Behind Closed Doors

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

This may be predictable, but it amuses me anyway, so here goes.

Behind Closed Doors


Not long after dawn, the morning after he invited Fraser to move in with him, Ray was awakened by weird sounds coming from his hall closet. Knocking. Banging. A low repeated whine that sounded suspiciously like sawing.

At the time, it didn't occur to him that the noises and the invitation to cohabitate were related. This was the city, so it wasn't like an animal could've gotten trapped in there. Seemed like it had to be a person. But how had whoever-it-was broken in, and why was he in the closet with the winter coats and the old hockey gear? Was it a homeless guy? Some kind of drug addict? Someone Ray (or, worse, Vecchio) had put behind bars who was out now and desperate for revenge?

Ray grabbed his gun and advanced towards the closet door, slowly, wishing he'd had time for coffee before trying to deal with some fucked-up fugitive. He grabbed the door handle and yanked it open, shouting, "Police!"

And blinked. Confused. Because inside his closet door was a kindly-looking white-haired guy in paint-spattered Carhartt's and a river-driver shirt, standing over a pair of sawhorses. Behind the guy was the frame of a small shack. There was a whole landscape, for God's sake, dry fall grasses and tall skinny pine trees and a cloudless sky.

"There's no need for police here, son," the man said. "You've got a Mountie under your roof now."

"Uh," Ray said, feeling like he was missing something. Like maybe his brain.

The man chuckled. "Soon enough you'll have two. Caroline always said two was more'n enough."

Closet guy seemed to be waiting for a response. Ray managed a "Right," as if that explained everything. Who the hell was Caroline? For that matter, who was the old guy in his closet?

The man nodded his head toward the hinges. "Mind closing the door? You're letting out a bit of a draft."

The sawdust, Ray noticed, was blowing into his apartment. "Sure thing," he said, and closed the closet door.

He looked down at the dust and wood shavings which absolutely did not belong in his apartment, and decided this was some kind of temporary weirdness. It was projection, that was it. Subconsciously he was freaked-out about committing to Fraser, committing himself to Fraser, the whole two-people-under-one-roof thing, so he was fabricating imaginary men in his closets.

Men in his closets. Heh. That was a good one. Subtle, right? His therapist would be laughing all the way to the bank, if he had one. A therapist. Or a bank, for that matter.

Or a brain.

It was way too early to be awake.

Ray walked into the kitchen, put the gun down, stared blankly at the coffee pot, and decided to go back to bed.

He burrowed back under the covers. He could still faintly hear the sound of hammering, which maybe wasn't a good sign for his sanity. Just for good measure, he got back up and closed his bedroom door, too...

(500 words)