A Kiss Is Just A Kiss
Author: Jess_Who
Fandom: Ashes To Ashes
Pairings: Ray/Shaz
Rating: 12A
Disclaimer: Only a fan, not the owner.. :'(
Spoilers: Series 3
Note: I wrote this for someone, but I can't remember who or even if I went with the right theme... not the greated memory.
....A2A...A2A....
Ray knows he will feel guilty in the morning when he has to look his friend and colleague in the eye. However, it doesn't mean he is going to stop.
Why on earth would he want to stop now?
He had always thought her pretty. Easy on the eye. Right now? Christ, he cannot even find the words. He feels like he should tell her she is beautiful, so fucking beautiful, but he has told her too much already.
A kiss, well, a kiss is just a kiss.
Ray likes kissing pretty girls. If that girl happens to be Shaz, then he is still just kissing a pretty girl, isn't he?
#
It started with Shaz answering her door and a mumbled request to be let in. How could anyone reject him when his voice was that soft?
She left him in the living room sitting on her lumpy sofa to make them both tea and pulled out a tumbler and sloshed an unmeasured amount of vodka in it, because it was all she had and she reckoned he needed it.
"Have you got more?" Ray asked when she pressed the glass in to his hand.
"If all you needed was a drink why didn't you stay at Luigi's?"
"Because if I mention the stars to Chris, he'll think I'm having a Star Wars moment." He said robbing half the liquid from the glass in one mouthful.
"What if I thought that too?" Shaz asked, testing the bridges they seemed to have made over the past few weeks.
"If you think I'm crazy then I'll go." Ray shouted, slamming the glass down and making to get up, but not bargaining on the determined grip of the young WPC who pulled him back down.
"I saw them too," Shaz walked over to the window leaving his slouched on her sofa, "I don't understand it, but I know I saw them. One minute the sun was shining and then it went dark and there were stars."
"So were either both crazy or someone spiked our drinks?" he asked joining her at the window to look out at the night sky as if they would again get a glimpse of the starry abyss.
"I think DI Drake saw them too. She said 'When you looked back, they were gone.' or something like that, so she must have seen them."
"Christ if she's seen them we must be barking!"
"Ray!"
"I'm kidding, well a little bit." At Shaz scowl, he almost laughed, "Oh come on we all go Doctor Who, you don't think that is a little..."
"Scary?" Shaz supplied.
"I was gonna say bloody weird. Someone must have spiked our drinks."
"And you, me and Drake all have the same hallucination? Get a grip," she said rolling her eyes at his stupidity.
"Well what do you suggest happened then?" Ray asked, his voice raising for a second time.
"I don't know. It was like the end of the universe, there was nothing, but...." Shaz shut the curtains and kept Ray out of her line of sight, "It feels like everything is falling apart and I'm really,"
"Scared," Ray interrupted, "Because it doesn't make any sense and if we tell anyone they'll think were crazier then a psychotic bag of acorn deprived squirrels."
"Yeah," Shaz smiled and after a beat said, "I'll get the vodka."
#
What was the word Alex used for the Guv? Neanderthal. Yes that was what Ray was, that and a misogynistic bastards when he wanted to be.
He hadn't even said anything and she knew he wasn't likely too.
There was a look in his eyes though. For the briefest of seconds, he had looked at her like she was a creature with a strange and ethereal beauty.
She refused to feel badly about what she was doing when someone could make her feel that desirable.
#
They let the silence draw out for as long as possible and with the aid of a bottle of vodka it was almost comfortable. Maybe in this alcoholic haze they are for the first time friends and not just colleagues.
Shaz only get up once, to get a bottle of wine. Its not exactly beer, but right now Ray is happy that they have something to numb this insanity and he doubts even if she has more drink in her fridge that she would be able to walk in a straight enough line to find it.
Ray is not intirely sure when he did it, but at some point he put his arm around her shoulders and what confuses him more is that she does not seem to mind.
"I'm not drunk, I have hollow legs."
He watched Shaz cover her mouth, but still catches the snort of amusement, "Yours legs arn't hollow, you have the loudest foot steps I've ever heard."
"Since when?"
"Since the neighbours complained when I let you crash on the floor, you stamped about to be sick in the toilet."
"In that case next time I'll aim for the bed." His huff of annoyance watered down with a smile.
"As if you could find it. You never actually made it to the toilet."
"I'm programmed to find womens beds." Ray said, puffing his chest out slightly.
"Like radar?"
"Yeah." He answered with male pride.
"You wish."
#
They do not fit together like two people that are meant to be. They are just two people that need to make sense of something bigger, of something that scares them.
With the drop of a kiss on her inviting mouth, they become entangled. Like the calm before a storm their bodies oppose and attract each other.
Ray won't ever be like Chris and Shaz knows she isn't that someone Ray is yet to find. It doesn't matter, because for next hour they can pretend they have someone, even if they only want a small part of them.
....A2A...A2A....