It occurred to Ray Vecchio that he should maybe be surprised to see Suzanne Chapin - Special Agent Suzanne Chapin - leaning against the side of the nondescript car the Feds had assigned to him (along with a nondescript safe-house and a nondescript name and ID to use right up until they finished the swap and he was set up in Vegas leading an anything-but-nondescript life). But Ray was distracted - distracted by saying goodbye to Fraser (saying I'll be in touch - not goodbye, not really), distracted by the final walk away from his life.

And besides, one thing he had (finally) learned was that Suzanne Chapin always knew more about what was going on than he did.

So he wasn't surprised to see her. A year down the road and she looked the same, and his heart beat faster as he studied her distractedly as he crossed the parking lot. Her dark hair was shorter, barely brushing her shoulders, but her crooked smile was the same as she looked up at him from where she slouched against his car, her hands tucked into the pockets of her blazer.

There were a dozen questions he could have asked, would have asked if it had been anyone else but her, but when he came to a stop in front of her, all he said was, "Long time, no see."

He'd been going for wry, casual, but his voice came out all rough. She smiled again, looking off to the side for a second. When she turned back, she gazed right at him (dark, he'd forgotten how dark her eyes were) and tilted her head towards the car. "Come on. I'll keep you company on your ride home."

"It's not my home," he said, looking at her.

"So I'll keep you company anyway," she said, and swung around to the passenger side of the car.

Ray stayed where he was for a second, rocking back on his heels and sliding his hands into his pockets, before shrugging, and going over to unlock the door for her.

He was a gentleman like that.

*~*~*~*~*~*

He had a couple of concerns about leading her to the safe house ("Tell nobody," they'd warned him. "Not your girlfriend, not your mom, not your lover, nobody.") But in the end, she knew where it was anyway, reciting the address to him as he sat, hesitating, with his hand on the gearshift. He raised one eyebrow at her, and pulled smoothly out of the parking lot.

When they got to the place, she knew the homeless guy slouched in the alley (who was actually an agent), and she knew the guy stationed on the roof across the way, and the one lurking in the hallway near his (nondescript) apartment. Not that she did more than deliberately not look at them or even near them, but they'd been training him on noticing details, and he noticed this.

No one stopped them going into the building, and no one burst in with guns drawn after he closed the door behind them, so Ray figured they knew her, too.

He watched as she slid her jacket off and laid it neatly across the armchair in the corner. So this could be a professional visit, then, but he didn't think so. "Nice place I got here, huh?" he said, waving his hand around airily.

She glanced around and smiled. All the furniture was grey, even the paintings on the wall, stripped of anything that would have made it a place an actual human would live.

"You won't be here long," she said, perfectly nailing the dry tone he'd been going for earlier.

It wasn't a question. She knew this was his last night as Ray Vecchio. "No," he agreed, and stepped closer, brushing her hair back off her face. It was soft against his fingertips, and her skin was, too, as he drew his fingertips lightly down the side of her face.

She didn't blink, just looked up at him, and jeez, all of a sudden it rushed in so quick it made him lightheaded. "A year, it's been a year," he said wonderingly. "I never saw you, never heard from you, and now you're just here."

"Yeah, well." She never broke their gaze. "It wasn't the right time."

"And now it is?" His heart was beating faster even than before.

"You're leaving," she said simply.

"I know," he said. He'd been dreaming of that last time they'd kissed for a year, been holding onto that memory so tightly. It had been like a movie, what happened between them. They had a connection, he hadn't been imagining it. He knew it, and she knew it, and that probably had something to do with why she'd left. They'd both done stupid things for each other, and would probably continue to do stupid things for each other. Like right now. Like tonight.

She was here, breaking every rule they'd both been given, looking up at him. He took a breath, and then took her in his arms, and kissed her with that whole year's worth of longing. It was - good, yeah, it was just as good, but rougher, not as smooth as last time. There was that edge of desperation feeding into it. Last time (a year, a whole damn year ago) time slowed down when he pressed his lips against hers. This time, everything sped up, frantic. She pushed herself against him, and he was holding onto her too damn tight, but he couldn't bring himself to let go. Her hands were hot as they slid under his suit jacket, and he shuddered at the sensation. She moaned against his lips, and he got hard.

They ended up in the bedroom that wasn't his, that would be as characterless and pale tomorrow as the rest of the apartment. But tonight, they shoved the beige bedspread down, and sprawled together on the sheets, kissing frantically, shoving up against each other like they couldn't get close enough. They didn't talk - they'd barely ever talked, the longest conversation they'd had was outside of the Regent's Park Hotel. They didn't have to talk to understand each other, and that was something Fraser had never grasped. What Ray had with Suzanne had went deeper than that.

When Ray sank inside of her, she arched up underneath him, panting desperately and looking into his eyes the whole time. That told him more than any conversation ever would. Her just being her, just showing up tonight, that told him every goddamn thing he needed to know.

When he came, buried deep inside of her, her legs wrapped warm around his hips, she said his name, just once, but that was enough. He buried his face in her neck, shaking and sweating, and memorized this moment, one last goddamn thing to take with him in the morning.

*~*~*~*~*~*

She didn’t spend the night. Ray hadn't thought she would. Tomorrow morning started a whole new life for him. When the sun came up and the feds came to get him, he'd have already started to become Armando Languistini, and she knew that as well as he did. It was the job, and that was another understanding they both had.

He kissed her as she slid out of bed, the smooth skin of her back catching the glimmer of streetlight through the shades. She shut off the light as she left.

She never looked back, and he never heard the door close.

~end~

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