#my screed of post cotw brain feels

[pigtailedgirl]

SECONDS OR GUILT PRIZES

Kowalski gave me his car to drive. Told me it was his and his father's pride and joy. That he knew I'd look after her because he saw how I looked after the riv. How much he knew I looked after things, seeing how my family relied on me. Missed me.

He'd only been driving his car the last couple months he explained. He'd left her with his Mom and Dad and figured his Dad wouldn't give her back. Wouldn't trust him with her. But he was wrong.

So, I know she's in good hands, he said.

His way of saying without word, sorry mine got yours in the bottom of Lake Michigan. Or other places far away.

I never liked sharing my car. My Dad told me a man without a car is nothing.

She is a beauty though. Classic muscle car. Enough gas in the tank to keep going.

---

He handed me the keys to his place in the same envelope. You need a place to crash, here you go Buddy, he'd wrote.

Had a big open space, you've gotta admit, for a bachelor place. And he filled it with a ton of shit. Nick-knacks everywhere, good god.

He knew I guess what it was like. Living in a place that you didn't want because you didn't want to have that alone space but you had no choice. The old was gone. Rent or time came due. Being displaced cause home is gone, the you at that home long gone and changed, or the force divorced from it. Asked to leave. You can't go back to the house if it's burnt out this time. You can't stay with the EX-wife when she wants to move on either.

All that's left is trying to fill the hole of what you were and wanted versus the what now, right?

So what if you up-end the place looking for traces -- Thinking; Why then did Fraser stay in his office?

---

You steal the Stella.

Charm and bamboozle and throw everything you have at it til she's smiling across the couch from you and letting you hold her hand a little too long as she encourages you to sip water and not pass out from the throbbing ache in your chest. "It's my heart beating overtime for you baby, not the bullet." Yeah that sounds smooth and not at all ridiculous.

She's actually your type. She's hard on the case, smart as a whip, and still shows she's got a side that cares about the effects.

You can see why they'd have been together.

How she mellowed the edge of her Ray's wildness but encouraged his spirit anyways. Helped him dream and strive to be the man he wanted to be.

You can fantasize about how good you'll be together.

She'll be just like Louise. Just as much a firing squad to you to shape up in correct notes and deposition.

She'll be just like Ange was at first. Wanting to share the bust. Craving her own with conviction. Won't be the past mistakes. If you'd have given her the credit and shared the load. Were home more off-shift. If only you'd stayed present. Stayed.

So what if you'll be retired by the end of the week, in witness protection the next, and never be fit to work another case in your life?

You made your choices.

Irene died to the senselessness of it and you thought heroism and undercover might finally solve it. Chapin would have told you the stupidity was striking you again in using that as a defence.

But you told him. You always pick the wrong ones, the wrong ways, and don't realize it until it's too late.

That's you with me Benny, or you now?

---

"Who the hell do you think you are, trying to propose to and take away my wife Vecchio?!"

What a great thing to wake to in a hospital bed half dead and with half a lung.

Feeling truly home because only at home was yelling a morning wake up call. Wasn't with Pops, who demanded the quiet, no, but it was the kids running down the stairs and Tony running the faucet and Frannie loudly bemoaning ruined beauty sleep and the smell of Ma's bacon cooking. Even Fraser's walls were thin and his neighbours loud in their demands of him. Of us. No wonder Kowalski fits right in.

Well guess I did a number on myself and really did pass out in Stella's arms. Long enough to bring back and lead in to one pissed polack.

Among others.

*pause*"...I do believe it's EX-wife Ray."

"Shut up, Frase. --The hell difference does that make? I loved and love her. You can't just take what's mine first!"

"Yeah." I say, and he doesn't even realize I'm not looking at him. Or that Fraser isn't either.

When he does, maybe then he's gonna be another level of upset.

I'll have to give him something to make it up to him. He's not that bad a guy after all and I'd hate to feel the guilt.

Strange to feel the slight weight of Fraser's stetson, resting there on the edge of my bed. The weight of his stare an odd happy anchor.

"It's pretty simple Kowalski", I manage to croak out through parched lips and a wicked forming grin, "I'm Italian. Don't mind taking seconds."