Almost Human
by Cat Young

"Ray! Stop the car!"

Ray jumped, but immediately pulled over. "If it's a hockey player, a litterbug, or a little old woman trying to cross the street, I'm shooting you first and then them."

"You make no sense, Ray." Ben unfastened his seatbelt and stepped out of the car. He circled around to the street side and paused, waiting for a break in the traffic. Ray moved quickly to his side, gun at the ready.

"What've you got?"

"There." Ben pointed toward the opposite street corner.

Ray squinted through the dim evening light at the old building, muscles tensed for action. Nothing threatening revealed itself, and he relaxed his shoulders slightly. "I don't see anything."

"Right there."

"What, the punk with the spray can?"

Fraser nodded, attention divided between the traffic and the young man busily painting his name on the already-so-decorated wall. "He's committing an act of vandalism." The light changed at the corner, and he took the opportunity to jog across the street.

"It's condemned!" Ray yelled after him, then followed, muttering under his breath.

The side street was less busy, and Fraser made it across before Ray reached him. He arrived at the curb in time to hear Ben address the young man in the Officious Mountie Voice. "Excuse me. Please put down that can. You are defacing property that does not belong to you."

The boy -- Ray now saw that he was young, certainly no more than fifteen -- jumped. Wide eyes took in Ben's red uniform and the gun that Ray still held, half-forgotten but still ready in case of need. With the low, dodging run of one all too familiar with being a target, the boy fled.

"Now, son, there's no need..." Ben began, then cut off the words as the boy leaped through an opening in the wall where a window had once been. Not sparing a glance for his partner, Ben followed. Ray sighed and resumed his chase.

The boy led them through room after abandoned room, over and around the piles of plaster and splintered wood left by workers intent on salvaging every possible reusable object. They ran upstairs and down, several flights at a time, until Ray had lost count of what floor they were on. Several times they almost caught up, but the boy was fast and agile. Had he been born in a better neighborhood, he might have been a track star. Finally he led them into a small room, not yet completely stripped. The two men stopped just inside, blocking the door. The boy ran to the window and stopped; however high they were, it was too high to jump. Ray leaned against the doorframe, too winded to yell "Freeze!"

Ben moved slowly into the room. "We're not going to hurt you," he said, and even he sounded a little out of breath. "I'm afraid that we will, however, have to place you under arrest. I'm sure that if you cooperate--" The boy made a sudden dash for freedom, successfully evading the Mountie. Ray caught him by the jacket, but he quickly shrugged it off and slipped away, slamming the door behind him. There was a loud crash just outside, and when Ray tried to open the door it swung open just a few inches before it hit something heavy. The sound of footsteps receding quickly in the direction of the stairs told him that the boy was uninjured and escaping once again. He pushed harder. Whatever was blocking the door slid a little, encouragingly. Fraser joined him, and together they managed to push it far enough for the two of them to squeeze through. Ray went first, tripping immediately. Ben stepped over the obstacle -- a ladder, he saw by the dim light from the windows -- and offered him a hand. Ray allowed himself to be pulled up, wincing as he flexed the arm he had used to break his fall.

"Are you all right?"

"Jammed my wrist. I think it'll be all right, though. Doesn't feel like it's broken."

"Would you like me to take a look at it?"

"Nah. It's fine. Let's just get outta here."

"All right."

They began picking their way back towards the stairwell, choosing the clearest path now that they were no longer in a hurry. Looking around, Ray marveled only that he hadn't tripped sooner. He turned to Ben. "So what the hell is wrong with you?"

"In what sense?"

"In the sense that you felt the need to chase that kid all the way up here for writing his name on the side of a building that's gonna be torn down in a couple of weeks anyway."

"Vandalism is wrong, Ray. The state of the building being vandalized is unimportant; it's the act that is wrong."

Ray shook his head in frustration, reaching for the handle of the door to the stairway. "Look, Fraser, sometimes--" He pushed, cutting off his sentence as the door didn't budge. He jiggled the handle. "What the... Little punk must've locked it!" He slammed his shoulder into the door, but achieved nothing beyond making his injured wrist throb. "Stand back." He took out his gun, aiming for the lock, but Ben stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"Ray, it's a fire door. That won't work."

"How come you never get us locked into anything where shooting out the lock does work?"

"I have no idea. Coincidence, I suppose, although it could be argued that my subconscious--"

"Shut up."

"As you wish."

Ray glanced around the room. "You see a screwdriver anywhere? Maybe we could take it off its hinges."

"It's hung from the other side. Can't you just call for help?"

"Left my cell phone in my jacket, and my jacket's in the car. It's still covered in mud from this morning."

"Oh. Did I mention that I was sorry about that?"

"Yeah. You did. I'm still sending you the cleaning bill."

"All right, Ray."

Ray sighed, leaning back against the wall. "So what do we do now?"

"We wait. With luck, your family will come looking for us when we do not arrive for dinner. They will find the Riviera parked across the street --"

"If it's still there," Ray muttered.

"-- and realize that we must be trapped somewhere in this general vicinity and come to our rescue. Or, if all else fails, we will simply be forced to spend the night here and the work crew will let us out when they arrive in the morning."

"Spend the night here."

"Yes, Ray."

"Greeeeaaaat." He drew the word out, glancing around again at their inhospitable surroundings. "Well, let's see if we can make it back to that other room at least. There wasn't so much junk everywhere and I think I even saw a chair in there. We can take turns sitting down."

They stumbled back. It was fully dark outside by now, and they were above the level of the streetlights. Fortunately the moon was nearly full, and the little office faced east, so once inside they could see well enough to settle down in relative comfort. There was indeed a lone folding chair, which Ben let Ray have, choosing the floor instead. Ray sat down with a groan.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah. Just tired."

"How's your wrist?"

"It's fine, Benny."

"All right." Fraser leaned his head back against the wall, gazing patiently out the window. He seemed resigned to the wait, however long it might prove to be. Ray stared at him curiously. There was no sign of resentment, no sense of shame at overreacting to what, in Ray's opinion, barely constituted a crime, not even a faint smile at the irony of the situation. Just plain, simple acceptance. Incredible.

As if feeling Ray's eyes on him, Ben turned his head, questioning him silently with a lift of his eyebrows.

"You really don't mind, do you?"

"Hmm?"

"This." Ray waved a hand, encompassing the room, the building, the city, their lives. "You don't mind."

Ben cocked his head slightly. "Why should I?"

"Is this what you expected? That you'd run after that kid and end up stuck for the night in this dump?"

"Well, no, Ray. But one does what one must, and takes the consequences. That young man was committing a crime, and it was our duty --"

"Fraser, he was just a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who got a hold of a can of spray paint and a wall to write on. He's hardly a mass murderer."

Ben's jaw was set in a stubborn line. "It was still our duty as officers of the law to stop him, for his own sake if not for the sake of the property owner. Once the line has been crossed into criminal behavior, it becomes easier and easier to cross it again. It is our duty to stop that from happening."

"Don't you ever think about anything but duty, Fraser?"

"Of course, Ray. I frequently… well, perhaps I wouldn't say frequently, I often… well, no, I sometimes… I occasionally…" He paused and looked away, turning back to the window. "Not really, no."

"Oh." Ray studied his hands, turning this over in his mind. He took a deep breath and opened his mouth, then closed it again, not sure exactly what he'd been about to say. He tried again. "Why?"

Ben looked faintly surprised. "I don't know. I've never really thought about it."

"You're a strange man, Benny."

"Perhaps." He kept his eyes fixed on the window. There was something odd in his expression, and it held Ray's attention, niggling at the back of his mind. Then he shifted against the wall, and memory clicked.

Ben was lying.

He did think about more than duty, or he had. Ray thought about the one time he remembered when Fraser had, completely and spectacularly, forsaken his duty. And with it had gone his friends, his manners, his principles… he had teased Fraser once about "the first step on a slippery slope." Maybe in his case, it was true. He couldn't allow himself any leeway, because if he did, he wouldn't be able to stop. He went "by the book" because the book was the only guide he had.

Ben turned to look at him, puzzled by his unaccustomed silence. The moonlight touched his face, casting his perfect features in stark silver and black. He looked suddenly alien -- a computer simulation, a mad scientist's creation, a beautiful statue brought to life but still marble inside.

"Ray?"

He blinked, shook his head, and the alien creature was gone. Ben was leaning towards him in the moonlight, with a worried expression. "Huh?"

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah, fine. Just had something on my mind."

"Ah. You know, we should probably sleep in shifts tonight, in case someone does come looking for us."

"Yeah, okay. I'll take first watch."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I mean, I've got the chair, right? Plus I don't think I'd be able to sleep just yet anyway."

"All right, Ray." Ben swiveled himself neatly away from the wall and stretched out on the bare wooden floor, crossing his arms behind his head. "Goodnight."

"Night, Benny." He tried not to stare at the still form, not to try to recapture the strangeness that had been there earlier. After about ten minutes he gave up, toeing off his shoes and padding on socked feet to the window. The moon was only about halfway up the sky, reminding him that it was still relatively early; the light it gave just showed the hands of his watch. A little after 9:30. They'd be having coffee at home -- Tony watching Family Feud after putting the boys to bed, Maria sewing after doing the same with the girls, Frannie either doing something with her nails, or reading her latest self-help book, or both, and Ma working on her quilt for the Ladies' Aid. They might be wondering where he and Fraser were, but they wouldn't be worried yet. Hard to believe they'd been in here for less than two hours. No wonder he wasn't sleepy, in spite of the dark. Fraser was the only adult he knew who ever went to bed this early.

Fraser. Ray turned his back on the moon and regarded his sleeping friend, the peaceful face caught once more somewhere between subhuman and superhuman. Another memory surfaced, another one-sided conversation. Are you human? Human beings have feelings, love and lust and anger and fear. He couldn't doubt that Fraser did feel things, felt them deeply behind that mask of his.

He wondered which had come first, the feelings so strong that they required the mask or the mask that kept the feelings bottled up until they exploded like that bottle of orange juice he'd once reclosed and forgotten on a windowsill. He suspected the latter. It couldn't have been easy, living Fraser's life. His own hadn't been great; he'd pretty much spent it feeling like he wasn't and never could be good enough for anything. Maybe Fraser's problem was that he'd felt like he wasn't and could.

He'd pieced together enough of Ben's history to imagine the words: "Chin up, son, men don't cry." "Hold the door for the lady, Benton." "Don't forget to share." "Keep those pants clean." "Don't whine, it's only a little farther." And so Ben had tried a little harder, held his back a little straighter, pushed himself just a little more. And the walls had grown thicker and the mask more polished, and his natural self, deprived of light and air and the chance to grow, had fermented and gone sour just like the orange juice.

He'd never thought of hopelessness as a good thing before. He himself had given up long ago on ever pleasing his father or actually living up to the Church's teachings; in fact, he'd decided pretty early on that he didn't really agree with either of them. His mother's admonishments to "Be a good man, Raimondo," had been vaguely encouraging but not very helpful. He'd had to pretty much invent his own rules as he went along, leaning on his own judgement in every situation. Where Fraser's world had been divided for him into strict polarities of right and wrong, Ray's was filled with gray areas and extenuating circumstances. His choices had been between the prudent and the stupid, the easy and the hard, the possible and the probable, and the proper, the permissible, and the unacceptable. He'd been allowed to choose.

Ray left the window and crouched beside Ben, fighting the urge to ruffle his hair like he sometimes did with his nieces and nephews. "You never had a chance, did you, Benny?" he murmured softly. "Well, I've got news for you. You're not perfect. You're never going to be perfect." Giving in, he ran one finger lightly over the dark curls. "But you're gonna be OK."

Shifting in his sleep, Ben sighed and smiled a little, as though in the midst of a wonderful dream.

END