FIC: Brick (Ray Levoi/Walter Crow Horse, R)
TITLE: Brick
RATING: R
FANDOM: Thunderheart
PAIRING: Ray Levoi/Walter Crow Horse
SUMMARY: On names and faces.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Kind of a remix of Trouble is a Friend of Mine, and part of the Homecoming Series. This is a completely new version than was posted before; I had to take it back to the drawing board.
THANKS: Many, many thanks to jean_c_pepper for helping me rework this.
Ray woke Crow Horse with his mouth. Crow Horse took Ray’s hair in his fist, held him steady, his back arching, sweet things falling from his mouth.
“Raymond,” he moaned. “Ray, Ray, Ray . . .”
The alarm clock beat Ray’s orgasm, but only just, and Crow Horse ignored it completely, whispering soft horse-taming sounds against Ray’s ear as he brought him home. Ray closed his eyes, and the red-black-red-black throbbing behind his eyelids synched perfectly with the high, repetitive note of the alarm; it was like a submarine going down.
Crow Horse turned off the alarm somewhere during the period Ray’s timeline was realigning with the step of the real world; suddenly it was just gone, and Crow Horse was gone, his off-tune rendition of “Under the Boardwalk” and the sound of the driving water bouncing off the tiled vault of the shower.
Ray glanced at the numbers on the clock face, groaned, and buried his face in his pillow. Their shared warmth still permeated the bedding, and it smelled lovely and familiar-his own scent, and Crow Horse’s: leather and motor oil and the low, earthy spice note that never failed to send butterflies fluttering in Ray’s belly.
Crow Horse shut the shower off and soon emerged, dripping, from the bathroom. He toweled off and got dressed; Ray remained facedown in his pillow. He listened to the precise percussion of Crow Horse’s boots on the hardwood, squeezed his eyes shut as Crow Horse threaded his fingers through the too-long shag at the nape of his neck.
“Hair’s gettin’ long.”
“It’s forty minutes to the nearest barber-”
“You could go on your lunch break today.”
“-and an hour and a half to the nearest good barber.”
The pads of Crow Horse’s fingers ran lightly over the back of Ray’s neck.
“I like it,” he said finally. A moment over, “You better come on, if you’re comin’.”
Ray listened to Crow Horse’s boots walk down the hallway.
***
Ray scrubbed the last of his sunburn off the bridge of his nose, and then slicked his hand through his hair. He frowned at his reflection. He glanced at his Casio and his frown lines deepened.
“You’re late,” Crow Horse said as Ray walked into the kitchen.
Ray bent to kiss Maggie, in her high chair munching happily on Cheerios, before rebuttal.
“Good thing I’m sleeping with the boss,” he said.
Crow Horse rolled his eyes. He was standing before the snapping stove, cursing at the thin, white smoke drifting up from the eggs and bacon in the blackening pan. Ray pushed past Jimmy, eagerly awaiting discarded breakfast, and glanced a kiss off Crow Horse’s cheek. It was enough to distract Crow Horse from the stove. He turned, smiling, and cupped Ray’s cheek in his hand, rubbing the pad of his thumb over Ray’s copper-colored skin.
“Glad you’re done peeling,” he said. “Boy, you’re gettin’ dark.”
Ray rubbed at the back of his neck. “It’s the roadblocks. I’m baking out there.”
“Well, you’re staying on ’em; I think you look damn good.”
“You’re scheduling me because you like me tan? Isn’t that an abuse of power?”
“Absolutely. It’s good to be the boss.”
He frowned at the contents of the pan, pulled it off the heat.
“Looks done,” Ray said.
“Smart ass.”
Crow Horse used his spatula to gently lift the slightly-charred breakfast onto plates. Ray tugged at Crow Horse’s belt loop.
“I’m tired of roadblocks, Walter. Let’s take the day off, go back to bed.”
Crow Horse was surprised, but not enough to stop shepherding Ray to the table.
“I was looking for Raymond Levoi,” he said, using his superior mass to bully Ray into a chair. “Tall, blonde, kind of a pain in the ass, but worth it?”
Ray frowned. He poked at his eggs. “It’s gonna be a long summer, is all.”
Crow Horse’s face softened. He rested his hand on Ray’s shoulder, squeezed gently.
“I know, kola,” he said. “I was just teasing before about keeping you on roadblocks all the time; I know you don’t like them. Why don’t you work a couple hours at the fire line this morning, then if we got an easy day we’ll take off early, go get something to eat before we pick up Maggie? Just the two of us?”
Ray smiled, and considered his breakfast. Despite a little over-cooking, the eggs were pretty good. “That’d be nice.”
***
Ray could hear the fire crackling in the distance, could smell the match head’s stink of it. He felt the heat on his body, prickling his sun-sensitive skin, sweat beading up over every inch. His shirt stuck to him like a wet paper towel.
The radio sputtered, and even through the car door and the horrible sound of the fires burning up in the hills, Ray could hear Terry saying his name. He slid into the red-hot sling of the driver’s seat, flinching as his bare hand hit the searing metal brand of the seatbelt. He picked up the handset.
“Levoi.”
“Hey, Ray.” Crow Horse’s voice this time. “How’s the fire line?”
Ray coughed into his handkerchief. His lungs felt scratchy and raw, like they were lined with insulation. “Smoky.”
“You stay on it another half hour or so; then I’m sending Danny up to relieve you. When she gets there, you come on down to the station, and I’ll take you to lunch.”
Another half hour. He could do another half hour. Ray wiped perspiration from his brow and smiled into the handset.
“10-4, boss.”
***
Crow Horse’s idea of taking him out was a decrepit diner in Red Pine, a tumbleweed town a few miles off the rez. The parking lot was full of old pickups; Ray smiled wryly as he parked his own.
“You really know how to treat a guy,” Ray said as they walked up to the door, passing a rusted tin sign: No dogs or Indians.
“You’re gettin’ spoiled,” Crow Horse said, and held the door for him.
The interior of the diner was cramped, and it looked like the décor had not been updated in forty years. There was a long counter running half the length of the building. Half the counter was lined with tall, backless stools, most of which were occupied by weathered Wasi’chu’s in dusty jeans, cowboy boots, and faded flannels; the last two stools were taken by Wasi’chu’s in the local police insignia, steaming their faces over cups of black coffee. A dessert case took up the other half of the counter; Ray investigated the cookies and cakes before turning his attention to the dessert du jour, a lemon meringue pie sitting out on the counter, free from the confines of the glass case. Ray studied the stiff, toasted peaks of the meringue and felt his irritation of a morning on the fire line dissipating.
“Pie looks good,” he said, and followed Crow Horse to a booth.
The cracked red vinyl stuck to Ray’s clammy back, and he frowned; he couldn’t wait for summer to end. But then winter would come soon after, and winters in South Dakota were cruel: roads out under feet of brittle, stinging snow; staying in bed all day because it was the warmest place in the house. Okay, maybe that part wasn’t so bad.
Ray smiled at the thought enough that Crow Horse gave him a familiar expression: his you better not cause any trouble look. Ray pressed himself to the vinyl, grinning.
Crow Horse had Ray’s number; food was a pretty reliable way to bolster his mood. He felt himself loosening up as soon as his burger arrived. Crow Horse was getting looser, too, but that probably had more to do with his beer-to-food ratio.
He got loose enough to give Ray’s knee a squeeze under the table, his palm lingering for a moment on the inside of Ray’s thigh. They had gotten used to the rez, where winktje were part of the whole, and part of the nation besides, and therefore not to be fucked with. The world wasn’t like that.
Ray felt the storm coming before a word was spoken. The click of cowboy boots on the diner’s linoleum floor, and a shadow fell across their table. A six-foot, hundred and ninety pound shadow.
“So,” the cowboy drawled. “Which one’a you’s the girl? Or, whatchacallit-squaw. Ain’t that right, boys? Ain’t that Injun for ‘pussy?’”
Crow Horse withdrew his hand from Ray’s leg. Ray steeled his jaw. He didn’t look up; his gaze was locked somewhere in the distance.
“Walk away,” he said softly.
“What’d you say, honey?” the cowboy said.
“Walk. Away,” Ray said again, louder, enunciating crisply.
The cowboy gave Ray’s shoulder a push. “I know you didn’t just tell me what to do, faggot.”
“Ray,” Crow Horse said. He was wearing his you better not cause any trouble look again.
Ray swallowed. His fists clenched by his sides, so hard the tendons in his fingers ached.
The cowboy shifted on his heels. “I said-”
“I heard you,” Ray said.
“Well, then, you just apologize like a good girl, and we’ll forget the whole thing.”
Crow Horse found Ray’s gaze and held it. Ray took a long breath. The cowboy pushed Ray’s shoulder again; Ray rocked with the blow, and took another breath. The cowboy cuffed Ray’s head, pushing him back into the wall. Ray hit the sticky, tobacco-yellowed laminate and bounced back, bounced out of the booth, his fists flying out and catching the cowboy in the jaw, in the stomach. The man was startled enough not to fight back for a moment, a moment long enough for Ray to drive him back against the lunch counter. The man’s head submerged in the lemon meringue pie.
Ray was aware of Crow Horse coming to his feet behind him.
“I knew I liked that pie,” Ray said.
Crow Horse’s hand on his shoulder, the tips of his fingers pinching into Ray’s muscle.
“Ray,” he hissed.
Ray looked briefly back. He saw Crow Horse’s face and his own immediately fell.
The cowboy regained his footing, standing up and wiping yolk-yellow pie filling from his face. The waitress working the counter was yelling; the lawmen at the end of the counter slid off their stools. Ray held up both hands in surrender.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the waitress. “I’ll pay for it.”
“You’ll get the fuck out of here, chief, is what you’ll do,” one of the officers said, taking Ray by the arm and dragging him out to the parking lot. The officer was a bit saggy around the middle; Ray glanced at the little brass placard over his breast pocket: it said Walker.
“Officer Walker,” Ray said, “I’m sorry to cause a fuss-”
“We were just leaving, anyway,” Crow Horse said, hot on their heels.
He was trailed by the other officer, a younger, leaner man with an angular, serious look to him, like a young hawk. His badge said Donovan. The four of them stopped beside Ray’s truck.
“Y’all going on back to the reservation?” Donovan asked. He looked Ray up and down, stalling at the holster on his hip. “You got a permit for that, boy?”
“I do,” Ray said, and reached for his wallet.
Donovan’s hands tensed, one on his own gun and one on Ray’s hand, arresting the motion. Ray froze.
“Put your hands against the car, spread ’em,” Walker said.
Ray hesitated; Donovan helped him along, jerking Ray’s hand onto the body of the truck. Crow Horse took a step forward, and Walker stopped him with a hard hand to the sternum.
“Hold it right there, chief.”
Ray couldn’t seem to get his body to cooperate; he stood frozen while Donovan moved him into position and began to frisk him. He took Ray’s gun from his holster, and the backup from his ankle.
“I have a permit,” Ray said. “In my wallet-”
He went for his wallet again, and this time Donovan pushed him back, hard, into the truck. Ray’s breath faltered as his ribcage was slammed against the metal body, and his hands fell limp by his side, purpose scared out of them.
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Donovan said.
Ray struggled to get his breath back. He held his hands out in front of him, raised at shoulder height. They shook, and he looked away. I have a permit, he though, but he couldn’t get his mouth to move to make the words. I’m a police officer. My name is Ray Levoi and I work for the FBI. I’m a police officer. I have a permit.
In the first grade, Tommy Logan had said something about Ray’s father, and Ray had taken a swing at him. Ray could not remember what the slur had been, but he did remember what happened after: Tommy had beaten the shit out of him. It was the first time Ray had really been hurt in a fight, and one of the only times he had lost, and he had lost spectacularly. Afterwards, Charlie Darby had walked him to the nurse. Ray had sat on the cot in the nurse’s office, and Charlie had paused for a moment in the doorway, and he had said, “Why didn’t you just let him win? You didn’t have to fight.”
The way Charlie had looked at him then was the way Crow Horse was looking at him now.
Donovan handed Ray’s guns to Walker. Ray’s hands were still shaking, and Crow Horse was still looking at him like that, but Ray hadn’t learned anything in twenty-some odd years, and he put his hands down and stepped forward.
“You can’t take those; I have a permit-”
Donovan hit him, his fist connecting with Ray’s cheekbone with a crack. Ray’s world flooded, throbbing, black and blue, and he fell against the truck. Before Ray could blink the black away, Donovan had him by the shoulders and was slamming him into the truck: once, twice. Ray’s teeth chattered in his skull.
“You need to quit while you’re ahead, chief,” Walker said. “You ain’t careful, you’re gonna end up in jail. And I ain’t talkin’ no tribal jail, neither.”
“Maybe you’d like that,” Donovan said. “I’m sure you heard stories about the kinda thing happens to a man in prison, haven’t you, sweetheart?”
Ray looked at Crow Horse. He held his hands up again.
“We just want to get outta here,” Crow Horse said.
The cops looked at them for a minute. Walker shrugged.
“All right. Get the hell out of my jurisdiction, boys.”
The cops and Ray’s guns walked, laughing, back into the diner. Ray was still backed against the truck, his hands fanned in surrender. Crow Horse was real gentle settling his hand on Ray’s arm, but he jumped anyway.
“Come on, Ray.”
They sat in silence a long time, the keys dangling from the ignition, the engine silent. Finally, Crow Horse looked over.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
Ray’s fingers tested the tender bulge below his right eye.
“I’m gonna have a black eye,” he said.
“That ain’t what I meant.”
Ray closed his eyes. “Take me home.”
***
Crow Horse had a little cut of beef he’d been saving, and once they were home, he got Ray into a chair and put the meat over his swollen eye.
Ray protested. “I don’t want to mess up your steak.”
Crow Horse shrugged. “I like the way you taste.”
Crow Horse squeezed his shoulder, and then went off to pick up Maggie from his folks’. Ray stayed for a while with the cool compress over his eye, and then he got up. He carefully wrapped Crow Horse’s steak up and put it back in the fridge. Then he stripped and took a long shower, letting the hot water sear over his body. He stood under the deluge for a long time, past hearing Crow Horse and Maggie come into the house, and then he shut the water off, and he stood for a long time letting the cool air bite at his skin. He was dry enough that he didn’t bother toweling off before putting on the same clothes-the washer was on the fritz again, and they’d been washing things by hand, a chore he loathed. Droplets of water dripped from his hair and down his neck, sticking the back of his shirt to him.
Maggie was in her room, on the floor with some finger paints. Ray had thought three was too young for that kind of thing, but Crow Horse did not recognize “too young” as an excuse for anything, and had difficulty saying no to Maggie, anyway.
“Daddy!”
Maggie ran up to hug him. Ray registered her hands moving too slickly against his ribs, and winced: the paint. Maggie went back to her coloring, and Ray sank down to sit on the floor with her. He glanced down at his shirt: there was a smeared handprint, a perfect arc like a rainbow, on either side of the buttons running down the middle.
He looked at Maggie’s picture: a family portrait of stubby stick people, their hands the same shape and size as the sun in the corner of the page. He smiled.
“Is that us?”
Maggie nodded. “That’s me, and that’s you, and that’s Pop.”
“What’s Pop?” Crow Horse said, poking his head in.
Maggie held up her painting.
“You’re the pink one,” Ray said, grinning.
Crow Horse came to sit with them on the floor. “That’s only ’cuz I’m so pretty.” He frowned at Ray’s shirt. “What happened to you?”
“Finger paint.”
“Aw, hell. That ain’t comin’ out.”
“No,” Ray mused. “I don’t think it will.” He looked at Maggie. “I bought this shirt for my final interview at Quantico. Do you know what that is?”
Maggie abandoned her paints to come sit with her parents; she loved story time. “No.”
“That’s the headquarters of the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“Intimidation,” Crow Horse said.
“Interpretation,” Ray countered.
“That’s where you work,” Maggie said.
Ray smiled. “That’s right. I bought this shirt a long time ago, when I was trying to get a job there for the first time. I was what they call a brick agent.”
Maggie scrunched her nose. “Why?”
“Because, if I did my job right, people didn’t remember my name, and they didn’t remember my face; I was just another brick in the wall.”
“That sounds silly,” Maggie said.
Ray toyed with her ponytail. “Yeah. Maybe it was.”
“That’s why he ain’t a brick agent anymore,” Crow Horse said. “He came to his senses.”
Ray looked down at his ruined shirt, and then he looked up at Crow Horse.
Ray shrugged, and he smiled. “Maybe I just wanted someone to remember my name.”
***
Ray put Maggie to bed, and then Crow Horse put Ray to bed, taking him gently in hand, stripping him, and laying him down. He was too careful with him; Ray could have stood anything else.
Crow Horse’s head was bent, pressing kisses to Ray’s collarbone. Ray moved his mouth close, tickling Crow Horse’s ear with the movement of his lips.
“Put your back into it, Walter.”
And that was how Ray hurt his back.
Ray moaned, and rubbed ineffectually at his shoulder. “I think I pulled something.”
The triumphant smirk slid off Crow Horse’s face. “I’m sorry, Ray. Didn’t mean to be so rough with you. Here; turn over.”
Ray flipped to his belly. The rough texture of Crow Horse’s hands tickled the sensitive skin of Ray’s back. Immediately, the pressure of the massage wakened the ache of the pulled muscle in a new way, but deep in his flesh Ray could feel himself relaxing. A pleased murmur escaped with an exhalation, and Crow Horse chuckled.
“I have a really good life,” Ray said.
Crow Horse’s hands stilled for a moment.
“Yeah,” he said finally, and continued his work on Ray’s back.
Crow Horse’s steady hands worked Ray’s muscles to a profound relaxation. Ray felt his spine going liquid, and he stretched like a sun-drunk cat.
“I’m sorry about today,” he said.
Crow Horse’s hands stopped for a moment, palms flat on Ray’s back, like a faith healer’s. “That wasn’t your fault.”
“My temper . . .”
“Raymond. It wasn’t your fault.”
Ray propped himself up on his elbows, and looked Crow Horse in the eye. “I don’t want to make more trouble for you.” Crow Horse’s brow creased. “But they took my guns, Walter.”
Crow Horse sighed. He motioned to the pillows, and Ray lay back down. Crow Horse went to work massaging his back again.
“Was wonderin’ how long it was gonna take you to start fussing about that,” he said.
Ray frowned. “I’m not ‘fussing.’ An infant fusses. I’m-”
“You could just leave it be. I’ll buy you a new gun. It’s a write off, you know.”
“They took my guns,” Ray said again. And then: “You wouldn’t like me if I was easy.”
Crow Horse shook his head, but he was smiling. “Yes, dear.”
***
Ray drove an hour and a half for a haircut. He put on his second best shirt and his best black suit jacket, and drove back to Red Pine. He kept his sunglasses on when he went inside the diner to ask for directions to the police department. As he walked back to his car, the rusted sign caught his eye: No dogs or Indians. Without breaking stride, Ray tore it from the wall and threw it in the trash.
The Red Pine Sheriff’s Department wasn’t that dissimilar from the Bear Creek Police Department: government-issue fluorescents and linoleum, a few officers milling about. Red Pine was a little pickier about uniform than the tribal PD, and the faces were paler, but really there wasn’t much difference. Ray smiled sourly, and asked dispatch for Walker and Donovan, flashing his FBI credentials and then putting them back in his pocket.
It was clear they didn’t recognize him at first; they walked up and studied him in his crisp suit and dark glasses, and they frowned. Ray took off his sunglasses, showing his bruised eye, and he smiled coldly.
Walker spoke while Donovan was just recognizing his handiwork. “Well, if it ain’t the little Injun-”
“Call me the little Injun that could,” Ray said. “Are you gentlemen familiar with United States Code Title 18, Chapter 111?”
The men exchanged a look, but said nothing. Ray continued, silkily.
“USC 18, Chapter 111, makes assault of a federal officer punishable by up to twenty years in a federal penitentiary,” he said.
“That’s good to know,” Walker said. “Where’d you learn that? Sioux Falls?”
“Quantico,” Ray said, and he pulled his fed ID from his pocket and flipped it open.
Donovan paled. Walker looked like he was choking on his tongue.
“My name is Special Agent Ray Levoi,” Ray said. “And I want my guns back.”
He smiled.