Short fic, due South: "Kept in Trust" (PG)

[hsavinien]

Title: Kept in Trust
Author: H. Savinien
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1130
Disclaimer:  All characters belong to the creators of due South and their respective authors.
Author's Note: This is a direct spin-off of DesireeArmfeldt's "Loaner".
***

"Well, son, it's a fine mess you've gotten yourself into this time."

Benton groaned and rolled over onto his side, wiping the concrete grit off his face with his shoulder.  "Shouldn't you be haunting Ray now?" he demanded.

"Don't be silly," his dad said, lounging against the splintery support beams of the barn.  "I'm tied to you, not your body.  God knows, if bodies were what mattered, I'd be stuck up in the Territories now with only the wildlife and the occasional itinerant trapper for company."

"I suppose," Benton conceded.  "I don't imagine you can give me a hand with this?"  He waggled Ray's hands behind his back.  Ray's body unfortunately did not share Benton's double-jointed thumbs.  On top of that, the men and women who had bundled him into the back of their truck had bound his hands with zipties, which he'd always had trouble with even in his own body.

"Still incorporeal, son."

"Well, at least look around for something sharp or abrasive for me or I'll never get out of here before they get back."

Robert grumbled an affirmative and started wandering the barn, drifting in and out of Benton's line of sight as he squirmed doggedly, trying to pull Ray's knees up close enough to his chest to slip his bound hands under his feet. He managed to slide one foot through, then gritted his teeth as the toe of Ray's boot caught in his coat-sleeve.  Deliberately relaxing his shoulders as much as he could, Benton caught the sleeve in the tips of his fingers and tugged gingerly.

Benton slid his foot free with a groan and rolled onto his back, bracing his free leg and his back against the chilly cement and working his bound hands down and under the other boot.  He let his head drop gently down and breathed for a few seconds, waiting for his back to remind him he wasn't twenty anymore.  It twinged, but in a more general all-over way than he was used to, no sharp ache between his shoulderblades...because they were Ray's shoulderblades.  Ray's long hands, wrists strained and raw against the zipties, Ray's hair falling into his eyes in the absence of hair gel.

Oh dear.  His kidnapping was somehow all the worse that he was in Ray's body.  It was clear that he had a responsibility - an obligation of common decency as much as of friendship - to keep it safe for Ray.  Ray hadn't given permission for its use and endangerment, wasn't even there to try to argue Benton out of a course of action of which he disapproved.  Ben shuddered.  It was somehow terribly unnerving to be entrusted so intimately with Ray's body's safety, though he was nearly as cavalier with his friends as with himself sometimes in the pursuit of justice.

It was not the time to dwell on it.  He needed to escape and he needed to keep Ray's body safe.  He shivered.  To that end...

"Dad?" he called.

"Over here, Benton."

"Any luck?" he asked, rolling onto his knees, then climbing to his feet.  He squinted over toward the sound of ghostly grumblings and shook his head resignedly.  Patting his pockets in wistful (and fruitless) hope, he stepped carefully on the unevenly-poured concrete.

"Why are you mincing like that?" his father asked.

"Ray wears glasses.  Well, occasionally.  Ray is nearsighted and wasn't wearing his glasses when we...switched places and, thus neither was I wearing his glasses when I was grabbed," he explained brusquely.  "I'm not used to the change in vision yet; everything's off-kilter.  Have you found anything useful?"

"Nothing much.  They cleared the barn of everything I'd expect to find in the way of tools.  Just some baling twine and old feed sacks."

Benton sighed and grabbed a feed sack, maneuvering it clumsily around his shoulders for warmth. "Ah.  Well, what do I have in the way of escape options?"

"The door is chained shut and the windows are boarded up."

"Hayloft?"

"Good thinking."  Robert climbed up the ladder, his feet only connecting with the actual rungs every third step or so.

Benton waited more or less patiently in the echoing silence of floating dust.  "Well?"

"Hah!  They forgot to secure things up here.  Still nothing to get your hands free, but there's some rope and a window.  Come on up, son."

It was incredibly awkward trying to climb a ladder without full use of one's hands or familiarity with one's body, but he managed it, only barking Ray's shins a couple of times when he slipped.  The hayloft was full of the mouldering, decrepit remains of hay-bales.  Benton tried not to breathe too deeply.  The window was latched, but not locked or barred, so he opened it a crack and peered outside.

They were in the middle of lightly-wooded, rolling hills with the lit windows of a small farmhouse probably half a kilometre distant.

"That'll be the ruffians," Bob observed helpfully from beside his ear.

"Yes, thank you, I had guessed as much."  Benton peered around.  "You said you found some rope?"

His dad led him over to a coil of rope under the split, strewn remnant of another hay-bale.  It was old, but the fibres appeared to be largely intact, so he gathered it up as best he could and made his way back to the window.  There were, of course, no convenient hooks, beams, or eyebolts, so he leaned as much weight as he could on the window shutter, decided it would have to do, and looped the end of the rope around it.

"You know, you really should use a buntline hitch here for security."

"Thank you, Dad, I know what I'm doing.  I want to keep the rope, not leave it here to advertise that I've escaped."  Benton could hear the irritation grating in hi- Ray's voice and winced.  It sounded very like Ray when Benton himself had done something to endanger them in the pursuit of justice.  "I'm using a bowline," he added stiffly.

His father hummed and frowned and Benton rolled his eyes and breathed on his fingers to warm them, then tied his bowline.  "Anything else of use here?" he asked.

Bob grumbled. "Not that I can see.  Get moving, son, you're losing light."

Benton squeezed out through the window, thankful for Ray's less solid build, and rappelled down the building as best he could.  He shook the rope free of its knot, squinted at the sky for direction, then headed due South, ignoring the rumble of his stomach.  He would find civilization, find Ray, they would track down the kidnappers and arrest them, then they'd find out how to put themselves to rights again.  "It'll be just fine," he told himself, Ray's familiar tenor soothing in his ears.

Comments

[mergatrude.livejournal.com]

Oh, yay! This is terrific.

[hsavinien.livejournal.com]

Thank you!