Chapter Text
“Buh?” Ray lets the startled noise escape. Oh, hell no, he’s gonna do better than that. It’s on. “I-I, uh… I’m cool with that.” Hell yeah. So cool.
Ryan scratches his neck with his free hand. “I just… I can’t…” He gestures to the mask.
“Oh,” Ray murmurs. “We can turn the lights off. I promise I won’t look.” And as curious as he is, he means that.
Ryan releases him and Ray is terrified for a moment that he has ruined the moment, pushed Ryan past his limit and made things irreparably weird. But Ryan just walks to the lightswitch and flicks it off. Without the overhead light, the lamp casts a dim golden glow and makes everything seem like it’s emerging from the shadows. Ryan materializes next to him.
“Close your eyes.”
Ray obeys, slipping his glasses off and setting them on the table for good measure. Ryan turns off the table lamp and plunges the room into complete darkness. There’s rustling and the sound of rubber folding and hitting itself. A thunk of something set on the table.
Hands land gently on Ray’s hips. He runs his hands up the length of Ryan’s arms and leaves them to rest on his shoulders. The tip of Ryan’s nose brushes against his own. Ray tilts his head a bit, but waits for Ryan to come to him. It’s probably a bad idea to seek out Ryan’s mouth when he can’t see him, anyway; nothing sexy about teeth smacking together or someone getting a nose to the eye.
Ryan finally, finally closes the little gap between them and oh, this was so much better than Ray ever imagined. Ryan’s got stubble that scratches pleasantly against him and he seems to instinctively know the perfect pressure to make Ray’s legs threaten to buckle. In no time at all his resolve melts and he presses forward, tangling his hands in Ryan’s hair, deepening the kiss. Ray gasps into Ryan’s mouth when one of his hands slide from his hip to rest on his ass.
“Okay?” Ryan asks against his lips.
Ray wants to open his eyes, to gaze at Ryan without the mask between them and say yes, of course it is , but he knows Ryan isn’t ready for that. Not yet. So he nods, and pushes forward. The hand goes from sitting to kneading and if Ray had any blood left for his brain before, he sure doesn’t now.
Ryan pulls back and Ray is about to complain but then his mouth is on Ray’s neck, and that’s awesome, that’s super. Teeth scraping gently over the spot where his neck meets his shoulder? Great.
Then Ryan slides one of his legs between Ray’s, which results in Ryan’s thigh pressing against his erection and yep that’ll work . His breath comes out in a shaky gasp. “ Shit, Ryan.”
Ryan laughs and he can feel the vibration in his neck. Ryan’s free hand slips under his shirt and rests against the bare skin of his torso, gripping his hip gently but still firm enough that Ray isn’t worried about his legs anymore. Man, this whole not being able to see thing is making every touch ten times more intense in ways that he could never have anticipated; it’s like his brain is making up for the lost sense by amplifying the others to extremes, and Ray kind of loves it. Wow. He had no idea he was this kinky.
Ryan pulls back and returns to his lips. Ray’s kissed a couple of people before this, sure, but he instantly accepts that he must have been doing it wrong, because it never felt this fucking good. His entire world is pinned down to the points of contact between them and a comfortable heat is covering his chest and sinking down, down. Ryan’s hair is on the shaggy side, but it’s soft. Fucker must condition. He runs his nails against Ryan’s scalp and revels in the groan he lets out. That noise is just enough to wipe away any restraint Ray had left and he finds himself pressing into Ryan’s leg and clenching his teeth at the friction. Ryan responds by biting Ray’s lower lip and snaking his hand up further on Ray’s torso, to tweak his nipple.
God. Damn.
Ray throws his head back and moans. Ryan’s hand withdraws from under his hoodie and presses flat on his chest, by the zipper. Too stiff. He’s too stiff, now. Body language is changed. Ray anticipates his next move before he can make it.
Ryan separates from him again, this time taking a step back. “We... Should wait.”
“Okay.” He knew it was coming, but it’s still fucking disappointing. Ray almost reflexively opens his eyes but catches himself just in time. “Did… Did I do something wrong?”
“What? No, god no. It’s just that this is a little…”
“Fast?”
Ryan doesn’t respond. A moment later, the lamp turns on. “You can look. I’m decent.”
He has the mask back on. “I don’t want to rush you or anything. If you’re not comfortable, that’s fine.”
“It’s not that.” Ryan sucks in a breath. “I’m just… You shouldn’t have to do so much to accommodate me.”
Ray reaches for Ryan’s hand and smiles when he takes it without hesitation. “Why do you wear the mask, Ryan?”
He stiffens, but he doesn’t let go. “Trust is a very dangerous thing, Ray.” He steps back again, but pulls Ray along with him. They end up sitting on his bed side by side, hands linked together. Ray can practically feel the tension rippling off of Ryan in thick waves.
So Ray decides it’s his turn to show some trust. “When I was a little kid, my dad would get drunk and beat the shit out of my mom.” It’s not a good story, but it’s his. Ray’s never told anyone about this since he started doing things on his own. No one person knows the whole story. It’s always been safer that way. “One day, she decided she’d had enough, so she hit him back. He broke a bottle on her head and choked her. I hid in the bathroom and called the cops. They arrested him and he was thrown in prison for murdering her, and I got sent to live with my aunt and uncle, except they were both crack heads with no money. So I started skipping school to hang out with some of the kids in my school who mostly stayed on the streets, because if I did shit for them, they would sometimes give me food. When I was twelve, I weighed 86 pounds. I was starving, and no matter how hard my teachers tried, the government wouldn’t move me to a home. One day when I was sixteen one of the street kids gave me a knife and told me to go steal drugs from an older kid in an actual gang. It wasn’t my brightest move, but I went along with it, because one of the guys promised to buy me whatever I wanted from McDonald's. So it was little Ray against the world with a knife to protect himself. Only, the kid had a gun.”
Ray rubs his shoulder with his free hand.
“My oldest scar is a gunshot wound. When my aunt and uncle found out what happened, they freaked the fuck out and kicked me onto the streets, so I started couch surfing or sleeping in the alleys with the other kids. As soon as I was all healed up… I started pickpocketing, and selling whatever shit I got. Once I had enough money, I bought a gun from this dude we called Scrapper, hunted the guy who shot me down, and killed him.”
“Ray…”
“The gang the kid was from decided that I was talented enough to coerce into joining them instead of just killing me, so I started doing armed muggings and assassinations and shit. I wasn’t ever paid. Just given food and somewhere warm enough to sleep. I started getting really good with the guns, so one of the dudes who ran shit set me up with a rifle to do higher profile assassinations. That got me through a few years. Then, uh… Well, some shit happened, and I had to go. So I sold the shit rifle they had me using, bought a bus ticket, and moved from NYC to Boston. There was a dude there who was friends with the gang leader I worked under, so he sold me my rifle for cheap. I killed him and made a name for myself as a sniper. I got cornered one day by some dudes who told me Geoff wanted me for the crew, bought a plane ticket, and… Here I am.”
Ryan listens silently. When Ray finishes, he carefully releases his hand and places it on his shoulder, pressing until he shifts so he’s facing Ryan. His hand moves to Ray’s hoodie zipper and he’s confused, but nods consent and shrugs it off when Ryan finishes unzipping. Then he grips the bottom of Ray’s shirt, and he understands. He lifts his arms very helpfully and lets them drop back down into his lap once the shirt’s off.
Ryan places a hand beside the scar. It’s not that big and pretty faded after six years, but it’s still obvious to anyone who knows the business what happened.
“I have a scar kind of like that, too.” Ryan says. “Well, uh, not really- But, like the beginning of my descent from a wholesome American lifestyle, I suppose.” He pulls off his own jacket and holds out his right forearm to Ray. He wonders if Ryan means his words for only a moment before he notices that the length of the print is set on subtle scar tissue. It’s clearly long healed and so faded that Ray didn’t notice, that day after he was injured- although the concussion could also have something to do with that- but the skin is raised and rough. “I was a computer engineer, before all of this. Had a girlfriend because that’s what was expected of me. She was never really… Stable. We weren’t soulmates. And she would go on tirades about how stupid the whole thing was, and how much she hated the whole idea of the words. One night, she drugged me and tried to get rid of my mark by cutting it out.”
Ray’s left hand goes instinctively to his own words, sitting on normal skin.
“I almost bled out. What’s ridiculous… Is that I stayed. She almost killed me, but everyone I knew acted like it was sweet, or a gesture of love . Like what she did was out of affection. Well, joke was on them, because she was arrested for murdering an old boyfriend when new evidence turned up. The night the police came was my last night in Georgia. I used all of my money to move myself to another city, but there weren’t any legal jobs in my industry, so I ended up taking money under the table to do what was essentially stealing data from rival companies. Then they needed me to do merc jobs for them, for free- Or they would sell me out to the cops. So I did their dirty work until they actually did sell me out.”
“That’s… Why you wear the mask.”
“Right.” Ryan sighs. “I picked up and left again, invested in good weapons and self defense, and took contracts. I tried trusting people a couple more times and I have the scars to show for it. I stopped letting my guard down, let my reputation become one of close-guarded mystery and intrigue, and then Jack approached me about joining Fake AH. I didn’t like the idea of working with other people again. It took a very long time to convince me.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“Geoff saved my life.”
Ray takes Ryan’s hand again.
“My side was grazed, I had taken a decent hit to the head, and I was disarmed in a room full of people with guns who really didn’t like me. Instead of running off like any sensible person would, Geoff took out every single one of them, dragged me out, and stitched me up without taking off my mask. I wouldn’t have been able to stop him, but he didn’t do it. He did make me agree to let Caleb take it off to look, but only after he left the room.”
Ray thinks of how Geoff had looked back after the heist in his room, how tired and exasperated he had seemed. For as much shit as he gives all of them, Geoff Ramsey clearly cares for every member for the main circle with all of his soul. It’s a marvel that he’s held on to that aspect of himself in this industry. “Geoff’s a good guy.”
“Yeah.” Ryan rubs the back of Ray’s hand with his thumb. “I want to trust you enough to let you see.”
“I don’t care.” Ray says. “If you don’t want to show me your face, you don’t have to. I don’t mind making out with you in the dark. Although you’re going to have to find something less creepy if we’re gonna bang while you’re wearing that. That, or we’ll have to get one of those sheets that super religious people wear, with the little hole cut in it for the dick.”
Ryan laughs. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“But you’re okay? With planning on this being, like… A thing?”
“Yeah. I’m okay with that. Are you okay with that?”
Ray leans his head on Ryan’s shoulder. “Yep. I’m okay with that.”
---
He sits down with a plate of hashbrowns, scrambled eggs, and fried ham to a symphony of whoops and cat calls.
He looks up at the faces staring smugly back at him in utter confusion. It’s too early and he’s too hungry. Not gonna deal with this. Ray chugs half his orange juice and gets to work on the eggs.
“Ryan’s a biter!” Gavin sounds utterly delighted by this piece of information.’Ray stares at him and chews.
Meg clears up his confusion. “Nice hickey, champ.”
“Shut the fuck up.” Ray points accusingly at her. “You’ve got no room to talk.”
“Hey.” Meg folds her hands and rests her chin on them, subtley blocking the view of her own collection of bruises. “I own my sweet sex life.”
Oh, god, the flashbacks. He goes red. “Do me a favor and invest in some duct tape or a fuckin’ ball gag or something. Anything. Please .”
“You could also solve that problem by moving into Ryan’s room,” Lindsay cheerily suggests.
“You guys are fucking terrible.” Ray goes back to his food.
“Is Ryan handsome?” Gavin asks.
“Can I eat now?” Ray says through a mouthful of hashbrowns.
Gavin retches, but Michael is unperturbed by his half-eaten bite. “Nope. Not until you answer our questions.”
Ray swallows and sighs, lamentably setting his fork down and crossing his arms. “I don’t know if Ryan is handsome.”
“Oh, come on!” Meg cries. “That’s the lamest fucking line I’ve ever heard. Don’t act like you can’t tell if someone is attractive or not.”
“I don’t know if he’s attractive because I didn’t see.”
“What are you saying?” Michael asks, patting Gavin on the back as he works through the last of his coughing.
“I’m saying that it was dark and I kept my eyes closed, because I’m a fucking gentleman.”
“What?!” Gavin gasps. “You hooked up with a bloke without knowing what he even looks like?”
Ray shrugs. “It’s not that important.”
“How could that not be bloody important? He could be an uggo, and you wouldn’t even know!”
“Would you have still dated me if I were ugly, Gav?” Michael asks with an unimpressed look.
“Probably not.”
Michael snorts. “No?”
“Well it wasn’t exactly your warm personality that drew me in, love.”
“Those are some big words coming from the guy who got his dick sucked this morning.”
Ray covers his ears and groans while Gavin sputters.
“Hey,” Geoff warns from the kitchen. “Don’t talk about your gross sex lives in my fucking dining room.”
“I thought you wanted to know when me and Ryan were gonna bang.” Ray shoots back. Geoff perks up and practically fucking trots over.
“You shagged him?” Gavin looks positively scandalized. “God, Ray, you’ve got to learn to love yourself!”
Ray shrugs again and picks his fork back up. “I guess I just don’t care that much about looks. And, not that this is any of your business, but we didn’t fuck.”
This launches a large conversation about how important looks are in a potential lover. Jeremy wanders in, then Jack, and they’ve got the whole inner circle- except for Ryan- in on the discussion. Jack, Michael, and Lindsay stick with Ray on the ‘it doesn’t fucking matter’ train. Gavin and Geoff maintain that looks are incredibly important. Meg and Jeremy sit in the middle, saying that looks aren’t everything, but they still affect some things.
“But is there a difference between knowing your partner is ugly and not knowing what they look like?” Jeremy asks.
“That’s an interesting point,” Jack replies. “I wonder if that discredits any of Ray’s claims that he doesn’t care, since there’s still a chance that Ryan is attractive.”
“Schroedinger’s hunk.” Lindsay helpfully supplies.
“But we already know that he’s fit.” Gavin scratches his head. “Does that stack the odds in Ray’s favor?”
“There’s no way to stack them in my favor because I don’t care about the outcome.” Ray says.
“So you say!” Geoff points at him. “How do we know you aren’t just covering your pettiness? Or,” he gasps. “Maybe you did see Ryan’s face, and you’ve sworn to keep it secret!”
“No.” Ray shovels in his last bite of ham.
“Well, there’s no way to verify his claims, so I guess you’ll all just have to take his word for it.”
Ryan’s leaning in the doorway again and Ray is reminded of the night they first met, when he was eating pizza and Gavin was bothering him about his soulmate. And this conversation was started in basically the same way, so he guesses history repeats? Or something lame and cliche like that.
“Ryan!” Gavin squeaks. “How much of that did you hear?”
“Most of it. None of you are quiet.” He strolls to the seat beside Ray and ruffles his hair. Ray flushes at the contact, because apparently he’s a fucking kid beaming under his favorite person’s attention. And the matters? They get worse. Ryan’s hand is resting on Ray’s thigh under the table.
“Well,” Gavin is also flushed. Ray supposes he’s flustered. Gavin takes and gives shit to basically every member of the crew, but he seems hesitant when it comes to Ryan. Ray worked out a couple of weeks ago that Gavin is sort of scared of Ryan. Not in ways that make sense, like oh no this dangerous man could easily shoot me in my sleep if he wanted , but more in the way a kid fears his older brother when he knows he’s pushed the annoying behavior too far. “Are you handsome then, Ryan?”
Ryan shrugs. “I don’t know.”
Gavin throws his hands up.
“I’ve been told that I have nice eyes.”
“Aw!” Meg grins. “What color?”
“Blue.”
“Baby blue eyes! That’s so cute! ”
“Hey, I said nothing about babies.”
“But do you deny it?” Lindsay asks.
Ryan sighs. “I think they’re more green than that.”
“Well.” Geoff smacks his hand down loudly on the table. “I’m sold. Ryan’s a hottie.”
---
Kissing Ryan while having to remember to keep his eyes closed any time they pull apart ended up being quite the task. After two more close calls, Ray asked Michael for suggestions. The answer came in the form of a long strip of dark fabric.
“A blindfold!” Ray grins.
“Really?” He can practically hear the raised eyebrow.
“Yeah. I suck at remembering to keep my eyes shut, and I don’t want to restrict myself to only making out with you at night.”
“How magnanimous of you.”
“Shut up and put this on me.”
Ray shivers at the feeling of Ryan’s fingers manipulating the fabric behind his head. Damn, okay, he’s definitely developing a kink.
The blindfold comes out every time after that, and Ray is grateful to no longer have to keep track of shutting his eyes. It makes the whole experience a lot better, he thinks. His dick definitely follows that line of logic. But they never go farther than kissing and above the belt touching. Ray’s not sure if Ryan’s just not ready for that, or if it has to do with the mask, or what. But if Ryan doesn’t want to go beyond that, then they won’t. That’s the long and short of it.
The air is particularly heavy one night. Ray’s foot is long healed and they had successfully pulled a seriously huge job a few hours back, so the adrenaline of victory is still rushing triumphantly through their veins. He reaches for the drawer in Ryan’s nightstand where the blindfold is kept- they never do shit in Ray’s room, since he knows for a fact that the walls are thin enough to be heard through, and Ryan’s room has the slight buffer of the main bathroom between him and his neighbors- but Ryan stops him with a hand on his wrist.
“What’s up?” Ray asks.
Ryan fiddles with the hem of his shirt, deliberately not looking at Ray.
“Rye?”
He releases Ray’s arm and slowly brings his hands to the bottom of the mask.
Ray’s breath hitches. “You don’t have to-”
“I want to.” Ryan cuts him off. His hands linger on the edge of the latex. “I’ve been thinking about it. A lot. And I think that I really want to.”
And all at once, he peels the mask off and tosses it away. Ray is speechless.
Ryan looks sheepish, and Ray can see it in the shift of his eyes, the way his lip curls a bit. “I hope I’m not actually super ugly.”
“No!” Ray cries, and the floodgates open. “Dude, you are super fucking hot. Like, I can’t… I don’t have words because you’re so goddamn attractive that my brain is busy trying to memorize every detail of your face.”
Ryan laughs and oh, the way his eyes crinkle is so fucking lovely that Ray cannot physically stop himself from pulling him in for a kiss. And when they separate, he rests their foreheads together and gazes into Ryan’s eyes, soaking in their color. Ray pulls back again just so he can continue to look at his face. A blush is creeping onto his cheeks. It’s so fucking cute and Ray does not know what to do with himself.
“You’re uh, kinda creeping me out.” Ryan says.
Ray giggles and covers his eyes, then pulls his hands away because no, Ryan’s beautiful face is here, absolutely no missing out on this. Ryan reaches up to gently cup Ray’s cheek and he realizes that Ryan has a whole entire body that Ray hasn’t seen out of clothing yet, and that must be corrected immediately. He orders Ryan to take his shirt off.
“Bossy.” But he complies. Ray runs his hands up and down Ryan’s chest and watches the way it moves when he breathes. He looks for all of the scars and runs his fingers over them and kisses the ones that look new. He demands to repeat this process on his back and Ryan complies, and the only noise he makes is a contented sigh as Ray nuzzles against his skin.
The noises that he thought were hot already are infinitely more so when they’re matched up with a shift in his facial features. The way his eyebrows scrunch together when he concentrates, or how he grins when Ray calls him a DILF , or the little lines next to his eyes when he laughs- Ray loves all of it. And Ryan’s orgasm face? Fucking incredible.
He must have an air of having been well fucked the next morning, because Meg keeps raising her eyebrows and Jeremy is smirking like nobody’s business.
Jack looks him up and down once, glances at Gavin, who is barely containing himself, and walks out of the room without a word.
“Did he leave the mask on?” Gavin finally pops and the tension in the room dissipates when they’re all united against a common enemy.
“Gavin!” Meg smacks his arm.
“Oh, like you don’t want to know!” She doesn’t deny it, but Ray decides that he wants to keep last night as his own secret, for now.
“Nope. He went with a full body gimp suit.”
---
Ryan’s got a death grip on his hand. It’s not his dominant, so Ray doesn’t say anything. He seems like he needs the support.
Everyone is looking up at him expectantly. He interrupted the end of the heist meeting to do this. Ray had asked if he would rather do it little by little rather than in front of everyone at once, but Ryan had insisted on doing it this way- something about not wanting to lose his nerve.
He doesn’t preface it in any way. Just yanks the mask off and squeezes hard enough to cut off the little remaining circulation in Ray’s fingers.
After Gavin’s astoundingly loud gasp, it’s dead quiet for several seconds.
And then Geoff stands forcefully and points at Ryan. “You!” He’s shouting so loud that his voice cracks. “You’re a fucking golden god! ”