For Richer or Poorer Challenge, by Chris

[the_antichris.livejournal.com]

Title: Songs in the French Language
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Rating: R
Word count: 4000 (approx)
Notes: Thanks to shihadchick and izzybeth for beta, and in Izzy's case saving me from a supreme piece of idiocy at the same time as providing a really great line. None of the characters you recognise belong to me, obviously, and the title is courtesy of Mr Mervyn Bunter, who belongs to Dorothy L. Sayers.



Although this states the obvious so glaringly as to risk tautology, my father was - in a sense, still is - a Mountie, which is to say that his membership of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was the dominant feature of his character.

A comic song that made the rounds at my most recent Canadian posting listed the traditional Force virtues as honesty, loyalty, humility, strength and thrift, and, like all true comedy, it contains a solid core of truth.

My father's upbringing, although he spoke very little about it before his death or after, must have been much the same as mine; if anything, more isolated, since my grandparents were thirty years younger and thus more able to stand the rigours of travel to isolated townships. I imagine the young Robert forming a sense of himself, as I did, primarily through literature, absorbing the ideals that he later passed on to me.

My father was ever scrupulous in his dealings, and perfect in his honesty, once one accepted his idiosyncratic definitions for certain words: words such as 'soon', or 'talk' or even 'son'. I'll see you soon, son. We'll have a long talk.

Loyalty? He made certain his only son was provided with the material necessities, and he loved my mother as wholeheartedly as he knew how, pursuing her killer quite literally to death and beyond.

Perhaps the only virtue in which he fell short of the ideal was humility; he believed in his own strength, in his skills, and never quite believed that there was anything capable of overcoming them.

As for thrift, my father was brought up as I was, travelling in the North, where anything more than the necessities was impossible to carry and those necessities themselves were cared for, stretched, made to last as long as possible – new leather (tanned by my grandfather) on a harness, mended bindings on a book, new mittens for a rapidly growing boy made out of the scraps left from my grandmother's coat. Even now, leading a relatively settled existence, I think of possessions as encumbering extravagance, a habit of thought that connects me comfortingly to my past, to my distant father, my lost mother, my reserved grandparents and beyond, to the earlier Robert Fraser who landed in Newfoundland with scarcely more than his tartan.

Thus, when Jack Dalziel's nascent timber company in British Columbia took off, ludicrously multiplying the investment my father had made as a favour to a friend (indeed, written off, as I later read in his journals), nothing about his lifestyle changed. Leaving the Force was unthinkable; everything else, irrelevant.

It came to me, of course, barring some bequests to RCMP charitable funds. Buck Frobisher was named as executor in the will, something I took up with my father in a later argument. (I wanted to save you the trouble, son. Buck and I have been friends for longer than you've been alive.) It took Sergeant Frobisher some time to free himself from his responsibilities long enough to be granted probate, and still more time to take enough leave to visit me in Chicago, with the result that I didn't learn the details of my inheritance until after the incident with the Bolt Brothers. After the funeral he had naturally told me, 'He left everything to you, son;' equally naturally, I assumed this meant the cabin and its contents.

'Dad, you made an obscene amount of money and you didn't think it necessary to tell me?'

'It never seemed germane, son.'

'Don't you think we could have used it? It is, after all, customary to spend one's earnings.'

'You had everything you required. I asked your grandparents if they needed anything, and they refused it.'

'We could have-'

But as usual, my father was both insufferable and unanswerable; incontrovertibly, I had had everything materially necessary, and to say anything else would violate the rules of civil family conversation.

And after all, what difference would it have made? Not to have followed him into the Force is a notion so alien as to leave me reeling. What difference could it make even now? To leave Chicago is unthinkable; everything else, irrelevant.

* * *

The first time Ray kissed me was, naturally enough, at a crime scene. A robbery at a toy shop had uncovered an illegal weapons dealership; a stake-out had been followed by an explosion; and crouched on the ground behind the pool car, glitter and Silly Putty in his hair, Ray looked ridiculous and utterly irresistible. I must have looked equally ridiculous - my Stetson has never been the same - but Ray didn't seem to mind, and our mouths met with the pent-up fervour of months of working and eating and talking and even sometimes sleeping together, yet never once admitting - to ourselves or each other - what we felt.

Unfortunately, the squad car pulled up immediately afterwards, and by the time the paperwork had been dealt with, surprise, embarrassment and our customary silence had asserted themselves, and I could only take refuge at the Consulate.

It was weeks, three weeks of strained, fidgeting normality, before the deadlock broke. Before I ended a particularly strenuous chase by winding myself on a garbage can, Ray at my back, cuffing the suspect and radioing for a squad car almost perfunctorily. Before he slid his hands over my sides in beautiful disregard for the filth on my uniform, pressed his ear to my chest and finally pressed his mouth to mine, there in the alleyway.

Before we— Ray's terminology is deplorable, but I lack words apt to describe what we did then, the desperation and hunger of it, both of us clumsy in our frantic need for the reality of each other's flesh. Administrative interruptions weren't enough, now, to restore the veneer of mere friendly partnership, and the drive to his apartment was made nearly unbearable by his wicked sideways glances and his hand straying imperceptibly from the gear stick to my thigh.

Then we were inside – blessed privacy – and Ray was kissing me again, licking the length of my mouth, seeking entrance granted freely. His hands tightened on my bruised back, surprising a wince out of me.

Ray nudged me further into the apartment, fumbling with my Sam Browne. I pushed his hands away – more efficient to do it myself – and he moved on to my uniform trousers, with rather more success. I protested wordlessly as he pulled away, leaving an unbearable expanse of emptiness between us, but it was only to unfasten my boots. He yanked my clothes off faster than I thought it possible to get out of full uniform, easily shucked his own and then, finally, we were on the bed, skin to skin, taking what had so long been denied.

For the sake of consistency I ought also to deplore the stream of curses my touch pulled from him, but the hoarse growl, interspersed with my name – Fraser, oh God, fuck, fuck, so good – unlocked something inside me and I dropped into French to say what cut too sharp and deep to say in English.

Je t'aime...
T'es tellement beau...
Je te veux plus que ma vie...

And I knew Ray was saying the same thing, and the grate of his voice was beautiful.

I spent few nights at the Consulate after that.

* * *

'Fraser, did you ever tell me why you live in your office?' We're on the couch, Ray draped expansively around me while we wait for pizza delivery.

'You may remember that there was an incident with a performance arsonist-'

'Yeah, yeah, I was there, you felt up my leg in a burning car, but how come you never got a new place? I mean, I was thinking, you spend most of your time here anyway, so maybe you could rent one in the building, or we could maybe look for a bigger place, two bedrooms, room for Dief, and rent it together...' He trails off.

I'm not sure how to answer that; I'm not sure I even know myself why I've been satisfied for so long with a cot and a bedroll.

'I... It just never seemed necessary.'

Ray's arm tightens. 'No one ever told you it's OK to want things?'

This I know the answer to. 'I want you. This. And I have it.'

Tentatively, he continues: 'So it's not that you can't afford to move out? Cos I bet if we look, we could find somewhere for not much more than this.'

I have to stifle a laugh. Ray feels my shoulders shake and demands to know what the joke is.

'Well, I recently discovered that in addition to his cabin, my father left me rather a large amount of money.'

'How large?'

I tell him.

Ray sits up.

'What do you mean, recently?'

'Some months ago. Before you were here.'

Ray stands; he scrubs the heel of his hand over his face.

'Fraser, what the hell is wrong with you? You can't say, "Ray, my friend, I recently received a wildly bizarre inheritance from my dead Mountie father"?'

'It never seemed-'

'And don't fucking say "germane". If you say "germane", Fraser, I swear to God I will-' He bites off the rest of it, clenched fists twitching at his side. I feel an answering anger rising, cold and strong.

'Ray, I do apologise if I haven't shared with you every detail of my financial circumstances and family history. Perhaps you'd like to see my grandparents' wedding photos? Or my RCMP pension-fund statements?'

'This isn't fucking about money. It's about you fucking telling me stuff so that we can make decisions together. That's not buddies, Fraser, and it's sure as hell not goddamn boyfriends or whatever we are.'

'"Fucking"?' I suggest acidly, then realise I've gone too far.

Ray's lips are edged in white, but the doorbell rings before he can reply.

'Ray, I'm-' I start, but he's gone, pushing past the startled delivery boy. Gone, leaving me with an extra-large pineapple pizza and an empty apartment that doesn't belong to me. Gone, and when I realise he isn't coming back, all I can do is go... back, not home... to the Consulate.


~ ~ ~


I can't think straight. Gotta get out. Fucking Fraser, perfect Mountie boy who never needs anyone else, fucking never telling me anything, like I'm nobody. It takes me weeks to bring up the idea of sort-of moving in because I don't know what they pay cops up there in Moose Elbow but I'm betting Canada's pretty much like America in that department, ie, shit, and I don't know what the exchange rate is but I sure as hell know the expression taxi drivers get when they look at a bill that's not green. And why would anyone live in a closet if they didn't fucking have to? Weeks, and then he thinks it's funny that he never tells me anything?

Plus there's this little quiet voice inside, deep inside, past the part of me that's in charge of getting angry and swearing and yelling and kicking heads - hey, good idea, wonder if Welsh has any perps for us - that says-

You thought he was just like you, huh? Under all the politeness and stuff, just a regular working cop? But one day he'll go back, leave this shit, and you'll – still – be – here.

And I know where that's coming from, and maybe I shouldn't be putting it on Fraser (but he didn't tell you), but –

I can't. I just can't. I can't go back.

* * *

Fraser, thank Christ, spends a week or so paying a lot more attention to the Ice Queen's dry-cleaning and a lot less to liaising with me.

Then, of course, Welsh calls me in and dumps this case on me. It's around where I grew up, so, OK, makes sense to give it to me, but when Welsh makes a point of telling me it's a two-hander, I try to wiggle out of it anyway.

'Are you suddenly not an employee of this precinct, Vecchio? I must have missed your letter of resignation.'

'No, I just- Fraser's kind of busy at the moment, and-'

'Ah, it must be form-filling season. I will call Inspector Thatcher and request as a special favour that he be allowed to spend some time licking evidence instead of ticking boxes.'

Why do I even try?

* * *

Talk about awkward. Fraser won't even look at me, and I can tell he's still pissed, which, great, so am I. The case is a little Polish diner – I must have eaten there a million times when me and Stella were kids – whose owner's been getting threatening letters, the full cut-outs-from-the-Tribune deal, broken windows, flaming shit bags left in the kitchen, nasty stuff that could turn nastier.

The owner, Mr Andrysiak, is scared, but he remembers me, tries to call me Stanley until I give him a quick word about the Vecchio thing. His wife tries to load me up with golabki, and, true to old-lady form, keeps asking me who my friend is until Fraser heads out back to do stupid Mountie licking stuff.

'Mr Andrysiak, have you had any problems with your neighbours recently?'

'No, no-'

'Jozef, you tell Stanley what people are saying.'

'Well...' He stares at his shoes.

'Jozef.'

'People are saying… our soup is made from bad meat, that people will get sick if they eat here.'

He says there hasn't been a drop-off in customers yet, which I guess is something. Still, sounds like someone wants to put him out of business.

'If you had to close down, is there anyone who'd get something out of it?'

Mr Andrysiak grimaces. 'Our son always tells us we work too hard, but he's a good boy.'

'But what about his friend? The man he brought home, wanted to buy the restaurant?'

I smell a rat, I mean a property developer. Not that there's much difference.

The Andrysiaks' son, Joe, who owns the tire place a few blocks away, can't tell me much about the rat, just that he showed up one day with a lot of teeth and what he said was a fair offer for the place. Though even I know, if he's going to turn the place into condos, the number he gave Joe was so not fair it's not even funny - it's out the other side of funny and into asshole territory.

Anyway, Joe gives me the guy's business card - Frank Cimino, he's called - and I take it back to Welsh, along with some Fraser crap about custom-made shoes.

Frannie does some computer magic, and turns out Cimino's got zoning consents all along the block except the Andrysiaks' place. Looks like we got ourselves a suspect. Shake, Frankie, shake.

Welsh recognises the name, too, says how Cimino's going to be at some city bigwigs' charity gala. And, wouldn't you know it, me and Fraser get to go along. This time he doesn't even let me start.

'Cimino's worked with Alderman Orsini, so we gotta figure he knows at least something about you, Detective. But one of my favorite things about the Constable here is that for all anyone knows, his family could be sitting on a big pile of oil sands up in the Yukon Territories.'

If Fraser thinks that's funny, I'm gonna kill him. But all he does is clear his throat and start a lesson on how it's 'the Territories' or 'the Yukon' but not both, only Welsh shuts him up.

'So, Constable, you talk to Cimino about investment opportunities. Detective Vecchio, you can at least attempt to be unobtrusive' - this with a weary glance at my hair - 'and provide the jurisdiction. Are we clear?'

* * *

So I grit my teeth, slick my hair down, put on my one suit and hope whatever stuffed shirt Stella's dating this week doesn't go to these things. I swing past the Consulate for Fraser – gotta be professional about these things, right? He's wearing a tux, and man, I'd like to know how Welsh convinced him not wear the fire hydrant disguise, because getting Fraser out of that? Is not usually easy. Well, there is one incentive that works pretty good, but I'm guessing Welsh didn't try that.

God, he looks good. I might be broken up with the guy, if you can call it broken up when you stop talking to the partner you used to be sleeping with, except the only time you ever talked about the relationship was when you had the fight that finished it – whatever, I didn't go blind when I left that night. The dark suit does amazing things for his shoulders, and the cloth is so much softer than the red serge that the view from behind is practically pornographic. And I'm used to thinking of Fraser's hair as black, but it's just a couple of shades lighter than the tux, warmer and softer, and I just want to run my hands through it--

Greatness. It's like Welsh goes out of his way to stock the 2-7 up with people I'm in love with but can't be around. Well, strictly speaking I'm over Stella, but I'm still in the habit of not being able to be around her, and anyway, my point is, Fraser doesn't even work for the Chicago PD.

But we're inside, and it's time to go prop up a wall while Fraser Canadians at Cimino.

He circulates first, looking uncomfortable, saying 'thank you kindly' to all the wait staff and fending off an average of one Gold Coast girl every forty-two seconds, then works his way over to Cimino, fielding a dirty look from Orsini on the way. Guy obviously hasn't forgotten the door incident. Ha.

He looks just as ill at ease talking to Cimino. I can't hear what they're saying, but Fraser's punctuating it with eyebrow swipes and he keeps touching his tie like he wishes it was a lanyard. He licks his lower lip, and I realise something.

Fraser isn't Stella. She came from this, grew up with this. It didn't matter that she thought she had to rebel all the way to get what she wanted, which was the little rebellion of being a lawyer instead of a lawyer's wife; in the end she had to go back to her roots, where she felt at home. But Fraser's not at home here. He's at home, or close enough, at the precinct, at my apartment – or he was, a cold voice says from somewhere around my twisting stomach – and if he ever has to go back to his roots, where the outdoorsy Canadian freaks come from, maybe I should have trusted him to take me with him. It was still a dick move not telling me something that important, but maybe I overreacted. I mean, two guys who've only been sleeping together for a few months haven't exactly done the 'with all my worldly goods I thee endow' thing, so you could make the argument that it's none of my business whether he sleeps in his office because he has to or because he wants to. The point isn't that he could trade the Consulate in for a sleek blonde girl and a sleek beige apartment, it's that he's not going to.

Still coulda told me, though. If I wasn't all obsessed with hypothetical Canadian pay scales, we could be moved in together right now instead of not even able to look at each other.

...look. Fraser's giving me a look. Cimino's giving me one, too, as I jog over with the handcuffs, even dirtier than the one Fraser got from Orsini, and it's all over bar the shouting.

* * *

We dump Cimino in a holding cell for the night and I offer to drive Fraser back to the Consulate.

'Ray, this isn't--' I've stopped the car in a side street a couple of blocks from the 2-7.

'Yeah. Uh, we have to talk.' Maybe this thing's gone too far to fix, but at least I can say sorry.

Fraser scrubs at his eyebrow and looks like he wishes he had a hat brim to twist.

'Look, I need to apologise. It's just, I...'

'Ray, don't.'

But I have to get this out. 'I thought... I thought it was going to be just like Stella, you'd realise you could have something better than me and you'd dump me for the people who talk in semicolons and I, I couldn't...'

His voice penetrates.

'Ray. Ray.'

'What?'

'Ray, please don't apologise. I should have told you, I realise that. I'm... unused to sharing things, to making joint decisions in a relationship, but that's no excuse, and you were entirely justified in your reaction.'

'I still shouldn't have...' I trail off as Fraser's hand covers mine where I'm drumming my fingers on my thigh. I look up, and he grins.

'Home?'

'Home.'

* * *

A while later, Fraser 'hmm's softly into my neck. It tickles, so I roll over and give him a noogie – soft, so soft, what do you mean, hair fetish? – and then there's a bit of kissing and wrestling, even though we're both on the wrong side of thirty to be up for another round, before I remember Fraser wanted to talk.

'Mm?' The finger tracing patterns on my shoulder-blade is distracting, but Fraser has Earnest Face on, so I try to concentrate.

'I've spent a lot of time this past week reading my father's journals.'

I make a listening noise and carefully don't touch the lock of sweat-damp hair on his forehead, because someone needs to be paying attention.

'He was uncomfortable about having invested in a forestry company. I think that was part of the reason he never talked about it; in a sense, he was pretending it had never happened. So I thought perhaps I'd buy some land up north and donate it to the government as a reserve. Dad would like that, I think.'

There's something funky about his tenses there, but it's not worth pursuing.

'It's a great idea. Plus, wouldn't want you to think I'm a gold-digger or anything.' I grin. Fraser snorts. I like that I can make Fraser snort. Not, what's the word, commensurate with the dignity of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, snorting. 'But you'll use some to fix up your dad's cabin first, right?'

'Dad's cabin?'

'Well, I figure next time you go back there, I'm coming with. A week, forever, I don't care, but I'm not big on snow caves so you gotta have somewhere for me to stay.'

He's pole-axed, in a bug-eyed, really cute way. 'Of course, Ray.'

It's stupid, cos obsessing about money is a really bad thing to do in a relationship, whether it's who has more or who paid for pizza last night, but the last little knot in my stomach relaxes, and it turns out we're not that far over the hill after all.


~ ~ ~


Ray is chopping wood, the burn in his muscles driving away the chill of the snow – weird to have snow in June, but never mind. Inside he hears a warm voice singing, a slow, lilting, syncopated rhythm with words he can't quite make out.

'Listen.'

Diefenbaker whines.

'Right, sorry.' Ray pulls the wolf's ears, ruffles his fur. 'Fraser's singing. It's fun.'

For a moment he thinks he sees an old guy in a fuzzy hat grinning behind a tree, but it must be a trick of the light, because when he looks back, it's just leaves and the wind and the silence Ray's getting to love as much as Fraser does.


Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait
Ni le mal
Tout ça m'est bien égal...

~END~

[The song Fraser references at the beginning is the Arrogant Worms' Mountie Song; the song at the end is Edith Piaf's Je Ne Regrette Rien. Quick, pedestrian, non-scanning translation: 'No, nothing at all. No, I don't regret anything. Neither the good turns people did me nor the bad - it's all the same to me.' When Fraser starts blithering in French, it's 'I love you; you're so beautiful; I want you more than life.']

Comments

[snarkyducky.livejournal.com]

this story is so beautiful.. the ending, with a syncopated-singing Fraser, is so very beautiful. so is Ray talking to Dief and pulling his ears. Fraser singing non-sad songs is beautiful. there's nothing not-beautiful about this entire story.. you're a masterful artist.. thank you for sharing this beautiful gemstone you carved and polished -- it's shiny and warm :D

[the_antichris.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! I love Ray with Dief, and I'm so pleased the story worked for you.

(sorry I forgot to reply to this for ages - it came in at work and then got lost in my inbox, which is as messy as the rest of my life...)