![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
j-s-cavalcante.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
ds_flashfictiondS Holiday Party: for Dramaturgca, by J S Cavalcante
Title: Smitten
Author:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
j_s_cavalcante
Pairing: F/K
Rating: NC-17. Very.
Length: 7,400+ words (Okay, so I totally fail at snippets. Maybe there’s a snippet in here somewhere, but I didn’t seem to be able to cull it out of its context, so here’s the whole thing. I hope that’s okay.)
Note: Thanks and a virtual bouquet toaukestrel , the hawk-eyed, for beta services above and beyond.
Prompt: 74. F/K. NC-17, true love. "I love you, now fuck me!"
Title: Smitten
Author:
j_s_cavalcante Pairing: F/K
Rating: NC-17. Very.
Length: 7,400+ words (Okay, so I totally fail at snippets. Maybe there’s a snippet in here somewhere, but I didn’t seem to be able to cull it out of its context, so here’s the whole thing. I hope that’s okay.)
Note: Thanks and a virtual bouquet to
aukestrel , the hawk-eyed, for beta services above and beyond.Prompt: 74. F/K. NC-17, true love. "I love you, now fuck me!"
Smitten
J S Cavalcante
“Ray, did you mean it?”
Which that was not what Ray was expecting to hear from Fraser at that moment. Considering Fraser was swiping his tongue down the small of Ray’s back, heading due south when he said it, it was kind of surprising Fraser could speak at all, but Fraser was always doing impossible, weird things (especially with his tongue), so why should Ray be surprised?
“Did I…mean…what?” he gasped.
“At the wedding,” Fraser said, sounding somewhat breathless himself because he was still licking Ray, in figure eights and swirls and flourishy things like a fancy signature. “When I mentioned how beautiful Eloise and Davy looked together, and you said, as you have many times, that their love can’t last, that it’s too good to be true, that it’s a pipe dream.”
Ray dropped his head down between his shoulders and groaned. “Fraser…” he managed. “You can’t seriously be…do we really have to talk about this right now?”
Fraser’s teeth fastened gently on Ray’s left buttock and his tongue traced more patterns there, making Ray shiver and arch his back. “I need to know, Ray.”
Ray panted, trying to catch his breath and gather his brains back together--well, as much as he could with Fraser leaving a series of wet, sucking kisses on his left asscheek and then starting in the same way on the other side. He groaned. “You’re killing me here, Fraser. You are killing me, and I gotta talk while you do it?”
“Oh, well, no…when you put it that way. Sorry, Ray.”
Fraser moved his lips back to the small of Ray’s back and licked there, a tickly feeling. He licked downward, downward, over…ohGodthere…back and forth and around, rimming him so perfectly, and then Fraser started to push his tongue in, just the tip, making Ray squirm and rock his hips helplessly back toward the sweet invasion, oh God, oh God please--
--and Fraser stopped again. “Ray.”
Ray bit the inside of his cheek, pretty hard: he tasted a little blood. “God…what…now?” he said when he stopped biting. Ray was going to hyperventriquilate or something and turn, uh, whatever color you turned when you did that, and then he’d faint and his balls would explode and it was all going to be Fraser’s fault.
“What I was trying to ask, Ray, is whether you are really as cynical about love as you purport to be. Because I thought…well I thought you’d experienced true love, and love at first sight, and you married for love, and you tried valiantly to win it back…. One would naturally assume you did believe in love after all.”
Ray leaned his head down on his hands. “Fraser. Do you know how hard I am right now?”
“Well, er, I couldn’t say exactly…”
Ray reached back blindly and grabbed Fraser’s hand, pulling it off his hip and bringing it around and down, pushing it against his cock.
Fraser obediently opened his hand and wrapped it firmly around Ray and gave him one long experimental stroke, really slow and tight, which that almost gave Ray the other kind of stroke, it was so good.
“Oh,” Fraser said. “Oh.”
“Yeah, ‘Oh.’ I could cut diamonds with that, that’s so ‘oh.’”
“Yes it is, Ray, you’re very…oh, dear.”
Fraser opened his hand and stroked Ray’s entire cock, from the weeping head down the shaft and over his balls, cupping them gently, then sliding back up the same way. Ray whimpered. He thrust into Fraser’s hand. He spread his legs even wider. He couldn’t help any of it.
“Frase, please, now!”
He was maybe going to cry if Fraser didn’t get a move on and fuck him soon.
Fraser stroked him again, a little faster, and Ray caught his breath, and then he felt Fraser’s tongue on him again, right there, and then Fraser’s tongue was in him, pushing in as far as it would go, which wasn’t far. It felt like heaven, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
Ray groaned, or maybe he growled, deep in his throat, like some kind of wild Arctic animal. On the outside he was just a guy who was minding his own business, in his own bed with his own partner who was supposed to be fucking him but wasn’t. But on the inside? Grr! Wild thing with claws.
Jeez, if Ray really was that animal, with his luck he’d probably be just about to pounce on his mate and finally get some, but then he’d get shot by a hunter right then, at the wrongest possible moment.
That’d be a mercy considering the animal’s mate was wanting to talk instead of fuck, anyway.
And Ray did not get that, because that was a chick thing, that was a thing like Stella used to do. But Stella wasn’t here. This was Fraser, and Fraser was a Real Guy, and when he fucked he didn’t talk, well, not as much as he did the rest of the time, anyway.
Which okay, that was kind of a lot, maybe even more than most chicks did, but, God, Fraser knew how to fuck, how to give it to Ray hard and fast and sweet and not hold back.
The main problem was that Fraser was not doing that right now.
Ray so needed him to do it right now.
Fraser’s tongue pulled out and went in again, and before Ray realized it, he was moving his hips in a circle, making Fraser shift and steady him with one hand on his hip and the other still on his cock.
So Ray did it again, swinging his hips in a wider circle. This time, Fraser almost lost his place and had to stab at him repeatedly with that wicked, wicked tongue. Then he found the place and thrust in all of a sudden like it was an accident and he hadn’t meant to (though Ray knew it wasn’t, and he had).
Fraser pushed one lubed finger in next to his tongue, much farther than his tongue could reach, and curved it just right to touch Ray’s prostate, and that almost knocked Ray off his knees, it was so good. Ray’s breath whooshed out of him.
“Did I hurt you, Ray?”
Oh, no, that was not pain. Shivers chased one another up Ray’s body and sweat beaded on his upper lip. All he could do was shake his head, panting, shift his knees on the bed, and try not to moan like an idiot.
He was pretty sure he wasn’t a hundred percent successful at that last one.
And then Fraser stopped again. “You know, Ray, it’s not as though it isn’t my place to ask this, considering…well considering where we are at the moment and what we’re doing. If you truly don’t believe love can last, I think I have the right to know that.”
Ray laid his face down on the backs of his hands again and whined, a long, drawn-out, this-is-never-gonna-end whine. He was being tortured. Obviously, he’d done something Very Bad at the wedding, and Fraser was now making him pay, and pay, and pay, and the hell of it was Ray didn’t even know what the fuck he’d done.
And this was Not a Good Thing to be wondering with his ass up in the air, wet from Fraser’s tongue, and tingling, also from Fraser’s tongue, and tightening up happily around Fraser’s finger, holding it inside him. But still not getting what Ray wanted right where he wanted it, when he wanted it. Which was, in order, Fraser’s cock, in Ray’s ass, right the hell now.
Okay. Okay. Ray had to calm down and get a hold of himself and think, because if he didn’t figure this out, he was obviously going to die here with his ass up in the air and his cock still hard. And that would suck.
So Ray mentally retraced his steps, really quick, in the hope that his Big Screw-Up would be obvious and he could apologize and they could get on with the fucking.
The wedding. Yeah. Since the Unfettered thing was gone, the kids had the ceremony in a nice little Baptist church. It still made Ray nervous, but not as much as a Catholic church, and anyway, Ray kept his cool. Fraser couldn’t be mad about that, because Ray was the picture of calm, he was the calmest.
He’d even put on his best suit, the dark gray one he only used for weddings and stuff like that. Fraser had worn a nice suit, too, navy, not his red uniform for a change, and Ray helped him do his tie and told him how hot he looked and how Fraser better watch out because Ray was going to rip it off him later, he looked so hot.
Fraser couldn’t be mad about that, because he blushed and rubbed his eyebrow and said they’d better finish dressing and get in the car before Fraser threw Ray on the bed and had his way with him.
They wore civilian suits because Eloise said the wedding was all friends and she thought cops in uniforms looked like something official, not friends, and there were going to be lots of cops there. Plus Davy said half of his friends (he had like three, so Ray didn’t try figuring out what half of them would be) would run the other way if they saw a roomful of uniformed cops or even one uniformed Mountie.
And then Eloise said this way if Ray wanted to hold Fraser’s hand during the ceremony or something, he could do that because they wouldn’t be in uniform. (Eloise was big on PDAs--like they hadn’t known that from the moment they first laid eyes on her, making out with Davy through an entire movie full of robots and spaceships and bitchin’ special effects?)
Eloise was onto him and Fraser. Maybe it was her “gift” or maybe it was just that starry-eyed young love thing, where when you’re in love you see love everywhere, but she just knew. In fact, she said she knew back when she met them, and that was spooky, because Ray didn’t even know back then.
Well, he knew he was crazy about Fraser, and he knew he was warm for Fraser’s form, but he didn’t know he was going to be unhinged enough to actually tell him, or that Fraser was going to be happy to hear it. He sure didn’t know he was going to go on a quest on a dogsled with him, or that he was going to talk Fraser into moving in with him when they got back to Chicago.
So, okay, some people, if they were sharp enough, could look at him and Fraser and know the score, and that was all right, because while Ray didn’t exactly stand on his desk and announce he swung both ways, he’d never made a state secret out of it, either. And it wasn’t like it was a big secret anyway after that incident at the 1-8 before he became Vecchio, but Ray’d always been kinda offbeat, kinda kooky. He even made it work for him on the job, which was not something most queer officers could say.
And anyway, since Vecchio was straight and Fraser was a little unhinged, everybody’d just looked the other way and pretended like Ray was straight, because he was Vecchio--nudge, wink--and nobody was going to come out (hah!) and say otherwise.
But that was over a year ago. Eloise was now an emaciated--um, emancipated--adult and legally entitled to do something stupid (like marry the first guy she ever fell in love with), Vecchio was in Florida being straight with Stella, and Ray was himself again.
Even so, the 2-7 wouldn’t exactly thrill to one of their detectives flaunting his gay lover all over the precinct. Not like Welsh cared who Ray slept with, but Welsh was not a big fan of anything likely to disrupt discipline and procedure any more than Ray already did with his temper and his sucking at paperwork.
So holding Fraser’s hand in front of the 2-7, even at a private wedding with no uniforms in sight, was just not going to cut it.
Jesus, could that be Ray’s Big Screw-Up?
“This isn’t because I wouldn’t hold your hand at the wedding, is it?” Ray panted.
“No, of course not, Ray. I understood why you wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t want you to take such provocative action in front of the people you have to work with every day. Tolerant as most of them seem to be, there’s still the chance that someone would make trouble.”
Ray shook out his neck and shoulders, almost dislodging Fraser’s hand from his hip. He blew out a breath.
“Okay, so tell me. What’d I do? Whatever it was, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Fraser, I didn’t mean it. Now can we please get back to what we were doing?”
“Ray, I’m afraid you’re under a misapprehension. I’m not asking you to apologize for anything. I just need to know if…well, if the cynical attitude toward love is really the posture I always thought it was, or if you really do believe love is ultimately futile.”
“Oh, jeez, Fraser, how can I…” Ray rubbed an impatient hand over his face, noticing his beard was getting scratchy.
He put his hand down over Fraser’s, which was still on his cock, and tried to get Fraser to stroke him some more. In a minute or two it wasn’t going to make a difference; Ray would lose his erection and then maybe Ray would fall on his face and cry--if he was smart. If he wasn’t smart he’d say a bunch of dumb stuff he didn’t really mean and make Fraser go sleep on the couch.
Ray was being such a girl about this not-getting-fucked thing.
Which maybe liking getting fucked by a guy was the problem in the first place, like his father said (only not in those words), but it was way too goddamn late to fix Ray now.
But just when Ray thought he was about to lose his hard-on, Fraser moved his hand on him, and Ray perked right up. He jerked his hips fast and rough, thrusting into Fraser’s hand so Fraser would get the message.
And Fraser seemed to, for a minute. But then Ray felt Fraser’s rough cheek against his side just above his hip, where it tickled. That was much too high to mean Fraser was getting back to where he’d left off.
Ray gritted his teeth, pulled carefully out of Fraser’s grip, and turned over, still holding Fraser’s hand. He pulled Fraser down after him and reached up to touch Fraser’s face.
“Fraser,” he said through his still-gritted teeth. “Do not do that. You hear me? If you start again, you do not stop until Ray comes. Unless you want a seriously pissed-off Ray in your bed.”
“It’s your bed, Ray.”
“It’s our bed, dammit.” Okay, so Ray was already pissed off. Weirdly, it didn’t make him any less hard. He wrapped his own hand around his cock. If Fraser wouldn’t do it, Ray would. Hah. Show him.
Anyway, it looked like getting fucked wasn’t on today’s menu after all, because Fraser couldn’t have stayed hard through this anyway, Ray figured. So even with Fraser right here, Ray was apparently going to have to take care of himself, because while talking was apparently Fraser’s thing (and how had he missed that all this time?) talking was not going to do it for Ray.
Ray squeezed his cock hard, just about resigned to doing himself when he happened to look down the long, hard line of Fraser’s body, and damn if there wasn’t something else looking kind of long and hard, too. Real hard, and red, and...wow.
Ray’s fingers twitched with wanting to touch that beautiful cock. Damn, Fraser had to be seriously pissed if he wanted to talk instead of do something about that.
Okay, so Ray had screwed up at the wedding, and Fraser obviously wasn’t ready to tell him what he’d done or even admit he’d done anything.
He sighed heavily. “Fraser. This isn’t buddies.”
Fraser twitched, putting his head on one side, looking at Ray like he hadn’t expected to hear that.
Ray hadn’t really expected it, either. It wasn’t what he’d meant to say at all.
“Is that what this is supposed to be, Ray? Buddies?”
“Yes! We’re a duet, we’re a team. You know that, Fraser. What the hell is up with you tonight? I know it’s the wedding. I just don’t know what, you know, triggered this whatever-it-is, this bee you got buzzing around your big hat.
“I mean, I know you don’t like me being cynical. Never mind that I been that way since the day we met.
“And okay, that’s okay, I can get that. Cynical’s not the most fun thing. You got reasons why I shouldn’t be, I’m willing to listen. But not now…jeez, in bed, Fraser, when you were just about to fuck me? That’s not buddies. That’s not even friends, doing that to a guy.”
“It’s not general cynicism I’m concerned about, Ray. It’s cynicism on the subject of love.”
Ray swallowed. “I don’t get it.”
“Ray. You told me several times today you didn’t believe love can last. Yet here I am with you. What am I to make of those statements of yours? I’m to just let them go and continue on as though nothing happened? You’ve called into question the very foundation of our relationship.”
“Huh? How is this the foundation of us? I told you and told you, you and me, we’re a duet. We jump into the lake and through glass windows and sled into the sunrise together. We got common cause, we got stuff we share.
“What I was saying before wasn’t about us. It was about Davy and Eloise, me and Stella. Kids who think they’re in love at first sight and it’s gonna be forever, and who go on believing that until they get burned. I still got the scars, Fraser.”
“Oh.” Fraser pressed his lips together. “But you’re talking about our partnership. Aren’t we lovers also? Are your feelings for me…”
“Jesus, Fraser, I’m crazy about you. You can’t tell?” He drew his legs up and back a little, tilting just right, urging Fraser closer until that big, red hard-on that Fraser was trying to pretend wasn’t there poked Ray pretty close to exactly where he wanted it.
Fraser caught his breath. It was just a little gasp, but it was enough. So Fraser wasn’t uninterested in fucking--he just sounded like he was.
And that? That meant Fraser was doing all this on purpose.
Ray hadn’t thought about it much before, but Fraser clearly got off on this kind of a bedroom chess game once in a while.
Luckily, Ray was really good at chess. And he owed Fraser a little frustration, didn’t he?
Ray wiggled his hips just enough. Fraser gasped again, his eyes widening, but he still managed to say, “Well, I thought I could, but your recent statements have led me to question whether my understanding of our relationship jibes with yours.”
Ray had to think about that one for a minute. “So your understanding about us is…what?”
“I love you, Ray.” Fraser might’ve been pretending he didn’t want to fuck Ray, but he wasn’t pretending about this, Ray could tell. Fraser’s eyes were true blue, steady, looking right into Ray’s.
Ray couldn’t help grinning. “Great.”
“And your understanding is…?”
“You can’t figure it out, huh? The great detective of the Yukon Territories and the Northwest Areas can’t read the clues this far south?”
Fraser was obviously ignoring Ray’s deliberate mangling of the provinces’ names, but his hand shot up to his eyebrow and smoothed it. “It’s not a problem reading the clues. It’s that on this subject I can’t trust my own perception.”
“Which is?”
“I think you love me.”
“Well, you think right.” Ray gave in and let his twitchy fingers wrap themselves around Fraser’s cock. It was as hard as it looked, and the skin was like a rose petal under his fingertips, it was so incredibly fine and soft. Ray stroked him and wondered how much gymnastics it would take to get his mouth down there so he could suck it.
“But I’m concerned about whether we, ah, differ on what that means.” Fraser’s voice shook, but he somehow kept on talking. “Ray, I…loved you the moment I set eyes on you. Well, within a few hours of meeting you, I was sure. Definitely before you jumped in front of a bullet for me. I’d consider that--I do consider that--love at first sight. And it doesn’t appear to have diminished at all. It’s grown.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“You claimed not to believe in lasting love, Ray. And I thought--well, I’m probably not a very good judge, seeing as the previous time I thought I was in love, it was actually an inner-ear imbalance.” Fraser cleared his throat. “Your statements today made me uncertain about what we’re doing here together.”
“Fraser,” Ray said, trying to sound patient, which he totally wasn’t, “we were fucking. We were supposed to be fucking, anyway. Only you wouldn’t fuck me. Which allow me to point out: you still aren’t.”
“Oh, dear. You’re quite right.”
Ray’d palmed the lube off the night table while he was talking. He pressed the little bottle into Fraser’s hand. “Now’d be good.” Checkmate. He really hoped that was checkmate.
Fraser focused on the lube like he’d never seen it before. Then he cracked his neck, once, opened the bottle, and lubed up two fingers. He pushed them into Ray, nice and slow, and Ray ohh-ed and tilted his hips up more and let his legs slide up along Fraser’s sides.
Fraser moved his fingers gently, in, out, in again. God, so good.
“Yeah, Fraser. Yeah, that’s it.” Ray felt himself ease up around Fraser’s fingers and knew he was ready for more. Hell, he’d been ready for the last half hour. “C’mon, c’mon. Your cock. Put your cock in me.”
“Oh.”
Jeez, Fraser wasn’t usually this clueless.
Ray fumbled around for the lube where Fraser had dropped it, came up with it, and squirted some in his own hand. “Come here.” He got hold of Fraser’s cock and slicked it up real fast, then slicked up his own, too.
Fraser pulled his fingers out, braced himself over Ray, and snubbed the head of his cock against Ray’s asshole.
And he stopped.
Ray thought his heart was going to stop. He couldn’t believe Fraser had done it again. “Fraser! What part of Do Not Stop do you not understand?”
“I haven’t stopped, Ray.” Fraser pushed his fingers back into Ray’s ass. “I just need…”
“Anything,” Ray promised. “Any fucking thing, diamonds, hearts, stars, clovers, it’s yours, just do me now.”
“Well, I just need my question resolved.”
Ray huffed like a weightlifter. “What question?” He didn’t remember a question, not with Fraser’s fingers in his ass, not quite moving but not quite stopped.
“The question of what you think this relationship is, if it’s not what I think it is.”
“Oh, God, Fraser,” Ray said, and he was pretty sure he sounded like Dief begging for the last slice of pizza. “You’re making my brain hurt. What do you think it is?”
“True love,” Fraser said without hesitating. “The kind that lasts.” He thrust his fingers into Ray again and this time he twisted them. Ray’s eyes rolled back in his head.
“Since you say that’s impossible,” Fraser continued, sounding maddeningly calm, “I’m forced to conclude your feelings are not the same.”
“Jeez. Fraser.” Ray gulped more air. “Can’t we…can’t we talk about this after you fuck me?”
“Well, no, Ray, I think the subject is germane.”
“Germane. Where do you get these--? Okay, all right. Jesus, you’re going to make me say it.” Ray breathed. God, oh God please let it be an okay thing for Ray to say out loud tonight, let nobody up there be listening….
“I’m attempting to make love to you, Ray, but if you don’t believe in love…”
“Fraser, of course I love you. I love you, c’mon, you know that.”
“I thought you did. But the statements you made today make me think we don’t define the term the same way.”
“Fraser. I loved you from the moment you said my name in the bullpen and I turned around and there you were, all big and red and gorgeous, and I went up and put my arms around you. Remember?”
“Of course I remember.”
“You ever seen me run up to another guy and hug him like that?”
“Well, I’ve seen you hug people of both sexes, Ray, but not in the same intimate manner, no.”
“You know Mikey O’Brien? You remember him, he came to the 2-7 last month.”
“Yes, of course.”
“You remember I told you how far Mikey and me go back, since kindergarten? You remember Mikey is cool with guys hugging him? Lives up in Wrigleyville now with a good-looking dentist. You see me go up and throw my arms around him?”
“No.”
“Well, there you go. He’s a good friend, he’s handsome, he’s gay, and I love him like my own brother. Known him almost as long. Did I throw my arms around him? No, I did not.
“But three seconds after I laid eyes on you for the first time, I was plastered up against you from knees to chin. You get that? You get that, Fraser?” Ray was just getting it himself, figuring it out while he talked. “Jeez. I did love you at first sight. Maybe my head didn’t know it, but apparently the rest of me did.”
“So you do believe in love at first sight?”
“I don’t know about believe, Fraser, but I can’t explain what happened any other way. I guess it’s like that Oakham thing.”
“Occam’s Razor?”
“Right. There’s no theory--I just love you. Always have.”
“Would you allow that it’s just possible this could be the kind that lasts? That we can last?”
“God, I hope so.” Ray sighed, feeling it all the way from his toes, and slid his hand up Fraser’s belly, over his smooth, strong chest, up onto his neck--that stiff neck of his, which didn’t make Ray love him any less. Fraser shivered under his touch and half-closed his eyes. Oh, yeah, he liked that.
Ray leaned up to press a kiss into the soft place just below Fraser’s jawbone. He trailed his tongue down to the notch of Fraser’s collarbone and sucked the place where the skin stretched smoothly over the bone. He kissed back up to Fraser’s chin and arched his neck so he could look Fraser in the eye.
“Fraser?” he whispered.
“Yeah?”
“I love you, now fuck me!”
All of a sudden it was Fraser who couldn’t hold back. He shook, and the muscles in his neck and chest tightened. Ray felt the wet, hot head of Fraser’s cock pushing at him again, pressing him so hard, stretching him right there and finally, finally pressing inside him.
It hurt some, which made Ray lose the rest of his erection--not that he cared, because it hurt, yeah, but it felt so good at the same time. And Ray knew this pain, he knew it eased up quick if he pushed back at it, so he did, bearing down, letting Fraser open him right up.
That’s what Fraser always did, what Fraser always had done, cracked Ray right open no matter how much of a shell he tried to build up around himself. He had no defenses that Fraser couldn’t breach, just like he had no defenses with Stella back then, and it was scary and wonderful and thrilling all over again, Ray had to admit.
God, he had to admit it. He was in this for keeps, even if it went down in flames, even if it couldn’t last.
Except Fraser made him hope all over again that it could.
Fraser pushed all the way in, and Ray lay back and took all of him, so big and hard. He filled Ray, filled up all his little spaces of doubt, pushing in where it didn’t even feel like there was room for him.
He’d pushed into Ray’s life just like that, big and red and so fucking stiff in every way except for how he loved Ray. He’d learned how to be soft for Ray, how to yield sometimes and how to trust Ray. He really had trusted Ray a lot tonight, to have started that whole discussion when Ray was going off his nut with frustration. Ray’d felt like kicking him in the head, but now he saw it was proof how much Fraser really trusted him.
Ray couldn’t be mad about that.
He especially wasn’t mad anymore because Fraser was finally giving it to him the way he needed, pulling out halfway and then pushing in again, so hard and good, again and again, getting a rhythm going that Ray’s hips couldn’t help following, like they were dancing.
They weren’t two separate people anymore, they were one wild thing that moved and danced and cried out to God, like the holy rollers or the dervishes or whoever else prayed by dancing. Ray sweated and moaned and yeah, it was a prayer, too, in its own way: oh, God, please keep Fraser and Ray, please let them keep loving each other, and do not smite them like Ray and Stella got smited. Ray already paid for that, and Fraser paid his own dues, he got smited so close to his spine that he almost died.
So maybe, because they’d already had the pain, and because they risked their skinny asses protecting good people like Beth Botrelle and Davy and Eloise, maybe Fraser and Ray could have each other for a long while, please, God?
Ray would do whatever it took. He felt a sob rising up from deep inside his chest and he couldn’t hold it back. He couldn’t hold any of it back, because Fraser was in him, filling him up. Ray had to stay open for him to thrust in the way he was doing, giving him short, fast, sweet thrusts that Ray felt like a refrain of love you love you love you…
Maybe his face was a little bit wet when Fraser leaned down and kissed him, and he could see Fraser tasting the salt, but if Fraser asked later, Ray would swear it was sweat.
Ray’s cock was hard again, and Fraser wormed his hand down between their bellies so he could stroke it, two firm strokes to every thrust. Ray felt like he was bent double, his heels in the air way above Fraser’s head and Fraser’s weight heavy on Ray’s hamstrings, but Ray didn’t care. His hands were free; he raised them to stroke Fraser’s face, and then he slid them down Fraser’s big shoulders to his chest, cupping his pecs and rubbing his nipples till they turned all rosy.
Fraser’s eyes went big and hot and he lost his rhythm and started pounding Ray like he couldn’t help himself. Even though it didn’t hurt at all anymore, Ray could feel how tight his ass was gripping Fraser’s cock, so tight, like he wasn’t ever going to let Fraser go. Maybe they could turn to stone right here like lovers in one of those old myths.
For a second it looked like Fraser had. He screwed his eyes shut and sobbed once and his mouth opened, but no more sounds came out. Ray moved his hands around to Fraser’s ass and pulled him in tight, hard, and Fraser shoved his cock into Ray as far as it would go and filled him with liquid heat.
Fraser stayed there, still, for long breathless minutes, then he pulled out of Ray and leaned down over Ray’s cock and swallowed him whole. Or what seemed like it, because Ray was so hard that Fraser couldn’t get most of him into his mouth. So he stroked Ray’s cock with one hand and cupped his balls with the other, and swirled his tongue over Ray’s cockhead again and again.
Ray didn’t know whether it took a minute or an hour because he was gone, totally fucked-out, with Fraser’s heat spilled inside him and his own heat rising in his balls under Fraser’s hand. His eyes wanted to close, but he forced them open just as he started to come. He almost went out of his mind watching himself shoot off in Fraser’s mouth, hottest thing he’d ever seen. Spellbound, he watched Fraser swallow every drop and lick his slit for more.
In a minute he was too sensitive to let that go on, and anyway he had to kiss Fraser before he gave in to the sleepy feeling that was settling around him like a blanket.
“Come here, come here,” he murmured, pulling Fraser up to his mouth, “love you, you idiot, always.”
Fraser’s mouth was thick with Ray’s taste, and his lips were slack and wet, but he kissed Ray thoroughly before dropping back onto the pillow, exhausted. “I know, Ray. And I you.”
Fraser was still sleeping when Ray woke up in the morning. That was such a rare thing that Ray just lay back and enjoyed how beautiful Fraser’s face was, how young it looked in sleep, all smooth and relaxed. Not perfect, but so damn close as made no difference.
Looking at him, you’d never know the guy was fucking like a wild thing the night before. His hair wasn’t even messy.
There was something profoundly wrong with that, Ray decided. It was way past Fraser’s usual rising time, even for a Sunday morning, so Ray didn’t have any qualms about waking him. He combed his fingers through Fraser’s thick hair, messing it up. Ray liked that. He even liked thinking about messing Fraser’s hair up, especially at times when it wouldn’t be prudent, Ray, because they were at work or would be shortly afterward.
Fraser opened his eyes and turned automatically toward Ray, leaning his head into Ray’s hand the way a cat did when you petted it.
Ray stretched his other hand out to trace Fraser’s full lips with a fingertip. Fraser kissed his finger, then grabbed the other four and kissed them, too. His smile lit up his face.
“Ray,” Fraser said, like that one word was everything. Which maybe it was, and that turned Ray’s crank like nothing doing.
“Frase.”
“Why was it so hard for you to admit that you really aren’t the cynic you pretend to be?”
“Aw, jeez, Fraser, do I get coffee before I have to answer the essay questions?”
Fraser rolled half on top of him and kissed him. “Sorry. I’ll go make you some.”
Ray scratched his neck. “Okay.” But he was grinning like a loon.
Later, after showers and breakfast and a lot of coffee (most of it for Ray), they settled on the couch, Fraser with a book and Ray with his glasses and the sports section of the Sunday Guardian, which Fraser and Dief had fetched for him. Dief was sacked out on the rug snoring at the moment because he’d been out half the night doing whatever wolves did when their Mountie companions were too busy to make them come in.
Ray was comfy in a pair of sweats and a t-shirt; Fraser had on a buttondown shirt and a pair of jeans that defied the laws of physics: Ray didn’t know how Fraser could sit down in them, they were so tight.
Ray looked up from his paper and saw Fraser sitting there all stiff and proper, with his feet on the floor, and Ray sighed. Jeez, that Mountie had to learn to let his hair down sometimes. Even his damn hair was all perfect again.
Ray swiveled around on the couch so he could stretch his legs out a little. He prodded Fraser’s leg with his foot until Fraser kicked his hiking boots off and stretched his legs out, too, and then they were sitting at opposite ends of the couch with their long legs all tangled up in each other.
Fraser grinned and put his book aside.
Ray countered by tossing the paper on the floor, being careful to miss Dief.
“Do you feel up to answering the essay question now, Ray?”
Ray pulled his glasses off and set them on the coffee table. He rubbed his eyes. In for a dollar, in for a doughnut, or however that went. “Look, Frase, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been down on Eloise and Davy. It could work out for them. I hope it does.”
“And for us?”
“I really hope it does.”
“That makes two of us.” Fraser stroked the side of Ray’s hip with his sock-covered foot. “Are you going to answer the question I asked? Why do you talk about love in such a negative way if it’s not what you really feel? Is it part of your cover? Part of the unofficial ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy?”
“Huh? Oh, you mean, am I pretending to be down on love to throw people off so they don’t know I’m in love with you?”
Fraser nodded.
“Nah. Nothing like that. I don’t care if they know. In fact, I want them all to know.”
“You do?” The sun coming up that morning couldn’t have been brighter than Fraser’s smile.
“’Course I do. You got to be kidding. I bagged the best-looking, smartest, bravest guy in Chicago, I got bragging rights.”
Fraser hugged him with his feet; Ray had to scramble over his legs and kiss the hell out of him, then. When they came up for air, it took a while to find a comfortable way to share the couch again. Fraser finally settled against one arm of the couch with his feet up on the coffee table, and Ray lay down on his back with his head in Fraser’s lap and his feet up over the opposite arm of the couch.
Frase played with Ray’s hair, sending delightful shivers all over Ray’s skin, which got Ray thinking about the delightful shivers the night before, and after a few minutes, he had to reach down and adjust himself in his sweatpants.
Fraser apparently saw that, judging from the way Ray’s “pillow” was suddenly getting firmer under his head. Ray figured Fraser was going to have to adjust something in those physics-defying jeans in a minute or so. Ray grinned, to himself, but he knew Fraser wouldn’t miss it.
Fraser stroked Ray’s cheek. “You don’t look at all like a cynic at the moment, Ray. You’ll have to put your scowl back on before we go into the precinct tomorrow, or the desk sergeant will stop you on your way in.”
“Huh?”
“Well, yes. She’ll ask who you are and where you’ve stashed Ray Kowalski.” Fraser’s lips twitched, holding back a grin.
Ray put a finger up and poked Fraser’s cheek so Fraser couldn’t hold it back; Fraser lost the struggle and the dorky grin spread all over his face. Ray laughed harder. He loved that dorky grin. It made Fraser look stupid and loveable and human. “Idiot.”
“You’re no cynic, Ray.”
“I just play one on TV.” Ray sighed. “Okay, look. You’re right. I’m not down on love. I just…I just have this thing. A superstition, kind of.”
Fraser watched him, his eyes soft.
Ray sighed and ran a hand through his own hair, which felt like it was looking really, really experimental at the moment. “It’s like that Greek thing, you know. Where the people were never supposed to brag in front of the gods or let on they really, really loved someone because then the gods would, um, smite them or something. ’Cause they were overreaching themselves.”
“You’re afraid of getting...”
“Getting smited?” Ray shrugged. “Just kind of afraid someone up there would notice Ray was happy, you know, Frase?”
“Ah, and not wanting you to be happy, they’d smite you then?”
“Look, I know it don’t make any sense.”
“Superstitions don’t. If they were reasonable fears, they wouldn’t be called superstitions.”
“It doesn’t make any sense when you try to explain it,” Ray said. “But I kind of always felt I, you know, overreached myself when I got Stella. She was a Gold Coast girl. Her dad’s a stockbroker. I was just a Polish kid from the South Side, the son of a meat-packer. My mom did domestic work. She was a cook for a family in Stella’s neighborhood.”
“It’s honorable work,” Fraser said.
“Sure.” Ray shrugged. “Of course it meant she was working when we had dinner. When Andy and I got old enough to both get part-time jobs, she quit. She’s been trying to force-feed me to make up for it ever since.”
“I’ve noticed that.”
Ray smiled. “So anyway. About Stella. I overreached. And I always knew the other shoe was gonna drop and…finally, it did.”
“She didn’t leave you because you were working-class, Ray. If she’d felt that way, she’d never have married you in the first place.”
“I know. We split because we wanted different things. Close enough. The point was we were too different. I guess I always kind of knew that.”
“I’m from a working-class family, Ray.”
“Fraser, buddy, you are in a class by yourself.”
“Well, you don’t have to have the same superstition in my case, Ray. I’ll endeavor to keep you just miserable enough to escape the thunderbolts from above, and just happy enough to stay with me, so I, at least, will be happy.” Fraser’s grin twitched toward dorkiness again.
Ray put his hand on Fraser’s smooth cheek. “It’s not me I’m afraid for now.”
“It’s not? You no longer think the gods will smite you for being happy?”
“I don’t really care. It’s you I worry about now. Out there without a gun, asking some whackjob to please hand over his weapons and surrender to the nice policeman who’ll read him his rights.” He sighed. “I don’t want the gods to smite you, Frase.”
“Oh, Ray. They can’t throw thunderbolts in the same place twice. I’m already smitten.”
“Huh?” Smitten, smited, hit by thunderbolts, was that the same thing?
“It means head over heels in love, Ray.”
“Really?”
“Scout’s honor.” He held up the Boy Scout sign, three fingers up, the pinkie pinned by the thumb. It looked a lot like a saint’s blessing, like you saw in old statues and paintings.
Ray couldn’t remember if the saints held up two fingers or three, but he figured a blessing was a blessing, no matter where it came from. He took Fraser’s blessing hand in his and wove their fingers together, holding on tight, like a guy who was never going to let go.
“Guess I’m safe, then,” he said. “I’m already smitten, too.”
Fraser swallowed. “For keeps?” He looked, God, he looked scared and really happy at the same time, just exactly how Ray felt. He looked a lot like when he was about to jump off something really high into something really deep, like Lake Michigan. As if he was thinking this could just possibly kill us, Ray, but isn’t it the most fun ever?
“For keeps.” Ray had never been more sure of anything. He always followed Fraser off those high places, didn’t he? Hell, sometimes Ray knew so totally that he was going with Fraser, no matter what, that he even jumped first.
Fraser didn’t ask him this time if he really meant it. His eyes said he knew, and his smile could have lit a city block. He leaned over and put his lips on Ray’s and kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him.
--end--
J S Cavalcante
“Ray, did you mean it?”
Which that was not what Ray was expecting to hear from Fraser at that moment. Considering Fraser was swiping his tongue down the small of Ray’s back, heading due south when he said it, it was kind of surprising Fraser could speak at all, but Fraser was always doing impossible, weird things (especially with his tongue), so why should Ray be surprised?
“Did I…mean…what?” he gasped.
“At the wedding,” Fraser said, sounding somewhat breathless himself because he was still licking Ray, in figure eights and swirls and flourishy things like a fancy signature. “When I mentioned how beautiful Eloise and Davy looked together, and you said, as you have many times, that their love can’t last, that it’s too good to be true, that it’s a pipe dream.”
Ray dropped his head down between his shoulders and groaned. “Fraser…” he managed. “You can’t seriously be…do we really have to talk about this right now?”
Fraser’s teeth fastened gently on Ray’s left buttock and his tongue traced more patterns there, making Ray shiver and arch his back. “I need to know, Ray.”
Ray panted, trying to catch his breath and gather his brains back together--well, as much as he could with Fraser leaving a series of wet, sucking kisses on his left asscheek and then starting in the same way on the other side. He groaned. “You’re killing me here, Fraser. You are killing me, and I gotta talk while you do it?”
“Oh, well, no…when you put it that way. Sorry, Ray.”
Fraser moved his lips back to the small of Ray’s back and licked there, a tickly feeling. He licked downward, downward, over…ohGodthere…back and forth and around, rimming him so perfectly, and then Fraser started to push his tongue in, just the tip, making Ray squirm and rock his hips helplessly back toward the sweet invasion, oh God, oh God please--
--and Fraser stopped again. “Ray.”
Ray bit the inside of his cheek, pretty hard: he tasted a little blood. “God…what…now?” he said when he stopped biting. Ray was going to hyperventriquilate or something and turn, uh, whatever color you turned when you did that, and then he’d faint and his balls would explode and it was all going to be Fraser’s fault.
“What I was trying to ask, Ray, is whether you are really as cynical about love as you purport to be. Because I thought…well I thought you’d experienced true love, and love at first sight, and you married for love, and you tried valiantly to win it back…. One would naturally assume you did believe in love after all.”
Ray leaned his head down on his hands. “Fraser. Do you know how hard I am right now?”
“Well, er, I couldn’t say exactly…”
Ray reached back blindly and grabbed Fraser’s hand, pulling it off his hip and bringing it around and down, pushing it against his cock.
Fraser obediently opened his hand and wrapped it firmly around Ray and gave him one long experimental stroke, really slow and tight, which that almost gave Ray the other kind of stroke, it was so good.
“Oh,” Fraser said. “Oh.”
“Yeah, ‘Oh.’ I could cut diamonds with that, that’s so ‘oh.’”
“Yes it is, Ray, you’re very…oh, dear.”
Fraser opened his hand and stroked Ray’s entire cock, from the weeping head down the shaft and over his balls, cupping them gently, then sliding back up the same way. Ray whimpered. He thrust into Fraser’s hand. He spread his legs even wider. He couldn’t help any of it.
“Frase, please, now!”
He was maybe going to cry if Fraser didn’t get a move on and fuck him soon.
Fraser stroked him again, a little faster, and Ray caught his breath, and then he felt Fraser’s tongue on him again, right there, and then Fraser’s tongue was in him, pushing in as far as it would go, which wasn’t far. It felt like heaven, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
Ray groaned, or maybe he growled, deep in his throat, like some kind of wild Arctic animal. On the outside he was just a guy who was minding his own business, in his own bed with his own partner who was supposed to be fucking him but wasn’t. But on the inside? Grr! Wild thing with claws.
Jeez, if Ray really was that animal, with his luck he’d probably be just about to pounce on his mate and finally get some, but then he’d get shot by a hunter right then, at the wrongest possible moment.
That’d be a mercy considering the animal’s mate was wanting to talk instead of fuck, anyway.
And Ray did not get that, because that was a chick thing, that was a thing like Stella used to do. But Stella wasn’t here. This was Fraser, and Fraser was a Real Guy, and when he fucked he didn’t talk, well, not as much as he did the rest of the time, anyway.
Which okay, that was kind of a lot, maybe even more than most chicks did, but, God, Fraser knew how to fuck, how to give it to Ray hard and fast and sweet and not hold back.
The main problem was that Fraser was not doing that right now.
Ray so needed him to do it right now.
Fraser’s tongue pulled out and went in again, and before Ray realized it, he was moving his hips in a circle, making Fraser shift and steady him with one hand on his hip and the other still on his cock.
So Ray did it again, swinging his hips in a wider circle. This time, Fraser almost lost his place and had to stab at him repeatedly with that wicked, wicked tongue. Then he found the place and thrust in all of a sudden like it was an accident and he hadn’t meant to (though Ray knew it wasn’t, and he had).
Fraser pushed one lubed finger in next to his tongue, much farther than his tongue could reach, and curved it just right to touch Ray’s prostate, and that almost knocked Ray off his knees, it was so good. Ray’s breath whooshed out of him.
“Did I hurt you, Ray?”
Oh, no, that was not pain. Shivers chased one another up Ray’s body and sweat beaded on his upper lip. All he could do was shake his head, panting, shift his knees on the bed, and try not to moan like an idiot.
He was pretty sure he wasn’t a hundred percent successful at that last one.
And then Fraser stopped again. “You know, Ray, it’s not as though it isn’t my place to ask this, considering…well considering where we are at the moment and what we’re doing. If you truly don’t believe love can last, I think I have the right to know that.”
Ray laid his face down on the backs of his hands again and whined, a long, drawn-out, this-is-never-gonna-end whine. He was being tortured. Obviously, he’d done something Very Bad at the wedding, and Fraser was now making him pay, and pay, and pay, and the hell of it was Ray didn’t even know what the fuck he’d done.
And this was Not a Good Thing to be wondering with his ass up in the air, wet from Fraser’s tongue, and tingling, also from Fraser’s tongue, and tightening up happily around Fraser’s finger, holding it inside him. But still not getting what Ray wanted right where he wanted it, when he wanted it. Which was, in order, Fraser’s cock, in Ray’s ass, right the hell now.
Okay. Okay. Ray had to calm down and get a hold of himself and think, because if he didn’t figure this out, he was obviously going to die here with his ass up in the air and his cock still hard. And that would suck.
So Ray mentally retraced his steps, really quick, in the hope that his Big Screw-Up would be obvious and he could apologize and they could get on with the fucking.
The wedding. Yeah. Since the Unfettered thing was gone, the kids had the ceremony in a nice little Baptist church. It still made Ray nervous, but not as much as a Catholic church, and anyway, Ray kept his cool. Fraser couldn’t be mad about that, because Ray was the picture of calm, he was the calmest.
He’d even put on his best suit, the dark gray one he only used for weddings and stuff like that. Fraser had worn a nice suit, too, navy, not his red uniform for a change, and Ray helped him do his tie and told him how hot he looked and how Fraser better watch out because Ray was going to rip it off him later, he looked so hot.
Fraser couldn’t be mad about that, because he blushed and rubbed his eyebrow and said they’d better finish dressing and get in the car before Fraser threw Ray on the bed and had his way with him.
They wore civilian suits because Eloise said the wedding was all friends and she thought cops in uniforms looked like something official, not friends, and there were going to be lots of cops there. Plus Davy said half of his friends (he had like three, so Ray didn’t try figuring out what half of them would be) would run the other way if they saw a roomful of uniformed cops or even one uniformed Mountie.
And then Eloise said this way if Ray wanted to hold Fraser’s hand during the ceremony or something, he could do that because they wouldn’t be in uniform. (Eloise was big on PDAs--like they hadn’t known that from the moment they first laid eyes on her, making out with Davy through an entire movie full of robots and spaceships and bitchin’ special effects?)
Eloise was onto him and Fraser. Maybe it was her “gift” or maybe it was just that starry-eyed young love thing, where when you’re in love you see love everywhere, but she just knew. In fact, she said she knew back when she met them, and that was spooky, because Ray didn’t even know back then.
Well, he knew he was crazy about Fraser, and he knew he was warm for Fraser’s form, but he didn’t know he was going to be unhinged enough to actually tell him, or that Fraser was going to be happy to hear it. He sure didn’t know he was going to go on a quest on a dogsled with him, or that he was going to talk Fraser into moving in with him when they got back to Chicago.
So, okay, some people, if they were sharp enough, could look at him and Fraser and know the score, and that was all right, because while Ray didn’t exactly stand on his desk and announce he swung both ways, he’d never made a state secret out of it, either. And it wasn’t like it was a big secret anyway after that incident at the 1-8 before he became Vecchio, but Ray’d always been kinda offbeat, kinda kooky. He even made it work for him on the job, which was not something most queer officers could say.
And anyway, since Vecchio was straight and Fraser was a little unhinged, everybody’d just looked the other way and pretended like Ray was straight, because he was Vecchio--nudge, wink--and nobody was going to come out (hah!) and say otherwise.
But that was over a year ago. Eloise was now an emaciated--um, emancipated--adult and legally entitled to do something stupid (like marry the first guy she ever fell in love with), Vecchio was in Florida being straight with Stella, and Ray was himself again.
Even so, the 2-7 wouldn’t exactly thrill to one of their detectives flaunting his gay lover all over the precinct. Not like Welsh cared who Ray slept with, but Welsh was not a big fan of anything likely to disrupt discipline and procedure any more than Ray already did with his temper and his sucking at paperwork.
So holding Fraser’s hand in front of the 2-7, even at a private wedding with no uniforms in sight, was just not going to cut it.
Jesus, could that be Ray’s Big Screw-Up?
“This isn’t because I wouldn’t hold your hand at the wedding, is it?” Ray panted.
“No, of course not, Ray. I understood why you wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t want you to take such provocative action in front of the people you have to work with every day. Tolerant as most of them seem to be, there’s still the chance that someone would make trouble.”
Ray shook out his neck and shoulders, almost dislodging Fraser’s hand from his hip. He blew out a breath.
“Okay, so tell me. What’d I do? Whatever it was, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Fraser, I didn’t mean it. Now can we please get back to what we were doing?”
“Ray, I’m afraid you’re under a misapprehension. I’m not asking you to apologize for anything. I just need to know if…well, if the cynical attitude toward love is really the posture I always thought it was, or if you really do believe love is ultimately futile.”
“Oh, jeez, Fraser, how can I…” Ray rubbed an impatient hand over his face, noticing his beard was getting scratchy.
He put his hand down over Fraser’s, which was still on his cock, and tried to get Fraser to stroke him some more. In a minute or two it wasn’t going to make a difference; Ray would lose his erection and then maybe Ray would fall on his face and cry--if he was smart. If he wasn’t smart he’d say a bunch of dumb stuff he didn’t really mean and make Fraser go sleep on the couch.
Ray was being such a girl about this not-getting-fucked thing.
Which maybe liking getting fucked by a guy was the problem in the first place, like his father said (only not in those words), but it was way too goddamn late to fix Ray now.
But just when Ray thought he was about to lose his hard-on, Fraser moved his hand on him, and Ray perked right up. He jerked his hips fast and rough, thrusting into Fraser’s hand so Fraser would get the message.
And Fraser seemed to, for a minute. But then Ray felt Fraser’s rough cheek against his side just above his hip, where it tickled. That was much too high to mean Fraser was getting back to where he’d left off.
Ray gritted his teeth, pulled carefully out of Fraser’s grip, and turned over, still holding Fraser’s hand. He pulled Fraser down after him and reached up to touch Fraser’s face.
“Fraser,” he said through his still-gritted teeth. “Do not do that. You hear me? If you start again, you do not stop until Ray comes. Unless you want a seriously pissed-off Ray in your bed.”
“It’s your bed, Ray.”
“It’s our bed, dammit.” Okay, so Ray was already pissed off. Weirdly, it didn’t make him any less hard. He wrapped his own hand around his cock. If Fraser wouldn’t do it, Ray would. Hah. Show him.
Anyway, it looked like getting fucked wasn’t on today’s menu after all, because Fraser couldn’t have stayed hard through this anyway, Ray figured. So even with Fraser right here, Ray was apparently going to have to take care of himself, because while talking was apparently Fraser’s thing (and how had he missed that all this time?) talking was not going to do it for Ray.
Ray squeezed his cock hard, just about resigned to doing himself when he happened to look down the long, hard line of Fraser’s body, and damn if there wasn’t something else looking kind of long and hard, too. Real hard, and red, and...wow.
Ray’s fingers twitched with wanting to touch that beautiful cock. Damn, Fraser had to be seriously pissed if he wanted to talk instead of do something about that.
Okay, so Ray had screwed up at the wedding, and Fraser obviously wasn’t ready to tell him what he’d done or even admit he’d done anything.
He sighed heavily. “Fraser. This isn’t buddies.”
Fraser twitched, putting his head on one side, looking at Ray like he hadn’t expected to hear that.
Ray hadn’t really expected it, either. It wasn’t what he’d meant to say at all.
“Is that what this is supposed to be, Ray? Buddies?”
“Yes! We’re a duet, we’re a team. You know that, Fraser. What the hell is up with you tonight? I know it’s the wedding. I just don’t know what, you know, triggered this whatever-it-is, this bee you got buzzing around your big hat.
“I mean, I know you don’t like me being cynical. Never mind that I been that way since the day we met.
“And okay, that’s okay, I can get that. Cynical’s not the most fun thing. You got reasons why I shouldn’t be, I’m willing to listen. But not now…jeez, in bed, Fraser, when you were just about to fuck me? That’s not buddies. That’s not even friends, doing that to a guy.”
“It’s not general cynicism I’m concerned about, Ray. It’s cynicism on the subject of love.”
Ray swallowed. “I don’t get it.”
“Ray. You told me several times today you didn’t believe love can last. Yet here I am with you. What am I to make of those statements of yours? I’m to just let them go and continue on as though nothing happened? You’ve called into question the very foundation of our relationship.”
“Huh? How is this the foundation of us? I told you and told you, you and me, we’re a duet. We jump into the lake and through glass windows and sled into the sunrise together. We got common cause, we got stuff we share.
“What I was saying before wasn’t about us. It was about Davy and Eloise, me and Stella. Kids who think they’re in love at first sight and it’s gonna be forever, and who go on believing that until they get burned. I still got the scars, Fraser.”
“Oh.” Fraser pressed his lips together. “But you’re talking about our partnership. Aren’t we lovers also? Are your feelings for me…”
“Jesus, Fraser, I’m crazy about you. You can’t tell?” He drew his legs up and back a little, tilting just right, urging Fraser closer until that big, red hard-on that Fraser was trying to pretend wasn’t there poked Ray pretty close to exactly where he wanted it.
Fraser caught his breath. It was just a little gasp, but it was enough. So Fraser wasn’t uninterested in fucking--he just sounded like he was.
And that? That meant Fraser was doing all this on purpose.
Ray hadn’t thought about it much before, but Fraser clearly got off on this kind of a bedroom chess game once in a while.
Luckily, Ray was really good at chess. And he owed Fraser a little frustration, didn’t he?
Ray wiggled his hips just enough. Fraser gasped again, his eyes widening, but he still managed to say, “Well, I thought I could, but your recent statements have led me to question whether my understanding of our relationship jibes with yours.”
Ray had to think about that one for a minute. “So your understanding about us is…what?”
“I love you, Ray.” Fraser might’ve been pretending he didn’t want to fuck Ray, but he wasn’t pretending about this, Ray could tell. Fraser’s eyes were true blue, steady, looking right into Ray’s.
Ray couldn’t help grinning. “Great.”
“And your understanding is…?”
“You can’t figure it out, huh? The great detective of the Yukon Territories and the Northwest Areas can’t read the clues this far south?”
Fraser was obviously ignoring Ray’s deliberate mangling of the provinces’ names, but his hand shot up to his eyebrow and smoothed it. “It’s not a problem reading the clues. It’s that on this subject I can’t trust my own perception.”
“Which is?”
“I think you love me.”
“Well, you think right.” Ray gave in and let his twitchy fingers wrap themselves around Fraser’s cock. It was as hard as it looked, and the skin was like a rose petal under his fingertips, it was so incredibly fine and soft. Ray stroked him and wondered how much gymnastics it would take to get his mouth down there so he could suck it.
“But I’m concerned about whether we, ah, differ on what that means.” Fraser’s voice shook, but he somehow kept on talking. “Ray, I…loved you the moment I set eyes on you. Well, within a few hours of meeting you, I was sure. Definitely before you jumped in front of a bullet for me. I’d consider that--I do consider that--love at first sight. And it doesn’t appear to have diminished at all. It’s grown.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“You claimed not to believe in lasting love, Ray. And I thought--well, I’m probably not a very good judge, seeing as the previous time I thought I was in love, it was actually an inner-ear imbalance.” Fraser cleared his throat. “Your statements today made me uncertain about what we’re doing here together.”
“Fraser,” Ray said, trying to sound patient, which he totally wasn’t, “we were fucking. We were supposed to be fucking, anyway. Only you wouldn’t fuck me. Which allow me to point out: you still aren’t.”
“Oh, dear. You’re quite right.”
Ray’d palmed the lube off the night table while he was talking. He pressed the little bottle into Fraser’s hand. “Now’d be good.” Checkmate. He really hoped that was checkmate.
Fraser focused on the lube like he’d never seen it before. Then he cracked his neck, once, opened the bottle, and lubed up two fingers. He pushed them into Ray, nice and slow, and Ray ohh-ed and tilted his hips up more and let his legs slide up along Fraser’s sides.
Fraser moved his fingers gently, in, out, in again. God, so good.
“Yeah, Fraser. Yeah, that’s it.” Ray felt himself ease up around Fraser’s fingers and knew he was ready for more. Hell, he’d been ready for the last half hour. “C’mon, c’mon. Your cock. Put your cock in me.”
“Oh.”
Jeez, Fraser wasn’t usually this clueless.
Ray fumbled around for the lube where Fraser had dropped it, came up with it, and squirted some in his own hand. “Come here.” He got hold of Fraser’s cock and slicked it up real fast, then slicked up his own, too.
Fraser pulled his fingers out, braced himself over Ray, and snubbed the head of his cock against Ray’s asshole.
And he stopped.
Ray thought his heart was going to stop. He couldn’t believe Fraser had done it again. “Fraser! What part of Do Not Stop do you not understand?”
“I haven’t stopped, Ray.” Fraser pushed his fingers back into Ray’s ass. “I just need…”
“Anything,” Ray promised. “Any fucking thing, diamonds, hearts, stars, clovers, it’s yours, just do me now.”
“Well, I just need my question resolved.”
Ray huffed like a weightlifter. “What question?” He didn’t remember a question, not with Fraser’s fingers in his ass, not quite moving but not quite stopped.
“The question of what you think this relationship is, if it’s not what I think it is.”
“Oh, God, Fraser,” Ray said, and he was pretty sure he sounded like Dief begging for the last slice of pizza. “You’re making my brain hurt. What do you think it is?”
“True love,” Fraser said without hesitating. “The kind that lasts.” He thrust his fingers into Ray again and this time he twisted them. Ray’s eyes rolled back in his head.
“Since you say that’s impossible,” Fraser continued, sounding maddeningly calm, “I’m forced to conclude your feelings are not the same.”
“Jeez. Fraser.” Ray gulped more air. “Can’t we…can’t we talk about this after you fuck me?”
“Well, no, Ray, I think the subject is germane.”
“Germane. Where do you get these--? Okay, all right. Jesus, you’re going to make me say it.” Ray breathed. God, oh God please let it be an okay thing for Ray to say out loud tonight, let nobody up there be listening….
“I’m attempting to make love to you, Ray, but if you don’t believe in love…”
“Fraser, of course I love you. I love you, c’mon, you know that.”
“I thought you did. But the statements you made today make me think we don’t define the term the same way.”
“Fraser. I loved you from the moment you said my name in the bullpen and I turned around and there you were, all big and red and gorgeous, and I went up and put my arms around you. Remember?”
“Of course I remember.”
“You ever seen me run up to another guy and hug him like that?”
“Well, I’ve seen you hug people of both sexes, Ray, but not in the same intimate manner, no.”
“You know Mikey O’Brien? You remember him, he came to the 2-7 last month.”
“Yes, of course.”
“You remember I told you how far Mikey and me go back, since kindergarten? You remember Mikey is cool with guys hugging him? Lives up in Wrigleyville now with a good-looking dentist. You see me go up and throw my arms around him?”
“No.”
“Well, there you go. He’s a good friend, he’s handsome, he’s gay, and I love him like my own brother. Known him almost as long. Did I throw my arms around him? No, I did not.
“But three seconds after I laid eyes on you for the first time, I was plastered up against you from knees to chin. You get that? You get that, Fraser?” Ray was just getting it himself, figuring it out while he talked. “Jeez. I did love you at first sight. Maybe my head didn’t know it, but apparently the rest of me did.”
“So you do believe in love at first sight?”
“I don’t know about believe, Fraser, but I can’t explain what happened any other way. I guess it’s like that Oakham thing.”
“Occam’s Razor?”
“Right. There’s no theory--I just love you. Always have.”
“Would you allow that it’s just possible this could be the kind that lasts? That we can last?”
“God, I hope so.” Ray sighed, feeling it all the way from his toes, and slid his hand up Fraser’s belly, over his smooth, strong chest, up onto his neck--that stiff neck of his, which didn’t make Ray love him any less. Fraser shivered under his touch and half-closed his eyes. Oh, yeah, he liked that.
Ray leaned up to press a kiss into the soft place just below Fraser’s jawbone. He trailed his tongue down to the notch of Fraser’s collarbone and sucked the place where the skin stretched smoothly over the bone. He kissed back up to Fraser’s chin and arched his neck so he could look Fraser in the eye.
“Fraser?” he whispered.
“Yeah?”
“I love you, now fuck me!”
All of a sudden it was Fraser who couldn’t hold back. He shook, and the muscles in his neck and chest tightened. Ray felt the wet, hot head of Fraser’s cock pushing at him again, pressing him so hard, stretching him right there and finally, finally pressing inside him.
It hurt some, which made Ray lose the rest of his erection--not that he cared, because it hurt, yeah, but it felt so good at the same time. And Ray knew this pain, he knew it eased up quick if he pushed back at it, so he did, bearing down, letting Fraser open him right up.
That’s what Fraser always did, what Fraser always had done, cracked Ray right open no matter how much of a shell he tried to build up around himself. He had no defenses that Fraser couldn’t breach, just like he had no defenses with Stella back then, and it was scary and wonderful and thrilling all over again, Ray had to admit.
God, he had to admit it. He was in this for keeps, even if it went down in flames, even if it couldn’t last.
Except Fraser made him hope all over again that it could.
Fraser pushed all the way in, and Ray lay back and took all of him, so big and hard. He filled Ray, filled up all his little spaces of doubt, pushing in where it didn’t even feel like there was room for him.
He’d pushed into Ray’s life just like that, big and red and so fucking stiff in every way except for how he loved Ray. He’d learned how to be soft for Ray, how to yield sometimes and how to trust Ray. He really had trusted Ray a lot tonight, to have started that whole discussion when Ray was going off his nut with frustration. Ray’d felt like kicking him in the head, but now he saw it was proof how much Fraser really trusted him.
Ray couldn’t be mad about that.
He especially wasn’t mad anymore because Fraser was finally giving it to him the way he needed, pulling out halfway and then pushing in again, so hard and good, again and again, getting a rhythm going that Ray’s hips couldn’t help following, like they were dancing.
They weren’t two separate people anymore, they were one wild thing that moved and danced and cried out to God, like the holy rollers or the dervishes or whoever else prayed by dancing. Ray sweated and moaned and yeah, it was a prayer, too, in its own way: oh, God, please keep Fraser and Ray, please let them keep loving each other, and do not smite them like Ray and Stella got smited. Ray already paid for that, and Fraser paid his own dues, he got smited so close to his spine that he almost died.
So maybe, because they’d already had the pain, and because they risked their skinny asses protecting good people like Beth Botrelle and Davy and Eloise, maybe Fraser and Ray could have each other for a long while, please, God?
Ray would do whatever it took. He felt a sob rising up from deep inside his chest and he couldn’t hold it back. He couldn’t hold any of it back, because Fraser was in him, filling him up. Ray had to stay open for him to thrust in the way he was doing, giving him short, fast, sweet thrusts that Ray felt like a refrain of love you love you love you…
Maybe his face was a little bit wet when Fraser leaned down and kissed him, and he could see Fraser tasting the salt, but if Fraser asked later, Ray would swear it was sweat.
Ray’s cock was hard again, and Fraser wormed his hand down between their bellies so he could stroke it, two firm strokes to every thrust. Ray felt like he was bent double, his heels in the air way above Fraser’s head and Fraser’s weight heavy on Ray’s hamstrings, but Ray didn’t care. His hands were free; he raised them to stroke Fraser’s face, and then he slid them down Fraser’s big shoulders to his chest, cupping his pecs and rubbing his nipples till they turned all rosy.
Fraser’s eyes went big and hot and he lost his rhythm and started pounding Ray like he couldn’t help himself. Even though it didn’t hurt at all anymore, Ray could feel how tight his ass was gripping Fraser’s cock, so tight, like he wasn’t ever going to let Fraser go. Maybe they could turn to stone right here like lovers in one of those old myths.
For a second it looked like Fraser had. He screwed his eyes shut and sobbed once and his mouth opened, but no more sounds came out. Ray moved his hands around to Fraser’s ass and pulled him in tight, hard, and Fraser shoved his cock into Ray as far as it would go and filled him with liquid heat.
Fraser stayed there, still, for long breathless minutes, then he pulled out of Ray and leaned down over Ray’s cock and swallowed him whole. Or what seemed like it, because Ray was so hard that Fraser couldn’t get most of him into his mouth. So he stroked Ray’s cock with one hand and cupped his balls with the other, and swirled his tongue over Ray’s cockhead again and again.
Ray didn’t know whether it took a minute or an hour because he was gone, totally fucked-out, with Fraser’s heat spilled inside him and his own heat rising in his balls under Fraser’s hand. His eyes wanted to close, but he forced them open just as he started to come. He almost went out of his mind watching himself shoot off in Fraser’s mouth, hottest thing he’d ever seen. Spellbound, he watched Fraser swallow every drop and lick his slit for more.
In a minute he was too sensitive to let that go on, and anyway he had to kiss Fraser before he gave in to the sleepy feeling that was settling around him like a blanket.
“Come here, come here,” he murmured, pulling Fraser up to his mouth, “love you, you idiot, always.”
Fraser’s mouth was thick with Ray’s taste, and his lips were slack and wet, but he kissed Ray thoroughly before dropping back onto the pillow, exhausted. “I know, Ray. And I you.”
Fraser was still sleeping when Ray woke up in the morning. That was such a rare thing that Ray just lay back and enjoyed how beautiful Fraser’s face was, how young it looked in sleep, all smooth and relaxed. Not perfect, but so damn close as made no difference.
Looking at him, you’d never know the guy was fucking like a wild thing the night before. His hair wasn’t even messy.
There was something profoundly wrong with that, Ray decided. It was way past Fraser’s usual rising time, even for a Sunday morning, so Ray didn’t have any qualms about waking him. He combed his fingers through Fraser’s thick hair, messing it up. Ray liked that. He even liked thinking about messing Fraser’s hair up, especially at times when it wouldn’t be prudent, Ray, because they were at work or would be shortly afterward.
Fraser opened his eyes and turned automatically toward Ray, leaning his head into Ray’s hand the way a cat did when you petted it.
Ray stretched his other hand out to trace Fraser’s full lips with a fingertip. Fraser kissed his finger, then grabbed the other four and kissed them, too. His smile lit up his face.
“Ray,” Fraser said, like that one word was everything. Which maybe it was, and that turned Ray’s crank like nothing doing.
“Frase.”
“Why was it so hard for you to admit that you really aren’t the cynic you pretend to be?”
“Aw, jeez, Fraser, do I get coffee before I have to answer the essay questions?”
Fraser rolled half on top of him and kissed him. “Sorry. I’ll go make you some.”
Ray scratched his neck. “Okay.” But he was grinning like a loon.
Later, after showers and breakfast and a lot of coffee (most of it for Ray), they settled on the couch, Fraser with a book and Ray with his glasses and the sports section of the Sunday Guardian, which Fraser and Dief had fetched for him. Dief was sacked out on the rug snoring at the moment because he’d been out half the night doing whatever wolves did when their Mountie companions were too busy to make them come in.
Ray was comfy in a pair of sweats and a t-shirt; Fraser had on a buttondown shirt and a pair of jeans that defied the laws of physics: Ray didn’t know how Fraser could sit down in them, they were so tight.
Ray looked up from his paper and saw Fraser sitting there all stiff and proper, with his feet on the floor, and Ray sighed. Jeez, that Mountie had to learn to let his hair down sometimes. Even his damn hair was all perfect again.
Ray swiveled around on the couch so he could stretch his legs out a little. He prodded Fraser’s leg with his foot until Fraser kicked his hiking boots off and stretched his legs out, too, and then they were sitting at opposite ends of the couch with their long legs all tangled up in each other.
Fraser grinned and put his book aside.
Ray countered by tossing the paper on the floor, being careful to miss Dief.
“Do you feel up to answering the essay question now, Ray?”
Ray pulled his glasses off and set them on the coffee table. He rubbed his eyes. In for a dollar, in for a doughnut, or however that went. “Look, Frase, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been down on Eloise and Davy. It could work out for them. I hope it does.”
“And for us?”
“I really hope it does.”
“That makes two of us.” Fraser stroked the side of Ray’s hip with his sock-covered foot. “Are you going to answer the question I asked? Why do you talk about love in such a negative way if it’s not what you really feel? Is it part of your cover? Part of the unofficial ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy?”
“Huh? Oh, you mean, am I pretending to be down on love to throw people off so they don’t know I’m in love with you?”
Fraser nodded.
“Nah. Nothing like that. I don’t care if they know. In fact, I want them all to know.”
“You do?” The sun coming up that morning couldn’t have been brighter than Fraser’s smile.
“’Course I do. You got to be kidding. I bagged the best-looking, smartest, bravest guy in Chicago, I got bragging rights.”
Fraser hugged him with his feet; Ray had to scramble over his legs and kiss the hell out of him, then. When they came up for air, it took a while to find a comfortable way to share the couch again. Fraser finally settled against one arm of the couch with his feet up on the coffee table, and Ray lay down on his back with his head in Fraser’s lap and his feet up over the opposite arm of the couch.
Frase played with Ray’s hair, sending delightful shivers all over Ray’s skin, which got Ray thinking about the delightful shivers the night before, and after a few minutes, he had to reach down and adjust himself in his sweatpants.
Fraser apparently saw that, judging from the way Ray’s “pillow” was suddenly getting firmer under his head. Ray figured Fraser was going to have to adjust something in those physics-defying jeans in a minute or so. Ray grinned, to himself, but he knew Fraser wouldn’t miss it.
Fraser stroked Ray’s cheek. “You don’t look at all like a cynic at the moment, Ray. You’ll have to put your scowl back on before we go into the precinct tomorrow, or the desk sergeant will stop you on your way in.”
“Huh?”
“Well, yes. She’ll ask who you are and where you’ve stashed Ray Kowalski.” Fraser’s lips twitched, holding back a grin.
Ray put a finger up and poked Fraser’s cheek so Fraser couldn’t hold it back; Fraser lost the struggle and the dorky grin spread all over his face. Ray laughed harder. He loved that dorky grin. It made Fraser look stupid and loveable and human. “Idiot.”
“You’re no cynic, Ray.”
“I just play one on TV.” Ray sighed. “Okay, look. You’re right. I’m not down on love. I just…I just have this thing. A superstition, kind of.”
Fraser watched him, his eyes soft.
Ray sighed and ran a hand through his own hair, which felt like it was looking really, really experimental at the moment. “It’s like that Greek thing, you know. Where the people were never supposed to brag in front of the gods or let on they really, really loved someone because then the gods would, um, smite them or something. ’Cause they were overreaching themselves.”
“You’re afraid of getting...”
“Getting smited?” Ray shrugged. “Just kind of afraid someone up there would notice Ray was happy, you know, Frase?”
“Ah, and not wanting you to be happy, they’d smite you then?”
“Look, I know it don’t make any sense.”
“Superstitions don’t. If they were reasonable fears, they wouldn’t be called superstitions.”
“It doesn’t make any sense when you try to explain it,” Ray said. “But I kind of always felt I, you know, overreached myself when I got Stella. She was a Gold Coast girl. Her dad’s a stockbroker. I was just a Polish kid from the South Side, the son of a meat-packer. My mom did domestic work. She was a cook for a family in Stella’s neighborhood.”
“It’s honorable work,” Fraser said.
“Sure.” Ray shrugged. “Of course it meant she was working when we had dinner. When Andy and I got old enough to both get part-time jobs, she quit. She’s been trying to force-feed me to make up for it ever since.”
“I’ve noticed that.”
Ray smiled. “So anyway. About Stella. I overreached. And I always knew the other shoe was gonna drop and…finally, it did.”
“She didn’t leave you because you were working-class, Ray. If she’d felt that way, she’d never have married you in the first place.”
“I know. We split because we wanted different things. Close enough. The point was we were too different. I guess I always kind of knew that.”
“I’m from a working-class family, Ray.”
“Fraser, buddy, you are in a class by yourself.”
“Well, you don’t have to have the same superstition in my case, Ray. I’ll endeavor to keep you just miserable enough to escape the thunderbolts from above, and just happy enough to stay with me, so I, at least, will be happy.” Fraser’s grin twitched toward dorkiness again.
Ray put his hand on Fraser’s smooth cheek. “It’s not me I’m afraid for now.”
“It’s not? You no longer think the gods will smite you for being happy?”
“I don’t really care. It’s you I worry about now. Out there without a gun, asking some whackjob to please hand over his weapons and surrender to the nice policeman who’ll read him his rights.” He sighed. “I don’t want the gods to smite you, Frase.”
“Oh, Ray. They can’t throw thunderbolts in the same place twice. I’m already smitten.”
“Huh?” Smitten, smited, hit by thunderbolts, was that the same thing?
“It means head over heels in love, Ray.”
“Really?”
“Scout’s honor.” He held up the Boy Scout sign, three fingers up, the pinkie pinned by the thumb. It looked a lot like a saint’s blessing, like you saw in old statues and paintings.
Ray couldn’t remember if the saints held up two fingers or three, but he figured a blessing was a blessing, no matter where it came from. He took Fraser’s blessing hand in his and wove their fingers together, holding on tight, like a guy who was never going to let go.
“Guess I’m safe, then,” he said. “I’m already smitten, too.”
Fraser swallowed. “For keeps?” He looked, God, he looked scared and really happy at the same time, just exactly how Ray felt. He looked a lot like when he was about to jump off something really high into something really deep, like Lake Michigan. As if he was thinking this could just possibly kill us, Ray, but isn’t it the most fun ever?
“For keeps.” Ray had never been more sure of anything. He always followed Fraser off those high places, didn’t he? Hell, sometimes Ray knew so totally that he was going with Fraser, no matter what, that he even jumped first.
Fraser didn’t ask him this time if he really meant it. His eyes said he knew, and his smile could have lit a city block. He leaned over and put his lips on Ray’s and kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him.
--end--
