Title: Excellent Dancers
Fandom: due South
Pairing: Fraser/RayK
Length: 2500
Rating: PG-13
Content notes: consent issues
Author note: part of my Discord and Strife series, this is for theicescholar; fill for the Any Prompt square on my bingo card.
This is my 200th posted work, and completes a 180 challenge streak starting with challenge 87.

Summary: How many times did he dream about Stella, wake up reaching for her, only to remember she wasn't there? Too many to count, most every day since she left.
Never had a dream about Fraser before, though.



Ray's dancing with Stella in the Crystal Ballroom. She's wearing the red dress she wore on the boat and it's great, like always, but then Orsini cuts in out of nowhere, leaving Ray high and dry. He stands there like a lemon, staring at Orsini and Stella on the dance floor, and then there’s a tap on his shoulder. He turns around and it’s Fraser, wearing a tux and saying “May I have the pleasure of this dance, Ray?” And Ray doesn’t say hell no, or what are you, crazy?, he just goes with it. It feels good. Really good. Like it’s not the first time, like they already know how to do this. “We’re both excellent dancers,” Fraser says, and it’s true. Fraser’s a smooth mover, as good as Ray, almost. Then the ballroom disappears and they’re at Tony’s, Fraser in his tux eating pizza in his fingers, Dief growling under the table for his share –

Ray blinks at the alarm clock on his nightstand. 6 a.m.

How many times did he dream about Stella, wake up reaching for her, only to remember she wasn't there? Too many to count, most every day since she left.

Never had a dream about Fraser before, though. Weird or what?

His stomach rumbles, loud enough to wake the dead. Probably why he dreamed of Dief growling for pizza. No dinner last night. Too knotted up to eat, after the fight with Fraser. If you could call it a fight when Fraser never even raised his voice. Just sat there, saying nothing and holding onto his hat. Fighting about Stella, about Ray not being over Stella. Not moving on.

How’s a guy supposed to move on when his ex-wife’s sleeping with a crooked big shot he gets assigned to protect? Even if it was over now between Stella and Orsini, there’d be some other guy in the picture next thing you know. Woman like Stella, there’s always some guy. It could have been Ray. It should have been Ray.

“You know we were put on this planet to love one another,” he says out loud. It sounds phoney, like he’s trying to convince himself as well as her. Or like he misses the idea of them together, who he thought he was with her...

His stomach rumbles again. Get some breakfast, Kowalski.

There’s nothing in the refrigerator but some carrots Fraser left there, and a half empty jar of peanut butter. Ray's so hungry he doesn’t care. Food and coffee’s what he needs to be human again. If they’d had pizza last night instead of fighting, there’d at least be leftovers. Maybe. If the wolf hadn’t scarfed the lot. Pizza tonight though, and he’ll swing by the donut place in the mall on the way to work, pick up a box to share with Fraser like he planned and make it up to him about the fight. Fraser loves those chocolate donuts, and right now Ray can’t think of anything better than sweet dough and custard, maybe applesauce or fudge.

Mid-morning, Ray’s eaten half the donuts, which maybe wasn’t such a smart move. No sign of Fraser or the wolf. He pecks away at the paperwork for the Barnardine case, fending off Frannie’s questions about Fraser till he can't take any more. Maybe Fraser’s sick. Maybe he woke up still mad at Ray, though he didn’t seem that way last night. Ray’s stomach gets an unhappy feeling in it, like the donuts aren't sitting right.

He caves in and calls the Consulate.

Turnbull answers, wouldn’t you know, and it takes Ray, no kidding, nine attempts to get the guy to give him the dope on Fraser’s whereabouts. One of these days Ray is so going to punch Turnbull. How Turnbull hasn’t got himself punched already, Ray has no clue.

“Tell Fraser to call me, first chance he gets,” Ray says, for the third straight time. He hangs up. Thumps his head on the desk a couple times, trying to shake the crazy out of it.

Fucking Canadians.

What the hell does Thatcher think she’s doing with a guy like Fraser, brain the size of a planet, putting him on folding napkins and polishing the silver? Ray's deep into an excellent fantasy where he tells the Ice Queen exactly where she gets off, when the phone rings.

“Vecchio,” he snaps.

It’s Fraser. The unhappy-donuts feeling in Ray’s stomach goes away, just like that, and the warm feeling from last night comes back. Fraser sounds like he's got stomach trouble himself – no wonder, stuck at the Consulate when he could be chasing down bad guys with Ray. Doesn’t even jump at the offer of pizza right away. It’s like this is something he thinks he’s not allowed to have.

The hell with that. Sometimes you got to push a little, so that everyone gets what they want. So Ray pushes a little, and Fraser says yes, he and Dief’ll come to Ray’s place when he’s finished, and they can order in.

“OK, it’s a date.”

It's out of Ray’s mouth before he knows it’s happening. Not that Fraser’ll think he means it like that, obviously, but –

“Ha ha,” Ray says, not quite fast enough. “I mean, see you later.”

“See you later, Ray.”

Ray’s stomach feels weird again. Not the unhappy-donuts feeling, more like he swallowed a frog.

It’s not the guy thing, OK? Ray is totally cool with the guy thing. He’s done the guy thing before, though none of the guys were what you’d exactly call dates. One-night stands and hookups in bars, after he and Stella broke up. But this is different. Fraser’s his partner. His friend, now. And OK, it’s true Ray asked him the second time they met if Fraser found him attractive, but that was just nerves and Ray running his mouth because he was on a stakeout in a fucking tomb with a crazy old lady and a couple of dumbass bad guys he hadn’t bargained for, waiting to catch the man who’d ruined his life. So he spilled his secrets to Fraser, told him things he never told anyone. Being with Fraser shifted something in him that day, like he stopped seeing himself as that twelve-year-old loser. Fraser giving him back to himself, but better. That wasn’t about either of them wanting to get into the other one’s pants.

Oh yeah? So why’d he dream about dancing with Fraser? Everybody knows what that means.

Back off, Doctor Freud. Dream or no dream, pizza after work with the Mountie and the wolf is not a date.

Seems like the frog in Ray’s stomach didn’t get the memo on that, because it’s still there. So is the thought of Fraser, all through the rest of the day, in between Ray and the paperwork, the bullpen, Frannie bugging him (what’s he supposed to do, bang on the Consulate door and yell at the Ice Queen till she lets Fraser out?), Welsh telling Vinny Duco he’s going down for the Barnardine fraud. It’s even there through Huey and Dewey getting what’s coming to them with their circus bust, Dewey limping where the clown car ran over his foot, and Huey with his new suit covered in flan and whipped cream.

Ray tugs his hair and cricks his neck and kicks the desk, fiddles with his bracelet, chews on a toothpick, knocks the dregs of his coffee over a stack of forms, and finally, finally, it’s time to go home.

He has a beer and tries to unwind, but the frog’s still there. There’s nothing on TV. The place is a mess. He pushes a bunch of junk off the coffee-table to clear a space for the pizza boxes. Put away the groceries he stopped for on the way home – juice, eggs, milk, bread.

Hey Ray, the voice in his head jeers, you got someone staying for breakfast?

“Shut up,” he says out loud.

He calls the Consulate again. Gets Turnbull, again, because Ray’s luck is really in today. Like he’s stuck in a loop. This time it only takes five goes to get Turnbull to hang up and go look for Fraser. Ray is still going to punch him one of these days. Turnbull calls him back and takes another three goes to get to the point.

“I’m afraid Constable Fraser and Diefenbaker have left the building, Detective Vecchio. If I’d known you were going to call, naturally I would have – ”

“Sure,” Ray cuts in. “Thanks, Turnbull. 'Night.”

Mountie and wolf on the way: it’s pizza time! Ray makes the call – today’s a day for extra pineapple if ever there was one – and shadow-boxes his way over to the tank to tell Turtle they’ve got company. Turtle chomps a lettuce leaf, which is the closest he gets to showing excitement. Doesn’t matter. Ray’s got more than enough excitement over here, maybe a little too much. He shadow-boxes some more, cracks open another beer to cool himself down. Counts down the blocks to the Consulate in his head, calculating how long it’ll take Fraser to get here if he doesn’t get caught up in saving a blue-eyed child from a runaway horse.

Doorbell rings, right on time, and it’s Fraser and Dief. Fraser out of uniform. Jesus, he looks fine. If Fraser was a chick, Ray’d say something corny like hey, that blue shirt really brings out your eyes. The shirt looks soft, touchable. Fraser looks touchable. Faded jeans that fit close, like they were sprayed on. Ray gulps down a breath. Act normal, Kowalski. Find something to do with your hands that’s not grabbing a handful of off-duty Mountie.

“Good to see you, buddy. Want a beer?”

Way too hearty, and stupid: of course Fraser doesn’t want a beer. He’ll want milk. No, wait, tea. Ray knows he’s fussing, but he can’t help it. Pizza’ll be here soon. Make the Mountie his tea.

“What kind of tea d’you want? I got Red Rose or – uh, Red Rose,” Ray says, realizing too late that he can’t offer Fraser a choice.

“Red Rose is good, thank you kindly, Ray.”

Fraser tugs at his collar, which, if he was wearing the red jacket that would make sense, but the shirt’s not even all the way buttoned up. He catches himself mid-gesture and pats at his shirt like he’s brushing off lint or crumbs. Imaginary crumbs, obviously: even in Ray’s dream Fraser didn’t get crumbs or pizza sauce on his tux. Then he goes over to Turtle’s tank and starts making small talk about that being a fine piece of lettuce Turtle’s got there. Seems like Turtle still doesn’t have anything to say for himself, so Fraser comes back into the kitchen and fiddles with the teaspoons.

Looks like Ray’s not the only one feeling nervous this evening, which, he doesn’t know why that makes things feel better but it does.

“I’m sorry Diefenbaker and I were so late, Ray,” Fraser says. “There was a culinary emergency.”

Ray rolls his eyes. “Don’t tell me, Turnbull set fire to the kitchen.”

“No,” Fraser says. “Someone apparently bought up the entire stock of sprayable whipped cream in the Greater Chicago area.”

“Clowns!” Ray says, thinking of the circus bust. It’s all making sense now.

“Possibly,” Fraser says. “Be that as it may, Inspector Thatcher required large quantities of whipped cream for the reception this evening, and the Consulate kitchen proved sadly ill-equipped for the purpose. I did what I could by hand–”

It’s all in the wrist action, right? Ray smirks a little, but decides not to share the joke with the class.

“… but I had to send Turnbull out to buy an electric food-processor to finish the job, and – well, here I am.” Fraser rubs the back of his neck.

“Yeah, here you are,” Ray says with a grin, and hands him his tea.

Which is when the pizza arrives, right on cue, and they move to the couch. Fraser sits bolt upright like he’s in church or something. Ray sits close to him, feeling weirdly aware of his own skin and his breathing.

Pizza’s good, and what with that and the tea Fraser starts to relax. He teases Ray about the pineapple (“Uncanonical it may be, but it’s surprisingly effective, Ray”), and turns a blind eye to him sneaking pizza to Dief. (Ray eats the pineapple off Dief’s share. He’s all for kindness to animals, but there are limits.) Ray gets himself another beer. And this is great, this is greatness, he’s lolling on the couch now with Fraser, with some dumb cop show on the TV and the wolf for company. Ray slumps comfortably against Fraser and tells him about his day, and it’s easy and warm, it’s like yesterday’s fight with Fraser never happened. Ray is full of pizza and beer and happiness, just happiness, seems like the frog in his stomach finally went to sleep…

“Ray,” Fraser says. “Ray. Ray. Ray.”

Ray blinks. Must have fallen asleep. He’s snuggled right up to Fraser, head on his shoulder, hand tangled in Fraser’s shirt. It’s warm, and Fraser smells good, and he doesn’t want to move.

Fraser says something about how he should go and it’s getting late, and Ray just wants to snuggle closer, so he does. Fraser keeps on about going back to the Consulate, which, Ray does not want him to do that.

“Stay,” he says. “Want you to stay, Fraser.”

He hugs Fraser and plants a kiss right on his neck.

Fraser makes a noise that spikes Ray’s temperature from mmm warm Fraser soft good to hell yeah fuck me now. He wants to make Fraser make that noise again, louder. Get his hands on Fraser’s bare skin, get his mouth on him. Fraser starts to say something Mountie-ish and sensible, trying to talk himself and Ray out of this probably, and if they don’t do it now maybe they never will, which, Ray is not even going to think about that or how much he wants this or what it means or how he’s going to feel about any of it in the morning –

“Nuh-uh,” Ray says. “No talking.”

He pulls at Fraser’s clothes, gets his hands up under Fraser’s shirt – Jesus, that feels good, so good it makes both of them groan – and kisses Fraser right on the mouth. Fuck yeah. Fraser grabs him by the hair and kisses him back like he’s starving for it, dying for it, like he’s been dying for it since day one. They move together like they did in Ray’s dream, like this is a dance they already know.

Fraser’s not saying anything now but “Ray” and “yes” and “Ray” in between desperate kisses, and “oh God” when Ray squeezes him through his jeans and says “Bedroom”, this being the only word Ray can remember right now.

Ray may be down to his last few brain cells, but he is not about to fuck on the couch with the wolf watching.