Making the Bed
by Hth

	Everything smelled like meadows all day on laundry day -- or at least that's
what the detergent bottle said. Meadow Fresh. Personally, Ray Kowalski wouldn't know 
what a meadow smelled like if it died on his dinner plate.
	But he knew that Meadow Fresh smells meant laundry day was finally over, which
was good, because Ray hated being stuck at home all day, running up and down to
the laundry room in the basement of his apartment, which always smelled like deadwater 
and where the only free dryer was always the one you had to take the front panel off 
of and jostle the coin-eating mechanism by hand to make it work. The only thing he 
hated worse was the three days before laundry day, when he was down to his most 
threadbare and ill-fitting clothes.  Kind of embarrassing in general, but really 
annoying when he had to put up with Vecchio's smart mouth on top of it.
	Vecchio cared about laundry day. He didn't just do the laundry, he *gave* a
shit about it. It was like a ritual for him, sorting it all, setting the dials all 
at minutely different levels of hot and cold and heavy and gentle, folding and hanging 
everything he owned. He cared so much about laundry day that he would drag both their 
asses down to the laundry room even when Ray had been out all night on a bust and 
hadn't slept in almost twenty-four hours, and his elbow hurt from where he'd gotten 
spun against a brick wall in the scuffle. No, hell, no, couldn't let the fact that 
Ray's elbow was cut to shit and he was tired and down because Welsh was already getting 
that look on his face like the arrests were never going to stand in court and besides 
the two of them hadn't had any time alone just to catch their breath in what seemed 
like a week -- couldn't let any of that get in the way.
	Not that Ray was bitter. But who got thrown over for laundry?
	Ray Kowalski, apparently.
	But at long fucking last, the whole process was over, full Meadow Fresh
achieved. Ray was so dog tired that he'd gone past wanting to go to bed, into
that twilight zone where even the most normal things in the world seemed alien
and somehow artsy, like those weird foreign flicks Stella used to drag him to. 
He was sitting right in his own bedroom, with the 0700 sunlight coming in through 
the window, watching his sig-o put clean sheets on the bed, but still the whole scene 
had this...look to it. Like the light was too light, and the ceiling was too high, 
and everything was so fascinating that Ray had to stare harder and harder at it.
	Vecchio gestured, and the sheet swam through the air with a soft thwumping
noise. It drifted down, so slow, so slow that Ray wanted to yell at it to hurry, and 
at the same time its easy fall through the air was the sanest, simplest thing Ray 
thought he'd ever seen in his life. How did Vecchio always do that, anyway? Make old 
things look new....  Say what you had to say about Ray's partner, he could make a 
bed.  Everything creased where it should be creased and flat where it should be flat, 
fluffed and folded back just so. He was doing it again, and this time it was downright
enthralling; Ray found himself leaning forward in his chair, like it was bases
loaded at the bottom of the ninth. He was doing that thing where everything changed 
-- where the narrow bedroom with its rough woodwork and pockmarked ceiling and beige 
carpeting was suddenly changed, just because of the Meadow Fresh white sheets and 
the way Vecchio's hands smoothed over them, not fussy, but just pleased with the sheets, 
with the bed, with laundry day, with life.
	It was like the living room in Ray's childhood house -- not the family room,
the one with the tv and his Dad's recliner, the one where Ray and his brother
played Chinese checkers and his mother kept her sewing machine. No, the Living
Room, where no one was allowed except for when company came -- and not regular
company, like neighbors or friends from bowling, but Father Andy or one of Ray's 
teachers or somebody who had to be impressed. Ray used to walk by and look into that 
room, where everything stayed exactly where it belonged, down to the page the 
magazines laid open at, and be amazed at how light and spacious and silent and 
beautiful it was. Pure and perfect, that was the room where all the family heirlooms 
got kept, in the china cabinet by the closet where the Kowalskis kept all their 
Christmas decorations during the rest of the year.  The living room had history, it 
had dignity.
	No idea how, but Vecchio had just taken a clean sheet and spread it over Ray's
plain old familiar bed, and somehow did it so neat and even and correct that now Ray 
was afraid to touch it. The whole room was pretty the way it was, and pure and perfect, 
and not to be played in. Vecchio had made it special, not like an everyday kind of 
bedroom.
	"Hey, sulky," Vecchio was saying to him, and Ray tried to snap into focus. 
"Come on, it's your nap time."
	"Shut up," Ray said automatically, because it was what he usually said when 
he
knew he'd never be able to find words for what he was actually thinking.
	Vecchio just shook his head and started shucking off his jeans -- you knew it
had to be laundry day when Vecchio was wearing jeans. "You're tired.  You've been 
dragging for the last nine hours."
	"Whose bed it is, anyway, huh, Vecchio? I been living here four years now. I
don't know what you're up to, but it's not gonna work."
	"It's our bed, that's whose it is. What the hell's gotten into you, tough guy? 
I'm just making the damn bed. Since when is that a felony offense?"
	*Since I said so* would never go down well. It sounded kind of dink-like even
to Ray.
	He moved from the chair to the bed, sat down gingerly on the edge of it. 
Meadow Fresh, just like his own shirt would smell tomorrow when he pulled it over 
his head, just like Vecchio's steam-ironed suit pants would smell later that night, 
when Ray played around by rubbing his face across the crotch and feeling Vecchio get 
hard under the fabric. Their bed, their laundry smell, their life. But he couldn't 
help but feel that he was the small t in "they," as his restless fingers plucked 
uneasily at the folded corner of the sheet. 
	Ray had always had quilts that could hastily be tossed over a bed to make it
look all made up when it wasn't, unscented soap in his shower and his laundry,
hard-edged, dangerous, un-fluffed and unyielding things and people in his life.
His strong and stubborn father. His strong and stubborn wife. His strong and
stubborn Fraser. Things nothing like Ray Vecchio's fabric softener and silk texture, 
those candlelight dinners and the way his hands could work every twist and pain out 
of Ray's neck, so slow and thoughtful.
	From behind, he gave Ray's head a little shove with his fingertips, which made
Ray smile automatically. "Look, Ray, what's your problem? You asked me to move in."
	"I just -- think it's stupid to dick around with the bed when we're just about
to get in and mess it all up again. I mean, it's -- stupid. I mean, I feel bad
going to bed now." Because Vecchio counted on the laundry getting done and the
place getting cleaned and every duck sitting in its right row, and Kowalski
always somehow managed to leave a mess. He didn't care, but -- but someday Vecchio 
might.
	"There." He looked back at the corner of the sheet and blanket that Vecchio
had just roughly tugged loose, leaving it hanging limp and scrunched up off the
edge of the bed. "All fucked up, just for you. Better?" And his voice was rough, 
impatient, like always, but his meadow green eyes were scanning Ray's face deeply, 
fussing over him the way Vecchio's hands fussed over folded laundry and fresh-made 
beds. Tidying Ray up -- which drove Ray Kowalski up the wall. And made him sort of 
shine, ttoo, like being clean for the first time in forever.
	He laid back on his fucked-up bed, Vecchio's meadow-fresh bed, and it did
work. Once he pulled the other corner untucked with his toe.  Once Vecchio was lying 
down beside him, one leg curled up around his, whuffling his softest laugh against 
Ray's neck. It worked.