"You're breathing kind of hard," Ray says, and Fraser knows he's laughing at him, just a little, but that's okay because Ray is here, standing in the circle of his arms.  If someone had told him six weeks, three days, fourteen hours, and thirty-seven minutes ago that time could move with all the dispatch of ice melting slowly in the spring, he would have smiled and shaken his head in amused tolerance at their lack of patience. Or at least related the story of the musk ox and the impetuous shaman as a lesson in forbearance.

As it is, he simply tightens his arms around Ray and revels in the reality of the quiet hiss of Ray's sudden indrawn breath, the small grunt forced out by compacting ribs. And kisses him. Kisses Ray. Feels Ray's arms come up around his shoulders and Ray's fingers dig deep into his hair, Ray's mouth open over his, wet and hard--impatient.

I’ve missed you, he wants to say, but he can't stop kissing Ray long enough to form the words. Diefenbaker is whining and trying to say hello but Fraser refuses to be moved in any direction that's away from Ray. Diefenbaker can't find any way to insinuate himself into the shrinking space between Ray's legs, knees, and thighs, and Fraser's, and finally gives a snort and leaves. Fraser hears him bound off the wooden deck at the front of the cabin, and he realizes the door is still open, still standing wide after it bounced off the wall. Fraser thinks he should close it but he's lost in Ray's mouth again, soft lips and demanding tongue and fevered need.

It's Ray who pulls away first--"God, Fraser"--and the words and Ray's two-day beard are rough against the side of his throat.  Then Ray leans back even further, staving Fraser off while he tries to draw air into his lungs. Ray is shivering, shaking. His hand trembles when he wipes it across his lips. Fraser can't make himself look away from Ray's mouth, blurred and swollen and smiling, and he doesn't recognize the sound that rises up in his throat and pours out of him as he pushes against Ray's hands, hands that still shake while they hold him at bay. He closes the gap between them again, moves relentlessly forward. Ray laughs even as he stumbles, falls back against the open door, and Fraser takes his laugh into his own mouth, swallows it with the groan that quickly follows. He's been starved for this, for the touch and scent, the sound of Ray. Six weeks, three days, fourteen hours, and thirty-eight minutes, or maybe thirty-nine or even forty now, and Fraser doesn't know how he survived, how he made it through the interminable days that passed after putting Ray on the plane at Yellowknife--

(--long, lonely days during which he talked himself into and out of making that phone call a dozen times--Ray wouldn't be happy here, Ray couldn't be happy here--until the night when the silence and the sky seemed too big, too empty, and when had that happened to him, that this place that had always called to him could seem so barren?  He finally picked up the receiver and dialed Chicago, thousands of miles and two time zones in the wrong direction, calling Ray, asking Ray to come back, shamefully needy--come back to me, I need you, stay with me--and he fancied he could hear relief as well as a grin in Ray's voice, rough with sleep. "You freak, it took you fucking forever to call--")

--and today, Ray finally walking back through his door, duffle bag slung over one shoulder, chilled to the bone and smiling. Fraser doesn't know how he would have survived if Ray hadn't come back, if Ray hadn't wanted to stay, oh god, if Ray had said no...

"I said yes, Fraser." Ray's voice is shaking now, too, every part of him is shaking, and he's running his hands over Fraser's face, smothering words Fraser didn't know he was speaking out loud. Ray's holding Fraser fast while he breathes the words into his ear, and Fraser closes his eyes to hear them, to feel them, soft and hot and sweet. "I said yes, god, yes, Fraser, I said yes, yes, yes---

Part of the Great Drabble Meme of 2004. 
Drabble requested by lilac_one: Kowalski/Fraser
Quote: "You're breathing kind of hard."
Kung fu beta by Brooklinegirl, china_shop, Kat, Lynn, and Shay. Obviously in my case, it doesn't take a village--it takes a densely populated urban metropolis.