My Internet died a horrible death Saturday morning. I've finally made it back on, thanks to a new router and far too many hours on hold with various technical support lines. I'm not even going to try working my way back through my Friend's List, so if you've got anything nifty going on, feel free to link it to me. I've missed the deadline for the ds_snippets Big Anniversary Amnesty Challenge, but I'll be posting some fic for it anyway!

Fandom/Character: Due South; Ray Kowalski
Rating: PG
Length: 300 words
Summary: Ray isn't enjoying asylum in Canada.
Challenge: Written for ds_snippets Amnesty Challenge #10, prompt: box
Notes: I grabbed myself 3 betas for this one, raine_wynd, springwoof, and dessert_first. I couldn't fit all of their wonderful ideas into 300 words, but I much appreciated every 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.