FIC: Take Cover (Ray Levoi/Walter Crow Horse, PG-13)
TITLE: Take Cover
RATING: PG-13
FANDOM: Thunderheart
PAIRING: Ray Levoi/Walter Crow Horse
SUMMARY: Ray gets homesick.
AUTHOR’S NOTES: Written for writers_choice prompt #418 signal.
Maybe “liaison” was Latin for “you have to go to twice as many conferences now.” Ray watched the rain splatter on the window, the dark clouds rolling through the slate-colored sky, for a long moment before returning to the bed. He plopped down on the plasticky Holiday Inn bedspread and stared up at the popcorn whorls on the ceiling. He flipped through channel after channel of uniformly uninteresting programming, pausing briefly on the pay-per-view menu before turning the television off. He crossed and uncrossed his legs, his arms, then turned over on his belly to grab for the room service menu again. He briefly entertained the option of ordering a second dinner, then threw the menu back to the nightstand and picked up the phone.
“I know you had to work, and I know I said I was okay with you not coming with me, but I’ve changed my mind and now I hate you.”
“And hello to you, Ray,” Crow Horse said.
Ray moaned and ground his head into the pillow. “I’m so bored I want to cry. I hate this.”
“You ain’t even at the conference anymore, are you? What time is it there?”
“Almost ten. No, we’ve been out for hours.”
“Why don’t you go out and play with your federal friends?”
“I don’t have any friends at the FBI anymore, thanks to you and Frank Coutelle. Everybody hates me, or I hate them.”
Crow Horse chuckled. “I don’t wanna kick you when you’re down, man, but you sound like a whiny little girl right now.”
Ray swallowed a moan; that would only vindicate Crow Horse and his ridiculous accusations.
“I miss you, asshole,” Ray said softly.
“Miss you, too. Whatcha been doing with yourself, besides learning how to be a more effective government tool?”
“Watch it,” Ray said.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. You’re my tool, too.”
Ray let it go. “I did some laps in the pool until some kids showed up to swim, ordered room service-”
“There’s a pool? And room service?”
Ray yanked at the phone cord. “Yeah. The FBI sends us to nicer hotels than the shit holes we stay in for local law enforcement expos. The TVs even have that pay-per-view thing-”
“Yeah? You gonna watch a dirty movie, fuck yourself?”
“I was thinking about it,” Ray admitted.
There was a long pause from the other end of the line.
“Really?” Crow Horse asked finally.
Ray laughed. “I did have a sex life before I met you, you know.”
“You and your hand?”
“Fuck you.”
“I would,” Crow Horse said, “if it weren’t for the commute.”
Thunder cracked overhead, so near the windows shook in their panes. A moment after, the camera flash illumination of lightning lit the room. Ray twisted the phone cord around his finger.
“I always think that when it’s storming where I am, it’s storming where you are, too,” he said.
There was a long pause; Ray listened to the echo of separation filter across the line. When Crow Horse finally spoke, his tone was gentle.
“You’ll be home soon,” he said.
Ray thought of the years he’d spent in deep cover, years with no country, where home was a foreign concept. He had never been homesick, not once during those long months living as someone else. He hadn’t even missed himself. And now he was an hour’s plane ride away, and missing home with an ache so profound it was difficult to breathe. He wanted to walk the dusty earth, and drink the limestone-rich water, and he wanted to take Crow Horse’s hair in his hand and pull him so close that it was hard to tell where he ended and Ray himself began.
Rain assaulted the windows; thunder cracked. The tornado sirens started in the distance, low at first, and then louder. Ray thought of school air raid drills, hiding beneath his desk, his hands on his head. Take cover.
Cover seemed a long way away.
Ray cradled the phone to his ear, listened to Crow Horse’s quiet breathing filter across the line.
“I miss you.”