Author's Website: http://www.finnatics.com/otsoko.htm

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Alliance owns all. All praise Alliance.

Author's Notes: Big thanks to Aukestrel and Kellie for beta-ing above and beyond the call. Wow, they're good! And they both spell Polish better than I do.

Story Notes: Spoilers for the beginning of MotB. This is either slashy angst or angsty slash.

Unholstered bis (Frozen but Alive)
by otsoko

Llega el momento me piro
Al filo de la ma-ana, que frio!
me siento como un esperma esperando en un tubo de ensayo Congelado pero vivo

The moment comes and I run scared
into the morning's knife-edge, it's cold! I feel like sperm waiting in a test tube frozen but alive.

from 'me falta el aliento' by Estopa.

I tell myself I come here because they always have Wyborowa vodka, and they know how to serve it. Yeah, Right.

"Another."

The bartender looks me over, but we're downtown, and most of his customers don't drive, so he's not too worried. He takes the bottle out of the freezer yet again and pours me another shot. When he puts it back I swear I hear him sigh.

I know I'm not one his favourite customers, sitting there silently, downing one shot after another, ignoring his attempts at conversation, until I'm numb, but not so numb that I'm not horny. Not an easy balance, but I've got it down.

It's pretty late. Almost all the customers are gone. But the place still reeks of smoke and spilled beer. The juke box has been silent for a while, but the last song keeps playing in my head. An old one, one that Stella and I used to dance to. A lifetime ago. I try to remember the lyrics and can't. But I can remember the way it felt to dance to it, to have somebody in my arms, to have that contact, to touch someone and be touched, to be held.

And the sex. Miss that too. Not so much lately.

I look at my face, reflected in the mirror behind the bar, and immediately look away, stare down at my glass again. Another would be a mistake. Shit, the last two were mistakes. I pick up the glass, and suck down the last few drops at the bottom, feeling it burn my throat, needing that burn.

I slam the shot glass down on the scarred bar, and stand and meet the bartender's eyes. He shrugs and says, "Call it seventeen-fifty." I nod and toss a twenty on the bar and don't wait for change, like a good barfly.

I pull the jacket on and head out the door. I pretend that I don't know where I am going, I pretend that the fact that this bar is only three blocks from the Canadian Consulate has nothing to do with why I've been drinking here recently. I pretend I don't know what is going to happen when I knock on the Consulate door. I pretend I don't want to hold him, that I don't want to kiss him. I pretend I don't want to do to him what he's doing to me . . . and more.

I pretend that I'm not using the shit out of him every fucking time I do this. Because I'm not, right? It's his deal. It's the way he wants it.

But hey, working undercover is all about pretending, right?

And I'm good at the undercover thing.

And I knock, and he opens, and I go in, and he kneels, and Christ!

Afterwards, he stays there, his head pressed against my stomach, and he lets a sigh escape him. And he doesn't sound unhappy. Not exactly happy either. Maybe content with just a touch of sad around the edges.

I stare down at him. Amazed that I can be so lucky in my misfortune. Stella could never really do this, give me what I really wanted.

But then, maybe she came in the wrong package. Maybe it took another guy to really know how to do that right, to make me feel this way.

Yeah, right. And the fact that his touch makes me harder in one second that she could make me in five minutes has nothing to do with it.

Fuck.

I gotta stop thinking so clearly. Next time I'm gonna have that one more drink before I head over.

I straighten up, zip up. He stands up and doesn't say a word, doesn't even look at me.

I reach for the doorknob and turn it slowly. The soft metal-on-metal sound of the bolt being drawn back is almost frighteningly loud against the complete silence that reigns in the Consulate entrance.

I don't meet his eyes as I head out into the cold Chicago night.

I pull the collar of the jacket up against the wind coming off the lake as I reach the corner, pausing briefly to turn to look at the now closed door of the Consulate.

I don't understand why I keep doing this.

Yeah I do. Of course I do. Best sex I've ever had. He really knows how to push all my buttons.

But it's sex. Just pure sex. I get off, he gets off. No love there. No mess. Just buddies.

That's safer. I let any of that other stuff come out, and I'd be all over him in the car . . . or in the bullpen.

And that would pretty much end things. End everything.

Shoulders hunched over against the cold, I turn and head around the corner to where the car is parked. Gotta hope I don't get stopped. Gotta hope that if I do, flashing my badge at the traffic cop will keep me from a DUI.

Because that would be fun to explain. Well, your honour, I was just driving back home after getting a blow job from my partner, but I sort of have to get plastered before I can do that.

That'd go over real well.

Shit! I stop dead in my tracks. I'm fucking everything up again.

On the surface everything is cool. But I catch myself looking at him way too often. He's better at keeping it cool, keeping that Mountie mask on . . . except for when he throws me that smile at me.

Almost like a mantra, I tell myself over and over again that this is just buddies, this is not big deal. That he doesn't want more, that I don't want more.

The wind is off the lake and I am freezing. I can feel it cut to my bones. It hurts. And I deserve it. It feels right to hurt.

The bars are closed, and that's probably good. I don't think I should have the drink that every muscle in my body craves.

I just wanna lie down.

I just wanna sleep.

And never have to get up.

Huey and Dewey are hanging around, joking about these two guys they caught doing the nasty in an alley, when the Mountie walks in. And can he leave well enough alone? Fuck no!

And I can't fucking believe he said it. He fucking said it to Dewey and Huey and half the fucking squad room.

He's goes and says that he sees nothing wrong with two guys getting it on in an alley. Thinks it's normal. He coulda said it was public indecency, but no, he's gotta look straight at me and go on about how it's not perverted or sick or anything.

Way to blow the cover, asshole!

Fucking jerk. Fucking honesty-is-the-best-policy Canadian Mountie asshole jerk.

If they start joking about him, which they're gonna do, they're gonna start thinking about him being that way, and then they're gonna start seeing it. The way he looks at me, that damned smile he gives me sometimes, like he wants to do me then and there. I don't understand how he can do that, or how anybody else can miss it.

Fuck up my life even more, why don't ya, Fraser?

So I get him outta there and fast, get him away from Dewey and Huey, and that whole topic of conversation. But he won't fucking let it go. He keeps looking at me, and hinting and doing that smile of his. So I tell him point-blank to stop using that smile on me to get what he wants from me.

And he fucking tells me we're doing what I want to do.

Doing what I want to do, what the fuck does that mean? Like I've been raping him? Shit. He fucking came to me. I never fucking even asked him to do anything, not even once. Never. And now he's trying to act like I'm doing it all to him?

Uptight, self-righteous, self-satisfied Mountie.

Fuck.

Fuck him.

I can't deal with his shit and I tell him, "I don't want to hear it!" I don't fucking want to hear it! I don't want to hear what an asshole you think I am.

I don't want to hear that you think I'm some kind of fag.

I don't want to hear one of your fucking theories about human behaviour, spelled with a fucking 'u' at the end, and I sure as hell don't want to hear a single one of your fucking stories about a caribou on a mountain ledge while some Mountie gets it on with Nanook the seal hunter.

Just shut the fuck up. We got a job to do here, we got bad guys to catch.

And there they fucking are. I whip out the phone and call for back up, but Mr. fucking perfect Mountie doesn't feel like waiting for back up, he's already after them, racing up the steel fire ladder on the outside of the grain storage silo. And like a fucking idiot, I'm right there behind him, risking my ass again.

Maybe if I get one blowjob for every time he risks my ass in some wildly bizarre fashion, we'll be even.

Yeah right.

I follow him and find myself trapped against the edge of the silo, as three of the FBI's Most Wanted take potshots at us. I can hear them moving across the roof above us. In a couple more minutes, they're gonna have a clear shot at us, and that'll be all she wrote.

Fucking super-Mountie couldn't wait for back-up, he's gotta go after three armed and three armed and extremely dangerous perps without a gun, expecting me to back him up, to put my skinny ass on the line for him, again and again and again.

And the worst part is that I fucking do, again and again and again, just like I show up at the Consulate, again and again and again, and even after that stunt he pulled in the squad room, and the shit he said before we spotted these guys, here I am. Again.

And now he's saying we gotta jump. Right. Pull a Butch and Sundance into Lake Michigan. Christ on a stick. I glance up and see the perps moving. In ten seconds, they're gonna have a clear shot. No choice, no fucking choice.

"One."

"Two."

"Three."

And my fucking life passes before me as I drop like a stone into the lake.

Shit.

We climb out of the water. Fraser has to pull me to shore by the scruff of my neck, cause the swimming thing is not my strong suit.

And he stands there with this grin on his face as he hears the sirens, as the back up arrives, and we watch the perps surrender, and get taken into custody, and read their rights.

It's that grin that does it. I just want to wipe that smug, satisfied grin off his fucking face.

So I let him have it with both barrels. But when I tell him we shoulda waited for the back-up, he just blows me off. I tell him we're not super-heroes, and he fucking tells me that we're cops. Like I'm some rookie who doesn't know how to be a cop! Then he starts goin' on about his uniform and his fucking belt, for Christ's sake.

I just want him to shut up if he's not gonna listen to me, if he's not gonna hear me, if he's gonna treat me like some rookie, like his side kick, some Robin to his Batman. Fuck that shit.

I tell him, I warn him, I let him know I'm gonna do it. And he looks at me like he's got no respect for me, like I don't have the guts, like I'm not enough of a man to do it.

So I do it. I lay a beautiful right on that smug Mountie face. And I stand there waiting, balanced on the balls of my feet, ready for him to hit back . . . to try to hit me back, motherfucker, cause I am good to go.

And he looks at me like I just let one, like he can't believe how rude that was, and he just turns his fucking back on me, and walks off.

I can't do this anymore. My knuckles are scraped and bruised. Part of me can't believe that I hit him, as much as he needed hitting.

I run into him at the station later, we both have to do the paperwork on the case. He won't meet my eyes, won't speak to me, just nods when I say we gotta fill in the forms. I pulled my weapon and fired. I didn't actually hit anyone, so no IA investigation, but you pull your gun and there are repercussions, you gotta explain it, you gotta justify it, in triplicate.

I wouldn't have had to pull my gun out at all if it weren't for super-Mountie. He just had to jump into the thick of it, without thinking of the consequences, and drag me along with him. Like always.

He's thinking long and hard about something. He looks up and says softly, "I've been offered a posting back home."

Two can play at this game. I nod. "They figure Vecchio's safe. I got permission to transfer out of the two-seven and be me again." Welsh had just called me into his office and given me the word. It might be safer for Vecchio for me to stay on, but the fibbies figured that the cover was well enough established now that my playing this role wasn't essential. I could transfer out, go back to my old station. Be Ray Kowalski again.

And seeing how badly I was fucking up being Ray Vecchio, maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing. Be Ray Kowalski again, just long enough to get another undercover assignment, and get a chance to be someone else, anyone else.

He looks over at me and sees I'm serious.

"So it's over?" Like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, his blurry-at-the-corner bruised mouth.

I pretend he's talking about me being undercover as Vecchio, even though I know that's not what he means. I nod. "Yeah. I'm in the clear now, if I want to be."

"Do you want to be?" And I know what he's asking. So I answer him direct, in a whisper.

"It's like I told you before. You don't want to do it any more, we're not gonna do it."

His eyes meet mine, his head snapping up like I've just hit him again, like this is all my doing, all my fault. It takes all my self-control not to wince, to keep my game face on.

I know that if I don't end this now, I'm never going to be able to. The signs are all there: his transfer, my transfer, what happened at the docks. It's over. Sign it, dot it, file it, stick in a box marked 'done'.

"Look, Fraser, Let's just end it clean, OK?"

"Clean?"

"Yeah, even-Steven. I hit you, you gotta hit me back."

"I don't want to hit you back, Ray."

Yeah, right, Mr. holier-than-thou Mountie. Like I didn't see your fists clench up when I let you have it before. Bullshit. You wanna hit me so bad you can taste it. You're aching to plant a solid one on me. You want this as badly as I wanted it. Just like you wanted that as badly as I wanted it.

"It doesn't matter. You got to. Let's go." I get up from the desk and head out of the station.

And, for fucking once, he follows me.

He'll hit me back. I'll take my transfer, he'll take his and go back to the great white north, and this whole mess'll be over. He'll be gone, it'll be over, and I'll be safe.

He'll be gone.

And even if it means I have to start unloading my gun again at night, at least I'll be safe.