Smooth

Spoilers: Current season and most recent ep.
Pairing: Neela/Ray
Disclaimer: If I owned them, d'you think I'd have let Neela marry Michael? They belong to the network and the creators.
Dedication: This is for Sarika, who not only engagesme in lively debates, but has promoted this pairing all along.

She smelled like Dove shampoo and men's shaving cream, with a trace of some flowery spray he couldn't place. The shaving cream was his – Ray had stumbled into the bathroom after shift one night and caught her using it, legs slathered in foam up to mid-thigh, killing the breath in his lungs because it was wrong to feel that way, so wrong. He liked Michael as much as he could, and would have liked him had the soldier not stolen his roommate, left her hastily shackled with a ring and no home. Newlyweds didn't split like that; they had wild and passionate sex on kitchen counters and learned each other again. Ray would've liked to learn Neela, maybe pluck the razor from her hands and kiss away her reproach before he tended to her legs himself. It's my shaving cream, he'd say and smirk, running the razor slowly down one calf and memorizing the way her expression turned from uncertainty to trust. His hands could coax a purr from a guitar and heal a patient, were callused and rough from the playing and the work, but on her legs they'd be gentle and relaxed. When he was done, he'd towel dry her skin and run his palms up Neela's calves, commenting on his fine job, his finesse and skill. And when she laughed, he'd kiss her again and find other uses for his hands – that was just how Ray learned.

He'd asked Neela once why she didn't just wait a few weeks and have her legs waxed. When she scoffed and met him in the eye, and explained that if she couldn't take the time to shave, why the hell was she a doctor, Ray had been nonplussed and couldn't see the connection. But even without pondering the correlation, he'd adored Neela for being that way, for being human. They weren't newlyweds, but he'd learned her anyway, storing the knowledge like it was fragile, apt to trickle away before he could bid it to stay.

Like Neela would one day slip away from him, back to Michael and being a soldier's wife, back to a place she'd rushed so eagerly, so heedlessly into. And Ray hadn't stopped her – he'd been at the wedding and he'd been with Zoë. That he wanted Neela had begun as an innocuous friendship, roommates sharing dinner and watching TV and bitching about long days in the ER. But then he cooked for her, and stayed up late with her doing nothing but talking, and had started something delightful and poisonous within himself. It had been cocooned by denial at first – Ray had viciously stubbed out the 'what if' centre in his head for feeding him ideas. Neela was married to Michael. Michael was a good doctor and loyal soldier. Ray was a smartass and a prick.

But she slept in his tee shirt and used his shaving cream on her legs. What was a ring to that?

And then she was gone, made skittish by the heat between them and what it would do to her marriage, what it had already done. Both of them pressed into that doorway before Neela left, Ray had followed the curve of her nose to her lips and wondered why he hadn't followed the impulse before – removed her ring and replaced it with a brand of his own. He'd liked to have seen her marked by his teeth and tongue and lips, maybe on her stomach, maybe on her shoulder, so long as it made her his.

X

Work was routine because it had to be, but Ray was glad to get into the supply closest and just…think. Patchy stubble lined his cheeks and jaw, rough against his fingers and palms – he couldn't shave, wouldn't, not with the memory of her legs and the foam. He and Neela both wore matching gaunt expressions, eyes hollow from a lack of sleep, from tears. No one said anything; one snarled phrase from Ray to Morris had quelled the others' appetites for inquisition, though Ray knew it would only be a breath of time before Abby knew, and then Luka. Neither of them would say anything, but Kovac had that annoying habit of being parental onto younger doctors and Neela had been no exception, so Ray didn't presume he was safe either. The emergency room was full enough of drama as it stood – fuck, Morris had five kids and Pratt was going to Africa…

So what did it matter that he wanted a married woman?

Ray grunted in surprise when the supply room door opened, hitting the toe of his shoe with enough force to bounce back and strike the person who'd opened it. There was a shrill curse and him scrambling to rise that followed, and then the door slammed shut again. The look in Neela's eyes reminded Ray of being fifteen and working for some fast-food pit, trying to put up the money for a guitar and stealing from the register that first and only time – there was guilt and anger and frustration and want all coiled together in some twisted orgy. It made him want to scream or throw himself into an inevitably fruitless endeavor to try and erase the words exchanged between them the night before. Her eyes made him want to cry and kill Michael for existing.

"Neela –"he bit his tongue and dropped his head to avoid her gaze, choking on any number of emotions. A quick, necessary breath propelled him back to cool professionalism and without a blink he handed her the extra sutures they needed for the patient in curtain ten. "How, uh…how's Abby's place?"

She seemed to be quarrelling with a number of responses, but this was work and they were doctors and they weren't anything else, not anymore. Ex-roommates, beer buddies maybe, but never anything else.

It was wrong to want Ray, to need him and Neela knew it. She was married to Michael, wonderful Michael. What did it matter that he had gone back to fight a pointless war against her wishes? Or that being around Ray was comfortable and easy? Her gut wanting of him was unnatural…oh, and so wrong.

"Neela, please…talk to me. You moved out, okay? Why should this be awkward for us to just talk?"

She snapped her gaze back to his like he'd just called her mother a whore and frowned, fingers twitching and working their way from pockets to stethoscope and back to pockets. Ray swallowed back a burning anger in his throat and intercepted Neela before she could retreat through the door. He pressed his palms and back to the cool surface, unflinching even when her hands balled into fists.

"Talk to me," he repeated, clenched jaw creating a dull ache up to his ears.

"Abby's is fine," Neela spat, refusing to touch him even to move him from the doorway. "Now move."

His lips peeled back over his teeth, eyes flashing and cold. He jerked his head sideways, nostrils flaring, reminding her of a threatened horse. Neela noticed he hadn't shaved.

"No, talk to me about why you left. Then you can go."

The plea had turned to steel as it passed over Ray's tongue and through his lips. She stepped closer, orbiting near enough for him to smell the Dove, but the shaving cream musk was gone. He wanted to cry again.

"Don't tell me what to do, Ray. I can bloody move out whenever I want, I did. Michael and I need a place of our own, we're married." She repeated it in her head like a cherished mantra – we're married we're married we're married.

Ray bared his teeth, tasting blood as his tongue cut against one incisor.

"Michael—isn't—even—HERE Neela! He's fighting in the fucking war, he left you, remember? You got married, I know – I was there – and then he was gone, like that ring and those vows were for, I dunno, an excuse to get laid."

She slapped him. Hard, right on the blade of his cheekbone, with force enough to produce a CRACK when his head turned. Neela wanted him to get mad, drive him towards hating her because that would be so much easier than sleeping in his t-shirt and using his shaving cream.

But Ray wasn't angry when he brought his gaze back to hers and held it there for a split-second before he attacked her. His lips were on hers and when Neela opened her mouth to protest, Ray sucked the objection from her lungs and stabbed down with his tongue. He didn't expect her to kiss him back, he just wanted to taste her, quench himself on her and maybe then wash away the rest. The stubble on his chin, around his lips, was coarse against her smooth, smooth skin. This was what he'd wanted last night in the doorway, and he knew some part of Neela wanted it too, ring or not. Marriage or not.

And then she was kissing him back, vicious, biting down on his bottom lip and scorching away his tongue with her own. Ray grunted as her hands fisted in his hair and tugged him back; they met eyes again and soon the slow red was of shame was crawling up his neck.

"No," he sobbed, gurgling on pain in the back of his throat. Ray expected her to cuff him again, maybe report him, and maybe kill him. Right now he wanted to die, anyway.

Neela's eyes were clouded, her lips swollen, and skin reddish where his beard had rubbed. She shook her head and it killed him.

"I can't, not while I'm with Michael."

Ray growled, running his tongue against his teeth, acid defeat in his gut. He'd been expecting this, but it was still a blow. And then she kissed him, soft, placing her hands on his scruffy cheeks and holding his head up. The kiss was like a vision of the future, perfect and rose and complete, making their embrace in the supply closet all the more surreal.

"You want to," Ray muttered, not telling her but reading it in Neela's eyes. She released him and they parted, eyeing each other.

"Ray…"

He swallowed and nodded, fingering a strand of her hair that their groping had mussed.

"I can wait."

a/n: This is because it just had to be DONE, dammit. But you just know Neela and Ray can't be together until Michael slips the picture, so, uh.../ominous/. Anyway, this disjointed piece is the product of an overly-dramatic show that frustrates its viewers to the point where they want to cut themselves. But since I'm squeamish, you get my bitter attempt at angst. Enjoy!