Gifts and Burdens Part One
Title: Gifts and Burdens. Part one.
Pairing Fraser/RayK
Rating: NC-17
Author:ultra_chrome
Summary/Story Notes: It’s long. Really long. 10,245 words in fact. And it’s all in Fraser’s POV, which is why it’s long. So it had to be split into two parts. Sorry.
Prompt: 13. Fraser/Kowalski - an explanation of how Fraser got clothes all over his floor in Asylum.
Disclaimer: These are not my boys, but I’m playing with them anyway.
Notes: Never ending gratitude to lucifercircle and heartofdavid for being the best betas in the known world, and for putting up with my comma abuse and endless changes. This is my first Due South fic, but don’t be gentle with me. I have broad shoulders. :)
Ray once said something very interesting to me. Well, he has said many interesting things to me, but this thing is the one I’ve come to find most interesting of all of them. He said, “On the inside, I’m a poet. On the outside…shake, bad guys, shake.” At the time, I thought very little of it, other than to surmise that he was a romantic at heart, but hid it from the world. As do a good many romantics at heart, I among them.
That was approximately two months ago, and many things have changed since then, including my take on the meaning of that seemingly small admission. Perhaps that’s not entirely true. It’s not so much that things changed, as it is that I finally became aware of how they have apparently been for some time. That happened as of two days ago. The clues were, for the most part, subtle, leading to a much larger event than my epiphany regarding Ray’s words, although not unrelated. And I am still coming to terms with the effects of both. Happiness, true happiness, is a feeling I have difficulty accepting, even though I crave it. Which is why I feel compelled to write it all down, in the hope that I will always have a reminder of how I feel at this precise point in time. In case things should change again, and not for the better. Things have a way of doing that, despite my attempts to keep them the same.
But I digress. If Ray were reading this, he would raise his eyebrows pointedly and sort of waggle (for want of a better word) his head about. This is his silent way of saying, “Fraser, would you just get to the point?” I believe he developed it to save himself from becoming repetitive. Because saying, “Fraser, would you just get to the point?” over and over is hardly poetic, no matter how beautiful the mouth that utters it.
And we are back to the point, I believe. Inside, Ray is a poet. I know this to be true, because I’ve been there, where the poetry is born; inside Ray. And it is everything that poetry should be. Very much more than most poetry is. I believe it was e.e.cummings who said, “A lot of people think or believe or know they feel -- but that's thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling --not knowing or believing or thinking.”
And the good poets, the truly great ones, have a way of doing more than simply sharing their feelings. They give them to you, wholly. Whether they be gift or burden, or somehow both, they become yours. You feel them as your own, even as you know that they are someone else’s. And the emotions stay with you, long after the words are forgotten.
Ray is very obviously an emotional man. Passionate is perhaps more accurate. He appears incapable of mild emotion, in any event. That is easy enough to see from the outside. It translates to nervous energy most often. I would say irrational anger runs a very close second. Whatever form his passion takes, he radiates it. It affects everyone around him. There is a possibility that I simply absorb it because I want any part of him that I can get. This would explain my own inability, at times, to contain my frustration and anger, which are obviously a reaction to his, more than they are my own feelings. Restraint is a virtue I have always been proud to have perfected. It is also one which Ray has systematically destroyed in me, at least where he is concerned. His gift and burden to me.
From the moment I saw him, I wanted him. And I felt guilt, because I should have been thinking more of Ray Vecchio, who had seemingly disappeared, to be replaced by a stranger. Nobody else seemed to care. Not even his family; so I should have been more concerned with his whereabouts than trying to discover whom this man claiming to be my friend was. But I wanted to know. I wanted to find out everything about him. Mostly I think I wanted to know his sexual orientation, and his identity would be the first step. It never once occurred to me to ask.
Even later, when he gave me opportunities to do so. There were clues, which I would mull over obsessively when I was alone at night, but which I was too afraid to follow up in the light of day. I tried and even thought I may have succeeded in showing my desire for him a few times, but either he was oblivious to my advances, or suffering from my own brand of reticence.
In any event, it didn’t take long for him to reveal his identity to me. Only slightly longer than it took me to discover it for myself. He told me many things about himself, including the more personal details of how he won the love of his ex-wife. It was evident from the way he spoke that he still held strong feelings for her. This was a blow to me. Such a crushing disappointment that I failed to wonder why he had asked me if I found him attractive. At least until I was alone with my thoughts, and the fantasies that arose from them. But that is neither here nor there.
Stella Kowalski is not a particularly pleasant woman, and I fail to see why Ray ever loved her. With his deep embarrassment about his given name, I would have thought that he’d have avoided a girl named Stella as a matter of self-preservation. But love her he did, and still does, in his own way, which I believe is one of Ray’s more endearing qualities. He loves freely, unashamedly, and makes no excuses for it. Stella almost destroyed him, but still, he will defend her and protect her with a single-mindedness that makes little sense, even to me. Considering I have been accused of being the most stubborn man on Earth, this is quite astounding.
And yet, even with his loving nature, he keeps himself closed to all and sundry, appearing violent at worst and annoyingly obtuse at best. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why I was so strongly attracted to him from our first meeting. He hardly stopped speaking for a second on that first day, even when he hugged me, which is unacceptable behaviour for a first meeting, and still, I learned nothing about him. Except for the physical evidence I gathered (in a somewhat less that surreptitious manner, I might add) which allowed me to pull his file later. He assures me that he practically told me his life story, but as I was sliding around on the roof of Ray Vecchio’s ill-fated Riviera for the duration of his discourse, I can’t be sure he told me anything that I wanted to know. Diefenbaker claims he was also distracted and wasn’t able to see Ray’s mouth moving, so he was no help. This is not entirely new.
If anything that occurred on our first day together gave me an inkling as to Ray’s true nature, it was the fact that he stepped in front of a bullet intended for me. Granted, he was wearing a vest at the time, but that would not have protected him had the bullet gone high.
That is not usually the act of a self interested, angry man. His inordinate pleasure at my fear that he was mortally wounded was a tad annoying at first, but I think perhaps it was more a case of happiness that he was appreciated. Even his sense of humour is not so perverse as to find instilling terror in a body amusing. And appreciation is not something Ray Kowalski has had a surfeit of in his lifetime, I imagine. He has such little faith in his ability to engender feelings of fondness in others that I wonder if he believes his prickly exterior is ultimately convincing; or is the prickly exterior there to hide his loneliness and self doubt? Either way, he responds well to praise and kind actions, a fact which I have shamelessly used to my advantage, I’m afraid.
A few days ago, Ray had a meet with a member of Chicago’s organised crime community, which ended in the fatal shooting of that man, one Andreas Volpe. Ray was knocked unconscious and never saw the shooter, but it was readily accepted by the police in general (although not by those who know him) that Ray had killed this man. When he regained consciousness, he ran from the scene, directly to the consulate. I heard the door burst open and rushed to the foyer in time to see Ray fall to his knees yelling my name. He was obviously in some kind of grave peril, yet all I could think for a brief moment was of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire and the fact that it should have been Stella that he was yelling. But it was oh so heartbreakingly my name that he called and I felt an uncharitable joy rising in me. I had replaced Stella. I was the first person he thought of in times of crisis. When Ray thought first with his heart, he thought of me.
Of course, I could hardly know that to be fact. It is entirely possible that Ray was thinking very clearly and the consulate was close enough to the scene of the shooting to be his first obvious destination. I haven’t yet had the courage to ask him. Perhaps I never will, so until I am told otherwise, I will believe he thought first of me, and that is why he was on his knees in the foyer of my place of employment and residence, panting raggedly and calling my name. Tragic and beautiful. Living poetry.
That image is one which I must admit led me to other inappropriate thoughts, briefly at that point in time, but increasingly as I recall it now. And so it was a difficult task to tend Ray’s head wound, which was, thankfully, minor, and take in the details surrounding his spectacular entrance. When the full weight of the situation became apparent, I determined that my only course of action was to arrest Ray and therefore keep him out of the hands of the Chicago Police Department until I could clear him of any wrongdoing. Metaphorically tying him up in red tape, if you like. The picture that conjured in my mind’s eye, coupled with the willing presentation of his wrists when I approached him with handcuffs was enough to make me eternally grateful for the length of my tunic and the loose fit of my jodhpurs. But there was work to be done, and quickly, if Ray was to be exonerated before he was extradited from my care.
Constable Turnbull was delighted to have a guest to fuss over, even with the curling being telecast at the time. This made me feel slightly less guilty for leaving my post, as it were, to retrieve Ray’s personal files from the station. I am helped in my belief that I was acting purely out of concern for Ray and not my own fear of losing him, by the alarming moments I was forced to endure in a darkened closet with Francesca. These were made even more alarming by the fact that I had to somehow open my trousers to hide Ray’s files and avoid her usually…free spirited hands. By some stroke of luck I managed this and was rewarded twofold when I returned to the consulate with my jodhpurs uncomfortably full of manilla folders stuffed with photographs and reports.
Inexcusably, I removed my tunic and lowered my trousers in front of Ray, when I really should have gone first to my office and removed the files there. As I said, Ray has destroyed any restraint I may once have had in these matters. At this point I am far from concerned, as he responded favourably to my impromptu strip show. The glint in his eye as he watched me was certainly not related to the files. In fact he seemed surprised when I produced them. Believe me, I was watching his face, and what I saw there gave me the courage to act as I did later that evening. But there was work to be done and I set out to gain as much information as I could, leaving Ray in the care of Constable Turnbull.
Typically, Ray was unable to stay put and let things unfold around him. He managed to convince Turnbull to hand over his uniform and left the consulate, resplendent in red serge and Stetson, walking unnoticed by Detectives Huey and Dewey, who were stationed outside, in the hope that he would try just such a stunt. I’m unsure whether this is testament to Ray’s undercover abilities, or the detectives’ lack of stake-out skills. But the upshot is that Ray and I were both captured by Eddie Herndorff’s men and held in a workshop to be turned over to the police. An outcome which never eventuated, thanks entirely to Diefenbaker’s tracking abilities.
Which is how we ended up hanging from the steel pipes on the ceiling until the search for us was called off. When Ray could hold on no longer he fell, quite awkwardly, into the back seat of a convertible that was parked directly below us, wrenching his neck rather painfully. After I climbed down, I managed to appropriate two coveralls which disguised us sufficiently to get to the consulate, and which I have since laundered and returned to their rightful owners. We shucked them just around the corner so that Detectives Huey and Dewey saw nothing more exciting than two Mounties returning to their little slice of Canada. One of them walking stiffly with his head held at a careful angle and the other with a concerned hand on his waist. I can only imagine their conversation about that. Although, I’m entirely certain I don’t want to.
Thankfully, Canada was closed for business by now, and we were greeted by the sounds of curling. Constable Turnbull was relieved that we had returned safely, although politely peeved at Ray for leaving him stranded in his underwear for over two hours. If the man had any sense at all, he would have borrowed a uniform from my office. However, as I am referring to Turnbull, I should not be surprised. When he asked if he could have his clothes back so that he could leave, Ray looked at me and said, “Yeah, can’t wait to get out of these pants.” For the life of me I cannot fathom why he would look at me while saying this, unless it was some kind of signal that he was…well, interested in being naked in my company. Which it turned out he was, but I was unaware of his desire at that time and merely cleared my throat to offer him a hot shower.
And so I found myself in the bathroom, helping Ray undress, as he was unfamiliar with the uniform and its various fastenings. If he noticed my shaking hands and increased respiration rate, he kindly avoided the subject. I turned to leave as he was peeling off his white t-shirt to reveal a black undershirt. I believe Ray would call it a wife beater, though I have no idea why. It’s not as if that item of clothing could inflict any sort of harm, unless rolled up and flicked, and even that would hardly constitute a beating. In fact many consider it a game, I included, contrary to the popular belief that I am incapable of having any sort of fun.
I’m also confused as to why he would wear black under a white t-shirt, but that is possibly something Ray couldn’t answer himself. He doesn’t share his predecessor’s passion for clothes. In point of fact, he often appears barely able to dress himself. I wonder if his mind is too busy to pay due attention to such a routine task, or if he deliberately dresses down as a form of rebellion against having to live someone else’s life. He certainly pays enough attention to his hair to indicate a touch of vanity in his nature. Whichever it is, his style of dress only serves to accentuate the image I now have of him as a poet. And I have always appreciated his choice of jeans, for reasons that don’t need exploring at this juncture, if I intend to complete this account of events.
Ray called me back to ask where he would find a towel, and I turned to see a vision of raw sexuality. Ray, wearing nothing but his clinging white jockey shorts and a halo of steam. I was momentarily lost for words as I noticed the outlines of his muscles, his stomach…the definition in the bulge at the front of his shorts. I believe I saw him smirk at me as I mumbled something about the vanity cupboard, before fleeing for the relative safety of Constable Turnbull’s incessant rambling.
By the time Ray emerged from the shower, I was in my office, once more in control of my urges and working on a plan to clear his name. I hadn’t counted on the fact that he had left his clothing in here when he made the transformation from Chicago flatfoot to Mountie, and so was taken aback when he entered wrapped in a fluffy white towel and holding his underwear in a bundle in one hand. As I looked up, he dropped the garments to the floor and folded his arms, leaning back just a fraction. I’m afraid I wasn’t looking at his face when he spoke, and this may or may not account for the hesitation in his voice when he asked if I had a shirt he could borrow. He seemed to think his own was somewhat sweaty and held traces of Turnbull’s scent from the tunic. I answered in the affirmative and rose to fulfil his request at the same time he made a move to retrieve his trousers from the far side of my desk. This had the unfortunate yet pleasant result of bringing us face to face in front of the closet door. In an office this size, I don’t need to tell you that there was very little space between us.
At this point I found it exceedingly difficult to breathe, torn as I was between decorum and desire. A dilemma that was made considerably worse when Ray looked down, causing his lashes to fan over his cheeks, and licked his lips. Slightly damp and flushed pink as he was from his recent shower, this gave him a deliciously debauched appearance and my breath returned to me in a sharp intake, as my body responded vigorously to both his beauty and his proximity.
Ray noticed. He smiled a little, moved even closer as he reached for his pants, and in a voice much warmer than his usual, said, “My shorts are a little damp, too. I’ll have to go commando.” More evocative words have never been uttered, nor have I heard any poem that suffused me with such intense emotion. Not even the one recited to me when I thought I was dying.
That was the moment I lost control, or took control, I’m not entirely sure which, but I leaned in and kissed him, not gently, not politely, but with a kind of desperation that spoke of my desire and my inability to articulate it any other way. Ray responded in kind, bringing his body to press against mine as he moaned into my mouth. The hand that I had placed on his chest now rose to the back of his head and I made to pull his mouth harder against my own. Ray stiffened and gasped, but in pain not pleasure and I backed off hurriedly, remembering his injury and feeling guilt wash over me. Ray grabbed my Sam Browne and tried to pull me in again, but I shook my head, no, telling him that I was sorry I had caused him pain. He just shrugged lopsidedly and leaned into me. As he pressed his hips close he said, “So take my mind off it.”
I desperately wanted to. But I had a much deeper need to get this right. To make it memorable for all the right reasons, not just for me, but also for Ray, because if I could make it perfect for him, then maybe, just maybe, given time, I could replace Stella as the love of his life. Which is entirely selfish of me, I admit. Disturbing as the thought is, that was and still is my goal. Perhaps more so now that I am privy to a side of him that I had not previously been aware existed. His inner poet.
And so I kissed him softly before I led him to my chair and pushed him down onto it. He went willingly enough, though he made an impatient noise in the back of his throat as I began to massage his neck, working on the knotted muscles with my thumbs. It didn’t take long for him to start alternating grunts of pain with groans of pleasure, and the euphony of his vocalisations touched me physically. A rhythm began to form between us, my hands moving slower, pressing deeper into the muscles beneath them, Ray’s groans becoming quieter and more frequent, until he seemed almost to be humming softly. I could feel that he was relaxing, becoming pliant in a way I never imagined him capable of, and knew that if I were to manipulate his neck now, I could ensure he would suffer no lasting effects from his fall.
Knowing Ray would tense if I warned him, and knowing this would hamper my efforts, I simply pulled his head back so that the top of it rested against my stomach and placed both hands under his neck, stroking upward to the base of his skull. He practically melted into me, so I had no trouble grasping his head firmly between my hands and twisting a little as I pulled upward. I was rewarded with a satisfying crack as his spine realigned, but Ray…well; Ray does not like to be caught unawares. He exploded from the chair, characteristic anger radiating from him in anything but subtle waves. He took a moment to gain his balance and launched a stream of invectives at me that I felt sure would strip the paint from the walls. I will certainly not recount them here, as I have no desire to recall them, even knowing as I do that they were merely a reaction to the surprise I caused. I punctuated his verbal abuse of me with a single syllable repeated often; that of his name, as I have discovered that if I say it over and over, it eventually sinks in and he cannot help but turn to me and say, “What?” in a suitably annoyed tone. Whether the repetition soothes him or irritates him further he has never indicated and I have never enquired, nor will I. It works and that is all I need to know.
At any rate, he stopped inventing new ways to insult me and glared at me instead. When I said nothing, he exploded again, this time with questions. “What the hell was that, Fraser? Was that some kind of freakish Mountie mating ritual? Do you get off on causing intense fucking agony? What the fuck was that?” But when I attempted to explain my actions he cut me off. Apparently I had not committed an act of kindness but rather executed a fiendishly devised plan to “mess with” Ray’s head, to use his own words. He gave me a quick lesson in etiquette, which, in a nutshell, was that one “should not kiss a guy and get him all worked up and then try to break his neck.” I understand now that it is an act of incivility preclusive to sexual contact. At least in the moments immediately following the faux pas.
When I failed to respond with any more than a pained expression, Ray made his “get to the point, Fraser” moves and asked if I was getting him a shirt, or was he going topless as well as commando? He waited as I retrieved and handed him a small pile of clothes from my closet, before dropping his towel and looking pointedly at me as he drew on the jeans I had added on a whim, leaving them unzipped while he pulled on the t-shirt and tucked it in. I followed the movement of his hands as he readjusted himself before drawing the zipper up and I noted the way he shielded his genitals from the metal teeth with the front of the t-shirt. My t-shirt. A garment that had been against my skin countless times and was now pressed intimately against that part of Ray that I wanted pressed against me. I closed my eyes a moment, trying to come to terms with the fact that because of my well intended actions, I had been reduced to envying a scrap of cotton.
When Ray spoke, his voice was quiet, almost apologetic. “Not a bad fit, all in all,” He said, echoing my words to him earlier in the day. I didn’t look up, merely nodded at my boots. “And my neck feels better.” He exited the room without waiting for my response. It was the closest I would get to a thank you, and was as good as an apology coming from Ray, but it did nothing to make me feel better about the situation. A few moments later I heard the television from down the hall and decided to leave him to his own devices while I caught up on some paperwork. Diefenbaker amused himself by throwing Ray’s clothing in the air and attempting to kill it on the way down. I didn’t admonish him for this. At least one of us was enjoying himself.
I removed my tunic and sat at my desk, unable to concentrate on any of the tasks I set myself, and when I heard the television silenced, I had a moment of hope that Ray would come to me. But he didn’t, and I was left wondering if I had ruined more than an opportunity.
The chiming of the doorbell pulled me from my self pity, and I mistakenly thought that Ray had ordered pizza, so was somewhat taken aback to find Lt. Welsh standing on the other side of the door when I opened it. He had come to inform us that Ray was to be extradited first thing in the morning, and as the three of us stood in my tiny office, with Ray’s clothes strewn around the room, and him wearing mine, I found it difficult to concentrate, despite the urgency of the situation. Even as I wondered how this would appear to Lt. Welsh, I kept looking to the hem of my t-shirt, now outside of the waistband of the jeans Ray was wearing, and wondering if he had untucked himself for a purpose, or if it had merely ridden up as he lay on the couch. The former, while being the preferable of the two options, was also infinitely more distracting, so I convinced myself it was the latter and forced myself to focus on the task at hand.
The information Lt. Welsh gave us opened up new leads, which needed to be followed up with haste if we were to keep Ray from being taken into custody by anyone other than myself, and I left to do so quickly. Once away from Ray’s presence, I was able to think more clearly and soon decided on a course of action that I felt would lead to a favourable outcome. Although I had my suspicions as to who had framed Ray, I couldn’t be certain and had devised a plan to flush the culprit out.
Pleased with myself, and feeling quite optimistic that Ray would also be pleased with me, I stopped in at a drugstore on my way back to the consulate, buying items that I had begun to despair I would never have use for again, as long as I was in love with Ray Kowalski and therefore uninterested in anyone else. I determined then, that I would try one more time to show Ray how I felt, and if he refused me, I would simply leave it at that; suppress my emotions with ever more force until they died of suffocation. Call it a hunch, or call it arrogance, but I didn’t think it would come to that. At least not if I refrained from attempting to break his neck this time.
Part Two
Pairing Fraser/RayK
Rating: NC-17
Author:ultra_chrome
Summary/Story Notes: It’s long. Really long. 10,245 words in fact. And it’s all in Fraser’s POV, which is why it’s long. So it had to be split into two parts. Sorry.
Prompt: 13. Fraser/Kowalski - an explanation of how Fraser got clothes all over his floor in Asylum.
Disclaimer: These are not my boys, but I’m playing with them anyway.
Notes: Never ending gratitude to lucifercircle and heartofdavid for being the best betas in the known world, and for putting up with my comma abuse and endless changes. This is my first Due South fic, but don’t be gentle with me. I have broad shoulders. :)
Ray once said something very interesting to me. Well, he has said many interesting things to me, but this thing is the one I’ve come to find most interesting of all of them. He said, “On the inside, I’m a poet. On the outside…shake, bad guys, shake.” At the time, I thought very little of it, other than to surmise that he was a romantic at heart, but hid it from the world. As do a good many romantics at heart, I among them.
That was approximately two months ago, and many things have changed since then, including my take on the meaning of that seemingly small admission. Perhaps that’s not entirely true. It’s not so much that things changed, as it is that I finally became aware of how they have apparently been for some time. That happened as of two days ago. The clues were, for the most part, subtle, leading to a much larger event than my epiphany regarding Ray’s words, although not unrelated. And I am still coming to terms with the effects of both. Happiness, true happiness, is a feeling I have difficulty accepting, even though I crave it. Which is why I feel compelled to write it all down, in the hope that I will always have a reminder of how I feel at this precise point in time. In case things should change again, and not for the better. Things have a way of doing that, despite my attempts to keep them the same.
But I digress. If Ray were reading this, he would raise his eyebrows pointedly and sort of waggle (for want of a better word) his head about. This is his silent way of saying, “Fraser, would you just get to the point?” I believe he developed it to save himself from becoming repetitive. Because saying, “Fraser, would you just get to the point?” over and over is hardly poetic, no matter how beautiful the mouth that utters it.
And we are back to the point, I believe. Inside, Ray is a poet. I know this to be true, because I’ve been there, where the poetry is born; inside Ray. And it is everything that poetry should be. Very much more than most poetry is. I believe it was e.e.cummings who said, “A lot of people think or believe or know they feel -- but that's thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling --not knowing or believing or thinking.”
And the good poets, the truly great ones, have a way of doing more than simply sharing their feelings. They give them to you, wholly. Whether they be gift or burden, or somehow both, they become yours. You feel them as your own, even as you know that they are someone else’s. And the emotions stay with you, long after the words are forgotten.
Ray is very obviously an emotional man. Passionate is perhaps more accurate. He appears incapable of mild emotion, in any event. That is easy enough to see from the outside. It translates to nervous energy most often. I would say irrational anger runs a very close second. Whatever form his passion takes, he radiates it. It affects everyone around him. There is a possibility that I simply absorb it because I want any part of him that I can get. This would explain my own inability, at times, to contain my frustration and anger, which are obviously a reaction to his, more than they are my own feelings. Restraint is a virtue I have always been proud to have perfected. It is also one which Ray has systematically destroyed in me, at least where he is concerned. His gift and burden to me.
From the moment I saw him, I wanted him. And I felt guilt, because I should have been thinking more of Ray Vecchio, who had seemingly disappeared, to be replaced by a stranger. Nobody else seemed to care. Not even his family; so I should have been more concerned with his whereabouts than trying to discover whom this man claiming to be my friend was. But I wanted to know. I wanted to find out everything about him. Mostly I think I wanted to know his sexual orientation, and his identity would be the first step. It never once occurred to me to ask.
Even later, when he gave me opportunities to do so. There were clues, which I would mull over obsessively when I was alone at night, but which I was too afraid to follow up in the light of day. I tried and even thought I may have succeeded in showing my desire for him a few times, but either he was oblivious to my advances, or suffering from my own brand of reticence.
In any event, it didn’t take long for him to reveal his identity to me. Only slightly longer than it took me to discover it for myself. He told me many things about himself, including the more personal details of how he won the love of his ex-wife. It was evident from the way he spoke that he still held strong feelings for her. This was a blow to me. Such a crushing disappointment that I failed to wonder why he had asked me if I found him attractive. At least until I was alone with my thoughts, and the fantasies that arose from them. But that is neither here nor there.
Stella Kowalski is not a particularly pleasant woman, and I fail to see why Ray ever loved her. With his deep embarrassment about his given name, I would have thought that he’d have avoided a girl named Stella as a matter of self-preservation. But love her he did, and still does, in his own way, which I believe is one of Ray’s more endearing qualities. He loves freely, unashamedly, and makes no excuses for it. Stella almost destroyed him, but still, he will defend her and protect her with a single-mindedness that makes little sense, even to me. Considering I have been accused of being the most stubborn man on Earth, this is quite astounding.
And yet, even with his loving nature, he keeps himself closed to all and sundry, appearing violent at worst and annoyingly obtuse at best. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why I was so strongly attracted to him from our first meeting. He hardly stopped speaking for a second on that first day, even when he hugged me, which is unacceptable behaviour for a first meeting, and still, I learned nothing about him. Except for the physical evidence I gathered (in a somewhat less that surreptitious manner, I might add) which allowed me to pull his file later. He assures me that he practically told me his life story, but as I was sliding around on the roof of Ray Vecchio’s ill-fated Riviera for the duration of his discourse, I can’t be sure he told me anything that I wanted to know. Diefenbaker claims he was also distracted and wasn’t able to see Ray’s mouth moving, so he was no help. This is not entirely new.
If anything that occurred on our first day together gave me an inkling as to Ray’s true nature, it was the fact that he stepped in front of a bullet intended for me. Granted, he was wearing a vest at the time, but that would not have protected him had the bullet gone high.
That is not usually the act of a self interested, angry man. His inordinate pleasure at my fear that he was mortally wounded was a tad annoying at first, but I think perhaps it was more a case of happiness that he was appreciated. Even his sense of humour is not so perverse as to find instilling terror in a body amusing. And appreciation is not something Ray Kowalski has had a surfeit of in his lifetime, I imagine. He has such little faith in his ability to engender feelings of fondness in others that I wonder if he believes his prickly exterior is ultimately convincing; or is the prickly exterior there to hide his loneliness and self doubt? Either way, he responds well to praise and kind actions, a fact which I have shamelessly used to my advantage, I’m afraid.
A few days ago, Ray had a meet with a member of Chicago’s organised crime community, which ended in the fatal shooting of that man, one Andreas Volpe. Ray was knocked unconscious and never saw the shooter, but it was readily accepted by the police in general (although not by those who know him) that Ray had killed this man. When he regained consciousness, he ran from the scene, directly to the consulate. I heard the door burst open and rushed to the foyer in time to see Ray fall to his knees yelling my name. He was obviously in some kind of grave peril, yet all I could think for a brief moment was of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire and the fact that it should have been Stella that he was yelling. But it was oh so heartbreakingly my name that he called and I felt an uncharitable joy rising in me. I had replaced Stella. I was the first person he thought of in times of crisis. When Ray thought first with his heart, he thought of me.
Of course, I could hardly know that to be fact. It is entirely possible that Ray was thinking very clearly and the consulate was close enough to the scene of the shooting to be his first obvious destination. I haven’t yet had the courage to ask him. Perhaps I never will, so until I am told otherwise, I will believe he thought first of me, and that is why he was on his knees in the foyer of my place of employment and residence, panting raggedly and calling my name. Tragic and beautiful. Living poetry.
That image is one which I must admit led me to other inappropriate thoughts, briefly at that point in time, but increasingly as I recall it now. And so it was a difficult task to tend Ray’s head wound, which was, thankfully, minor, and take in the details surrounding his spectacular entrance. When the full weight of the situation became apparent, I determined that my only course of action was to arrest Ray and therefore keep him out of the hands of the Chicago Police Department until I could clear him of any wrongdoing. Metaphorically tying him up in red tape, if you like. The picture that conjured in my mind’s eye, coupled with the willing presentation of his wrists when I approached him with handcuffs was enough to make me eternally grateful for the length of my tunic and the loose fit of my jodhpurs. But there was work to be done, and quickly, if Ray was to be exonerated before he was extradited from my care.
Constable Turnbull was delighted to have a guest to fuss over, even with the curling being telecast at the time. This made me feel slightly less guilty for leaving my post, as it were, to retrieve Ray’s personal files from the station. I am helped in my belief that I was acting purely out of concern for Ray and not my own fear of losing him, by the alarming moments I was forced to endure in a darkened closet with Francesca. These were made even more alarming by the fact that I had to somehow open my trousers to hide Ray’s files and avoid her usually…free spirited hands. By some stroke of luck I managed this and was rewarded twofold when I returned to the consulate with my jodhpurs uncomfortably full of manilla folders stuffed with photographs and reports.
Inexcusably, I removed my tunic and lowered my trousers in front of Ray, when I really should have gone first to my office and removed the files there. As I said, Ray has destroyed any restraint I may once have had in these matters. At this point I am far from concerned, as he responded favourably to my impromptu strip show. The glint in his eye as he watched me was certainly not related to the files. In fact he seemed surprised when I produced them. Believe me, I was watching his face, and what I saw there gave me the courage to act as I did later that evening. But there was work to be done and I set out to gain as much information as I could, leaving Ray in the care of Constable Turnbull.
Typically, Ray was unable to stay put and let things unfold around him. He managed to convince Turnbull to hand over his uniform and left the consulate, resplendent in red serge and Stetson, walking unnoticed by Detectives Huey and Dewey, who were stationed outside, in the hope that he would try just such a stunt. I’m unsure whether this is testament to Ray’s undercover abilities, or the detectives’ lack of stake-out skills. But the upshot is that Ray and I were both captured by Eddie Herndorff’s men and held in a workshop to be turned over to the police. An outcome which never eventuated, thanks entirely to Diefenbaker’s tracking abilities.
Which is how we ended up hanging from the steel pipes on the ceiling until the search for us was called off. When Ray could hold on no longer he fell, quite awkwardly, into the back seat of a convertible that was parked directly below us, wrenching his neck rather painfully. After I climbed down, I managed to appropriate two coveralls which disguised us sufficiently to get to the consulate, and which I have since laundered and returned to their rightful owners. We shucked them just around the corner so that Detectives Huey and Dewey saw nothing more exciting than two Mounties returning to their little slice of Canada. One of them walking stiffly with his head held at a careful angle and the other with a concerned hand on his waist. I can only imagine their conversation about that. Although, I’m entirely certain I don’t want to.
Thankfully, Canada was closed for business by now, and we were greeted by the sounds of curling. Constable Turnbull was relieved that we had returned safely, although politely peeved at Ray for leaving him stranded in his underwear for over two hours. If the man had any sense at all, he would have borrowed a uniform from my office. However, as I am referring to Turnbull, I should not be surprised. When he asked if he could have his clothes back so that he could leave, Ray looked at me and said, “Yeah, can’t wait to get out of these pants.” For the life of me I cannot fathom why he would look at me while saying this, unless it was some kind of signal that he was…well, interested in being naked in my company. Which it turned out he was, but I was unaware of his desire at that time and merely cleared my throat to offer him a hot shower.
And so I found myself in the bathroom, helping Ray undress, as he was unfamiliar with the uniform and its various fastenings. If he noticed my shaking hands and increased respiration rate, he kindly avoided the subject. I turned to leave as he was peeling off his white t-shirt to reveal a black undershirt. I believe Ray would call it a wife beater, though I have no idea why. It’s not as if that item of clothing could inflict any sort of harm, unless rolled up and flicked, and even that would hardly constitute a beating. In fact many consider it a game, I included, contrary to the popular belief that I am incapable of having any sort of fun.
I’m also confused as to why he would wear black under a white t-shirt, but that is possibly something Ray couldn’t answer himself. He doesn’t share his predecessor’s passion for clothes. In point of fact, he often appears barely able to dress himself. I wonder if his mind is too busy to pay due attention to such a routine task, or if he deliberately dresses down as a form of rebellion against having to live someone else’s life. He certainly pays enough attention to his hair to indicate a touch of vanity in his nature. Whichever it is, his style of dress only serves to accentuate the image I now have of him as a poet. And I have always appreciated his choice of jeans, for reasons that don’t need exploring at this juncture, if I intend to complete this account of events.
Ray called me back to ask where he would find a towel, and I turned to see a vision of raw sexuality. Ray, wearing nothing but his clinging white jockey shorts and a halo of steam. I was momentarily lost for words as I noticed the outlines of his muscles, his stomach…the definition in the bulge at the front of his shorts. I believe I saw him smirk at me as I mumbled something about the vanity cupboard, before fleeing for the relative safety of Constable Turnbull’s incessant rambling.
By the time Ray emerged from the shower, I was in my office, once more in control of my urges and working on a plan to clear his name. I hadn’t counted on the fact that he had left his clothing in here when he made the transformation from Chicago flatfoot to Mountie, and so was taken aback when he entered wrapped in a fluffy white towel and holding his underwear in a bundle in one hand. As I looked up, he dropped the garments to the floor and folded his arms, leaning back just a fraction. I’m afraid I wasn’t looking at his face when he spoke, and this may or may not account for the hesitation in his voice when he asked if I had a shirt he could borrow. He seemed to think his own was somewhat sweaty and held traces of Turnbull’s scent from the tunic. I answered in the affirmative and rose to fulfil his request at the same time he made a move to retrieve his trousers from the far side of my desk. This had the unfortunate yet pleasant result of bringing us face to face in front of the closet door. In an office this size, I don’t need to tell you that there was very little space between us.
At this point I found it exceedingly difficult to breathe, torn as I was between decorum and desire. A dilemma that was made considerably worse when Ray looked down, causing his lashes to fan over his cheeks, and licked his lips. Slightly damp and flushed pink as he was from his recent shower, this gave him a deliciously debauched appearance and my breath returned to me in a sharp intake, as my body responded vigorously to both his beauty and his proximity.
Ray noticed. He smiled a little, moved even closer as he reached for his pants, and in a voice much warmer than his usual, said, “My shorts are a little damp, too. I’ll have to go commando.” More evocative words have never been uttered, nor have I heard any poem that suffused me with such intense emotion. Not even the one recited to me when I thought I was dying.
That was the moment I lost control, or took control, I’m not entirely sure which, but I leaned in and kissed him, not gently, not politely, but with a kind of desperation that spoke of my desire and my inability to articulate it any other way. Ray responded in kind, bringing his body to press against mine as he moaned into my mouth. The hand that I had placed on his chest now rose to the back of his head and I made to pull his mouth harder against my own. Ray stiffened and gasped, but in pain not pleasure and I backed off hurriedly, remembering his injury and feeling guilt wash over me. Ray grabbed my Sam Browne and tried to pull me in again, but I shook my head, no, telling him that I was sorry I had caused him pain. He just shrugged lopsidedly and leaned into me. As he pressed his hips close he said, “So take my mind off it.”
I desperately wanted to. But I had a much deeper need to get this right. To make it memorable for all the right reasons, not just for me, but also for Ray, because if I could make it perfect for him, then maybe, just maybe, given time, I could replace Stella as the love of his life. Which is entirely selfish of me, I admit. Disturbing as the thought is, that was and still is my goal. Perhaps more so now that I am privy to a side of him that I had not previously been aware existed. His inner poet.
And so I kissed him softly before I led him to my chair and pushed him down onto it. He went willingly enough, though he made an impatient noise in the back of his throat as I began to massage his neck, working on the knotted muscles with my thumbs. It didn’t take long for him to start alternating grunts of pain with groans of pleasure, and the euphony of his vocalisations touched me physically. A rhythm began to form between us, my hands moving slower, pressing deeper into the muscles beneath them, Ray’s groans becoming quieter and more frequent, until he seemed almost to be humming softly. I could feel that he was relaxing, becoming pliant in a way I never imagined him capable of, and knew that if I were to manipulate his neck now, I could ensure he would suffer no lasting effects from his fall.
Knowing Ray would tense if I warned him, and knowing this would hamper my efforts, I simply pulled his head back so that the top of it rested against my stomach and placed both hands under his neck, stroking upward to the base of his skull. He practically melted into me, so I had no trouble grasping his head firmly between my hands and twisting a little as I pulled upward. I was rewarded with a satisfying crack as his spine realigned, but Ray…well; Ray does not like to be caught unawares. He exploded from the chair, characteristic anger radiating from him in anything but subtle waves. He took a moment to gain his balance and launched a stream of invectives at me that I felt sure would strip the paint from the walls. I will certainly not recount them here, as I have no desire to recall them, even knowing as I do that they were merely a reaction to the surprise I caused. I punctuated his verbal abuse of me with a single syllable repeated often; that of his name, as I have discovered that if I say it over and over, it eventually sinks in and he cannot help but turn to me and say, “What?” in a suitably annoyed tone. Whether the repetition soothes him or irritates him further he has never indicated and I have never enquired, nor will I. It works and that is all I need to know.
At any rate, he stopped inventing new ways to insult me and glared at me instead. When I said nothing, he exploded again, this time with questions. “What the hell was that, Fraser? Was that some kind of freakish Mountie mating ritual? Do you get off on causing intense fucking agony? What the fuck was that?” But when I attempted to explain my actions he cut me off. Apparently I had not committed an act of kindness but rather executed a fiendishly devised plan to “mess with” Ray’s head, to use his own words. He gave me a quick lesson in etiquette, which, in a nutshell, was that one “should not kiss a guy and get him all worked up and then try to break his neck.” I understand now that it is an act of incivility preclusive to sexual contact. At least in the moments immediately following the faux pas.
When I failed to respond with any more than a pained expression, Ray made his “get to the point, Fraser” moves and asked if I was getting him a shirt, or was he going topless as well as commando? He waited as I retrieved and handed him a small pile of clothes from my closet, before dropping his towel and looking pointedly at me as he drew on the jeans I had added on a whim, leaving them unzipped while he pulled on the t-shirt and tucked it in. I followed the movement of his hands as he readjusted himself before drawing the zipper up and I noted the way he shielded his genitals from the metal teeth with the front of the t-shirt. My t-shirt. A garment that had been against my skin countless times and was now pressed intimately against that part of Ray that I wanted pressed against me. I closed my eyes a moment, trying to come to terms with the fact that because of my well intended actions, I had been reduced to envying a scrap of cotton.
When Ray spoke, his voice was quiet, almost apologetic. “Not a bad fit, all in all,” He said, echoing my words to him earlier in the day. I didn’t look up, merely nodded at my boots. “And my neck feels better.” He exited the room without waiting for my response. It was the closest I would get to a thank you, and was as good as an apology coming from Ray, but it did nothing to make me feel better about the situation. A few moments later I heard the television from down the hall and decided to leave him to his own devices while I caught up on some paperwork. Diefenbaker amused himself by throwing Ray’s clothing in the air and attempting to kill it on the way down. I didn’t admonish him for this. At least one of us was enjoying himself.
I removed my tunic and sat at my desk, unable to concentrate on any of the tasks I set myself, and when I heard the television silenced, I had a moment of hope that Ray would come to me. But he didn’t, and I was left wondering if I had ruined more than an opportunity.
The chiming of the doorbell pulled me from my self pity, and I mistakenly thought that Ray had ordered pizza, so was somewhat taken aback to find Lt. Welsh standing on the other side of the door when I opened it. He had come to inform us that Ray was to be extradited first thing in the morning, and as the three of us stood in my tiny office, with Ray’s clothes strewn around the room, and him wearing mine, I found it difficult to concentrate, despite the urgency of the situation. Even as I wondered how this would appear to Lt. Welsh, I kept looking to the hem of my t-shirt, now outside of the waistband of the jeans Ray was wearing, and wondering if he had untucked himself for a purpose, or if it had merely ridden up as he lay on the couch. The former, while being the preferable of the two options, was also infinitely more distracting, so I convinced myself it was the latter and forced myself to focus on the task at hand.
The information Lt. Welsh gave us opened up new leads, which needed to be followed up with haste if we were to keep Ray from being taken into custody by anyone other than myself, and I left to do so quickly. Once away from Ray’s presence, I was able to think more clearly and soon decided on a course of action that I felt would lead to a favourable outcome. Although I had my suspicions as to who had framed Ray, I couldn’t be certain and had devised a plan to flush the culprit out.
Pleased with myself, and feeling quite optimistic that Ray would also be pleased with me, I stopped in at a drugstore on my way back to the consulate, buying items that I had begun to despair I would never have use for again, as long as I was in love with Ray Kowalski and therefore uninterested in anyone else. I determined then, that I would try one more time to show Ray how I felt, and if he refused me, I would simply leave it at that; suppress my emotions with ever more force until they died of suffocation. Call it a hunch, or call it arrogance, but I didn’t think it would come to that. At least not if I refrained from attempting to break his neck this time.
Part Two