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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.
ú ú ú
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.
. . .
On to part three
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