For the Lie / lay challenge
Mar. 13th, 2005 10:36 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
shrewreader.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
ds_flashfiction*hand brow* Under the wire. Cool.
Obligatory disclaimer: No, they're not mine, the citation in here comes under the heading of 'fair use,' and you can find a copy of The Last Unicorn in your local library.
Rated PG-13 to R for m/m necking and FTB.
Many thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dswdiane for grammar and sentence betaing, and to nevansams2_feet for keeping me at it, while distracting me with play by play IM narration of The Brier. My condolences to those who were rooting for Nova Scotia.
Icelandic Unicorn
When Ray Kowalski took the Vecchio gig, no one had given him any warning about the Canadian’s habit of breaking into song.
Before he’d spent any time with Fraser, and before they’d burned all their back-accumulated vacation in the Arctic, Ray had no great acquaintance with the species Homo Sapiens Canadiensis. He didn’t know whether this singing thing was a peculiarity of this particularly handsome specimen, or if it was the entire sub-species Homo Sapiens Regalis Canadiensis Equites Legalis. The invitations Turnbull’s choir concerts and to the Musical Ride were leading him towards thinking perfect pitch was a prerequisite to joining the RCMP.
It was better than his alternative hypothesis: that the entire country was related by blood to the Von Trapp family.
Now that he was back to being Kowalski, he did know, however, that the Voice was becoming a Problem.
For one thing, it was distracting. He’d be happily sitting in a stake-out, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel along to whatever tune was playing in his head, and then he’d hear... humming. Usually in tune with whatever was playing in his head. This was less annoying than the sort of humming that was completely out of synch with the tunes playing in his head (a significant part of the reason why he would sooner hand in his badge and gun than ever work a stakeout with Dewey again), but the harmonization made the phenomenon no less creepy.
Tunes could get caught in his head for days. It was mainly the fault of the Illinois Department of Transportation, which was doing its bit to spend valuable taxpayer dollars in the maintenance and repair of Lake Shore Drive near Ray’s apartment building. The construction meant navigating a mess of Jersey barriers, traffic cones, and mornings spent in the company of Cokie Roberts and Daniel Shore instead of his more normal Morning Zookeepers, ‘cause the only reliable traffic report in the Chicagoland area came over NPR.
By the time Kowalski -left- the 2-7 at the end of the day, he was usually too wasted to change the setting on the radio -- he’d just have to put it back in the morning, after all. And not that he’d tell anyone or anything, but Fraser liked All Things Considered. Turnbull said it reminded him of As it Happens, so Fraser probably liked it for the same reason. It reminded them of home. Ray was all in favor of people being reminded of home. He still bought the same kind of laundry detergent Stella used, and it wasn’t just because Tide did a better job of getting blood stains out of his clothes than Gain did.
But the music -- and the Voice -- really had to stop. It was getting under his skin and into his system in ways he didn’t quite understand, and the distraction was almost enough to make his internal dialogue with himself grammatically correct.
He’d caught this particular tune -- and the Voice, harmonizing with it -- for some days now.
Unfortunately, the same could not be said of Isgridir Feldasson, son of Felda Feldasson, owner of Feldasson Confectionary. Isgridir was suspected of breaking, entering into, and causing approximately $45,000 damage to the baking equipment of the competition, Haraldsdottir Delicacies. This included resetting their oven’s thermostat for metric measurements and causing massive damage to their batch of zabaglione, which, Ray was quite surprised to learn, had won city- and state-wide awards.
He was rather less surprised to learn that fact from Fraser.
Feldasson the younger’s son had been working late on a school project across the street in the Steam Vent, taking advantage of the coffee-shop’s free wireless internet access, and had admitted to Fraser (naturally), after some pretty complicated hedging and dancing around answering direct questions about his whereabouts from Ray, that he was pretty certain he’d seen his dad’s car drive by at about the same time the alarm had gone off over at Haraldsdottir’s. ‘Pretty sure,’ of course, was not enough for an arrest warrant, but it was enough to get surveillance on Isgridir Feldasson.
The most identifiable object stolen from Haraldsdottir’s was its world-famous pepper cookie recipe. Haraldsdottir’s version of the Icelandic Christmas treat required a large quantity of rose pepper, an ingredient that Feldasson’s had not purchased, so far as Ray could determine, ever.
They’d tried the logical and reasonable thing -- asking the same vendor who told them that Feldasson’s had never ordered rose pepper -- but all he could tell them was that the orders came in about once a week and were delivered within 24 hours. Bakeries usually got their deliveries at approximately 3 AM, Fraser told Ray earnestly. Their presence at the time of delivery would provide the necessary evidence to Judge Stantenhope, and then, hopefully, an arrest could be made.
Ray had muttered about painstakingly precise authority figures as they stalked back to the GTO from the Cook County Courthouse.
“Nice for a change, isn’t it?” Fraser replied.
Ray had grumbled that they’d just have to watch more carefully -- after all, if this guy was smart enough to try and make the b & e look like a piece of anti-Icelandic propaganda from a militia in Michigan, he might be smart enough to bring the pepper in on his own.
They had been spending the night together for about four days now.
The damn tune had been stuck in Ray’s head for three of them.
And now he had the Voice next to him.
“...I lied and I cheated, deceived and dissembled, and I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned.”
The rich tenor startled Ray, and he tried to drop his coffee -- the Steam Vent was open 24-7, and gave discounts to buyers who brought their own mugs. His hand got caught under the handle on his commuter mug, saving him from yet another life-altering damp jeans incident, but drippage of scalding drink happened anyway, splashing onto his right thigh. Ray yelped and hit his head on the roof of the car as he jumped in his seat.
A hand landed on his shoulder, another on his thigh, both pulling up the scalding hot denim away from the skin and blotting it with an immaculate, crisp, starched handkerchief. The motion was businesslike and caressing all at once, and once Fraser’s hands returned to their own side of the GTO, Ray squirmed in his seat, catching his breath.
He turned and looked at Fraser, who was watching the target bakery with every evidence of intense concentration.
A spark in his eyes betrayed the other man’s distraction -- as did the tiniest hint of a tremor in his hand as the Canadian used the same handkerchief to wipe his nose.
Ray’s eyes narrowed.
Fraser hadn’t sneezed or sniffed since the middle of October, when a slime mold infestation mysteriously appeared in the closet of his office. Mysteriously because slime molds were primarily found in Central and South America, and not in urban Canadian Consulates, much less confined to a 4 foot wide by 2 foot deep closet within the same. It had taken three weeks to clean the spores out of the space, and during that time, Fraser had camped out on Ray’s couch, under his spare blanket, not even bringing a bedroll with him for fear of bringing the infestation to the apartment.
Except, now that he thought about it, Fraser hadn’t stopped working in the office. Nor had he objected to Ray meeting him there, or going over case details there.
And Ray hadn’t seen his spare blanket since the day that Fraser had announced, almost regretfully, that the closet had been cleared of infestation by a local contractor.
Mounties didn’t lie. And cheating, particularly when you were likely to be the local hockey, soccer, baseball, basketball and curling coach -- to say nothing of the local Scout troop leader -- was right out.
But maintaining the right, Ray had figured out over the course of four months wandering the Arctic, certainly required deceit and dissembling.
“Wanna explain that?” Ray asked, as he settled back in the driver’s seat, his face directed at the bakery -- but his eyes on the reflection of Fraser in the windshield.
Fraser was doing his caribou in the headlight look.
“Explain what? You’ve been tapping the Ash Grove for days. It was getting on my nerves.”
“Sure. Okay.” Ray kept looking towards the bakery, waiting for the delivery truck to show, but his eyes stayed on Fraser’s reflection, which was re-ordering an eyebrow. “‘Cept that I haven’t. It’s a thing by Britten. And that’s not what you just sang.”
“Certainly you have. The rhythm is quite distinctive. And Benjamin Britten was noted, along with Ralph” he pronounced it ‘Rafe,’ Ray noticed, “Vaughn Williams, for his variations on English folk songs. Movement.”
Ray groaned, and shifted his attention back to the object of their surveillance. The delivery truck pulled up in front of Feldasson’s, and off it came sacks of flour, brown sugar, white sugar, confectioner’s sugar, baking soda, baking powder, nuts, and dried fruit.
“So much for that,” Ray grumbled, reaching for the ignition.
Fraser’s hand closed over Ray’s stilling it. “Wait for it,” he murmured. “Isgridir Feldasson is not the brightest stone in the creek. Look again.”
The delivery truck guys came down the ramp with a hand truck, loaded with three milk crates. Ray looked at Fraser, finger tapping on the key under Fraser’s hand.
“All right, so I was... there.” Fraser nodded again at the truck.
Hand truck again, this time loaded with boxes. Top one was labeled in large bright red letters on a white background: Aladdin’s Cave Rose Pepper.
Ray punched the air. “Yes. NOW we wake up Stantenhope.” He reached for his cell.
Twenty minutes to a warrant, forty minutes to its delivery by a beleagured looking clerk, ten minutes’ examination of the premises located the recipie -- in Inga Haraldsdottir’s handwriting -- for Icelandic pepper cookies. A black & white took Isgridir Feldasson in to the 2-7, and it took Ray and Fraser forty-five minutes to convince Dieffenbaker that it was, in fact, time for him to vacate the window seat at the Steam Vent.
Four hours later, as dawn broke over a cold and gray December day in Chicago, they finished the paperwork on booking Isgridir Feldasson. Welsh told them to stop haunting his bullpen and sent them home -- and being a considerate soul, Ray offered Fraser a ride home.
Cheating might be a non-option for Mounties, but it was nothing to a veteran Chicago detective.
“The Consulate is in the other direction, Ray,” Fraser said helpfully as they drove towards Ray’s apartment.
“Is it?” Ray replied. “As a life long resident of Chicago, I would never have known the way to Stetson Avenue from my place of employment. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Where are we going?”
“Three guesses. First two don’t count.”
“Ah.” Fraser rubbed at his eyebrow again, “well, not breakfast; the usual diner we patronise is on the other side of the Drive.”
“Mmm.” Ray turned the car toward the morning commute traffic on Lake Shore Drive and turned on the radio to get the traffic report.
“And obviously not toward the Vecchios’, who live on the other end of town.”
“Mmm-hmm.” They came to a stop in bumper to bumper traffic.
“Your apartment?” Fraser asked.
“Gosh. Who’d’a thunk. Offered you a ride home, after all.”
“I was not aware that your apartment was my home.” Frosty Fraser Syndrome, a lesser known side effect of prolonged separation from the natural habitat of the Arctic Mountie, had come in in full stride.
Ray shrugged, a slight smile on his face. “Well, was gonna talk about that, ‘cause I gotta say, the whole slime-mold thing? -Way- pushing it.”
“Pushing it?”
“Mm-hmm.” The radio announcer said the traffic was bumper-to-bumper and not moving, so Ray put the car in park. “Pushing it. As in the envelope.”
“The envelope,” Fraser replied, still trying to be Frosty and having less success at it.
“Yeah. You know.” Ray’s eyes glinted, and it was Fraser’s turn to shift uncomfortably in his seat. “That edge of things known and unknown, and what you put your address on when you’re writing home.”
Fraser looked confused. Dief snorted interrogatorily, and Fraser looked at him with exasperation. “I am not.”
“You aren’t?” Ray asked.
“Not you. Him.”
“Ah. And he thinks...?”
“That I am, obviously.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’re welcome. The traffic’s moving.”
Ray drove them home, and parked and looked at Fraser.
“Slime mold?” He asked, leaning into Fraser’s space, and tugging the Stetson out of the other man’s lap. “Did you really think that would hold up?” He slid his hand across Fraser’s shoulders and caressed the hair that brushed the starched collar.
Fraser squirmed. “It worked.”
“For three weeks.”
“I wagered you would not have a knowledge of the behavior of the species.”
“You bet right.” Ray tugged, and pulled Fraser half across the car and into his arms. Their heads met, forehead to forehead, and Ray smiled. “I’ve got a lousy record on relationships that start with necking in cars.”
Fraser looked disappointed.
“Come inside. We’ll lie down. We can wallow. We’ve earned it after this week.”
Fraser smiled, took the Stetson back, climbed out of the car, and let Dief out of the back. Ray came around to the passenger side of the car and caught Fraser’s arm as they went in the back door.
“And after we’ve laid down, and wallowed, we can go get your stuff from the Consulate. That way I can get my spare blanket back.”
Fraser chuckled. “Saw through it?”
Ray grinned. “Eventually. Love may be strong, but a habit is stronger.” He tugged Fraser into the apartment, into his arms, closed and locked the door without letting go, and led him into the bedroom. “You lie, cheat and deceive worth shit.” They kissed. It was long, wet and intoxicating.
Fraser looked a bit dazed, and Ray smiled again before pulling him in for another kiss.
“What about dissembling?” Fraser asked, breathless. He seemed a bit unsteady, his hands almost shaking on Ray’s back.
Ray chuckled. “Right up there with your sinning.” His eyes twinkled. “Can always use practice, though.”
Fraser’s arms tightened around Ray, turned the blond toward the bed, and kicked the bedroom door shut behind them. “Oh, good.” He tugged Ray to him to kiss him, and smiled. “Something to look forward to.”
They laid down together.
And they knew when they loved by the way they behaved.
Bits:
You might recognize the line or two: It’s from Peter S. Beagle The Last Unicorn. Full text available (and chords, it really -is- done most often to ‘The Ash Grove,’) here http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/wheniwa0.htm
It was the first thing, honestly, that came to mind with the challenge. After all. Fraser doesn’t lie. Really he doesn’t. Honest.
Obligatory disclaimer: No, they're not mine, the citation in here comes under the heading of 'fair use,' and you can find a copy of The Last Unicorn in your local library.
Rated PG-13 to R for m/m necking and FTB.
Many thanks to
dswdiane for grammar and sentence betaing, and to nevansams2_feet for keeping me at it, while distracting me with play by play IM narration of The Brier. My condolences to those who were rooting for Nova Scotia.Icelandic Unicorn
When Ray Kowalski took the Vecchio gig, no one had given him any warning about the Canadian’s habit of breaking into song.
Before he’d spent any time with Fraser, and before they’d burned all their back-accumulated vacation in the Arctic, Ray had no great acquaintance with the species Homo Sapiens Canadiensis. He didn’t know whether this singing thing was a peculiarity of this particularly handsome specimen, or if it was the entire sub-species Homo Sapiens Regalis Canadiensis Equites Legalis. The invitations Turnbull’s choir concerts and to the Musical Ride were leading him towards thinking perfect pitch was a prerequisite to joining the RCMP.
It was better than his alternative hypothesis: that the entire country was related by blood to the Von Trapp family.
Now that he was back to being Kowalski, he did know, however, that the Voice was becoming a Problem.
For one thing, it was distracting. He’d be happily sitting in a stake-out, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel along to whatever tune was playing in his head, and then he’d hear... humming. Usually in tune with whatever was playing in his head. This was less annoying than the sort of humming that was completely out of synch with the tunes playing in his head (a significant part of the reason why he would sooner hand in his badge and gun than ever work a stakeout with Dewey again), but the harmonization made the phenomenon no less creepy.
Tunes could get caught in his head for days. It was mainly the fault of the Illinois Department of Transportation, which was doing its bit to spend valuable taxpayer dollars in the maintenance and repair of Lake Shore Drive near Ray’s apartment building. The construction meant navigating a mess of Jersey barriers, traffic cones, and mornings spent in the company of Cokie Roberts and Daniel Shore instead of his more normal Morning Zookeepers, ‘cause the only reliable traffic report in the Chicagoland area came over NPR.
By the time Kowalski -left- the 2-7 at the end of the day, he was usually too wasted to change the setting on the radio -- he’d just have to put it back in the morning, after all. And not that he’d tell anyone or anything, but Fraser liked All Things Considered. Turnbull said it reminded him of As it Happens, so Fraser probably liked it for the same reason. It reminded them of home. Ray was all in favor of people being reminded of home. He still bought the same kind of laundry detergent Stella used, and it wasn’t just because Tide did a better job of getting blood stains out of his clothes than Gain did.
But the music -- and the Voice -- really had to stop. It was getting under his skin and into his system in ways he didn’t quite understand, and the distraction was almost enough to make his internal dialogue with himself grammatically correct.
He’d caught this particular tune -- and the Voice, harmonizing with it -- for some days now.
Unfortunately, the same could not be said of Isgridir Feldasson, son of Felda Feldasson, owner of Feldasson Confectionary. Isgridir was suspected of breaking, entering into, and causing approximately $45,000 damage to the baking equipment of the competition, Haraldsdottir Delicacies. This included resetting their oven’s thermostat for metric measurements and causing massive damage to their batch of zabaglione, which, Ray was quite surprised to learn, had won city- and state-wide awards.
He was rather less surprised to learn that fact from Fraser.
Feldasson the younger’s son had been working late on a school project across the street in the Steam Vent, taking advantage of the coffee-shop’s free wireless internet access, and had admitted to Fraser (naturally), after some pretty complicated hedging and dancing around answering direct questions about his whereabouts from Ray, that he was pretty certain he’d seen his dad’s car drive by at about the same time the alarm had gone off over at Haraldsdottir’s. ‘Pretty sure,’ of course, was not enough for an arrest warrant, but it was enough to get surveillance on Isgridir Feldasson.
The most identifiable object stolen from Haraldsdottir’s was its world-famous pepper cookie recipe. Haraldsdottir’s version of the Icelandic Christmas treat required a large quantity of rose pepper, an ingredient that Feldasson’s had not purchased, so far as Ray could determine, ever.
They’d tried the logical and reasonable thing -- asking the same vendor who told them that Feldasson’s had never ordered rose pepper -- but all he could tell them was that the orders came in about once a week and were delivered within 24 hours. Bakeries usually got their deliveries at approximately 3 AM, Fraser told Ray earnestly. Their presence at the time of delivery would provide the necessary evidence to Judge Stantenhope, and then, hopefully, an arrest could be made.
Ray had muttered about painstakingly precise authority figures as they stalked back to the GTO from the Cook County Courthouse.
“Nice for a change, isn’t it?” Fraser replied.
Ray had grumbled that they’d just have to watch more carefully -- after all, if this guy was smart enough to try and make the b & e look like a piece of anti-Icelandic propaganda from a militia in Michigan, he might be smart enough to bring the pepper in on his own.
They had been spending the night together for about four days now.
The damn tune had been stuck in Ray’s head for three of them.
And now he had the Voice next to him.
“...I lied and I cheated, deceived and dissembled, and I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned.”
The rich tenor startled Ray, and he tried to drop his coffee -- the Steam Vent was open 24-7, and gave discounts to buyers who brought their own mugs. His hand got caught under the handle on his commuter mug, saving him from yet another life-altering damp jeans incident, but drippage of scalding drink happened anyway, splashing onto his right thigh. Ray yelped and hit his head on the roof of the car as he jumped in his seat.
A hand landed on his shoulder, another on his thigh, both pulling up the scalding hot denim away from the skin and blotting it with an immaculate, crisp, starched handkerchief. The motion was businesslike and caressing all at once, and once Fraser’s hands returned to their own side of the GTO, Ray squirmed in his seat, catching his breath.
He turned and looked at Fraser, who was watching the target bakery with every evidence of intense concentration.
A spark in his eyes betrayed the other man’s distraction -- as did the tiniest hint of a tremor in his hand as the Canadian used the same handkerchief to wipe his nose.
Ray’s eyes narrowed.
Fraser hadn’t sneezed or sniffed since the middle of October, when a slime mold infestation mysteriously appeared in the closet of his office. Mysteriously because slime molds were primarily found in Central and South America, and not in urban Canadian Consulates, much less confined to a 4 foot wide by 2 foot deep closet within the same. It had taken three weeks to clean the spores out of the space, and during that time, Fraser had camped out on Ray’s couch, under his spare blanket, not even bringing a bedroll with him for fear of bringing the infestation to the apartment.
Except, now that he thought about it, Fraser hadn’t stopped working in the office. Nor had he objected to Ray meeting him there, or going over case details there.
And Ray hadn’t seen his spare blanket since the day that Fraser had announced, almost regretfully, that the closet had been cleared of infestation by a local contractor.
Mounties didn’t lie. And cheating, particularly when you were likely to be the local hockey, soccer, baseball, basketball and curling coach -- to say nothing of the local Scout troop leader -- was right out.
But maintaining the right, Ray had figured out over the course of four months wandering the Arctic, certainly required deceit and dissembling.
“Wanna explain that?” Ray asked, as he settled back in the driver’s seat, his face directed at the bakery -- but his eyes on the reflection of Fraser in the windshield.
Fraser was doing his caribou in the headlight look.
“Explain what? You’ve been tapping the Ash Grove for days. It was getting on my nerves.”
“Sure. Okay.” Ray kept looking towards the bakery, waiting for the delivery truck to show, but his eyes stayed on Fraser’s reflection, which was re-ordering an eyebrow. “‘Cept that I haven’t. It’s a thing by Britten. And that’s not what you just sang.”
“Certainly you have. The rhythm is quite distinctive. And Benjamin Britten was noted, along with Ralph” he pronounced it ‘Rafe,’ Ray noticed, “Vaughn Williams, for his variations on English folk songs. Movement.”
Ray groaned, and shifted his attention back to the object of their surveillance. The delivery truck pulled up in front of Feldasson’s, and off it came sacks of flour, brown sugar, white sugar, confectioner’s sugar, baking soda, baking powder, nuts, and dried fruit.
“So much for that,” Ray grumbled, reaching for the ignition.
Fraser’s hand closed over Ray’s stilling it. “Wait for it,” he murmured. “Isgridir Feldasson is not the brightest stone in the creek. Look again.”
The delivery truck guys came down the ramp with a hand truck, loaded with three milk crates. Ray looked at Fraser, finger tapping on the key under Fraser’s hand.
“All right, so I was... there.” Fraser nodded again at the truck.
Hand truck again, this time loaded with boxes. Top one was labeled in large bright red letters on a white background: Aladdin’s Cave Rose Pepper.
Ray punched the air. “Yes. NOW we wake up Stantenhope.” He reached for his cell.
Twenty minutes to a warrant, forty minutes to its delivery by a beleagured looking clerk, ten minutes’ examination of the premises located the recipie -- in Inga Haraldsdottir’s handwriting -- for Icelandic pepper cookies. A black & white took Isgridir Feldasson in to the 2-7, and it took Ray and Fraser forty-five minutes to convince Dieffenbaker that it was, in fact, time for him to vacate the window seat at the Steam Vent.
Four hours later, as dawn broke over a cold and gray December day in Chicago, they finished the paperwork on booking Isgridir Feldasson. Welsh told them to stop haunting his bullpen and sent them home -- and being a considerate soul, Ray offered Fraser a ride home.
Cheating might be a non-option for Mounties, but it was nothing to a veteran Chicago detective.
“The Consulate is in the other direction, Ray,” Fraser said helpfully as they drove towards Ray’s apartment.
“Is it?” Ray replied. “As a life long resident of Chicago, I would never have known the way to Stetson Avenue from my place of employment. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Where are we going?”
“Three guesses. First two don’t count.”
“Ah.” Fraser rubbed at his eyebrow again, “well, not breakfast; the usual diner we patronise is on the other side of the Drive.”
“Mmm.” Ray turned the car toward the morning commute traffic on Lake Shore Drive and turned on the radio to get the traffic report.
“And obviously not toward the Vecchios’, who live on the other end of town.”
“Mmm-hmm.” They came to a stop in bumper to bumper traffic.
“Your apartment?” Fraser asked.
“Gosh. Who’d’a thunk. Offered you a ride home, after all.”
“I was not aware that your apartment was my home.” Frosty Fraser Syndrome, a lesser known side effect of prolonged separation from the natural habitat of the Arctic Mountie, had come in in full stride.
Ray shrugged, a slight smile on his face. “Well, was gonna talk about that, ‘cause I gotta say, the whole slime-mold thing? -Way- pushing it.”
“Pushing it?”
“Mm-hmm.” The radio announcer said the traffic was bumper-to-bumper and not moving, so Ray put the car in park. “Pushing it. As in the envelope.”
“The envelope,” Fraser replied, still trying to be Frosty and having less success at it.
“Yeah. You know.” Ray’s eyes glinted, and it was Fraser’s turn to shift uncomfortably in his seat. “That edge of things known and unknown, and what you put your address on when you’re writing home.”
Fraser looked confused. Dief snorted interrogatorily, and Fraser looked at him with exasperation. “I am not.”
“You aren’t?” Ray asked.
“Not you. Him.”
“Ah. And he thinks...?”
“That I am, obviously.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You’re welcome. The traffic’s moving.”
Ray drove them home, and parked and looked at Fraser.
“Slime mold?” He asked, leaning into Fraser’s space, and tugging the Stetson out of the other man’s lap. “Did you really think that would hold up?” He slid his hand across Fraser’s shoulders and caressed the hair that brushed the starched collar.
Fraser squirmed. “It worked.”
“For three weeks.”
“I wagered you would not have a knowledge of the behavior of the species.”
“You bet right.” Ray tugged, and pulled Fraser half across the car and into his arms. Their heads met, forehead to forehead, and Ray smiled. “I’ve got a lousy record on relationships that start with necking in cars.”
Fraser looked disappointed.
“Come inside. We’ll lie down. We can wallow. We’ve earned it after this week.”
Fraser smiled, took the Stetson back, climbed out of the car, and let Dief out of the back. Ray came around to the passenger side of the car and caught Fraser’s arm as they went in the back door.
“And after we’ve laid down, and wallowed, we can go get your stuff from the Consulate. That way I can get my spare blanket back.”
Fraser chuckled. “Saw through it?”
Ray grinned. “Eventually. Love may be strong, but a habit is stronger.” He tugged Fraser into the apartment, into his arms, closed and locked the door without letting go, and led him into the bedroom. “You lie, cheat and deceive worth shit.” They kissed. It was long, wet and intoxicating.
Fraser looked a bit dazed, and Ray smiled again before pulling him in for another kiss.
“What about dissembling?” Fraser asked, breathless. He seemed a bit unsteady, his hands almost shaking on Ray’s back.
Ray chuckled. “Right up there with your sinning.” His eyes twinkled. “Can always use practice, though.”
Fraser’s arms tightened around Ray, turned the blond toward the bed, and kicked the bedroom door shut behind them. “Oh, good.” He tugged Ray to him to kiss him, and smiled. “Something to look forward to.”
They laid down together.
And they knew when they loved by the way they behaved.
Bits:
You might recognize the line or two: It’s from Peter S. Beagle The Last Unicorn. Full text available (and chords, it really -is- done most often to ‘The Ash Grove,’) here http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/wheniwa0.htm
It was the first thing, honestly, that came to mind with the challenge. After all. Fraser doesn’t lie. Really he doesn’t. Honest.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: *G*
Date: 2005-03-18 12:48 am (UTC)Vimes of the North? Never thought of it that way, but now I am.
Re: *G*
Date: 2005-03-18 02:22 am (UTC)Well, three and an acronym.
Carrot of the RCMP
Re: *G*
Date: 2005-03-25 07:20 am (UTC)And somebody has written a Due South/Discworld crossover. It was slightly mindblowing.
Re: *G*
Date: 2005-03-25 11:38 am (UTC)Re: *G*
Date: 2005-03-30 09:44 pm (UTC)