Fic: Impressions on Apartment 3J (due South)
Title: Impressions on Apartment 3J
Pairing: Fraser/Vecchio
Rating: PG-13 (sorry, Bel; porn next time, I promise!)
Summary: Six places Ray's fingerprints ended up in Fraser's apartment.
Disclaimer: I am but mad north-northwest, and as the wind is southerly, I know characters that are mine from characters that are not mine. These are the latter.
A/N: Very late for both the fabulous belmanoir's birthday and Bel's fabulous Fingerprints Challenge at ds_closet. But there's no less love for being late, Ma Noir! *smishes you* Many thanks to sdwolfpup for support and cheerleading, and to greensilver for wading through my comma festivals and syntactical idiosyncrasies to provide a very helpful beta. :) All mistakes remaining are my own.
Impressions on Apartment 3J
i. The pots and pans
"Well," said Ray, looking around. His open distrust of Fraser's new apartment evidently continued unabated, despite the fact that neither Fraser nor Willie had been gruesomely murdered the night before. "It's, uh. You said you didn't sign a lease, right?"
Fraser sighed inwardly as he pulled his mess kit from the cabinet above the stove. He'd spent a full eight hours standing at attention on the unforgiving concrete, and his feet hurt. "No, Ray."
"Good, okay, good." Now Fraser heard the tick-tick-tick of Ray's fingernail against something. "Has this paint been tested for lead?"
"I don't know, Ray." A bit of gruel, that would be soothing. And at least there was fresh air… well, air, anyway, coming in through the open window. Better lead poisoning than the forced sterility of his hotel room, even if the walls around him seemed at once much too close and shamefully far away.
"You're gonna cook in that?" Ray was peering over his shoulder. "Jeez. Why don't I just get you a rusty tin can out of the alley, maybe it'll add a little seasoning."
"Ray," Fraser gritted, "this is an RCMP-issue cooking implement, and I have taken great pains to keep it clean and undamaged. So I sincerely doubt that-"
"Gruel?" Ray interrupted incredulously. "I don't believe this. Fraser, you are not gonna eat gruel."
"If my new accommodations don't meet with your approval," Fraser said, and he meant it to sound crisp and dismissive, but he was afraid there was a distressing undercurrent of despairing, "then I will understand if you choose not to return here."
Ray was standing close enough that Fraser heard it when he stopped breathing.
"Okay, fine," Ray said, "if that's what you want," and he turned on his heel to go.
It only took Ray a few steps to get to the door. Fraser's heart twisted in his chest; in the corner, Dief whined anxiously.
"Ray, I'm sorry if I'm not-" Fraser started, at the same time Ray rounded on him and snapped,
"Dammit, Fraser, if you didn't want me around, you should've-"
And then they just stood there, staring at each other. Ray's breath seemed to be coming abnormally quickly, and Fraser's fingers were desperate to curl into fists; he kept them relaxed only by force of will. The prospect of endless days of menial duties at the Consulate yawned in front of him, unmarked by Ray's loud commentary and loud shirts and surprising friendship, and Fraser had already lost home and family once in the past several months; surely that should be enough. But even for that, he wouldn't keep another living being against its will unless his duty demanded it, so he kept his mouth resolutely closed and waited.
"You're a nice guy, Benny," Ray said finally, awkwardly. "You should live in a nice place."
Just like that, all the tension drained from Fraser's body, like quicksilver. He cocked his head. "Are you… worried about me?" It was such a novel sensation that he wasn't sure whether it called for laughter or solemnity.
Ray's smile slanted wry across his face. "Yeah, I'm worried that one of these days you're gonna be leaping tall buildings and need to readjust gravity or something and the rest of us are gonna end up on Mars."
Laughter, then, though hiding it behind solemnity was more fun. "I would certainly warn you before I attempted to alter any major laws of physics."
"See?" Ray said, grinning. "Like I said. Nice guy."
"Thank you." Fraser smiled when Ray took a couple of steps back toward him, away from the door. "And for the record, I do appreciate your concern."
"Yeah, yeah." Ray brushed past him and looked into the container of rolled oats standing open by the stove. "Ugh. I'll make you a deal, okay?"
Fraser crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm listening," he said equably.
"I won't make disparaging remarks about your apartment if you let me cook us something decent to eat. No way your first dinner in your new place should be the same disgusting mush they serve to orphan kids in movies when they wanna show how abused they are."
"Well-" Fraser started, about to point out that it was technically his second dinner in his new apartment, and that the first one had, in fact, been gruel, which Willie had choked down with an impressive array of grimaces-but Ray had said us, and the relief was catching up with Fraser now, making him a little light-headed. Perhaps in this particular case, truth couldn't necessarily be equated with fact. "That would be wonderful, Ray," he said instead, letting himself lean against the wall behind him.
"All right." Ray sounded as happy as if someone had just given him the perfect lead on a case. He was already shifting Fraser's meager collection of cooking implements around so that they were arranged to his liking. "Now, I think I noticed-before she slammed the door in our faces-that Mrs. Garcia had some basil growing in her windowsill…"
ii. The railing of the fire escape
They were at the table, trying to convince themselves that they were playing cards, when Ray's phone finally rang.
They both froze at the sound, eyes locking on each other's in an instantaneous flash of dread. Then Ray reached over and picked up the phone from its place on the table next to him, put it to his ear as slowly as if the air in the room had suddenly thickened. And maybe it had, held heavy in Fraser's lungs as he waited.
"Vecchio," was all Ray said, and then nothing more, but the abrupt slump of his shoulders and the single blow of his closed fist on the table told Fraser everything he needed to know. "Dammit," Ray breathed, and Fraser let his own head drop to his chest.
Billy Fernough was a thief and a snitch, but charming enough in his way, which Fraser suspected had proven quite an advantage in both thieving and snitching. He had a habit of teasing Ray about his hair and Fraser about his… well, most things, really, and he'd already been missing for two days by the time the news had trickled up to the precinct. Billy Fernough was a thief and a snitch and a charmer, and he was also nineteen years old, and now, from the look on Ray's face, that was as old as he was ever going to get.
Fraser had to grit his teeth around a brief, incandescent flare of anger and frustration. Waste, he couldn't help thinking. Such a needless, illogical waste.
As soon as Ray finished his murmured assurances of reports and identifications, he let the phone clatter to the table and shoved back, rising to his feet with tension hard in every line of him.
"Gonna get some air," came strangled over his shoulder, and he yanked the window open and ducked outside. Fraser could hear the grating of the fire escape ringing against the hard soles of his shoes.
He left the window open behind him, though, which Fraser fervently hoped he was correctly interpreting as a mute signal, rather than just carelessness. He allowed Ray a few moments to himself, then climbed out to stand next to him. Ray's hands were braced on the railing, his eyes fixed on some point in the far distance. The night was warm; the low sun made his skin gleam gold.
"I love this city, Fraser," he said, still staring straight ahead of him.
"I know." And Fraser did. When he'd first arrived in Chicago, all he'd been able to see had been chaos and claustrophobia. Vast potential in the individuals, certainly, but the city itself, as an entity-that, he had mistrusted on sight, which was one of the reasons he'd been so adamant about wanting to stay in the heart of it. Better to remain vigilant and open and let it come to him as it might, rather than waiting to be ambushed.
Watching Ray in the city, though-the way he steered his beloved car easily through the folie â milliers that was rush hour on the Kennedy Expressway; the way he could use the previous night's game (Cubs, White Sox, Bears, or Bruins, depending on the area and season) to start a conversation with almost anyone; the way he could unerringly locate an Italian bakery in four neighborhoods out of five; the way he seemed to gain more energy the more people he had around him, his eyes bright and his hands gesticulating wildly, making bad jokes, making connections-that had been something of a revelation. Fraser had never loved a city, but then, he'd never loved anyone who loved a city, either, and it turned out that those two states of mind weren't as dissimilar as he would have expected.
A siren wailed, several miles away, and Ray flinched. His knuckles went white on the railing.
"When I first met you," Fraser said, "you had forty-one unsolved cases on your desk."
Ray's eyelids fell shut. "Jesus, I can't believe you remember that."
"Do you want to know the largest number of unsolved cases I ever had on my desk, before I was a Liaison Officer?" Fraser continued.
Ray sighed. "Less than forty-one?"
"Seven."
That was enough to get Ray to look at him. "Fraser, why are you telling me this right now?" The mixture of resignation and betrayal in his eyes was piercing.
Fraser hastened to explain. "I never had that many unsolved cases, Ray, because I never had that many cases at all. Not even close." He shrugged, gestured with one hand out over the golden-gray city. "The number of people here-the number of people you're responsible for-it's astonishing."
"So… what? I can't win 'em all, is that what you're saying?" Ray asked, his mouth twisting.
"I'm saying that it takes a great deal of courage to do what you do. What all of you do-you, Lieutenant Welsh, Detectives Huey and Gardino, every officer in this city. Just by walking in to work every day, you're displaying more courage than I ever managed in all my years in law enforcement."
Ray squinted at him, skeptical. "Come on. You don't really believe that, do you?"
Fraser shrugged. "I just wanted you to know that… I admire it. What you do."
"You do it, too." There was the ghost of a smile hovering around Ray's mouth.
"Yeah," Fraser agreed. "I do now. Thanks to you."
Ray huffed a short laugh and looked back out over the rooftops. "You're nuts, Benny."
Fraser's own mouth curved. "I won't argue with you there."
"But thanks."
"You're welcome."
Fraser counted almost a dozen breaths before Ray spoke again, low and harsh like the words were scraping his throat on the way out. "Kid's still dead, though."
Fraser swallowed hard. "I know."
"Yeah," Ray said, and swiped an arm across his eyes.
They stood in silence, watching the sun go down.
iii. The thermostat
Fraser shifted in his seat. He was fairly certain that he could detect…. "Ray?"
"Yeah?" Ray was at the kitchen table, working on the crossword puzzle in a days-old newspaper. From the periodic swearing emanating from that corner of the room, Fraser guessed it wasn't going too well. Still, Ray maintained that it was better than "subjecting myself to the insane asylum"-the Vecchio home, presumably-and so Fraser had no choice but to believe him.
Fraser shifted again. The needle was slipping a bit on his fingers, making his attempt to mend his trousers more frustrating than it strictly needed to be. And not that he would have dreamed of saying it aloud, but after a full day of tromping through the slush with Ray, searching fruitlessly for a suspect against whom they had very little persuasive evidence in the first place, he was in the mood to minimize his frustration as much as possible. "Did you happen to adjust the thermostat?"
Ray looked up from his crossword puzzle. "Yeah, I did." When Fraser didn't respond, Ray raised an eyebrow. "I was getting frostbite over here. Is that a problem?"
"Of course not." Fraser returned his focus to his mending, stabbing the needle into the fabric with a force that was probably excessive, considering that he went through two layers of wool and nearly into his index finger in the process.
"Fraser. I changed the temperature two degrees. Fahrenheit, even. In Canadian, you wouldn't even notice."
"I understand, Ray," Fraser answered smoothly. Sharp yank on the thread. "I'm glad that you feel comfortable enough in my home to make those kinds of changes without consulting me."
"Yeah, well, me too," Ray said, and went back to his crossword puzzle.
Stab. Yank. Scribble. Curse.
Fraser abruptly rose from his chair. "I'm going to make some tea. Would you like some?"
"No, thanks," Ray answered, tapping his pen on the paper in a frenetic rhythm.
Fraser tried very, very hard to keep any and all scenes of ink-spattered violence out of his mind.
He was back in his seat, serenely sipping tea, when Ray said with alarming calm, "Fraser."
"Yes?"
"You changed the thermostat while you were up, didn't you?"
A tiny voice in Fraser's head made a sound suspiciously like "ha," but he immediately dismissed it as unbecoming of a Mountie and therefore impossible. "You know, Ray, my father used to tell me that-"
"Oh, he did not."
Well, Ray had him there. Still, "Many cultures feel that mortification of the flesh-"
"Hey, I end up in dumpsters with you two days out of five, you think my flesh isn't mortified enough? You're the one who's supposed to go about his duty come rain, come shine, come dark of-"
"Ray, that's the U.S. Postal Service."
"So maybe you could learn a thing or two!"
Fraser shot to his feet. "If you insist on maligning the proud history of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, I'm going to have to-"
And suddenly Ray burst out laughing.
Nonplussed, Fraser just stared at him for a few seconds. Then, "What's so funny, Ray?"
"You-" Ray gasped. He was gesturing helplessly. "You-"
Fraser looked down at his hands, and realized he was brandishing his sewing needle like a saber.
Oh, dear.
He managed to restrain the laughter in for a heroic three seconds-surely that was long enough to satisfy the honor of the RCMP-before it tumbled out of his mouth. Which only made Ray laugh harder, and for a long, ludicrous moment, that was all they had the power to do. Diefenbaker looked between them disapprovingly from his place underneath the table.
"You want…" Ray managed eventually, wiping tears of mirth, "you want me to see if I can get you a permit for that?"
"I don't think that will be necessary," Fraser sighed. He gathered up his discarded trousers, tucking the needle safely in a convenient fold, but Ray was already crossing to the thermostat. "Ray, you don't have to-"
"No way. Next time we're on stakeout, I don't want to wake up with an ice-scraper to my neck," Ray said, hands out in front of him as he turned back to face Fraser.
"That's just silly, Ray." Fraser caught sight of his white wool sweater, folded neatly next to his bed. On impulse, he tossed it to Ray, who caught it easily. "The point would be to make sure you didn't wake up."
"Aw, thanks, Benny. That's real comforting." Ray's voice was momentarily muffled, until he emerged from the sweater, his cheeks slightly flushed. Fraser felt a strange skip and shiver in his stomach at the sight.
Ray's cheeks went redder still and he returned to his spot at the table without meeting Fraser's eyes again. Fraser went back to his mending.
"Wearing this thing doesn't make me part Canadian or anything, does it?" Ray asked after a few minutes.
"No," Fraser replied. "For that, you'd need a hat, as well."
"Good to know." Ray's grin was clear in his voice. Then, "What's a seven-letter word for 'quick'? Ends in 'y.'"
Fraser considered. "Cursory."
"Aha," Ray said, pleased, and Fraser returned contentedly to his task.
iv. The lid of the gun chest
Within moments of their return home, Dief was sprawled out in his usual spot on the rug at the foot of the bed, snoring faintly and apparently unperturbed by his adventures. Fraser moved by rote through the familiar space, placing his hat atop the armoire, hanging his tunic on its hanger, twisting the dial on the burner underneath the teapot. The only sign that anything was out of the ordinary was that Dief didn't even stir at the metallic whine of the gun chest opening.
The rifle was clean already, and unloaded; Fraser placed it carefully in the chest. The bullets went next to it, in their neat rectangular box that was heavier than something so small should really be. Fraser found himself running one finger along the long, smooth surface of the rifle barrel, back and forth, back and forth, and he turned to watch Dief sleeping: the steady expansion and collapse of his ribs, the fragile pile of bone and flesh and fur. Fraser's throat closed. His hands were shaking.
And then Ray was there, at his back, gently removing Fraser's hand from inside the chest. Fraser heard the croak of hinges and the thump of metal against metal, and he knew, rationally, that the sound couldn't possibly travel outside their immediate vicinity, but still, it echoed through his sternum like a gunshot. Ray put one warm hand on Fraser's shoulder and left it there while Fraser closed his eyes and matched his breaths to Dief's.
v. The Norton Anthology of Romantic Poets
Ray was pacing, as he often did when he was deep in thought; Fraser could hear him from the kitchen, the rhythmic scuff of his shoes on the hardwood. Then the sound stopped, replaced by the quiet hiss of dust jacket on dust jacket.
Fraser hastily set Dief's bowl on the kitchen floor and ducked through the doorway into the living room.
Ray was standing by the bookshelf, eyebrows raised. "The Norton Anthology of Romantic Poets?" he asked incredulously.
"Yes," Fraser said. He felt his neck heat, which was ridiculous.
"Well, well," Ray said, heavy with implication, "chalk one up for the librarians." He braced the book in one hand and let the pages flutter past his other thumb.
Fraser coughed slightly. "Actually, Ray, that's a common misconception. While they certainly did deal with some themes that would fit the modern definition of romance, the Romantic movement, artistically speaking, was also deeply concerned with the natural world, as well as the concept of a transcendent-"
"An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king…" Ray read. He looked up at Fraser. "Cheery."
"Yes, well," Fraser said, trying to catch his balance. Five minutes ago, they'd been talking about the footprint they'd found at the scene of the Carino mugging earlier that day; he hadn't been prepared for a sudden onslaught of poetry. "England was undergoing some fairly serious political and social upheaval at the time, and-"
But Ray obviously wasn't listening; he was paging through the book at random.
"Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star in his steep course?" he murmured absently, and Fraser held very, very still, except for the knuckles of one hand curving out against the wall to brace him. "I mean, not that I can't appreciate the value of a well-turned phrase," Ray continued after a moment, flipping more pages, "it just seems like a lot of these guys must've spent more time writing about this stuff than they spent actually doing it."
Fraser could hear the pads of Ray's fingers sliding against the well-worn paper, the same paper Fraser's own fingers had traced a thousand times.
"Wordsworth-" The word came out hoarse; Fraser cleared his throat. "Wordsworth rather famously defined poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility."
Ray snorted. "Yeah, and you're the expert on spontaneous overflows of feelings, right, Benny?"
He said it without heat, clearly still distracted by the book, but Fraser felt the impact like the first blast of wind and ice when he stepped outside his cabin in midwinter. He knew how he must look to Ray-Ray, who rarely seemed to have a thought to which he didn't give voice, who, in fact, frequently gave voice to things that he didn't appear be thinking about at all, just a steady rolling aria of words wrapping around them both.
Fraser knew that he must seem cold and passionless in comparison, and the irony was that he was growing to hate that reserve, at times, as passionately as he had ever hated anything in his life. Words were his refuge, most days, familiar as the snow rushing underneath his sled, the warmth of Dief's fur under his palm, the smooth curve of a rifle in his hands. But ever since he could remember, it seemed that when he wanted them, needed them most, they deserted him utterly. A better man might have conquered that reticence, he thought; a better man might have had the courage to ask the right questions, the ones that could have saved his father; a better man might have forced himself to take the half-dozen steps necessary to cross the room and demonstrate to Ray in great detail the exact extent of the spontaneous feelings currently overflowing from Fraser's chest.
Hand and voice, he thought, with a touch of bitterness, Awake! Awake! And thou, my heart, awake!
"Benny?" Ray was looking at him quizzically, the book still hanging open in his hands.
Fraser didn't trust his voice at the moment, so he simply raised his eyebrows.
"Aww, no," said Ray. His shoulders slumped, his head angled to the side. "Don't give me that look."
The rigid wall cracked a little, in spite of everything; Fraser found himself suddenly tempted to smile. "I'm not giving you any look, Ray."
"Oh, yes, you most certainly are giving me a look." Ray took a couple of steps toward him. "Well, okay, right now, you're giving me the you're nuts, Ray look, but before that you were giving me the you just stuck one of your very fine Italian leather loafers in it, Ray look, and that is not a look that is conducive to a harmonious partnership, not to mention you giving me a hand on the Carino case, so. What gives? I didn't say anything about the Queen, Canada, the RCMP, the wolf, or your hat."
The smile broke through. Fraser shook his head. "It's nothing."
"Fraser," Ray groaned, exasperated. He tucked the book underneath his arm and started to tick points off on one hand. "Okay, so I was reading, and... blah blah blah mountains, blah blah blah serious anger management issues, blah blah blah Wordsworth, and-"
Fraser watched Ray's cheeks flush and felt his own face heat in response.
"Oh," Ray said quietly.
After a short hesitation, he moved closer still, until Fraser could see the reflection of the light above him in Ray's carefully polished shoes. "Look, Fraser, I know you're not-" Ray started, sounding as uncomfortable as Fraser felt. "I didn't mean-"
"It's all right, really, I-"
"I get it, you're Canadian, and-"
"I just wouldn't want you to think that I-"
"Benny." Ray's head was ducked down; all Fraser could catch were brief flashes of green from underneath long eyelashes, and Ray's hands making uneven circles in the air between their bodies. "I work with you every day, okay? And you got more feeling than anybody I ever met. Sure, it's underneath about a hundred layers of starch, but it's there. I know it is. Hell, why else would you try to rescue every old lady or three-legged squirrel that comes your way?"
For a long moment, Fraser couldn't respond, trying to absorb the idea that perhaps he didn't need to speak to be heard.
Not an entirely new concept, of course. He'd had it drummed into him from childhood, all the small signs and signals that could make a confession of another man's silence. To have it applied to him, though, and in this context-
He took a deep breath, feeling his chest expand like the gravity was fading from the room. "Ray, I…" It turned out that the immediate effect of not being expected to confess was, apparently, an intense desire to confess. The words caught in his throat, but he could be patient, he could breathe through it, find a path.
Ray glanced up at him. Then his eyes caught Fraser's, quick as a spark, and held, uncertainty flaring into heat.
"Ray," Fraser repeated. His thoughts were flying now, his blood rushing in his veins-Meantime, across the moors had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire-"Ray, I want you to know that, despite my occasional... I want you to know that I do-"
Ray's phone began jangling in his pocket, muffled by the fabric but still screamingly discordant in the charged air. Fraser blinked, adrenaline jumping through him.
"Fucking…" Ray was muttering, half-laughing, digging in his pocket, "I mean-sorry, Benny-" He started to draw back his hand as if to throw the phone aside.
Fraser caught his forearm. "Wait." He could feel Ray's pulse, strong and rapid. "It could be about the case."
Ray sighed, but he was smiling. "Now how did I know you were gonna say that?" He shook his head, opened the phone and put it to his ear. "Vecchio. Hi, Ma. Yes. Yes, I- Ma. I told you, I- Well, Frannie doesn't know what she's talking about! I… Yes. Yes, I promise you'll still have a place for guests to eat. Ma! I promise, okay? Yes. Yes. Fine. I'll be right over." He clicked the phone shut, shaking his head again. "Man, that little sister of mine is a tattletale."
"Is something wrong?" Fraser prompted.
"Long story," Ray answered. "Look, I gotta get home. But, uh." His eyes flicked back to Fraser's, and there it was again, that jolt of electricity. "The family's headed out of town tomorrow, and while they're gone, I'm gonna do a little redecorating."
Fraser's eyebrows went up. "Oh?"
Ray snorted. "Yeah, like I'm gonna be taking home improvement advice from the guy who has three pieces of furniture." There was rich affection underneath the wry tone; even with Ray, Fraser had found, there was often some distance between words and meaning. "Anyway," Ray continued, "I got this old pool table of my Pop's. Wanna drag it upstairs, get some use out of it. But, uh." He lifted a shoulder. "I'm gonna need an extra pair of hands. You busy?"
Fraser felt a smile spreading across his face. "No," he said. "No, I don't believe I have any plans tomorrow."
"Great." Ray's grin was enough to make the dirty walls of Fraser's apartment seem to glow a little brighter. "Ten o'clock, then. I'll pick you up."
"Great," Fraser answered.
Ray held out the book. "Thanks for the English lesson."
"Thank you," Fraser said automatically, then flushed again as the words caught up with him. What was he-
"Okay. Well. Tomorrow then," Ray said. As he turned to leave, Fraser could see that the back of his neck was red.
"Tomorrow," Fraser repeated, and watched the door close behind Ray with a heady mixture of regret, relief, and anticipation.
They'd taken one step, he reasoned, listening to Ray's tread recede down the hallway. One step, and they were still friends; he was still welcome. And tomorrow. Tomorrow would be soon enough to find out whether they could take another.
vi. The numbers on the outside of the door
Fraser's apartment had been thoroughly cleaned while he'd been in the hospital.
He'd never given his permission, and there'd been no note, but he strongly suspected Mrs. Vecchio, and possibly Francesca, as well. They'd hovered over him in the hospital, dividing their time between his room and Ray's, and now the small space that had slowly become his smelled faintly of the same artificial lemon scent that tended to hang around the Vecchio home on Saturdays. He appreciated the gift in the spirit with which it was intended-he wasn't accustomed to being looked after, but the fact that Mrs. Vecchio was willing to make that kind of effort on his behalf despite the wreckage he'd caused in her own home, and the potential for more that she didn't even know about… he could hardly be insensitive to that kind of compassion.
Still, as he sat in the chair across from the bed and tried to read, he couldn’t help thinking how sterile and cavernous the space seemed now. It was almost as if the past months had never happened, as if he was starting over, and the thought terrified him. What semblance of home he'd found here had been hard-won; yet aside from Diefenbaker, curled up like a furry sentry in the entryway, everything felt foreign, out of phase. He shivered.
Then he was nudged out of his brooding when footsteps sounded in the hallway-a common enough occurrence, but they stopped just outside his door. And that was normal enough, too, but then… nothing.
Fraser held still as a statue, listening for the faintest hint of movement. Ray hardly even bothered to knock anymore, at least not during reasonable hours, and certainly the other residents showed no hesitation about doing so. Was it possible that Victoria had returned? What would he say to her? But the steps had sounded too heavy to be hers. What if it was one of her associates, or enemies, what if-
On his feet now, Dief whined and scratched lightly at the door.
His blood thudding painfully through the knot of still-healing tissue in his chest, Fraser stood carefully, tucked the book aside and made his way across the room, quiet in his stocking feet. He swung the door open in one decisive movement and there was Ray, one hand raised to shoulder height, fingers outstretched. He quickly snatched his hand down to his side, but when Fraser glanced at the door, he could see Ray's fingerprints on the numbers, smudges on the freshly-shined metal.
He felt an overwhelming rush of gratitude. "Ray," he said, trying to put as much as he could into his smile. Dief nosed at Ray's hand.
Ray smiled, too, and it seemed awkward but heartfelt. "Hey, Benny."
"Come in, please." Fraser stood to the side.
"Thanks." Ray's left arm was still in the sling, the telltale mound of bandages distorting the line of his linen shirt. He'd had his hair cut, and it had only been two days since they'd been released and Ray had already had his hair cut, and Fraser couldn't help wondering what else he'd missed. He'd thought they'd come to an understanding, there in the hospital, but Ray hadn't made any attempt at contact, so maybe he had decided he'd had enough bullets and betrayal-
Fraser clamped down on his thoughts. Ray was here, now; wasting that in self-pity and fear was inexcusable.
"Can I get you anything?" Fraser asked. Now that Dief had finished sniffing him, Ray was wandering around the apartment, seemingly aimlessly, the fingertips of his good hand drifting over the table, the counter-top, the walls.
"No, thanks, I'm fine."
Fraser couldn't take his eyes from Ray's hand. He could feel each brush of skin against surface like Ray was touching him, like the world was bleeding into color around him. It was a glorious ache.
When Ray had finished making his haphazard circuit of the apartment, he came back to stand in front of Fraser.
"The place looks nice."
"Thanks," Fraser answered. "I suspect the credit for that should go to your mother."
Ray gave him a lopsided grin. "Yeah, sorry. Ma cleans when she's stressed. I hope she didn't mess up any of your stuff."
"No, no," Fraser assured him. "I… I'm deeply grateful for the effort. Especially…" He found he couldn't meet Ray's eyes. "Especially under the circumstances."
"Hey," Ray said sharply. "I thought we covered this. You take a bullet from me, I take a bullet for you. Even Steven."
"Ray-"
"Benny," Ray said, and his voice was so gentle and urgent that Fraser looked back up at him without thinking. Ray's expression was determined and a little bit scared, and Fraser felt his whole body flush.
"I've been trying to give you space," Ray continued. "I don't want to… but Benny, I just gotta know if everything's okay. If I…" He hesitated, then took a deep breath and rushed on, "I gotta know if I screwed up."
"Ray." All Fraser could do was blink at him. "If you-"
"I don't want to waste any more time," Ray said roughly. "Because maybe if I'd-maybe if I hadn't been so-"
"Ray." His heart thundering, Fraser reached out and slid one hand down Ray's good arm, slowly, slowly. The fabric of Ray's shirt was cool and soft against his fingers, sweet contrast to the heat of his skin. When he reached Ray's hand, Ray's fingers curled up immediately, gripping hard.
"Okay," Ray said hoarsely, after he had swallowed a couple of times. "Okay."
Fraser was intensely aware of the space between their bodies, as if the air was tingling against his skin even through the cotton of his shirt. He felt frightened and free, like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, and he leaned, leaned-
And Ray leaned with him. His mouth was warm against Fraser's, hesitant at first as they experimented, making tiny adjustments to find the right angle, learning. Then Ray's tongue flicked against Fraser's lips and Fraser found himself pressing forward with a strangled moan, his free hand finding purchase on the solid leather of Ray's belt. Sensation was spreading through him, curling out from every place their bodies were touching. It felt like the first return to the campfire after a long foray in the snow: hot and familiar and edged with just the right red glow of unpredictability. Fraser closed his eyes and let it fill him.
Ray eventually pulled his mouth away with a groan, stood panting with his forehead resting against Fraser's. "I…" he gasped. "God, if I had two good hands-"
Fraser laughed low and smoothed his fingers over the curve of Ray's belt. The words slid out of him easily. "I've always thought your hands were excellent."
Ray groaned again. "Benny…" He leaned in, lips swollen and slick and so sweet on Fraser's that he was tempted to throw caution to the wind; he could be careful, he could be gentle-
Then Ray shifted and sucked in breath, and Fraser could feel the wince against his mouth. He forced himself to ease back.
"Dammit," Ray breathed. He sounded frustrated, certainly, but also amused, and most of all relieved.
Fraser grinned. His back was hurting, too, but it was distant, it was nothing. "This is certainly a good incentive to follow the doctor's instructions for quick healing."
Ray's laughter poured into the space between them. "You can say that again. Is that how they get you to do all that Boy Scout stuff in Mountie school?"
"Ray!" Fraser feigned shock. "I can't believe you'd suggest such a thing."
"I'm just saying, it'd work. Bring on the weird gunk and the chanting, I'll try anything."
"Ray." He tried to sound disapproving, but it was difficult, with the way Ray's eyes were shining. Though Fraser couldn't help thinking of some salve that he thought might help ease Ray's aches, or perhaps arouse a different kind of ache…. His skin tingled at the prospect.
"Hunh," Ray managed, sounding a little strangled. "Whatever you're thinking about, just… keep thinking about it till I'm all healed up, all right?"
"Mmm," Fraser murmured. He leaned forward to press his nose carefully to the curve of Ray's long neck. Ray smelled like laundry soap and iodine and aftershave; Fraser nuzzled closer, mouth half-open against Ray's skin. Ray's good hand was moving again, fingers drawing patterns on Fraser's hip, his back, the back of his neck. Like a tapestry. Like a map.
Fraser could feel his muscles going lax and liquid, his restless thoughts easing into the slow rhythm of Ray's fingers. He fitted his head more comfortably against Ray's shoulder, and let him touch.
END
Pairing: Fraser/Vecchio
Rating: PG-13 (sorry, Bel; porn next time, I promise!)
Summary: Six places Ray's fingerprints ended up in Fraser's apartment.
Disclaimer: I am but mad north-northwest, and as the wind is southerly, I know characters that are mine from characters that are not mine. These are the latter.
A/N: Very late for both the fabulous belmanoir's birthday and Bel's fabulous Fingerprints Challenge at ds_closet. But there's no less love for being late, Ma Noir! *smishes you* Many thanks to sdwolfpup for support and cheerleading, and to greensilver for wading through my comma festivals and syntactical idiosyncrasies to provide a very helpful beta. :) All mistakes remaining are my own.
Impressions on Apartment 3J
i. The pots and pans
"Well," said Ray, looking around. His open distrust of Fraser's new apartment evidently continued unabated, despite the fact that neither Fraser nor Willie had been gruesomely murdered the night before. "It's, uh. You said you didn't sign a lease, right?"
Fraser sighed inwardly as he pulled his mess kit from the cabinet above the stove. He'd spent a full eight hours standing at attention on the unforgiving concrete, and his feet hurt. "No, Ray."
"Good, okay, good." Now Fraser heard the tick-tick-tick of Ray's fingernail against something. "Has this paint been tested for lead?"
"I don't know, Ray." A bit of gruel, that would be soothing. And at least there was fresh air… well, air, anyway, coming in through the open window. Better lead poisoning than the forced sterility of his hotel room, even if the walls around him seemed at once much too close and shamefully far away.
"You're gonna cook in that?" Ray was peering over his shoulder. "Jeez. Why don't I just get you a rusty tin can out of the alley, maybe it'll add a little seasoning."
"Ray," Fraser gritted, "this is an RCMP-issue cooking implement, and I have taken great pains to keep it clean and undamaged. So I sincerely doubt that-"
"Gruel?" Ray interrupted incredulously. "I don't believe this. Fraser, you are not gonna eat gruel."
"If my new accommodations don't meet with your approval," Fraser said, and he meant it to sound crisp and dismissive, but he was afraid there was a distressing undercurrent of despairing, "then I will understand if you choose not to return here."
Ray was standing close enough that Fraser heard it when he stopped breathing.
"Okay, fine," Ray said, "if that's what you want," and he turned on his heel to go.
It only took Ray a few steps to get to the door. Fraser's heart twisted in his chest; in the corner, Dief whined anxiously.
"Ray, I'm sorry if I'm not-" Fraser started, at the same time Ray rounded on him and snapped,
"Dammit, Fraser, if you didn't want me around, you should've-"
And then they just stood there, staring at each other. Ray's breath seemed to be coming abnormally quickly, and Fraser's fingers were desperate to curl into fists; he kept them relaxed only by force of will. The prospect of endless days of menial duties at the Consulate yawned in front of him, unmarked by Ray's loud commentary and loud shirts and surprising friendship, and Fraser had already lost home and family once in the past several months; surely that should be enough. But even for that, he wouldn't keep another living being against its will unless his duty demanded it, so he kept his mouth resolutely closed and waited.
"You're a nice guy, Benny," Ray said finally, awkwardly. "You should live in a nice place."
Just like that, all the tension drained from Fraser's body, like quicksilver. He cocked his head. "Are you… worried about me?" It was such a novel sensation that he wasn't sure whether it called for laughter or solemnity.
Ray's smile slanted wry across his face. "Yeah, I'm worried that one of these days you're gonna be leaping tall buildings and need to readjust gravity or something and the rest of us are gonna end up on Mars."
Laughter, then, though hiding it behind solemnity was more fun. "I would certainly warn you before I attempted to alter any major laws of physics."
"See?" Ray said, grinning. "Like I said. Nice guy."
"Thank you." Fraser smiled when Ray took a couple of steps back toward him, away from the door. "And for the record, I do appreciate your concern."
"Yeah, yeah." Ray brushed past him and looked into the container of rolled oats standing open by the stove. "Ugh. I'll make you a deal, okay?"
Fraser crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm listening," he said equably.
"I won't make disparaging remarks about your apartment if you let me cook us something decent to eat. No way your first dinner in your new place should be the same disgusting mush they serve to orphan kids in movies when they wanna show how abused they are."
"Well-" Fraser started, about to point out that it was technically his second dinner in his new apartment, and that the first one had, in fact, been gruel, which Willie had choked down with an impressive array of grimaces-but Ray had said us, and the relief was catching up with Fraser now, making him a little light-headed. Perhaps in this particular case, truth couldn't necessarily be equated with fact. "That would be wonderful, Ray," he said instead, letting himself lean against the wall behind him.
"All right." Ray sounded as happy as if someone had just given him the perfect lead on a case. He was already shifting Fraser's meager collection of cooking implements around so that they were arranged to his liking. "Now, I think I noticed-before she slammed the door in our faces-that Mrs. Garcia had some basil growing in her windowsill…"
ii. The railing of the fire escape
They were at the table, trying to convince themselves that they were playing cards, when Ray's phone finally rang.
They both froze at the sound, eyes locking on each other's in an instantaneous flash of dread. Then Ray reached over and picked up the phone from its place on the table next to him, put it to his ear as slowly as if the air in the room had suddenly thickened. And maybe it had, held heavy in Fraser's lungs as he waited.
"Vecchio," was all Ray said, and then nothing more, but the abrupt slump of his shoulders and the single blow of his closed fist on the table told Fraser everything he needed to know. "Dammit," Ray breathed, and Fraser let his own head drop to his chest.
Billy Fernough was a thief and a snitch, but charming enough in his way, which Fraser suspected had proven quite an advantage in both thieving and snitching. He had a habit of teasing Ray about his hair and Fraser about his… well, most things, really, and he'd already been missing for two days by the time the news had trickled up to the precinct. Billy Fernough was a thief and a snitch and a charmer, and he was also nineteen years old, and now, from the look on Ray's face, that was as old as he was ever going to get.
Fraser had to grit his teeth around a brief, incandescent flare of anger and frustration. Waste, he couldn't help thinking. Such a needless, illogical waste.
As soon as Ray finished his murmured assurances of reports and identifications, he let the phone clatter to the table and shoved back, rising to his feet with tension hard in every line of him.
"Gonna get some air," came strangled over his shoulder, and he yanked the window open and ducked outside. Fraser could hear the grating of the fire escape ringing against the hard soles of his shoes.
He left the window open behind him, though, which Fraser fervently hoped he was correctly interpreting as a mute signal, rather than just carelessness. He allowed Ray a few moments to himself, then climbed out to stand next to him. Ray's hands were braced on the railing, his eyes fixed on some point in the far distance. The night was warm; the low sun made his skin gleam gold.
"I love this city, Fraser," he said, still staring straight ahead of him.
"I know." And Fraser did. When he'd first arrived in Chicago, all he'd been able to see had been chaos and claustrophobia. Vast potential in the individuals, certainly, but the city itself, as an entity-that, he had mistrusted on sight, which was one of the reasons he'd been so adamant about wanting to stay in the heart of it. Better to remain vigilant and open and let it come to him as it might, rather than waiting to be ambushed.
Watching Ray in the city, though-the way he steered his beloved car easily through the folie â milliers that was rush hour on the Kennedy Expressway; the way he could use the previous night's game (Cubs, White Sox, Bears, or Bruins, depending on the area and season) to start a conversation with almost anyone; the way he could unerringly locate an Italian bakery in four neighborhoods out of five; the way he seemed to gain more energy the more people he had around him, his eyes bright and his hands gesticulating wildly, making bad jokes, making connections-that had been something of a revelation. Fraser had never loved a city, but then, he'd never loved anyone who loved a city, either, and it turned out that those two states of mind weren't as dissimilar as he would have expected.
A siren wailed, several miles away, and Ray flinched. His knuckles went white on the railing.
"When I first met you," Fraser said, "you had forty-one unsolved cases on your desk."
Ray's eyelids fell shut. "Jesus, I can't believe you remember that."
"Do you want to know the largest number of unsolved cases I ever had on my desk, before I was a Liaison Officer?" Fraser continued.
Ray sighed. "Less than forty-one?"
"Seven."
That was enough to get Ray to look at him. "Fraser, why are you telling me this right now?" The mixture of resignation and betrayal in his eyes was piercing.
Fraser hastened to explain. "I never had that many unsolved cases, Ray, because I never had that many cases at all. Not even close." He shrugged, gestured with one hand out over the golden-gray city. "The number of people here-the number of people you're responsible for-it's astonishing."
"So… what? I can't win 'em all, is that what you're saying?" Ray asked, his mouth twisting.
"I'm saying that it takes a great deal of courage to do what you do. What all of you do-you, Lieutenant Welsh, Detectives Huey and Gardino, every officer in this city. Just by walking in to work every day, you're displaying more courage than I ever managed in all my years in law enforcement."
Ray squinted at him, skeptical. "Come on. You don't really believe that, do you?"
Fraser shrugged. "I just wanted you to know that… I admire it. What you do."
"You do it, too." There was the ghost of a smile hovering around Ray's mouth.
"Yeah," Fraser agreed. "I do now. Thanks to you."
Ray huffed a short laugh and looked back out over the rooftops. "You're nuts, Benny."
Fraser's own mouth curved. "I won't argue with you there."
"But thanks."
"You're welcome."
Fraser counted almost a dozen breaths before Ray spoke again, low and harsh like the words were scraping his throat on the way out. "Kid's still dead, though."
Fraser swallowed hard. "I know."
"Yeah," Ray said, and swiped an arm across his eyes.
They stood in silence, watching the sun go down.
iii. The thermostat
Fraser shifted in his seat. He was fairly certain that he could detect…. "Ray?"
"Yeah?" Ray was at the kitchen table, working on the crossword puzzle in a days-old newspaper. From the periodic swearing emanating from that corner of the room, Fraser guessed it wasn't going too well. Still, Ray maintained that it was better than "subjecting myself to the insane asylum"-the Vecchio home, presumably-and so Fraser had no choice but to believe him.
Fraser shifted again. The needle was slipping a bit on his fingers, making his attempt to mend his trousers more frustrating than it strictly needed to be. And not that he would have dreamed of saying it aloud, but after a full day of tromping through the slush with Ray, searching fruitlessly for a suspect against whom they had very little persuasive evidence in the first place, he was in the mood to minimize his frustration as much as possible. "Did you happen to adjust the thermostat?"
Ray looked up from his crossword puzzle. "Yeah, I did." When Fraser didn't respond, Ray raised an eyebrow. "I was getting frostbite over here. Is that a problem?"
"Of course not." Fraser returned his focus to his mending, stabbing the needle into the fabric with a force that was probably excessive, considering that he went through two layers of wool and nearly into his index finger in the process.
"Fraser. I changed the temperature two degrees. Fahrenheit, even. In Canadian, you wouldn't even notice."
"I understand, Ray," Fraser answered smoothly. Sharp yank on the thread. "I'm glad that you feel comfortable enough in my home to make those kinds of changes without consulting me."
"Yeah, well, me too," Ray said, and went back to his crossword puzzle.
Stab. Yank. Scribble. Curse.
Fraser abruptly rose from his chair. "I'm going to make some tea. Would you like some?"
"No, thanks," Ray answered, tapping his pen on the paper in a frenetic rhythm.
Fraser tried very, very hard to keep any and all scenes of ink-spattered violence out of his mind.
He was back in his seat, serenely sipping tea, when Ray said with alarming calm, "Fraser."
"Yes?"
"You changed the thermostat while you were up, didn't you?"
A tiny voice in Fraser's head made a sound suspiciously like "ha," but he immediately dismissed it as unbecoming of a Mountie and therefore impossible. "You know, Ray, my father used to tell me that-"
"Oh, he did not."
Well, Ray had him there. Still, "Many cultures feel that mortification of the flesh-"
"Hey, I end up in dumpsters with you two days out of five, you think my flesh isn't mortified enough? You're the one who's supposed to go about his duty come rain, come shine, come dark of-"
"Ray, that's the U.S. Postal Service."
"So maybe you could learn a thing or two!"
Fraser shot to his feet. "If you insist on maligning the proud history of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, I'm going to have to-"
And suddenly Ray burst out laughing.
Nonplussed, Fraser just stared at him for a few seconds. Then, "What's so funny, Ray?"
"You-" Ray gasped. He was gesturing helplessly. "You-"
Fraser looked down at his hands, and realized he was brandishing his sewing needle like a saber.
Oh, dear.
He managed to restrain the laughter in for a heroic three seconds-surely that was long enough to satisfy the honor of the RCMP-before it tumbled out of his mouth. Which only made Ray laugh harder, and for a long, ludicrous moment, that was all they had the power to do. Diefenbaker looked between them disapprovingly from his place underneath the table.
"You want…" Ray managed eventually, wiping tears of mirth, "you want me to see if I can get you a permit for that?"
"I don't think that will be necessary," Fraser sighed. He gathered up his discarded trousers, tucking the needle safely in a convenient fold, but Ray was already crossing to the thermostat. "Ray, you don't have to-"
"No way. Next time we're on stakeout, I don't want to wake up with an ice-scraper to my neck," Ray said, hands out in front of him as he turned back to face Fraser.
"That's just silly, Ray." Fraser caught sight of his white wool sweater, folded neatly next to his bed. On impulse, he tossed it to Ray, who caught it easily. "The point would be to make sure you didn't wake up."
"Aw, thanks, Benny. That's real comforting." Ray's voice was momentarily muffled, until he emerged from the sweater, his cheeks slightly flushed. Fraser felt a strange skip and shiver in his stomach at the sight.
Ray's cheeks went redder still and he returned to his spot at the table without meeting Fraser's eyes again. Fraser went back to his mending.
"Wearing this thing doesn't make me part Canadian or anything, does it?" Ray asked after a few minutes.
"No," Fraser replied. "For that, you'd need a hat, as well."
"Good to know." Ray's grin was clear in his voice. Then, "What's a seven-letter word for 'quick'? Ends in 'y.'"
Fraser considered. "Cursory."
"Aha," Ray said, pleased, and Fraser returned contentedly to his task.
iv. The lid of the gun chest
Within moments of their return home, Dief was sprawled out in his usual spot on the rug at the foot of the bed, snoring faintly and apparently unperturbed by his adventures. Fraser moved by rote through the familiar space, placing his hat atop the armoire, hanging his tunic on its hanger, twisting the dial on the burner underneath the teapot. The only sign that anything was out of the ordinary was that Dief didn't even stir at the metallic whine of the gun chest opening.
The rifle was clean already, and unloaded; Fraser placed it carefully in the chest. The bullets went next to it, in their neat rectangular box that was heavier than something so small should really be. Fraser found himself running one finger along the long, smooth surface of the rifle barrel, back and forth, back and forth, and he turned to watch Dief sleeping: the steady expansion and collapse of his ribs, the fragile pile of bone and flesh and fur. Fraser's throat closed. His hands were shaking.
And then Ray was there, at his back, gently removing Fraser's hand from inside the chest. Fraser heard the croak of hinges and the thump of metal against metal, and he knew, rationally, that the sound couldn't possibly travel outside their immediate vicinity, but still, it echoed through his sternum like a gunshot. Ray put one warm hand on Fraser's shoulder and left it there while Fraser closed his eyes and matched his breaths to Dief's.
v. The Norton Anthology of Romantic Poets
Ray was pacing, as he often did when he was deep in thought; Fraser could hear him from the kitchen, the rhythmic scuff of his shoes on the hardwood. Then the sound stopped, replaced by the quiet hiss of dust jacket on dust jacket.
Fraser hastily set Dief's bowl on the kitchen floor and ducked through the doorway into the living room.
Ray was standing by the bookshelf, eyebrows raised. "The Norton Anthology of Romantic Poets?" he asked incredulously.
"Yes," Fraser said. He felt his neck heat, which was ridiculous.
"Well, well," Ray said, heavy with implication, "chalk one up for the librarians." He braced the book in one hand and let the pages flutter past his other thumb.
Fraser coughed slightly. "Actually, Ray, that's a common misconception. While they certainly did deal with some themes that would fit the modern definition of romance, the Romantic movement, artistically speaking, was also deeply concerned with the natural world, as well as the concept of a transcendent-"
"An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king…" Ray read. He looked up at Fraser. "Cheery."
"Yes, well," Fraser said, trying to catch his balance. Five minutes ago, they'd been talking about the footprint they'd found at the scene of the Carino mugging earlier that day; he hadn't been prepared for a sudden onslaught of poetry. "England was undergoing some fairly serious political and social upheaval at the time, and-"
But Ray obviously wasn't listening; he was paging through the book at random.
"Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star in his steep course?" he murmured absently, and Fraser held very, very still, except for the knuckles of one hand curving out against the wall to brace him. "I mean, not that I can't appreciate the value of a well-turned phrase," Ray continued after a moment, flipping more pages, "it just seems like a lot of these guys must've spent more time writing about this stuff than they spent actually doing it."
Fraser could hear the pads of Ray's fingers sliding against the well-worn paper, the same paper Fraser's own fingers had traced a thousand times.
"Wordsworth-" The word came out hoarse; Fraser cleared his throat. "Wordsworth rather famously defined poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility."
Ray snorted. "Yeah, and you're the expert on spontaneous overflows of feelings, right, Benny?"
He said it without heat, clearly still distracted by the book, but Fraser felt the impact like the first blast of wind and ice when he stepped outside his cabin in midwinter. He knew how he must look to Ray-Ray, who rarely seemed to have a thought to which he didn't give voice, who, in fact, frequently gave voice to things that he didn't appear be thinking about at all, just a steady rolling aria of words wrapping around them both.
Fraser knew that he must seem cold and passionless in comparison, and the irony was that he was growing to hate that reserve, at times, as passionately as he had ever hated anything in his life. Words were his refuge, most days, familiar as the snow rushing underneath his sled, the warmth of Dief's fur under his palm, the smooth curve of a rifle in his hands. But ever since he could remember, it seemed that when he wanted them, needed them most, they deserted him utterly. A better man might have conquered that reticence, he thought; a better man might have had the courage to ask the right questions, the ones that could have saved his father; a better man might have forced himself to take the half-dozen steps necessary to cross the room and demonstrate to Ray in great detail the exact extent of the spontaneous feelings currently overflowing from Fraser's chest.
Hand and voice, he thought, with a touch of bitterness, Awake! Awake! And thou, my heart, awake!
"Benny?" Ray was looking at him quizzically, the book still hanging open in his hands.
Fraser didn't trust his voice at the moment, so he simply raised his eyebrows.
"Aww, no," said Ray. His shoulders slumped, his head angled to the side. "Don't give me that look."
The rigid wall cracked a little, in spite of everything; Fraser found himself suddenly tempted to smile. "I'm not giving you any look, Ray."
"Oh, yes, you most certainly are giving me a look." Ray took a couple of steps toward him. "Well, okay, right now, you're giving me the you're nuts, Ray look, but before that you were giving me the you just stuck one of your very fine Italian leather loafers in it, Ray look, and that is not a look that is conducive to a harmonious partnership, not to mention you giving me a hand on the Carino case, so. What gives? I didn't say anything about the Queen, Canada, the RCMP, the wolf, or your hat."
The smile broke through. Fraser shook his head. "It's nothing."
"Fraser," Ray groaned, exasperated. He tucked the book underneath his arm and started to tick points off on one hand. "Okay, so I was reading, and... blah blah blah mountains, blah blah blah serious anger management issues, blah blah blah Wordsworth, and-"
Fraser watched Ray's cheeks flush and felt his own face heat in response.
"Oh," Ray said quietly.
After a short hesitation, he moved closer still, until Fraser could see the reflection of the light above him in Ray's carefully polished shoes. "Look, Fraser, I know you're not-" Ray started, sounding as uncomfortable as Fraser felt. "I didn't mean-"
"It's all right, really, I-"
"I get it, you're Canadian, and-"
"I just wouldn't want you to think that I-"
"Benny." Ray's head was ducked down; all Fraser could catch were brief flashes of green from underneath long eyelashes, and Ray's hands making uneven circles in the air between their bodies. "I work with you every day, okay? And you got more feeling than anybody I ever met. Sure, it's underneath about a hundred layers of starch, but it's there. I know it is. Hell, why else would you try to rescue every old lady or three-legged squirrel that comes your way?"
For a long moment, Fraser couldn't respond, trying to absorb the idea that perhaps he didn't need to speak to be heard.
Not an entirely new concept, of course. He'd had it drummed into him from childhood, all the small signs and signals that could make a confession of another man's silence. To have it applied to him, though, and in this context-
He took a deep breath, feeling his chest expand like the gravity was fading from the room. "Ray, I…" It turned out that the immediate effect of not being expected to confess was, apparently, an intense desire to confess. The words caught in his throat, but he could be patient, he could breathe through it, find a path.
Ray glanced up at him. Then his eyes caught Fraser's, quick as a spark, and held, uncertainty flaring into heat.
"Ray," Fraser repeated. His thoughts were flying now, his blood rushing in his veins-Meantime, across the moors had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire-"Ray, I want you to know that, despite my occasional... I want you to know that I do-"
Ray's phone began jangling in his pocket, muffled by the fabric but still screamingly discordant in the charged air. Fraser blinked, adrenaline jumping through him.
"Fucking…" Ray was muttering, half-laughing, digging in his pocket, "I mean-sorry, Benny-" He started to draw back his hand as if to throw the phone aside.
Fraser caught his forearm. "Wait." He could feel Ray's pulse, strong and rapid. "It could be about the case."
Ray sighed, but he was smiling. "Now how did I know you were gonna say that?" He shook his head, opened the phone and put it to his ear. "Vecchio. Hi, Ma. Yes. Yes, I- Ma. I told you, I- Well, Frannie doesn't know what she's talking about! I… Yes. Yes, I promise you'll still have a place for guests to eat. Ma! I promise, okay? Yes. Yes. Fine. I'll be right over." He clicked the phone shut, shaking his head again. "Man, that little sister of mine is a tattletale."
"Is something wrong?" Fraser prompted.
"Long story," Ray answered. "Look, I gotta get home. But, uh." His eyes flicked back to Fraser's, and there it was again, that jolt of electricity. "The family's headed out of town tomorrow, and while they're gone, I'm gonna do a little redecorating."
Fraser's eyebrows went up. "Oh?"
Ray snorted. "Yeah, like I'm gonna be taking home improvement advice from the guy who has three pieces of furniture." There was rich affection underneath the wry tone; even with Ray, Fraser had found, there was often some distance between words and meaning. "Anyway," Ray continued, "I got this old pool table of my Pop's. Wanna drag it upstairs, get some use out of it. But, uh." He lifted a shoulder. "I'm gonna need an extra pair of hands. You busy?"
Fraser felt a smile spreading across his face. "No," he said. "No, I don't believe I have any plans tomorrow."
"Great." Ray's grin was enough to make the dirty walls of Fraser's apartment seem to glow a little brighter. "Ten o'clock, then. I'll pick you up."
"Great," Fraser answered.
Ray held out the book. "Thanks for the English lesson."
"Thank you," Fraser said automatically, then flushed again as the words caught up with him. What was he-
"Okay. Well. Tomorrow then," Ray said. As he turned to leave, Fraser could see that the back of his neck was red.
"Tomorrow," Fraser repeated, and watched the door close behind Ray with a heady mixture of regret, relief, and anticipation.
They'd taken one step, he reasoned, listening to Ray's tread recede down the hallway. One step, and they were still friends; he was still welcome. And tomorrow. Tomorrow would be soon enough to find out whether they could take another.
vi. The numbers on the outside of the door
Fraser's apartment had been thoroughly cleaned while he'd been in the hospital.
He'd never given his permission, and there'd been no note, but he strongly suspected Mrs. Vecchio, and possibly Francesca, as well. They'd hovered over him in the hospital, dividing their time between his room and Ray's, and now the small space that had slowly become his smelled faintly of the same artificial lemon scent that tended to hang around the Vecchio home on Saturdays. He appreciated the gift in the spirit with which it was intended-he wasn't accustomed to being looked after, but the fact that Mrs. Vecchio was willing to make that kind of effort on his behalf despite the wreckage he'd caused in her own home, and the potential for more that she didn't even know about… he could hardly be insensitive to that kind of compassion.
Still, as he sat in the chair across from the bed and tried to read, he couldn’t help thinking how sterile and cavernous the space seemed now. It was almost as if the past months had never happened, as if he was starting over, and the thought terrified him. What semblance of home he'd found here had been hard-won; yet aside from Diefenbaker, curled up like a furry sentry in the entryway, everything felt foreign, out of phase. He shivered.
Then he was nudged out of his brooding when footsteps sounded in the hallway-a common enough occurrence, but they stopped just outside his door. And that was normal enough, too, but then… nothing.
Fraser held still as a statue, listening for the faintest hint of movement. Ray hardly even bothered to knock anymore, at least not during reasonable hours, and certainly the other residents showed no hesitation about doing so. Was it possible that Victoria had returned? What would he say to her? But the steps had sounded too heavy to be hers. What if it was one of her associates, or enemies, what if-
On his feet now, Dief whined and scratched lightly at the door.
His blood thudding painfully through the knot of still-healing tissue in his chest, Fraser stood carefully, tucked the book aside and made his way across the room, quiet in his stocking feet. He swung the door open in one decisive movement and there was Ray, one hand raised to shoulder height, fingers outstretched. He quickly snatched his hand down to his side, but when Fraser glanced at the door, he could see Ray's fingerprints on the numbers, smudges on the freshly-shined metal.
He felt an overwhelming rush of gratitude. "Ray," he said, trying to put as much as he could into his smile. Dief nosed at Ray's hand.
Ray smiled, too, and it seemed awkward but heartfelt. "Hey, Benny."
"Come in, please." Fraser stood to the side.
"Thanks." Ray's left arm was still in the sling, the telltale mound of bandages distorting the line of his linen shirt. He'd had his hair cut, and it had only been two days since they'd been released and Ray had already had his hair cut, and Fraser couldn't help wondering what else he'd missed. He'd thought they'd come to an understanding, there in the hospital, but Ray hadn't made any attempt at contact, so maybe he had decided he'd had enough bullets and betrayal-
Fraser clamped down on his thoughts. Ray was here, now; wasting that in self-pity and fear was inexcusable.
"Can I get you anything?" Fraser asked. Now that Dief had finished sniffing him, Ray was wandering around the apartment, seemingly aimlessly, the fingertips of his good hand drifting over the table, the counter-top, the walls.
"No, thanks, I'm fine."
Fraser couldn't take his eyes from Ray's hand. He could feel each brush of skin against surface like Ray was touching him, like the world was bleeding into color around him. It was a glorious ache.
When Ray had finished making his haphazard circuit of the apartment, he came back to stand in front of Fraser.
"The place looks nice."
"Thanks," Fraser answered. "I suspect the credit for that should go to your mother."
Ray gave him a lopsided grin. "Yeah, sorry. Ma cleans when she's stressed. I hope she didn't mess up any of your stuff."
"No, no," Fraser assured him. "I… I'm deeply grateful for the effort. Especially…" He found he couldn't meet Ray's eyes. "Especially under the circumstances."
"Hey," Ray said sharply. "I thought we covered this. You take a bullet from me, I take a bullet for you. Even Steven."
"Ray-"
"Benny," Ray said, and his voice was so gentle and urgent that Fraser looked back up at him without thinking. Ray's expression was determined and a little bit scared, and Fraser felt his whole body flush.
"I've been trying to give you space," Ray continued. "I don't want to… but Benny, I just gotta know if everything's okay. If I…" He hesitated, then took a deep breath and rushed on, "I gotta know if I screwed up."
"Ray." All Fraser could do was blink at him. "If you-"
"I don't want to waste any more time," Ray said roughly. "Because maybe if I'd-maybe if I hadn't been so-"
"Ray." His heart thundering, Fraser reached out and slid one hand down Ray's good arm, slowly, slowly. The fabric of Ray's shirt was cool and soft against his fingers, sweet contrast to the heat of his skin. When he reached Ray's hand, Ray's fingers curled up immediately, gripping hard.
"Okay," Ray said hoarsely, after he had swallowed a couple of times. "Okay."
Fraser was intensely aware of the space between their bodies, as if the air was tingling against his skin even through the cotton of his shirt. He felt frightened and free, like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, and he leaned, leaned-
And Ray leaned with him. His mouth was warm against Fraser's, hesitant at first as they experimented, making tiny adjustments to find the right angle, learning. Then Ray's tongue flicked against Fraser's lips and Fraser found himself pressing forward with a strangled moan, his free hand finding purchase on the solid leather of Ray's belt. Sensation was spreading through him, curling out from every place their bodies were touching. It felt like the first return to the campfire after a long foray in the snow: hot and familiar and edged with just the right red glow of unpredictability. Fraser closed his eyes and let it fill him.
Ray eventually pulled his mouth away with a groan, stood panting with his forehead resting against Fraser's. "I…" he gasped. "God, if I had two good hands-"
Fraser laughed low and smoothed his fingers over the curve of Ray's belt. The words slid out of him easily. "I've always thought your hands were excellent."
Ray groaned again. "Benny…" He leaned in, lips swollen and slick and so sweet on Fraser's that he was tempted to throw caution to the wind; he could be careful, he could be gentle-
Then Ray shifted and sucked in breath, and Fraser could feel the wince against his mouth. He forced himself to ease back.
"Dammit," Ray breathed. He sounded frustrated, certainly, but also amused, and most of all relieved.
Fraser grinned. His back was hurting, too, but it was distant, it was nothing. "This is certainly a good incentive to follow the doctor's instructions for quick healing."
Ray's laughter poured into the space between them. "You can say that again. Is that how they get you to do all that Boy Scout stuff in Mountie school?"
"Ray!" Fraser feigned shock. "I can't believe you'd suggest such a thing."
"I'm just saying, it'd work. Bring on the weird gunk and the chanting, I'll try anything."
"Ray." He tried to sound disapproving, but it was difficult, with the way Ray's eyes were shining. Though Fraser couldn't help thinking of some salve that he thought might help ease Ray's aches, or perhaps arouse a different kind of ache…. His skin tingled at the prospect.
"Hunh," Ray managed, sounding a little strangled. "Whatever you're thinking about, just… keep thinking about it till I'm all healed up, all right?"
"Mmm," Fraser murmured. He leaned forward to press his nose carefully to the curve of Ray's long neck. Ray smelled like laundry soap and iodine and aftershave; Fraser nuzzled closer, mouth half-open against Ray's skin. Ray's good hand was moving again, fingers drawing patterns on Fraser's hip, his back, the back of his neck. Like a tapestry. Like a map.
Fraser could feel his muscles going lax and liquid, his restless thoughts easing into the slow rhythm of Ray's fingers. He fitted his head more comfortably against Ray's shoulder, and let him touch.
END