Disclaimer: Nope, not mine. Alliance own them. Sigh.

Author's Notes: Thanks a lot to Sel for reading through it, & to all the people on Serge who responded to my request for info on hockey games. This would be wildly inaccurate without you.

Story Notes:

I'm woken by a cold nose pressing itself into my palm. Sleepily, I pull my hand away and turn over, reaching out for Ray...who isn't there. He's standing fully dressed by the bed, pulling Dief away from me and trying to pick up his keys quietly. Groggy and only half-awake, I sit up. "Ray, what are you doing?" He scowls at Dief. "Now look what you did. Lie back down." The last is addressed to me, accompanied by a hand in the centre of my chest, pushing me back down against the sheets gently but firmly. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he kisses me lightly. "I'm taking the furball out for a walk, running some errands and then coming back to watch the hockey game with you. 'Kay?" I yawn and squint at the clock. "What time is it?" "About eleven thirty."
Feeling mildly guilty for having slept so late, I move to get out of bed but Ray intercepts me. "No, go back to sleep. Dief wasn't supposed to wake you. You need your rest, I kept you up kinda late last night." He winks and I smile. Last night, and early this morning. Making love lazily, with the early-dawn light streaming through the window and Ray twined round me. And afterwards he closed the blinds and fell asleep on my shoulder.

I get one last kiss before Ray leaves. Turning over, I close my eyes but lying in bed holds no appeal without him. It isn't long before I'm up, pulling on sweatpants and a T-shirt - weekend clothes - and finished my morning ablutions. Walking through to the living room, I can see last night's supper dishes on the coffee table where we left them. I carry them into the kitchen and wash up, thinking about the hockey game this afternoon. A week ago, Ray noticed that there was a game on and mentioned it to me, thinking I might like to watch it. One of the teams sounded familiar and after I recognised that it was Mark's team, it took me a few minutes to decide whether or not to mention this to Ray. Eventually I blurted it out to him and he shrugged and said okay. Well, naturally. I don't know what kind of reaction I was expecting. Ray knows that Mark was the first man I ever had sex with, though I suppose we were only boys, and it was more fooling around than actual sex. Just round behind the back of the barn near where we used to play hockey, kissing, touching...experimenting. But it counted to me. Ray also knows that Mark and I are still friends, despite the fact that we've both changed over the years. So I don't know what I expected from Ray - jealousy? A sudden refusal to watch the game? But as it turned out, he was fine with it.

I stack the dishes on the draining board and, at a loss for something to do, I move through into the living room and start tidying aimlessly. The book I'm reading is buried under magazines on the coffee table and I stretch out with it on the couch. I'm more tired than I thought; it seems like only a minute or so before I feel Ray stroking my hair and realise I must have fallen asleep. "Hey, Sleeping Beauty." He sounds amused. "Looks like the Mountie Police have been again - the dishes are done and the place is a lot tidier than I remember it. Do you want some tea?" Nodding, I rub my eyes and sit up to watch him over the back of the couch. "What were your errands?" "Junk food shopping." He turns to grin at me. "Can't watch a game without it." Opening a large brown paper sack on the counter, he pulls out a one-pound bag of M&Ms, a bag of tortilla chips and a jar of something luridly orange. Frankly, it looks radioactive. My face gives me away, as Ray says "Cheese dip" and turns the jar so I can see the label. Personally, I doubt it's ever seen real cheese in its life but I hold my tongue as Ray continues. "But I know you're not into my kind of junk food, so you get something different." He comes to sit by me on the edge of the couch, setting my tea on the table. Kissing me and talking against my mouth, he drops things into my lap. "Peaches...strawberries...raspberries...cherries...apricots...and..." A handful of tawny, papery things patter over the bags on my legs. "Chinese gooseberries." "What?"
"They're cool, the guy in the shop showed me how to eat them." So saying, he picks one up, unpeels the thin brown leaves and feeds me the marble-sized, citrusy fruit. Unused to people spoiling me, I smile at him and swallow hard to clear the tight feeling in my throat. It crosses my mind that perhaps Ray is a little more jealous of Mark than he admitted. "What?" Ray looks at me intently. "What're you thinking?" "Thank you for all this."
"And? Come on Ben, you can ask me anything, you know that." "Are you...do you have a problem with, I mean...not that it's important, really-" "Ben!" He grabs my forearm and shakes it slightly. "Just ask me, don't you ever ever think there's something you can't say to me." I know my stammering and beating about the bush annoys him so I take a deep breath and ask. I wish I could be more direct, more like him. "Ray...are you jealous of Mark?"
He drops his eyes, then looks up at me as he answers honestly. "Yeah. A little. In the same kinda way that you're jealous of Stella. You know there's no reason to be but you can't help it." I can't deny that, and the only way I can think to answer the first part is to pull him close and kiss him deeply, showing him just how important he is to me.

Things get fairly involved, until Ray glances at the clock and pulls back. "Whoa, starting soon." He tries to speak casually but I can hear the husk in his voice and through the denim of his jeans I can see his erection. So I smile up at him, flicking my tongue over my lower lip, and slide my hand between his legs. Groaning, he leans back down to kiss me again, pushing my shirt up so he can run his thumbnail along the line of hair below my navel. "No." He sits up and clears his throat. "You wanted to watch this and I'm not going to make you miss it." Clearly I don't get a say in this. I suspect it also has something to do with his desire to change out of his now too-tight jeans. Even so, I protest when he tries to get up, holding onto his leg and trying to pull him back down. Grinning at me, he unpeels my fingers from his inner thigh, calls me a horny bastard and heads into the bedroom, reappearing a few minutes later in sweatpants and a sleeveless shirt. He knows how much I like this shirt - I like seeing his arms, the muscular strength of him and his tattoo.

Sitting up, I scoot up the couch to make room for him as he comes over, juggling bags and a beer. "Hey hey hey, where're you going?"
"You'll want to sit down-"
"Get back where you were, Constable."
Puzzled, I do so and he arranges all the various things on the floor before simply draping himself on top of me, his head resting on my chest. "Oh," I murmur happily, and touch his hair. "Too heavy?" I can feel the vibration of his voice against my stomach. "No, not at all." Feeling sentimental, I kiss the top of his head. "Perfect, actually." "Cool." Flicking on the television, he grabs my hand and squeezes it briefly as he skips through the channels. When he stops on the right one, we find that there are 15 minutes of pre-game interviews with various sports commentators to sit through. Well, we could sit through them, or then again we could- "Hey." Ray kisses my chin to get my attention. "Want to make out?"

By way of an answer I put my hand on the back of his neck and draw him towards me, spreading my legs for him to lie more comfortably between them. Dief takes advantage of our preoccupation with each other and jumps onto the armchair, curling up and sighing loudly. I relax under Ray's weight, melting back into the couch and sliding my hands up under his shirt to touch warm, bare skin. Tipping my head back as he kisses my neck, I let my hands wander lower to grab his ass, pulling him down against me as I rock my hips up. He chuckles against my collarbone, reaching down to cup my half-hard penis through my sweatpants. "I'd never have time to get you off before it starts," he murmurs against my mouth, his hand stroking and squeezing between my legs. As I reach under his pants to palm his hipbones, making incoherent noises against his lips, I doubt the truth of that statement. He nips my earlobe. "But I'll suck you off in the break."
Blindly, I reach for his mouth, kissing him hard and shoving my hands down the front of his underwear, holding his testicles and feeling their warm, heavy weight in my palm. He rocks into my hand, his cock lengthening and hardening against my wrist. God, I love the noises he makes when we do this.

"Mmmph," Ray frees himself reluctantly, tugging my hand out of his shorts. "It's starting." His pupils are dilated, the blue of his irises just a thin rim around the edge, and he has a familiar flush along his cheekbones that my body recognises and reacts to. But looking at the television, I see the players skating out onto the ice and so I let Ray go. He lies back down on my chest, then lifts his head to grin at me. "What?" I ask.
"You're kinda digging me in the stomach here." He smirks and puts his head back down, rubbing his hand along my ribs whilst I'm still trying to think of a reply.

The first period passes uneventfully, apart from Ray teasing me by feeding me fruit. When I try to reciprocate, he eats it and insists on licking each of my fingers clean, slowly and thoroughly, until I'm ready to jerk off or kill him. Halfway through the period, Ray gets up to use the bathroom and I take the opportunity to get a glass of water and think calming thoughts about glacier formation and ice fields. Buck Frobisher. God, that works. That definitely works. I'm able to lie back down feeling normal, and when Ray starts to run his hand up my thigh, looking devilish, I catch his wrist and kiss his palm. "Please. Don't tease me. Unless you want to watch the rest of the game with me 'digging you in the stomach'." Sniggering, he wriggles against me but refrains from tormenting me for the rest of the period. Mark's team scores twice, and Mark himself is sent off briefly for high-sticking. The opposing team scores once.

Despite myself, I get caught up in the game and it's only when I look at the clock and realise that there are only a few more minutes of this period left that I remember Ray's promise for the intermission. The thing is, he knows as well as I do that an ice hockey game has two intermissions. He didn't say which one he meant and frankly, it didn't occur to me to ask, seeing as how most of the blood in my body wasn't in my brain... Blood starts to slide under my skin at the memory and I feel myself getting hard. I try to press my hips away from Ray - not wanting him to notice and think that I may be assuming or...expecting something, but to no avail. Lifting his head he smiles and slides his hand under my T-shirt to rub my stomach. He's not helping.

There are one or two near-goals towards the end of the period, but only a small part of my brain notices this. The rest is wondering if it's a sign of obsession that even the feel of Ray's stomach muscles pressed against my own seems erotic. Eventually, with a minute to go, he starts playing with the drawstring cord of my sweatpants, fingers brushing my half-hard penis and making me shift under him. When the siren finally sounds he looks up at me, eyes dark and heavy-lidded, and kisses me without saying a word. He tastes of the tortilla chips, beer, chocolate and faint traces of fruit. And I have to admit, the cheese sauce tastes a lot better off the roof of his mouth than it looked in the jar. Kissing me deeply, one hand up my T-shirt fingering my nipples, the other one down the front of my sweatpants stroking my cock, trying to turn me on. Not that he needs to try very much. Within a short time I'm hard, moaning against his mouth and thrusting into his hand. "God." He bites my lower lip and holds it gently between his teeth. "You're so hot like this. I could tease you all afternoon." His thumb rubs across the head of my cock and I buck up into his hand. "Ray..." "But I won't. Lift up."
This last is whispered against my lips and I cant my hips upward as he tugs my sweatpants down around my knees. Ray kisses his way down my stomach, pushing my T-shirt up to plant a kiss on my breastbone and traces his fingers lightly along the creases where thighs join torso. "Ray..." I moan his name again and feel his stubble against the inside of my knee as he nuzzles me. "Relax. Just enjoying the view."
Half-sitting up, I find him looking at my erection appreciatively as he kisses my leg gently. As usual, I can feel my face heating, always slightly and inexplicably embarrassed by Ray's willingness to lie and stare at my genitals for hours. When he nudges me to lie back down and eventually, finally, shuffles up and licks the head of my cock - letting it slide over his lower lip and onto his tongue - I tip my head back and groan at the ceiling. I can't imagine how I used to survive without this - without Ray and his love, his generosity, his bright, mischievous nature...

He sets a faster pace with hand and mouth and I am unable to resist reaching down and dragging my hands roughly across his shoulders. Mark never liked it if I touched his hair or face when he was doing this. "Let go of my ears, Ben, I can figure out what to do," he used to joke, but there was seriousness behind it. I never tried it with Victoria but looking back, I suspect I would've had the same response. But Ray never tells me "No", not in bed. He told me after the first time we had sex that I could ask him anything, and could ask him for anything, anything at all. I admit that I've shamelessly taken advantage of that, pushing him farther, wanting to know everything about him.

Suddenly, his mouth slides off me, leaving me hanging. Looking down my body at him, I see him stick two fingers in his mouth and wet them thoroughly and deliberately, well aware that I'm watching. The knowledge of where they're going is almost as arousing as the feeling, a few seconds later, when he presses them inside me and reaches to stroke across my prostate. He starts sucking me again, hard and fast, squeezing my testicles gently and flexing his fingers against that small spot up inside me... And a few seconds before orgasm hits, I give into the temptation to weave my fingers through his hair and hold him there. Hold him right there as I arch up and cry out, bucking into his mouth and squeezing my eyes shut so tight I see purple flashes behind my eyelids.

When I come back to myself, Ray's kissing my stomach and trying to pull my sweatpants up. I try to help, lifting my hips with jellied legs and pulling him close for a kiss. "Here, let me..." But my hands are gently batted away when I try to work them under the waistband of his pants. "S'okay Ben. Look, the game's started again." Sure enough, the players are skating out onto the ice but my attention is more focused on Ray...and the erection I can feel against my thigh. "But you're still...you didn't-"
"It's okay," he repeats. "I can wait." "But you hate waiting-"
I'm distracted by sudden noise form the television - one of the teams has scored. Looking closer, I find it's the opposing team, bringing the score to a draw. When I turn back to Ray, making another determined effort to persuade him to let me touch him, he catches my hands. His eyes are tightly shut. "Ray?"
"Ssshh, don't say anything. I'm thinking of Dief." "What? But why-"
"It...helps."
As he says this I notice he's softened against my leg and horrified comprehension dawns. "Dear God, Ray!" "What's the problem? You should be more worried if I think about him when I'm trying to get it up." He cackles at the (probably appalled) look on my face. No. He has to be joking. For a few minutes, there's no sound in the room save the noise of the television but eventually the words rise irresistibly to my lips. "Do you really think about-"
"No!" He whacks my ribs. "Jeez, of course not, that's just sick. Just 'cause you have a thing for caribou..." I make no effort to contradict him. I've been told one should always keep a little mystery in a relationship.

Neither of the teams scores in the rest of the second period, though there are several near-misses. The two teams are evenly matched in skill, which makes for an interesting game. Or it would do, if it weren't more interesting to tease Ray. I'm beginning to see why he does it so much. It's fun.

For example, when one of the players is lining up to take a penalty shot, I stretch lazily and casually let my hands come to rest on Ray's ass. He tolerates this but when I start to caress him, he plucks them off deliberately, trying for a stern look. "That's enough. Mr. I-Already-Got-Mine."

Or soon after this, when my curiosity finally gets the better of me and I reach down to swipe my finger through the dubiously-named cheese dip. Sure enough, it tastes as bizarre as I thought it might but it's worth it to see Ray's expression as he watches me suck it slowly off my index finger. I get a kiss for that, long and thorough as he searches out the taste in my mouth.

The middle period is absorbing and, for me at least, passes quickly. I'm not sure how quickly it passes for Ray. Obviously not fast enough, judging from how he kisses me when the siren sounds for the second break. A few breathless minutes follow, during which time I'm finally allowed to tug his shirt off to rub my thumbs across his nipples. They're very sensitive, as I found out the first time we made love, and now Ray moans into my mouth and rocks his hips against me. "What do you want?"
I have to turn my head to murmur into his ear; his face is burrowed hard into the crook of my neck as he squirms against me, obviously not knowing whether to push forward against the hand still on his chest or backwards against the one on his ass, under his sweatpants. "What do you want?" I repeat, and his answer comes muffled as a groan. "Your mouth, Ben...please, just your mouth-" Still lying underneath him, I start to shuffle down the sofa but am stopped by another word from him. "Just, y'know, if you want to."
Amazed, I look up at him now sitting astride my ribs, face flushed and hair more experimental than ever. "If I want to? Ray, why would I not want to?" "I just don't want you to think that you have to 'cause you owe me or something. I mean, no-one's keeping score here." "Don't be an idiot, Ray."
I continue to shuffle down under him, tugging at his pants and underwear, and stop when my mouth is at just the right place for him to lean forward and... "Really?"
"Mmm-hmm." The only sound I can make as my mouth is already half-full of him. "Don't...Jesus God, Ben, look at you...don't let me go too fast for you." My only response is to plant my hands firmly on his ass, pulling gently until he falls forward onto his elbows, his knees jammed under my armpits. He rocks tentatively into my mouth, gasping against the sofa cushions, already leaking enough that I have to swallow once or twice. It's unlikely he'll last long; he's been kept waiting all through the second period. Sure enough, he's soon thrusting into my mouth - his ass flexing under my hands - panting and writhing bonelessly. When I draw my fingers down between his cheeks he moans my name loudly and comes almost immediately, taking us both by surprise.

Gently now, I let my mouth slide off him and tip him onto his back. He sits up, or tries to, looking wild and utterly edible, with his pants still around mid-thigh and if I thought his hair was experimental before it was nothing on what it is now. "Sorry, sorry." He pants, still trying to get his breath. "Kind of, uh, not my best performance there, I kinda-" A kiss silences him effectively, something I've learnt over these past few weeks, though not something I'm about to try at the station. "I thought no-one was keeping score?" I tease him gently whilst tugging his sweatpants back up, and lean in to kiss him again. When he tries to protest I nudge him back down flat on the sofa so I can lie across him, my head on his collarbone and my fingers curled round his silver bracelet. "Love you." I'm not sure which of us said it. It doesn't matter; he knows I love him and I know he feels the same.

Our positions reversed now, we watch the final period.

Mark's team wins the game.

FIN

End Bodycheck by Kat: krystalz42@yahoo.com

Author and story notes above.