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"Fraser."
Ray kept his head down even after it was clear that Fraser had finally shut up and was waiting for him to say something else. If he could see Fraser, he could hit Fraser, and that road didn't lead anywhere Ray wanted to make a return visit. "Okay, look, I never thought I would say this, so you gotta listen to me and you gotta understand that I am serious."
Ray dared to peek up at Fraser, and Fraser nodded. Ray took a breath and let it out slowly, and said what he had to say. "Fraser, I want a divorce."
Fraser frowned, and Ray shut his eyes the instant before he started talking. "Ray, what I'm proposing would not actually constitute a marriage--although there would be some obvious similarities--and in any case we haven't yet--"
Ray's fists were clenched so hard they hurt, his nails digging into his palms. "Fraser! What part of I want a divorce do you not understand?"
He opened his eyes to see Fraser blinking at him. "Well, Ray, all of it. That's why I--"
Ray shut his eyes again, and didn't open them until he was out the door and halfway down the block, with the sound of his own running feet drowning out Fraser's voice.
Ray was a cop. He knew that when you left somebody who really didn't want you to leave--especially when that somebody was more than a little unhinged--you had to have somewhere to go. He'd never needed a Mountie to tell him that knowing what you're doing is how you stay alive.
It was three months later--which was about two and a half months later than Ray expected--that Fraser caught up with him in Mexico. Ray was working near the border with a cooperative policing pilot program, under his own name, and making no real effort to hide, except for swearing Welsh and his parents to secrecy and cutting off all contact with everyone he couldn't trust not to tell Fraser where he was. So he hadn't been sure in all that time, whether he'd been wrong and Fraser wasn't looking for him, or whether the Mountie was slipping. It hadn't taken him this long to find the killers of his father, that was for sure. He'd read that file about a hundred times.
The first thing Ray did, when he saw Fraser standing there in the street watching him, was toss his cigarette down to the dust and crush it out with his foot, grinding it down with the sole of the sandals he wore all the time off duty. Then he walked over to Fraser, grinning the stupid grin that wouldn't stay off his face so there was no use fighting it, and hugged him.
Twenty minutes later, Ray had Fraser handcuffed to his bed, hands apart, cuffs placed so that he couldn't fiddle with them. Fraser didn't say anything--shocked speechless, not surprising--while Ray rummaged in the drawer for a couple of bandanas to make a gag. When he turned around with them in his hands, Ray cleared his throat and said, "Okay, you got ten seconds to say, 'Ray, my friend, I object to being tied up and gagged and I'm pretty sure you're committing a felony even in Mexico by doing this against my will.'"
Ray waited expectantly, turning his eyes down to watch his fingers rolling one bandana into a little ball, but Fraser didn't say a word. Ray shrugged and leaned over him, pulling Fraser's jaw down with two fingers in his mouth, and stuffed the gag in with his other hand. He tied the second cloth in place, just so. He'd had three months to practice that, so he knew Fraser wouldn't be able to get it off.
"Okay," Ray said, while Fraser stared up at him, grimy from traveling, wearing sweaty dusty civilian clothes, his hair messed up by the brief struggle. "Okay. I--kind of thought you'd get here sooner." Ray turned away, started straightening stuff up. His apartment was just the one room. Kind of dingy. He'd figured he'd be moving out, one way or another, pretty soon.
He came to a halt at the foot of the bed, and ran his hands through his hair. "All of Canada belongs to you, Fraser, you know that? The whole fucking country is yours. You're a Mountie, you could go anywhere. But you stayed in Chicago when we got back from up north and--fine, you know, you can have Chicago, too. It's your city now. I know you don't want it, but you made a bigger fucking mark there than I ever did, so--it's all yours, okay? I left. But I like Mexico, and I'm not going to let you have Mexico, you understand me? Mexico is my place."
Fraser's jaw worked under the gag, like he maybe wanted to remind Ray of the hundred million other people Mexico belonged to. Ray rolled his eyes. "But I know you, Fraser. If you wanted Canada, you'd've gone back there. If you wanted Chicago, you'd've stayed there. You don't want a place. You want me. You followed me to this godforsaken country that's not even safe enough to bring your wolf to and you want me so bad you'll just sit there, bound and fucking gagged, because you figure that's the deal, isn't it? You--" Ray took a breath, but it was perfectly true and he'd always known it. "You love me that much."
Fraser blinked once, slowly, and then nodded.
Ray nodded back, and then turned away, and sat down on the very end of the bed, just out of range of Fraser's booted feet. "Well, I got news for you. I love you that much, too. I love you so--so fucking much, Fraser, only I'm not crazy. If you'd showed up in the first two weeks I was here, while I was sick as a dog from the water and sunburned to hell and not remembering a damn word of the Spanish I used to know--you could have just scooped me up, stuck me on a plane, and dragged me all the way to Tuktoyaktuk, and I never would have argued. And even after the sunburn died down and the stomach virus passed off, I would've been happy there. Even with no fucking sunshine or cable TV, even under six feet of snow--even if you'd been posted to the Fortress of Solitude and dragged me along--I'd've been happy every time you talked to me, or gave me that look, or--or kissed me."
Ray had had three months to remember the handful of kisses Fraser had stolen from him. It was long enough to convince him that, while it'd seemed like petty theft at the time, in retrospect, Fraser had gotten away with grand larceny. And he'd called himself a detective.
He turned around again to look at Fraser, sitting on the bed, hands spread out to the sides by the cuffs, his legs drawn up. His boots had shed dust all over the soft striped blanket that covered Ray's bed. He was watching Ray intently, not like he was planning his escape, not like he was scared, just like--Ray was the only thing in the room he wanted to look at. Ray swallowed hard. "Do you get what I'm saying here, Fraser? There are people," he waved one hand wide, out to the city beyond his little place. "There are people who just do heroin on the weekends, you know that? The trick is you never let it under your skin, but--I've had the shakes for you since I got here. I started smoking again just to make it go away, but now here you are and--I may be a junkie, but even junkies have their moments of clarity and I knew, back in Chicago, I just fucking knew I couldn't do it your way, not and still be me at the end of it. And I didn't have a way there that wasn't yours, I didn't have anything there that wasn't you. I had to come down here and find my own ground."
Fraser's nostrils flared as he breathed in, and Ray wondered if Fraser could smell him. He remembered Fraser doing that from across the room during their adventure, whenever there had been a room to be across, and suddenly he wanted to be up there again, with the snow and the sky and the dogs, almost as much as he wanted to kiss Fraser. Almost as much as he wanted another cigarette. "Fuck," Ray muttered, and kicked off his sandals. He crawled onto the bed and started unlacing Fraser's boots, pulled them off, and then his socks, and tossed everything on the floor.
"Fuck," Ray repeated, to Fraser's wriggling toes. "It doesn't matter, does it? I could run from here to Tierra del Fuego and you'd follow me and find me and nothing would ever be the same. Mounties always get their man."
Fraser's foot touched his knee, gently, and Ray raised his eyes to Fraser's face. Suddenly the gag wasn't a desperate necessity, just a shitty way to welcome his partner to Mexico. "Fuck," Ray said again, and knelt up between Fraser's legs to untie it, yanking the spit-wet cloth out of his mouth and chucking it after his socks. The corners of Fraser's mouth were red, and Ray couldn't help ducking his head to lick the spot as gently as he could. Fraser breathed out in a long sigh against his mouth.
They kissed for a long time, and Ray remembered for the first time in three months that you couldn't steal anything that was freely given. He pulled his lips away from Fraser's, and reached for the keys on the night stand, but Fraser's mouth found his ear and whispered, "Leave them."
Ray froze. Fraser kissed him, just under his jaw, where his pulse had to be beating so hard the Mountie could see it, and then leaned back against the headboard. Ray braced a hand against the wall and leaned over him, and Fraser looked up at him with a hint of a smile in his eyes. "I will happily concede Mexico, Ray, and perhaps we could reach some sort of negotiated peace regarding Chicago."
"Fuck," Ray whispered again, because his brain had sort of seized up on that point, and lowered his mouth for another kiss.
Fraser made a sound against his lips that sounded like "Please," and Ray figured it wouldn't be a bad way to open negotiations.