Completed DS Fic: Foreign Territory, RK/BF, Part 3/3
Foreign Territory, By Aristide, Part 3 of 3
One thing was clear: if Ray didn't want to have unexpected and unknown truths popping up at him when he might or might not be ready for them, he was going to have to put in some heavy time Thinking About Gay Things.
Which wasn't that easy to do, since it made him jumpy and kind of paranoid, at least during the day, in public, when there were people around. So instead he tried Not To Think About Gay Things, but then *that* didn't work out because all of a sudden everything everybody said or did seemed to have a second meaning to it, a hidden meaning, and all the hidden meanings seemed to be... well, gay.
He had a hell of a time at the 27th (because sixty percent of cop humor was about dicks and the other sixty percent was about asses, and he really couldn't believe he'd never noticed how totally gay that was), at the grocery store (where he had to force himself not to stare at the tender, almost obscenely sensual way the produce guy restocked the cucumbers), even at the auto parts junkyard (where he Did Not Listen to the huge, muscle-bound guy who kept going on about drive shafts and rods and pistons and which kind of motor oil was best for keeping your parts lubed up), and it was damn hard to work a case or pick out peanut butter or hunt for a decent used carburetor when he was busy Not Thinking About Gay Things and couldn't stop wondering if people were looking at him funny.
So the days kind of sucked. But at night, when he was alone, in bed, he rolled with it. Of course, that wasn't so much Thinking About Gay Things as it was Thinking About Fraser in a Very Gay Way, but he was actually okay with that since it didn't make him paranoid so much as, well, horny, and hey, he was right there in bed and there were tissues and lotion on the nightstand, so that was all good.
He thought about Fraser and the car and the closet and the kitchen, about Fraser sucking him in a way that was so eager it was almost clumsy, wet and hot and inexperienced and how that had done something to him besides just turn him on like crazy so that afterwards he slid off the table and went for Fraser with no hesitation at all, wet, bitter kisses and Fraser in his hand, spread out on the kitchen floor. Which was when he found out that jerking Fraser off was incredibly, insanely hot, nevermind that it only took about ten seconds. It was a really hot ten seconds.
It was while he was alone at home (not in bed yet, but getting ready for it), that Ray went from Thinking About Gay Things to Thinking About Really *Really* Gay Things, Really Scary Gay Things, and it was all Stella's fault. Sort of.
The weather had turned cold, fiercely, bitterly cold, and so he was hunting through his bottom drawer for his heaviest winter socks, which was the only way he knew for sure he could go to sleep and not wake up with toesicles in the morning. He pawed through everything once, didn't find them, pawed through again and found his second-heaviest pair of socks, thought about wearing them instead, thought 'toesicles' and stuffed them back in the drawer, and then went through everything more slowly, digging all the way to the bottom.
He was just about to say fuck the gas bill and go turn up the heat for the night when a solid 'clunk' from the drawer's bottom layer caught his attention. He fished around, dug deeper, grabbed... and pulled out a long, slim, chrome-colored vibrator.
Stella's vibrator. Or, more accurately, the vibrator that had been Stella's until she packed up and left him and forgot to take it and he found it in the nightstand a week later and of course he couldn't give it back and he couldn't stand to throw it out just then and he certainly couldn't stand to sit there crying and holding a vibrator so he'd jammed it into the bottom of his least-used drawer where he forgot all about it and where, apparently, it ate his best winter socks.
He remembered when Stella had brought it home, a gag prize she won at her friend Gabrielle's bachelorette party for making the best improvised lingerie out of gift wrap and toilet paper (and yes, there were moments in his life when Ray was so, *so* glad that he was a guy, and yes, that had been one of them). She'd only bothered to bring it home so she could share the laugh with him, and once that was over with she was about to chuck it in the trash when he said hey, no, let's try it out, could be fun, and Stella got all red-faced and embarrassed and all oh-no-Ray-you-can't-be-serious, but he was.
Back then he loved talking Stella into things (because back then she still smiled about it when she decided to give in), so he'd talked her into it and taken her to bed and done everything he could think of along with a bunch of stuff he invented on the spot. He'd made her come over and over again, made her come until she couldn't anymore, until she was limp and damp and flushed in his arms, beautiful and perfect and all his.
Ray bounced the silver thing on his palm, remembering the last time he'd seen it, when all those Stella memories coming back to him had been like having his guts pulled out slowly through a very small incision in his chest. That had been bad, that had been so, so bad.
But now it wasn't like that, not the same thing at all. It was a good memory, and it was only when he'd finally realized that he had to let the good *and* bad Stella memories be what they were--memories--that he'd been able to start getting through each day like something other than the walking dead. It wasn't a symbol any more, this stupid-looking chrome thing, it wasn't a trap. It was just a leftover, just a dumb toy, just something people used for--
Ray stopped cold. He closed his eyes and dropped the vibrator like it had burned him, and heard it roll across the floor until it came to rest against his foot. He had to force himself not to yank his foot back, had to force himself to open his eyes and look at it, all shiny and toylike and bright, snuggled up to his foot like an innocent bullet-shaped metal kitten.
It was a tool of Satan. Gay, gay Satan.
Ray made a grab for the vibrator, missed, tried again and got it, jammed it in the drawer, slammed the drawer shut and then got the hell away from there fast, thinking maybe he wouldn't go to bed just yet after all. Maybe he'd go take a nice long walk in the snow instead.
***
If he'd had a ringside seat, it's entirely possible that Ray might have enjoyed watching the battle between his curiosity and his fear, because that motherfucker was *epic*--a real Frazier/Ali-style heavyweight title showstopper. He could have made a fortune selling popcorn and scalping tickets, except for the fact that he would have quietly strangled to death on his own shame first.
It was one for the books all right, a full twelve rounds of nonstop pulse-pounding mayhem, the outcome uncertain until the very, very end when Ray tossed the vibrator away and laid splay-legged on his bed, heaving for breath and hoping his heart wasn't going to up and quit on him, studying the shiny pattern of droplets he'd somehow managed to shoot a good three feet up the wall above the headboard and wondering if he'd ever be able to move his limbs again.
"Hail Satan," Ray wheezed, and closed his eyes.
***
There were good days and bad days, just like always. Only sometimes they were a little different.
Ray had a bad day when a couple of thugs that Huey and Dewey brought in got loose in interview room two, and before Ray could yell for help he'd gotten his skull pounded through the drywall. He cleaned up the cut over his eye in the men's room, and Fraser came in to help and ended up helping him into a stall and jerking him off fast and sweet, one hand slicking over his cock and the other covering his mouth. Which, Ray had to admit, made it a slightly less bad day (that, and the fact that Welsh made Dewey go take a refresher course in Proper Restraint Techniques at the Academy).
And Ray had a good day when a pursuit over a bag of stolen diamonds turned into an impromptu ice-hockey grudge match on the frozen streets of the shipping docks, and Ray took out two of the robbers with a piece of packing crate and then whacked the bag of diamonds towards Fraser before the rest of them crashed into him, and Fraser caught the bag in his hat neat as you please, game over, good guys 1, bad guys 0, let's hear it for the Canadian hat trick. It was so cool.
It was cool enough that it led to Ray blowing Fraser for the first time in the back seat of the GTO when they found their way back to the alley they'd parked in, and he might not have gone there but Fraser stiffened up on him again, which meant that it was time for Ray to get pushy. So he pushed, and Fraser shook like a leaf the whole time Ray was down on him, moaning like his heart was breaking and touching Ray's face gently, very gently. Ray found out that Fraser's cock wasn't too much to deal with if he let his hand help out, but he only had the one free because he needed the other one for himself, since the whole thing turned him on like crazy.
And sometimes he'd think about that, watching Fraser go over a case file or eat his dinner or take a reaming from the Ice Queen, sometimes he'd think 'hey, I've blown that guy', and the whole thing would seem totally nuts all over again. But other times, certain other times, he'd think it and then he'd have to do something about it, drag Fraser into the closest available private place and just go all over him, as much as he could get away with given limited space and time and the fact that he was always half-panicked at the idea of them getting caught.
Fraser never resisted, and always responded, which was only fair because it wasn't like Ray ever said anything when Fraser dragged *him* off (except of course for really quiet four-letter words and a few enthusiastic-but-embarrassing things he'd rather not dwell on).
After a brief struggle with himself, Ray started carrying his own hankie, which cut down on his laundry some.
***
The annual Advanced Weaponry conference in Miami was coming up, but this year Ray wasn't falling for it. The conference had been expanded to a full six days and so competition for the assignment was fiercer than ever, but the fact was that getting picked for it was something that required subtlety and finesse, and Ray knew better than anybody that he didn't exactly have piles of that lying around. Now, if getting picked had been something that required a smart mouth and a problem with authority, he'd have been a shoo-in (at least, that was what Welsh had told him last year). This year, uh-uh, no way, he was out of it. But he had to admit that it was kind of fun to watch.
The initial scrimmage was short but brutal, and when the dust settled there were three top contenders on the field: Huey, Dewey, and Matson-the-split-shift-guy. It was understood that dirty tricks and cheating were acceptable, which was how Matson got knocked out early after he 'accidentally' overheard Dewey going on at length to Brenda from Booking about Lieutenant Welsh's love of clowns, and how that could possibly be leveraged.
Matson (displaying, in Ray's opinion, all the brains that could be expected of a split-shift-guy) immediately sent Welsh a Clown-O-Gram, but Welsh (who had hated and feared clowns from birth, a fact which everybody--except apparently Matson--knew perfectly well) sent the clown shrieking out of his office, followed by a garroted balloon poodle, after which he called Matson on the carpet and chewed his ass for an hour. Exit Matson.
Huey tried cigars. That didn't work. It never did, but he tried it anyway. Dewey made a lot of noise about having an 'in' for primo Cubs tickets, until someone pointed out to him that it was December, after which he shut up about it. He went with single-malt scotch instead, which got him an in-depth lecture from Welsh about the state of his ulcer, with details and even some helpful drawings.
Since expensive gifts were still cause for immediate disqualification, Huey next tried to 'loan' Welsh a top-of-the-line hedge trimmer that would do pretty much everything except seed your lawn for you, but since Welsh lived in a big concrete building in the middle of their big concrete city and had no green things anywhere around him and liked it that way, that particular offer didn't go down too well.
The next day Dewey returned from lunch carefully guarding a large brown paper bag with some grease spots near the bottom. "This is it," he said proudly, patting the bag. "This is the bomb."
"Do the words 'ethnic appropriation' mean anything to you?" Huey asked irritably, but everyone knew he'd only been able to get store credit when he returned the hedge trimmer, so of course he was pissed off.
"No, really. It's a bomb. Hoagie from Petrello's on Kedzie--salami and meatball. It's his favorite, they only make it for him." Dewey tapped the side of his nose. "I have sources."
"Yeah," Ray said, "you do whatever the little voices tell you to."
Dewey pretended not to hear him. "Excuse me, guys, but glory and sunshine and bikinis await," and he marched into Welsh's office, closing the door behind him.
Silence. Lots of silence. Huey's shoulders sagged. "Son of a bitch."
Ray whapped him on the back. "Hey, next year. Maybe you can trick your partner into giving Welsh some edible underwear--"
Welsh's door flew open, and Dewey, greasy bag in hand, sprang out of it as if he'd been kicked. The door slammed shut behind him hard enough to rattle the glass.
Dewey shrugged. "How was I supposed to know his doctor told him 'no refined flour'? And what the hell does refined flour have to do with a hoagie anyway--"
Welsh's door swooped open again, this time with Welsh in it. Everybody got very quiet.
"Gentlemen," Welsh said, in that way he had that somehow made the word rhyme with 'assholes'. "This has gone on long enough. Vecchio--I don't know where you managed to find some tact, but you should shop there more often. I hear Miami's lovely this time of year; send me a postcard." Then he ripped the paper bag out of Dewey's hand, stomped into his office, and slammed the door again.
"Foul!" Dewey yelled, at the same time that Huey said "Scab," and Fraser clapped him on the shoulder and said "Congratulations, Ray!"
"Uh, yeah, same to you," Ray said numbly, and very carefully did not look at Fraser, because until this very moment he hadn't even considered *why* he'd decided not to try for six glorious days in Florida, but now that he was going it was really, really obvious.
***
And the next day he was packed, he was ready, he had tickets and a room booked and he only had to work half his shift because he had to get to O'Hare in time to catch his flight to Miami. Fraser gave him one hell of a sendoff in the janitor's closet, kissing him breathless and then pushing him up against the locked door and blowing him not once but twice, the first time fast and eager and the second slow and teasing and sweet, and when he was done Ray had gnaw-marks on his wrist where he'd sunk his teeth in to keep from yelling, and he'd sweated so much his clothes were stuck to him everywhere, and for the first time ever Fraser pulled Ray's hand away from his cock when Ray finally recovered enough to reach out and grab him.
"No, Ray," Fraser said, his eyes brilliant and his cheeks flushed and his lips wet, "I want to... I'll save it for your homecoming." He gave Ray one last kiss, lingering and salty and lewd, and was gone.
Ray couldn't decide if that was really weird or really weirdly hot, but he leaned his sweaty forehead on a cold metal shelf and waited for his lungs to stop heaving and thought about it, thinking about Fraser and his weirdness and the way things happened, about safe and not-safe and control and no control, and not all of it was Fraser, he knew that, but that didn't really matter when he had no idea what to do about the part of it that was.
***
The Florida sunshine hit him like, like... like some really big warm thing, and as soon as he got outside the airport terminal Ray dropped his bag between his feet and stretched, feeling the heat soak into him, and he would've said it was better than sex if he hadn't recently had several opportunities to know that he'd be lying like a dog if he did.
Ray cabbed to his hotel, checked in, went up to his room, unpacked, changed into warm-weather clothes, sat down, got up and checked his hair in the mirror to make sure it had survived the flight okay, sat down again, almost got up but didn't, and then asked himself who was being a big dumb guy now and got up, decisively, and left the room.
***
Three days later Ray was just about ready to kill someone, and he didn't much care who. Florida sucked--it was ugly and too bright and crammed full of bugs and so hot it was like getting mugged by a steam room. The conference itself was incredibly boring, and it seemed like a minor miracle that anything with 'Advanced Weaponry' in the title could come across as boring, but apparently the conference organizers had really applied themselves.
And how come he'd never noticed how fucking annoying cops were? The way they talked, the things they talked about--tits and guns and how bad the coffee was and how bad the bad guys were and *endless* stories about their own personal feats of daring (which Ray was just never going to buy coming from any guy in white patent loafers and plaid sansabelt pants). The first day some loudmouth from Duluth had slapped him on the back at happy hour and told him, "Drink up, Chicago!", and now everybody called him Chicago, like it was cool or something, which it really wasn't.
He'd thought about fixing his conference badge so that instead of 'Law Enforcement Applications of Modern Advanced Weaponry--Attendee', it read 'Huge Bunch of Drunk Lame-O Jerk-Off Losers--Hostage', but in the end he didn't. Nobody would have noticed anyways.
Day three of the conference was a Friday, and the sessions wrapped at two o'clock to give all the attendees some extra time for plowing hookers and getting good and shitfaced before the Keynote Breakfast the next morning (not that the conference program book came right out and said that, but Ray thought it might as well have, since everyone seemed to take it as a given). He himself turned down several invitations to various outings from various groups of his fellow conference-goers: titty bar, sports bar, live sex show, titty bar, karaoke bar (this one didn't actually surprise him, coming as it did from a lonely rookie from Nevada who forcibly reminded him of Turnbull every time he opened his mouth), gun show, and titty bar.
The gun show guys were easily the creepiest (the fact that none of them seemed to care that one of their number was wearing a bedsheet and a Darth Vader mask didn't help), but the assorted groups headed for assorted titty bars would sweep the 'most pathetic' category, hands down. But one thing Ray knew for sure was that he didn't want to be within a hundred feet of any of them, especially not in public, even if he had decided that he hated Miami and all the people in it.
In the end, after going up to his room and sitting down and getting up again a number of times, Ray made for the hotel bar, and one glance around after he stepped into the wonderfully dim-and-cool interior made him glad he did, because the only people in there were the older cops, the quiet cops, the antisocial cops, and a few cops who looked way too depressed to talk to anybody--in other words, it was exactly what a cop bar should be. He bellied up and ordered a beer.
He'd finished half of it when he realized that he had company. He turned to the left to find that one of the quiet cops had settled in next to him, a pretty-but-tough little blonde woman he'd seen taking careful notes at the lectures. As one of only a handful of women there she'd stuck out, but what Ray had noticed most was the way she carried herself: calm and confident, like she belonged there but wasn't looking to prove anything. That stuck out a lot in a place where *everybody* was looking to prove something, namely that they should be Lead Asshole on the Asshole Float in Assholes On Parade.
"Mind if I join you?" she asked, the first time Ray had heard her say anything at all. He liked her voice, low and kind of musical.
"Yeah, sure," he said, waving at the bar. "Wasn't like I was sitting here trying to think up any new applications for advanced weaponry or anything."
"Thanks." She tipped her bottle of beer towards him in salute before she drank. After she set the bottle down she wiped her hand on her jeans and then held it out towards him. "Michelle Markowitz, Homicide Detective. Gary, Indiana."
Ray shook her hand. "Ray Vecchio, uh, Chicago. Detective."
Michelle squinted at him. "That's funny, you don't look Italian."
"Yeah. I get that a lot."
Ray went back to staring into his beer, and Michelle went to work on finishing hers, and when she was done he signaled the bartender for another one for her, which she clicked against his glass.
"Thanks again." She took a sip, set the bottle down, and then squinted at him a second time. "You don't talk much, do you?"
He opened his mouth to tell her how wrong she was, but then he thought about how many words that would take and how much he'd have to tell her, so he shrugged instead. "Sometimes I do, I guess."
She patted his shoulder. "Hey, it's okay, it's nice to spend five minutes with a guy who isn't a blowhard."
Her choice of words made him choke on his beer a little, but he passed it off as a cough. "Thanks."
"Welcome."
He looked at her then, pretty light green eyes and smooth blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, her tough and pouty little mouth that was neither one right now because she was smiling. At him. "See anything green?"
Ray hadn't heard that one since... well, since he'd been old enough to play on the monkey bars. "Sure. Your eyes are green."
"Nice to see you got the Detective badge on merit, and not just 'cause you're handsome," she said lightly, playfully, and reached out to pat him again, but Ray felt her hand coming towards him from a long way away, everything suddenly moving in slow-motion, her hand moving closer and closer and he knew what this all meant even if it was low-key, just like she was low-key, low-key and simple and it had been so long since he'd done anything that could even remotely fall into either of those categories that he totally, completely panicked.
Ray leapt off his barstool so fast that he nearly knocked it over. "Sorry," he mumbled, digging in his pocket for bills which he tossed on the bar without even looking at them, "I have to... uh, I got these weird groinal lesions I gotta go take care of." And he would swear before the throne of God that that was *not* what he'd planned to say, but his argument was weak because he was in mid-panic and so of course he didn't plan anything, and now along with the panic he had embarrassment as hot and ugly as the whole state of Florida crashing down on him, and he turned and left the bar before he could make it any worse.
Ray went back up to his room, sat down, got up, sat down again, yanked on his hair with both hands, got up again, changed, packed, went down to the lobby and checked out of the hotel, stepped out into the hellish Florida sunshine, and lifted his arm for a cab.
***
He'd had a clear plan at first, a plan prompted by the dense, low burn in his guts that had settled in after the panic finally died away: go directly to Fraser, do not pass Go, blah, blah, blah. Go to Fraser, and do what needed to be done. But somewhere over Tennessee or Kentucky that burn started to slip away from him, and by the time he landed at O'Hare he thought that maybe he should go home first: dump his suitcase, check on the turtle, take a shower and change his clothes to get the plane smell off him, that sort of thing. So he did that.
And then he thought that maybe he should get something to eat, because plane food sucked as hard as cop conferences did, so he bundled himself up and went to the Korean barbecue place on the corner, which took care of that.
And then he thought he really should go check in at the station, and by that time he knew for sure what he was doing but he couldn't help it, so off to the station he went.
Which turned out to be one of those things, one of those fate's accomplices things that Fraser talked about, because he ran into Fraser (literally, ran right into him) as soon as he turned the corner into the bullpen.
"Ray!" Fraser said, and jeez, you'd think he'd been gone a year or been presumed dead or something, the way the guy lit up. "Ray, you're back!"
"Everybody's a detective," Ray mumbled, and then shook that off. "Yeah. Came back early. The conference was, uh, lame. Really lame." He looked around. It was late, and there was nobody in the bullpen except for Matson, working on the second half of his shift and giving him the stink-eye from his desk. "So how come you're here, Fraser?"
Fraser's cheeks went very faintly pink. "I thought I might... that is, I thought it would be a good idea for me to monitor any developments in your open cases, so that I could make sure you were thoroughly briefed. Upon your return. Which reminds me, the Peterson case, the forgery, a few curious facts have come to light..."
Fraser told him about it, and Ray kind of listened, but he couldn't have been paying too much attention because he hadn't even noticed when they'd started to move but suddenly here they were, moving, drifting along through the hallways and turning corners until they arrived at their closet, which really ought to have a fucking plaque on it by now. Fraser held the door open for him and in he went, and how weird was it that the smell of toner cartridges and typewriter ribbons made his dick twitch?
"I've missed you, Ray," Fraser said once the door was closed, all the cop-business gone from his voice like magic, and he leaned in and took Ray by the shoulders--
And Ray put his hand right in the center of Fraser's uniformed chest, and held him off. "Stop, Fraser."
Fraser stopped, of course he stopped. "Ray?"
Ray ducked his head a little. "I'm not gonna do this any more, Fraser. It's not right." He took a breath. "I can't... we can't keep ambushing each other like this, with kisses and blowjobs and orgasms and stuff, right in the middle of a police precinct. It's not right."
Fraser stepped away, looked away, and even in the dim light from the overhead bulb he looked pale, so very pale, sculpted from snow. "I... I see."
"No you don't, Fraser." Ray reached out and got Fraser's chin in his hand, and Fraser wasn't snow at all but warm skin, smooth and perfect. He lifted Fraser's head until their eyes met. "Come home with me."
Fraser's eyes widened. "What?"
Ray felt something quiver in his stomach, there and then gone, but it was too late for gut-level freak-outs, it had been too late for a long time. "Come home with me, Fraser," he repeated, and on the plane he'd planned out kind of a speech for this moment, anticipating Fraser's responses (and boy, the Fraser in his head was one snippy motherfucker), but he got how dumb that was now. "You can say no, okay? But I'm asking. Come home with me."
For a moment he thought Fraser was going to say no, or at least argue with him about it, and it looked like Fraser did too, but maybe the ability to avoid saying dumb things was in the air, going around like a virus, because after a few seconds the careful-and-stubborn fell away from Fraser's face, and his shoulders relaxed. "All right, Ray."
And just like that, they were in new territory all over again.
***
It was easy to think that it was too late for freaking out, but apparently his freak-center hadn't gotten the memo, because once they were there, in Ray's bedroom, in Ray's home, the door locked on the outside world and the two of them staring at Ray's bed like they expected it to jump up and do a tapdance, Ray found that it wasn't too late after all. Not by a mile.
"Ray--"
"I'm a little nervous!" Ray said very loudly, much more loudly than he'd intended to, not that he'd intended to say that at all. He stuck his hands in his pockets.
Fraser looked like his own freak-center was putting in some overtime. "Well," he said cautiously, "you don't really need to be. I mean, we could always just--"
"Oh, no, Fraser," Ray interrupted, shaking his head and squeezing his fists in his pockets. "No. We're gonna fuck, and we're gonna do it in my bed. Unless you say no."
Fraser blinked. Then blushed. "I'm not saying no, Ray," he said quietly, sounding a little choked. "I'm certainly not going to be the one to say no."
Great, Ray thought, next thing you know we'll be calling each other 'pussy' and arguing about which one of us is he-man enough to take it up the ass... "Okay," he said, and rocked on his toes. "Then that's that."
"Indeed." Fraser studied him for a moment. "Ray, do you have... have you done this before?"
Ray scratched his ear. "Uh, not exactly, no." He waited for his ears to stop burning. "You?"
Fraser shook his head. "Other than you, I've been intimate with one other person. One woman, to be precise."
"Oh." Ray wondered what the hell he was supposed to say to that, what guys were supposed to say in this situation. "Was she hot?"
Fraser stared at him, his face suddenly as smooth as still water. "She was soulless."
"Oh." Way to go, Kowalski. Why don't you just kick the guy in the nuts while you're at it? He sighed. "Sorry."
"It's all right," Fraser said, and it looked like maybe in a weird way that had been the right thing to say after all, because after a few seconds Fraser came back from wherever he'd gone off to and when he did he didn't look scared anymore, or at least not scared of Ray. He stepped closer. "I really did miss you, Ray."
Ray let his fists relax back into hands, and took a step forward himself. "You too, Fraser. I did, I mean. Miss you."
Fraser took another step. "I'm sorry to hear that the conference was unproductive."
Ray snorted, and then stepped. "The conference sucked rancid maggot ass, Fraser."
Fraser appeared to be thinking that over. "That's... that's really disgusting, Ray," he said, but he stepped closer anyway.
"You don't have to tell me, I was there." Ray stepped, and then there were no more steps to take, just he and Fraser, face to face. And because Fraser had gone first, because Fraser had had the balls to do what he did all those months ago, Ray leaned in and kissed him, and it wasn't an ambush or a game of tag or a control thingy or anything like that, it was just a kiss from him to Fraser, soft and warm and not in a hurry to go anywhere.
Ray nudged his forehead against Fraser's. "We're gonna take this slow."
Fraser nudged back. "Well, that's just fine, Ray."
***
Ray *hated* slow. Slow *sucked*. Slow was for Grandmas and poodle-owners and high-school history teachers from Idaho, not for naked, sweaty men who were trying their level best to fuck their naked, sweaty, gorgeous partners through the mattress.
"Oh, God, Fraser," he said, not for the first time but he couldn't help it--Fraser was everywhere, Fraser was all around him, and Fraser was slick and hot and squeezing the almighty bejeezus out of his cock (probably on purpose, the bastard).
He'd gone along with it when Fraser said he wanted to be the one to get fucked, gone along like a lamb, a smug lamb, knowing how wild it had made him and wanting to surprise Fraser with a taste of that, which was all good except Ray wasn't a vibrator and now his nerves were jumping like cats on fire, and his whole upper body was twisting with the effort not to just sink down on Fraser and yank his legs up and pound into him like a maniac.
But he didn't. Fraser was good, Fraser was happy, Fraser was purring along like a well-oiled machine beneath him, and maybe Fraser didn't get crazy from this the way Ray did but once he'd relaxed he got right into it, moaning and gasping and kissing Ray deeply whenever he wasn't doing either of those first two. His cock was hard and leaking, sliding against Ray's belly with every stroke, and while that was great for reassurance, right now it was just another thing that was making Ray insane. Apparently Fraser *loved* slow. Which figured.
"Ray..." Right in his ear, sounding throaty and blissed-out and so turned on that it made his balls ache, not to mention that whole talking-while-fucking thing, which always drove him nuts anyway.
"Nr."
"Ray, this is good, this is so good..."
"Nrr."
"Ohh, Ray... please... yes, ohh..."
"Nrr!"
"Ray... j'aime votre peau, j'aime votre odeur..."
"Fuck!" Ray's eyes rolled back in his head and something in his spine went off like a line of firecrackers and before he knew it he'd curled his arms under Fraser's shoulders and pulled and rammed forward with no control at all, shattered and wrecked and shaking. Fraser made this *huge* noise underneath him, but when Ray forced himself to look down to see if he'd maybe just done something really awful he saw Fraser wide-eyed and blitzed and *fucked*, and it looked like he'd finally managed to surprise Fraser after all.
"Oh my God, Ray!"
Oh yeah. Ray got as deep into Fraser's ass as he could, forgetting all about slow and fucking Fraser hard and fast and desperate, and thank God Fraser seemed to be a dual-speed kind of guy because he grabbed Ray's hips hard enough to bruise and the more Ray gave him the more he asked for, riding Ray's cock and squeezing and Ray didn't care because he *had* to come, had to, or he was gonna die or come or something, so he kissed Fraser and their teeth crashed and their tongues touched and Fraser heaved up right off the bed, shuddering, and Ray went with the pull and the throb and the heat of it and came his fucking brains out.
***
When Ray woke up, he had about five seconds of oh-holy-shit-I-did-some-Really-Gay-Things-with-Fraser, but that gave way to about thirty seconds of I-made-Fraser-come-so-hard-he-almost-passed-out-heh-heh-heh-I-am-the-man, so that was okay.
He opened his eyes and turned over, surprised to see that Fraser was still asleep; he'd thought for sure Fraser would be an early worm kind of guy if ever there was one. Fraser had the covers tugged up to his chin so that only his face was visible, flushed and damp and so innocent-looking that for a moment it seemed impossible to believe that this was the same guy who just last night had humped his cock like an animal until he came all over both of them, but Ray had the bruises to prove it, and besides, it wasn't the kind of thing he was ever going to forget.
As he watched, Fraser's eyelids fluttered, then he yawned, stretched, stiffened, and made a sleepy-curious noise that Ray would bet his next paycheck translated to something like 'hey, why is my ass sore?' Ray grinned.
Fraser opened his eyes, and if he had any first-moment freak-outs or smug attacks, they didn't show. "Ray," he said softly, "you're awake. And you're smiling."
"Yeah, I do that sometimes." He was about to add that it wasn't something Fraser should get used to, but before he could Fraser had octopused out of his huddle and drawn him in and wrapped him up, a tight, multi-limbed snuggle that Ray hadn't really expected but which, once he settled into it, was surprisingly... nice. Comfortable. Sleepy.
He'd actually started to drift a little when Fraser spoke again. "Thank you for taking me home, Ray."
Ray nudged Fraser with his chin. "You're a freak, Fraser. And you're welcome."
But he was awake now, awake and really aware of how close he was to Fraser, that Fraser was here, in his bed, with his heat and his soft skin and his smell and everything all wrapped up and tangled together and... close. It was new territory once again, maybe the last new territory, their final frontier. Ray snorted.
"Ray?"
Ray hesitated, rubbing his cheek mindlessly back and forth over the silky skin of Fraser's shoulder, then planted his hand on Fraser's chest and levered himself up onto his elbow, sending the covers sliding down and ignoring Fraser's startled wheeze.
"If I had a pair of boots that you hated, what would you do?"
Fraser blinked, and his eyebrows drew down. "If you had... if I... Well, would these be boots that I would be required to wear?"
"No, they're my boots--my boots, Fraser. I own 'em. I wear 'em. You hate 'em. What would you do?"
Fraser scratched his eyebrow. "Are the boots endangering your life in some way?"
"They're not super-villain boots, Fraser, okay? They're just boots. Regular, non-homicidal boots."
Fraser appeared to be thinking about it, thinking hard, but in the end he just shook his head. "Well then, I suppose the answer to your question is that I would do nothing, Ray."
He studied Fraser closely. He meant it. "Yeah, okay. I was just checking."
Ray came down off his elbow, and sure enough Fraser wrapped him right back up again, tugging the covers up and getting all around him and holding him close, and the warmth felt so good soaking into him, surprisingly good, because he hadn't even realized that he was cold until just now.
End
One thing was clear: if Ray didn't want to have unexpected and unknown truths popping up at him when he might or might not be ready for them, he was going to have to put in some heavy time Thinking About Gay Things.
Which wasn't that easy to do, since it made him jumpy and kind of paranoid, at least during the day, in public, when there were people around. So instead he tried Not To Think About Gay Things, but then *that* didn't work out because all of a sudden everything everybody said or did seemed to have a second meaning to it, a hidden meaning, and all the hidden meanings seemed to be... well, gay.
He had a hell of a time at the 27th (because sixty percent of cop humor was about dicks and the other sixty percent was about asses, and he really couldn't believe he'd never noticed how totally gay that was), at the grocery store (where he had to force himself not to stare at the tender, almost obscenely sensual way the produce guy restocked the cucumbers), even at the auto parts junkyard (where he Did Not Listen to the huge, muscle-bound guy who kept going on about drive shafts and rods and pistons and which kind of motor oil was best for keeping your parts lubed up), and it was damn hard to work a case or pick out peanut butter or hunt for a decent used carburetor when he was busy Not Thinking About Gay Things and couldn't stop wondering if people were looking at him funny.
So the days kind of sucked. But at night, when he was alone, in bed, he rolled with it. Of course, that wasn't so much Thinking About Gay Things as it was Thinking About Fraser in a Very Gay Way, but he was actually okay with that since it didn't make him paranoid so much as, well, horny, and hey, he was right there in bed and there were tissues and lotion on the nightstand, so that was all good.
He thought about Fraser and the car and the closet and the kitchen, about Fraser sucking him in a way that was so eager it was almost clumsy, wet and hot and inexperienced and how that had done something to him besides just turn him on like crazy so that afterwards he slid off the table and went for Fraser with no hesitation at all, wet, bitter kisses and Fraser in his hand, spread out on the kitchen floor. Which was when he found out that jerking Fraser off was incredibly, insanely hot, nevermind that it only took about ten seconds. It was a really hot ten seconds.
It was while he was alone at home (not in bed yet, but getting ready for it), that Ray went from Thinking About Gay Things to Thinking About Really *Really* Gay Things, Really Scary Gay Things, and it was all Stella's fault. Sort of.
The weather had turned cold, fiercely, bitterly cold, and so he was hunting through his bottom drawer for his heaviest winter socks, which was the only way he knew for sure he could go to sleep and not wake up with toesicles in the morning. He pawed through everything once, didn't find them, pawed through again and found his second-heaviest pair of socks, thought about wearing them instead, thought 'toesicles' and stuffed them back in the drawer, and then went through everything more slowly, digging all the way to the bottom.
He was just about to say fuck the gas bill and go turn up the heat for the night when a solid 'clunk' from the drawer's bottom layer caught his attention. He fished around, dug deeper, grabbed... and pulled out a long, slim, chrome-colored vibrator.
Stella's vibrator. Or, more accurately, the vibrator that had been Stella's until she packed up and left him and forgot to take it and he found it in the nightstand a week later and of course he couldn't give it back and he couldn't stand to throw it out just then and he certainly couldn't stand to sit there crying and holding a vibrator so he'd jammed it into the bottom of his least-used drawer where he forgot all about it and where, apparently, it ate his best winter socks.
He remembered when Stella had brought it home, a gag prize she won at her friend Gabrielle's bachelorette party for making the best improvised lingerie out of gift wrap and toilet paper (and yes, there were moments in his life when Ray was so, *so* glad that he was a guy, and yes, that had been one of them). She'd only bothered to bring it home so she could share the laugh with him, and once that was over with she was about to chuck it in the trash when he said hey, no, let's try it out, could be fun, and Stella got all red-faced and embarrassed and all oh-no-Ray-you-can't-be-serious, but he was.
Back then he loved talking Stella into things (because back then she still smiled about it when she decided to give in), so he'd talked her into it and taken her to bed and done everything he could think of along with a bunch of stuff he invented on the spot. He'd made her come over and over again, made her come until she couldn't anymore, until she was limp and damp and flushed in his arms, beautiful and perfect and all his.
Ray bounced the silver thing on his palm, remembering the last time he'd seen it, when all those Stella memories coming back to him had been like having his guts pulled out slowly through a very small incision in his chest. That had been bad, that had been so, so bad.
But now it wasn't like that, not the same thing at all. It was a good memory, and it was only when he'd finally realized that he had to let the good *and* bad Stella memories be what they were--memories--that he'd been able to start getting through each day like something other than the walking dead. It wasn't a symbol any more, this stupid-looking chrome thing, it wasn't a trap. It was just a leftover, just a dumb toy, just something people used for--
Ray stopped cold. He closed his eyes and dropped the vibrator like it had burned him, and heard it roll across the floor until it came to rest against his foot. He had to force himself not to yank his foot back, had to force himself to open his eyes and look at it, all shiny and toylike and bright, snuggled up to his foot like an innocent bullet-shaped metal kitten.
It was a tool of Satan. Gay, gay Satan.
Ray made a grab for the vibrator, missed, tried again and got it, jammed it in the drawer, slammed the drawer shut and then got the hell away from there fast, thinking maybe he wouldn't go to bed just yet after all. Maybe he'd go take a nice long walk in the snow instead.
***
If he'd had a ringside seat, it's entirely possible that Ray might have enjoyed watching the battle between his curiosity and his fear, because that motherfucker was *epic*--a real Frazier/Ali-style heavyweight title showstopper. He could have made a fortune selling popcorn and scalping tickets, except for the fact that he would have quietly strangled to death on his own shame first.
It was one for the books all right, a full twelve rounds of nonstop pulse-pounding mayhem, the outcome uncertain until the very, very end when Ray tossed the vibrator away and laid splay-legged on his bed, heaving for breath and hoping his heart wasn't going to up and quit on him, studying the shiny pattern of droplets he'd somehow managed to shoot a good three feet up the wall above the headboard and wondering if he'd ever be able to move his limbs again.
"Hail Satan," Ray wheezed, and closed his eyes.
***
There were good days and bad days, just like always. Only sometimes they were a little different.
Ray had a bad day when a couple of thugs that Huey and Dewey brought in got loose in interview room two, and before Ray could yell for help he'd gotten his skull pounded through the drywall. He cleaned up the cut over his eye in the men's room, and Fraser came in to help and ended up helping him into a stall and jerking him off fast and sweet, one hand slicking over his cock and the other covering his mouth. Which, Ray had to admit, made it a slightly less bad day (that, and the fact that Welsh made Dewey go take a refresher course in Proper Restraint Techniques at the Academy).
And Ray had a good day when a pursuit over a bag of stolen diamonds turned into an impromptu ice-hockey grudge match on the frozen streets of the shipping docks, and Ray took out two of the robbers with a piece of packing crate and then whacked the bag of diamonds towards Fraser before the rest of them crashed into him, and Fraser caught the bag in his hat neat as you please, game over, good guys 1, bad guys 0, let's hear it for the Canadian hat trick. It was so cool.
It was cool enough that it led to Ray blowing Fraser for the first time in the back seat of the GTO when they found their way back to the alley they'd parked in, and he might not have gone there but Fraser stiffened up on him again, which meant that it was time for Ray to get pushy. So he pushed, and Fraser shook like a leaf the whole time Ray was down on him, moaning like his heart was breaking and touching Ray's face gently, very gently. Ray found out that Fraser's cock wasn't too much to deal with if he let his hand help out, but he only had the one free because he needed the other one for himself, since the whole thing turned him on like crazy.
And sometimes he'd think about that, watching Fraser go over a case file or eat his dinner or take a reaming from the Ice Queen, sometimes he'd think 'hey, I've blown that guy', and the whole thing would seem totally nuts all over again. But other times, certain other times, he'd think it and then he'd have to do something about it, drag Fraser into the closest available private place and just go all over him, as much as he could get away with given limited space and time and the fact that he was always half-panicked at the idea of them getting caught.
Fraser never resisted, and always responded, which was only fair because it wasn't like Ray ever said anything when Fraser dragged *him* off (except of course for really quiet four-letter words and a few enthusiastic-but-embarrassing things he'd rather not dwell on).
After a brief struggle with himself, Ray started carrying his own hankie, which cut down on his laundry some.
***
The annual Advanced Weaponry conference in Miami was coming up, but this year Ray wasn't falling for it. The conference had been expanded to a full six days and so competition for the assignment was fiercer than ever, but the fact was that getting picked for it was something that required subtlety and finesse, and Ray knew better than anybody that he didn't exactly have piles of that lying around. Now, if getting picked had been something that required a smart mouth and a problem with authority, he'd have been a shoo-in (at least, that was what Welsh had told him last year). This year, uh-uh, no way, he was out of it. But he had to admit that it was kind of fun to watch.
The initial scrimmage was short but brutal, and when the dust settled there were three top contenders on the field: Huey, Dewey, and Matson-the-split-shift-guy. It was understood that dirty tricks and cheating were acceptable, which was how Matson got knocked out early after he 'accidentally' overheard Dewey going on at length to Brenda from Booking about Lieutenant Welsh's love of clowns, and how that could possibly be leveraged.
Matson (displaying, in Ray's opinion, all the brains that could be expected of a split-shift-guy) immediately sent Welsh a Clown-O-Gram, but Welsh (who had hated and feared clowns from birth, a fact which everybody--except apparently Matson--knew perfectly well) sent the clown shrieking out of his office, followed by a garroted balloon poodle, after which he called Matson on the carpet and chewed his ass for an hour. Exit Matson.
Huey tried cigars. That didn't work. It never did, but he tried it anyway. Dewey made a lot of noise about having an 'in' for primo Cubs tickets, until someone pointed out to him that it was December, after which he shut up about it. He went with single-malt scotch instead, which got him an in-depth lecture from Welsh about the state of his ulcer, with details and even some helpful drawings.
Since expensive gifts were still cause for immediate disqualification, Huey next tried to 'loan' Welsh a top-of-the-line hedge trimmer that would do pretty much everything except seed your lawn for you, but since Welsh lived in a big concrete building in the middle of their big concrete city and had no green things anywhere around him and liked it that way, that particular offer didn't go down too well.
The next day Dewey returned from lunch carefully guarding a large brown paper bag with some grease spots near the bottom. "This is it," he said proudly, patting the bag. "This is the bomb."
"Do the words 'ethnic appropriation' mean anything to you?" Huey asked irritably, but everyone knew he'd only been able to get store credit when he returned the hedge trimmer, so of course he was pissed off.
"No, really. It's a bomb. Hoagie from Petrello's on Kedzie--salami and meatball. It's his favorite, they only make it for him." Dewey tapped the side of his nose. "I have sources."
"Yeah," Ray said, "you do whatever the little voices tell you to."
Dewey pretended not to hear him. "Excuse me, guys, but glory and sunshine and bikinis await," and he marched into Welsh's office, closing the door behind him.
Silence. Lots of silence. Huey's shoulders sagged. "Son of a bitch."
Ray whapped him on the back. "Hey, next year. Maybe you can trick your partner into giving Welsh some edible underwear--"
Welsh's door flew open, and Dewey, greasy bag in hand, sprang out of it as if he'd been kicked. The door slammed shut behind him hard enough to rattle the glass.
Dewey shrugged. "How was I supposed to know his doctor told him 'no refined flour'? And what the hell does refined flour have to do with a hoagie anyway--"
Welsh's door swooped open again, this time with Welsh in it. Everybody got very quiet.
"Gentlemen," Welsh said, in that way he had that somehow made the word rhyme with 'assholes'. "This has gone on long enough. Vecchio--I don't know where you managed to find some tact, but you should shop there more often. I hear Miami's lovely this time of year; send me a postcard." Then he ripped the paper bag out of Dewey's hand, stomped into his office, and slammed the door again.
"Foul!" Dewey yelled, at the same time that Huey said "Scab," and Fraser clapped him on the shoulder and said "Congratulations, Ray!"
"Uh, yeah, same to you," Ray said numbly, and very carefully did not look at Fraser, because until this very moment he hadn't even considered *why* he'd decided not to try for six glorious days in Florida, but now that he was going it was really, really obvious.
***
And the next day he was packed, he was ready, he had tickets and a room booked and he only had to work half his shift because he had to get to O'Hare in time to catch his flight to Miami. Fraser gave him one hell of a sendoff in the janitor's closet, kissing him breathless and then pushing him up against the locked door and blowing him not once but twice, the first time fast and eager and the second slow and teasing and sweet, and when he was done Ray had gnaw-marks on his wrist where he'd sunk his teeth in to keep from yelling, and he'd sweated so much his clothes were stuck to him everywhere, and for the first time ever Fraser pulled Ray's hand away from his cock when Ray finally recovered enough to reach out and grab him.
"No, Ray," Fraser said, his eyes brilliant and his cheeks flushed and his lips wet, "I want to... I'll save it for your homecoming." He gave Ray one last kiss, lingering and salty and lewd, and was gone.
Ray couldn't decide if that was really weird or really weirdly hot, but he leaned his sweaty forehead on a cold metal shelf and waited for his lungs to stop heaving and thought about it, thinking about Fraser and his weirdness and the way things happened, about safe and not-safe and control and no control, and not all of it was Fraser, he knew that, but that didn't really matter when he had no idea what to do about the part of it that was.
***
The Florida sunshine hit him like, like... like some really big warm thing, and as soon as he got outside the airport terminal Ray dropped his bag between his feet and stretched, feeling the heat soak into him, and he would've said it was better than sex if he hadn't recently had several opportunities to know that he'd be lying like a dog if he did.
Ray cabbed to his hotel, checked in, went up to his room, unpacked, changed into warm-weather clothes, sat down, got up and checked his hair in the mirror to make sure it had survived the flight okay, sat down again, almost got up but didn't, and then asked himself who was being a big dumb guy now and got up, decisively, and left the room.
***
Three days later Ray was just about ready to kill someone, and he didn't much care who. Florida sucked--it was ugly and too bright and crammed full of bugs and so hot it was like getting mugged by a steam room. The conference itself was incredibly boring, and it seemed like a minor miracle that anything with 'Advanced Weaponry' in the title could come across as boring, but apparently the conference organizers had really applied themselves.
And how come he'd never noticed how fucking annoying cops were? The way they talked, the things they talked about--tits and guns and how bad the coffee was and how bad the bad guys were and *endless* stories about their own personal feats of daring (which Ray was just never going to buy coming from any guy in white patent loafers and plaid sansabelt pants). The first day some loudmouth from Duluth had slapped him on the back at happy hour and told him, "Drink up, Chicago!", and now everybody called him Chicago, like it was cool or something, which it really wasn't.
He'd thought about fixing his conference badge so that instead of 'Law Enforcement Applications of Modern Advanced Weaponry--Attendee', it read 'Huge Bunch of Drunk Lame-O Jerk-Off Losers--Hostage', but in the end he didn't. Nobody would have noticed anyways.
Day three of the conference was a Friday, and the sessions wrapped at two o'clock to give all the attendees some extra time for plowing hookers and getting good and shitfaced before the Keynote Breakfast the next morning (not that the conference program book came right out and said that, but Ray thought it might as well have, since everyone seemed to take it as a given). He himself turned down several invitations to various outings from various groups of his fellow conference-goers: titty bar, sports bar, live sex show, titty bar, karaoke bar (this one didn't actually surprise him, coming as it did from a lonely rookie from Nevada who forcibly reminded him of Turnbull every time he opened his mouth), gun show, and titty bar.
The gun show guys were easily the creepiest (the fact that none of them seemed to care that one of their number was wearing a bedsheet and a Darth Vader mask didn't help), but the assorted groups headed for assorted titty bars would sweep the 'most pathetic' category, hands down. But one thing Ray knew for sure was that he didn't want to be within a hundred feet of any of them, especially not in public, even if he had decided that he hated Miami and all the people in it.
In the end, after going up to his room and sitting down and getting up again a number of times, Ray made for the hotel bar, and one glance around after he stepped into the wonderfully dim-and-cool interior made him glad he did, because the only people in there were the older cops, the quiet cops, the antisocial cops, and a few cops who looked way too depressed to talk to anybody--in other words, it was exactly what a cop bar should be. He bellied up and ordered a beer.
He'd finished half of it when he realized that he had company. He turned to the left to find that one of the quiet cops had settled in next to him, a pretty-but-tough little blonde woman he'd seen taking careful notes at the lectures. As one of only a handful of women there she'd stuck out, but what Ray had noticed most was the way she carried herself: calm and confident, like she belonged there but wasn't looking to prove anything. That stuck out a lot in a place where *everybody* was looking to prove something, namely that they should be Lead Asshole on the Asshole Float in Assholes On Parade.
"Mind if I join you?" she asked, the first time Ray had heard her say anything at all. He liked her voice, low and kind of musical.
"Yeah, sure," he said, waving at the bar. "Wasn't like I was sitting here trying to think up any new applications for advanced weaponry or anything."
"Thanks." She tipped her bottle of beer towards him in salute before she drank. After she set the bottle down she wiped her hand on her jeans and then held it out towards him. "Michelle Markowitz, Homicide Detective. Gary, Indiana."
Ray shook her hand. "Ray Vecchio, uh, Chicago. Detective."
Michelle squinted at him. "That's funny, you don't look Italian."
"Yeah. I get that a lot."
Ray went back to staring into his beer, and Michelle went to work on finishing hers, and when she was done he signaled the bartender for another one for her, which she clicked against his glass.
"Thanks again." She took a sip, set the bottle down, and then squinted at him a second time. "You don't talk much, do you?"
He opened his mouth to tell her how wrong she was, but then he thought about how many words that would take and how much he'd have to tell her, so he shrugged instead. "Sometimes I do, I guess."
She patted his shoulder. "Hey, it's okay, it's nice to spend five minutes with a guy who isn't a blowhard."
Her choice of words made him choke on his beer a little, but he passed it off as a cough. "Thanks."
"Welcome."
He looked at her then, pretty light green eyes and smooth blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, her tough and pouty little mouth that was neither one right now because she was smiling. At him. "See anything green?"
Ray hadn't heard that one since... well, since he'd been old enough to play on the monkey bars. "Sure. Your eyes are green."
"Nice to see you got the Detective badge on merit, and not just 'cause you're handsome," she said lightly, playfully, and reached out to pat him again, but Ray felt her hand coming towards him from a long way away, everything suddenly moving in slow-motion, her hand moving closer and closer and he knew what this all meant even if it was low-key, just like she was low-key, low-key and simple and it had been so long since he'd done anything that could even remotely fall into either of those categories that he totally, completely panicked.
Ray leapt off his barstool so fast that he nearly knocked it over. "Sorry," he mumbled, digging in his pocket for bills which he tossed on the bar without even looking at them, "I have to... uh, I got these weird groinal lesions I gotta go take care of." And he would swear before the throne of God that that was *not* what he'd planned to say, but his argument was weak because he was in mid-panic and so of course he didn't plan anything, and now along with the panic he had embarrassment as hot and ugly as the whole state of Florida crashing down on him, and he turned and left the bar before he could make it any worse.
Ray went back up to his room, sat down, got up, sat down again, yanked on his hair with both hands, got up again, changed, packed, went down to the lobby and checked out of the hotel, stepped out into the hellish Florida sunshine, and lifted his arm for a cab.
***
He'd had a clear plan at first, a plan prompted by the dense, low burn in his guts that had settled in after the panic finally died away: go directly to Fraser, do not pass Go, blah, blah, blah. Go to Fraser, and do what needed to be done. But somewhere over Tennessee or Kentucky that burn started to slip away from him, and by the time he landed at O'Hare he thought that maybe he should go home first: dump his suitcase, check on the turtle, take a shower and change his clothes to get the plane smell off him, that sort of thing. So he did that.
And then he thought that maybe he should get something to eat, because plane food sucked as hard as cop conferences did, so he bundled himself up and went to the Korean barbecue place on the corner, which took care of that.
And then he thought he really should go check in at the station, and by that time he knew for sure what he was doing but he couldn't help it, so off to the station he went.
Which turned out to be one of those things, one of those fate's accomplices things that Fraser talked about, because he ran into Fraser (literally, ran right into him) as soon as he turned the corner into the bullpen.
"Ray!" Fraser said, and jeez, you'd think he'd been gone a year or been presumed dead or something, the way the guy lit up. "Ray, you're back!"
"Everybody's a detective," Ray mumbled, and then shook that off. "Yeah. Came back early. The conference was, uh, lame. Really lame." He looked around. It was late, and there was nobody in the bullpen except for Matson, working on the second half of his shift and giving him the stink-eye from his desk. "So how come you're here, Fraser?"
Fraser's cheeks went very faintly pink. "I thought I might... that is, I thought it would be a good idea for me to monitor any developments in your open cases, so that I could make sure you were thoroughly briefed. Upon your return. Which reminds me, the Peterson case, the forgery, a few curious facts have come to light..."
Fraser told him about it, and Ray kind of listened, but he couldn't have been paying too much attention because he hadn't even noticed when they'd started to move but suddenly here they were, moving, drifting along through the hallways and turning corners until they arrived at their closet, which really ought to have a fucking plaque on it by now. Fraser held the door open for him and in he went, and how weird was it that the smell of toner cartridges and typewriter ribbons made his dick twitch?
"I've missed you, Ray," Fraser said once the door was closed, all the cop-business gone from his voice like magic, and he leaned in and took Ray by the shoulders--
And Ray put his hand right in the center of Fraser's uniformed chest, and held him off. "Stop, Fraser."
Fraser stopped, of course he stopped. "Ray?"
Ray ducked his head a little. "I'm not gonna do this any more, Fraser. It's not right." He took a breath. "I can't... we can't keep ambushing each other like this, with kisses and blowjobs and orgasms and stuff, right in the middle of a police precinct. It's not right."
Fraser stepped away, looked away, and even in the dim light from the overhead bulb he looked pale, so very pale, sculpted from snow. "I... I see."
"No you don't, Fraser." Ray reached out and got Fraser's chin in his hand, and Fraser wasn't snow at all but warm skin, smooth and perfect. He lifted Fraser's head until their eyes met. "Come home with me."
Fraser's eyes widened. "What?"
Ray felt something quiver in his stomach, there and then gone, but it was too late for gut-level freak-outs, it had been too late for a long time. "Come home with me, Fraser," he repeated, and on the plane he'd planned out kind of a speech for this moment, anticipating Fraser's responses (and boy, the Fraser in his head was one snippy motherfucker), but he got how dumb that was now. "You can say no, okay? But I'm asking. Come home with me."
For a moment he thought Fraser was going to say no, or at least argue with him about it, and it looked like Fraser did too, but maybe the ability to avoid saying dumb things was in the air, going around like a virus, because after a few seconds the careful-and-stubborn fell away from Fraser's face, and his shoulders relaxed. "All right, Ray."
And just like that, they were in new territory all over again.
***
It was easy to think that it was too late for freaking out, but apparently his freak-center hadn't gotten the memo, because once they were there, in Ray's bedroom, in Ray's home, the door locked on the outside world and the two of them staring at Ray's bed like they expected it to jump up and do a tapdance, Ray found that it wasn't too late after all. Not by a mile.
"Ray--"
"I'm a little nervous!" Ray said very loudly, much more loudly than he'd intended to, not that he'd intended to say that at all. He stuck his hands in his pockets.
Fraser looked like his own freak-center was putting in some overtime. "Well," he said cautiously, "you don't really need to be. I mean, we could always just--"
"Oh, no, Fraser," Ray interrupted, shaking his head and squeezing his fists in his pockets. "No. We're gonna fuck, and we're gonna do it in my bed. Unless you say no."
Fraser blinked. Then blushed. "I'm not saying no, Ray," he said quietly, sounding a little choked. "I'm certainly not going to be the one to say no."
Great, Ray thought, next thing you know we'll be calling each other 'pussy' and arguing about which one of us is he-man enough to take it up the ass... "Okay," he said, and rocked on his toes. "Then that's that."
"Indeed." Fraser studied him for a moment. "Ray, do you have... have you done this before?"
Ray scratched his ear. "Uh, not exactly, no." He waited for his ears to stop burning. "You?"
Fraser shook his head. "Other than you, I've been intimate with one other person. One woman, to be precise."
"Oh." Ray wondered what the hell he was supposed to say to that, what guys were supposed to say in this situation. "Was she hot?"
Fraser stared at him, his face suddenly as smooth as still water. "She was soulless."
"Oh." Way to go, Kowalski. Why don't you just kick the guy in the nuts while you're at it? He sighed. "Sorry."
"It's all right," Fraser said, and it looked like maybe in a weird way that had been the right thing to say after all, because after a few seconds Fraser came back from wherever he'd gone off to and when he did he didn't look scared anymore, or at least not scared of Ray. He stepped closer. "I really did miss you, Ray."
Ray let his fists relax back into hands, and took a step forward himself. "You too, Fraser. I did, I mean. Miss you."
Fraser took another step. "I'm sorry to hear that the conference was unproductive."
Ray snorted, and then stepped. "The conference sucked rancid maggot ass, Fraser."
Fraser appeared to be thinking that over. "That's... that's really disgusting, Ray," he said, but he stepped closer anyway.
"You don't have to tell me, I was there." Ray stepped, and then there were no more steps to take, just he and Fraser, face to face. And because Fraser had gone first, because Fraser had had the balls to do what he did all those months ago, Ray leaned in and kissed him, and it wasn't an ambush or a game of tag or a control thingy or anything like that, it was just a kiss from him to Fraser, soft and warm and not in a hurry to go anywhere.
Ray nudged his forehead against Fraser's. "We're gonna take this slow."
Fraser nudged back. "Well, that's just fine, Ray."
***
Ray *hated* slow. Slow *sucked*. Slow was for Grandmas and poodle-owners and high-school history teachers from Idaho, not for naked, sweaty men who were trying their level best to fuck their naked, sweaty, gorgeous partners through the mattress.
"Oh, God, Fraser," he said, not for the first time but he couldn't help it--Fraser was everywhere, Fraser was all around him, and Fraser was slick and hot and squeezing the almighty bejeezus out of his cock (probably on purpose, the bastard).
He'd gone along with it when Fraser said he wanted to be the one to get fucked, gone along like a lamb, a smug lamb, knowing how wild it had made him and wanting to surprise Fraser with a taste of that, which was all good except Ray wasn't a vibrator and now his nerves were jumping like cats on fire, and his whole upper body was twisting with the effort not to just sink down on Fraser and yank his legs up and pound into him like a maniac.
But he didn't. Fraser was good, Fraser was happy, Fraser was purring along like a well-oiled machine beneath him, and maybe Fraser didn't get crazy from this the way Ray did but once he'd relaxed he got right into it, moaning and gasping and kissing Ray deeply whenever he wasn't doing either of those first two. His cock was hard and leaking, sliding against Ray's belly with every stroke, and while that was great for reassurance, right now it was just another thing that was making Ray insane. Apparently Fraser *loved* slow. Which figured.
"Ray..." Right in his ear, sounding throaty and blissed-out and so turned on that it made his balls ache, not to mention that whole talking-while-fucking thing, which always drove him nuts anyway.
"Nr."
"Ray, this is good, this is so good..."
"Nrr."
"Ohh, Ray... please... yes, ohh..."
"Nrr!"
"Ray... j'aime votre peau, j'aime votre odeur..."
"Fuck!" Ray's eyes rolled back in his head and something in his spine went off like a line of firecrackers and before he knew it he'd curled his arms under Fraser's shoulders and pulled and rammed forward with no control at all, shattered and wrecked and shaking. Fraser made this *huge* noise underneath him, but when Ray forced himself to look down to see if he'd maybe just done something really awful he saw Fraser wide-eyed and blitzed and *fucked*, and it looked like he'd finally managed to surprise Fraser after all.
"Oh my God, Ray!"
Oh yeah. Ray got as deep into Fraser's ass as he could, forgetting all about slow and fucking Fraser hard and fast and desperate, and thank God Fraser seemed to be a dual-speed kind of guy because he grabbed Ray's hips hard enough to bruise and the more Ray gave him the more he asked for, riding Ray's cock and squeezing and Ray didn't care because he *had* to come, had to, or he was gonna die or come or something, so he kissed Fraser and their teeth crashed and their tongues touched and Fraser heaved up right off the bed, shuddering, and Ray went with the pull and the throb and the heat of it and came his fucking brains out.
***
When Ray woke up, he had about five seconds of oh-holy-shit-I-did-some-Really-Gay-Things-with-Fraser, but that gave way to about thirty seconds of I-made-Fraser-come-so-hard-he-almost-passed-out-heh-heh-heh-I-am-the-man, so that was okay.
He opened his eyes and turned over, surprised to see that Fraser was still asleep; he'd thought for sure Fraser would be an early worm kind of guy if ever there was one. Fraser had the covers tugged up to his chin so that only his face was visible, flushed and damp and so innocent-looking that for a moment it seemed impossible to believe that this was the same guy who just last night had humped his cock like an animal until he came all over both of them, but Ray had the bruises to prove it, and besides, it wasn't the kind of thing he was ever going to forget.
As he watched, Fraser's eyelids fluttered, then he yawned, stretched, stiffened, and made a sleepy-curious noise that Ray would bet his next paycheck translated to something like 'hey, why is my ass sore?' Ray grinned.
Fraser opened his eyes, and if he had any first-moment freak-outs or smug attacks, they didn't show. "Ray," he said softly, "you're awake. And you're smiling."
"Yeah, I do that sometimes." He was about to add that it wasn't something Fraser should get used to, but before he could Fraser had octopused out of his huddle and drawn him in and wrapped him up, a tight, multi-limbed snuggle that Ray hadn't really expected but which, once he settled into it, was surprisingly... nice. Comfortable. Sleepy.
He'd actually started to drift a little when Fraser spoke again. "Thank you for taking me home, Ray."
Ray nudged Fraser with his chin. "You're a freak, Fraser. And you're welcome."
But he was awake now, awake and really aware of how close he was to Fraser, that Fraser was here, in his bed, with his heat and his soft skin and his smell and everything all wrapped up and tangled together and... close. It was new territory once again, maybe the last new territory, their final frontier. Ray snorted.
"Ray?"
Ray hesitated, rubbing his cheek mindlessly back and forth over the silky skin of Fraser's shoulder, then planted his hand on Fraser's chest and levered himself up onto his elbow, sending the covers sliding down and ignoring Fraser's startled wheeze.
"If I had a pair of boots that you hated, what would you do?"
Fraser blinked, and his eyebrows drew down. "If you had... if I... Well, would these be boots that I would be required to wear?"
"No, they're my boots--my boots, Fraser. I own 'em. I wear 'em. You hate 'em. What would you do?"
Fraser scratched his eyebrow. "Are the boots endangering your life in some way?"
"They're not super-villain boots, Fraser, okay? They're just boots. Regular, non-homicidal boots."
Fraser appeared to be thinking about it, thinking hard, but in the end he just shook his head. "Well then, I suppose the answer to your question is that I would do nothing, Ray."
He studied Fraser closely. He meant it. "Yeah, okay. I was just checking."
Ray came down off his elbow, and sure enough Fraser wrapped him right back up again, tugging the covers up and getting all around him and holding him close, and the warmth felt so good soaking into him, surprisingly good, because he hadn't even realized that he was cold until just now.
End