Disclaimer: I don't own anybody here. A couple of the kids in the club look familiar, and that guy with the gloves. but they don't belong to me.

Author's Notes: ds_flashfiction made me what I am today.

Story Notes: Written for the makeup challenge. This isn't exactly a sequel to To Hear Ill, but they are connected.

This story is a sequel to: To Hear Ill

Fraser probably thought he knew him. Ray clutched that to himself as one thing of his own, one thing he knew better than Fraser did, the relative virtue and admirability of S. Ray Kowalski. Whatever insight Fraser had into the workings of the world was still too tinted with his earnest simplicity to come up with Ray before the divorce, crawling like a dog after Stella while becoming more and more convinced that a colder bitch never existed, or the Ray between her leaving ("separation," they told their parents, but Ray wasn't a complete idiot) and the divorce being final, when he went a little crazy.

First he stopped cleaning the apartment. Then he started lounging around in his underwear. Then he started smoking again, and flicking the ashes into beercans, but when he realized he was craving being scolded for it more than he was craving the cigarettes he had to figure something else out.

So he took a vacation, drove up to Detroit where he had a couple friends who'd never really gotten the whole Stella thing, let them dress him up and take him out. Detroit had stinky, dark, sweaty clubs where the strobe lights hid his age and some eyeliner and an attitude and some angry dancing would get him a girl or a boy or both to fill the dark corners of the club.

And afterward those friends, who thought this was great fun and whom he never got around to telling about being a cop, were just as willing to pile into the car and drive out to some too-brightly-lit all-night place like they were teenagers again, although by now they had other goals than pissing their parents off by staying out late. They had a broad menu to choose from -- driving in one direction gave them tired and frustrated third-shift workers who didn't like white boys in their diner, and another gave them tired and frustrated crackers who didn't like nancy boys in their diner, and a third would give them a tired and frustrated smorgasbord who pretty much didn't like anybody in their diner. Ray was equal-opportunity, though -- the lipstick looked as pretty smeared across brown knuckles as pink knuckles as big shiny rings as leather driving gloves, and all their blood looked the same on his fists. The only requirement was that nobody'd call the cops.

Ray fought Stella these nights, or the idea of Stella. He fought the Stella he would never raise a hand to, the Stella he couldn't argue with, the Stella who looked at him in exasperation and turned away. Stella didn't know this Ray, Stella'd never seen this Ray, Stella thought she was the one with the eyeliner and the lipstick and the sway in the hips. Sometimes after he'd collapsed into one friend or another's sleeping bag he'd think, Stella might have stayed married to this Ray, Stella'd maybe been looking for this Ray when she married the kid with the car and the tattoo, but most of the time he was too drunk and tired to think more than "Ah, fuck, that hurts" before falling asleep. He didn't dream.

His time off ended soon enough, and he patched up his cheek and his knuckles and got in one last knock-down fight with Jack who'd stolen twenty bucks from him in high school, and grinned bloodily at him in the rear-view mirror as he drove back to Chicago with a thick line of Wet 'n' Wild Kohl Black around his eyes, even if it didn't show so good on the shiner. The next day he would have to go back to work, so when he got home he found some left-behind cold cream and attacked the lines, and fucked it up enough that he couldn't much remember watching Stella while he shaved, Stella with her lips tight and staring straight ahead as she did her eyes, and when he went to clean up his lip the cut stung pretty bad so he didn't much think about how no matter how mad she was she still had to loosen up her mouth while putting on lipstick.

And then he went back to work and made up a story about his bruises that nobody much believed or cared about, and he pestered Stella and he had trouble letting go and he cried into his beer sometimes before he flicked ashes in it. And he got so bad his lieutenant called him into his office and strongly suggested taking the undercover job that didn't make any sense. And he did.

But that Ray didn't pine over Stella, cause Stella never knew that Ray. He'd served his purpose, or so Ray thought, until now. Now Fraser thought he knew him. And over there in the corner was a punk kid, 25 or so, running a bit overweight, with the eyeliner and the lipstick and the stubborn glare back at Ray when he saw him watching, and he tensed up when Ray sneered at him, and he smiled meaner when Ray tilted his head, and he followed Ray right out the back door.

Turned around with "Yougotaproblembuddy" already on his lips, and although Ray's "Shut up, asshole" was in the script, the drop to his knees wasn't and the kid wasn't quite ready for improv. But by the time Ray got past the pants to the erection he remembered from every back door the kid had his hands buried in Ray's hair, and Ray was getting pushed into a mouthful of dick and a noseful of pubic hair just like this Ray had never left.

End This Ray by Hel Virago: lorelei_fic@hotmail.com

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