#{it's soft hours; may i offer you some diet angst; a bit of sad-lite; comfort but it's giving 'drive'; the melancholia with the fur}

[kylo-wrecked]

Ben's face, still somewhat flushed, falls a little. Beth's veil only hides the features of what he's already heard in her voice long before she's thought to bury them. The tremor in her hushed admission tells him everything he needs to know.

He hates that he does this to her.

He hates himself for making Beth feel she has to pack herself away.

He hates that he's big as he is, mammoth of flesh, titan of bone, and still not big enough for the both of them.

He hates how hard he clings to the idea of a them, an us, and most of all, how he says nothing, how the thought of giving voice to his needs paralyzes him, how even the word, desire, makes him turn to stone, in a way that's convinced him of his lack of humanity and his lack of hope.

Ben huffs. Rolls onto his mattress, smearing an ocean's spray of blues and greens across his sheets. He hopes it stains. He hopes not to hear the sound of Beth leaving, and his heart jumps at the tempo of Beth's packing, the small, defeated clap of each paint tube, then her palette, the small one that looks like a compact mirror, inside their case.

Yet, in his silence, Beth only retreats further.

In his silence, the dry food clinks in D.O.'s steel bowl, and there's the faint, grateful pat of her dog tongue, damp muscle on Beth's flesh. A lonely sound.

Back in Dontamo, late at night, the patterns of breathing, of tongues extending, springs creaking like katydids he recalled from crystal nights so long ago. Sometimes that's all you'd hear for hours.

Ben calcifies on his back, watches the light shift on the ceiling, certain that she'll leave after she feeds D.O. But when it comes to feeding Ben, Beth mustn't take his lack of response for an answer one way or another because he hears the burner click on.

He doesn't know who to thank. Probably Beth. He slowly pulls himself upright, and edges off the bed, bashful in front, lathered with paint in back—both sides in conflict with the weight of his features.

Finally, when it may even be too late, he says, "Beth, I'm sorry.”

She doesn’t turn so easily. He thinks. He thinks about what his counselor keeps telling him.

"I got…defensive," Ben says, at last, a little surly, gesturing at the impression of the word, an unwanted guest.

But there're no more ghosts to recall once he comes up behind Beth because, when his solid chest, his ribcage dressed in scars and sweat, meet Beth’s soft bronzed shoulders, and the rest of him curls around her, his solar plexus against her back, his belly at her tailbone, it's almost like his arms're right where they need to be, and he's where he needs to be; here. Beth fits; all of her fits here in his arms; here. Their bodies call to each other, and their bodies pressed together make a fairy story.

"I wish a lot of things." Ben rests the scruff of his chin on Beth's crown and lowers the flame under a pot of water. Hugs her close. Imagines they're nesting dolls. He rolls his cheek onto her temple, speaks dark and soft in her ear. "Mostly, I wish I never made you sad. 'I had three wishes, that'd be one. 'Second."

Ben squeezes Beth's waist, smoothing the inch or so of her skin made accessible to him with an artisan's pliancy, and just maybe, his thumbs get away with a little more, over the little beads of metal, gently kneading the tautness in her pelvic belt with no other intent but to soothe, though he could as easily fold Beth's torso in his golem's hands, pack her away like her paints.

"Second wish," he says into her ear. "I'd make you stop being sore at me and come back from wherever you go to make yourself small. 'Cause you're not to me."

He doesn't mention a third wish. They both know what it'd be. But then Ben thinks that whenever the moon hangs down to the lunette on its silver string, and the crickets start up their brush bands for the promise of a blue velvet night, Ben thinks he'd use his third and final wish for Beth, so she could use hers to catch a star.

@kylo-wrecked   {{from this hole in our souls}}

“Wishin’ is sometimes all I got,” she says softly. A splinter of her already smoke-quiet voice.  She wishes she’d been born someone else, someone of value. She wishes her brother never went away, to a place she couldn’t follow. She wishes she could live inside of Ben, to be a part of him. She wishes a lot of things. Her hands falter after his muscle ballet ceases, and she draws away. Gathers herself up off her knees and pads her way to the little, stain-splattered metal sink where she washes the evidence of her art from her hands.  He will shower and in that great deluge, her efforts will be washed clean. They will never have existed, not even in memory. She doesn’t blame him now nor will she later. He is a clock-maker god, he winds the watch and lets time run down. His body might be the canvas but the firmament doesn’t require his keeping.

Her hair veils her face as she packs up her paint. Offers him only faint slices of features ~the tip of a nose, the arch of a cheek, a glimpse of chin~ and even these are a little hollow. She’s retreated into herself as she often does with others, a rarity with him.

“Mebbe some day I’ll take you. Haumea. Dorumaa. Somewhere so far from here, you’ll forget it. You’d like shark-diving. Scuba or snorkelling.” She deliberately doesn’t answer his last question, hopes he takes it as something she just didn’t hear; it happens every so often if she’s not looking at his mouth, when they’re turned away from one another. She doesn’t know the answer to give him and anything she might say will hit too close to the bone. Beth doesn’t feel substantial enough today to bleed for him. “I’m going to feed DO. You wan me make somet’ing for you?”