AN: Thank you all for so kindly reviewing my story and one of you who even favorited it! I have truly begun to realize how much reviews mean to their authors and have resolved to do more reviewing of my own to show my sincere appreciation for their work.
This story emerged out of one of those reviews, thank you MoseSchrute, that suggested I write one from Raph's POV. There are many many ways this could have gone (bits of them are sitting on my hard drive now) but this one, connected to the events of 'Through Brandi's Eyes,' just begged to be written and posted here.
Disclaimer: Regrettably In Plain Sight is not mine. In the mean time I just play with the characters.
Through Chico's Eyes
It is early morning when Raph decides to collect the rest of his things from Mary's house. He keeps the radio blaring something hot and latin hoping to distract himself from the thought that this might be the last time he travels the well worn route between her place and his. Instead of drowning out his thoughts, the rhythm reminds him of Mary. He remembers... A night out with her at a local bar. The band is good and the beat perfect to dance to, but Mary stays in her seat refusing to dance with him. Gripping the steering wheel he realizes how well that moment described his time with Mary. She didn't want to dance with him... and now they were done. He and Mary were over and all that was left were the final goodbyes and the last bit of closure.
Raph stepped on the gas a bit hoping that he'd arrive at Mary's with enough time to actually talk to her before she left for work. Somehow he just needed to see her one last time to be sure... without a doubt... that this was what she really wanted. Mary said she didn't love him and that was the reason she called off the wedding. But why? Why didn't she love him? What had he done? What hadn't he?
The light changed ahead of him and he stopped to wait for the green. Looking around impatiently, his eyes settled on the early morning patrons of a street-side cafe. One pair in particular, still dressed for the evening and leaning close to laugh and talk, caught his eye. He remembers... waiting up for Mary only to get a call that she's still on the road and won't be home that night. Then, waking up the next morning to see Mary and Marshall, still dressed from the previous day, eating breakfast together at their kitchen table. They had laughed and smiled over coffee and pancakes, neither of them noticing that he was there.
As he turned up Mary's street and finally approached the house he saw it, Marshall's truck parked in the driveway beside Mary's probe. He tried to believe that Marshall had just come to pick Mary up for an early day at work. That had happened often enough for it to be true. He remembers... how after a night spent in bed with him, Mary would get up and step into the shower without so much as a good morning kiss for him. She'd rush about so as not to be late for Marshall and would forget to kiss him at all if he didn't follow her to the door. That's where He'd be of course, standing there with a coffee in each hand and a joke to make Mary laugh without fail. Reflecting on those mornings Raph recalled a sense of pleasure at the look on Marshall's face when he caught Mary into his arms and kissed her roughly with some of the passion of the night before. Had he imagined that Marshall looked away when his hands wandered to caress Mary's hips?
She had been his Querida then. Though she never seemed to like that name or in fact offer him any other pet name but Chico, though even that had come from Brandi. Marshall, on the other hand, she called by so many different names it was hard to keep up. Dufus or Pervis were favorites though sometimes he was String Bean or Florence or Cowboy. To which Marshall would call her Cowgirl or Sunshine or even 'My Girl' surprisingly without loosing a limb. There was something in the way that Marshall called Mary "Mare" and the way that the tone between them seemed to shift as often as the nicknames they'd exchange that he did not like, an intimacy, an inside joke that he had never been made a party to.
Slapping his palm into the steering wheel he gave up waiting for the two to appear. Turning off the engine he slammed the car door and stalked toward Mary's front stoop. Reaching the door he didn't bother to ring or knock just used his key to unlock the door and enter. Fleetingly he remembers the fight he'd had just to have a key and how it had been among the first things that Mary had asked him to give back. Gritting his teeth he also remembers the day he learned that Marshall had a key. While he had stared at Mary in frustration, she had shrugged and said "of course" as if it was no big deal that her partner had a key to the house when her fiancé did not.
He steps into the foyer, ready to call out his arrival to the quiet house, when he notices something odd. Mary's boots, usually thrown to land somewhere by the door are standing at attention against the wall next to a pair of only too familiar cowboy boots. Not only was Marshall here but he'd been here for a while, probably since last night. Moving in a daze through the hall his eyes alight on yet another testament to Marshall's presence in the house, a pair of badges and sidearms rested side by side on the entry hall table along with a single set of keys. They seemed to fit there side by side, the boots the guns and the badges...
Closing his eyes he takes a breath and repeats to himself Mary is not mine, Mary is not mine but it fails to calm him. Instead an answering mantra starts up in his brain then whose, then whose. He remembers... all the times he'd caught them together. Marshall so much closer to Mary than she would ever let him get.
All the mantra's in the world are not enough, when he turns the corner into the living room and finds them asleep on the couch. He takes a deep breath, and in the seconds before he roars out his displeasure, thinks- we were engaged and she never let me hold her like that!