nine

If Ben thought she was going to fuck him after she just tried to kill him, after he just made her cry, after only having gotten to see his face for the first time in decades for a few moments–

Well, Ben was unfortunately right.

But she wasn't going to be happy about it. No, she was going to be very, very unhappy the entire time.

The car ride back is extremely awkward but not because of the expected reasons, but because Hughie is naked. Brooke tried to hand him back his clothes and Butcher said they didn't have time. Said that if he truly insisted, he could get dressed as they drove. Said that it wasn't much to look at anyways.

So Hughie sat in the front seat with his balls pinned to leather, Butcher drove them to a potentially fatal second destination (though, realistically, it was just a hotel, but Brooke did not necessarily trust anyone in this car) and Ben sat straight beside her. Completely, stick-up-his-ass straight.

Brooke elbows him in the side. "What is your problem?"

"I didn't know I had a problem," Ben answers, a dimple poking through the skin of his cheek. He is so pretty. She still wants to deck him. "But I'm sure you're going to enlighten me."

"You're sitting like you've got a stick up your ass," Brooke huffs, using that moment to nod toward his ass, and allowing herself a glance. As a treat. "If you're so tense about this plan, why'd you agree to it?"

"Oh, I'm not tense about anything." He turned ever so slightly. Enough to look at her. "Payback on Payback? Dealing with whatever their dirty laundry is? Piece of cake for me."

Brooke bristles. "So what–"

"Have you ever considered," Ben leans impossibly close, his green eyes so impossibly green and simmering, "that maybe, it's impossible to sit this close to my wife and not be able to touch her?"

There's the painful sound of skin unsticking from leather, and then an uncomfortable, "oooookay" sighed from Hughie in the front seat.

Butcher, on the other hand, fixes his gaze on Brooke in the rearview mirror. "Wife? You two marry each other outside Crimson Countess' remains or something?"

Brooke actually flushes against her will. It's embarrassing to be so petty and aggressive in one moment and to deal with the deflation the next. It's also amazing how quickly the presence of someone familiar can calm her, how she feels so much less hostile with Ben at her side, even if he's instigating conversations that she is behooved to have.

She clears her throat, though, and looks Butcher's reflection in the eye. "We got married in Russia."

"They hold a ceremony in between all that torture, did they?" Oh, that smirk is going to get his head blown up one day. Brooke will make sure of it if she has to.

"No. It was– Well, it was just an unofficial thing," her face is blazing hot, this really is embarrassing, defending her fake marriage to these very real people, "I thought I was going to die, and I just– didn't want to die with him as my boyfriend. After all we'd gone through so far."

"Touching." Butcher's fingers drum on the steering wheel. Brooke's eye actually twitches.

Hughie twists around in the seat just enough for Brooke to see one of his eyes. "You called him your boyfriend."

Ben's suit shifts next to her. He's fully sitting sideways in the seat now, staring at her. No traces of anger on his face, just pure amusement. Is she seriously this red? She's going to blow up this entire car. She's mortified. "You demoted me without me here to defend myself?"

"To be fair," she stutters out, hating this, hating not being in control of this narrative. These men are ganging up on her! "You– You left me."

"I came back," he shoots back, and he's sick for twisting it to be that way. No he didn't. She found him.

"I could still downgrade you again," Brooke breathes out, breathless and heaving from the frustration and the adrenaline in her veins. She wouldn't downgrade him again. She is actually actively resisting the urge to clamber in his lap and let him take her in the backseat.

He senses it. She knows he does. The look he's wearing – a dimple indenting his cheek, the upward curl of his mouth, the glimmering green in his eyes – is proof of it. "Would you?"

"I'm going to go get us a room," Butcher sighs, and the car is parked. When did the car park? How did cars in these few decades become so quiet and so speedy that they've already reached a hotel? "Hughie, try to keep them from tearing each other's spandex off."

"Big responsibility." Hughie spares a half glance over his shoulder again at them. Brooke snaps her teeth in his direction. "What authority do I even have? I'm fucking naked."

"Try not to cream all over yourself when my tits come out," Brooke said, leaning forward to pat his bare shoulder.

Ben laughs. Laughs. And how delightful it is to hear Benjamin Anderson laugh, gutturally and warmly and with the whole force of his being. How could she be angry with him? How could she harbor any resentment when that sound exists at the same time as her, when they've reunited under terrible, unfortunate circumstances but together again nonetheless?

No, she will still make him grovel. She must. But there are bigger problems they're wrapped up in, and little things like hearing the sweet melody of his joy is enough to make her savor it while she can.

Butcher reappears minutes later with two hotel keycards – "and why would I trust you lot with them when you don't even know how to work them?" – and throws open the back driver's seat door. Brooke stares at him, waiting for him to quip whatever he–

"You aren't expecting the master bedroom, are you, newlyweds?"

She snatched the piece of plastic out of his hand before he could yank it back, promptly stomping his toes in the process of hopping out of the seat. "I do expect it, actually." Offering her best smile, she held up a middle finger. For good measure. "Unless you and your little lover would like it?"

Hughie starts spluttering.

Butcher's mouth set in a grim, straight line. "Damage to the property will be charged to your accounts. Somehow, someway, I'll bloody make sure of it."

"And what, Butchy," she leaned up on the tips of her toes, eyes narrowing, "makes you think we are going to do any property damaging?"

"I've seen how you Supes like it in the bedroom." He plucked the plastic card out of her fingers again. Winked, nodding toward Ben, who was shutting the car's door behind them. "And you've got yourself an ace of one."

Brooke shook her head. This was always the assumption to make. That she was just a minor little hero who picked from the higher branches of apples, never the ones scattered on the orchard floor. It was common to be reduced to nothing but a woman with powers and a suit and a much more powerful man on her arm. Except Brooke was much, much too aware of the fact that she was powerful too. Dangerous, even, when put in the wrong hands. If he were a top branch, succulent apple, hard to reach and harder to pick, she was poisonous.

"No, Butcher," she hums, and waits for the feeling of Ben's arm slinking around her waist. He is always the one to touch her first. She does not cling to his arm or hang off of him like a purse. No matter how much she wanted to be the girl who couldn't keep her hands off of her boyfriend, she never let herself be open to being reduced to Soldier Boy's Girlfriend. Never let them have any bait for it. Especially once Crimson Countess came into the picture and those claims would then turn into The Side Piece or The Other Girl.

Brooke's face softens, leaning back into the arm of her husband. Her husband. Even if not legally, it's real in every other way, bonded together in a situation that no one should ever know. "He's got himself an ace."

The master bedroom is, actually, the only bedroom in the hotel room. It's smaller than Brooke is used to after her years of traveling as the understudy for Crimson Countess in Payback, but truly who is she to complain when the last decades of her life were spent encapsulated in dry ice?

Brooke and Ben both tuned out when Butcher and Hughie started to talk about something called DoorDash, only breaking back into the conversation when asked what they wanted to eat. How long had it been since they'd had a meal? A true meal, one that wasn't basic components of the food pyramid so they didn't disintegrate while the scientists tried to actually make them disintegrate.

Ben wanted an All-American, fatty, greasy hamburger. Two. Three, but Butcher told him that "he wasn't made of bloody money" and so Ben settled for two and fries. Brooke got two, too, except one of them was for Ben. They were opposites in this regard; the thought of real food was so good that she knew she would vomit if she ate too much at once, whereas she knew without a doubt he would eat every last bit of the food put in front of him.

Hughie finally put on clothes. It was about time. He looked like he felt the same way too, no longer as rigid as a piece of drywall. He sank onto the couch and started to flip through channels on the huge television screen immediately while they started to get food figured out.

Brooke didn't care about the domestics of their group escapades. She found herself drifting to that bedroom, the large bed with the fluffy pale cream colored bedspread and the open blue curtains. She leans against the doorframe of it, staring at the untouched spread and realizes then just how truly tired she is.

Emotional exhaustion is worse than physical. It brittles her bones and bruises her heart black and blue. Her lungs have yet to fully inflate again, still pinched together and struggling to form a full breath. Everything still weighs on her so heavily that she knows, knows she will collapse if she tries to take a step.

Ben's breath grazes across her neck, dusts her jawline and traces a line over her cheekbone. His arms wrap slowly around her hips and his fingers lock across her stomach. She tenses, waiting for him to feel the scar, but he doesn't. She could collapse in his arms right then at the relief that brings, not having to confess to her own secrets just yet.

His hair tickles the spot beneath her ear when he leans down, pressing a kiss against her shoulder. "What are we staring at, Doll?"

Brooke lifts her arms to settle them on top of his, enclosing her fingers through the locks of his own. "Just how different everything is now."

"Mm," his hum sends a rattle through her bones and down her ribcage, "the beds didn't stay looking so nice when we stayed in hotels, did they?"

She laughs. "No. Because you kick in your sleep."

"Is that why?"

"And because you..."

"I?"

Brooke traces a line up his forearm, looking over her shoulder at him. He's already looking at her eyes, already watching her. "You are a very thorough lover, Benjamin Anderson."

"Damn right I am." Ben's smirk lights his whole face in glittering gold, and there's a split hair between the seconds that it takes for him to move one arm and scoop her into the both of his and hold him to his chest.

She goes to gasp out a protest but his other hand is over her mouth. He shakes his head, a subtle little thing, barely noticeable but there, telling her no, don't let them know, no, stay quiet. Her side is pressed fully into his front, held in his arms like a new bride, the bride she never got to be, the bride he's making her to be now.

His foot kicks out once they cross the threshold between living space and bedroom space. The door shuts, louder than he probably intended but, hey, they're stronger now, so much stronger. So much has changed between them and yet, not this.

Not the way he looks at her with those melting green eyes, the gentle expression that he reserves solely for her.

"Tell me, Brooke," Ben says, as he sets her on the edge of the bed, kneeing her legs apart so that he can stand between them, "tell me we're making the right choice."

It's been a while since he's needed this sort of reassurance. Since she's asked for it, either. It's so familiar to her that it hurts. How can things fall right back into their life's pattern and yet be so entirely different?

Brooke reaches her hands up to run her fingers through the nape of his hair. His eyes fall closed, head leaning down so close it nearly brushes hers. "I don't know," she says honestly. "I really don't want to be involved in their shit."

He laughs again, and it's so sweet. He sounds like a dream. She even remembers dreaming in the lab of moments just like this, where he stood in front of her and they kissed and he laughed, and then she woke up as his image was flickering away.

"So much eloquence," Ben says, and he lifts her hand to kiss the backs of her knuckles.

She resists the urge to stomp on his toes. Immaturity will get her nowhere in a conversation like this. "Big word. Who taught you it?"

"Pretty sure you did," Ben moves her knuckles away to lean closer and brush his lips against the corner of her mouth. Not a kiss. She wishes it was a kiss. "When you were on my lap, legs spread out over my thigh–"

"Stop," Brooke rasps out, unsure if she's mentally capable of reliving that memory. It's cruel to bring it up. It is. He won't even kiss her. "Stop it."

"Does that embarrass you, Brookie?" She does stomp on his toes now. Forget maturity. "Remembering how you rode my thigh when you hated me?"

She's going to kill him. It wouldn't be the first time the thought crossed the bridge of her mind, but it is the first that the thought hesitates at the expanse of the bridge, looking over the edge, contemplating jumping into the water below.

So, she jumps. Her finger hooks the collar of his supersuit and yanks, pulling him down to finally connect their mouths. The bastard isn't even surprised, at least, not enough for it to count. His lips work on hers immediately, catching her bottom lip between his and sucking it between his, his teeth lightly clamping as he pulls back. Pulls back just enough to smile softly. "I knew you remembered."

"I'll kill you," Brooke exhales, out of breath from that one kiss. She's out of practice. Loving him isn't hard work but this is, the physicalities of it, the self restraint and the intensities.

"Try me." His lips swallow her retort before she can make it, sucking her breath down his throat. Ben's hands are on her hips, tracing his fingertips down her backside and lifting. He wraps her legs around his waist. He bites down on her bottom lip.

She wants to flip them over. She decides right then, right in that moment, that she cannot let him see her naked, not with that scar and not with the secret burrowed so deeply in her mind. She decides, though, that it does not mean that they can't relive 1982, with her straddling his knee and him grinding her hips against it.

Ben's hands are already working their way to the back of her suit. There's no zipper, only a slight elastic to pull the pink nylon off and on with ease, and his fingers are slipping underneath her collar to try and shrug one of her sleeves off. She pulls away, their mouths disconnecting with a quick, hasty pop.

She shakes her head.

He tilts his.

She violently shakes her head.

"I haven't had a chance to shave," she tries, because, well, he used to be a tool. Wouldn't such an excuse work?

Ben scoffs. To her dismay. "You think I care about a little weed wacking?"

"I care." She doesn't care. Also, weed wacking? Brooke would pummel him if she wasn't keeping up a ruse.

"Why?" Ben's arm slackens his hold on her leg. "You haven't had a chance to brush your teeth yet, either. Not complaining about that."

She kicks her heel into his ass cheek. "Can you just–"

Ben stares at her, and she looks away, unwilling to let him read anything between the lines of her eyes. God forbid he see a hint of anything beyond the feigned insecurity. He's still staring. She shifts, not having to fake the discomfort, horrified at the thought that maybe, maybe he's going to ask. That the mood is ruined because there will be too many questions, because she panicked, because–

Ben drops his hand back to her hip. Both hands. Then he's moving so it's him sitting on the edge of the bed and her between his legs, except since she was wrapped around him when he was standing, she's still wrapped around him.

Brooke's breath hitches. Stalled in her throat. Her lungs are revving, waiting for her brain to kick them into gear, to get them moving again.

"You don't have to do this," she says softly, and doesn't know how much she means it until it's out of her mouth. How can the most selfish person she once knew now be so selfless, at least in this regard? It's almost foreign.

Ben's palms are fiery hot on her hipbones, fingertips tapping on her ribs. "Baby, if you don't think I'm gonna get off on you riding my leg, you've got me all wrong."

Somehow, Brooke finds herself tearing up. Why? Why is it oddly endearing? She can't even explain it or justify it, she can only duck her head, hide her face before the tears can actually spring in her eyes. Stupid. Absolutely stupid to get teary over him just being kind.

He rolls her hips against the knee guard he wears. A spike of pleasure and warmth starts in her core and zaps up her spine. A gasp stutters out of her lips, her forehead falling against his chest. "Yeah?" His voice is already raspy, already grinding against his vocal chords. They're both too out of experience for this. "Figured you weren't going to start yourself. Too caught up in that pretty little head of yours."

She feels the need to disprove him this time, rolling her own hips this time, meeting the edge of his kneeguard with her clit. A heady moan falls out of her mouth, followed quickly by a rough, gravelly, "you are such a dickhead."

"Am I?" Ben's hands are guiding her movements, pulling her down on that edge of his suit. He noticed the reaction it got. Of course he did. She tries to speed up the movement, to gain a sense of control for herself, but his palms tighten on her sides. Slowing her. Keeping her at the pace he wants. "I could be so, so much more of a dickhead."

He uses his knee to bump her legs open more, sliding her closer to him, setting her on the thigh strap of his suit. It's so familiar to decades ago in the alley, when they fought and ended up in this position, still arguing but waists locked, hips connected, keeping pace with each other while she spat venom at him.

She's tempted to call him names for the nostalgia. She won't. She's tempted to slap him for old times' sake. She won't.

Rather, Brooke lets him guide her to a high on the hard muscles of his thigh, with no other control in it than her hands bracing herself on his shoulders, and accepts that she's okay with being at his mercy. If only for a night.