Slice

Fraser/Kowalski Fanfiction
Title:	Slice
Author(s):	Brighid/Carmen Kildare
Date(s):
Length:
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	due South
External Links:	online here online at AO3
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Slice is a Fraser/Ray K story by Brighid.

Reactions and Reviews

This story has much to recommend it. First of all, there is Brighid's insightful, lovely writing. Also there are some kick-ass recipes for desserts that left me drooling. And finally, there is the scene between Ray and Fraser Sr. that made me laugh so hard I was in tears. That scene is worth reading the entire story. Not like it's a hardship, or anything; it's a wonderful look at the post-CotW relationship between Fraser and Ray. Just read it. You'll love it.

Brighid is another author whose writing I admire tremendously. Her writing is poetic and her descriptions are rich with detail, like a medieval manuscript. She shows a wonderful grasp of characterisation and her use of metaphor within her stories is second to none in fandom. Brighid can tell a story about everyday events with such skill and insight that the reader is swept into the reality of her character's lives. Her palette is always full of rich colours like glowing jewels and her writing has an ageless charm to it that never fails to fascinate me. This is one of my favourite Brighid stories in Due South but I'd recommend anything by this author. "Slice" is an excellent story in which the relationship between RayK and Fraser is explored via the metaphor of fruit pie recipes: apple, cherry, lemon, fruit mince, peanut, lime. The story is very sweet, very well-done <g>, and the language is all, humorous and deep with feeling and nuance.

Largely an established relationship fic, but starts out with the first time. Lovely snippets intermixed with pie recipes. I love post-CotW stories where they end up back in Chicago, and this is a great one.

I find Brighid to be one of the most underrated authors out there. It's not like she's unknown or unpopular, it's just that I find her fic, at least in the fandoms I've read (Sentinal and dS), invariably tender, touching, and heartbreakingly lovely, and I think it deserves wider acclaim, and more passionate adulation, than it gets. Her stories read almost like poetry; they're beautifully paced and cadenced. And she more than any other writer I've read epitomizes the metaphor of slash-as-fairy-tale, without ever descending into cliche or insipidity. When I read her fics I feel like I've been granted entrance into a dreamy, magical world, a world that is sweet and tender and whimsical yet never sappy - a world that I yearn for, that I hate to leave.

I love all Brighid's dS stories - they're among my favorites in the fandom - but I think Slice is perhaps her most substantial and remarkable accomplishment. This is one that hits you where it counts, sneaking in under the radar to leave you marveling and laughing and wiping the mist out of your eyes. It's a lovely, touching, deceptively simple fic, structured (similarly to Resonant's Sixteenth of June, which I rec'ed earlier) as a series of vignettes, "slices" of Ray and Fraser's life post-Call of the Wild, as they come together on the quest and then settle down together in Chicago. Each slice is cleverly associated with a type of pie - a Peanut Pie, for example, introduces the scene in which Ray first meets Bob Fraser's ghost (who appears at an extremely inopportune moment!), Mincemeat Pie for a child murder case that ravages Ray, and Key Lime pie for the scene in which Ray and Fraser prepare to visit Stella and Ray Vecchio in Florida. (On a side note, Brighid provides a recipe for each type of pie. I'm a pie baker myself, and though I haven't tried any of these recipes, they look wonderful, and I've been told they are.)

The slices alternate between Ray's and Fraser's first-person POVs, and Brighid writes both staggeringly well - the voices are dead on. Each slice is filled with gorgeous little details and images that show the guys' feelings and characters incredibly effectively and insightfully. Ray's sensitivity and vulnerability, Fraser's fears and insecurities, their complementary strengths and the deep tenderness between them - all are conveyed so clearly and yet so subtly. It's another fine example of "showing not telling." And Slice, like all Brighid's fic, reads like poetry; the rhythm and cadence of her prose is so lovely and lyrical, the pacing so measured and so deliberate, that it feels like a song. Her writing manages to be restrained and at the same time almost heartbreakingly poignant - but it's also funny and witty and sexy and detailed and very "real," never mannered or pretentious.