okayawesome | Fic Week Fics: Due South, "Falling Into Place" and "Secret-Keeper"

Two today, because they're both short and from the same fandom. Actually, these could even be occupying the same reality, I guess, if you squint and turn your head to the left.

Title: Falling Into Place
Fandom: Due South
Rating: G
Pairing: Fraser/RayK
Spoilers?: Up through "Call of the Wild"
Word Count: 907
Notes: I wrote this like two seconds after seeing the series finale, and later discovered that it's basically the most stereotypical post-CoTW fic ever. Snow, sleeping bags, and Fraser being introspective. Oh well.

Summary: Alone in the wilderness, Fraser and Ray have an epiphany.

It's truly remarkable the way things happen, at times, so slowly and yet so quickly at the same time. In the end, you try to think when they began, and all you can say is "all at once" and "all along."

I had worked with Ray for just over a year, and we had been on our adventure for just over a month when everything finally... I remember thinking how sudden it seemed, and yet somehow I think we both knew what was coming from the start, from when we set off on this quest together. Why it took so long, I don't know. Perhaps we needed the cold and the desolation and the isolation of the Yukon to wear down our inhibitions--those Ray had been guarding his whole life, those I had built up like armor during my time in Chicago. Some things get built up, out here in the wildnerness: I got to see Ray grow strong and healthy, every day a little easier for him. Others get torn down: every day a little harder as well.

A month-- it was April, then, but so far north and such a cold, cold night. Our gear, individually, was simply not adequate; it was only natural when Ray climbed in with me, burrowed himself into my bedroll like a tick into skin and huddled up against me. Equally natural the next night, when his arms found their way around my waist and I awoke to feel his head pressed into my shoulder, his breath warm and tickling my neck. And the next, when even though the temperature had risen significantly Ray still slipped into my bed with scarcely more than a glance at his own still bundled up in the sled.

The weather was hard on Ray. The weather, and the emptiness, and the silence, these were all as foreign to him as the noise and heat and crowds of Chicago had been to me when I first arrived. The armor was cracking, and on the fourth night when we settled down together, his voice wavered as he spoke to me.

"Listen, Fraser. You don't really think we're ever, you know, ever really gonna find this thing, do you?"

I remember thinking if I say no, does it end here? It was selfish of me, not to mention cowardly, but I knew that was a risk I was not yet prepared to take. "We may," I replied evenly, staring at the wall of our tent, feeling the pressure as Ray's arms tightened and then the rush of warmth across my skin as he laughed, shakily.

"Yeah," he murmured, and there was something in his voice that made something in me take notice. "Yeah, well..." Something anxious. Something breaking. He tucked his face into my neck and I could suddenly feel the twitch of every muscle: the tension around his sockets as his eyes shut tight, the sharp furrow of his brow deepening the creases in his forehead, the sudden stretch of his lips into that odd, reflexive grin he sometimes had over nothing at all. I closed my eyes, then; sight was no longer an important sense. "Until we do," he said, and I felt his hands press into my stomach, "you think you could be my reaching-out hand? You think you could do that for me, Fraser?"

This is how life goes. So suddenly, and yet through my surprise I realized, I knew, I had been waiting for this. I think we both had from the beginning. Not from the start of our adventure, not really -- no, it was so much longer coming. I think we knew from the moment I first called him "Ray," from the first time he reached out to me and I took his hand and pulled him up to me.

"I think I can do that, Ray," I whispered, and turned, rolled onto my side to face him. His skin felt like paper beneath my fingers, but it warmed as I brushed my hand over his face. His hand, as it took mine, was strong, rough, harder than it had been that first day by the lake called Michigan, toughened by the long month behind us. And I reached out to him, or he reached out to me, and the first meeting of our lips was something I had never thought of but waited for every day. It was everything finally falling into place.

Amazing, truly remarkable, the way these things happen sometimes. I could give you the date when Ray and I first became lovers, but I could never begin to tell you when it was that we really began. And though I could tell you when our quest for that hand, that reaching-out hand, came to an end -- as it happens, it was that same night -- I will never be able to tell you when we stopped, because we still haven't. Every night we search for each other; every night, we find. Ray reaches for me and I let him pull me to him, and in the morning he still huddles up against me until the dogs begin to bark.

One morning, he asks me: "So, really. You think we're ever gonna find this thing?"

I tell him, "No, Ray, no I don't."

"Yeah, I figured as much," he murmurs, and he burrows into the covers like a tick under skin. "Knew it all along."

Title: Secret-Keeper
Fandom: Due South
Rating: G
Pairing: Fraser/RayK, implied Fraser/Frannie
Spoilers?: Up through "Call of the Wild"
Word Count: 846

Summary: Frannie is better at keeping secrets than people give her credit for, and now she's got another one.

Frannie is great at keeping secrets. Like in high school, when she found out Connie D'Amico hadn't really gone off to boarding school but was actually pregnant with Paulie Sardino's baby? She never told a soul about that, and boy, had she ever wanted to.

Or like how she's supposed to pretend that the skinny blond Pollack with the attitude is supposed to be her goofy, big-nosed hulk of a brother? Hey, she can do that too. She can even pretend she doesn't miss the big lug like crazy, even though she does every day.

Or that she's been in love with Constable Benton Fraser for the past three years-- okay, well, maybe she hasn't done the best job of keeping that one secret.

Or maybe how one day, Fraser came in all beat up and bloody from the latest goombah they'd been chasing, and later on Frannie was behind the two-way mirror cleaning up the papers Ray'd knocked all over the place when the door to Interview Two swung open and the two of them stormed in, arguing the way they always argued over stuff like this, like so regular that Frannie could practically write their dialogue herself even though the mic wasn't switched on. Here's Ray, all freaked out and wired, shouting something like Fraser, I don't care what they do in Canada, you cannot jump in front of a 2x4; and there's Fraser, all calm and, what's the word, self-sacrificial (and, incidentally, gorgeous even with the bruises), saying something like Ray, in the pursuit of justice-- and maybe using some of those big Canadian words Frannie could never totally wrap her mind around.

And there's Ray getting angrier and angrier, Frannie could see, because he doesn't know what else to do, because it's easier being angry than scared. Really mad now, getting all in Fraser's face, shouting something like next time it could be a gun, you could get shot, Fraser what the hell is wrong with you. And there's Fraser looking so tired suddenly, saying Ray, please-- which gets him even more wound up. For a minute it seriously looked like he was gonna haul off and clock him, and then his hand was actually in the air and Frannie was just about to run next door and stop him from bruising up poor Fraser even more when all of a sudden he grabbed for Fraser's hair, and Fraser let him, and then they were kissing--

So here's a secret Frannie's been keeping: she watched Fraser and Ray kissing in Interview Two one day two months ago. And she knows it wasn't the first time they'd done it, too; because when Ray finally pulled away, all the anger drained out, whispering I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Fraser just shook his head and smiled like she'd never see him smile for anyone and closed the distance between them again in a heartbeat.

That was about when Frannie decided to leave, but she's been seeing them be secret at each other since then. All those little looks, every time Fraser says Ray, would you mind driving me home? Yeah, she gets it, and she knows she's the only one that does.

Maybe Frannie's biggest secret is how happy she actually is for them. Oh, sure, there was a good hour (or night) of crying right afterwards, but now she's okay with it. She's, you know, come to terms. For one thing, it explains a lot, and while she's not exactly thrilled to see the man of her dreams happy with someone else at least now she knows it wasn't that she wasn't pretty enough or didn't try hard enough. The thing she was missing, she couldn't have done a whole lot about; it's not her fault Fraser's into blondes or, for that matter, guys. Plus, she's been around for a while now, and she's seen a lot. Ray might be real annoying sometimes, but he's a good guy (and maybe kind of cute, if he hadn't been her fake brother and all). And Fraser... Frannie doesn't know anyone in the world who's gotten less of what they deserve than Fraser.

She's not going to tell them she knows, that much she decided right away. She knows these guys: the second they know one person knows, they'll worry everyone knows, and she doesn't want them to be freaking out all the time. They do that enough, or at least Ray does enough for the both of them. She doesn't say a word -- although maybe once in a while she'll talk extra-loud or rattle something if she sees the Lieu going for the supply closet.

Besides, Frannie's busy with a secret of her own, a beautiful little secret getting bigger by the day and not going to be secret much longer. She watches Fraser and Ray at his desk, chatting, beaming at each other in their own private little world, and she touches her belly lightly where her skirt is getting just a little too tight and smiles.

She thinks she'll call him Ben.