Author's Notes: Unbetaed, unrewritten, unguent. Or something like that. Many thanks to Queue and Vsee, both of whom heads-upped me (headsed me up?) and offered encouragement.

Story Notes: Written in April 2008 for stop_drop_porn. Prompt = daffodils.

Fraser had always assumed that Ray, while he had his own peculiar charm, was not extremely well-versed in the more subtle forms of interpersonal etiquette. But.

"Apparently," he says to Dief, and to Ray's closed apartment door, "He is in fact a master of that delicate maneuver my grandmother would have called a 'chivvy.'" Hurrying guests on their way without ever once making one's intent visible, without causing a particle of offense, was surely a pinnacle of etiquette; but somehow they had moved from...a very strange moment, to Ray's inquiring after Fraser's busy schedule tomorrow, to Ray's opining that said schedule sounded exhausting, and had Fraser been getting enough shut-eye lately? and now...now Fraser is outside his door, hat in hand and wolf at heel, wondering how exactly that happened.

He keeps standing there for a bit, trying to gather courage to knock, because surely they should...discuss the very strange moment.

He's not quite sure how that happened either.

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

He was on his way to Ray's to meet him for a run when he saw the flower vendor and was amused by the massed daffodils; their yellow peaks reminded him of nothing so much as Ray's hair. He stopped and mentioned this to Dief, who snorted and rolled his eyes. "There's nothing odd about it," Fraser said. "He's ordering the pizza later and is therefore our host, and a gift for the host is entirely traditional."

He found himself blushing, though, when Ray opened the door and grinned, said, "You brought me flowers, Fraser?"

"For," he said, cleared his throat. "For hosting."

"Yeah, sure," Ray said, getting two water bottles out of the fridge. "You were just hoping I'd put out."

Fraser froze for a second before Ray burst out laughing and he could relax, could store that comment in the part of his mind where he kept, "Do you find me attractive?" and "I'll try anything," and all the other things that Ray--would surely never have said if he knew what they did to Fraser. All the comments that he ought not to replay, over and over in his head, on long nights.

"They made me think of your hair," he said, and he had not meant to say that, but Ray was pawing through the debris on his kitchen counter, muttering, "Where the fuck are my keys?" and didn't even seem to notice for a second, then looked up and grinned, said, "Yeah, Stella used to say I had a dandelion head."

"You're not a weed," Fraser snapped out before he could stop himself. Ray stopped his key search, walked over very close. Close enough that Fraser could tell that he'd showered quite recently; he still smelled faintly damp, why had he showered when they were going to run? Ray said, "Hey, relax, she was kidding. She always liked my hair. What's got you wound up today?"

And, horribly, as he said, "wound up," he gave Fraser a long, thorough look up and down, and Fraser was, indeed, wound up; and sweatpants, he realized belatedly, were really quite inadequate for camouflaging that.

"Oh," Ray said, calmly.

He looked Fraser in the eyes for one completely unreadable second--Fraser simply had no idea what that look was--and then. My God. Then reached out and squeezed Fraser's erection through his sweatpants.

Fraser--yipped. There was no other word for it, really. He made the sound that Dief made when his paw got stepped on.

"Easy, there," Ray said. Slid the sweatpants down a little, and got his warm hand inside Fraser's boxers. I should probably breathe, Fraser thought wildly. Yes, breathing is called for in nearly every situation, breathing is, is the foundation of--of good hygiene, I should certainly breathe, I can't breathe, and he came, hard, as much out of panic as pleasure.

Ray got a Kleenex box off his counter, offered Fraser a handful, scrubbed at his own hands a bit while he looked at the floor. "Hey," he said. "I think you can probably skip the run after that, huh? And...you got a lot on your plate for tomorrow?"

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

Fraser looks at the door and at Dief some more. Dief offers uncomplimentary assessments of his courage, and Fraser says, "Helpful, as always," and heads for home.

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

Working together is--strangely unstrange, that next week; the atmosphere of the station (muggy, smelling faintly of chili dogs) does not lend itself to musing, and they fall into their usual routine. He wonders, though, what it will be like the next time he's at Ray's; and before he heads over the next Thursday, Dief-free, picking up Chinese along the way, he somewhat ashamedly double-books himself. He agrees to meet Turnbull for a ten o'clock showing of--some costume drama, he cannot even remember; but the point is that his stay at Ray's will be of necessity brief; that he will not be stuck there for hours if they are both excruciatingly uncomfortable.

And at first Ray does indeed seem--off; he's jittering about the kitchen, taking far too long putting ice in glasses, and Fraser takes pity on him, mentions that he has to go in just an hour or so.

Ray looks over at him, says, "That's too bad, buddy,"--but he's leaving the kitchen, he's nearing Fraser, and then he's on Fraser, pushing him onto the couch, climbing on top of him.

Fraser remembers oxygen intake this time, and when Ray starts working his pants down he retains enough brain cells to unzip Ray as well, and then they have hands on each other, squeezing and speeding, so hard and so fast, and then they're done.

Ray rolls off him, tosses him the tissue box, disappears into the bathroom.

Fraser blots at himself with only mild success, zips up, calls out, "I have to--soon--Turnbull. Crinolines."

"You do that," Ray yells back, over the sound of running water. "Have fun."

Fraser is already out on the sidewalk before he realizes that he never got any of the Chinese food.

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

That encounter sets the template for the next few weeks. Sometimes when he goes over to Ray's nothing happens; sometimes there are frantic hands. A couple of weeks into it, there is (startlingly, wonderfully) a frantic mouth. Ray slides Fraser's boxers down farther than usual; they pool around his ankles and Ray pushes him onto the couch, goes down on his knees.

"Oh my God," Fraser says, because Ray's tongue. Circling and flicking, and then Ray sucks hard and it feels like he sucked every bit of rigid out of the rest of Fraser and into his cock, Fraser's pooled on the couch, couldn't move if someone waved a gun at him, feels fairly sure his bones are melting, but oh my God he is so hard in Ray's mouth.

He comes so hard it almost hurts, and it's perfect, and as soon as he can talk he says, "You. Let me, let me take care of..."

"Took care of myself, don't sweat it," Ray says. Stands up with a groan and a couple of popping sounds from his knees, pulls his shorts back up, says, "Hey, you wanna hit O'Malley's? Half-price onion rings today."

"Sure," Fraser says. "Sure, Ray."

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

"It's absurd of me, really," Fraser says to Dief. "I had constructed this elaborate--I don't know why I thought--"

When he had allowed himself to fantasize about a--more intimate relationship with Ray, he had never pictured something explicitly romantic in the way of chocolates and love poems and ornate speechery. That was not Ray, nor was it really him. He'd dreamed up something--akin to what was actually happening, in that the sex was simply folded into their normal relationship; they were partners already, and that would just make it more sweetly so; they wouldn't need words.

But he has to admit that he'd pictured the sex--differently. Not that Ray was bad, or even mediocre. "It's just always so--goal-oriented," he tells Dief, who asks why on earth it should be anything else. "It's different for wolves," Fraser says. Patiently.

He'd thought, somehow, that Ray would be--a sensualist, a wallower, a reveler in touch and taste. Devoting hours to his pleasure, and Fraser's--a ridiculous fantasy, placing Ray on some sort of sex-god pedestal back when they'd never even touched, and what they have now is fine, it's just so--

"Rushed," he says to Dief. "Always when one of us has to be somewhere, no time for--exploring any parts that won't lead directly to, ah, fulfillment, and we never make it to the bed, and if I have some free time blocked out something always seems to come up that Ray needs to deal with, and--"

Dief gives him a "How stupid are you, exactly?" look, an expression he is demoralizingly gifted at.

"Oh." Fraser sits and just blinks for a minute. Ray is not--practical, goal-oriented, speeding to orgasm by nature. Ray--Ray, of all people! is holding out.

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

He knocks on Ray's door unscheduled that Friday night, and when Ray answers Fraser can read his expression this time: wary.

"Hey, what's up?"

"Not much," Fraser says cheerfully. "I had a few minutes free, and I thought--"

Ray grabs his shirt and pulls him into the apartment. "Great," he says, gives Fraser one quick hard kiss and tugs him toward the couch.

"Hold on a second," Fraser says, and pulls up on Ray's t-shirt.

"Hey, c'mon, you don't need to bother with--" Ray says, but Fraser's already got his head out of the tee, and, moving quickly, slides it so it's behind Ray's back with his arms still in it.

"What--" Ray says, but Fraser halfway picks him up, squeezing his waist and arms tight, and then dumps him on the couch, drops onto him full-length before he can move; Ray's upper arms are cuffed by their weight bearing down on the shirt. Excellent.

"The hell--" Ray says, and makes ineffective little tyrannosaurus motions with his forearms, and Fraser slides down a little, sucks at his nipples for the first time. "Jesus!" Ray says. "You don't need to--fuck, we haven't got all day, Fraser!"

"Actually we do."

"You said--a few minutes--oh God, that's good, stop it," Ray says, because Fraser is flicking his tongue now, scraping his teeth softly over the little nubs.

"I didn't say I only had a few minutes," Fraser says, and tries sucking at one nipple while pinching gently at the other, and Ray arches up under him. "I have, ah, fifty-six hours and a few minutes before I have anywhere to be."

"Fraser. I can't I can't I can't," Ray says, but Fraser's kissing down his belly and when he murmurs "Can't what, Ray?" as he's unsnapping the waist of his jeans, Ray's response is vowel-heavy and indecipherable.

He's managed to get his mouth on Ray's cock before, but he was always distracted by Ray's hand on him; the one time he tried to take it slow, to kneel between Ray's legs and focus just on him, Ray managed to distract him with his shin, rubbing at Fraser's crotch until he lost focus completely.

Now, though, Ray's trapped, unable to get at Fraser with talented hands or mouth or any other part, and his thwarted wiggles only add a little spice. Fraser takes his damn time, rubs his face through Ray's pubic hair, sniffs and kisses lightly.

"Fuck, Fraser, c'mon."

"Nope," Fraser says happily. He bites gently at the inside of Ray's thighs and gets a lovely choked howl out of him. He runs his tongue up the so-soft creases where thighs meet body, licks at Ray's balls and just--delights in him, wallows and revels, kisses and nibbles and sucks everywhere except Ray's cock, which is so hard, so hot next to Fraser's cheek, trembling slightly in time with Ray's heartbeat.

He runs his cheek up it, softly, and Ray moans, a heartfelt wanting moan that Fraser's never heard before.

"God, please, Fraser, suck me, now," he says, and that's new too, so Fraser lowers his head and takes Ray in. But he still takes his time, sucks and tugs a little and then pulls back to lick delicately at the head with just the point of his tongue; bobs his head fast until Ray is gasping and then slows to a dreamy pace.

Ray is swearing at him and at God and at one point possibly at the Cubs, and then he's saying I can't I can't I can't again, and Fraser raises his head, slides a fingertip very softly down Ray's cock, says, "Can't what?"

"I can't, I can't need it, I can't need you like this," Ray gasps, and Fraser can't think of anything to say that could possibly be enough to answer that, so he clasps Ray's flailing hands with his own, holds on tight while he speeds up with his mouth; Ray spills bitter against his tongue and Fraser's thinking so loud at him, yes you can.

Fraser sits back up and looks at him, and Ray's expression has gone back to incomprehensible. So Fraser stands up, pulls Ray up too; and he's limp and wobbly, but when Fraser cups Ray's face in his hands and gives him a long kiss, a slow kiss, and then says, "We're going to your bed now," Ray doesn't argue.