Re: Horatio & Yelina fic
...Another head aches, another heart breaks
I am so much older than I can take
And my affection, well it comes and goes
I need direction to perfection, no no no no...
Horatio parks his Hummer beneath a street lamp and both he and his younger brother step out. They had driven to their old meeting place, just on the outskirts of town near the bridge, where they used to go when they were kids.
Miami seems strangely cold, on this particular night, and the breeze rolling in off the ocean was not helping any. However, only one of the two men seemed affected by the weather. Walking quickly to the front of the vehicle, Raymond stuffs his hands into his jeans pockets and waits for Horatio to walk to him.
“I didn’t do it, Horatio,” Raymond speaks quickly. “That’s not why I ran, okay? I didn’t kill that guy.”
Horatio nods slightly but it isn’t a nod of agreement. Right now, he doesn’t know what to believe, everything is just coming at him too fast, and he needs time to sort his own feelings out. In truth, he doesn’t want to believe his brother—his own blood—could be capable of murder. Nevertheless, right now, he could only make judgment from the one fact that he knew: Ray had to have ran away for some reason—even if he had not kill that man.
“Then why did you run, Ray?” Horatio asks, peering closely at his brother in the dark.
Raymond rounds his shoulders against the cool breeze and looks anywhere but at Horatio. He knows he had done the wrong thing and that running away made him look guilty for murder.
Yet, even if he had to do it again, he could not help himself. After Horatio had left the room that old, feeling had come back over him: the animal cornered. It happened sometimes whenever he felt that Yelina was holding him back from the things he wanted to do.
Here he had tried to start over, a clean slate, and then his demons had to catch up with him. And he knew that Horatio wasn’t going to leave well enough alone and wasn’t going to let him alone.
“Ray,” Horatio speaks again, the silence trying his patience. “Tell me.”
Raymond flinches as he becomes torn from his thoughts. Looking at his brother he feels another feeling come back, one that he had not felt in awhile, for a fleeting moment. He feels the want to be like this man before him, his big brother, always able to never waver from what was right and true and just. He could never do that for, in his own mind, it is too late. There was a fine line between savable and already gone and he felt, for so long now, that there was no turning back. No matter how hard he had tried to turn over that new leaf, the real him still lurked and no one could save him from the man he’d become. Not even Horatio.
“I was scared, instinct told me to bail, and I listened. Okay?”
“What about Yelina and the boy. What did your instinct tell you they’d think?”
“I wasn’t leaving forever. I’m back. I just needed to talk to someone.”
Horatio nods again and looks away. He does not like the idea that, whatever the problem, his brother couldn’t talk to him about it. Instead, he had run away. How did this ever happen. Where did the two of them go wrong?
“And who did you talk to?” Horatio asks.
“A man that can fix all of this and keep my name out of it. You’ll get your murderer, but I swear to you I had nothing to do with it. I swear. But there are some things…”
The ringing of Horatio’s cell phone broke off Raymond’s explanation. He let it ring a moment more.
“We’ll finish this in a minute.” Horatio spoke, before answering the phone. “Yelina?”
“Horatio, I just wanted to apologize to you for the way I acted earlier. Telling me how you felt about…”
Horatio swallows hard and glances at Raymond. He knows that his younger brother cannot hear what she just said but impulse makes him look.
“Okay. Um, Yelina I’ve got to go. I’ve got something…”
“Oh. I just needed—wanted—to tell you that. I’ve just been so stressed and I shouldn’t have…”
“It’s fine. Listen, I’ve got to…”
“Yeah, right, right.” she spoke quickly. “Then goodnight, Horatio.”
“Night,” Horatio nods, not being able to keep a small smile from his lips.
Horatio then looks down at his cell phone to close it and keeps his head low. Raymond watches him. Something that Yelina had just said had caught him off guard. Perhaps it had something to do with whatever the tow of them had been talking about, so quietly, on the front porch. Slowly Horatio regained his composure.
“Like I was saying,” Raymond spoke quickly before he let his imagination get the better of him. “There are some things I’ve done, that involve the people who may’ve killed that man, and—it happens sometimes. Not to everyone but it does happen. Narcotics Agents getting involved in the same stuff they started out trying to stop. This guy…”
“And this guy can,” Horatio spoke intensely. “Make it all go away?”
Raymond scoffed.
“You don’t get it do you?” he asks. “The stuff I did is enough to get me put away—for a long time. This is the way out.”
“In exchange for what, Ray?”
“I can’t say.”
Horatio shifts his feet and raises his hands to his hips, trying to control himself. Ray doesn’t see what he may be getting into. Someone powerful enough to do what he was talking about was dangerous. If things turned sour, there could be no getting out of it—alive.
“Ray, I’m begging you to listen to me. There’s still time to…” Horatio speaks urgently.
“No, Horatio. No!” Ray interrupts. “I’m so sick of listening to you and your do-good crap. This is my choice.”