FINISHING TOUCHES
Author: Tatau
Fandom: Due South
Pairing: Fraser/RayK
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Due South is the property of Alliance Atlantis. Written for fun not for profit
Words: ~49.200
Notes on the Text: Thanks to Surya who created such a vivid image of Ray drawing in my mind that this story could take place. The Chinatown in this story is a bit exaggerated and bears resemblance to the Chinatown in San Francisco as well as the street markets around Bangkok. But in the face of all the other outlandish elements in this story, I'm sure you can forgive one more XD
Additional Notes: Thanks to Bookjunk and drkphoenyx for always leaving such encouraging feedback :) So the chaptered version is totally for you guys :D
Beta: My lovely ride_4ever helped me out again, not only with her brilliant beta!fu but also with constant enthusiasm for this amazing fandom
Feedback Welcome!
It wasn't too late yet—he could still leave. Ray looked around the deserted hallway and considered going back to his car. But he had come all this way and now he was already here— Ray ruffled his hair. This was ridiculous. His colleagues would die laughing should they ever find out.
"Excuse me?" A friendly voice inquired behind him. Ray jerked slightly with surprise.
"Are you here for the drawing course?" The woman looked Ray over. "You don't look as if you wanted to participate in Mrs. Fletcher's embroidery class which had to be cancelled." She said with a teasing smile.
Ray grinned back. "Nah, uh, I am here for the drawing course. I mean, I was. I think I'll just—" Ray shrugged casually and motioned toward the exit.
"No, no don't be silly. You're just in time. Come, I'll show you the way." She smiled again and Ray steeled himself. He had wanted to come here, after all.
"I'm Jenny Jones, by the way. I'm what they call the teacher." She confessed in a conspiratorial whisper and grinned a little and Ray took an immediate liking to her. She was a little older than him, not by much though.
She didn't look like those art students from university—though, to be fair, Ray had no idea what a painter or a drawing artist should look like. He supposed he had expected something a bit flashier. Jenny Jones looked like the nice girl next door, like someone Fraser might know from his book club, what with the freckles on her face, dancing green eyes and brunette hair that reached past her shoulders in soft waves. If Ray had to describe her with one word he'd have said organic.
"Ray Vecchio. Nice to meet you." They shook hands shortly before they reached a door leading to one of the classrooms. Jenny opened the door and motioned for Ray to precede her.
Desks were arranged in a semicircle and all but two were occupied. Mostly by women. Ray winced; he had expected that this was going to be a housewife thing. There were only two other men there, one pretty old and the other one easily ten years younger than Ray. But everyone smiled friendly at him and some even raised their hand in greeting so Ray grinned and waved his hand in a short hello.
He took one of the free desks and Jenny moved into the spot left clear in the circle of tables.
"Well, it seems as if we're complete. Welcome to my drawing course. My name is Jennifer Jones and I'll be your instructor for the next 12 weeks. Don't worry if you're rather new to the art of drawing, that's what we're here for after all. I'll show you the basics and how to use a wide variety of tools for a broad spectrum of effects. You'll see, by the time we're finished there is no motif left that intimidates you."
There were a few titters at Jenny's obvious optimism which made Ray instantly feel better. He had no idea what had possessed him to take up drawing. It wasn't as if he had a whole closet full of filled sketchbooks at home or anything. He just thought it might be ideal to unwind, to take his mind off things for a while. Stella had always demanded that he found himself a hobby. Boy, she would be pissed off should she find out that Ray was finally doing what she had told him to do years ago.
"Any questions?"
People glanced at each other until finally one of the younger women raised her hand shyly.
"Yes?"
"My name is Anna Parker. I only brought pencils with me—do I need to bring anything else next time?" The question was met with approval from the other participants.
"We'll do a little bit of everything today but I've brought everything we'll need. After that you can all choose your favorite method and I'll see that everyone gets the necessary equipment for the duration of this course. Anything else?"
"Do we get to draw naked people?" A woman Ray's age asked cheerfully.
Jenny smiled. "Yes, we will do nudes. But it will be a few weeks before we get to that. We'll have four weeks to cover the basics: forms, proportions, distances, shading and so on and after that we'll move to nudes for a few weeks and once you feel confident with that we'll move to the last part which is portrait-drawing. If there aren't any more questions I'd say we get started."
She presented everyone with different types of paper, different types of pencils, charcoal and even India ink with drawing pens. The first task sounded rather easy. Jenny placed a few simple objects on a table in the middle, an unadorned water glass, a plain tin can, a porcelain cup with a handle—all easy forms, circles and ellipses.
All they had to do was figure out with what kind of drawing tool they felt comfortable. Ray tried one line with the drawing pen and decided that this wasn't going to be his friend. The fickleness of the stupid ink pot alone was killing him, spilling ink in fat blotches on the otherwise pristine white sheet; he was too impatient for this kind of thing.
The pencils, he could do. Felt like old times when he had been doodling in class instead of listening to the teachers. But when Ray tried the charcoal he knew it was love. He did a quick sketch of the water glass and enjoyed the smooth flow of the charcoal over the paper. The contrast of pitch black on ivory white looked strangely appealing.
He made another sketch of the tin can and even managed a passable imitation of the ridges that went around the middle of the can. Jenny came over and watched the movement of his hand.
"You have the right grip for coal drawings. I dare say you two will become good friends. Your strokes are very bold, really good for a quick sketch."
"Anyone can draw a tin can," Ray muttered slightly embarrassed but Jenny just smiled and said "We'll see," before she moved to the maternal woman at the desk next to Ray.
A few couldn't decide which tool to settle on but Jenny assured them that they would find out over time and that they could just switch whenever they felt like it.
Most chose the pencil as weapon of choice. Only the old guy actually picked the drawing pen with the ink. Well, Ray figured if you've managed to live as long as that one had you could afford to be patient— even though it might be a bit optimistic. He could drop dead between the time it took to dip the pen in the ink and put it on the paper.
For the next two hours, Jenny explained how to break every object down into simple geometric forms and they practiced it with a few more sketches. It was a different way of looking at things if you were always trying to see the simple forms behind it. It was fun, kinda relaxed to look at everything in this over-simplified manner.
At the end of class Jenny handed each of them a sketchbook to fill with as many drawings as they liked and Ray got a small package of charcoal to take home with him, too. Ray felt pretty good about this. He had feared that sitting still for hours would be tedious and that he would be vibrating to get moving again. Instead, he felt pretty relaxed; he'd been so focused on what his hands were doing, he simply hadn't noticed his body's usual restlessness.
Yeah, spending his Saturday morning that way wasn't the worst he could do with his weekend.
Ray didn't get much sketching done during the week what with the crazy smuggling ring with the flowers and – no, Ray did not care what kind of flowers they were, monkscaps or something similar stupid... if he had an interest in horticulture he would've asked Fraser.
But, apparently, those were some rather vicious flowers – and Ray wondered for the umpteenth time what the poor bastards reading his reports made of all this. He was pretty sure that no one except for him ever had to write down 'assault weapon: purple plant' in his report.
"Ah, it's a flower, Ray. Aconitum Napellus— also more commonly known as monkshood or wolfsbane or even—"
See? Had he wanted a botany lecture all he had to do was give Fraser the chance to open his pretty mouth. His mouth. All he had to do was give Fraser the chance to open his mouth.
Anyway, poisonous flowers and just as vicious florists with hedge trimmers were not a good mix. So Ray didn't get to do any sketching. Even though these huge purple flowers would have probably made one hell of a motif.
But Fraser had insisted that everything went into evidence lock-up. Pity, really, but Fraser had almost jumped out of his skin when Ray had tried to touch one—talk about back-stabbing plants, judging by Fraser's reaction these could kill by touch. Pretty neat… if you were looking for the perfect murder weapon, that is.
Still, Ray felt a little bad that not one single page in his sketchbook had been filled by the time next Saturday rolled around.
Getting the proportions and the angles right wasn't as easy as Ray had thought. Fraser would've probably aced it with his freaky mathematical vision. But Ray thought that he wasn't doing too bad—at least not compared to the woman with the badly done dye-job next to him. Ray guessed that she was drawing a desk but it could just as well be a piece of paper being held by four sticks. Yeah, it was kinda comforting to realize that his way of seeing reality wasn't so far off the mark. At least his drawing could be clearly identified as one of a chair.
It only got more difficult when they came to architecture. Trying to copy the house shown in the photo onto a piece of paper, Ray had to concede that you had to look differently at something in order to draw it.
It wasn't enough to identify the object as a house or to start from a box with a triangle on top. You really had to see the whole thing, where did the lines end or where would they meet, how much further inside were the windows or was the door more of an elevation compared to the rest of the façade?
Drawing seemed to be much more about looking than about making a line on paper. That was also the reason why Ray didn't really get very far with his house; he had to start over and over again, always realizing that he had overlooked something before. The more details he noticed the more there were to take in.
He had started with the roof, thinking it would be easier to just follow the lines down, but the result had looked stunted. You couldn't start with the roof, instead you had to draw the foundation first and Ray put up the walls afterwards, carefully gauging the length of his lines, and he marked the spots where the windows should be.
Ray wheeled around suddenly when he finally noticed someone standing right behind him—he had been so engrossed in the process that he hadn't noticed before. Jenny jumped at Ray's unexpected movement.
"Sorry," Ray mumbled. Some things you just couldn't shake; being a cop never really left you.
"No, I should apologize. I didn't want to startle you. But you were working pretty intently over here so I thought, maybe I could help you. Watching you, however, I see that you realized one of the essential truths about drawing. It's not simply copying lines and points in the right distances to each other, hm?"
Ray shook his head and looked at the bit of house on his paper. "No… it really isn't. Funny, I never noticed that before."
She smiled indulgently. "Why did you want to learn how to draw?"
Ray shrugged awkwardly. "Just something to keep my hands busy, I guess." And dangerous thoughts at bay, Ray thought but didn't utter.
She nodded thoughtfully and glided away to observe the work of the young guy who always managed to make everything look right out of a comic. It was weird but Ray had to admit that the effect was pretty cool.
He was almost sad when class was over. Over the course of the next week, Ray promised himself that he would practice some more. Jenny had advised them all to practice looking at everything as if at a possible motif—promising that practice made everything easier. She also recommended not thinking twice about sketching the same thing multiple times.
And practice, Ray did. Whenever his eyes started to wander, each time his glance wanted to stray, every time his hands itched to reach for something, he practiced looking at things. The basketball basket over the doorway became a circle with a cone underneath, the uninteresting case folder turned into an equally unremarkable rectangle, and the coke can he bought from the vending machine turned into nothing more than a cylinder.
It soothed his impulsive urges. It just didn't keep long. There was always a flash of red, a glimpse of a tall figure negotiating the hallways with perfect accuracy and without ever bumping into anyone, or a smooth baritone to call him out of his geometrical musings.
Substituting one way of looking at things for another might not have been the brightest idea Ray's ever had but it worked for him.
He couldn't even pinpoint when he had started looking at Fraser like that.
Maybe he had always looked at Fraser like that but it had taken him all this time to notice, because there had been Stella for so long and after her all he had been able to feel was pain, so blinding that nothing else registered on his screen?
But then, inexplicably, really, one day Ray had looked at Fraser across his desk and felt a smile tugging at his lips. That was when the thought holy shit, when the fuck did I fall for him? hit him. Falling in love with Fraser was a bit like the high you got from a designer drug – and yeah, Ray wasn't proud of himself for knowing this for a fact either but he had done a lot of shit in his youth and not much to be proud of.
Anyway, being with Fraser was a lot like being on E. The constant rush, from adrenaline, from giddiness (which always came after they survived another improbable situation), from feeling good about yourself, and you did a lot of stuff you would never believe do-able under normal (aka sober) circumstances.
Yeah, and there was the happiness thing. E got you high on happiness and after that first hit you needed to taste it again so badly that you would do anything for it.
Falling in love with Fraser was like that. No, strike that, being in love with Fraser was like that. Falling in love with him was like gulping down a drink that had been spiced with E without your knowledge and only after it hit your bloodstream did you finally notice that something was carrying you away like a cannonball. You knew you were probably about to crash and burn in the most glorious way but you just didn't care and there was nothing you could do about it anyway.
Being in love with Fraser was realizing that Ray was happy when he was with him, that it didn't feel as lonely as long as he could be sitting next to Fraser, that he needed Fraser to be happy, that he was actually one of the best people Ray had ever met, that he wanted to be the one to make Fraser smile and laugh – and a whole lot of other, less polite, noises. And once he was alone again he got this craving – a real hum in his blood whispering to him – that he needed to have this feeling again, needed to be close to Fraser again.
And the whole scenario started again from the beginning 'cause like a good druggie Ray couldn't stay away. Not for long.
This was also why Ray had been hurting like hell lately. He was nothing more than a druggie on detoxification.
Because lately, Ray had felt as if he and Fraser were drifting further and further apart. One day they were fine and the next there was this huge gap between them, a rift Ray couldn't bridge because he didn't know how. It hurt like a bitch. Ray had felt good about their duet, as if it had come to mean something—to both of them.
He had no idea what he might have done to cause a reaction like that. Fraser wasn't all there lately and Ray wanted nothing better than to strip him of all his armor, to get down underneath that uniform and just see what was going on there. When had it gotten so damn hard to speak to his best friend?
Think: Square. How many squares do you see in this room? The computer screen sitting on Frannie's desk, the little post-it note on his report that accused him of forgetting his signature, hmm, the drawers of the filing cabinet… Dewey's lunchbox—and what self-respecting man used lunchboxes anyway? Not very many things for a room as big and cluttered as the squad room.
Maybe he should look for unshapely things? Dewey's head, Lt. Welsh's bologna sandwich after another bout of chewing out Ray's fellow detectives, Francesca's skirt – could a line be counted as a geometrical form? – the bashed in nose of the guy sitting in front of Johnson's desk, the thing that might have been a plant at one point on top of the filing cabinet.
Ray released a breath and swung back in his office chair, the lazy tilt of his chair snapped back to an upright position and Ray surveyed his open cases. Unbelievable, how the number of Ray's freak cases decreased with every minute Fraser stayed away from the precinct.
Fraser had some high level meeting to attend: Polishing silver at the consulate for the upcoming banquet of the beef marketing board. Ray hadn't really listened, so he wasn't entirely sure if it indeed was the beef marketing board; it could be the Canadian prime minister for all he cared. All that mattered was that Fraser was spending only the barest amount of time with Ray at the station because he was just that good at cleaning a spoon with a cloth.
They should put that in their job description at Mountie school: You're really talented and completely wasted on this bunch of airheads? You're overly ambitious and you pack a mean punch? Why then you better prepare to bring a shine to spotty old silverware for the remainder of your prime.
Bottom line: Ray was Fraser-less for most of the week. There were good things and bad things to that. Ray missed Fraser. Missed him like an amputated limb, like a snooze button when the alarm rang before it was even light out, like a smile in a room full of hostile faces, like a safety blanket—okay, the safety blanket was probably a stupid comparison, 'cause 'safe' was one thing Fraser just couldn't do.
What Ray didn't miss was searching for topics to talk about, or kicking himself for thinking about Fraser like that or all the times his heart skipped a beat because Fraser did something, like, breathe, or something. Fraser's absence gave Ray the needed space to draw some more at least. To be fair, Fraser probably wouldn't laugh at him if he knew about Ray's newest occupation but… this was private.
Ray grinned self-deprecatingly. How ironic that his dirty little secret should be something as unoriginal and innocent as charcoal drawings.
At home, he found a comfortable spot on the couch and opened his sketchbook. The only question that remained was what to draw? Ray tapped impatiently with a piece of charcoal against the ring binding of his drawing block; he jiggled his leg; he scanned the room; he drummed an uneven rhythm on his thigh.
Just start already.
The first item in front of him was the empty coffee mug, a left-over from this morning, balanced on top of today's newspaper; a milk-brown coffee stain adorned the sports page.
Ray shrugged. Why not draw another cup? Practice made perfect, right?
His hand flowed in a smooth line over the paper, the friction of the coal against the paper hardly there at all and all thoughts were left behind in the simple act of tracing with his hand what his eyes were seeing.
Gently, Ray's fingers smudged the lines, creating a sense of plasticity. The soft black of the coal spread outwards, adding shadows to the otherwise flat-looking cup. Ray had always liked touching things with his hands, tracing the texture of something, memorizing its feel, creating stuff with his own fingers.
Drawing felt kinda personal when you thought about it. It was an invasion into—something—the core of the object maybe. Like you got something out of it that only you could see or maybe something that was there all along but that only you could show to the world.
Ray surveyed his handiwork. It really didn't look all that bad. Maybe he should have taken up drawing instead of smoking as a teenager – might have kept him from quite a few other mistakes as well. Had Fraser started drawing as a child? To be that good at it you had to start really young, right? But there couldn't have been much to draw, what with all the ice and the frozen wasteland. But maybe Fraser had been lonely eno—get drawing again, dammit. Less thinking, more drawing.
Ray sighed and turned the page in his sketchbook.
So Ray drew. For hours. Everything he could think of and anything at all that caught his eye in his apartment. When his eyes turned too tired to focus he went to bed. This was good.
Fraser was hardly at the station all week and Ray knew, because Fraser had told him, that it was only because of this stupid meeting at the consulate and that Fraser really regretted not being able to be of more assistance. Only, Ray felt that Fraser might not be telling the whole truth. That maybe Fraser was secretly a little relieved that he couldn't spend more time with Ray.
So Ray drew some more. But on day three he fell asleep over his sketchbook and woke up just barely in time to make it to work at all. He arrived with more stubble than usual on his jaw and still a bit bleary-eyed, but at least he was on time.
After two cups of coffee Ray even felt a bit like a human being again. Okay, he still had this crick in his neck from falling asleep on the couch but apart from that it was alright. At noon Fraser called. He sounded hesitant and Ray felt a wave of bitterness well up when he heard Fraser ask him if they should have lunch together in a voice that made it perfectly clear that Fraser didn't feel as if he was quite sure that was even such a good idea.
Ray was craving his company bad enough to say yes no matter what so there was no sense in pretending otherwise. And Ray felt in equal amounts better for being able to see Fraser and worse for feeling that Fraser didn't really share this joy. He honestly didn't get it. He was trying so hard to keep his fingers to himself and there was no chance that Fraser could know what was really going on beneath the surface so Ray didn't see why Fraser should act all withdrawn and polite around him.
But when they met for lunch at Fraser's favorite deli Fraser's eyes lit up at Ray's sight and Ray felt immediately better. Fraser stepped right up into Ray's personal space like he had always done and for a second everything was back to normal. Ray held his breath and did his utmost not to let it register.
It only took a second though before Fraser's face sobered and he took a little step back, hardly noticeable if you weren't looking for it but it was there and Ray swallowed his disappointment. Maybe he just wasn't that good at hiding. It was okay, he told himself again, he got it. It hurt but he knew that things would never be the same should Fraser find out. All he had to do was keep on pretending – and doing a better job of it.
So Ray plastered a grin on his lips and started rambling about the latest case and mocking Fraser for spending his day cleaning (and Ray was not thinking about Fraser and a feather duster in the same sentence, thank you very much) and it almost felt normal.
Fraser kept sneaking glances back at Ray while they were eating and Ray tried very hard not to look too long at Fraser.
"Ray, I—" Fraser started with a frown and Ray felt a tidal wave of panic wash through his gut, making him clench. This sounded a lot like 'we need to talk' and nothing good ever came of it. Ray had the divorce papers to prove it.
"Hey, what was the name of that purple flower again?" Ray blithered, grasping at the next best topic he could think of. "You know, those were really very beautiful and, uh, aren't those the ones that make your pupils dilated?"
"Ray—ah, do you mean perhaps Belladonna—"
"Huh? Oh, sure. Come to think of it, right, there was this movie with—"
"Ray—"
"It wasn't all that great but the flower poison thing was pretty cool and—"
"Ray—"
"How come so many flowers are really assassins in disguise? I mean, gimme a break—"
"RAY!"
Okay, there was no way to make the Mountie let it go.
"What?"
"You have – something – on your hand." Fraser looked seriously puzzled and Ray had a very short moment of perverse pleasure to pose a riddle to the man who had an answer for everything. Until what Fraser said registered in his brain.
"Huh?" Ray turned his hand around and saw a smudge of black coal adorning the edge of his hand. Ray felt himself turning red and he cricked his neck, smoothing the side of his hand against his jeans to rid himself of the stain.
"It's nothing," Ray muttered, not meeting Fraser's eye.
"I see," Fraser replied after a heartbeat's hesitation. Had Ray looked at Fraser's face he might have seen the disappointment at his dismissal but he was still busy hiding his hand so he didn't notice.
There was an awkward silence and Ray winced at the lack of noise but before he could think of something to say Fraser had already stood up and straightened his serge.
"I should head back to the consulate now. Inspector Thatcher is surely awaiting my return."
"Yeah, sure," Ray mumbled and rose to his feet as well.
There had to be a way to go back to the way things were, he was sure of it. But as long as he couldn't figure it out drawing was a welcome distraction.
He did feel a bit nervous though, when Jennifer broke the news to the class that they were going to start with nudes the next Saturday.
Ray went home thinking about it and he wasn't sure if that was really going to be such a cool thing. The women in his course seemed to be all over it but Ray felt it was kinda, well, wrong, really. It seemed invasive to draw someone when the model had nothing to keep herself from being exposed.
He looked through his drawings and had to concede that he, all of the course participants actually, had really improved over the span of a few weeks. But drawing people seemed to be a bit more demanding than drawing a house or a street or a still life. On Sunday, his curiosity got the better of him. He fished in his bedside drawer for one of his porn mags and leafed through it.
It felt stupid to copy a centerfold onto a piece of paper with the help of charcoal. In fact, it was probably the most inappropriate thing ever done with a porn mag, but at least it featured naked women and he didn't have to apologize if the tits looked funny in his drawing or if he got her legs all wrong.
It was a disaster. Ray did countless drawings of the blonde in the picture but nothing looked really lifelike. He supposed that this kind of picture wasn't exactly done to show the soul of a person. He grinned wryly. No self-respecting man used porn as drawing material – not unless you considered 'drawing' another word for jerking off.
His porn mag had not seen this much action for ages – at least not his female version – as it was getting this week. Funny, how you could spend your nights looking at lewd pictures of naked ladies and not have a single wank. It was all a matter of perspective.
It actually helped with his wanking problem; the problem being that the object of his fantasies was his best friend. Because looking at female porn stars was as far away as you could get from Benton Fraser.
Ray felt more or less prepared for his first nude session when the next Saturday rolled around. At least, he was fairly confident that his result wouldn't look so offending that the model would feel the need to hit him over the head with his drawing for insulting her figure.
He felt a little less prepared when Jennifer introduced their model. Make that a lot less prepared.