Author's website: http://www.ravenswing.com/bas/

Disclaimer:

Author's Notes: thanks to Laura JV for the beta.

Story Notes:

Two in the morning. The wee small hours, as his grandmother used to say, but Fraser didn't feel small. He felt enormous, too big for his skin. It was an uncomfortable feeling for a Tuesday night. He supposed that he had brought it upon himself.

Dief was under the bed snoring. Fraser was lying in the bed, his arms crossed loosely above his head, staring at the ceiling and attempting to will himself to sleep. It wasn't working.

All right. Perhaps he could hypnotize himself into thinking he was asleep. It is the duty of all members who are peace officers, subject to the orders of the Commissioner, to perform those duties that are assigned to them as peace officers..

His extension rang. "Thank God," he muttered, rolled over, and picked it up. "Canadian Consulate, Constable Benton Fraser speaking."

"Benton!"

"Maggie!" He grinned into the air.

"How do you tie a double moosehead knot?" she asked.

Fraser rubbed his eyebrow. "Well, er, the squirrel--er, no." He closed his eyes and concentrated. "The rabbit comes out of his hole, runs a circle around the eagle, makes another circle around the owl, then climbs back in his hole and jumps out the window. There you are."

"Let me try that..." Fraser could hear the faint squeak of leather. "Aha! I've been fighting that one all night. Thank you kindly."

"I'm glad I could be of service." Fraser sat back against the wall, tugging one bare foot under him. "How have you been, Maggie?"

"Oh, you know, a little of this and a little of that. I'm off the suspension but still on desk duty--have you noticed how they look at you funny even when you're right?"

"Yes. I have." Fraser tipped his head back against the wall.

Maggie sighed. "They set the court date. Four months from now. Should be a longer visit, eh?"

"Indeed. Justice has its own time frame." Fraser picked up his whittling stick. The smooth curve near the far end bore a strong resemblance to the back of Ray's neck--

Fraser forcibly derailed that train of thought and put the stick down. "I can recommend a hotel; it's surprisingly difficult to find one with windows that open in this city, so I keep a list." He had a notebook full of lists of useful things.

"Or perhaps I could stay with Ray," she said, and laughed.

"No! No, I don't think that would be a good idea..." Fraser remembered Ray kissing Maggie and Maggie kissing Ray--certainly he had turned around when they asked, but it wasn't an entirely subtle request--and he cleared his throat. "Maggie--what's the best bait for mice?"

"Peanut butter."

"Ah. Thank you kindly." Fraser tugged at the collar of his long underwear. They should have been comfortable, but he couldn't seem to get comfortable tonight. Lord, he hoped Maggie wasn't interested in Ray. That would make things... complicated.

There was a pause and then Maggie said, all in a rush, "I'm just having trouble taking it all in. My husband robbing a bank, it doesn't fit. He wasn't like those men."

"He did balk. He had changed--or perhaps he never was like them."

"I don't know," Maggie said, her voice catching on the words. "I guess I won't ever know for sure."

Fraser rubbed his thumb over his lower lip. "You know what you know in your heart."

She sniffed and let out a long breath. "I suppose you think it's foolish--a Mountie and a criminal--I should have seen it, eh? I should have seen the signs."

"No, I don't think it's foolish." Fraser closed his eyes and drew his knees up to his chest. "Not at all."

"So--what's the best substance to tan hides?" Maggie said, her voice shaky but recovering.

Offering him a way out of the conversation. Oh, she was his sister, no doubt of that. He wondered if that brand of politeness was genetic or environmental; he still suspected the Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik water systems of irregularities. "I should tell you a story," he said.

"All right."

"I was on patrol in the Yukon twelve years ago when I heard a report of an escaped criminal. She was an American, and she had just robbed a bank in Alaska with the help of two men." Fraser leaned forward and hugged his knees to his chest. "I hunted her, and I found her, half-dead in Fortitude Pass as the storm closed in. We were snowed in for two days--I'm sure I don't have to elaborate."

"No," Maggie said. "I know all about that."

She was part of the North just like him. They were never closer to life than when they were staring down frozen death. "When the storm cleared, she asked me to let her go. This was her first offense; she could just--disappear. But I brought her in anyway."

"It was your duty."

"It was my duty," Fraser said. He had been repeating that to himself for twelve years; he had guessed that Maggie would understand. That's why he was telling her this story. "She served ten years in prison, and when those ten years were up, she hunted me down. She found me here in Chicago and she made me fall in love with her all over again."

Fraser's eyes were hot but he had no tears, no more tears for Victoria. "And then she quickly and efficiently framed me for the murder of her partner, a murder that she herself had committed."

"What did you do?"

"I tried to disentangle Ray, of course, and then I tried to bring her in--but in the end, all I could do was--" He swallowed, remembering a purse-snatching victim asking for his help, remembering his heart in his throat as he realized that he couldn't even help himself. "When it was all over, when she was standing on a train escaping, she held out her hand and asked me to come with her, and I did. Even knowing exactly who and what she was, I ran to her."

Fraser wrapped his arm around his knees, trying not to think about the pound of pavement beneath his boots as he ran like a rabbit leaping into the talons of the hawk-- "Ray shot me in the back. He was aiming for her and he shot me instead. He's a good friend."

Fraser could hear Maggie breathing, but she didn't speak.

"I don't think you're foolish at all," he said. "From your account, your husband was a good man." He rubbed his face. Victoria was not a good woman. Perhaps she was once, but that had changed.

Ray--both Rays--they were good men, good partners, and good friends.

"He was," Maggie said. "He was a very good man," and her voice was stronger.

"Victoria is still out there. She got away with murder. I'm afraid that you're more determined than I am." The thought gnawed at him every day. Every single day.

Fraser uncurled, settling cross-legged on the bed and rubbing at his stomach. "And you use brains to tan hide, but I rather think you knew that." He thought about the current Ray and his scrambled brains. He wondered if Ray would be a better or a worse cop if he could think from A to B without stopping at Q on the way.

"Just enough brains in an animal to tan its own hide." Maggie shifted. Fraser could hear what sounded like boots hitting a carpeted floor. "Say, what's that noise? Sounds like Kathleen Karmenack's truck starting."

Fraser blinked and was aware of the noise echoing through the small room. "Oh, that's Diefenbaker. He snores. Profoundly."

Maggie laughed. "I suppose it's late there."

Fraser glanced at the clock on the wall. "Two-thirty in the morning, but I was up anyway."

"Just past midnight here..." She yawned. "Goodnight, Benton."

"Goodnight," he said, and Maggie hung up. Fraser returned the telephone to its cradle.

Dief was snoring. The rest of the consulate was quiet, but the ever-present noise of traffic penetrated from the outside. Ray was maybe standing, maybe sitting, but probably lying two miles away in the bed they had just--

Oh, Lord.

He was not going to get out of this bed and go back to Ray. Never mind that Ray would welcome him, that he was put out when Fraser left. He was not, under any circumstances, going to fall that wildly in love again.

It would be easy--

Fraser lay back in the bed and pulled the blanket up to his neck. He could still feel Ray's hair against his hands, his thighs, his belly, that hair that should be soft but was sticky and crunchy from gel. He'd held onto that hair, needing something to anchor him as Ray touched him in places that nobody had seen since the hospital in ways that nobody had touched him since Victoria.

His father had written in one of his journals that falling in love was easy, like jumping out of a window. Once you gave yourself over to gravity the rest just sort of happened. He and his dad had had a blazing row over that one, since his dad had omitted the most important part of jumping out of a window: knowing what you were going to land on.

There was no possible way that he was going to sleep tonight. His skin prickled all over like he was lying on a bed of nails.

"Fishhooks of doubt, son," his dad said. He was sitting in the chair by Fraser's bed. "You know how to pull out a fishhook safely?"

"Through the skin, barb first. Thank you kindly, Dad; that's very sage." Fraser pulled the blanket over his head and turned toward the wall.

"No need to get snippy. I'm not the one who was creasing the sheets with a Yank."

Fraser buried his head under his arm. He didn't really expect that physical barriers would do much against a ghost, but it helped his own peace of mind. He heard the scrape of metal on wood--whittling? Fraser risked a peek and found that, indeed, his dad was whittling away. Carving a stick into the shape of a different stick, apparently.

He stuck his head back under the blankets and concentrated on the sturdy, honest sound of metal and wood--and then he could sleep.

End Rabbit Jumps Out the Window by Basingstoke: bas@yosa.com

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