Author's website: http://www.trickster.org/kass/

Disclaimer: Boys are theirs, words are mine.

Author's Notes: Thanks to Sihaya Black for the beta-read. This one was written in response to the knickers challenge at ds_flashfiction (the livejournal flashfic community).

Story Notes:

Ray figures he wears boxers. Probably plain cotton ones, white or navy or grey, unadorned and unassuming. Probably they've been washed so many times they're a little limp and clingy, won't hold their starch like they used to.

Nah: probably even Fraser doesn't starch his underwear. Everything on the outside, yes. But underneath, there's got to be something he's not ironing. Maybe because he figures nobody's ever gonna see it.

Frannie, now, she'd like to see it. That's obvious to anyone with half a brain. Probably obvious to Fraser, too, but he plays like he doesn't notice 'cause he can't figure out how to let her down easy. At least, that's what Ray likes to think.

Ray likes to think Fraser might go for somebody else, if the situation were right. Somebody else named Vecchio, at least for now.

He's dropped a few hints, here and there, but Fraser doesn't seem to pick them up. So maybe it's not gonna happen, after all. S'okay: he can always lie around and imagine. What Fraser wears under that uniform. What Fraser might be like if Ray could ever, slowly, one piece at a time, take the uniform off.

At the office Christmas party Frannie gives him socks. Which, okay, not all that exciting, but what did he expect? He got her chocolates in a fancy box from the drugstore, which isn't exactly a high-class gift that a lot of thought went into.

She gives Fraser underwear. Silk underwear. Red and green silk boxers with little dancing elves and wreaths of mistletoe on 'em. His face goes a little red, and he thanks her kindly, and she makes some innuendo-laden comment that everybody ignores, and the party moves on.

The next day, kicking back at Ray's apartment, Fraser asks him about it. "Is it considered...normal to give coworkers underwear here, Ray?"

"Not exactly." Not unless you want to get into their pants, he thinks, but doesn't say.

"Hm." There's a pause, while Fraser sips his hot chocolate and Diefenbaker gnaws happily on the enormous rawhide bone Ray found at the pet specialty store.

"I might regard them as a courtship gift," Fraser says cautiously, "if their motif weren't so...whimsical."

"That's one way to put it. I might say 'butt-ugly,' but 'whimsical' works too."

"Ray!" Scandalized and amused at the same time.

"What? It's true!"

"I suppose it is," Fraser concedes. "It was good of her to think of me, but they're not exactly my...style."

The word sounds strange in his mouth, but Ray figures he knows what Fraser means. He bites back stray thoughts about what underwear might be Fraser's style, what underwear Fraser might actually be wearing. "Yeah, youldn't have picked you for a dancing-elves man, myself."

"My tastes run a bit more towards the, ah," Fraser takes a deep breath, "the masculine."

The words sound labored, which for a second makes Ray wonder what's so hard about saying them (maybe Fraser isn't used to talking about his underwear? with another guy, no less?), but he glances at Fraser and suddenly it hits him: Fraser's flirting. With him. Right now.

Excitement prickles every hair on his body to stand straight up. Ray takes a deep breath himself. Two can play at this game, right?

"Masculine, huh? Like silk boxers in some nice designer plaid, or like...something a little wilder, with a little punk to it?" Mentally crosses his fingers that he's reading Fraser right, and, more, that Fraser hears what he's really asking.

Fraser downs the end of his cocoa and sets the mug down on the endtable, reaching over Ray to do so, and Ray catches an intoxicating breath of soap and aftershave that aren't his own. "Something a little 'punk' might be just the thing, though I'm given to understand silk also has its benefits."

Now there's an image: Fraser in silk. Fraser wearing nothing but silk. Fraser's dick tenting a pair of silk boxers, just begging to be stroked through the fabric. Ray swallows and tries to ignore the arousal spiking through his body.

"I'm a boxer-briefs guy myself, but you could probably convince me." Voice a little gritty.

"I'd like to hope you wouldn't need too much convincing."

Ray is so hard he's not sure he can keep the thread of the conversation going much longer.

"You've got chocolate on your mouth," he says, stupidly, aware that it's a non sequitur but unable to tear his gaze away from the smudge of cocoa at the corner of Fraser's lips.

And then they are kissing, Fraser's tongue sliding into his mouth, Fraser's body mind-blowingly solid against his own. Ray's last non-sex-related thought is 'I'd better thank Frannie for that underwear,' and then his hand glides beneath Fraser's waistband and Ray doesn't think about anything else except being horny and happy and having Benton Fraser, hallelujah, hot and eager in his hands.

(812 words)

End The Present by Kass: kass@trickster.org

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