seekerbenjy:
“You hit me!” He declares, more surprised than anything else. “That’s a hate crime!”
“No it’s not.” Marlowe says, rolling her eyes and deepening her glare at him. Niko puts his arm around her in a way that’s practiced, easy. Simple. He cared about her, clearly, and Loey…
“Oh fuck-” Benjy manages, before he violently throws up over the arm of the couch onto the floor. As he retches again, he hears snippets of conversation.
“What do you mean you-”
“…does he look like he can…”
The world is fuzzy now, and all Benjy can taste is bile as he manages to sit up semi normally on the couch he’s on. Someone hands him a glass of water which he sips on gratefully, his head bent forward, close to his knees, willing the world to stop spinning and the ache in his chest that has nothing to do with alcohol to go away. He can’t remember where he and he really wishes he had a drink. Benjy isn’t sure how long he sits there.
“Come on.” Marlowe’s voice is soft now, and her hand on his back feels so nice. “Let’s get you home.”
“Okay.” Benjy says, trying to get to his feet and stumbling, only catching himself with Marlowe’s hand. She says something to someone else in the apartment they’re in, but Benjy doesn’t hear or understand. Marlowe guides him down the stairs and into the FLOO-the wizard rideshare service. Thankfully she’d gotten a car, Benjy wasn’t sure he’d be able to stay on a broom.
“You’re staying, right?” Benjy says, unsure himself if he means for the car ride or overnight. Marlowe doesn’t acknowledge his question, just slides into the backseat next to him. She says something to the driver and when the car starts, Benjy vomits again-but the car instantly whisks it away. She’d ordered the service that catered to drunks.
Loey’s hand is on his back, but she doesn’t rub it in small circles, she doesn’t whisper nice things to him-and that’s how Benjy remembers the reason he’d been drinking in the first place.
“D’you know what today is, Loey?” Benjy says after a moment, taking a mint out of the container that was floating beside them. He sits up, slumping towards her slightly, letting out a half chuckle as she sits him up right.
“No, Benjy. I don’t.”
She sounds tired, borderline exhausted, and Benjy knows a lot of that is his fault. He shifts, pressing his cheek against the window, smiling softly at the way that cool glass feels against his face. He speaks softly, not looking at her, because he’s worried he’d do something incredibly stupid, like cry, if he did.
“Five years ago…today, you and I had a big fight. THE big fight. And you told me I had a week to get my shit together or you were done.”
Benjy closes his eyes, the moveent outside the window was making him feel sick again.
“And well, you know the rest. I didn’t. You left. And clearly, I’m handling it quite well.”
Marlowe freezes, her hand lingering a half-second too long at the base of his spine but Benjy doesn’t seem to notice. She used to think perhaps with time, every single moment spent with Benjy somehow monumental in the smallest of ways would all fade from memory. Instead, they seem to stream through her blood as in the very thing elemental to life from birth until the end. The fight with the ultimatum. Her aunt often resorted to ultimatums with her uncle and yet, still to this day, they’re still together as if the power weren’t heavily stilted in favor of one half of them. She loved them both individually but together they could be horrid. And Marlowe came to the conclusion that it depended on ultimatums. She promised herself that she would never be one to resort to ultimatums and yet she had given Benjy one seven days before her nineteenth birthday. Unlike Aunt Marilyn, however, Marlowe followed through with this one.
“I knew it was coming up,” she murmurs, unsure if he can hear.
“Hngh?”
She turns her head, their eyes meeting in the faint reflection through the city sky night passing by the car window. “How else do you think I ended up on your Instagram last month?”
