[REC] due South (177/365)
luzula recced me this story (with others quickly chiming in to second) a long time ago when I was first taking due South recs, but I couldn't read it right away, and couldn't read it even a bit later, and then I approached it but the sci-fi AU idea just didn't click for me, and even though I have adored beyond reason every single thing by this author that I have ever read, this particular story kept sinking slowly, inexorably, down to the bottom of my to-read list. It just... I don't know what was in my head. I'm particular about my science fiction reading, it's what I've read the longest. I have opinions about science fiction, let me tell you. Well, no, let me not tell you, we'd be here all year.
The point is only that, faced with the possibility that something I'm about to read is of a style I favor and know really well, but that maybe it won't be absolutely brilliant and perfect, I tend to shuffle my feet and delay. I shouldn't have done that here. I should have dropped everything when the comment first landed on my request post, no, earlier, I should have dropped everything when Luzula was first thinking about leaving that comment, and going off to read this thing then, and then I should have read it again. And again.
Real Boys (Fraser/RayK (dS AU) | R? | 22,169 words)
He came to the city on the trail of the killers of his father, and for reasons that will be elucidated below, he didn't remain. Also, that there's a dog, okay?
Author: Salieri/troyswann. Also available @author's archive.
It's a busy, futuristic, semi-dystopian AU - semi-dystopian in the sense that some very important things have gone from the world, while other things have grown up and filled in the cracks, and the world may not be quite right for a lot of people, but it's mostly muddling along, crowded and dirty and loud.
Ray is... an earnest, smart, capable investigator. Ray is good at his job. Ray is a bit lonely. Fraser is an investigator of a different sort, a stranger to Ray's world, a newcomer, having arrived on the trail of the killers of his father and found himself in the middle of a veritable mob war-turned-actual-war instead. Fraser is a mystery, and he is special, and he is a good man, and Ray falls for him - instinctively and helplessly and deeply as only our Ray can, but most importantly quietly, without really telling anyone about it, maybe not even himself. He'd be downright heartbreaking, if he weren't so lucky.
Damn, I love this Ray. And this Fraser, he's a revelation. And this story is just an utter pleasure to read, filled to the brim with vitality, and gorgeous detail, and possessed of a voice and a rhythm that's utterly engrossing and fascinating, from the very first paragraph. I was riveted, and I laughed, and I cried, and I just marveled all over it, so there you go.
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Further bits in my 2012 one-a-day slash recs experiment can be found on my rec: 365 tag ( LJ/DW)
(cross-posted from http://mementis.dreamwidth.org/68967.html -
comments @ DW - reply@DW)