#Rusty Cage|ExCon verse

[brooklynislandgirl]

NAME: Ben Prestor

AGE: 34

DO YOU LIKE TO CUDDLE?: He does. Permission helps.

CAN WE MAKE-OUT?: …Yes. 

A NIGHT IN OR DINNER OUT?: Out is okay. Easy on the surprises. 

WHIP CREAM OR CHOCOLATE SYRUP?: *frown deepens as he realizes he and Beth apply different meanings to these… things… and none involve sundaes* Syrup?

CHOCOLATES AND ROSES?: Nah. He’d rather do something for you.

WHAT MAKES YOU A GOOD VALENTINE?: He didn’t say that.

WOULD YOU COOK FOR ME?: Beth… *thinks* All right.

WOULD YOU LET ME COOK FOR YOU?: *clears throat* That’s okay.

WHERE WOULD YOU TAKE ME ON A DATE? Somewhere natural so he doesn’t have to think about tablecloths. 

WHO’S PAYING?: *flustered silence*

WHAT DID YOU GET ME FOR VALENTINE’S DAY?: He made you something, naturally. A lovely thing carved in bone with a fine skill he may take a little for granted. He’s sorry about that. You have to kiss him first, though, because ^this was hell. 

Better Together || -

Beth's fingertip traces from the natural part in his hair down the slope of his nose, pausing at the very tip, before continuing on over his lips ~she takes care to neither be kissed nor nipped on the journey~ and on down to his chin. From there she travels on an itinerant journey to explore the parts between. The sweep of his jaw, the arch of his cheek. A scattering of freckles here, a mole there. The shell of his ear, the etched lines of his brow. But specifically not the scar. He has trouble enough with that, and she only needs to drown in the turbid headwaters of his eyes to see the way he turns from stray ideas of touch. They are the same in that regard; his is kapu from pain and misery, hers is kapu for its host of other reasons. Even now as they make themselves into living nesting dolls ~she being the holder of the others, Ben tucked up and around her as if with enough determination he can fit into the space between her ribs and disappear, and D.O rested her head on his thigh, where Ben could pet her and she was part of this cozy circle. She doesn't know when she abandoned the quiz, having used it as a buffer to broach things she's too uptight to just bring up like an adult. Some questions don't need to be asked. She knows his name. Has heard everything whispered and shouted about it. From himself, from others. She trusts D.O. as the best judge of character. Beth knows they are of the same age, though it's funny that they should both be water and she's the elder by four-ish months. "I'm not much f' goin' out dese days." He doesn't know how close Mos Espa has come to having a new ever flowing river running red through town like an ancient apocalyptic sign. But she remembers every flinch, every inward curl of shoulder and shuffle-drag of foot. She remembers every time he doesn't lift his gaze and every nasty thing still muttered behind his broad back. Some day she will make them all regret every slight cast his way. She won't shed a tear over it. He ghosts the single word against her ribs and sends a rush of goose bumps rushing from the curve of her hips to the nape of her neck. Ben doesn't always need words; expressions, a flick of his wrist, the tectonic shift of his shoulders is enough to make an elegant counterpoint. She's grateful he doesn't gravitate toward roses, and in turn rewards him with the brush of lips across his brow, the shift of pose allowing him to burrow just that much deeper into her. Ben is a sensitive soul. Maybe because it's so big in him it pushes at his skin and threaten to spill out of his nicks and scars like spring sap. Her fingers tangle themselves in the thick ink of his hair. Lets it stain her skin the way he stains wood; with patience and care, the mark of hesitance. "We don' have to, ya know. Can jus' order some kine jalike. Somet'ing dat totally break da mout'. I could go get it. We could go togeddah." She can't cook, and it seems unfair to force such a thing on him if he's not feeling quite up to it. Sometimes she wonders if he resents food as a necessary evil, the way she does her meds. Therapy. Things she's forced to do in order to simply maintain survival level existence. She doesn't know how to carefully pry at that without letting the worms of argument escape the can. "Or mebbe, jus' could consume each oddah. Live off of..." She trails off, the word sticking in her throat. She shifts again and D.O huffs a little sigh before grudgingly removing her head from Ben's leg, the C of her back now pushing against him as she rests her muzzle on her paws. It's not an indictment of Ben and Beth's relationship but rather being disgruntled by all the moving around. For her part, Beth shimmies down just a little and the bed-frame creaks mournfully. Ben needs a better bed, especially if Beth is going to take up her own negligible space. Her hand slides up the rungs of his ribs. Swerves toward his back. The hand in his hair tightens only enough to tip his face upward. Her lips grace his, a half breath caught between their mouths. "I wanna kiss you. Gonna do it now, okay?" It seems weird to announce her intent; not as a warning, not as a demand ~she has few of those and never with him~ but maybe she's looking for permission, for an acceptance. A substitute for the things that she can't quite get out of her own head.   

[brooklynislandgirl]

@kylo-wrecked

Clarice Lispector, from “Preciousness", Complete Stories (tr. by Katrina Dodson)

[brooklynislandgirl]

@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?”

[brooklynislandgirl]

@kylo-wrecked  {{carried forward from this gloriously savage offering}}

Fervid light gleaming through half-lidded midnight bathes her in his pathos, but it serves to also distract him from what she does. As her hands work his skin warmth pours from her touch and into the wound. The first wave of it meant to numb the pain ~physically, at least. There is so little she can do about the other kinds he suffers~ and the second will sweep through him killing off any infection it might find. She can't coincidentally salve the wound shut with just her want. That he would see. That she wouldn't be able to explain. So it will have to be left up to nature, his own body's strength. Her gaze flickers up to face and back to his body once she feels caressed by the pull of his lips. She'd only intended to watch him form the words of his answer, but she can muddle through without that sort of crutch. At least until she's done. What she doesn't expect is how closely she relates to his questions. Or the shame that climbs up her spine one vertebrae at a time. He exposes himself down to the soul without prelude. She can only see it as the rush of Pele's blood seeping into Namaka's cold-salt world. Maybe Ben is the land that hardens in the aftermath. How long does he have to lie in the centre of his own life until he builds up layers that might become fertile with a semblance of renewed vibrancy? Will the scars he carries within and without even allow for it? And it makes her wonder if they even bothered to prepare him for what that new life would be like. Had her brother lived long enough to return to civilian life he would have had the benefit of attending a TAP... Transition Assistance Program. People like Ben, rehabilitated presumably, certainly could use something like that. Make it less likely that they would re-offend, but at the same time, it would support them to find their way. He has no north star, no needle on any sort of compass. Once she'd learned about his travails, she'd of course invested time and energy researching the entire process, only to be shocked by the lack of any help. By the apathy shown to him, and how utterly dehumanised he must have felt. It's all so horrific and she can only imagine the millstone around his neck it must feel like. Why it carves permanent grief in place of his smile, and blackens out his gaze. And why does it feel like an irrevocable loss when his hand goes slack? She misplaces some of his words between D.O.'s distress and the subsequent twitch of his body, causing her to focus on the last of the stitches. She stops what she's doing for a moment because she needs to tie them off, then treat and cover the wound up. While she cares about Ben she has no faith that he'll bother with after care. Maybe in the following days she'll be able to satisfy the itch at the back of her throat where the questions prickle as they run over each other but never manage to make it out of her. "...A vicious t'ing, eats a' ya softest places an' leave you hollow. Believe me I know." She can't help but fill in what he leaves to silence because she's heard herself time and again saying so in her private rages. In the moments where she indulges in her own violent instincts that are ultimately unfruitful because the only thing she hurts is herself and the things she can easily replace. She's never so beautifully tragic. She can't be Ben because there's no Beth for her. Not a word she says is a lie. Not with the look on his face and how familiar it feels. She can all but taste it. His blaspheme rolls off her back unheeded. But she doesn't move again when he tries his best to bargain with his dog, her lovely sweet face and soulful eyes communicating her anxiousness. She can smell it too, of that Beth is sure, and maybe both women in his life share the same fear. Beth however has the ability to express herself in something other than furtive licks and keening vocalisations. Funny though, her instinct is to kiss him too. Kiss him until he can't remember anything but the way her lips feel against his. Until all he wallows in is her cinnamon breath and the way her fingers stroke the side of his neck, wrap a lock of his thick hair around the smallest tip. Maybe he'd feel better if she could cry for him. When he settles and his skin is wet with different salt water ~sweat instead of tears instead of sea~ she makes a quick and tight knot. Cuts off the excess of the surgical thread. She shifts and sweeps the materials back into her kit, she'll dispose of it all later, and then pulls out the antibiotic ointment and gauze. Automatic movements so deeply ingrained she doesn't even have to think about it. "Of course I have t' do dis, Ben." Her voice is quiet but firm. She's not so much arguing with him as she's reciting fact, with a touch of humour to assuage whatever harshness he might find in it. "Took an oath once, an' it was f' life, ya know? Sides... your hands shake too much an' its in an inconvenient place for ya t' do it yaself an' I've nevah seen a mirror anywhere. You're too pretty to make a mess of." She offers him a quick wink and follows it up with a shake of her head. "You didn' drag me anywhere. I'm here because I wanna be. You can't turn me into a victim because I won' let you take my autonomy." She slowly reaches for her best haole, using words that are too sophisticated to speak in her native Pidgin but she's making a point. One he has to realise one day. Despite having suturing scissors, she tears the tape off with her teeth before smoothing it down across his muscles. "Instead of an apology I nevah need nor require, instead of tryin' to push me away, if I'm allowed to ask...jus' wha' da heck happen, any way? Someone do dis or did you do it to yaself?"

[brooklynislandgirl]

@kylo-wrecked  {{xx for I am agrieved over the loveliness and the stark honesty}} Sometimes she wonders how he can break pieces of himself and still be alive. His neck, his knuckles, his knees. Every last n-word she could apply to him. He'd only sneer if she said it aloud. Remind her that it's bubbles of nitrogen and the like building up. Becoming compressed in synovial fluids. Like she doesn't already know. He called her a nurse once, she said it was something like that.She makes the choice she's given. Almost instantly feels like it's the wrong one. But like bees stirred from the hive, she can't put the words neatly back into her mouth. Through the veil of her lashes, she watches his mouth. She has to, to make sure she doesn't miss a word, however painful it might be. It can't really get any worse than it's been the last few weeks. Ever since the wood incident. And yet, he draws first blood, and all she can do is sniff a little. How dare he be able to see it and then let it go. She can't be like that. Pain sings to her, and she's powerless but to try to make a difference, whether it's body or mind. The soul is harder to reach and far more delicate. It's his soul that she worries about the most. It's far more fragile than he'd ever admit to. Maybe it isn't that she's surprised, maybe he doesn't know what to do with her. He's not wrong, after all, she is moody. She almost touches that slice of skin. Her hand rises then falls back. He's not done yet, and it's rude to interrupt. She doesn't tell him. She's never found the words and even if she could be the most eloquent human on the planet, she doubts he'd care to hear it. There's nothing she can offer that would be any worse than what he's already lived. She doesn't tell him because he doesn't ask, because what good would it to to add to his problems. He doesn't share unless she drags it out of him. And she hates it. Hates it. Prying at his wounds and reopening them, even if air and sunlight might ameliorate the hurt. Even the heavy pause, where he's willing to look anywhere but at her, keeps her on tenterhooks. Is so filled with everything they can't imagine and some things that they know too well. He becomes a sculpture of grief. Contemplation. Things stone workers have tried to capture and come close but never for the right reasons. Both Pygmalion and Galatea at once but of all the gods, Aphrodite is the last she can compare herself to, and there's no breath of life that can pull Ben out of himself. She knows. She's tried.The last thing he says becomes a little muddled. She sacrifices clarity for the clean, dusty scent of his hair. Reminds her of wheat at midnight, dark but welcoming. "I'm sorry," she breathes. Those thick strands don't buffet. She doesn't thunder, she doesn't have the voice for it. "I...I don' like you, Ben." He is her friend. He doesn't have any, beside her, beside the doberman who stretches his leg until one paw pushes against Ben's feet. But even that... She doesn't just like Ben. And that's been killing her bit by bit like poison. The pretending every day that she does. Laughing when he delivers a dry pithy observation. While the dark sweep of his voice wraps itself around the back of her neck. When he pulls her into his lap and curls up around her, eyes closed, trying to shut the world away. Beth shifts. Braces herself internally for the inevitable thing that is going to happen, because she knows it in her bones. Like a sailor that battens down his hatches at the first trace of a red morning even if he's no longer on the sea. Her lips are soft when they land on his. She doesn't try to pry her way into him, but drags her mouth in such a way, with such slowness that he can stop her if he wants, until his lower lip rests between hers. He tastes like saltwater. She can't tell who the tears comes from.

[brooklynislandgirl]

Somewhere there’s gravel that lines his chest and maybe even into his throat, where the water of his words struggle upward so that by the time they fall from his lips they are cloudlessly pristine. It’s his posture that frays at the edges. Pulled taut by the weight of things so ephemeral she cannot put a hand ~merciful or vengeful~ on it. Despite the imprecision, he can still cut to the bone. And so she bleeds toward him, square inches at a time. And she stops dead in those very empty steps. Not that she makes much noise, bare toes peeking out from under her skirts. Leaves her shoes at the door as always because he has enough trouble without her dragging the devil inside with her wake. But her eyes…they trail almost hawkishly to his arm. She can only blame herself, but the apology crumbles apart before she can manage to get a grasp on it. And his voice submerges her again. Harder to follow this time through the gritted teeth, the lack of malleability in his jaw in shadowed profile. He’s telling her about the dark fairy-tale she only knows in soundbites and rumours. Out of respect, Beth never bothered to look into the details and shut-out the things she hears in town. If he wanted her to know the whole story, it wouldn’t have taken months that feel stretched into epochs for her to have more than a framework of the truth. She knows he went away for murder. She’s certain it was his father. There’s a bitter jealousy in the pit of her stomach. Beth doesn’t believe in coincidence, not really. But she can’t help the shiver down her spine when he mutters that particular thing under his breath. Did he somehow know what she was thinking? Was it because of the water and the pain? Or was it somehow a poorly timed invitation that at any other time in any other place almost might sound…romantic? Right then, Ben ceases to be entirely a person. He becomes a shade of himself, a Mariusz Lewandowski masterpiece in washed out tones. She thinks she might miss him, if he’s to fade away completely. The smallest teeth of her guilt could consume her whole and she wishes she had a way to spool back the threads of time. Instead she has hands that are just as empty as her previous steps had been, too small and frail to span the breach between them, if he’d even accept them and not pull away like D.O might from a stranger. It is then that she realises she forgives him even before she’d thrown down the proverbial gauntlet. That maybe she didn’t even need a truth, not when she could see that look on his face. A look they both midwifed into being with little precaution. With even less provocation. “You could,” she begins. “Would all be kind of fruitless, d’ough. Wha’ more cliche dan…an entitled little girl who got so sick an’ tired of watchin’ da world from her Ivory Tower dat she took everyt’ing she could put inside a sea bag, took a car she inherited an’ decide t’ drive all da way across a country wi’ no destination in mind, hopin’ mebbe she could lose herself along da way.” There are millions of stories that begin and end that way. Ones that span a dozen genres and each as bland as the one before.

“I don’ know…I don’ know. Mebbe aks me somet’ing else. Somet’ing dat might actually mattah t’ ya.”

@brooklynislandgirl sent :// [ whiskey sour ] Eyes glossy, she stands in the door way. Face made up of a mosaic of emotions that scholars can debate endlessly in a hundred years. Maybe she doesn't even know what they are or why they creep up into her voice as she helps to carve out the infinite space between them. She hates that it almost sounds like pleading to her own ears. "Wha's da bigges' lie you've ever told someone? Mo'beddah- why you tell it?" {Ex!Ben}

{ from this meme }

—☾—

Ben says it outright. Says what he sees in Beth's mosaic of emotions. 

"Not to you," he calls out, so she can't pretend to blunder the words. "'Bout anything. Least you could do is trust me not to lie."

Four farmhouse walls with their vertical slats. The kitchen lives in the same corner of the room as Ben. Beth knows he hates when people hang in doorways. She could cross the eight feet towards him. 

Nah. More questions. 

He misses the stove somehow and burns himself. Just not paying attention. Makes a reflexive sound, something between a grunt and a groan. 

"I had to lie in court," he grumbles. "Under oath." The words strain through his teeth. 

Ben flips the kitchen tap on, running cloudy water from the tank behind the old coop, what Uncle Luke called 'the moisture farm’ until it’s clear.

"Was that or life without parole" he explains, sticking his hand under the tepid current. "Guess I thought I deserved it at the time."

His court-appointed lawyer didn't think he did. To his surprise, neither did the twelve members of the jury. Guilty of manslaughter. Guilty of conspiracy. But not the rest.

"Fuck me," he says in wonderment at the pink ripple on his wrist, the side of his palm. To Beth, nothing. His body angled away communes what Ben won't put into words. He won't be made to justify his feelings for her. 

Ben stares at the light burn. Seeing somebody else's hands, two red claws. Boiled clean. 

How long's he going to keep it from her, and isn't that the same as lying? Even if Beth already knows. If she looked into him when they met. If she doesn't care. He'd have to 'fess up to it himself.

He's never lied to Beth before. Why start now? She knows he's holding something back, something besides himself. 

"Biggest lie," Ben says absently. Spares Beth a thoughtful glance, a glimpse of his profile beneath his sable mane. Breathes. The air musty, tasting like an apple left to dry in the sun. "Told my ma I was gonna stay with some friends for a while."

Every breath draws on tension until his words pare away to no more than the bare facts. 

"Said they knew the family. Didn't want her to worry."

The lie boys have told their mothers for generations. The most benign lie in the universe. That was the lie that changed his life. 

Ben turns off the faucet and looms uncertainly over the four-legged basin, the four-burner stove, and its big copper pot simmering goldenrod. Over the promise of yellow, the last of the day's sun, in a bucket. His brown shirt pilled with florets. 

"Do I get to ask back?" 

[brooklynislandgirl]

Advent Calendar: Day 27 @kylo-wrecked​

Beth’s already let herself in and made herself at home by the time Ben and D.O. come in through the door. Guilt laces everything about her when he stops short and for a moment looks like he could, through no fault of his own, murder her where she stood. Only she isn’t standing. Far from it. The little house, if she’s using the word generously, was all ice by the time she’d gotten here. There might not be a lot of snow in the desert but the temperatures could drop brutally cold once it hits sundown. The lights were off too, and if she had thought better of it, she might have simply waited on the porch or even in her rented suite. He doesn’t ever come up to her place. Instead, she takes the key from under the coffee tin and realises two things; it fits a door no longer part of the structure and hadn’t been for a long time, and that he doesn’t actually care that his door isn’t locked. She doesn’t imagine him having a lot in the way of unexpected visitors, really. She puts the key back in its unsuspecting resting place and let herself in. She turns on a couple of lights and it breaks her heart that he doesn’t have one single seasonal item, not a single bit of glitter or glow. She busies herself with the bits and bobs she finds laying around and makes him a little tree of scrap wood and metal, and below it she places the gifts she meticulously wrapped for him in plain paper she’s drawn over, and tied together with one of her much-prized hair ribbons. It’s nothing earth-shattering, just some replacement tools for the ones she noted were a little rusty and age-worn. Some wax pencils to mark the few measurements he makes; she loves that most of his art is done with the eye and the heart. The gift for D.O is much more obvious, a meaty bone almost as big as she is tall, and a soft little  duck toy, though she did remove the squeaker. Plastic inside animal toys is a recipe for disaster and a huge vet bill she isn’t sure Ben can swing. But even all of that only takes so much time. She browses through his pantry and manages to find just enough things to make a hearty stew which she puts on his stove-top, one of those ancient wood burning ones that doubles as a heat source. The aroma doesn’t take much time to fill the space and add to the comfort of the warmth. Still, everything is too cold for her except Mos Espa at high noon, and she indulges herself by slipping one of his shirts over her own, and curling up on the nearest flat surface ~his bed~ and bundling up with the blanket that still smells like him. That makes her burrow her face into it. And maybe a part of her longs for more than just bedding, more than just well worn flannel. She doesn’t blame him, no, not at all, that this is what he comes home to; food and gifts and a Beth blinking at him with sleep-heavy eyes. And the softest smile she could ever hope to have. “Oh, hey. Uhm. Sorry I jus’ help myself in…but Merry Christmas?”

[brooklynislandgirl]

@kylo-wrecked  {{XX}}

No matter how gentle Beth might be, she knows that jerk away from her touch is going to come so she tries to minimise the damage it might further cause, and the associated pain along with it. She watches the ripple of abdominal muscle. In the back of her mind he looks like a living painting from one of the great masters, but closer to her gaze all she can see is the pain that must be rippling through him. Were he to open his eyes, what would she find in their striated depths? If she had a guess, it would be shame. Something of the residual vibration of his voice, dark and deep, but unusually flat and lacking his overall timbre, strikes her all wrong. She can’t pinpoint the origin of the red. It is tacky to the touch, the edges look torn rather than slit by something smooth. She removes the towel and lets the next words hang. An afterimage of sound. Carefully she removes the compress and watches the wound begin to congeal sluggishly. Pressure did not stop it from oozing, and that tells her it will need stitches, something she already suspected when she first saw it. “I’m not,” she murmurs. A matter of semantics. She hasn’t been a healer for a while now. She doesn’t know what she is. But she can’t allow Ben to suffer. “What happened?” The mattress creaks as she takes the knee off of it. Slow to spring back into shape leaving an indent beside her. She moves toward the black bag she always keeps with her, opens it, searches through its contents until she finds what she is looking for. An even smaller bag with more than a dozen compartments. She brings it back with her. “I’m going to pour some sanitising liquid on the wound. It’s going to be cold and it is going to sting and I am sorry about that. Then I’m going to need to stitch you up, ‘s too deep a wound to close up on its own.” Her fingertips find their way to his arm of all places and lightly glides against the faint white line. “Do my best to keep it from scarring. Something tells me….you don’t care.”  

[brooklynislandgirl]

@kylo-wrecked   {{xx}}

She doesn’t remember how she got…here, or where here really is. The sense of smell so sharp in her is dulled like an overused knife by the congestion in her head and in her lungs, which in turn saps her strength. It is familiar enough though that she doesn’t fight it even if she’d rather be in her own bed. Everything is too cold and her body shivers; it is the heat trying to burn away illness that spikes her core temperature. Andy was of no help to her, hovering just at the edge of her perception, not wanting to catch whatever’s going around but not wholly capable of letting her languish without him, but half the time he doesn’t seem to hear her. She drifts on the tides of the dream-sea. The sky above her is so full of unfamiliar stars to navigate by though once in a while she gathers as much power as she can muster to reach for them; the way they would navigate in the olden days, with fixed stars that created maps handed down in old songs and between fingers. Fingers. Her own that feel disembodied and floating in front of her, seeking for anything that will help keep her earth-bound. What they find is his wrist and she latches on to the lifeline of him to feel the beat of his heart until a wracking shudder robs her of any willpower and she has no choice to let go. She has no idea how long it takes for her to fall back onto soft lumps of cloud. There’s a word for them but not that she can remember just then. Perhaps the word was lost when Andy becomes Ben becomes a jackal god come to guide her to halls of judgement, which would be very odd, that’s not a part of her paradigm. Sebehy er rut ta desehert Iw iyin s n kekw Em Seshet’w djuu senefu

Crying out from the Red Land, came a man of darkness, with evil bloody secrets. But that’s ridiculous. Ben doesn’t bleed. Certainly no longer and not for her. She does not thirst for it to sluice down her throat, hot and full of life. A flash of an image in her mind though is alluring; the palness of his skin beneath her lips. Her breath haltingly whispers a borderline sweet sigh, but the gaze slanted his way is verdant delirium shining like dawn through trees that haven’t grown on Tatooine in any memory, living or dead. But her slim dark brows a moment later attempt to morph together around the confused ridges. Ben is haunted by old ghosts. They crowd in around him and breath icily upon his neck but never manifest distinctly. They simply sweep through and around him leaving behind things that seem to swim in the depths of his eyes, so dark now they are moonless nights guarded by the gates of his lashes, but she swears she can feel them just the same. She doesn’t want to see them any more than he likely does, and closes her eyes. It takes its toll on her and she swallows down the desire to be sick. He bathes her brow though, fighting Pele’s fires back with the grace of Nāmaka and she tries to murmur her gratitude at the feeling of Mother’s kiss on sweat laden skin. She can’t though, because of the vibrations. They begin in her bones. Pure sound, tremulous and too full of grief. Comes from somewhere deep in his chest, buried under the weight of everything he holds back with each transition of the Twin Suns. It comes from very far away. The resonance is inside of her chest. The effect is as mad as Orpheus’ flight. She offers him the lyrics he leaves off, thinking perhaps she’s succumbed to the sleep she so desperately needs. Whether it’s delirium or that way she talks…so often responding to things he’s said or asked with what seems like nonsense, because she genuinely has no idea that she’s garbled words in the nebulous space between her ears and her brain, or not caught the nuance of the twist of his lips…only he can judge. “....Is s-s-stealin’....da dimes….”   

[brooklynislandgirl]

Inflections, tones, repeating human algorithms are equations she cannot quite grasp. She subsists on the braille of Ben to make up for her lack. Every mote of light interconnected by his grief. Every fractured flaw that only makes him wonderfully, miserably alive. He's cut himself open and bled his spleen out in front of her giving her a glimpse of the vulnerability beneath. Reminds her of the stories of towers built out of stone and shrouded in thorn briars. There's no hair to climb and no kiss that can wake him. Whatever disillusioned him from his most formative years banished any sense of mercy the universe may have had for Ben. She's not sure what he's trying to bring to her attention to, whether or not it means he accepts that she has the feelings she does for him. The foundation shifts treacherously like sand under low tide. She's counted Ben to be a friend from the first time they contemplated imaginary murder together. Long before she knew that he didn't have to make it all up whole-cloth. She'll gladly swallow that anger for him. That rage against the human condition, his own included. Maybe especially his. Though she's sure if she said it allowed, asked him to let her come rushing in and soothe the roiling liquid heat of him like sea-water, he'd shrink back. Push her away and salt the earth between them. "See what?" A thickened slur of a tone, cotton candy on a summer day, sweet but sticky.

She has a painting in her lodgings. Red slashes of paint with cracks of black showing through, radiating like scars throughout. She will never show it to him. Never tell him that the violent brushstrokes and quiet despair that flowed when she made are now in her head indelibly called by his name. She won't show him half the portraits she's created in his image. For her, she much prefers the living flesh and the active mind that he would casually tell her is empty but only because he doesn't the right perspective. Just as she does, he lives in himself. She thinks she can taste a trace of guilt in the way he squirms as quietly beneath her. It must be an uncomfortable weight on his shoulders. Her. The fact that he seems to understand what she said, even if she hadn't said it very clearly. Ben didn't have to say it first. He's shown her in so many other ways. Little things. Trying to show her his own art. Letting her come and go through his space with all the permanence of a spring breeze. Pulling her close when all of him aches and buries himself in her hair. Even the bruises left on her hips when he does bite into her whether because she's crossed a line or hasn't risen to meet all of the things tucked inside of his head. The way he bears his teeth in a smile that dies too quickly. How his hair falls into his eyes and he doesn't bother to look up until she puts the mug of coffee or tea within reach. He doesn't ask her anything, not really. Everything he knows about her has been volunteered. With Ben, she can be anyone she chooses to be. She can change and adapt and sometimes she can be nothing at all. He doesn't know what a gift that is. One she can only repay by taking up as little space as she can, and not make demands. She's very good at both those things. She can tuck herself under his wing and hardly leave an impression. She can go away for as long as he needs her to until his solitary confinement brings him back around to some shadowy sort of equilibrium. The sort that is leaking out between his lashes. Salts his lips with her Mother's soul. When he finally puts his hand on her back ~skin partially exposed in her leaning that he must feel the delicate balance between skirt and flesh, the textures and temperatures between the two at odds with one another~ she shivers. And where he might feel like a meek thing unsure of what to do with her, she in turn is a butterfly shaking wet wings under the noonday sun of him. All it really costs him is the idea of wanting her closer for her to rush his shores with a knee on either side of his wide hips. Her hands melt over the breadth of his shoulders, veritable mesas compared to her own, all of him the open desert vista that had almost felt like death to her until Ben happened. It takes all of her natural instinct not to catch his offering between her teeth. To bite into them until the seams she can see up-close split apart and she slakes herself on the iron tang of his vitality. Instead the tip of her tongue traces the edge of it from one corner of his mouth to the other. At least until she feels more than hears what he says as they breath one another in. And while he grips her like a rusted anchor, dragging her convictions down to a place she finds no solid footing, she has to pull back. Green-and-honey gaze hazy, a forest surrounded by mists, her brows hovering over them like the threat of a thunderstorm, she tilts her head and stares at him in utter confusion. "How…how are you so… sensitive, so understandin'….an' so deaf f' wha' I say?" The words slip out from between her teeth before her better angels have a chance of shutting the gate on them. "I nevah say I no like you. I say… I…" She falters. "I don' t'ink…I don't t'ink..."

🤍 @brooklynislandgirl:// { cont'd from goodness gracious }

— ☾ —

There isn't enough time to batten down any hatches before Beth washes over him. Her words first, and then—

Ben's never been to the sea, but this must be what it's like when the waves hurl. Stings a little, and it's like how Kenny said, sometimes when he got wiped out by a big wave, he got the feeling of falling. Getting sucked over, then under, body all tumbled around. Ben feels like that now.

Beth doesn't like him, but she lays her lips on him. Fuck is that?

"See?" Ben says, likely of her moods. Not in any particular tone. Soft, like. In a breath, warm with a touch of basil, over hers.

Is he supposed to pretend, too? He lets Beth's mood speak for itself. Doesn't draw away, doesn't fight it. Could be this is just another one passing by. Beth's moods come in hues and textures in the multitudes. Every day is some new starry night, brilliance, or eclipse. She says Van Gogh made something like 900 paintings, and maybe that's what it's like when you're Beth. Ben only has one mood repeating, slightly offset, like what you'd make with a silk screen. At least, it seems that way. Feels that way? Maybe.

Is that what she sees, where he sees the Van Goghs? Badness repeating? He committed the unforgivable, not once, not twice, and now he was bad for business and anyone with a reputation. Bad at making himself emendable. Bad at getting close to people. Bad at talking, though he'd always been bad at talking. Bad at trying. Couldn't even pay a hooker to hook 'cause he made the hooker feel bad, him 'looking all doleful.'

Is that what she wants him to feel? Bad? He's supposed to feel bad? He feels bad. He feels Beth's hands on his grey nylon thighs while he digs one red-knuckled fist into the foam pad, and the other fumbles artlessly around one of the dusty carton slats behind them. It's the wood incident all over again.

You know, but he feels other things. He dreams of things he doesn't have words for. He's got pictures of them up there in his head. Some of them are Beth. Some of them are Ben and Beth together. Some are hazy sketches of recall, things he only thinks he remembers. Like, there being this sore thing, this tenderness in Beth the night she stitched him up.

Was that for him? It's stupid to hope when there's a chance Beth'll regret this kiss, the way his body, enough a barge to carry each of her moods to shore, compresses instead. 

He doesn't remember much from that night besides saying a lot of stuff he now regrets. The thing about stuff is it takes up space, and there's got to be room in his life for Beth’s stuff, too, she was going to be in it. Ben knows that, but he said it; he doesn't know how sometimes. He can tell her where the tears came from, though, without having to say. The tears, they come from that deep ocean world they share, a place of sorrow and ruins. They come from not knowing how to be what she wants. They come from not knowing how to be angry. They come from not knowing how to speak the words he wants to speak. They come from doubt, and shame, and need. They come from Ben.

Maybe they're Beth's too. Her tears, her mouth sweet and hot against his, and maybe she can't breathe him to life, but she's got her triumphs. Her finest is how she kisses him with such slowness that Ben presses his lips to hers like a lamb, gingerly but blindly, trembling and unsure.

Her hair is soft, out of a shampoo commercial. Smells like something he didn't know they could make hair products out of. Then there is her smell of burnt honey and sun. His uncurled fist wavers over Beth, awaiting cue or guidance, ultimately settling for the small of her back. Ben pulls her onto his lap like he's done so many times before.

He holds her upright by the waist and, finding Beth's mouth again, grazes his plush lower lip over hers as though to make sure he remembered how she did it, that he isn't breaking any more pieces of her than he already has. And then again, his lips murmuring, 'you don't have to like me,' somewhere between breaths, but his hands gripping Beth's hips, telling her she's not allowed to leave him like this, just 'cause her mood tells her to take flight.

[brooklynislandgirl]

@kylo-wrecked My Songs Know What You Did || Accepting I walked across an empty land. Her hands were tired and so were sold... I started up my hollow If I show you the roses, will you follow? I still recall the taste of your tears. That's all the note says that is left on top of the crate. Packed with stabilizing material that creeps and crawls it's way out of the opening. Beneath the note is nothing more insidious than wood. There's long thin pieces. Thicker more rough hewn. But how deeply it glows, gleams in the pale light. Enough inside that he could make nearly anything he wished from it. Wood that even before the world had died had never grown here. That had to be shipped in at astronomical cost from somewhere light years away and to the west, a mid-rim planet whose name isn't even spoken between them. Which leads to questions there are no answers for, not unless he reads between the lines. Because she's not there, is she? Only the lingering ghost of her sun-kissed warmth, something a little too floral in the air. Maybe if he heads into Mos Espa proper, he'll find her. Maybe she wants him to. Maybe is good intentions that sometimes don't manifest. Choices. But aren't they all?

[brooklynislandgirl]

(i accidentally hit 'unfollow' instead of 'ask,' so that's why i'm your newest follower ANYWAY)

*sets little boat on the water, with a note inside that reads: moodboard meme if you please*

ship - beth x ben

verse - your choice

I Want A Photograph...Picture Of...|| Accepting

It's gonna be too dark to sleep again Cutting my teeth on bars and rusty chains I'm gonna break my rusty cage and run

When the forest burns along the road Like God's eyes in my headlights And when the dogs are looking for their bones And it's raining ice-picks on your steel shore

{{//oh my gosh, how COULD you?!?! Pfft. I cannot tell you how many times that’s happened, especially on mobile. You’re good, you’re wonderful, shine on you crazy diamond.}}

[brooklynislandgirl]

@kylo-wrecked   {{XX}}

Wide eyes, so alien as a child and even more so now that’s she’s grown into her features but still not quite normal in mien, take so much in at the dying of the light. Not the rise of the lover’s star. Not the other flickering possibilities that litter the heavens like so many spilled jewels. Not the spaces he leaves between them because he’s not being hurtful. She’s touched a tender place. One never given permission to be so mishandled. He prickles at it as if thorns can keep her at bay but they don’t sprout up, just the dream of them. It is enough of a warning and she takes a half step back, remorse having the dignity to grace her features. But he’s robbing himself, or maybe she has, it’s hard to tell when the shadows press in who carries what guilt. There is ache that radiates in the space between them and it sings to her need to fix and soothe and make things just a touch better, something ancient and cultural but in keeping with her ill-aligned birthing stars. So chooses his hands.

Road-maps of stories untold. Inviting her to get lost around the bend of every faint scar and long, blunt hill. To trace the winding rivers on their backs, and plumb the lines of his palms for fortune.

She wishes she could. Maybe he’d let her. She doesn’t ask though. She’s a stray that’s lingered on his periphery. Maybe a bit like his rescued dog. Maybe like some half-forgotten dream someone laid down a long time ago before wandering away. She doesn’t feel like she’s earned the right. Not with how he seems to shrink when she does breach boundaries. She finds his eyes again before she falls to the ledge of his lips, collecting words as she goes. “Was....was he like you? I mean... If that’s okay to ask.”

[brooklynislandgirl]

📝 {all of 'em but don't do anything until we answer yours or ben will be grumpy}

Bits and Bobs || Accepting

~colour~

When she closes her eyes she can see the paint spilling across her canvas. Taken at first glance everything is rust and dirt and endless emptiness. Shallow, passive eyes cannot see the varying depths where blood blends with coral, where gold becomes the thirst-quenching bite of starfruit. There is an abundance of life below the surface, pallid thin stalks of grass, tiny shrubs struggling on dunes. Creatures who dart too fast to get more than an idea of shape. If she can just crack him open somehow, would all that come pouring out?

~song~

The strings are a little worn, and the body a little warped by the elements. And maybe her voice isn’t all that it should be, a touch off key as she sings it from memory, a melody and words from a far away time in a far away place. Knowing what she knows, though, it could have been written about Ben. In spirit if not directly things she’s heard him mutter when he doesn’t think she’s really listening. She does. More often than not it is all that she can really do. She doesn’t know that maybe he’s listening now.

~scent~ She props her chin on the bridge of his shoulder and turns her face inward, into his neck. She can lose herself in the thickness of the black waves that brush against her bone-structure as if they intended to bar her passage. A hint of soap brushes against her senses. Overlain by sun’s-heat-on-skin, dry-air so desperate for moisture, wood pulp, soft cotton. Salt. Something subtle and herbaceous she can’t quite put a finger on try though she might. It tempts her more than the melting treat in her hand, but she doesn’t bite. Doesn’t want him to move at all so she can remain.

~sound~

She can feel the movement of muscle as he lashes out with his tongue and licks the ice-cream offering relief to the cooling evening swelter, and his entire throat vibrates as he describes exactly how they dispose of the jogger who keeps a choke-chain on a very small dog and yanks it viciously to ‘motivate’ the little beast. The imagery has merit, poetic justice she would say, and the dark rumble of his bitten back laugh. It reminds of the crunch of autumn leaves and the brisk shiver of a misty breeze. A campfire burning. All things briefly lived.

~setting~

Desert just before the monsoon breaks the heat. A crisp sky and full moonlight neither hot nor cold. Yearning. Reaching out. Silhouetted. She wakes.

~fashion style~

The hem of his shirt flirt with her knees. Envelopes her and whispers his secrets across her skin. She wonders if his fingertips would do the same. Would the stories be new? Less cool, more accented? She doesn’t know...yet. But the thieved henely is worn smooth, butter soft. Protective in many ways. Envelopes her when she curls up and holds herself close. ~feeling~

Ben is complex and he’s patient. Ben feels like waiting. Waiting and hoping on a winter morning, or for the promise of spring to be fulfilled. He’s the wish before midnight and the held breath just before sunrise, just before you reach out and hit the snooze button. Just before. He’s all the things that run headlong into the barricade of the back of your teeth and you wanted to say but only stood there and watched with too big eyes and not any voice. It’s not fear. But carefulness. It’s holding onto the idea that maybe everything isn’t so different after all. That you have to strain close and maybe you’ll hear an echo. ~animal~ Beth’s friends tell her of their ‘aumakua. Though it is a little less personal in nature, as far as she can gather, perhaps more in another way of looking at it. One of the most interesting concepts for her is that it is spoken of, thus:

“Raven was not thought of as a god. He was thought of as the transformer, the trickster. He was the being that changed things—sometimes quite by accident, sometimes on purpose.”

Not a god nor demon, neither hero nor villain. Then there’s other similarities from the colour of his hair to the sharpness of his profile. The miles of wingspan remind her of long limbs.

Makes her wonder if Raven is hidden somewhere in his ancestral tree. She’s also sure if she calls him ‘birdie’ that he will never speak to her again.

~holiday~

She appears from the side of his place like a dark little menahune. Lifts her cupped hands up and blows red, green, pink, and purple dust on him before producing a cup of water and arcing it up and at him, intending to douse his hair. She misses by a couple of inches instead and looks appropriately apologetic immediately after.

”I...it’s Holi,” she says. Goes onto explaining the festival of arriving spring, and the blossoming of love. That it is a day to meet, play, laugh, forgive and forget, and to repair broken relationships. “Come play with me, Ben.” And then she runs.

~season~

“Be my winter. My restive season, be the dark of the year and the promise of sun’s rebirth. And I will be your summer, your ever burning sun and warmth, the time of fullest plenty, whaddya say?”

[brooklynislandgirl]

What do you think is the best way to seduce my muse?

1. {w/ the ex con } :// Go on a trip to the local dog park (a reclaimed junkyard in Mos Espa), scout out the best bench by the buffalo grass, pick the dog owners they'd kill, describe the crimes with gory relish, share in the hell of trying to repress hysterical laughter , joke about making a shelter for the dogs in the small house next to Ben's shop, "it's a joke--I swear," completely let loose wild laughter, walk back to the crossroads together under a starry sky, with ice cream.

Drink The Honey || Accepting

She likes the way the wispy seeds feel as they brush against that spot above her knees, where her boots aren’t high enough to protect her and an incidental slit in her skirt has gone from a rip to a full tear that she’ll eventually patch over like she’s done others. Feels like it’s whispering secrets across her skin. And Beth likes secrets in the same way she likes glitter and open ocean and pretty rocks. Ben doesn’t say much. Not because he doesn’t have so many words pushed down and smooshed together inside. She thinks it’s just hard for him to let them go. Maybe he’s afraid it will leave him hollow and empty. Maybe they are secrets unready to be born. She doesn’t mind so much, it’s almost nice just to be.

He drapes himself across three rickety wooden tier-benches. One at his back where he props his elbows. One at his feet that creek beneath his boots. The one he sits on that leaves her room to sit, and she does, straddling it like a speeder, only to lean her back against him.

They pick the cutest dogs they would rescue. The lady is her least favourite owner. Who keeps pushing the pup away with her foot, who can’t be bothered to pet or play with him. He’s a status symbol, not a companion. Not even a pet, really. She will be worse to children that she will also pick out from a breeder because heaven forbid she get dirty in that way. Everything about her is brittle and pointy and polished to a fine gloss.  Beth’s eyes close and her lips part with a soft breath exhaled, one that ends sigh of pure pleasure. She confides about stripping the woman of all her designer wear and leaving her tied in charitable hand-me downs, rickety chair, empty warehouse. Fed and watered just enough to keep her alive. Beth would cut away the expensive platinum blond hair. Would use a chisel to chip away at her beauty and press the wounds with alcohol soaked rags. Wouldn’t want her to get infected. The fantasy is long and torturous and very full of a quiet, inexhaustible rage for someone so young.

She lays a hand on his leg and makes small sightless designs between knee and hip as he picks his next victim, and there’s an answering kind of energy to the words that come out of his mouth, low and meant for her alone. Bare hands. Quick. Contemptible. Destroyed evidence in an acid bath. For all that his dreams can be vicious, there’s something very soft beneath Ben’s exterior.

“I know.”  She understands it’s a joke and it IS funny. But there’s a yearning, too. A desire to nurture and grow. To feel unconditional love, something she doesn’t think he’s very close friends with.

Walking back home ~when did she attach that word to the place he lives? Would he laugh at her, too, if she said it aloud?~ she licks a scoop of cold, creamy perfection, before holding it up high, waiting for him to take an impatient bite... because he will. She knows that, too. And she likes the impression his teeth makes. She knows he’s self conscious about that. About everything that makes Ben really Ben. Especially the ones that are a little too sharp, a little too prominent to be comfortable either in his mouth, or bared in a smile. Like hers. She slides her free hand into his back pocket, falls into step beside him though he’s notably slowed his pace so she doesn’t have to jog to keep up with him. It is one of a hundred or thousand little considerations that he makes throughout the day when she’s around and underfoot. He makes nothing of it, nor does he complain except to tease her on occasion. Like now, he’s pointing out a constellation and telling her a story about it, and how he could, if she wanted, pluck it from the sky with just a stretch of his fingers.

She asks where he’d put them, and he gets that wistful look again before he steals another lick from her ice-cream. She’s not sure if he really likes spiced tea.

Eventually they come back to his place. And this time? Beth skips ahead, taking the lead, a little recklessly. There’s a crate outside of his door that she clambers atop, feeling it shift beneath her feet. When he finally catches up, there’s a moment of silence. Those dark eyes drip downward to some spot between his feet. Her hands drift to his cheeks and lifts all the rest of his head up. She brushes her thumbs across the bones below his eyes. Leaves a little sticky melted sweetness in their wake that she isn’t sorry for at the moment. Her heart pounds in her chest and she’s sure he can feel it as if it were a quake that will shatter the world.

The tip of her nose brushes his, and she speaks against his lips. “S’where I goddah say g’night. Unless...” She swallows and again closes her eyes. “Unless ya wan me stayin’.”   

[brooklynislandgirl]

@kylo-wrecked {{xx}}

The landscape is bleak in a beautifully austere way and while it isn’t exactly what she calls home, she can see the appeal for him, or maybe that’s the gin thinking. There are similarities between the surrounding Mos Espa, the man beside her, and the thick quietude that spans out around them as the sun starts sinking behind far distant and dark mountain chains. She knows from experience that while it’s still light out the air will retain it’s hazy warmth, but once the dark draws on so will the chill. She sweeps the horizon for the first star. ”Mahalo,” she murmurs. A small thanks for the refill even if she didn’t exactly ask for it. A sign of his hospitality. His desire not to drink alone. Motives various as the glints in his eyes, his hair that lend it shades of blood and fire despite it’s raven blackness. She glances askance, takes in his profile as he moves. He has the hands of a surgeon. Of an artist. But they are worn by less delicate things, calloused here and there. The tiniest of scars making hatch-work patterns. A reflection of less definable things buried within.

Just as she raises scintillating green to meet his gaze, his slides away and takes with it the only comfort night can give away. So she drops her own back to her hands that have in the in-between collective of seconds taken the glass and cradled it within her grasp.

She near flinches more at the ice sound than his words. She can’t say why.

It’s a case of shapes and boundaries and thresholds. The kinds that make no sense outside of one’s own head.

At first, she tenses. Even with the self-deprecation tied into the laugh she fears he’s going to tell her something awful about a dog. Something that will make certain that she will never look at Ben the same way, not without feeling sick on the inside, which is no life to have. There’s only so many ways a soft heart can break before it can’t be put back together.

But instead the grief in his tone is heavier than the liquid in her glass. Maybe he’s already found that out. Maybe is a terrible word.

As he continues on she feels the flicker of a shadow within fluttering at the edges of her senses, that sets her teeth to clenching together, that gives her jaw a hardness so unsuitable as to stand out. She can almost see the end coming before he gets to her, sentiments that echo his own. People who can do that to innocent and dependent creatures aren’t people at all. They are the worst kinds of monsters, cloaked in human skin. Ones people turn blind eyes toward because they choose not to acknowledge the depths of depravity it takes to hurt an animal. A child. An elder. All of whom cannot fight back. And the suffering it breeds.

Makes her want to squirm, that rising bile in her throat, burning it’s way up, up, Up until it forms into words she can’t quite make herself interrupt with.

Dead leaves on sidewalks, the rattle of bones against stone. That’s what his laugh reminds her of, the kind of coldness that settles in and makes a home inside.

She takes the glass whether the contents are wanted or not and downs all of it in a single long drink that tilts her head back. Exposes her throat. Hides the quavering anger she tries to wash away with the forest burn. It doesn’t really help and she pulls herself up. Rustling silk of long skirts. Starts to brush past him as she intends to walk away from what turns out to be a softness. A weakness that makes Ben a little more human than reputation would suggest.

She doesn’t make it far. Not more than a step or two until her hand comes down to rest on his shoulder a minute. Fingers giving him a squeeze though with a lack of that still swimming sense of righteousness in her veins half lulled. “Makes you feel any better? You’re a much better person than me. I would have stolen the dog and made sure he never hurt anyone again.”