ds_flashfiction | Necking challenge: Third Time's a Charm by lamardeuse

lamardeuse.livejournal.com posting in

I wanted to do this challenge, but I wasn’t sure what I could add to the amazing pantheon of F/K first-kiss fics. Then Ray started talking and I just let him run with it. And hey! It’s my 50th DS story! *throws confetti on self*

I apologize in advance for insulting the no doubt fine quality of Northern television programming.

Third Time’s a Charm
by lamardeuse

The first time Fraser kissed Ray, Ray was drowning, so he didn’t really register what was going on until after he was breathing again. Besides, he was wet and freezing and pissed off, and therefore, as Fraser would say, getting horny over the whole thing was not an option.

At least, it wasn’t an option until he was alone in his apartment three days later and jerking off under a stream of ice-cold water, his mouth open and gasping and the back of his head banging rhythmically against the hard ceramic tile.

The second time Fraser kissed Ray, Ray was ninety-five percent unconscious, so that one didn’t count for much either. They’d come back to his apartment after taking Beth Botrelle home and Ray was already feeling like a big fuck-up for bawling all over Fraser, not that he couldn’t come up with other reasons on a regular day, but that was beside the point. Fraser insisted on sticking around to help Ray clean up the place in spite of Ray acting like a prick to try to make him leave, and when his apartment was clean and normal-looking again Ray just stood there and stared, because it was like nothing had happened, nothing at all. Which made him feel like bawling again, so he went into the bathroom and locked the door for a few minutes and sat on the toilet lid and put his head between his knees until the shaking stopped.

And when he came out he wasn’t surprised to find Fraser there waiting for him, only Fraser wasn’t standing there all awkward like Ray expected he would be. No, in fact Fraser was in Ray’s bedroom, where he was currently turning down the fresh linens on Ray’s newly-made bed. If Ray hadn’t been sure he’d only been in the bathroom five minutes, he would’ve bet money that Fraser had just laundered the sheets himself. Maybe there were instructions in the Mountie manual for bending the laws of space and time in order to get more shit cleaned faster.

He opened his mouth to say something nasty to get Fraser to go already, but right then Fraser straightened and the look in his eyes was something Ray didn’t recognize. Hell, he didn’t even think Stella had ever looked at him that way, and he tended to remember more good stuff about his marriage than had actually happened. So he shut his mouth and stripped out of his clothes, unselfconsciously, like a trusting kid, and he got into the bed and Fraser pulled the covers up over him without another word.

He didn’t want to think about what it meant that he was letting Fraser tuck him in, he only knew that he needed Fraser to do it, and Fraser seemed to need to do it, and he was so fucking tired. As soon as his head hit the pillow he was going, going, and he was most of the way to gone when he felt Fraser’s lips brush over his forehead, felt Fraser’s soft breath dance along his hairline. His eyes cracked open slightly, but right then the light clicked off and everything went dark, and by the next day Ray was half convinced he’d dreamed everything after he opened the bathroom door.

By the time they agreed to go on their adventure, Ray was determined that when the third kiss rolled around he would not be facing imminent death, dismemberment, or emotional trauma. He was no shrink, but he was pretty sure that these were not the events he wanted to become permanently associated with his sexual identity. If him and Fraser kept on the way they were going, pretty soon he’d only be able to get it up by whacking his more sensitive bits with a ball peen hammer or watching small rodents getting tortured. And that was definitely not an option.

And knowing Fraser, that left it up to Ray to do the kissing this time. The only thing he had to figure out was the timing.

*~*~*~*~*~*

As usual, Ray’s timing sucked.

It was going to be their last night in civilization before heading off into the sunset. Ray had it all planned out, right down to the plush hotel in Yellowknife (hey, they had a Hilton too) and the room service and the romantic—well, okay, the rerun of Slap Shot on the pay-per-view (fine, so their pay-per-view was kind of pathetic). Instead of that, they ended up helping the local RCMP chase down a Bavarian count who was a master of industrial espionage and who had stolen the plans to a state-of-the-art drill that would—oh, who the fuck cared? The upshot of it was that they showed up six hours late by which time the Hilton had given their room away and Slap Shot was history and the only place they could get was a run-down motel with one creaky bed that was probably older than the Pyramids and one lousy channel on the TV. It happened to be the Inuit channel, which was okay with Fraser but really stank for anybody who didn’t want to learn the proper method of drying seal meat.

“But Ray, if you’ll just allow me to translate—this is a valuable survival skill should anything happen to me while—”

“Fraser,” he said, his eyes closing in pain as he flopped back onto the ancient bed, “if you croak and I am stuck on the frozen tundra alone with the dogs, I can guarantee you I will not be drying any seals.” He opened one eye. “Dief, maybe. Now he’d dry up good, make nice sweet jerky. Why you think I been feeding him all those donuts?”

Fraser pressed his lips together like an old schoolmarm. Great. No way was Ray getting any kissing tonight.

Bouncing to his feet, he grabbed his toothbrush and headed into the bathroom.

*~*~*~*~*~*

When he came out, Fraser had tucked himself in and was lying there stiff as a board, which even for Fraser meant he was in a bad mood. That made two of them, so Ray turned off the light and got into his side of the bed. Not even the prospect of sharing a bed with Fraser was enough to get him going, because this was not the way it was supposed to be, dammit, and why couldn’t anything in his fucking life ever turn out the way Ray pictured it in his head?

Because maybe, his inner voice replied, this is all you’re going to get. And if you’d take your head out of your ass for more than two seconds, you’d see that this is all you need.

Ray blinked up at the ceiling. He blinked again.

Hey, Ray said to his inner voice. Since when did you get so smart?

“Ray?” Fraser’s voice was tentative in the darkness.

“Yeah?”

The words tumbled out of Fraser like an avalanche. “If you’ve changed your mind, I understand completely.”

Changed his mind? But how did Fraser—oh, right. He was talking about the hand thing, the adventure. “No, I haven’t changed my mind. I still want to.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”

There were a few moments of silence, then: “It’s only that—you don’t seem happy.”

That was, Ray realized, the best opening he was likely to get. And never let it be said that Ray Kowalski couldn’t paint himself a new picture when inspiration came and dropped a clue bus on his head. He rolled over and snapped on the bedside lamp, then rolled back to face a bewildered, squinting Fraser. “You want me to be happy?”

Fraser nodded. “Of course, Ray.”

Ray nodded back. “Then kiss me.”

Fraser’s eyebrows nearly flew off his forehead. “Excuse me?” he choked.

“Kiss me, Frase,” Ray repeated patiently, hitching himself up on one elbow. “Kiss me when I’m not drowning or freezing my nuts off or asleep or falling apart or drying seal blubber. Kiss me right here, right now, when I’m warm and alive and we’ve got all night to get naked and touch each other in this creaky old bed.” He moved closer until Fraser’s eyes seemed as big as dinner plates and his nose looked all crooked.

“Kiss me,” Ray murmured against Fraser’s mouth, “like you mean it.”

And then Ray felt the gentle touch of Fraser’s hand on his cheek. He closed his eyes so he could concentrate on every moment of this, imprint it on his brain and his skin and his heart.

“I always have,” Fraser murmured back, right before he made Ray happy.

End