#comet's fics

all spelling out desire— 

“Pushy, pushy. You gonna even let me get undressed first, or am I supposed to fuck you through my jeans?” i’m a sucker for ben being pushy and bratty and sammy being like, a little mean, but in a really nice way eheheheh

fall softly and adore— 

They’ve been sleeping like this increasingly often. It started back in Ben’s apartment. It had just been easier, to have the other there when they woke up. And now the station only has the one couch anyway, so… Why not? Besides, this way there’s less chance of forgetting where or when you are, of waking up and feeling like you’re still falling into the void. It's… fine. Ben’s fine with it.

Sammy sighs in his sleep and turns his face further into Ben’s shirt.

He’s not gonna be that guy, Ben promises himself. Sammy needs a friend right now. Just a friend.

They’re both in a fucked-up situation right now, what with the whole being trapped in the goddamn station unable to broadcast because if they do, then the mob with literal pitchforks will know that they’re there. Most people think they skipped town.

The only reason hiding in the station’s worked for so long is that the other employees usually there are on “temporary leave,” and the townsfolk don’t believe Sammy and Ben could stay in the station for so long without broadcasting anything. Or as HFB III would put it, “attempting to feed their libel into the ears of the trusting townsfolk.”

Yeah. Fuck that dude.

He stares into the darkness. There’s no one here but him and Sammy: no cars driving by this far up the mountain; no view of the town far below from this room’s one window.

They are, for all intents and purposes, alone. Ben shakes his head and breathes deep. He glances down to make sure that Sammy is still asleep. There’s no change in the steady movements of Sammy’s breathing. His face remains taut, even in sleep, muscles drawn tight and jaw clenched shut.

Ben should probably just let it go. Sammy will get through whatever dream he’s having. He’ll relax and be fine and Ben shouldn’t disturb him.

But then Sammy makes this—this horrible, small sound. The kind of sound someone makes when they’ve been trying not to cry for so long that they’ve forgotten how to cry at all.

And that’s it, Ben has little self control at the best of time and that goddamn sound is more than enough to wreck it. He wraps his arms around Sammy, one on his waist and the other stroking along his hair. “It’s gonna be okay,” he murmurs. “I promise, I’m not leaving, we’re not leaving. We’re gonna figure this out.”

“Hm?” Sammy’s voice is rough, and he barely opens his eyes.

“Sorry, buddy, I didn’t mean to wake you.” Ben’s hand stilled on the back of Sammy’s neck. “Do you want me to stop?”

Sammy shifted to meet Ben’s gaze. There’s still sleep in the corners of his eyes, and Ben itches with the probably super weird desire to rub it away. His irises are so gray in this light that they’re nearly colorless. “Don’t stop,” he says, almost too quiet for Ben to hear.

Ben doesn’t make him say it again. “It’s okay.” He tugs Sammy a little closer, aligning them from shoulder to hip to ankle. Sammy’s all elbows and knees but Ben doesn’t care, can’t care when Sammy hums a little and lets his head fall back against Ben’s chest.

“I would really, really love to do that,” he says aloud, distracting himself from everything in his mind that screams to make itself known. “But in case you haven’t noticed, we are… quite high off of the ground.”

“It’s going to be okay, just keep walking forward. I’m not going to let you fall,” Martin assures him. He sounds like Georgie trying to coax the Admiral out of a tree, and Jon has to choke back an inappropriate laugh at the thought.

He takes a step forward. The netting—oh, who is he trying to fool with that—the web shivers under his feet, like a living creature.

Jon doesn’t fall.

“That’s it,” Martin says, still encouraging. He takes another step back himself, pulling their arms out straight in front of them. “Just a few more steps and we’ll reach the utility ladder.”

Jon doesn’t ask how Martin knows where the ladder is.

After all, there is little on this warehouse ceiling that is not swathed in web. The spiders that hide in its corners must know every inch of it by now. He glances to one side as if to look for one of the arachnids now, but the dizzying space beneath him catches his eye instead.

“Jon, Jon, wait, stay with me!” Martin’s voice is insistent, cutting through the haze building in Jon’s head. He’s got two hands folded around Jon’s, and his skin is hot. “Come on, we have to keep moving. I might, um,” he hesitates.

“Just say it,” Jon sighs, and he hadn’t thought he was compelling Martin or doing anything like taking a statement. He hadn’t tried to, really, but the shiver of relief that runs under his skin when Martin starts to answer him must be the Eye, craving whatever information he will give it.

“Spiders kind of like me,” Martin admits, which from what Jon has seen is a hell of an understatement. There’s web twisting through his hair that Jon hadn’t even seen until this now. “So we’ll probably be okay, but… I was the first one to read this statement, the one we’re trying to investigate here, and I really don’t think we want to be here when Kumo gets back.”

“Yes,” Jon agrees, repressing the urge to pry further into just how Martin discovered this affinity with everything he has. His voice is shaking, he notes, almost passively. He could die here, surrounded by the first Entity to ever lay claim to him, and all he wants to do is sit down and hear Martin’s story.

Martin could die here, he thinks. That realization twinges something within him, something deep and possessive and he does not want to think about it too much. The Eye is more than willing to let its assistants wander, but it does not like them to go unseen.

And as powerful as it is, the Eye cannot see past death.

Jon takes another step forward, focusing on Martin’s hands clasped around his own. He does not look at the web or the spiders that gather around to chitter at he and Martin, he does not consider taking out his recorder, and he does not look down.

Martin coaxes the two of them forward, bit by bit. His voice is still so soft, the last thing Jon could imagine as threatening.

“‘Will you walk into my parlour?’” Jon murmurs under his breath.

He thinks the clicking from the spiders around him might be laughter. Martin laughs too, a huff of air that’s barely even audible. If they get out of this, Jon thinks, he’d like to make Martin laugh for real.

There’s a muffled clank when Martin runs into the top of the utility ladder, metal poles sticking up through the soft bindings of a thousand strands of silk. “I knew we’d make it,” Martin says, with more determination than true optimism in his voice.

The strange thing is, for once Jon believes him. They were always going to make it. Not just here, either. They, at least, are going to live through whatever is to come. He may not know how much of that knowledge is him and how much is the Eye, but he knows this.

“He was being super gross,” Ben declared. He sniffled slightly and made a face. “Ugh, I can taste blood.”

Sammy tipped Ben’s head to one side, eyeing the way the light played over the bruise across his nose and right eye. There were a few small scrapes across the skin from the ring the man had been wearing, but all the actual bleeding had stopped. Sammy dropped the soiled paper towel he’d been using in the trash, but didn’t step away from Ben to go get a bag of frozen peas or a cold pack or painkillers or anything useful like that.

He just stayed, standing between Ben’s knees with one hand on Ben’s face. “Do you need to put new tissues in your nose?” he asked.

Ben shook his head and promptly winced. “Jack in the box Jesus, remind me not to shake my head any time in the near future. Or like. Ever again. I forgot how dizzy nosebleeds make me.”

“Have a lot of nosebleed experience, do you?”

“It’s just a nosebleed.” Ben shrugged and Sammy clicked his tongue disapproving, moving his free hand to Ben’s shoulder to keep him from moving. “It happens every time it’s dry and I get punched in the face.”

“Gee, really?” Sammy asked, voice dry as a riverbed in midsummer. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Ben went to shove him, grinning despite himself. Sammy let go of Ben’s shoulder to catch Ben’s hand with his own before it made contact, holding onto Ben’s wrist securely.

There was a second when neither of them knew what to do.

Of course it was Ben who acted first. Ben, all reckless and risky and willing to do anything for the chance for his friends to be happy. Ben with the purple-blue bruise across half of his face, the dark eyes and pretty smile and ridiculous laugh.

It was Ben who tugged Sammy’s hand towards his face, turned it over so Sammy’s palm was facing up, and kissed the inside of his wrist.

Sammy couldn’t breathe.

“Is this…” Ben cleared his throat. “This doesn’t have to be anything.”

“But can it?” Sammy asked, before he was even aware of what he was saying.

He was still standing between Ben’s legs and he took a step forward, almost on instinct. His waist ran up against the counter, cold and angular. Ben was holding onto the lapels of Sammy’s shirt, crumpling the flannel in white-knuckled fists. When had that happened?

With his hold on Sammy’s shirt, it was easy for Ben to pull him forward into a kiss.

It was a little rougher than probably wise, especially with Ben’s bruised face. He made a sound, a whine just this side of pain rather than pleasure, and Sammy backed off.

Well, not literally. Ben had brought his legs up, pinning Sammy close to him with his knees and thighs. But he leaned away just far enough to let Ben catch his breath. “You okay?”

Ben was grinning at him, helpless and flushed and the cutest goddamn thing Sammy had ever seen. “I’m real good. Real, real good.” He still held onto Sammy’s shirt with one hand, but he let go with the other to reach up and push Sammy’s hair out of his face.

“Shouldn’t we get you some ice or something?” Sammy asked.

He had to at least try to be the responsible one here.

“I don’t know,” Ben said, and that was definitely a smirk on his face now. “I think it would be much more helpful to kiss it better.”