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crack_van2004-01-15 04:43 pm
justacat.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2004-01-15 04:43 pm
Somewhere Else to Be by Kellie Matthews (NC-17)
Fandom: DUE SOUTH
Pairing: Ray Kowalski/Benton Fraser
Author's Website: http://kellie.mrks.org/
Author on LJ:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kelliem
Why this must be read:
There is no due South crossover I want to rec - but in keeping with the spirit of crossover day, I've decided to rec an AU today. Due South is not one of those fandoms that seems to inspire a lot of AUs (by which I mean stories in which Ray K is not a cop and Fraser is not a Mountie). There are, however, a few dS AUs that are well worth reading. Kellie Matthews's Somewhere Else to Be is among the best of them.
Kellie is one of the "backbones" of due South fanfic. She's a wonderful storyteller - she writes long, involved, interesting stories, always with an appealing underlying sweetness. She's called herself a "fluffy vanilla girl" - but that's a label which, while perhaps technically accurate, doesn't really do her justice. Yes, her stories are often light-hearted and whimsical (e.g., Ray going undercover as a rent boy or a bicycle messenger), and usually they are relatively angst-free - but they have substance and depth of feeling and a certain poignancy; many of them stick in your head for a long time. And maybe she's "vanilla" - but her vanilla is the Madagascar kind, highest quality; she is a truly gifted writer of smut, definitely one of the best I've ever read, and her stories are reliably, invariably sexy. I think her sex scenes work so well and are so hot because she is so effective at interweaving the characters' feelings and identities into the explicit details, so that each sexual encounter feels like a real, unique coming together of two people - and also because she is so good at making sex seem fun and hot and sexy even when it isn't perfect. It's a rare gift.
Somewhere Else to Be epitomizes all these things - it's long and engrossing, sweet and sexy and touching. It's also that rarity in fanfic, an AU that really, truly manages to capture the essence of the canon atmosphere and characters in a fully realized, interesting, believable alternate setting. You get the feeling that if there had been just one slight glitch, one tiny alteration, in the canon universe, things for Ray and Fraser could have turned out like this rather than like canon - it's that recognizable. Kind of like the Butterfly Effect (which, coincidentally, has an appearance by Callum Keith Rennie) - the same characters, same dynamic, just a slightly different context.
The universe that Kellie creates is beautifully imagined and realized. Ray is an auto mechanic and Fraser is a Canadian archaeology and anthropology professor temporarily in Chicago on a fellowship. On the recommendation of one of his students (Levon Jefferson, the boxer Ray coaches in Mountie and Soul), Fraser brings his jeep to the garage where Ray works. They strike up a conversation and gradually become friends and then lovers. Many familiar secondary canon characters appear in one guise or another - Welsh as the owner of Ray's garage, Ray Vecchio as a local mob guy, even Mort as Fraser's department chair and Gladys (from Eclipse) as his housekeeper. And Kellie skillfully and seamlessly adapts events from canon - things like the buddy breathing from Mountie on the Bounty, Fraser's comment about finding Ray attractive in Eclipse, Ray's remark that he'll try anything - preserving their original essence and importance while integrating them into her own universe .
Kellie's characterizations are especially solid in this fic. Ray is particularly endearing - funny and smart, tough and sexy, yet with a surprising vulnerability and great capacity for tenderness. Kellie also effectively and movingly conveys Fraser's loneliness and aloneness, his fear of and desperate, painful desire for connection. The contrast between Ray's and Fraser's reactions to prior hurts - Ray's emotional honesty and inability to dissemble about his feelings, despite the risk, versus Fraser's tendency to keep everything inside, to freeze up and shut everyone out and believe the worst - is also especially well done.
(It's worth noting that Ray Vecchio is characterized a bad guy in this story - the plot (such as it is, this being primarily a relationship-driven story) revolves around Vecchio's hatred for Ray Kowalski, whose ex-wife Vecchio is about to marry, and Ray Kowalski's defiance when Vecchio bullies him and threatens Fraser. Though there are some fans who are uncomfortable with this portrayal of Vecchio, I had no problem with it - to me, it's certainly well within the realm of possibility that in an alternate universe the Vecchio of canon could have ended up a mobster and a bully rather than a cop. They're two sides of the same coin, really.)
In sum, Somewhere Else to Be is simply a great read - well written, totally engrossing, touching and sexy and sweet, with just a tiny bit of angst and h/c, enough to add piquancy without detracting from the sweetness. It's one of the best from an author whose many wonderful fics have immeasurably enhanced the fandom.
Somewhere Else to Be
Pairing: Ray Kowalski/Benton Fraser
Author's Website: http://kellie.mrks.org/
Author on LJ:
kelliemWhy this must be read:
There is no due South crossover I want to rec - but in keeping with the spirit of crossover day, I've decided to rec an AU today. Due South is not one of those fandoms that seems to inspire a lot of AUs (by which I mean stories in which Ray K is not a cop and Fraser is not a Mountie). There are, however, a few dS AUs that are well worth reading. Kellie Matthews's Somewhere Else to Be is among the best of them.
Kellie is one of the "backbones" of due South fanfic. She's a wonderful storyteller - she writes long, involved, interesting stories, always with an appealing underlying sweetness. She's called herself a "fluffy vanilla girl" - but that's a label which, while perhaps technically accurate, doesn't really do her justice. Yes, her stories are often light-hearted and whimsical (e.g., Ray going undercover as a rent boy or a bicycle messenger), and usually they are relatively angst-free - but they have substance and depth of feeling and a certain poignancy; many of them stick in your head for a long time. And maybe she's "vanilla" - but her vanilla is the Madagascar kind, highest quality; she is a truly gifted writer of smut, definitely one of the best I've ever read, and her stories are reliably, invariably sexy. I think her sex scenes work so well and are so hot because she is so effective at interweaving the characters' feelings and identities into the explicit details, so that each sexual encounter feels like a real, unique coming together of two people - and also because she is so good at making sex seem fun and hot and sexy even when it isn't perfect. It's a rare gift.
Somewhere Else to Be epitomizes all these things - it's long and engrossing, sweet and sexy and touching. It's also that rarity in fanfic, an AU that really, truly manages to capture the essence of the canon atmosphere and characters in a fully realized, interesting, believable alternate setting. You get the feeling that if there had been just one slight glitch, one tiny alteration, in the canon universe, things for Ray and Fraser could have turned out like this rather than like canon - it's that recognizable. Kind of like the Butterfly Effect (which, coincidentally, has an appearance by Callum Keith Rennie) - the same characters, same dynamic, just a slightly different context.
The universe that Kellie creates is beautifully imagined and realized. Ray is an auto mechanic and Fraser is a Canadian archaeology and anthropology professor temporarily in Chicago on a fellowship. On the recommendation of one of his students (Levon Jefferson, the boxer Ray coaches in Mountie and Soul), Fraser brings his jeep to the garage where Ray works. They strike up a conversation and gradually become friends and then lovers. Many familiar secondary canon characters appear in one guise or another - Welsh as the owner of Ray's garage, Ray Vecchio as a local mob guy, even Mort as Fraser's department chair and Gladys (from Eclipse) as his housekeeper. And Kellie skillfully and seamlessly adapts events from canon - things like the buddy breathing from Mountie on the Bounty, Fraser's comment about finding Ray attractive in Eclipse, Ray's remark that he'll try anything - preserving their original essence and importance while integrating them into her own universe .
Kellie's characterizations are especially solid in this fic. Ray is particularly endearing - funny and smart, tough and sexy, yet with a surprising vulnerability and great capacity for tenderness. Kellie also effectively and movingly conveys Fraser's loneliness and aloneness, his fear of and desperate, painful desire for connection. The contrast between Ray's and Fraser's reactions to prior hurts - Ray's emotional honesty and inability to dissemble about his feelings, despite the risk, versus Fraser's tendency to keep everything inside, to freeze up and shut everyone out and believe the worst - is also especially well done.
(It's worth noting that Ray Vecchio is characterized a bad guy in this story - the plot (such as it is, this being primarily a relationship-driven story) revolves around Vecchio's hatred for Ray Kowalski, whose ex-wife Vecchio is about to marry, and Ray Kowalski's defiance when Vecchio bullies him and threatens Fraser. Though there are some fans who are uncomfortable with this portrayal of Vecchio, I had no problem with it - to me, it's certainly well within the realm of possibility that in an alternate universe the Vecchio of canon could have ended up a mobster and a bully rather than a cop. They're two sides of the same coin, really.)
In sum, Somewhere Else to Be is simply a great read - well written, totally engrossing, touching and sexy and sweet, with just a tiny bit of angst and h/c, enough to add piquancy without detracting from the sweetness. It's one of the best from an author whose many wonderful fics have immeasurably enhanced the fandom.
Somewhere Else to Be
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