Title: Loaner
Fandoms: due South
Characters: Ray Kowalski, Benton Fraser, Diefenbaker
Rating: Teen (some language, canon-level violence)
Length: ~1750 words
Angst-to-hope ratio: Low?  I think?
Disclaimer: I didn't create these characters, I don't own them, I derive no profit from their use.
Author Note: The below summary is totally useless, because I realized that I wrote this assuming the reader would find out the premise as they went along and I feel like stating it up front would be kind of a spoiler.  That said, there's no Big Secret here or anything; I just feel like the story's more fun without too much up-front description.  We'll see how I feel when it comes time to use AO3 tags. :)  Anyway, I don't think there's anything particularly special or triggery to worry about here.  ETA: Warning for extremely open ending.
Author Note #2: ETA: I'm issuing an open invitation to anyone who feels like writing their take on what happens next (or before, or simultaneously).  I don't currently have a plan to do it myself, so you won't be treading on my authorial head-canon. :)  I'd love for you to come play with me.
Summary: Ray on the road, on a mission.


97. . .98. . .99. . .100.

Ray finished his sit-ups and rolled to his feet, only slightly winded.  That was it for the evening exercize routine.  He’d run four miles earlier, up and down the highway shoulder in the dark, with Dief at his heels.  Which was a great way to get run over, but he was crashing at a fleabag motel in the middle of nowhere and it’s not like there was a sidewalk anywhere for miles around.  Then he’d done a round of chin-ups on the closet door, and lifted the hand weights he’d packed in the GTO’s trunk alongside his spare guns and ammo, a duffel of clothes he’d picked up at Salvation Army plus his own socks and underwear, and a couple of Fraser’s uniforms in case he needed to get all Canadian-official for some reason.

If he’d been at home, he’d have gone to the firing range for some target practice; maybe the boxing gym, too.  He’d never seen Fraser practice either shooting or fighting, but he’d seen Fraser in action—rarely, but enough to know Fraser had to be keeping his skills sharp somehow.  Ray didn’t know the Secret Mountie Training Regimen, so he was doing his best to keep in shape the old-fashioned, normal-guy way.  On the road, though, there weren’t so many opportunities for fighting practice.  Not until he caught up with whoever had snatched Fraser.  Then there would be plenty of opportunity to use his fists and his guns for real.

He stripped down for a quick shower, wondering if there was any dinner to be found within twenty miles of this place and whether it’d be something Dief could make a meal out of, or whether he should turn the furball loose to hunt some mice or something.  It made him antsy to let Dief wander off on his own for too long.  Not that he didn’t think the wolf could take care of himself, but Fraser could take care of himself too, except when he couldn’t.  Ray scrubbed hard at his arms and legs under the barely-running water, until he realized that he was trying to wash the dark hair off his skin.  He swore and jerked the shower handle so hard it came off in his hand.  At least the water did actually shut off.

The mirror was tiny but the bathroom was tinier, relatively speaking, so he couldn’t avoid catching a glimpse of his reflection.  Jesus. Even after going on three weeks of this, it still gave him the willies to see Fraser’s face looking out of the mirror at him.  Fraser’s face, but not quite.  It was backwards, for one thing.  Ray would have thought Fraser’s face was pretty symmetrical, but apparently not entirely, because the mirror-reversed version looked just a little off from what he was used to seeing when he looked at Fraser in real life.  And then, his expression was somehow not-Fraser, though with Fraser’s round cheeks and square jaw, it didn’t look like anything Ray was used to seeing on his own face, either.

The five o’clock shadow lining the jaw was wrong, too, but that, at least, Ray could do something about.  He ran his electric razor over his face, concentrating on the feel of the skin under his fingers, avoiding meeting his own eyes in the mirror.  He was shaving twice a day now, religiously.  Even that didn’t keep him quite as clean-shaven as Fraser normally looked, which proved that the electric razor just didn’t give as close a shave as a straight razor, but Ray figured a little stubble was less bad than slicing Fraser’s face up.  Fraser could fix it up quickly enough when he was back in his own body.

Still, Ray felt kind of bad about the stubble.  Fraser leaving Ray in charge of his body was like giving your car keys to a teenager.  Only worse, because it wasn’t like Fraser had actually given Ray permission to hang out in his body, so it was more like having the teenager steal your car for a joyride.  Ray wondered if Fraser—wherever he was—was worrying about what kind of dings Ray was leaving on his bodywork.  He was doing everything he could think of to keep Fraser’s body in good condition, but he couldn’t help worrying that Fraser would be disappointed when he got it back.

Because if there was one thing this whole bodyswapping thing had made really obvious, it was just how much better shape Fraser was in than Ray.  Not that Ray hadn’t already known that, but now he knew what it was like to be Fraser, who could run a six-minute mile, bench-press his own weight, and identify a face four blocks away.  Ray wasn’t a couch potato himself, but he squirmed picturing Fraser shaking his head in disappointment over Ray’s piss-poor vision and his ex-smoker’s lungs and the headaches he got if he skipped his morning coffee.

Fraser would give Ray’s body back in better shape than he’d found it, that was for sure.  Just by living in it, he’d probably take better care of it than Ray normally did, plus Fraser was the kind of guy who, if he borrowed your car, he’d take it to the car wash before he returned it.  Unless he got it blown up or set on fire or driven into Lake Michigan. . .

Ray smacked his fist against the wall hard enough to rattle all the flimsy bathroom fixtures.  He was not going to think about ropes and brass knuckles and knives and all the things the assholes who took Fraser might have been doing to him all this time while Ray chased around failing to rescue him.  Bad enough that it was all he could think about when he was lying in the dark in some shitty motel bed trying to fall asleep.  Or when he fell into a highway trance during the miles of straight, boring road because the radio wasn’t enough to keep him focused on the here and now and there was only so much time he could spend planning what he was going to do when he got where he was going, since he had basically no clue what he was going to find when he got there.  Or. . .pretty much any time he let his attention wander, really.

Dief was on him the second he opened the bathroom door, pushing his nose into Ray’s hand with a kind of snuffling whimper.

“I know, I know.”  Ray rubbed behind Dief’s ears with his free hand.  “I’m doing the best I can.”

Dief whined and licked Ray’s hand.  Ray wasn’t sure if the wolf was looking for comfort or trying to comfort him.  Fraser would have known, of course.

“We’re gonna find him,” Ray promised.  “We’ll get him back.  He’ll be okay, you know Fraser always lands on his feet.”

Dief gave a little growl—maybe disagreeing, maybe determined, how the hell did Ray know?—and went to stretch out in front of the outer door.

Ray put on a pair of boxers to sleep in—his own faded blue ones, because he could wear Fraser’s clothes if he had to, even his uniform, but no fucking way was he wearing the man’s underwear or sleeping in his ridiculous long johns.  Maybe it was dumb to feel like that was too intimate, because what could be more fucking intimate than living in someone’s body?  But he felt better in his own underwear and it wasn’t like anyone but him was going to know or care.

It was never his own body he saw when he imagined Fraser bound, gagged, bruised, cut, bleeding. . .  He knew, in his head, that Fraser was in Ray’s body just like Ray was in Fraser’s.  But in his imagination, it was Fraser’s face he saw, streaked with blood but calm and determined, not letting the pain show.  Or—and this was the one that yanked Ray up out of the fuzzy edge of sleep with his heart hammering—lying with his cheek on cold concrete, staring into the dark in dull despair.  That was an expression Ray had never seen on Fraser’s face in real life, and he was never going to see it either, damn it, because Fraser was going to be okay.  Ray would find him, and they’d kick the bad guy’s heads, and then they’d go home and. . .oh yeah, and figure out some way to get back into their own bodies.

He tried to imagine what it would be like, Fraser in Ray’s skinny-ass body with the hair done all wrong, bickering with him about Ray’s sloppy shaving habits and Fraser’s stick-up-the-ass posture.  It would be weird as hell, but also honestly kind of hilarious.  He wondered if Fraser would think it was funny.  He could never predict what Fraser was going to have a sense of humor about versus what would make him go all stiff and stuffy or flustered and embarrassed.  Would Fraser think that trading bodies with Ray was a fascinating new experience, or would he feel. . .violated by the whole thing?  Because it was creepy and invasive, no question about that, even though it wasn’t like either of them was doing it to the other one on purpose.  Fraser wouldn’t hold it against Ray, that was for sure, but what if he couldn’t feel comfortable around Ray any more, knowing what they knew about each other?  What if this was it, the final straw that broke their partnership’s back and made Fraser take off for Canada and—?

That’s just silly, Ray, said Fraser’s voice in his head, and even though he knew it was just his imagination, it drained the tension right out of him.  Just do your best, put your shoulder into it, and everything will turn out fine.  Trust me.

It sounded like the way Fraser would say it, except, Ray realized, Fraser didn’t usually say things will turn out fine or trust me. Ray was the one who said that kind of stuff when he was trying to cheer Fraser up.  Fraser mostly seemed to think it went without saying.

Still, it made Ray feel better anyway.  Curled up on the awful creaky mattress with his head under the pillow, with one hand wrapped around the other wrist where he wasn’t wearing a bracelet, with the sound of highway traffic in the distance and the wolf breathing nearby, he murmured, “Things will turn out fine, Ray,” in Fraser’s voice and drifted off to sleep.