On the anniversary of Malnpudl...
...there is Birthday Fic! Woot! I wish you a Very Happy Birthday, and hope you enjoy! \o/
Title: Then I Got On This Bus, But I Left My Luggage At The Station
Author: Brigantine
Pairing: F/K
Rating: PG
Length: 2659
Disclaimer: Not characters of my own creation - I'm merely inviting the boys over for Mal's Birthday Party.
Summary: After "A Likely Story," Fraser makes an observation, Ray gets thinky, and Dief swears. Not necessarily in that order.
A/N: Mal, I TRIED to write hot, sticky, established-relationship smut, but it just would not turn out properly, so I had to scrap it. Taking advantage of my frustration, Dief talked me into playing instead with a charming little moment from "A Likely Story." meresy's "stealthy" icon may have had something to do with it.
###################
Ray buttons, flushes, and washes his hands, checking himself over in the mirror above the sink in the consulate restroom. He looks about as worn out as he feels. It's been a long couple of days, and it's really late, or really early, depending on which end of the time-scope he's looking through. Nice old Mr. Tucci murdered, his ailing wife widowed a week before their fortieth anniversary, and then Ray and Fraser find out the Tuccis' wayward son is dead. Man that sucks. That is a whole list of suckage, right there. Ray did manage to catch the interest of a beautiful woman during the investigation, but of course he lost it again in like hours, shot down in flames when he jumped to one of his usual stupid conclusions. Way to go, Kowalski, nothing makes a girl feel special like an accusation of conspiracy to commit homicide.
Fraser took him back to the park and told him a story to help make him feel better. Completely bizarre story, involving a cannibal, a princess, and chokecherry tarts. Why would anybody want to eat something that starts with the word 'choke'? Still, the Mountie's heart was in the right place, which is what matters, Ray figures. It's funny, but now that he thinks about it, Ray doesn't feel as bad about Luanne shutting him out as he thought he would. Lately he gets the feeling something in his brain has shifted, something that's been weighing him down for a long time. He's not sure what phantom baggage he might have been carrying, aside from the usual stuff with Stella's initials monogrammed onto it, but whatever it was, it's a relief to unload it.
Fraser's in the kitchen, futzing around making tea. God knows what's in it; roots, pine cones, rocks. It's after-midnight quiet in the consulate with just Ray, Dief, and Fraser here. Fraser's relaxed down to his Henley and his goofy suspenders. Hell, he even took his boots off. Hedonist. Heh.
Ray is just about to the kitchen when he hears Fraser arguing. With whom, Ray can only guess, but he's gotten used to the weirdness.
"For heaven's sake, I can't tell him that!"
Dief does one of his little wolf-warbles, and Fraser squeaks, "Good lord, are you unhinged? I can't possibly tell him that, either! It's worse than the first! Such a revelation would prove disastrous! It would ruin--"
Ray steps into the kitchen. "What's a disastrous revelation?"
Fraser starts guiltily, "Nothing!"
Uh-huh. Move along, move along, nothing to see here, ignore the Mountie behind the curtain.
Dief grumbles pointedly - and was that an annoyed snort? Oh, yeah.
"Wolf says otherwise," Ray interprets, "and y'know Fraser, when I start understanding the wolf, that is just unsettling." As the kettle begins to burble he reaches up into the cupboard, looking for cookies to go with the tea. He'd prefer coffee, but hey, if it cheers Fraser up, then tea it is.
The Mountie's been tetchy since the Park Services security guys made them put out their camp fire and gave Fraser, of all people, a lecture on public safety. Fine time for them to start getting serious, after Mr. Tucci is dead. Officious morons. Hm. Officious. He'll have to spring that one on Fraser in a sentence one of these days. That wordy sort of stuff really seems to turn his crank.
Okay, where'd that come from, the crank-turning thing, the part where Ray is even contemplating turning Fraser's crank?
"...anything in particular, anything important," Fraser is insisting. He scrubs at one eyebrow, and glances sideways at Diefenbaker, as though daring him to contradict.
Ray decides that the word of the evening here is 'discombobulated,' with which he is personally fine, but when applied to the Mountie, that means something's going on that Ray should know about. "Don't bullshit me, Fraser. What can't you tell me?" He's pretty sure it's got zip to do with beautiful princesses taming people-eating ogres.
Fraser draws himself up and feints, "Who says we were referring to you?"
Ray snorts dismissively. "Who else is here? And if it wasn't about me, then you'd tell me. Kettle's yelling, you gonna get that? Now quit sidewinding, and tell me what's going on."
Fraser turns off the stove burner and pours the boiling water into a dark brown tea pot. His mouth is clamped shut like a bulldog on a postman's ankle.
"Hey, you got a Brown Betty." Ray redirects toward what he's hoping will turn out to be a workable Plan B.
"What?" Fraser splashes hot water over the counter and onto his uniform pants, jumping back with a startled squawk.
Ray eyes him calculatingly. "Skittish, much? That tea pot there. My grandma had one just like it. Called it a Brown Betty." He pulls the milk out of the fridge, baiting, "I have no idea why."
Fraser wipes up the mess on the counter. "Er, yes, well, I don't know precisely how the 'Brown Betty' received its common name, but that particular style of tea pot was first manufactured from unglazed red clay during the late sixteen-hundreds..."
As they settle at the kitchen table Ray wonders how Fraser's going to fit caribou or polar bears or possibly princesses into a story about round brown tea pots - okay, he can see where a princess could come in, but caribou? Ray doesn't think so. Wolverines, maybe.
"..and they are to this day still manufactured by the Crown Clarence Works in Staffordshire, England." Fraser smiles, "The simple pleasure of a pot of tea is a very old tradition, Ray, at once soothing and invigorating."
Ray rustles a ginger cookie from the package and sneaks it to Dief, who crunches it discreetly under the table. "That's a nice little antidote there, Benton--"
"Ah, that's anecdote, Ray."
"Right, of course," Ray agrees calmly. "So now that we're back to telling stories, what is it that you're avoiding telling me?"
Fraser startles for a second, then his face clouds over again with that grumpy expression he gets when he's been out-maneuvered, or when anyone makes a crack about the Queen. "Ray, I really don't understand why you seem to think it's so important."
"If it's not important, then why can't you tell me?" Take that, Mister Smarty Puffy-pants.
Fraser scowls at the tabletop for a while. His fingers drum a few beats, and then he appears to come to a decision. He begins, as though he's lecturing on bicycle safety, "Last night, when we were bedding down in Mrs. Tucci's back yard..."
Ray slurps carefully at his hot tea, thinking that tradition is great and all, but he really needs to get Benton to start appreciating the higher caffeine tradition that is coffee. "Uh-huh..."
"...and you climbed over the fence--though why you didn't just come through the gate I don't understand, it wasn't locked--"
"Fraser."
Fraser clears his throat, and jerks his head sideways, the crackle of his cervical vertebrae echoing in the quiet. "Right. Last night, when you climbed over Mrs. Tucci's fence, I thought, we thought..." He shakes his head and does that hand-wave thing, "You know, it was very dark, anyway--"
Diefenbaker groans from under the table, and Ray prods, "Jeez Fraser, we're not talking national security here, spit it out, would ya?"
"Fine." Fraser rushes irritably, "Last night when you were climbing over the back fence you reminded Diefenbaker markedly of a raccoon kit."
Dief barks and scrambles out from under the table, glaring accusingly at Fraser, who glares back, "You did too! You--well, you agreed with me! And I wasn't even going to say anything until you nagged me into it, I--don't you take that tone with me!"
Diefenbaker whirls and trots out of the kitchen, tail waving high, and that's a "Fuck you," if Ray's ever translated one.
"I looked like a baby raccoon to you? Honest to God, Fraser, I don't know whether to think that's cute, or smack you in the head."
"Haven't you ever watched a young raccoon struggling head-first down a tree trunk? There's something almost heroic in the effort." Fraser waxes poetical, his hands illustrating in the air, "There's the little fellow, young and inexperienced, battling the forces of gravity..." Suddenly he giggles, and then he can't seem to stop, and he sits there grinning at Ray and snickering into his tea. "I'm sorry, I'm really very sorry, Ray!"
"I hate you," Ray declares flatly.
Fraser sighs, "You see, that's why I didn't want to tell you. I knew you'd be angry with me, and it's just..." Fraser wipes at the corner of one eye. "It was merely an amusing observation, and I truly didn't intend to hurt your feelings. Please forgive me?"
Ray glowers, but he hasn't got the energy necessary to keep a grudge going. He shrugs, "Yeah, well, there y'are, right? Gorgeous blondes do not hook up with guys who go around looking like baby raccoons."
Fraser's face darkens suddenly, all the silliness drained right out of him, which is, wow, that's a loss right there. Instead, Ray can just about feel the disapproval coming off him, though he can tell that none of it's directed his way. "What? What's wrong?"
Fraser scowls down at the table top as though it's done something un-Canadian, and then he blurts out, "Luanne Russell treated you badly. At the end, I mean. She was unconscionably rude!"
"I accused her of being an accomplice to murder, Fraser. That tends to peeve people."
Fraser shakes his head, arguing, "You had reason to suspect her, Ray! She has a past record of breaking the law, and the evidence, circumstantial though it may have been, was nevertheless compelling. She should have forgiven you your error!"
Ray reminds him, "Fraser, even you warned me that just 'cause she'd done wrong in the past, that didn't mean she was doing wrong now. Or then. You know what I mean." He rubs at his face. That spaghetti they roasted over an open fire is sitting in his stomach like a big blob of fire-roasted glue. Man, he could really go for some of Mrs. Li's snow peas and lotus root.
"I understand," Fraser agrees doggedly, "but the fact remains that she did have a police record for fraud, and the circumstances were such that she might logically be implicated. You were right to consider her as a possible suspect. She should have seen that, should have--of all people, she should have been willing to, to cut you some slack!" He sets his mug down hard and glowers across the table at Ray, that little furrow he gets between his eyes furrowing something fierce.
Fraser can deny it all day, but Ray always knows when the Mountie's got his shorts in a bind. It was just a matter of wheedling the reason out of him. Ray digs a little. "Ben?"
Fraser straightens his shoulders and swallows a few times, like maybe that spaghetti isn't sitting any too good with him, either. "I was jealous," he admits.
Now that, Ray can understand. "Yeah, maybe she was impolite, but she's a beautiful woman, Fraser my friend. I don't blame you if you wanted to take a chance." Although if he's honest with himself, Ray doesn't think she's good enough for Fraser.
Wait, what does that mean? What does it mean that he's thinking stuff like that? That he's been thinking stuff like that for a while now? Ack!
Fraser's voice drops, "She wasn't the one I was jealous of."
Ray twitches. "Pardon?" Jealous not over Luanne? There are a lot of shiny new thoughts running around inside his head tonight, and Ray really needs for them to quit it, so he can get a good look at them. He's pretty sure they're clues.
Fraser licks his lip, and stares down into his mug. "It was you I was jealous of. Not her."
It takes a while for this to percolate through the jumble of Ray's distracted brain, but he's not a detective for nothing. He clarifies, "So... it wasn't that you didn't want me to go after her, it was that you didn't want her to come after me."
Fraser's still talking to his tea. "Yep."
The butterflies in Ray's stomach start turning into helicopters. Whomp whomp whomp. He's feeling a little asphyxiated. "Because I'm your partner?"
Fraser shakes his head. "Nope."
Holy cow. There. Yes. That's the final piece, right there, the little Mountie-shaped piece exactly in the center of the puzzle Ray's been trying to figure out.
Ray is free.
Luanne Russell might be as pretty as a heroine in a romance novel, and Ray's Stella, well, she'll always be his Stella, but for practical purposes, these days Ray has just been going through the motions, and the sudden weightlessness of letting go of what he has for years felt obliged to cling to, to pursue, that is the source of the peculiar feeling he's been feeling. Or whatever. 'Sword of Desire,' indeed.
Opposite Ray, Fraser is still staring into his tea mug, but he's sitting up very straight, shoulders back, as though he's expecting to get hurt, and he's setting himself to take it like a man. Ray mentally kicks himself for being so damn slow, but this is a new thing for the both of them, and he needed to think it through. Hell, he still needs to think it through, but there isn't time right now. He's got to handle this moment exactly right or they're both screwed, and not in the fun way.
Ray asks Fraser gently, "Is this the other thing Dief wanted you to tell me that you didn't think you could?"
Fraser nods, looking miserable and fragile, and that is just wrong. Partners do not let partners sit there looking gutted. That's a Kowalski rule, no matter whose name he's wearing at the moment. There are things this man needs to know, like, yesterday. Of course, Ray just figured it out at this moment, but that's beside the point. He reaches forward, and rests his hands on top of Fraser's, where they clutch his empty tea mug so hard his knuckles have gone white.
"I don't mind, Benton."
Fraser gulps, takes a breath, and looks up at Ray. "You're not... not horrified, or disgusted?"
"I am not horrified," Ray assures him, hating the fear in Fraser's eyes. "Really, really not horrified."
"No?" Fraser perks up a little and chews thoughtfully on his lower lip. "That's welcome news, Ray. Very welcome. I--I mean, you're aware, I hope, that it isn't incumbent upon you to reciprocate. Y-you don't reciprocate, do you?"
"I kissed a guy once. In high school," Ray hints.
One corner of Fraser's mouth twitches, making him look almost hopeful. "Were you drunk?"
"Nope." Ray begins lightly rubbing his thumbs across the backs of Fraser's hands, hoping Ben will get the message. It's like leading a scared colt - not that Ray's ever led a scared colt, but he's never led a scared Mountie either, so there you go.
"Did you like it?"
"Yes I did. I even reciprocated."
Fraser frowns a little, and in his head Ray can hear the next doubt before it hits the air. "But, ah, you married Stella."
"Because I loved Stella. But I didn't ever regret the kissing thing." Ray wills Fraser to follow, here. "With my friend. My guy friend."
To his immense relief Ray sees the light go on behind those big blue eyes and the color blushes back into Fraser's face. "Oh! W-ah. Um. That being the case, would you, um, would you like to kiss me?"
Ray rises up out of his chair a little, leans forward across the table, and licks his lips nice and slow. He murmurs, "Did I really look to you like a baby raccoon?"
Fraser laughs softly, "Yeah."
And Ray feels like he doesn't weigh anything at all.
--#--
Title: Then I Got On This Bus, But I Left My Luggage At The Station
Author: Brigantine
Pairing: F/K
Rating: PG
Length: 2659
Disclaimer: Not characters of my own creation - I'm merely inviting the boys over for Mal's Birthday Party.
Summary: After "A Likely Story," Fraser makes an observation, Ray gets thinky, and Dief swears. Not necessarily in that order.
A/N: Mal, I TRIED to write hot, sticky, established-relationship smut, but it just would not turn out properly, so I had to scrap it. Taking advantage of my frustration, Dief talked me into playing instead with a charming little moment from "A Likely Story." meresy's "stealthy" icon may have had something to do with it.
###################
Ray buttons, flushes, and washes his hands, checking himself over in the mirror above the sink in the consulate restroom. He looks about as worn out as he feels. It's been a long couple of days, and it's really late, or really early, depending on which end of the time-scope he's looking through. Nice old Mr. Tucci murdered, his ailing wife widowed a week before their fortieth anniversary, and then Ray and Fraser find out the Tuccis' wayward son is dead. Man that sucks. That is a whole list of suckage, right there. Ray did manage to catch the interest of a beautiful woman during the investigation, but of course he lost it again in like hours, shot down in flames when he jumped to one of his usual stupid conclusions. Way to go, Kowalski, nothing makes a girl feel special like an accusation of conspiracy to commit homicide.
Fraser took him back to the park and told him a story to help make him feel better. Completely bizarre story, involving a cannibal, a princess, and chokecherry tarts. Why would anybody want to eat something that starts with the word 'choke'? Still, the Mountie's heart was in the right place, which is what matters, Ray figures. It's funny, but now that he thinks about it, Ray doesn't feel as bad about Luanne shutting him out as he thought he would. Lately he gets the feeling something in his brain has shifted, something that's been weighing him down for a long time. He's not sure what phantom baggage he might have been carrying, aside from the usual stuff with Stella's initials monogrammed onto it, but whatever it was, it's a relief to unload it.
Fraser's in the kitchen, futzing around making tea. God knows what's in it; roots, pine cones, rocks. It's after-midnight quiet in the consulate with just Ray, Dief, and Fraser here. Fraser's relaxed down to his Henley and his goofy suspenders. Hell, he even took his boots off. Hedonist. Heh.
Ray is just about to the kitchen when he hears Fraser arguing. With whom, Ray can only guess, but he's gotten used to the weirdness.
"For heaven's sake, I can't tell him that!"
Dief does one of his little wolf-warbles, and Fraser squeaks, "Good lord, are you unhinged? I can't possibly tell him that, either! It's worse than the first! Such a revelation would prove disastrous! It would ruin--"
Ray steps into the kitchen. "What's a disastrous revelation?"
Fraser starts guiltily, "Nothing!"
Uh-huh. Move along, move along, nothing to see here, ignore the Mountie behind the curtain.
Dief grumbles pointedly - and was that an annoyed snort? Oh, yeah.
"Wolf says otherwise," Ray interprets, "and y'know Fraser, when I start understanding the wolf, that is just unsettling." As the kettle begins to burble he reaches up into the cupboard, looking for cookies to go with the tea. He'd prefer coffee, but hey, if it cheers Fraser up, then tea it is.
The Mountie's been tetchy since the Park Services security guys made them put out their camp fire and gave Fraser, of all people, a lecture on public safety. Fine time for them to start getting serious, after Mr. Tucci is dead. Officious morons. Hm. Officious. He'll have to spring that one on Fraser in a sentence one of these days. That wordy sort of stuff really seems to turn his crank.
Okay, where'd that come from, the crank-turning thing, the part where Ray is even contemplating turning Fraser's crank?
"...anything in particular, anything important," Fraser is insisting. He scrubs at one eyebrow, and glances sideways at Diefenbaker, as though daring him to contradict.
Ray decides that the word of the evening here is 'discombobulated,' with which he is personally fine, but when applied to the Mountie, that means something's going on that Ray should know about. "Don't bullshit me, Fraser. What can't you tell me?" He's pretty sure it's got zip to do with beautiful princesses taming people-eating ogres.
Fraser draws himself up and feints, "Who says we were referring to you?"
Ray snorts dismissively. "Who else is here? And if it wasn't about me, then you'd tell me. Kettle's yelling, you gonna get that? Now quit sidewinding, and tell me what's going on."
Fraser turns off the stove burner and pours the boiling water into a dark brown tea pot. His mouth is clamped shut like a bulldog on a postman's ankle.
"Hey, you got a Brown Betty." Ray redirects toward what he's hoping will turn out to be a workable Plan B.
"What?" Fraser splashes hot water over the counter and onto his uniform pants, jumping back with a startled squawk.
Ray eyes him calculatingly. "Skittish, much? That tea pot there. My grandma had one just like it. Called it a Brown Betty." He pulls the milk out of the fridge, baiting, "I have no idea why."
Fraser wipes up the mess on the counter. "Er, yes, well, I don't know precisely how the 'Brown Betty' received its common name, but that particular style of tea pot was first manufactured from unglazed red clay during the late sixteen-hundreds..."
As they settle at the kitchen table Ray wonders how Fraser's going to fit caribou or polar bears or possibly princesses into a story about round brown tea pots - okay, he can see where a princess could come in, but caribou? Ray doesn't think so. Wolverines, maybe.
"..and they are to this day still manufactured by the Crown Clarence Works in Staffordshire, England." Fraser smiles, "The simple pleasure of a pot of tea is a very old tradition, Ray, at once soothing and invigorating."
Ray rustles a ginger cookie from the package and sneaks it to Dief, who crunches it discreetly under the table. "That's a nice little antidote there, Benton--"
"Ah, that's anecdote, Ray."
"Right, of course," Ray agrees calmly. "So now that we're back to telling stories, what is it that you're avoiding telling me?"
Fraser startles for a second, then his face clouds over again with that grumpy expression he gets when he's been out-maneuvered, or when anyone makes a crack about the Queen. "Ray, I really don't understand why you seem to think it's so important."
"If it's not important, then why can't you tell me?" Take that, Mister Smarty Puffy-pants.
Fraser scowls at the tabletop for a while. His fingers drum a few beats, and then he appears to come to a decision. He begins, as though he's lecturing on bicycle safety, "Last night, when we were bedding down in Mrs. Tucci's back yard..."
Ray slurps carefully at his hot tea, thinking that tradition is great and all, but he really needs to get Benton to start appreciating the higher caffeine tradition that is coffee. "Uh-huh..."
"...and you climbed over the fence--though why you didn't just come through the gate I don't understand, it wasn't locked--"
"Fraser."
Fraser clears his throat, and jerks his head sideways, the crackle of his cervical vertebrae echoing in the quiet. "Right. Last night, when you climbed over Mrs. Tucci's fence, I thought, we thought..." He shakes his head and does that hand-wave thing, "You know, it was very dark, anyway--"
Diefenbaker groans from under the table, and Ray prods, "Jeez Fraser, we're not talking national security here, spit it out, would ya?"
"Fine." Fraser rushes irritably, "Last night when you were climbing over the back fence you reminded Diefenbaker markedly of a raccoon kit."
Dief barks and scrambles out from under the table, glaring accusingly at Fraser, who glares back, "You did too! You--well, you agreed with me! And I wasn't even going to say anything until you nagged me into it, I--don't you take that tone with me!"
Diefenbaker whirls and trots out of the kitchen, tail waving high, and that's a "Fuck you," if Ray's ever translated one.
"I looked like a baby raccoon to you? Honest to God, Fraser, I don't know whether to think that's cute, or smack you in the head."
"Haven't you ever watched a young raccoon struggling head-first down a tree trunk? There's something almost heroic in the effort." Fraser waxes poetical, his hands illustrating in the air, "There's the little fellow, young and inexperienced, battling the forces of gravity..." Suddenly he giggles, and then he can't seem to stop, and he sits there grinning at Ray and snickering into his tea. "I'm sorry, I'm really very sorry, Ray!"
"I hate you," Ray declares flatly.
Fraser sighs, "You see, that's why I didn't want to tell you. I knew you'd be angry with me, and it's just..." Fraser wipes at the corner of one eye. "It was merely an amusing observation, and I truly didn't intend to hurt your feelings. Please forgive me?"
Ray glowers, but he hasn't got the energy necessary to keep a grudge going. He shrugs, "Yeah, well, there y'are, right? Gorgeous blondes do not hook up with guys who go around looking like baby raccoons."
Fraser's face darkens suddenly, all the silliness drained right out of him, which is, wow, that's a loss right there. Instead, Ray can just about feel the disapproval coming off him, though he can tell that none of it's directed his way. "What? What's wrong?"
Fraser scowls down at the table top as though it's done something un-Canadian, and then he blurts out, "Luanne Russell treated you badly. At the end, I mean. She was unconscionably rude!"
"I accused her of being an accomplice to murder, Fraser. That tends to peeve people."
Fraser shakes his head, arguing, "You had reason to suspect her, Ray! She has a past record of breaking the law, and the evidence, circumstantial though it may have been, was nevertheless compelling. She should have forgiven you your error!"
Ray reminds him, "Fraser, even you warned me that just 'cause she'd done wrong in the past, that didn't mean she was doing wrong now. Or then. You know what I mean." He rubs at his face. That spaghetti they roasted over an open fire is sitting in his stomach like a big blob of fire-roasted glue. Man, he could really go for some of Mrs. Li's snow peas and lotus root.
"I understand," Fraser agrees doggedly, "but the fact remains that she did have a police record for fraud, and the circumstances were such that she might logically be implicated. You were right to consider her as a possible suspect. She should have seen that, should have--of all people, she should have been willing to, to cut you some slack!" He sets his mug down hard and glowers across the table at Ray, that little furrow he gets between his eyes furrowing something fierce.
Fraser can deny it all day, but Ray always knows when the Mountie's got his shorts in a bind. It was just a matter of wheedling the reason out of him. Ray digs a little. "Ben?"
Fraser straightens his shoulders and swallows a few times, like maybe that spaghetti isn't sitting any too good with him, either. "I was jealous," he admits.
Now that, Ray can understand. "Yeah, maybe she was impolite, but she's a beautiful woman, Fraser my friend. I don't blame you if you wanted to take a chance." Although if he's honest with himself, Ray doesn't think she's good enough for Fraser.
Wait, what does that mean? What does it mean that he's thinking stuff like that? That he's been thinking stuff like that for a while now? Ack!
Fraser's voice drops, "She wasn't the one I was jealous of."
Ray twitches. "Pardon?" Jealous not over Luanne? There are a lot of shiny new thoughts running around inside his head tonight, and Ray really needs for them to quit it, so he can get a good look at them. He's pretty sure they're clues.
Fraser licks his lip, and stares down into his mug. "It was you I was jealous of. Not her."
It takes a while for this to percolate through the jumble of Ray's distracted brain, but he's not a detective for nothing. He clarifies, "So... it wasn't that you didn't want me to go after her, it was that you didn't want her to come after me."
Fraser's still talking to his tea. "Yep."
The butterflies in Ray's stomach start turning into helicopters. Whomp whomp whomp. He's feeling a little asphyxiated. "Because I'm your partner?"
Fraser shakes his head. "Nope."
Holy cow. There. Yes. That's the final piece, right there, the little Mountie-shaped piece exactly in the center of the puzzle Ray's been trying to figure out.
Ray is free.
Luanne Russell might be as pretty as a heroine in a romance novel, and Ray's Stella, well, she'll always be his Stella, but for practical purposes, these days Ray has just been going through the motions, and the sudden weightlessness of letting go of what he has for years felt obliged to cling to, to pursue, that is the source of the peculiar feeling he's been feeling. Or whatever. 'Sword of Desire,' indeed.
Opposite Ray, Fraser is still staring into his tea mug, but he's sitting up very straight, shoulders back, as though he's expecting to get hurt, and he's setting himself to take it like a man. Ray mentally kicks himself for being so damn slow, but this is a new thing for the both of them, and he needed to think it through. Hell, he still needs to think it through, but there isn't time right now. He's got to handle this moment exactly right or they're both screwed, and not in the fun way.
Ray asks Fraser gently, "Is this the other thing Dief wanted you to tell me that you didn't think you could?"
Fraser nods, looking miserable and fragile, and that is just wrong. Partners do not let partners sit there looking gutted. That's a Kowalski rule, no matter whose name he's wearing at the moment. There are things this man needs to know, like, yesterday. Of course, Ray just figured it out at this moment, but that's beside the point. He reaches forward, and rests his hands on top of Fraser's, where they clutch his empty tea mug so hard his knuckles have gone white.
"I don't mind, Benton."
Fraser gulps, takes a breath, and looks up at Ray. "You're not... not horrified, or disgusted?"
"I am not horrified," Ray assures him, hating the fear in Fraser's eyes. "Really, really not horrified."
"No?" Fraser perks up a little and chews thoughtfully on his lower lip. "That's welcome news, Ray. Very welcome. I--I mean, you're aware, I hope, that it isn't incumbent upon you to reciprocate. Y-you don't reciprocate, do you?"
"I kissed a guy once. In high school," Ray hints.
One corner of Fraser's mouth twitches, making him look almost hopeful. "Were you drunk?"
"Nope." Ray begins lightly rubbing his thumbs across the backs of Fraser's hands, hoping Ben will get the message. It's like leading a scared colt - not that Ray's ever led a scared colt, but he's never led a scared Mountie either, so there you go.
"Did you like it?"
"Yes I did. I even reciprocated."
Fraser frowns a little, and in his head Ray can hear the next doubt before it hits the air. "But, ah, you married Stella."
"Because I loved Stella. But I didn't ever regret the kissing thing." Ray wills Fraser to follow, here. "With my friend. My guy friend."
To his immense relief Ray sees the light go on behind those big blue eyes and the color blushes back into Fraser's face. "Oh! W-ah. Um. That being the case, would you, um, would you like to kiss me?"
Ray rises up out of his chair a little, leans forward across the table, and licks his lips nice and slow. He murmurs, "Did I really look to you like a baby raccoon?"
Fraser laughs softly, "Yeah."
And Ray feels like he doesn't weigh anything at all.
--#--