ds_flashfiction | Paint Challenge by joandarck

joandarck.livejournal.com posting in

*sneaks in, looking really embarrassed, promises to never write anything this long again, puts story on table, leaves.*

Pairing: RayK/Fraser
Length: 5000 words
Rating: G? (language)
Warnings: Silliness, nudity, heterosexual subtext.

Study in Red and Green

"No, Ray! No, will you listen? It is not drawing OF people, it's drawing ON people! Like– draw on." She mimed scribbling over his arm.

"Okay, something is definitely queer about that. And I thought this was supposed to be some kind of painting class. With, with fruit bowls and stuff."

"Oh, sure, it is. But! We have homework!" Frannie bounced in excitement and settled on the edge of what used to be her brother's desk, swinging the toe of the foot in the shoe that didn't fit quite right. "See, Ms. Hartwell says lots of people are kinesthetic learners, which means we learn better by doing, so– what?"

"No, nothing, just, you said that right."

"Oh, and that surprises you? Whatever, Mister Eloquence." She glared at him. What did he think she was, dyspeptic or something? "Anyway, we have this assignment, and it's so cool. Because think about it, what better way to learn the human anatomy than to feel it, to trace every curve..."

Ray interrupted her rapt rendition of Ms. Hartwell's latest lecture, tipping his chair back down to the floor. "Every curve?" His knees knocked together.

"Oh. Ewww! No!" Frannie flicked her fingers and grimaced. Naked Ray Kowalski, blecch. He probably had those skinny frog legs. "Like anybody'd– No! Just the... you know... torso."

"Oh. Okay." Ray folded his arms across the torso in question and tipped his toothpick at her. He seemed to be having one of his extra-irritating days, like it was that time of the month but with testosterone. "Why don't you ask Fraser?"

"I tried. He keeps–" She looked down and tucked her hair back, trying not to show that she was hurt. "He keeps pretending he's got something in his ear."

"Well, this is Fraser we're talking about, you know, he might have something in his ear."

"Please, Ray, pleeeeeease?" She leaned onto his desk, letting him have it with the pleading eyes and the cleavage at the same time, a double-barrelled attack. "It's what my real brother would do."

The toothpick spun as Ray made a valiant and visible effort to keep his eyes above chin-level. "Frannie, I don't know about Vecchio, okay, but I just don't see myself taking my shirt off for a bunch of–" he caught her narrowed glance and corrected, "very pretty, um, and interesting and complex girls and, um, whoever else is taking the class."

"Oooh... Fine! Now what am I supposed to do?" God, her allure didn't even work on a hound like Kowalski any more, even with the new push-up. What a terrible day. She sat up and swung her feet mournfully, dog-earing the papers in the nearest pile.

"Just because I have the worst fake brother ever, and they're all going to think you don't care, the way you never come to class and see how I'm doing, and that time you dropped me off after work and you wouldn't even come in and meet everybody? And they keep asking about you. And I have to tell them you're too busy. Like I'm the biggest loser in the world and my own brother doesn't care about my art class, just like Ma doesn't care, and who else can I take home to my room without her killing me? I mean now what am I supposed to do? Huh, Ray? Ray? What is it?"

He had this goofy look on his face, and it wasn't good news for the toothpick.

"They ask about me?"

Said she'd meet him at the car in five minutes, probably get pissy if he was late, too, hope this wasn't all gonna be an excruciating fiasco farce kind of thing like the time she tried to lead a yoga class in the break room and Huey got stuck under a table and had to get PT, and you know he shouldn't have said yes but maybe there'd really be some girls at this thing, and for once he wasn't thinking about Fraser so that probably explains why he ran right into him.

"Oh, I'm very sorry, Ray. Are you going somewhere?"

"What does it look like, I'm jogging?" He jiggled the keys in his pocket and tried to make like jumping back a couple feet was what he really wanted to do after getting a front full of the guy.

"I see I've caught you at a bad time."

"Yeah, no, that's okay, I just gotta– what are you doing here, anyway?" Crap, Fraser didn't need a ride somewhere, did he? God no, him and Frannie in the same car?

"Well, we had a long day at the Consulate, it seems four hundred crates of–" Ray made wind-the-film motions until Fraser's mouth caught up to his brain and skipped the part of the story they didn't need, "I just thought I'd see if you needed help with any of your cases. We could even do some paperwork. But you seem to be... leaving."

He made that sound suspicious, like Ray was some kind of slacker. "It's after hours, Fraser. It's important to have a life after work, you know, be a well-rounded person, corpe mano a mano... you never heard that?"

"Ah, so you mean you..."

"Yeah, I got a thing." Better not tell him it was Frannie. Let him think it was a real woman. Besides, couldn't take another lecture about respecting the Sacred Vecchio Modesty, not at the end of a long day like this, and with Frannie probably going to yap at him all night too.

"Oh, a thing."

"Yeah."

"Well, please, go ahead then. If it's a thing."

Didn't need a ride. Great! "You're the best, Fraser!"

He heard the voice calling from behind him as he sprinted off down the hall.

"I wouldn't want to interfere with a thing."

It was a fine evening, relatively speaking, perfect for a brisk walk under the stars, or what passed for them given the local air pollution and lighting conditions. Naturally, since he was going to have to walk home anyway– instead of getting a ride from Ray, which he had foolishly assumed he would, based only on the fact that that was what had happened every other time he had dropped by the precinct– it made sense to start out immediately. And if, having reached the sidewalk, he happened to pause at the corner-

Why, look! Ray's car, headed this way. From here, depending on whether Ray turned left at the light or went straight, he'd be able to deduce–

The horn spoke as the car passed him and it slowed down by the curb, allowing him to see into the passenger side. There was a face in the window: Francesca? She waved at him frantically, but smiling, not as if she were being kidnapped. The car sped up to catch the yellow light and made an abrupt turn to the right.

Not any of Ray's usual haunts, then. That route could lead to the new Vecchio household, as the family had resettled in a neighborhood to the west of this area. That explained it: Ray had offered her a ride home. Although it didn't explain why he hadn't simply said as much.

And Frannie hadn't had Ray stop the car, or insisted on giving him a ride, or invited him over for coffee, or tried to convince him he'd be more comfortable out of uniform. No. She'd just waved. That was odd.

That was very odd.

"Wow, you don't get a lot of sun, do you?"

"Lemme think. It's Chicago. The Windy City. And when it's not forty below, there's the bullets. No, Francesca, I do not have a deep base tan, thank you for asking."

Ray sat on the bed, hunched over, clutching his balled-up shirt to his stomach and looking cold and scrawny. Frannie refreshed herself with another longing look at the picture of Fraser tucked into the frame of her mirror– she'd had to steal one of Fraser's mug shots from work to replace the one that got lost in the fire, but that just made it extra special– and turned back to Ray, uncapping the pen. Poor guy. It wasn't his fault he looked like a drowned rat.

She clambered onto the bed behind him, grateful once again for Ma's television habit, and brandished the pen. "Okay, how do we do this. Just hold still, and I'll– ick, you're all veiny."

"You want me to do this again you're going the wrong way about it."

"Oh no you don't, buster. You're committed. Every Tuesday and Thursday night until we finish the assignment. Or I'll tell Fraser you broke your solemn word to me, and you need him to give you a really long speech about how that's bad."

Ray winced. "Low, Frannie. Real low."

She chortled and went back to inspecting his back, all tight and ripply, every muscle and bone right there under the skin. What exactly was she supposed to do with this? Could she even draw a straight line here?

Ray coughed. "So after you show me off to all the girls like a piece of meat (you said there'd be girls, right) then what am I supposed to do while you're painting? Just, what, clean the brushes?"

"I'm sure Ms. Hartwell can think of something you can do to pass the time. Maybe find you some trucks to play with!"

"Funny, ha ha."

She gripped his shoulder and raised the pen; he jumped. "Is this gonna tickle?"

"What are you so nervous about, bro? You got a tattoo, you're afraid of a little magic marker?"

"Okay a) that is a permanent marker, b) I was drunk at the time and stupid and 3) shut up."

She rolled her eyes. "Whatever, big shot. Just don't embarrass me in class, all right? Keep your mouth shut and try and look like a human being."

But that gave her an idea, and she checked out his back again, seeing it with fresh eyes. Like– artist's eyes. Because suddenly it was okay that it didn't look like anything she was used to. It was something different, maybe a place she'd never been.

"Wait, wait. Yeah. It's like– a landscape. With a mountain range down the middle."

She ran her hand down his spine, feeling the knobs, feeling for her idea. "And these are the mountains, here. So the mountains... should be surrounded by..." she didn't hear her voice going singsong with concentration, "clouds. Big, fluffy, clouds."

Sticking her tongue out a little, she touched the wet pen tip to his back and drew, black on the buttermilk skin, big sweeping curvy lines, fluffy clouds, everywhere.

"Izzat so," Ray said in a small voice.

"Only the dry cleaner's says he picked it up, uh, Saturday night, see, when all the witnesses say he was in... sheesh, what is the matter with you today, Fraser? You got something in your ear?"

Fraser looked pissy. Worse than that, disapproving. Disapproving to the point of wanting to spit. "You have a–. There's a small–." His voice started to drop, one word at a time. "Dark. Area. On your neck."

"Huh?" Ray reached up, like groping for a mosquito. "So I'm a slob, what – oh, oh, here? This? It's pen, sorry." He licked the heel of his hand and started rubbing at it.

"Pen?" Fraser looked unbelieving.

"Sure, what did you think?"

"Why would you–"

"Uhh, yeah. Long story. So the dry cleaner says–"

"But why would you have pen–"

"Hey, are you gonna listen to me or–"

"Well I just don't understand why you'd–"

"Gentlemen, did this precinct get re-zoned as some kind of relationship counsellor's office? Because if it did, somebody shoulda warned me."

They sprang apart to give Welsh room to come through, along with his files and his rumpled jacket and his coffee and what was left of his good temper.

"Oh, and by the way, there's a meeting at o-nine hundred in my office for anyone who still thinks of himself as employed by the Chicago Police Department."

Fraser coughed. "Ah, well, Lieutenant, I see my work here as being in more or less a volunteer capacity."

"Oh, really? Then I guess I must not have been talking to you." He shambled off, leaving Ray wincing from a parting shot of the Evil Eye.

"I think we'd better wrap up the case, Fraser."

Fraser yanked his eyes up from where they'd been, which was (what the-? why?) Ray's collar again. "The case. Yes."

What made it so especially justifiable was the question of Ray Vecchio's cover, because if the man who was pretending to be Ray's sister's brother and the woman who was, in fact, Ray's sister, were engaged in any sort of untoward behaviour in public places, it was bound to attract attention, and a concerned friend of the family would have no choice but to step in and protest. In fact, it would be remiss of him not to monitor the situation. Clearly.

Fraser kept his eyes just above the level of the car roof until the two middle-aged women had entered the building, laughing and talking, bulky tackle boxes under their arms, then darted across the lot and tried the door. Open. He slipped inside, looking both ways, then followed the receding trail of their voices to whatever event was going on here at Greenfield Community College after dark.

A strange place for a rendezvous. If that was what it was, but he couldn't imagine any other reason Ray would start hiding things from him. On the other hand, he wouldn't have expected Ray to hide that from him, either; he would more have expected him to, well, brag incessantly.

"This is very foolish, Benton. Trust is the basis of any good relationship."

"Thank you, I'll remember that." Fraser kept edging down the corridor, hugging the wall. He didn't let it rattle him any more.

"I could never have spent so much time away from your mother if I hadn't trusted her completely."

"Oh, then what very good advice."

His father's ghost was unruffled. "There's no need for sarcasm. Caroline understood."

"Well, you'll forgive me if I'd rather–" he dashed across and flattened against the other wall, peering around the corner– "see my spouse more than three times a year."

"Not a healthy way to be thinking about this, son." He had gone into his more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger bit now, standing in what would have been full view of the woman behind the desk in the next room, hands behind his back. "Sorry to be blunt, but you can't marry the Yank, now can you? In case you hadn't noticed, he's a man."

Fraser ducked his head back out of sight and snapped over his shoulder, "Sarcasm doesn't become you either, Dad."

"I'm dead serious, Benton. You're trifling with forces you may not have reckoned with."

"I'm not trifling with anything."

"And don't mumble."

Fraser risked another look around the corner and saw that the woman at the desk had stood and was headed his way. He beat a hasty retreat and, spotting the familiar bar handle of a utility closet, ducked inside. It was small and dark and smelled of paper towels. He'd always felt safe in closets.

"Look at yourself. Skulking, spying, hiding. Where's your dignity?"

"Dignity isn't everything..." No, he would not get defensive.

"Sometimes it's all you have, son. And can you blame me for wanting you to turn your attention in a more suitable direction? To someone more, more fertile?"

"Oh, well, if fertility is your only–!" He'd been raising his voice, he realized when the door opened and the woman leaned in.

"Hello? I thought I heard something. No, don't worry, you don't have to change in here. They let us use the greenroom for the community theater. Come on! I'll show you!"

She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out into the light, cringing like a mollusc. "Very impressive," she said cheerfully, looking him over as she quick-marched him down the hall. "Nice shoulders. They'll love you. Thanks for coming early, by the way. But what's with the costume? Oh, I get it. Second job as a strip-o-gram, huh?"

They reached a classroom, through the window of which he could see a milling crowd of mixed age and just make out the back of Frannie's head, before the woman unlocked the room next to it and ushered him in. "Don't worry, this is even easier. You take your clothes off before you even go in there. Just remember, the difference for this is you try to move as little as possible, and whatever you do don't start singing 'Happy Birthday, Mr. President.'"

"I– think there's been some sort of–"

Fraser Sr. shrugged and spread his hands. "I'd like to help you, son, but. I'm dead."

"Ma'am, I– Francesca! Frannie! RAY!"

The door shut.

"Ooh, beautiful."

"Will you look at that?"

"Makes you want to just grab it and take a bite, doesn't it?"

Frannie nodded modestly. "I'm good with fruit," she admitted. "Ms. Hartwell says it's like, a gift."

The painting stood propped against the bulletin board so they could all admire it. Chin lifted in a heroic stance, Fraser perched on the stepladder, nude, strategically clutching a bowl of fruit. The red of the apples brought out the pink in the skin and its Rubenesque curves of muscle. It was a pretty good rendering for one night's work, even managing to suggest the panic in his eyes. Most of the 2-7 had gathered around to applaud, the typing pool especially, who were warming Francesca's heart with their oos and ahs.

"Now let's see your drawing, Ray." Huey got the picture up alongside Frannie's, and thoughtful silence fell.

"It's not as..."

"Literal," Dewey said politely. "I'd say it's not as literal."

Huey nodded. "Yeah. Ray's more of an expressionist."

"Hey!"

"Nothing wrong with the classical style," Dewey assured her, and went back to comparing the two. "Actually they look a lot alike, if you squint."

"That's 'cause this bozo copied off me," Frannie snapped, giving Ray a shove in the arm.

"Well I didn't wanna look at– you know– area–!" Ray looked around, trying to get his fellow cops to comprehend the horror. They were still busy with aesthetics.

"It does look the same, uh, compositionally," Huey agreed. "Except Ray drew the fruit bigger."

"Thank you, pardon me, excuse me, if I may." Fraser finished elbowing to the front and snatched both pictures down, turning to face the crowd with a firm and final, "Thank you kindly."

"Oh, no, thank you," they chorused.

Fraser pressed his lips together and started edging for the door. Ray managed to cut him off in time and, when tugging didn't work, whispered in his ear, "Come on, you gotta let her have that back, Frase. She's really proud of it."

Fraser gave him a betrayed look, but let him confiscate the pictures.

Frannie broke out of the pack and swaggered over, accepting a few more congratulations on her way with little pageant-queen waves. "Oh it was nothing, really, just an instinct for lights and darks. Hi Fraser!"

"Francesca," he said gloomily.

"It is so nice of you to let me show everybody the painting. Not every guy would be secure enough to let everyone see him, you know, in the altogether, I mean especially at work. That is so cool."

He cleared his throat and nodded, trying to look willing, if not eager.

"Oh, and, Fraser... Last night, thank you for coming over to talk to me afterwards," she said more quietly, looking down. "The girls don't know we knew each other already, and they thought– you know. That you wanted to talk to me."

Fraser's throat squeezed. He had a real affection for her, and would have liked to have formed more of a friendship, especially in her brother's absence. If only she wouldn't keep insisting on something else.

"Francesca..." he said again. What could he say? "I think you're a good painter."

"Really?" She beamed up at him, all deep brown liquid eyes. He leaned backwards by reflex, but continued.

"Very promising. A natural talent."

"Oh, Fraser."

"I think so too, honestly, Fran," Ray said, inserting himself into the conversation just an inch or two in front of Fraser. "And you draw even better. Of course, you had a good subject."

He grinned at her, putting on the charm. She dimpled back.

"You really came through for me, Ray. You know, I said to myself, don't ask him, he'll just be a jerk, but you were great. Here." She pawed through her purse a little, then pulled out his old friend, the marker. "You should get a souvenir." She folded his hand around it and looked up with a little smile that was just between the two of them. "Thanks a lot, bro."

"Any time, Frannie. Think of me as your canvas." He threw his arms back invitingly.

She smiled again, but couldn't help her eyes drifting over to Fraser, like every girl's eyes were going to from now until the day he stopped standing next to the guy. She sighed. "I'm sorry, Ray. But you're just– you're just not very wide, are you?"

Patting him gently on the cheek, she tucked the painting under her arm and clicked unevenly off down the hall, cute little rear swaying from the heels.

Ray shook his head as he watched her go. "Did you see that? I think she just broke up with me. That's great. I just got dumped by my own sister."

"Ah, Ray, you may want to keep your voice down."

"Oh, yeah, sorry." He raised his voice helpfully. "We weren't dating. You know, obviously." The few lingering art critics hoping to get another look at his drawing gave him odd looks as they left. "I never thought we were dating."

Fraser put a sympathetic, manly arm around his shoulder (one of his low-contact specials) and towed him towards the door. "You'll feel better after some dinner."

"Oh, yeah?" Ray asked, willing to be convinced, but also willing to soak up a little more body heat first. "How do you know?"

"Because you have the attention span of a four-month-old puppy."

"Oh. Right."

Ray held up the piece of butcher paper and pretended to case the walls. "So, where do you think? Over the TV?"

Fraser tugged his collar. "Ah... pride of place? Well, that's very flattering, but..."

"Too public, you think? Yeah, I getcha. Okay, bedroom it is."

Ray got way too much of a kick out of yanking Fraser's chain sometimes, mainly because he couldn't yank anything else. He smirked as Fraser followed him across the room, opening and shutting his mouth.

"Be a nice surprise for my mom next time she comes to iron my shirts. Give her something to, uh, to look at."

"Ray, this may not be– er."

"Something wrong? The greys don't match?"

"Ray, I hope you realize that if people visiting your apartment see a portrait of a naked man on your wall, your partner no less, people are going to assume that you– that we–"

Didn't it break some kind of physical laws for Fraser to say that stuff? Ray's eyebrows climbed and he said the first thing that came into his head. "Oho, so you have heard of it."

And then Fraser was mad again, without warning. "I am an adult, Ray. I shave, I vote, I lace my own boots."

Good point. Of course, he'd heard of it. Yeah. Somehow that popped the bubble once and for all, took this out of the dreamland where Fraser was sort of special and had never even thought about it and might conceivably up and develop a sexual orientation one day out of complete friggin nowhere, and put it in the real world where he just wasn't interested. Like most guys. Statistically speaking.

"Look, I'm being stupid," he said, "forget it. I wasn't really going to put it up anyway. Here, you can have it, burn it or something." He pushed the paper at Fraser, right into his hand.

"Oh, no, Ray, it was ungracious of me to object. It's your picture. You drew it, you should feel free to display it anywhere you like." Fraser tried to hand it back, but he was handicapped by trying not to get it wrinkled.

"Nope, all yours, take it away, let Dief..."

"Please, I insist, maybe, the living room..."

"No, stupid idea, I don't want it, you heard Huey, it's all expressionist anyway..."

"The Expressionists were a fine school of..."

Somewhere in the arguing and the grunting and the being polite and the pulling and the pushing, paper ripped.

Ripped in half.

Ray stared down at the torn halves of the picture, the stupid picture, and said, "That figures."

He grabbed the other piece and Fraser let him have it, getting out of his way as he went over to the corner and pulled out the trash can. "Figures." He shouldn't have a crazy thing like that anyway, shouldn't have wanted to keep it, shouldn't have drawn it in the first place. He tore it into quarters, ripped it again, and dropped it in the bin. "Figures!" God, he wanted to punch something. He kicked the cupboard, and again.

"Ray," Fraser said, getting all nearby and shifting from foot to foot. He sounded like he was trying to figure things out, or maybe he was just being tactful. "I'm sorry. I had no idea you were so devoted to your art."

"Art, I don't care about the art. Don't you get it? Don't you even GET IT!"

"Ray. Ray. Ray!" He gave in finally and looked up. Fraser was giving him the earnest expression, considering him.

"What?"

"Maybe I don't get it, but–" and there it went, mouth open, tongue out, zap, boom, like always, Ray's a fish on a hook for him every time. "I'm willing to learn."

"Well I'll tell ya then. Oh, fuck, no I won't. I will, I– this is ridiculous–" Ray tried to kick the counter again, but he didn't have it in him. He jammed his hands in his pockets instead and his fist closed on something big. The marker.

Fraser was as pale with his shirt off as Ray was, but more pink than yellow. His back was soft-looking, bulges of muscle instead of thin cords. Ray sat behind him on the couch and gaped like he'd just gotten his first pair of glasses and realized how fuzzy the world wasn't.

This was probably the worst idea he'd ever had. But at least it would get it over with, and it could stop, like, tormenting his life. He'd just draw it where Fraser couldn't see, then take him home, drop him off, let him check it out when he stripped off for bed tonight, and then he'd get it and Ray would know he got it and they'd never have to talk about it again. ...Yeah, still a bad idea. But he wasn't a thinker, he was an action kind of guy, and he was sick of thinking.

Without making any big thing out of it, he dragged the pen down Fraser's skin (who jumped a little, haha Frannie, he wasn't the only one who got ticklish) and drew himself. Okay, kind of a stick figure, but close enough anyway, once he put it in the hair and the glasses. Little mark there for the badge, not his best work, fine. It looked weird, black pen lines drying on the shiny bare skin, but panicking wasn't going to help here. He tried to add a gun but it didn't go so well. Eesh. Forget that.

Moving right along, Fraser next to him. Chunkier, more like two stick figures packed into the same shirt, but good enough: get the hat on, that's the main thing, maybe some bubble pants, and a big flat black thing for the hair. There. Yeah. Try and draw Dief? Nah, that'd just confuse him. Right so now. Here's the hard part. They're holding hands.

He finished drawing the round thing that was supposed to be their hands and looked at it, jaw sideways, trying to decide. It felt like way too much already, but would it actually do the job? Would Fraser, twisted around in front of some dinky little Consulate bathroom mirror, actually get the drift like he was supposed to? Because the whole point of this was to not have to answer any questions the next day. So he'd better lay it out there 100%, so even someone who had to break physical laws to get it would get it.

So... what? So he made like he was thirteen and carving Stella's initials in the bench, and honestly he hadn't changed as much as you're supposed to since then. Take the pen, write on the bare spot further up the back, RK + BF, very carefully, face going red and hot as he finished it, sorry already he'd had this idea, but too late now, too big to scribble it out. He'd only drawn half of the heart around the initials when Fraser whipped around, getting himself a big stripe across the shoulder.

"Ray, do you mean it?"

Ray stared at him, feeling his stomach dissolve into cold, sick, tingling bits and sink down into the couch. "You can tell what I'm writing?"

"Of course, the human back is a very sensitive–" but Fraser didn't look any more interested in that than he was right now, and he broke off and just said "Ray" again. He didn't have any kind of shirt on, and his shoulders were huge, and he was looking at Ray like he'd just seen something beautiful. Then he frowned and looked down and took the pen away from him and capped it and tossed it on the table.

And then he was grabbing the back of Ray's head with his big hand, whoa, big hand, and pulling him up close and mashing into him and showing him what that tongue was for, and okay, maybe Ray didn't have the full picture before either, but man, was he getting it now.

Page 1 of 2 << [1] [2] >>

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

pearl-o.livejournal.com

Oh, I enjoyed this a lot!

From:

Paint Challenge by joandarck

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags