Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Collections:
RCW 139 - a due South ficlet collection
Stats:
Published:
2024-09-22
Words:
139
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
15
Kudos:
20
Hits:
85

September 21 in Las Vegas

Summary:

September 21 in Las Vegas and it's Ray Vecchio's birthday.

Notes:

Written for Ray Vecchio Day 2024, and for the RCW 139 Ficlets Collection, and for the dSC6D snippets comm on Dreamwidth.

TYK to Amedia for emotional support and tech support. TYK to Amedia and to Christie Y for brainstorming.

The prompt used was the Challenge 39 prompt from the dSC6D snippets comm prompt list on Dreamwidth:
He's already been inside me
And I really don't feel well
I keep looking in the mirror
But it's hard to tell

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^

Work Text:

Ray Vecchio keeps looking in the mirror like he does every morning in Vegas, seeing an undercover Chicago cop turning into Armando "The Bookman" Langoustini. He's preparing for another day and night undercover with the Mob. He thinks of how the persona of Armando has been cultivated to be inside him, and he feels it taking hold again.

"Cultivated," he murmurs aloud, and laughs mirthlessly at the thought of science fiction pod people growing into inhuman replicas of humans. For a moment he feels unwell at the comparison, how on the surface it's hard to tell the original from the copy, the human from the inhuman.

When Ray turns away from the mirror, Armando's ghost is there as he sometimes is, and Armando says in greeting "September 21, Raimondo. Ray Vecchio's birthday is being celebrated somewhere, but not here."