Work Text:
Ray remembered this one night, when they'd been visiting Maggie and her new husband Mike for dinner. It was right when the whole same-sex marriage thing was starting to break in Ontario. Ray and Fraser were just getting settled in Inuvik and they'd taken the trip down to Yellowknife for some shopping, and to visit Fraser's sister. She had two little kids who'd adopted Ray as a sort of favorite uncle. So, after dinner, Ray had offered to read the kids a story before bed, while Maggie and Fraser and her husband watched the news on CBC.
He'd just finished "Goodnight Moon," and Jimmie had dropped off to sleep in his lap, when he heard the echo of the newscaster's voice coming in from the living room.
". . . Today, the Ontario court of appeals ruled in Halpern V. Canada, that the historical restriction of marriage to heterosexal couples violated the terms of the Canadian Constitution. . . this opens the door for same-sex marriages to be legally performed in Ontario. The first marriage of a same-sex couple was. . ."
The newscaster droned on and on, and Ray felt his heart first leap, then turn to ice as Mike started talking. "Can you believe this gay marriage thing?" Mike said. "I mean, this whole damn country is being taken over by the homosexual agenda! I just can't believe I'd even live to see it."
Oh shit. Ray looked down guiltily at the sleeping two year old in his lap and slipped the boy off his lap and under the covers. How could Mike be so stupid, and with him and Fraser right there? He had to get Fraser's back in this.
Back in the living room, Mike still had his eyes fixed on the TV, his expression belligerent and a bottle of beer clutched in his hand, two more on the table in front of him. Fraser was looking at Mike, face completely blank, and Maggie was staring at Fraser in wide-eyed apprehension.
Fraser looked at Maggie, smiled tightly, and turned back to her husband. "Mike," he said quietly. "I'm gay. Ray is my partner. You've known that for years. If you have anything to say about that, I'd ask that you please say it to me directly."
That moment would always hang in Ray's memory perfectly preserved in all its awe and horror. Gay. Fraser had never said it before, as far as he knew. Not to him, not to anybody. All they'd been through, and all they'd done, never mind that everybody knew, but he'd never just come out and said it before. Mike looked queasy and wouldn't meet his eyes, and Maggie, who Fraser had tried so hard to make his family, was bright red with embarassment. Fraser just sat there, a rock, serene in the river of their disapproval and Ray was so full of pride and love that he thought he was going to explode.
Maggie had said, "But, Ben, you're family. That's different. And you and Ray, you aren't trying to push any kind of agenda or anything. You're not the sort of people Mike was talking about."
Fraser looked thoughtful, and he picked his hat up off the table in front of him, turned it slowly in his hands. "You're wrong, actually," he said, finally. "We're exactly that sort of people." He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders stood up. Ray hadn't needed to hear what came next; he just went and got the coats. "I see that you invited us here based on some mistaken assumptions," Fraser concluded. "I'm deeply sorry for any misunderstanding. And, as always, thank you kindly for your hospitality. The caribou chili was delicious." Ray handed him his coat and he shrugged into it.
Maggie's sense of Canadian propriety must have kicked in at that point, because she escorted them out the door and said good night politely enough. Fraser had taken Ray's elbow at the door and they walked out into the night arm-in-arm. Maggie said she would call but, of course, she never did. And they never received a response to their wedding invitation, sent out almost four years later.
Still, two years after that, they'd gotten a Christmas card from her, with a photo of all the kids-- by then she had four kids, and no husband, again. Fraser sent her a letter on her birthday that year, and she had briefly called him on his. By the time the nephews were in high school, everything was normal between them. As far as Ray knew, they'd never talked about it again.
But, by then, he and Fraser had been marching in the Inuvik Pride Parade. By then, Inuvik had had a Pride Parade. Things changed.
It had been later that night, when they were home and safe in their own bed, Ray had asked: "You told Mike you were gay. Is that really how you think about yourself now?"
Ben frowned. "I hardly thought my sister's living room, during an argument with her bigoted husband, was either the time or the place to attempt an exact definition of my sexuality." He had his schoolteacher voice on.
Ray snorted. "Well 'course not. That's why I'm asking now."
Ben shrugged, still looking annoyed. "It's as good a word as any," he said.
"Really?" Ray pressed. " 'Cause I know there have been women. I mean, I saw you with Janet. I read the file on Victoria," and I saw the scar, he thought and did not say. "So how does all that work, now?"
"Why does it matter?" Ben asked, exasperated. "Why do we have to define there things at all? What do you want from me, Ray?"
Ray didn't know himself. He didn't know why he kept pushing Ben about this, when it was so obvious that Ben didn't want to talk about it. "I don't want anything," he said. "Well aside from what we've got. What we've got is what I want, whatever you wanna call it. But I guess I kinda want to know what's going on in your head. I mean we never really talked about this."
Fraser was frowning, but it was different from the annoyed frown he'd been wearing a minute ago. "No," he agreed. "We never really talked about it. Then, to Ray's surprise, he turned the question back. "Well, how about yourself? How do you think about yourself?" He raised an eyebrow and turned a challenging look on Ray.
Ray stopped. They'd never talked about it before. Which meant, Fraser didn't know-- "I'm bi, Fraser. Bisexual. Always have been."
"And it's really that easy for you?" Fraser sounded like he didn't believe it.
"Shit no!" Ray jumped out of bed and started to pace. "There ain't nothing easy about it. Really fucked me up when I was a kid, you know? There were a couple of guys, and I, well, you know about that. But it scared the shit out of me. And, I figure that's at least half of why Stella. 'Cause after the divorce, I had to deal with it, right? That, after Stella, the next one might be a guy. The next one might be you. There was nothing easy about it."
He stopped and looked back at the bed, saw Ben watching him with serious smiling eyes. He was suddenly overwhelmed by tenderness, all of the irritation and anxiety draining out of him. He sank back down on the bed and put a hand on Ben's shoulder. "That's why I want to know, see? Because it was hard. And I don't want to think about you going through all that on your own." He hadn't known it was true until he said it, but there it was.
Ben smiled up into Ray's eyes and covered Ray's hand with his own. "Thank you, Ray," he said, quietly. "And you're right. . . it's. . . hard." His face looked far away. "I never actually gave it much thought, when I was young," he mused. "Homosexuals were just another sort of criminal, a threat to public decency. I knew I wasn't like that, so I assumed my. . . interest. . . in other boys was just a part of normal sexuality. I assumed that my lack of interest in women-- with those few exceptions-- was just a personal idiosyncrasy (of which I do, after all, have many). It wasn't until I came to Chicago that I even encountered the idea that sexual orientation existed as a . . . a way of being, entirely separate from a person's actions." He paused, took a breath. Fraser was having more trouble putting his words together than Ray had ever seen.
Finally, Fraser continued. "It was terrifying," he admitted. "I tried to ignore it, to go back to thinking about these things as I always had, as if only actions mattered. But I found myself questioning everything, all my past experience, all my interactions with the people around me. My friendship with Ray Vecchio, which had already been strangely close, took on new significance, which disturbed Ray even more than it did me. And then Victoria came and I was so. . . relieved. Because here was the one person with whom I had truly felt myself to be a normal man. The one woman who I. . . Well. You know how that ended."
Yeah. Ray thought. The man you were in love with shot you in the back. He laid down beside Fraser and wrapped him in a tight embrace, wanting to banish all the hurt and fear in his voice. And, to his surprise, it worked.
Ben relaxed in his arms, just melted as all the tension left him. "But then there was you," he said, softly touching Ray's face. "At first I thought I had come completely unhinged. It may come as a surprise to you, but I have had cause to doubt my own mental stability over the years. And when I first came back from Canada, looking for Ray Vecchio, and found you in his place. . . I though I was hallucinating you, you see. You were so very beautiful." Before Ray could object, Ben had kissed him, and they went on kissing for a long time.
the end