"Second Thoughts"
By Viridian5
9/30/00

RATING: R; Fraser/Kowalski.  If m/m interaction bothers
you, walk away now.
SPOILERS: "Odds," "Easy Money"
SUMMARY: Ray's the one who was injured, but Fraser's dealing
with a related pain all his own.
ARCHIVAL/DISTRIBUTION: Hexwood and Serge. If some kind
person feels that this story is appropriate for DSX and wouldn't
mind posting it, that would be great as well.  Anywhere else too, as
long as you ask me first.
FEEDBACK: can be sent to Viridian5@aol.com
DISCLAIMERS: All things _due South_ belong to Alliance no
matter how much I want Ray K to belong to me.  No infringement
intended.  Suing me would be a waste of time.  Besides, I'd just
kick you in the head.
NOTES: This is a companion story to "Enabling." Read-through
by Te.
#2 in the Thinking Twice series

=========================
"Second Thoughts"
By Viridian5
=========================

Ray had his hand on my shoulder to comfort me and stop my late-
breaking shivers.  To comfort *me*, after everything he'd suffered
tonight.  I turned my head so I could feel the living warmth of his
skin against mine.  His other hand stayed wrapped around my
hand, making him stand so close to me that he could embrace me
if he moved further forward.  If his head and neck injuries hadn't
made him stiff and too sensitive to touch.  I squeezed his hand
again and opened my eyes to look directly at his battered face. 
"I swear to you, Ray, that I will endeavor to deserve your trust."
God knew I didn't deserve him.

His mouth twitched upward in a little smile.  It looked painful. 
"That's all I need to hear."

If my own conscience hadn't succeeded in rightly tormenting me
for my actions tonight, the sight of his face would take up the
slack.  Ray's ordeal had swollen his face on one side, making it
look as if he wore a misshapen mask.  That the other side retained
its usual, angular shape only made the total package worse to see
somehow.  The broken blood vessels under his skin and in his left
eye gave him the look of something that had been repainted, badly,
as well as warped.  He'd been defaced.  He couldn't even move
with his usual, perpetual, jittery energy, instead holding himself
motionless in place to avoid jarring his head.

He could have been paralyzed. 

He could have died.

And it was all my doing, my fault.  I hadn't dropped the crate on
his head, but my careless disregard for his safety and my lust for
the hunt had led to it.  That I had only the best intentions amounted
to little when compared to the damage done.

I'm aware that people consider me to be logical, methodical.  Yet
it was my partner, thought impetuous and reckless by so many,
who'd suggested we wait for backup.  Ray often functioned as the
voice of sense in such situations.  I'd refused to heed his caution. 
These men had stolen the museum's art treasures and intended
to sell them into unscrupulous private hands, robbing the public. 
They had to be stopped immediately. 

I didn't give it a second thought.  I barely even waited for Ray to
follow me.  Like a hound with the scent of his prey in the wind, in
my exhilaration at the nearing conclusion of the chase I charged
forward almost mindlessly.

Into disaster and nearly tragedy.

We split up to cover the vast expanse of space inside the
warehouse.  I thought nothing of it until ten minutes later when
I heard Ray's cry of surprise and then pain from across the room
and ran toward it.  I didn't let myself think about what it might
mean.  I couldn't.  Seeing Ray lying motionless under the large
crate and the corpse of one of the two criminals left me chilled
and frightened.  Thank God he'd started to move and moan after
that moment.  I noticed the perpetrator escaping but had no time
for him--though Dief left in pursuit--as a rush of adrenaline gave
me the strength to yank the crate off my partner.  The broken
corpse, which had probably saved him, lying atop his I threw
aside as quickly. 

My fault.

I crouched next to him and resisted the urge to turn him over so I
could see all of his face.  I couldn't tell how much of the blood on
and spattered around him belonged to him.  The corpse atop him
had been a mess, and I knew head injuries bled completely out of
proportion to how large the wound was.  I told myself these things
to remain calm and avoid envisioning Ray's face laid open in an
area I couldn't currently see.

Ray groaned and said, "I can't believe it hurts worse with the crate
*off*."

Ray actually handed me his cell phone and said that he thought he
might need an ambulance.  I knew him to be badly injured when
he wouldn't move anything other than that arm since usually you
couldn't keep him still.

Diefenbaker returned after I finished that call and one to
Lieutenant Welsh.  The criminal had slammed the door in
front of Dief and escaped.

"We get the guy?" Ray asked.

"No, Ray."

"Don't worry. We'll clean his clock later on."

That wouldn't be the last time that he tried to comfort me.

With the both of us unwilling to risk damaging him further by
moving him, I spoke to his back and the visible right side of his
face during the agonizing wait for the ambulance. Ray joked with
me, but I could hear the pain in his voice.  I tried to keep the terror
out of mine, but the guilt leaked through.  I could hear it.

Huey, Dewey, and Lieutenant Welsh arrived just before the
ambulance did and agreed to take Diefenbaker home while I went
to the hospital with Ray.  Welsh commended us on retrieving the
stolen paintings, but I had too much of my attention on Ray as the
emergency medical technicians put a cervical collar around his
neck and strapped him to a backboard for transport to do more
than murmur positive sounds back to Ray's commanding officer. 
At least I could see Ray's face now and noticed no serious open
wounds, though the swelling had already started.  Most of the
blood on him seemed to be the criminal's.

Still, he was in a collar and strapped to a backboard, barely able to
move.

"We'll find the bastard who did this, Constable," Welsh said.

"I'm sure it will please Ray to know that, sir."

When we reached the hospital and finally had a doctor attend to
Ray, my guilt increased.  We had seen this doctor a few times
before, and she greeted him by saying, "I thought I told you I
didn't want to see either of you back here."

"Yer too charming, doc," Ray answered.  "I needed an excuse to
see you again."

Doctor Takeshi gave me a look that seemed to see down into my
soul and know that if not for me, Ray wouldn't be injured now.

At least he didn't look quite so bad once she'd cleaned the blood
from his face to see his injuries better.  Most of it *had* been from
the other man.

As we waited for Ray to be admitted for X-rays, I talked to distract
him.  I didn't want him to worry about what the X-rays might find
or to go crazy from boredom.  He told me that he'd be counting
the holes in the ceiling tiles if I hadn't been there.  While they'd
unstrapped him from the backboard, he still wore a movement-
restricting cervical collar.  He fidgeted as best he could regardless,
but looking around the room remained out of his reach.  To my
shame, I stared at the white expanse of collar the whole time so I
wouldn't see his damaged and misshapen face.

That our talk also distracted me from brooding was an undeserved
side effect.  Not that I didn't manage to slip some brooding in now
and then.  How many times had I seen Ray Vecchio in a hospital
gown after one of our cases or my crusades had taken its toll on
him? Now my new Ray suffered the same.  Again.

At one point Ray told me an Inuit story of his own, sharing the
tale of Eskimo Joe.  When I told him that "Eskimo" is a pejorative
term, he told me that it wasn't his fault that Joe had named himself
that.  When I asked why Eskimo Joe had a habit of throwing
walruses over his head, he answered, "The people in yer stories
do bizarre things all the time, but I have to explain mine?  Unfair. 
Okay, okay.  See, his father and his father's father and so on all
threw walruses over their heads, so it's tradition, but the origin
of the practice was lost in, uhm, antiquity."

Ray refused to let me call his parents, saying he'd tell them after he
found out what the X-rays had to say.  No reason to worry them
yet.  I had a sudden mental image of myself calling Mrs. Kowalski
to tell her that her son had died because I was a reckless idiot.

The X-rays showed no broken bones, and Doctor Takeshi didn't
think he had a concussion, so she released him from the collar
and the hospital, though she told him he should have someone
wake him every hour in case he had a concussion after all.  I
volunteered, then called a cab for us while Ray received the
prescription he'd have to fill tomorrow for a painkiller.

Ray said nothing during the ride home, simply lying back against
the front seat's headrest looking tired and beaten.  He put his
happy face back on when we reached his apartment, saying that he
had to find a way to buy some pudding since his head hurt so much
that chewing would be out of the question.  "You can't argue with
an excuse to eat pudding all the time, Fraser," he said.  "And don't
you tell me that baby food would be healthier, because there's no
way in hell I'm eating that.  I found a plus to all this, and I'm
going with it."

"I wouldn't dream of it, Ray."

Ray refused my offers of help, preferring to navigate his apartment
without my guiding hand on his arm and saying that he could
undress and dress himself for bed.  He did let me choose a T-shirt
with a badly stretched neck for him, though I couldn't help
believing that he did that to make me feel better. 

"What's with the nightlight, Fraser?"

"It's for me, so I can check in on you without hurting the both of
us."

"That's cool then." He smiled and started to shake his head, but
quickly stopped when the motion pained him.  He gritted his
teeth and said, "Started to feel like a baby."

Watching him try to find a comfortable position for his head on the
pillow proved to be another kind of torture.  "If I could take some
of your injuries on myself, I would."

"Only *some*?  That's not buddies."

For the first four hours he really didn't need me to wake him since
he slept not at all.  The cadence of his breathing told me that even
though I stayed in the living room when I wasn't checking on him. 
It impressed me that he didn't strike out in his growing irritation
with his pain, his inability to sleep despite his fatigue, and my
unnecessary hourly visits.  Similar situations had made me quite
unpleasant to be around in the past.

A little while after my third visit I heard his breathing settle into
the pace of sleep and sighed in relief.  And continued to use my
time in the living room to castigate myself.  I'd been here before. 
Every time I swore I wouldn't needlessly endanger my partner
again.  Every time I ceased to think and just threw myself in,
giving no thought to the threat my partner faced.

I think Ray would walk through Hell for me.  He'd already flung
himself through glass a number of times.  Why did I keep forcing
him into situations where he had to do it?

About 40 minutes later I heard moaning from his bedroom and
rushed in, not knowing if the pain had finally overwhelmed him
or if he suffered through a nightmare.  As I watched him twist and
writhe, I came closer, prepared to wake him up.  I stopped when I
saw how he was moving, the way his head fell back and his back
arched, the flex of his long fingers, the curve of his lips....  I
stopped when I smelled the rich scent of his musk.

Knowing that I had no right to be watching this, I backed away
until I stood in the doorway.  I should have left the room entirely,
but I was obsessed by the thought that this was how he would
move, this was how he would sound.  I wanted to be the person
inspiring this, wanted to be the one arousing him as the sight and
scent and sound of him aroused me.  I couldn't look away.

"No, it's great.  I'm good," he moaned suddenly in a voice thick
with sex, and I was lost.  Arousal hardly caused a loss of all motor
function, but what I faced at that moment certainly felt like it.

He cried out as he achieved orgasm, and I felt an answering pull
within myself.  I needed to leave and stroke myself to my own
release.  I had to be clear-headed when I returned to wake him
instead of stupid with lust.

Lust left me so stupid that it took me some time to realize that
he was awake and staring at me. I started to apologize, but he
forestalled me by standing up and nearly falling over.  It looked
like he did it on purpose to distract me. 

Ray should have been angry with me--I almost wanted him to be--
but he still tried to make me feel better.  He tried to deflect me
further by joking about what had happened to him, then told me
he wanted to use the bathroom.  When I still didn't move to let
him pass, he told me that he didn't need me to carry him in or
clean him up, then looked horrified and fled to the bathroom as
quickly as he could while still keeping his head level.

The conversation that ensued once he felt ready to face me again.... 
This time he accepted my apology and, to my relief, held me
responsible for my actions.  I resolved once again to take better
care, to refuse to recklessly endanger him in bizarre ways.  He
told me that he knew that running in as my backup helped me to
continue behaving as I did, but he couldn't risk me being hurt by
refusing to back me up.  I could swear that I heard love in his
voice, maybe even a love like what I felt for him.... 

Now was not the time for confessions of love.  Not that kind of
love.

I wanted to touch him but didn't dare, and not for the usual
reasons.  I simply didn't want to add to his pain.  All right,
maybe it was close to my usual reason.

What he told me confirmed that I would have to change my
behavior by myself, which was as it should be.  Then he
forgave me.

How could he possibly?

I would endeavor to deserve his trust.  He'd walk through Hell for
me, and I loved him.  How could I do any less?


**********************THE END***********************


More Viridian5 stories can be found in The Green Room at
http://members.tripod.com/~drovar/viridian/
Fandoms represented: due South, Hard Core Logo, Twitch City,
X-Files, Once a Thief, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, Angel,
Two Guys and a Girl (was Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place),
X-Men, Doctor Who

"Will it fly?"
"There's only one way to find out."
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