Disclaimer: I only dream of these guys, I didn't dream them UP.

Author's Notes: Originally done for the LiveJournal ds_shakespeare challenge, for the prompt of "I have not slept one wink."

He was glad to give up a little sleep, to help Ray out and to be near him. Ray was on a low-level Mafioso stakeout, and Fraser sat in the car with him for hours at a time, playing twenty questions, handing him sandwiches and a thermos of coffee. Ray always lifted up the bread to look at the sandwich filling before he took a bite, and Fraser amused himself by wondering if he had gotten unpleasant surprises in his lunch bag as a child, or if that was a more recent Fraser-induced paranoia, if he was checking for window putty.

He never asked, because it seemed odd and-sentimental.

The one or two days Welsh had been sure it would take turned into five days, six, seven. And Ray kept asking him if he was okay, because Ray was able to sleep well into the morning after knocking off the stakeouts at two a.m., but Fraser was up and about early on consulate duty.

"I'm fine, Ray," he said, over and over. "I don't really have a normal need for sleep." What he needed, what he couldn't tell Ray, was to keep doing this, to keep sitting beside him in the dark, watching him fidget.

But he was prevaricating a bit, because as the week wore on with three or four hours of sleep a night, he was not entirely fine. He was, on occasion, catching himself staring off into nothing and forgetting to blink. He was beginning to feel...glazed. Like donuts, he thought. Fried and glazed and sprinkled, beware of Dief, and he laughed out loud at how jagged and jangled his thoughts were getting.

And then realized that he'd just laughed really loudly. And that, for quite some time now, while he was assuming he was staring off into a distant nothing, he'd really been staring at a quite near Ray. Who was looking worried.

"Fraser, buddy, we gotta get you home," Ray said, but then there was a noise up ahead of them and they were both out of the car and sprinting, Ray with his gun out yelling "Hands up in the air!" and Fraser realizing that this time if Ray derailed midway through the Miranda warning, he couldn't remember it either.

The mobster they'd been waiting for proved anticlimactic, however; he threw his hands up, looked wistfully at the front door of his girlfriend's apartment building, and said, "Well, fuck." Ray Miranda-ed like a champion, and within the hour they'd dropped their man off with the night lieutenant, promised full paperwork the next day, and were back in the car, taking Fraser home.

At some point in the short ride, he fell hard asleep. He woke up, partially, when the car stopped, to find himself in that odd state of being awake and aware but unable to move; this brief sleep-paralysis had on previous occasions panicked him slightly, hitting when he was alone-even though he knew what was happening, he had uncomfortable thoughts of his time after the plane crash, when he was unsure if his legs would ever work again. But this time it was fine, Ray was right there, everything was fine.

He could feel Ray leaning toward him, reaching across him to unlock his door. Ray was going to come around and help him out of the car because he was so sleepy.

Kind Ray, Fraser thought muzzily, and then Ray was leaning back toward his own side, and Fraser could feel the heat of Ray's arm passing in front of his face again, going away, and he couldn't bear it, so much could not bear it that he snapped all the way awake; his eyes flew open and he grabbed Ray's hand with both his, pulled it to his mouth and kissed the inside of the wrist right where it was most pale and tender and soft, before he could stop himself, before he could get another thought through his muddled brain.

As soon as he knew what he was doing he stopped doing it. Pulled his lips away from the soft hot skin. Ray was sitting quite still, really remarkably still for Ray, just looking at him, and Fraser realized that he hadn't released his hard grip on Ray's hand. "I'm sorry," he whispered, and let it go.

Ray pulled his hand back; moved it toward Fraser again, stopped; dropped it to the seat between them.

"Fraser," he said. "Are you thinking straight?" Then Ray closed his eyes and laughed, and Fraser stared at his lashes all he wanted to, because he was already discovered, he was undone, he might as well look all he could before Ray very gently and kindly turned him down. He wasn't even sure what he'd been offering. "Sorry," Ray said. "Bad choice of words there. I mean, are you--impaired?"

"I don't know," he said honestly.

Ray nodded, scratched at the back of his head, kept looking at Fraser. His hand resting on the seat was twitching a bit. "I'm trying to care about whether your brain is working right or not," he said. "I think it would be, you know, honorable to care. You'd probably care, if you were me." He cocked his head, considered Fraser some more. "I think I don't care," he said.

He slid across the seat, put both his hands on Fraser's cheeks, and kissed him.

*****************************************************

The next week was gloriously sleep-deprived. They worked their regular shifts and ate their regular dinner together, and then (most new, most irregular) they kissed for hours. In the car in the dark, on Ray's sprung and lumpy couch, on Fraser's creaking cot. Some nights slow and lingering and langorous, some nights fierce kissing, with tongues and teeth and gasping.

Parts of Fraser were beginning to suggest that they should move on to additional activities. He would pull back from Ray's mouth to breathe, to look at Ray in the half-light, look at Ray looking back at him, and think, yes, more, anything, everything. And then think, I don't know how to do everything, I don't know how to do any of this particular everything, I don't know if he knows how to do any of it because we haven't been talking, we've just been kissing, and kissing is good. We should kiss some more.

Ray seemed to be trying to make sure Fraser got enough sleep. If they were at his apartment he'd nudge Fraser (groaning, complaining) up off the couch, into his car, take him home. If they were at the consulate he'd pull himself (groaning, complaining) off the cot, walk backwards to the door grinning, and go home in plenty of time for Fraser to rest up.

The problem was that after he left he was still there. Fraser could smell him on the pillow, and the sheets, and most distractingly on his own skin. And everything that he'd tamped down with more kissing would become rampantly untamped.

Every night, mere minutes after Ray left, he'd find himself scrambling frantically out of his pants. It never took long, not after the kissing; all he had to do was squeeze and pull and think, would Ray like this? Would my hand work for Ray, just like this? And he didn't know, but it worked for him.

He'd come hard, and start to relax and drift, and then, every time, just on the edge of sleep, snap back awake. Because his hand and stomach were drying sticky, and he couldn't possibly go to sleep quite this-debauched, what if Turnbull or Thatcher came in early and smelled him? And it was just-unfinished, wrong, like leaving dishes in the sink.

So he would stumble to the shower, and by the time he got done he'd be fully awake again and thinking about Ray. He was lucky if he managed an hour or two before his alarm went off.

He was in a constant daze. His lips were sore and his face was chapped-Francesca kept offering him lip balm and moisturizer. He was clumsy and forgetful, and sometimes the punctuation on the consulate forms would float up off the page and do a little midair dance for him. Dief was quite sarcastically dismissive of his current mental capacity, and he was starting to feel like the orbits of his eyes were lined with ground glass, and he was very happy.

****************************************************************

On Friday Fraser left the consulate precisely at 5 p.m., even though he was still in the midst of a seemingly endless series of questions from a female American tourist. (Who had kept touching his arm, and who, he suspected, did not actually need the answers to any of the questions she'd been asking him for an hour.) He handed her off to Turnbull with a clear conscience, because for once, Turnbull was likely to be more helpful than he was. He was so groggy, and his head was so full of Ray, that he was fairly certain he had told the woman that Canada's main export was giant carnivorous radishes.

Friday was the first night of-whatever this was-that they were both free the next morning. Fraser resolutely refused to let himself speculate about what that might mean, but to his own surprise, he stepped outside the consulate and hailed a cab.

Once in the station, he waved at Ray, who looked at his watch, mimed astonishment, and started to get up from his desk. But a moment later there was a hubbub near the door, and Fraser turned because one of the female voices was oddly familiar.

The hubbub was a dozen or so people in dark suits, federal agents of some sort, and now he remembered the mention of an upcoming "interagency intergovernment play-well-with-others blah blah blah workshop" which Ray was extremely grateful not to have been assigned to, but that voice, who was...

He spotted her face. "Agent Cortez!" Fraser said delightedly, but as soon as he stopped trying to recognize her voice he heard what she was actually saying to her companions, which was something about homemade land mines and Vecchio and oh. Oh no.

Ray arrived beside him at the same second that Agent Cortez spotted him. "Fraser!" she said, smiling hugely. "Where's-"

"AgentCortezofcourseyouremembermypartnerRayVecchio!" Fraser interrupted frantically, gesturing at Ray.

She blinked at him and turned to look at Ray.

Ray gave her a blazing smile. "Hey, been a long time," he said. And winked. It was, Fraser thought, an unnecessarily slow wink.

Agent Cortez shook herself and said, "Well. You...haven't changed a bit. Ah, Fraser, I had something I wanted to ask you about..."

She dragged Fraser around the corner and into the supply closet (he found himself vaguely wondering how she knew where it was, but this was hardly the time to ask.) "Okay," she said. "WHAT?!?"

He gave her a quick precis, details and geography omitted, of the first Ray's current assignment. "And thank you for being-fast on your feet," he added. "And, please, continue not to mention that the current Ray is, uh, ersatz, in front of people whose level of trustworthiness has not been established."

"Right," she said. "Well. I've been talking you guys up for an hour, here, it's going to look weird if I don't invite you out to dinner with us like I said I would."

Fraser hesitated. Of course the original Ray's cover must be maintained at any cost, but whether or not he and the new Ray could maintain the fiction over the course of a dinner was... Was not remotely in question, he told himself sternly; he would have plenty of time to brief Ray on their previous "acquaintance" on the ride to the restaurant. The only reason he was hesitating was eagerness to get Ray alone, and that was an unacceptable, self-centered reason.

******************************************************

That would have been a perfectly fine reason, he thought an hour later. Anything would have been a perfectly fine reason not to be suffering through this dinner. Not to be watching Anita and Ray.

Ray was having no trouble maintaining his cover-any time one of the feds asked about the earlier case, he would just shrug and smile and duck his head and Anita would say, "Oh, see, he wants to look modest but he wants me to tell about it!" and start talking again about how smart and brave and funny Ray had been.

Well, not this Ray, but it was this Ray she was leaning closer to when she talked, tipping her head toward his and laughing low. Ray was doing it back, and Fraser found himself replaying that wink over and over in his head, that wink that was considerably more lascivious than it had to be. It was becoming obvious to him that Anita had had, as they say, a thing for Ray, and was even now developing a thing for Ray, and Ray seemed to be falling back into the thing even though it hadn't been his thing in the first place, and Fraser was quite sure he wasn't thinking straight, and should probably go home.

He stood up, abruptly, and everyone stopped talking, and looked at him. "I'm-I'm very tired," he said, "and I need to go home."

He kept fairly upright until he made it out of the restaurant and then he could feel his gait descend into a disheveled shamble.

He was going at about half his usual speed; he wanted this day to be over, but his legs weren't cooperating. Not that it mattered all that much, he thought; not that the day would really be over once he got back to the consulate. He was fairly certain that he'd be awake the rest of the night again, but not with the pleasant pictures of Ray in his head that he'd had lately. He wouldn't get forty winks, he wouldn't get one wink, because he'd be seeing that wink, again and again, that laughing and leaning into Anita; a more realistic picture of Ray, no doubt. A picture of Ray when he wasn't-having a dry spell with women, or temporarily insane.

He'd only made it a couple of blocks when Ray pulled the car up next to him. "Hey," Ray said. "Couldn't wait, huh? How were you gonna get into my place without keys?"

"I was going to the Consulate," Fraser said stiffly.

"Uh-wrong direction, Frase," Ray said, and gave him a worried look.

"Oh," Fraser said. His legs stopped walking but his torso seemed to think there should still be forward momentum, and made him sway in place slightly.

"Get in the car, I'll take you to my place. You can crash better in my bed than in the Consulate, right?" Ray said, and added, more softly, "We don't have to-you can just sleep, okay?"

"No thank you," Fraser said, but he was suddenly, for once, very tired of walking. "But could you take me to the Consulate, please?"

"Sure, hop in."

Fraser climbed in, and Ray started driving, and noticeably failed to turn around. Fraser waited through four intersections, and then said, "Ray? Consulate?"

"Lied," Ray said cheerfully, and kept driving.

When they reached his apartment Fraser sat down on the couch and took his boots off, which afforded him several minutes of not looking at Ray, and then stretched out . He threw his forearm over his face and silently begged Ray: just go in your room, just go to bed, don't make me talk.

"Hey, what's that about?" Ray said. Of course.

"Tired," Fraser said.

"I get that. But you can't possibly be comfortable. C'mon, get in bed, stretch out," and Ray was sliding an arm under him and lifting and shoving and nudging until he had Fraser up and walking.

"What," he said in Fraser's ear, in a flirting teasing tone that was most unfair considering he'd been using the same tone on Anita an hour ago, "you think you're so hot I can't leave you alone to let you sleep for a few hours?" and then the bed was behind Fraser's knees and Ray gave him a shove and he dropped gracelessly. The surprise of the mattress impact knocked out his last bit of self-control and he snapped, "I'm sure you have no trouble leaving me alone."

"What?" Ray said, and sat down next to Fraser on the bed. The mattress dipped and tilted Fraser toward him, and even a few inches away, Ray was very warm. "What are you talking about?"

Fraser slid away from Ray's heat. "That doesn't need exploring at-"

"I am exploring it, Fraser," Ray said. "I am exploring the hell out of it. I am drawing maps and I am planting a fucking flag. What...are...you...talking...about?"

"You." Fraser said. "She..." He seemed to have lost his verbs.

"Cortez?!?" Ray said. "Christ, are you jealous?" And started laughing. Which was too much. Really too much for Fraser, and he would have stood up and left if Ray's hand hadn't started moving through his hair.

"Fraser. C'mon. I was maintaining cover. You told me to maintain cover."

"I didn't tell you to enjoy it so much! And to wink like that!"

"Like what?"

"That was lewd."

"That was the exact same wink I gave you the first time I saw you! Did you think that one meant, 'Come on, baby, let's fuck on Welsh's desk!'? It did not! It meant, 'Undercover, here, work with me!' Just like this one did!"

"It didn't look the same at all."

"Yes, it did, you were just TRANSLATING IT WRONG!"

"WELL I'M SORRY I DON'T SPEAK EYELID!"

"WHAT ARE WE ARGUING ABOUT?!?"

"I DON'T KNOW!"

Fraser started to sit up and leave, but Ray was all over him suddenly. Ray seemed to have gotten stronger recently, or grown more arms; in any case he was somehow simultaneously pinning Fraser and pulling down his pants. And boxers. And then his hand was wrapped around Fraser's cock, moving, and Fraser stopped trying to leave at all.

"Listen," Ray said, and stroked, and cupped. "Pay attention," he said, squeezed, pulled. "Was I doing this to Cortez?"

"Well, technically," Fraser gasped, "you--oh!--you couldn't do-"

Ray suddenly squeezed just a little too hard, and Fraser shut up.

"Are you done being an idiot?" Ray said.

"I think so, yes," Fraser said.

"Good," and Ray went back to the lovely things he'd been doing. It was inexplicable, really, how much better it was than Fraser touching himself; he'd been doing that for years, he ought to be the expert on it by now, but when he closed his eyes and thought, my god, this is Ray, this is RAY'S hand on me, it was so much better that he couldn't make it last, couldn't wait, he was bucking up into Ray's hand and moaning and coming all over his stomach and Ray's wonderful hand and, no doubt, his uniform tunic.

He felt all his muscles going lax, the familiar pull of sleep, and fought back hard, because he certainly had to do something about his uniform, sponge it off at least, make it decent enough to even show to a dry cleaner, and besides he couldn't fall asleep in Ray's bed like this with his pants and boxers down around his knees and a sticky mess everywhere, he looked ridiculous. He tried to sit up but Ray was all around him now, an arm under his neck and one across his chest, a leg flung across Fraser's thighs, and Ray was whispering in his ear, "Let go, let go..." Which was ludicrous, what was he talking about, Fraser just had, how could he possibly let go more than coming all over himself, and he needed to get up and fix things but Ray was warm and heavy and pressing everywhere, whispering let go, and something somewhere unclenched or uncoiled or unsprung and Fraser went limp, dropped into a dream, and Ray was wrapped around him there too.