Author: Minervacat
Fandom: due South
Pairing: Kowalski/the city of Chicago with a side of Fraser/Kowalski
Rating: PG.
Disclaimer: Two guys named Paul and a production company called Alliance Atlantis own these characters and His Royal Highness the Emperor Daley owns Chicago; I'm just fooling around.
Summary: Ray loves Stella like he loves breathing, loves Fraser like he loves his tattoo, loves Chicago like he loves everything permanent in his life.

chicago, chicago, where there's assholes everywhere
chicago, chicago, where you're 15 pints from all your cares
where your wallet's like a sieve and that's where all of the gangsters live
chicago, chicago, it's where we can afford to live

Ray loves his parents. He loves the Cubs and sometimes he even likes the White Sox and he really loves the way that Wrigley just sort of appears out of nowhere, when you're not paying attention -- you turn the corner onto Clark and it's just there. He loves Old Style and PBR and he loves Giordano's thin crust pizza and the gumbo at Heaven on Seven. He loves his crappy little apartment that the trains run past all night, because it's his, and most days he loves working at the 2-7.

But Ray loves -- loved, still loves, he still loves her, it's just different -- Stella different than he loves beer, loves the hotdogs at that junky place with no name down on Des Plaines in the factory district. Like -- and he's not good with words, still can't explain to Fraser why pineapple's so goddamned good on pizza, it just is -- but with beer, hotdogs, pizza, he loves them when they're there, but doesn't think much about them when they're not there.

But Stella, he loves her because she's there.

It's one of those things, you know, inevitability. Like when something's there all the time, and you can love it or hate it: Stella, Fraser, Chicago, they're all things that he loves, just because they exist.

And they've always been there.

Ray loves Stella like he loves breathing, loves Fraser like he loves his tattoo, loves Chicago like he loves everything permanent in his life.

Ray's a pretty straight-up guy -- his life is mostly work and pizza and Fraser, but sometimes, nights that Fraser's stuck at the Consulate or out having some kind of weird Canadian social life, he likes to go up to the top of the Hancock Building and have a drink. Never dinner - the Signature Room is Stella-pricey - but a drink. Or two. Or five.

He likes the view better than the top of the Sears Tower because it's sort of ... he doesn't know why, but it's more Chicago. He drinks Jack on the rocks and watches the lights on the water and looks down on the top of the Drake Hotel's weirdo sign, and, some nights, he thinks about the fact that he's got it pretty good these days.

"Ray, the John Hancock building isn't the tallest building in Chicago."

"I know that, Fraser, why do you think I don't know that? All I'm saying is, tourists go to the top of the Sears Tower. We ain't tourists, okay? Go with me here."

"Understood, Ray, but isn't it a question of the view?"

"The Hancock building's all about the friggin' view, Fraser. It's got a better view of the lake, it's got better drinks, and if you're lucky, you can see all the way to Canada today, so just shut up, okay?"

"All right, Ray."

He doesn't take Fraser up there because the view's good -- he takes Fraser up there because it's this place in Chicago that's his, this secret place no one else who lives there's discovered.

It's a place that belongs to Ray and Ray alone, and he wants Fraser to see it. Wants Fraser to see Chicago the way he sees it.

Only bad thing about his folks talking to him again and moving back from Arizona -- Ray's got to take the Goat out to fuckin' Skokie in the snow now. Driving it in the city is bad enough, salt everywhere and he's got to get it washed three, four times a week in the winter, but worst is the 'burbs. Cross over Howard Street into Evanston and suddenly there's snow three times as deep on Clark Street where it turns into Chicago Avenue.

Ray's got a lot he can say about Emperor Daley, all bad, but one good thing is he keeps the street plowed. Nobody gets trapped in their cars on Jackson Street now, unless they're tourists, because the plows have been through, over and over.

And Daley's pretty good to the CPD, too, so Ray's not ever going to make any kind of noise, even if he wanted to, which he doesn't -- brass upstairs don't like it when cops get mouthy about the Emperor, not even detectives with pretty good solve rates, like Ray.

Chicago's got a mun -- mon -- manar -- you know, a king, instead of a president or a mayor, but it works, and you don't question that.

You don't question mocking the hell out of Daley either, though.

"Daley don't deserve respect, Fraser."

"Then I assume you will be voting against him in the next election?"

"Don't be a dumbass, Fraser. I always vote for the Emperor. Have since I was legal and he was running."

"But ... you just said-"

"You don't vote against the Emperor, alright? It doesn't do any good. And he knows."

"I am not certain how this works."

"You vote for the Emperor because you do, like you voted for his dad. Only crazy people run against him, there's no point in voting him out."

"But electing a man you don't respect, repeatedly. It makes no sense."

"Daley runs the city like a machine, see. It all works. And maybe you don't like how it works, say, but it's just this thing. It's what you do."

Fraser shakes his head, still doesn't get it, and Ray tries not to call Daley the Emperor in Fraser's hearing because it makes Fraser frown, get that little line right between his eyes. Ray shares a He's Canadian look with Welsh, or Huey, or Frannie whenever it happens, like: "What does he know, he ain't lived here all his life."

Daley's got a machine, and Ray's just trying to stay out of the gears.

Ray was walking a beat for the 8 when they were tearing Old Comiskey down. During the day when he'd pass by, there'd be all these old guys, really old guys, standing outside the fence, fingers in the chain link, looking lost, like little kids whose dogs've died. When he was on nights, he spent a lot of his time running off kids with cans of spray paint and guys his age trying to steal a seat or a chunk of the concrete.

He ran them off, but he kind of knew the feeling -- he was never a Sox fan, but Comiskey was this place that was there, it was always there, and then suddenly they were tearing it down and building a plastic, perfect replacement. It was like when they tore down the old Stadium and the Hawks started playing in the United Center -- it was never right. Sure, United's got those big TVs and great food, but it's not the Stadium.

Then one night he passed Comiskey and there was this piece of fence all bent up, like people'd been going under it, and he just couldn't help himself -- he crawled under and stole this chunk of concrete, nothing special at all, but it'd been part of that stadium, so he wanted it, he didn't know why, but he did.

Ray keeps his chunk of Old Comiskey Park in a drawer by his bed, never told Stella he stole it, never told his dad or any of the guys from his old neighborhood. He knows it's there, and it's sort of comforting. The Emperor tore it down and carted it away, but he didn't get all of it.

Ray's still got a piece, and he hangs onto it.

Nobody talks about how the Sox -- White Sox, not Red Sox, but here you don't got to qualify it, everybody just knows -- haven't won a Series since, what, something like 1917. 1916, maybe. Everybody talks about the Red Sox, and everybody talks about the Cubs, the world's favorite lovable losers, but nobody talks about the White Sox.

They been almost as long as the Cubs without winning the big one, and nobody, not in Chicago, not in the world, gives a flying fucking shit about it, because the White Sox have got the Cell, but the Cubs have got Wrigley, and Wrigley trumps everything.

Ray's a Cubs fan because Wrigley was the first stadium he ever saw, with his dad, maybe he was six or seven. He remembers the way the place with the food, it all smelled like piss and beer and cigarette smoke, and he remembers walking up to their upper deck seats. Rattling his fingers along the fence, watching the people on the sidewalk scalping tickets and all wearing bright blue caps, and the air getting lighter, higher they got. He remembers turning the corner out of that ramp, his first baseball mitt tucked under his arm, and then there was all that fuckin' green. In June, in Wrigley, everything's green. Scoreboard and the wall and the field, and it's green on the field and a sea of blue in the stands, and Ray fell, just like that. Fell hard.

Cubs lost to the Cards that day, Ray remembers all of it, it was a slugfest, couple of homers out onto Waveland, and Wrigley was only half full, but it was magic and the Cubs were heroes to him -- bigger than life, like movie stars and the tooth fairy all in one. Afterwards, out by the players' exit, Santo signed a ball for him, and it sits up against the chunk of Comiskey he stole. It's brown and cracked and the ink's smeared, but it's there.

Ray's a Cubs fan because this third baseman who wasn't much more of a kid himself, then, signed a ball for Ray -- To Ray, Best wishes and thanks for being a Cubs fan, Ron Santo -- and acted like he was happy to do it.

And Ray's a Cubs fan because he'll never get over the way that Wrigley crawls up out of nowhere. He's been driving up and down Clark Street since he was sixteen, and the place still surprises him. Speed through Grace and Racine, and when you blink, there it is, huge and concrete and gorgeous. Somehow Vecchio'd never managed to haul Fraser's ass up there to see it, not before Ray took over for him, and man, it even surprised Fraser, who's, like, the least surprisable guy ever.

Ray was driving some crap car from the pool, and he was cutting over Addison to get to Lake Shore to get downtown, because they were -- he can't even remember where they'd been, but it was west side somewhere, so it made sense to take Addison back to LSD. But Fraser was talking about something stupid, head down, and he looked up at Ray just as Wrigley crawled into sightlines, and Fraser fucking gasped.

It's this stadium, right in the middle of the neighborhood, like it's always been there and everything else just happened around it. And it took Fraser's breath away, and Ray has always thought that was really great, absolute greatness. Fraser ain't so perfect, after all -- he's impressed by Wrigley, so he's got to be human.

Ray's got season tickets, third base side, about half from the dugout to the bullpen. Lower deck but upper terrace, just under the upper deck and a great view of right field and Sammy making errors left and right. He's had them since the year he and Stella split, bought them to cheer himself up and it didn't really work for a while, but they've grown on him, and there's nothing like fuckin' off from the precinct on a Friday to go drink Old Style and watch the Cubs lose in the ninth inning like they always do.

Ray's never been much on rah-rah-American-freedom crap, because he doesn't need to be -- if 40,000 people skipping work every day for five straight months, just to watch the Cubs, ain't a sign of the free world, Ray doesn't know what is.

The Red Line runs past the windows of Ray's apartment. Right past, like. Trains hurtling six inches past his curtains, the ones his mom made him get when he moved out of the place with Stella, all goddamned night.

They say - whoever they is, Ray's never been sure - that it takes people six months to get used to living that close to the trains, but Ray never minded. He just passed right out the first night he slept there, and it's never bothered him. He likes it. Likes watching the commuters, headphones and business suits, roll past his windows -- likes to give 'em all fake lives and histories and love affairs, especially when there's nothing good on the TV.

It's soothing. Some people love listening to the ocean. Ray? Loves listening to the trains run past his window all night.

He and Fraser argued about it once; sometimes they leave the window to the back stairs open all night, so the wolf can get out if he needs to. Ray doesn't buy that the wolf's deaf, the wolf hears way more than he should if he was deaf, but the trains -- if Dief can hear them or if Dief can just feel them, rattling the porch under his paws ... either way, Dief's terrified of them.

Ray thinks it's funny, big bad Canadian wolf scared of Chicago trains, but he and Fraser fought about it because Ray wants Fraser to stay, to sleep in his bed because it's too big when Ray's in it alone. But Dief hates the stairs, hates the trains, and so Fraser leaves.

Which is just not cool, in Ray's opinion. Red Line's not that bad, could be the Green Line out in one of those places even gangs don't want to live, and it's been six months, Fraser should be used to it by now.

"To be perfectly honest with you, Ray, I find it as disconcerting as Diefenbaker does. I'm not used to the noise."

"You live in this city how many years, you still like the quiet better," Ray says, and it baffles him. "It's not noise, Fraser, it's comforting. Like, you know, a what-do-you-call-it. Like the city's singing us to sleep."

"A lullaby."

"Yeah, yeah, that. That's what it is. It ain't noise."

"The walls shake, Ray. The walls! Shake! On a regular basis!"

"Every eight, ten minutes, yep."

"Consistency is not necessarily something that should be rewarded here, Ray."

Ray don't argue with that, because it ain't every eight or ten minutes -- Red Line's not that regular. And besides, he doesn't ever ride the train. He took enough busses when he was a kid, getting from Pilsen up to where Stella and her parents lived on Lake Shore, and now he's got a car, he's never going back to the CTA. Fraser takes the train sometimes, if the weather's really, really, out-of-control shitty and Ray's not around with the car, but Ray -- no way, no how, only time you take the train's when you're going to Soldier or the Cell, don't want to pay for parking.

But the trains rattle the walls, and even if he ain't set foot in a CTA station in years, it's nice to know they're there. World ends, the Red Line'll still be shaking pictures off his walls.

He buys Fraser earplugs and a CTA pass, and every night he watches the shadows of trains flicker on the ceiling until he falls asleep.

Lake Shore Drive's meant for cars like the Goat. It's all sleek curves and fast speeds, and Ray rolls the windows down when April starts and he drives fast, straight along the lake, and just breathes the lake and the exhaust and weird city smells. Sometimes, if he don't have anything better to do and there's no games on, he'll kill a couple of hours just driving up and down Lake Shore, from Hollywood up north all the way down to McCormick Place and back.

He never takes the curves too fast -- man, back in high school, pre-GTO, he and Stella once saw a guy lose control going south, jump the guardrail, cross the northbound lanes, and flip his Jeep straight into the lake, all because he was doing 65 around the Oak Street turn -- but when he gets north of the Loop, it's all straight, and if he's driving late at night, after 3 AM or so, he can just hit the gas and go.

Plus, everybody who's out catching speeders that late, they all know him and they all know his car -- so he honks when he flies past the squad cars hanging out on the shoulder, and they never pull him over, 'cept sometimes when a rookie's not got the memo: leave the nice detective with the need for speed alone.

Fraser don't drive on Lake Shore -- when Ray lets him drive, which isn't often, because Fraser drives like somebody's grandmother. Not Ray's grandmother, though, 'cause all the Kowalskis have driven like bats outta hell, Ray's grandma included, right up until they took her license away, and then sometimes then, too. But Fraser drives like someone else's grandma, and he takes all the stupid little streets, stop signs every two fucking blocks, and it makes Ray crazy, crazier than Fraser already makes him, because you got a car like the GTO under you, you just don't drive like that.

But Lake Shore scares Fraser, even when it's Ray driving, and he survives it by clinging to the door like his life depended on it and saying, "Ray. Ray. Ray! RAY!" every thirty seconds, like Ray's going to let some slowpoke in a Cutlass slow them down. The whole point of taking Lake Shore's to get where you want and get there fast.

Back in the 70's, some group with some dumb name wrote a song about Lake Shore -- Ray can't remember much of the song or anything about the stupid group, but Stella liked them, bought the record, played it over and over again until Ray was ready to break it in half and throw it out her bedroom window onto Lake Shore Drive. But now, Fraser hanging on the door like Ray's trying to kill him on purpose (where Fraser only ever tries to kill Ray with wildly bizarre situations and incidents and accidents) and not, say, driving down to Rush Street to eat at that Italian place Fraser likes, and Ray's got the dumb chorus, the couple of lines he does remember, rolling around in his head.

Tapping his fingers against the steering wheel, watching Fraser try to climb the passenger side window every time Ray takes a curve a little too fast (just to scare him, Ray remembers that Jeep, he ain't stupid), and the lake's sort of glittering with the reflection of the sun setting behind the skyline. It's just this moment, total girl stuff, but it's nice, even with Fraser twitching beside him, so Ray says, "Ain't no road just like it, Fraser, anywhere I've found."

"Excuse me, Ray?" Fraser says, like he's trying to be politely interested while he's figuring out the best way to leap out of the car without Ray stopping at the same time.

"Just some dumb song Stell liked," Ray says. "About Lake Shore. Best road in the whole world, Frase, it really is."

"Well, Ray," Fraser says pointedly, "where I grew up, paved roads were not exactly common, so I'm sorry that I can't share your enthusiasm for high-speed driving in treacherous conditions."

Ray's got no answer, so he just grins at Fraser and revs the Goat's engine a little, and they fly down Lake Shore, fast as traffic'll let them, with the sun glinting off the Sears Tower and the stars starting to show a little over the lake.

Best bars in Chicago, in Ray's humble opinion, whether you're asking or not, are the ones that got no names. All you get so you know it's a bar and not some rathole tenement is the dusty Pabst sign flickering in the window, and maybe a Vienna Hotdogs sign, too, if they're the kind that gets deliveries from the hot dog place down the street.

They're not hard to find, if you're looking -- Ray knows, he's looked. After Stella, before being Vecchio, he spent a lot of time in bars like that. No-name bars with dust on every bottle in the place but the PBR and the Old Style and the Jack Daniels, because nobody there drinks anything but. They all got character - initials carved into the bar tops, and the same old crusty regulars who all look alike, no matter what bar, and one rattling TV that maybe, if you're lucky, gets enough reception on GN to see the Cubs in the afternoon and the Sox at night.

If you're into drinking in the afternoon and well into the evening, at least - which Ray was, at one point, except when the whole Stella thing was falling apart, because then he was usually too drunk to actually appreciate the White Sox game when it flickered into grainy life on the crappy TV in these bars with no names -- well, then you can appreciate the whole greatness of having one city and two baseball teams.

There's the one at 35^th and South Lowe, with the wicked jukebox, straight outta Ray's childhood, and the one at 38^th and Union where the hotdogs from the place next door are just about the next best thing to heaven. And there's the one right across the street from where Old Comiskey used to be -- if it had windows it'd have a great view of the Cell's new parking lot -- which has got a good jukebox and a good hotdog place and it was just about perfect, in Ray's eyes, back when he was walking that beat and again when he was running from Stella's Gold Coast ghosts.

Plus, two years later, the regulars are still the same and it's still great, absolute greatness, when he and Fraser push through the door. They weren't down there for the bar, they were down there for a lead on another body-in-the-lake case, but the lead was a dead end and Ray's feet just sort of walked him through the door and into the dark smoky room, and where Ray goes, thankfully Fraser follows.

Well, some of the time. At least, he's following now.

All the regulars turn and stare, and Ray can't tell if it's 'cause they think they used to know him, crying in his beer (and his whiskey, and his scotch, and his bourbon) over Stella, or because Fraser's glowing like a lighthouse in his dumb red coat, but he'd forgotten about this place until just ten minutes ago and it's all exactly the same as it was before. When he saw it and remembered, he kind of expected that it would be full of shitty Stella memories, only it's not -- maybe because he can't remember most of the nights he spent here when he was drinking himself dumb, maybe just because he's over that, end of story, thanks for asking.

So he makes Fraser sit down at the bar, far end, away from the regulars in case they're like to bite, and only Fraser can sit at a grimy bar in a shitty neighborhood and not slump across the stool like he's never sat nowhere else. Back straight, Mountie posture, which makes the regulars stare, too, but Ray just stares back, shows a little snarl, until one of them grins at him and says, "You're that kid with the rich ex-wife, ain't you?"

And only in this bar is Ray a kid, he ain't been a kid for a long time, but to these guys, he guesses he is, so he tugs on Fraser's sleeve and slides down the bar towards them, orders him and Fraser four Chicago dogs from the place down the street, and an Old Style for him and a Coke for Fraser. Plus the regulars, damn if he can remember their names but he remembers the faces, are asking him all about his love life, and it's funny, it don't hurt no more, so he's feeling generous, like, and so he orders up a round for the whole damn bar.

It's been a while since he did that, and it feels kind of good.

Fraser complains about the hotdogs -- "Are you sure there is actually a meat product underneath all these toppings, Ray, or is this some kind of joke?" "Shut up and eat your hot dog, Fraser" -- and complains about Ray smoking, but the Cubs are winning on the TV, out in Arizona, and Ray shuffles on his stool a little, not quite ready to leave, when he finishes his beer.

"Ray," Fraser says, and Ray jerks away from Chip and Steve on the TV. He'd almost forgotten that Fraser was there. "Why don't you have another beer?"

And Ray's so fucking surprised that he actually orders one. When the bartender slides the bottle across the bar top, Fraser smiles at him brilliantly, cutting across the dark, dim room and Ray knocks the bottle against Fraser's empty glass. "Cheers, Frase."

"Cheers," Fraser says, and rests the back of his hand against the back of Ray's, real deliberate like, and they sit in the dark with the regulars and watch the Cubs thump the crap out of the Diamondbacks, and it's great, real greatness.

God knows how many tourists at the Taste every year, and Stella's the person Ray spills a damn beer on when he's trying to steal his Polish sausage back from Dief. She turns around to yell at him, and she's got her don't-fuck-with-me face on, but when she sees it's him, her face softens. Ray blinks, and maybe it's all the beer Fraser's been buying him, but for a minute he sees 18-year-old Stella overlaid on this Stella in front of him -- softer face, fewer heartbreaks, cheaper clothes. He sees Stella the way she was the summer she turned 18, buying her first legal beer and kissing him, tasting of beer and coleslaw and relish, in the back seat of his car until he was crazy with wanting her.

Then Fraser puts his hand on Ray's back, and Ray blinks and Stella's herself again, looking like she's getting old and maybe like she's too tired to be here. He says, "Hey, Stell," and waits for her disapproval to start.

"Ray," she says, and nods in Fraser's direction, not meeting his eyes, which makes Ray prickle a little, lazy beer drunk or not. "Constable." She's never been quite sure what to think about Fraser and him, together, but she's at least never said anything that's nasty on purpose, either. So he's got to give Stella that, but he's not really interested giving her anything else, even the time of day, lately. Which is kind of new, and definitely nice.

"Charge the wolf for your drycleaning, Stella," Ray says, and he looks down to see what he's going to have to pay to get cleaned, and Stella's in jeans, and a pair of flip-flops that have seen better days, and that picture flickers in front of his eyes again. But Fraser presses his fingers against Ray's spine again, and Ray leans back into the touch and just doesn't care what Stella's going to say, or what she's wearing.

"It's all right, Ray," Stella says, and when she smiles, it's both familiar and completely uninteresting to Ray. "It's the Taste. If I didn't have beer spilled on my feet, I wouldn't know that I'd been here at all."

Ray watches her go, pushing through the crowd, until all he can see is ugly tourists and a thousand blonde women who aren't Stella, and he turns and puts one beer-sticky hand in Fraser's hair and he kisses him, standing in Grant Park with thousands of people wandering past -- he's got Fraser's tongue in his mouth and the roar of the city in his ears.

Stella was the first 40 years of his life, Fraser's gonna be his back 40, at least, if he plays his cards right, and Chicago -- Chicago's been right there for all of it.

Author's notes: Title and epigraph from the Tossers, "Chicago." Ass-kicking beta by Lale. For Sid, as with everything, for teaching me to love Chicago.