Fraser touched his fingertips to the corner of his mouth; they came away spotted with tiny flecks of blood.
“Ray,” he said for the hundredth useless time, wishing his partner would stop pacing. The rapid back-and-forth was making him feel queasy. If Ray would just hold still a moment. “Ray,” he said, raising his voice a little, gambling more than he could afford to lose, because anything was better than this stalemate, “Ray, for God’s sake, you’ve done worse to me yourself.”
Ray stopped then, sharply, his shoulders hunching briefly as he seemed to feel the impact of the words like an unanticipated blow. He turned toward Fraser, his face gone dead white, and came toward him with unsteady steps, dropping to his knees, heedless of the cracked pavement underfoot. For a moment he looked horribly lost, but when he met Fraser’s eyes, he seemed to find something there that steadied him. His face lost its shocky open helplessness, hardened again into angry planes, but at least this time he was holding still instead of walking away. He opened his mouth, and Fraser thought, Whatever he says, at least he’s speaking to me. “Listen,” he said, looking away again, “you never had a brother, so I’ll explain this to you, just this once.” Love you like a brother, Fraser thought, feeling sicker than ever. Are we all the way back to that, then? Ray stared down at the pavement for a long moment that felt to Fraser like falling, watching the ground rush closer, and then he looked up with a small rueful smile like a parachute. “Nobody picks on my mountie but me, okay?”
Fraser smiled, a little, just to the limit of the cut at the corner of his mouth, and, watching Ray’s eyes, licked at the raw spot. Ray’s eyes flickered down to his mouth, following the motion, and finally he spotted the warmth in Ray’s look that had been pointedly absent since he’d made the unforgivable tactical error of trying to speak reasonably with a seventy-three-year-old woman wearing a very large ring on her right hand, thereby igniting the rather unfortunate series of events which had followed her punching him. “I see,” he said, slowly, fighting the instinct to smile wider as Ray’s eyes lingered on his mouth a second longer than they would if he were entirely focused on presenting a professional demeanor. “I’ll try to incorporate that when I introduce myself in future. ‘I’m Constable Benton Fraser of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police--‘”
“And if you wanna punch me, which is sometimes totally understandable, you gotta go through this guy,” Ray finished for him, only a little peremptorily. “Sounds good.” He settled his fingers along Fraser’s jaw, and brushed the bloodied corner of his mouth with his thumb, so lightly the touch barely registered, and caused no further pain. “So no point hanging around here, right? Let’s go put something gross and smelly on that.”
Ray dropped his hand from Fraser’s face and straightened up, abruptly seeming to remember that they were in a public street, hidden from the view of their fellow officers simply by virtue of being on the other side of Ray’s car. Fraser took the hand he extended with a slight nod. The gleam in his eyes had been only an aberration, after all, and it was kindest to overlook these small foibles in one’s partner. “I thought you had declared a strong preference for odorless Western medicine, Ray?”
Ray glanced sideways at him, grinning slyly, and Fraser realized that though he was now safely and steadily on his feet, Ray had not released his hand. “I’m just being practical, Fraser. I don’t want your mouth outta commission any longer than it has to be.”
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