Fic: Three States Part III (Cowritten with slwatson, Due South, Turnbull/Vecchio, PG13)
Three States
Fandom: Due South
Characters: Turnbull/Vecchio (pre-slash)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 23322 Total (All parts)
Summary: Ray takes a hit to the vest. The result? Three states, three days, and two men in the best sort of trouble.
Notes: Arch to the Sky. Co-written with sl_walker. Please allow me to assure you that all the good bits are hers.
Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V
The trip down the stairs was mercifully without damsel-incident. That wasn't to say it was quick. It was slower going than the trip up, even if down should really be easier; it probably had a lot to do with Turnbull's fussing. It must've been every three stairs that he felt the need to ask after Ray. He imagined that probably grew irritating.
"Are you all right, Ray?"
"Yeah, Ren. Don't mind me, just crippled."
"Are you certain you're quite all right?"
"I'm fine. Gimme a sec."
"Perhaps we should stop."
"Nah. I'm not fainting yet."
"I would be happy to attempt to carry you--"
"Geez, Ren, you'd think I'd just been shot or somethin'."
"Are you certain you wouldn't like me to carry you the rest--?"
"Man, it's kinda funny how even beat up like this my sister would probably kill to be me right now."
Finally, mercifully -- or not, as this meant again driving the Riviera and all of the inherent potential for disaster -- they were settled in the car. Thus far, there had been no real attempts to figure out where they were going. Which meant that the entire first several minutes of sitting in the car was in relative silence, with one fidgeting Mountie and one out-of-breath detective.
It was Ray who broke the silence, sprawled again in the passenger's seat with his eyes closed, still gradually catching his breath. His face was tight, but his tone was calm and good-natured despite it. "So, where you wanna go?"
"I'm not certain, Ray. I don't particularly have anywhere I want to be, at the moment." The urge to continue fussing was quite difficult to ignore. Instead, Turnbull whipped out his handkerchief and polished off the already-smooth steering wheel.
"Me either. 'Cept, not at home." Ray leaned his head against the window. The car was well-baked in the heat of the day, which made this even less comfortable. "How 'bout this... you drive, and if you see somethin' you wanna stop and do, we stop and do it."
Oh, dear. This really was rapidly turning into a disaster. "I-- yes, Ray."
"I mean it, Renny. 'Cause if you spend the next several hours drivin' and getting all twisted up tryin' to think about what I might wanna do, I'm gonna drive--"
Turnbull surprised himself by interrupting, aghast, "--but your injuries--"
"--and I'm gonna stuff you in the trunk, too. Got me?"
It was strange how tempting a ride in the trunk was at this moment, Ray's injuries aside. At least then the matter was beyond his control. Turnbull was reasonably ashamed at that thought, and after a moment's half-freeze, half-hanging on the rest of his interruption, he sighed. "Yes, Ray."
"Uh-huh." It was entirely smug. "Thought so."
Turnbull actually knew quite a bit of the city. He just tended to know it by bus route, not direct, and it was quite true that he had no specific place in mind. His polishing had moved on to the dash, randomly. Meandering. He stopped when he found himself leaning to polish down the passenger side dash. He flicked the handkerchief back and pocketed it.
There was a long moment where he stared at the steering wheel as though considering very carefully. "...ah, how... how spacious is your trunk, Ray?"
Turnbull was pleasantly surprised to find that got a laugh, though he was instantly guilty for the wince that went with it.
He shook his head a little as he slipped the key in and started the vehicle. This was a bad idea. A terribly bad idea. And he found he couldn't argue.
"Okay, good. It's the one on the right that makes it go," Ray said, letting his head fall back to the window, eyes closed. He was still smiling when he did.
It had been quite a long time since he had driven to any degree beyond short trips in the consulate's vehicle, but after awhile, he found it came back more naturally than he might have liked it to. But it was certainly better than thinking too much about the myriad of things he wasn't in any rush whatsoever to work over in his head, at least, and there was something soothing about the sound of the tires on the freeway.
In fact, Turnbull had managed a state of something not unlike 'zen' all the way up until he realized that Ray was not merely resting with his eyes closed and his seat back slightly, but that he was actually asleep.
That, of course, kicked off a number more thoughts he didn't want to have. It was unfathomable, really, that this man not only handed him the keys to the Riviera, a car he loved passionately, but that he trusted Turnbull enough to sleep during the ride. Turnbull was still boggled by this.
It wasn't that Ray hadn't put some measure of trust in him lately, specifically when it came to tracking down subjects and suspects on those days they rode together. That took a great deal of faith, as a situation could go badly at any given point, but Turnbull had some measure of faith in his training and experience. He wasn't leading those ventures, merely following Ray's lead, and his training and reflexes were still good. At least, in terms of apprehension and, occasionally, some degree of interrogation. He could still run, he could still take someone down and he was still quick with the handcuffs. It required very little thought, or so he'd believed. The reward was the rush of doing well at something he had half-forgotten he was good at while he was busy dodging Thatcher's hammer every day; of providing something useful, at least.
It wasn't that Ray hadn't trusted him of late professionally, it was that Ray was trusting him now personally. Leaned back in his seat, under the summer sun, eyes closed, he snored quietly away as though he were somehow perfectly safe letting this man he barely knew drive his prized automobile.
It made driving some more difficult. Suddenly, Turnbull was quite aware, all over again, of the weight of this trust.
He hadn't had any particular destination in mind, initially, though after he had wandered aimlessly for a half-hour, he'd found himself on the interstate. After that, he found himself heading for the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, as it was one of the few destinations he knew that had a fair amount of nature. He'd been there one Saturday with his art group, and remembered enough of the route to find his way. Of course, this lead to a number of anxieties about how Ray would take such a long venture, not only outside of Chicago but outside of Illinois. If he had the heart to do it, he would have woken Ray up and prepared for a rant. But he didn't. The man looked peaceful. Tired, yes. But peaceful.
Peace suited Ray.
That was another thought he never wanted to have, and Turnbull cast his eyes to the road, trying not to let the pass of lines hypnotize him.
Quite in defiance of Ray's offer, Turnbull was determined to pay for their meal. He knew the odds of Ray sleeping through the matter were slim. It would take strategy. Strategy, careful quiet, and a firm, close eye on the Riviera. He didn't want to leave Ray vulnerable and asleep.
There was no way he was consuming fast food. Ever. It would not happen, and he would not subject poor Ray to such a thing, either. He wished he'd thought to actually pack food he'd made. It really was the only way to ensure the food was clean...
It didn't matter. Needs must.
He had a reasonable idea of what Ray liked, considering the number of dinners shared. It wouldn't be difficult to pick something.
It was a strange and new kind of awkward, sitting in silence in a car next to a sleeping man, plotting to ambush him with food. Turnbull suppressed a sigh, rubbing his forehead. No. No, in the end, Turnbull wasn't going to try and steal liberties, even if the liberty was buying the man the gift of a meal.
"Ray," he whispered, feeling quite as though he were dumping a bag of kittens into Lake Michigan.
No response.
One really couldn't wake a man in half-measures, Turnbull knew. "Ray," he repeated, a hair louder.
"Hn," came the most assuredly asleep response.
Turnbull shut his eyes and sighed. He was dreading said bag of soaked kittens being exceedingly irritated at the locale as well as the rude awakening.
Carefully, he put a gentle hand to Ray's arm, absolutely refusing to shake it. It was the softest pat. Barely there. "Ray."
Ray seemed to sniff in mostly-unconscious surprise. "...not now, Ma."
Ah. Yes. Hm. "Ray?"
"--I'm up." There was a multitude of evidence to the contrary, but Ray squeezed his eyes more tightly shut, shifting uncomfortably and bringing a hand to his own face.
Turnbull stole back that hand from Ray's arm like he'd been caught stealing. "We're, ah. Here, Ray. After a fashion." He was parked aimlessly on the side of the street, indecision in regard to food keeping him from selecting a particular destination. It was only for Ray, really, he worried about it. Turnbull wasn't hungry. He was entirely too nervous of the amount of trust in his lap to be hungry.
"Where's here?"
"On the side of the road, at the moment."
Ray finally managed to get his eyes open, and then winced away from the summer light, even though it was no longer directly shining on him. "How long I been asleep?"
"Approximately two hours."
"Wow." Ray rubbed over his eyes, then opened them again. Still looking decidedly sleepy. "Wisconsin or Indiana?"
Turnbull winced a little, though he mostly kept it off of his face. "Indiana. I had been uncertain as to where to go in the city, and when I found myself on Interstate 90, I debated on possible exits before it became apparent I had driven quite a distance, and by that time, I thought that it would be rude to wake you. So, we are in Indiana, currently quite close to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. I'm sorry."
"--what?" Ray picked himself up with another wince. "Are you apologizing?"
"Yes, Ray." In fact, Turnbull was hoping at this point for some sort of lecture, because truth be known, he felt entirely silly for having driven a full hour outside of Chicago simply because he had nowhere closer and perhaps more entertaining to go. He didn't imagine that Ray would have cared too much for the idea of roaming around a national park, and the more he thought about it, the worse the idea seemed. It was almost selfish, the idea of transposing his own desire to visit somewhere quiet and comparatively peaceful onto Ray Vecchio. Even accounting for Ray's prior words about going wherever he wanted to go.
"Okay. We're gonna have a talk." Ray turned some in the seat, and even though he was wincing as he did it, his expression was dead serious. "Listen: I like you. This might come as a shock, Ren, but I like you. I like hangin' out with you. I like being around someone who doesn't treat me like a walkin' fucking time-bomb. I like hangin' out with a guy who isn't waiting for me to explode and go postal. I like havin' a partner who I don't gotta worry about trying to psychoanalyze me while I'm on the road tryin' to do my job. I like you. I like hangin' out with you. I like it when you -- God forbid -- relax enough to smile. So, how 'bout I cut you a deal: You stop puttin' me up on a pedestal, and I'll hang out at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore today with you, and then we'll go from there."
He leaned forward slightly, even though it made his eyes narrow briefly in pain. "So. We gotta deal?"
Turnbull would've answered quicker if, through that, he'd remembered to breathe. It wasn't his strong suit.
"--ped-- estal." It was breathed out, and he blinked rapidly, rerunning those words in perfect clarity and order in his brain a second time before he could understand. Gaping.
Well. He... hadn't been expecting that.
He likes it when--
Turnbull cleared his throat and tilted his head in a brief crack of his neck.
"...understood, Ray." Well, that was hardly adequate. Turnbull wasn't sure anything could be. "That is to say-- your company is very much enjoyed, I cannot say I had ever thought of you as a 'walking f--' hm. 'Walking timebomb', there is most certainly no psychoanalyzation, and while I had not-- not-- indeed there were never meant to be any pedestals involved, I simply wanted to take no li--" Give it up. "Hm. That is to say, yes, Ray. We have a deal."
Ray's expression softened instantly, and he smiled a half-smile then, eyebrows up a little. "Now that we got that outta the way, how 'bout you track us down some food? I'm still starved, you're probably starved, the car probably needs gas. My treat, no more of this apology stuff. Then we can go hang around the park."
In truth, Turnbull wasn't starved. He ate more for Ray's benefit; honestly, there was something about this whole situation that kept him bizarrely on edge.
It wasn't without its upsides, however.
Not least of which was that Ray seemed to get some kind of genuine enjoyment out of it, sore though he was. Turnbull had noted that tendency before; some strange pleasure taken from when Turnbull gave over and allowed Ray to do or pay or otherwise provide in a situation. He honestly didn't understand it. It certainly wasn't within his normal disposition to accept. Turnbull could only think himself a burden when it happened, and yet, Ray continued to insist. There was nothing to indicate that he expected anything, or wanted anything, except simply to be around and take care of things.
Currently, he had taken up taking care of things by laboriously and carefully climbing up onto the hood of the Riv with a blanket out of the trunk to lay in the dappled sunlight under one of the very few trees in the otherwise sand-blasted parking lot. Turnbull couldn't imagine it was terribly comfortable, particularly given the heat of the day and the heat of the engine under the hood, but he wasn't even remotely sure how to bring it up. It seemed, again, like taking liberties -- if the man wanted to nap draped on his car, who was he to complain?
Ray simply made himself a seat, taking the folded blanket as a cushion of sorts, and rested back against the windshield with a slow, drawn sigh. "Yeah... that's good."
Turnbull had no idea who Ray was addressing. Perhaps the universe in general. It wouldn't have been the first time.
"Okay, I'm good. Don't figure I'm probably all that much use for hikin' or whatever, so I'll rest here, and you go ahead if you wanna."
There was an immediate urge to ask fifty times if Ray was certain of that, but then he thought better of it. It would likely result in shooing. Then he had to consider that he had just, in all likelihood rightly, predicted how Ray would respond to that. "Would you like one of the water bottles?"
"Huh?" Ray was already in the process, apparently, of falling back to sleep. "Sure, I guess."
Turnbull took a bottle from the seat and twisted it most of the way open, offering it over. Eyes shut, Ray missed the first time and Turnbull had to catch his hand and press the bottle into it.
"Thanks."
"You're quite welcome, Ray." A beat passed during which Turnbull was tempted again to ask. He put it down. "Please be careful, Ray."
"Relax. No deranged glacier salesmen here. Worst that happens is I slide off this thing, and she loves me too much to throw me off."
Turnbull dropped his head, smiling at that quite in the face of his own worry to the contrary. "Yes, Ray."
"Uh-huh." It was sleepy and smug at the same time. Turnbull didn't examine what he felt about that.
Even in jeans, Turnbull wore his RCMP high browns. It was a comfort thing. An identity thing. A reminder of what he was when there were no other outward markings. And very likely something that would drive Inspector Thatcher to disapproval; Turnbull wasn't without his little rebellions.
That was all very high-minded and symbolic up until the point he realized it was really annoying to walk in sand in those boots. The black t-shirt had been quite the poor idea, as well, though he had to give himself the pass that he had no idea how his day would unfold when he put it on.
There were people about. He nodded politely to everyone he passed, his duty smile firmly in place.
Ray sleeping back there made him nervous. There was something about leaving him alone that screamed wrong; a man that vulnerable should be watched over. Injured and dozing.
A mother and her child passed him hand in hand; the little girl offered Turnbull a wave.
...it wasn't like this place was crawling with threats. Still. Turnbull didn't wander far, even if he did itch to move. Work, maybe. Or clean. Cook. Something. His mind wasn't the safest place to occupy at the immediate moment, he found. The sun on his shoulders and a trek through hilly sand provided plenty of physical exertion, but not much in the way of accomplishment.
It was the little girl that provided him inspiration for what he would do next, though the idea struck him several minutes after she'd passed.
She'd waved with a handful of beach grass.
It was an absolute flight of fancy, but then, so was the day; he ran with it. Straying a little off the beaten path, he carefully selected a few longish strands of thick beach grass.
Straightening them in his hand, he made his way back toward the Riv, selecting a small patch of sand not far from the parking lot - close enough to keep a reasonable eye on Ray, far enough not to seem like he was hovering - to settle in and begin work.
It was a completely, childishly, goofily random a thing to do, but it killed some time. When he was done, he had a meticulously woven tied ring of beach grass. Pristine, so far as anything made of plantlife could be. Pretty. Alternating colors; some selected more sun-beaten than others, the washed out colors patterned with the more lively green. They would all dry to the same color, but in the meantime, they made for a visually appealing pattern.
He stood up to knock the sand off of himself and stepped lightly toward the Riv, aiming not to wake Ray if he was still asleep.
There was quite a lot of presumption in his thought to tie it to the rear-view mirror. Turnbull didn't even know if Ray could stand things dangling from his mirror, much less that he'd want something so silly. Regardless, he went to open the door as quietly as he could, all the while telling himself that if Ray didn't like it, he was sure to complain. Loudly.
"Good hike?" Ray asked, before his hand was even on the door handle.
Turnbull straightened and tried not to feel too much like a thief. Though, admittedly, he wasn't stealing anything. That particular feeling as though he were was, therefore, quite an annoyance. "Yes, Ray. Brief and sandy though it was."
"Yeah?" Ray's voice was sleepy. How he had guessed who it was without opening his eyes was a mystery.
"Yes. It's quite a nice park; your government has done a fine job maintaining it." Turnbull fiddled with his woven beach grass and kept trying to kick away the sensation of having been caught red-handed at something. "Your nap?"
"In and out. Side hurts. Heard your boots, decided to be in."
Turnbull raised an eyebrow and looked down at said boots for a long moment, then back up again. "I was unaware they were distinctive."
"Yeah, they are. Well, kinda. How you walk in 'em is." Ray finally opened his eyes, though only as much as necessary, and looked over with a mild grin. "So, you wanna hang out here awhile longer, or you got a bug to go do somethin' else?"
"Whatever you--"
"Noooooo..."
Turnbull closed his eyes for a moment in exasperation, but he couldn't, again, quite chew down the grin and he dropped his head briefly. This was... he didn't know what this was. "--that is to say, I would gladly entertain suggestions."
"Better." Ray grinned brightly back, a sudden flash of it. "'Cept, I don't got any suggestions."
It was very hard not to smile back at that look. Even accounting for embarrassment, even accounting for the utter blankness that took over whenever he tried to think about where they could go next, and for thoughts he didn't want to have of things hanging on rearview mirrors; even accounting for many, many things that should have made it impossible, Turnbull was smiling back. "It's too early for dinner. I'm afraid I have no particular ideas in mind." While he still had some nerve, he set the woven grass next to Ray on the hood of the Riv.
Ray picked it up, eyebrows going up. "Wow. You did this?"
Ah. There was the rush of familiar red. He felt like he had been branded with a permanent blush. "Yes, Ray."
"Pretty," Ray answered, looking over it and running a thumb down the weave.
Turnbull cleared his throat quietly. "Hm. Thank you. It's, ah. Yours, in any case."
"Yeah?" That tone was entirely too touched for Turnbull's sanity.
"Yes, Ray," he repeated. "I had thought... thought to hang it in the rear-view mirror, though-- though-- I was uncertain as to whether-- hm. Yes, Ray."
The answer was quite a long moment in coming, but then Ray said, on the quiet side, "Sure. I mean, long as you don't think that means you can hang some fuzzy dice up there, too, yeah. Go for it."
It was a bit of a surprise, even though that had been his intention. The pause vaguely worried him, though it seemed far more a thoughtful pause than an uncertain one.
Then Ray looked back over, holding the weave up. "Hey, you think you can teach me how to do this?"
What? It took a long several moments for Turnbull to realize that he hadn't actually asked that out loud, and then he finally did, albeit keeping as much disbelief out of his tone as possible. The idea of Ray Vecchio, of all people, wanting to learn children's crafts was quite far outside of his expectations. "Pardon?"
"I figure it like this," Ray said, laying the weaving over one leg, "We don't know what we wanna do, I don't wanna go back home, your place doesn't have much to do, and it's pretty nice out here. So, can you teach me how to make one of those or not?"
Turnbull blinked rapidly a few times, his smile stealing right back across his face. It seemed a bizarre request, but once he'd gathered his brain, Turnbull was grateful to give something. It sounded an entirely lovely prospect. He clasped his hands at front, tugging on his thumb with his fingers. "I would be... I mean, yes, Ray. I would be delighted to teach you." Still, he worried about Ray trudging through all that sand. "I-- ah, shall I... Hm. Please stay here, Ray, I will bring back some grass."
Turnbull's walk that time around had quite a bit more purpose and confidence to it. It probably helped that he was scouting for something specific, giving him no time to think intently on anything more confusing. He'd chosen blades of grass for sturdiness, thickness, shape, and length. He'd brought back quite a bundle.
He'd initially anchored it around his bootlace for weaving; something simple and on the fly. It didn't really do for teaching, and there was no way to comfortably do it on the car; in the end he'd seen Ray off the Riv, settled that blanket in the sand just off the parking lot (Lord, did he ever resist the urge to fuss over), stuck a thick stick deep into the sand and surrounded it by a few small rocks. It would be sturdy enough to work from, keep the strands taut, and hopefully not lean too much.
He had shown Ray a very basic pattern; a left to right weave, over and under, before starting again.
Idle observations were thrown off as best he could, an exercise that he found increasingly, annoyingly, more difficult as the day wore on. He observed that Ray couldn't possibly be very comfortable like this, with bruised ribs; he was sitting very straight. That people didn't seem to think that it was overly odd for two grown men to be sitting in the sand making summer camp crafts. That his black t-shirt was an exceptionally bad idea indeed. That Ray had nice hands, especially when they were doing something sort of delicate.
He was especially going to throw off that last one.
"...oh. So that's how you make that edge all looped like that."
"Yes, Ray. You're doing very well."
"Yeah?" Ray seemed pleased with that. It was almost unnerving. "Ain't as neat as yours, but hey."
"It's a better first effort than mine was, at the time."
"And you were what, six? Seven?"
"...seven."
"Right, so stop tryin' to make me feel better about it." Ray's grin was decidedly tongue-in-cheek, but he was still weaving. The sunlight didn't seem to bother him, even dressed in an off-white dress shirt over a white undershirt. Though, he had rolled the sleeves up to halfway up his forearms. "Where'd you learn this?"
Turnbull looked back down again at the weaving. "My sister taught me."
"A sister? Got any other siblings?" Even not looking, he could hear Ray grinning wider. How was that even possible? "And they anywhere near as annoying as mine?"
"I have two older brothers." Turnbull pressed his lips together around a brief grin. "...not... not annoying. Well. I imagine they could be. There is a rather large age gap, so I wouldn't know in the same sense."
"Oh, yeah? How large is 'rather large'?"
"My sister was fourteen when I was born. My brothers were seventeen."
"Okay, so that is large. Huh."
"I was something of a surprise."
"Say that's a pretty good one, as surprises go. You ever miss 'em?" One sentence melded seamlessly from the other, giving Turnbull no time to boggle over the first before he was answering the second.
"My sister, often." Turnbull's smile shrank, and he made a point of examining the weave very closely. "It really is very good for a first try, Ray," he reiterated.
"It's okay. I feel like a hippie." Ray chuckled, then apparently thought better of it. "Next thing you know, I'm gonna be wearin' tie-dye or somethin'. You get to see her whenever you went back to Toronto?"
"Yes, Ray." There must have been something else to talk about. Casting about, Turnbull landed on something. "You're the oldest, then, of the Vecchio siblings?"
"Uh, yeah." Ray nodded, weaving away, concentrating on the strands of grass. "Had an older brother, but he died when I was four. Marie and Frannie don't remember him, and I barely do. 'Course, my parents kept it all kinda... well, not hushed, y'know, but... not something to worry us over. Which is really messed up in retrospect, but I guess I can see their point. So, it was Nicholas, me, Maria and Francesca."
"I'm sorry for your family's loss." Turnbull felt it was very like him to have landed on precisely the wrong thing to ask. The urge to 'Detective' was powerful. "--Ray."
"It's okay." Ray half-shrugged, suddenly seeming a little more awkward now. "It was a long time ago." He gestured to the weaving, which was getting quite long now. "How much longer should this go?"
Turnbull's frown twitched a bit; he itched to take back having asked. Nothing to be done for it now. "...as long as you like, really, so long as you have enough to tie off. However, if you would like to tie it off now, you will need to gather these strands into two sections--" He gestured close to the weave, brushing over it. "--and if you would like to make a ring of it, tie it to the other end. Tie it to itself tightly, if you'd rather leave it open."
"Yeah, okay. I can do that."
"Incidentally, I also know enough about cold process dying that should tie-dye truly interest you, it is an art I could also teach." It was an attempt at a small joke; Turnbull was quite desperate to bring back any hint of a grin to Ray's face. He couldn't help but think it was entirely crass once he'd said it, though.
Ray never looked up as he got to tying, but his mouth twitched in what looked like a smirk, then became decidedly serious again. "Only if you wear it with me, Renny."
"I-- you mean-- tie-dye?" Well, obviously that was what Ray was getting at, but the mental image of himself in tie-dye was enough to make him stare off for quite a long moment.
No, he couldn't quite hang onto that image without a large sign blinking in his head going 'ABSURD-ABSURD-ABSURD.'
"Yeah, why not?" Ray finished tying the weave off, then undid it from the stick so he could finish it off. And once he was done, he held it up to his forehead like a headband. Still serious. "Whaddya think? Hippie enough?"
Turnbull did his very best to hold onto a straight face, and quite nearly succeeded. Until Ray broke into the widest, cheesiest grin that he had ever seen on the man.
It seemed somehow horribly wrong to laugh right now, but that was exactly what happened.
Ray was both laughing and swearing, that headband held up for only an instant longer under what was clearly pain.
Turnbull was laughing and fussing, so they made a nice matching set. "Ray, you mustn't--" Oh dear, that was a giggle. "--exert yourself--"
"--oh, man, the look on your face-- holy--"
"The look on mine? Do you realize I thought for an instant you must be serious--?" Turnbull rocked forward under a laugh, half-hiding his face behind one hand.
"Yeah, that's why it was a priceless look!"
"You really should stop--" Oh, God. Turnbull had to stop laughing or he thought Ray might hurt himself. He tightened the hand over his mouth in a concerted effort to stop laughing, if only by example.
"--picturing a whole new Mountie uniform, rainbow, peace sign buttons, sandals, K-9 units goin' nuts for the smell comin' off it--"
"Crossed pistols no more; crossed joints, on the other hand..." So much for trying to stop laughing. Turnbull couldn't quite resist throwing that in, and the howl of both laughter and pain that came from Ray made it even more impossible.
"Oh, God! Okay, I'm dyin' here." Ray had doubled over, trying to brace his ribs without putting too much pressure on them, and after a few more moments with his eyes squeezed shut tight, he managed to gasp in a few short breaths. He was grinning, though, if tightly. "See, now, what you gotta do is picture Thatcher in that getup. Every time she gives you crap, just picture that."
"I believe she would combust from the mere mental suggestion." That was not at all a bad image - for that matter, it seemed like the uniform to suit a particular old acquaintance had he made it through Depot - and neither was it helping with the state of Turnbull's sides. He was hugging himself, arms crossed tight. Head fallen forward just to laugh. Turnbull untucked a hand to wipe his face, leaving it pressed to his own cheek. "You-- you may injure us both if you keep-- keep us laughing." It was spaced out with poorly contained giggles. "Are-- are you all right, Ray?"
"Yeah." Well, Ray was clearly sore, but his spirits seemed high. He was still smiling as he managed to unpry a hand from one side to gesture. "You oughta do that more often."
"Picture Inspector Thatcher in full peacenik regalia?" Turnbull asked, catching his breath.
Ray gestured again; a relaxed, casual motion, even wound protectively around his wounded ribs. "No, laugh. It's nice."
Well. How does one respond to that? Turnbull blinked a few times, not entirely -- well, not remotely -- sure how to answer. That was rapidly approaching 'story of his life' status. "Ah... thank you."
"No problem." Ray tossed his weaving over, then picked up the one Turnbull had made earlier, wincing again as he leaned back enough to put it into his pocket. "So, we did some hippie stuff, and we had lunch, and we got to hang out at the park. What's next?"
There really wasn't a great deal to be done, aside perhaps wait for dinner. Ray seemed just as resolute about avoiding his family well into the early evening as he had been in the morning. It wasn't entirely surprising -- a chaos of Vecchios being a chaos -- but it still made for some difficulty in planning. Which was to say, they didn't have one.
It felt strange for Turnbull to have both his friend and his friend's car in his custody of sorts, but it felt somewhat less strange as the day wore on. They had just meandered along the coastline, stopping occasionally for directions. They found a pharmacy where Ray filled his prescription for pain medication (a distinct relief) and they found a fair restaurant where they ordered carry-out before finding yet another lakeshore park to sit and eat at.
It was a rather nomadic day.
"I suppose we should consider heading back to Chicago," Turnbull finally said, and he was sort of surprised to feel a pang of regret for it. Despite the occasional moments of absurdity, the much less occasional moments of awkwardness and the sheer strange randomness of it all, he found himself rather reluctant to call it a night and turn the nose of the Riv towards home.
"We should." Ray nodded, looking out over Lake Michigan. "Be the responsible thing to do, right?"
"Yes, it would."
"That what you wanna do, Ren?"
He must not lie. He must not lie... There was something about the way Ray had learned to question him that made it inconveniently difficult to step around. "No. I cannot honestly say I'd prefer to go back. However, I'm not certain that sleeping in a car is legal in this particular state, and for that matter, at all advisable in your state." It was almost a joke.
Ray huffed a laugh as he replied, apparently taking it as one. "You don't wanna go back, I don't wanna go back, there's nobody yankin' our leash to go back. Well. Maybe Frannie, but I shut the phone off hours ago, so she doesn't have a leash to go yankin' anymore. So we don't sleep in the car. So we get motel room. Or two. I'd say three, but I'm not that protective of my car. Well. Who'm I kidding? 'Course I am. But I'm pretty sure they don't have beds big enough for her, so I gotta live with the parking lot."
"A-- a--"
"A room, Renny. You have those in Canada, right? Or do you gotta have a throw down with an Eskimo for the last rent-an-igloo?"
"Ray, of course we have--" Oh. Right.
Turnbull still hadn't the faculties to deal with the question.
"I-- I--"
"You, you. You wanna room or not? I'm payin'."
The idea of sharing a room with Ray made him want to bounce his head off another wall. It made him want a couple of other things, but his mind wasn't the least bit prepared to name them.
Renfield Turnbull was becoming rapidly aware that he had a problem.
Neither did he want to leave Ray alone in his condition; at least back at the apartment Turnbull would've been in position to help him quickly and easily if something should go wrong.
Guilt tangled with embarrassment wrapped around awkwardness knotted up with some weird kind of hope looped through sheer, blinding panic and all of it got caught in the gears of his poorly-oiled brain, bringing everything to a grinding halt. He felt stuck on absolutely stupid for a several gaping seconds before he forced out a reply. "A double room. Hm. Will-- will do. Yes, Ray."
"Okay, a double room. So, hit the next gas station we come to, and I'll get directions to some place decent." Ray seemed completely satisfied with the notion of continuing this quite impromptu 'vacation' of sorts. "Maybe somewhere with a jacuzzi."
Turnbull's head thumped off of the steering wheel before he even had time to realize it was headed there.
"What? You think I'm gonna go for a Motel 6? Or some place where you're afraid of what kinda mutated dust bunnies there might be under the bed?" Ray's broad smirk was audible. "So, c'mon. Tally ho, or sally forth, or whatever you Mounties say when it's time to hit the trail again."
The urge to give over to a bit of hysterical laughter was there. Turnbull firmly quelled it, picking his head up and staring out straight ahead as he turned the key, commenting deadpan, "Yee-haw."
All right, so perhaps he cracked a small smile when Ray huffed another laugh.
Ray had not been joking when he said he wanted a jacuzzi -- it was after dark when they found a hotel suitable. It was back more towards Chicago, close to the Indiana Dunes again, but it really was very nice. Very expensive, as well. If not for Ray bumping shoulders lightly with him, Turnbull might well have sputtered for the next ten minutes at the price. It was easily a third of his monthly rent, for one single night.
"Hey, I've paid off all the family's bills, I already put cash in the trust funds, I should at least be able to spring for a nice room for a night here or there," Ray had said, after they had collected the keys. It was a first floor room, and it did, indeed, have a jacuzzi.
Which was where Ray was now, leaving Renfield to feel as though he had just stepped into another world entirely. It wasn't that he had never seen high-class surroundings; quite the contrary. It was that it had been quite a long time, and the room looked so pristine that he could see disaster everywhere he turned. It wasn't the more typical beige or gray, but a rather large, warm and homey room with two of the most absurdly fluffy beds he'd ever set eyes on.
So he did the only reasonable thing and stood still, and even then he felt he might be only one step away from applying Murphy's Law to something expensive.
Sentry duty in a hotel room wasn't something he ever thought he'd pull.
He glanced to the left. Then, slowly, the right.
Perhaps this entire day was some sort of elaborate plot set in motion by Inspector Thatcher. Some manner of carefully crafted mindgame designed as an entirely new and more insidious way of throwing Turnbull off balance; there could be some sort of hypnotic agent in the drugs prescribed to Ray to make him cooperate.
That had to be it. It was not a charitable accusation, but that didn't matter. Someone was waiting for him, somewhere, to pop out at the least likely second to laugh at him and point. Perhaps they would film the reveal. He would undoubtedly break something and perhaps dirty himself with its contents.
He'd inclined his head a fraction to check under the bed before he caught himself, forcing himself upright again.
Renfield Turnbull was going out of his mind.
...perhaps he should lay down.
It was with a great deal of slow care that he unlaced his boots.
Jeans and a t-shirt most assuredly on, he crawled on top of the covers feeling just a little like they were judging him for his state of dress. He also sunk somewhat deeper into them than he had anticipated, which just added to the feeling. He was still trying to grasp exactly what he was supposed to think about today and yesterday, and he was failing utterly.
Ray coming back nearly had him jumping out of his skin. Ray wearing the complimentary bathrobe had him deciding that the ceiling was absolutely fascinating. Oh, look. There was Texas, in the stucco.
"Get any stiffer, you'll be a corpse," Ray commented, mildly. He sounded a little confused, though by the way his feet hit the floor, he did seem to be moving better for both the pain medication and the hot soak.
"I am somewhat unaccustomed to a bed like this." It was a piece of the truth, so Turnbull took it.
Ray settled onto his own bed, after drawing back the covers, and then sighed in relief. "Almost better than mine."
Ah. Florida? No. Quickly, find all the states. "I'm relieved that you're comfortable, Ray." It was also a truth, and sincere. Ray being in pain made all kinds of desperate little pangs of 'fix it' fire off. Even if nothing but time, healing and rest could.
"Yeah. Me too." Ray apparently was ready to sleep. At least, he pulled his covers up. The room was nice and cool after a long day in the sun. "So, why are you all ratcheted up?"
Maybe he wasn't ready to sleep. Hello, Massachusetts. "I--" There was no simple answer to that question. He didn't even really know all of the reasons himself. Self-analyzation had never been his strong point. Observation of others? Certainly. Himself? Disasterous. "That is to say, I'm-- this situation is quite a change from the norm."
"Suppose so." Ray reached over -- Turnbull could all but hear the wince -- and turned the nightstand light off. "So, hey, I got somethin' I gotta say. Since you don't seem to wanna believe it.
"I still like you. I just spent the whole day wanderin' around wherever you wanted to go, 'cept this place, and I still like you. I had fun. Hear that?" When he didn't get an answer (for it was quite difficult to answer in something not entirely unlike a panic state), he continued, "I don't get you sometimes, Ren. I don't get how you can be all... I dunno, sharp and hard when you're runnin' down a suspect, but you can't string two words together when someone wants to be nice to you. But I figure it like this: You think I want something. Hell if I know what, but you sure wanna give it, whatever it is, 'cause you think I'm gonna be disappointed if you don't.
"Not true. I don't want anything outta you except your company. Think about that for a few minutes. I don't want you to fall all over your boots trying to make me happy or whatever you think you gotta do. I just like hangin' out with you, and it gets a whole lot harder when you look like you wanna be anywhere else. If you really wanna be anywhere else, that's fine. But if you just wanna be anywhere else 'cause you're all up in your head about making me happy, I'll thank you kindly to can it. 'Cause I ain't Benny and I ain't Thatcher and I don't expect you to. And for that matter, Ren, you ain't Benny, and you ain't Thatcher, and you might be the only friend I got these days.
"So, there ya go. Have a speech. Do what you want with it, or don't. But yeah, I like you, and I ain't goin' anywhere, and if you wanna hang out with me, do it 'cause you want to, not 'cause you're tryin' to make me happy."
Silence stretched on, save for the odd huff of Turnbull's breath; abandoned words thought better of on the execution.
Perhaps he should be looking for provinces instead...
Pointless in the dark, wasn't it?
Turnbull hugged his arms to his chest tightly. He had a burning fight-or-flight urge that should not reasonably go with a proclamation so kind as that. His jaw clenched. His hands flexed. It was useless to be wide-eyed in the dark, but he was; hands, he could bat away. Cruelty, he could throw off. Spitballs, he could endure. Even Francesca, he could flee. That? That stuck, and he felt nothing so much as pinned to that bed.
He briefly wondered what Ray would do if Turnbull just tore his way out of there in fear.
He couldn't do that to Ray.
"I-- I--" You. You. Breathe. "I like you, too." A few breaths passed; labored. "Goodnight, Ray."
There was a long moment of silence on the other side of the room, and then Ray replied, quietly, "'Night, Ren."
Ray hadn't been wrong when he'd said Turnbull would've heard something like that gunman rounding the corner.
Sleep had come lightly, fitfully, in the emotional sense. He could keep physically still even when his brain couldn't. He was caught between feeling abject terror at Ray having been so easily able to read him and relief for the words he'd been given as a result. Even if believing them was beyond him. He couldn't think he wasn't a burden; so long as he could be useful, something good for Ray, he would be. When his usefulness ended he knew he would excuse himself before he made of himself a fool and a problem for Ray.
Hopefully, this time, he'd be able to determine where that line was.
For that matter, now was absolutely not the time to be readable to anyone. If Ray could glean that much from him, the very possibility of his, ah... rapidly developing problem... God, if whatever this was slipped through even the slightest bit, Turnbull thought he'd probably jump on Thatcher's transfer to the middle of nowhere, north.
No, sleep was not easy. Light. Easily broken by something such as rapid breathing and the odd motion from the bed across from him. Loud to his ears, subtle though it should have been.
His immediate thought was that Ray must be in pain; it was formed in his mind before consciousness fully was, and it was a few seconds before Turnbull landed on the realization that it was probably a nightmare.
He was at a total loss for what to do about it.
He could wake Ray up. He could, but it seemed cruel when the man clearly needed sleep to heal. He could ignore it; that seemed equally cruel. Turnbull had been given a limited briefing on Ray's undercover operation in order to maintain the cover; he knew so far as it involved the mob. He could imagine what Ray Vecchio's nightmares might entail in the abstract.
The clear choices warred with each other. The former option seemed far beyond his place. The latter felt like withholding a duty. Neither felt right.
Ray's breath caught.
"Sssh."
Turnbull blinked in the dark. Ah. Yes. That had come from his own lips. No louder than the rustle of leaves, but for all he believed, it may as well have been a foghorn.
He sat frozen for a few seconds, arms tightening around himself again. Measuring his breaths slowly so as to be silent. Terrified he'd woken Ray.
Ray hitched another breath, but aside that, it remained even.
Perhaps it had helped...?
"Sssh..." Quieter, this time. As one might shush a child; something for which Turnbull felt no small amount of shame, once he realized.
It seemed to work anyway. Or perhaps the nightmare came to an end. He couldn't be sure. He didn't, entirely, want to be sure. But Ray's breathing settled back to something softer and slower, a more natural sleep-rhythm, and left him to the darkness and his own thoughts.
Part IV
Fandom: Due South
Characters: Turnbull/Vecchio (pre-slash)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 23322 Total (All parts)
Summary: Ray takes a hit to the vest. The result? Three states, three days, and two men in the best sort of trouble.
Notes: Arch to the Sky. Co-written with sl_walker. Please allow me to assure you that all the good bits are hers.
Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V
The trip down the stairs was mercifully without damsel-incident. That wasn't to say it was quick. It was slower going than the trip up, even if down should really be easier; it probably had a lot to do with Turnbull's fussing. It must've been every three stairs that he felt the need to ask after Ray. He imagined that probably grew irritating.
"Are you all right, Ray?"
"Yeah, Ren. Don't mind me, just crippled."
"Are you certain you're quite all right?"
"I'm fine. Gimme a sec."
"Perhaps we should stop."
"Nah. I'm not fainting yet."
"I would be happy to attempt to carry you--"
"Geez, Ren, you'd think I'd just been shot or somethin'."
"Are you certain you wouldn't like me to carry you the rest--?"
"Man, it's kinda funny how even beat up like this my sister would probably kill to be me right now."
Finally, mercifully -- or not, as this meant again driving the Riviera and all of the inherent potential for disaster -- they were settled in the car. Thus far, there had been no real attempts to figure out where they were going. Which meant that the entire first several minutes of sitting in the car was in relative silence, with one fidgeting Mountie and one out-of-breath detective.
It was Ray who broke the silence, sprawled again in the passenger's seat with his eyes closed, still gradually catching his breath. His face was tight, but his tone was calm and good-natured despite it. "So, where you wanna go?"
"I'm not certain, Ray. I don't particularly have anywhere I want to be, at the moment." The urge to continue fussing was quite difficult to ignore. Instead, Turnbull whipped out his handkerchief and polished off the already-smooth steering wheel.
"Me either. 'Cept, not at home." Ray leaned his head against the window. The car was well-baked in the heat of the day, which made this even less comfortable. "How 'bout this... you drive, and if you see somethin' you wanna stop and do, we stop and do it."
Oh, dear. This really was rapidly turning into a disaster. "I-- yes, Ray."
"I mean it, Renny. 'Cause if you spend the next several hours drivin' and getting all twisted up tryin' to think about what I might wanna do, I'm gonna drive--"
Turnbull surprised himself by interrupting, aghast, "--but your injuries--"
"--and I'm gonna stuff you in the trunk, too. Got me?"
It was strange how tempting a ride in the trunk was at this moment, Ray's injuries aside. At least then the matter was beyond his control. Turnbull was reasonably ashamed at that thought, and after a moment's half-freeze, half-hanging on the rest of his interruption, he sighed. "Yes, Ray."
"Uh-huh." It was entirely smug. "Thought so."
Turnbull actually knew quite a bit of the city. He just tended to know it by bus route, not direct, and it was quite true that he had no specific place in mind. His polishing had moved on to the dash, randomly. Meandering. He stopped when he found himself leaning to polish down the passenger side dash. He flicked the handkerchief back and pocketed it.
There was a long moment where he stared at the steering wheel as though considering very carefully. "...ah, how... how spacious is your trunk, Ray?"
Turnbull was pleasantly surprised to find that got a laugh, though he was instantly guilty for the wince that went with it.
He shook his head a little as he slipped the key in and started the vehicle. This was a bad idea. A terribly bad idea. And he found he couldn't argue.
"Okay, good. It's the one on the right that makes it go," Ray said, letting his head fall back to the window, eyes closed. He was still smiling when he did.
It had been quite a long time since he had driven to any degree beyond short trips in the consulate's vehicle, but after awhile, he found it came back more naturally than he might have liked it to. But it was certainly better than thinking too much about the myriad of things he wasn't in any rush whatsoever to work over in his head, at least, and there was something soothing about the sound of the tires on the freeway.
In fact, Turnbull had managed a state of something not unlike 'zen' all the way up until he realized that Ray was not merely resting with his eyes closed and his seat back slightly, but that he was actually asleep.
That, of course, kicked off a number more thoughts he didn't want to have. It was unfathomable, really, that this man not only handed him the keys to the Riviera, a car he loved passionately, but that he trusted Turnbull enough to sleep during the ride. Turnbull was still boggled by this.
It wasn't that Ray hadn't put some measure of trust in him lately, specifically when it came to tracking down subjects and suspects on those days they rode together. That took a great deal of faith, as a situation could go badly at any given point, but Turnbull had some measure of faith in his training and experience. He wasn't leading those ventures, merely following Ray's lead, and his training and reflexes were still good. At least, in terms of apprehension and, occasionally, some degree of interrogation. He could still run, he could still take someone down and he was still quick with the handcuffs. It required very little thought, or so he'd believed. The reward was the rush of doing well at something he had half-forgotten he was good at while he was busy dodging Thatcher's hammer every day; of providing something useful, at least.
It wasn't that Ray hadn't trusted him of late professionally, it was that Ray was trusting him now personally. Leaned back in his seat, under the summer sun, eyes closed, he snored quietly away as though he were somehow perfectly safe letting this man he barely knew drive his prized automobile.
It made driving some more difficult. Suddenly, Turnbull was quite aware, all over again, of the weight of this trust.
He hadn't had any particular destination in mind, initially, though after he had wandered aimlessly for a half-hour, he'd found himself on the interstate. After that, he found himself heading for the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, as it was one of the few destinations he knew that had a fair amount of nature. He'd been there one Saturday with his art group, and remembered enough of the route to find his way. Of course, this lead to a number of anxieties about how Ray would take such a long venture, not only outside of Chicago but outside of Illinois. If he had the heart to do it, he would have woken Ray up and prepared for a rant. But he didn't. The man looked peaceful. Tired, yes. But peaceful.
Peace suited Ray.
That was another thought he never wanted to have, and Turnbull cast his eyes to the road, trying not to let the pass of lines hypnotize him.
Quite in defiance of Ray's offer, Turnbull was determined to pay for their meal. He knew the odds of Ray sleeping through the matter were slim. It would take strategy. Strategy, careful quiet, and a firm, close eye on the Riviera. He didn't want to leave Ray vulnerable and asleep.
There was no way he was consuming fast food. Ever. It would not happen, and he would not subject poor Ray to such a thing, either. He wished he'd thought to actually pack food he'd made. It really was the only way to ensure the food was clean...
It didn't matter. Needs must.
He had a reasonable idea of what Ray liked, considering the number of dinners shared. It wouldn't be difficult to pick something.
It was a strange and new kind of awkward, sitting in silence in a car next to a sleeping man, plotting to ambush him with food. Turnbull suppressed a sigh, rubbing his forehead. No. No, in the end, Turnbull wasn't going to try and steal liberties, even if the liberty was buying the man the gift of a meal.
"Ray," he whispered, feeling quite as though he were dumping a bag of kittens into Lake Michigan.
No response.
One really couldn't wake a man in half-measures, Turnbull knew. "Ray," he repeated, a hair louder.
"Hn," came the most assuredly asleep response.
Turnbull shut his eyes and sighed. He was dreading said bag of soaked kittens being exceedingly irritated at the locale as well as the rude awakening.
Carefully, he put a gentle hand to Ray's arm, absolutely refusing to shake it. It was the softest pat. Barely there. "Ray."
Ray seemed to sniff in mostly-unconscious surprise. "...not now, Ma."
Ah. Yes. Hm. "Ray?"
"--I'm up." There was a multitude of evidence to the contrary, but Ray squeezed his eyes more tightly shut, shifting uncomfortably and bringing a hand to his own face.
Turnbull stole back that hand from Ray's arm like he'd been caught stealing. "We're, ah. Here, Ray. After a fashion." He was parked aimlessly on the side of the street, indecision in regard to food keeping him from selecting a particular destination. It was only for Ray, really, he worried about it. Turnbull wasn't hungry. He was entirely too nervous of the amount of trust in his lap to be hungry.
"Where's here?"
"On the side of the road, at the moment."
Ray finally managed to get his eyes open, and then winced away from the summer light, even though it was no longer directly shining on him. "How long I been asleep?"
"Approximately two hours."
"Wow." Ray rubbed over his eyes, then opened them again. Still looking decidedly sleepy. "Wisconsin or Indiana?"
Turnbull winced a little, though he mostly kept it off of his face. "Indiana. I had been uncertain as to where to go in the city, and when I found myself on Interstate 90, I debated on possible exits before it became apparent I had driven quite a distance, and by that time, I thought that it would be rude to wake you. So, we are in Indiana, currently quite close to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. I'm sorry."
"--what?" Ray picked himself up with another wince. "Are you apologizing?"
"Yes, Ray." In fact, Turnbull was hoping at this point for some sort of lecture, because truth be known, he felt entirely silly for having driven a full hour outside of Chicago simply because he had nowhere closer and perhaps more entertaining to go. He didn't imagine that Ray would have cared too much for the idea of roaming around a national park, and the more he thought about it, the worse the idea seemed. It was almost selfish, the idea of transposing his own desire to visit somewhere quiet and comparatively peaceful onto Ray Vecchio. Even accounting for Ray's prior words about going wherever he wanted to go.
"Okay. We're gonna have a talk." Ray turned some in the seat, and even though he was wincing as he did it, his expression was dead serious. "Listen: I like you. This might come as a shock, Ren, but I like you. I like hangin' out with you. I like being around someone who doesn't treat me like a walkin' fucking time-bomb. I like hangin' out with a guy who isn't waiting for me to explode and go postal. I like havin' a partner who I don't gotta worry about trying to psychoanalyze me while I'm on the road tryin' to do my job. I like you. I like hangin' out with you. I like it when you -- God forbid -- relax enough to smile. So, how 'bout I cut you a deal: You stop puttin' me up on a pedestal, and I'll hang out at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore today with you, and then we'll go from there."
He leaned forward slightly, even though it made his eyes narrow briefly in pain. "So. We gotta deal?"
Turnbull would've answered quicker if, through that, he'd remembered to breathe. It wasn't his strong suit.
"--ped-- estal." It was breathed out, and he blinked rapidly, rerunning those words in perfect clarity and order in his brain a second time before he could understand. Gaping.
Well. He... hadn't been expecting that.
He likes it when--
Turnbull cleared his throat and tilted his head in a brief crack of his neck.
"...understood, Ray." Well, that was hardly adequate. Turnbull wasn't sure anything could be. "That is to say-- your company is very much enjoyed, I cannot say I had ever thought of you as a 'walking f--' hm. 'Walking timebomb', there is most certainly no psychoanalyzation, and while I had not-- not-- indeed there were never meant to be any pedestals involved, I simply wanted to take no li--" Give it up. "Hm. That is to say, yes, Ray. We have a deal."
Ray's expression softened instantly, and he smiled a half-smile then, eyebrows up a little. "Now that we got that outta the way, how 'bout you track us down some food? I'm still starved, you're probably starved, the car probably needs gas. My treat, no more of this apology stuff. Then we can go hang around the park."
In truth, Turnbull wasn't starved. He ate more for Ray's benefit; honestly, there was something about this whole situation that kept him bizarrely on edge.
It wasn't without its upsides, however.
Not least of which was that Ray seemed to get some kind of genuine enjoyment out of it, sore though he was. Turnbull had noted that tendency before; some strange pleasure taken from when Turnbull gave over and allowed Ray to do or pay or otherwise provide in a situation. He honestly didn't understand it. It certainly wasn't within his normal disposition to accept. Turnbull could only think himself a burden when it happened, and yet, Ray continued to insist. There was nothing to indicate that he expected anything, or wanted anything, except simply to be around and take care of things.
Currently, he had taken up taking care of things by laboriously and carefully climbing up onto the hood of the Riv with a blanket out of the trunk to lay in the dappled sunlight under one of the very few trees in the otherwise sand-blasted parking lot. Turnbull couldn't imagine it was terribly comfortable, particularly given the heat of the day and the heat of the engine under the hood, but he wasn't even remotely sure how to bring it up. It seemed, again, like taking liberties -- if the man wanted to nap draped on his car, who was he to complain?
Ray simply made himself a seat, taking the folded blanket as a cushion of sorts, and rested back against the windshield with a slow, drawn sigh. "Yeah... that's good."
Turnbull had no idea who Ray was addressing. Perhaps the universe in general. It wouldn't have been the first time.
"Okay, I'm good. Don't figure I'm probably all that much use for hikin' or whatever, so I'll rest here, and you go ahead if you wanna."
There was an immediate urge to ask fifty times if Ray was certain of that, but then he thought better of it. It would likely result in shooing. Then he had to consider that he had just, in all likelihood rightly, predicted how Ray would respond to that. "Would you like one of the water bottles?"
"Huh?" Ray was already in the process, apparently, of falling back to sleep. "Sure, I guess."
Turnbull took a bottle from the seat and twisted it most of the way open, offering it over. Eyes shut, Ray missed the first time and Turnbull had to catch his hand and press the bottle into it.
"Thanks."
"You're quite welcome, Ray." A beat passed during which Turnbull was tempted again to ask. He put it down. "Please be careful, Ray."
"Relax. No deranged glacier salesmen here. Worst that happens is I slide off this thing, and she loves me too much to throw me off."
Turnbull dropped his head, smiling at that quite in the face of his own worry to the contrary. "Yes, Ray."
"Uh-huh." It was sleepy and smug at the same time. Turnbull didn't examine what he felt about that.
Even in jeans, Turnbull wore his RCMP high browns. It was a comfort thing. An identity thing. A reminder of what he was when there were no other outward markings. And very likely something that would drive Inspector Thatcher to disapproval; Turnbull wasn't without his little rebellions.
That was all very high-minded and symbolic up until the point he realized it was really annoying to walk in sand in those boots. The black t-shirt had been quite the poor idea, as well, though he had to give himself the pass that he had no idea how his day would unfold when he put it on.
There were people about. He nodded politely to everyone he passed, his duty smile firmly in place.
Ray sleeping back there made him nervous. There was something about leaving him alone that screamed wrong; a man that vulnerable should be watched over. Injured and dozing.
A mother and her child passed him hand in hand; the little girl offered Turnbull a wave.
...it wasn't like this place was crawling with threats. Still. Turnbull didn't wander far, even if he did itch to move. Work, maybe. Or clean. Cook. Something. His mind wasn't the safest place to occupy at the immediate moment, he found. The sun on his shoulders and a trek through hilly sand provided plenty of physical exertion, but not much in the way of accomplishment.
It was the little girl that provided him inspiration for what he would do next, though the idea struck him several minutes after she'd passed.
She'd waved with a handful of beach grass.
It was an absolute flight of fancy, but then, so was the day; he ran with it. Straying a little off the beaten path, he carefully selected a few longish strands of thick beach grass.
Straightening them in his hand, he made his way back toward the Riv, selecting a small patch of sand not far from the parking lot - close enough to keep a reasonable eye on Ray, far enough not to seem like he was hovering - to settle in and begin work.
It was a completely, childishly, goofily random a thing to do, but it killed some time. When he was done, he had a meticulously woven tied ring of beach grass. Pristine, so far as anything made of plantlife could be. Pretty. Alternating colors; some selected more sun-beaten than others, the washed out colors patterned with the more lively green. They would all dry to the same color, but in the meantime, they made for a visually appealing pattern.
He stood up to knock the sand off of himself and stepped lightly toward the Riv, aiming not to wake Ray if he was still asleep.
There was quite a lot of presumption in his thought to tie it to the rear-view mirror. Turnbull didn't even know if Ray could stand things dangling from his mirror, much less that he'd want something so silly. Regardless, he went to open the door as quietly as he could, all the while telling himself that if Ray didn't like it, he was sure to complain. Loudly.
"Good hike?" Ray asked, before his hand was even on the door handle.
Turnbull straightened and tried not to feel too much like a thief. Though, admittedly, he wasn't stealing anything. That particular feeling as though he were was, therefore, quite an annoyance. "Yes, Ray. Brief and sandy though it was."
"Yeah?" Ray's voice was sleepy. How he had guessed who it was without opening his eyes was a mystery.
"Yes. It's quite a nice park; your government has done a fine job maintaining it." Turnbull fiddled with his woven beach grass and kept trying to kick away the sensation of having been caught red-handed at something. "Your nap?"
"In and out. Side hurts. Heard your boots, decided to be in."
Turnbull raised an eyebrow and looked down at said boots for a long moment, then back up again. "I was unaware they were distinctive."
"Yeah, they are. Well, kinda. How you walk in 'em is." Ray finally opened his eyes, though only as much as necessary, and looked over with a mild grin. "So, you wanna hang out here awhile longer, or you got a bug to go do somethin' else?"
"Whatever you--"
"Noooooo..."
Turnbull closed his eyes for a moment in exasperation, but he couldn't, again, quite chew down the grin and he dropped his head briefly. This was... he didn't know what this was. "--that is to say, I would gladly entertain suggestions."
"Better." Ray grinned brightly back, a sudden flash of it. "'Cept, I don't got any suggestions."
It was very hard not to smile back at that look. Even accounting for embarrassment, even accounting for the utter blankness that took over whenever he tried to think about where they could go next, and for thoughts he didn't want to have of things hanging on rearview mirrors; even accounting for many, many things that should have made it impossible, Turnbull was smiling back. "It's too early for dinner. I'm afraid I have no particular ideas in mind." While he still had some nerve, he set the woven grass next to Ray on the hood of the Riv.
Ray picked it up, eyebrows going up. "Wow. You did this?"
Ah. There was the rush of familiar red. He felt like he had been branded with a permanent blush. "Yes, Ray."
"Pretty," Ray answered, looking over it and running a thumb down the weave.
Turnbull cleared his throat quietly. "Hm. Thank you. It's, ah. Yours, in any case."
"Yeah?" That tone was entirely too touched for Turnbull's sanity.
"Yes, Ray," he repeated. "I had thought... thought to hang it in the rear-view mirror, though-- though-- I was uncertain as to whether-- hm. Yes, Ray."
The answer was quite a long moment in coming, but then Ray said, on the quiet side, "Sure. I mean, long as you don't think that means you can hang some fuzzy dice up there, too, yeah. Go for it."
It was a bit of a surprise, even though that had been his intention. The pause vaguely worried him, though it seemed far more a thoughtful pause than an uncertain one.
Then Ray looked back over, holding the weave up. "Hey, you think you can teach me how to do this?"
What? It took a long several moments for Turnbull to realize that he hadn't actually asked that out loud, and then he finally did, albeit keeping as much disbelief out of his tone as possible. The idea of Ray Vecchio, of all people, wanting to learn children's crafts was quite far outside of his expectations. "Pardon?"
"I figure it like this," Ray said, laying the weaving over one leg, "We don't know what we wanna do, I don't wanna go back home, your place doesn't have much to do, and it's pretty nice out here. So, can you teach me how to make one of those or not?"
Turnbull blinked rapidly a few times, his smile stealing right back across his face. It seemed a bizarre request, but once he'd gathered his brain, Turnbull was grateful to give something. It sounded an entirely lovely prospect. He clasped his hands at front, tugging on his thumb with his fingers. "I would be... I mean, yes, Ray. I would be delighted to teach you." Still, he worried about Ray trudging through all that sand. "I-- ah, shall I... Hm. Please stay here, Ray, I will bring back some grass."
Turnbull's walk that time around had quite a bit more purpose and confidence to it. It probably helped that he was scouting for something specific, giving him no time to think intently on anything more confusing. He'd chosen blades of grass for sturdiness, thickness, shape, and length. He'd brought back quite a bundle.
He'd initially anchored it around his bootlace for weaving; something simple and on the fly. It didn't really do for teaching, and there was no way to comfortably do it on the car; in the end he'd seen Ray off the Riv, settled that blanket in the sand just off the parking lot (Lord, did he ever resist the urge to fuss over), stuck a thick stick deep into the sand and surrounded it by a few small rocks. It would be sturdy enough to work from, keep the strands taut, and hopefully not lean too much.
He had shown Ray a very basic pattern; a left to right weave, over and under, before starting again.
Idle observations were thrown off as best he could, an exercise that he found increasingly, annoyingly, more difficult as the day wore on. He observed that Ray couldn't possibly be very comfortable like this, with bruised ribs; he was sitting very straight. That people didn't seem to think that it was overly odd for two grown men to be sitting in the sand making summer camp crafts. That his black t-shirt was an exceptionally bad idea indeed. That Ray had nice hands, especially when they were doing something sort of delicate.
He was especially going to throw off that last one.
"...oh. So that's how you make that edge all looped like that."
"Yes, Ray. You're doing very well."
"Yeah?" Ray seemed pleased with that. It was almost unnerving. "Ain't as neat as yours, but hey."
"It's a better first effort than mine was, at the time."
"And you were what, six? Seven?"
"...seven."
"Right, so stop tryin' to make me feel better about it." Ray's grin was decidedly tongue-in-cheek, but he was still weaving. The sunlight didn't seem to bother him, even dressed in an off-white dress shirt over a white undershirt. Though, he had rolled the sleeves up to halfway up his forearms. "Where'd you learn this?"
Turnbull looked back down again at the weaving. "My sister taught me."
"A sister? Got any other siblings?" Even not looking, he could hear Ray grinning wider. How was that even possible? "And they anywhere near as annoying as mine?"
"I have two older brothers." Turnbull pressed his lips together around a brief grin. "...not... not annoying. Well. I imagine they could be. There is a rather large age gap, so I wouldn't know in the same sense."
"Oh, yeah? How large is 'rather large'?"
"My sister was fourteen when I was born. My brothers were seventeen."
"Okay, so that is large. Huh."
"I was something of a surprise."
"Say that's a pretty good one, as surprises go. You ever miss 'em?" One sentence melded seamlessly from the other, giving Turnbull no time to boggle over the first before he was answering the second.
"My sister, often." Turnbull's smile shrank, and he made a point of examining the weave very closely. "It really is very good for a first try, Ray," he reiterated.
"It's okay. I feel like a hippie." Ray chuckled, then apparently thought better of it. "Next thing you know, I'm gonna be wearin' tie-dye or somethin'. You get to see her whenever you went back to Toronto?"
"Yes, Ray." There must have been something else to talk about. Casting about, Turnbull landed on something. "You're the oldest, then, of the Vecchio siblings?"
"Uh, yeah." Ray nodded, weaving away, concentrating on the strands of grass. "Had an older brother, but he died when I was four. Marie and Frannie don't remember him, and I barely do. 'Course, my parents kept it all kinda... well, not hushed, y'know, but... not something to worry us over. Which is really messed up in retrospect, but I guess I can see their point. So, it was Nicholas, me, Maria and Francesca."
"I'm sorry for your family's loss." Turnbull felt it was very like him to have landed on precisely the wrong thing to ask. The urge to 'Detective' was powerful. "--Ray."
"It's okay." Ray half-shrugged, suddenly seeming a little more awkward now. "It was a long time ago." He gestured to the weaving, which was getting quite long now. "How much longer should this go?"
Turnbull's frown twitched a bit; he itched to take back having asked. Nothing to be done for it now. "...as long as you like, really, so long as you have enough to tie off. However, if you would like to tie it off now, you will need to gather these strands into two sections--" He gestured close to the weave, brushing over it. "--and if you would like to make a ring of it, tie it to the other end. Tie it to itself tightly, if you'd rather leave it open."
"Yeah, okay. I can do that."
"Incidentally, I also know enough about cold process dying that should tie-dye truly interest you, it is an art I could also teach." It was an attempt at a small joke; Turnbull was quite desperate to bring back any hint of a grin to Ray's face. He couldn't help but think it was entirely crass once he'd said it, though.
Ray never looked up as he got to tying, but his mouth twitched in what looked like a smirk, then became decidedly serious again. "Only if you wear it with me, Renny."
"I-- you mean-- tie-dye?" Well, obviously that was what Ray was getting at, but the mental image of himself in tie-dye was enough to make him stare off for quite a long moment.
No, he couldn't quite hang onto that image without a large sign blinking in his head going 'ABSURD-ABSURD-ABSURD.'
"Yeah, why not?" Ray finished tying the weave off, then undid it from the stick so he could finish it off. And once he was done, he held it up to his forehead like a headband. Still serious. "Whaddya think? Hippie enough?"
Turnbull did his very best to hold onto a straight face, and quite nearly succeeded. Until Ray broke into the widest, cheesiest grin that he had ever seen on the man.
It seemed somehow horribly wrong to laugh right now, but that was exactly what happened.
Ray was both laughing and swearing, that headband held up for only an instant longer under what was clearly pain.
Turnbull was laughing and fussing, so they made a nice matching set. "Ray, you mustn't--" Oh dear, that was a giggle. "--exert yourself--"
"--oh, man, the look on your face-- holy--"
"The look on mine? Do you realize I thought for an instant you must be serious--?" Turnbull rocked forward under a laugh, half-hiding his face behind one hand.
"Yeah, that's why it was a priceless look!"
"You really should stop--" Oh, God. Turnbull had to stop laughing or he thought Ray might hurt himself. He tightened the hand over his mouth in a concerted effort to stop laughing, if only by example.
"--picturing a whole new Mountie uniform, rainbow, peace sign buttons, sandals, K-9 units goin' nuts for the smell comin' off it--"
"Crossed pistols no more; crossed joints, on the other hand..." So much for trying to stop laughing. Turnbull couldn't quite resist throwing that in, and the howl of both laughter and pain that came from Ray made it even more impossible.
"Oh, God! Okay, I'm dyin' here." Ray had doubled over, trying to brace his ribs without putting too much pressure on them, and after a few more moments with his eyes squeezed shut tight, he managed to gasp in a few short breaths. He was grinning, though, if tightly. "See, now, what you gotta do is picture Thatcher in that getup. Every time she gives you crap, just picture that."
"I believe she would combust from the mere mental suggestion." That was not at all a bad image - for that matter, it seemed like the uniform to suit a particular old acquaintance had he made it through Depot - and neither was it helping with the state of Turnbull's sides. He was hugging himself, arms crossed tight. Head fallen forward just to laugh. Turnbull untucked a hand to wipe his face, leaving it pressed to his own cheek. "You-- you may injure us both if you keep-- keep us laughing." It was spaced out with poorly contained giggles. "Are-- are you all right, Ray?"
"Yeah." Well, Ray was clearly sore, but his spirits seemed high. He was still smiling as he managed to unpry a hand from one side to gesture. "You oughta do that more often."
"Picture Inspector Thatcher in full peacenik regalia?" Turnbull asked, catching his breath.
Ray gestured again; a relaxed, casual motion, even wound protectively around his wounded ribs. "No, laugh. It's nice."
Well. How does one respond to that? Turnbull blinked a few times, not entirely -- well, not remotely -- sure how to answer. That was rapidly approaching 'story of his life' status. "Ah... thank you."
"No problem." Ray tossed his weaving over, then picked up the one Turnbull had made earlier, wincing again as he leaned back enough to put it into his pocket. "So, we did some hippie stuff, and we had lunch, and we got to hang out at the park. What's next?"
There really wasn't a great deal to be done, aside perhaps wait for dinner. Ray seemed just as resolute about avoiding his family well into the early evening as he had been in the morning. It wasn't entirely surprising -- a chaos of Vecchios being a chaos -- but it still made for some difficulty in planning. Which was to say, they didn't have one.
It felt strange for Turnbull to have both his friend and his friend's car in his custody of sorts, but it felt somewhat less strange as the day wore on. They had just meandered along the coastline, stopping occasionally for directions. They found a pharmacy where Ray filled his prescription for pain medication (a distinct relief) and they found a fair restaurant where they ordered carry-out before finding yet another lakeshore park to sit and eat at.
It was a rather nomadic day.
"I suppose we should consider heading back to Chicago," Turnbull finally said, and he was sort of surprised to feel a pang of regret for it. Despite the occasional moments of absurdity, the much less occasional moments of awkwardness and the sheer strange randomness of it all, he found himself rather reluctant to call it a night and turn the nose of the Riv towards home.
"We should." Ray nodded, looking out over Lake Michigan. "Be the responsible thing to do, right?"
"Yes, it would."
"That what you wanna do, Ren?"
He must not lie. He must not lie... There was something about the way Ray had learned to question him that made it inconveniently difficult to step around. "No. I cannot honestly say I'd prefer to go back. However, I'm not certain that sleeping in a car is legal in this particular state, and for that matter, at all advisable in your state." It was almost a joke.
Ray huffed a laugh as he replied, apparently taking it as one. "You don't wanna go back, I don't wanna go back, there's nobody yankin' our leash to go back. Well. Maybe Frannie, but I shut the phone off hours ago, so she doesn't have a leash to go yankin' anymore. So we don't sleep in the car. So we get motel room. Or two. I'd say three, but I'm not that protective of my car. Well. Who'm I kidding? 'Course I am. But I'm pretty sure they don't have beds big enough for her, so I gotta live with the parking lot."
"A-- a--"
"A room, Renny. You have those in Canada, right? Or do you gotta have a throw down with an Eskimo for the last rent-an-igloo?"
"Ray, of course we have--" Oh. Right.
Turnbull still hadn't the faculties to deal with the question.
"I-- I--"
"You, you. You wanna room or not? I'm payin'."
The idea of sharing a room with Ray made him want to bounce his head off another wall. It made him want a couple of other things, but his mind wasn't the least bit prepared to name them.
Renfield Turnbull was becoming rapidly aware that he had a problem.
Neither did he want to leave Ray alone in his condition; at least back at the apartment Turnbull would've been in position to help him quickly and easily if something should go wrong.
Guilt tangled with embarrassment wrapped around awkwardness knotted up with some weird kind of hope looped through sheer, blinding panic and all of it got caught in the gears of his poorly-oiled brain, bringing everything to a grinding halt. He felt stuck on absolutely stupid for a several gaping seconds before he forced out a reply. "A double room. Hm. Will-- will do. Yes, Ray."
"Okay, a double room. So, hit the next gas station we come to, and I'll get directions to some place decent." Ray seemed completely satisfied with the notion of continuing this quite impromptu 'vacation' of sorts. "Maybe somewhere with a jacuzzi."
Turnbull's head thumped off of the steering wheel before he even had time to realize it was headed there.
"What? You think I'm gonna go for a Motel 6? Or some place where you're afraid of what kinda mutated dust bunnies there might be under the bed?" Ray's broad smirk was audible. "So, c'mon. Tally ho, or sally forth, or whatever you Mounties say when it's time to hit the trail again."
The urge to give over to a bit of hysterical laughter was there. Turnbull firmly quelled it, picking his head up and staring out straight ahead as he turned the key, commenting deadpan, "Yee-haw."
All right, so perhaps he cracked a small smile when Ray huffed another laugh.
Ray had not been joking when he said he wanted a jacuzzi -- it was after dark when they found a hotel suitable. It was back more towards Chicago, close to the Indiana Dunes again, but it really was very nice. Very expensive, as well. If not for Ray bumping shoulders lightly with him, Turnbull might well have sputtered for the next ten minutes at the price. It was easily a third of his monthly rent, for one single night.
"Hey, I've paid off all the family's bills, I already put cash in the trust funds, I should at least be able to spring for a nice room for a night here or there," Ray had said, after they had collected the keys. It was a first floor room, and it did, indeed, have a jacuzzi.
Which was where Ray was now, leaving Renfield to feel as though he had just stepped into another world entirely. It wasn't that he had never seen high-class surroundings; quite the contrary. It was that it had been quite a long time, and the room looked so pristine that he could see disaster everywhere he turned. It wasn't the more typical beige or gray, but a rather large, warm and homey room with two of the most absurdly fluffy beds he'd ever set eyes on.
So he did the only reasonable thing and stood still, and even then he felt he might be only one step away from applying Murphy's Law to something expensive.
Sentry duty in a hotel room wasn't something he ever thought he'd pull.
He glanced to the left. Then, slowly, the right.
Perhaps this entire day was some sort of elaborate plot set in motion by Inspector Thatcher. Some manner of carefully crafted mindgame designed as an entirely new and more insidious way of throwing Turnbull off balance; there could be some sort of hypnotic agent in the drugs prescribed to Ray to make him cooperate.
That had to be it. It was not a charitable accusation, but that didn't matter. Someone was waiting for him, somewhere, to pop out at the least likely second to laugh at him and point. Perhaps they would film the reveal. He would undoubtedly break something and perhaps dirty himself with its contents.
He'd inclined his head a fraction to check under the bed before he caught himself, forcing himself upright again.
Renfield Turnbull was going out of his mind.
...perhaps he should lay down.
It was with a great deal of slow care that he unlaced his boots.
Jeans and a t-shirt most assuredly on, he crawled on top of the covers feeling just a little like they were judging him for his state of dress. He also sunk somewhat deeper into them than he had anticipated, which just added to the feeling. He was still trying to grasp exactly what he was supposed to think about today and yesterday, and he was failing utterly.
Ray coming back nearly had him jumping out of his skin. Ray wearing the complimentary bathrobe had him deciding that the ceiling was absolutely fascinating. Oh, look. There was Texas, in the stucco.
"Get any stiffer, you'll be a corpse," Ray commented, mildly. He sounded a little confused, though by the way his feet hit the floor, he did seem to be moving better for both the pain medication and the hot soak.
"I am somewhat unaccustomed to a bed like this." It was a piece of the truth, so Turnbull took it.
Ray settled onto his own bed, after drawing back the covers, and then sighed in relief. "Almost better than mine."
Ah. Florida? No. Quickly, find all the states. "I'm relieved that you're comfortable, Ray." It was also a truth, and sincere. Ray being in pain made all kinds of desperate little pangs of 'fix it' fire off. Even if nothing but time, healing and rest could.
"Yeah. Me too." Ray apparently was ready to sleep. At least, he pulled his covers up. The room was nice and cool after a long day in the sun. "So, why are you all ratcheted up?"
Maybe he wasn't ready to sleep. Hello, Massachusetts. "I--" There was no simple answer to that question. He didn't even really know all of the reasons himself. Self-analyzation had never been his strong point. Observation of others? Certainly. Himself? Disasterous. "That is to say, I'm-- this situation is quite a change from the norm."
"Suppose so." Ray reached over -- Turnbull could all but hear the wince -- and turned the nightstand light off. "So, hey, I got somethin' I gotta say. Since you don't seem to wanna believe it.
"I still like you. I just spent the whole day wanderin' around wherever you wanted to go, 'cept this place, and I still like you. I had fun. Hear that?" When he didn't get an answer (for it was quite difficult to answer in something not entirely unlike a panic state), he continued, "I don't get you sometimes, Ren. I don't get how you can be all... I dunno, sharp and hard when you're runnin' down a suspect, but you can't string two words together when someone wants to be nice to you. But I figure it like this: You think I want something. Hell if I know what, but you sure wanna give it, whatever it is, 'cause you think I'm gonna be disappointed if you don't.
"Not true. I don't want anything outta you except your company. Think about that for a few minutes. I don't want you to fall all over your boots trying to make me happy or whatever you think you gotta do. I just like hangin' out with you, and it gets a whole lot harder when you look like you wanna be anywhere else. If you really wanna be anywhere else, that's fine. But if you just wanna be anywhere else 'cause you're all up in your head about making me happy, I'll thank you kindly to can it. 'Cause I ain't Benny and I ain't Thatcher and I don't expect you to. And for that matter, Ren, you ain't Benny, and you ain't Thatcher, and you might be the only friend I got these days.
"So, there ya go. Have a speech. Do what you want with it, or don't. But yeah, I like you, and I ain't goin' anywhere, and if you wanna hang out with me, do it 'cause you want to, not 'cause you're tryin' to make me happy."
Silence stretched on, save for the odd huff of Turnbull's breath; abandoned words thought better of on the execution.
Perhaps he should be looking for provinces instead...
Pointless in the dark, wasn't it?
Turnbull hugged his arms to his chest tightly. He had a burning fight-or-flight urge that should not reasonably go with a proclamation so kind as that. His jaw clenched. His hands flexed. It was useless to be wide-eyed in the dark, but he was; hands, he could bat away. Cruelty, he could throw off. Spitballs, he could endure. Even Francesca, he could flee. That? That stuck, and he felt nothing so much as pinned to that bed.
He briefly wondered what Ray would do if Turnbull just tore his way out of there in fear.
He couldn't do that to Ray.
"I-- I--" You. You. Breathe. "I like you, too." A few breaths passed; labored. "Goodnight, Ray."
There was a long moment of silence on the other side of the room, and then Ray replied, quietly, "'Night, Ren."
Ray hadn't been wrong when he'd said Turnbull would've heard something like that gunman rounding the corner.
Sleep had come lightly, fitfully, in the emotional sense. He could keep physically still even when his brain couldn't. He was caught between feeling abject terror at Ray having been so easily able to read him and relief for the words he'd been given as a result. Even if believing them was beyond him. He couldn't think he wasn't a burden; so long as he could be useful, something good for Ray, he would be. When his usefulness ended he knew he would excuse himself before he made of himself a fool and a problem for Ray.
Hopefully, this time, he'd be able to determine where that line was.
For that matter, now was absolutely not the time to be readable to anyone. If Ray could glean that much from him, the very possibility of his, ah... rapidly developing problem... God, if whatever this was slipped through even the slightest bit, Turnbull thought he'd probably jump on Thatcher's transfer to the middle of nowhere, north.
No, sleep was not easy. Light. Easily broken by something such as rapid breathing and the odd motion from the bed across from him. Loud to his ears, subtle though it should have been.
His immediate thought was that Ray must be in pain; it was formed in his mind before consciousness fully was, and it was a few seconds before Turnbull landed on the realization that it was probably a nightmare.
He was at a total loss for what to do about it.
He could wake Ray up. He could, but it seemed cruel when the man clearly needed sleep to heal. He could ignore it; that seemed equally cruel. Turnbull had been given a limited briefing on Ray's undercover operation in order to maintain the cover; he knew so far as it involved the mob. He could imagine what Ray Vecchio's nightmares might entail in the abstract.
The clear choices warred with each other. The former option seemed far beyond his place. The latter felt like withholding a duty. Neither felt right.
Ray's breath caught.
"Sssh."
Turnbull blinked in the dark. Ah. Yes. That had come from his own lips. No louder than the rustle of leaves, but for all he believed, it may as well have been a foghorn.
He sat frozen for a few seconds, arms tightening around himself again. Measuring his breaths slowly so as to be silent. Terrified he'd woken Ray.
Ray hitched another breath, but aside that, it remained even.
Perhaps it had helped...?
"Sssh..." Quieter, this time. As one might shush a child; something for which Turnbull felt no small amount of shame, once he realized.
It seemed to work anyway. Or perhaps the nightmare came to an end. He couldn't be sure. He didn't, entirely, want to be sure. But Ray's breathing settled back to something softer and slower, a more natural sleep-rhythm, and left him to the darkness and his own thoughts.
Part IV