New F/K Story: From There to Here (PG)
Title: From There to Here
Author: arrow00
Fandom: dS
Pairing: Fraser/RayK
Rating: PG (injury, so no seX0rs!)
Category: FT, Post-post-CotW, H/C
Wordcount: 6,147
Warnings: Dief isn't with us.
Summary: Sometimes it takes a journey.
Notes: BEWARE THE SCHMOOP.
I started this fic back before I read Nos' definitive post-CotW limb story, an unfinished universe
which made me weep (and not just because damn, that's a similar plotline.) So I put it away. But yesterday I was dorking through my folder and thought it was worth finishing. You will notice NO LIMBS GO COMPLETELY MISSING in this story. I just don't have her fortitude and skill.
From There to Here
By Arrow
They say that without darkness there can be no light, but I have always thought that a poetic fallacy. Light has its own properties, real and physical, and does not rely on the dark.
But rather, it is darkness that cannot exist unless light defines it.
I have learned that truth well in ten years of living, ever since I watched Ray Kowalski go back to Chicago, leaving me here in the north where I belong. For ten years I have continued alone and followed my career to what some might say was its inevitable end: a messy one.
The fall has crushed my unlucky leg, gunshots and stab wounds apparently being inadequate to the task. At least the accident occurred in the line of duty-I had tracked and captured a killer who took nine lives with his ax before haring out of Moose Jaw. For once I failed to take my father's advice, and I ended up following Owens over a cliff. Of course, we were tethered together at the time fighting a raging storm.
At least I brought him back alive.
But now, at last, my body has failed me, or I have failed it. Yes, I have failed it, just as I failed my heart ten years ago when I didn't find a way, a path between, that might have kept me by Ray's side. Kept near to his light and warmth, somehow, without extinguishing them.
It just wasn't possible. To take Ray out of his native milieu would have been a greater sin than even I am capable of. The north was no place for him. He lost heat too easily, expended it uncaring in the dry, frigid air. On me.
And I could no longer survive living half a life in Chicago.
So, I stayed, and he returned to the States, and I managed to deflect his half-begun expressions of remorse, knowing that he would recover his natural ebullience, and would now never learn of my aching need for him, which I was uncertain he would have welcomed. I also tried to hide the worst of the pain that losing my best friend caused me, though I feel quite certain he saw beyond that subterfuge.
He traveled aimlessly for a while-went walkabout, to borrow a term. Eventually he settled in Southern California. And he visited me, on occasion-always looking leaner and more beautiful to me, almost as if age purified him. He always came in the spring, when the weather had turned to those fleeting days of perfection. Eventually, when he became the captain of his own squad, he could no longer could extricate himself, and the visits stopped. I suppose I could have flown out to California myself, but there was always duty, duty calling and keeping me here.
Now I have reached the end of what I stayed for-ten years of good work patrolling endless kilometers, righting as best I could a multitude of injustices, and sinking into an ever-deeper solitude, which became complete when Diefenbaker died last year.
Ray found out about it-I don't know how-and called me from his home in Los Angeles, but my grief was too thick for words. I was ashamed of my need for his grieving but friendly voice, and of the raw sound of my own, and begged to call him back later. I never did, although I did compose a letter telling him how much Dief had missed his company over the years. I'm certain some feelings of my own were projected in that letter. Ray responded with a postcard-a blown-up photograph of a powdered donut, and on the reverse the words 'This one's for you, buddy.' The postcard, as far as I know, is still sitting on my desk.
And I will, in all likelihood, be stuck behind that very desk for the remainder of my career, should I remain in the RCMP after getting out of the hospital. The doctors are pessimistic my leg will pass muster again. But I cannot stomach the thought of being desk-bound. My career is over. Ten years earlier than my father's, but he was always better in all things.
No, instead I will be retiring on full pension to my father's cabin. A man can subsist for a long time off the land, and I plan to do so with my limited mobility for as long as I can, until some random accident of fate takes me from this plane.
Nature is not merciful. Or, more accurately, Nature knows neither mercy nor vengeance. It knows nothing but strict, logical imperatives without emotion. It simply is. So whether it be a bad winter flu, or the slip of an ax, or simply the claws of something wild, there will be no one to rescue me from Nature's oblivious hand.
I lie in the hospital bed aching for all that I might have done with my life, and I wonder if my parents are still somehow aware of me, keeping tabs from their afterlife, and if they disapprove of my choices. But since they have never once deigned to visit since abandoning me in the mineshaft, I believe they have relinquished their right to judge me.
There is no one left at all to judge my life, not even Dief, who always had an exalted opinion of his own right to do so.
///
The night nurse is somewhat dismayed at some instrument reading of mine, and she frowns as she makes a note in my chart. The steady beeping of the monitor has lulled me into a half-sleep, and hours pass in what feels like mere moments. Cold packs follow, and changes to my IV, and whispered conversations alert me to the fact all is not, perhaps, going as well as it could, and I feel a lazy, fleeting hope that it will end here now, without my ever having to return to the cold cabin and its dusty memories of my lost life-of Ray Vecchio, grinning at me in the doorway, still in a neck brace and sling; of the two weeks of Ray Kowalski's stay after our adventure, when I would lie awake on my bedroll listening to his soft sleep-sounds in the cot above me; of Dief, curled up beside me on one of my rare vacations, his tail thumping restlessly against my leg. And of my father, of course, showing me how to apply pitch to the chinks in the logs when the cabin was first being constructed. It was the only time he and I worked together on something, though at age ten I probably wasn't of much real assistance to him.
The nurse comes in again, her rubber soles squeaking lightly on the linoleum. And she does something strange-though my temperature, I know, is digitally displayed moment-by-moment on the monitor, she puts a testing hand on my forehead as if I were a child with the flu. I keep my eyes shut, hoping the sudden sting of embarrassing liquid beneath my lids will fail to spill over. The last time anyone touched me thus was when I was six years old.
Have I returned then to my childhood as a stepping-stone to my death? Because I know now that I am dying. Some unexpected infection has caught hold of my knitting flesh, and there is pain, a great deal of it, and they have put me on painkillers, which I abhor. But at least the drugs keep my thoughts glacially slow, and free me of the need for speech.
I know I should ask them to call Maggie. She is currently stationed near the North Pole, on some sort of exchange program for extreme survival strategies. I admit I am jealous that she has made it further north than I, and I am almost glad she is not here to see me die. We have never been close, as much I think we both wished it. We are too much alike, she and I, and the walls remained unbreached.
There are only two people I would wish to see again before I die. I don't have the right to ask it of either of them-Ray Vecchio, because I clearly chose Ray Kowalski as my partner even after Vecchio's return; and Ray Kowalski, because I then let him go.
///
On the day my father first came back from the afterlife, he said to me, "I don't understand how I lived all those years and didn't get to know my son." I remember being quite unable to respond. Was he expressing true regret? Is it easier to say the things that need saying once you are dead?
I hope so. I might try to make a visit of my own, when this is all over.
I sink deeper. The fire that was once my leg is burning all through me now, and I'm thirsty all the time and cannot sleep. Instead, to my shame, I hear the mutter of my own voice. I have lost control of my body and no longer even care about the indignities of hands touching me intimately, cleaning me, moving me. I dream crazy dreams, of being suspended in a sling next to a glacier, a deep blue crevasse yawning below me. The pitons are shifting loose, and I know it's only a matter of time. I call out to Ray over and over, which seems strange to me, since he was never in his element out on the ice. But eventually I swear I can hear him saying something softly in return-something about ships, red and green.
And his hand is cool on my forehead.
///
I thrash awake from an avalanche dream to discover my wrists are bound, which panics me even further. I have been bound too many times by those with evil intent to be able to bear this now when I am at my most vulnerable. I hear someone saying my name urgently, but the sound is muddy and indistinct, as if muffled by snow.
"Dief!" I say, "Dief, chew the ropes." Something cool lands on my forehead, wetness passes over my eyelids, ungluing them, and I open my eyes.
Blue stares out of a deeply tanned face. Too familiar, yet strange. It is Ray-of course it is-but my confusion makes it hard to take in his presence here, now. It's only because his face is so changed that I manage to convince myself he isn't a product of my delirium. Whenever I dream of him, he is always as I remember him, never this drawn, lined face, silver vying with the dark blond of his hair. His eyes are the same, startling blue flecked with gold.
"Ray?" My voice sounds querulous and old.
"Yeah. Yeah, that's right, Fraser. You awake? You really awake?"
I nod and swallow. The sensation of sandpaper in my throat makes me wince. My eyes close, and I feel something hard butt against my lip.
"Straw. Drink some water."
Oh, this is bliss. I drink thirstily, the straw sucking air before Ray pulls the cup back with a little laugh.
I feel heavy with exhaustion, and my eyes are burning with the fever so I can barely keep them open, but I must. Ray is here.
"What are you doing here?" I manage to ask.
"You never get tired of asking the stupid questions, do you?" he says, his voice rough.
"No, I suppose not." I can't keep my eyes open any longer, and they shut, but I retain the afterimage of his interesting new face. "You came to say goodbye?"
"Goodbye? What kinda bullshit is that?"
He goes on, ranting confusingly about stupid cowboys and wearing boots, but I can't make heads nor tails of it, just that he sounds angry, and that seems appropriate somehow, because I can't ever recall a time when he didn't sound absolutely furious at me for some new idiocy I had committed. It is comforting. Ray is here, and angry, and so all is right with the world.
I surface briefly later, and Ray is not there, so I start to think I dreamed the whole interlude, except then I see a pair of sunglasses on the bed table. They are rounded, and designed to wrap around the wearer's face; very 'cool' in the parlance, the sort of thing an urban teenager might wear. Ray never left high school, I think. I find that thought vaguely reassuring.
The next time I awaken he is back, and I seize the opportunity to try to tell him about my estate and that he should contact Maggie, who is the executor of my will. What few possessions I own are going to Ray, with the exception of my books, and my father's journals, which I had long ago decided to leave to Maggie, with copies going to the Inuvik Public Library.
For some reason my words infuriate Ray; he kicks the end table and his glasses go flying, which makes me cough a rusty laugh. This turns out to be a grave mistake, because once I start I cannot stop coughing, and when the spasms finally ease I'm left without any strength at all.
"Don't do that, you bastard. You could really scare a guy," Ray says. He has hold of my hand. I'm not sure when that happened, or when they released the straps on my wrists.
I try to rasp out an apology.
"Just shut up and concentrate on getting your ass out of this bed."
"Ray." I try to make my voice gentle, but it is like gravel. "You must realize that just isn't a reasonable expectation-"
"Shut the fuck up. I mean it, Fraser."
"You're only making this harder-"
"Good! Great! Because it's supposed to be hard, goddammit. Rage, rage, and all that good stuff. You hearing me?"
I shouldn't be surprised he knows the poem. Nothing about him should ever surprise me, because nothing about him isn't surprising. He is the Trickster embodied, my Ray, even at fifty, with lines patterning those expressive blue eyes.
I'm staring, I know, and I shut my eyes again, but he jiggles my hand.
"Don't go back to sleep."
"Dare I stare too long at the sun," I mumble. I'm drifting again, but I can still hear him, sounding slightly less crabby now, going on about idiot poets and crazy Mounties.
I'm not sure, but I think I smile in my sleep.
///
I don't die. This surprises me not a little, and the doctors even more, I can tell, but Ray just looks smug. He's since shaved and cleaned up. I'm awake enough now that I'm starting to worry about why he's still here; and, more importantly, how quickly I can get him to leave, because I'm bound to have a slow and difficult recovery, and the added pain of having him here will probably be more than I can accept with equanimity.
I say pain, but really, it would be pleasure too strong for my weakened state to have him around all the time. I have never been able to afford luxuries for that very reason. I am weak, and a coward, no doubt, but I want him to leave before I grow too soft to survive without him.
Ray, of course, doesn't hear even the most obviously worded hint. It was much easier to get rid of him the last time. And though almost ten years have passed, and we are both so changed in that time, certain fundamentals still apply. I can still make him laugh with a carefully maintained deadpan, and he still fills my heart with an unholy joy with his sheer unexpectedness. Every thought that ping-pongs out of his mouth makes me re-think the world around me.
He's teasing me about Nurse Goodall. An unfortunate name for a very fortunately endowed lady, and in spite of the fact I'm at least fifteen years her elder and obviously decrepit, she appears to have taken a shine to me. At least, Ray insists it is so, and takes every opportunity to tease me about it. I no longer blush with the same rapidity, but he manages to leave me tongue-tied more than once with his risqué puns, which he seems to find amusing.
I catch him during a pause and say, "So, when are you planning to return to Los Angeles?"
He angles a glance at me and then looks back down at his copy of the Moose Jaw Herald. "Why don't we talk about that when you're up and around?"
"I'm being released on Friday." I won't be going home, of course. It will be some months before I'm able to fend for myself at the cabin, but I have quarters in town that the RCMP will continue to provide until my status is determined.
"Yeah, and you'll be on crutches for, what, seven weeks? I figure you'll need an extra pair of hands for a while, yet."
"Ray, I cannot ask you to-"
"No one's askin', so just shut yer yap, Frase." He always tended to interrupt me. It used to annoy me, but now I find it comfortingly familiar.
On Friday he takes me home.
///
We settle into a strange routine. Strange, because I've lived so long alone at first I don't know how to act around him. Is he a guest? But he's the one helping me, and it's impossible to be a good host when I can't even carry a cup of tea. Truthfully, I don't think I could've survived the first weeks without him. I'm incredibly weak, both from the injury and the illness, not to mention the eight days' trek in catching Owens, the murderous fellow with the ax.
My weakness in turn makes me moody. Much still remains unknown-for example, how much use I will regain of the leg? Enough to walk, certainly. With a limp? Will I be able to run? Snowshoe?
If I can't do the latter, my plans to live at the cabin are moot.
Ray is surprisingly patient with me, his eyes a calm, cool blue. He suffers my ill-humor with a mocking smile.
My first day at the housing unit I find myself in the thoroughly embarrassing position of being too weak to rise from the toilet. I try to use my cast as a counterweight and only succeed in causing inexecrable pain to go shooting up my leg.
I must have made a sound, because Ray is with me at once, an expression of concern on his face that does not, as I am anticipating, dissolve into laughter at my plight. He doesn't say a word, just hauls me up and bends to pull up my boxers while embarrassed heat crawls painfully up my scalp.
Ray gives me a pat on the side. "Hey, you're in pretty good shape for an old guy," he says.
I'm sure it is meant as a kindness, but considering all the many circumstances-my new disability and weakness, my old yearning for him, and my present state of undress-his words serve only to deepen my embarrassment, and I croak out a request for privacy.
He gives me one keen look and raises a finger, but then he nods and backs out of the bathroom to leave me in peace. I pivot on my good leg and wash my hands in the sink, reclaim my crutches, and join him out in the living room.
He appears to be waiting. Ray's face has a set sternness to it that is new to me. He seems to have changed somewhat in the years we were apart. He is more serious, and his humor has grown drier.
"We have to get a couple of things straight if this is going to work," he says.
I sag down into the recliner and give him a nod.
"First off-" he points his fingers in an old, familiar gesture that sends a pang through my heart, "you need help, you better ask for it. I realize this is an unfamiliar concept, but it's what sane people do."
He sounds a little bit like me, I'm surprised to realize. I wonder how much of him rubbed off on me, over the years. Not enough, I fear. But, in that spirit, I nod again.
"All right, Ray."
He looks a little taken aback, as if he were expecting more of an argument. I have none. I am exhausted beyond reason by the trip home from the hospital and my simple visit to the bathroom.
"May I have a cup of coffee?" I don't even mind, in that moment, sounding somewhat pathetic, because Ray's face lights up with a grin, taking the years off, taking my breath away.
"You got it." Ray disappears behind me into the tiny kitchen, and I hear his search for the needed items along with muffled comments about groceries he plans to pick up in town.
It is only now that it comes home to me how utterly dependent I will be on him for the next seven weeks or so. He will be providing all our food, wood for heat, assistance in the tasks of living. A complete reversal of our roles on the quest. And though some part of me resents this new dependency, I realize, because of our history, that he is perhaps the only person in the world I would willingly become reliant upon.
He makes the coffee and finds a box of biscuits, which he insists on calling "shortbread cookies." He brings both to me and pulls up a chair so we are facing each other.
"It looks like California has been good for you," I say. And he does look good-strong and lean and tanned.
He twists his mouth wryly. "Next thing you know I'll be getting my teeth capped. I had a girlfriend for a while-total beach bunny-who was trying to convince me to do it."
The casual implication sets me back, although of course he would be seeing someone. He's a handsome man. It's just that he never mentioned any "beach bunnies" in his emails.
"And what about you?" he says, "tell me what's been going on."
I'm afraid I roll my eyes.
"No, no, not with that," he waves his hand toward my leg. "Before, you know? I haven't heard much out of you since...since Dief."
It's odd that he perceives it that way, since I recall being the one to send the last piece of email between us.
"I've been involved in three interesting cases recently. The first was shutting down a poaching ring from Saskatchewan. The last was Owens, and of course you know I did catch him, eventually." I look away, suddenly feeling the weight of the cast on my leg.
"What was the middle one?"
I cough. "Well, that one was quite accidental, really. I was returning from a trip across the border when I noticed a suspicious vehicle trying to cross illegally. I pulled them over, and as a matter of course conducted a search on their car. I found a thermos taped to their engine block."
"Oooh." Ray rubs his hands together. "What was in it? Coke? Diamonds?"
I feel a flush start under my collar. "Bovine semen."
"What the fuck-?"
"Bull semen. From a particularly valued line." I suppress a smile.
"Someone was trying to smuggle jizz across the border? In a freakin' thermos?" He snickers.
"Yes. And apparently, due to animal byproduct regulation, the border office has been unable to dispose of it yet. As far as I know it's still sitting in the communal refrigerator-"
He laughs, and I join him. It seems so odd to have him here talking to me. So familiar and terrifyingly good, like coming in from a viciously cold day to find the fire already blazing. Too quick the thaw-almost painful.
An unexpected bolt of agony travels down my broken leg and I stiffen. It's quite excruciating, and for a moment I am afraid to breathe.
Ray is already up, and he dashes to the kitchen to bring back a small brown bottle and a glass of water.
"I'm a big dummy-we were supposed to get two of these into you an hour ago."
"Ray, you know I don't like taking medication-"
"Yeah? Well, suck it up, Mountie."
His eyes change and duck down momentarily with embarrassment. They match the cold sinking of my heart. Because I'm not a Mountie anymore. Well, technically, I am, but only until the final prognosis comes through regarding my leg.
"Don't do that. Don't look like that," Ray says fiercely. "Nobody's counting you out. Not me, and not you."
"I have to be realistic-"
"You don't have to be anything. All you have to be is good and take your pills," he shakes out a couple onto his palm, "and don't jostle the leg, like the doc said. And then you'll get the cast off and do your therapy and then-"
"Then what?" I take the pills and wash them down obediently.
"And then you'll show 'em, is all I'm saying." Ray puts down the bottle and crosses his arms.
I feel strangely liberated by his faith, as if by his particular magic he has lifted the ugly weight bearing down on me these past few weeks.
"All right, Ray."
"That's right. You remember I'm always right, and we'll do fine." He cocks a grin at me. His temples look a little thinner, and there are more wrinkles around his eyes, but right now, in this light, as his good humor glows at me, he looks just as I remember him. Just as I always envision him, whenever I've thought of him these past years.
Which is often. I don't deny that. I have never had anyone in my life quite like him, and forgetting even a part of his charm and personality was quite beyond me, no matter how much I tried to relegate him to the past.
Feeling a queer sense of freedom, I smile back at him, at the Ray of yesterday and today. We've come so far from there to here. It's been a long road, and an ugly one, but having him here now, being together once more, I suddenly feel quite young again.
How I wish Dief could be with us, too.
///
The next days are difficult. The painkillers make me foggy and listless. I don't have much of an appetite, and Ray tries to bully me into eating. I think if he weren't here, my recovery would have been impossible. It really is ridiculously difficult for me to accomplish even the simplest tasks, and Ray often won't even let me try without his assistance. I can tell he is worried I will do something to damage the leg in its delicate state.
I admit I'm worried about the same thing, and so I let him, even as it galls my pride. The worst is when he has to help me into and out of the shower with my plastic-wrapped cast, and I'm conscious of my nakedness, and of his strong arm around my bare waist, and the way his fingertips brush the skin just above my buttocks.
Fortunately, thanks to the medication, I feel no inappropriate arousal, just self-consciousness and a sad resignation that he is seeing me at my worst-now, when he has no recent memories of me as strong and fit.
The constant, enforced intimacy wearies me, and I turn moody once again. He gives me an exasperated look and straps on his cold-weather gear to go trudging into town. I read some Lorca, making my solo trip to the bathroom with care.
Ray returns much later with beer on his breath and carrying the remains of a pizza, which he heats in the small microwave that came with the house. He also has with him a new CD, and he puts it into the player that sits on the counter between the kitchen and the living room.
Mozart fills the space around us. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, I recognize with some surprise.
"How-?"
"I remember seeing you had the music," he says with a shrug. "They had a copy at the S&S."
"Thank you kindly." It's a wonderful gift. I put down my book and close my eyes to listen. Some minutes later the scent of cheese and tomato sauce makes me open them again.
He smiles down at me and puts the plate on my lap, balancing it, as he has come to, upon the flat part of my cast at the top of my thigh.
"How long are you staying?" I am no longer able to hold back the question.
He squats down beside the recliner and puts a hand on my arm. "As long as you need me here. I thought you'd figured that out, Fraser."
"I hadn't-I'd hoped-"
"Yeah, well." He looks down and rubs his forehead. "I'm almost at thirty years, you know? Altogether, I mean. Only six weeks left, and I have that easy in vacation time." He pauses. "The fibbies were so happy over the whole Muldoon thing they arranged a federal thing to transfer my pension. I don't know if I told you."
"No, I don't recall." My chest feels tight. "You also never told me why you chose Los Angeles."
"I didn't, huh?"
"No, you didn't."
The silence goes on a little bit too long. We've reached the end of the allegro, and my ear waits for the romanza.
"It's warm in Los Angeles," he says just as the first notes sound.
"Yes, yes," I say uselessly, suddenly afraid.
"I was tired of the cold, Fraser."
"Could you bring me a glass of water?" There is a certain urgency to my request, and he shoots me a look before getting up and turning toward the kitchen.
I try to compose myself, and I think I am successful until he returns and I see his expression. He hands me the water glass and I take a sip.
"Maybe we should talk about this later. Why don't you eat up before your pizza gets cold again? If you think it's bad now-"
"Yes, you're quite right."
I eat the pizza. It's not very good, but it's not terrible, either. It sends me back through time to the many late-night feasts we had after long stakeouts, when Nero's was already closed and we could barely muster the energy to call the cheap, twenty-four hour pizzeria near Ray's apartment.
And, oddly, I remember Ray Vecchio and the pizza delivery boy we'd once helped. I try to compare the pizzas in my mind, but my mouth has no memory. I wonder how many hundreds of pizzas the two Rays have consumed in my absence.
It feels as though my life has passed by me somehow, has gone speeding away in a classic automobile of one kind or another while I stood on the curb watching uselessly.
"It was colder here after you left," I say now, and see Ray's eyes widen. But it is nothing but the truth.
"Yeah, well-I'm here now, aren't I? Look around."
I take him literally, and look around the small house. What had been a spare, barely-furnished pit stop I used seldom between long patrols now has a feeling of occupancy. Ray's belongings are spread about-a small CD collection lies in a jumbled pile on the counter next to the player. Various pairs of his boots are similarly scattered about-I have complained to him testily while crutching around them. There are new blankets on the pullout sofa where he sleeps and, perhaps most telling, a stack of cookbooks he has consulted at one time or another to try to stimulate my medication-dulled taste buds.
He's made a home here, temporary or no. I think about what it means, that he has come here, after so many years apart. I wonder if by some strange twist Time has turned the corner and is now rushing back toward me.
"I'm very glad you're here, Ray," I say.
"I'm guessing that was pretty hard to say." His smile is wry, and I match it with one of my own.
"Yes. I am an ungrateful wretch."
His face goes still and careful. "It's not gratitude I'm after. You gotta know that, Fraser."
I have to swallow suddenly, and I reach for the glass of water. I catch it with my knuckles and it topples from the table to land on the carpet with a thunk.
"Swift move," he teases, sounding oddly shaky, and he bends to pick it up.
His head is near to my right hand, and I feel the same reckless freedom that struck me my first night back from the hospital. Reaching out as if in a dream, I put my palm on his cheek, stopping him from rising.
His eyes come up to meet mine. He goes utterly still.
I think-I have waited a lifetime for this moment. I almost died for this moment. But I am alive, and Ray is here with me. At long last.
He licks his lips. I can almost taste them. I want to taste them-taste Ray. My beautiful, dearest friend. I draw my thumb across the dampness, and then bring it to my mouth.
"Jesus," Ray says. His eyes positively glow, and my heart beats high, high, pushing blood up to my face, making the pulse pound in my lips. And then he shuffles forward on his knees, until his face hovers over mine, and I know he is going to kiss me.
At first I can't even feel it when his lips touch mine, as if the power of this moment has stunned my neurons into stasis. And then I feel him push closer, and I tilt my head, the better to feel him pressing there, and suddenly sensation bursts through me. For the first time since the accident I feel a complete lack of pain, just the pleasure of his lips moving, nipping and sliding against my own.
He pulls back and frowns. His fingers touch the hair on my temple, stroking over the silver I know is there.
"Breathe, would ya?"
"No need," I say, and my hand has found the back of his head so I can pull him in once again. This time his mouth opens, and after a heartbeat of anticipation I feel his tongue enter my mouth, and now I wish my taste weren't compromised, because I am only getting a part of his flavor. But even so much is a delight to me-beer and Ray combined.
"Oh, man," he says, slipping away to kiss my jaw, to lay a path of kisses to my ear. "Do you have any fucking idea how long I've waited for this?" He sounds miffed and joyous, both.
A bubble of laughter rises in my throat, but I quell it in favor of exploring the lobe of his ear with my teeth. His fingers squeeze my shoulder, and I can't help smiling even as I kiss my way back to his sweet mouth.
"I love you-but I couldn't-I'm sorry," I say, and kiss him again, harder, but he pulls away.
"Why not?" His eyes dare me to tell the truth.
"I couldn't see the way," I say finally. "I didn't know you wanted this, but even so, I wouldn't have asked that of you. Or of me-half a life for one of us, no matter what we decided."
His eyes clear, as if he hadn't heard what he feared.
"And even now, Ray-"
"Don't do that. Don't start with that again." He grabs my head with both hands, hard pressure centering me on his blue-blue eyes. "It's a done deal, don't you get it? Even when you get your leg back up to snuff-and you know you will, so don't kid me-and you decide to go on duty again, I'm not letting you kick me out the door this time, Fraser. Not a chance."
My heart somehow soars and dips at once. "But you hate the cold."
His eyes soften-look almost pitying. "That wasn't the cold I was talking about."
I hear him, and pain flares in my chest. I did that. I pushed him away, tried to thrust him out of my heart. And I hurt him. I never intended to hurt him.
"I'm sorry, so, so sorry, Ray."
"Hey, none of that." He hoists himself up onto the arm of the chair and leans over me, devouring me with more kisses until I'm nearly faint with yearning for the impossible-that this moment might never end, and yet that it should-so we might leave the dark past and walk forward into our light-filled future days.
It seems I can almost see them waiting, there in Ray's eyes.
....................
2008.03.11
ETA: I forgot to note: the bovine semen story is ABSOLUTELY TRUE to every detail. A friend of mine works in the FDA and received a request for an Order of Destruction, which is apparently required in such cases. The RCMP had confiscated a thermos full of bovine (bull) semen from the engine of someone's car. Apparently it's cheaper to smuggle jism than follow all the approved transport protocols.
The truth is stranger than dS, even.
ETA: There is now a Diefalogue to this tale.
Author: arrow00
Fandom: dS
Pairing: Fraser/RayK
Rating: PG (injury, so no seX0rs!)
Category: FT, Post-post-CotW, H/C
Wordcount: 6,147
Warnings: Dief isn't with us.
Summary: Sometimes it takes a journey.
Notes: BEWARE THE SCHMOOP.
I started this fic back before I read Nos' definitive post-CotW limb story, an unfinished universe
which made me weep (and not just because damn, that's a similar plotline.) So I put it away. But yesterday I was dorking through my folder and thought it was worth finishing. You will notice NO LIMBS GO COMPLETELY MISSING in this story. I just don't have her fortitude and skill.
From There to Here
By Arrow
They say that without darkness there can be no light, but I have always thought that a poetic fallacy. Light has its own properties, real and physical, and does not rely on the dark.
But rather, it is darkness that cannot exist unless light defines it.
I have learned that truth well in ten years of living, ever since I watched Ray Kowalski go back to Chicago, leaving me here in the north where I belong. For ten years I have continued alone and followed my career to what some might say was its inevitable end: a messy one.
The fall has crushed my unlucky leg, gunshots and stab wounds apparently being inadequate to the task. At least the accident occurred in the line of duty-I had tracked and captured a killer who took nine lives with his ax before haring out of Moose Jaw. For once I failed to take my father's advice, and I ended up following Owens over a cliff. Of course, we were tethered together at the time fighting a raging storm.
At least I brought him back alive.
But now, at last, my body has failed me, or I have failed it. Yes, I have failed it, just as I failed my heart ten years ago when I didn't find a way, a path between, that might have kept me by Ray's side. Kept near to his light and warmth, somehow, without extinguishing them.
It just wasn't possible. To take Ray out of his native milieu would have been a greater sin than even I am capable of. The north was no place for him. He lost heat too easily, expended it uncaring in the dry, frigid air. On me.
And I could no longer survive living half a life in Chicago.
So, I stayed, and he returned to the States, and I managed to deflect his half-begun expressions of remorse, knowing that he would recover his natural ebullience, and would now never learn of my aching need for him, which I was uncertain he would have welcomed. I also tried to hide the worst of the pain that losing my best friend caused me, though I feel quite certain he saw beyond that subterfuge.
He traveled aimlessly for a while-went walkabout, to borrow a term. Eventually he settled in Southern California. And he visited me, on occasion-always looking leaner and more beautiful to me, almost as if age purified him. He always came in the spring, when the weather had turned to those fleeting days of perfection. Eventually, when he became the captain of his own squad, he could no longer could extricate himself, and the visits stopped. I suppose I could have flown out to California myself, but there was always duty, duty calling and keeping me here.
Now I have reached the end of what I stayed for-ten years of good work patrolling endless kilometers, righting as best I could a multitude of injustices, and sinking into an ever-deeper solitude, which became complete when Diefenbaker died last year.
Ray found out about it-I don't know how-and called me from his home in Los Angeles, but my grief was too thick for words. I was ashamed of my need for his grieving but friendly voice, and of the raw sound of my own, and begged to call him back later. I never did, although I did compose a letter telling him how much Dief had missed his company over the years. I'm certain some feelings of my own were projected in that letter. Ray responded with a postcard-a blown-up photograph of a powdered donut, and on the reverse the words 'This one's for you, buddy.' The postcard, as far as I know, is still sitting on my desk.
And I will, in all likelihood, be stuck behind that very desk for the remainder of my career, should I remain in the RCMP after getting out of the hospital. The doctors are pessimistic my leg will pass muster again. But I cannot stomach the thought of being desk-bound. My career is over. Ten years earlier than my father's, but he was always better in all things.
No, instead I will be retiring on full pension to my father's cabin. A man can subsist for a long time off the land, and I plan to do so with my limited mobility for as long as I can, until some random accident of fate takes me from this plane.
Nature is not merciful. Or, more accurately, Nature knows neither mercy nor vengeance. It knows nothing but strict, logical imperatives without emotion. It simply is. So whether it be a bad winter flu, or the slip of an ax, or simply the claws of something wild, there will be no one to rescue me from Nature's oblivious hand.
I lie in the hospital bed aching for all that I might have done with my life, and I wonder if my parents are still somehow aware of me, keeping tabs from their afterlife, and if they disapprove of my choices. But since they have never once deigned to visit since abandoning me in the mineshaft, I believe they have relinquished their right to judge me.
There is no one left at all to judge my life, not even Dief, who always had an exalted opinion of his own right to do so.
///
The night nurse is somewhat dismayed at some instrument reading of mine, and she frowns as she makes a note in my chart. The steady beeping of the monitor has lulled me into a half-sleep, and hours pass in what feels like mere moments. Cold packs follow, and changes to my IV, and whispered conversations alert me to the fact all is not, perhaps, going as well as it could, and I feel a lazy, fleeting hope that it will end here now, without my ever having to return to the cold cabin and its dusty memories of my lost life-of Ray Vecchio, grinning at me in the doorway, still in a neck brace and sling; of the two weeks of Ray Kowalski's stay after our adventure, when I would lie awake on my bedroll listening to his soft sleep-sounds in the cot above me; of Dief, curled up beside me on one of my rare vacations, his tail thumping restlessly against my leg. And of my father, of course, showing me how to apply pitch to the chinks in the logs when the cabin was first being constructed. It was the only time he and I worked together on something, though at age ten I probably wasn't of much real assistance to him.
The nurse comes in again, her rubber soles squeaking lightly on the linoleum. And she does something strange-though my temperature, I know, is digitally displayed moment-by-moment on the monitor, she puts a testing hand on my forehead as if I were a child with the flu. I keep my eyes shut, hoping the sudden sting of embarrassing liquid beneath my lids will fail to spill over. The last time anyone touched me thus was when I was six years old.
Have I returned then to my childhood as a stepping-stone to my death? Because I know now that I am dying. Some unexpected infection has caught hold of my knitting flesh, and there is pain, a great deal of it, and they have put me on painkillers, which I abhor. But at least the drugs keep my thoughts glacially slow, and free me of the need for speech.
I know I should ask them to call Maggie. She is currently stationed near the North Pole, on some sort of exchange program for extreme survival strategies. I admit I am jealous that she has made it further north than I, and I am almost glad she is not here to see me die. We have never been close, as much I think we both wished it. We are too much alike, she and I, and the walls remained unbreached.
There are only two people I would wish to see again before I die. I don't have the right to ask it of either of them-Ray Vecchio, because I clearly chose Ray Kowalski as my partner even after Vecchio's return; and Ray Kowalski, because I then let him go.
///
On the day my father first came back from the afterlife, he said to me, "I don't understand how I lived all those years and didn't get to know my son." I remember being quite unable to respond. Was he expressing true regret? Is it easier to say the things that need saying once you are dead?
I hope so. I might try to make a visit of my own, when this is all over.
I sink deeper. The fire that was once my leg is burning all through me now, and I'm thirsty all the time and cannot sleep. Instead, to my shame, I hear the mutter of my own voice. I have lost control of my body and no longer even care about the indignities of hands touching me intimately, cleaning me, moving me. I dream crazy dreams, of being suspended in a sling next to a glacier, a deep blue crevasse yawning below me. The pitons are shifting loose, and I know it's only a matter of time. I call out to Ray over and over, which seems strange to me, since he was never in his element out on the ice. But eventually I swear I can hear him saying something softly in return-something about ships, red and green.
And his hand is cool on my forehead.
///
I thrash awake from an avalanche dream to discover my wrists are bound, which panics me even further. I have been bound too many times by those with evil intent to be able to bear this now when I am at my most vulnerable. I hear someone saying my name urgently, but the sound is muddy and indistinct, as if muffled by snow.
"Dief!" I say, "Dief, chew the ropes." Something cool lands on my forehead, wetness passes over my eyelids, ungluing them, and I open my eyes.
Blue stares out of a deeply tanned face. Too familiar, yet strange. It is Ray-of course it is-but my confusion makes it hard to take in his presence here, now. It's only because his face is so changed that I manage to convince myself he isn't a product of my delirium. Whenever I dream of him, he is always as I remember him, never this drawn, lined face, silver vying with the dark blond of his hair. His eyes are the same, startling blue flecked with gold.
"Ray?" My voice sounds querulous and old.
"Yeah. Yeah, that's right, Fraser. You awake? You really awake?"
I nod and swallow. The sensation of sandpaper in my throat makes me wince. My eyes close, and I feel something hard butt against my lip.
"Straw. Drink some water."
Oh, this is bliss. I drink thirstily, the straw sucking air before Ray pulls the cup back with a little laugh.
I feel heavy with exhaustion, and my eyes are burning with the fever so I can barely keep them open, but I must. Ray is here.
"What are you doing here?" I manage to ask.
"You never get tired of asking the stupid questions, do you?" he says, his voice rough.
"No, I suppose not." I can't keep my eyes open any longer, and they shut, but I retain the afterimage of his interesting new face. "You came to say goodbye?"
"Goodbye? What kinda bullshit is that?"
He goes on, ranting confusingly about stupid cowboys and wearing boots, but I can't make heads nor tails of it, just that he sounds angry, and that seems appropriate somehow, because I can't ever recall a time when he didn't sound absolutely furious at me for some new idiocy I had committed. It is comforting. Ray is here, and angry, and so all is right with the world.
I surface briefly later, and Ray is not there, so I start to think I dreamed the whole interlude, except then I see a pair of sunglasses on the bed table. They are rounded, and designed to wrap around the wearer's face; very 'cool' in the parlance, the sort of thing an urban teenager might wear. Ray never left high school, I think. I find that thought vaguely reassuring.
The next time I awaken he is back, and I seize the opportunity to try to tell him about my estate and that he should contact Maggie, who is the executor of my will. What few possessions I own are going to Ray, with the exception of my books, and my father's journals, which I had long ago decided to leave to Maggie, with copies going to the Inuvik Public Library.
For some reason my words infuriate Ray; he kicks the end table and his glasses go flying, which makes me cough a rusty laugh. This turns out to be a grave mistake, because once I start I cannot stop coughing, and when the spasms finally ease I'm left without any strength at all.
"Don't do that, you bastard. You could really scare a guy," Ray says. He has hold of my hand. I'm not sure when that happened, or when they released the straps on my wrists.
I try to rasp out an apology.
"Just shut up and concentrate on getting your ass out of this bed."
"Ray." I try to make my voice gentle, but it is like gravel. "You must realize that just isn't a reasonable expectation-"
"Shut the fuck up. I mean it, Fraser."
"You're only making this harder-"
"Good! Great! Because it's supposed to be hard, goddammit. Rage, rage, and all that good stuff. You hearing me?"
I shouldn't be surprised he knows the poem. Nothing about him should ever surprise me, because nothing about him isn't surprising. He is the Trickster embodied, my Ray, even at fifty, with lines patterning those expressive blue eyes.
I'm staring, I know, and I shut my eyes again, but he jiggles my hand.
"Don't go back to sleep."
"Dare I stare too long at the sun," I mumble. I'm drifting again, but I can still hear him, sounding slightly less crabby now, going on about idiot poets and crazy Mounties.
I'm not sure, but I think I smile in my sleep.
///
I don't die. This surprises me not a little, and the doctors even more, I can tell, but Ray just looks smug. He's since shaved and cleaned up. I'm awake enough now that I'm starting to worry about why he's still here; and, more importantly, how quickly I can get him to leave, because I'm bound to have a slow and difficult recovery, and the added pain of having him here will probably be more than I can accept with equanimity.
I say pain, but really, it would be pleasure too strong for my weakened state to have him around all the time. I have never been able to afford luxuries for that very reason. I am weak, and a coward, no doubt, but I want him to leave before I grow too soft to survive without him.
Ray, of course, doesn't hear even the most obviously worded hint. It was much easier to get rid of him the last time. And though almost ten years have passed, and we are both so changed in that time, certain fundamentals still apply. I can still make him laugh with a carefully maintained deadpan, and he still fills my heart with an unholy joy with his sheer unexpectedness. Every thought that ping-pongs out of his mouth makes me re-think the world around me.
He's teasing me about Nurse Goodall. An unfortunate name for a very fortunately endowed lady, and in spite of the fact I'm at least fifteen years her elder and obviously decrepit, she appears to have taken a shine to me. At least, Ray insists it is so, and takes every opportunity to tease me about it. I no longer blush with the same rapidity, but he manages to leave me tongue-tied more than once with his risqué puns, which he seems to find amusing.
I catch him during a pause and say, "So, when are you planning to return to Los Angeles?"
He angles a glance at me and then looks back down at his copy of the Moose Jaw Herald. "Why don't we talk about that when you're up and around?"
"I'm being released on Friday." I won't be going home, of course. It will be some months before I'm able to fend for myself at the cabin, but I have quarters in town that the RCMP will continue to provide until my status is determined.
"Yeah, and you'll be on crutches for, what, seven weeks? I figure you'll need an extra pair of hands for a while, yet."
"Ray, I cannot ask you to-"
"No one's askin', so just shut yer yap, Frase." He always tended to interrupt me. It used to annoy me, but now I find it comfortingly familiar.
On Friday he takes me home.
///
We settle into a strange routine. Strange, because I've lived so long alone at first I don't know how to act around him. Is he a guest? But he's the one helping me, and it's impossible to be a good host when I can't even carry a cup of tea. Truthfully, I don't think I could've survived the first weeks without him. I'm incredibly weak, both from the injury and the illness, not to mention the eight days' trek in catching Owens, the murderous fellow with the ax.
My weakness in turn makes me moody. Much still remains unknown-for example, how much use I will regain of the leg? Enough to walk, certainly. With a limp? Will I be able to run? Snowshoe?
If I can't do the latter, my plans to live at the cabin are moot.
Ray is surprisingly patient with me, his eyes a calm, cool blue. He suffers my ill-humor with a mocking smile.
My first day at the housing unit I find myself in the thoroughly embarrassing position of being too weak to rise from the toilet. I try to use my cast as a counterweight and only succeed in causing inexecrable pain to go shooting up my leg.
I must have made a sound, because Ray is with me at once, an expression of concern on his face that does not, as I am anticipating, dissolve into laughter at my plight. He doesn't say a word, just hauls me up and bends to pull up my boxers while embarrassed heat crawls painfully up my scalp.
Ray gives me a pat on the side. "Hey, you're in pretty good shape for an old guy," he says.
I'm sure it is meant as a kindness, but considering all the many circumstances-my new disability and weakness, my old yearning for him, and my present state of undress-his words serve only to deepen my embarrassment, and I croak out a request for privacy.
He gives me one keen look and raises a finger, but then he nods and backs out of the bathroom to leave me in peace. I pivot on my good leg and wash my hands in the sink, reclaim my crutches, and join him out in the living room.
He appears to be waiting. Ray's face has a set sternness to it that is new to me. He seems to have changed somewhat in the years we were apart. He is more serious, and his humor has grown drier.
"We have to get a couple of things straight if this is going to work," he says.
I sag down into the recliner and give him a nod.
"First off-" he points his fingers in an old, familiar gesture that sends a pang through my heart, "you need help, you better ask for it. I realize this is an unfamiliar concept, but it's what sane people do."
He sounds a little bit like me, I'm surprised to realize. I wonder how much of him rubbed off on me, over the years. Not enough, I fear. But, in that spirit, I nod again.
"All right, Ray."
He looks a little taken aback, as if he were expecting more of an argument. I have none. I am exhausted beyond reason by the trip home from the hospital and my simple visit to the bathroom.
"May I have a cup of coffee?" I don't even mind, in that moment, sounding somewhat pathetic, because Ray's face lights up with a grin, taking the years off, taking my breath away.
"You got it." Ray disappears behind me into the tiny kitchen, and I hear his search for the needed items along with muffled comments about groceries he plans to pick up in town.
It is only now that it comes home to me how utterly dependent I will be on him for the next seven weeks or so. He will be providing all our food, wood for heat, assistance in the tasks of living. A complete reversal of our roles on the quest. And though some part of me resents this new dependency, I realize, because of our history, that he is perhaps the only person in the world I would willingly become reliant upon.
He makes the coffee and finds a box of biscuits, which he insists on calling "shortbread cookies." He brings both to me and pulls up a chair so we are facing each other.
"It looks like California has been good for you," I say. And he does look good-strong and lean and tanned.
He twists his mouth wryly. "Next thing you know I'll be getting my teeth capped. I had a girlfriend for a while-total beach bunny-who was trying to convince me to do it."
The casual implication sets me back, although of course he would be seeing someone. He's a handsome man. It's just that he never mentioned any "beach bunnies" in his emails.
"And what about you?" he says, "tell me what's been going on."
I'm afraid I roll my eyes.
"No, no, not with that," he waves his hand toward my leg. "Before, you know? I haven't heard much out of you since...since Dief."
It's odd that he perceives it that way, since I recall being the one to send the last piece of email between us.
"I've been involved in three interesting cases recently. The first was shutting down a poaching ring from Saskatchewan. The last was Owens, and of course you know I did catch him, eventually." I look away, suddenly feeling the weight of the cast on my leg.
"What was the middle one?"
I cough. "Well, that one was quite accidental, really. I was returning from a trip across the border when I noticed a suspicious vehicle trying to cross illegally. I pulled them over, and as a matter of course conducted a search on their car. I found a thermos taped to their engine block."
"Oooh." Ray rubs his hands together. "What was in it? Coke? Diamonds?"
I feel a flush start under my collar. "Bovine semen."
"What the fuck-?"
"Bull semen. From a particularly valued line." I suppress a smile.
"Someone was trying to smuggle jizz across the border? In a freakin' thermos?" He snickers.
"Yes. And apparently, due to animal byproduct regulation, the border office has been unable to dispose of it yet. As far as I know it's still sitting in the communal refrigerator-"
He laughs, and I join him. It seems so odd to have him here talking to me. So familiar and terrifyingly good, like coming in from a viciously cold day to find the fire already blazing. Too quick the thaw-almost painful.
An unexpected bolt of agony travels down my broken leg and I stiffen. It's quite excruciating, and for a moment I am afraid to breathe.
Ray is already up, and he dashes to the kitchen to bring back a small brown bottle and a glass of water.
"I'm a big dummy-we were supposed to get two of these into you an hour ago."
"Ray, you know I don't like taking medication-"
"Yeah? Well, suck it up, Mountie."
His eyes change and duck down momentarily with embarrassment. They match the cold sinking of my heart. Because I'm not a Mountie anymore. Well, technically, I am, but only until the final prognosis comes through regarding my leg.
"Don't do that. Don't look like that," Ray says fiercely. "Nobody's counting you out. Not me, and not you."
"I have to be realistic-"
"You don't have to be anything. All you have to be is good and take your pills," he shakes out a couple onto his palm, "and don't jostle the leg, like the doc said. And then you'll get the cast off and do your therapy and then-"
"Then what?" I take the pills and wash them down obediently.
"And then you'll show 'em, is all I'm saying." Ray puts down the bottle and crosses his arms.
I feel strangely liberated by his faith, as if by his particular magic he has lifted the ugly weight bearing down on me these past few weeks.
"All right, Ray."
"That's right. You remember I'm always right, and we'll do fine." He cocks a grin at me. His temples look a little thinner, and there are more wrinkles around his eyes, but right now, in this light, as his good humor glows at me, he looks just as I remember him. Just as I always envision him, whenever I've thought of him these past years.
Which is often. I don't deny that. I have never had anyone in my life quite like him, and forgetting even a part of his charm and personality was quite beyond me, no matter how much I tried to relegate him to the past.
Feeling a queer sense of freedom, I smile back at him, at the Ray of yesterday and today. We've come so far from there to here. It's been a long road, and an ugly one, but having him here now, being together once more, I suddenly feel quite young again.
How I wish Dief could be with us, too.
///
The next days are difficult. The painkillers make me foggy and listless. I don't have much of an appetite, and Ray tries to bully me into eating. I think if he weren't here, my recovery would have been impossible. It really is ridiculously difficult for me to accomplish even the simplest tasks, and Ray often won't even let me try without his assistance. I can tell he is worried I will do something to damage the leg in its delicate state.
I admit I'm worried about the same thing, and so I let him, even as it galls my pride. The worst is when he has to help me into and out of the shower with my plastic-wrapped cast, and I'm conscious of my nakedness, and of his strong arm around my bare waist, and the way his fingertips brush the skin just above my buttocks.
Fortunately, thanks to the medication, I feel no inappropriate arousal, just self-consciousness and a sad resignation that he is seeing me at my worst-now, when he has no recent memories of me as strong and fit.
The constant, enforced intimacy wearies me, and I turn moody once again. He gives me an exasperated look and straps on his cold-weather gear to go trudging into town. I read some Lorca, making my solo trip to the bathroom with care.
Ray returns much later with beer on his breath and carrying the remains of a pizza, which he heats in the small microwave that came with the house. He also has with him a new CD, and he puts it into the player that sits on the counter between the kitchen and the living room.
Mozart fills the space around us. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, I recognize with some surprise.
"How-?"
"I remember seeing you had the music," he says with a shrug. "They had a copy at the S&S."
"Thank you kindly." It's a wonderful gift. I put down my book and close my eyes to listen. Some minutes later the scent of cheese and tomato sauce makes me open them again.
He smiles down at me and puts the plate on my lap, balancing it, as he has come to, upon the flat part of my cast at the top of my thigh.
"How long are you staying?" I am no longer able to hold back the question.
He squats down beside the recliner and puts a hand on my arm. "As long as you need me here. I thought you'd figured that out, Fraser."
"I hadn't-I'd hoped-"
"Yeah, well." He looks down and rubs his forehead. "I'm almost at thirty years, you know? Altogether, I mean. Only six weeks left, and I have that easy in vacation time." He pauses. "The fibbies were so happy over the whole Muldoon thing they arranged a federal thing to transfer my pension. I don't know if I told you."
"No, I don't recall." My chest feels tight. "You also never told me why you chose Los Angeles."
"I didn't, huh?"
"No, you didn't."
The silence goes on a little bit too long. We've reached the end of the allegro, and my ear waits for the romanza.
"It's warm in Los Angeles," he says just as the first notes sound.
"Yes, yes," I say uselessly, suddenly afraid.
"I was tired of the cold, Fraser."
"Could you bring me a glass of water?" There is a certain urgency to my request, and he shoots me a look before getting up and turning toward the kitchen.
I try to compose myself, and I think I am successful until he returns and I see his expression. He hands me the water glass and I take a sip.
"Maybe we should talk about this later. Why don't you eat up before your pizza gets cold again? If you think it's bad now-"
"Yes, you're quite right."
I eat the pizza. It's not very good, but it's not terrible, either. It sends me back through time to the many late-night feasts we had after long stakeouts, when Nero's was already closed and we could barely muster the energy to call the cheap, twenty-four hour pizzeria near Ray's apartment.
And, oddly, I remember Ray Vecchio and the pizza delivery boy we'd once helped. I try to compare the pizzas in my mind, but my mouth has no memory. I wonder how many hundreds of pizzas the two Rays have consumed in my absence.
It feels as though my life has passed by me somehow, has gone speeding away in a classic automobile of one kind or another while I stood on the curb watching uselessly.
"It was colder here after you left," I say now, and see Ray's eyes widen. But it is nothing but the truth.
"Yeah, well-I'm here now, aren't I? Look around."
I take him literally, and look around the small house. What had been a spare, barely-furnished pit stop I used seldom between long patrols now has a feeling of occupancy. Ray's belongings are spread about-a small CD collection lies in a jumbled pile on the counter next to the player. Various pairs of his boots are similarly scattered about-I have complained to him testily while crutching around them. There are new blankets on the pullout sofa where he sleeps and, perhaps most telling, a stack of cookbooks he has consulted at one time or another to try to stimulate my medication-dulled taste buds.
He's made a home here, temporary or no. I think about what it means, that he has come here, after so many years apart. I wonder if by some strange twist Time has turned the corner and is now rushing back toward me.
"I'm very glad you're here, Ray," I say.
"I'm guessing that was pretty hard to say." His smile is wry, and I match it with one of my own.
"Yes. I am an ungrateful wretch."
His face goes still and careful. "It's not gratitude I'm after. You gotta know that, Fraser."
I have to swallow suddenly, and I reach for the glass of water. I catch it with my knuckles and it topples from the table to land on the carpet with a thunk.
"Swift move," he teases, sounding oddly shaky, and he bends to pick it up.
His head is near to my right hand, and I feel the same reckless freedom that struck me my first night back from the hospital. Reaching out as if in a dream, I put my palm on his cheek, stopping him from rising.
His eyes come up to meet mine. He goes utterly still.
I think-I have waited a lifetime for this moment. I almost died for this moment. But I am alive, and Ray is here with me. At long last.
He licks his lips. I can almost taste them. I want to taste them-taste Ray. My beautiful, dearest friend. I draw my thumb across the dampness, and then bring it to my mouth.
"Jesus," Ray says. His eyes positively glow, and my heart beats high, high, pushing blood up to my face, making the pulse pound in my lips. And then he shuffles forward on his knees, until his face hovers over mine, and I know he is going to kiss me.
At first I can't even feel it when his lips touch mine, as if the power of this moment has stunned my neurons into stasis. And then I feel him push closer, and I tilt my head, the better to feel him pressing there, and suddenly sensation bursts through me. For the first time since the accident I feel a complete lack of pain, just the pleasure of his lips moving, nipping and sliding against my own.
He pulls back and frowns. His fingers touch the hair on my temple, stroking over the silver I know is there.
"Breathe, would ya?"
"No need," I say, and my hand has found the back of his head so I can pull him in once again. This time his mouth opens, and after a heartbeat of anticipation I feel his tongue enter my mouth, and now I wish my taste weren't compromised, because I am only getting a part of his flavor. But even so much is a delight to me-beer and Ray combined.
"Oh, man," he says, slipping away to kiss my jaw, to lay a path of kisses to my ear. "Do you have any fucking idea how long I've waited for this?" He sounds miffed and joyous, both.
A bubble of laughter rises in my throat, but I quell it in favor of exploring the lobe of his ear with my teeth. His fingers squeeze my shoulder, and I can't help smiling even as I kiss my way back to his sweet mouth.
"I love you-but I couldn't-I'm sorry," I say, and kiss him again, harder, but he pulls away.
"Why not?" His eyes dare me to tell the truth.
"I couldn't see the way," I say finally. "I didn't know you wanted this, but even so, I wouldn't have asked that of you. Or of me-half a life for one of us, no matter what we decided."
His eyes clear, as if he hadn't heard what he feared.
"And even now, Ray-"
"Don't do that. Don't start with that again." He grabs my head with both hands, hard pressure centering me on his blue-blue eyes. "It's a done deal, don't you get it? Even when you get your leg back up to snuff-and you know you will, so don't kid me-and you decide to go on duty again, I'm not letting you kick me out the door this time, Fraser. Not a chance."
My heart somehow soars and dips at once. "But you hate the cold."
His eyes soften-look almost pitying. "That wasn't the cold I was talking about."
I hear him, and pain flares in my chest. I did that. I pushed him away, tried to thrust him out of my heart. And I hurt him. I never intended to hurt him.
"I'm sorry, so, so sorry, Ray."
"Hey, none of that." He hoists himself up onto the arm of the chair and leans over me, devouring me with more kisses until I'm nearly faint with yearning for the impossible-that this moment might never end, and yet that it should-so we might leave the dark past and walk forward into our light-filled future days.
It seems I can almost see them waiting, there in Ray's eyes.
....................
2008.03.11
ETA: I forgot to note: the bovine semen story is ABSOLUTELY TRUE to every detail. A friend of mine works in the FDA and received a request for an Order of Destruction, which is apparently required in such cases. The RCMP had confiscated a thermos full of bovine (bull) semen from the engine of someone's car. Apparently it's cheaper to smuggle jism than follow all the approved transport protocols.
The truth is stranger than dS, even.
ETA: There is now a Diefalogue to this tale.