Notes: Written for Stop Drop Porn.
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"Vecchio, you do that one more time, and I swear I'm gonna..."
"You're gonna what, exactly, Kowalski? 'Cause, the way I see it, you're not gonna be doing a hell of a lot until I unlock those things." He gestured at Kowalski's wrists, then deliberately switched channels on the TV again. "Golf. Hm. You like golf, Kowalski?"
"Turn the damn thing off," he said wearily, and Ray was smart enough to know when the fun had gone out of tormenting the guy.
"Yeah," he agreed, and hit a button on the remote, leaving the room lit only by the harsh fluorescent light that poured in from the bathroom.
Kowalski shifted a little on the bed, and Ray could hear the rattle of handcuffs against the bedframe. "Vecchio, what the fuck?"
Ray tipped back in his chair, grinned. "What the fuck, Stanley? You need to be reminded? Well let's have a little refresher course, shall we? Ten o'clock tonight. You meet up with the suspect. Attractive lady, right? Long legs, blonde, just your type. You come back to her room with her, all wired up and bugged from here til Tuesday, trying to trap her into selling to you. Except instead, she drugs that fancy imported drink she gives you, and by the time I get to the room, you're cuffed to the bed, trussed up like a turkey, and your clothes, your gun, and all of our bugs are gone. Welsh puts the Duck Boys on the job of tracking her down, and now here I am, holding this key and wondering if it's actually worth the trouble of getting you out of those damn things."
"Vecchio," Kowalski warned him in a voice that said I will break you where you stand, and Ray propped his feet up on the end of the bed and grinned.
"You know, you really should have been nicer to me all these months," he said. He glanced at his watch. "I wonder if the little shop in the lobby is still open. Maybe I can get one of those disposable cameras, take some commemorative photos."
"Bite me," Kowalski said, and Ray watched the way his fingers bent as he twisted his wrists inside the cuffs.
"Yeah, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" Ray asked, and saw Kowalski's eyes flash. It was something they never talked about, the same way they never talked about why Ray came back from Florida. He lost Stella, Kowalski lost Fraser, and that was just the way life was. A pair of losers, the two of them.
"Oh yeah, I'd love that. That's what this was all about, didn't you know? Just an elaborate scheme to get you to blow me," Kowalski said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Aw, tough luck, Stanley," Ray told him. "Your plan failed."
"Pity," Kowalski replied, leaning back into the pillows. "I figured one look at this and you'd be all over me." He nodded down at his naked body, covered only by a thin scrap of sheet, and Ray followed his gaze, seeing the way the dim light outlined the muscles in his legs, the lines of his shoulders, the dark hollow of his throat.
He swallowed.
"Ok, fun's over." He held up the key, ignoring the way his pants were getting tighter by the second. "I've got better things to do than sit around watching you look like some extra from a bad porn film," he said, and knelt on the bed by Kowalski's head, reaching for the cuffs.
"Yeah?" Kowalski asked, his breath warm against Ray's chest, and then�holy fucking mother of�his arm was pressing up against the bulge in Ray's pants, moving, rubbing. "Doesn't feel like it," he said, and Ray froze there, his fingers inches from the cuffs, staring down into Kowalski's completely expressionless face. We're doing this? his eyes asked, we're really fucking doing this?, and Kowalski's only answer was to grin and twist a little beneath him.
"Yeah," Ray breathed as Kowalski's arm pressed harder against him, started moving slowly, steadily. "Yeah, ok," and he was leaning down to taste the skin of Kowalski's wrists, the key slipping from his fingers and landing somewhere under the bed, tasting the sharp tang of metal and sweat against his tongue.
"Oh," whispered Kowalski, sounding surprised, amazed, and then Ray was licking his way into his mouth, feeling all that nervous tension focused on him, on sliding their tongues along each other, caressing the inside of his lower lip, making him moan into Kowalski's mouth.
Ray spread out on top of him, feeling warm skin through the silk of his shirt, their erections pressing together through too many layers of cloth. "Hey," Kowalski said against Ray's temple as Ray kissed a line down his throat. "Hey," he repeated more urgently when Ray didn't respond, and he finally lifted his head. "Clothes," Kowalski told him, and he didn't need to be reminded twice. He stripped them off quickly and efficiently, leaving them pooled on the floor beside the bed, and then he reached out to pull back the sheet that was just barely covering Kowalski's waist.
The uncovered skin was just begging to be touched, so Ray reached down with one finger, let it drift across Kowalski's stomach, feeling the way the muscles leapt at his touch. The skin of his sides was soft, warm, and he whimpered a little when Ray leaned in to bite lightly at first one hipbone, then the other. His lips found their way to Kowalski's inner thighs, teasing him, leaving marks.
"Jesus," Kowalski finally whispered, his voice sounding harsh and strained, "Vecchio, please," and that was what Ray had been waiting to hear.
He wrapped his lips around the head of Kowalski's cock, tasting the wetness there, hot and bitter, and then he was sucking, stroking with his hand, feeling Kowalski arching up against him. It had been a long time, too fucking long, but once he got a rhythm going he remembered what he was doing, and Kowalski's panting gasps were going straight to his dick, knowing that he could turn him on like that, make him sound so fucking desperate.
He reached down with his other hand, wrapped it around himself, stroking in time to Kowalski's thrusts into his mouth. "Vecchio," he heard Kowalski say, panting. "I...I'm�oh," and then he was coming, hips jerking up off the bed, voice catching on a cry.
Ray swallowed, pulled back, driving downward into his own hand, and when he heard the rattle of metal against metal he was lost, shattering with a shout he muffled against the skin of Kowalski's leg.
They lay like that until Kowalski moved under him, shifted impatiently, and Ray reluctantly rose to retrieve the key from the floor. The cuffs opened with a soft clink, and Kowalski wrenched his hands out of their grasp, leaning back against the headboard and rubbing at his chafed skin.
Ray leaned back next to him, took one of those wrists in his fingers, and lifted it to his lips.
"What're you going to do," Kowalski asked, "kiss it and make it better?"
"Yes," Ray said, breath warm against skin cooled by metal, and he felt Kowalski shiver by his side.