Page 89 of Forget Me Not

Cal was muttering about several things: the history of the buildings connected to the alley where they’d found Ray, the information about the case being investigated at that building nearby, which Penn must have gotten him, and also seemed to be looking up various names. Ray recognized one, thought he recognized another, and realized Cal was doing internet searches on all the police at the original scene that he could remember.

And Ray was… spying on them and wiping down the counters. Having panic attacks. Taking naps.

With a snarl, he left the kitchen and stalked over to his desk, where he pulled out the candy tin and opened it to get the hidden drive. Then he marched over to Cal and handed it to him. “This is probably more useful, even if we don’t know why yet. Definitely more useful than old stories about the “curse” of the moon or Irish wolf warriors.”

“Says you,” Benny muttered, unruffled.

Cal stared at the drive in Ray’s hand without blinking, then up at Ray. He brightened with no warning, lighting up like metallic confetti. “Good, because this was getting me nowhere.”

To Ray’s surprise, he popped up out of the chair and gestured for Ray to sit down before plucking the drive from Ray’s hand. Ray’s ass had barely hit the seat before Cal was on top of him, settling in like Ray was a cushion, the drive already in his laptop.

Ray shot a look over to Calvin, who was perusing something one of them must have printed out.

“Not letting you out of my sight for a while,” Cal explained without twisting around, the rest of his attention apparently already on the files he was flicking through at lightning speed.

Ray’s head throbbed just trying to keep up, and he eventually looked out the window to give his eyes a rest. It felt quite human, quite fragile, to have to stop and recover after doing so little. He remembered how after one of the department staff had fallen down their apartment stairs and gotten a concussion there had been talk of computers screens making headaches worse. One more new thing for Ray to enjoy this week.

He tapped his fingers on the arms of the chair and tried not to notice the attempted flutter from Cal’s wings trapped against his chest.

Cal’s skin was chilled again. Ray finally wrapped one arm around Cal’s waist. Cal sighed and let himself be drawn back and adjusted, although his head stayed down, eyes steady on the screen.

“Copies of documents. Pictures of documents taken on your phone. Ooh, a spreadsheet! Did Penn do that for you?” He didn’t seem to expect an answer, which was good, since Ray of course remembered nothing about the drive he had obviously used to collect information for Cal to look through—in case of trouble, Ray suspected. But if Cal wasn’t going to say it, neither was he.

He put his nose into Cal’s hair, which made Cal pause, but only for a second. “You didn’t organize these in any way. It’s like, a pocket full of weird or interesting things you found while on a walk. Or things you hid away from view as quickly and messily as you could, so putting them in any sort of order was not your concern at the time. Which makes sense, if some of these are files or docs from the station. A few of the pictures from your phone are dated last year. You’ve been at this a while. And clearly, a lot of it was unofficial because you would take pictures of files, not request copies. Raymond…” Cal clucked his tongue. “You sniffed something out, and in true Ray Ray fashion, hadn’t yet put it into words for the rest of us. Hmm, I am going to need hours and hours with these just to get a sense of what I’m looking at.ThenI can try to suss out whatever it was you thought was important about them.”

“Sorry.” It stirred Cal’s hair.

Cal shivered and reached back to clumsily pat Ray’s side. “Don’t be. It’s… I’m not an elf. But I can feelsomethinghere. And I love a project… I might need to take over another wall though. To help me visualize it.”

Ray considered the cost of the ink to print all of that out, but only sighed. “Okay.”

“The thing is,” Cal continued smoothly, “this might not even be related to what happened to you, so we’re possibly wasting time here. Maybe, yeah sure, you noticed a pattern and you started to look into it, and something about it made you decide to not even tell Penn yet. But maybe that has nothing to do with the others abandoning you.”

The room seemed very still and quiet, Calvin and Benny suddenly controlling their breathing to be unobtrusive, as if a change in their breathing patterns wasn’t something Ray would notice.

“Which they have,” Cal finished. He might have thought he was being gentle. “Haven’t they? No calls. No visits. No updates of info or questions. That’s what Penn was telling you, I’ll bet.”

Ray closed his teeth around the tip of Cal’s ear, then let go when Cal shivered. “If I was hiding it from youandPenn, I didn’t think it was safe to share. It’s connected, even if only indirectly.”

Cal reached up and ran a finger along the shell of his ear, now wet from Ray’s mouth. He shivered again but his tone was all business. “So,” he announced, loud enough for the room, “you were noticed looking into this, whatever it may be.Oryou were already an obstacle to it and you noticed that it bothered someone, and you decided to privately look into why. That narrows down nothing.”

He moved the cursor around, again too fast for Ray to watch without strain, and the printer by Ray’s desk clicked on.

Cal’s hand stopped, frozen over the keyboard. “You’re going to think this was about earlier, and oh, I have so much to say about that, but…” Cal trailed off. “It’s related, I guess. I don’t know.” The noise of the printer didn’t fully drown him out, but he was speaking softly. The other two probably couldn’t hear him. “You’re a were, and, incident with Ross aside, I never seriously considered you… dying. You know? Someday. Not at work. Not violently. Not big, strong Ray.” He made a claw gesture with his hand and a little growl. Then he sighed. “Obviously, I wasn’t prepared for illness, either.”

Ray tensed.

Cal patted the side of Ray’s face again, his ear more than his cheek. “I’m not going anywhere,” he reassured Ray immediately. “I just… never had to think about it, with you. My dad, yeah. He’s got a pill caddy, and foods to avoid, and I’m supposed to help make sure he goes for walks like he is supposed to—or swim, but he refuses to go to the gym pool. Then I have to tell my mom about it so she can worry in secret. Not secret—pretty sure he knows I tell her. Anyway.” Cal scooted back against Ray, tucking himself more firmly against Ray’s chest and then tipping his head up to rest it on Ray’s shoulder. “But you… I never imagined it. Not any of it. Today, I’m getting it all at once. So if I seem calm and normal, know that I’m not, okay, Raymond?”

“You call me Raymond when you’re upset,” Ray observed. “Not always, but it’s a good indicator.”

“Well, it’s not aimed at you, at the moment.” Cal clicked for more things to print. “I’m glad I wasn’t there, in a way, and not only because I might have cursed those assholes to extinction instead of being helpful. For once, I’m grateful that my dad is like that. Then I think about him and that’s terrifying too.”

Ray glanced at Calvin out of the corner of his eye. He looked as tired as Ray felt.

“But, you know what,” Cal muttered, briefly lowering his voice even more, “it also means I’ve had enough, of all of it, as he will find out in a few hours.”

A fairly alarming statement. Cal didn’t give Ray time to focus on it or ask.

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