REDUX
                         by Ruth Devero


     It was cold.  He hunched over his cards, feeling the cold wash
down from the top of the mountain.  A royal flush, all hearts.

     Cold, and the snow falling around him.  He brushed the
snowflakes off the cards, but they kept falling, dimming the
figures.

     Cold, and the snow covering the cards, burying them even as
he frantically brushed, brushed, brushed.

     Cold; oh, god, so cold, and the cards a blankness now,
completely covered, the figures gone, as if they had never been
there.

     Gone; and he was alone in the swirling snow.

     Benton Fraser jerked upright in bed, cutting off a shout. 
Awake now, he relaxed back onto the chilled, sweat-soaked pillow. 
Cold was the breeze from the window, not the blizzard of his dream. 
Autumn, with its chilly wind, had invaded his sleep, providing the
winter that had temporarily filled his soul.

     Just the coolness of early October, nothing more.  At his sigh
of relief, Diefenbaker twitched his ears.

     The wolf was the only other creature in the room, and suddenly
Fraser felt the chill of loneliness sweep through him again. 
Silly, really:  the apartment had never felt all that empty before,
when it held just him and Diefenbaker.  How could it feel as if
someone were missing, when all the inhabitants were present and
accounted for?

     He knew the answer to that even before the question formed
itself in his mind.  *Don't lie to yourself, Fraser*, he sternly
told himself.  *Just because he doesn't live here, that doesn't
mean you can't miss him.  Don't negate your feelings for each other
by implying otherwise.*

     Fraser turned and looked over at Diefenbaker, who gazed
placidly at him.  Not enough.  Wrapping himself in the blanket as
if it were those long arms was not enough.  Wrapping himself in
his own arms was not enough.  Imagining that that warm body was
just behind him was not enough.

     The loneliness stirred in him again, with an unease he
realized came from the image in the dream:  a poker hand erased,
as if it never had been.  A royal flush, negated.

     Fraser forced a laugh into the silence, breaking it.  Silly. 
Dreams were--well, just games the mind played while one was asleep,
rearranging thoughts to slot them into the subconscious.  Not
prophetic, not profound.  Nothing, really, to pay attention to.

     But the unease whispered through him as he stared into
darkness.  Erased.  A royal flush.

     Suddenly the chill that prickled his skin was not from the
open window.

                              . . .

     Chilly in here.  Ray Vecchio tugged the blanket tighter around
him and looked again at the alarm clock.  Couple hours until he had
to get up; what was keeping him awake?

     *Don't fool yourself*, he told himself sternly.  *You know
what's keeping you awake.  Fraser.  You want Fraser.  You want to
warm your feet on his back, to reach out and find him there next
to you, to see that sweet, sleepy face every morning*.

     Ray tugged impatiently at the blanket, swearing when it came
out at the foot of the bed.  He wrapped himself up tighter.  It
wasn't enough, of course; it wasn't really Fraser's arms holding
him close, Fraser's warm body erasing the chill.

     Ray twitched at the blanket; he turned onto his side.  One
hand found the warmth of his groin and lingered there, molding the
silk of pajama trousers to stirring flesh.  Oh, god, he wanted
Fraser, wanted Fraser, wanted FRASER--

     Just before things got serious, he took his hand away.  That
wouldn't be enough, either; it would just remind him of who he was
missing.

     Whom.  Of WHOM he was missing.  Ray grinned.  Grammar:  he
hadn't realized it rubbed off.

     He looked at the clock again.  An hour and fifty-two minutes
until he had to get up.  Get some sleep, Vecchio.

     He stared up at the ceiling.  When exactly had he started to
get this way?  Was it just after Fraser spent that night here last
spring after his apartment house was fire damaged?  Something about
having the Mountie here, where Ray could fuss over him, tuck him
in, watch those shining cerulean eyes gradually close themselves
in sleep, where Ray could look though very definitely not touch,
not with the rest of the family right there.  Fraser undressing in
front of him as they went to bed that night, just like it was
something Ray had the right to see.  The sweet intimacy of what
felt like a stolen kiss the next morning, while everyone else
slept.  He could still taste it.  Was it then, when he realized the
sheer delight of having Fraser right within reach?

     Or was it later, when hours spent at Fraser's started to get
commented on, when sometimes it seemed impossible to work some time
alone with him into the everyday demands of family and work?  When
the fact that he wasn't dating seemed to become an issue for Ma;
when he started feeling lonely even in a house full of Vecchios,
turning in bed at night for a warmth that wasn't there, listening
during dinner for a voice he rarely heard.  When it became an
effort not to work Fraser's name into every conversation, to keep
his mouth shut about the one relationship central to his very
existence.

     He sighed.  *Boy, Vecchio, you really know how to pick 'em*. 
Irene, the sister of his enemy.  Angie, now the FORMER** Mrs. Ray
Vecchio.  Suzanne, who'd left him for duty.  And Fraser.  His laugh
curdled in the darkness.  Fraser.  Another guy.  *Yes, Vecchio, you
really know how to keep your life simple*.

     Watch the pattern the headlights made on the ceiling when a
car passed; try to relax.  Six months.  Six months of loving
Fraser.  *Six months is a very long time, Vecchio, to keep your
love life secret.  Six months is a very long time to lie to your
family*.

     Ray sighed and closed his eyes.  Relax, Vecchio. Get some
sleep.  Imagine life in a universe where a guy telling his family
he's in love with another guy doesn't end in screams and a code
245:  the poor guy getting assaulted with a deadly weapon, probably
his own.  He smiled wryly.  Maybe a code 999:  officer requires
assistance--NOW!

     He tugged the blanket tighter.  Give it a rest, Vecchio.  Try
to sleep now; think about this in the morning.

                              . . .

     Morning seemed to come all too soon.  Fraser went through the
before-work routine automatically, holding the dream at bay with
the comfortable rituals of bathing, of dressing, of consulting with
Diefenbaker about plans for the day.

     Ray was not available to give him a ride to work this morning. 
He couldn't always be at Fraser's beck and call; sometimes he had
to be elsewhere.  Self-pity was--inappropriate.  Longing was--well,
it was an over-reaction.  Besides, a brisk walk to the Consulate
would clear Fraser's mind.  It was going to be a lovely day.

     The breeze whisking down the street was unexpected, and for
a moment Fraser seemed caught in the dream.  Snow.  And a coldness
beyond the autumn chill.

                              . . .

     "Those iceeee fingers up and down my spiiiiine--"

     "Oh, yeah, that's original, Jaworski."  Ray steered his
prisoner through a tuneless gauntlet of "That Old Black Magic,"
"It's Witchcraft," and "Voodoo Woman."  Jeez, cops couldn't sing.

     Why him?  Why always him?

     "Oh, mama, cast your voodoo spell on ME!" a teenage perp
yodelled.

     "Aw, quit it," Ray muttered when his prisoner wiggled her butt
for her audience.  Why him?  Why always him?  Voodoo woman, indeed.

     Not that Alessandra Willson didn't look the part:  orange hair
gelled into spikes and veiled under a scrap of black gauze; eyes
ringed solid in black eyeliner and black eyeshadow; lips the color
of fresh blood; inch-and-a-half-long fingernails painted jet black
with little ghosts and pumpkins on them; little black dress with
practically no skirt, artfully ripped to almost reveal things nice
women didn't show on the street; black hose ripped likewise;
strappy black shoes that could only hurt to walk in.  Just your
average vampire hooker.

     Who mostly fenced stolen merchandise.  Step up from her former
career:  pickpocket.

     He paused as they reached Booking, stared straight into her
eyes.  "You're really not gonna tell me," he said.

     Aless stared back at him, that look that said she wasn't
talking.

     "Okay," said Ray.  He pulled her to the cop at the counter.
"Book 'er--"

     "Don't say it."  Daniella Brown fixed him with a glare. 
"Don't say, 'Book 'er, Danno.'  Just don't say it.  You got no idea
how tired I am of cops comin' in, sayin', 'Book 'em, Danno.'  Like
I ain't heard it about a thousand times before.  Only joke they
know.  And none of 'em brings donuts."

     He regarded her evenly as he dropped the white sack onto the
counter.  She opened the sack, looked at the two creme-filled
donuts inside.

     "Okay," she said, "you can say it."

     Ray smiled sunnily.  "Sergeant Brown," he said, "would you
please see to the booking of this suspect?"

     "Smart-mouth," she said.  A grin crept onto her face.  "All
the time I'm surrounded by smart-mouths.  And none of 'em brings
coffee."

     "Well, today you're in luck," Ray said, just as the first
dolly trundled by:  three cases of Dos Asnos coffee, grown in
Colombia.  Each case pictured two donkeys kicking up their hind
legs, presumably from an excess of caffeine.

     "That all?" Brown said, leaning out to watch the coffee being
trundled to the evidence room.

     "The other fifty-two cases are on their way," Ray assured her. 
"Along with thirty-six more cases of those."

     He jerked his chin toward the dolly bearing four cases of One
World condoms, being pushed by a blushing rookie.

     "Oh, honey, think you got enough for your date?" the
transvestite Lipkowitz had brought in yodeled out as the rookie
went past.

     "There's a little map of the world printed on every one of
'em," Ray confided to Brown, who was choking back laughter.  "You
should see what happens to Australia when those things get
stretched out."

     "Sheez, coffee and condoms," said Lipkowitz.  "Add cigars,
and you got America in the nineties, right there in one place."

     Ray turned to his suspect.  "Aless," he said gently, "I wish
you'd tell me."

     Her eyes narrowed.  He could sympathize:  certain parties
would not be appreciative if she told him where she'd gotten the
stuff.

     "Okay," he said.  "Book 'er, Danno."  Maybe later.

     Up the stairs to the squad room, where Elaine Besbriss was
glaring at one of the new computer monitors they'd installed in
the squad room.  "This thing's gettin' slower and slower," she
complained to the room.  "I thought they fixed this."

     "It's that time of day," said Phaedra Dewey, for once more
than five steps from her new partner, Jack Huey.  Huey and Dewey: 
somebody in the Department had a sick sense of humor.

     Ray watched Elaine's shoulders tense.  Dewey had that effect
on people:  that "I-know-everything-and-you-don't" air grated on
everybody but Huey and--

     *Leave it outside, Vecchio*.  Don't think about him. 
Constable Benton Fraser, Super-Mountie, heart of Ray's heart,
breath of Ray's breath, and all the other mushy stuff that barely
began to describe how Ray felt about him.  *Just leave it outside,
Vecchio*.  Had it only been six months?

     At his desk, Jack Huey looked up.  "Lieutenant's looking for
you."  Why did he always seem to be gloating when he said that?

     "Lieutenant!" Ray said, entering Welsh's office.

     "Detective.  Good of you to join us."

     "I was bringing in a perp, sir."  And making a damn good bust,
sir.

     "The fence?"

     "Yes, sir.  Alessandra Willson.  Fifty-five cases of Colombian
coffee.  Forty cases of--"  Smother a grin.  "--of Chinese
condoms."

     "CHINESE?"

     "New World Order, sir."

     Welsh gave him that eye again--that look that hinted that Ray
was smarting off, but he couldn't quite prove it.  Then he looked
past Ray, through the open door.  "New World Order, indeed."

     Ray glanced back, caught a glimpse of white wolf and of red
uniform that made his heart jump.  "Lunch date, sir."

     "Only lunch?" said Welsh.  "No thermonuclear devices in
Captain Kangaroo lunchboxes?  No dolphins being killed for tuna
salad?  No hostages at Ernie's Grill?"

     "Just lunch, sir."  No time for anything else.

     "Well, enjoy yourself.  I look forward to your report on the
New World Order."

     "Yes, sir."

     "And," Welsh went on before Ray could get out of the office,
"to your reports on these new cases."

     Don't flinch; just take the folders.

     Welsh smiled.  "Bank robbery, a couple homicides, aggravated
assault.  In other words, Old World Order."

     "Of course, sir.  Right away, sir."

     "I refuse to believe half the database is nothing but
Vecchio's old cases!" Huey exploded as Ray dropped the folders onto
his desk.

     "Perhaps the computer's gone into an nth-complexity infinite
binary loop."  Dewey, enlightening the masses.

     "Actually, Detective," Fraser said, "the nth-complexity
infinite binary loop doesn't actually exist."

     "Oh, really."  Her voice seemed to drip icicles.

     "Yes.  Actually, it's very interesting.  You see--"

     "Lunch, Fraser."  Ray grabbed his arm to turn him.  If Fraser
kept on, there'd be another homicide to write up.

     "Whatever it is, it's a pain in the neck!" Elaine said as he
and Fraser left the squad room.  "Why does it keep pulling up
Vecchio's cases?"

     "Poor judgment?" said Huey.

     Ray turned, then was turned back by the iron-hard fingers
gripping his arm.  Another senseless death averted.

     "So," Ray murmured as he and Fraser left the station house,
"lunch, or a quickie?"

     He was rewarded by a flush of scarlet in the handsome face.

     "Red suits you," he whispered to Fraser.

     "That's not amusing, Ray."

     "Oh, yeah, it is, Fraser.  Trust me."

     "Would you like to go to the Korean deli, or did you have
somewhere else in mind?"

     "Korean's fine.  So I guess it's 'no' about the quickie."

     "Well, we'd hardly have time:  it usually takes me ten minutes
just to get back into this uniform, and what with the length of
time it takes to get to Racine and back--"

     "Who said anything about getting out of the uniform?"

     "--And, if I didn't get completely out of uniform, I'd be so
rumpled that Inspector Thatcher would notice--"

     "One little wrinkle!  Don't Canadians wrinkle?"

     "Not Mounties, Ray."

     Oh, that open, blue-eyed look that implied he was telling the
absolute truth.  Not Mounties--

     "Just go in."  Ray held the door for him--and found himself
then holding the door for a little old lady, two businessmen, and
a woman with three small children.  At least Dief had the grace to
ignore the open door.  Off his game:  being doorman was the
MOUNTIE'S job.

     So, lunch was lunch after all.  Not that bad, really--just,
well, not entirely satisfying.  He walked Fraser to the Consulate,
talking about nothing, not yanking him into the alley for a kiss,
not tugging him behind that truck over there for a quick grope. 
Perfect gentleman.  Ray had the right to be proud of himself.

     Back of his mind, though, was having quite a little party all
on its own, dreaming up all kinds of stuff to keep him awake at
night.

                              . . .

     Last night's dream had come with him to work, swirled with
the light breeze down Ontario as he stood sentry outside the
Canadian Consulate, waited patiently in a corner of his mind while
he spoke to caterers on the telephone, wove through his words as
he consulted representatives of state agencies about necessary
permits, spiced the scent of the rose Ray must have left on his
desk while he was out on an errand.  Lunch with Ray hadn't
dispelled it:  now it worked its way into the ink as he addressed
invitations, flavored the tea he drank at his break.  Why did it
hold him?  What could it signify?

     Surely not discontent with this relationship--the most
satisfying of his life.  Never could Fraser have imagined the
delights of being in love with Ray Vecchio:  the sheer joy of being
so in tune with such a delightful--and, yes, occasionally
irritating--being.

     A relationship that had built slowly from standoffishness to
trust, from fascination with the foreign other to real regard and
appreciation of the other's talents.  From the occasional case
solved together to a growing friendship that had somehow slid into
something deeper before either realized it.

     Fraser smiled down at the envelope he was stamping.  Far
deeper than friendship, though they hadn't known it at first.  That
first awkward forfeit during a poker game--such a startling thing
for Ray to demand and for Fraser to give--and his body responding
in a way he had not planned, making love where it should have
merely cooperated.  That second game, and another forfeit--and more
lovemaking.  And then--and then a swirl of emotion and love and
tenderness, days when Fraser's body seemed to rule his heart, or
his heart ruled his brain.  But, love.  A final, heart-healing
declaration of love.  A sweetness for which he'd been unprepared.

     That first night, after they had declared their love, after
hungry lovemaking had become sleep, after they had awakened to eat,
they had found their way again to bed, there to touch with hands
and mouths, exploring and arousing for what seemed hours.  Tender,
slow, gradually losing all sense of the world outside the bed,
wrapping themselves in pleasure and sensation:  whisper of skin on
skin; echo of a sigh; tang of sweat; crispness of pubic thatch;
rasp of stubble against stubble; the warm, sweet heat of mouth on
mouth, on throat, on belly, on musky scrotum.  Tips of fingers
drifting over every millimeter of his skin; tongue laving his
thighs, his buttocks and, astonishingly, dipping into the crevice
between; the strangled gasp as he engulfed Ray's penis with his
mouth; cool sole of a foot stroking his back while fingers
tightened in his hair; hot mouth languidly sucking his fingers in
tempo with his own slow sucking; mouth on his, upside down, then
sliding over his skin farther, farther, farther down; trembling
body above him as his penis slid into a soft, hot mouth.  Again and
again, they brought each other to the brink, watching the other's
joy and pleasure.  And all that was himself melted away, until he
could not say what mouth sighed against what throat, whose hand
stroked whose penis, until he was nothing but the heat of love, the
ecstasy of Ray's pleasure.  Again and again; until, on some
unspoken signal, they took each other beyond, to an exquisite
instant:  locked in his embrace, Ray's body arching against his in
a long orgasm Fraser felt more strongly than his own.

     That sleep came, Fraser had not known until he woke from it,
shivering at the cold from the window, protecting Ray's body from
the chill.  Pulling the blanket over them both, he looked down at
the figure in his arms and sleepily realized that he was no longer
alone inside himself, that now there was someone else there with
him, completing him, filling what had been empty.  He had not known
that such completion would be waiting for him; he had savored it
as he slid again into Ray-scented dreams--

     "Yes, sir!"  Fraser jumped to his feet.

     "I SAID, 'Are you done with those invitations yet?'" 
Inspector Margaret Thatcher frowned at him from the doorway.

     "Almost finished, sir--ma'am--INSPECTOR."

     She regarded him closely.  "Are you all right, Constable?"

     "Yes, sir!"

     "Didn't it hurt to slam your hand in the drawer like that?"

     *Didn't it hurt to slam his hand*--  He looked down at the
hand in question, which most certainly seemed to have been slammed
hard in the upper right-hand drawer of his desk.  Reaching absently
for something when her voice had broken into his daydreams and
startled him into trying to hide--well, trying to hide what he was
thinking about?  Thank heaven his scarlet face could be explained
by such a ridiculous accident.

     "Well, sir, now that you mention it, it does hurt just a tad."

     She looked at him.

     "How are the permits coming?"

     "Fine, sir.  I've gotten almost all of them."

     Pause.

     "I hope we don't have the same trouble this time that we had
last time.  With the--events."

     "I really doubt, sir, that this time we'll have a nuclear
incident on a train full of unconscious Mounties.  The laws of
chance alone would--would preclude it."

     "Of course."

     Pause.

     "Well, Constable, if you think you've everything in order..."

     "Yes, sir."

     When Inspector Thatcher turned from the doorway, her frown
had not smoothed itself out.

     Fraser realized why when he started to reach for his pen.

     Hand still caught in the drawer.

     Oh, dear.

                              . . .

     Oh, damn.

     Oh, damn, he was thinking about the Mountie again, when he
was supposed to be concentrating on that report, still curling,
half-typed, from his typewriter.  What was WRONG with him?  You'd
think after six months a guy wouldn't still get so--so LOOPY about
his love life.

     Ray sighed and reached for the white-out.

     "You know, if you used a good word processing program, you
wouldn't need all that white-out."  Dewey, spreading unwanted
information and sour good cheer.  "You could just input everything
on a form and make corrections right on the screen."

     *And be perfect, like you*.  "Yes," said Ray, "but think about
all the little children who go to their beds with full tummies at
night, because kindly Uncle Ray goes through thirty-five bottles
of white-out every week.  Think about the fragile little old people
who feel like such useful members of society, weaving all these
typewriter ribbons by hand--"

     That *clack-clack* was the sound of her heels as she stomped
off.  Ray shook his head.  No courtesy.  People just had no
patience to be courteous any more.  Couldn't even finish a polite
conversation.

     He peered at the report, fooled with the carriage in order to
squeeze an "m" at the end of "condo", so the sentence now read,
"Forty cases of One World brand condom were found in the suspect's
apartment."  Oh, damn.  "Condom" needed an "s," and there was no
room.  He sighed, ripped out the report, and started over.

     Trouble was, he was having a harder and harder time keeping
his love life separate from his work life.  Well, they did overlap
to a large extent:  Ray's cases and Fraser just seemed to attract
each other.  Not that Ray really tried to keep them apart.  It was
just weird, was all.

     And dangerous.  A hand halted before it reached for Fraser on
the sidewalk.  A sudden surge of joy stifled when Fraser walked
into the squad room.  Ray surveyed the room.  How many of those
cops would still be his friend if they found out about him and
Fraser?

     He grunted.  Well, actually, how many of those cops really
were his friend now?  Just write your damn report, Vecchio.

     Focus.  Just focus.

     But dried rose petals in the top drawer of his desk spiced
the air when he opened it for yet another bottle of white-out, and
he couldn't help but smile.  Fraser's roses, still popping up in
unexpected places.  Long-stemmed roses from a long-legged Canadian. 
It was so much fun, being in love.

     That night they'd finally admitted it, in the chilly shower
of Fraser's fire-damaged apartment building.  Just the thought,
and Ray's heart still quickened.

     What felt like the whole rest of that first night, they had
touched each other, explored each other with mouth and tongue and
fingers and cock.  God, he'd never done that before, never
experienced anything like that before:  the stoking of some slow,
hot flame inside him, that seemed to melt something in him so he
couldn't later even remember the things they did.  Just snatches,
mostly Fraser:  that hot, wet mouth on every inch of his skin;
words that were half a moan; fingers caressing the crevice of his
ass over and over; tongue tracing the lifeline in his palm;
sentences tangled up in sighs; fingers skimming him all over, mouth
following; a slow, solid sucking on his cock; Fraser's strong
fingers in his mouth.  At some point, everything seemed to blend,
so that when they finally came, he could have sworn he actually
felt Fraser's orgasm, a spasm of pleasure even sweeter than his
own.

     Next morning, silence woke him:  the absence of Fraser's
breathing, of his heartbeat.  Ray sat up.  Out with the wolf
someplace.  This waking up alone didn't feel so bad, because he
didn't feel like he was alone; there was something of Fraser inside
him, filling up the empty spaces.  Ah, god, he loved this part of
being in love.

     Quick shower, quick shave, both ice-cold and, well,
shrivelling.  Quick shuffle down the cold floor of the hallway back
to the apartment, to make--well, damn, no coffee.

     But when the door opened and Fraser stepped in, suddenly Ray
didn't need it.  Ah, god, look at him.  Ah, geez, look at his face
light up like that.  Guy whose blood was perking along like Ray's
suddenly was didn't need coffee at all.

     They gazed at each other for a long, silent moment.  Who
needed words?  A step into a sweet kiss.  Oh, GEEZ, who needed
words?

     "I was gonna make coffee, but--" said Ray.

     "What brand do you like?"

     Some guys were so romantic.  "I'll ask Ma."  Gosh, he smelled
good.

     "I passed the workmen on the way in," Fraser said.  "They
think they'll be done inspecting the gas lines today.  Until then,
I guess it's--cold showers."  He was grinning.

     "Good thing," said Ray, which was about the funniest thing
either of them had heard in a long time.

     Oh, it was a shame to break from that long, deep kiss, to get
into clothes and get ready to go to breakfast and to work.  Just
before they left, Fraser pulled open Ray's jacket and checked the
gun in Ray's holster.  Ray grinned at him.  Yes, dear; I'll be
careful, dear.

     Ray settled Fraser's Mountie hat firmly on his head.  "Keep
your hat on," he said to Fraser's bemused expression.

     "Keep my hat on?"

     "Yeah.  Haven't you ever noticed, you lose that hat, you get
hurt?"

     "WHAT?"

     Time to go.  He walked out of the apartment ahead of Fraser.

     "Yeah, Fraser.  Think about it!  Ever since I've known you,
every time you get beat up, stabbed, or--well, whatever, it's only
when you're not wearing the hat.  You got the hat, you get shot at,
jump off buildings--no problem.  That hat ain't just a hat, Fraser;
it's armor.  You keep it on."

     "But that's--that's just RIDICULOUS, Ray!  That's just--just
RIDICULOUS!"

     "Nevertheless, scientific observation, Fraser.  Can't be
wrong.  Once or twice, coincidence, but...  Really, it's scientific
fact."

     "But RAY--"

     Out on the street by now, passing the workmen.  Just arguing
like a couple of regular guys.  "You ARE gonna get this place in
shape real soon," Ray said as he passed the workmen.  "Guardin'
this place is a real pain."

     Safe in the Riv, Fraser's hand moving to Ray's thigh as they
pulled into traffic.  "But, Ray, that's the most LUDICROUS--"

     "Nevertheless."  Geez, what a beautiful morning.  Arguing
sweetly with the one he loved.  Damn, love was wonderful--

     "VECchio?  Why does that computer have such a jones for
VEDchio?"

     Ray jerked to attention, knocking over the bottle of white-
out.  Oh, damn, all over page one of the new version of his report. 
Ah, JEEZ.

     "No accounting for tastes," Elaine said.

     "Maybe it really HAS gone into an nth-complexity infinite
binary loop."

     Ray paused in his mopping.  Who the hell ever told Huey he
knew a damn thing about computers?

     "Actually, there's a computer virus that makes it do just
that," Dewey informed the world.

     "Oh, REALLY."  Huey sounded fascinated.

     "Yes.  It's called 'Good Times'--"

     "That's it!  I'm rebooting!" Elaine broke in.

     Rebooting.  Good idea.  Ray sighed and cranked yet another
report form into the typewriter.  "Forty cases of One World brand
condominiums were--"  Oh, where the hell was that white-out?

     "Maybe it's an nth-complexity infinite PROBABILITY loop." 
Dewey, an hour later, still Albert Einstein on the computer.

     The click of wolf toenails on the floor was like the answer
to a prayer.  Ray jumped up and grabbed his coat.

     "Diefenbaker!"  Elaine forgot her frustration with cyberspace
in fussing over the wolf.

     And there was the wolf's owner, equally worth fussing over.

     "Fraser!"  Ray tried to keep his tone light.  "Give you a
lift?"

     "Certainly!"

     "What's wrong with the hand?" Ray said as they made their way
downstairs.

     Fraser looked at his bandaged right hand.  "Office accident."

     "Well, let's hope it's covered by workman's comp.  Those
paperclips can be deadly."

     "Drawer, actually."

     In the Riv, wolf in the back, Mountie stetson on the dash,
Fraser's hand on Ray's thigh when they were safely away from the
station house.  Feeling the warmth of that hand, Ray felt himself
relax.  Safe.

     "I was gonna pick you up," he said.

     "I needed to--walk off some excess energy."

     Ray grinned at him.  "There are more interesting ways."

     "Thinking about those was the cause of the--excess energy."

     Ray laughed.  Oh, yeah, he could understand that.  "So, did
you--drain all the--energy?"

     The hand on his thigh tightened.  "I certainly thought so,
until I walked into your squad room."

     Ah, jeez, there was enough excess energy in the car now to
light half of Chicago.  Too bad it couldn't go anyplace.

     "This is the night I got to take Ma to Aunt Ina's, remember?"

     The hand let go.  "Oh.  I thought that was tomorrow night."

     "Damn, I wish it was.  Dinner and a whole evening of Aunt
Ina's gall bladder and Aunt Ina's bunions and Aunt Ina's
palpitations.  When I could be having palpitations of my own
focusing on your mouth and your cock and that really tasty place
on the back of your neck."

     The fingers tightened on his thigh again--more firmly than
before.

     "How about I come over afterward?"

     "But your mother will--"

     "Yeah.  You're right; she will.  Besides, what I got in mind,
we won't want to get out of bed for a week."

     The hand caressed his thigh.  Fraser looked wistful.  "I wish
we--I wish we--could be more--open--about our relationship."

     Ray's heart did a flip-flop.  "Yeah, so do I."

     He pulled into a parking spot near Fraser's apartment
building; they looked at each other for a minute.  More open about
the relationship meant hurting people Ray just couldn't bear to
hurt.

     The hand patted his thigh.  "Come up for coffee?"

     Oh, yeah--he could come up for coffee.

     Coffee took time, of course:  all that water to heat.  And
waiting for water to heat, a guy had to find something to occupy
his time.  And his hands.  And his mouth.

     And so the next thing a guy knew, he was on the floor, pants
to his knees, with Fraser under him, clutching his ass and gasping
"Ray" and "yes" and "there" and "oh" while his cock slid against
a hot, naked belly softer than any rose petal and he did some
clutching and gasping of his own and all the water in the pan
boiled clean away.

     Fraser's gentle thoroughness cleaning Ray's belly and cock
afterward with a wet washcloth was almost foreplay all over again. 
Ray reached for the back of Fraser's neck, brought his mouth down
for a kiss that could have ignited a dead sun.  Damn, he loved
coffee.

     Somehow it wasn't quite the same beverage later on that night
at Aunt Ina's house.

                              . . .

     Night--and Fraser cooled himself under the wind that came
through the window, the one that seemed to be blowing straight from
the Territories to remind him of home.  Home.  Wherever that was. 
He frowned.  Canada, of course; specifically, Northwest
Territories.  Naturally.

     He shifted on the bed.  Or perhaps not.  The Territories were
changing, becoming two separate entities.  In a handful of years,
the place he had left would cease to exist, except in his mind. 
He could live with that change; it was long overdue.  But it was
changing without his help, becoming not-home without him, except
for what he could do at the Consulate.

     Fraser snorted.  Silly and melodramatic.  "Home" wasn't a
political entity:  it was a landscape, a people, a way of life
sculpted by limitless sky and by the sere beauty of great cold. 
That was basic; that wouldn't change.  When he returned, the brief
and vivid summers would bring black flies to thicken the air near
waterways where grizzlies splashed for fish, winter snow would
blanket the earth in softness and deception, and the mountains
would stand lofty and eternal under the crackling curtain of the
aurora borealis.  When he returned, the people would be that quirky
combination of shyness and warmth, toughness and self-deprecation;
elusive, eccentric--people of a landscape larger than they were. 
Nothing essential would have changed.

     But perhaps he would have.  "You've changed, Mountie," Eric
had said when he'd come to Chicago to rescue the sacred masks;
sometimes even now those words haunted Fraser.  He didn't want to
have changed, to have lost that essence that was, at its center,
a function of the land where he was born.

     But he WAS changing, and, he thought, so was his definition
of "home."  Now it wasn't simply Canada, the Territories, Mackenzie
District.  Now it seemed to be wherever Ray was:  Chicago, Inuvik,
Illinois, the Territories, the States, Canada, wherever.  Ray now
defined the word "home."

     Fraser smiled into the darkness.  Put that way, it was all so
very simple.  Canadian stranded in the States, man of the
wilderness dropped into one of the great urban centers of the
world:  and "home" was wherever one very singular person might be. 
Simple.

     He laughed and stretched luxuriously in the caress of the
wind.  That afternoon's interlude had been all too brief, but
wonderfully intense.  Ray's mouth on his the minute he'd put on
the water for coffee; and then he was half unclothed on the floor,
with Ray over him, gasping "Fraser" and "oh" and "oh" and "Benny,"
gripping him hard and thrusting against Fraser's belly as
desperately as Fraser was thrusting against his.  Actual coffee
had--well, had been postponed.

     Love.  He was still delighting in the joys and nuances.  That
an explosion of passion could sate and inflame all in the same
instant.  That simply touching hands could satisfy the soul.  That
any emotion could make him feel this complete.

     That there could be such utter enthrallment.  Looking at Ray,
some people would fail to understand Fraser's pleasure in him, but
Ray reminded Fraser of a poem he'd once heard, about the glory
hidden in ordinary things:  the graceful mastery of a bird over the
wind; the shine in freshly plowed earth; the fire hidden in the
ash-colored ember.  A glory within, that spilled forth in humor and
tenderness and passion.

     Something about Ray was--inspiring.  Fraser's hands would
trace new patterns on Ray's body as if they were expressing
thoughts of their own; his tongue led him to every crevice and
caressed every centimeter in a different rhythm.  Even out of bed,
he sometimes found himself pausing in mid-action until his mind had
resolved the intricacies of some new method of drawing pleasure out
of that long, lithe body.  Fraser would plot out an afternoon's
lovemaking; and his body would follow its own strategy the minute
he tongued the first bead of sweat from Ray's throat.  He had no
control; he simply followed his hands, his mouth, his heart.  His
entire body seemed to exist mostly to pleasure Ray.  Even his
words:  sometimes in the moments of love they spilled from his
mouth in strings of poetic fire that astonished him when he
recalled them later.  And, standing quietly at sentry or
accomplishing the mindless duties of the office, he would feel more
words gather around the first, ready for the next passionate
moment.  It seemed as if Fraser's body and his words were engaged
in one labor:  building an endless epic poem he facetiously titled,
"In Praise of Ray."

     In praise of Ray.  Fraser turned again in the touch of the
wind from the Territories.  A life spent in praise of Ray was a
life well worth living, even if it had to be lived far from the
Arctic circle.  Where Ray was, was home, though tonight Ray was
blocks away, locked in his own house, safe in his own bed, deep in
his own dreams, and unaware of the wind.

                              . . .

     Wind from the Territories tonight--straight from the ice pack. 
Ray frowned.  WAS there an ice pack up there?  Probably; seemed
like a good place for it.  Was Fraser awake, thinking of him,
feeling the chill wind that was a reminder of winter yet to come?

     Jeez, tonight had been a complete waste.  Whole evening spent
in Aunt Ina's stuffy house, eating her weird lasagna, listening to
that boring monologue about her feet.  Aunt Ina's feet were a
subject of great interest to everybody in the family but Ray.  So
of course she always grabbed him to tell him all about them.

     And all the time he was going, "Uh, huh," and "Oh, really,"
he'd been thinking of Fraser, which got him in trouble when he'd
gone "Uh, huh" AND "Oh, really" a couple minutes after she'd left
the room to get those x-rays of her feet to show him.

     Absent-minded.  Geez, he got so absent-minded still.  That
first week after he and Benny had become an item, he'd walked into
walls, he was so distracted.  Like his brain was overloaded and
couldn't really take in the outside world.  Overloaded with the
sense of Benny's textures, of Benny's smell, of Benny's taste,
overloaded with the electric warmth of Benny's hands on his skin,
of Benny's cock filling his emptiness, overloaded with the sense
of being the center of Benny's universe, of being wrapped up in
love.  And all these many months later, some days he still went
foggy, coming out of a Fraser-scented daydream he hadn't realized
he was sliding into, to find somebody getting impatient at him.

     This wasn't what he'd wanted; this wasn't what he'd planned
on:  falling in love with a guy.  At first he'd thought it was just
some weird mid-thirties phase nobody talked about--something to do
with looking for sex in all the wrong places.  And bone-melting sex
was certainly part of it in the beginning.  But there was more than
great sex or great friendship:  he was actually in love with the
guy.  And it had lasted, which surprised him sometimes.  Six
months.  Almost a record.

     Six months of Fraser as his anchor in a sometimes-stormy life. 
Six months of love filling the empty places in a soul still twisted
by the hurts of childhood, by the disappointments of love gone
sour.  Six months of a relationship so close they completed each
other's thoughts.  A whole lot more than he'd ever bargained on.

     And the sex.  Oh, god, the sex.  Six months, and his body
still tingled whenever he thought about the sex.  It was like being
a newlywed again, besotted with Benny's smell, with the texture of
his skin, with the heat of his mouth.  At work, he had to keep his
mind all business:  at the oddest moments he could find himself
overwhelmed by the memory of Benny's fingers rubbing that tender
spot between Ray's ass cheeks, of the strained beauty of Benny's
face at the instant of orgasm, of the taste of musky sweat--and Ray
would have to sit quietly, hoping nobody noticed, while his
erection melted.  It was like being thirteen again, with a cock
with a mind of its own.  He'd developed the habit of holding things
in front of his crotch, just in case; sometimes it felt like he was
shielding his real life from the notice of hostile strangers.

     One thing he couldn't get over was how much--well--FUN it was
making love with Benny.  Part of it was the not feeling responsible
for the other person having a good time:  Benny wasn't as passive
in that department as some girls Ray had slept with.  Not passive
at all.  But most of it was that Benny so thoroughly enjoyed
himself, like somebody playing--except the playground was Ray.  He
would caress Ray in unexpected places, lick body parts a good
Catholic boy had never even thought of as places a person would
want to put his mouth.  And it was no good telling him such things
weren't kosher, because he just did them anyway--and Ray's knees
would buckle in ecstacy.

     And some of the things Benny thought of--  Like, what if he
sat in a rocking chair, with Ray on his lap, firmly impaled, and
then rocked?  "What if" was that they'd almost broken the chair,
Benny's cock, and Ray's spine, but the glory of that instant of
sliding hard down Benny's cock, wrapped in Benny's arms, turned
for Benny's kiss still set Ray's mind ablaze.  Just get a sturdier
chair next time.  Maybe practice first.  Or that time that Benny
got real impatient halfway through undressing and just pushed Ray
against the wall, yanked their pants halfway to their knees, and
started moving against Ray's crotch, mouth glued to mouth, so that
desperate moans were muffled as they rode each other's sweat-slick
bodies hard and fast and harder and faster to a knee-trembling
finish.  Or the way Benny sometimes made love with words as well
as with his body, hands gliding over Ray's skin while Benny's mouth
murmured a sweet and passionate description of what he was touching
and seeing and feeling.  Who'd have thought words could be so sexy?

     Sometimes Ray found himself pulling back a little, just to
watch Benny's joy at what they were doing, to revel secondhand in
what Benny was feeling.  And, a couple times, to watch Benny
watching himself:  necking in the Riv, Ray would see a wondering
half-smile on Benny's face and realize that Benny was enjoying not
only the touch of Ray's hand caressing his cock through the fabric
of his trousers, but that he WAS enjoying it, and that Ray was
doing it to him.  Ray found that consciousness touching; it spoke
of the years when Benny had had no one to give him such sweetness. 
And Ray would watch the Mountie watching himself--and then firmly
dispel all thought with his fingers or his mouth.  He was here,
now; the past was over and done.

     But, ah, god, the sex.  The mind-teasing, sense-sating, heart-
pleasing presence of Benton Fraser, RCMP, now filling every was-
empty corner of Ray Vecchio's life.  Sometimes Ray was happily
aware that he felt like he was moving through the world safe behind
the shield of his love for Benny and of Benny's love for him.

     Which, of course, was why he walked right into it.

     Couple days after Aunt Ina, a Saturday, and Ray was getting
ready for a whole afternoon with Fraser.  Good shirt, new jacket,
fresh shave.  A whole afternoon with Fraser.

     Then downstairs, looking to see if Ma had finished folding
the laundry:  socks to match the jacket.

     Something should have told him to turn right around and go
back upstairs, put on the socks that didn't quite match the jacket
and just get out of there; but he was thinking about Fraser and a
whole afternoon and how great he was going to look for Fraser, and
so he missed the tender smile Ma gave him, missed the dewy look in
her eyes; and he didn't realize how much trouble he was in until
she took his hand and smiled up at him and said, "Bring her back
for dinner," cradling his cheek in her other hand.

     Ray's heart froze; he stood and looked at her a minute.

     "Ma," he said in a strangled voice.

     She smiled at him again and brushed some non-existent lint
from his shoulder.  "What--are you ashamed?"

     Something was wrong with his breathing.  "No, Ma--"  Oh, damn,
she looked so happy for him--suddenly he just couldn't lie to that
happy face.

     Ray took a deep breath but seemed to get no air at all.  "Ma,"
he said.  He took both her hands and sat her down at the table
where she'd been folding clothes.  "Ma--Ma, it's not a girl." 
Breathe.  "It's--it's a guy, Ma."  Breathe, while the light went
out of her face.  "I'm--I'm in love with a guy."

     Her hands were yanked from his so fast he could feel her
fingernails scrape his fingers.  She jerked, like she'd been
slapped.

     "Nonsense," she said.

     "Ma, it's--"

     "Nonsense."  Her voice was as flat as her eyes.

     "Ma.  Ma!"  He tried to touch her, but she jerked away.  "Ma,
it's true.  I'm--"

     The slap rocked his head so hard his head spun for a minute. 
He put his hand to his cheek, waiting for it to start stinging.

     "This is nonsense."  She was sitting bolt upright, glaring at
him, dry-eyed.  "Nonsense, what you're telling me; it's nonsense."

     "It's not--"

     "It's nonsense."  She looked away from him, swallowing hard,
hands working each other in her lap.  She looked at him.  "Who is
it?"

     He stared at her.

     "WHO IS IT?  I demand to know who it is!"

     "It's--"  Oh, god, his voice wouldn't work.  "It's--it's
Fraser, Ma."

     The slap this time was harder than the first.  He glared at
her, focusing on not hitting her back.  She was angry, was all,
and hurt, betrayed by Ray and--well--by the nice Mountie she'd
adopted in the traditional Italian-American way.

     So he concentrated on not hitting back, on not breaking down
right in front of her, the wetness in his eyes matching the wetness
in hers.  They glared at each other across the silence.

     "Filth.  That kind of filth you're talking about in MY house."

     Ray set his jaw.  It was HIS house, but--  "It isn't filth. 
We're in love."

     "It's filth.  It's a sin; it's a filthy sin in the eyes of
God.  Bringing that man into this house--doing those THINGS.  All
those filthy things those perverted men do to each other."

     The tears in his eyes had dried now; his heart seemed to be
drying up too, shrivelling.

     "I can't believe you do those--those THINGS.  You let HIM do
those--those things to you.  He's filthy.  And you're filthy to
let him do it.  My son."  She almost spat.

     "Well, Ma," Ray heard his voice say as if from far away, "this
is your son.  This is what I'm really like.  I'm in love with
Fraser.  I've been in love with him for a long time."

     "LOVE.  Love is a man and a woman and they make children
together!  This is--this is disgusting."

     "Ma, I feel for him twice what I ever felt for Angie."

     He saw the blow coming this time, caught her wrist before she
connected.  She flinched it out of his grasp.

     "Don't you DARE mention him in the same breath as her!  Don't
you DARE say what you and he do is something to be mentioned in the
same breath as the sacrament of marriage!  It's disgusting animals
doing disgusting animal things!"

     "Ma, it's love."

     "No, it's something terrible he's making you do.  You are not
to see him again!  I forbid you to ever see him again!"

     She forbid--  He almost laughed.

     She saw; her face closed as tightly as if he'd struck her. 
"You are never to see him again!"

     This was getting ridiculous.  "I'm an adult," he informed her.

     "While you are living in MY house, you will live like a decent
person, not some sort of animal doing disgusting things to another
man!"

     "It's my house."

     "WHAT?"

     "It's my house, and I'm an adult, and I will see him if I
like."  The knife edge in his voice silenced her for a minute. 
"You can't stop me.  I'm an adult.  I love him.  And you can't stop
me seeing him."

     "While you live in THIS house--"

     "MA--"  His voice held a warning.

     "While you are living in THIS house, Raymond--"

     "Don't, Ma."

     "--you will abide by rules of common decency!  You will not
see him and live in this house."   

     He felt himself shove his chair back.  "Well, we can fix that,
can't we?"

     Fury got him to his feet before she could say a word; fury
took him upstairs and into his room.  All his actions were sharp
and smooth as he got the suitcase out of his closet, began filling
it with clothes.  His hands did their job automatically; his brain
seemed to be elsewhere.

     He was almost done when he felt her presence in the room,
turned to find her dropping his clean clothes into the suitcase,
wrinkled, twisted, just as they'd come out of the dryer.  They
stared at each other for a silent minute, and then she stalked out;
he heard her feet loud on the stairs up to her room.

     Ray took a deep breath; suddenly his hands were shaking. 
Lunch was threatening to come back up.  He stopped the shaking in
his hands by gripping the suitcase while he looked around the room
to see if he'd missed anything important.

     Nothing he couldn't live without.

     So he shrugged on his shoulder holster and slipped his
semiautomatic into it, slipped his backup piece and its holster
into the suitcase; and he walked downstairs and got his overcoat
out of the closet, opened the front door, and left.

     Not until he got into the car did he realize that he was still
barefoot.  He looked down at his feet, wondering if there was any
point in digging his shoes out of the suitcase to put them on.

     No real point, so he drove barefoot all the way over to
Fraser's place, landscape blurring in front of him because halfway
there it suddenly struck him that without his shoes and those
perfect socks his whole outfit was wrong; he wouldn't look all that
special for Fraser after all.

                              . . .

     Something alerted Fraser even before Diefenbaker went to the
door, before he heard the faint knock.

     He opened the door, and his heart froze for a moment at the
sight of Ray, carrying a suitcase, eyes brimming in a face that
looked bruised, feet bare and pinched-looking.

     "Want a roommate?" Ray said; and Fraser's arms reached out to
bring him home.

     Hours passed before Fraser realized it:  hours in which Ray
paced and tried not to cry, shook in Fraser's arms and tried not
to cry.  When at last he did cry, it was the wrenching, half-
strangled sobs of a man unaccustomed to weeping.  Fraser held him
through the sobs, then busied himself in the kitchen while Ray
pulled himself back together.

     Coffee.  Early supper.  His hands shook while he put water on
to boil for pasta.  He felt bruised, as if he'd been beaten.

     Whisper of bare feet on the floor, and Ray came to the sink
to fill a glass with water, drink it dry.  He rubbed his hands over
his puffy eyes.

     "I ruined our afternoon," he said.

     "No, you didn't, Ray!"

     Ray looked forlornly at him.  "Smells good," he said, though
there was no food to smell.

     Sitting at supper, he said it again, though he made no move
to eat.  He rubbed his hands over his eyes.  "I don't feel so
good," he said.

     Alarmed, Fraser put a hand to Ray's forehead.  Warm.  "You're
sick," he said.  "You need to get into bed."

     And so Ray was put to bed, and Fraser tried to eat his own
supper, too aware of the other plate, of the silent figure curled
under the blanket in the bed.  Diefenbaker got most of the pasta.

     A long evening.  Fraser tried to read, but Ray's still figure
drew his eyes, his concentration.  Well, early bedtime.  It would
be good for him.

     He looked at Ray, lying so quietly.  Bed on the floor tonight;
better not to disturb Ray.

     A few minutes after Fraser put out the light, he was aware
that Ray was sitting up in bed, looking over at him.

     "I make my whole family hate me, and now you won't even touch
me."

     Fraser was off the floor and into the bed almost before the
last word left Ray's lips.  He gathered Ray close, listened to the
thumping of his heart.  Here.  Ray was here at last, in his proper
place.  Home was right here.  Fraser was shamed by the joy that
tried to flood through him.

     He concentrated on comforting that hot body, holding it close. 
Ray shivered and clutched him; Fraser smoothed a hand over his
back, again and again, until Ray's body relaxed in sleep.

     Fraser stayed awake for quite a while longer, staring into
darkness, soothing Ray's fevered dreams with a caressing hand.

                              . . .

     Flu.  Had to be.  Ray spent that whole next day in bed, achy
and restless, twitchy and hot, drowsing to fitful dreams and waking
to water and juice and aspirin and soup and donuts, to Fraser's
cool hand on his cheek and Fraser's frown at his temperature. 
Lousy:  Ray felt lousy.  Ma had been right; if you went out of the
house without your shoes when it was cold, you got sick.

     Evening, and Fraser wrapped him up good and got him into a
chair, so he could change the wrinkled, sweat-damp sheets.  Ray
picked at the clam chowder Fraser had heated up for him and ate
the Oreos and then endured the sponge bath Fraser insisted on--
which actually felt kind of good--and settled into the freshly made
bed with a contented sigh.  Fraser really knew how to take care of
a guy who was sick.

     Next morning, he felt a lot better but still loggy. 
Nonetheless, he sent Fraser off to work and to call in sick for
Ray:  he'd be fine; just needed to rest.  At noon, Fraser brought
him a prosciutto sandwich, smiling while he watched Ray eat it and
smiling at the thermometer when he took Ray's temperature.

     Weird, though, how he couldn't seem to get his energy back. 
Next couple of days Ray spent mostly dozing, with Dief a warm
presence just behind him on the bed; even when he roused himself
to talk to Fraser, his body felt leaden.  At night, the feeling of
Fraser's arms around him was a treasure to be cherished; but Ray
quickly fell hard asleep, waking only when the Mountie got up to
go to work.  Tough flu to get over.

     One of those days, Fraser came home later than usual.  "I--I
took the liberty of picking up your mail," he said.  His voice
sounded rough, and Ray saw a slight flush on his left cheek.  Oh,
god, had Ma--

     Fraser wouldn't talk about it, and Ray didn't really feel all
that good:  too queasy to do anything more than toy with supper. 
His legs didn't seem to want to hold him up; he went to bed early,
and so did Fraser, clutching him tight.  Oh, god, poor Fraser:  Ray
smoothed his hair over and over again, listening to their combined
heartbeats, until they both fell asleep.

     Next day, Ray was sitting in a chair, thinking about how much
effort it would be to heat up some soup; Dief had gone out the fire
escape window to do whatever he did when he went out.  There was
a knock at the door.

     Oh, just let it not be one of those preachy people trying to
rescue his soul from damnation.

     He opened the door, and there was his sister, Frannie.  She
looked at him for a minute, face caught between sympathy and
outrage, and then she took a deep breath as outrage won.

     "WHAT did you DO to her?" Frannie said with that look that
said, "You're dog meat, buster, because after all you're only my
brother," and also said, "But I'll listen to you first, because
after all she is our mother."

     He drew her inside, closed the door, started through the
kitchen to the table, his insides twisting.  Then, halfway there,
he turned and said very quietly, "I fell in love with Fraser."

     "You fell in love with--" she began, then, "--oh!"  She stood
still for a minute, then something seemed to dawn on her, and her
eyes widened.  "OH!"  Then her feet started working again, though
her eyes were glazed; he pulled out a chair for her and steered her
to it, and she plumped down like something was wrong with her legs. 
He sat on the other chair.  "Oh," she said after a while; then her
eyes focused on the end of the bed.  "OH, my--"  She turned red. 
"OH, my go--"  She looked at him in outraged disgust.  "Oh, my god,
that's--"  She seemed to think better of what she was about to say. 
She settled back and gave him a look both puzzled and a little sad. 
"Oh."

     "I didn't mean to," he offered.

     "Oh, you should SEE her!  She's lighting candles and screaming
curses and talking to the priest every five minutes--  I didn't
know WHAT to do!  And then when BENNY came over--"

     His heart stabbed him.  Benny walking into the firestorm that
was Ma being mad.  Poor Benny, bravely taking his licks.

     Frannie was getting that squeamish look.  "Did you ALWAYS like
guys?"

     "_I_ don't know."

     "Was he the first guy you--"  She turned red.

     Now, what kind of question was that for a good Catholic girl
to ask her brother?  And what kind of answer was he going to give
it?  There'd been those couple times with Vinnie Mauceri, just--
well, maybe it was kind of a weird way for a guy to get his rocks
off, even if he was curious and constantly horny and was between
girlfriends.  But that had been it.

     His silence answered her.  Her jaw dropped.  Then she got that
fighting-Vecchio look.  "YOU didn't make a pass at Stephen
DiNapoli, did you?  I KNEW he didn't break up with me just because
Lucia Doran came back to town.  You better not--"

     "Are you CRAZY?  _I_ didn't make any passes at your
boyfriends!  Who'd want those losers anyway?  He went back to her
because she'd put out and you wouldn't!  At least you BETTER not
have--"  Gee, he was relieved she was fighting with him; it meant
she'd gotten over the initial shock.  It was better than having
her--oh, damn, she WAS crying.

     "How could you--"  She turned away, toward the window, tears
rolling down her cheeks.

     *Get water*, his brain told him in a strangled voice.  *Woman
crying; get out of here; getting water is a good excuse*.  He hoped
his lunge from the chair didn't look as desperate as it was.

     He took a long time, rinsed the glass, let the water run nice
and cold, filled it up carefully, shoulders hunched against the
misery behind him.  When he turned, she was honking into a kleenex.

     "Well, him being gay explains why he never really went for
me," she said forlornly.

     Ray paused, his heart tumbling over in his chest.  Oh,
Frannie.  Fraser'd never gone for her because--well, because he'd
just never gone for her.  But if it helped her self esteem to
believe that--  Oh, Frannie.

     He set the glass of water down on the table and gave her a
quick one-armed hug, pressing his lips to her hair.  "I'm sorry,"
he said.

     She gave him a teary smile and hugged him back.  "You couldn't
help it," she said.  "Nobody can ever really help it."  Her voice
sounded sad.

     He sat back down and watched her sip the water.

     Then she got the war look again.  "When did you--  When did
you realize you were--"

     "Spring.  Last spring."

     She sat back and took a deep breath.  "Oh, GOOD," she said. 
"Oh, that's a RELIEF!  Good!  That time you tried to warn me off
him--  I'd hate to think you were being jealous!"

     "No!  I was seeing Linda then, remember?"

     "Oh, yeah.  LIN-da."  Oh, yeah, she DID remember.  Linda had
been an error of epic proportions; for weeks after they'd broken
up, "LIN-da" had been Vecchio-talk for "big mistake I really didn't
realize I was making at the time, but now, oh, BOY, I wish I
hadn't!"

     Frannie was mopping her face.  "Well, if it couldn't be me,
at least it isn't that Mountie woman," she said.

     He laughed then, a laugh that seemed to clear out a lot of
the debris from the last few days.  "The Dragon Lady," he said.

     Frannie was laughing along with him, in one of those rare
just-us-Vecchios-against-the-world moments.  She would hurt for a
long time, but she'd stick by him.  In her own fashion, of course.

     "Is he--is he GOOD to you?" she asked.  Her hands were
shaking.

     "Oh, yeah," he said gently.  Oh, Frannie.

     She sniffled, her eyes suddenly bright with tears, and looked
out the window.  "That's good," she said.  "That's good."

     He wanted so much to hold her, but he knew that if he did
she'd start crying hard and get embarrassed and mad at him for
seeing her so upset.  So he just sat there, stroking her hand,
loving her, while she got it back together.

     "Well, Ma is just--she's just WRONG," Frannie said, some of
the fierceness coming back.  "I mean--people fall in LOVE, and-- 
Well, she's just WRONG."

     "She's following the teaching of the Church," Ray said.

     "Yeah, but that's just--"  He understood that sudden silence: 
the Church's teachings weren't to be questioned.  But two divorced
Catholics weren't exactly going to be such good advocates of the
Church's doctrines.

     "I don't think they GET it."  Frannie was nothing if not
stubborn.  "I mean, I don't exactly get it, either--well, maybe I
DO get it.  I mean, it's BENNY.  He's just--I just really do
understand, Ray.  I can see why you'd fall in love with him.  I
can.  After all, _I_ did."  Her little smile was forlorn.  "You two
being physical--I don't--that's just not something I want to try
to get.  But LOVE.  It just doesn't seem right to be that horrible
when it's LOVE."

     She still had remnants of the squeamish look, but his heart
was warmed.  Once Frannie made up her mind, nothing short of a
baseball bat could change it.

     "And who does she think she is, just kicking you out like
that?"  She shoved the unused kleenex into her purse.

     "I LEFT, Frannie."

     "Because she made you!  It's YOUR house, Ray!  She threw you
out of YOUR house!  Pop left it to YOU!"

     "You KNOW that was so I could take care of everybody!  It sure
wasn't out of reSPECT!  Can you see me kicking everybody out of the
house so me and Benny can live happily ever after?  EVERYBODY,
Frannie?"

     She grimaced at him.  "I JUST mean it's your house and you
got a right to live there if you want!  Oh, she is just WRONG.  I
am just gonna--"

     Arms were waving now, hands being flung into the air in the
usual sort of Frannie-fit.  Ray grinned at her.  There were those
women who sang opera, riding into battle all dressed up in armor
and singing at the top of their lungs.  Valkyries--that was them. 
When Frannie got like this, she reminded Ray of one of those.

     Frannie stood, jerking her purse onto her shoulder.  "You just
leave it to me," she said.  "She may have started it, but I'M for
sure gonna end it.  Being so nasty to Benny like that!  Oh, she is
just WRONG!"

     "Give her my best," Ray sang out, closing the door behind her. 
He leaned on it and gave himself up to a laugh.  Oh, Frannie! 
Riding into battle.  And not because Ma was being nasty to Ray, but
because she'd been so rotten to Fraser.  Some things just didn't
change in a hurry.

     Gee, it'd been ages since he'd eaten.  And there was Dief,
jumping in through the window.  "Hey, Dief," he said to the wolf. 
"Deli?"

     Gosh, it was pretty out--nice and brisk.  Get his shoes on. 
Put a jacket on.  Take a walk in the park.  Get something nice for
supper tonight, something not too hard to cook:  feed up Fraser
before--

     He was whistling when his feet hit the sidewalk.

                              . . .

     "Bed," Ray said drowsily, "is just the right place to eat
pizza."

     Fraser chuckled and stretched languidly.  Outside, the city
was settling in for sleep.  He had a warm feeling that he was
settling in for no sleep at all.

     "And naked," Ray said, "is just the right WAY to eat pizza." 
He picked a piece of mushroom off the top of the pizza and put it
to Fraser's lips.

     *No*, Fraser thought, mouthing the mushroom and the fingers
that held it, *bit by small, tempting bit is the right way to eat
pizza*.  He licked the fingers thoroughly, catching every drop of
pizza sauce.

     Ray was grinning at him, then closing in for a long, pizza-
flavored kiss.

     Pizza in bed with Ray.  Fraser had been completely unprepared
for it, for the clear-eyed smile that welcomed him home after work. 
That Ray had recovered quickly was not really a surprise:  during
all those days of Ray's bout with flu, his temperature had
resolutely never risen above 37.1 degrees Celsius--perfectly
normal--and his ability to eat rich foods had never wavered.  His
illness had been more of the heart than of the body.  But Fraser
would guard that secret like he would guard Ray:  with his life.

     But so suddenly--  Francesca's visit, her demonstration of
loyalty revitalizing him--that was unexpected.  She had been a
shocked presence in the background during Fraser's visit with their
mother; he had assumed that the shock was at his and Ray's
relationship, and not at the fury that possessed Mrs. Vecchio when
she saw him.

     And so this:  Ray cheerful and tender and brisk, moving with
his usual vigor, quick with his usual jokes, fervent with his usual
passion.  So, pizza in bed with Ray, after lovemaking, before more
lovemaking and falling asleep to the sound of Ray's heartbeat and
waking to that sweet, sleepy face.

     So, toss the empty pizza box to the floor, to be nosed by a
disappointed Diefenbaker; watch the last piece of pizza being
bitten into; feel the joy that bubbled through his veins like
meltwater in spring; see the hazel eyes brighten at a lascivious
thought; observe the last bite of pizza being swallowed; lick the
remaining sauce from the long fingers; tongue the drop of sauce
from the warm lower lip; and so begin.

                              . . .

     The weird thing was that nobody at the precinct seemed to
know.  Somehow, Ray had figured that if Ma knew and Frannie knew,
then everybody at work would somehow know; but they didn't.  They
just treated him like usual:  mostly ignored him.

     "Oh, hey, I hope you're feeling better," Elaine said, just
before she got huffy about something he asked for.

     "Ah, Detective Vecchio," Welsh said, giving him the once-over. 
"Glad to see you looking so well.  Will I get that report today?"

     "Were you gone?" Huey said.

     Yep--just like usual.  Unsolved cases piled on his desk; phone
messages scattered over them like fallen leaves.

     Life as usual.  Except now he was going home to Fraser, which
jacked up his whole day, even when the drunken perp threw up on
him.  Going home to Fraser made the ego bruises and small failures
that went with cop work all worthwhile.

     "Hey, I didn't tell you--they erased you," Elaine said,
handing him the printout he'd asked for.

     "EXCUSE me, Elaine?"

     "Yeah--it was funny.  For some reason the computer kept
pulling out all your cases and putting them in a file.  And then
sometimes it would pull from that file instead of the real one. 
Strange.  They erased it.  I hope they fixed the thing; I got kind
of tired of reading about your old cases.  You really brought in
that Alessandra Willson a lot."

     Aless.  Oh, damn.  "Is she still here?" he asked.

     "No.  Out on bail.  Weird, because it was pretty high.  She
doesn't strike me as the kind with that kind of connections."

     She didn't strike Ray as that kind, either.  But he was glad
she'd made bail:  he hated to think of her in jail.  She was such
an entertaining informant.  The arrest would only put her in more
solid with her fellow scumbags, who assumed that somebody who got
brought in as often as she did wouldn't be inclined to help the
cops.  Ray grinned.  They were wrong, though he suspected that she
gave him info less out of any sense of civic duty, than because she
had a thing for him.  Usually she didn't make bail very quick; this
was unusual.  But he filed it away in his head and went on to the
other stuff that had piled up while he'd been out sick.

     And felt his heart start to race as the afternoon wore on and
it was closer to time to go home to Fraser.

     Home.  To Fraser.  Now, those were three of the sweetest words
Ray knew.

                              . . .

     Fraser knew there was something more to do; he simply could
not bring it to mind.  He ran the list through his mind as he stood
sentry.  Permits:  yes.  Accomodations confirmed:  yes.  Catering;
train; laundry facilities:  yes; yes; yes.  Thirty-two Illinois-
Welcomes-You packets:  yes.  Bomb-sniffing dog for the train:  yes--
though its handler seemed puzzled when Fraser asked about
searching for the components of a nuclear weapon.  Unfortunate. 
Fraser didn't want yet another train carrying the Musical Ride to
spark yet another nuclear incident.  Once was enough.

     Fraser sighed:  a sigh undetectable to those around him, but
still cleansing.  There was something more to do, but he couldn't
think what.  Whatever it was, he would think of it eventually.

     Instead he gave himself over to the pleasure of thinking about
Ray Vecchio.  Chicken tonight for supper; eaten at the table.  *And
Ray*, he thought facetiously, *for dessert*.  Toothsome,
satisfying, and--he chuckled inwardly--low-fat.  Thinking of that
snug bottom, of the wiry arms, Fraser thought, *Extremely low-fat*.

     Ray all night in his arms; Ray grumbling that Fraser was
stealing the blanket; Ray protesting how cool the floor was in the
morning--Fraser reminded himself to find a nice, thick rug for
Ray's side of the bed.  Ray holding the front door closed with one
hand and pressing Fraser against it for a long, delicious kiss
before they went to breakfast.  Lovely.

     This offset Ray leaving his soiled clothing on the floor next
to the hamper instead of actually putting it INto the hamper; Ray
grumbling in the middle of the night about having to dress and go
down the hall to use the toilet; Ray demonstrating how cool the
floor was by putting his icy feet on Fraser's back when he returned
to bed.  Loving Ray without a soup‡on of irritation wasn't really
loving Ray.

     Fraser let his mind glide over the possibilities of the
evening to come--and of the weekend to come, for that matter. 
Amazing how many combinations and variations of kissing, stroking,
licking, nuzzling, sucking, nibbling, thrusting, and caressing he
could think up to try on that responsive body.  Why, even after six
months of almost constant experimentation, he could think of dozens
yet to explore.

     And then, of course, there were the private fantasies.  Fraser
could feel himself flushing; he hoped observers would credit it to
the reflection of his dress uniform.  He had never thought of
himself as an imaginative man, had never felt the need to spice
lovemaking with elaborate fantasies.  But, sometimes, while Ray
thrust deliciously into him, Fraser would become in his mind a
slave pleasuring his beloved master; and, once or twice, to Fraser's
shame Ray became a conquering warrior raping an unruly prisoner into
submission.  Better keep those private--at least for now.

     Ray's fantasies, however, they had begun to explore--at least
the simpler ones.  Like making love in his own bed.

     One day last summer, a day in the middle of a week they both
had off, they had gone to Ray's house to pick up some papers--an
insurance form or registration for something; Fraser couldn't
remember just what.  What he did remember was the soft silence
there, the emptiness of a house where everyone was out.  Dust motes
sparkled in the slant of sunlight in the foyer.

     "Oh, yeah, I forgot:  Ma's got her women's meeting today,"
Ray said.  "Everybody's out all afternoon.  Now, where did I put
that?"

     Fraser watched him search through a paper-littered desk.

     "Gee, it's quiet," Ray said.  "Did I have it over--"  He went
to an end table.

     "Gosh," Ray said, pausing in his search.  "The fantasies I've
had about having you here.  You waiting in bed for me at night. 
You and me in my bed--"  He ducked his head with a smile and
reached under the couch to feel around.

     Fantasies of Fraser waiting to make love in Ray's bed.  Fraser
felt his breath quicken.  He looked at the kneeling figure bent in
its search and felt a stirring in his groin.  Making love in Ray's
bed.  Ray wasn't the only one with those fantasies.

     Ray climbed to his feet, snapped his fingers.  "Dining room,"
he said.

     Fraser walked ahead of him into the foyer, then paused and
started for the stairs, hands busy.

     "Where you goin'?" Ray said.

     "Upstairs."  Fraser's shirt was unbuttoned now; he removed it
as he climbed the first flight and folded it over his arm.  His
hands went to his belt.

     "What for?"

     Fraser paused at the landing and smiled down at the sunlit
figure, long enough to see understanding dawn in the astonished
face.  "Don't forget to lock us in tight," he said.  Ray almost
tripped in his scamper for the dining room.

     Fraser smiled as he started up the next flight.  Wanton.  He
felt pleasantly wanton, undressing on his way to Ray's room, to
wait naked in Ray's bed for lovemaking in the middle of the day. 
Ray's skin bathed in sunlight; Ray's ardent gasps harsh in Fraser's
ears.  He had become a wanton creature; he even liked rolling the
word on his tongue:  "wanton."

     He dropped the clothing on the floor of Ray's room, so wanton
that he did not even much care if the clothing wrinkled.  A quick
gesture, and the counterpane and top sheet drifted to the floor. 
He stretched out on his side, naked on the naked bed, hand
automatically going to his hardening penis, to stroke it into
evident arousal.

     Ray's bed, where he had lain nights, thinking of this moment,
thinking of Fraser, perhaps thrashing in silent, solitary orgasm. 
Fraser's hand went to caress the sheet.  Ray's scent rose from the
mattress and the pillows, overwhelming him so that his penis
hardened without touch.  He stretched luxuriously on the smooth
sheet and cradled his head in his arms, smiling at the pound of
footsteps on the stairs.  He licked his lips.  Wanton.

     Fraser smiled at the figure in the doorway gaping at the naked
man clearly ready for an afternoon of love.

     "Did you find it?" Fraser said after a long moment.

     "Uh--yeah."  In a squeak.

     Good.

     Ray closed the door, locked it.  His hands seemed everywhere
at once, divesting him of his clothing while he stared at Fraser. 
Fraser turned and rose to his knees, spreading them.  He leaned
onto his elbows.  Now.  He was going to be entered, and he was
going to make a LOT of noise; fill the empty house with passionate
sounds.  Indulge himself and Ray.  Fulfill the fantasies; build a
memory for Ray, to last him through the solitary nights--to last
them BOTH through the solitary nights.

     He heard Ray striding around the bed and looked over his
shoulder at him, feasting his eyes on the engorging penis, feasting
his ears on Ray's sudden sharp intake of breath.  Lust washed
through him.  He would indulge his own appetite, drain every
lustful sigh from Ray.  Fraser stretched.  Now.  Oh, god, NOW.

     Ray fumbled at the drawer in the bedside table, almost
dropping the condom and the tube of jelly he took from it.  The
cool jelly only stoked Fraser's desire:  he leaned back against
the penetrating fingers, pumping his hips as if the fingers were
the penis he craved.  Ray's groan was maddening.

     Then the fingers were gone, and the penis was easing into
their place.  Hands on his hips, guiding him back to impale himself
on that delicious heat.  Hand firm around his penis.

     He groaned into the pillow, then lifted his head to groan
louder.  "YES!" he said.  "Oh, yessss."

     "Ah, geez," Ray groaned.  His hips fell into the rhythm Fraser
was seeking.

     Thrust back onto that burning fullness, slide forward to feel
the exquisite friction; Fraser's moans of pleasure fell into the
rhythm of the pumping hips, echoed Ray's groans behind him.

     Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  Yes, yes.  Yes, yes, YES.  YES--

     And the rhythm sharpening now, Ray's cries building a climax
in Fraser's groin.

     "Oh, god, FRASER," Ray moaned.  "Oh, Benny, BENNY--"

     Hips frantic against his buttocks; firm hand frantic on his
penis; his own hips pumping hard, seeking release, release--

     It poured out of him in an instant of howling pleasure
intensified by Ray's cry, by the sensation of that magnificent
penis spasming inside him.  Fraser's hips jerked of their own
volition, milking the last bit of pleasure from the moment.

     The rasp of their breathing filled the quiet room, the silent
house.  Eased onto the semen-dampened bed, Fraser smiled as he
turned to take Ray into his arms.  The slight ache between his
buttocks was delicious.  Wanton.  Truly wanton.

     He laved the gasping mouth with his tongue, twining his legs
with Ray's.  He scoured the sweat from Ray's throat, dipped his
finger just into the cleavage of Ray's buttocks and licked off the
accumulated sweat.  Musk of Ray.  The salty musk of love.

     Ray's heart thudded against his own.  He smiled down into a
love-softened smile.

     "Oh, you were NOISY," Ray murmured.

     "You made me noisy," Fraser accused gently.  "You brought it
out of me.  You and your fantasies and your strong, beautiful hands
and your thick, beautiful penis, and those--well, those EARS that
I just have to--"  He sucked an earlobe into his mouth.

     Ray's groan was half laughter.  "Ah, god, and you always
struck me as the quiet type," he said.

     "It's your fault," Fraser went on.  "I was such a nice, QUIET
young man before I met you and your hard, beautiful buttocks and
your hard, beautiful nipples and your--"  Ray's laughter drowned
the rest.

     Naked in the naked bed, they gazed at each other.

     "We probably better get going," Ray said.  His voice sounded
half-hearted.

     "You said no one's coming home for a while," Fraser reminded
him.  "Do you know I once almost ravished you in this bed?"

     "Huh?"

     "That night I spent here after the fire.  We kissed that next
morning, and I came very close to ravishing you on this very bed." 
Ray's hazel eyes were on his, huge.  "The hiss of those silk
pyjamas against your silky backside, rustling to the floor."  Ray's
breathing deepened.  "Bending you over the edge of the bed,
feasting my eyes on your alabaster skin in the moonlight."  Ray's
leg twitched between Fraser's; his foot began to stroke the calf
of Fraser's leg gently, gently.  "Parting those firm, round cheeks. 
Inserting myself between them and thoroughly taking my pleasure
there again, and again, and again, and--"

     Ray groaned, his chest heaving.  "We got no moonlight," he
gasped.

     "I know.  Perhaps some other time."  But he had planted a
fantasy in Ray's fertile brain.  Wanton.  "Perhaps we could go out
into the country some moonlit night, find a deserted lane."

     "A-A-A-AH."

     "Bend you over the hood of the Buick."  Fraser grinned as Ray
started to laugh.  "Trousers down to your knees, moonlight gleaming
on your buttocks--"

     "Cock getting whacked off in the grillwork," Ray finished,
laughing.  "NO thanks!"

     Fraser laughed.

     "Let's see, bend YOU over something," Ray said musingly. 
"Ravish you repeatedly in spite of your virginal cries.  Someplace
Canadian--ooh, your office desk!  With the Dragon Lady right next
door, oblivious to your helpless cries."

     "We'd have to do without the moonlight," Fraser said.  "She's
only there during the day."

     "Well, sunlight, then.  Less romantic, but definitely kinkier. 
I really like the desk idea.  Maybe MY desk.  Think anybody'd
notice?"

     "Perhaps if I weren't in the dress uniform."

     Ray was smiling at him.  Then Ray was kissing him, the first
kiss since they had entered the house.  Joy sang in Fraser's blood. 
An afternoon together in the empty house.

     "So," he said, "what OTHER fantasies have you had about me
being in this house?"

     Mrs. Vecchio's automobile had turned onto the street just as
they had driven away.

     *Wanton*, Fraser thought now, standing unblinking while the
tourist took his photograph.  *Love has made you wanton*.

     Sunlight shimmered on the windows opposite the Consulate,
reflecting a web of light onto him.  He felt caught in a golden
glow.  Love.  Wantonness.  They were both such lovely feelings.

                              . . .

     Lovely.  Watching Fraser wash dishes, knowing they'd probably
be going to bed in just about a minute or two was lovely.  Ray
leaned back in the chair, enjoying the way Fraser looked from the
rear, shifting and stretching as he washed dish after dish.

     "Hey--whattaya want to do this weekend?" he asked, knowing
the answer.

     Fraser turned, half-washed tin plate in his hand, and gave
him a lascivious smile.  Yep, just what Ray had thought.

     "You know I got Monday off, too," he offered.

     "Oh?"

     "Columbus Day."

     Fraser stopped.  "But Columbus Day is TOMORROW."

     "We observe it Monday."

     "That's never made sense to me."

     "Fraser, it's every American's god-given right to get every
Monday off that the law will allow.  It's one of the things we
fought the Revolution for."

     Fraser's look this time was more exasperation than lust. 
"Ray, I seriously doubt that a group of colonies rode roughshod
over England and declared itself an independent country so you
could have Mondays off."

     "It's an EXPRESSION, Fraser."

     "Yes--one every American seems to use every five days or so."

     "Well, you at least gotta agree with the Columbus Day part: 
after all, when he discovered the New World, he discovered Canada,
too."

     "Well, Ray, 'discovered' is open to interpretation, as is
Columbus' role in North American history.  After all, the Vikings
landed in Newfoundland centuries before Columbus was even born;
and even before that--"

     And he was off and lecturing.  Ray cheerfully tuned him out,
preferring to focus on the lecturer.  The way Fraser practically
lived in his uniform just killed Ray, especially when Fraser was
doing something domestic like dishes.  Stern Mountie boots and
regulation Mountie pants--and a dish towel tied around the
regulation Mountie waist, and that little brush people use to clean
out glasses being wielded with precision.  Fraser was describing
some rune stone somebody either had or hadn't planted in Minnesota. 
Ray grinned at the regulation Mountie back.  *Damn, Vecchio, you're
such a sap when you're in love*.  Yep.  Maybe he should just go
kiss the dishwasher.

     Which he did; and it started something that ended up with the
sheets in a tangle on the floor and them tangled naked in the
sheets.

     Ray leaned back against the trunk Fraser had by the bed.  It
wasn't in the usual place; it had shifted during one of their more
intense moments, vibrating out of position while they'd--  He
smiled at Fraser, relaxed across his lap, head and shoulders
propped against the wall.  Damn--how had Fraser come up with THAT?

     Sometimes after they'd made love, Fraser had this kind of
dreamy look in his eyes that, combined with the tousled hair and
the flush of lovemaking and the sheen of sweat, made him look
positively edible.  He had it now.  Ray bent and kissed him,
grunting as some hard-ridden body parts protested; he slid his
mouth over the relaxed lips, glided the tip of his tongue along
them as they parted.  Edible.

     "Who'd'a thunk it?" Ray said languidly.

     Fraser laughed.  "And there's more where that came from."

     "I just bet."

     "Yes.  My imagination seems to be limitless where you're
concerned."

     "Flattering."

     Fraser held Ray's eyes with his.  "Inspiring."

     They looked at each other for a warm minute.

     "I always thought you'd be kinda--conventional," said Ray.

     Fraser chuckled.

     "I mean--jeez, Fraser, you just don't come off like the kind
of guy who'd come up with half the stuff you do."

     Flicker of a frown, quickly smoothed out.  "You know, Ray,
it's a bit--annoying that people see politeness and attention to
etiquette as, well, being REPRESSED."

     "Oh, you're not REPRESSED, Fraser.  You're anything but
REPRESSED.  Boy, do I know you're certainly not REPRESSED."

     "Yes, Ray, but--  Sometimes people seem to treat me as if I
were some fluttery virgin."

     Ray laughed.  No virgin would have just done THAT.

     "I mean, I'm a human being.  _I_ have--_I_ have a--less polite
side."

     "Of course you do, Fraser.  Now, me, I get just the opposite. 
I get people forgetting I got feelings."

     Fraser's eyes widened in alarm.  "Ray, I--"

     Oh, some Mounties...  "Not YOU, Fraser.  OTHER people."

     "Well, Ray, you do rather--protect yourself.  Armor yourself
in mistrust of people."

     "Trust can do you in, Fraser."

     "It can also free you, Ray."

     Yeah, well.  "That only works for Canadians."  He flirted a
smile at Fraser's exasperated frown.  "My neighborhood, you learned
early that people can be basically rotten.  Not just Frankie Zuko;
_I_ did some rotten things as a kid.  Every kid does."

     "Not every kid, Ray."

     "Yeah, Fraser, I bet you were helping little old lady polar
bears across the ice just as soon as you could walk."

     "Well, I wouldn't go that far.  I just learned early that
consideration for others is--important."

     "Yeah, well, some people call that repressed."

     "It's not repressed, Ray.  It's--thoughtfulness."

     Fraser eased himself up, sitting against the wall, his legs
across Ray's.  He didn't look so relaxed any more.

     "You can't tell me you were this polite as a kid.  It's not
natural."

     "Ray, it's just as natural to be polite as it is to be rude."

     "Yeah, but--didn't you ever do ANYthing rotten as a kid?"

     Fraser paused, then gave him what Ray thought of as that
bright, blue-eyed smile--the one where his dimples and his honest
looks were supposed to keep you from noticing that you weren't
getting a complete answer.  "I once tried to feed a book to a
passing walrus," Fraser said.

     But Ray wasn't buying any today, and he let his expression
show it.  The smile part froze on Fraser's face; the blue eyes
studied him for a minute.

     Then Fraser relaxed and rested his head against the wall,
still watching him.  "Would you still love me if I weren't--"  He
stopped.

     "--perfect?" Ray finished after a minute.  His heart was
softening like warm wax.  "Oh, yeah, Fraser."

     Fraser's look was doubtful, like he didn't really believe it. 
Then,

     "Sometimes I don't really like myself," Fraser said softly,
looking away.  His legs across Ray's lap felt tense.  "I think I'm
too judgmental.  Or--or not judgmental enough...  And sometimes
even I'M not sure if I'm being courteous out of--"  He hesitated
and then laughed.  "--out of COURTESY, or--or out of fear."

     "Fear of what?"

     Fraser focused on him then, the blue eyes wary.  "Of--"  He
looked at Ray for a minute.  "Would you really love me if I--"

     "--didn't memorize the name of everybody in the phonebook on
the off chance you might run into them one day?" Ray finished for
him.  Fraser laughed, but his eyes stayed wary.  "Oh, yeah,
Fraser."  And, oh, god, he meant it.  Even though he hadn't exactly
liked what he thought of as That Other Mountie--the guy Fraser had
become when he'd lost his memory that time.  The rude guy, who
acted just like every other selfish, thoughtless person there was
in the world.  But FRASER--  Well, Fraser kind of over did the
politeness thing; he could afford to relax a little, at least
around Ray.  Ray could take it.  But how to say what really
motivated him?  "That extra stuff is--well, it's damn NICE, but--
but I'd love you without it."  And, oh, dear sweet god he meant
every word.

     But Fraser wasn't finished.  "But mostly I'm afraid of--"  He
studied Ray for a minute.  "Of--"  A couple of heartbeats.  "Of--
of--what might come out," Fraser finally whispered.  His face
stiffened.  He was watching Ray.

     Ray regarded him for a minute.  What to say?  He'd known for
a long time what lurked deep inside Fraser:  seen it at the very
beginning in the satisfaction when a would-be assassin went over
a cliff; in the desperate run after Victoria Metcalfe at the train
station; in the smothered fury when they'd babysat his father's
murderer.  Fraser was nobody's cuddly little kitten.  He'd been
scraped and scalded by life, and part of him wanted to snarl and
lash out; Ray had come to recognize that.  Perhaps because it was
all too familiar in himself.  But what to say?

     Ray leaned forward and placed his mouth on Fraser's:  firm,
no nonsense.  Not a sexual kiss; but Fraser's breathing was ragged
at the end of it.  Not a come-hither kiss; but Fraser's eyes were
wide when he looked at Ray.

     "You and me," Ray told him, "we got the same jungle inside
us.  Only I let mine take over once in a while, and you try to
cover yours over in concrete."  Oh, that was just dumb.  But he
couldn't think of another way to put it.  "It keeps cracking the
concrete, and then you just pour more on.  But it's just gonna keep
coming through the concrete.  You got to--"  Got to what, Dr.
Sigmund Vecchio?  "You got to--you got to look at all of it, so you
can find your way through it.  And find your way out of it when you
need to."  Oh, that was just STUPID.

     But Fraser was looking at him like he'd just invented
relativity.  "And would you--would you LOVE me if I--if I let--that
part of me--"  Deep breath.  "If I let that part of me--out?"  Such
wary blue eyes.

     They'd been here before.  "Oh, yeah, Fraser."  Geez, his heart
was racing.  "But--but would you love--ME?"

     Fraser's eyes softened; his tongue flickered over his bottom
lip.  "Oh, yeah, Ray," he said softly.

     And he leaned over and pinned Ray to the trunk in a kiss that
just confirmed it.

     So this was probably why a few days later, naked against the
naked Mountie, Ray listened with astonishment to the sound of his
own handcuffs clicking around his wrists, looked up into eyes
suddenly distant as a clear winter sky.  "Fr--" he said, before
the handkerchief was shoved in his mouth and bound there by
another.

     Ray squirmed against the mattress, trying to sit up.  As often
as he'd joked about handcuffs and sex, he'd never actually thought
he'd like the combination:  too reminiscent of childhood
helplessness, of somebody else--somebody UNTRUSTWORTHY--calling
the shots, with him unable to protect himself.  The goosebumps that
suddenly prickled his skin all over weren't because he was cold.

     Fraser was kneeling over him, keeping him flat, his cuffed
hands a knot between the mattress and the small of his back. 
Helpless.  The thumping of his heart may have been that or it may
have been Fraser's nearness or it may have been fear.

     Fraser smiled down at him--a smile with an edge to it.  Ray
tried to smile back through the gag.  Fraser's lips grazed his
forehead, his temple, his ear.  "Well, Ray--"  Fraser's whisper
was a tickle in his ear.  "--you DID invite me to explore the
jungle inside me."  His tongue traced the structure of Ray's ear. 
"Don't you trust me?"

     Ray's back stiffened.  Oh, god, didn't he--  He drew a ragged
breath.  Didn't he, after all this time together, after all they'd
been through together, didn't he--  Well, usually, he'd say, "yes,"
but--but, now--

     The blue eyes were implacable.  "Don't you trust me?" said
the soft mouth he'd plundered so often.

     Ray looked up into the depthless eyes.  Didn't he?  This was
Benny.  Didn't he trust Benny with his whole heart?  Well, with
his heart, yes, but--but didn't he trust Benny with his whole body?

     His nod seemed a little jerky, but he didn't think Fraser
noticed.  After all, he DID trust Fraser.  Yeah--REALLY.  Really
truly.

     Fraser's eyes had warmed; his smile was more like normal. 
"Good."  His warm mouth made its way down the side of Ray's throat.

     Ray's eyes closed of themselves.  Okay.  THIS was good--he
liked this.  This was actually kind of better than good, even with
the handcuffs, because--well, he wasn't exactly sure why.

     "NOW then."  And the touch of fabric across his eyes jolted
him.  Ray thrashed, but it did no good:  Fraser was in charge now,
and he simply tied the blindfold just like Ray was cooperating.

     Fraser's hands were gentle on his shoulders.  "You can't have
stopped trusting me, Ray."  His voice was gentle and sounded a
little disappointed.

     Oh, COULDN'T he?  Ray tried to will his muscles into relaxing. 
Quit panicking, Vecchio.  This was FRASER doing all this; Fraser
wouldn't hurt you; Fraser LOVES you.  And all the time, at the back
of his mind a little voice was saying, *Damn it, Vecchio, you had
to open your big, dumb mouth, had to try to talk Dudley Do-Right
into walking on the wild side.  Why do you have to do that?  Huh? 
Just to needle him?  Just to prove that really, after all, deep
down, he's really no better than you?*

     He barely felt Fraser's hands skimming his chest, focusing
instead on keeping himself limp.  See, Fraser?  I trust you. 
Really.

     A pause, then Fraser's mouth at his throat again, teeth
sliding down to his collarbone.  Little nibble here and here.  Oh,
Fraser was taking forever.  This was never gonna be over.

     Fraser's mouth at Ray's lower lip, teasing it out from under
the gag, sucking on it.  Kinky.  Kinkier when Fraser started
chewing, then bit hard enough to startle, then sucked on it some
more, soothing where he'd bitten.  Heat was gathering in Ray's
groin.  His hands were falling asleep.  He moaned against Fraser's
mouth, though maybe not at the cramp starting in his arms, but at
the chewing Fraser was doing again on his bottom lip.  More tongue,
then a final nip--a hard one, this time, hard enough so the pain
lingered.

     Side of his neck, and top of shoulder, touched only with teeth
and hot mouth, cooling where Fraser's tongue had lingered.  Funny
how you noticed things you wouldn't if you could watch that slack
rosebud mouth against your skin, see those fingers twine themselves
in chest hair.

     Tongue circling his nipple, now; brief pause; then teeth
gently tugging before the tongue came back.  Teeth delicately
worrying the tender nipple bud, gripping harder and harder; and
then, just as it really began to hurt, mouth sucking hard, tongue
roughing the throbbing nipple in a way that was damned far from
being unpleasant.

     Teeth and tongue exploring the other nipple, now, bolder,
sucking harder.  Then mouth sliding across his ribs, tracing each
one.  Dryness of lips and wetness of tongue.  Ray shifted.  His
cock was hardening, and his hips were twitching, aching to thrust.

     Benny astride him now, soft ass brushing his thighs, bumping
the tip of his cock, hard thighs gripping his hips.  Husky
breathing as hands explored the softness of his belly.  Was Benny
smiling at him all laid out for his enjoyment, all helpless against
those hands?  Ah, jeez, Fraser might do ANYthing.  Ray's moan was
smothered in the gag.

     Sudden shift, then tongue against navel.  Lingering over his
lower belly.  He tried to keep his hips from lifting themselves to
offer his cock for Benny's mouth.  Benny was calling the shots;
this was Benny's party.

     Hands rearranging him, and then the gentle tongue enjoying
the sensitive back of his knee.  His groan was half disappointment
and half appreciation.  Mouth sliding up the inside of one thigh,
teeth nipping it harder and harder as Fraser came closer and closer
to Ray's balls.  Ray found himself catching a deeper and deeper
breath with each flash of ecstatic pain.  Would Fraser stop before
he did something that really hurt?  Would Ray be able to stand it
if he did stop?

     Fraser's teeth grazing Ray's balls now, so exquisite that Ray
groaned.  A pause.  Then those teeth on Ray's cock.  Ray was limp,
with pleasure and with fear and with, he realized, a dread that
Fraser would stop.  Don't stop.  Don't ever stop, Fraser.  The
exquisite pain of teeth just gripping the head of his cock was just
this side of pleasure.

     And then the light scrape of the teeth all the way down his
cock, and a quick, hard suck that lifted his hips, before the mouth
went away and Fraser's hands yanked him by the ankles so his ass
rested on the edge of the bed.  Fraser spread Ray's legs wide, ran
his hands up Ray's thighs, thumbnails scoring a line of delicious
fire.  A tug at Ray's waist brought him up to sit, swaying.

     Pain radiated up his arms as blood rushed back into them; he
wiggled his fingers to get the deadness out.  The pins and needles
in his hands and arms, the throbbing of his cock, the roughness of
the rug under his feet, the tingles of pain where Fraser had used
his teeth, the dryness of the gag, the fading ache where Fraser's
thumbnails had dug into his thighs, the sweetness of Fraser's
strong arms circling him, the smoothness of Fraser's hands
caressing his ass while Fraser's mouth worked his neck and Fraser's
hard cock stabbed his thigh--it all just--it just--  *Oh, Benny,
do what you want with me--I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm yours*.

     Then, light, and Ray blinked.  Benny's face was right there,
almost too close to focus on.  Sweat on the flushed face.  The heat
in those blue eyes could have melted cold steel.

     "So, do you trust me?" Benny asked.

     Ray's nod was languid.

     "Do you really trust me--trust me to do whatever I want?" 
Husky whisper right in his ear.

     Ray's heart jumped like a startled rabbit, but he held Benny's
eyes as he nodded.  And was rewarded by one of Benny's sunny
smiles, the kind that could ignite wet paper.

     Ray wasn't wet paper.  And, oh god, his bones were melting as
Fraser wrapped him in strong arms, dragging him close, taking that
lower lip again into a mouth hot and warm and busy with teeth and
tongue.

     Fraser's cock slid against his, then that burning cock was
hard against his belly, then harder, as Fraser's hand clutched his
ass tighter, tighter.  The other hand was on the back of Ray's
neck; oh, god, he couldn't get away if he tried.  Helpless, with
Benny still calling the shots.

     Ray's legs wrapped themselves around Fraser's hips, clamping
tight, grinding his cock against Fraser's belly.  Heat against
heat; helpless to do anything but ride that silky belly.  He
pressed his heels against Fraser's sides.

     Then Fraser gathered him closer, fingers bruisingly tight on
his ass, cock sliding against his sweat-slick belly, riding it,
riding it.  A shift in Fraser's breathing.

     And a sense of being weightless, before something cold and
hard touched his shoulders, his arms.  Oh, god, the wall--Benny
had actually picked him up and gotten them both over against a
wall.  Ray's arms were being pinched between his body and the wall,
but oh it was exquisite:  animal growling from Benny's hot mouth
against his bottom lip, matching his own, Benny's ass clenching in
the circle of Ray's legs, hard fingers clutching his ass, big hand
gripping the back of his neck, slick belly, searing cock, click of
handcuffs hitting hard plaster, clicking harder, clicking faster,
faster, faster, fast--

     His groin exploded just as Benny ground his hips into Ray's
belly, smothering Ray's raw cry with one of his own.  Wetness
flooded between them.  Ray tightened his legs, riding both orgasms
for as long as he could.  Oh, his breath--he would never catch his
breath.  Benny's body jerked against his once, twice, again.

     Then half a heartbeat, and Benny's hand left his ass, to thump
onto the wall beside them.  Legs.  Unlock legs and try to stand. 
It sort of worked, especially if he propped himself against the
wall.

     Fraser's eyes were soft--tenderness still colored with lust. 
Slowly, he worked the gag out of Ray's mouth; Ray grimaced as
Fraser drew out the handkerchief.  Cotton.  Really dried out the
mouth.  At last a good, deep breath.  Then Fraser's hand steadied
his chin, and Fraser's mouth was on his, wet tongue sliding over
Ray's dry one, dampening the inside of his cheeks, the roof of his
mouth.  Thank you very kindly, but that's not going to substitute
for a good drink of water.

     But he took it as it was intended, and he leaned in for some
gentle nuzzling, breathing in the smell of sweat and Fraser and
what they'd just done together.  Back to the bed on unsteady legs,
where Fraser unlocked the handcuffs and eased the cramp out of
Ray's shoulders and arms with fingers as gentle now as they'd been
bruising earlier.

     Oh, lovely to stretch out on the rumpled bed, Fraser's hands
deft on his shoulders and his back.  Lovelier still to feel Fraser
stretch out beside him and gather him close.

     "That," Ray said, "was wild."

     Fraser's low chuckle rumbled against his chest.

     "I thought you were gonna get out the whips and chains there,
for a minute," Ray went on.

     "Wasn't that enough for you?"  Surprise in wide Mountie eyes.

     "Oh, yeah--sure.  I just wasn't--I mean, you really might of--"

     "Ray!"  The eyes were wider now.  "Do you think I could
actually--I could actually HIT you?  I could never do that, Ray,
not after what you've said about your fath--  I could never do
that.  And--actually--HURTING you.  I could never do that."

     Ray ran his fingers through Benny's hair, smiling languidly
at him.  Oh, yeah, Ray had known that all along.  Really.  His
heart thumped happily, and he slid his leg over Fraser's, drawing
him closer.  Fraser was watching him.

     "You know, Ray, I--I know the darkness inside me, intimately. 
What you said about the jungle inside me the other night:  I've
explored that jungle; I know all its paths.  I have to:  how could
I make a good law officer if I don't know what people are capable
of when they're frightened, when they're pushed, when they're
desperate?  I don't repress my emotions; I simply don't act on all
of them.  I'm capable of--"  He swallowed, hard; his eyes slid away
and then returned.  Ray's grip tightened.  "I can let passion ruin
my life--I can let passion destroy--"  Another swallow; hold him
tighter.  "I can let passion destroy everyone around me.  I can let
hatred kill and be glad it's done so.  But, Ray--"  Fraser's hand
was gentle on Ray's cheek.  "Ray, knowing the shadows in the human
soul, I can also choose kindness.  I know you sometimes think my
devotion to the law is exaggerated and my devotion to courtesy is
old-fashioned and laughable--"  He grinned at Ray grinning at him. 
"--but--but, Ray, it gives me a framework for helping others, a
structure for my best impulses.  Ray, you said you would love me
if I weren't so--"  Oh, hey, he was turning a new shade of red: 
Flushed Mountie.  "If I weren't so--"  *Say it, Fraser; c'mon, you
can say it*.  "If I weren't so--so--perfect."  They both started
to breathe again.  "You said you'd love me if I weren't so
courteous.

     "But, Ray--would you still love me even if I were?"

     *Geez, Vecchio, how the hell do you get yourself into these
things?  How'd your life get to be like this?  Would you love
Fraser even if he expressed those deep, dark, hidden urges to do
good things; would you love him even if he was Mr. Nice Guy
Mountie--and these were serious questions.  Vecchio, you sure can
pick 'em.*  The grin that plastered itself on his face felt goofy,
but he tried to give the questions and the questioner the
seriousness they deserved.

     "Oh, yes, Fraser.  Oh, very much yes, Fraser.  Bounce me off
walls, bounce me on feather beds, beat me with chains, treat me
like glass--I'd still love you.  Keep me waiting in the cold while
you hold the door for five thousand people with shopping bags, and
I'll still love you.  Silly of me, I know it, but--but, damn it,
Fraser, I'll love you no matter what."

     Amazing what a couple of words could do:  Benny's face was
glowing.  Seal it with a kiss.

     When they came up for air, Fraser was grimacing.  "Well, Ray,
the wall-bouncing may have to wait a bit:  I think I strained a
muscle when we--"

     Ray laughed gently as he reached to massage the offending
muscle, smiled at Fraser's groan of pleasure when he found the
right spot, laughed harder as he felt Fraser's arms slide around
him, locking him in a gentle embrace while he warmed to his job. 
*Ah, Vecchio, you sure can pick 'em.  You really, really can*.

                              . . .

Part 1 of 4