Love In The Asylum

So, it seems that I've stumbled into the alternate universe where Ray Kowalski finished college and became a forensic anthropologist instead of a detective. Because I swear, my professor today looked just like Ray, if Ray were a redhead and Fraser somehow talked him into a wearing a badly-fitted suit and an ugly tie.

I have proof.

You know, even if this class didn't look like it was going to be interesting as all hell (we're doing a unit on arson! and forensic psychology! and whether our university founder was murdered!), this would be a pretty strong incentive to stay, just for the ogling opportunities. I think weedy, geeky guys are pretty hot to begin with, but a weedy, geeky guy that looks like RayK? YES PLEASE. 

There needs to be an AU where one of Ray's college professors gets him into forensic science, and it seems just awesome enough to him that he scrapes together the money and sticks through the rest of the university so he can stay in the bio labs. And Stella approves of it because he's home to make her dinner, and it's nice to have an extra informed opinion when she's going over the briefs the police send her, and being a scientist seems pretty respectable even if it isn't as cool as being a cop like he used to want to be. But then they break up, because he starts working longer hours and she works longer hours and they never see each other, and no matter how many dorky ties he wears and how much hair gel he uses he's still a boring college professor, and not even at something important that's going to win him a Nobel Prize, he just teaches undergrads and pokes around the osteology lab all day. And then Ray and his experimental hair are sad.

But! Then a mysterious body turns up in the woods outside Chicago and the police are baffled, just baffled, about who it is or how they died except that it might be Canadian, because it was wearing Canadian sneakers or something. So they call in the RCMP officer attached to the Chicago consulate to be their Canadian police consultant and they call in Ray to be their forensic science consultant and tell them what the heck happened to their skeleton. And Ray is very confused, because this mountie - Benton Fraser, seriously, who the hell names their kid Benton? - is very weird but also very very hot and Ray hasn't fallen this hard for a guy since, uh, ever. Not that he has much time to worry about it, since people keep trying to kill them in unnecessarily dramatic and painful ways and might have succeeded if Fraser hadn't also been the most bad-ass mountie ever, and Ray is so going to end up in bed with him.

...I think my brain got away from me there.

Got up at 7.30 to exactly no purpose - the woman who gave me the referral at the orientation on Tuesday specifically told me I had to apply for the job in person, but this proved not to be the case - according to Front Desk Boy, I can only apply online. And when we got to my dad's office, his partner wasn't there, so there wasn't any work for him to do. We went home at 11 having accomplished precisely nothing. Needless to say I am both tired and severely pissed off. It does not help that applying for the job gave me a huge freaked out existential crisis sort of thing - lots of me hating myself for being useless and angsting that I'm only ever going to work at stupid call centers for the rest of forever because I have no skills because I suck. Yeah. Annoying and pointless. I finally distracted myself with Justice League cartoons and Star Trek porn.

I think I let colourofsaying  talk me into actually writing the Due South/Torchwood crossover fic where Jack Harkness is Benton Fraser's father. Um. It has a plot! And emotional arcs! And alien drug-dealing gangsters with laser-dillingers. And Margaret Thatcher being awesome, because I kind of love her. We decided that she's secretly an ex-Time Agent who used to be bestest drinking buddies with Jack and John - the three of them hung out, got drunk, and slept their way through the agency, but they had a rule to never sleep with each other. When Jack and John hooked up in the time loop she was pissed enough that she quit the agency and disappeared off to Canada (which is why she is still alive, until the rest of the Time Agents). Jack is very very surprised to get an email from her.

I have serious plans to go to bed early so I can get up in the morning and work on it, and colourofsaying  is already plotting the sequel, where Fraser goes to Cardiff and tracks an alien fugitive and finds out Jack is immortal. Fun times!

It's easier to talk in the darkness.

In the day there's so many damn distractions, the doctors coming in to read Fraser's chart, nurses adjusting his IV, other patients and their visitors going past the door - for all the talk of rest there's no peace in the hospital, and that makes it easier to talk about other things. Easier to change the subject. Because Victoria doesn't belong here, it's hard to even fit her into the same thoughts as the bland normality of the hospital, and that makes it easier to veer the conversation away every time it goes in a direction neither of them are ready to deal with.

But the darkness makes it different. It's not full dark, even this late at night, he can still see Fraser's face in the pale glow from the hallway and the eerie green tint of the monitors. But it's dim and it's still and it feels like it isn't real, like this is just a dream that will vanish with the dawn. It's enough to lower their defenses, and stop them edging around this like it's a bomb they'll set off if they say the wrong thing.

"I was going to go with her," Fraser says, like that's the secret that's hanging over them and driving them both crazy. Like Ray didn't know from the first time he saw them that Fraser would follow her to Hell if she smiled at him pretty. Like that's the thing that matters.

"I know," he says, because Fraser needs to hear it, even if it won't make him stop blaming himself. Like a guy can help who he falls in love with.

"I wasn't going to let you," he doesn't add. He's been not saying it for weeks, ever since the first night when Welsh dragged him away from the waiting room to get his statement and he didn't tell him. He didn't say it to Internal Affairs and he didn't say it to Frannie and he's not saying it to Fraser now or ever. But in the end, he knows where he aimed the gun, and he knows what he was thinking when he pulled the trigger. He knows what people are capable of doing for love.

Even in the darkness, some things are just too hard to say.

Re: this week's Batman: The Brave and the Bold (Menace of the Conqueror):

• BOOSTER GOLD, BE MORE ADORABLE. OH WAIT YOU CAN'T.
• I have a hard time getting into this show when my characters aren't in it. Not because it isn't good, but because Batman's VA has a really flat delivery that drives me up the wall. Booster's VA, on the other hand, is quite excellent, even though that's not quite the Booster voice I hear in my head. Close though.
• Heeeeeeee security guard!Booster. He is such a cute schmoe.
• Skeets wins everything ever, as always. And I adore how much Booster loves him, even though he tries to play like he doesn't. He comes across as so young and vulnerable.
• YAY I LOVE WHEN BOOSTER IS HEROIC AND OTHER PEOPLE NOTICE.
• It makes me sad that Booster's been in two DC cartoons (three if you count his cameo in LOSH) and Ted's been in one and they still haven't been in an episode together. Woe.

Re: Due South (season 1 still):

• I bet Ray spends all the time he isn't involved in wacky hijinks with Fraser wondering how he always lets himself get talked into wacky hijinks by Fraser, and vowing never to let himself be dragged into this stuff again. And the next day, when they are chasing a gang of Canadian art smugglers through a wax museum, he remembers this vow and laughs bitterly. Because he is never going to be able to say no to Fraser, because he luuuuuurves him.
• Fraser being awkward and uncomfortable while women hit on him will never, never stop being funny.
• The episode where Diefenbaker got taken to the pound and almost put to sleep broke my heart into a MILLION TINY PIECES. I mean, bad things happening to animals always makes me go all watery-eyed because I am a soft-hearted animal lover, but god, the look on Fraser's face. It was so very much "I'm about to lose the only family I have left." *sniffles*
• Fraser playing hockey does positively pornographic things to my brain.
• Fraser's understated daddy issues fascinate me to no end.
• The Blue Line could be retitled The Time Fraser's Middle-School Crush Is A Famous Jerk Hockey Player (and then they have nostalgia sex). I'm, uh, not the only one who's picking up that vibe, right?

colourofsaying : Did you notice that Fraser looks similar to John Barrowman?
masterofmidgets : JB from, like, way back in S1 DW, maybe
colourofsaying : *nods*
masterofmidgets : that provides some very strange mental images, and also a crossover where Jack is his own great-great-great grandfather somehow (and by somehow I mean fucking someone he shouldn't)
colourofsaying :  *grins*
...wait, were you thinking of Jack as a Mountie in a threesome with the Rays?
masterofmidgets : um, no?
colourofsaying : ok, that's probably a good thing
Jack as a Mountie is a scary scary thought
And he probably couldn't carry caribou either
masterofmidgets : more like Jack making an unexpected trip to Canada in the 60s and then one day he and the team are in Chicago and he meets a Mountie who looks suspiciously familiar
colourofsaying :  *grins*
Somehow Fraser procreates eventually?
masterofmidgets : or at the very least jerks off into a cup for science
colourofsaying :  *raises eyebrows* Somehow the phrase 'jerks off' and the name 'Fraser' sound very odd together
colourofsaying :  I just - do you think he ever did?
masterofmidgets : I...god
I actually imagine him having a very strict schedule for it. Like, once in week, in order to stay in top condition and good spirits.
very businesslike
colourofsaying : *giggles*
With Mountie-approved pinup posters?
masterofmidgets : he lies back and thinks of Nova Scotia
colourofsaying :  *dies*
YES
He makes Diefenbaker go in the barn.
masterofmidgets : this is not a sight appropriate for young wolves
colourofsaying : Nope
Although Diefenbaker is apparently quite the Casanova
He has puppies!
masterofmidgets : awwwwwwww
I am dead from cute
colourofsaying :  *grins*
masterofmidgets : ...and also picturing Fraser very carefully staring straight ahead, back perfectly straight, while he gives Diefenbaker The Talk.
colourofsaying : ...yes
masterofmidgets : I feel like I have to post this conversation now

ETA: this conversation continued on to Jack trying to initiate an orgy with Fraser and both Rays, John Hart's attempt to seduce Fraser into his spaceship, Fraser's identity crisis, and the founding of Torchwood Chicago. Go us.