Author's website: http://N/A

Disclaimer: Fraser and RayK belong to other people. I make no profit.

Author Notes: For JiM and Destina and the long, dark tea time of the soul.

Warnings: Angsty, I suspect. Spoilers for Ladies Man. Not precisely PWP --- but that category fit best.

Real

by Carmen Kildare

"Leave it on."

I pause a moment, close my eyes at those words, said in that voice. It is not, as one might reasonably expect, a come-on, a come-hither, a command.

It is a heartfelt plea. It threatens to unmake me.

He's waiting in the half-open door of his bedroom, his body trembling on the edge of unnatural stillness. We are suspended, the calm in the centre of the storm. I find his gaze, hold it, and there are the winds, the tempests that he tries but never quite manages to hide.

It's not that he doesn't trust me, that he doesn't believe me when I say I love him. Ray, despite a veneer of cynicism, wants to believe. He wants to believe that there's justice in the universe. Goodness in the hearts of men. True love. In the crypt, all those years ago, he asked me when I told him that we make the world a safer place, "Do you really believe that?" and beneath the world-weary air, there was a thread of longing.

There was much the same longing in his voice the night I pinned him to the floor and whispered that I loved him to his navel, the small of his back, the curve of his throat.

But the truth is, experience has taught him to not believe, to not hope. Beth Botrelle almost died because of his ignorance, his partner's corruption. His 'happily ever after' marriage to his Gold Coast Girl fell apart, leaving him bewildered and bereft. It's as though there is always a war being waged inside of Ray Kowalski, between hope and despair. I suspect that he has spent much of his life wrestling angels in the dark corners of his own heart.

Our relationship is just one more thing that must ride the knife's edge between hope and despair for him. We are very much at the mercy of outside influences. He has to hide his heart every day. Once ... once, he punched a dent into the side of men's restroom hand-dryer because he wanted to hold my hand, just wanted to reach out and touch me and he couldn't, he couldn't, because "queer cops don't last too long." We are neither of us ideal candidates for emigration to one another's country. Nor can we claim domestic partnership and be accorded the same opportunities as a cross-border marriage. To make matters worse, the RCMP could, at any time, decide to change my posting.

There are no guarantees there, nothing for him to hold onto. He lives always with the fear of losing us.

Tomorrow, I'm going to Ontario for several weeks, an indefinite period of time. I have testimony to give in a criminal case that began in Scarborough and ended in Chicago. Since the case is convoluted and controversial, the Crown has intimated I might be recalled several times.

Ray would like to go with me, but he has enough open files on his desk to make that impossible. And so tonight, we went to a hockey game. We went to a late dinner. As far as the world knows, I am here now because Ray will be giving me a ride tomorrow, early, to the airport, and Diefenbaker will be staying with him in my absence. We always have an answer, should anyone ever ask.

He hates that. He wants to touch me in restaurants, dance with me at weddings. He wants to answer to no one.

I strip down, slowly. My boots come off easily, because I unlaced them in the car. The socks and pants and briefs are gone just as quickly, and I watch the storm clouds in his eyes darken, roil. My blue denim shirt goes next. But the undershirt, that stays on.

He is naked by the time I reach him in the doorway, and he grabs me, his fingers hard and grasping, pulling at my hair as his mouth finds mine, biting and sucking and breathing me in. I want to pull the damned undershirt off, want to feel the catch and slide of his body on mine. But he said leave it on. So I leave it on.

Stillness is replaced by the whirlwind, and he is everywhere at once. I will carry more than a dozen kiss-sized bruises on my body into the courtroom. I will feel them when I move, when I shift, when I stir. I will remember how his hands pushed and pulled the undershirt to reveal a pectoral, an abdominal, the upper curve of a buttock. How he smoothed the cotton down again, his spit mixing with my sweat. I will remember the noises he made as his mouth left each mark upon me.

Eventually, somehow, we end up with him on his stomach, my teeth at the back of his neck, holding him in place as I move in him, feel him move through me ... his pulse, his breath, his need. The undershirt rucks up between us, sweat slick and warm. He bites my fingers, pushes hard against me, urging me on, and I am not gentle with him. He always wants it like this when we are forced to be apart. He says he wants to feel where I've been, wants to know beyond all uncertainty that I'm real and not just some unhinged dream he had. He wants me to be real. He wants us to be real.

Even if being real hurts.

And then the world just falls out beneath us, a slow spiral for first one, then the other. He is breathing so hard it sounds like sobbing and I am a deadweight against his back, my own breath ragged. Neither of us moves for the longest time. He makes a noise when I finally leave him to throw away our refuse, get a face cloth to clean us up a bit. I come back to the bed, and he is watching me. He won't say anything, he doesn't need to. It's there in his eyes. It's always there between us. I climb into the bed and he curls around me and we do not fall asleep for a very long time.

In the half-light of early morning when we wake up, he will talk about traffic and complain about work and sneak Dief the last of his Frosted Flakes and I will not mention that he is wearing my undershirt. When I am dressed and ready to be driven to the airport, he will not mention that his bracelet is not on the dresser.

And he will not hold my hand in the airport or kiss me good-bye. But we will be...

real.

)0(

An End

End Real by Carmen Kildare: carmen@kildare.com

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