Foreign Motions

"...spheres being lately grown/ subject to foreign motions, lose their own..." John Donne: "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning."

He had been crabby for as long as he could recall in recent memory. Maybe it was the heat, or maybe it was the noise of a Chicago evening, the endless wail of sirens, constant chaos. Maybe, he thought (with a crudeness that was very unlike him) it was because he hadn't gotten laid in months. No, it was rather closer to a year, he mused, his mind being occupied with the order that was its natural state.

He went out that night with Ray, some poky little place on the West Side, a real dive. Except that the draft beer was great and they served fabulous, piping hot French fries in baskets. It was strange to be eating fries when it was so hot; curiously, it seemed to dissipate the heat. Maybe this was why Mrs. Vecchio insisted on cooking her wonderfully-spicy meals at the peak of summer's heat. Maybe Mrs. Vecchio knew something he didn't about dispersing heat: add more heat, and what existed before will diminish to nothing in its boiling shadow. It was an interesting thought.

Ray had ordered them great foaming mugs of draft beer, even before he could protest.

"Fraser, it's a bar, for God's sake. I am not going to sit here with you drinking coffee." Ray was dressed for the heat, dressed much more casually than Fraser had ever seen him: rumpled khaki chinos, a white cotton shirt open at the neck, the sleeves rolled up over his forearms, his feet shoved into a battered pair of deck shoes. He hardly even looked like Ray anymore, until you looked at him closely, until your gaze was drawn, as it irresistibly was, to the deep green eyes, the wide mouth that might at any moment shiver into a smile.

"Let's go outside, they got chairs outside." The bar wasn't air-conditioned; at least outdoors there was some semblance of a breeze. "Catch the wind here anyway; hey, they don't call it the Windy City for nothing."

They sat for a time in a companionable silence, munching and sipping and trying, by stages, to relax out of the everyday alertness that was so necessary to them both. It was obviously easier for Ray than it was for Fraser, who was even at this moment trying unsuccessfully to spear french fries with the toothpick the waitress had given him. "For the love of God, Benny---" Ray seized the toothpick and flicked it away into the night. "Use your fingers. It's just me." It was Ray who'd suggested the evening out, who'd shown up at Fraser's apartment after work. He'd had to dissuade Fraser from wearing his usual casual attire; indeed, Ray had refused to leave until Fraser changed into an ensemble more suited to the hot weather. He'd been prepared to go outside in his usual off-duty garb: jeans, a flannel shirt, the ubiquitous hiking boots he'd bought in Nunavut. "Nice boots, Fraser. Where'd you get 'em, Tuktoo's Mukluk Emporium?" That was funny. Ray was a very funny guy. But Fraser had come along in his uniform shirt and pants.

"How come you're not talking to me?" Ray leaned across the table. When Ray leaned close like that, it did funny things. You could smell his cologne, that kind he always wore, what was it? His clear green eyes were excruciatingly earnest. It put ideas in his head, ideas that he didn't even dare to articulate in thought; ideas that were mere phantasms of the mind.

"I'm thinking about something."

A tiny drop of sweat beaded on Ray's forehead, slid slowly down his cheek, his neck. Fraser found himself watching it, unable to tear his eyes away from it. "What is it?" Ray couldn't follow his gaze, had no idea that Fraser was staring at him. "Jeez, Benny, what is it?"

"Ray, I---" He leaned over the table, too, hunched his shoulders to form a kind of shield. He was still wearing his uniform shirt and trousers. His one concession had been to slightly loosen the knot of his tie. He felt horribly disheveled, he realised. He also realised that he liked it. In fact, he liked it enormously. He suddenly felt...evil, wanton. He wanted to run out and do something completely irrational. Like get a tattoo. Stomp fully-clothed through a fountain.

"What? What is it? God, the suspense is killing me!"

There was a tiny pulse beating, in that hollow at the base of Ray's throat, a miniature heartbeat. He found himself watching it, irresistibly drawn to it. God, he was cranky. Maybe it was the heat. It was safer to blame it on the heat.

He lingered, wavering. Staring into Ray's green eyes, a great silence rose up, roaring between them. He felt that he would have to shout to be heard above it. "Ray." The heat was

pounding in his chest, throbbing in the base of his belly. The muscles of his thighs were clenched tight with tension.

"Benny..." Ray wet his lips, the tip of his tongue slipping out to trace their perimeter. Fraser watched it, entranced; that pink tongue-tip, that momentary quiver. His hand moved, index finger outstretched, traversed that monumental distance. He pressed the soft pad of his finger against the center of Ray's lips, rested it there. The contact hissed and sizzled up his arm, the wanton danger of it bursting like fireworks in his brain. Ray's eyelids fluttered closed, his head dropped back, ever so slightly, opening the line of his neck, his smooth olive skin.

Fraser felt like he was on fire. *God help me* The throbbing in his belly echoed it, a pulsing deep and wet. He slid across the table, til they were separated by mere microns of empty space. He could feel Ray's breath on his skin, could breathe it in and thus link himself to Ray in one long, continuous circuit of breath. *Say it.* It was hard to force the words past his lips. "Ray, I---" He felt he colour drain out of his face; he couldn't go through with it.

Ray's hand leapt to catch his chin, fingers digging into his flesh with an intensity that was very nearly cruel. "Don't tease me, Fraser." His mouth lingered, their lips nearly touching, Ray dropping words into his mouth. "I know damn well what you're thinking, and if you think I haven't been thinking the same thing, then---" He turned his head slightly, rubbed his cheek against Fraser's. The contact sizzled through him, and he groveled for Ray, eyes blinded, mouth open. Ray could take him right there, in plain sight, it didn't matter. And he wondered where his cool objectivity had gone. Ray could do what he wanted. Or maybe he wanted to do something to Ray. He'd thought of it often enough, during the long hot days locked in the Consulate. Late afternoons, when the heat was peaking, he'd get up from his desk and quietly shut his office door, and allow himself the indulgence of ribald thoughts. It amused him, that nobody suspected him, that they considered his closed door a sign of industry. Sometimes in the afternoons, when his daydreams grew too torrid, he'd slip into the bathroom and lock the door, unzip himself furtively. He imagined that the fingers were Ray's fingers; he imagined what Ray's mouth would feel like, caressing him, and it was easy to let himself come, thinking of it. It made him feel decadent and gloriously guilty for the rest of the afternoon, though; he'd sit at his desk for hours, going over it in his mind. *I should stop this* But he couldn't stop it. And on the days that Ray's car was waiting outside the Consulate for him, well...

"Get up." Ray was staring at him, gazing deep into his eyes. His white cotton shirt was clinging damply in places, saturated with the heat.

"Where are we going?" He swayed, drunk with it, drawn into Ray's space as into a gravity well, as if pulled by some outside force, some foreign notion.

Ray walked him away as if he were drunk. Ray stopped underneath a late-night awning and Fraser flattened him against the wall, pushed himself into Ray. He'd become somebody else, or maybe this was who he'd always truly been. He pushed himself into Ray, rubbed himself against Ray's groin. "Do you feel that?" He caught Ray's head between his palms, tilted it to open the line of his neck, and drew his tongue slowly up, tasting the salt of sweat. A thought was tugged, unresisting, into words; it amazed him, this new debauchery of which he seemingly was so capable. "Ray, I want you."

Ray, squirming against the wall, groaning softly. "Oh, Jesus, Benny..."

Keep talking, he thought, just say it. Say those bad words that you've always been taught not to say; say those bad words that you really want to say to him. Tell him what you want. It would be alright; Ray was going along with this.

He noticed that Ray had rather a spectacular erection, a great turgid bulge against the inside of his slacks. He wanted to slide down, take it in his mouth. He could imagine doing that.

Tell him what you want. "Ray, I want you to..." Swallow hard, swallow over the lump in the throat and that tremendous, tremendous desire that glows against the back of the eyeballs like hunger. "Ray, I want to---"

And Ray capturing his mouth, silencing him with a slow, hot kiss. Ray's mouth on his, caressing him; Ray's agile tongue wrestling with his. "Benny, you ever fucked a man before?"

My God! Ray said that word, that word he'd been thinking of. He liked to hear Ray say it. "No. No, I haven't." But he'd come close, and there was a truth he'd told to no one. Those long cold nights in training, awake one night, he must have been sending out signals like crazy. That cadet, the dark-haired one with green eyes like Ray, his name was Knight.

No, blond hair, green eyes. *I'm so lonely, love me.* It was more than getting off. There was affection, of a sort.

"Benny, get in the car." Ray, still flattened against the wall, moved slowly to embrace him. "Please."

"You have to relax. Benny, please relax." But it wasn't even the hardest part yet, they were still just fooling around. Caressing each other. That was what was irritating him. Ray took forever to get to it, dancing around the edges, kissing and touching and... oh, God, stroking. And Fraser knew what he wanted and he couldn't say it.

Well, that was it, wasn't it. He couldn't say it. He wondered, deliciously, what would happen if he just...out and *said* it...just told Ray exactly. He remembered those nights, in the barracks, writhing silent underneath the covers, both of them naked and sweaty. Thank God they slept two to a room. It would have been impossible to manage in an open barracks. And the two of them, writhing silent underneath the covers, and Gabriel clamping a hand over his mouth to silence him, when he came.

Nobody ever suspected.

"Ray." The words were coming out of his mouth, he could feel them, lodged jostling in his throat. He pulled himself back from the ragged edge of bliss, forced himself to concentrate. "Ray. I want you to---"

"What is it, what do you want, Benny?" Ray lifted languid eyes to his, wrapped one naked leg around him. Ray was burning hot, his skin like heated silk. Ray's cock, heavy against his leg.

"Ray, I want you to suck my cock." Oh my God, he was actually *saying* those words, he was--- "Ray, I want you to go down on me, I want you to, would you just---"

Ray, sliding down his body, swallowing the length of him in one fluid motion. Fraser felt the whole of himself contract down into that one point of heat, of wetness. Ray's mouth, around his cock. Ray, sucking his cock. He didn't think he could stand it. He'd go out of his mind.

Ray's agile tongue, slipping around the head of his cock, sliding on the shaft, tracing the whole surface of the glans, the delicate corona. Oh, Jesus God---he's doing what I've always wanted him to do, he's doing what I imagined he would do.

He was weeping, his hands clenched in the bedclothes, driving himself up into his best friend's throat; he was coming, he was spilling himself, his head back, mouth open. Ray had sucked his cock and made him come, and the throbbing abated a little bit. And then Ray slid up and kissed him hard, sliding the taste of himself deep into his mouth. Ray, naked and sweaty and oh, God! *I love him*

"Ray, I love you. I love you." Ray, on top of him, his hands digging into his shoulders. Ray sliding himself in and out of that space between Fraser's thighs. Fraser reached up and pulled him down, pulled Ray tight against him, their bellies pressed together. He watched Ray's face, watched the expressions change across it, watched as Ray's green eyes lost their focus. He wondered when it had slipped across to this, their relationship. He remembered how, one night long ago, after Victoria, after he had gotten out of the hospital, Ray had come to pick him up. He remembered walking with Ray, walking in silence down the block to where the Riv was parked. He remembered stopping Ray suddenly with just a touch; he remembered pulling Ray underneath the shadow of a drooping elm, and he remembered kissing Ray, and he remembered that Ray hadn't resisted him. He remembered that Ray had come into his arms and returned it, murmuring over and over, "oh, Benny, oh Benny..." It was as if Ray had been waiting for him to do this. It was as if Ray knew.

"Benny?" The opened window cast a breeze across them. Ray, lying naked and sprawled across Fraser, his head against the Mountie's shoulder.

"Hmm?" Sleepy, now. Drifting.

"You okay with this?"

His hand slid to the back of Ray's neck, rested there. "Ray, I'm in love with you." He watched as his friend's green eyes changed; Ray's eyes changed often like that. "I think you're the most perfect person I've ever met. And I love you. In fact, Ray, I want to be your lover. I want you to have nobody else but me. I don't care who you tell. Tell everybody. Tell nobody. I'm your lover. I want to be your lover."

He should have said it like that years ago, in the barracks, late at night. When he and Gabriel were circling each other like captive spheres.

"Like spheres, so lately grown/subject to foreign motions, lose their own."

"What's that, Benny?"

He tightened his arm around his lover, drew the sheet over them both. "John Donne."

"Huh." Ray's voice, growing sleepy. "Was he a poet, or something?"

Fraser smiled in the darkness. "He was a lover."

The End