New due South story: Privacy

[resonant]

Privacy (4540 words) by Resonant
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: due South
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski
Characters: Benton Fraser, Ray Kowalski
Additional Tags: Romance, First Time, Post-Canon, Back to Chicago, fun with refractory periods
Summary:

“Guess it’s a while since you had a door with a lock on it?”

“I’ve never had a door with a lock on it."

Yeah, I can't believe it, either -- I haven't written an all-new story since 2014, and I'm incredibly relieved that I can still do it.

Thanks to fox for beta, and also for a couple of years of shared squee and general enabling.

Comments

[sineala]

Wow, congratulations! I am really looking forward to reading it! I will admit that I had a brief "wait, what year is it right now?" moment when I got the email notification that you'd posted a new Due South story.

[resonant]

Funny thing is, I've been rewatching the series now that it's on YouTube in HD, and talking about it, and rereading all the fic that's made it onto ao3 over and over, and I actually forgot that there was anything strange about a new story in such an old fandom. (In spite of having to have a conversation with Fox about how you were supposed to call Illinois Bell to get a phone when you didn't already have a phone.)

Maybe Simon & Garfunkel will get back together too.

[ride_4ever]

3:00 AM. A little too sleepy for reading fic alertly, but will read it soon. Very excited to see you return to dS.

[resonant]

dS wasn't my first fandom, and I don't know if it was my longest fandom, but when I think about all the good things the word "fandom" means to me - companionship and creativity and that shared experience of being together loving something so much that you can't resist taking it apart and putting it back together again and again - it's always the fandom I'm thinking of.

[lunabee34]

High five!

[resonant]

Back atcha!

[grey853]

I'm thrilled to see it!

[resonant]

<3

[desireearmfeldt]

*\o/*

[resonant]

Thanks!

[clevermanka]

Congratulations! Creating anything in these trying times is definitely an accomplishment to be celebrated 🧡

[resonant]

And thank you for your magic input!

[clevermanka]

🧡

[destina]

Yay you!! I know that feeling oh so very well, and I'm so happy for you. ♥

[resonant]

Thanks so much. I'm always happy when any of us are still here!

[laurashapiro]

OMG WOW YAY

[resonant]

<3<3

[spikedluv]

So excited! Can't wait to read it!

[resonant]

It was so nice to spend some time with my longtime favorite pairing again.

[minnaway]

OMG, the wholesome mutual pining of this was just...happy sigh.

Loved, loved, loved the groupings of three in this litany:

>He had not killed Fraser. Fraser had not killed him, and nothing else had killed him, either. His intense stupid longing for Fraser hadn’t gone away, and it hadn’t ruined everything, and it hadn’t made anything real happen. When it was time to sled on back to civilization, they hadn’t fallen into each other’s arms and they hadn’t parted forever.

They hadn’t found any reaching-out hand, but other than that, he’d guessed wrong about everything.<

>OK, Ray sort of got it. Fraser would never say anything so impolite, but Thatcher’s replacement was way too eager to be his best friend, and Turnbull’s replacement was on a whole new axis of unhinged. It maybe wasn’t a surprise that he didn’t want to be that easy to reach. When he wanted to call Ray, he used the pay phone outside the corner pawnshop.<

Ha, also, so very Fraser to just...whatever the opposite of malicious compliance is. Polite noncompliance, I guess.

>Dief behind him looking like he found the whole thing hilarious.<

Because he did, of course.

>They were passing his third-favorite diner, so he made with the courteous door-opening thing and pulled them both in for food and breath-catching and giving Fraser a menu to hide his face in so he could stop blushing before he passed out.<

Oooooh, this is so sweet!

>“My first Chicago apartment seemed the height of luxury in that it had a door, but as the lock tended to get stolen, the door was more in the nature of a polite request.”<

So very Fraser.

>He slammed out the front door, and in five minutes he was down at the corner pawn buying Fraser a mini television.<

Chekhov's pawnshop, good for a pay phone *and* a white-noise generating television.

>It was a terrible kiss, bad angle and too much pressure and the stupid fucking channel knob pressed into his chest. And then they both tried to pull it back at the same time like a tug of war, and Fraser said, “What was that?” and then he frowned down like he was just now noticing it and said, “What is this?”<

This is just perfect and visual and funny.

>“No, Ray, you don’t understand.” Fraser corrected him right down onto the bed<

Best verb use.

>Fraser made a frustrated half-growl. “I yearned for this all this time and now that I have it I’m in no condition to take it.” He stood up, throwing off clothes, tight-jawed like some kind of strange pissed-off stripper. “My self-indulgence has made me useless.”

“I don’t need you useful,” Ray said, appalled.<

And this is just so...so sweet and hilarious, and they both want this so much, and Ray just wants Fraser to be happy and to have good things, and he is one of those good things, and this is all just very delightful.

Yay!

[resonant]

This is so nice! You called out some of my favorite bits.

Ha, also, so very Fraser to just...whatever the opposite of malicious compliance is. Polite noncompliance, I guess.

Yeah, just because he's courteous doesn't necessarily mean he's helpful.

You've still got it!

[jesse_the_k]

...and we're so lucky.

In patrol situations I had my own tent, but of course a tent doesn’t have a lock, or for that matter a door

Brutally accurate, that Fraser.

Every amount of noise was the wrong amount, either interrupting or sneaking.

Ray's tiptoeing on the sisal rope between their hearts

And then this magnificent delicious collision!

“No, Ray, you don’t understand.” Fraser corrected him right down onto the bed, which was sticking out into the middle of the room at a weird angle, but nice and solid just like Ray’d said in the thrift shop, yay him, and Fraser came down in a messy tumble over him, also plenty solid and already halfway into his Levis, pulling at his clothes with something between rough efficiency and a personal grudge.

Did this mean Fraser was OK with the kissing? Maybe he could ask later.

Your insight into their needs is 100% accurate!

​

Re: You've still got it!

[resonant]

Ray's tiptoeing on the sisal rope between their hearts

Aw, yes, exactly. And BTW he doesn't quite know where his apt is from Fraser's bedroom window, but he totally k own where Fraser's apt is from his own bedroom window!