Notes: Written for the First Line challenge at DS Flashfic. First line belongs to joandarck.
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Chicago smelled like a snowmobile crash. It smelled like exhaust and dirty midwinter snow, and a place that would never be home again.
Ray watched the street signs pass by, each one sparking a memory in his mind.
"If you follow that street," Ray said to the cabbie, "you'll find Sandor's. Best pizza in the city." The man made a sound that may or may not have meant something, and gestured rudely at the car next to them.
"We busted a guy on that corner once," he said a few blocks later, watching the evening commuters rushing by outside. "He'd been robbing banks in a clown suit, and Fraser found him by�" he trailed off, forgetting. "Tasting his facepaint or something." He smiled at nothing through the glass. "It was always something."
The cab turned left.
Somewhere in the city, Ray knew, the Vecchio house was still standing. Frannie was Ma Vecchio now, surrounded by rooms full of children and grandchildren, and she probably couldn't be happier. There was a part of him that wanted to visit, but that part didn't matter, because the rest of him had forgotten the address, and the phone number.
He forgot a lot of things these days, without Fraser by his side to remind him, and sometimes his hands would shake when he tried to write things down. He eventually stopped trying. He remembered the important things.
He remembered the way Fraser had looked at him, by the lake that first day, when he took a bullet for him. He remembered the sharp pain of Fraser's knuckles on his jaw and the warm pressure of his lips against Ray's, underwater, desperate, easily dismissed.
He remembered that when they came back for Vecchio's funeral last month, this was the corner where Fraser had broken down, yelling at Ray for nothing at all. That was the park where Ray had sat, waiting for Fraser to take a walk and cool down. Here was the coffee shop where they had met up again, Fraser folding Ray into his arms and holding him silently for long enough that their coffee got cold.
The cabbie didn't hear any of those stories. Those ones, Ray kept to himself.
Instead, he talked about the diner that used to be on this corner, where the waitresses would feed Dief donuts under the table when Fraser wasn't looking, and flirt with Fraser when Ray wasn't.
He didn't say a word about the hospital, not even when they pulled up in front of it. He didn't talk about the hours spent by the side of the bed, reading, telling stories, waiting for those brief moments when he would feel the slightest pressure of fingers tightening around his own. He didn't mention the fights with the doctors, the endless waiting for a few more days, one more week, just until he was stronger.
Fraser had always been the strong one. He was still stronger than Ray would ever be.
Instead, he gave the cabbie a big fake smile, and tipped him twice as much as he should have, because no one wants to listen to an old man give directions to the places his memories live.
Then he went upstairs, and he held Fraser's hand while they waited to go home.