Pairing & Rating: Fraser/Vecchio. M, I think. There are swearwords and non-graphic sexual scenes.
Word count: about 5,000
Summary: It's the little things, all coming together, that bring together Fraser and Ray: a cylinder head, a murder, and going undercover in a gay club. (It's not as funny as it sounds.)
Disclaimer: Due South (c) Paul Haggis, so not me.
Author's Notes: This was written for the Livejournal community Fraser-Vecchio - a ficathon for Due South and those two characters in particular. The request was by SDWolfpup. Many thanks for Aingeal for an excellent beta!

NIGHT SPOTS

The smell of oil and metal permeated the shop. Fraser lingered in the doorway, trying to tell the different chemicals apart. He brushed his finger on a smudge on the doorframe and brought it close to his nose. It didn't really tell him anything, except that the composition of the originating crude oil was fairly low on naphta. He filed away the information anyway.

Ray's voice was rising again as he debated with the mechanic. Apparently there was a need for a new cylinder head and the price for a genuine part wasn't coming down. It sounded like this might take a while. Knowing they were supposed to be on duty Fraser walked out across the yard (fenced with wire, the ground a sand-covered asphalt, with old cars in various states of repair parked around it) to the gate, to keep an eye on the street. It was empty at this hour save for some kids playing with a basketball on a small asphalt yard across the road. He set himself the task of observing the area, beginning with identifying the species of flower on the sixth third floor windowsill in the opposing building.

'Come on, Fraser, let's get out of here,' said Ray, as he came out of the shop at last.

'Did they have the part you needed?' asked Fraser, as they got in Ray's brother-in-law's car.

'150 for the cylinder head alone, and he wouldn't budge. Yeah, right, maybe that would be the going value of it if this was ten years from now and the inflation had gone crazy on the prices. No way. I'm not gonna let him just walk all over me, all right? There's got to be a mechanic in this town who'll exchange it for a fair price. You have to make them compete, or they'll never give you a good deal. So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to find a spot where there's three mechanic shops right next to each other. Can't beat a spot like that for good prices. Give me the map, Benny.'

'But, Ray, you're driving.'

'Okay, you look it up on the map. They list mechanics, don't they?'

'Usually just the gas stations.'

Ray cursed long and passionately about modern mapmakers, but in the end it was back to the Vecchio house for the Yellow Pages.

The next day they were back at the first mechanic. Fraser noticed that Ray had that detached look in his eyes, which he usually wore for cross-examining or the court house. Fraser looked away politely and decided to stay in the background once more.

'All right, you swine, 170 for the part and the service, and I'm not paying a penny over that.'

'200,' said the mechanic calmly, wiping off a wrench on an oily rag. He was a thin, stubbled man with staring eyes and a mouth suggestive of bad teeth and a sense of humour.

'180, my final offer.'

The mechanic looked Ray over, mulled, and finally announced, '190, for you. That's squeezing my balls, but you cops just got the guys who gaybashed my brother, an' today cops and queers are all right by me.' He offered his hand.

'185, then,' said Ray and gave his hand. The mechanic had shrugged and shook it before what he said sunk in. 'Wait, queers?'

'You just tow that Riviera here and you'll have it done next day, two days tops. Took the liberty of ordering the part for you. I knew you'd be back.'

'What did you mean about queers?'

'I didn't say nothing about queers. I ain't no homophobe. Little brother's a fudgepacker, like I said, and he's all right and so's his boyfriend. I'm glad you got the bastards that beat him up. Should've seen what they did to him. Guys like that ought to be shot.'

'Right.'

'Not everybody's a goddamn warrior, could take treatment like that. You guys are lucky, you and your Canadian tourism advert there. You could've taught those bastards a thing or two.'

'What - me - you mean Fraser? Me and Fraser? We're... what?'

'Pardon me, if you ain't,' said the mechanic with a look of amused disbelief. 'If you ain't, you might mention to him that he should watch the hands. People might get the wrong idea.'

'What?'

'Just sayin', he's had his hand on your four times since you got out of that Toyota.'

'What?'

'Anyway, it ain't none of my business, is it?'

'...What.'

'So, you bring in the Riviera on Tuesday, we'll have it to ready by Thursday at latest, all right? Hey Ronnie!' This last was shouted out to a passing boy (lanky, about seventeen, and trying to grow a moustache), who, in response, started to walk faster towards the coffee machine. Soon the mechanic was gone in pursuit.

Fraser was waiting politely by the door. Ray walked back a little unsteadily.

'I do apologize, Ray,' he said, looking somewhat perturbed. Fraser was one of those few people to whom "somewhat perturbed" could honestly be applied.

'You don't touch me that much, do you?' implored Ray.

Fraser blushed. 'I can try to do it less.'

'No, no. You know what? Forget about it. You don't have to change your behaviour just because you remind some greedy son-of-a-bitch of his little brother. It's just one guy. Right. Let's go.' He reached for the car's door handle, and Fraser turned, and their hands brushed each other.

They both looked up, and into each other's eyes.

Seconds passed.

Fraser began apologizing with a look of sincere embarrassment. Ray had been ready to laugh, but felt his face grow hot instead. He blinked, muttered something, and got in the car, fixing his eyes straight ahead.

He could still feel the tingle on the back of his hand.

All through the day, which remained blissfully uneventful on the whole, Fraser never once touched him. That night at dinner Ray was touched exactly seventeen times by various family members, none of which touches tingled (thank God). After dinner they watched TV, and Ray was still counting the touches between the lovers on the screen and on the sofa next to his, and the touching between his mother and sister, and trying to make out exactly what it was that made him and Fraser stand out so much.

He went to bed early, but found himself staring at the ceiling and thinking back to a particular day, say the previous day to this one, and count how many times he felt Fraser's hand on his arm, or his arm against Ray's back when he leaned over his shoulder to look at the computer screen, or his cheek against Ray's chest no wait that never happened. That most emphatically did not happen.

It could have though.

With a quiet moan of surrender, Ray closed his eyes, slid his hand down his belly, and let himself imagine Fraser's jawline. Fraser's neck.

(It wasn't the first time. Ray thought of women most of the time, smiling glossily from magazines, or dredged up from memories of skin and sighs; of men, irregularly, since he was very young and there was a blue-eyed soccer player at school that never glanced in Ray's direction and that Ray barely dared to cheer for. Guilt, fear; if his mother found the glossy magazines or if the boy ever looked in his direction at the wrong moment and saw his eyes and told his friends and it would have been him the student councellor found on the alley behind the school, God, did it happen to someone else or was it really him? It was such a long time ago. Fear. Guilt. Oh God, but Fraser had eyes just the same shade, but he never would do anything like that. He never would, and that was the scariest of all thoughts. Fraser would be kind and say nothing and walk away and get a transfer back to Canada but he was so beautiful and Ray knew a thing or two and perhaps he could make Fraser bend back his head and expose that neck and his chest would be wide and smooth and heave under him, and the body underneath would be perfection smelling of crisp air and sweat and cotton and his strong legs might curl around Ray and his. His. Oh God.)

Fraser's breathing calmed down slowly. As it did his room returned to solid reality around him, the sharp edges of the doorway drawn out in the semi-darkness. Cars roared by outside, and somewhere there was the sound of broken glass and raised voices. Diefenbaker's soft snuffly breathing went on, undisturbed, on the floor by the bed. Whatever wolves were they weren't resentful of these little exercises of the body, and Fraser felt grateful for it.

It was altogether pleasant to have a wolf to talk to, to come home to, or with, as the case usually was. There were certain issues that just didn't rise that might, if he was coming home to a... well, a grandmother, for example. Or, even worse, a father. He was seeing his Dad more often than ever, now, but there were some times when Bob Fraser knew to clear out. It also helped, when one felt a certain pressure, not to have to share the bed. As such. That is to say, with someone other than a... well, a woman, he thought, and immediately knew himself for a liar.

Ray came to work the following day with filmy eyes and jaw-splitting yawns, and drank two cups of the vile sludge yielded by the coffee machine. He had stared at his paperwork for half an hour, making perhaps two changes, before Fraser sat at the chair by his desk, bright with good-mornings. Ray looked up at him and saw a little frown of worry on Fraser's fresh forehead.

'Yeah, it would be a good morning if it had started eight hours later. Hey Benny.'

'My grandmother had a wonderful recipe for warm milk and honey that would always put me to sleep. If you want I could...'

'No thanks, Fraser,' said Ray, thinking bitterly about what Frannie would say if he started drinking warm milk. 'And anyway, my dad always swore by a good half-bottle of gin before bedtime. Granted, that only ever knocked him down if he'd been drinking mixed drinks all night and it didn't exactly make him wake up all rosy.'

'Well, there's nothing like a walk to clear up your head, and it's a fine crispy morning outside.'

'Yeah, why don't I just go and ask Lieutenant Welsh if I could step outside for a nice refreshing walk in the park?'

'In fact, Detective,' said Welsh, stepping up behind him, 'I'd say fine, go for it, hope you enjoy it, though I doubt you would. Take a look at this.'

There'd been a murder.

Half an hour later Ray and Fraser were standing by the pool in the park. There was thin ice forming around the edges of the pool, and frost had whitened the grass, trash can, the skin of the murdered young black man by the pool. There were ice crystals in his darkened blood which stained the park bench. Police barrier tape was keeping out a scarce crowd of onlookers, most of whom wouldn't want to be looked at two closely by the officers busying themselves about the scene. It wasn't a good kind of park.

'Looks like a gaybashing,' said Huey. 'Young man's name was Graham Mbuta. Immigrant. Could also be related to that. Good kid, apparently, got no record. God knows what he was doing around here last night.'

'I thought we caught the college kids who'd been going around the gay bars.'

'Guess there's more of them.'

Fraser took his usual unofficial look around and gave Ray the unofficial benefit of all his unofficial observations. 'You might want to look for clubs near the waterfront. There was some water weed on his shoe, and there's none growing in this pond, and considering the way the young man was dressed...'

'The Anenome.'

Fraser looked startled. 'I wouldn't go so far as to assume which...'

'He had their matchbox in his trouser pocket. Come on.'

'You're going to check it out right now?'

'Or send someone. They don't like most cops in most clubs, let alone where you might get arrested and have to call your wife to bail you out. Better ask Welsh. He might want to send someone better-looking.'

'Now, Ray.'

'What? I'd rather squeal to a good-looking woman, it's the same principle. Kind of makes me wish you were a real cop.'

'Well, in a sense I am, Ray.'

'Canadian cops don't count, not in Chicago.'

'Oh.'

Ray left Huey in charge. They were half-way out the gate before Fraser said, 'Thank you, by the way.'

'For what?'

'For the compliment.'

'What compliment?'

'Well, Ray, I thought you implied that I...'

'What?'

'Never mind.'

Ray thought for a moment. 'That you're better-looking than me?' He almost laughed.

'I do apologize if I was mistaken.'

'Yeah, you might have the looks, Benny, but I have the style. Style counts for more, trust me.'

'You do have your own particular charm, Ray.'

''Course.'

'I'm sure many women find you attractive.'

'They do.'

They continued on in what was, to all observers, a companionable silence, without any touch of awkwardness.

Welsh sent them both to the Anenome, but undercover. They dropped by Fraser's apartment, because it was closer. Ray changed into one of Fraser's short leather jackets, because the long coat apparently "screamed cop", while Fraser put on his civilian outfit. Ray did not look at him once while he was changing, and had begun to hum a tune, rather loudly and badly, when the rustle of clothing began to sound too suggestive of naked Fraser. Diefenbaker danced around his feet, until he woke from his reverie and tossed him a donut to appease his own guilt. There wasn't anything like a dog's gratitude to appease guilt, whatever the crime.

'I'm ready,' said Fraser, and appeared in the doorway. Ray looked at his face, and not at his clothing (because he looked so nice in jeans, and so much more approachable, and he could have just slipped his hand through those shirt buttons like you never could with a man in a uniform), so they were almost out the door before he noticed the hat. 'Wait,' he said, and swiped the Stetson off Fraser's head. 'Better leave this. Too Mountie-like.'

'Ah,' said Fraser, looking a little affected.

'Sorry, Benny, but I don't think it's quite the thing.'

'Well, you know best, I'm sure,' said Fraser, looking a little longingly at the hat in Ray's long fingers. They left it on the counter.

He'd felt the air blow through his short hair when Ray had taken off his hat, and had thought, for a moment, that it had been a touch. But Ray's fingers had been firmly on the hat's brim, nowhere near his head.

He wondered if Ray even noticed that he wasn't touching him anymore. He'd tried to think, that night, if there'd been something obvious about him. Most of the time it really had been innocent, unconscious - but then sometimes - sometimes when he put his hand on Ray's shoulder, or on his back, it was a halted caress.

'Hey Benny,' said Ray, and Fraser returned to the moment. 'You know that thing you used to do, where you touch me a little sometimes?'

'Yes?' said Fraser, his heart in his throat.

'You could pick it up again now.' Ray flashed him a look of mischief.

'Ray!' he exclaimed mildly.

'In case you didn't notice, you and me, we're going in undercover, right? And how would two guys go undercover in a gay bar?'

Fraser blushed slowly from his hairline down to his mouth. He hadn't blushed when he'd gone undercover as a woman, so this was nothing, of course. This would have been nothing if it had been anyone but Ray.

'Don't worry, Benny, we don't have to make out or anything. It's just a matter of keeping your eyes and ears open, and maybe putting your arm on my shoulder sometimes.' Ray's voice had a touch of steel now, and he was keeping his eyes on the road. Was it written all over Fraser's face? Or was it just that hard for Ray?

Fraser, confused, recited the periodic table of the chemical elements and their symbols in his mind, to keep focused. It usually helped.

It was still between afternoon and evening when they arrived at the Anenome. Two men were walking in, both of them wearing Stetsons. Ray refused to look at Fraser and acknowledge his look of reproach.

Ray sat in the parked car for perhaps half a minute too long. He needed that time, if not to gather his courage, then to send up a little prayer that his mother would never find out, or, if she did, she'd fully understand the meaning of undercover, and how it differed from "under cover".

They got out of the car and walked into the bar. At the doorway Ray took Fraser's hand briefly and squeezed it quickly, not looking at him. It was the best he could do, and even that little touch sent him wishing for a cold drink of water to pour down his pants.

This was all his dreams and nightmares together, and he hated to think that Fraser did not - could not - know.

The club was nearly empty. Aside from the two who'd just come in before them there were three very well-dressed middle-aged men drinking beer in the corner cabinet, and a record playing on the background, just a little too loud in the relative silence. The barkeep was reading Elle behind the counter and smoking. It was a dim club that would be dark by nightfall, when the bright neon lights would be lit and the band whose single roadie was setting up the gear at the stage would blast a beat into the room.

'I think we're a little early,' said Ray, to say something.

'I'll say,' said a low voice approximating sultry from their right. 'A queen's got to have a fucking day job to get up before six.'

Ray turned, and his eyes opened wide. He croaked a little.

'What?' said the man who'd been leaning on the wall by the door, nursing a gin and tonic. He was tall, blonde, blue-eyed, and thinner than Ray remembered, though still painfully fit. 'Yeah, look your fill, you ain't ever getting any, Bignose.' The man's sneer faded into a glimmer of recognition. 'Wait. Bignose? Ray something? Ray Vecchio?'

Ray started laughing, and there was an edge of hysteria in it.

'Are you okay, Ray?' said Fraser, concerned.

'Well, fuck you too, Ray Vecchio,' said the blonde man bitterly, and finished his drink. Fraser led Ray, still giggling, to one of the tables.

'Pardon me for saying so, Ray, but you're not being very inconspicuous. If you're worried about being recognized...'

'It's not that, Benny,' said Ray, calming down at last, and signalling the barkeep for a drink. (He gave them a bored wave that could have meant anything from acknowledgment to dismissal.) 'It's just someone I used to know. He was kind of different then.'

It had been him. In the alley. The school councellor wasn't a stupid woman. She’d called the cops and Ray's mother, but the school had never found out. The official story was he'd fallen off his bike.

The barkeep brought them their drinks, eventually. As the afternoon delved deeper into evening a group of Japanese businessmen came in, laughing and chattering, and then a group of young students, and one drag queen with an evident hangover. Ray and Fraser sipped their beers as slowly as they could. Ray thought of snatching a couple of empty glasses from the students' table to make it look like they were drinking more, but that was too risky when there weren't more people around and the barkeep kept suspicious eyes on them whenever he glanced over his magazine.

'I'm not sure we're making much progress, Ray,' said Fraser.

'Shh,' said Ray, listening to the students. Nobody was mentioning Graham Mbuta.

Frased hushed. The students' conversation turned to dildoes, and one boy started an anecdote which occasioned roars of laughter. Ray felt his face grow hotter and angrier.

'Ray,' said Fraser, worried.

'What?' snapped Ray.

'We're supposed to be undercover,' he whispered.

'Yeah, so?'

'So don't look so shocked.'

Ray blushed even deeper. 'I'm not shocked. It's just...' he leaned in close and whispered, 'These guys, do you hear the way they're talking? If I talked like that to a woman, or about a woman, every woman I know would slap me silly.'

'Perhaps it would help if you thought about this like an anthropological expedition.'

'How would that help? We're supposed to be a part of this crowd.'

'Well, Ray, an anthropologist would recognize that every culture, or sub-culture in this case, creates its own code, by which inappropriate behaviour in one culture becomes laudable in another, and subcultures can develop features that specifically counter the prevalent culture's behavioral codes.'

'Hippies in the sixties were counter-culture, Fraser. I don't know what this is, but I do know that if I ever had to come within fifteen feet of a pink dildo I'd struggle to forget about it, I wouldn’t be boasting about it at a club the next evening.'

'So the bit with the bathtub and the cream sauce and the men's underwear model...'

'Definitely out.'

As night fell, the crowds arrived. The music blasted from the stage, and the club began to liven up. Fraser began to feel the hour, but it would hardly be the first time he'd stayed up after eleven. As the noise level rose it gave him the perfect opportunity to practice picking out single elements of sound, to practice hearing conversations from among the hubbub, and tell apart the sounds of almost a hundred people doing a hundred different things. An environment filled with noise was as much a challenge to the senses as the apparent absence of sound, when it came to picking out the one bit of information that you needed.

Like in the street, where the mechanic shop was, during the day, on the hour when no-one was about. His eyes flew open. 'Ray.'

'What?' Ray shouted.

'Ray, this isn’t the place.'

'What?'

'I know where we need to go.'

'I swear to God, Fraser, I can't hear a word you're saying.'

'Come on!'

He took Ray by the sleeve (touching - he hadn't done any all night, partly because there was a table between him and Ray, and partly because he knew he could not halt a caress when it was half-allowed and there was a pair of beautiful young men making out at the next table for the past half hour) and impatiently guided (he could never drag) him out of the chair and out towards the door. 'Easy, sweetheart,' someone said as they pushed past.

Fraser half-ran to the Toyota, Ray hurrying behind. 'What is it? Did you hear something.'

'No. I saw something. The mechanic's little brother.'

'What?'

'It's not a gaybashing, Ray. Remember the first day you went to Gobson's Garage? I was waiting for you outside. There were three men who passed by that day. I wasn't really listening, because I was trying to work out the rules some children were playing basketball by, but I remember thinking the young man in between was looking harassed. It was Graham Mbuta.'

They were in the car, and Ray was driving out the club parking lot. 'Where do we go?'

'To the garage. I'll explain on the way.'

Fraser hadn't thought of it at the time, but thinking back to the moment with his eyes closed brought back the words he heard that day. '...Be terrible to get deported just because of some club drug. Then think of your dear Mama. What was her name? Sally? Think of how her heart would break. Do they take kindly to your kind in South Africa? And you can forget about bringing your sister over.'

'One of them had his car keys dangling on a chain from his jeans. There was a bell on the chain, with a very unique jingle, which you get when the metal has worn out for over a decade. I heard the same jingle at the shop when we were there the second time.'

Ronnie, the mechanic's assistant.

'We don't have a warrant.'

'Have you heard that odd clinking sound in the car?'

'What odd clinking sound?'

'I think the Toyota might need a new cylinder head too, Ray.'

'...You might be right, Benny. Better check it out.'

'Wouldn't want the car breaking down in the middle of Chicago.'

By the time they arrived, the garage was dark and the gate was chained shut.

'Well, who would've thought of it, it's closed.'

'I was hoping we might catch them closing up.'

'And then what? It's a good lead, Fraser, but you know Welsh will want something more substantial.'

'I'm sure if we could take Ronnie's fingerprints we could match them to the fingerprints found at the scene.' He was peering through the fence at a darkened window. Ray followed his gaze, and could just faintly make out the outline of a coffee machine.

'Tomorrow, Fraser. First thing. There's nothing we can do now. We don't even know his full name.'

'Hey, you!' the shout came from close by, too loud. If there was any way to slur the words "hey, you", the voice gave the impression that it would have slurred them.

'My shop. Someday, my shop. Gerroutofere.'

It was Ronnie, drunk, with the keys jingling on his jeans.

'You ever get the feeling that Lady Luck has some kind of a repressed love-hate thing for you?' Ray asked, casually, smiling a predatory smile.

'Get out, you.' Ronnie staggered closer.

'Okay, pal, first you tell me how you met Graham Mbuta.' Ray fumbled inside the unfamiliar coat and pulled out his badge.

Ronnie sobered up quickly, turned and began to run with surprising speed. Fraser sprinted after him. The boy got around one bend and over one fence, quick as a rabbit, before Fraser had him by his wrists and up against the wall. Ray wasn't far behind. Fraser picked out a wad of money and a passport protruding from one of Ronnie's coat pockets. Ray took it and opened it, snapped it shut, pocketed it, and took out his handcuffs.

'You're under arrest on suspicion of the murder of Graham Mbuta,' said Ray. 'Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law...'

'He confessed pretty quickly. Now it's just a matter of whether or not he'll change his story before we get to court. He gave us a name though, and the other guy's apartment should give us enough to put both of them away.'

'Not bad, Detective,' said Welsh. 'And the Mountie, I expect, will testify?'

'Constable Fraser assisted me in the arrest, yes.'

'Well done. Have the paperwork on my desk by tomorrow morning, okay?'

'Thank you, sir.'

'Lunch,' said Ray to Fraser, coming out of Lieutenant Welsh's office with a look of perfect self-satisfaction.

'The Lieutenant was pleased?'

'The case was sound, we got the bad guys, happy ending. Yeah, he was pleased. I could probably take a whole hour and he wouldn't mind. See you, Huey, good luck with that gaybashing lead.' He grinned as Huey shot him a dark look, and ran straight into Elaine coming from the filing cabinet. A cardboard box took most of the collision, broke its bottom and spread the files across the floor.

'Goddammit, Ray!'

'I'm sorry, Elaine.'

'No, you know what? You pick it up. It's needed in the archives at two sharp. Enjoy.' She marched away.

'Come on, it's my lunch hour!'

There was no helping it, except, of course, Fraser helped. They first reached for the same file, and their hands touched. Ray blinked, his lips parted for a moment, but he kept his eyes firmly on the papers.

As they kept collecting them, they somehow ended up kneeling thigh to thigh, and half the files they went for were very, very, close together. They put the papers back and took them to the archives. Ray let Fraser carry the box, because the skin on both his hands was tingling now, and he didn't want to lose that.

'Fraser?' he said as they were coming out.

'I'm sorry about your lunch hour, Ray.'

'It's not over yet. We could go to your place for lunch, it's much closer than mine.'

'But you usually eat at the Café Sardinia.'

'Can I come to your place or not?'

'Of course, Ray, but since you only have another 15 minutes...'

'You said I can come so let's go.'

'All right, Ray.'

They drove in silence, still in the Toyota, as the Riviera had only been dropped off at Gobson's Garage that morning, with the sad tidings of young Ronnie's criminality. Ray parked the car, locked the steering wheel and talked loudly about being a cop, like he always did before entering the building. They made their way in under the resentful eyes of the strictly law-abiding Mrs Umeki. As soon as the door closed behind them Fraser said, nervously, 'I have some... beans.' It was all he got to say before Ray touched his cheek with his hand. Fraser closed his eyes in silent ecstasy. When he opened them Ray was watching him and smiling, that sweet secret smile Fraser hadn't seen since he'd been laid out in a hospital bed.

'It's not all about pink dildos,' he said, half-aware of anything beyond Ray's eyes, the electric touch on his cheek. Ray gave him a small slap, then slid his fingers down to caress the back of Fraser's neck, and Fraser filed away the date and time, November 28, around 13:00, 1995, the most erotic moment of my life.

Until a few seconds later.