Title: The Boots
Fandom: due South
Rating: Gen
Length: 381

Author notes: For the Footwear challenge at fan-flashworks. Inspired by meeting a real Mountie in Toronto at the rcw139 festival, and learning the secret of the boots.
Summary: Everybody obsesses about the boots.


Everybody obsesses about the boots. He knows that. He obsesses about the boots. He polishes them every day. He’s got it down to a fine art. It only takes about fifteen minutes.

“Boots like those, Son, should last a lifetime,” his father said to him, displaying for once, a certain pride. Not on the day of his graduation – he missed that, of course, rather as Ben had expected. Buck Frobisher had turned up instead, which should have been nearly as good. He’d taken him out afterwards, and managed to get him drunk, for the first, and hopefully last time in his life.

But yes, his father had been proud of his son’s boots, and had told him a secret about them.

“You stand in these all day,” he said, “your feet swell up, and your ankles and calves stiffen and –”

“I know.” Ben winced at the tone of irritation in his voice, while tugging the bloody thing off his left foot. “I’ve been wearing them, remember?”

“Of course you have. Of course you have.”

“Do you get used to it?” Ben tried to sound nonchalant, as he lined his boots up by his cot, but honestly, elderly Mounties had waxed lyrical about how these were the most comfortable boots in the world, and he was beginning to suspect a large scale prank on the part of the RCMP.

“You do get used to them.” His father nodded wisely. “Why, after only a few years, you’ll find these the most comfortable boots -”

Ben groaned. “Years?”

Bob laughed. “Look, Son. I’ve got something for you.”

Ben stared, flummoxed. “Boot laces?”

“Yup. Use these myself. Elasticated boot laces. Makes all the difference.”

“Are they – regulation?”

“Well, if they’re not nobody’s saying anything.” Bob tapped his nose. “Try them.”

“Alright.” Ben stared at them dubiously, then shrugged and changed the laces.

When Bob Fraser died, everyone commented on how well Ben was bearing it. A few people considered him cold. “You’d think he’d cry a little,” Gerrard’s wife was heard to mutter at the wake.

At the end of the day, Ben sat privately in his room and, pulled out the polish and rags for his daily ritual of cleaning the boots. It wasn’t until he started undoing his elasticated laces that he cried.