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It took Ray nearly six months to work out what Vecchio’s real problem with him was. At first he thought it was just the obvious: he was Stella’s husband – ex-husband, he had to keep repeating that to himself, ex-husband – and Anna’s dad, and if Vecchio stuck around for the long haul, which it seemed like he might be setting up to do…he was stuck with Ray as well.
He couldn’t really begrudge the guy that one. If he’d met a woman like Stella – impossible, of course, there was only one Stella in the world – and she came with an ex and a kid with that ex, well…that was a lot. He wasn’t going to say it out loud or anything, but he kinda had to respect Vecchio for taking that in his stride. And for being, when he wasn’t complaining or talking himself up or getting into dumb arguments with mob guys (Ray got into his share of dumb arguments, but he had some sense), genuinely good at his job. Ray had been out of the game for five, count ‘em, five whole years; he knew there was stuff he’d forgotten, instincts that weren’t working right; Vecchio was helping him find his way back.
So it could have been that too, Vecchio being pissed to be carrying around a former househusband – Ray still cringed at that word – but he didn’t think it was. Vecchio trusted him, wasn’t looking over his shoulder, went left when Ray went right because he knew Ray had his side of things covered.
No, what it was – and Ray begrudged him this, Ray begrudged him this so much – was that Vecchio was crazy jealous of him and Ben. Not jealous like a straight guy might be of his buddy’s time being taken up by a new squeeze. Jealous in the most direct sense of the word: he wanted Ben’s (extremely fine) ass, and he couldn’t stand that Ray was tapping that instead.
Which pissed Ray off, because Vecchio had Stella. Ray had tried literally everything he possibly could to keep Stella, Ray had given up his job for Stella, and it still hadn’t been enough. Some days he still missed her, because she was there but she wasn’t. It had been five years now since they’d really been anything outside of being Anna’s parents, and he wanted the Stella from Before back so bad. Still. But that couldn’t happen, and if that had happened there would be no Anna, and Anna was, Ray was convinced, the smartest, funniest, most interesting child in the entire city; how could he not want to be Anna’s dad?
So anyway, he’d got what he wanted and lost what he wanted, and that was how it was, but now Vecchio and Stella were a thing, and Ray and Ben were a thing, and Ray also couldn’t believe exactly how goddamn lucky he had gotten there. He’d heard some stories about the Mountie at the 27th precinct before he’d been assigned there, and he didn’t think half of them could be true; that had been correct, in that the other half were much crazier than even rumour had it. He had not expected to walk out of Welsh’s office, after failing to convince him that partnering him with the guy sleeping with his wife was not a winning strategy (he didn’t think Welsh had believed him about that part), and see the hottest man, even in that dumb red tunic (itchy, fiddly, hot) that Ray had ever seen in his entire life. That had kind of been it.
Sure, there’d been some getting-to-know-you stuff, and the weeks of discovering that Benton Fraser’s pretty face just distracted you from the guy’s all-encompassing freakery, but it was way too late. Ray was in the freak zone now. He was down for all of it. The surprise had been that Fraser was equally down for him. Not until the divorce actually went through, which had been the longest eight weeks of Ray’s life, even longer than the first eight weeks of Anna’s life. Fraser had simply said – murmured, in Ray’s ear – “It’ll be worth waiting for”, and oh fuck yes it had been, which had made Ray even more confused when he’d eventually worked out that Fraser had never even slept with a guy before.
“But – what about – all the it’ll be worth the wait stuff,” he’d said.
“Anticipation improves almost everything, in my experience,” Ben said – by then he was Ben – frowning at him. “Don’t you agree?”
“For anticipation to happen first you have to have impulse control,” said Ray, which was what had led to the first time Ben had handcuffed him to the headboard, which had been good and confusing in that of course it made Ray remember all the other times he’d had those cuffs on and it had been Stella there, but somehow having Ben made those nostalgic memories and not bad ones, so instead it was just kind of extra hot.
So: good, confusing, scary (mostly when Fraser threw himself out there on trust, or wanted Ray and Vecchio to jump off things they really shouldn’t be jumping off), his, his new start, his second chance. Ben was really good with Anna, too, the times they’d met. They’d been super careful because Ray could just imagine how it would go if she went to school and started talking about her dad’s boyfriend. But he’d already heard her saying on the phone to her grandmother (his mom, thank god, the safe one) that her mom had a new friend called Ray, and her dad had a new friend called Ben, though mostly she’d wanted to talk about Dief, she adored Dief. He’d burn that bridge when he came to it, or however it was the saying went. In the meantime, he was already able to see a future here: a future where they bit the bullet and sold the house and got their own places, close enough that it was easy for Anna to move around, and she had two families who loved her. That seemed okay. That seemed possible.
But then there was the way Vecchio looked at Fraser. Not all the time. Just sometimes. Like Fraser was the most important thing in the entire world, in his entire world. And that could have been a friends thing – Ray knew how partners could get about each other, police-type partners, well, he’d never had a partner like that, Stella had always been first for him, but some guys did – except for the stakeout.
The stakeout where one of their guys left the building, and Ray followed him on foot, very cautiously, except then it turned out he was just going for a smoke, so that was a waste of time. What was the world coming to, that assholes doing criminal conspiracy made someone leave the building to smoke? It made Ray’s mouth itch even though he’d given up fifteen years ago.
So he headed back to the car, except he was just turning the corner when he saw a bunch of the others coming out of the building, and Vecchio and Fraser were just sitting there, and someone was pointing, and someone was walking over to the car, shit shit shit, and Ray ducked back behind the corner and fumbled out his glasses and took a deep breath, hand going to his holster, and peeked around very slowly, except then he heard some jeers and disgusted noises, along with a couple of the words he had told Vecchio he better never hear him using, and then they all kept going. Ray holstered his gun and put his head down and walked quickly, just a guy with places to be, not looking to start anything, thank God he didn’t do like Vecchio and wear fucking Armani on stakeouts. Or any time, but especially on stakeouts.
He didn’t stop at the car, just kept going, and met the others two blocks over, where they’d agreed to meet if something went wrong. When he got back in – the back seat, because he’d lost rock-paper-scissors with Vecchio to drive and it was slightly less cramped if he sat behind Vecchio instead of Fraser behind him or the other way around – everything seemed normal enough. Except that Fraser was a little pink, and when he saw Ray he licked his lip, and Vecchio, Jesus, Vecchio looked like he needed to get a room just for himself. Ray knew what that felt like, the first time you found out that Ben kissed just as thoroughly and expertly and wholeheartedly as he did everything.
“Well that’s a waste of an evening,” he said, as Vecchio drove away. “You two have fun there? That the first time you’ve pulled that one, Vecchio?”
He didn’t bother to make it nice.
“I believe we successfully defused their suspicions,” said Fraser, and it was hard to tell in the yellow-orange light of streetlights flickering in and out, but he maybe looked embarrassed.
“Cool it, Kowalski, it doesn’t mean anything,” said Vecchio, and Ray might, might have bought that if Fraser hadn’t winced just the tiniest bit.
“Let’s just fucking call it in,” Ray said, so they did, and took the pool car back to the precinct, and Ray didn’t even have time to offer to drop Fraser off because it was his week with Anna and Stella had agreed to stay with her, so with an early shift finish he really needed to get back as soon as he could, in case Stella was still up and wanted to go back to the apartment. But by the time he got there Stella had given up and gone to bed, and he was so tired and angry and he-didn’t-know-what that he was working on autopilot and almost got into bed with her. He was just backing out when she mumbled “Ray?”, and she didn’t sound upset or confused, so probably she meant Vecchio, and he couldn’t stand that right now, he really couldn’t.
“Just grabbing a pillow,” he whispered, and went and slept on the fold-out couch. Anna was thrilled when she got up the next morning, like she always was at any chance to have her mom and dad at the same place and time, and Ray and Stella looked helplessly at each other because – but they both knew why it hadn’t been working. Anna was a much happier kid now than she’d been a year ago, too.
“How did it go?” she asked him over breakfast. They never talked directly about work stuff around Anna, but they’d got real good at talking around it.
“A wash,” he said. “But it was a one-off thing, I don’t have to be back there tonight.”
“Great.” She looked a little too pleased; of course, if he was off the hook, so was Vecchio, and it was her week off. Then he remembered exactly what had happened last night, and – he turned to Anna.
“Hey, kiddo, I didn’t get to see you yesterday. What happened at school?”
As always she took a little prompting, and then she broke off in the middle of talking about frogs (she was very into frogs right now) to say “Are you and mom both going to stay tonight, too?”
“No, Anna,” Stella said before he could. “I was just doing your dad a favour, because he had to work late. I’ll be here on Saturday morning like usual.”
“Because you’re still friends,” said Anna, who repeated this like a mantra at every opportunity.
“Because we’re still friends,” said Ray, except he thought: if they were real friends, he’d tell her what happened last night.
But he didn’t.
*
Fraser was doing consulate stuff in the morning, but he came to the 2-7 in the afternoon, and when Vecchio got into an argument with Frannie about something-or-other – it really stressed the guy out working with his sister – Ray pulled him aside and said “Are you going to explain what –”
Fraser looked at him with something like despair. “I was hoping not to. That is – I didn’t – it wasn’t my intention to –”
“If you’re going to make out with people as a distraction on stakeouts, it should be me,” Ray said, which wasn’t what he’d meant to say, but it was what he was thinking. Zero brain-mouth filter guy, that was him.
“Well, you weren’t in the car, Ray,” Fraser said so reasonably that Ray kinda wanted to punch him. He wouldn’t. But he kinda thought about it.
“Okay, do not – do not try and – you can’t pull the dumb Mountie thing about this! I know people have relationships in Canada! You can’t go around kissing other people, Ben!”
By this point they had retreated into the storage closet, but Ray still said the last part very quietly.
“I’m sure other people do have relationships, in Canada. But I – I didn’t.”
Ray scrunched up his face, because this was – people tripped over themselves for Ben, it wasn’t for lack of opportunity, surely.
“I’m told I’m – difficult,” Fraser added, and then, inexplicably and much more grumpily, “No, I don’t want to break up!”
“I didn’t say that, Jesus!” Ray said hastily. “I just – okay. Look. Be straight with me. Uh, well, don’t – tell me the truth. Did you and Vecchio ever…before I…”
Fraser shook his head, and said simply “No. Never.”
“Well. Okay.” Ray took a breath. He could do this. He’d got through a whole divorce. He was a co-parent. He was so good at this. “Just, uh, you can’t go around kissing other people. And, uh, me either, of course –”
“I can’t kiss you either?”
“Jesus Christ,” Ray said, and gave up and kissed a Mountie in the storage closet of the 27th precinct of the Chicago Police Department, which he had avoided doing up until this point. Fraser kissed him back very gently, which was how Ray knew Fraser knew he’d fucked up.
And when he thought a bit more about what he knew about the guy – his shitty apartment – being kinda in exile – the bullet wound on his back he didn’t want to talk about even though it must have nearly killed him – Ben Fraser’s real secret, Ray was starting to realise, was that his face and his uniform and his perfectionism covered up the fact that his life was one big mess. Ray’s life was one big mess too but somehow it was a manageable mess, it was an explainable mess. Ray did not like feeling like the adult in the room. He had too much of that with being a dad.
*
So the kissing thing, he could just about write off – he poked Vecchio very hard in the chest and opened his mouth and Vecchio said “Yeah, yeah, hands off your boyfriend, I get it,” and then a bit of fear came into his eyes and he opened his mouth again and Ray said “I didn’t tell her, that’s your problem, but she does not need you fucking this up,” and Vecchio nodded very vigorously, and that was that, for the moment.
Except then a month later, Saturday night, it was Ray’s week with Anna but she was at a birthday party sleepover, so he swung by Fraser’s godawful apartment with no locks (well, he did have a half-wolf) and walked right in. Fraser said “Ray!”, and the way he lit up when he saw Ray was the only ego boost Ray was ever going to need for the next five to ten years (okay, fine, apart from his kid thinking he was cool, and there was a definite expiry date on that one). Ray kissed him hello.
“It’s very nice to see you –” Fraser started to say, so Ray kissed him again.
Approximately ten minutes later he was on his knees on Ben’s janky but, to be fair, extremely well-swept kitchen floor with Ben’s dick in his mouth, and there was nowhere else he would rather be. Ben was breathing very heavily and had a hand in Ray’s hair, pulling just right. He was quiet in bed except right before he came, but Ray was working on that.
Ray dropped his left hand to Ben’s thigh and his right hand scrabbled at his belt, because yes yes yes, Ben had his other hand on Ray’s chin now, just powering in and out, precise and inexorable, and Ray couldn’t wait. He got his own dick in his hand just in time to hear the door open. Ben froze all the way down Ray’s throat and Ray had to back off in a hurry.
Fucking neighbours, why couldn’t they fucking knock, except Fraser wasn’t saying anything, and his hand was still in Ray’s hair, so Ray couldn’t turn around, at least not without it hurting a lot. He tapped Fraser on the thigh with his free hand, hard, twice, and at the same time he heard Ray Vecchio say “I…thought we were gonna watch the game?”
Fraser’s hand loosened in his hair, so Ray took his mouth all the way off Fraser’s dick – which did not appear to have any problems with Vecchio walking in on them, cool, fine – and twisted around and saw Vecchio standing in the doorway with a six-pack of beer, wearing slacks and a turtleneck under his coat, the closest he got to casual.
“Ray, ah. Surprised me?” Fraser said, and then “You’re…early.”
“Well, I didn’t…” Vecchio didn’t even pretend to not be staring.
Ray could almost deal with that but he could not deal with him standing in the fucking doorway like that, there were kids in this building. He said “In or out, Vecchio, pick one,” and Vecchio took a step into the apartment and shut the door behind him, and Ben took this sudden little breath in, and for some reason that was what Ray really couldn’t deal with. He turned his head back around and went down all the way, and Ben’s hand clenched in his hair again and he actually moaned, and then they were right back at it, Ben fucking Ray’s mouth and breathing like he was running a race, and Ray jerking himself almost savagely. Fucking watch this, Vecchio, he thought. He could hear the hoarse breathy noises of Vecchio – he wasn’t thinking about that, he wasn’t. He came in his own hand, all over Ben’s beautifully swept floor, and Ben said “Ray, Ray,” almost pleading, and then Ray was swallowing him down, taking it, taking ownership.
He leaned his head on Ben’s thigh, not ready yet to look around and see what he knew he was gonna see, even though Vecchio probably looked so stupid standing there with his dick out, red-faced, his own come on his hand. Things he did not want to do: look at Stella with the knowledge he’d seen her boyfriend’s dick. That he’d seen her boyfriend’s dick after he’d – like that.
So yeah. He knew what Vecchio’s real problem with him was. But he had no idea what he was going to do about it. If there was anything he could do at all.