Thank you for your explanation about the Rays. I agree with most of what you said about RayV, but I can equally see RayV becoming Fraser's lover after first acting as Fraser's brother, or RayV staying as Fraser's brother. I can't see Kowalski as anything other than a work partner and casual friend to Fraser - because he treats Fraser so poorly at times (he HIT him), and the Fraser from the first two seasons, whom I consider the canon Fraser, would not want to be a lover to someone like that.
As I’ve said, I understand shipping Ray V and Fraser, and your interpretation of the characters is just as valid as mine. If you don’t like Ray K, you don’t like him, and there’s really not much I can say that would change that. However, I’m an academic and I love to discuss this stuff, so :D
Personally, I don’t think Fraser is capable of being a casual friend with a work partner - they get into too many life-or-death situations. And yeah, Ray doesn’t always treat Fraser the greatest, but he learns (or, rather, unlearns poor behaviors) as the series progresses. He hit Fraser, Fraser hit him back. They’re active people who are around violence -- what matters is that, once it happened, Fraser *walked away* and Ray *never hit him again*.
Fraser is not a peach, either. He can be condescending and stubborn and doesn’t listen. They are both of them flawed people, and I think one of the more dangerous things to do when writing characters is to ignore their flaws.
And I don’t know that I agree with you about the first-two-seasons Fraser - his big romance with with Victoria, after all, who does all sorts of nasty things to him. (Though, I like to think that he learned from her what not to sleep with). And Ray V *shot* him, which, granted, is different than lashing out in anger/frustration, but Fraser nearly died. If he forgave Ray nearly killing him, I think he could forgive Ray hitting him.