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Some completed ficlets for your reading pleasure!
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echoes: Medically Speaking; Doctor Who, Koschei/Theta
Koschei was frowning.
Theta did not take this as a bad sign: Koschei's darker moods usually settled his face into a strange smooth neutral, where a frown meant his friend was working out some difficult problem in his mind. A month ago Theta might not have bothered to set Koschei's expression to specific parameters, but they were currently learning the basics of interstellar diplomacy, and Professor Flavia was insistent that they closely study the facial expressions of a variety of lifeforms for vital social cues. Theta rather wanted to dismiss the whole theory as ridiculous, but Koschei seemed genuinely enthusiastic about it, so he studied willingly. At the very least it gave him another excuse to closely watch Koschei's face.
Having the tables turned, however, was slightly disconcerting. Koschei's studying frown had been focused on Theta for several long minutes now. Finally Theta threw down his data pad and shot Koschei an irritated look. "What?"
"Hold still," Koschei said in reply, coming over and sitting down next to Theta. Theta complied, since it was no great hardship, but when he raised his eyebrows in inquiry Koschei said again, "No, hold still," and produced a translucent tendril of measuring tape. Theta's eyebrows climbed rather higher, but he made them subside so that Koschei could take careful measurements of his face.
At length Koschei seemed satisfied, and turned away to rummage about for a data pad. Theta rubbed self-consciously at his face, which was tingling a little from the contact, a somewhat ridiculous psychosomatic response, and asked, "What exactly was I holding still for, hmm?"
"According to the raw numbers," Koschei said, apparently in the process of entering the measurements of Theta's face into the data pad, "you ..." He paused, looked rather surprised, chuckled, and glanced up at Theta. "Medically speaking, you're adorable. That's how the numbers come out."
"Adorable," Theta repeated indignantly, with the faintest notion that indignation was not going to help his case. Koschei started chuckling again, but didn't stop Theta from snatching the data pad away from him. The numbers glowing back at him did seem to be accurate numerical calculations for the various dimensions of his face, but there was no apparent value judgment on the results. Theta looked back up at Koschei with narrowed eyes; Koschei was still laughing a little, with no appearance of nerves, and Theta felt the now-familiar sensation of expansive fondess in his chest.
"Koschei," he said; a last chuckle and his friend subsided. "You really don't have to go to so much trouble to give me a compliment."
"Compliment," Koschei snorted, but when Theta reached out to map and measure Koschei's face with his fingertips, his mouth curved into a smile and his eyes fluttered closed, and the point was conceded.
Forpolarisnorth: If I Changed My Haircut I Could Apply For Alien Citizenship; due South/Star Trek, Kowalski & Fraser
Lieutenant Ray Kowalski made his first really serious cultural error two days after he was assigned to the core engineering crew aboard the USS Exeter.
So far he'd been doing pretty well; he hadn't been a nerdy loser kid trapped in Southside Chicago for a pretty long time, and four years at the Academy had taught him to not freak out when someone human-looking turned out to have weirdly-shaped eyes or ridges in their foreheads or pointy ears and stupid haircuts or whatever, or when someone not-human-looking just was not. His Lieutenant Commander was human, which he kind of appeciated, and one of the other guys on his team was actually a girl and from Orion and seemed really into him, which was great for his ego even if Ray wasn't quite done being miserable that Stella had graduated a year early and was out god knew where and sucked at returning his calls. The point was Ray did pretty well getting along with everyone, including the ship, which was almost brand new and ran like a dream, so aside from the loneliness he was good.
Then, woo, cultural error.
The good thing was that the screw-up didn't get any further than the inside of Ray's head. The bad thing was that it embarrassed the hell out of him anyway.
He'd sent a request up for some specs on how much cold the pods were good to take, because they were coming up on a snowy and damn cold planet and he wanted to make sure atmospheric change wasn't gonna rip right through his babies. Visuals on the communications screens were down for some reason (the lieutenant from Orion was working to fix that one) so when Ray asked for the specs, some ensign promised to bring them down "the old-fashioned way, Lieutenant Kowalski," with just that calm edge of wry humor that meant Ray was gonna be dealing with a Vulcan ensign here.
Ray had nothing against Vulcans, seriously, but he kind of thought they had something against him. They had this relentless calm logical thing going on that used to make Ray slouch down in his desk in class and stare out at the water glittering off the Bay below, trying to feel smarter and cooler-headed than a hornet or some other kind of angry bug. Vulcans just made Ray feel twitchy and dumb, and so far he'd managed to mostly avoid them because they didn't tend to go for getting greasy up to their elbows and whacking at things with wrenches. But he had a Vulcan ensign from Communications coming down to give him some specs, and okay, he could do this.
It was easy to spot the guy coming: Ray rolled out from under the pod and saw the Vulcan's neat dark hair and his neat red shirt and his perfect-posture walk, grit his teeth, and was on his feet and halfway to making the stupid weird-fingered gesture that he used to show he was cool with Vulcans and he hoped they'd prosper and stuff when he saw that the ensign was human.
That was a fucking jolt.
"Here are the specifications you ordered, sir," the ensign said, handing the sheets over, all human ears and stupid human haircut and Vulcan levels of neutral politeness on his face.
"Thanks," Ray said, snatching them. "Ensign ...?"
"Fraser, sir," Ensign If-I-Changed-My-Haircut-I-Could-Apply-For-Alien-Citizenship Fraser replied. "Is there anything else?"
"No," Ray said. "No, uh, dismissed," and Ensign Fraser actually snapped off a crisp salute before leaving.
Ray did get around to looking through the specs, but first of all he sat near the pod for a while feeling like a particularly screwed-up hornet, missing Stella and the view of the Golden Gate Bridge something fierce.
Forwintercreek: taking it all apart; due South, Thatcher & Fraser
Meg reminded herself that this is not the end of the world.
The objective facts: Cloutier wanted to promote her in return for affections Meg didn't have to give. That he would assume her willing to engage in that sort of office politics was bad enough; that he didn't really regard her as an autonomous being capable of that kind of decision was worse. She'd made her position clear: she didn't appreciate the sort of help he was offering, and if he persisted she would have no choice but to report him. Meg thought this would be sufficient to quell his advances, and wouldn't be any great hindrance to the trajectory of her career. Wrong.
So here Meg was, standing on the steps of the Canadian Consulate in Chicago, fighting to find some sort of equilibrium. At least it was a city, if one less well-appointed than Ottawa. At least Cloutier had arranged her transfer with a minimum of fuss, and bundled her off before she could make a -- No. Meg squared her shoulders and reminded herself that she was here because the Consulate was understaffed, that she was a perfectly capable constable and not in any sort of exile, and that as soon as it was tenable she'd be transferring back north -- to Toronto, perhaps, not ideal but far enough away from Cloutier that she could file a complaint with relative immunity. This situation was not a catastrophe; it was a minor roadblock.
The door opened in answer to Meg's knock.
Oh.
Meg recognized him. Of course she recognized him; she watched the news and kept up with the various ongoings inside the RCMP, but even if she hadn't she probably would have known him. Meg looked into the polite face of Benton Fraser and felt the full import of her situation come down on her: Chicago was that place the RCMP sent their misbehaving heroes. Constable Fraser had done indisputably the right thing in exposing the corruption around that dam project, and the top brass had swept him under the rug. Meg remembered with a flash of horror all Cloutier's various connections in high places. Through the weight of epiphany and some secondhand shock at seeing a face from the news in person, Meg felt a kind of kinship for this stranger.
All of this went through her head in an instant. "Constable Meg Thatcher," she said, holding out a hand. "I'm the new assistant liaison officer."
Fraser took it in something that was mostly a handshake but nearly the clasp of greeting a comrade-in-arms, too. "Benton Fraser," he said, and smiled, a lopsided little smile that saved his face from perfection. "Welcome back to Canada."
Forfeverbeats: Saturday; due South, F/K/V
Ray Kowalski has always really loved Saturdays.
When he was a kid, Saturday was the day he could pretend the pile of homework didn't exist, go out and practice batting with his dad in the community lot. Saturday night was the night he had dancing lessons with Stella. When he was a little older, Saturday was still the day homework didn't exist, only instead of baseball with his dad it was crawling into the hot space between concrete and engine, fixing up the GTO, and at night it was still dancing with Stella, clubs instead of ballroom.
When he was older, had his first apartment with Stella and his job as a rookie beat cop, he always requested Saturdays off because he could convince even his law-school wife that homework didn't exist for whole lazy mornings. After the divorce went through (finalized on a Monday, which probably meant Garfield was fucking right) Ray took up the boxing he'd stopped when he'd married Stella, and Saturdays became days at the gym coaching Levon, a single bright spot amid the gray welter of the working week.
After Fraser turned up, Ray still took his Saturdays off, and even if he couldn't always coax the Mountie from the paperwork, sometimes he could convince Fraser to walk Dief with him and come home afterwards for TV and takeout.
Up on the tundra Ray lost track of calendars, and he decided every day was a Saturday.
But none of that, none of it -- not dancing, not boxing, not fixing up cars, not days on a sled and nights with the aurora rippling overhead -- compares to the Saturdays he has now.
The weekend starts at about 7 AM, because it's just Ray's luck that he has to be living with a chronic early riser and another guy who is understandably kind of an insomniac after spending a year as a mob boss. Anyway, it's usually at least kind of light out, and Vecchio and Fraser both know that if Ray had his way he'd sleep another fucking hour, thanks, so they make sure to have the blinds drawn and wake Ray up as nice as possible -- which is pretty damn nice.
Ray usually sleeps on the side furthest from the window -- and isn't that still a trip, three guys in one bed and somehow they all fit because Ray's a skinny bastard and Fraser takes up about one polite inch of space and Vecchio was married long enough that he knows not to steal all the covers. Vecchio gets the side by the window, so he can keep an eye on the bedside clock, and Fraser gets the middle because he ... has to. Ray and Vecchio didn't even have to discuss it, just knew that's how it had to be, because not-so-deep-down Fraser was just a guy who'd slept on a solitary cot most of his life, and it had only taken him about two nights lying there radiating an anxiousness for solitude before he'd snapped and become a touch junkie, which was apparently a surprise to Fraser but not any kind of surprise to Vecchio or Ray. He still manages to disentangle during the night and lie there politely, giving Ray and Vecchio their space, but that's okay too; Ray doesn't mind sleeping next to the solid heat Fraser gives off rather than half-smothered in it. Anyway, it works out well, the sleeping-arrangement thing, because it means in the morning insomniac Vecchio rolls out of bed to be some kind of crazy Italian mother hen and make a pot of coffee (cream for him and Fraser, handful of M&M's for Ray) and Fraser rolls over, wide-awake already, the freak, to do something fucking amazing like wake Ray up with a Fraser-caliber blowjob, which basically means Ray cannot remember his own name let alone what godawful early hour of the morning it is.
Fraser and Vecchio have the timing almost down to an art, too; it's usually about thirty seconds after Ray's come his brains out and is lying there making inarticulate noises of sleepy goodwill to the entire universe that Vecchio saunters in with the mugs of coffee and calls Ray back from the land of the blissfully fucked with lots of caffeine and sugar. Sometimes Fraser remembers the state of the coffee and insists that he and Vecchio drink theirs before it gets cold, but more often Ray gets to contentedly drink his coffee and watch the free Fraser and Vecchio porn show, and seriously, there is no better way he can think of to start the day. It's usually up to him to shuffle out with the cold coffee and fix everyone new rounds while Fraser and Vecchio are lying around trying to recover the use of their limbs, but Ray doesn't mind.
Then they drink their coffee for real around the kitchen table, and there's the usual debate about who gets to take Dief out for his morning walk. (Fraser always offers to go, then worries that if he's gone his Rays will be irresponsible and forget to have a decent real breakfast; sometimes they solve this by Vecchio volunteering to make omelets, sometimes by Ray rolling his eyes and taking Diefenbaker out before Fraser can even finish going over the relative merits of his options, sometimes by Dief becoming tired of the whole thing and just sneaking out a window onto the fire escape.) Breakfast (and Ray's even keeping on a little weight now that Fraser and Vecchio between them have finally convinced his stomach it might be a morning person), then showers (sometimes together, but usually not; Fraser disapproves of the waste of water and also takes the shortest showers ever, but that doesn't mean Ray and Vecchio don't sometimes wait until he's gone out and then take really nice groping half-hour ones), and then Fraser leaves for the Consulate.
It's about then, 10 AM or so, that the day stops being fucking magical and becomes just a day; Vecchio bosses Ray around a bit and they get the apartment cleaned up. Sometimes they talk shop, running over cases; sometimes they talk Fraser stories, because Ray doesn't think they'll ever run out; once in a while they'll even talk undercover stories, although Ray likes to wait until Fraser's around for those, because he might understand them better but Fraser's a better listener and when Vecchio needs to tell them something about Vegas it's usually a good idea to have takeout menus on hand and four arms for hugging.
Mostly, though, it's good, a weird kind of normal Ray's kind of surprised they all got used to without it all going wrong. But it doesn't: Vecchio looks over Ray's case notes and bitches about his handwriting, Ray bounces a couple of ideas off him about their next lead, they toss a coin for which car they're gonna take today and bicker about it anyway, and they go in the Riv to pick up Fraser at the end of the day.
And I am unsure why I create ficlet projects like this for myself, but I really want an actual excuse to write due South fusion ficlets. If you want Frannie in the TARDIS or Kowalski the Watcher or Fraser being hit by a car and traveling in time or Welsh teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts or Vecchio as the Advisory wizard for the greater Chicago area or everyone as mutants with superpowers or, um, anything really that I have some working knowledge of the canon for, I am your woman. Propose fusions, please!
For
echoes: Medically Speaking; Doctor Who, Koschei/ThetaKoschei was frowning.
Theta did not take this as a bad sign: Koschei's darker moods usually settled his face into a strange smooth neutral, where a frown meant his friend was working out some difficult problem in his mind. A month ago Theta might not have bothered to set Koschei's expression to specific parameters, but they were currently learning the basics of interstellar diplomacy, and Professor Flavia was insistent that they closely study the facial expressions of a variety of lifeforms for vital social cues. Theta rather wanted to dismiss the whole theory as ridiculous, but Koschei seemed genuinely enthusiastic about it, so he studied willingly. At the very least it gave him another excuse to closely watch Koschei's face.
Having the tables turned, however, was slightly disconcerting. Koschei's studying frown had been focused on Theta for several long minutes now. Finally Theta threw down his data pad and shot Koschei an irritated look. "What?"
"Hold still," Koschei said in reply, coming over and sitting down next to Theta. Theta complied, since it was no great hardship, but when he raised his eyebrows in inquiry Koschei said again, "No, hold still," and produced a translucent tendril of measuring tape. Theta's eyebrows climbed rather higher, but he made them subside so that Koschei could take careful measurements of his face.
At length Koschei seemed satisfied, and turned away to rummage about for a data pad. Theta rubbed self-consciously at his face, which was tingling a little from the contact, a somewhat ridiculous psychosomatic response, and asked, "What exactly was I holding still for, hmm?"
"According to the raw numbers," Koschei said, apparently in the process of entering the measurements of Theta's face into the data pad, "you ..." He paused, looked rather surprised, chuckled, and glanced up at Theta. "Medically speaking, you're adorable. That's how the numbers come out."
"Adorable," Theta repeated indignantly, with the faintest notion that indignation was not going to help his case. Koschei started chuckling again, but didn't stop Theta from snatching the data pad away from him. The numbers glowing back at him did seem to be accurate numerical calculations for the various dimensions of his face, but there was no apparent value judgment on the results. Theta looked back up at Koschei with narrowed eyes; Koschei was still laughing a little, with no appearance of nerves, and Theta felt the now-familiar sensation of expansive fondess in his chest.
"Koschei," he said; a last chuckle and his friend subsided. "You really don't have to go to so much trouble to give me a compliment."
"Compliment," Koschei snorted, but when Theta reached out to map and measure Koschei's face with his fingertips, his mouth curved into a smile and his eyes fluttered closed, and the point was conceded.
For
polarisnorth: If I Changed My Haircut I Could Apply For Alien Citizenship; due South/Star Trek, Kowalski & FraserLieutenant Ray Kowalski made his first really serious cultural error two days after he was assigned to the core engineering crew aboard the USS Exeter.
So far he'd been doing pretty well; he hadn't been a nerdy loser kid trapped in Southside Chicago for a pretty long time, and four years at the Academy had taught him to not freak out when someone human-looking turned out to have weirdly-shaped eyes or ridges in their foreheads or pointy ears and stupid haircuts or whatever, or when someone not-human-looking just was not. His Lieutenant Commander was human, which he kind of appeciated, and one of the other guys on his team was actually a girl and from Orion and seemed really into him, which was great for his ego even if Ray wasn't quite done being miserable that Stella had graduated a year early and was out god knew where and sucked at returning his calls. The point was Ray did pretty well getting along with everyone, including the ship, which was almost brand new and ran like a dream, so aside from the loneliness he was good.
Then, woo, cultural error.
The good thing was that the screw-up didn't get any further than the inside of Ray's head. The bad thing was that it embarrassed the hell out of him anyway.
He'd sent a request up for some specs on how much cold the pods were good to take, because they were coming up on a snowy and damn cold planet and he wanted to make sure atmospheric change wasn't gonna rip right through his babies. Visuals on the communications screens were down for some reason (the lieutenant from Orion was working to fix that one) so when Ray asked for the specs, some ensign promised to bring them down "the old-fashioned way, Lieutenant Kowalski," with just that calm edge of wry humor that meant Ray was gonna be dealing with a Vulcan ensign here.
Ray had nothing against Vulcans, seriously, but he kind of thought they had something against him. They had this relentless calm logical thing going on that used to make Ray slouch down in his desk in class and stare out at the water glittering off the Bay below, trying to feel smarter and cooler-headed than a hornet or some other kind of angry bug. Vulcans just made Ray feel twitchy and dumb, and so far he'd managed to mostly avoid them because they didn't tend to go for getting greasy up to their elbows and whacking at things with wrenches. But he had a Vulcan ensign from Communications coming down to give him some specs, and okay, he could do this.
It was easy to spot the guy coming: Ray rolled out from under the pod and saw the Vulcan's neat dark hair and his neat red shirt and his perfect-posture walk, grit his teeth, and was on his feet and halfway to making the stupid weird-fingered gesture that he used to show he was cool with Vulcans and he hoped they'd prosper and stuff when he saw that the ensign was human.
That was a fucking jolt.
"Here are the specifications you ordered, sir," the ensign said, handing the sheets over, all human ears and stupid human haircut and Vulcan levels of neutral politeness on his face.
"Thanks," Ray said, snatching them. "Ensign ...?"
"Fraser, sir," Ensign If-I-Changed-My-Haircut-I-Could-Apply-For-Alien-Citizenship Fraser replied. "Is there anything else?"
"No," Ray said. "No, uh, dismissed," and Ensign Fraser actually snapped off a crisp salute before leaving.
Ray did get around to looking through the specs, but first of all he sat near the pod for a while feeling like a particularly screwed-up hornet, missing Stella and the view of the Golden Gate Bridge something fierce.
For
wintercreek: taking it all apart; due South, Thatcher & FraserMeg reminded herself that this is not the end of the world.
The objective facts: Cloutier wanted to promote her in return for affections Meg didn't have to give. That he would assume her willing to engage in that sort of office politics was bad enough; that he didn't really regard her as an autonomous being capable of that kind of decision was worse. She'd made her position clear: she didn't appreciate the sort of help he was offering, and if he persisted she would have no choice but to report him. Meg thought this would be sufficient to quell his advances, and wouldn't be any great hindrance to the trajectory of her career. Wrong.
So here Meg was, standing on the steps of the Canadian Consulate in Chicago, fighting to find some sort of equilibrium. At least it was a city, if one less well-appointed than Ottawa. At least Cloutier had arranged her transfer with a minimum of fuss, and bundled her off before she could make a -- No. Meg squared her shoulders and reminded herself that she was here because the Consulate was understaffed, that she was a perfectly capable constable and not in any sort of exile, and that as soon as it was tenable she'd be transferring back north -- to Toronto, perhaps, not ideal but far enough away from Cloutier that she could file a complaint with relative immunity. This situation was not a catastrophe; it was a minor roadblock.
The door opened in answer to Meg's knock.
Oh.
Meg recognized him. Of course she recognized him; she watched the news and kept up with the various ongoings inside the RCMP, but even if she hadn't she probably would have known him. Meg looked into the polite face of Benton Fraser and felt the full import of her situation come down on her: Chicago was that place the RCMP sent their misbehaving heroes. Constable Fraser had done indisputably the right thing in exposing the corruption around that dam project, and the top brass had swept him under the rug. Meg remembered with a flash of horror all Cloutier's various connections in high places. Through the weight of epiphany and some secondhand shock at seeing a face from the news in person, Meg felt a kind of kinship for this stranger.
All of this went through her head in an instant. "Constable Meg Thatcher," she said, holding out a hand. "I'm the new assistant liaison officer."
Fraser took it in something that was mostly a handshake but nearly the clasp of greeting a comrade-in-arms, too. "Benton Fraser," he said, and smiled, a lopsided little smile that saved his face from perfection. "Welcome back to Canada."
For
feverbeats: Saturday; due South, F/K/VRay Kowalski has always really loved Saturdays.
When he was a kid, Saturday was the day he could pretend the pile of homework didn't exist, go out and practice batting with his dad in the community lot. Saturday night was the night he had dancing lessons with Stella. When he was a little older, Saturday was still the day homework didn't exist, only instead of baseball with his dad it was crawling into the hot space between concrete and engine, fixing up the GTO, and at night it was still dancing with Stella, clubs instead of ballroom.
When he was older, had his first apartment with Stella and his job as a rookie beat cop, he always requested Saturdays off because he could convince even his law-school wife that homework didn't exist for whole lazy mornings. After the divorce went through (finalized on a Monday, which probably meant Garfield was fucking right) Ray took up the boxing he'd stopped when he'd married Stella, and Saturdays became days at the gym coaching Levon, a single bright spot amid the gray welter of the working week.
After Fraser turned up, Ray still took his Saturdays off, and even if he couldn't always coax the Mountie from the paperwork, sometimes he could convince Fraser to walk Dief with him and come home afterwards for TV and takeout.
Up on the tundra Ray lost track of calendars, and he decided every day was a Saturday.
But none of that, none of it -- not dancing, not boxing, not fixing up cars, not days on a sled and nights with the aurora rippling overhead -- compares to the Saturdays he has now.
The weekend starts at about 7 AM, because it's just Ray's luck that he has to be living with a chronic early riser and another guy who is understandably kind of an insomniac after spending a year as a mob boss. Anyway, it's usually at least kind of light out, and Vecchio and Fraser both know that if Ray had his way he'd sleep another fucking hour, thanks, so they make sure to have the blinds drawn and wake Ray up as nice as possible -- which is pretty damn nice.
Ray usually sleeps on the side furthest from the window -- and isn't that still a trip, three guys in one bed and somehow they all fit because Ray's a skinny bastard and Fraser takes up about one polite inch of space and Vecchio was married long enough that he knows not to steal all the covers. Vecchio gets the side by the window, so he can keep an eye on the bedside clock, and Fraser gets the middle because he ... has to. Ray and Vecchio didn't even have to discuss it, just knew that's how it had to be, because not-so-deep-down Fraser was just a guy who'd slept on a solitary cot most of his life, and it had only taken him about two nights lying there radiating an anxiousness for solitude before he'd snapped and become a touch junkie, which was apparently a surprise to Fraser but not any kind of surprise to Vecchio or Ray. He still manages to disentangle during the night and lie there politely, giving Ray and Vecchio their space, but that's okay too; Ray doesn't mind sleeping next to the solid heat Fraser gives off rather than half-smothered in it. Anyway, it works out well, the sleeping-arrangement thing, because it means in the morning insomniac Vecchio rolls out of bed to be some kind of crazy Italian mother hen and make a pot of coffee (cream for him and Fraser, handful of M&M's for Ray) and Fraser rolls over, wide-awake already, the freak, to do something fucking amazing like wake Ray up with a Fraser-caliber blowjob, which basically means Ray cannot remember his own name let alone what godawful early hour of the morning it is.
Fraser and Vecchio have the timing almost down to an art, too; it's usually about thirty seconds after Ray's come his brains out and is lying there making inarticulate noises of sleepy goodwill to the entire universe that Vecchio saunters in with the mugs of coffee and calls Ray back from the land of the blissfully fucked with lots of caffeine and sugar. Sometimes Fraser remembers the state of the coffee and insists that he and Vecchio drink theirs before it gets cold, but more often Ray gets to contentedly drink his coffee and watch the free Fraser and Vecchio porn show, and seriously, there is no better way he can think of to start the day. It's usually up to him to shuffle out with the cold coffee and fix everyone new rounds while Fraser and Vecchio are lying around trying to recover the use of their limbs, but Ray doesn't mind.
Then they drink their coffee for real around the kitchen table, and there's the usual debate about who gets to take Dief out for his morning walk. (Fraser always offers to go, then worries that if he's gone his Rays will be irresponsible and forget to have a decent real breakfast; sometimes they solve this by Vecchio volunteering to make omelets, sometimes by Ray rolling his eyes and taking Diefenbaker out before Fraser can even finish going over the relative merits of his options, sometimes by Dief becoming tired of the whole thing and just sneaking out a window onto the fire escape.) Breakfast (and Ray's even keeping on a little weight now that Fraser and Vecchio between them have finally convinced his stomach it might be a morning person), then showers (sometimes together, but usually not; Fraser disapproves of the waste of water and also takes the shortest showers ever, but that doesn't mean Ray and Vecchio don't sometimes wait until he's gone out and then take really nice groping half-hour ones), and then Fraser leaves for the Consulate.
It's about then, 10 AM or so, that the day stops being fucking magical and becomes just a day; Vecchio bosses Ray around a bit and they get the apartment cleaned up. Sometimes they talk shop, running over cases; sometimes they talk Fraser stories, because Ray doesn't think they'll ever run out; once in a while they'll even talk undercover stories, although Ray likes to wait until Fraser's around for those, because he might understand them better but Fraser's a better listener and when Vecchio needs to tell them something about Vegas it's usually a good idea to have takeout menus on hand and four arms for hugging.
Mostly, though, it's good, a weird kind of normal Ray's kind of surprised they all got used to without it all going wrong. But it doesn't: Vecchio looks over Ray's case notes and bitches about his handwriting, Ray bounces a couple of ideas off him about their next lead, they toss a coin for which car they're gonna take today and bicker about it anyway, and they go in the Riv to pick up Fraser at the end of the day.
And I am unsure why I create ficlet projects like this for myself, but I really want an actual excuse to write due South fusion ficlets. If you want Frannie in the TARDIS or Kowalski the Watcher or Fraser being hit by a car and traveling in time or Welsh teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts or Vecchio as the Advisory wizard for the greater Chicago area or everyone as mutants with superpowers or, um, anything really that I have some working knowledge of the canon for, I am your woman. Propose fusions, please!
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