Bendy-timed to Saturday June 23rd

[r_vecchio]

It has been so long, Ray actually has to look for the LA number, without knowing it off by heart. Just another thing that’s changed since February. He finds it still pinned to the refrigerator door when he goes to grab the milk. It’s written wonky, in scruffy handwriting but the address underneath is surprisingly legible. For him, anyway.

*** 

He walks out of the gym, towel still slung over his shoulder. Letting a guy pound him for an hour has helped things a little. He may be bruised, sweaty and aching, only half due to his own doing, but at least his head is clearer. Which makes picking up his cell phone, when he’s clean and showered at home twenty minutes later, a hell of a lot easier.

***

He’s finding excuses to go to the fridge, to look at the number, to read the name and address. But he doesn’t take it down. Every morning he goes to work with it still stuck up there and every evening he comes back home to find it in exactly the same place. It’s too strange to think that there’s nothing to stop him ringing the number now, and talking to her on the other end of the phone. But there is so much more that follows that first thought and it is way too much for Ray to handle all at once. He doesn’t know what would happen if he rang, he doesn’t know what he wants to happen. And he’s got too much planned right now to spend all his time thinking about the call. He’d begun to move on, at least he believed he had, and one tiny little relapse has lead to this.

***

He flops down on his bed, feet still touching the floor, and stares up at the ceiling. He’s made it through the week. Saturday couldn’t have come fast enough. He blocks out everything that’s happened so far, he’ll deal with it at another time, and he shuts his eyes, one arm laying limp above his head. The post-it is still downstairs. But he doesn’t need it. He’s seen it enough now to know the number again. His skin is still damp as he dials, thumb leaving moisture marks on the buttons and he roughly swipes the water away. He leaves his eyes closed since he’s going into this blind. It seems only befitting.

Comments

[ynez-castillo.livejournal.com]

Ynez has been hiding in her room since lunchtime. Well, "her room." The place she's sleeping these days. It still feels alien to her, temporary. Maybe that's all for the best. Tico moved a little table in and then ran a phone extension for her. Sometimes her computer is plugged in, sometimes a phone. She can't stand dial-up and Lupe isn't happy about having the line tied up while she's on the computer. She gets on to read her e-mail and that's about it.

She doesn't know why she answers the phone when it rings. Maybe so she can make a big show to Lupe about the phone line being available, so get over it already. Maybe she's bored. She's been looking at the same page in her book for the last fifteen minutes.

She feels like she's losing her mind.

"Hello?"

She's already rolling towards the doorway, taking the receiver with her as she goes. It never occurs to her that the call might be for her.

[r-vecchio.livejournal.com]

Ray's not half as surprised to hear her voice as he thought he would be. It only takes a second for him to realise Ynez has answered and not her father or Aunt Lupe, whom he's heard so...little about. It definitely makes things easier. He'd never relished the idea of an unavoidably awkward conversation between himself and Senor Castillo in the event that he picked up the phone anyway.

“You said I could call.”

[ynez-castillo.livejournal.com]

Ynez doesn't recognize the voice. "I'm sorry," she says politely. "Do you have the right number? This is the Castillo residence."

Lupe is already calling out to ask who it is on the phone. It reminds Ynez of high school, and not in a nice way. For a moment, she wishes she could crawl out the window again, the way she used to.

[r-vecchio.livejournal.com]

Part of Ray had known she wouldn't recognise him but the other part, the side of him that's still so wary about this, most probably the cop in him, had had to test it out. To listen for a change in her tone when she spoke, or a falter or anything that tells him she does remember him and everything that happened.

Nothing. That he could hear anyway. He'd gotten to know Ynez over the 'net the first time round so he doesn't have much experience to go on this time.

"Yeah, right number. Right person," he assures her. At least this feels familiar. He sucks in a breath before reeling off the usual line. "It's Ray Vecchio. The real one."

[ynez-castillo.livejournal.com]

"Oh, hello. There's a fake one?" What an odd thing for him to say.

It's been so long since he contacted her that Ynez had decided that he wasn't going to call. Probably just as well, and all that. It's not like she doesn't have plenty else to worry about besides confronting the degree of damage her brain sustained. Damage due to the drowning, that is. Based on what her father had to say, she'd been acting pretty brain-damaged before that, too.

[r-vecchio.livejournal.com]

The question knocks him off-guard and he brings his hand to his face, rubs the heel of it into his eye as his brain races to catch up.

"Was," he replies languidly. "But not anymore. Now there's just me."

It's so hard to think about Ynez not knowing who he is, hard to figure out what he can and can't say before he says it. He doesn't know how he's supposed to act, can't feel natural yet. All he knows is the more they talk, the more questions there will be and when it comes to answering the difficult ones, he doesn't have the first clue about what he can say.

[ynez-castillo.livejournal.com]

"Oh." He doesn't seem inclined to expand on the details and Ynez wonders if she should already know this story. She must have at one time. Is she supposed to ask him for details? Ynez has no idea what to do and Lupe is calling from the other room. Ynez grits her teeth.

"Excuse me a moment."

Without waiting for a response, or perhaps not really expecting one, she puts her hand over the receiver and shouts at Lupe in Spanish: Be quiet, I'm on the phone, it's for me! She has a moment of complete disorientation when she would swear she was fifteen again, and then the world rights itself. She's old again and stuck in what she's stuck in.

"Back. Sorry about that. My aunt was bothering me."

[r-vecchio.livejournal.com]

There's nothing there. Ray'd been hoping there be something he could latch onto, some little thing that Ynez remembered that they'd be able to work from. But there's really nothing there. Some of the biggest parts of Ray's life, why and how he's here now, things he'd finally been able to tell Ynez...they're all just gone.

Something as big as going undercover. He's left wondering if it's just him she's forgotten or whether whatever happened has affected memories of Kowalski or Fraser or, hell, even Stella. The mind is a powerful thing but what does that say about him, what they had, if it's just him that's lost in the fog?

When she returns to the line, a faint smile crosses his face at her comment, and it's easy to hear in his voice. "That wouldn't be your Aunt Lupe, by any chance?" At least some things don't change.

[ynez-castillo.livejournal.com]

"It would of course be my Aunt Lupe," she says with a smile. "I don't think she's ever accepted the fact that I'm an adult now."

Except when she complains that Ynez never had children. Thank God there's been none of that so far. It's almost worth everything that happened to have her finally shut up on that subject.

"She gets to boss me around a lot right now. She loves it."

[r-vecchio.livejournal.com]

"Is that-"

Ray cuts himself off, isn't sure whether he should ask about the accident. It's probably too personal. After all, to Ynez, he's a stranger and Ray knows most people don't like strangers, cop strangers, asking questions. He knows how well that went down with her father back in February so he decides treading carefully, in all matters, is the way to go.

"Is that because of the bump on your head?" He leaves the question pretty casual so Ynez has an out if she doesn't want to talk about it. "She's looking after you?"

[ynez-castillo.livejournal.com]

"The bump on my head, some other stuff, you know." She's equally casual, as evasive as ever. "My aunts need more to do, I think. All three of them have been overwrought since I got here. I don't need that much looking after."

That part is an out-and-out lie, but it doesn't sound like it. Ynez has already decided that she isn't going to mae a big issue about her injuries with anyone. People who don't see her in person are probably not even going to know they happened.

It's just none of their business, after all.

"At least I get to eat Lupe's cooking for the time being. That makes up for a lot."

[r-vecchio.livejournal.com]

“If it’s anything like yours then I can see why.”

It seems like the safest route to take. Ray knows Ynez well enough to hear the evasion in her voice, it took him long enough to start to get past that so he's well accustomed to it.

"They're probably just glad to have you around," he comments, fiddling with one of the buttons on his shirt. He undoes it, rolls it between his fingers, does it up again, over and over again as he talks. "I guess they didn't get to see you much when you were living in New York."

[ynez-castillo.livejournal.com]

"Not really."

Ynez doesn't know whether it matters or not. The reason she moved to New York in the first place was because she couldn't stand living under the same roof with them any longer.

The silence on the phone begins to draw out. She can't think of what to say to him. She imagines they would have had a lot to say to each other at one point, but it's all gone now. She fidgets uncomfortably.

"So how's the weather there?"

For a moment, she forgets where he lives and can't specify the place. Oh well.

[r-vecchio.livejournal.com]

There may be a long silence but Ray doesn't feel particularly uncomfortable. In fact, he feels strangely calm. He's not very well thought-out or confident, but there's something about ignorance, and knowing you're ignorant and can't do a damn thing about it, that he finds relaxing.

"Chicago?" He asks inanely, tipping his head to the side to look out his window. He doesn't really have to, since the sweat slicking his skin, despite his recent shower, tells him all he needs to know.

"Hot." For a change.

He considers leaving it there, but he figures it can't be easy finding conversation with a near stranger. "Not as bad as Mexico, I bet. You sad to have left?"

[ynez-castillo.livejournal.com]

Chicago. Right. She should know that. She should know so many things. He seems to know so many things about her. It makes her a little uncomfortable.

"Not really. I was tired of it and ready to go."

Two weeks and change in a hospital in Oaxaca got old pretty fast, even without her tendency to get restless when confined.

"I expect I'll go back someday, though."

For a moment, she has a funny thought about going back to see if she can find her phone. It must be there somewhere, right? It just doesn't feel right to not have it, to not have a phone of her own. Vaguely, she wonders why her father hasn't said anything about replacing it.

"Ray, I don't understand this. Why have you called? What do you want?"

The words are out before she can censor them. There isn't any time to even think of a way to soften them.

[r-vecchio.livejournal.com]

And there it is.

Of all the things she could ask, of all the questions there are, she's gone straight for the main one, the heart of the matter, the one the old Ynez would've made a beeline for too.

Now it's his turn to feel uncomfortable.

"I called because..." He trails off, wetting his bottom lip and nipping at the inside of his cheek with his teeth. There's only one answer that's the complete truth.

"Because I can."

He still feels guilty though. The only reason she's willing to talk to him is because she can't remember what happened or the things he said, what they both said to each other. He somehow feels like he's conning her, going against her wishes and he just can't get rid of that feeling.

"And I'm not...after anything, don't worry."

[ynez-castillo.livejournal.com]

"Of course you are. If you weren't, you wouldn't call." Unconsciously, she shrugs, then pulls her chair over so she can look out the window into the back yard. Nance is in the garden.

"I'm not saying you're after anything shady." Skethcy, that's what Holden would have said, he's not after anything sketchy. Funny that she remembers him so clearly, her vanished vampire. "But you want something from me, otherwise there's no reason to call. No reason to talk to me at all, especially now." Her tone isn't accusatory. As far as Ynez is concerned, she's just making an observation.

"My father told me you called him while I was in Mexico."

[r-vecchio.livejournal.com]

It's easy to learn from mistakes, Ray thinks, when you know what it is you've done wrong. And right now, Ray knows what not to do. Talk when he doesn't know what to say. When he does that, he says things, makes promises, that deep down, he knows he can't keep. When he's lost, he says what he thinks they want to hear; he did it in highshool, with Ange, Stella. Only person he didn't do that with was Irene. But that was different.

So he keeps quiet for once, doesn't answer her observations, just leaves them there, said.

"I called a lotta people," he finally speaks up, although his voice isn't so loud.

[ynez-castillo.livejournal.com]

"What does that mean?" She can't get any sense of him at all. He's a complete mystery, a cipher walking on egg shells. She hasn't thought about it until now, but there had been something between them until fairly recently, and at this point in time, it's a complete mystery to her. Not just a mystery, a void.

"Ray, tell me what happened."

It's not a request.

[r-vecchio.livejournal.com]

People have always said to start stories from the beginning, that that's the easiest way to tell a tale. In some cases, Ray would beg to differ. At work, it's far easier to cut straight to the chase, skip parts, skim over details,and he normally wouldn't think twice about it. But this isn't one of those cases, this isn't a crime, he's not at work, there aren't pages upon pages of reports and notes for Ynez to read to remind herself of the lost details. Ynez can't understand what happened unless she knows everything. But sometimes there are things better left forgotten.

He's torn. She deserves to know what went on during those five, six months, of course she does, but ignorance can be bliss and he doesn't want to make her have to live through whatever she lived through the first time round. Because even he knows that it hurt.

He opens his mouth to brush it off, tell her again that he'd been a jerk and leave it at that. All that really comes out is a shallow sigh and his arm comes up to rest over his eyes.

"...There's a lot to tell, Ynez. Things you've forgotten about me, stuff that's go on between us, there's a hell of a lot. If I tell you what happened, you won't get it without knowing all that stuff first." His finger jerks slightly, twitches a bit before he curls it to stop the tingles. "I don't know if you really wanna hear it all."

[ynez-castillo.livejournal.com]

"Oh, please, Ray," she says impatiently. "Don't treat me like a child. I'm already getting plenty of that and I don't need more. What you mean is that you don't know whether you really want to tell it all or not."

She huffs, frustrated and angry.

"Fine. You don't have to tell me anything. I don't think I have much to say to you as things stand now. I don't even know you."

Ynez isn't going to dance around with this. She's getting more than enough well-meaning -- and humiliating -- crap from everyone else in her life. She knows she doesn't have to put up with it from Ray.

[r-vecchio.livejournal.com]

I don't even know you.

Well, that hurt more than he thought it would. And although that might be true for Ynez, it's not for him. She does know him. There must be something, somewhere, a little bit of her head that remembers him, something that just needs a trigger. And maybe doing as she asks and trying to treat her like normal - normal being subjective - will help her memory. He could actually do something good for her for once.

"Okay, okay, no child treating...like," he agrees, sitting up on the edge of the bed with a groan. "Just gimme a second to get comfy."

Kicking off his shoes, he slides back until he's resting on his pillows and hooks his ankles together in front of him.

"Alright, still with me?" He takes a breath, fingers going back to the button on his shirt. "We met on the 'net. Cliche, huh? I was in Florida, you were in New York."