Chapter 5 - Perspectives

Ray's week was not going well, not at all. Monday and Tuesday had been a wash, obviously. The realization that Fraser was still struggling to recover from his, after all still very recent, shooting and surgery had helped Ray find some more patience for the Mountie not being with him to chase down the criminal they were after. But that didn't mean he didn't miss his constant partner's presence. He had forgotten how boring and lonely work could be when you were flying solo, with no one to spar with over the case and other trivialities of life. He sure as hell hoped that Fraser was wrong, that this wasn't going to be a permanent change.

The highlight of Wednesday, which at the behest of Agent Whitman, Ray spent going through financial records to try to find anywhere that Loman could have transferred funds that he might be trying to access now, was receiving a phone call from Fraser, from his shiny new phone, to give Ray the number. It was a relief to know that he could reach Fraser without having to physically locate him.

It was just before five on Wednesday when Ray finally found something that might be useful in the endless financial records, some bank transfers that he believed might point to Loman socking away money under his girlfriend, Camilla Dawson's accounts. He put in a query to the bank, but given how late in the day it was, he knew not to expect results.

The week was trickling away fast, and Ray knew to his frustration and dismay that with every day the chances that Loman was still in Illinois, still even in the United States, grew slimmer and slimmer. Thursday morning he stopped by Welsh's office then left the station before the egregious Whitman or the repulsive Thoreau could find him. He had a hunch about Camilla Dawson, and he wouldn't be satisfied until he tracked her down.

o-O-o-O-o

Agent Whitman was having a lousy week. For starters, could his boss bend over further to kiss the State department's ass? Not without needing to see a chiropractor afterwards. There was noise from the Ecuadorians about sending someone to check things out, which was just great. What they needed was more hostility and tension. Vecchio had been sour on the Bureau being involved to start with. Whitman knew full well that making the man do their grunt work wouldn't improve that situation, but jesus, it'd be nice to walk in somewhere just once and have the locals behave like it might help to have the Bureau's resources at their disposal.

And then, Thoreau's stunt. Thoreau could be a real asshole sometimes. Sure, Whitman backed his partner up in front of Welsh, helped build up Thoreau's argument as to why he went after the Mountie. That's partners. And he didn't disagree that there was something freakish in the Mountie's ability to put fellow cops behind bars without actually being IA, but having to remind Thoreau none too gently over dinner that they'd agreed that Thoreau would cut the physical shit out, that wasn't his favorite part of the week so far.

Thoreau had a hard-on for rogue cops. Actually, it was ironic in Whitman's eyes- Thoreau had worked up this personal mythos that the Mountie was some kind of vigilante, but Whitman was willing to bet that if it turned out the Mountie was innocent, they'd find that he and Thoreau had a lot in common, some kind of zeal for justice thing that Whitman couldn't relate to. Except he couldn't imagine the straight-laced Mountie ever referring to someone as a "Fucking smug bastard who needed to be taken down a notch."

But wasting time interrogating him hadn't got them anywhere. Whitman had done his best to show Thoreau that even if the Mountie had been involved, there was no reason to think he'd lead them to Loman now. Basically, all they'd achieved was to piss Vecchio off more, get Welsh's back up, and apparently offend the entirety of the 27th district who thought the Mountie walked on water. And he had to keep up the appearance of solidarity with a partner who was pissed as hell at him and who, frankly, he wasn't too fond of either right now.

This wasn't the first time Thoreau had gone off on some kind of side crusade, sometimes his instincts were good, sometimes he jumped too soon on shit that wasn't even real. Whitman had the sinking suspicion this was one of those times. So, great, he got to be the one to try to appease Vecchio, see what lead they could scare up, keep Thoreau from digging himself deeper into a hole, and answer the phone every time his boss called demanding a progress report.

His instinct that he didn't want to know where Thoreau had been taking off to when they were off duty was confirmed when Thoreau greeted him on Thursday morning with a growled, "Would have been helpful if someone clued us in that Constable Fraser's screwing the Inspector." So, great. Barking up the wrong tree, wasting time, and failing completely to work well with the locals. Not calculated to make anyone upstairs happy.

Perhaps he should have taken the alternative career as an English teacher that he'd always wondered about. Because this whole set up was for the birds. But they had a major league criminal to catch, and if Whitman wasn't mistaken in his reading of the Vecchio's absence from his desk and Welsh's waffling, Vecchio must have turned something up in his paperchase. Following any kind of lead that didn't involve harassing Mounties seemed like a damned fine idea.

o-O-o-O-o

The last half of the week was going much better for Meg and Ben. After some amount of ferrying Ben around on Tuesday evening, because she needed to be with him, but he needed to be home to take care of Diefenbaker, Meg had decided that just for the moment she was going to ignore any trivial rules about pets in her apartment.

Wednesday night after she left work at the Consulate, Meg picked up Fraser, telling him to bring his overnight bag and pack for the wolf to come along too.

And in another act of unprecedented spontaneity, Meg called in to the Consulate to let Turnbull know that she would be out the next day. She saw no reason not to take Thursday off to spend with her lover, leaving the Consulate in the tender care of the officious Ovitz and the bumbling Turnbull. And she didn't care! Let them make a total disaster of things. Meg deserved a day off. She had come to the decision that she and Ben both deserved a lot more happiness together than they'd managed to find separately, and she was accustomed to acting swiftly once she'd made a decision about something.

Diefenbaker was more than happy to have a new place to sniff around. He even seemed to understand that getting on the furniture was not going to lead to a pleasant outcome. Meg was skeptical but pleased that he seemed to have accepted her place in his owner's life. Well, mostly. If she didn't count being bailed up in the corner of her own bedroom while Fraser was brushing his teeth before bed. Meg could swear the wolf was interrogating her as to her intentions, and began to question her own sanity when she found herself replying.

"No, of course it's not casual. I don't invite men to sleep over casually. Don't sniff at me like that. Yes, I know he was yours first." Rolling her eyes at the wolf. And then baring her teeth? Well, it was a message the wolf seemed to get. The part where Fraser emerged from the bathroom and just grinned at her in a way that said he knew exactly what was going on made it even more disconcerting. Still, it was bound to happen, and Meg hoped that was the last of it, because she really didn't fancy putting a submission hold on the wolf. But her house, her man, she wasn't going to let the wolf boss her around.

Thursday morning, Fraser rose later than was his habit, sleeping in until the daring hour of seven am, and then padded into Meg's kitchen in a t-shirt and boxer shorts to see what he could assemble for breakfast. Her kitchen was as beautifully appointed as the rest of the apartment, but it didn't seem to get much use. He was astonished upon opening the oven door to see if it was gas or electric to find several sweaters neatly stacked on the as-new shiny clean oven racks. Apparently she used it as storage.

She did have the bare basics for making pancakes, although it was unclear to Fraser WHY she had flour, considering that she obviously never baked. He used a tupperware container for a mixing bowl, and when Meg awoke and wandered in to join him in her nightgown, it was to find breakfast ready and waiting. At least she had a patriotic quantity of maple syrup in the fridge.

o-O-o-O-o

Ray found the break he was looking for at quarter past ten, the fourth nail salon he'd been into that morning. His early start from the station had been pointless, none of the salons opened until ten, so he'd sat in the Riviera really wishing he had someone to talk to, even a deaf wolf demanding donuts.

At the fourth salon he showed the picture of Camilla, pointing out the artwork on her nails. A woman who worked there looked at the picture.

"Yes! I know her! Cami! She's a good customer. Why do you want to know?" Suddenly she was suspicious.

With no Mountie around to act as his conscience, Ray went with a blatant lie. "Well, miss, we've been asked to find her by the lawyer responsible for her great uncle's estate. Turns out she is his only living relative, and she stands to inherit a bundle." He sold this with a broad smile.

"Ohhhh..." the manicurist seemed impressed. "Well, I'll tell you, you can go ask her Mama." She wrote down an address for him on the back of a business card.

Ray went back to the Riviera. Finally, he had something. The girl's mother had proved impossible to trace previously, having apparently moved around a lot without benefit of leases and lived in shared accommodations where her name wasn't always on the utility bills. He'd found the last place she lived, but not her current residence. Maybe she'd be able to tell him where Camilla might be. He just wanted someone to share the thrill of the chase, picking up the scent, with him. He shrugged and picked up his phone. On leave or not, Fraser at least owed it to him to put up with his exultation at getting a step closer to Loman.

o-O-o-O-o

After a long, lazy breakfast, Meg suggested a quiet day in. She knew that her physically active lover must be going crazy at his confinement, but she also knew that the more he allowed his body time to repair the damage done to it, the sooner he'd be back running over rooftops. Not that she was sure she was happy about that, but for the meantime, it was light activity only.

Fraser was delighted, on nosing into the bookshelf in Meg's living room, to find a well read copy of Kipling's Just So Stories. He had faint but happy memories of his mother reading that book to him when he was a young boy, and it seemed like a good sign that she still had a copy, obviously treasured. Inside he found the inscription, "To Margaret, on her birthday, 1968, Gran and Grampa."

Meg, having put their small number of breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, wandered in to find him looking at it. She'd immediately, greedily, demanded that he read to her. He had such a beautiful voice. She loved the way his carefully cultivated elocution would sometimes give way to a word or two in the tell-tale drawl that spoke of his home in the far North West.

They were camped on the living room floor, his back leaning against the front of her sofa, she seated between his outstretched legs, leaning back into his good side, his arms wrapped around her so he could hold the book and read it over her shoulder.

He had just finished reading The Elephant's Child, about the young pachyderm that kept getting spanked by aunts and uncles of various species for asking too many questions. It was a story that Fraser could relate to. Meg closed her eyes, letting his voice, his smell, his warm touch suffuse her.

The stories were narrated by the author to his 'Best Beloved', and every time Fraser read those words, she heard his voice tremble slightly, powerful meaning coming through his light tone.

Now Ben was beginning The Cat that Walked by Himself. Diefenbaker sat with his back turned ostentatiously during the feline literary moment. Fraser loved the opportunity to use the words in the story to say things he wasn't ready to. He could feel how Meg shivered when he said it, a sort of contented wriggle that drove him crazy.

"Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild." he read.

There was that shiver, her lithe, soft body moving against his, and it made his voice turn husky and low as he continued reading. Meg thought his voice sounded like pure sex when it got like that. How had she overlooked certain... elements of his personality for so long? She bit her lip, thinking of his mouth pressed against hers.

"Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn't even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways." Ben read, with a dry tone of humor to his voice. The comparison between his stark bachelor apartment and her cozy home was apt. Meg giggled.

Then his phone rang, and as Ben shifted to find it where he'd placed it on her coffee table and answer it, Meg wondered why she'd thought the damned thing was a good idea at all. She didn't want the magic of this moment broken. No other man she'd been with would have been so comfortable in his own skin sitting reading to her from a children's book they both loved.

The suitable men were all good at the proper number of red roses, and needless to say the correct clarity, color, cut and carats of diamonds for each holiday occasion, but not at letting their guard down and being playful with her. And there was just no way any of them would have called her "best beloved" in that throaty voice that turned two words into the sweetest, hottest caress she'd ever felt. Playful could be... playful could be good. Very good.

"Ray!"

Meg was amused at the surprised delight with which Fraser greeted his friend. It wasn't like many people had his number, in fact just she and Ray, which meant that surprised delight was hardly called for.

"Oh, that's great news, Ray. You went back down to the South Side? And you have an address? The girl's mother? That's a good start. I'm sorry I can't be there, too."

Meg gathered that it was something to do with the Loman case. She knew Ben was itching to be a part of it. She was still sitting curled up to him, and with the hand that wasn't holding the phone, he rubbed her shoulder, letting her know he was still present with her, even though they'd been interrupted.

"I really think that waiting for back up might be advisable. No, I know time is short."

Meg could hear concern in Ben's warm tones.

"Well, all right, but be careful, then. Call me if you find anything. Understood. Good bye, Ray."

He reached over her to set the phone back down, and then snuggled Meg back into the position she'd been in when they were interrupted. She liked the firm, possessive way he pulled her back to him. It wasn't rough, but it was very definite, very sure of what he wanted. Again she marveled at how touch seemed to transform him. Although, to be honest, she had to wonder what it did to her, whether she'd been missing this her whole life, too, because she had never felt so cherished, not since the first flush of romance with Rafael. And that wasn't real, but this was.

"Now, where was I?" Fraser said. He picked up the book again, and started where he left off, with the story of the taming of the first Man in the world by the first Woman.

"-she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. She picked out a nice dry Cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the Cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail-down, across the opening of the Cave; and she said, 'Wipe you feet, dear, when you come in, and now we'll keep house.'"

As he read, Ben wondered at the position he was in. It was such a short time since he'd gone from "I'm not sure if she likes me or despises me," to "Having her in my arms is the most natural thing in the world." It was a fragile feeling, a spring shoot pushing upwards from dark earth sort of feeling, and he treasured it. It seemed to fill him with a warmth that was more than the shared body heat of the two of them pressed together.

On the one hand, he hoped that he would never learn to take it for granted. On the other, he hoped it would last long enough that he'd have the chance to remember not to take it for granted. He paused his reading to brush the hair aside from her her shoulder and lean down to kiss her soft skin where her nightgown strapped crossed it. She must know how beautiful she was, although he had a mind to stop reading altogether and start telling her that, maybe showing her that.

Just at that moment, Fraser's phone rang again. He snatched it up, his mood divided evenly between extreme irritation at the timing of interruption and concern that Ray was calling back so soon.

"Benton Fraser speaking." he answered crisply, expecting to hear Ray. Instead he heard silence, then a crash, then the dial tone.

He stared at the phone a moment after taking it from his ear.

In an urgent voice he said, "I think Ray's in trouble."

Author's Note: They're both the Cat.

As always, I thank you for reading and commenting. It makes the effort extra worthwhile.