Disclaimer - I don't own it. I am not making anything off it. I do get a kick out of displacing my angst onto people in shiny red uniforms.

Chapter 2 - Disgrace to the Uniform

Fraser listened carefully. The footsteps outside the door did not belong to anyone he knew. It was probably the drug dealer. But he could hear other footsteps as well.

"That's not Ray." he said. "But I can hear him in the building. It sounds like he has company."

Welsh turned to look at him with disbelief. "You can tell his footsteps from this guy's?"

"Of course." Fraser said. There was an implied "You can't?" in his tone that irritated Welsh.

Fraser took a deep breath. Every minute that passed, he felt stronger, less dizzy. He pushed himself into a crouch, then pulled himself upright, turning to lean on the desk until the room stopped performing a dervish dance around him.

He pressed his lips together tightly and looked around the room. He scrutinized the door. Based on the position of the hinges, it would open outward, which was a disadvantage. That negated any thought of blocking it by pushing the desk against it.

There was no chair. Whoever owned the building didn't use this office to work. There was no lamp, which might have made a handy staff-type weapon. The power cord for the computer on the floor might make a fine garrote or lasso, but that was largely useless against a man bursting into the room with a gun.

Fraser settled for a piece of sheetrock to complement Welsh's, and positioned himself across from the Lieutenant, by the door, hugging tight to the wall. The Lieutenant gave him something that Fraser thought the older man probably believed was an encouraging smile. It was not exactly sparkling with the milk of human kindness, but he was glad enough of it to smile back.

The faint footsteps belonging to Ray and two other men were catching up with the footsteps he'd first heard. With luck, Ray would get the jump on the drug dealer before he came through the door to shoot them.

Ray Vecchio moved slowly and carefully. He didn't dare alert the drug dealer to his presence. The two uniformed men moved with equal stealth behind him. After the drug dealer had forced Welsh to drag the unmoving form of Fraser into the back office, Ray had waited for fifteen agonizingly long minutes as the dealer and the buyer finished their transaction. The buyer appeared to be demanding much reassurance that the whole thing wasn't a setup. They had walked out of the warehouse together, and as they passed the crate Ray was crouched uncomfortably behind, Ray heard the dealer say that he had arrangements to make so he could take care of the cops.

Ray watched the buyer leave the scene, frustrated that he was slipping away and taking the drugs with him. The dealer stayed close, in his car, using a car phone to make whatever his arrangements were. Ray couldn't get further in to the warehouse to get to Fraser and Welsh without passing through the dealer's line of sight. But he could get out around to the side, and back to the uniformed men waiting in cars nearby.

All that time he spent in cold dread. Not only was his career down the toilet if his Lieutenant got killed on his bust, but seeing Fraser like that - so still and pale - Ray couldn't help second guessing his snap decision to stay down. It would have done Fraser no good for Ray to give himself away. He hadn't had a clear shot at either the drug dealer or the buyer. But reality wasn't nearly enough to overcome his guilt.

Returning with two of the uniformed men, Ray hoped to make a clean arrest, planning to catch the dealer while he was still on the phone in his car. He had no such luck, the man was already somewhere back in the warehouse. That meant caution. Ray couldn't risk that alerting the man to his presence if he was already with Welsh and Fraser. Right now what they didn't have was a hostage standoff. If the dealer had a cop and a Mountie at gunpoint, he would be in a negotiating position Ray would much rather not deal with.

Welsh and Fraser heard the key turning in the lock. Welsh made a couple of hand gestures, and Fraser nodded. When the door opened and the dealer stepped into the doorway, Welsh swung his piece of sheetrock up hard to hit the man in the face, while Fraser brought his chunk down narrow edge first to smack the man's wrist, with the hopes that he would drop his gun.

Fraser's blow was simply not hard enough to do anything more than startle the drug dealer, although Welsh's whack to the head slowed him down. As soon as the dealer shook it off, bringing up his arm to defend against a repeat of the attack, he turned his gun on Welsh.

"Drop the... " he looked around the office and noticed the hole in the wall. "Drop the... wall. Both of you." he said. "Or I start shooting parts off." He was aiming at Welsh because the Mountie still appeared slower and disoriented, less of a threat.

Welsh dropped his chunk of sheetrock and put his hands in the air. Fraser moved as if to do the same, but at the last second he grabbed at the dealer's arm, swinging it away from aiming at Welsh.

The gun ended up pointed between Fraser and Welsh, but the dealer grabbed Fraser's other shoulder, pulling him in close, face to face. He put his free arm around Fraser's neck as if he were hugging him. The gun in his hand pressed against Fraser's stomach. Fraser's grip on his arm was useless to prevent the dealer from shooting if he chose to.

"You really don't want to do this." The dealer said. His back was to the doorway now, and Welsh flashed a brief glance over the dealer's shoulder at Ray Vecchio who was moving in quietly from the side. Welsh doubted that Fraser could see Vecchio's approach from the angle at which the drug dealer was holding him, but he hoped that the Mountie could hear that help was near.

"I don't want to kill you here if I don't have to." the dealer whispered confidentially in Fraser's ear. "Too much mess. But if you keep trying to fight back, I'll do it right here, nice and slow. Behave and we'll go for a ride, then it'll be over quickly."

Then the dealer shoved Fraser away roughly. "I guess I underestimated you two. Look at you, like rats, trying to chew your way out." he said. "Get on your knees. Hands behind your back." he ordered Fraser. He reached into his back pockets and tossed Welsh the handcuffs that he'd confiscated earlier.

"Cuff him." he said. He kept the gun on the kneeling Fraser. Welsh had so far been obedient when the younger man's life was threatened. The dealer was counting on that.

He wasn't counting on the barrel of Ray's gun being pressed into the back of his neck.

"Drop your weapon!" Ray said forcefully. Welsh, standing behind Fraser, moved quickly to push the Mountie flat to the floor.

"I said drop it!" Ray repeated, grinding his gun into the flesh of the dealer's neck. The two uniformed policemen stepped into the room and stood on either side of the dealer, guns pointed at him. He reluctantly lowered his weapon and let it fall to the floor.

Welsh got up off the floor and cuffed the dealer with the handcuffs he'd been ordered to use on Fraser. Fraser stood, too, this time not taking very long to regain his balance and stability.

Ray looked at Fraser with concern. Welsh's shirt was soaked through with blood where it was wrapped around Fraser's temple.

"Okay, Benny, let's get you to a doctor." Ray said, as Welsh oversaw the drug dealer's arrest.

"Oh, Ray, it's just a small cut." Fraser said dismissively. "I can put some salve on it at home."

Ray scowled and exhaled loudly. "Benny. You don't have to take care of everything yourself. This isn't the Yukon territories. You can let someone else fix you up. No argument."

Fraser closed his eyes and opened them again. Ray did not look like he was in the mood to hear any rebuttal. And perhaps Ray was right. He did have a tendency to assume that he'd have to take care of things that other people, people who grew up in less lonely circumstances, automatically knew they didn't have to handle on their own.

"Understood, Ray." he said.

Naturally, there was a wait at the emergency room before someone could stitch his wound. When that was done, it was well past the early rising Mountie's bedtime, and Ray drove him straight home.

"I'll see you tomorrow?" Ray asked as he pulled up outside Fraser's building.

"Yes. I'll need to stop by the Consulate in the morning and fill out some paperwork." he gestured at his head. "But then I'm not on duty until after lunch, so I should imagine that I will be at the station by ten."

Ray nodded, satisfied. "Okay, Benny. See you then. Take it easy."

"Thanks, Ray." Fraser smiled warmly. "Good night."

Ten o'clock the next morning came. Eleven came. Ray Vecchio waited at his desk. No Mountie. Ray was surprised. It was very unlike Fraser to be late or absent from where he said he'd be. At lunch time, he decided to stop by the Consulate, but the constable wasn't there, and the man on desk duty wouldn't say when he'd be back.

After work, Ray drove to Fraser's building. He climbed the stairs to Fraser's apartment and knocked. Fraser opened the door and seemed indifferent to seeing Ray.

Ray stepped into the apartment. "It's cold in here." he observed.

"Yes, the heat doesn't seem to be working." Fraser said.

"Have you talked to Dennis?" Ray asked. The building super could be weaselly, but there were laws regulating how long a landlord could go without fixing the heat, and it should have been taken care of.

"Oh, I'm sure someone has." was all Fraser said. He sat down at the bare table and waved his hand to indicate that Ray should sit too.

Diefenbaker was more enthusiastic in his greeting, coming to Ray for attention when he sat down.

"So. How are you feeling?" Ray asked anxiously. Fraser was out of uniform, and he wondered if the stubborn man had actually taken sick leave because of the bump to his head.

Fraser didn't respond for a moment, looking at Ray with an expression that seemed to be holding everything in check, a dam wall.

"Ray, Inspector Thatcher suspended me." he said.

Ray burst out with "You're kidding me!"

Fraser again took his time answering. For a while he stared at the table top.

"No, Ray, I'm afraid not." He sighed, a deep, shuddering sigh, and looked up at his best friend. He wasn't one to for emotional outpourings but he had been hurt where it mattered, his sense of duty, and he did trust Ray to understand.

"After I gave her my report about what happened last night, she said-" Fraser began, still in a flat tone of voice, then paused. Ray waited.

"She said I had recklessly endangered myself, and Lieutenant Welsh."

Fraser didn't elaborate upon the fact that Thatcher seemed to think that both times he'd put himself in danger, when he leaped out and got hit on the head, and later when he'd wrestled for the gun, he'd acted out of a desire for glory, not out of a desire to protect Welsh. Or that he hadn't been able to find the words to explain his actions to his superior without sounding like he was boasting.

"She said that she had already suspected from my file that I was not a team player. She said I had no business being along on the drug bust."

Fraser crossed his arms in front of his chest before he continued speaking.

"She said that my actions were a disgrace to the uniform. She said that when I come off suspension, she'll make sure that I spend the rest of my career behind a desk, so I can't do any more harm."

The last two sentences came out almost inaudibly, and his gaze once again dropped to its intense examination of the table.

"Benny." Ray said, reaching out to touch the other man's shoulder. "She's wrong. You know that."

Fraser mumbled something. Ray thought it was "It doesn't matter."

Fraser's fingertips brushed across the bandage over his temple. Ray caught the gesture.

"Hurts?"

"Mmm." Fraser replied. The cut to his temple wasn't helping him think through the situation.

"The doc gave you something for it, right?" Ray asked.

Fraser reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out an orange vial of pills, unopened. Ray examined it. The instructions said that the strong pain killers needed to be taken with food.

"Did you eat?" Ray asked. Looking around he saw no signs of cooking or food being consumed.

"Yes, Ray." Fraser said. He'd had an apple. Technically, he'd eaten. He'd fed Diefenbaker, of course. He'd never let the wolf suffer just because he wasn't on top form.

Ray sighed exasperatedly. He knew when his friend was only technically telling the truth. "Did you eat enough to take one of these pills?"

Fraser shook his head slightly.

Ray stood up. "Come on. You're coming over for dinner. Ma will be mad if she finds out I let someone go hungry when she could possibly feed them."

Diefenbaker stood up at this pronouncement. He'd been watching the conversation with concern, but this was a good development. There was probably a meatball in it for him, never mind getting his moping human to do something useful.

Ray ruffled the wolf's head. "Yeah, you too. Ma will be happy to see you as well!"

Fraser was slower to stand up. He didn't know if he could take the chaos of the Vecchio household. But he certainly wasn't up to arguing about it. Why not? Just go along, do as he was told. What else was there to do?

Ray had no intention of subjecting Fraser to the family dining table. When he told his mother that the Mountie was recovering from a head injury, however minor, she would hear of nothing but that he should sit up in the guest bedroom, tucked in to bed, and have Ray bring a tray up. Fraser was grateful enough for the quiet to overlook the embarrassment at Ma Vecchio fussing around him like a five year old with a scraped knee.

While Ray waited in the kitchen for his mother to put together generous plates of food for the two men, he made a phone call. Fraser wasn't going to be happy about that, either, but Ray had a head of steam worked up. After dinner, and after Fraser had been persuaded to take one of the pain pills with a glass of water, the doorbell rang.

"I got it." Ray yelled. He went downstairs, and came back up with Lieutenant Welsh.

Fraser tried to get up out of the bed when Lieutenant Welsh entered the room.

"Sit down, Constable, sit down." Welsh was still feeling guilty about the man's injury. And now Ray had told him that Fraser's new superior officer had deemed him some kind of maverick and called him a disgrace, suspended him from duty. That was not good, and he felt responsible for it too.

Welsh had long turned a blind eye to the fact that Constable Fraser's position as liaison at the Consulate did not necessarily entitle him to wander around crime scenes with Detective Vecchio without any proper paperwork to establish a need for Canadian co-operation on any given case. He was loath to interfere with the informal partnership that was doing wonders for the district's arrest rate. He was a pragmatist. If the pair took bad guys off the streets, was he going to worry that every 'i' wasn't dotted, every 't' not crossed? It was a grey area, but Welsh was comfortable working in grey areas.

Constable Fraser's previous boss had been oblivious to the situation. The new inspector apparently favored a more by-the-book approach, and Welsh knew that the lack of documentation on his end would do nothing to help the constable's case. But he, personally, owed it to the man to put up a fight.

"Vecchio told me about your problem." he said bluntly.

"Oh." Fraser felt at a disadvantage. He felt infantilized, sitting on the bed with his boots off while his colleague's superior stood and talked to him. And he was embarrassed that Ray had gone straight to Welsh with the news.

"Now, Constable, I know I've questioned your methods at times, but we both know that you're a damn fine officer." Welsh said. He didn't praise his men to their faces often, but sometimes it was the right choice.

"Well. Thank you for saying so." Fraser said.

"I'm going to go and talk to this Inspector Thatcher." Welsh added. "Don't worry. We'll get this sorted out."

Fraser smiled, but his eyes remained blank.

When Welsh had left, Ray sat beside Fraser on the edge of the bed.

"There you go." he said. "Welsh will put the fear of god into her."

Fraser pinched the bridge of his nose. "Somehow, I think that the inspector has already made up her mind." he said tiredly. "It's nice of Lieutenant Welsh to try."

Ray stood up. "So what, that's it, you're just going to let her push you around?" he said sharply.

"She is my superior officer." Fraser reminded him. He looked up at Ray, and Ray saw dark emptiness in his usually serene expression.

"Ray, after I arrested Gerard for his part my father's murder, it was made very clear to me that- you know that- they don't want me back home. The only places they'll transfer me - they're the last places on earth anyone would want to go."

It was a very blunt statement for the usually circumspect man. He continued:

"I tried so hard to make it work here. It hasn't always been easy. I tried to fit in. You know I've always done my best." He took a deep breath, not waiting for Ray to reply.

"Inspector Thatcher has made it clear that she doesn't want me here, either. If I try to stay, she'll do everything she can to ensure I spend the next thirty years licking envelopes and holding doors open."

There was no question in Ray's mind of what that would do to the active, intelligent man. It was a slow murder to stick him with menial, pointless duties. He was furious. The woman had just come in out of nowhere and decided that Fraser was trouble, and apparently she had the authority to destroy his career.

"What are you going to do?" Ray asked.

"I have no idea." Fraser replied. He pushed the blankets aside and moved to stand up. It was very sweet of Mrs Vecchio to mother him, but right now he felt stifled. He'd shared a lot with Ray, a lot of things that he would normally have left unspoken.

"I think I had better go home now. Thank you for having me for dinner." he said.

Ray rolled his eyes. "I don't think you want to be alone right now, Benny." he said. He was worried. The recent head injury, the emotional upheaval. He didn't want to send Fraser back to solitary brooding in his small, cold apartment.

Fraser pressed his lips together tightly in frustration, clenching his fists and unclenching them before he spoke again.

"I really would rather be alone, if you don't mind. I can walk home."

Ray raised his eyebrows. That was practically a burst of temper from the softly spoken Mountie.

"Okay, Benny, whatever you say." Ray said soothingly. "Of course I'll drive you."

Author's Note:

Trouble! Stick around for some more introspection, a confrontation between two superior officers, oh, and is that a bomb in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?

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