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Ray's face hurt, but he couldn't quite kill the dopey smile. Ten minutes left in the game, which meant twenty minutes before he had to peel himself off the couch and have the usual stupid argument that he and Fraser substituted for actually saying good night to each other at the end of the night. (You sure you don't wanna sleep here? Of course not, Ray. Lemme give you a ride. No, there's no need, I'll walk. Fine! Walk! Yes, I think I will, as I just said. Fine! I'll see you tomorrow! Good, I should hope so!) The Blackhawks were up 4-1, and he could just sorta coast for a while, now.
He glanced over at Fraser, who wasn't smiling at all, but in Fraser-terms, looked like he felt pretty much the same way. Ray's smile widened a little further, and he quickly looked away. At the next commercial, he said, "Y'know what I wish, Fraser? I wish every day could be just like this. Five years from now, this is what I wanna be doing." Of course, five and a half years from now, his eyes were gonna go, or maybe his knees, and then he'd be stuck behind a desk til he died...
He glanced over at Fraser again, and realized he was on the receiving end of one of those very low key, Canadian-style, ‘Are you out of your mind?' looks. "You wouldn't change anything about today, Ray?"
He thought it over. Okay, so, maybe he didn't want a gun pointed at him every single day, but where else were you gonna get that great adrenaline rush? Plus he got to watch Fraser go all alpha-Mountie ‘You threatened my partner' afterward, which always gave him a warm fuzzy feeling. Maybe the damsel in distress could have been a little less grabby, and maybe he could have gotten rid of her before Fraser started giving him the stinkeye, but, hey, appreciative citizens were all in a day's work. And after that it was just pineapple pizza and watching hockey with Fraser, and he definitely didn't want to screw with that.
"Nope," he said, settling back as the game returned on the TV. "Wouldn't change a thing."
Ben shifted a little and sighed with something oddly like contentment. In a few minutes the game would be over, and he and Ray would get off the couch and go to bed and finish what they'd started sometime around the second intermission, but for a moment this was more about hockey than sex, and more about the weight of his lover pressing him into the couch than anything else at all.
He found his mind returning, as it perversely tended to do at moments like this, to that night, years ago, when he'd thought this was all an impossible fantasy. After a long, miserable day in which he'd watched Ray nearly get killed, watched Ray flirt outrageously with yet another interchangeable woman, and watched Edmonton get pasted by Chicago, Ray had turned to him and announced that he didn't want to change any of it. He'd grasped for some small thread of hope: perhaps, in five years, Ray imagined that he might use his partner's first name, or that they might not be still dealing with the endless importunities of life as officers of the law in Chicago. Perhaps Ray's vision of the future included some sort of romantic success for them, if not with each other as Ben secretly dreamed, then with someone. But Ray had only shaken his head, and said he wouldn't change a thing.
"Hey," Ray muttered, raising his head from Ben's chest and giving him a sleepy look almost comically at odds with the wide-awake attitude of the rest of his body, "Ben, you remember that time when I said I wished nothing would ever change?"
He smiled. Ray occasionally claimed to be disturbed by these synchronicities in their thinking, but he enjoyed the evidence that they were so perfectly in tune. "Yes, Ray, I was just thinking of it myself."
Ray nodded, and laid his head back down. "I'm glad I was right."
Fraser didn't know whether to laugh or check Ray for signs of concussion. "I beg your pardon?"
Ray lifted his head, a small furrow forming between his eyebrows. "I was right, Ben. Five years on, and here I am: catching bad guys, eating pizza, and watching hockey. With you."
Ben couldn't help raising his voice a little, as though Ray were perhaps hard of hearing. "In the Arctic, Ray. Making your own pizza. Rooting for the Oilers. And with me..."
Ray smiled smugly. "With you, buddy. I was completely right."
"Wrong."
"Right."
"Wrong."
Ray suddenly burst out laughing, and Fraser was too genuinely pleased with life to pursue the argument in the face of his lover's happiness. "See?" Ray gasped, "We never even learned to just say good night like normal people."