Exoskeleton (Due South)
Ray carefully applies super glue to Kowalski’s torn wing, hands shaking slightly. Somehow, he’d been expecting blood, which seems crazy now. Then again, how much crazier can things be?
“You ever tear one before?” he asks.
“Too many times to count,” Kowalski replies, and Ray’s mind is filled with images of a little boy shimmying up trees, of a twenty-year-old feeling them tear beneath the leather of a motorcycle jacket.
Then, of course, there’s the hours old memory of some perp shoving, fighting, grasping t-shirt in his hand and getting a near-fistful of something seemingly papery, a confused look on his face, then a decidedly scared one when Ray slammed him to the ground.
“’Stings a little, but doesn’t hurt too bad,” Kowalski says, doing that weird mind-reading again. He pushes himself up from the couch and pads to the refrigerator for beers.
“You don’t ever get afraid?” Ray asks once Kowalski returns.
“Nah. Tore one right off once and it just grew back.” Kowalski takes a long drink, and Ray is momentarily distracted by his bare chest, wiry arms, and the way the light is hitting his spiked blond hair. (Really need to get a grip on the libido, he thinks).
“What about of people finding out?”
Kowalski gives him a wry grin. “People can explain anything away.”
It’s a tough place to be, in love and scared of what could happen. Ray leaves his own beer sitting on the coffee table and runs a frustrated hand over his scalp.
“You okay?” Kowalski’s brow is furrowed and his eyes are worried.
Ray thinks about how Kowalski’s the one with the fragile wings, but he’s the one who feels vulnerable, thinks about how sometimes it’s easier to go through the fire than to try to avoid it. He mentally searches for a way to say it without sounding like something contrived, but gives up. “Let’s go to bed,” he finally breathes. “I want you to fuck me.”
Kowalski is more perceptive than most give him credit for, and he seems to register the depth of Ray’s need immediately. His eyes go dark and his wings flutter erratically. “Damn,” he says a bit breathlessly.
“Yeah Kowalski, poet on the inside.”
Kowalski just grins before leaning towards Ray, cupping one cheek in his hand, and kissing him slowly. Ray imagines he feels a kind of twitch in his shoulder blades, as if his own body could produce something surprisingly beautiful.