Title: The Show
Author:
halotolerantRecipient:
elfbertRating: Blue Cortina
Pairing: Ray/Glen
Word Count: ~1,400
Notes/Warnings: Prompt was: If you really will take a crack at anything m/m then...Ray/Glenn ::evil cackle:: (If that's too hard then R/Your choice ) "Why put on the show to the rest of them then? Think it makes you look tough or something?" Moral is: Never dare me with pairings, I will attempt them. Title and summary from 'The Show' by Girls Aloud, for crack value.
Summary: Nobody sees the show (not 'til my heart says so)
“Well, I didn’t know what to say, did I? What was I s’posed to do?” Ray took a last long drag on his cigarette, then blew out the smoke with a contented sigh. “Get up and kiss yer in front of all of ‘em? Mind you, Tyler’d practically already done that and all.”
“He’s a weird one, that Tyler.”
“Bleedin’ weird.” Shifting in the bed, Ray pressed out the cigarette-end on the nearby ashtray. It was a hideous thing, covered in shells, A Present from Brighton - but then it had good memories, did that weekend in Brighton. Turning onto his left side, Ray smiled as he regarded the man beside him.
Glen grinned back up at Ray, white teeth shining in the frame of dark skin like…like…
Ray had never been so good with words. He couldn’t frame up a vicious response so neatly that someone respected you for saying it, or tell the kind of joke it took the best part of five minutes to understand.
But where did that get you, anyhow?
Clever words hadn’t got him here, brought him this. Just truthful ones. Which might have been harder to say, he reckoned, if he’d been trying to be clever about it.
Glen laughed, laying back, resting a hand up behind his head, “You should have seen your face!” he chuckled. “Oh God, when you told me it wasn’t as warm at the station as at home…I thought I was going to crack up!”
“Well I was aimin’ for bein’ a racist bastard, wasn’t I?” Ray sniffed with a little hurt pride, leaning over more, letting himself wait, poised above Glen’s chest, savouring how that felt. “I mean, I didn’t think how it’d sound to you ‘til I bloody said it.”
“Which reminds me, did the plumber ever ring about the radiator? I’ve been meaning to ask. Only someone assaulted and ravished me in the hallway of my own house” Glen glared with mock-irritation and moved his hand to stroke gently down across Ray’s chest hair with just the threat of a tickle, “And that made me forget everything except how frustrating the last two days have been. The chance to meet all your colleagues was not worth the stress of that transfer.” His hand dipped lower, teasing.
Ray snorted. “Bloody Tyler! Did he ever let up on you?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of constantly having to remember not to hug you when I was feeling tired. Or, you know, ask you if we needed the milk getting in or if the plumber had rung. But yeah, Tyler didn’t help.” Glen’s fingers were carding through the hair now, nails glancing off Ray’s nipples at intervals with unconvincing casualness. The feeling reminded Ray of the part of eating a sherbet lemon when the boiled sweet dissolved and the tart sherbet hit your tongue - you were expecting it each time, but it was wonderful all the same. Tingling.
“And it wasn’t his fault Ray, really” Glen continued conscientiously - giving both sides of the story, like he always did, like on the day they’d met and he’d told a still-seething Ray through bleeding lips not to go and try and fight the other cadets, ‘they might just hate me, Carling, it might not be the negro thing’ - “Every time I talked to Tyler I dug myself in deeper. I was so worried about giving us away - he must have thought I was a complete cowardly twonk by the end. Although at one point I was sure he was trying to come on to me…”
Ray stiffened, “He what?”
“Easy tiger. He couldn’t have been, really, he looked like a spooked kid when I asked him about it.”
“When you what?”
“Hey! Look at me, Ray, look right at me, yeah, that’s it.” Glen’s voice was tenderness twisted up with lust and Ray basked in the warmth of his gaze, relaxing and unlocking better than in a hot bath. “Let me enjoy being allowed to stare at last.”
“But…” Ray’s words were lost in a sudden, hungry kiss, Glen’s hands going to Ray’s head, drawing him down, guiding Ray with slight, familiar touches to straddle over his body.
Ray let go of his train of thought without regret.
Before they’d got the house, they’d used to have to hide, doing this. Years and years of one of them always round at the other’s flat, skulking in the darkness and the small hours. Waiting, always, for the snatched weekends, the bank holidays in anonymous southern seaside towns, just to wake up together in the same bed. Some places, the sex didn’t even come into it, just the sight of the two of them together, talking, friendly-like, could drive people mad.
And it was so simple, Ray considered, letting his tongue dip into Glen’s mouth and running a fingertip over the rim of his ear, exactly the same moment so that Glen would whine and squeeze his eyes tight shut and buck against him without meaning to. Life was so simple, really, if you didn’t waste time over it, pondering and idealising and listening to windbags spout crap about purity or economics or moral bleeding hygiene. Good and bad, pleasure and pain, right and wrong - it was easy enough. If you just found what you liked and enjoyed it.
Other people made it complicated, and what did that get them? Headaches and guilt.
“Now, Ray” Glen pulled away, finally, with a little groan, breathing hard. “This is the part where you tell me how hard it was fighting your urge to do disgusting things to me over your Guv’s desk.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Braced on his arms over Glen, Ray felt a deliciously increasing sense of need; along with the knowledge that here, now, he could respond to it without inhibition. “I know what you mean ‘bout diggin’ yourself a hole. I mean, I have a good crack with Chris, when he’s not bein’ a div, you saw that, but with the others, it’s like, like I’m that thing the boss called me.”
“Neanderthal?”
“That one, yeah.”
Glen’s eyes flicked away for a moment, “I’ve been called that, in my time. People…people don’t know shit about anything, sometimes." He sighed and Ray dropped a quick kiss to his chest.
"So Chris gets you, sometimes, yeah?" Glen shrugged, "He likes you, because he sees a bit more of what you’re really like. So why put on the show to the rest of them then? Think it makes you look tough or something?"
“Don’t you see that I have to be like that, though? Do you see, now you’ve been there, what’d it’d be like if they knew I was queer? Can you imagine the Guv, bloody hell! He’d burn me alive. Twice, if he could, for being with you.”
“Do you think so?” Glen raised an eyebrow, moving his hands to stroke again, mind clearly a few steps ahead of his speech. “I dunno... Depends whether you go by what a person says or what you see them do…Anyhow, that’s enough work talk, eh?” His hands slid lower, finally with intent, and Ray hissed in pleasure.
“How…Oh shit, yes, there” Ray murmured, overwhelmed then as he had been the first time, police academy, behind the toilet block, him and the most exotic, beautiful young man he’d ever seen, both of them equally nervous and equally crazy. “How did a neeanth, neandy…an oaf like me keep a gorgeous bloke like you, eh?”
“Because when you look at me, it’s me you see.” Glen’s tone was quite serious as he moved his hands faster, always so eager, so desperate, like he hadn’t had it all a hundred times before, like he was still that bruised teenager trembling in the cold night, touching the only cadet in the class who deigned to shake his hand. “And when I look at you, I don’t see some tough guy with no feelings. I see…” He pulled Ray into a kiss again, and Ray broke it into parts by smiling, unable to stop himself.
“And I know” Glen continued, quietly, “That you let me see it. I know what that means to you. Now more than ever, bloody hell, that station…” his voice drifted away as Ray lined them up, let them start sliding, slick and familiar, easy and perfect together, the same old groove and the best one, really, gazing in sweet contentment at each other.
“I love you” Ray murmured easily, because that was what he felt, what he meant, what was in his heart.
It wasn’t clever. But it was true.
Might've been harder to say, he pondered, if he’d been trying to be clever about it.