Benny Miller lives rent free in my head

You’re totally right & you should say it! 👏🏻

Your daughter was born early on a Tuesday morning. It was a windy day, bleary and overcast, but it was almost the happiest day of your life. A never-ending stream of family and friends cycled through your hospital room, bearing gifts and flowers, balloons and well wishes. It was almost perfect.

Except… you went through it all alone. 

Benny was halfway around the world when his first child was born. At least, you assume so. He could be three towns over for all you know–the most he can tell you is that he’s stationed at an Army base and that the rest of the boys say send their congratulations. 

So you hold the bundled baby up to the camera as she grows. You bought an HD webcam for the sole purpose of showing her off to him, but even the best camera can’t compensate for a shitty connection. He doesn’t tell you that his little girl is jumbled mass of pixels more often than not. Instead, he tells you about the photograph of her he keeps in his breast pocket, one taken at four months old, shortly after she first found her feet for the first time.

You update him with her milestones, the little girl balanced in your lap more often than not. You tell him about her first smile (at his mother), her first time laughing (you blowing raspberries against her tummy), her first solid meal (mashed peas and carrots). She sits up earlier than expected, five months, and he roars with pride, declaring that his daughter is a little Amazon already. 

You don’t see the tears he sheds when you hang up. He doesn’t see yours. 

And then his tour ends. You meet him at baggage claim, and no sooner has he kissed you hello, and he’s gesturing for you to pass over the squirming, wriggling eight-month-old balanced on your hip. She bursts into fussy tears, her stranger sense piqued as unfamiliar arms scoop her into unfamiliar chest. He winces, but puts on a brave face, shushing her gently through a choked up throat.

“Hey there, kiddo,” 

ohhhhh man can you just imagine? 

Like, he’s high off a win but this guy took him to the mat, had to rely on his grappling training, his college wrestling days, and then got slightly lucky on top of it, so he’s spent. Like he’s so, so fucking sore, can barely pick his arms up, let alone his legs. 

But he sees the look on your face, predatory and smug as you watch him–your man–emerge from the ring with a guttural roar of victory. He sees the way you eye him as he hops down from the cage, the way the bright lights gleam off his glistening skin. 

Problem is, once he finds himself sinking into the mattress he can barely move. Too sore to even get it up, to tired to take the reins. Earlier in the evening he’d put on the biggest display of domination in front of an audience of a couple hundred. Here though, in the comfort of your bedroom, there’s no audience, no performance to commit to, no reason to dominate. So he does what he refused to do earlier today–he rolls over. He lets you pin him to the bed, bracket his head between your shins as you lean over him to grab the headboard. 

Okay but.. my heart is screaming at all of these. 🥺

1. I adore my goofy, rowdy husband, okay? So, yes, I totally agree. Biggest goober child of them all.

2. Oh, Benny and his quest to make him look a fool in order to make you laugh. Your laughter is his favorite sound, so you know he’s trying all he can do to make you laugh at any moment in the day.

3. A drive around town blasting music with Benny? Where the hell do I sign up for this? Cause I need it right now for about.. the rest of my life.

“How did you even do that?” You didn’t realize you’d been speaking aloud as you looked over the man’s x-ray.

“I’m an MMA fighter,” he spoke up, and you turned to look at him. He was smiling a little, despite his swollen cheek and black eye.

“I usually don’t break anything when I do it, though,” he added. You hummed, pulling your seat up in front of him and taking hold of his hand.

“How long do you think I’ll be out of commission?” He asked, and you could hear worry tinging his voice.

“About a month? The splint can some off after then, but after that it’s gonna be another two weeks without doing anything strenuous.” He swore under his breath and you let your eyes stray to his for a moment, offering him a sympathetic look.

“This didn’t even happen in the ring,” he sighed, “Guy was a sore loser, tried to take me on in the parking lot.” You shook your head.

“Dick move,” you said simply. He laughed, and you smiled a little as you returned to your work quietly.

“Month and a half,” he grumbled as you stepped away. “The hell am I supposed to do for a month and a half?”

“Keep your workouts exclusively the right side of your body. You’ll wind up with a real mean hook.”

“Oh, I’ve already got one of them.” You smiled.

“Try not to overdo it, Mr. Miller. We’ll see you in a few weeks.”

“Any chance I could see you before then?” You were surprised. It wasn’t that you’d never had a patient come on to you, but it was the first time you were considering it.

“For… Medical reasons?” You asked. He snorted.

“Or a drink.” You stepped farther back into the room, holding your hand out for his phone.

“I am pretty curious to see what your face looks like when it’s not all swollen.”

This took a minute. Thank you for your patience! Fluffy lil Benny Miller drabble.

An impossibly tight squeeze from your bladder had woken you up. It was the only thing that could coax you out your comfortable bed that you never meant to fall asleep in in the first place. The sun had still been pouring in through the window when you came into the room to change out of your work clothes and into the comfortable fleece pajama pants that you wished you could get away with at the office. How you had gone from sitting on the edge of the bed putting on pants to fast asleep on top of the covers, you would never know. The bedroom was pitch black now, the glow of orange lamplight outside not even breaking through.

 As you stood up off the bed, you found your cell phone on the night stand and checked your phone for the time. 11:18 PM. You had been out of it for four and a half hours and collected a missed call, two ‘Are you OK’ texts from your boyfriend, and a long winded message from your best friend in the midst of family drama. 

Benny Miller x Black!Reader (Co-Parents)

Summary: A couple weeks after his return to the States and his sleepover at your house, Benny finally gets to take you out on that date.

Previous parts: [Before I Go] [When I get Home]

Word Count: 3.4K

*****

You honestly couldn’t remember the last time you’d gotten ready for a date. It was definitely before Mattie was born, while you and Benny were still together, likely before you’d gotten pregnant or right after to celebrate the pregnancy. You got dressed up all the time, so this was nothing new to you, but the thought of doing all this for a date with Benny felt strange. You’d always felt that you would gravitate back into his orbit, but it was only a matter of when and how his magnetism would pull you in.

“What do you think, Mattie, natural eyes or smokey eyes?” you asked, looking to the three-year-old love of your life to see her intently watching you from where she sat on the wide countertop. Watching her tilt her head and hum theatrically was one of the cutest things you’d seen, and you could not argue at the way she said natural. “You’re gonna be good for your uncle, right?”

“Where are you and Daddy going?”

“Your dad is taking me out on a date,” you answered honestly as you applied your eyeshadow, not totally certain if she’d get it but you also knew that she was a smart girl. She was also three, so she didn’t have to get it, either.

“Is Daddy gonna live with us?”

Benny Miller x Black!Reader (co-parents)

Part two (I guess?) to Before I Go

Word Count: 2.5K

Summary: Benny makes it home to his girls after a rough Boys Trip™, but he has a lot to think about in regard to what he’s done and what that could mean for his future with you and your daughter.

Warnings: angst at the beginning, the events of operation fuck up, mentions of death (but we ain’t sad about it), fluff

*****

He should’ve gone home when he had the opportunity. Should’ve gotten on the first flight back to the states with his seventeen grand, knocked on your door so he could scoop his daughter into a hug and take you out on that date. He could’ve done that – should have done that – instead of going through with this crazy idea.

But he told Pope “I go where you go”, told his brother that he was following his lead on this, and he stayed. He stayed for his brothers, but he also stayed for his daughter. You’d been working with him on building a savings account for her, something to get her through college or whatever she wanted to do when she grew up. But this could set Mattie up for the rest of her life, you wouldn’t have to work if you didn’t want to, and he could invest more time into fighting until he could just do that for a living to support you and your daughter.

And now? As he cold camps in the fucking jungle, watching his injured brother struggle to get comfortable and listening to Pope and Redfly bicker like an old married couple, he knew he should’ve just gone home to his daughter. All the money in the world wasn’t worth it if he didn’t get to see her again because Redfly got greedy.

Benny Miller x Black!Reader (Co-Parents)

Summary: Benny needs to see his daughter before he leaves for South America, and leaves her with a piece of him. But he also wants to see you, and you aren’t completely sure how to feel about that. 

Word count: 2K

Warnings: none?

******

The day had been longer than usual, and you’re very excited to turn on the TV for your daughter’s after dinner TV show. She curls into your side on the couch, and you know she’s sleepy based on the way she was working hard to get comfortable while fussing against you. Eventually she settles, singing along with the What’s New Scooby Doo! theme song and you let out a quiet yawn as you let yourself relax into your sofa for about thirty minutes of quiet.

Just as you start to doze, a knock sounds on your front door and you let out a small huff as you peel the three-year-old off of your shirt and help her get comfortable laying on the couch. Another knock has you rolling your eyes as you make your way to the door, looking through your peephole and immediately waking up when you see Benny standing on your front porch.

I see it so much in fics. You can claim what you want about making reader inserts neutral (they never are but whateves), but I’ve been reading fanfic for almost 10 years, and I can’t count on both hands how many of those have been geared towards bipoc readers. The reality is, in your moodboard, your edits, and your writing, your fics are geared towards white women.

It’s in your reader descriptions (what little you give), it’s in the set ups of relationships (there’s no way I could look like I’m related to certain characters), it’s in the way you write scenes. If I had a dollar for everytime I’ve read that a “neutral reader insert” had skin that flushed red, or straight thin hair, I’d be fucking rich. However unintentional it is, it still makes me feel excluded, like I don’t have a place in this fandom.

And this is not a new thing by far, bipoc in fandoms have been pushed out or forced to create their own spaces because of the exclusivity of fandoms that predominantly appeal to white women. And we’ve talked about this for so long. Like I’m basically repeating things that have come up a thousand times, but that’s because NOTHING’S CHANGING.

Representation fucking matters. It’s not enough to have neutral readers anymore. It’s a good step. But I wanna see myself in AUs and moodboards and fics.