Title:: That's Life
Fandom: Due South
Pairing: Fraser/Vecchio
Rating: PG
Word count: 487
Warnings: angst, I guess. Spoilers for dS 1x17, "The Deal," and 1x19, "Heaven and Earth."
Summary: People like Franny and Ray get hurt, and guys like Fraser don't even know it.
Notes: My very first due South fic! Unbeta'd.
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine, and I am making no money off this.
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Christ on a stick, he couldn't believe his sister was as bone-headed as he was. "Guys like him don't marry girls like you--that's fairy tale," he told Frannie. People like Fraser were too good for people like him and Frannie--loudmouthed, badly dressed Italians who'd never read Thomas Paine. "And girls like you get hurt and guys like him don't even know it, and that's life."
They went at it from there, and Frannie went into some speech about dreaming, and reaching out for what you really wanted, and how Ray was going to die miserable and alone, and sure, it was true, but Ray hadn't always been that way. And the only thing Ray had ever gotten from hitting on guys like Fraser was a sock in the jaw.
Of course, Fraser wouldn't hit him, he knew that. No, it'd be even worse with Fraser. Because Ray'd seen the way Fraser looked at Frannie. And if he got the slightest inkling that Ray felt the same way, that Ray had laid awake and fucking fantasized about going to Fraser's shitty walkup in the middle of the night and dropping his coat on the floor and purring, "Don't be afraid"--because Fraser would be afraid and because him and Frannie, they had the same tacky Italian imagination--well, Fraser'd be giving Ray that look next, like a caribou caught in the snowmobile lights or whatever the fuck they said in Canada. Then he'd jump out a window and Ray would never see him again. No partners, no friends; no nothing.
Frannie made for the door, and Ray grabbed her arm, because suddenly he had to know--and so what if he'd told Fraser earlier that if someone had to sleep with his sister, he'd want it to be Fraser? He'd meant it at the time. At least that way Fraser would be in the family. But then he'd realized Fraser would never stay with Frannie, and she'd be heartbroken, and also the jealousy hurt like falling out of a building--which was another wonderful sensation he'd never experienced before Fraser. Why did he keep doing this to himself? What his father would say next time he saw him--"pathetic little fag" would be the nice part. "Did you sleep with him?" Ray demanded.
She laughed, a sad little sound that he suspected was his answer. "Why?" she asked. "Why? Would it matter to you if I did?"
"Yes, it would," he told her, too desperate to be careful. She looked at him, his little sister, and he didn't say that it would matter because if she'd seen Fraser naked, if she'd gotten one night with Fraser in exchange for whatever she'd have to give up--then Ray was probably going to cry, because it might even have been worth it. Instead he said, "You're my sister, and I care about you," because that was true too.
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