Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of this work of fiction and no profit, monetary or otherwise, is being made through the writing of this.
A/N: Written for Yuletide on A03, but heard nothing from the recipient, so I can only assume that it was not to that person's liking, which makes me feel like crap, and sorry that it didn't meet that person's expectations.
Warning: Character death, but he's still very present. Features sex with a ghost.
The first time it happens, it's in a dream, and Ray wakes sitting up straight in bed, sweating, heart pounding, cock hard as a frickin' rock, and grasping his sheets so tightly that his knuckles are bone white. When he's able to breathe, he lets go of the sheets, takes a quick look around the room, because he could've sworn that it was real, that Peter was right there with him, even though the man's been dead – some kind of freak accident that had involved a vat of chocolate, an apparition with an attitude the size of New York City, and a faulty nuclear accelerator – for going on three days now.
He's not sure if he should will away the hardness in his cock, or just continue where the dream left off – his thumb instead of Peter's tongue, brushing the tip; his own calloused hand stroking his dick to the erratic rhythm of his heart, rather than Peter's warm, wet mouth encasing it; whimpering and mewling, biting his bottom lip so hard that it bleeds.
He shouts, "Peter!" when he comes, shooting white streams of cum so high that it decorates his ceiling. He falls back onto the sheets, breathless and wishing that he'd had the guts to come out and tell Peter how he felt about the man when he'd still had the chance. Lost opportunities suck. Big time. And the worst part is that he has no one to blame but himself.
The second time it happens, Ray isn't entirely certain that something has actuallyhappened. All he knows, when he wakes, bathed in sweat and mouth dry as the Mojave Desert, is that the ghost of Peter's fingers have worked some sort of sexual magic on him.
He pulls the sheets – sticky with cum and something that Ray thinks, but can't be certain (and he really doesn't want to get his hopes up that Peter is in fact a ghost, haunting him), might be ectoplasm – off the bed and balls them up, tossing them on the floor. They stink, like his clothes after a long day spent battling spectres.
Ray stands there for a minute, runs his fingers through his hair, notes that they aren't sticky as they'd be had he jerked himself off as he had the other night. He frowns, gets fresh sheets and tries to go back to sleep, because it's only two in the morning and he feels like he's run a marathon.
But the memory of Peter's fingers, up his ass, stretching and prodding, and working him until he'd felt like weeping, keeps him awake until he sees the first rays of the sun creep across his bedroom floor. For a wet dream, it had been just short of spectacular.
He almost wishes that Peter was a ghost, haunting him, rather than being haunted by the memories of things that had never happened because he'd been too afraid to say anything. Peter'd had Dana, why would he have given Ray even a passing thought?
The third time it happens, he's definitely awake. The sound of something crashing onto the floor wakes him from a sound sleep, and he blinks blearily at his clock – two in the morning. He knows that he's awake because he pinches himself, just to be sure, and utters an audible, "Ouch!"
It hurts, and he rubs at the sore spot on his arm, conceding that maybe he didn't have to pinch himself quite so hard. A softer, non-bruise-inducing pinch would've done the trick just as well. Peter, ghost Peter, hell, maybe Ray's hallucination Peter, raises an eyebrow at him and shakes his head.
"Ray, Ray, Ray," Peter says, wagging his finger at him.
And Ray isn't sure what to make of this because Peter doesn't look at all like any of the apparitions he's encountered over the years. For one thing, he can't see through the other man/ghost, and for another, Peter's all there. He's not just a torso, or a bodiless head, or one of those strange ethereal beings that look like a swirling wisp of smoke.
"Peter?" the two syllables get stuck in Ray's throat, and he coughs to clear it, backs up until he's stopped by the headboard.
"In the flesh," Peter says, smiling wide and waggling his eyebrows, "or, well, not exactly flesh, but, you probably know more about this kind of thing than I do."
"Wha…you, you're real?"
"Well, yeah," Peter says, rolling his eyes and throwing up his hands. "As real as a ghost can get, or rather as real looking as a ghost can get. Not sure how it all works, but I figured I'd try it out on you. You know, rather than just appearing to you in your dreams." He smiles, one of those wide, shit eating type grins that Ray's familiar with.
"And you know what, Ray?" Peter moves closer, seemingly floating in the air.
"Wh…what?" Ray's words get stuck in his throat, and he knows that he shouldn't be afraid because he's dealt with a number of ghosts over the years, and this is Peter, but he is afraid.
"I was right," Peter says, and Ray can feel the mattress dip beneath a weight that isn't there as Peter sits down on a corner of the bed, "this is much more fun."
"What do you want with me?" Ray draws the blankets up to his chin and wishes that he wasn't trembling.
Peter blinks and gives Ray a classic look which communicates that he thinks it should be obvious and that he's a little hurt that Ray doesn't get it. And this, this intimate interaction with a ghost, is new. It's nothing like what happened with the incubus when Ray was new to ghost busting. That was only about sexual pleasure, somehow Ray doubts that's all that Peter's ghost has in mind for him.
"What do I want with you?" Peter's ghost frowns, and reaches out, touches Ray's foot and jiggles it. "Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in the dreams…"
Peter flops over onto his side, props his head up on his hand and flutters his eyelashes. Fear is gone in a flash of anger, and Ray yanks on his blankets, unsettling the ghost that shouldn't be making a dent in his mattress, but is.
"So, you came to make fun of me? To, to prey on my, my," Ray can feel himself blushing as he stutters his way through the rest of his question, "my ghost fetish, and, and my crush on you?" Ray's eyes go wide and he slaps a hand over his mouth. He shakes his head even as Peter's ghost smiles smugly.
"Well, you've had your fun; you can get on with your afterlife now," Ray says when he can get his mouth to work once again.
"You had a crush on me?" Peter's voice is low, almost a purr, and the ghost's trailing a finger along Ray's blanket-clad leg.
Ray ducks his head and nods. He'd thought his crush on Peter had been obvious, but, judging by the incredulous look on Peter's face and his tone of voice, Ray thinks that his crush might have been obvious to everyone else aside from the object of his not so secret affections.
Egon and Winston had both called him on it. Janine had encouraged him to tell Peter how he felt. But, he'd been a coward.
"Why didn't you say anything?" Peter sounds exasperated, sad even.
The words, When I was alive, remain unspoken, but Ray can feel them like a slap across the face. It smarts and Ray resists the urge to rub at his cheek.
Ray shrugs, because, what can he say? He'd been a coward, had seen the way Peter had gone after Dana – like a hound to a scent – and decided that it wouldn't be worth his while to be a third wheel, and that Peter would just laugh at him.
"I suppose I can't really blame you," Peter says on a sigh, and he squeezes Ray's knee.
"Why are you here?" Ray asks, flicking his eyes to Peter's.
"Because," Peter says, and there's a haunted look in his eyes, "I might've had a little crush on you too." Peter emphasizes his words by walking his fingers up Ray's thigh, letting his hand settle just short of brushing against Ray's dick.
Ray hadn't thought it was possible for ghosts to blush, but Peter's cheeks sure look flushed, and the man is looking up at him shyly, through the fringes of his eyelashes. Peter's biting his bottom lip and when he shifts himself so that more of his ghostly weight (and how is that even possible?) is resting on Ray's legs, that's all it takes for his resolve to break, and Ray can feel his dick twitch in anticipation.
"Like that do you?" Peter teases. He lightly palms Ray through the rough fabric of the sheets with one hand, snakes the other beneath the covers and pinches a nipple.
"Oh yeah." Ray's breath hitches in his chest when Peter crawls his way up along his body, and licks a path along Ray's throat.
"What say we give this whole thing a chance?" Peter murmurs, his lips and tongue trace Ray's earlobe.
Ray shudders and nods. He gulps in a lungful of air and closes his eyes when Peter dips his head toward his mouth, and it's different than what Ray had imagined it would be like to be kissed by Peter. It's soft, at first, and then slowly builds to something more aggressive – demanding – and Peter tastes like chocolate and vermouth. The tongue is one muscle that Ray has always been in awe of – not only for the weighty words it can wield, but also for the ways in which it can render pleasure or pain when it's plied to good use.
"Oh, fuck, yeah," Ray groans when Peter grinds himself against him.
Ray doesn't know when the sheets shifted, exposing him, or when Peter's clothes were shed, but he isn't about to question any of it, because, real or not, this is something that he wants. Something he's wanted for years, decades really. And he'd even go so far as to say that this is something he needs.
"Tell me you want me, Ray," Peter begs. The ghost's sitting on his knees, straddling Ray's waist, twining his fingers through Ray's hair. His erection's poking into Ray's belly; Ray's is nestled between the cheeks of Peter's ass. It feels right, comfortable, and Ray can't resist the impulse to move.
"I want you," Ray's voice is husky, and he lunges upward, capturing Peter's mouth in a forceful kiss that's more teeth and tongue than anything else. He's hungry and fuck he's wanted this going on forever now, he's entitled.
"Tell me you need me," Peter presses, when Ray finishes ravishing his mouth.
"I've always needed you, Peter," Ray mumbles.
Peter sits back, and Ray pants as the shift in the ghost's weight does something to his dick which should be forbidden by laws in several different states and countries. It has him seeing stars and he wonders that he hasn't come already – dick sandwiched snugly between Peter's ass cheeks, like this has happened countless times before; fingers digging into the ghost's hips (how the fuck is any of this possible?) and toes curled so far into the mattress that he knows they're going to leave permanent indentations.
"I think I'll always need you." Ray manages to get the words out between playful kisses – to the lips, neck, collarbone, anywhere his mouth and tongue can find to latch onto Peter.
Kissing Peter's ghost isn't at all what he'd imagined it would be like – not that he's imagined kissing a ghost often (except, he has). For one thing, Peter isn't cold; he's warm, hot even. For another, it's Peter that he's kissing, and Ray can sense every bit of the man that was in the ghost that is.
Peter is no less Peter for being dead and ethereal. There's substance to him, even though Ray doesn't know how it's possible –perhaps there's something in one of the books that his occult book shop carries which will be able to explain all of this. Maybe it's got something to do with electromagnetism.
"Stop thinking," Peter chastises, and he starts moving his body back and forth, and Ray's eyes almost bug out of his head. His heart does a damn good imitation of a jackhammer, and he throws his head back, grateful that, sometime between whenever the sheets disappeared and Peter nakified himself, he'd moved closer toward the foot of the bed.
And just like that, Ray does stop thinking. His heart stops beating too, for what feels like an eternity, but is, in reality, only a few seconds of time. He can't breathe for the space of several non-existent heartbeats. He's blind and yet not. He sees shooting stars and fireworks and unicorns and little dancing faerie lights, and he sees Peter – laughing, a dangerously mischievous smile curving his lips, arms thrown up in the air, twirling like a lunatic.
Everything comes back to Ray in a rush. His lungs pull in air like a smoker taking a much needed drag on a cigarette. His heart pounds in his chest, the sound of blood rushing in his ears drowns out whatever nonsensical words he's uttering – he can feel his lips moving, like so much rubber, just can't make out what it is that he's saying.
No longer blinded, Ray can see the ghost of Peter: head bowed, dick in hand, a look of fierce concentration on his face. Last night's dream comes back to him, hitting him like a ton of bricks, and Ray realizes that, as wonderful and amazing as coming with his dick encased between Peter's cheeks was, Peter's nighttime visitation isn't over just yet. There's more to come.
Ray's both terrified and turned on, and he knows what Peter wants before the ghost raises his eyes, meeting Ray's in question. He's seeking permission, and Ray doesn't trust his voice. He swallows thickly, and nods.
Ray is, for all intents and purposes, a virgin. It's not something that he's advertised, and, he thinks that none of the guys know the truth – that he's never been with anyone sexually. Sure, he's petted and made out and experimented on occasion, but none of it has ever felt right, and he'd ended it before it went any further. Aside from his experience with the incubus, Ray has never been brought to an orgasm by any hands which were not his own. Until now.
"Are you sure?" Peter asks, fingers already slicked with what Ray assumes is ectoplasm (and if that isn't a turn on, Ray doesn't know what is).
Ray nods, bites his bottom lip, and following Peter's lead, wraps his legs around the ghost's waist. He holds his breath when Peter starts to press a finger into him, feels the pressure build as he's stretched to accommodate a first and then a second and a third ghostly finger. It feels strange, and yet not bad, and then Peter does something which makes the stars he saw earlier, pale by comparison.
"Fuck, oh Zeus' balls," Ray says when he can formulate words.
"I never knew you to have such a dirty mouth," Peter scolds, but he's smiling.
Peter's smile fades, and he rests his forehead against Ray's. Ray can count on one hand the number of times he's witnessed a sober, serious Peter, and this, more than anything else, frightens him, but he ignores the hammering of his heart and concentrates on Peter's eyes – the little flecks of green in the sea of blue.
"Are you sure you want this, Ray?" Peter asks.
"Yes." Ray squeezes Peter's shoulder (he'll have to figure out how to get Egon's help researching this impossible phenomenon without alerting the other man as to what happened).
"Are you sure you want me?" the question is little more than a whisper.
Ray can feel the ghost's vulnerability coming off of Peter in waves. It's overwhelming, and Ray wants nothing more than to reassure his former partner in ghost busting that, he does want him.
"Peter, I've wanted you almost from the moment I met you," Ray admits.
His stretched hole throbs, and he realizes that there's nothing to fear, that Peter won't hurt him, that, whether this is something that can be explained with science or not, it doesn't matter. What matters is that, Peter, ghost or something more, wants him, and is waiting for his permission to fill him in more ways than one.
"But," Peter hesitates, tries to pull back. Ray holds him in place, refuses to let Peter go.
"I want this," Ray says, "I want you. Inside me. Now."
He coaxes Peter, urges him by wriggling his ass and rubbing up against the ghost's erection.
Peter's vulnerability vanishes almost as quickly as it had come, and he gives Ray a crooked smile, latches his mouth to Ray's and then presses the tip of his dick into Ray's stretched hole. It burns, and there's a moment where Ray isn't sure that this was such a good idea after all, but then Peter's tongue is in his mouth, and the ghost's swallowing his moans and his panicked breathing.
And then Peter's inside of him, filling him, completing him in ways that Ray has only dreamt of – not that his dreams had even come remotely close to the reality of what it's like to have Peter inside of him, moving. It hurts a little, but in a good way that somehow makes him whole.
"I could go at this for hours," Peter speaks the words against Ray's mouth, "ghost stamina and all," he says on a chuckle that tickles Ray's lips, "but we only have until dawn."
"What happens at dawn?" Ray's surprised he can even pose the question because he's really having a hard time concentrating on anything other than the way Peter's dick, swollen and stiff, feels – warm, slick, and . . . perfect – inside of him, and the way that Peter's hand, tightened in a fist around Ray's newborn erection is attempting to coax a second orgasm from him.
"I disappear," Peter says, stilling. "Go the way of the otherworldly, swallowed into a mist that looks a lot like pudding. Something like that. You'd probably have the right words for it."
"Disappear?" Ray's heart skips a beat, and he flags.
"Uh-uh big boy," Peter says, and Ray can picture his friend wagging a finger, which is currently otherwise occupied, in his face. "There'll be none of that. You stay with me Ray, you hear me?"
"Ain't going anywhere," Ray says. "You are." He doesn't mean for it to come out as a pout, but it does, and Peter's eyes are twinkling with laughter, which just makes him mad.
"You're cute when you're angry," Peter says, kissing him on the nose.
And then Peter does some rolling maneuver with his hips, and Ray loses all semblance of rational thought. Peter is a fucking genius in bed, and Ray finds himself on the ride of a lifetime – a rollercoaster/bumper-car/corkscrew/carousel – that he never wants to dismount.
Ray's cock, wound tightly within the palm of Peter's hand, is weeping and throbbing, and his ass feels like it's about to split wide open, but it all feels good and right. Just when he doesn't think he can handle much more, Peter speeds up his combination of hip roll, thrust, and then he adds something new to the mix which has Ray mewling like a day old kitten prized forcibly from its mother's teat. The mewling is followed by a series of high-pitched keening moans which aren't exactly the epitome of manly; it feels like they're being ripped from the bottom of his lungs, and he can't breathe.
Spots dot Ray's vision, mar his view of Peter's face, which is glowing, taking on a more ghostly hue – something silvery white and hazy; a stream of smoke without substance. Ray's panting and sweat is pouring down his back, pooling at the base of his spine. He can taste the salt of his own sweat on Peter's lips, on the ghost's tongue.
When Ray comes, for the second time that night, spilling his seed into Peter's fist, across the ghost's torso in little white crisscrosses, he feels Peter stiffen inside of him, and then pressure as he's filled with something hot, and they're both a juddering mess. Each call out the other's name on a final after thrust.
Ray falls back against the mattress. He's shaking and his body's aching in places it's never ached before, but Ray can't seem to stop smiling. He reaches a hand out to touch Peter's face. The ghost flickers, once, then twice, and then he's gone and Ray feels the loss of him immediately. He fists the sheets and slams his fists into the mattress. A few tears slide down the side of his face and Ray lets them fall unchecked.
He's exhausted, sore, and raw. He misses Peter, and, for the first time since Peter died, Ray cries. He weeps for the loss of his friend and business partner, for what never was between them, for how good they could have had it had he not lacked the courage to tell Peter how he felt. When he's done, he feels empty, and strangely at peace. He sleeps, and nothing wakes him.