birthdayfic \o/\o/\o/\o/\o/
You know, I kind of really love that
ignazwisdom made the post asking about things we love in fics, because now that it's
isiscolo's birthday, I look at her comment, have a little think and decide...hmm, bodyswap, eh? I'll have a play with this. It turned out it was, uh, 4000 words worth of playing.
Title: 9 Days in his suit
Fandom: due South
Pairing: Ray/Ray
Rating: NC-17
Length: 4500 words
Notes: Bodyswap fic (no timetravel, alas *beams*). Post CotW. Now Kowalski's like his reflection, saying his words in Ray's voice.
Day One
His gun’s out before he can think, cause if the feds have made a mistake about Langoustine being out of the picture-
“Not a fucking word, Vecchio. Not one goddamn word.”
Langoustine scrubs a hand over his head, scowls. “No fucking hair, and yours looks shit- Christ, you get given a decent head of hair- my hair, all styled and cool when I fucking lost it- for the first time since you were fifteen, and--”
He zones out of the rest, sits back down onto the bed, heart pounding. He feels subtly wrong, like when he was getting over being shot, zoned out on meds, not sure of his own skin. Except now he’s seen his reflection in the dresser, he knows why, knows there’s a pretty fucking good reason for it.
“C’mon, we’ve gotta get you outta the house, before your Ma sees.”
“Kowalski?”
“You’re not gonna faint, are you? C’mon, keep moving; we’ll talk in the car.”
Kowalski wears his body weirdly, he notices. Slouches a little more, but pulls his shoulders back, his chin held up. He catalogues the changes almost mechanically, the robotic memorising of faces, names and histories he had to perform for Vegas meaning he just can’t stop. Can’t stop looking at himself walking down the stairs in front of him.
Out to the GTO, and all he can do is slump in the passenger seat, unused to the sudden extra leg length, the broadness across his knuckles.
“I need a drink.”
Kowalski huffs out a little laugh. “I think your planning’s getting better, Vecchio.”
They’ve got a couple of days off after the Delucci case fuckup, anyway. Kowalski drives them to his- his- apartment, parks smoothly. “Those jeans look wrong,” he grouses, looking at himself dressed in Kowalski’s clothes, in one of those t shirts only teenagers should wear really, and battered looking boots.
“Well at least I don’t sleep in my fucking suit,” Kowalski snarls over his shoulder as they climb the stairs.
He’s holding the bottle of cooking brandy, covered in dust when he gets into the apartment.
“We not gonna…talk about this, at all, then?” he asks, feeling his head start to ache.
“Drink up, Vecchio,” Kowalski says grimly. He drinks.
Day 2
Kowalski’s approach to a hangover is brutally elegant: run a sink full of cold water and plunge his head into it.
“You can’t hold your drink,” he tells Ray, voice hoarse.
“I don’t drink. Not really.”
He doesn’t mention pa, or how twitchy ma gets if he so much as looks at the wines in the grocery store. Kowalski’s body, though, can take it. “You don’t get hangovers.”
“You drank like a fucking girl, that’s why.”
“Kowalski?”
“Yeah?”
“Fuck. Off. I don’t wanna give myself a broken jaw, this is too messed up already.”
“Existential angst’s how I get up every morning, Vecchio.”
By the time he realises that yeah, they hate each other, he’s already sniggering.
“How’d this even happen?” he asks, leaning back, controlled by what Kowalski’s body’s used to.
Kowalski shrugs, the movement juxtaposed, wrong.
“Another drink?”
Day 3
“You move in with me. No way I’m ever gonna pass as a Vecchio. I’ll phone, tell ‘em I’m worried about me, I’m not eating properly. Your ma’s always nagging at me- you- fuck. Pronouns.”
He nods. They’ve spun out the stake-out lie for long enough. They’re parked outside his house now, Kowalski checking a few more details. He already has a head start on the Vecchio dynamics, but his style of moving, of speaking is just too strong for him to pull off not being him for long, especially with Frannie’s complete belief of everything she’s ever read in kid’s books, especially with magic.
Magic. Christ. He stays in the car, watches Kowalski walk up, list of things he’s to pack clutched in one hand. Only person he can think of who’s even a little likely to know what’s going on with this is Benny, and Kowalski’s completely clammed up about him, lips shut with a vicious silence, all glares and headjerks.
Day 4
They’ve both been pushing the ‘I go by Ray’ envelope for months, so the way they both answer when one of them is being spoken to isn’t really noticed. They fall back into bickering and working; it’s easier than Ray expects it to be. He sleeps on Kowalski’s couch, gets used to living by his patterns.
They don’t talk about…well, about showers, and dicks, and how completely fucking weird it is that they really do hold each other’s dicks when they piss. He figures so long as he doesn’t get hit by a truck, or tattooed or pierced, what he does isn’t any of Kowalski’s concern. The weirdly hot cringing feeling he gets that morning, jerking off in the shower is, well. It’s just because things are weird. Not weird weird. He goes out and bitches to Kowalski about how much coffee he needs to drink to get even a bit of an effect in this body before he overthinks things.
He writes a letter to Benny, but his handwriting looks wrong, wobbly where his mind and body want to do different things. He can’t find the right words either. He doesn’t send it, just tears it up and scatters it into a dumpster.
Day 5
Kowalski hates suits. Bitches about them constantly, takes off the tie before they’re even in the GTO to drive home. Ray feels like he’s dressing like a five year old, but when he looks at himself in the mirror, he…in jeans, he has to put the fucking toddler-style t shirts on…
Well, he can see why Benny looked so hungry when he looked at Kowalski.
He traces the tattoo with the tips of his fingers, already hard just from thinking.
That morning he can’t seem to concentrate, forgets to try and get some of Kowalski’s jerky energy when he’s interviewing a perp. Glares instead, speaks real quiet, and for a moment he can feel the hot dry rush of the wind off the Vegas desert. He keeps it together for the interview, ignores Kowalski frowning at him, goes to the washroom once the perp’s admitted that, yeah, it was insurance fraud, and no, lightning didn’t strike the icecream van three times, and gets real friendly with the sink. His stomach feels like it’s trying to clench itself out of his throat, his knuckles white, sinews stretched over bone, because he’s pretending to be one person, and the person he used to fake wants in on the action, wants to make himself alive again.
Next thing he knows, there’s a hand on the back of his neck, thumb rubbing the side, and Kowalski murmuring “Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s okay,” complete nonsense, but it calms him enough to straighten up, run some water.
“You ever figure you, uh, well, you wanna talk, I-”
He turns in on himself, feet unevenly planted on the floor, hand going up to his neck. Awkward teenager in a ridiculous suit. Ray claps him on the shoulder, grin even if it isn’t really that funny.
“If I wanna tell you shit, I’ll look in the mirror,” he tells him, giving him a pretty good imitation of that wink Kowalski does when he’s after the pretty lady lawyers.
He asks Kowalski if he wants to wear some of his old clothes, make things easier for him. He asks it in the most sneering tone he can manage, cause that way Kowalski won’t get all proud and prickly. He just shrugs, looks over at him through his lashes.
“I figure if I wear dumbass fucking suits the whole day, I get to understand why you’re such a complete asshole,” he says, sweet as anything.
They go back to watching the game.
Day 6
He gets used to the couch, lies there staring at the ceiling all night, listening to the night traffic and Kowalski’s restless movements in his bedroom. It’s not the stomach-clenching insomnia it was in his old room though. There’s no…history, with Kowalski’s apartment. He wasn’t a kid, here. No Pa, no Ma, no arguments, no Victoria. Memories seep into the walls of houses, and all he has here are some dumb photos on the wall of Benny, a shamrock, and a turtle. All that’s here is Kowalski’s history- half empty bottles, chipped mugs and feet outlined on the floor. He finds he doesn’t mind that, really. Doesn’t mind steeping himself in someone else’s history, cause he’s still too raw to be himself, would just be marking time until another change was due.
Today, they’re going over to Ma’s for an evening meal, both of them. He gets fussed over, his cheeks patted, and really, Ma don’t make much of a distinction between him and Kowalski. They both call her Ma, and she beams and bustles, gives them extra helpings and asks about grandchildren, while avoiding Stell and Benny. It’s such noisy chaos that no one notices how much he watches Kowalski, or the signals they keep sending each other. Kowalski’s incredible, though, now he needs to be. He sorta didn’t need to for being Ray the first time, but Ray wishes he could see him undercover for real, in his own skin. By the way Kowalski’s face goes all tense and closed whenever they work with trafficking and narcotics, he’s done it a lot, and well.
He doesn’t ask, but compiles a profile in his head, things he has to know, things he needs to avoid.
“Fraser ever call?” he asks after the evening’s done, out on the back porch. Kowalski nods, gives this full body sigh.
“Yeah. We still talk. I guess…we’ll hafta tell him. He’ll pick up on this, this- whatever that we’ve got in seconds.”
He waits next to Kowalski, stands there leant against the pillar, watching the shadows move across his face. “Why’d you come back?” he asks after a while, softly.
“It wasn’t burning cars into lakes there any more. It was Fraser saving my life every damn time I did something dumb. I was outta my territory; however much I tried to tough it out, learn about the sled dogs and which clouds meant which sort of snow, Fraser was still being a nursemaid. By the end of the quest, Fraser’d flinch if I so much as moved. So I was surly, he was fretting himself and that big old grin he wore when he jumped out of that plane had gone. He was blankfacing me, hiding how miserable he was and…I’d love to have stayed, but I can’t do that to the guy. I told him I missed pizzas, and got the next plane out back to Chicago.”
Kowalski didn’t need his sympathy. He knew that, but it doesn’t stop him from resting his hand on his shoulder. They stand there in silence for a long time.
Day 7
Turns out Kowalski meant what he said about calling Benny. He’s on the phone when Ray gets back from his house-from trying to calm ma down after Frannie’s second immaculate conception-in his room, speaking in a hushed voice. The door’s open, and he can see how Kowalski’s sort of hunched in on himself, so he leaves, buys a few packs of the candy Kowalski knocks back in his coffee, glances over at the liquor. In the end, he just gets the candy.
When he gets back, Kowalski’s off the phone. “He doesn’t know. Says he’ll find Eric, ask him, then come down to Chicago and see if he could help. Made me feel like a lab rat, a bit. You know how he gets.”
Ray nods, hands him the bag of candy. “He gonna need a bedroll?” he asks, leaving Kowalski a way out of this, a way to clear things up.
“No! I mean, uh, yeah, bedroll. This body’s still yours. This is…”
He wonders briefly at how good he’s gotten at translating Kowalski’s broken sentences. “Game’s on tonight,” he tells him. They sit side by side on the sofa, a hairsbreadth between them, slumped, bodies tired but minds still wired, by the way Kowalski isn’t paying any attention to the game.
Three penalties later, and Kowalski’s turning to him, other hand tight around the glass of water he’s drinking instead of beer. “I love him.”
Face back to the screen, profile carefully blank.
“Me too,” he sighs, scrubbing a hand over his forehead- Christ, even Kowalski’s mannerisms are starting to rub off. He catches Kowalski’s eye, and they’re laughing, like they did in the bullpen, before the submarine and everything went to shit for the third? fourth? time. Benny’s their touchstone, their point of reconnection. He’s…he’s the fulcrum, still. His hand goes to his- no, Kowalski’s- tattoo, tracing it under his shirt. Kowalski licks his lips, quickly, trying to play it cool, but Ray knows what mannerisms he gets when he’s nervous. Ray spent a lifetime in Vegas ironing them out.
“What’re we doing, Vecchio?”
Ray just shrugs, starts wondering if maybe he shoulda spent longer at the liquor counter.
“When’s Benny coming over?” he asks, sneering a little, knowing that’ll put the brakes on this thing, clear Kowalski’s mind enough for actually thinking. Kowalski stands up, suddenly, face closed-off, even to Ray. His fist’s clenched, whole body tensed. He looms over Ray, blocking out the blue and white light from the screen, and Ray sits back, smiles coldly, goading him as much as he can. This has gone beyond sense into anger, into wanting to hurt and be hurt, cause really, how’re the two of them ever gonna be anything but snarling acquaintances?
“You gonna hit yourself?”
One hand either side of him, leaning in close. “Who the fuck are you tryin’ to kid, Vecchio? You’re as fucked up about this as I am; only you don’t have the balls to take a leap and admit it.”
He doesn’t answer, just looks straight ahead, imagines he can see right through Kowalski, right through the glass of the screen to the wires inside it, through to the back, out of the apartment. He registers Kowalski kneeling, then there are hands on his knees, parting his legs, then Kowalski’s as close as he can be, one hand on the side of his face, thumb stroking his cheekbone.
“Come to bed,” Kowalski murmurs, voice rich and soft. “You ain’t sleeping. Don’t see why you hafta do the ‘I can cope’ thing.”
Ray smiles at him, looking deep into his own eyes. “I can cope,” he tells him, the lack of choice in coping ringing silent through the room.
Day 8
He does sleep. Wakes up next to Kowalski, their hands almost touching on top of the coverlet, but other than that completely separate, like there was a bolster down the bed or something. He gets up quietly, showers and mainlines coffee, as strong as he can make it, cause Kowalski’s build up a ludicrous resistance to caffeine. He knows his way around the kitchen now, cooks them both an omelette and puts a mug of coffee on the worktop near the bedroom door to lure him out. They’re in the bullpen again today, forms and interview reports and endless frustrations for Kowalski, who gets more wired up the stiller he has to sit, like a negative dynamo.
He’s getting used to pacifying him, but makes sure he looks wired too, so it’s like he’s calming and agitating at the same time, cause Kowalski in his old body would never sit still. They share their complete fucking hate of forms- Langoustine never had to do ‘em- and the dotting and crossing and stamping, well, it reminds them both of Benny. At least no one was killed with Delucci, even if Kowalski had been taking fucking stupid risks with it. It was a wonder he managed to walk away from it. He realizes his fist is clenched, relaxes with an effort and has himself enough under control by the time Kowalski shuffles straight out of the bedroom into the bathroom, snagging the cup of coffee as he goes. Ray shakes his head, mutters ‘and a good morning to you too’.
After last night, though, he’s glad Kowalski’s just his usual grumpy, not awkward.
Course, the morning goes on and the witnesses haven’t seen nothing, and Delucci’s sitting back with this real smug look on his face and they’ll be lucky to make a fucking parking ticket stick. Kowalski starts getting a little bit past the bad cop side of rude, and Ray just knows this one’ll walk, because they’ve got no Benny to pull justice out of his ass, and this massive fucking slippery wall of connections and deals. Ray jerks his head towards the door, keeping his face carefully still, pulls Kowalski into the neighbouring interrogation room.
“He’s walking. You know it, Kowalski,” he says, keeping a pace and a half between them. Kowalski takes a step forward, but he puts his hand flat on his chest, pushes until Kowalski’s up against the door and reaches around him to lock it. Two hands push him roughly away, and then Kowalski’s right up in his face, not shouting, but snarling.
“Fraser wouldn’t-”
“He’s not here, Kowalski. You still act like he’s here to cover your back with a Stetson and an Eskimo story, but it’s just me, and I ain’t no Canuck, you dumb fuck.”
Another shove, this time more forceful, knocking the backs of his knees into the table. He lets himself be pushed, talking in the same measured tone.
“Delucci’s gonna walk, and you’re gonna stop trying to paint a bull’s eye on your back.”
Fists in his collar, Kowalski’s forehead resting on his. “Shut the fuck up, Vecchio,” he breathes, making it sound more like an invitation than an insult. He’s got nothing to say to that, is briefly, insanely, tempted to say ‘make me’, but isn’t in one of those dumb romance films. Deadbeat crazy flatfoots don’t get their own films. They don’t kiss, just look at each other, frozen in a tableau until Kowalski takes a step back, loosens his shoulders a few times, shadowpunches.
“You good?” he asks him. Kowalski nods, and they go back into the room.
Later, when they’re home and trying not to think about anything, Kowalski stands as close as he was in the interrogation room and kisses him on the lips, softly. “We call each other Ray when we’re with other people now,” he murmurs.
“Is there a point to this?”
“Nah. Just wanted to, uh, vary the kissing.”
“Once, Kowalski. You kiss me once, then you want variety?”
Anything Kowalski is gonna say to that is muffled, because Ray gives up on any sort of patience, puts on hand on the back of his neck, familiar skullshape fitting into his hand at a new angle, kisses Kowalski and knows just where the scar on his bottom lip is, just how much pressure to use, and there’s no uncertainty about this. He presses Kowalski back against the worktop, undoes the top two buttons of his shirt and takes his time with him. He should like his lip just being caught between Ray’s teeth, and he does, makes a noise between a groan and a sigh that makes the hairs on the back of Ray’s neck stand up, because it’s him, outside of himself, making everything stranger, more charged.
He’s been dancing around this for what feels like months, and he isn’t sure if he’d enjoy moving things on or teasing Kowalski more, so he stalls, kisses him, runs his hands down Kowalski’s back, over the bullet. It twinges still, sometimes, reminds him he ain’t as young or as unwounded as he used to be, and now it’s transferred, now he has someone else’s aches and pains to deal with, someone else’s acquaintances to nod at in the street. Kowalski’s got scars, too, plenty of them. Scars and visible ribs that make his stomach clench when he looks this body Kowalski seems to neglect.
“Get back here, Vecchio. I ain’t gonna be patient for long,” Kowalski warns, hand going to the fly of his jeans. “Now, let’s see if I remember this.”
Ray grins. “You mean you saved beating off for special occasions?”
“4th July. Thanksgiving. I’m patriotic, I guess.”
He doesn’t answer, cause Kowalski’s got his palm pressed flush against the front of his boxers, just a steady pressure that makes him gasp and shake all the same. Ray ditched Kowalski’s boots as soon as he got back to the apartment, can tow his way out of his socks and jeans, and he’s there in just a t shirt, in the middle of Kowalski’s apartment.
“Not bad,” Kowalski smirks. Ray rolls his eyes. His face wears arrogance well, though, when it’s Kowalski, with the slightly tilted head, the quirk of the mouth that makes it shyer, more self deprecating. They’re adapting each other’s faces to look like their own, disobedient mirrors. Kowalski’s other hand goes to his hipbone, with touch light enough to tickle, but not quite, like a breath. “Bedroom?” Kowalski murmurs, thumb stroking his hipbone, dipping into the hollow of it, paying more attention to it than to his cock. He can only nod, cause he figures hipbones for Kowalski are like wrists for him. Thought goes out of the window, and he kisses Kowalski again as they walk, stumbling a little, then they’re in the middle of his room.
Kowalski just lets his clothes drop to the floor, looks at him as if daring him to make a fuss. “You’re ironing them,” he tells him, taking off his t shirt and throwing into the pile Kowalski’s made.
“You trusting me with something hot next to your million dollar suit?”
Ray kisses him again, just to shut him up, standing skin to skin, one of his hands on the back of Kowalski’s neck, the other going back to the bullet, then one of Kowalski’s hands is closing round his cock, and he gasps up into it, cause of course Kowalski knows what he likes, the angle may be different but the edge of roughness, that real sweet twist at the end-
“Kowalski, go on like that and it’ll be over before it’s started.”
He catches hold of Kowalski’s wrist, stills him. Kowalski smirks at him, walks backwards until the backs of his knees hit the bed, tugging Ray along with him. “C’mon. I wanna play.” His voice is teasing, husky, and once they’re horizontal he finds Kowalski was completely serious. He concentrates on the base of Ray’s thumb joint for what feels like hours, licking into the dip of it, nipping lightly. “People never quite get it right usually. You okay there, Vecchio?”
Ray doesn’t answer, tries to keep from snatching his hand away as the sensation sparks away at his spine and cock. Kowalski focuses on the quirky; the soft skin on his sides, the insides of his wrists, licks up between his fingers until he’s sure he’s gonna come without a hand on him. He’s like some hyperactive kid in a candystore, and Ray can only gasp and indulge. One of Kowalski’s hands goes to the crease of his ass, strokes there gently until he’s almost writhing with it.
“Second drawer down on the nightstand. Lube. Condoms. You want to?”
A pillow, propping up his hips, Kowalski arranging him with deft, sure touches. He breathes in, keeping his pulse unhurried, his face calm.
“You know, I don’t look like a hitman during sex usually,” Kowalski murmurs, kissing his shoulder. “C’mon, loosen up. I know you. Relax.”
He sweeps his hands over Ray’s back, up to his shoulders, ghosting near his ass, but not quite touching. He relaxes into it as Kowalski gets closer, until his other hand, slick with lube, circles his entrance, a gentle sliding tickling. He feels himself open, relax even more and hold onto it even when Kowalski goes in up to the first knuckle, soothing and stroking.
A second finger eases in, the discomfort fleeting; a bead of sweat rolls down his forehead, the pillow is cool against his dick-
“You okay?”
“Don’t move. You keep your fingers right there and I’ll be okay for life.”
Kowalski snickers, crooks his fingers in a way that makes Ray see stars, pleasure shooting from his spine down his arms. He’s a hairsbreadth away from begging.
“You clean?”
Takes a while for the question to register.
“Yeah. Got myself tested after Vegas, and, well…”
“God, we both need to get laid,” Kowalski mutters. Ray shakes his head.
“I think we’re already-”
he gasps. Kowalski’s done the finger thing again.
“Know there was a way to shut you up,” he says, smug, withdraws both fingers, then there’s blunt pressure at his entrance, Kowalski’s pushing slowly, relentlessly making him gasp from the pleasurepain of it. Feels like he’s burning up as Kowalski starts to move, the same glacial relentless pace as before, lets his head drop and concentrates on breathing.
“Christ,” he whispers, descending into an underbreath stream of babble, half Italian, half English, no sense.
Ray lifts his head again, arches and twists so they can kiss again, and Kowalski manoeuvres them so he’s on his lap, facing him. He catches glimpses of them in the dresser mirror, jarring dissonance between what he feels and where his face is. “Look at us,” he murmurs.
“Not thinking of another postcard to Fraser are you?”
His laugh breaks off into another gasp when Kowalski’s hand closes around his dick, moving in time to the hip swivels he keeps doing. His other hand links and twines with Ray’s, and next time he’ll show Kowalski what drives his body wild, pin him by the wrists to the bed, blow him till he begs-
He finds he’s babbling between kisses, a hoarse pre-emptive confession. Kowalski’s pupils are huge, his lips swollen, glistening. He stares at his face, his own face, arches back a little and closes his eyes, comes so sweetly he could cry. His heart’s hammering when he opens them; he slumps forward and rests his forehead on Kowalski’s shoulder, listens to his pulse as his hips jerk once, twice and he comes, gripping Ray’s hand almost painfully. Kowalski’s forehead’s damp with sweat, his breathing uneven but his eyes are clear, calm.
“You okay?” Kowalski asks him.
Ray smiles, goofy, blissed out.
“I’m good.”
Day 9
The part of him that hasn’t given up on fairy tales expects to see a spiky head in his arms this morning, but the rest of him knows it isn’t that simple. He closes his eyes again, listens to Kowalski snuffle and twitch like he’s chasing rabbits. He whimpers a little when Ray gets up to shower, so he gets his pillow, puts it in Kowalski’s hand and grins as he wraps around it.
“Such a girl,” he murmurs.
This time, he puts the coffee on the nightstand, and picks up the suit from where it’s been lying all night. Crumpled, of course. He gets out the ironing board, turns the iron on. The t shirt, he leaves. Kowalski can iron his own damn clothes.