Another Pass      Another Pass

 by Kass

  

 Author's website: http://www.trickster.org/kass/

 Disclaimer: Words are mine, characters are not.

 Author's Notes: Blame it on Justine and Speranza, who double-dog-dared me
to write snowplow porn. Also, an extra thank-you-kindly for the instant
beta-work.

 Story Notes: 

 

 

 The beeping stopped as the plow guy jerked into drive again and headed
for the other side of the street. Ray shifted from one foot to the other,
hunching his shoulders to keep wet flakes from landing inside his collar. 

 "C'mon, do your thing." It was nasty out -- just warm enough to be damp
-- and Ray wanted to be back indoors already. 

 Dief made a noise that was surprisingly like a sniff before finally
picking a wheel to whiz on. As soon as he was through Ray fumbled for his
keys and let them back into the building. The wolf trotted ahead of him
back up the stairs. 

 Fraser, absorbed in the crossword puzzle, didn't look up when they came
in. 

 "You're lucky your dog didn't decide to chase the snowplow." Ray shrugged
out of his coat and boots and went back to his end of the couch. The new
issue of ESPN: The Magazine was calling his name. 

 "A thankless task,"Fraser said, a little distantly. 

 "What -- taking the dog out for a leak?" 

 "Plowing." 

 "It's not so bad." Ray opened to the first article, creased the cover
over, but now he was thinking about snowplows. "I drove one in high
school." 

 "Hmm?" A faint frown creased Fraser's brow. "If that's six across, then
what's four down?" He flipped the pencil around and started erasing. 

 Ray went on anyway. "Mom and dad weren't big on the whole 'allowance'
thing, and I wanted to be able to take Stella out. Nice places." The kind
of places she deserved. The kind of places that wouldn't make her mouth
tighten the way it did at Jack's, where she was the only girl at the
counter and hot dogs cost sixty cents and the air was rich with the smell
of hot grease. 

 The dogs at Jack's were probably still only sixty cents. Ray hadn't been
there in a while. 

 "What was your route?" Fraser was still staring at the little crossword
boxes. Hearing his voice was startling; Ray's mind had gotten off track
again. 

 "Nowhere special. The neighborhood. I worked nights, eleven to three." 

 "That's only four hours." 

 "Yeah, but I hadda get some sleep sometime. I split the shift with
another kid from my street." Carlos Dominguez. Who was always wide-awake
when Ray dropped the truck off. Came out of his house with a big thermos
of coffee, hair wet like he'd set his alarm for 2:30 to shower. Crazy. 

 "Adinkra." 

 "What?" 

 Fraser was writing carefully. "Eight across. 'Symbolic language of
southern Ghana.'" 

 The crossword. "Right." 

 Ray was just starting to get interested in the interview with Yao Ming
when Fraser spoke up again. 

 "Did you like the job?" 

 Ray shrugged, although Fraser wasn't looking at him and wouldn't see. "It
was okay. Beat flipping burgers or mowing lawns. Pay was decent." 

 There was a short silence. 

 "Good time to be by myself, y'know? Wasn't a whole lot of that in the
Kowalski household." Not in that tin can of a house. Jeez, a guy could
barely be alone in the bathroom for two minutes without somebody banging
on the door looking for a tissue or something. 

 "Mmm. I must say, time alone was not at a premium when I was at school,
but I can imagine that you must have...enjoyed it." Fraser was gazing deep
into the puzzle again. 

 "Got a lot of thinking done." 

 "About?" 

 "Stella, mostly." Ray felt himself quirking a grin at the memory. "Where
I was gonna take her with all the money I was making, which wasn't a lot,
but it was better than nothing, right? I saved up a while to get her this
little gold chain for Christmas that year. It was gold--I thought it was
such a big deal." Stella hadn't thought so much of it, but she was sweet
enough to wear it anyway. For a while. 

 Yeah. He'd thought about Stella a lot. 

 'Course, he hadn't just thought about Stella. Sometimes, when they were
fighting or she was being bitchy, he'd thought about Rob. 

 Rob whose leather jacket had dimes hammered onto the shoulder studs. Rob
who'd introduced him to Wire, and to grass, at the same time, handling the
album with almost exaggerated care to keep it from getting scratched. Ray
remembered lying on his back on the floor of Rob's bedroom, head spinning
from the smoke and the sounds. He used to think maybe he'd start a band,
back then. 

 Fraser put the Times magazine down on the table carefully and then
stretched, reaching his arms way up and then rotating his head to one
side, then the other. 

 "As it happens, I drove a plow whilst at school, too. In a manner of
speaking," Fraser added hastily. 

 "Really?" Ray put the magazine down. 

 "It doubled as the Driver's Education vehicle during the summer. No one
learned to drive during the winter; the truck was too precious. Had one of
us damaged it..." 

 "I thought you lived in the boondocks." 

 Fraser scratched his eyebrow. "We weren't far from town by local
standards, but we certainly weren't nearby. Only the very center of town
was plowed. The rest of us used snowmobiles or dogsleds anyway." 

 From the corner Dief whined. 

 "You hush," Fraser said. "You didn't like the other dogs then; I can't
imagine why you miss them now." 

 Ray was trying to picture Fraser learning to drive, but it wasn't easy.
It was hard to imagine Fraser as a teenager. 

 "That was the last year they left the plow truck unlocked," Fraser mused.


 "Oh yeah?" 

 "Jenny Aluviaq was discovered to be pregnant in early spring. Apparently
she and Tom Finn, the postmaster, had...trysted there on a rare stormless
fall day." 

 Ray snickered. "Even if it had a bench seat, betcha that wasn't real
comfortable." 

 "Well, it was private. Jenny had four siblings and Tom lived with his
wife and two children." 

 "Private, yeah. I get that." 

 Fraser looked like he was about to say something, but didn't. 

 Ray waited. 

 Fraser continued to say nothing, and in fact looked away, and suddenly
Ray felt himself grinning widely. 

 "No, I never brought company, Fraser. Thought about it, but--" Ray
shrugged. "It wasn't Stella's style." 

 Fraser was smiling, too, now. Not precisely at him, but near him. 

 Feeling suddenly cooped-up and snowed-in and a little reckless, Ray kept
going. "Rob might've, if I'd asked." 

 "The boy who shared your shift?" Fraser sounded curious but no more so
than usual. Damn: it had sailed right over his head. 

 "No, that was Carlos. Rob was..." Ray stopped. Suddenly this seemed like
maybe not such a good idea. He looked away, he looked at the wolf, nose
pillowed on a paw, because it was suddenly easier to face Diefenbaker than
to look at Fraser. "Rob introduced me to punk." 

 "Ah," Fraser said, and there was a world of something in that ah. "But
you never asked him to...join you." Ray glanced up, and saw that Fraser
was watching him intently. 

 Ray took a deep breath and went for it. "I thought about it a few times,
when me and Stell were on the outs, but I never got up the courage." 

 Fraser licked his lips and Ray fought the temptation to mirror the
action. His mouth was dry all of a sudden. And Fraser's lips were wet. 

 "Oh?" Fraser tilted his head, still staring him down. "And what would you
have said?" 

 "Huh?" Ray felt dazed. 

 "To your...Rob." 

 "'You...'" Ray cleared his throat. "'You wanna come with me some night?'"
His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears. 

 He hadn't noticed Fraser moving, but suddenly they were closer together
than they'd been. Their knees were almost touching. Ray's palms were
sweating where he had them pressed against his thighs. 

 "'I could...show you some things,'" Ray murmured. "'It's real quiet out
there in the snow.'" 

 Fraser was so close that Ray could almost feel his heat. "And if he'd
said yes?" 

 Heart beating like it wanted to push right out of his chest, Ray closed
the gap between them. 

 Fraser's mouth was hot, he tasted like the pizza they'd had for dinner a
few hours before, his hand was splayed across Ray's back amazing and firm
through Ray's sweater, and holy shit: holy shit, he was kissing Benton
Fraser on his living-room couch. Knees tangling awkwardly now, like he'd
imagined his knees tangling with Rob's across the leather bench of the
1975 Dodge pickup the snowplow had been bolted onto, except he'd never
tangled with Rob, not really. Not like this. 

 His tongue was in Fraser's mouth. Fraser moaned, which Ray could feel
everywhere. 

 And then zzzt! The power went out. The lights; the coffee-pot; the cd
player. Even with his eyes closed, Ray could feel the dark. 

 Fraser pulled away enough to bite gently at Ray's jaw, moving a wet kiss
down Ray's throat. 

 "Quiet out here in the snow," Fraser murmured. 

 Ray felt himself grinning. "Told you." 

 "And dark. How are you going to show me things in the dark?" Fraser
sounded...arch. Edible. 

 Ray pushed him back against the couch and let himself slide down onto the
floor between Fraser's knees. 

 "Ahhhh," Fraser said, sounding surprised. 

 Then, much later, "Oh. Oh. Ray." 

 Then, after that, almost plaintively, "I'm afraid I can't--get off the
floor, Ray. I can't reach you down there." 

 Ray didn't last long, especially once Fraser unfastened his jeans and
slipped a large, capable hand inside. Capable of wringing his orgasm out
of him in about ten seconds, actually. 

 There was no question of driving Fraser home. The storm was still
going--ice pellets now, by the sound of things--and besides, they were
half-naked and sticky. And Ray wasn't done with the kissing yet. 

 They wound up wrapped together in bed. Having somebody in bed with him
again was amazing. That it was Fraser was almost unbelievable. Except that
it was real; that was Fraser's chest, Fraser's ass, Fraser's mouth. 

 Mmm. Fraser's mouth. 

 After a while the kissing slowed and Ray felt himself starting to nod
off. 

 He fell asleep to the distant beeping of the snowplow, backing up and
making another pass.  END 

End Another Pass by Kass: kass@trickster.org

Author and story notes above.