by R. Cooper
They’d worked another case once involving glazed pastry and a particularly gruesome murder. Cal had stopped eating Danishes and all other breakfast pastries afterward for months. It was only when Ray had left a donut heavy with sprinkles out for him—the brightest sprinkles he could find, chock full of so much food coloring it should have been toxic—that Cal had finally started to enjoy baked goods again. Not Danishes anymore, not ever again, but his love for sprinkled donuts was a thing to behold.
But in between his pastry lectures and driving Ray crazy with a thousand casual touches from the backseat, Parker had been eating candy buttons from a roll of wax paper—if Cal could single handedly keep candy stores in business, the demand from the rest of the fairies could fuel an entire industry—and leaving sticky fingerprints and bits of paper in the backseat until Ray had snapped for him to clean it up.
“You’re so anal, Branigan.”
“You try living with heightened senses in a human world and see how much you enjoy a mess.”
He had at least had the satisfaction of knowing that after that, the bits of paper had mysteriously disappeared. It had only been lessened somewhat by then having to listen to Cal lick his fingers clean.
Ray had shifted in his seat. Penn had given Ray a look.
She did it again as she got out of the car back at the station, well aware that they’d wasted a day and that his mood wasn’t any better than hers. His was actually worse, since Penn wasn’t fighting every instinct in her body.
He looked back at her, watching her finish another bottle of seawater and tactfully not commenting as their absent-minded genius scrambled out of the backseat, stretched invitingly, then dashed into the station in search of a bathroom. Ray realized he’d forgotten to ask where Cal had purchased those candy buttons and to remind him to keep his nose out of his other cases. He sighed.
“Suddenly everyone has an alibi,” Ray declared to Penn instead, twisting to look at the rising moon, the setting sun. “I’m going to get some dinner.”
“I’m going home,” she announced. “Call me if we get something.” With a wave and another sip that made him wrinkle his nose, she was heading toward her car. He could have gone home too, but frustration carried him back into the station.
The captain saw him and called him over, letting him know Perretti had friends working on posting his bail, but then grinned as he added that they probably wouldn’t be able to raise the money. Apparently the ADA working the case had asked for and gotten a newer, higher amount, as some detective had been very emphatic in their belief that Perretti was a flight risk.
Lex was good. Ray could almost smile for that, but then hearing that Perretti had friends was enough to make him frown again. The man was a flight risk. He’d vanished for years and had no known address.
“You’d better lock this up. You have a bigger case waiting.” Murphy was stern, and Ray didn’t blame him for that. But the idea that Nasreen’s attack was somehow less serious, when she could have died, made him narrow his eyes.
He didn’t growl; he didn’t threaten. He never did. But his chin came up, and Captain Murphy’s expression changed. He wasn’t afraid, but if anything, his look grew thoughtful. After a moment he relaxed, shrugging in an admission that if that case hadn’t involved a fairy it would have been a murder, and was no less serious.
Ray nodded.
“Yes, sir,” he responded quietly, and Murphy hesitated again. Ray was pretty certain it was because the man was thinking of asking about the new case. Things involving magic made him uncomfortable, even after years of exposure to them, something that the department rumor mill said involved a scorned sorceress, though personally Ray found that hard to imagine. He couldn’t imagine Murphy with anyone. He couldn’t even imagine him as a child.
Murphy had come up through the ranks with Calvin Parker. Ray knew that much. Though he didn’t know which side of the gossip the man believed, if he believed any of it. He just grunted.
“How are the consultants treating you?” Unlike when most people said it, there was no insinuation in his voice. Ray took that as a good sign. “Aguirre has nothing but praise for them. I told that guy when he transferred in. We keep only the best around here.”
“Fine. Fine. They’re fine.” Ray was a firm believer in the “No Comment” rule. That was all that Murphy wanted to hear about it or anything else magic anyway.
Whatever his reasons, the captain decided not to ask anything else, and with another awkward nod and a tug at the suspenders that were struggling to keep his pants up, Captain Murphy left, and Ray turned back toward his desk.
“How’d it go?” A few uniforms were hanging around the coffee machine as he walked by, and he immediately scowled. He was tired. He was cranky. He was, in other words, as wound up as he could be after hours in Cal’s company without touching him or catching a killer.
“You don’t need to work so hard to catch the guy.” One of them clearly read his annoyance, but Ray turned on them with his eyebrow up. “Probably done you a favor, right? Not wasting your time catching bad guys who’ll just get off. And we all know what you’d really do to the guy if you had your way.”
“Shut up,” Ray snapped, loud enough to be heard in Booking, and damn, he needed to go home. They were just expressing the frustration that they’d all felt from time to time and he was overreacting. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he added, extending hands that were currently not paws at them to wave them away. “Get back to work.”
As though he wanted the hateful stench of murder in his town. As though he was an indiscriminate killer or would admire one. He turned on his heel to head back out, knowing he was leaving fear in the air behind him.
He’d officially had too much frustration for one day. Too restless to stop now he headed down the street for some Puerto Rican takeout and then went back to the car.
He ought to drive home. Or go inside. But with the possibility of Cal or those ignorant idiots still in the station and his stomach growling, he just sat in the driver’s seat and opened the carton. His mouth was full of seasoned beefsteak when the passenger door opened and Cal swung inside.
He slid down and got comfortable before Ray could swallow.
“Eating in the car? Really? You need a life, Branigan. And you just ate dinner. I was there. You had tacos. In fact, you’ve eaten like six times today.”
“You pull something sweet out of thin air almost constantly. And it’s best not to starve a werewolf.” Good advice. And it kept him from having to explain why he’d been so ravenous lately. He bared his teeth and then went back to eating. He heard Cal take a few fast breaths as the interior light went out. He wished it was fear, but he knew Cal was turned on even without smelling it. He knew that scent, had it memorized for his dreams. It was unmistakable.
“Then I’ll resist the urge to tease you about your insatiable appetite.” But of course, it was as though Cal knew anyway what Ray was desperate for.
With his head down, Ray had plenty of time to think of answers to that. Most of which he couldn’t say. He finished his sandwich, munched a fried plantain, then closed the carton and put it on the floor at Cal’s feet without actually touching him.
“Why are you here?” It was a potentially explosive question. Maybe fairies sucked at deception, but they could always try. Not that Cal had any reason to lie. He just looked hurt—Ray could see him clearly even with little light. He wondered how much Cal could see. All he had to go on about fairy vision were tidbits about shining and seeing the truth.
“What?” Cal went with innocence. “We can’t pretend that it’s a full moon and one of those nights where you’re alone in your car, and you just happen to drive by wherever I am?”
Ray gave a startled flinch and turned his head so Cal couldn’t read his guilt. He never meant to do that, find Cal like that, it was just, sometimes, with the windows down and the moon so bright, he found himself trailing Cal through the city and not realizing it until he saw the puf
f of glitter and the small, iridescent wings.
He swallowed and thought that he should have gotten something to drink. There honestly wasn’t an answer he could give Cal that wouldn’t reveal too much. But not once had he ever thought that Cal had known he was there. He wanted to ask how or why Cal hadn’t confronted him about it until now, but his throat went tight at the possible answers.
“Okay,” Cal changed the subject in a light voice, like he was granting Ray mercy, with a strange tact even a half-fairy shouldn’t have possessed. “I’m here because it occurred to me just now… what Ross and the boys said in there….”
“Never mind that, Daffodil.” Ray couldn’t manage much more than the feather-soft insult. He quickly glanced back over, watched Cal watch him in the dark, watched the longing come and stay in Cal’s face.
“No, Ray, it made me think. What if we’re going about this the wrong way? I mean. I know I’m only here to consult about magic but—”
“Knock it off,” Ray interrupted. “If you’d ever bothered, you’d be detective by now.” Cal’s grin was beautiful, a flash of light in the shadowy interior of the car.
“A situation that would have been unacceptable to most other fairies and entirely too acceptable to my pain-in-the-ass father, but thank you, Branigan. I’m touched. I love you too.”
“Back to the case.” Ray was really hoping fairies couldn’t see in the dark as well as he could, so his flush would stay hidden. He tried to sound annoyed, but he could almost hear Penn saying, With a capital ‘T’ again. “And I mean this case, the one you are supposed to be sticking your nose into.” He also pretended that he hadn’t been wishing to have Cal around to help with Nasreen and Audrey’s case.
Cal paused quite obviously for one moment, and then, without actually admitting it, let the subject change to Nasreen and Audrey anyway.
“You know, Audrey’s shop serves everything in these cute heart-shaped boxes, ribbon and everything. Pricey, but totally worth it. Aesthetics, Ray. They count. Hmm.” So he had been there. He was probably a regular and not just keeping track of Ray’s cases. Or both, Ray instantly thought.
“Cal.”
“Ray.”
Ray inhaled to try again. “I don’t need you to….” He couldn’t say it. Anyway, Cal would do whatever he wanted just the same. “I saw that place and knew you’d been there,” he said instead. Cal reeked of delight at that, even made a sound, almost like a purr, and Ray felt a touch of guilt to think that so little from him could make Cal so happy. He pressed on. “If they’re friends of yours, you should know that we caught the guy. She doesn’t have to worry. The trial won’t be pleasant, but I think Nasreen can handle it.”
“Ray,” Cal made a sound. A rude one. “Nasreen will do whatever she has to for Audrey. Surely you sniffed that out?”
Ray turned to look out the driver’s side window. He didn’t answer right away. He strangely didn’t want to, but Cal was waiting. He turned back. “I didn’t think they were sleeping together.”
“They’re not. Audrey is… I don’t think… I don’t know. I don’t understand humans sometimes. And they aren’t the only ones….”
“Really? All that insight and you’ve drawn a blank?” Ray hadn’t. He looked at Cal in the dark and thought about Audrey. Like looking into a mirror. “Maybe she’s….” He couldn’t say worried, because that wasn’t it at all. “Afraid.”
There was a gasp. “Why? Why, when they both want it so much?” Cal’s voice broke and the sadness, even for others, made Ray shift to be nearer to him. But he bit down so he wouldn’t respond. “What’s there to be afraid of? There’s no reason at all to suddenly…. Or is it sudden?”
Ray glanced over. Cal’s longing was so intense sometimes. Like waves of memory that hit you for no obvious reason.
Cal straightened, and for a second Ray almost thought the air tightened, like a spell was being worked.
“Remember when we met, Ray….” Cal had never been so hesitant. Almost never. Ray felt himself grow warm, and as though he could feel that, Cal shook his head. “Not exactly then, but a little later, when you were so beautifully naked and just red all over with embarrassment and—”
“Cal,” Ray warned. But of course he vividly remembered that night, and Cal’s words. Ray Ray. Look at you. Look at you. You can… just drag me… anywhere. Anywhere you want to take me, and I’m there. There you are, and here I am. Just take me.
That probably wasn’t what Cal was talking about. But Ray didn’t feel like reliving the past right now.
“The case.” He grabbed at it.
“This case or the one we had then?” Cal floundered for a moment then yanked himself back upright. He was breathing hard. “Right.” He whipped out a pink box. Cookie sticks covered in strawberry cream. Sweet, sweet strawberry, mixed with the clean warm scent of him and that want/need/want that never went away around Ray. It made Ray want to crush strawberries against Cal’s mouth. He inhaled and pulled at his tie. Cal didn’t seem to notice. “That list of his enemies.”
“Yes?” His answer was short, but Ray was starting to think Cal ate around him deliberately to push him over the edge. A stick went in and out of his mouth before he crunched it. Ray could close his eyes, but he couldn’t stop breathing.
He grabbed at the seat then loosened his collar.
“I read those files.”
“All of them?” That was a distracting thought. But then, Ray instantly reasoned, with the amount of sugar in him Cal had to be borderline manic. Add to that his natural brilliance, and it was no wonder his father had worried that he would need to be grounded.
“Yes, and your name came up a few times. Arresting officer, etc….” Cal cleared his throat and put his treat away. The sign of tact from him made Ray suddenly very nervous. “Also… also two of them are already dead. Accidents, the reports said. Whoever investigated only noted them as accidents.”
Ray had read that too, glancing over it because the investigators hadn’t flagged them. He hadn’t read cause of death. He sat up.
“Broken necks?” He asked, but Cal was already nodding. Ray’s breath whooshed out of him, but he looked straight ahead and refocused on the station, some officers smoking outside, others milling around between shifts. “My name is probably there because I make a lot of arrests.”
“Branigan on the hunt.” He jerked his head to the side and saw Cal’s small, wistful smile. “You’re probably right.”
“But….” He couldn’t not mention that. “I’ll tell Penn tomorrow.”
“Um….” Cal fidgeted, leaning back carefully to accommodate his wings. “That’s it? Because, what if I’m right? What if… well….” He hummed anxiously, shifted his feet and then held up his hands and spoke in a rush. “You should know that just now I called and asked Bens to put a protection spell on you. Don’t be mad!”
His wings made a stuttering sound as they tried to flap against the seat.
Ray opened his mouth, closed it, then tried to open it again.
A goddamn… a protection…. If there was anything more annoying than a protection spell….
“I don’t need protecting.” He was a werewolf and a detective. The last thing he needed was Cal worrying about him not being able to defend himself.
As proof of that, he was growling, but he barely noticed with the way his soul automatically sang out at the evidence of Cal’s concern for him. It made him warm inside. Outside. Everywhere. Wafts of worry were hitting him, touching and only too real. Worry and want and strawberry cream, and damn it, a protection spell? He tried to only think of that, and not what would happen if he pulled Cal close.
“Really?” Cal was defiant even through his nerves. “When you go home, alone, to that big, lonely, empty cave of a house, you can protect yourself?” He sat up, moving enough that the stuttering of his wings sounded like a bicycle wheel with a baseball card in the spokes. He sucked in a breath then lowered his voice seductively. His hand attempted to cross the space between them. Ray
wanted to let it. “Unless you want me around with you tonight, Ray Ray. To keep you safe… after all, there’s nothing scary about little old me, right?”
Ray’s heart hit his ribs so solidly that Cal should have heard it.
“It’s been a while since last time in your house… years in fact. Remember.” Cal moved his hips, his entire body, with a restlessness Ray understood. It was the second time in a few minutes Cal had mentioned that night, and Ray tried to follow his point and not to wonder if Cal was haunted by the same memories, or to think once again about that painful realization in his living room and feeling so raw from it that he hadn’t noticed until it was too late that Cal had followed him into his bathroom. That Cal had been on the other side of his shower door, waiting for Ray to emerge from his shower.
“Cal—Parker.” He couldn’t quite recover from the shock of Cal being there with him, and how much his mind and body and heart seemed to welcome him, and from the idea that this half-fairy knew anything at all about his kind.
The air was too tight, like there was a spell at work, or some kind of magic. He looked at Cal and opened his mouth.
“Parker. I told you to leave.”
“No, you didn’t, actually.” Cal hummed again. “Not explicitly.” Ray grunted and put his hands up high to the smooth tile by the specially installed showerhead. He was too… naked… for this.
“Then I’ll be explicit—”
“Please. Be as explicit as you want, Branigan,” Cal whispered back, and Ray turned, trying to make out his form through the frosted and steamy glass. But whatever had compelled Parker to follow him into the bathroom had stopped him before he’d come into the shower too.
If he had…. Ray swallowed. He couldn’t speak as he saw himself lifting Cal up and fucking him in the corner of the shower, Cal’s hand grabbed for the showerhead, his body wet, bare, the floor swirling with sparkles as his cries echoed off the tile.
Ray jerked himself back from the memory, furious with himself. With Cal. His Cal. He smelled like hope.
“Get out of my car, Callalily,” Ray ordered, surprisingly calm considering the way his heart and body were screaming. But he wasn’t going to take Cal’s concern and hurt him with it. He just… couldn’t be around him now.
