(why does everything always take so fucking LONG?)

For you, m'dear. Unbetaed and a little angsty. Hope it helps.

*****
There are different kinds of pain.

There’s the bruises born of banging into walls during a chase or fighting the dogs when they pull or being under someone’s hands at the right time. There’s the ache when you’re sick and only want soup and crackers and to be left the hell alone, and the irritable itchy hurt of a sprained ankle, where mostly what hurts is that you can’t fucking move when you want to and your muscles are tense all the time with the need to just get up and go already. There’re the cuts, same story as the bruises and scrapes but closer calls, or maybe the knife slips when you’re cleaning the last of the fur off the rabbit Dief brought back. Or maybe someone else’s knife, and it didn’t slip, or a gun. But those heal, too, like the rest.

Then there’s the kind where Ray’s hands hurt, clenched tight around the thick top rungs of the headboard, and his back twinges a little when Fraser shoves into him even harder than normal, and he’s got more of both of their weights on his knees than maybe he ought to. And if he’s lucky, like now, there’s still a little burn where Fraser went in hard and fast, wanting it so bad that he gave that whole proper-preparation thing a miss and just took Ray nownowNOW. Just enough stretch and burn to back Ray down from the edge, which he usually hits in, like, four strokes when Fraser’s fucking him. Ray appreciates this particular small pain; it lets him stay in that place where he can see the edge but hasn’t hit it yet, so it’s less about him and he can actually feel what Fraser’s doing, what Fraser needs, what’s got Fraser so completely twisted up inside today.

Because, yeah: whatever’s going on with Fraser? Is hurting him like hell, no doubt about it. Fraser is in pain here. Ray could feel it when Fraser pinned him down on top of their comforter and sucked biting, stinging kisses from his throat all the way down to high inside his thighs without ever touching his aching cock, and he could feel it when Fraser flipped him over and pulled him roughly onto all fours, put a lubed finger into him as a token gesture and then pushed into him, voice cracking in the middle of a monologue Ray thinks was French and full of curse words. And he can feel it now, in the way Fraser is fucking him, thrusting into him over and over, teeth sunk into the side of his neck and continual groans humming against the sensitive skin there, marking him and taking him and owning his ass.

But Ray knows this one, he is with this, this particular pattern of all the ones they’ve got together, and he has a rough idea of where this is gonna end. Yeah, he’ll come, hard, and he can see the edge a little closer now and that’s a very good thing. He’ll come before Fraser, probably, because when Fraser’s this far inside his own head he just really needs to fuck his way through it, needs the skin and the sweat and the contact of being deep inside Ray a lot more than he needs the actual release of coming. So it’ll take him a long time, long enough maybe that Ray comes again, definitely long enough that Ray’ll feel it for a while and Fraser'll wind up apologizing needlessly. Finally, though — finally Fraser’ll lose that pounding rhythm he’s got going and his hips will push into Ray short and sharp and like he can’t help himself, and his scraped-up, sore hands will tighten their hold where they’re curled under Ray’s arms and over the points of Ray’s shoulders — hard enough to bruise — and he’ll moan long and low like he’s dying and collapse on Ray, wiped out and exhausted and empty.

And he’ll sleep.

And then, maybe, he’ll be able to find words for it.