ds_flashfiction | Diary challenge, by Chris

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Title: Many A Winter
Author: Chris/

the_antichris
Pairing: F/K
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 4500
Notes: Fraser learns something from Bob's journals. Set in and around Good For The Soul. Thanks to

ignazwisdom for an awesomely speedy and thoughtful beta.

'Drink?' Ray was still jangling from the Shaughnessy bust, high on adrenaline and the buzz of taking down the guy who'd robbed three banks in as many days. It was always like this, but tonight the way they worked, him and Fraser, in tune without thinking, was zinging through his muscles, prickling dangerously across his skin, and there was no way he was going home yet. Not alone.

Fraser nodded, just barely, but from the way his fingers smoothed up and down his uniform pants, he felt it too: the frustration with this dance, forward and back, circling and spinning, the push of their bodies and the pull of their heads, and the music just went on and on... Because yeah, Ray liked dancing, he loved dancing, he was the goddamn king of the dance floor, but sometimes it was just time for the music to stop so everything else could start. They'd had months of dancing, of waiting for Fraser, who really did have cluelessness down to an art form, to get around to noticing what his body was telling him (closer, let's get closer) and started looking at Ray with his eyes as well as the rest of him. Days, until they'd closed the Shaughnessy case and finally had some space to think about something other than small-time thugs and big-time wackos. Hours, which seemed like months, until they'd filed enough paperwork to keep the DA in shouting distance of happy and Welsh finally let them go.

The radio was jingling out a Christmas carol, the poppy sort Ray secretly liked; he hummed a few bars. 'That's great, that's -- I know a place, just round here--' He spun the wheel, hard. Fraser didn't blink.

He'd driven past the bar a hundred times, even gone in once or twice. Not too busy or too quiet, what crowd there was was pretty mixed, and it was the sort of place people might look up if you came in toting a Mountie in full dress uniform -- hell, when the Mountie was Fraser, damn sure they'd look -- but they'd go back to their beers without saying anything. Canadian beer, too, fine-grained and silky, and there were plenty of dark corners to nurse it in.

Perfect.

Ray shimmied through the press of people around the bar, balancing his beer and Fraser's iced tea (Canadian, if anyone asked, not Long Island), and slid into the booth. He hadn't wanted to let Fraser out of sight, out of comfortable touching distance, but saving a booth was only sensible (prudent, Ray), and he could do sensible. Had to, if they were going to do this thing.

And they were going to, because they were sitting down, bumping elbows, knees, thighs, and they were going to talk for a bit, pretend like they were there to drink. This was the downhill side of waiting, when every breath caught and every moment you could see more of what was in front of you, and Ray was going to enjoy it. And after that, Fraser was going to damn well kiss him. After that... well, he hadn't got that far, but Fraser's hair was standing up in cartoony spikes, and Ray's fingers were twitching with how soft it would feel on his fingers when he pulled Fraser in to meet him.

'So,' Ray started, and took a pull of his beer. 'Think it'll stick?'

Fraser's face cleared, expectation and uncertainty receding to leave his normal everyday guy face, cop face, Fraser face. 'I'm certain of it. ADA Bailey seems very competent, and our evidence is, ah, compelling.'

Ray snorted. 'Compelling? We nailed the guy in a bathtub full of the goods. I'd pay money to be there when his lawyer shows up.'

'As you say.' Fraser smiled, the oh-so-sincere one he had for witnesses and old ladies, and it suddenly occurred to Ray that the everyday face was the mask. It was the uncertainty that was real, without even enough expectation to count as hope, and Ray wanted to see that again. Wanted to do something about it.

'Hey.' Fraser's eyes were crinkled up, his cheek curving sweetly down to his jaw, and Ray's gun calluses caught on the beginnings of stubble. 'C'mere.'

Fraser closed his eyes for a second, two, then tilted his head and leaned in.

Fraser tasted of French fries and tea and something less identifiable, something that started the familiar tension coiling deliciously in his belly and made him lick into Fraser's mouth and slide his hand round Fraser's waist to hook into the Sam Browne and pull him closer.

The hand on Ray's knee gripped harder, almost painfully, and Ray eased back. 'Fraser?' No good pushing too far -- from everything Vecchio had said, it had been a hard fall and a long time getting up, and God knew Ray'd spent enough time staring at that particular ceiling.

Fraser's face was open, honest, unreadable; the light from the bar slid over it without leaving a mark.

'Ray, I don't...'

'Mm?' Ray rubbed Fraser's arm, he hoped reassuringly.

'I don't...' Fraser took a breath, and the rest came out in a rush. 'Think this is a good idea.'

'Yeah? We can go someplace else if you want.'

Fraser pinched the bridge of his nose, looking suddenly tired. 'No, I was referring... Ah, that is...'

And, okay, now Ray was getting worried, because since when was Fraser stuck for something to say? Ray, yeah, more of an actions-speak-louder kind of guy, but Fraser talked like he'd been given the dictionary to chew on when he was a kid.

'We have an excellent working relationship,' Fraser continued flatly. 'It would be foolish to jeopardize that.'

'Yeah, so what if we got a groove? This is our groove too, you know?' He waved his free hand at nothing; Fraser's hair brushing through his fingers, just as soft as it looked, felt like everything.

Fraser looked down into his glass, then studied the far wall for so long Ray almost checked the bar for the world's quietest hold-up.

'When I was five, my mother cooked for days -- the ice roads were closed, so she collected berries, caught fish, traded a new pair of mittens to the neighbours for some sugar. She didn't tell me; I think she wanted it to be a surprise, but I knew she was expecting Dad home. Everything seemed... brighter, somehow. Even the stones on the path. I still have one that I picked up because it looked like the river.'

Ray nodded. There wasn't much he could think of to say to Fraser's Inuit stories at the best of times, and this was like a horrible parody. Fraser's voice wasn't calm, it was dead, and Christ, no wonder he told stories about anything and everything but what really mattered.

'He didn't come, of course. Mom tried... She pretended not to cry, but I knew. The dogs knew, too. I could hear the lead bitch whining out in the shed. All day.' After a moment, he went on. 'I read about it in his diaries, later. He'd met up with a patroller from another detachment and they set out after a poacher. "Benton turns five today. I'd hoped to be there, but needs must when duty calls. I'll make it up to them at Christmas."' He slapped both hands down on his knees and huffed a laugh. 'Christmas.'

Which sounded more like a swear word than anything he'd heard Fraser use. There had to be something he could say -- or do, but Fraser was edging away from Ray already, back to the usual polite distance that brushed everything off like snow from the sleeve of a coat. 'Fraser. We're talking about us, not your dad. 'Cause I don't know about you, but your relatives are the last thing I want to think about right now, you get what I'm saying?'

Fraser went right on, as if he hadn't heard. 'My first posting was to a four-man detachment in Nunavut. My partner and I were left a great deal to our own devices, and we soon found we, ah, shared rather more than an appreciation of the works of the Group of Seven. To cut a long story off at the pass, I fell in love with him, and he with me. I suppose it was inevitable, in a way, but at the time, I thought... Well, it was like nothing I'd ever experienced.'

Ray knew the feeling. God, did Ray know the feeling.

'But when our assignment finished, and he asked me to transfer south with him, I still -- all I could think about was my father. How disappointed he'd be. My duty.' Fraser bit down on the last word, cutting it off with a click of his jaw. 'The only woman I ever loved, I left in a cell. Six feet by eight and a forty-watt bulb.' He sighed. 'Winter's worse inside than out.'

One kiss, and Fraser was already abandoning him in the snow. 'Look, can you just back up a second here?'

'I'm sorry, Ray. I'll make my own way home.'

Dief, under the table, argued. Ray didn't.

The next day, when Fraser turned up at the station all shined up like a Mountie recruiting poster and pushing away whatever Ray tried to say with a question about the case (which, jewelry store, gun, robbery, how much was there to say?), Ray'd had a whole night of not much sleep to get pissed, and for a moment he really was going to send Fraser packing back to Fake Canada, like he'd been planning all night. Stick that 'excellent working relationship' in your chimney and smoke it, perfect Mountie boy. But if he'd heard right, working together wasn't even the real issue, plus Welsh was pointedly tapping his watch, they had an owner for the getaway car and it was a toss-up between the armed bandits and the Lieu as to which he least wanted to face up to without Fraser at his back.

Half an hour later Ray was crouched behind the GTO (turned out the perps were a lot better armed and better informed than they'd expected), glasses on and gun out, covering Fraser while he rolled in a smooth red blur over the hood and fetched up with his fists in two ugly bad-guy mugs. They were moving together, running smooth, and it hurt. Like a torn muscle, or getting out of bed the day after a lost boxing match, and maybe it wasn't too healthy to think of your partner as an extra arm or something, but all Ray knew was that tearing themselves apart would hurt like a bitch. Fraser was the push to his pull, the back to his forth, the give to his take, and no way was he giving that up.

He'd never been too good at letting go.

So, they were partners, and Fraser had decided partners was all he wanted. That much Ray knew. The rest took him a while to figure out, but when he did, it slotted into place like something he'd known all along. Which, if he thought about it, he had -- Fraser had tackled the goons in the jewelry store before Ray had even flashed his badge, much less got a bead on them with his gun, and it had to say something that Ray wasn't even surprised. Fraser's mask, the stand-up guy, maintaining the right, duty and honour above all -- it wasn't a mask, it was armour, and if you found a chink in it, Fraser would patch it over, hard and quick, and throw himself at something impossible to prove it would hold.

He should have known it wouldn't stop there, either. Normal, everyday criminals weren't enough for Fraser, so he had to run the length of the mall to arrest the biggest mob boss in Chicago. For slapping a busboy. And if there was anything more impossible than Willie Warfield, Ray really, truly, sincerely hoped never to see it.

Ray about had it worked out by now. Duty was the only solid thing in Fraser's life; it was the only thing he'd never left or lost, so Fraser had to go after Warfield, no matter what it cost him. Or anyone else, for that matter. Truth, justice and the Canadian way -- or his father, Ray got the feeling that was almost the same thing in Fraser's head -- told him to chase a mob boss, and he'd chase the mob boss till he caught him or died of it. And one guy, even a guy like Fraser, had about a snowflake's chance in a Chicago summer of taking down someone like Warfield, with all the weight of everything wrong and petty in the city behind him.

It was impossible, and Ray fucking hated that the right thing could become the impossible thing. He hated the look in Fraser's eyes, too, hated seeing the shadow behind the hard, bright resolve that said Fraser knew how impossible it was, even if he'd never admit it. If he never saw that look again, it'd be too soon.

And the DA wanted him to sit here pickling himself in coffee and interrogating pickpockets while Fraser maybe got himself killed, because the cop thing only got you so far, and Warfield might be pissed enough to decide that Canadian cops didn't count.

Fraser. Killed.

Over my dead body. Over a whole goddamn bunch of dead bodies.

Everything slowed down then, got brighter and harder at the edges; Ray wondered for a second if this was what it felt like to be Fraser. He thumped the table and the sound echoed dull and heavy in his ears.

'Hey, Lieu! Huey! Dewey!' He paused. Welsh turned, as did a couple of uniforms on their way out the door. 'We want Warfield gone or not?'

Ray was warm and blurry at the edges with eggnog and a job well done, like pretty much everyone at the station. Willie Warfield going down, and taking a chunk of his organization down the gurgler with him, Organized Crime going around with pokers up their butts -- it was Christmas and no fooling. Even Fraser looked happier than he had in days, clutching the smudged silver frame of his picture like Turnbull with the laser rifle.

'Ray. Can I interest you in the last of the cake?'

Ray shook his head. 'Nah, I'm good. You done here?'

'Well, considering the hour and Lieutenant Welsh's expression... I believe so.'

Yeah, the Lieu had indigestion written all over him, which Ray usually took as a signal to get the hell out of Dodge.

'I'll drive you home. Spirit of not freezing your butt off at Christmas and all that.' Fraser wasn't in any kind of shape to get himself home -- paler even than normal, bruises standing out so much it hurt just to look at them, and by the way he kept cracking his neck, that wasn't doing any too good either.

Fraser started to shake his head, then -- 'Thank you, Ray.'

Thatcher pushed her way into the crowd, edging towards them, planning to get Fraser into the back of her own taxi, Ray would bet his laser gun on it. He waved her back, smiling bright and fake like the Christmas lights. 'Nah, I got it, Inspector.' One hand aiming Fraser at the door, the other juggling keys and a crumbling gingerbread man for the wolf -- 'Dief! We got more of those outside.'

'Dief takes Christmas very seriously, Ray. He'll be most put out when he finds you've inveigled him away under false pretenses.'

Ray slung Fraser's arm around his shoulder -- cracking jokes probably counted as a good sign, but he still wasn't taking any chances.

'Nah, I wouldn't lie about food. Stopped off at the 7/11 while Frannie was setting up.'

He'd left the box on the back seat. Dief dived through the door almost before he got it open and chowed down, but Fraser got in a lot slower and stiffer.

'You got enough of that Arctic goo? Powdered horn and shit?

'Yes, Ray.'

'Should probably have a bath, too. Soak the bruises out.'

Fraser just nodded. Okay, he didn't want to talk, Ray could go with that. He flipped on the radio: John Lennon asking him what he'd done for the thousandth time since November. What had he done? Taken down more criminals than he knew how to count, taken about as many punches, and got his ex-wife and his best friend acting weird around him, how was that for a year's work, Mr Lennon?

If things were normal, he'd be inviting Fraser over for turkey sandwiches about now. If things were normal, Fraser would say yes, and they'd eat on the couch in front of some cheesy holiday movie, and just having Fraser there would make Ray feel like he was in one. If things were normal, though, he wouldn't be setting himself up so that Stella could knock him down once again, out of habit and because the alternative was setting himself up for Fraser to knock down, which he wasn't sure he could handle. And that was one more bit of proof, as if he needed it, that he was in way too deep.

'So, guess I'll see you at Ma Vecchio's? She wants us both for dinner tomorrow. '

Fraser hesitated, then opened the door. 'Ray, would you...'

'Hm?'

'Would you let Dief out?'

Which Ray didn't think was what he'd meant to say, but Fraser was already halfway to the Consulate door, and there was no point asking.

Dief barked once, put his head over the seat back to nose Ray's ear, and followed. Ray waited a while, watching the fresh snow dust over their footprints, but Fraser didn't come back to shut the door, even when the snow started creeping over the Bienvenue Au Canada mat. Shit -- Ray should have taken him home, should have insisted, concussions could be sneaky little fuckers...

He was through the gate and blinking in the unlit hallway before he'd even finished the thought. 'Fraser? You okay?'

The door to Fraser's office was open, letting dim yellow light spill into the hallway.

'Fraser?'

'In here, Ray.'

The light from the storm lantern washed unevenly across Fraser's face, softening planes and angles as it went. He was at his desk, clutching a cup in one hand like a lifeline. The other shook slightly as he held out a sheet of paper.

Ray took the page as carefully as Fraser had held it. It was yellowed and creased, ripped at the left edge, as if it had been torn from a book. Neat, square writing. Date at the top, Canadian-style -- 14 October 1972 --

'Your dad's diary?' Fraser had read out a few entries in between Inuit stories, but he'd never shown Ray the books, and Ray had never asked.

'I found it folded behind the backing of the photo frame. He must have torn the page out after writing it.'

You want me to read it?'

Fraser swallowed, and tugged at the collar of his Henley. 'Yes.'

Ran across Joe Morgan (almost literally; the dogs are headstrong this time of year) after delivering Thomas McCaw to the detachment. I fancy they were pleased enough to have him in custody, but the young constable in charge seemed eager to have me gone. Recruits these days -- all wet behind the ears and wouldn't know good field work if it turned around and bit them.

Joe invited me to a dance at a roadhouse a few miles south, and there was no polite way to refuse, no matter how wearing I might find constant company. Especially after a week on the road with a violent but surprisingly incompetent trapper strapped to the sled. Still, someone had roasted a good moose hock and unearthed a decent vintage of whisky, and Randall Bold's a fine hand with a harmonica, I'll say that for the boy.

A couple of hours in the same room as Joe's tobacco sent me outside for some air; the dogs were restless, so I looked round the corner of the barn, and--

I still hesitate to set it on paper, even where no one but myself will read it. I'm not certain whether I'm afraid that I didn't see truly see it (her), or that I did. Madness or a doubled loss -- a fool's choice.

What I saw was... Not a ghost. Caroline. The moon loomed high and round overhead, shining coldly through her as she stood there, bundled in her favourite winter parka and wolverine cap.

'Bob,' she said. I just stared like a cornered muskrat.

I was surprised at how young she looked. Untouched. I'd learned too well the trick of being apart, of imagining how she would change day to day; a poor substitute for reality, but, I thought, a necessary one. Even when I knew she was gone, I'd seen her growing softer, older, with perhaps a grey hair or two by now from raising a resourceful child like Benton. But there she stood, looking barely older than the day I'd married her, frozen in time on the day I last saw her, three weeks after Benton's birthday.

Five years ago, it must be.

She took my hand. I didn't feel it, of course, but the gesture was welcome. More than I would have dared ask for, to tell the truth. 'Bob, come home. Let them drink themselves out and come home.'

Her voice was soft, urgent. I didn't understand why -- still don't -- but I've always made it my policy not to argue with women.

'Are you staying long?' I asked, as if she'd come on a day trip from Norman Wells, then cursed my inanity. 'I mean, do you... Are you often... here?'

She shook her head. 'I can't stay. I just wanted to say -- it's all right. We would have been all right. You're a stubborn bastard, Robert Fraser, but we would have muddled through.'

She was always smiling, my Caroline, even when she tried not to. As if she'd been born with a smile and never learned the trick of stopping. She was smiling now, distant and sad, and for a moment, I couldn't speak.

'Have you...' I cleared my throat, trying to clear my head. 'Have you been home? Seen Benton?'

She put out a hand, unconsciously I think, at about the level of a six-year-old's head. One tall for his age. 'He seems... He seems well. Healthy.'

I nodded; Frasers were tough stock, and my parents had a good few years in them before raising a child would be beyond them.

'He's grown so tall. Such a beautiful boy.'

'Takes after his mother,' I said gruffly. Never had the trick of compliments, though she deserved them in abundance.

She blinked back tears; it had never occurred to me that ghosts could weep, and I closed my eyes for a moment against the weight of it. The grief was my burden: how unjust that she should carry it, that it should be multiplied like this.

When I opened them, she was gone.

On the whole, I think I would have chosen madness.

'Fraser. Is this--?' Real? True? Crazy? Ray waved his hand, lost not so much for words as for thoughts. Fraser seemed to understand, though.

'Dad... appears, from time to time. Well, rather more often than that, to tell the truth. For a long time, I thought I must be unhinged, seeing things, but Buck Frobisher's seen him, and judging by a shriek I heard Constable Turnbull emit while cleaning once, he can see Dad, too.' Fraser laughed sharply. 'Not the most incontrovertible evidence of sanity, I admit.'

'Huh.' He'd been knocked for a loop by his own dad turning up out of the blue, but at least his couldn't walk through walls. Not to mention not being dead. 'So... you see your dad, and he saw your mom.'

'So he says.' Fraser picked up the photo frame and rubbed at a smudge on the glass. 'And... perhaps that means that the time I saw her, it wasn't a dream.'

'You see her, too?'

'Only the once, a few years after... after she died. She didn't say anything, and my grandmother explained the role dreams play in the grieving process, but still...'

God, this was too much. Fraser's face -- wide-eyed, hopeful, naked with the pain of unexpected happiness, and none of it was for him.

'Look, Fraser, it's getting late, I better... You're okay, yeah?'

Fraser frowned and rubbed the cut on his eyebrow, but nodded. 'Surprisingly so. It seems confession really is good for the soul.' Which Ray guessed meant yes.

'Okay, so. I'm just gonna. You know. Make like the wolf and hit the sack.'

Ray turned to go, but Fraser caught his hand, rubbing his thumb in insistent circles over Ray's palm.

'Ray. I saw my father today. He told me he wished he'd spent more Christmases with me. Good Lord, he even sang carols.' Fraser sighed. 'Be that as it may, I suppose what I'm trying to say is -- the branch that cannot bend must break. And if he can change, with all his, ah, handicaps, I believe I can, too.'

'Uh, you wanna run that past me again?'

'Please, Ray. Stay.'

The day kaleidoscoped around him, settling into strange new shapes, and Ray rocked back on his heels. He breathed in, inhaling the curls of steam from Fraser's tea -- if he was Fraser, he'd know the perfect thing to say, something snappy but sincere to get the credits rolling on a happy ending. 'Yeah, buddy, just let me park the car and I am there' didn't seem to cut it. It was only a couple of seconds, but apparently that was enough to give Fraser the wrong idea, because --

'I'm sorry, Ray. I shouldn't have asked.' The Mountie-face came down so fast Ray could almost hear it, like a door clanging shut.

'Hey.' Ray punched Fraser's shoulder, then let his hand slide down the worn-soft sleeve of his undershirt. 'Hey. I ever tell you about my dad? My mom -- this was after high school, before they got married, she went to some resort town in Manitoba to work for a summer. Had an aunt who married a Canadian, moved up there. Anyway, come September, Dad drives up there to get her. He had to quit his job, it took him two days, and he could hardly afford the gas, but he got there, and she drove back home with him instead of on the Greyhound.'

If it was Stella, he'd force a smile right about now and sell it as a cute family story, but if this was going to work, Fraser had to see that it was just as true as the bit of paper still crinkling in his hand. There was a drop of melted snow balanced uneasily at the corner of Fraser's eye; Ray leaned in and kissed it off. Soft strands of hair tickled his nose, smelling of pine needles. 'I'm not going anywhere.'

END

Note: Sparked off originally by this, from 'Dead Guy Running': One night, in '72 I think it was, Joe Morgan and I were at this dance. Wasn't much of a dance, really, just the five of us. In the wee hours, your mother showed up, made me come home.

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From:

take-no-ko.livejournal.com

Oh man, that was really nice... just, really subtle and in-character and nice.

The day kaleidoscoped around him, settling into strange new shapes is such a nice line, too... =)

From:

Diary challenge, by Chris

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