❛ bullshit. i know you better than that. ❜
oh he knows. maybe she even knows him better than he knows himself, knows that he can never hide what he feels from her, can never keep secrets tucked in the cavern of his heart, can't hold back from her. they are sitting at the bar counter, their seats a little too close for exes but the late night hours brought in the street crowd, limiting some space for the two of them, almost as though the universe is forcing them closer and closer once more, desperate for the epic love to come into fruition again. their fingers wrapped around their retrospective bottles of beer nearly graze against one another, and if not for the warmth of being close to her orbit, the scowl on ben's lip when the guy behind him bumps into him for a third time that night seems easier to manage.
"what's th' point of me tellin' you that i'm fine if y'er just not gonna believe me?" he asks her, though there's no gripe that's laced in the undercurrents of his timbre, but rather amusement. something akin to a simper tugging on the corners of his lopsided brims, the dead nerves within the half of his lower lip curling his smile to be uneven. but like she said: she knows him better than that. she always will, have seen the intimate corners of his soul, of the vulnerability that seeps from him after getting injured on hunts, the showers where they would subtly trace their fingers down along one another's scars while the other pretends to be oblivious to what they are looking at.
her chestnut hues linger on his profile when he tries to look away, because she knows that her own steely resolve can chip at his armor, little by little, pieces by pieces. and it seems that since their reunion, ben will be happy to give those jagged edges of himself to her; to let her polish them and dull the edges and carefully put the pieces back to make him whole again. she always had that ability with him. "jesse is talking about some things that's pissin' me off," he finally gives in, meeting her gaze with his own whiskey irises, and for a minuscule moment, he stutters. the momentum he had stalls when he stares at her, almost like a punch to the gut, like the first time he has seen her years ago. that's how much power she has over him. like a siren luring sailors with their voice. skies, ben wants to kiss her now. just as his gaze drops to her lips for a moment, rakes over the swell of her lower lip that he wants to seize with his mouth, and quickly looks back down at his beer. "when people try t' tell me that something is, i guess, destined to happen no matter what, it gets under my skin." but you know that, don't you? he nearly adds.
