Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ray ought to have known something would go wrong.

Not because of the plan – the plan was fine. They’d done their research, they’d covered all the angles. But when a plan is carried out by three guys who are keeping more secrets from each other than from the gang they’re meant to be taking down – well yeah, that’ll mess up anything you like.

For starters, it shouldn’t have been Fraser who ended up drinking with the muscle at the bar. Fraser might have looked like he could take his liquor, but that was the thing Ray had sort of forgotten about Fraser while he’d been in Vegas. Fraser looked like a whole lot of things that he wasn’t.

He looked like he needed someone to look out for him in the big bad city, but after a couple months as his partner Ray had realised he needed about as much help as a fox in a henhouse. Fraser looked all outdoorsy and wholesome and out of place in Chicago, even in his lumberjack-on-a-daytrip casual clothes, but he’d come right back here after his six weeks messing about in the Arctic, and Kowalski had come right back with him. So really, Ray had decided, Benny wasn’t as out of place here as he liked you to think. He could have gone home in a blaze of snowy glory, but he didn’t.

Ray’s definition of wholesome had gotten both broader and stricter in Vegas, too. There was wholesome like going to church every Sunday and being faithful to your wife and leaning on some guy so hard his family business folds and he leaves town with his life savings gone. There was wholesome like giving money to charity with one hand, and taking it in with the other through the slot machines and blackjack tables from people who can’t afford to lose it but are too dumb to walk away. Or there was getting the same girl sent up to your suite and always paying her for a whole night so she could sleep enough to take her kid to school in the morning. There were a lot of different kinds of wholesome, and Ray had seen most of ‘em, was what it came down to.

And Fraser had a whole lot of them, no doubt about that. The real kind, that actually meant something, and weren’t just about how you looked. Only Ray had started thinking maybe they weren’t exactly the same kinds of wholesome he’d used to think they were.

Take today. Today there’d been Fraser, in his faded jeans and a worn flannel shirt, looking like your average annoyingly good-looking God-fearing Canadian who’s going to settle down and make babies with a fresh-faced Canadian girl one day. That was what he looked like. What he looked at though – or rather who, and how – that was a whole ‘nother story.

It wasn’t like Ray hadn’t wondered before. Anyone whose taste in women was as dangerously, spectacularly, deliberately bad as Fraser’s – it was almost like he was making a point. What point that might be Ray wasn’t 100% sure on, and maybe Fraser wasn’t either, but it felt like some kind of point was being made to someone. Something like how he’d tried his best, no one could say he hadn’t tried, but this getting-a-girlfriend thing was not working out for him so maybe it would be best if he focused his attention in another direction. Maybe.

*

When he first got back from Canada, Fraser had called Ray and they went out for pizza just the two of them and the wolf, like old times.

They went to the place a few blocks from the station, where they always used to go, and Fraser ordered the same pizza he always ordered, and Ray ordered the same pizza he always ordered, and it was like time hadn’t passed at all.

But when he looked at Fraser carefully, Ray saw that it had. Fraser had changed. Not a lot, but but it was there now he had time to notice. Fraser was thinner and sort of looser, like he’d relaxed up there on the ice; somehow he was even kind of wilder looking. Less buttoned up and proper. Ray had a feeling he’d changed some as well, in the nearly two years since they properly saw each other last, but he didn’t ask Fraser about that. However nice he put things, Fraser did tell you the truth.

They didn’t talk about anything big. Ray started saying some things about Vegas that he finished with an awkward pause and hand gestures that meant - what did they mean? He didn’t know. But Fraser met his eyes and nodded, like he understood anyway, and then started telling him dumb things about what he’d been doing in Canada and here in Chicago all the time Ray had been gone, and between performance arsonists and ghost ships the moment passed. Fraser kept a straight face - nobody kept a straight face as well as Fraser - and Ray laughed at him, and it was everything Ray had wanted from the evening.

Only when Ray teased him about his hair, which was maybe a half inch longer than strict Mountie regulations (and Ray was totally embracing Fraser’s right to say something back about his hair – in fact he was setting Fraser up to say something sweetly snide about his hair, that was how this conversation was supposed to go) Fraser looked all embarrassed and ducked his head and raised an awkward hand to his hair.

“Yes, I ought to get it cut before I report for duty,” he said like he was talking about root canal surgery, which was not at all how he usually sounded about anything related to reporting for duty.

“Nah, looks good on you. Leave it,” Ray told him, grinning.

But mostly Ray wasn’t paying as much attention as he could have been, because every time Fraser mentioned Kowalski (and he mentioned Kowalski a lot - what he did and what he said and what he thought and what he objected to, not without justification, I would have to concede, although at the time...), Ray felt a distracting little twinge of guilt. He knew he had to tell Kowalski something, and he was putting it off. He was putting it off because would be working with the guy come Monday, and this was not going to improve working relationships one bit.

Everyone had told him how Kowalski was. There was trouble coming, and Ray just wanted to enjoy a couple days of Benny being back before he plunged them all into a seething mess of jealousy and recrimination.

A couple of days, or maybe a week. Two, tops.

So the first time he drank a cup of coffee with Benny and Kowalski together, Ray was almost too preoccupied with what he wasn’t saying to notice what Benny wasn’t saying.

The second time Fraser opened his mouth and began, “Ray, there’s something I’ve been - ” then cut himself off, Ray actually got with the plot and caught Kowalski’s tiny panicky head-shake. And Ray thought, huh?

He only managed to translate it when Kowalski got up to pay, and Ray watched Benny watch Kowalski with enough heat in his gaze to melt the entire Yukon. And Ray thought, oh.

Then when Kowalski scooped up his car keys and stood jangling them, shuffling from one foot to the other and said,

“So, uh, you still wanna stay at my place, Frase?”

And Fraser did his own little shuffle and looked off to the side and licked his lips and tugged at his ear before meeting Kowalski’s eyes and saying,

“Yes, I’d like that very much. If you’re sure it isn’t any trouble,”

And Kowalski said, “Nah, you’re no trouble,” and a starry-eyed private smile passed between them before they both looked back at their feet.

And Ray thought, ohhhh.

He was surprised for about six seconds, then a lot of things fell into place. He wasn’t entirely proud of the thought that struck him next.

Rather than taking a moment to consider the long term future happiness of the person he considered his best friend, and how, aside from being a skinny badly-dressed Polish guy, there was an assistant state’s attorney who used to be married to him and a whole police force telling Ray that this was a brave, decent, honest man; a stand-up cop who had already risked his life for Fraser almost as many times as Ray himself, and had apparently shared an extreme weather tent without killing him, and that maybe this sounded like a promising candidate who he could actually trust Benny with, Ray was thinking something completely different.

He was thinking, hey, if this is going where it looks like it’s going, telling Kowalski I’m moving in with his ex-wife might be easier than I thought.

*

Which brought them to today. The giant clusterfuck of today, which had started with Fraser at the bar putting away shots of what looked like vodka in some inescapable male bonding experience he was not equipped to handle. Ray, he could have managed. He wasn’t a drinker because he’d chosen not to be a drinker, but if he’d learned anything from his time as Armando Langustini, it was how to look like you were drinking with the boys without actually drinking with the boys.

Fraser embraced his freakish nature and never even tried to blend in or pretend he was like everyone else. And Ray admired that about him: it took some nerve, and Fraser never flinched. But Ray also knew that sometimes, blending in was the best way to get the job done.

Today was a good example of that. Today called for Ray or Kowalski blending in and doing the talking, having a couple drinks if that was the way it went, while Fraser scoped the joint, gathered evidence, paid attention so he could be a good witness and most importantly, (really, Ray felt, this was a thing that should go without saying) didn’t get drunk, open his big honest mouth and say something incredibly stupid.

Because now Fraser was God-knows-where, drunk, while some very unpleasant people most likely did very unpleasant things to him, and Ray was sitting on the cold hard floor, handcuffed to Kowalski. Neither of them was going anywhere to help him because of the solid cast iron pipe in between them stopping them taking more than a step in any direction. They’d tried kicking it out of the wall, but it’s hard to get any kind of leverage against a pipe you’re handcuffed to, and even with leverage Ray had his doubts they’d be able to shift it.

There was nothing to do except sit here, and worry. About all sorts of things, starting with Fraser and what might be happening to him; moving swiftly on to what might be about to happen to him and Kowalski; and followed in close third by whether dying with a guilty conscience sent you to hell or purgatory.

Ray didn’t even properly believe in hell or purgatory, and he was mostly sure that he hadn’t really done anything to deserve that guilty conscience. Except for wake up next to Stella Kowalski nearly every day for the last seven weeks, and while that definitely wasn’t wrong, it was seeming more and more like the sort of thing he ought to mention to the guy on the other end of the handcuffs before they both got killed. Just to clear the air.

Kowalski, though, in his blissful ignorance, wasn’t giving Ray the sort of conversational opening he needed. He was jiggling and fidgeting and drumming his fingers on the pipe and standing up and sitting down like he’d forgotten Ray’s arm was attached to his arm and that every time he got to his feet, Ray’s arm was yanked up in the air above his head, and it was starting to hurt, dammit.

The fifth time he did it, Ray lost it. He yanked back on the cuffs as hard as he could (and that hurt too) and Kowalski came crashing down on his skinny ass with an oof.

Then he was grabbing the chain and lunging round the pipe, spitting mad and ready to fight it out one-handed.

“It is not me you’re mad at, Kowalski!”  Ray told him through clenched teeth, trying not to yell.

“You’re here, you’ll do!” Kowalski was definitely not making any effort not to yell.

Ray looked him right in the eye.

“Like that’s gonna help Fraser,” he said, calm as he could with Kowalski’s hand fisted in his shirtfront.

And that was the magic word, just like he knew it would be.

Kowalski let him go and slumped back against the wall.

“We gotta get out of here, Vecchio. We can’t just leave him.”

Ray rattled the cuffs rather than answer. Kowalski growled in frustration and thumped his head against the wall.

“Ow,” he said after a second, like he’d needed to think about it.

“He’s ok, you know,” Ray told him, even though he knew no such thing. It was what he was telling himself so he figured he might as well tell Kowalski too. See if maybe he believed it. He sounded like he needed to believe it.

“How you figure that?”

“If they had shot Fraser, they woulda shot us too. They have not shot us, therefore they have not shot Fraser. Ok?” That sounded pretty convincing, once he said it out loud.

“Yeah well, there’s a whole load of difference between ok and not shot, ya know,” Kowalski muttered.

“He’s drunk, Kowalski. They don’t need to do anything bad to him to get him to tell them stuff. He’s probably halfway through the complete history of the Northwest Territories, complete with a full account of local bylaws and the dates of the hunting season, and they still haven’t figured out how to make him stop.”

That earned him a huff of breath that wasn’t quite a laugh, but maybe it had met a laugh once.

Kowalski was silent for a moment, then he said,

“He does it on purpose, y’know.”

“Huh?”

“Those stories that go on and on. He makes ‘em boring on purpose. Or weird. Or whatever.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ray said.

Kowalski looked at him like he’d been expecting a who-knows-Fraser-better showdown and wasn’t sure how to react now Ray was agreeing with him.

“He shoulda stayed in Canada. I shouldn’t have let him come back here. None of this woulda happened if we’da stayed up there.”

His voice was tight and miserable. He didn’t believe Ray’s reassurances one bit.

“We? You’da stayed up there?” Ray asked, to keep him talking. Talking had to be better than brooding, right?

“Sure. If I coulda got a job.”

“So that’s why he came back?”

Kowalski’s head whipped round.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Ray said. “Just what I said.”

“Why would he come back just because I couldn’t get a job?”

Ray shrugged, knowing Kowalski would feel it through the handcuffs.

“No reason,” he said. Ok Kowalski, you and Fraser making eyes at each other is a big secret. “Just, you know, he obviously likes you a lot.”

Kowalski didn’t answer. When Ray looked over at him, his eyes were squeezed tight shut.

“He likes you a lot too,” Kowalski said eventually.

“Course,” Ray agreed. Then he added, “Just, not quite the same as how he likes you.”

The handcuffs jerked as Kowalski sat up straight and looked at him through narrowed eyes. Ray blinked back at him, deliberately calm, but inside he was kicking himself. Way to go, Ray! Get his back up prying into his personal life before you tell him you’re in love with the ex he never got over!

But Kowalski surprised him by sagging back against the wall again, free hand over his eyes.

“Yeah. He said you’d notice,” he muttered.

For a second Ray had no idea what to say. Had Kowalski just come out to him? Sure, he had already been like, 90% sure there was something going on, but that still left 10% handcuffed to Kowalski and really not prepared for the turn the conversation had taken. Which was stupid, because Ray was the one who’d steered them here while trying to get around to People Who Are Dating Somebody You Might Not Expect Them To Be Dating. And now Kowalski had beaten him to it, he was left sitting on his ass with his mouth open.

It was time to get his shit together and make an effort here.

“Uh, it’s not like it’s really obvious or anything, just I’ve known Fraser a long time, so…” Which wasn’t really true, but Ray had started so he was going to go on. “…I guess I just notice when he likes someone. I mean, likes likes someone.” Then he added as an afterthought, “Because it’s not like it happens that often.”

Kowalski jerked his head in a nod and finally took his hand away from his eyes. He didn’t look at Ray at all.

“He wanted to tell you. Said you’d be cool. But I just - ”

“Yeah. I know. You don’t know me. I get it. Kind of a risk.”

Ray’d heard a lot of good stuff about Kowalski from the people who mattered. But the people who didn’t matter, they could still make your life a misery if they knew a thing like this. Hell, before Vegas, if it had been some other guy and not Fraser, Ray might not have tried too hard to stop them. If he was really honest, he might even have thrown in his own two cents worth from the sidelines. Maybe he wouldn’t, but maybe he would. And Kowalski, Kowalski had been him. Kowalski probably knew that about him. Of course he hadn’t wanted Fraser to tell him.

Kowalski made a sound that might have been agreement and might have been disagreement but was definitely freaked out.

“Look, I didn’t mean to – I mean, your private life’s private, right? That’s what I always say. So I’m cool with your private life, and I can see that you might want to keep it private, which is also, you know - ” if Ray heard himself say cool again he was just going to lie down and die right here on the floor. But he didn’t have another word. His sentence trailed off and hung in the air between them, waiting for Ray to pick it up again and turn it into a reciprocal confession about him and Stella.

That could probably wait a few minutes longer though, he figured.

“’Kay,” muttered Kowalski.

The silence stretched on.

Ray cleared his throat.

“So look, while we’re kinda on the subject…” Again, Kowalski gave a grunt that might have been a yeah? or some kind of sign of encouragement to keep talking. Or also might not have been.

He pressed on.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to mention. Just, you know, ‘cause we’re working together, and I thought you should hear it from me - ”

“What, about you and Stella?”

Ray nodded slowly.

“Yeah, that’s – that’s ok. You don’t need to – I mean, I appreciate it, but you don’t need to tell me nothing.”

“Ok,” Ray said cautiously.

“No, I mean, I guess people said, that before I was kinda outta line about her, and when she was dating, but that’s not gonna happen no more.”

“Oh,” said Ray. “Ok. Well, that’s - ”

 “Yeah,” said Kowalski.

“Right.” He figured he should probably stop talking now.

For all sorts of reasons, it was just as well that was when they brought Fraser back.

He was maybe a bit wobbly, but he was standing on his own two feet. Someone had bashed him around some – there was a bruise rising on his cheekbone and his lower lip was puffy, but given what Ray had been imagining, he was a picture of health.

One of the huge ugly guys with him gave him a hard shove, and that was the proof right there of how much alcohol was in his system, because he stumbled into the room and landed on his hands and knees in front of Ray and Kowalski as the door slammed shut behind him.

Kowalski reached for him like he couldn’t help it, gripping Fraser’s shoulder with his free hand as he leaned in to inspect his bruised face.

“Frase, you ok? What happened? You all right?” he asked anxiously.

“Yes Ray, I’m fine. I’m just – tired.”

Oh boy. Fraser was toasted, was what he was.

Fraser blinked earnestly at Kowalski. “I think I might just – lie down for a moment, in fact.”

And he pitched forward with a vodka-scented sigh, head first into Kowalski’s lap.

Kowalski froze for just a second, then he gave a little shrug and went along with it. Which, with Fraser, was probably the only way to stay sane. He flicked a self-conscious glance at Ray and Ray couldn’t help grinning back. Maybe Kowalski didn’t think it was funny that he had a drunk Mountie in his lap, and probably Ray shouldn’t think it was funny either right now. But three minutes ago he’d been worried Benny was dead, and anything short of that seemed pretty much hilarious.

“It is just as well Vecchio had already noticed, ‘cause you woulda just given everything away here, Frase,” Kowalski told the top of Fraser’s head.

“Oh. Yes, I  - sorry, Ray,” he said. He didn’t sound very sorry.

“Yeah well, he had already noticed, so, y’know, it’s fine.”

“Told you,” Fraser mumbled.

Ray nudged Fraser’s foot with his own. Fraser’s feet were in his way actually, but with the handcuffs and the pipe he couldn’t exactly get up and move.

“So yeah, me and Kowalski were talking,” he began.

Fraser smiled up at the ceiling. “I knew you two would get along,” he said.

Ray and Kowalski exchanged another look. Ray couldn’t say for sure what Kowalski was thinking, but he was thinking it was damn lucky they got along because drunk Fraser needed at least two partners who could work together, and probably more.

“And I knew Ray would notice – I told you Ray would know, didn’t I?” he continued.

“I wouldn’t say I knew – I mean I wondered, sure, but I didn’t know you – you know…” Ray figured that sentence could just join all the other ones he wasn’t finishing around here.

Besides, Fraser was picking up where he’d left off.

“Oh, neither did I, Ray! Of course I suspected this about myself, but it wasn’t until the first time Ray and I - ”

Ray tried to cut him off there. “Ok Benny, I get the picture.”

But Fraser with a bottle of vodka inside him was a force of nature, something totally unstoppable and disastrous, like an avalanche maybe.

“And the sex was incredible, like nothing I’ve ever - ”

Ray and Kowalski were both talking over him, Kowalski’s free hand actually pressed over his mouth.

“He doesn’t need to know this, Frase,” Kowalski told him firmly. The tips of his ears were pink.

Ray echoed, “I do not need to know this, Benny.”

Fraser mumbled something faintly aggrieved from under Kowalski’s hand that sounded like,

“I thought you’d want to know, Ray.”

“In private, Frase. Tell me in private, ok?”

He waited for Fraser to nod his understanding before cautiously lifting his hand.

Fraser instantly opened his mouth like he was going to carry on talking, but Ray was quicker.

“Benny. I love you like a brother, you’re my best friend, and all I want is for you to be happy with someone who treats you right. But I never, ever need to hear the details of your sex life ever again. Are we clear about this?”

Just in case it wasn’t clear, Ray pressed his advantage while he still held the floor.

“Kowalski never needs you to tell me the details of your sex life ever again, ok?”

“Honestly, I wasn’t going to tell you the details!” Fraser protested. “That would be highly un - un - gentlemany. Ungentlemanly.”

“Yes it would, Benny.”

“Ungentlemanly,” Fraser repeated. All the syllables seemed to be there, but there was definitely something a little blurry about his pronunciation.

“Yeah, Frase. We got it,” Kowalski said gently, carding his fingers through Fraser’s hair. Fraser closed his eyes and made a small sound of contentment the likes of which Ray had never, ever heard him make before.

Well, that explained the haircut thing anyway.

“Don’t go to sleep,” Kowalski cautioned. “I know you want to, but we kinda need your help to get out of here.”

He rattled the handcuffs against the pipe and gave Fraser’s head a little shake.

Fraser blinked up at him.

“I would have thought it was just easier to wait for Lt. Welsh to make the arrests and come and find us, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, if they had any idea where we were or any evidence to make an arrest with, that would be a great plan.” Maybe it was low to be sarcastic with Fraser when he was drunk, but he wasn’t the one in handcuffs, so Ray figured it was fair enough.

“I kept repeating the name of the establishment while they were asking me questions – it’s printed on all the paper napkins – and given everything they said, I certainly think the Lieutenant has grounds for a search warrant and more than enough evidence to make arrests. And I expressed repeated concern for your safety, so at the very least Francesca will have requested back up…”

Ray and Kowalski looked at each other in wordless despair, and Ray let his head fall back against the wall with a thump. It didn’t make him feel any better, but at least his frustration had been expressed.

“Fraser,” said Kowalski darkly, “Is there some information you have forgotten to share with us here?”

“A second ago you didn’t want me to share any information! I really think you ought to make up your mind, Ray.” Woah, drunk Fraser was just as snippy as sober Fraser.

“Policework information, Fraser. Policework information, ok?” Kowalski sounded like he was gritting his teeth.

“About how you seem to be implying that you’re wearing a wire you didn’t tell the actual Chicago police officers about?” Ray added.

“I assumed it went without saying!” Oh yeah, his injured innocence didn’t suffer any from the liquor either.

“No, Benny. It did not go without saying. What Kowalski’s like in bed, that can go without saying. You wearing a wire on a police operation that we planned together, that really did need saying.”

“Oh well, perhaps you’d better just write me a list then - ”

Ray saw his own annoyance echoed loud and clear on Kowalski’s face. What had either of them done to deserve this?

“Kowalski, you are a brave man. If there is ever anything I can do to help you, up to and including hiding a body, just say the word.” Ray said.

“Thanks, you free right now?” muttered Kowalski, giving Fraser’s head another little shake.

“Yeah as a matter of fact I am,” Ray told him.

Fraser broke out into a goofy grin at that.

“I knew you two would get along,” he said.

**

Ray would be the first to admit they weren’t creating the best impression of Chicago’s finest when the door opened to Welsh and the backup from the 27^th. Fraser was asleep, head still in Kowalski’s lap, and Ray and Kowalski were still handcuffed together with a water pipe stopping them going anywhere.

Welsh looked at them hard for a second, but all he said was,

“Gentlemen. Is anybody in need of medical assistance?”

“No sir,” chimed Ray and Kowalski, and Welsh just nodded before waving O’Donnell in with the boltcutters.

“Is Constable Fraser drunk?” he asked, watching Kowalski try to shake him awake.

“Yeah. They kept pouring vodka down him so he’d talk.”

“Huh,” Welsh said.

“Fraser. Frase. Ben. Wake up.” Kowalski was crouched over him, patting his face, a lot more gently than Ray would have done under the circumstances.

In hindsight, Ray thought, he ought to have taken over and dealt with the waking up a little more briskly to avoid what happened next, which was really totally predictable given how today was going.

But hindsight, as they say, is 20/20, and Ray would be needing reading glasses any day now.

He and Welsh watched as Fraser opened his eyes to Kowalski leaning over him. Ray saw his sappy smile break out, and an answering one appear on Kowalski’s face. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world for Fraser to reach out and cup Kowalski’s face as if he was about to pull him in for a kiss.

“Ray,” he murmured softly.

The cat was probably well out of the bag, but Ray felt honour-bound to try and stop it wreaking too much havoc now it was loose.

He cleared his throat loudly before Kowalski had time to give into any impulse he might regret, and saw his head shoot up, lovesick smile gone.

There was a moment of silence.

Then Welsh said,

“Constable Fraser. You re-join us. There’s a coffee machine out front – please make use of it. I’m going to need you passably sober to put faces to the voices we’ve got on tape.”

“Yes sir,” said Fraser, all business as if he wasn't still mostly asleep on the floor.

He might even have gotten away with it it he hadn’t swayed so obviously when Kowalski pulled him to his feet.

Welsh shook his head and waved them out the door.

“Kowalski, get some coffee inside him. And don’t leave him unsupervised with scalding liquids - I don’t want a lawsuit from the Canadians. Vecchio, start getting me some IDs for these guys…”

* 

So really, Ray told Stella over dinner, it all turned out much better than he could have expected. No one was dead. Fraser would have a headache and a black eye in the morning, but it looked like Kowalski was there to make him feel better. Kowalski hadn’t flipped out over Ray and Stella, because Fraser was there to make him feel better. Lt Welsh had presumably noticed the expanded definition of Fraser’s liaison duties where Kowalski was concerned and had nothing to say about it, and the total clusterfuck of today had turned up six arrests and a “Good work, gentlemen,” which wasn’t something that happened every Tuesday.

And Ray, Ray was falling in love with the most beautiful woman in Chicago, and life seemed pretty good.