Disclaimer: These characters belong to people who are not me. I just borrow them, bend them into awkward positions and leave them out in the sunlight to go yellow.

Author's Notes: Written because I couldn't stop thinking about Ray Vecchio. In fact, I was thinking about him so much that I even thought I had to go and meet him. For reals. Hello cat? Fictional character? *sigh* Thanks to lordessrenegade for her excellent beta.

Story Notes: This wasn't originally written as part of the Lost and Found 'verse, but it slots right in as story three (um, six).

SequelTo: Restoration: What's Lost is Found

Ray is not alone. He is definitely not alone. He's fumbling with lube and a condom and sliding home, inch by precious inch and grabbing the hips of...of...of this guy, controlling him, making him wait.

Ray says he's never done this before. That makes him kind of a liar. But only kind of.

Way back when he was with Ange he used to try to persuade her to let him in the back door, as it were.

"Don't you wanna know what it's like?" he would cajole.

Or, "Live a little."

But Ange wasn't interested. Apparently there was a limit on the number of orifices that could be used for sexual purposes. Depending on her mood she'd respond to Ray's hopeful overtures by sucking his cock to create a diversion (very successful) or by turning her back on him and switching off the light. That's it, no more nookie for you tonight, Detective.

Eventually he stopped asking. Never say Ray Vecchio doesn't get the message. He still thought about it, fingers drifting over round, silky flesh, wondering what it would be like to prize the cheeks apart and hide himself inside that forbidden place. His fantasies didn't affect the sex, though. That was great. Right up until the day Ange walked out of the door with one suitcase, a repressed spring in her step and no forwarding address.

"I could never give you what you wanted," she said.

For weeks Ray wondered if she'd left him over sex they'd never had.

In Vegas, Ray — Armando — had call girls on tap. He tried them all shapes, colors, sizes and tempers. He had them on their knees — giving him the Our Father — spread out underneath him like angels in the snow, riding him like warrior princesses, up, down and sideways. But there were times, dark times, when the border between Ray and the Bookman was too thin, too raw. And then the routine was always the same. He'd sit in the shadows watching them undress, order them to lie on the bed face down and fuck them. Tender or hard, it didn't matter, but always, always in the ass. Ray didn't want them to look at him, didn't want them to see past the Bookman, didn't want to remind himself of who he wasn't anymore. Anything familiar, anything of home and he knew he would shatter into a thousand million pieces.

The first time he didn't know what he was doing. There was pain and friction and blood. It terrified him. Sex and death, death and sex — it was all too close to home. But the girl, she was well trained and she knew better than to get on the wrong side of the Bookman. She talked him through it; a call girl's tips worth more than any two-bit informer he'd ever known. He got to be quite an expert. There was something satisfying about how easy it was to spread these girls open, have them ready and waiting and begging. Sure, they were doing what they were paid to do, but you can't play a player — he knew getting off when he heard it.

By the time his undercover gig was blown he'd gotten quite the reputation among Vegas hookers. Ray wasn't sure he wasn't sorry to be leaving it all behind.

Then came Stella. Whirlwind romance. Whirlwind relocation. Whirlwind bowling alley. Whirlwinds bring disaster in their wake. How did Ray ever think it could last? On the spectrum between Ange and the call girls he wasn't sure where Stella stood. Lay. Whatever. This time he kept his mouth shut and let his fingers do the talking. Who'd've known it was possible to clench that tight? Ray was damn sure he nearly lost his pinky.

When Stella eventually let him fuck her ass he knew they were over. That she was doing it as a favor, throwing him a bone as it were. She offered it, resigned, and it made Ray wonder what Kowalski used to ask for.

And now he's fucking this guy and it's not that different, not really. Sure the back is broader, the muscles more defined, the ass is flatter, the whole thing is about hard lines, not soft curves, but it's the same tight feeling around his cock, the same gut-twisting knowledge that he could lose himself in there.

It's not that he's never thought about doing a guy before. Benny. He'd been something special from day one. Must've been. Ray thought of himself as a decent guy but decent guy didn't begin to cover traipsing thousands of miles north in his precious vacation time, to search out a man he barely knew, in a cabin in the middle of exactly nowhere, to tell him that you knew who killed his father.

At the time he called it friendship. Mainly because he didn't have another name for it. But after Victoria — that bitch! — after the horror of losing Fraser had been shoved in Ray's face on that railway platform, he'd have to been deaf, dumb and blind not to recognize what he was feeling. He'd walk through fire for Benny. Shit — he'd taken two bullets for him so far. Never say never again, huh?

Ray had thought a lot about it — him and Benny: sitting beside him in the hospital those three weeks, carrying him on his back through the stupid forest, in church with Ma and the rest of them shoved up tight next to him in the pew. And the conclusion he'd eventually reached was no. Never going to happen. Nu-uh. It wasn't that he didn't love Fraser. He didn't think there was anyone he'd ever loved more. Not even Ange. Not even Irene. And it wasn't because Benny didn't love him: buttoned-up though Fraser was there were certain things — signals — that Ray had learned to read. No, it was that they loved each other too much the same way.

Ray prides himself on his detective skills. He can weigh up facts dispassionately and sift the evidence. And what everything had told him was that Benny would want to be fucked. He'd want to be filled up because he was empty. Empty as his apartment. Empty as the frozen wasteland he came from. Stupid Victoria. She would never have been enough — wasn't equipped right. Not mentally. Not physically.

Thing was, he didn't want to fuck Fraser, he wanted to be fucked by him. Because Benny owned him. He was the alpha male in their pack and all Ray wanted to do was lie down and roll over. Sure, they'd've maybe tried to make it work, but Ray figured he'd choose the best friend he'd ever had over a few fumbled screws any day. It was lucky Vegas and the Bookman had come along when they did — gave them time to breathe, take a step back, find the right balancing point on the line between them.

When he came back, saw the new Vecchio, saw the pain and need shining out of him clear as a Nevada moon, he knew he'd made the right decision. Because the guy — Kowalski — was fucked. In too deep to get himself out with no life-raft in sight. Could've been me, Ray had thought.

The body underneath him shifts, hips arching off the bed to push further onto Ray's cock. Ray realizes, slightly ashamed, that he's stopped moving, too busy thinking of times past. He thrusts and then a voice groans in satisfaction. Ray smiles. All those memories just from admiring this fine piece of ass. And it is fine. A little skinny maybe, but very, very fine.

And then something inside of him shifts, realigns, clicks into place and he finds himself talking.

"You gotta turn around. I need to look at you."

There's a startled silence and Ray freezes, wondering if he's gone too far, too fast.

"Yeah," comes the drawled response, voice sex-deep. "Yeah, you gotta. Because I am just that pretty."

Ray considers administering a smack but there's nothing but truth in that statement so he settles for thrusting hard before pulling out.

"Turn around," he growls.

Now this he's never done before. They reorganize themselves and Ray slides back in. He sees eyes shining at him, bright with need and pleasure — clear as a Nevada moon. His heart speeds up and it's nothing to do with how good he feels buried so deep he's practically fused to the guy. He's definitely going to do this again, he thinks as he drives home. And this time he's not lying.