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ds_recsredux2008-10-04 01:03 pm
brynnmck.livejournal.com) wrote in ds_recsredux2008-10-04 01:03 pm
Great Character Voices, Part 3: Vecchio
So if there's one thing we can say about Ray Vecchio, it's that he loves to talk. And I love to listen to him talk, with his dry humor and his frequent bitching and his existential honesty. A great Vecchio voice is a rare gem in the fandom (these days, anyway), and I hold those stories close to my heart. (And as a side note, I'm formulating a theory in the course of compiling these recs: Vecchio and Kowalski tend to sound most like their canon selves in F/V and F/K fic: y/n?)
In any case. VECCHIO. I like him okay:
The Eskimo Thing, by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
merryish (F/V, rated NC-17) – It's so sad to me that Merry has published so little dS fic, because she gets Fraser and Vecchio as well as anyone I've ever encountered in the fandom. This has long been one of my favorite dS fics, and while there's nothing about it that I don't love, Merry's Vecchio voice is a particular joy for me (though her Fraser voice is absolutely brilliant, too). Perfect blend of dry humor and affection and love and hotness, and an awesomely wacky plot, too (as china_shop called it once: "The Inuit made them do it admit they liked each other!"). If you only ever read one Fraser/Vecchio fic, I think it should be this one.
An excerpt:
Two hours later, the sun had sunk behind a distant ridge and twilight filled the clearing in which they were still tied -- Fraser now with a dislocated shoulder -- to a tree. It hadn't been what Ray would've called warm to start with, but now it was downright chilly. Diefenbaker had either gone for help (according to Fraser) or fled the scene (Ray) around noon, and since help had not been forthcoming, Ray was pretty sure he was the better judge of wolf character in this instance. The ropes were cutting into his ribs and his arms and his thighs, he was getting a headache from dehydration and annoyance, and the mosquitoes had found them -- big honking mosquitoes with a yen for Italian food, apparently. He wanted, probably more than he'd ever wanted anything in his entire sorry life, to go home.
He'd spent the past two hours explaining that, at some length, to Benny, who was now slumped against the ropes on the other side of the tree, pretending to be asleep. Like anybody could sleep with all the cricket-chirping and owl-hooting and wolf-howling that was going on all around them. It made Ray miss the ambulances always coming and going to the hospital down the street from his house. Ambulances made noise because they wanted to help you. Canada, Ray was absolutely convinced, made noise because it wanted to eat you.
One Man's Kink, by Mallory Klohn (F/V, no rating given, but includes sexing) – OMG this fic is so adorable. Filled to the brim with fabulous UST, and Mallory has a great gift for Vecchio's exasperated/affectionate speech patterns. And it's a bit of an unusual first-time fic in that it's not primarily one guy trying to seduce the other; it's both of them appreciating and wanting each other, teasing, making moves, holding back, trying to get it right. It's a fantastic slow burn that pays off with an scorching hot climax.
An excerpt:
Arching his back extravagantly, Ray stroked his throat with the root beer can Ben had given him. "Oh, god, that feels so good..."
"It'll warm up if you do that," Ben said, staring resolutely out the passenger window.
"I don't care," the detective groaned, rolling the can across his neck. "Ohhh..."
"You know, Ray, until recently, it was possible to contract aluminum poisoning from drinking beverages out of cans."
Ray shot him a look through hooded eyes. "Sure, Benny. And how much soda are we talking about here? I mean, what's the Mountain Dew of Death, ten thousand, or ten thousand and one?"
"I'm sure it's nothing that high," Ben said confidently.
"Don't try to weasel outta this, Fraser, I wanna know. You'd have to drink them all in, what, a week, to get sick like that? Do you know somebody who drinks that much soda?"
Ben snatched Ray's root beer from his hand and gave him his own can of Mountain Dew.
"It's still very cold," he explained. "You seem to need it more than I do."
"Thank you, Benny," he grinned. "If I didn't think I'd give myself chromosome damage, I'd stick it down my pants."
Ben choked on the root beer. "Actually, Ray," he coughed, "cold is much better for your... chromosomes... than is warmth. This is why many fertility specialists recommend wearing loose pants to men who are trying to get their wives with child."
"I was just-- aw, forget it."
Two Meetings in Neutral Territory, bygreensilver (K/V, rated PG-13) – Greensilver's writing style tends to be understated, and so is her Vecchio POV; it's a fantastic example of doing a lot with a little. This short fic just crackles with tension and things unsaid, and it builds a vivid backstory that gives us such a sharp picture of Vecchio and Kowalski (and Fraser, which is a great dimension) and their connection. And the end is just LOVE.
An excerpt:
A blast of warm air and a wall of sound hit him as he swung open the door. The place was dim - that much, he'd gotten right - but it was a soft, diffused kind of lighting, and the smell was less fried food and more ... tomato sauce, maybe. Not a bar - a restaurant, and he'd lay good money on Lou being Italian.
What the hell was so urgent about pasta? Was this Kowalski's genius idea of a joke?
There was a bar at one end of the place, and the only open barstool was dead center, right next to the guy with the spiky blond hair.
Ray jerked a thumb at the bar as he passed the matre d', shaking snow off his clothes as he went. Kowalski didn't look injured, or even mildly inconvenienced; he was just sitting there at the bar, casually plucking at the label on a bottle of beer.
If there wasn't actually something life-or-death going on, Ray was going to kill him.
Conviction, bychina_shop (F/V, rated PG) – I think this was one of china's first F/V fics, and it was one of the first F/V fics I ever read, and it's still one of my favorites. She just gets exactly that canon dynamic (with a great Frannie voice, too), and weaves the slash around it, bringing Fraser and Vecchio exactly where they tend to end up in my head. :) And it's full of wonderful little Vecchio-isms, like:
An excerpt:
After that, Ray couldn’t forget the feel of Fraser’s hands on his face or the look in his eyes. It’d been a significant look. Special. A magical Moment.
At least, Ray hoped it’d been a Moment. A day or two later when nothing had changed between them, when it was all business and teasing as usual, and Fraser hadn’t dragged Ray into the supply closet to kiss him, and Fraser’s hands weren’t coming back to Ray’s face, to his neck, and Fraser himself was weirdly distant and distracted, avoiding Ray’s puzzled gaze—then Ray realized it was possible he’d had that Moment all by himself, and Fraser had just had a series of minutes, with no special stick-in-your-mind Moment in there that he would remember afterward, and think about, and maybe relive late at night when he couldn’t sleep.
Ketchup, bycatwalksalone (pre-slash, F/V kinda implied, F/K kinda implied, F/V/K totally happening in my head, rated PG) – After you finish giggling over the fact that cat starts this entry by declaring that she doesn't write dS (SO glad you changed your mind about THAT, cat! ♥), you'll get to another of my favorite dS fics. Short and fairly simple, but there's so much character insight packed in, here, Vecchio lost and angry in (an AU version of) his return from Vegas. Plus it's in second-person POV, which is hard to pull off, but cat does it excellently here.
An excerpt:
There was a time that you’d have been swaggering down these dirty streets, daring the low-life and scumbags to take you on. Yeah, you had a mouth on you, and sometimes even a fist, but whatever got the job done, right? You’re not swaggering now. It’s been a long time since the thick Chicago air invaded your not insubstantial nose and the strange mix of odors – fumes, pizza slices, humanity – makes you appreciate how he must have felt when he landed up here. You don’t own these streets anymore, most of the time you think you don’t even own yourself. So maybe that’s what you’re doing here. Looking to find someone you think you belong to. Hope you still belong to. It’s been a real long time.
Such a Pathetic Pair, byspuffyduds (F/V, rated R) – I still remember when I first found Spuffyduds' fic; I was SO thrilled to see someone new writing F/V with such sensitivity and depth. This fic is part of a (sadly still unfinished!) series, and all the stores in it are excellent, but this is one of my favorites. Spuffy has Vecchio's post-VS guilt and loyalty with heartbreaking clarity, and the tentative attempts to re-establish his connection with Fraser are just… oh, RAY. Painful, but beautiful, and there's honesty and solace at the end.
An excerpt:
But Benny gets better. It’s a good hospital and the guy was in some kind of superhero health to start with, and every Vecchio in Chicago has been bugging the hell out of God, and whatever reason, Benny gets better.
And feels like he has to confess. Ray’s sitting there, having fucking SHOT the guy, hello, and Benny starts talking about how he was going to go with her. Which, yeah, Ray had figured out and doesn’t particularly want to go over again. But Benny’s got to get it out, stammering about how he wasn’t thinking clearly at the time and he was somehow assuming that Ray’s bail, Ray’s house would be okay because now people knew that Victoria existed, that none of this was Ray’s plan or Ray’s fault, but of course that probably wasn’t really clear to anybody except the two of them, and the bail was on Fraser anyway and he was in fact skipping on it even if he was innocent of the charges, and--
“I got it, Fraser. Shut up.”
He shuts up, thank you God, and slides back off into the drug haze where he is most of the time this week. Every now and then he flinches halfway awake and mumbles something stupid, like, Dief, Twinkies are not even food. But mostly just sleeps.
Ray falls asleep in the chair, most days. He’s got a lot of leave saved up, and the only time he’s been back to the station house since the train, he just walked in, went straight to the supply closet, grabbed the big glass pickle jar they always set up on Elaine’s desk after something happened to one of the precinct guys. (Shot or stabbed in a domestic, heart attack behind the wheel of the squad car, ate his gun and left a widow…) He set it down on Elaine’s desk, hard, wrote FRASER in magic marker on a piece of masking tape and stuck it on the jar, under the faded Post-It that said “Please donate for.” Looked around the squad room at everybody one by one, thinking, just try to say I can’t do this for him. Just try. And Huey came over and opened his wallet.
If you don't love me, let me go bybelmanoir (F/V, rated PG) – Vecchio-in-Vegas is maybe the saddest genre of fic for me, and this story absolutely breaks my heart. But it's so filled with gorgeous Vecchio insight, and with the ways that Fraser and Vecchio changed each other's lives… gah. I adore it, even through the tears.
An excerpt:
He learned to do undercover from Fraser. Not like Fraser taught him or anything. Fraser couldn't do undercover if his life depended on it, which sometimes it did. But there were people who wanted to hurt Fraser, and they had to be intimidated, even if Ray wasn't naturally a very scary guy. Or maybe he was, but he'd never really wanted to know about it.
And then, of course, there was the unrequited love angle. Fraser was the best detective Ray'd ever met, and Ray had had to hide a pretty damn big secret from him almost from the first day they met. Had to act natural a million times and a million ways, had to give Fraser a hearty slap on the back when he wanted to kiss him blind. And he'd succeeded. He'd been the one guy in Chicago who wasn't asking Fraser for anything.
And that's it! Please feel free to add your own Vecchio-tastic recs in the comments, and thanks to the mods for letting me rec this week!
In any case. VECCHIO. I like him okay:
The Eskimo Thing, by
merryish (F/V, rated NC-17) – It's so sad to me that Merry has published so little dS fic, because she gets Fraser and Vecchio as well as anyone I've ever encountered in the fandom. This has long been one of my favorite dS fics, and while there's nothing about it that I don't love, Merry's Vecchio voice is a particular joy for me (though her Fraser voice is absolutely brilliant, too). Perfect blend of dry humor and affection and love and hotness, and an awesomely wacky plot, too (as china_shop called it once: "The Inuit made them An excerpt:
Two hours later, the sun had sunk behind a distant ridge and twilight filled the clearing in which they were still tied -- Fraser now with a dislocated shoulder -- to a tree. It hadn't been what Ray would've called warm to start with, but now it was downright chilly. Diefenbaker had either gone for help (according to Fraser) or fled the scene (Ray) around noon, and since help had not been forthcoming, Ray was pretty sure he was the better judge of wolf character in this instance. The ropes were cutting into his ribs and his arms and his thighs, he was getting a headache from dehydration and annoyance, and the mosquitoes had found them -- big honking mosquitoes with a yen for Italian food, apparently. He wanted, probably more than he'd ever wanted anything in his entire sorry life, to go home.
He'd spent the past two hours explaining that, at some length, to Benny, who was now slumped against the ropes on the other side of the tree, pretending to be asleep. Like anybody could sleep with all the cricket-chirping and owl-hooting and wolf-howling that was going on all around them. It made Ray miss the ambulances always coming and going to the hospital down the street from his house. Ambulances made noise because they wanted to help you. Canada, Ray was absolutely convinced, made noise because it wanted to eat you.
One Man's Kink, by Mallory Klohn (F/V, no rating given, but includes sexing) – OMG this fic is so adorable. Filled to the brim with fabulous UST, and Mallory has a great gift for Vecchio's exasperated/affectionate speech patterns. And it's a bit of an unusual first-time fic in that it's not primarily one guy trying to seduce the other; it's both of them appreciating and wanting each other, teasing, making moves, holding back, trying to get it right. It's a fantastic slow burn that pays off with an scorching hot climax.
An excerpt:
Arching his back extravagantly, Ray stroked his throat with the root beer can Ben had given him. "Oh, god, that feels so good..."
"It'll warm up if you do that," Ben said, staring resolutely out the passenger window.
"I don't care," the detective groaned, rolling the can across his neck. "Ohhh..."
"You know, Ray, until recently, it was possible to contract aluminum poisoning from drinking beverages out of cans."
Ray shot him a look through hooded eyes. "Sure, Benny. And how much soda are we talking about here? I mean, what's the Mountain Dew of Death, ten thousand, or ten thousand and one?"
"I'm sure it's nothing that high," Ben said confidently.
"Don't try to weasel outta this, Fraser, I wanna know. You'd have to drink them all in, what, a week, to get sick like that? Do you know somebody who drinks that much soda?"
Ben snatched Ray's root beer from his hand and gave him his own can of Mountain Dew.
"It's still very cold," he explained. "You seem to need it more than I do."
"Thank you, Benny," he grinned. "If I didn't think I'd give myself chromosome damage, I'd stick it down my pants."
Ben choked on the root beer. "Actually, Ray," he coughed, "cold is much better for your... chromosomes... than is warmth. This is why many fertility specialists recommend wearing loose pants to men who are trying to get their wives with child."
"I was just-- aw, forget it."
Two Meetings in Neutral Territory, by
greensilver (K/V, rated PG-13) – Greensilver's writing style tends to be understated, and so is her Vecchio POV; it's a fantastic example of doing a lot with a little. This short fic just crackles with tension and things unsaid, and it builds a vivid backstory that gives us such a sharp picture of Vecchio and Kowalski (and Fraser, which is a great dimension) and their connection. And the end is just LOVE.An excerpt:
A blast of warm air and a wall of sound hit him as he swung open the door. The place was dim - that much, he'd gotten right - but it was a soft, diffused kind of lighting, and the smell was less fried food and more ... tomato sauce, maybe. Not a bar - a restaurant, and he'd lay good money on Lou being Italian.
What the hell was so urgent about pasta? Was this Kowalski's genius idea of a joke?
There was a bar at one end of the place, and the only open barstool was dead center, right next to the guy with the spiky blond hair.
Ray jerked a thumb at the bar as he passed the matre d', shaking snow off his clothes as he went. Kowalski didn't look injured, or even mildly inconvenienced; he was just sitting there at the bar, casually plucking at the label on a bottle of beer.
If there wasn't actually something life-or-death going on, Ray was going to kill him.
Conviction, by
china_shop (F/V, rated PG) – I think this was one of china's first F/V fics, and it was one of the first F/V fics I ever read, and it's still one of my favorites. She just gets exactly that canon dynamic (with a great Frannie voice, too), and weaves the slash around it, bringing Fraser and Vecchio exactly where they tend to end up in my head. :) And it's full of wonderful little Vecchio-isms, like: An excerpt:
After that, Ray couldn’t forget the feel of Fraser’s hands on his face or the look in his eyes. It’d been a significant look. Special. A magical Moment.
At least, Ray hoped it’d been a Moment. A day or two later when nothing had changed between them, when it was all business and teasing as usual, and Fraser hadn’t dragged Ray into the supply closet to kiss him, and Fraser’s hands weren’t coming back to Ray’s face, to his neck, and Fraser himself was weirdly distant and distracted, avoiding Ray’s puzzled gaze—then Ray realized it was possible he’d had that Moment all by himself, and Fraser had just had a series of minutes, with no special stick-in-your-mind Moment in there that he would remember afterward, and think about, and maybe relive late at night when he couldn’t sleep.
Ketchup, by
catwalksalone (pre-slash, F/V kinda implied, F/K kinda implied, F/V/K totally happening in my head, rated PG) – After you finish giggling over the fact that cat starts this entry by declaring that she doesn't write dS (SO glad you changed your mind about THAT, cat! ♥), you'll get to another of my favorite dS fics. Short and fairly simple, but there's so much character insight packed in, here, Vecchio lost and angry in (an AU version of) his return from Vegas. Plus it's in second-person POV, which is hard to pull off, but cat does it excellently here.An excerpt:
There was a time that you’d have been swaggering down these dirty streets, daring the low-life and scumbags to take you on. Yeah, you had a mouth on you, and sometimes even a fist, but whatever got the job done, right? You’re not swaggering now. It’s been a long time since the thick Chicago air invaded your not insubstantial nose and the strange mix of odors – fumes, pizza slices, humanity – makes you appreciate how he must have felt when he landed up here. You don’t own these streets anymore, most of the time you think you don’t even own yourself. So maybe that’s what you’re doing here. Looking to find someone you think you belong to. Hope you still belong to. It’s been a real long time.
Such a Pathetic Pair, by
spuffyduds (F/V, rated R) – I still remember when I first found Spuffyduds' fic; I was SO thrilled to see someone new writing F/V with such sensitivity and depth. This fic is part of a (sadly still unfinished!) series, and all the stores in it are excellent, but this is one of my favorites. Spuffy has Vecchio's post-VS guilt and loyalty with heartbreaking clarity, and the tentative attempts to re-establish his connection with Fraser are just… oh, RAY. Painful, but beautiful, and there's honesty and solace at the end.An excerpt:
But Benny gets better. It’s a good hospital and the guy was in some kind of superhero health to start with, and every Vecchio in Chicago has been bugging the hell out of God, and whatever reason, Benny gets better.
And feels like he has to confess. Ray’s sitting there, having fucking SHOT the guy, hello, and Benny starts talking about how he was going to go with her. Which, yeah, Ray had figured out and doesn’t particularly want to go over again. But Benny’s got to get it out, stammering about how he wasn’t thinking clearly at the time and he was somehow assuming that Ray’s bail, Ray’s house would be okay because now people knew that Victoria existed, that none of this was Ray’s plan or Ray’s fault, but of course that probably wasn’t really clear to anybody except the two of them, and the bail was on Fraser anyway and he was in fact skipping on it even if he was innocent of the charges, and--
“I got it, Fraser. Shut up.”
He shuts up, thank you God, and slides back off into the drug haze where he is most of the time this week. Every now and then he flinches halfway awake and mumbles something stupid, like, Dief, Twinkies are not even food. But mostly just sleeps.
Ray falls asleep in the chair, most days. He’s got a lot of leave saved up, and the only time he’s been back to the station house since the train, he just walked in, went straight to the supply closet, grabbed the big glass pickle jar they always set up on Elaine’s desk after something happened to one of the precinct guys. (Shot or stabbed in a domestic, heart attack behind the wheel of the squad car, ate his gun and left a widow…) He set it down on Elaine’s desk, hard, wrote FRASER in magic marker on a piece of masking tape and stuck it on the jar, under the faded Post-It that said “Please donate for.” Looked around the squad room at everybody one by one, thinking, just try to say I can’t do this for him. Just try. And Huey came over and opened his wallet.
If you don't love me, let me go by
belmanoir (F/V, rated PG) – Vecchio-in-Vegas is maybe the saddest genre of fic for me, and this story absolutely breaks my heart. But it's so filled with gorgeous Vecchio insight, and with the ways that Fraser and Vecchio changed each other's lives… gah. I adore it, even through the tears.An excerpt:
He learned to do undercover from Fraser. Not like Fraser taught him or anything. Fraser couldn't do undercover if his life depended on it, which sometimes it did. But there were people who wanted to hurt Fraser, and they had to be intimidated, even if Ray wasn't naturally a very scary guy. Or maybe he was, but he'd never really wanted to know about it.
And then, of course, there was the unrequited love angle. Fraser was the best detective Ray'd ever met, and Ray had had to hide a pretty damn big secret from him almost from the first day they met. Had to act natural a million times and a million ways, had to give Fraser a hearty slap on the back when he wanted to kiss him blind. And he'd succeeded. He'd been the one guy in Chicago who wasn't asking Fraser for anything.
And that's it! Please feel free to add your own Vecchio-tastic recs in the comments, and thanks to the mods for letting me rec this week!
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::opens some tabs:: i have been enjoying the heck out of these recs let me tell you. also yes how is "conviction" so perfect?
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Thank you for the rec, honey! *beams* And also, I've enjoyed this whole series of recs. \Brynn/