TITLE: In the Absence Of
E-MAIL: eli @ popullus.net
ARCHIVE: Ask, please.
RATING: PG-13
POSTED: Sept. 13, 2005
SUMMARY: The bullseye is the weight.
AUTHOR NOTES: Random unbetaed snippet written to fend off pouting!Apathy.
DISCLAIMER: Read

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It's not the heat that makes the difference, Ray finally realizes. Thinking about it, it was stupid to think that it would be -- that wasn't what he'd missed whenever Stella was in class, at the office, not there -- but with all the heat Fraser puts out, it wasn't the idea of a total idiot.

It's not the touching, either, not really. Ray can touch himself just fine, thank you, even if his bony fingers are nothing like the stroke or press of Fraser's hand. God, Fraser's got nice hands. Ray curls his own fingers under, just to feel the scrape of his nails on his stomach, and damn, he thinks, definitely not Fraser's tender, rough, just-right touch.

But, nah. That's on the board at least, but the bullseye is the weight.

Five tossing and turning hours into the first night of Fraser up hobnobbing with the Chief of the Mounties ("No," the City of Chicago said through Welsh, "Some shiny Canadian medal is not worth flying your U.S. Detective self out of this country for four days."), and Ray knows that he's kind of an idiot.

He spent the first week twitching and shoving every time he woke up before finally getting used to it; he's slept with plenty of people, but only Fraser seems to think he needs to pin Ray down. There's always a leg, a heavy one, thrown over his, whether he's face-down in his pillow or flat on his back. It's not going anywhere, not the first step toward starting something, not usually...okay, sometimes it was, eventually, which is way more than okay. And if Ray's on his side -- if they're pressed together, sweat-sticky or just flat-out tired, with Fraser's head tucked under Ray's chin or Ray falling asleep to the thud-thump of Fraser's heart in his ear -- there's a leg and at least one arm doing the job. Fraser's cuddling with him, Ray can tell by the soft brush of Fraser's lips on whatever part of Ray is nearest, and how it happens even more often, or he thinks it does, when he's not awake enough that he's awake-awake. It's nice; Ray's all for cuddling, so long as the air conditioning works. But it took him, yeah, more than a week to stop feeling like, well, like Fraser was trying to keep him from getting away. Like, "He's here now, but he won't be here in the morning unless I hang on."

That was just the first week, though -- that split-second oh god, trapped feeling -- and they've been in the same bed (when they haven't been in the same car, in different seats, in a situation where cuddling is supposed to be the very, very, very last thing they should be thinking of) for almost a month now. And now Fraser's not here. And now Ray's...lost in his own damn bed.

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