Mosquito Field, AFQ
due South fic
Rating: Adult
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Words: 11k
Summary: How Ray Kowalski got his wings. Angst, the Alaskan bush, post-CotW, aviation kink. Written for getfraserlaid
Mosquito Field, AFQ
by raggedass_road
Martin was a guy like a moose. Kinda lanky, big shoulders, big hands, clomped around in a huge pair of hiking boots and man you did not wanna get between Marty and his baby. An old red with a gray streak and white underbelly, she was a sweet little Cessna 180 on fat tundra tires and IFR fitted. Four seats if you knew how to cram it and Marty did, Marty maintained her himself. He was a mechanic on top of being an airplane driver, so unless he was out flying all over hell he'd be off in the bush someplace, checking up on other little birdies.
He was hanging around in the FBO when Ray trudged in that day - that day still a blur in Ray's memory, with its snapshot moments of clarity, Kodak stills.
The back pocket on a pair of Levi's, streaked with grease and stuffed with a fold-up chart. A battered canvas coat, blue tartan liner peeking up at the collar. Coffee. Stinking black coffee so strong Ray was gut-wrenched and homesick.
"Howdy," said Martin Boone, slurping off the Styrofoam. "Help you with something?"
Ray jerked his head, scratched his neck, thought but didn't say I am beyond all your help, buddy. Out the window and across the parking ramp, a windsock wriggled from the hangar like a giant orange worm, and Ray could see runway lights twinkling in the distance. The tail number N3301T stood out from the nearest airplane, tied down at the wings but the nose still angling into the sky, like it wished it could be there.
"Where do you want to go?"
"I don't... nowhere."
Marty gave him a headset and flew him in circles.
In a month Ray was flying in circles on his own.
His savings by then were long gone, gone and blown on a bad dream, so Ray paid it back minding the desk, keeping books and ordering parts from an outfit in Anchorage. Once in a while he pumped avgas and helped push a plane to the maintenance hangar, where Marty took the cowling off and tinkered and Ray just stood handy.
By the time weather briefings were coming in the toasty mid-sixties, motel rates had doubled. Ray checked out before he got kicked out, hauled his pack to the FBO and stashed it in a back room. There was a smell in there, like musty paper and book glue, like an office in a past life. Outdated aeronautical charts covered the walls - Southcentral then Southeast Alaska, the Yukon, the very far edge of the Territories. Ray scanned them in the dark with a MagLite, pressed up close like reading hieroglyphs, his fingers brushing over the puzzle of concentric circles and lines.
Marty found him in there the next morning, asleep over a map of the Mackenzie Delta.
(Running a double lead on the gangline white wolf and a husky, the shout echoes wide clear and cold in the dusk miles away, miles away, Ray lies down in the snow. Come haw! Dief, come haw! He can see, he hallucinates the team rounding back in a wide arc, ice booties and cable, a malamute train. He closes his eyes. Ray where are you, Ray, Ray!)
He twitched awake. INUVIK VOR-DME 112.5, said a tiny box of print under his nose. The hashes of a compass rose bloomed out in every direction as Ray picked up his head, blinked his eyes into focus. Due west was a Styrofoam cup full of high-octane coffee, and a newspaper folded to the classifieds.
***
It was the honest-to-god 1970s in there. Everything burnt orange and chocolate and cream, all jumbled together in a psychedelic floral. What could he say, it had character. Groovy little place, funky even, it was kind of like being in a time warp.
Okay, it was a dump. Two rooms and a closet with a shower and toilet, disgusting shag carpet with baseboard heating and the plumbing was iffy, the linoleum peeling, the seal on the windows was cracked and they frosted on the inside. But hey, Ray had lived among the caribou, right? He had lain down at night with the dogs, eaten dried meat, and pissed in a hole in the snow. This was Babylon right here, a palace.
Marty didn't ask. Cut the paycheck a couple weeks early and piled Ray's stuff in the back of his truck, like it was just something any guy would do. Like they were buddies. They talked the whole way about 180 engine conversions on the 172s, and how Marty had to get Ray up in a Super Cub one of these days. At the end of the road, they stood leaning on the truck like a couple of old-timers going on about nothing.
"Oh hey," Marty said when he'd finally got a leg in the cab, got back out, and dropped another bunch of crap in a Hefty bag, saying it was junk he'd been meaning to get rid of.
It was, mostly. Ray kept the blankets and the rattled Mr. Coffee - and Mr. Coffee did not mess around, that stuff came churning straight down the Pipeline and into Ray's kitchen - and the rest he kept anyway, for clutter.
Still, when he dozed at night, naked with the rough blanket drawn to his chin, his nose chilled, his dick aching, he whiffed at a memory in the wool.
(Cold, so cold he can't stand it, he can't shake it off. The slither of the nylon tent flap, zipping, and warm hands, warm breath on his neck and his face in the soft cotton henley, the tang of the outdoors, of cold sweat and camp smoke and dogs...)
Marty. Marty, he smelled like the cold, honest dirt and 100 low lead. Like Ray's hands after lending in the hangar. Ray's hand before reaching under the blanket and shutting his eyes.
Summer died. The world got dark and Ray got jittery, Ray got cold. A local jackass who was also the local FAA examiner had a heart attack, and word got back from Providence the examiner never would. Ray passed the checkride when the next guy took his place. He knew he'd passed when Marty grinned at him and pounded him on the back, he'd passed with flying fucking colors, passed like Ray was born with wings.
Wasn't five o'clock but it was dark, and so they trucked into town to celebrate. The Loosey Goose had never felt so much like home, two-dollar beer had never tasted so damn good, and then when Marty broke and shoved him, slammed him back against the pickup door - (he braces his hand on Ray's heart, stop) - that was it, the end of everything. It was all he could do just to sit by the tire, his ass on the ice, and put his head in his gloves. He was lost on the delta all over again, he was right the fuck back where he started.
Except that Marty wiped his mouth and had the decency never to mention it.
Winter overstayed itself.
***
Springtime brought the melt, and business flooded with the tourists from the Lower 48. Summer kept them coming steady, autumn slowed it to a trickle, winter finally shut it down. Ray got to know ebb and flow of things, the way things were, the way some things would never change. Were never meant to change. Some things were just not meant.
Marty hired someone else to do the books. What year that was Ray couldn't remember. In the logbook somewhere it was all down, his IFR ticket, his seaplane rating, his commercial ride. The flightseeing tours over Wrangell and Mt. Drum, the supply gig, the air taxi, ferrying the Troopers and teachers and powerline repair crews and half tons of moose - with the antlers on the wing struts, like some kind of flying freak dinosaur.
It's good. Hell, it's maybe even greatness. In an airplane he's too high to touch, he's a piece of the sky.
***
Once, he takes these three guys up from Oregon to a place on the Al-Can border, says he'll pick them up in a week, but when he's taxiing in from the water he has to squint, because now it's four guys on the lake, or else three guys and a monster king salmon.
Okay, this ship does four and Ray makes five, but he's sure they can work something out. The fishing buddies aren't big guys, and he's pretty creative about loading the gear. There's space to be had in the float lockers too, he can always put an external load on. He's already planning it out as he starves the engine, feels the prop spin down and come to a shuddering halt. He tosses his headset, bangs the door and drops his feet to the nearest float.
He picks out the new guy and squints again, trying to get the size of him. He's got these broad shoulders that remind Ray of Conoco Phillips and Exxon-Mobil, the heavy build of the guys he takes sometimes to Deadhorse. The battered old shirt, sleeves rolled up, collar open, suspenders off and dangling by the knees - the whole picture. He can't put his finger on it quite, there's just something about it that turns his crank. Top it off with a stained ballcap - not even for a team, it's like one of those cheap things commemorating the Alaska State Fair, or Our 50 Years Serving the Mat-Su Valley and the electric company logo. That is some hick shit right there. A smile prickles at him with the thought, and he raises a shout to the guy, "Hey! Somebody else fly you up, or these guys fish you out of the lake?"
He looks up.
Ray stumbles and falls in the drink.
***
The towel is damp, ripe and stinking of the great outdoors, but at least he's lucky enough to get it after everybody's had a laugh at his expense. Even Fraser is smiling and flushed, though it might be a sunburn. His hair is a mess, and his RCMP shirt is sticking to the skin, and his trousers are so bogged down with water the suspenders are stretching to hold them up. He looks so damn happy about it Ray kind of wants to punch him. Fraser grips him by the shoulders and says, "It's good to see you, Ray."
And Ray just stands there dripping and shaking, and not knowing what the hell to do. Fraser Hauls Ray's Ass Out of a Lake, Take Six, and he doesn't know what the fuck is his line here.
"What..." he struggles and false-starts and spits something out. "What are you doing here, Fraser?"
"It's a long story, Ray," he says, shaking his head, as if Fraser has a story that isn't long, or that doesn't involve heavily armed criminals and conspiracy to litter. "Really the only relevant part at this juncture would be that I've lost my compass, and seem to have - "
"What, got lost?"
"Well not precisely, just meandered slightly off course."
"What you did was meander into slightly the wrong country, Fraser."
"Yes, well, you see - "
"You got lost."
"I'm not lost, Ray. I have faith you know exactly where I am."
Ray backs up. Just backs the fuck up, hands off, big grabby Mountie hands off. "Yeah? I dunno Fraser, five guys is a tight fit." He hugs his arms to his chest and jerks his chin. "How much do you weigh."
Fraser all of a sudden seems to remember what page they're on here. As if Ray was gonna let him forget, he's had it bookmarked since forever, since the cold bitter end of that chapter, since they closed the book and shoved it under a sofa leg. Fraser does that thing with his lip like he's trying not to chew on it, drops his head, and looks away, squinting in the sunlight and pulling at his ear. "I... well, I don't know exactly - "
"Round numbers, Fraser. About. Guess."
"Ah. Well, if it's an estimate you want, I suppose..."
"Look, never mind, you just sit up front. Heavy stuff goes up front and that's you." He bundles the towel into Fraser's hands and shoves by, spinning him around like a revolving door.
Fraser's voice comes after him, "Ray..." and Ray does not look back. He's too busy rounding up duffels. Christ, do the damn things breed in the wild?
"Ray, I don't want to cause you to balance the airplane unsafely. If a reduced weight is necessary, I can just stay behind - "
"We're a-okay Fraser, I flew up the clown car."
He shoves by again to start loading the gear.
***
In the end, he has to make a special trip just for Fraser. Not because Fraser found the operating handbook and did the performance calculations in his head, and not even because Fraser tried to argue that according to the table they were grossly overloaded for such a confined takeoff area. Oh no, he has to do it because the Mountie was right.
Would a cold day in hell be so bad once in a while? Okay, he should have known, he did know, but at that point Ray's pride was on the line. There had to be one fucking thing he knew better, that Fraser in his vast expertise couldn't speak to.
But he had had trouble getting the airplane to taxi on the step, and even then had to swing it around wide and double back across the lake, pushing the power at a fast run. He felt the flight controls coming alive as they roared past the shoreline, ripping a wake in the murky green water, doing 70, maybe 75 knots when he took the control wheel in both hands and hauled. The weight shifted, the wings took, and the seaplane surged up... and then settled back down again, heavy and wet.
Fraser hadn't said a word, but Ray could feel the I told you so radiating off him like stink. He clenched his jaw and taxied downwind, turned around again and went for it.
Turned around again and went for it.
On the third failed attempt he ordered Fraser out the plane. Tossed him on the bank with a cooler full of trout and warm beer, and would've left him there permanently if he hadn't an obligation to come back for the fish.
In the late afternoon, Fraser's nowhere to be found. But the cooler's still there, so Ray parks it on the lid and he waits.
***
He sits on the bank with a beer bottle, watching the sun go down. Dragonflies hover in the rushes and zip around the toe of his hiking boot - tapping out a rhythm to a song he's forgotten, that lives only as a kinesthetic echo. The floatplane rocks gently on the tether just a few feet offshore, ripples slapping the pontoon, and the shadows of fish flickering under it. He swallows and glares at the sunset, bottoms-up for the last drop, and grinds the empty bottle in the weeds.
"Ray!"
He misses a beat. Stops - a dragonfly settles on his laces.
Ray looks over his shoulder, and yeah, he's got company. There's a hat coming over the hill, picking its way through the spruce - a Stetson, this time, and no Trooper blue either. Ray looks to the end of the lake again. On impulse he snatches the bottle and flings it away. It arcs out past the wings of the floatplane, and tumbles into the lake with a hollow dunk, splash, and then bobs up. He watches it nodding along like a dead fish, the Coors label flashing in the sun.
He hears the slip-whisper of boots in the long grass and fireweed, tramping to the bank - it disturbs all the peace and the quiet. "Ray, that's littering. And while I'm sure you consider it a trivial offense, it does carry a thousand-dollar penalty in the State of Alaska for a reason, the cumulative damage to the environ - "
"Don't get started with me Fraser," Ray tells him, putting his head in his hands, trying to squeeze out his thoughts through his eyeballs. All this space and Ray can't clear his head.
"I'm not 'getting started' with you, Ray, I was merely trying to impress the importance of - "
"No. No, you do not impress me, okay? I am one-hundred percent unimpressed over here."
"Ray - "
"Shut up. Just shut up. You got no jurisdiction here."
"Well, that may be," Fraser gives, getting snippy, "but unlike you I have an interest in the beauty and preservation of the land."
God, that is it. Ray stomps to his feet, slaps the dirt from the ass of his jeans and rounds on Fraser. It's like going nose-to-nose with Smokey the Bear. He's standing feet apart, his arms folded, a grave and accusing look under the Stetson. Only you can prevent forest fires, Ray. Like Ray's the only guy ever to camp in the woods. Like Ray has a thing against trees. Like Ray's favorite part of the show was when they shot Bambi's mom.
"Okay fine then. You just stay here and fucking preserve it, then."
Fraser opens his mouth, but Ray's already whipped around, shut him out. He heads down the bank to let the airplane loose, swatting through a cloud of mosquitoes.
"Ray..."
"Fraser," he sneers, and crouches by the mooring rope, slimy from trailing in the lake. He fumbles for the loose end and gives it a yank.
Fraser huffs, "Ray," and Ray doesn't hear him, he's too busy damning and fucking with the knot, "Ray, you know perfectly well you can't legally pilot an aircraft within eight hours of consuming - "
"No shit, Fraser? Really?" He slaps a tickle at the back of his neck, and feels the mosquito guts burst in a wet, bloody smear. "Fuck."
There's a mutter about 'language' that Ray doesn't catch, quite.
"You got something you wanna share with the class, Benton?"
"Ray, if you can't say something nice," he starts, and he must be getting pissed, or else Fraser's just never seen the movie. Hell, Fraser is living in the movie.
"Will you get off my case!" Ray bursts out, and can hear himself hollering back across the lake. "Just get off my fucking case, Jesus, I know what I'm doing!"
"Oh, well, in that case." Sarcasm reserved just for Ray, well, that's nice, this is just like old times, and now Fraser's going to trot out the famous I'm-reasonable-you're-ridiculous voice. "Perhaps then you wouldn't mind sharing? Because it seems to me, Ray - and forgive me if I'm mistaken, but it seems like your plan is to strand me on a lake in the middle of... of..." he gestures broadly with his arms, "of god-only-knows-where, for what reason I can't understand...."
"Canada's that way. Send me a postcard."
"Would you mind at least telling me what this is about?"
"Or you know what, on second thought, don't." The rope pulls free and Ray goes with it, sloshing to the airplane and winding the slack round his arm. Water swills in his boots, soaks his jeans, and with each heavy step the lake tries to suck him down. Fraser stands on the bank, looking hurt, looking confused, looking kind of pissed off that Ray's leaving him hurt and confused - not that Ray's looking, because he doesn't need to look, he's so good at imagining anyway.
"Ray, are you punishing me for something?"
***
Fraser doesn't speak to him after that. Well, not apart from confiscating Ray's keys and insisting that friends do not let friends fly drunk. Except that isn't what he says, because two beers do not equal 'drunk,' and Ray doubts if they've actually been friends for a very long time.
He digs in the cooler for the rest the beer, since he's grounded anyway, and decides to take his chances with the skeeters while Fraser dozes - sulks - whatever, in the cabin.
An hour later he's getting eaten alive, and the buzz he's got going isn't helping with that.
God, just - fuck this. Free country. Ray's country, Ray's airplane - okay, not Ray's airplane, but close enough - and he is not going to stand down for Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties. He drags himself into the cabin and bangs the door, thumps around getting his boots and his squelching wet socks off, and has to spend the next five or ten minutes killing mosquitoes.
The seats are lined up close as a couple of folding chairs, together in an inch, tight enough to knock knees. And there's just no way Fraser could sleep through it all, but he never moves, slumped in the co-pilot seat with the Stetson in his lap, his feet crammed at the pedals, his head fallen against the window. In the sheen of starlight Ray can almost see him in color - the flush of sunburn down his neck, deep blue suspenders strapped over his shoulders, the stripe of yellow down his leg.
Benton Fraser was made hell-for-stout. And Ray has had a look around, they just don't make 'em like that anymore. His body relaxed and laid out in the seat in that old-style RCMP ranger stuff looks so sturdy, and heavy, and good....
Ray grabs the inseam of his crotch and fights a grimace, adjusting his jeans. No. He is not gonna do this. It's gotta stop here, right now, no more feeling the guy up with his eyes. No more thinking about buttons, or the spread of Fraser's knees, or just slowly unzipping his -
Ray growls in his throat, tugging his pants again - Jesus, why does he have to be such a fucking guy, can't he just imagine something like... cuddling. No. God no, that's worse. Fraser's hands on him, arms around him, breathing on him - god, that is so, so much worse. He should have just stuck with the bloodsuckers, he wouldn't have this problem.
Then he's got another problem, because - "Ray."
He jerks his head. Fraser's eyes are awake, black and glittering in the weird light. Ray freezes. Unfreezes. Tries to make it look casual, or restless, or cold, any excuse whatsoever to confuse what Fraser's seeing. Not that Ray grabbing at his crotch has got to be all that hard to confuse, but just this once, let Fraser play that Ace of Oblivious he keeps up his sleeve. Please god, just this once, and Ray will never ask anything again. He fumbles his jacket off and tucks it up under his chin, hands shaking, his heart in his throat, and hunkers down against the seat.
Fraser breathes out.
For a guy at least pretending to get a little shut-eye, Ray has got way too much peripheral vision. Fraser's shadows thumb an eyebrow, fold their arms, and then he pushes on the rudder pedal, shifting. Ray can hear the seat track creaking, he can see the way Fraser's thighs tighten, his hips tilt, and scoot sideways. Sleep weighs down on him again. The words pour as heavy as molasses, thick and drowsy. "I... Ray, are you..."
He trails off. Ray's mind won't let it go at that, he keeps trying the sentence like a choose-your-own-adventure book. Are you cold. Are you staring at me. Ray, are you actually considering another sexual advance, because I thought I had made it abundantly clear that I - fuck. He can't take that. Can't take it, it's like hanging in the air with the engine dead, watching the trees get taller and the earth get bigger, just praying the wings hold him up as far as that field.
"Am I what."
Fraser lowers his head, rubs his cheek. It takes him a minute to come up with the word. "...Uncomfortable."
If wishes were fishes that cooler would've been nothing but booze. He might just be stupid enough, if he'd had a bit more, just to say yeah, he is, he is cramped, he is freezing, he might be more comfortable if.... "No." He huddles under the jacket. This ain't the Mackenzie Delta anymore, and he is not gonna go there again.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. Go to sleep."
***
He's slept next to Fraser before. The same tent, the same bag, he's slept wrapped in the guy's arms for Chrissake. He can tell when Fraser's not sleeping. Doesn't matter how still, doesn't matter how steady and level his breathing. He's not asleep. Which means he knows Ray's not asleep, and they're both just sitting here faking it.
"You know what," he snaps, when he can't take the stupidity of the situation anymore, "it's not like I'm gonna grab your dick when you're not looking, okay? I am not gonna do that. I got more respect than that Fraser, I would not fucking do that."
No answer. He's not going to get one either, he knows that - not that Fraser would give him an answer he really wants to hear. He already knows this thing is dead, it's just not buried, it won't stay in the ground.
"It was just a kiss, all right?" he tries again, mumbling, and rubs a hand over his head. And god, he's going to hammer his thumb doing it, it's going to hurt like a sonofabitch, but he has got to put the nail in the coffin. "A kiss, it was not like - not sexual assault. I did not grab your ass, I did not try to get in your pants, I did not - "
"You kissed me, Ray."
"Yes! Am I talking to myself here, or what? I gotta say it in Canadian? It was just - "
Fraser does not want to talk about it. Right, why should that have changed, huh? Except somehow he's taken it too far this time, because suddenly Fraser is up and fisting a hand in Ray's shirt. He yanks, he gets right in Ray's face, and Fraser is stinking like cooled sweat and spruce trees and breathing in his face and then sucks on Ray's mouth. It's wet. Wet, and tight, and there's tongue, and Ray makes a stifled noise because god, oh, shit, this is it, this is - Ben - Fraser - shoving him back at the seat like he's disgusted with the taste of him.
" 'Just a kiss,' Ray," Fraser quotes, like other people slap, "I know."
He reels. Doesn't care that he's smacked the control wheel and somewhere he's throbbing, he can't think, there's the sweet tang of Fraser in his mouth and soft memory on his lips and - "Wh - Fraser - "
"Go to sleep."
"But - "
"Go to sleep, Ray."
"I don't get you!" Ray cries. He can't deal with this push-pull, red-light-green-light crap anymore, it's like Fraser grew up without a traffic signal for miles, he doesn't get you're only supposed to see one color at a time. "You want this, Fraser? Now you want this?"
"I don't want anything, Ray," he says, and jams himself into the seat like before, like that settles it. "You're drunk."
Ray cannot get that to make sense. It makes no fucking sense at all, makes so much sense he has mime it fucking with his head. "I'm...? Fraser, you just kissed me!"
"Mmhm," Fraser agrees, like he's proven some kind of a point here, and pretends to be asleep.
It's near dawn till Ray realizes that Fraser is asleep, and he's the only one left pretending.
***
He's pissing in the woods when he hears the droning in the sky. Ray tilts his head back and stares through the tamarack. It sounds close, real close, but they're kind of in the ass end of nowhere here, it's a place you won't find in any fish Alaska guide and he'd kind of like to keep it that way. But the noise keeps on circling, and never does pass through the small patch of blue in the treetops. He frowns, zips up and hikes back out to the lake, where he can get a clearer look at the sky.
He's in time to find Fraser climbing from the cabin, careful and awkward like a cat coming down from a tree, and Ray is just not ready to face that. Him and Fraser is just as fucked up in the cold light of morning, and there's a breakfast mix of feeling in his stomach that makes him want to puke. Fraser looks at him and Ray can almost taste it coming up.
He shields his eyes, he tells himself against the sunburst, looking out beyond the shoreline. In a moment he catches sight of an airplane skimming to a landing on the water.
Great. Just great, here comes discovery. It's gonna be bad for business and bad for Ray's soul. You can never get the hell away from people anymore, you cannot get a damn bit of peace. Who are these assholes, anyway, Troutfitters? Flight Fishing? He squints, peering hard at the aircraft as it turns in a taxi toward shore - and out of the morning glare, the blue, white, and yellow of the Alaska State Troopers.
He pales.
Fraser's there in Ray's periphery again, stumbling up the bank and looking tired. He needs a shave. A shower, a comb, and change of clothes while he's at it too. He looks like shit. Ray wants him even worse. He has that surge again of breakfast that he didn't eat and Christ, how fucked up can you get?
Fraser turns out to the water, and back again with a bleary, confused sort of look on his face. It can't be that Fraser doesn't know who they are - course he knows who they are, stupid marksmanship games and collaborative cross-border policing - but he doesn't get to ask. Before the search-and-rescue gets too close, a door bursts open and a guy stands up that looks an awful lot like Marty. Yells an awful lot like Marty, even if Ray can't really hear him over the prop.
"Oh, fuck," says Ray, and for once Fraser doesn't correct him.
***
"You said you'd be back! They all said you'd be right back!"
"I was about to be right back, you couldn't have waited a couple hours?"
"A couple hours since when, you dickhead? You didn't sign out, you didn't file a fucking flight plan - "
"A flight plan, a flight plan, you have got to be kidding me! How often do you file a flight plan, Mr. Safety-Conscious?"
"I try to tell a guy where I'm going for Chrissake, you got everybody thinking you're dead - "
"I'm fine! We're both fine, the plane's FINE, what the hell is your goddamn problem Marty? Does it look like I nosed it over? Is it sinking in the lake, is the ELT fucking going off? Because you know what, I think I woulda noticed that."
"Ray - "
"What! It's gotta be I fucked up somehow, is that it? You never think maybe I was waiting for the air to cool off, huh? You ever think of that?"
"Ray, that isn't exactly - "
"Shut up, Fraser, did somebody ask you?"
"You got out of here with three guys and a whole bunch of gear in the middle of afternoon, you're going to tell me you couldn't make it out with him?"
"Yeah, so?"
"Bullshit!"
"No, bullshit is you flying the fuck in here with a state cop and no excuse for wasting his whole fucking morning."
"There was no plane, all right? No airplane, no pilot, nobody seen Ray Kowalski since yesterday, you wanna tell me that doesn't get to scare the shit out of me? Huh?"
"Aw c'mon! Why you making a big deal out of this?"
"Look, Ray. I may be an asshole. But if you think for one second that when my best guy goes missing I am just gonna sit around with my thumb up my ass, you got another think coming."
"I... Marty," he tries to protest, but the wind's gone out of his sails. Marty folds his arms, staring him down, and Ray stuffs his hands in his pockets.
On the bank, Alaska's finest worries his Stetson. Fraser's missing his, and looks completely lost.
***
Fraser stays at the same motel. And Ray doesn't know why but that irks him, really burns his ass. It's kinda like Fraser's invading it, doing it on purpose, never mind if it's cheap and convenient to the airport and has a big neon sign sizzling VACANCY on the main drag of town. He's got no right to stay there, where Ray used to sniffle and jack off and sleep in the mess, because that's what Ray was then, a mess.
And now, now Ray's shit is together. He's good. Only Fraser turns up at the airport the next day, shaved, showered, and dressed in his best reds like One Horse, Alaska has a phone booth somewhere. Ray's shit is all falling apart again.
"Listen," says Ray in the safety of the hangar, "you gotta take this one."
Marty peers at him from under the guts of a PA-18, wiping his hands on an oil rag.
"It's just... look, you remember that time? That uh, time you and me," Ray fiddles his collar and dances back and forth for a second, "you know - after my checkride."
Something flickers in Marty's face, but he just sits there, rubbing at a stubborn bit of dirt on his hand. "Yeah?"
"The Mountie." Ray spits it out. Just spits it out, and there it is, after all this time trying to choke it down, shut it up. Suddenly he can breathe, really breathe, feel it whooshing in and out, taste the chill and the stale fume of the hangar. "He's the guy, that's - that's it, that's what that was about. And I'm not sayin' - look, I'm not saying that's any excuse, but, I'm sorry. The guy just... the guy fucks me up, a little."
Marty raises his eyebrows, as if to say yeah, tell me something I don't know, and that staggers him a little. Okay, so Marty knows about the closet, he's never come out to the guy as such but it's kinda hard to avoid when you slip a guy the tongue. But - he knows about Fraser? How the fuck does he know about that? Is there a big gay motel sign over Ray's head or something? A giant Arby's thing except it's pink and it's a Stetson?
Marty's not telling. He just stays on the concrete with the Piper guts, tucking the rag in the back pocket of his jeans. He fishes a wrench from the toolbox. "I would, Ray, but...." He glances up, tapping the handle on his leg.
Ray rubs a hand over his eyes, then his face. "Yeah. Okay."
***
"Ray - "
"Do not talk to me, Fraser." He hauls the harness over his shoulder and puts it together, straps the kneeboard to his thigh and starts getting his shit organized. "Do not. You just sit there, and shut up, and do not talk to me."
Fraser drops his head and frowns at the instrument panel, closes his eyes and rubs an eyebrow, like he's trying to scrub the thing right off his face, it's like a cut he won't let heal. "I was just going to ask for a headset, Ray."
"What did I tell you."
"Not to talk to you, Ray."
"And are you talking to me?"
"No, Ray."
"Good." He bangs the door shut and shoves the lock lever, conversation over. He flips through the checklist with his head down, determined to keep busy, do not interrupt. Fraser doesn't. He just sits there like Ray said, like a big goddamn fire-engine red fucking elephant in the room. Cabin, whatever. And the cabin is a hell of a lot smaller than your average room too, tiny even. Cram one pilot and one moody Mountie and it's a flying fucking can of sardines.
He doesn't know how he's going to make it to the border like this, never mind clear to Inuvik.
Ray puts his head to the window and snarls, "Clear prop!" cranks the starter and jams in the throttle so the engine catches quick. It roars to life and the airplane lurches with the sudden propeller blast. Fraser startles - and not that Ray's looking, just catches him doing it from the corner of his eye. Ray reaches over him and snaps through a series of radio switches, haphazardly dials in settings and twists the altimeter, transponder, knocks the flaps up, his fingers dancing deftly and furious over the console. He's showing off, yeah, he knows Fraser is sitting there watching him pretending not to watch, just like Ray is pretending not to notice. And you know what? Good. Let him. Just let Captain Amazing over there start to worry he might not be the only guy north of the forty-ninth parallel who knows how to do shit.
When he's damn good and ready, he starts taxiing out to the runway, makes his radio calls, and then neither of them talks the whole way to Canada.
***
The airstrip is deserted. Nobody answers on the CTAF, nobody hanging around to welcome them on the ground. Just the creaking of a weathervane, the gentle flagging of a faded Remove Before Flight tag, hanging from a solitary airplane left in parking.
Fraser stays in the plane while Ray finds the fuel service and tops off the tanks. Doesn't even get out to stretch his legs. Ray catches glimpses of him as he climbs up and down on the wing struts - the whole time just sitting there, turning his Stetson around in his hands and looking miserable.
Ray closes the fuel cap and stays there a minute, folding his arms on the surface of the wing. The evening air is sweet and calm, and the shadow of Marty's Cessna reaches out across the tarmac, dark and lengthening in the nine o'clock sun. Ray puts his head down, tries to think, and bangs it quietly on the wing.
***
He angles for runway 20 and taxies in silence, fingers drumming on the yoke. Another 300 nautical miles or so, a few hours, and Fraser is out of his life. For good. Or that's what he tells himself, anyway, because everything feels jinxed. Like somebody's gone through his stuff and trashed it, all the meager shit he owns, and splattered red all over these pictures Ray has of his life.
The front desk at the FBO, right next to the bulletin board that's always covered in specs and pictures of planes for sale? Now with Fraser, smack in front of it. Marty howdying over his coffee and Fraser how-do-you-doing right back. Marty asking where did Fraser want to go, the right-hand seat where Fraser sat, the Mountie walking on the tarmac. God. A thousand miles of nowhere and it's all going to be Fraser from now on, squinting his eyes when the sun flashes in through the plexiglass, craning to watch the meander of cold creeks far below.
It's not an album Fraser's even supposed to be in. It's supposed to be Ray, just Ray, and Marty, maybe the guy who tends bar, and the grocer and his wife and the local State Trooper. The small-town set, twenty faces he knows. But not Fraser. The whole point of the album was not to have Fraser, but now everything's fucked and nothing's what it's supposed to be. His home base at AFQ, the place where he's safe, it's not so safe anymore. The sky where he can't be touched, it's not so high up there all of a sudden.
It won't be the same. It's not ever going to be the same again.
Meanwhile, Fraser gets to keep his Ray-free album, whatever the fuck it's full of pictures of. Suddenly he wants to know. It's only fair, since Fraser stuck his nose into Ray's, he wants to know what life is Fraser going back to.
Life in Inuvik? Yeah, well Ray may be flying him to Inuvik, but just to the airport. So what, does he live in town? Out of town? Is it just that it's close to some village or other and Fraser doesn't want to go direct? Or maybe he's picking up Dief or something, got some business with the local detachment?
Maybe he's with the local detachment. Except that doesn't make sense, because what was he doing getting lost in Alaska if he's posted to the friggin Territories? That's a long way from home for a village cop, doesn't matter what Fraser was chasing. Well. Then again this is Fraser. Tracking something for hundreds of miles across the tundra is probably the crazy arctic version of jumping on cars and chasing criminals over the rooftops. Like Inuit Superman, or something.
Yeah, well fuck that shit, he doesn't care if Fraser did do an impromptu Iditarod across the Yukon in the middle of summer. There's got to be something a guy can't do just off the top of his head. There's got to be something you just can't get from any Inuvik Public Library book. Fraser can quote the manual all he wants, but when you get right down to it? There is theory, and then there's doing it. And this is it here, Ray is doing it. Fraser could probably tell him exactly how it works, and how it flies in terms of the laws of aerodynamics, and follow it up with the entire life story of Charles Lindberg. But Ray's betting money - American money - that he would not last five minutes at the controls.
If Ray keeled over dead at say ten-thousand feet, it'd be adios Constable Fraser, that's it. He would drop right out of the sky. He'd be helpless to put it down safely if someone had never once shown him the rudder, if no one had taught him to finesse the control wheel, if Ray hadn't put Fraser's hand on the throttle and trusted him and talked him back down to the ground.
He stomps on the brakes so fast the airplane lurches and throws them forward. Fraser braces himself and turns around - "Feet on the pedals," Ray says, hearing himself on the mike but not sure for a second if Fraser can understand over the propeller. He raises his voice, "Top of the pedals, that's the brakes, hold the plane for a sec."
Fraser gives him a look like he's out of his mind, but does as he's told - at least, the plane doesn’t start rolling again when Ray takes his feet off, twists out of the harness and wedges his arm into the backseat, reaching, straining - and closes his hand on the spare headset. He drops it in Fraser's lap, and gets himself buckled up to fly again.
"Okay, I got the airplane." No reply, so Ray glances to the co-pilot seat. "Mike check, Fraser."
"Loud and clear, Ray," he says, though his hands are still adjusting the set and he's frowning like he doesn't hear a thing.
"You wanna drive?"
"What?"
"Drive." Ray jerks his shoulders. "You know, taxi. You wanna drive it to the runway?"
There's silence on the com for a minute. Then, "Ray, I don't..."
"Look, it's easy, just - feet on the pedals. Bottom half, you gotta steer with your feet." Ray waits to feel pressure on the dual controls, the telltale movement of Fraser's boots. "You got it?"
"Really Ray, I'm not - "
"Ready? Just keep it on the line, Frase, little corrections. You got the pedals."
The airplane starts rolling. It goes forward for a second or two, then starts listing to the left, and immediately veers to the right - and pretty soon, the way Fraser keeps stomping on it, they're fishtailing all over the taxiway. "Little corrections," says Ray, "you gotta lead it a little."
But Fraser's not leading, he can't get it right, and just short of the runway he jams on the toe-brakes. "Okay, not bad," Ray says, "I got the plane for a sec - "
"Ray, what are you doing?"
"Engine run-up, just gotta turn us around here - "
"No, Ray, what are you doing?"
There's something in the tone that makes him stop before he's pivoted the airplane quite all the way around.
"I was given to understand we weren't talking."
"We're not talking. This more, uh... conversing."
"Talking, Ray."
"Discussing."
"Talking."
"Arguing."
"Your exact words were - "
"I know what my words were! Just - I take it back. This is me taking it back, okay?"
"I'm not asking you to take it back, Ray, not especially if you only intend to amuse yourself by making me look foolish."
"Huh?"
"This! This, Ray, ridiculous things like asking me to help you pilot the airplane. In case it's escaped your notice, I can't fly an airplane."
"Yeah, well that's why I'm telling you."
"Ray, are you even qualified to give flight instruction?"
He fixes Fraser with a look, gripping the wheel and letting him figure it out for himself just how fucking insulted he is. "As a matter of fact, yeah. I am."
"Well, that's wonderful," says Fraser, like he's talking about shit in his oatmeal. "That's quite an accomplishment, Ray, and I'm sure you must be proud of yourself."
"You're damn right I'm proud of myself. What else should I be, huh?"
"I'm sure I don't know."
"What the hell does that mean? God, you do something nice for a guy - "
"And you somehow upset him? You frustrate him more with your efforts to help? Well, Ray, I can't say that I know the feeling."
"You..." Ray trails off, and suddenly he gets it, jamming a finger in Fraser's face. "That was not my fault! The dog thing was not my fault, Fraser, they wouldn't listen to me!"
"Dief would have listened to you."
"Dief's deaf."
"That's just it, you think everything needs saying."
"So what are you not saying, Fraser?"
Fraser makes an exasperated gesture, like Ray's a damn moron, like this is the door, Ray!, like Fraser's fucking drawn him a picture and Ray doesn't get it. "I love you, Ray!"
"What?"
"I love you," he says again, pushing on the words, and enunciating everything like Ray doesn't understand Canadian - which Ray's starting to think that he totally doesn't. "Although apparently I - oh, never mind." He yanks the headset out of the jacks, off his head, and sits glaring at the runway.
It takes Ray a second to catch up here.
He idles the throttle and fumbles for the parking brake, throws off his headset and yells over the wash of the prop - "You do not get to say that! You do not get to come here and say that, that is bullshit, Fraser!"
"Well it's true, Ray, I can't help it if you - "
"Shut up!"
"Ray - "
"Shut up! Don't you even try to pull this on me, Fraser, don't you even fucking think about doing this shit to me again!"
"Ray, what - "
"Do not ask me what! You do not get to act like you're the guy who doesn't know what the fuck's going on here, Fraser, I am wearing my stuff on my sleeve! It ain't cool, it ain't the style anymore, I can't help that. I can't help what's all over my fucking face. But you, I don't know what the fuck is with you. 'Cause just when I think I got you figured out? Just when I think I get what you're saying all these times you're all, oh, conserve body heat, Ray, I got all this lung capacity, Ray, I'm a freak, this is all just standard freak procedure - just when I think I fucking get that? I don't get that!"
"Well Ray, if you'd just - "
"I don't get it! You kiss me, it's standard procedure! I kiss you, you push me away!"
"Ray, I didn't - "
"I try to apologize for kissing you, you stick your tongue down my throat! What the fuck!"
"What would you have rather I did, Ray?" Fraser gets in finally, shouting over the chop of the engine. "I mean for god’s sake, you're so obviously uncomfortable with your attraction to me - "
"My attraction to you? I make a move on you in an actual sack and you get that I'm uncomfortable with my attraction to you?"
" - though I don't pretend to know why," Fraser goes on, ignoring him completely, "if it's just that I'm a man, or your partner - ex-partner - your friend, or if it's something else unique to your mind entirely - but whatever the case, you seem to need the excuse of drink or hypothermic delirium before you're prepared to 'make a move on me,' as you put it."
Ray completely cash-registers.
"Ah." And Ray doesn't have to ask what that means, 'ah.' Fraser looks pissed. "Let me guess, Ray, it never occurred to you that in all your excessive proximity to me, you go out of your way to assure an acceptably heterosexual pretense? ...Buddy breathing, Ray?" Fraser prompts him, like it's the most juvenile euphemism he's personally ever heard in his life.
"You - that was all you, Fraser, you're the one who called it that!"
"Well you're the one who asked."
"Well you're the one who put your mouth on me like a fucking piece of evidence!"
"Very well Ray, and if I'd told you it was a kiss? Did you want me to tell you 'Ray, that was a kiss, Ray something's changed,' would you have welcomed that?"
"That's not the point."
"Oh I think it is the point."
"It is not the point, the only pointy thing you got is right at the top of your pointy head."
"Oh for the love of - that's fine, Ray, please, insult me. You're so much better at it than saying what you mean."
Ray slams the control wheel. "Fraser. All I want to know, was it a kiss. Was it a kiss."
"No, Ray, and far be it from me to contest your preference of reality even if it had been."
"Do not give me that psycho-shit Fraser, I will pop you in the head, just answer the question. Yes or no. The other night in the floatplane?" He gestures between their faces, you and me, this. "Was that a kiss?"
Fraser's thumb at his eyebrow isn't doing the trick anymore; he takes the whole heel of his hand up there. "Yes."
"Yes what."
"Yes, Ray, it was a kiss."
"Okay then." He waits. Fraser doesn't volunteer, so Ray gives him a warning. "Start talking, Fraser."
Fraser pinches his own face, right there between the eyes. "I'm sorry, Ray. I was... frustrated."
"Frustrated."
"Yes, Ray, frustrated!" he bursts out, like Fraser's going to save him the effort of looking it up, be the picture right next to the dictionary entry. "You were, shall we say entertaining certain ideas under the combined suggestion of close quarters and alcohol. And don't doubt my respect for your person, Ray, but your staring at me and your... well, as you were, and then insisting on being allowed to inform me exactly what sexual overtures you had and had not made, I don't mind telling you just how difficult you were making it for me to... for me not to... what I mean to say, it would have been easy to disregard your impaired state and simply provoke you to - "
Ray claps his hand over Fraser's face and stuns him silent. He kills the engine, and all that survives the death rattle of the prop is a soft electrical whine, the avionics shutting down, the power failing as he trips the master switch. He unbuckles his harness and fumbles for the strap of his kneeboard, clumsy and trembling. He's done with this shit. He is so fucking done with this shit.
The Velcro tears apart and all his navigation stuff flies into the back, his chart, his checklist, and Fraser recovers himself like he's next if he doesn't get Ray to let go. But the last thing Ray wants is to hear another word of blue-ribbon Mountie horseshit, Fraser spreads it on so thick you may as well show up to an argument with a shovel. Funny thing, Ray must have left his on the parking ramp. He squeezes Fraser's jaw with the heel of his hand, the nose and cheekbone with his fingers, holding his mouth shut. He jerks the Stetson out of Fraser's lap and flips it over the seat.
Fraser's eyes go wide. But he's still strapped in and Ray's already levering away from the control wheel, swinging out of the pilot seat.
He settles hard on Fraser's thighs, his knee banging the passenger door and the small airplane rocking with the load shift. He ducks his head under the skylight and slams his pelvis close, right up at Fraser's waist, his jeans stretched and straddling him tight. Fraser makes a stifled noise and heaves backward, trying to shove him away, trying to wrench him aside by the jacket. But it's going to take meaner than that, and Fraser was never good at fighting dirty.
Ray tangles the other hand in Fraser's hair and yanks his head against the seat. Tightly enough to hurt, Ray holds him fast, and Fraser grits his teeth and stills, his breathing harsh and hot against Ray's hand.
He tenses to struggle again.
"Nuh-uh." Ray's voice is pitched low and threatening; his hands don't gentle. "Don't push me, Fraser. You do not want to push me."
A moment passes. And under all the layers of uniform, Ray can feel him, the muscle taut in Fraser's legs, the nervous energy winding him up. And it's hell just to grip him and wait, wait for Fraser to give in, give up and let go, but Fraser listens to him closer this way. Ray rests the two of them together, cheek-to-cheek, and waits. Just waits.
The leather creaking softly, Fraser relaxes his hold on Ray's flight jacket. In surrender he lowers his hands, and lets them rest at Ray's hip pockets.
Ray lets the hand from Fraser's hair. He swallows as it slides around his jaw, and down his throat, falls into his lap. Ray disconnects the harness and releases the belt, the restraints clicking, falling away as he tugs at the Sam Browne. It tightens, then loosens, and Ray unclips the bandolier, starts prying the buttons of his serge jacket apart. Fraser doesn't watch him do it. His eyes pinch shut, like he knows too acutely the work of Ray's fingers in the tugs on his uniform, the drag of the lanyard knot, the constriction of his collar as Ray works at the clasp.
He bends and mouths at Fraser's neck, and Fraser's head rolls helplessly aside, then back, as Ray paints a line to his jaw. "Take off your coat," he mutters. "Take it off for me, Frase."
He sits forward, complying, his forehead touching the cool leather at Ray's shoulder, and works awkwardly to pull his arms from the sleeves. Ray cuts a finger under one of his suspenders, and snaps it at his chest. "These too."
Fraser slips them from his shoulders, one, then the other, and lets Ray push him back at the seat. He takes a handful of Fraser's undershirt in the middle, and drags it out of the uniform pants. There's nothing under the cotton but skin, a warm bare belly that tightens as he touches, skims his fingers along. Ray tongues at the lobe of his ear to a startled hiss in Fraser's breathing.
"You hard for me, buddy?"
Fraser's fingers twitch, and suddenly they're fistfuls of clothing, Ray's t-shirt, Ray's jeans, and Ray goes with those hands as they pull at him, finally, god, finally, and rocks himself on Fraser's leg, getting friction and hot in his ear, "Huh? Yeah? You want me to suck your dick?" His fingers dig below Fraser's belly and open his pants, split the zip.
Fraser jerks his head to the side, dislodging Ray's hand from his face, and grabs for his wrist to keep him from covering it again. "Ray," he gasps, "Ray."
"You love me, Fraser?"
"Ray please - "
"You love me love me? Like Ray-it's-like-this, that kinda you love me?"
"Oh - "
Ray shuts up the noise with a kiss, abrupt and open-mouthed and hot like the one Fraser took from him out on the lake. "Then let me do this."
***
Ray goes down. He kneels on the floor with the Mountie boots, grabs the seat catch behind Fraser's ankles, and throws it backward as far as it'll go. It ain't that far. His back is jammed against the control wheel, and he can hear the rudder cranking as he braces his feet on the pedals. Fraser's hands rake into his hair, not pulling, but like Fraser needs something to hold on to. That's okay. He'll be that thing. He slides his hands up Fraser's naked thighs, the bracelet rolling under his wrist, and kisses the inside of Fraser's knee.
"I'm gettin' there," Ray tells him, when Fraser starts shifting and anxiously stroking Ray’s head, fucking his hair up in all new directions. He crawls up Fraser's lap with his kisses, his tongue, and fumbles the pants down his legs a little more, till the honor and dignity of the RCMP is hung up inside-out on Fraser's boots. He spreads Fraser's knees and leans in.
The head of his penis is soft-swollen and wet, standing up dark and red against the white of Fraser's t-shirt. It tastes a little like come already. Like the smell of a locker room, like sweat and guy and kicked-off jockey shorts. Ray slides him along his tongue, up under the roof of his mouth, and Fraser makes a smothered noise as he lodges in the back of Ray's throat. He closes his lips and pulls away, sucking, letting Fraser slip out and then jacking him, smearing the wetness down his cock and teasing the foreskin back.
His own cock throbs in his jeans as he watches himself stroking. He's fascinated, god, he feels like the star of a porno. Some tape he'd rewind and watch over and over again, go to bed with the images burned in his mind and lie there trying to imagine... trying to feel... oh, Fraser. Oh man it is so hot, it's hotter than the tape in his head, the soft weight of his balls, and Fraser's blood-heavy cock in his hand, flushed and straining and up for him, hard for him, Fraser going Ray and Ray and God....
He glances at Fraser's face.
Except that Fraser is one of those guys who jerk it in secret. His eyes are screwed shut and his mouth open, showing a little teeth, he looks kinda like Dief on a hard run. His hips rock and bump up and beg but he doesn't make a sound. Not except for his breathing, he doesn't make a sound, and Ray can hardly even hear himself think over all Fraser's hitching and gasping and cringing.
He puts his head down, braces himself on the seat and kisses Fraser's cock, rims his tongue around the tip and feels him jump. "C'mon Fraser," he breathes, "oh yeah...." He opens the kiss and takes Fraser in his mouth again, in and out, in and out, ducking and swallowing hard and trying to show him a rhythm. He slows for a breath and Fraser's legs relax and tighten again, pushing back in.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, Fraser's going to fuck him, gonna give it to him, yeah - Ray closes his eyes and just holds still, his jaw slack and moaning and just going with it when Fraser pulls his hair and starts to thrust. Short, hot, fast, and forgetting to be nice and Ray's trying not to gag because he doesn't want Fraser to stop, he does not want apologies, he wants Fraser to come, he wants Fraser to lose it. Come on. Come on.
And Fraser stops. Stops breathing. Stops pulling and hits the brakes, he slows way down, way down, his hips gyrating gently, and groaning softly as his penis drags in and out of Ray's throat. Ray tastes his come, and lets him ride for as long as he can, but - fuck - he can't kill the reflex forever and has to pull away, coughing and sniffling. He pinches his face and tries to keep it quiet, not so suave as in the movies, and hopes that Fraser doesn't notice, doesn't say anything.
He doesn't. He lets Ray lie with his head in his lap, Ray's sweaty cheek sticking to his thigh, his hand heavy in Ray's hair. He lets him stay until both their breathing levels off, until Ray's knees hurt, till he notices his left foot's fallen asleep.
How long has it been? How long since Fraser last - how long since Ray was - Jesus, how does it take this many years of not even knowing what fucking town to find each other in, to get to this? Why not in Chicago or Sault Ste. Marie on that stupid boat, the cold case of John Franklin, or maybe the backseat of the GTO?
"Ray?"
He pushes himself up, crawling off the floor and wincing at the stab of pins and needles in his foot. He settles again in Fraser's lap, and touches his face, with only his fingertips now, and gentle. He leans to kiss.
Fraser's mouth is pliant, easy, yielding, but there's something missing in it. Something that Fraser's hiding from him, doesn't let him have, does not give up. Ray shoves away from him in a burst of raw anger and hurt.
"Is that how it is, I can blow you but you don't wanna kiss me? That is all kinds of fucked up for telling a guy you love him, Fraser, fucked up. Kiss me. Kiss me, right fucking now, or I swear my ass is going back over in that seat and you will never, ever see it again, do you hear me?"
***
Ray dumps himself in the pilot seat. His head thumps the door and he curses blindly, still heaving for breath as he shifts around, arches his back, and lifts his hips, fighting his jeans back up. The sweat on him is already going cold, his skin prickling to gooseflesh. Where's his shirt.
He twists over and paws through the pile of stuff underneath him. Fraser's tunic - Fraser's belt thing, that's his jacket, that's the empty bottle of - aw jeez. He can't believe he just used that to - jeez. What the hell won't he do when he's thinking with his pants? Without his pants. He needs to get rid of that before he turns the plane back over to Marty. Just on the off chance he'd guess, not that Marty would guess, because Marty doesn't think of him like that, except Ray kinda told him - aw, shit. Well the cap was so dirty and stuck on there anyway Marty might have forgotten it was stuffed in the seat pocket.
...Yeah, he's gonna have to get rid of it.
And probably leave the windows open in parking overnight.
Maybe run into the Northern store and try to find one of those car freshener things.
Ray palms the sweat from his forehead and fumbles with his t-shirt. Right. Like Marty's not going to notice if his airplane smells like Pine-Sol all of a sudden. God, Ray is dumb. Capital D-U-M dumb. The only possible way to get dumber would have to be fucking with the plane in the air, what the hell was he thinking?
Fraser grunts. Ray glances to the passenger side, and remembers - in color - exactly what he was thinking.
Fraser's got the seat back into its upright position - and Ray feels sort of bad about that now, because okay, it's not his fault the seat doesn't lay back, it collapses forward, but how comfortable could that really have been? Not that Ray heard him complaining, but that'd be Fraser for you, taking one for the team.
Uh. Speaking figuratively, there.
Or, you know, not so figuratively. Fraser... god, just took it for Ray, right up his sweet, bare, gorgeous ass, with his legs tight and butt flexing, back arching, hands braced and squeezing as Ray pushed inside him. Ray - oh, ff - nngh...
A hot-and-cold shiver shoots through him, and Ray drags up his t-shirt to wipe his face. "Fraser?"
His uniform pants are back up and buttoned, and he's sitting a little gingerly as he pulls his own shirt back on. His head pops out of the collar and he glances over, already looking wary of what Ray's going to say.
"I um," Ray starts, trying to shove himself back into sitting position with his feet, "that was... I'm, I mean...." He scratches his face, looking down at the control wheel, and maybe that's the best cue he's ever going to get. Two hands now, Kowalski, both hands, you gotta reach out and take it.
"I'm... dumb, it's - I'm stupid, I miss the fuck out of you Frase, and I just...." He's not saying it right. Fuck. He mashes a hand at his face and shoves it through his hair, makes himself just keep going. "Don't do the goodbye thing again with me. I mean I know you're - up there, and I'm that way, but... I really wanna see you again."
Fraser's face has gone skeptical at some point when Ray wasn't looking. He shoulders up his suspenders and doesn't answer for a second. Ray jumps in before he has a chance. "Just say yes. You gotta say yes, so just - say it, okay?"
Fraser stares at him like Ray's talking Eskimo and not making sense, and Ray feels like his airplane just fell out of the sky, crashed and burned and he's never going to be airborne again. And then - then this weird little something creeps into the look, like what the hell?, and Ray doesn't get that, doesn't get what that's about, till Fraser bursts wide open and laughs, looks out the windshield and drops his head in a nod, repeatedly, rubbing his eyes.
"Yes, Ray," he says, and the smile on him's got all the bigness and brilliance of the low midnight sun. "Yes."
Rating: Adult
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Words: 11k
Summary: How Ray Kowalski got his wings. Angst, the Alaskan bush, post-CotW, aviation kink. Written for getfraserlaid
Mosquito Field, AFQ
by raggedass_road
Martin was a guy like a moose. Kinda lanky, big shoulders, big hands, clomped around in a huge pair of hiking boots and man you did not wanna get between Marty and his baby. An old red with a gray streak and white underbelly, she was a sweet little Cessna 180 on fat tundra tires and IFR fitted. Four seats if you knew how to cram it and Marty did, Marty maintained her himself. He was a mechanic on top of being an airplane driver, so unless he was out flying all over hell he'd be off in the bush someplace, checking up on other little birdies.
He was hanging around in the FBO when Ray trudged in that day - that day still a blur in Ray's memory, with its snapshot moments of clarity, Kodak stills.
The back pocket on a pair of Levi's, streaked with grease and stuffed with a fold-up chart. A battered canvas coat, blue tartan liner peeking up at the collar. Coffee. Stinking black coffee so strong Ray was gut-wrenched and homesick.
"Howdy," said Martin Boone, slurping off the Styrofoam. "Help you with something?"
Ray jerked his head, scratched his neck, thought but didn't say I am beyond all your help, buddy. Out the window and across the parking ramp, a windsock wriggled from the hangar like a giant orange worm, and Ray could see runway lights twinkling in the distance. The tail number N3301T stood out from the nearest airplane, tied down at the wings but the nose still angling into the sky, like it wished it could be there.
"Where do you want to go?"
"I don't... nowhere."
Marty gave him a headset and flew him in circles.
In a month Ray was flying in circles on his own.
His savings by then were long gone, gone and blown on a bad dream, so Ray paid it back minding the desk, keeping books and ordering parts from an outfit in Anchorage. Once in a while he pumped avgas and helped push a plane to the maintenance hangar, where Marty took the cowling off and tinkered and Ray just stood handy.
By the time weather briefings were coming in the toasty mid-sixties, motel rates had doubled. Ray checked out before he got kicked out, hauled his pack to the FBO and stashed it in a back room. There was a smell in there, like musty paper and book glue, like an office in a past life. Outdated aeronautical charts covered the walls - Southcentral then Southeast Alaska, the Yukon, the very far edge of the Territories. Ray scanned them in the dark with a MagLite, pressed up close like reading hieroglyphs, his fingers brushing over the puzzle of concentric circles and lines.
Marty found him in there the next morning, asleep over a map of the Mackenzie Delta.
(Running a double lead on the gangline white wolf and a husky, the shout echoes wide clear and cold in the dusk miles away, miles away, Ray lies down in the snow. Come haw! Dief, come haw! He can see, he hallucinates the team rounding back in a wide arc, ice booties and cable, a malamute train. He closes his eyes. Ray where are you, Ray, Ray!)
He twitched awake. INUVIK VOR-DME 112.5, said a tiny box of print under his nose. The hashes of a compass rose bloomed out in every direction as Ray picked up his head, blinked his eyes into focus. Due west was a Styrofoam cup full of high-octane coffee, and a newspaper folded to the classifieds.
***
It was the honest-to-god 1970s in there. Everything burnt orange and chocolate and cream, all jumbled together in a psychedelic floral. What could he say, it had character. Groovy little place, funky even, it was kind of like being in a time warp.
Okay, it was a dump. Two rooms and a closet with a shower and toilet, disgusting shag carpet with baseboard heating and the plumbing was iffy, the linoleum peeling, the seal on the windows was cracked and they frosted on the inside. But hey, Ray had lived among the caribou, right? He had lain down at night with the dogs, eaten dried meat, and pissed in a hole in the snow. This was Babylon right here, a palace.
Marty didn't ask. Cut the paycheck a couple weeks early and piled Ray's stuff in the back of his truck, like it was just something any guy would do. Like they were buddies. They talked the whole way about 180 engine conversions on the 172s, and how Marty had to get Ray up in a Super Cub one of these days. At the end of the road, they stood leaning on the truck like a couple of old-timers going on about nothing.
"Oh hey," Marty said when he'd finally got a leg in the cab, got back out, and dropped another bunch of crap in a Hefty bag, saying it was junk he'd been meaning to get rid of.
It was, mostly. Ray kept the blankets and the rattled Mr. Coffee - and Mr. Coffee did not mess around, that stuff came churning straight down the Pipeline and into Ray's kitchen - and the rest he kept anyway, for clutter.
Still, when he dozed at night, naked with the rough blanket drawn to his chin, his nose chilled, his dick aching, he whiffed at a memory in the wool.
(Cold, so cold he can't stand it, he can't shake it off. The slither of the nylon tent flap, zipping, and warm hands, warm breath on his neck and his face in the soft cotton henley, the tang of the outdoors, of cold sweat and camp smoke and dogs...)
Marty. Marty, he smelled like the cold, honest dirt and 100 low lead. Like Ray's hands after lending in the hangar. Ray's hand before reaching under the blanket and shutting his eyes.
Summer died. The world got dark and Ray got jittery, Ray got cold. A local jackass who was also the local FAA examiner had a heart attack, and word got back from Providence the examiner never would. Ray passed the checkride when the next guy took his place. He knew he'd passed when Marty grinned at him and pounded him on the back, he'd passed with flying fucking colors, passed like Ray was born with wings.
Wasn't five o'clock but it was dark, and so they trucked into town to celebrate. The Loosey Goose had never felt so much like home, two-dollar beer had never tasted so damn good, and then when Marty broke and shoved him, slammed him back against the pickup door - (he braces his hand on Ray's heart, stop) - that was it, the end of everything. It was all he could do just to sit by the tire, his ass on the ice, and put his head in his gloves. He was lost on the delta all over again, he was right the fuck back where he started.
Except that Marty wiped his mouth and had the decency never to mention it.
Winter overstayed itself.
***
Springtime brought the melt, and business flooded with the tourists from the Lower 48. Summer kept them coming steady, autumn slowed it to a trickle, winter finally shut it down. Ray got to know ebb and flow of things, the way things were, the way some things would never change. Were never meant to change. Some things were just not meant.
Marty hired someone else to do the books. What year that was Ray couldn't remember. In the logbook somewhere it was all down, his IFR ticket, his seaplane rating, his commercial ride. The flightseeing tours over Wrangell and Mt. Drum, the supply gig, the air taxi, ferrying the Troopers and teachers and powerline repair crews and half tons of moose - with the antlers on the wing struts, like some kind of flying freak dinosaur.
It's good. Hell, it's maybe even greatness. In an airplane he's too high to touch, he's a piece of the sky.
***
Once, he takes these three guys up from Oregon to a place on the Al-Can border, says he'll pick them up in a week, but when he's taxiing in from the water he has to squint, because now it's four guys on the lake, or else three guys and a monster king salmon.
Okay, this ship does four and Ray makes five, but he's sure they can work something out. The fishing buddies aren't big guys, and he's pretty creative about loading the gear. There's space to be had in the float lockers too, he can always put an external load on. He's already planning it out as he starves the engine, feels the prop spin down and come to a shuddering halt. He tosses his headset, bangs the door and drops his feet to the nearest float.
He picks out the new guy and squints again, trying to get the size of him. He's got these broad shoulders that remind Ray of Conoco Phillips and Exxon-Mobil, the heavy build of the guys he takes sometimes to Deadhorse. The battered old shirt, sleeves rolled up, collar open, suspenders off and dangling by the knees - the whole picture. He can't put his finger on it quite, there's just something about it that turns his crank. Top it off with a stained ballcap - not even for a team, it's like one of those cheap things commemorating the Alaska State Fair, or Our 50 Years Serving the Mat-Su Valley and the electric company logo. That is some hick shit right there. A smile prickles at him with the thought, and he raises a shout to the guy, "Hey! Somebody else fly you up, or these guys fish you out of the lake?"
He looks up.
Ray stumbles and falls in the drink.
***
The towel is damp, ripe and stinking of the great outdoors, but at least he's lucky enough to get it after everybody's had a laugh at his expense. Even Fraser is smiling and flushed, though it might be a sunburn. His hair is a mess, and his RCMP shirt is sticking to the skin, and his trousers are so bogged down with water the suspenders are stretching to hold them up. He looks so damn happy about it Ray kind of wants to punch him. Fraser grips him by the shoulders and says, "It's good to see you, Ray."
And Ray just stands there dripping and shaking, and not knowing what the hell to do. Fraser Hauls Ray's Ass Out of a Lake, Take Six, and he doesn't know what the fuck is his line here.
"What..." he struggles and false-starts and spits something out. "What are you doing here, Fraser?"
"It's a long story, Ray," he says, shaking his head, as if Fraser has a story that isn't long, or that doesn't involve heavily armed criminals and conspiracy to litter. "Really the only relevant part at this juncture would be that I've lost my compass, and seem to have - "
"What, got lost?"
"Well not precisely, just meandered slightly off course."
"What you did was meander into slightly the wrong country, Fraser."
"Yes, well, you see - "
"You got lost."
"I'm not lost, Ray. I have faith you know exactly where I am."
Ray backs up. Just backs the fuck up, hands off, big grabby Mountie hands off. "Yeah? I dunno Fraser, five guys is a tight fit." He hugs his arms to his chest and jerks his chin. "How much do you weigh."
Fraser all of a sudden seems to remember what page they're on here. As if Ray was gonna let him forget, he's had it bookmarked since forever, since the cold bitter end of that chapter, since they closed the book and shoved it under a sofa leg. Fraser does that thing with his lip like he's trying not to chew on it, drops his head, and looks away, squinting in the sunlight and pulling at his ear. "I... well, I don't know exactly - "
"Round numbers, Fraser. About. Guess."
"Ah. Well, if it's an estimate you want, I suppose..."
"Look, never mind, you just sit up front. Heavy stuff goes up front and that's you." He bundles the towel into Fraser's hands and shoves by, spinning him around like a revolving door.
Fraser's voice comes after him, "Ray..." and Ray does not look back. He's too busy rounding up duffels. Christ, do the damn things breed in the wild?
"Ray, I don't want to cause you to balance the airplane unsafely. If a reduced weight is necessary, I can just stay behind - "
"We're a-okay Fraser, I flew up the clown car."
He shoves by again to start loading the gear.
***
In the end, he has to make a special trip just for Fraser. Not because Fraser found the operating handbook and did the performance calculations in his head, and not even because Fraser tried to argue that according to the table they were grossly overloaded for such a confined takeoff area. Oh no, he has to do it because the Mountie was right.
Would a cold day in hell be so bad once in a while? Okay, he should have known, he did know, but at that point Ray's pride was on the line. There had to be one fucking thing he knew better, that Fraser in his vast expertise couldn't speak to.
But he had had trouble getting the airplane to taxi on the step, and even then had to swing it around wide and double back across the lake, pushing the power at a fast run. He felt the flight controls coming alive as they roared past the shoreline, ripping a wake in the murky green water, doing 70, maybe 75 knots when he took the control wheel in both hands and hauled. The weight shifted, the wings took, and the seaplane surged up... and then settled back down again, heavy and wet.
Fraser hadn't said a word, but Ray could feel the I told you so radiating off him like stink. He clenched his jaw and taxied downwind, turned around again and went for it.
Turned around again and went for it.
On the third failed attempt he ordered Fraser out the plane. Tossed him on the bank with a cooler full of trout and warm beer, and would've left him there permanently if he hadn't an obligation to come back for the fish.
In the late afternoon, Fraser's nowhere to be found. But the cooler's still there, so Ray parks it on the lid and he waits.
***
He sits on the bank with a beer bottle, watching the sun go down. Dragonflies hover in the rushes and zip around the toe of his hiking boot - tapping out a rhythm to a song he's forgotten, that lives only as a kinesthetic echo. The floatplane rocks gently on the tether just a few feet offshore, ripples slapping the pontoon, and the shadows of fish flickering under it. He swallows and glares at the sunset, bottoms-up for the last drop, and grinds the empty bottle in the weeds.
"Ray!"
He misses a beat. Stops - a dragonfly settles on his laces.
Ray looks over his shoulder, and yeah, he's got company. There's a hat coming over the hill, picking its way through the spruce - a Stetson, this time, and no Trooper blue either. Ray looks to the end of the lake again. On impulse he snatches the bottle and flings it away. It arcs out past the wings of the floatplane, and tumbles into the lake with a hollow dunk, splash, and then bobs up. He watches it nodding along like a dead fish, the Coors label flashing in the sun.
He hears the slip-whisper of boots in the long grass and fireweed, tramping to the bank - it disturbs all the peace and the quiet. "Ray, that's littering. And while I'm sure you consider it a trivial offense, it does carry a thousand-dollar penalty in the State of Alaska for a reason, the cumulative damage to the environ - "
"Don't get started with me Fraser," Ray tells him, putting his head in his hands, trying to squeeze out his thoughts through his eyeballs. All this space and Ray can't clear his head.
"I'm not 'getting started' with you, Ray, I was merely trying to impress the importance of - "
"No. No, you do not impress me, okay? I am one-hundred percent unimpressed over here."
"Ray - "
"Shut up. Just shut up. You got no jurisdiction here."
"Well, that may be," Fraser gives, getting snippy, "but unlike you I have an interest in the beauty and preservation of the land."
God, that is it. Ray stomps to his feet, slaps the dirt from the ass of his jeans and rounds on Fraser. It's like going nose-to-nose with Smokey the Bear. He's standing feet apart, his arms folded, a grave and accusing look under the Stetson. Only you can prevent forest fires, Ray. Like Ray's the only guy ever to camp in the woods. Like Ray has a thing against trees. Like Ray's favorite part of the show was when they shot Bambi's mom.
"Okay fine then. You just stay here and fucking preserve it, then."
Fraser opens his mouth, but Ray's already whipped around, shut him out. He heads down the bank to let the airplane loose, swatting through a cloud of mosquitoes.
"Ray..."
"Fraser," he sneers, and crouches by the mooring rope, slimy from trailing in the lake. He fumbles for the loose end and gives it a yank.
Fraser huffs, "Ray," and Ray doesn't hear him, he's too busy damning and fucking with the knot, "Ray, you know perfectly well you can't legally pilot an aircraft within eight hours of consuming - "
"No shit, Fraser? Really?" He slaps a tickle at the back of his neck, and feels the mosquito guts burst in a wet, bloody smear. "Fuck."
There's a mutter about 'language' that Ray doesn't catch, quite.
"You got something you wanna share with the class, Benton?"
"Ray, if you can't say something nice," he starts, and he must be getting pissed, or else Fraser's just never seen the movie. Hell, Fraser is living in the movie.
"Will you get off my case!" Ray bursts out, and can hear himself hollering back across the lake. "Just get off my fucking case, Jesus, I know what I'm doing!"
"Oh, well, in that case." Sarcasm reserved just for Ray, well, that's nice, this is just like old times, and now Fraser's going to trot out the famous I'm-reasonable-you're-ridiculous voice. "Perhaps then you wouldn't mind sharing? Because it seems to me, Ray - and forgive me if I'm mistaken, but it seems like your plan is to strand me on a lake in the middle of... of..." he gestures broadly with his arms, "of god-only-knows-where, for what reason I can't understand...."
"Canada's that way. Send me a postcard."
"Would you mind at least telling me what this is about?"
"Or you know what, on second thought, don't." The rope pulls free and Ray goes with it, sloshing to the airplane and winding the slack round his arm. Water swills in his boots, soaks his jeans, and with each heavy step the lake tries to suck him down. Fraser stands on the bank, looking hurt, looking confused, looking kind of pissed off that Ray's leaving him hurt and confused - not that Ray's looking, because he doesn't need to look, he's so good at imagining anyway.
"Ray, are you punishing me for something?"
***
Fraser doesn't speak to him after that. Well, not apart from confiscating Ray's keys and insisting that friends do not let friends fly drunk. Except that isn't what he says, because two beers do not equal 'drunk,' and Ray doubts if they've actually been friends for a very long time.
He digs in the cooler for the rest the beer, since he's grounded anyway, and decides to take his chances with the skeeters while Fraser dozes - sulks - whatever, in the cabin.
An hour later he's getting eaten alive, and the buzz he's got going isn't helping with that.
God, just - fuck this. Free country. Ray's country, Ray's airplane - okay, not Ray's airplane, but close enough - and he is not going to stand down for Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties. He drags himself into the cabin and bangs the door, thumps around getting his boots and his squelching wet socks off, and has to spend the next five or ten minutes killing mosquitoes.
The seats are lined up close as a couple of folding chairs, together in an inch, tight enough to knock knees. And there's just no way Fraser could sleep through it all, but he never moves, slumped in the co-pilot seat with the Stetson in his lap, his feet crammed at the pedals, his head fallen against the window. In the sheen of starlight Ray can almost see him in color - the flush of sunburn down his neck, deep blue suspenders strapped over his shoulders, the stripe of yellow down his leg.
Benton Fraser was made hell-for-stout. And Ray has had a look around, they just don't make 'em like that anymore. His body relaxed and laid out in the seat in that old-style RCMP ranger stuff looks so sturdy, and heavy, and good....
Ray grabs the inseam of his crotch and fights a grimace, adjusting his jeans. No. He is not gonna do this. It's gotta stop here, right now, no more feeling the guy up with his eyes. No more thinking about buttons, or the spread of Fraser's knees, or just slowly unzipping his -
Ray growls in his throat, tugging his pants again - Jesus, why does he have to be such a fucking guy, can't he just imagine something like... cuddling. No. God no, that's worse. Fraser's hands on him, arms around him, breathing on him - god, that is so, so much worse. He should have just stuck with the bloodsuckers, he wouldn't have this problem.
Then he's got another problem, because - "Ray."
He jerks his head. Fraser's eyes are awake, black and glittering in the weird light. Ray freezes. Unfreezes. Tries to make it look casual, or restless, or cold, any excuse whatsoever to confuse what Fraser's seeing. Not that Ray grabbing at his crotch has got to be all that hard to confuse, but just this once, let Fraser play that Ace of Oblivious he keeps up his sleeve. Please god, just this once, and Ray will never ask anything again. He fumbles his jacket off and tucks it up under his chin, hands shaking, his heart in his throat, and hunkers down against the seat.
Fraser breathes out.
For a guy at least pretending to get a little shut-eye, Ray has got way too much peripheral vision. Fraser's shadows thumb an eyebrow, fold their arms, and then he pushes on the rudder pedal, shifting. Ray can hear the seat track creaking, he can see the way Fraser's thighs tighten, his hips tilt, and scoot sideways. Sleep weighs down on him again. The words pour as heavy as molasses, thick and drowsy. "I... Ray, are you..."
He trails off. Ray's mind won't let it go at that, he keeps trying the sentence like a choose-your-own-adventure book. Are you cold. Are you staring at me. Ray, are you actually considering another sexual advance, because I thought I had made it abundantly clear that I - fuck. He can't take that. Can't take it, it's like hanging in the air with the engine dead, watching the trees get taller and the earth get bigger, just praying the wings hold him up as far as that field.
"Am I what."
Fraser lowers his head, rubs his cheek. It takes him a minute to come up with the word. "...Uncomfortable."
If wishes were fishes that cooler would've been nothing but booze. He might just be stupid enough, if he'd had a bit more, just to say yeah, he is, he is cramped, he is freezing, he might be more comfortable if.... "No." He huddles under the jacket. This ain't the Mackenzie Delta anymore, and he is not gonna go there again.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. Go to sleep."
***
He's slept next to Fraser before. The same tent, the same bag, he's slept wrapped in the guy's arms for Chrissake. He can tell when Fraser's not sleeping. Doesn't matter how still, doesn't matter how steady and level his breathing. He's not asleep. Which means he knows Ray's not asleep, and they're both just sitting here faking it.
"You know what," he snaps, when he can't take the stupidity of the situation anymore, "it's not like I'm gonna grab your dick when you're not looking, okay? I am not gonna do that. I got more respect than that Fraser, I would not fucking do that."
No answer. He's not going to get one either, he knows that - not that Fraser would give him an answer he really wants to hear. He already knows this thing is dead, it's just not buried, it won't stay in the ground.
"It was just a kiss, all right?" he tries again, mumbling, and rubs a hand over his head. And god, he's going to hammer his thumb doing it, it's going to hurt like a sonofabitch, but he has got to put the nail in the coffin. "A kiss, it was not like - not sexual assault. I did not grab your ass, I did not try to get in your pants, I did not - "
"You kissed me, Ray."
"Yes! Am I talking to myself here, or what? I gotta say it in Canadian? It was just - "
Fraser does not want to talk about it. Right, why should that have changed, huh? Except somehow he's taken it too far this time, because suddenly Fraser is up and fisting a hand in Ray's shirt. He yanks, he gets right in Ray's face, and Fraser is stinking like cooled sweat and spruce trees and breathing in his face and then sucks on Ray's mouth. It's wet. Wet, and tight, and there's tongue, and Ray makes a stifled noise because god, oh, shit, this is it, this is - Ben - Fraser - shoving him back at the seat like he's disgusted with the taste of him.
" 'Just a kiss,' Ray," Fraser quotes, like other people slap, "I know."
He reels. Doesn't care that he's smacked the control wheel and somewhere he's throbbing, he can't think, there's the sweet tang of Fraser in his mouth and soft memory on his lips and - "Wh - Fraser - "
"Go to sleep."
"But - "
"Go to sleep, Ray."
"I don't get you!" Ray cries. He can't deal with this push-pull, red-light-green-light crap anymore, it's like Fraser grew up without a traffic signal for miles, he doesn't get you're only supposed to see one color at a time. "You want this, Fraser? Now you want this?"
"I don't want anything, Ray," he says, and jams himself into the seat like before, like that settles it. "You're drunk."
Ray cannot get that to make sense. It makes no fucking sense at all, makes so much sense he has mime it fucking with his head. "I'm...? Fraser, you just kissed me!"
"Mmhm," Fraser agrees, like he's proven some kind of a point here, and pretends to be asleep.
It's near dawn till Ray realizes that Fraser is asleep, and he's the only one left pretending.
***
He's pissing in the woods when he hears the droning in the sky. Ray tilts his head back and stares through the tamarack. It sounds close, real close, but they're kind of in the ass end of nowhere here, it's a place you won't find in any fish Alaska guide and he'd kind of like to keep it that way. But the noise keeps on circling, and never does pass through the small patch of blue in the treetops. He frowns, zips up and hikes back out to the lake, where he can get a clearer look at the sky.
He's in time to find Fraser climbing from the cabin, careful and awkward like a cat coming down from a tree, and Ray is just not ready to face that. Him and Fraser is just as fucked up in the cold light of morning, and there's a breakfast mix of feeling in his stomach that makes him want to puke. Fraser looks at him and Ray can almost taste it coming up.
He shields his eyes, he tells himself against the sunburst, looking out beyond the shoreline. In a moment he catches sight of an airplane skimming to a landing on the water.
Great. Just great, here comes discovery. It's gonna be bad for business and bad for Ray's soul. You can never get the hell away from people anymore, you cannot get a damn bit of peace. Who are these assholes, anyway, Troutfitters? Flight Fishing? He squints, peering hard at the aircraft as it turns in a taxi toward shore - and out of the morning glare, the blue, white, and yellow of the Alaska State Troopers.
He pales.
Fraser's there in Ray's periphery again, stumbling up the bank and looking tired. He needs a shave. A shower, a comb, and change of clothes while he's at it too. He looks like shit. Ray wants him even worse. He has that surge again of breakfast that he didn't eat and Christ, how fucked up can you get?
Fraser turns out to the water, and back again with a bleary, confused sort of look on his face. It can't be that Fraser doesn't know who they are - course he knows who they are, stupid marksmanship games and collaborative cross-border policing - but he doesn't get to ask. Before the search-and-rescue gets too close, a door bursts open and a guy stands up that looks an awful lot like Marty. Yells an awful lot like Marty, even if Ray can't really hear him over the prop.
"Oh, fuck," says Ray, and for once Fraser doesn't correct him.
***
"You said you'd be back! They all said you'd be right back!"
"I was about to be right back, you couldn't have waited a couple hours?"
"A couple hours since when, you dickhead? You didn't sign out, you didn't file a fucking flight plan - "
"A flight plan, a flight plan, you have got to be kidding me! How often do you file a flight plan, Mr. Safety-Conscious?"
"I try to tell a guy where I'm going for Chrissake, you got everybody thinking you're dead - "
"I'm fine! We're both fine, the plane's FINE, what the hell is your goddamn problem Marty? Does it look like I nosed it over? Is it sinking in the lake, is the ELT fucking going off? Because you know what, I think I woulda noticed that."
"Ray - "
"What! It's gotta be I fucked up somehow, is that it? You never think maybe I was waiting for the air to cool off, huh? You ever think of that?"
"Ray, that isn't exactly - "
"Shut up, Fraser, did somebody ask you?"
"You got out of here with three guys and a whole bunch of gear in the middle of afternoon, you're going to tell me you couldn't make it out with him?"
"Yeah, so?"
"Bullshit!"
"No, bullshit is you flying the fuck in here with a state cop and no excuse for wasting his whole fucking morning."
"There was no plane, all right? No airplane, no pilot, nobody seen Ray Kowalski since yesterday, you wanna tell me that doesn't get to scare the shit out of me? Huh?"
"Aw c'mon! Why you making a big deal out of this?"
"Look, Ray. I may be an asshole. But if you think for one second that when my best guy goes missing I am just gonna sit around with my thumb up my ass, you got another think coming."
"I... Marty," he tries to protest, but the wind's gone out of his sails. Marty folds his arms, staring him down, and Ray stuffs his hands in his pockets.
On the bank, Alaska's finest worries his Stetson. Fraser's missing his, and looks completely lost.
***
Fraser stays at the same motel. And Ray doesn't know why but that irks him, really burns his ass. It's kinda like Fraser's invading it, doing it on purpose, never mind if it's cheap and convenient to the airport and has a big neon sign sizzling VACANCY on the main drag of town. He's got no right to stay there, where Ray used to sniffle and jack off and sleep in the mess, because that's what Ray was then, a mess.
And now, now Ray's shit is together. He's good. Only Fraser turns up at the airport the next day, shaved, showered, and dressed in his best reds like One Horse, Alaska has a phone booth somewhere. Ray's shit is all falling apart again.
"Listen," says Ray in the safety of the hangar, "you gotta take this one."
Marty peers at him from under the guts of a PA-18, wiping his hands on an oil rag.
"It's just... look, you remember that time? That uh, time you and me," Ray fiddles his collar and dances back and forth for a second, "you know - after my checkride."
Something flickers in Marty's face, but he just sits there, rubbing at a stubborn bit of dirt on his hand. "Yeah?"
"The Mountie." Ray spits it out. Just spits it out, and there it is, after all this time trying to choke it down, shut it up. Suddenly he can breathe, really breathe, feel it whooshing in and out, taste the chill and the stale fume of the hangar. "He's the guy, that's - that's it, that's what that was about. And I'm not sayin' - look, I'm not saying that's any excuse, but, I'm sorry. The guy just... the guy fucks me up, a little."
Marty raises his eyebrows, as if to say yeah, tell me something I don't know, and that staggers him a little. Okay, so Marty knows about the closet, he's never come out to the guy as such but it's kinda hard to avoid when you slip a guy the tongue. But - he knows about Fraser? How the fuck does he know about that? Is there a big gay motel sign over Ray's head or something? A giant Arby's thing except it's pink and it's a Stetson?
Marty's not telling. He just stays on the concrete with the Piper guts, tucking the rag in the back pocket of his jeans. He fishes a wrench from the toolbox. "I would, Ray, but...." He glances up, tapping the handle on his leg.
Ray rubs a hand over his eyes, then his face. "Yeah. Okay."
***
"Ray - "
"Do not talk to me, Fraser." He hauls the harness over his shoulder and puts it together, straps the kneeboard to his thigh and starts getting his shit organized. "Do not. You just sit there, and shut up, and do not talk to me."
Fraser drops his head and frowns at the instrument panel, closes his eyes and rubs an eyebrow, like he's trying to scrub the thing right off his face, it's like a cut he won't let heal. "I was just going to ask for a headset, Ray."
"What did I tell you."
"Not to talk to you, Ray."
"And are you talking to me?"
"No, Ray."
"Good." He bangs the door shut and shoves the lock lever, conversation over. He flips through the checklist with his head down, determined to keep busy, do not interrupt. Fraser doesn't. He just sits there like Ray said, like a big goddamn fire-engine red fucking elephant in the room. Cabin, whatever. And the cabin is a hell of a lot smaller than your average room too, tiny even. Cram one pilot and one moody Mountie and it's a flying fucking can of sardines.
He doesn't know how he's going to make it to the border like this, never mind clear to Inuvik.
Ray puts his head to the window and snarls, "Clear prop!" cranks the starter and jams in the throttle so the engine catches quick. It roars to life and the airplane lurches with the sudden propeller blast. Fraser startles - and not that Ray's looking, just catches him doing it from the corner of his eye. Ray reaches over him and snaps through a series of radio switches, haphazardly dials in settings and twists the altimeter, transponder, knocks the flaps up, his fingers dancing deftly and furious over the console. He's showing off, yeah, he knows Fraser is sitting there watching him pretending not to watch, just like Ray is pretending not to notice. And you know what? Good. Let him. Just let Captain Amazing over there start to worry he might not be the only guy north of the forty-ninth parallel who knows how to do shit.
When he's damn good and ready, he starts taxiing out to the runway, makes his radio calls, and then neither of them talks the whole way to Canada.
***
The airstrip is deserted. Nobody answers on the CTAF, nobody hanging around to welcome them on the ground. Just the creaking of a weathervane, the gentle flagging of a faded Remove Before Flight tag, hanging from a solitary airplane left in parking.
Fraser stays in the plane while Ray finds the fuel service and tops off the tanks. Doesn't even get out to stretch his legs. Ray catches glimpses of him as he climbs up and down on the wing struts - the whole time just sitting there, turning his Stetson around in his hands and looking miserable.
Ray closes the fuel cap and stays there a minute, folding his arms on the surface of the wing. The evening air is sweet and calm, and the shadow of Marty's Cessna reaches out across the tarmac, dark and lengthening in the nine o'clock sun. Ray puts his head down, tries to think, and bangs it quietly on the wing.
***
He angles for runway 20 and taxies in silence, fingers drumming on the yoke. Another 300 nautical miles or so, a few hours, and Fraser is out of his life. For good. Or that's what he tells himself, anyway, because everything feels jinxed. Like somebody's gone through his stuff and trashed it, all the meager shit he owns, and splattered red all over these pictures Ray has of his life.
The front desk at the FBO, right next to the bulletin board that's always covered in specs and pictures of planes for sale? Now with Fraser, smack in front of it. Marty howdying over his coffee and Fraser how-do-you-doing right back. Marty asking where did Fraser want to go, the right-hand seat where Fraser sat, the Mountie walking on the tarmac. God. A thousand miles of nowhere and it's all going to be Fraser from now on, squinting his eyes when the sun flashes in through the plexiglass, craning to watch the meander of cold creeks far below.
It's not an album Fraser's even supposed to be in. It's supposed to be Ray, just Ray, and Marty, maybe the guy who tends bar, and the grocer and his wife and the local State Trooper. The small-town set, twenty faces he knows. But not Fraser. The whole point of the album was not to have Fraser, but now everything's fucked and nothing's what it's supposed to be. His home base at AFQ, the place where he's safe, it's not so safe anymore. The sky where he can't be touched, it's not so high up there all of a sudden.
It won't be the same. It's not ever going to be the same again.
Meanwhile, Fraser gets to keep his Ray-free album, whatever the fuck it's full of pictures of. Suddenly he wants to know. It's only fair, since Fraser stuck his nose into Ray's, he wants to know what life is Fraser going back to.
Life in Inuvik? Yeah, well Ray may be flying him to Inuvik, but just to the airport. So what, does he live in town? Out of town? Is it just that it's close to some village or other and Fraser doesn't want to go direct? Or maybe he's picking up Dief or something, got some business with the local detachment?
Maybe he's with the local detachment. Except that doesn't make sense, because what was he doing getting lost in Alaska if he's posted to the friggin Territories? That's a long way from home for a village cop, doesn't matter what Fraser was chasing. Well. Then again this is Fraser. Tracking something for hundreds of miles across the tundra is probably the crazy arctic version of jumping on cars and chasing criminals over the rooftops. Like Inuit Superman, or something.
Yeah, well fuck that shit, he doesn't care if Fraser did do an impromptu Iditarod across the Yukon in the middle of summer. There's got to be something a guy can't do just off the top of his head. There's got to be something you just can't get from any Inuvik Public Library book. Fraser can quote the manual all he wants, but when you get right down to it? There is theory, and then there's doing it. And this is it here, Ray is doing it. Fraser could probably tell him exactly how it works, and how it flies in terms of the laws of aerodynamics, and follow it up with the entire life story of Charles Lindberg. But Ray's betting money - American money - that he would not last five minutes at the controls.
If Ray keeled over dead at say ten-thousand feet, it'd be adios Constable Fraser, that's it. He would drop right out of the sky. He'd be helpless to put it down safely if someone had never once shown him the rudder, if no one had taught him to finesse the control wheel, if Ray hadn't put Fraser's hand on the throttle and trusted him and talked him back down to the ground.
He stomps on the brakes so fast the airplane lurches and throws them forward. Fraser braces himself and turns around - "Feet on the pedals," Ray says, hearing himself on the mike but not sure for a second if Fraser can understand over the propeller. He raises his voice, "Top of the pedals, that's the brakes, hold the plane for a sec."
Fraser gives him a look like he's out of his mind, but does as he's told - at least, the plane doesn’t start rolling again when Ray takes his feet off, twists out of the harness and wedges his arm into the backseat, reaching, straining - and closes his hand on the spare headset. He drops it in Fraser's lap, and gets himself buckled up to fly again.
"Okay, I got the airplane." No reply, so Ray glances to the co-pilot seat. "Mike check, Fraser."
"Loud and clear, Ray," he says, though his hands are still adjusting the set and he's frowning like he doesn't hear a thing.
"You wanna drive?"
"What?"
"Drive." Ray jerks his shoulders. "You know, taxi. You wanna drive it to the runway?"
There's silence on the com for a minute. Then, "Ray, I don't..."
"Look, it's easy, just - feet on the pedals. Bottom half, you gotta steer with your feet." Ray waits to feel pressure on the dual controls, the telltale movement of Fraser's boots. "You got it?"
"Really Ray, I'm not - "
"Ready? Just keep it on the line, Frase, little corrections. You got the pedals."
The airplane starts rolling. It goes forward for a second or two, then starts listing to the left, and immediately veers to the right - and pretty soon, the way Fraser keeps stomping on it, they're fishtailing all over the taxiway. "Little corrections," says Ray, "you gotta lead it a little."
But Fraser's not leading, he can't get it right, and just short of the runway he jams on the toe-brakes. "Okay, not bad," Ray says, "I got the plane for a sec - "
"Ray, what are you doing?"
"Engine run-up, just gotta turn us around here - "
"No, Ray, what are you doing?"
There's something in the tone that makes him stop before he's pivoted the airplane quite all the way around.
"I was given to understand we weren't talking."
"We're not talking. This more, uh... conversing."
"Talking, Ray."
"Discussing."
"Talking."
"Arguing."
"Your exact words were - "
"I know what my words were! Just - I take it back. This is me taking it back, okay?"
"I'm not asking you to take it back, Ray, not especially if you only intend to amuse yourself by making me look foolish."
"Huh?"
"This! This, Ray, ridiculous things like asking me to help you pilot the airplane. In case it's escaped your notice, I can't fly an airplane."
"Yeah, well that's why I'm telling you."
"Ray, are you even qualified to give flight instruction?"
He fixes Fraser with a look, gripping the wheel and letting him figure it out for himself just how fucking insulted he is. "As a matter of fact, yeah. I am."
"Well, that's wonderful," says Fraser, like he's talking about shit in his oatmeal. "That's quite an accomplishment, Ray, and I'm sure you must be proud of yourself."
"You're damn right I'm proud of myself. What else should I be, huh?"
"I'm sure I don't know."
"What the hell does that mean? God, you do something nice for a guy - "
"And you somehow upset him? You frustrate him more with your efforts to help? Well, Ray, I can't say that I know the feeling."
"You..." Ray trails off, and suddenly he gets it, jamming a finger in Fraser's face. "That was not my fault! The dog thing was not my fault, Fraser, they wouldn't listen to me!"
"Dief would have listened to you."
"Dief's deaf."
"That's just it, you think everything needs saying."
"So what are you not saying, Fraser?"
Fraser makes an exasperated gesture, like Ray's a damn moron, like this is the door, Ray!, like Fraser's fucking drawn him a picture and Ray doesn't get it. "I love you, Ray!"
"What?"
"I love you," he says again, pushing on the words, and enunciating everything like Ray doesn't understand Canadian - which Ray's starting to think that he totally doesn't. "Although apparently I - oh, never mind." He yanks the headset out of the jacks, off his head, and sits glaring at the runway.
It takes Ray a second to catch up here.
He idles the throttle and fumbles for the parking brake, throws off his headset and yells over the wash of the prop - "You do not get to say that! You do not get to come here and say that, that is bullshit, Fraser!"
"Well it's true, Ray, I can't help it if you - "
"Shut up!"
"Ray - "
"Shut up! Don't you even try to pull this on me, Fraser, don't you even fucking think about doing this shit to me again!"
"Ray, what - "
"Do not ask me what! You do not get to act like you're the guy who doesn't know what the fuck's going on here, Fraser, I am wearing my stuff on my sleeve! It ain't cool, it ain't the style anymore, I can't help that. I can't help what's all over my fucking face. But you, I don't know what the fuck is with you. 'Cause just when I think I got you figured out? Just when I think I get what you're saying all these times you're all, oh, conserve body heat, Ray, I got all this lung capacity, Ray, I'm a freak, this is all just standard freak procedure - just when I think I fucking get that? I don't get that!"
"Well Ray, if you'd just - "
"I don't get it! You kiss me, it's standard procedure! I kiss you, you push me away!"
"Ray, I didn't - "
"I try to apologize for kissing you, you stick your tongue down my throat! What the fuck!"
"What would you have rather I did, Ray?" Fraser gets in finally, shouting over the chop of the engine. "I mean for god’s sake, you're so obviously uncomfortable with your attraction to me - "
"My attraction to you? I make a move on you in an actual sack and you get that I'm uncomfortable with my attraction to you?"
" - though I don't pretend to know why," Fraser goes on, ignoring him completely, "if it's just that I'm a man, or your partner - ex-partner - your friend, or if it's something else unique to your mind entirely - but whatever the case, you seem to need the excuse of drink or hypothermic delirium before you're prepared to 'make a move on me,' as you put it."
Ray completely cash-registers.
"Ah." And Ray doesn't have to ask what that means, 'ah.' Fraser looks pissed. "Let me guess, Ray, it never occurred to you that in all your excessive proximity to me, you go out of your way to assure an acceptably heterosexual pretense? ...Buddy breathing, Ray?" Fraser prompts him, like it's the most juvenile euphemism he's personally ever heard in his life.
"You - that was all you, Fraser, you're the one who called it that!"
"Well you're the one who asked."
"Well you're the one who put your mouth on me like a fucking piece of evidence!"
"Very well Ray, and if I'd told you it was a kiss? Did you want me to tell you 'Ray, that was a kiss, Ray something's changed,' would you have welcomed that?"
"That's not the point."
"Oh I think it is the point."
"It is not the point, the only pointy thing you got is right at the top of your pointy head."
"Oh for the love of - that's fine, Ray, please, insult me. You're so much better at it than saying what you mean."
Ray slams the control wheel. "Fraser. All I want to know, was it a kiss. Was it a kiss."
"No, Ray, and far be it from me to contest your preference of reality even if it had been."
"Do not give me that psycho-shit Fraser, I will pop you in the head, just answer the question. Yes or no. The other night in the floatplane?" He gestures between their faces, you and me, this. "Was that a kiss?"
Fraser's thumb at his eyebrow isn't doing the trick anymore; he takes the whole heel of his hand up there. "Yes."
"Yes what."
"Yes, Ray, it was a kiss."
"Okay then." He waits. Fraser doesn't volunteer, so Ray gives him a warning. "Start talking, Fraser."
Fraser pinches his own face, right there between the eyes. "I'm sorry, Ray. I was... frustrated."
"Frustrated."
"Yes, Ray, frustrated!" he bursts out, like Fraser's going to save him the effort of looking it up, be the picture right next to the dictionary entry. "You were, shall we say entertaining certain ideas under the combined suggestion of close quarters and alcohol. And don't doubt my respect for your person, Ray, but your staring at me and your... well, as you were, and then insisting on being allowed to inform me exactly what sexual overtures you had and had not made, I don't mind telling you just how difficult you were making it for me to... for me not to... what I mean to say, it would have been easy to disregard your impaired state and simply provoke you to - "
Ray claps his hand over Fraser's face and stuns him silent. He kills the engine, and all that survives the death rattle of the prop is a soft electrical whine, the avionics shutting down, the power failing as he trips the master switch. He unbuckles his harness and fumbles for the strap of his kneeboard, clumsy and trembling. He's done with this shit. He is so fucking done with this shit.
The Velcro tears apart and all his navigation stuff flies into the back, his chart, his checklist, and Fraser recovers himself like he's next if he doesn't get Ray to let go. But the last thing Ray wants is to hear another word of blue-ribbon Mountie horseshit, Fraser spreads it on so thick you may as well show up to an argument with a shovel. Funny thing, Ray must have left his on the parking ramp. He squeezes Fraser's jaw with the heel of his hand, the nose and cheekbone with his fingers, holding his mouth shut. He jerks the Stetson out of Fraser's lap and flips it over the seat.
Fraser's eyes go wide. But he's still strapped in and Ray's already levering away from the control wheel, swinging out of the pilot seat.
He settles hard on Fraser's thighs, his knee banging the passenger door and the small airplane rocking with the load shift. He ducks his head under the skylight and slams his pelvis close, right up at Fraser's waist, his jeans stretched and straddling him tight. Fraser makes a stifled noise and heaves backward, trying to shove him away, trying to wrench him aside by the jacket. But it's going to take meaner than that, and Fraser was never good at fighting dirty.
Ray tangles the other hand in Fraser's hair and yanks his head against the seat. Tightly enough to hurt, Ray holds him fast, and Fraser grits his teeth and stills, his breathing harsh and hot against Ray's hand.
He tenses to struggle again.
"Nuh-uh." Ray's voice is pitched low and threatening; his hands don't gentle. "Don't push me, Fraser. You do not want to push me."
A moment passes. And under all the layers of uniform, Ray can feel him, the muscle taut in Fraser's legs, the nervous energy winding him up. And it's hell just to grip him and wait, wait for Fraser to give in, give up and let go, but Fraser listens to him closer this way. Ray rests the two of them together, cheek-to-cheek, and waits. Just waits.
The leather creaking softly, Fraser relaxes his hold on Ray's flight jacket. In surrender he lowers his hands, and lets them rest at Ray's hip pockets.
Ray lets the hand from Fraser's hair. He swallows as it slides around his jaw, and down his throat, falls into his lap. Ray disconnects the harness and releases the belt, the restraints clicking, falling away as he tugs at the Sam Browne. It tightens, then loosens, and Ray unclips the bandolier, starts prying the buttons of his serge jacket apart. Fraser doesn't watch him do it. His eyes pinch shut, like he knows too acutely the work of Ray's fingers in the tugs on his uniform, the drag of the lanyard knot, the constriction of his collar as Ray works at the clasp.
He bends and mouths at Fraser's neck, and Fraser's head rolls helplessly aside, then back, as Ray paints a line to his jaw. "Take off your coat," he mutters. "Take it off for me, Frase."
He sits forward, complying, his forehead touching the cool leather at Ray's shoulder, and works awkwardly to pull his arms from the sleeves. Ray cuts a finger under one of his suspenders, and snaps it at his chest. "These too."
Fraser slips them from his shoulders, one, then the other, and lets Ray push him back at the seat. He takes a handful of Fraser's undershirt in the middle, and drags it out of the uniform pants. There's nothing under the cotton but skin, a warm bare belly that tightens as he touches, skims his fingers along. Ray tongues at the lobe of his ear to a startled hiss in Fraser's breathing.
"You hard for me, buddy?"
Fraser's fingers twitch, and suddenly they're fistfuls of clothing, Ray's t-shirt, Ray's jeans, and Ray goes with those hands as they pull at him, finally, god, finally, and rocks himself on Fraser's leg, getting friction and hot in his ear, "Huh? Yeah? You want me to suck your dick?" His fingers dig below Fraser's belly and open his pants, split the zip.
Fraser jerks his head to the side, dislodging Ray's hand from his face, and grabs for his wrist to keep him from covering it again. "Ray," he gasps, "Ray."
"You love me, Fraser?"
"Ray please - "
"You love me love me? Like Ray-it's-like-this, that kinda you love me?"
"Oh - "
Ray shuts up the noise with a kiss, abrupt and open-mouthed and hot like the one Fraser took from him out on the lake. "Then let me do this."
***
Ray goes down. He kneels on the floor with the Mountie boots, grabs the seat catch behind Fraser's ankles, and throws it backward as far as it'll go. It ain't that far. His back is jammed against the control wheel, and he can hear the rudder cranking as he braces his feet on the pedals. Fraser's hands rake into his hair, not pulling, but like Fraser needs something to hold on to. That's okay. He'll be that thing. He slides his hands up Fraser's naked thighs, the bracelet rolling under his wrist, and kisses the inside of Fraser's knee.
"I'm gettin' there," Ray tells him, when Fraser starts shifting and anxiously stroking Ray’s head, fucking his hair up in all new directions. He crawls up Fraser's lap with his kisses, his tongue, and fumbles the pants down his legs a little more, till the honor and dignity of the RCMP is hung up inside-out on Fraser's boots. He spreads Fraser's knees and leans in.
The head of his penis is soft-swollen and wet, standing up dark and red against the white of Fraser's t-shirt. It tastes a little like come already. Like the smell of a locker room, like sweat and guy and kicked-off jockey shorts. Ray slides him along his tongue, up under the roof of his mouth, and Fraser makes a smothered noise as he lodges in the back of Ray's throat. He closes his lips and pulls away, sucking, letting Fraser slip out and then jacking him, smearing the wetness down his cock and teasing the foreskin back.
His own cock throbs in his jeans as he watches himself stroking. He's fascinated, god, he feels like the star of a porno. Some tape he'd rewind and watch over and over again, go to bed with the images burned in his mind and lie there trying to imagine... trying to feel... oh, Fraser. Oh man it is so hot, it's hotter than the tape in his head, the soft weight of his balls, and Fraser's blood-heavy cock in his hand, flushed and straining and up for him, hard for him, Fraser going Ray and Ray and God....
He glances at Fraser's face.
Except that Fraser is one of those guys who jerk it in secret. His eyes are screwed shut and his mouth open, showing a little teeth, he looks kinda like Dief on a hard run. His hips rock and bump up and beg but he doesn't make a sound. Not except for his breathing, he doesn't make a sound, and Ray can hardly even hear himself think over all Fraser's hitching and gasping and cringing.
He puts his head down, braces himself on the seat and kisses Fraser's cock, rims his tongue around the tip and feels him jump. "C'mon Fraser," he breathes, "oh yeah...." He opens the kiss and takes Fraser in his mouth again, in and out, in and out, ducking and swallowing hard and trying to show him a rhythm. He slows for a breath and Fraser's legs relax and tighten again, pushing back in.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, Fraser's going to fuck him, gonna give it to him, yeah - Ray closes his eyes and just holds still, his jaw slack and moaning and just going with it when Fraser pulls his hair and starts to thrust. Short, hot, fast, and forgetting to be nice and Ray's trying not to gag because he doesn't want Fraser to stop, he does not want apologies, he wants Fraser to come, he wants Fraser to lose it. Come on. Come on.
And Fraser stops. Stops breathing. Stops pulling and hits the brakes, he slows way down, way down, his hips gyrating gently, and groaning softly as his penis drags in and out of Ray's throat. Ray tastes his come, and lets him ride for as long as he can, but - fuck - he can't kill the reflex forever and has to pull away, coughing and sniffling. He pinches his face and tries to keep it quiet, not so suave as in the movies, and hopes that Fraser doesn't notice, doesn't say anything.
He doesn't. He lets Ray lie with his head in his lap, Ray's sweaty cheek sticking to his thigh, his hand heavy in Ray's hair. He lets him stay until both their breathing levels off, until Ray's knees hurt, till he notices his left foot's fallen asleep.
How long has it been? How long since Fraser last - how long since Ray was - Jesus, how does it take this many years of not even knowing what fucking town to find each other in, to get to this? Why not in Chicago or Sault Ste. Marie on that stupid boat, the cold case of John Franklin, or maybe the backseat of the GTO?
"Ray?"
He pushes himself up, crawling off the floor and wincing at the stab of pins and needles in his foot. He settles again in Fraser's lap, and touches his face, with only his fingertips now, and gentle. He leans to kiss.
Fraser's mouth is pliant, easy, yielding, but there's something missing in it. Something that Fraser's hiding from him, doesn't let him have, does not give up. Ray shoves away from him in a burst of raw anger and hurt.
"Is that how it is, I can blow you but you don't wanna kiss me? That is all kinds of fucked up for telling a guy you love him, Fraser, fucked up. Kiss me. Kiss me, right fucking now, or I swear my ass is going back over in that seat and you will never, ever see it again, do you hear me?"
***
Ray dumps himself in the pilot seat. His head thumps the door and he curses blindly, still heaving for breath as he shifts around, arches his back, and lifts his hips, fighting his jeans back up. The sweat on him is already going cold, his skin prickling to gooseflesh. Where's his shirt.
He twists over and paws through the pile of stuff underneath him. Fraser's tunic - Fraser's belt thing, that's his jacket, that's the empty bottle of - aw jeez. He can't believe he just used that to - jeez. What the hell won't he do when he's thinking with his pants? Without his pants. He needs to get rid of that before he turns the plane back over to Marty. Just on the off chance he'd guess, not that Marty would guess, because Marty doesn't think of him like that, except Ray kinda told him - aw, shit. Well the cap was so dirty and stuck on there anyway Marty might have forgotten it was stuffed in the seat pocket.
...Yeah, he's gonna have to get rid of it.
And probably leave the windows open in parking overnight.
Maybe run into the Northern store and try to find one of those car freshener things.
Ray palms the sweat from his forehead and fumbles with his t-shirt. Right. Like Marty's not going to notice if his airplane smells like Pine-Sol all of a sudden. God, Ray is dumb. Capital D-U-M dumb. The only possible way to get dumber would have to be fucking with the plane in the air, what the hell was he thinking?
Fraser grunts. Ray glances to the passenger side, and remembers - in color - exactly what he was thinking.
Fraser's got the seat back into its upright position - and Ray feels sort of bad about that now, because okay, it's not his fault the seat doesn't lay back, it collapses forward, but how comfortable could that really have been? Not that Ray heard him complaining, but that'd be Fraser for you, taking one for the team.
Uh. Speaking figuratively, there.
Or, you know, not so figuratively. Fraser... god, just took it for Ray, right up his sweet, bare, gorgeous ass, with his legs tight and butt flexing, back arching, hands braced and squeezing as Ray pushed inside him. Ray - oh, ff - nngh...
A hot-and-cold shiver shoots through him, and Ray drags up his t-shirt to wipe his face. "Fraser?"
His uniform pants are back up and buttoned, and he's sitting a little gingerly as he pulls his own shirt back on. His head pops out of the collar and he glances over, already looking wary of what Ray's going to say.
"I um," Ray starts, trying to shove himself back into sitting position with his feet, "that was... I'm, I mean...." He scratches his face, looking down at the control wheel, and maybe that's the best cue he's ever going to get. Two hands now, Kowalski, both hands, you gotta reach out and take it.
"I'm... dumb, it's - I'm stupid, I miss the fuck out of you Frase, and I just...." He's not saying it right. Fuck. He mashes a hand at his face and shoves it through his hair, makes himself just keep going. "Don't do the goodbye thing again with me. I mean I know you're - up there, and I'm that way, but... I really wanna see you again."
Fraser's face has gone skeptical at some point when Ray wasn't looking. He shoulders up his suspenders and doesn't answer for a second. Ray jumps in before he has a chance. "Just say yes. You gotta say yes, so just - say it, okay?"
Fraser stares at him like Ray's talking Eskimo and not making sense, and Ray feels like his airplane just fell out of the sky, crashed and burned and he's never going to be airborne again. And then - then this weird little something creeps into the look, like what the hell?, and Ray doesn't get that, doesn't get what that's about, till Fraser bursts wide open and laughs, looks out the windshield and drops his head in a nod, repeatedly, rubbing his eyes.
"Yes, Ray," he says, and the smile on him's got all the bigness and brilliance of the low midnight sun. "Yes."