Retired Guy Hobbies, Exposures, The Teeth of the Hydra

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Title: Retired Guy Hobbies
Author: greensilver
Pairing: Vecchio/Stella
Rating: The author didn't specify, but I'd venture PG.
Length: 4,214 Words
Why I'm reccing this fic: Much as I love Fraser and Kowalski riding off into the sunrise on a dogsled, the endings given to the other characters in Call of the Wild have never set well with me. Could Ray Vecchio and Stella Kowalski really be happy running a bowling alley in Florida? And how did they end up with a bowling alley anyway? greensilver answers with a beautiful, believable piece from Ray's POV.


Sunbathing wasn't the only thing that got old fast; the whole concept of an extended honeymoon turned out to have a shelf life of about a month. Stella was theoretically retired, too, but in practice, that meant she was on the fast track to partner at some high-class law firm; he hardly ever saw her during the day.

He didn't exactly whine – that wasn't his style – but he did hint here and there that he was the most bored he'd ever been in his entire life. After a couple weeks of hinting, she came home one day with an enormous set of golf clubs and a fishing rod, which was her none-too-subtle way of telling him to get some good old-fashioned retired guy hobbies.

He put the golf clubs in a closet, and told himself that that was the end of that: retired or not, he wasn't sinking that low.


Retired Guy Hobbies



Title: Exposures
Author: dsudis
Pairing: F/K
Rating: PG
Length: 12 k
Why I'm reccing this fic: This is an odd one for the "fics of my heart" rec, I know, being a death fic and all. But since the challenge asks for the ones that stay with you, I couldn't leave it out. I think Exposures was the first death fic I read in dS; I'm sure I read it well before I'd watched Call of the Wild, which is probably part of why it got such a grip on me. The other part would be how much of a whallop is packed into so few words.


They found the camera carefully wrapped in plastic and packed among the extra socks. Frobisher added it to the box of personal effects, and shipped the lot to Lieutenant Welsh in Chicago.

Welsh, thinking the photos might shed some light on the situation - they still weren't absolutely positive, as the searchers hadn't found Fraser, Ray, or Dief, though God knew they couldn't have gotten far without any of their gear - handed the camera, one of those disposables `for outdoor use,' over to the police lab to be developed immediately.

A tech brought up the folder of glossies, but he wouldn't meet Welsh's eyes, just set them down on his desk and high-tailed it back to his darkroom. Welsh closed his eyes and took a deep breath, fighting down all the crime scene scenarios his mind's eye had offered in the last hour. *Please God, let there be one in here that I can show to Mrs. Kowalski.* Then he opened the folder.


Exposures

Title: The Teeth of the Hydra
Author: resonant8
Pairing: Kowalski/Stella, F/K
Rating: NC-17
Length: 140 K
Why I'm reccing this fic: Here's another one that I read early on and that has stuck with me. I've told friends about this story and promised to send them a link, in blatant attempts to suck them into the fandom. Unfortunately, I tend to forget that "that awesome Ray and Stella history" is also "that serial-tattooing casefic wherein Ray comes to some Realizations and gets together with Fraser," and, as a result, I've sometimes talked it up to people who won't read slash--and then I am sad.


1971

Stanley Kowalski was nobody in particular, just another kid, until the day he started sixth grade. When Mrs. Bates was handing out cards to fill out, the cute girl beside him looked straight at him for the first time. She had the prettiest eyes he'd ever seen.

"I'm Stella Kirkman," she said. "What's your name?"

And that was the day Ray Kowalski was born.

The Teeth of the Hydra