Notes: The tag of the episode "Odds" beguiles me. It always has. It always will. For the longest time I've wanted to do some kind of piece related to it, and when Anagi presented the ABC Challenge on another list, I saw a chance.
Summary: While playing cards, Fraser contemplates a next move.
Disclaimers, et al.: They belong to Alliance. I feel deep, unyielding envy at that fact. If they were mine, they'd play strip poker all the time. Very minor spoilers for "Burning Down the House" and "Odds." This one's rated R for maybe one or two bad words, and naughty thoughts on the part of a certain Mountie. His thoughts are of the boy-on-boy variety, so if that doesn't do it for you, walk on.
Thanks to Audra for the read-through.
Feedback should be properly attired and stylishly sent to LaToot@aol.com.
For Erica, Kasha and Viridian. They know why .
==
Ace in the Hole
by LaT
April 2000
I would wrap myself around him like a blanket if I could, curl him up and fold him to me. Foolish to think such things, particularly thinking them about your partner when you yourself are an officer of the law, but I can't seem to stop myself and even if I could, I'm not sure I would.
He has that effect on me and has had it since the very first day. Ray, my new, not improved but just very different Ray, unnerved me utterly when he strode across the bullpen at the 27th district, flung those long, long arms wide and wrapped them around me. Touch - simple, affectionate, unconditional - is not something to which I was ever greatly accustomed before I came to Chicago, but it is something that I crave. Xerophytes can survive on a limited amount of water, but that fact makes them oddities among plants, and I suppose my ability to live without an excess of touch would make me something of an oddity, too. Even though I never seem able to bring myself to ask for it, touch *is* something I want, something I know, deep down, that I need. Both of my Rays seemed to . . . understand this somehow, and gentle pats to the small of my back, simple squeezes to the curves of my shoulders became, along with other casual yet meaningful touches, a regular part of my physical vocabulary with the advent of the Rays Vecchio and Kowalski in my life.
Yesterday, I found myself in an alley holding hands with Ray Kowalski and it was only mildly shocking to discover how absolutely right that felt. Once Ray let go of me, I felt instantly and thoroughly bereft. My father, had he deigned to grace me with his presence at that point, would no doubt have advised me that my feelings on the matter were simply a function of a head injury I probably suffered in my fall. Unfortunately for my father's sensibilities - not to mention his insistence on grandchildren - I know better than that.
Lately, the thoughts I've had of Ray have been of the sort that convince me my feelings for him are not filial and most certainly are not platonic. Panting above me or sweating beneath me, he is, in my mind, wholly and completely mine. As I look at him now, sitting across from me in his rumpled yet stylish suit, the suspenders and tie adding a dashing quality to his usual slinky, graceful elegance, I want nothing so much as to feel his lips moving over mine, feel his fingers smoothing through my hair, feel his cock pulsing and twitching against my own as he says my name again and again and again, a benediction for all those nights when I had nothing but my imaginings of how he might sound to lull me into sweet, easy bliss.
Jealousy accounted for his worry over my involvement with Lady Shoes, or so I told myself in moments of delusion these past two days. Denny Scarpa is no match for my Ray, and it is almost laughable to me that he can't see that, yet his inability to do so makes perfect sense to me because the fact of my attraction to him is something I know he has not considered. Zealously in love with his ex-wife, Ray, I am sure, not only considers himself to be heterosexual, but has no doubt made the same assumption about me.
No sooner do I think this than it occurs to me that just as Ray has made an assumption about me, I could very well be making an assumption about him. Kindred in our erroneous conclusions about each other (well, Ray's is erroneous, mine only potentially so), it is entirely possible that we are both prematurely closing off a plethora of possibilities. Given my own . . . skittishness . . . when it comes to the idea of letting anyone get as close to me as I would like to let Ray, it is not difficult for me to imagine that I could create an obstacle to that closeness where there is none. Certainly Ray has his own reasons to be hesitant to try again to attain with someone the level of connection he had with his ex-wife. Stella's frequent dismissiveness of him is unfathomable to me, so hard is it for me to imagine that anyone could know that Ray loved them and not love him in return.
Quietly, silently, I tell myself this is something that will not ever be an option for Ray and me. When and if I work up the courage to tell him how I truly feel, and if those feelings are reciprocated, there will never be a time when I don't allow myself to feel the luxury of loving him.
==
Additional notes: The ABC Challenge, in a nutshell, goes like this: Write a story (or poem, snapshot, whatever) in which each sentence begins with a letter of the alphabet, and in which you only use each letter once. Whatever your end product, it should only have 26 sentences. After having done this, I have to say, it is more challenging that it initially appears. I recommend giving it a try.