I needed some Kaitlin/Ben interaction because of everything that's going on in the RP and thus I must write fic since I play them both and RPing with myself is weird. I consider this "RP canon" and that it happens some time after Ben has seen Lara and been taken off active duty.
“Hey,” she said gently. “How you doing?” She knew his sprained knee was taking its toll on him. He never did like sitting around.
“Fine,” he said, not looking up from the book he was very obviously not reading. There was hardly any conviction to the word.
She closed the door and moved over to sit on the edge of his bed. She watched him a moment before speaking. He looked terrible, but that wasn’t anything new. Both he and Wes were looking terrible lately. “You’re not fine,” she said quietly.
He closed the book and set it down on the night stand, then looked at her wearily. “What do you want me to say, Kaitlin?”
For one brief moment Kaitlin saw an agony in his eyes that was so deep she couldn’t begin to understand it. It scared her and she felt an unknown sense of dread curling in her stomach. He looked away, not answering her. She hesitated only a moment before crawling into his lap and straddling him, like she had so many times before to get him to look at her.
“Ben…” she placed a hand on his cheek, coaxing him to look at her, which he did. He looked like he was about to shatter. “You’re safe here,” she said, trying to reassure him that if he needed to cry or scream that it was okay.
His face crumpled in pain at her words, his eyes squeezing shut tightly as a sob broke free. She pulled him forward and he buried his face against her shoulder, wrapping his arms around her and holding on tight. She smoothed her hands over his hair, blinking against the stinging in her eyes.
At one point Kaitlin had selfishly thought that since Wes and Ben had broken up that maybe, just maybe, she would have a chance with Ben. But now? Now she felt like a heel for ever having thought such a thing. Being apart was tearing both of them apart and it wasn't right.
Kaitlin firmly believed in the idea of soulmates and had known, even before they got together, that Ben and Wes were at least platonic soulmates. But it was clear now that they were far more than that, as if the bond they shared was written into the stars. She wondered why they had done this, ripped away from each other. She had no idea what had happened or if the break up was mutual or one sided. She couldn’t see Ben being the one to end things, but she just didn’t know.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“’S not your fault,” he choked out.
“I doubt it’s yours either.” She continued to smooth her hands over his hair, trying to calm him.
“I fucked up,” he sobbed. “I fucked up and I don’t know if I can make it right.”
Kaitlin hesitated a moment. He’d never really been all that willing to talk to her about things, but she felt she still had to try. “Ben, what happened?”
“I-I’m broken,” his voice sounded so small. She held onto him tightly. “A-and I told W-Wes and he said I needed h-help a-and that it w-would be b-better if we w-weren’t together while I-I-“ he choked on another sob. “But I-I’m too broken. I c-can’t be fixed an’ I’ll n-never get Wes back ‘cause I’m b-broken.”
“You are not broken, Ben,” Kaitlin said fiercely, pulling back and taking his face in her hands. He looked utterly hopeless and lost and it made the tears slip out of Kaitlin’s eyes. “You are not an object that needs to be fixed. You’re a human being and you’re hurt and have problems and issues that you need to work through, but you are not broken and you don’t need to be fixed.” Ben sobbed harder at her words and she pulled him into another hug. “God, Ben, I love you so much and you are worth so much more than you think. And I am so sorry you’re going through this. But it’s not your fault Ben. It’s not.”
She couldn’t even begin to know what Wes’s reasoning was behind this and as much as she wanted to be angry with him she knew that he wouldn’t do something like this without a reason. He hadn’t done it to hurt Ben; that much she knew for certain. But whether he meant it or not, the fact was that he had.
“It feels like it’s my fault.”
She gave him a squeeze. “You have to ignore that,” she said, voice thick as she cried as well. “Because it’s not. No matter what you feel or think it’s not.”
He didn’t say anything, just held her tight and cried. And Kaitlin couldn’t do anything more than the same. Eventually Ben’s crying subsided, though he made no move to let her go. Kaitlin let go enough to run the fingers of one hand through his hair. She chewed her lip, debating about asking her next question.
“Ben, do you… do you want me to talk to Wes?”
“No,” he took a shaky breath. “T-Truck said he would.”
“Okay.” Kaitlin felt relieved that someone was going to talk to Wes. Someone needed to get his side of the story. And it was probably a good thing that it was someone who wasn’t tied quite so closely to both of them.
Ben pulled back and looked at her for a long moment. For once Kaitlin wasn’t sure what was going through his head.
“You remind me of my wife,” he finally said, voice and eyes sad.
And suddenly everything made so much more sense. The reason he’d been so volatile around her, why he had tried so hard to keep her at arm’s length, why he seemed to snap around her more than anyone; she was one big trigger for him. He spoke again before she could say anything.
“She would have liked you.”
Kaitlin smiled sadly, more tears threatening to fall. “I think I would have liked her too.” She hesitated. “Can you tell me about her?”
A pained expression crossed Ben’s face.
“You don’t have to,” Kaitlin said.
She gave him a small smile. “Okay.”
She moved off him so she was sitting next to him on the small bed. He hesitated before wrapping his arm around her shoulder and holding her close. Kaitlin wrapped her arm around his waist, selfishly letting herself enjoy the contact.
He was quiet for a long moment and Kaitlin waited patiently, knowing how hard it probably was.
“Elise was… amazing,” he finally said, voice soft. “She was kind to everyone. We met in high school…”
They spent several hours like that, curled up on Ben’s bed, talking about Elise and Dawn. Kaitlin hoped it was some kind of progress, that it was helping Ben in some way. But she still couldn’t quite shake the gut feeling of dread she’d felt when she’d seen the agony in his eyes. She hoped it was nothing, that she was worrying for nothing and that Ben would be fine.
