Author's website: http://www.mrks.org/~viridian/

Disclaimer: All things _due South_ belong to Alliance no matter how much I want Ray K to belong to me. No infringement intended. Suing me would be a waste of time. Besides, I'd just kick you in the head.

Author's Notes: Read-through by LaT.

Story Notes:

Fraser awoke with a sense of dislocation in a bed far too comfortable to be his own, wrapped in sheets and blankets that smelled of Ray. Awoke with someone beside him, twined around him. Ray himself, only his hair and part of his cotton-clad back visible with the covers over the two of them.

Given Fraser's fatigue at the time, last night had taken on the quality of a dream, but it appeared that Ray had brought him home and taken him to bed just as Fraser had remembered. Ray had also professed affection for and attraction to him, though in a roundabout way. Then they'd slept, too tired to make anything of it.

Fraser could feel Ray's breath on his left nipple even through his long johns. Ray moved a little, then murmured, his voice sounding blurry, "Yer hot enough to roast s'mores off of."

"Why would you want to?"

"Maybe I'm in the woods with chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers and a real hankering for some s'mores, but I don't have matches or a lighter to start a fire with. If I had you, it would be okay."

"Yes, because I could start a fire."

"No stones around either."

"What kind of woods is this?"

"Hypothetical kind. And I'm having a moment, which you are ruining. I'm smearing chocolate on you in my head."

"Melted chocolate?" It wasn't the question he really wanted to ask.

"Tasty. Nah, Fraser, a block of the hardest chocolate I could find, and I'm rubbing it against yer arm to see which gives first. Yeah, melted. It starts soft and gets softer and smeary as it heats up more on yer skin. Then I lick it off."

Fraser found it hard to speak. "Thoroughly?"

"Mmm-hmm. Waste of good chocolate and good Fraser otherwise."

Given the weirdly blurred and distant sound to Ray's voice, Fraser wondered if he might be seeing Ray's occasional tendency to sleeptalk. Ray said that his mother claimed that sometimes she used to find him at night, say, sitting under a table with the lights turned on and would have full, if surreal, conversations with him as she brought him back to bed. Fraser didn't need him to be asleep to have surreal conversations with him, but still....

Would Ray say these things while awake? "Ray, are you awake?"

"Dunno," Ray mumbled. Ray looked up at him, eyes open, but Ray had said that his eyes did open and focus during his bouts of somnambulism. Or so Ray had been told. "Are you?"

"Yes."

"Then so am I. Hey, we're awake."

Instead of the expected sarcasm, the last statement had an almost childlike wonder in it. Answering Fraser's question. "Close your eyes, Ray. You must be very tired."

"Okay." Then Ray made an odd noise.

"Are you all right?"

"M'okay. Got yer long john fuzz in my mouth." Ray climbed him, aligning their bodies in a way that let him feel Ray's arousal directly against his own, and started to kiss his neck. "Better," he mumbled.

Yes, it was better. No, it wasn't, not with Ray asleep and unknowing. Of course, Fraser saw a simple solution to that. Wake him.

And Fraser did try, calling Ray's name several times, though a bystander might think it the vocalizations of passion from the huskiness of his voice. Ray crooned and kissed and stroked and rubbed against him, though each initial touch was light, asking him if he wanted more. Each time he shifted into it, giving consent, becoming ever more lost in desire, wishing they were bare skin against skin.

Asleep, Ray was a considerate lover. Fraser had no knowledge of him awake.

This indolent, almost narcotic lovemaking trapped Fraser like honey, sweet and thick and delicious. Part of him didn't want Ray to wake for fear it would end. Fortunately, the larger part remained aware that letting this continue used Ray and so kept trying to rouse him.

"Mmm?" Ray asked, and this time when he opened his eyes he had a different look in them. Returning consciousness lessened the liquid feel his somnolent body had had. Horror suffused his gaze, and this time his voice sounded immediate and clear. Awake and aware, though tired. "Oh, Jesus, I'm molesting you in my sleep." He sounded mortally embarrassed and started to roll away.

Fraser gripped Ray's wrist. "Ray, it would be a bad thing if you were molesting me in my sleep. Instead, I am awake and cooperating. Participating, even."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. You did nothing I didn't consent to."

Ray snorted. "How was I?"

"Excellent, though you awoke before we finished." Indeed, Fraser ached, his whole body insistent on finishing.

His lips curved into a smile, though his eyes were serious. "I want you to know that I really love you, Fraser. I'm not the type of guy who'll promise the moon just to get into yer long johns. This is real. So if that's not you want, you better run for it now. Uhm, actually, in this case you'd better let me roll out of bed and sleep on the couch."

"There will be no running or rolling out of bed here. I love you too."

Ray glanced down at the hand on his wrist and raised an eyebrow. "Kind of in a take-charge mood this morning, aren't ya?"

"I merely wished to clear up any misconceptions before they started and grew."

"Such misconceptions being?"

"The misconception that I didn't want what you were doing to me."

Ray almost purred. "And we don't want that kind of thing to come between us."

"Of course not."

"So, what do we do now?"

"Now?"

Ray smiled and stretched in a way that managed to be serene and wanton all at once. "Yeah, 'now,' as opposed to next week or yesterday. Now. Now that I know you don't mind me molesting you in my sleep and we both know we love each other."

It required a distinct mental shift to remember that desire was permissible now. More than that, that desire was desired, by Ray himself. Ray wanted him to remember, desire, and act on it.

Fraser liked to cultivate adaptability for himself, especially in happy circumstances.

Fraser let his hands wander down the long lines of Ray's body, his lips over the clean curves of Ray's neck, feeling the sleep warmth radiate from skin and through cotton, tasting salt on his tongue. Ray made a pleased if blurred sound and drew Fraser in closer, parting his legs as he did so.

"I know that you believe in reciprocation and fair-mindedness in your actions, Ray, as do I, but I'm afraid that I lack the ability to molest you in my sleep."

"That's a shame," Ray murmured as his fingers fumbled with the buttons on Fraser's long johns.

"Perhaps. Instead, I'll have to molest you while I'm awake."

"I think I can live with the substitution. You'll have to make it up to me though."

Ray seemed more determined to make it up to him, though, as Ray finished unbuttoning him at last, baring his sensitized skin to rub against cotton that felt almost rough to his nerves, exciting him. He wanted to feel skin in turn, so he undid Ray's boxers and smiled at the rewarding moan he heard.

Ray and the delicious friction they produced together became the whole of his world. He brushed Ray everywhere he could reach with his hands, mouth, and erection, and Ray, fair-minded, reciprocated. They rocked together and thrust against one another, starting to slide a little more as their skin became slicker from sweat and pre-come.

Fraser gloried in the sharp, raw scent of their mingled passion, the pounding of Ray's heart, and even the awkwardness of their movements. He couldn't resist the urge to nip Ray now and then, eager to get a deeper taste of the skin that had occasionally obsessed him. How many times had Fraser been set aback by a close-up view of the nape of Ray's neck or the inside of his wrists? He finally had a chance to see if the slide of the bracelet on one wrist gave it a different taste than the other....

It did, leaving a sharper tang of metal. His lips stroked along fine-grained skin and the ridges of the tendon.

"You're so hot...." Ray groaned into his neck before coming in a surge against his belly.

With Ray collapsed, panting hotly into his ear, against him, perfect, Fraser thrust a few more times into the tight grip of Ray's fist and came himself. Smiling sweetly, Ray murmured, "I'm all melted Ray now."

Fraser kissed his unruly hair. "No chocolate though."

"Give it time."

*********************THE END**********************

More Viridian5 stories can be found in The Green Room version 2.0 at http://www.mrks.org/~viridian/

No-frames but no-frills access available at http://www.mrks.org/~viridian/Viridian_side.htm

Fandoms represented: due South, Hard Core Logo, Twitch City, X-Files, Once a Thief, Andromeda, Angel, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, Two Guys and a Girl (was Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place), X-Men, Smallville, Doctor Who, Fight Club, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

End Melted by Viridian5: Viridian5@aol.com

Author and story notes above.