TEAM REALITY: Day 4, "Watchman"
Title: Watchman
Author: llassah
Team: Reality
Prompt: "Pemmican was the first thing I thought of"
Pairing(s): Fraser/Vecchio/Kowalski, the beginnings of Welsh/Frannie
Rating: G
Word count: 3,100
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: Thank you to teaphile and andeincascade for wonderful betas, and the rest of team reality for cheerleading and general awesomeness.
Summary: Welsh watches, and waits for his detectives to come home.
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Genre information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
Vecchio’s the first to return. He stands next to his old desk, looks across the dark bullpen to where Welsh leans against his office doorframe. Both men are silent. Welsh has been in this situation with other officers, that silence where comfort is neither sought nor offered, where his role is merely to watch, to acknowledge. The precinct after dark is a time of crisis, of doubts.
“My desk,” Vecchio begins, body turned a little to the door.
“Your desk.”
There are files on there, low level cases - petty crimes or strange ones only Canadians seem able to solve. He’d put them there over the weeks and months, something he did in secret, without a word to his other officers. Miss Vecchio had sometimes added other information, other leads, slipping newspaper articles into the files when she thought he wasn’t looking. It was a vigil of sorts.
Vecchio opens the top file, leafs through it idly. Welsh goes to his office, bypasses the whisky and starts preparing two mugs of tea (it was the Mountie’s fault he drank it at all; he keeps the stash hidden). They’d done this when Vecchio’s deadbeat father had wrapped his car around a tree (open verdict, a favor from the coroner), with Angie, after the Metcalfe case, then for the last time when the Feds had made their offer. They sit at Vecchio’s desk, sipping tea and discussing a case that no one else has shown an interest in, a small case, important to only a few people, ignored in a twilight world of murder, rape, drug crime. When it gets too late -- early -- they drive to his house. Vecchio takes the couch. They drive in again the next morning. Vecchio walks to his desk like nothing’s different. No one seems to want to say how different it is.
*
“I just - I thought it would work. That it’d all be okay, you know, like some sort of fairy tale.” She stands there, hands clasped in front of her, chin jutted out, a mixture of defiance and sadness.
The realization that he has no idea what to say to her, how to tell her why her brother will never have anything like a fairy tale makes him feel old and more jaded than he’s ever wanted to be. “Miss Vecchio, eventually a man gets bored of bowling.”
“I wanted him to - to get old, bowling. To be, uh, bowling somewhere safe, for the rest of his life.”
He can’t comfort her, but maybe she doesn’t need it. “There’s always baseball,” he tells her instead, keeping his face deadpan. The laugh is startled out of her, a little. Her eyes light up. He’s too damn old for this, too. She leaves his office with her back straight. He smiles when he’s sure no one is looking.
*
He had pulled strings to get Vecchio’s early retirement rescinded, pissing off quite a few of the top brass, not to mention the feds. Undercover officers were loose cannons, drifting from assignment to assignment, seeing shrink after shrink after the job was over, keeping themselves together until something went wrong, until they looked in the mirror and couldn’t see themselves any more. That golden bullet had taken Vecchio out of their hands - early retirement had relieved them of their duty to him. Now, he’s back, working. Now, he’s their problem again.
Vecchio works without a partner, because before Fraser he always had. He’d always been too abrasive, too nervy, but now the air of still menace has stayed with him, a habit of staring that unnerves where he used to annoy. He works alone, and by his own rules. Welsh doesn’t - he trusts him, but doesn’t want to know what he does to get results. Sometimes, his gut tells him to wait in the bullpen, and he and Vecchio drink tea, not talking about what has gotten him so wound up. One time, he offers him whisky. Vecchio refuses. Test passed.
*
Seven of the cases on Vecchio’s desk have been solved when Kowalski returns, in the lull on a Friday afternoon, where all anyone’s doing is shuffling files from one side of the desk to the other. It’s hot, but he’s wearing a leather jacket, walking like he’s a teenager, with an arrogance and a slouch to him. Welsh suddenly has the irrational urge to straighten his shirt, ask if he’s eaten recently. He’s blocking the entrance of the bullpen, but Kowalski doesn’t stop walking until he’s three paces away.
“You got over your mono, then?”
Kowalski blinks.
“Well, I can’t think of any other reason as to why you would be taking three months leave, Kowalski. These viruses, difficult to shake. Had it once, when I was fifteen. Caught it off-“He stops abruptly. Perhaps that isn’t strictly relevant, and Kowalski looks like he’s got the point. He clears his throat, musters an expression of ill health with imminent recovery, shifts from one foot to the other. “I got a job?”
His ulcer had cleared up just fine. Now, he feels a twinge. Just a twinge, but still. “As far as I am aware, Kowalski,” he rumbles, weighting every word, “you have always had a job. You have merely been, ah-“
“Ill,” Kowalski supplies. Then he winks. Another twinge.
“Another thing, Kowalski,” he says, a grim sort of pleasure making him relish his words. “You’ll be partnered with Vecchio. You’ve got a lot to talk about.”
To his credit, he doesn’t actually start laughing until Kowalski’s out of earshot.
*
By the end of the second day, Vecchio has a split lip, Kowalski’s knuckles are bruised and the side of his face is grazed. Miss Vecchio’s delivering an impressive lecture in the middle of the bullpen, looking for all the world like a mother chastising two schoolboys. He makes sure both men can see him watching as they seem to shrink into themselves, cowed by a woman a head shorter than them, wearing heels that, for some reason, are the exact same color as her lipstick. He’d actually be more worried if they were getting along.
It takes three more cases, but both men relax. Vecchio’s expression at rest contains less menace, and Kowalski doesn’t look like he’d fight a fire hydrant if he thought it had sassed him. Neither of them talk about Fraser, which says all it needs to. From behind his desk, he watches, sometimes so they know, sometimes unseen. Francesca watches, too. At some point, she decided that she had a duty to discuss them with him. She sits on his desk, her perfume distracting him - her whole presence distracting him. He listens to perhaps a quarter of what she says--
“--and I think they were kissing. Which is - uh, I mean, not a peck on the cheek. Weren’t they both married? I mean, his hand was--“
He spits out his coffee. Maybe he’s listening to the wrong quarter.
Of course, now she’s suggested it, he’s looking for it, measuring how long their looks last, their expressions, pauses in steps to turn towards each other. Vecchio brings Kowalski coffee, and a bag of candy. Kowalski watches him intently in interrogations, lets him go silent and withdrawn. He sees something like tenderness. Francesca watches him watching, lips curving into a smile. They are conspirators now - she’s dragged him into it.
On Tuesday night, Vecchio stays late. He doesn’t ask why.
“Kowalski thinks it’s Donnelly, and it’s all about drugs,” Vecchio says suddenly, looking down at the file. Double homicide, on the wrong side of town. Two kids - barely twenty. Juveniles, kids you’d cross the street to avoid. Some cops don’t worry about those cases. They’re the cops from the right streets, the right families. The families who aren’t second, third generation immigrants, with surnames that are easy to pronounce. Those cops don’t last long in the poorer precincts. “It’s one of his hunches. Won’t say why.”
Welsh sips his tea, looks across at Vecchio, expression carefully giving nothing away. “No previous for dealing, though. Last one was for hotwiring a car, before that it was shoplifting, mugging, three cases of assault. Small stuff. Donnelly’s big time.”
“I believe him.”
“Any reason?”
Vecchio holds his gaze. “Got a hunch.”
*
Donnelly’s into arms dealing, too. Donnelly has a warehouse downtown. Donnelly isn’t averse to shooting at detectives when they ask too many questions.
Kowalski’s getting patched up when Welsh gets to the hospital. Vecchio’s pacing, up and down. The corridor’s empty, there’s a magazine on the floor that he treads over every single time. His steps echo hollowly, fists clenched, the repeated taps followed by the crinkle of paper sounding more ominous at each turn. Welsh walks over, picks up the magazine and puts it on the chair. Everything feels fragile, as if it’s all about to come crashing down. Vecchio’s shoulders are tense, and there’s a spot of blood on the collar of his shirt. “Sit,” Welsh tells him, voice unnaturally loud in the stillness. Vecchio looks at him, a look that reminds him of the wolf, testing and pushing his right to command. Welsh returns it, waits him out. When he does sit, it’s like his strings have been cut. He stares at his hands. Welsh sits next to him, reads the front page of the magazine, over and over. When the words have stopped making sense, he puts a hand on Vecchio’s shoulder, then on the back of his neck when he slumps forward. They wait.
*
Kowalski’s kept in overnight for observation. Vecchio snarls at anyone who goes near him as he sits in the corner like a surly wounded dog. Francesca brings him coffee, stands over him until he eats his lunch, the door of Kowalski’s room closed, silence within. It feels like a wake. Welsh sits in the corridor looking calm, as he knows he must. Kowalski’s let out that afternoon, is on sick leave for a week. Vecchio visits Kowalski in the evening. The next morning, there’s a bruise just under the collar of his shirt that’s briefly visible. Welsh wishes Francesca hadn’t put the idea in his head. Someone makes a comment, uses the word ‘fag’. It might not even be directed at Vecchio, but Welsh cuts him off, gives him a chewing out that’s more satisfying than it should be (his doctor had told him to avoid yelling. He figures it’s more stress keeping quiet). It feels a little like something that’s always under the surface is there in bright neon letters, something he can’t avoid knowing about, talking about, hearing about.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Francesca stands in his doorway, a mug -- not one of those plastic cups -- of coffee in her hand. He can smell it from here, rich, bitter.
“I don’t allow that sort of language in my precinct,” he says, feeling strangely guilty for the way she smiles at him. It wasn’t for her brother that he did that; he isn’t his keeper or his mentor. He’s his lieutenant.
“I know; that’s why I wanted to thank you.” She walks over to his desk, puts the coffee down. “You aren’t sleeping,” she says, voice softer. He almost snaps at her, takes a breath of coffee.
“You’ve seen who I’m responsible for, F- Miss Vecchio,” he tells her instead. She looks tired, too. If anyone understands, it’s her.
*
He’s sitting at Vecchio’s desk when Welsh comes in, large as life, possibly even redder than before. “Sergeant,” he says as Fraser stands up, noticing with absent minded surprise that the stack of cases has been solved, as if it’s some sort of requirement for his return.
Fraser smiles. “Lieutenant Welsh, it’s a pleasure to see you.”
They shake hands. Welsh already feels slightly bemused. “Is this...an official visit?” he asks.
Fraser shifts a little. “In a manner of speaking, Lieutenant.”
“Which manner would this be?” Welsh asks, willing his blood pressure back down.
“I have asked to be assigned as a full time liaison with this precinct. I apologize for the lack of warning, but my departure from Canada was rather...precipitous.” Fraser smiles a little grimly.
Welsh’s eyebrows feel about two inches higher than they should be. “Are Detectives Kowalski and Vecchio aware of this career change, Sergeant?”
Fraser coughs a little. Welsh is still shaking his head when he closes the door to his office.
Three phone calls later, and Welsh is unsure which of the international incidents Sergeant Fraser triggered caused his departure from Canada, but the glib phrases about dedicated service, modern policing and ‘last of his breed’ told him more than he wanted to know. He feels angry, suddenly, for a man unbending in his desire to do good, and only good. The paperwork is finalized, sped through with the haste an overly patient tone of voice can create. His ulcer threatens again, a phantom twinge. He really didn’t sign up for this.
He misses Kowalski and Vecchio’s reunion with Fraser, but sees Francesca greet him warmly, kiss him on both cheeks with a sisterly smile and genuine pleasure without yearning. Kowalski prowls around Fraser for the next few days, circling like a twitchy stray cat.
Francesca bends his ear as she sits on his desk, swinging her legs back and forth. “I mean, it’d be fine if Ray -- Ray Kowalski -- kissed Benton. It worked with my brother, stopped them fighting so much - well, stopped them punching each other.”
He’s not getting involved. “But surely your brother-”
“My brother needs to kiss Benton, too.”
He nods. That makes sense - oh, Christ. Now he’s thinking like her. “No.”
She frowns. “No to what?”
“We are not playing matchmakers, Miss Vecchio.”
She snorts. “Those three don’t need matchmakers. Give it a week,” she tells him, patting his shoulder, then breezing out. He’s...accustomed to her, now. While he doesn’t seek out her face in the bullpen, he notices when it isn’t there. It’s familiarity more than fondness, the comfort of sometime conspiracy, of mutual understanding, and leaving some things unsaid. He would miss her if she wasn’t there.
*
Kowalski’s slouching in the corridor when he switches off the lights, locking the doors as he goes. He falls into step with Welsh. “Why’s Fraser here?” he asks, without preamble.
Welsh looks at him. “I don’t gossip, detective.”
Kowalski shrugs. “Game of pool?” he says, seeming unconcerned -- he is unconcerned; Welsh knows every damn one of those tells -- bouncing on his toes a little.
“You any better?” he asks him, gaze level.
Kowalski grins his sharp wolf-grin. “Guess we’ll find out.”
Kowalski has improved, but Welsh still wins three, only losing one by sinking the white straight after the black. They don’t really talk - it’s more concentrating, the occasional few words of praise or commiseration. He prefers pool to snooker or billiards - it’s simpler, fewer rules. Provided you name the pocket you’ll get the black into, provided you do what you say you will, then skill is all there is to it. Blind luck can only get you so far.
“Vecchio doesn’t play pool,” Kowalski says, chalking his cue. “Why is that?”
Metcalfe. His pa. Welsh shrugs. “I’m not the man’s shrink, Kowalski. You ask him yourself.”
And Sergeant Fraser about Canada, and why he hardly mentions his pa, and how he’s coping with his mom being murdered, and why he’s so damn scared of women, and stands so straight and stiff all the time then laughs at the kind of jokes that you read on bubblegum wrappers.
“And Fraser- I’d have stayed with him in that shack, if he’d asked, out in the asscrack of nowhere. I told him I’d eat his dumb food like it was a bet, and I’d get to stay if I won it. He suggested moose stew, but pemmican was the first thing I thought of, because it’s really gross, and would prove it, make him want me around. He never did. I guess I didn’t wanna set myself up for another six year fall. I was a coward.”
“Most of us are, Kowalski. Sometimes it makes us scum, sometimes it makes us human. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need at least five hours of sleep, or the vein in my temple starts throbbing.” He points to the top left corner, sends the white gently along the cushion, nudging the black in, and places his cue on the table. He leaves Kowalski mapping out the path of the ball, scratching the back of his neck a little.
*
It takes four days. Francesca lets herself into his office while he’s resting his eyes. “Harding, Harding, are you awake?”
“Miss Vecchio, I am always awake,” he says, opening his eyes and straightening up. She’s practically bouncing with excitement.
“They’re - you know - I mean, they’re--” she waggles her fingers, a gesture that looks suspiciously like a magic spell, then does it again more vigorously at his look of confusion. “They’re together. They came in the same car, and Benton was sort of rumpled, and Ray winked! He never does that!”
“Oh, I’ll sign the card when it comes around shall I, Miss Vecchio?”
She’d been hoping for this. Been invested in it-well, she’s his sister after all. She wants them all to be happy, but it doesn’t turn fine with the first kiss, or the first night. It’s not a fairytale after that. Francesca’s face doesn’t fall at all at his lack of enthusiasm; she just walks round his desk, perches on it and beams down at him. “I know it isn’t just ‘poof! All problems gone!’ when something nice happens. I’ve known that for years -- pa taught me that, and it was the one useful thing I learned from him. But...it’s a good thing, right? A good thing happening to good people. It doesn’t take a handsome prince on a white horse and fireworks to make things happy. Sometimes it can be normal.”
He looks over to the desk, where all three men are standing, looking down at a newspaper clipping. Kowalski’s hand is on the desk; Fraser’s half an inch away from it. Vecchio’s talking, animated as ever, but when Fraser answers, he smiles at him with such tenderness that Welsh can’t watch them anymore. He nods, looking up at her. Slowly, he smiles. “You’re right, Francesca.” It isn’t a fairytale. It doesn’t need to be. He has more than enough disturbances in his bullpen without white horses and knights. He has enough trouble with submarines and gold bullion. “But I don’t think those three will ever be normal.”
END
**
Now you've finished reading, please take a moment to vote on this story in our poll here.
Poll Vote for this story
Author: llassah
Team: Reality
Prompt: "Pemmican was the first thing I thought of"
Pairing(s): Fraser/Vecchio/Kowalski, the beginnings of Welsh/Frannie
Rating: G
Word count: 3,100
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: Thank you to teaphile and andeincascade for wonderful betas, and the rest of team reality for cheerleading and general awesomeness.
Summary: Welsh watches, and waits for his detectives to come home.
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Genre information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
Vecchio’s the first to return. He stands next to his old desk, looks across the dark bullpen to where Welsh leans against his office doorframe. Both men are silent. Welsh has been in this situation with other officers, that silence where comfort is neither sought nor offered, where his role is merely to watch, to acknowledge. The precinct after dark is a time of crisis, of doubts.
“My desk,” Vecchio begins, body turned a little to the door.
“Your desk.”
There are files on there, low level cases - petty crimes or strange ones only Canadians seem able to solve. He’d put them there over the weeks and months, something he did in secret, without a word to his other officers. Miss Vecchio had sometimes added other information, other leads, slipping newspaper articles into the files when she thought he wasn’t looking. It was a vigil of sorts.
Vecchio opens the top file, leafs through it idly. Welsh goes to his office, bypasses the whisky and starts preparing two mugs of tea (it was the Mountie’s fault he drank it at all; he keeps the stash hidden). They’d done this when Vecchio’s deadbeat father had wrapped his car around a tree (open verdict, a favor from the coroner), with Angie, after the Metcalfe case, then for the last time when the Feds had made their offer. They sit at Vecchio’s desk, sipping tea and discussing a case that no one else has shown an interest in, a small case, important to only a few people, ignored in a twilight world of murder, rape, drug crime. When it gets too late -- early -- they drive to his house. Vecchio takes the couch. They drive in again the next morning. Vecchio walks to his desk like nothing’s different. No one seems to want to say how different it is.
*
“I just - I thought it would work. That it’d all be okay, you know, like some sort of fairy tale.” She stands there, hands clasped in front of her, chin jutted out, a mixture of defiance and sadness.
The realization that he has no idea what to say to her, how to tell her why her brother will never have anything like a fairy tale makes him feel old and more jaded than he’s ever wanted to be. “Miss Vecchio, eventually a man gets bored of bowling.”
“I wanted him to - to get old, bowling. To be, uh, bowling somewhere safe, for the rest of his life.”
He can’t comfort her, but maybe she doesn’t need it. “There’s always baseball,” he tells her instead, keeping his face deadpan. The laugh is startled out of her, a little. Her eyes light up. He’s too damn old for this, too. She leaves his office with her back straight. He smiles when he’s sure no one is looking.
*
He had pulled strings to get Vecchio’s early retirement rescinded, pissing off quite a few of the top brass, not to mention the feds. Undercover officers were loose cannons, drifting from assignment to assignment, seeing shrink after shrink after the job was over, keeping themselves together until something went wrong, until they looked in the mirror and couldn’t see themselves any more. That golden bullet had taken Vecchio out of their hands - early retirement had relieved them of their duty to him. Now, he’s back, working. Now, he’s their problem again.
Vecchio works without a partner, because before Fraser he always had. He’d always been too abrasive, too nervy, but now the air of still menace has stayed with him, a habit of staring that unnerves where he used to annoy. He works alone, and by his own rules. Welsh doesn’t - he trusts him, but doesn’t want to know what he does to get results. Sometimes, his gut tells him to wait in the bullpen, and he and Vecchio drink tea, not talking about what has gotten him so wound up. One time, he offers him whisky. Vecchio refuses. Test passed.
*
Seven of the cases on Vecchio’s desk have been solved when Kowalski returns, in the lull on a Friday afternoon, where all anyone’s doing is shuffling files from one side of the desk to the other. It’s hot, but he’s wearing a leather jacket, walking like he’s a teenager, with an arrogance and a slouch to him. Welsh suddenly has the irrational urge to straighten his shirt, ask if he’s eaten recently. He’s blocking the entrance of the bullpen, but Kowalski doesn’t stop walking until he’s three paces away.
“You got over your mono, then?”
Kowalski blinks.
“Well, I can’t think of any other reason as to why you would be taking three months leave, Kowalski. These viruses, difficult to shake. Had it once, when I was fifteen. Caught it off-“He stops abruptly. Perhaps that isn’t strictly relevant, and Kowalski looks like he’s got the point. He clears his throat, musters an expression of ill health with imminent recovery, shifts from one foot to the other. “I got a job?”
His ulcer had cleared up just fine. Now, he feels a twinge. Just a twinge, but still. “As far as I am aware, Kowalski,” he rumbles, weighting every word, “you have always had a job. You have merely been, ah-“
“Ill,” Kowalski supplies. Then he winks. Another twinge.
“Another thing, Kowalski,” he says, a grim sort of pleasure making him relish his words. “You’ll be partnered with Vecchio. You’ve got a lot to talk about.”
To his credit, he doesn’t actually start laughing until Kowalski’s out of earshot.
*
By the end of the second day, Vecchio has a split lip, Kowalski’s knuckles are bruised and the side of his face is grazed. Miss Vecchio’s delivering an impressive lecture in the middle of the bullpen, looking for all the world like a mother chastising two schoolboys. He makes sure both men can see him watching as they seem to shrink into themselves, cowed by a woman a head shorter than them, wearing heels that, for some reason, are the exact same color as her lipstick. He’d actually be more worried if they were getting along.
It takes three more cases, but both men relax. Vecchio’s expression at rest contains less menace, and Kowalski doesn’t look like he’d fight a fire hydrant if he thought it had sassed him. Neither of them talk about Fraser, which says all it needs to. From behind his desk, he watches, sometimes so they know, sometimes unseen. Francesca watches, too. At some point, she decided that she had a duty to discuss them with him. She sits on his desk, her perfume distracting him - her whole presence distracting him. He listens to perhaps a quarter of what she says--
“--and I think they were kissing. Which is - uh, I mean, not a peck on the cheek. Weren’t they both married? I mean, his hand was--“
He spits out his coffee. Maybe he’s listening to the wrong quarter.
Of course, now she’s suggested it, he’s looking for it, measuring how long their looks last, their expressions, pauses in steps to turn towards each other. Vecchio brings Kowalski coffee, and a bag of candy. Kowalski watches him intently in interrogations, lets him go silent and withdrawn. He sees something like tenderness. Francesca watches him watching, lips curving into a smile. They are conspirators now - she’s dragged him into it.
On Tuesday night, Vecchio stays late. He doesn’t ask why.
“Kowalski thinks it’s Donnelly, and it’s all about drugs,” Vecchio says suddenly, looking down at the file. Double homicide, on the wrong side of town. Two kids - barely twenty. Juveniles, kids you’d cross the street to avoid. Some cops don’t worry about those cases. They’re the cops from the right streets, the right families. The families who aren’t second, third generation immigrants, with surnames that are easy to pronounce. Those cops don’t last long in the poorer precincts. “It’s one of his hunches. Won’t say why.”
Welsh sips his tea, looks across at Vecchio, expression carefully giving nothing away. “No previous for dealing, though. Last one was for hotwiring a car, before that it was shoplifting, mugging, three cases of assault. Small stuff. Donnelly’s big time.”
“I believe him.”
“Any reason?”
Vecchio holds his gaze. “Got a hunch.”
*
Donnelly’s into arms dealing, too. Donnelly has a warehouse downtown. Donnelly isn’t averse to shooting at detectives when they ask too many questions.
Kowalski’s getting patched up when Welsh gets to the hospital. Vecchio’s pacing, up and down. The corridor’s empty, there’s a magazine on the floor that he treads over every single time. His steps echo hollowly, fists clenched, the repeated taps followed by the crinkle of paper sounding more ominous at each turn. Welsh walks over, picks up the magazine and puts it on the chair. Everything feels fragile, as if it’s all about to come crashing down. Vecchio’s shoulders are tense, and there’s a spot of blood on the collar of his shirt. “Sit,” Welsh tells him, voice unnaturally loud in the stillness. Vecchio looks at him, a look that reminds him of the wolf, testing and pushing his right to command. Welsh returns it, waits him out. When he does sit, it’s like his strings have been cut. He stares at his hands. Welsh sits next to him, reads the front page of the magazine, over and over. When the words have stopped making sense, he puts a hand on Vecchio’s shoulder, then on the back of his neck when he slumps forward. They wait.
*
Kowalski’s kept in overnight for observation. Vecchio snarls at anyone who goes near him as he sits in the corner like a surly wounded dog. Francesca brings him coffee, stands over him until he eats his lunch, the door of Kowalski’s room closed, silence within. It feels like a wake. Welsh sits in the corridor looking calm, as he knows he must. Kowalski’s let out that afternoon, is on sick leave for a week. Vecchio visits Kowalski in the evening. The next morning, there’s a bruise just under the collar of his shirt that’s briefly visible. Welsh wishes Francesca hadn’t put the idea in his head. Someone makes a comment, uses the word ‘fag’. It might not even be directed at Vecchio, but Welsh cuts him off, gives him a chewing out that’s more satisfying than it should be (his doctor had told him to avoid yelling. He figures it’s more stress keeping quiet). It feels a little like something that’s always under the surface is there in bright neon letters, something he can’t avoid knowing about, talking about, hearing about.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Francesca stands in his doorway, a mug -- not one of those plastic cups -- of coffee in her hand. He can smell it from here, rich, bitter.
“I don’t allow that sort of language in my precinct,” he says, feeling strangely guilty for the way she smiles at him. It wasn’t for her brother that he did that; he isn’t his keeper or his mentor. He’s his lieutenant.
“I know; that’s why I wanted to thank you.” She walks over to his desk, puts the coffee down. “You aren’t sleeping,” she says, voice softer. He almost snaps at her, takes a breath of coffee.
“You’ve seen who I’m responsible for, F- Miss Vecchio,” he tells her instead. She looks tired, too. If anyone understands, it’s her.
*
He’s sitting at Vecchio’s desk when Welsh comes in, large as life, possibly even redder than before. “Sergeant,” he says as Fraser stands up, noticing with absent minded surprise that the stack of cases has been solved, as if it’s some sort of requirement for his return.
Fraser smiles. “Lieutenant Welsh, it’s a pleasure to see you.”
They shake hands. Welsh already feels slightly bemused. “Is this...an official visit?” he asks.
Fraser shifts a little. “In a manner of speaking, Lieutenant.”
“Which manner would this be?” Welsh asks, willing his blood pressure back down.
“I have asked to be assigned as a full time liaison with this precinct. I apologize for the lack of warning, but my departure from Canada was rather...precipitous.” Fraser smiles a little grimly.
Welsh’s eyebrows feel about two inches higher than they should be. “Are Detectives Kowalski and Vecchio aware of this career change, Sergeant?”
Fraser coughs a little. Welsh is still shaking his head when he closes the door to his office.
Three phone calls later, and Welsh is unsure which of the international incidents Sergeant Fraser triggered caused his departure from Canada, but the glib phrases about dedicated service, modern policing and ‘last of his breed’ told him more than he wanted to know. He feels angry, suddenly, for a man unbending in his desire to do good, and only good. The paperwork is finalized, sped through with the haste an overly patient tone of voice can create. His ulcer threatens again, a phantom twinge. He really didn’t sign up for this.
He misses Kowalski and Vecchio’s reunion with Fraser, but sees Francesca greet him warmly, kiss him on both cheeks with a sisterly smile and genuine pleasure without yearning. Kowalski prowls around Fraser for the next few days, circling like a twitchy stray cat.
Francesca bends his ear as she sits on his desk, swinging her legs back and forth. “I mean, it’d be fine if Ray -- Ray Kowalski -- kissed Benton. It worked with my brother, stopped them fighting so much - well, stopped them punching each other.”
He’s not getting involved. “But surely your brother-”
“My brother needs to kiss Benton, too.”
He nods. That makes sense - oh, Christ. Now he’s thinking like her. “No.”
She frowns. “No to what?”
“We are not playing matchmakers, Miss Vecchio.”
She snorts. “Those three don’t need matchmakers. Give it a week,” she tells him, patting his shoulder, then breezing out. He’s...accustomed to her, now. While he doesn’t seek out her face in the bullpen, he notices when it isn’t there. It’s familiarity more than fondness, the comfort of sometime conspiracy, of mutual understanding, and leaving some things unsaid. He would miss her if she wasn’t there.
*
Kowalski’s slouching in the corridor when he switches off the lights, locking the doors as he goes. He falls into step with Welsh. “Why’s Fraser here?” he asks, without preamble.
Welsh looks at him. “I don’t gossip, detective.”
Kowalski shrugs. “Game of pool?” he says, seeming unconcerned -- he is unconcerned; Welsh knows every damn one of those tells -- bouncing on his toes a little.
“You any better?” he asks him, gaze level.
Kowalski grins his sharp wolf-grin. “Guess we’ll find out.”
Kowalski has improved, but Welsh still wins three, only losing one by sinking the white straight after the black. They don’t really talk - it’s more concentrating, the occasional few words of praise or commiseration. He prefers pool to snooker or billiards - it’s simpler, fewer rules. Provided you name the pocket you’ll get the black into, provided you do what you say you will, then skill is all there is to it. Blind luck can only get you so far.
“Vecchio doesn’t play pool,” Kowalski says, chalking his cue. “Why is that?”
Metcalfe. His pa. Welsh shrugs. “I’m not the man’s shrink, Kowalski. You ask him yourself.”
And Sergeant Fraser about Canada, and why he hardly mentions his pa, and how he’s coping with his mom being murdered, and why he’s so damn scared of women, and stands so straight and stiff all the time then laughs at the kind of jokes that you read on bubblegum wrappers.
“And Fraser- I’d have stayed with him in that shack, if he’d asked, out in the asscrack of nowhere. I told him I’d eat his dumb food like it was a bet, and I’d get to stay if I won it. He suggested moose stew, but pemmican was the first thing I thought of, because it’s really gross, and would prove it, make him want me around. He never did. I guess I didn’t wanna set myself up for another six year fall. I was a coward.”
“Most of us are, Kowalski. Sometimes it makes us scum, sometimes it makes us human. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need at least five hours of sleep, or the vein in my temple starts throbbing.” He points to the top left corner, sends the white gently along the cushion, nudging the black in, and places his cue on the table. He leaves Kowalski mapping out the path of the ball, scratching the back of his neck a little.
*
It takes four days. Francesca lets herself into his office while he’s resting his eyes. “Harding, Harding, are you awake?”
“Miss Vecchio, I am always awake,” he says, opening his eyes and straightening up. She’s practically bouncing with excitement.
“They’re - you know - I mean, they’re--” she waggles her fingers, a gesture that looks suspiciously like a magic spell, then does it again more vigorously at his look of confusion. “They’re together. They came in the same car, and Benton was sort of rumpled, and Ray winked! He never does that!”
“Oh, I’ll sign the card when it comes around shall I, Miss Vecchio?”
She’d been hoping for this. Been invested in it-well, she’s his sister after all. She wants them all to be happy, but it doesn’t turn fine with the first kiss, or the first night. It’s not a fairytale after that. Francesca’s face doesn’t fall at all at his lack of enthusiasm; she just walks round his desk, perches on it and beams down at him. “I know it isn’t just ‘poof! All problems gone!’ when something nice happens. I’ve known that for years -- pa taught me that, and it was the one useful thing I learned from him. But...it’s a good thing, right? A good thing happening to good people. It doesn’t take a handsome prince on a white horse and fireworks to make things happy. Sometimes it can be normal.”
He looks over to the desk, where all three men are standing, looking down at a newspaper clipping. Kowalski’s hand is on the desk; Fraser’s half an inch away from it. Vecchio’s talking, animated as ever, but when Fraser answers, he smiles at him with such tenderness that Welsh can’t watch them anymore. He nods, looking up at her. Slowly, he smiles. “You’re right, Francesca.” It isn’t a fairytale. It doesn’t need to be. He has more than enough disturbances in his bullpen without white horses and knights. He has enough trouble with submarines and gold bullion. “But I don’t think those three will ever be normal.”
END
**
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