"Yeah, um, this is Ray, leave a message and I'll get back to ya."

Beep.

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Okay. Poker night. It had been a long damn night since poker night, and not just because that called back memories for Ray, or anything. But. He'd cleared out part of the back room (dumped the bagels in a corner, plus a couple buckets of rainy syrup), left some skittles in bags on the table, and got the cards out.

Yep. Poker night could go in full swing from here.

[[ wait for wee-cd up! Open to all cops and trooper stationly types ]]

It was morning, and Ray was going through his morning ritual of pouring some coffee, chucking in some M&Ms, and double-checking that he hadn't turned into a girl, a pink elephant, or a mountie or something over night.

He liked to call this the Sanity Check. As long as he kept doing the Sanity Check, he had not gone crazy.

Or that was his reasoning, anyway, and he was going to stick with it, dammit, and maybe leave Fraser some angry voice messages blaming him for this entire mess if he ever got metaphorically drunk (because he sure as hell wasn't getting actually drunk, these days) just to make sure. Yeah.

He amped up the radio, sipped his coffee, and strode for the fridge to get some chow, humming along with the music.

[ for one, plz! ]

It was Friday. Ray had his shift on Friday. Ray... was not goin'.

See, Ray had a cold. A really bad cold. The kind of cold you, uh, had to scratch. And he was gonna be no use at the station like this anyway, right? So Ray was at home, in front of the TV, eating pizza off the arm of his chair and watching mindless stuff.

In his boxers.

Calling in sick was good, some days. Yep. The life of Sergeant Ray Kowalski was tough.

[[ mostly establishy, but open if you want to visit ]]

Okay, so Ray's pay didn't get them beyond a nice three-star place with about half the amount of old people he'd have got on his old salary, but that was decent, right? He wasn't going to let Tony Stark's bazillions ruin his mojo.

Besides, the beaches were still good. And it was sunny. And there was a sea, and everything. "I think I'm starting to get why my folks moved to Arizona," he said.

Okay, that was half a lie, because Ray was pretty sure that if this kept up for a couple more days, he was gonna be boiling over. And the place was kinda crowded. "...Okay, I do not wanna see this place in July."

[ for the girl and nfb due to distance! ]

Ray had everything set up for Pepper showin' up. Even got some candles. Some good music in the stereo. The apartment was even kinda clean (well, for Ray's standards. He was still kinda a slob). So. Now.

All he needed was Pepper.

He took a seat to lounge on the couch, calm and collected (he wasn't a teenager anymore) and flipped some channels while he waited.

[ for the girl. and the offspring ]

Ray had spent an entire half-week doing both Cooper's job and his own when there were zombies around. Ray had earned some downtime. He'd leave the workaholic crap to Day.

So today, Ray had taken a day off, Ray was on the couch, Ray had a turtle on his chest, a pizza, and really crappy TV. Ray was going to be content. Ray was going to...

Sleep a lot, probably. Shitting rainbows still seemed like a stretch.

[ mostly establishy, but can be open if anyone has a reason to show up ]

So Ray still wasn't sure how the date thing was going to go. If they had a date thing.

If Pepper was going to hate him for life because he'd told her there were dinosaurs out to eat her head last weekend. If Pepper was still Pepper.

Okay. Ray was cool and collected. Ray was knocking.

[ for the girl! ]

Okay, last night had been good. In that not-so-dirty kinda way. Pepper was a total dork and yet scarily efficient, which was two great tastes that ran together. Or something.

What would've also been great tastes to go together woulda been bacon and eggs, though. When Ray pulled open his fridge, there was neither. In fact, there was a whole lot of nothing period. Phones didn't work. Fridge did not work.

And a short trip downstairs taught him that Door Did Not Work. Too much stupid snow outside. He was hungry, and he didn't wanna wait for the landlord to do his damn job (or at least, as he noticed the guy outside later, a faster one, dammit), so he trudged back up, trying to think.

It would probably be kinda lame to show up at Pepper's for food, but maybe she had, um, leftovers. He went back and forth on that plan a couple of times, but his feet were apparently in league with his stomach or something, and so he found himself outside #7 anyway, knocking.

[ for the girl who lives there, yeah ]

Okay, it was cold.

But if the squeaky chair and the coffee and Cooper's stupid badgering hadn't gotten Ray down, well, hell, cold weather wasn't gonna hit him. Got colder back home anyway. Yep. He was leaning by the GTO, nice and cool, nice clothes, the good jacket even if it was kinda cold.

He was good to go. Just needed the, uh, girl.

God, he hoped the girl was gonna show up.

[ for the girl, and nfb for distance except to mention Ray and Pepper left the island by car onna date, plz! ]

He'd come home with a TV dinner and wound up with some weird-ass piece of meat on his dinner table ("Huh. Turducken."), ready for a night of... well, not really much at all. Mom called once, but that was about it.

He shoved the remains of the turducken (couldn't eat as much anymore these days, bad for his health) in the fridge after a while, then sat down. TV didn't hold his attention for very long, and so soon enough he was drifting through the apartment. Aimlessly, maybe.

He tried to sit down with a book, but that didn't work, either. Just kept hearing the damn clock, ticking away like something crazy. Needed to get that thing fixed. It was also way too dark outside, really. He had noticed that before, but not as much as now.

Headlights. That's what was missing. No headlights passing by outside.

Feeling thoroughly pathetic and sorry for himself, Ray wound up doing what he always did. He drifted towards the CD player, picked something out, something slow, something quiet. With the notes drifting through the apartment, he took his spot.

And danced. Alone, with a phantom of days gone past, like he always did. Swinging carefully measured across the apartment. One step two step. The whole nine damn yards.

It went on and on. Yeah. Him and the dancing, things weren't so bad.

[ establishy, but open if anyone wants to knock on Ray's door for some reason ]

There was a point at which a guy was just going to have to say 'it's enough', and Ray had about reached that point. Actually, Ray was pretty sure he'd gone back, rechecked the point, went back again, poked at the point a while, drenched it in coffee and then firmly reached it again.

Seriously, he was wondering whether hanging out with Fraser was really worth all of this crap.

...Yeah, keep kidding yourself, Raymond.

But anyway, enough was enough, which is why he was crawling into the GTO at this time of the night with a sleeping bag, some extra sheets, and his favorite pillow. Okay, a little hard to handle and kinda awkward, but he was dealing with an emergency type situation here and he could live with it.

He cranked the chair back, locked the doors, stretched out, and dumped the covers all over him.

He was just going to keep sleeping until the crazy went away. Sounded like a damn good plan. Night, island.

[ establishy, unless someone is really in a mood to make ray miserable ]

When Ray woke up that morning, he had a mild headache and a desperate craving for coffee. He slinked out of bed, thwacked his old stereo until it started making noise (Iggy, great) and went into the kitchen to make some.

The very sound of coffee was enough to activate at least some of his braincells. He looked out the window once-- "Island still hasn't blown up yet. Huh." --and picked his pants up off the floor.

Ten minutes later, he'd have coffee. Right now, he was making eggs. It was gonna be a perfectly ordinary, quiet, kinda lonely-- okay, shut up, Ray-- normal weekend. Unless the island blew up. He was gonna keep checking.

He flipped the egg to the beat of the music.

"No fun, my baaabe, no fun..."

Ray's morning singing voice was not really virtuoso, but nobody was around to give a crap anyway.

[ establishy of foreboding, yes ]

Moving didn't mean much when all you had to your name were two suitcases and some random crap in storage up in Chicago. Even his car was in another state, for fuck's sake. With a grunt, Ray kicked open the door (so it had been kinda half-open to begin with, who cared), tossed said suitcases into the room, and then kicked the door shut again behind him.

"Right," he muttered, "Ray, this is your casa. Home sweet home."

It did not look that cheery.

"Right," he muttered again. Probably should get some groceries. Or something.

Couple minutes later, he'd collapsed on the couch. TV first, shopping... some other time.

[ establishy, unless someone has a reason to come by ]

Freaking Alexandria.

"Who puts a parking lot for a place near Annapolis by freakin' Alexandria?!"

The mirror of Ray's GTO didn't respond, but he kinda felt better about it anyway. He smacked the steering wheel again, then shoved his sunglasses further onto his face, and shoved open the door.

"Right," he muttered. So now, how the hell was he gonna get back to Maryland? After a couple of minutes, he started walking around to find a cab stand or something. Nothing. Just cars. Now this was beyond inconvenient into completely brick-headed--

"Huh."

He tapped his sunglasses down the moment he saw the causeway that looked an awful lot like the one he'd left behind in Maryland, like something straight outta a sci-fi movie. "Now that's just weird."

Fraser wasn't kidding when he said this place was wacky. (Of course he wasn't. Fraser. Wacky. Duh)

[ and 'stablishy, whee ]