Ray's Fingerprints Challenge fic: "Warm and capable of earnest grasping" by belmanoir
Thought I'd start my vacation off right by finally finishing this!
Title: Warm and capable of earnest grasping
Author: belmanoir
Pairing: Fraser/Vecchio
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 4421
Prompt: 35. The Norton Anthology of Romantic Poets
Summary: Ray isn't impressed by Keats' poetry...at first.
Notes: Beta'd by snoopypez. Also, um, this particular poem is not actually in the Norton Anthology's Romantic Era volume, but let's pretend, shall we?
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine and I am making no money off this.
"You call this romantic? This poem is to a bird, this one's to a vase, and this one--ugh! I don't even want to know what kind of love life this guy had."
Fraser plucked the book out of his hand. "You're referring to 'This Living Hand'?" he asked after scanning the page. And then, before Ray could say anything, Fraser was reading it out loud:
"This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed--see here it is--
I hold it towards you."
He read it like it meant something to him, like it meant something, slow and throbbing and Ray was getting goosebumps.
"See?" he said, giving himself a little shake. "It's creepy! Giving that to a girl would be like taking her to a horror movie on a first date. Worse, 'cause at least during horror movies a lot of girls need comforting, if you get my drift."
"All too well," Fraser said, a current of amusement in his voice. "In this context 'Romantic' actually refers to a school of artistic thought. It started in the second half of the eighteenth century as a reaction to the upper-class values of the Enlightenment and stressed strong emotion rather than rational thought as the source of artistic inspiration and meaningful human experience."
"So it's not love poetry, is what you're saying? 'Cause I got a hot date tonight and girls have been known to go for a guy who can quote poetry. I thought maybe your book could give me some tips."
"What type of poetry do you think your date would prefer?" Fraser asked, running his fingers over the top of his shelf of books like he was gonna start combing his library for the perfect line. Which was sweet, and also a little weird, and indirectly said a lot about why Fraser never had a hot date.
"How should I know? I met her in line at the post office. All I know is she smells like almonds and she's got a brother in Kankakee who can't get kosher salami out there."
"Almonds. I see. I can't think of a poem that would be relevant, Ray, I'm sorry." His hand fell away from his books and back to his side and there that line was, stuck in his head in Fraser's voice --warm and capable of earnest grasping.
"That poem's giving me the heebie-jeebies, Fraser," he said. "Why the hell would someone write something like that?"
"It was perhaps ungenerous, Ray. But Keats was very young and dying of tuberculosis and believed his fiancée's affection to be more shallow and fleeting than his own. Recent scholarship suggests he may have misjudged her, but--"
"So he's saying, 'hey, you don't appreciate me now but when I'm dead you'll be gagging for it, but it's cool, I forgive you'?"
Fraser tilted his head, his mouth curving. "In essence, yes."
"Real big of him. If I were her I'd have hit him with my purse."
"I've no doubt you would have, Ray. And yet there's something powerful about the message, isn't there? That a written record can lead to reconciliation even after death--that it can lay open the motives and feelings of dead loved ones--"
So this was about his dad's journals. No point arguing in that case, even if Ray privately thought that it didn't matter one bit what was in those stupid leather notebooks, because it didn't change a thing about the way Fraser's dad had treated Fraser. Those journals sure as hell couldn't go back and give Fraser a childhood instead of a whole bunch of weird advice on catching criminals.
"Yeah, Benny, real powerful," he said.
###
"Are you sure you haven't seen my copy of the Norton Anthology of Romantic Poets, Ray? I haven't been able to find it since my release from the hospital."
Fraser was giving Ray that look, like he knew something he wasn't saying, but Ray ignored it. "I haven't seen that book since I read that creepy-ass poem, Fraser." Maybe Victoria wanted something to read on the train, he thought, but he didn't have the nerve to say it. It wouldn't check out, anyway. They both knew the book was still there after Victoria left Fraser's place, because it had been on the list of crap with Ray's prints on it. "Did you check under the bed?"
"Yes, Ray."
"Well, I ain't seen it," Ray said again, and Fraser looked at him and didn't say anything. But he kept bringing it up, mentioning how his book had inexplicably gone missing, how his other books had been rearranged out of order to hide it. He even said There's a relevant passage in one of Coleridge's letters. I would read it to you but my copy of the Romantic Poets has gone missing, as you know, Ray in the middle of a conversation about the Vecchios' plugged drain, and Ray was pretty sure that Coleridge hadn't had an opinion about that.
After a couple of days Ray would have confessed to slaughtering an entire native village to get Fraser to shut the hell up. "Fine, Fraser!" he snapped. "You win! I threw it away! Are you happy now?"
Fraser frowned at him. "Not particularly, Ray," he said, looking puzzled and--yeah, kind of sad. "You threw away a book?" Like that was the worst crime there was, and Ray couldn't work this guy out. A month ago he wouldn't have thought twice about it, because Fraser was Canadian and, well, he was Fraser. But now he knew Fraser could walk into a dirty diamond-running deal like it was nothing. He could completely trash Ray's house when Ray would have said he couldn't even leave his shoes on the floor not lined up. Fraser could skip town and leave his best friend with no career and no house, and he still managed to look sincerely shocked at the idea of throwing away a book. Ray wanted to just believe it was an act, but it wasn't.
"Look, I had to! That book was bad luck, okay? I mocked that weird death poem and it had its revenge. I wasn't just gonna leave it here!"
Fraser blinked again. "You believe--the poem was responsible for--what, exactly?"
Me shooting you in the back, Ray thought, but he couldn't say it out loud. Besides, it wasn't like he didn't know it was ridiculous that he thought it. Nothing was responsible for that, for any of it, except Ray. His unreliable eyes, his shitty reflexes, and his stupid faith in Fraser. "Just forget it," he said. "You want another copy? I'll buy you another copy."
"That copy was my grandmother's," Fraser said quietly, and suddenly Ray just felt so goddamn tired he couldn't even stand up anymore. He slumped into one of Fraser's kitchen chairs and rubbed at his newly close-shaven scalp.
"Sorry," he said. "You want me to take you down to the dump? Maybe we can--"
"It's all right," Fraser said. "The spine was broken."
It may have damaged the spine, Ray heard, and suddenly it was all spilling out. He wanted to stop it but he couldn't. He'd forgotten this about Fraser--which was weird, because Fraser had been right there the whole time. But either Fraser'd been acting so weird, or Ray'd been feeling so weird, that it came as a total shock to remember how he just wanted to tell the guy everything. "They didn't know if you were gonna be okay for three weeks," he said. "They couldn't take it out, and they said maybe when you started moving again the bullet would shift, or paralyze you, get in your blood. You were sitting up a little and mostly making sense when you talked to me and they were still saying--who the hell did you think was gonna have to go through this shithole of an apartment and clean out your stuff, huh? And I knew I couldn't do it if that poem was here, so I tossed it."
He'd read it again, first. He couldn't not. And he could hear Fraser's voice saying thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood so in my veins red life might stream again. He could feel it, his heartbeat, he could hear every blood cell in his body pounding down an alley after Fraser's retreating footsteps.
The silence stretched and stretched and finally he had to look. Fraser was watching him. "I didn't know," Fraser said, his voice catching and thickening a little on the words.
"Yeah, I told them not to tell you." Ray hadn't known how he would take it. He hadn't even been sure Fraser wanted to not die, for a while there. Usually it seemed like Fraser healed the same way he did everything else, by force of will. Ray closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them Fraser was holding out his hand with this look on his face--
Ray jerked back. "Come on, Fraser, we don't have to have a moment," he said hastily. "We're guys, we--"
The look changed, went from burning with some weird light to blank and a little lost in about half a second, and Ray realized Fraser thought Ray didn't want to take his hand because he was--mad at him, or something. Which he was, kinda. But--
He stood up and took Fraser's hand. Fraser's warm hand, earnestly grasping his. And Ray had known this was a bad idea, but Benny never listened. It was too much and not enough all at the same time, and he tugged Fraser to him by his hand and kissed him. Any second now, he knew, Fraser was gonna back away or, hell, maybe even deck him. A couple months ago he woulda said Fraser would never hit him, no matter what, but now he just didn't know. But it didn't matter because Fraser's lips were warm, warm and alive, Fraser was alive--
Fraser was kissing him back.
Tentatively, like he didn't want to spook Ray. His hand was still in Ray's and it was shaking. Ray was so shocked he dropped Benny's hand and stepped back. Fraser stared at him, wide-eyed and breathing hard and still holding his empty hand against his chest.
"This is a really bad idea, Benny," Ray said.
Fraser looked at him blankly for a second like he was remembering how to process words, and then he said, "That's cruel, Ray."
Ray laughed, and it was like the first time Benny'd smiled at him in the hospital, really smiled at him like he didn't just wish Ray would fuck off but was too polite to say so. That same headrush of relief, but this time Ray didn't have that weird triangular thing they put over the bed in hospitals to hang on to. "Guess it is," he said. "C'mere."
What felt like several breathless hours later, Fraser asked, "What do you want, Ray?"
"I want--I want your hands," Ray said, embarrassed, but Fraser didn't laugh. He just tugged at Ray's shirt until it came free from his pants and then slipped his hand underneath until his bare hand was spread across Ray's lower back. He pulled Ray close, and Ray couldn't breathe. Fraser's hand was warm on his skin, Fraser's other hand was working the buttons of his shirt and Fraser was still kissing him. Ray didn't know what to focus on first, it felt almost like panic except--good. Amazing. Like he was drowning in Fraser. Fraser undressed him slowly, his hands and his mouth all over. Ray closed his eyes. It felt too good to be sex--it was like a blessing or something. A benediction. He felt safe. He felt like both of them were safe. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd felt that way.
Fraser's clothes came off too, eventually. Ray'd expected that to be a battle. He'd thought the uniform would be more difficult to take apart, for one thing, although at least it was the brown one because he was deeply suspicious of those weird-shaped pants, which probably came with a built-in chastity belt or something. And he'd thought Fraser would be more shy, although he wasn't sure why because it was actually kinda hard to shock Fraser. He just--he had inhibitions, sure, but they seemed to be different than everyone else's, like how he had better manners than anybody Ray had ever met but he didn't see anything wrong about drinking milk out of the carton. Ray couldn't wait to figure out what they all were.
When Fraser was naked, he looked at Ray, kinda now what?, and Ray looked back. Fraser was naked and warm and when Ray laid both his hands flat on Fraser's chest he could feel his heartbeat. Fraser's eyes fluttered closed and he took in a deep breath, his chest rising and falling under Ray's hands.
Ray stepped in, awkwardly, until he was pressed up against Fraser, body to body. He was pretty sure this was weird, just wanting to stand here with his skin pressing up against Fraser's, but Fraser didn't seem to think so. He was sniffing Ray's neck, actually, and Ray stifled a laugh and ran his hands up Fraser's back. Fraser shivered, and Ray could feel his blood trying to get into Fraser's veins again. But Fraser's blood was racing too, rising to the surface, and when Ray pulled back to look Fraser was flushed all over.
"Come on," Ray said, tugging Fraser towards the bed. Fraser followed willingly enough, but when the backs of Ray's legs were pressed against the bed he stopped and looked at his sheets with a weird, unhappy look on his face. Ray realized, suddenly and miserably, that Fraser had slept with Victoria in this bed.
Fraser stepped back. "Ray," he said, "you do forgive me?"
"Fraser, I thought we did this! I thought we did the handshake thing and now we were done, we'd put it symbolically behind us, and we could move on without a lot of talking about feelings!"
"I thought so too," Fraser said, licking his lip, "but I don't appear to have moved on."
Ray sat on the bed, feeling tired again. "You really had to wait until we were naked to have this conversation, Fraser?"
Fraser blinked, and then smiled, his eyes trailing over Ray in a way that made Ray's softening cock get all indecisive. "I suppose I didn't have to, Ray, but I fail to see a downside."
"I feel stupid, Fraser, that's the downside."
"I can't imagine why," Fraser said, his voice warm as a blanket, and Ray's whole insides were shaking with tenderness.
He pulled the corner of the sheets over his lap anyway and stared at his feet, because he couldn't look at Fraser and say this. That was way too intimate for a first date. He felt the mattress shift as Fraser sat down next to him. "I don't know, Benny," he admitted. "I never been too good at forgiveness. I guess I always felt like it was weak, letting someone off the hook when they treated you bad. Pop used to--he did all kinds of things, and she'd just forgive him. She'd act like she had no choice, like it was okay what he did just 'cause I don't even know why. Because she loved him, I guess. Maybe 'cause he paid the bills. And I always swore to myself that I'd never forgive him, that I'd never, ever, say it was all right. So do I forgive you? I got no clue, Fraser."
He found the nerve, finally, to glance sideways and there Fraser was, stark naked, with his hands clasped and his elbows on spread knees like this was any one of a million conversations they'd had, and his eyes were on Ray with that same total focus he always gave him, like he was listening with his whole soul because Ray was just that important. And he looked sad, too, sad and guilty and Ray hated that.
"And that's the thing," he said. "With you--it doesn't matter whether I forgive you or not, Fraser. I figure you had your reasons, and you'll tell me what they were eventually, although I'd rather it was in a couple of hours, maybe, there's other things I wanna be doing right now. But either way, I wasn't angry at you. Not when I feel this way. I was mostly just sorry, 'cause I figured it meant I wasn't important to you the way I thought I was. But--be straight with me, okay, Fraser? I am, right?" He watched Fraser closely.
Fraser sucked in a breath. "Oh, Ray," he said, almost reproachfully, like it killed him that Ray was even asking. Then he smiled, a little ruefully. "I won't blame you if you don't believe it, but you're the most important thing in the world."
And there it went, the last bit of Ray's resentment breaking apart. "More important than justice?" he teased.
Fraser's eyes flew to Ray's, and he didn't say anything.
Ray grinned. "It's okay, Fraser, you don't gotta choose. So there it is. What you did wasn't okay and I don't give a shit. I'm not mad at you. I still want you just as bad."
"Ray," Fraser said slowly. "I might be wrong, but I always thought that was forgiveness."
Ray blinked. "Huh." He shrugged. "I'll think about that one later, if that's okay with you." For a second he wanted to ask if Fraser forgave him, but Fraser was here. Fraser'd offered him his hand. Fraser'd said it in a million indirect ways and Ray had to learn to trust that. To trust Fraser again. Even so, he sounded kinda needy, kinda insecure when he said, "Come on, Benny, just touch me again. Please."
Fraser moaned a little in the back of his throat and unclasped his hands. For a second they hovered, graceful and hesitant, between Fraser's knees, and then Fraser reached out and put them on Ray. Pushed Ray down on the bed and pulled him close and kissed him again, and his hands weren't even doing anything, one was pressed up against Ray's chest and the other was curled heavy over his hip. But it was like those giant heat pads the physical therapist used--Fraser's hands were warming Ray all the way to the bone, taking away all the ache and pain and leaving him slow and happy and hot.
They were lying side by side, nobody on top and nobody on the bottom, and apart from the hands they weren't even touching, mostly. There were a few inches between their chests, but Ray could feel Fraser's body heat anyway, could feel Fraser just like he could always tell when Fraser was behind him at a scene. His body, his blood just knew.
Which all made it sound like it wasn't urgent, but it was, it was necessary, if Fraser took his hands away Ray thought his heart might really dry up, and from the way Benny was breathing, deep and shuddery, Ray was pretty sure he felt the same way. He licked at the corner of Fraser's mouth and tasted salt.
He tried to pull back, but Fraser mumbled "No, Ray, I can't breathe" and sealed Ray's mouth with his own again.
And they were still going slower than Ray remembered ever going since high school, but it felt like if they went any faster it'd be like swallowing medicine and then just puking it up again. It felt like he needed to give Fraser plenty of time to soak in, so Ray kept his eyes shut and just kissed him and kissed him, for hours. They were sweating, and every now and then when Ray pressed closer his dick slid over Fraser's stomach, and that felt good enough he'd jump and gasp against Fraser, and then he could feel Fraser's breath hitch, feel Fraser exhale against his mouth, and that just made him want to kiss Fraser again even though by now Fraser's hand had slipped to the curve of Ray's ass, and when Fraser's breath hitched his fingers also flexed in this really hot way. Then Ray's dick started brushing Fraser's, and every time it happened Fraser moaned, right into Ray's mouth, and Ray could not believe how much that turned him on.
So he pressed a little closer, started thrusting a bit, still slow, just to see, and Fraser actually bit Ray's lip. Not hard enough to draw blood, just enough pressure that Ray couldn't draw away. He rocked against Ray, a few times, and then he let go of Ray's lip and said "Ray" against his cheek, and he put his hand down between them and wrapped it around Ray's dick.
Ray was pretty sure he was supposed to do something, do it back, but he couldn't move, couldn't even think. He just shook and shook and gripped Fraser's shoulder hard enough to probably be kind of uncomfortable while Fraser's warm hand slid up and down, firm and sweaty, and Fraser was talking in his ear, a restless urgent mumble he could barely make out.
For a second it reminded him of the train platform--he shivered, and it pushed his dick into Fraser's hand. "Ohhh," Ray moaned, straining to hear, and it wasn't poetry this time, it was just his name, just, "Yes, Ray, yes, Ray, Ray, Ray, yes, Ray--" Ray told his name in Fraser's mouth like rosary beads, and before he'd even gotten past the first Joyful Mystery he was coming, kept safe and grounded on the bed by Fraser's hand on his dick and Fraser's hand on his chest.
He lay there, trying to get some air, trying to get up the energy to move or even open his eyes. He traced a small design on Fraser's shoulder with his thumb--he realized with an embarrassed jolt that it was a heart--and Fraser said tightly, "I'm sorry, Ray, but please--" and pulled Ray's hand down to his own dick.
"Yeah, yeah," Ray mumbled, struggling to get his boneless hand around Fraser. Fraser's dick was weirdly slick, and--Ray realized it was his own come. He'd come on Fraser's dick. "Oh God." He finally opened his eyes and Fraser looked--red and sweaty and strung out and like he was this close to losing it, his hair curling a little at the edges and his wide eyes fixed on Ray's face. Ray finally got his fingers working, then.
The angle was weird, but once he got a good grip and said "Yeah, Benny, yeah," his voice sounding scratchy and unused--once he did that, Fraser did most of the work. And he kept looking at Ray. Everybody closed their eyes for this, but not Fraser--Fraser wanted to see, wanted to see Ray which was more than Ray could figure out. But it didn't matter if he could figure it out because he trusted it, he trusted Fraser. So he watched Fraser thrust into his fist, sloppy and desperate, and when Fraser's rhythm got shaky and he did finally close his eyes, Ray laced the fingers of his other hand with Fraser's and kissed him. Fraser squeezed Ray's hand and licked Ray's lower lip and came all over the sheets.
After a couple minutes Ray figured he better do something about that, but when he tried to pull away Fraser held tight to his hand and still didn't open his eyes.
"Hey, I was just gonna grab something to clean up the sheets with," Ray told him. "Hospital corners don't go with a wet spot." He thought wistfully of Fraser's undershirt, lying by the bottom right leg of the bed, but the guy lugged all his stuff to the laundromat every week, six blocks on foot, so he guessed his own was gonna have to bite the bullet. Somehow, though, he wasn't moving. He was kissing Fraser's fingers instead, one by one, and when Fraser's grip loosened, he sucked Fraser's index finger into his mouth.
Fraser's hand jerked, and then he took his other hand off of Ray's shoulder and reached up and started feeling around at the head of the bed. Ray couldn't figure out what he was doing until Fraser said, "There, no more hospital corners," and tugged Ray closer.
"Benny, I--" Ray started, and then couldn't think of anything to say that would be big enough for how he felt. He turned over and curled against Fraser, twisting so they could keep holding hands. It was weird, 'cause he was used to being on the outside of spooning, but it seemed to work fine and when Fraser stretched his arm around Ray's chest and pulled him in tight, Ray didn't even really mind being in half the wet spot. "I'll give you a ride to the laundromat later," he said finally.
Fraser smiled--Ray could tell even though the only part of Fraser's face that was touching him was his nose and forehead, mashed into Ray's scalp. "Thank you kindly, Ray."
"Don't thank me," Ray said. "I'll expect some more of that earnest grasping in exchange."
"Ray," Fraser scolded, the smile still in his voice, and Ray was gonna go out and buy Fraser a whole stack of poetry books, just as soon as he could stand to leave Fraser's bed. Although if past experience was anything to go by, that could be days.
Title: Warm and capable of earnest grasping
Author: belmanoir
Pairing: Fraser/Vecchio
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 4421
Prompt: 35. The Norton Anthology of Romantic Poets
Summary: Ray isn't impressed by Keats' poetry...at first.
Notes: Beta'd by snoopypez. Also, um, this particular poem is not actually in the Norton Anthology's Romantic Era volume, but let's pretend, shall we?
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine and I am making no money off this.
"You call this romantic? This poem is to a bird, this one's to a vase, and this one--ugh! I don't even want to know what kind of love life this guy had."
Fraser plucked the book out of his hand. "You're referring to 'This Living Hand'?" he asked after scanning the page. And then, before Ray could say anything, Fraser was reading it out loud:
"This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed--see here it is--
I hold it towards you."
He read it like it meant something to him, like it meant something, slow and throbbing and Ray was getting goosebumps.
"See?" he said, giving himself a little shake. "It's creepy! Giving that to a girl would be like taking her to a horror movie on a first date. Worse, 'cause at least during horror movies a lot of girls need comforting, if you get my drift."
"All too well," Fraser said, a current of amusement in his voice. "In this context 'Romantic' actually refers to a school of artistic thought. It started in the second half of the eighteenth century as a reaction to the upper-class values of the Enlightenment and stressed strong emotion rather than rational thought as the source of artistic inspiration and meaningful human experience."
"So it's not love poetry, is what you're saying? 'Cause I got a hot date tonight and girls have been known to go for a guy who can quote poetry. I thought maybe your book could give me some tips."
"What type of poetry do you think your date would prefer?" Fraser asked, running his fingers over the top of his shelf of books like he was gonna start combing his library for the perfect line. Which was sweet, and also a little weird, and indirectly said a lot about why Fraser never had a hot date.
"How should I know? I met her in line at the post office. All I know is she smells like almonds and she's got a brother in Kankakee who can't get kosher salami out there."
"Almonds. I see. I can't think of a poem that would be relevant, Ray, I'm sorry." His hand fell away from his books and back to his side and there that line was, stuck in his head in Fraser's voice --warm and capable of earnest grasping.
"That poem's giving me the heebie-jeebies, Fraser," he said. "Why the hell would someone write something like that?"
"It was perhaps ungenerous, Ray. But Keats was very young and dying of tuberculosis and believed his fiancée's affection to be more shallow and fleeting than his own. Recent scholarship suggests he may have misjudged her, but--"
"So he's saying, 'hey, you don't appreciate me now but when I'm dead you'll be gagging for it, but it's cool, I forgive you'?"
Fraser tilted his head, his mouth curving. "In essence, yes."
"Real big of him. If I were her I'd have hit him with my purse."
"I've no doubt you would have, Ray. And yet there's something powerful about the message, isn't there? That a written record can lead to reconciliation even after death--that it can lay open the motives and feelings of dead loved ones--"
So this was about his dad's journals. No point arguing in that case, even if Ray privately thought that it didn't matter one bit what was in those stupid leather notebooks, because it didn't change a thing about the way Fraser's dad had treated Fraser. Those journals sure as hell couldn't go back and give Fraser a childhood instead of a whole bunch of weird advice on catching criminals.
"Yeah, Benny, real powerful," he said.
###
"Are you sure you haven't seen my copy of the Norton Anthology of Romantic Poets, Ray? I haven't been able to find it since my release from the hospital."
Fraser was giving Ray that look, like he knew something he wasn't saying, but Ray ignored it. "I haven't seen that book since I read that creepy-ass poem, Fraser." Maybe Victoria wanted something to read on the train, he thought, but he didn't have the nerve to say it. It wouldn't check out, anyway. They both knew the book was still there after Victoria left Fraser's place, because it had been on the list of crap with Ray's prints on it. "Did you check under the bed?"
"Yes, Ray."
"Well, I ain't seen it," Ray said again, and Fraser looked at him and didn't say anything. But he kept bringing it up, mentioning how his book had inexplicably gone missing, how his other books had been rearranged out of order to hide it. He even said There's a relevant passage in one of Coleridge's letters. I would read it to you but my copy of the Romantic Poets has gone missing, as you know, Ray in the middle of a conversation about the Vecchios' plugged drain, and Ray was pretty sure that Coleridge hadn't had an opinion about that.
After a couple of days Ray would have confessed to slaughtering an entire native village to get Fraser to shut the hell up. "Fine, Fraser!" he snapped. "You win! I threw it away! Are you happy now?"
Fraser frowned at him. "Not particularly, Ray," he said, looking puzzled and--yeah, kind of sad. "You threw away a book?" Like that was the worst crime there was, and Ray couldn't work this guy out. A month ago he wouldn't have thought twice about it, because Fraser was Canadian and, well, he was Fraser. But now he knew Fraser could walk into a dirty diamond-running deal like it was nothing. He could completely trash Ray's house when Ray would have said he couldn't even leave his shoes on the floor not lined up. Fraser could skip town and leave his best friend with no career and no house, and he still managed to look sincerely shocked at the idea of throwing away a book. Ray wanted to just believe it was an act, but it wasn't.
"Look, I had to! That book was bad luck, okay? I mocked that weird death poem and it had its revenge. I wasn't just gonna leave it here!"
Fraser blinked again. "You believe--the poem was responsible for--what, exactly?"
Me shooting you in the back, Ray thought, but he couldn't say it out loud. Besides, it wasn't like he didn't know it was ridiculous that he thought it. Nothing was responsible for that, for any of it, except Ray. His unreliable eyes, his shitty reflexes, and his stupid faith in Fraser. "Just forget it," he said. "You want another copy? I'll buy you another copy."
"That copy was my grandmother's," Fraser said quietly, and suddenly Ray just felt so goddamn tired he couldn't even stand up anymore. He slumped into one of Fraser's kitchen chairs and rubbed at his newly close-shaven scalp.
"Sorry," he said. "You want me to take you down to the dump? Maybe we can--"
"It's all right," Fraser said. "The spine was broken."
It may have damaged the spine, Ray heard, and suddenly it was all spilling out. He wanted to stop it but he couldn't. He'd forgotten this about Fraser--which was weird, because Fraser had been right there the whole time. But either Fraser'd been acting so weird, or Ray'd been feeling so weird, that it came as a total shock to remember how he just wanted to tell the guy everything. "They didn't know if you were gonna be okay for three weeks," he said. "They couldn't take it out, and they said maybe when you started moving again the bullet would shift, or paralyze you, get in your blood. You were sitting up a little and mostly making sense when you talked to me and they were still saying--who the hell did you think was gonna have to go through this shithole of an apartment and clean out your stuff, huh? And I knew I couldn't do it if that poem was here, so I tossed it."
He'd read it again, first. He couldn't not. And he could hear Fraser's voice saying thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood so in my veins red life might stream again. He could feel it, his heartbeat, he could hear every blood cell in his body pounding down an alley after Fraser's retreating footsteps.
The silence stretched and stretched and finally he had to look. Fraser was watching him. "I didn't know," Fraser said, his voice catching and thickening a little on the words.
"Yeah, I told them not to tell you." Ray hadn't known how he would take it. He hadn't even been sure Fraser wanted to not die, for a while there. Usually it seemed like Fraser healed the same way he did everything else, by force of will. Ray closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them Fraser was holding out his hand with this look on his face--
Ray jerked back. "Come on, Fraser, we don't have to have a moment," he said hastily. "We're guys, we--"
The look changed, went from burning with some weird light to blank and a little lost in about half a second, and Ray realized Fraser thought Ray didn't want to take his hand because he was--mad at him, or something. Which he was, kinda. But--
He stood up and took Fraser's hand. Fraser's warm hand, earnestly grasping his. And Ray had known this was a bad idea, but Benny never listened. It was too much and not enough all at the same time, and he tugged Fraser to him by his hand and kissed him. Any second now, he knew, Fraser was gonna back away or, hell, maybe even deck him. A couple months ago he woulda said Fraser would never hit him, no matter what, but now he just didn't know. But it didn't matter because Fraser's lips were warm, warm and alive, Fraser was alive--
Fraser was kissing him back.
Tentatively, like he didn't want to spook Ray. His hand was still in Ray's and it was shaking. Ray was so shocked he dropped Benny's hand and stepped back. Fraser stared at him, wide-eyed and breathing hard and still holding his empty hand against his chest.
"This is a really bad idea, Benny," Ray said.
Fraser looked at him blankly for a second like he was remembering how to process words, and then he said, "That's cruel, Ray."
Ray laughed, and it was like the first time Benny'd smiled at him in the hospital, really smiled at him like he didn't just wish Ray would fuck off but was too polite to say so. That same headrush of relief, but this time Ray didn't have that weird triangular thing they put over the bed in hospitals to hang on to. "Guess it is," he said. "C'mere."
What felt like several breathless hours later, Fraser asked, "What do you want, Ray?"
"I want--I want your hands," Ray said, embarrassed, but Fraser didn't laugh. He just tugged at Ray's shirt until it came free from his pants and then slipped his hand underneath until his bare hand was spread across Ray's lower back. He pulled Ray close, and Ray couldn't breathe. Fraser's hand was warm on his skin, Fraser's other hand was working the buttons of his shirt and Fraser was still kissing him. Ray didn't know what to focus on first, it felt almost like panic except--good. Amazing. Like he was drowning in Fraser. Fraser undressed him slowly, his hands and his mouth all over. Ray closed his eyes. It felt too good to be sex--it was like a blessing or something. A benediction. He felt safe. He felt like both of them were safe. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd felt that way.
Fraser's clothes came off too, eventually. Ray'd expected that to be a battle. He'd thought the uniform would be more difficult to take apart, for one thing, although at least it was the brown one because he was deeply suspicious of those weird-shaped pants, which probably came with a built-in chastity belt or something. And he'd thought Fraser would be more shy, although he wasn't sure why because it was actually kinda hard to shock Fraser. He just--he had inhibitions, sure, but they seemed to be different than everyone else's, like how he had better manners than anybody Ray had ever met but he didn't see anything wrong about drinking milk out of the carton. Ray couldn't wait to figure out what they all were.
When Fraser was naked, he looked at Ray, kinda now what?, and Ray looked back. Fraser was naked and warm and when Ray laid both his hands flat on Fraser's chest he could feel his heartbeat. Fraser's eyes fluttered closed and he took in a deep breath, his chest rising and falling under Ray's hands.
Ray stepped in, awkwardly, until he was pressed up against Fraser, body to body. He was pretty sure this was weird, just wanting to stand here with his skin pressing up against Fraser's, but Fraser didn't seem to think so. He was sniffing Ray's neck, actually, and Ray stifled a laugh and ran his hands up Fraser's back. Fraser shivered, and Ray could feel his blood trying to get into Fraser's veins again. But Fraser's blood was racing too, rising to the surface, and when Ray pulled back to look Fraser was flushed all over.
"Come on," Ray said, tugging Fraser towards the bed. Fraser followed willingly enough, but when the backs of Ray's legs were pressed against the bed he stopped and looked at his sheets with a weird, unhappy look on his face. Ray realized, suddenly and miserably, that Fraser had slept with Victoria in this bed.
Fraser stepped back. "Ray," he said, "you do forgive me?"
"Fraser, I thought we did this! I thought we did the handshake thing and now we were done, we'd put it symbolically behind us, and we could move on without a lot of talking about feelings!"
"I thought so too," Fraser said, licking his lip, "but I don't appear to have moved on."
Ray sat on the bed, feeling tired again. "You really had to wait until we were naked to have this conversation, Fraser?"
Fraser blinked, and then smiled, his eyes trailing over Ray in a way that made Ray's softening cock get all indecisive. "I suppose I didn't have to, Ray, but I fail to see a downside."
"I feel stupid, Fraser, that's the downside."
"I can't imagine why," Fraser said, his voice warm as a blanket, and Ray's whole insides were shaking with tenderness.
He pulled the corner of the sheets over his lap anyway and stared at his feet, because he couldn't look at Fraser and say this. That was way too intimate for a first date. He felt the mattress shift as Fraser sat down next to him. "I don't know, Benny," he admitted. "I never been too good at forgiveness. I guess I always felt like it was weak, letting someone off the hook when they treated you bad. Pop used to--he did all kinds of things, and she'd just forgive him. She'd act like she had no choice, like it was okay what he did just 'cause I don't even know why. Because she loved him, I guess. Maybe 'cause he paid the bills. And I always swore to myself that I'd never forgive him, that I'd never, ever, say it was all right. So do I forgive you? I got no clue, Fraser."
He found the nerve, finally, to glance sideways and there Fraser was, stark naked, with his hands clasped and his elbows on spread knees like this was any one of a million conversations they'd had, and his eyes were on Ray with that same total focus he always gave him, like he was listening with his whole soul because Ray was just that important. And he looked sad, too, sad and guilty and Ray hated that.
"And that's the thing," he said. "With you--it doesn't matter whether I forgive you or not, Fraser. I figure you had your reasons, and you'll tell me what they were eventually, although I'd rather it was in a couple of hours, maybe, there's other things I wanna be doing right now. But either way, I wasn't angry at you. Not when I feel this way. I was mostly just sorry, 'cause I figured it meant I wasn't important to you the way I thought I was. But--be straight with me, okay, Fraser? I am, right?" He watched Fraser closely.
Fraser sucked in a breath. "Oh, Ray," he said, almost reproachfully, like it killed him that Ray was even asking. Then he smiled, a little ruefully. "I won't blame you if you don't believe it, but you're the most important thing in the world."
And there it went, the last bit of Ray's resentment breaking apart. "More important than justice?" he teased.
Fraser's eyes flew to Ray's, and he didn't say anything.
Ray grinned. "It's okay, Fraser, you don't gotta choose. So there it is. What you did wasn't okay and I don't give a shit. I'm not mad at you. I still want you just as bad."
"Ray," Fraser said slowly. "I might be wrong, but I always thought that was forgiveness."
Ray blinked. "Huh." He shrugged. "I'll think about that one later, if that's okay with you." For a second he wanted to ask if Fraser forgave him, but Fraser was here. Fraser'd offered him his hand. Fraser'd said it in a million indirect ways and Ray had to learn to trust that. To trust Fraser again. Even so, he sounded kinda needy, kinda insecure when he said, "Come on, Benny, just touch me again. Please."
Fraser moaned a little in the back of his throat and unclasped his hands. For a second they hovered, graceful and hesitant, between Fraser's knees, and then Fraser reached out and put them on Ray. Pushed Ray down on the bed and pulled him close and kissed him again, and his hands weren't even doing anything, one was pressed up against Ray's chest and the other was curled heavy over his hip. But it was like those giant heat pads the physical therapist used--Fraser's hands were warming Ray all the way to the bone, taking away all the ache and pain and leaving him slow and happy and hot.
They were lying side by side, nobody on top and nobody on the bottom, and apart from the hands they weren't even touching, mostly. There were a few inches between their chests, but Ray could feel Fraser's body heat anyway, could feel Fraser just like he could always tell when Fraser was behind him at a scene. His body, his blood just knew.
Which all made it sound like it wasn't urgent, but it was, it was necessary, if Fraser took his hands away Ray thought his heart might really dry up, and from the way Benny was breathing, deep and shuddery, Ray was pretty sure he felt the same way. He licked at the corner of Fraser's mouth and tasted salt.
He tried to pull back, but Fraser mumbled "No, Ray, I can't breathe" and sealed Ray's mouth with his own again.
And they were still going slower than Ray remembered ever going since high school, but it felt like if they went any faster it'd be like swallowing medicine and then just puking it up again. It felt like he needed to give Fraser plenty of time to soak in, so Ray kept his eyes shut and just kissed him and kissed him, for hours. They were sweating, and every now and then when Ray pressed closer his dick slid over Fraser's stomach, and that felt good enough he'd jump and gasp against Fraser, and then he could feel Fraser's breath hitch, feel Fraser exhale against his mouth, and that just made him want to kiss Fraser again even though by now Fraser's hand had slipped to the curve of Ray's ass, and when Fraser's breath hitched his fingers also flexed in this really hot way. Then Ray's dick started brushing Fraser's, and every time it happened Fraser moaned, right into Ray's mouth, and Ray could not believe how much that turned him on.
So he pressed a little closer, started thrusting a bit, still slow, just to see, and Fraser actually bit Ray's lip. Not hard enough to draw blood, just enough pressure that Ray couldn't draw away. He rocked against Ray, a few times, and then he let go of Ray's lip and said "Ray" against his cheek, and he put his hand down between them and wrapped it around Ray's dick.
Ray was pretty sure he was supposed to do something, do it back, but he couldn't move, couldn't even think. He just shook and shook and gripped Fraser's shoulder hard enough to probably be kind of uncomfortable while Fraser's warm hand slid up and down, firm and sweaty, and Fraser was talking in his ear, a restless urgent mumble he could barely make out.
For a second it reminded him of the train platform--he shivered, and it pushed his dick into Fraser's hand. "Ohhh," Ray moaned, straining to hear, and it wasn't poetry this time, it was just his name, just, "Yes, Ray, yes, Ray, Ray, Ray, yes, Ray--" Ray told his name in Fraser's mouth like rosary beads, and before he'd even gotten past the first Joyful Mystery he was coming, kept safe and grounded on the bed by Fraser's hand on his dick and Fraser's hand on his chest.
He lay there, trying to get some air, trying to get up the energy to move or even open his eyes. He traced a small design on Fraser's shoulder with his thumb--he realized with an embarrassed jolt that it was a heart--and Fraser said tightly, "I'm sorry, Ray, but please--" and pulled Ray's hand down to his own dick.
"Yeah, yeah," Ray mumbled, struggling to get his boneless hand around Fraser. Fraser's dick was weirdly slick, and--Ray realized it was his own come. He'd come on Fraser's dick. "Oh God." He finally opened his eyes and Fraser looked--red and sweaty and strung out and like he was this close to losing it, his hair curling a little at the edges and his wide eyes fixed on Ray's face. Ray finally got his fingers working, then.
The angle was weird, but once he got a good grip and said "Yeah, Benny, yeah," his voice sounding scratchy and unused--once he did that, Fraser did most of the work. And he kept looking at Ray. Everybody closed their eyes for this, but not Fraser--Fraser wanted to see, wanted to see Ray which was more than Ray could figure out. But it didn't matter if he could figure it out because he trusted it, he trusted Fraser. So he watched Fraser thrust into his fist, sloppy and desperate, and when Fraser's rhythm got shaky and he did finally close his eyes, Ray laced the fingers of his other hand with Fraser's and kissed him. Fraser squeezed Ray's hand and licked Ray's lower lip and came all over the sheets.
After a couple minutes Ray figured he better do something about that, but when he tried to pull away Fraser held tight to his hand and still didn't open his eyes.
"Hey, I was just gonna grab something to clean up the sheets with," Ray told him. "Hospital corners don't go with a wet spot." He thought wistfully of Fraser's undershirt, lying by the bottom right leg of the bed, but the guy lugged all his stuff to the laundromat every week, six blocks on foot, so he guessed his own was gonna have to bite the bullet. Somehow, though, he wasn't moving. He was kissing Fraser's fingers instead, one by one, and when Fraser's grip loosened, he sucked Fraser's index finger into his mouth.
Fraser's hand jerked, and then he took his other hand off of Ray's shoulder and reached up and started feeling around at the head of the bed. Ray couldn't figure out what he was doing until Fraser said, "There, no more hospital corners," and tugged Ray closer.
"Benny, I--" Ray started, and then couldn't think of anything to say that would be big enough for how he felt. He turned over and curled against Fraser, twisting so they could keep holding hands. It was weird, 'cause he was used to being on the outside of spooning, but it seemed to work fine and when Fraser stretched his arm around Ray's chest and pulled him in tight, Ray didn't even really mind being in half the wet spot. "I'll give you a ride to the laundromat later," he said finally.
Fraser smiled--Ray could tell even though the only part of Fraser's face that was touching him was his nose and forehead, mashed into Ray's scalp. "Thank you kindly, Ray."
"Don't thank me," Ray said. "I'll expect some more of that earnest grasping in exchange."
"Ray," Fraser scolded, the smile still in his voice, and Ray was gonna go out and buy Fraser a whole stack of poetry books, just as soon as he could stand to leave Fraser's bed. Although if past experience was anything to go by, that could be days.