Title: Family Portrait
Fandom: due South
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Categories: Slash, AU, family, kids
Length: Epic (~75,000 words)
Warnings: Minor character death (before the prologue), much sex.

(The author's website has gone the way of all things, but the story is still around on the archives.)

Summary:
"It says, and I quote, Constable, `Give this man something to do before I kill him and cause an international incident," Welsh said in a long-suffering voice.

"Ah." Fraser shuffled his feet. "I was, in essence, correct."

Review:
I seem to be on a historic jag at the moment, digging up all the stories that I dearly loved ten years ago or more. This one is a classic due South story unaccountably missing from epic_recs, so I get to set that aright too. I love this job :-)

The story re-jigs the set-up of season 3 of dS by changing Ray Kowalski's backstory just a little. In this reality, he and Stella had kids, but Stella died in a car accident. When Ray Vecchio goes undercover, RayK is assigned to take on his caseload and, as the above quote indicates, his Mountie.

Despite the humour inherent in any due South setup that leavens the story, this is far more a romance than a rom-com. Fraser is aware quite quickly of his attraction to Ray, something that his father (still a ghost) has definite opinions on, but can't see any future to it. Journey makes the point several times that Fraser has been left behind in his personal life so often that he doesn't even hope for a permanant relationship. For Ray it's a far slower realisation, something that he never expected; indeed, something that his kids see before he does, and don't so much as bat an eyelid over. And for Ray, for this Ray at least, family and belonging are very important.

The story is dotted with wonderful observations about Ray and Fraser, and that's one of the things that makes it one of my favourites. For example, there's a nice little insight early on into the different ways Ray and Fraser approach detective-work, partly done by discussion between the characters but then played out in a snippet of casework as they combine to identify the culprit and prove it was him. It all adds up to a very nice pair of character studies intertwining in a beautifully gentle romance.

Family Portrait