Five Confessions

Fraser/Kowalski Fanfiction
Title:	Five Confessions
Author(s):	kindkit
Date(s):	2005
Length:	4,570 words
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	due South
External Links:	online here and here
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Five Confessions is a Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski story by kindkit.

Reactions and Reviews

Another Fraser in Canada and Ray in Chicago doing the long distance thing fic. Except Ray cheats with a guy at a bar, and tries to come clean with a number of people, including Stella and a priest, before deciding what to tell Fraser. I won’t tell you what he decides, because it ruins the end, but I think that it is so painfully realistic for anyone who’s ever dealt with infidelity or thought about what they would do if their partner cheated, and this story doesn’t take the easy way out. And the sex…absolutely hot and heartbreaking.

Why this must be read:

I love post CoTW fic. I love first time post CoTW fic, I love established relationship post CoTW fic, I love are we actually in a relationship if we are in different countries? post CoTW fic. And while due South is my happy place, I especially love fic that acknowledges that even though they obviously, indisputably, luminously love each other these two people might find it difficult to be in a relationship, even more so if they are doing it long-distance. There are practical obstacles and emotional obstacles for them to cope with, and these are different from the sort of challenges they were so good at facing as cop partners.

So I love this fic because it looks at all that, and steers them through to a convincing happy ending. Warning: it's an infidelity fic, and I know not everybody wants to read that. But this one deals with real, messy, human emotions. Ray is lonely and he makes a mistake and he suffers for it, and this story is how he deals with that and how he tries to make it right. It's nuanced and realistic, and even though we can't (and aren't supposed to) condone what he did, we can understand and empathise with how it came to happen, and the choices he makes later to try to not hurt Fraser.

So yes there's some angst here, but it finishes in a happy place. That's what I love best - fic that acknowledges real world problems, and then solves them convincingly, so that I can whole-heartedly believe that Ray and Fraser are real and they sledded off into that sunrise and lived happily ever after. (I told you, it's a coping strategy, ok?)

Huh. I'm pretty sure when I first read that story (a while back), I didn't think it had a happy ending. But I didn't actually remember the details, so when I read your rec I went back and looked and... I can't actually tell whether I think that's a happy ending or not. I can make an argument for either, and they both sound equally convincing to me. It's...uncomfortable, at the very least. (Which is what makes it such a powerful story.)

That's interesting that you have a different reaction to it, because to me this in an unequivocal happy ending. Ray does something bad that pushes him into asking for what he wants - being with Fraser all the time. And it turns out to be what Fraser wants too, but maybe if Ray didn't have his guilty conscience behind him he would never have taken the plunge. To me, that last line is so hopeful "Anyway, he's pretty sure that after a while it'll stop being amends. It'll just be love." that I can't see it as anything but happy.

Although yes, it's uncomfortable too because there's no getting away from the fact that he's hiding something from Fraser, something that would hurt him a great deal if he knew. I suppose I buy the internal logic here, that "The weird thing about cheating is, it only hurts the other person if they know. While Ray's still got his secret, he can keep Fraser safe from that pain. He'll spare himself pain, too--no point being a hypocrite about it--but that's mostly a side effect."

But I think everyone will have a very personal reaction to fic with infidelity and as you say, that's why this one is so powerful, because there is room for ambiguity.

Ambiguity indeed.

Hope....or rationalization and self-deception?

A relationship built on dishonesty...or sparing them both not just pain but potentially the destruction of a relationship that doesn't have to be destroyed?

Owning one's mistakes and moving on...or pushing them under the rug and evading punishment and taking the easy way out?

I think you can read the story any of those ways.

The question of "how important is honesty, and is it better to know the painful truth or to be spared it?" is something I kind of obsess over, both in life and in fiction. :)

(See all the plays Oscar Wilde wrote that were not The Importance of Being Earnest, for a manifesto in fiction about why honesty is not always the right thing to do.)