FIC: Hunger (Thunderheart, Walter Crow Horse/Ray Levoi, R)
TITLE: Hunger
RATING: R
FANDOMS: Thunderheart
PAIRING: Walter Crow Horse/Ray Levoi
SUMMARY: On monsters. For escritoireazul, for morale purposes.
Ray dreams. In his dream, he sees shooting stars over the pale desert, and a giant woman forged of silver and turquoise leans down to kiss him. She is tall enough to stand on the earth and reach the moon, just reach out and take it, but her kiss just feels like a kiss. Maybe he's a giant, too. He can't tell. Things are different here. Time, space, the laws of physics.
He doesn't mind.
***
Ray wakes to a kiss, but he knows without opening his eyes that it's Walter kissing him this time. Ray murmurs quietly against Walter's mouth, and holds onto him, his fingers closing around Walter's bicep, his hip.
Ray always closes his eyes when he's being kissed, and he doesn't open them until Walter comes up for air, taking a deep, satisfied breath and then pressing closed-mouth kisses to Ray's cheek, his temple.
“Hi,” Ray says.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” Walter says. He pulls back a bit to see Ray's face better, looks at him fondly. “Happy birthday.”
Ray feels a little color come to his cheeks, and he smiles. “Thanks.”
Ray raises his face to be kissed, and Walter settles back in, kissing him long and slow. Ray's body is still relaxed from sleep, his muscles liquid, and it's a nice sort of kiss like that, lazy and pleasurable with no urgency. Walter insisted they take Ray's birthday off, even though Ray doesn't like birthday parties or much fuss, so they have plenty of time.
Walter kisses down Ray's body, taking his time, his loose hair dragging across Ray's skin. Walter nips gently at Ray's collarbone, drags his tongue lazily across Ray's nipple until he squirms, then sucks down on it, teasing tongue and just a little scrape of his teeth. His hand goes between Ray's legs, finding his morning erection, palming it, stroking slowly with a good grip.
Ray moans, breathing shallowly, and closes his eyes again, focusing completely on the sensation of Walter touching him. It's nice, but it's still not urgent, and Ray likes that a lot. He's learning to be patient. He's learning to take things as they come. His whole life, everything seemed so pressing; he was taught to always be working, earning, striving. No one ever taught him to sit still. Walter, life out here, they're teaching him that. He's still learning, and sometimes the lessons are hard for him, but he knows they're making him better. Making his life better.
Walter keeps stroking his cock, nice and steady, and he kisses his temple and whispers in his ear, “Come on, Ray. Come for me, pretty baby.”
Ray comes, seeing stars, seeing a silver hand reach out and take the moon. He pants, opens his eyes to see Walter smiling down at him.
“You like that?” he asks
“Mmmm, yes.”
“What else would you like? Breakfast?”
Ray slips his fingers through Walter's hair. “Yes, but first…”
He bites his lip, raises his brow. Walter chuckles. Kisses him again, once, twice, a dozen times.
“I'll see what I can do,” he says.
***
They stay in bed way past breakfast. Walter makes them egg sandwiches for lunch, instead. Ray isn't sore, exactly, just very aware of his body and what's been done to it in the past few hours. It feels comfortable, lived in, like a soft old sofa.
“You told me not to plan anything, so I didn't,” Walter says. “Except we gotta drop by the bakery for your cake.”
“Let's take Jimmy. It's a nice day for a ride.”
The three of them pile into the truck. It is late June and sunny, in the high 70s with a light breeze. They ride with the windows down, Jimmy with his head out, enjoying the wind in his face and all the smells.
There are several cars in the parking lot of the bakery, and several people getting in and out of them. There's an ancient red truck parked in the last spot, and hanging outside it, two dark, angular men with raven-colored hair down past their waists and some kind of geometric tattoos on their biceps.
Jimmy sees them and lets out a deep growl low in his throat.
Ray takes hold of his collar, feels the dog's raised hackles on his hand.
“It's okay, boy,” he says, and looks at Walter. “I've never heard him growl like that. Maybe we should leave him in the car.”
They leave Jimmy in the car barking at the men with the tattoos. Closer up, Ray can make out the pattern: it looks like snakeskin.
The men are gone when they come back to the truck with the cake, and Jimmy is lying down on the bench, his head on his paws.
“Tell me a story,” Ray says on the way back. Jimmy's head is in his lap, and he is scratching his ears.
“What kind of story?”
“Any kind. You know a thousand. Tell it in Lakota.”
This is Ray's second birthday on the reservation, and by now he can recognize every word spoken to him in Lakota, though he’s still hesitant when it comes to speaking the language himself.
Walter tells him about a little girl whose entire family was slaughtered by wolves. Everyone but the swaddling child, who was adopted by the pack. She tussled with the pups, suckled at the mother's teat. When she was older, she ran with the pack with unshorn hair and no clothes. The people of the surrounding settlements saw her sometimes, sharing a fresh kill with her pack mates, running under the full moon. One day, they saw her suckling two wolf pups on a riverbank. Maybe they were her own.
“What happened to her?” Ray asks.
Walter steers the truck into the driveway, and turns off the engine. He shrugs. “What happens to all of us. You coming?”
***
They spend the rest of the day doing nothing much, but doing it together. They take Jimmy on a long walk, watch an old movie on TV, and then cook and eat dinner together.
After dinner, Walter readies the cake. He carefully arranges and lights the candles, then sets the whole thing on the table in front of Ray.
“I used 29 candles,” he says, “cuz I figured this is the last year we can put your age in candles without burning the house down.”
“You are eight years older than me.”
“Hush,” Walter says. “You got a wish to make.”
Ray looks around the kitchen, at Walter and the mess they made making dinner, at Jimmy on the floor under the table. He looks at the candles, and he doesn't even have to think about what he wants. More of this, he thinks. Just more of this.
***
Ray dreams. In the dream, he is walking through the desert at night. There are no stars in the sky. There is something wound around his arm, moving slowly. It is too dark for him to see what it is, but he recognizes it by touch: a snake.
He walks until he stumbles, and he feels the weight and chill of water dragging down his pants. He crouches, the water rushing up to his waist, and now he's close enough to see his reflection, even in the dark. The face in the water is dark and angular. His mouth falls open in surprise, and he can see two fangs, long as steak knives, dripping with venom.
***
Ray wakes sweating and gasping for air. The room is dark and quiet. Walter is next to him, snoring quietly. Ray scrubs a hand across his face, works on slowing his breathing. After a few minutes, he feels steady again, sound, and he lies down next to Walter, snuggling in close, and closes his eyes.
***
The next time Ray wakes is right on schedule, a few minutes before Walter's alarm. He rises easily, and an hour later, he and Walter are driving to the station.
As soon as they get there, however, they're sent away.
“Hey boss,” Terry at dispatch says, “Scott Four Guns found a body in the retention pond on his ranch this morning. I sent George up there, but I figure you'd want Ray up there, major crime and all.”
“You figure right,” Walter says. “I'll go up there with him. We'll be on air; call if you need something.”
“Sure thing, boss. Oh, happy birthday, Ray.”
“Thanks, Terry.”
They ride up to Scott Four Guns's place. George is there to meet them. He's already started collecting evidence, and he's pulled the body, what's left of it, from the water.
Walter whistles. “Whoo-ee. That's a sight.”
Ray crouches beside the DB. Deceased is a young woman, early twenties. She's missing her left arm and everything below her diaphragm. A few ribs, stripped to the bone, are visible. Ray notices bruises on her face, defensive wounds on her right hand, and a set of deep puncture wounds, about four inches apart, in the flesh below her collarbone.
“Animals?” Walter asks.
Ray looks at the puncture wounds. He thinks of the strange reflection in the dark water of his dream, the fangs as long as steak knives.
“Maybe,” he says.
“Got some tire tracks,” Walter says.
Ray remembers something. “Truck tracks?” he asks. “An old model truck?”
Walter frowns. “Yeah, looks like. You got a theory?”
“Let's get her to the ME.”
Walter comes with him to the medical examiner. They drive in silence for a while before Ray can't help himself.
“Walter, do you know any stories about snakes?”
“What kinda snakes?”
“Um, snake… snake people.”
Walter is quiet for long enough that Ray feels like retracting, but then he says, “Like Unk Cekula?”
“Tell me that one.”
“Unk Cekula was a great serpent woman who came to live in the Black Hills. She and her children would feed on the people at the base of the Hills until a great warrior slayed them.”
“How'd he do that?”
“By piercing the demons’ hearts with arrows blessed by a medicine man.”
Ray frowns. “I'm not great with a bow and arrow. You think he could bless some bullets?”
“It's just a story, Ray.” He catches Ray's expression. “What?”
Ray pokes his tongue into his cheek. “I had a dream.”
Walter sighs. “All right. Fill me in.”
***
The ME grimaces over receipt of the body, and promises results soon.
“Not every picture in your head's a vision,” Walter says lamely, driving them back to the rez.
“I want Grampa Reaches to bless some bullets for us.”
Walter takes in a long, slow breath. Finally, he nods. “All right.”
***
Ray dreams. The giant woman of silver and turquoise gives him a spear made of lightning. It pulses in Ray's hand. He climbs into the mouth of a giant snake as it is sleeping, coiled in a cavern up in the Black Hills, and he uses the spear to carve his way out. The snake is dead, but he sees empty egg shells in the cavern. He goes out to look over the desert at the foot of the hills. Maybe it's like the wolf girl, he thinks. Maybe she lived among the humans, and her babies look like us.
***
The report on the tire tracks come back, an old truck, just like Ray thought. A red one, he's sure. The ME finds a strange toxin in the girl's bloodstream, but it's not in her stomach, and he can't find any sign of injection. There's traces of the toxin in the puncture wounds; the ME suggests knives dipped in poison.
Grampa Reaches blesses Ray's bullets. Ray hunts the truck.
“Walter,” he asks, “do you believe in monsters?”
“If you'd asked me this time last week, I'd’ve said the only monsters are human.”
Ray's mouth crimps down. “I complicate your life, I guess.”
Walter pulls him close. “I wouldn't trade you for simple, honey.”
***
The last call of his shift, Terry sends Ray on a 207 in Metoska. Finding the right house is easy; there's a woman outside screaming, “He took her! He took her!”
A man, tall and dark and angular, with tattoos on his arm, grabbed the woman's child from the yard where she was playing. He fled on foot. Ray follows in the direction the woman indicates, and finds them soon enough, a quarter of a mile into the woods. The girl is six or seven and wailing, kicking her bare feet. The man holds her in his tattooed arms, and opens his mouth, revealing fangs the size of steak knives, dripping with venom.
Ray is a good shot. His gun is filled with bullets blessed by a medicine man. He shouts, startling the man, who drops the girl, just a little, just enough. Just enough to give Ray a clean shot.
Ray carries the girl back to her mother. He wipes her tears, and tells her, “It's okay. I'm a police officer. You're safe.”
***
Walter kisses down his spine, his hands gently encircling his ribs. Ray breathes in, nose pressed to the bedclothes, which smell of them both.
“You know,” Walter says, “this is the first time I've had a monster slayer in my bed.”
“I've never killed anything before.”
“Sometimes a warrior has to, to protect things worth protecting.” He runs his tongue over Ray's tailbone, and Ray shivers. “You were always a warrior,” he adds. “It didn't change you.”
“How do you know?”
“I'd be able to feel it,” Walter says. “I know you. I know you better than anyone.”
“You do,” Ray says softly.
“Now relax,” Walter says. “I'm gonna make you feel real good now, čhaŋté skúya.”
If Ray has more questions, he forgets them the moment Walter's mouth falls on him again. He breathes in slowly, and closes his eyes. Afterwards, once he falls asleep, he'll dream of this.