Work Text:
Ray gets back to Chicago in August. It's hot and humid, sweat sticking on him like loose snow, and it's not as weird as Ray thought it'd be. Sure, he'd spent months freezing his dick off in a tent in the middle of nowhere, but he spent a lot longer here. It smells the same. It feels the same: familiar and loud with people bumping into him and without saying 'oh, pardon me' like he's the fucking President or Queen or something. The city buzzes around him, and he can feel it even in the airport terminal, familiar in that kinda I-knew-you-when way.
His dad's waiting for him at the gate and reaches out to hug him as soon as Ray walks up, so Ray hugs back and breathes in the air and the scent of his dad's Old Spice aftershave.
“It's good to have you home,” his dad says gruffly, his skin tanned against Ray's pale white arms.
* * *
He gets a new desk, two up from the one he had before, and now it says “Detective Kowalski” all shiny and new and official looking. This is him. This is his life. This is his shitty little desk already overflowing with paperwork that he's never going to catch up on without Fraser around to nag him and look disappointed and finally type it for him.
“You waiting for an engraved invitation, Kowalski? Get to work,” Welsh says.
So Ray does.
* * *
He avoids going past the consulate. Not because he can't take it -- it's just a place, and sure, there are memories, but Ray can't walk around a corner of Chicago without thinking of some guy him and Fraser busted there or how he once took Stella to a place down the block; and if he can be in Chicago at all, he can go by a building.
It's not that Ray misses Fraser and Dief. It's that the place isn't right without Fraser there, couldn't be without Fraser being all Canadian and Fraser-like. Ray's instincts tell him that the place has to be wrong, so he avoids it.
Besides, it's not like there's anything there Ray wants when it doesn't have Fraser.
* * *
1. Sleeping under a big umbrella in the middle of It's not an umbrella, Ray. This is not a tent, Fraser. I have been in a tent, and this is not it. no-fucking-where.
It was cold, but not as cold as Ray thought it'd be with Fraser wrapping them in so many layers they looked like fat mummies. And Fraser would talk, would tell Ray stories about being a rookie Mountie until Ray was warm enough to fall asleep, usually nodding off while Frase was still in the middle of a story about seals or how Fraser found tracked a vandal through two towns by licking snow.
2. Breakfast.
Fraser would make them food and talk about balanced diets and how candy wasn't a food group and neither was coffee and how they needed energy until Ray reminded him that it'd worked for him for years, thank you very much, Fraser. But Fraser did make good breakfasts. Ray gained six pounds while he was in Canada, and he didn't feel as jittery without all the sugar and caffeine, even if he wasn't about to tell Fraser that.
And Ray tries to make breakfasts like Fraser for weeks before he decides that it's useless and goes back to a breakfast of Skittles, coffee, and beef jerky.
3. Setting up camp.
Ray took a while to get used to other things, but he was good at starting fires, and after the first few days, he could find the best place to camp without Fraser's help. 'Cause Ray might not know how to fish with a leaf and a shoelace, but he wasn't useless, and he liked the look on Fraser's face when he realized that Ray listened to him.
Of course the problem with having a list that Ray can think about is that it leads Ray to the Other Things. Other things like:
1. Fraser's hands.
During the colder weeks, Fraser's skin would dry out like everyone else's, and Ray couldn't get enough of teasing Fraser when he saw Fraser breaking out his horrible smelling lotion that was made out of something like bat spit and toe lint. He loved watching how flustered Fraser'd get when he tried to explain that it wasn't vanity.
And Ray loved the way Fraser touched him with those hands, slick and rough underneath, driving Ray so crazy that he wanted to beg and promise Fraser anything and everything for more. Ray would get hard just from the smell of it. From the thought of it.
2. Fraser's mouth.
Ray can't point to the exact minute he became fixated on Fraser's mouth. It was before Canada but after Ray almost drowned. It was quick, quiet. One day Fraser was talking and Ray was looking at his mouth, watching how Fraser's lips thinned and how he *licked* them all the time, and Ray remembered what they felt like and then it was all obsession from there. He couldn't stop himself from staring. He wanted to feel them when he wasn't freezing and running out of oxygen.
Ray got a lot of Fraser's mouth in Canada. He got Fraser's lips pressed against his, Fraser's teeth against his jaw, and Fraser's tongue on his cock. Canada fed his obsession, and now that Ray's in Chicago, he's in withdrawl.
Which leads him to the third thing he hates to admit to.
3. Fraser.
Ray doesn't just miss one thing or one set of things about Fraser. He misses arguing and laughing and solving cases with Fraser next to him all calm and polite and annoying. He misses everything.
* * *
Ray's been in Chicago two months when he tells Fraser that Sandberg isn't deaf but might as well be for all he listens. Fraser laughs, and Ray smiles, and then Ray's getting off the phone with Fraser. They've done the basics: Dief's fine, Frannie's fine, Fraser's fine, Ray's fine, everything's just fucking great.
“Why didn't you just stay?” Frannie asks after Ray hangs up.
Frannie watches him a lot now, and Ray's figured from what she says and doesn't say that she knows. He thinks most of them probably do, but he hasn't been asked until now. He's been waiting it, waiting for Frannie especially, 'cause that's just what she does, so he isn't surprised that she's one.
He is surprised when he answers with the truth. “Fraser never asked.”
end.