Title: Repatriation
Author: necessary angel
Pairing: BF/RK
Rating: PG for m/m slashy implications and maybe the odd bad word
Spoilers:
Lots and lots for Asylum
Disclaimer: Alliance owns them - in this reality anyway.
Feedback: Comments to necessary_angel@yahoo.com
Notes: This fragment picks up just after the end of Asylum. Ray has to
adjust to life back in America.

Thanks as always to Megan for knocking this into shape and for the
encouragement.

Repatriation

Cahill and his goons have been here, turned the place over looking for
me, I suppose. They didn't treat the place that bad; it's far from
trashed,
and I've seen plenty of places that looked worse after cops have been
through 'em. Shit, this place has looked far worse just from me living
here. Fraser thinks I'm a slob; he doesn't say it, way too polite for
that, but I know he does. He shoulda seen me just after Stella and I
split. But then, Fraze travels light, very light, ready to pick up and
head back North the first chance he gets. Or maybe he's just not the
world's biggest pack rat, Kowalski. Whatever; he just doesn't have enough
stuff to have a shot at the cluttered look.

The apartment's beginning to warm up now. I could probably risk shedding
my coat. I stay where I am, though, sitting on the couch looking at my
stuff. It doesn't look real, any of it. I keep expecting gleaming wood
and much more space.  I shake my head; the time in the wide-open spaces
of Canada has really done something to my already-damaged self. Probably
the curling; that or Turnbull, Canada's secret weapon..

Okay, Kowalski, get it together here.

It's better when I'm up and moving, the smell of coffee drifting from
the kitchen. Some music, and maybe I'll start to feel like I actually
live here. I punch the play button on the CD player; whatever is in there
already will do. The sneaky, insistent bass of The KLF twists out of
the speakers, and the rest of the knots in my neck undo at the sound.

Without thinking, I'm straightening the mess IA left behind. For the
first time in what seems like a lifetime I'm not thinking, not planning,
not trying to remember. I'm in the flow of it, in that place I get to
when I'm dancing, nothing in the world but music and the flex and pull
of my body moving.  

It doesn't take long to return my place to something that looks close
enough to normal, pretty much like my life really. Fraser had taken what,
twenty minutes to pull the rabbit out of his Stetson and reel Cahill
in? He'd knocked the sneaky little backstabbing bastard off balance the
second Cahill'd knocked on the Consulate door with cameras, enough
firepower
to take out Chicago, and his precious extradition papers. Cahill should
have been top dog, but Fraser was in charge the whole way. Smooth and
confident and with the simplest of plans, he'd turned the whole sorry
mess around and given me back my life.	Well, another man's life, but
it's all the same at the moment. Watching Fraser working it, busting
his ass to save my skinny neck had been.the RCMP doesn't know what they
gave up when they exiled him down here in the snowy south.

Everything back to normal. True, I'm stretched out on my couch sipping
coffee at three something in the afternoon, which is far from normal,
but I still have my shield, and we got the bad guys again. It should
all be business as usual, but nothing's really been normal since I took
on this assignment. well, since I met a certain uptight and way too
good-looking
Mountie. 

And Benton Fraser has done it again; squeezed in under the barbed wire
and bricks I'd built to keep this partnership treading the line. But
for all his by-the- book exterior, Fraser doesn't really play by the
rules; well, he does.by his own rules.. I rub one hand over my face;
my thoughts have been running in this circle ever since that conversation
in the hallway at the Consulate. Something, everything, had cracked in
those few minutes and there is no way the pieces are gonna fit back
together
again.	

And I'm far from sure that I'd want them to. No, I'm sure I don't want
them to; the question is what do I do with them. Fraser was so far under
my skin already that I was kinda dazed to find that there was room for
him to tunnel in further. As usual, if there's something ya think he
can't do, he manages it. He blasted all the pieces way up into the air
and all I can do is ride out the aftershocks. Far more warmed by that
decision, and the memory of Fraser's eyes as he asked me to trust him,
than by the coffee, I head for the luxury of a shower in my own bathroom.