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Ray has been staring at him for nearly 76 seconds before Fraser realises that he is staring right back.
“Yes, well.” He turns back to the windscreen and pretends he can see the factory past the sheets of water falling from above. In the back seat Diefenbaker sighs in abject disappointment. Fraser keeps his eyes fixed forward and considers his next words carefully.
“You’re something else, Fraser.” Ray drawls his name out as he always does, arm laid out across the back of both their seats, hand too close to Fraser’s shoulder and he thinks Ray doesn’t even notice.
The thing about Ray is, he takes up the space. When he walks into a room the room becomes noticeably smaller, because Ray is too busy taking up that space, swallowing it down like he can’t find enough to contain him. For such a lithe man it’s impressive. Fraser is impressed, always, by Ray Kowalski.
“What are you doing, son?” the ghost of his father admonishes from the back seat, and Fraser startles at the intrusion.
“Nothing.” He defends automatically.
“What?” Ray asks.
“Nothing.” Fraser explains just as quickly.
“But you said something, buddy.”
“No I said nothing.”
“The something you said was ‘nothing’.” Rays gestures sharply, he’s got a look like he knows how this’ll turn out but he’ll fight it anyway.
“The yanks right, you know.” His father interjects once more.
“Not at all.” He directs to his father, then to both of them, “If I said nothing, then clearly I didn’t say something. You can’t say nothing and something at the same time, it’s a contradictory action and simply not possible.”
“Fraser, buddy-” Rays got a note of annoyance in his voice, and the tips of the fingers resting far too close to be ignored brush against the back of Fraser’s neck. Fraser stiffens at the contact, and whatever Ray was going to say in reply dies.
“Well now you’ve done it.” His father chides.
Fraser shots a petulant glare at the rear vision mirror and can see both his father and Diefenbaker watching him despairingly.
“Not you too.” He despairs right back at the wolf.
“Not me too what?” Ray asks.
“No not you, ‘not you’,” Fraser assures see’s the whole cycle starting again and pushes on, “I was merely reminding Diefenbaker that it is not his business who or what I do and that if he could perhaps keep his opinions on the matter to himself it would be much appreciated.”
“Who you do.” Ray repeats in a way that’s entirely too loaded. Fraser is absolutely certain he did not precisely say those words, but can see the implication of them when he recollects what he did say. He lets that go.
“Well, yes.” He says simply and they settle back into silence. The rain sheets against the windscreen, the street beyond lost in the deluge, whatever crime is happening tonight, they will not see it from the warm dry safety of the car, but Fraser can’t bring himself to leave it yet. Not with the way Ray’s fingers still haven’t retreated from the back of his neck. Not when the very thought of those fingers leaving his side of the car makes him feel like a herd of buffalo are stampeding through his lower intestines.
“Fraser,” Ray starts again, and Fraser braces himself for another round of this. He has two choices; steer the course and see where it lands, or run. There are criminals to apprehend out there, a printing racket they’ve been on the trail of for three days, but inside the car is a possibility. A very important possibility at that.
“The question son, is what would you do with it, if it came?” his dead father asks from the back seat.
“That hardly seems an appropriate question.” He counters, and even though he’s not talking to Ray, he feels the man shift, and then there’s a whole hand pressing into the back of his neck, encouraging him to turn his head back towards his partner. Fraser bends to his will and twists his whole body to accommodate the command.
“I didn’t really say anything inappropriate, did I?” Ray asks and his voice is smokier than normal, though Fraser is not sure how it’s accomplished it sounds like smoke. Perhaps, he reasons, it’s the tone of voice you expect to hear in the dark corners of closed rooms full of smoke and promise. It’s hard to breath with the way Ray’s looking at him again, there is certainly not enough air reaching his brain, but he focuses; on Ray, on the question that started this whole mess off, on their potential.
“Not you.” He assures sincerely and there’s a lessening of tension around Ray’s mouth. Fraser is struck with the desire to touch his mouth to Ray’s, to press in against the seams and feel the curve against his own. To kiss him, he supposes, but the idea of a kiss is too simple, too animal, too sexual even to cover the manner in which he wants to learn the tiniest dents and lines and marks that make up Ray Kowalski’s mouth.
“Then who, Fraser?”
His father might say something from the back seat, but Fraser doesn’t hear it, because somehow he’s getting closer to Ray, migrating across the distance between them at the lightest pressure to the back of his neck and the bend of his own body moving towards the one thing it most wants.
“I don’t know.” He replies breathily and Ray stops pulling, but gravity has him already so Fraser keeps going, keeps moving until there’s contact, his hands and his body folding in over and around this enigmatic man who’s pulled the rug out from under his feet, so to speak.
“I believe I’m going to kiss you now.” He informs his friend with all the due caution and apology that kind of sentiment requires, and Ray grins broad and unrestrained.
“About time.” Two voices say in unison just before Fraser loses himself to rationality. The noise Diefenbaker makes says much the same thing. Fraser ignores that as well.