Chapter Text
Peter McVries was going to break his fucking hip. There was no way he would have all of his bones intact when this evening was done. When Ray had suggested that they go skating, there was such hope behind his doe eyes. Pete thought it would be a cute date where Ray pulled him around. They would be sweet in the snow, but when Ray was lacing up Collie's skates onto Pete so tight he already couldn’t feel his toes. He was genuinely worried that Ray wouldn't like him so much after the night was through. Pete was confident and suave; he didn't like being bad at things. He did in fact care what people thought about him and how he came across. Ray tapped Pete's left ankle softly, and his knees cracked loudly as he stood up.
“Alright McVries let’s get a move on.” Ray was standing 6’2” in the skates and he was looming over a terrified Pete. He was wearing a Navy sweater emblazoned with a thick Hershey's embroidered on the chest and a red toque. Pete was pretty sure it was a Taylor Swift Red red toque, but he would never admit that he had recognized the tiny writing on the fold. Pete was not dressed for the weather when Ray came and got him at the dorm door like a gentleman, and he swiftly marched Pete back into his room to pull on sweats. He even was sweet enough to not notice that they were his own favourite pair.
“I liked you better when you were looking up at me like that, Garraty.” Pete was still on the bench. Ray had his homemade mittens outstretched to Pete, and a wide loopy grin.
“C’mon Pete, it’ll be fun, and you know I’ll help you.” Ray grabbed Pete quickly and yanked him to his feet. He pulled too hard and slammed Pete to his chest. Pete was squished by the lettering.
“Okay, just take one step, it's not that hard on the floor.” The thick rubber floor was scuffed and beaten. Pete took a step and didn’t immediately crumble. He was like a baby learning how to walk, mother Garraty slowly walking backwards holding onto Pete steadily.
“There you go! Pete, you're damn natural.” Pete didn't reply. He was concentrating too hard to flirt. He had his eyes glued on Collie's fancy skates and Ray was so steady around him
“Alright McVries let’s get that sweet ass of yours on the ice.” Ray was slowly walking them both to the door. Pete wanted to project an air of calm confidence, rather than the terror he was trying to quell. He had fallen bad a couple years ago and shattered his wrist, he still remembered the searing pain. There was a rubber path that led to the small outdoor rink. It was late on a Tuesday and there were a group of boys on the other rink. They had chosen the other smaller but gratefully empty rink. They would hear their chirps and the sharp slap of sticks cracking from the other side. Ray was being so patient with him, Pete was so fond of the way that Ray wanted to share the things he loved with Pete. He took one more step towards the ice and braced himself on the wooden banister before plunging onto the ice with Ray. Ray was fully showing off for his man.
He was racing back and forth on the ice as fast as lightning. Stopping hard at each side, turning his strong body to the side and spraying ice from his skates. He was looking at Pete the whole time with a shit easting grin.
“Next games Thursday if you want to google me some more.” Ray was now skating backwards nearly just as fast, It would probably look menacing if he didn’t have to wiggle his fat ass to do so. He skated a few more laps around the rink. His thick legs pushed him powerfully with ease across the ice in strong sure footed movements. Pete was definitely going to the next game. Maybe he would even wear Ray's other jersey like he had seen the other girlfriends on campus do. He’s definitely not not Ray's girlfriend
“Just wait until the playoffs where I have to wear a suit for all the home games.” Ray said, skating backwards from Pete wagging his hips suggestively. He slowly turned his back to Pete and held out his arms and moved the haunches commes un serpent.
“You’re telling me this whole time you're going to wear a suit around campus and no one told me” Pete yelled the last few words at Rays slowly leaving him.
“Yeah..well only shirt and tie with dress pants” Ray corrected. He was yelling across the rink and he started to skate to Pete full force. His arms swinging side to side. He stopped quickly spraying Pete softly with a strong dusting of snow.
“Stop trying to get me to show off, we came here for a reason. I learnt to do this in the first grade so it shouldn’t be that hard for you to master.” Ray's mitts were a blood red to match his hat. His cheeks and tip of his nose were already rosy from the cold, they matched perfectly.
Ray slowly helped Pete to the ice and slowly held onto both hands and Pete took one graceful step on the ice and immediately fell on his ass. Ray tried to stop the crash but Pete fell hard in the ice. He had managed two tiny steps before immediately falling tits over ass.
“Woah Pete! Y’alright?” Ray was still holding his hands and he looked genuinely concerned.
“I’m from fucking Georgia this isn’t for me.” Pete mumbled resting his head on the ice. Ray slowly and carefully skated around Pete's hip and knelt down lower as if he was going to help him up.
“I didn’t know you were born in Georgia. Let’s get ya up.” Pete sadly held out both hands. Ray hauled Pete off of the ice in one strong fluid motion. He was shocked at how easily Ray could launch him off the ice. Pete was in Ray's arms and they were face to face now. Ray kissed Pete softly on the nose. Pete didn’t want to move.
“Okay let’s try again.” Ray slowly unwound himself from Pete and held his hips firmly.
“Okay Pete I got you to put your weight on me.” Ray was solid and Pete didn’t feel like he was immediately going to fall now knowing what the ice felt like under his feet.
“Push your feet out to the sides like you're scraping the ice away, think of it as sideways instead of forwards.” Ray was watching Pete's skates awkwardly scuttle and scrape across the uneven ice. Pete was barely moving but he hadn’t fallen yet.
“Sorry I let you fall on your perfect ass.” Ray looked up with a smirk and Pete was inches away from his perfectly freckled pink nose. Pete was wearing a slouchy white toque and it was slowly falling down into his eyes from the effort, that is not translating to his movements in the slightest. Ray gingerly took his left hand off of the death grip he had on Pete's hip and swiped the toque higher up Pete's forehead.
“Thank you baby.” Pete whispered while taking a more confident push of his skate, and wobbled dangerously.
This time Ray was prepared and pulled Pete forward. He definitely didn’t over-correct sending Pete into his somehow still warm chest.
They spent a good 20 minutes like this Pete making smaller and smaller improvements. Ray had experimentally loosened his grip. After a few confident strokes from Pete, Ray let go of his hip. Pete still had two hands confidently on Ray, this was where he was at peace with the world. Two firm hands pressed into Ray Garraty and having those dark eyes looking at him with a saccharine stare.
Pete was awful at skating whenever one of them thought Pete was ready to let go of Ray he would take 1-2 shaky strides and immediately fall on his ass. The falls were spectacular. He fell both feet in the air and land on his butt hard. He at least had the foresight to protect his wrists but he still was hitting the ice hard.
“This is stupid, and fuck Canada.” Pete was on the ice and was making snow angles while Ray did another lap.
It had slowly started to snow big fat flakes. Ray skating towards him and offered him a hand sans red mitten. The only thing that Pete had gotten marginally better at was getting up off the ice. It did look like a grandma getting up, he did it slowly. Each time Ray would haul him into his chest. Pete was getting frustrated, he was easy to annoy. He was aware that this was on ugly side of him so he tried his best not to let it show outwardly to Ray. There were sharp edges that Pete had worked hard to tamp down. They were just standing looking at each other now. Ray looked like he wanted to push Pete to keep trying.
“Alright, saddle me and I’ll show you the best part of skating. You’re going to need the motivation to get fast.”.
Ray put Pete feet hips apart and swung his right arm back for Pete to hold.
“It’s so freeing Pete just gliding around you’ll love it” Ray looked to look to Pete's eyes and skated once to him and planted a soft kiss on his frozen lips. Ray's mouth was still impossibly warm to the touch. He was so warm that it needed to be shared.
He stood in front of Pete. Turning his head around. He just asked-
“Do you trust me Pete?” He had a warm smile, but his eyes were wide and pleading.
Pete trusted him.
“Of course, I trust you Ray.”
“How does this feel Pete?” Ray was still skating slowly, but Pete was bending his knees and he had some pretty impressive abs so he could hold his balance.
“I think you can go faster. I think I’m okay.” Ray didn't speed up but instead reached out and held his other hand out to Pete behind him.
He grabbed Ray's hand carefully and was scared to let go of one hand for even a second. He knew that Ray would be careful. Pete slowly let go and for hopefully what would happen again every day until his last, he grasped Ray Garraty's hand into his own. Ray turned around to stare at Pete with pride.
“Look at you Pete from Georgia” He started to speed up still looking at Pete over his shoulder.
“Ray, I got this!” Pete shouted back with joy.
Ray whooped his other hand into the air and continued to drag Pete behind him. He was starting to speed up and Pete didn't care that he probably looked insane. Ray was right it was freeing, there was a light in the way the wind was whipping his face. He felt joy in giving his trust to Ray in this way. He didn't give up control easily and that this was something that was happening outside of the bedroom gave the nurtured seedling of hope in Pete chest gentle rays of sunshine.
He wanted to let go.
He slowly let go of Ray's mitten and let himself glide to the side of the rink. He was crouched low and awkward pushing his hands out, but he made it to the bench without falling. He took the bench too hard, and let out a whoop of air as his stomach hit the railing. He stumbled into the box and watched Ray skate to him.
“I knew you liked to show off ever since “rolling out my hamstring gate” but this is more fun, give me a little twirl 47.” He yelled from the penalty box. Ray blew him a kiss and gracefully tried to turn around, he landed awkwardly on his knees. Pete stood up and cheered loudly for Ray.
“GO GO Garraty number 47!!! Maine very own!!” Pete yelled as Ray got up to try again.
Ray jumped into the air and landed on one foot with the other in the air. Giving a dramatic bow.
“I knew a guy at hockey camp who could do an axel, and he taught me this as a party trick.”
”That is not the information I wanted to know for my detailed hockey camp fantasy.” Pete thought that he wouldn’t like knowing about Ray with other men but he found that he was more into the information if it was far away. Sue him he wanted to know the details of these men with the years and distance safely tucked far away.
“His eyes were so blue they looked like a husky, and he was such a fucking puritan he didn’t even let out one swear, even with his entire dick in-“ Ray stopped staking the lap he was on and looked at Pete with shame. That colour didn’t suit Ray,
”Oh Ray--Please keep going.” Pete was leaning against the board now, not even trying to make it look like he wanted to keep skating. He had put himself in the penalty box.
“You’re a perv Peter Michael McVries” Ray skated back to Pete and bracketed him against the boards Pete was leaning over. His cheeks were so pink, they were bright from the cold, he was sniffing softly.
“I’m sorry Raymond, I’m a pervert, I’m not the one giving head to every bi-curious guy west of Winnipeg.”
”First of all I have given head to at one forward from Winnipeg.”
”You know I don’t know what those words mean!” Pete blew out the last words on a white puff of air.
Ray chucked softly and went to grab Pete to swing him around.
“Ray…mercy.” Pete held his hands on Ray's chest. He playfully rolled his eyes and skated backwards quickly as a rabbit.
“Let me just get my legs warmed up for tonight, then I'll get you a hot chocolate princess.”
”Ray!! You didn’t say you had a game tonight.” As if Pete didn’t have the schedule tucked into the back of his Indigenous studied textbook.
”Game?”
Ray was full belly laughing, when he turned to see Pete sneakily trying to slip his frozen phone back in his back pocket, he was crouched over laughing deeply, his belly shaking.
He just watched Ray skate back and forth, stopping at center ice and then racing backwards. He was wondering if this is what men feel when they watch him play guitar or read the poetry he has written. To have someone do something they love and having them not share that part of themselves with you. It’s so delicate Pete could cry. He wanted to watch this man dry dishes and write grocery lists. That thought made him more scared then it should. He was focused on the slow gentle swing of Ray's arms and the way that his thighs moved to glide his large frame along the ice. Ray started to huff his breaths shortly as he sped up. Across the small rink Pete would see Ray's chest heaving, and he was right back in that sticky dorm room and Ray's round chest flexing above him.
Pete pushed off the bench and slowly wobbled to an ever tiring Ray.
“Oh hello” Ray stopped sharply in front of Pete. Pete who simply touched his frozen nose on the side of Ray's cheek.
”I’m from Atlanta, this is inhumane.”
“Alright Atlanta, Let’s get you inside.”
Ray walked Pete so slowly over the rubber mats inside the community center.
“I’m a defenceman, I can do anything backwards.” Ray was gripping Pete's waist as he inched forward. Ray's hands felt so solid on him that he knew he wasn’t going to fall again.
“‘Was that a gay joke Garraty?” Pete's skate clanked loudly on the metal doorframe as he stepped on it. He would have felt bad if Ray hadn’t shown him pictures of the inside of Collie's cabin. He’ll be fine.
Ray delicately took the skates off each of Pete's aching, rubbing them both with strong hands before squeezing Pete's heel to stop the tingling. Pete let out a small groan of relief.
”My Dad used to run me so many hot baths for my feet’s after games, they would get so beat up it was like I had been walking miles and miles without shoes.”
“He was the one who taught he to skate, my Mom and Dad were on the Rideau canal skating when he asked her to marry him.”
Ray wasn’t looking at Pete when he said this, he was wiping the blade of his own discarded skate so meticulously, a boy who knew how much they cost to the cent. Pete suddenly felt weird about Collie's elite skates.
“He was so uninhibited, he showed me such uninhibited music, I miss the way he would always contradict me when I was small. Make me think deeper.”
Pete had known that Ray's dad wasn’t in the picture, but this was not the way you spoke about someone who was still living. Pete wanted to be vulnerable with him to talk about his own Dad and share the faded grainy memories he had about Peter McVries Senior.
“Samuel”
Ray looked up from his skates and raised one eyebrow at Pete.
“Serious, I’m named after my Dad and he doesn’t have a middle name, but there is no one that has ever loved Sammy Davis Jr more then Peter McVries Senior”
Ray's smile almost cracked his face in two.
“My middle name is Davis-.”
Pete has heard people talk about an invisible string, but now he feels like it has gotten twisted into the sinews of his chest.
“That’s spooky Ray.” Pete wanted to say was fate or kismet or something more poetic but he was also just genuinely kinda wigged out.
“We’re matching.” Ray kissed him deeply.
They walked into the clearing and went to walk by the river. There was a small walking path in the summer along the river through a nice park. In the winter the delicate snowfall was peppered with small deer prints. It was serene.
”Why did you kiss that girl at the party?” Ray was looking at his feet when he said this. It was cold and crisp, but they were out of the wind in a small tree covered portion of the path. Pete stooped in his tracks. They were talking about hockey and classes and finals, this was blurted out so fast that Pete didn’t have time to think of a convincing lie.
“I kissed her because I wanted your attention, you were kissing Jen. (Pete knew it was Jan but he wasn’t nothing if he wasn’t a petty bitch.)
”I wanted to be kissing you and you were so close and so there, I wanted to be in your orbit, the closest thing that I could think of at that moment was to do the same thing as you. I know there is no logic, but then you looked at me and I thought that you could read my mind. That if I screamed my jealousy to you that you’d hear me and plus I like looking at your mouth. You kiss with your whole body”
They’d both stopped on the path, and were inches apart. Ray thought that if this was a movie this would be the scene before the credits rolled.
“I thought I liked Jan, she’s a sweet girl, but she’s is like bread”
”…white?” Pete was a smart man but he had no idea what on earth Ray was on about.
“No- like she’s plain and safe and solid, but I think that I would get bored of her. Even though I love bread, I have always wanted to be with someone dynamic. When you walked into that party I knew that I wanted to be in your orbit, to have you look my way no matter how.”
Pete looked at Ray like he was insane. Why were they both like this? Instead of having a conversation they both decided independently to swap spit with other people.
“This is why women live longer.” Ray was giggling like he hadn’t just admitted that he thought kissing Jan was like bread. They walked for longer in the snow, it was starting to snow big fat Hallmark movie flakes. There was a mix of them on Ray toque, some were melted into small drops of dew and others stayed solid and steady. They were never two that were the same.
Ray had his two mitten clad hands clasped behind his back. They walked in complete sync, like they had known each other for so long that they had learnt to walk in neighbouring homes.
“Have I ever told you how I got this scar, Ray?” Pete had stopped and was looking up at the grey sky, small snowflakes slowly coming into focus the second before they landed on his cheeks.
”You don’t have to, if you don’t want to …baby.” The last word Ray tacked on like it wasn’t something Pete had prayed for.
“When I was seventeen—“ Pete was speaking fast the handful of times that he had shared this story he needed to do it all at once. He wanted Ray to know him so desperately that it even needed to be done in one breath.
“There was this boy that I was hooking up with when I was living in Toronto. He was so sweet, but his family was super conservative, and they had no idea. One night we both fell asleep in the hammock, and when we woke up in the morning, his dad was in the yard. We were so wrapped in the hammock that he cut it open in a rage to see who was inside and slashed my cheek in the process.
Pete was still looking up at the sky, he knew the tears would come if he was the knit of Ray's eyebrows.
“Told me that If I was even caught with his son again, that he would blow my fucking fag head clean off.”
There was more to the story, how the ever loved local principal had thrown the knife into the dirt directly between Pete's feet as he sprinted away, or that he got stitches from a vet tech who lived with another woman. This was what Pete was always fighting to make sure didn’t calcify into his soul. This was what kept him open and creative, he would not give this man the opportunity to have his actions make Peter McVries harden to the world.
He heard the crunch of boots on snow and felt his head being tilted down slowly by the chin. All of his tears were caught in his lash line and he knew that if he tilted his head they would spill onto his cheeks.
Ray had glossy eyes and the look of shock he had seen before after telling people.
“Pete, you're the bravest person I've met. Thank you for telling me.” Ray kissed Pete's forehead.
They walked the rest of the way to the dorms in silence. Pete could tell that Ray wanted to say something, he had this worried look that he didn’t think Pete could see. Pete has swung the other way too quickly. Shared too much, gotten too deep. The mysterious cool guy slashed away. Pete went to turn to the stairs to head to his dorm floor, when Ray called to him.
“Come with me Pete.” That was all that Pete needed to hear.
They made their way to the dilapidated kitchen and Pete perched on a cracked maroon vinyl stool. There was no one else in the kitchen but he heard the faint trill of Ella Fitzgerald Christmas coming from the closest closed door.
Ray took milk, cream and real cocoa out of the packed fridge. Pete let out a laugh that was in fact loud enough to break the ice when Ray brought out an honest to god vanilla bean.
“Garraty, I’ve been wooed this is too much.” Pete was looking over Ray's shoulder into the pot, Ray was slowly whisking sugar into the bubbling drink.
“This is the gentlemanly thing to do, when one is on a skating date.” Ray had on a light blue shirt that had run transparent with sweat down the perfect middle of his back. Pete kissed it hungrily. Ray just let his head tilt back as he turned off the element.
The look that he gave Pete when he pulled out the whipped cream, made Pete need to turn around because he was worried a scarlet A would appear on his hoodie.
He poured Pete's treat into the least chipped mug he could find, which of course was Collies saying “Women love me Fish fear me!” He poured the rest into his own oversized white lady mug that simply had “Wine Mom” in the ugliest font Pete has ever seen.
“Does it make you feel weird if people call it a sexy scar?” Of all of the things to ask Raymond Davis.
“No they’re right, it is sexy, I just worry that people assume that I’m a fighter or aggressive.”
”You’re about as aggressive as a daffodil.” Ray was rubbing small circles on the top of Pete's knee.
Pete felt lighter now that he had told him, this wasn’t something that he had ever noticed had happened before. Pete had never stayed long enough with someone after he’s told them to feel any sort of relief.