Author's Notes: This is my first dS story ever. It is sad.
"I don't know what you're after; I'm no good after you. It's a shame your heart's a disaster, and there ain't nothing I can't do." (--halfacre gunroom, "amy")

It's over. It's over. Ray knows all about endings, see -- things end and then they're over. He's not real good with them -- see entry under Kowalski, Stella -- but he knows how they work, and he can spot an ending when he sees one, like he can spot the back of a GTO even when it's got the front of an Aston Martin. And this? This is definitely an ending. This is the ending to end all endings. This is a chainsmoke-two-packs-while-drinking-seven-beers ending. This is a collapse-on-a-bed-and-not-even-notice-that-it's-not-a-sleeping-bag-in-the-middle-of-buttfuck-Canada ending. This is a wake-up-with-a-killer-hangover ending. This is a time-to-figure-out-how-to-live-a-totally-Fraserless-life ending. And it fucking sucks.

Ray's apartment doesn't seem like a place he ever could have lived. It's stifling and boring and he can't see the sun rise from his bed, which is too soft, and he can't bring himself to wash his hair or his clothes. His clothes, which are totally rank and he knows it, but besides smelling gross, like sweat and other shit, they smell like Fraser and Dief and the great fucking outdoors -- which wasn't so great until he wasn't there anymore.

This is what Fraser must have felt like the first time he came to Chicago, which Ray isn't gonna think about because he's not thinking about things like what the fuck he's gonna do with his life now that he's back to being plain old Ray Kowalski, whose spotty personnel file whenever he's not undercover ain't gonna help him go back to being a cop.

But he can't do anything but be a cop, cause Fraser's gone, so he can't be Fraser's partner no more. He's just gonna be a cop, like everyone else, no special Mountie treatment, no dogs (or wolves) allowed in the precinct. Just him. At least he won't have to wear a uniform like some fucking rookie beat cop.

Not that he'd ever minded being a beat cop, but that was nothing at all compared to being Fraser's partner and solving all those fucked up cases because Fraser couldn't keep his tongue off nothing, no matter how disgusting or muddy or whatever the fuck. Ray's solve rate is gonna go way down, he knows it.

That's not why he misses Fraser, no way, but it's reality. Fraser wouldn't know anything about that, now would he? No, because when reality came calling, that was always when Fraser stepped back and let Ray handle it. If it was filling out paperwork or jumping off a building or lighting a car on fire or taking off through the wilderness of buttfuck Canada, Fraser was the guy, but if it was reality, Ray had to take it, and that was not fair, if Ray's opinion counted for anything.

Which it didn't, obviously, because Ray was the one sitting in the middle of a too-big bed in Chicago, wishing he could watch the sun rise, waiting until he wasn't too dizzy to stand up, sweating his ass off in eight fucking layers of clothes because they smelled like Fraser.