Family Portrait

Fanfiction
Title:	Family Portrait
Author(s):	Journey
Date(s):	2001 or before
Length:	424 KB
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Due South
Relationship(s):	Fraser/Kowalski
External Links:	online here online at AO3
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Family Portrait is a Fraser/Ray K story by Journey.

Summary

"A widowed policeman meets a Canadian Mountie in Chicago."

Reactions and Reviews

...slightly AU, not in a weird way, just 'What If' things happened a little differently way This is an absolutely wonderful new story in the DS fandom. It is beautiful, sweet, tender, and passionate. It has some angst, plenty of love. It is so good I could never say enough about it. If you though Denise Raymond's All the Comforts of Home was good, you'll absolutely love this one too.

Most visitors to [my rec site] know that I’m not a big fan of AU’s, so when you see one rec’d here, you know it has to be good. In this story, the road of canon forks at the beginning of the ep ‘Burning Down the House’. Fraser returns to Chicago and meets a very different Ray K., one that is a widower and a father of two. Journey takes the time to explore both characters in depth, which only makes the inevitable relationship between them even more complete and compelling.

This is a lovely AU, where Ray and Fraser work together as partners, but Ray is not undercover as Vecchio. Ray also has two children from his marriage to Stella, who died in a drunk driving accident. Fraser starts to slowly become a part of the children’s lives, and Ray’s as well. I’ve become a bit of an AU whore, after some very serious resistance, as you will see, and this is an AU that really works. Fraser finding his family, and Ray rebuilding his family come through, and what could be hopelessly cheesy is absolutely genuine and heartbreaking.

Journey's story is about family, i.e. about an AU Ray who's lost Stella and now has to raise his two children on his own. Thankfully, the author circumnavigates all the pratfalls of writing kid!fic; Kathy and Stevie feel like real kids and - like their father - manage to breach Fraser's usual barriers with little effort. Ray is characterized equally well; being a parent has made him more mature and responsible, although also less willing to take the risk of committing to a man, and Fraser has difficulties not letting past disappointments color his perception. Long, inevitable and sweet.

It is an AU, one where things happen a little differently, but not alot. It is such a fabulous story, I haven't been able to recommend it highly enough to people. It is beautiful, sweet, loving, hot, sexy, and filled with just enough angst to make it interesting. It fast became one of my favorites.

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.

I absolutely loved this story, it is nothing short of fabulous. It's one of those stories that you finish reading it and then you want to immediately turn back around and read it all over again. I knew when I started reading this that I was going to rec it. I was a few paragraphs in and was already loving it. It was wonderful from the get go and had me hooked in immediately. It is an AU, things are different, but not by a whole lot. The characterizations are amazing. She definitely remembered something some writers forget or don't know...An alpha always mates with another alpha. The only reason an alpha will fuck a beta is to teach him a lesson, show/remind him of his place in the pack. The beginning starts out with a little alpha'ing, not much, just a testing the waters, seeing who the other is kindof thing. This story incorporates beautifully what I have always loved about RayK and Fraser, why I see the slash potential in them. They get each other, challenge one another, and let the other see sides of themselves that no one else gets to. I love the way they truly are 'a duet' in this as Ray has referred to it on the show. They get each other, use all those powers of deductive reasoning they possess on one another to show some uncanny insights. Ray just understands Fraser from the beginning so well, knows what he is about, finds his way inside and will not let him go. There is a quote I love by William Blake from his poem I Sing the Body Electric, it goes "I sing the body electric. The armies of those I love engerth me and I engerth them. They will not let me off until I go with them, and respond to them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul." It means those who love you won't stand by and let you only show them part of yourself, they demand all be given and they give all in return. That is what Ray does in this one, he won't let Fraser go until he has all of him; his love, his need, his desire, and his trust. The hardest for Fraser to give. He wants the whole package, screwed up as it may be by fear and insecurities. I love her characterization of Fraser, how she got deep down into him and exposed who he is. I think deep down that is Fraser, the one she shows us. God, a slow build up to friends, to love, to lovers, to trust, to family. This story is just wonderful. Long too, it is over 400K. Same story, don't know why one is longer. It is a good long read that is just beautiful though. You have to read this one. Go down to my rec for Denise Raymond's All the comforts of home see how much I enjoyed that one? I love this one more. When I first started reading it I was thinking it would probably come in second as my favorite DS story, after All the comforts of home, by the time I finished it had pushed it's way up to first. Love, angst, sweetness, slow buildups to all the good stuff. So well thought out, it is amazing. Go read it. It's a must read in DS fiction, trust me. I can't say enough about it, so much I want to say and not enough words for it. Just read it, it's so good you can't miss it. You'll be so sorry if you do. One of the best fics I've ever read. And I've read alot of them.

The first problem one encounters when writing an AU (which this story is) comes when one has to think of a reason for the two characters to meet, since the canon reason no longer exisits. Journey does this by sticking as close to canon as she possibly can, while still making the differences both obvious and subtle (which you must admit is quite a trick). Let me just say, for the record, that I love AUs. Love them to pieces. This one makes me all kinds of happy (plus it's 446K long, which makes it even better, AFAIC). I'm not going to quote from the story, because it starts out with a bang that I don't want you to miss. Put aside some time for yourself and read this.

The only other kidfic I like in this fandom. AU in which Ray and Stella had two kids and she died. Ray meets Fraser and slowly integrates him into their lives. I love this fic because it gives Fraser a family, and I love that.