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Nov. 13th, 2005 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wakeupnew posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
treasure_geeksTitle: Need
Fandom: National Treasure
Pairing: Ben/Riley
Rating: Somewhere between R and NC-17
Notes: Set sometime before the beginning of the movie. I saw the movie only once about six months ago, so comments on points that I may have gotten wrong/on characterization are most welcome.
He glanced at his—favorite expensive—watch and simultaneously swore in his head at himself for losing track of time, and wondered who was still in the cramped set of offices that Ian had leased for the Charlotte project.
He looked expectantly at the doorway as the footsteps neared in the hallway, and he caught a brief glimpse of Riley Poole. The younger man took a step past the doorway of Ben’s office, glanced inside, saw Ben, and promptly wheeled about and went back the way he’d come.
“Riley,” Ben called out.
There was a pause, and then Riley’s voice said a weak, “Hey Ben.”
Ben set down the pen in his hand and looked curiously, tiredly at the empty doorway. “What are you doing?”
Riley hesitated for a moment, and then stepped into view. He wore battered blue jeans and a brown track jacket zipped up to his neck against the air-conditioned chill in the air. He wasn’t always the most mature of companions, but looking at him now, Ben was suddenly reminded of his age; he looked particularly young, pale, unsure of himself. His brown hair was just mussed, rather than artfully tousled per usual, and his glasses hung askew on his nose.
“I forgot my laptop,” Riley said with a small, self-effacing shrug.
Ben wasn’t entirely sure where to begin. Riley’s laptop was glued to his fingers; how had he forgotten it? Why had he ducked back when he’d seen Ben? Why did he look like he’d been hit by a truck? But he started with the easiest. “Where have you been?” he asked matter-of-factly.
Riley leaned against the doorframe, stuffing his hands into his pockets, and made a valiant attempt at his normal patter. “Hey, I told you I was going. I definitely told you I was going.” He paused. “… I told you I was going, right?”
Ben turned a skeptical eye on him. “You walked in here, said ‘I have to go Ben; I’ll be back in a few days’, and then left the greater metropolitan area.”
“I knew I told you,” he said, more to himself than to Ben.
“Riley,” Ben said with a hint of impatience.
He sighed. “I had to go home for a few days. That was it, Sherlock.”
Ben was slightly embarrassed to realize that he knew nothing about Riley’s home or his background. “Home?”
“Teeny little town in the other Washington.” He was silent a moment, as if contemplating, and then his mouth twisted into a ‘what the hell’ kind of an expression and he said, “My brother died.” His eyes held steady with Ben’s for the first time, their usual piercing blue dulled. He glanced away after a second. “Wow. That’s the first time I’ve actually said it. Not cool.”
Ben could feel the contents of his chest cavity sink, and he just stared for a moment before managing a, “Hell, that’s awful.” Benjamin Franklin Gates was a fast-thinking, determined,resourceful man, but at that moment, he felt entirely useless. Part of him wanted to rise from his chair but the other part advised him that he wouldn’t know what to do once he was standing, and so he remained behind the big desk. “I’m sorry, Riley,” he said. And then his brain, scrabbling frantically for something to fill the silence that followed Riley’s nod, threw out, “Were you close?” If he could have physically put his foot into his mouth, he might have tried it.
Riley leaned more heavily into the doorjamb, gaze squarely on the floor. “He worshipped me when we were kids; followed me around everywhere.”
“How old was he?” Ben asked quietly.
“Seventeen.” Ben visibly winced and before he could say anything, Riley’s flat voice went on. “He was driving home from a friend’s house and ran a stop sign.”
Ben was still silent, watching him in the half-darkness.
“An eighteen-wheeler broadsided him.”
There was a moment of stunned quiet.
“…How was your family?”
Riley gave the smallest of snorts. “Bad, obviously. My mom couldn’t or wouldn’t get out of bed, my dad took it so hard his heart started giving him problems and they had to take him into the hospital…” His voice was rough and a little thick. “I did everything.”
“Everything?”
“Funeral arrangements, tell the relatives, tell his friends, write the obituary for the paper, give the eulogy, speak for the family, everything.” His calm broke and his voice cracked like a whip at the end. He didn’t speak for a minute or two. “You wanna know the worst part, though?”
Ben said nothing, but Riley continued anyway.
“The more I did, the harder it got to remember what he looked like.” Overcome, he pulled his glasses off of his face with a shaking hand and pinched the bridge of his nose hard. Despite that, his closed eyes still burned.
The creak of the chair didn’t even register until after arms wrapped around him, after he tucked his face into a broad shoulder that smelled like musty old books and aftershave. He hadn’t realized how badly he’d needed human contact until he was pressed tightly against Ben, who was warm and solid and, well, not very comforting, though he was trying.
He tried to halt the flow of hot, shameful tears that were threatening to soak Ben’s shirt, but A, Ben sensed the change in his breathing and muttered a quiet, slightly gruff, “It’s okay,” and B, he really couldn’t. He’d kept himself so tightly wound through the whole ordeal, focusing so hard on staying strong for everyone else, that he’d forgotten to grieve somewhere along the way. And now it was very nice to be able to fall apart with someone who’d help put his pieces back together.
It took a few moments, but he eventually slid an arm around the taller man’s neck and settled into the embrace. Ben’s hand ran through his hair.
“Hey Ben,” Riley mumbled into his shoulder after some time of stillness.
“Yeah?”
“I really did come here for my laptop.”
Startled, Ben gave a short laugh then immediately wondered if he should have.
“I mean, I didn’t exactly walk in the door and say to myself, ‘Hey, I’ll bet Ben is here. I should go use him as a giant tissue.’”
Ben laughed again, the movement shaking the younger man.
“So, uh, what are you doing here at 7:00 on a Sunday night?” Riley asked, disentangling himself and standing off a little sheepishly. He rubbed one eye then the other with the palm of his right hand, and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his red nose.
“I wanted to look up the exact size of the Charlotte.”
Riley looked at the papers strewn wildly across Ben’s desk. “I’m guessing you didn’t find it.”
Ben shook his head, ignoring the hint of snark in his tone. “No, I didn’t.”
They were both quiet for a moment and then Riley quickly breached the awkward silence. “Hey! Uh, I’m gonna go—” He gestured with his entire body. “—Get my laptop. And you can just, keep looking for those size specifications, and I’m going to stop talking right nmmmph!”
Ben cut him off by clapping a hand around the back of his neck and pressing his mouth hard against his. Riley got a handful of Ben’s shirt and drew himself flush against him, breathing in fast, hard hitches when their lips separated for brief seconds. Ben’s fingers rubbed unconscious patterns into the back of his neck, and Riley made a low, desperate noise and tilted his mouth further into Ben’s.
Ben abruptly broke away from him, looking shame-faced. “I was just trying to get you to stop talking, Riley, not—”
“You know what? You should stop talking, and I should point out that I’m fine, Ben, and I would have kicked you in the nuts if I hadn’t wanted your tongue in my mouth,” Riley interrupted, his matter-of-fact tone slightly hurt by the fact that he was wiping the back of a hand across his mouth.
As seemed to happen often when speaking to Riley, Ben found his mouth quirking into a bemused smile. “Would you have?”
Riley stroked his goatee in a show of heavy thought. “Hmmm…” He shook his head, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Nah. I missed you.”
There was a softened silence, and then Ben said, “I missed you, too.”
Another moment of quiet came, this one thankfully not awkward, and then Ben, still standing close by, asked, “When’d you get in?”
“About an hour ago; I think the jet lag might kill me. I dropped my bags at my good old hole-in-the-wall and then talked the cabbie into stopping here.”
The seeds of an idea began to germinate. “So you haven’t eaten yet?”
“Food. I can hardly remember what it tastes like.”
“Do you want to get dinner?”
“What, like at a restaurant?”
“That was the general idea.”
Suddenly, Riley smiled for the first time that night, and while his eyes were still puffy and his face not quite right, it did much for him. “I’ve got a better one.”
Ben crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh?”
“We go back to the hole-in-the-wall, I make Easy Mac, and you sleep with me on the futon.”
Ben knew that he was accustomed to Riley when the idea sounded not only slightly appealing but pleasant. Ben also thought that the other man wanted company. And so he readily agreed.
* * * * *
Riley’s apartment was tiny and its nickname of ‘hole-in-the-wall’ apt. However, it was small and cozy and he kept it fairly neat, in a cluttered sort of way. And, in a key point, it was a single. Unfortunately, the bed was also a single, which necessitated taking to the squishy futon in the living area on those occasions where Ben spent the night.
The first time they’d wound up in Riley’s bedroom, some months before, Ben had just stared at it for a moment. “…Riley, that’s a single bed.”
“I noticed,” Riley had responded, frustrated by the fact that the hands so intent on removing his shirt had stopped. Ben had shot him a look, and he had cooled down a little and sighed. “This place didn’t come furnished, so when I bought the bed I knew I could go one of two ways: optimistic or pessimistic.”
“Optimistic being a bed big enough for more than one person?”
“What can I say? Pessimism was cheaper.”
Ben had laughed, pulled his T-shirt off over his head, and kissed him again.
Back in the present, unfortunately for Riley’s complaining stomach but fortunately for the rest of him, they made it to the apartment but not to the Easy Mac. He was dumping the un-nuked pasta into a bowl when his assistant’s hand somehow found its way from the cheese powder package to Riley’s ass. After five days of distraught, celibate misery on the tense Poole mother ship, Riley couldn’t not enthusiastically show his appreciation of the gesture. He did so by calmly setting the bowl on the kitchenette countertop, turning around, and yanking Ben down the necessary inch or two and desperately kissing him senseless. Ben placed one hand on his side and the other on his shoulder and went with it, telling himself, as Riley’s hips bucked against his and they immediately swore into each other’s mouths, that he was going along with the frenzied pace because Riley wanted this so bad. Not like Ben had missed him like crazy over five days, not like Ben wanted him just as much right back, oh no, of course not.
Ben eventually slipped a hand between them and went to work, and was rewarded by Riley clutching even tighter at him and making Ben’s personal favorite low, helpless noise deep in his throat.
Ben drew back and eyed him critically for a moment, taking in the younger man with his eyes shut, head tilted back, face aflame, and he smiled. He shepherded Riley into the living room against his protests and rebellious moans of, “now would be better,” and pressed him down onto his back on the futon mattress. He placed a knee alongside each hip and, leaning over him just enough to tease but not provide substantial contact, proceeded to slowly kiss him until Riley thought he’d scream in frustration.
Right when he opened his mouth to threaten to shriek like a girl, though, Ben unzipped his track jacket and Riley wasted no time in helping to yank it off. After the jacket came the white T-shirt, lifted over his head and left to tangle his arms as Ben ran his hands over the pale skin—neck, chest, stomach—and flicked his tongue into the hollow of Riley’s throat, and the other man swore hoarsely. Ben’s hands slipped lower until with painful care, he began unbuttoning and unzipping Riley’s pants. Riley used his teeth to aid in untangling his arms from his shirt as Ben simultaneously slowly pulled down his jeans and ran his tongue over Riley’s nipple. ‘Multi-tasking son of a bitch’ was probably what Riley would have thought had his brain been capable of stringing words into sentences.
Instead, though, he made an utterly incoherent sound and threw his shirt off to one side. His hands now freed, grabbed Ben and tugged him back up and fully on top of him, where he could get his arms around him and have something to hold onto. With Ben’s warm weight pressing him into the futon, he kissed him hard for a moment before becoming cognizant of the fact that while he was mostly naked, Ben was mostly clothed. Very quickly, Ben’s T-shirt followed Riley’s in being flung to the floor, and now they were both breathing hard in irregular pants.
Ben paused there above him, and Riley cracked an eyelid after a moment, confused as to why nothing was happening. He found Ben looking down at him with a serious cast to his features. “You alright?” he asked.
Riley thought about answering him indignantly, telling him to hurry the hell up, but instead he just went with honesty and an affirmation. “I need this,” he said simply, roughly.
That was all Ben needed. He leaned down and kissed down Riley’s neck and along his jawbone, and Riley made that low noise of pleasure again and threw his head back, baring his throat in a clear plea to continue. Ben was only too happy to oblige, his mouth leaving a hot trail up Riley’s neck. He breathed on Riley’s earlobe before pulling it into his mouth, and feeling himself quicken further with Riley’s heartfelt moan.
Riley’s hips ground against his and Ben grunted while the smaller man choked out something that might have been “nngod” and might have been “pleaseben”; Ben wasn’t entirely sure which it had been, but it was more than enough for him. He returned his attention to Riley’s pants and pulling them down, and was greeted by the sight of neon orange boxer shorts adorned with smiling ghosts.
“It’s June,” he pointed out.
Riley opened his eyes, blinked a few times, lifted his head to look down at Ben sitting on his knees. “You can never get enough Halloween,” he said, the hoarse words taking him a moment as though it were a monumental struggle to think. And this time, it was clear when he shot Ben a plaintive look from a flushed face. “Ben, c'mon.”
Nodding, Ben tugged the boxer shorts in question and jeans off of Riley’s legs and dropped them on the carpet. Then he moved back up near Riley once again, stretching out at his side, and closed his hand around him. Riley gasped out something not meant for civilized company and leaned into him, burying his face in his neck. He clutched at Ben, holding on as if his grip were the only thing saving him from drowning. Ben didn’t tease or take his time now; the other man was shaking under his hands. He stroked hard in a quick rhythm, and only listened to Riley’s quickening, muffled, broken noises for a moment or two before Riley stiffened and cried out low, spilling a desperate, hard-thrusting release into his hand.
Pushing his own need to the back of his mind as much as possible, Ben wiped his right hand off on his jeans and wrapped his arms around the younger man, running his left hand through his hair until the shuddering stopped.
“Alright?” Ben asked once again, quieter this time.
“Mmhmm,” he agreed, sounding as though he might drift off to sleep.
“Alright.” Ben reached over the side of the low-lying futon and picked up the first article of clothing that he found, which happened to be Riley’s T-shirt. He used it to clean off both his hand and Riley—who was so groggy that he didn’t even respond to the touch—as best as he could, then went to slide out of Riley’s grip.
That woke the other man up. His face rose from Ben’s shoulder and he looked at him with bleary eyes. “Wh—” Understanding dawned and he reached for him. “Ben, I’ll—”
Ben not unkindly pushed the hand away. “It’s okay, Riley. I’ll take care of it. You go to sleep.”
“Bu…” He trailed off, and then as if realizing just how tired he was, he let his head fall back to the mattress and muttered,
“ ‘Kay.”
Ben smiled faintly and padded into the bathroom.
When he came back some minutes later, with a pillow under each arm after a stop in Riley’s bedroom, he found that Riley had managed to pull on his orange Halloween boxer shorts—backwards—before passing out cold. Lying there on the green futon with his hair mussed out of control, wearing only those ridiculous boxers that left the rest of his pale, skinny body exposed, face lined with fatigue even in sleep, he once again looked very young to Ben. Too young. Like a kid.
Ben watched him for a moment, standing silent in the living room doorway. How old was Riley? Ben had never asked. He had always thought somewhere upwards of 25, but in moments like this, he wasn’t sure. Probably 23 at the most, while Ben… Well, Ben was a good deal older. Maybe this … whatever they had going wasn’t the best idea.
He took the several steps closer, carefully lifted Riley’s head to place a pillow under it. He took the heavy quilt that was neatly folded at the foot of the mattress and spread it out over the sleeping man. Then he set down the other pillow beside Riley’s and eyed it for a moment before shaking his head.
He stepped away from the bed, picking up his shirt and beginning to pull it over his head, but then heard Riley’s voice. It was slurred and jet lag and grief-exhausted, but he still understood the one word with the utmost clarity. “Ben.”
Ben turned around. Riley hadn’t moved an inch, still sprawled under the quilt, and his eyes weren’t open. “…Riley?” he asked after a moment. There was no response; he had clearly spoken in his sleep.
Ben wavered for a moment, then tugged his T-shirt back off, walked over, and slipped beneath the blankets. Riley immediately gravitated toward his warmth, and Ben drifted off to an uneasy sleep with an armful of Riley Poole. He would stay.
For now.
A/N - A bit of my idea of the beginning of the end for Ben and Riley, since an end would clearly have to come about before Abigail enters the picture.
cross-posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
rare_pair & personal journal
Fandom: National Treasure
Pairing: Ben/Riley
Rating: Somewhere between R and NC-17
Notes: Set sometime before the beginning of the movie. I saw the movie only once about six months ago, so comments on points that I may have gotten wrong/on characterization are most welcome.
He glanced at his—favorite expensive—watch and simultaneously swore in his head at himself for losing track of time, and wondered who was still in the cramped set of offices that Ian had leased for the Charlotte project.
He looked expectantly at the doorway as the footsteps neared in the hallway, and he caught a brief glimpse of Riley Poole. The younger man took a step past the doorway of Ben’s office, glanced inside, saw Ben, and promptly wheeled about and went back the way he’d come.
“Riley,” Ben called out.
There was a pause, and then Riley’s voice said a weak, “Hey Ben.”
Ben set down the pen in his hand and looked curiously, tiredly at the empty doorway. “What are you doing?”
Riley hesitated for a moment, and then stepped into view. He wore battered blue jeans and a brown track jacket zipped up to his neck against the air-conditioned chill in the air. He wasn’t always the most mature of companions, but looking at him now, Ben was suddenly reminded of his age; he looked particularly young, pale, unsure of himself. His brown hair was just mussed, rather than artfully tousled per usual, and his glasses hung askew on his nose.
“I forgot my laptop,” Riley said with a small, self-effacing shrug.
Ben wasn’t entirely sure where to begin. Riley’s laptop was glued to his fingers; how had he forgotten it? Why had he ducked back when he’d seen Ben? Why did he look like he’d been hit by a truck? But he started with the easiest. “Where have you been?” he asked matter-of-factly.
Riley leaned against the doorframe, stuffing his hands into his pockets, and made a valiant attempt at his normal patter. “Hey, I told you I was going. I definitely told you I was going.” He paused. “… I told you I was going, right?”
Ben turned a skeptical eye on him. “You walked in here, said ‘I have to go Ben; I’ll be back in a few days’, and then left the greater metropolitan area.”
“I knew I told you,” he said, more to himself than to Ben.
“Riley,” Ben said with a hint of impatience.
He sighed. “I had to go home for a few days. That was it, Sherlock.”
Ben was slightly embarrassed to realize that he knew nothing about Riley’s home or his background. “Home?”
“Teeny little town in the other Washington.” He was silent a moment, as if contemplating, and then his mouth twisted into a ‘what the hell’ kind of an expression and he said, “My brother died.” His eyes held steady with Ben’s for the first time, their usual piercing blue dulled. He glanced away after a second. “Wow. That’s the first time I’ve actually said it. Not cool.”
Ben could feel the contents of his chest cavity sink, and he just stared for a moment before managing a, “Hell, that’s awful.” Benjamin Franklin Gates was a fast-thinking, determined,resourceful man, but at that moment, he felt entirely useless. Part of him wanted to rise from his chair but the other part advised him that he wouldn’t know what to do once he was standing, and so he remained behind the big desk. “I’m sorry, Riley,” he said. And then his brain, scrabbling frantically for something to fill the silence that followed Riley’s nod, threw out, “Were you close?” If he could have physically put his foot into his mouth, he might have tried it.
Riley leaned more heavily into the doorjamb, gaze squarely on the floor. “He worshipped me when we were kids; followed me around everywhere.”
“How old was he?” Ben asked quietly.
“Seventeen.” Ben visibly winced and before he could say anything, Riley’s flat voice went on. “He was driving home from a friend’s house and ran a stop sign.”
Ben was still silent, watching him in the half-darkness.
“An eighteen-wheeler broadsided him.”
There was a moment of stunned quiet.
“…How was your family?”
Riley gave the smallest of snorts. “Bad, obviously. My mom couldn’t or wouldn’t get out of bed, my dad took it so hard his heart started giving him problems and they had to take him into the hospital…” His voice was rough and a little thick. “I did everything.”
“Everything?”
“Funeral arrangements, tell the relatives, tell his friends, write the obituary for the paper, give the eulogy, speak for the family, everything.” His calm broke and his voice cracked like a whip at the end. He didn’t speak for a minute or two. “You wanna know the worst part, though?”
Ben said nothing, but Riley continued anyway.
“The more I did, the harder it got to remember what he looked like.” Overcome, he pulled his glasses off of his face with a shaking hand and pinched the bridge of his nose hard. Despite that, his closed eyes still burned.
The creak of the chair didn’t even register until after arms wrapped around him, after he tucked his face into a broad shoulder that smelled like musty old books and aftershave. He hadn’t realized how badly he’d needed human contact until he was pressed tightly against Ben, who was warm and solid and, well, not very comforting, though he was trying.
He tried to halt the flow of hot, shameful tears that were threatening to soak Ben’s shirt, but A, Ben sensed the change in his breathing and muttered a quiet, slightly gruff, “It’s okay,” and B, he really couldn’t. He’d kept himself so tightly wound through the whole ordeal, focusing so hard on staying strong for everyone else, that he’d forgotten to grieve somewhere along the way. And now it was very nice to be able to fall apart with someone who’d help put his pieces back together.
It took a few moments, but he eventually slid an arm around the taller man’s neck and settled into the embrace. Ben’s hand ran through his hair.
“Hey Ben,” Riley mumbled into his shoulder after some time of stillness.
“Yeah?”
“I really did come here for my laptop.”
Startled, Ben gave a short laugh then immediately wondered if he should have.
“I mean, I didn’t exactly walk in the door and say to myself, ‘Hey, I’ll bet Ben is here. I should go use him as a giant tissue.’”
Ben laughed again, the movement shaking the younger man.
“So, uh, what are you doing here at 7:00 on a Sunday night?” Riley asked, disentangling himself and standing off a little sheepishly. He rubbed one eye then the other with the palm of his right hand, and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his red nose.
“I wanted to look up the exact size of the Charlotte.”
Riley looked at the papers strewn wildly across Ben’s desk. “I’m guessing you didn’t find it.”
Ben shook his head, ignoring the hint of snark in his tone. “No, I didn’t.”
They were both quiet for a moment and then Riley quickly breached the awkward silence. “Hey! Uh, I’m gonna go—” He gestured with his entire body. “—Get my laptop. And you can just, keep looking for those size specifications, and I’m going to stop talking right nmmmph!”
Ben cut him off by clapping a hand around the back of his neck and pressing his mouth hard against his. Riley got a handful of Ben’s shirt and drew himself flush against him, breathing in fast, hard hitches when their lips separated for brief seconds. Ben’s fingers rubbed unconscious patterns into the back of his neck, and Riley made a low, desperate noise and tilted his mouth further into Ben’s.
Ben abruptly broke away from him, looking shame-faced. “I was just trying to get you to stop talking, Riley, not—”
“You know what? You should stop talking, and I should point out that I’m fine, Ben, and I would have kicked you in the nuts if I hadn’t wanted your tongue in my mouth,” Riley interrupted, his matter-of-fact tone slightly hurt by the fact that he was wiping the back of a hand across his mouth.
As seemed to happen often when speaking to Riley, Ben found his mouth quirking into a bemused smile. “Would you have?”
Riley stroked his goatee in a show of heavy thought. “Hmmm…” He shook his head, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Nah. I missed you.”
There was a softened silence, and then Ben said, “I missed you, too.”
Another moment of quiet came, this one thankfully not awkward, and then Ben, still standing close by, asked, “When’d you get in?”
“About an hour ago; I think the jet lag might kill me. I dropped my bags at my good old hole-in-the-wall and then talked the cabbie into stopping here.”
The seeds of an idea began to germinate. “So you haven’t eaten yet?”
“Food. I can hardly remember what it tastes like.”
“Do you want to get dinner?”
“What, like at a restaurant?”
“That was the general idea.”
Suddenly, Riley smiled for the first time that night, and while his eyes were still puffy and his face not quite right, it did much for him. “I’ve got a better one.”
Ben crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh?”
“We go back to the hole-in-the-wall, I make Easy Mac, and you sleep with me on the futon.”
Ben knew that he was accustomed to Riley when the idea sounded not only slightly appealing but pleasant. Ben also thought that the other man wanted company. And so he readily agreed.
* * * * *
Riley’s apartment was tiny and its nickname of ‘hole-in-the-wall’ apt. However, it was small and cozy and he kept it fairly neat, in a cluttered sort of way. And, in a key point, it was a single. Unfortunately, the bed was also a single, which necessitated taking to the squishy futon in the living area on those occasions where Ben spent the night.
The first time they’d wound up in Riley’s bedroom, some months before, Ben had just stared at it for a moment. “…Riley, that’s a single bed.”
“I noticed,” Riley had responded, frustrated by the fact that the hands so intent on removing his shirt had stopped. Ben had shot him a look, and he had cooled down a little and sighed. “This place didn’t come furnished, so when I bought the bed I knew I could go one of two ways: optimistic or pessimistic.”
“Optimistic being a bed big enough for more than one person?”
“What can I say? Pessimism was cheaper.”
Ben had laughed, pulled his T-shirt off over his head, and kissed him again.
Back in the present, unfortunately for Riley’s complaining stomach but fortunately for the rest of him, they made it to the apartment but not to the Easy Mac. He was dumping the un-nuked pasta into a bowl when his assistant’s hand somehow found its way from the cheese powder package to Riley’s ass. After five days of distraught, celibate misery on the tense Poole mother ship, Riley couldn’t not enthusiastically show his appreciation of the gesture. He did so by calmly setting the bowl on the kitchenette countertop, turning around, and yanking Ben down the necessary inch or two and desperately kissing him senseless. Ben placed one hand on his side and the other on his shoulder and went with it, telling himself, as Riley’s hips bucked against his and they immediately swore into each other’s mouths, that he was going along with the frenzied pace because Riley wanted this so bad. Not like Ben had missed him like crazy over five days, not like Ben wanted him just as much right back, oh no, of course not.
Ben eventually slipped a hand between them and went to work, and was rewarded by Riley clutching even tighter at him and making Ben’s personal favorite low, helpless noise deep in his throat.
Ben drew back and eyed him critically for a moment, taking in the younger man with his eyes shut, head tilted back, face aflame, and he smiled. He shepherded Riley into the living room against his protests and rebellious moans of, “now would be better,” and pressed him down onto his back on the futon mattress. He placed a knee alongside each hip and, leaning over him just enough to tease but not provide substantial contact, proceeded to slowly kiss him until Riley thought he’d scream in frustration.
Right when he opened his mouth to threaten to shriek like a girl, though, Ben unzipped his track jacket and Riley wasted no time in helping to yank it off. After the jacket came the white T-shirt, lifted over his head and left to tangle his arms as Ben ran his hands over the pale skin—neck, chest, stomach—and flicked his tongue into the hollow of Riley’s throat, and the other man swore hoarsely. Ben’s hands slipped lower until with painful care, he began unbuttoning and unzipping Riley’s pants. Riley used his teeth to aid in untangling his arms from his shirt as Ben simultaneously slowly pulled down his jeans and ran his tongue over Riley’s nipple. ‘Multi-tasking son of a bitch’ was probably what Riley would have thought had his brain been capable of stringing words into sentences.
Instead, though, he made an utterly incoherent sound and threw his shirt off to one side. His hands now freed, grabbed Ben and tugged him back up and fully on top of him, where he could get his arms around him and have something to hold onto. With Ben’s warm weight pressing him into the futon, he kissed him hard for a moment before becoming cognizant of the fact that while he was mostly naked, Ben was mostly clothed. Very quickly, Ben’s T-shirt followed Riley’s in being flung to the floor, and now they were both breathing hard in irregular pants.
Ben paused there above him, and Riley cracked an eyelid after a moment, confused as to why nothing was happening. He found Ben looking down at him with a serious cast to his features. “You alright?” he asked.
Riley thought about answering him indignantly, telling him to hurry the hell up, but instead he just went with honesty and an affirmation. “I need this,” he said simply, roughly.
That was all Ben needed. He leaned down and kissed down Riley’s neck and along his jawbone, and Riley made that low noise of pleasure again and threw his head back, baring his throat in a clear plea to continue. Ben was only too happy to oblige, his mouth leaving a hot trail up Riley’s neck. He breathed on Riley’s earlobe before pulling it into his mouth, and feeling himself quicken further with Riley’s heartfelt moan.
Riley’s hips ground against his and Ben grunted while the smaller man choked out something that might have been “nngod” and might have been “pleaseben”; Ben wasn’t entirely sure which it had been, but it was more than enough for him. He returned his attention to Riley’s pants and pulling them down, and was greeted by the sight of neon orange boxer shorts adorned with smiling ghosts.
“It’s June,” he pointed out.
Riley opened his eyes, blinked a few times, lifted his head to look down at Ben sitting on his knees. “You can never get enough Halloween,” he said, the hoarse words taking him a moment as though it were a monumental struggle to think. And this time, it was clear when he shot Ben a plaintive look from a flushed face. “Ben, c'mon.”
Nodding, Ben tugged the boxer shorts in question and jeans off of Riley’s legs and dropped them on the carpet. Then he moved back up near Riley once again, stretching out at his side, and closed his hand around him. Riley gasped out something not meant for civilized company and leaned into him, burying his face in his neck. He clutched at Ben, holding on as if his grip were the only thing saving him from drowning. Ben didn’t tease or take his time now; the other man was shaking under his hands. He stroked hard in a quick rhythm, and only listened to Riley’s quickening, muffled, broken noises for a moment or two before Riley stiffened and cried out low, spilling a desperate, hard-thrusting release into his hand.
Pushing his own need to the back of his mind as much as possible, Ben wiped his right hand off on his jeans and wrapped his arms around the younger man, running his left hand through his hair until the shuddering stopped.
“Alright?” Ben asked once again, quieter this time.
“Mmhmm,” he agreed, sounding as though he might drift off to sleep.
“Alright.” Ben reached over the side of the low-lying futon and picked up the first article of clothing that he found, which happened to be Riley’s T-shirt. He used it to clean off both his hand and Riley—who was so groggy that he didn’t even respond to the touch—as best as he could, then went to slide out of Riley’s grip.
That woke the other man up. His face rose from Ben’s shoulder and he looked at him with bleary eyes. “Wh—” Understanding dawned and he reached for him. “Ben, I’ll—”
Ben not unkindly pushed the hand away. “It’s okay, Riley. I’ll take care of it. You go to sleep.”
“Bu…” He trailed off, and then as if realizing just how tired he was, he let his head fall back to the mattress and muttered,
“ ‘Kay.”
Ben smiled faintly and padded into the bathroom.
When he came back some minutes later, with a pillow under each arm after a stop in Riley’s bedroom, he found that Riley had managed to pull on his orange Halloween boxer shorts—backwards—before passing out cold. Lying there on the green futon with his hair mussed out of control, wearing only those ridiculous boxers that left the rest of his pale, skinny body exposed, face lined with fatigue even in sleep, he once again looked very young to Ben. Too young. Like a kid.
Ben watched him for a moment, standing silent in the living room doorway. How old was Riley? Ben had never asked. He had always thought somewhere upwards of 25, but in moments like this, he wasn’t sure. Probably 23 at the most, while Ben… Well, Ben was a good deal older. Maybe this … whatever they had going wasn’t the best idea.
He took the several steps closer, carefully lifted Riley’s head to place a pillow under it. He took the heavy quilt that was neatly folded at the foot of the mattress and spread it out over the sleeping man. Then he set down the other pillow beside Riley’s and eyed it for a moment before shaking his head.
He stepped away from the bed, picking up his shirt and beginning to pull it over his head, but then heard Riley’s voice. It was slurred and jet lag and grief-exhausted, but he still understood the one word with the utmost clarity. “Ben.”
Ben turned around. Riley hadn’t moved an inch, still sprawled under the quilt, and his eyes weren’t open. “…Riley?” he asked after a moment. There was no response; he had clearly spoken in his sleep.
Ben wavered for a moment, then tugged his T-shirt back off, walked over, and slipped beneath the blankets. Riley immediately gravitated toward his warmth, and Ben drifted off to an uneasy sleep with an armful of Riley Poole. He would stay.
For now.
A/N - A bit of my idea of the beginning of the end for Ben and Riley, since an end would clearly have to come about before Abigail enters the picture.
cross-posted to
rare_pair & personal journal
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