WARNING! Rated NC-17 for explicit M/M sex. Due South, Benton Fraser and Ray Kowalski all belong to Alliance/Atlantis, not to me, *sigh.*

I'm certifiable. I started out writing a PWP, and then had to stop and write a different PWP to explain how they got into the relationship assumed in the first PWP. Which is now the second PWP and which I still haven't finished, but here's the first one, which is really the second one. And if you can figure that out, you deserve an award. ;-D Thanks to Kass and Betty for egging me on. Nobody's betaed this so it is probably chock full of errant commae, tense problems, and POV whiplash. --KM

Soundtrack: Gravity Kills: Guilty. Juno Reactor: God is God, & Swamp Thing.





Leap
© 2001 Kellie Matthews


I pull up outside my building and park, leaning back in my seat with a sigh. God, what a day. I still can't believe my folks are here in Chicago. That they came back from Arizona, just to see me. Well, of course that's not my dad's excuse but it was plain enough from what mom was saying. It's kind of amazing. Ever since I took this gig, ever since I partnered up with Fraser, my life has gotten weirder, but. . . better. A lot better.

Of course they were kind of confused by the Vecchio thing so I had to explain that, tell them they'd have to play it cool and not give the game away. I think they'll do okay. They drove the RV out to the trailer park in Skokie where they'd made hookup arrangements, and then mom fixed dinner and we stayed up talking until midnight. Probably would have been longer but dad started yawning and mom said they had to get their beauty sleep and so did I. They were careful to avoid talking about the Stella, thank God. I really don't want to go there any more. Ever since the Orsini thing I've finally been seeing my way straight about Stella and my feelings.

I snort softly into the darkness. Maybe straight isn't quite the word to use there. I still love her. Probably always will, like she said to me that night. I even still want her occasionally, like when I see her in the hall and the light catches on her hair and she looks so untouchable I just want to . . . messy her up a little. Which is kind of confusing but at least I'm consistent because there's somebody else I find myself wanting to messy up from time to time. Which is even more confusing. Roller Coaster Ray. That's me.

Okay, this is stupid, I'm sitting in my car in the dark thinking about my lack of love life. Pathetic. But I'm grinning as I get out of the car and lock it, because my job's going great, and I managed to keep the most annoying best friend in the world from getting his fool self killed today. . . okay, yesterday. . . and my parents came to see me and my dad actually spoke to me and we managed not to get in a fight though it came close once or twice. Wish I had Fraser's knack for knowing just the right thing to say most of the time. Except when talking to people holding guns.

Gaaah. Don't think about that. Just don't. It'll make you crazy and you'll wake up in a sweat from a nightmare of what if you'd been thirty seconds later getting that bike through the window. I wish to hell he'd stop doing stuff like that, but that's sort of like wishing the sun wouldn't come up in the morning. Ack. Shaking off a mental shiver I head toward the apartment building door and there's a sudden movement in the shadows that has me snatching out my gun and leveling it at the figure standing just inside the doorway. "Chicago PD! You, out of the shadows, now," I bark as quietly as I can.

He steps out into the glow from the porch light and I sigh, rolling my eyes and re-holstering my gun, trying to will my heart to stop pounding. "Jesus Christ, Fraser. Don't you know better than that?"

"Ordinarily yes, Ray, but I'm a little tired, I wasn't thinking."

"Hey, seems to be your day for it," I snark. He looks at me, and I see his eyes are slightly narrowed. Ooh. That one got him.

"Excuse me?" he snaps huffily. "You can say I don't think, when you're the one who rode a motorcycle through a window today?"

A hand parts the curtains in a nearby window and I jerk my head at the door. "Come on, if we're going to make like trailer trash we better do it inside where we don't wake up the whole neighborhood."

He hesitates, but apparently neither of us is willing to let this go, because he nods once, sharply, and follows me upstairs. Once we're in I turn, fast, poking him in the chest with a finger.

"Okay, now, I think you and I both know that I wouldn't've had to ride a motorcycle through a window today if you'd taken time to think," I say, holding my ground. "I'm not the one who goes haring off after every gun-toting and knife-throwing criminal in Chicago."

"It's not every criminal, Ray, and may I remind you about the way you walked up to those criminals in the cemetery because you thought that something was, and I quote, 'hinky?'"

"That's not the same thing."

"On the contrary, I think it's very much the same thing."

"No, it isn't. I had a gun."

"A gun won't keep anyone from shooting you."

"It will if I shoot them first."

"Oh, now there's a commendable attitude."

"Hey, it keeps me alive."

"I seem to be quite alive, even though I don't carry a gun."

"Yeah, because I do carry one."

"I'm a perfectly capable adult, you don't need to . . . babysit me."

"If it was babysitting it'd be a hell of a lot easier, Fraser. Babies don't tend to piss off known felons. And do not quote me statistics on babies pissing off felons to prove I'm wrong, either," I say, pretty proud of myself for heading him off at the pass. "Somebody has to look after you."

"No one held a gun to your head, Ray . . . ."

"Stop!" I hold up both hands, seeing red, and for once it's not his uniform since he's in civvies. "God damn it, Fraser, no, no one held a gun to my head, they held a gun to your head. And since I got elected Fraser Keeper when I took this job, it's up to me to keep you in one piece."

He flinches at that, but I'm too pissed off by that point to care. He takes a step back and stares at me, his eyes unreadable. "If you would kindly allow me to finish my sentence. . . ." he says with icy politeness.

"No, I kindly won't, Fraser, because you're wrong."

His jaw tightens. "Ray," he says ominously. "Would you just shut up?"

My jaw would drop if I wasn't so mad. "You shut up," I snap back, instantly. Wow. That wasn't polite or Mountie-like at all. I feel an instant of weird pleasure at having pushed him past his boundaries.

"You shut up first," he says, his jaw so tight I'm surprised he can open his mouth to speak.

And I can't help it, I really can't, because this is a traditional argument and there's only one reply to that. "Make me," I say, in his face, cocky, but bracing for it. I know how hard he hits.

Fraser's muscles bunch, and I sense the shift of his body as he moves forward, his hands coming up. I flinch instinctively, eyes closing, so it's even more of a shock when what I feel isn't a fist or a backhand. Hands on either side of my face. Lips. On mine. Hot. Fierce. Angry. Lips. Mouth. I gasp in shock and his hands tilt my head, sealing our mouths tighter together. I'm breathing his air, he's breathing mine, and I'm getting dizzy, red-threaded darkness rising. I can't think, can't feel-- it's like time stopped and my brain is just one huge empty place in my head. Finally he lets me go, and I stand there staring at him, dragging air into my lungs until I have enough to speak.

"You kissed me!" I say accusingly.

"I . . . did." He looks a little like I felt a few seconds and a lifetime ago, like he thinks I'm gonna belt him.

"You kissed me," I repeat, dumbfounded.

"Yes, I did, Ray." His jaw gets that stubborn set to it that I know all too well. "I swore to myself that I would never hit you again."

"You. . . do it again." I say fast, before I lose my nerve.

He looks at me, blinks, clearly puzzled. "Hit you?"

"Not hit," I say, exasperated. Don't be slow, Fraser, not now. "The, uh . . . the other."

Narrowed eyes, speculative. His tongue moistens his lips. I can see the conflicting emotions shifting across his face, see the decision made, and hold my breath for a second, wondering what it was, then he's moving, one hand on the back of my neck, the other curling into the front of my t-shirt, pulling me closer fast. The hair on the back of my neck stands up under the touch of his fingers. I shiver as I close my eyes and open my mouth.

His lips are a little rough, and they start out hard, but I let mine soften, and his do too. The fingers on my shirt uncurl a little, fanning out across my collarbone. The hand on the back of my neck moves up into my hair, fingers stroking, petting, and I feel like purring. Nice kiss. Warm, and moist. Too nice. Kisses aren't supposed to be nice, unless they're from your aunt or something. I tip my head a little, flick my tongue along the edge of his teeth, checking out the twist of that crooked eyetooth. And while he may be stubborn and thoughtless, he's not stupid. His tongue sweeps out, finds mine, slicks across it.

He tastes like tea and himself. I probably taste like the beer I had with dinner, but he doesn't seem to mind even though he doesn't drink. He's going after me like a man dying of thirst. God, can he kiss. This is insane. And it's sooo damned good. I turn my head a little to take the pressure off the sore spot on my mouth where it got a little bruised going through that window, and he must think I'm trying to pull away because his hand tightens in my hair, pulling a few strands as he holds me where he wants me and keeps trying to find my tonsils.

The thought that he doesn't want to let me go makes me shiver all over, little pulses of heat flaring out through me, then pulling back in, converging in my crotch. I'm hungry, no, ravenous, and it tastes like he is too. I get my other hand inside his coat, work it around behind him, flatten it on the small of his back and push. Ohfuck. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what I wanted to know. A feeling of relief explodes through me, nearly as intense as the feel of his mouth on mine. It's okay. It's really okay. Finally he eases back for a long, deep breath, and I do the same, find I'm grinning at him like an idiot.

"Either you've started carrying a weapon or you're enjoying this," I say with a wink.

He gives a single, startled guffaw, eyes flashing with appreciative humor, and then break's over. He's on me again before I finish catching my breath, both hands framing my face as he brushes his mouth across mine, saying my name between each kiss, and if I thought I was turned on before it's nothing compared to how I feel now. He licks my jaw, and I can hear the rasp of his tongue on my stubble, weird, but hot. He keeps following my jaw with his tongue, finds my ear. "Yes," he breathes as he starts to suck on my earlobe.

More shivers, painfully pleasurable, explode through me. Swear to God I never knew he could sound like he'd spent years hanging out in bars drinking rotgut and smoking unfiltered cigarettes, but that voice is pure whiskey and smoke. I want to hear that voice screaming nonsense as he comes. Okay, Kowalski, enough letting the Mountie drive. I let my hands skim down his back, rest one on each hip and hold him still while I rock against him. I can feel the hard rise of his cock under the taut denim of his jeans, rub my own cock against him there. He stops sucking on my ear with a gasp, his hands dropping to my shoulders, his hips pushing against mine.

I grin. Yeah, you definitely like that, Fraser. Except I know a way to make it better. Shift one hand to his fly, tug roughly at the button, and unzip him with a practiced sideways tug. I rub my fingers up and down the heavy shaft that's barely contained by the thin cotton of his boxers. One nice thing about boxers, they're easy to get into, I think, searching for the opening as he moans and starts to suck on my neck, humping my hand. Funny, I expected him to put up more of a fuss. I mean, I've never seen a woman get to the hand-holding stage, and he's letting me put my hand in his shorts? God, the things you never know about people.

There it is. Found it. Slide my fingers inside that little gap there and touch hot, silky skin, feel his pulse fast and frantic against my fingertips. My shoulders take his weight as his knees buckle for a second, and I realize all the sudden that we're still vertical. That won't do at all, but he bucks into my hand and there's an answering throb in my own groin, and I know we'll never make the bed. Okay, okay, couch. I get us turned around and hang onto his pants with one hand while I walk him backward toward the couch.

Halfway there he starts kissing me again and we stop and do that for a while, until he nudges my hand with his cock and I remember where we were going. God, that tongue goes to work and I'm lucky I can remember my own name. Somehow I manage to get us to the couch, and I'm about to push him down on it when he shifts his weight, moves his hands. All the sudden I'm the one on my back and he's on top, one knee between mine, one hand rubbing up and down my fly, stroking me through my clothes.

I buck into his hand, reach up and haul him down to kiss me again. He resists for a minute because he's got both hands at my waist, but then I feel my zipper going down, feel one of his hands warm and rough against my belly, and then he's bracing one hand on the couch, and leaning down to kiss me as his fingers wrap around my aching hard-on. Like everything else he does, he must figure if something is worth doing, it's worth doing well. He knows exactly how to do this. Well, duh, Ray, he's a guy, of course he does.

Before I have time to get shocked by that realization he starts to get a rhythm going. His hand is strong, and I can feel the calluses on his fingers as he strokes me firmly, almost roughly. I'm losing it. I know I'm not going to last more than a couple of minutes, max, here, so I reach for him, tugging at his jeans and boxers, getting annoyed by them. Apparently he is too, because he makes an impatient sound and pushes himself off me, standing up for a second while he shoves them down and off, along with his boots. Yeah. Oh yeah. Skin. Skin's good.

It's hard to do while lying down, but I toe off my boots start to squirm my own pants off. No way am I wasting this moment. Half naked, horny Fraser with a hand on my cock and his tongue in my mouth-- those have been driving my jerk-off fantasies for quite a while now. Getting him for real is even better than I imagined, and I can imagine pretty damned good. He notices what I'm doing and helps, tugging when I lift until my pants are down around my knees, then dragging them the rest of the way off. When he tries to go back to kneeling over me, I wrap my fingers around his wrist and yank him off balance. He lands exactly where I intended him to: on me. It was risky, but he did fine. His cock is hard and hot and wet against my thigh, and I tug him up until its lined up right next to my own.

He moans, and reaches up to stroke my face, his mouth searching blindly for mine as he thrusts against my belly, his cock leaving a wet streak behind. The next time I'm ready for him and we push together. I slide my tongue into his mouth, and slide a hand under his sweater to find a tight, slightly sweaty little nipple with my fingers. He gasps as I play with it, thrusting harder, sucking a little on my tongue, making noises in his throat, not even close to words any more. He starts to rock against me, and there's enough wet from both of us to make a nice, moist slide-- our cocks kiss and slip with each movement.

I fill my hands with the flex and stretch of those amazing glutes of his, and he thrusts harder, groans, and comes with his face buried in my neck and his hands clutching my hand and shoulder. Everything is hot and wet and slick where we're pressed together, and the realization of who I'm with, and that he just came, and that I made him come, overwhelms me. Whimpering a little with the sheer mindless joy of it, I let go too, pleasure and need pulsing out of me to mingle with his between us.

He sags against me, deadweight, panting. Somehow I manage to sling an arm around him and squeeze. After a minute or two he pushes up, looking at me with the strangest expression on his face. I figure mine matches his. A combination of 'what the hell was that' with 'finally' and 'what do we do now?' We stare at each other for a few seconds, and then one corner of his mouth turns up, and I grin at him, and we both start to laugh. I finally catch my breath after a while, and shake my head.

"Jesus. How long has that been lurking, waiting to jump us?"

He strokes my shoulder, still smiling. "Quite some time, I suspect. For me at least."

"Me too," I sigh, fingers playing in his hair. "But don't think distracting me with hot monkey sex lets you out of being more fucking careful on the job."

He lifts his head, eyes narrowed, a hint of annoyance flickering in them. "You as well, Ray." His fingers slide down to my chest, rub at a spot just below my collar bone, and he looks at me, his eyes unreadable. "If her aim had been slightly better, or worse . . . ." He shudders suddenly, like he's cold.

Yeah. He gets it. Now to make him understand. "Okay, so think about how I'd feel right now if that wacko today had shot you."

The irritation in his gaze softens to a kind of rueful understanding. "Yes. Yes, I . . . see that. And I'm sorry, Ray."

Whoa. Didn't expect that. Now I've gotta be gracious too. "Yeah, well," I say, stalling. "I'll . . .um. . . try to do less leaping before I look." Unless it involves your ass, I think, crossing my fingers. "We even?"

He nods, a tentative smile shaping his mouth. "Yes. I believe so."

"Good. So, um, let's go hose off and . . . go to bed?" I offer, casually, because I don't want to make a big production out of it.

His smile gets bigger. "I'd like that very much, Ray."

"So would I, buddy. So would I."


* * * Finis * * *



Comments to: kellie@www.mrks.org