sakura_no_miko

Title: Eight Sessions

Author: Speranza (AO3) (Tumblr) (DW)

Fandom: Due South

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Benton/RayK

Warnings: explicit sex (gay), violence, characters dealing with the aftermath of a deadly shootout

Other notes: psychology/therapy, character study,

Length: 34k

Summary: An assignment goes bad, and Ray and Benton are forced to take mandatory therapy sessions.

Sometimes you read a fic at just the right–or wrong–time. I mentioned that I read Performance in a Leading Role, which deals with an AU version of the 2012 Oscars, right before the real-world Oscars that year, and it was kind of surreal.

So here I was, reading a fic about a cop who is coming to terms with the fact that he had emotional involvement in a shooting that ended with several people dead, and I’m reading this fic right in the middle of the manhunt for Christopher Dorner, which was dominating the news here in California for a couple of weeks. You can’t really distill the story down to a quick summary, especially since it’s so fresh and there are still a lot of unanswered details, but basically Dorner, a former cop, wrote this long manifesto about police corruption, threatened to kill cops’ families, and allegedly killed at least two people related to a cop, as well as a few other cops who tried to apprehend him. They had a massive manhunt for him for about a week, and it ended with him dead. Cue talking heads going on and on about ‘why he did it’ and people spouting conspiracy theories about the LAPD.

I bring this up because, quite frankly, I have my own prejudices. I grew up in a neighborhood where people were arrested, frequently, and as such I was surrounded by this “don’t trust cops” mentality. Given the choice, I’d rather avoid being near cops, even though I know it’s more an emotional response than a logical one. I don’t feel safe. I’m not surprised when I hear about corrupt cops and police brutality. I believe there are cops out there with good intentions, and I believe there are cops who are severely under-trained for the stress and danger of the job, and I believe people can make mistakes, especially in high-stress situations. I don’t hate cops. But given a situation where I have to interact with them, I would be wary, and I’d be prepared for trouble, because I know there are also cops out there who could not give less of a fuck about helping people.

So, reading this fic, I found myself really driven to sympathy for Ray, and it was a conflict, because Ray is a cop, and he’s doing things I wouldn’t really want a cop to do, but I’d feel sympathy for him. I was particularly uncomfortable with the vetting scenes with the union rep–the way Ray was being coached to say things in a certain way. I mean, when you’re interviewed, you do have to have some amount of control over your emotions, some confidence and enough to say that you don’t end up stumbling over your words like a rambling idiot. But in my head, I instantly thought, “that’s how you cover things up–by manipulating words and giving explanations. That’s politics.” That’s kind of what I mean by my own prejudices–that my gut feeling is, this is wrong, this reminds me of wrongdoing, even though, at that point in the fic, the reader is meant to sympathize with Ray.

God, I feel like I’m rambling, but it suddenly seemed so important to stress that what you, the reader, bring to a story can be just as important as what an author brings.

I feel like, I could make this an easier, more standard review, talk about things like how much I enjoy the therapy sessions and how they force the characters to examine themselves and their actions; how I adore the reveal towards the end where Ray realizes he was in the wrong, that his emotions clouded his judgement and he has to face up to that fact; how watching Benton break down his walls of propriety and let loose for once just thrill me. I loved reading this fic, start to finish. I liked watching the characters break down and face hard truths.

I just…just can’t quite bring myself to believe that there are enough men good enough to be Ray in this scenario–open enough to stop hiding behind denials, accept that something wrong and terrible happened, and owning up to it. I think the majority of people aren’t wired that way. I think most people just keep up their denial. I’m not sure I could face up to my mistakes that well, and I’m lucky enough not to have made any mistakes as big as getting people killed. I’m amazed to read about a character doing this, doing the right thing and being praised (at least by Fraser) for it, because I’m too cynical to believe it would actually happen in real life.

Lordy, lordy. Feels. Emotional splatter. I should write better than this, really I should.

It’s a good fic. Read it.

(Looking for more fic recs?)
Originally posted on tumblr on 03/04/13