can't get there from here

Ray has the radio on while he packs. There's just one station that comes in up here, but it's okay, he just wants the noise, something to fill up some of the emptiness.
It's playing an old song he used to listen to back in Chicago, a long time ago, back when he believed in happy endings. He liked it then. Didn't think he'd ever know what it felt like, being that sad, when he had a shiny new badge and his Gold Coast girl, and everything was cool.

Everything's cold now and it isn't from the snow that stretches out in every direction from the cabin.

Ray's tired. He stops in the middle of the room and just sways to the music, listening with his eyes closed. There's no real hurry.

I poured it on and I poured it out
I tried to show you just how much I care

Too bad, so sad, but what ya gonna do, right? Shit happens, he'd been a cop long enough to know that by the time he ended up staying here in Freezerland.

He's got his old dufflebag on the bed and just shoves his things inside. Fraser is the one that packs neat, so his civvies come out as perfect and unwrinkled as his uniform. Ray doesn't care what state his things are in when he gets where he's going. He just doesn't want to leave anything behind, because he isn't coming back again.

There's three cardboard boxes sitting by the door, with his CDs and boombox and a dusty dreamcatcher packed inside, all taped up. Some books on French Impressionism he'll probably never crack open again, but he's taking them with him, because he doesn't want to leave any other pieces of himself behind.

He wants it to be like he was never here.

Funny that it's been five years and he can pack up and leave just about as light and easy as Fraser did in Chicago. Things never mattered much to either of them. He'd like to think that that was it and not that he was never quite comfortable enough to act like the cabin was home.

He sits down on the edge of the bed and hangs his head.

I want you
I need you
But there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you

Ray scrubs his face with his hands. He thought it would be more. When Fraser asked him to stay, he really thought there was a chance. So he blew off the job and Chicago and even his parents, and stayed, because Fraser needed him.

And he loved Fraser. Just about had from the first day, when he hugged the guy, not realizing Fraser didn't have a clue, and felt him stand there all rigid at first. Because just for second, Fraser almost melted into Ray, like he was so starved for touch even a stranger's was welcome.

Ray's not a shallow guy. Yeah, Stella was beautiful, but he loved her when they both had zits and braces, and he would have gone on loving her when her hips got wide and her tits sagged and both their hair turned gray, if she'd let him. Fraser, well Fraser's beautiful too, but Ray loved a lot more than the face and body; he loved what was inside, the stuff most people never looked deep enough to see.

He still does.

He sinks back on the bed and stares at the ceiling, the logs with the bark stripped off plain and pale with dark knots where the branches were. He should have learned his lesson from Stella. He'd trusted Fraser though, hadn't thought Fraser would hurt him. He'd forgotten that sometimes it doesn't matter what you want or mean to do. Fraser ... Fraser didn't even know.

That's what killed Ray inside, that Fraser never even saw it.

He'd known you could be alone in a crowd, but he hadn't realized you could miss someone who was right next to you in bed.

Not that Fraser spent much time in their bed or even at the cabin. There was always something Fraser needed to do, some duty to fulfill or crime to foil. Something or someone that needed Fraser more than Ray did. Ray understood. He always let Fraser go, maybe uttering a token protest, because Fraser always did what he wanted, what he thought was right, but Ray wanted Fraser to remember he was there. Every time Fraser left though, Ray felt a little more tired. Tired and sad inside, because Fraser always said he needed him, but it didn't seem like it mattered what Ray needed.

He smooths his long fingers over the crazy quilt covering the bed. Maggie made it for them. The different fabrics have different textures and he strokes them absently, running a finger along a seam where old cotton and a scrap of velvet are joined.

He used to think that quilt was a metaphor. He used to take hope from looking at that quilt, knowing that Maggie making it meant she accepted Fraser and him being together. He used to think that crazy quilt was like their lives, all those bits and pieces of leftover fabric, worn out, stained, torn, damaged, all patched together and made into something beautiful.

They'd made love on that quilt.

His fingers can feel where the seams are coming undone, the binding thread already broken in places.

Ray rolls over, hiding his eyes behind his forearm, smelling the scents of fabric softener, Fraser, and even the faint, old ghost of wet dog, courtesy of Diefenbaker.

He chokes back a sob.

He misses Dief. Dief had spent more time with Ray than Fraser after they stayed in the North. He'd become Ray's company and his confidante, the one he'd whispered his worries and sorrows to, a warm presence when Fraser was gone on patrol. Or wherever. Ray wasn't sure anymore what Fraser did when he left the cabin.

He'd buried Dief on the little rise above the cabin, where the wolf liked to lie in the sun and wait for Fraser to come back. It was summer when Dief died, shot by someone while Ray was buying groceries in town and Fraser was away again. If it had been winter, he wouldn't have been able to dig through the frozen earth. He hadn't been able to wait for Fraser to get back before he did it.

He'd left a message with the constable at the RCMP station, but he'd known Fraser wouldn't abandon his duty to come back. It didn't matter how much Diefenbaker had meant to him. Fraser had his duty. It didn't matter what it did to Ray, burying a friend like that, all alone.

Maggie came by a day or two later and sat with him, but Ray felt even more a stranger in a strange land, Fraser's exotic foreign lover brought back from the distant south like loot from a war. He could find nothing to say to her. Fraser came home over a week later. Ray couldn't find anything to say to him, either.

What was there to say, after all?

Constable Hawley told me you'd gone to Yellowknife with Inspect-— sorry— Chief Inspector Thatcher, Frase. He gave me the contact number you left with him, the one for the hotel. Guess you didn't head up toward Jack Symond's place after all.

It wasn't that Fraser had lied. He hadn't. He'd let Ray assume he was off to track the poacher, but he would have told the truth if Ray had known the questions to ask.

Ray just didn't want the answers anymore.

He remembered Fraser standing in the snow, late in the blue light of dusk, a few days after they gave up on the adventure. Fraser had taken his gloved hand and squeezed it, smiling into Ray's eyes so seriously.

"Why don't you stay?"

Then Fraser kissed him and Ray was lost, because he could feel how much Fraser wanted him, the way Ray wanted Fraser. It was so easy to let go of everything that should have kept him from giving in, when Fraser said he needed him.

Maybe he had, then. Ray wasn't sure anymore, what that had been, why Fraser had asked him to stay. It didn't matter, he supposed. He'd loved Fraser and Fraser had needed him to stay for some reason.

He'd never said he loved Ray.

Want and need. He'd thought the love would come with time and if not, want and need would be enough. Wrong again, Ray.

Now don't be sad
'Cause two out of three ain't bad

"Christ," Ray mutters, rolling over again and sitting up. Yeah, right, two out of three ain't bad, Meatloaf, but after a while they ain't enough, either. He gets up and switches off the radio, not waiting for the song to end. Hell, he knows how the song ends.

Time to go.

He zips up the duffle and slings it over his shoulder, then walks to the door. The duffle goes in the jeep, followed by the boxes. He wants to get into town before noon. He'll leave the jeep at the RCMP station after unloading at the airstrip. No one will bother his stuff there and he can walk back, catch a ride south with Denny McLaughlin when he flies the mail back down to Yellowknife.

Wearily, he starts the jeep and puts it in gear. He doesn't look back, the track is pretty rutted and requires all his attention. The first snow of the year fell during the night, a white shroud that just coats the ground in the open.

Constable Hawley frowns and then smiles when Ray steps inside the station. "Hello, Mr. Kowalski. I'm afraid Sergeant Fraser isn't here—"

"Yeah, I know, 's okay," Ray says. He fishes the jeep's keys out of his jeans and tosses them to Hawley, who manages to catch them despite being startled. "Just wanted to leave these with ya. The jeep's parked out back."

"Ah. I see," Hawley says slowly.

Ray smiles and shakes his head. "Nah, you don't."

"Are you going on a trip? I hope that nothing untoward has happened," Hawley asks.

Ray echoes, "Untoward?" He lets out a snort of unhappy laughter. He sobers and looks at the young constable. Hawley has always been decent to him.

"I'm going—" Home? No, he didn't have a home anymore, did he? "—I'm going back to the States," he says quietly.

"And when will you be coming back?"

Ray shakes his head again. "I'm not coming back, Hawley."

Hawley blinks, his pink face getting a little pinker with embarrassment, then looks down. "Ah, you're—you're, ah—leaving. I'm sorry."

"So, this is good-bye," Ray tells him quietly. "Could you tell Frase—um, Sergeant Fraser—that I said that? Good-bye. That I said good-bye."

"Yes sir," Hawley says gently.

"Thanks. Thanks, Hawley."

Ray turns and starts for the door then spins on his heel and walks back to Hawley's desk. He slips the catch on his bracelet and lets it fall into his open palm. "Here." Ray lays the bracelet on the desktop. "Give this to him, would ya?"

"I will," Hawley promises.

"Yeah, okay." Ray takes a deep breath and straightens his shoulders. "So long."

"So long, Mr. Kowalski," the constable says solemnly.

Ray walks out the door. He saw the questions in Hawley's eyes, but he was just too tired to explain, and maybe Hawley was still too young and full of hope to understand if Ray had: you can't make someone love you when they don't.

Ray loved Fraser. That hadn't changed. But Fraser loved so many other things more than he cared about Ray.

And Ray knew it.