Author: Desiree Armfeldt
Title: Missing Piece
Fandoms: due South
Characters: Ray Vecchio, Benton Fraser
Rating: Teen
Length: 750 words
Angst-to-hope ratio: Medium
Disclaimer: I didn't create these characters, I don't own them, I derive no profit from their use.
A/N: This started out as a snippet for ds_snippets, for the prompt “And when I chose to live, there was no joy, it’s just a line I crossed/It wasn’t worth the pain my death would cost,/So I was not lost or found,” but it got too long.  Companion piece from Fraser's point of view is posted over there.
Summary: Ray worries about Fraser.  (Gen or pre/slash, depending on your goggles)


Fraser’s had a hard life; Ray’s always known that.  It was pretty much the first thing he learned about the guy: his father had been murdered, no one was even bothering to look into who did it, Fraser was on his own.  When Ray went looking for him with news and found him in a diner, Fraser looked so alone, so lonely—and that was what did it for Ray.  Maybe he couldn’t right all the world’s wrongs, but here was a guy who badly needed a friend, and Ray could give him that.

Besides being Fraser’s friend himself, Ray’s also encouraged him—okay, forced him—to have more of a social life.  Because the funny thing about Fraser is, he’s a people person, he honestly likes people—way, way more people than Ray likes, people it’d be smarter to steer clear of—but he doesn’t actually make friends with hardly anybody.  He doesn’t hang out, he doesn’t know what to do at parties, he doesn’t invite people to things (except for Ray).  So Ray drags him to family dinners and poker nights with the guys from the station and goddamned church choir practice.  Gets him involved; gets him making connections.  It doesn’t make Fraser less of a nerdy weirdo, but it helps.  It makes him less alone.

(And if being friends with Fraser makes Ray less alone?  Makes him realize how lacking he was in the real-friends department before Fraser came along?  Well, that’s a win-win, right?)

But now. . .since the whole thing with Victoria. . .

They’ve patched up their friendship, just fine.  Ray isn’t worried about that any more.  But he’s worried about Fraser.  Because now he sees just how lonely Benny really was—is.  All along, there’s been this big piece missing from his life.

Ray didn’t get that before.  Sure, he sometimes joked about Fraser needing to get laid, but the truth is, that always seemed like such a not-Fraser thing.  It was hard to imagine Fraser actually wanting sex, or romance, or any of that.  But come to find out, Benny’s human, all right.  He does want—not to get laid, Ray doesn’t think, not just sex.  What Fraser wants is the real deal: true love, a life partner, all that good shit that Ray dreams about, prays for, but knows damn well in the light of day that it’s impossible.  Ray’s got a failed marriage and a bunch of embarrassing crushes and fantasies and one-night stands to prove it.

Sometimes he almost wishes Fraser had gotten on that damned train.  If it would’ve given him a lifetime of that goofy, shy smile he gave when Ray showed up at his door on the morning after. . .if it would’ve given him that happy-ever-after that everyone longs for and most people never even get a sniff of. . .

Only it wouldn’t have been like that.  Not in real life.  Only in Benny’s dreams.

But now, Ray worries that Benny doesn’t even have his dreams left.

He watches Fraser living his life, doing his thing, seeming just as peppy and gung-ho and committed as ever, and he wonders if Fraser’s just going through the motions, if that big, empty hole inside him, that missing piece, is eating him away.

And Ray wonders if there’s anything he can do to make it better.