I felt Ray's sleeve maddeningly brush back and forth against mine as he darted from side to side. "Are they slaughtering the cows back there? It shouldn't be taking this long for a burger. I'm watching my lunch break tick ticking away here."

"I'm sure the staff is working as fast as they can."

"Yeah, I know. I had a McJob kind of thing as a kid. Doesn't mean I have to wait gracefully. And those people rubbernecking at the counter won't let me see what's going on. I hate being left in the dark."

"We could go elsewhere."

"I got 15 minutes invested on this line. I'm sticking with it."

Diefenbaker whined. "You're only encouraging Ray's impatience," I told him. Not that anything I said made much of a difference.

Still, I understood their frustration. The four people standing in front of us hadn't moved at all in the last ten minutes. That had to feel like an eternity in Ray time. If a person could actually "die of waiting," it would be my Ray.

And Ray had seemed distracted and irritable of late. It hurt to see him like that, but he wouldn't confide in me.

I suddenly realized that I couldn't hear Ray muttering blackly to himself, sense him radiating impatience, or feel him fidgeting anymore. When I turned to look, he was smiling and waving at something. Then I saw her, and heard her as well, since she was cooing with happiness. A baby girl perched on her mother's shoulder a meter ahead of us smiled and waved one chubby fist back to him, her dark eyes shining in delight.

"Ray?"

"Huh?" For a moment he retained that smile as he looked at me, and it felt like spring sun on my skin.

"Who started it?"

"Uh, the kid was staring at us."

"At us?"

"I'm the guy standing next to the guy in bright red and the fluffy doggie. 'Course she's gonna look at us."

"But she's smiling and waving at you."

"No, she's not."

"Ray...."

"Okay, okay. Kids and me.... They stare at me, like I pop out at them. Maybe they think I'm interesting looking or something. And it's not the hair," he said, surprising me in the way he'd so effortlessly guessed what I was about to say. "They did it when I was a kid too, and back then Mum made sure my hair behaved to her standards. So they stared at me with these big, solemn eyes, like the Mexican orphan kids in those velvet paintings. Freaky. But I found out I could make them smile if I smiled at 'em, and the smiling was easier to take than the staring. Smiling like that seems to work on lots of grown-ups too."

"Yet you don't use this vast power for the betterment of humanity."

"Yer funny. I'd ruin my rep." He waved to her again.

"It seems that children like you. Well, most children."

Ray looked so offended I nearly laughed. "Who didn't?"

"Janet Morse's children."

"The bounty hunter?" Ray shook his head. "Those weren't kids; those were demons done up as kids. I like kids, most times."

I had something I wanted to ask him, but I didn't dare, not when the wounds of his divorce still seemed to be so fresh. Yet he guessed again and said, "I kinda want kids of my own, but I'm not going out looking for 'em. If the right person comes along and kids follow, good. Otherwise...." He frowned suddenly, his eyes going distant. "Stella wasn't it, but I think I knew that even before I asked her about having some. Felt her slipping away from me, but I was denying it. Part of me knew that asking about kids would finally get it out in the open and make the slow waiting and pain stop."

Ray's expression tried for rueful but couldn't mask the hurt. "I had this image of what our lives together would be like, and right now our kids would be giving us gray hairs but we'd be *happy* together, y'know?" He looked at me as if just remembering I stood there, then grabbed me by the arm. "Hey! Don't look so bad. I'm sorry I dumped that on you. I'm thinking about this stuff anyway lately. My wedding anniversary's coming up. Kind of a very, merry unanniversary now, but hey."

His confession amazed me, and I was torn between the urge to put an arm over his shoulder in comfort and to find Assistant State's Attorney Kowalski and.... Fortunately, my mind didn't let me take my thoughts of those urges to their natural conclusions, and I acted on neither. Instead I said, "I think you'd make an excellent father, Ray."

"I couldn't do worse than most people, that's for sure. Look at that kid wandering around alone while his mom's gabbing and not watching. He's been out there by himself for at least five minutes, since that's when I noticed him and started watching. Kid can't be more than three. She should just ring a dinner bell and tell the pedos to come and get him. I mean, I'd have a Lo/Jack on my kids. And that thing with the bounty hunter's kids; of course they were monsters."

"Ray." As much as I was certain what he would say next would horrify me, at least a good rant would keep his mind from lingering on Stella.

"They were. All over the place, and didn't listen to nobody, and why not? They didn't have a home, their mom didn't pay much attention to them because she was so busy all the time, and the oldest girl was resentful that her mom expected her to play mom to the others, and why shouldn't she be? She's a kid; she has plenty of time to be a mom when she has her own kids, so let her be a kid. Mom had lost control and was down to bribing them to behave when she couldn't rope someone into babysitting for her. I know they had no money, and the dad was a deadbeat, but those kids were headed for trouble. I'm sorry; I know you liked her."

"You could call it that." I had more than liked her. "But you do have a few points there."

"A few." Ray shook his head. "All this stuff about being 'friends' to yer kids seems more like an excuse not to do the things you should be doing as a parent because yer lazy or ya wanna avoid doing the tough stuff. Kids need some structure and discipline, need to get told some things so they don't have to find out on their own and get hurt."

"I've always thought you would spoil any children you'd have."

Ray smiled. "Sometimes, when it's, uhm, appropriate. Otherwise--"

"'Shake, children, shake'?"

"You scare me, Fraser." Seeing that the line still refused to move, Ray fidgeted some more, then put his hands over his eyes to play peek-a-boo with the child ahead. "I had a weird dream last night."

One could get whiplash following Ray's conversations. "Weird how?"

"I was eight or something, and I was in the school band. Not in real life, just in the dream." Ray lifted his hands to reveal his eyes, making the girl coo and wave her fists in delight, before covering his eyes again.

"I was in such a band as a boy. An orchestra."

"Yer kidding me."

"I played clarinet. Well, it really wasn't much of an orchestra with the five of us."

"And the other half of the town's population came to see you play?"

"Something like that."

"That's freaky, Fraser. Anyway, in my dream, I was playing the triangle."

I could almost see him. I imagined he'd looked adorably gawky as a child, and that was the last thing one would want to tell him. "A noble instrument."

"Oh yeah," he answered, sarcasm itself. "I'm, like, three seconds off every time I have to strike the damn thing, and I know it, but I can't fix it. I mean, the triangle isn't that tough but I am not cutting it."

"I'm sure the triangle is harder than it looks."

"Sure was in that dream. The other kids start to growl at me, and the growling gets louder every time I screw up. Finally, they all attack me. I woke up as a violin came flying at my head at close range. So I dreamed that a group of band geeks jumped Bogart on me."

"'Band geeks' sounds cruel, Ray."

Ray shrugged. "I got called lots of stuff too. Since I never fit into any of the groups, all of 'em called open season on me. It's just kids. Yes! Somebody moved!"

Ray turned to face me and smiled, his mouth, his eyes, his body, his whole self beaming at me. I could no more fight the pull of that smile at my own mouth than I could fight the pull of gravity. I wanted to kiss him, feel the shape of his joy from his lips, but I controlled myself enough that I merely smiled back, helpless, warm.

His mouth quirked. "See? Toldya it worked. And you scoffed. Hey, why are you looking at me like I just killed Dief? What did I do?"

For a moment my misery at realizing that he hadn't been smiling for me must have shown through. He'd been smiling simply to prove a point. It had nothing to do with me at all.

My voice sounded as blank and level as I hoped my face looked. "It was nothing you did; it was something I did."

Ray's sudden unhappy expression left me sorry for my lapse and selfishly elated at the same time. I had dragged him back down, yet it showed me that he did care for me. Wrong of me, so wrong.

"Is there anything I can do?" he asked softly.

"No, but thank you, Ray. It's nothing you should trouble yourself over."

"Fraser, you'll tell me if you think of something I can do, right?"

Kiss me. Love me. "Yes."

To the little girl's dismay and my own, Ray remained solemn and thoughtful through the rest of our wait in line. I apparently lacked his power of the smile, because none of my attempts succeeded in bringing the light and smile back to his face.

******************************************************

Ray remained thoughtful for the rest of the day and said very little. Once in a while I caught him shooting a quick glance at me. As much as it unnerved me, I left him to his thoughts after my first attempts at bringing him out met only with distracted, mumbled answers. It left me selfishly praying for some crime to occur to snap him out of it and bring him back to me, but the afternoon turned out to be one of the dullest I'd ever been through with either of my Rays, with nothing to tempt his attention back.

After three hours of this, Ray finally looked at me directly and said, "I'm sorry I've been such a grouch and-- What are you doing?"

Perhaps wry honesty might keep him here. "I'm staring at you, Ray."

He leaned back in his chair, as if to put more distance between my eyes and him. "Yeah, I noticed. Uh, why?

"I find you interesting to look at. The same way the children do." I doubted that, but it sounded better than what I really thought.

"Yeah? Well, same like with the kids, it's kind of creepy." Ray took a breath and looked down at the papers cluttering his desk. "I like yer smile too."

"Ray?"

"Look, I know I'm talking English here.... I wanted to let you know that you smiling can make me smile the same way mine makes you."

"Ray?"

Ray sighed. "I'm trying to figure out where I went wrong at lunch today."

"You didn't do anything wrong."

"Yer long face said otherwise. The only thing I can think of is that you felt like I was taking advantage of ya."

If only. "How so?"

"'How so?' Damn. Didn't nail it, then."

I felt terrible. Poor Ray was looking for a way to make things right but kept misinterpreting my actions, completely understandable given the way I was deliberately misleading him and mixing my signals.

I decided to take a small chance. "Please feel free to smile at me as often as you'd like. I'd miss it if you didn't."

"Yeah?" Ray burst out into an irresistible grin, lighting his whole face, demanding a like response. As much as I hated the way his ex-wife treated him, at times like this I understood that turning him away so abruptly might be the only way to keep her resolve intact. Not that I understood her resolve to keep Ray out of her life. Not that I didn't still hate her for her actions, whether they had reason or not.

As much as the depths of my feelings for Stella Kowalski worried me, I couldn't seem to help myself. I was terribly biased where Ray was concerned.

"I will endeavor to never answer one of your smiles with a long face again," I said.

"That's a big promise. Think yer up to it?"

"I'll try my hardest."

"Cool. Y'know, I was thinking about that kids thing. What do I need kids for? I mean, I don't know much about 'em aside from having been one for a while. Maybe wanting 'em was just me responding to societal pressure to conform to a traditional standard." Ray cackled at the look on my face. "Thank yew, thank yew. You can throw money if you'd like. Throw enough, and I might start trotting out the *five*-dollar words. 'Sides, if I feel the urge for a kid, I can just treat Dief like one. I can spoil him--"

"I think not. Besides, it would be like salting the sea." As Diefenbaker whined, I said, "Don't play innocent with me." He snorted and pointedly looked away from me. "Although I would love to see you try to discipline him, Ray."

"That might be rough. At least he can't backtalk me. Yer the only one he does that to. That way I can dress him up in doll clothes and have imaginary tea parties with 'im, and he can't say a word."

I almost choked. Ray certainly had a gift for perverse imagery. I've never seen Diefenbaker look so horrified before. I had to ask, "Would this involve putting a bonnet on him as well?"

"Of course. It wouldn't be a real imaginary tea party any other way." Ray laughed. "Just kidding, Dief."

"I would worry were I you. He has a long memory as well as a gift for taking vengeance."

"Yeah, yeah, but he knows which side his donut is powdered on. We're still buddies, you and me?"

"Beyond a doubt." As much as I could wish we were more, he was still very obviously in love with his ex-wife. I couldn't compete with an icon set on a pedestal.

For now I would have to content myself with the knowledge that while Stella Kowalski had his love, I had his smiles.

**********************THE END***********************

More Viridian5 stories can be found in The Green Room at
http://members.tripod.com/~drovar/viridian/
Fandoms represented: due South, Hard Core Logo, Twitch City, X-Files, Once a Thief, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, Angel, Two Guys and a Girl (was Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place), X-Men, Doctor Who