#& ben

[agentinred]

007. standing in front of the christmas tree, decorating it with an assortment of baubles, lights and tinsel. - Ben, probably with Jo 🥰

It is late by the time Carmen sinks into the couch, one leg tucked beneath her, the room glowing unevenly as if it, too, is growing sleepy. They have done everything backwards tonight: cocoa first, stockings half-hung, music forgotten, saving the tree for last because Joaquin insisted it was the most important part. Now it stands before them, unfinished and slightly leaning, lights only halfway wrapped, colorful (and delicate) ornaments clustered wherever his small hands have managed to reach. The living room smells of pine and the faint sweetness of cocoa now abandoned on the counter.

Jo hums as he works, then sings, then forgets what he was singing and begins again. El burrito de Belén loops endlessly in his chest, stubborn and sincere, the lyrics reshaped by his own (un)certainty. Con mi burrito sabanero…jingle bells, jingle bells… The melodies collide happily, two languages tangled together as if they had always belonged that way. He sways as he sings, tinsel tangled around his wrists like silver and gold bracelets, utterly enchanted by the sound of his own voice. He had wanted to hang the tinsel first, but Carmen and Ben had reminded him gently, Lights first, remember? Joaquin had nodded, and then immediately resumed singing, louder, as if the song itself were doing the work. Carmen rose to hand him a strand of lights, guiding his hands without correcting him. When the lights finally flicker on unevenly and imperfectly, Joaquin beams as if he has summoned them himself. “Mamá,” he says, tugging at her sleeve, “look!”

Soon after, Ben lifted him to place another ornament. Jo’s voice wobbled with effort, then broke into laughter (a sound echoed by his parents). Carmen steps in without thinking, wrapping her arms around both of them as Jo squeals and hides his face in Ben’s neck, giggles muffled there, small hands clutching his collar as if to anchor himself. Carmen watches them, a wide smile settling easily on her lips. She murmurs to Ben, “I think he’ll be done for the day soon…” And Carmen can't help but smile at the thought of Jo, undone by excitement, by the simple miracle of being allowed to stay up, to sing, to be held. They indulge him, as they always tend to do. Perhaps it is only right; neither she nor Ben (she imagines) ever truly had this luxury, this softness that stretched past bedtime.

[agentinred]

mouth - ben

She woke slowly, by the smallest of degrees, as if the world itself had conspired to wake her not with sound or light but with the insistence of his devotion. At first, she floated in the dimness of a dream, limbs heavy, breath shallow, her body already tightening around a pleasure that insisted itself into her sleep. A sigh slipped from her lips, startled and low, as though her body was confessing what her mind had not yet named. All the while, the pale light of dawn pressed through the curtains, spilling thin and golden across her bare skin. Sheets clung damply to her thighs, and every brush of fabric seemed to echo the rhythm Ben set at her core. Heat unfurled from the inside out, a molten thread pulling her closer to fully waking, to him.

There was certainty in his touch, reverence in his mouth, each movement patient, deliberate, as if by his actions he might be able to commit her to memory. Who would have thought that she’d be here? She who had been trained for a life full of resistance to it all: to GUARD, to MEASURE, to WITHOLD. Yet here, now, no walls to part them. She let herself be found, and the sound that escaped her was no longer just a sigh but something deeper, unpracticed, impossible to disguise. Her hips shifted, at first a slow yielding, then with a growing urgency that betrayed her surrender. A tremor coursed through her thighs, every nerve alive to the insistent rhythm he coaxed from her without asking or needing to. Hands reached for him instinctively, a hand threading into his hair, fingers curling with the kind of desperation that begged him for closeness. It was not permission (he had earned that long ago), but confirmation: yes, you are here, we are real…

Her dark eyes fluttered open at last, lashes heavy, vision blurred by the fog of pleasure. The room still held its shadows, though morning pressed at the edges, insisting on its light. Her chest rose and fell in sharp, uneven bursts, her breath stuttering into broken sighs that threatened to become moans. She looked down at him, lips parted, voice roughened by both sleep AND desire. “Ben…” His name escaped her like a tremor, half a moan and half a prayer. She offered a smile, soft and sly even as it wavered with the intensity he drew from her, curved her mouth. And with a laugh half tangled in her breathing, she managed to whisper: “You’ll ruin me like this. One day, I won’t know how to wake without you.”

[agentinred]

" i cannot believe we just paid four figures for a cradle when the baby won't even sleep unless they're in our arms... " - ben 🤣

Leaning against the doorframe, her eyes lingered at the sight of Ben propped against the bedframe, their son’s small body rising and falling with the steady rhythm of his father’s chest. Jo seemed to sleep as if the world itself had been built just for him, soft and unquestioning, his tiny fist curled against Ben’s shirt. Well, at the very least, he was very much their child. Even at such an early age, he had already claimed his comforts and would not be argued with (lest the wrath! of his cries be heard down the hall).

She couldn’t help but laugh at Ben’s comment, quietly though so as not to disturb their hard-won peace. “Don’t pretend you don’t like it,” she said softly, her voice half a smile. She crossed the room, her bare feet almost soundless, and pressed her hand against Jo’s head, then let her fingers rest a moment longer on Ben’s shoulder. “We bought the cradle in the hopes of remedying our own pasts…Jo couldn’t care less.” She couldn’t help but question what her own early upbringing had been like. At the very least, there was some gratefulness there in that she couldn’t quite remember it. Gently, leaned down, her mouth close to Ben’s ear, and added in a whisper, “Besides, he doesn’t need the cradle. He has you. And you’re much more expensive.” An attempt to coax a chuckle out of him. Still, she couldn’t help but think that it still seemed strange to contemplate. She wasn’t used to ‘gifts’ staying in her hands, always moving, nothing quite permanent. But Jo was not a treasure to be hidden, nor was Ben. They were her proof that perhaps some stories could be rewritten.

[agentinred]

My  muse  looks  away,  voice  barely  above  a  whisper.  “If  I  tell  you,  everything  changes.  And  I  don’t  know  if  I  can  handle  that.”

How many men had she stared down during the scope of her career? Hundreds? Thousands? An insurmountable amount that had always thought themselves better…And yet she had always known what to say, always known when to smile and when to strike. But now, here, she found herself still, utterly and inexplicably still. As though the weight of his simple words had pinned her in place. As though the smallest movement might scatter everything like dust, like a mirage vanishing at the edge of a desert, something you only think to have looked at before it disappeared again.

In his words, she saw that fragile fracture beneath the polished surface. Maybe the recognition of a man who had spent his life running from something he could not fully name. It was not the fear of the unknown…but perhaps the fear of grasping at something too real. To admit change would be to admit to a kind of stability they had never known, a stillness that threatened to undo them. A language neither of them spoke fluently, one they could only decipher in fragments. Ever since that night in Monaco, Ben had become a constant presence, if not an uninvited (yet not unwelcome)reminder in the chambers of her mind. Even when she traveled the farthest reaches of the world, he remained there…someone she could not outrun. And that frightened her. Not because of who he was, but because of what it meant he had created: a tether. A complication. One that might even be considered a ‘vulnerability’ that dared to whisper of belonging.

She stepped closer. The dim light wrapped around them, softening the sharpness of the room. Without thinking, her hand reached for his. Delicate fingers brushed against his skin, pausing for a heartbeat as a flicker of hesitation crossed her face—the kind she barely felt, much less showed. And then, deliberately, she closed her hand over his and gave his fingers a gentle squeeze. “Maybe,” she said, her voice low and steady, “it’s not about whether you can handle the change. Maybe it’s about what you’re willing to lose if you don’t stop running from it.” Dark eyes found his, searching, wondering. The words were for him as much as they were for herself. Because deep down, she knew how hypocritical it was for her to be saying something like this. She, who was always running, urging him not to run.

[agentinred]

[ TXT ] : you are always going to be my priority.

she doesn't respond right away, responding 2-3 days later

[ bonbon] I didn’t forget what you said. [ bonbon] I just didn’t know how to answer. [ bonbon] Still don’t. But I haven’t stopped thinking about it. [ bonbon] You mean more than I planned for. [ bonbon] Come open your door.

[agentinred]

52﹕ sender  takes  a  / bullet   meant  for  receiver . - also from Ben 8)

It happened TOO quickly for the moment to belong to the real world. The sound, a CRACK of violence in the air, echoed like thunder—in a not too dissimilar and unforgiving way. And for ONE aching second, Carmen Sandiego did not move. She had lived most of her life like this: suspended between instinct and decision. Eyes sharp, heart quieter than it should be. In all her years she had become accustomed to brushing past affection. Leanring, more than anything,  to collect such moments like pressed flowers: delicate, beautiful, already dead. BUT that was before Benjamin Callahan. Before his ‘foolish’ heart stepped between her and a bullet with her name on it.

She had always thought herself unbreakable in these sorts of matters. Too clever, too fleeting. Her ‘love stories’ (if there were any to be had at all) were meant to be footnotes, not chapters. No one really stayed toon long as to take root. That was the rule, a law she obeyed more than any other. Now she had seen the way Ben’s body had jerked, a marionette with its strings cut. And then he had crumpled to the floor with a gracelessness he likely would have hated, his blood blooming out like a velvet spill across her plans, her silence, her 'carefully' drawn borders.

Throwing herself down beside him, her knees slammed into the earth. The sound of the world became irrelevant—there was only his face, flushed with pain, and the weight of him beneath her hands. She pressed one palm against the wound, and the other cradled the back of his neck, drawing him closer to her chest as though by sheer proximity she could keep him tethered to breath. “Ben, mírame. Just look at me,” she whispered, voice steady though everything inside her trembled. “Don’t close your eyes. Don’t you dare, cariño.” He coughed, or at least that’s how she remembered it,  a sound wet and cruel, and she saw the edge of something dangerous in his eyes, not death yet, not quite, but perhaps the threat of surrender? She leaned over him, shielding him with her body, not caring about anything else amidst the chaos. Let them aim again. Let them try. She would tear the sky open with her teeth if it meant keeping him alive.

“I told you not to do anything stupid…” she murmured, pushing hair from his damp forehead.

[agentinred]

”taste this… tell me what you think!” - Ben ofc

She didn’t lift her eyes right away, only swirled her black coffee in its cup, watching the steam curl as it moved through the cool morning air. A window had been just barely cracked open, and the sweetness in the air wasn’t just from the early breeze; there was something else. Warmth, butter, sugar, cinnamon, maybe? It surprised her. He surprised her. Barefoot, wrapped in one of his shirts with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, Carmen had her legs folded beneath her on the kitchen stool like a woman entirely at home. Her morning entertainment was watching him, @corpatrem, flour-dusted and focused, a streak of something golden near his temple.  Carmen had looked up at him when he beckoned her over. One brow arched as she took him in. The apron sat awkwardly on him; he was clearly more accustomed to suits than smudged countertops, but the grin he wore was unmistakable. He was proud, earnest, and entirely too proud of himself.

“Oh no,” she said, voice velvet-dry yet still playful. “This is how it starts. One bite and suddenly I’m confessing undying admiration, handing over the oven mitts, and next thing I know, CHAOS.” Still, she slid off the stool, amused and though she wouldn’t admit it just yet, touched. She accepted the offered spoon with ceremony, lifted it slowly, and tasted. Then she paused. Blinked. And tasted again. The second time, her lips curled slightly, not into one of her usual teasing smirks, but something smaller, real. “Well,” she said slowly, like a woman trying to regain her footing on unfamiliar ground, “either you’ve stolen this recipe… OR you’ve somehow made something that tastes like a memory I forgot I had.”

It was soft, whatever he’d made. Rich but delicate. The kind of sweetness that lingered, not too much, but comforting. Familiar in a way that unsettled her. She glanced down at the plate, then back at him, her expression unreadable for a moment. “You made this…for me...” It wasn’t a question. The kitchen had always been a place for joy. A place to feed those she loved. It was her language. And now here he was, speaking it back to her.