Notes: Written for Vecchiofest.
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Say goodbye to the old street that never cared much for you anyway
Different colored doorways you thought would let you in one day
Goodbye to the old bus stop, frozen and waiting
Weekend edition has this town way overrated
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When Ray was a kid, he used to play baseball in the lot down the street.
He vaguely remembers it having grass in the beginning, but by the time he was old enough to outgrow things like that, it was completely bare, worn down by years of pickup games in the summer and snowball fights in the winter.
He and Kowalski walked by there last summer when they had dinner at his ma's. Instead of the lot in his memory, all they found was an apartment complex.
Looking back, he thinks that may have been when he started saying goodbye.
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They went to his ma's for Christmas, because Fraser insisted.
"You should be with your family, Ray," he said, and Ray couldn't figure out how to tell him that staying home would mean that too.
So he sat in the living room and watched as Fraser tried to help his mother and she shooed him away. He watched Kowalski sitting in the armchair with Frannie's latest on his lap, having a conversation with the baby while it stared at him with huge eyes.
It wasn't until that night, walking home together in the snow, that it finally felt like Christmas.
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It started naturally, and a little ridiculously, like something out of a sitcom.
Ray returned to Chicago with nothing but a suitcase and an address scribbled on a piece of paper, and when he showed up to an apartment that was supposed to be empty, he found Fraser and Kowalski there instead.
He stayed.
Maybe it should have been more complicated than that, and it was certainly never easy by anyone's standards�because nothing ever is with Kowalski�but it worked, in some completely inexplicable way.
Working together, living together, fucking together, fighting together�it shouldn't have worked, but it did.
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The fighting happens more than he'd expect, especially from Fraser.
Fraser never fought with anyone when Ray was around the first time, but now that he's back, he sees that Fraser's changed. He isn't sure if Kowalski has changed him, or just all this time away from Canada, but he's snarky now. He knows how to bite back and make it hurt.
Kowalski, he's just a fight waiting to happen. He's got all that energy wrapped up in that skinny frame, it seems like he needs to be fighting or fucking all the time. Luckily, he's damn good at both.
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If Ray could find a way to get the two of them in bed with him and never leave, he'd be a happy guy.
Sure, he knew the sex would be good. You get a guy as repressed as Fraser and a guy as unintentionally sexy as Kowalski in a bed together, you're lucky if the damn thing doesn't ignite. But he never knew it would be this good.
Fraser's got the most talented mouth he's ever come across, and these big broad hands that always seem to know exactly what part of Ray's body is begging for his touch. And Kowalski, he's a dancer. He can twist his hips ways that Ray never even imagined.
And his fingers. God. Those long fingers that Ray can't get enough of. He's never come harder than the first time Fraser was leaning over him, Ray's cock in his mouth, and Kowalski reached in and started fucking him with his fingers.
The sex isn't even all of it, really. Because what comes after is almost as good, his head pillowed on Fraser's chest, Kowalski sprawled out beside him, arm tossed across both of them.
Ray's forgotten how to fall asleep any other way.
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"He's miserable here, you know," Kowalski said one night when the hockey game was over, and it made Ray want to fight him, made him want to put his fist through a wall.
"I know," he said instead, because Kowalski was right.
Chicago was a cage of the worst kind for Fraser, a cage full of people and sounds and smells and crime, when all he wanted was to be outside again, really outside, not the fake kind of outside you can find in the city.
And Fraser would never say a word, because he loved them too fucking much.
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Ray wasn't very good at planning, and neither was Kowalski, so they had to enlist some outside help: Frannie, and even Turnbull for some of the details. But once all the finagling was over, it was just him and Kowalski, sitting there in a diner, looking at each other across a big manila envelope.
"So," said Kowalski, and Ray nodded. "We're really doing this."
Ray looked out the window for a long time. "Yeah," he finally agreed. "We really are."
He felt Kowalski's hand land on his, and their fingers tangled together as they watched their city go by outside.
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"Happy anniversary," Kowalski said as Ray kissed Fraser hello. When they pulled apart, he held out the envelope, adorned with a red bow.
"Ray, I�" Fraser began, and Ray held up a hand.
"Just open it."
So he did. Then he stared, and shuffled the papers, and wouldn't look either of them in the eye.
"Ray," he finally said to the carpet, and Kowalski grinned.
"It's everything we need to move north, Fraser. The deed to a cabin. Your transfer papers. Immigration forms."
"But you can't possibly want to�"
"We want to," Ray told him, and it was true.
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He stands beside Fraser by the window and watches the planes land while they wait for theirs to arrive.
"You ready to go?" Kowalski asks behind them, and Ray thinks about his city, the house he grew up in, the pizza place he orders from every Friday night, his job, his family, his life. All the things he'll be leaving behind.
"Yeah," he says. "I'm ready to go." Kowalski wraps his arms around him from behind and rests his head on Ray's shoulder. Fraser takes his hand as their flight is called.
"Let's go home," he says, and they do.