Comment-fic prequel to "Doppelganger." Ray K/Fraser.

Maybe it was because you were both sick of the whatever it is between you. Or maybe, you think, Fraser just didn't want you, maybe he just wanted sex. Though why a guy who looked like him couldn't just go out and get it, without all this rigmarole, is anybody's guess, and you've used up all your guesses late at night alone in your bed, sleepless and wondering.

Maybe it's what you wanted, too, sex without commitment, but sex that's about as safe as you can get short of marriage. You've had marriage; it's not for you, because you suck at it.

Maybe this is the only way you can have it, have him, though tonight he's not who he is. He's someone else, someone hot, a different, deliberate kind of hot -- and a little bit sleazy, weirdly wise in the ways of sex-for-money, and not for the first time you have doubts about this arrangement. Down deep you know it's the worst idea ever.

There's more to Fraser than you knew, but what you do know is that when the two of you stumbled on that john and his rent boy in the flea-bag hotel, something electric ran through you, because the two of them, one dark haired and buff, the other skinny with ropey muscles, reminded you of, well, you, you and Fraser. And when you looked up Fraser was looking back at you, and his eyes were deep and piercing, and they were speaking to you, asking you a question, and you knew what he was asking, and you looked back, and your own expression said, yes, yes, yes.

So maybe that's how you got here, Ray Kowalski and scarily convincing rent-boy Benton Fraser, and maybe that's why you haven't said a word, just closed the hotel room door and took off your clothes, and maybe that's how you ended up with him sucking your dick and your head craned back so far you can see the cracks on the flaking ceiling, about ready to come even after only half a minute of it.

And maybe that's why you'll leave the money on the dresser when you're done, and close the door behind you, and pretend it's not him, it's just some hooker with a mouth and a hole who's in it for the money. Maybe you'll even come back, though this time you'll be the one sucking his dick.

Maybe that's how this arrangement happened. But not why it happened.

One thing you know for sure is, if you start believing it's real, it's over.