mrsronweasley (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mrsronweasley) wrote2006-09-18 11:21 pm
mrsronweasley) wrote2006-09-18 11:21 pm
Fic: "Practical Diplomacy" (dS, AU, NC-17, part 1.)
Written for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
getfraserlaid:
Title: "Practical Diplomacy"
Pairing: F/K
Rating: NC-17
Prompt: 76. Fraser/Kowalski (AU) – Ray as professor, Fraser as graduate student, a little bit of inappropriate fraternization, if you will.
Summary: Benton Fraser gets a lesson in the ins and outs of graduate school, politics and desire. (14,780 words)
Author's Notes: Well, it's done. And the pigs are flying. With all of my eternal, neverending, flaming thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
soupytwist for holding my hand through this whole thing, looking over the early drafts and picking up on everything that I wasn't happy with and making it better, even at 3 o'clock in the morning. (The girl doesn't sleep.) And with same huge, neverending, flaming thanks to brooklinegirl for breaking down exactly what wasn't working as a whole and pointing me in the right direction. (All the remaining mistakes are mine.)
Thus, this whole entire escapade into lands of Longer Fic, I dedicate to both of you, you wonderful, smart, gorgeous ladies.
And, finally, with huge thanks to all those cheerleaders along the way, who encouraged and never lost faith thatthe porn this was going to happen sooner or later. And, hey, it's only...three days after the deadline. That's...that's all right, right?
* * *
Part 1.
* * *
“Professor Kowalski? Uh- Ray?”
Ben poked his head through the half-open door. His gaze immediately fell on the familiar figure of his advisor, sitting with one knee propped up on his desk.
“Yeah, Ben, come in. Sit down.” Ray waved him in without looking away from the computer screen. He didn’t look at Ben until Ben was seated directly across from him, shifting a bit in an attempt to find a position that he could settle into more or less comfortably. His starched shirt felt too constricting under his tie, his jacket too warm a burden.
“Ben, relax. It’s just a first draft.” Finally looking up at him, Ray flashed a toothy grin and slid a thick, familiar-looking folder toward Ben.
The last of his thesis. Ben knew that it was, technically, the first of what promised to be many more drafts of these last few chapters, and it was not so much an obstacle standing in the way of his Ph.D. as the basic groundwork. However, it was proving very difficult indeed to convince himself of this.
He’d worked on his thesis for so long now, he had begun to understand why writers considered their novels to be like their children. Ben’s thesis was very much his own creation – a labor of the love that he felt for his country; a small opus on the ways he believed the world at large could be bettered. Working with his sense of duty firmly in place, he had avoided wording, or, indeed, mentioning at all, the ideas included in the pages he had left in Ray’s in-tray just a few days ago. However, now that he sat facing his advisor, he realized that perhaps he had gambled a little too much.
He stared at the folder without lifting a hand to retrieve it. A second extended into moments and he was still staring at it dumbly when Ray’s voice cut into the haze of this thoughts, startling him into meeting his gaze.
“Ben! Quit that, and take it back. It’s – it’s good, Ben. It’s very good.”
Ben took a deep breath and finally reached for the blue folder.
“Very good?” His voice broke a bit and he cleared his throat. Very good was…good. It was, well. Very good, indeed. However, his expectations being what they’d been, he had expected something else. Something about the newly posited ideas, perhaps. Watching his advisor’s face gave Ben the courage to ask. “But not stellar?”
Ray’s smile disappeared, replaced by a thoughtful expression. “You don’t want a stellar thesis, Ben.”
Ben frowned, uncertain as to where Ray was headed with that comment. “I don’t?”
“No, you don’t.” When Ray didn’t clarify, Ben opened his mouth to ask for further elucidation, but was interrupted by Ray abruptly jumping out of his seat.
“Come on. You need a drink,” he declared and was almost out the door by the time Ben found the mechanism that closed his jaw and implemented it. He wasn’t sure what he needed at that very moment, but he knew that a drink was less likely to be the answer than, say, an encouraging review of his first thesis draft by his advisor.
Ray didn’t give him a chance to voice any of this. All sudden energy fed quite a bit by impatience, he bounced a little on his feet and jiggled his keys.
“Come on, come on. Grab your folder. We’re going to the University Café for a drink.”
“I – okay.”
There were times when, all logic reaching its tethers, Ben could find no other solution than to trust the people around him not to lead him too much astray.
*
The University Café was newly remodeled. Ben had seen it just before it had been closed down for renovation. Faded and ripped leather chairs, with stains that no one could tell the origin of anymore and, Ben had thought, no one had actually cared to. Sparse, cheap lighting. Two kinds of coffee – regular and decaf – served in Styrofoam cups that came in one size. Two kinds of tea – Lipton and Lipton Decaf – and three-day-old milk, with sugar that you could try to scrub off the tables, if you were a brave student, or, as was usually the case, a stoned one. Ben had hated the place on first sight, and had been reluctant to come back even after its grand reopening. However, Vicky had dragged him there bodily about a week into its rebirth, and although that particular foray into lands unknown had nearly ended in disaster, his enjoyment of the café never wavered. He’d been coming there ever since.
In fact, the café was where he had first met his advisor in person, rather than at a departmental gathering or in class. Professor Stanley Raymond Kowalski was among the youngest of the faculty to garner a full professorship and actually take on students. Ben, having been nurtured in a rather traditional academic manner, was less than thrilled to learn that in order to be able to study his particular brand of Civics, he would have to ask Professor Kowalski to become his advisor. However, one chance meeting over tea – and Ray’s coffee – had convinced him he’d been entirely wrong to have had a single doubt as to Ray’s merits as an expert in his field.
Ray, for all that he looked like the biggest misfit on campus, was whip-sharp and lightning-quick. Sitting in on his classes had humbled Ben, who had imagined himself as a professor a lot more than he’d care to admit. However, while he was thinking about it, Ray was doing it. Drawing his students out, getting them interested in the smallest minutiae through his passionate and obvious love of the field, teaching them without making it an effort on either side. He was a well-loved and respected professor, and yet – there was that air of – well, something. Ben could never quite figure out why Ray struck him as such a fascinating mystery.
The obvious answer, of course, was that he was a member of the faculty, and as such a lot less open with his life than any of Ben’s peers. They never interacted outside of the academic setting, and Ben did not know much more about Ray than Ray knew about Ben. However, that wasn’t the entire reason for Ben’s curiosity. Somehow, somewhere, Ben knew there lurked a secret, maybe, or at least some kind of quirk, that distanced Ray from the university as a whole. Never quite as enveloped in the academic life as the rest of them, Ray stood apart and a little ways…in the back.
It hadn’t hit Ben until about the tenth time he’d come into Ray’s office. Filled with books on politics and Civics and the law, cluttered with notepads and pens and paper clips, it lacked the one thing that humanized every other office Ben had been inside: no visible signs of Ray outside his physical person graced the room. No pictures, no notes to self, no grocery lists, not even a mug or a coffee maker. Most grad students with offices, and indeed, most professors, rushed to make their offices feel like home, having to spend long hours ensconced in them. If judged by his office, Ray’s only purpose in life appeared to be research and teaching. Which was not, in fact, true, judging by how difficult it was to catch him on campus most late afternoons.
Which was another reason Ben was shocked to find himself having an actual drink with Ray Kowalski on a Wednesday night. Ray favored early meetings with his students, apparently preferring to spend the later part of the day either holed up in his office with the door locked or away from campus altogether. Finding Ray in his office at five at night, with the door open, had actually been due to a rescheduled meeting originally set to take place at noon, but, to Ben, was no less perplexing for it.
And now, at nearly six o’clock at night, Ben was staring into his ale, with Ray’s blue eyes crinkling at the corners across from him, a beer in one hand, Ben’s thesis in another.
Ben cleared his throat. “You know, Ray, I- I don’t actually drink that much. Or, well -” In for a penny, in for a pint. “Or at all, in fact, outside of holiday festivities and the like. I’m rather puzzled – that is –” Ben’s tongue felt like it had jogged a mile and was having trouble staying off his teeth.
“Why are you having a beer with me at six at night on a Wednesday, at the University Café, and it isn’t the apocalypse?” Ray interrupted him, smiling in a knowing way.
Ben shut his mouth and nodded, his cheeks flushing. He watched as Ray leaned back in his chair and studied him over thick-framed glasses. After a moment, Ray quirked a small grin, held up a finger in the universal gesture of “wait a sec!” and began flipping through Ben’s thesis. Ben’s eyes only registered red marks, visible on every page that he could see, flying by as Ray searched for whatever it was that had the world tilting on its axis. Ben took a gulp of his light beer and waited, forcing the bile down.
“Ah. Here.” Ray flopped the thesis on the table between them, and pointed a long finger at a passage, now framed by three overlapping red squares.
Oh, dear.
Ben flipped the folder so he could read, and bent his head low. He didn’t want Ray seeing his reactions.
Ray had, indeed, circled the very heart of what Ben had been trying to get across in his thesis, and the very thing that he had avoided discussing with Ray before. He hadn’t been sure at the time if it had been fear of mockery or something much more difficult to overcome, but he knew now that it had been a somewhat cowardly act. It was, after all, his thesis. Ray was there to advise him on it, and not to discourage.
Well. Ben coughed and, without looking up, took another gulp of his beer. For courage, he told himself.
“So, Ben,” Ray cut in through the silence. “Now we come to the, uh, heart of the matter.”
Ben finally made himself look at Ray, and was perplexed to find him looking more amused than anything else. Ben wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been amusement. At least not on his end.
“You,” Ray pointed at him in his characteristic two-finger point, one largely favored by tough Chicago street guys and not lauded academics, “are trying to change the way this government is run. And by ‘this government’, I mean, this specific government that tends to, uh, run its way into others.”
“Which,” Ben cleared his throat, “which government do you mean, exactly?”
That’s right, son, he heard his father’s voice in his ear, skirt the issue. Maybe the Yank will get confused and stop probing you for your plans. Never let the enemy see your weaponry until you are ready to shoot.
Ben jerked his head around, but knew that he couldn’t have possibly heard his father speaking. His father was dead and Ben had seen him buried, watched his coffin lowered into the ground. The voice he had heard had most likely been a product of his somewhat sleep-deprived mind and nothing more. He shook his head free of the voice, and when he looked back at Ray, Ray’s eyebrows were furrowed. Clearly, Ben’s surprise had been a little too visible. He forced his lips into a smile, and settled back in his chair, ready to listen.
“I mean, the United States of America,” Ray finally said after a largely uncomfortable pause. “Ben, you’re Canadian.”
Ben nodded, trying to place the import of the statement. “Yes. Born and bred, so to speak.”
“And you ended up in Chicago because you were probably – stop me if I’m wrong – at the top of your class, and Chicago was one of the best places to study Poli Sci.”
Ray looked at him through the thick-framed glasses, but it seemed to Ben as if there was hardly even air between them. The room was getting stuffier with the number of students occupying the various tables and booths and everything in between. He tugged at his collar and forced himself to nod.
“See, I’m psychic.” Ray smirked and leaned back in his chair. “Ben, you’re an overachiever – I had you pegged from the moment I met you.”
Ben felt his hackles rising, in his mind’s eye seeing his back like Dief’s, covered in fur and agitation. He had always excelled at his studies - that was true. But it had never been due to any particular desire to please, only out of his sense of right and wrong and what he had to do to live up to what he had been given.
Some of his thoughts must have shown on his face, because Ray leaned back in and stretched a hand out towards Ben. Seeing the slender, calloused fingers reaching out for his brought Ben back to reality with the force of a bola. He grabbed his drink and did not even attempt to look at Ray, focusing only on the slightly warm, dull taste of his beer.
“Ben, I didn’t mean that as an insult. You’re one of the brightest, most dedicated students I have ever worked with.” Ray’s voice sounded lower, less aggressive, perhaps, than usual. A lot more uncertain. His hand withdrew, and Ben allowed himself to look up and nod. Ray continued. “The biggest problem with your thesis is that you are trying to change the world with it. And Ben, I am telling you right here and now, it won’t work – so don’t do it.”
It felt like a compression in his chest, a deflation – something had collapsed. He did not even attempt to hide the reaction Ray’s words had created.
“Ray, I – I want to – I need to propose all this now, while I am still in a position to.” He broke off when he saw Ray shaking his head. “Isn’t this the sort of thing graduate students are meant to try and do? And are you not meant to encourage me?” Ben knew he was grasping at straws, but he was mystified, absolutely mystified as to why a man as dedicated to his field as Raymond Kowalski would be discouraging his student from publishing a strong thesis.
“Ben.” Ray took a sip of his seemingly forgotten beer and never looked away from Ben’s gaze. “What you are proposing is incredibly smart. It is, in fact, potentially groundbreaking. It is also crazy. It is one hundred percent, one hundred percent, freak-certifiably nuts.” Ray lowered his beer and narrowed his eyes. “But I believe in it.”
Ben blinked. He took a deep breath, leaned on the table and nearly dislodged his own beer. He clutched at the glass as it wobbled on the edge of the polished surface and only a little bit spilled out onto the floor. For once, he didn’t reach over for a napkin and attempt to clean it up. He was, as the saying went, all ears.
Ray continued as if nothing had happened. “What I’m saying is, if you put all of this into your thesis, you will get nowhere. And I mean that almost literally, by the way – departmental politics, if you’ll forgive the pun. This is too out there – you won’t get past the defense committee.”
Ben must have looked as startled as he felt, because Ray spread his hands and his smile was just a tad sad. “It’s true, Ben. This isn’t the idealized, open-minded world we all envisioned when we came here. If it’s too far out there, it won’t pass. This is why you don’t want a stellar thesis.”
Ben’s mind was reeling. It felt like Ray was dismantling all of his years in Chicago one by one. When Ben had left Inuvik for Toronto to go to college, he had been so wide-eyed, it embarrassed him to this day. Toronto wised him up, made him learn, but it had never actually drained his hope or the promise he had made to himself when he had set out to do his duty. And now Ray was telling him that not only was it hopeless to try, this world he had so staunchly believed in – the land of knowledge and unending possibility – had its own spider webs to weave and flies to catch. Ben thought he was going to be sick.
In fact, he actually was, as the beer he had imbibed began to slowly make its way upwards, raising bile and dizzying his head, and he slumped slightly forward, just a might too fast. It was simply the beer, he told himself, because he could handle Ray’s criticism. After all, he had had many years to practice taking criticism. Criticism had never stopped him before.
“Ben, are you all right? Ben?” Ray was on his feet much too fast, and now he was much too close, leaning over Ben, a crease of concern between his eyebrows, teeth too white between his full lips. Ben closed his eyes and slumped back. The bile began to recede. He thought that perhaps sitting still was the best solution he could up with at this time.
“I’m all right. I apologize, Ray. Like I said, I hardly ever drink alcoholic beverages.”
Ray’s hand settled heavily on his shoulder, adding unnecessary warmth to his suit jacket, and squeezed. Ben wanted to dislodge his hand, gain some distance, but that seemed nearly impossible now. He opened his eyes and saw that Ray had straightened up and wasn’t looking at him at all, his hand their only point of contact. His gaze seemed to be scanning the room – perhaps he was looking for someone.
“Hang on, I’ll be right back,” he said and finally let Ben go. Ben watched Ray stride away with a detached sort of interest, and forced his hands to stop shaking. No matter how much he told himself he was right, he couldn’t help feeling a fool. Perhaps, he should have done what his father had wanted him to do all along.
So, you’re admitting I’m right now, are you?
Ben jerked in his seat and this time, when he searched for the source of the voice, he actually found it, standing at the opposite side of where Ray had stood less than a minute ago, staring at him with a familiar mixture of exasperation and worry.
“Son,” said Bob Fraser, “you are not a fool. No son of mine could ever be a fool. You just keep that in mind.”
Ben watched as his – very dead – father waggled a finger in warning and sat down in the seat vacated by Ray. Ben wanted to rub his eyes and pinch his arm, but he found he had no energy for such frivolous attempts at righting himself.
“Dad,” he began instead, “what are you doing here? And why aren’t you -”
“Lying in the ground, where I was last seen?” his father interrupted.
“Well.” Ben thought about it. “Yes. In fact, why aren’t you?”
“It got dull, son! This way I get to exercise the old limbs, get some life back in them, if you catch my drift. Get some air, converse with my only son. That kind of thing.” Ben stared as his father attempted to get the attention of the young man working the bar at the other end of the room and failed. “They never see me. Why is that, do you think?”
“Because you’re – dead?”
Looking horribly out of place in his red serge and Stetson, Bob Fraser glared at Ben, then waved his hand one more time, gave up and attempted to lift Ray’s abandoned beer.
“Dad? Is there –” Ben searched for a delicate way to phrase his next question. “Is there a history of insanity in our family?”
“Insanity?” His father paused with his fingers half-way through Ray’s beer bottle. “Not that I remember. Of course, your uncle Tiberius was found dead, wrapped in cabbage leaves. However, it was never proven that it had been his mental state -”
“I got it. Thank you.” Ben hadn’t known about the exact nature of Uncle Tiberius’s sad demise, but he’d known enough. “No insanity. So, what, are you haunting me?” He seemed to have regained his equilibrium and his father had still not disappeared. Ben could only assume that his father had not been a side-effect of his drinking, but an incorporeal form determined on making his evening even more incomprehensible than he could have imagined five minutes ago.
“Haunting is such a strong word, don’t you think, son? I like to think that I am able to do this through the strong bond that we have shared over the years. You know, father, son, a dogsled…”
“Dad, we went sledding once. Then, I decided to go into politics, you decided I should become a Mountie, we fought, I went to college, you got killed.”
“Those are some harsh words of welcome, son.” His father assumed an all-too-familiar tone of disappointment and warning. Ben bit back a retort, and then realized that he was simply too tired to deal with it tonight. He never wanted to disappoint his father, not even after his death. Perhaps, in fact, especially so.
“You’re right, dad. I’m sorry. I just don’t deal with this sort of thing every day.” He slumped against the back of his chair and peeled off a corner of the Heineken label on Ray’s bottle. It gave easily, and he began to strip it with a kind of fervor.
“This isn’t the end of the world, you know,” his father said, all hearty intonation and undying optimism. He looked horribly fragile against the light, harsh lines etched into his skin, bags under old, pale eyes.
Ben had missed him.
“It feels like it,” he admitted after a moment, feeling the wet paper give away with a certain amount of grim satisfaction. “If I can’t change anything from here, I -”
“You need to get out and get a life, is that it?” Ray’s accented voice broke in and Ben nearly jumped out of his skin. Scanning the chair in front of him, he found it first empty, then Ray filled his line of vision, all messy hair, crow’s feet and big smile. “Here, have this.”
A glass with ice water stood between them now, the top fogging over already. Ben watched it mutely.
“Who were you talking to just now?” Ray asked, and he didn’t look like a man who had nearly caught his student talking to a ghost of his dead father. In fact, he didn’t look in the least surprised. Perhaps it had helped that graduate students were not known for their sanity.
“No one, I just – sometimes, I talk to myself out loud and forget where I am,” Ben fibbed. It hadn’t even been a fib, really – sometimes he did forget where he was, and talked to himself. He had just never had to use that as a cover for conversing with ghosts before.
“Understandable. So, you feeling any better?” Ray tipped his chin forward, looking genuinely concerned, forcing Ben to look away.
He was not okay. Not by a long shot. He wished that Ray would excuse him, let him go home and be alone. But Ray had settled in more comfortably, it seemed, and if anybody would be making excuses, it would have to be Ben. He searched for some kind of answer that would not offend Ray, and came up with a nod and a sip of the water Ray had graciously brought him.
“You’re not okay. All right, how about I make you feel better?” Ray didn’t wait for Ben to respond, which was a good thing, because Ben had no comment. “All of your ideas? You should go for it. Not in your thesis, mind, but you should. After you get your Ph.D., Ben. Not before. And here is why.” Ray took a pull of his beer, made a face, and put it down. “God, I forget how awful beer is until it gets warm, and then it’s like a cat pissed in my mouth. You mind?” He nodded toward Ben’s glass of water and Ben had just enough presence of mind to let go of the glass and nod his head. When Ray brought the glass to his lips and sipped exactly where Ben had gulped a moment ago, Ben’s palms prickled and he scratched them on his slacks. He dug his fingers into his thighs and attempted to relax, while Ray’s throat moved as he drank.
When he was done, he lowered the glass, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked nothing like a professor at all. He smiled at Ben, pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, and nodded toward the door. “Wanna get out of here? It’s getting kinda stuffy, and late. We’ll talk on the way.”
To where? Ben wanted to ask, but didn’t. Instead, he gathered his thesis into his bag, summoned all his strength, and walked out after Ray. By the time he stepped outside, Ray was already lighting a cigarette. It was dark now, and the orange glow was visible a few inches away from Ray’s lips. Ray snicked his Zippo closed, dropped it in his coat pocket and leaned against the brick wall. Ben fidgeted with the shoulder strap of his bag, not quite sure where to rest his hands.
“See, this is Poli Sci, Ben,” Ray spoke up, his mouth still expelling smoke. “The real breakthroughs, the kind that you’re talking about? They happen in office. They don’t happen in dissertations. Your dissertation will get published, bound, and put on a shelf along with a thousand other ones, and no one will ever really see it after that, and hardly anybody’ll care about its actual content.”
Ray pushed himself away from the wall and nodded for Ben to follow him. They were headed in the direction of the faculty parking lot by the Political Science building, Ben realized. Their meeting was very much coming to an end. He walked in step with Ray, silently waiting for him to continue.
“Politics isn’t like math or physics. Those fields depend on academia, they’re fueled by it. Academia is where mathematicians and physicists do that kind of research and make those kinds of discoveries. What you’ve done?” Ray pointed at Ben’s chest. “That is not something for a dissertation. It just isn’t. You gotta trust me.”
Ben cleared his throat and finally spoke. “What do you suggest I do, then?”
Ray slowed his stride and rubbed his chin. Ben fancied that he could hear the rasp of stubble against skin. “I suggest that you get your Ph. D. and get into office. You’re Canadian, so you can’t exactly run for much around here. But I’m guessing that you’ve thought about this. So, you tell me. What are your plans, Ben?” Ray tilted his head to the side, like he was considering Ben, and Ben’s collar got tight again.
“I…I admit to having laid out something of a plan for a career in diplomacy, upon my return to Canada.”
Ray smiled at him, a genuine smile that somehow eased out a knot in Ben’s stomach. “Diplomacy, eh? Working between nations to better each other?”
Ben felt himself smiling sincerely for the first time in a long time. “Something like that, yes. A liaison between countries, and their political ways, I suppose.”
“Well, Benton Fraser, you got my vote.” Ray clapped him on the shoulder and brought out his keys. “Listen, I gotta drop something off downtown, so if you want a ride home, we can continue this in the car.” Ray lowered his eyes and Ben thought it must have been the street lights that extended his lashes into soft shadows and made him look ten years younger and strangely vulnerable. “You look like you could use a talk right about now,” Ray continued as he fidgeted with his keys. “And, admittedly, that’s kind of my fault.”
When Ray looked up again, he was back to his usual self, perhaps a little more flushed. The refusal was at the tip of Ben’s tongue, and in fact, about to pour out, when his exhaustion caught up with him and he exhaled.
“A ride would be wonderful, Ray. Thank you.”
Ray flashed him a grin, opened the front door of his vintage car, and slid in. Ben, for the first time wondering how inappropriate this actually was, looked around, walked to the other side of the car, and opened the passenger door.
It was a ride, and he was tired. If Ray thought it was nothing untoward, he would, as well.
*
Ben lived a ways away from campus, but not as far downtown as Ray had to go. Nevertheless, even after Ben had given Ray his address, instead of dropping Ben off first, Ray headed straight for his own destination. With the window rolled down to let the chilly night air in and the smoke of his cigarette out, Ray smiled seemingly at nothing as they drove through brightly-lit streets and past dark alleyways, filling the air around them with companionable silence.
Ben used the time to pull his head together, get a clearer picture of the torrent of thoughts raging in his mind. Ray had nearly pulled the rug from under Ben’s feet tonight, but he had also righted Ben when he’d been about to topple over. Ben knew that Ray had been right. Even if some grand illusion had been shattered, he knew that he was, more or less, on the right track – perhaps simply on the wrong platform.
He found himself watching Ray whenever he thought Ray wouldn’t notice. They had spent more time together than this, many times, in fact, but it was tonight that Ben felt closer to Ray than he ever had before.
Perhaps it was the strange intimacy of being in Ray’s car. If Ray’s office lacked any sort of presence of humanity, his car was infused with it. While his office didn’t even hold an ashtray, Ray’s car was scattered with bits of cigarette packets, or torn plastic wrappers. Tapes littered the cubby between the front seats. In the back, Ben had noticed a window sticker, though he couldn’t quite make out what it symbolized.
And perhaps it had been the tacit agreement they had come to. All through their previous working partnership, with Ray pacing Ben, and Ben rushing both of them, they worked out Ben’s problems, worked out his plans. And even with all that, he had still managed to hold back his most basic and profound beliefs, his most treasured ideas.
“We’re stale,” Ray had said once. “Kind of like bread, or something. Or, not even we. You, Ben. You gotta get that fire lit under your ass, gotta do whatever it is that you need to do get back into it. You’re flagging.”
That had been true. There were times when Ben couldn’t see the end of this, it seemed so far away, he could barely imagine the next day, much less the first draft of his thesis.
But even with all that, he had never felt as connected to Ray or his work, for that matter. Whatever fire Ray had lit under Ben’s ass tonight, so to speak, had kindled something greater. Ben felt discomfited and determined all at once. In fact, with the ride lengthening, each second drained away the exhaustion and added fuel to his determination. He was thrumming with anticipation. He thought, for the first time in a while now, that perhaps he could do this and more.
He suppressed a smile, and looked out the window. Chicago rolled by and he welcomed it, the sensation so unfamiliar, his head nearly spun.
After a while, Ray broke the silence. “We’re almost there. Sorry to take you around this way, but I figure a drive can’t hurt, and you shouldn’t be doing any more work tonight, anyway.” He turned a corner without looking at Ben and threw his cigarette butt out the window. “You don’t have a pet or anything horrendously difficult to take care of, do you?”
The question seemed as much out of the blue as the rest of the evening’s events, but Ben diligently answered. “I do, indeed, but Diefenbaker – my dog – can take care of himself for a while. As long as I leave the window unlocked, he can come and go as he pleases.”
“Diefen-who?” This time, Ray did turn to face him, both eyebrows raised. “Don’t tell me you named your dog after a Prime Minister, Ben.”
“I- I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Ben replied in all honesty.
Ray shook his head in response, chuckling. “You really are a freak.”
“So I’ve heard. And he’s a half-wolf, actually.” Ben cracked a smile and waited for Ray to finish gaping at him long enough to maneuver his car into a relatively small space. He seemed to enjoy doing it, steering the wheel with panache.
After they came to a stop, with his hand halfway to the buckle of the seatbelt, Ben froze. What was the proper etiquette in this kind of situation? Ray had given him no clue as to where they’d arrived, and Ben had been so lost in his own thoughts, he had simply neglected to inquire. Now faced with the dilemma, he scratched the uncomfortable itch of sweat on his forehead and turned to Ray, only to see his advisor already getting out of the car. Ben shut his mouth and watched Ray’s progress through the windshield.
“Ben, you coming? Or do you wanna wait in the car?” Ray knocked on Ben’s window, and it seemed only polite to answer. Ben signaled for Ray to move away and slid out of his seat. As he followed Ray, Ben took in their surroundings and, with a jolt, recognized the building they were about to enter.
“Ray, this is the City Council.” He had walked by here a million times with Diefenbaker on the mornings they were both feeling up to a brisk walk, and each time he’d felt an almost reverence of sorts.
“Yep, sure is.” Ray didn’t hesitate before opening the heavy, gilded door and waving Ben in before him with a grin and a wink. “After hours, no less.”
They walked inside and the security guard at the front desk barely waved a hand in Ray’s direction as he watched the monitors secured behind the counter. Ray waved back and Ben’s curiosity finally got the best of him. “What are we doing here?”
Ray flashed him a grin over his shoulder and pressed the elevator button more times than was strictly necessary. “I’m dropping off some paperwork. This is kind of like my part-time job.”
It was only through a super-human effort that Ben managed to keep a firm lock on his jaw. His shock must have shown in his expression despite his efforts, because Ray grinned wider, and bounced a little on the balls of his feet as he explained. “I should say, part-time volunteering, actually. Don’t really need a second job, just -”
“Do you- do you lecture here, or -”
Ray barked a laugh. “Christ, no! Remember how you make a difference?” His hands took in their surroundings, inviting Ben along. “Start small, think big, right? I can’t spend my whole life warming my ass in academia. I love teaching, Ben, and I love the research, but this here – this is what gets my blood pumping.”
“All politics is local,” Ben murmured, almost to himself.
Ray’s sudden smile seemed to light a beacon across his features, years melting from his face like shadows. “Exactly!” He led Ben towards the elevator as it dinged upon arrival. “Come on up, I’ll give you a tour.”
Ben followed him in while his mind reeled. This certainly explained quite a bit. Ray’s office wasn’t his whole life, because academia – the students, the research – wasn’t his whole life.
The numbers on the display rolled up and Ben found himself studying Ray from his corner of the elevator. The folder in Ray’s hand beat an unsteady rhythm against his thigh. The hollow sound of it and the whir of the elevator was all Ben could hear over his own breathing. Ray wasn’t looking at him, but something about his stance – perhaps the tilt of his head, or the odd steadiness of his gaze on the glossy metal door – jolted Ben into the realization that Ray was aware of his scrutiny. Ben’s neck prickled. He broke his gaze and turned it on his own shoes. When the elevator finally lurched and came to a stop, Ben had to force himself not to run. Instead, he waited until Ray gestured for him to follow and exited.
The hallway echoed with their steps, though it was not entirely empty. Even after hours, the City Council did not appear to sleep. The hallway lights flickered, white halogen lamps diffusing the evening darkness. Every now and then, a yellow, warmer light would spill from under a closed door of an office, a thud or an odd conversation, dulled by the closed doors, would break the surface quiet. Ray didn’t speak as he led them down and around the floor, to Ben now a long and wondrous punctuation to a long and odd night.
After their third turn, Ray glanced over at Ben and gestured for him to follow through a closed door, which turned out to be unlocked. A flick of Ray’s hand over the wall illuminated the office. Ben looked around. Tall shelves lined one wall, filing cabinets lined another. The desk was made of heavy oak – the kind favored by the higher officials of the RCMP. He felt his childhood memories floating to his mind like seaweed, lapping around his senses. For one breathless moment, it was as if his father were truly there - alive, bent over the desk, busy recounting his various altercations and pursuits in a leather-bound journal.
Ben blinked, and the vision dispersed. Apart from Ray, rummaging through a stack of papers on the desk, he was very much alone.
“Is this your other office?” he inquired, hoping to put himself in a less maudlin state of mind. His voice sounded odd in the echoed silence.
“Nah, only sometimes. This is an old friend of mine’s. She leaves it open for me to come and go, since I don’t got one here, and -” Ray snatched a piece of paper from the middle of the pile and pushed the rest towards the middle, “- a-ha, gotcha – I use it for my own thing.” Ray scanned the paper he’d picked up without turning to Ben.
“And what is your friend’s position here?” Somehow it felt more polite not to inquire about ‘Ray’s own thing’. Perhaps, Ray would feel compelled to tell him on his own sometime.
“Stella?” Ray finally pulled his gaze away from the piece of paper he’d been clutching, and looked up at Ben. “She’s an Alderman. Alder-woman, rather. Stella Kowalski, heard of her?”
“I – Kowalski?” Ben felt the oddest sensation of his stomach dropping out, though he could not, for the life of him, figure out as to why.
“Yeah, well, that’s the ‘old friend’ part. She’s my ex, actually.” Ray did look up at Ben then, the slight squint of his gaze adding a sudden intensity to the moment. Ben’s stomach flipped over, something akin to anticipation simmering inside. Then, broken by Ray’s too-casual shrug, the moment ended, leaving Ben with the sense of a thing unfinished, or perhaps, not even begun. He nodded then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and did not inquire further. Ray, meanwhile, turned back to the papers, stacked the ones he’d rearranged into some kind of order. Ben might not have noticed the slight flush to Ray’s neck if he hadn’t been looking. He turned his gaze away when Ray turned back to him and patted his jacket pockets.
“Looks like I’m done here.”
Ray moved forward and Ben felt a compulsion to move away, into some kind of safety zone in which he knew where he stood. He mustered a polite smile and made an ‘after you’ gesture.
“Is there anything else you wanna see?” Ray asked, wrapping his arm casually around Ben’s shoulder, just tight enough that he felt Ray’s touch through the cloth. Ben felt frozen in place. “I got the private tour covered, if you want it.” Ray’s hand didn’t move from its position. “C’mon, the scenic route getting back to the car. Or- or not?”
“I, uh –” Ben cleared his throat and scratched a sudden itch above his eye. “Perhaps another time. I think I should get back to Diefenbaker.”
“Sure thing, Ben,” Ray nodded. His hand remained a hot weight on Ben’s shoulder, and Ben finally found the strength to step away. He thought he’d felt Ray’s fingers linger on his jacket, like the touch of a ghost, before they disappeared entirely.
*
Part 2.
getfraserlaid:Title: "Practical Diplomacy"
Pairing: F/K
Rating: NC-17
Prompt: 76. Fraser/Kowalski (AU) – Ray as professor, Fraser as graduate student, a little bit of inappropriate fraternization, if you will.
Summary: Benton Fraser gets a lesson in the ins and outs of graduate school, politics and desire. (14,780 words)
Author's Notes: Well, it's done. And the pigs are flying. With all of my eternal, neverending, flaming thanks to
soupytwist for holding my hand through this whole thing, looking over the early drafts and picking up on everything that I wasn't happy with and making it better, even at 3 o'clock in the morning. (The girl doesn't sleep.) And with same huge, neverending, flaming thanks to brooklinegirl for breaking down exactly what wasn't working as a whole and pointing me in the right direction. (All the remaining mistakes are mine.) Thus, this whole entire escapade into lands of Longer Fic, I dedicate to both of you, you wonderful, smart, gorgeous ladies.
And, finally, with huge thanks to all those cheerleaders along the way, who encouraged and never lost faith that
* * *
Part 1.
* * *
“Professor Kowalski? Uh- Ray?”
Ben poked his head through the half-open door. His gaze immediately fell on the familiar figure of his advisor, sitting with one knee propped up on his desk.
“Yeah, Ben, come in. Sit down.” Ray waved him in without looking away from the computer screen. He didn’t look at Ben until Ben was seated directly across from him, shifting a bit in an attempt to find a position that he could settle into more or less comfortably. His starched shirt felt too constricting under his tie, his jacket too warm a burden.
“Ben, relax. It’s just a first draft.” Finally looking up at him, Ray flashed a toothy grin and slid a thick, familiar-looking folder toward Ben.
The last of his thesis. Ben knew that it was, technically, the first of what promised to be many more drafts of these last few chapters, and it was not so much an obstacle standing in the way of his Ph.D. as the basic groundwork. However, it was proving very difficult indeed to convince himself of this.
He’d worked on his thesis for so long now, he had begun to understand why writers considered their novels to be like their children. Ben’s thesis was very much his own creation – a labor of the love that he felt for his country; a small opus on the ways he believed the world at large could be bettered. Working with his sense of duty firmly in place, he had avoided wording, or, indeed, mentioning at all, the ideas included in the pages he had left in Ray’s in-tray just a few days ago. However, now that he sat facing his advisor, he realized that perhaps he had gambled a little too much.
He stared at the folder without lifting a hand to retrieve it. A second extended into moments and he was still staring at it dumbly when Ray’s voice cut into the haze of this thoughts, startling him into meeting his gaze.
“Ben! Quit that, and take it back. It’s – it’s good, Ben. It’s very good.”
Ben took a deep breath and finally reached for the blue folder.
“Very good?” His voice broke a bit and he cleared his throat. Very good was…good. It was, well. Very good, indeed. However, his expectations being what they’d been, he had expected something else. Something about the newly posited ideas, perhaps. Watching his advisor’s face gave Ben the courage to ask. “But not stellar?”
Ray’s smile disappeared, replaced by a thoughtful expression. “You don’t want a stellar thesis, Ben.”
Ben frowned, uncertain as to where Ray was headed with that comment. “I don’t?”
“No, you don’t.” When Ray didn’t clarify, Ben opened his mouth to ask for further elucidation, but was interrupted by Ray abruptly jumping out of his seat.
“Come on. You need a drink,” he declared and was almost out the door by the time Ben found the mechanism that closed his jaw and implemented it. He wasn’t sure what he needed at that very moment, but he knew that a drink was less likely to be the answer than, say, an encouraging review of his first thesis draft by his advisor.
Ray didn’t give him a chance to voice any of this. All sudden energy fed quite a bit by impatience, he bounced a little on his feet and jiggled his keys.
“Come on, come on. Grab your folder. We’re going to the University Café for a drink.”
“I – okay.”
There were times when, all logic reaching its tethers, Ben could find no other solution than to trust the people around him not to lead him too much astray.
*
The University Café was newly remodeled. Ben had seen it just before it had been closed down for renovation. Faded and ripped leather chairs, with stains that no one could tell the origin of anymore and, Ben had thought, no one had actually cared to. Sparse, cheap lighting. Two kinds of coffee – regular and decaf – served in Styrofoam cups that came in one size. Two kinds of tea – Lipton and Lipton Decaf – and three-day-old milk, with sugar that you could try to scrub off the tables, if you were a brave student, or, as was usually the case, a stoned one. Ben had hated the place on first sight, and had been reluctant to come back even after its grand reopening. However, Vicky had dragged him there bodily about a week into its rebirth, and although that particular foray into lands unknown had nearly ended in disaster, his enjoyment of the café never wavered. He’d been coming there ever since.
In fact, the café was where he had first met his advisor in person, rather than at a departmental gathering or in class. Professor Stanley Raymond Kowalski was among the youngest of the faculty to garner a full professorship and actually take on students. Ben, having been nurtured in a rather traditional academic manner, was less than thrilled to learn that in order to be able to study his particular brand of Civics, he would have to ask Professor Kowalski to become his advisor. However, one chance meeting over tea – and Ray’s coffee – had convinced him he’d been entirely wrong to have had a single doubt as to Ray’s merits as an expert in his field.
Ray, for all that he looked like the biggest misfit on campus, was whip-sharp and lightning-quick. Sitting in on his classes had humbled Ben, who had imagined himself as a professor a lot more than he’d care to admit. However, while he was thinking about it, Ray was doing it. Drawing his students out, getting them interested in the smallest minutiae through his passionate and obvious love of the field, teaching them without making it an effort on either side. He was a well-loved and respected professor, and yet – there was that air of – well, something. Ben could never quite figure out why Ray struck him as such a fascinating mystery.
The obvious answer, of course, was that he was a member of the faculty, and as such a lot less open with his life than any of Ben’s peers. They never interacted outside of the academic setting, and Ben did not know much more about Ray than Ray knew about Ben. However, that wasn’t the entire reason for Ben’s curiosity. Somehow, somewhere, Ben knew there lurked a secret, maybe, or at least some kind of quirk, that distanced Ray from the university as a whole. Never quite as enveloped in the academic life as the rest of them, Ray stood apart and a little ways…in the back.
It hadn’t hit Ben until about the tenth time he’d come into Ray’s office. Filled with books on politics and Civics and the law, cluttered with notepads and pens and paper clips, it lacked the one thing that humanized every other office Ben had been inside: no visible signs of Ray outside his physical person graced the room. No pictures, no notes to self, no grocery lists, not even a mug or a coffee maker. Most grad students with offices, and indeed, most professors, rushed to make their offices feel like home, having to spend long hours ensconced in them. If judged by his office, Ray’s only purpose in life appeared to be research and teaching. Which was not, in fact, true, judging by how difficult it was to catch him on campus most late afternoons.
Which was another reason Ben was shocked to find himself having an actual drink with Ray Kowalski on a Wednesday night. Ray favored early meetings with his students, apparently preferring to spend the later part of the day either holed up in his office with the door locked or away from campus altogether. Finding Ray in his office at five at night, with the door open, had actually been due to a rescheduled meeting originally set to take place at noon, but, to Ben, was no less perplexing for it.
And now, at nearly six o’clock at night, Ben was staring into his ale, with Ray’s blue eyes crinkling at the corners across from him, a beer in one hand, Ben’s thesis in another.
Ben cleared his throat. “You know, Ray, I- I don’t actually drink that much. Or, well -” In for a penny, in for a pint. “Or at all, in fact, outside of holiday festivities and the like. I’m rather puzzled – that is –” Ben’s tongue felt like it had jogged a mile and was having trouble staying off his teeth.
“Why are you having a beer with me at six at night on a Wednesday, at the University Café, and it isn’t the apocalypse?” Ray interrupted him, smiling in a knowing way.
Ben shut his mouth and nodded, his cheeks flushing. He watched as Ray leaned back in his chair and studied him over thick-framed glasses. After a moment, Ray quirked a small grin, held up a finger in the universal gesture of “wait a sec!” and began flipping through Ben’s thesis. Ben’s eyes only registered red marks, visible on every page that he could see, flying by as Ray searched for whatever it was that had the world tilting on its axis. Ben took a gulp of his light beer and waited, forcing the bile down.
“Ah. Here.” Ray flopped the thesis on the table between them, and pointed a long finger at a passage, now framed by three overlapping red squares.
Oh, dear.
Ben flipped the folder so he could read, and bent his head low. He didn’t want Ray seeing his reactions.
Ray had, indeed, circled the very heart of what Ben had been trying to get across in his thesis, and the very thing that he had avoided discussing with Ray before. He hadn’t been sure at the time if it had been fear of mockery or something much more difficult to overcome, but he knew now that it had been a somewhat cowardly act. It was, after all, his thesis. Ray was there to advise him on it, and not to discourage.
Well. Ben coughed and, without looking up, took another gulp of his beer. For courage, he told himself.
“So, Ben,” Ray cut in through the silence. “Now we come to the, uh, heart of the matter.”
Ben finally made himself look at Ray, and was perplexed to find him looking more amused than anything else. Ben wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been amusement. At least not on his end.
“You,” Ray pointed at him in his characteristic two-finger point, one largely favored by tough Chicago street guys and not lauded academics, “are trying to change the way this government is run. And by ‘this government’, I mean, this specific government that tends to, uh, run its way into others.”
“Which,” Ben cleared his throat, “which government do you mean, exactly?”
That’s right, son, he heard his father’s voice in his ear, skirt the issue. Maybe the Yank will get confused and stop probing you for your plans. Never let the enemy see your weaponry until you are ready to shoot.
Ben jerked his head around, but knew that he couldn’t have possibly heard his father speaking. His father was dead and Ben had seen him buried, watched his coffin lowered into the ground. The voice he had heard had most likely been a product of his somewhat sleep-deprived mind and nothing more. He shook his head free of the voice, and when he looked back at Ray, Ray’s eyebrows were furrowed. Clearly, Ben’s surprise had been a little too visible. He forced his lips into a smile, and settled back in his chair, ready to listen.
“I mean, the United States of America,” Ray finally said after a largely uncomfortable pause. “Ben, you’re Canadian.”
Ben nodded, trying to place the import of the statement. “Yes. Born and bred, so to speak.”
“And you ended up in Chicago because you were probably – stop me if I’m wrong – at the top of your class, and Chicago was one of the best places to study Poli Sci.”
Ray looked at him through the thick-framed glasses, but it seemed to Ben as if there was hardly even air between them. The room was getting stuffier with the number of students occupying the various tables and booths and everything in between. He tugged at his collar and forced himself to nod.
“See, I’m psychic.” Ray smirked and leaned back in his chair. “Ben, you’re an overachiever – I had you pegged from the moment I met you.”
Ben felt his hackles rising, in his mind’s eye seeing his back like Dief’s, covered in fur and agitation. He had always excelled at his studies - that was true. But it had never been due to any particular desire to please, only out of his sense of right and wrong and what he had to do to live up to what he had been given.
Some of his thoughts must have shown on his face, because Ray leaned back in and stretched a hand out towards Ben. Seeing the slender, calloused fingers reaching out for his brought Ben back to reality with the force of a bola. He grabbed his drink and did not even attempt to look at Ray, focusing only on the slightly warm, dull taste of his beer.
“Ben, I didn’t mean that as an insult. You’re one of the brightest, most dedicated students I have ever worked with.” Ray’s voice sounded lower, less aggressive, perhaps, than usual. A lot more uncertain. His hand withdrew, and Ben allowed himself to look up and nod. Ray continued. “The biggest problem with your thesis is that you are trying to change the world with it. And Ben, I am telling you right here and now, it won’t work – so don’t do it.”
It felt like a compression in his chest, a deflation – something had collapsed. He did not even attempt to hide the reaction Ray’s words had created.
“Ray, I – I want to – I need to propose all this now, while I am still in a position to.” He broke off when he saw Ray shaking his head. “Isn’t this the sort of thing graduate students are meant to try and do? And are you not meant to encourage me?” Ben knew he was grasping at straws, but he was mystified, absolutely mystified as to why a man as dedicated to his field as Raymond Kowalski would be discouraging his student from publishing a strong thesis.
“Ben.” Ray took a sip of his seemingly forgotten beer and never looked away from Ben’s gaze. “What you are proposing is incredibly smart. It is, in fact, potentially groundbreaking. It is also crazy. It is one hundred percent, one hundred percent, freak-certifiably nuts.” Ray lowered his beer and narrowed his eyes. “But I believe in it.”
Ben blinked. He took a deep breath, leaned on the table and nearly dislodged his own beer. He clutched at the glass as it wobbled on the edge of the polished surface and only a little bit spilled out onto the floor. For once, he didn’t reach over for a napkin and attempt to clean it up. He was, as the saying went, all ears.
Ray continued as if nothing had happened. “What I’m saying is, if you put all of this into your thesis, you will get nowhere. And I mean that almost literally, by the way – departmental politics, if you’ll forgive the pun. This is too out there – you won’t get past the defense committee.”
Ben must have looked as startled as he felt, because Ray spread his hands and his smile was just a tad sad. “It’s true, Ben. This isn’t the idealized, open-minded world we all envisioned when we came here. If it’s too far out there, it won’t pass. This is why you don’t want a stellar thesis.”
Ben’s mind was reeling. It felt like Ray was dismantling all of his years in Chicago one by one. When Ben had left Inuvik for Toronto to go to college, he had been so wide-eyed, it embarrassed him to this day. Toronto wised him up, made him learn, but it had never actually drained his hope or the promise he had made to himself when he had set out to do his duty. And now Ray was telling him that not only was it hopeless to try, this world he had so staunchly believed in – the land of knowledge and unending possibility – had its own spider webs to weave and flies to catch. Ben thought he was going to be sick.
In fact, he actually was, as the beer he had imbibed began to slowly make its way upwards, raising bile and dizzying his head, and he slumped slightly forward, just a might too fast. It was simply the beer, he told himself, because he could handle Ray’s criticism. After all, he had had many years to practice taking criticism. Criticism had never stopped him before.
“Ben, are you all right? Ben?” Ray was on his feet much too fast, and now he was much too close, leaning over Ben, a crease of concern between his eyebrows, teeth too white between his full lips. Ben closed his eyes and slumped back. The bile began to recede. He thought that perhaps sitting still was the best solution he could up with at this time.
“I’m all right. I apologize, Ray. Like I said, I hardly ever drink alcoholic beverages.”
Ray’s hand settled heavily on his shoulder, adding unnecessary warmth to his suit jacket, and squeezed. Ben wanted to dislodge his hand, gain some distance, but that seemed nearly impossible now. He opened his eyes and saw that Ray had straightened up and wasn’t looking at him at all, his hand their only point of contact. His gaze seemed to be scanning the room – perhaps he was looking for someone.
“Hang on, I’ll be right back,” he said and finally let Ben go. Ben watched Ray stride away with a detached sort of interest, and forced his hands to stop shaking. No matter how much he told himself he was right, he couldn’t help feeling a fool. Perhaps, he should have done what his father had wanted him to do all along.
So, you’re admitting I’m right now, are you?
Ben jerked in his seat and this time, when he searched for the source of the voice, he actually found it, standing at the opposite side of where Ray had stood less than a minute ago, staring at him with a familiar mixture of exasperation and worry.
“Son,” said Bob Fraser, “you are not a fool. No son of mine could ever be a fool. You just keep that in mind.”
Ben watched as his – very dead – father waggled a finger in warning and sat down in the seat vacated by Ray. Ben wanted to rub his eyes and pinch his arm, but he found he had no energy for such frivolous attempts at righting himself.
“Dad,” he began instead, “what are you doing here? And why aren’t you -”
“Lying in the ground, where I was last seen?” his father interrupted.
“Well.” Ben thought about it. “Yes. In fact, why aren’t you?”
“It got dull, son! This way I get to exercise the old limbs, get some life back in them, if you catch my drift. Get some air, converse with my only son. That kind of thing.” Ben stared as his father attempted to get the attention of the young man working the bar at the other end of the room and failed. “They never see me. Why is that, do you think?”
“Because you’re – dead?”
Looking horribly out of place in his red serge and Stetson, Bob Fraser glared at Ben, then waved his hand one more time, gave up and attempted to lift Ray’s abandoned beer.
“Dad? Is there –” Ben searched for a delicate way to phrase his next question. “Is there a history of insanity in our family?”
“Insanity?” His father paused with his fingers half-way through Ray’s beer bottle. “Not that I remember. Of course, your uncle Tiberius was found dead, wrapped in cabbage leaves. However, it was never proven that it had been his mental state -”
“I got it. Thank you.” Ben hadn’t known about the exact nature of Uncle Tiberius’s sad demise, but he’d known enough. “No insanity. So, what, are you haunting me?” He seemed to have regained his equilibrium and his father had still not disappeared. Ben could only assume that his father had not been a side-effect of his drinking, but an incorporeal form determined on making his evening even more incomprehensible than he could have imagined five minutes ago.
“Haunting is such a strong word, don’t you think, son? I like to think that I am able to do this through the strong bond that we have shared over the years. You know, father, son, a dogsled…”
“Dad, we went sledding once. Then, I decided to go into politics, you decided I should become a Mountie, we fought, I went to college, you got killed.”
“Those are some harsh words of welcome, son.” His father assumed an all-too-familiar tone of disappointment and warning. Ben bit back a retort, and then realized that he was simply too tired to deal with it tonight. He never wanted to disappoint his father, not even after his death. Perhaps, in fact, especially so.
“You’re right, dad. I’m sorry. I just don’t deal with this sort of thing every day.” He slumped against the back of his chair and peeled off a corner of the Heineken label on Ray’s bottle. It gave easily, and he began to strip it with a kind of fervor.
“This isn’t the end of the world, you know,” his father said, all hearty intonation and undying optimism. He looked horribly fragile against the light, harsh lines etched into his skin, bags under old, pale eyes.
Ben had missed him.
“It feels like it,” he admitted after a moment, feeling the wet paper give away with a certain amount of grim satisfaction. “If I can’t change anything from here, I -”
“You need to get out and get a life, is that it?” Ray’s accented voice broke in and Ben nearly jumped out of his skin. Scanning the chair in front of him, he found it first empty, then Ray filled his line of vision, all messy hair, crow’s feet and big smile. “Here, have this.”
A glass with ice water stood between them now, the top fogging over already. Ben watched it mutely.
“Who were you talking to just now?” Ray asked, and he didn’t look like a man who had nearly caught his student talking to a ghost of his dead father. In fact, he didn’t look in the least surprised. Perhaps it had helped that graduate students were not known for their sanity.
“No one, I just – sometimes, I talk to myself out loud and forget where I am,” Ben fibbed. It hadn’t even been a fib, really – sometimes he did forget where he was, and talked to himself. He had just never had to use that as a cover for conversing with ghosts before.
“Understandable. So, you feeling any better?” Ray tipped his chin forward, looking genuinely concerned, forcing Ben to look away.
He was not okay. Not by a long shot. He wished that Ray would excuse him, let him go home and be alone. But Ray had settled in more comfortably, it seemed, and if anybody would be making excuses, it would have to be Ben. He searched for some kind of answer that would not offend Ray, and came up with a nod and a sip of the water Ray had graciously brought him.
“You’re not okay. All right, how about I make you feel better?” Ray didn’t wait for Ben to respond, which was a good thing, because Ben had no comment. “All of your ideas? You should go for it. Not in your thesis, mind, but you should. After you get your Ph.D., Ben. Not before. And here is why.” Ray took a pull of his beer, made a face, and put it down. “God, I forget how awful beer is until it gets warm, and then it’s like a cat pissed in my mouth. You mind?” He nodded toward Ben’s glass of water and Ben had just enough presence of mind to let go of the glass and nod his head. When Ray brought the glass to his lips and sipped exactly where Ben had gulped a moment ago, Ben’s palms prickled and he scratched them on his slacks. He dug his fingers into his thighs and attempted to relax, while Ray’s throat moved as he drank.
When he was done, he lowered the glass, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked nothing like a professor at all. He smiled at Ben, pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, and nodded toward the door. “Wanna get out of here? It’s getting kinda stuffy, and late. We’ll talk on the way.”
To where? Ben wanted to ask, but didn’t. Instead, he gathered his thesis into his bag, summoned all his strength, and walked out after Ray. By the time he stepped outside, Ray was already lighting a cigarette. It was dark now, and the orange glow was visible a few inches away from Ray’s lips. Ray snicked his Zippo closed, dropped it in his coat pocket and leaned against the brick wall. Ben fidgeted with the shoulder strap of his bag, not quite sure where to rest his hands.
“See, this is Poli Sci, Ben,” Ray spoke up, his mouth still expelling smoke. “The real breakthroughs, the kind that you’re talking about? They happen in office. They don’t happen in dissertations. Your dissertation will get published, bound, and put on a shelf along with a thousand other ones, and no one will ever really see it after that, and hardly anybody’ll care about its actual content.”
Ray pushed himself away from the wall and nodded for Ben to follow him. They were headed in the direction of the faculty parking lot by the Political Science building, Ben realized. Their meeting was very much coming to an end. He walked in step with Ray, silently waiting for him to continue.
“Politics isn’t like math or physics. Those fields depend on academia, they’re fueled by it. Academia is where mathematicians and physicists do that kind of research and make those kinds of discoveries. What you’ve done?” Ray pointed at Ben’s chest. “That is not something for a dissertation. It just isn’t. You gotta trust me.”
Ben cleared his throat and finally spoke. “What do you suggest I do, then?”
Ray slowed his stride and rubbed his chin. Ben fancied that he could hear the rasp of stubble against skin. “I suggest that you get your Ph. D. and get into office. You’re Canadian, so you can’t exactly run for much around here. But I’m guessing that you’ve thought about this. So, you tell me. What are your plans, Ben?” Ray tilted his head to the side, like he was considering Ben, and Ben’s collar got tight again.
“I…I admit to having laid out something of a plan for a career in diplomacy, upon my return to Canada.”
Ray smiled at him, a genuine smile that somehow eased out a knot in Ben’s stomach. “Diplomacy, eh? Working between nations to better each other?”
Ben felt himself smiling sincerely for the first time in a long time. “Something like that, yes. A liaison between countries, and their political ways, I suppose.”
“Well, Benton Fraser, you got my vote.” Ray clapped him on the shoulder and brought out his keys. “Listen, I gotta drop something off downtown, so if you want a ride home, we can continue this in the car.” Ray lowered his eyes and Ben thought it must have been the street lights that extended his lashes into soft shadows and made him look ten years younger and strangely vulnerable. “You look like you could use a talk right about now,” Ray continued as he fidgeted with his keys. “And, admittedly, that’s kind of my fault.”
When Ray looked up again, he was back to his usual self, perhaps a little more flushed. The refusal was at the tip of Ben’s tongue, and in fact, about to pour out, when his exhaustion caught up with him and he exhaled.
“A ride would be wonderful, Ray. Thank you.”
Ray flashed him a grin, opened the front door of his vintage car, and slid in. Ben, for the first time wondering how inappropriate this actually was, looked around, walked to the other side of the car, and opened the passenger door.
It was a ride, and he was tired. If Ray thought it was nothing untoward, he would, as well.
*
Ben lived a ways away from campus, but not as far downtown as Ray had to go. Nevertheless, even after Ben had given Ray his address, instead of dropping Ben off first, Ray headed straight for his own destination. With the window rolled down to let the chilly night air in and the smoke of his cigarette out, Ray smiled seemingly at nothing as they drove through brightly-lit streets and past dark alleyways, filling the air around them with companionable silence.
Ben used the time to pull his head together, get a clearer picture of the torrent of thoughts raging in his mind. Ray had nearly pulled the rug from under Ben’s feet tonight, but he had also righted Ben when he’d been about to topple over. Ben knew that Ray had been right. Even if some grand illusion had been shattered, he knew that he was, more or less, on the right track – perhaps simply on the wrong platform.
He found himself watching Ray whenever he thought Ray wouldn’t notice. They had spent more time together than this, many times, in fact, but it was tonight that Ben felt closer to Ray than he ever had before.
Perhaps it was the strange intimacy of being in Ray’s car. If Ray’s office lacked any sort of presence of humanity, his car was infused with it. While his office didn’t even hold an ashtray, Ray’s car was scattered with bits of cigarette packets, or torn plastic wrappers. Tapes littered the cubby between the front seats. In the back, Ben had noticed a window sticker, though he couldn’t quite make out what it symbolized.
And perhaps it had been the tacit agreement they had come to. All through their previous working partnership, with Ray pacing Ben, and Ben rushing both of them, they worked out Ben’s problems, worked out his plans. And even with all that, he had still managed to hold back his most basic and profound beliefs, his most treasured ideas.
“We’re stale,” Ray had said once. “Kind of like bread, or something. Or, not even we. You, Ben. You gotta get that fire lit under your ass, gotta do whatever it is that you need to do get back into it. You’re flagging.”
That had been true. There were times when Ben couldn’t see the end of this, it seemed so far away, he could barely imagine the next day, much less the first draft of his thesis.
But even with all that, he had never felt as connected to Ray or his work, for that matter. Whatever fire Ray had lit under Ben’s ass tonight, so to speak, had kindled something greater. Ben felt discomfited and determined all at once. In fact, with the ride lengthening, each second drained away the exhaustion and added fuel to his determination. He was thrumming with anticipation. He thought, for the first time in a while now, that perhaps he could do this and more.
He suppressed a smile, and looked out the window. Chicago rolled by and he welcomed it, the sensation so unfamiliar, his head nearly spun.
After a while, Ray broke the silence. “We’re almost there. Sorry to take you around this way, but I figure a drive can’t hurt, and you shouldn’t be doing any more work tonight, anyway.” He turned a corner without looking at Ben and threw his cigarette butt out the window. “You don’t have a pet or anything horrendously difficult to take care of, do you?”
The question seemed as much out of the blue as the rest of the evening’s events, but Ben diligently answered. “I do, indeed, but Diefenbaker – my dog – can take care of himself for a while. As long as I leave the window unlocked, he can come and go as he pleases.”
“Diefen-who?” This time, Ray did turn to face him, both eyebrows raised. “Don’t tell me you named your dog after a Prime Minister, Ben.”
“I- I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Ben replied in all honesty.
Ray shook his head in response, chuckling. “You really are a freak.”
“So I’ve heard. And he’s a half-wolf, actually.” Ben cracked a smile and waited for Ray to finish gaping at him long enough to maneuver his car into a relatively small space. He seemed to enjoy doing it, steering the wheel with panache.
After they came to a stop, with his hand halfway to the buckle of the seatbelt, Ben froze. What was the proper etiquette in this kind of situation? Ray had given him no clue as to where they’d arrived, and Ben had been so lost in his own thoughts, he had simply neglected to inquire. Now faced with the dilemma, he scratched the uncomfortable itch of sweat on his forehead and turned to Ray, only to see his advisor already getting out of the car. Ben shut his mouth and watched Ray’s progress through the windshield.
“Ben, you coming? Or do you wanna wait in the car?” Ray knocked on Ben’s window, and it seemed only polite to answer. Ben signaled for Ray to move away and slid out of his seat. As he followed Ray, Ben took in their surroundings and, with a jolt, recognized the building they were about to enter.
“Ray, this is the City Council.” He had walked by here a million times with Diefenbaker on the mornings they were both feeling up to a brisk walk, and each time he’d felt an almost reverence of sorts.
“Yep, sure is.” Ray didn’t hesitate before opening the heavy, gilded door and waving Ben in before him with a grin and a wink. “After hours, no less.”
They walked inside and the security guard at the front desk barely waved a hand in Ray’s direction as he watched the monitors secured behind the counter. Ray waved back and Ben’s curiosity finally got the best of him. “What are we doing here?”
Ray flashed him a grin over his shoulder and pressed the elevator button more times than was strictly necessary. “I’m dropping off some paperwork. This is kind of like my part-time job.”
It was only through a super-human effort that Ben managed to keep a firm lock on his jaw. His shock must have shown in his expression despite his efforts, because Ray grinned wider, and bounced a little on the balls of his feet as he explained. “I should say, part-time volunteering, actually. Don’t really need a second job, just -”
“Do you- do you lecture here, or -”
Ray barked a laugh. “Christ, no! Remember how you make a difference?” His hands took in their surroundings, inviting Ben along. “Start small, think big, right? I can’t spend my whole life warming my ass in academia. I love teaching, Ben, and I love the research, but this here – this is what gets my blood pumping.”
“All politics is local,” Ben murmured, almost to himself.
Ray’s sudden smile seemed to light a beacon across his features, years melting from his face like shadows. “Exactly!” He led Ben towards the elevator as it dinged upon arrival. “Come on up, I’ll give you a tour.”
Ben followed him in while his mind reeled. This certainly explained quite a bit. Ray’s office wasn’t his whole life, because academia – the students, the research – wasn’t his whole life.
The numbers on the display rolled up and Ben found himself studying Ray from his corner of the elevator. The folder in Ray’s hand beat an unsteady rhythm against his thigh. The hollow sound of it and the whir of the elevator was all Ben could hear over his own breathing. Ray wasn’t looking at him, but something about his stance – perhaps the tilt of his head, or the odd steadiness of his gaze on the glossy metal door – jolted Ben into the realization that Ray was aware of his scrutiny. Ben’s neck prickled. He broke his gaze and turned it on his own shoes. When the elevator finally lurched and came to a stop, Ben had to force himself not to run. Instead, he waited until Ray gestured for him to follow and exited.
The hallway echoed with their steps, though it was not entirely empty. Even after hours, the City Council did not appear to sleep. The hallway lights flickered, white halogen lamps diffusing the evening darkness. Every now and then, a yellow, warmer light would spill from under a closed door of an office, a thud or an odd conversation, dulled by the closed doors, would break the surface quiet. Ray didn’t speak as he led them down and around the floor, to Ben now a long and wondrous punctuation to a long and odd night.
After their third turn, Ray glanced over at Ben and gestured for him to follow through a closed door, which turned out to be unlocked. A flick of Ray’s hand over the wall illuminated the office. Ben looked around. Tall shelves lined one wall, filing cabinets lined another. The desk was made of heavy oak – the kind favored by the higher officials of the RCMP. He felt his childhood memories floating to his mind like seaweed, lapping around his senses. For one breathless moment, it was as if his father were truly there - alive, bent over the desk, busy recounting his various altercations and pursuits in a leather-bound journal.
Ben blinked, and the vision dispersed. Apart from Ray, rummaging through a stack of papers on the desk, he was very much alone.
“Is this your other office?” he inquired, hoping to put himself in a less maudlin state of mind. His voice sounded odd in the echoed silence.
“Nah, only sometimes. This is an old friend of mine’s. She leaves it open for me to come and go, since I don’t got one here, and -” Ray snatched a piece of paper from the middle of the pile and pushed the rest towards the middle, “- a-ha, gotcha – I use it for my own thing.” Ray scanned the paper he’d picked up without turning to Ben.
“And what is your friend’s position here?” Somehow it felt more polite not to inquire about ‘Ray’s own thing’. Perhaps, Ray would feel compelled to tell him on his own sometime.
“Stella?” Ray finally pulled his gaze away from the piece of paper he’d been clutching, and looked up at Ben. “She’s an Alderman. Alder-woman, rather. Stella Kowalski, heard of her?”
“I – Kowalski?” Ben felt the oddest sensation of his stomach dropping out, though he could not, for the life of him, figure out as to why.
“Yeah, well, that’s the ‘old friend’ part. She’s my ex, actually.” Ray did look up at Ben then, the slight squint of his gaze adding a sudden intensity to the moment. Ben’s stomach flipped over, something akin to anticipation simmering inside. Then, broken by Ray’s too-casual shrug, the moment ended, leaving Ben with the sense of a thing unfinished, or perhaps, not even begun. He nodded then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and did not inquire further. Ray, meanwhile, turned back to the papers, stacked the ones he’d rearranged into some kind of order. Ben might not have noticed the slight flush to Ray’s neck if he hadn’t been looking. He turned his gaze away when Ray turned back to him and patted his jacket pockets.
“Looks like I’m done here.”
Ray moved forward and Ben felt a compulsion to move away, into some kind of safety zone in which he knew where he stood. He mustered a polite smile and made an ‘after you’ gesture.
“Is there anything else you wanna see?” Ray asked, wrapping his arm casually around Ben’s shoulder, just tight enough that he felt Ray’s touch through the cloth. Ben felt frozen in place. “I got the private tour covered, if you want it.” Ray’s hand didn’t move from its position. “C’mon, the scenic route getting back to the car. Or- or not?”
“I, uh –” Ben cleared his throat and scratched a sudden itch above his eye. “Perhaps another time. I think I should get back to Diefenbaker.”
“Sure thing, Ben,” Ray nodded. His hand remained a hot weight on Ben’s shoulder, and Ben finally found the strength to step away. He thought he’d felt Ray’s fingers linger on his jacket, like the touch of a ghost, before they disappeared entirely.
*
Part 2.