FIC: Life in Traction (Ray Levoi/Walter Crow Horse, PG)
TITLE: Life in Traction
RATING: PG
FANDOM: Thunderheart
PAIRING: Ray Levoi/Walter Crow Horse
SUMMARY: Ray doesn’t like riding the bike, but some things cannot be avoided.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: For Mundane Bingo, prompts: caught in tropical downpour while riding motorbike, sitting around waiting for the rain to stop being so loud on the roof so you can hold a conversation again.
Ray doesn’t like riding the bike-in fact, he often and loudly refuses, citing crash statistics and detailing a life in traction-but some things cannot be avoided. The truck breaks down twenty miles outside the rez, and it’s Sunday, so there won’t be even a chance of getting the part needed to fix it until tomorrow.
“I’ll hitchhike,” Ray says.
“‘Thanks for coming to pick me up, Crow Horse,’” Crow Horse says. “‘Sure, the game’s on, but I know how much you enjoy driving an hour to come hang out at some Badlands Bates Motel with cardboard Injuns decorating the place-’”
Ray frowns, but sheepishly; he knows when he’s cornered.
“It was not an hour drive out here,” he grumbles.
Crow Horse gives him a look, and he gets on the back of the motorcycle.
At least part of the reason Ray doesn’t like the bike is nerves, and he sits closer than he needs to, his pelvis pressed to the small of Crow Horse’s back, his hands gripping Crow Horse around the waist so hard for a minute he loses his breath. Crow Horse tries not to chuckle too loud; maybe the sound’s swallowed by him revving the engine up, anyhow.
They’re less than five miles out when the sky opens. The rain starts hard and with no warning, and soon there’s no visibility, only a gray curtain of the rain falling, and before Crow Horse can blink, the next torrent is washing over his eyes, morphing his vision. Ray is shivering, and his hands are white-knuckled around Crow Horse’s waist, so it might be the cold or nerves or both. Crow Horse turns the bike around, the wheels slipping on the slick road, now technically a shallow river.
The motel isn’t the A-1, but it’s not much better, and it looks like they have the same decorator, anyway. Ray shivers in his jacket while Crow Horse pays for a room; the sky’s opaque with rain all the way out to the horizon; no telling when it’ll let up.
First thing in the room, Ray strips. He rubs himself dry with a towel best he can, and then makes down the bed and snuggles beneath the cheap, scratchy covers. His teeth are chattering, which Crow Horse can only see and not hear; the rain on the roof is near deafening.
“You don’t have to be so forward, now,” Crow Horse says, but Ray just frowns, shakes his head; he didn’t hear.
Crow Horse strips himself, then gets under the blankets with Ray. The room itself is root cellar cool beneath the curtain of the rain, but Ray’s body has made the bed hot as a little toaster. Crow Horse would be plenty warm just soaking up the ambient heat, but there’s a time to press your luck, so he pulls Ray to him. Ray settles against his chest, his heat and the familiar fine form of him covering near every inch of Crow Horse, and Crow Horse rests his palm on the back of Ray’s neck, feathers his fingers up through Ray’s hair.
“There’s a TV,” Ray murmurs, drugged with heat and languor, and he’s close enough to hear beneath the drums of the rain on the roof. “You could watch the rest of the game.”
Crow Horse’s fingers run lazily over the familiar planes of Ray’s body-his country. Ray makes a formless, pleased noise, and snuggles closer.
“Nah,” Crow Horse says. Then he feels himself going sentimental, and adds, “Sure the storm’s knocked the reception out; don’t need to sit through no hours of static.”
Ray’s pale, quick eyes are on him. The corner of his mouth turns up, the same smirk he gets when he catches a suspect in a lie in interrogation.
“Sure,” he says slowly. “Don’t need that.”
Ray laughs, but he tries to swallow it, and that’s enough for Crow Horse to give in.
“Got everything I need right here,” he says.
Ray has the decency to try and keep a leash on his grin. Crow Horse holds him tight.