#ben

Even before the Compound V, even before the Vought men with their polished shoes and lacquered smiles, the house had always been too small for his footsteps. He had filled every room like a storm front. Broad shoulders in narrow doorways, heavy hands on the kitchen table. His voice carrying down the short hallway whether he meant it to or not. But back then, the house had still felt lived in. Tight, a little shabby, but warm. His boots by the front door. His jacket slung over the back of a chair. The smell of coffee in the mornings, cigarette smoke curling out the kitchen window, his laugh—rare, but real—when you said something dry enough to catch him off guard.

Now it felt like a place arranged around an absence.

You sat on the sofa with your legs tucked under you, a mending basket open at your feet and his shirt spread across your lap. One of the seams at the cuff had split. It was the beige one he barely wore anymore, too plain now, too ordinary for the image Vought had started to build around him. If he wasn´t in his supe suit, they liked him in red, white and blue. Outside, the street was quiet. You lived outside the city, where people still left porch lights on for one another.

Eleven forty-three.

You threaded the needle through the cuff and pulled it taut.

You used to wait up without realizing you were waiting. Two plates on the table, one growing cold. Coffee kept warm on the stove too long. It had changed slowly, then all at once. The first week after the injections, he’d still come home every night, wired and bright-eyed, walking too fast, talking too loud, unable to sit still. His skin had run hot under your hands. He’d paced the kitchen in a white undershirt, flexing his fingers like he could feel power underneath them, as if his own body had turned strange on him.

“D’you know what it felt like?”, he’d asked you then, grinning in that boyish way that made him look younger and meaner all at once. “Like lightning. Like somebody cracked me open and poured in pure energy”.

You had been standing barefoot at the stove, stirring tomato sauce that was already done. “Ben”, you’d said quietly, because your voice always got quieter when his got louder, “sit down before you wear a hole in the floor”.

He had laughed and crossed the room. He caught you around the waist and lifted you clean off the ground with one hand like you weighed nothing at all.

You had gasped, sauce spoon clattering against the pot, both hands flying to his wrist. “Benjamin—put me down”.

He had. Right away. Too fast, almost, as if he’d forgotten for a second what ordinary strength felt like. His grin had faded when he saw your face. “Hey”. He’d touched your cheek with the backs of his fingers, unexpectedly gentle. “Didn’t hurt you”.

“I know”.

“You looked scared”.

You had managed a small smile then, one that meant to smooth a moment over before it turned ugly. “You picked me up one-handed in the kitchen”.

“That’s the point, sweetheart”.

Months later, the point seemed to belong to everyone except you. A pair of headlights swept across the living room wall. You looked up fast, needle pausing midair.

The front gate clicked. Then his tread hit the porch, still unmistakable, still his, though heavier now somehow.

Your fingers curled around the shirt.

He stepped inside. For a second, he stood under the entry light, framed by it. Broad chest under a dark peacoat. Hair combed back too neatly, probably for some event, though loose strands had fallen over his forehead by now. There was lipstick on the corner of his collar—not yours, not your shade. The sight of it passed through you so quietly it barely made a ripple on the surface, but your hand tightened around the cloth in your lap until the needle pricked your thumb.

He closed the door with more force than necessary. The glass in the little front window rattled. “You’re up”. His voice was rough with fatigue and something harder underneath it.

You set the shirt aside before you stained it with blood. “It’s late”.

He glanced at the room, taking it in like a man visiting a place he used to know. His gaze landed on the mending basket. On the lamp you’d left on beside the sofa. On you. He looked tired in ways the newspapers never caught. It couldn’t show the strain gathered around his eyes now, or the restless twitch in his jaw when he was trying to keep hold of his temper. “Yeah”, he said. “I noticed”.

You rose from the sofa, smoothing your skirt automatically. “Do you want something to eat? I kept the roast warm as long as I could, but I can—”. “No”.

You nodded. “All right”.

He tossed his gloves on the side table and missed. They slid to the floor and he didn’t pick them up. For a few seconds, neither of you spoke. Then he gave a short, humorless laugh and dragged a hand over his face. “You gonna ask?”.

Your throat felt dry. “Ask what?”.

“How the gala went. Whether the mayor kissed my ass. Whether the Vought pricks rolled out another flag and called me the future of the nation”. He stepped farther into the room, shrugging out of his coat. “That’s what a wife asks, isn’t it?”.

You bent to pick up his gloves because leaving them there felt worse. “I didn’t want to start with work the second you walked in”.

“Work”, he repeated, like the word offended him. “That what you think this is?”.

You straightened carefully. “I think it keeps you away from home”.

His eyes snapped to yours. There was that little movement, sudden and electric, the one he’d had since the V, like something inside him hated being contradicted. He crossed the room before you’d fully braced for it, looming close enough that you had to tip your face up to keep looking at him. “Home”, he said, lower now. “This place? This little box on a dead street where the neighbors peek through their curtains every time a car pulls up?”.

“It was home before they put you on billboards”. His mouth tightened.

For one awful second, you thought he might smash something just to have somewhere to put the anger. The lamp or maybe the side table. His hand flexed at his side. Tendons stood out in his wrist. Then, instead, he laughed again. Meaner this time. At himself or at you, you couldn’t tell. “You think I asked for half of this?”, he said. “You think I like being pulled in ten directions by men who smile with all their teeth and talk to me like I’m a racehorse?”.

“No”, you said softly. “I think you like the parts that shine”. His stare sharpened.

You almost wished you hadn’t said it. Not because it wasn’t true. Because it was. Because you knew him well enough to put a finger right on the bruise.

His jaw worked. He looked past you toward the kitchen, toward the sink full of washed dishes drying in the rack, the hand towel folded over the oven door, the ordinary life waiting there with its small routines and quiet expectations. When he spoke again, his voice had gone flatter. “You don’t know what it’s like now”.

The room felt very still.

“No”, you said after a moment. “You don’t let me”.

Something in his face shifted, unsettled, as if for a moment he had been forced to look directly at the distance he kept pretending was made by everyone else. He looked at you. At your cardigan buttoned wrong because you’d done it absentmindedly. At the tiny dot of blood on your thumb from the needle. At the shirt on the sofa, half-mended, waiting for hands that hardly came home to wear it. His eyes dropped to your thumb. “You hurt yourself?”.

You tucked your hand behind your back automatically. “It’s nothing”.

He reached for your wrist. You flinched. Not dramatically. Barely anything, just the slightest pull backward, quick as breath. But he saw it and his hand stopped in the air between you.

His expression changed in increments so small they were almost impossible to read. First disbelief. Then anger. Then something darker and more private, like humiliation curdling into resentment before it had the chance to become regret. “Jesus Christ”, he said, very quietly.

You hated that your pulse had jumped. Hated that he’d noticed. Hated even more that part of you had started measuring the room the way you did lately without meaning to, the distance to the kitchen, the solidity of the table, whether the front door was unobstructed.

He let his hand drop. “You think I’m gonna hit you now?”, he asked.

You swallowed. “I didn’t say that”.

“You moved”.

You looked at his face and chose your words with care. “You came at me fast”.

“I came at you fast”, he echoed, a bite under the words. “That what we’re calling it?”.

The first drops had started, tapping softly against the front window. You could smell rain coming in through the cracks in the old frame. “I’m tired, Ben”.

“So am I”.

The answer came back immediate, almost childish in its force. He turned away, raking both hands through his hair, pacing once to the fireplace and back like the room could not contain him. “Everybody wants a piece”, he muttered. “The company, the press, the goddamn country. And I come home and you look at me like—”. He stopped.

“Like what?”, you asked.

He faced you again. His eyes were bright, too bright. “Like I’m already somebody you have to survive”.

You couldn’t answer right away. Not with the truth sitting between your teeth.

He looked as though he regretted saying it the moment it left him, but the regret didn’t make him gentler. It just made him harder, the way shame always did with him.

Finally, you said, “I still wait up for you”.

His face closed off. That had been the wrong thing too, or maybe there wasn’t a right one anymore. “Don’t”.

Your fingers curled at your sides. “Don’t what?”.

“Sit here like some widow every damn night”. He went to the hallway, then paused without turning around. “Go to bed”. The bedroom door shut a minute later, hard enough to shake the framed wedding photo on the mantle.

You stood where he’d left you, listening to the rain and the old house settling around it. You looked down at the shirt still draped across the sofa, the neat line of stitches you’d managed before he came home, and then at the hallway where the light under the bedroom door burned a thin gold line across the floorboards.

After a long while, you sat back down and picked up the needle again, though the thread shook a little in your hands.

-

Half an hour later, the light under the bedroom door had still been on when you reached the hallway. You stood outside it for a second with your hand on the knob, listening. No pacing now. No drawers opening and shutting. Just the low scrape of bedsprings when he shifted his weight, and the faint hiss of rain against the window over the radiator. Then you opened the door and stepped inside.

The bedroom was small, same as the rest of the house. Too much furniture for the space. A narrow bed pushed against the wall. One dresser with a warped bottom drawer. Your vanity by the window, its mirror clouded at the edges. The yellow lamplight made everything look softer than it was. It took the sharpness out of the room, but not out of him. Ben was already in bed, propped against the headboard in nothing but his underwear, one arm hooked behind his head. The sheets were dragged low on his waist. He looked up as soon as you came in. He didn’t say anything.

You shut the door quietly behind you.

Your nightgown was folded at the end of the bed where you had left it that morning, a spill of pale pink satin catching the light. Soft pink, almost too delicate a color to belong anywhere near him. All your nightgowns had come from him, bought on one of his early Vought trips into the city when the money had started coming easier and faster. He had arrived home with glossy department store boxes tucked under one arm and the self-satisfied look of a man pleased with his own generosity.

“Try ‘em on”, he’d said, dropping them on the bed. You had touched the tissue paper, then looked up at him. “Ben, we didn’t need—”. “I wanted to”. That had been the end of that.

He liked choosing things for you. Dresses. Perfume. Stockings. Little ribbons for your hair back when you still wore it that way around the house. He liked to look at you and see his own taste staring back.

You crossed to the dresser and opened the top drawer for your hairbrush, though you didn’t need it yet. Mostly you needed something to do with your hands. Behind you, the mattress creaked once. “Thought I told you to go to bed”, he said.

You kept your eyes on the drawer. “That’s what I’m doing”.

His voice came back after a beat, flatter. “You know what I meant”.

You set the brush down again. “No. You meant stop waiting up. I did that”.

The room went still. In the mirror, you could see him watching you. Not lazily or idly. Fully. His gaze had weight to it. It moved over your shoulders, your hands, the line of your back beneath your cardigan, and stayed there. He always looked like a man who expected the world to hold still when he fixed his attention on it. Lately, the world usually did.

You unbuttoned your cardigan slowly. Not for him but because your fingers felt clumsy, and you refused to let them show it.

He made a small sound in his throat. Not quite a laugh. “You’re sore at me”.

You set the cardigan over the chair by the vanity. “You noticed”. “Don’t do that”.

You turned partway toward him. “Do what?”.

“That quiet little voice like you’re better than everybody in the room”.

For a second you just looked at him. Then you reached for the zipper at the back of your skirt. “I’m not better than you, Ben”.

“No?”. He shifted higher against the headboard. “You’ve been looking at me all night like I crawled out of the gutter”.

The zipper rasped down. “You came home looking for a fight”.

“And you made sure I found one”. His tone sharpened on the last word.

You stepped out of your skirt and folded it over the chair. The blouse came next. You laid that down too, careful with the sleeves. The air in the room felt cool against your skin. Your slip brushed your knees as you moved. In the mirror his eyes had not left you. There was nothing tender in the watching, not at first. It was the old familiar thing: appraisal, possession, habit. The look of a man checking whether what was his was still where he had left it.

You reached for the pink gown. The satin slid through your fingers with a whisper. It was soft enough to make your skin look softer, the color flattering in the way he liked. The neckline was modest, but the fabric clung a little before falling loose. He had chosen it because it made you look gentle. It made you look like his wife should.

You slipped it on over your head.

The gown settled against you cool and smooth, then warmed by degrees where it touched your shoulders and ribs. You adjusted the straps, eyes lowered. The motion was ordinary, practiced. But under his stare, even ordinary things started to feel staged. Ben watched every second of it.

When you reached for a fresh pair of panties, he spoke again. “Leave em”.

You stilled. Then you set the panties down exactly where they were and turned to face him.

He had one knee bent under the sheet now, one arm draped over it. His hair was mussed from his hand going through it. Without the uniform and the shield and the Vought smile, there were flashes of the old him if you knew where to look. The crooked scar by his shoulder from some dumb bar fight before any of this. The nick on his jaw from the time he tried to fix the gutter himself and slipped. The shape of the mouth you had once thought looked stubborn in a way you could laugh at. Now it mostly just looked dangerous.

His eyes moved over the nightgown and back to your face. “That one looks nice on you”.

You almost said thank you by reflex. The habit rose quick as breath, then died before it reached your mouth. “You picked it”, you said instead.

He held your gaze. “Yeah”.

The word sat between you for a moment. Then he pushed the sheet aside and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. You didn’t move. Neither did he, at first. He just sat there with his forearms braced on his thighs, looking up at you from under his lashes. “Come here”, he said. His voice wasn’t soft. It rarely was. But it had dropped out of that earlier sharpness into something lower, rougher, more intimate in a way that still made your stomach tighten.

You went. You always had, with him. Not because he raised his voice. Not because he stood bigger than everyone else, bigger now than he had any right to be. Because this part had once felt simple. Him reaching. You yielding. His hand at the small of your back guiding you where he wanted you, and your body answering before your mind caught up. There had always been something in you that liked being gathered up by his certainty. Liked not having to be hard in a world built for hard edges. Liked belonging, in the ways that were tender and chosen and warm. It was only lately that warmth had started to come with a flinch.

You stopped between his knees. Ben’s hands found your hips almost at once. They settled there like he was reminding himself of your shape. Through the satin, you could feel every spread finger, every ounce of pressure.

He tipped his head back to look at you properly. Up close, his face was all the things the billboards flattened out. The shadow of stubble darkening his jaw. The faint crease between his brows that deepened when he was trying not to snap. The tiredness under the bravado. The temper under the tiredness.

His thumbs moved once against the fabric at your waist. “You were mouthing off”, he said.

The corner of your mouth twitched before you could help it. “That wasn’t mouthing off”.

“Was for you”.

You looked down at him. “Maybe”.

One of his hands slid around to your back, pressing you a little closer. Not enough to hurt. Not yet. The satin shifted under his palm with a soft whisper. “That little attitude”, he muttered. “You save it up for when I get home?”.

“Somebody has to say things to you”.

“I got plenty of people saying things to me”.

“That isn’t the same”.

His gaze sharpened on your face. For a second you thought he might bite back immediately, something mean and fast and cutting, the way he had lately when a nerve got touched. Instead he just looked at you, jaw moving once.

Then his eyes dropped. His hand had moved from your back to your side without you noticing. His fingers spread there, almost spanning half your waist. The pressure changed, minutely, as he touched the place above your hip.

The bruise there had already started turning the ugly yellow-brown of healing. Last week. The last time he’d been home long enough to touch you like he meant it. You had worn a higher-waisted skirt for two days after and pretended not to notice it in the mirror. His thumb pressed beside it, not on it. “That still there?”, he asked.

You swallowed. The question should have sounded like concern. On someone else, maybe it would have. On him it came out hard, almost annoyed, like he resented the evidence of himself. “It’s fading”.

His fingers stayed where they were. You could still remember the exact moment it happened. His hand clamping down when you twisted under him, not from pain, just from the force of him, and his body not remembering yet that it wasn’t ordinary anymore. The breath leaving you in a short sound you hadn’t meant to make. His mouth going still against your throat when he realized. Then that strange, ugly sequence that had become familiar these last weeks: guilt for one beat, anger the next, as if being sorry made him feel weak and weakness had become intolerable.

He looked at the bruise through the satin as though he could see it. “You should’ve told me”.

You let out a small breath through your nose. “You were already mad”.

His head jerked up. “At what?”.

“At yourself”. Your voice stayed quiet and careful. “Which usually turns into me if I’m standing there”.

Something flashed across his face. Not denial, worse. Recognition. His hand tightened before he caught it. You felt the start of it in your skin, that instinctive clench of too much strength, and then the deliberate release that followed. He noticed too

You put your hands lightly on his shoulders, more to steady the moment than yourself. His skin was warm, warmer than it used to be, the heat of him seeming to sit closer to the surface now. Under your palms he was all hard muscle and contained motion, even sitting still. “I know you don’t mean to”, you said.

His mouth flattened. “Don’t make excuses for me”.

“I’m not”.

“You always do”.

“That’s not true”.

He gave a short, humorless laugh. “Sweetheart, that’s damn near all you do”.

The endearment should have softened it. It didn’t. You looked at the set of his mouth, at the arrogance worn so close to the skin now, at the strain pulling under it. Then you reached up and touched the line between his brows with two fingers. He went still.

“You didn’t used to look at me like you were waiting for me to disappoint you”, he said. The words came out quieter than the rest. So quiet you almost missed them.

Your hand lingered against his forehead, then slid into his hair. “You didn’t used to make me work this hard to remember you”, you said.

His eyes lifted to yours and held, while his hands shifted from your hips to the backs of your thighs, just under the hem of the gown. The satin bunched under his fingers. The touch sent a familiar shiver through you despite everything.

He knew it. You knew he knew it.

That had always been the trouble with him. He could make your body answer even when your mind was tired, hurt, wary. Even now, with all the sharpness in him. Maybe especially now. There was a part of you built to soften under a hand at your waist, under a low command, under that look that said come here, stay still, let me. It wasn’t shameful to you. It was simply true. What you had never wanted was this other thing that had come in on the heels of power. This impatience. This carelessness. This streak of meanness that seemed to flare up before he even knew he’d lit it.

His thumbs stroked once, absent and possessive, against the bare skin above your knees. “You like it”, he said.

You knew what he meant. The way he handled you. The way he directed. The way you came to him instead of making him drag you. His voice had gone rougher again, but less defensive now, more certain. More Ben.

You didn’t look away. “That doesn’t mean I like all of it”.

His hands stilled. “All of what?”.

You hesitated just long enough for him to notice. “The way you get now”, you said. “How fast it turns”.

His jaw tightened.

“That V”, you went on, because if you stopped now you’d lose the nerve entirely, “it’s not just making you stronger, Benjamin. It’s making everything in you come up sharper… Meaner”.

“Meaner”, he repeated, like trying the word for weakness.

“Yes”.

He stared at you. The muscle in his cheek flexed. For one long second you thought he would erupt. You could see the instinct for it, the pride wounded and immediately baring its teeth. His fingers flexed once against your thighs. Then, unexpectedly, he looked away first. His gaze went to the vanity, to the warped drawer, to your brush lying across a folded handkerchief. Anywhere but you.

When he spoke again, his voice had gone flatter, stripped down. “You think I don’t know something’s off?”.

You blinked.

He huffed a breath, not quite a laugh. “Jesus”. He scrubbed a hand over his face, then put it back on your leg as though he couldn’t bear to have both hands off you at once. “I can hear too much now. Smell too much. Half the time I’m trying not to put my fist through a wall because the goddamn fridge is humming from three rooms away”.

You stayed still, listening.

“The suits want me smiling. Reporters want me charming. Every asshole in the country wants a piece”. His mouth twisted. “And then I get home and I touch you too hard”.

Something inside you softened at the edges, not because the problem vanished, but because there he was for a moment. Not the mascot, not the looming figure on the stage, not the man puffing up his chest against every bruise to his ego. Just Ben, sitting on the edge of a cheap bed in his underwear, looking furious at the world because he could not control his own hands.

You brushed your thumb once along his temple. “I know”.

His eyes cut back to yours. “No”, he said. “You don’t”.

You let your hand slide down to his jaw. The stubble there rasped against your palm. “Then tell me”, you said.

He searched your face like he expected mockery and found none. Only you. Only your too-soft voice and your pink gown and your hand on him like he was still worth touching.

Something in him gave way a little at the center. His shoulders dropped, not much, but enough. He leaned into your hand. Only for a second. So slight you might have thought you imagined it if you hadn’t known him as well as you did. Then he caught your wrist and kissed the inside of it.

The gesture should have been sweet. The grip almost ruined it. Not because it was cruel, but because even now he forgot. Your breath snagged before you could hide it. He froze. His mouth stayed against your pulse for one beat too long. Then he pulled back and looked at the place where his fingers circled your wrist. His expression changed when he saw the faint blanch of your skin there.

Very carefully, he loosened his hand. The gentleness of that was worse than if he’d ignored it.

“You see?”, you whispered. His eyes lifted. “I do like when you tell me where to be”, you said.

The admission came easier than you expected, because it was true, and truth had a way of making the air cleaner even when it hurt.

“I like when you put your hands on me. I like being yours”. Your throat tightened around the next part, but you made yourself say it anyway. “I don’t like feeling like you’ll forget I can break”.

He stood up too fast. You took half a step back before you could stop yourself. His eyes caught the movement immediately. That same wounded, furious look flickered over his face again, but now something else sat under it too. Shame. Raw and hot. “Christ”, he muttered, and turned away from you.

He went two steps toward the window, then braced one hand on the sill hard enough to make the old frame creak. Rain striped the glass beyond him. The muscles in his back were rigid under his skin.

You stayed where you were, fingers curled into the satin at your side. After a moment he said, without turning, “Come here”. This time it wasn’t an order. It sounded almost like defeat.

You crossed the room slowly. When you stopped behind him, he didn’t turn around right away, he reached back for you. You put your hand in his. He drew you around to stand in front of him, between him and the rain-dark window.

His fingers slid under your chin, lifting your face. “I’m not gonna let anybody else touch you”, he said.

You held his gaze. “That was never the part I was afraid of”.

He looked at you for a long moment. Then, with visible effort, he moved his hand from your chin to your cheek instead. Gentler. Deliberate. The pad of his thumb brushed under your eye, then along your jaw.

You laid your hands flat against his bare ribs. You could feel the expansion of his breathing under your palms, still a little too fast. Feel the contained strength in him, the dangerous ease of it. It scared you sometimes now. It also didn’t stop you from wanting him. Both truths lived together, neither canceling the other out.

“I miss you”, you said.

His eyes flickered. “I’m right here”.

“No”, you said softly. “Not like before”.

He closed his eyes. Just for a second. When he opened them again, some of the fight had gone out of him. Not all. Never all. There would always be something in Ben that came out with his fists half-raised against the world. That was true before the V. The V had just poured gasoline over it and called it heroism.

He bent his head and rested his forehead against yours. The contact was careful. That, more than anything, almost undid you. His hand slid from your cheek to the back of your neck, holding you there with a pressure you liked, a pressure that steadied rather than threatened.

You let your eyes close. His breath moved against your mouth. “Tell me if I do it”, he said.

You blinked your eyes open. “Do what?”.

“Turn on you”. His mouth tightened around the words. “Before I know it”.

You searched his face. Ben didn’t ask for help. Not from anyone. The request sat between you like a lit match cupped in both hands, fragile only because he would hate that word. You touched his cheek. “I always do”, you said.

A sad smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. Barely there. Gone almost before it formed. “Yeah”, he said quietly. “You do”.

He kissed you then. Not rough. Not the punishing kind of kiss he sometimes reached for now, like he was trying to silence himself with your mouth. This one was slower. Intentional. His lips warm, the hand at your neck steady, the other settling at your waist with obvious care. You felt the effort in him, the restraint, and that made the tenderness feel more precious, not less. You kissed him back.

When he pulled away, he didn’t go far. His nose brushed yours. His thumb moved once against your side. “Get in bed”, he said. The old command was back in the words, but gentled. Familiar in the way that made your body loosen instead of brace. You obeyed.

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A/N: Please let me know what you think.🥰 

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Part 2

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