Don't Touch the Toaster from the Future (And Other Rules of Time-Travel)
by Sandrine Shaw
The device whirls and blinks and calls to Ray. There's no better word for it.
He has no business going into the small, circular room at the end of the long corridor, but somewhere in the back of his mind, the suggestion to check it out makes itself known, seductive and insistent, and before he knows better, he's left the others behind and finds himself standing in front of the machine. It's about as big as a toaster, silvery and unremarkable until Ray touches it.
All at once, it comes alive under his hand, lighting up with a faint white glow and purring like a contented cat that likes to be petted, warm against his skin.
He doesn't know how long he stands like that, time stretching and constricting, wobbling strangely until Ray loses all sense of it. He doesn't think of his teammates, or the time aberration that brought them here, or Gideon's warning not to linger because 3072 was too far into the future for them to safely explore.
"Haircut, what're you doing?"
Mick's voice calls to him as if through a trance. It feels as if Ray's brain had been shut down, like an old computer in stand-by mode sluggishly powering up when someone hits a button.
"I'm just—" He shakes his head to clear his mind, blinking rapidly. "I came in here and there was this machine, so I thought I'd check it out."
"Huh. What's it do?"
Mick's footsteps draw nearer, and at the same time the vibrations from the device get stronger. Less happy kitten now, more like an engine about to start. A little ominous, foreboding, like something that's about to go off.
"I don't know yet. It started glowing and humming when I put my hand on it. Maybe it's some kind of A.I. We have no idea about the kind of evolution technology has gone through in the 31st century!"
Mick frowns and looks at Ray like he's not quite right in the head. "And you thought you'd, what? Stick around and pet it? We got no time for this. Blondie wants us back at the Waverider in ten."
"Yeah, sure," Ray says, but the way the device is vibrating against his palm is distracting him. It feels... nice. Calming. He makes no move to step away, and Mick must be getting impatient because the next thing he knows, Mick suddenly grabs him by the hand, trying to pry it from the device.
A painful jolt shoots up his arm, and he jerks in surprise. Next to him, Mick shouts and pulls back as well. He growls at Ray. "Fucking hell, Haircut. You could have warned me that it's giving off electrical shocks." He looks ready to throw a punch, either at the machine or at Ray, but Ray has long since stopped being afraid of Mick, and he easily shrugs his anger off.
"It wasn't! Not when I was touching it." He frowns at Mick, then looks down to the machine. It's stopped glowing, silent now. Unremarkable. Just an ordinary not-toaster from the future. Ray feels no more compelled to reach out and put his hands on it than he feels compelled to touch any random kitchen appliance.
"Maybe it doesn't like you," he jokes.
Mick gives him an unimpressed look. "Feeling's mutual. Let's get going, or Sara's not gonna like either of us when we get back."
Ray follows him out, throwing a brief parting glance back at the device before the door slides shut behind him. Why did he go in there in the first place? He shrugs it off, and marks it down as the regular weirdness of time-traveling, no more significant than convincing George Lucas not to give up on film-making or making friends with dinosaurs or spending two years living the life of an academic in the 1950s.
It's the hunger that wakes him up.
Still fuzzy with sleep, he stumbles through the corridors of the Waverider into the kitchen area where Mick's perched on a chair, a triple-stacked cheeseburger in front of him. He barely looks up when the doors slide open and Ray steps in, offering a low grunt in response to Ray's greeting.
Ever since they got back on the ship, Mick's been grumpier than usual. Ray wonders if it's his fault, if Mick's pissed at him for that weird thing with the electro-shock-toaster earlier. Mick's barely talked to him afterwards. Then again, it's not like Mick's the most talkative on his best of days, and when Sara berated them for dillydallying about and not making it to the rendezvous point in time, Mick shrugged off her lecture without pointing out that it was Ray's fault, so maybe it's all in Ray's head and they're good.
Ray's mouth starts watering when he eyes the burger that Mick's eating with greasy fingers. "Gideon, I'll have one of those as well."
Certainly, Dr. Palmer.
"And a beer." Oh God, he'd murder for a proper beer, not the weird synthetic stuff Gideon produces that's always a little too sweet or a little too bitter or just tastes like watered-down piss. For a highly developed A.I. who can regrow limbs, Gideon is surprisingly bad at replicating the taste of the simplest of foods.
"Sautudnlikear."
Ray blinks at the unintelligible gibberish Mick mumbled with his mouth full of half-chewed burger. He frowns, trying to decipher the statement, but all it does it make his head ache.
"Excuse me?"
Mick swallows and tries again. "Thought you didn't like beer."
"Of course I—"
He stops himself. Huh. Mick's right; he doesn't like beer, not in particular. Certainly not enough to have an opinion on Gideon's attempts at replicating it. He also likes his meals a lot more healthy than this. Weird. "Maybe it's because of the time jump? I don't think Rip mentioned strange food cravings, but it's hardly the worst side effect we've experienced."
Mick huffs. "If you were a chick, I'd say someone knocked you up."
Ray throws him a look that's supposed to be murderous but only succeeds in making Mick guffaw loud enough that Ray jumps at the sound, concerned that it might carry through the Waverider's corridors and ventilation systems and wake up the others.
Something Ray doesn't tell anyone: He goes straight down to the med bay and has Gideon run a full check-up as soon as he finished his late-night snack, leaving the beer untouched. Blood works, ECG, brain scan. He swears Gideon to secrecy when he tells her to do an ultrasound of his stomach.
He's not pregnant. (Of course he's not pregnant. It's a ridiculous thought. Men don't get pregnant, not even in the 31st century when they touch weird devices, no matter what bad sci-fi novels from the 1980s claim.)
In fact, he's perfectly healthy.
The test results should bring relief, but they don't. He tells himself it's just weird food cravings, it's no big deal. Maybe, like eye bleeds, loss of hearing and balance issues, they really are a side effect of time jumps. But in the back of his head, something buzzes – not quite like static or bees, more like... whispers. Too soft to make out the words, if they are indeed words at all. But it's there, and it wasn't there yesterday or the day before.
He can't make himself go back to sleep that night, and when he wakes up in the morning, he feels exhausted and dizzy, vaguely like he has a bad hangover.
London, 1666, and they're trying to stop some time-traveling thief from making off with the Crown Jewels while the entire city descends into chaos and panic.
Ray stares at where the flames lick into the sky, rising heat and dark smoke blurring the air before his eyes. He wants to reach out and touch it. Wants to strip off his suit and step into the flames, feel their heat against his skin. Wants to sit back and watch as London burns to the ground, then pour enough gasoline into the fire to torch the rest of the planet.
He doesn't realize that he's surrounded by flames until he's grabbed from behind and lifted into the air, higher and higher. The fire grows smaller beneath him as he gets further away, and he immediately misses the warmth.
Firestorm unceremoniously drops him on the field where they parked the Waverider, far enough out in the countryside that only the faint cloud of smoke on the horizon hints at the tragedy unfolding. Ray turns his eyes away only when Jax and Stein split apart, the younger man angrily charging towards him with a storm brewing on his face.
"The hell is wrong with you?" he yells, and his furious expression makes Ray stumble backwards. "Man, are you suicidal or something?!"
"I was wearing the suit, it would have been fine."
Stein frowns at him like Ray is a complicated equation on the whiteboard he can't quite solve. "Maybe, but there was no reason for you to be there to begin with. This isn't like you, Raymond."
Ray shrugs. "It was just pretty, that's all."
He winces as soon as the words tumble out. What the hell is he saying? It wasn't pretty. It was horrifying and deadly, and not even the fascination of seeing history unfolding in front of his eyes should be able to cancel that out.
Jax throws his hands up. "Dude, you gotta stop hanging out with Mick. I think he's rubbing off on you."
"And not in a good way," Stein adds. When Jax gives him a look that essentially translates to 'what the fuck', he seems to realize what he just implied. He takes his glasses off and awkwardly rubs at his eyes. "Not that there is a good way for Mick Rory to be rubbing off on anyone."
Next to him, Jax cracks up, but Ray barely pays them any attention, his thoughts whirling, trying to find a way to put two and two together and not arrive at four because, frankly, four sucks.
He does what any sane person in his stead would do.
He pretends it's not happening and hopes it'll go away.
When he wakes up at 2 a.m. with his stomach rumbling, he turns around, punches his pillow and tries to go back to sleep. When they're having a movie night in Amaya's room and she lights up candles, he wrestles down the urge to hold his hand into the flame and pointedly doesn't take his eyes off the screen for the entirety of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. When Nate makes a smartass remark or Sara issues a command with steel in her voice, and he feels flashes of unexpected anger at them, rage burning bright inside of him, he swallows it down and clenches his fists to stop himself from throwing a punch.
Late at night, when he feels a rush of arousal, fast and hard like a fist to the stomach, he ignores it as well as he can and keeps his hands out of his pants until the need ebbs away, replaced by a low echo of borrowed satisfaction.
It'll pass, he tells himself. It'll pass. It'll pass.
And the buzzing in his head gets louder and louder.
11:49. 11:48. 11:47. 11.46.
There's a bomb in front of Ray, a timer that's steadily counting down.
It should be easy enough to defuse – just cut the right wire. Except there are no wires, the technology beyond anything Ray knows.
10:01. 10:00. 09:59.
He can do this, but the niggling self-doubt pushes to the forefront of his mind, reminding him that if he fails, he'll not only get himself but Mick killed. His fingers are shaking. A bead of sweat runs down his forehead. The sense of impatience he can't shake (Mick's impatience, because, dammit, he might have raised denial to an art form, but it's not like he hasn't learned to identify which emotions are his own and which aren't) distracts him from his focus.
8:13. 8:12. 8:11.
Oh God, I can't do this. I'm going to get us killed, he thinks.
"No, ya won't," comes Mick's voice from behind him, oddly reassuring despite the annoyance Ray knows he's feeling. "You're good with this kind of shit, so stop panicking and use that weird genius brain of yours. You can do this."
Ray's head snaps around. "What are you— Oh God, did I say that out loud?"
Mick throws him a withering glare. "You said it in my head." He pokes himself in the forehead to illustrate his point, but Ray can't get past the casual tone of Mick's voice that seems to suggest that this is somehow not a big deal.
"I — What — "
Haircut. Stop dithering about, Mick says, except his lips don't move. He's staring at Ray, and for the first time in days, the buzzing in Ray's head is gone. In its stead, Ray hears Mick's voice loud and clear. Familiar and grumpy, always sounding a little angry even when he isn't. Fix the goddamn bomb now. Freak out later.
I can hear you, Ray thinks at him, a little awed and a whole lot perturbed.
Mick rolls his eyes, and when he speaks this time, his voice comes out of his mouth the way it should. "Great. Now how 'bout you actually listen and stop us from getting blown to bits?"
When Ray just keeps staring at him, Mick slaps the side of his head with his palm, just hard enough to sting. "Ow."
Right. The bomb.
He turns around and rubs his head, squinting down at the blinking numbers. 4:27. 4:26. 4:25. 4:24.
Okay, yeah. I can do this.
'course you can, echoes back in Mick's voice, and the rush of confidence Ray feels might not be his own, but it helps him barrel through his insecurities just the same, sharpening his focus and steadying his hands as he works to defuse the explosive before the timer runs out.
There's no time to talk until they're back on the Waverider, and when they board, Mick quickly makes himself scarce. Ray isn't sure whether he's trying to escape Sara's mission debriefing or the conversation Ray thinks they should have. He also isn't sure if Mick realizes that running off isn't going to be a roadblock on the way to a conversation when they literally can hear each other talk inside of their heads.
We need to talk, Ray tries to think very clearly, feeling only vaguely silly when he concentrates extra hard to project the sentiment to Mick.
There's no response.
Which can mean anything, really. Perhaps the telepathy requires proximity, maybe they need to be in the same room for it to work. Or maybe Mick hears him just fine and has decided to ignore him. The uncertainty makes him anxious on a personal level and frustrates him as a scientist. It's in his nature to collect data and experiment with the connection until he knows exactly how it works. At the same time, he's so overwhelmed by the idea of it all that he isn't sure if he even wants to know all the details.
He attempts to feel into the thing he tries very hard not to call a telepathic bond (because honestly, that's only one, maybe two steps better than A.I.-induced-pregnancy would have been) and get a sense of Mick's emotional state. But all he receives is silence, a quiet flow of tranquility. He knows it has to come from Mick, because Ray is never this calm, anxiety always buzzing under his skin even when he's happy and relaxed.
He finds Mick in his quarters, sitting on the floor with his back leaning against his bunk, legs stretched out wide in front of him. All his attention is on the disassembled Heat Gun in his hands that he's cleaning with the same kind of reverent focus he otherwise only gives booze or fire.
When Ray enters the room, Mick doesn't look up, fingers caressing the gun's barrel with the deft gentleness of a lover's touch. It's mesmerizing, and Ray can't look away. He can't quite tell whether the low hum of arousal he senses comes from Mick, if cleaning his gun gets him all hot and bothered, or if it's all him. Doesn't want to think about either option too hard.
"I can hear you, ya know," Mick says without turning his eyes off the gun, interrupting Ray's train of thought.
Oh. Right. There's that.
Embarrassment burns on Ray's cheeks, and his mind splutters pointless denial and half-arsed excuses without knowing what exactly he's apologizing for. It takes him entirely too long to gather his wits.
"That's what I came to talk about," he finally says. He uses his actual words because at least that way he has a modicum of control over what he's revealing, and if Mick listens to his words he might not concentrate on his thoughts. "How long have you been able to, you know..." He trails off. 'Hear my thoughts' sounds ridiculous.
Except that's what it is. They're hearing each other's thoughts, and it is ridiculous. Ridiculous and scary and fascinating and kind of cool and utterly wrong at the same time. It's a lot of things, and Ray has no idea how he's supposed to feel about it.
Mick's voice fills his mind, accompanied by a rush of irritation. You're giving me a fucking headache, Haircut.
"Since 3072. On and off. Mostly where you're nearby. Or panicking. 's annoying. Like some stupid radio without an off-button." He frowns up at Ray. "You sayin' you couldn't hear me?"
Stepping further into the room, Ray pulls out a chair and sits, leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs, watching Mick continue working on the gun.
"Not until today. I've just been... feeling things."
Ray doesn't need to see the suspicion blooming on Mick's face to know how very much he dislikes the idea of unconsciously sharing his feelings with Ray.
"What things?" He sounds like he wants to punch someone, feels that way too, and it's a good thing that Ray knows that Mick isn't blaming him for this whole mess and that all that rage isn't directed at him, because otherwise his tone alone would make Ray flinch away.
He shrugs awkwardly. "I don't know. Hunger. Anger. Stuff like that."
Perhaps it's better if he doesn't mention the arousal, like he can't sense it every time Mick jerks off, doesn't feel the hot curl of want in the pit of his stomach or the build of a climax that never feels quite satisfactory, always leaving Ray wanting until he feels that an acceptable amount of time has passed and he can take care of his own needs without feeling like he's leeching off Mick's.
He doesn't think he should mention the way every flame calls to him either. Couldn't describe it, anyway.
"Oh, that." Mick's anger calms down as fast as it came, and he shrugs the idea off. "I just feel it when you're nervous."
Only about all the time, then, Ray thinks wryly. Mick's probably heard him, but just thinking it feels weirdly like Ray is trying to hide it from him, so he says, aloud, "I'm always nervous."
"You don't fucking say, Haircut." Mick grunts, deadpan. But the corners of his mouth twitch ever so slightly, and his amusement curls around Ray like a warm blanket.
"We should tell someone," Ray argues, on one of those nights where Mick's hunger, or maybe his thirst, drove both of them down to the kitchen while everyone else is fast asleep.
"Tell them what?" Over the pile of cupcakes between them, Mick gives him a look that would perfectly transfer what he feels about the idea even if Ray couldn't sense the echoes of his irritated disbelief, balking at Ray's suggestion. "That we touched a toaster in the future and now we can hear each other's thoughts?"
It wasn't a toaster, Ray mentally corrects him because yeah, sure, calling it a toaster when they explain this thing to Stein and the others is not going to help their case.
You're the one who keeps calling it a toaster.
"In my head! It's not supposed to be overheard. Like, you know, most thoughts. Which is why we need to tell people so they can help fix it."
Mick snorts, the only indication that Ray's agitation is affecting him at all the vicious bite he's taking off his cupcake. "You really think Blondie and Pretty can fix this, if you and Gideon can't?"
"Maybe the Professor —"
"No. I went to Stein when I was hallucinating Snart. He already thinks I got brain damage. I don't need him to know I'm hearing things now."
It's irrational, but Ray gets it. Maybe he wouldn't, if it wasn't for the fact that he feels Mick's unhappiness prickle and churn in his stomach like a mild case of food poisoning every time one of the others makes a quip about Mick's I.Q. or some smart-ass jibe about how he must have got hit on the head a few times too many. Mick acts like it doesn't bother him, like his skin is thick enough that the not-quite-friendly insults bounce off of him, but what's coming through their bond makes Ray flinch in advance every time one of their teammates so much as addresses Mick.
Of course Mick wouldn't trust them with this, and Ray can hardly blame him.
I'm sorry, he thinks, because it's one of those sentiments that are more easily expressed without actually saying the words, giving Mick the chance to ignore it if he doesn't want to acknowledge it.
Mick shrugs, but he offers him one of his cupcakes. When their fingers brush as he hands it over, it feels a little like touching the device did, tingly and strangely alluring, and Ray misses the contact as soon as it's gone.
It's Mick who suggests sparring. Hand-to-hand combat's never been Ray's forte, but he knows he can't always rely on the suit, those endless few weeks when it was destroyed and he felt like he didn't have a place in the team without it a bitter memory he can't quite shake.
Still, he's not too fond of the idea of letting Mick beat him up, because that's pretty much how this is going to play out when someone like him goes up against someone like Mick who's been winning fist-fights since he could walk. Ray's not a small guy by any measure; he's fit enough, but one look at the bulging muscles of Mick's upper arms as he discards his jacket and long-sleeved shirt and strips down to a simple grey wife-beater makes Ray's throat go tight with trepidation and... something else he shoves away before the thought can take hold.
He knows he has his strengths, but physically holding out to Mick is not going to be one of them. "Can you at least go easy on me to start with?"
"Sure." Mick agrees too readily, and Ray already knows it's fake even before he continues. "You gonna tell that to the next asshole ninja we're fighting, too? Ask them nicely to pull their punches because you don't feel up for it?"
"That's not—"
Mick huffs impatiently. "We're in each other's heads, Haircut. Should be easy enough to anticipate whatever moves the other makes."
"But then what—" Ray has no time to finish the thought, ducking out of the way when Mick's fist swings his way, adrenaline shooting thorough his veins like a drug as he avoids the impact.
Oh. Okay. This is... fun, actually.
The thought must reach Mick loud and clear, because his responding grin is satisfied and a little feral. That's what I've been sayin'.
Then they go at it, hard and fast, and it's nothing like fighting's ever been for Ray. More immediately physical, without the suit, but at the same time also requiring a mental focus, a close attention to Mick's intentions, that feels almost meditative. It's taxing and exhausting, but in a good way. Beyond the aches of pushing his body in ways it's not used to, it remains unexpectedly painless, neither of them actually landing a punch.
It should be frustrating, but it's not. Ray is reveling in the enjoyment of the easy back-and-forth, a constant flow of Mick's gratification echoing back at him, when his focus slips.
He twists to the side to avoid a kick against his shin and loses balance, flailing and stumbling backwards. The wall crashes into him hard, a sharp piece of metal from the control board catching his arm. It cuts through fabric and skin, blood gushing out of the wound.
"Fucking hell," Mick swears.
Ray is about to assure him that he's alright – it's nothing Gideon can't fix in a matter of seconds – but when he looks up, he realizes that Mick isn't even looking at him. He's staring at his own bare arm. Against the scar tissue, there's a fine, red line. Not a bleeding wound like Ray's, but plainly visible, in the exact same spot.
Mick rubs across it, and Ray feels a fresh stab of pain that he knows is not his own.
He swallows, unable to tear his gaze away from Mick's arm even when the mark is fading and disappearing right before his eyes, leaving behind nothing but tanned skin and angry burn scars.
Ray's cut is still bleeding, blood running in crimson lines down his arm, sullying his t-shirt and the floor.
Mick frowns at him. "We need to get you fixed up."
A wave of hysterical laughter bubbles up inside of him. He rubs his forehead. "That's literally the least of our problems right now."
Mick doesn't disagree.
They need to tell the others. They need to fix this, find a way to stop the bond because it's gone from weird and somewhat inconvenient to potentially dangerous.
While Mick isn't enthusiastically agreeing, he isn't objecting anymore, either. Ray counts it as a win, but he still doesn't think that Mick's going to be readily volunteering the details of their situation to a larger audience, so it falls to Ray to work out a way how to breach the topic.
He's good at working out complex problems, but it turns out multiple PhDs in astrophysics and engineering aren't much of a help when it comes to developing a strategy how to tell your crew that you accidentally managed to trigger some weird kind of soulbond with one of your fellow teammates and kept it from them for weeks because you didn't think it was any of their business.
He tries to convince himself there's no rush. It doesn't seem to be escalating any further.
When they return to 2017 for a short break, Mick gets punched in the face by Lisa Snart, who's very much not happy that she apparently had to find out about her brother's death from Team Flash, and it only hurts Ray a little bit. Well, no, that's not quite right: the pain is so bad it almost knocks him out, but only for about a minute and then it's gone – nothing like the impressive shiner Mick is sporting for the next week.
They don't get the chance to linger in their present time. Gideon calls them back to the Waverider and sends them straight to Gotham in 1984, where a bunch of villains from the future who'd had enough of Batman ruining their plans and found out about the Dark Knight's identity decided to gun him down before he was old enough to be a threat.
Maybe not the time to sit his teammates down for a cozy chat of 'how I touched a 31st century toaster and now I understand Mick Rory's pyromania a little too well'. Ray will talk to them once they save young Mr. Wayne.
(Oh God, he needs to stop calling it a toaster.)
He'd forgotten how much he loathes Gotham.
Turns out Gotham in the 80s is actually worse than present day Gotham. Batman may be a humorless dick with a hero complex, but without a vigilante keeping the streets as clean as they will ever get, the city's a cesspool of crime and bloodshed.
They successfully stop the assassination plot, but things turn awry on the way to the Waverider when an asshole who calls himself Pulse wrecks both his suit and Mick's heat gun with an EMP and they get their asses kicked by what seems like the world's creepiest biker gang.
Ray really wishes Mick and him had started the whole hand-to-hand combat training earlier, because it would certainly come in handy right now. Maybe Sara could even have taught him a few of her assassin tricks.
For a while, things are going reasonably well, considering that it's two of them and at least twelve of the bad guys, but Ray feels it every time a fist buries itself into Mick's stomach, feels every punch to the head that Mick just shakes off like it's nothing, and it leaves him even more woozy than the hits his own opponents get in.
A particular well-aimed kick hits Mick right between the legs, and Ray's the one who goes to his knees. The guy in front of him, fat and short with a missing front tooth and a mustache that looks like it belongs to a porn star from two decades earlier, grabs his head. His meaty little hands hold on as tight as if he was trying to squeeze Ray's brain out, and Ray can't shake him off.
A mean grin on his face, mustache guy slams Ray's head hard into the brick wall behind him, and the world goes dark.
"Raymond."
"Ray!"
"Fucking hell, Haircut, if you're dead, I swear I'm gonna travel back in time to murder you."
Ray's eyes sluggishly blink open, his lids heavy like someone glued them shut.
His head throbs. It's almost dark, which means he must have been out a while. The first thing in his line of vision is Mick's face, bent over him at an awkward, unflattering angle. Frown lines are corrugating his forehead, and his eyes are narrowed. They're a deep, dark grey, like the metal interior on the corridors of the Waverider. Huh. Ray never noticed that before. He always thought they were blue.
His mental ramblings are met with an amused huff. "You better let Gideon treat you for that concussion before you start serenading Heywood's eyes or Amaya's gonna kick your ass."
But he feels the relief coming off Mick in waves, overflowing their bond, and when Mick reaches out a hand to pull him to his feet, the Glad you didn't die echoes through his mind crisp and clear in Mick's gruff, familiar tones.
Ray can't help but smile. "Yeah, I guess that would have sucked for you. If a little cut or a punch feels that bad, death is probably... not a fun experience, I imagine."
Relief turns into white hot anger, so intense that the rush of it actually hurts Ray physically, enough to make him momentarily lose his footing and stumble. Mick catches him, large, warm hands against his arms, holding him just long enough until he's steady again before dropping away.
"You're a fucking idiot, Haircut." Mick turns and stalks off, not slowing down when Ray tries to call him back.
Mick's not in his quarters or in the kitchen. In fact, he's not anywhere Ray's looking for him when they're back on the ship and Gideon finally lets Ray out of the med bay with an all-clear. Everything Mick's projecting over the bond screams to leave him alone, but Ray's never been one to heed good advice and he's more stubborn than most. He thinks of it as one of his best character traits. It's how he and Mick ended up friends to begin with, after all, months of Ray cheerfully ignoring Mick's best and worst attempts to push him away.
Eventually, he tracks Mick down in the gym, Ray's hands aching from the way Mick's been relentlessly pummeling the punching bag for hours.
Mick doesn't let up when Ray steps into the room. If anything, he pulls his arm back further to slam down even harder, and the soreness throbs in Ray's knuckles. He sighs and crosses his arms, intent to wait until Mick stops giving him the cold shoulder, until he realizes that this is the worst strategy because they'll still be here next week unless Ray takes the first step.
"Look, I realize I fucked up, I just don't know how I fucked up. I mean, I can actually read your mind, but you're not exactly forthcoming with information right now, and I can't avoid doing whatever I did wrong in the future unless you tell me what it was."
Other than a sharp spike of frustration, there's no indication that Mick has heard him or in fact has even noticed Ray's presence. He lays into the bag with a couple of fast-paced jabs, making it sway towards Ray.
"What did I do? Is it because I almost died?" He suddenly has a horrible thought. "You don't think that— Death isn't— I mean, do you think that if one of us dies, the other dies too?"
He doesn't think that's how it works, because otherwise the injuries they sustained would have been mirrored exactly rather than just leaving a faint imitation. And Mick seemed fine – aggravated and worried, but not physically harmed – when Ray was unconscious.
"'course not," Mick says. He doesn't stop his punishing workout and he doesn't look at Ray, but at least he's talking, heavy, labored gusts of breath interrupting the words. "You were knocked out and I wasn't. Even if you'd have been dying, I knew I'd be okay. Wasn't even thinking 'bout that."
Ray weighs Mick's words. If it wasn't his injury that made Mick clam up, then it must have been his reaction, what he said afterward. It makes sense, because Mick didn't seem angry before Ray started musing how his dying might have affected Mick.
He frowns. "I just don't want you to get hurt just because I get hurt." His thoughts snap to the Vanishing Point, how it was supposed to be him holding down the failsafe of the Oculus until Mick had knocked him out and taken his place. And when ultimately Snart made the choice to sacrifice himself in his stead, it was still Mick getting hurt, losing his partner and getting himself settled with Ray as a poor substitute.
With a heavy exhale, Mick ceases his punches, catching the bag when it swings towards him and holding on, leaning against it. Sweat pours down the side of his face, and his exhaustion seeps into Ray's bones.
Mick looks past the bag at Ray with a frustrated, unhappy expression. "How about you don't fucking die, then?"
And Ray doesn't get it, not really, doesn't understand why Mick cares so much if it's not about the consequences from the bond, doesn't understand why his confusion makes Mick's anger flare up anew. Not until Mick pushes himself away from the bag, letting it sway dangerously close past his head when he crosses the distance to Ray. Not until Mick's hands are cupping his face, battered knuckles brushing his skin, and suddenly Mick's lips are on his. The kiss is bruising and hard, almost punishing, resentment and want pushing through the bond, and Ray's too overwhelmed to react until he feels that Mick is about to put a resigned step back.
Oh, no, you don't, Ray thinks, a little resentful himself now because dammit, they could have been doing this for weeks. How can two people have a mental connection and still manage not to figure out that they want each other? (That they care about each other, he tries very hard not to think, because judging by how he reacted to almost losing Ray, Mick might technically do feelings, but that clearly doesn't mean he likes talking about them.)
Ray's fist tangles in Mick's sweat-soaked shirt, pulling him back towards him, and he finally gets with the program.
The moment his hand sneaks into Mick's pants, fingers closing around his cock, the pleasure hits Ray like a freight train.
"Holy fuck," he mutters under his breath, a little awed, when he gives Mick a few experimental strokes and feels it echo through his body.
"What?" Mick raises an eyebrow at him. His hands are still at Ray's sides, but his thumbs keep drawing small circles against his skin, so gently that Ray would bet Mick's not even aware he's doing it.
"Feedback loop."
At Mick's confused expression, Ray laughs, a little shakily, because Mick starts resuming his exploration of Ray's body, and those warm, callused hands feel too damn good on his skin. "I can feel your arousal though the bond," he explains.
The look Mick gives him in response is intrigued and speculative and a little wicked, and before Ray has a chance to anticipate what Mick's going to do, their pants are bundled at their feet. He almost stumbles as Mick pushes him backwards, crowding him against a wall, and when Mick reaches down to bring their cocks together, taking both of them into one large hand and letting it slide up and down, slick with pre-come and sweat, his brain almost short-circuits and a broken moan tumbles from his lips.
"Nice," Mick mutters in that low, grumbling tone that resonates deep and warm in Ray's stomach, and even through the overwhelming rush of pleasure, laughter bubbles up inside of him at what has to be the understatement of the temporal zone. Before it can make it out, Mick captures his lips again, lacking the angry frustration from before but no less heated, and kisses him until he's breathless and light-headed and has forgotten what was so funny in the first place.
Mick's body hot like a furnace behind Ray as he wakes up in Mick's bunk, a muscular, scarred arm thrown across his chest, pinning him down in a way that should evoke a sense of being trapped but doesn't.
Good morning, he thinks quietly, unwilling to break the contented early morning silence with words yet.
There's no response. Mick doesn't even twitch, and for a moment Ray thinks that maybe he's still asleep, until he notices that the persistent churn of hunger is also missing, and the casual way Mick's morning wood presses into his backside isn't accompanied by the familiar undercurrent of arousal.
He twists around towards Mick and finds him looking at him with sleep-heavy eyes, awake but not alert, his face relaxed in a way it rarely is when he's out and about unless he's eating or cleaning his gun. It seems wrong to be able to read Mick's contentment on his face without being able to sense it, and when Ray searches his mind for some trace of Mick and can't find any, it's like a cold shower.
"What?" Mick grunts.
"I... can't feel you."
Mick raises an eyebrow and, in a motion that's surprisingly smooth for a man his size and the small bunk they're sharing, rolls on top of him. "Feel me now?"
His body presses Ray into the mattress, arms on either side of Ray's head caging him in, and when he rocks their hips together, Ray's brain blanks out for a moment before he gathers his wits again. "No. I mean, yes, obviously I do, but that's not what I was talking about. I can't feel the bond anymore."
Mick doesn't at all seem perturbed or surprised. "Yeah, noticed that last night. Your dreams didn't keep me awake. Best sleep I had since we touched the toaster thing."
Ray blinks. He hadn't been aware that his dreams – nightmares, really – had been leaking through the bond. Mick never mentioned anything. It almost, but not quite, distracts him from Mick's odd indifference. "Why are you so calm about this?"
"We were looking for a fix anyway. It fixed itself. Problem solved." Mick shrugs, as good as he can with his entire weight resting on his arms in an effort not to crush Ray. He gives Ray an odd look. "What's your deal, Haircut?"
Ray doesn't know how to answer the question. He can't quite put his finger on the reason why he's so disturbed by the sudden lack of insight into Mick's mind, other than the vague idea that this might affect their... whatever this is. It would be easier to try and explain this if he didn't have to use words. "It's just— Before this, we weren't— And now—"
It's barely enough to get an idea what he means. But maybe having spent such a long time in each other's heads has left Mick with an understanding of how Ray's mind works – how he constantly expects people to think he's somehow not enough, how he is always tempted to judge his own worth by things like his suit or his ability to pull off some heroics or an accidental mental bond he stumbled into by pure chance – because Mick glares down at him.
"Seriously?" It works both ways, because he doesn't need to be able to hear Mick's thoughts to read the expression on Mick's face. "You're a dumbass, Ray."
It somehow sounds at the same time admonishing and fond, and Ray feels a warmth spreading through him that has nothing to do with the heat of Mick's body covering his. It eases his self-doubts enough to make him snark back, "Hey, I'm a genius."
Mick snorts. "Dumbass genius, then."
The indignant response on his tongue gets swallowed by Mick's mouth on his, and when he grinds down, Ray wraps his legs around him and pulls him in harder, making Mick groan into the kiss.
"It's weird," he says later (much later), watching Mick get dressed. "Not hearing your thoughts."
He misses the feedback loop. He misses the certainty of knowing what Mick's thinking. He's not gonna miss Mick's terrible taste in food and the obsessive love for all things burning, just like he's sure Mick isn't going to miss Ray's nightmares keeping him awake or the constant stream of anxiety. Still, they got used to the bond and having it disappear so suddenly makes Ray feel like he's broken, like they're broken, somehow.
Mick grunts, his back turned to Ray as he picks up his boots, and Ray wishes he had any clue if this was a 'yeah, I agree' grunt or a 'stop talking, you're getting on my nerves' grunt.
Fuck. He really does miss the bond. He wonders if there's any way to get it back.
"Haircut. Don't even think about it," Mick says, turning around with stormy expression, narrowing his eyes at Ray and pointing an accusing finger at him.
"What? I didn't— Wait, you can still hear me, can't you? But that means—"
Mick interrupts him before he can get too excited about the possibility that maybe they haven't lost the connection.
"Can't hear you. But I know you. Know what's going on in that stupid genius brain of yours." He pokes Ray in the forehead, hard enough to make him lose balance and fall backwards onto the bunk. "No more touching weird toasters from the future, ya hear me."
A fond smile steals onto Ray's face at the stern, grumpy tone.
Maybe Mick's right. They don't need telepathy to work this out. They're gonna be okay. "I hear you. Loud and clear."
End.