(no subject)

[gone_byebye]

The nice thing about owning your own building is that if you want to go up on the rooftop without setting off an alarm, you can. Ray does a lot of his big thinking up there. Sure, the Firehouse is only three stories tall, but it's still up on the roof. It gives him a little more perspective, and it's a nicely controlled perspective, too, rather than oh-my-god-my-place-in-the-universe-is-WHAT perspective.

Sometimes he finds it easier to talk about certain things up here, too. Slimer doesn't come up here much, and Ecto can't hear this far up without deploying active scanning, and Peter and Egon can't stumble in on things by accident. So he's waiting for Winston just now.

This is gonna be at least as hard as telling the guys about Milliways in the first place.

Comments

[sane-gb.livejournal.com]

Winston's pretty good at drawing at this point. Considering the kind of nonsense that would come out of the other four occupants of the firehouse, it was something of a necessity.

"So... you going to start swinging that lightsaber around and shouting about how there can only be one or did you not spend six years somewhere and look exactly like you did before you left?"

[gone_byebye]

Ray snorts. "Winston, I've never committed an act of violence against a human being who wasn't Walter Peck in my life," he says. (Agent N totally doesn't count; he was possessed by the Black Oil at the time, and probably long since dead.) "Do you honestly think I'm going to start something like that now?"

Then he sobers. "Sorry. Yeah, that's pretty much the gist of Beldaran's arrangement. And it wasn't six years, it was more like forty-seven, but they at least get snow in Melcene. I kind of found out about the no-aging package when I got shoved into the past of Garion's world by a being or forces unknown and realized just how long I'd been trying to work out how to get back home."

[sane-gb.livejournal.com]

He laughs, because that helps.

"It was a joke, Ray. I do know you, you know."

He pats the other man's shoulder before breathing in deep.

"Man. Forty seven years? That's... that's wild. And forty-seven years in a totally different world?"

He whistles.

[gone_byebye]

"At least I got a job at a university. There's only two actual universities in Garion's world, and this was the better one. I spent most of my time there in the lab, so it's not as if it was too different, except for the part where there were a lot more explosions and I had to invent toilet paper myself. Medieval alchemists have weird priorities."

[sane-gb.livejournal.com]

Winston just nods.

It's usually safest.

[gone_byebye]

Wise man.

"Anyway, that's the big thing. Around forty years at the university, six and a half in a tropical country with so many jungles and snakes that I'm never going to be able to go to Rain Forest World at the Bronx Zoo again without flinching. I finally got contacted by the guy who switched me and Ecto back, and he got Garion to find me in the past and pull me out of it, and that's pretty much when I finally came home."

There is no power on Earth or in Heaven that can compel Ray to say exactly what he was trying to do in Nyissa.

[sane-gb.livejournal.com]

That gets another nod.







"So. You're immortal."

He presses his lips together into a line for a moment before breathing out in a puff.

"Better than it could be."

[gone_byebye]

"Yep," says Ray. "I don't think it changes anything except my investment strategy, really. I'm going to have to go long term now. Everything else is pretty much the same."

Except what happens on Mexican Night, but he'll deal with that later.

[sane-gb.livejournal.com]

"You gonna tell your sister?"

Because he thinks of these things.

[gone_byebye]

"I can't figure out how, for the life of me," Ray confesses. "And I've been trying to think how to say it for days. 'Oh, hey, Catherine, you remember how we talked about me setting up a will? That might not be necessary after all' doesn't really work very well with her."

[sane-gb.livejournal.com]

"You could just wait," he offers. "She notices, she notices... and it'll give you a few years to think up something to say about it. Plus, hey, people tend to get used to things over time. Might soften the blow."

[gone_byebye]

"I was kind of hoping that approach might be an acceptable one," Ray says. "Catherine can swallow a lot, but this would really be asking too much of her right now. Maybe over the course of a couple of years she might get around to being able to handle it, right?"

[sane-gb.livejournal.com]

"Probably," he says.

And he looks out over the City.

"So, were you trying that speech out on me before giving it out to the other guys?"

[gone_byebye]

"No, they're getting a different one," Ray says. "I haven't worked Peter's out yet. Egon's is mostly shaping up to be what he is and isn't allowed to test me for."

[sane-gb.livejournal.com]

He reaches out now and gives Ray a healthy pat on the shoulder.

"Just remind Peter that he's not allowed to hide behind you any more than he used to be," he says with a warm smile. "And Egon--"

There's a short pause.

"You're on your own there. Sorry."

[gone_byebye]

Ray smiles wryly. "I'll work something out," he says. "Thanks, Winston."

[sane-gb.livejournal.com]

He shrugs.

"What're friends for?"