Shack 2
by Speranza
Ray wished the hippie kid would give a little fuckin' ground on the armrest. Christ, his legs ached, his back hurt, and the hippie kid stunk like the Body Shop had exploded all over him. He ventured a jerky little shove with his elbow, and the kid whipped down his headphones and shrank back. "Sorry."
Now he felt like a prick. "S'okay, yeah," Ray mumbled, fumbling in the seat pocket for something to read. What to do when you crashed—well, that wasn't gonna happen, being as Fraser was 1500 miles due North.
Beside him, the kid reached into his knapsack and pulled out—hell, you had to be kidding. "Were you there?" Ray blurted, before he realized he was going to say anything.
The hippie kid glanced down at his program—24th Annual Conference of Local Law Enforcement, embossed in gold yet—and then back up at him. "Yeah."
"You're a cop?" The kid sighed and reached into his pocket. Not just a cop but a detective, gold badge and everything, in a carefully worked leather case that looked Native American.
"Me too," Ray explained, squinting at the case—definitely Native, how weird was that? The beads looked just like the ones on his dreamcatcher.
"Blair Sandburg." Sandburg awkwardly offered a hand. "Cascade P.D."
Ray took his hand, shook it; Sandburg had a firm grip. "Ray Kowalski." It took him a second to figure out what to say. "Former Chicago P.D., now I work with the Mounties."
"Oh yeah?" Sandburg seemed interested, but Sandburg struck him as one of those guys who, like Fraser, could be interested in sand. Sand?What kind? Tell me more... "Where?"
Ray waved that away. "Little town, you wouldn't know it."
"Try me."
"Inuvik," Ray said, rubbing at his dry eyes. "It's—"
"—in the Northwest Territories, really far north." Sandburg was grinning at him now, and there was a bit of 'fuck-you' there which Ray figured he deserved.
"Yeah, that's it. Thrill a minute," Ray muttered, "but my partner got transferred, so..." He shrugged. "Whatever, it was a partner thing, I don't mind so much."
Sandburg was nodding slowly, like he understood that, which no way could he understand that. "Is your partner Canadian?"
"Yeah," Ray muttered; the guy was starting to give him the creeps, and he wished he'd never started this conversation. "Plus he don't like cities. Plus he's kind of a freak, so, whatever, we work in Canada now."
"Freak how?" Sandburg looked curious.
"Well, he's polite and he's got ears like a bat and he tends to lick stuff," Ray said, hoping that this would maybe creep the kid out and he'd put his headphones back on.
But Sandburg didn't look creeped out; Sandburg looked fascinated. "Really. What kind of stuff?"
Great, maybe the guy had a licking thing. "You know—electrical sockets, dogshit, mud..."
Sandburg went perfectly still, then murmured something that sounded a lot like, "Bang, Wholly Girltime,"— and something about the way he said it made Ray shiver.
The End