
Fandom/Character: Due South; Ray Kowalski
Rating: PG
Length: 300 words
Summary: Ray isn't enjoying asylum in Canada.
Challenge: Written for

Notes: I grabbed myself 3 betas for this one,
Ray prowled the halls of the Consulate. His life was going up in flames, and Ray was stuck in here. Turnbull kept following him around, offering tea, and snacks, and apologies for the thing with the TV remote. If Ray heard one more nutball remark, somebody was gonna get punched in the head. He waited until Turnbull was busy with some tourists, and then escaped into Fraser's office.
The room seemed smaller without Fraser in it. There were lots of filing boxes, but no photos. No personal touches. Ray poked around, opened a few drawers and peered inside. Office supplies, mostly. Nothing too exciting. Ray picked up an address book, which had some potential. He dropped it guiltily back onto the desk as a siren wailed outside.
Ray stretched out on the cot. Maybe he could absorb a little of that freaky Fraser-calm.
Hard, narrow cot. Scratchy wool blanket. When Ray looked up, he could see all four walls without even turning his head. Ugh.
Fraser's office might make a nice walk-in closet, but as a bedroom, it sucked. Ray felt like a rat in a trap. He'd go mental if he had to sleep in here.
Ray itched to get up, get out, do something. As he sat up, something caught his eye. Ray squinted at the ceiling and then stood up, hand on the wall for balance as the cot creaked under his boots.
Dots. The office ceiling was covered in tiny little pencil marks, laid out in patterns, as if Fraser had set up the world's most complicated connect-the-dots game, and then forgotten to connect any of them.
Weird. Must be some Canadian thing, he decided.
A year later, Ray would look up from a campfire into a limitless sky blazing with stars, and recognize Fraser's ceiling.
Comments
ummm...while you were gone, i podficced my own story, which was very weird for me. i now have even MORE admiration for your ability to do it with such skill and aplomb than i already did...
I've downloaded "Still", and I look forward to having a listen once my iPod's back from the depths of the repair service. (I seem to be working through some bad technology karma here.) I'll be having my first attempt at recording someone else's work either this weekend or the next, so we can compare war stories.
YAY for more podfic from you!!! and i'd love to hear what you think about the experience, for sure.
You are brilliant. I love your shiny, shiny brain.
That image is definitely going to stay in mine. WOW. \o/
That comment makes me very happy. Thanks, Nos! Ray's narration has a bare-bones, almost stacatto sound to it. Partly a side-effect of cutting down from 387 to 300 words, but I like the way it shows Ray almost bouncing off the walls inside his own head.
And a year later, Ray remembers! I wonder what goes through his head at this moment of recognition? I'm thinking all those comments that folkette have left above, like how homesick Fraser must've been, and feeling trapped like a prisoner in a cell... and then Ray looks across the camp fire at Fraser and sees a whole new dimension to his friend.
Andthentheyhavesex. (sorry. girl hormones.)
*nods* I left the ending there, open for a reader reaction, but I like your ideas about Ray's reaction. Feel free to pick it up and run with it, if you want! Oh, and have I mentioned recently how incredible your Men with Guns cross-over story is? I ran across a rec for it, and am really looking forward to rereading it.
(Also, while you were gone, I podficced "The Course".)
Oh my. You recorded "The Course"? That is a HUGE project, luzula! Well done! I'll definitely have to check that out once my iPod is up and running.
Yeah, "The Course" was a big project, but also lots of fun.