Keeping Kowalski, by Brigantine for the Care & Feeding challenge
Title: Keeping Kowalski
Author: Brigantine
Pairing: Vecchio/Kowalski
Rating: PG-13
Length: 11,040, give or take
Warnings: A little violence, off-stage.
Summary: When Ray Vecchio comes back to Chicago, he doesn't even know where to start, but he gives it a shot anyway.
A/N: This whole thing was supposed to be short, and porny. Just a short, simple, porny little thingy. As it turned out, this is not even remotely short, and by the time the story got its legs under it, the porn didn't fit anymore, and I had to cut it out. I don't even know, man. I'mma have to have a talk with the bunnies.
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When Ray Vecchio left the warmth of Florida to return to the ass-freezing streets of his home town, and found himself partnered with Stanley Raymond Kowalski, he might have assumed it was some sort of cosmic mistake, like ringworm, or "Welcome Back, Kotter," except for the expression of grim amusement on Lieutenant Welsh's face upon delivering the glad tidings.
Even Kowalski thought it was a joke, until Welsh leaned back in his chair, folded his hands over his belly and growled, "Go forth, the pair of you, and catch bad guys. I have spoken." He glanced expectantly between the two of them. "Can I get an 'Amen'?"
Ray ventured, "Sir, you have a unique sense of humor. You are kidding, right?"
Kowalski whined, "This sucks!"
"I'm so glad we're in agreement," Welsh pronounced, with all the smooth assurance of an avalanche. "I knew your keen minds would grasp the potential for greatness, as I have."
Ray predicted flatly, "We will kill each other inside of a week."
Kowalski grumbled at Ray, "You suck," and kicked a scuffed-up black boot at the worn linoleum of Welsh's office.
The lieutenant chuckled sadistically and waved the two of them out into the bull pen. Ray could hear him chortling to himself, like Odin brooding over the battle-slain, as the door closed behind them.
Kowalski turned to Ray, flailing his skinny arms and looking, Ray hated to admit, remarkably fit and maybe kind of dangerous, given his new habit of charging around the frozen wilds of Canada with a certain well-intentioned but completely loopy Mountie and a dog team led by a half-deaf half-wolf for a couple of weeks every winter. Apparently being a cop in the city of Chicago wasn't crazy enough for the twitchy Polack. No, he needed to travel north to the homicidal ice fields of the Yukon and be extra insane.
"You," Kowalski growled, "try to keep up, and don't get in the way."
"Tell you what, Stanley, how about if you keep your yap shut, and just worry about holding up your end? And maybe find a way to keep track of your glasses so I don't end up shot again, okay?"
Kowalski grimaced at him, "I have contact lenses now."
Frannie sashayed past, singing out, "But he never weeaaarrs them..."
Kowalski hollered after her, "I could wear them if I wanted to! I choose not to!"
"Aw jeez," Ray complained, "that puts me right back in the bad guys' gun sights, while you rummage through your latest fashion disaster, trying to find your seein' specs. Wait, why don't you wear the contacts, if you've got 'em?"
Kowalski shuffled irritatedly and rubbed at the back of his neck, scowling down at the messy top of his desk. He mumbled a string of consonants that sounded like it ended in "ice bags."
Ray made a game attempt at translation. "They hurt your eyes?"
"No," Kowalski groused, "No, they do not hurt my eyes, I just... " He grimaced fiercely at the wall, at his desk, at Ray - who was immune to fierce grimacing post-Vegas and post-Stella, thanks - and then confessed, "I got a thing about touching my own eyeballs."
By the time Ray stopped laughing he had a split lip, Kowalski had a bloody nose, Huey and Dewey were paying off bets in favor of Kowalski, those jerks, and Ray had promised to help Kowalski put in his contacts every morning. It was, Ray swore to himself after he'd taken a moment to think about that and wonder if he'd finally lost his mind, a necessary act of self-preservation. It was bad enough that the forces of Evil wanted to kill him. Ray did not want, "Shot accidentally by his myopic partner in the heat of battle" written on his tombstone. He didn't want it written anywhere, if he could help it.
Later that afternoon he caught up to Jack Huey in the break room, and after glancing around to make sure the coast was clear, asked him, "So, it's been two years since Fraser went back to the Great White North. How many partners has Kowalski gone through?"
Jack sipped his cappuccino thoughtfully. "Six," he said.
Ray groaned, "Six? Please don't tell me they all ended up either in the morgue, or in the nuthouse?"
"They couldn't keep up," Jack told him. "You know what he's like."
"A psychotic squirrel on a sugar rush."
Jack explained, "He gets hunches. Weirdly accurate hunches, and with Kowalski, to hunch is to act, and you've seen how he acts; fast, furious, doesn't care much who's in his way. When Fraser was here, Fraser kept him under some kind of control... I don't know if it was the power of his Mountie logic, or what, but without Fraser... Kowalski's a good detective, but a loose cannon. Partners don't stay. They can't keep up."
Ray pressed his forehead against the cool metal of the refrigerator. "So what you're telling me is... the nuthouse. They all begged Welsh for transfers, and ran screaming into therapy, that's what you're telling me."
"Sorry, man. But hey, he and Fraser worked. Maybe you'll get lucky."
Ray eyed him sourly. "You're running a betting pool that we'll kill each other in a week, aren't you."
Huey shrugged. "You said it first."
What Ray had not foreseen in relation to assisting Kowalski with his morning eyeball routine was, first, that in order to help Kowalski put in his contact lenses Ray had to get up earlier in order to drive over to Kowalski's place.
Upon arrival, Ray was then forced to witness Stanley Raymond Kowalski in his underwear.
Kowalski, it turned out, was just as much a fashion horror in his skivvies as when he was fully dressed - if you could call ancient biker boots, baggy jeans and t-shirts that had probably been given away free as promotional items being fully dressed.
At his first glance at Kowalski's hole-riddled white undershirt and his cotton Jockeys with the saggy elastic, Ray's immediate urge was to lock Kowalski in his apartment, and go down to Silverman's men's shop to buy the guy some decent gear. For crying out loud, Kowalski was a detective. He had commendations. Going on four years now he'd hung out with a tall, handsome Canadian in a perfectly pressed wool uniform and a hat whose brim he ironed. It seemed to Ray that at least a little of that sartorial care should have worn off.
Then it occurred to Ray that running out to buy his partner a new set of knickers was an act that might be misconstrued by that partner. And apparently by Ray's libido, because Kowalski standing there with his knobby knees sticking out from under the frayed hem of loose, baby blue boxers, with his worn-through t-shirt clinging tight across his chest while he yawned and blinked and tried to focus enormous blue eyes on Ray, all of that was making Ray want to either adopt him like a puppy, or throw him back onto the bed and kiss him senseless. Ray honestly did not know which scenario surprised him more.
He took refuge in his familiar Chicago Bad Cop routine. "Kowalski, you're a mess. You need new underwear."
Kowalski shoved his glasses onto his face and stuck his chin out. "Bite me."
Disheveled as an alley cat dragged through a knothole backwards, and just as grumpy, Kowalski should not be that... cute. Sweet Baby Jesus, this was bad, very bad. Ray cast aside his pride and resorted immediately to the lowest threat he could imagine. "I will call your mother, and tell her about the deplorable state of your underthings, should you some day need to be taken away in an ambulance. See if I don't."
"My mom's in Arizona."
"She's your mother, Kowalski. Arizona is not far enough away for you to be safe from your mother. China is not far enough away for you to be safe."
Kowalski's lower lip trembled. "I hate you."
Ray snorted. "Go wash your face."
Eyeball-phobia aside, it turned out Kowalski really did seem to have an eerily accurate way with a hunch, and however much he and Ray fought over the next few days, their solve rate was surprisingly good. The down side of this - naturally, there had to be a down side - was that Ray was left to translate Kowalski's hunches and the ensuing mayhem into cop-English, to string everything together into chains of logic and correctly-spelled sentences that could be used to persuade judges to issue search warrants. Kowalski listened to Ray's opinion slightly more than half the time, which was a lot more than he listened to anyone else, and together they developed a knack for solving cases other cops hadn't even realized were cases yet.
Ray had a small epiphany one night, as he lay in bed, exhausted from chasing Kowalski halfway around Chicago, and yet remarkably satisfied with his day's work. He'd made sure Kowalski didn't punch anyone in the face or otherwise fold, spindle or mutilate anybody, even that obnoxious kid at the gas station, who mistook the GTO for a Ford Marquis (Ray would not have blamed Kowalski for that one). They'd found seven stolen purebred Australian Red-tailed Black cockatoos, which the guys at the station laughed at, 'cause ha ha, Vecchio and Kowalski, tracking down pets. They shut up when the grateful owner came to get his birds, and informed the ignorant knuckleheads that said birds were rare in the States, hand-raised, and worth maybe forty grand each.
Welsh had been so pleased with the two of them, he'd almost smiled.
Ray, cautiously optimistic as he lay there in the dark, thought to himself, "This could work."
The next morning, while Kowalski muttered and flailed around in his bedroom Ray, deciding that if he was sticking his fingers in Kowalski's eyes then going through his kitchen cupboards should be no big deal, discovered Kowalski's coffee machine. It had been stuffed into a lower cupboard, way at the back. It was a Braun, for crying out loud; elegant, efficient, and barely used. A tragedy. A genuine, fricking tragedy. Ray finished washing out the filter and the carafe just as Kowalski came out of his room.
Before Kowalski could start bitching about Ray going through his drawers, Ray told him, "You will leave this on your kitchen counter. I will buy some decent beans, freshly ground for our coffee-making convenience, and tomorrow we will start the day like civilized men."
Kowalski shut his mouth, but he sulked for most of the day, until they'd ordered a late lunch from Schuster's Deli, and Ray absolutely refused to allow him to order pastrami with extra pickles, because, Ray said, "I have to be in the car with you all afternoon, and I am not putting up with what extra pickles do to your digestive system."
"Christ on a crutch," Kowalski complained, "you let a guy touch your eyeballs and he thinks he owns you!"
The entire bull pen went silent. Every detective in the room stopped, turned, and stared, like a herd of startled wildebeest checking out the lions on the African savannah.
Ray and Kowalski looked at each other for a second and then burst out laughing.
After lunch they had to go out and track down some jerk, who was wanted as a suspect in the assault of one Helene Martin, age 19. According to the uniforms who'd answered the 911, it had happened late at night on her way home from work, a quick bash-and-run by a guy in a ski mask. Nothing was stolen. Helene's mom said she was sure it was Gary Feeney, Helene's possessive ex-boyfriend.
Helene was a small, dark-eyed girl, with a split lip and a fresh shiner on the right. This meant the guy who'd hurt her was left-handed, and as it happened so was her ex-boyfriend.
While Ray talked to Mrs. Martin, Kowalski talked to Helene. He was so gentle when he spoke, it was as though someone had exchanged Ray's volatile partner for a Zen master. It was unsettling, was what it was.
Kowalski asked if he could help make coffee, and as Helene kept herself busy he told her about how his buddy, Constable Benton Fraser, would make them tea and oatmeal for breakfast over a camp fire up in the Northwest Areas. He talked about sunrises, and scrounging for wood, and how their lead dog had this thing for raisins, and Kowalski would sneak him some from their limited supply.
Helene smiled at that, and then she dropped a cup into shards on the floor and blurted out, "I hate him, I really hate him, but I don't want to carry that with me, I don't want that fear, I don't want this anger, I don't want to carry that kind of baggage!" and she burst into tears.
Mrs. Martin stood up ready to run to the rescue, and Ray was bracing for disaster and an abrupt end to the interview, but Kowalski already had his arms around the girl, crooning that she could be mad for as long as she wanted to, or not if she wanted to, like Masters of the Universe, the power was hers, and she giggled, for Christ's sake, giggled, and cried some more, and punched Kowalski in the arm. For the first time Ray got to see Stanley Raymond Kowalski, the grown-up his Stella had once been married to.
When they left, Kowalski was quiet. Terrifyingly, palpably quiet. Ray got that. He himself had zero sympathy for the Gary Feeneys of the world. Still.
"Listen," Ray cautioned, once they were in the Goat. "This is a nasty business, and I understand a certain lack of charitable feelings toward our suspect--"
"I'm fine," Kowalski snapped. "No problemo. Just fine."
"She was angry, right? You heard how pissed-off she is, and that's good, right, that anger is what'll help her get through this and past this--"
"This," Kowalski yelled, "should never have happened in the first place!"
"Please," Ray begged, "I agree with you, I do." Ray determinedly shut out his memory of beating the crap out of that cowardly little shit, Frank Zuko, after Zuko's goons had beaten up Benny, and how very, very satisfying that had been. At the moment, it was not helpful. "Just... at least don't dismember the guy. Can you at least give me that?"
Kowalski growled. "Okay. All arms and legs remain attached. Fine. Right."
"Thank you."
Ray almost hoped that Gary Feeney wouldn't be home when they went to pick him up.
No such luck. Ray banged on the front door, i.d.'d them as Chicago Police Department, and two seconds later he could hear the back door slam. Kowalski was off and running before Ray even opened his mouth to yelp, "Back door!"
Kowalski vaulted like a gymnast over the fancy iron fence that led to the back yard, while Ray ran around to the other side of the house. Gary Feeney, as tall as Ray and half again as wide, was pelting along the side yard. He took one look at Ray and whirled back the other direction, smack into Kowalski, who grabbed him with both hands, lifted him in a momentum-fueled arc, and slammed him down onto the lawn, then straddled him while he wheezed for breath.
Kowalski grabbed Feeney's left hand, bruised and cut, likely from Helene Martin's front teeth, and brandished it, as Exhibit A. "You," Kowalski snarled, and at that moment Ray was genuinely worried that Kowalski might beat the guy to death right there in front of him, using Feeney's own fist, and then even Ray's remarkable ability at bull-shitting would not be able to save Kowalski from I.A. Gary Feeney suddenly becoming the Late Gary Feeney probably should have bothered him at least as much, but Ray just wasn't that good a person.
Gary Feeney, beater of girls half his size and reeking of sour whiskey, whimpered, pissed himself, and rolled his eyes at Ray. "Come on, I didn't do nothing--"
Kowalski continued, "You, you miserable, useless son of a nobody will ever love you, are under arrest, you fucking worthless coward, for the assault and battery of Helene Martin," and Ray phoned for a blue and white - because no way were they putting that into the GTO - while Kowalski finished off the rest of the Miranda warning, academy-perfect.
The next morning Ray brought the promised coffee to Kowalski's apartment, along with a loaf of whole wheat bread and a jar of organic peanut butter.
Kowalski whined, "I do not eat breakfast on the week days. My stomach isn't even awake until ten!"
If Ray hadn't witnessed both Kowalskis with his own eyes it would have been hard to believe that this guy blinking at him, in bare feet and white boxers that had apparently gone through the wash with something red and not color-fast was the same guy who'd turned into a werewolf the day before when they were chasing that creep Feeney. Kowalski tugged down the hem of his old green t-shirt, hiccuped and rubbed at his nose. "I have Pop Tarts."
Ray dumped the old crumbs out of Kowalski's toaster and informed him, "You will leave this apartment with something in your stomach besides coffee and candy, young man! I am not putting your contacts in until after you've eaten at least one slice of toast."
Kowalski boggled. "You are blackmailing me into eating breakfast?"
His eyes were huge. Huge, and blue, and Ray really needed to not think about that. Or about how Kowalski's white-and-red Jockeys were so old they were practically, wonderfully, transparent, or about the way Ray'd been fantasizing about Kowalski's mouth last night, just before he fell asleep. About the way the warmth of the back of Kowalski's neck against the palm of Ray's hand as he held him still to put his lenses in was forever imprinted into his skin.
"Yes," Ray confirmed. "I am blackmailing you into eating a semi-healthy breakfast."
Kowalski scowled. "You suck."
Ray thought, Don't I wish.
He said, "Put your pants on."
During the next couple of weeks Ray and Kowalski tracked down approximately twenty-seven thousand dollars' worth of illegally imported wind-up robots. That was an awful lot of wind-up robots. Mostly though, it was the cocaine that was hidden inside the robots that made them worth twenty-seven thousand dollars.
"Upon reflection," Welsh informed them agreeably, "I find you worth the space you take up."
One amusing afternoon they double-teamed a teenage shoplifter and would-be tagger they caught in the act at the Kragen auto parts shop, Ray sidling in all smooth and knowing, while Kowalski snuck up from the other side and gave the kid that sort of lazy half-smile that made him look like a serial-killer. The little yahoo put back the spray paint and scrammed, Vecchio calling out after him, "We see you when you're sleeping, kid! Like Santa Claus! With guns!" Kowalski cackled and asked Ray if he wanted to come over and help him tune up the Goat. Which Ray did. They argued, swore at each other, fixed the car 'til she was roaring smoothly, and then got pizza after; half with pineapple, all of it with extra cheese. It was a good day.
Other days, they were a dancing bear act, the bear in this case being a cranky bastard, and to the unfamiliar eye apparently untrainable. Ray had become adept by this time at apologizing, while Kowalski threw down with thugs, mugs, assorted scumbags, occasionally other cops, and on one very special occasion involving the vandalizing of a small, neighborhood pre-school by a South Side gang member who'd just been let off on a deal, the new Assistant District Attorney, one Jason Coolidge, Jr.
Harvard, Ray could tell right off by the way the guy kept trying to be reasonable, had not prepared Jason Coolidge, Jr. for Stanley R. Kowalski's particular method of debate, what with the Kowalski method involving more in the way of bleeding and screaming, and not so much with the wearing of school ties. Before things could get truly ugly, Ray grabbed the back cross-strap of Kowalski's holster, and a fistful of the back of his old grey t-shirt and hauled him, flailing and swearing, down the nearest hallway and, thanking Huey for holding the door open, out of the precinct house.
"I hate you," Kowalski sulked when Ray stuffed him, squirming, into the passenger seat of the newest Riv.
Ray started the engine, thinking fast. "I am starving. You want food? Pizza, a burger? Pie? You want to go get some Chinese, maybe?"
Kowalski slouched in the seat and scowled at his fingernails. "Li Chen's? They got those crunchy little spring rolls. I like those." He slouched further. "Christ, Vecchio, what kind of a guy lets another guy go around scaring little kids, just because he's 'useful'? Stella never would'a let that dickweed get away with it."
"No, she wouldn't," Ray agreed, pulling out into the street. He wondered how Stella was doing, chasing wife-beaters and dead-beat dads down in Tampa. Giving 'em hell, he hoped. He missed her at times like this.
"I don't hate you," Kowalski mumbled. "I don't."
Ray put the brakes on a grin. "Yeah, I know."
Any ordinary day, the urge to strangle Kowalski - to smack him upside the head, or lock him in a closet, or maybe to drench him in chum and throw him into a large body of water infested with sharks - these sorts of thoughts came along with each day like fries with a cheeseburger. But often enough there were little spring rolls, or maybe pie. All in all, life seemed to settle out in Ray's favor.
The next morning, when Ray let himself into Kowalski's apartment, Stanley was still asleep. Ray stood at the bedroom doorway for a few seconds, just watching him be still. He couldn't quite suppress a flicker of wishful thinking, wondering what it might be like to go over there and pull the covers back, to flatten his hand up under Kowalski's t-shirt, feel the warm skin of his belly under there. Then he started thinking about other parts of Kowalski that were covered by blankets and ratty underwear, and he told himself he was a bad, bad man, and he went to make the coffee.
Ten minutes later Kowalski shuffled into the living room, scrunching his face up and trying to wrangle his free-range hair. He grumbled, "Ss'earlyVecchio, wha'the--?' and then the scent of the brewing coffee made itself known, and worked its tender magic. Kowalski's sleep-scrunched face bloomed into a smile, bright and grateful, and he looked at Ray as though Ray had just brought the sun up, all by himself.
Ray thought to himself that this was not a bad way at all to begin a day. Waking Kowalski with a blow-job would have been even better, but the smiling thing was really pretty good.
He said, "I brought jam."
Three weeks later they were on a stakeout, a Wednesday night of all things, staring for hours and hours at the dark, junk-yard palace of one H. Plotkin, gun-runner, drug-dealer, and all-round interesting citizen...
"I hate this," Kowalski growled, "Every time we work with the Feebs we get the sharp end of the stake."
Ray turned to Welsh, "I must concur with my colleague, Sir. The Feds will screw us six ways from Sunday if they think they can get extra credit for a bust."
"Gentlemen," Welsh rumbled, "you have my sincere condolences. However, as the Commissioner has himself pledged our cooperation in the apprehension of Mr. Henry 'Kneecap' Plotkin and his rough-and-tumble associates, we are committed to seeing this through. I hope you will find comfort in the fact that I'm assigning detectives Huey and Dewey as extra back-up, on account of the Feds being morons. Try not to get shot."
Kowalski turned to Ray on their way out of Welsh's office. "What the hell kind of a name is 'Plotkin,' anyways?"
....when Ray suddenly broke the surface of a weird and troubling dream, with Kowalski shaking him awake. Ray woke up with a shout, and nearly clocked his partner before he remembered where he was.
"Sorry, sorry..." Ray rubbed his face.
Kowalski shrugged, "No harm. Dreaming about Vegas?"
Ray frowned, "I don't remember what it was. Why do you assume it was Vegas?"
"You muttered something about Nick, Mr. Angelino, and some 'stupid bastard trying to cheat the roulette table.'"
"Oh." Ray leaned wearily back against the head rest. "Man, it's been a long time since that happened. I'd rather not, all things considered."
Kowalski took a long slurp of bad coffee and offered a cup to Ray. "Yeah, I get it. Part of the reason I don't do under cover anymore. There y'are, having a funny dream about penguins, and then suddenly there's gunfire, and killer mimes." He shuddered. "I hate that."
"Killer mimes?"
Kowalski shuddered again. "Don't ask. Y'know what you should do?"
"What's that? If you mention therapy or meditation, I will have to eliminate you."
"Come north with me and Fraser some time. Maybe in the fall, when the mosquitos have backed off. We can go fishing. Fraser knows all the best places."
"You're inviting me?"
"What did I just say? Was I speaking Swahili?"
Ray grinned. "I appreciate the offer. But you know Canada has it in for me, or didn't Fraser pass on that little piece of information?"
Kowalski snorted. "Canada has it in for everyone. Even Canadians. You have to be either First Nations, or totally deranged to make it outside a city."
"So sayeth a guy who goes up to the Territories voluntarily every February to go dogsledding."
Kowalski cackled softly. "Yeah, well. It helps me burn off extra energy or something. Hey - d'you know what he did the first day we met?"
"He being our favorite deranged Canadian? And aside from destroying my car? "
"He measured my nose!"
"Measured your nose?" Ray blinked.
"To prove I wasn't you."
"What, like people couldn't tell? Oh my god, he was building a case, wasn't he!"
"Everybody kept insisting I was you." Kowalski grimaced ruefully. "Slight hitch in the lines of communication between the time you left and the time he got back from Canada."
"Ah, poor Benny. I never got the chance to explain things properly, and then I disappear, and he comes back to find his apartment burned down, and a scruffy Polack standing where a stylish Italian should be."
"He tried to take a mold of my teeth - using window putty. He tried to disguise window putty in a sandwich, Vecchio!"
Ray chuckled, "Oh, Benny, Benny..."
"And then, when we got to your house--"
"--which was on fire--"
"--which was on fire, I suggest, like a rational person, 'Hey buddy, how about we wait for the fire department, instead of rushing into a burning building like a couple of crazies?' he does that thing where he suddenly grows about six inches taller, and he says, 'Ray Vecchio would!'"
Ray laughed, "No, I most certainly would not!"
Kowalski beat his fist once against the steering wheel. "I didn't think so! I did not think so! But Fraser gets this look on his face, like..." He flailed, as though trolling the air for an adjective. "What is that, that look he gets? It's like getting glared at by a whole room full of nuns."
"It's the Disapproving Mountie look, Stanley. Banned by the Geneva Convention. I'm surprised you didn't get used to it."
"Oh, hardy ha ha - hey, we got some action up there at Plotkin's yard!"
And then Ray was on the radio, calling for their Federal back-up.
Their Federal back-up, it worked out, were seven minutes behind Huey and Dewey. Seven minutes in a gun-fight is an eternity.
At 3:14 Thursday afternoon Ray, having slept for exactly one hour and twenty-six minutes since Tuesday night, counting the uneasy nap he'd taken in the car, was sitting in Kowalski's hospital room, watching a hockey game with the sound off. They'd got Plotkin, the Feds were crowing over what a coup it was, and Welsh, Ray'd been told by a nervous-looking Huey, was contemplating the relative merits of inter-agency assassinations.
Ray's knuckles hurt. He looked down at his right hand, at the neat, white bandages that criss-crossed over the back of his hand, and under his palm, and over his bruised knuckles. A little bit of blood had seeped through. Ray recalled, in a blurry sort of hindsight, his earnest attempt to disassemble the son of a bitch who'd shot Kowalski, who had stepped in front of the bullet that had been meant for Ray, and Ray started to shake, because he was suddenly terrified all over again and, apparently, still murderous, because his right fist did not hurt enough.
At this point Kowalski, who was supposed to be completely zonked out on medication mumbled, in the exact tone of voice he used when he'd checked out a suspect's alibi and it did not wash, "You kissed me," and Ray broke right down and cried.
"Hey. Hey," Kowalski murmured, reaching one hand out from under the rumpled covers, the hand that didn't have an i.v. drip attached to it. He pawed at Ray's mangled shirt, still dusty and stained from the cluster-fuck of the night before. "I see things," Kowalski said, like that was supposed to be reassuring.
Ray pressed his hands to his eyes, trying to turn off the waterworks. He'd kissed Kowalski while the guy was half-conscious on a gurney in the ambulance, like Prince Moron and Bleeding Beauty. What was he, unhinged? "The meds giving you hallucinations?"
Kowalski cleared his throat. "Not like that. Jeez, not like that, I mean..." His long fingers climbed Ray's arm and flailed a little, his reach too short to touch Ray's face. "People think 'cause I'm such a spazz--"
"You are not a spazz!"
"Shut up. Wounded cop confessing, here. I notice things, Vecchio. I'm a hot-head and I can't spell worth a damn, and my favorite words are the ones that get quickest to the point, and that's what other people see, that's how they see me. But I notice things while they're busy sticking me into a fucking category. You... you kissed me, Vecchio. What did you see that made you do that?"
Ray moaned miserably, "What did I--? Jesus, Kowalski... Look, what did you do the first day you met Fraser?"
Kowalski blinked at him. "Aside from driving your burning Riviera into the lake they call Michigan?"
"Aside from that, yes. What did you do?"
"Ate window putty? Caught a crazy arsonist? Annoyed Fraser? Learned a secondary definition for the word 'posture'?"
Ray shifted in his chair, ignoring the way his lower back protested at having sat in the same position for nearly twelve hours. He twined his fingers with Kowalski's, the fingers that had recently been trying to reach his face. "You stepped in front of a bullet for Fraser. You'd known the guy all of a day, and you stepped in front of a bullet for him, just like you did for me, today. Another couple of inches to the right, and you'd be down there visiting Mort, instead of going home tomorrow."
"I didn't mean to," Kowalski apologized.
Ray laughed, "I know. That's the beauty of you. It's what I see every day, Kowalski. Every time I have to apologize for you having slugged a rapist or a murderer; every time I re-do your crappy paperwork; every time, I see that guy who gets outraged at a world where assholes wander around at will, getting their jollies selling coke to little kids, or beating up girls; that guy who steps in front of a bullet for his partner without thinking about it. That is why I kissed you, Kowalski, and God help me, if you gave me a chance I'd do it again. I'm sorry if that freaks you out, but--"
"It doesn't freak me out," Kowalski interrupted, and his fingers squeezed Ray's a little.
Ray's sleep-deprived brain took a moment to contemplate the implications. "Oh. Oh? Um, so, does that mean, just that you're not going to apply for a new partner, or that I might get another chance, to, y'know...?"
Kowalski snickered, wincing as he wriggled the wrong way. "Ow. I mean that last thing."
Ray's voice squeaked embarrassingly. "Really?"
Kowalski smiled at him, all soft and quiet, and Ray felt like a total idiot, because how did he not notice this while he was noticing all that other stuff?
"Really," Kowalski said.
"I think I need to re-retire," Ray decided.
Kowalski frowned at him. "Did we not just establish that we are both okay with the mutual attraction thing?"
"Exactly," Ray said. "In case you haven't noticed, the universe has got it in for me as a cop. If I stick around, either I am going to get killed, or you will, trying to save me, and honest to God, Kowalski, I could not live with that."
"Oh," Kowalski admitted, "I guess you make a fair point, there. So... what do we do? I mean, about..." and he squeezed Ray's hand again.
Ray took a deep breath. "I get a job at something non-life-threatening. You get used to me sleeping on the right-hand side of your bed."
Kowalski squirmed in his hospital sheets, biting his lip thoughtfully. Pretty soon that smile that Ray looked forward to every morning when Kowalski staggered out into his tiny living room in his ratty t-shirt and his see-through Jockeys, and he smelled Ray's coffee, and he looked at Ray like suddenly the day was worth getting out of bed for, that smile bloomed over Kowalski's face. "You think we wouldn't kill each other if we tried it?"
Ray thought that with good food to come home to and regular, enthusiastic sex, Stanley Raymond Kowalski would be a much happier person, and a hell of a lot easier for the world in general, and Ray in particular to deal with.
Ray said, "Only one way to find out."
--#--
Author: Brigantine
Pairing: Vecchio/Kowalski
Rating: PG-13
Length: 11,040, give or take
Warnings: A little violence, off-stage.
Summary: When Ray Vecchio comes back to Chicago, he doesn't even know where to start, but he gives it a shot anyway.
A/N: This whole thing was supposed to be short, and porny. Just a short, simple, porny little thingy. As it turned out, this is not even remotely short, and by the time the story got its legs under it, the porn didn't fit anymore, and I had to cut it out. I don't even know, man. I'mma have to have a talk with the bunnies.
#####
When Ray Vecchio left the warmth of Florida to return to the ass-freezing streets of his home town, and found himself partnered with Stanley Raymond Kowalski, he might have assumed it was some sort of cosmic mistake, like ringworm, or "Welcome Back, Kotter," except for the expression of grim amusement on Lieutenant Welsh's face upon delivering the glad tidings.
Even Kowalski thought it was a joke, until Welsh leaned back in his chair, folded his hands over his belly and growled, "Go forth, the pair of you, and catch bad guys. I have spoken." He glanced expectantly between the two of them. "Can I get an 'Amen'?"
Ray ventured, "Sir, you have a unique sense of humor. You are kidding, right?"
Kowalski whined, "This sucks!"
"I'm so glad we're in agreement," Welsh pronounced, with all the smooth assurance of an avalanche. "I knew your keen minds would grasp the potential for greatness, as I have."
Ray predicted flatly, "We will kill each other inside of a week."
Kowalski grumbled at Ray, "You suck," and kicked a scuffed-up black boot at the worn linoleum of Welsh's office.
The lieutenant chuckled sadistically and waved the two of them out into the bull pen. Ray could hear him chortling to himself, like Odin brooding over the battle-slain, as the door closed behind them.
Kowalski turned to Ray, flailing his skinny arms and looking, Ray hated to admit, remarkably fit and maybe kind of dangerous, given his new habit of charging around the frozen wilds of Canada with a certain well-intentioned but completely loopy Mountie and a dog team led by a half-deaf half-wolf for a couple of weeks every winter. Apparently being a cop in the city of Chicago wasn't crazy enough for the twitchy Polack. No, he needed to travel north to the homicidal ice fields of the Yukon and be extra insane.
"You," Kowalski growled, "try to keep up, and don't get in the way."
"Tell you what, Stanley, how about if you keep your yap shut, and just worry about holding up your end? And maybe find a way to keep track of your glasses so I don't end up shot again, okay?"
Kowalski grimaced at him, "I have contact lenses now."
Frannie sashayed past, singing out, "But he never weeaaarrs them..."
Kowalski hollered after her, "I could wear them if I wanted to! I choose not to!"
"Aw jeez," Ray complained, "that puts me right back in the bad guys' gun sights, while you rummage through your latest fashion disaster, trying to find your seein' specs. Wait, why don't you wear the contacts, if you've got 'em?"
Kowalski shuffled irritatedly and rubbed at the back of his neck, scowling down at the messy top of his desk. He mumbled a string of consonants that sounded like it ended in "ice bags."
Ray made a game attempt at translation. "They hurt your eyes?"
"No," Kowalski groused, "No, they do not hurt my eyes, I just... " He grimaced fiercely at the wall, at his desk, at Ray - who was immune to fierce grimacing post-Vegas and post-Stella, thanks - and then confessed, "I got a thing about touching my own eyeballs."
By the time Ray stopped laughing he had a split lip, Kowalski had a bloody nose, Huey and Dewey were paying off bets in favor of Kowalski, those jerks, and Ray had promised to help Kowalski put in his contacts every morning. It was, Ray swore to himself after he'd taken a moment to think about that and wonder if he'd finally lost his mind, a necessary act of self-preservation. It was bad enough that the forces of Evil wanted to kill him. Ray did not want, "Shot accidentally by his myopic partner in the heat of battle" written on his tombstone. He didn't want it written anywhere, if he could help it.
Later that afternoon he caught up to Jack Huey in the break room, and after glancing around to make sure the coast was clear, asked him, "So, it's been two years since Fraser went back to the Great White North. How many partners has Kowalski gone through?"
Jack sipped his cappuccino thoughtfully. "Six," he said.
Ray groaned, "Six? Please don't tell me they all ended up either in the morgue, or in the nuthouse?"
"They couldn't keep up," Jack told him. "You know what he's like."
"A psychotic squirrel on a sugar rush."
Jack explained, "He gets hunches. Weirdly accurate hunches, and with Kowalski, to hunch is to act, and you've seen how he acts; fast, furious, doesn't care much who's in his way. When Fraser was here, Fraser kept him under some kind of control... I don't know if it was the power of his Mountie logic, or what, but without Fraser... Kowalski's a good detective, but a loose cannon. Partners don't stay. They can't keep up."
Ray pressed his forehead against the cool metal of the refrigerator. "So what you're telling me is... the nuthouse. They all begged Welsh for transfers, and ran screaming into therapy, that's what you're telling me."
"Sorry, man. But hey, he and Fraser worked. Maybe you'll get lucky."
Ray eyed him sourly. "You're running a betting pool that we'll kill each other in a week, aren't you."
Huey shrugged. "You said it first."
What Ray had not foreseen in relation to assisting Kowalski with his morning eyeball routine was, first, that in order to help Kowalski put in his contact lenses Ray had to get up earlier in order to drive over to Kowalski's place.
Upon arrival, Ray was then forced to witness Stanley Raymond Kowalski in his underwear.
Kowalski, it turned out, was just as much a fashion horror in his skivvies as when he was fully dressed - if you could call ancient biker boots, baggy jeans and t-shirts that had probably been given away free as promotional items being fully dressed.
At his first glance at Kowalski's hole-riddled white undershirt and his cotton Jockeys with the saggy elastic, Ray's immediate urge was to lock Kowalski in his apartment, and go down to Silverman's men's shop to buy the guy some decent gear. For crying out loud, Kowalski was a detective. He had commendations. Going on four years now he'd hung out with a tall, handsome Canadian in a perfectly pressed wool uniform and a hat whose brim he ironed. It seemed to Ray that at least a little of that sartorial care should have worn off.
Then it occurred to Ray that running out to buy his partner a new set of knickers was an act that might be misconstrued by that partner. And apparently by Ray's libido, because Kowalski standing there with his knobby knees sticking out from under the frayed hem of loose, baby blue boxers, with his worn-through t-shirt clinging tight across his chest while he yawned and blinked and tried to focus enormous blue eyes on Ray, all of that was making Ray want to either adopt him like a puppy, or throw him back onto the bed and kiss him senseless. Ray honestly did not know which scenario surprised him more.
He took refuge in his familiar Chicago Bad Cop routine. "Kowalski, you're a mess. You need new underwear."
Kowalski shoved his glasses onto his face and stuck his chin out. "Bite me."
Disheveled as an alley cat dragged through a knothole backwards, and just as grumpy, Kowalski should not be that... cute. Sweet Baby Jesus, this was bad, very bad. Ray cast aside his pride and resorted immediately to the lowest threat he could imagine. "I will call your mother, and tell her about the deplorable state of your underthings, should you some day need to be taken away in an ambulance. See if I don't."
"My mom's in Arizona."
"She's your mother, Kowalski. Arizona is not far enough away for you to be safe from your mother. China is not far enough away for you to be safe."
Kowalski's lower lip trembled. "I hate you."
Ray snorted. "Go wash your face."
Eyeball-phobia aside, it turned out Kowalski really did seem to have an eerily accurate way with a hunch, and however much he and Ray fought over the next few days, their solve rate was surprisingly good. The down side of this - naturally, there had to be a down side - was that Ray was left to translate Kowalski's hunches and the ensuing mayhem into cop-English, to string everything together into chains of logic and correctly-spelled sentences that could be used to persuade judges to issue search warrants. Kowalski listened to Ray's opinion slightly more than half the time, which was a lot more than he listened to anyone else, and together they developed a knack for solving cases other cops hadn't even realized were cases yet.
Ray had a small epiphany one night, as he lay in bed, exhausted from chasing Kowalski halfway around Chicago, and yet remarkably satisfied with his day's work. He'd made sure Kowalski didn't punch anyone in the face or otherwise fold, spindle or mutilate anybody, even that obnoxious kid at the gas station, who mistook the GTO for a Ford Marquis (Ray would not have blamed Kowalski for that one). They'd found seven stolen purebred Australian Red-tailed Black cockatoos, which the guys at the station laughed at, 'cause ha ha, Vecchio and Kowalski, tracking down pets. They shut up when the grateful owner came to get his birds, and informed the ignorant knuckleheads that said birds were rare in the States, hand-raised, and worth maybe forty grand each.
Welsh had been so pleased with the two of them, he'd almost smiled.
Ray, cautiously optimistic as he lay there in the dark, thought to himself, "This could work."
The next morning, while Kowalski muttered and flailed around in his bedroom Ray, deciding that if he was sticking his fingers in Kowalski's eyes then going through his kitchen cupboards should be no big deal, discovered Kowalski's coffee machine. It had been stuffed into a lower cupboard, way at the back. It was a Braun, for crying out loud; elegant, efficient, and barely used. A tragedy. A genuine, fricking tragedy. Ray finished washing out the filter and the carafe just as Kowalski came out of his room.
Before Kowalski could start bitching about Ray going through his drawers, Ray told him, "You will leave this on your kitchen counter. I will buy some decent beans, freshly ground for our coffee-making convenience, and tomorrow we will start the day like civilized men."
Kowalski shut his mouth, but he sulked for most of the day, until they'd ordered a late lunch from Schuster's Deli, and Ray absolutely refused to allow him to order pastrami with extra pickles, because, Ray said, "I have to be in the car with you all afternoon, and I am not putting up with what extra pickles do to your digestive system."
"Christ on a crutch," Kowalski complained, "you let a guy touch your eyeballs and he thinks he owns you!"
The entire bull pen went silent. Every detective in the room stopped, turned, and stared, like a herd of startled wildebeest checking out the lions on the African savannah.
Ray and Kowalski looked at each other for a second and then burst out laughing.
After lunch they had to go out and track down some jerk, who was wanted as a suspect in the assault of one Helene Martin, age 19. According to the uniforms who'd answered the 911, it had happened late at night on her way home from work, a quick bash-and-run by a guy in a ski mask. Nothing was stolen. Helene's mom said she was sure it was Gary Feeney, Helene's possessive ex-boyfriend.
Helene was a small, dark-eyed girl, with a split lip and a fresh shiner on the right. This meant the guy who'd hurt her was left-handed, and as it happened so was her ex-boyfriend.
While Ray talked to Mrs. Martin, Kowalski talked to Helene. He was so gentle when he spoke, it was as though someone had exchanged Ray's volatile partner for a Zen master. It was unsettling, was what it was.
Kowalski asked if he could help make coffee, and as Helene kept herself busy he told her about how his buddy, Constable Benton Fraser, would make them tea and oatmeal for breakfast over a camp fire up in the Northwest Areas. He talked about sunrises, and scrounging for wood, and how their lead dog had this thing for raisins, and Kowalski would sneak him some from their limited supply.
Helene smiled at that, and then she dropped a cup into shards on the floor and blurted out, "I hate him, I really hate him, but I don't want to carry that with me, I don't want that fear, I don't want this anger, I don't want to carry that kind of baggage!" and she burst into tears.
Mrs. Martin stood up ready to run to the rescue, and Ray was bracing for disaster and an abrupt end to the interview, but Kowalski already had his arms around the girl, crooning that she could be mad for as long as she wanted to, or not if she wanted to, like Masters of the Universe, the power was hers, and she giggled, for Christ's sake, giggled, and cried some more, and punched Kowalski in the arm. For the first time Ray got to see Stanley Raymond Kowalski, the grown-up his Stella had once been married to.
When they left, Kowalski was quiet. Terrifyingly, palpably quiet. Ray got that. He himself had zero sympathy for the Gary Feeneys of the world. Still.
"Listen," Ray cautioned, once they were in the Goat. "This is a nasty business, and I understand a certain lack of charitable feelings toward our suspect--"
"I'm fine," Kowalski snapped. "No problemo. Just fine."
"She was angry, right? You heard how pissed-off she is, and that's good, right, that anger is what'll help her get through this and past this--"
"This," Kowalski yelled, "should never have happened in the first place!"
"Please," Ray begged, "I agree with you, I do." Ray determinedly shut out his memory of beating the crap out of that cowardly little shit, Frank Zuko, after Zuko's goons had beaten up Benny, and how very, very satisfying that had been. At the moment, it was not helpful. "Just... at least don't dismember the guy. Can you at least give me that?"
Kowalski growled. "Okay. All arms and legs remain attached. Fine. Right."
"Thank you."
Ray almost hoped that Gary Feeney wouldn't be home when they went to pick him up.
No such luck. Ray banged on the front door, i.d.'d them as Chicago Police Department, and two seconds later he could hear the back door slam. Kowalski was off and running before Ray even opened his mouth to yelp, "Back door!"
Kowalski vaulted like a gymnast over the fancy iron fence that led to the back yard, while Ray ran around to the other side of the house. Gary Feeney, as tall as Ray and half again as wide, was pelting along the side yard. He took one look at Ray and whirled back the other direction, smack into Kowalski, who grabbed him with both hands, lifted him in a momentum-fueled arc, and slammed him down onto the lawn, then straddled him while he wheezed for breath.
Kowalski grabbed Feeney's left hand, bruised and cut, likely from Helene Martin's front teeth, and brandished it, as Exhibit A. "You," Kowalski snarled, and at that moment Ray was genuinely worried that Kowalski might beat the guy to death right there in front of him, using Feeney's own fist, and then even Ray's remarkable ability at bull-shitting would not be able to save Kowalski from I.A. Gary Feeney suddenly becoming the Late Gary Feeney probably should have bothered him at least as much, but Ray just wasn't that good a person.
Gary Feeney, beater of girls half his size and reeking of sour whiskey, whimpered, pissed himself, and rolled his eyes at Ray. "Come on, I didn't do nothing--"
Kowalski continued, "You, you miserable, useless son of a nobody will ever love you, are under arrest, you fucking worthless coward, for the assault and battery of Helene Martin," and Ray phoned for a blue and white - because no way were they putting that into the GTO - while Kowalski finished off the rest of the Miranda warning, academy-perfect.
The next morning Ray brought the promised coffee to Kowalski's apartment, along with a loaf of whole wheat bread and a jar of organic peanut butter.
Kowalski whined, "I do not eat breakfast on the week days. My stomach isn't even awake until ten!"
If Ray hadn't witnessed both Kowalskis with his own eyes it would have been hard to believe that this guy blinking at him, in bare feet and white boxers that had apparently gone through the wash with something red and not color-fast was the same guy who'd turned into a werewolf the day before when they were chasing that creep Feeney. Kowalski tugged down the hem of his old green t-shirt, hiccuped and rubbed at his nose. "I have Pop Tarts."
Ray dumped the old crumbs out of Kowalski's toaster and informed him, "You will leave this apartment with something in your stomach besides coffee and candy, young man! I am not putting your contacts in until after you've eaten at least one slice of toast."
Kowalski boggled. "You are blackmailing me into eating breakfast?"
His eyes were huge. Huge, and blue, and Ray really needed to not think about that. Or about how Kowalski's white-and-red Jockeys were so old they were practically, wonderfully, transparent, or about the way Ray'd been fantasizing about Kowalski's mouth last night, just before he fell asleep. About the way the warmth of the back of Kowalski's neck against the palm of Ray's hand as he held him still to put his lenses in was forever imprinted into his skin.
"Yes," Ray confirmed. "I am blackmailing you into eating a semi-healthy breakfast."
Kowalski scowled. "You suck."
Ray thought, Don't I wish.
He said, "Put your pants on."
During the next couple of weeks Ray and Kowalski tracked down approximately twenty-seven thousand dollars' worth of illegally imported wind-up robots. That was an awful lot of wind-up robots. Mostly though, it was the cocaine that was hidden inside the robots that made them worth twenty-seven thousand dollars.
"Upon reflection," Welsh informed them agreeably, "I find you worth the space you take up."
One amusing afternoon they double-teamed a teenage shoplifter and would-be tagger they caught in the act at the Kragen auto parts shop, Ray sidling in all smooth and knowing, while Kowalski snuck up from the other side and gave the kid that sort of lazy half-smile that made him look like a serial-killer. The little yahoo put back the spray paint and scrammed, Vecchio calling out after him, "We see you when you're sleeping, kid! Like Santa Claus! With guns!" Kowalski cackled and asked Ray if he wanted to come over and help him tune up the Goat. Which Ray did. They argued, swore at each other, fixed the car 'til she was roaring smoothly, and then got pizza after; half with pineapple, all of it with extra cheese. It was a good day.
Other days, they were a dancing bear act, the bear in this case being a cranky bastard, and to the unfamiliar eye apparently untrainable. Ray had become adept by this time at apologizing, while Kowalski threw down with thugs, mugs, assorted scumbags, occasionally other cops, and on one very special occasion involving the vandalizing of a small, neighborhood pre-school by a South Side gang member who'd just been let off on a deal, the new Assistant District Attorney, one Jason Coolidge, Jr.
Harvard, Ray could tell right off by the way the guy kept trying to be reasonable, had not prepared Jason Coolidge, Jr. for Stanley R. Kowalski's particular method of debate, what with the Kowalski method involving more in the way of bleeding and screaming, and not so much with the wearing of school ties. Before things could get truly ugly, Ray grabbed the back cross-strap of Kowalski's holster, and a fistful of the back of his old grey t-shirt and hauled him, flailing and swearing, down the nearest hallway and, thanking Huey for holding the door open, out of the precinct house.
"I hate you," Kowalski sulked when Ray stuffed him, squirming, into the passenger seat of the newest Riv.
Ray started the engine, thinking fast. "I am starving. You want food? Pizza, a burger? Pie? You want to go get some Chinese, maybe?"
Kowalski slouched in the seat and scowled at his fingernails. "Li Chen's? They got those crunchy little spring rolls. I like those." He slouched further. "Christ, Vecchio, what kind of a guy lets another guy go around scaring little kids, just because he's 'useful'? Stella never would'a let that dickweed get away with it."
"No, she wouldn't," Ray agreed, pulling out into the street. He wondered how Stella was doing, chasing wife-beaters and dead-beat dads down in Tampa. Giving 'em hell, he hoped. He missed her at times like this.
"I don't hate you," Kowalski mumbled. "I don't."
Ray put the brakes on a grin. "Yeah, I know."
Any ordinary day, the urge to strangle Kowalski - to smack him upside the head, or lock him in a closet, or maybe to drench him in chum and throw him into a large body of water infested with sharks - these sorts of thoughts came along with each day like fries with a cheeseburger. But often enough there were little spring rolls, or maybe pie. All in all, life seemed to settle out in Ray's favor.
The next morning, when Ray let himself into Kowalski's apartment, Stanley was still asleep. Ray stood at the bedroom doorway for a few seconds, just watching him be still. He couldn't quite suppress a flicker of wishful thinking, wondering what it might be like to go over there and pull the covers back, to flatten his hand up under Kowalski's t-shirt, feel the warm skin of his belly under there. Then he started thinking about other parts of Kowalski that were covered by blankets and ratty underwear, and he told himself he was a bad, bad man, and he went to make the coffee.
Ten minutes later Kowalski shuffled into the living room, scrunching his face up and trying to wrangle his free-range hair. He grumbled, "Ss'earlyVecchio, wha'the--?' and then the scent of the brewing coffee made itself known, and worked its tender magic. Kowalski's sleep-scrunched face bloomed into a smile, bright and grateful, and he looked at Ray as though Ray had just brought the sun up, all by himself.
Ray thought to himself that this was not a bad way at all to begin a day. Waking Kowalski with a blow-job would have been even better, but the smiling thing was really pretty good.
He said, "I brought jam."
Three weeks later they were on a stakeout, a Wednesday night of all things, staring for hours and hours at the dark, junk-yard palace of one H. Plotkin, gun-runner, drug-dealer, and all-round interesting citizen...
"I hate this," Kowalski growled, "Every time we work with the Feebs we get the sharp end of the stake."
Ray turned to Welsh, "I must concur with my colleague, Sir. The Feds will screw us six ways from Sunday if they think they can get extra credit for a bust."
"Gentlemen," Welsh rumbled, "you have my sincere condolences. However, as the Commissioner has himself pledged our cooperation in the apprehension of Mr. Henry 'Kneecap' Plotkin and his rough-and-tumble associates, we are committed to seeing this through. I hope you will find comfort in the fact that I'm assigning detectives Huey and Dewey as extra back-up, on account of the Feds being morons. Try not to get shot."
Kowalski turned to Ray on their way out of Welsh's office. "What the hell kind of a name is 'Plotkin,' anyways?"
....when Ray suddenly broke the surface of a weird and troubling dream, with Kowalski shaking him awake. Ray woke up with a shout, and nearly clocked his partner before he remembered where he was.
"Sorry, sorry..." Ray rubbed his face.
Kowalski shrugged, "No harm. Dreaming about Vegas?"
Ray frowned, "I don't remember what it was. Why do you assume it was Vegas?"
"You muttered something about Nick, Mr. Angelino, and some 'stupid bastard trying to cheat the roulette table.'"
"Oh." Ray leaned wearily back against the head rest. "Man, it's been a long time since that happened. I'd rather not, all things considered."
Kowalski took a long slurp of bad coffee and offered a cup to Ray. "Yeah, I get it. Part of the reason I don't do under cover anymore. There y'are, having a funny dream about penguins, and then suddenly there's gunfire, and killer mimes." He shuddered. "I hate that."
"Killer mimes?"
Kowalski shuddered again. "Don't ask. Y'know what you should do?"
"What's that? If you mention therapy or meditation, I will have to eliminate you."
"Come north with me and Fraser some time. Maybe in the fall, when the mosquitos have backed off. We can go fishing. Fraser knows all the best places."
"You're inviting me?"
"What did I just say? Was I speaking Swahili?"
Ray grinned. "I appreciate the offer. But you know Canada has it in for me, or didn't Fraser pass on that little piece of information?"
Kowalski snorted. "Canada has it in for everyone. Even Canadians. You have to be either First Nations, or totally deranged to make it outside a city."
"So sayeth a guy who goes up to the Territories voluntarily every February to go dogsledding."
Kowalski cackled softly. "Yeah, well. It helps me burn off extra energy or something. Hey - d'you know what he did the first day we met?"
"He being our favorite deranged Canadian? And aside from destroying my car? "
"He measured my nose!"
"Measured your nose?" Ray blinked.
"To prove I wasn't you."
"What, like people couldn't tell? Oh my god, he was building a case, wasn't he!"
"Everybody kept insisting I was you." Kowalski grimaced ruefully. "Slight hitch in the lines of communication between the time you left and the time he got back from Canada."
"Ah, poor Benny. I never got the chance to explain things properly, and then I disappear, and he comes back to find his apartment burned down, and a scruffy Polack standing where a stylish Italian should be."
"He tried to take a mold of my teeth - using window putty. He tried to disguise window putty in a sandwich, Vecchio!"
Ray chuckled, "Oh, Benny, Benny..."
"And then, when we got to your house--"
"--which was on fire--"
"--which was on fire, I suggest, like a rational person, 'Hey buddy, how about we wait for the fire department, instead of rushing into a burning building like a couple of crazies?' he does that thing where he suddenly grows about six inches taller, and he says, 'Ray Vecchio would!'"
Ray laughed, "No, I most certainly would not!"
Kowalski beat his fist once against the steering wheel. "I didn't think so! I did not think so! But Fraser gets this look on his face, like..." He flailed, as though trolling the air for an adjective. "What is that, that look he gets? It's like getting glared at by a whole room full of nuns."
"It's the Disapproving Mountie look, Stanley. Banned by the Geneva Convention. I'm surprised you didn't get used to it."
"Oh, hardy ha ha - hey, we got some action up there at Plotkin's yard!"
And then Ray was on the radio, calling for their Federal back-up.
Their Federal back-up, it worked out, were seven minutes behind Huey and Dewey. Seven minutes in a gun-fight is an eternity.
At 3:14 Thursday afternoon Ray, having slept for exactly one hour and twenty-six minutes since Tuesday night, counting the uneasy nap he'd taken in the car, was sitting in Kowalski's hospital room, watching a hockey game with the sound off. They'd got Plotkin, the Feds were crowing over what a coup it was, and Welsh, Ray'd been told by a nervous-looking Huey, was contemplating the relative merits of inter-agency assassinations.
Ray's knuckles hurt. He looked down at his right hand, at the neat, white bandages that criss-crossed over the back of his hand, and under his palm, and over his bruised knuckles. A little bit of blood had seeped through. Ray recalled, in a blurry sort of hindsight, his earnest attempt to disassemble the son of a bitch who'd shot Kowalski, who had stepped in front of the bullet that had been meant for Ray, and Ray started to shake, because he was suddenly terrified all over again and, apparently, still murderous, because his right fist did not hurt enough.
At this point Kowalski, who was supposed to be completely zonked out on medication mumbled, in the exact tone of voice he used when he'd checked out a suspect's alibi and it did not wash, "You kissed me," and Ray broke right down and cried.
"Hey. Hey," Kowalski murmured, reaching one hand out from under the rumpled covers, the hand that didn't have an i.v. drip attached to it. He pawed at Ray's mangled shirt, still dusty and stained from the cluster-fuck of the night before. "I see things," Kowalski said, like that was supposed to be reassuring.
Ray pressed his hands to his eyes, trying to turn off the waterworks. He'd kissed Kowalski while the guy was half-conscious on a gurney in the ambulance, like Prince Moron and Bleeding Beauty. What was he, unhinged? "The meds giving you hallucinations?"
Kowalski cleared his throat. "Not like that. Jeez, not like that, I mean..." His long fingers climbed Ray's arm and flailed a little, his reach too short to touch Ray's face. "People think 'cause I'm such a spazz--"
"You are not a spazz!"
"Shut up. Wounded cop confessing, here. I notice things, Vecchio. I'm a hot-head and I can't spell worth a damn, and my favorite words are the ones that get quickest to the point, and that's what other people see, that's how they see me. But I notice things while they're busy sticking me into a fucking category. You... you kissed me, Vecchio. What did you see that made you do that?"
Ray moaned miserably, "What did I--? Jesus, Kowalski... Look, what did you do the first day you met Fraser?"
Kowalski blinked at him. "Aside from driving your burning Riviera into the lake they call Michigan?"
"Aside from that, yes. What did you do?"
"Ate window putty? Caught a crazy arsonist? Annoyed Fraser? Learned a secondary definition for the word 'posture'?"
Ray shifted in his chair, ignoring the way his lower back protested at having sat in the same position for nearly twelve hours. He twined his fingers with Kowalski's, the fingers that had recently been trying to reach his face. "You stepped in front of a bullet for Fraser. You'd known the guy all of a day, and you stepped in front of a bullet for him, just like you did for me, today. Another couple of inches to the right, and you'd be down there visiting Mort, instead of going home tomorrow."
"I didn't mean to," Kowalski apologized.
Ray laughed, "I know. That's the beauty of you. It's what I see every day, Kowalski. Every time I have to apologize for you having slugged a rapist or a murderer; every time I re-do your crappy paperwork; every time, I see that guy who gets outraged at a world where assholes wander around at will, getting their jollies selling coke to little kids, or beating up girls; that guy who steps in front of a bullet for his partner without thinking about it. That is why I kissed you, Kowalski, and God help me, if you gave me a chance I'd do it again. I'm sorry if that freaks you out, but--"
"It doesn't freak me out," Kowalski interrupted, and his fingers squeezed Ray's a little.
Ray's sleep-deprived brain took a moment to contemplate the implications. "Oh. Oh? Um, so, does that mean, just that you're not going to apply for a new partner, or that I might get another chance, to, y'know...?"
Kowalski snickered, wincing as he wriggled the wrong way. "Ow. I mean that last thing."
Ray's voice squeaked embarrassingly. "Really?"
Kowalski smiled at him, all soft and quiet, and Ray felt like a total idiot, because how did he not notice this while he was noticing all that other stuff?
"Really," Kowalski said.
"I think I need to re-retire," Ray decided.
Kowalski frowned at him. "Did we not just establish that we are both okay with the mutual attraction thing?"
"Exactly," Ray said. "In case you haven't noticed, the universe has got it in for me as a cop. If I stick around, either I am going to get killed, or you will, trying to save me, and honest to God, Kowalski, I could not live with that."
"Oh," Kowalski admitted, "I guess you make a fair point, there. So... what do we do? I mean, about..." and he squeezed Ray's hand again.
Ray took a deep breath. "I get a job at something non-life-threatening. You get used to me sleeping on the right-hand side of your bed."
Kowalski squirmed in his hospital sheets, biting his lip thoughtfully. Pretty soon that smile that Ray looked forward to every morning when Kowalski staggered out into his tiny living room in his ratty t-shirt and his see-through Jockeys, and he smelled Ray's coffee, and he looked at Ray like suddenly the day was worth getting out of bed for, that smile bloomed over Kowalski's face. "You think we wouldn't kill each other if we tried it?"
Ray thought that with good food to come home to and regular, enthusiastic sex, Stanley Raymond Kowalski would be a much happier person, and a hell of a lot easier for the world in general, and Ray in particular to deal with.
Ray said, "Only one way to find out."
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