Midnight Hour

Episode-related: Ladies Man
Response to the masturbation challenge. And the post-episode sex challenge. Warnings: Slash, PWP, m/m fantasy
Pairings: Fraser/Ray K.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: A Fraser martini: shaken and stirred.

Disclaimers: I write this stuff for love. You couldn't pay me enough to do this for money. They belong to Alliance.

Acknowledgments: Blessed by betas from Sandy S., Chrysothemis, Te.

I sit on my cot in the now-silent Consulate that has become my home, and contemplate my partner. When did Ray become invaluable to me?

I don't love people easily -- places, animals, yes, but not people. But in less than a year, he's become as dear to me as Diefenbaker. And Ray doesn't know, can't suspect how I feel. He doesn't understand what I mean when I call him my partner. Even a few months ago, when I offered him asylum in the Consulate, he didn't understand that he could ask me for anything, far more than just belief in his innocence, and I would say "yes." Animals understand when I show my love through my actions. People never seem to. Ray doesn't. Words, which serve me so well in other ways, never seem able to convey my emotions.

My fingers strum the guitar idly. I'm not really thinking about the song I'm playing. I'm thinking about how he cried tonight, in the car. He cried in front of me. I grieved with him, but I was also honored that he trusted me with his emotions. Ray shows his emotions the way I never could.

I keep everything inside. My upbringing is not entirely to blame. True, my grandparents drummed reserve into me, but I took it to extremes. I've buried my heart so deep that sometimes I can't find it. My father was never this way, and I'm told that my grandparents raised me far more leniently than they raised him. I even wondered at one point if I was slightly autistic, but as far as I am able to self-diagnose, I suffer merely from repression. So when passion breaks through my reserve, it catches me by surprise, and the loss of control shocks me.

I am more alone than usual since Diefenbaker chose to go home with Turnbull tonight. Turnbull made the mistake of mentioning, within my friend's view, that he planned to cook dinner for a date. I imagine Dief will be disappointed to discover that Turnbull's date is a young man, rather than a young lady, but Turnbull's cooking should console him.

And for once, Dief's absence consoles me.

Usually, I masturbate only in the shower, and that rarely. I fully understand that self-gratification is natural and common, especially among those who are abstinent for long periods, but I remain self-conscious and slightly ashamed by it. Too self-conscious to touch myself in front of Diefenbaker.

Even though he's never shown me the same delicacy: I've seen him mount an inanimate object on the busiest street in Moosejaw. Not to mention the collie bitch in heat last week. She seemed agreeable, it was a shame that her owner was present and opposed to the mating.

It seems that Diefenbaker has more intercourse than either I or Ray. While we were investigating Mr. Tucci's murder, Ray said that he at least still thinks about women, unlike me. He was right. While I have loved at least one woman, and been sexually attracted to several in the past, none interest me now. Instead, I think about Ray.

There is nothing to stop me from pleasuring myself tonight. I put away the guitar, and pull two handkerchiefs from the desk drawer that functions as my dresser. I love him. I imagine I could fall in love with him, if I allowed myself. If he ever encouraged me, I might risk the loss of control. But he hasn't. Instead he has grieved for his broken marriage and propositioned every female in the department, including at least two suspects. At times I study him for clues that he may be amenable to my attentions, but alas, he appears firmly heterosexual.

I will not fall in love with him. Victoria taught me a terrible lesson. It has three parts: that my body's lust can focus on completely inappropriate objects, that my heart sides as easily with my body as with my mind, and that the triumvirate of body, heart, and mind is a strict democracy. In self-defense, I've gagged my heart. It aches, but that is preferable to a bullet in the back and the shame of living with the consequences of my actions when I'm out of control. Out of my mind.

As I unbutton my longjohns, I am reminded of the quote from Hamlet, "What a noble mind is here overthrown." Noble is too grand a word for my mind, but the sentiment holds. The experience of being in love, for me, is a powerful obsession, an affliction. I felt it once, and it nearly destroyed me. Once was more than enough.

I grasp my penis gently and wrap it in one of the handkerchiefs. It is flaccid, now, from remembering the Aftermath of Victoria. I refer to the entire incident as though it were an important historic battle. Which, on a small personal scale, it was.

But I don't want to think about Victoria now. I want to think about Ray. Before I met Ray, I thought I was self- sufficient. Now I know that my heart is the lacking, the runt of the litter, compared to his.

Beautiful Ray. Ray, who needs someone to believe in him. Ray, who is so strong that he allows himself to be vulnerable in my presence. Ray, so unselfconsciously confident, so masculine, he moves with the grace of an alpha wolf. Ray, who feels so deeply and whose emotions boil out of him, who can live with his feelings visible to the wide world. Ray, who is all the things I am not. I envy him deeply, and I want to make love to him, want him to make love to me, want so much --

I breathe faster as I invoke his presence. Ray's voice, his smell, his touch when he first hugged me. My cock swells. I imagine us in my father's cabin, where there's plenty of room to be alone. Alone with each other. I could break open my shell of reserve. Show him my emotions, the way he graced me with his. But instead of his grief, I'd bring him my desire.

He wouldn't back down, he never does. No, he'd close on me, get "in my face," grind his chest and hips against me. This is a fantasy, and tonight I choose to be passive. No duty, no need to act. He comes to me. I can bear to wait for him to reach between our bodies and cup me through the cloth, because I know he will. I stroke my erection, and it's his hand wrapped around my cock.

He leans in, closer, closer, until his mouth closes over mine.

Oh god, his mouth. Wet and hot and open, so confident. I wet a finger and run it over the whorls of my ear, and it's his tongue, licking, sucking gently on my lobe, whispering into my ear. He's going to do everything he ever wanted to my body. "Yes," I whisper back. I'd do anything for him. I'd do everything for him. Even give myself to him.

"I want you," he tells me. We're laying down now, he's on top of me, chest to chest, cock to cock.

"Yes," I groan. I'm pumping, hard. My free hand is roaming over my chest, my nipples. I'm paying attention to his dilated pupils, the drumming pulse on the side of his throat.

"You want me, Frase?" he growls before biting the side of my neck, holding the large muscle not-too-gently between his teeth.

"Yes," I whimper. My hands, in the fantasy, fall open at my sides and I stretch my head back. Beta dog behaviour. Submissive.

He lets go of my throat, pulls his weight off me. "All or nothin', Fraser."

And before I can imagine what he means by that, I am coming, coming, too soon but oh, it feels wonderful.

I float back down to earth, settle back into my body slowly.

"Greatness," I can imagine Ray saying, and then it all goes to hell, because I'm not great, I'm cold because I'm half out of my longjohns, and my groin is wet and a mess, and I'm crying because for a moment I'd fooled myself into believing it was real, or at least possible, but now I'm alone on my narrow cot, as always, alone, alone, alone.

Instead of wiping myself off with the second handkerchief, I sit up and reach for the phone on my desk. I dial before I can talk myself out of it.

"Vecchio," he says, picking up on the first ring.

"Ray," but I don't get out anything else before my voice breaks. This is so unlike me.

"Fraser, what's wrong, where are you?" He is instantly concerned. I can hear him moving. Dressing?

I clear my throat. "Nothing's wrong. I'm at the Consulate. I just. . ." What can I tell him? I close my eyes, try to breathe past my suddenly congested nose. "I was thinking of you. I wondered how you were feeling. . ."

"Uh huh." He's agreeing with me on the surface, but he's also using his neutral-cop voice, "And you've got a stuffy nose 'cause you're getting a cold, right?"

"That's -- possible."

"And yer calling me past midnight, 'cause you wondered if I was still broken up about Beth Botrelle."

I'm thinking too slowly, far too many seconds pass before I can say, "Well. I hadn't realized it was that late. I'm sorry. I'll let you get back to sleep--"

"I wasn't asleep, Frase." His voice has changed, this voice he uses with me when we're alone, when he's telling me about his past.

I close my eyes. I am far more upset than I'd expected, I haven't been able to pull my armor back on, and I keep thinking that I am still wearing it.

Ray says, "You can call me anytime you need to, buddy."

I cover the mouthpiece of the phone as I sigh, shakily. I can call him anytime I need to. "Thank you, Ray." It is a wonderful gift.

But he offers me even more than that. "Tell ya what," he says, "I'm still wide awake and gettin' the munchies. I'll pick you up and we can check out that all-night diner we saw last week."

"Are you sure that's wise, Ray?" I click on the desk lamp and check my watch. It is well past midnight. "We both report for duty in less than seven hours. . . ."

"I'm going. I'm asking you to come with. You coming?"

My answer requires no thought at all. "Yes, Ray." Anything for you. I'd do anything, even face you in the small hours of the morning amid exhaustion and post-orgasm tristesse.

"Great, okay." He pauses before saying, "Look, if yer too tired, we can just have hot chocolate in the kitchen there. Then I'll tuck you in like a good little Mountie and come home again."

That sounds wonderful. But before I can agree, he adds, "In fact, if yer coming down with a cold, maybe we shouldn't go out. Start heating the milk, I'll be over in fifteen. Bye." He doesn't give me a chance to reply.

He's coming to me. He's coming to check on me.

And I can almost feel my mind split in two. The eminently practical side of me takes control as usual, and lists the tasks I must do before Ray arrives. Wash up, dress, turn on the hall and entrance lights, start the cocoa. But below those thoughts, some dim part of me is excited, frightened, that he's coming, he'll be with me now, he'll see me like this.

Ray will know how I feel, tonight. He can read people, he can read me, with fine clarity. Tonight I feel transparent. I cannot dissemble well enough to hide my love.

I no longer wish to.

END