Title: Champions of Breakfast
Fandom: due South
Rating: R
Length: 1850 words
Content notes: Fraser/Kowalski, first time, set post-Call of the Wild.
Summary: Re-entry into civilization is weird. But good.



The last couple of days of the Quest, when they actually had a destination that was a real place and not just “more wilderness, because you haven’t had enough”--Ray kept thinking, “civilization, wow, getting back to civilization.” He hadn’t stopped to think about the fact that civilization had more people in it than just him and Fraser, and how fucking weird that was going to feel.

So now he’s standing in the little office of this rundown motel and watching Fraser talk to the desk clerk, and he thinks maybe his mouth is hanging open and he probably looks kind of scary. Because there is this person, right over there, moving and talking and being a human who is not Fraser. He just cannot get over how freaky that is. It’s not even “Whoa! WOMAN!” which you might expect after weeks of not seeing one. It’s just “Whoa! PERSON! Who is not Fraser!”

Fraser seems to have jumped right back into civilized behavior, though; Fraser is calmly talking his way through the renting-a-room process as if he talked to non-Ray people all the time. He’s not gawking like Ray, so Ray’s confused when the desk clerk keeps backing slowly away from Fraser while he’s talking, until she has to stretch waaaay out with her (little! short! not-Fraser!) arm to put the room key on the counter in front of him.

Ray blinks, and snaps out of it and tunes in to the conversation, because what the hell, that is not the way people react to Fraser.

He tunes in just in time to hear the clerk say, “We’ve got a really huge water tank! LOTS of hot water for showers! And, and soap! We’ve got just tons of soap!” And then she coughs and says, “I have to...go...answer the...thing!” and speedwalks out the door.

Fraser looks blankly at Ray, who suddenly gets it, realizes that on the Quest personal hygiene was so far down on the list of priorities--or possibilities, even--that it wasn’t actually on the list. “Frase,” he says, “our noses gave up a few days in, but I bet we both smell like dead caribou. Like dead caribou that’s been dead caribou for a long, long time. In August.”

Fraser cracks up. And that makes the world less weird, that makes civilization something Ray can deal with again.

Ray is a fabulously generous person and offers Fraser the first shower. Fraser is obviously happy about that because he only argues with the idea for about three minutes, which is the shortest time Ray’s ever heard him argue against getting something he wants.

He’s also obviously happy because once he’s in the shower he starts singing opera. Something Ray’s heard on Bugs Bunny, although Fraser’s probably singing the real words, which most likely have nothing to do with rabbits but maybe actually are about barbers, Ray’s not sure. Whatever, he sits in the one chair (he’s not touching the bed until after he’s clean) and stretches his legs out, ahhhhhh, and sings along in English, “YOU’RE so NEXT!”

Fraser comes out after a long, looooong shower, and he’s all shaved and has weird tan lines from his missing beard and when he steps into the room there’s just this whoooooosh of moist great-smelling air from the bathroom, soap and shaving gel and shampoo, and having this other smell to take in reactivates Ray’s nose somehow, and suddenly he can smell himself, and oh good god. The dead caribou comparison was insulting to dead caribou.

Ray almost runs into the bathroom, he’s so next, barely registers Fraser saying that he’s going to get Dief and the dogs settled and check in with the local Mountie outpost and he’ll probably be a while and blah blah blah because soap, oh god soap.

Ray takes the best shower in the history of the universe. Or any other universe. He is willing to bet that no tentacle-y alien monster anywhere has ever had a better shower.

And then he stretches out on one of the beds and has one of the most mediocre jerk-off sessions in the history of the universe.

It’s not terrible. It’s not like jerking off the first few months after Stella, where sometimes he’d be so drunk that his dick would stop working before he got done, or sometimes he’d be sober and get this absolutely perfect flashback of exactly what it was like with her when it was great with her, and he’d have a huge fantastic orgasm and then lie there sobbing.

Nah, it’s just kind of...boring. Which after weeks of not having any privacy to do it at all, he was not expecting.

It reminds him of breakfast, toward the end of the Quest. At first he bitched about breakfast being dried something or other every day, and then he got so sick of it he tried skipping it a couple of times, which was a bad plan because he was working so hard all day every day that he got crazy hungry even when he did eat breakfast, and stupid angry hungry when he didn’t. So after that he got over himself and stopped even really thinking of it as food; it was more like life maintenance. Just one thing on the list of Things He Did in the Morning: piss, dress, tend to dogs, break down tent, put beige rectangle of dried something in face, chew.

So yeah, this was life maintenance masturbation. This was a beige rectangle of a jerk-off.

“Huh,” Ray says to the empty room, and cleans himself up a little with his damp towel, and because even a boring orgasm is still relaxing, he turns out the lights and tries for a nap.

It doesn’t work, though. He just lies there wondering what the hell happened--did he forget how to do it right, all those weeks going without? That’s crazy, because god knows he had enough practice before that, he oughta be able to coast on that expertise for years.

He ought to ask Fraser. Ha. Yeah, that would work, just say, “Frase, I am not getting my usual jollies out of the jack-off experience, you got any insight into why that might be? Any Canadian chicken-choking tips, buddy?”

Ray throws an arm over his face and snickers into the crook of his elbow. He can picture Fraser going red and looking at the ceiling and the floor and over Ray’s shoulder, anywhere but at Ray’s face, while Fraser sincerely tries to come up with helpful tips.

Because he would. He’d want to help. He’d be embarrassed as hell and anything that came out of his mouth would be some kind of crazy ancient campfire story, probably involving ice weasels, that Ray wouldn’t be able to sort out in a million years. But at least in Fraser’s head it would have something to do with jacking off, in Fraser’s head it would be helpful. Because Fraser does actually care about Ray, Ray gets that, and if he thought that giving Ray tips on...on how to...

Jesus, Ray’s hard again.

He lies there and considers that for a minute, because whoops. He has always kept Fraser strictly out of his head during boners. Because Fraser is his partner, and his buddy, and he’s pretty sure Fraser isn’t as, um, flexible in his tastes as Ray is himself, and so it would be really stupid on a whole lot of levels to be dragging Fraser into sex thoughts, and this solid line of reasoning always held up really well before but now, now Ray’s got one hand cupping his balls and the other curling around his cock and line of reasoning, what line, what reasons?

Ray squeezes and gropes and moans and thinks about Fraser blushing bright red and saying, “Well, Ray, when an ice weasel has to spend the winter alone...” and he thrashes around and maybe yells a little and comes his brains out.

Yeah, that was not a beige bar of dried don’t-even-ask. That was bacon and hash browns and eggs over easy. Lots of grease.

“Goddamn,” Ray says happily, and falls asleep.

When he wakes up again his brain’s all muzzy, and Fraser’s just standing in the doorway stock still, why’s he statued out like that?

“Whaaaat, Fraser?” he mumbles. “What you waiting on, come on in,” and his eyes close, he’s drifting off again, but there’s this weird little noise and he snaps back to alertness.

Because that weird little noise came out of Fraser, huh, what? Ray shakes some of the sleep out of his head and props himself up on his elbows, which gives him a terrific view in the light from the doorway of a fact he’d forgotten about, which is that he fell asleep completely naked and on top of the covers.

“Buh?” Ray says. Lots of information coming in right now, the nakedness, and hey that noise coming out of Fraser was something between a whimper and a growl, and now Fraser’s stepping in and slamming the door behind him.

And then there are a lot of sounds of clothes hitting the floor, and Ray has a few seconds to fast-rewind through the last minute in his head and realize that 1) Fraser opened the door to find naked Ray and didn’t cover his eyes or run, just stood there staring, and 2) naked Ray said “What you waiting on?” and 3) apparently Fraser had actually been waiting on something but isn’t anymore because 4) he is climbing naked into Ray’s bed, not the other bed, the one Ray is already being naked in himself.

He shoves Ray over and presses up against him and he still smells like soap and shampoo and shaving cream, so good, and he’s talking and talking but not making much sense, just saying “Ray,” and “god,” and “finally.”

Ray has a lot of things he wants to say, mostly about how the hell did he get Fraser so wrong for so long, but for once in his life he manages to keep his mouth shut--well, manages to not talk, anyway, because really his mouth is open but it’s because Fraser’s kissing him.

And Ray must have had a hella long nap, or he’s just making up for lost time, because god there he goes again, hardening against Fraser’s warm thigh, moaning around Fraser’s tongue at the fucking gorgeous feel of Fraser’s cock brushing against his stomach.

This is not dried boring life maintenance, this is way past the greatness of a greasy diner breakfast, this is--Ray can’t think of fantastic enough food words for this, all he can think of is that Fraser’s kissing him and Fraser’s pulling him closer and closer and tighter and shaking against him, and Ray hadn’t known, hadn’t let himself feel how hungry he was, how long he’d been starving, but apparently, thank you god, Fraser was too.