Author's Website: https://www.squidge.org/~pumpkin/cara/caraindex.html

Disclaimer: Alliance owns them and is responsible for letting Paul end COTW the way he did. Don't look at *me!*

Author's Notes: Thanks to Bas and Anne for beta and comments. :)

Story Notes: Bitter Vecchio! Depression! Loneliness! Resentment! Angst! Brief Song Lyrics! Unrepentant and deliberate use of the name "Stanley!"

The breakers were low, curling onto the sand with a tame soughing hiss and chasing the long-legged sandpipers up the beach. The small birds skittered earnestly to avoid the water that lapped around Ray Vecchio's bare feet, sun-browned like the rest of his body. Even this early in the season, he was deeply tan-- the sun loved him, and he stayed here year-round now. A gull wheeled overhead, its patch of shadow darkening Ray's body for a fleeting moment, its melancholy cry echoing over the water. He trailed his thumb idly back and forth over the silvering scar of his last bullet wound.

A few people strolled idly up and down the beach; mostly Ray didn't pay any attention to them. There weren't any buxom, long-haired babes in bikinis with oil-shiny skin and Osmond teeth, like he once thought all the Florida beaches were populated with. Most of them were pretty sad, middle aged and older, the elastic of swim trunks stretched by fat bellies, the occasional beleaguered bikini bottom struggling not to roll down under the pressure of an overhanging belly. There was even one old guy in sneakers wearing dark socks that had garters holding them up on the skinny, white, hairy legs sticking out of his khaki shorts.

A balmy summer breeze floated in from the southwest, cooling the sweat on Ray's chest. He took a sip out of the glass in his right hand; it was beaded with condensation and held iced tea, almost the same color as his body.

The sun was starting to sink behind him; soon Stella would get home and come out to remind him it was time to go in to open up the bowling alley. She hated having to do that; it got sand in her shoes.

Some of the same people strolling the beach behind him would go get dressed in cheap polyester clothes, leave their trailers and their campers and their little summer houses, and come in to spend the evening where it was air-conditioned without them having to pay for it. They'd maybe have a beer or two, maybe fight and flirt around with their cronies, do a little bowling and show around pictures of their grandkids. They'd rent shoes and dust them carefully with antifungal foot powder before they put them on.

Just a bunch of nattering old fools who had finished the useful part of their lives and come down here to toast their bones until they died, mostly forgotten by the people they loved, who maybe had once loved them.

Ray sighed and held the glass to his temple, enjoying its coldness. It made him think of winter, of Chicago and Canada.

Long time since he'd seen any of the above.

Stella tried to give him news from home, back when they first came down here. She'd just gotten off the phone with Harding and was full of chatter. "Fraser and Ray went off together in a dogsled after they caught Muldoon, some crazy nonsense about adventure and finding a dead man's hand, can you believe it?"

"I can believe it." Ray's voice had been sharp, cold and hostile, and it had made her blink. "I don't wanna hear about them anymore, all right? Just don't tell me what you hear. I've got my own life now, and so do you." He'd felt remorse then, watching her pretty brow wrinkle with confusion and the first hint of anger. "I already had this talk with Frannie. Chicago's behind me now, I'm not a cop anymore, I want a new start-- new friends, a new life. And I know you want it too."

He'd smiled at her, his best charming apology, and she'd kissed him, but it had been an ugly moment, one of the first bad patches in their brand-new marriage. The emotional scent of it had lingered for a few hours before either one of them forgot.

Ray took a drink of his tea, brooding. He hated Stella sometimes for telling him about that stupid fucking adventure. Because now that's where Fraser and Stanley lived, in Ray's head. They were still on that damned dogsled skidding over the pure, untouched snow together, making camp together, sharing a little pup tent and a campfire and conversation together, on a great never-ending journey into partnership, friendship... and God knows what else.

He'd ridden that sled with Fraser once. And fallen off.

Ray closed his eyes. The tea was cold in his hand, and he took another sip. It trickled a taste of Canada across his tongue and down his throat. Lemon and sugar. Sour and sweet.

The waves lapped at his feet, half-burying them in wet sand, but he ignored the rising tide and refused to move. He could hear engines on the highway behind the beachfront. Cars, tourists and bored locals driving slowly up and down the long flat highway. Otis Redding was on the local radio station; two or three cars were picking up the same song as they cruised past. I have nothing to live for, / it look like nothin's gonna come my way...

Ray smiled bitterly. Plenty to live for. Beautiful wife with a skyrocketing legal practice in West Palm Beach. Nice house on the beach here in Boca Raton. *I'm sittin' here restin' my bones, and this loneliness won't leave me alone, yes. Two thousand miles I roamed just to make this-a dock my home.*

Not quite that far, but far enough. Far enough to leave behind everything he'd ever known and loved. It was Armando's fault, mostly. Ray Vecchio left his life to live someone else's, and when he came back, his own life was gone. It'd been usurped by a crass loudmouthed slob who'd rather wear a six-days-unwashed t-shirt than a good suit.

Everything was different, everybody was changed. Even Fraser was a stranger, one with a sharp tongue and a new aggressive manner and a life that centered securely and intently on his new partner. Ray knew right away he couldn't fit in anymore. Armando Langoustini was gone, but he couldn't reclaim himself because there was already somebody else there. He didn't know where he stood anymore.

So there wasn't a partner for Ray anymore? Fine. There was that final gunshot wound and a chance to stop being a cop, with paid disability, thank you very much. So Stanley had Fraser now? Fine. Ray could find somebody too. He'd wooed Stella and won her. Whirlwind courtship. See how easy it was, Stanley? How easy was it for you?

After that first year in Florida, Ray had come to realize that in desperation, he'd fallen into the only niche available to him from his old life-- the role Stanley Raymond Kowalski left empty when he became Raymond Vecchio.

The glass of iced tea was cold. Like Canada in his hand. An icy cold droplet trickled down to his elbow.

Sometimes he thought about the likelihood that one day, Fraser would just show up on his doorstep, Stanley trailing behind him like a pet puppy waiting to have its head patted. Ray would be sitting here, staring east and drinking tea like he did every day. Stella would come out, her feet making a low padding sound in the sand, and bend to speak in his ear. "We've got company, honey."

No, that was how Ange would have said it. Stella wouldn't be so tolerant about it; whatever she said would have an edge of "Company that should have called first."

Ray would get up and hand her his tea glass and a grin would spread across his face for Fraser in spite of himself... and then his eyes would slide past Benny to his blond shadow, and his smile would freeze.

"Hey, Fraser, you're a sight for sore eyes, long time no see..." his mouth would spill out all the trite things that everybody else said down here, the phrases and idioms invading his own vocabulary as he settled in. The words would taste as false and unreal as his smile would feel. "Stay the night, hell, stay the week, we've got a foldaway couch and a guest bedroom...."

And Fraser and Stanley would put their heads together to discuss whether or not they could accept such a lavish gift of hospitality. While they debated, Stella would put on her best polite welcoming expression and cut her eyes at Ray in that particular subtle way that said he wasn't getting any till next Christmas, and then only if he was lucky and came crawling to her on his knees.

Or maybe she would look at Fraser and Stanley, the way Ray would, and maybe when he glanced at her he would see an echo of his own pain and regret on her face.

Fraser and Stanley would talk about it, oblivious, tousled blond head and neat dark head close, shoulders touching, voices low. They'd decide to stay, and maybe Fraser would solemnly announce that there was no need for the couch, he'd be perfectly content to sleep on a blanket in the floor in Stanley's room. Only he'd call Kowalski Ray, because Stanley Raymond Kowalski was Ray to him now, and maybe Fraser wouldn't be sleeping on that blanket at all. Ray's belly knotted into a dark, ugly lump at the picture imagination made of their intimacy.

So Ray would go in and be the perfect host, give them the grand tour, feed them, chatter with them about Chicago and cases and dead explorers with reaching-out hands. Late in the evening, they would go in to sleep. He'd go to the master bedroom with Stanley Raymond Kowalski's wife, and Stanley would go to the guest bedroom with Ray Vecchio's long-lost partner and best friend.

And Ray would not want to know, but he would lie awake anyway, straining to hear some sign, and maybe he would hear a whisper or a moan or a soft creak. And he would curse their decision not to stay in Chicago and leave him alone.

In a week they would go home and leave Ray here to run Stanley's bowling alley. In Chicago, Stanley would sit at Ray's desk and laugh with Ray's friends and take care of Ray's sister and be fed by Ray's mother and be cared about by Ray's Mountie. Meanwhile Ray would stay in Florida to run Stanley's bowling alley and try to satisfy the aristocratic whims of Stanley's up-and-coming wife and sit on Stanley's beach during the long oppressive afternoons, drinking iced tea and envying Stanley's haven in the welcoming arms of Benton Fraser.

Sweating, getting old, waiting to die. Dreaming of Canada.

"Ray?"

Stella's voice startled him and he jittered a little, nearly losing the glass he held in white-knuckled fingers. She reached and took it from him. He realized with surprise that it held only a few inches of pale brown water. All the ice had melted and the water inside was getting warm.

"You're going to be late; the alley opens at four." Like he didn't know that. "The league bowlers will be waiting in the parking lot."

As he got up to obey, Ray could see the impatience behind her eyes, and he knew she could see Canada in his. The Yukon-- barren and cold and remote, unreachable from the beaches of sunny Florida.