Angels & Mounties (due South/Supernatural) Part 5
"I remember when I woke up this morning, I thought to myself, I thought: 'Ray, at least today can't be any stranger than yesterday.' That was my exact thought. Well, turns out, yeah, it can be stranger than yesterday. It's not even 9 am and already yesterday is looking like a trip to Six Flags compared to the shit that I've dealt with today!" He paced, twitchy, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he ran his hands through his hair, spiking it up and out every which way until his appearance nicely mimicked his state of mind.
A charge filled the room. Electrical pulses of confused anxious tension emanated from all the beings--be he man, angel or deaf wolf-making it hard to think. Fraser had that look on his face that one can only get after encountering a bad idea hook up at the exact wrong time. It's happens to just about everyone, one way or another. Maybe you spot him or her at a grocery store or in line at the movies and you're with someone else, but you think, you have to acknowledge that you know each other. You don't want to be rude. But there's an easy way to have that discussion. Or, there you are, enjoying a nice uncomfortable conversation with your best friend about how you're in love with him, but slept with someone else the night before and 'poof!' that exact same someone else zaps into the room like some kind of ethereal sitcom nosy neighbor. Happens all the time. Hard to believe that it was happening with Fraser, though. That was really very fucking hard to fathom.
"Was I interrupting something?" Castiel asked.
"You could say that," Ray answered. "You could say that we were kind of in the middle of something before you popped in out of thin air. I bet, if you thought about it for a minute or two you might even be able to figure out exactly what we were talking about that makes your timing is so great."
"Is that sarcasm or was my arrival fortuitous?" Castiel asked Fraser.
"I definitely recognized that as sarcasm," said Fraser.
"How the hell can I be so lucky as to have encountered two of you?" Ray sounded like a man teetering on the edge of hysteria.
"Maybe you should sit down, Ray."
"Maybe I should get the hell out of here, Fraser. Maybe I should just turn tail and run home and go back to bed until I convince myself this morning didn't happen."
Castiel looked at Fraser. "I take it you've discussed last night's events?"
"Yeah, he told me. I was almost OK with it, too. I almost had a full thought formulated. I was this close" he held his almost touching index finger and thumb up in front of Cas's face, "to having come up with a reaction to the whole thing and then you show up and I have to start over with a whole new bunch of reactions. It's annoying. You really need to stop doing that."
"So I've been told. I can assure you, I am as happy to be here as you are to see me."
"That fixes everything, then."
"Ray."
"What? Are you going to defend him? Cuz, let's just say we forget all the you and me crap for now. Let's just put that in a little box and not think about it for a few minutes. He's broken every one night stand etiquette rule in the book."
"You've had enough of these one night stands that you are aware of the proper etiquette surrounding them?" Cas asked.
"Have you?" Fraser sounded surprised, although, how he could be surprised about anything right now Ray wasn't sure.
"That's not the point! I know the rules! Everyone knows the goddamn rules. First you-" he turned and pointed towards Fraser "You shouldn't use someone like that. No one deserves to be just a stand in for someone else. I don't care if he is some kind of angel freak. It's not healthy."
"Don't point that finger at me," Fraser snapped. "He was doing the same thing."
Ray punched at the air. "I don't need to know that!"
"You brought it up."
"It's true, you began this line of discussion," Cas said. If Ray still had any doubts that Cas wasn't exactly human, his total lack of emotional response to this situation would have proven it.
"Look, you,” Ray jabbed his finger at Castiel, “you don't get to be the voice of reason here. You didn't even have the decency to stick around for breakfast. Or, hell, if you couldn't stick around, at least you could've cleaned up a little before snapping your fingers and making like Endora. You could have shown some kind of consideration. No! You just left in the middle of the night."
"I wasn't given a choice. I was resigned to the fact I would be here for some time when, much to my dismay, I found myself face to face with a very stoned, belligerent, and very human, me. He thought I was a hallucination. Not that that stopped him from attempting to smash my head in."
"From where I'm sitting, that doesn't sound that different from how you acted last night."
"Jesus, Fraser, am I going to have to call some kind of domestic abuse hotline for you?" The comment was met with a "Don't start" look that shut Ray right up.
"Is that all? Then you were here?" Fraser asked.
"No, unfortunately. I now know that this is my brother's handiwork."
"What brother?" Ray asked. "You mean, like, some other angel is screwing with you? Was anything they told us in Sunday school even close to right?"
"Most Sunday school lessons do the disservice of glossing over our ferocity in favor of extolling the divine. As for your other question, yes, another angel is screwing with me. Gabriel."
"The guy with the horn?" Ray asked.
"The archangel Gabriel? The Gabriel who foretold the births of both John the Baptist and Jesus? He's to blame for this?"
"John the Baptist was a fluke, he told dozens of parents the same thing. Zachariah and Elizabeth were the only ones to take him seriously." He looked at Fraser and Ray. His expression changed, like he had registered that he was embarking on a tangent that wasn't relevant to the conversation. "Yes," he verified, "that Gabriel."
"He's fact-checking the Bible. My entire worldview is crashing down around my ears and I'm listening to a guy debunk--from personal experience!-- one of the most sacred and holy texts in the world," Ray babbled.
"I didn't realize you were religious, Ray."
"Gaaaah…" He covered his mouth with his hands to smother the cry. Still, the sentiment was loud and clear. Fraser walked over behind him, put his hands on Ray's shoulders, and began digging his fingers into the tight muscles at the base of his neck. Ray's first instinct was to shrug him off, but it wasn't an entirely unpleasant sensation. Eyes closed, his head flopped forward, he let Fraser's fingers work on the knots...yeah, like that. God that felt good. Fraser had amazing hands. He'd never thought about it before. Very strong, sure hands. He'd put himself in Fraser's hands plenty of times. This was like that, only with less threat to his life than usual. All in all, a very welcome respite from thinking. Nothing like a friendly massage from your partner and pal to clear the old head,. Should be part of the daily routine at the station.
Castiel had the decency to keep quiet until Ray had relaxed somewhat. "I have no idea how long this is going to go on. I'm not appropriately armed to fight him. It's up to Sam and Dean to put a stop to this. Not that they're in any position to do so."
"Where are they?" Fraser kept his hands on Ray's shoulders, it seemed to keep them both steady.
"They appear to be trapped in a television show, as far as I as could tell. The sort where people laugh loudly at things that aren't the least bit comical. Dean sometimes watches them in the middle of the night when he can't sleep."
Ray raised his head, "A sitcom?"
"If you say so."
"So, first a Japanese game show and now a sitcom? The trickster, Gabriel, whatever he's calling himself, is holding them hostage on television? Why?"
"He's always had a strange sense of humor."
The room seemed to shift. The way it would if someone had opened a window, discovered it was windy and rainy and slammed it shut again. "Awwww, thanks bro. That's sweet," Gabriel smirked.
"I'm really not sure how much more of this I can take," Ray sighed.
"It's all right, Ray. It can't go on much longer." Fraser was trying to sound reassuring. He was only somewhat successful.
"Oh, now, Constable, you don't know that. In fact, it can go on for as long as I want it to," Gabriel's eyes sparkled with wicked mischief. He turned to Cas, "Did you like your little side trip into the future? Looks like fun, doesn't it? Boy, when you fall you fall hard. Thought I'd throw that in, just for grins. I mean, yeah, it kinda messes with the narrative, but--it was just too tempting."
"Gabriel, I can't stop you from doing whatever you want to me, but leave them out of this." He dove at his brother, who sent Castiel flying through the air and crashing against the table with a flick of his hand. Fraser and Ray instinctively fell into action. They pulled Cas up into a sitting position, rested him between them, checking him for cuts or broken bones. He stood up, “I'm all right,” He turned his attention to his brother. "You have no right to interfere in the lives of innocent people. If you want to come after me, fine, here I am. But this doesn't concerned them."
"You haven't figured it out, yet, have you?" He turned from Castiel to Fraser and Ray and then back again. His smile only growing wider and more wicked with each pass. "You really don't get it, do you? This is spectacular!' He spun, maniacal, the dance of a madman. "Oh! This is so much better than I could have hoped! None of you know!"
"Know what?" Fraser and Ray asked in unison.
"Oh, no. No. I'm not going to spoil it. It's all too hilarious. I'm just going to leave you all to your little tableau."
"You son of a bitch! This has to end!" Cas sounded furious.
"Byeeee!" Gabriel scrunched his shoulders up to his ears, waved playfully and was gone.
Cas turned his back to Fraser and Ray and pounded his fist against the wall. "Son of a bitch!" He crumpled to his knees, the figure of a man who had lost the will to fight.
The two men exchanged a look. Ray twitched the corner of his mouth and shrugged. Fraser nodded. They both knelt down beside the distraught angel, each putting an arm around a shoulder. "C'mon, come upstairs," Fraser said as they lifted him up off the floor. It felt like a replay of yesterday, the two of them trying to move the unresponsive man to a second location. Castiel, for his part, rested his head on Fraser's shoulder and let them drag him along like the giant Mr. Potato Head figure he resembled.
"You really want to take him upstairs, Frase? He's not exactly light, y'know."
"Inspector Thatcher and Constable Turnbull will be here any minute. Do you want to explain this situation to them?"
"I really don't." Ray hefted himself up under Castiel's weight and began dragging him upstairs.
"I didn't think you would."
After much stumbling and next to zero assistance from Castiel they managed to get upstairs and into the room where Ray had found Fraser a little less than two hours ago. How could it possibly have been such a short period of time? It felt like a hundred years. A blissful time long in the past when his biggest problem was a little vanishing person. How he longed for the good old days of earlier this morning. "OK, 1-2-3... drop" Ray counted down before they deposited Cas in the chair he'd sat in the night before.
Cas reached out and took the bottle of scotch off the table, unscrewed the cap and poured the liquid down his throat like it was Gatorade.
"Oh, sure, now you perk up. After we hauled your ass up a flight of stairs." Ray sounded bitchy. He didn't care, he felt bitchy.
"Things were so simple before." Cas's voice was low and rough. "Untold eons of relative ease. There were battles. But I was a soldier, that was my job. I knew my role and I performed it. I never encountered anything so frustrating as being trapped on this planet, surrounded by humans, tethered to Dean Winchester. Do you have any idea what it's like to feel imperfect after spending the entire history of creation as a sublime being? Let me tell you," he took another drink, "it sucks."
Fraser sat down in the chair across from Cas. "I can imagine it does. I wish there was something we could do..."
"But there isn’t. This is your problem, not ours," Ray finished.
"You could've put it in nicer terms, Ray," Fraser said.
Cas's eyes flickered with a brief flash of anger. "What good does nice do anyone? Until Dean and Sam figure out how to break out of this trap, I'm stuck. Gabriel can do whatever he wants with me and I can't do shit about it. There's nothing we can do but wait."
So, they waited. Ray called into the station and told Welsh that he wouldn't be in, that he was using a sick day. It didn't take long before Cas finished the bottle of scotch. When he got fidgety and annoying Ray went downstairs and stole the rum from the cabinet. He wasn't happy about having to make the booze run, but he lost at rock-paper-scissors. Fair was fair. While down there, he was stuck trying to hide the bottle behind his back while having a five minute conversation with Turnbull about the latest developments in Canadian international relations. Which, he was sad to admit, was the least frustrating conversation he'd had all day. At lunchtime, Fraser went out and got a pizza and a gallon of ice cream, which they ate while watching a VHS tape of a curling match from last December. Castiel seemed to really enjoy the intricacies of curling and Fraser was happy to explain the sport in detail. Ray was so bored he almost wanted to go back to the frantic insanity of the morning. At least it was more interesting than listening to an oral history of curling. So some guy in Scotland carved an inscription in a stone back before the Pilgrims hit Plymouth Rock. That was really not fascinating, no matter what Fraser seemed to think.
"Are we just gonna sit here waiting around for something to happen? Because you don't need me for that."
"I'd like it if you'd stay."
"Here," for someone who'd ingested as mucn barrel aged as he had, Cas sounded remarkably coherent, "have a drink." He poured a few fingers of booze into the one available glass and handed it to Ray. "It makes the passage of time considerably more tolerable."
Since he couldn't immediately come up with a reason not to, he took the glass and pounded it. He motioned for Cas to hand him the bottle so that he could get a refill.
Fraser reached out and took the glass out of Ray's hand. "Would you please stop trying to take everyone you come in contact with down with you?" he snapped at Cas, scowling.
"What the hell, Fraser?" Ray looked shocked at the sudden outburst. Castiel didn't react, which wasn't much of a surprise.
"Ray, can I talk to you for a minute?" Ray spread his hands out in front of him, making an 'I'm listening' face. "In private," Fraser pointed his head towards the hallway.
"Sure," Ray got up and followed Fraser into the hallway. "What's up with you?" he said as he pushed the door shut. "I thought you'd want me to be polite. It is very impolite to turn down such a friendly offer."
"I don't think it's wise to encourage him."
The laughter burst forth from Ray's throat. He didn't even have time to try to stifle it. He steadied himself against the wall, letting the amusement flow through him.
"What's so funny?" Fraser apparently missed the inherent humor in the whole situation.
"What's so funny?" He scrubbed the back of his hand across his mouth, literally trying to wipe that smile off his face. "What's so funny? You're telling me not to encourage him. You've done nothing but encourage him since the first moment I pointed him out to you and now you're saying I shouldn't encourage him? What the fuck is going on in that head of yours? I'm honestly at a loss, here."
Fraser ran his tongue along his top teeth, his lips parted ever so slightly, a confused look on his face. He opened his mouth, as if he was going to say something, but he must have thought better of it. He dragged his hand over his perfect hair, leaving a few strands out of place. It made him look so vulnerable. Anyone else, a few hairs out of place wouldn't warrant a second look, but Fraser could walk through fire and not break a sweat, so seeing him looking just the least bit imperfect was jarring. Even after seeing him naked and semi-incoherent, somehow, this was more meaningful. It was spontaneous, and so much more raw. Ray's brain stopped working. Or maybe some other part of his mind, some part he'd turned off when Stella had left, switched back on. All these things he'd never thought about: Fraser's hands. The way he licked his lips when he was nervous. His mouth and tongue and eyes, and everything else about him, if he was being honest, were lovely. There was no other word for it. It might not be a very manly word, but what else was there to describe Fraser? Beautiful? Handsome didn't cover it. All those things he could say, they all came down to the same thing and they were not tough things. Fraser was all man, but the words that tumbled around in Ray's brain weren't the usual terms he'd use to describe another guy. They really weren't things a cop usually thinks about his partner, but Ray had started thinking them and now he couldn't stop. Fraser was just begging with every move to be touched and kissed and pushed up against a wall and--Ray snapped. He didn't care anymore what he was supposed to think, because right now he just cared what he was feeling. Before he really knew what he was doing, he had Fraser pulled up against him, their mouths pressed together. Ray was teasing Fraser's mouth open with his tongue as his hand traced down Fraser's back, until it slid into the back pocket of Fraser's uniform pants.
Fraser smiled. "I think you've finally snapped."
"Hey, Fraser," he placed a hand on the back of Fraser's neck, "A little less conversation, OK?"
They kissed, long and slow, exploratory and searching. Like two teenagers making out in the backseat of a Chevy, oblivious to the monster movie playing on the drive in screen.
"Ray," Fraser whispered against Ray's mouth. "Ray," he didn't pull away, but he did slow his responses. "Ray, we still have a guest, you know."
"Forget him," Ray said.
"Ray..."
"Haven’t you been paying attention? He'll probably be gone by the time we get in there anyway."
Fraser nipped on Ray's ear, "Wouldn't you rather find that out sooner rather than later, then?"
"Fine," Ray traced his tongue along Fraser's throat. "Have it your way."
They parted, static electric shocks snapping as the fabric of the clothes scraped apart. Fraser opened the door. Ray's prediction was right on. Castiel was gone. Only the empty liquor bottle remained.
Fraser smiled. That damn smile, how he'd ever been able to see Fraser smile and not want to jump him he didn't know. He didn't think too hard about it, either. He just did what came natural. Pulled Fraser down on top of him as he fell back into a chair. Pushed his hips up against Fraser's until he heard a delicious needy sound curl its way up from Fraser's stomach and out his throat. It had been too long since he'd made anyone make a sound like that. It made him feel warm, vital, powerful. God this had been a strange day. A complete mindfuck from the get go. That was life with Fraser, though. Every day another completely ridiculous and bizarre adventure. That was the glory of it. It was what he loved about him. Yes. That was exactly what he loved about Fraser and he was going to show him. Fraser was going to know for sure that Ray returned Fraser's affections. If it took all night, he was going to know.
"You don't have to do this." Hot breath against the curve of his neck, lips brushing against his skin. Don't have to? Who cares about what he has to do? Or was supposed to do or any of that? What did that have to do with this? Fraser's body was hard and heavy, warm, and so close against his. The weight, so much heavier and stronger than he was used to. The strokes of his hands stronger, the grip of his fingers around his arms so much tighter. He felt like he was being crushed. Like Ray, that shell of Ray that he showed everyone everyday was breaking under the pressure of Fraser's weight against his chest. He couldn't stop now. Stop? Hell, he couldn't figure out how Fraser was even thinking, much less talking.
"Shut up," he managed to mumble. Sometime around the second inning, quarter or whatever of that stupid curling match Fraser had shucked his uniform jacket. Now, Ray pushed Fraser's suspenders off his shoulders and helped him off with the rest of it as well. Ray pulled his t-shirt off over his head. They stopped, quiet, awestruck. Like they were both sure one of them was going to point out all the ways this was bound to blow up in their faces. Their chests rose and fell, heavy breaths, nervous with anticipation and the deep down realization that this wasn't something that you came back from. They would not emerge unscathed. Even if they stopped right now, it'd already gone past the point where they could stop and laugh it off.
Fraser took Ray's face in his hands, looked at him as if he was a creature from another world. Some wondrous being that couldn't possibly exist. He leaned forward, their foreheads touching. Fraser kissed him, reverent, worshiping him, before pulling him close with one hand, sliding his other hand down to unzip Ray's jeans. Fraser fumbled with the zipper, like a schoolboy struggling to undo a bra.
"Here, let me," Ray unzipped his pants and, while he was at it, did the same for Fraser. He was so hard, aching with the need for contact. He reached over and cupped Fraser's cock in his hand. The noise that came from Fraser indicated he knew that feeling well. "Touch yourself," he whispered. "Show me how you like it."
Without the shortest hesitation. Fraser took himself in his hand and stroked, slow, long strokes brushing his hand over the tip, drawing slick droplets down along his shaft as he did. He slid his fingers gently up and down, barely even touching himself then ratcheted the intensity up and fisted his cock, fast strong flicks of his wrist. He never once took his eyes off Ray. Christ it was hot. Ray couldn't take it, he began to jerk himself off. Unconscious of form or technique, he was working for results. He didn't need a perfect score from the judges. He just wanted to finish his routine. Fraser's back arched, he pushed up on the pads of his feet and finally broke Ray's gaze as he came. Ray lost it almost immediately after. His orgasm crashed through him, like a man waking up from a coma, his heart and head exploding with colors and sounds like he hadn't experienced in years. If he could come like that just by looking at Fraser...my God, what would it be like if they were touching each other?
He had to touch him, didn't want to ever stop touching him. He took Fraser's hand, guided them down onto the floor. Fraser pulled Ray over and tucked their bodies together. That puzzle piece fit, two bodies interlocked, head on shoulder, hand on hip, legs folded together, breath rhythmic. Like a Rube Goldberg machine, two things that don't have anything in common, fitting together to make something new and unexpected.
"I know how fond you are of sleeping on the floor and all, but maybe next time we could try a bed?"
"We need to work on your sense of adventure, Ray."
On to the final part