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Kowalski’s surprisingly…indulgent toward Ray. Vecchio wouldn’t have thought words like “compromise” or even “generosity” would’ve applied to Kowalski, but then he’d remind himself that the man had been married to Stella for a lot longer than Ray himself had stuck it out with her. Kowalski in a relationship wasn’t Kowalski running around threatening to kick people in the head or jump Bogart on them, whatever the hell that meant. Well, he had threatened to kick Ray’s entire Undercover 101 class in the head when those boneheads had spent ninety minutes of class time jerking their heads around every time Ray called them by their real names. Ray’d gotten a tension headache from visions of every single man and woman in that class getting their heads shot off, and Kowalski had graphically assured him that, in his words, “A, that ain’t gonna happen and two, I will personally kick each and every one of them in the head until they get it right.”
Kowalski said things like that instead of saying “I love you,” but they amounted to the same thing, in Ray’s book. Ray himself spent four hours in Barbara Kowalski’s tiny RV kitchen learning to make pierogies and stuffed fucking cabbage instead of saying “I love you.” Kowalski’s expression when he came home to smell the result of Ray’s first solo foray into cooking Polish food suggested that the message had been received.
Kowalski’s other indulgences are a little more physical. Kowalski spent high school getting lucky with Stella in pretty much every place they could get away with it (Stella-and-Kowalski was something Ray tried not to think too hard about, unless he was in the shower, by himself, and then afterwards Kowalski would leer at him and say, “Hey, thinking of my ass, right?” and Ray would say, “Yeah, that was it exactly that pushed me right over the fucking edge” sarcastically to cover up that he’d been thinking of Kowalski and Stella together). But Kowalski and Stella’s adolescent adventures had definitely included cars.
Ray had spent high school dreaming of getting lucky in a car, because cars are sexy and sex is sexy, but whenever he actually fell for a girl and she liked him back, he always felt like it was disrespectful to put the moves on her in a car, let alone try to get her in the back seat. Guys weren’t really on his radar back then.
But now he’s in his forties (and, Jesus, when the hell had that happened?) and he’s with Kowalski, of all people, and both of them know what respect is, and that getting it on in a car is not really all that disrespectful in the context of their (sometimes depressingly) mature love.
Kowalski may have gotten the sex-in-a-car kink out of his system in high school, but Ray never had. So when Ray’s birthday rolled around (another one, good to still be alive, but seriously, unless he can count on living to ninety, he’s well into middle age by now), the biggest surprise of the night wasn’t that Kowalski had booked them a table at the new fancy Italian place that Ray could’ve sworn Kowalski had never even heard of. It wasn’t even that Kowalski had, somehow, gone out and gotten himself a decent suit, with custom tailoring and everything, and done something with his hair that was neither his dorky flat courtroom appearance arrangement, nor his goofy spiked rockhopper penguin experiment, but rather somewhere in between. Kowalski looked like a respectable rebel with dinner reservations, and Ray found that so hot they almost missed said reservations.
No, the big surprise of the evening was when, after a truly world-class meal, Kowalski had driven them out to a surprisingly deserted parking lot near the lake and pulled Ray across the seat to dive right into some serious tongue kissing. Ray may have been surprised, but he was also extremely ready for this welcome development. Sitting across from Kowalski during a leisurely dinner, watching Kowalski behave himself and consciously tamp down his natural hyperactivity, had turned him on like crazy. It was partly the voluntary restraint Kowalski was exercising, which was very, very hot and reminded Ray of the times he’d restrained Kowalski with something more tangible than good intentions, but mostly the reason Kowalski was doing it. He wanted to be Ray’s perfect date. Had gone to a lot of effort for that. Another silent “I love you.”
And now he was putting the make on Ray in his car, something Kowalski wasn’t particularly into. The first time Ray had brought it up, Kowalski’d looked puzzled. “We’re grown men with a bed,” he’d said, not meanly but with genuine incomprehension. “Why would we want to neck in the car like a couple of teenagers?” Ray had dropped it, but apparently Kowalski had either thought it through and realized why Ray would find it appealing or (more likely, in Ray’s book) had remembered it and thought, “Oh, yeah, I can do that, even if I’m not sure why he wants me to.”
Whatever it was, Ray wasn’t going to stop for analysis. Instead he breathed in the scent of Kowalski, the scent of the newly detailed GTO, and somehow got even harder. And Kowalski kept kissing him, Ray wasn’t even sure how they could both still be breathing at this point, but they were and Kowalski was also managing to say things like, “God, you make me so hot, please, I need this, I need you,” and was groping Ray.
Groping Ray’s ass at first, while still managing to keep up with the kissing and the litany of praise and desire, then groping a little more intimately until Ray was coming, gasping out “Stan, God, Stanley,” as he did, the one time Kowalski was perfectly okay with Ray using his given name.
After coming, Ray went boneless in Kowalski’s arms. Well, arm. Kowalski’s left hand was a little busy even while his right arm encircled Ray, his hand clutching at Ray's sleeve. “God, that was so hot, Raimundo, you have no idea what you do to me,” Kowalski’s voice told him breathlessly, and that was hot, because that was how they’d negotiated the name issue: for sex, Kowalski was “Stan” or “Stanley” and Vecchio was “Raimundo” or “Raymond” and the rest of the time it was all last names and endearing insults.
Before long, Kowalski was just as boneless as Ray. “Thanks, Kowalski,” Ray said, and it was yet another “I love you.”
“I’ll still respect you in the morning,” Kowalski said solemnly, and they both laughed and nobody needed a translation for that.