Ursus Questus
Title: Ursus Questus
Word count: 2316
Pairing: Ray/Ray
Rating: PG
A/N: This fic is for exbex, for her generous contribution to Rainbow Youth. Thank you, my dear. I hope you like it!
With many thanks to mizface and andeincascade for beta!
Ray Vecchio sat up, blinking. Woah. That was some blow to the head. He was lucky he wasn’t unconscious.
There was a strong white light glaring right in his eyes. Kowalski’s headlights? Ray remembered the Goat slewing to a stop in the alleyway. They’d jumped out, left the doors open - probably the lights were still on, blinding him. He raised a hand to shield his eyes.
Bit by bit, the alleyway came into focus. The Goat was there, front doors hanging open, wipers whiz-thumping across the windscreen, headlights making two bright white cones of light in the flurries of snow.
Wait, snow? Yes, it was snowing. It was a blizzard. Ray raised his face to the sky. It was black and brown like a horrible bruise, and snow was spiraling out of it. It made him dizzy, and he looked away, which was when he saw the polar bear.
The creature was massive, shaggy, white, its breath huffing huge clouds of steam in the air, its nose wet, its black eyes fixed on him, on him, on Ray, Jesus Christ!
He scrambled away backwards on his ass, got tangled up in his jacket, finally got to his feet, and would have drawn his gun, except that it wasn’t there.
“Ray! Ray! Calm down!” The bear reared up on its hind legs, front paws dabbing at the air. “It’s me.”
Ray stood, gasping for breath, head spinning, next to a dumpster and a shopping cart lying on its side. The bear thumped back down onto all fours, and its head nodded ponderously from side to side.
“That’s better. Ray, don’t be scared. It’s me. Don’t you recognise me?”
“Oh,” said Ray. “Oh. It’s a dream. Oh.” He let his arms flop to his sides, and his head slumped back on his neck with relief. “Thank God! I thought I was gonna get mauled to death by a polar bear. Oh, God.” Laying one hand on his still-racing heart, he added, “What the hell are you doing anyway, Fraser? Why are you a polar bear?”
The bear with Fraser’s voice took a few heavy steps towards him. The snow lay inches thick on the ground, and crunched under the great paws.
“I like it,” it said. “I’ve never had the chance to be a polar bear before, and I thought it would be appropriate for a spirit quest.”
“Spirit quest? I thought I was asleep. Or maybe unconscious. Some punk hit me over the head with a plank of wood.”
“That’s right,” said the bear. “You’re unconscious. And you’re going to take this opportunity to go on a spirit quest. Don’t worry, we’ll be done by the time the EMTs show up.”
*
“You know it’s late spring,” Ray observed as they walked down the street. The blizzard had thickened and covered everything, from cars to trees to front stoops. A cab drove by with six inches of snow laid over its hood and roof. When it was gone it left deep clefts in the snow, which were filled within minutes.
“I’m a polar bear, Ray, I prefer snow,” said the bear. It was trundling beside Ray with a sort of weighty deliberation that suggested it could walk through a brick wall as if it was a beaded curtain.
Ray, walking beside the bear, reached out and touched its pelt.
“I saw on the Discovery Channel that polar bear fur is actually multi-coloured,” he said. “Something about UV rays or being hollow or something.”
“That’s right. The hair follicles reflect all colours of the spectrum.”
“It’s still white, though.”
“Most of it.” The Fraser bear stopped and reared up so it could look down at its paws. They were a slushy grey. “Even in a spirit quest, this city is not as clean as I wish it could be.”
“I notice I don’t have a gun,” said Ray pointedly as they continued on their way. “Is that another thing you’d prefer?”
“Oh, that’s regulations, I’m afraid. Canadian spirit quests have very strict firearms license restrictions.”
“I bet.”
“When you’re running the spirit quest, you can make the rules.”
They reached a crossroads and tracked across it without waiting for the lights, which were all flashing green, making crazy disco balls of colour as the snow drifted through their light.
“Where are we going, anyway?” asked Ray. Across the street a department store window showed the menswear department mannequins standing around naked. Except for one, which had a scarf draped artistically around its shoulders.
“I understand you’ve recently been caught on the horns of a dilemma,” said the Fraser bear.
“If that were true you’d be a moose.”
“Smart comments don’t cut any ice in this situation,” replied the bear. “You and Ray have been debating a vexed issue.”
He came to a stop, and Ray stopped beside him, as two guys clambered out of a moving van and hauled a wardrobe across the sidewalk and up some steps into an apartment building.
“The symbolism in this spirit quest isn’t exactly subtle,” Ray observed dryly. “Green for go, lots of naked male mannequins, and a closet.”
“Are you ready to come out of it yet?” asked the bear.
“If I knew that, we wouldn’t be here, would we.”
If Fraser had been shaped like Fraser and not like a bear, he probably would have tilted his head at this, or shrugged, or raised his eyebrows. Presumably polar bears weren’t capable of those particular mannerisms, because Fraser merely huffed an extra-large cloud of breath, and carried on down the street.
*
They were outside the police station. Two uniformed officers scurried up the steps and in through the front doors, their shoulders hunched against the snow.
“You spend a lot of your time here,” said the Fraser bear. Its rear end swayed for a moment, then thudded down on the ground.
“Graceful,” muttered Ray.
“I’d like to see you do better. And don’t change the subject. We’re both officers of the law, Ray. Our jobs are more than just jobs. And the people we work with are more than just colleagues. Making ourselves vulnerable to them can be difficult.”
“Seriously?” said Ray. “I’m getting a lecture on workplace camaraderie from a polar bear?”
“You’re going to have to stop fixating on the exterior appearance of things,” said the bear, ignoring Ray’s loud, sarcastic groan.
“Why don’t you just hit me over the head with your point?” he demanded. “It’d probably be less painful!”
*
Inside the station, everything seemed relatively normal, though a bit quiet. Ray followed the polar bear down the hallway. The thing padded along silently now that there was no snow underfoot; the only sound it made was the deep rumble of its breathing. It filled the hallway from side to side, making the water cooler shake, sending the notices on the walls fluttering nervously.
When it reached the bullpen, it stood up on its hind legs and surveyed the room.
“Look at all these people,” it said.
“Why aren’t all these people looking at you?” asked Ray.
“Concentrate,” said the bear. “All these people, working here every day, living their lives. How well do you think you know them?”
“I take it I don’t really have to answer that question.”
“Shall we find out?”
“Thought not.”
*
A great grey-white polar bear paw pushed against the door to Interview Room 2 and swung it open. Huey and Dewey were making out on the table.
“Christ!”
Ray jumped back into the hallway.
“Ah! Why?! Why would you show me that?”
The bear let the door swing shut again.
“Why are you so upset, Ray?”
Ray gave a full-body shudder.
“Listen, I don’t care who does what to who around here, as long as I never, and I mean never, have to see Dewey sticking his tongue down anyone’s throat. Man, woman or beast, I don’t care what! Eugh! I need to bleach my brain!”
“For someone living what might be called an alternative lifestyle, you don’t seem very tolerant,” sniffed the bear. It went to turn around, found it couldn’t, and tried to turn the other way.
“I am tolerant,” Ray protested. “I got tolerance up the wazoo. But I don’t want to see people I know making out with other people, and I don’t want to even think about what Dewey does in private. And with Jack Huey! I thought he had better taste!”
The bear had got itself into a tight spot. It nudged the interview room door open again with its ass and backed in to perform a three-point turn.
“Terribly sorry,” it said over its shoulder as it did so. “I’ll be out of your hair in just a moment.”
*
Ray was still shivering and trying to shake the shock off when they reached the supply closet. The bear swiped at the door handle, but its paw was not made for the task. Ray reached forward and opened the door.
Inside, in a breathless clinch, were his sister and Elaine Besbriss.
Ray gawped. Without breaking their lip lock, Elaine reached out and slammed the door shut in his face.
“What is wrong with you?” squeaked Ray, his voice up in the rafters and eyes bugging out. The bear turned an innocent, hairy face to him. “Why are you doing this to me? Do you want me never to have sex again?”
“You didn’t imagine you and Ray Kowalski were the only people in the 27th precinct to have sex lives?” said the bear.
“I didn’t imagine anything about anyone,” squawked Ray. “And I don’t want to!”
“I think we’re nearly done,” said the bear. “You’ll have to lead the way. I can’t squeeze past you here.”
*
Ray clutched a fistful of the polar bear’s fur.
“No,” he whispered huskily.
The bear raised a paw and began to push open the door marked “Lieu. Welsh.” From beyond, Ray heard a deep-throated chuckle.
“Okay!” he shouted. “Okay! I get it! Everyone’s gay! Everyone is secretly gay and it doesn’t matter if me and Kowalski come out at work because everyone is gay and can I please wake up now?”
“Um,” said the polar bear, “that isn’t really what -”
*
“Ray! Ray! You okay?”
Kowalski’s worried face was all he could see.
Ray blinked, and sat up. Kowalski helped him.
“You all right there, buddy? You took a hell of a crack to the head.”
At the far end of the alleyway he could see a squad car with its lights still flashing.
Ray rubbed a hand over his head and winced when he found the bump.
“Did you get the guys?”
“Yeah, I got ’em. Listen, EMT’s on their way, just sit tight. Don’t try to get up. You were out for a couple of minutes, I think.”
“Hey Kowalski.” He grabbed Kowalski’s arm. “We should come out at the station.”
Kowalski’s eyebrows jumped to the top of his head.
“What?” He lowered his voice. “We’re not talking about this right now.”
“Trust me, it’ll be okay. Everyone’s gay.”
“What?”
“Everyone’s gay, so it won’t matter. Fraser the polar bear told me so.”
“I’m gonna keep saying ‘what’ until you make sense,” said Kowalski.
Ray managed to get to his feet, leaning on Kowalski and trying not to throw up. The EMT truck pulled in to the alley and two guys hopped out.
“I went on a spirit quest,” Ray said, as the EMTs guided him over to sit in the truck. One of them sponged the blood from his scalp while the other shone a light in his eyes. “Fraser was there, but he was a polar bear.”
“What day is it?” asked the EMT.
“Oh, and the spirit quest was Canadian, so I wasn’t allowed my gun,” said Ray to Kowalski, who was hovering nervously in the doorway. “Yeah, I thought you’d like that. Tuesday,” he added.
“Do feel any dizziness? Nausea?”
“Yeah, I feel nauseated,” said Ray. “I saw Huey and Dewey making out. I may never be able to keep a meal down again.”
“We’re going to need to take him down to the hospital,” said the EMT to Kowalski. “He’s had a pretty severe blow to the head.”
*
Kowalski came to pick him up.
“You had me worried there for a moment,” Kowalski said, as they walked down the shiny hospital corridors. “You kept babbling on about a polar bear and everyone being gay.”
“Yeah, weird, huh,” said Ray. He had a bandage around his head as if he’d just had a lobotomy. There were at least three sick days in this. He put his arm around Kowalski as they got into the elevator. “I did go on a spirit quest, though. I mean, I wasn’t just babbling, I was telling you what happened.”
“And Fraser was a polar bear?”
“Yeah.”
“I woulda thought he’d be a wolf. Although I suppose Dief’s already got that covered. Maybe a moose.”
“He was good as a bear. And Kowalski.” He waited until Kowalski looked at him. “I meant it. We should come out at work. There’s no reason not to. Everyone’s got their weird thing, and they’ve all got their own lives, and as long as we’re not actually making out in the interview rooms nobody’s gonna care. They’ll get used to it.”
Kowalski narrowed his eyes. “You got all of that from Huey and Dewey making out in your dream?”
“It was not a dream. It was a spirit quest and I had no control over it whatsoever. I’ll tell it to you from the start, then you’ll get it. Seriously, though, my subconscious needs to get classier. It might as well have just had Fraser bear hit me over the head with a dead salmon and tell me, ‘Come out.’”
Kowalski laughed. The elevator doors pinged open. And they came out.