Disclaimer: I don't own Due South and I'm not making any money off the characters I've borrowed.


Honour Bound - Part 2

Francesca had stormed out of Benny's apartment and, despite his efforts to call her back, she hadn't even looked back.

He got himself dressed in a kind of trance and began the long walk to the consulate. As he walked he pondered his predicament. Just when he had reached the conclusion that, if indeed he had proposed to fiery Italian, he had to keep his promise to her and become her husband, Ray pulled up beside him in the Riv.

Hey Benny! Benny! Fraser!" It took the Mountie a few moments to realise that his friend was calling him. Normally this would be a welcome sight but today Benny was worried by how his friend might react to the news.

"I'm sorry Ray. I didn't see you there." Ray frowned; it wasn't like Benny to be unobservant, usually his keen observational skills led the pair on a dangerous chase after some criminal or other.

"Come on Benny. Get in. I'll give you a ride." Benny decided to bite the bullet and accept the lift his friend was offering him. Sooner or later he was going to have to face Ray and Benny knew that it would be best if the Armani-loving detective heard it from him and not the grapevine. Not that this knowledge was making it any easier for the confused Mountie.

Ray noticed his companion's silence and the way he was nervously rubbing his hand. It worried him because he knew that when something was really troubling Benny he didn't tell anyone, unless they forced him to and only then if it didn't conflict with one of his many principals. Ray figured he had nothing to lose by trying.

"Hey Benny, what's up." Benny jumped and looked at Ray, who would have sworn that he saw fear in the other man's eyes. The detective's instincts began to go into overdrive. He knew that Benny was hiding something, which he knew that Ray should know but was finding it difficult to tell him. Had the tension in the air felt less serious Ray might have been amused by the amount of information that he had gleaned from just looking in his friend's eyes, however the tension between the two friends had a very serious feel to it and Ray wanted to know why.

"Ray… I…" Ray pulled over and looked at the stuttering man.

"Come on Benny. Spit it out."

"IthinkIgotengagedlastnight." Benny whizzed the words out so fast that it took Ray a moment work out what he'd been told. When he figured it out his jaw dropped; he was gobsmacked. Benton Fraser, uptight Mountie, engaged!

"You, engaged? You're joking, right?" Ray would've laughed if Benny hadn't looked so damn lost. The Mountie ducked his head and sighed.

"I wish I was." Benny looked at Ray, his eyes wide, as if he had just been spooked. "I don't mean to sound disrespectful to the lady but …" He let the sentence hang, unfinished, in the air. Ray nodded; he understood.

"Benny if you don't want to marry her, then why don't you just tell her?" Ray asked even though he knew that Benny probably felt some kind of moral obligation to marry the woman, now that he'd proposed. He was surprised when Benny laughed. It wasn't a funny laugh; it was more of a scoff, like he found something ironic in what Ray had asked.

"That's what she asked me, as she was telling me that I had proposed."

"She had to tell you?" Benny wobbled his head in a half nod, half shake kind of motion.

"I don't actually remember proposing Ray."

"What!"

"I don't actually remember proposing Ray." Ray crossed his arms and frowned at his friend.

"Yeah I heard that. What do you mean you don't remember proposing?"

Well before I woke up this morning, the last thing I remember is… my now fiancée met me at the consulate after my shift. She gave me a cup of coffee but then I started to feel light headed and she had to help me into the car." The detective's mind was working so fast he could almost hear the cogs turning.

"So you don't remember anything between her giving you a coffee and waking up this morning to find out you were engaged?"

"Well, other than getting into the car… no." Ray nodded. He had a hunch, well more of a suspicion about what had happened. It was so obvious to him and he couldn't believe that the Mountie hadn't considered it. Then again, maybe he had, but he had likely dismissed it, he seemed to think that most people were genuinely good, trustworthy. Ray knew he had to appeal to the detective in Benny.

"What did the coffee taste like Benny?" Benny's eyebrows drew together before he closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose. He allowed his mind to drift back to the first sip he had taken of the coffee and tried to concentrate on its taste. He opened his eyes and looked at Ray, confision clouding his blue eyes.

"Well Ray, as you are aware, coffee isn't my normal drink of choice." Ray nodded for Benny to continue. "I find the taste and smell to be very overpowering and, while I'm reasonably sure that there was something other than coffee in the cup, I can't identify it. Ray thought that he'd hit the jackpot here and that Benny was now on the same wavelength as him.

"So you think she might have drugged the coffee?" Benny didn't look at him horrified so Ray assumed the thought had at least crossed the Mountie's mind. The slightly slouched shoulders and the tint of hurt in Benny's eyes also told Ray that, even though Benny had considered the possibility that he'd been drugged by this woman, it wasn't something he had expected from her and the thought that she might have done something like that hurt him.

"That's one possibility, yes Ray. However it could also have just been sugar or sweetener in the coffee." Ray's earlier thoughts made another question pop into his head, that he couldn't believe he hadn't asked earlier.

"Who is the woman Frasier?" Benny tensed up. Partly because Ray had, yet again, mispronounced his name but mostly because this was the question he had been dreading. His answer was barely more than a whisper.

"Francesca." Ray's eyes bulged.

"You woke up next to my sister!" Benny could see this was not going to be a good conversation.

"No Ray. I woke up on the floor. You're sister was in my bed." Ray was fuming.

"How could you! My sister! Wait a minute… you said you wished you were joking… You got something against my sister? Is my family beneath you?" Benny sighed, he had been dreading this.

"No Ray. I love your family but I…"

"You what Fraser!"

"Your sister frightens me Ray. I am not afraid to jump on moving vehicles or face down armed criminals. Those situations make sense to me, they are relatively predictable, but you're sister is intimidating and unpredictable." Ray couldn't really argue with what Benny had said. He knew that Benny was intimidated by Francesca; he saw the rabbit in headlights look that his friend got every time Francesca suggested anything to him. He couldn't see Benny proposing to Francesca, but he didn't want to believe that Frannie would drug Benny to make him think that he's proposed. Something odd was going on here and Ray needed to find out what. Before his friend did something stupid, like marry his sister.