not waving

Like a goddamned drowned rat.

A skinny, shaking blond rat with a pair of heavy, black-framed glasses sitting on his face, a thin t-shirt glued to him, and that ball-bearing bracelet running around one fragile looking wrist. Forearms resting on his bent knees, hands dangling, head bent, looking like he was nothing but sharp angles and bones.

Soaking wet, sitting on his ass in the alley behind O'Malley's Bar in the rain, too tired and drunk and fucked up to make it home. So damn wet the water was dripping off his fingers, plastering the hair to his temples.

Stupid bastard.

Just looking at him made Welsh want to flinch, so he got mad instead.

"Kowalski!"

The kid – Welsh knew he was always going to think of Ray as the kid and, hell, he still looked like one half the time, that's why the brass kept putting him undercover – looked up, but probably couldn't make out a damn thing with the rain blurring his lenses. Couldn't see his eyes through them, but Welsh knew how they'd look: big and pale and blinking those silly damn long lashes gone all spiky-wet. Fucking Bambi eyes, because Ray had never got it, that trick of turning it all off so you didn't have to feel any of the shit that kept coming down.

Ray was all raw nerve endings and feelings, too sensitive to be a cop, even if it made him one of the best. The job ate up kids like him. Welsh had seen it a hundred times already, the good ones ending up burned out, used up, broken down.

"Hey, Lieu," Ray said flatly.

Welsh didn't like that tone of voice. It was too empty.

"Get your ass up or I'm arresting you for vagrancy," he growled.

Kowalski tipped his head back against the bricks behind him. The position left his neck exposed, the long line of it oddly vulnerable, as he swallowed and his Adam's apple bobbed.

"Shit, yeah, why don't you do that," he said finally. "Think I'd feel more at home in a cell than ... " He reached up and took his glasses off, rubbing his eyes hard instead of finishing the sentence.

Welsh stepped out of the bar's back door alcove and crossed the alley to where Kowalski was slumped. He stopped in front of the kid and waited until he opened his eyes again.

Looking into Kowalski's unguarded, bloodshot eyes, Welsh realized the younger man wasn't really that drunk. He was just hurting enough that it was better to get out than stay back in the cop bar, and the rain meant no one would see him cry. Maybe it was the last case he'd been on – a long, dangerous undercover assignment for Narcotics. It had ended with a bunch kids dead from rat poison-cut drugs and the bastard behind it all out on bail before the detectives in charge finished typing up their reports. Welsh knew how that sort of thing got to a cop.

It was why he'd come by O'Malley's looking for the kid. He'd been in the same place. And Kowalski had been under as another junkie; he'd known the kids that died.

"Get out of the undercover jobs, Kowalski," Welsh advised. He held out his hand to Kowalski and pulled him to his feet. "Go home."

Kowalski gave himself a convulsive shake, spattering Welsh with water, then managed a sardonic grin. The light filtering into the alley from the street at the far end traced along Ray's temple and cheekbone, caught on the rain gleam of wet skin. "Stella wants a divorce."

That goddamned bitch.

Welsh didn't say it. The kid would have punched him.

"So you're just going to sit out here in the fucking rain?"

Welsh didn't say anything else. Nothing was going to help tonight.

Ray shrugged.

"You gotta better suggestion?"

"You got dry clothes at the station?"

The kid nodded.

Welsh took his arm and tugged him down the alley. "Come on. You can change there. You can crash on my sofa."

Kowalski pulled away from him, though, and straightened his shoulders. His head lifted and his blue-gray eyes glittered with feverish determination.

"Nah, I gotta go talk to Stella. I gotta convince her to give me another chance."

Welsh looked at him and started to say something, but knew it was no use. The kid was drowning. There was nothing he could do to stop it. Nothing anyone could do, except Stella Kowalski, and she was the one pushing him under.

Kowalski started to walk away, then twisted around and said, "Thanks for looking out for me, Lieu."

"I just stopped in for a beer," Welsh growled. "O'Malley started complaining."

The kid grinned, that luminous, innocent smile that had wormed its way under Welsh's skin from the first time he met Kowalski.

"Sure."

"Get outta here. Get outta the rain."

Or you're going to drown.

Kowalski went and Welsh turned to go back into O'Malley's and then just stopped and stood in the empty alley and watched the kid lope away. The rain sheeted down and quickly hid the receding figure. Welsh shivered, realizing his coat was soaked through.

Stupid bastard.

Didn't even have the sense to come in out of the rain.