benjamin-hastings:
When the door opened and Flo was standing there with her daughter, Benji’s heart seized up. Rory wouldn’t remember Colin, and her impression of him would instead be colored by how he had treated her mother. She would never have the ability to know what Connor thought: his grandpa was fun, and affectionate, and spoiled him rotten. “Yeah.” He replied awkwardly, stepping in and shutting the door behind him. “Can I? —” Benji gestured towards Rory, but not hesitating to snatch his niece out of her hands. She was perfect and small in his hands, and yet growing too quickly for Benji to comprehend. He remembered thinking the same thing with his own son, how fast time passed. Benji followed Flo into the living room, settling into a chair by Flo, enough that he wasn’t sitting next to her, but could look at her straight-on. “I have to… I have to tell you something.” Benji tensed up, looking from Flo back to Rory, watching as she reached for his beard. “Maybe you might want to get Noël, or we can just… Just you and me.” Like it’s always been. “Dad, um… He — He, um…” Benji shifted uncomfortably, finally looking up to meet Flo’s gaze. “I’m sorry. He’s… He’s…” Benji sucked in a shaky breath. He knew he couldn’t use the word ‘gone’ — Flo would simply think he’d jetted off again, but was still out there in the world somewhere. No. He had to suck it up, he had to tell her the truth, and not mince words. “He died.”
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Florence had long ago stopped protesting when Benji decided he wanted to steal Rory from her. It allowed her to get a better look at him and his somber expression. It was rare for her brother to look like anything but an excited puppy dog, so this was alarming to say the least. “Noël’s sleeping,” she said dismissively, her eyes scanning his every feature in an attempt to figure out what was about to come out of his mouth. Apart from it being bad, it wasn’t given much away. “Spit it out, you’re freaking me out. Last time I saw you like this was when you came to visit me at the hospital.” Cold crept into her chest at his mention of their father and she almost felt her walls coming up. He was fine. He had to be. There was just no way that he wasn’t after everything, after she had just begun to get to know him the way she always wanted to. “He — No, Benji, he’s fine. I just saw him. We went for a walk on the beach and he played with Rory for hours. He was doing great,” she said tightly, standing up from the couch quickly and extending her arms out for Rory. “It’s just not possible, okay? I should probably get her back to bed, so...” Realistically, she knew he was telling the truth. Benji wouldn’t joke about something like this. No one would. She just wanted to live a few more minutes in blissful ignorance because she wasn’t sure she was ready to handle something like this.













