Chapter 5: Adoration
Gwen sighed contently, stretching out over the mall bench she and Ben had conquered, the light through the overhead windows of the hall warming her pleasantly. Sometimes it felt like all she did anymore was nap, but considering how terrible her nights generally were, she'd take it. And Ben will be over with the sweets any minute now...
"That's a lot of smoothie for just one loser, Tennyson."
Gwen's ear twitched at the sound of an obnoxious voice and sighed to herself. Can't take him anywhere, can I? She thought ruefully, standing up to glance around the first floor of the mall. Locating the origin of the sound (near the Mr. Smoothy parlor; she really should've guessed that), she picked up Ben's backpack and began to make her way over the where her doofus of a cousin was standing, an expression on his face that almost made her burst into hysteric giggles. He looked just like grandpa when he was absolutely done with someone, down to the twitching of his left eye.
Ben wasn't as diplomatic though. "Hi, Cash, J.T., Buzz off." He told the larger boy and his stooge, making to move around them, hands filled with two different smoothies.
The taller one (Cash? Hadn't Ben mentioned him once or twice?) blocked his way and she could feel Ben's annoyance skyrocket. But, to his credit, he only took a deep breath and merely repeated himself. "Buzz off, please."
"Aw, c'mon Tennyson. You don't need that much for your scrawny butt. Why don't you share some with us?"
Ben's eyes flickered to her on her approach and she held up her hands, a silent question on her face. Want me to do something here…?
Ben's expression gave her no answer, so she moved closer but did not intervene. She was pretty sure Ben could handle himself against a random bully these days; even when he wasn't in one of his stronger forms, he had plenty of instinct for butt-kicking. But that would risk the food. Tricky situation.
"Maybe it's for his girlfriend." The smaller boy suggested, snickering. Both Gwen and Ben snorted, though the boys only heard Ben's. Well, if they mean a girl who is also his friend, they're not wrong...
"Nah, who would date that twig?" Cash snarked unkindly.
Ben looked extremely unimpressed. The range by which he could express distaste had really flourished during his summer with her. "Really? 'Twig' and 'loser'? That's the best you've got?" His eyes rolled skyward. "Please tell me I wasn't ever this dumb..." It was like hearing herself talk. It brought a proud tear to her eye. My little guy is growing sassier by the day. She thought, a distant part of her brain heaving with laughter.
Seeing the bullies tense, Gwen decided it was time to step in. "There you are!" She said as she pushed past the bullies, nearly knocking the smaller one over when Ben's backpack smacked him on the back of the head when she slung it over her shoulder. Oopsie. Placing one hand on her hip, she held out the other and smiled cheekily at Ben, studiously ignoring the two brats right behind her. "I think that strawberry-vanilla one is mine, dear."
Ben looked startled for a moment, but recovered quickly. Her doofus was always sharper when there was a joke to be played. "I believe it is, sweety." Oof, he was going all in alright. The looks the bullies gave them were priceless.
"Wha- what the hell, Tennyson?!" Cash stammered, both kids looking at her oddly, both red-faced.
Ben gave him his best confused, innocent look. It was actually quite adorable when he wasn't using it to get out of doing the dishes. "Jealous?" He teased, only to be forestalled by Gwen latching onto his free arm.
"Come on Ben! You said you'd walk me home." Before your ego can get any bigger.
Ben waved cheerily to the still flabbergasted bullies before he fell into step beside her. "Of course, m'lady."
"I can't believe they fell for that!" Ben guffawed, clutching his belly with one hand. "Way to sell it, cuz."
Gwen flicked her hair before taking a spoon of her smoothie, equally perplexed at that their blindness. "We have literally the same eyes, how could they miss it? They must've been too shocked at the thought of anyone dating you to notice." She gave him a sideways glance. "Not sure what that says about my standards though." She joked. Ben feigned offense, but there was a mischievous glimmer in his eyes.
"I think they were too busy gawking at you." He teased, waggling his eyebrows. Gwen felt all the blood drain from her face and she shuddered, violently.
"No. No. No!" Turning green she threw the rest of her smoothie in the trash. Ben was laughing too hard to care about the waste. "You have got to be kidding me! Those mouth-breathers?"
Ben wiped a tear from his eye, downing the last of his snack. "I wish I was kidding! But they didn't turn all red because of shock, Lucky Girl." He sang at her before dancing out of the way of her attempt to smack him.
"Stop laughing! It isn't funny!"
"It totally is, dweeb! Imagine that, my school bullies stammering before the nerd queen." He placed a hand on his chin, looking at her thoughtfully. "Hey, maybe you should really hook up. With some luck, you'll scar them for life."
"Ben!"
"Just saying! It would get them off my back for a while."
"Ugh, I was going to say 'I'd rather date you' but then I remembered, it's you." She muttered, rubbing her temple to stave off a headache.
"Hey! I'm totally the better deal here." He objected, before course correcting when it sank in what he was actually arguing. "I-I mean I would be. Hypnotechnically!"
"Hypothetically, and really now? How's that?" She quirked her most unimpressed eyebrow at him, trailing her eyes up and down his short frame and shaking her head, indicating she found him lacking. That she found him cute was not something she was going to share. There'd be no living with him after that.
He shrugged. "I dunno, didn't really have a punchline for this set-up. But I guess it's kind of like how the story usually goes, right? Hero and distressing damsel and all that."
"It's 'damsel in distress', and I call stinkfly on that one! What about all the times I saved your butt?"
"Puh-leeeeease. A hero doesn't need saving." He struck pose to get his point across. He looked ridiculous. And adorable. She really needed to have her head checked if she kept thinking this was cute. Her standards were dropping lower by the day.
"Riiiight, and I guess they also don't cry during movie night?"
"Okay, FYI, that scene with the dog was so manly that my eyeballs were sweating. That's my story and I'm sticking to it."
"Of course you are." She smiled indulgently at him, reaching over to pinch his cheeks with both hands. "My little hero." Shoe cooed. The foul glare he gave her was one for the record books and she loved it, right up until he reached up and yanked the hair on the back of her head. He'd learned all her weak spots alright.
Oh, he's in for it. Her hands shifted from his cheeks to tangle in the hair at the sides of his head. His eyes widened and she could've sworn she saw a drop of sweat roll down his face.
"Gwen?" He asked nervously. "What are you doing?" He shivered at her answering smirk.
"It just occurred to me that we haven't sparred in ages." He started quivering, hands working frantically to find a weak spot on her. Her smirk widened. "I think we should rectify that."
Frank was drawn from the newspaper article he was reading by a scraping sound. Glancing around the living room, he saw nothing out of the ordinary until he looked down to where Ben was dragging himself across the floor, coming to a stop before the couch Frank was seated on. Reaching up, the boy hauled himself onto the cushions with a grunt of effort.
When he pulled himself into a sitting position beside the older man, Ben made a sound halfway between a relieved sigh and a pained groan, and sank into the plush pillows. The kid looked like he'd run a marathon and then got run over by a truck. Twice. That left only one explanation.
"Redheads?" He inquired mildly, turning the page in his newspaper.
Ben groaned. "Redheads." He confirmed, shuddering.
"If it's any consolation, they're worth it. Usually."
The boy was silent for a moment before a, and there really was no other way to describe it, smitten smile graced his features. "Yeah, she is."
Clamping down on the instinctive discomfort that came to him when he heard his nephew talk of his daughter while looking like that, he opted to instead attempt to gain some information. Frank hadn't seen the boy since the photo viewing a week ago, and since then Gwen had spent the weekend at his brother's place and the kids had met up every day throughout the last week of the summer holiday, usually going to visit their grandfather or hanging out at one of their houses. Mostly, that meant Ben's house, as he had all the video games. Natalie had had some choice words about Gwen's new hobby, but she wasn't nearly pissed off enough about it to actually put a stop to it. Tonight, though, Ben was staying with them.
"Still haven't grown tired of hanging around Gwen, then?" Frank decided discretion was the better part of valor here; wouldn't want to have the boy clamp up because he came charging out of the gate with all his guns blazing. He needn't have worried either way, as Ben seemed to be eager enough to talk.
"Can't believe I'm saying this, but it's pretty okay. I didn't think getting lectures from the commander in geek could be fun, but she manages. Somehow." Ben probably realized he had inadvertently insulted Gwen in front of her father about half a second after he said it, but Frank waved off his apologetic spluttering.
"If Gwen has an issue with a nickname, I'm sure she can handle you." The boy nodded enthusiastically. Silence reigned for a second before Frank moved onto the meat of the meal. "How… how is she doing?" He was taking a chance here. Not even their grandpa could get them to talk about much of anything regarding whatever it was that they went through. At this point it was an open secret in the family: everybody knew something was wrong, and the kids knew that they knew.
But that hadn't prompted them to be more open; if anything they were even more secretive. It was literally the only reason Max had managed to convince them all that they couldn't get professional help: if the kids wouldn't talk to them, they weren't going to talk to some stranger either. That, and Natalie was an on hand psychologist. There was little point. However, close lipped as they were about their trauma and their own struggles, Frank had quickly learned that getting them to talk about how the other was doing was much easier.
Ben was silent for a moment, but did not clamp up as Frank had feared. "She's… better. Today at least. So far." He concluded haltingly. "She was first out the door this morning, no hesitation whatsoever." Was that a hint of pride in his voice? That was just precious.
Frank nodded, feigning comprehension when he really only partially understood the significance. Natalie had already made the (in hindsight rather obvious) extrapolation that Gwen's fears were connected to being outside, specifically the garden. What that said about the trauma was difficult to say, so the significance of going outside on her own wasn't fully understood either.
But he'd seen her run from their garden, which she'd always loved, in tears a little over a week ago. And he'd seen her fearlessly charge into another one chasing after Ben last Friday. Even if he understood little else about this, the significance of that was not lost on him.
"And… what of you?" He asked, cautiously, eyes still fixed on his newspaper, trying to sound as casual as possible. Either Ben was too preoccupied to clamp up, or he was in an indulgent mood, because the boy ran a hand through his hair and answered him.
"I do well when Gwen's alright, or when I can help her be alright." He asserted, absently, before whispering so softly that Frank, for a second, thought that he had imagined it. "It's my fault anyway, so I gotta." Frank maintained his composure and filed that tidbit away for sharing with Nat later. The boy probably didn't realize he'd even said that out loud. It was obvious that Ben could help Gwen overcome her… episodes, but they hadn't known that Ben felt directly responsible for Gwen's wellbeing, much less for what was wrong with her, in such a personal way.
Honestly, it was still difficult to get his head around the fact that they cared at all. Their closeness was the one good thing that had come out of their summer on the road as far as Frank was concerned.
He wanted to continue his line of questioning, but was interrupted by the voice of his daughter, who plopped down next to Ben. "How's my sparring partner doing?" She asked cheerily, bumping shoulders with her cousin, who responded by-
Ouch. The glare Ben gave for that one was just nasty.
"Peachy." The boy bit out, before he smirked. "I was just going to tell your dad about the trail of broken hearts you left behind you at the mall."
The newspaper ripped.
Ben breathed in deeply, the night air filling his lungs and banishing the last vestiges of sleep from his mind. Wiggling his toes in the grass, he opened his green orbs to see his cousin standing on the paved part of her parents' garden. The moonlight made her look paler, even if her hair an eyes remained vibrant as ever. But those big, expressive eyes did nothing to hide her apprehension.
"Come on." He encouraged, trying to sound gentle. It wasn't his nature to be, but he could try for her. Gwen took a fortifying breath, holding it briefly before exhaling. Raising her foot to step forward, it hovered in the air for a moment, before she firmly put it back down where it had been, breathing heavily, as if the wind had been knocked out of her. Her face crumpled in the ensuing silence.
"I will not be this weak." She hissed, a hint of desperation in her voice, echoing what she told him, told herself, weeks ago. The same words she'd whispered brokenly when she'd sought him out in the guestroom earlier. He'd taken her by the hand, through the sleeping house, into the garden where he now stood on the grass, just out of her reach.
"You're not weak." He told her, firmly. "I've got some bruises to prove that." And he was not salty about that. Not. At. All. C'mon, He thought to himself, fighting to keep the encouraging smile on his face. I'm supposed to be the hero! I can fix… this… drat.
Stifling a sigh, he held out his hands to her. She eyed them with confusion before her eyes met his and he could see realization dawn. He hoped his smile was as convincing as he needed it to be.
"I've been slacking off on my dancing." He admitted, part of him disbelieving that he actually offered to go through this nonsense again, part of him disbelieving that he even cared about that at all at this point.
She stared at him, teary eyes wide in surprise before she tentatively reached for him, grabbing the extended hands. "Can't have that." She remarked, going for a casual tone. They both ignored the way her voice quivered, or the way her hands shook in his.
Retracting his arms slowly, he still very nearly pulled her over before she found the courage to take that necessary step onto the grass. He could barely hear the sound of her small foot crunching on the grass, but the second she did she scrunched her eyes shut and a gasp wracked her body, all off her tensing for an attack. She took the next two steps to close the distance with him like that, only opening her eyes when she was right before him. They were filled with fear, and he could hear her heart beat a mile a minute.
He grinned at her and couldn't quite stop the admiration from leaking into his voice. "You did it." Gwen released the breath she'd been holding, gasping past a shaky, disbelieving smile. Ben was only just quick enough to catch her when her legs gave out beneath her, steadying her for long seconds before he dared to step back again. "It's okay." He reassured her. "I got you."
He placed one of her hands on his shoulder before letting one of his fall to her side, waiting briefly for her nod before stepping forward to begin the dance. She moved with him, slowly and stiffly at first, before she started relaxing bit by bit. Though her eyes were red rimmed from crying and her voice slightly scratchy, she recovered her cheekiness quickly.
"Dancing in the moonlight, Ben? How romantic." She quipped.
Ben's face heated, but his grin widened. "Told you I was the better deal."
Gwen hummed in agreement as she leaned in to bump foreheads with him, the tips of their noses brushing. Ben smiled.
Yeah, definitely worth it.
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