due South: You Just Have to Leap: 3/4
See part 1 for header info.
#
I’m very fond of you, Ray.
He didn’t let himself think about it until he was done with work and heading home. Because the thing was, Fraser was a freak, but Ray didn’t think he was so much of a freak that he thought doing flirty things with his head and saying I’m very fond of you was normal partners stuff. He didn’t mean he thought Ray was a good cop or a nice guy. I’m very fond of you was Canadian for I want you. It had to be. Ray was sure. Almost.
And if that dip of his head, the one Ray had always figured was Fraser trying not to let on that Ray’s stupidity was funny, actually meant I want to fuck you, then Fraser thought about it a lot. Maybe even almost as much as Ray did.
Fraser was coming over tonight, as soon as he got off the leash at the Consulate. Ray could have him. He could feed him whatever Mom left in the crock pot, and flirt with him, and watch him duck his head and blush, play it out for a couple of hours and make his move. Or he could back him up against the wall as soon as he walked in the door, grind against him, make him come before he even had time to take his coat off.
Fraser might put up a fuss--are you sure this is prudent, Ray?--but now that Ray’d cracked the code, he’d know better than to back off. Fraser wanted Ray to talk him into it. Or maybe even not talk--maybe just do, and not give him time to think twice about it.
He hadn’t done much more with guys than jerk off together, but with Fraser, he was up for more. Up for everything. Ray didn’t just want him--which he did--he loved him. Loved being with him. Could almost see getting old with him.
And that was it. That was why thinking about what he could have tonight was making him feel sort of sick, and not turned on. Fraser didn’t love him. Maybe he thought he did--maybe--but if he did, he was in love with the guy he thought Ray was. The smart guy. All Ray was bringing to the table was a body for Fraser to put his fantasies in.
He’d fucked people who didn’t love him before. It was okay. But fucking--being with--Stella when he still loved her, but she didn’t love him anymoe, always left him feeling sick and disgusted with himself.
So it couldn’t happen. He’d go with the plan he’d made before--shove Fraser’s face in what he was really like. Make him see. Once Fraser stopped fooling himself, he wouldn’t want Ray anymore. Ray would still want him, but he was used to wanting things he couldn’t have.
The apartment smelled like cabbage. He peeked under the lid of the crock pot--sausage and kraut, possibly the least seductive meal he could think of. Perfect. The box with his school stuff was there on the counter, with a note from Mom next to it.
Dear Stanley:
Here are the things you asked for. I brought one of the photo albums, too. We have a lot more of your old things in the storage unit, if you want them.
Stella told me you were in trouble at work. Remember to try hard and do your best. We love you!
Mom
That was great. He should have known Stella would tell his mother about the Recu case. She wouldn’t have said he was in trouble, but even if Stella tried to explain what really happened, Mom probably didn’t quite understand. What did she need to know about how the courts worked? Nobody she knew ever got arrested.
He moved the box over to the couch, and checked on Speedy. He’d had to tell Mom to leave the turtle alone after the time he’d come home to find Speedy huddled on his rock in a tank that stank of bleach from how thoroughly Mom had cleaned it, but she still put stuff into the tank sometimes--mostly things that were okay for Speedy to have, but not always.
This time, she’d put a cabbage leaf in there. Cabbage was okay for turtles, but the leaf was so big Speedy could use it as a tent. Shaking his head, he went to the refrigerator for mealworms.
He was floating them in the water for Speedy to eat when Fraser knocked on the door. “It’s open!”
Dief came charging in, jumping around like he hadn’t seen Ray for days--which, okay, he hadn’t--and a moment later, Fraser came in too. He’d changed out of the uniform. Damn. Ray liked him in civvies--even if he did dress like he was supposed to be on the front of paper towels. He looked…touchable.
But Ray wasn’t touching. “There’s, um, food. On the counter.”
“Ah. I brought wine.”
“What for?” It wasn’t like Fraser eating over at his place was some big occasion. Plus Fraser didn’t drink, and he knew perfectly well Ray liked beer, not wine.
“I don’t know.”
“What, it just appeared or something?”
“No, I just--I didn’t think it through.” He put the bottle, still in a paper bag from the liquor store, on the counter. “‘Caution Turtle Food’?”
Huh? Ray turned and saw he was reading the lid to the mealworm container. “Yeah, that’s so if Mom decides to clean out the fridge while she’s here, she knows not to open it.”
“Ah.”
“There was an incident with a box of crickets.”
“Oh dear.”
“Yeah. I‘m not sure if she thought the leftovers had been in there so long they turned into crickets, or that they were getting into the fridge somehow, or what. It was a month before the apartment stopped chirping.” He snapped the lid back on the mealworms and put them back in the fridge.
When he turned back to the room, Fraser had gone over to the turtle tank. “Despite living in an urban environment, Speedy manages to hunt and consume live prey. You would do well to emulate him.”
Ray was very confused until he realized Fraser was talking to Dief. “It’s not like Speedy goes to the park and finds his own bugs. I buy them for him. I guess you could buy bunnies at the pet store and set them loose in the Consulate for Dief to hunt down, but that might be kinda cruel to the bunnies. And, you know, messy.”
“Hm.” Fraser looked down at the wolf. “Perhaps we’ll stick with kibble.”
Dief woofed.
“And the occasional soft pretzel.”
He woofed again.
“And so forth.”
While Fraser settled the issue with the wolf, Ray got out some plates and dished up the food, thinking that he ought to get a dog dish for his place one of these days--if Mom knew he fed the wolf off of the same plates human beings used, she’d either faint or clip him one around the ear. Or both.
He was just about to put Dief’s plate down on the floor when Fraser said, “Oh. I’d rather you didn’t give Diefenbaker any cabbage. It disagrees with him.”
“No problem.” He slopped the cabbage back into the crock pot and gave Dief an extra sausage, to make up for it.
They started eating. “This is very good,” Fraser said after a few bites.
“I’ll tell Mom you said that.”
“Thank you.”
Ray tried to think of something to talk about that wasn’t sex, him being dumb, or the Recu case. Having all three of those things laying on the table between them gave him a lump in his throat it was hard to eat around. The best he could come up with was, “What’s new and exciting at the Consulate?”
Fraser tilted his head to one side and went “Hm.” He chewed meditatively at a chunk of sausage. “Ottawa has issued a new form, Form 37 dash J, Request for Supplies, replacing the old form B stroke 82, Requisition of Materiel.”
“Wow. Big changes.”
“Well, the new form came into effect on Monday, at which point we had still not received any of them. Personally, I suspect that Inspector Thatcher simply forgot to order any, but that’s neither here nor there. She had Turnbull requisition some as soon as the problem was discovered, but--I’m sure you see the difficulty.”
Ray thought about what he knew about bureaucracy. “They wouldn’t send you the new forms because you used the old form to ask for them?”
“Exactly. Inspector Thatcher was very cross, and evidently Turnbull had to spend several hours cleaning the Queen’s Bedroom to soothe his nerves. He was doing so well about not bursting into tears when she yells at him, but I fear this incident has set him back.”
“Poor bastard.”
“Turnbull is a sensitive soul,” Fraser agreed. “Eventually he realized that he could have his friend Constable O’Reilly in Toronto express-mail him one of the new forms. It arrived today, so assuming he remembers to use it to request additional forms, and not any of the half-dozen other things we need, the crisis should pass by early next week. In the meantime, we’re out of paper clips, toilet tissue, vacuum cleaner bags, # 2 manila envelopes, and ink for the self-inking date stamp.”
“You know, they sell all of those things in Chicago. You could just go to a store and buy them.”
“That would be against regulations.”
“What, you’d rather wipe your ass with leaves than buy American toilet paper?”
“No, not leaves. We have a considerable number of the outdated B-stroke-82s left.”
Ray could never be quite sure that Fraser was joking when he said stuff like that. He almost had to be, but it was that almost that got you. “Sounds scratchy.”
“We all knew the risks when we joined up.”
Ray made a mental note not to use the can at the Consulate for a while, just in case.
After they ate, Fraser insisted on helping with the dishes. Ray wanted to let him, and didn’t want to, at the same time. Finally he decided that since he wasn’t having sex with Fraser, he’d let himself have Fraser’s help with the dishes.
Since Fraser was out of uniform, he didn’t have the jacket-thing to take off, but he rolled up his sleeves. Ray had to work pretty hard at keeping his eyes on the dishes and off Fraser’s forearms.
He didn’t do that good at it. When he let his eyes linger a little too long after handing Fraser the silverware, Fraser did that head-duck-and-smile thing, and it occurred to Ray that if he just did a quarter-turn and leaned a little, he could be kissing Fraser. Right there in his kitchenette.
Resolutely, he turned away and dried his hands on another dishtowel. “You want some coffee?”
“Sure. If you’re making some.”
Ray made some--if Fraser wasn’t having any, he’d probably have gone with instant, but since Fraser was going to, he got out the grinder and the whole beans.
Fraser didn’t say anything while he made the coffee, but Ray could feel the weight of his eyes on him. Stupid. It wasn’t like this was a date. He didn’t want to impress Fraser. The other way around.
“So, here,” he said, handing Fraser a cup of coffee and opening the box of his school stuff. “We’ve got--ok, photo album, I don’t know why she brought that. Picture I did of a Stegosaurus.” He passed that to Fraser. “Spelling test I got nine out of ten on. OK, here we go. Report cards.”
“It’s a very nice Stegosaurus.”
“I think I copied it. OK, here’s kindergarten. I did okay in kindergarten. That was my best year. I flunked sitting still and the alphabet, but I did okay in colors and shapes and sharing with others.”
“You didn’t flunk sitting still,” Fraser said, studying the paper. “The teacher marked ‘needs improvement.’”
“Yeah, that’s how they say F in kindergarten.” He kept digging through the box. “I don’t know why my mom saved some of this stuff. Here, hold this.” He handed Fraser a pile of old papers and stuff. “If you think my handwriting’s bad now, take a look at that.” Finally, he found more report cards. “There’s eighth grade.”
“You got a B plus in Home Economics,” Fraser pointed out.
“Yeah, that was embarrassing. We had to sew these stuffed animals. Mine was a turtle.”
“Ray.”
“Yeah?”
“As fascinating as this is, it’s really not necessary. I believed you when you said that you did poorly in school.”
“Good.”
“But any number of very intelligent people have done poorly in school. I was educated at home myself, you know, and the few times I went to school with other children were frankly disastrous--I’ve told you about the incident with the otter.”
“Yeah, that’s not the same.” He got up and paced over to the turtle tank. Fraser just didn’t get it.
“I know, but that experience and a few others did convince me that success in formal schooling has, well, very little to do with intelligence, or even genuine learning. I once--well, that’s not important. Ray, I work with you nearly every day. I know you.”
“I know you think you do.”
“Have you been hiding something from me?”
“No.” He leaned over the turtle tank, clutching the sides of the shelf so hard his fingers hurt. “No, it’s just that there’s something you’re not seeing.”
“Is this something new, or are we still talking about your intelligence?”
“Look, I’m sorry I’m boring you, but I already said why this is important.”
“You’re not boring me, I’m just trying to keep up.”
Ray might not be smart, but he was a fucking genius at screwing up relationships. Here he’d managed to skip right over all the good parts and get right to the messy breakup. “Look. I just don’t…I don’t want you to be disappointed in me.”
Fraser crossed the room to stand behind him. “I’m not.”
“You will be.” He straightened up and ran a hand through his hair, the beads of his bracelet clicking as it slid down his wrist. “Look.” Fraser was too close, and if he kept standing here, if Fraser kept being so fucking nice, so understanding, Ray was going to do something they’d both regret. “I’m taking a walk. I’m not mad,” he added, because Stella always thought he was mad when he had to take a walk in the middle of some big stupid relationship conversation. “I just…have to take a walk.”
But Fraser nodded, like he got that sometimes a guy just had to take a walk.
“Okay. So you hang out here, and I’ll be back.” He gathered up his coat and his gun. By the time he got to the door, the wolf was waiting there for him.
“Diefenbaker, I think Ray wants to be alone.”
“It’s okay; he can come with. He’s a good listener.”
“He’s deaf,” Fraser pointed out.
“Yeah, that might have something to do with it. C’mon, Dief.”
It wasn’t real cold, but cold enough that there weren’t any kids playing in the street or people sitting out on their stoops. Ray and Dief had the sidewalks to themselves, which suited him just fine. He wasn’t sure if he was out here to think or to stop thinking. Fraser had a way of twisting up his head until he barely knew which way was up. He wished Fraser would just…hell, he didn’t know what he wished Fraser would do.
Ahead of them, a stray cat scuttled out from under a parked car. Dief woofed softly and took off after it.
“Aw, what are you doing? Leave the kitty cat alone.”
Dief, unsurprisingly, didn’t obey. With a sigh, Ray shoved his hands in his pockets and kept walking.
He wanted Fraser. Fraser--he was almost completely mostly sure--wanted him. It oughta be real simple. But all he could think about was how it would end.
Stella had worked on him for years: the tutoring, the dance lessons, all the little tricks she taught him to help him pass for a smart guy. But eventually, she’d figured out that her ugly duckling was never going to turn into a swan.
But hell, at least she had known that he wasn’t smart. She thought he could change, but she wasn’t in complete fucking denial the way Fraser was. So maybe the thing with Fraser was more like with his dad. When he was a kid, he’d liked it when his dad stuck up for him with his teachers. Told them he was a smart kid. But maybe if he’d faced the reality of it, he’d have realized that Ray was never going to be a doctor or a lawyer or even a hotshot businessman like Marlon, and that being a cop was good, for Ray. Maybe he’d have seen that Ray was doing about the best he could with what he had to work with, and he’d have been proud of him, instead of not even really talking to him for all those years.
So, yeah. Maybe if Fraser would just realize that Ray was kind of dumb, he’d eventually come around to being okay with that. He probably wouldn’t want to be with him--cause, face it, that would be like a turtle and a swan or something; different worlds--but maybe he’d still sort of like him.
But that didn’t get him any closer to figuring out how to get Fraser to face the facts, which was the big problem.
Fraser was just being pigheaded, and it wasn’t fair. The whole point was that Ray was the dumb one, so Fraser ought to meet him at least halfway. Maybe he could do something with that--convince Fraser it wasn’t, dunno, chivalrous or something to take advantage of the fact that he could think circles around Ray just to get his own way.
Ray noticed a car coming up the street, way too fast for a neighborhood like this. “Dief! Get your ass out of the road!” That would just be great, if he let Fraser’s wolf get hit by a car. Maybe then Fraser would admit he was dumb.
The car skidded to a halt right next to him. The back doors opened and two men got out.
Fuck. Fuckity, fuck fuck fuck. “Dief!” Ray yelled again, and reached for his gun. Before he could aim, the closer of the two men kicked his elbow, and the gun clattered to the sidewalk. The man raised his own gun, and then--
Darkness.
#
This was why he shouldn’t drink. Sure, it killed the pain for an hour or two, but then he had to wake up with a jackhammer going in his head, mouth stuffed with cotton, arms and legs stiff from sleeping--or passing out--tangled up in his clothes.
He pried one eye open. He’d fallen asleep with the overhead light on. Damn. He let the eye close again.
Funny, usually after a night of drinking he woke up dying to go to the can. Felt okay now, though. Maybe it wasn’t morning yet. If that was it, he ought to drink some water and take an aspirin.
“Ray?”
Fraser? He hadn’t--he’d better not have….
“Ray, now that you’re awake, if you can manage to sit up with your back to mine, I might be able to untie your hands.”
Untie his hands? What the hell had they done?
He got his other eye unstuck. He was lying on carpet--short gray carpet, like in an office building. He didn’t have anything like that in his place. Neither did the Consulate. He turned his head the other way, and he was looking at Fraser’s hiking boots and the cuffs of his jeans.
Now that he thought about it, he didn’t remember any drinking. He’d been out walking with Dief, and then--
They were captured. That explained the being-tied-up. What a relief. “Okay,” he said. “This, uh, might take me a minute.”
“Take your time. Your head wound has stopped bleeding, so it might be best if you can manage to avoid disturbing the scab.”
With a lot of wriggling, he managed to turn over onto his back, and then tightened up his abs and sat up, like a crunch. The effort made his head hurt worse; he had to lean forward until it stopped pounding.
Now he could see more of Fraser than just his feet. He was sitting up against the wall, not a hair out of place except that his hands were tied behind him, like Ray’s were. “You okay?” Ray asked.
Fraser nodded. He tucked his legs under him and got up on his knees, turning around so his back was to Ray.
Ray copied him, a lot less gracefully. “Dief’s, uh, I don’t know where Dief is,” he admitted. “He was up ahead.”
“Good. If he hasn’t been caught, perhaps he’ll be able to summon help.” Fraser squirmed backwards on his knees until his hands brushed Ray’s. “Hold still.”
“What, he’s going to run to the nearest police station and make like Lassie?”
Fraser’s fingertips skimmed over his hands, exploring the knots. “He sometimes manages to make himself understood with Turnbull.”
“Oh, that’s great.”
“Yes, we had better not count on receiving outside aid. That way, if it arrives, we’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
The ropes on his wrists started to loosen. “So, what’s the plan?”
“After we’ve managed to untie ourselves?”
“Yeah.”
“Then we’ll assess the situation.”
“You mean you’ve been conscious all this time and you still don’t have a plan?”
“Not as such.” The ropes momentarily tightened. “Whoops. I think we can safely assume that Recu is behind this.”
Good to know. “Yeah?”
“Yes. Judge Bowen and his son were in the car that brought me here. We were separated at the elevator--I’m not sure where they were taken.”
So they didn’t just have to escape--they had to free Judge Bowen and the kid, and, if at all possible, get some evidence against Recu. And Fraser didn’t have a plan yet. “Great.” The ropes suddenly loosened enough that he could pull his hands out. “Thanks.” He rubbed his fingers together to put some feeling back into them.
After that, he felt gingerly at his head. There was a large lump forming on his forehead, and dried blood crusting over his left eye. That explained why it had been so hard to get his eye open.
“Ray?” Fraser said.
Ray turned and saw that he was waggling his hands. “Oh. Sorry.” He got to work on untying the knots. It would have been easier if he could get a good look at them, but if he tried to put his head down, the bump on his forehead started throbbing so much he thought his head would split open. “You don’t still have that knife on you, do you?”
“No, I’m afraid Recu’s men took my knife very early in the abduction.”
Figured. He kept working on the knots, and eventually Fraser was free. Well, untied. He got carefully to his feet, pulling Ray up after him.
The room they were in was a plain square, about ten feet on a side, with no furniture and a set of windows on one side. Funny how Ray had never noticed how much an office could look like a cell. He went straight to the door and tried it--it was pretty damn unlikely that the criminals were dumb enough to tie them up but leave the door unlocked, but hey, you never knew.
Locked. The door opened inward, so chances were, they couldn’t kick it down, and anyway, a few cautious thumps proved it was heavier than most interior doors, and made of metal--probably aluminum. They weren’t going to get out by bashing through it. “The hinges have inset pins,” he told Fraser. “You don’t have a Phillips-head screwdriver, do you?”
“No.”
“Neither do I.” So lifting the pins and taking the door out of the frame was out, too.
“The windows are tempered glass, and even if we managed to break them, we appear to be at least twenty stories up.”
Ray went over to look out the window with him. Yep, that looked like about twenty stories, straight down. It was a modern skyscraper, all glass and steel, with no convenient ledges to climb around on. “Okay, we’re going to die.”
“Let’s not give up hope. Look, a heating vent.”
Ray looked where Fraser was pointing. Sure, there was a heating vent, but it was only about the size of a hardback book. They weren’t going to crawl through it to safety. Or even to greater danger that might eventually be followed by safety. “Yeah, that looks real useful.”
“Give me a boost.”
“Huh?”
“Let me stand on your back so I can investigate the heating vent,” Fraser explained.
“Why do I always have to be the guy that gets stood on?”
“You don’t. I’d be more than happy to let you stand on me.” Fraser handed him a tiny flashlight and got down on all fours below the heating vent.
This wasn’t exactly what Ray had had in mind any of the times he’d fantasized about mounting his Mountie. “Okay, yell if I hurt you.”
“I shall.”
Ray carefully put one foot on Fraser’s shoulder and the other down near his hips, steadying himself against the wall with his hands. “Okay? I’m not stepping on where your bullet is, am I?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Great.” He shined the light into the vent. It was…a vent. “Am I looking for anything in particular?”
“Does the duct widen after the opening?”
“Nope.” He started to step down. “Wait--do you hear that?” It sounded like a cat crying, but, given the context, maybe it was the kid.
“Hear what?”
Ray climbed down. “Here, you listen.”
He made like an ottoman and let Fraser climb on top of him. “Your Honor? Judge Bowen? My name is Constable Benton Fraser of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Yes--I first came--that’s not important right now. We believe you have been taken prisoner by a criminal by the name of Michael Recu. Yes, sir, I understand. We--that is to say, my partner Ray Vecchio of the Chicago Police Department and I--are going to rescue you. As soon as we manage to escape ourselves. Yes, sir. You’re welcome!”
Fraser climbed down. “Judge Bowen and his son are being held prisoner in another room connected to that vent. The Judge’s hands are bound, as ours were, but he’s attempting to remain calm so that the child doesn’t become unnecessarily upset.”
“Great.” He sat down on the floor, rubbing his back. “How’s that plan coming along?”
Fraser hesitated, then shook his head.
“Great.”
Fraser started going through his pockets. “Ah. I do have some powdered horn, if you’d like it for your head.”
“Okay.” He tilted his head back as Fraser knelt in front of him.
“It looks as though you were struck with the barrel of a handgun. Probably a semiautomatic.”
“Uh-huh.” Fraser was so close Ray could smell him--pine and fabric softener and saddle soap.
“Before the abduction, I had a chance to read some of your writing.”
“My writing?”
“Mm-hm. I especially enjoyed ‘Turtles!’ but ‘Which is better, Ford or Chevy’ was also very informative.” He dabbed some of the horn stuff on Ray’s head.
“You read my school papers?”
“I never pass up an opportunity to learn. Until now, turtle care and American automotive rivalries are areas in which I’ve been woefully ill-informed.” He sat back on his heels and put the little jar of powdered horn back in his pocket. “But I think my favorite was--”
“Ceiling.”
“What?”
Ray pointed at the ceiling. “It’s an acoustic drop ceiling. Sometimes in the movies they escape by climbing up into the ceiling and crawling into another room.”
“I’ve never known that to work in real life.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you should stop talking about turtles and come up with the plan, then.”
“The ceiling is worth checking. Here, climb on my shoulders.”
Ray climbed. When he pushed one of the ceiling tiles aside, they were showered with gray insulation material. “Ugh.” He brushed enough of the stuff aside so that he could see into the crawl space. “The walls go all the way up.”
“How much space is there between the drop ceiling and the main ceiling?” Fraser asked.
“About a foot.”
“Hm.”
“What?”
“I have an idea.”
“Great.” He stepped down. “What’s the plan?”
“It’s not so much a plan as the barest suggestion of a notion that may be potentially of use.”
“Okay….”
“It occurs to me that the criminals may have seen the same movies that you have. So if we hide in the ceiling, and perhaps leave one of the tiles on the floor, they may believe that we’ve escaped through the ceiling, which may, I emphasize may, lead to a moment of inattention that we can use to overpower and subdue them.”
“You mean, we hang out up there in the ceiling until they come looking for us, and then while the bad guys are scratching their butts and saying, ‘duh, where’d they go?’ we jump down and kick ‘em in the head?”
“Exactly.”
Fraser had come up with some goofy plans in the past--starting with driving the car into Lake Michigan on the day they met--but this one had to be one of the goofiest. “You’re sure you don’t have a Phillips head screwdriver?”
“Very sure. I really should carry a small toolkit with me for situations like this, but I just haven’t gotten around to assembling one.” They were in a completely bare room, with a lock they couldn’t pick, windows they couldn’t break, and a heating vent too small to escape through. The ceiling really was the only choice. “Okay. Ceiling it is.”
Fraser got up. “You should go first, since you’re lighter. I should mention that there’s a slight--well, more than slight--danger that the ceiling supports won’t support our weight. Choose a spot near to the wall, and distribute your weight across as many of the supports as possible.”
Of course. It wouldn’t be a Fraser plan without the possibility of falling on his ass and breaking his neck. “Great. That’s exactly what I was hoping to hear.” He stepped into Fraser’s cupped hands, and swarmed up into the opening in the ceiling.
When Fraser’s hands left his foot, he tensed, figuring that any second the ceiling supports would pull away from the wall and he’d be on the floor, maybe even unconscious again. But it didn’t. Digging a path in the insulation with his hands, he slithered closer to the wall. “Fraser?”
“Yes, Ray?”
“How are you going to get up here?” Now that he was up, Fraser didn’t have anyone to give him a boost.
“I believe I mentioned that it wasn’t a fully realized plan.”
Ray shifted another tile so that he could look down at Fraser. He stuck his hand out. “Okay. Grab my hand, and maybe I can pull you up.”
“I doubt that the ceiling supports can hold our combined weight at one spot, Ray. The ceiling is already bowing where you are.”
“Oh.” Looking at what they had available to them--a couple of ceiling tiles and the insulation, which was dry, papery stuff, like old leaves, he flashed on the time when he was a kid that Marlon had hidden in a pile of leaves and jumped out to scare him--he must’ve been really young, five or six. It wouldn’t have scared him except that Marlon had told him the night before how he swamp monsters that lived in the sewers liked to hide in leaf piles so they could jump out and eat kids. Ray’d been stupid enough to believe it, of couse. He’d just about wet his pants. “Okay, why don’t I shove more of this insulation stuff down there, and you can make a big pile and hide in it.”
Fraser thumbed his eyebrow. “Ah…why, exactly?”
“When the criminals come in, you can jump out of it like a swamp monster. It’ll give you the advantage of surprise for a second or two.”
“Ah. Well, if I were a criminal, and my prisoner jumped out of a pile of insulation like a swamp monster, I’d certainly be surprised,” Fraser admitted.
“Do you have a better idea?”
“No.”
“And then while you’re surprising him with your swamp-monster act, I’ll drop down out of the ceiling and surprise them even more.”
“I don’t suppose there’s anything up there that could be used as a weapon.”
He shined the flashlight around the cramped space. “Nope, just insulation. Do you want it or not?”
Fraser sighed. “Fine. I’ll be a swamp monster.”
“Good.” Ray tunneled around in the ceiling like a giant mole, sweeping up the insulation with his arms and dropping it through one of the removed tiles. The resulting pile was smaller than he’d expected--crammed into the tiny ceiling space, it looked like there was a lot of it, but on the floor, it was only a little bigger than a load of laundry. “Um,” he said, hanging down out of the ceiling to look back and forth between Fraser and the pile. “Maybe if you kind of prop that tile up in front of the pile, they won’t notice you. Right away.”
Fraser nodded. “Get back to the edge. You don’t want them to see you in the hole.”
He was right, but that meant Ray couldn’t watch him try to hide in that crummy pile of insulation, which had to be worth seeing. He belly-crawled over to the wall. “Is it working?” he asked after a while.
“I’m not sure.” Fraser’s voice was muffled. “Look.”
Ray slid a tile aside and looked. Fraser made a surprisingly convincing pile of insulation. It just figured that he’d even be good at hiding in a completely inadequate hiding place. “Your one foot’s sticking out.”
The brown hiking boot disappeared under the insulation. “Now you’re good.”
“I look like a swamp monster?”
“Yeah.” That was them, Swamp Monster and his sidekick Ceiling Mole.
“So now we wait?”
“Yeah.”
After a while Fraser said, “This insulation is very dusty.”
“I know. It was up here before it was down there, remember?”
“I might be a swamp monster with a respiratory condition.”
“Any time you have a better plan, just go ahead and shout it out. Don’t be shy”
“I didn’t mean to disparage your plan, Ray.”
“I get that it’s a crummy plan, but right now it’s all we’ve got.”
“Given the constraints of the situation, it’s a fine plan.”
“I think that’s what I said.”
“So it is.” Below him, in the insulation, Fraser sneezed. “As I was saying, while I greatly enjoyed the turtle-care and automotive rivalry papers, I found the fiction pieces especially interesting.”
“Fraser, you know I wrote that stuff for school, right? The teachers made me. It’s not like I wrote them because I felt like it.”
“Nevertheless, Ray, you have a real gift for storytelling. Take, for instance, the story about the--oh, dear. Someone’s coming.”
After a moment, he heard them too--voices in the hallway, not quite loud enough for him to make out the words. Sounded like two guys. He got ready to jump down out of the ceiling.
The door opened. “What the hell?” one of the goons said.
“Oh, man, the boss is gonna be pissed.”
part 4
a/n: This is not a scene break; LJ made me divide the post, and there was no really good place to do it.