Archive of Our Own

The first time, Ray was five years old.

Actually, Ray had a lot of shame issues, and they probably started when he was born, because his dad insisted on naming him Stanley, and thank God his mother held out for Raymond as a middle name, but he didn't know his name back then, and didn't care, and he didn't remember any of that, anyway.

But the first time he was ashamed of his dick, he was five. It was summer, a hot day. He was outside with a few friends from the neighborhood, a bunch of kids, mostly boys, and he was playing Cops and Robbers with them.

Ray (he was called Stanley back then, but he never remembered it that way, because he didn't want to think about that)—Ray was always the robber, not the cop. Not because he wanted to be the bad guy, no way. But because he was smaller and skinnier and he never got to say what the game was going to be, he always just had to go along with what the bigger, smarter, faster-talking kids wanted.

That kind of sucked, but at the time Ray didn't realize he could lodge any kind of protest, and it wasn't like there was a kid labor union for five-year-olds. Still, he figured if he waited his turn, he'd eventually get to choose what part he would get to play. So he did his best to be a real good robber, and he tried to be patient, even though patience wasn't really his best thing.

When the kids switched to playing Cowboys and Indians, he figured the other kids would be grateful for how good he played the robber and would let him be a cowboy, or maybe even let him be a marshal and wear a badge. But, no. The cowboy parts were all taken. The kids did rock-paper-scissors, and Ray lost, like he always did, so he had to be the Indian.

That was not a good thing to be, in 1966. All the kids had seen Westerns, and the one thing you learned from those was that the Indians always lost.

Still, Ray figured it was like the Cubs, who maybe could win the World Series again some day, right? Maybe this was the year. Maybe Ray could be the one to finally make the Indians win something, so they didn't have to always be the losers in all the movies. Maybe they'd start making movies about how the Indians killed all the cowboys and danced on top of their stupid hats.

His friends all had those stupid hats, and bandanna scarves, and they had real-looking toy six-guns in plastic holsters, too. Pauly Carr even had spurs.

That brought up the second problem: If you were a towheaded blond, it was hard to be a convincing Indian. And shorts and a polo shirt and a pair of Keds didn't look very Indian-like, either. So Ray took off his shirt. He went in the house and got some orange stuff that his mother used to put on cuts, because he knew it stained the skin really good and didn't come off for days. It smelled funny, and it went on a little cold, but it didn't hurt when it wasn't on an actual cut. He painted it on his chest like warpaint.

The other kids still didn't think he looked like an Indian.

Ray thought the problem was probably his dungaree shorts. Indians did not wear them. So he went back indoors and took his off, but in the mirror, he thought he looked even worse. Because if his shorts didn't look like Indian clothes, his white underpants sure didn't.

Ray thought about that. His dad watched Westerns at the drive-in and said the movie Indians were supposed to look like naked painted savages. Ray'd asked him about that, because the Indians in the movies always had on these weird things that Ray was afraid looked too much like diapers, but his dad said that was for Hollywood, and lots of Indians went on the warpath with nothing on but warpaint. He figured that was why they got called naked painted savages.

So Ray took his underwear off, too. He was a little tanned, because it was summer, and the warpaint stood out in scary stripes all over his chest. He figured he really looked the part, if you could overlook the bright blond hair that liked to stick up in all directions. He thought his hair would be easier to overlook if he found enough feathers in the toy chest and stuck them in it. He did that, and then he made a scary face in the mirror and thought he looked pretty fierce.

When Ray came back out, the kids thought he looked more authentic, too, and it was like a hundred degrees anyway that day, so he wasn't cold, and the Mercuro-whatsits stuff stood out orangey-red all over his chest.

While the cowboys discussed strategy, Ray scouted around for sticks to make a bow and arrow or maybe even a tomahawk, and got ready for the first victory of the Indians over the cowboys ever, at least in his neighborhood.

And then one of the kids shrieked.

It was a girl from a few blocks up, a friend of somebody's, only about four years old, and Ray didn't really know her. She'd been fine before, kind of quiet and hanging back, which wasn't any surprise, because if the cowboys had no place for Ray they sure as heck had no place for a girl. But she'd seemed happy to have any kids to play with at all, so she'd let the cowboys tell her she had to be the cook, and maybe a nurse who could bandage them when they got wounded.

She'd been fine till she turned around and saw Ray looking for his tomahawk, and then she was suddenly shrieking like anything and pointing at Ray, with her eyes really wide like she was scared.

Ray looked at himself, almost expecting to see blood, like maybe he'd cut himself and hadn't realized it. But, no, he just saw his warpaint, and his skin under it looking way too pale.

The sun would take care of the paleness pretty quick if he stayed outside a while, and as for his warpaint, he had to admit it was pretty good, all spiky jagged-edged symbols on his chest and shoulders. He'd put some on his face, too, best he could do in the mirror.

"Warpaint's supposed to look scary," he said. "You know it's just a game, c'mon."

But she wasn't looking at the warpaint. She was looking lower. She said, "How come you have a tail?"

The other kids laughed, and she blushed bright pink. "But Stanley has a tail," she said.

Finally, one of the kids told her, "That ain't a tail, that's his dick," but she just looked confused and kind of grossed out. Turned out she had only one sister and no brothers, and she really didn't know.

But it was too late for explanations, because the other boys were laughing—

Jimmy Kazmierczak was rolling on the grass laughing so hard he got the hiccups, and Pauly Carr was pointing at Ray's dick and asking if he could wag it—and the girl was blushing and then crying and running away.

Ray looked down at himself like Adam in the Bible and realized he was naked.

He wasn't really an Indian, orange medicine stuff wasn't warpaint, and he was standing naked on his front lawn like a baby, and the kids were laughing at him.

He ran inside and put his clothes back on and scrapped the game, and he never played Cowboys and Indians again.

***

When he was thirteen and he met Stella, the issue reared its ugly head—uh, in a manner of speaking—and pretty much didn't back down again for years.

You'd think the bank robbery would've been the big embarrassment for Ray's dick that year, and sure, it was a big deal, but it wasn't really in the same category. The bank incident was the thing that would later make him a cop and the thing that won him Stella, and he wasn't ashamed of either of those results.

Even peeing himself wasn't his dick's fault. The problem was him losing his nerve, and, really, he was thirteen and Ellery was huge and hyped on drugs and had a gun. Looking back later, as a cop, Ray realized any thirteen-year-old kid should've had the piss scared out of him in a situation like that.

His dick suffered more than the rest of him that day, 'cause it felt cold and clammy and disgusting all the way to the police station, and it seemed like hours before his mother came to pick him up. Thank God somebody'd got word to her she needed to bring him a change of clothes. After that it was okay, because Stella apparently thought he hung the moon, she thought he'd saved her life by distracting Ellery, and maybe he had, even if only by accident.

He didn't much care at the time if that was just another embellishment, because it won him Stella: she went from just his friend to being his best friend, and maybe even his girlfriend, he thought, though she didn't really call it that for a couple more years.

That part was all good.

What was weird about being thirteen-almost-fourteen was how Ray felt all funny when Stella smiled at him after that. How he felt hot all over and jealous when she was partnered with someone else in dance class.

And mostly how his dick started to get big and hard when she was partnered with him.

Or when she glanced at him.

Or when he thought about her.

Or when he thought about pretty much anything.

Shortly after his fourteenth birthday, he started waking up with even weirder stuff happening, stuff happening all over his bed sheets in the morning, and he didn't really remember it, he just felt all messy and sweaty and strange, but then finally one day he woke up with his dick in his hand—which in itself wasn't unusual; he pretty much woke up that way every morning—but this time it was huge in his hand, and stiff, and he pushed the sheet down and looked at it, and saw it was also red and hot. It felt incredible, like it was about to burst, and his heart was pounding, and he was pushing it into the circle of his fist like he couldn't stop. And then he really couldn't stop; he almost shouted, or probably he actually did, because just as his dick let loose and spurted stuff all over the place, his door swung in, and his mom was standing there looking worried and asking if he was okay.

His face burned. But there was just enough blanket between his still-spurting dick and her line of sight, he figured, and he turned away and scrabbled the sheet up over himself. "Fine, I'm just...dream. Just...a dream," he said, kind of gasping to catch his breath again. "I'm all right. Could you please...?"

"Of course, dear," she said, and shut the door and clicked away down the hall and Ray pressed his face into his pillow. Because, dammit, that had felt so good—and then so bad. Because what if she saw? What if she knew he was a pervert who had his hand on his dick all night and still couldn't keep it from getting stiff all the time during the day, whenever anyone looked at him cross-eyed, it seemed?

He always reacted to Stella, yeah, but he usually only saw her a couple times a week in dance class unless they made special plans to study together or go to a game or something. But he was getting hard-ons at school, too, even when no one was around but the guys, and with a bunch of other fourteen-year-old maybe-perverts, that wasn't so easy to hide.

And, yeah, at school he got the lectures about stuff like that, only they didn't tell him everything he really wanted to know, because while they kept saying crap like "it's perfectly normal," Ray heard a lot from the other guys about what they thought normal was supposed to be, and it didn't sound much like Ray.

Thing was, Ray was growing every day, really shooting up, his mother said; going to be tall, his father said proudly. Eating us out of house and home, his mother said, smiling like that was a good thing.

All of him was growing, just not all at the same time. Sometimes his hands would suddenly be bigger, and then other times his pants would be too short at the ankles again, and his mother would have to figure out how to afford new pants like every three months, it seemed. Then his legs would slow down and something else would grow and change, like his face—his face grew! He hadn't been prepared for that.

Or his arms would grow out of his sleeves, or he'd put on a little weight. "Still skinny as a string bean," his father said. "But you'll put on muscle one of these days."

All of that was normal, according to health class, and Ray saw it happening to most of the other boys, too. But one part of Ray didn't ever seem to stop growing. It was heavy against his leg when it wasn't getting hard, and even his balls were bigger, heavier. Even when his dick wasn't hard, it wasn't staying where he used to keep it. He had to figure out which side of the crotch of his pants to push it towards, because it actually made a bulge in front when he had his usual jockey underwear on, and the bulge was too big; it made him look like he was getting hard even when he wasn't.

He thought if he just had room to push it down one pants leg it wouldn't be as obvious. So he begged his mom for thigh-briefs like the baseball players wore, and he tried to make it sound a lot like it was all about baseball, because he sure as heck didn't want to say what it was about, couldn't really tell her that her son was probably a freak, could he?

The baseball angle turned out to be a dumb move, because then she thought it was all about baseball, and she figured it wasn't something he really needed, and wasn't she already spending enough money buying him bigger clothes and shoes every time she turned around?

He wondered for about three seconds whether he could talk to his dad about it, and then he nixed that idea, because when did his dad ever really listen to him, right? So he finally went to his mom and confessed that it wasn't about baseball after all, but that his old underwear was getting uncomfortable, it wasn't fitting him right anymore, and she looked at him funny for a minute, and then finally said, "Oh, for heaven's sake, Stanley, why didn't you say that in the first place?"

And he tried to answer that, but she was looking at him with what he thought of as her Oh, Stanley look, and smiling a little sadly. He could see the love in her eyes, though; he always could, and he couldn't bring himself to say another word, because she didn't deserve to hear that her son was a freak, did she? "You don't have to make up stories, dear," she said. "You're growing; I realize that. I'll see what I can do."

That was all she said about it, but the very next morning when he got up there was new boxer-style underwear on his dresser, and nobody ever said anything more about it.

Which he took that to mean: if he was a freak, they really didn't want to know about it.

That was fine by him.

***

One time after school, Ray was hanging out with a few of the guys, kicking around Jimmy Kazmierczak's musty basement, and Mikey O'Connor pulled something out of his jacket and motioned the other guys over. "Get a load of this. Look what I found in Casper's locker."

"What were you doing in Caspy's locker?" Ray said, a little too loud, because never mind that nobody liked Caspy Feinman, it wasn't right to be snooping in a guy's locker. That was trespassing, or breaking and entering, or something. "Don't you know that's tres—"

"Jesus, Ray, give the cop stuff a rest," Jimmy said, swatting Ray on the head. "He owed Caspy one for showing him up in math class."

"Ta-da!" Mike said. "Fag rag." He held out a glossy magazine and whipped it open to the centerfold: Naked guy. Big naked guy. Huge muscles. Whoa.

Huge muscles and amazing, tanned, smooth skin, not like any of the men Ray had seen, who were hairy and scruffy, and only tan above their shirt collars this time of year.

The guy had his foot up on a locker bench, it looked like, like in a gym, and he had his hand—Jesus, Ray's face went hot, because the guy had his hand under his balls and he was kind of lifting them, lifting everything, showing off so whoever was looking at him could see it, could look at him, and...

Yeah, Ray went hot all over. The guy wanted people to look at him, at his—? The guy was clearly a freak.

He found his voice. "Freak. You got that from some girl's locker. Gotta be." Because Caspy was smart. He'd know better than to bring a thing like that to school. If he even would have a thing like that.

"Whoa, imagine having a thing like that," Pete Krasny said, pointing, and after a second or two, Ray realized he wasn't talking about the magazine. He was pointing at the guy's...

"Yeah, where would you put it?" Jimmy said, laughing. "Roll it up and stuff it down your pants leg?"

"What? It's not that big," Ray said. "With some pants on he'd look pretty normal."

And really, the guy wasn't that big. He probably wasn't much bigger than Ray already was, and Ray was still growing.

"The only guys with dicks that big are fags," Mike pronounced, like it was gospel.

Ray's mouth went dry. "What the—whaddya mean?" His voice came out like a croak.

"It's true. My brother Ralph read it in a magazine down at the shop." Ralph was seventeen and he drove a car already, and worked part-time in an auto-body shop, which Ray thought was pretty cool.

"Gotta be nonsense," Ray said. But he could feel his face burning.

"Nope," Mike said, like the kind of know-it-all just as bad as Caspy in math class. "They get that way from being queer."

Jimmy snorted with laughter, but then he joined in like it was a can-you-top-this game. "I bet it's because they do stuff to each other."

"Get outta here," Ray said.

"No, it's true," Pete chimed in. "They start when they're real young and they keep pulling on their thing thinking about other guys, and then when they're older they start doing guys. It makes their dick keep growing."

"That's stupid," Ray said. "No way," Ray said. Okay, he pulled on his dick sometimes, he couldn't help that, that was perfectly normal, the sex ed film said. But he didn't think about boys when he did it—did he? He didn't think so. He didn't remember thinking about anything at those times, except how good it felt and how he couldn't stop. But the films never said anything about doing that making it grow. That didn't make any damn sense. Ray didn't pull on his feet, and they were growing like gangbusters, too.

Mike leaned forward to whisper. "I knew Caspy had to have some shit like this in his locker, because I saw something. Down by the back lockers."

Ray wanted to say shut up, shut up, if somebody was down by the back lockers, they didn't want an audience, for Chrissakes—

—but Mike was already whispering, "Caspy kissed a boy. I saw him."

"Who?" Ray started to ask, but Pete and Jimmy were howling with laughter by then, and Mike was joining in, and it was too damn loud to get a word in edgewise. It didn't really seem like they wanted to know, anyway. It was more like they just wanted to laugh like that, real cruel-sounding, at Caspy's expense.

Ray suddenly realized he was going to puke.

He got out of there and made it to the curb before he lost his lunch, and when Jimmy came out to see if he was okay, Ray was still feeling shook up, but a lot better.

"Jeez, what a wussy stomach you have," Jimmy said. "What's the matter, thinking about Caspy with a boy turned you green, huh?" He chuckled, obviously trying to make Ray feel better, which of course made everything worse. "Or maybe it was looking at that fag's big disgusting—"

"Shut up," Ray said.

"Hey, what—?"

Ray held up a hand. "I'm gonna spew again if you don't—"

"Oh," Jimmy said, probably thinking he understood.

"I could use some water," Ray said.

Jimmy pulled him over to the outside spigot and pushed his head under the stream, and laughed a lot more when Ray half-drowned in it, but at least it was way more normal than before.

Ray punched him in the arm and took off for home, because it was October, and he didn't need a cold on top of everything else.

The next time he saw the guys, Jimmy mentioned going over to his place. Ray suggested taking off to the park instead and maybe finding an open basketball court or something. He wasn't big on basketball, but it was something to do that wasn't in Jimmy's dopey basement, and the guys agreed.

They didn't find a court free, though, so they ended up just walking around down by the lake, kicking stones into the water and talking bullshit.

And Ray wasn't really paying attention—which was stupid, because bad stuff always happened when he wasn't paying attention, and why the hell hadn't he figured that out by now?—and that's when Pete said, "So how'd it go, Mike? You get that rag stuffed back in Caspy's locker?"

"Hell, no," Mike said. "Too risky. Gotta do it sometime when I'm down there alone, when I got a hall pass."

"So now it's in your locker," Jimmy said, and smacked Mike on the shoulder. "Good move, genius. What's gonna happen when they do surprise locker checks?"

"I got it hidden," Mike protested. "I'll get a hall pass tomorrow."

"You got me wondering if you want to keep it," Jimmy said, punching Mike's shoulder again.

"Jerk-off." Mike swiped back at him with an open hand, but missed, like he usually did.

"Not me, that's what you're planning to do with it."

"Asshole."

"What you like to get fucked in."

Mike took a clumsy swipe at him.

"Ooh, Mike, you want to take it camping?" Pete taunted, saying "camping" like it was a bad thing, making a limp-wrist gesture and waving it in Mike's face.

"Shut up," Mike said, his face looking like it had been slapped.

"Yeah, shut up," Ray chimed in. "Nothing wrong with camping." He thought it was fun, even though he didn't get to do it very often.

"You go camping, Kowalski?" Pete said, still in that stupid singsongy voice.

"I been a couple of times, with my dad," Ray said.

"Yeah, well, going with your dad's not what I'm talking about," Pete said, lowering his voice almost to a whisper. "I'm talking about the Boy Scouts. Mike camps with the Boy Scouts. I just found out Caspy does, too. Maybe they got something going on we don't know about."

"Asshole!" Mike said again, sticking his hands in his pockets. They were kind of twitching. Ray got that. If Pete kept this up, Ray was going to want to hit him, too.

"So, what, they go fishing together? Big fucking deal," Ray said.

Pete shrugged. "It's not the fishing you gotta worry about. It's the stuff after lights out. After they all get in their sleeping bags. What do you think happens then, with guys like Caspy around?"

Ray didn't know; he'd never thought about it. He was thinking about it now, though, and it gave him a shiver up his spine. He swallowed, scratched his neck, glanced up sideways to make sure the guys hadn't seen.

"You gotta watch who you go camping with, because you could wake up to find a guy in your sleeping bag with you. Trying to do stuff,“ Pete said, still whispering.

Jimmy barked a laugh. "Maybe it's catching. Maybe that's what happened to Caspy, and maybe he left his queer cooties on the magazine, huh?"

Mike aimed the back of his hand at Jimmy and this time it almost connected. Would have if Jimmy hadn't ducked fast.

"Ooh—getting hot under the collar there. I think we're onto something," Jimmy said. "You a closet fag, too, Mike? That why you really got that magazine? You like looking at those monster dicks under the covers?"

"Shut up!“ Ray said before he even thought about doing it. Which was really, really stupid, because Mike probably deserved what he was getting, and anyway he could defend himself, even if he couldn't ever land a punch.

"Get outta here," Mike said, clearly pretending to sound cool and unruffled. "You know I hate fags. I hate freaks, too."

"Sure you do. Can't find your dick with a microscope, so you gotta get your thrills looking at those freaks—"

Ray had hold of Jimmy's windbreaker at the throat before Jimmy could get out another word.

"What's got into you, Kowalski? You got a thing about dicks, too?"

"I got a thing about you busting on a guy for something stupid like the size of his dick, yeah."

"I seen you, Kowalski," Jimmy said. "Hung like a fag. There something you forgot to tell us?"

Ray's face heated, and he was glad he didn't have a snow-white complexion like Mike, because it didn't really show on him. "Asshole." He let go of Jimmy's jacket and pushed him away. "I got a girlfriend." He was in love with her. She was his friend. That was kind of the same thing.

He shouldn't have said anything defensive, though. That was another stupid mistake in a whole list of them. Ray was constantly making mistakes with these guys, and he didn't know how to stop.

Guys always said stupid shit like this. You weren't supposed to take it seriously, just laugh it off. Even Mike was laughing now. Mike usually figured out the right way to react. Ray, though, Ray just never had the right reactions at the right times.

The problem was, it always got personal for Ray, really damn quick. He didn't know how to make it not personal.

"He got a girlfriend," Pete taunted in a fake-sissy voice, and Mike even joined in, probably glad Ray'd diverted them from picking on him.

"Oh, yeah?" Jimmy said. "How come we never seen her?"

"Stella. She lives up on the Gold Coast. Goes to private school."

"Now we know she's imaginary," Mike said.

"You never seen her because you never been up there. They don't let losers like you up on the Gold Coast."

"Oh, yeah, but they let you? Pull the other leg."

"I take dancing with her," Ray said, not thinking fast enough, and damn, that was another mistake, because all three of the guys started whooping with laughter.

"Dancing! Ray's a ballerina. Bet you look pretty in a tutu, Blondie."

"Ballroom!" Ray started to protest, but it was pointless; no one was listening.

"Nah, even the boys wear tights," Pete said, winking broadly.

"No way!" Jimmy said.

"It's true. My mom dragged me to somebody's ballet recital last year. The boys wear tights, and they don't hide nothing. Caspy would love it." Pete grabbed his crotch for emphasis.

This set Jimmy off. He doubled over and clutched his sides, laughing so hard he got out of breath. Ray felt almost like he was suddenly back on his front lawn, five years old, naked and bewildered.

Jimmy caught his breath just enough to choke out: "I can see it now. Kowalski stuffs his big thing in a pair of tights and hops around, Caspy would think he'd died and gone to heaven."

"Stelllllaaaaa!" Mike yelled, clutching the collar of his shirt and making like Brando.

Ray's fist was in Mike's face so fast that it even surprised Ray. He'd hardly felt the impulse to move before he was standing there over Mike and Mike was down, clutching his jaw and spitting blood onto the dirt.

"That feel like a ballerina punch to you, O'Connor?" Ray heard himself growling. He shadow-punched the air a few times, up on his toes, ready to give Mike more if he didn't shut up.

Jimmy's and Pete's arms were pinning his all of a sudden, pulling him back. "Jesus, Kowalski, you don't hit a guy for busting your chops," Pete said.

Mike picked himself up off the ground, wiping the corner of his mouth on his sleeve. "Nice to know that Brando shit still gets to you, Stanley," he said, winking at Ray real slow, all confident now because Ray's arms were pinned. Ray wondered whether Jimmy and Pete were going to hold him and let Mikey punch him back. Ice settled in his stomach. He went limp, and when he felt their hold relax, he pulled free, just in time to duck Mike's punch.

It wouldn't have landed anyway, he figured, because Mike's aim still sucked, but better safe than sorry.

Pete was shoving Mike back from Ray, so maybe they wouldn't have held him after all. Jimmy said, "You can't blame a guy for questioning that dancing shit. It's queer."

"Oh, yeah, really queer," Ray said, catching his breath. "Since it's all about meeting girls."

"Sure. So you can have tea parties with them and do their hair." Mike was still too damn cocky. Ray was sorry he'd stepped in to defend him, and sorrier he hadn't followed the right to the jaw with a left to the gut. The guy was like a shark, smelling blood in the water, glad it wasn't his.

"I gotta actually break that jaw to shut it up?" Ray glared at him.

"Knock it off," Jimmy said. "Jesus, Ray. You're gonna give us all a bad rep, with this dancing shit, and you notice I don't even mention that crap with you following the Cubs when you live in Sox country. What's the matter with you? You always gotta be different."

Yeah, there was that. Not like Ray did it on purpose, but he did kind of have a knack for standing out in a group. He didn't fit in up in Stella country any better than here. He'd had the wrong shoes for dance class for the first six months he took lessons, and even when he finally got some that worked, they were used, and kids in the class looked at him funny. Then his big feet got bigger and he had to get "new" used ones, and he still looked like shit even though his mom worked extra hours just to afford those.

Stella didn't care; thank God for Stella. She smiled at him when he showed up, just like always, and never even looked at his feet. She didn't see his clothes or his hair that needed to be cut two months ago. She didn't see a kid from the South Side who was different. She saw Ray, and he saw that you're-my-hero look in her eyes, and after class they put their heads together and he listened to her tell him all about criminal justice and how she was going to make a difference.

"If different means being with Stella," Ray said quietly, "then it's great to be different. I'm as different as they come. I'm the different-est. I got Stella."

That ought to have shut the guys up, but, no. It was more blood in the water, apparently, and they were circling.

"You ever done it with her?" Mike asked.

Pete and Jimmy glanced over, too. "Yeah," one of them said. "Spill."

Done what? Ray almost started to ask. He caught himself in time. And then he started to say Sure, of course, whaddya think? but he stopped himself from saying that, too, because it wouldn't be fair to Stella, telling a lie like that. That could hurt her reputation, and he wasn't going to do that to her.

The guys were in his face, interrogating Ray like they were cops and he'd done something wrong. He couldn't help feeling guilty even though he knew he hadn't.

"You just shut up," Ray said. "Stella's a nice girl. I'm going to marry her."

That just made them laugh harder. "Oh, right. I can see that. Like she'd agree to be Stella Kowalski."

"Ah have always depended on the kindness of strangers," one of them mimicked in a falsetto and a fake Southern accent.

Ray started to tell them that was Blanche, not Stella, but he checked himself in time. If he was finally learning to think before saying stuff, that was a good thing.

"I don't think she's real," Mike said, clearly still sore from the punch in more ways than one.

"I'll bring her down here some time," Ray said. "We got a prom next year. You'll see. Or maybe get her to come down to a football game, even."

"You think you can get a girl to come down from the Gold Coast to see you, you're dreaming. You look in the mirror lately? You don't look like Brando," Jimmy said. "Or Steve McQueen. You're just skinny Stanley Four-Eyes."

"McQueen's a fag, too," Mike said, ducking behind Pete's shoulder so Ray couldn't hit him again, which Ray probably would have if he'd had a clear shot. Because the guys ragging on Ray was business as usual, but McQueen wasn't here to defend himself.

"Cut it the fuck out, guys," Pete said. Ray wondered if that was really to defend him or just because if Ray lashed out in Mike's direction, Pete stood to take the hit this time.

So Ray dropped it. The guys were being assholes, but Ray probably had made it all worse by reacting. He couldn't fucking stop himself, sometimes.

He put his hands up and backed away, and they started walking again, back towards the park gate and the street beyond. It was what he should've done when they first started in. And he shouldn't have defended Mike, the creep.

But the damage was apparently done.

The next day, he found the gay magazine in his locker.

***

When Ray went to Senior High, the guys in his gym classes had to change and shower in one big room. It was bad enough jerks like Jimmy Kaz had ever seen Ray, but now they were gonna gawk at him every day?

Ray figured he had to come up with some strategies to keep out of their sights. He learned a few moves that worked. He turned his back when he stripped for his shower, trying to look casual about it. He slipped under the spray and showered real quick so no one would see him, no one would notice.

He figured out how to grab a towel and get it around himself quick, too, and that turned out to be a real smart move, because when he showered in a room full of other guys, it was just as bad as when he got distracted any other time: he got hard.

That made everything worse.

Of course, he wasn't the only guy to get hard in a situation like that, and some of the sex-ed classes—which Ray pretended not to be paying attention to, even while he listened intently to every word—had pointed out that boys his age could get excited real easily for almost no reason. That was okay for them; the other kids mostly ignored it, anyway, but at least when it happened to them, they didn't get fucking huge, like Ray did.

For the first two months of sophomore year, he had his moves perfected, and he managed to hide himself pretty well.

And then one day he missed. He didn't know whether he was just tired after gym class, or whether it was all about Mark Halston, a new kid in school who had dark wavy hair and filled-out muscles, and the most gorgeous blue eyes.

Apparently Ray found him kind of distracting.

Ray wasn't exactly Captain Attention Span, after all; he typically got distracted at the wrong times and places, but there couldn't have been a time or place as wrong as the shower after gym, could there? Ray was just ducking out from under the spray and grabbing his towel, and there Mark was, his back to Ray, stripping off his Jockeys.

He had the most perfect ass Ray had ever seen, full and muscular and tight.

Ray forgot about his towel. He forgot about everything for a second or two, and that apparently gave his dick plenty of time to notice Mark. Mark turned at that moment, and Ray was wiping his face with his towel, pretending he wasn't looking at anything at all, even though he sure as hell was...

...and Mark came right toward him, only swerving at the last second to pass Ray—so close Ray practically felt the hairs on Mark's arm brush against him—and get under the shower...

...and Ray spaced out completely. Somehow he remembered he was supposed to be going to his locker and putting his clothes on, but apparently he forgot about his towel and how he was supposed to shield himself with it, how he was supposed to be hiding his freakishness from the other guys, because he dropped it.

He dropped the damn thing in a puddle, and he didn't even notice right away. He headed to his locker, too many steps away, and there was Jimmy Kazmierczak at his locker, only two down from Ray's, standing there with all of his clothes on and a damp towel in his hand. Staring at Ray.

Staring at Ray with his eyes gone huge and stupid with shock.

That startled Ray off whatever planet he'd been on. "What—?"

"What you gonna use that wood for, a baseball bat?" Jimmy said, and snapped his towel at Ray.

And maybe it was because Ray didn't have enough blood going to his brain at the moment, but he was too slow to jump away, and the towel caught him on the tip of his cock, not really snapping hard enough to hurt; Ray caught more air than towel, but it was enough to feel like a touch, wrapping around him for a second and pulling...and Ray couldn't help his reaction to that, could he? It was bad timing, bad luck, or just one of those horrible coincidences that seem to happen way too often in high school, but Ray couldn't help any of it. He gasped out a little sound, and his cock just...gushed.

His own towel was a light-year away on the bathroom floor, soaked. His clothes were still in his locker. There was nothing around to hide behind. He grabbed his cock in his hand and pushed it up against his belly, but the stuff soaked through his fist anyway; there was so fucking much, and it was warm in his chilled hand.

He'd turned his back on Jimmy, but Jimmy'd seen enough, apparently, because he gasped, too, and then he was squawking with laughter behind Ray and slamming his hand against his locker loudly in case there was anyone in the room who might've missed it.

And Ray looked away, away, he had to get back under the showers and rinse this off, and he had no fucking towel, but he had to, so he stumbled back over there, still clutching his cock against his belly, knowing he couldn't move or they'd see more...

...and he stumbled right back where he'd showered before, only someone else was under the nearest shower head now, and Ray practically stepped on his foot before the guy noticed and got out of his way. It was Mark. Ray's face went hot, but he felt like the rest of him froze. He rinsed off and then went over and picked up his sopping towel and wrung it out over the drain.

He couldn't look at anyone.

He felt like every eye in the room was trained on him.

He wrung out his towel and didn't bother trying to dry off with it; that was a total lost cause; he was back to Earth enough to know that. He slapped the wet thing over the locker bench, slammed his locker open, and felt around in there for his clothes. He'd have to find a way to pull them on wet. It'd take him hours to dry off, and people would stare, and someone would ask what happened to him.

It'd be all over school by dismissal, he figured.

Except a pale hand reached into his field of vision. Holding a dry towel.

Ray jerked his head up.

The worst possible thing had just gotten even worse: it was Caspy Feinman, swallowing hard but looking Ray in the eye, his dark eyes nervous, determined. "I always got an extra one," Caspy said. "Be prepared, you know. Scouts." He shrugged.

Ray took the towel, pathetically grateful, and hating himself at the same time, hating himself for thinking for a second that Caspy was the wrongest person to be helping him, because of what it might look like. "Thanks," he managed to croak out.

"S'nothing." Caspy turned away quickly, hunching his skinny shoulders like he knew this was going to make almost everything worse.

At least Ray'd be dry when he faced the music. He scrubbed his hair with the towel and dried the rest of him quick, ditching all his practiced moves, because they hadn't done him any good anyway, and he really had nothing left to hide except his pain, right? He didn't have to let them all know how much he wanted to die right there, except he couldn't die right there, because then they'd stare even more.

Ray got his clothes on and ignored everybody, even Caspy when he stuck a hand out to take the loaned towel back.

"My mom washes them," Caspy said under his breath, and Ray just grunted back at him, not really thanks, hardly an acknowledgment, but what could he really say?

Jimmy quit having fits and took off somewhere, slamming the door behind him, and the other guys maybe whispered a little, but nobody said anything else to Ray, and finally when all the noise stopped, he finished tying his shoes and looked up, hoping to find the room empty.

But it wasn't. Caspy was still there, looking at him cautiously.

"Look, thanks," Ray said.

Caspy shrugged. "Not a big deal."

Ray shrugged, too, because what else was there to do? "What're you waiting around for?"

"Thought you could use a friend."

"Yeah, well...thanks."

"Welcome." Caspy still hovered. Ray couldn't figure what he was hovering for, unless—

Horrible just got horribler. Yeah, Ray could think of a reason why a might-be-gay guy like Caspy would be hovering around Ray after what just happened.

Think we're playing for the same team, huh, Caspy? Think again. Ray has a girl.

He pushed himself up off the bench, said "bye," and took off like a shot.

So, not that Ray had ever really liked locker rooms, but after that he hated them.

There was lunch and then two more periods after gym. Ray couldn't eat, so he went out on the football field alone and just walked for a while. Then he came back in and went to his classes, which nobody he knew well was in, anyway, so he figured they were safe enough. When he looked around, he didn't see anybody looking at him, which was normal, but every time he looked down at his books—blurry, stupid books, because he wasn't putting his ugly glasses on—he could swear he felt eyes on him.

Finally, the last bell rang, and he was out, heading home, only something stopped him at the gate. He didn't think he'd really even heard anything; he'd been spacing out again. He froze for a second, thinking Jimmy and Mike were maybe waiting for him, maybe planning something he wouldn't like that might involve bruises, but, no. It was Caspy.

Caspy tilted his head in the direction Ray was going and said, "I go that way, too."

"Mm." Ray didn't know what to say. Caspy had saved him from sitting around in damp clothes all afternoon, maybe saved him a cold or something, since Ray got chilled easily. He'd probably saved him a bunch of stupid questions, and maybe even saved him from becoming the news item of the week. Maybe.

But being seen with Caspy after all that was problematic, at least since the guys had decided they knew what Caspy was.

Ray thought about it. Thought about what a jerk he was even to weigh the question.

Jerked his chin in the direction of home and gathered Caspy up with a grunt: "C'mon."

They walked three blocks before Ray figured out what he wanted to ask and how to ask it. He waited till they were walking next to a park, no one within earshot. "They say you're queer," he said casually.

"Oh, yeah?" Caspy said that real matter-of-factly, like it wasn't news to him. Or maybe like he was used to being questioned and real good at deflecting attention he didn't want.

Ray figured he'd either get answers or learn that deflecting trick, so it would be a win either way. Besides, maybe he could convince Caspy to be more careful. "They say you been kissing a boy behind that last row of lockers."

"That what they say?"

"Well, did you?"

"Jeez, Ray, whaddya think?"

"I don't know. And I don't really care, I just..." He scratched his neck awkwardly. "Don't want to see you get hurt."

"They been calling me names forever. If it's not fag, it's kike. Your friends, Ray."

Ray snorted. "They're assholes."

"I know that. Question is whether you know that."

Ray did, but he knew Caspy had it wrong. "They're just trying to get your goat. Jimmy and Mike wouldn't hurt you, not really."

"Other people might want to."

"Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. It's not those assholes you gotta worry about. There's seniors, there's bigger kids who think beating up a fag is a fun way to spend a Friday night."

"I stay in Friday nights," Caspy said quietly.

"Saturday night, too," Ray said. "Look. The point is, if you got...stuff...incrim—uh, whatsis...suspicious-looking stuff, gay-looking stuff—just don't bring it to school, okay?"

"Oh, thanks, Vice Principal Kowalski."

"They know, Caspy."

"I don't think so. I don't think they know me at all."

"Look, they showed me, uh...somebody went snooping in your locker."

"So that's where my lunch money went," Caspy said with a tight little grin. And boy, Ray was surprised. Everybody thought Caspy was just some awkward nerd, but he wasn't, was he? He was pretty cool under pressure.

"No, that's where your—" Ray lowered his voice, and tried to scope out the street and the park around them without making it obvious. "That's where your gay magazine went. The one with the guys."

"Guys?" Cool customer, for sure. Like he didn't have a clue what Ray was talking about.

"Yeah, the guys with the big—" Ray stopped himself. It wasn't a subject he really wanted to pursue. "You know, the guys. Naked guys."

Caspy pushed his tongue into his cheek. Ray thought for a moment he was being mocked, but apparently he wasn't. Caspy glanced up at him over the wire rims of his glasses. "So what'd they do with it?"

"The magazine? It's, uh...gone. Off the school grounds." He wasn't going to get specific. No point in that now. If Ray gave it back, Caspy would just bring it back to school, putting himself right back in the guys' sights.

"What's with you, Kowalski? Think I can't fight my own battles?"

Ray took in Caspy's skinny frame. He was even skinnier than Ray; he was downright bony, fragile-looking. Ray chuckled. "Yeah, maybe a little. You're a scarecrow, you freak."

Caspy obviously heard it the way Ray meant it, because he laughed, too.

"Look, I, uh, I'm learning to box," Ray said. "Maybe you could come along. It's just me and my Uncle Stosh. I think he could teach us both. It'd be easier together. More fun, to, uh, bring a friend."

"Are we friends, Ray?"

"That was your idea," Ray countered. "But, yeah. Looks like I didn't pick 'em too well in the past, did I? Maybe I'm trying to reform." He smirked.

"How long you known them?"

"I don't know. I don't remember ever not knowing them."

Caspy shrugged. "Not your fault, then. You're loyal. That's a good thing."

"Look, my point was, just because I hang out with those guys—or did, anyway—that don't mean I think they're right about you."

"What if I said the magazine was mine?"

"If it was yours, then somebody owes you five bucks, or whatever that thing cost, and I'll make sure you get paid back."

Caspy laughed. "Never mind. If it was mine, and I'm not saying it was, let's assume I threw it away. Finders keepers."

Well, that removed any guilt from Ray for keeping it. "Okay. Either way, it's your business," Ray said. "I'm just saying don't bring shit like that to school. It's your business if you got that stuff at home."

Caspy snorted. "Fat lot you know about it. It's probably safer at school."

That sent a shiver, and not a nice one, up the back of Ray's neck. "Shit. Your folks?"

Caspy shrugged, like it wasn't important.

"You'll think about the boxing?" Ray said.

"Yeah. As long as you're okay being seen with me."

"I'm being seen with you now, aren't I?" They were walking across Cermak in front of God and everyone.

Caspy stopped walking the minute they got out of the street. He stepped up on the curb. Turned. Eyed Ray slowly, up and down. Ray had a weird, spacey feeling, a flash of memory: standing naked near the lockers again, Caspy shooting him a worried glance, Caspy handing him a towel.

But Caspy just leaned against the Don't Walk sign, blinked calmly, and said,

"You a Jew-lover?"

“What?“

"Fag-lover? You a fag yourself?"

"Caspy, don't." Street language was one thing, and when Jimmy and those guys threw that talk around, they were mostly just pounding sand.

But Caspy was serious. When it was serious, this kind of talk made Ray want to puke.

"That's what they're going to call you, you know. These guys you grew up with on the South Side. You ready for that?"

Ray swallowed. Nodded. "Yeah, they might. So fuck them."

"It ever occur to you maybe somebody planted that rag in my locker?"

Ray felt slow, stupid. Yeah, it had occurred to him, but then Mike swore he'd seen Caspy with a boy. It all seemed to add up. Ray hit himself in the head a couple of times. What a crappy detective he'd make, huh? "Well, yeah. At first I told them they were nuts; you were too smart to bring something like that to school. But then Mike said he saw you, you know, behind the lockers," he finished lamely.

"You were right the first time. I didn't bring a magazine into school."

"Good. Great."

"Great?"

Ray shrugged. "I kind of hit Mike, that day. Drew blood."

"Over me?“ Casey looked astounded.

"Well, not just that. Also, he did the 'Stella' bit from Streetcar." Ray chuckled. "But, yeah. Mostly over you. Glad I didn't hit him for nothing."

"The 'Stella' thing, I don't get why he'd do that."

"You know my first name's Stanley?"

"Oh." Caspy smiled. "Hey, that's better than Casper. I was doomed from the start."

"Yeah, well, me, too, if you think about it."

"I see what you mean." They started walking again, crossed another block.

"So, you're not really...you know?" Ray started to ask.

Caspy laughed, a short little laugh that didn't sound like he thought it was actually funny. More like he thought he should laugh than wanted to laugh. "I didn't say that, exactly."

"So you are?"

"What do you think, Kowalski?" Again, always hitting the ball back into Ray's court.

Ray looked at him. Looked away. Looked at him again. Caspy smiled over the wire rims of his glasses.

And Ray noticed for the first time that Caspy was handsome, that his eyebrows were two thin, straight lines of ink-black and his eyes were hazel, and his lashes were very, very curly. His black hair was curly, too, not a 'fro, but tight, shiny waves. His skin was fair and he had freckles across his nose. The humor went all the way up, reflected in his eyes, and Ray could see just by looking at him that Caspy was smart; he was very, very sharp. And that made Ray's mouth water.

Ray had a thing for smart people, apparently.

Opposites attracted, he figured.

And he might be a dumb kid who was flunking just about every subject, but he wasn't so dumb he couldn't put two and two together. "Yeah, I hear you," Ray said, finally. "There's not, like, a secret handshake, or something, is there?"

Caspy laughed out loud at that. "I don't think so." But he stuck out his hand.

Ray took it, shook it, let go. "I just gotta tell you. I like you, and all. I think the boxing can work. And I got a girlfriend."

"Yeah," Caspy said quietly after a moment. "Good-looking guy like you, I figured you probably did."

Which that blew Ray's mind pretty completely. Good looking? Ray?

"Would you believe me if I told you her name's Stella? Really."

They laughed all the way to Caspy's neighborhood.

But they sobered up when Ray left Caspy there at the end of his block. "Things gonna be okay at home?"

"Sure," Caspy said. "You don't have to worry."

"Boxing," Ray said, pointing with two fingers. "We're gonna start Thursday."

"All right." Caspy looked away, then glanced back at Ray real quick, like he was afraid to look him right in the eye. "So what screwed you up in the locker room?" he asked out of the blue.

Ray almost staggered backwards physically. Jesus Christ, the guy was good. He could probably teach interrogation to the PD.

He didn't see any reason not to answer, though. He had Stella. That meant any discussions of anything else were, whatchacallit, academic. "Mark," he said. "Mark Halston."

"Whoa. Yeah, I get that," Caspy said reverently.

"Yeah. And...thanks."

Caspy shrugged as though to say even a benchwarming member of the home team was welcome.

***

The first time Ray made love to Stella, he almost chickened out of it. Well, he actually did chicken out of it at the first couple of opportunities, which was pretty stupid, all in all, but he had to be sure she really meant it before he did anything she'd regret.

He had to talk to her, tell her about him. She'd touched him, yeah, through his clothes, and they'd gotten a little hot and heavy sometimes, but he'd never actually shown her the full extent of his, well, his full extent, and he had to warn her.

She didn't seem worried. She just shrugged and said, "We'll figure it out." She seemed pretty confident, so he got over his fears long enough to take her to bed.

They were seventeen, and his parents were away for the weekend, gone up to see his mom's sister in Michigan. Ray had the house to himself, and he had money from working at the auto-repair shop part time, and he had the GTO, which was gleaming with six new coats of jet black. Things were good. He took Stella out to a dance hall on the North Side that didn't look at IDs too closely, and they danced up a storm: waltz, foxtrot, even swing. They didn't drink anything but root beer, though, because Ray was not gonna do anything stupid behind the wheel, and he wasn't going to let Stella get in bed with him unless she was sober and sure she really wanted to—

—and she did. She wanted him, she really did. He was going to make it perfect for her.

He figured his stupid freak dick could behave long enough for that, right?

Apparently it couldn't.

Because when he got her in bed and he cuddled her and touched her till she was clinging to him, kissing his neck, and asking him to put it in her, please, put it in her now, he just...couldn't.

Not that he didn't want to.

But he physically couldn't. She was tiny and tight and a virgin, and he was a freak with a freak dick.

He was a virgin, too, but it wasn't the same at all. It wasn't going to hurt him.

When he pushed, he just felt the tight, tight clasp of her. It didn't hurt, it felt too good, and he had to pull out and grab himself hard to keep from shooting all over her.

But when he got himself under control and she egged him on and asked him so sweetly to do it again, and he pushed again, he wasn't thinking clearly enough; he was spacing out a little because it felt so damn good...

...and he pushed a little too hard, and she yelped.

He'd hurt her! He pulled back right away, but she was breathing hard, and catching her breath, and still smiling at him even though he could see the strain in her eyes and a little bit of sweat plastering wisps of hair to her forehead.

She pulled him close and kissed him, and everything about her was so good, everything about her was greatness: the way she felt and the way she looked and how sweet she smelled. The incredible softness of the place where her neck met her shoulder, where he pressed desperate kisses. It was all so good that he got choked up, even though his dick was hard enough to pound nails, and he had to ease back a little and catch his breath.

"Come on, Ray," she murmured in his ear.

"Help me," he said. "Help me not hurt you. I can't hurt you, Stella."

"It's all right," she said. "I knew it wouldn't be that comfortable. When I went to the doctor, got the Pill and everything, she said it's okay if it hurts a little bit the first time. It's normal."

"You're sure?"

"Sure I'm sure."

Dumb question. Stella was brilliant at asking the right questions. She was going to breeze through pre-law with no problem, and she was going to ace law school, too; Ray could see all that coming. Words were Stella's friends. She'd have gotten every bit of information she needed out of the doctor and remembered every last detail.

Ray trusted her. "Okay, okay."

"Just push a little more," she said. "Just a little more. We've got to get past it."

He got his knees under him and arched his back a little, looking down to see where he was going into her. She looked so tiny there, her pink flesh all puffy where the head of his cock touched her, the opening of her pussy so little, his cock like three times bigger, scary-big. He didn't know how it was ever going to fit.

"But, I don't see..."

She squirmed under him and pulled her knees back more, and said, "Don't look, Ray."

She put her hand down to guide him and even her hand on him seemed so tiny by comparison.

"Don't look, just push!" she commanded.

So he obeyed, closing his eyes, letting her guide him in, pushing, pushing...

"That's right!" she said. "Come on!" she said.

And he pushed. Met resistance. Pushed harder.

Stella made one tiny, tight sound like she'd swallowed another yelp—he didn't know—and whoosh, he was in, so quick, a knife through butter, and he banged into something firm but yielding, like muscle, and there was a weird, hot, wet feeling around the base of his cock, but it wasn't him coming. He desperately wanted to move inside her, and he wasn't coming yet.

Neither was she, apparently. She had her teeth biting into her lip, and tears were squeezing out under her eyelids. They didn't look like happy tears, though Ray couldn't always tell.

"Close your eyes," she said. "Just move, do it."

He couldn't look at her face like that, and he didn't dare look down to see what was going on there. He could only feel. Stella felt very good.

"Move," she said, and there was more ease in her voice then. So he moved, and she moved with him, and she felt amazing around him, soft and so warm, and so tight, clasping him inside her. Like her body wanted him there.

It didn't last long, which was good, too; he felt himself going over the edge after just a minute or so. He felt Stella's hand clutching his ass and almost digging her nails into him, and that was it, he couldn't help it, the feeling flooded him, a rush of excruciating pleasure, and he gasped, and he was coming in her. Her nails dug into him hard, and he didn't even care. It was a distant sting.

The noise she was making was distant, too. He heard it, but it didn't register till his head cleared.

And he opened his eyes.

And he saw her face streaked with tears.

"Oh, God, Stella! I didn't want to—" He couldn't say what he wouldn't even let himself think.

"It's okay," she gasped. "I didn't expect it to be quite that—it's okay, though. I wanted it." She was openly sobbing now.

He tried to kiss the tears off her face. Why why why? kept going through his head. Why'd she have to insist?

But he lay as still as he could till he softened up, and then he pulled out carefully, and she gasped at that, too, like even that hurt.

Scared, he looked down. Blood. There was blood on him, on her, on the sheets. Red, ugly.

"No," he whispered, his voice cracking. "God, Stella, you're bleeding!"

"I'm all right."

"No, you're not, you're all—"

"I'm all right, Ray," she said in that firm voice that she used when she meant business. "Really. I'll go clean up."

"You...you didn't enjoy any of that, did you? You didn't..."

"Come?" she laughed a little, just a little chuckle, and the sound made Ray feel a little less panicked. If she could laugh about it...

"Not this time," she said. "I knew I wouldn't. This wasn't about that."

"Okay, I get that, but I didn't want to hurt you, Stella."

"It's all right, Ray. I'm really all right. Trust me."

He kissed her neck, her cheek, her eyebrow. "Okay," he said, trying not to cry. "Later, when you're..."

"Tomorrow," she said. "Or a few days, maybe. Let me rest a few days and we'll try again."

He kissed her, pulled her close. He was still on his knees and elbows above her, and his muscles strained to hold him, but he wasn't going to add insult to injury by putting his weight on her.

"The last thing I wanted was to hurt you," he whispered in her ear.

"I know. It was unavoidable," she said.

"But maybe if I had—"

"No," she said. "No. You're you and I'm me. This was how it was going to happen if it happened. It's not just you, Ray. I'm kind of small, and you're..."

"A freak," Ray said. "I'm a freak."

"Ray, no..."

He wasn't listening. He was a freak, and because of it he'd hurt Stella. A normal-size guy wouldn't have hurt Stella.

He moved off her as gently as he could and flopped down on the mattress at her side. He was a freak, he could barely fit inside her, and he'd hurt her. He'd spend the rest of his life making it up to her, he promised himself. He'd get really good at making love to her any way he could that didn't hurt her.

And he did. He got really good at doing everything she liked most, and he often "forgot" to get to the actual intercourse part. It didn't matter that much anyway. Since she didn't want to get pregnant, they didn't actually have to, and he was still totally crazy about her and happy with whatever she did to him. Sometimes she stroked him with her hands or put her mouth on him; other times he made her come first with his mouth and hands, and then slid over her and rubbed off on her hip or between her legs, as though he was so excited by her that he never quite made it all the way inside her.

So Ray's freakishness wasn't such a big deal then, because he and Stella knew each other, they'd gone through years together.

And they were pretty good together out of bed as well as in. There were tough times when Ray struggled through two years of college and then the police academy, and then the years when she went to law school and Ray walked the beat and worked overtime up to the limit, and took all the moonlighting jobs he could stay awake for, because even with loans and stuff, law school was tough to pay for.

Stella had some savings, but wouldn't take help from her parents. She didn't have time to hold down a job while she was studying for the bar, either, so Ray had to keep up with the overtime right through all those months while she was exhausted and even impatient with him sometimes.

Ray didn't care. If he was home in time, he cooked dinner because he was better at it, anyway, and Stella didn't have the time. Hell, he was Polish, he knew good food, even if he had kind of an unpredictable stomach and didn't always sit still long enough to eat a lot.

His mother helped; she brought over food every week, and she used to come over and iron stuff, not only Ray's uniform shirts and trousers, but Stella's stuff, too. His mom had a thing about ironing. As if being neatly pressed made you look like you belonged someplace better than the neighborhood you actually came from.

Ray still took Stella dancing when they had time and a little extra money, and when they didn't, he put on the stereo and danced her around their little living room. It was good enough.

It was greatness, and so was making love to her afterward.

He'd learned how to get her ready, and he'd learned how to go slow with her, and if it was one of those nights when she wanted him inside her—she didn't usually, but that was okay, because Ray liked her mouth and her hands just as much—if it was one of those nights, he knew how to go slow and go in her gently now, and he never made her yelp anymore, only take in a sharp breath once in a while when he went in too quick and banged into what she told him later was her cervix. She said it didn't hurt that much, and he just needed to give her a minute to open up more. He'd touch her then, with his mouth and hands, get her to where her eyes unfocused with pleasure, and then he could try again, going even slower and more carefully.

And it was good enough. He couldn't really get all the way inside her, but it was still good. They were good, right up until when they weren't.

They were over in the early 90s, really, even though they didn't actually divorce till '96. Ray knew it didn't have anything to do with their first time, when he'd hurt her. He knew it didn't really have anything at all to do with his dick, and since his freak dick was the reason he'd learned how to make love to her so good in other ways, it might've even been the reason they hung on to their sex life long after the rest of the relationship was over and done.

In the light of day, Ray and Stella had always been too different. She'd always been the girl that his friends didn't believe was going out with him. He'd always been the guy that she didn't come down to the South Side to visit. Her dance partner from the other side of the tracks. It read like a script out of fucking Hollywood. A beautiful dream, but the thing about dreams was, you always woke up eventually.

The opposite-sides-of-the-tracks thing was probably what their breakup looked like to other people. But Stella had never really made an issue of the fact that Ray was from a different background. It had never been important to her, just like she said it wasn't important that his dick was too big to get inside her comfortably. They ignored that stuff, but there was stuff they couldn't ignore that always simmered underneath, and it was that stuff that eventually boiled over.

Bottom line was, they'd never really merged their lives. Stella had her way of cleaning up the streets, and it was with words and papers and other lawyers and judges. She thought through every decision before she made it, and she went back over it a hundred times to make sure it was the right one, and Ray didn't know how anyone could have the patience for all that.

Ray's way was different: he went after bad guys with his instincts and his fists and his badge. He kept the words simple, he kept his gun where he could reach it, and he kept strong and light on his feet so he could run when he needed to. What the city called bravery and valor, Ray called "getting the job done any way he could." He did what was needed and was really good at not thinking about it later.

Stella was all about thinking through stuff later, especially stuff Ray didn't want to think through.

In the cold light of day, Ray wasn't that awkward kid anymore. He was a cop. He was the kind of cop who ran into warehouses outgunned, rescued kids, got wounded, and brought home citations that made Stella cry, because he couldn't stop doing stuff that might get him killed.

So it turned out that Ray was the guy she didn't want to be her hero after all.

The freak ex-husband.

The freak.

Yeah, it turned out Ray's freakishness ran a lot deeper than his dick.

And freaks apparently flocked together. Eventually.

Ray probably should've figured that out from his friendship with Caspy, which had seemed kind of inevitable at the time. It wasn't only that Caspy was the only other guy around that Ray knew for sure was playing for the home team, and it wasn't only that Caspy learned to box with him.

Caspy had remained his friend from the moment he handed Ray a dry towel in the showers right up till the present day, even though Caspy'd gone off to an Ivy League college in New York, and by the time he came back to Chicago, he was in medical school and Ray was a cop walking a beat, so they didn't find the time to catch up all that often.

From high school on, Ray had learned how to keep the more freakish parts of his nature separate from the parts that looked more socially acceptable. The part that was Stella's boyfriend, then husband, and then ex-husband, was okay with most people, including his parents, though they didn't like the ex-husband part of it so much. They did understand Ray moping about how Stella left him and how Stella didn't want kids. They were real sympathetic about that stuff, especially because Ray made a point of never telling his father that it was mostly his cop behavior that drove Stella away.

Mostly. Because another reason he lost Stella was the fact that he looked at guys once in a while, and Stella knew. She never missed a damn thing. She knew what Ray was thinking about every time he went to the gym or went out for a beer with Caspy, even though, all that time, Ray was still sitting on the bench watching the rest of the home team play the game.

He sure as hell didn't clue his parents in about that.

So he kept his Ray-and-Stella self separate from his self that was Caspy's friend. That Ray sparred with Caspy at the gym, took him out for a beer afterward and heard all about the latest guy who broke his heart, and sometimes wondered what it would be like to kiss him, though he never did it.

And both sides of him stayed away from communal showers and never, ever went camping any more. He told people he was allergic to both of them, and people stayed off his case.

He wished he'd known how to bullshit like that back in high school.

***

By the time Ray relocated to the 27th district to stand in for Vecchio, met Benton Fraser, and had his life turned upside down, Ray's issues with his dick were mostly a distant memory. Which was nice, actually, if a bit lonely. Nobody cared any more if Ray was a freak under his clothes, because nobody got under his clothes but him.

That was pathetic, yeah, but it was also safer.

Ray wasn't getting any dates, but the flip side was that he wasn't having to stammer through the explanation of how he was a freak who would have to get to know a person real well before he could take them to bed.

It was kind of a relief.

Relief could make a guy let down his guard. That was the only explanation Ray had for his distraction in early March of 1999.

Well, that, and the fact that a couple of years earlier, Benton Fraser had hit Ray's life like the tornado hit Kansas. Picked up Ray's life like Auntie Em's house and spun it around, and by the time Ray landed in Oz, he didn't know which end was up.

So it wasn't that unusual when Ray clicked on an empty chamber during a shootout he shouldn't have been a party to (but had no choice in once the bad guys started it), and Fraser snagged his arm, and they ducked and raced away while the perps reloaded. That kind of thing happened, on average, once a month. So did what happened next. One minute they were ducking the bullets and running like hell, and the next minute, Fraser was jumping off a catwalk and grabbing Ray by the waistband of his pants on the way down. Before Ray knew it, Fraser had pulled him ass-first into a vat of stinky, probably poisonous gunk in a warehouse, and made him hold his breath under there for so long he probably got brain damage and definitely got nose damage.

But the four perps with deadly intent passed them by—because who would even check the vat of stinky, stinky green stuff anyway?—and hightailed it out into the bright Chicago sunshine, where five fully staffed patrol cars, two lieutenants, and a couple extra plainclothes detectives were waiting to take them into custody.

It was just a bunch of sleazy perps who'd been using a vitamin factory as their transfer point for stolen merchandise, after all. And nothing interesting like uncut diamonds or gold bullion or Canadian beaver-pelts, either. Just the usual crap: electronics, old jewelry, silverware missing half the teaspoons.

The usual, except this time, Fraser had let Ray call for backup first. It almost made Ray believe in miracles. Welsh let someone else Mirandize the perps and interrogate them and do the paperwork, too, because he didn't want the probably poisonous crap that was all over Fraser and Ray coming into the station. That was practically a miracle, too.

You know a substance is truly disgusting when they won't let it in a police station.

So Ray got to skip the paperwork and drag Fraser over to his place to clean up.

Relief really could make a guy complacent.

When they got to his apartment, Ray herded Fraser inside and made him undo his boots and leave them by the door. Ray might be a slob, but there was no way he was letting that disgusting gunk in more than a few feet. Even he could figure out how to clean up a few square feet of weathered wooden flooring. He toed his own boots off, and his socks, and left the pile of gunky shoes and socks right where they dropped.

"Shower, he told Fraser," jerking his head in the approximate direction of the bathroom. "Now. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200."

Fraser cocked his head and looked at him like Ray had just said something in Klingon. But then he straightened his shoulders and headed for the bathroom without even token resistance.

Ray made a mental note to learn some Klingon.

There was no time at the moment, though, because he had to hose Fraser off and then hose himself off, quicker than Fraser could say...one of those weird things Fraser said.

Fraser slowed down in the hallway just outside the bathroom. Ray wasn't having any of that. He put his hand between Fraser's shoulder blades, right on the place where his suspenders connected under his tunic, and pushed Fraser into the small bathroom.

"Strip."

"Ray?"

"C'mon. Out of the clothes. I am gonna get...I'll be right back."

He didn't know if Fraser's uniform was salvageable—though, knowing Fraser, the uniform probably was actually Scotchgarded, and his usual dry cleaner would have no trouble with it. Ray's sweater and t-shirt and jeans, though, were history.

He went into the kitchen and grabbed a couple of garbage bags and brought them back to the bathroom.

Fraser was standing in the middle of the floor, just as dressed as he had been when he walked in, rubbing the hell out of his eyebrow with the side of this thumb.

"Jesus, Fraser, get them off!" Ray said, pushing up close to him and pinching the lanyard between his fingers, trying to remember how to slide the knot down...

"Ray."

Those stupid little knots were tough, and this one was even tougher because it was slick with the scummy green stuff, but Ray'd worn Turnbull's uniform once; he should be able to figure it out from this angle.

"Ray."

Fraser should be helping him, though. "C'mon, c'mon," Ray murmured at the knot, or maybe at Fraser.

"Ray."

"C'mon, Fraser, this stuff is gonna, like, soak into your skin if you don't get the uniform off fast." He got the knot to move, and then, right, up and around, and the thing was off. He pushed it into the garbage bag and started scrabbling at the Sam Browne belt. Why the hell wasn't Fraser helping him?

"Ray."

"You don't know what these green chemicals could be doing to you right now," Ray was saying. "They could be, like, corroding something. You could be getting poisoned right now. You gotta—"

“Ray!“

Fraser's shout finally brought Ray out of it. “What?!“

"I never said they were poisonous."

Ray goggled at him for a moment. "So you know what this crap is?"

"Well, not entirely, but I did detect the taste of decaying vegetable matter, chlorophyll, sulfur compounds—"

Ray covered his ears. "Do not tell me you tasted them, Fraser. Just do not."

"Well, Ray, I could hardly avoid—"

"I said don't tell me!"

"Well, all right, Ray. I suppose the important thing is that I don't believe they're poisonous. At least not from simple skin contact."

"Fraser, I almost don't care if they're poisonous or not. What they are is disgusting."

"Well, they are rather unpleasant—"

"Rather. Unpleasant. Oh, yeah. Like a skunk in sewage. Which is probably what this stuff is."

"Oh, no, Ray, while a skunk's smell can be strong, it isn't usually—"

Ray cut him off with a sharp sound. "Don't. National Geographic later, cleanup now." He opened one of the garbage bags and pointed at it. "In here. Every damn thing you got on, put in here. Your watch, too. Then I am tying this shut and setting it by the door with your shoes. My stuff's going in this other bag, which I am going to throw in the building incinerator tonight, but you want to try to save your uniform, that's your call. It's just not going anywhere in this apartment except this bag, you get that?"

Fraser pulled in a very long breath, then stopped short and let it out quickly. "Er. Well. I see your point about the noxious odor," he said. "What should I..."

Ray pointed at the bag again. "Strip. Clothes in here." He pointed at the shower. "You—in there. Shower. I got Lava soap in there for times like this when you throw me in gross stuff."

"I see." But Fraser was finally unVelcroing and unbuttoning and pulling his uniform off, and stuffing each piece in the garbage bag like Ray told him to. The only thing Ray could think of at that moment was getting the gross stuff off both of them and safely encased in plastic, so he kind of zoned out on the fact that Fraser was getting naked right next to him. Absently, he shooed Fraser into the shower, then opened the other garbage bag and stripped himself down carefully. The mess was sticky in some places and crusty in others, and his clothes crackled with it as he peeled them off. Still, he got his clothes off in record time, shoved them in the bag, and tied it off.

He tied Fraser's shut, too, and hauled the bags out to the entryway, then he stood there, at a loss. Because, even naked, he still stank with the skunky stuff and he couldn't stop anywhere, couldn't sit on or lean against anything. He still didn't even want to touch a wall. He wasn't that thrilled about touching the floor, come to think of it.

So he went back to the bathroom, where Fraser still had the shower going, strong and hot.

Fraser stuck his head out around the curtain. "Ray, I think this—" He stopped abruptly. His eyes widened. "Oh, dear."

Ray looked down at himself.

And saw that he was naked.

It was the Garden of Fucking Eden all over again. He'd forgotten to do that usual covering-up thing, even though he had successfully managed to hide his freak body from Fraser for two years, through every wet, toxic, slimy, and undercover costume change they'd been through in their police partnership.

At least this time Ray had a more life-or-death excuse for spacing out: He'd been worrying about the probably-not-poisonous-but-definitely-disgusting stuff all over him. It had definitely soaked through his clothes.

He was kind of green. There was no point in covering up now. He was green, and he was naked, and his freak-sized dick was green, and Fraser was staring at him. All of him.

"Jeez, I'm corroding?"

Fraser looked startled. "Well, you're not metallic, Ray."

"Huh?"

"You're not corroding, but the, er, substance appears somewhat staining."

He cocked his head and pushed the shower curtain back a little more. "You'd better share the shower, Ray. I don't know what sort of pigment it is, but if it's a dye...well, usually the longer you leave them on the more staining they become. I would hope we could clean the odor off fairly completely, but as long as there's some dye left on us, we'll know we haven't got it all."

"Oh. Okay."

Clearly, Ray was not thinking right, because if he was thinking like a guy with at least half a brain, he would never have gotten into a shower with a naked Benton Fraser.

Ray should have learned about that kind of thing, right? Mark Halston had nothing on Fraser, after all, and there wasn't anyone else here to distract Ray from Fraser, and, oh, yeah...Fraser was tugging Ray by the arm, and there was Fraser's round, tight ass, and Fraser's smooth chest, and his big arms, and Ray was having trouble breathing, much less forming a coherent thought.

Then Fraser was doing this weird do-si-do around him and shoving him under the spray with his back to Fraser. Then there was something scraping the back of his neck, rough as a cat's tongue, and Ray smelled his Lava soap. Oh.

"It's efficient," Fraser was saying, like that made some kind of sense, which it didn't, not to Ray. He shivered under Fraser's hands, even though the water was perfectly warm.

"Though it would have made far more sense to use the showers at the station," Fraser said.

Ray never used the showers at the station. Ever. He'd learned to fend off any questions quickly, too: he told people stuff like the station showers gave him allergies, or he was scared of foot funguses, or something like that. So when he answered Fraser, he didn't have to even think about it first; he just said what he always said: "Have you seen those showers lately, Fraser? I think they're more toxic than Lake Michigan. P.D. showers—no thanks."

"Well, it would have saved all this trouble. And not threatened the seats of your car."

"That's why I took the pool car. They already take a load of abuse." Ray'd spread newspapers and plastic bags on the seats; he figured it'd work good enough for a pool car.

The important thing was to avoid taking a shower at the station. Police stations were stinky and disgusting—which, admittedly, was a good fit with this green crap—but the real reason was that cops could be jerks just like high school kids. They laughed and snapped towels at each other just like high school kids, and Dewey—Christ, Dewey! The guy everybody wanted to hose off most was the last guy you ever wanted to meet in a locker room, naked. Dewey said whatever came into his screwy head. The guy was totally without tact.

Even Ray was Mr. Manners compared to Dewey, and that was just scary.

So Ray stayed away from that noise, because he'd volunteer to walk in front of a bullet before he'd volunteer for a repeat of high school.

The raspy touch of the Lava soap moved down his back, and yeah, that was Fraser's hand on top of it. Those were Fraser's hands, touching him, spreading the lather. Stopping at his hips with a little stuttery motion, like Fraser was undecided about how to continue.

Or whether to continue.

"Er. I think I've got all of the areas it's harder to reach."

Ray huffed out a little laugh. "Fraser. I can reach my whole back."

"You can?" Fraser sounded really surprised.

"Yeah." Ray stretched his arms back and demonstrated. He heard Fraser jump hastily back.

"Well, that's...that's very flexible of you, Ray. I'm impressed."

"Not so unusual for a skinny guy with long arms."

"Even so."

Fraser's hand came around to Ray's front, offering the bar of soap. "Here, would you prefer..."

Ray'd kind of liked what Fraser had been doing, but if Fraser didn't want to...

"Uh, sure. I just, uh. I gotta turn around, and...you know. Don't want to..." He swallowed kind of hard. "Don't want to freak you out."

"You won't, Ray."

"Yeah, well. Been a couple of changes since you got the first, uh, eyeful."

"It's quite all right. It happens." Fraser sounded like he knew what Ray was getting at. Ray better make it perfectly clear.

"Look, I, uh...you were touching me, and, you know. A guy can react...sometimes, when..."

"Yes. I understand, Ray. I'm...well, I'm having a similar reaction myself. I hope you don't find that offputting."

"You are?" The idea stunned Ray enough that he got distracted all over again and turned, forgetting, for that crucial half-second, to be self-conscious. Because Benton Fraser did not have those reactions. Hadn't, at least not that Ray had noticed, in the almost two years of their partnership.

But he was having one now.

Ray stared, his jaw dropping. Fraser was sporting a real firm erection. His cock was beautiful; flushed dark pink, arrow straight, and in perfect proportion to the rest of Fraser's gorgeous physique, exactly like Ray would've expected, if he'd ever really expected to see this.

Yeah, Fraser sure was reacting. Wasn't any way a guy could hide that, not naked in a shower. With his best friend.

Who'd had the hots for him for two years.

Who was also naked in a shower.

Who was also hard as a rock, and sticking out so far he was going to touch Fraser in a second if he didn't step back.

Ray could only pull back a couple of inches, but he did that, pressing his back against the tiled wall so that his freakish, still-slightly-green dick wouldn't brush against Fraser.

Fraser's eyes were wide, startled. Incredibly blue under the dark, wet swath of his bangs. "Ray!"

"Yeah, I, uh. Sorry. I should've warned you before."

Fraser looked confused. "Warned me...? About what?"

"Uh, that I'm a freak."

"I thought I was the freak."

Ray sighed. "You are. Just not the same kind of freak. Uh, obviously." He gestured. Then his face heated. "I mean, obviously, you're normal. You're...perfect."

"I'm glad you think so, Ray." Fraser sounded genuinely pleased.

"It's not a matter of thinking it. I can see you are."

"Oh." Now Fraser sounded like he didn't know what the heck Ray was talking about.

His eyes raked over Ray for a moment. "Forgive me, Ray, but I can't see what you think is strange about yourself. Or, well...any stranger than I am, since I'm obviously also having a...reaction." He licked his lips. "To your, er. Presence."

"It's not that. It's me, it's my...you know." He gestured at himself. At his dick, which was still sticking out what looked like more than a foot—and maybe it was, but he really didn't want to know, so he'd never measured.

"Well, you are still a little bit...green," Fraser said, and offered the soap again. "But the soap works very well. Once you get the green substance off, you'll look quite normal, I'm sure."

Ray shook his head. "Never been normal, Fraser. I grew this thing at age thirteen, fourteen...I don't remember when it stopped growing, but for a while there I was afraid it was just going to keep on growing till it was dragging on the floor."

Fraser cracked a little smile. "Well, that's just silly, Ray."

"Yeah, hyperb-whatsis, I know. But when I was a kid I was afraid it might; what did I know?"

"It was certainly hyperbole, yes. You're well within the range of normal, Ray. Penis size varies widely in all human populations."

Ray closed his eyes, shook his head to clear it, opened them again. Maybe he had water in his ears. Fraser was standing there, hard as a rock, in a shower with Ray and his freak dick, also hard as a rock, discussing penis size.

Maybe Ray had been poisoned and he was dying in a hospital somewhere, and this was his coma-induced hallucination.

He gestured. "Fraser, are we...I mean..."

Somehow Fraser picked up on his wavelength. Or maybe it was obvious all along.

"Possibly," Fraser said.

Ray realized he had to be clearer than that.

"Look, I'm...I didn't tell you before, because...well, lots of reasons, but the uh, the long and short of it is..." he coughed. "I kind of got feelings for you." He gestured at his hard-on. "These kind of feelings."

Fraser cleared his throat. Rubbed at one wet eyebrow with the hand that wasn't holding the bar of soap.

The water thundered down around Ray's ears.

"Sexual feelings?" Fraser said.

"Yeah. More than that, Fraser, but, yeah. Those, too."

"What more?"

"C'mon, you know that part. The 'more' where I follow you into every damn vat of green grossness that you pull me into. The 'more' where I risk my skinny neck because it makes you happy to chase down every purse snatcher in Chicago and stand up for truth, justice, and the Canadian way. Without a gun."

"I'm not sure...you're saying...?"

"I love you, you idiot."

Fraser's face relaxed into a smile. "Oh. Well, you might have said that in the first place."

Ray waved a hand. "I have said it. A dozen times. What I didn't say was the other part of it. That I'm kind of...I'm sorta...you know." He made the mezzo-mezzo sign. Queer, he didn't say. "Flexible," he said. "In who I like. You know what I mean?"

"Oh." He could see Fraser's gears turning. "Bisexual?"

Ray had never thought of it quite that way, probably because it sounded a lot more reasonable than the other stuff that went around in his head—closet queer, freak out of water, con job—but Fraser's idea made a lot of sense. It wasn't like what Ray'd had with Stella wasn't real, after all. It just wasn't everything. There were also Ray's reactions to people like Mark Halston and Caspy Feinman. And Benton Fraser. And, hell, Ray'd kept the damn magazine from his locker, too. He'd told himself he didn't want it in circulation, that Caspy didn't need that kind of crap, but actually, he'd kept it because it intrigued him, and he didn't think he'd have the guts to actually walk into a store and buy something like that.

"Bisexual," Ray said, trying out the word. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess so."

"Ah."

"Ah. What's that supposed to mean?"

"Relax, Ray. I already knew." Fraser's hair was plastered wetly to his head. His blue eyes were huge and sincere.

"You did?"

"Well, of course. It's been clear to me at least since the first time you asked if I found you attractive."

"What? I was asking what a woman might think!"

"Oh, I don't think so."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, there was an actual woman present, Ray. You didn't want to know her opinion. You only wanted mine."

Ray swallowed. Christ, had he been that obvious, even way back then?

"That, coupled with your informing me you were a 'con job,' and then, a week later, your rather disproportionate reaction to the word "closet," even in the midst of your obsession with Stella's post-marital relationships, and your...well...I'm sure I don't need to go on. The evidence has been plentiful."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Ray demanded.

"It wasn't my place. I assumed if you had any interest in me, you'd let me know."

Ray looked away, thinking back over their two-year partnership. "I did kind of let you know, didn't I?"

"Well, to an extent. But you never suggested your interest was precisely romantic. I knew it was loving, of course. But you didn't seem very interested in sex, Ray. I had no way of knowing you returned my feelings in that regard."

"I didn't seem interested in sex? Fuck!" He almost laughed. "I thought you weren't interested."

"I'm rather more reticent than you, Ray. But I would not wish to, er, presume. You seemed to be...er, not entirely comfortable with that side of yourself. And I'm not one to push in a romantic relationship, or assert my romantic attentions. My previous attempts have been disastrous." He swallowed hard. "I didn't want to lose you over sex, Ray. It didn't seem worth it, much as I dreamed about the possibility."

Ray couldn't stop the grin that broke over his face at that. "You did? Really?"

Fraser nodded, his face serious. Maybe even a little scared.

"Okay, you were right," Ray said. "I wasn't that comfortable. Um, before I date somebody, I...I gotta tell them about..." he gestured at his still-hard, still-green dick. "I don't want to scare them off."

"I don't understand."

Ray waved a hand in the general direction of his dick again. "I don't want them to get a look at this and run the other way."

"Your body's not scary, Ray. It's beautiful."

That shocked him. Even Stella hadn't called him beautiful. "What?"

"Don't you remember my answer to your question? I find you attractive, Ray. Very much so."

"You couldn't see my dick when you said that."

Fraser shrugged like it didn't matter. "My answer wouldn't have changed. I think your penis suits you."

"You don't think it's ridiculous, a skinny guy like me with...this?" Ray had a hard time getting his brain around that. He couldn't think of anybody who'd seen his dick—except maybe doctors—who hadn't reacted at least a little like he was a freak.

"Not at all," Fraser said. "Though it is a bit green at the moment, but I feel certain we can remedy that with the soap. It's a slightly abrasive soap, though. We'll have to be careful."

We? That sounded like an offer. Ray hauled in a breath. He could hardly believe what was happening. He did know, though, that he wanted Benton Fraser's hands on him at that moment more than he'd ever wanted anything. "You, uh, up for helping me with that, Frase?"

"Oh, yes." Fraser rubbed the soap in his hands to work up some lather, then put the soap carefully into the soap dish. "Come here, Ray."

Ray steeled himself. And stepped forward.

And Fraser slipped around behind him, just like that, and took Ray's cock in his lathery hands, and stroked it, all the way down, and back up again.

Ray looked down his body and saw Fraser's square, capable hands moving on his cock, and suddenly he was harder than he'd ever been in his life. "Oh, God, Fraser—“

"Sh," Fraser breathed in his ear. "There. Look." And he turned Ray just enough so the shower spray hit the front of his body and washed the suds off.

His cock wasn't green any more. It was hard in Fraser's hands, and it was reddened from the shower and the flush of arousal, and his balls were crowding up under it, wanting, wanting. Wanting Fraser's hands on them, too.

Ray felt something else—Fraser's cock prodding him in the ass, a hot, insistent touch.

Fraser's hands came up under Ray's balls with more suds and went through the washing routine over them, too, while Ray squirmed and tried not to shoot off right there.

Fraser's hands smoothed up over Ray's chest quickly, and down his thighs, and then Fraser was crouching, holding the soap, and cleaning the rest of Ray at top speed while Ray stood there stupidly, because Fraser's hands were on him, everywhere. Ray nearly forgot how to breathe.

Fraser straightened up and reached for something in the shower caddy behind Ray, and a moment later, Ray smelled his favorite shampoo. Fraser's hands were in his hair, sudsing, his fingers on Ray's scalp sending shivers over the entire surface of Ray's skin. If Ray'd had a hand on his cock at that moment, he'd have come.

But he held on, because he wasn't seventeen, and he wasn't afraid any more.

And Fraser wanted him. Fraser wanted this. Because Ray was...

"Beautiful," Fraser said in his ear. "Do you see now?"

Ray didn't; it was too much of a stretch, but not green was an improvement. And Fraser's hands felt so good on him. So good.

By the time they got rinsed clean and got the soap back in the dish, the water had cooled a bit. Fraser turned the shower off.

"Towels?" he said.

Ray pushed the curtain back and stepped out, grabbing two towels and shoving one at Fraser.

He scrubbed at his hair quickly, just enough to get it from dripping to merely damp, and he ran it over the rest of him real quick and then dropped it on the floor. He was going to have to clean the floor later, anyway, in case any bits of green yuck had fallen there.

Fraser dried his hair more slowly, and finally Ray got impatient and tugged Fraser's towel away from his face. Under it, Fraser was blushing. It was the sweetest thing Ray'd ever seen. Fraser was self-conscious? Beautiful, perfect Fraser?

"Can I, uh..." Ray stammered.

"Kiss me," Fraser said. He knew what Ray was thinking. He always seemed to know.

Ray's knees felt weak. He stepped forward and put his arms around Fraser, pushing Fraser's towel away, dropping it, pulling Fraser close. He leaned into Fraser's space closer than he ever had, except that one time when Fraser gave him air under water.

His cock slid against the firm, smooth skin of Fraser's belly. Fraser didn't move away. Fraser moved closer, letting Ray rub against him.

Ray pressed his lips to Fraser's, real gently.

Fraser made the most desperate, aching, wonderful moan under his lips and opened up to Ray, just like that.

Like he'd been waiting for him. Like he couldn't wait for more of Ray.

Ray sank into him, pushing his tongue into the hot, hot, wet space of Fraser's mouth, meeting Fraser's tongue there, strong and eager for him.

It was heaven.

When Ray finally came up for air, he had only one thought left in his head: more. He needed more of Fraser.

He grabbed Fraser's hand. "Do you—can we...?" He tilted his head in the vague direction of the bedroom.

"Certainly," Fraser said.

Because they understood each other without having to explain much of anything.

Because it took a freak to know one, Ray figured.

"C'mon, c'mon," he murmured, and Fraser followed him.

Ray shoved the covers down off the bed and pulled Fraser in with him. Pulled Fraser into his arms, which took no strength at all, because Fraser wanted to be there. Fraser was eager to be in Ray's arms.

Ray looked into Fraser's eyes, and all he saw there was yes yes yes. All he saw there was eagerness and happiness and enthusiasm...for Ray. For being with Ray.

Apparently it took a freak to love one, too.

Ray should have known that.

He should have known, because Caspy had as good as told him, years ago. Caspy, the freak, had confessed he'd fallen for Ray the first time he saw him, and that was why he'd always kind of been hovering, in places like the locker room and the gym showers and just outside the school gates, where the biggest bullies sometimes waited on their fag-bashing nights.

Ray'd thought it was funny, and kind of sad, when Caspy made that confession after a late sparring match one night. Funny, because Caspy apparently thought he could protect Ray? Caspy was skinnier than Ray, back then, even though Caspy grew bigger muscles later and probably could wipe up the gym floor with Ray now, if they ever got back in a ring together. Sad, because although Ray liked Caspy a hell of a lot and found him attractive, Ray hadn't been okay with seeing anyone but Stella, even if Stella barely slotted him into two afternoons a week of her busy schedule, and the occasional Friday night.

Maybe Ray could have saved himself a lot of heartache if he'd known he wasn't going to make it with anybody normal like Stella, anybody who wasn't a freak, either inside or out, and that Caspy probably had the right idea all along: accept your inner freak.

But Ray wasn't flocking with freaks back then, and Caspy knew it, Caspy was okay with just being friends. So Ray'd just messed up Caspy's hair and pulled him into a sweaty clinch and pretended to sucker-punch him, and that got Caspy laughing, and they were good.

Then Caspy left for college, and Ray filed the part of himself that was Caspy's friend back in its separate box, just like he did every time he left the gym. He went back to faking normal. He went to the police academy, married Stella, and the rest was history.

Maybe it all happened in the perfect way, because learning to pack up parts of yourself in separate compartments turned out to be the exact skill set that every undercover cop needed, and Ray'd had that one down cold since his sophomore year of high school. Or earlier, even. Maybe it went all the way back to the day he swore off Cowboys and Indians.

If it hadn't happened exactly like that, maybe Ray wouldn't have met Fraser, or maybe he'd have been with somebody else when he met Fraser, and their duet wouldn't have been the same at all.

Maybe all of Ray's freakish history had been leading up to this moment, when he pulled Fraser into the circle of his arms, and Fraser came eagerly, Fraser hugged him back like Ray was the most desirable, most wonderful thing in the world.

Fraser's kisses were like nothing Ray had ever felt. Fraser pressed kisses hard into Ray's skin, as though he wanted to leave their imprint on Ray, as though he wanted to breathe them into Ray, much deeper than his skin.

With Fraser, nothing was about surface appearances. Everything was about diving in, immersing himself. Practically drowning.

Ray should have known that, too.

Hell of a detective he was, huh? Fraser jumped into loving Ray with both feet, just like he jumped into everything else. And what Fraser jumped into, Ray jumped into, whether he was prepared or not. If Ray hadn't already been totally in love with Fraser by then, Fraser would probably have pulled him into that, too, ass first, like he'd pulled him into the vat.

Ray chuckled against Fraser's neck at the thought.

"What...?" Fraser whispered against Ray's ear between the kisses he was pressing into Ray's neck and shoulder.

"Nothing." It wasn't the time for explanations. "Just happy."

"Oh, yes. I, too."

That was greatness. Not much had the power to reduce Benton Fraser to words of one syllable.

Fraser's lips were too busy to say anything more. He kissed down Ray's chest to his belly, to his groin.

Ray felt the slight roughness of Fraser's cheek touch his cock. Ray curled up to watch. The sight wrenched a whimper out of him: Fraser was rubbing his cheek there, against Ray's shaft, one side and then the other, rubbing his face all over it. Breathing him in.

And then Fraser opened his mouth. Fraser opened his lips around the head of Ray's cock. And took him in.

Fraser took the entire head of Ray's cock into his mouth, and a couple more inches after that. His tongue moved against the underside, sending electric pleasure through every nerve Ray owned.

Ray's hips moved even though he tried so hard to hold still. At least he was on his back and Fraser was on top of him where he could hold him down if he had to.

Fraser Mmmmed like he was tasting something delicious, and curled his tongue around the head of Ray's cock.

Ray felt his eyes roll back in his head. His hips moved again, starting to thrust for real, and he tried to hold back, but he couldn't, he really couldn't. "Fraser, hold me," he gasped. "Don't let me push. Don't let me hurt you."

Fraser released his cock for a moment. "Of course not, Ray." He sounded totally calm, except for how he was kind of breathless himself. "Not to worry." Then he bent his head back down and sucked Ray back into the wet warmth of his mouth.

"Hold my hips down," Ray managed to gasp as Fraser took him deeper. Fraser would choke on him, he'd—

Fraser wasn't choking. Fraser was leaning over Ray, holding his hips down with both hands, and deep-throating him like Ray's cock was the only popsicle in the Sahara.

Ray was thrusting hard, but Fraser had him, Fraser was strong, and, oh God, Ray should have done this before, he should have tried this with a guy before, because he really could move, and Fraser could hold him down. He wasn't going to hurt Fraser, Fraser could take this—

"Let go," Fraser said. He'd lifted his mouth off Ray's cock just long enough to speak. "Let go, Ray. You can." As though he knew. There was no way Fraser could know; Ray'd never told his whole history to anybody. Even Stella didn't know all of it.

But Fraser was saying, "It's all right, Ray. It's safe. Let go," his breath puffing against Ray's slick, hard cock. Then Fraser was taking Ray in again, as far as he could, farther than anyone had ever swallowed Ray before, and Fraser looked happy about it, excited to do it.

Fraser laid his right forearm across Ray's hipbones, holding him down like Ray'd asked, and he was sliding his wet, wet mouth around Ray's cock, up and down, making Ray shiver and moan and curl up toward him.

And then Fraser snaked his free hand down between his own legs and touched his cock like he couldn't possibly stop himself, and that was it: Ray went over the edge, shouting nonsense: Fuck, Fraser, you're...fuck, I can't...oh God...

His muscles clenched tight, and then all his tension gave at once, his balls spasming, and he just poured himself down Fraser's throat. Fraser swallowed greedily, again and again, and then pulled off gently as Ray subsided.

Ray collapsed back on the pillow and tried to remember his name.

Fraser flopped down next to him and took his hand, entwining their fingers.

When Ray caught his breath, it finally occurred to him that Fraser probably would appreciate it if Ray reciprocated. He reached for him. "Fraser, let me do you."

Fraser kissed Ray's jaw. "Ah, I'm sorry. I'm afraid I couldn't hold out."

Ray propped himself up on his elbow and forced one eye open. Glanced over Fraser's body just long enough to confirm that Fraser's dick was limp against his thigh. "Huh. Sorry."

"No need," Fraser said lazily. "I enjoyed it immensely."

"What, sucking me?"

"Oh, yes. When you climaxed, I couldn't keep myself from joining you." He leaned up over Ray, tipped him back onto the pillow, and pressed kisses onto his face, cheekbones, eyelids, forehead. "It was beautiful. You were so beautiful."

Ray remembered feeling like that with Stella, like her pleasure was the most exquisite thing in the world, and to know he'd caused it was like winning something big. Yeah, he'd hit a game-winning, season-ending homer once, even though it was only in Single A. It was kind of like that.

He was kind of amazed...shell-shocked, even...to realize that Fraser felt that way about him.

He wanted to know that feeling with Fraser. He wanted to see Fraser lose it from pleasure that Ray gave him. He opened both eyes. "I want to do that to you, Fraser."

"Fellatio? Absolutely. After a sufficient refractory period, I'll be delighted."

"Fellatio." Ray laughed, trying the word out. Dumb-sounding word; he never used it. "I call that a blowjob, Fraser, but it don't matter what you call it."

"Yes, I see what you mean."

"But what I meant—I want to do anything to you that you want, anything that'll make you feel that good. As good as you just made me feel. Okay?"

"Certainly," Fraser said in his warm, calm voice.

Ray loved that. He put his free hand up to stroke Fraser's face. His other hand was still clasped tightly in Fraser's. "You're just going to have to be patient with me while I figure out how. I'm kind of...well, I've known I was a switch-hitter for a long time, but I never actually took batting practice left-handed, if you catch my drift."

Fraser looked bewildered. "Er, what does baseball have to do with...?"

Ray didn't know if there was a curling equivalent, so he figured he just had to say it out straight. In a manner of speaking. "Sorry. I mean, I've known I liked guys since I was a teenager, but I was with Stella all that time, so...I've never actually been with a guy before. I'm saying you're going to have to cut me some slack on the, uh, the cocksucking learning curve." He cracked a little smile; couldn't help it.

"Well, I'd never done it before, either, Ray. It isn't that difficult; I believe you just need to keep your teeth well out of the way."

"No way! You never?"

Fraser shook his head.

"How can you be that good at something the first time?" Dumb question, though. This was Fraser. He aced the first serve in on a lot of stuff, mostly because he was so damn smart. Ray's mouth watered.

Fraser rubbed his eyebrow with the side of his thumb. "Well, I've read quite extensively on the subject. It helps."

Ray was going to have to re-evaluate his opinions on reading. Apparently he didn't do near enough of it—at least not the right books. Police reports, Ring World, and the sports page didn't count.

Fraser cleared his throat. "Ray, when you said just now that you'd do anything that I want, did you mean it?"

"Of course I did." He'd give Fraser the sun and the stars if he could.

Fraser rubbed at his eyebrow again. Ray grabbed his hand away before he could rub that eyebrow off, and kissed him there instead.

Fraser's voice lowered to a whisper. "Well, there's something I want."

"All right," Ray said easily.

"Ray, I want...have you thought about the possibility of...er..."

Ray waited. He'd rarely seen Fraser at this much of a loss for words. It had to be something big. He smoothed Fraser's ruffled eyebrow down and leaned up to kiss it again.

"I'd like you to penetrate me."

"What?!" Stunned, Ray pulled back to stare. Fraser looked perfectly sincere.

"Penetrate me," Fraser repeated. "I believe you'd call it f—f—" He didn't seem to be able to make himself spit out the word.

Ray had no such problem. "You want me to fuck you?"

"Yes," Fraser said with a deep sigh, like he was vastly relieved Ray hadn't made him sully his perfect-Mountie reputation with such a vulgar word.

"Why?"

Fraser cleared his throat. "I want you inside me, Ray. I love you."

Ray blew out his breath. "Jeez."

"And it's reputed to be an exquisite experience."

"Oh." Yeah, Ray knew some guys said that, but they weren't talking about doing it with Ray. They were talking about getting fucked by somebody normal, like Fraser.

"It's not such an unusual request," Fraser said.

"Not for most people," Ray said. "Fraser, you're asking something really difficult, here."

Fraser looked away. "So you didn't mean it."

Ray tried to swallow around the lump in his throat. "No, Frase, I did, I meant it, I just...it didn't even occur me you might want that..."

Fraser sighed. A lonely sound. Ray couldn't stand hearing that.

"You really want it, huh?"

"Yes," Fraser said, fervently. "Don't you?"

Stella had really wanted it, and look how that had turned out.

"Well, I don't know, Fraser, I...I'm not so good with actually...fucking people. Look, it's pretty clear I wasn't made to fit inside somebody else."

"Size variations are normal, Ray. I thought we'd gone over that."

"Yeah, but there's the range of normal, and then there's the range of freaks. My dick is in the freak range."

"Ray, no, you're—"

"Fraser, look, I've tried stuff, I've tried, and..." he didn't want to say it. But he had to say it. It wouldn't be fair to Fraser if Ray skipped this confession.

"I hurt Stella."

"What?" Like Fraser couldn't believe his ears.

Ray's face heated. He couldn't meet Fraser's eyes. "I was too big for her, Fraser. The first time, I...there was so much blood. She cried from the pain. And, uh, we tried again a few days later. She kept saying the pain was normal, it was her first time. Then it was the first few times. She said she just had to get used to me, she just had to learn how to relax better, make her body stretch more. But I don't think it ever got much better. We always had...a tight fit."

Fraser's face clearly said he didn't buy it. "I realize it's not my place to comment, Ray, but I've seen Stella interact with you. I saw her that night, when I had to interrupt because of the bomber. She clearly looked forward to the prospect of making love with you, Ray."

"Making love, yeah, the stuff we used to do. Hands, mouths. But not, you know, putting my dick inside her. I didn't do it that often, and when I did, she always had to kind of grit her teeth and get through it. So we did a lot of other stuff instead. That was good."

"Ray..." There was pain in Fraser's voice. Ray hadn't put his too-big dick anywhere near Fraser's ass, and there was already pain.

"I never could get all the way in," Ray confessed. "Good meta—meta-whatsis for our marriage."

"Metaphor?"

"Yeah." He turned over, put his face in the pillow. He turned his head just enough to speak. "And you're a guy, Fraser. You're gonna be even smaller than Stella, if you know what I mean."

Fraser's hand let go of his, and came up to rest on the back of Ray's neck instead. "I've, er, read extensively on that subject, too."

"What, about getting fucked?"

"Yes. How to prepare, how to make the experience pleasurable. Even with, er..." He coughed delicately. "Even with a particularly well-endowed partner."

That got Ray's attention. He turned to look Fraser in the eye. "You knew? How did you know? I thought I kept my freak dick out of your sightlines for the last two years."

Fraser was back to rubbing that eyebrow again. "Well, I didn't actually see you, Ray, but I am a trained observer. The way you walk, the way you sit, and some of the trousers you wear actually conceal...er, less than one would hope."

Ray turned over, careful not to jostle Fraser, and freed a hand to smack himself in the head. "I'm an idiot. You're Fraser; of course you knew."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Just that I know you, Fraser. I know you notice stuff nobody else sees." He looked up at him. "You don't think it's, like, obvious to everybody else, do you?"

"Most people don't see more than a fraction of what's right before their eyes, Ray. As you well know. Just think of witness statements."

"Yeah, I get that." Ray sighed. "So you knew. And you still want this?"

"Very much so, Ray."

"If I say okay to this, and we try it...I'm gonna stop if it hurts you. I'm not going all the way through with it if it's only going to hurt. I can't do that again. Don't ask me to do that, Fraser."

"From what I've read, it's normal to experience some discomfort at the beginning. But it should fade, and then there should be pleasure."

"There wasn't any pleasure for Stella the first time," Ray said.

"I'm not Stella," Fraser said.

Fraser wasn't Stella. He wasn't normal, even though he looked like a Mountie picture postcard on the outside. Inside, he was like Ray—a freak. If anyone could make this work, it would be Fraser, Ray thought.

He swallowed. "All right," he said. "All right, after we both rest. Get something to eat. You know. Proper preparation."

"Prevents poor performance," Fraser said. He was smiling.

Ray kissed him.

Fraser slid an arm around Ray. "Rest a while."

So they rested, and then they got up and made sandwiches, and while they ate, Fraser caught Ray up on what he'd read. Then they got back in bed. Ray had lube in his nightstand, because he'd needed it even with Stella, and he had condoms in there, too. The condoms were made for large guys, but they were still a tight fit. But since they compressed him a little, he figured they might make things easier.

Fraser said it was smart, anyway, even though they were both safe, in case there were tiny, invisible tears inside him. There would be less chance of any infection.

Not that Ray thought there was any way Mr. Perfect Mountie was going to either give Ray an infection or catch one himself. He told Fraser that, and Fraser just stared at him for a minute, and then said, a little snippily, "You call me that just to irritate me, don't you, Ray?"

So then Ray had to tickle him, and they ended up kicking all the covers on the floor, and Ray actually saw Fraser get out of breath, extra lung capacity notwithstanding.

He pinned him to the mattress and kissed him.

Fraser's arms came around him, warm and tight. He kissed Ray back like Ray was buddy-breathing him and he needed all the air he could get. Ray felt like he could lose himself in those kisses. Almost did, till he remembered there was other stuff he wanted to do, and he had to keep a clear head for what he'd promised Fraser, too. "You haven't let me touch you yet, Fraser. C'mon, equal time."

Fraser let him go, and Ray propped himself up to see Fraser looking so fucking happy that Ray practically quivered all over just from looking at Fraser's smile.

Ray smoothed his hands down Fraser's chest, his fingertips grazing Fraser's soft pink nipples. Fraser's strong, springy pecs flexed under his hands—another ticklish area Ray'd have to check out later. Fraser was built, his skin thick and soft over muscles that had just the right amount of bulk to them. He didn't look like a gym rat; he looked like a guy who kept himself strong for a reason, so he could do his duty.

Fraser's belly was flat, but not ridiculously ripped. Fit, not show-offy. Ray liked that. He rubbed his cheek over Fraser's belly carefully, glad he hadn't shaved in a few days, so that his beard was just long enough to be soft on Fraser's skin.

Fraser moaned softly and shivered under Ray's touch.

Ray lifted his head and moved down a little to check out Fraser's cock.

It was just as handsome and perfect as it had looked in the shower. And just as hard. For a split second, Ray wondered what it would be like to have that cock inside him. He realized he wanted to know.

He looked up along Fraser's body to see Fraser watching him uncertainly. "Ray?"

Ray smiled. "Just admiring." He put his hand on Fraser's cock, stroked down its length to Fraser's body and cupped his hand around its thickness. Fraser wasn't in Freakville with Ray, but he wasn't exactly small, either. Ray thought Fraser filled his hand perfectly. "You'll do it to me, too, won't you? You'll fuck me?"

"Of course. If that's what you want."

"I want." Ray leaned down and put his tongue out to taste Fraser's cock: smooth, soft skin over the firm, throbbing length. He took it into his mouth as far as he could, pushing the foreskin back gently with his lips. He sucked gently. Smooth, slightly bitter fluid welled on his tongue. He lapped it up, then pulled off carefully. "Wow." He smiled up at Fraser again.

Fraser looked kind of awed. "Wow, indeed."

"You want me to suck you?"

"Another time," Fraser said. There was heat in his eyes.

"Yeah. Okay."

They pushed a pillow under Fraser's hips so he could lie on his back with his legs spread wide, his ass tilted up toward Ray at just the right angle. Ray got Fraser ready like they'd discussed earlier, with lots of lube and his fingers, slow and patient, till Fraser was practically writhing on the bed with desire, his eyes unfocused, sweat beading on his brow and his upper lip and plastering his hair to his temples in dark curls.

"Now, Ray, please,“ Fraser whispered, breathless.

Like Stella had. Ray took his cock in his hand and pressed the head against Fraser's asshole. And he trembled. He shook so hard his cock slipped away from where he was aiming it.

"Fraser, I don't know if I can."

"You can," Fraser said. "I'll help. I'll meet you halfway. Try." Calm and sure. Fraser reached a hand down to him and entwined their fingers, squeezing.

"Okay, okay..." Ray murmured under his breath as he tried again. He pressed forward against the little star of Fraser's asshole. He pressed forward really, really slowly. Seconds ticked by, and he felt no give at all. Then all of a sudden, Fraser bore down against him hard, and Ray just popped in, the head of his cock disappearing inside the tight ring of muscle.

"Oh," Fraser said, like it was a revelation.

"Oh," Ray echoed. "It doesn't hurt?"

Fraser smiled, though there was some strain in that smile. "It doesn't hurt, Ray. Push a little more, very slowly. Keep pushing."

Ray did, though he had to grit his teeth against the pleasure. Fraser was so tight around him, tighter than a fist, yet contracting and yielding at the same time. It was better than a fist. He was cradled in a perfect ring of muscle instead of bones and tendons.

Slowly, carefully, Ray slid in. Farther, then farther still. Fraser pushed down, and every time he did, Ray slid in more...until he was all the way in, his entire cock inside Fraser, and his balls pressing up tight against Fraser's ass.

Ray looked at this in amazement. Touched the place where he was completely, totally joined to Fraser.

Fraser had taken all of him.

He looked up. Fraser's face was slack with...pleasure. It had to be. Ray'd seen pain, and pain did not look like this. Fraser opened pleasure-clouded eyes and smiled at Ray. "That's exquisite, Ray."

"Really?" Ray wanted to believe him so much.

"Really." Fraser reached down, wrapping a hand around Ray's forearm. "Move, Ray. You can move now."

For a moment Ray thought he meant move off him, and then he realized Fraser meant thrust. Ray's hips followed the instruction before his brain realized it. He thrust, going slowly by sheer instinct, and under him, Fraser drew his legs back further and lifted one lean thigh to fit it snugly against Ray's hip.

"Faster," Fraser said.

So Ray thrust a little faster.

Fraser groaned and arched his head back and breathed, "Oh, God, Ray."

Ray balanced himself carefully on his knees so he could free his right hand. He snaked it up to touch Fraser's cock, which had softened some, but still looked full and heavy. Fraser's smooth balls crowded up immediately like they wanted Ray's hand on them, too. Ray spread his fingers to cup them.

And Fraser practically shouted Ray's name.

Ray froze in mid-thrust. He hadn't—he couldn't have hurt Fraser...?

Fraser's hand was covering his. But he wasn't pulling Ray off him. Fraser was pulling Ray closer.

"Can you," Fraser was saying between gritted teeth. "Is there any way you can..."

"Yeah?" Ray managed between deep, slow thrusts.

"Kiss me?" Fraser said, and with his free hand he was pulling another pillow under him, curving his body up like a C, his chest muscles flexing, his abs bunching, trembling under Ray.

Ray pulled Fraser close and curled forward just enough, and they were kissing, deep and hot and wet, and it was like closing a circuit, not of electricity but some other energy. Maybe pleasure was energy. Or maybe love was.

Fraser gasped under Ray's mouth and the moment was gone: Fraser's body clasped him so tightly, and Ray had no choice but to move inside Fraser. There was no way to hold their mouths together. But it was okay; Fraser was flopping back to the pillows with satisfied grunt, and his hand clasped Ray's and moved it over his cock.

Fraser's cock was stiff under Ray's hand, leaking pre-come and pulsing like a heartbeat.

Ray pulled out a couple of inches and thrust in again, a little more firmly, a little more quickly.

Fraser moaned, loud and long. "Oh, God, Ray...f—f—"

Ray was babbling, too: "Yeah, Frase, yeah, anything you want; I love you. God, I love you—"

Fraser bore down against him, pulling him in with his ass, with his legs, with his hands. His body was slicked with sweat. His hips rocked against Ray's, precisely in rhythm.

His ass tightened around Ray like he wanted to hold him there forever. And it was good. Ray felt himself swell inside Fraser, and Fraser's eyes opened suddenly like that was a revelation. Fraser's eyes were incredibly blue. And Fraser just...moaned out ffffuck, like he couldn't help himself at all; his ass spasmed around Ray, and he was suddenly coming under Ray's hand, pulsing out warmth in time with the spasms.

Ray lost it right then, too, or maybe he'd been going over the edge all along. Later, he could never straighten it out. All he knew was that he was fully, totally inside Fraser and he was coming like he never had before, deep, deep inside his partner, who wanted him there.

Fraser wanted him there. And there was no pain. They were a good fit.

He had the presence of mind to pull out super-carefully before collapsing on the bed next to Fraser and falling into a dreamless doze.

When he came out of it, he was snuggled up close to Fraser with his head in the crook of Fraser's neck and shoulder, his arm flung across Fraser's chest. They were both sticky with drying sweat and...other stuff, but Ray didn't care a bit. He had a real good shower, and he and Fraser fit into it just fine together.

Fraser's fingers were carding through his hair.

Ray pulled back just enough to look into his face. He'd never seen Fraser look so contented.

"I guess you liked that, huh?"

"You might say that," Fraser answered. A little smile hovered around his lips.

"Yeah, I might. Kind of an understatement."

"Indeed."

"Mountie said the F-word, if I recall."

Fraser's smile widened. "I trust you'll forgive me."

"Never," Ray said. "I'm gonna file that in my, uh, my mental box of cherished memories." He knew his grin had to be practically splitting his face.

Fraser turned, and put his hands on Ray's face, stroked his cheeks. "I'm glad you have them."

"What, cherished memories?"

Fraser nodded. "Most of the ones you've actually told me have been painful."

Ray thought about that for a minute. "I think I've been...what do you call it? I've been remiss, Fraser. I got lots of good memories, too."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"Yeah, I guess I've been sharing the ones that I thought made me who I am. Turns out those are the tough ones."

"I know what you mean."

"Yeah, you got your share," Ray said. "Probably more than me. But you've got good ones, too. I know you do."

"You're right," Fraser said. "Perhaps it's about time to share them with each other, then."

"Yeah." Ray smiled and eased over on his back. Fraser kissed him once and lay back down beside him.

"Just let me get rid of this first," Ray said, pulling off the condom and aiming it in the general direction of the wastebasket. He felt sticky and gross, but he really didn't care.

His dick was soft against his thigh, heavy and content-looking. He cupped his hand under it and looked at it for a minute.

"Something wrong?" Fraser said.

"Nope," Ray said. "For maybe the first time ever, I don't think there's anything wrong with him at all."

"He's perfect," Fraser said, and kissed Ray's hair.

Ray glanced over at him. Fraser looked serenely back. He meant it. Wow.

Ray thought for a minute. "I think I got some reorganizing of those memories to do, Fraser."

"How so?"

"I think I got some filed in the box of bad memories that maybe aren't so bad after all."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"Today's for starters." Ray said. "Normally, I would think getting half-drowned in a vat of gross, green, I-don't-wanna-know-whatsis would be a bad memory. And...I really don't want to revisit that smell—like, ever. But I can't argue with how it ended." He put his face against Fraser's neck and breathed in his sweaty, masculine, delicious Fraser-smell instead.

"I trust we can do this again without having to resort to vats of bad-smelling chemical substances," Fraser said.

"You're on. We'll just have a date like normal people."

"Very well."

"Okay," Ray said. "Friday." Then he snorted softly. "Normal. As if."

"Well, we could at least pretend." Fraser's eyes were sparkling.

Ray blew out a long easy breath. He was still grinning; he didn't seem to be able to stop. It didn't trouble him a bit. "Meanwhile, I think we got some catching up on those memories to do. So I'm gonna start, okay?"

"That would be wonderful, Ray."

"Okay." Ray settled back against his pillow, squirming his long limbs around to get comfortable against Fraser's side. "So let me tell you about the last time I played Cowboys and Indians. I was five years old, and it was summer in Chicago..."

—end—