"Do you already love the elevator?" Ray asked as he, Benton, and Dief piled in. "If we were back at your place you'd have to carry me up. Or strap me to Dief's back."

He didn't feel that bad anymore, but he was pretty sure climbing six flights of stairs would fall under the No Strenuous Activities rule the doctors had slapped him with.

Ray woke up in an unfamiliar room, in an unfamiliar bed, his body thrumming with dulled pain.

The important part was, he woke up.

That was nice, that he was alive and all. Secure in this knowledge, he drifted back to sleep.

Later, Ray woke up again. He was in a hospital, he hurt. There was a strange pressure on his hand, and looking over he discovered ( Read more... )

Ray pulled up in front of Benton's apartment complex, and looked out the window and up at the rows of windows. No way was he looking forward to walking up six flights just to give Benton's door a knock, not when they'd just be leaving a moment later. To top it all off he was...weirdly nervous. He hadn't been on a date, not one that meant anything, ( Read more... )

Ray, when he realized what he was seeing, nearly tore up the streets of Siam to get to Benton's apartment. He parked. He took the five billion steps two at a time until he ended up at Benton's door, impatient, red-faced, and out of breath, and knocked until the door opened for him.

So it wasn't like Ray was stalking Benton or anything...it was just. Work was boring. And he was looking up the names of all kinds of people on his chat program, just to see if they had an account. And one of those names happened to be Benton Fraser. And he maybe couldn't help it if, when he entered the name and it came up with a result, he sat up ( Read more... )

The whole thing had been a setup, and now Ray had somehow become the suspect. Fuck, and maybe he was the one who'd shot Volpe, who knew when the last thing he remembered was Volpe giving him the ol' feel-up for a wire. Real smooth, Kowalski. So what was a guy to do with a psycho, trigger-happy PK couldn't listen to reason? You ran. So he was ( Read more... )