Chapter Text
Ryan sounds like black coffee, and has a voice like melted copper. He stumbles over words, but still has memorizing diction. He sounds like birds at sunrise and crickets at sunset but either way he’s as rich as the colors in the sky.
Ryan tastes like cigarettes and grape candy. Nicotine stains his teeth and tastes sweet yet dirty mixing with the bags of jolly ranchers he keeps in the glove box of his car. Ray swears he’s second hand addicted to cigarettes now because they remind him of Ryan’s lips.
Ryan is as soft as felt but still a double edged sword. His embrace is warm. His kisses are soft. However, some days he holds on to Ray like he’s a life jacket on a sinking ship and presses him against a wall so hard that he thinks he might bruise. Ryan’s jaw turns to sandpaper only hours after he shaves and Ray’s favorite feeling in the world is trailing his fingers along Ryan’s rough face.
Ryan looks like an ex-marine but is really just a farmhand from Georgia. He’s never lost his farmers tan or sturdy limbs. His eyes are cold and calculating only when he’s working, because when he’s with Ray, they soften to a pale grey.
Ryan comes home smelling like death, most of the time. This scent masks his natural cigarette-musk combination. When he needs to disappear for a little while, Ray brings one of Ryan’s shirts to sleep in because it almost feels like he’s there when he closes his eyes. Ray never thought dried blood and cigarettes would ever smell like home to him.
Ray has a languid way of speaking, and sounds like crickets in the dead of night. This would normally be very attractive, but be counteracts this by being as sarcastic as humanly possible. His voice is low and scratchy when he first wakes up, and Ryan thinks it’s the most wonderful sound he’s ever heard.
Ray tastes like cannabis, mint chap stick and red bull because he’s used to not sleeping anymore. Ryan doesn’t know how the other things he smokes stick to his clothes but never his teeth. Ryan only notices this when he finds a piece of gum in his mouth after his lips finally leave Ray’s.
Ray is nothing but bony. His collarbones are sharp, his ribs are jagged against his skin when he stretches. Ryan can touch his thumb to his pinkie if he wraps his fingers around Ray’s wrist. This concerns Ryan like nothing else. He knows perfectly well that it’s due to his drug use, but he also knows there’s nothing he can do about it.
Ray smells like gunpowder and fabric softener. He smells like a drug dealers basement after getting his fix because he’s a god damn stoner, but usually he smells like a fired gun. He doesn’t smell like death like Ryan does. Ryan never wants him to.
Ray looks fragile, but hardened simultaneously. There’s still fire in his eyes, but no one knows how it became lit. Most people wouldn’t peg down a skinny Puerto Rican kid who’s blind without his glasses as one of the finest snipers in Los Santos, but Ray is made of extremes.