TEAM WHIMSY: Day 1, "Lift"
Aug. 29th, 2008 07:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ds_flashfictionTitle: Lift
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spuffyduds
Team: Whimsy
Prompt: “I can’t feel my elbows”
Pairing(s): Kowalski/Vecchio, Kowalski/Vecchio/Fraser
Length: 6,200
Rating: R
Warnings: None
Summary: Ray Kowalski would prefer not to be needy and freakish, thank you very much. But on a day full of bizarre surprises, he needs a hand from his friends.
Author's notes: This was beta’ed by the gloriousdessert_first and green_grrl, with a lot of pitching in from the rest of the Whimsy Team, who all live in the Land of Sparkly Awesome.
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**
Even though Ray isn’t looking forward to the very weird conversation that’s coming up, it’s a relief when Vecchio finally hammers on his door and yells, “Kowalski? You in there? You okay?” Because by that point he’s been sitting around the apartment for hours unable to do much of anything, and mostly keeping his eyes closed—it’s a little less upsetting that way.
The phone rang over and over, and the answering machine picked up and picked up, and he listened to a snippy where-are-you message from Frannie and a pissed-off where-are-you message from Welsh, and then a worried where-are-you? message from Frannie. Then a really pissed-off one from Welsh, but Ray knew by now that that was how Welsh did worried. He briefly considered knocking the phone receiver off the unit with his face and trying to talk, but—no.
And then apparently somebody phoned Vecchio, who wasn’t scheduled to be in this morning; and, being Vecchio, he didn’t call Ray—he just showed up.
*************************
“Yeah, I’m here, I’m fine,” Ray hollers back.
“The four hours late for work and not answering the phone kind of fine?” Vecchio says, and Ray grins a little in spite of everything, because since he got back from Vegas Vecchio’s Mr. Careful—and Ray just knows, can hear it in his voice, that he’s supertense out there in the hall. Stepped back a little sideways from the door, gun raised, in case Ray’s apartment is full of twitchy mobsters.
“Yeah, that kind.”
“So, let me in.”
“Can’t,” Ray says, gets anxious silence from the hall and adds, “Fine, though, I swear. Peachy. No gun to my head, no knife in the ribs, swear to God, officer’s fine. I just, uh, can’t open the door.”
“So,” Vecchio says, and his voice has relaxed now, gotten a smile in it, “hooker tie you to a chair?”
“Hah. So funny. Get a key from the landlady, okay? Apartment right under me.”
“What’ll I tell her?”
“Shit, I don’t want her coming up here. Tell her—getting out of the tub, back spasm, can’t move, embarrassed, naked.”
“Is that what happened?”
“Nope.”
“Ohhhhkay. If I had a key—“
“Not the time, Vecchio,” Ray snaps, and he hears Vecchio heading for the stairs.
He sits there for a couple more minutes in the wooden kitchen chair. His butt’s gone numb but he couldn’t get—arranged right in the recliner, there wasn’t room, and trying to sit on the couch was bad because he kept looking at the TV remote and being reminded he couldn’t use it and getting a little panicked.
Then there are steps and a rattle in the lock, and Ray makes himself look up at the door; gonna get an eyeful of Vecchio’s reaction first thing, get it over with.
Vecchio opens the door and freezes with his hand still on the knob. His eyes go round and he takes a couple deep loud breaths and says, “Holy fuck.”
*************************
When Ray woke up with wings he wasn’t actually that whacked out for the first few minutes. Because he figured he wasn’t really awake, that this was just another in the series of “I am some kind of bizarre freak” dreams he’d been having lately. In the past week or so he’d been a man-lizard-thing, and a centaur, and one of those carnival guys who eats lightbulbs. And in every dream there’d been people pointing and staring and laughing, so this one wasn’t that bad, what with being set in the privacy of his apartment and not featuring a throatful of broken glass. So he just got the briefest glimpse—brown and white feathers, big—before he closed his eyes in the dream and waited to drift into blank sleep or just one of his more usual dreams, like the one where Vecchio insisted they trade cars or the one where Fraser was trying to convince him that Canadians always slept with peanut butter in their ears.
But things stayed the same and stayed the same, and every time he shifted a little there was a feathery rustling noise, and his shoulders hurt where he was lying on the wings, and there was a tickle-in-the-back-of-the-nose dusty-feather-pillow smell, and damn this was a detailed dream. He tried moving his arms around to take some of the pressure off his shoulders, and—that felt really strange, something was wrong there.
He squinched his eyes tighter shut, time for this dream to go away now, but it didn’t, and he whispered, “I can’t feel my elbows.”
He finally made himself look, and—the wings didn’t come out from behind his arms like he’d been figuring. The wings were his arms, or his arms were the wings—a few inches out from the shoulders his arms narrowed, tapered, became the feathered ridge of muscle at the top of the wings, with tiny bones fanning out and down.
He couldn’t feel his elbows because he didn’t have any.
He didn’t have any hands either.
That was when he lost it for a little while.
************************
Vecchio’s losing it now, pacing up and down in front of Ray with his hand over his mouth. Every now and then he stops, waves wildly at Ray like he’s gotten some big lightning-strike solve-everything idea; but then he just says, “You—“ and covers his mouth again and starts pacing.
“Yeah, that helps,” Ray says.
“Sorry,” Vecchio says, and pulls a chair close and sits down. Ray’s got to give him some credit—after the initial surprise he’s acted worried and weirded out, yeah, but not like Ray was a repulsive mutant or anything. He even touched the wings, felt around where they flare out of Ray’s sides and ran his hands along the tops. “Yeah, they’re—they’re really on there,” he said.
“No kidding, “ Ray said. The touching there was strange—didn’t hurt exactly but didn’t feel good either; sort of a sourish prickly licking-a-battery feeling, but all up and down his back instead of on his tongue.
Vecchio rubs at his forehead, eyes Ray. “You get bitten by anything lately?” he says. “Are there werewolf birds? Werebirds?”
And that’s so fucking stupid it cheers Ray up, so he gives Vecchio a glare and sings, “Little old lady got mutilated late last night, werebirds of London again...”
Vecchio snorts, says, “Okay, probably not.” He looks Ray over again, says, “You know, I could probably think this through a little better if you weren’t naked.”
“You ever try to put boxer shorts on with your teeth?”
“Oh, I dunno, I bet you could,” Vecchio says, with a leer, and then his face gets—different and he says, “You sleep naked when you’re alone and wear shorts after you fuck somebody? Huh.”
“Vecchio,” Ray says softly. “Not now.”
“Yeah, okay, sorry. But let’s get some clothes on you, all right?”
He gets some shorts out of Ray’s dresser and helps Ray step into them—his balance is off in strange ways. And Ray hates this, hates needing help, but Vecchio keeps his mouth shut at least.
They get sat back down and Ray bites back on the snarl that he always wants to use on anybody who’s seen him worthless and useless, (shot and in a hospital bed, drunk off his ass the first few weeks after Stella left, drunk off his ass the first few days after he and Fraser came back from the quest and the new Inspector cancelled the liaising) makes himself say, “You’re being—pretty calm. Considering the freakishness. Thanks.”
Vecchio waves a hand. Usually that looks kind of elegant on him, he’s got nice hands—but this time a tiny feather floats off his cuff, spirals slowly down to the floor while they both stare at it. A—pinfeather, maybe? Fraser would know.
“Well,” Vecchio says. “You’re not—.” He gives Ray a tired look. “In Vegas? I had to eatdinner with this one guy—more than once, because the Bookman was friends with him—that I’d heard, everybody said he could only get if up if they, if the kids were—“ He stops, runs a hand through his sparse hair. “Anyway,” he says. “He was a freak. You’re just fucked up.”
Ray doesn’t know what to say to that, so he shrugs, which turns out to be a bad plan because his—his fucking wingspan is wider than his body’s figured out yet, and he whacks Vecchio in the face with a wing tip.
“Ow,” Vecchio says.
“Maybe you should—“
“I’ll call Fraser.”
“Yeah.”
*************************
Ray’d gotten over the worst of the re-entry into his regular life by the time Vecchio came back from Florida, by that morning that Welsh called the two of them into the office and said that he was, “with a certain sense of dread and inevitability,” partnering them up.
He’d stopped with the drinking, hauled himself out of it after a few days, because—he didn’t have anything to mourn, really; there’d never been anything, he’d never said anything, because no way would Fraser say yes. And because he managed to get it through his skull that this was a good thing for Fraser, that the reason the new Inspector was pulling him off liaising duty was that he was giving Fraser actual worthwhile stuff to do over in mini-Canada—investigative stuff and diplomatic stuff. ‘Bout time, after the submarine and all, that somebody figured out the guy was wasted on guard duty, and it was better for him to be doing interesting things at his own job than to be tagging along on the interesting parts of Ray’s.
So they worked their jobs, and they met up a lot for meals and TV and just hanging out. Ray was almost okay, and things were almost normal, and Fraser seemed—fine. But remembering how he’d looked up there on the ice fields, just totally blissed, so much more than fine, Ray couldn’t figure out why Fraser’d come back at all. It wasn’t gonna last, he could tell. Fraser would keep impressing the hell out of his boss, and he’d get some kind of awesome-to-him offer up in the ass-end of nowhere, and he’d be gone. And he’d be happy, so okay, Ray was okay with that.
And then Vecchio came back and things got weird. Vecchio was really different—Ray’d had him figured, that frantic couple of days they’d met before, for a serious posturer. All bluster and swagger, easy to rile up, all “hands off my partner” and “I was off being a big tough Mafia guy while you were being the wussy little cop I used to be” and—he made sense, Ray got him. But when he came back he was quiet, and sort of slower-moving, and when he’d fucked up he owned up to it right off, calmly—“Yeah, Lieu, I gotta get paperwork filed with the DA on time, we’re all on the same team, you’re right.” Not in a sucking-up way, either, just: yep, there it is. And even weirder, it had gotten impossible to insult him. Ray didn’t really try, because he needed to get along with the guy, but Huey and Dewey did, God knows. They were both kinda pissy after they had to cut the struggling comedy club back to a night job and start working at the station again, and Vecchio got the worst of it—maybe because he’d left all triumphant and had to come back too. They ragged on his clothes and his car (the same car, again, geez) and his detecting skills (which were, Ray was relieved to find, actually pretty damn good) and he just smiled a little and kept at his paperwork.
And one day Dewey started in on Vecchio’s six-week Stella-marriage, possible reasons it was so short, and covered the expected territory of “She meet somebody hotter, like, a monkey?” and “Did she bail because you couldn’t get it up?” Ray wasn’t even paying much attention, plodding along on his own stack of overdue triplicate forms, with Dewey’s jabbing and Vecchio’s saying, “Yeah, sure, that’s it,” and “Whoa, Dewey, how’d you guess?” just background noise. And then Dewey said, “No, no, I got it, you bailed because you didn’t think she was as hot as Fraser.”
And Ray gulped in a breath and looked up, waiting for Vecchio to go off on Dewey, to start removing pieces of Dewey, because, holy hell, you do not go there, that is the There to Which You Do Not Go.
But Vecchio just smiled, said, “No, I thought they were pretty much equally hot,” and went back to what he was doing.
Jesus.
Dewey sat with his mouth open for a while, and then closed it so hard Ray could hear his teeth click. And everybody left Vecchio alone after that.
Ray, though, spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the hell was up with Vecchio—it was a nice distraction from those fantasies about things he was, face it, never going to do with Fraser. He watched Vecchio all the time, listened hard to the things he said and the things he didn’t, and finally decided that maybe Florida and Stella had been in some weird way Vecchio’s last bluster, his last fronting; that now he was what he was. And what he was, was the only person Ray had ever met who genuinely no longer gave a shit what anybody thought about him. On any subject.
That was really fucking scary.
He was a good partner, though, and they hung out a little after work; sometimes with Fraser, which was easier, more comfortable than Ray would have thought. And one night, a few weeks after Vecchio got back, they were all watching a game together and Fraser begged off; had to get up early in the morning, thank you kindly for the chips and dip, come along, Dief.
Ray and Vecchio watched for a few minutes more, and Ray was starting to feel a little yawny himself when Vecchio suddenly said, “So, you pretty much over him?”
“I—what?” Ray said. “It’s not, it was never like that, I’m not—“
“Sure,” Vecchio said, smiled slow, leaned over and kissed him.
Ray was too stunned to do anything for a second, and then he opened his mouth to say “Whoa!” Honestly he wasn’t sure if it was going to be a “Stop!” kind of whoa or a “Keanu Reeves is very impressed!” kind of whoa, but it didn’t matter—when he opened his mouth Vecchio took it as “c’mon in and get comfy,” and wow, nice tongue, there. So he didn’t do anything to stop it, because it had been a really, really long time since he’d had any kissing at all, much less any like this, Vecchio’s tongue all pointy and pushy and tickling and Vecchio’s hands in his hair and Vecchio’s whole body smooshing him into a corner of the couch, goddamn.
He figured he would stop it if Vecchio tried for anything else, but the anything else turned out to be Vecchio’s hands untucking Ray’s shirt and sliding up and pinching at his nipples, which, Jesus, that was. Acceptable. Yeah, but he was definitely going to stop this if it went any further.
Except that the any further was Vecchio sliding Ray’s sweatpants down and taking his cock in his mouth, and Ray was not stupid, so he didn’t say a word, just moaned through his clenched teeth while Vecchio went at him. Teased him with just a tongue-tip while Ray tried really hard not to arch all the way off the couch, and licked around the head, and went down and down and further down, and sucked hard and fast.
The thing that killed Ray, though, the thing that put him over the edge, was that the whole time Vecchio was making these little happy noises, these “I am the one getting a treat here,” noises. That was—just—that was—Ray couldn’t even figure out what that was, but it made him lose it completely, made him shake and shiver and swear and come in Vecchio’s mouth. Left him useless and helpless, sprawled on the couch, couldn’t have moved if you paid him.
And then Vecchio did an even weirder thing. Which Ray wouldn’t have thought was possible, but it was. Vecchio knelt up and looked at Ray, right in the face, and then reached up and rumpled his hair.
Affectionately. Like they had something going on here. But before Ray could get out, “What the fuck?” Vecchio said, “Hey, I’m heading out. First thing tomorrow, we’ll canvass the witnesses on the storefront smash-and-grabs, okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” Ray said, lay there with his cock out and watched Vecchio go out the door.
That was how it went for the next few weeks. Vecchio would just jump him, get him amped up out of his fucking mind or get him to come so hard he’d lost his fucking mind, and then—Vecchio would assume stuff. Vecchio would make assumptions. Like, about reciprocating. Ray would be flopped on his bed, boneless and brainless and panting, and then Vecchio would climb up on him and sort of shove his cock in Ray’s mouth, which, yeah, was only fair, but it was bizarre that he just figured Ray would be okay with that. And Vecchio smelled, felt, tasted really good and Ray somewhere found the energy to start licking and sucking, so apparently he was okay with that. But still.
Or Vecchio would do—relationship-type things. Hair-rumpling. Cheek-patting. And once, when Ray was sprawled on his living room floor with carpet burns up his back, trying to remember how to breathe, Vecchio got their fingers all tangled together, just lay there and held his hand for a minute until Ray got it together enough to move away.
Vecchio was always pushing. And Ray tried to explain that it wasn’t like that, that he wasn’t like that, that this was a—tide-us-over kind of deal, but without hurting the guy’s feelings too much. Because Vecchio was a good guy, really.
And it never seemed to hurt him at all, because Vecchio would always agree and then act like he hadn’t heard a damn word.
*************************
“Vecchio. I do not have every goddamn night free to spend with you.”
“Sure, okay. You wanna go play pool?”
*************************
“Vecchio, this is not a thing. It’s just a thing, okay?”
“Yeah, fine—killer logic, there, Kowalski. Hey, here’s a key to my place, you need to make me a copy of yours.”
*************************
“Kowalski, you make me that key yet?”
“No, I did not make you a key, because I am not your fucking boyfriend, Vecchio.”
“Whatever. I’m gonna leave some spare clothes here.”
Like that. It was making Ray insane.
*************************
Except it’s kind of nice now, Ray has to admit, because he’s just barely hanging on, just managing not to freak out completely from that ongoing loony chant of “Look, ma, no hands!” repeating in his head. It’s nice because when Vecchio finishes talking to Fraser, hangs up, plops down on the couch, Ray knows he can sit down next to him, all awkward with the wings bent up and sticking out every which way, and Vecchio will still manage somehow to get an arm across what’s left of his shoulders. Will pull Ray close and pet his hair and say, “We’ll figure it out, we’re gonna work something out, okay?” And right now Ray doesn’t even mind the “we.”
He jumps up when there’s a knock at the door, though, is up and pacing by the time Vecchio sighs and lets Fraser in.
Vecchio’s given Fraser some warning, so he just gives a “Hmmmmm,” and starts circling Ray. Then gets his hands on the wings, fans them out and bends them experimentally, inspects individual feathers and mutters about coverts and primaries and secondaries.
Finally he looks up and says, “Has anything bitten you recently?”
Ray and Vecchio both crack up. Vecchio starts a wolf howl and Dief joins in, so then they both get the giggles even worse and it’s a while before they can explain it to Fraser.
“Ah,” he says. “Yes, doubtful, admittedly. I’m afraid, Ray, that I’m just going to have to chalk this up to—magic.”
“Oh great,” Ray says. “Like, a voodoo thing? Who’d I piss off?”
“Who didn’t you?” Vecchio says, and Ray’s getting a little better with the wing control, whacks him on purpose this time.
“This sort of transformation hasn’t appeared in any of the voudoun literature I’m familiar with,” Fraser says. “Some other magical tradition, perhaps, in which case it could be a personal attack by a practitioner. But if it’s an intervention by a god or gods, instead, it could have no basis whatsoever in your behavior—gods can be quite capricious.”
“’Capricious’ means ‘bastards’?”
“More or less. On occasion, though, such a—curse, if it’s from a god, could be intended as some sort of behavior modification. You could be supposed to—change something, learn a lesson.”
“I have learned my lesson,” Ray says instantly, looking at the ceiling. “I have learned any fucking lesson you wanna teach me. I will never eat chicken again. I will never eat any birds. Or eggs. Fuck, I will stop eating eggplant if you want, I don’t even like it. I will be a totally good person, I will give money to orphanages, I’ll believe in whatever you like, I’ll buy that Oswald acted alone, anything, just give me a fucking break here.”
They all stand there for a stupid minute, looking up, like some big giant head is going to appear and say, “Oh, okay,” and poof Ray back to normal. Which of course doesn’t happen.
“Shit,” Ray says, and plops back down on the couch.
The phone rings and they all jump a little. Vecchio says, “Oh, hell, I never called the station,” and picks up. And it’s gotta be Welsh because Vecchio starts apologizing right away, explaining that Ray has some kind of god-awful stomach flu or food poisoning, and what is this, Thursday? There’s no way he’ll be in tomorrow, the poor guy can barely stand up, couldn’t even make it to the phone earlier, and Vecchio’s gonna hang around and make sure he stays hydrated, they’ll both be in Monday, and—
Fraser walks over near the phone and starts making the most amazing retching noises; seriously, he sounds like a cow turning inside out. Ray’s getting a little nauseated just hearing it, and Vecchio grins and says, “Oh, yech, I gotta clean up again,” and hangs up.
“Nice,” Vecchio says.
“I try, Ray,” Fraser says, solemnly. Then he sits down, pulls out a pocket notebook and a pencil, and starts making a list—“Local practitioners of magic, and priests or priestesses of the more obscure religions,” he explains. He alternates writing and chewing on his pencil, and Ray is managing to distract himself from his current fucked-itude by watching him chew on the pencil. Then Ray looks over and catches Vecchio watching the pencil-chewing, and they share a grin.
“Maybe you should add large-animal vets,” Vecchio says.
“Maybe I should wing you to death,” Ray says.
“Not as idle a threat as you might think, Ray,” Fraser says. “There has been a documented case of a full-grown, healthy human male being beaten to death by a swan.”
“Benny, there is no way a guy got beat to death by a swan,” Vecchio says. “It’s possible the guy died of embarrassment because he let a swan beat him up.”
“No, really. There were multiple witnesses,” Fraser says. For a second Ray enjoys how normal all the bitchery feels, but then it suddenly pisses him off, and he says, “Could we maybe focus on my problem, here?”
“Certainly, Ray, sorry,” Fraser says, but then he stands up and says, “Ah—facilities for a moment, first,” and heads for the bathroom.
“Hey,” Vecchio says. “Have you—how did you?”
“Haven’t had to,” Ray says, and thinks about how fucking impossible that would have been. Then he thinks a minute and starts getting a little nervous—more nervous—and says, “Haven’t been hungry, either. Or thirsty.”
“Huh,” Vecchio says. “Maybe your metabolism’s changed?”
And that’s really terrifying, so Ray grins at him, says, “At least you didn’t have to hold my dick in the bathroom.”
“Yeah, small favors,” Vecchio says.
“Was that a size dig?” Ray says, and Vecchio leans in and nips his ear, murmurs, “I know better than that.”
Ray squirms and smiles—and, and flutters a little, and looks up to see Fraser standing in the living room doorway with his mouth open.
“It’s not,” Ray says. His voice has gone all squeaky. “We haven’t. It isn’t. Really.”
Vecchio, goddamn him, just says, “Hey, Benny.” Gently.
Fraser stands there for a moment, and then puts on this smile, this horrible smile, and says, “Ah. You are…amenable. As are you. You both are. I had not, I had not guessed. I could have, you would have let—excuse me.”
He goes back into the bathroom, and slams the door. Then there are all these noises, some of which are laughing and some of which are really, really not.
Ray should probably be doing something or saying something, but he can’t get past the fact that Benton Fraser is having some kind of breakdown in his bathroom.
The noises get quieter and further apart, and finally Ray looks at Vecchio and says, “I don’t think he could mean what I think he means. You think?”
“Yeah,” Vecchio says.
“Which is?” Ray says, because he’d like to hear somebody else say it and make sure he’s not crazy. The day he’s having, he’s maybe not at his most logical.
“Which is,” Vecchio says, “we’re all—‘amenable.’ And we’re all stupid.”
“Huh,” Ray says. They sit there, listening as the noises die out completely, and finally Ray manages, “You know, this day is just not getting any more normal.”
Fraser comes out of the bathroom then. He looks—blotchy and puffy and only about half as hot as usual, and Ray suddenly wants to touch him so bad he can barely keep himself on the couch. His wings shudder all around him, trying to make him move.
“So,” Fraser says, “you two have an…interpersonal arrangement of some sort? That’s wonderful, congratulations.”
Vecchio looks at Ray, and Ray—doesn’t say anything, which makes no sense at all because the answer’s “No,” it’s obviously no, but his mouth is not opening.
Finally he stands up and walks over to Fraser, and Fraser’s just standing there, breathing loud and looking at him and not touching him. Ray stands close and curls one wing around him, the tips of his feathers brushing the backs of Fraser’s knees, and looks at Vecchio.
Vecchio looks back at the two of them with a face gone totally blank. Ray’s never seen the guy before with an expression that was such a—lack of one.
“Hey, Benny,” Vecchio says quietly, “give me your list, I’ll go track down some of ‘em, get out of you guys’ hair.”
Ray takes a deep breath, because if he says this there’s no going back to anything approaching normal, wings or not. Thinks crazily, welcome to the freak kingdom, helmet required when operating a motorcycle, please leave your weapons at the border, and says, “Vecchio, you asshole, get over here.”
*************************
It turns out that even a queen-size bed isn’t built to accommodate three full-grown guys and a couple thousand feathers. The only way they fit on it is with Ray in the middle and Vecchio and Fraser each lying on a wing. So Ray’s pinned, can’t move, and he’s dying to—to get his hands on both of them, which is obviously not going to happen. And he was expecting, after a year of stupid pointless pining after Fraser, which, goddamnit, he could have ended any time—he was expecting, after that, that it would mess with his head a little watching Vecchio kiss him.
He wasn’t expecting, though, to be wanting to tell Vecchio to get the hell off Fraser and wanting to tell Fraser to get the hell off Vecchio.
“Guys,” he manages finally, and they break the long fucking clinch they’ve had going over his chest, look at him.
“Dying here,” he says, and then Vecchio’s sucking on his earlobe on one side and Fraser is kissing along the top of the wing on the other.
And Fraser surprises him, because—when he walked in and saw the wings he was all, “Hmmm, I shall now be extremely calm and scientific,” but here, with his mouth nuzzling into Ray’s feathers, he moans, “Oh, Ray, your beautiful hands,” in this way that makes it sound like a personal tragedy for him. Which is kind of cool.
Ray doesn’t get to think that over much, though, because Fraser shifts over from wing to nipple. He’s kissing and licking and biting just lightly, and making little hungry noises. Ray’s got zingy shocky feelings shooting out from there, and from what Vecchio’s doing to his ear on the other side, and they cross streams in the middle of his body and get his spine all confused.
He moans and arches his hips up, and then he has one terrible second of wondering whether everything is still gonna work right before Vecchio’s hand is cupping his balls and Fraser’s hand is around his cock and yeah, yeah, all systems are go.
*************************
When he wakes up his wings have gone numb under the other guys. Vecchio’s snoring and Fraser’s drooling into the feathers a little.
Ray wiggles his wings out from under them, and the guys stir vaguely and grumble. He sits up awkwardly—he’s starting to work out how much he can use the stupid things to push himself upright; not all that much, but enough to manage. Makes himself look at the wings carefully; better get used to them in case this is a—permanent thing.
He could—he could almost deal with the wings, if it was just that, if they were just added on. But the hands thing. God, that’s—
“I can’t drive. Jesus,” he says into the quiet of the bedroom. That’s, he can’t fucking take that.
Then he looks at the wings a little closer, and the bed, and says, “Hey. Hey, guys!”
“Mmmph?” Fraser says and sits up. Vecchio grumbles and pulls a pillow over his head.
“I think they’re different,” Ray says. “I think—don’t my arms look normal for a little further out, before the feathers start? And look, I shed a fuckload of feathers in the bed.”
“Hmm,” Fraser says, and inspects. Vecchio emerges and checks things out on his side.
“Yeah, I think?” Vecchio says, and “Perhaps, probably?” Fraser says.
Fraser hops out of bed and comes back from the kitchen with a Sharpie, draws a line on each of Ray’s arms where the feathers start. “We should have done this earlier—now if there’s a change we can tell for sure. I’m optimistic, I’m fairly certain there’s a change here, and combined with the feather loss—although it’s possible that’s just molting as part of a change from juvenile plumage to adult.”
“Great, thanks,” Ray says, but he’s—optimistic, yeah.
Fraser and Vecchio get their clothes back on and help Ray into his shorts again, and then they all start trying to figure out what to do next—if they should just sit around and watch for changes, or maybe Vecchio or Fraser should go out and start tracking down names from the list.
Ray’s trying hard to think, but he’s distracted by the serious funk the bedroom has acquired, what with all the orgasms and all the feathers (and what is he gonna do for hygiene, anyway, a dust bath?)
“I gotta get a little air, guys,” Ray says. “Can you, uh—“ he waves at the blankets—“drape me?”
Fraser and Vecchio get an end of blanket apiece and put it carefully over his shoulders. He feels kinda like James Brown.
He steps out onto the tiny, tiny balcony off his bedroom, squeezes past the rusty barbecue grill and just breathes. Even the Chicago air is nice after a day inside panicking.
Then he looks back inside and Fraser is watching him so intently, knees bent, ready to move. Like he thinks Ray is gonna get an offer he can’t refuse from a passing Canada goose, or something.
“Fraser,” he says, “I am not taking to the skies, okay? Lighten up.”
Fraser stands down, and Ray goes back to breathing and not thinking and looking down at the street, at the hot-dog stand and the kids bicycling on the sidewalk and the homeless guy who yells “CONDOMS!” every time you pass his corner and the old lady getting mugged and—fuck.
“Fuck!” he yells. “Mugging! Across the street!” and behind him he hears the apartment door wham open and Fraser and Vecchio both pounding full-bore for the stairs, but that’ll take a couple minutes and the asshole is hitting her. She already gave up the purse and being that she’s an old lady in this neighborhood she’s probably got seven dollars and a kleenex in there, and he’s hitting her, Jesus.
Ray shrugs the blanket off and climbs up on the rusty scaly rail and jumps.
And for a second there he doesn’t remember to move the wings because he’s too busy thinking, “Oh hell, I only have boxer shorts on,” but then he pushes his arms down and he—lifts a little, it’s like the air is pushing up under him, weird.
But he’s going into this long swoop that looks like he’s gonna to end up landing four miles down the road. He needs to go down sharp and fast, and he remembers something about pulling the wings in, making them smaller, from the only bird thing he ever read. Which was Jonathan Livingston Seagull when he was eleven.
And if he ever meets the guy that wrote that he is going to kick his seagull-loving ass, because pulling the wings in sends Ray into a goddamn death spiral, the buildings on either side of the street blendering around him and the yelling from the sidewalk getting closer and he can’t pull out and wham.
He’s really sure for a second that he’s dead, but he’s not, because there’s a guy under him, and then he’s sure he killed the guy under him, but he didn’t. And then he’s pretty sure that he broke a few bits of the guy, including his nose and a leg. And he’s right about that, but he doesn’t really care because by this point he’s figured out that the semi-broken guy is the mugger.
He’s sitting on this moaning mugger with his wings spread out on the sidewalk, and there’s a circle of people around him staring. One of them is the old lady. She reaches out and pulls her purse out of the mugger’s fingers, then looks at Ray and says, “Are you an avenging angel?”
“Sure,” he says. “Why not.”
She gives him a huge smile and then looks at the mugger and says, “God hates you, you dickweed,” and whacks him in the broken nose with the purse.
Which is when Fraser and Vecchio push through the crowd, and Vecchio’s calling it in and saying he can’t stay at the scene, for extremely complicated reasons, but the perp isn’t going anywhere. But the beat cops should hurry anyway before Ruth Buzzi beats the guy to death.
Fraser gets Ray up and kind of gets his arms around the wings, like that’s gonna hide anything, and one kid standing there gaping says, “Hawkman, right?”
“Absolutely,” Ray says. Fraser whaps him on the back of the head and says, “No, no. Experimental…government…black ops…”
“Weather balloon,” Vecchio adds, and they hustle Ray out of there. Nobody chases them, everybody’s still just standing there on the sidewalk—trying to stretch their brains around what they just saw, probably.
They scoot Ray down an alley, and Vecchio hunkers down by some trash cans with him while Fraser runs up to get the blanket off the balcony.
“Hawkman,” Ray says.
“You realize Hawkman is a total jerk of a superhero.”
“A total jerk of a superhero,” Ray says, “is still a superhero.”
Fraser gets back and they’re bundling him up, and Vecchio says, “Well, he’s gonna be unbearable for a while,” but he scoots an arm around Ray’s waist when he says it. Fraser does the same from the other side, so they can get the wings draped over their backs and the blanket draped over the wings, so they’re just three guys walking around with a blanket on, la la la move along, nothing to see here.
They start down the alley to the next street, “So we can go in your building out of sight of the—witnesses to your unorthodox arrest technique, Ray,” Fraser says.
Vecchio suddenly giggles and says, “You know, we really need a three-man poncho,” and Fraser cracks up.
Ray has no idea what they’re talking about, but he’s leaving a trail of shed—molted?—feathers. Which has gotta be good, right? And Fraser and Vecchio are hanging on tight, hips pressing hard into his. Walking in synch and squeezing him hard, and for the rest of the alley his feet don’t touch the ground.
END
**
[Poll #1249747]
Author:
spuffydudsTeam: Whimsy
Prompt: “I can’t feel my elbows”
Pairing(s): Kowalski/Vecchio, Kowalski/Vecchio/Fraser
Length: 6,200
Rating: R
Warnings: None
Summary: Ray Kowalski would prefer not to be needy and freakish, thank you very much. But on a day full of bizarre surprises, he needs a hand from his friends.
Author's notes: This was beta’ed by the glorious
dessert_first and green_grrl, with a lot of pitching in from the rest of the Whimsy Team, who all live in the Land of Sparkly Awesome.Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Genre information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
Even though Ray isn’t looking forward to the very weird conversation that’s coming up, it’s a relief when Vecchio finally hammers on his door and yells, “Kowalski? You in there? You okay?” Because by that point he’s been sitting around the apartment for hours unable to do much of anything, and mostly keeping his eyes closed—it’s a little less upsetting that way.
The phone rang over and over, and the answering machine picked up and picked up, and he listened to a snippy where-are-you message from Frannie and a pissed-off where-are-you message from Welsh, and then a worried where-are-you? message from Frannie. Then a really pissed-off one from Welsh, but Ray knew by now that that was how Welsh did worried. He briefly considered knocking the phone receiver off the unit with his face and trying to talk, but—no.
And then apparently somebody phoned Vecchio, who wasn’t scheduled to be in this morning; and, being Vecchio, he didn’t call Ray—he just showed up.
*************************
“Yeah, I’m here, I’m fine,” Ray hollers back.
“The four hours late for work and not answering the phone kind of fine?” Vecchio says, and Ray grins a little in spite of everything, because since he got back from Vegas Vecchio’s Mr. Careful—and Ray just knows, can hear it in his voice, that he’s supertense out there in the hall. Stepped back a little sideways from the door, gun raised, in case Ray’s apartment is full of twitchy mobsters.
“Yeah, that kind.”
“So, let me in.”
“Can’t,” Ray says, gets anxious silence from the hall and adds, “Fine, though, I swear. Peachy. No gun to my head, no knife in the ribs, swear to God, officer’s fine. I just, uh, can’t open the door.”
“So,” Vecchio says, and his voice has relaxed now, gotten a smile in it, “hooker tie you to a chair?”
“Hah. So funny. Get a key from the landlady, okay? Apartment right under me.”
“What’ll I tell her?”
“Shit, I don’t want her coming up here. Tell her—getting out of the tub, back spasm, can’t move, embarrassed, naked.”
“Is that what happened?”
“Nope.”
“Ohhhhkay. If I had a key—“
“Not the time, Vecchio,” Ray snaps, and he hears Vecchio heading for the stairs.
He sits there for a couple more minutes in the wooden kitchen chair. His butt’s gone numb but he couldn’t get—arranged right in the recliner, there wasn’t room, and trying to sit on the couch was bad because he kept looking at the TV remote and being reminded he couldn’t use it and getting a little panicked.
Then there are steps and a rattle in the lock, and Ray makes himself look up at the door; gonna get an eyeful of Vecchio’s reaction first thing, get it over with.
Vecchio opens the door and freezes with his hand still on the knob. His eyes go round and he takes a couple deep loud breaths and says, “Holy fuck.”
*************************
When Ray woke up with wings he wasn’t actually that whacked out for the first few minutes. Because he figured he wasn’t really awake, that this was just another in the series of “I am some kind of bizarre freak” dreams he’d been having lately. In the past week or so he’d been a man-lizard-thing, and a centaur, and one of those carnival guys who eats lightbulbs. And in every dream there’d been people pointing and staring and laughing, so this one wasn’t that bad, what with being set in the privacy of his apartment and not featuring a throatful of broken glass. So he just got the briefest glimpse—brown and white feathers, big—before he closed his eyes in the dream and waited to drift into blank sleep or just one of his more usual dreams, like the one where Vecchio insisted they trade cars or the one where Fraser was trying to convince him that Canadians always slept with peanut butter in their ears.
But things stayed the same and stayed the same, and every time he shifted a little there was a feathery rustling noise, and his shoulders hurt where he was lying on the wings, and there was a tickle-in-the-back-of-the-nose dusty-feather-pillow smell, and damn this was a detailed dream. He tried moving his arms around to take some of the pressure off his shoulders, and—that felt really strange, something was wrong there.
He squinched his eyes tighter shut, time for this dream to go away now, but it didn’t, and he whispered, “I can’t feel my elbows.”
He finally made himself look, and—the wings didn’t come out from behind his arms like he’d been figuring. The wings were his arms, or his arms were the wings—a few inches out from the shoulders his arms narrowed, tapered, became the feathered ridge of muscle at the top of the wings, with tiny bones fanning out and down.
He couldn’t feel his elbows because he didn’t have any.
He didn’t have any hands either.
That was when he lost it for a little while.
************************
Vecchio’s losing it now, pacing up and down in front of Ray with his hand over his mouth. Every now and then he stops, waves wildly at Ray like he’s gotten some big lightning-strike solve-everything idea; but then he just says, “You—“ and covers his mouth again and starts pacing.
“Yeah, that helps,” Ray says.
“Sorry,” Vecchio says, and pulls a chair close and sits down. Ray’s got to give him some credit—after the initial surprise he’s acted worried and weirded out, yeah, but not like Ray was a repulsive mutant or anything. He even touched the wings, felt around where they flare out of Ray’s sides and ran his hands along the tops. “Yeah, they’re—they’re really on there,” he said.
“No kidding, “ Ray said. The touching there was strange—didn’t hurt exactly but didn’t feel good either; sort of a sourish prickly licking-a-battery feeling, but all up and down his back instead of on his tongue.
Vecchio rubs at his forehead, eyes Ray. “You get bitten by anything lately?” he says. “Are there werewolf birds? Werebirds?”
And that’s so fucking stupid it cheers Ray up, so he gives Vecchio a glare and sings, “Little old lady got mutilated late last night, werebirds of London again...”
Vecchio snorts, says, “Okay, probably not.” He looks Ray over again, says, “You know, I could probably think this through a little better if you weren’t naked.”
“You ever try to put boxer shorts on with your teeth?”
“Oh, I dunno, I bet you could,” Vecchio says, with a leer, and then his face gets—different and he says, “You sleep naked when you’re alone and wear shorts after you fuck somebody? Huh.”
“Vecchio,” Ray says softly. “Not now.”
“Yeah, okay, sorry. But let’s get some clothes on you, all right?”
He gets some shorts out of Ray’s dresser and helps Ray step into them—his balance is off in strange ways. And Ray hates this, hates needing help, but Vecchio keeps his mouth shut at least.
They get sat back down and Ray bites back on the snarl that he always wants to use on anybody who’s seen him worthless and useless, (shot and in a hospital bed, drunk off his ass the first few weeks after Stella left, drunk off his ass the first few days after he and Fraser came back from the quest and the new Inspector cancelled the liaising) makes himself say, “You’re being—pretty calm. Considering the freakishness. Thanks.”
Vecchio waves a hand. Usually that looks kind of elegant on him, he’s got nice hands—but this time a tiny feather floats off his cuff, spirals slowly down to the floor while they both stare at it. A—pinfeather, maybe? Fraser would know.
“Well,” Vecchio says. “You’re not—.” He gives Ray a tired look. “In Vegas? I had to eatdinner with this one guy—more than once, because the Bookman was friends with him—that I’d heard, everybody said he could only get if up if they, if the kids were—“ He stops, runs a hand through his sparse hair. “Anyway,” he says. “He was a freak. You’re just fucked up.”
Ray doesn’t know what to say to that, so he shrugs, which turns out to be a bad plan because his—his fucking wingspan is wider than his body’s figured out yet, and he whacks Vecchio in the face with a wing tip.
“Ow,” Vecchio says.
“Maybe you should—“
“I’ll call Fraser.”
“Yeah.”
*************************
Ray’d gotten over the worst of the re-entry into his regular life by the time Vecchio came back from Florida, by that morning that Welsh called the two of them into the office and said that he was, “with a certain sense of dread and inevitability,” partnering them up.
He’d stopped with the drinking, hauled himself out of it after a few days, because—he didn’t have anything to mourn, really; there’d never been anything, he’d never said anything, because no way would Fraser say yes. And because he managed to get it through his skull that this was a good thing for Fraser, that the reason the new Inspector was pulling him off liaising duty was that he was giving Fraser actual worthwhile stuff to do over in mini-Canada—investigative stuff and diplomatic stuff. ‘Bout time, after the submarine and all, that somebody figured out the guy was wasted on guard duty, and it was better for him to be doing interesting things at his own job than to be tagging along on the interesting parts of Ray’s.
So they worked their jobs, and they met up a lot for meals and TV and just hanging out. Ray was almost okay, and things were almost normal, and Fraser seemed—fine. But remembering how he’d looked up there on the ice fields, just totally blissed, so much more than fine, Ray couldn’t figure out why Fraser’d come back at all. It wasn’t gonna last, he could tell. Fraser would keep impressing the hell out of his boss, and he’d get some kind of awesome-to-him offer up in the ass-end of nowhere, and he’d be gone. And he’d be happy, so okay, Ray was okay with that.
And then Vecchio came back and things got weird. Vecchio was really different—Ray’d had him figured, that frantic couple of days they’d met before, for a serious posturer. All bluster and swagger, easy to rile up, all “hands off my partner” and “I was off being a big tough Mafia guy while you were being the wussy little cop I used to be” and—he made sense, Ray got him. But when he came back he was quiet, and sort of slower-moving, and when he’d fucked up he owned up to it right off, calmly—“Yeah, Lieu, I gotta get paperwork filed with the DA on time, we’re all on the same team, you’re right.” Not in a sucking-up way, either, just: yep, there it is. And even weirder, it had gotten impossible to insult him. Ray didn’t really try, because he needed to get along with the guy, but Huey and Dewey did, God knows. They were both kinda pissy after they had to cut the struggling comedy club back to a night job and start working at the station again, and Vecchio got the worst of it—maybe because he’d left all triumphant and had to come back too. They ragged on his clothes and his car (the same car, again, geez) and his detecting skills (which were, Ray was relieved to find, actually pretty damn good) and he just smiled a little and kept at his paperwork.
And one day Dewey started in on Vecchio’s six-week Stella-marriage, possible reasons it was so short, and covered the expected territory of “She meet somebody hotter, like, a monkey?” and “Did she bail because you couldn’t get it up?” Ray wasn’t even paying much attention, plodding along on his own stack of overdue triplicate forms, with Dewey’s jabbing and Vecchio’s saying, “Yeah, sure, that’s it,” and “Whoa, Dewey, how’d you guess?” just background noise. And then Dewey said, “No, no, I got it, you bailed because you didn’t think she was as hot as Fraser.”
And Ray gulped in a breath and looked up, waiting for Vecchio to go off on Dewey, to start removing pieces of Dewey, because, holy hell, you do not go there, that is the There to Which You Do Not Go.
But Vecchio just smiled, said, “No, I thought they were pretty much equally hot,” and went back to what he was doing.
Jesus.
Dewey sat with his mouth open for a while, and then closed it so hard Ray could hear his teeth click. And everybody left Vecchio alone after that.
Ray, though, spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the hell was up with Vecchio—it was a nice distraction from those fantasies about things he was, face it, never going to do with Fraser. He watched Vecchio all the time, listened hard to the things he said and the things he didn’t, and finally decided that maybe Florida and Stella had been in some weird way Vecchio’s last bluster, his last fronting; that now he was what he was. And what he was, was the only person Ray had ever met who genuinely no longer gave a shit what anybody thought about him. On any subject.
That was really fucking scary.
He was a good partner, though, and they hung out a little after work; sometimes with Fraser, which was easier, more comfortable than Ray would have thought. And one night, a few weeks after Vecchio got back, they were all watching a game together and Fraser begged off; had to get up early in the morning, thank you kindly for the chips and dip, come along, Dief.
Ray and Vecchio watched for a few minutes more, and Ray was starting to feel a little yawny himself when Vecchio suddenly said, “So, you pretty much over him?”
“I—what?” Ray said. “It’s not, it was never like that, I’m not—“
“Sure,” Vecchio said, smiled slow, leaned over and kissed him.
Ray was too stunned to do anything for a second, and then he opened his mouth to say “Whoa!” Honestly he wasn’t sure if it was going to be a “Stop!” kind of whoa or a “Keanu Reeves is very impressed!” kind of whoa, but it didn’t matter—when he opened his mouth Vecchio took it as “c’mon in and get comfy,” and wow, nice tongue, there. So he didn’t do anything to stop it, because it had been a really, really long time since he’d had any kissing at all, much less any like this, Vecchio’s tongue all pointy and pushy and tickling and Vecchio’s hands in his hair and Vecchio’s whole body smooshing him into a corner of the couch, goddamn.
He figured he would stop it if Vecchio tried for anything else, but the anything else turned out to be Vecchio’s hands untucking Ray’s shirt and sliding up and pinching at his nipples, which, Jesus, that was. Acceptable. Yeah, but he was definitely going to stop this if it went any further.
Except that the any further was Vecchio sliding Ray’s sweatpants down and taking his cock in his mouth, and Ray was not stupid, so he didn’t say a word, just moaned through his clenched teeth while Vecchio went at him. Teased him with just a tongue-tip while Ray tried really hard not to arch all the way off the couch, and licked around the head, and went down and down and further down, and sucked hard and fast.
The thing that killed Ray, though, the thing that put him over the edge, was that the whole time Vecchio was making these little happy noises, these “I am the one getting a treat here,” noises. That was—just—that was—Ray couldn’t even figure out what that was, but it made him lose it completely, made him shake and shiver and swear and come in Vecchio’s mouth. Left him useless and helpless, sprawled on the couch, couldn’t have moved if you paid him.
And then Vecchio did an even weirder thing. Which Ray wouldn’t have thought was possible, but it was. Vecchio knelt up and looked at Ray, right in the face, and then reached up and rumpled his hair.
Affectionately. Like they had something going on here. But before Ray could get out, “What the fuck?” Vecchio said, “Hey, I’m heading out. First thing tomorrow, we’ll canvass the witnesses on the storefront smash-and-grabs, okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” Ray said, lay there with his cock out and watched Vecchio go out the door.
That was how it went for the next few weeks. Vecchio would just jump him, get him amped up out of his fucking mind or get him to come so hard he’d lost his fucking mind, and then—Vecchio would assume stuff. Vecchio would make assumptions. Like, about reciprocating. Ray would be flopped on his bed, boneless and brainless and panting, and then Vecchio would climb up on him and sort of shove his cock in Ray’s mouth, which, yeah, was only fair, but it was bizarre that he just figured Ray would be okay with that. And Vecchio smelled, felt, tasted really good and Ray somewhere found the energy to start licking and sucking, so apparently he was okay with that. But still.
Or Vecchio would do—relationship-type things. Hair-rumpling. Cheek-patting. And once, when Ray was sprawled on his living room floor with carpet burns up his back, trying to remember how to breathe, Vecchio got their fingers all tangled together, just lay there and held his hand for a minute until Ray got it together enough to move away.
Vecchio was always pushing. And Ray tried to explain that it wasn’t like that, that he wasn’t like that, that this was a—tide-us-over kind of deal, but without hurting the guy’s feelings too much. Because Vecchio was a good guy, really.
And it never seemed to hurt him at all, because Vecchio would always agree and then act like he hadn’t heard a damn word.
*************************
“Vecchio. I do not have every goddamn night free to spend with you.”
“Sure, okay. You wanna go play pool?”
*************************
“Vecchio, this is not a thing. It’s just a thing, okay?”
“Yeah, fine—killer logic, there, Kowalski. Hey, here’s a key to my place, you need to make me a copy of yours.”
*************************
“Kowalski, you make me that key yet?”
“No, I did not make you a key, because I am not your fucking boyfriend, Vecchio.”
“Whatever. I’m gonna leave some spare clothes here.”
Like that. It was making Ray insane.
*************************
Except it’s kind of nice now, Ray has to admit, because he’s just barely hanging on, just managing not to freak out completely from that ongoing loony chant of “Look, ma, no hands!” repeating in his head. It’s nice because when Vecchio finishes talking to Fraser, hangs up, plops down on the couch, Ray knows he can sit down next to him, all awkward with the wings bent up and sticking out every which way, and Vecchio will still manage somehow to get an arm across what’s left of his shoulders. Will pull Ray close and pet his hair and say, “We’ll figure it out, we’re gonna work something out, okay?” And right now Ray doesn’t even mind the “we.”
He jumps up when there’s a knock at the door, though, is up and pacing by the time Vecchio sighs and lets Fraser in.
Vecchio’s given Fraser some warning, so he just gives a “Hmmmmm,” and starts circling Ray. Then gets his hands on the wings, fans them out and bends them experimentally, inspects individual feathers and mutters about coverts and primaries and secondaries.
Finally he looks up and says, “Has anything bitten you recently?”
Ray and Vecchio both crack up. Vecchio starts a wolf howl and Dief joins in, so then they both get the giggles even worse and it’s a while before they can explain it to Fraser.
“Ah,” he says. “Yes, doubtful, admittedly. I’m afraid, Ray, that I’m just going to have to chalk this up to—magic.”
“Oh great,” Ray says. “Like, a voodoo thing? Who’d I piss off?”
“Who didn’t you?” Vecchio says, and Ray’s getting a little better with the wing control, whacks him on purpose this time.
“This sort of transformation hasn’t appeared in any of the voudoun literature I’m familiar with,” Fraser says. “Some other magical tradition, perhaps, in which case it could be a personal attack by a practitioner. But if it’s an intervention by a god or gods, instead, it could have no basis whatsoever in your behavior—gods can be quite capricious.”
“’Capricious’ means ‘bastards’?”
“More or less. On occasion, though, such a—curse, if it’s from a god, could be intended as some sort of behavior modification. You could be supposed to—change something, learn a lesson.”
“I have learned my lesson,” Ray says instantly, looking at the ceiling. “I have learned any fucking lesson you wanna teach me. I will never eat chicken again. I will never eat any birds. Or eggs. Fuck, I will stop eating eggplant if you want, I don’t even like it. I will be a totally good person, I will give money to orphanages, I’ll believe in whatever you like, I’ll buy that Oswald acted alone, anything, just give me a fucking break here.”
They all stand there for a stupid minute, looking up, like some big giant head is going to appear and say, “Oh, okay,” and poof Ray back to normal. Which of course doesn’t happen.
“Shit,” Ray says, and plops back down on the couch.
The phone rings and they all jump a little. Vecchio says, “Oh, hell, I never called the station,” and picks up. And it’s gotta be Welsh because Vecchio starts apologizing right away, explaining that Ray has some kind of god-awful stomach flu or food poisoning, and what is this, Thursday? There’s no way he’ll be in tomorrow, the poor guy can barely stand up, couldn’t even make it to the phone earlier, and Vecchio’s gonna hang around and make sure he stays hydrated, they’ll both be in Monday, and—
Fraser walks over near the phone and starts making the most amazing retching noises; seriously, he sounds like a cow turning inside out. Ray’s getting a little nauseated just hearing it, and Vecchio grins and says, “Oh, yech, I gotta clean up again,” and hangs up.
“Nice,” Vecchio says.
“I try, Ray,” Fraser says, solemnly. Then he sits down, pulls out a pocket notebook and a pencil, and starts making a list—“Local practitioners of magic, and priests or priestesses of the more obscure religions,” he explains. He alternates writing and chewing on his pencil, and Ray is managing to distract himself from his current fucked-itude by watching him chew on the pencil. Then Ray looks over and catches Vecchio watching the pencil-chewing, and they share a grin.
“Maybe you should add large-animal vets,” Vecchio says.
“Maybe I should wing you to death,” Ray says.
“Not as idle a threat as you might think, Ray,” Fraser says. “There has been a documented case of a full-grown, healthy human male being beaten to death by a swan.”
“Benny, there is no way a guy got beat to death by a swan,” Vecchio says. “It’s possible the guy died of embarrassment because he let a swan beat him up.”
“No, really. There were multiple witnesses,” Fraser says. For a second Ray enjoys how normal all the bitchery feels, but then it suddenly pisses him off, and he says, “Could we maybe focus on my problem, here?”
“Certainly, Ray, sorry,” Fraser says, but then he stands up and says, “Ah—facilities for a moment, first,” and heads for the bathroom.
“Hey,” Vecchio says. “Have you—how did you?”
“Haven’t had to,” Ray says, and thinks about how fucking impossible that would have been. Then he thinks a minute and starts getting a little nervous—more nervous—and says, “Haven’t been hungry, either. Or thirsty.”
“Huh,” Vecchio says. “Maybe your metabolism’s changed?”
And that’s really terrifying, so Ray grins at him, says, “At least you didn’t have to hold my dick in the bathroom.”
“Yeah, small favors,” Vecchio says.
“Was that a size dig?” Ray says, and Vecchio leans in and nips his ear, murmurs, “I know better than that.”
Ray squirms and smiles—and, and flutters a little, and looks up to see Fraser standing in the living room doorway with his mouth open.
“It’s not,” Ray says. His voice has gone all squeaky. “We haven’t. It isn’t. Really.”
Vecchio, goddamn him, just says, “Hey, Benny.” Gently.
Fraser stands there for a moment, and then puts on this smile, this horrible smile, and says, “Ah. You are…amenable. As are you. You both are. I had not, I had not guessed. I could have, you would have let—excuse me.”
He goes back into the bathroom, and slams the door. Then there are all these noises, some of which are laughing and some of which are really, really not.
Ray should probably be doing something or saying something, but he can’t get past the fact that Benton Fraser is having some kind of breakdown in his bathroom.
The noises get quieter and further apart, and finally Ray looks at Vecchio and says, “I don’t think he could mean what I think he means. You think?”
“Yeah,” Vecchio says.
“Which is?” Ray says, because he’d like to hear somebody else say it and make sure he’s not crazy. The day he’s having, he’s maybe not at his most logical.
“Which is,” Vecchio says, “we’re all—‘amenable.’ And we’re all stupid.”
“Huh,” Ray says. They sit there, listening as the noises die out completely, and finally Ray manages, “You know, this day is just not getting any more normal.”
Fraser comes out of the bathroom then. He looks—blotchy and puffy and only about half as hot as usual, and Ray suddenly wants to touch him so bad he can barely keep himself on the couch. His wings shudder all around him, trying to make him move.
“So,” Fraser says, “you two have an…interpersonal arrangement of some sort? That’s wonderful, congratulations.”
Vecchio looks at Ray, and Ray—doesn’t say anything, which makes no sense at all because the answer’s “No,” it’s obviously no, but his mouth is not opening.
Finally he stands up and walks over to Fraser, and Fraser’s just standing there, breathing loud and looking at him and not touching him. Ray stands close and curls one wing around him, the tips of his feathers brushing the backs of Fraser’s knees, and looks at Vecchio.
Vecchio looks back at the two of them with a face gone totally blank. Ray’s never seen the guy before with an expression that was such a—lack of one.
“Hey, Benny,” Vecchio says quietly, “give me your list, I’ll go track down some of ‘em, get out of you guys’ hair.”
Ray takes a deep breath, because if he says this there’s no going back to anything approaching normal, wings or not. Thinks crazily, welcome to the freak kingdom, helmet required when operating a motorcycle, please leave your weapons at the border, and says, “Vecchio, you asshole, get over here.”
*************************
It turns out that even a queen-size bed isn’t built to accommodate three full-grown guys and a couple thousand feathers. The only way they fit on it is with Ray in the middle and Vecchio and Fraser each lying on a wing. So Ray’s pinned, can’t move, and he’s dying to—to get his hands on both of them, which is obviously not going to happen. And he was expecting, after a year of stupid pointless pining after Fraser, which, goddamnit, he could have ended any time—he was expecting, after that, that it would mess with his head a little watching Vecchio kiss him.
He wasn’t expecting, though, to be wanting to tell Vecchio to get the hell off Fraser and wanting to tell Fraser to get the hell off Vecchio.
“Guys,” he manages finally, and they break the long fucking clinch they’ve had going over his chest, look at him.
“Dying here,” he says, and then Vecchio’s sucking on his earlobe on one side and Fraser is kissing along the top of the wing on the other.
And Fraser surprises him, because—when he walked in and saw the wings he was all, “Hmmm, I shall now be extremely calm and scientific,” but here, with his mouth nuzzling into Ray’s feathers, he moans, “Oh, Ray, your beautiful hands,” in this way that makes it sound like a personal tragedy for him. Which is kind of cool.
Ray doesn’t get to think that over much, though, because Fraser shifts over from wing to nipple. He’s kissing and licking and biting just lightly, and making little hungry noises. Ray’s got zingy shocky feelings shooting out from there, and from what Vecchio’s doing to his ear on the other side, and they cross streams in the middle of his body and get his spine all confused.
He moans and arches his hips up, and then he has one terrible second of wondering whether everything is still gonna work right before Vecchio’s hand is cupping his balls and Fraser’s hand is around his cock and yeah, yeah, all systems are go.
*************************
When he wakes up his wings have gone numb under the other guys. Vecchio’s snoring and Fraser’s drooling into the feathers a little.
Ray wiggles his wings out from under them, and the guys stir vaguely and grumble. He sits up awkwardly—he’s starting to work out how much he can use the stupid things to push himself upright; not all that much, but enough to manage. Makes himself look at the wings carefully; better get used to them in case this is a—permanent thing.
He could—he could almost deal with the wings, if it was just that, if they were just added on. But the hands thing. God, that’s—
“I can’t drive. Jesus,” he says into the quiet of the bedroom. That’s, he can’t fucking take that.
Then he looks at the wings a little closer, and the bed, and says, “Hey. Hey, guys!”
“Mmmph?” Fraser says and sits up. Vecchio grumbles and pulls a pillow over his head.
“I think they’re different,” Ray says. “I think—don’t my arms look normal for a little further out, before the feathers start? And look, I shed a fuckload of feathers in the bed.”
“Hmm,” Fraser says, and inspects. Vecchio emerges and checks things out on his side.
“Yeah, I think?” Vecchio says, and “Perhaps, probably?” Fraser says.
Fraser hops out of bed and comes back from the kitchen with a Sharpie, draws a line on each of Ray’s arms where the feathers start. “We should have done this earlier—now if there’s a change we can tell for sure. I’m optimistic, I’m fairly certain there’s a change here, and combined with the feather loss—although it’s possible that’s just molting as part of a change from juvenile plumage to adult.”
“Great, thanks,” Ray says, but he’s—optimistic, yeah.
Fraser and Vecchio get their clothes back on and help Ray into his shorts again, and then they all start trying to figure out what to do next—if they should just sit around and watch for changes, or maybe Vecchio or Fraser should go out and start tracking down names from the list.
Ray’s trying hard to think, but he’s distracted by the serious funk the bedroom has acquired, what with all the orgasms and all the feathers (and what is he gonna do for hygiene, anyway, a dust bath?)
“I gotta get a little air, guys,” Ray says. “Can you, uh—“ he waves at the blankets—“drape me?”
Fraser and Vecchio get an end of blanket apiece and put it carefully over his shoulders. He feels kinda like James Brown.
He steps out onto the tiny, tiny balcony off his bedroom, squeezes past the rusty barbecue grill and just breathes. Even the Chicago air is nice after a day inside panicking.
Then he looks back inside and Fraser is watching him so intently, knees bent, ready to move. Like he thinks Ray is gonna get an offer he can’t refuse from a passing Canada goose, or something.
“Fraser,” he says, “I am not taking to the skies, okay? Lighten up.”
Fraser stands down, and Ray goes back to breathing and not thinking and looking down at the street, at the hot-dog stand and the kids bicycling on the sidewalk and the homeless guy who yells “CONDOMS!” every time you pass his corner and the old lady getting mugged and—fuck.
“Fuck!” he yells. “Mugging! Across the street!” and behind him he hears the apartment door wham open and Fraser and Vecchio both pounding full-bore for the stairs, but that’ll take a couple minutes and the asshole is hitting her. She already gave up the purse and being that she’s an old lady in this neighborhood she’s probably got seven dollars and a kleenex in there, and he’s hitting her, Jesus.
Ray shrugs the blanket off and climbs up on the rusty scaly rail and jumps.
And for a second there he doesn’t remember to move the wings because he’s too busy thinking, “Oh hell, I only have boxer shorts on,” but then he pushes his arms down and he—lifts a little, it’s like the air is pushing up under him, weird.
But he’s going into this long swoop that looks like he’s gonna to end up landing four miles down the road. He needs to go down sharp and fast, and he remembers something about pulling the wings in, making them smaller, from the only bird thing he ever read. Which was Jonathan Livingston Seagull when he was eleven.
And if he ever meets the guy that wrote that he is going to kick his seagull-loving ass, because pulling the wings in sends Ray into a goddamn death spiral, the buildings on either side of the street blendering around him and the yelling from the sidewalk getting closer and he can’t pull out and wham.
He’s really sure for a second that he’s dead, but he’s not, because there’s a guy under him, and then he’s sure he killed the guy under him, but he didn’t. And then he’s pretty sure that he broke a few bits of the guy, including his nose and a leg. And he’s right about that, but he doesn’t really care because by this point he’s figured out that the semi-broken guy is the mugger.
He’s sitting on this moaning mugger with his wings spread out on the sidewalk, and there’s a circle of people around him staring. One of them is the old lady. She reaches out and pulls her purse out of the mugger’s fingers, then looks at Ray and says, “Are you an avenging angel?”
“Sure,” he says. “Why not.”
She gives him a huge smile and then looks at the mugger and says, “God hates you, you dickweed,” and whacks him in the broken nose with the purse.
Which is when Fraser and Vecchio push through the crowd, and Vecchio’s calling it in and saying he can’t stay at the scene, for extremely complicated reasons, but the perp isn’t going anywhere. But the beat cops should hurry anyway before Ruth Buzzi beats the guy to death.
Fraser gets Ray up and kind of gets his arms around the wings, like that’s gonna hide anything, and one kid standing there gaping says, “Hawkman, right?”
“Absolutely,” Ray says. Fraser whaps him on the back of the head and says, “No, no. Experimental…government…black ops…”
“Weather balloon,” Vecchio adds, and they hustle Ray out of there. Nobody chases them, everybody’s still just standing there on the sidewalk—trying to stretch their brains around what they just saw, probably.
They scoot Ray down an alley, and Vecchio hunkers down by some trash cans with him while Fraser runs up to get the blanket off the balcony.
“Hawkman,” Ray says.
“You realize Hawkman is a total jerk of a superhero.”
“A total jerk of a superhero,” Ray says, “is still a superhero.”
Fraser gets back and they’re bundling him up, and Vecchio says, “Well, he’s gonna be unbearable for a while,” but he scoots an arm around Ray’s waist when he says it. Fraser does the same from the other side, so they can get the wings draped over their backs and the blanket draped over the wings, so they’re just three guys walking around with a blanket on, la la la move along, nothing to see here.
They start down the alley to the next street, “So we can go in your building out of sight of the—witnesses to your unorthodox arrest technique, Ray,” Fraser says.
Vecchio suddenly giggles and says, “You know, we really need a three-man poncho,” and Fraser cracks up.
Ray has no idea what they’re talking about, but he’s leaving a trail of shed—molted?—feathers. Which has gotta be good, right? And Fraser and Vecchio are hanging on tight, hips pressing hard into his. Walking in synch and squeezing him hard, and for the rest of the alley his feet don’t touch the ground.
END
**
[Poll #1249747]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 07:53 pm (UTC)(That's all I can say right now, as I am (1) still at work and (b) required to STAY at work for another little while and (iii) DO WORK OMG.)
no subject
Date: 2008-09-28 12:14 am (UTC)*not objecting*
Thank you!
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 08:13 pm (UTC)Blee! *dies in a shower of whimsical hearts*
no subject
Date: 2008-09-28 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 08:16 pm (UTC)also the whole bit with the mugging. DEATH SPIRAL. HAWKMAN. GOD HATES YOU. EEEEEEEEE.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-28 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 09:08 pm (UTC)Ray should probably be doing something or saying something, but he can’t get past the fact that Benton Fraser is having some kind of breakdown in his bathroom.
*flails* oh poor Fraser! so much unnecessary angst...
I'm so glad they came to an arrangement in the end - also, much love for the line about Keanu Reeves. :D
squeeeeeeeeee! :D
no subject
Date: 2008-09-29 02:59 am (UTC)Glad you liked, thank you!
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 09:16 pm (UTC)Okay, I'm going to take a breath and calm down and say things other than OMG WINGFIC. !!! which actually really can't be said enough.
Love how Vecchio's changed and takes it all in stride and Stella and Fraser are equally hot, and how he just pushes his way into Ray's life. I love how Ray's so bewildered and no thank you bye in the beginning and then things change - and then he gets wings.
Love Fraser's breakdown and how he describes the F/V relationship, heh.
And the mugging scene totally killed me ded, in the positive sense. Hawkman. Avenging angel. Yes, Ray. Totally.
Wheeee!
no subject
Date: 2008-09-29 03:00 am (UTC)I'm so glad you liked! Is fun to think I gave somebody a "whee!"
no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 09:25 pm (UTC)That is the coolest thing EVER!!
But Vecchio just smiled, said, “No, I thought they were pretty much equally hot,” and went back to what he was doing.
GO VECCHIO!
but he can’t get past the fact that Benton Fraser is having some kind of breakdown in his bathroom.
AAAWWWWWW!! *pets him*
And Ray being a superhero!
Wonderfully whimsy! &hearts &hearts
no subject
Date: 2008-09-29 03:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 10:02 pm (UTC)Fraser's breakdown was classic Fraser, as was his response to Ray having wings. It's not the crazy stuff like Ray growing wings overnight that freaks Fraser out, it's the thought of Vecchio sucking Kowalski's dick and how that affects him, that freaks Fraser out. *pets poor Fraser*
no subject
Date: 2008-09-29 03:04 am (UTC)It's so cool to see your user name and be able to put a FACE with it. Neat.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 10:28 pm (UTC)I laughed so much reading this! If I started picking out favourite lines, I'd just end up quoting the whole thing, but "Experimental…government…black ops…”
“Weather balloon,"
Takes the prize for making me snort tea. With Ruth Buzzi's “God hates you, you dickweed,” is close second.
Also, how did you manage to have something this cracky be nonetheless angsty and (mildly) tortured? “You sleep naked when you’re alone and wear shorts after you fuck somebody? Huh.”, and the whole thing with Fraser was all -- woobie! And simultaneously crack, because RayK! No hands! Feathers all over the place!
Ahem. In summary: wingfic yay. *g*
no subject
Date: 2008-09-29 03:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 10:31 pm (UTC)*falls over dead now*
That was great.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-29 03:08 am (UTC)I was intrigued to find, when I Wiki'ed Ruth Buzzi to make sure I was spelling it right (after screwing it up at first and being nudged by a helpful beta) that that is apparently her real name, except the family pronounced it Italian-ly, as BOOT-sy. (Random useless factoid for the day!)
no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 11:02 pm (UTC)Because dude, seriously, it is a HUGE frikkin' tragedy. I mean. His HANDS!
Also, I love how both Rays decide that clearly Fraser is the one for the job when somebody randomly develops an overnight case of wings. And Ray should TOTALLY be Hawkman. He'd make a much better Hawkman, anyway.
In short: yay!!!
no subject
Date: 2008-09-29 03:09 am (UTC)Thank you so much for the yay!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 12:40 am (UTC)Oh how I adored Vecchio despite being sad that his bluster has all gone, Ray's issues, Fraser's meltdown in the bathroom. So very much yay, here.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 12:52 am (UTC)I really like the characterizations here. Seeing all three guys after Florida and the quest; they're themselves, but they're not stagnant.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 10:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 12:58 am (UTC)OK, giggling lile a goof, here.
Julia, and the "total jerk of a superhero" also kills
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 01:20 am (UTC)“Well, he’s gonna be unbearable for a while,” but he scoots an arm around Ray’s waist when he says it.
D'awwwww.
Clearly the unnamed wing-giving god of threesomes did good work on that day.
ETA: I meant to add how much I loved the fact that the wings replaced the arms instead of just being added on. It added a really cool element to the story and Fraser's "oh your beautiful hands" moment was just fabulous.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 02:10 am (UTC)I have to ask, though - what is it about dS that inspires wingfic? Never ran across it in any other fanfic I've read.
Just wondering.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 03:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 02:23 am (UTC)Just...YES.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 10:56 pm (UTC)I really wanna see the three-man poncho, now...
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 02:36 am (UTC)“Ow,” Vecchio says.
“Maybe you should—“
“I’ll call Fraser.”
“Yeah.”
Perfect!
She gives him a huge smile and then looks at the mugger and says, “God hates you, you dickweed,” and whacks him in the broken nose with the purse.
Best little old lady EVER.
What a delightful story. I'm all aglee.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 10:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 02:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 03:05 am (UTC)RAYK WOKE UP WINGED! I want you to know, I laughed so hard when I saw why Vecchio had to get the key from the landlady that I had to explain WINGFIC to my mother-in-law, who was here for dinner. She's 81! She could have had a stroke!
I hope you're suitably ashamed. :) :)
Actually, she just thought I was nuts. I already was getting the "you're unhinged" looks because I was wearing my "On the Inside I'm a Poet" shirt. She didn't understand the back. :) I did not, by the way, explain homosexual-threesome fic. *snorts*
Ray woke up winged! *dies laughing* Oh my God. I'm just floored by what you did with this prompt, you Whimsical author, you!
*dies more*
This is really a terrific story. And it's so much more than just a little wingfic piece. It's angsty and funny and romantic, too!
Ray's beautiful hands! That kind of terrifies me, too. But Fraser's hysteria? Not about Ray's predicament, but totally about how he could have had either or both of them, but never spoke up? That's kind of funny and sad and scary all at the same time. Awwwww. And I do love how RayK made it all better, for both Fraser and Vecchio. Awwwwww. That whole sequence was just too sweet for words.
I adored this cool, unruffled, post-Vegas Vecchio! That's an amazing characterization, and I loved it, and that's a Ray/Ray connection that makes a hell of a lot of sense. Vecchio's kind of terrifyingly calm. In the PD, wow. You just blew me away with that. RayK's protestations of how he's not Vecchio's boyfriend, the thing with the key, etc., are brilliant and snarkily funny at the same time.
The love scene with Fraser, awwww. I would have loved more of that (when did I not want a sex scene to be more explicit? Hee!), but it was nicely done, in any event.
The mugging bit was brilliant. Ray forgetting to fly for a second (although Fraser taking the stairs? Had he learned his lesson about that? *the mind boggles*), "blendered"--best newly coined verb I've seen in a while, and the death spiral taking out the mugger, and the "avenging angel/Hawkman/black ops/weather balloon" explanations? Hilarious.
And, you know, if RayK were a superhero, he would be one of the dorky ones; sad but true. :)
The Ruth Buzzi line had me on the floor (thank goodness I'd taken the MIL home before I finished reading the story). The image of her in her hairnet, beating the bad guy with her purse! HEE! Oh, Vecchio! And that's such a perfect reference for someone of Vecchio's and RayK's generation (like, say, me). I'm guessing you're not one of the very young team members. Either that, or you know your 70s TV, backward and forward.
And Hawkman! Oh, RayK! And thank you, Author, for the hints that RayK may be getting his beautiful hands and arms back to human form. Because he needs to. His beautiful HANDS. Yikes.
In short, this is an amazing debut story for Team Whimsy, superbly written, and you guys should all be proud of it.
And I must admit, now that I've seen this? I'm rather terrified to see what Team Whimsy has done with all the other prompts! :) :)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-03 11:03 pm (UTC)And yeah, not one of the very young team members, me. ;-)
I love love love the idea of your bewildered MIL. SNORK.
And yeah, I thought if I didn't leave it with a pretty strong intimation that Ray's hands were coming BACK, after the reveal a posse of fangirls would come to my house and beat me to death.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 03:33 am (UTC)He goes back into the bathroom, and slams the door. Then there are all these noises, some of which are laughing and some of which are really, really not.
Ray should probably be doing something or saying something, but he can’t get past the fact that Benton Fraser is having some kind of breakdown in his bathroom.
The noises get quieter and further apart, and finally Ray looks at Vecchio and says, “I don’t think he could mean what I think he means. You think?”
“Yeah,” Vecchio says.
“Which is?” Ray says, because he’d like to hear somebody else say it and make sure he’s not crazy. The day he’s having, he’s maybe not at his most logical.
“Which is,” Vecchio says, “we’re all—‘amenable.’ And we’re all stupid.”
I think I start tearing up at horrible smile, and just...I can see that scene in my head, and that's both awful and so fucking awesome. As is the rest of this.
Also, I love the little old lady a WHOLE LOT. It's just what my gran would say in the same situation.
*hearts x 1000000*
no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 09:55 pm (UTC)Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 03:45 am (UTC)Before I opened today's stories, I was thinking to myself, "you know, most of the reality stories are going to be angsty, and most of the whimsy stories are going to be fluffy, and that's all well and good, but I wish there would be exceptions." And then there was this exception in the very first day! And also, playing with not just the wingfic trope, but the wings-in-fiction (and mythology) trope, and keeping the wind being as a freaking quadruped. For that alone, I want to marry this story.
“Oh, I dunno, I bet you could,” Vecchio says, with a leer, and then his face gets—different and he says, “You sleep naked when you’re alone and wear shorts after you fuck somebody? Huh.”
Oh, this is just so rich, especially followed by “Vecchio,” Ray says softly. “Not now.”
Vecchio looks back at the two of them with a face gone totally blank. Ray’s never seen the guy before with an expression that was such a—lack of one.
“Hey, Benny,” Vecchio says quietly, “give me your list, I’ll go track down some of ‘em, get out of you guys’ hair.”
What's so great about this is that, so quietly, Vecchio has been just assuming that Ray was his and would always come back to him. And here is the first moment he thinks otherwise.
“God hates you, you dickweed,” and whacks him in the broken nose with the purse.
♥
“Hawkman, right?”
“Absolutely,” Ray says. Fraser whaps him on the back of the head and says, “No, no. Experimental…government…black ops…”
“Weather balloon,” Vecchio adds
Yay!
no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 09:59 pm (UTC)Thanks muchly for enjoying!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 04:17 am (UTC)Except it’s kind of nice now, Ray has to admit, because he’s just barely hanging on, just managing not to freak out completely from that ongoing loony chant of “Look, ma, no hands!” repeating in his head.
Ow, ow, ow. *pets Ray*
And
Fraser stands there for a moment, and then puts on this smile, this horrible smile, and says, “Ah. You are…amenable. As are you. You both are. I had not, I had not guessed. I could have, you would have let—excuse me.”
Ow some more.
Great work, mystery author.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 04:23 am (UTC)I really like the mix of complete implausibility and rather frightening realism. I completely buy that Vecchio's push-pull, just circling and circling, is exactly the [pig-headed yet sweet] way he'd act, although I keep remembering the description ("the only person Ray had ever met who genuinely no longer gave a shit what anybody thought about him") and thinking, "yeah, that really is fucking scary."
But you know, I think the thing that really sticks with me is Fraser is watching him so intently, knees bent, ready to move,, because, yeah, that's Fraser, always braced for the moment when everything he wants slips through his fingers.
And in conclusion, Ray Kowalski, Avenging Angel. I could go for that.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 10:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 06:22 am (UTC)Oh, Fraser. *squeezes*
Fun and moving too.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-04 10:03 pm (UTC)Thank you!