Disclaimers: I subscribe to the point of view that if no one's using them, they're mine. Finders keepers, babe.

Spoilers: Mounty on the Bounty.

Archiving: Anywhere, just let me know.

Summary: Nobody benefits from a lot of pointless thinking.

Ratings Note: NC-17 for language, m/m stuffsies.

Author's Note: All day watching the third season of Due South... does something to the brain. Yes. That, and the song "A Lonely Place" by Bush.

Acknowledgments: To Dawn Sharon for the tapes *and* the audiencing, and to her and Laura for many helpful comments.

Feedback drooled over at Daddy793@aol.com.

*
for torch
*

Ray lays on his own bed, surprised to be dry. Sure, it's after 3 a.m., but it's the armpit middle of Chicago summer. Which means it's hot and sticky, which in turn means he should be ball deep in his own sweat.

And, technically, he is.

Sweaty.

But Ray's pretty sure he hasn't been wet since a day or so after he got back from the damned pirate case.

It had taken a while, a really really long while for him to dry out, but once he had, he'd stayed dry.

Dry all day every day. Dry in the shower, dry in the precinct car with the busted air conditioner that *still* worked better than his own, thank you very much.

But dry.

Ray isn't an idiot. He knows from residual trauma, and while it's never quite been like *this*, it's been. Oh, it's been.

So he knows what's going on, knows that when he *does* get to sleep he'll dream and he'll be dreaming of a whole bunch of water and death.

Fraser hadn't known that Ray had actually *tried* to learn how to swim. Not that Ray had enlightened him, but you'd think constant repetitions of the words "I can't swim" might have clued him in that this was more than just another barbarian-of-the-city thing.

It didn't.

Ray dreams -- too often -- of being surrounded on all sides by blue and/or green water that's frighteningly clear in the fading terminal between darkness and a weak, weak sunbeam reaching down and down to where his ankle is caught in this swaying, swinging vine...

Not that this ever actually happened, you see. He's never even the same age twice in the dreams. They developed over years of summers at the community center patently failing to learn.

Maybe it was because no one ever told him to be a flower before.

Some weird Bambi-skunk thing. Fraser makes the friggin' sun shine by calling Ray a *flower*.

Yeah, he hears the music swelling from here.

He thinks, "that's how I can bring this up with Fraser."

There's this skunk, and a deer --

A deer, Ray? I'm not aware of any species of deer that spends its free time with rabbits, Ray.

He thinks, "when he's talked himself out, six, maybe seven years later, I'll get to the part where I figure out how to thank him for teaching me how to swim, except, I can't get it out of my head and I've never been a big fan of water that doesn't come out of nozzle, so I'm having these *nightmares*, and you're never there to *help*."

He listens to the music playing and he's *still* waiting for it to swell. All it does is... is *beat* at him. There's lyrics, he can tell, but they're all one big mumble.

He knows exactly three lines from the song, and he never actually remembers that he does until after those lyrics have passed, thereby thwarting all attempts he makes to sing along.

He has no clue why the thing is still in the stereo.

"I wish you were here with me now..."

Well, he'd caught that one. He could pat himself on the back if he didn't know how his skin would friggin' *stick* to the sheets were he to try to actually move.

And when you stick to cotton, you are no longer human.

Ray *does* know why the CD is still there. It's because the only time he comes in this room is to sleep. He'd read that once, or maybe Frannie //Francesca// had read it to him badly out of some book. To cure insomnia, only go to bed when you're supposed to sleep.

Of course, that didn't say anything about coming in the room one day just to change the CD and leaving without even friggin' *looking* at the bed, but Ray's pretty sure that anything coherent he manages to get out of Frannie //Francesca// when she's not hitting on Fraser is found money.

His to spend, not to question.

He shifts a little and finally he can no longer stop himself from running one hand through the dampness on his chest and belly and proving, *proving* that he's wet and not dying.

Or remembering what it felt like under Fraser's touch under all that *water*. Ray hadn't thought you could float in something so heavy, but you could. Just way too slowly to get to anything like air without arms wrapped around him and tugging up under his shirt, brushing over his chest, wet and wet against his own wet skin.

Dragging over it, really. He thinks, "how could you be different kinds of wet in all that water?" It just doesn't seem like it should work that way, though it's possible it's got something to do with it being his skin and Fraser's friggin *wool*.

And that was months ago, and now it was time for the next part of the evening, which included him jerking off.

Well, it was *entirely* him jerking off, actually. It wasn't like there was anyone there who could turn his shameful masturbation into a perfectly respectable handjob, say, maybe while holding him somewhere else, too.

That was the part that was supposed to be the double entendre, he knows, but he already *had* Fraser's hand on his dick and he wanted the other arm around him somehow. Except that he'd stooped to hugging Fraser all the time, it seemed, so Ray has about 800 different ways of being held in his memory to choose from.

He decides on one that allows him to rest his forehead within the cup of Fraser's shoulder while he's being... while he's getting that handjob. They would *both* be on their knees and that hand would be hitting him just *like this*, stroking him that way. He thinks, "expert little whore motions except that they probably came from the Kama Sutra, which Fraser's grandmother read to him because, you know, those winters are *long* in Beavercock, Canada or wherever I'm from."

Ray's thumb-knuckle pushes bonily into the curls at the base of his cock. This is where he feels the best, and not just because this is where he *wants* to feel the best, either. It's one of the few parts of his body with thick hair and the sweat just *stays* there.

There's no denying the dampness there. His fist is wet but not quite *slick* on his cock. Wet on wet isn't the only touch he knows from Fraser, but it's the one that won't leave his mind so it's the one he does his best to duplicate and for a flash Fraser *is* there, one hand cupping Ray's ass, the other is... fisted around his cock.

Ray hears himself cry out a little, jerks up into his own grasp. He thinks "no real reason to be freaked by water and not *get* anything out of it."

And he sees Fraser looking at him seriously. No, Looking At Him Seriously. Blue eyes paler, mouth open, watching him like Ray is supposed to figure out some major issue by sheer glance alone.

That's the was Fraser always looks at Ray when he touches him. When he jerks Ray off with them both so wet even the pre-come Ray's shooting doesn't make it slick.

It's awkward this way, not like any sex Ray's really had since he and Stella had gotten central air. Benny strokes him faster now, seeing Ray is paying good enough attention.

He thinks, "it's just possible that Benny'll start trying different methods beyond saying my name so many times people think I've forgotten it." It's the *Vecchio* bit he's supposed to screw up, but Benny's got everyone thinking it's Ray.

People really seem to think he'd *willingly* go around letting people call him Stanley.

But it's possible that Benny will see Ray choking or something in the middle of the squadroom and immediately decide he needs more oxygen and mold his lips to Ray's and...

And then Ray will slip his tongue right into the man's mouth, just like he almost did the last time //and really, what else are you supposed to do when your lips get locked with other lips through no fault of your own?//, the only thing stopping him then was Fraser blowing air into his mouth and even right then he hadn't been able to just think "Canadian kissing" and plow on the second they were wet together on land.

But he'll kiss Benny this time, air or no air, and suck his face like a teenager if he has to to get what he needs.

Ray, are you going to have an orgasm now?

He snickers so hard he doesn't feel what the motions do to his cock for a little while. When he does, it rocks him both because it feels so incredible and because it's like his mind was storing up the charge for him.

He strokes himself faster, not quite up to that fantasy-blur, but by no means keeping hold of even the tiniest notion that Fraser is doing this for him. Fraser wouldn't be this merciful. Fraser would drag it out until Ray begged, cried, admitted he was right... he wouldn't even be merciful then.

He'd work Ray until Ray had the *right* orgasm and, because it would, in fact, be an orgasm it's not like Ray would be able to complain.

He thinks, "I'd beg him not to let me up from wherever I fell just so I could suck him and *pretend* to myself it was as good for him as it was for me."

And yeah, it's just late enough in the evening's festivities that that thought just makes him harder, hotter. Sweat more.

He fucks into his own fist and doesn't try to give it any correspondence to anything in his mind. He doesn't even try, wants to believe that he really couldn't, not right now.

See, 'cause if he can, that means it's not good enough to compare to everything he's not getting.

Yes, Ray, this changes everything. It would have to, wouldn't it?

Yes indeedy, Fraser. Am I attractive when I come all over you?

Quite so, Ray.

And he's laughing and not so much shaking his head as rolling it back and forth on the pillow. His neck is arched up, his body in this rolling curve that doesn't look a thing like a wave, but hits just as hard.

He makes this noise like a sobbing cough and his cock spits hot on his belly and fist.

And he doesn't relax until he has to, and then he just lays there and waits for sleep to catch up with him again.


End.

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