Title: A Goodbye
Fandom: due South
Characters: Fraser/Kowalski
Rating: PG
Length: 381 words
Content notes: Homophobia
Written For: Challenge 439: Dust
Summary: Where one chapter opens, another ends


"Shake the dust off your feet." It's under his breath, muttered, words butting up against the din of a busy terminal at O'Hare and melting into it, but Fraser hears them anyway, of course.

He doesn't say anything; he puts his palm on the small of Ray's back though. The touch is brief but warm, grounding. Ray nods his head in a quick jerk of acknowledgment and moves up as the line to board the plane finally starts moving.

His Uncle Jake used to say that when he was a kid; Uncle Jake was a good man, always stuck up for the little guy even if that meant falling out with his friends. He showed up at his brother's one night with a black eye and a split lip courtesy of a drunken brawl with a drinking buddy who had some things to say about the , but he smiled like usual when Ray came downstairs, woken up by the noise.

"When you find yourself somewhere where you're not wanted, Stannie," he said. "Just do like the Good Book says, and shake the dust off your feet when you leave. Life's too short to waste with people who aren't worth your time."

Ray's got a black eye too, today, and a lip to match. He's not smiling—not just now—though that'll come, he knows. He just needs some time.

"Two hours and we'll be in Toronto," Fraser says once they hand over their boarding passes. He smiles, that soft, friendly thing he gives when he's feeling especially soft.

Toronto, where the Supreme Court's just ruled that same-sex, common-law partners who've lived together at least one year are entitled to all the same legal rights as everybody else.

There's movement behind them; a call of "Good luck!" from the little cluster of people that came to see them off. Ray—the real Ray Vecchio—is at the front, hand up in a wave; Frannie and the other Vecchios altogether, Mama Vecchio with a couple of tears on her cheeks; Welsh and Huey, next to her, who came as a surprise; Inspector Thatcher, who's telling off Constable Turnbull, waving a cell phone wildly over her head.

And then the space beside them where Ray's parents aren't.

"Home sweet home," Ray says, and leaves.