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Marking Time
for kristiinthedark
Author's Notes: Many, many thanks to riverlight for the lightning-fast beta and tons of help with the ending.
He lasted almost three months. It was thirteen weeks (ninety-one days days, a whole lot of hours) of watching Fraser move, sitting across from him in diners and wanting to lick the corner of his mouth, keeping his hands mostly to himself and not once letting on that he wanted to push Fraser up against a wall and fuck him senseless.
Okay. Maybe he let on a little. But luckily Fraser wasn't that great at noticing non-case clues. Either that, or asking someone if they found you attractive meant something else in Canada.
Ray was betting on oblivious, counting on Fraser's cluelessness to keep him from being an idiot, right up until the moment when he just couldn't take it anymore.
And it wasn't entirely his fault. As long as Fraser kept the uniform on, he was fine with not touching. Well, not fine, but at least not sitting there in a dark car, across from a warehouse that they both knew didn't contain anyone committing a crime, with his hands clenched and his eyes pointed forward, because if he looked over he'd have to see Fraser sitting there in a pair of tight-as-fuck jeans and a ratty sweater. He was fine. Only he really, really wasn't, and all it took was Fraser clearing his throat for Ray to finally snap.
Everything considered, he thought he'd done pretty well at restraint. And when he pulled back, let go of Fraser's hair (which was every bit as soft as it looked, so it took a bit for Ray's fingers to get with the whole restraint plan), leaned away and took a shaky breath, it was the only thing he could think of to say.
Fraser disagreed. He disagreed pretty loudly, for him, while panting a little and stuttering. Ray ignored the words, because the whole time Fraser was talking he was rubbing at his lip and those jeans didn't leave a damn thing to the imagination. "This is really quite inappropriate," translated pretty easily to "this would be a much better idea in a bed," and Ray could totally get with that program.
***
That would have been the end of it, happily-ever-after with a house and a picket fence and a half-wolf under the kitchen table, except that Fraser turned out to be one of those guys who had standards and wanted to take things slowly. Which, yes, fine, Ray should have realized on his own because he'd been watching Fraser for three months and it was pretty clear that Fraser had standards.
When he pulled up in front of his apartment and Fraser got out of the car and kissed him goodnight (messily, with tongue, and Ray was never going to bitch about the licking things again) before calling for Dief and walking off into the night, Ray really shouldn't have been surprised.
And he wasn't. His dick was, which sucked a lot more than it should have given that there wasn't any actual sucking going on, but that was what happened when you fell for a guy with manners.
So after thirteen weeks of not touching, there were four months of touching without sex. Eighteen weeks. Fifty-three separate evenings on Ray's couch that ended with no actual fucking. Not that he was counting or anything.
Technically, it was fifty-four, if you added the night that Fraser got stuck at the Consulate and called to apologize for missing the game, the night they ended up talking about hockey while Ray maybe possibly slid his hand inside his sweats and listened to the reasons that Hull was infinitely better than Gretzky until he had to either hang up or explain the concept of phone sex in more detail than his brain cells could handle just then. Fifty-three and a half was probably about right.
All in all, the four months after the touching started were infinitely worse than the three months without it.
Because Fraser, he was good at the whole touching thing. Good at kissing, good at licking, good at whispering words that Ray honestly hadn't ever considered to be part of Fraser's vocabulary. Fraser was really good at all that stuff, and he also had a real talent for knowing just when Ray was about to snap and beg for more.
That was usually the point where Fraser decided to call it a night, leaving Ray sprawled on his couch wishing he was straight.
But during the fifth month, on a Tuesday afternoon when Ray was still a little shaky from a close call with a petty thief who turned out to be a little unclear on the concept of resisting arrest ("if you don't knock it off, I'm going to kick you in the head" seemed pretty simple to Ray, but a black eye and skinned elbow from hitting the pavement after guy hauled off and cracked him with a golf club argued otherwise) and then falling in Lake Michigan again while he explained the reasons not to resist arrest with a hands-on demonstration, Fraser decided that having sex was a good idea.
Ray was an observant guy. When Fraser grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into the supply closet, he figured that something was up. And when Fraser turned on the light and locked the door, Ray even knew to expect something more than a quick review of the definition of police brutality and an argument for non-violent responses to conflict.
Given the past seven months, though, he also thought that taking a moment to ask why Fraser was suddenly fumbling with the buttons on Ray's jeans and reaching into them to run the backs of his fingers along his suddenly-interested dick was reasonable.
Unfortunately, answering would have slowed things down, and Fraser was busy trying to drive him completely crazy by running his tongue along Ray's collarbone, sucking kisses up his neck and over the edge of his jaw. When Fraser slid one hand over his mouth and leaned in, pinning Ray's head against the door while he used the other hand to wrap around Ray's dick and make up for the fifty-three and a half times he walked out, Ray figured that it was a bad time to start a conversation.
Instead, he closed his eyes and bit his lip, careful not to make any noise beyond a couple of harsh breaths (and something that was definitely not a whimper, no matter what it sounded like). He was pretty sure that if he actually looked at Fraser's face this would be over much, much too fast.
And so it wasn't until a few minutes later, when Fraser gave him a quick kiss and then stepped back, pulled a handkerchief out of somewhere and generally looking like nothing had been going on, that Ray got around to questioning things.
By then it seemed sort of pointless, so he settled for zipping back up and being grateful that he wouldn't need to count to fifty-five.
***
Technically, it was Ray's fault that it was seventeen days before he returned the favor.
Supply-closet sex was one of those things that Fraser took as normal but that freaked Ray out. Knowing that Stella could walk in and find him blowing Fraser up against a shelf of copy paper was a little unnerving, and all the buttons and snaps and strings and leather that were usually between his hands and Fraser's cock didn't help things.
Fraser was still doing the blushing innocent routine at his apartment, and Ray wouldn't try anything at the station (because fuck it, he could have standards, too) and they were back to the touching-without-sex routine that Ray was starting to get way too comfortable with for a divorced guy with a willing partner. When he finally got sick of wondering what the hell was going on, Ray broke into the Consulate to ask.
That was the plan, at least. What actually ended up happening was a little more complicated.
Fraser was asleep, and Ray felt a little guilty waking him up just to talk about why they weren't fucking, so he decided to sneak back out again. And he would have, but he figured one quick kiss couldn't hurt anything. And as long as he was stealing a kiss, Ray took the opportunity to get a hand inside those stupid red pajama-things and introduce himself to Fraser's cock.
He was being polite, really.
Fraser woke up just before Ray got the second button undone, and at that point there was nothing to do but give Fraser a taste of what he was missing. As incentive or something. Ray dropped to his knees and wrapped his hand around Fraser's cock, leaning forward with his other arm over Fraser's hips to hold him still.
It took him a couple of minutes to figure out what to do with his mouth, but if the way Fraser's thighs shook and his fingers were clenched around the edges of the cot were any evidence, he was doing fine. Ray spent some time running his tongue around the head, tasting Fraser and soap and the starch that he used on those RCMP-issue boxers. He licked down the shaft, ran his fingers carefully over the tip of Fraser's cock and grinned at the sharp gasp Fraser sucked in.
Sucking, that was probably a good idea. Ray gave it a try, gently at first and then, when Fraser twitched a little and bucked up against his arm, harder, hard enough to make Fraser grunt and whisper "Fuck, I-" before Ray pulled his off and used his hand to slide along Fraser's cock, watching as Fraser's back arched and then he went still, coming all over Ray's hand with a shaky moan.
Ray waited for Fraser to open his eyes, licked his fingers clean and stood, pressing a fast, nasty kiss to Fraser's lips.
He let himself out.
***
The fight they had the next day was ugly and long but at least Fraser had figured out why Ray didn't want to fuck in the supply closet. Which wasn't much of a consolation when Ray ended up eating pizza on his couch and falling asleep in front of the television alone for the next eighty-three days.
And yeah, they were back to being friends after Ray's first experience falling into Lake Superior (which was cold as fuck, and made him miss Lake Michigan a little) but that was about it, and Ray figured he could be forgiven for trying to get Fraser's attention with a trip to Mexico and a poncho.
Fraser showed up at the hotel a few hours later, carrying a plastic bag from the local drugstore and looking a little nervous. Ray shrugged and let him in. He pointed Dief at the blanket outside the door and dropped a cruller. Without a word, Ray shut the door and headed for the bathroom to wash off the dirt from practice and soak some of the ache out of his shoulders under the spray.
Ray didn't say anything when Fraser slipped into the shower a few minutes later, didn't say anything when Fraser dropped to his knees and ran his hands up the backs of Ray's thighs, didn't say anything when Fraser pulled his hips forward and licked the water off the head of Ray's dick before he slipped a condom onto it and stood.
When Fraser turned around and braced himself against the tiles (which was hot and wrong and a better man would have stopped to ask what was going on, probably), Ray counted to ten and stepped forward, wrapping his arm around Fraser's ribs and his hand around Fraser's cock, pushing Fraser against the wall and pressing into him slowly.
Fraser's insistence on proper preparation was sometimes really, really useful.
Fraser hissed out a breath but pushed back against Ray, rocking into him. Ray bit his lip and thought about baseball, Welsh, Welsh's brother, but he gave it up when Fraser moaned and bucked into his hand. After that, things got a little blurry, a mixture of hot, wet, steam, tight, hot, hard, hot that was a whole lot shorter than Ray was hoping for but probably about what he should have expected after eighty-four days.
Once he caught his breath, Ray pulled out and leaned back. Fraser slumped against the wall, forehead pressed to the tiles and panting harshly. Ray reached out to run his hand down Fraser's back before wrapping it over his hip. He pulled carefully and Fraser pushed off the wall, settling against Ray's chest as they stood under the water until it started to run cold.
Ray woke up the next morning in an empty bed, but he figured the cup of coffee steaming on the nightstand was as much of an apology as he needed.
***
After that, he stopped counting hours (two months, nine weeks, sixty-four days). Fraser wouldn't move out of the Consulate, but he spent the night once in a while and Ray got used to making compromises. It was good, fantastic, everything he wanted (except for the being careful and the nights that Fraser still insisted on leaving, because he couldn't explain why he wasn't there when Thatcher called in the middle of the night for some stupid form. Ray was pretty sure that wasn't what she was checking on, but he kept his mouth shut and did his best to convince Fraser that he could be an adult). Ray had no one to blame but himself when his mother almost walked in on them.
Fraser was leaning up against the stove, and Ray was on his knees on linoleum that was a hell of a lot cleaner now that there was a good chance one of them would end up sprawled on it a couple of times a week, when they heard the lock click.
Ray wasn't a complete idiot. The chain was latched and by the time he got it open they were both decent and only a little out of breath. But Fraser didn't see it that way, and Ray's arguments about "it's not like she won't call from now on" and "how was I supposed to tell her she couldn't have a key?" didn't work that well. Or at all, since Fraser went back to the touching-but-not-sex that had almost killed Ray the first time.
Hotel rooms were expensive, and a little ridiculous given that they were two single guys in their thirties with an apartment and an office and a supply closet available.
Ray got really sick of polyester bedspreads and continental breakfasts after the first month.
***
When Maggie showed up, Ray's flirting was as much a complaint about spending twenty-three weeks paying for Chicago hotel rooms as it was genuine interest. And he wasn't sure what Fraser was doing, but he figured around the time they tried to get through a doorway at the same time that something wasn't working.
Before he could figure out how to bring up the problem, Ray found himself hanging from the wing of a plane and then trying his damnedest not to freeze to death. It didn't seem like a good time to mention that his credit card was maxed out and he'd asked his mom to give back her apartment key five days ago.
After that, things got a little a little crazy. Ray found himself out in the middle of the big Canadian wilderness, wrapped in about a dozen layers and wondering if he'd ever be warm enough to think about sex ever again. That night, Fraser rolled close and started sliding his hands into Ray's shorts, but he was fucking freezing and it didn't matter whether the air was at zero degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit, it was too goddamned cold for pulling out any appendages he wanted to keep.
Fraser looked confused, but he didn't argue, just kissed Ray and slid into his own sleeping bag and fell asleep.
Ray curled into a ball and thought about how much his life sucked for a long time that night.
Twenty-two days later, Fraser called the dogs to a halt in front of a tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere.
***
Fraser came back from patrol with a calendar two weeks after they unpacked the supplies and settled in. He didn't say anything, just pulled off his boots and walked across the room to hang it next to the bookshelf.
Ray crossed off the days as they went by, thought about pizza and hotel rooms and Lake Michigan. He thought about beginnings and endings when Fraser was gone for too long and the cold started feeling like it was sinking into his bones, but somewhere along the way he stopped counting.
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