Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine and I am making no money off this.

Author's Notes: Written as a Reality Bomb for elementalv during dS Match '08.

Story Notes: Set during s3/4.

"Reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture." He says it every day, sometimes more than once, and almost no one even asks. The city's closed over the absence of his reasons without a scar.

He's never been so grateful for his own formidable self-command; it enables him to ignore the possibility that there will never be an appropriate juncture to explore those reasons again. Mostly ignore it. Practice, he is discovering, does not make perfect.

Sometimes, when he can't sleep, he makes a list of the reasons in his head.

1. Ray's smile. (This is actually many reasons, as Ray had--has, has--many different smiles.)

2. Ray's eyelashes.

3. The way Ray said his name, just before pushing him out the window of an exploding apartment. As if it weren't just duty or generosity; as if he already mattered.

4. Ray's cross glinting in the light as it tumbles out of the open neck of his shirt.

Usually he's asleep before he gets to 10. Not always. Once, he made it all the way to 637.