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Let It Snow
for sam80853
'Ray, are you coming?' Stella, weirdly, looked concerned, so maybe she'd meant it earlier when she invited him for Christmas dinner. And what with snow in Toronto, it didn't look like Fraser was going to make it back from the frozen north today, whatever he'd said about getting an earlier flight. Still, even if it was a choice between dinner with Stella, Vecchio and assorted screaming Vecchio relatives (nieces, nephews and not to forget Ma and Tony) and a turkey sandwich at his desk, on the whole Ray thought he'd take the desk.
'Nah, think I'll stay here for a while.' He waved his hand at the desk, indicating paperwork. So what if it could all wait till after the holidays? A guy needed an excuse sometimes.
Stella shrugged. 'Have it your way, Ray.'
Vecchio, hovering in the doorway with Stella's coat, waved as he handed her out, and if he looked to be gloating a little that he was the one going home with Stella and about to sit down to one of Ma Vecchio's turkeys, well, could Ray really blame the guy? Vecchio had a home, not just a messy apartment, and he had Stella, and a huge noisy family that Ray missed pretending to be part of, not that he'd admit it out loud. And Ray? Ray had a job, a phone call from his parents and a Mountie stuck at some conference in an ice cave in Toronto. At least Fraser had sounded apologetic when he left, and promised to look for an earlier flight home, but really, it didn't say much for a guy's life when he was dependent on the RCMP's scheduling for company at Christmas.
Ray sighed. He'd known plenty of guys like that when he'd been married. even invited them home for dinner himself sometimes. He'd just never expected to turn into one.
He picked up his sandwich, trying not to compare it to the real thing Stella would be eating by now. Well, at least he wouldn't starve.
***
He'd never been in the station before when it was this quiet. Even in the middle of the night shift - hell, especially in the middle of the night shift - you could expect puking drunks, crying women and someone, if not a bunch of someones, shouting about how they'd been wrongly accused and Welsh - or Huey, or Dewey, or whatever sad fucker's luck was out far enough to get them a shouter - was gonna go down.
Tonight, though, there was just the jingle of the desk sergeant's keys as she handed over to the graveyard shift, and outside the whistle of the icy wind.
The wind was getting up, come to think of it, and-- was that snow? Ray pushed the blinds open a crack, shivering as a finger of cold air slid inside his collar. Yup, snow, and plenty of it. Well, if it was snowing this hard, he could kiss any hope of seeing Fraser goodbye. And there was another thing, the accident of phrasing reminded him - what sort of loser spent years of his life pining after his stunningly uninterested partner? Ray guessed it was progress of a sort that he'd let Stella go, but Fraser was another level of impossible altogether. Like, halfway up the Canadian Rockies on a ledge with a yeti impossible, or maybe it was more of a crevasse, and the more he struggled, the farther he fell.
He shook his head. Time to get going, if he didn't want to be snowed in till morning.
The door snicked open.
Despite the hour, despite the cold, despite the long day and Frannie's festive punch, Ray was on his feet before his brain had time to catch up. Had to be something big to need a detective at this time of night, or they'd just have let the unis handle it--
'Fraser?' For a moment, Ray thought he must be hallucinating. God knew it was cold enough. 'What are you--? I mean, I thought you were in Toronto.'
Fraser was pink-cheeked, snow-dusted and utterly beautiful.
'I decided to come back early after all,' he said, as if it was that easy at midnight in a December snowstorm.
'But what about--' Ray waved helplessly at the snow, the distance, everything. 'Isn't the airport closed?'
Ray could swear Fraser was blushing.
'It is, yes. I... Well, I made the acquaintance of some young journalists who offered me a ride to Windsor in their helicopter, and then one of them was kind enough to lend me his motorcycle.'
Ray just gaped, though he wasn't sure which was weirder, that Fraser had done all this or the image of Fraser in full dress serge on a motorbike. On a motorbike in the snow.
That cleared his head remarkably. 'Fraser, have you gone completely round the bend You could have been killed! Do you even know how to ride a motorbike?'
Fraser tugged at his collar and looked away, brushing an invisible snowflake off his collar. 'I had a half-share in one at Depot--' and if that wasn't an image to knock you flat, twenty-year-old Fraser in leathers, straddling a Harley, Ray didn't know what was -- 'and in any case, there was a lull in the weather or I would have attempted to find a car.'
'Yeah, okay, but why?'
Fraser closed his eyes a moment, cleared his throat, then faced Ray square on. 'You see, it occurred to me that... Well, Christmas is a time best spent with those you...' He was blushing furiously now, but took a step toward Ray. 'Not to put too fine a point on it, those you love.' And with that, he reached out and took Ray's hand.
With difficulty, Ray tore his eyes from the square fingers wrapped around his to look into Fraser's face, which wore an odd mixture of resolve and resignation. Ray didn't know what his own face looked like - probably something like a guy who'd just been knocked on the head - but whatever it was, Fraser was mumbling something and trying to pull his hand away.
'Hey. Hey,' Ray said, grabbing it tighter. 'Me too.'
At that, Fraser smiled like the sun, the moon, the Northern Lights all rolled into one, sparking and reflecting in a blinding flash through the snow-covered streets.
'Really?'
Ray said nothing, but Fraser's mouth was warm and sweet and opened easily under his, like clouds tumbling aside after a storm, so he figured, as they stumbled toward the door, that Fraser had his answer.
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