Holding Out for a Fairy Tale

by A. J. Thomas

  He felt empty and worthless.

  He wanted to feel angry. Anger would have been so much easier, but he was too emotionally exhausted to lie to himself. He was too emotionally exhausted for much of anything.

  Ray figured hiding in his apartment and drinking alone to avoid reality just wasn’t healthy. Hiding in his apartment and drinking alone to avoid sobriety was probably fine, and so he stuck with that approach, even if it wouldn’t work forever.

  Monday morning he ended up typing up reports about the last two weeks. He signed formal statements for the FBI and made copies for his captain. He couldn’t blame his captain for wanting to keep records of what happened. If Internal Affairs ever decided he was more trouble than he was worth, detailed paperwork would be the only thing that would keep his entire chain of command from being fired along with him. After paperwork, he sat in on the interview of a suspect in a domestic-violence case that had ended in murder, and typed up yet more reports. By late afternoon, he was ready to start bouncing off the walls. He had to find a way to stop thinking about how Elliot had blown him off.

  Every time he tried to think of something else, he just ended up thinking about how many times he’d done the same damn thing. He found himself driving by the hospital where he knew Bruce worked. He wandered into the ER, flashed his badge to get the information he wanted, and saw the frazzled young doctor typing away at a workstation in the middle of a cluster of computers.

  “Ray Delgado?” Bruce frowned. “I didn’t expect to see you again. You’re not hurt, are you?”

  “No. I shouldn’t have come to bother you at work, but I really wanted to talk to you.”

  Bruce rubbed his eyes and shoved himself away from the computer. “I was going to grab some coffee anyway.”

  At an espresso cart in the hospital food court, Ray bought the other man a latte and bought himself a plain cup of coffee. He took a deep breath and dove right in. “So I wanted to apologize.”

  “For what?” Bruce chuckled.

  “Everything. For pushing you out the door, not calling, not getting your name right. Not being interested in much besides sex. All of it. I was kind of an insensitive dick that night. Traumatic shit or not, I shouldn’t have treated you like that.”

  “Did I say I was looking for more than sex?” Bruce turned the apology back on him. Ray saw a glimmer of what had attracted him to the man in the first place. He had a comforting smile and an easy confidence that Ray found attractive in all of the men and women he’d pursued. Now, though, that confidence was nothing but a reminder of what he really wanted.

  “Believe it or not, I wasn’t sure. I’m actually sorry for the whole night.”

  “That night was totally fucked-up.”

  Ray uncurled fingers he didn’t remember clenching, relieved. “But you weren’t mad at me about it?” Ray asked.

  “A little.” Bruce shrugged. “I’m a big boy, though. I can get over shit like a bruised ego pretty fast. Honestly, escaping that night with just a bruised ego was probably a lucky break.”

  “Yeah, that was psycho. I’m still sorry. I really was an ass that night.” Ray took a sip of his coffee and smiled.

  Bruce finished his in a series of long gulps. “Are you fishing for another chance to hook up, or is this something else?”

  “Would you believe me if I said absolution?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Well, it’s recently occurred to me that I’ve treated a lot of people bad. I mean, sex is just supposed to be fun, you know?”

  Bruce nodded and took a long sip from his latte. “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “But sometimes, I get clingy and people get the wrong idea. People think, when I want them to stay the night, I really want them to stay. And I’ve recently been reminded of just how much it sucks to be the one with mixed-up signals in that kind of hookup. It feels shitty. So I figured the least I could do was come apologize.”

  “Really?” Bruce gaped at him.

  “It’s not that lame, is it?”

  “No. No, it’s not. It’s actually kind of cool.”

  “No, it’s lame.” Ray kicked at the hospital linoleum, embarrassed. “But in my line of work, if you let go of the whole personal responsibility thing, you end up letting go of everything. Like that Hippocratic oath thing you’re stuck with, I suppose.”

  Bruce’s smile softened. “You know, if you ever want to go hit a club together, or just have a bit of fun, you should give me a call.”

  Ray knew he was blushing, but it was nothing more than the flush from feeling flattered. “Any other time, I’d love to take you up on that. Not right now, though. I’ve got a lot stuff I’ve got to work through.”

  “Were you involved in that big explosion on the news? The one they said was linked to some big money-laundering case?”

  “No.” The lie came easily. “No, just personal stuff.”

  “Yeah, right. If you ever change your mind, give me a call?”

  “Yeah.”

  When Ray left the hospital, he felt a bit better. Since hookups were a normal part of most single men’s lives, he knew that the majority of his encounters had been just as casual for his partners as they had been for him. There weren’t many people who had been unhappy with him afterward, but he called the ones he could remember. Of the six people he ended up calling, two of them hung up on him. He managed to leave messages apologizing to the other four, trying to be as polite and neutral as he could.

  Feeling better than he had in days, Ray went back to work and said good-bye to Hayes before he flew back to the middle of nowhere.

  “Are you going to be a year between visits each time?” He punched Hayes in the shoulder rather than hugging him.

  “We’ll see.” Hayes was unusually gloomy, which Ray knew meant he was actually being sincere. “I kind of like it up there. This whole city holds so many memories, you know? I never realized how on edge I was all the time, living down here. Up in Montana, there are just mountains and forests and fields.”

  “And psychotic locals who run you down and try to kill you.” Ray mimicked Hayes’ smile. Hayes grimaced, and Ray felt like an ass. The case that had lured Hayes away from San Diego had resulted in a suspect hitting him with a truck during an early-morning run and dragging him out into a remote stretch of forest to finish him off. It had shattered his leg, ended his career, and left him stuck in a cast for months. From the expression on his face, Ray realized it wasn’t a memory Hayes was comfortable joking about yet. “Guess that was insensitive, huh? Right. Sorry.”

  The damn cowboy grumbled. “It was just the one guy. It’s not like everybody in town does it.”

  Hayes conjured up his plastic smile and laughed at them. “It’s amazing up there. It’s nice to be able to really relax. And the town’s so far away, it doesn’t really matter if a few folks there aren’t crazy about me.”

  Ray stared at his partner for a long moment, wondering just how he actually felt about his lover’s Montana home. Hayes had always kept his feelings to himself, but Ray had become decent at reading him over the years. He might be out of practice, but he’d bet money that Hayes was lying. But if Hayes felt like staying with his lover was worth lying to himself for, it wasn’t Ray’s business. He shrugged. “If you’re happy, then whatever, it’s all good.”

  Hayes’s smile shifted into the lopsided goofy expression that Ray knew meant he was actually pleased. “We’re coming back down in the summer. Doug promised he’d teach me how to surf.”

  “Teach you how to surf?”

  Hayes glowed and nodded his head up and down like an eager ten-year-old.

  Ray turned toward Hayes’s lover. “A cowboy from a landlocked state knows how to surf?”

  “I haven’t surfed for years,” he admitted. “But it’s like riding a bike.”

  “Fall off a few times, and then it’s like you never forgot?” Ray grinned as he coaxed a begrudging smile out of the other man.

  Hayes wanted them to be friends, and
Ray promised he’d try. It would be easy to try being friends from a thousand miles away. When they left to catch their plane, Ray went back to work and back to annoying his coworkers. Being a pain in the ass was the best way he knew to make sure Jenkins assigned him a full case load quickly, and it was a more entertaining way to pass the time than filing the hundreds of report pages he’d typed over the last week.

  The final case-status meeting was scheduled to last one hour, but so far it’d been dragging on for three hours. The deputy director pored over every detail of the last incident report, verifying the physical descriptions of Alejandro Munoz and Esteban Garcia, making Elliot draw a diagram of the roads, the house, and the cistern, comparing trajectories calculated from the impact angle of each stray bullet and injury. Elliot was fine wasting time on details. So long as the conversation didn’t shift back to Ray or to how Elliot had so miserably failed to do his job in the end, he was just fine.

  He’d skirted around his time babysitting Ray, cataloging every piece of potentially disastrous information he’d shared with him, but pretending that there’d been nothing more to their relationship than keeping a worried colleague informed. The glare that St. Claire sent his direction left no doubt in Elliot’s mind that she knew the truth, but she didn’t say anything, so he didn’t have to actually deny it.

  “So when you chased the subject up the embankment, your report says you had your sidearm drawn. You ordered him to stop, and then….” The deputy director flipped through the file in front of him. “You didn’t shoot. Care to tell me why?”

  “I didn’t shoot.” Elliot kept his face still, his expression absolutely neutral. “It was dark. He had the cover of the SUV and the driver’s side door. The chance of getting a clean shot seemed slim.” He was parroting what he’d written in the report.

  “You couldn’t get a clean shot?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Agent Belkamp, your personnel file includes your list of military commendations. You’ve never scored less than an excellent rating in marksmanship. You were qualified, with an expert rating, with a dozen different weapons. Your last assessment at the academy was exceptional.” The deputy director held up a scored copy of the man-shaped target students in the FBI academy used for firearms qualification. Elliot had received a perfect score.

  “Yes, sir. I am well trained in assessing my line of fire, and I have enough combat experience to know when I can and cannot make a shot. I can’t list all the factors I took into consideration because it was a split-second decision. I couldn’t get a clear shot.”

  “And you didn’t think to shoot out one of his tires?”

  “No, sir. That was a lapse of judgment on my part. I was already calling in the vehicle description hoping the helicopter crew would be able to follow it from the air. I also assumed that one of the fifty or so cars down below would be quick to respond.”

  “And they weren’t?”

  “No, sir. I guess I underestimated how much Detective Delgado’s fellow officers care about him. When word got out that he was in trouble, half the city rushed out of town to help, and no one wanted to leave the scene.”

  The deputy director nodded and scribbled a note in the margin of Elliot’s report. “Belkamp, I don’t think you need me to point out just how reckless your conduct was during the course of this investigation, particularly with regard to Detective Delgado.”

  Elliot kept his mouth shut. He knew how badly he’d fucked up, but he didn’t dare admit the full extent of it aloud. He had been right to trust Ray, though. In the end, Ray had stayed professional, calm, and functional. He’d been able to distance himself from Elliot and do his job. In the end, it was Elliot who hadn’t been able to separate himself from his emotions. It had been Elliot who let his feelings cripple him.

  In a moment of desperate insanity, filled with dread at the idea of Ray being gunned down by Alejandro’s replacement, Elliot had been the one who choked.

  “Now, having reviewed Detective Delgado’s personnel records and his report, I can understand why you presumed his input would be useful in this case. But son, that’s not a decision for a field agent to make. Next time, I expect written reports to reflect that outside consultation was discussed and authorized beforehand, is that clear?”

  Elliot blinked. He couldn’t be getting off that easy. “Yes, sir.”

  “So we lost our chance to nail Alejandro Munoz, but we have Esteban Garcia on first-degree murder in the death of Agent Hathaway.”

  St. Claire leaned forward, her elbows on the table. “On the other hand, Garcia was instrumental in forcing things in Tijuana to settle down. With him out of the picture, the situation could just become more violent.”

  “Well, think of it like duck hunting.” The old director pointed his pencil in the air like a shotgun. “You aim for the flock. What you hit, well, sometimes that’s a matter of luck. I can’t say that this operation was a complete success, but it was hardly a failure, either. Not bad for your first assignment with this task force. Not bad at all. I think, once you get settled in, you’re going to be a valuable asset to this team.”

  Elliot wished he could share the deputy director’s confidence. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Oh, by the way, how did you get a hold of the GPS coordinates from Detective Delgado’s cell phone? We have to get a court order to do that.”

  “It’s a trail-running app,” said Elliot. He dug out his own cell phone and showed the deputy director the program. “So long-distance runners can keep track of their running partners if they run at a different pace. His old partner suggested it, and I set it up on his phone after the hotel explosion.”

  “With his permission, I’m sure?”

  “Of course.”

  “Go on, then. And send Detective Delgado in after you.”

  Elliot almost flinched. He caught himself quickly, but not quickly enough to stop St. Claire from pursing her lips. “I’ll send him in.”

  It had been almost four weeks since Ray walked away from him at Sophie’s funeral. Four weeks without seeing or hearing from the other man at all. Ray had been so miserable at the memorial service, Elliot knew if he let himself be alone with Ray, they would fall into bed again, fall into the comforting easy game of pretending that they were in a relationship. No matter how long they drew out the game, Elliot knew it would all come crashing down when Ray learned that he’d had Alejandro’s head in his sights and choked. Elliot had had a chance to stop Sophie’s killer, and instead he’d let him go. Elliot wouldn’t blame Ray if he tried to kill Elliot himself.

  Elliot could handle Ray’s fury, but not while he still remembered the giddy warmth he’d felt when he realized Ray cared about him. Not while he could still remember the taste of Ray’s lips and the warmth of his body. He’d pulled away, knowing that the truth would come out, sooner or later. He wondered now if Ray turning on him as a lover would hurt half as much as watching Ray walk away had.

  Seeing Ray sitting outside the conference room, avoiding his gaze and keeping his face locked in a cold, professional mask, hurt more.

  Ray stood up when Elliot met his gaze, flashing that sexy smile that made Elliot’s resolve crumble. He balled his hands into fists so he wouldn’t be able to reach for Ray. “They’re ready for you.” He nodded toward the conference-room door. “Sorry if you were waiting long.”

  Ray’s smile drooped. “I get paid by the hour. Don’t worry about it.”

  Elliot dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands. His entire body tried to reach out for Ray, to bring his smile back. He just stared as Ray shuffled into the conference room.

  Elliot found a spot to pretend to work where he could keep an eye on the door. It wasn’t half an hour before St. Claire and the deputy director followed Ray out. Finalizing his statement was the last step in closing out Sophie Munoz’s case once and for all.

  Elliot watched them shake hands, then nonchalantly followed Ray toward the elevator. “Delgado, can I talk to you?”

&nb
sp; Ray stepped into the elevator, and Elliot hurried in on his heels.

  “Changed your mind?” Ray asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Are you still holding out for your fairy tale?” Ray’s voice dripped with mockery.

  “This isn’t about what happened with us. Can we talk? Please?”

  When the elevator door slid open, Ray gestured for Elliot to lead the way. Outside, Elliot headed for a set of picnic tables used by the few agents who still smoked.

  Ray flashed him an empty smile that hurt almost as much as the broken expression at Sophie’s memorial service had. “What’s up?”

  “Now that everything with your cousin’s case is wrapped up, I need to tell you the truth.”

  “The truth?”

  “Yes. But, don’t kill me, okay?”

  “Kill you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just spit it out already.”

  Elliot sat down on the picnic table and set his elbows on his knees. “When I tried to arrest Alejandro, he started talking. He made a break for it, and I caught up to him. I had a clean shot, but he just kept talking. I didn’t take the shot. I couldn’t.”

  “They let me read your report. It would have been a difficult shot.”

  “You probably read the report, went to the scene, and tried to recreate the angle,” said Elliot.

  Ray’s smile softened a little. He didn’t dispute any of it, Elliot noticed.

  “I said I had a clean shot. But he kept talking, and I let him get inside my head. He didn’t escape, Ray, I….” Elliot tried to force the words out, hoping to finally voice the guilt and doubts screaming inside him. “I fucked up.”

  “What did he say?” Ray’s smile was gone and his tone unreadable.