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Two Meetings in Neutral Territory
for Aerye
Author's Notes: With thanks to sdwolfpup for cheerleading, and brynnmck for the last-minute beta.
The name on the crumpled piece of paper Frannie had handed him was almost illegible, but it looked kind of like Lou's, which Ray figured was about as blue-collar a name as a bar could get without resorting to something like Bob's PBR Emporium. He knew the type: dim, hazy rooms reeking of stale smoke and fried food, four or five end-of-shift regulars in the whole place, fuzzy TVs blaring daytime programming into the silence. The kind of place his dad had liked to hole up in, when the classy joints were too packed with people he owed money.
Ray pulled into a fire lane and threw the car into park, tossing Frannie's scrap of paper onto the dashboard. The snow was starting to pick up a little, but it wasn't nearly thick enough yet to block out the garishly bright blue awning on the right; whoever Lou was, he sure didn't want to risk anyone missing his bar.
He slid out of the car and into the snow, his feet slipping a little on the unplowed cement. No hat, no scarf, no gloves; he could blame it on this being his first winter back in Chicago, but the truth was, Frannie had said guess it's urgent or something and he'd taken off like someone had lit a fire under him.
In the back of his mind, he could almost hear Fraser saying, that's no excuse for not being properly prepared for the weather, Ray.
He flipped up the collar of his coat and stuffed his hands into his pockets; for one quick dash from the car to the awning, that was preparation enough.
A blast of warm air and a wall of sound hit him as he swung open the door. The place was dim - that much, he'd gotten right - but it was a soft, diffused kind of lighting, and the smell was less fried food and more ... tomato sauce, maybe. Not a bar - a restaurant, and he'd lay good money on Lou being Italian.
What the hell was so urgent about pasta? Was this Kowalski's genius idea of a joke?
There was a bar at one end of the place, and the only open barstool was dead center, right next to the guy with the spiky blond hair.
Ray jerked a thumb at the bar as he passed the matre d', shaking snow off his clothes as he went. Kowalski didn't look injured, or even mildly inconvenienced; he was just sitting there at the bar, casually plucking at the label on a bottle of beer.
If there wasn't actually something life-or-death going on, Ray was going to kill him.
He slid onto the barstool and waited for a moment, but Kowalski didn't say anything; he just took a long, slow drink from his bottle. There was a glass of wine already sitting on the bar in front of Ray, something too light to be a cabernet or merlot - pinot noir, maybe. The glass was too narrow for a pinot, but maybe Lou didn't know the difference.
Kowalski still hadn't said anything.
Ray lowered his voice, pitching it to be just audible under the hum of conversation. "You want to tell me what the hell this is about, Stanley?"
Kowalski finally looked up at him, his smile slightly crooked and pressed thin. There was nothing all that unusual about the way Kowalski was looking at him, but something about it made Ray edgy, just the same. Maybe it was the way Kowalski was looking at him, just looking and looking, like Ray had suddenly sprouted antlers or some kind of fungus.
Finally, Kowalski said, barely audible over the din: "Do you regret it?"
"Do I regret what?"
"Las Vegas," Kowalski said, his gaze a little more intent, his smile almost gone. "Do you regret it?"
Ray took a slow sip of his wine, letting it sit on his tongue until it was almost too bitter to swallow. The wine wasn't bad - a little on the acidic side, but flavorful enough. Probably something fairly cheap; the kind of wine he might have bought for himself, if he were strapped for cash.
The kind of wine Armando wouldn't have been caught dead drinking.
"Why?" Ray still wasn't sure entirely where the conversation was going, but he sure as hell didn't like it. "You thinking of booking a casino getaway, or something?"
Kowalski's fingers tightened around his beer bottle, just a fraction, barely noticeable.
Ray felt like he'd been whacked across the head with a bag of bricks. "Kowalski--"
"I asked--" Kowalski sat up a little straighter, an edge in his voice. "I asked if--"
"Yeah." It wasn't as simple as that, not really, but he knew without hesitation what he needed Kowalski to hear. "Yeah, I regret it."
Kowalski stared at him for a moment longer, and then he slumped back a little, all the air going out of him at once. "No question, not even--"
"Jesus, Kowalski. I came back and you owned the goddamned place, and Fraser--" Ray shook his head, willing himself not to go there. "Like no one had missed me at all, like I--"
"That was kind of the point, genius." Kowalski's smile was half-hearted, and his voice was flat. "No one was supposed to miss you."
"Think about that for a minute, will you?" Ray tapped his fingers against the bar, resisting the urge to smack his palm down on it, to make a scene. If he made a scene, maybe he'd blow the whole not-yet-an-op all to hell; maybe they wouldn't take Kowalski if he attracted notice right here, right now. He wouldn't even have to stop at smacking the bar; he could smack some sense into Kowalski, directly. That would get some attention. "No one is gonna miss you, either."
The restaurant had the heat cranked up so high that Kowalski's bottle was actually perspiring, and his constant pulling at the label was gradually reducing it to sludge. For a minute, he didn't say anything, just pulled and pulled until the label was completely unreadable and little bits of wet paper were all over the bar.
"That pretty much makes it ideal, I'm thinking," Kowalski said, his voice low, almost rough.
Ray didn't know what to say, what it was Kowalski expected him to say. Kowalski had to be expecting something; he wouldn't have called Ray up if he hadn't wanted to be talked out of it. What the hell did he think Ray was going to give him, a definitive answer on the exact degree to which going undercover sucked? Kowalski had been undercover, he had to know--
Or maybe he didn't. When Kowalski had gone under, he'd just been filling a seat. He hadn't been required to do anything illegal or amoral to maintain his cover; he hadn't had to constantly watch his back, and stay awake nights for fear of getting whacked by someone in the family who'd found him out, or someone in another family who'd bought the cover. He hadn't even really given anything up to be Ray Vecchio; he'd still had the job, his folks, even his shitty car.
And he'd gotten Fraser.
"What are we doing here?" Ray looked around the bar, like there was going to be a clue hidden somewhere among the bottles of liquor and cheap pseudo-Italian dcor. "If you'd wanted pasta, I could've--"
"In about ten minutes, there's gonna be a guy in the corner." Kowalski finally pushed his bottle away and sat back a bit, folding his arms. "I go over there, I give him the nod, that's it."
Yeah, that sounded real familiar - neutral territory, somewhere stupid where no one would notice or remember you; his had been at Bennigan's, which would've been funny if he hadn't spent the whole time ready to burst out of his skin.
Ten minutes. God. Between Kowalski and the feds, no one had left anything up to chance, had they? "You want to know why you don't? Because it's dangerous. Because you could get--" He couldn't say killed, people might be listening-- "Because--" Because I'd miss you, you asshole. "Because it gets easier while you aren't paying attention, and then one day you wake up and you are that guy, and you - you don't want to be that guy."
Kowalski nodded slowly. "You're really gonna tell me you regret all of it, Vecchio?"
It wasn't as simple as that. He'd done a job no one else could've; he'd saved lives; he'd made a difference in Vegas the way he never could've made a difference in Chicago, and stuck it to the Iguana family in a way he'd never been able to stick it to the Zukos. He didn't regret those things, not really.
"Yeah. All of it." Fraser's voice was there in the back of his mind again: now, Ray, that's really not-- "Everything."
When he looked up, Kowalski was watching him; still waiting for something, like Ray had some kind of rabbit to pull out of his hat.
"Come on," Ray said. He'd meant it to sound coaxing, but instead, it'd come out as brash and argumentative as any two words exchanged between them ever did. "Let's go. I've got better things to do than hang out in a joint like this."
Kowalski studied him a moment longer, and looked away.
"You go ahead," he said. "I think I'm gonna stick around for a while."
The snow had thickened to a near-total white-out; half an inch had accumulated on his car while he was in the restaurant. Snow was sticking to the tiny fuzz that remained of his hair and melting down the back of his neck, inside his collar, and in the back of Ray's mind, Fraser's voice was saying, well, Ray, I did tell you--
He wasn't listening to that voice, though. He wasn't doing much of anything, really; he was just sitting on the hood of the car, hands tucked under his arms, ears red-hot with frostbite.
It'd been twenty minutes, and there was no sign of Kowalski.
He'd been turning over the possibilities in his mind since the first blast of cold air had hit him on the way out of the restaurant. It wouldn't be the mob - that much, he was sure of. Kowalski's undercover experience was all on the force; maybe he was going undercover as a cop again. More secretive, this time, so maybe it was a sting - dirty cops, that sort of thing. Not in Chicago, where people would recognize him as Ray Kowalski or Ray Vecchio or both; somewhere further afield, where he wouldn't know anyone, where he'd be difficult to find.
Maybe Ray would even get a replacement Kowalski. The irony there would be pretty fucking thick, but it wouldn't be like he'd get a choice in the matter.
He should've said something.
Warm hands clapped down on either side of his head, covering his half-frozen ears.
"Are you really that fond of frostbite, or just that stupid?" Kowalski was glaring down at him, his threatening posture dampened a little by the amusement lurking in the fine lines that fanned out from the corners of his eyes. "Fraser would--"
Ray hooked two fingers around Kowalski's belt and yanked, pulling Kowalski hard against the hood of the car. Kowalski let go of Ray's ears to grab at his shoulders for balance, and Ray grabbed a handful of Kowalski's jacket to hold him in place as their mouths smacked together, more of a rough impact than anything else; maybe not an ideal first kiss, but Ray wasn't inclined to be picky.
Kowalski's mouth slanted across Ray's with a tiny bit more finesse, his tongue grazing across Ray's lower teeth.
Ray shoved him back with both hands, fingers still tucked into his belt and clutching his jacket. "What the fuck, Kowalski?"
Kowalski scowled. "Hey, you were the one who--"
"Not out here, in there!"
"Well, gee, Vecchio," Kowalski said, leaning back in, his ice-cold nose just barely brushing against Ray's as he angled his head, almost speaking against Ray's mouth. "I guess I was hoping you'd say something like, 'Seeing as how you're such a good partner and all, I figure you shouldn't--'"
Ray pushed forward, pressing his mouth to Kowalski's.
Kowalski swayed back, putting another half-inch of space between them. "But since you couldn't just tell me you wanted me to stay--"
"I want you to stay, so shut up, already," Ray said, yanking Kowalski back in.
They actually managed to just kiss for a moment; Kowalski's mouth opened under Ray's easy as anything, or maybe it was the other way around, and then--
And then Ray pushed Kowalski back again, unable to just let it sit. "Why didn't you go?"
"Because you told me not to, you idiot," Kowalski said. His fingers were icicles on the back of Ray's neck, but his voice was the warmest thing around. "It just took me a minute to figure that out."
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