Feedback: Yes, please
Category: AU
Spoilers For: To read this, you really ought to have seen the Due South pilot
Rating: PG13
Archive: Anywhere, just let me know.
Pairing: Fraser/Vecchio
Note: Written for a five things that didn't happen challenge
Characters: They don't belong to me. Is that fair?

Summary: "I first came here on the trail of my father's killer..."

Due North

1. First sight

He's covered in snow and he's wind-burned, too. His voice is what Ma calls milk-chocolate tenor as he says "That's the last time he'll fish over the limit again," and I realize for the fourth time today that I've lost my mind.

Before I can go ask him what the hell, he's getting called in for a yell-at by his lieutenant, or whatever they call them here. Don't I know that drill, huh? But it's another thing I'll never have to deal with again. No pointed words from Welsh, no reprimands formal or informal, no nagging about the outstanding caseload. No badge no gun no radio...

Now he's coming back out of the office. I go to block him from brushing past me, like I would brush, and that lonesomecrazed part of me's thinking about what the bump'll feel like. But he stops before we make contact.

"I do beg your pardon," he says. His eyes are bright, his cheeks pink. He's so clean he almost sparkles. Snowflakes are melting in his hair as he frowns. "You must be from the Chicago police."

"No shit, Sherlock. What gave it away?"

"Your unregistered firearm." He gestures. "Additionally, your colorful mode of dress and the lack of appropriate footwear for the Northwest Territories--"

"Yeah, great." I don't ask how he knows the gun's unregistered. "Now since we both agree I'm from Chicago, you think maybe we can do business?"

"Of course. Excuse me." He pulls off his hat and I see he's like a picture out of Snow White--the pale skin, the dark hair, the red lips. "You're following up on the Vecchio case?"

"You can't follow what you don't got. You been up here chasing Grizzly Adams. Me, I been sending information requests up the chain of command. One after another after--"

"I don't understand. I sent the requested materials and arrested the most likely suspects--"

"Sure you did. I bet you made it a real priority, huh?"

The lips purse. God, is he actually getting prissy on me?

"I presume you're implying that this case hasn't been treated as urgent because the murder victim had unsavory connections."

"You wanna repeat that unsavory part?" My voice goes quiet and the edges of the room are tinged in red, but for a guy who knows I smuggled my gun up here to the Arctic he isn't very observant. In my peripheral vision, I see heads coming up.

"Unsavory. The victim was clearly involved in narcotics trafficking, smuggling, racketeering and even a virtual slave trade in illegal immigrants. His profile indicates he may have been a morally reprehensible character, perhaps seeming to lack any worthy human virtue, although--"

I can't seem to stop myself. I see my fist lash out in slowmo, feel the shock run up my arm when it hits his jaw. Register the smoothness of his skin even as pain sparks through my fingers and I see him fall. His mouth's two colors of red now and Mounties are all over me.

"Nobody talks about my old man that way," I yell, and they dump me in their one cell with the fisherman.

2. Spend $20, get $23

It turns out he sent the files. Four times. He has transmittals and everything, like it makes a difference. Just means Pop was kakked by someone with friends on the C.P.D., and I pretty much guessed that already.

Now the guy--Fraser, he's called--is stuck to me like gum on my thin designer shoe. Right now he's watching me buy a couple of beer. I pay with a twenty--American--and the barkeep gives me twenty--Canadian--in change. Fraser gives him a look and he adds a couple queen-headed coins to the pile.

"The hell are these supposed to be?"

"One and two dollar coins. Colloquially, a loonie and a toonie. Though some favor doubloon as a term for the two-dollar." He turns the two-colored disk of metal over in his fingers, and I eye the lump I raised on his lip as I pull on the beer.

"So. You have almost no serious killers for hire in the whole Northern Territories. I faxed and said who might have done the job and you came up with two whole names."

"Northwest Territories," he says. "Yes, there were two. A father and son team." We're rehashing, because I know now that Fraser shipped the suspects down Chicago-way. And guess what? Their transport crashed, burned, rolled, fell into the river, floated until it hit a Great Lake and then sank like a stone. Where it sat, forgotten, until today when I turned up and the Mounties thought to call and ask if they got there.

"This leaves me up shit creek," I say.

"We'll hike out to their cabin in the morning," Fraser says. "See if we can pick up a trail."

"Great, morning. I can't wait to see what this frozen wasteland looks like by daylight."

His lips quirk, and I feel my heart kind of *stutter*. "You'll have to wait two more months for that, Ray."

3. Mounties, it turns out, beget Mounties

There's an explosion at the hitters' cabin. Afterward they med-evac Benny to Toronto and fly in his kin. The father's gruff, calls me a reckless Yank--which I deserve--but doesn't quite bring himself to smack me the way he wants to. The way I *want* him to. He won't hold son's hand either, even though the nurse says it'll help. When I do it instead the old man just looks pained and leaves the room. Once when I'm out and he's in I hear him berating the guy, ordering him to get up. Like he's conscious, like he's some weird Canadian version of a slacker for being blown up and comatose.

Leave him alone, I think. And hey, Ray, when did he become Benny anyway?

There's a kid sister too. Half sister, actually--I gather Dad Fraser's something of a hound dog. She's stickier than Fraser himself: follows me to the coffee machines, the magazine store, even tracks me to the men's room once before blushing and veering away. Her problem I don't even know.

The wolf just looks at me reproachfully until I finally catch the hint. Why am I staying? Pop got wacked by Zuko's crew and his lapdogs on the Force, just like I guessed. I've done enough damage here, and I've got business outstanding at home. It's time to go.

So I dodge the kid sister, sneak outside, and hail a cab. As I get in I realize I'm seeing the sun for the first time in seven days.

4. Fast Cars and Hot Bullets

I'm still telling myself to forget about him, to keep my mind on business, when he turns up on my doorstep. Bashed up, wearing a crash collar, his arm in a cast. His Mountie hat is perched on his head but he's dressed in civvies--pants, suspenders, a wool shirt. He smiles and it's like someone just fried me two eggs, over easy, and brought them to me in bed.

He walked all the way from the airport.

I've packed my womenfolk off to Florida, and he's caught me midway through an inventory of Pop's gun collection. I've been cleaning, oiling, and loading for three solid hours.

"It's not like I have a plan or anything," I say, nervous, showing him the armory. If I had half a brain I'd try to get him out of here.

"They come. We arrest them."

Right, Benny, I think. And if it was your dad, you'd be hauling them off to jail instead of putting bullets between their eyes. I don't say this. He can believe he's that strong if he wants to.

"You do understand some of these people we'll be taking out are cops, right?"

He doesn't get a chance to answer me. Machine gunfire cuts a line through Pop's house and we hit the floor behind the pool table. Distantly, I hear the gas tank of my Riv exploding out on the street.

"The bullets are coming from a height," he says. "It's likely the shooter is firing at an elevation of twenty-two feet."

"Capelli's roof," I answer. Then, before I can think about it, I grab him by the suspenders, pull him close and kiss him hard on the lips. His eyes widen a little, and there's a pause. All the air is about to woosh out of me but then he kisses back.

Okay. *Now* I'm ready to die.

"They've come," I say, kind of breathless.

"They have," he says, voice thin. "Shall we go and arrest them?"

"You go through the garage, Fraser. I'll take the guy on the roof."

Afterward, all I remember is the spray of blood when I take out Zuko's chief lieutenant and the sight, two seconds later, of Benny clinging one-armed to the roof of their van. If ever there was a guy who needed to get out of the city before it killed him, it's this Mountie. He brings them to a stop, and somehow it turns out he's right and I'm wrong. I limp over, put my gun to Frankie's temple and I don't pull the trigger.

It's those eyes. Something in Fraser's face makes me haul out the cuffs, keeping my voice steady as I read the fucker his rights.

5. Exile

It's my turn to surprise him, dropping in on the North Pole like Santa coming back from his route. I figure it's a good sign the wolf doesn't growl to warn me off, just moves aside so I can reach the door and knock.

"Ray," he says. Surprised but--I think--pleased too. When did I stop being Detective Vecchio? He gestures me into his hovel.

"This is it?" I say. "This is your place? I gotta tell you, Benny, it's--"

He's Canadian, so he can't tell me to shut up. Instead he presses his mouth to mine. It's long and slow, this kiss, almost experimental. The pain from the bullet wound in my hip goes away completely. He's so shy when he slips me a little tongue that I suddenly wonder if he's a virgin.

"Actually," he says then, voice soft, forehead resting on mine, eyes just an inch away, "This is my father's cabin." His fingers play with the zipper on my brand-new downfilled jacket. "Ray, what are you doing here?"

"Hey, even dead guys gotta live somewhere."

"Dead..."

I hand him the newspaper article, the Tribune account of my gory death-by-mob. "Zuko ever thinks I'm alive, he goes after my family."

A slow nod. I see him getting it. That I can't go back. That I'll never see Frannie or Ma or even the fucking Sears Tower again. And he struggles for a minute with that, because it goes against his basic sense of justice and setting things right. Then...

"Understood." It's all he says.

And suddenly that's just too much. I pull away, break eye contact. Kick off my stupid heavy boots--can you believe it, they're called mukluks--and make my way into the room. The *only* room. And my eye falls on the desk... "What the hell's this?"

"Nothing." He snatches the paper, tossing it into the fire before I can see more than a couple words. Transfer. Consulate.

I'm a moron, I think. The words come up slow, like they're bigger than my throat. "You going somewhere, Benny?"

But he turns from the brightening flames, giving me that breakfast in bed smile of his again, only now it's a special: eggs, toast, sausage, fresh-squeezed orange juice and maybe pancakes too. "No, Ray," Fraser says. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Okay then," I say, and then since there's no TV in the joint I figure it's time to start kissing him again, starting now and going until dawn, until the sun comes up in the springtime.

--end--