You Might Think

“You think I’m crazy? You think I’m crazy? You know who’s crazy here, and I don’t mean the guy in the apron with the feather duster, you know who’s crazy here –”

Well, yes, I want to say, and ordinarily I would: I know what he means. There’s always been a hole in my bag of marbles, and that I thought today that the hole was larger than I’d previously suspected, well… that went without saying, as my father would undoubtedly tell me.

Will, when he comes back from wherever he’s establishing that office he so desperately needs.

So perhaps it was unwise of me to use that term: it’s given Ray the excuse he pretended to need so he could bring up exploding cars, hot wax, “Lake Michigan,” and rubber ducks, Fraser.

“I mean,” he says, taking another bite out of his hamburger (“loaded,” he’d told the waitress), “okay, they told me you had a superhero complex, and I think someone even mentioned the wolf a few dozen times, but when you hear ‘crazy,’ you think ‘bag lady,’ or at least I do, not ‘bugfuck,’ you know what I’m saying? How’d he survive you? Hell, how’d you survive this long?”

I wonder if this is the time to bring up the bullet Ray stepped in front of, but it’s clear his questions are merely rhetorical.

“And the car,” he says, shaking his head. “Frannie told me I might as well get measured for that pine box right now.” He pokes a French fry at me for emphasis and grins.

I must have hit my head at some point today, because I grin back without even thinking.

“It’s not the first – well, at any rate, I hardly think you’ll hold yourself responsible for being stalked by a –”

“A performance arsonist,” he sing-songs, stabbing another fry into his ketchup. “Oh, yeah, I’m gonna believe that one, Fraser. Or maybe I will. Will I?”

“I don’t think you won’t,” I say, cautiously, perhaps, but why wouldn’t I be?

“How long you been doing this?” he asks before taking another bite of his burger.

And he waits for my answer, even though it’s longer in coming than it should be. “A long time.”

“‘What goes around comes around,’” he says, or quotes, rather. I have no earthly idea what he means, so I just nod, and he grins again, the way he did before: warm, shy, and happy, somehow all mixed together.

***

I’d like to think I wasn’t desperate for explanations, for changes, for – well, in retrospect, for the advent of Stanley Raymond Kowalski in my life; if I had the courage to tell him that, he’d probably say I wasn’t desperate, just crazy.

He has a warm heart.

And warm hands.

And three citations.

And an ex-wife.

“Just crazy” is, I suspect, a more than adequate description for my daily state of mind.

“Feckless, too, son.”

“Thanks, Dad. Somehow your presence reaffirms my lack of confidence in my mental stability.”

“Oh, no, no call for that, Benton. There’s never been insanity in our family. Aside from Aunt Martha’s sheep, I mean.”

“And cabbage,” I mutter under my breath.

“No, no, I don’t think Tiberius was certifiable,” my father says cheerfully. “You’re not either. Yet.”

By the time I formulate an unreasonable response he is, of course, gone: he takes shameless advantage of his state.

I stretch, cautiously – one disadvantage to being called away at a moment’s notice to aid Ray in a stakeout/sweep targeting the elusive Ventura brothers is the serge, so bright that when I arrived, Lieutenant Welsh muttered disgustedly that I ought to just paint a bulls’ eye on it and be done with it and promptly banished me to a back alley two warehouses “east of Ontario, Constable” where, he said, I probably couldn’t get into trouble – and wonder where Ray is.

Thought conjures presence: I hear a soft step behind me and there’s a hand sliding round my waist, the other pressing fingers – warm and rough – against my mouth. “Hey,” he whispers, his breath hot against my ear. “Found you. Any doings?”

I shake my head and allow myself the very brief luxury of enjoying the warmth and strength of his body pressed close alongside mine.

“Vito the Snake got a deal,” he continues, his mouth so close to my ear I can feel the brush of his lips against my skin, and I hold my breath and close my eyes and let myself relax against him for a few more seconds. “They got a line on Rocco, maybe even on Sal. It could go down nice and quiet.” He snorts, then, and the hair on the back of my neck thrills erect. “We should be so lucky. I should be so lucky to get through just one day without you doing something crazy.”

I turn within the circle of his arm, and the hand on my mouth slides to my shoulder; and I take advantage – shameless, just like my wolf – to whisper into his ear in turn: “You really sound more and more like yourself every day, Ray… Vecchio.”

“When you’re good, you’re good,” he whispers back, his stubble rough against my cheek, senseless words that need no sense. “They didn’t choose me for this gig just ‘cause I’m pretty, Fraser.”

And I must be dreaming, fallen asleep at my post following the ghost-visit of my father, because the hand on my shoulder is sliding up past my uniform collar and winding into my hair; and his lips are on my cheek, now, warm and soft and moist, a flick of his tongue between: tasting me.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he says next, against my mouth, fumbling behind him; the next second the door swings open and we stumble into a small, dark foyer, “the luck had something to do with it, ‘cause I should have played the lottery that day –”

I think I won the lottery that day, I want to say, but why waste words, here, now? His pulse is thunderous beneath my lips on his neck; his stubbled skin is rough and sweet and begs for lips, tongue, teeth.

He pays in kind, finding – somehow – bare skin behind my ear, above my collar, and if this is a dream, my dreams have increased exponentially in quality, if not quantity: he’s hard, hard against my leg and I –

Well, there’s never been anything wrong with my autonomic responses.

“ –and if I had any idea beyond those fucking eyes looking at me like you were some stray dog and I was the last bone on the shelf, I would have bought a ticket, believe you–”

I grab his chin: a kiss should be gentler, kinder than this, but I have no more patience: I can’t believe I’ve had this much, now, now that Ray’s here and it’s quite possibly real. “Do you ever –”

“No,” he says, when he can, and the golden light filtering through the dusty transom makes his smile transcendent. “Not really ever.”

“I thought as much.”

“Yeah, you’re smart like that, I noticed that.”

While he’s been talking his hands have been busy at my waist, unbuttoning my suspenders, unfastening my pants, unzipping –

“You know how lucky you were Turnbull was there that day? How close I was to dropping to my knees then and there and –”

“I’d have thrown him out and locked the door if you’d so much as breathed –”

“Breathing is for wimps, Fraser,” and the next second his mouth is on mine, his eyes closing just a half second before mine do; and he kisses the way I’ve dreamt, the way I’ve wished, the way I’ve… hoped. And he smells, tastes, feels better than I’d have dared to imagine, his hands rough against my bare skin.

“Ah, come on, c’mon,” he’s whispering under his breath, one hand slipping inside my boxers, “that’s it, yeah, God, yes –”

“God, yes…”

And I’m hard and – and already wet, straining into his hand, his grip firm and practised. And I don’t want to think about that, not right now, not with my penis – “…cock,” he whispers, biting my chin, as if he can hear my thoughts, “God, yeah, big hard cock…” thrusting of its own volition between his fingers, against his palm.

Far too real to be a dream, but why – why now, what –

“…I’ll take it, take it, take you,” he’s murmuring, his hand working faster. “Taste you, swallow you, swallow you whole, Fraser.”

All I can think to say – gasp, rather – is pointless: “Don’t… stop.”

“No way,” he says, his teeth flashing in the dim light, his grin as quick as his hand. “No way, uh uh, nunca, never…”

Beyond imagination, and well beyond belief, I find his waistband too: his penis, his cock, is straining against the khaki, and when I slip one hand inside, it jerks, his hips jerking too, rocking into, against my hand, pushing our cocks together, our hands trapped between them.

“God, get me out, get – Jesus, Fraser, I can’t…”

I can’t stand it either, not another second, and I haul us both upright, pushing him back against the wall. He helps, one hand pushing down his underwear and pants together, the other hand kneading the flesh at my hip; and then we’re skin to skin, cock to cock, Ray meeting me, matching me, thrust for thrust.

“It’s good, it’s good, so fucking good,” he chants, punctuating each ‘good’ with another thrust, our cocks slick now and sliding against each other, easier, faster, harder, our hands on one another’s hips pulling us together in a rhythm impossible to duplicate; and my long, low groan takes me by surprise.

“Shhhh, shhhh,” he whispers, fast and fierce, and suddenly I remember where we are, what we’re doing, only to forget everything the next moment as orgasm overtakes me and I spray my semen all over his belly and chest, gasping his name.

“God, oh God, yes, yes,” and his voice is harsh and sweet; and the floor is hard under my back as he tumbles us down, pushing me before him and spreading me out beneath him as much as possible, my legs constrained by my pants. He braces his hands on my shoulders, and I imagine the serge rough on his palms, rough like his hands on my body; and I stare, avidly, as he thrusts, moans, thrusts again and freezes, his jaw clenched, while his cock jerks against mine, covering my abdomen and cock with warm heat.

“God, Fraser, yes,” and he’s collapsed on me, his hips still moving as if he simply can’t stop.

Nor can I, even if this is a dream: waking now would be… anticlimactic.

And that makes me laugh, but I remember where we are, and stifle it in his hair; and he snorts into my neck, sharing an unspoken joke even though he can’t know.

“We should have done this sooner,” I whisper after a few moments; he snorts again and nods, his head heavy on my shoulder.

“They called off the stakeout, didn’t they,” I say after watching the dust motes swirl lazily in the late afternoon sunlight for a while.

“’S what I love about you, Fraser,” he mumbles. “You’re a smart, smart man.”