Recipe Challenge

[lamardeuse.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, not quite Sunday after all, but close. Sorry 'bout that.


If you missed the earlier bits, Head Trip I can be found here. From there you can go through the sections in order.






Head Trip VI: Recipe
by lamardeuse


Nuts.

Nuts.

Where the hell were the nuts? The store was so small he'd been around it six times in ten minutes, and he was starting to panic, here, because he shouldn't have assumed they had nuts in this burg--

"Can I help you, dear?"

Ray started at the sound of a voice directly behind him and thought Jeez, not more of 'em, but when he turned around he didn't see any ghosts, just a short, middle-aged lady with really orange hair.

"I, ah, yeah," Ray blundered. "You got any nuts? Like, for baking?"

"Yes, certainly," she said, pointing to a shelf right by his head. "We have walnuts and almonds. We're out of pine nuts, I'm afraid, but I'm expecting a shipment tomorrow."

"Ah, that's okay, the walnuts are great," Ray murmured, feeling his face heat as he blindly grabbed them off the shelf. Right in front of his nose, and he hadn't even seen them.

He snorted and smiled to himself. So what else was new?

The lady cocked an eyebrow at him, and his smile disappeared as he recognized the look. It was that small town I'm about to stick my nose in your shorts look.

"You're American, aren't you?"

"Uh, yeah." There, keep it simple.

"Bit early for the hunting season."

"I'm not here for the hunting."

She cast a speculative glance at his wire basket, crammed to the top with eggs, coconut, condensed milk, butter, flour, figs and brown sugar.

"Let me guess," she said, her mouth twitching. "You're here for the Queen Elizabeth squares."

Ray's mouth hung open. "How did you--"

She waved a hand. "I've only made them a hundred times, though I don't use nuts myself. Family recipe?"

He tensed. "Not my family, but yeah."

She nodded at him, apparently satisfied. "Name's Belinda, but everyone calls me Bella."

He debated with himself for a split second, then thought, oh, to hell with it. "Ray Kowalski," he murmured, extending his free hand.

"Oh!" Her lips pursed in exasperation. "For Heaven's sake, why didn't you just say so in the first place?"

Ray was flabbergasted for the second time in as many minutes. "You've heard of me?"

Bella rolled her eyes. "Well, you see, we don't get too many nuclear submarines loaded with terrorists in the Territories, so those stories tend to make the news."

He attempted a scowl he knew from the start was doomed to failure. "How d'you know I'm that Ray Kowalski?"

She regarded him with an expression that reminded him uncomfortably of the ghost. "Because Fraser's here, isn't he?" She gestured at the basket, then patted him reassuringly on the arm. "You've arrived just in time. He could do with some fattening up. The lad's been looking much too thin lately."

Ray's pulse jumped. His life had become an episode of The Twilight Zone.

Bella leaned in and took the basket from his unresisting fingers. "Let's get these rung up and into bags for you, hmm? And then you can be on your way."


*~*~*~*~*


"Ow, ow, fuck, ow." Ray let go of the pan before he should have, and it clattered noisily as it landed on the stovetop. A dish towel was definitely not enough to protect his hands against 350 degree heat, but he'd felt funny enough about rummaging around in Fraser's cupboards for the necessary bowl and pan, so toasting his pinkies was a minor tradeoff.

There was something about being here without Fraser's knowing it that creeped him out, but it would be even weirder showing up at the station, and if he wandered around town all day waiting for the other man to get off work, he would be bound to attract attention. He'd sworn Bella to secrecy after she showed him the way to Fraser's cabin, and despite his initial impression of her, he actually believed she would keep her word. He figured she must think a guy who'd come a thousand miles to bake squares for another guy couldn't be all bad.

Well, there were plenty of other things he was hoping to do for--and with--Fraser, but Bella didn't need to know about those. Plenty of things that didn't involve brown sugar and condensed milk, but did involve sweating and moaning and large quantities of pharmaceutical products.

Those he'd picked up in Edmonton. No way would he have bought condoms and Astroglide from Bella, though he had no doubt she kept a supply of that, too, stashed right beside the chopped walnuts.

"Keep the details to yourself, Ray," he muttered, smiling, as he glopped the creamy coconut icing mixture over the top of the hot squares. Five more minutes and he'd be done. Man, he hadn't made a dessert since he'd helped his mom bake toll house cookies in the kitchen when he was about ten. Dad had been so horrified to see his son in an apron when he came home from the plant that he'd taken Ray out the next day and bought him his first set of socket wrenches. And on the weekend, he'd finally let Ray help him barbecue the steaks out in the back yard.

Point taken: if it didn't involve fire and raw meat, it wasn't a guy thing to do.

It occurred to him that he'd never been very good at sticking to the things a guy was supposed to do. Cars, yeah, boxing, fine, tough cop, okay, but that wasn't all of it, wasn't the beginning, middle and ending of Ray Kowalski by a long shot. He'd always been ashamed of that part of himself, ashamed and more than a little scared, because that was the part of him that got bruised and battered: by Stella, by the dirt and filth he saw on the streets, by the hope of something that always seemed to be hovering just out of his reach, teasing him with the mirage of happily-ever-afters.

Well, fuck that. Today, he was reaching. And if that involved a frilly apron and baked goods, so be it.

Wrapping the towel around his fingers, Ray picked up the pan again and shoved it back in the oven. He peered at it through the glass for another minute, then sighed and straightened.

And nearly died of shock when he saw Fraser's face peering in at him through the window.

"Shit!" Ray staggered back against the counter for support. When he looked up again, Fraser was stopped at the entrance to the tiny kitchen, wearing that brown uniform and staring at Ray like he was a ghost.

"Is this some kind of family trait?" Ray panted, hand pressed to his chest. "Because I'm not gonna last much longer if it is."

He heard a sharp bark, and then Dief nosed past Fraser's legs and promptly placed his front paws on Ray's chest.

"Hey, buddy," Ray said, aware his voice was shaking. "I brought ya donuts."

"Dief." Fraser's voice was a growl. As if responding to the vibration in the air, the animal turned to look at him. "Outside."

The wolf whined once, then pushed himself off Ray and padded away.

Suddenly Ray felt an urge to follow him, but Fraser was real and solid and definitely blocking his only escape route. "He, ah, he go to obedience school since I left?"

Fraser looked at Ray and didn't say anything. Then he took a step forward and still didn't say anything.

Ray's heart was threatening strike action. He was sure his left ventricle was handing out leaflets, while his right was holding up a picket sign.

Then Fraser took another step, then another, and he was practically plastered up against Ray, because hey, this was a small kitchen, and three steps was pretty much it.

This close Ray could see the truth for himself, see that Fraser was tired and pale and thinner than he should be, and he heard himself blurt out the first stupid thing that came into his head.

"You don't look so good."

Fraser didn't bat an eye. "I know," he said simply.

"H--how come?" Ray stammered, hating that he was stammering.

Fraser cocked his head then like he was listening for something, but all Ray could think about was how easy it would be to kiss him now.

"Don't you know?"

Ray shook his head; Fraser's expression clouded for a second before he took a small step back.

Then he sniffed the air, and Ray's hands clenched the counter so tightly he thought it might crack. "Bella told me you'd been in, but she refused to tell me what you'd bought."

Ray gaped. "She promised me she wouldn't--" he began, then cut himself off.

Fraser's eyes couldn't seem to decide which part of Ray they wanted to settle on. First it was his hair, then his nose, then his mouth, then what the hell, an ear, why not. "Well, you see, she had little choice. I tracked you to her store."

"You--tracked me?" Ray said weakly. Why was the thought of that making him hot?

Fraser nodded. "It's standard procedure for us to check the manifests of the planes coming into the airstrip, and my 2IC recognized your name on Mike's passenger list. After that, it was a simple matter to find out where you'd gone. There are a limited number of stores and restaurants in town."

"Oh," Ray said, kind of disappointed. "So, you didn't have to like, lick anything in the line of duty this time."

Fraser's eyes widened slightly. "No," he said, and his voice was almost as low as when he'd been talking to Dief.

"So," Ray breathed.

"Yes," Fraser said, and the look in his eyes wasn't anything Ray could understand, because nobody had looked at him exactly like that before.

"I, ah, I think I gotta take those out now." One hand rose and gestured feebly at the oven.

Fraser didn't move, kept looking at Ray. "What did you make?"

"Can't you tell?"

Fraser closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. "I can catalogue the individual ingredients, but the end result is..."

His eyes snapped open.

"No," he whispered.

"They're, ah--"

"Queen Elizabeth squares," Fraser interrupted, voice gone suddenly tight.

"Yeah."

Fraser blinked. "I haven't had those in thirty-five years."

"I, ah, somebody I know gave me a recipe. I thought you might like 'em, being as how they were named after--Fraser?"

As Ray watched, the other man spun around and fished a pair of potholders out of a drawer, then yanked the oven open. He took the squares out, laid them carefully on the stovetop, then stared at them for a long time.

"Ray, where did you get the recipe for these?"

Ray shook his head. "You'll think I'm nuts." He snorted. "Hell, I think I'm nuts."

In a heartbeat, Fraser moved from the stove to Ray, his palms flattened against the cabinets behind Ray's head, his body close and warm and trembling. "Ray, why did you come?"

Ray was suffocating, his lungs working overtime to take in air. "I don't know."

"Don't lie to me," Fraser growled.

Ray's eyes narrowed. "Quit that. I'm not one of your suspects."

Fraser's expression softened, and for a second Ray saw the fear in the other man's eyes. "Ray. Please," and just like that he caved, because he'd always been a sucker for that politeness thing, deep down.

"I dreamed about you, all right?" he snapped. "I dreamed--that you needed me. That you sat alone every night and--" he laughed harshly "--and thought about me." He met Fraser's gaze defiantly. "Wanted me."

Fraser stared at him, mouth slack, and Ray chuckled.

"And so I hopped a plane and twenty-six hours later, here I am, skinny ass and all, baking fucking squares and wondering what the hell I'm doing reaching for--"

"God," breathed Fraser. "It was you."

And then Fraser leaned in and kissed him, with the smell of coconut and the press of Fraser's warm body surrounding him. And Ray opened for him automatically, on instinct, opened his lips and his arms and then he was surrounding Fraser, too, and he didn't have to reach any more because Fraser was. Right. There.

When they broke apart, Ray searched his face, an undercurrent of doubt still tugging at him, threatening to carry him back out to sea. "This is where you belong," he murmured.

Fraser ran his hands up Ray's arms, tracing from biceps to elbows and back up again, mapping the bridge of flesh and bone that held them together.

"This is where I belong," he choked out, and Ray stared at him and saw, not a king or a study in perfection mounted on a pedestal, but--

"Benton Fraser," Ray breathed into his mouth, opening that door and stepping through it without hesitation, because everything was on the other side.


*~*~*~*~*


"Frase?"

"Mmm?"

"Don't you want to know how I got that recipe?"

Fraser smiled at Ray as they lay together on his narrow bed, skin to skin under the thin coverlet. He ran the tip of one finger along Ray's stubbled cheekbone, and the other man shivered. "I believe I already know."

Ray's eyelids drooped. "You do, huh?"

"Yes." He took a deep breath. "It's my mother's recipe."

"That's what the man said." Ray's voice was growing fainter as he drifted into unconsciousness.

"Should I drape a blanket over the window?" Fraser whispered.

"Hmmm?"

"At this time of year, it stays light here until well into the night," Fraser explained. "Most people find it disturbing to their sleep patterns."

"It bother you?" Ray mumbled.

"No."

Ray's eyes opened one last time before he succumbed to sleep. Taking Fraser's hand in his, he brought it to his lips.

"Then I say, let there be light," he said softly.

Fraser lay beside him for some time and allowed himself the luxury of falling in love all over again with the play of sunlight on Ray's sleeping face.

And later, much later, as he too descended into sleep, he whispered, "Thank you, Dad."



End (the very end!)


Caroline's recipe is the first one, except with powdered egg and condensed milk instead of cream, but it's in French, so I include another for your convenience. Bella's is the second.

Gateau Reine Elizabeth
Queen Elizabeth Squares





(2358 words)