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Share and Share Alike
for nell monroe
Author's Notes: Thanks to my co-worker and house-host, Janet, possibly the coolest AARP member on the planet, who wants to read what I've written but has accepted with remarkable equanimity the fact that I'm going to have to explain it to her in quite painfully thorough detail first, probably over several glasses of wine. Thanks also to Dira, who hung out with me online and bitched about other things, and to TFV and MMWD, who distracted me beautifully with their intense and funny clevernesses in entirely Mountie-free universes.
For obvious reasons, this story owes a serious inspirational debt to Lynnmonster and her untitled 2004 K/T tentacleporn story.
warning: this is semikinky!sex threesome fic with tentacles, all as per the recipient's request. in light of this, it need hardly be said that this is also crackfic, at least by some definitions thereof, and thus not exactly a model of logic where character motivations and certain qualities of physical science are concerned. on the other hand, there is exactly zip angst herein, and what with one thing and another various people do have rather a lot of sex. furthermore, no aliens were harmed in the making of this story. (quite the reverse, in fact. or so I'm told.)
Share and Share Alike
When Ray Vecchio returns from Florida, he looks relieved.
Ben does not find this particularly surprising. He has met former ASA Kowalski, after all--seen her "in action," as it were--and the deleterious effects she's had on his partners have not been lost on him. Indeed, he finds Ray Vecchio's return to be a relief as well, not least--though also, if he is honest with himself, not primarily--because when Ray returned, his now-ex-wife stayed behind. It can't have been easy, Ben suspects, having a second marriage fall apart under one's hands, but he sees nothing of that strain in Ray Vecchio's face. Quite the reverse, oddly enough: Ray's smile is easier, his eyes less cynical, his whole elegantly clad body more relaxed and at ease.
Watching him, covertly, Ben finds himself ... excited.
At the time of Ray Vecchio's return, Ray Kowalski is on an undercover assignment in Evanston, running a college record store under the typically improbable name of Blackie Robinson as part of a multi-jurisdictional effort to stop a Britney Spears bootlegging ring. When he comes back to the precinct, he keeps Robinson's piratical silver hoop earring and pale brown goatee. He looks improbably deliberate and dangerous, and his vociferously irritable reaction to his ex-wife's second ex-husband carries an undeniable electrical charge that amplifies his typical kinetic energy.
Watching him--somewhat less covertly, given their more recent partnership--Ben finds himself ... well, Ray Kowalski's phrase for it would be "all worked up," and that seems to Ben as accurate a phrase as any, particularly given its inherent adverbial double entendre. Suffice it to say that he develops a new appreciation for the relative roominess of the Uniform's lower half.
For his part, Ray Vecchio ceases to look particularly relieved--or, for that matter, relaxed. Neither, however, does he return to what Ben privately characterizes as the "Stella state." On balance, Ben thinks, the change is more positive than not: Ray Vecchio may be off balance, but at least he's on equal footing with what's disconcerting him.
A month after Ray Kowalski's record-store stint ends, Lieutenant Welsh--in a move Ben views, with some trepidation, as both inspired and insane--partners Ray Vecchio and Ray Kowalski with one another. Sparks begin, almost visibly, to fly. Detectives Huey and Dewey take bets from their co-workers on when and where the two Rays will come to blows. Whether this will happen is generally assumed to be a given. Ben, who has never been a conventional gambler and who is intimately familiar with the energy being generated, keeps his own counsel--and his money. The pool grows; the participants lose their initial stakes and bet again. Ben is not surprised.
He is, however, extraordinarily, distressingly distracted.
Watching Ray and Ray together--watching them work, watching them fight, watching them disappear multiple times for measurable moments and return flushed and sweaty and smelling so strongly of sex that Ben cannot imagine how they continue to keep their liaisons secret from their fellow officers--Ben's excitement swells. So, increasingly often, does his cock. He begins to have nightly, feverish dreams, intensely carnal and viscerally real: Ray's mouth on his cock, Ray's teeth on his nipples, Ray's hands--all four--stroking and pumping him to the brink of orgasm and leaving him hanging there, right there, shivering uncontrollably and unable to move a muscle to resolve his tormented state.
It is undeniably, unbelievably delicious.
It is also embarrassingly inconvenient, as the necessity of coping with the resulting morning erections begins to make Ben consistently late for his morning duties, no matter how efficiently he tries to resolve the issue at, well, hand.
In desperation, Ben mounts a deliberate countercampaign. Reasoning that one's body can produce only so many erections, sustain only so many climaxes, before its resources must be replenished and respite from arousal thereby be provided, he allows his fantasies to enter his waking hours and incorporates into his morning routine a regular period of masturbation. To avoid Turnbull's sharp eye--the man may appear dense, but he has a supply colonel's instinctive sense of vanishing stores--Ben purchases the requisite tissues from a suspiciously well-stocked convenience store between the Consulate and the precinct. A week into the program, he adds lubricant to his shopping list.
Ben buys a great deal of Kleenex and KY over the ensuing month.
At the end of that month, with his self-allotted sexual-supply discretionary fund severely depleted and his Rays-driven libido more active than ever, Ben resigns himself to declaring the experiment a failure. At which point, abruptly and without notice, his life takes a sharp turn for the sexually fulfilled--with, as Ray Vecchio might say, a side order of the more-than-a-little weird.
*****
It begins late one Monday evening, at the close of what has been an otherwise perfectly ordinary day, when Ben follows Ray Kowalski out into the small parking lot at the side of the precinct building and finds himself abruptly pushed into a dark corner of the lot by Ray Vecchio. For a brief, insane moment Ben wonders whether his partners, having decided to favor the intimate side of their relationship, are now looking for an alternative target for their more pugilistic impulses and have seized upon him as the most likely candidate for the position.
The real answer turns out to be nothing like that simple.
Visible over Ray Vecchio's shoulder before the latter sinks to his knees--his knees!--in front of Ben, Ray Kowalski gives Ben a hot, challenging look and the back of his partner's head a shorter, sharper one before sliding into the GTO and departing. Otherwise, thank God, the lot is empty save for Ray Vecchio--under whose knees, Ben now notices, lies one of Ray Kowalski's cleaner garage towels--and Ben himself. No more than thirty seconds have elapsed since the side door closed--and locked--behind Ben's back, but time itself seems to have stopped, along with all signs of life in the Chicago night outside the bubble around the two men. Thank God for early sunsets and dysfunctional streetlamps.
Backed against the wall, Ben stares down at Ray Vecchio. Ray Vecchio stares back, unsmiling, intense. His hands are wrapped around Ben's hips, strong fingers digging into Ben's buttocks; Ben's hands have found their way, seemingly without his volition, to Ray's shoulders and are gripping there, hard. Under the fabric of his brown uniform pants, his cock is suddenly, achingly erect.
Suddenly, Ray grins. "Thank God," he says, inexplicably. "That damn red wool get-up would've ruined the plan."
Almost as baffled as he is aroused, Ben opens his mouth to ask the first in a long line of questions. Ray's hand, lifted quickly to cover Ben's lips, stops him. "Shh, Fraser. Don't ask. Don't talk. Just ... roll with it." Ben tries to speak a second time, but the words morph into a low moan as the hand across his mouth shifts down and joins the other at the fastening of his pants, which quickly separates under Ray's expert ministrations. Seconds later, Ben's uniform pants and boxers are around his thighs, prevented from falling only by Ray's arm where it encircles his hips and buttocks, and Ray's other hand is tipping Ben's rigid cock away from his body, out towards Ray's mouth. Ray licks his lips, and Ben can feel Ray's hot breath gusting unevenly over the wet tip of his erection. The sensation is excruciatingly pleasurable, and Ben's knees weaken.
"Ray!" It's one of Ben's nighttime fantasies come, utterly improbably, to life. He's on the verge of being fellated to orgasm, by his partner, in a public place. Anyone could see them. Other law enforcement officers could see them. He has to stop. He has to. He--
Ben's body settles the matter with a sharp, involuntary thrust towards Ray's mouth. Ray laughs low in his throat, tightens his fist around the base of Ben's cock, and sucks the head into his mouth. Ben cries out sharply as a bolt of pleasure shoots through him, and Ray's eyes flick upward in warning. Gasping for breath, Ben tightens one fist on Ray's shoulder, dimly sensible of the need to keep his hands away from Ray's head--don't push, don't push--and brings the other one to his mouth to muffle his groans. Ray smiles around Ben's cock, hollows his cheeks, and begins to suck.
Ben's head thunks back against the wall, and he bites his fist in time with Ray's strokes. Oh, God. God. So good. This is-- he wants-- he needs-- ah-- ah--
"Nnnngh!" Even muffled, Ben fears, that noise must be far, far too audible--but Ray has swallowed Ben, taken Ben's cock deeply down his throat, and before he can even warn the other man Ben is coming almost violently, spurt after spurt, and the noise he makes as he does so is really the least of his concerns.
Almost immediately, he pries open his eyes. God, what Ray must think of him. He should apologize. He should-- But Ray is standing, smiling at him, licking his lips and leaning in, angling his head and opening his mouth over Ben's, kissing him deeply and sweetly.
The kiss goes on for some time.
Ben is distantly aware of Ray's fingers moving throughout, tucking and zipping and patting Ben back into some semblance of publicly presentable normality. When Ray finally lifts his head, Ben's mouth and chin are slick with the two of them. Ray grins at him again--a grin not unlike Ray Kowalski's, which Ben finds both amazing and, impossibly, arousing.
"Hang in there, Fraser. It only gets better from here." And without further word--without anything that might conceivably be understood as an explanation--he picks up the towel, turns, and walks away. Slumped against the wall, breathless and drained in the wake of his partner's ministrations, Ben watches him go.
Though he knows others might disagree--not least those with whom he works--Ben has never considered himself a man given to hyperbole. Nor has he ever cared for the tendency among those inclined towards exaggeration to misuse the concept of literality--to state, for example, that they are literally too tired to stand when they are clearly standing right in front of one.
In the wake of events just past, however, he begins to understand where those he previously regarded as linguistic miscreants may be, as either Ray might say, "coming from." For surely that was the ... the blow job, yes, to end all blow jobs, and certainly--he gathers just enough energy to sniff the air--that scent on the breeze must literally be smoke coming out of his ears.
Ben walks home in a rather unsteady daze.
The next morning, for the first time in weeks, he is early to his Consular duties.
When Inspector Moorhead releases Ben that afternoon and he turns his steps toward the precinct, he has recovered sufficiently to have formulated a firm intention: he will pull his partners aside at the earliest opportunity and find out, as he himself now finds it entirely necessary to say, what the hell is going on.
But no opportunity presents itself--at least, no opportunity that would allow both for the presence of all three men and the time necessary for Ben to do such things as outwait his partners' inevitably raucous amusement as his insistence on using the correct clinical term for the act in which he and Ray Vecchio engaged. By the time he reaches the precinct, the squad room is knee-deep in the squealing pre-teen members of an East Tennessee clogging team, the coach and sponsor of which have been arrested by Detectives Huey and Dewey--mistakenly, as it turns out--on suspicion of smuggling homemade methamphetamines over state lines in the thick soles of their proteges' dancing shoes. As the recognized expert in taking care of someone else's progeny, due to his family's enthusiastic procreational tendencies, Ray Vecchio has been pressed into emergency babysitting service, and the look he shoots Ben the moment the latter steps over the threshold so clearly begs for help that Ben puts aside his burning desire for sexual clarification and wades into the fray alongside his partner. By the time the misunderstanding is resolved and the area free once again of step-dancing children and the strains of Billy Ray Cyrus's single hit, one of Ray Kowalski's informants has been reported missing from his cotton-candy emporium. After that, the day rapidly becomes complicated, and at the end of their mutual extended shift Ben and the Rays part exhausted company with nary an indication that, fewer than thirty-six hours ago, Ben came explosively down Ray Vecchio's throat with Ray Kowalski's apparent blessing.
As he collapses onto his cot, untied hiking boots still half on, Ben's last conscious thought is a renewal of the morning's vow: tomorrow, he will find out from his partners what the hell is going on.
Like the day before, however, the next afternoon--and ensuing evening, night, early morning, and several days thereafter--teem with casework and craziness. Indeed, Ben and his partners are so genuinely busy that week, and the interaction between the three of them so ordinary (for some value thereof), that Ben begins to suspect some higher power of deliberately frustrating his need for an explanation for the best orgasm, thus far, of his life.
Put that way, Ben realizes, it seems probable that the higher power is a beneficent one.
Further proof of this presents itself approximately ten irritatingly explanation-free days after Ben's initial amorous encounter with Ray Vecchio, in a context only slightly less surprising than and not entirely unrelated to the precinct parking lot. It's long past midnight at the McMursky & Co. Warehouse stakeout, and Ray Vecchio has been gone for more than ten minutes in search of coffee, when Ben is abruptly startled out of his focus on the warehouse dock by the unfamiliar warmth of Ray Kowalski's long, narrow hand landing heavily in his lap where he sits in the GTO's passenger seat.
Ben twitches, surprised, and then groans; just the idea of Ray's skin against his cock is making him harden rapidly within the confines of his jeans. Ray's fingers curve under his testicles, rubbing and massaging, and then squeeze, hard and knowingly. Ben's back arches and he thrusts helplessly into Ray's hand, gasping in pained pleasure. Ray drags the back of fingers slowly up the center seam of Ben's jeans, pressing down as he goes, and Ben writhes under him. When Ray reaches Ben's waistband, he turns his hand and flicks open the buttons on Ben's fly. Ben's own scent rises up to him in waves from the V of his opened jeans, and he gasps again. Ray's hand comes back to his waist, nails scratching roughly over the skin of his belly as Ray slides his hand inside Ben's boxers and pushes them far enough down to draw Ben's cock out into the air. Ben gasps a third time and his hands belatedly come up to Ray's arm and clutch at it, though with what intent is not clear even to him.
"Shh, Fraser." Ray's voice comes thickly from close to Ben's left shoulder, and his breath against Ben's ear sends a cascade of shivers down Ben's spine. "Don't think. Don't talk. Just ... feel," and God, hasn't Ben heard something very much like that from someone else somewhere important recently? But then Ray's hand moves, and moves again, and keeps moving, sliding up and down Ben's cock, faster and harder, friction and heat and astonishing welcome tightness and the unbearably sweet relief of someone else's hand touching him, and Ben clenches his fists on his own thighs and grits his teeth and tries not to come too soon.
He lasts longer than he'd have thought possible, all things considered. He lasts until Ray tells him not to, until Ray leans even closer to him and speeds up his hand still more and licks a slow, warm, wet path from the point of Ben's jaw up into the short hairs behind his ear and says, hoarsely, "Come on, now, Fraser, give it up, give it to me, give it to us..." and Ben does.
When Ben comes back to himself, insofar as he's capable of doing so, the world in front of him has whited out. For one brief and exceedingly strange moment, Ben hears the echo of a grade-school classmate's voice in his head--"Do it too much and you'll go blind!"--but as his head slowly clears he sees mist in the air and realizes it must be condensation on the windshield, born of his and Ray's activities. Windshield ... car ... warehouse ... work!
"Ray! My God, the stakeout--"
Ray laughs at him from somewhere safely back on the driver's side, voice only a little strained. "Relax, Fraser. What kind of a cop d'you think I am, anyway, that I'd molest my partner while on duty? Vecchio called our relief in half an hour ago when he went hunting the wild Starbucks. We've been on break for the past twenty minutes."
Ah. Ah. So: once again, Ben has been the target of his partners' concerted efforts to ... to ... to what? To distract him? To seduce him? To confuse him to death, albeit in the most delightful of ways? If he had the energy to lift his head, he'd ask Ray Kowalski and be done with it, notwithstanding Ray Vecchio's suspiciously convenient absence. By the time he musters the wherewithal, however, Ray is out of the car talking to Elaine and her new partner, Detective Allard, and Ben has just enough time to hastily reassemble himself before courtesy dictates that he join them.
Ray offers him a ride home afterwards, of course. But Ben, finding himself in dire need of time for serious thought and planning, declines, despite his pleasant state of exhaustion, and walks himself home. The next morning, unfortunately, he awakens without a useful thought or plan in his head where his partners are concerned.
On the other hand, he is once again early for work at the Consulate.
It all begins to feel oddly familiar, the more so when, on walking into the precinct that afternoon, he is confronted by Ray Kowalski riding somewhat shell-shocked herd on a troop of bilingual Girl Guides from Montreal who seem remarkably determined to obtain their Foreign Law Enforcement badges in the most creatively destructive of ways. Sighing, Ben shoos several giggling, chattering nuisances into the nearest interview room and swiftly reduces them to a state of biddable catatonia by reading them the drier, if solidly on-point, portions of the CPD manual. On emerging from the room to the accompaniment of a chorus of treble snores, he is manifestly unsurprised to find himself snagging his jacket with one hand and the Stetson with the other as he follows both Rays on their way out the door to the scene of a suspicious banana-stand arson, investigation into which extends into the wee small hours of the morning.
And so it goes. Every week or ten days, one or the other of the Rays waylays Ben in some unexpected fashion and entangles him in an increasingly intense sexual encounter. Notwithstanding their creative variety, these encounters share some significant traits. Every encounter occurs with the blessing, whether tacit or explicit, of the Ray not actually present. Every encounter raises questions in Ben's brain, even as it further educates his increasingly experienced body. Every encounter is followed by a period of work so intense and exhausting as to render impractical any substantive discussion of their apparent sexual triumvirate. And every encounter causes Ben yet more incendiary pleasure.
Ben learns that Ray Kowalski likes to watch Ben's face contort helplessly as he jerks Ben off, and that Ray Vecchio prefers blow jobs to rimming for himself but will eagerly engage in either when Ben is on the receiving end. Ray Vecchio finger-fucks Ben slowly and sweetly on several successive occasions, bringing him shuddering to completion with one finger and then two and then four, before he's willing to fuck Ben as hard and as long as Ben has begged him to from the outset. Ray Kowalski moves from a single finger to one slender, strong fist in Ben's ass in one marathon session; that time Ben loses count of his orgasms. Ray Kowalski loves Ben's nipples; he can make Ben come just by playing with them--and he does, often. Ray Vecchio makes Ben lie face up and spreadeagled on the bed one night, forbids him to touch himself in any way, and talks at him in low-voiced, dirty, dialectical Italian until Ben comes apart without anyone's hand on him anywhere. Both Rays, separately, make Ben masturbate in front of them as they watch, eyes glittering, legs apart, burgeoning erections tenting the fabric at their groins. Ben uses his own KY from his old experiment for this, but he's long since abandoned the fantasies that necessitated its purchase: he stares directly at each of the other men as he strokes and teases himself, both times closing his eyes only at the very end, when he finally loses control.
And then, one night, when Ben and Ray Kowalski arrive at what has, over time, become the meeting place of choice (sturdy bed, large shower, thick walls, and so on), Ray Vecchio is there waiting for them, sitting in the armchair against the window with a glass of wine in his hand. No one in the room appears to be surprised--not even Ben, who, as the person ostensibly least in charge of the situation, would be the one most likely to manifest such a reaction. In truth, however, Ben has long since recognized the primary dynamics at play in their partnership and the inevitable point to which those dynamics must lead them, and he has been waiting for this night with considerable anticipation.
But he plays his appointed part with enthusiasm, knowing that his responses will, as ever, heighten his partners' pleasure. Although he can't feign surprise, he can--and does--lodge a token protest regarding the proposed alteration to their alliance. He is concerned, he tells them, about risking the valuable relationships--working and ... otherwise--they've each formed and on which they daily rely. What are they doing, he asks? What is this plan they've been enacting with him, this relationship to which they've clearly been building up over the past weeks and months?
Works fly; sparks, ditto. Finally, Ray Kowalski throws up his hands, voice rough with his by-now-usual combination of frustration and arousal. "Fine, dammit, Fraser, fine. You gotta have a name for it, a concept, a fucking viable framework for what we got here? Call it shared custody, okay? And then do me a favor: don't ask, don't think, just go with it. We'll make it worth your while. Promise."
Ben nods, capitulating willingly. And they do.
Oh, they do.
*****
Wrung out, used up, and thoroughly debauched, Ben lets his aching body relax into the ties that bind him. As he sags, the bonds behind him seem to lengthen, allowing his shoulders to relax into the mattress, and the cuffs around his wrists begin a gentle pulsating that is deeply, profoundly soothing. Such good men, his Rays, Ben thinks sleepily, meeting in every way his bone-deep need to be wanted and used and fucked and still sparing a thought for his comfort both during the experience and after. Auto-massaging bondage cuffs, of all things. He wonders which one of them came up with that idea. Possibly a joint inspiration: for two essentially contrary men possessed of strong territorial impulses, Ray Vecchio and Ray Kowalski seem to have arrived at a remarkable meeting of the minds. One might almost think they had obtained the assistance of some kind of mediator.
This reminds Ben, obscurely, of the fiction the other men utilized to justify the deeply pleasurable position in which he now finds himself. Shared custody, indeed. A serious matter in the ordinary course of things, but an amusing--and highly arousing--concept in the present circumstances, though not one Ben would necessarily have expected either Ray Kowalski or Ray Vecchio to come up with on their own. He knows Stella occasionally fulfilled the Chicago bar's pro bono requirement by taking on custody cases for the local legal-services organization; he suspects this provided the seed of the idea. If the three of them are to hew to a simulacrum of the legal model, however, it seems to Ben that they should do so in all pertinent particulars--and if Ben's understanding of shared custody is correct, that means there is an important actor missing from the stage. At the very least, it should be entertaining to hear his partners' reactions to the idea.
Ben clears his throat, suddenly reminded of the other uses to which the muscles involved have recently been put, and addresses his partners.
"Ray. Ray." Curious, how the customary repetition of the name now serves a useful purpose. "I believe you asked me, earlier, to envision our new arrangement as shared custody." Tired chuckles emanate from the overstuffed corner armchair, which the other men are now sharing. "As I understand it, such an arrangement between two parties who have a history of the sort of ... passionate disagreement in which the two of you typically engage requires the presence of a third-party neutral, a 'buffer zone,' who can assist in creating a mutually beneficial relationship."
Ray Vecchio laughs again, harder this time. "Christ, Fraser, you are something else. If coming your brains out didn't short-circuit your vocabulary unit, I'd have thought hanging out with the Polack here--ow, dammit, get your pointy elbow back where it belongs--would've done the damage way before now."
"I'm gonna ignore the racial invective being directed my way by the Italian not-quite-a-fucking-Stallion over here, on account of the fact that I'm just in too good a mood to bother with kicking him in the head--me and no army, asshole, the state you're in my mother could do it for me and you'd still go down for the count--and actually direct my response to your remark, Frase, because I am just that kind of guy. Yeah, we know shared custody stuff needs some assistance from outside the relationship, at least when you're first starting out. We checked the rules and regs; we ain't cops for nothing, y'know."
Now Ben is a little surprised. So the shared-custody idea was actually part of the Rays' long-term plan, rather than being invented for argument's sake in the heat of the moment. Interesting. Clever. And--knowing his partners--just slightly worrisome.
Ray Kowalski continues. "Here's the deal. With this kind of arrangement, you got your two basic choices for the guardian-supervisor-type person. One is, you find a citizen of our fair country, what you might call an American. Which is harder than it should be in this situation, on account of the point of the whole set-up being primarily fucking of various sorts. Never mind the fact that we're all consenting adults, people get really bizarrely stupid about that kind of thing. Their loss, but still. So we ruled that one out."
For a moment, Ben considers reopening the debate in which he has frequently engaged with both Rays, separately and together, regarding the somewhat jingoistic inaccuracy of characterizing as American only those residents of a small portion of the continent bearing that name. The moment passes swiftly, for obvious reasons.
"The other choice for custodial supervisor, though--the other choice fit our preferred candidate to what you might call, if you were trying for the title of King of the Obvious like Vecchio over here, a T." The sounds Ben hears suggest that Ray Vecchio has responded to this sally with the hardest shove possible within the confines of a single shared armchair. "Go ahead, Vecchio--tell Ben how this is gonna work."
"Tempting, but...nah. All things considered, I think Turnbull ought to be the bearer of good news on this one."
Turnbull?
Ben is suddenly considerably more awake.
"Good call," Ray Kowalski says. "Turnbull? You're up."
From close behind him--behind him?--Ben hears Turnbull's characteristic shy cough. He angles his head to the right and cranes it back on the pillow, trying to see his subordinate's face.
What he sees first are his subordinate's tentacles.
The gently tapered ends, wrapped firmly around Ben's wrists, continue to flex in time with his pulse, which is adamantly refusing to accelerate despite what would seem to be an ideal situation in which to do so. Ben's eyes follow the well-muscled line of the tentacle on his right--smoothly tan, lightly furred with pale blond hair, and really quite pleasing to the eye--all the way up to where it disappears into the sleeve of Turnbull's sparkling white regulation short-sleeved T-shirt, and then shift to Turnbull's face. Even upside-down, Turnbull's smile remains the same sweet, earnest, slightly dim expression with which Ben is all too familiar.
Ben finds this somewhat alarming.
Or he would, he feels sure, if he could muster the energy to do anything other than lie here, entirely fucked-out, drained by his partners of every drop of semen and--apparently--every adrenaline reflex his body possesses, shackled by ... by ... by Turnbull's tentacles, for the love of Pete. He risks a quick look downwards and is distantly relieved to discover that the now-loosed strictures formerly anchoring his ankles appear to be conventional, shearling-lined leather bondage gear. He spares a thought for the ways in which his understanding of the concept of "conventional" has changed since he moved to Chicago and first met the first Ray Vecchio, but only a thought. Under the circumstances, his priorities necessarily lie elsewhere.
Turnbull coughs again, and Ben's attention returns to what he can see of the head of the bed, behind which Turnbull stands, his tentacles snaking around on either side to grip Ben's wrists. Oddly, Turnbull appears to be waiting for something. What in the world can the man possibly ... oh. Ben clears his own throat and summons an improbable veneer of hierarchical dignity.
"Yes, Constable? Do please explain."
Turnbull looks relieved. "Well, sir, as you know, I am not native to the United States." A snort emanates from the general vicinity of the Rays' armchair roost. It is quickly, if not quietly, suppressed. "In addition, given that my presence in the United States arises from my posting at the Consulate rather than from any academic situation or formal educational purpose, I possess neither an F nor a J visa. Nor have I yet applied for what is colloquially referred to as 'green-card status,' although I cherish the hope that this avenue will become open to me some day."
"Get on with it, Turnbull." Ray Kowalski's voice is lazy, the characteristic thread of humor in it affectionate. "Take the man off the hook, why don't you. Tell him why you're here."
"Right you are, Detective." As usual, Turnbull's pleasure at receiving a direct command is audible. "Well, sir, as I was saying, I am neither a foreign student nor a lawful permanent citizen. I am, however, in the United States on a legitimate government visa. Furthermore, I have been here for more than nine contiguous months thus far this year, well over the statutorily requisite one hundred and eighty-three days." Even from Ben's awkward position, Turnbull's proud smile is clearly visible.
The light begins to dawn.
"You mean," Ben says, his pleasure-dazed mind finally -- reluctantly -- beginning to make sense of the situation, "you're a ... a ..."
"Yes, sir," Turnbull says happily. "I am a bona fide resident alien."
-FIN-
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