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The second first kiss (March 26, 1999)
On the trail of the hand of Franklin, Ray was pretty much the grossest he’d ever been. He was wearing eight layers of puffy clothing, his once fashionable stubble was now a patchy, scraggly beard, and he hadn’t brushed his teeth properly in weeks. Of course, this is when Fraser decided to kiss him.
Ray wouldn’t admit it out loud or anything, but it’s maybe possible that sometimes, in the lonely dark of his own apartment, he considered the whole buddy breathing thing on the Harry Anderson to be their first kiss. Which, yeah, Ray knew that was a little messed up. He knew that. But no matter what Fraser claimed, Ray was pretty damn sure there was no ‘standard procedure’ that involved slipping someone tongue. Ray had thought for just a minute that this thing between them was finally becoming something more, but Fraser had sworn up and down that nothing was changed. If that’s how Fraser needed it to be, then fine. Ray could deal. He wouldn’t push. But no one could blame him for thinking about it. The dark and the cold, and the taste of lake water; then the taste of Fraser. And the air. That too. Also important.
It really wasn’t all that different the second time they kissed. It was dark and cold and if Ray could see anything, he’d be watching his breath puff out from his lips. They’d been on their quest for 17 days and nothing had happened between them up until then. Ray had no idea what finally broke or clicked or whatever in Fraser’s brain, but something had. They ate dinner and fed the dogs and did all their usual setting-up-camp chores. It was a cold night and there wasn’t much else to do, so they went to bed, even though it was barely dinner time by Chicago standards. Ray was wrapped up in his sleeping bag with the hood attachment snapped tight over his chin and his hat pulled down low on his brow. He was laying in the cold and the dark thinking about his turtle of all things and trying to make himself sleep when he heard Fraser roll toward him. Fraser pawed at his face and unsnapped the hood. After that, everything happened in slow motion. Cold. Dark. The taste of ice. And then Fraser’s mouth was there, his warm lips pressed to Ray’s chapped ones.
As soon as Ray’s brain got over the shock and tried to kiss back, Fraser’s mouth was gone and his gloved hands were snapping Ray’s hood back in to place.
“Fraser? The fuck?”
“I’m sorry, Ray. I shouldn’t have done that, but I had to know.”
“No, Frase, no ‘sorry’, it was good.” Ray tried to inch closer to Fraser’s bag, managing only to move about six inches, and with all the grace of a flopping fish. “You, um, don’t have to stop.”
“That’s very good to know, Ray, but try and get some sleep now.”
“But –“
“All in good time, Ray.”
And with that, Fraser relaxed back into that corpse pose of his. Ray gave Fraser his best cop glare, but it must not have worked in the dark because Fraser’s breathing was still slow and regular, like he was falling asleep. And wasn’t that just like the contrary Mountie? Making all the decisions and doing everything on his own timeline without so much as bothering to explain his plan to anyone else.
“Oh, hell no,” said Ray, dolphin-kicking at Fraser’s shins as best he could. “We are not doing that whole don’t-talk-about-it-until-someone-gets-punched-in-the-head thing again. You can’t just do… that… and then roll over and go to sleep like nothing happened. That’s not buddies.”
Ray could feel Fraser hesitating. “Ray, I—that is to say…”
Ray waited him out. Fraser cleared his throat and Ray could almost see him scratching his eyebrow. Finally, in a voice that Fraser would never admit was actually a mumble, he said, “The nearest town is five hours away. And I.. I had thought… tomorrow…”
Ray grinned in the dark. “Yeah, Frase, okay. Tomorrow.”
Ray had waited two years for this; he could wait another twelve hours.
The first ice crevasse (March 10, 1999)
In the crevasse, where Ray had first mentioned having an adventure and Fraser had decided to use his excess lung capacity to sing them off to death with a song about the hand of Franklin, Ray had thought about it. Confessing. Part of him didn’t want to die without letting Fraser know how much he meant to him. Part of him didn’t want to die with his last kiss being from a woman that hadn’t loved him in years, but who occasionally pitied him. But, in the end, pride shut his mouth. Vecchio had told him—Well. He was still Vecchio at that point. Technically. But the Italian Ray Vecchio had told him about whatshername, the bank robber, when he’d first been put on this crazy-ass assignment. He knew she and Frase had almost frozen to death together, and Original Recipe Vecchio had thought that was part of why Fraser had such a thing about her, even though everyone knew she was bad news.
Ray himself wasn’t so sure. From what he could tell, Fraser just kinda sucked at love. There was Hypothermia Chick a long time ago, right after she robbed the bank. And then Hypothermia Chick: The Sequel, which Vecchio said nearly got Fraser and Dief both killed. During his own time with Fraser, the only ones to really turn Fraser’s head were The Liar with the Kids and The Liar with the Cards. Fraser just could not catch a break. But, just in case Vecchio was right about Fraser and Hypothermia Chick being bonded together by their ordeal, Ray decided not to be the second person to come on to Fraser while they were – fingers crossed – almost dying in the Canadian wilderness.
Luckily, Delmar from Grade Four had stepped right out of one of Benton Fraser’s Tales of the Tundra™ and saved their bacon. Ray thought the guy was a hallucination at first, all huge and covered in furs. And, okay, fine, maybe Ray did have a touch of hypothermia, because all he could think was that Delmar looked like Mike Myers doing Lothar of the Hill People on Saturday Night Live, but with warmer pants. Del-MAR! Of the ICE People! And wasn’t Mike Myers Canadian, too?
They still had para-Mounties to summon and a nuclear submarine to capture and the killer of Fraser’s mother to bring to justice, but that crevasse had been the start of something. The Adventure. Because as Ray was dangling there, wedged 200 feet down into a seemingly bottomless fissure, thinking about his life, he really could only come up with the one regret. Well, only one regret after nixing the whole Fraser-feelings thing. And because Fraser was Fraser, master of efficiency and the kind of guy who didn’t ever think other people might only be talking out their asses, it was only three days later that they set off into the wilderness on a dogsled.
The first town (March 27, 1999)
The first thing Ray noticed about the town was the tiny brown sign for the airstrip. While they were boarding the dogs, Ray let Fraser have it.
“So, Fraser. How does it just so happen that you come on to me in a place just five hours from an airport? Pretty convenient there.”
Fraser kept his head down, so Ray pushed even though he wasn’t really mad, shaking his head mockingly and drawling out, “Way to trust your partner there, buddy.”
Fraser did look up then, and his eyes were bright with something that wasn’t up to being teased.
“On the contrary Ray. I ‘conveniently’ came on to you in a place just a half a day from showers and a real bed.”
That shut Ray up fast. Sometimes he forgot just how intense Benton Fraser could be when he was focused on something. By the time they had walked to the hotel and gotten their room, Ray's stomach was a knotted up mess of nerves and excitement. But then Fraser’s mouth was on his and he wasn’t even dying, or maybe he was, there was no air anywhere, but it wasn’t cold, it was hot and then there was skin.
*****
“Okay, yeah, Frase. The whole wait-for-a-bed thing was a good plan.”
“So you’re no longer offended that I waited to ‘make my move’ then?”
“Nope. Right now, Frase, you can do no wrong. That’s the beauty of the afterglow.”
Ray tipped his head back to look at his partner. “Out of curiosity though, exactly how long did you wait?”
“I had my suspicions that my feelings… well, that you also… “ Fraser cleared his throat. “Since the second crevasse.”
Ray froze a second at that. “Because of the song?”
Fraser looked puzzled. “No. Because it was the second crevasse we had gotten trapped in, but you didn’t say anything about regretting the adventure.”
Ray smiled against Fraser’s chest and patted him sleepily. “Nowhere else I’d rather be, Benton-buddy.”
The second ice crevasse (March 20, 1999)
Ray tried not to take it personally that Canada was trying to kill him again. Nearly dying twice in two weeks would deter some guys. Or at least make them reconsider their vacation plans. But those guys didn’t jump off a roof into a gun fight or drive a motorcycle through a glass window into a hostage situation on a normal Tuesday either.
“Hey Fraser, this time can I pick the song we sing as we die?”
“Of course, Ray. Though we had quite a bit of luck with Northwest Passage last time,” said Fraser. Because they were the kind of people who had a last time we were dying in an ice fissure.
“No offense, but we did like that song said and had an adventure and that’s how we ended up here.”
So now Fraser was looking at Ray all expectantly and Ray had to actually come up with a song worthy of being the soundtrack to their slow and miserable demise. Like last time, his brain was screaming S.O.S at him, which, no. Although he had heard this rock band cover it once and it had sounded waaay more awesome than the ABBA version. But still, no. The Police’s Message in a Bottle was the next option his brain supplied, which he nixed just as fast. Nothing that had ever charted at #1 was appropriate impromptu funeral dirge material. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth, and Paul Westerberg’s words came out.
“I can live without so much. I can die without a clue. Sun keeps rising in the west. I keep on waking fully confused.”
By this point, Ray’s brain had caught up to his mouth, and he had mentally fast-forwarded to the chorus of Within Your Reach. Whoops. So much for the not-coming-on-to-his-best-friend-in-an-ice-crevasse plan.
“I ain’t ever seen no mountain. Never swam no sea. City’s got me drowning, I guess it’s up to me--”
Ray looked Fraser right in the eye, and decided he would be ready for the “I can’t live without your touch/I’d die within your reach” part when it came. Of course, in typical Fraser Luck fashion, they were rescued from certain death before they even got to the bridge of their song.
The second cabin (May 1, 1999)
Fraser had inherited his Dad’s cabin after he was killed, but it was shot up and firebombed soon after. So this was technically Fraser’s second cabin, but Ray suspected it might be his first real home. Ray knew Fraser’s grandparents moved a lot when he was a kid, and knowing Fraser, he lived in post housing after Depot. The first Ray Vecchio had said Fraser had an apartment in Chicago, but the description he got in the file made it sound like Fraser living on a cot in his office wasn’t a really huge change.
Ray himself had gone from renting to leasing as Stella climbed the corporate ladder, but they never bought a house. Ray had his suspicions even then that Stella thought having a yard might encourage him in his whole wanting-kids thing. It was funny, or sad, or something, looking back on it now. Ray and Stella. How on Earth did he ever think that was going to last? They were just kids, and all the stubborn in the world wasn’t going to change the fact that they disagreed on some really fundamental shit.
Not like this, not like with Fraser. The two of them were simpatico. Of course, if he hadn’t been married to (and divorced from) Stella, he wouldn’t have met Fraser at all. And even if he had met Fraser instead of Stella at 13, it’s not like they would have gotten here. But somehow, they had ended up right where they were supposed to be. Their first place.
Ray smiled to himself and felt the happiness bubble up in him. On a whim, he waltzed over to Fraser and swept him up into a dance. Fraser followed along gamely enough, with the beginnings of a smile spreading across his lips. In a few minutes, Fraser would start getting self-conscious about dancing, or they would bump into a piece of furniture, or Ray would press his hips into Fraser’s and they would both get distracted. Something would break the spell before too long. But until then, Ray was content to lead Fraser around their small cabin humming a Frank Sinatra classic in his partner’s ear.