Notes: So I had things all
planned out to get angsty after the last post.
I didn’t really want to but I felt the plot needed to go there regardless,
and then…I couldn’t. I couldn’t make
myself do it. I just didn’t want that
kind of personal strife between my characters.
Strife happens, strife will
happen, but it isn’t going to happen the way I thought it would. I’ve gone and nerfed myself. I blame Ryan entirely, you smug, adorable
little jackass of a conniving plot bunny.
Who, me? Yes, you.
So, fine. It happens.
I’ll make this part of the story work without the requisite heated
interpersonal angst and/or life-threatening danger that I love so much.
PS-some of the texts at the end are going to look strange. This is stupid blogger's fault, I'm working on fixing it. Just go with the message, you'll get it.
Title:
Love Letters
Part Sixteen:
Unbearably Happy, Desperately Sad
***
Ryan’s phone started beeping at
midnight, waking Ben up out of the doze he’d been drifting in and out of for
hours now, caught somewhere between hungry-sticky-gross and
tired-satisfied-happy. Ben would have
gotten up and turned it off himself, but Ryan was just as clingy tonight as he
had been the last time, and they were also kind of stuck together. Ben probably should have let Ryan follow
through with his cleaning up idea earlier, but he hadn’t quite been able to
make himself let go. And now Ryan had
fallen asleep between his legs, which wasn’t really comfortable for Ben and
probably wasn’t for Ryan either, yet he was still reluctant to wake him
up. The beeping didn’t stop, though, so
it probably wasn’t a phone call or message.
Ben ruffled his fingers into Ryan’s
hair, making it fluff up even more.
“Ryan, your phone’s going off,” he said softly.
To his surprise, Ryan woke up fairly
fast this time. “It…what?”
“Your phone,” Ben repeated. “It’s going off.”
“…oh.
Oh!” Ryan sat up fast, wincing as
their skin peeled apart. “Ouch,” he
muttered as he bent over the edge of the bed and started fishing around for his
clothes. “Where is it, where…ah!” A second later the noise stopped, but when
Ryan came back up he still had his phone with him. His face was illuminated by the small white
screen, and his expression was somewhere between sad and reminiscent, intensely
personal.
“What is it?” Ben asked. He wouldn’t have been upset if Ryan had
declined to tell him; that kind of expression didn’t tend to lead to something
you shared. But of course Ryan did.
“It’s just a reminder I put into my
phone, so that I wouldn’t forget…do you remember what today is?” Ryan asked,
glancing over at Ben.
“February twenty-fourth,” Ben said,
turning the date over in his head.
February…what happened in February?
No holidays (that he celebrated, anyway), no birthdays, no
anniversaries…wait, no— “Shit. It’s
Brody’s birthday.” Ben was stricken by
the realization. “I can’t believe I
forgot.”
“It wasn’t exactly his favorite day,”
Ryan said easily, full of forgiveness that Ben was positive he didn’t
deserve. He came back over next to Ben
and fluffed up a pillow, then propped it against the headboard and relaxed
against it. “Brody didn’t like to be
reminded that he was getting older. You
remember when he turned thirty?”
“I…yeah, I do,” Ben said. One of Ryan’s hands found his head and
started petting him, and Ben turned his face and kissed Ryan’s bare hip,
distantly shocked at how easy it felt.
“Brody sent me something like a dozen texts that night, and most of them
were incomprehensible. Something about
beer and tequila and getting fat.”
Ryan chuckled. “Yeah, he was so vain. Just because he was ten pounds heavier than
he’d been in college. Can you imagine
him at forty? Or omigod, fifty?” Ryan laughed again, then sighed. “I would have loved to have seen him at
fifty.”
“Me too,” Ben said honestly. “Or at
least, I would have loved to have kept in touch with him for that long. Meeting up was never really in the
cards. It was better that way.”
“Why was it better?” Ryan asked. “Because…okay, you absolutely don’t have to
answer this, I totally get it if I’m being invasive and you want me to back
off, but…some of your letters, they read like—like you’re in love with
him. Or like you were, I guess.”
“I’m not in love with Brody,” Ben
reassured Ryan, and he knew he wasn’t imagining the faint shiver of relief he
felt in the other man’s body. “I might
have been, a long time ago. He was the
perfect confidant, you know? I could
tell him anything, and I did. And he did
the same for me, and that was good for both of us. I loved him, and maybe for a little while I was in love with him, but only because
it was safe. I never thought anything
would ever come of it. Brody was very
resolutely straight, for one thing.”
“I know,” Ryan agreed. “Actually, I was thinking about the timing of
it the other day, when I read the letter you wrote coming out to him.”
Ben remembered that letter. He’d been so fucking nervous, nervous but
determined because he’d just come to the conclusion that he was gay, very
definitely gay, and he’d wanted to tell someone. Someone important, but also someone who might
not judge him as harshly as he knew his family would. So he’d gone with Brody, and a week later a
letter had come back to him.
So okay, you’re
gay. Cool. Want a cake or something? Want me to send you flooowers? Pretty pink ones?
Like I care who you
sleep with, man. Just, no details, okay?
There had been more, but Ben had just
stared at the first few lines for a while before breaking down into breathless
laughter, gutted from relief.
“What about the timing of it?” Ben
asked.
“Well…that was a little after my
parents sent me to the Very Private School For Naughty Little Boys,” Ryan’s
voice was thick with sarcasm, “and also right around when Brody took me out and
brought me all your letters and told me that being gay didn’t make me a
leper. Before that he hadn’t said a word
to me, not for months. I think maybe
that you coming out to him is a big part of what made him okay with me.” Ryan smiled down at Ben a little
crookedly. “So thanks for that.”
Which meant that this was evidence, as
far as Ryan was concerned, that Brody had liked Ben better than his own brother. If Brody had still been around and they had
somehow come face to face, Ben would have been tempted to punch him. Hugged him too, but punched him first thing. There was nothing he could say that wouldn’t
sound facetious, though, so Ben just sat up and pulled Ryan in for a quick
kiss.
Ryan was smiling when he pulled back. “It feels more like happy birthday to me
tonight.”
“Brody would never have wanted a kiss
for his birthday,” Ben said. “Maybe a
moon pie and a beer.” Brody had had
simple tastes in some regards. When Ben
had asked, in one of his first letters, what Brody liked to eat, the kid had
written back three pages extolling the virtues of moon pies, which Ben had
never eaten before. When he confessed
his ignorance to Brody, the next letter had come stuffed inside a box of the
pastries.
“Oh god, right!” Ryan was out of bed in an instant, going over
and rummaging through his bags. Ben
leaned over and turned on the bedside light, because looking at Ryan,
especially Ryan naked, was never going to get old. He had tattoos everywhere, not just the
serpent on his arm that Ben had seen before but shoots of bamboo running up his
back, a thick black tribal band around his right thigh, and what looked like a little
bumblebee on his ass.
“Why is there a bee on your butt?” Ben
asked, smiling a little.
“Long story, I’ll tell you—aha!” Ryan pulled out two single-wrapped moon
pies. He came back and held up the
boxes. “Chocolate or banana?”
“Chocolate, please.” The chocolate ones had been barely edible
when he was a kid, but Ben hadn’t been able to stomach banana, despite it being
Brody’s favorite. He took out the
perfectly round pie and looked at it. “The
last time I ate one of these it was because Brody had sent it to me and my
mother didn’t want me to let food go to waste.”
“My mom baked like her life depended on
it when we were little, but if he had a choice Brody always picked moon pies
over whatever she’d made. He did the
same with Cheryl’s desserts, it drove both of them crazy. They finally just started getting him moon
pies for his birthday and sticking a candle in the top. His son Joey’s the same way.” Ryan reached out and tapped his pie against
Ben’s. “Cheers. Happy Birthday, Brody.”
“Happy Birthday,” Ben echoed, then took
a bite. It was just as nauseatingly
sweet as he remembered, the graham cracker crunch muted by the slightly stale
marshmallow fluff, the chocolate thin and waxy against his tongue. It was also inexplicably delicious, which Ben
chocked up to not eating dinner.
This should have been weird. Shouldn’t it?
He’d never had midnight snacks with a lover, sitting naked and filthy in
a messed up bed, spreading crumbs around and not bothering to care. Instead it just felt natural, like of course Ben would be doing this with
Ryan, he wanted to do everything with
Ryan, so why not this?
Once they were done Ryan looked around
and started laughing. “I feel like a kid
at a sleepover.”
“I never had those when I was a kid.”
“You had a deprived childhood. Sleepovers were mandatory for us,” Ryan
said. “If we didn’t bring friends over
my mother worried that we didn’t have any, and then it was talks with teachers
and counselors and all kinds of crap. I
brought people over just to get her off my back.”
“Yeah?”
Moved by a mischievous impulse, Ben got up onto his knees and shuffled
forward until he was straddling Ryan this time around. “What kind of people?”
“Boring people,” Ryan said instantly,
his eyes drawn to Ben’s lips, just a few inches from his face. “People who just wanted to use the pool. Not like you.”
“I would never use you for your pool,”
Ben told him solemnly, cupping Ryan’s neck with one hand and his waist with the
other. A few crumbs lingered on the
edges of his lips, and Ben delicately licked them away. “I might us you for your shower, though.”
“We should shower together,” Ryan said
immediately, his arms settling possessively around Ben’s middle. “Colorado is in a drought, right? We should shower together to conserve water.”
“That’s very responsible of you.”
“I can totally be responsible,” Ryan
said breathlessly. Ben felt him getting
hard and grinned.
“Let’s go do the responsible thing,
then.”
Their shower lasted almost an
hour. Neither one was able to feel
guilty about it, though.
***
Wearing a costume was…well, it was
embarrassing, there was no way around that.
Ben didn’t have Michael’s incredible confidence or Ryan’s joie de vivre,
but it helped that those two were there to detract attention from him. Michael was still dressed up as Director
Fury, and Ryan made a surprisingly feminine Black Widow. When he came out of the bathroom that morning
in a red wig and black leather catsuit, his lips glowing like rubies, it had
been all Ben could do not to throw Ryan down on the bed and have his way with
him again. He hadn’t even known cross dressing
was a kink of his before that, or maybe it was just Ryan any way Ben could get
him.
The last panels wrapped up at noon, the
costume contest took way too long, and by the time their little group came in
second (one of the dragons got first, which was deserved because her costume
involved custom rivets, for fuck’s sake) most people were filtering out of the
hotel.
After getting a text from Starbuck, Ben
left Ryan and Michael talking—they got along splendidly, he had the feeling he
might regret introducing them—and met her at the front door. It took a moment—he barely recognized her in
jeans and a sweater.
“Your stuff,” she said, handing his VIP
bag over. “Except for the drink tickets,
I used those after I figured you were skipping the banquet.”
“I’m glad you did. Thanks for holding onto this for me.”
“No problem,” she shrugged. Her pale blonde hair was pulled back in a
ponytail, and she carried herself differently now, less broad-shouldered swagger
and more of a slouch. “So, hey. Call me if you ever want to watch some more
Battlestar, I’m always up for it.”
Ben wasn’t great with people, but in
this case he recognized the fact that she was reaching out, and that it was
hard for her. And hell, he would like to
see more of the show, so… “Absolutely. How about some time this week?”
Starbuck smiled slowly. “Sure, I’m free Wednesday night.”
“Sounds good.”
“Good.”
She ducked her head for a moment, then looked up. “And you can call me Heather, I guess.”
“I’ll do that. See you later, Heather.”
“Later, Ben.”
Saying goodbye to Heather had been
easy. Saying goodbye to Ryan was a
fucking nightmare.
Ben had driven him to the airport,
naturally, he wasn’t going to let his…god, his what? Boyfriend?
Friend with benefits? Whatever he
was, Ben wasn’t going to let him take a hotel shuttle to the airport.
They didn’t really talk on the
drive. Ryan was getting that look in his
eyes that Ben recognized from the diner, when he was unhappy trying not to show
it, but that was impossible this time around.
By the time they pulled into the passenger drop off Ryan had given up
all pretense that he was fine and settled on miserable, his breathing too
shallow and his eyes too bright. He held
onto Ben’s hand and barely let go long enough for them to get out of the car
and get his luggage.
“You have to come to Boston now. When can you come see me in Boston?” he
asked, so close to Ben that his breath barely had room to frost up between
them. God, it was cold. Ben pulled their joined hands up and kissed
Ryan’s knuckle, unsure where this odd romanticism was coming from. Apparently Ryan was the exception to a lot of
his habits.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly,
regretting it as he watched Ryan’s face fall.
“I’ve got an entire book’s worth of material to figure out before April,
it’s going to be frantic for a while.”
“Oh, right.”
“But I’ll call you every day,” Ben
promised, “just like before. Nothing has
to change.”
“But would you…like things to change?”
Ryan asked hesitantly. “I mean, not that
I want to pressure you or anything, I really don’t, but I mean, if you could
visit me you would want to, right?”
Right at that moment Ben couldn’t think
of anything he wanted more. “Absolutely,”
he said, and kissed Ryan gently, right there in front of everyone heading into
the airport. They got a few pointed
looks but Ben ignored them, not bothered for once because fuck it, he was with
Ryan. “And I will as soon as possible.”
“Okay,” Ryan said. “Okay.”
He kissed Ben again, embracing him tightly. “Or I could just stay,” he gasped when their
lips parted. “I could just not leave; I’d
like to not leave.”
“Baby.”
Ben felt a little helpless in the face of this kind of unhappiness. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Ryan to stay,
or to go and visit him, but it wasn’t breaking him down the way it seemed to
Ryan. “It’ll be fine, I promise.”
“I know, but…fuck, I miss you already.”
“I miss you too.” They stood locked together for another few
minutes until one of the traffic cops came over.
“Drop off only,” the man said
loudly. “You can’t keep your car here
like this.”
“Just one minute,” Ben promised.
“Already had five, buddy.”
“No, it’s fine, I’m leaving, I’m going,”
Ryan said, pulling away. He wiped his
face on his sleeve and shouldered his backpack.
“I’ll let you know when I get back, okay?”
“Please do.” Ben couldn’t resist; he leaned in and kissed
Ryan again, just briefly. “It’s okay,”
he said, futilely, because obviously it wasn’t okay and there was nothing he
could do about it.
Ryan tried to smile. “I know.
I really do.” He picked up his
suitcase. “I’m going now.” He didn’t move.
“I will
ticket you if you stay here any longer, mister.”
“I’m going!” Ben said, glaring at the
guy, who glared right back. When he
turned around again, Ryan was gone.
“Shit,” he muttered. It was easier this way, but it didn’t feel
any better. Ben slowly got into his car
and pulled away from the airport. Why
hadn’t he parked and gone inside with Ryan?
Fuck, he felt awful.
His phone beeped. Ben pulled it out of his pocket and glanced
at it.
Drive safe. <3 span="" u.="">
It took Ben a moment to puzzle that out, but when he did he
had to pull over to the side of the road.
They were texting revelations now? Deep, serious revelations about how they felt
about each other? Fuck. Ben would rather have said it in person. Although…did he mean it?
The most frightening thing was that Ben thought he did.
I <3 span="" too.="" you="">
