Author's website: http://www.geocities.com/annodomini2003tm/mercutio/mercutio.htm

Disclaimer: They don't belong to me, darn it. I'd treat them a lot better if they did.

Author's Notes: Big thanks go to my friend R. for giving my stories a once-over, and pointing out what might have made me the laughing stock of all slashdom. =)

Story Notes: Multiple partners (threesomes). Angst. Language, maybe. Unrelieved sexual tension. A teeny-tiny hint of s/m, so insignificant I doubt merits a warning. I also took some liberties with canon, but it's not really an AU, because. well, you'll see.

It all started with an invitation to dinner, one of those formal occasions where you've got to appear all decked out in your best clothes, and guys wearing perfume are not only not frowned at, but indeed kind of a must. It was one of those rare cases Fraser could freely indulge in his secret love of exotic scents, and he did so happily, spaying himself with that fresh cinnamon-and-pineapple fragrance that blended so perfectly with the chemistry of his skin, making him smell as if he had just taken a bubble bath spiced with tropical fruit oils, a special treat he sadly couldn't offer himself as often as he would like. He was going to drop by his partner Ray Vecchio's house to pick him up, and while he was putting the finishing touches to his toilet, Fraser realized that, for some indefinable reason, he felt inclined to make himself look exceptionally good that evening. It must be the tamed, semi-dormant, but ever-present instinct of male antagonism, he thought, the need to supercede your peer, all the more so if your peer is a confirmed lady-magnet, unabashedly waving his decadent charm like a conqueror's flag of triumph.

It almost went without saying that Fraser and Vecchio would present themselves at the dinner escorted by each other. The two of them had become great friends besides being great partners, emotionally attached to one another in a deeply touching way which was also a little comical, each of them acting towards the other like an over-protective older brother. Moreover, as it happened, both of them were also dateless at the time, and Fraser was sure his friend hoped, at least for his own part, that this particular state of affairs would be altered in an advantageous way that evening. He adamantly refused to admit that this thought caused an unpleasant feeling of rejection and envy combined to start spreading itself in his soul, slyly and slowly, making him wince internally at the prospect of Ray ending up in the arms of some ethereal female presence, who would be much too eager to succumb to his gallant advances.

He got into his car, still overwhelmed by that annoying mixture of anticipation and reluctance. It seemed to him that the trip to Ray's house lasted a whole eternity; and when he finally reached his destination, Fraser saw fit to take a last appraising glance at his reflection in the window of his car, and adjust his tie and that unruly lock that deemed it below its dignity to remain stuck with the rest of his gel-soaked hair. When satisfied with the result, he purposefully walked to Ray's house and proceeded to knock on the door.

*"Hey man, you look just fabulous in that suit!" Ray exclaimed upon seeing him enter, and rushed to envelop him in his lean but strong arms. "And mmm, you smell so good..." he cooed as he stroked Fraser's hair and nuzzled his neck before pressing his lips to the man's cheek in greeting, the corners of their mouths meeting for the flash of a second - and as Fraser let himself melt in the embrace, he couldn't help smiling inwardly at the thought of what a good idea it had been to apply a hint of that colorless, odorless balm to his lips to soothe the "roughness caused by dehydration due to excessive heat or cold", as the product's label affirmed it would. He felt the surreptitious heat of blushing on his face, and wondered whether it was right for a guy to blush just because his male partner found him so presentable and worthy of such an affectionate welcome.*

*Ray had no qualms at all about telling Fraser how good he looked if he thought so (he had, indeed, expressed his appreciation of Fraser's looks in a pretty eloquent way a few minutes after they were first introduced - "Man, you're gorgeous!" he had exclaimed, a little breathlessly, eliciting from all around the place a discreet buzz of muffled giggles and a hesitant couple of wolf-whistles. "From what everyone's been saying about you, I'd thought you'd be a grumpy old grinch or something!" he'd added with disarming frankness, only to dissolve in horrified apologies a heartbeat later, as realization of what he'd just said began to sink in), or draping himself all over the other man in an affectionate full-body hug whenever they parted at the end of the day or met again the next morning at work.*

It had been a hard thing for Fraser to learn to kiss back whenever Ray applied his lips to the side of his face - it had already been difficult, in the first place, to get himself to admit that being touched by another man in an intimate way like this did not make him - or Ray, for that matter - less of a man. By now he had fairly mastered the art of adapting to Italian effusiveness. If nothing else, Ray was already established as "the Italian", and whatever he said or did, which would definitely be considered out of place coming from anyone else, was automatically justified by Ray's being who he was, although Fraser preferred not to give too much thought to the rather condescending perception of Ray's nationality this attitude implied; sometimes even discrimination might prove convenient, and absurdly enough, for the very same reasons that motivate it. Indifference, Fraser decided, was a blessing in that case, and as far as he was concerned, he was determined from now on to follow the way his heart was pointing; if his heart directed him to make himself good-looking and nice-smelling and smooth to the touch for Ray, there was no force or power in the world that would stop him from doing it.

"Hey man, you're half an hour early!" Ray exclaimed upon seeing him enter, and rushed inside to inform his mother that Fraser had already arrived, and ask her to keep him company while he, Ray, put the finishing touches to his own toilet. Fraser shook his head violently to clear it from the fogs of fantasy, finding it extremely hard to even try and adapt to a reality so dramatically different from his dream. Instead of wallowing in the tender comfort of his friend's arms and whispered loving words, he had to endure a whole half hour of unenthusiastic small talk with Mrs. Vecchio, a great deal of which was, as always, occupied by her zealous extolling of her daughter Francesca's virtues. Not that poor Francesca did not correspond, to a certain extent, to the picture her mother painted of her, but at the moment, Fraser was infinitely more interested in her brother.

When Ray was finally ready, and materialized in front of him in his white suit and silk azure tie that flattered the blue-green of his eyes, it was all Fraser could do not to swoon like some lovestruck virgin. It was almost normal for him to expect that his own white trousers would feel impossibly tight all the way to the classy restaurant, making him squirm uncomfortably on his seat and risking to betray himself to Ray, who sat smiling cluelessly beside him and occasionally nudging Fraser's knee with his own in the course of conversation, as well as lose his concentration on the road; but when, to his utter misfortune, at the exact moment he was stopping the car outside the restaurant, already half-filled with well-dressed people, Ray threw his head back and laughed at a joke Fraser couldn't even remember having told, his musical laughter ringing into the constricted space of the car like a garland of crystalline, deep-sounding bells, Fraser was totally unprepared for the helpless explosion that took place in his body's nether regions. He managed to hide his shocked gasp under a sob that was part laughter and part cry of abomination, and the damp stain on his pants beneath his jacket, which he would now have to keep buttoned until the end of the evening.

The rest of the dinner was a wet ordeal that fortunately passed in a blur, and Fraser could only remember dancing with a couple of ladies (one of whom began sniffing him suspiciously, and apparently not because of his perfume) and conversing mechanically with a number of other guests, some of whom he had never met before. In the meanwhile, Ray was making the most of his own time, enjoying the party to the fullest and at some point presenting Fraser with a bodacious brunette called Lori Lee or something, whose fingers were wrapped like immovable tentacles around Ray's arm. They left the restaurant together, of course, and Fraser returned home alone and miserable, valiantly resisting the urge to cry his heart out like a dishonored and abandoned soap-opera heroine. That night he offered himself the precious luxury of a comfort bubble bath spiced with tropical fruit oils, which lasted more than four hours and during which Fraser had all the time he needed to masturbate frantically to random fragments of Ray's brilliant smiles and clear baritone laughter, and brace himself for the long days and even longer nights to come in his friend's tormenting presence/absence, fleeting "manly" affection and occasional touches and words that didn't, and never, ever would, mean anything more.

When Stanley "Ray" Kowalski came to take Raymond "Ray" Vecchio's place, Fraser had hoped with all his heart those embarassing mental trips would finally subside. He had willed himself to stop thinking of his former partner as a potential lover and see him just the way he was, an innocent, unsuspecting, and above all else, totally heterosexual guy to whom it had, of course, never occured that he and Fraser could possibly share anything more than the warm friendship already forged between them. At first sight, at least, the new Ray seemed to have nothing on the old Ray, which was rather encouraging in itself. He lacked the old Ray's atractiveness and social finesse, and besides, he smoked like a chimney and had that horrible accent which was a torture to Fraser's sensitive ears. There was barely anything in his personality that might even remotely be of romantic interest to Fraser, and thus their first hesitant steps towards a partnership were blessed by the most positive of omens - or so he thought in the beginning.

But to his horror, as time passed and their initially reluctant relationship started to take on a closer, more affectionate turn, Fraser realized the waking dreams continued with a vengeance, taking control of his thoughts at any given moment or occasion, sometimes even in such public places as the middle of the street in broad daylight, and each time he found it more and more difficult to resist their lure, risking an irreparable damage to his reputation. Instead of curing him from his obsession with Raymond "Ray" Vecchio, Stanley "Ray" Kowalski's presence kept reminding him of the other Ray. Almost against his will, Fraser's subconscious mind pulled off detailed comparisons, and even outright sensual confrontations between the two, his imagination helpfully providing any missing links in the chain of his spirit and body's instinctual reactions.

The worst thing was that in most cases, the missing "link" was Fraser himself - a fully naked, painfully horny and absolutely slutty human link, eager to please both his Rays and seal them together in his memory by means of his own bare hands (literally, or as literally as it was possible in the nebulous realms of reverie). Since the day his two Rays finally met in reality, he caught himself, more often than not, imagining how it would feel to find himself in a compromising position involving both of them, or rather, all three of them. In those flights of fancy, Fraser was surprised to realize he usually preferred to place himself on the receiving end, with both his Rays servicing and being serviced by him at the same time, while doing their best to outdo and complement one another.

It felt like being sandwiched between two distorting mirrors facing each other. The one face elegantly boned, almost aristocratic, receding hairline adding to the patrician effect. Aquiline nose, huge aquamarine eyes you could lose yourself in, oddly shaped mouth tormenting his earlobe. The body looked slight but there was strength in those lean arms and legs, enough to leave bruises behind after they'd finally sorted out which limbs belonged to whom. The other face had irregular features, and if not for those dark blue eyes and the fair skin, there was nothing else on it to mark it as beautiful, or even attractive. But there was fire in those eyes, and it lit up the whole face from within, erasing the somewhat painful angles of that wiry body and the cigarette smoke he could smell on the other man's breath.

His other Ray was attacking his mouth with his lips from behind, angling his face a bit too uncomfortably, while his one Ray was making himself at home inside his body from the front, his own right leg hooked over his one Ray's shoulder and the left one wrapped around his one Ray's hips. His other Ray was gently massaging his neck and his shoulders and back, calming and stimulating him, making it easier for both him and his other Ray, and he could sample the strength and tenderness of both, Mediterranean fervor and Northern nonchalance, the wholesome feeling of an uncut member pounding him like there was no tomorrow and a cut one sliding in and out of his palm. He wanted to bring both his Rays off simultaneously, timing his own explosion to join theirs. He could feel the end approaching for all of them together, and they soared up into the seventh heaven in a white hot thunder of pleasure.

Long live his Rays, the Ray-Ray Vecchio and the Stanley-Ray Kowalski. Long live the twist of fate that had brought them together. As all three of them came down from the high, sharing the sweetest three-way kiss in the history of threesomes, Fraser felt his other Ray's fingers working their way into his body and using the residues of slippery moisture there to prepare him for round two of mind-blowing lovemaking, while his one Ray knelt in front of him, to return with his mouth the pleasure he had taken from him earlier.

Fraser braced himself for the shock of ecstasy he knew he would soon be experiencing in the hands, and arms, and lips of his oh, so talented lovers, only to find himself abruptly landed onto reality, the reality he hated and despised, the reality that translated itself into loneliness, and lovelessness, and that incurable feeling of emptiness he had come to associate so closely with himself. Stanley-Ray Kowalski was sitting at his desk nearby, shuffling lazily through a heap of papers and putting out his hundredth cigarette of the day. Another clueless, innocuous creature Fraser had shamelessly used for his own personal satisfaction.

He suddenly felt very dirty, like the most despicable pervert, a violator of innocent souls. This, of course, didn't stop him from coming hard in his pants for the millionth time that year, his eyes riveted on the ghost-white swirls of smoke escaping from between the delicate rose curves of his partner's lips, his strangled grunt causing Stanley-Ray to raise his head in startled worry and ask him if he was all right. To which Fraser only managed to stutter something unintelligible in reply, which Stanley-Ray deemed reasonable to take as the Canadian version of "yes", and reassured about his partner's health, nodded once and went back to studying his papers and stuffing his already full ashtray with a fresh bunch of cigarette stubs.

And so one more year went by, haunted by the typical repertoire of one-sided emotions and unrequited desires, adding another load of self-pity and depression to Fraser's overtaxed emotional inventory. The only consolation he had left were those mental escapades into his own "perfumed garden", his garden of forbidden pleasures, where he took refuge now and then, whenever the hours seemes to take much longer than usual to roll by and life got a bit too hard to live. But since he could see no possible alternative to this half-life he was condemned to endure forever, he decided to clench both his teeth and fists and live it and with it, up to its inevitable end. He was no fatalist, but he was determined to prove to himself that he could be more than a realist if circumstances called for it.

And then, the following summer, there was that seminar in Cascade, Washington, a place Fraser hadn't even imagined the existence of until he received the invitation to attend, and where he made the acquaintance of big, bad, beautiful cop Jim Ellison and his sugar-sweet boy-toy, one lovely Blair Sandburg with a razor-sharp mind and honeyed tongue, who kept asking Fraser weird questions about his unusually acute senses of taste and touch, and who eventually proved to be unexpectedly robust and bossy for his size. After a couple of preliminary meetings, Fraser had already begun to revise his initial assessment of which of them was the other's boy-toy. In fact, Sandburg seemed to be keeping Ellison on a short leash, a mental image that had kept Fraser mostly sleepless and almost constantly aroused until their next rendez-vous.

It hardly mattered that this rendez-vous had been arranged to take place not in one of those "discreet" motels scattered all over the outskirts of Cascade, but in Fraser's own pleasure dome, the forbidden garden of his private Utopia, reserved for those select few whom he judged appropriate to "invite" there. He had come to Cascade unescorted, which meant he was free to do as he pleased in his spare time - which, in turn, meant that if he chose to remain locked in his hotel room for hours on end, soiling the sheets with the liquid fruit of his solitary enjoyment, no one was going to complain, except perhaps for the hotel's cleaning staff. There was not much to admire in Cascade anyway, save Ellison and Sandburg and maybe one or two other people in their company.

So Fraser threw his clothes away and let himself sprawl in a boneless heap onto the king-sized bed. The room was air-conditioned, and the caressing coolness seeped luxuriously through his bare skin, making his whole being hum with the pleasure. As if moving of their own, his hands started on an exhaustive journey of reacquainting themselves with the most sensitive and most responsive areas of his body. They felt his throat, fingered the tender spots behind his ears, stroked the broad, hairless planes of his chest, pinched his already peaked nipples, worried his armpits, traced his navel, played in the thatch of black curls at his groin, tickled the inside of his thighs, and finally, as his hips began to move in response to the more and more urgent contractions of his bowels, those hands grasped the base of his burgeoning erection and squeezed it painfully, wanting to punish it for its impatience and make it wait obediently for the main event. It would be improper, if not outright rude, to start the party before his guests arrived.

And then, suddenly, he was enveloped in darkness and there were hands on his body again, only this time they weren't his own hands, because his own hands had mysteriously been tied somewhere above his head; the new hands felt calloused and strong, but their touch was tentative, careful, almost gentle. They followed exactly the same path Fraser's own hands had traced before, but their touch was lingering, more insistent, leaving behind a trail of thrilling, unfamiliar sensations. They were obviously a man's hands, square, knowing, capable, hands able to cause pain and bring pleasure in equal amounts. Fraser tried to open his eyes but realized they were already open, and unable to see because a black piece of cloth was covering them. "Most nteresting," he thought to himself. "Restrained AND blinfolded, and not having even the faintest idea by whom."

Then he felt another pair of hands touching him, those ones softer and even gentler, with longer, slimmer fingers, but they were manly hands as well, their movements on his skin sure, confident. Fraser sighed and cleared his throat, intending to speak, ask who his tender torturers were, but one of the smaller, rougher hands covered his mouth, halting his speech. All right then, if they wanted silence, Fraser could do silence. Even in his euphoric haze, the tiny part of his conscious mind that hadn't been numbed by the sensual rapture found a viable reason for this. The slightest whisper would definitely break the mood and disrupt the voiceless ecstasy in which his invisible lovers had him swimming; the rougher hands returned to his straining cock, smearing something cool and slick all over its length. A weight - a big man's weight - settled slowly on his thighs, and before he was able to register this new development, Fraser suddenly found his hardness wrapped in impossibly tight damp velvet, the unexpected sensation overwhelming, almost unbearable, leaving him breathless and panting for air. The softer hands, which apparently belonged to this big man, continued to caress his chest and worry his nipples as the man at last found a rhythm and began moving steadily on Fraser's erection.

The rougher hands were all the while slicking and stretching his own entrance, and just as Fraser felt he was ready to explode, the weight shifted off his thighs and went away, his cock was painfully freed from its wonderful prison, his legs were forcefully spread apart and the hugest, hardest erection he could ever imagine was unceremoniously shoved into him. Then the big man straddled his hips again, impaling himself on Fraser's cock from a different angle this time, maybe so that he was able to face his companion. For long, interminable moments, the only noises Fraser's trained ears were able to register were the soft susurration of skin moving on sheets and skin moving on, in and out of skin, and the wet sounds of greedy, lengthy, nasty kisses being exchanged above him. Despite the thorough pleasuring he was receiving from both of his unknown lovers, Fraser's heart was suddenly filled with almost hurtful envy at these two men for the urgency of their hunger for one another, and their perfectly practiced synchronization as they possessed him like a pair of demons, making his body scream with the frightful intensity of the pleasure.

And he did scream indeed as he came, violently waking from his fantasy in a pool of his own sperm and hoping the walls of this hotel's rooms were adequately insulated. The erotic daydream had been so vivid that Fraser was nearly surprised to discover his hands were unrestrained and that he wasn't sore in the places he expected he would be. He half-heartedly rose from the bed and dragged himself to the bathroom for a quick but efficient shower, belatedly berating himself for his carelessness. Who knows what the room service might think of him when they found out the mess he had made on the sheets. On the other hand, the encouraging thing was they probably would never have to see him again, or he them, for all that it mattered.It wasn't like there would be seminars like this in Cascade every year, or that he, of all Canadian mounties, would be chosen to attend them on a regular basis.

That day's afternoon had been left free for all participants to do whatever they wanted, so Fraser decided to replace his uniform with jeans and an impeccably ironed T-shirt and take a walk in the streets of Cascade, after enjoying a nice cup of coffee. A brief inspection of his face in the mirror left him totally stunned, as it revealed a pair of bright eyes and refreshed, shining skin, which was highly unusual after each of his solitary exploits that left him even emptier and more needy and dejected than before. He would normally expect to contemplate a tired, dull complexion, eyes bloodshot and circled in black and an acrid expression of discontent written all over his features. It took him quite a few minutes to take in the change and accept that the face in the mirror was really his own. In the end, still puzzled but not in a disagreeable way, he got out of his room and made his way to the cafeteria.

There, among other faces he remembered from earlier sessions of the seminar, he saw the inseparable Ellison-Sandburg pair seated at a somewhat isolated corner table and talking in low voices, their heads bent close together, clearly indifferent to whatever was going on around them. Fraser felt the imperative need to avert his eyes and disappear as soon as possible, before they had the time to acknowledge his presence. Although it was impossible for them to be aware of what had gone on in his head and body a quarter of an hour before, because of them but without their even suspecting it, the familiar, ever-present guilt was taking charge of his feelings once more, preventing him from acting and speaking as if nothing had happened. The dream lovers he had shared his afternoon "siesta" with had no faces, of course, and no names had been spoken at all - and yet, deep, very deep inside him, Fraser was certain beyond any doubt that it was them who had innocuously incited his fantasy. But just as he was about to turn his back on them and make a hasty retreat, Jim Ellison raised that patrician head of his, turned his face in Fraser's direction and pinned him with a look that almost made Fraser cream his pants again. He knew, just knew it was his imagination, but he couldn't take off his mind the impression that the big, gorgeous man was giving him the glad eye - the bluest glad eye anyone, woman or man, had ever given him...

END

End The Garden of Forbidden Pleasures by Crimson Mercutio 007: handsome_stranger_007@hotmail.com

Author and story notes above.