Due South Gen Recs

[thisgirlsays22]

This list is compiled for the rec event over at dsvirtualbar (thank you so much juniperberry for putting this together!!) If I've got time, I may either add to this list or compile a part 2 :) 

Hope Chest by Hth: This is the Frannie character study I didn't know I needed. Beautifully rendered and made me feel like I knew her in a whole different way after I'd read, which is exactly what you want in a short, lovely character study.

And if one time she sat on the floor at the foot of her brother's bed and held a silk shirt up to her face and cried for two hours, just on and on like there was no end to it, until her head was pounding like the first hangover she ever had after she learned to pick the lock on her father's liquor cabinet -- if she cried so hard that makeup bled into the silk and ruined it worse than the Delmonicos could get out even after they spent all that money remodeling and upgrading their dry cleaning equipment -- if she broke the rule about pretending all the time, even in her own head, that she didn't have a brother who was missing, disappeared, dead--

Why was that a rule at all, anyway? To protect him, to protect the other Ray, for everybody's own good? Or just because that was all she was ever supposed to do: wait and pretend? Didn't everybody deserve to have something that was real?

Contact - DesireeArmfeldt: This to me captures the loneliness in Fraser and the deep intimacy of the friendship between Fraser and RayK. As the author says, you could put your slash-goggles on, but they didn't imagine it that way. My heart breaks at how much Fraser needs to be touched and it makes perfect sense he'd never ask or think to ask for that, but once he's given that gift it's overwhelming.

 

And even in Chicago, contact was usually skin-to-cloth or hand-to-hand, even between Ray and myself, who touch easily and often. The last time my navel felt the touch of any hand but my own? I can’t remember. My body has forgotten this simple, fundamental feeling that now surges up, woken by Ray’s strong, careful hands. My blood thrums; my skin sings. I am alight, alive; melting into the soil and reaching up shoots toward the sun and scattering in every direction with the wind.

5 Things Welsh Really Wishes Detectives Vecchio and Kowalski Would Not Do In the Bullpen - belmanoir: This is absolutely hilarious. It's SUPER short so there's no excuse not to read this delightful snapshot of the two Ray's as partners and Fraser clearly THRIVING with both Rays in his life. And the tiny running thread of Welsh and Dief's rivalry over baked goods is a <.< >.> treat. I laugh every time I read this bit:

2. Argue about who "gets more action," as Detective Kowalski puts it. Welsh is confident neither of them has seen a naked woman since Kowalski got divorced and Vecchio got back from Vegas. And from the look on Constable Fraser's face, he's just as skeptical as Welsh.

Extraneous - keerawa - I think I may now have an intense craving and serious addiction to gen fic that's just Fraser hanging with both Rays. This was short and very sweet.

They were handling me, passing me back and forth between them like a suspect being interrogated. I found it irritating. They'd only been partners for a week.

Observatory - atrata - I have a feeling I'll be returning to this one for more re-reads in the coming days.

 

He'd rescued a hunter once, an American from Oklahoma who had never been north of Iowa and who'd disappeared near the Aklavik Channel. Benton had found him two weeks later, shelter built and stove in working order, but he'd lost one of his stuffsacks, the one with his compass and other navigational equipment, and once he realized it was gone, he'd stopped moving and waited for someone to come for him. He'd squinted at the horizon and shrugged and said, "All looks the same to me," and Benton hadn't understood.