An Unfinished Universe
by Nos4a2no9
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I do not profit from their use.
Author's Notes: For the stop_drop_porn 24hr challenge community.
It took a whole village of betas to whip this into shape: dessert_first came through like a champion to help me fix tense agreements and suggest that a warning might not be amiss. j_s_cavalcante came up with Inspector Laurier and she reminded me of the importance of motivation. ignazwisdom contributed a lot of cheerleading and some necessary last lines, and jamethiel_bane, as always, provided the initial inspiration and encouragement. Everyone should be blessed with so many incredible fangirls in their lives.
Story Notes: Someone suffers a fairly traumatic injury in this story, but it all works out well. I promise.
An Unfinished Universe
It is vain to look for a defense against lightning.
-Publius Syrus
Fraser calls about a month after Ray gets home. Ray hasn't been able to dial the number of the detachment in Inuvik, can't bear to hear Fraser's voice come in tinny and hollow-sounding over the thousands of miles of telephone line that separate them. He didn't have anything to say, anyway.
But when the phone rings and he hears Fraser's cautious "Hello, Ray," hope flares up, brief and burning, because Fraser called and so maybe Fraser has something to say. Like, "Come back."
"It must be nice for you to be home again," he says instead, his voice level and even. Ray is furious. Apparently Fraser is unaware that he is home to Ray.
Ray's home in Chicago is just an old couch and older photos and stacks of porn and chipped dishes. Everything important about the place has something to do with what Fraser's done there--where he stood those first few times, hat held awkwardly in his hands like he didn't understand how to be a guest in Ray's castle. The bathroom, where Fraser patched up his knuckles after Granzetti made bail and Ray punched the wall. The kitchen countertop where Fraser liked to lean and watch Ray buzz around the kitchen. The living room, where they had their first kiss. And the bedroom, where they had their second.
Ray still touches the spot on the wall in the hallway where they once fucked front-to-back, hurried and frantic because they couldn't even make it to the bedroom, Fraser's legs spread wide, Fraser whispering Yes, now, please, God as Ray pushed inside the warm sheath of his body, his arms wrapped tight around Fraser's chest and numb from where they were trapped against the wall. Fraser's skin was hot and salty; Ray licked droplets of sweat from the back of Fraser's neck, sighing against Fraser's hair and muttering bits of Polish learned in early childhood, English when he remembered. And Fraser arched back into him, using the wall as leverage, opening himself up wider and shuddering each time Ray stroked in, breathing deep when Ray pulled back and pushing the air out in strange words. Maybe Fraser was saying something in Inuktitut; Ray can't remember.
He just remembers the creak of the hallway floor as he shifted and moved on trembling legs, the rough feel of cracked plaster against his hand, the way it felt to be connected like this, so good, so much better than anything else he'd ever known. In that hallway Ray listened to the small groans and gasps of pleasure Fraser made when Ray got into a good rhythm and started rubbing that place inside him just right. And the sound Fraser made when Ray reached around and stroked his cock, everything too much and not enough at once. Fuck, but they'd loved each other.
"Yeah," Ray says. "It's good to be home."
Fraser's phone calls come regularly after that. They are brief but dependable, and Ray starts to look forward to Sundays and the shrill ring of the telephone in his empty apartment. It reminds him of other times, better times, on stakeouts or eating a lousy burger and cold fries at a diner at two a.m., Fraser telling a stupid Inuit story and making him laugh so hard his jaw hurt.
Even the faint crackle of long-distance humming underneath Fraser's voice stops bothering him after a while. And slowly, eventually, Ray discovers he is able to speak, to tell Fraser things and make jokes and act like things are...well, not normal, because living a half-life isn't normal for anyone, but he starts to be able to fake it. He's able to forget during those Sunday phone calls that together they were a force to be reckoned with.
And that bad things happened when they were apart.
Sometime in April Fraser misses a Sunday. Ray isn't too worried; he figures Fraser's a busy guy and probably has a patrol to take care of or a litterbug to catch. But when the second Sunday rolls around and the phone stays quiet, Ray can't decide what to do. He's never been the one to call because he wasn't the one to say "Go" in the first place. It was Fraser's choice, right from the start. Fraser, who had defeated Ray with his silences and averted eyes whenever Ray talked about sharing an apartment in Chicago after the Quest was over. All that silence wore Ray down until he couldn't stand not being wanted anymore. He bought a single plane ticket and showed it to Fraser late one night. Fraser only blinked once or twice, as if something had gotten caught in his eyes, and then said, "I can't go with you, Ray. My duty is here." A soft, expectant sadness in his face, as if he had won a bet with himself. Or lost one. "Go."
So it's been Fraser's duty (Christ, how Ray hates that word) to dial and find out if Ray was as much of a mess as he knows he sounded during those short, sad Sunday phone calls.
It doesn't occur to Ray that for Fraser, duty is just another word for devotion. It doesn't occur to him until the hospital in Yellowknife calls.
"Stanley Raymond Kowalski?" asks the nurse on the other end. She has a cold, clipped voice and Ray doesn't mind the long-distance hum on the line at all. Anything to be separated from that voice.
"Yeah?"
"You're listed as Benton Fraser's emergency contact," she tells him. Ray sags against the wall, sliding down to the floor.
"Is he dead?"
"No," the nurse says, but she doesn't sound too sure. "He's here in the ICU. You'll want to come see him, if you can. You're in Chicago?"
Ray nods before remembering that the nurse up in Yellowknife can't see him. "I'll be on the next flight out."
That's what he said to Fraser, six months and a lifetime ago. His only reply when Fraser said, "Go."
He forgets to ask any other questions, the nurse's "You'll want to come see him" jangling in his head like loose pennies in a pocket. Ray packs a bag and spends the next twenty-four hours in airports. Chicago to Calgary, Calgary to Edmonton, Edmonton to Yellowknife, each one smaller and quieter than the last. He tries not to think about what the nurse meant when she said, "No." No, Fraser isn't dead, but what does that mean? The question hums in his mind like the drone of airplane engines and long-distance phone lines and the sound Fraser made when Ray would curl his fingers over his hip. "Hmmmmm."
He thinks instead about how he still makes room for Fraser when he walks the streets of Chicago. He turns corners sideways and scrunches himself up into elevators and holds open doors for Fraser to follow close behind. It took him a long, long time to realize what he was doing, but then his body kept doing it anyway. And since Ray never learned how to fill up the empty places in his heart, the places that ached for Fraser, he didn't mind the empty space all around him. It felt like a memorial.
Ray wonders if he'll always have to live with that space.
The hospital in Yellowknife is bigger than Ray expected. He tries to figure out when whatever happened happened. Was it that first Sunday? The second? He can't even remember what day it was, or what the last thing he said to Fraser might have been. Except "Goodbye."
The nurse at the front desk points him to the intensive-care ward and then stares after him for a long time. Ray thinks he must look pretty bad.
A Mountie meets him outside the hospital room. Ray doesn't recognize the guy--he's older than Frobisher but his hair is black and he has a Sam Steele mustache. He introduces himself as Inspector Laurier. Ray tries to push past, everything in him screaming Get to Fraser get to Fraser get to Fraser, but the Inspector holds him back. Apparently he's had a lot of experience with desperation.
"Sergeant Fraser has been badly hurt," he explains in that quiet, confidential tone they must teach in Mountie school. Ray stops moving immediately. He stands so still his whole body vibrates. "We're not sure if--"
And then Ray remembers motion. He grabs Laurier by the carefully pressed lapels of his brown uniform and slams him up against the wall, standing so close their breath mingles. The Inspector's breath smells like lunchmeat and stale bread; his eyes are old and weary.
"Don't say that. Don't even fucking think it. Fraser is going to be fine."
"Detective," Laurier tries. His voice sounds a little hoarse, and Ray realizes that's because he's got a death-grip on his throat. "Please."
It's the `please' that does it. All the fight goes out of Ray. He releases Laurier and moves across the hall, arms folded around himself like he's trying to hold his body together. It's still screaming for Fraser.
"It was a bear trap," Laurier explains. He rubs at his throat and breathes carefully. Ray refuses to feel guilty. "The Sergeant was tracking a group of men who had kidnapped a young girl from one of the villages. He'd been gone a week before we could organize a search party."
Ray's head jerks up. "He didn't have any backup?" Accusing. The Inspector's eyes get older and sadder.
"We didn't know where he'd gone or how he'd tracked the men. Sergeant Fraser is a bit...reckless."
The Inspector coughs, as though it's not polite to speak ill of--
No. And Fraser, reckless? It doesn't seem possible--Fraser was Mr. Proper Preparation. He must have thought they'd kill the girl unless he went after the men right away. Ray doesn't want to think that maybe Fraser was taking risks he shouldn't because he didn't have a partner anymore. He can't think that. He won't.
"What happened?"
The Inspector nods like he's glad Ray is paying attention. "He caught up with the men the seventh day out. They held the girl at knifepoint. He managed to overcome three of them, somehow." He frowns a little like he's not exactly sure how it's possible. Obviously Mr. Hot-Shot Inspector doesn't know Fraser very well. "The fourth man was holding the girl, and according to her testimony the Sergeant was so focused on the hostage situation he didn't notice the trap buried in the snow."
Ray tries not to picture it. A trap strong enough to snap a bear's leg or back. Iron jaws snapping shut, Fraser caught inside the teeth. Blood on the snow, red like Fraser's serge. Ray feels like he's going to throw up.
"Detective Kowalski, he saved that girl's life. Mary Tslinglic is alive today because Sergeant Fraser risked his life for her. When he stepped down on the trap he distracted the man long enough for Mary to gain control of the knife. She stabbed her captor and then tended to the Sergeant. She kept him alive until the other officers found them."
Ray breathes out through his nose, slowly. The urge to vomit fades away but he still can't believe--
"How bad?"
Laurier's eyebrow twitches. Bad tell for someone who is supposed to give comfort to the dying, strike fear into the hearts of criminals. "They had to amputate the leg."
Jesus. "I need to see him. Now."
Inspector Laurier just steps aside and lets Ray into the room.
Soft, dim light and the slow beep of machines. Fraser is sleeping. His face is pale and too thin. The white blankets that cover him look like the rolling snow hills of the Arctic, and Ray tries not to notice the way the blankets dip and fold where the lower half of Fraser's left leg should be.
He approaches the bed and stands for a long time looking down at Fraser. He remembers a night out on the Quest, one of a hundred, snuggled up close to Fraser's incredible heat, wrapped up in his arms, safe and secure. The feeling that nothing could ever hurt either of them because they had each other. If Ray hadn't left, if he'd insisted on staying--
"Ray."
Cracked, broken voice. Ray grabs a cup of water off the bedside table, offers Fraser the straw. He sips for a long time, eyes closed, dark lashes against snow-pale cheeks. Ray wonders why Fraser suddenly can't look at him.
"You came."
"Of course I came," Ray says, his own voice cracking. Tears too close to the surface, but he wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket and keeps going. "What'd you think I would do?"
Fraser smiles. "I didn't want to presume." He seems to be working up to something, as though he has a speech to make, but Ray presses a finger to Fraser's dry lips. Finally Fraser looks up at him, and in the dim light of the hospital room his eyes are a deep, dark blue. He is all I'll ever know of heaven, Ray thinks.
"You're unhinged. I'm in this, Frase." He looks Fraser directly in the eye, determined to make him believe. "I'm in this. I'm not going anywhere, so don't even start."
Fraser's eyes close again and Ray thinks he's drifted away on a cloud of painkillers. Until the first tear slips out, streaking down Fraser's waxy cheek to puddle in the curve of his neck. "I can't ask you to give up your life, Ray. Not for me. Especially now."
A wave of his hand down to where the blankets dip and roll. Like the gulley of a snow hill, something absent, something lost.
He should have known it would come to this. He'd taken a bullet for Fraser on that first day, vest or no vest, and even then it had spoken of an insane kind of devotion, a depth of feeling, a willingness to act that Ray hadn't known he possessed. They're never going to have one of those relationships that mellows and gets easier, and it's time Fraser realizes this essential truth.
"You're nuts," Ray tells him. "Certifiable. Think a little thing like this would make me want to leave you?"
Flash of anger in those wet blue eyes and Fraser's jaw tightens. Ray knows that look. It's his digging-in look. Damn stubborn Mountie. Ray tries to stave off the inevitable argument by hitting first, a fast and quick jab right at the weakest point. Like they taught him in the ring. "If it had happened to me, would you leave?"
Fraser seems to reel from the blow. He blinks and his jaw loses that tightness that made Ray worry that the Mountie would eventually win this argument. The most important argument they'll ever have. "No. But you're not--"
"What, not loyal? Not devoted? Not so fucking crazy about you that I can't breathe when you're not around?"
Fraser looks shocked. And for an instant Ray's heart stops, because how could Fraser not have known? He goes on, his voice a little less certain. If Fraser could miss a thing like that, maybe Fraser had missed everything.
"I love you. This," another wave at the valley of snow, "doesn't change anything. It does not. And I'm going to stay with you and you're going to heal up and then we're going to live wherever you want. Chicago. Yellowknife. The ass crack of the frozen north. Wherever you want to be, I'll be. Got it?"
Fraser's eyes are blazing now, burning with unshed tears, with fire and the pent-up anger of six months apart, rage towards fate and circumstance. And then suddenly Ray is in Fraser's arms, wrapped up in a bone-crushing hug. Fraser holds him tight and makes desperate sobbing noises, like Ray's the only solid ground in miles and miles of deep snow. And between each sob and half-breath, Fraser is whispering, "I love you, Ray. I love you, I love you. Please don't go. Don't go."
************
Their relationship is full of change, but then it always has been. Theirs is an unfinished universe, Ray thinks. Endless possibility. Endless change. He feels this when Fraser steps out onto the porch and breathes out in a puff of cold air, cane in hand, his artificial leg echoing on the wood planking. They adapt, but they still fit together like they always have--Fraser's erection in his mouth or his body, Fraser's low hum of satisfaction in his ear, Fraser's hand in his.
There is no defense against lightning. Nor love. And duty is another word for devotion.
THE END
End An Unfinished Universe by Nos4a2no9
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