Due South: Out of the Box
Title: Out of the Box
Author: Me
Rating: PG-13, language
Pairing: Fraser/RayK
Summary: Ray can't figure out why Fraser is acting so weird.
A/n: Not the time travel story, which I'm still working on.
Fraser was talking, probably telling some kind of caribou story--he had that serious look he got when he was doing that--but Ray wasn’t listening, couldn’t even really hear him over the churning of his guts. He should have known better than to buy an egg salad sandwich out of a truck. He’d been hungry, but that was no excuse. He could have at least gotten something that didn’t have mayonnaise in it.
“Sorry,” Ray said, interrupting Fraser’s story. “Gonna be sick.” He ran to the bathroom, managing to make it there just in time to lose his egg salad into the can.
He was halfway afraid Fraser would come in to see how he was doing--that a guy might want to heave his guts out in private seemed like it would be one of those things that Fraser just did not get. But after fifteen solid minutes of heaving, followed by a few minutes more of sitting by the toilet waiting to see if he was really done, he decided he was done, and Fraser still hadn’t shown up.
He rinsed his mouth again and headed back for the living room, saying, “I think we oughta go back to that lunch truck with a Department of Health inspector, what do you say?”
But Fraser didn’t answer, because Fraser was gone. Ray would have figured he’d just gone to the john, except Ray had been in there, so that wasn’t it. Plus, he’d taken his hat and his wolf. And left the TV on.
So that was about three different kinds of weird. Maybe he did know about the privacy-while-you-puke thing, but he thought being in the next room wasn’t quite enough privacy. That happened sometimes, with Fraser. If he tried to act like a normal guy, he sometimes got the details wrong.
Ray paced around the living room. Thing was, now that he’d gotten rid of that egg salad, he felt a lot better. He even sort of wanted the pizza they’d been talking about earlier, before his guts had revolted on him. He picked up the phone, then, attacked by another wave of queasiness, put it back down.
Maybe just some TV, then. The show was Fraser’s pick--something about the rain forest. He’d kind of gotten used to watching that kind of thing, with Fraser. They were showing some native guys--Amazonians?--hunting some kind of wild pig with these wicked-looking spears. If Fraser was there, he’d be talking about how it was like the way the Inuit hunted--well, whatever they had up there instead of pigs. Walruses, maybe.
Maybe he ought to call Fraser. Make sure he got home okay.
Because, yeah, a Mountie and a wolf were really likely to have trouble walking home at night.
Still, maybe he ought to call. Explain about the egg salad and everything.
He reached for the phone again, then decided Fraser hadn’t had enough time to get to the Consulate yet. If he had a car like a normal person, sure, but walking? He’d need another twenty minutes or so.
He got himself some Coke and saltines, and watched the Amazonians hunt down the pig. After they killed it, they hauled it back to the village and roasted it over a big fire, and there was lots of dancing and drumming.
At least somebody was having a good time.
#
“I don’t want to hear another word about it,” Fraser told Diefenbaker as he unlocked the front door to the Consulate. Burning with humiliation and regret, he’d taken the long way home, through the park, but even the exertion of the long walk wasn’t enough to leave him with any sense of peace.
Dief circled around his feet, whining anxiously.
“His reaction was hardly ambiguous.” It was at times like this that he wished he was a drinking man. He’d seen enough drunks to know that liquor was a time-tested means of creating temporary amnesia. But he didn’t drink, and if he chose tonight to start, he’d probably succeed only in making himself sick.
Which would provide a certain aesthetically appealing symmetry, but he failed to see how it would improve the situation. So.
When the telephone rang, he warred with himself over whether to answer it--it could be, after all, a Canadian citizen in need of assistance--but in the end, his complete disinclination to speak to anyone at this particular juncture won out.
The decision turned out to be a fortunate one. A few minutes after the phone ceased ringing, his sense of duty prevailed, and he played the message.
It was Ray, the person of all of “anyone” he was least inclined to speak to at present. “Hi, Fraser. It’s, uh, me. Ray. Ray Vecchio. Look, you didn’t have to go--I’m feeling better now. I should have known better than to eat that egg salad, I guess. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Egg salad. So that was how they were going to play it.
Fine.
#
The next day, Fraser didn’t come to the 27th. Or the next day, either. Ray was puzzled--probably Inspector Thatcher had some trivial but time-consuming job for him, but usually Fraser called when that happened. Hell, sometimes it even seemed like he hoped Ray would come up with something to get him out of it. But there was no call, no Fraser saying, “Unfortunately, I’m very busy measuring all of the Consulate’s paper clips to ensure that they are uniform in size, so I won’t be able to liaise with you today, unless there’s some pressing matter that requires my assistance.” Nothing. Nada. Bupkis.
He was just about to break down and call himself and demand to know what was up, when Welsh gave him the new case. “Bring the Mountie in on this one,” was the first thing he said about it. “the Australian ambassador has been receiving death threats. she has her own security, but the threats have just started since she’s been in Chicago, so the investigation falls in our lap.” He gave Ray a file with not much in it, besides the address for the ambassador’s hotel. “Make this case your top priority. The ambassador’s expecting you, so get the Mountie and head over there now.”
Ray headed for the Consulate, calling Fraser on the cell phone on his way.
Once Ray had finished filling him in, Fraser said, sort of stiffly. “Is there some Canadian connection to this case?”
“I don’t think so.” What, that mattered, all of the sudden? “Australia is kind of like Canada.”
“It is not.”
“Sure it is. You both--” Ray couldn’t, now that he thought of it, think of a way that Australia was like Canada. “Speak English.”
“So does the United States.”
“Look, I’m here, are you coming?”
Fraser sighed. “Yes. Yes, I’ll be right there.”
A moment later, he came out the front door. Something was off, though. He was moving kind of stiffly, like he was hurt or something. Once he got to the car, he stood there with his hand on the door handle for a few seconds, then took this big breath before he opened it and got in.
“You okay?” Ray asked.
Fraser put his hat on the dashboard. “Yes, Ray.”
“You seem kinda queer.”
Fraser was in the middle of buckling his seat belt, but he stopped, and went kind of rigid for a moment. “I’m fine.” He licked his lip. “Which hotel is the ambassador staying in?”
Well, okay. Ray could take a hint--whatever was wrong with him--and something was, no matter how much he tried to deny it--Fraser didn’t want to talk about it. “The Clarion.” He started driving. “How about you do most of the talking with the ambassador. You’re good with--you know.”
“Fine.”
“And I’ll take the lead when we talk to his security guys.”
Fraser nodded.
Scratch that--Fraser didn’t want to talk about anything. Something had put him in a funk, that was for sure. Wait--he hadn’t brought Dief today. Maybe the wolf was the one who was hurt. Or even dead. “Where’s Dief?”
“At the Consulate.”
Not dead, then. “Is he, uh, he’s okay?”
“Yes.”
The rest of the trip to the hotel, Fraser did his best impression of a deaf-mute, and he kept it up until they were actually in the ambassador’s suite. Weirdly enough, after that he was pretty much normal, all, “So sorry this has happened to you,” and “I first came to Chicago on….”
Once the preliminary stuff was out of the way, the ambassador handed over the threatening letters, already in clear evidence bags. “Who handled ‘em before they were bagged?” Ray asked.
“My secretary handled some of them, the ones that were mailed, and my security staff.”
“We’ll have to get elimination prints,” Ray said.
“Of course.”
“Hm,” Fraser said.
“What?” Ray leaned over to look at the letter, and Fraser gave this sort of micro-jolt, like if they weren’t in front of other people, he’d have jumped away rather than let Ray’s arm brush against his. But they were in front of people, so he just sat back a little and handed Ray the letter.
It was hand written and pretty hard to make out--the writing was jagged and dark, with a few rips in the paper where the person had pressed too hard with the pen. Ray read out loud one of the phrases he could make out: “‘Representative of an illegitimate government’?”
Fraser was looking at another letter. “It appears that Her Excellency is being threatened by an Australian Monarchist. Or group of the same, but all of these appear to have been written by one person.” He passed Ray the second letter. “I see these arrived over several days--what led you to conclude that they represent a credible threat?”
“The most recent one. It was left here, in my hotel room. I initially assumed that it had been hand-delivered to the hotel and brought to the room by one of the maids or bellhops, but when my bodyguards questioned the staff--they had hoped to get a description of the person, you see, in case he or she approaches me in public--they found that none of the staff admitted to accepting it, or to putting in the room. My security arrangements are fairly loose, but the fact that the person was able to gain access to my rooms suggests--well, a level of commitment unusual for a garden-variety kook.”
“Indeed.” Fraser smoothed an eyebrow. “I’m afraid I’m not as versed as I might be--is there is a substantial Monarchist movement in Australia?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Ah.”
“There is a movement to cut ties with the queen we already have, but her role is almost entirely symbolic. The issue doesn’t inspire anyone to violence.”
“Australia has a queen?” Ray said.
Fraser looked at him for the first time all day. “The Queen of England, Ray.”
Oh, right. “I told you Canada and Australia had something in common.”
Fraser opened his mouth, closed it, and shook his head. “At any rate, this person appears to believe that the nearest relative to the British royal family to be born on Australian soil should be the king or queen of Australia.”
“I have no idea who that would be,” the ambassador said. “I doubt anyone does. One of the letters makes reference to the rightful monarch appearing when the epoch of revolution begins, or something like that.”
“It’s a fascinating portrait of severe mental disturbance,” Fraser said. “Have you observed any other suspicious activity?”
“No. You’ll want to talk to my security staff, of course, but they tell me they haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary.”
Fraser went through his whole polite goodbye routine, and they went to find the ambassador’s security chief.
He was in another hotel room that had been set up as an office. “Hi. I’m Ray Vecchio, Chicago PD, and this is Constable Fraser, RCMP. He first came to Chicago for reasons you don’t care about, and now he works with me.”
“Thank you for coming so quickly. We’re not sure that the threat to the ambassador is credible, but it’s better safe than sorry, right?”
“Yeah,” Ray answered. He and Fraser sat down. “When did these letters start coming?”
“The first one came five days ago, the day after we arrived in Chicago.” He took out some photocopies of the letters and envelopes. “You can see it was mailed the day before, from Chicago. The post office says it was probably placed in a public collection box, but they can’t tell us anything more than that. The next three arrived the same way, until the one today, which was hand-delivered.”
They asked some more questions about where the ambassador had been when the letter was delivered (at a breakfast meeting) and who knew about her schedule (her staff, the hotel staff, the people she was meeting with, anybody who’d seen her leaving the hotel). The chief agreed that nobody had seen anything suspicious, and refused Ray’s offer that he could try to get some uniforms to help with security, if they wanted.
“In that case, we’ll get these to the fingerprint guys. Give me a call if anything else happens.” He wrote his cell number on the back of a business card and handed it over. “Somebody’ll be around to take your prints soon.”
Bu first, Ray made a detour to check with the hotel staff, make sure they didn’t know anything they weren’t saying.
“Perhaps I should take the letters to the station while you do that,” Fraser suggested.
What was he gonna do, walk? The station was at least thirty blocks away. “It’ll just take a minute. I’ll be done before you’re halfway there.”
They found the maid responsible for the ambassador’s floor in the hotel laundry, folding sheets. “Buenas dias,” Ray said, flashing his badge. “Chicago PD. We have a couple questions about the letter that was found in the Australian lady’s room.”
“I know nothing?” she said, but her hands clenched around the sheet she was folding--she was gonna have to iron it again if she didn’t let go.
“Are you sure?” Fraser asked.
She didn’t answer.
“Look, you ain’t--aren’t--in any trouble. But if you saw somebody, it could help us out. The ambassador seems like a nice lady; we wouldn’t want anything to happen to her.”
The young woman turned her face away from them, and wiped at her cheek with her hand. “There was a man. He asked me to put the letter in the room. I told him he could leave it at the desk, but he said it was a surprise.” She reached into her apron pocket and took out a folded twenty-dollar bill. “He gave me this. So I put it in the room.”
Ray dropped the twenty into another evidence bag. “Okay. Okay, so when the ambassador’s bodyguard asked you about it….?”
“I knew he was angry that the letter was there. I didn’t want to get into trouble. I need this job. So I said I didn’t know.”
That sounded plausible, and Ray couldn’t think of any reason a Hispanic hotel maid in Chicago would have it out for an Australian ambassador. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I don’t think we need to get you in trouble about it. What did this man look like?”
She described him, while Fraser took notes.
“I’m going to send a sketch artist down, so you can help him make a picture of the guy, okay? We’ll have him come down when you’re on your break.”
“Okay. At eleven thirty.”
“Great. Okay. The sketch artist’s name is Tommy; he’s kinda weird, but he’s a nice guy. And somebody with him will take your fingerprints, too.”
She looked startled. “What for?”
“Elimination.” She still looked confused, so he explained, “Your fingerprints will be on this--” he held up the bag with the twenty in it “--and the letter. So we need to be able to tell which one are yours and which are the guy’s.”
“Okay.”
“You’ve been a great help, Miss,” Fraser said, tipping his hat.
Ray had figured that Fraser was over his snot, or whatever it was, but when they got back in the car, he shut down again, like someone had flipped a switch. He buckled his seat belt, folded his hands in his lap, and stared out the window.
“So now that we figured out how the letter got there, I figure there’s not too much to worry about.” He figured that if he made a sweeping statement like that, Fraser would have an anecdote about the time Some Inuit Guy had thought the polar bear was gone, and boy was he wrong--but no.
Fraser just said, “Ah.”
“Okay, what is your problem?”
“I don’t have a problem, Ray.”
“You’re sure acting like you have a problem.”
Fraser didn’t say anything else for a long time, and when he did, Ray almost missed it, since he was practically whispering, and still facing the window. “I don’t know what you want me to do, Ray.”
“Do about what? Either tell me what the problem is, or just act normal.” Probably not the best answer in the world, but Ray was more than a little annoyed by now.
In that same small voice, Fraser said, “I’m trying.”
#
And he was trying, but this was somehow even more difficult than he’d anticipated--and he had anticipated that it would be very difficult indeed. He’d prepared himself--he thought--for a negative reaction to his declaration. He’d even considered the possibility of a violent reaction. But it had never, in his darkest imaginings, occurred to him that Ray would be physically ill. And although he recognized that pretending it hadn’t happened was as much of a gesture of tolerance as Ray was able to make--well. It was difficult, that was all.
But--perhaps fortunately--they arrived at the station. With an audience, acting as if everything was normal seemed more--well, more natural.
And Ray was very, very good at it. He bumped Fraser’s shoulder with his as they walked down the hall, allowed their fingers to brush when he handed Fraser a cup of coffee.
It was almost unbearable. Before, he’d hopefully interpreted these gestures as--well, as something they clearly weren’t. Now, it was hard not to think that Ray was deliberately teasing him.
Back at their desk, Ray picked up the phone. “Tommy? Yeah, it’s Vecchio. I need you to meet a witness at her work and do a sketch. Yeah, have somebody take you.” He gave the address of the hotel, and added, “It’s a nice hotel, so don’t go, you know, sniffing the banisters or anything.” He listened for a moment. “Yeah, I know. Look, behave yourself and I’ll take you to the lumberyard, get you anything you want.” He laughed. “Yeah, okay. See you.” He hung up the phone and sat back, propping one leg up on the desk. “Tommy, huh?”
Ray’s remark didn’t seem to be one that required a response, so Fraser didn’t say anything.
“I wish you’d tell me what’s eating you.”
Fraser had had about enough. “I wish you’d stop asking.”
“Okaaaaaay. Jeez, you don’t have to snap at a guy.”
“What would you like me to do, Ray? Make something up?”
“You could just tell me what crawled up your ass and died.”
Fraser winced at the crudeness of the metaphor, as well as Ray’s stunning, and uncharacteristic, tactlessness.
No, not tactlessness. Ray was frequently tactless. What he was being was cruel. And that wasn’t like Ray at all. Abruptly, Fraser stood up. “Let’s go outside.”
Ray hesitated for just a moment before he nodded.
They had just made it to the front door, however, when Fraser heard the clatter of extremely impractical shoes behind him, followed by Francesca Vecchio yelling, “Ray, Fraser, wait up!”
They both turned back to face her, and Ray said, “What, Frannie?”
“You have to go back to the Australian ambassador’s hotel.”
“How come?”
“They just called.”
“Who called?”
“I don’t know, somebody from the hotel. They just said you had to come right away, the cops that were there before.”
Ray reached for his cell phone, then shook his head. “Okay. Okay, let’s go.”
There was no time for conversation as Ray drove to the hotel, taking every shortcut he knew, cutting through parking lots to avoid traffic lights. “This better not be nothing,” Ray muttered. “We’re half killing ourselves to get here, if it turns out the ambassador just forgot to tell us something--”
“We could call,” Fraser suggested.
Ray took out his phone and tossed it into Fraser’s lap.
He dialed the hotel’s number and asked for the ambassador’s room. The line rang a few times, before the desk clerk came back on the line and said, “There’s no answer in the room, sir. Would you like to leave a message?”
“Perhaps you can help me. This is Constable Benton Fraser, RCMP. Someone from the hotel just called the police station asking for my partner and me.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know anything about that.”
“Thank you kindly.” Fraser closed the phone and reported what little he’d learned to Ray.
“Sounds like there isn’t anybody shooting up the place, anyway.” Ray parked in the hotel’s underground garage, and they headed for the elevator.
However, a sign taped to the elevator doors proclaimed it to be out of order. Later, Fraser would think that if he hadn’t been preoccupied, he’d have realized something was amiss. The elevator had been working little more than an hour ago, and the block lettering on the sign was idiosyncratic, the letters different sizes and slanting across the page. But at the time, they just turned and went to the stairs.
The door to the stairwell--usually kept locked, it appeared--was propped open with a small block of wood. Ray opened it, gesturing with his free hand for Fraser to go through first.
As soon as he stepped through the door, the barrel of a gun was pressed to his temple, and his arm twisted up between his shoulder blades. “Don’t say a word, either of you, or I’ll blow his brains out!”
Wide-eyed in the doorway, Ray nodded mutely. The gunman matched Lupe--the maid’s--description of the letter-writer. He had brown hair, rather mousy looking in color, but limp and stringy in a way that would indicate extreme ill health in a rodent. Behind wire-rimmed glasses, his eyes were--well, a bit crazed, but perhaps it was only context that supplied Fraser with that impression.
“Shut the door. Make sure it latches.”
Ray hesitated a second before obeying.
“Over there.” The man pointed toward the staircase with his gun.
Fraser pivoted around the arm the gunman was holding. In the space of a second, pain ripped through his shoulder, a shot echoed through the stairwell, and a woman screamed. At the end of it, Fraser was mildly surprised to find himself pinning the gunman to the floor, while Ray held his own gun on the man, and Lupe peered out from the nook under the stairwell. Ray had known what he was going to do as soon as he had--perhaps sooner--and had responded as though they’d planned it. Exactly like normal.
“You’re under arrest for--Fraser, what the hell is this?”
“Kidnapping,” Fraser suggested, tilting his head toward Lupe, whose hands were bound in front of her with duct tape.
“Kidnapping, and other charges to be named later.” Taking one hand off his gun, he tossed his handcuffs to Fraser.
The cuffs clattered against the concrete floor. “I’m afraid I’ve dislocated my shoulder,” Fraser said. “Perhaps you could--”
“Oh. Sure.” Ray took custody of the man’s gun, then handed his own to Fraser to hold with his good hand while he cuffed the suspect.
Ray called in to the station, and while they were waiting for the uniformed officers to arrive and take custody of the suspect, Fraser asked Lupe what had happened.
“I was cleaning a room, with the door open. He came in and showed me his gun. He said that I shouldn’t have told the police, and now he would have to--to take care of it. He made me call the police station and ask for you to come. I didn’t want to do it, but he had a gun.”
“It’s all right,” Fraser told her. “It’s usually best to cooperate with armed criminals.”
“You didn’t,” she pointed out.
“We’re trained professionals,” Ray answered.
When the marked cars arrived, Fraser would gladly have stayed to help with the statement-taking, but nearly as soon as the other policemen had arrived, Ray was dragging him back to the car.
“Where are we going, Ray?”
Ray stared at him. “The hospital.”
“I don’t need a hospital.”
“You’ve got a dislocated shoulder. I did that once, I know it hurts like fuck.”
“Not once it’s been popped back in.”
“I know, which is why we’re going to the hospital.”
“I already popped it back in,” Fraser explained.
“You’re insane.”
“It’s quite easy the second time.” The first time, admittedly, he’d prefer not to think about. But as it had occurred hundreds of kilometers from the nearest settlement, he’d had little choice but to reduce it himself.
Ray shook his head and got into the car. “You’re a freak, but you know that.”
“Yes.”
Despite Fraser’s protests, Ray insisted on taking him to the hospital to “get that shoulder checked out.” The doctor took some x-rays and confirmed that Fraser’s shoulder was back to normal. Fraser was feeling fairly smug until she added, “How many times have you dislocated your shoulder?”
“That one? Four or five.”
“If the joint is that unstable, you should consider surgery to tighten the ligaments.”
“But what if I want to dislocate my shoulder?”
“Why would you want to?”
“Well, to get out of a straitjacket, for instance.”
Ray, who had insisted on staying with him for some reason, jumped in. “He’s kind of an escape artist. In his, uh, free time.”
“I see. Well, I’ll prescribe some anti-inflammatory medication.”
When the doctor had left, Ray said, “Fraser, do not tell a doctor that you go around dislocating your shoulder to get out of straitjackets.”
“It’s not just straitjackets,” he protested. “I remember one occasion when I became stuck in a--”
“Just don’t, Frase. It makes you sound cuckoo. Not that you aren’t cuckoo, but you don’t want to go around advertising it.”
“Understood.”
A few minutes later, the doctor returned with a prescription and a sling. To Fraser’s chagrin, Ray insisted that he wear it. “You want to pop your shoulder out again? I didn’t think so. Put it on.” Ray also made him fill the prescription at the hospital pharmacy, and watched him as he took two of the pills.
Fraser rarely took prescription medication, and quickly found himself feeling rather--well, less than fully alert. He didn’t notice that Ray wasn’t taking him back to the station until the car stopped moving, and he looked up to see Ray’s apartment building.
“What are we doing here?”
“Thought you might want to lie down.”
Fraser had to admit that sounded like a fairly good idea, although he wasn’t certain that Ray’s apartment was the ideal venue, under the circumstances. “You could take me to the Consulate.”
“It’s the middle of the work day; you won’t get any peace. C’mon.”
#
Fraser put up a little bit more of a fuss about lying down in Ray’s room than he’d expected, but Ray finally got him settled, and promised he’d call the Ice Queen for him.
By the time he made it to the station, the crazy guy was just about done with processing. He kept insisting to the uniforms that he was the Earl of Canberra, and for a while they thought they might have to book him in under that name. Finally, under threat of being left in a room alone with Ray and his head-kicking boots, he admitted he was also known as Larry Smith.
Taking his statement took forever and a half, since Smith couldn’t stop talking about the rightful king or queen of Australia long enough to tell them key details like where he got the gun and why he wanted to kill the Ambassador in particular.
By the time Ray made it back to his apartment, he was afraid Fraser would have bolted, but he hadn’t--in fact, he was out of bed, stirring something on the stove and still looking a little dopey. “Hello, Ray,” he said, looking at him sort of like he thought Ray might suddenly fly off the handle.
“Put yer arm back in that sling before I put it in for you.”
Fraser opened his mouth, closed it, then took the sling from the counter and put it back on.
“You feelin’ okay?”
“Yes, thank you. Was the case, ah, resolved successfully?”
“Yeah. You want to know what’s weird?”
“Certainly.”
“That guy? Isn’t even Australian.”
Fraser smiled. “How peculiar.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty weird shit. But the ambassador’s happy, I’m happy, an international incident has been averted, and all’s right with the world.” Except, he remembered, Fraser had been just about to tell him what was making him so pissy, when they’d gone running off to the hotel.
Maybe Ray didn’t have to ask. Fraser seemed like he was doing okay. But maybe it was just that the medication had him feeling kinda relaxed, and once he stopped taking it--which Ray knew he’d do as soon as Ray wasn’t there to make him--he’d be back to pod-Fraser again. “So, uh, you’re doing okay?”
“Yes, Ray. I have dislocated my shoulder many times before, and I usually return to duty immediately.”
“Yeah, I, uh, I didn’t so much mean that.”
Fraser went kind of stiff, and carefully put down the wooden spoon--on a spoon rest, which Ray hadn’t even known he owned, but never mind that right now. “Oh?”
“Yeah. Yeah, you know how you were gonna tell me what was bugging you?”
“Ah. That. You know, I’m not sure I…I think it’s fine, really.”
Yeah, Ray wasn’t buying that. “Fraser. Spill.”
Fraser leaned against the counter, fiddling with the strap to his sling. “Ah. Well. Perhaps you recall the other night?”
“The puking my guts out night?”
“Yes, that one.”
“I remember parts of it, yeah.” Ray wondered if maybe something had happened after he left.
“Do you remember--I apologize if I’m bringing up something you’d rather not discuss, but you did ask--what we were discussing right before you--er, began to feel ill?”
“Pizza?”
“After that.”
“After that I was mostly focusing on trying not to puke.”
“So you…er, you didn’t hear…ah…what I said?”
“No.”
“I see.” He let out a relieved sigh. “I’m very glad to hear that, Ray.” He turned back toward the stove.
“Hey!”
“Yes?”
“What did you say?” You didn’t get to be a detective by being dumb. Fraser thought he had thrown up because of whatever it was he’d said. It couldn’t be a disgusting story--he would be surprised if any story of his was enough to make Ray lose his lunch, but he wouldn’t be offended. Whatever he’d said--well, it had to be something important.
“I said everything’s fine.”
“What did you say when I was puking?”
“Nothing, Ray. I stopped talking when you started vomiting.”
“Do not do this, Fraser.”
Fraser played with his sling some more, then switched to the eyebrow, then back to the sling again. “Perhaps we should sit down.”
They sat down on the couch, but Fraser didn’t start talking until Ray said, “Before I die of waiting, Frase.”
“I…ah…well, I’d thought that what I told you had, er, upset you.”
“I figured that part out.”
“But it didn’t.”
“Right. So what was it?”
Fraser opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I don’t really feel like discussing it.”
“Fraser!”
“Ah. Well, you see, I had said that I--” Fraser mumbled something that Ray didn’t quite catch.
“Huh? Speak up, Frase.”
“I said,” Fraser said loudly, “that I said, that I--” Once again, the end of the sentence was something maybe dogs would have been able to hear.
“Okay, this time, skip the I said I said I said, and just say the thing that you said,” Ray suggested.
Fraser stared at the turtle tank. In a low rush, like something scurrying across a floor, he said, “I’ve-been-attracted-to-you-for-quite-some-time-I-thought-you-deserved-to-know.”
“What? No, I heard that time,” he said quickly, as Fraser opened his mouth to tell him again. “Sorry, I…wow.” That sure explained why Fraser was upset. Ray had gotten some bad brush-offs before, but he’d never actually made anyone literally vomit. Poor Fraser. His next thought was, “You think I’m that much of a dick?”
“No, I…I was surprised. And…well, hurt. I didn’t consider how out of character your response--what I thought was your response--was, until earlier today.”
Ray was pretty sure he knew when--when they’d been at his desk, and Fraser had said they ought to go outside and talk. And he remembered some of the things he’d said before that. You seem kinda queer. “Jesus. Sorry, Fraser.”
“It’s all right, Ray.”
“Yeah, okay.” Suddenly, the real meaning of what Fraser had just said hit him. He’d been focusing on how it sure as hell explained what was wrong with Fraser the last couple days. But.
Fraser was attracted to him. Fraser. Him. For quite some time. “Wow.” He raked his hair back with one hand. “Uh, when you say attracted to me, you mean, uh….”
“Yes.”
“That’s…wow.” Ray had always thought of Fraser--he probably shouldn’t have--as sort of asexual. Dumb, because he knew that a lot of the way Fraser acted--the politeness, the trusting people, the aw shucks, I’m just a country boy schtick--was halfway to being an act. Well, maybe not an act, but a performance. Like talking to a witness, or interrogating a suspect--you showed them the part of you that you wanted them to see. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either. So he should have figured that the obliviousness to women throwing themselves at him was part of the same thing. Maybe he wasn’t interested--although, there was the Victoria thing, so he did go for women sometimes--but it wasn’t because he’d never had an impure thought in his life and didn’t know what sex was.
And yeah, Ray--Ray wasn’t, if you had to know the God’s honest truth, one hundred percent heterosexual. But guys at work were in a box marked not for you, don’t even think about it, and that went double for Fraser.
But now here was Fraser, jumping out of that box.
The visual that gave him was--well, was maybe entirely appropriate, under the circumstances. “Wow.”
“Ray, are you all right?”
“Uh, yeah.” He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans. “What, uh…whaddya want to do now?”
“Well, we could eat,” Fraser suggested.
“That’s an option,” Ray said slowly. “Or, um, you know.”
“Hm?”
“You know.” But Fraser clearly didn’t, so Ray leaned over kissed him.
Fraser kissed back, for about half a minute, then pulled back. “Ray--you want this?”
“No, Frase, you’ve got a gun to my head.”
Accepting that, Fraser leaned into him, bringing his mouth back to Ray’s. His good hand slipped up Ray’s back, and his tongue darted out, brushing Ray’s lips, shyly, like he wasn’t sure Ray wanted him to go that far.
Ray definitely did.
Fraser’s hand crept higher, and his fingers twisted in Ray’s hair. “Ray,” he murmured. “Ray.”
“What?”
“Is this…happening?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s happening.” Ray sat back a little and bumped his knee against Fraser’s. He knew he was grinning like an idiot, but he didn’t mind, much. Fraser was smiling too, but a little cautiously--liked even though Ray had told him it was happening, he still knew it could stop happening any minute now.
“You’re, ah, you’re not feeling ill, then?”
Fraser joking about what had been a pretty awful misunderstanding was a good sign--except, taking another look at him, Ray wasn’t sure he was joking. “Yeah, I really am sorry about that.” He picked up Fraser’s hand and laced their fingers together, and answered the question. “Yeah. I’m feeling great.”
“In that case, perhaps we should eat.”
It took Ray a minute to figure out Fraser was serious. Apparently, even though Fraser wasn’t asexual--Ray got that now--he wasn’t a fuck on the first date kind of guy.
Even though if you looked at it just right, the first date had been going on for about a year and a half.
#
Having a great deal to think about, Fraser again took the long way back to the Consulate. This time, though, the tenor of his thoughts was considerably more hopeful.
Ray had kissed him again before he left the apartment. It was, unsurprisingly, delightful. What Fraser still found surprising was that it had happened at all.
But it had. His head swirled with plans. He’d make dinner for Ray again--perhaps at the Consulate this time. Something more special than stovetop lasagne. He would take Ray to the Territories, perhaps in spring, during the brief moment when the tundra came alive. His home was beautiful 365 days a year, but its beauty was more, well, accessible in springtime. Perhaps he’d ask Ray to teach him to dance--he would be, he knew, terrible at it, but they could laugh at his clumsiness, and it would be wonderful.
But before any of that, he’d have to tell Diefenbaker that he’d been right.
The wolf was going to be insufferable.
Author: Me
Rating: PG-13, language
Pairing: Fraser/RayK
Summary: Ray can't figure out why Fraser is acting so weird.
A/n: Not the time travel story, which I'm still working on.
Fraser was talking, probably telling some kind of caribou story--he had that serious look he got when he was doing that--but Ray wasn’t listening, couldn’t even really hear him over the churning of his guts. He should have known better than to buy an egg salad sandwich out of a truck. He’d been hungry, but that was no excuse. He could have at least gotten something that didn’t have mayonnaise in it.
“Sorry,” Ray said, interrupting Fraser’s story. “Gonna be sick.” He ran to the bathroom, managing to make it there just in time to lose his egg salad into the can.
He was halfway afraid Fraser would come in to see how he was doing--that a guy might want to heave his guts out in private seemed like it would be one of those things that Fraser just did not get. But after fifteen solid minutes of heaving, followed by a few minutes more of sitting by the toilet waiting to see if he was really done, he decided he was done, and Fraser still hadn’t shown up.
He rinsed his mouth again and headed back for the living room, saying, “I think we oughta go back to that lunch truck with a Department of Health inspector, what do you say?”
But Fraser didn’t answer, because Fraser was gone. Ray would have figured he’d just gone to the john, except Ray had been in there, so that wasn’t it. Plus, he’d taken his hat and his wolf. And left the TV on.
So that was about three different kinds of weird. Maybe he did know about the privacy-while-you-puke thing, but he thought being in the next room wasn’t quite enough privacy. That happened sometimes, with Fraser. If he tried to act like a normal guy, he sometimes got the details wrong.
Ray paced around the living room. Thing was, now that he’d gotten rid of that egg salad, he felt a lot better. He even sort of wanted the pizza they’d been talking about earlier, before his guts had revolted on him. He picked up the phone, then, attacked by another wave of queasiness, put it back down.
Maybe just some TV, then. The show was Fraser’s pick--something about the rain forest. He’d kind of gotten used to watching that kind of thing, with Fraser. They were showing some native guys--Amazonians?--hunting some kind of wild pig with these wicked-looking spears. If Fraser was there, he’d be talking about how it was like the way the Inuit hunted--well, whatever they had up there instead of pigs. Walruses, maybe.
Maybe he ought to call Fraser. Make sure he got home okay.
Because, yeah, a Mountie and a wolf were really likely to have trouble walking home at night.
Still, maybe he ought to call. Explain about the egg salad and everything.
He reached for the phone again, then decided Fraser hadn’t had enough time to get to the Consulate yet. If he had a car like a normal person, sure, but walking? He’d need another twenty minutes or so.
He got himself some Coke and saltines, and watched the Amazonians hunt down the pig. After they killed it, they hauled it back to the village and roasted it over a big fire, and there was lots of dancing and drumming.
At least somebody was having a good time.
#
“I don’t want to hear another word about it,” Fraser told Diefenbaker as he unlocked the front door to the Consulate. Burning with humiliation and regret, he’d taken the long way home, through the park, but even the exertion of the long walk wasn’t enough to leave him with any sense of peace.
Dief circled around his feet, whining anxiously.
“His reaction was hardly ambiguous.” It was at times like this that he wished he was a drinking man. He’d seen enough drunks to know that liquor was a time-tested means of creating temporary amnesia. But he didn’t drink, and if he chose tonight to start, he’d probably succeed only in making himself sick.
Which would provide a certain aesthetically appealing symmetry, but he failed to see how it would improve the situation. So.
When the telephone rang, he warred with himself over whether to answer it--it could be, after all, a Canadian citizen in need of assistance--but in the end, his complete disinclination to speak to anyone at this particular juncture won out.
The decision turned out to be a fortunate one. A few minutes after the phone ceased ringing, his sense of duty prevailed, and he played the message.
It was Ray, the person of all of “anyone” he was least inclined to speak to at present. “Hi, Fraser. It’s, uh, me. Ray. Ray Vecchio. Look, you didn’t have to go--I’m feeling better now. I should have known better than to eat that egg salad, I guess. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Egg salad. So that was how they were going to play it.
Fine.
#
The next day, Fraser didn’t come to the 27th. Or the next day, either. Ray was puzzled--probably Inspector Thatcher had some trivial but time-consuming job for him, but usually Fraser called when that happened. Hell, sometimes it even seemed like he hoped Ray would come up with something to get him out of it. But there was no call, no Fraser saying, “Unfortunately, I’m very busy measuring all of the Consulate’s paper clips to ensure that they are uniform in size, so I won’t be able to liaise with you today, unless there’s some pressing matter that requires my assistance.” Nothing. Nada. Bupkis.
He was just about to break down and call himself and demand to know what was up, when Welsh gave him the new case. “Bring the Mountie in on this one,” was the first thing he said about it. “the Australian ambassador has been receiving death threats. she has her own security, but the threats have just started since she’s been in Chicago, so the investigation falls in our lap.” He gave Ray a file with not much in it, besides the address for the ambassador’s hotel. “Make this case your top priority. The ambassador’s expecting you, so get the Mountie and head over there now.”
Ray headed for the Consulate, calling Fraser on the cell phone on his way.
Once Ray had finished filling him in, Fraser said, sort of stiffly. “Is there some Canadian connection to this case?”
“I don’t think so.” What, that mattered, all of the sudden? “Australia is kind of like Canada.”
“It is not.”
“Sure it is. You both--” Ray couldn’t, now that he thought of it, think of a way that Australia was like Canada. “Speak English.”
“So does the United States.”
“Look, I’m here, are you coming?”
Fraser sighed. “Yes. Yes, I’ll be right there.”
A moment later, he came out the front door. Something was off, though. He was moving kind of stiffly, like he was hurt or something. Once he got to the car, he stood there with his hand on the door handle for a few seconds, then took this big breath before he opened it and got in.
“You okay?” Ray asked.
Fraser put his hat on the dashboard. “Yes, Ray.”
“You seem kinda queer.”
Fraser was in the middle of buckling his seat belt, but he stopped, and went kind of rigid for a moment. “I’m fine.” He licked his lip. “Which hotel is the ambassador staying in?”
Well, okay. Ray could take a hint--whatever was wrong with him--and something was, no matter how much he tried to deny it--Fraser didn’t want to talk about it. “The Clarion.” He started driving. “How about you do most of the talking with the ambassador. You’re good with--you know.”
“Fine.”
“And I’ll take the lead when we talk to his security guys.”
Fraser nodded.
Scratch that--Fraser didn’t want to talk about anything. Something had put him in a funk, that was for sure. Wait--he hadn’t brought Dief today. Maybe the wolf was the one who was hurt. Or even dead. “Where’s Dief?”
“At the Consulate.”
Not dead, then. “Is he, uh, he’s okay?”
“Yes.”
The rest of the trip to the hotel, Fraser did his best impression of a deaf-mute, and he kept it up until they were actually in the ambassador’s suite. Weirdly enough, after that he was pretty much normal, all, “So sorry this has happened to you,” and “I first came to Chicago on….”
Once the preliminary stuff was out of the way, the ambassador handed over the threatening letters, already in clear evidence bags. “Who handled ‘em before they were bagged?” Ray asked.
“My secretary handled some of them, the ones that were mailed, and my security staff.”
“We’ll have to get elimination prints,” Ray said.
“Of course.”
“Hm,” Fraser said.
“What?” Ray leaned over to look at the letter, and Fraser gave this sort of micro-jolt, like if they weren’t in front of other people, he’d have jumped away rather than let Ray’s arm brush against his. But they were in front of people, so he just sat back a little and handed Ray the letter.
It was hand written and pretty hard to make out--the writing was jagged and dark, with a few rips in the paper where the person had pressed too hard with the pen. Ray read out loud one of the phrases he could make out: “‘Representative of an illegitimate government’?”
Fraser was looking at another letter. “It appears that Her Excellency is being threatened by an Australian Monarchist. Or group of the same, but all of these appear to have been written by one person.” He passed Ray the second letter. “I see these arrived over several days--what led you to conclude that they represent a credible threat?”
“The most recent one. It was left here, in my hotel room. I initially assumed that it had been hand-delivered to the hotel and brought to the room by one of the maids or bellhops, but when my bodyguards questioned the staff--they had hoped to get a description of the person, you see, in case he or she approaches me in public--they found that none of the staff admitted to accepting it, or to putting in the room. My security arrangements are fairly loose, but the fact that the person was able to gain access to my rooms suggests--well, a level of commitment unusual for a garden-variety kook.”
“Indeed.” Fraser smoothed an eyebrow. “I’m afraid I’m not as versed as I might be--is there is a substantial Monarchist movement in Australia?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Ah.”
“There is a movement to cut ties with the queen we already have, but her role is almost entirely symbolic. The issue doesn’t inspire anyone to violence.”
“Australia has a queen?” Ray said.
Fraser looked at him for the first time all day. “The Queen of England, Ray.”
Oh, right. “I told you Canada and Australia had something in common.”
Fraser opened his mouth, closed it, and shook his head. “At any rate, this person appears to believe that the nearest relative to the British royal family to be born on Australian soil should be the king or queen of Australia.”
“I have no idea who that would be,” the ambassador said. “I doubt anyone does. One of the letters makes reference to the rightful monarch appearing when the epoch of revolution begins, or something like that.”
“It’s a fascinating portrait of severe mental disturbance,” Fraser said. “Have you observed any other suspicious activity?”
“No. You’ll want to talk to my security staff, of course, but they tell me they haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary.”
Fraser went through his whole polite goodbye routine, and they went to find the ambassador’s security chief.
He was in another hotel room that had been set up as an office. “Hi. I’m Ray Vecchio, Chicago PD, and this is Constable Fraser, RCMP. He first came to Chicago for reasons you don’t care about, and now he works with me.”
“Thank you for coming so quickly. We’re not sure that the threat to the ambassador is credible, but it’s better safe than sorry, right?”
“Yeah,” Ray answered. He and Fraser sat down. “When did these letters start coming?”
“The first one came five days ago, the day after we arrived in Chicago.” He took out some photocopies of the letters and envelopes. “You can see it was mailed the day before, from Chicago. The post office says it was probably placed in a public collection box, but they can’t tell us anything more than that. The next three arrived the same way, until the one today, which was hand-delivered.”
They asked some more questions about where the ambassador had been when the letter was delivered (at a breakfast meeting) and who knew about her schedule (her staff, the hotel staff, the people she was meeting with, anybody who’d seen her leaving the hotel). The chief agreed that nobody had seen anything suspicious, and refused Ray’s offer that he could try to get some uniforms to help with security, if they wanted.
“In that case, we’ll get these to the fingerprint guys. Give me a call if anything else happens.” He wrote his cell number on the back of a business card and handed it over. “Somebody’ll be around to take your prints soon.”
Bu first, Ray made a detour to check with the hotel staff, make sure they didn’t know anything they weren’t saying.
“Perhaps I should take the letters to the station while you do that,” Fraser suggested.
What was he gonna do, walk? The station was at least thirty blocks away. “It’ll just take a minute. I’ll be done before you’re halfway there.”
They found the maid responsible for the ambassador’s floor in the hotel laundry, folding sheets. “Buenas dias,” Ray said, flashing his badge. “Chicago PD. We have a couple questions about the letter that was found in the Australian lady’s room.”
“I know nothing?” she said, but her hands clenched around the sheet she was folding--she was gonna have to iron it again if she didn’t let go.
“Are you sure?” Fraser asked.
She didn’t answer.
“Look, you ain’t--aren’t--in any trouble. But if you saw somebody, it could help us out. The ambassador seems like a nice lady; we wouldn’t want anything to happen to her.”
The young woman turned her face away from them, and wiped at her cheek with her hand. “There was a man. He asked me to put the letter in the room. I told him he could leave it at the desk, but he said it was a surprise.” She reached into her apron pocket and took out a folded twenty-dollar bill. “He gave me this. So I put it in the room.”
Ray dropped the twenty into another evidence bag. “Okay. Okay, so when the ambassador’s bodyguard asked you about it….?”
“I knew he was angry that the letter was there. I didn’t want to get into trouble. I need this job. So I said I didn’t know.”
That sounded plausible, and Ray couldn’t think of any reason a Hispanic hotel maid in Chicago would have it out for an Australian ambassador. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I don’t think we need to get you in trouble about it. What did this man look like?”
She described him, while Fraser took notes.
“I’m going to send a sketch artist down, so you can help him make a picture of the guy, okay? We’ll have him come down when you’re on your break.”
“Okay. At eleven thirty.”
“Great. Okay. The sketch artist’s name is Tommy; he’s kinda weird, but he’s a nice guy. And somebody with him will take your fingerprints, too.”
She looked startled. “What for?”
“Elimination.” She still looked confused, so he explained, “Your fingerprints will be on this--” he held up the bag with the twenty in it “--and the letter. So we need to be able to tell which one are yours and which are the guy’s.”
“Okay.”
“You’ve been a great help, Miss,” Fraser said, tipping his hat.
Ray had figured that Fraser was over his snot, or whatever it was, but when they got back in the car, he shut down again, like someone had flipped a switch. He buckled his seat belt, folded his hands in his lap, and stared out the window.
“So now that we figured out how the letter got there, I figure there’s not too much to worry about.” He figured that if he made a sweeping statement like that, Fraser would have an anecdote about the time Some Inuit Guy had thought the polar bear was gone, and boy was he wrong--but no.
Fraser just said, “Ah.”
“Okay, what is your problem?”
“I don’t have a problem, Ray.”
“You’re sure acting like you have a problem.”
Fraser didn’t say anything else for a long time, and when he did, Ray almost missed it, since he was practically whispering, and still facing the window. “I don’t know what you want me to do, Ray.”
“Do about what? Either tell me what the problem is, or just act normal.” Probably not the best answer in the world, but Ray was more than a little annoyed by now.
In that same small voice, Fraser said, “I’m trying.”
#
And he was trying, but this was somehow even more difficult than he’d anticipated--and he had anticipated that it would be very difficult indeed. He’d prepared himself--he thought--for a negative reaction to his declaration. He’d even considered the possibility of a violent reaction. But it had never, in his darkest imaginings, occurred to him that Ray would be physically ill. And although he recognized that pretending it hadn’t happened was as much of a gesture of tolerance as Ray was able to make--well. It was difficult, that was all.
But--perhaps fortunately--they arrived at the station. With an audience, acting as if everything was normal seemed more--well, more natural.
And Ray was very, very good at it. He bumped Fraser’s shoulder with his as they walked down the hall, allowed their fingers to brush when he handed Fraser a cup of coffee.
It was almost unbearable. Before, he’d hopefully interpreted these gestures as--well, as something they clearly weren’t. Now, it was hard not to think that Ray was deliberately teasing him.
Back at their desk, Ray picked up the phone. “Tommy? Yeah, it’s Vecchio. I need you to meet a witness at her work and do a sketch. Yeah, have somebody take you.” He gave the address of the hotel, and added, “It’s a nice hotel, so don’t go, you know, sniffing the banisters or anything.” He listened for a moment. “Yeah, I know. Look, behave yourself and I’ll take you to the lumberyard, get you anything you want.” He laughed. “Yeah, okay. See you.” He hung up the phone and sat back, propping one leg up on the desk. “Tommy, huh?”
Ray’s remark didn’t seem to be one that required a response, so Fraser didn’t say anything.
“I wish you’d tell me what’s eating you.”
Fraser had had about enough. “I wish you’d stop asking.”
“Okaaaaaay. Jeez, you don’t have to snap at a guy.”
“What would you like me to do, Ray? Make something up?”
“You could just tell me what crawled up your ass and died.”
Fraser winced at the crudeness of the metaphor, as well as Ray’s stunning, and uncharacteristic, tactlessness.
No, not tactlessness. Ray was frequently tactless. What he was being was cruel. And that wasn’t like Ray at all. Abruptly, Fraser stood up. “Let’s go outside.”
Ray hesitated for just a moment before he nodded.
They had just made it to the front door, however, when Fraser heard the clatter of extremely impractical shoes behind him, followed by Francesca Vecchio yelling, “Ray, Fraser, wait up!”
They both turned back to face her, and Ray said, “What, Frannie?”
“You have to go back to the Australian ambassador’s hotel.”
“How come?”
“They just called.”
“Who called?”
“I don’t know, somebody from the hotel. They just said you had to come right away, the cops that were there before.”
Ray reached for his cell phone, then shook his head. “Okay. Okay, let’s go.”
There was no time for conversation as Ray drove to the hotel, taking every shortcut he knew, cutting through parking lots to avoid traffic lights. “This better not be nothing,” Ray muttered. “We’re half killing ourselves to get here, if it turns out the ambassador just forgot to tell us something--”
“We could call,” Fraser suggested.
Ray took out his phone and tossed it into Fraser’s lap.
He dialed the hotel’s number and asked for the ambassador’s room. The line rang a few times, before the desk clerk came back on the line and said, “There’s no answer in the room, sir. Would you like to leave a message?”
“Perhaps you can help me. This is Constable Benton Fraser, RCMP. Someone from the hotel just called the police station asking for my partner and me.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know anything about that.”
“Thank you kindly.” Fraser closed the phone and reported what little he’d learned to Ray.
“Sounds like there isn’t anybody shooting up the place, anyway.” Ray parked in the hotel’s underground garage, and they headed for the elevator.
However, a sign taped to the elevator doors proclaimed it to be out of order. Later, Fraser would think that if he hadn’t been preoccupied, he’d have realized something was amiss. The elevator had been working little more than an hour ago, and the block lettering on the sign was idiosyncratic, the letters different sizes and slanting across the page. But at the time, they just turned and went to the stairs.
The door to the stairwell--usually kept locked, it appeared--was propped open with a small block of wood. Ray opened it, gesturing with his free hand for Fraser to go through first.
As soon as he stepped through the door, the barrel of a gun was pressed to his temple, and his arm twisted up between his shoulder blades. “Don’t say a word, either of you, or I’ll blow his brains out!”
Wide-eyed in the doorway, Ray nodded mutely. The gunman matched Lupe--the maid’s--description of the letter-writer. He had brown hair, rather mousy looking in color, but limp and stringy in a way that would indicate extreme ill health in a rodent. Behind wire-rimmed glasses, his eyes were--well, a bit crazed, but perhaps it was only context that supplied Fraser with that impression.
“Shut the door. Make sure it latches.”
Ray hesitated a second before obeying.
“Over there.” The man pointed toward the staircase with his gun.
Fraser pivoted around the arm the gunman was holding. In the space of a second, pain ripped through his shoulder, a shot echoed through the stairwell, and a woman screamed. At the end of it, Fraser was mildly surprised to find himself pinning the gunman to the floor, while Ray held his own gun on the man, and Lupe peered out from the nook under the stairwell. Ray had known what he was going to do as soon as he had--perhaps sooner--and had responded as though they’d planned it. Exactly like normal.
“You’re under arrest for--Fraser, what the hell is this?”
“Kidnapping,” Fraser suggested, tilting his head toward Lupe, whose hands were bound in front of her with duct tape.
“Kidnapping, and other charges to be named later.” Taking one hand off his gun, he tossed his handcuffs to Fraser.
The cuffs clattered against the concrete floor. “I’m afraid I’ve dislocated my shoulder,” Fraser said. “Perhaps you could--”
“Oh. Sure.” Ray took custody of the man’s gun, then handed his own to Fraser to hold with his good hand while he cuffed the suspect.
Ray called in to the station, and while they were waiting for the uniformed officers to arrive and take custody of the suspect, Fraser asked Lupe what had happened.
“I was cleaning a room, with the door open. He came in and showed me his gun. He said that I shouldn’t have told the police, and now he would have to--to take care of it. He made me call the police station and ask for you to come. I didn’t want to do it, but he had a gun.”
“It’s all right,” Fraser told her. “It’s usually best to cooperate with armed criminals.”
“You didn’t,” she pointed out.
“We’re trained professionals,” Ray answered.
When the marked cars arrived, Fraser would gladly have stayed to help with the statement-taking, but nearly as soon as the other policemen had arrived, Ray was dragging him back to the car.
“Where are we going, Ray?”
Ray stared at him. “The hospital.”
“I don’t need a hospital.”
“You’ve got a dislocated shoulder. I did that once, I know it hurts like fuck.”
“Not once it’s been popped back in.”
“I know, which is why we’re going to the hospital.”
“I already popped it back in,” Fraser explained.
“You’re insane.”
“It’s quite easy the second time.” The first time, admittedly, he’d prefer not to think about. But as it had occurred hundreds of kilometers from the nearest settlement, he’d had little choice but to reduce it himself.
Ray shook his head and got into the car. “You’re a freak, but you know that.”
“Yes.”
Despite Fraser’s protests, Ray insisted on taking him to the hospital to “get that shoulder checked out.” The doctor took some x-rays and confirmed that Fraser’s shoulder was back to normal. Fraser was feeling fairly smug until she added, “How many times have you dislocated your shoulder?”
“That one? Four or five.”
“If the joint is that unstable, you should consider surgery to tighten the ligaments.”
“But what if I want to dislocate my shoulder?”
“Why would you want to?”
“Well, to get out of a straitjacket, for instance.”
Ray, who had insisted on staying with him for some reason, jumped in. “He’s kind of an escape artist. In his, uh, free time.”
“I see. Well, I’ll prescribe some anti-inflammatory medication.”
When the doctor had left, Ray said, “Fraser, do not tell a doctor that you go around dislocating your shoulder to get out of straitjackets.”
“It’s not just straitjackets,” he protested. “I remember one occasion when I became stuck in a--”
“Just don’t, Frase. It makes you sound cuckoo. Not that you aren’t cuckoo, but you don’t want to go around advertising it.”
“Understood.”
A few minutes later, the doctor returned with a prescription and a sling. To Fraser’s chagrin, Ray insisted that he wear it. “You want to pop your shoulder out again? I didn’t think so. Put it on.” Ray also made him fill the prescription at the hospital pharmacy, and watched him as he took two of the pills.
Fraser rarely took prescription medication, and quickly found himself feeling rather--well, less than fully alert. He didn’t notice that Ray wasn’t taking him back to the station until the car stopped moving, and he looked up to see Ray’s apartment building.
“What are we doing here?”
“Thought you might want to lie down.”
Fraser had to admit that sounded like a fairly good idea, although he wasn’t certain that Ray’s apartment was the ideal venue, under the circumstances. “You could take me to the Consulate.”
“It’s the middle of the work day; you won’t get any peace. C’mon.”
#
Fraser put up a little bit more of a fuss about lying down in Ray’s room than he’d expected, but Ray finally got him settled, and promised he’d call the Ice Queen for him.
By the time he made it to the station, the crazy guy was just about done with processing. He kept insisting to the uniforms that he was the Earl of Canberra, and for a while they thought they might have to book him in under that name. Finally, under threat of being left in a room alone with Ray and his head-kicking boots, he admitted he was also known as Larry Smith.
Taking his statement took forever and a half, since Smith couldn’t stop talking about the rightful king or queen of Australia long enough to tell them key details like where he got the gun and why he wanted to kill the Ambassador in particular.
By the time Ray made it back to his apartment, he was afraid Fraser would have bolted, but he hadn’t--in fact, he was out of bed, stirring something on the stove and still looking a little dopey. “Hello, Ray,” he said, looking at him sort of like he thought Ray might suddenly fly off the handle.
“Put yer arm back in that sling before I put it in for you.”
Fraser opened his mouth, closed it, then took the sling from the counter and put it back on.
“You feelin’ okay?”
“Yes, thank you. Was the case, ah, resolved successfully?”
“Yeah. You want to know what’s weird?”
“Certainly.”
“That guy? Isn’t even Australian.”
Fraser smiled. “How peculiar.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty weird shit. But the ambassador’s happy, I’m happy, an international incident has been averted, and all’s right with the world.” Except, he remembered, Fraser had been just about to tell him what was making him so pissy, when they’d gone running off to the hotel.
Maybe Ray didn’t have to ask. Fraser seemed like he was doing okay. But maybe it was just that the medication had him feeling kinda relaxed, and once he stopped taking it--which Ray knew he’d do as soon as Ray wasn’t there to make him--he’d be back to pod-Fraser again. “So, uh, you’re doing okay?”
“Yes, Ray. I have dislocated my shoulder many times before, and I usually return to duty immediately.”
“Yeah, I, uh, I didn’t so much mean that.”
Fraser went kind of stiff, and carefully put down the wooden spoon--on a spoon rest, which Ray hadn’t even known he owned, but never mind that right now. “Oh?”
“Yeah. Yeah, you know how you were gonna tell me what was bugging you?”
“Ah. That. You know, I’m not sure I…I think it’s fine, really.”
Yeah, Ray wasn’t buying that. “Fraser. Spill.”
Fraser leaned against the counter, fiddling with the strap to his sling. “Ah. Well. Perhaps you recall the other night?”
“The puking my guts out night?”
“Yes, that one.”
“I remember parts of it, yeah.” Ray wondered if maybe something had happened after he left.
“Do you remember--I apologize if I’m bringing up something you’d rather not discuss, but you did ask--what we were discussing right before you--er, began to feel ill?”
“Pizza?”
“After that.”
“After that I was mostly focusing on trying not to puke.”
“So you…er, you didn’t hear…ah…what I said?”
“No.”
“I see.” He let out a relieved sigh. “I’m very glad to hear that, Ray.” He turned back toward the stove.
“Hey!”
“Yes?”
“What did you say?” You didn’t get to be a detective by being dumb. Fraser thought he had thrown up because of whatever it was he’d said. It couldn’t be a disgusting story--he would be surprised if any story of his was enough to make Ray lose his lunch, but he wouldn’t be offended. Whatever he’d said--well, it had to be something important.
“I said everything’s fine.”
“What did you say when I was puking?”
“Nothing, Ray. I stopped talking when you started vomiting.”
“Do not do this, Fraser.”
Fraser played with his sling some more, then switched to the eyebrow, then back to the sling again. “Perhaps we should sit down.”
They sat down on the couch, but Fraser didn’t start talking until Ray said, “Before I die of waiting, Frase.”
“I…ah…well, I’d thought that what I told you had, er, upset you.”
“I figured that part out.”
“But it didn’t.”
“Right. So what was it?”
Fraser opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I don’t really feel like discussing it.”
“Fraser!”
“Ah. Well, you see, I had said that I--” Fraser mumbled something that Ray didn’t quite catch.
“Huh? Speak up, Frase.”
“I said,” Fraser said loudly, “that I said, that I--” Once again, the end of the sentence was something maybe dogs would have been able to hear.
“Okay, this time, skip the I said I said I said, and just say the thing that you said,” Ray suggested.
Fraser stared at the turtle tank. In a low rush, like something scurrying across a floor, he said, “I’ve-been-attracted-to-you-for-quite-some-time-I-thought-you-deserved-to-know.”
“What? No, I heard that time,” he said quickly, as Fraser opened his mouth to tell him again. “Sorry, I…wow.” That sure explained why Fraser was upset. Ray had gotten some bad brush-offs before, but he’d never actually made anyone literally vomit. Poor Fraser. His next thought was, “You think I’m that much of a dick?”
“No, I…I was surprised. And…well, hurt. I didn’t consider how out of character your response--what I thought was your response--was, until earlier today.”
Ray was pretty sure he knew when--when they’d been at his desk, and Fraser had said they ought to go outside and talk. And he remembered some of the things he’d said before that. You seem kinda queer. “Jesus. Sorry, Fraser.”
“It’s all right, Ray.”
“Yeah, okay.” Suddenly, the real meaning of what Fraser had just said hit him. He’d been focusing on how it sure as hell explained what was wrong with Fraser the last couple days. But.
Fraser was attracted to him. Fraser. Him. For quite some time. “Wow.” He raked his hair back with one hand. “Uh, when you say attracted to me, you mean, uh….”
“Yes.”
“That’s…wow.” Ray had always thought of Fraser--he probably shouldn’t have--as sort of asexual. Dumb, because he knew that a lot of the way Fraser acted--the politeness, the trusting people, the aw shucks, I’m just a country boy schtick--was halfway to being an act. Well, maybe not an act, but a performance. Like talking to a witness, or interrogating a suspect--you showed them the part of you that you wanted them to see. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either. So he should have figured that the obliviousness to women throwing themselves at him was part of the same thing. Maybe he wasn’t interested--although, there was the Victoria thing, so he did go for women sometimes--but it wasn’t because he’d never had an impure thought in his life and didn’t know what sex was.
And yeah, Ray--Ray wasn’t, if you had to know the God’s honest truth, one hundred percent heterosexual. But guys at work were in a box marked not for you, don’t even think about it, and that went double for Fraser.
But now here was Fraser, jumping out of that box.
The visual that gave him was--well, was maybe entirely appropriate, under the circumstances. “Wow.”
“Ray, are you all right?”
“Uh, yeah.” He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans. “What, uh…whaddya want to do now?”
“Well, we could eat,” Fraser suggested.
“That’s an option,” Ray said slowly. “Or, um, you know.”
“Hm?”
“You know.” But Fraser clearly didn’t, so Ray leaned over kissed him.
Fraser kissed back, for about half a minute, then pulled back. “Ray--you want this?”
“No, Frase, you’ve got a gun to my head.”
Accepting that, Fraser leaned into him, bringing his mouth back to Ray’s. His good hand slipped up Ray’s back, and his tongue darted out, brushing Ray’s lips, shyly, like he wasn’t sure Ray wanted him to go that far.
Ray definitely did.
Fraser’s hand crept higher, and his fingers twisted in Ray’s hair. “Ray,” he murmured. “Ray.”
“What?”
“Is this…happening?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s happening.” Ray sat back a little and bumped his knee against Fraser’s. He knew he was grinning like an idiot, but he didn’t mind, much. Fraser was smiling too, but a little cautiously--liked even though Ray had told him it was happening, he still knew it could stop happening any minute now.
“You’re, ah, you’re not feeling ill, then?”
Fraser joking about what had been a pretty awful misunderstanding was a good sign--except, taking another look at him, Ray wasn’t sure he was joking. “Yeah, I really am sorry about that.” He picked up Fraser’s hand and laced their fingers together, and answered the question. “Yeah. I’m feeling great.”
“In that case, perhaps we should eat.”
It took Ray a minute to figure out Fraser was serious. Apparently, even though Fraser wasn’t asexual--Ray got that now--he wasn’t a fuck on the first date kind of guy.
Even though if you looked at it just right, the first date had been going on for about a year and a half.
#
Having a great deal to think about, Fraser again took the long way back to the Consulate. This time, though, the tenor of his thoughts was considerably more hopeful.
Ray had kissed him again before he left the apartment. It was, unsurprisingly, delightful. What Fraser still found surprising was that it had happened at all.
But it had. His head swirled with plans. He’d make dinner for Ray again--perhaps at the Consulate this time. Something more special than stovetop lasagne. He would take Ray to the Territories, perhaps in spring, during the brief moment when the tundra came alive. His home was beautiful 365 days a year, but its beauty was more, well, accessible in springtime. Perhaps he’d ask Ray to teach him to dance--he would be, he knew, terrible at it, but they could laugh at his clumsiness, and it would be wonderful.
But before any of that, he’d have to tell Diefenbaker that he’d been right.
The wolf was going to be insufferable.