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Title: The widening gyre
Fandom: due South
Pairing: Fraser/Vecchio UST
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 884
Summary: Fraser and Ray swap clothes in preparation for going undercover in a gay bar.
Author's Notes: This is for blackcurrant, who asked for more like "I want it for my own." mrs_laugh_track gave it a once-over and provided the gay bar's name.

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"We gotta blend in at the Junkshop, Fraser. We don't want them to smoke us yet. We go as a couple." Ray's eyes are fixed on the road. "The question is what do we wear. I'm coming up empty." He chuckles. "I should really lay in some Madonna t-shirts for this kind of cover."

"You're welcome to borrow anything of mine." Fraser expects one of Ray's usual harangues on the inferiority of his wardrobe. He's hoping for it. It would help make this the ordinary Tuesday of five minutes ago, before Ray said, We go as a couple.

Instead, Ray's eyes narrow. "You may have something there, Benny."

###

"Wow, I do look gay. Weird, huh? I mean, you wear this all the time and you don't look gay in it."

Fraser finds the whole idea of "looking gay" idiotic. He is a homosexual, so he must look like one no matter what he's wearing. The fact that right now he's wearing a brightly-patterned shirt in a silk-polyester blend, trousers with a sharp crease, and well-shined, ill-fitting shoes--that doesn't make him any more or less attracted to men than he was before.

What Ray's wearing, though, is sending Fraser's attraction spiraling out of control. The falcon cannot hear the falconer.

Ray is right about one thing: Fraser's flannel shirt looks entirely different on him. They're the same height, but even so the shirt is too big; the bones of his slim wrist look fragile and incongruous in the heavy plaid cuff. His hands have plainly never held an ax or a saw--although that doesn't, Fraser clarifies, mean that Ray doesn't know how to work. There's a smudge of typewriter ink on his middle finger, and the three new scars scattered across his body from their cases weren't his first, by any means.

Fraser can't help imagining Ray in his other clothes. His white cable-knit sweater, his sweatpants, his RCMP t-shirt, his union suit--oh, dear God, his uniform.

The thought is erotically transgressive, of course--"kinky," Ray would call it. But at the same time, the purity of his longing is painful. The intimacy such a loan would imply is--he doesn't know how to finish the sentence.

Ray plucks at his collar. "I feel like I'm about to start singing about cross-dressing. At least I haven't got suspenders, huh?"

Fraser blinks. "Those jeans are meant to be worn with a belt."

"Don't they have Monty Python in Canada? 'I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay, I sleep all night and I work all day'--okay, I don't know any more of the words, but he's got Mountie back-up singers and he's a cross-dresser and I'm pretty sure 'suspenders and a bra' is in there somewhere."

"I see." Fraser files away an image of Ray leaning forward, Fraser's undershirt and suspenders curving over false breasts, Ray's green eyes rimmed with kohl and a dark, modacrylic-fiber curl falling across his cheek.

Ray waves a hand in front of Fraser's face. "Earth to Fraser!" Fraser can smell him, can smell them, their scents all mixed up together. The way it should be all the time.

The way he wants it to be, at least. "Yes, Ray?"

"Don't look so worried, I'll wash everything before I give it back."

"Please don't." Careless. He bites his tongue. He can't afford to be careless tonight.

"You are way too polite for your own good, you know that? Like I'm gonna make you schlep all this to the laundromat."

"Thank you, Ray." He gathers himself to sound composed. "Our cover?" He coughs. So much for composed. "That is--how far should we take the charade--"

Ray flushes. "We don't have to make out or anything, Benny."

"I never supposed that you meant us to." Fraser feels a flare of disappointment anyway.

"Just, uh--" The red spreads down Ray's neck and slips under Fraser's collar. "Just what we normally do is probably fine." So Fraser isn't the only one who's noticed them touching more and more frequently.

Ray's discomfort sends another helpless wave of affection crashing over him. Ray is obviously uneasy with the idea of himself as homosexual; but he never hesitated. Not really. Ray does what he has to in the service of justice. The complaining is misdirection, sleight-of-hand: don't look at what my hands are doing, just watch my mouth. Whatever you do, don't tell me I'm generous, honorable, intelligent, a good friend--

Of course, Fraser has no objection to watching Ray's mouth. "I agree, Ray," he says honestly. "It's chilly outside. Take my jacket."

There are decades (possibly centuries) of acquired symbolism in the loan of outerwear. Rebecca, lettermen jackets, Rebel Without a Cause, they're all jostling together in Fraser's mind as he lifts the jacket off a hook and holds it out. Is it his imagination, or does Ray hesitate, his fingers hovering and then smoothing the leather before he slings it over his shoulders? That, at least, will smell like Ray tomorrow, and the next day.

Fraser wonders what he can do on the drive to the bar to make Ray sweat.