A fic! New, but not.
So I found these floppy disks in my old bedroom at home, right? And I brought them home after Christmas because I was curious to know what was on them. It was likely to be old school projects (We still used floppies when I was in undergrad! Heh.) but it turned out to be a lot of really old fic. I'm talking Wordperfect files I'd been hiding since the late 90s, up to random snatches of stuff I wrote in 2006. It was all pre-LJ, anyway, when I was nothing but a baaaaaaby!fangirl lurking around like a big lurkerface.
Some of the stuff was actually dS fic--or the aimless beginnings of some--and it didn't actually seem bad upon reading nearly 4 years later. I sent off a ficlet to sionnain to ask if it was worth posting, even incomplete, and she proceeded to capslock at me to POST RIGHT NOW. So, here it is, unbeta'd with no real ending, and with a brand new and very apropos title:
Unfinished Business
Ray/Ray with an F/K/V backdrop
PG-13, ~2400 words
"Hey! Hey, Vecchio, hold it! I gotta talk to you!"
Ray had said this-more or less-at least five times since the weekend. It was Tuesday.
The man in question flapped a hand at him, beating a hasty retreat up the hall and not even looking back as he waded through the midday crowd. "No can do, Kowalski! I have to go see a guy about a thing," he called over his shoulder. This was totally a lie, since he’d been coming in to the bullpen until he’d laid eyes on Ray, at which point he’d booked it out of there.
He wasn’t going to be able to avoid this forever.
"I mean it, Vecchio. Wait!"
"I’ll catch up later!"
"You said that yesterday," Ray argued. He was gaining ground, quickly now, dodging around a guy carrying a stack of files nearly as tall as he was and a harried looking uniformed cop dragging a whining teenager toward Interview 2, while Vecchio was jammed up at the corner.
"No time right now," Vecchio was protesting, trying to scurry around to the exit exactly like the cool character he liked people to think he was shouldn’t. It would have been comical if Ray weren’t so pissed at him. He reached out, fingers closing on dense, expensive material and reeled Vecchio in backwards by his collar. The shirt felt like linen today, and his skin was warm where Ray’s knuckles brushed the back of his neck. Ray had to firmly push down the sense memory that came with the feeling.
"Make time, Vecchio, or the whole precinct is gonna hear about what things and guys you’ve been seeing," he hissed in his ear, which earned a gratifying shudder. He hauled Vecchio into one of the lesser-used small interview rooms-it had no mirror.
Vecchio retreated to stand near the table in the middle of the room, crossing his arms and keeping them crossed, though Ray could tell by the set of his shoulders he wanted to drop them again, maybe duck his head and run a palm over his close-cropped hair. People knocked Ray for his inability to stay still sometimes, but everyone had their own set of twitches. Vecchio was trying for a cross between impatient and indifferent, but Ray figured he was probably weighing the odds of getting through him to the door.
"So, Vecchio," Ray said casually, leaning back against the door. "What the fuck?"
Green eyes flicked up and down once, slowly enough to be telling, and then skittered away to inspect the cracks in the paint. "Look, I-look, Kowalski, I never thought that something’d actually-and I don’t want to screw things up, for him. Or you. And it’s just, I never thought, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to-"
"So you figured you’d just pretend-real casual-like, I gotta say, since fucking everybody and Frannie’s been asking me what your deal is-that nothing happened?" Ray burst out, his anger boiling up and making him have to move-to gesture furiously and start pacing before he walked across the room and did something completely stupid. "This is exactly how to screw us up, you asshole!"
"Jesus Christ, will you keep it down?" Vecchio demanded, watching Ray warily.
"Do not start your paranoid bullshit," Ray growled, annoyed that he’d lowered his voice anyhow.
"It’s not paranoid, you dumbass; we’re in the station," Vecchio hissed right back, face flushing. "We still gotta work here, you know."
Ray stopped pacing and violently mimed his incredulity, spreading his hands at his sides. "You call this work? Avoiding your partner for three days is not work, Vecchio," Ray replied hotly, before running one hand up through his hair and pulling on it in frustration. "Fuck, I should have known this was gonna happen. Should’ve fucking said no."
"Oh, like you could have," Vecchio sneered. It would have been more grating, annoying like only he could be, except that the curl in his lip didn’t reach his eyes. "Benny finally works himself up to asking for what he wants and you’ve have said no? As if you could. As if either of us could."
"Oh fuck you, I could. I could if it was nothing but him wanting to pick up a missed chance again-"
Vecchio tipped his head back and raised his eyebrows, holding his arms tighter. "Isn’t that what it is?"
Ray glared at him for a long moment. "He loves you, you asshole."
His eyes flickered. "Which has shit to do with-Listen, you-You’ve got this habit, Kowalski, of taking bullets for people whether you should or not. Just . . . letting people fuck you up, or something. Stubborn son of a bitch. You say you could say no, but you won’t ’cause you’ve decided. You’ll go and go and take your hits until someone tells you to fuck off. And then you’ll still try."
"That is not what I-You know fuck all, Vecchio," Ray accused, not liking the way this was going at all.
"I know it’s your mission in life to drive me batshit. I finally get used to this and get a good thing going again and you gotta go try to make it more for some fucked up reason, like Stella wasn’t enough, like Be-"
"Hey, hey, do not go there," Ray protested, pointing his index and little fingers right at Vecchio’s eyes. "Like I’m fucking looking to superin-super-overlap our lives in wildly bizarre ways or something? Do you think we planned for any of this? Believe me, Vecchio, you were not in the five-year outlook, so you can forget being some sort of victim here. We didn’t talk you into nothing. You weren’t even drunk." Maybe if he had been, he wouldn’t have taken off like that, leaving Ray to talk down Fraser, who felt like he’d driven off his best friend again. To say nothing of how Ray had dreaded Monday and seeing Vecchio pretend he didn’t know him, didn’t want to talk to him, had nothing to say.
They’d been partners for months now, coming up on a year, ever since they came back to Chicago, and even if neither of them would say it they were friends. Cops again too, fucking great cops, different than Ray and Fraser or Vecchio and Fraser, but with their own verve, their own sarcastic, irritable duet. Fucking legends someday, he could feel it. So much in common and so different you’d think, like most people did, that they’d continue to hate each other like they had on sight that first day. But no, they became this team, the only two guys who knew how to follow Fraser, how to watch his back, help him up, follow his lead and head him off and be made into better men than they were. A matched set, flint and knife. Great, until now.
"This wouldn’t be so messed up if I had been drunk," Vecchio sighed, leaning against the table behind him wearily.
Ray decided he was going to ignore that fact that Vecchio was repeating his thoughts to him and take that the wrong way. "Is that what it is with you? You having some sort of midlife crisis here, this sudden attack of Catholic bullshit-"
"Christ, no! You think I would have had my tongue in your mouth if I had a problem with-"
"-’Cause I’ll tell you, I will kick the shit out of you. We are not some fucking experiment, Vecchio. You do not get to jerk Ben around like that, you don’t get to jerk me around like-"
"-It’s about having fucking missed my chance and not realizing shit until I was in the fucking desert and finally getting over that. And finding out later that that was totally bullshit, getting divorced again, and my head so screwed around and finding out Benny’s shacked up with my fucking cover guy-"
"That it? Is it jealousy, or me, or the way you never learned to detox Armando, or the fact that you seem to have no fucking clue what to do with someone who meets you halfway? ’Cause you’re right about one thing, I ain’t gonna let this go." Ray realized he’d gotten right into Vecchio’s space, making him step back until the table got in his way.
Vecchio put a hand over his eyes, like he had to block out the sight of Ray. This close, he could smell Vecchio’s cologne and hear him breathing, count the lines in his knuckles and see the way his lips twitched down just- "I just don’t understand you at all," Vecchio complained. He had taken his hand away to run it over his shorn head, and was looking straight at Ray. "You got a good thing with Benny, real good, but you find out we’ve got some . . . unresolved stuff between us, and instead of getting mad or insecure-like only you know how, by the way-you get Benny to tell me-"
"Yeah. And let me tell you, that took some work." Weeks on eggshells, wondering what was going in Fraser’s mind. Did he think Ray was trying to get rid of him? Trying to trap him into doing something wrong? Could he just trust him? Jesus, it was so tense you could have cut the air between them with a knife, until . . . "Look, Vecchio, the thing is, I don’t care what the thing is. You work out your issues on your own time, but you can’t leave Fraser hanging like this. He thinks he’s blown it. It’d be easier if he could blame me, but he hasn’t got it in him."
Vecchio gave him a sharp look for a moment, and then shook his head. "I’d blame you if I could figure out what the fuck it is you’re doing," Vecchio sighed. "You make no sense."
"Fuck sense," Ray muttered, and kissed him.
At first, it was exactly like the first time, on Saturday night. Vecchio was caught by surprise, so he jerked back a little. Except he was blocked by the table, and Ray had a hold on his jacket, curling his hand under the lapel. He could only move his head back and Ray was following anyhow. Eventually he got the idea, and then it was fucking show time with him. Vecchio was all or nothing-either he was pursing his lips and leaning back or he was licking the roof of Ray’s mouth and reaching for t-shirt and belt loops, almost no in-between, no warning. After a moment’s pause to consider the abrupt detour, Ray was leaning into it with a sigh. Yeah, just the same, except it was a table holding them up and not Fraser.
"This-this is fucking why-" Ray mumbled against Vecchio’s lips, pushing his hips forward and moving Vecchio’s foot aside with his own before slipping his leg between and fitting them together, feet, hips and chest, warm all along him. Their belt buckles clicked together and his hand wandered up behind Vecchio’s head to rub at the soft fuzz of hair there. The table legs scraped ominously on the floor, but held, and Ray didn’t care anyhow.
"This is so fucking stupid," Vecchio said, looking up at the ceiling and gasping a little as Ray took the opportunity to suck kisses along his jaw line and slip the tips of his fingers under the belt at the small of his back and start to pull the shirt un-tucked. "Anyone could just-walk in here-"
"No one uses this room, you jumpy bastard," Ray muttered into his neck, which tasted like salt and a little like coffee and the spice and alcohol in his cologne and God it made him hard. When the hell had he started wanting this anyhow? Vecchio was right; he’d had a good damn thing, a fucking excellent thing with Fraser. Didn’t need or want anything else from anyone. But then, he’d seen that regret on Fraser’s face and that half-hidden loneliness on Vecchio’s and wondered, wondered if he could. . .
"You-you should talk about 'jumpy'-Ray, Jesus-" Vecchio’s hips stuttered up, and his fingers pulled at the waist of Ray’s jeans where he’d been holding on tightly.
Ray groaned and kissed him again, suddenly aching sharply, grinding forward, looking for pressure. They had started off like this last time too, only with Fraser helping. Fraser looking glazed and more worked up than Ray’d ever seen him as he bit the back of Vecchio’s neck and insinuated his hands anywhere there was a hint of space between them. It should have made him jealous but only kind of stunned him, since it wasn’t just about Vecchio, it was about both of them. It had been just like this, and got just as interrupted by Vecchio’s fucking thinking.
Vecchio pulled away again. "S-seriously, stop it. People saw us come in here." Wasn’t stopping him from sticking his fingers in Ray’s back pockets, the hypocritical jerk.
"Ah, fuck," Ray grunted. He stopped moving his hips but didn’t let go, leaning himself against Vecchio and catching his breath with his nose in his collar. After a moment to collect himself, he spoke, "So, you gonna apologize to Ben for being a fuckhead?" he asked, muffled a little by the fabric covering Vecchio’s shoulder.
A sigh in his ear, and Vecchio turned his head and rested his cheek on Ray’s hair. Sappy bastard. There was this time, when Ray ‘pulled a Fraser’ chasing an armed suspect and fell climbing a high fence after nearly getting winged by a bullet. And Vecchio at dragged him up off the ground in one move, patting him over and swearing at him until he figured out he was okay, and just let out his breath and rested his head and held on for just a moment . . . It wasn’t the first time something like that had happened, but it was the first time Ray noticed . . .
"He really upset?"
"The fuck do you think? He says 'I’m fine, it’s fine,' every question I ask, even if it’s about breakfast or something. I’m ready to kill him."
He felt the wince. "You two are some real pieces of work, you know?"
Vecchio was pulling his hands off Ray’s ass and standing up straight, giving him the send off. Ray unwound himself and stepped back, watching Vecchio reach behind to tuck his shirt back in. Absently, Ray reached down to adjust himself. Lucky he’d worn some old jeans that were a little too big today.
"You should talk."
*****
:D?
Some of the stuff was actually dS fic--or the aimless beginnings of some--and it didn't actually seem bad upon reading nearly 4 years later. I sent off a ficlet to sionnain to ask if it was worth posting, even incomplete, and she proceeded to capslock at me to POST RIGHT NOW. So, here it is, unbeta'd with no real ending, and with a brand new and very apropos title:
Unfinished Business
Ray/Ray with an F/K/V backdrop
PG-13, ~2400 words
"Hey! Hey, Vecchio, hold it! I gotta talk to you!"
Ray had said this-more or less-at least five times since the weekend. It was Tuesday.
The man in question flapped a hand at him, beating a hasty retreat up the hall and not even looking back as he waded through the midday crowd. "No can do, Kowalski! I have to go see a guy about a thing," he called over his shoulder. This was totally a lie, since he’d been coming in to the bullpen until he’d laid eyes on Ray, at which point he’d booked it out of there.
He wasn’t going to be able to avoid this forever.
"I mean it, Vecchio. Wait!"
"I’ll catch up later!"
"You said that yesterday," Ray argued. He was gaining ground, quickly now, dodging around a guy carrying a stack of files nearly as tall as he was and a harried looking uniformed cop dragging a whining teenager toward Interview 2, while Vecchio was jammed up at the corner.
"No time right now," Vecchio was protesting, trying to scurry around to the exit exactly like the cool character he liked people to think he was shouldn’t. It would have been comical if Ray weren’t so pissed at him. He reached out, fingers closing on dense, expensive material and reeled Vecchio in backwards by his collar. The shirt felt like linen today, and his skin was warm where Ray’s knuckles brushed the back of his neck. Ray had to firmly push down the sense memory that came with the feeling.
"Make time, Vecchio, or the whole precinct is gonna hear about what things and guys you’ve been seeing," he hissed in his ear, which earned a gratifying shudder. He hauled Vecchio into one of the lesser-used small interview rooms-it had no mirror.
Vecchio retreated to stand near the table in the middle of the room, crossing his arms and keeping them crossed, though Ray could tell by the set of his shoulders he wanted to drop them again, maybe duck his head and run a palm over his close-cropped hair. People knocked Ray for his inability to stay still sometimes, but everyone had their own set of twitches. Vecchio was trying for a cross between impatient and indifferent, but Ray figured he was probably weighing the odds of getting through him to the door.
"So, Vecchio," Ray said casually, leaning back against the door. "What the fuck?"
Green eyes flicked up and down once, slowly enough to be telling, and then skittered away to inspect the cracks in the paint. "Look, I-look, Kowalski, I never thought that something’d actually-and I don’t want to screw things up, for him. Or you. And it’s just, I never thought, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to-"
"So you figured you’d just pretend-real casual-like, I gotta say, since fucking everybody and Frannie’s been asking me what your deal is-that nothing happened?" Ray burst out, his anger boiling up and making him have to move-to gesture furiously and start pacing before he walked across the room and did something completely stupid. "This is exactly how to screw us up, you asshole!"
"Jesus Christ, will you keep it down?" Vecchio demanded, watching Ray warily.
"Do not start your paranoid bullshit," Ray growled, annoyed that he’d lowered his voice anyhow.
"It’s not paranoid, you dumbass; we’re in the station," Vecchio hissed right back, face flushing. "We still gotta work here, you know."
Ray stopped pacing and violently mimed his incredulity, spreading his hands at his sides. "You call this work? Avoiding your partner for three days is not work, Vecchio," Ray replied hotly, before running one hand up through his hair and pulling on it in frustration. "Fuck, I should have known this was gonna happen. Should’ve fucking said no."
"Oh, like you could have," Vecchio sneered. It would have been more grating, annoying like only he could be, except that the curl in his lip didn’t reach his eyes. "Benny finally works himself up to asking for what he wants and you’ve have said no? As if you could. As if either of us could."
"Oh fuck you, I could. I could if it was nothing but him wanting to pick up a missed chance again-"
Vecchio tipped his head back and raised his eyebrows, holding his arms tighter. "Isn’t that what it is?"
Ray glared at him for a long moment. "He loves you, you asshole."
His eyes flickered. "Which has shit to do with-Listen, you-You’ve got this habit, Kowalski, of taking bullets for people whether you should or not. Just . . . letting people fuck you up, or something. Stubborn son of a bitch. You say you could say no, but you won’t ’cause you’ve decided. You’ll go and go and take your hits until someone tells you to fuck off. And then you’ll still try."
"That is not what I-You know fuck all, Vecchio," Ray accused, not liking the way this was going at all.
"I know it’s your mission in life to drive me batshit. I finally get used to this and get a good thing going again and you gotta go try to make it more for some fucked up reason, like Stella wasn’t enough, like Be-"
"Hey, hey, do not go there," Ray protested, pointing his index and little fingers right at Vecchio’s eyes. "Like I’m fucking looking to superin-super-overlap our lives in wildly bizarre ways or something? Do you think we planned for any of this? Believe me, Vecchio, you were not in the five-year outlook, so you can forget being some sort of victim here. We didn’t talk you into nothing. You weren’t even drunk." Maybe if he had been, he wouldn’t have taken off like that, leaving Ray to talk down Fraser, who felt like he’d driven off his best friend again. To say nothing of how Ray had dreaded Monday and seeing Vecchio pretend he didn’t know him, didn’t want to talk to him, had nothing to say.
They’d been partners for months now, coming up on a year, ever since they came back to Chicago, and even if neither of them would say it they were friends. Cops again too, fucking great cops, different than Ray and Fraser or Vecchio and Fraser, but with their own verve, their own sarcastic, irritable duet. Fucking legends someday, he could feel it. So much in common and so different you’d think, like most people did, that they’d continue to hate each other like they had on sight that first day. But no, they became this team, the only two guys who knew how to follow Fraser, how to watch his back, help him up, follow his lead and head him off and be made into better men than they were. A matched set, flint and knife. Great, until now.
"This wouldn’t be so messed up if I had been drunk," Vecchio sighed, leaning against the table behind him wearily.
Ray decided he was going to ignore that fact that Vecchio was repeating his thoughts to him and take that the wrong way. "Is that what it is with you? You having some sort of midlife crisis here, this sudden attack of Catholic bullshit-"
"Christ, no! You think I would have had my tongue in your mouth if I had a problem with-"
"-’Cause I’ll tell you, I will kick the shit out of you. We are not some fucking experiment, Vecchio. You do not get to jerk Ben around like that, you don’t get to jerk me around like-"
"-It’s about having fucking missed my chance and not realizing shit until I was in the fucking desert and finally getting over that. And finding out later that that was totally bullshit, getting divorced again, and my head so screwed around and finding out Benny’s shacked up with my fucking cover guy-"
"That it? Is it jealousy, or me, or the way you never learned to detox Armando, or the fact that you seem to have no fucking clue what to do with someone who meets you halfway? ’Cause you’re right about one thing, I ain’t gonna let this go." Ray realized he’d gotten right into Vecchio’s space, making him step back until the table got in his way.
Vecchio put a hand over his eyes, like he had to block out the sight of Ray. This close, he could smell Vecchio’s cologne and hear him breathing, count the lines in his knuckles and see the way his lips twitched down just- "I just don’t understand you at all," Vecchio complained. He had taken his hand away to run it over his shorn head, and was looking straight at Ray. "You got a good thing with Benny, real good, but you find out we’ve got some . . . unresolved stuff between us, and instead of getting mad or insecure-like only you know how, by the way-you get Benny to tell me-"
"Yeah. And let me tell you, that took some work." Weeks on eggshells, wondering what was going in Fraser’s mind. Did he think Ray was trying to get rid of him? Trying to trap him into doing something wrong? Could he just trust him? Jesus, it was so tense you could have cut the air between them with a knife, until . . . "Look, Vecchio, the thing is, I don’t care what the thing is. You work out your issues on your own time, but you can’t leave Fraser hanging like this. He thinks he’s blown it. It’d be easier if he could blame me, but he hasn’t got it in him."
Vecchio gave him a sharp look for a moment, and then shook his head. "I’d blame you if I could figure out what the fuck it is you’re doing," Vecchio sighed. "You make no sense."
"Fuck sense," Ray muttered, and kissed him.
At first, it was exactly like the first time, on Saturday night. Vecchio was caught by surprise, so he jerked back a little. Except he was blocked by the table, and Ray had a hold on his jacket, curling his hand under the lapel. He could only move his head back and Ray was following anyhow. Eventually he got the idea, and then it was fucking show time with him. Vecchio was all or nothing-either he was pursing his lips and leaning back or he was licking the roof of Ray’s mouth and reaching for t-shirt and belt loops, almost no in-between, no warning. After a moment’s pause to consider the abrupt detour, Ray was leaning into it with a sigh. Yeah, just the same, except it was a table holding them up and not Fraser.
"This-this is fucking why-" Ray mumbled against Vecchio’s lips, pushing his hips forward and moving Vecchio’s foot aside with his own before slipping his leg between and fitting them together, feet, hips and chest, warm all along him. Their belt buckles clicked together and his hand wandered up behind Vecchio’s head to rub at the soft fuzz of hair there. The table legs scraped ominously on the floor, but held, and Ray didn’t care anyhow.
"This is so fucking stupid," Vecchio said, looking up at the ceiling and gasping a little as Ray took the opportunity to suck kisses along his jaw line and slip the tips of his fingers under the belt at the small of his back and start to pull the shirt un-tucked. "Anyone could just-walk in here-"
"No one uses this room, you jumpy bastard," Ray muttered into his neck, which tasted like salt and a little like coffee and the spice and alcohol in his cologne and God it made him hard. When the hell had he started wanting this anyhow? Vecchio was right; he’d had a good damn thing, a fucking excellent thing with Fraser. Didn’t need or want anything else from anyone. But then, he’d seen that regret on Fraser’s face and that half-hidden loneliness on Vecchio’s and wondered, wondered if he could. . .
"You-you should talk about 'jumpy'-Ray, Jesus-" Vecchio’s hips stuttered up, and his fingers pulled at the waist of Ray’s jeans where he’d been holding on tightly.
Ray groaned and kissed him again, suddenly aching sharply, grinding forward, looking for pressure. They had started off like this last time too, only with Fraser helping. Fraser looking glazed and more worked up than Ray’d ever seen him as he bit the back of Vecchio’s neck and insinuated his hands anywhere there was a hint of space between them. It should have made him jealous but only kind of stunned him, since it wasn’t just about Vecchio, it was about both of them. It had been just like this, and got just as interrupted by Vecchio’s fucking thinking.
Vecchio pulled away again. "S-seriously, stop it. People saw us come in here." Wasn’t stopping him from sticking his fingers in Ray’s back pockets, the hypocritical jerk.
"Ah, fuck," Ray grunted. He stopped moving his hips but didn’t let go, leaning himself against Vecchio and catching his breath with his nose in his collar. After a moment to collect himself, he spoke, "So, you gonna apologize to Ben for being a fuckhead?" he asked, muffled a little by the fabric covering Vecchio’s shoulder.
A sigh in his ear, and Vecchio turned his head and rested his cheek on Ray’s hair. Sappy bastard. There was this time, when Ray ‘pulled a Fraser’ chasing an armed suspect and fell climbing a high fence after nearly getting winged by a bullet. And Vecchio at dragged him up off the ground in one move, patting him over and swearing at him until he figured out he was okay, and just let out his breath and rested his head and held on for just a moment . . . It wasn’t the first time something like that had happened, but it was the first time Ray noticed . . .
"He really upset?"
"The fuck do you think? He says 'I’m fine, it’s fine,' every question I ask, even if it’s about breakfast or something. I’m ready to kill him."
He felt the wince. "You two are some real pieces of work, you know?"
Vecchio was pulling his hands off Ray’s ass and standing up straight, giving him the send off. Ray unwound himself and stepped back, watching Vecchio reach behind to tuck his shirt back in. Absently, Ray reached down to adjust himself. Lucky he’d worn some old jeans that were a little too big today.
"You should talk."
*****
:D?