Title: Chicago's finest morris side
Rating: All ages / No AO3 warnings apply
Fandom: due South
Summary: Fraser decompresses after a fraught practice with his dance team. For the fan_flashworks challenge "Stick."
Character: Benton Fraser
Tags: Vignette, AU - Morris Dancing, Geeky Hobbies
Words: 400
Beta: the_jack


Fraser put his hankies in the laundry basket with a sigh. As far as the actual performances went, it was good to be on a side capable of doing six-person dances rather than doing jigs by himself. Interpersonally, he wasn't sure that it was an improvement over dancing by himself to his grandmother's accordion playing.

Stella's and New Ray's separation was setting everyone's teeth on edge every practice. Neither had been willing to let the other have Marynook Morris in their breakup. They'd had an earnest conversation about how they were going to keep it amicable. They were trying, but they clashed.

Occasionally with great force, when sticks were involved.

The team had weathered Frannie's and Old Ray's comfortable bickering since her big brother joined, and those two had broken several sticks over the years, but that was just the way they were. The new post-marital tension between Stella and New Ray was so thick you could cut it with one of Loop the Loop's rapper swords, blunt though they were.

At least Huey and Louis had finally gotten their heads on straight about their not being straight. They'd been almost as irritating as the formerly-inseparable Kowalskis.

Fraser fed Diefenbaker his after-practice meal and tried to imagine explaining his team to anyone who hadn't been there for years.

Old Ray and New Ray were simple enough. Another group of people would have suggested that perhaps New Ray ought to use a different name entirely, but the morris dancers, being inveterate punsters, had decided that since Old Ray's name was Vecchio, the nickname was simply fate.

The team was rehearsing for the Midwest Morris Ale at the end of May, when they would be getting together with sides from all over the region. Fraser's experience of such events had been limited before he came to Chicago, and he hadn't decided whether the enjoyment of seeing other dancers outweighed the social pressure of being with people he didn't know for days on end while his teammates dispersed to eat meals with their friends from other teams.

Ultimately, he was just grateful that Marynook Morris had hosted the MWMA the year before he moved south, which meant that it wouldn't be their turn again for years. The image of Stella and New Ray sniping at each other during long planning meetings made Fraser rub his eyebrow to try to dispel a nascent headache.

*

Note: Ravenswood Morris and Pullman Morris and Sword can duke it out for the real crown of Chicago's finest morris team. I have never seen either perform. As for one-man morris teams in the wild, there's at least one, and I suspect, given the tendency of curmudgeons to schism, that there are more I've never met.


c: stick, f: due south, m: fanfiction