Story Notes: Written in August 2007. Done speedily and sleepily.

"Static, static, static," Ray says, twitching the dial. "More static. Opera, which--" he glares at Fraser, and Fraser quickly switches off his hopeful expression--"I'd rather have static. And here's some more static, and guess what, this station has static."

He slumps back dramatically in the driver's seat.

"I'm unsure what you expect me to do about it, Ray," Fraser says. "You could look upon it as a blessing, really---it's undoubtedly easier to concentrate on the task at hand without the distraction of music." And he tries to look terribly fascinated by the featureless, lightless, really quite boring warehouse they're surveilling. But he's distracted himself, thinking of Ray's fingers on the radio dial, Ray's fingertips bunched into a tight circle and gently, delicately turning.

His sweater seems, quite abruptly, to fit oddly. Too heavy, and too tight, and too---textured.

He seems to have skipped over the decision to take it off because he's suddenly in the middle of taking it off, and maybe it's because he's used to dealing with much more complicated clothes, buckles and belts and lanyards, but he gets completely fouled in the sweater, arms tangled and face snarled, and by the time he finally thrashes out of it he can feel that his hair is staticked into a frizz, and his face is burning with embarrassment at his unaccustomed awkwardness, and Ray's grinning at him.

"Doing okay, there, buddy?" Ray says.

"Yes." Fraser looks out the windshield at the dark warehouse with the most intense concentration he can muster. Still dark. Still a warehouse. Still much, much less interesting than Ray. "I was just...hot."

"Huh," Ray says. "Because you don't--look like it. I would have guessed you were, uh, cold."

Fraser makes the mistake of glancing over at Ray, getting another flash of that smile. Ray gestures at Fraser's shirt, and Fraser looks down, and--oh, yes, this is the white tee that's a little too tight, aged a bit too thin, and-- Yes. Should have thrown this one out already.

"Ah," he says, and stops. Because he can't come up with an excuse for his, his visible state that doesn't involve cold, and he'd just said he was hot, and he certainly isn't going to explain the actual reason. Because that's simply insane, it would be an imposition on Ray to burden him with Fraser's current--temporary unhingement, with his obsessions as of late, with his inability to stop fixating on Ray's most mundane movements, to stop picturing over and over his fingertips, circling, and--stop.

He stops. He looks at the warehouse.

"I don't think I know that 'ah,' Fraser," Ray says, and Fraser's very carefully not looking at his smile but he can hear his smile, curled up smug in his voice. "Which 'ah' is that?"

"It's just an 'ah', Ray," Fraser says, and he tries to sound a bit annoyed, to distract Ray into an argument over whether "ah" should be allowed to mean as many things as Fraser uses it for. It's worked before. But the annoyed just comes out as strangled--sounding, and Ray does not rise to the bait.

Ray just sits there, very quietly, very still, and Fraser's stomach goes cold, because that means Ray is thinking. Hard.

"I should--" Fraser says, and utterly fails to finish his declaration, because, really, what is he going to say? "I should be going now, I'll just walk away from the stakeout I was helping with, no, really, the third worst neighborhood in Chicago in January is my favorite kind of stroll."

"Should what?" Ray says, and the smile is out of his voice, he just sounds concerned--but it's a ruse, a stratagem, because when Fraser looks over at him his teeth are gleaming, and he raises his hand to his mouth, runs his thumb slowly across his lower lip, watches Fraser watching.

And when his thumb slides just in Fraser gasps, something in his lower back locks and jerks his hips off the seat for an instant, and it's ridiculous, it's pathetic, he had more self-control than this as a teenager.

"Ray," he says, "I don't know what you think you're, I'm, I. I'm sorry, I'm not myself and you keep being you and it's very distracting, disturbing, it's--" and then Ray, Ray's wet thumb is against Fraser's lips and Fraser moans, gives up, gives in, opens.

He sucks and licks, scrapes lightly with his teeth, and Ray's moaning too. Ray too, that's important, Fraser thinks blurrily, we're both in this, that's good--oh, wait, that's bad.

"Raygh!" he says, coughs, pulls Ray's thumb out of his mouth. "Stakeout. Uh, attention. One of us. At least."

"Right. Right." Ray blinks at him. He's panting, Fraser notices. Ray peers at the dashboard clock, says, "Fifteen minutes. We got fifteen left."

They both face forward and Fraser thinks it is quite possible that he will never make it through the fifteen minutes, that in fact this is some Beckett-ish version of hell, that the next few moments will just loop over and over into eternity, with Ray's breath in jagged counterpoint to his, with Fraser's pants grown so tight they actually hurt, and he is not looking to see if Ray is in a similar state, he is not.

"Fuck," Ray says. "Fourteen minutes. I'm gonna die."

And then there's a miracle, a divine intervention, a deus ex machina in a Crown Vic, because Huey and Dewey pull up behind them, early.

"Christ, they're never early," Ray says, starts the car and swivels into a remarkably tight U-turn that ends with his window right next to Huey's.

"What are you--" Fraser says but Ray's frantically rolling his window down, and Huey does too, starting to look concerned.

As soon as the windows are out of the way Ray lunges half out of his, grabs Huey's head with both hands, and gives Huey a dramatic kiss on the forehead.

"What--hey--cut it out!" Huey yelps.

"I love you for showing up early," Ray says. "We were really fucking bored."

"Jesus, you freak," Huey says, and scrubs at his forehead with his coatsleeve. Dewey's already launching into an obscene personalized limerick.

Ray snickers, rolls up the window and swings the car out into the street.

Fraser sits quietly for several blocks until Ray looks over at him, shrugs. "You make the fake weird loud enough, they don't notice the real weird," he says.

"Ah."

"Which 'ah' was that?" Ray says, and he looks truly a bit worried, so Fraser, for once, tells him the whole truth.

"That was, 'Ah, Ray, please feel free to violate the speed limit slightly, because I can hardly stand to wait even one more second to taste you all over."

"That's a good 'ah,'" Ray says. "You can put that at the top of the list of 'things ah means.'"

"It already is," Fraser says, softly, and Ray hits the gas.