Benjy doesn’t even think, he just lets his instincts and old habits take over. His feelings for Cleona take over. As quickly as she’d kissed him, his hands are on her cheeks, and their lips come together again. Benjy kisses her fiercely, everything he hadn’t let himself say in the past five years rests in his lips.
Cleona is familiar and yet still brand new; an undiscovered chapter in a book he thought he’d finished.
She was everything he knew he was missing, and Benjy no longer doubts it; he’s never loved anyone else. Not really. Not like this.
It’s only when Cleona moves to deepen the kiss that reality returns to him, and Benjy springs away from her, both of his hands coming up to tent over his mouth and nose. Benjy squeezes his eyes shut, breathing hard, trying to get his head on straight-how could he be so stupid.
“Benjy-?”
“I-fuck. Fuck!”
He stands, suddenly full of too much energy to stay sitting. It’s a quick, jerky, movement-and Benjy is sure he looks insane.
“Are you ok?”
It’s the worry in Cleona’s voice that almost breaks him. Because you don’t worry about someone you hate, not like that. And you certainly don’t look at them with slightly swollen lips and eyes you could swim in, head cocked slightly to the left, waiting for your reply.
“Shit. I-” He takes a deep, shaky breath in, exhaling dramatically before he says the words that make him feel sick.
“I’m engaged.” He can’t meet her eyes any longer. “To, uh, my girlfriend. Fiance, I guess. Happened last month.”
It might have been more refreshing had he just dunked a large bucket of ice water over her head but the initial shock would have been the same. For a stupid second, Cleona finds herself longing for the bucket.
“Oh.”
It occurs to her after a blank few seconds that she is supposed to be mad, that Benjy is expecting her to get mad and yell and kick him out of the apartment they used to share.
But all she says is “oh” while Benjy gapes at her.
“Well,” she stands suddenly, which makes her brain lurch too far forward. Alcohol. Alcohol is also a factor here. “er-congratulations.”
She waves her hand in a vague gesture that wants to hold him for a moment but catches itself in the nick if time.
Benjy’s jaw slightly drops but he manages to catch it. “Uh, thank you.”
Far too many silent seconds pass between the two of them standing with the corner of the coffee table jutting between them. A few more add on when both of them open their mouths at the same time only to clamp them shut again. Cleona recovers first.
Benjy inches closer to her without even realizing.
“I-why wouldn’t I still have feelings for you?”
Cleona looks at him like he’s grown another head, but Benjy just looks back at her, feeling fuzzy and warm and…almost like he’s 22 again. Well no, not 22, but, he might as well be. Everything he’d ever felt for her, the full weight of it, it comes out from where he keeps it locked in his chest and rears up, taking him over and deafening all reason.
“I don’t know, Benjy, maybe the terrible screaming matches and the fact that we’ve broken up?”
Benjy can’t help it, he laughs, shaking his head before he downs the rest of his wine glass.
“Right. Yeah. Breaking up gets rid of all feelings, you’re so right, Cleona, I’m just being silly.”
Benjy leans forward and puts the glass on the coffee table and, as he settles back on the couch, his hand covers hers. He feels Cleona stiffen, but she doesn’t pull away. With practice he’d never forgotten, he drags his thumb slowly down the back of her knuckles, keeping his eyes on hers. Benjy waits for any sign of her resisting, for her to hate him like he’s sure she does, but Cleona keeps her eyes glued to their hands.
“I don’t feel anything. I certainly don’t miss you nearly every second I’m awake, I don’t think about you all the time. And I certainly don’t wish I could call you and tell you when I’ve seen something that would make you laugh, or when A League of Their Own is on TV.”
She’s looking at him now, and Benjy holds her gaze, committing her look to memory, knowing (this time at least) that he might never see it again after tonight. She turns her hand over so his thumb now dances up and down her palm.
“See, Lo? Nothing.”
It’s not fair. It’s not fair how he can just say those things and stroke her knuckles like he used to when she was stressed. It’s not fair that he can do all of those things while also making her remember how good he is, how good they were. Because no matter what she may outwardly claim now, she knows the truth. She was her best with Benjy. He brought out more smiles from her than both of her brothers combined. Stronger, bolder with his hand clutched in hers. They used to never be apart. There used to be a time where they couldn’t be in the same room without touching. And now five years have passed before he touched her again. If her thoughts weren’t so gelatinous right now, she would be able to recall the last time he held her hand. The night before he caught an early morning flight back to LA, they’d exchanged clipped tones over dinner but never provoked each other into a fight. They’d both crawled into the same bed and stared at the same ceiling until he finally reached over and covered her hands folded on her stomach with one of his.
It was also the last time they had sex.
“It was on TV last weekend,” she says vaguely, still watching his fingers trace around hers.
“Hm?” His tone is more an offer than a request.
“A League of Their Own.” She lifts her head to look at him and nearly flinches at the intensity in his gaze. She didn’t know it was possible to get unaccustomed to a person’s gaze, particularly the gaze of someone who used to love her and made her feel loved.
“Oh, I missed it,” he says softly, and a beat. It’s so fast and so sudden that neither of them fully recognize that it happened until she’s pushing back his shoulders, breathing like she’s just sprinted up the stairs.
He stares at her, wild-eyed, and Cleona gapes back, the warmth of his lips still lingering on hers.
“I’m glad the bar’s doing well.” He says after a full minute of staring at her-realizing he should probably say something. “I thought about popping in but I thought Axl flying off of the stage to kill me with his bare hands might put a bit of a damper on the experience.”
Cleona laughs and tries unsuccessfully to turn it into a cough as she finishes filling her glass and settles back down on the couch.
“He doesn’t-well….he’s not aggressive like that.”
Benjy laughs and takes a big sip. “True-he’d probably spread another rumor about me having crabs.”
Cleona gives him a funny look and Benjy feels his eyes grow wide.
“…he never told you about that, did he?”
“No?”
Benjy smirks, remembering and pretending like losing two of his best friends along with Cleona didn’t hurt.
“Yeah-I mean, I wouldn’t have dated for a while after you anyway because…well, you’re a hard act to follow I guess, but uh, even if I wanted to, the entirety of Brooklyn’s alt and queer scene thought I had crabs.”
God he loves her laugh, Benjy feels himself reach for her hand instinctively, before he catches himself and moves like he was going to scratch his knee all along. He wants to bottle her laugh, capture it on tape and play it over and over-Benjy supposes he has it somewhere, in one of the cassette diaries they used to film together when they were stoned. He hadn’t been able to listen to them since they broke up-their joy was there, recorded, preserved- proof that she’d loved him once, proof of what he’d lost.
Benjy shifts on the couch, half listening to Cleona talk about some other shenanigan one of her brothers pulled, when she interrupts herself.
“You don’t have to sit that far away from me, you weirdo. I don’t bite.”
“Mmm, I know for a fact that’s not true.” Benjy says, ducking out of the way and chuckling when she throws one of the decorative pillows at him.
“Whatever, you still don’t have to-”
“I do.” Benjy says, the wine taking over control of his voice and clouding his judgement. He couldn’t stop himself even if he wanted to. Benjy regrets what he says even before it leaves him-certain that her reaction will result in the night ending early, and once again he’ll be kicked out with only himself to blame.
“Cause I don’t trust myself not to do something stupid like kiss you if I’m sitting closer.”
Cleona has to squint a bit to bring him back into focus. Except it’s not so much her sight that’s the problem but it must be her hearing. Because why...why would he still say that now? After everything? Why would he really want to still kiss her after all that’s passed between them?
She scrunches her face up and, with much effort, manages a half-decent response a full ten seconds later. “But...why?”
Benjy looks nearly as flummoxed as she feels. “Are you-are you being serious right now?”
Well that seems a bit unfair. She frowns. “Look, I know I’ve been a bit of a bitch sometimes, a bit difficult because...of how we happened,” she waves a hand between them. “But I promise you, I’m being 100% real with you right now that I don’t get why you would still--why you would still want to...have feelings for me?”
She tilts her head to the side, combing her hair over her shoulder with her fingers as she studies him. His lips slightly parted and his brow furrowed, he still looks unsure as he watches her work out a tangle between her index and middle fingers.
“Cleona--”
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Look at you like what?”
She huffs out a small laugh and shakes her head. “Like you don’t know what I’m talking about? Like I’m the crazy one and we’re actually 22 again and you’re just supposed to kiss me and tell me to stop freaking out over nothing?”
It all comes out in a such a rush that she’s not fully aware of her words until it’s too late. And even then, she feels strangely bold, almost daring Benjy to make a move.
“Well I could be forgiven for thinking the wine might be a guise.” He says with a laugh, taking the glass and following her into the living room.
Cleona raises an eyebrow at that.
“And what kind of guise would that be?”
Benjy shrugs, sitting at the complete opposite end of the couch as her, swallowing hard as he does. How many times had they ended up wrapped around each other on this couch? How many times had he told her he’d loved her on this couch? How many times had they fucked on this couch?
Why, on Earth, given how much money he sent her for Shay and extras, did she still have this god damn couch?
Benjy takes a big sip of wine, hoping it helps him get a grip.
“I dunno, maybe you poisoned it or something.”
“Well if I did, you just drank it so…”
“Shit.”
Cleona laughs, a real, actual laugh, and Benjy feels his shoulders relax.
“Apparently women use poison the most-saw that on an episode of Forensic Files when I couldn’t sleep the other night. Your absolute favorite show of all time ever.”
He grins at her cheekily and dramatically taps his finger on his chin.
“No, wait, you like the one where they re-enact shit, truly peak television, you always used to say.”
She’d once given him a blowjob as a bargaining chip to turn off the horrible show-its definitely not all Benjy thinks about when they come on the TV anymore.
“Do you think you could kill someone?” He says, his voice suddenly serious.
“I uh, never got it, you know, until the first time a kid at the park pushed Shay and like, if it was legal, I would’ve fucked wrecked that little asshole. Like…if anyone hurt him, you know, for real? I know deep down I could and uh, probably would.”
Benjy used to think he’d kill anyone who hurt Cleona too, but that’s a lot harder of a sentence to stand behind when you’re the one doing the hurting.
“I guess that’s my fucked up way of saying that he, you know, changed everything about me. And even though I was just talking about murdering an elementary schooler, I think uh, largely for the better.”
The corner of Cleona’s lip twitches upwards as she looks down at her glass. “Well, you’re a good dad so...of course, you’re willing to murder for your kid. I think that just comes with the territory.”
She looks back at him. “But yes, yes I sometimes believe I could. With that shit that went down with Axl when we were in school...yeah.”
She doesn’t elaborate any more than that nor does she feel like she needs to. Benjy knows as well as her about Axl’s pill habit and his on-again-off-again abusive boyfriend. She lost track of the amount of times Killi and her punched the buzzer to Rick’s apartment to scoop up their half-conscious triplet. Even more the amount of times she called Benjy, cried on Benjy, swore to Benjy that if she saw one more bruise barely concealed under heavy amounts of powder on her brother’s cheek, that would be it.
A quiet lingers between them that isn’t so awkward between them but still heavy. It wasn’t the pleas and tears that had moved Axl to finally check into rehab; it was Cleona and Benjy telling him that she was pregnant. The very next day, he’d called Benjy’s apartment to tell them where he was and he’d call when he could.
Benjy clears his throat, breaking the silence. “Er-how are Axl and Killian?”
“Oh, uh, they’re good. Really good actually. Killi just started working at a kids’ group home in the Bronx a couple months ago. He loves it but it’s also kicking his ass.” She pauses to take a sip of her wine. “And Finnigans’ unsurprisingly is the best it’s ever been. Even my parents can’t deny the money that it’s bringing in for all its queerness so Axl is very smug about that.”
Benjy doesn’t reply right away and suddenly that makes Cleona nervous. Like they’re talking and being cordial and nice and friendly even but it’s off and it definitely can’t be because of her wine being finished in two more swallows. The amount of alcohol in her system has nothing to do with the extra shine in her ex’s eyes in the dim lamplight. It does, however, have everything to do with her deciding to refill her glass. And when Benjy proffers his nearly empty glass for a top-off as well, she’s in no position to refuse.
“Oh yeah, out quick after the third round of Grover not wanting the book to finish.”
He meets Cleona’s eyes and pretends he can ignore the shame that boils up in stomach when he does.
“Oh good, he always asks me to read that one like you.”
Benjy has crossed to the spot on the counter with the drying rack and freezes when Cleona speaks.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
He studies her profile as she looks down into the dirty dishwater-someone who did not spend the first part of his adulthood studying the Language of Cleona Finnigan would think her frown indicated annoyance, but Benjy knows better.
She’s sad. And it’s almost certainly his fault.
“I could give you voice lessons.” Benjy tries to joke, opening the bottom cupboard to put away the colander and frowning.
“Does this not go here anymore?”
“Here-” Cleona says, taking it from him and hanging it on the pot rack above the stove.
“That way it doesn’t get used for toddler drum practice.”
“Ah yes, the most underground of performances.”
Cleona can’t stop her smile in time and Benjy smiles back tenatively.
“We-shit.” He sighs dramatically.
“I don’t know how to-I’ve been having-I’m still a mess.” He says, cursing himself mentally for being so garbled.
“And I’m really trying, to you know, pull it together. For myself, for Shay-” For you, Benjy thinks, but he doesn’t dare to say it.
“What I’m trying to say is, even though I absolutely don’t deserve it, do you think maybe we could-”
Every part of Benjy is screaming at him to ask to try again. Give their relationship another shot, actually make it to the altar this time, give Shay some siblings. Be happy together.
But the idea of Cleon saying no, the realization that she should absolutely say no, keeps the words locked in his chest.
“Maybe we could try to be friends? Just so this-and holidays and his birthday-we can, we should you know, try to be better to each other. Friends. I-” Benjy swallows hard and tries to smile again.
“I want to be friends with you. Please?”
Cleona leans her hip against the counter as she appraises him, her right foot propped against her left shin and her arms folded across her chest. He keeps his eyes fixed on her but the pull of his mouth, his grip on his arm betrays just how much this is eating him up inside. Like how most interactions with him these days leave her feeling numb and defensive. They built so much between them in the span of a few short years and even after five years, that foundation never fully eroded so perhaps...Benjy was right. They could be better to each other and come to some terms with what they still had. Besides, being friends with him would make things a lot easier for Shay, and wasn’t that the most important thing here? Never mind the way the earnest plea in his voice sinks its tendrils into her heart and fills her with that ache most familiar during those sleepless nights. But for Shay....
“Do you want some wine?”
Benjy raises a bemused eyebrow. “S-sure?”
“I mean, I don’t want to keep you if you want to...er-need to...or have other plans or...?”
“Wine sounds good, Cleona.” It’s supposed to be irritating that he can still read her like a fucking book, but perhaps a start to this er-friendship is letting go of that.
“Oh-okay.” With a chagrined smile, she retrieves two glasses and a bottle of red she just got from the bodega down the street earlier today. She pours out two glasses and passes one over to Benjy.
“This is me saying yes, by the way,” she says, but judging by Benjy’s smile, he already knows.
“Just the effect your voice has on me.” Benjy says without thinking, standing and carrying his plate and the others to the sink. He lets out a breath of annoyance at himself for slipping, for trying to joke with her-that hasn’t worked in years.
“Sorry.” He says as he turns on the tap, not looking at her yet. “I forget we can’t talk to each other like we were ever close.”
Benjy grabs the back of his wet hair and sighs, moving the pans to the sink and throwing in some soap.
“Benjy-”
“What do you want to hear, Cleona? That I’m still a fucking mess? Congratulations, you made the right call?”
He doesn’t realize how loud he’s being until he hears the last word in the kitchen. Cleona is staring at him in that same impossible way.
“Fuck!” Benjy says under his breath, his heart beat picking up as the same emotions from earlier swirl up in his stomach.
“Look, we both know you’re the winner here it’s just-”
“Was someone yelling?” Shay asks, bounce walking into the room in a pair of Spiderman pajamas that are a little too long. Being as small as he is, it was hard to find things that properly fit him.
“Oh yeah that was me, little dude. Baba saw a…spider.” Benjy says, putting the dish towel down and scooping Shay up with both arms. “Now all I see is a Spiderman.”
Shay giggles as Benjy kisses him on the cheek. Decidedly not looking at his ex, Benjy squints in mock suspicion at his son.
“Breath check?”
He’s greeted with a burst of mint followed by a hint of marinara sauce. Good enough.
“Excellent work, Mr. Parker. Go give your mom a kiss and then I think we can work out that story.”
Benjy smiles at Shay before putting him down and walking out of the kitchen, not looking back and cementing himself as the coward the both already know he is.
“Good night, Mama!” Shay bounds over to Cleona, completely and blessedly oblivious to the uncomfortable shift between his parents, and flings his arms around her neck.
“Good night, baby.” She presses several kisses in succession to both of his cheeks before pulling away, holding his little face in both of her hands. “I’m so glad you had a good day with Baba.”
Shay gives her a small smile but his blue eyes go downcast. “I don’t want Baba to go, Mama.”
The sudden smallness in his voice sends her heart up to her throat. No matter how hard it was for her and Benjy to co-parent and consistently have to face what they lost in each other over and over again, she knows that neither of them can ever fully appreciate what struggles their kid faces with their separation. Even the kids in his class whose parents are divorced have stepmoms and stepdads. Shay just has Cleona at home and Benjy in California. She’s never even introduced her son to any of her past boyfriends. Neither has Benjy. It’s always just been them...just separately.
“I know,” she smiles sadly at him, tucking a few errant curls behind his ears. “I know you don’t and--”
I’m sorry for that. I wish we could be better for you. I don’t want him to leave either.
He blinks his big blue Finnigan eyes at her and words have entirely no use here. They’ll never be enough. Not really. Instead, she presses a kiss to his forehead and gives his shoulders a little nudge. “You better get upstairs before your dad misses you. I love you.”
“Okay,” he kisses her cheek and starts off towards the stairs, calling over his shoulder. “Love you too!”
Cleona sits for another minute, a vague smile on her face as she listens to the pattering of Shay’s footsteps overhead and the soft rumble of her ex’s voice and the peal of their baby’s laughter. For as much as her heart hurts with it all, aches with Benjy’s last words before he made his escape, she’s almost happy in spite of it all. It’s that domesticity that she had craved when he was gone, that she later claimed that she never needed anyway when he was gone for good. That warm glow hesitantly lighting up in that space around her heart, knowing very well that its lifespan is short.
She’s at the kitchen sink doing the dishes when she hears footsteps behind her.
“I said I’d do those, Cleona.”
She sets the pot in the drying rack before turning around to face him. “You made dinner, Benjy. I don’t mind.”
Neither of them mention that dishes left in the sink were a common source of contention in the later days of their relationship. She wipes her hands on her jeans and tosses her hair back over her shoulders.
Benjy can’t even make it through the first chorus. His stomach bottoms out, like it used to at the top of the ramps at the skatepark, and Benjy stands abruptly. His fork clatters and his chair scrapes across the floor loud enough to cut through the music, earning him identical looks of confusion from mother and son.
“Excuse me.” Benjy says lamely, his palms sweating as his walks stiffly out of the kitchen. He’s too hot, even though it’s almost cold in the apartment, and as he closes himself in the tiny half bathroom on the first floor, he rips his shirt off before crouching over the sink, sure he was going to vomit. It’s only when he sees his hands shaking that he recognizes what’s happening.
The first panic attack he’d had had been in the tiny apartment he and Cleona had shared before this one, before Shay. It was the day after his mother’s funeral. The kitchen had smelled entirely too much like flowers, entirely too much like grief and had been entirely empty of the only constant he’d had in his entire life. Cleona found him probably about half an hour later, when she’d returned from her quest for hamburgers and had scooped him up off of the stained white tile floor as if he were the helpless child he’d felt like. He’d cried into her neck while she rubbed his back, the hamburgers growing cold beside them. They were pretty constant for those first few months after Samira died, the worst one happening on the subway on his way to skate practice. He’d been frozen in place, riding the train from Brooklyn to Manhattan and back again, until Cleona had found him one more, wordlessly knowing what had happened without needing an explanation. He used to joke with her that she was psychic, tuned into him in a way that seemed otherworldly, and now, as Benjy falls to his knees in the tiny half bathroom of the apartment that used to be his, he wonders if Cleona’d lost that sixth sense along with her love for him.
He had no right to be bitter-he was self aware to know that much-but that didn’t stop the bitterness from coming. Hearing that song-their song, even though neither of them would’ve ever admitted so hideously cliche-at the dinner he’d made for Cleona and their son, the possibilities of what could’ve been presented to him on a fucking platter-it was just too much.
“Fuck.” He whispers softly, taking a shaky breath. The bathroom was still the same depressing shade of beige it’d been when he’d bought the apartment-his promises to paint of course falling flat with each new deal and competition and event that took him away from New York. Away from Cleona. Away from the family they should be right now if only he’d tried a little harder.
Benjy smacks himself, hard, in the side of his face. Left then right. He clenches his fists as tight as he can and counts backwards from ten in Arabic as quietly as he can manage. When neither of those don’t work, and he can still hear the strains of the song from other room and the clatter of forks and plates, he does the next logical thing; he sticks his entire head under the cold tap and lets the sound of water numb his brain.
The panic attacks had gotten bad again when he’d moved back to California more permanently. Without Cleona. Without Shay. He still wasn’t entirely sure how to get through them without her, as unhealthy and as useless as that was. The water is surprisingly effective, shocking Benjy back to the present and reminding him of how complicated it was, that even though it wasn’t the future they’d planned, they both have pretty good lives-and most importantly, Seamus had a great life. Their son was the reason Benjy was subjecting himself to the hell of having to stare his mistakes in the face and eat fettuccine with them-and he needed to stop being a pussy and get back out there.
He dries his curls ineffectively on a hand towel and pulls his shirt back on over his head, pausing as he pulls it down around his hips. The tiny shamrock he’d gotten on his twenty-first birthday was so small and faded now that he hardly noticed it anymore, but it seemed to glow now. Drunk and insistent on doing something memorable for his twenty first, he simply would not shut up until the Finnigan triplets took him to a tattoo parlor. He’d wanted to get Cleona’s name, but she’d insisted that he didn’t, and they’d settled on an homage to her homeland instead.
“This way if you ever get rid of me it can just be a stupid ass tattoo.” She said with a grin, drunk enough to kiss him in front of her brothers, who both promptly took a break from their bickering to make dramatic retching sounds.
“Baby.” Benjy said with as much serious as he could muster. He couldn’t quite see straight, but Cleona was somehow even more beautiful when he was cross-eyed. Maybe it was the whiskey.
“If I ever get rid of you, you might as well just shoot me in the head, cause I don’t really see the point of being alive if you’re not there too.”
He’d meant it, even though Cleona had laughed and told him to stop being stupid, and that hadn’t changed. He never wanted to be rid of her, not all the way. Even if she just tolerated him to the point of confusing dinners and co-parenting.
God. He thinks as he pulls his black teeshirt over the shamrock. I really am still in love with her.
He feels a twinge of guilt as he opens the door, thinking of Cher. Another twinge of guilt tickles down his spine as he realizes it’s the first time he’d really thought about her all day. He was sure she didn’t care-her best friend from childhood(-or college? Benjy couldn’t remember) lived in the city and whenever she flew over with him, they almost always partied until ridiculous hours, entertaining herself while he saw Shay. Benjy stands in the doorway for a minute, rocking back and forth on the arches of his feet, making sure he could handle going back in there.
International daredevil and he can’t even face the first woman he fell in love with. Maybe he really was a fraud.
Shay’s yammering away, telling his mother about the dog he’d chased when Benjy re-enters the kitchen.
“Baba!”
“Shay!”
“Where’d you go?”
The question is so simple, and Shay says it with genuine distress clouding his big blue eyes. God-of all the things to take from his mother, of course it had to be her eyes. The ones that always could see through his bullshit-Benjy wasn’t entirely sure where he’d gone either, but he smiles at Shay as he sits back down.
“It’s not polite to talk about at the table, just had a bit of a er…personal matter to handle.”
He notices when he picks up his fork that Shay and Cleona are both done-he’d been in there longer than he’d thought.
“I haven’t uh, been eating a lot of carbs lately.” He says before he can catch himself, feeling even more like a douche when Cleona raises her eyebrows at him. He gives her a tight half smile, thankful that the stereo is now playing a toothpaste commercial instead of that fucking song.
“I’ll clean up and then I’ll get out of your hair.”
Watching Benjy now shoveling noodles in his mouth, Cleona chooses not to acknowledge any of what just happened right now and focuses instead on their son. Somehow that’s the easier option.
“All right, Shaybaby, ” she says, picking up her plate and nodding at Shay to do the same. “Go get your PJs on and get ready for bed.”
“But Mamaaa,” Shay whines as he follows her to set his dishes in the sink.
“But Shayyyy.” She turns back to him, arms crossed, mouth fixed in the classic expression of a mother trying not to be amused by her child’s whining.
Shay sticks his lower lip out, taking his stolen few seconds to scroll through his options. “Can I-can I watch TV first? Just for a little while?”
Cleona shakes her head once. “I know how that works, lovebug. A little while becomes another hour and then we’re both passed out in front of Spongebob and his laugh infiltrates my nightmares. Not to mention that you” she ruffles his hair as she grabs his Spiderman lunchbox on the kitchen island. “and I have school tomorrow.”
Shay wrinkles his nose. “Ew.”
Cleona laughs and she hears Benjy snort too. “Lunchable for tomorrow?”
Shay heaves a great ever-suffering sigh. “Fine.”
“Your sacrifice has been noted, bug.” She stoops down to press a swift kiss to the top of his head. “Now, PJs and maybe Baba will read with you before he goes. If you ask super, super nicely and have minty fresh breath.”
Shay scampers up to the kitchen island and stands on his toes so he can just see Benjy over the top. “Will you read with me, Baba? Pleeeease?”
Cleona can’t quite help a smile at Benjy over their son’s head. Maybe it was out of pity because of a heavy suspicion that her ex might have been more affected by the song that she ever would have expected after all these years. Or maybe it was because watching Benjy reading with Shay was still one of her favorite things...after all of these years.
Benjy cracks a smile for the first time since he’s returned from the bathroom, first at her, then at Shay. “Brush your teeth real good and I guess I can’t say no.”
“Okay!” Shay starts off down the hallway towards the stairs only to skid to a quick stop at the end and turn back around and speed back into the kitchen to grab his Spiderman off the table.
“Spiderman,” he says seriously to Benjy before peeling off again.
When she hears his bedroom door shut above them, Cleona decides it’s safe to set his lunchbox down and turn off the music. Without a word, she crosses the kitchen to sit at the table again and sets her chin on her interlocked fingers. Both Benjy and she watch each other, both of them waiting for the other to make the first move, both almost afraid of each other for lack of a better word. Benjy has his bottom lip fixed between his teeth, his fork still poised over his plate but making no move to finish the last of his pasta.
“Are you all right?” she finally breaks the silence, folding her arms across the tabletop.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Benjy replies far too breezily for it to be natural. Like he somehow forgot how she used to be able to read him better than the back of her own hand.
She’s still a terrible liar, Benjy thinks passively as Shay enters the room. There was no way she didn’t hate him, or at the very least want to-which was somehow worse.
Benjy forgets all of that when the gut punch of his appearance being a ‘special occasion’ lands.
“Yeah nice try, Seamus Naseem, but I see you at least twice a month.”
Two maybe four whole fucking days out of thirty. Father of the year.
“But,” Seamus says, unphased as he grabs a fistful of napkins and crosses to the table. “You and Mama are neverrrr together.”
The opposite used to be true. They used to get teased when they were both still in school over how clingy they were. Before they were even living together, if Benjy went a day without seeing Cleona he just didn’t feel right. After his mom died she never left his side. Until he got on a plane to California a year later without her.
She’d always said she didn’t want to stand between him and his dreams, but she never stopped to think that those dreams included her. That Benjy gave two shits about skateboarding compared to Cleona, and even less compared to Shay, but if he made that clear, he was apparently throwing something else away. And he couldn’t burden her with anything else.
“We’re together enough. I’d hate for it to come off like tonight is all about me or something like that.” He feels Cleona’s glare before he sees it and he offers her and smirk in return. “Plus, you need to drink milk it makes you strong, little dude. Dancers gotta be strong so they can jump really high and catch each other and stuff.”
“I can jump really high!”
Shay demonstrates, actually making fairly impressive air. Benjy smiles.
“And milk can get you to jump even higher. Come on, kid, let’s sit. I bet your mom is really hungry after all her homework.”
The funniest pregnancy craving Cleona had had was specifically and only the Green M&Ms. They’d spent the finals week before Shay splitting bag after bag, with Benjy helping her with flash cards and periodically feeling sick from and over flux of chocolate.
“Can you lift people, Baba?” Shay asks, finally giving in and only looking a little defeated.
“I don’t know Shay, I’ve never really tried. You’re the dancer in the family.”
Shays eyes get huge.
“You’ve never danced?”
Benjy laughs.
“No silly, I have-“
“With Mama?”
Shay looks between the both of them and Benjy has a strange feeling that their child might be plotting against the pair of them. Had someone let him watch The Parent Trap? Benjy clears his throat and looks up at Cleona, her expression purposefully hard to read. He feels something pull in his chest as he answers, a small smile appearing before he could help it.
“Yeah. With your Mama. A few times.”
“What songs?” Shay presses, twirling the spaghetti noodles around sloppily with his fork.
“Stand By Me.” Benjy says before he can stop himself, remembering the night one of the 100s of Finnigan cousins had gotten married. They just started dating, they were barely official. Cleona was embarrassed of her family and Benjy was already in love with her. The thumping bass of the old song had seemed to mirror his heartbeat as he swayed with his girlfriend on the dance floor. That night, after they were naked and tangled, he’d made her laugh with his poor attempt at a rendition, complete with badly mimicked bass instruments and a cracking falsetto.
“Remember that one, Cleona?”
Benjy honestly isn’t sure what he’d do if she said no. Shay’s curiosity only highlighted how little Benjy knew about where he stood when it came to Cleona, and god, how he ached to be someone she loved again. Even platonically.
Cleona clinks her fork absently against her plate, not looking at either of them but a small smile on her face in spite of herself.
“Of course I do.”
Benjy had bought a burgundy tie to match her dress, a plain thing that Axl and she had found in the thrift store down the street from their apartment but it complimented her curves quite nicely and she could wear a normal bra in it, a concept. And then her new boyfriend’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head when he saw her in it.
“God...you look...”
She self-consciously smooths her hair over her shoulders, avoiding his eye. This was the third wedding in her family this summer alone and it was only July. Her cousin Rosalie and some perfectly fine dipshit named Ken were getting married at St. Mary’s in the Hamptons because Ken apparently had money. Axl and Killi were pulling the car around while she waited for Benjy on the stairs. “I know. I’m terrible at dressing up for these things and I--”
“Beautiful.”
She’d been told she was pretty all her life, or rather she would be if she put in an iota of effort, but never beautiful. Especially in a way that seemed to take his breath away just as he spoke. Stranger still, she believed him. Still believed him even as he coaxed her out to the dance floor, skimmed his fingers along her bare shoulders, an apparently innocent action in case her father was watching but sensuous enough to send shivers down the base of her spine. Even with the baseline thudding heavily in the pit of her stomach, she felt light as air in his arms...
“Beautiful,” he whispers again as the song finishes and the world returns to her feet. He looks at her almost like he’s expecting her to argue or roll her eyes or do just about anything to contradict him like normal. But this time, she only smiles at him and leads him out of the hall, away from the always disapproving gaze of her father to wander the golf course in the twilight.
“What’s ‘Stand By Me’?” Shay pipes up, disrupting her reverie. If only evenings on golf courses could stretch out into forever...
“It’s a song, Shay,” she replies helpfully and more than willing to steer the conversation into less emotionally charged topics. “Pasta’s very good, Benjy, thank you.”
Benjy opens his mouth to reply but, Shay refuses to be dissuaded and fixes his mother with a hard scowl. “I know it’s a song, Mama. What’s the song?”
Cleona stares at her son for a beat, meanwhile noting that Benjy has barely made a sound himself. When she glances at him, he has his mouth full and his brow slightly furrowed as if he didn’t himself inspire this topic of conversation. For a moment, in another life, Cleona could easily see the two of them teasing their seven-year-old for not knowing a song that’s over forty years old and come on Shaybaby what are they teaching you in those dance classes? Then, they’d both launch into some horrid duet rendition of Ben E. King’s classic while Shay has his hands clamped over his ears giggling and begging them to stop until Cleona runs to their bedroom to dig out the mixtape Benjy made her a week after her cousin’s wedding...
Her chair scrapes against the linoleum as she stands and tugs at the hem of her t-shirt. “All right, kid, I’ll play you the song.”
Shay looks positively gleeful whereas Benjy looks confused to the point of distress. Before she can think better of it, she heads to their-her bedroom and digs out the tape from the bottom of her sock-and-underwear drawer.
When she re-enters the dining area, Shay is jabbering away about something that happened in his dance class the other day but Benjy looks distracted, his eyes flitting to hers almost nervously as soon as she walks in. She raises her eyebrows back as if to say what do you want me to do? he asked.
She crosses over to the CD-tape boombox she has on the kitchen counter and slides the tape in the deck, both boys following her every movement.
The tell-tale beat opens the track and not completely unexpected, her heart lurches in time.
When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we'll see
No I won't be afraid
Oh, I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me
“I don’t think your dad likes me very much,” Benjy chuckles nervously in her ear, his hand squeezing her hip from emphasis as they sway to the music.
“That’s okay,” she says with a half-smile, tilting her head back so she can look him in the eye. “I don’t think he likes any of us very much.”
“No?” he grins at her.
“Not even a little bit,” she laughs, letting her hand fall a little from his shoulder to his chest. “Don’t get me wrong--objectively, he’s a good man, all things considered, but children are a requirement for every good Catholic marriage and well--one thing to not like kids. Quite another to get a bunch of duplicates who are keen on causing trouble and being queer and generally problematic in just about everything they can get their hands on--well, we never really stood a chance with him.”
Benjy laughs and shakes his head, his gelled hair falling out of place.
“What?” she cries, mock affronted.
“It’s just--” he smiles at her, then ducks his head. “those might be some of the best things about all of you.”
“Oh.” Her face is starting to hurt from smiling. “I think so too.”
“And you--”
“What about me, Benjamin?”
God, have his eyes always been so bright, so deep, so goddamn brilliant? He laughs, leans in so their foreheads almost touch. “I’m just so happy to be here. With you.”
So darling, darling
Stand by me, oh stand by me
Oh stand, stand by me
Stand by me
He gets a sudden urge to cry, watching them. God. If he could’ve just tried a little harder. Been a little bit better….
Benjy physically shakes himself before going into the kitchen. He marks the open books with post its and then neatly sets them to the side. “CHILD DEVLOPMENT AND INTEGRATION” slips out of his hand and lands on the floor with a thump, causing Mel to trot into the kitchen and growl at him.
“I’m doing my best, alright?” He says to the dog, who stops making noise but doesn’t stop watching him. Benjy falls into the rhythm of cooking, making a garlic and butter sauce to sauette the noodles in after they’re cooked aldente. He still hears Shay chattering away and smiles to himself when he hears Cleona laugh. He wondered when that was supposed to stop being one of his favorite sounds. He gets them all plates, ensuring of course, that Shay has his full Spider-Man dinner set to avoid a tantrum. As if on queue, his son comes bounding into the kitchen in a weird, quasi-gallop that makes Benjy laugh.
“What’s going on here?”
“I’m a unicorn.” Shay says, as if it’s painfully obvious.
“Ah yes, of course. Question for you-do Unicorns wash their hands?”
“Nooo” Shay thrills, smiling at him cheekily.
“Hmm, Im pretty sure in this apartment they do.” Benjy smiles and lets Shay run around him in a few circles before he pats his back twice.
“Alright, Mr. Unicorn, go tell your mom dinner’s ready and wash your hands-I’m getting pretty hungry.”
Shay gallops off and Benjy plates up the first serving as Cleona comes in, when he turns around, she’s in a pair of light jeans and a black v neck t shirt that fits her in all the right places-he catches himself staring before he gives her a look.
“Really?”
“What?”
“You found out it was mine and you couldn’t stand to have it on anymore, huh?” He says incredulously. “Do you hate me that much?” Benjy is surprised when his voice cracks.
“We were friends first, Lo. Can’t we be friends again?”
Cleona stares at Benjy, looks down at her clothes, and then back at him.
“I’m sorry, I’d been wearing the same clothes for over 24 hours now and thought I might spare the dinner table, but next time I’ll be sure to check with you to make sure you don’t find any personal offense.” Her voice is low enough for only him to hear but no less biting. “Strangely enough, Benjy, not everything is about you.”
Not that she would admit to him, but as strange as it felt to accidentally find herself in his clothes, it felt even stranger to take it off and toss it in the laundry with the full intention of giving it back to him and never touching it again.
Benjy opens and closes his mouth a few times before finally rediscovering speech, his eyes still darting up and down her figure. “So you’re telling me it’s just a coincidence that you changed right after finding out that was my old sweatshirt?”
“Imagine that,” she replies in the same clipped tone, flicking her hair over her shoulders and eyeing the plates in his hands. “Can I help with anything?”
Benjy stares at her for another second and shakes his head. “No, I-I got it,” he says, setting the plates at the table. “You didn’t answer my question though.”
Turning her back to him as she crosses to the fridge, she rolls her eyes. “Can we be friends again?”
When she turns around, a gallon of milk in hand, she’s almost surprised to see Benjy looking at her so dejectedly that it almost makes her want to go to him. Instead, she stands still and he sighs, his shoulders slumping forward as he grips the back of a nearby chair like he suddenly needs its support. “Do you hate me?”
In all honesty, it should be an easy question. She has no problem letting him know her thoughts on every other one of his flaws and wrongdoings over the past years. All that put together must equal hatred. God knows how much she’s been practicing the act of hating her ex-fiance. Just to make it easier to face what’s been lost. Of course, that alone is what makes it impossible. That, and their history. Because for everything he did wrong, there were ten other things he did right, things for which she’d be forever grateful to him. It’s just that when it came down to it, in that last year, even the right things turned bitter and Benjy became anxious to return to California and Cleona became anxious for him to leave.
That’s all became more complicated ever since he left for good.
“I do not hate you, Benjy,” she says carefully, finally joining him to set the milk down on the table.
“Not for lack of trying,” he adds bitterly, drumming his fingers on the back of the chair.
“I’ve never lied to you about that,” her voice lowering to just above a whisper as she hears the bathroom door slam shut down the hall and the clamoring footsteps of an over-excited six-year-old.
“Mama! Baba! I’m hungry!” Shay announces as he marches into the kitchen, his Peter Parker action figure in one hand and Spiderman in the other.
“Well,I suppose you help Baba set the table so we can do something about that, eh?” Cleona says, ruffling his hair as he passes. “Remember the rules. Peter and Spiderman can sit at the table, but they stay sitting while you’re eating.”
“Yesssss, Maamaa,” Shay replies with an exasperated sigh and carefully sets both figures on either side of his plate. He then skates over to the cutlery drawer and perks up, struck by sudden inspiration. She can practically see the lightbulb materialize over his head.
“Can I have pop with dinner?”
Cleona snorts and bends over to pet Mel as she saunters past the table, presumably heading for the hallway where she can lay down on the carpet but still have a good view of Benjy. “Pop is for special occasions, bucko. I don’t know what you think you’re trying to pull.”
“But it is a special occasion, Mama,” he smiles beatifically at her. “Baba’s here.”
That stops her short. Because for a split second, she had forgotten that she was living in a world where the appearance of her kid’s dad was a special occasion.
“That’s er-” she nods jerkily at Benjy. “That’s up to you.”
“You sure your guard dog is gonna let me in?” Benjy says, mostly joking but eyeing Mel suspiciously.
“Go wash up, Rollerboy.” Benjy says, kissing the top of Shay’s head as he puts him on the ground. Shay doesn’t argue, which is honestly surprising, but Benjy sees Cleona frown after he passes her, and Benjy raises his eyebrows at her.
“Everything alright?”
“Peachy.”
Benjy scoffs, looking down for a second before looking right into the eyes that used to be his.
“You can just tell me to fuck off, you know that right?”
Cleona doesn’t say anything as she crosses her arms over her chest, and Mel barks once.
“Look, I’m sorry we were late, okay? I just-” Benjy’s jaw twitches with emotion. “I don’t forget on purpose, it just goes by so fast and I don’t want him to see me constantly looking at my watch cause like, that’d give him a complex or some shit. But it’s not fair, and you don’t even have to let me see him, really, and I need to remember that and try harder to not fuck it up-”
“Benjy.”
God, how can she still do that? Say his name in a way that made it sound like something and let him know everything was alright in one fell swoop.
“Okay. Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.” He says with a grin, it grows when he sees Cleona struggling not to smile.
“Don’t worry about the table, yeah? Give me like…thirty minutes? Keep studying. He was excited to get back to you and tell you about today, but if he’s too distracting tell him to come in and be a taste tester.”
Benjy heads towards the kitchen but stops to kick off his beat up red Vans and move them out of the way. They’d always fought about where he’d left his shoes, especially towards the end, and now the simple act of moving them sends pain shooting through him. If he’d done this, the first time she’d asked, and not fought, if he’d let go of the little petty shit that didn’t matter, would he be going to make dinner in his own kitchen right now? He knows its not that simple, but Jesus, he wishes it was.
“I’ve been looking for that sweatshirt, by the way.” He says as he walks towards the kitchen in search of pasta. “Glad it made it’s way home, I guess.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cleona follows him only as far as the doorway, watching as he starts pulling things out of their-her cupboards. “This is mine.”
“Is there a giant coffee stain on the left sleeve above the cuff?”
“No--” she stops short when she pulls her sleeve over her hand and sees that there is indeed a giant brown splotch that can only be coffee on the left sleeve. When she looks back at him, he’s grinning at her with a box of spaghetti in his hand.
“Told you.”
Fuck. “Next time I do laundry, you can have it back,” she says, avoiding his eye again.” Now, she remembered. This was the sweatshirt she wore when she was pregnant because it was just a tiny bit bigger than her own and smelled like Benjy, a great comfort when he was on the road. It must have got buried in the closet over the fights, the tears, the sleeping alone in their bed while Benjy snored on the couch, the slow accumulation of her mom wardrobe choking out her Benjy’s fiance wardrobe...
For some reason, Benjy’s face falls. “That’s not--”
The conversation is cut short by Shay peeling into the kitchen, nearly losing control of his stocking feet on the linoleum and colliding into his father’s legs.
“Whoa there, little dude!” Benjy chuckles and ruffles Shay’s hair as he hugs his legs. “Careful.”
He grins up at his dad and then turns to his mom. “Whatcha guys talking about?”
“Nothing important, baby,” Cleona smiles at him and leans her hip against the doorframe. “Sounds like you had lots of fun with Daddy today.”
Shay nods emphatically. “We went skating at Central Park!”
“Oh yeah? You think you got moves, kid?”
“Yeah! I got moves!” Shay plants his hands on his hips, his chest puffed out and looking like a miniature of his uncle.
Cleona laughs and crosses her arms in mock challenge. “Well, go on. Let me see.”
With a toss of his wild curls too reminiscent of his father watching behind him, Shay takes two skating strides towards her into a stance she recognizes from watching his dance classes and flings himself into a tight pirouette. When he finishes, he wobbles only a little bit on his toes, his arms gracefully posed over his head. His expression is serious for a second before breaking with his perfect bright smile.
“How about that?” he asks proudly.
Unable to help herself, she scoops him up into her arms and peppers his face with kisses, for a moment forgetting that they have audience as Shay squeals in delight. “Absolutely stunning. How’d you get so good?”
“I practice everyday!”
“You practice everyday?”
“Everyday, Mommy!”
“That’s my man.” She kisses his forehead, catching Benjy’s eye over his tiny shoulder. It’s funny how Shay is the one thing that keeps them connected anymore, but their relationships with him are so separate.
“So,” she turns back to Shay and nudges her forehead to his, “tell me everything.”
His first thought when he sees her is how pretty she is, followed closely by the intense, almost overwhelming feeling of missing her. Benjy’s smart enough not to comment on either of these feelings, knowing he’d get a ‘fuck off’ and an eye roll at best and a protectile hurled his way at worst. Instead, he grins at her and says “love what you’ve done with the place.” Like he does every time he comes over. Cleona has barely touched the apartment they once shared in the five years since Benjy stopped living in it, and the bit makes the pain of that a little easier for Benjy. And Cleona hates it, which is a bonus-a solid foundation of his sense of humor had always been lightly pissing her off. Cleona glares at him and rolls her eyes. Benjy lets Shay down from his hip with a dramatic groan.
“Alright lug, go show Mommy why you insisted I carry you up three flights?”
“I fell!” Shay says dramatically, practically skipping across the family room to show his mother the giant green band-aid on his knee.
“It’s just a scrape.” Benjy says hastily. “I only had uh, the big kid band-aids. And I cleaned it all up, Shay miraculously pulled through, it was a touch and go there for a minute though, huh bud? Thought we were gonna have to amputate.”
His son grins at him before skipping back over to Benjy, who catches him easily and lifts him up onto his hip. He was small for his age-they’d been worried about it for a while, but now his doctors were fairly sure it was just the genetics of both of Shay’s fairly short parents. His dance teachers said it was a good thing and Benjy personally was a fan of it-Shay still felt like a baby in that way, and Benjy was clinging to all he could when it came to his son’s childhood.
“I’m sorry we’re late-really. I thought we were doing okay but I forgot it gets so clogged on the bridge-I uh-” Benjy smiles tightly at his ex-fiance. “Really tried. If that matters. But I’ll let you two get on with your night, how’s that sound?”
“Gnarly.” Shay says, turning to look at him, sunglasses still on. Benjy gently moves them up onto the top of his thick dark curls. Their last Christmas together, Cleona had given Benjy a frame with one of Benjy’s baby pictures side by side with one of Shay’s the only major difference being their eye color. He had inherited his mother’s frankly ridiculous hair, and Benjy was almost obsessed with it.
“Baba don’t go! Not yet!”
“I gotta little dude, we spent allllll day together and now it’s your mom’s turn.”
Shay sticks his bottom lip out.
“Can’t you at least stay for dinner?”
Seamus resembled his mother most when he wanted something from Benjy-they were the only two people in the world who could get him to do almost anything with just a look. Benjy clears his throat, looking from his son to Cleona.
“Can I stay for dinner? I uh, wouldn’t mind making it if that’s a point in my favor.”
Cleona barely gets a chance to check out Shay’s knee before he’s bounding back over to Benjy and flinging himself into his arms. It’s fine. She gets it. He’s novel whereas she’s always around. Seven-year-olds don’t entirely know how to appreciate routine and consistency. They want fun and excitement, which is exactly what Benjy gives him.
What he used to give her.
Right on cue, she feels Mel bump against her legs and starts vibrating with a slow growl as she focuses on Benjy. Mel came soon after the split with Benjy, because why not add a puppy on top of the chaos that comes with teaching and raising a two-year-old. Between her and herself alone, it’s entirely her own fault that Mel doesn’t like Benjy. She was an oddly intuitive puppy that trotted after Shay around the apartment to both help him cause trouble and stop him from getting into trouble. For Cleona, Mel almost always seemed to “appear” when dealing with her ex, like she could almost sense the shift in the atmosphere. Or maybe Mel could actually understand the midnight rants against her ex to which only she was privy.
“Down, girl,” Cleona tells her, and Mel sits but her glare does not waver. To be fair, the way Shay has his arms wrapped so tightly around Benjy’s neck makes her want to cry a little so perhaps the dog is having the better reaction.
“Knock yourself out,” she says to Benjy with a shrug. “I need to go grocery shopping but they’re might be something workable in there.”
“Yay!” Shay exclaims, throwing his head back and nearly tossing off what must be new shades, and Cleona can’t quite help a small smile.
“I just-I’ll clean off the table and you two can have at it.”
Benjy Fenwick glances in his review mirror, smiling at Shay in his booster seat as he dials the phone number he’d had memorized since his Sophomore year of college.
The phone rings once before he gets her voice mail, the standard robot stating her number and unavailability. He was sure she had her phone on Do Not Disturb while studying, and even when she wasn’t, Benjy was sure Cleona screened his calls.
“Hey Lo-Cleona.” He mouths ‘shit’ to himself, you’d think after five years, he’d have broken the habit.
“We had a bit of an incident with the roller skates- he’s fine, we had the Neosporin on stand by, and got right back up. But then we saw a dog and lo and behold, we had to chase it, and uh-” Benjy lets out a weird half laugh half sigh, trying to figure out how to tell his ex that their child is actually freakishly fast when given wheels and that Benjy came dangerously close to losing him in the crowd of the park. “Well, it was quite the adventure.”
Seamus giggles from the backseat and Benjy grins despite himself. “Anyway, we’re on the way back to yours right now but traffic is gnarly so we’re going to be kind of late. I’m super sorry and I uh, well we can work out if you need to take time away later or whatever. Just wanted to let you know what was up. I’m sure you won’t listen to this and will text me in about two minutes, but just wanted to keep ya in the loop. Alright, later.”
Benjy hangs up and glances at Shay again, who was insisting on wearing the mini aviators Benjy had given him when he’d gotten back to New York yesterday-even in the car.
“Hi Baba.”
“Hello, Seamus.”
“What’s ‘gnarly’?”
Benjy smiles at the bumper of the Volvo in front of them.
“It’s slang for something bad or uncool. Like this traffic. Well maybe not, like, super bad, just something that gets in the way of your plans. Like how this is gonna make us a little late to get back to your mom’s. Skaters say it, little dude.”
“Why don’t they just say bad?”
“I-” Benjy says as he flicks on his turn signal and changes lanes. “Do not know. I guess we think it sounds cooler.”
“That’s stupid.”
Benjy laughs and poorly tries to turn it into a cough.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to say ‘stupid’, are you?”
“I don’t know.” Shay says, his voice dripping with faux innocence.
“Well I say you shouldn’t. It’s not nice.”
“Sorry, Baba.”
“That’s okay, Shaybaby. But I’ll let the guys know you don’t think saying ‘gnarly’ cool. Your opinion is held in the highest regard there.”
He was. Everyone in Benjy’s circle loved Shay.
“In California?”
“Mhmm.” Benjy says, pulling into another lane and getting ahead of a big surge of traffic.
“Mommy would say California is gnarly.”
Benjy lets out a breath and physically bites his tongue, ignoring the swell of emotion in his chest.
“I’m sure she would.” Benjy makes the best eye contact he can with his son through his sunglasses. “Maybe we uh, don’t tell your mom that you learned that word today, alright little dude?”
@cleonafinnigan
It’s another 23 minutes before Cleona Finnigan checks the clock on the oven and checks her phone, letting out a sigh when she sees “new voicemail” pop up on her screen. That would be Benjy late once again returning their child. Out of everything, she never really holds that against him. Oh sure, she makes a show of being pissed, but she knows how Shay is, particularly when he gets time with his dad. The extra study time without interruptions isn’t exactly the worst thing either.
Listening to the voicemail, she can’t quite help but chuckle when Benjy mentions Shay chasing after a dog, nudging her stocking feet into Mel’s side under the kitchen table. That’s her boy, all right. Benjy himself almost sounds haggard, like Shay gave him a run for his money and good on him. Someone fucking needs to around here. If only she could just be smug about her ex having to be a panicked and exhausted parent for a change instead of also getting that familiar twinge in her chest.
She doesn’t bother calling (or texting, for that matter--sometimes, she actually does listen to his messages...if it’s convenient) . She knows all about the parents who hover and harangue their exes if they’re even a minute late returning their kids, but Cleona does her damnedest not to do that with Benjy. Because for all of his faults, he loves Seamus with everything he is and Seamus idolizes him. She already has to be the bad guy on a near-daily basis; she wasn’t about to start quibbling over minutes with their son. Instead, she uses that energy to not take Shay’s disappointment when Benjy leaves too personally.
Of course, who really stands a chance when your dad is an accomplished professional skater who does everything in his power to give you a piece of the world in a few short hours?
She slams the textbook in front of her shut, her mind having wandered too far into those dark places to be effective anymore and startling Mel out from underneath the table.
Lo and behold, the intercom buzzes and it’s time to put on a good face.
“Yeah?” she jams on the button by the front door.
“It’s us, Cleona,” Benjy’s voice crackles through the speaker. Something about his voice in the building’s shitty intercom system makes her think of cherry-flavored Pop Rocks...like when they raided the 7-11 by their apartment that one night and trading kisses to see if it felt different with the candy snapping on their tongues...
“Mommy!” Shay’s excitement isn’t going to last after Benjy leaves, but she’ll take what she can get right now.
“Hey, Shaybaby! Come on up!” After pressing the other button to let them in, she immediately starts fussing with her hair. The ratty candy cane pajama pants with the stained NYU hoodie were already a look by themselves but shoving the wild flyaways of her ponytail would obviously make all the difference with the ex she doesn’t want back.
God...it’s been five years. When was this supposed to get easier?
“Hi Mama.” He barely whispers, his voice breaking even still, his vision clouding as he looks at her name in stone. Tabby had helped him pay for the stone, had helped him with everything, really, after his Mum had passed. She probably would’ve let Benjy stay with her, but he’d been too proud to ask. To get any kind of help-he could manage just fine on his own. And here he was, however many years later, still determined not to let anyone help him more than what was absolutely needed, determined to manage on his own in place of flourishing with the help of someone else. But he couldn’t burden Tabitha with himself, just as he couldn’t-and wouldn’t-burden Cleona.
He’d liked what they’d picked out all the same-reddish granite with her name and epitaph on tan, two lilies marking the corners. He reads the line under his mother’s name, refusing to look at the dates below, a reminder of how short of time they’d had together.
“Brilliant and beloved mother, friend, mind.
وفي النهاية ، الحب الذي تصنعه يساوي الحب الذي تتخذه.”
“I hope you’re here.” Benjy says in Arabic, so low he’s not even sure Cleona could hear him if she knew the language.
“I hope you know I’m sorry this happened to me-I hope I haven’t let you down, mama. I’m trying to get better. I’m getting better, but today…” He smiles despite himself, knowing his mother knows without him having to say anything out loud. It’d been like that when she was alive too. She knew him better than anyone, probably still did. Cleona was the only other person he’d ever met who just seemed to understand him to the same degree, and even then there were parts of him that he could never show her. If his mother was still alive, she’d instantly be able to tell how he felt about his best friend, and she’d come up with the perfect thing to say, the perfect reason for them to be together. She’d have a whole list of reasons as to why it could still work, a whole list of reasons on why they should make it work, and knowing that makes his stomach drop further.
“I don’t really know how to live like this. Help me figure it out, mama. If you’re listening.” Part of him means without his legs, part of him means without Cleona knowing how he feels, but most of all, he means living without Samira-it was something that even at the end of her life he’d never been able to picture, and in the years since, nearly a decade, Benjy still felt like he lived part of his life in a fog. The world was different without his mum, and he was finally understanding that it was never going to go back to how it was before, just like with his legs.
“I just want it all to be okay. I hope it can be.”
He sees movement and softens as he watches Cleona wordlessly clear the dead leaves and grass off of the corner of the stone.
“The Beatles.” He says in English, his voice raised slightly. Cleona glances at him from the ground, confused.
“…what?”
Benjy nods at the script in the epitaph.
“The Beatles. Mum’s favorite-she said it was a side effect of her time or whatever.” He chuckles quietly, almost hearing her say it. “But that’s what the Arabic is. It’s, uh, “In the end the love you make is equal to the love you take” a little cheesy you know, but uh, I thought it fit her.”
Cleona smiles softly, looking at Benjy and then back down at the script. “I like it.”
“Me too,” Benjy replies thoughtfully, his attention already back on his mother. They lapse back into silence, Cleona stepping back next to him. She hears him speak under his breath in Arabic, the slight crinkle of the flower wrappings as he fidgets with the lilies still in his lap, but keeps her eyes on the stone as well, trying to imagine what Samira would say if they ever had met. The way Benjy talks about her, she sounds like a gentle but no-nonsense woman. Would she really like her, like Benjy has once said, or would she rather keep her away from her son? Her son for whom she gave everything? They had each other. And then she died.
She glances over at Benjy when the Arabic stops, his lips pressed in a tight line and his jaw slightly clenched. A breeze ruffles his hair, the longest she’s ever seen it, and she gets the urge to card her fingers through it.
“Hey Benj?”
“Hm?” His eyes flick in her direction and the effort to smile is evident by the strain in his features but it doesn’t quite connect and he quickly gives it up.
She kneels down, situating herself so she gets grass stains on her knees instead of her sister’s skirt, and folds her arms on his armrest.
“Tell me more about her?” she asks in a quiet voice, much like she would speak in church, and sets her chin on her arms.
Sam is sprawled out on his side on the floor with Shay using his arm as a ramp for his cars when Cleona and Axl come into the living room.
“Oh my God, Lo, is that really you?” It’s part comic relief but also a very real part surprised because he’s fairly certain he hasn’t ever seen her in a dress in the two years that he’s known her. If she had come out in a dress in a color other than black, he might have actually keeled over dead.
Axl snorts behind her but Cleona does not look at all amused. “Thanks, Samuel.”
“Oh come on, Lolo, you look gorgeous, honey.” He tries to push himself upright but stops at Shay’s squawking. “I’m just so in awe of your beauty that I honestly didn’t recognize you.”
That earns him a smile, albeit a rather stiff one. Maybe it’s just him but she looks more uptight than actually excited to be going on a date with this bloke Kingsley. There’s also a very real possibility that all of Axl’s entirely unironic griping about the situation between his sister and the cop has had some effect on his perspective.
“C’mere, Shaybaby.” Cleona crouches down to scoop up Shay and presses her forehead to his. “You be good for Uncle Sammy and Uncle Axl? Take your bath and get some good sleepies and I’ll see you in the morning?”
Sam catches Axl’s eye and can’t help the small smile that spreads across his face. His older sister Anita has two young kids of her own. He speaks to her occasionally on the phone but he’s never met her kids. Never gotten to hear them call him “Uncle Sam.” Not that he wouldn’t like to, but Anita still lives with their parents and he hasn’t spoken to them since he was kicked out at sixteen.
It was actually Cleona who first started referring to Sam as Uncle Sam to Shay, which is something that surprised both him and Axl even though he will never admit it. When Axl introduced Sam to her in this very room, Cleona barely spoke more than two words to him. Shay wasn’t even six months old yet and she ended up excusing herself to tend to him after five minutes of staring straight into Sam’s soul. When Sam asked Axl about her later, he had waved him off.
“I promise you. She doesn’t not like you. She’s just extra uh...protective right now.”
It had taken some time, but Cleona gradually warmed up to him and Sam learned bits and pieces of her story as it intersected with Axl’s. He did the tattoo on her bicep that covers the name of her ex and hugged her when she cried because he’s finally gone. And then, with a bit more time, he became Uncle Sammy.
Cleona sets Shay back down on the floor with a kiss to the top of his head before smiling at Sam, a bit more genuine now but still guarded.
“Thanks for watching him, Sam. I really appreciate it.”
“Anytime, hon. Here.” Before Shay gets the chance to commandeer his limbs as car ramps again, he stands up to hug her. “That bloke do anything funny, I’ll beat his arse. Cop or not.”
On account of the baby in the room, he adds this last part under his breath so only she can hear and gets a small laugh in return. When they separate, she bids him goodnight and blows Shay a kiss that he very clumsily returns by softly smacking his own face and then reaching out to his mum. For a second, it looks like Cleona is going to sink to the floor and totally give up on the date she has spent the last two hours getting ready for when Axl speaks up.
“Lo, you’re going to miss the bus.” He pauses, looking significantly at his sister in the way the Sam has noticed is apparently unique to the Finnigans. “Unless…”
Cleona glares at him before shouldering past him to the front door. Axl raises his eyebrows once at Sam and follows her out the door.
“Mamaí go bye-bye,” Shay says matter-of-factly to the semi-truck in his hands.
Sam sits back down and crosses his legs, watching the two-year-old as he steers the truck along the edge of the coffee table. “She’ll be back to see you in the morning, bud.”
Shay turns his head to glance at Sam. “Mamaí go to hospibtal?”
“Nah, she’s uh going to see a friend. Wanna race?” Sam picks up the little red convertible and sets it next to Shay’s semi on the table. Something tells him that this is not something that Cleona would want them to get into with Shay right now. Just a suspicion.
However, something seems to have suddenly clicked within the kid and he quickly stands up, looking at the door aghast. “Benjy?!”
Shit. The B-word. “No, no, honey, Mamaí’s not seeing Benjy tonight. Another friend. It’s okay.”
Shay looks at him for a minute, apparently trying to decide whether or not he believes him or not, before he gets back down on the floor. “Okay, let’s race!”
***
After Axl returns, it takes the two of them just a little less than two hours to get Shay bathed and ready for bed. The whole time, Sam notices that Axl seems distracted, staring at nothing in particular until a butt-naked Shay pops up between his legs demanding attention. A few times Sam even catches Axl staring at him over Shay’s head while he reads The Velveteen Rabbit, making his stomach flip. Even better, when Axl catches himself, he bites down on his bottom lip in a nervous smile. Except when Sam says “better,” he actually means “worse.” He’s had this crush on Axl for almost as long as he has known him, and every time he thinks Axl feels the same, something shifts and Axl closes himself off again. Or maybe it’s him who closes off. It has been so long since he’s been even remotely intimate with someone, he doesn’t even know where to start anymore. There had been a few times they had gotten so close while watching a film that he’d been afraid to breathe. One of those times, Axl had been a little wine drunk and ended up slumped against his chest, cuddling into him before falling asleep. The only proof Sam has that this actually happened and wasn’t a cruel dream is that Cleona had been there too and had made a point of leaving the room to give them privacy with the smuggest smile on her face.
Obviously nothing happened.
But still, holding his best friend against him may have been one of the nicest ways he’d fallen asleep in a long time.
They are now both folded on opposite ends of the couch with glasses of red wine, the telly on but neither of them watching it. Every time a pipe so much as creaks, Axl jolts up and looks at the door. Sam watches this happen at least five different times before speaking up.
“All right, what’s going on with you? You’re all jumpy and shit and you and Lo were acting even weirder than normal before she left. What’s going on?”
Axl somehow manages to both shrug and fold himself even deeper into the sofa at the same time. “Not weirder. She’s just being...dumb.”
Sam sighs. “Why is she being dumb? Even better, why do you care?”
As soon as he says it, he knows it is the wrong thing to say and Axl’s glare drives the point home. “Right,” he raises his hand not holding the wine glass in surrender, “I’m sorry. But babes, don’t you think you should trust her a bit on this? I don’t know much but I don’t think she’s particularly interested in re-living any of the shit she went through with that twat with another one. Didn’t you tell me that she hasn’t even been out with anyone since?”
Axl sighs and sets his glass on the end table.“It’s not even that, Sam.” He pauses and scrubs his hand over his face before turning to look at Sam. “It’s the fact that she’s going out with some berk she met once when she’s spent the last month either on the phone or visiting with this Benjy idiot.”
“That’s the other cop, right?” Sam smirks and takes a sip of his wine. Obviously, Sam knows this Benjy idiot is the other cop. He has been made aware of just about every visit and phone call shared between this idiot cop and Cleona. A person cannot step into this flat without being made aware of the ongoing saga, and Cleona herself doesn’t even talk about him as much as Shay and Axl do. What’s even funnier is that Axl hasn’t even met the man and is somehow still so easy to rile about him.
“Yes. He’s the other cop, Sam,” Axl says, rolling his eyes. “You know damn well he’s the cop. He came around before this other one.” He adds darkly.
Sam shrugs. “All right so he’s the cop and Cleona spends a lot of time with him. What about it?”
“You know, I’m not the biggest fan of you when you pretend to be thicker than you actually are.”
“Hmm you know what I actually think?” Sam smacks his lips and sets his glass down so he can cross his legs underneath him and interlocks his fingers underneath his chin, staring right into Axl’s icy blue eyes. “I think you’re just upset that she hasn’t talked to you about him since the last time she took Shay to visit him.”
Axl’s entire face screws up when he pouts. It’s adorable. “Oh piss off.”
“Struck a chord, darling?”
Then Axl’s face goes purple and Sam realizes that he has struck more than just a chord. “It’s not-! I just don’t want her making the same mistakes I have, all right? That’s all.” He straightens up and plants his feet on the floor like he’s getting ready to bolt.
Sam watches him in shocked silence, his stomach sinking down to somewhere near his ankles. Mistakes? What the hell did he mean by that? He knew that Axl struggled a lot with the shame associated with his diagnosis, often referring to the mistakes he had made in the few times he spoke up in group, but he couldn’t possibly be talking about that right now. With a nervous swallow, Sam scoots closer to him so their thighs brush against each other but Axl does not move. Does not even lift his head from his head to look at him when Sam switches off the telly.
“Ax...what’s this really about? What mistakes do you think you’ve made that Cleona’s going to make too?”
Axl lets out a long sigh and presses the heels of his palms to his eyes. “It’s stupid.”
“Honey,” Sam smiles softly when Axl drops his hands to look at him. More words are supposed to come out of his mouth, but they all die on his tongue at Axl’s wide-eyed gaze, somehow both desperate for whatever comfort Sam can offer and challenging him to dare say anything at all. Overall, Axl was a pretty even-tempered person, particularly when things were rough. Mostly because he internalized everything and put all his focus on everyone else. The only person Sam had ever seen Axl really argue with was Cleona, but now he cannot help but wonder if he was perhaps dancing on the edge of something dangerous here too. If not a fight, maybe something else…
“Just talk to me?”
Axl holds his gaze for a second longer before letting out a long sigh and sinking back into the couch, his eyes now watching the ceiling but his thigh still pressed against Sam’s. “You know, before all of this, he was just a guy she talked to at the pub. She mentioned a few times that he asked her to come home with him, but because she’s herself, she always said no. Not that I blame her for that after everything, but Jesus Christ, live a little, you know? I’m already watching the baby. One of us should be getting laid every once in awhile. But she made it clear that wasn’t going to happen and I didn’t push it. It did get to the point a few times where I was more concerned that Mum was going to put the moves on him and then we’d have an entirely different situation on our hands with ‘the nice Middle-Eastern boy.’”
Sam can’t entirely help the amused snort that comes out when Axl mimics Sandra Finnigan’s high-pitched Irish accent but is heartened when Axl breaks into a small smirk of his own.
“You never mentioned he was a homewrecker.”
“Potentially a homewrecker. I’m pretty sure there was little danger of anything happening there on his part, but still...you’ve seen his mug on the telly right? The jawline that could cut glass?”
Sam impulsively rubs the side of his jaw instead of answering the question. He still did not totally understand how Benjy’s early attempts at getting Cleona to come home with him related to Axl’s fears. Then again, Axl frequently engaged in what Sam liked to call “lawyer-speak” when faced with a direct question that he either did not know how or did not want to answer. Somehow through some long-winded roundabout narration that sometimes even Sam had a hard time keeping up with, Axl would make his point. It was just a matter of getting him there.
“So this bloke harasses your sister and you’re actually disappointed that she doesn’t go home with him.”
Axl snorts. “She liked him. I don’t typically like speaking for Cleona but--”
“That’s never stopped you before.”
The corners of his icy blue eyes crinkle when Axl smiles and Sam has to physically push down on his wrist to keep himself from reaching up and caressing the side of his face, starting right at that corner down the curve of his cheek that abruptly straightens into a strong square jaw.
“Touché. She likes him. Point blank.”
“Just to be clear,” Sam says, slouching back against the couch next to him, “when you say ‘likes’...”
“She loves him, yeah.”
“Right. Because she told you…?” Sam turns his head just in time and smirks when Axl rolls his eyes.
“Twat.”
“I’m going to take that as a no.”
Axl chuckles. “There’s some things you don’t have to tell a person for them to just know, Sammy.”
There’s something more in the way Axl’s voice goes gentle around a nickname that Sam thought he’d shaken off well before meeting the Finnigans. There’s something even more about the way Axl’s words strike him straight through the soul and god, he knows. After all this time, how could they not both know but still be so afraid to speak it into existence?
Axl stares at him for a long while before turning away and clearing his throat. That was the window. That was it and Sam missed it. Oh well, opportunity lost. It’s fine. Even though his stomach is currently tying itself in knots because that simple sentence made so many things finally slide into place except who’s going to say it first.
And it’s most definitely not going to be Axl.
“It’s so obvious...how much she cares about this guy,” Axl says instead, ignoring Sam gaping at him. “And I think the same goes for him. But it’s not just them in a bar anymore. It’s real, like he can’t just blame it on the alcohol or Lo say something lame about work or Shay. Or this random Kingsley bloke that came out of nowhere. You know she’s literally got their nightly phone calls blocked off in her planner? Like in purple ink too. Like she obviously purposefully uses a purple pen to mark off her Benjy times. And she only uses colored pens, particularly purple, for the important shit.”
Sam shakes his head in effort to pull himself out of his own thoughts and instead follow Axl’s train of thought. “How the fuck do you know that? I mean, that is way too much insight into her fucking planner, mate. Way, way too much.”
Axl glances at him out of the corner of his eye and raises a single eyebrow. “Maybe so, but her reaction when she caught me looking at it after she so foolishly left it on the kitchen table...that offered me plenty of insight.”
Sam snorts, easily able to picture Cleona chasing Axl around the flat armed only with the planner but ready to beat him within an inch of his life. Even he has to admit, that would be a fairly obvious tell on how much she cares for the Benjy idiot.
“So, I guess what I’m trying to say,” Axl continues after a pause, returning to his staredown with the ceiling. “I don’t want my sister making my same mistakes. Ignoring what’s right in front of her because there’s no way they could be...even with everything between the lines-they’re just-they're both too fucking stubborn to realize that they love each other, but I’m just the idiot big brother who has watched her cry over this guy and-”
“Like us.”
Before Sam can think better of it, those words just come blurting out to both his and Axl’s surprise. But the fucking idiot was taking too damn long and he doesn’t want to talk about Cleona and a man he hasn’t even met when the fucking idiot man he loves is in front of him. Who loves him back. Or at least he better otherwise Sam is going to sink into this carpet and just die.
But there had been a window and he missed it. So he just had to make his own, didn’t he? After all this time...
For a second, Axl looks like he’s about to burst into tears as his chin starts to tremble. But he’s looking at him. That’s not nothing. “Wh-what?”
Sam runs his tongue over his cracked lips, ignoring how his stomach lurches as the action draws Axl’s eye to his mouth. “They’re us, you idiot. Isn’t that what you’re saying in your dumbass lawyer-speak?”
Axl’s mouth opens and closes once before words finally come out. “You mean...you-?”
Sam’s face splits into a wide grin. He’s too far committed to hold back now and somehow that actually emboldens him. Axl hasn’t kicked him yet, or worse, given him some pitying look and shaken his head. No, he just looks adorably panicked that Sam saw straight through him. “Anyone ever tell you how cute you are when you’re all flustered?”
It takes Axl a full minute to summon a barely coherent response. “Uh...I think, my mum...once?”
“Oh my god, Ax.” Sam throws his head back to laugh loudly only for Axl to shush him and pull on his arm. And Sam lets him. Lets him pull him closer until their faces are just centimeters apart. And there’s a smile on Axl’s lips that wasn’t there before and god, he’s so close and finally, finally looks like he might stay there even when Sam reaches forward to touch his face. Just his fingertips to the soft five o’clock shadow that Axl has been debating on growing out for months now, but that’s enough for the other man’s eyes to flutter shut for a moment.
“You know, there’s a kid sleeping in the other room,” Axl says quietly, staring steadily into Sam’s eyes as he brings his hand up to close around his wrist. “So I’d really appreciate if you could keep the maniacal laughter down so we could...you know, not deal with that.”
Sam hums, beaming at him as he moves his hand up from the other man’s cheek to the curls right over his ear. “Oh, you’d just love that, wouldn’t you? Saved by the baby?”
Axl scrunches up his nose at him while his hand roams down from Sam’s wrist to his forearm like he’s debating pulling him closer. “That’s not fair.”
“Doesn’t have to be fair, babes,” Sam chides gently, intense warmth flooding him as Axl scowls halfheartedly back at him, his face now beet red. “I know you...and suffice it to say, we’ve both been bloody cowards and how did you put it? Ignoring what’s right in front of us?”
“To be honest, I can’t remember what I said five seconds ago.”
They both stare at each other for a beat before breaking into giggles. Sam still hasn’t stopped tucking that same rogue curl behind Axl’s ear, and Axl’s eyes have gone that impossible soft that they do when Sam isn’t supposed to see. Except now he sees and Axl isn’t turning away. There’s nothing to stop him from finally closing that distance and kissing the man he’s spent so much time telling himself not to kiss.
That is, nothing except one thing.
“You still haven’t told me that I’m right.”
Blowing out a soft sigh, Axl takes Sam’s hand from his hair in both of his hands. For a second, he looks like he’s going to say what he needs to say, but because he’s an asshole, he narrows his eyes instead and Sam is completely and utterly screwed. “But do I have to?”
“If you want me to bloody kiss you, you’d better!”
“But what if I kiss you?” Axl is openly smirking at him now and screw being screwed, Sam is fucked.
“I don’t know. All I’ve heard so far tonight is a lot of talk and--”
He’s cut off with a less-than-elegant grunt as Axl all but launches himself at him, grabbing his face and mashing their mouths together with little grace but all the passion Sam has come to expect from the beleaguered public defender. It’s almost as if Axl has been wanting this for nearly as long as Sam has and just been waiting for permission. Waiting for some sign that he’s allowed and then waiting some more. But all Sam can think of before his thoughts are completely shorted out by Axl’s tongue is how fucking stupid it was for them to wait in the first place. They’re not forbidden; they’re just fragile.
The kiss lasts only a few seconds but it’s a few seconds of the forever Sam has always wanted.
When Axl pulls back, his gaze flits from Sam’s eyes to his fingers now tracing along Sam’s cheekbone like he’s somehow forgotten how his hands ended up on Sam’s face. When he dares meet Sam’s eye again, he immediately ducks his head and lets out an embarrassed laugh, which Sam matches in kind.
“So...there’s that,” Axl murmurs, all shy again but this time slightly undercut by his kiss-swollen lips.
Sam chuckles low in his throat, raising his hand to Axl’s still on his cheek and interlacing their fingers. “If I’d known that all it’d take was a challenge to get you to kiss me, I’d have done that a long time ago.”
Axl scowls. “Oh hush, I’m far more complicated than that.”
“Are you though?”
Axl screws up his face with the effort of trying to come up with an argument but ultimately gives up and slumps forward to bury his face in Sam’s neck. “Shut up.”
Sam chuckles and cranes his head to the side to kiss down Axl’s neck. “I’d love to.”
Axl lets out a shaky sigh, his voice suddenly going breathy as Sam sucks at his pulsepoint. “Then do it.”
It’s as if those are the magic words meant to flip the final switch and everything starts moving in fast motion from the moment Sam lifts his head from Axl’s neck and sees the challenge and lust in the other man’s steely blue gaze. He lunges forward, his hands now gripping the sides of Axl’s face, as he presses him backward into the couch, kissing him and meaning it with every molecule contained in his body. He feels Axl’s hands brush down the sides of his neck to his shoulders, clumsily marking the terrain of his body in their fast desperation for each other. In this moment, nothing exists outside of Axl and all the ways he feels and sounds. Especially when Sam breaks away to kiss up and down his jaw and neck, this time drawing out a moan that’s delicious enough to sustain life as he sucks at the tender skin underneath his ear. Perfectly content to keep going and going, he smirks as he feels Axl writhe and shudder beneath him.
“Sammy...oh, Sammy, st-stop for a second.”
Sam pulls away to look down at him, panicked for a split second that he had done something wrong. “What-what’s wrong?”
Axl’s face splits into the most perfect smile, somehow soft and teasing at the same time. This is what his soul burns for--this beautiful fucking man who’s finally underneath with his arms closed tight around him, who’s raising his head to kiss his lips real gentle before opening his mouth to speak.
“I’ve no idea when Lo is gonna be home,” he says with a quiet laugh. “And I really want you to fuck me and still be able to look my sister in the eye.”
Fast-motion, make-out, move to bedroom
He’s everywhere all at once, and it’s all Sam can do to try and keep up with him.
He points towards the tree, a weeping willow that’s got to be at least a hundred years old.
“She’s over there.”
“Okay.”
He feels Cleona grip onto the handlebars on the back of his chair and he swivels around to face her.
“I want to do it myself.”
Benjy’s mouth ticks up at the side again as he catches her eye, bracing for an argument. For her to (rightfully) tell him it’s too much for him, to remind him that his shoulder’s still healing, that he shouldn’t over do it. Benjy readies his argument about how he’s been coming here on his own for years, about how the least he can do for his mother is go up to her grave on his own accord, that the paralysis has already taken so much from him and if he loses another he’s going to lose his mind.
“Okay.” Cleona says, letting go of the handlebars and smiling at him, flicking on of her plaits over his shoulder. A new emotion chokes Benjy’s throat. She understands him, he doesn’t have to explain himself. She bought lilies. She brought him here, went through all this trouble on her day off, not to mention all the work she had to do to get him out of there in the first place. And Cleona’s letting him lead, letting Benjy do exactly what he needs to do today.
Benjy’s loved her for a while now, probably longer than he’s even been aware of, but looking at Cleona right now, Benjy’s so close to saying it he’s about to burst. He’s never loved her more than he has now. Benjy knows as he smiles sadly back at her, that he’s never going to be able to get over her. Even if he never gets to tell her, Benjy’s going to love Cleona for the rest of his life.
“Hey kid?”
Cleona shifts one of the bags on her shoulder and twists her ring around her finger with her other hand.
“Hey Benj?”
He could say it. I love you. Right here, right now in this cemetery. She’d take it platonically, cause how else would she take it. She might even say it back, but she couldn’t possibly feel the same way, and he doesn’t dare ruin all the wonderful things she’s already done today.
“You’re my best friend, you know that?”
Benjy actually manages a smile and turns around before Cleona responds, flicking off his brakes and starting to push himself up the thankfully flat road towards Samira’s final resting place.
Cleona ducks her head but keeps her eyes fixed on his retreating back, her lips pressed in a smile that just barely contains how much she wants to fling her arms around his neck and hug him so tight neither of them can breathe. One of these times, she most certainly is going to burst and ruin everything, but today and hopefully for days and days to come, she can at least be his best friend.
She waits a beat before following him, her arms crossed loosely in front of her and her eyes scanning blindly over the gravestones as she passes. Aside from funerals for distant relatives in Dublin, she’d only come to cemeteries to meet up with Emmett and his friends.
“Emmett, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
A a half-empty bottle of vodka dangling between her fingers, Cleona stares aghast at her boyfriend stomping over the remains of a gravestone that had just been barely intact before they had come upon it. Danny kicks a large chunk of granite over the side of the hill, going giddy with his apparent discovery of gravity, while Leon stands next to her, snickering with a joint still between his teeth.
“What?” Emmett frowns at her, pausing long enough to bring his cigarette to his lips.
She scoffs and gestures with the bottle at the evidence of his destruction underneath his trainers. “Have some fucking respect for the dead, arsehole.”
His brief confusion fades with a stupid shit-eating grin. “Aw, baby, you do have a heart.”
“You should fucking try it sometime.”
“Of course Cleo would have a soft spot for the dead,” Leon chimes in smoothly, leering at her in that way that makes her blood run cold. Emmett and he have been best mates since they were nappies, but he gave her the fucking creeps and she’d heard horrible rumors about how he was somehow involved with what happened to Gabrielle at the party last Saturday.
“They had fucking families, you fucking pervert” she spits at him. “Something you wouldn’t know anything about.”
Leon also lived with his grandmother, both of his parents having been sent to jail when he was very young.
She sees it about a second before he lunges at her, the threatening glint in his eye, his jaw clenching-- “You little bitch!”
“Hey, hey, hey!” Emmett rushes over to stand between them and places a hand on Leon’s chest while glaring over his shoulder at Cleona.
“You shouldn’t let your whore girlfriend talk to me like that!” Leon says through bared teeth, eyes still fixed on Cleona.
Cleona grins wickedly and takes a long slug from the bottle, long enough to make the world swing a bit too far to the right when she tries to focus on them. “Don’t say that like you wouldn’t love to get with this, Leon.”
She thrusts her chest towards him, which infuriates him but just makes her bolder. That is, until Emmett releases his hold on his best friend and grabs her instead.
“What’d you fucking say?” He’s squeezing her arms too tight, burying his nails into her skin.
“Ow! Emmett! You’re hurting me!”
“What’d you fucking say?!” he growls, his face contorting with fury, tightening his grip on her as she tries to wrench herself away. God, he always came so close, so close...
“You finally going to hit me, you fucking coward? Or still too scared that my brothers are gonna string you up by your entrails?”
He squeezes her harder, hard enough to leave bruises. He wants to, she can fucking see it in his face and, in some weird twisted way that she can’t explain, she wants him to too. If just to stop the waiting, stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. Finally get rid of the inexplicable love she has for him.
Instead, he lets out a gruff sigh and shoves her away, making her lose her balance and fall onto the rather unkempt lawn.
“Slut.”
She spits at his feet. “Coward.”
Emmett stares at her, the disgust roiling off of him in tangible waves, before turning back to slap Leon on the back, and both boys go off to follow Danny stumbling over the other side of the hill. Cleona watches them, finishing off her vodka in peace and waits for Emmett to come back. He always comes back. After all, he needs somewhere to put his dick and it’s nice to feel needed.
Cleona shakes her head slightly, jerking herself out of her head as she comes up besides Benjy in front of Samira’s grave. Immediately, she has the urge to reach for him, her hand twitching at her side, but she resists. This is his time and, just because she’s here with him, does not mean that she needs to intrude on that. She gazes over the stone and down to the expanse of green grass before it, the hand that had been twitching at her side now clenched around her St. Margaret of Cortona medal at her neck.
Um hi, Samira. I’m Cleona, but uh...your son calls me Lolo. I hope--I hope you don’t mind me being here. I uh--I really love your son. There’s no use hedging with you, ma’am. However, the afterlife or whatever works, I figure you already know so...I really love your son and that’s why I’m here. The past few months have been a bitch and he needed to see you and uh...in a weird way, I think I needed to see you too.
“No.” He doesn’t even try to hide the crack in his voice when he answers. He undoes the seatbelt with his free hand but makes no moves beyond that. Cleona squeezes his hand once.
“Yeah, stupid of me to ask.”
“No.” He says again, glancing up at her and holding her eyes in his own for a moment. “You’re not stupid. Don’t say that about yourself. Especially when you’re- especially today.”
Especially when you’re everything to me.
He takes a deep breath and looks up at the ugly tan roof of the car. He takes a breath in, and allows himself to remember.
He’s mad at his mom. He’d been waiting all day to ask her about his dad, and now she’s refusing to answer any questions. Benjy’s tried crying, and it didn’t work, neither did screaming or threatening to run away. Through it all, Samira remained eerily calm.
“Are you done, now?”
Fury like he’d never known fills his tiny body, he’s so mad he can practically feel it radiating off of his Scooby Doo pajamas.
“I hate you! I wish you were dead!”
The silence is different now, and the rage leaves him as quickly as it had come as he watches his mother’s face twist, the facade breaking for a second before she takes a breath and the mask slips back on.
“Benjy. That was….incredibly mean of you. You hurt my feelings. And I don’t think you mean it. I want you to take five big breaths with me, okay?”
“Okay.” His voice is small as his mother’s own wavers slightly.
“One-” She says in Arabic. They breathe in and out, Benjy copying Samira, all the way through
“-five.”
He looks at her, expectant, ashamed, and he’s struck with the urge to cry when his mom gives him the first smile he’s ever seen that’s anything other than happy.
“Now. Do you want to repeat yourself?”
Benjy shakes his head so hard that his whole body shakes along with it.
“What do you want to say instead.”
“I’m sorry-” He starts crying, crying for real this time, and Samira breaks too, crossing the room and enclosing him in a hug in two easy strides.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He repeats over and over between hiccups, his mom rubbing small circles on his back until he quiets down. He doesn’t know how long they stand there, but Benjy knows he doesn’t ever want her to let go. Eventually, he looks up at her, his arms around the bottom of her thighs. His mom, the prettiest person in the world. His protector. His first everything.
“I didn’t mean it, mama.”
She kisses the top of his head and pushes his curls back to properly look at his face.
“I know, Ha-Benjy, I know. You’re just like me, eh? And sometimes, when we get really upset, or really mad, or really sad even, we just gotta take a minute, pause, and take five deep breaths, okay?”
“One…” Benjy thinks staring at the ceiling in the car.
“Okay, mama.”
“Two…” There’s a spot that’s either coffee or chocolate, Benjy stares at it as he pushes the air out of his lungs.
“We can talk about your dad some other time, okay? We’ve got plenty of time, my love.”
“Three…”
“No need to rush.”
“Four…” He squeezes Cleona’s hand so hard he’s pretty sure he’s bruising her, but she doesn’t pull away.
“I don’t care about him, mama. I changed my mind.”
Samira chuckles softly, pulling away slightly and leading them down the hall towards Benjy’s room. “Is that so?”
“Yep.” Benjy says, climbing into his bed and scooting all the way to the wall so his mom can climb in too.
“All I care about is you.”
“Five.” He whispers, in arabic, barely intelligible to himself. He looks over at Cleona, who is watching him with impossible patience.
“Okay.” He nods once, looking away from her and out the window, towards the last tree, towards where he buried his mother.
“I think I’m ready.”
Cleona smiles at him even though he doesn’t see and gives his hand one final squeeze before releasing him. “Okay.”
Slinging her purse back over her shoulder, she gets out of the car and goes around to the rear to battle his chair out of the trunk. As soon as it’s unfolded with the footrests fixed back in place, she wheels the chair around to Lucinda’s passenger side and Benjy opens the door at her approach. Both of them are quiet as she transfers and helps settle him into the chair.
“Ah fuck,” she mutters as the left footrest swivels out as Benjy tries to place his foot on it. “Stupid thing.”
She gets down on her knees, nearly tripping over her skirt in the process, and re-adjusts the footrest while trying not to think about her position between his legs. Really not appropriate. Downright sleazy, really.
After checking and double-checking that it was fixed properly in place, she looks up at him, tossing her pigtails now extra frizzy with perspiration over her shoulders. “There ya go.”
The corner of Benjy’s mouth quirks up but doesn’t say anything as he lifts his leg to set his foot on the footrest, and Cleona stands up to wrestle the passenger seat down and retrieve their supplies. First, she very carefully scoops up the bouquet of bright yellow lilies and straightens up out of the car.
“Do you want to hold onto these?”
She can see Benjy’s bottom lip tremble just slightly as he nods, accepting the bouquet from her and cradling it in his arms. To be terribly honest, Cleona had been completely lost in the flower shop, spending nearly ten minutes just wandering around being overwhelmed by color, smell, and price. Personally, she’d always been partial to sunflowers, but those didn’t really work for a cemetery. The lilies had been closest to the till.
She doesn’t realize she’s staring until Benjy lifts his gaze back to hers and she flashes an embarrassed smile before diving back into the car for the cooler bag and slinging that over her other shoulder.
“All right,” she murmurs, shutting the passenger door and crossing around to stand behind his chair. “Where is she?”
She squeezes his shoulder lightly before going to grab the handlebars, her stomach tightening with nerves. The same kind of nerves you get seconds before meeting someone important, someone you’ve already learned to hold in high esteem. Maybe not a meeting in the traditional sense, but that doesn’t matter. The fact that they’re here, he’s here--that’s everything.
Cleona has to believe that Samira would think the same thing.
Benjy feels his stomach drop out as soon as Cleona starts talking about Axl maybe having the flu. Instinctively, he knew it was deeper than that, and between cases he’d run into and acquaintances from his Graham days…
The second she says “AIDs” Benjy has to stop himself from flinching physically.
“No, not quite the same thing.” He says, his voice low, almost at a whisper. He tries to wrap his head around that. “But uh….My mum was sick you know, for a bit of time before….I mean Liver cancer isn’t AIDs but…”
They’re quiet for a while, just driving and holding onto each other, both lost in their own heads. When Benjy glances over, Cleona’s got a tear rolling down her cheek.
“Hey.”
Before he can stop himself, his free hand wipes it away.
“That’s a big, terrible secret to keep all to yourself, kid.”
She sniffs once as Benjy takes his hand away.
“Yeah.”
“And it sounds like he can afford the medicine. He’s got you and he’s got Shay, who, no offense Lolo, is probably the best nurse on the planet-”
That makes her laugh. It’s a small, tired, broken laugh, but it’s a laugh. It’s a win.
“-but…you understand then. Wanting to be sad about something but at the same time needing to keep going, just to feel….normal. Or rather, figuring out how to find normal again.” She nods, and comes to a stop sign where the road splits.
“Left here.”
“Okay.”
“It’s just down the road a little, it should be on the right.”
He watches her shift and turn and smiles despite everything when she reaches for his hand again.
“You know, I uh, barely told anyone when Mum was dying what was going on. And when I did….people would apologize to me. Like ‘Oh Benjy I’m so sorry.’ and when you know….this happened.” He pats his legs. “It was more of the same thing. ‘Oh its so awful you can’t walk again, I’m so sorry.’ And god kid, it just pisses me off. Sorry isn’t enough you know? It’s not gonna cure Cancer, or make me walk again, and it’s not gonna cure AIDs but….I kind of get why people say that now, I guess. Because it’s a terrible thing, and I want to fix it for you so bad. And for Axl. But I’m not a scientist and I never should be because I am absolutely horrible at Maths but…fuck.” He gives her hand a squeeze.
“That is so horrible. And I am so sorry that this is happening to your family. And I’m so sorry you’ve been carrying that all by yourself. Ans d…”
The corner of his mouth twitches up into a sad smile.
“Thanks for trusting me with it. And thanks for uh, you know, all of this. You’re a pretty incredible person. I know I tell you that sometimes but God, Cleona. I really fucking mean it.”
Cleona glances over at Benjy, her lips quirking up in a small sad smile of her own in return. The sincerity in his words echoes in his face. In those his eyes that go so impossibly wide and reveal emotions that she knows he normally tries to keep bottled up but he doesn’t so much with her anymore. His half-smile that contains his sadness but also that understanding she hadn’t realized she needed. How even now, she hadn’t completely come to terms with how this secret had been affecting her. How much she actually needed to talk to someone. And Benjy, he’s the one who gets it. Gets her. Everything he said about hating when people apologize for your personal tragedies and losses, that worthless pity.
But then, he apologizes and she feels it right in her heart, the base of her throat, her stomach...
She doesn’t have the words right now, not even close. If she wasn’t driving, she might try to muddle her way through them but right now, she just moves her hand in his so their fingers can interlace.
“Thank you,” she says, her voice cracking off at the end.
Benjy hums softly and starts stroking his thumb along the side of her index finger. They stay like that until she has to pull her hand away to shift gears again and turn into Forrest Greene Cemetery. It’s a relatively small field with a single driveway that loops around the perimeter and a smattering of rather large trees that are just starting to bud. Everything is so impressively green in the sunlight. Just a perfect spring day.
“Where should I park?”
“Anywhere is fine.” When she looks over at him again, his gaze is fixed on some far-off point through the windshield. Towards Samira, she suspects. “We can walk.”
She brings Lucinda to a crawl before finally parking by a marble obelisk bearing the name “Hawthorne” at the base and shutting off the stereo. Without the music, there’s no mistaking the new heaviness in the air. They are finally here. His mum’s final resting place. Somewhere Benjy hadn’t believed he would even get to be today until nearly an hour ago.
Watching his profile, she reaches for his hand and interlaces their fingers again, hoping the tightness of her grip offers some sort of security. Some assurance that he’s not alone.
