Ex Libris, The End of the Road

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My table

Here is the end of my road. Thanks for the opportunity to rec for this kickass fandom.

Claim: due South, Fraser/Kowalski
Title: Ex Libris
Author: brooklinegirl, on LJ brooklinegirl
Characters: Fraser, Ray
Prompt: 50. Reccer's Choice
Rating: R
Length: medium
Brief summary: This is a wonderful story written recently by one of my very favorite authors. There are many examples of wonderful Ray voice in the due South fandom, but relatively few examples of good Fraser voice. This is one of them. Fraser is pining after Ray, but can't find the way and the words to tell Ray what he wants. This is worth it for the glimpse into Fraser's mind, and how difficult it is for him to voice how he feels and his own needs and wants. This blew me away when I first read it, brooklinegirl just gets better and better with every fic she writes.


f this were a fairy tale, Fraser would get his happily ever after. He'd find the words, be the hero, save the day.

But it’s not a fairy tale, it's Fraser's life. So what he gets is a punch in the face by Mr. Clancy, the doughnut shop manager they're investigating, who has been poisoning the manager of the cab company next door. Clancy is panicked and flailing and really no threat, but Ray has him on the floor in seconds, shoving the cuffs on him and pinning him
there with a foot in the small of his back. Ray then holds his hand out and Fraser grasps it, allowing Ray to hoist him to his feet.

"You okay?" Ray asks, panting, and grabs Fraser's face, tilting it to the side to look at where he'd been hit.

Fraser's face throbs slightly, and Ray's hands feel cool against his cheek. Ray's breath is still coming fast, and Fraser feels it soft against his mouth as Ray worriedly examines his face. "I'm fine," Fraser manages, and Ray lets him go with a rough pat to the cheek.

"Good thing you got a hard head," Ray says, and Fraser grins even though it makes his cheek hurt.

Link to the story: Ex Libris

Claim: due South, Fraser/Kowalski
Title: The End of the Road
Author: Kat Allison, on LJ katallison
Characters: Fraser, Ray
Prompt: 14. Loss
Rating: NC-17
Length: epic
Brief summary: I consider this to be THE fic of the due South fandom. I saved the best for last. Because of that, I'm going to write a little bit more than usual about what makes this story so absolutely amazing and heartbreaking. You know from the first few lines of this that things are not going to work out for Fraser and Ray. This story is told in flashbacks, juxtaposed with Ray and Fraser waiting in the airport for Ray's plane to leave Canada for good. Watching the slow demise of their relationship post-COTW, and how they can never quite figure out how to make room for each other is torturous, but only in the way that makes you not want to look away. If you have not yet read this story, you should immediately set aside a couple of days of your life for this. And don't give up even if it makes you sad, because Kat's unbelievable writing and Fraser voice, and the way she makes you believe this, is completely and totally worth the heartache.


There was a blizzard down in Edmonton, of course, this being December, so of course the flight is delayed. And, of course, this has propelled Ray from his chronic edginess into outright anger, and I know very well how close that is to explosive rage. I sit entirely still, knowing all it would take to propel him over the edge is one sigh, one wrong look, one clumsy word—and all my words have been clumsy, of late.

Nothing about Ray is clumsy, I think as I watch him pace. Not now, not ever. In the relative warmth of the terminal he's shed his parka, balaclava, mittens, even traded his boots for sneakers. He's prowling up and down the passenger lounge, turning the rows of chairs and their inhabitants into partners in his private quadrille. There's a rucked-up hump of carpeting in the aisle; every time he nears it I think this time for sure he'll trip over it, so intent are his eyes on the windows, scanning the runway and sky. And yet every time he steps gracefully over it, as if every cell in his body is sensate, perceiving.

Every so often he takes off his glasses, scrabbles under his sweater for the hem of his t-shirt, and scrubs the lenses with it. He's taken to wearing them habitually of late, as if he needs the clarity of vision they give him now even more sorely than he did in Chicago, when his very life at times depended on getting off a clean shot.

He stops pacing, finally, and turns from the window (difficult to see anything out there in any event, the sun stopped rising three days ago). He runs his fingers through his hair, then drops into a chair and stares back into the terminal from hooded eyes. The airline clerk, behind her small desk, is in his line of vision, and he fixes on her a stare of such concentrated malevolence (Ray in his cobra incarnation, I know that look well) that it seems to compel her to glance up, and to flinch, visibly, when she catches his gaze. But she's a brave girl—Canadian North hires no weaklings—and after a moment she stands and walks over, closer to him.

"Mr. Kowalski? I'm very sorry about the delay. Can I get you anything while you wait?"

"Can you get me anything." This tone, too, is familiar to me, I've heard him use it on the street with armed thugs, in interrogation rooms with unlucky suspects. At home, recent nights, with me. "Yeah, you can get me something, you can get me my flight out of this fucking place. Nineteen hours it's gonna take me to get back to civilization, and I got to be held up, right here at the get-go, cause in Canada they don't have rubber bands strong enough to run the propellers when it's snowing." He leans back, grinning at her. "What a surprise, hey? Snow, up here, who'd'a thought it."

Then he stops, looks down, and raises his hands. The other passengers in the lounge are very pointedly not noticing him. "Sorry. I'm sorry. Shouldn't take it out on you. Not your fault, I know that." His sharp gestures are conciliatory, as if trying to pull back his words and his anger, reallocate them, to him, to me, to us. The fault is indeed no one else's. It is his, mine, ours.

Link to the story: The End of the Road (and its equally lovely and heartwrenching companion piece Solstice)