New Fic: Duplex: A House With Two Faces (Due South)
Duplex: A House With Two Faces
by Fabella, adult (for mature themes, and some references to sex).
Due South, AU, Fraser/RayK with some minor Victoria/Fraser.
Complete, 6,736 words.
The characters do not belong to me.
Warning
This is a dark story, with dark characters, and Fraser is darkest of all.
Notes
This was written for the ds_flashfiction Mix and Match challenge, but wasn’t finished in time to post it there. Here are the details of the challenge I answered. Additional notes can be found at the end of the story.
His name was Benton Fraser, and he had come to Chicago on the trail of the woman who had betrayed him.
*
Duplex: A House With Two Faces 1/1, by Fabella
*
Crossing the crosswalk, his chin angled slightly toward his chest, he could have been anyone. Caught from this angle, hands in pockets, contemplating the run in the nylons of the woman striding in front of him, his face was only partially visible. If Victoria saw him, she might look twice, but definitely not a third time.
His name was Benton Fraser, and he had come to Chicago on the trail of the woman who had betrayed him. For reasons that would doubtlessly frighten the faint of heart, he had remained, attached as another pair of shoes blending in with the nameless crowd.
Life hiding from a Mountie was life inside a twisted fun house mirror.
In the park, Benton stopped at a pretzel cart and smiled at the vendor. He was counting money from his wallet when he happened to glance up as the vendor wrapped his pretzel in a napkin, and caught his reflection in the man’s sunglasses. Chin-length hair that curled with sweat in the Chicago heat, contacts that changed his eye color from ice to walnut brown, and the patchy beard all combined to make him look like a stranger. Benton squinted at his reflection, and saw the image of himself do the same.
Phillip was the name of that man in the reflection, not Benton.
Phillip preferred to be called Phil. He went home to his apartment at night and watched the news in disgust from the couch while eating his microwave dinner. He always burnt his tongue on the chicken, and found the mashed potatoes too cold in the center. Phil woke at dawn to work at the meat packing plant, and wore that bloodstained apron from morning until quitting time, with three days off a week. His co-workers thought he was distant, but polite, and his neighbors nodded at him in the hallway, despite the dead smell he carried with him; he always kept the noise down, and occasionally fixed things for them that the super wouldn’t find the time for.
“You have the money, yes?”
Benton jerked, nearly ripping his shabby leather wallet apart. The vendor tipped his sunglasses down, briefly, then pushed them back up his nose. He was obviously as foreign as Benton himself, but no stranger to the bizarre behavior of this city’s occupants.
“Other customers, you see. My pretzels stay fresh for only so long, then I must give them out free. My reputation.”
“Certainly,” Benton said politely, and made the exchange. “Thank you, kindly.”
Biting into the cooked bread, he walked away, glancing behind him only once to see the wobbly old man pushing the cart deeper into the park. Like clockwork, he would be in the same place, at the same time, tomorrow morning. Benton made it his business to know that kind of detail about his world. One never knew when information might become useful. Proper preparation prevents prison incarceration.
Benton pushed his long hair behind his ears, and continued on, eating the pretzel distractedly as he estimated the time of day by the sun’s position. Victoria would be leaving the Consulate for lunch with Ray Vecchio within the next hour. Vecchio would pick her up, and Benton would be forced to kill the man if he grew any more unrequitedly lovesick, saving Vecchio the trouble of suicide. He would watch them leave from the window of his apartment, between reading the newspaper and making his tea.
Life hiding from a Mountie was life hiding in plain sight, where Victoria would least suspect to find him. His apartment was on the same street as the Canadian Consulate.
Benton walked the park for another twenty minutes, tracking the progress of the sun in the sky, the billow of smoke from the city reaching up and strangling the clouds. He wouldn’t have to stay here forever, he assured himself. Phillip wouldn’t swallow Benton like the smog of the city swallowed the stars. Phillip was his own creation.
Benton was simply biding his time.
*
One day, he thought Victoria spotted him.
He’d been daring enough to park nearby instead of driving past, and from this close, the binoculars weren’t necessary. She meandered more than walked down the sidewalk, stopping here and there to help an old person cross the street, opening doors for UPS delivery men, disrupting the flow of human traffic around her. Abruptly, with her hand on some old woman’s lower back, she froze.
Right there, in the middle of the street with car horns blaring at her to get out of the way-come on, lady, are you fucking nuts, move that ass!-she *felt* him.
Benton held his breath as she turned, the hat on her head angling a shadow over her eyes and nose. The clouds passed slowly overhead, leaving elongated shadows on the hood of his car, and his toes curled inside his shoes. Waiting.
The old woman leaned close to Victoria, her lips moving, watery eyes narrowed against the sun. Victoria shook her head distractedly, and shivered so hard it reverberated in Benton’s teeth as they clenched. The old woman patted her back, and Victoria turned away, her movements awkward as she ushered the woman across the street. In the rear view mirror, Benton’s smile stretched, slowly, until it spanned his entire face.
The last time they had seen each other, her hand had been outstretched toward his as she ran alongside the train, misery and love twisting up her face. If she’d seen the weapon, she hadn’t cared. And then, the sound of a gun discharging broke her race to his hand. Vecchio’s gun, not his own. He saw her fall before he swung back inside the train, his chest heaving under his flannel shirt, blood pumping through his arteries. If it had been his bullet, it would have been to the heart, and she wouldn’t have lived.
Fucking Mounties, and their fucking luck.
Why couldn’t she just die, so he could breathe again?
*
Know where your prey is going, not where they have already been.
On the day Victoria was scheduled to return from Canada, Benton was sitting at the bus stop across the street from the new Consulate, smoking a cigar. He had hated the taste at first, but Phil liked six cigars a day, so he’d been forced to accustom himself to the flavor. He stubbed one cigar out and lit another, flicking the dead match to the ground, where it settled weightlessly on a mud puddle.
Through a haze of smoke, his eyes focused on the sign-hanger.
Three weeks since he’d last seen Victoria, gotten a fix on her position, worked to dig his spot deeper in the back of her mind, where she couldn’t feel him creeping around. Three weeks since, and his hands were shaking as he brought the cigar to his mouth. It was imperative he know where she was at all times. If he couldn’t see her, then she could be behind him, or he could make a mistake, and she might spot him.
If he couldn’t see her, she would find him.
So he wasn’t arrogant enough to be sitting here, waiting, and waiting, but desperate enough. He was having that nightmare again, the one he’d thought he’d gotten rid of after his escape from prison. He’d woken from it twice now believing the blocks of streetlight coming in through the blinds were bars.
He was trapped in a lion’s cage at the circus, and Victoria snapped a whip at him, stinging hurt all up and down his back.
You belong here, she said apologetically.
He roared.
Benton shivered just as Vecchio’s car squealed to a stop over two parking spots. He stiffened, briefly, then slouched and tucked the cigar between his teeth, crossing his arms over his chest. The driver side door was shoved open, and a lean, blonde man stepped-no, make that charged-out of the car, his long coat snapping, a brown aftershock behind him.
Who...?
Blood pounded in Benton’s ears, and he couldn’t help but sit straighter, his shoulders drawing a tense, curious line. This wasn’t Vecchio, but his face was familiar. Benton’s lips parted, cigar dangling from the edge, ashes dropping unnoticed to his lap. The man, this not Vecchio man, had an abrupt sort of grace as he moved, like tension coiled into muscle and bone, heat straining under skin.
He was...
Too skinny, too blonde, too loud.
I know you.
Benton barely saw Victoria climbing from the passenger side with her usual trained skill. He registered her presence in the part of his brain where the presence of that red serge meant something, but he couldn’t make his eyes focus on her. She was far away, somehow. A shade had been drawn over her. When one lit fire in the dark, there was a circle of light, but the dark around deepened.
Phillip, no, no, Benton swallowed hard, and strained to catch another glimpse of this stranger’s face, but all he could see was the back of his head as he climbed the Consulate steps. Vulnerable skin behind his ears, the white nape of his neck. Benton pulled the cigar from his lips, let it fall to the cement beneath his feet even though, at that moment, he wasn’t sure it was truly there.
The blonde man disappeared inside the Consulate, and Benton bent forward, trying to see through the solid wall. Victoria followed close behind, and Benton glared at her vanishing back, the stiff fabric, familiar hatred welling up in his throat. He looked down at his hands, saw they were clenched into tight fists, too white at the knuckles, and he slowly relaxed them until the skin on his hand was one color.
Today, as he had brushed his teeth, he was waiting for Victoria. When he put one sock on, and then the other, it had been her he’d waited for. Since before she’d left, he’d been waiting for her, ironing his clothes, washing the dishes, cutting and packaging the meat, waiting for the moment when he could blot her out of the world, and out of his mind. When it would pain her the most. And she had returned, bringing with her something sharp and bright to hurt him with.
He could never trust her to be fair. He could never trust her.
The veins in his arms were thrumming, blood reaching from his heart *out*.
His only desire had been that Victoria one day knew what the collapse of hope was, as Benton had when the door to the cell had shut behind him, cold gray like everything else would be for a very, very long time. Until now.
The cigar burned still, smelling like the smoke from a train, and when he stood, Benton slammed his foot down over it, smashing its life to ashes. When Victoria and her pretty stranger stepped out of the Consulate, Benton was on the city bus, halfway across town, staring at his reflection in the window. He saw, for the first time in a long time, only himself with longer hair.
*
Open the door, step inside. Wait, first unlock the door, open it, then step inside. There’s an order to these things, Benton reminded himself. Inside his apartment, he turned on the free-hanging unadorned lightbulb in the livingroom, leaving it swinging as he set his mail on the kitchen table, then opened the freezer door. Ten frozen dinners stared back at him with colorful cardboard faces, edges caked with frost.
Phil liked them; Benton did not.
“No,” he said, abruptly, and shut the door.
Leaning against the counter, he stared at the mail. It hadn’t been difficult to come up with a name. In Chicago, information was currency, and there was enough of it drifting around for Benton to grab a piece of it after he’d put the right amount of cash in the right palms. Detective Stanley Raymond Kowalski, these palms told him. A sarcastic ass.
More information, sold cheaply, waited in those pristine, white envelopes.
He took a step toward them, before pivoting away, and hurrying into the living room where he threw himself onto the couch and scrambled for the remote. His breathing evened out as he watched the nature channel; a wolf moved through the snow with careful strides, low to the ground, while ahead, a deer found for a patch of grass peeking through the white, and began to chew on it. The wolf waited, savoring the hunt. Then, red on white, and neither wolf nor deer went hungry anymore.
Benton waited until he was in bed, a single mattress sitting on the floor, before opening the envelopes. His bedroom wasn’t much larger than a closet, and the light carried well, filling the whole room from tightly shut door to the pulled down shade. Benton’s fingers trembled around the handle of his knife, as he carefully drew it across the top of one envelope, slitting it open. Two sheets of paper fell into his lap, and Benton drew them close to his face as he slid from his butt to his back.
Head on the pillows, papers above him, he read.
Stanely Raymond Kowalski preferred to be called Ray, which was convenient, since he was undercover as Ray Vecchio. That he was Polish, blonde, and had an average nose hadn’t mattered to the authorities. Kowalski was Vecchio now, and Victoria’s partner. There was a picture of him included in the next envelope, a photo that had been used in an article citing his bravery.
Benton pushed his head against the pillow, and slid his hand beneath the constricting band of his boxer shorts.
Three citations, ex-wife named Stella, college drop-out, father has a thing for Brando, parents in Arizona, no other family, Steve McQueen, braclets, a passion for dance; this was the new Ray Vecchio as far as the paper trail could understand him. Benton had long since pushed the envelopes off the mattress, his chest bursting with repressed air as he pulled, and pulled, and heaved.
Benton cupped his hand over the head of his penis when he climaxed, spilling over his fingers as he thought of holding onto those vulnerable looking ears.
*
Across from Ray Kowalski’s apartment building, Benton stomped some scat from his boot, and again turned his binoculars to the third storey windows on the left, which were Ray’s. From the roof of the parallel building, he had a perfect view, which was not to say there was actually something to see. Ray wasn’t at his apartment often, and on some nights, he didn’t even bother returning home.
If on those nights, something dark and aching brewed in his stomach, Benton rinsed it away with bark tea, and fixed himself as a more discreet shape to avoid being spotted.
When Ray was actually home, it was like watching a fish swimming around in a bowl while in the dark. Often, as Benton watched, one hand steadying the binoculars, there was little more to see than the shifting of light from one room to another as Ray moved about in the apartment, the shades drawn down.
Tonight, it was hot, the sky damp with heat. Electricity itched on the nape of his neck, warning of a building storm, and Benton wanted to squirm in his clothes, the black sweater with the torn neck and the jeans almost worn down to nothing, but he didn’t. His father had always told Benton that squirming was unbecoming, even when there wasn’t anyone around to witness it. Of course, his father had also said not to kill your fellow man, and look how well Benton had listened to that.
Just when he was about to call the night a failure and return home to his empty apartment, to Phillip’s empty life, he saw movement inside the apartment. No lights turned on, but Benton knew that shape, that body. Red light flashed from a nearby sign and illuminated the stretch of Ray’s torso, the curve of his neck, and Benton’s entire body wrenched, aching with want.
Was it possible that it was worse seeing Ray than not seeing Ray?
They had never spoken to each other, but Benton knew that Ray would drape his jacket over the armchair near the television, would stop by the window to look outside at the street, as if he was waiting for someone. The more Benton saw of him, the more he felt he knew him, as if he’d been meant to meet Ray under different circumstances, but had faltered at the specific moment which would have sent him to Ray under the right ones. On some nights, when Ray left the blinds to his bedroom open, stripping to his gray boxer briefs, Benton would be tempted to break in, crawl under the sheets with him.
He wanted, more than to touch him, to speak to him, for their eyes to meet and not immediately be forced to look away and continue walking. His plan for Victoria was a clock ticking in his apartment, a cabinet with his notes and his schedules. They had grown less important since the new Ray, a distant fixture in the life it had once absorbed. Someday, she’d be a chalk outline on the pavement as the camera flashed, capturing a black and white image with a garish pool of blood that, colorless, might as well have been oil.
In the now, she was an obstacle.
How could he break her, and still have Ray?
Oh, God, he could see no way from here.
Benton’s jaw flexed, nostrils flaring as he forced the fruitless thoughts away.
In the red glow, Ray moved to his stereo, fiddling with the buttons, his long fingers pinkish blurs in the shadows. Benton held his breath as Ray stepped back, raising his arms in the air and sliding seamlessly into motion. Oh, yes. Tonight, Ray would dance himself to sleep. What song had he chosen? Were there even lyrics? Perhaps it was slow, hot jazz that Ray slunk to, with a whiskey female voice humming in his ears, his head falling back on his neck to show his throat.
“He clomps,” his landlady said after a few drinks. “In rhythm.”
Ray shimmered, less jerky than a fish in water; he danced as if it took absolutely no effort to perform the steps, to keep his shoulders, waist, and hips fluid, in sync with whatever music he had selected. Benton licked his dry lips, fingertips stroking the cool metal casing of the binoculars, and moved to his knees on the roof. Small stones bit his skin through the jeans as he spread his thighs farther apart, making room for his thickening penis.
I know you, had been his first impression of Ray, and the feeling of familiarity had only grown stronger in the past month. It hurt now, that he didn’t, because under that pull of unwarranted recognition hid, I want you. I’ve wanted you forever.
Benton ached to take himself in hand, unbutton his jeans and slide two fingers inside his boxers, caress until he had assuaged the slowly, heavy pulse of blood. And Ray continued to dance, rolling his shoulders, then his hips, his arms holding a ghost partner who followed his shuffling steps perfectly. Benton moved one hand down to grip the edge of the roof, breath hissing sharply inward through his teeth. He’d rather throw himself off this building than taint the hours he spent watching Ray dance, the loneliness spread over Ray’s red-lit face.
What hurts you?
What makes you dance?
Turning, and weaving, and spinning.
Benton grew dizzy and lowered the binoculars from his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose as he struggled to orient himself in a world that continued to spin.
*
On the following Wednesday, Benton had left work early, and was parked near Ray’s boxing club. His car was rusted and falling apart, so naturally, he didn’t blend. On the positive side, he didn’t appear to be making an effort to conceal himself, so when Ray Kowalski’s car turned the corner, and slowed to a stop near an empty parking space across the street from his club, Benton looked not in the least as if he’d been waiting for anything more than perhaps that woman crossing the street, her arms full of groceries.
The discovery that Ray was a boxer hadn’t been surprising. Ray threw himself in front of bullets for Mounties, Ray danced, Ray was in love with his ex-wife, Ray cried. Ray had emotions that Benton hadn’t felt in years, and they flooded out through his fists first, his heart second. He liked to fight.
Ray parallel parked, roughly, and got out of his car, gun holster over his t-shirt, badge hooked to the leather strap over his shoulder. He had a duffel bag in hand, and it swung at his side as he trotted to the club door, catching it just before it swung shut behind another member. He tossed a glance at the street before going inside.
Benton caught his reflection in the mirror, straightened the crumpled line of his eyebrow, where he’d been rubbing it nervously, and met his own gaze steadily. He felt more like himself than he had in years, recognized his face beneath the scruff, and felt the sparks of his own personality burning away at Phillip’s overwhelming ordinariness. He hadn’t smoked a cigar in three days, and he’d been eating freshly-picked vegetables from the farmer’s market since last week.
Okay, then.
Benton nodded at his reflection, and looking toward the battered door Ray had gone through, slid out of the car.
Stepping inside the building, he was fleetingly blinded by the change in lighting. Outside, the afternoon sun burned on everything, made even the dirtiest sidewalk bright and hot to the eye, but in here, it was much darker. Benton could make out only fuzzy blobs. He breathed in the stale sweat and blood as he waited for his eyes to adjust, until finally, he was able to distinguish between shapes: the boxing ring was at the center of the large room, and the bobbing forms resolved themselves into toned men and women, weaving around each other as they sparred.
Toned, that is, except for the single individual standing in the far corner, swinging pitifully at a weighted bag he was easily three times the size of in the waist. Benton clutched his bag tightly in one fist, and looked away, searching for the figure of his true interest. He wasn’t among the sweating fighters, or the weight lifters, or even flirting with the women, another hobby Ray seemed to find as interesting as he did dancing or boxing or obsessing over Stella. Benton settled on a bench near the ring, placed the bag near his feet, and made a show of stretching his back.
His first year in the RCMP, he’d been involved in an undercover operation as a bare-knuckle fighter within Toronto’s notorious underground boxing circuit. That had been an embarrassing number of years ago, before everything he’d ever worked for had become useless as he walked the footsteps his father had taken the day he died, and red snow had risen up within Benton, surging in his throat, burning his eyes.
Kill them all, it had demanded. And Benton had.
All of his choices, even leaving that wolf to die, brought him here.
Benton was working his calves when he felt a prickle up his spine. Through his eyelashes, he saw Ray appear from a back room, now dressed in loose drawstring shorts cut off from a pair of sweat pants. He was wearing the same t-shirt, but the holster was gone, and his hair had been partially tamed by the headgear. Benton was transfixed by the way the shorts seemed to be in danger of slipping off those slim hips. It would only require one gentle tug, and...
Those slim hips sauntered right past his bent head without pause.
Benton’s eyes almost fell shut as his stomach tripped. It was as close as they had ever come to touching, although once, Benton had walked right behind Ray for nearly an entire minute, breathing the same air, treading the same steps, before jaywalking to the other side of the street, leaving Ray to his day.
Funnily enough, twenty years ago, he would have gasped at even the thought of himself jaywalking. Such a small thing was still breaking the law, and such laws existed for a reason, he would have lectured whoever had committed the offense. He’d done a lot of things since then that his former self would not have approved of, and he had one more action to add to that list: sniffing the air Ray left behind, the almost chemical smell, like a chlorine pool-but tangier, mustier.
At that moment, he wanted Ray so much, he was already leaking.
And from Ray, nothing. Benton was all but drooling on his own sneakers, and he wasn’t even a comma, full stop in Ray’s run on sentence of a life. Ray didn’t get a shiver up his spine, didn’t freeze, didn’t choke on his spit. If he noticed he was the object of Benton’s fixation, he was either used to the attention, or he didn’t wish to encourage it.
“Levon!” shouted Ray.
The young black man in the center of the ring stopped throwing punches at his imaginary opponent, and turned. He was already smiling when he saw Ray standing near the edge of the matt, hanging on the ropes.
“If your trainer taught you to box like that, I’m gonna arrest him for corrupting this city’s youth. You beating up your grandmother in there?”
Levon rolled his eyes. Reaching out, he gave Ray a hand up.
“Big talk, Homes,” Levon said, as Ray climbed somewhat awkwardly through the ropes, barely managing to untangle the generous length of his legs without falling on his head. “At least I could beat my grandma up. You, I dunno.”
“Hardy, ha, ha,” said Ray dryly, straightening. “Here I was thinking you’re a boxer, and all this time, you’re a fucking comedian.”
They participated in an elaborate handshake.
“You’re late, coach.”
“Yeah, sorry.” Ray bounced his back against the ropes a few times, before letting it sling him to the center of the mat, where he did some fancy footwork to warm up. “Got hung up on a case, had to kick a few heads, bust a few jaws,” Ray mimed the action, “pow, pow, same as always.”
Benton started when his nose almost touched one of the ropes riding the side of the ring, realizing that at some point while he’d been eavesdropping, he’d gotten to his feet and moved toward them. This lack of active control over himself was unusual, for Benton and Phillip both. Pivoting sharply, he made a straight line for the heavy bag a woman was kicking and punching at, grunting when she connected.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Would you like a spotter?”
She kicked the bag one more time, before pushing a tangle of sweaty hair off her forehead and giving him a deliberate once over. The snarl of her unpainted mouth softened to something more beguiling. Apparently he passed muster as someone she wouldn’t mind advances from while sweating profusely.
“You could spot me for pretty much anything,” she drawled.
Benton scarcely refrained from rolling his eyes, taking hold of the bag. The woman, she said her name was Cheryl, spoke between desperate gasps for oxygen. While he held the bag, she mentioning her ex-boyfriend, his kids, his ex-wife, and eventually, her strained relationship with her mother. Benton nodded at all the right times, making interested noises in his throat as, slowly, he situated the two of them so her back was to the ring, and he could see Ray and the kid sparring while his body absorbed the vibrations from her lunges at the bag.
For looking no more than nineteen, Leveon was a fairly decent fighter, but his poor defense. Ray seemed to be trying to show him what he was doing the classic way; when Ray hit him in the side hard enough, Levon started defending that area. After about ten minutes of heavy sparring, Ray called it quits, slapping Levon briefly on the back, waving him away. Levon climbed gingerly from the ring, limping to one of the back rooms.
Ray remained in the ring, bouncing around on the balls of his feet. The cotton shirt adhered to his torso in wet patches, the lean muscles in his arms bunching and releasing as he mimed a series of winning uppercuts.
The saliva in Benton’s mouth dried up, his heart beating oddly. He abandoned the heavy bag just as the woman gave a war cry and stormed toward it. Her exclamation of surprise, as well as the sound of her body hitting the floor, barely registered. When Benton reached the side of the ring, Ray was doing a victory dance, gloved hands raised in the air. He spoke between triumphant pumps of his fists.
“I could’a been, I could’a been, I could’a been...”
“A contender?” Benton suggested, surprised by the roughness of his own voice.
Ray’s bouncing went off-kilter, wilting to a deceptively loose stance, and he looked at Benton, who couldn’t contain the sound of surprise that came straight from his stomach. For the first time, Benton experienced Ray’s undivided attention. It was remarkably similar to being run through with an ice-pick, hit square between the eyes. Benton flinched back before he could stop himself, painfully aware that the shock was on his face. Ray’s chin went up, tilting at a challenging angle, the narrow shine of his eyes set suspiciously on him.
“Yeah?” Like Cheryl, Ray appraised him from head to toe. “How’d you know?”
Benton essayed a shrug, feeling awkward and hulking. He could thank the dimness of the room for concealing his expression, and still be thankful that Ray had bad eyes.
“A lucky guess, I imagine.”
“Huh.” Ray moved forward, propping his arms on the ropes and leaning on them as he stared down into Benton’s face. “Do I know you or something?”
Do you know me?
You see me every day from the corner of your eye. I’m as familiar to you as the taste of your mouth in the morning, the ache in your knee as you pull the shade down at night. For a detective with three citations, you can been dangerously blind.
“No,” Benton said honestly. “We’ve never met.”
Ray tilted his head to the side for a moment, then finally nodded.
“But I’ve seen you,” he said, and the way he did, so firmly, was enough to make Benton’s heart turn uneasily. He froze for a millisecond, and had to force himself to breathe. Blind? Perhaps not. Perhaps Benton hadn’t been as careful as he’d believed he was, and Ray had caught more than a fleeting impression. Perhaps that time Ray wore glasses when he left the precinct, he’d clearly made Benton’s face, then filed it away in his memory out of pure instinct, that of prey to defend against predator.
The deer lifts his head, as the wolf shows his teeth.
None of this anxiety showed on Benton’s face. He smiled, easily.
“Ah, yes.” Another smile, as he made a circular gesture in the air. “As it happens, I was here recently while you were sparring. I’ve been considering purchasing a membership.”
Ray snapped his fingers, grinning.
“That’s where I saw ya. Yeah, from the other day. You were sitting in a car outside.”
Benton controlled a flinch. “Yes.”
He offered no further information. It was easier to remember truths. And Ray was a detective for godsake, even if his pretty face continued to distract Benton from this unassailable fact. Since the night on the roof, watching Ray dance, he’d wanted so badly to meet Ray face to face that he’d allowed himself to grow careless. He was aware now that he’d been unconsciously hoping to be caught.
“How long have you been sparring?” Benton asked. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Oh, years,” Ray said, waving a hand, dismissing his words. “Had to stop a while back though. The wife, she, uh.” Ray stuck a finger in his ear and half-smiled at the floor. “She thought it was uncivilized.”
Benton stuck his hands behind his back, held them together tightly. It was a rush, speaking to Ray in this simple manner, as if it was easy, as if it was allowed. Sweat was gathering under his shirt, the type of sweat that existed only during gunfights, in the crook of the armpit, the inside of the elbow, like the skin was preparing to cleanse blood.
“So you’re divorced, then?”
“Huh?” Ray squinted, looking wary. “How did you--”
“Well, you appear to be sparring again,” Benton interrupted quickly.
The wary look vanished, but it was replaced with a self-conscious sneer as Ray grew quiet, eyes far away. And then he shrugged a fully body shrug, with his head and his hips shrugging, too.
“Yeah. Divorced, yeah.” There was a distinct slump to his shoulders after he said this, and Benton’s tongue slicked his bottom lip as Ray frowned. “You talk funny.”
Benton nearly laughed, and that was *shocking*.
Yes, it was certainly he with the outrageous accent.
“Ah, yes.” Benton smiled and tugged on his ear, a nervous tic he hadn’t had in several years. “I’m - I happen to have moved here from Canada. I’m afraid I haven’t become accustomed to the locals’ preferred way of conversing quite yet.”
“Canada? Like, the Yukon territories or whatever?”
“Something of the sort,” Benton agreed, but didn’t elaborate. The silence after was obvious, glaringly curbed, and Ray stiffened again, arms retracting close to his sides.
“Makes sense.” Shuttered eyes passed over Benton. “So. Nice to meet ya.”
With that, Ray turned and dismissed him. Benton cursed himself and retreated to a weight bench. After a few minutes, from the awkward position of lying on his back with two hundred and fifty pounds hovering over his chest, Benton saw Levon return, a towel thrown over his shoulder. Ray slipped between the ropes to meet him, and the two of them stood there, speaking in hushed voices as another pair of fighters took up position in the ring. Ray gestured to the woman, who had just knocked the much larger man on his butt with a powerhouse of a hit, and shared a smile with the kid.
See? that smile said. She’s a skinny runt, and she just kicked his ass.
A good man, this detective. The type of man that coached a charity boxing program for gang-kids in an effort to keep them off the street. The type of man that liked to.
When Benton was finished lifting, he sat up and wiped sweat from his face with a towel he’d brought from home. Perhaps it was some remnant of his former self that wanted Ray Kowalski so desperately. It seemed to be his curse to be drawn to people who represented everything Benton no longer was; the man he had been before his father died, was murdered, before he had hunted his father’s killers to their death, making them suffer it at his own hand. When, in the frozen north, trapped with the Mountie sent to retrieve him, he had reveled in her goodness, washed his bloody hands in her hot, wet sex, and believed he could be saved. And was proved wrong.
All these years later, he still wanted her to pay.
She *would* pay.
Observing Ray near the edge of the ring, musical face intense as he discussed strategy and technique, Benton stuffed the damp towel in his bag and wished that things could be different. In another world, Benton was sure he could have that beautiful man by means other than the force he was bound to apply in this one. For months, he’d gone over and over scenarios in his mind, but they all ended with the same, inevitable conclusion - Victoria died, Ray discovered Benton for who he was, and was sickened by him.
“You have to hit them hard and quick,” Ray was explaining to Levon, his back to Benton, the muscles shifting cleanly under his thin shirt. “Or else they’re gonna get a swing at you, and your defenses suck like lemon. They’ll take a piece with ‘em when they go.”
A drop of sweat rolled from Ray’s hair to the top of his spine, before it vanished under his shirt collar. Benton’s stomach clenched.
The wolf opens his mouth. He opens. His mouth. And.
Whatever this man had, Benton wanted it. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was Victoria’s partner, except, why should she be allowed to have him when she couldn’t care for him properly? How could she possibly understand that this man was meant to assuage a deep loneliness? She had befriended this Ray, but in her own vague way; if Ray came to her on his knees, begging for asylum, she’d return him to the streets.
You belong there, she would say apologetically.
So, let it be here that Benton decided, surrounded by sweat and blood and the impact of flesh on flesh. He would have Ray and he would have his revenge, because he could not give up one for the other. Even if it saddened him to think of the small piece of himself--the final good piece--that would die taking them both. The dirty floor tilted under his feet and Benton shut his eyes, feeling the change as it took him.
“Are you okay?”
Benton opened his eyes. The woman from earlier was touching his arm gingerly, her mauve painted fingernails grazing the inside of his elbow. He nodded, pulling his arm away, and she smiled a little wistfully, letting him go. As he walked to the door, the angle from which he saw Ray shifted, and Ray’s profile stood out striking among the other more husky members; a slim, slick blade that could cut as easily as it teased.
“Hey, Canada!”
Benton turned at the door, eyebrow inclined in question.
Ray grinned at him crookedly with his whole body, even his hair.
“You wanna dance?”
Ray performed a two-step, and raised his fists. Levon sighed dramatically at Ray’s side, covering his eyes with one hand, but Benton thought Ray was an absurdly tempting invitation in the chubby boxing gloves that made his narrow wrists look twice as skinny than they were. Queerly innocent.
I know that, he thought. That something.
Benton shook his head slowly, hands fists behind him.
“Perhaps another day,” he added politely. He would give Ray that precious gift of time. The one that was not granted to him before Victoria took him and locked him behind those horrible, gray bars. He would be Phillip, the friendly, boring man on level four, and then, when he could no longer stand it, he’d-
He’d take it.
The something Ray had.
Ray seemed a little disappointed. There was a downward curve to his mouth as Benton turned away, but he wasn’t destroyed, not yet, and in all likelihood forgot about Benton after he was out the door and out of sight. Possibly, Benton would rate a thought between opening the milk carton and wriggling impossibly long fingers into the pickle jar as he tried to capture that last one swimming at the bottom.
That guy looked at me funny, Ray would think.
Possibly.
A woman in a pale blue sundress was selling carnations on the curb when Benton stepped outside. The sun’s crude glare had subsided some since he’d went inside, but the heat still pinched at his cold-hungry shoulders. Impulse led him toward her frozen looking smile. She was pretty and remote, like daylight catching on a fish frozen under ice. He dug a few dollars from his wallet, and handed them to her in exchange for a fistful of dead flowers he had no idea what to do with, and the tired clench of her smile. The woman was wearing mirrored sunglasses, and in them, he saw his reflection, or rather, a reflection of himself.
He supposed he could have walked away for good, left the city of Chicago far behind, and with it, the temptation. He could have done the right thing. But then, Victoria would have won, and Benton would have lost the one person able to make him feel more than cold details and colder hate.
Benton was not that noble, and Phillip-Phillip was nothing.
The reflection squinted at him, scruffy face familiar, and not.
Hello, Phillip. You’ve been awfully quiet, of late.
Phillip smiled knowingly, and crossed the street to his car. He tossed his bag in the back seat, and on the road, lit a cigar, blowing smoke out the open window. Phillip was just another driver at an overcrowded intersection, cursing when he looked at his watch. A few yellow and white carnations sat in the passenger seat, waiting for the funeral.
*
End
Notes
The story was previously titled, “Pull The Shade Down,” but that was the starting title, and by the time I finished the story, it was clear that this was a story less about stalking, more about the nature of dual identities, and the ones that exist inside Fraser when he meets the Ray in this story. I’d say that Pull The Shade Down is a sort of subtitle, though, because stalking is what Fraser does in this.
And he’s good at it. Which is scary. I don’t see Fraser as an extremely dark character on the show. I see him as a character with a lot of emotional trauma and as a very repressed man, but not *dark* - Vecchio was dark, RayK was fairly dark himself, but Fraser was hope that kept standing up after getting knocked down, at least to me. So when this came out of me, this darkest of dark Fraser, I almost stopped writing, because I knew immediately - OUT OF CHARACTER - but then I reassured myself that if Fraser had made different choices, if he had murdered his father’s killers, and Victoria had put him in jail for it after making love with him - logically, he *could* be darker.
Anyway, he got written that way, whether I liked it or not.
The people I chose to switch were Victoria and Fraser, obviously. With the exception that Fraser started off as a Mountie, and went bad when his father was killed. Victoria was the Mountie sent to retrieve him, and they ended up falling for each other, but she betrayed him, sending him to prison, where he plotted his revenge on her. That’s how it happens in my head. I alluded to it in the story, but I didn’t go into any depth.
Soundtrack
Songs I listened to while writing this story.
“Bad Boyfriend,” by Garbage
“Real, a Lie,” by Melissa Auf Der Maur
“The Way You Are,” 46bliss
“The Moth,” Aimee Mann
“About Her,” Malcolm Mclaren
Feedback is beautiful. If you see any typos, don't be afraid to let me know. So I can edit them and stop humiliating myself. :D
by Fabella, adult (for mature themes, and some references to sex).
Due South, AU, Fraser/RayK with some minor Victoria/Fraser.
Complete, 6,736 words.
The characters do not belong to me.
Warning
This is a dark story, with dark characters, and Fraser is darkest of all.
Notes
This was written for the ds_flashfiction Mix and Match challenge, but wasn’t finished in time to post it there. Here are the details of the challenge I answered. Additional notes can be found at the end of the story.
His name was Benton Fraser, and he had come to Chicago on the trail of the woman who had betrayed him.
*
Duplex: A House With Two Faces 1/1, by Fabella
*
Crossing the crosswalk, his chin angled slightly toward his chest, he could have been anyone. Caught from this angle, hands in pockets, contemplating the run in the nylons of the woman striding in front of him, his face was only partially visible. If Victoria saw him, she might look twice, but definitely not a third time.
His name was Benton Fraser, and he had come to Chicago on the trail of the woman who had betrayed him. For reasons that would doubtlessly frighten the faint of heart, he had remained, attached as another pair of shoes blending in with the nameless crowd.
Life hiding from a Mountie was life inside a twisted fun house mirror.
In the park, Benton stopped at a pretzel cart and smiled at the vendor. He was counting money from his wallet when he happened to glance up as the vendor wrapped his pretzel in a napkin, and caught his reflection in the man’s sunglasses. Chin-length hair that curled with sweat in the Chicago heat, contacts that changed his eye color from ice to walnut brown, and the patchy beard all combined to make him look like a stranger. Benton squinted at his reflection, and saw the image of himself do the same.
Phillip was the name of that man in the reflection, not Benton.
Phillip preferred to be called Phil. He went home to his apartment at night and watched the news in disgust from the couch while eating his microwave dinner. He always burnt his tongue on the chicken, and found the mashed potatoes too cold in the center. Phil woke at dawn to work at the meat packing plant, and wore that bloodstained apron from morning until quitting time, with three days off a week. His co-workers thought he was distant, but polite, and his neighbors nodded at him in the hallway, despite the dead smell he carried with him; he always kept the noise down, and occasionally fixed things for them that the super wouldn’t find the time for.
“You have the money, yes?”
Benton jerked, nearly ripping his shabby leather wallet apart. The vendor tipped his sunglasses down, briefly, then pushed them back up his nose. He was obviously as foreign as Benton himself, but no stranger to the bizarre behavior of this city’s occupants.
“Other customers, you see. My pretzels stay fresh for only so long, then I must give them out free. My reputation.”
“Certainly,” Benton said politely, and made the exchange. “Thank you, kindly.”
Biting into the cooked bread, he walked away, glancing behind him only once to see the wobbly old man pushing the cart deeper into the park. Like clockwork, he would be in the same place, at the same time, tomorrow morning. Benton made it his business to know that kind of detail about his world. One never knew when information might become useful. Proper preparation prevents prison incarceration.
Benton pushed his long hair behind his ears, and continued on, eating the pretzel distractedly as he estimated the time of day by the sun’s position. Victoria would be leaving the Consulate for lunch with Ray Vecchio within the next hour. Vecchio would pick her up, and Benton would be forced to kill the man if he grew any more unrequitedly lovesick, saving Vecchio the trouble of suicide. He would watch them leave from the window of his apartment, between reading the newspaper and making his tea.
Life hiding from a Mountie was life hiding in plain sight, where Victoria would least suspect to find him. His apartment was on the same street as the Canadian Consulate.
Benton walked the park for another twenty minutes, tracking the progress of the sun in the sky, the billow of smoke from the city reaching up and strangling the clouds. He wouldn’t have to stay here forever, he assured himself. Phillip wouldn’t swallow Benton like the smog of the city swallowed the stars. Phillip was his own creation.
Benton was simply biding his time.
*
One day, he thought Victoria spotted him.
He’d been daring enough to park nearby instead of driving past, and from this close, the binoculars weren’t necessary. She meandered more than walked down the sidewalk, stopping here and there to help an old person cross the street, opening doors for UPS delivery men, disrupting the flow of human traffic around her. Abruptly, with her hand on some old woman’s lower back, she froze.
Right there, in the middle of the street with car horns blaring at her to get out of the way-come on, lady, are you fucking nuts, move that ass!-she *felt* him.
Benton held his breath as she turned, the hat on her head angling a shadow over her eyes and nose. The clouds passed slowly overhead, leaving elongated shadows on the hood of his car, and his toes curled inside his shoes. Waiting.
The old woman leaned close to Victoria, her lips moving, watery eyes narrowed against the sun. Victoria shook her head distractedly, and shivered so hard it reverberated in Benton’s teeth as they clenched. The old woman patted her back, and Victoria turned away, her movements awkward as she ushered the woman across the street. In the rear view mirror, Benton’s smile stretched, slowly, until it spanned his entire face.
The last time they had seen each other, her hand had been outstretched toward his as she ran alongside the train, misery and love twisting up her face. If she’d seen the weapon, she hadn’t cared. And then, the sound of a gun discharging broke her race to his hand. Vecchio’s gun, not his own. He saw her fall before he swung back inside the train, his chest heaving under his flannel shirt, blood pumping through his arteries. If it had been his bullet, it would have been to the heart, and she wouldn’t have lived.
Fucking Mounties, and their fucking luck.
Why couldn’t she just die, so he could breathe again?
*
Know where your prey is going, not where they have already been.
On the day Victoria was scheduled to return from Canada, Benton was sitting at the bus stop across the street from the new Consulate, smoking a cigar. He had hated the taste at first, but Phil liked six cigars a day, so he’d been forced to accustom himself to the flavor. He stubbed one cigar out and lit another, flicking the dead match to the ground, where it settled weightlessly on a mud puddle.
Through a haze of smoke, his eyes focused on the sign-hanger.
Three weeks since he’d last seen Victoria, gotten a fix on her position, worked to dig his spot deeper in the back of her mind, where she couldn’t feel him creeping around. Three weeks since, and his hands were shaking as he brought the cigar to his mouth. It was imperative he know where she was at all times. If he couldn’t see her, then she could be behind him, or he could make a mistake, and she might spot him.
If he couldn’t see her, she would find him.
So he wasn’t arrogant enough to be sitting here, waiting, and waiting, but desperate enough. He was having that nightmare again, the one he’d thought he’d gotten rid of after his escape from prison. He’d woken from it twice now believing the blocks of streetlight coming in through the blinds were bars.
He was trapped in a lion’s cage at the circus, and Victoria snapped a whip at him, stinging hurt all up and down his back.
You belong here, she said apologetically.
He roared.
Benton shivered just as Vecchio’s car squealed to a stop over two parking spots. He stiffened, briefly, then slouched and tucked the cigar between his teeth, crossing his arms over his chest. The driver side door was shoved open, and a lean, blonde man stepped-no, make that charged-out of the car, his long coat snapping, a brown aftershock behind him.
Who...?
Blood pounded in Benton’s ears, and he couldn’t help but sit straighter, his shoulders drawing a tense, curious line. This wasn’t Vecchio, but his face was familiar. Benton’s lips parted, cigar dangling from the edge, ashes dropping unnoticed to his lap. The man, this not Vecchio man, had an abrupt sort of grace as he moved, like tension coiled into muscle and bone, heat straining under skin.
He was...
Too skinny, too blonde, too loud.
I know you.
Benton barely saw Victoria climbing from the passenger side with her usual trained skill. He registered her presence in the part of his brain where the presence of that red serge meant something, but he couldn’t make his eyes focus on her. She was far away, somehow. A shade had been drawn over her. When one lit fire in the dark, there was a circle of light, but the dark around deepened.
Phillip, no, no, Benton swallowed hard, and strained to catch another glimpse of this stranger’s face, but all he could see was the back of his head as he climbed the Consulate steps. Vulnerable skin behind his ears, the white nape of his neck. Benton pulled the cigar from his lips, let it fall to the cement beneath his feet even though, at that moment, he wasn’t sure it was truly there.
The blonde man disappeared inside the Consulate, and Benton bent forward, trying to see through the solid wall. Victoria followed close behind, and Benton glared at her vanishing back, the stiff fabric, familiar hatred welling up in his throat. He looked down at his hands, saw they were clenched into tight fists, too white at the knuckles, and he slowly relaxed them until the skin on his hand was one color.
Today, as he had brushed his teeth, he was waiting for Victoria. When he put one sock on, and then the other, it had been her he’d waited for. Since before she’d left, he’d been waiting for her, ironing his clothes, washing the dishes, cutting and packaging the meat, waiting for the moment when he could blot her out of the world, and out of his mind. When it would pain her the most. And she had returned, bringing with her something sharp and bright to hurt him with.
He could never trust her to be fair. He could never trust her.
The veins in his arms were thrumming, blood reaching from his heart *out*.
His only desire had been that Victoria one day knew what the collapse of hope was, as Benton had when the door to the cell had shut behind him, cold gray like everything else would be for a very, very long time. Until now.
The cigar burned still, smelling like the smoke from a train, and when he stood, Benton slammed his foot down over it, smashing its life to ashes. When Victoria and her pretty stranger stepped out of the Consulate, Benton was on the city bus, halfway across town, staring at his reflection in the window. He saw, for the first time in a long time, only himself with longer hair.
*
Open the door, step inside. Wait, first unlock the door, open it, then step inside. There’s an order to these things, Benton reminded himself. Inside his apartment, he turned on the free-hanging unadorned lightbulb in the livingroom, leaving it swinging as he set his mail on the kitchen table, then opened the freezer door. Ten frozen dinners stared back at him with colorful cardboard faces, edges caked with frost.
Phil liked them; Benton did not.
“No,” he said, abruptly, and shut the door.
Leaning against the counter, he stared at the mail. It hadn’t been difficult to come up with a name. In Chicago, information was currency, and there was enough of it drifting around for Benton to grab a piece of it after he’d put the right amount of cash in the right palms. Detective Stanley Raymond Kowalski, these palms told him. A sarcastic ass.
More information, sold cheaply, waited in those pristine, white envelopes.
He took a step toward them, before pivoting away, and hurrying into the living room where he threw himself onto the couch and scrambled for the remote. His breathing evened out as he watched the nature channel; a wolf moved through the snow with careful strides, low to the ground, while ahead, a deer found for a patch of grass peeking through the white, and began to chew on it. The wolf waited, savoring the hunt. Then, red on white, and neither wolf nor deer went hungry anymore.
Benton waited until he was in bed, a single mattress sitting on the floor, before opening the envelopes. His bedroom wasn’t much larger than a closet, and the light carried well, filling the whole room from tightly shut door to the pulled down shade. Benton’s fingers trembled around the handle of his knife, as he carefully drew it across the top of one envelope, slitting it open. Two sheets of paper fell into his lap, and Benton drew them close to his face as he slid from his butt to his back.
Head on the pillows, papers above him, he read.
Stanely Raymond Kowalski preferred to be called Ray, which was convenient, since he was undercover as Ray Vecchio. That he was Polish, blonde, and had an average nose hadn’t mattered to the authorities. Kowalski was Vecchio now, and Victoria’s partner. There was a picture of him included in the next envelope, a photo that had been used in an article citing his bravery.
Benton pushed his head against the pillow, and slid his hand beneath the constricting band of his boxer shorts.
Three citations, ex-wife named Stella, college drop-out, father has a thing for Brando, parents in Arizona, no other family, Steve McQueen, braclets, a passion for dance; this was the new Ray Vecchio as far as the paper trail could understand him. Benton had long since pushed the envelopes off the mattress, his chest bursting with repressed air as he pulled, and pulled, and heaved.
Benton cupped his hand over the head of his penis when he climaxed, spilling over his fingers as he thought of holding onto those vulnerable looking ears.
*
Across from Ray Kowalski’s apartment building, Benton stomped some scat from his boot, and again turned his binoculars to the third storey windows on the left, which were Ray’s. From the roof of the parallel building, he had a perfect view, which was not to say there was actually something to see. Ray wasn’t at his apartment often, and on some nights, he didn’t even bother returning home.
If on those nights, something dark and aching brewed in his stomach, Benton rinsed it away with bark tea, and fixed himself as a more discreet shape to avoid being spotted.
When Ray was actually home, it was like watching a fish swimming around in a bowl while in the dark. Often, as Benton watched, one hand steadying the binoculars, there was little more to see than the shifting of light from one room to another as Ray moved about in the apartment, the shades drawn down.
Tonight, it was hot, the sky damp with heat. Electricity itched on the nape of his neck, warning of a building storm, and Benton wanted to squirm in his clothes, the black sweater with the torn neck and the jeans almost worn down to nothing, but he didn’t. His father had always told Benton that squirming was unbecoming, even when there wasn’t anyone around to witness it. Of course, his father had also said not to kill your fellow man, and look how well Benton had listened to that.
Just when he was about to call the night a failure and return home to his empty apartment, to Phillip’s empty life, he saw movement inside the apartment. No lights turned on, but Benton knew that shape, that body. Red light flashed from a nearby sign and illuminated the stretch of Ray’s torso, the curve of his neck, and Benton’s entire body wrenched, aching with want.
Was it possible that it was worse seeing Ray than not seeing Ray?
They had never spoken to each other, but Benton knew that Ray would drape his jacket over the armchair near the television, would stop by the window to look outside at the street, as if he was waiting for someone. The more Benton saw of him, the more he felt he knew him, as if he’d been meant to meet Ray under different circumstances, but had faltered at the specific moment which would have sent him to Ray under the right ones. On some nights, when Ray left the blinds to his bedroom open, stripping to his gray boxer briefs, Benton would be tempted to break in, crawl under the sheets with him.
He wanted, more than to touch him, to speak to him, for their eyes to meet and not immediately be forced to look away and continue walking. His plan for Victoria was a clock ticking in his apartment, a cabinet with his notes and his schedules. They had grown less important since the new Ray, a distant fixture in the life it had once absorbed. Someday, she’d be a chalk outline on the pavement as the camera flashed, capturing a black and white image with a garish pool of blood that, colorless, might as well have been oil.
In the now, she was an obstacle.
How could he break her, and still have Ray?
Oh, God, he could see no way from here.
Benton’s jaw flexed, nostrils flaring as he forced the fruitless thoughts away.
In the red glow, Ray moved to his stereo, fiddling with the buttons, his long fingers pinkish blurs in the shadows. Benton held his breath as Ray stepped back, raising his arms in the air and sliding seamlessly into motion. Oh, yes. Tonight, Ray would dance himself to sleep. What song had he chosen? Were there even lyrics? Perhaps it was slow, hot jazz that Ray slunk to, with a whiskey female voice humming in his ears, his head falling back on his neck to show his throat.
“He clomps,” his landlady said after a few drinks. “In rhythm.”
Ray shimmered, less jerky than a fish in water; he danced as if it took absolutely no effort to perform the steps, to keep his shoulders, waist, and hips fluid, in sync with whatever music he had selected. Benton licked his dry lips, fingertips stroking the cool metal casing of the binoculars, and moved to his knees on the roof. Small stones bit his skin through the jeans as he spread his thighs farther apart, making room for his thickening penis.
I know you, had been his first impression of Ray, and the feeling of familiarity had only grown stronger in the past month. It hurt now, that he didn’t, because under that pull of unwarranted recognition hid, I want you. I’ve wanted you forever.
Benton ached to take himself in hand, unbutton his jeans and slide two fingers inside his boxers, caress until he had assuaged the slowly, heavy pulse of blood. And Ray continued to dance, rolling his shoulders, then his hips, his arms holding a ghost partner who followed his shuffling steps perfectly. Benton moved one hand down to grip the edge of the roof, breath hissing sharply inward through his teeth. He’d rather throw himself off this building than taint the hours he spent watching Ray dance, the loneliness spread over Ray’s red-lit face.
What hurts you?
What makes you dance?
Turning, and weaving, and spinning.
Benton grew dizzy and lowered the binoculars from his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose as he struggled to orient himself in a world that continued to spin.
*
On the following Wednesday, Benton had left work early, and was parked near Ray’s boxing club. His car was rusted and falling apart, so naturally, he didn’t blend. On the positive side, he didn’t appear to be making an effort to conceal himself, so when Ray Kowalski’s car turned the corner, and slowed to a stop near an empty parking space across the street from his club, Benton looked not in the least as if he’d been waiting for anything more than perhaps that woman crossing the street, her arms full of groceries.
The discovery that Ray was a boxer hadn’t been surprising. Ray threw himself in front of bullets for Mounties, Ray danced, Ray was in love with his ex-wife, Ray cried. Ray had emotions that Benton hadn’t felt in years, and they flooded out through his fists first, his heart second. He liked to fight.
Ray parallel parked, roughly, and got out of his car, gun holster over his t-shirt, badge hooked to the leather strap over his shoulder. He had a duffel bag in hand, and it swung at his side as he trotted to the club door, catching it just before it swung shut behind another member. He tossed a glance at the street before going inside.
Benton caught his reflection in the mirror, straightened the crumpled line of his eyebrow, where he’d been rubbing it nervously, and met his own gaze steadily. He felt more like himself than he had in years, recognized his face beneath the scruff, and felt the sparks of his own personality burning away at Phillip’s overwhelming ordinariness. He hadn’t smoked a cigar in three days, and he’d been eating freshly-picked vegetables from the farmer’s market since last week.
Okay, then.
Benton nodded at his reflection, and looking toward the battered door Ray had gone through, slid out of the car.
Stepping inside the building, he was fleetingly blinded by the change in lighting. Outside, the afternoon sun burned on everything, made even the dirtiest sidewalk bright and hot to the eye, but in here, it was much darker. Benton could make out only fuzzy blobs. He breathed in the stale sweat and blood as he waited for his eyes to adjust, until finally, he was able to distinguish between shapes: the boxing ring was at the center of the large room, and the bobbing forms resolved themselves into toned men and women, weaving around each other as they sparred.
Toned, that is, except for the single individual standing in the far corner, swinging pitifully at a weighted bag he was easily three times the size of in the waist. Benton clutched his bag tightly in one fist, and looked away, searching for the figure of his true interest. He wasn’t among the sweating fighters, or the weight lifters, or even flirting with the women, another hobby Ray seemed to find as interesting as he did dancing or boxing or obsessing over Stella. Benton settled on a bench near the ring, placed the bag near his feet, and made a show of stretching his back.
His first year in the RCMP, he’d been involved in an undercover operation as a bare-knuckle fighter within Toronto’s notorious underground boxing circuit. That had been an embarrassing number of years ago, before everything he’d ever worked for had become useless as he walked the footsteps his father had taken the day he died, and red snow had risen up within Benton, surging in his throat, burning his eyes.
Kill them all, it had demanded. And Benton had.
All of his choices, even leaving that wolf to die, brought him here.
Benton was working his calves when he felt a prickle up his spine. Through his eyelashes, he saw Ray appear from a back room, now dressed in loose drawstring shorts cut off from a pair of sweat pants. He was wearing the same t-shirt, but the holster was gone, and his hair had been partially tamed by the headgear. Benton was transfixed by the way the shorts seemed to be in danger of slipping off those slim hips. It would only require one gentle tug, and...
Those slim hips sauntered right past his bent head without pause.
Benton’s eyes almost fell shut as his stomach tripped. It was as close as they had ever come to touching, although once, Benton had walked right behind Ray for nearly an entire minute, breathing the same air, treading the same steps, before jaywalking to the other side of the street, leaving Ray to his day.
Funnily enough, twenty years ago, he would have gasped at even the thought of himself jaywalking. Such a small thing was still breaking the law, and such laws existed for a reason, he would have lectured whoever had committed the offense. He’d done a lot of things since then that his former self would not have approved of, and he had one more action to add to that list: sniffing the air Ray left behind, the almost chemical smell, like a chlorine pool-but tangier, mustier.
At that moment, he wanted Ray so much, he was already leaking.
And from Ray, nothing. Benton was all but drooling on his own sneakers, and he wasn’t even a comma, full stop in Ray’s run on sentence of a life. Ray didn’t get a shiver up his spine, didn’t freeze, didn’t choke on his spit. If he noticed he was the object of Benton’s fixation, he was either used to the attention, or he didn’t wish to encourage it.
“Levon!” shouted Ray.
The young black man in the center of the ring stopped throwing punches at his imaginary opponent, and turned. He was already smiling when he saw Ray standing near the edge of the matt, hanging on the ropes.
“If your trainer taught you to box like that, I’m gonna arrest him for corrupting this city’s youth. You beating up your grandmother in there?”
Levon rolled his eyes. Reaching out, he gave Ray a hand up.
“Big talk, Homes,” Levon said, as Ray climbed somewhat awkwardly through the ropes, barely managing to untangle the generous length of his legs without falling on his head. “At least I could beat my grandma up. You, I dunno.”
“Hardy, ha, ha,” said Ray dryly, straightening. “Here I was thinking you’re a boxer, and all this time, you’re a fucking comedian.”
They participated in an elaborate handshake.
“You’re late, coach.”
“Yeah, sorry.” Ray bounced his back against the ropes a few times, before letting it sling him to the center of the mat, where he did some fancy footwork to warm up. “Got hung up on a case, had to kick a few heads, bust a few jaws,” Ray mimed the action, “pow, pow, same as always.”
Benton started when his nose almost touched one of the ropes riding the side of the ring, realizing that at some point while he’d been eavesdropping, he’d gotten to his feet and moved toward them. This lack of active control over himself was unusual, for Benton and Phillip both. Pivoting sharply, he made a straight line for the heavy bag a woman was kicking and punching at, grunting when she connected.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Would you like a spotter?”
She kicked the bag one more time, before pushing a tangle of sweaty hair off her forehead and giving him a deliberate once over. The snarl of her unpainted mouth softened to something more beguiling. Apparently he passed muster as someone she wouldn’t mind advances from while sweating profusely.
“You could spot me for pretty much anything,” she drawled.
Benton scarcely refrained from rolling his eyes, taking hold of the bag. The woman, she said her name was Cheryl, spoke between desperate gasps for oxygen. While he held the bag, she mentioning her ex-boyfriend, his kids, his ex-wife, and eventually, her strained relationship with her mother. Benton nodded at all the right times, making interested noises in his throat as, slowly, he situated the two of them so her back was to the ring, and he could see Ray and the kid sparring while his body absorbed the vibrations from her lunges at the bag.
For looking no more than nineteen, Leveon was a fairly decent fighter, but his poor defense. Ray seemed to be trying to show him what he was doing the classic way; when Ray hit him in the side hard enough, Levon started defending that area. After about ten minutes of heavy sparring, Ray called it quits, slapping Levon briefly on the back, waving him away. Levon climbed gingerly from the ring, limping to one of the back rooms.
Ray remained in the ring, bouncing around on the balls of his feet. The cotton shirt adhered to his torso in wet patches, the lean muscles in his arms bunching and releasing as he mimed a series of winning uppercuts.
The saliva in Benton’s mouth dried up, his heart beating oddly. He abandoned the heavy bag just as the woman gave a war cry and stormed toward it. Her exclamation of surprise, as well as the sound of her body hitting the floor, barely registered. When Benton reached the side of the ring, Ray was doing a victory dance, gloved hands raised in the air. He spoke between triumphant pumps of his fists.
“I could’a been, I could’a been, I could’a been...”
“A contender?” Benton suggested, surprised by the roughness of his own voice.
Ray’s bouncing went off-kilter, wilting to a deceptively loose stance, and he looked at Benton, who couldn’t contain the sound of surprise that came straight from his stomach. For the first time, Benton experienced Ray’s undivided attention. It was remarkably similar to being run through with an ice-pick, hit square between the eyes. Benton flinched back before he could stop himself, painfully aware that the shock was on his face. Ray’s chin went up, tilting at a challenging angle, the narrow shine of his eyes set suspiciously on him.
“Yeah?” Like Cheryl, Ray appraised him from head to toe. “How’d you know?”
Benton essayed a shrug, feeling awkward and hulking. He could thank the dimness of the room for concealing his expression, and still be thankful that Ray had bad eyes.
“A lucky guess, I imagine.”
“Huh.” Ray moved forward, propping his arms on the ropes and leaning on them as he stared down into Benton’s face. “Do I know you or something?”
Do you know me?
You see me every day from the corner of your eye. I’m as familiar to you as the taste of your mouth in the morning, the ache in your knee as you pull the shade down at night. For a detective with three citations, you can been dangerously blind.
“No,” Benton said honestly. “We’ve never met.”
Ray tilted his head to the side for a moment, then finally nodded.
“But I’ve seen you,” he said, and the way he did, so firmly, was enough to make Benton’s heart turn uneasily. He froze for a millisecond, and had to force himself to breathe. Blind? Perhaps not. Perhaps Benton hadn’t been as careful as he’d believed he was, and Ray had caught more than a fleeting impression. Perhaps that time Ray wore glasses when he left the precinct, he’d clearly made Benton’s face, then filed it away in his memory out of pure instinct, that of prey to defend against predator.
The deer lifts his head, as the wolf shows his teeth.
None of this anxiety showed on Benton’s face. He smiled, easily.
“Ah, yes.” Another smile, as he made a circular gesture in the air. “As it happens, I was here recently while you were sparring. I’ve been considering purchasing a membership.”
Ray snapped his fingers, grinning.
“That’s where I saw ya. Yeah, from the other day. You were sitting in a car outside.”
Benton controlled a flinch. “Yes.”
He offered no further information. It was easier to remember truths. And Ray was a detective for godsake, even if his pretty face continued to distract Benton from this unassailable fact. Since the night on the roof, watching Ray dance, he’d wanted so badly to meet Ray face to face that he’d allowed himself to grow careless. He was aware now that he’d been unconsciously hoping to be caught.
“How long have you been sparring?” Benton asked. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Oh, years,” Ray said, waving a hand, dismissing his words. “Had to stop a while back though. The wife, she, uh.” Ray stuck a finger in his ear and half-smiled at the floor. “She thought it was uncivilized.”
Benton stuck his hands behind his back, held them together tightly. It was a rush, speaking to Ray in this simple manner, as if it was easy, as if it was allowed. Sweat was gathering under his shirt, the type of sweat that existed only during gunfights, in the crook of the armpit, the inside of the elbow, like the skin was preparing to cleanse blood.
“So you’re divorced, then?”
“Huh?” Ray squinted, looking wary. “How did you--”
“Well, you appear to be sparring again,” Benton interrupted quickly.
The wary look vanished, but it was replaced with a self-conscious sneer as Ray grew quiet, eyes far away. And then he shrugged a fully body shrug, with his head and his hips shrugging, too.
“Yeah. Divorced, yeah.” There was a distinct slump to his shoulders after he said this, and Benton’s tongue slicked his bottom lip as Ray frowned. “You talk funny.”
Benton nearly laughed, and that was *shocking*.
Yes, it was certainly he with the outrageous accent.
“Ah, yes.” Benton smiled and tugged on his ear, a nervous tic he hadn’t had in several years. “I’m - I happen to have moved here from Canada. I’m afraid I haven’t become accustomed to the locals’ preferred way of conversing quite yet.”
“Canada? Like, the Yukon territories or whatever?”
“Something of the sort,” Benton agreed, but didn’t elaborate. The silence after was obvious, glaringly curbed, and Ray stiffened again, arms retracting close to his sides.
“Makes sense.” Shuttered eyes passed over Benton. “So. Nice to meet ya.”
With that, Ray turned and dismissed him. Benton cursed himself and retreated to a weight bench. After a few minutes, from the awkward position of lying on his back with two hundred and fifty pounds hovering over his chest, Benton saw Levon return, a towel thrown over his shoulder. Ray slipped between the ropes to meet him, and the two of them stood there, speaking in hushed voices as another pair of fighters took up position in the ring. Ray gestured to the woman, who had just knocked the much larger man on his butt with a powerhouse of a hit, and shared a smile with the kid.
See? that smile said. She’s a skinny runt, and she just kicked his ass.
A good man, this detective. The type of man that coached a charity boxing program for gang-kids in an effort to keep them off the street. The type of man that liked to.
When Benton was finished lifting, he sat up and wiped sweat from his face with a towel he’d brought from home. Perhaps it was some remnant of his former self that wanted Ray Kowalski so desperately. It seemed to be his curse to be drawn to people who represented everything Benton no longer was; the man he had been before his father died, was murdered, before he had hunted his father’s killers to their death, making them suffer it at his own hand. When, in the frozen north, trapped with the Mountie sent to retrieve him, he had reveled in her goodness, washed his bloody hands in her hot, wet sex, and believed he could be saved. And was proved wrong.
All these years later, he still wanted her to pay.
She *would* pay.
Observing Ray near the edge of the ring, musical face intense as he discussed strategy and technique, Benton stuffed the damp towel in his bag and wished that things could be different. In another world, Benton was sure he could have that beautiful man by means other than the force he was bound to apply in this one. For months, he’d gone over and over scenarios in his mind, but they all ended with the same, inevitable conclusion - Victoria died, Ray discovered Benton for who he was, and was sickened by him.
“You have to hit them hard and quick,” Ray was explaining to Levon, his back to Benton, the muscles shifting cleanly under his thin shirt. “Or else they’re gonna get a swing at you, and your defenses suck like lemon. They’ll take a piece with ‘em when they go.”
A drop of sweat rolled from Ray’s hair to the top of his spine, before it vanished under his shirt collar. Benton’s stomach clenched.
The wolf opens his mouth. He opens. His mouth. And.
Whatever this man had, Benton wanted it. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was Victoria’s partner, except, why should she be allowed to have him when she couldn’t care for him properly? How could she possibly understand that this man was meant to assuage a deep loneliness? She had befriended this Ray, but in her own vague way; if Ray came to her on his knees, begging for asylum, she’d return him to the streets.
You belong there, she would say apologetically.
So, let it be here that Benton decided, surrounded by sweat and blood and the impact of flesh on flesh. He would have Ray and he would have his revenge, because he could not give up one for the other. Even if it saddened him to think of the small piece of himself--the final good piece--that would die taking them both. The dirty floor tilted under his feet and Benton shut his eyes, feeling the change as it took him.
“Are you okay?”
Benton opened his eyes. The woman from earlier was touching his arm gingerly, her mauve painted fingernails grazing the inside of his elbow. He nodded, pulling his arm away, and she smiled a little wistfully, letting him go. As he walked to the door, the angle from which he saw Ray shifted, and Ray’s profile stood out striking among the other more husky members; a slim, slick blade that could cut as easily as it teased.
“Hey, Canada!”
Benton turned at the door, eyebrow inclined in question.
Ray grinned at him crookedly with his whole body, even his hair.
“You wanna dance?”
Ray performed a two-step, and raised his fists. Levon sighed dramatically at Ray’s side, covering his eyes with one hand, but Benton thought Ray was an absurdly tempting invitation in the chubby boxing gloves that made his narrow wrists look twice as skinny than they were. Queerly innocent.
I know that, he thought. That something.
Benton shook his head slowly, hands fists behind him.
“Perhaps another day,” he added politely. He would give Ray that precious gift of time. The one that was not granted to him before Victoria took him and locked him behind those horrible, gray bars. He would be Phillip, the friendly, boring man on level four, and then, when he could no longer stand it, he’d-
He’d take it.
The something Ray had.
Ray seemed a little disappointed. There was a downward curve to his mouth as Benton turned away, but he wasn’t destroyed, not yet, and in all likelihood forgot about Benton after he was out the door and out of sight. Possibly, Benton would rate a thought between opening the milk carton and wriggling impossibly long fingers into the pickle jar as he tried to capture that last one swimming at the bottom.
That guy looked at me funny, Ray would think.
Possibly.
A woman in a pale blue sundress was selling carnations on the curb when Benton stepped outside. The sun’s crude glare had subsided some since he’d went inside, but the heat still pinched at his cold-hungry shoulders. Impulse led him toward her frozen looking smile. She was pretty and remote, like daylight catching on a fish frozen under ice. He dug a few dollars from his wallet, and handed them to her in exchange for a fistful of dead flowers he had no idea what to do with, and the tired clench of her smile. The woman was wearing mirrored sunglasses, and in them, he saw his reflection, or rather, a reflection of himself.
He supposed he could have walked away for good, left the city of Chicago far behind, and with it, the temptation. He could have done the right thing. But then, Victoria would have won, and Benton would have lost the one person able to make him feel more than cold details and colder hate.
Benton was not that noble, and Phillip-Phillip was nothing.
The reflection squinted at him, scruffy face familiar, and not.
Hello, Phillip. You’ve been awfully quiet, of late.
Phillip smiled knowingly, and crossed the street to his car. He tossed his bag in the back seat, and on the road, lit a cigar, blowing smoke out the open window. Phillip was just another driver at an overcrowded intersection, cursing when he looked at his watch. A few yellow and white carnations sat in the passenger seat, waiting for the funeral.
*
End
Notes
The story was previously titled, “Pull The Shade Down,” but that was the starting title, and by the time I finished the story, it was clear that this was a story less about stalking, more about the nature of dual identities, and the ones that exist inside Fraser when he meets the Ray in this story. I’d say that Pull The Shade Down is a sort of subtitle, though, because stalking is what Fraser does in this.
And he’s good at it. Which is scary. I don’t see Fraser as an extremely dark character on the show. I see him as a character with a lot of emotional trauma and as a very repressed man, but not *dark* - Vecchio was dark, RayK was fairly dark himself, but Fraser was hope that kept standing up after getting knocked down, at least to me. So when this came out of me, this darkest of dark Fraser, I almost stopped writing, because I knew immediately - OUT OF CHARACTER - but then I reassured myself that if Fraser had made different choices, if he had murdered his father’s killers, and Victoria had put him in jail for it after making love with him - logically, he *could* be darker.
Anyway, he got written that way, whether I liked it or not.
The people I chose to switch were Victoria and Fraser, obviously. With the exception that Fraser started off as a Mountie, and went bad when his father was killed. Victoria was the Mountie sent to retrieve him, and they ended up falling for each other, but she betrayed him, sending him to prison, where he plotted his revenge on her. That’s how it happens in my head. I alluded to it in the story, but I didn’t go into any depth.
Soundtrack
Songs I listened to while writing this story.
“Bad Boyfriend,” by Garbage
“Real, a Lie,” by Melissa Auf Der Maur
“The Way You Are,” 46bliss
“The Moth,” Aimee Mann
“About Her,” Malcolm Mclaren
Feedback is beautiful. If you see any typos, don't be afraid to let me know. So I can edit them and stop humiliating myself. :D