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His heart shouldn’t be beating this fast.
It’s just his face. It’s only his face.
He saw by accident already, why is it so different now? Tobias- Commander. Commander’s face wasn’t so different from anyone else’s. In fact, Ben would say that he was pretty. Beautiful, even, in the orange light of the fire. The scar didn’t change anything about it. It was just human. It was just him.
Which was what he told him. And then the mask came off. And the first thing to fall from Ben’s own mouth was, “There you are.”
He hadn’t meant to say it. It just fell from his lips, soft and certain.
“What?” Commander’d whispered, his eyes widening just the slightest bit. It wouldn’t have been noticeable if Ben weren’t studying him. Though he studied everyone, he couldn’t help it.
He changed the subject after that. And the conversation continued. Softly, quietly, like it was a secret. And like their party members were sleeping five feet away from them. Which they were! They were. So this was no time and no place for a speeding up heart.
Gods, kill him again. This just can’t happen. This can’t be happening. They want different things. Different futures. Commander mentally lives in a constant battle zone. He loves it. They could never make eachother happy. Not in the way Ben wants. It’s just not a possibility. He even found himself asking(twice, for that matter, how desperate are you, Trawler?) if Commander ever had another vision for his future. The answer was exactly what he was expecting. Still, it pricked at his heart. He was going to ignore those feelings, and any thoughts it brought on.
When they finally agreed to sleep, it may have been the first time in hours that Ben looked away from his face for longer than a minute. It was a gnarly scar, by all means. But it was still him. That made it good, in some way. That made it beautiful. Like his eyes. Like his hair. Like that tattoo on his arm of a sword that Ben memorized while they were in the underworld.
He’s falling too hard too fast. It took him twice this much time to realize he was falling for Jason. But he convinced himself that Jason had the same future planned as he did. For some desperate reason, he chose to ignore his ex-fiancé’s thirst for adventure, that spark in his eyes whenever anyone brought up the prospect of traveling. Tobias had a similar look when he talked about his company. It was hard to see through the crossed arms and the always creased brows and the freakish height. But it was there.
It was awful. Everything about this situation was horribly awful. That stupid man has even noticed his deflection tactics. What else is he meant to do?
He was never going to fall asleep at this rate. Damn it. What was he going to do?
Nothing! He was going to do nothing. That was the only thing to do. This was probably the closest they’d ever get. The closest he’d ever let himself get.
The skin of his back was hurting. There was something wrong, but he was honestly too scared to check. It felt tight. And it throbbed if he laid on it. The whole of his back, and the back of his arms, and some of the back of his neck. It looked like a scar, when he found a moment alone to check his arms. A giant, shiny scar from his death. He wished he knew who to thank.
Tobias had mentioned something about checking everyone for weird scars whenever they find the opportunity. The thought made him nervous. For some reason. That he refused to acknowledge further than that. It would be just a standard check. He was telling himself, anyway. He had no idea what a “normal check” even was. Hopefully, it didn’t involve any prolonged staring or touching or anything of the sorts. He wouldn’t be able to handle that. He might melt. And die again. That second possibility was sounding better and better with every single second he found himself thinking back to Tobias’s whole face in the flickering light of that fire and the stars above. And the way he looked when he finally smiled.
Ben groaned and turned on his other side at that thought. What the fuck was he going to do? Nothing. He was going to do nothing. He was going to go home. To his parents and his friends and his brother. And he was going to bake and bake and bake until his hands fell off. And then he was going to punch Sven, finally. And he was going to forget about all of these people, at some point in his life. They were going to save the world and bring back the sun itself like Demeter’s joy at her favorite daughter’s return brought back the spring air. And he’d never see them again, that would be that. He’d eventually forget.
And he was going to do nothing about how he always seemed to lean closer to Tobias when they spoke, or how his hand felt in his. Absolutely nothing.