Archive of Our Own

It is twelve twenty-three when she wakes up crying. 

For a second Devi doesn’t know where she is—which is the worst feeling in the world, and the crushing weight on her chest only seems to solidify, black tar hardening in her lungs so she can’t breathe—until she remembers that she is in Ben’s house—and that she has shattered whatever broken relationship existed between her and her mother and that she is alone. Horrifyingly, truly, utterly alone. 

Devi has never felt like this—this crippling loneliness that wraps around her soul and sucks all of the warmth out of her. She is buried under covers and the house is warm—but she has never felt more cold in her life. She feels as though she is in the vacuum of space, without even the air to comfort her. 

She wipes her eyes and pushes the nightmare—one where her father had vanished in front of her and her mother had slammed the door in her face—from her mind and turns over. She stares at the creepy cardboard cut-out of the Doobie Brothers in the side of the room, and thinks faintly, to herself, that she doesn’t even have the energy to be scared of it. 

It’s her first night in Ben’s house, and the mattress is insanely comfortable and the food is amazing—even if part of her aches for sambar vada with kothamalli and the smell of turmeric—and she knows she should be grateful to him for taking her in when she had nowhere else to go—but all she can think about is how lonely this house is. 

Devi curls up in the bed—it will never be her bed, not really—pressing her knees to her chest and looping her arms around them, nearly crushing her lungs. She presses her forehead to her kneecaps, breathing in and out slowly. 

But it doesn’t work, and five minutes later, she’s crying. 

She makes sure to keep the tears soft and quiet and barely there, but she can’t stop once she starts. Tears well up in her throat, forming a lump there, and when she tries to choke them down they only hurt more. 

(her father—flashing sirens and a piece of classical music she can never listen to again and empty shoes and handkerchiefs that she stole and buried her nose in to smell and the text thread on her phone she can’t bear to delete—the last message a good luck! he’d sent her fifteen minutes before crumpling on the floor of the school auditorium (she hadn’t even thanked him)—and breakfast for dinner and a million other parts of her life he bleeds into that she will never be able to scrub him out of—even if she wanted to) 

Grief—Devi thinks, is like the sea—overwhelming in its enormity, and so dangerous it cannot be experienced alone—for else she would be able to do nothing but drown in it—lapping at her heart, sometimes a tsunami, sometimes a gentle crest—but ever present. 

There are times—whole days, even—when she gets sucked into it the same way one gets sucked into a whirlpool, and then it spits her out, harsh and unforgiving and brutal, and she is left to figure out how to patch herself up. And so she lets herself be sucked down to the depths of the ocean. 

It is a forgiving current today, and not long after, she is able to lift her head up from where she has curled so tightly in on herself it is almost painful and wipes at the saltwater staining her skin, glancing at the clock to see it is glowing, twelve fifty one. 

Devi swallows roughly, her throat wracked from the tears she has been letting out, and as she stretches, it is like the grief is slowly, but surely, leaching out of her body. 

She turns over and presses her face into the pillow—which, by some miracle, is dry, and breathes, slowly, trying to lull herself back to sleep. “Go to bed, Devi,” she murmurs to herself. “You’ve got school in the morning. You need to sleep.” 

But she can’t. She is terrified she’ll dream of her father again—and lately, even though her dreams have been the only way she has been able to really, truly reach him, losing him all over again cuts her to ribbons—and she can’t bear that. Can’t bear that loss all over again only to wake up alone. 

Devi groans, softly, and resists the urge to suffocate herself with the probably thousand dollar pillow. She might not feel the grief as cripplingly heavy as she did a small while ago, but the loneliness, it still aches. 

Aches in some part of her she does not know. Aches below her heart but above her sternum, as if a soul full of emptiness, hollower than the Grand Canyon, has lodged itself into her body. Devi flexes her hand, not quite sure what she is seeking for, but seeking it anyways. The loneliness remains. 

Devi rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling, fingers resting on her chest. She blinks, and her head aches—she’s so exhausted, but every time she closes her eyes, all she can feel is how this bed is empty and big—too big—in a way that almost scares her. 

“Go to sleep, Vishwakumar,” she whispers, and even that sounds loud, but it’s no use. She’s not getting any sleep here, lying on this bed that feels more like an abyss than anything else. 

She groans, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes, sighing. She is so very, very tired. 

(she blames the choice she makes next on her exhaustion, and nothing else) 

Devi swings out of bed and pads across the floor quietly, making sure to turn the doorknob on the door carefully and quietly before pulling it open. Ben’s parents were in the house tonight, and the last thing she wanted to do was wake them up. 

She gently shuts the door behind her, turning her head to the right and spotting Ben’s door. 

This is a very very bad idea, but she’s honestly too tired and too drained to even stop to consider the implications of this, and she is so far beyond caring at this point. 

Devi drags her fingers along the wall as she carefully walks to Ben’s room, carefully glancing around her to make sure she hasn’t woken anyone up. When she finally reaches Ben’s room—deceptively far from the room she is staying in—she tries the knob, gently, to find it’s unlocked. 

She twists it carefully and slips inside of the room, shutting it behind her and facing the door before she can give it a second thought. For some reason, once she is in the room, it becomes easier to breathe, and she releases the tension in her shoulders through an exhale, leaning against the door. 

For some reason, the room is so much warmer than hers, and she is so tired, simply leaning on the door she feels the tendrils of sleep threaten to overtake her, but then she hears something behind her. 

Her heart leaps out of her chest and she whirls around, but then she remembers she is in Ben’s room and he is still asleep. 

Her heart flies back into her body, but instead of settling itself in her chest cavity like it’s supposed to, it lodges itself in her throat, and she very nearly chokes on it. 

Ben is—expressive, to say the least. There are moments when his face slips into that annoyingly smug mask she cannot see behind—but then there are moments when every emotion he feels is painted on his face. He both wears his heart on his sleeve and keeps it carefully guarded. 

But Devi has never seen him so peaceful, like this, asleep. His face is slack and easy, and there is no stress, nothing for him to hide. He looks younger than she can remember, and she cannot decide if she wants him to wake up so his face can twist into that smile of his she loves, or she wants him to sleep so she might stay here for a while, studying him. 

She swallows roughly as she walks forward, and she glances to see their agreement pinned up on the wall, and the corner of her mouth quirks up. Sentimental bastard. 

Devi has never really been one to think things through before she charges forward with them, and she finds herself in that very predicament right now, hovering nervously at the edge of Ben’s bed, fingers toying with one another as she watches him sleep, silently. 

It’s strange, in a way. Devi—according to her mother and friends—is a hurricane when she sleeps, tossing and turning and moving, and her covers are always tangled when she wakes up in the morning. But Ben is the exact opposite, so still when he is asleep she would be scared if she did not hear the slow, steady sound of his breathing. 

Devi clears her throat, quietly, and makes an impulsive decision. She is not going to sleep in that bedroom if she tries. She can’t. And this is—this is the only place she can really go. 

It’ll be fine, she reassures herself. She’ll just climb into bed really, really quietly, and so he won’t wake up, and she’ll sleep far enough away from him—honestly, his bed is literally huge—so that he won’t even roll over near her, and she’ll wake up early enough in the morning to slip out of his room and run back to her own, and he’ll  be none the wiser. 

It’s not—the best plan, but Devi’s plans have always been wanting, and she is so tired. She doesn’t want to go to sleep only to wake up alone again. She is not sure she will survive that heartbreak once more. 

And so she swallows, summons the courage, and creeps over to the side of Ben’s bed, lifting the covers. 

She perches gently on the edge of the bed and swings her legs up, carefully climbing under the comforter and shifting, trying to balance on the bed so she is as close as possible to the edge of the bad without practically falling off of it, but she nearly topples on the bed and just manages to catch herself before she falls. 

“Fuck,” she mutters, her heart pounding. 

“Devi?” 

Devi freezes in the bed, caught like a child with their hand in the cookie jar. She freezes as though that will make her invisible somehow, and turns, swallowing roughly. 

In the incredibly marginal light let off by the alarm clock on Ben’s dresser, she can see his eyes flutter, and he raises a hand, rubbing it at his eyes as they squint at her in the dark, so blue they’re black. 

“Um,” she whispers, her heart pounding away in her chest. She doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t have anything to say, no explanation for why she is here, in his room. 

Ben pushes himself up so he’s sitting up in his bed and rubs at his eyes. “What—what are you doing?’ he rasps, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. 

She looks into his eyes, half-lidded, still glazed over with sleep but becoming clearer by the moment as he blinks at her. Ben yawns, cheeks flushed, and Devi swallows, about to push herself out of the bed and run away, run to her own bedroom and just accept the insomnia, but then Ben’s hand falls on her arm. 

It’s so hot she sucks in a breath, sharp and quick, in her lungs, and Devi looks down at his hand and then back up. His hand is so warm and the longer she looks at him, the more she realizes. 

Ben is solid and warm and here, and she is so cold and lonely, and he’s here, with her, living and breathing, more alive and vibrant than anything else in her life—even her, and he has always been here, through everything, and all of a sudden she cannot bear to leave. 

“Devi?” he murmurs, voice thick. He squeezes her arm gently, and the action nearly makes her want to burst into tears, gentle and caring and kind. “Are you alright?” 

It’s just that phrase, almost whispered, that nearly makes her break. They are in his room, and no one is here save them, and instead—instead of it scaring her that Ben is the one here to watch her break, it comforts her, because Ben has seen the worst parts of herself and taken her in anyways. If there is one person she must fall apart around, it is him. 

The words rise up on the tip of her tongue—to break and tell him no, sometimes i miss my dad so much it feels like i can’t breathe, to crawl into his arms and bury her face in his shoulder and cry and feel like someone is holding her while she breaks, to admit that i told my mom i hated her and that i wish she was the one who had died and now i can’t stop having nightmares of losing her and i’m sorry for running away from you at your birthday party and to listen to the sound of his breathing and to let herself just break, to loosen the hastily tied strings that are keeping her together, to just let herself, for once, be comforted—and she very nearly lets them spill. 

But something—something holds her back as she looks into his eyes, so compassionate and thoughtful and understanding. 

Devi is glass, broken into little shards, and picking up the pieces of her will only hurt him. If there is one thing she cannot bear to do, it is hurt Ben. 

And everyone—everyone has their breaking point. Every other person in her life, she thinks—her mother and Eleanor and Kamala and Fabiola and Paxton—is done with her. Tried and tired. She has broken it—broken them. Part of her wants to hate them for seeing the ugliest parts of her and then turning away, but part of her cannot blame them. Cannot blame them for turning away once they saw her, truly saw her. 

(but just the idea of ben—ben who has stayed when everyone else left, ben who has been there in her life for as long as she can remember, ben who inhabits some of her earliest memories, ben—the idea of him leaving her behind, of her driving him away with the ugliest parts of her, shatters some part of her she did not think could break again) 

She will not survive if she is the one who leeches that kindness out of his eyes. 

There is no quid pro quo to be had here. Nothing she can offer him in return for holding the broken pieces of herself. Devi is a hurricane, and she has nothing but a storm warning to offer him. 

Devi blinks, twice, looking into his eyes, impossibly blue, impossibly kind, and carefully, slowly, methodically packages away her emotions, wraps them up and tucks them away. She won’t lose Ben. She can’t even bear the thought, cannot even bear the idea. 

She has always been risky, but this—this is a risk she cannot take. Ben is her last person to lose. As long as she has him, she has something worth breaking. 

Devi shakes her head, clearing her throat. “I’m fine, Ben,” she rasps, voice fraught with the trillion things she can’t bear to let out. “My room was fucking cold as hell. Just go back to sleep.”

Ben frowns at her, clearly unbelieving, and his thumb skims over the inside of her wrist gently, comfortingly, sending her pulse hammering away. “Devi—” he starts. 

“Just shut up and let me sleep,” she mutters, scooting down on the bed and turning away from him, closing her eyes. The motion pulls her arm away from his hand and even though he radiates heat, she is suddenly still a bit cold, a bit desperate for affection. 

Better than anyone she knows, Ben understands loneliness, so desperate for love and affection that he had gone to a strange pizza shop just to find a friend. 

Devi has known love and affection, and then it was ripped away from her. Ben has never known it. Which is worse, she wonders? 

“Are—” he tries, one more time, but she groans. 

“Ben, we have school in the morning. Just go to sleep. And we will never speak of this again, ok?” she snaps. 

He’s silent for a moment, and she’s terrified, for a split second, that he will kick her out and tell her to go back to her room, or even worse, tell her to go back to her own house, but then she hears the rustling of the bed sheets and his weight dip down next to her. 

For a second she imagines his hand hovering over her shoulder, just about to touch it, and if he touches her right now she’s not sure she’d be able to hold back. 

But then he whispers, “good night, Devi,” and falls silent. 

Devi lies awake in the bed, staring at the wall, listening to the sound of Ben breathe, until the steady sound grows deeper and slower, and she turns back, facing him once more, studying him. 

His criminally long lashes flutter against his cheek, and she wants to trace every inch of his face with her fingertips so badly. She wants to find comfort in him. 

Devi watches him sleep, so impossibly still, so beautiful it hurts her heart. 

Beautiful like a meteor shower and the crack of lightning against the night sky, beautiful like a midnight flower and the depths of the ocean. 

She shivers, cold, and without even realizing it, she moves a bit closer, sighing in relief when the warmth bleeds into her body. 

Her eyes feel heavy, all of a sudden, and she closes them, breathing in quietly. Exhaustion slams into her, without preamble, and her limbs relax, tension melting away. 

She doesn’t even remember falling asleep to the sound of Ben’s breathing. 

When she wakes up in the morning, for once she’s not disoriented about where she is, and she groans quietly to herself, upset at having to peel herself away from such a warm bed so early. 

She has school, though, however annoying. 

Devi yawns, and burrows herself further into her pillow, feeling it shift under her and—

Wait, what? 

Her eyes fly open to see Ben’s face heart-stoppingly close to her own. By some small miracle, he isn’t awake yet, but she’s pressed up against his side, like ivy crawling up the side of a building, seeking warmth. 

She must have moved in her sleep. 

Devi is frozen in place for a second, and then suddenly she pushes herself away from Ben, instantly missing the warmth he provides. 

Her luck runs out right then, however, because Ben wakes up as she pushes herself away from him, slowly, and then his eyes snapping open when he finds her there. 

“Shit,” she mutters, under her breath, as she stares at him. His face blooms red as he clears his throat, looking around. 

“Um,” Devi says.

Ben blinks at her, and then rockets off the bed. “I gotta get ready for school,” he calls over his shoulder. 

Devi presses the heels of her palms against her eyes and falls back on the bed, groaning. He’d practically run from her. 

(can she blame him for that?)

“Well, fuck me.” 

By the time Devi finally opens her eyes and admits to herself she can’t sleep, it is the early hours of the morning and she has just moved into her apartment. 

It’s just off of Princeton’s campus, in a tall, red brick stucco building, and she had loved it as soon as she’d seen it. The rent was too much on her own, though, so she’d sweet-talked Ben (which included all of walking up to him and bothering him until he gave in) into paying the rent with her and living together so that she didn’t have to live on campus for her sophomore year. 

She’d painstakingly set up her room to make it comforting, and it—it was comforting. But she can’t sleep. 

A fresh wave of homesickness overtakes her all of a sudden, so potent it almost physically hurts.  

Devi has never had the best sleeping schedule, but it has only gotten worse over time. She’s barely getting enough sleep to keep herself upright these days, and if this continues much longer she is not sure what she can do.

Rolling over in bed, she peers at the clock, which glows red: three seventeen. 

Perfect. She’s got class in less than six hours, and she’s still awake. 

Devi clutches her bedsheets, determined to go to bed, but it seems the harder she tries the more awake she becomes. 

Honestly, she just does not have time for this bullshit. She is already dealing with frustrating professors—she had answered a question on their discussion board for her chemistry class and her professor had corrected her, incorrectly, she might add, so she’d had to email him to let him know that he was wrong—she hates pretty much everyone in her microbiology lecture because she knows how lazy they are and she’s got her internship starting in two days. So, really, losing sleep is about the last thing she needs right now. 

“Fuck you, organic chemistry,” she mutters. 

(but she just wants to sleep)  

She rolls over onto her left and stares at the wall, the one she shares with Ben. 

That week—it’s honestly got to be the last time she’s gotten any decent sleep. After that first night when she had gone to Ben’s room to get some sleep, something in her had been unable to sleep without him next to her. And somehow—she didn’t really let herself think about, think about what that week had meant to her and especially what happened after that week—she’d ended up back with him, again and again, and only then could she sleep. 

That was four years ago, and she still aches for him next to her when she sleeps. 

Now—now she’s actually living with him. Unlike the past thousand nights when she has wanted him, he is there . He is so close it nearly makes her head spin with whiplash. 

(she shouldn’t. she shouldn’t. but can she resist?)

The solution is right there. Why—why can’t she just fix her problem? 

Devi sets her jaw and throws off her covers, padding over to her door and opening it. Ben is right next door, and she barges into his room without any preamble, no longer all that perturbed if she wakes him up. 

He groans quietly and shifts in bed as she shuts the door, but other than that, doesn’t stir. 

Devi looks at him, feeling her heart knock into her chest. 

Something about Ben is magnetic, and ever since she had fallen into his center of gravity in sophomore year, she had never been fully able to pull herself out of it—not that she had wanted to—and no matter who she dated, who she hooked up with, she had never been able to stop feeling herself drawn to him, again and again. 

(she knows she is gone for him, completely gone for him, but he is also her best friend and she will not do anything to break that) 

She smoothes down her pajama top, hands shaking, and walks over to his bed, pulling back the covers and sliding in, no longer caring much about waking him up, even if he needs his sleep just as much as she does. Ben has never had the same problems with sleeping like she has. 

Devi tucks herself under the blankets comfortably, shifting on the sheets, and Ben stirs, eyes flickering open to look into hers. “Hey, David,” he murmurs. 

The corner of her mouth quirks up. “Hi,” she whispers back. 

Ben’s eyes flutter and he breathes. “What’re you doin’ here?” he mumbles. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” she whispers back. 

“Oh,” he breathes, turning onto his side. “Everything ok?”

She looks at him, face pressed into his pillow, blue eyes patient, as always. “Yeah. Just fucking exhausted.” 

“Mmm,” he agrees. “John pissing you off again?” 

“John,” she says, practically spitting out the name, “is Satan reincarnated.” 

“Is this solely because he corrected you incorrectly or?” 

“I hate that man,” she mutters. 

“He’s gotta suck, David. His name is John,” Ben drawls. “Most boring white guy name ever.” 

“I agree with you, but also your name is Ben, so you can’t say anything about that.” 

“Ok,” he mumbles, already half-asleep when she pinches him. 

“I’m not done, Gross.” 

“Devi,” Ben says, cracking open his eyes. “You’ve complained about him nonstop for the past three weeks. Is there anything new?”  

She chews her lip. “............no.” 

“Then it can wait until the morning. Come on, we both have busy days tomorrow.” 

She groans, throwing her head back onto the pillow and staring at the ceiling. “I fucking hate John McCartney.” 

“He does sound horrible.” 

“Boring and wrong and he always tries to stuff too much into one lecture—as if organic chemistry isn’t fucking hard enough, like, what the hell even is NMR sometimes? Why are their so many coupled signals?—and I just fucking hate his class.” 

“NMR is easy; it's just determining the structure of an unknown compound.” 

She kicks him. 

“I’m sleeping,” he groans. 

“You’re fucking annoying,” she laughs. 

“Not as bad as John though.”

“John once wasted a solid 10 minutes of lecture describing how to piss off our marking TAs by writing SN2 incorrectly. It was so annoying. He also keeps mentioning  radical chemistry and going, ‘oh, you’ll cover that next semester,’ which I checked the course outlines, Ben, we don’t even cover radical reactions.”

“Sounds frustrating as hell.”

“You think he’s bad,” she groans, “you should deal with the fucking course and lab coordinator.”  

“This is….?”

“Travis Brickman,” she bites out.

“The one who looks like a hungover Jerry Seinfeld?” 

“And is currently bleeding me dry with course materials. Why did my lab manual for one single semester cost thirty-three dollars?” 

Ben sighs, placing his hand on her arm, and she moves a little closer to him, seeking his warmth. “Education costs way too much,” he agrees. 

“You can fucking say that again,” she murmurs. “And it’s not just orgo that sucks, my genetics professor is currently committing war crimes against my GPA.”

“Dr. Yang?”

“Well, he makes us call him Prof. Y, but yes. We only get fifty minutes per test and they’re twenty-two  multiple choice plus two short answers that often involve rigorous calculations.”

Ben snorts. “It’s genetics, how calculation based can it be?”

“You asshole, you know the entire course is essentially statistics and probability.” Devi waves her hand erratically. “Regardless, I feel like he’s constantly evaluating how fast I can do his tests rather than how well I understand the material.”

Ben yawns, and rubs his eyes. “Aren’t you still getting high nineties on his tests?”

“Well, duh, but it’s still annoying ,” she groans, placing emphasis on the final syllable. 

He nods, slipping back into the clutches of sleep, and Devi watches him, watches as he relaxes more and more. “Go to bed, Devi,” he whispers. “Please get some rest.” 

She gnaws at her lip, and she is tired, she is, but she can’t quite sleep yet. She places her hand over Ben’s hand on her arm, the heat bleeding into her own body. “I will. I promise.” 

“Good,” he mutters. “Otherwise I’m not letting you sleep here again.” 

Devi rolls her eyes. “Sure, Ben.” 

She knows he is joking, of course, because she knows the type of person Ben is. If she came to him every night for the rest of her life, he would not turn her away. He would never do that. 

She watches him fall asleep, and waits until she is sure to raise her hand, running her thumb down the side of his face gently, watching him breathe. 

(he is so peaceful here she thinks she would watch him like this for the rest of her life, with no problem)

Ben moves closer to her, just a little bit, and Devi does not know how—how she went without him next to her for so long. Ten years where she fought with him and held him at arm’s length, ten years that she kept him out of her life, and now he is woven into every aspect of it. 

She sighs and closes her eyes, melting into the sheets. Being with Ben has always been her safe place, the one space where she feels, really, that she can be herself. With Ben, everything she was trying to be, all of the people she wanted desperately to be like, fell away, and she was just herself. And the thing about that was that somehow, in some way, he saw nothing wrong with the way she was. 

Devi is just about to fall asleep when she feels something land on her stomach, startling her a bit awake. She blearily opens her eyes and looks down to see Ben’s arm there, and then he pulls her closer. 

She barely stifles a startled yelp before Ben tucks his face into her shoulder and sighs, warm breath brushing her skin, and his hand on her waist tightens, fingers brushing her skin. She freezes, wondering if she should try to free herself from his grasp, but she doesn’t want to wake him up and have him discover the awkward position they are in. 

Ben yawns, lips brushing her neck, and shivers of pleasure shoot down her spine at his touch on her body. He has always been able to make her feel this way, and it’s dizzying, pleasurable and wondrous.

“God,” she mutters. She’s pretty firmly stuck here, and there’s no real point in trying to extricate herself from his grasp. He makes the already warm bed so much warmer, and she can already feel herself falling back into sleep, peaceful and easy and thick. 

So Devi presses herself closer to him and closes her eyes, yawning and feeling sleep overtake her. His hand on her waist is hot, like a brand, pulling her even closer, and she relishes it. The feeling of nearness, of safety that he brings her. 

She feels like she can never be close enough to him, and this, here, right now, is the closest she is going to get to that. 

And so she savors it, savors the feeling that being with him gives her, securer and warmed than any blanket on the planet, even as she falls asleep, tucked into his side. 

She sits cross legged on her bed, staring at the clock, watching the minutes tick by, closer and closer to Christmas Eve. 

Honestly, Devi doesn’t know why she is surprised she can’t sleep. But this is—this is different from the past when she hasn’t been able to sleep. 

She had gotten used to it. Gotten used to the sound of Ben’s breathing being the sound that pulses in her ear as she falls asleep, gotten used to waking up in sheets that smell like him, gotten used to sleeping next to him night after night. She has lost count of how many times she has snuck into his room and fallen asleep with him beside her. 

It has gotten to the point where she thinks she might need him to sleep, and that—that hurts, because she knows she is never going to have him. Not really, not if she wants to keep her distance like they both need.

(she’s doing a spectacular job failing at that, by the way) 

It has become something akin to a pretense, really, when they go to sleep in their apartment in Princeton every night. In some way, they both know that she will end up next to him before midnight. It has become nothing more than routine for her to go to her room at the end of the night and shut off the light. At this point, she does nothing but scroll through her phone for a few hours before setting it down and heading next door. She has stopped waking him up—a little bit because she knows how to be quiet now, but also because he has stopped sleeping that soon, reading when she walks into his room instead. 

Devi is cold, so very, very cold. Cold is an interesting thing, she thinks. Cold itself does not have a presence. It is the absence of heat, rather than an actual thing. Loneliness, she thinks, is much of the same. It is not so much a thing on its own as the absence of someone there. 

(and for her, right now, this cold, this loneliness, is the absence of ben) 

She sighs, rubbing at her eyes, and leans over, rifling through her duffel bag, searching for something. 

“Yes,” she mutters, quietly, when she finds what she is looking for. 

She pulls out her favorite hoodie of Ben’s—black and orange, the colors of Princeton—with strings and the softest, most worn pockets she has ever felt, the letters so faded and worn they are barely hanging on, a loose thread on the inside of the right sleeve, and slips it on over her pajama top. 

Putting the hoodie on is exactly like coming home, and she has lost count of how many times she has worn this hoodie. It is practically her hoodie now, even though she has one of her own that is exactly the same hanging in her closet, barely touched compared to how well worn and soft this hoodie is. 

Devi curls her hands inside the sleeves of the sweater—they hang well past her fingertips, as always—and buries her nose in it, taking a deep breath. Wearing it makes her miss him both more and less, paradoxically. 

The rest of Ben’s clothes that she has now reclaimed as hers—they’re best friends, ok, sharing clothes is not that weird, or maybe that’s just what she keeps telling herself—are in her suitcase, but if the hoodie doesn’t make her feel better, none of the other clothes will. 

But they are not Ben. These clothes are not—they don’t smell like him and they aren’t as warm as he is and he is alive—she can feel his breath and hear the sound of his heart and when she touches him she knows he is alive, but this—this is not that. 

And she longs for him, something fierce and potent and sharp, like a blade slicing through her stomach, and before she knows what she is doing, she is pushing herself up off the bed and slipping out of her room. 

She just—Devi just needs to be with him. She can’t sleep. 

Her hands curl around her keys and she slips out into the garage, and it is second nature, the route to Ben’s house, so much so she does not even need to think about it, think about how to get there. 

Before she knows it, really, she is pulling up in front of his house—which is more like a mansion than anything else, quickly getting out of the car. She punches in the garage code—which she remembers, hasn’t been able to forget, really, from the week she lived with him—and enters the house. 

The lack of any other cars in the driveway tells her that Ben is the only person in the house, and Devi lets the keys clatter onto the kitchen counter as she makes her way up the stairs quietly. 

Ben hadn’t wanted to come home. His parents were on some half-anniversary trip in Bali for the whole month, and so he’d come home to an empty house—save for Patty, who wasn’t there nearly as often as she had been when they were in high school, and Devi knows the only reason he had come home was for her. Because she had practically begged him to come home. 

But the truth was that she hadn’t asked him to come home for her. Not really. She hadn’t wanted him to be alone, couldn’t bear the thought of him being alone during the holiday time if she could do something about it, so she had begged him to come home until he gave in. 

He was still alone in the house, though. And she hated that. 

Devi walks down the hallway to Ben’s room and pushes open the door to see Ben leaning against his headboard, a reading light clipped to his book as he reads in silence. 

He looks up when she opens the door, and a strange look crosses his face for a second, almost like he doesn’t believe she is quite there, like she’s an apparition or a spirit. But the look is fleeting, and vanishes from his face a moment later, and he is giving her a smile. “Hey.” 

She shuts the door behind her, giving him a small smile. “Hey.” 

Devi makes her way to him, wrapping her arms around herself as she sinks onto the bed. Ben flicks the reading light off and shuts his book, placing it on his dresser as she settles herself next to him. “What are you doing here?” he murmurs. 

Instead of answering him, she just shakes her head, and Ben sighs, opening his arms out. Devi crawls into his arms, sliding her arms around his waist as his arm wraps around her shoulders, resting her head on his shoulder as she stretches her legs out next to his. 

Ben is silent, and he reaches his other hand out and places it on her knee, rubbing at her skin gently. She drums her fingers against his waist, relishing in the quiet beauty of being held, and touched, and treated like something special. Something gentle and precious. Something worth keeping. 

She lets her eyes flutter shut as Ben runs his thumb across her knee, calluses scraping across her skin, the anxiety in her stomach settling. 

They sit in silence for a while until Devi feels like she has calmed down enough, encouraged and comforted by the drum of his fingers on her skin. She slips one of her hands from around his waist and catches the hand on her knee with her hand, lacing their fingers together. “I don’t like the idea of you here alone,” she mutters, so quiet she can barely hear her own voice. 

Ben huffs a laugh, breath brushing ahead her forehead, his thumb brushing over her wrist. “So you decided to break into my house?” 

“Yup.” 

“Any reason you think I warrant breaking the law?” 

She chuckles, glancing down to see his fingers, glowing almost radiantly in the dark, running over her knuckles, over the circles of skin darker than the rest of her hand gently, carefully. “I’m always tempted to break the law around you.” 

“Oh?” 

“Yeah, but murdering someone on the basis of annoyance is still frowned upon by wider society.” 

“Such a shame.” 

“Truly,” Devi sighs. “It’s not like it was planned out or anything.” 

“You’re telling me you don’t have a perfectly plotted out way to get rid of my body when I finally make you break one of these days?” he laughs, voice low and husky and tender in her ear. 

“I mean, I was going to throw the whole plan out, but Taylor Swift convinced me not to. Who knows if I might need it?” 

“Of course, of course,” he agrees. “Our lord and savior.” 

“Don’t you know it.” 

They fall back into easy silence once more, because it is always easy with Ben. It is easy for her to just be with him. 

Devi sighs, melting back further into Ben, when his fingers slip out of hers and skim up her arm, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear when he reaches her face, drawing her gaze up to him. 

(like a nebula exploding in space, blue and black and more shades of green than she ever realized before—most nebulae are light-years across, immense and massive—but there are miniscule ones too, trapped in ben’s eyes) 

“Thank you,” he whispers. 

She smiles at him, slow and soft and far sadder than she wishes. “I just—wish you didn’t have to thank me.” 

Ben shakes his head. “Trust me, Devi, even if my parents were here, you’re much better company than either of them, and especially both of them.” 

“Wow, that’s a ringing endorsement.” 

“It really is. Maybe not quite on the level of someone like Drake, but yeah.” 

“Knew I could never beat Drake,” she mutters, shaking her head. 

She feels Ben’s laugh, shaking in his chest and reverberating through her own, and then she feels his lips press against her head—not really a kiss but just the touch of his mouth to her hair, comforting and sweet and delicate—and she closes her eyes. 

“I’m sorry I made you come home to an empty house.” 

Ben props his chin on her head, the hand wrapped around her shoulder slipping underneath her hoodie—his hoodie—to gently scrape his blunt nails against her waist, almost absentmindedly. It sends shivers wracking up her spine, and she ignores them as he traces patterns on her hip, trying to slow down her hammering heart. “It’s ok. I was going to be in an empty house no matter what happened. At least you’re here.” 

“Still.” 

“Don’t be sorry, Devi.” She buries her nose in Ben’s shoulder and breathes him in, impossibly warm, the sharp scent of sandalwood filling her nose. “I wanted to come back.” 

She doesn’t know what to say to that, so she says nothing. 

Ben shifts, laying down on the bed instead of sitting up, and Devi moves down with him, climbing underneath the covers. She is not quite ready, though, to let go of him, so she tucks her nose into his neck and closes her eyes. 

His fingers skim up and down her side, growing slower and slower over time, and soon his breathing deepens and quiets. Devi pulls her face out of his neck and looks up at him, so impossibly close to her she can see the individual lashes that frame his eyes, thick and long and beautiful. 

She reaches up and brushes her hand over his cheekbone, thumb rubbing underneath his eye, and then running her hand through his hair—ridiculously soft and adorably tousled from sleep—before she moves her hand down his face. 

She wants to burn him into her fingers, burn him into her hands and body and into the marrow of her bones. He is already burnt into her soul, burnt into every part of her that matters. 

(bone marrow produces the blood that flow through her veins, and the marrow in her bones knows ben, and will forever produce blood that sings his name) 

Her eyes trail down to his lips, slightly parted, and she wonders what it would be like to kiss him again. 

Kissing him at Malibu had been like waking up some part of her she hadn’t known was sleeping. Kissing him had been—like triggering a landmine. And when she had pulled away from him, she had tripped it, and both of them had gotten shrapnel lodged into their hearts because of it. 

They’ve only just managed to skirt around that issue for the past six years—and she is not sure if she is relieved or disappointed by that fact. The English language fails her when it comes to describing what Ben is to her. Fails when she tries to figure out who she is to him. 

Sometimes she wants to kiss him so bad she aches with it. Sometimes she wishes she were able to show him how she loves him. But this isn’t some story. She cannot simply skip through time until it becomes less painful to love him from afar. There is no hand of god, no deus ex machina to give her a reprieve. Devi just has to learn to live with it. 

As she presses her nose against the hollow of his collarbone, she wonders if she will ever be brave enough to tell him. Wonders if she will ever be able to work up the courage to place herself on the altar, to lay her heart bare and splayed at his feet. 

(she feels like icarus, chasing ben’s love, and there is a point when it will all come crashing down)

She is not brave enough now, though. Devi knows that. So she just keeps her face tucked into his neck and lets the sound of his breathing lull her to sleep.

“Ben,” Devi groans. “Are you sure there are no direct flights from Hartsfield-Jackson to Newark?” 

“No, David, I’m not at all sure, I was talking to random airport personnel for the past three hours as a hobby,” he drawls. 

She groans, pulling her legs closer together and sitting up straight on her bed. Devi picks at a thread on her blanket, pouting even though Ben can’t see her. “So what’re you gonna do?” she grumbles. 

Ben sighs heavily through the phone, and she can just picture the face he is making right now—tired and pinched, brow furrowed and shoulders tense. “I’m gonna get a flight from Atlanta to Chicago and then a flight from Chicago to New York.” 

Devi sits up straight at that. “That’s so long!” 

Hades jumps up onto the bed next to her, and she absentmindedly drops her hand to rub behind his ear gently. She and Ben had adopted him after getting wasted one night and deciding they needed a cat to take care of, and even though he’s the size of her arm and his name always gets strange looks from everyone, she loves him. 

“Yeah, well, I can’t do anything about it, David,” he drawls. “My flight back home got cancelled.” 

“I don’t even see why you had to go on this stupid trip anyways,” she mutters. Hades mewls and bumps his head against her knee, and she strokes the top of his head  gently. 

He laughs. “Devi, my friend getting married is not a stupid trip.” 

“It is if you’re going to be home extra late because of it.” 

“It is only two extra hours, Devi,” he says, voice infuriatingly patient with her. 

“But you were already supposed to get in late. Now it’s gonna be fucking like—3 am or something.” 

“2:30, actually,” he corrects. “Don’t worry about me, Devi,” Ben murmurs. “I promise I’ll be home soon.” 

“Well, you might have to find a new place or something. I kind of sold all of your stuff while you were gone to pay for tickets to the next MARINA concert.” 

“As long as you got me tickets too, I’m ok with that.” 

“Please,” she snorts. “I had to sell practically everything in your room to get them anyways. Maybe you should just find a new place to live.” 

“Yeah, ok,” Ben laughs. “You’d starve to death if I left you there alone.” 

“I’ll be bored to death living with you if I have to hear you talk about constitutional law for one more second.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he mocks. “Is someone getting tired of the constitutional law? Tell that to my brain. I think I can name every single protein in my body.” 

“First of all, that’s literally impossible,” Devi points out, stretching out on her bed and staring up at the ceiling, Hades lying down at her side, “and secondly, that’s like. Actually a useful skill if you need to go to the hospital or something.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” 

Devi clutches her phone a little tighter and looks up at her ceiling, drumming her fingers on her stomach. “But you’ll be back tonight? Or—tomorrow morning?” 

“Yeah, I’ll be here when you wake up,” Ben says. 

Devi chews her lip. “Ok. You know just because—because Hades misses you a lot.” 

As if to punctuate her statement, Hades lifts his head and hops off her bed, padding out of the room. 

“Really?” Ben says, a smile in his voice. “Hades misses me?” 

“Oh yeah,” she says, smirking. “He’s been insufferable.” 

“Well, tell Hades I miss him too,” Ben says, voice warm. 

Devi laughs. “He knows. But—just come home soon for him.” 

“Yeah. For sure. For him.” 

The strangest thing is, in the years since she and Ben have become friends (eight, she is counting) she has rarely gone this long without seeing him, and she has never gone this long without seeing him once they moved in together. He’d been gone for the whole week for a friend’s wedding in Atlanta, and at first it had been nice in a way, getting her own space for a little bit. It had been nice, for all of twelve hours, and then she had gone to bed that night in her own bed, completely alone, and laid awake until three am in the morning, where she passed out from sheer exhaustion. 

She has barely slept this whole week, catching twenty minute naps here and there, and she is just glad that her work has not suffered too terribly from her lack of sleep. 

She had thought she might be able to sleep tonight—because Ben would be back and she could stay up for him, but now that he is coming home much later than she thought he would, she knows she will be up for even longer and sleep poorly. 

Devi bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from saying she will wait up for him, because then Ben will just insist she go to bed and they will end up fighting about it and that is the last thing she wants right now. “Do you promise you’ll be here?” 

(her voice sounds small and defeated and shaky, and she blinks back a longing so fierce for him it nearly brings tears to her eyes. she knows it is weird and strange and not—not normal that she goes to him like this, and it is probably unhealthy, but being with ben is the closest thing to peace she knows—and she is not willing to give that up quite yet)

“I promise, Devi.” 

She swallows roughly, and nods, before remembering he can’t see her. “Ok. So, how was the wedding?” 

“Good,” he starts. “I got to see—” 

He is cut off by some background noise coming through his side of the phone, and his voice becomes muffled for a second as he pulls away from the phone to speak to someone, and then he is back. “Devi, I’ve got to go board now. They’re moving us to a new gate and flight and everything.” 

She swallows roughly. “Ok.”

“I’ll see you in a few hours, ok?” His voice quiets, becoming softer and more rounded at the edges, smoother, shaping it like hands shape a clay pot. “I’ll text just before we take off.” 

“Ok,” she says, the words as dry as sawdust in her mouth. “Fly safe.” 

“Bye, David.” 

“Bye, Ben.” 

He hangs up and she lies there, on her bed, staring at the ceiling, hand loosely gripping her phone. God, she misses him so much it feels like there has been some part of her that has been cleanly scooped out in her chest cavity, a sphere of emptiness. 

She knows that—loneliness, at the end of the day, is not actually tangible. She cannot cup her hands and hold it, she cannot actually run her fingers along it. But the pain in her chest, the ache there, she feels that more keenly than she feels most other things. Like a phantom pain. 

(devi aches for him in a different way than she aches for her father. she aches for her father every moment of every day, even if she has processed that he is gone, even if she has said goodbye. the ache for her father is like the tide, welling up and pulling back, the push and pull of the water. the ache for ben—that is like being burned—sharp and all consuming and painful, something she has not become accustomed to—something she thinks she will never become accustomed to) 

Her phone buzzes in her hand suddenly, shaking herself from her train of thought, and she picks it up to see that Ben has texted her his flight is about to take off. Hastily texting back a stay safe message, she turns off her phone and lays it face down on her bed. Now she just has to wait for him to come home. 

She busies herself for the rest of the night so she will not go insane with longing, puttering around the apartment and cleaning it up, tidying up her books and reorganizing her bookshelf and the spice rack, heating up leftovers for dinner and eating them while Facetiming her friends, because the loneliness and desire for company nearly overwhelm her. Eleanor regales her with tales of off-Broadway and its drama, while Fabiola tells her about some insanely cool robotic stuff she’s developing for a hospital.

Once she says goodbye to her friends, it is only nine, and she curls up on the couch with a blanket and Hades, simply holding him in her arms and stroking her hand down his glossy black fur. Hades bumps her arm with his head, and she looks down at her cat. “I miss him too, kitty,” she whispers. 

Hades is unusually affectionate today, calmly curling up in her arms and patiently letting her pet him, as if he knows she needs something to hold and something to be with. But eventually he falls asleep in her arms, and she sets him down in his bed and heads down the hallway to change into her pajamas. 

She glances at her bed, but there is no real—point, honestly, in trying to sleep there. If she ends up asleep on the floor of her apartment after passing out from sheer exhaustion, that’s what happens. 

Devi sighs and runs a hand through her hair, planning to head back down the hallway to the living room to sleep on her couch, but as she walks down the hallway, she passes Ben’s bedroom, door wide open. 

She cannot resist glancing in. She is never ever in this room without Ben, save for when she drops off his laundry for him to put away, but she knows this room almost as well as she knows her own. Devi hesitates at the door, lingering and debating on whether or not to go in, but eventually, she is unable to resist and creeps in, shutting the door behind her. 

Devi walks over to Ben’s bed, sitting on his—his side, the side he always scoots over to when she comes to his room. She reaches over and runs her finger over the book on his bedside dresser, a bookmark sticking out of it, neatly tucked into the book. She flips the cover of the book over and smiles faintly at the title: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. It is her copy of the book that she had leant to him, when he had been complaining about not reading enough classics. 

Devi places the book back on the dresser and looks back around the room. Ben is not spartan when it comes to decorations, but compared to her room, stuffed with knick knacks and sentimental souvenirs, his is much more bare. On the small calendar board hanging on his wall, he has his schedule written out neatly, and to the side, the chore list that they made when they first moved in together—divided up between them. 

A poster hangs on the wall—for The Lonely Island—except they both know Brooklyn Nine-Nine is the best Samberg project, and then the rest of the room is covered in pictures and photo frames. One holds his diploma from Princeton, but the rest of the frames all hold pictures. Devi has her photos strewn around her vanity like she did at home, but Ben’s are methodical and neatly laid out on the wall, exactly the same space apart. 

She runs her fingers over the photo frames—most of them featuring her in some way. She and Ben had fallen into the same friend group during college, spending so much time together—but there are other photos too. Photos of his parents and then of Eleanor and Fabiola, and honestly, he is literally horrendous at hiding how much of a sap he really is. 

Devi sits back on the bed and opens his dresser drawer. His book of crosswords—fucking nerd—is in the drawer, pencil tucked neatly into its pages, a book of kenken underneath it. 

“Pretentious dick,” she mutters, but there’s no real venom to it. 

She opens the next drawer in his dresser, and her heart stops. 

The stupid friendship bracelet she had made for him during some Arts and Crafts activity she had organized when she was RA for her dorm building a few years ago is still there, along with a playbill for Eleanor’s play and the miniature book Fabiola had printed with her 3D printer—trinkets she had given to each of them. 

There’s no reason for him to hold onto these things other than sentimental value and she loves him for it. 

Underneath all of these things is a photo, as if it has been carefully tucked away as some secret, and she pulls it out, flipping it over. 

It’s a photo of her and Ben, at the Holi event Princeton held in their junior year. They’re covered in powder, multichromatic and blissfully happy. She is on Ben’s back, piggyback style, and he is looking up at her while she smears red powder on his cheek. Devi remembers that day, how fun it had been. She had felt like she was young once more. By the time the event had ended, both of them were covered in powder, head to tie, their white shirts ruined beyond repair. 

It had been one of the best days of her life. It still is. 

Devi feels, all of a sudden, like she is intruding on something rather private of his, so she tosses the photo back into the drawer and slams it shut, and sighs, sitting back against the pillows. On the other dresser, the one she’s claimed for her phone, the clock glows red, and it’s eleven thirty and she is so tired. 

She climbs under the covers—searching, perhaps, for something. 

She does not find it. Something is wrong. It is missing—he is missing, and she is tangled up in knots. 

Her hands shake as she buries her nose in his pillow, inhaling in the sharp and potent smell of sandalwood. If she closes her eyes tight enough, she can almost—almost imagine he is here. 

It is already improper to sleep in his bed when he is there, let alone crawling into it when he is not. There is no reason for her to be here, to be wrapped up in his sheets and in his room, there is no excuse, really. 

Other than that she misses him, and she does not know how to handle that other than being here. 

Devi would care, but she’s honestly too tired to, so she reaches over to the lamp on Ben’s bedside dresser and flicks the light off. She is plunged into darkness and lets her eyes shut, exhaustion creeping up on her. 

The bedsheets are not warm, because he has not been in this bed for a week, but they smell like him, linger on the pillow and the comforter, and she wraps the blankets tighter around herself and moves over to her side of the bed. There is no dip in the bed where he should be, no weight there next to her, and when she reaches out her hand, he is not there, warm and solid, next to her. But she can feel him here, imagine him here so vividly if she closes her eyes, and so she lets herself relax and melt into the bed, falling asleep to the memories of Ben. 

It’s later when she is woken up by some movement, and she stirs, still half-asleep, eyes opening slowly. “What?’ she whispers, voice raspy. 

In the dark, she can just make out a shadow sitting on the bed. “Hey.” 

Devi yawns. “B—Ben?” She raises her hand and rubs at her eyes, sure she’s dreaming that he’s here, and he will vanish in another second. 

When she blinks again, though, he’s still here. “What’re you doing here?” he asks, and then suddenly the back of a warm hand is brushing against her cheek, gentle as a feather and so brief she wonders for a split second if she imagined it. 

“Hmm?” Devi tilts her head, searching for his hand again, eyes slipping shut. 

His hand slides over her cheek, as smooth as water running over a stone, and she sighs, turning her face into his hand. “What are you doing in my room, David?”

Ben’s voice is silken smooth and soft, like he is afraid of speaking too loudly and breaking something—or maybe he just does not want her to wake up. 

“I was tired,” she murmurs. His hand moves from her cheek to brush back a strand of her hair back from her face, tucking it gently behind her ear, thumb gently rubbing at her earlobe. 

“You have your own bedroom for that, you know,” he teases. 

Devi opens her eyes again, lifting her hand from the bed and searching for him, desperate to make him more tangible than a voice and his hand on her face. He catches her other hand with his, thumb brushing against her wrist, sending her pulse skyrocketing and slowing down at the same time. 

“Ben?” she whispers. 

She can see him shift, and then he leans down, his face becoming clear. She can see his eyes, the same color of the night sky. He reaches up and brushes the hair on her forehead away so she can look at him more clearly. “Yeah, Devi?” 

“I missed you,” she admits. Devi is too tired to think about lying to him, or hiding from him. 

“Ok,” he murmurs. “I’m gonna go, Devi, but I’ll—be right back, kay?” 

“No, Ben,” she protests, clutching at him, but he slips from her grasp before she can hold on to him. She twists in the bed, rubbing at her eyes to wake herself up a bit more, and when she pulls herself up from the bed, she sees Ben on the other side of the bed, peeling off his jacket and chucking it in the corner. 

“What are you doing?” 

He laughs as his silhouette unbuttons his shirt, pulling it off and tossing it along with his jacket. “I’m getting ready to go to bed. You’re not the only one who is exhausted here.” 

“Oh,” she whispers, lying back on the bed. Devi watches him as he pulls on his pajamas, pulling back the covers and climbing into the bed. “How was the flight?” 

“Tiring,” he admits. “I’m just glad to be back home.” 

“Mmmm,” she agrees. “Hades thinks so too.” 

“Really?”

She turns onto her side and looks up at him. “Yeah, and he’s a picky cat.” 

Ben laughs quietly, lifting his hand to trace patterns on her shoulders. “He is.” 

Devi tucks her face into his side, sighing. “I’m tired.” 

“I know,” he murmurs. She closes her eyes, hearing him shift next to her. “Go to sleep.” 

She feels his other hand skim down her face, gently, and then a pair of lips presses to her forehead. She leans into his touch, melting into it, memorizing everything about this moment—just in case it is a dream: the softness of his lips and his warm breath, puffing against her face, and the careful skim of his fingertips against her face and the heat emanating from his body, so close. 

Ben pulls away far too soon, in her opinion, and the bed dips under his weight as he shifts until he is face to face with her. 

Devi moves closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder. “G’night.” 

“Goodnight, Devi.” 

She stays awake—though just barely, as she waits for Ben to fall asleep, making sure he sleeps first like always, and she presses his lips to his shoulder, his skin warm against her mouth. 

(a thousand words hang unspoken in the air between them, like light that she cannot see, ultraviolet and infrared and gamma all at the same time, and she wishes she were able to change the frequency of them so he might be able to see what she cannot say—those three little words which she has struggled with for years) 

She runs her hand up his arm, settling her fingers into the crook of his elbow, and breathes out. 

Devi falls asleep thinking about that quote from Emma, about the intensity of love making it harder to tell someone. 

It is always a bad idea to start drinking early. Not only is Devi more of a lightweight than she’d ever like to admit, in general it is not a practice she likes to stick to. It usually doesn’t end in anything good. 

But today, the anniversary of her dad’s death, is not a day that she really cares about anything else. 

It always falls on the worst day possible, too, because it is the end of April and she has finals and exams and so much work to do, but she feels paralyzed by it. Paralyzed by the feeling, the sick, overwhelming feeling of losing him all over again. 

Some small grace of God gives her a reprieve this year, though, and she is finished with her exams two days prior. She still has work to do—because she is studying to be a doctor and therefore her work never ends—but today she just can’t. 

Ben is always in a flurry this day, and she knows that he worries about her excessively. It should bother her, the way he worries about her, but she has realized, now, after having gone through nine years of this, after him watching her mourn her father year after year, that he is not so much coddling her as supporting her. 

But he is not here right now, and so she pulls out the bottle of red wine in the fridge and pours herself a glass—perhaps a bit too much, but if she can be forgiven on any day for drinking too much, it is today. 

She steadily makes her way through the bottle and opens another one—not for the first time wishing that Ben were not tied up at work so she might at least drink with him here together. But it is just her here alone, so she does what she does best and tries to avoid thinking about it.

Hades meows at her from his little cat bed, and she drops her hand to his head absentmindedly as she steadily makes her way through the bottle.  

She scrounges up some dinner in the form of leftover Chinese food and polishes off another bottle, and she drops both in the trash before stumbling to her couch and face planting there, closing her eyes and falling asleep with Hades curled up next to her. 

Devi wakes up at 8:30, still a little drunk, to a sound at the door—Ben’s key. She rubs her eyes and flops back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. 

(grief, again, like a tsunami. ebbs and laps at the edges of her soul, and she is not always strong enough to bear its weight)

The click of his key in the lock jars her mind, and Devi groans, burying herself further into the couch as if that will make her vanish. The door creaks open as Ben steps through, and she hears the jangle of his keys as he drops them in the little misshapen ceramic bowl by the door—a leftover relic from her one and only attempt to try pottery, after which she decided she would stick to drawing—and the creak of his shoes as he toes them off. 

“Devi?” he says, and she can hear his feet getting louder and louder as he approaches her. 

She raises her eyes and blinks at him. “Hey,” she mumbles. 

Ben shoves his hands in his pockets as he steps onto the rug—plush and beautiful and the only thing she’d let him buy new for their apartment, dropping to his knees in front of the couch. “How are you?” he murmurs. 

His other hand gently nudges their cat off of her stomach, and Hades hops off of the couch and silently pads over to his bed, curling up closing his eyes. 

He reaches out and brushes the hair away from her forehead, and she closes her eyes, melting into his touch. “Pretty shitty, all things considered,” she mumbles. 

His thumb smoothes over her brow, fingers splayed out and cradling her head gently. “That’s ok,” he says. “What do you need from me?” 

Devi blinks her eyes open, finding his blue ones looking right into hers, serious and concerned and gentle. 

(she bites back the real thing she needs from him—for him to love her—because she has already asked him for so much, has already taken and taken and taken from him, and she will not take anymore) 

“I’m tired,” she whispers. 

“Ok.” Ben reaches over and helps her up into a sitting position on the couch, and Devi clutches her head, groaning as the world spins violently. “Careful,” he says, pressing his hand against her back as she sways. 

“I’m fine,” she insists, although her shaking says something else. 

Ben rolls his eyes. “Yes, because being unable to sit upright is a hallmark of being fine,” he drawls. 

Devi scowls at him. “Don’t be annoying.” 

He cracks a small smile as she swings her legs off the couch, standing up. “That’s my natural state of being.” 

“Change it,” she mumbles, standing up and nearly falling back down. 

“Whoa,” Ben says, grabbing her arms before she can fall back down on the couch. He narrows his eyes at her suspiciously. “Devi,” he says, slowly. “How much did you drink today?” 

She holds up two fingers. “Five bottles in Rome,” she says, snorting. “Get it? Cause—cause—” 

“I get it, Devi,” he says wryly. “Come on, tell me the truth.” 

“Just two,” she mumbles, pressing her hand to her forehead. “That’s it.” 

Ben sighs heavily. “Ok, then.” 

Unexpectedly, Devi feels tears prick at her eyes. “Are you disappointed?” 

He presses his hand against her back, gently guiding her into the bedroom. “Disappointed?” 

Devi stumbles and sits on his bed, burying her face in her hands. “I’m such a fucking fuck up,” she says, swallowing the stifle the tears that threaten to fall. “You found—found me drunk on the couch and it’s the day my dad died and I’m just sitting here fucking drinking and—” 

“Hey,” Ben says, firmly. He pulls her hands away from her face, and Devi looks down to find him crouching in front of her, peering up into her eyes. “You are not a fuck-up.” 

She laughs bitterly. “What else would you call me? I’m certainly acting like it.” 

“You’re grieving, Devi.” Ben clenches his jaw. “And you need to do that however you feel is appropriate.” 

Devi rubs at her eyes, finding it hard to look him in the eyes. “So you’re not disappointed in me?” 

Ben reaches up and smoothes her hair back. “Of course not.” He smiles sadly at her. “I could never be disappointed in you.” 

She gives him a watery smile back. “Thank you.” Devi sighs, carefully sitting back on Ben’s bed and willing the room to stop rocking, closing her eyes to feel a little less sick. “Can I sleep here?” 

Ben nods. “I’m not letting you out of my sight,” he whispers. 

Devi turns to face Ben and gently knocks her  head on his shoulder. “Ok. I can’t sleep in this, though.” She gestures to herself, in a blouse and jeans. “It’s not comfy.” 

Ben flushes a bright red, but nods. “Yeah, ok.” 

He walks over and rummages through his drawers, tossing her a shirt and sweatpants. Devi fumbles to catch them, pressing them against her body. “Thanks.” 

“Uh, sure,” he says, shoving his hands into his pockets. He just stands there, seemingly frozen, staring at her, until she smirks at him. 

“Turn around, you pervert.” 

Ben flushes an even deeper red, his blush spreading down his neck in uneven splotches, and Devi bites back a peal of laughter at the wide, terrified look in his eyes. “S—sorry,” he mumbles, spinning around instantly. 

She fumbles for a little bit, pulling off her blouse with a little difficulty, before slipping the shirt on. It’s only after she’s put her shirt on that she realizes she left her bra on, and she curses herself. Devi reaches up under her shirt, fumbling with the clasp on her bra for a little bit. 

“Come on,” she mutters, until the clasp finally loosens and she pulls it off. Ben’s shirt is impossibly soft against her skin, warm and comforting and better than anything else. The flannel is loose around her shoulders and she buries her nose in it for a split second, catching the faint scent of laundry detergent. 

Devi shucks off her jeans and pulls on the sweatpants, dropping her clothes into a pile next to Ben’s bed. “‘M decent, Gross,” she mumbles. “You can turn around now.” 

Ben turns around slowly, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. “You’re ok?” 

She nods. “Yeah.” Devi crawls backwards on the bed, climbing underneath the covers and sighing in relief when she pulls the covers up to her neck, closing her eyes. “I just wanna sleep now.” 

She lies there for maybe two minutes before a hand closes around the covers and pulls them away from her. She whines and looks up to find Ben peering at her, dressed in his own pajamas. “Hey, no sleeping yet, ok?” 

Devi scowls at him. “Why?” 

Ben helps her sit up, propped up against his headboard with pillows surrounding her before he climbs in next to her. “You’re too drunk.” 

She crosses her arms and glares at him. “I’m not too drunk.” 

Ben doesn’t even dignify that with a response, simply quirking his eyebrow at her. 

Devi sighs, just leaning back against the pillows and closing her eyes, trying to stop the spinning. She lies there for about thirty minutes, the room silent except for the sound of Ben’s breathing and the occasional turning of a page as he reads his book. 

The spinning slows down bit by bit, until Devi feels less like her stomach is turning to turn itself inside out and empty itself out, and she turns to Ben. “I feel like today gets harder and easier each year,” she finds herself saying, before she can stop. 

Ben turns to her. “What?” 

Devi sighs, pushing herself up a bit more. “It just—gets hard sometimes.” 

Understanding dawns in Ben’s eyes slowly, and he bookmarks his novel and sets it on the bedside dresser, sitting up and turning to face her more fully. “Do you want to talk about it?” 

In all honesty, she doesn’t. It is painful to think about and talking about it is like picking away at a scab she thought had healed or rubbing salt into the wound. Talking about it both rips her apart and stitches her up. 

(but this is ben, and she has never been good at fighting her nature when it comes to him. his eyes compel her to reveal everything—maybe because in some deep, hidden part of her, she feels like he already knows her, knows all of her. her secrets, when it comes to ben, her secrets are just there, and all she needs is a catalyst to get her over her hesitance, to bypass the activation energy, and then the reaction proceeds, and she tells him things she didn’t even know herself) 

“It’s—” she starts. “It’s the worst when I wake up,” she whispers. “Every day. Because—because for a split second I forget that he’s gone. For a split second everything’s ok. And then it comes crashing down on me again and—I lose him. Again and again.” 

She lays her head on his shoulder, and Ben wraps his arms around her, drawing her in closer. She buries her face in his shoulder and lets the tears fall from her face, quietly, onto his t-shirt. “Today is just—it’s the worst,” she murmurs. “And it’s stuck in my brain and I hate that—that my last memory of him is just him collapsing onto the floor of a fucking auditorium. That’s—I don’t want that to be what I think of when I think of him.” 

Ben’s hand smoothes up and down her back, smoothing her. “I don’t know,” she finds herself whispering. “I wish it was easier.” 

He doesn’t say anything to that, just draws her closer, almost crushing her against his chest as he grips her tightly. She would protest, would beg for air, but it already feels like her whole world has been swept out from underneath her and right now Ben holding her like this, tight and almost harsh, in a way, is the only thing that is keeping her upright. 

Ben doesn’t speak, just rubs at her shoulders, relaxing the muscles there, the knots melting away into her skin easily, like ice cubes held in the palms of his hand. She melts in his arms, and she thinks being held by Ben is like—like alchemy, turning the hard, brittle edges of her into something more soft and supple, like clay.

But he doesn’t say anything, and she loves him all the more for it. Ben knows that empty platitudes and reassurances do nothing, and after nine years—nine years where he has fucked up and said the wrong thing and nine years when he has managed to comfort her when no one else has—he knows what to say, and when to say it. He knows how to read her heart. 

(ben can read her like his favorite book, and she has been softened by the number of times he has cracked her open and thumbed through her chapters, traced his fingers over her lines and made annotations in the margins of her pages. he has read her worst moments, and instead of turning her into persona non grata, instead of sticking her on the shelf and letting her crumble into pieces he has kept her, weaving himself into her story. she will never understand why, not really, but she will forever be grateful to him for it) 

He has scarred himself into her soul—but not all scars are bad. 

“Thank you,” she says, into his shirt. 

His hand stills on her back, and then he sighs, her hair fluttering around her face at the air. “You’re welcome, Devi.” 

There are nine years of thank yous built up into that word, nine years of where he has been there for her, unfailingly so, and she will never really be able to tell him how grateful she is, so the least she can do is spend the rest of her life showing it. 

Devi sighs, closing her eyes and pressing her forehead into Ben’s shoulder, slipping her hands around his waist and linking them together, pressing her palms against his back, and she fits into his body, like she always has. It seems that all she was meant to do was hold him. 

“Thank you,” she whispers again, so quiet there is no way he can hear her, but she needs to say it again. 

Ben’s hand slides up to her neck, carding through her hair thoughtfully, and the motion is more comforting than she ever thought it would be possible. She tucks her face into his neck, feeling the warmth of his body bleed into her own.

She hovers in the limbo between sleep and wakefulness for a while, tucked firmly into Ben’s side, and pillowing her head on his shoulder. 

Devi feels his hand skim up her side and clutch her tightly, and Ben buries her hand into his hair and breathes, and Devi cracks her eyes open just the smallest bit to see him fast asleep, lips parted. 

She smiles, and closes her eyes, letting sleep overcome her. 

Devi wakes up slowly, entering wakefulness gradually, and she honestly wants nothing else to do but to fall back asleep, but now that she is awake she can’t, so she presses her hand to her mouth and yawns, opening her eyes. 

Her face is pressed against Ben’s hip, and his fingers are skimming up and down her back soothingly, and she turns her head to find him sitting up in bed, reading his book. 

She groans as the headache starts to sink in, pressing her hand against her forehead. “Oh, ow,” she whispers, blinking. Fucking hangovers. Everytime she gets a hangover, she swears she is never going to drink again. She never follows through on that promise. 

Ben turns to her, immediately bookmarking his book and placing it back on the shelf. “Hey,” he whispers. “Are you ok?” 

Devi presses her hand to her forehead a little harder, as if that will alleviate her headache, and turns to look at him. Her other arm is loosely wrapped around his waist and she knows her hair probably looks like a mess but he still lets her dig into his side and latch onto him, like some goddamn koala bear. 

“I’ll be right back,” she says. 

Devi pushes herself up, padding out of the bed and into the bathroom next door. She grabs her toothbrush and brushes her teeth, wincing at the light headache that’s still pounding away at her skull. 

Looking at herself in the mirror, she winces again at the rat’s nest her hair has become, tangled and a mess, hanging loosely around her face. 

Devi yanks a brush through her hair, taming it slightly, before tossing her brush back and walking back into Ben’s room. 

She comes around the side of the bed to settle back into her warm spot. Ben’s arm raises up to make room for her as she tucks back into the sheets, instinctively, his thumb skimming the small of her back over and over again.

Devi looks up at him, but he is not even consciously doing it, still captivated by his book. 

“What’re you looking at me for, David?” he murmurs. 

She doesn’t answer, her heart in his throat, and she thinks—late nights and countless sunrises and crooked smiles and a million more things she cannot begin to cover that describe him—every moment of their friendship, years and years built into the foundation of them. 

Ben glances at her when she doesn’t answer. “Devi,” he says, again. “Are you ok? Did you sleep well?” 

Devi opens and closes her mouth, just staring at him.

(and through all it, him)

“I love you.” 

The words spill out before she can take them back, and they hang there, heavy in the air, like the moment before a thunderstorm cracks the sky open. 

Ben blinks at her almost owlishly, and she would laugh at the stricken, shocked look on his face if her heart wasn’t hammering in her chest, waiting for him to say something. 

“So—so you slept well then?” he gets out, haltingly. 

“Ben!” She kicks him in the shin, and then, before she knows what she is doing, Devi pushes herself up on her hands from the bed and cups his face in her palms, and then she is kissing him. 

Ben groans against her mouth, lips parting like the sea, and his hand reaches up and cradles her head in his palm, gentle and strong all at the same time. 

She kisses him like she has always wanted to kiss him, deep and sweet and carefully, with care and caution and every single emotion he has made her feel in nine years sweeping through her, smoothing out her rough edges. 

He presses his other hand against her back, but he’s forgotten his book is still in his hand, and the hard edge of the cover digs into her back. Devi winces, pulling away from him to gasp. “Ow.” 

“Fuck, sorry,” Ben mutters, a blush blooming high on his cheeks as he drops the book—carelessly on the floor—and looks up at her through lashes with eyes that look like the moon on June nights. 

She tries to bite back a grin, but she can’t. “I’m such a good kisser you forgot that a book was in your hand?” 

Ben scowls at her, running a hand through his hair. “Don’t flatter yourself.” 

Devi leans forward, grin huge on her face. “I think I’ll have a permanent indent on my spine now. You know, from making you lose your senses so much.” 

“Yeah, well, you blurt out—out that to any guy, and he’s gonna forget what he was doing.” 

She smirks. “Tell yourself what you want to, Ben, but we both know it was my kissing that—” 

The end of her sentence is muffled when Ben kisses her again, harder this time, and she kisses him back, pressing herself closer, impossibly closer to him. 

He pulls away to whisper. “Are you sure about that?”

Devi laughs. “We both know I’m better than you.” 

“Maybe I can persuade you to change your mind,” he murmurs, and then he is kissing her again. 

She gasps, raising her hands to curl around his neck, fingers brushing the nape of his neck, thumbs stroking his jaw just between his ears, and kisses him back harder. 

Warmth pools in her stomach, hot and thick and almost sluggish, and she sighs against his mouth. Ben deepens the kiss, slanting his mouth and sweeping his tongue into her mouth, and his hands on her tighten, pulling her closer, closer, closer. 

Devi is sure she cannot get any closer to him, no matter how much he tries, but then Ben’s hand slides down her back and pushes her up, his hands digging into her hip, and she blindly moves forward, letting his hands guide her, and she settles herself into his lap, sliding her arms around his neck, determined to kiss him for as long as she can. 

His hand slips under her shirt, warm fingers stroking the skin of her back, and she gasps when his nails scrape against her waist bluntly. 

Ben pulls away, looking up at her with worried eyes. “Did I—” 

She cuts him off with a shake of her head and pulls his mouth back to hers. “You’re good,” she whispers, and then presses her lips to his. 

Devi kisses him over and over again, breaking away only when her lungs burn for air, and Ben seems just as desperate as she is, just as hungry to kiss her. She has been deprived of this for almost ten years, and now she cannot bring herself to stop. 

Ben pulls away from her and presses a kiss to her cheek, fingers skimming over the spot his lips had touched, and then he presses a kiss to her jaw, and then down her neck, soft and gentle, like the brush of a butterfly’s wing. 

Her fingers dig into his shoulders as he nips at her throat, teeth scraping at her neck, and she sighs, melting into him. “I love you,” she says. 

Ben grins against her skin, tilting his head up. “I love you too.”

Devi swallows roughly, looking into his eyes, and finds nothing but affection and adoration shining in them. She reaches up and brushes her thumb over his eyebrow. “Really?” 

He nods, pulling her closer to him, hands skimming up her back, fingers brushing her shoulder blades. “Yeah.” 

She bites her lip, resisting the urge to kiss him again. “Are—are you sure?” 

It is a strange question to ask, but she needs to know. She loves him. She is sure of it. And she wants to make sure he is. 

Ben smirks, fingers skimming up and down her back in a distracting pattern, tracing shapes into her skin. “Am I sure that I love you?” 

Devi flushes, well aware of how foolish it sounds, but she shoves him in the shoulder gently. “Come on, doofus,” she snorts. “Answer the fucking question.” 

“Devi,” he murmurs, softly. “Given, I’ve been in love with you since we were like, sixteen. Yeah, I’m pretty sure.” 

Now it is her turn to blink at him owlishly, mouth dropping open. “You—what?” 

He reaches up and brushes a strand of hair back from her face. “Yeah. You—you didn’t know?” 

“No!” she insists. 

“I thought I was kind of obvious about it,” Ben says. He smiles, rather sheepishly. “Maybe I could have been a little more obvious about that.” 

Devi smacks him on the head. “Uh, yeah, maybe!” 

“Oh, come on, David,” Ben says, wincing. He moves his hand from her back to rub at his head, but she rolls her eyes and drops her hand to his head, rubbing at it gently, and he resettles his hand at her back. “You didn’t say anything either.” 

She rolls her eyes. “Cause I thought you didn’t like me!” 

“I was obvious about it!” 

“Maybe you could have been a little more obvious about it!”

“What about you? You didn’t say anything either!” 

“Maybe I would have if I knew how you felt!” 

Ben opens his mouth to say something else, before closing it and shaking his head. “You know what?” he huffs. “Doesn’t matter.” 

Devi stares at him, lips parting in shock. “What? Are—are you seriously giving up on arguing with me?” 

He leans down and presses his lips to her collarbone, skimming his lips up her neck. “Yeah,” he says, nipping at the underside of her jaw. Her nails dig into his skin, and she whimpers when he scrapes his teeth over her skin, before soothing it by pressing his lips there. “I don’t really think it matters much,” he mumbles. “We’re here anyways.” 

“Ben, I—” 

He cuts her off again by kissing her, and she forgets whatever she was going to say at that, sighing into his mouth. “Fine,” she murmurs. “But we do agree that I started this.” 

“Ok David,” he agrees, and kisses her harder. 

Devi shifts in his lap, and smiles against his mouth, losing herself in his touch.

“So,” Ben murmurs, “how did you like today?” 

Devi pulls back from him, grinning. “Today?” 

“Yeah,” he says, nodding. His hands slip down her side and dig into her waist, pulling her flush against him. “Today?” 

Devi pretends to think about it. “What happened today?”

Ben rolls his eyes, leaning in and nipping at her earlobe. Her breath catches in her throat, and she curves against him. “Don’t be coy.” 

She laughs. “Ben, mea culpa. What was today?” 

“I don’t know, maybe the date we just came back from?” 

Devi pulls away from him, curling her hand around his. She tugs him backwards, down the hallway of their apartment and to her bedroom—the closer one. “Oh, right.” 

She is just about to say something else when she feels something brush the back of her legs, and she glances down to see Hades rubbing his body against her leg, wanting attention. Devi snorts and picks up their cat, cradling him in her arms. 

“So,” Ben says, reaching out and scratching Hades behind his little ear, “I’m gonna have to compete with the cat for attention now, huh?” 

“Don’t flatter yourself, Gross,” she smirks. “It never has been and never will be a competition.” 

Ben sighs dramatically. “Fair enough.” 

Hades gets tired of her petting him after another five minutes—picky cat, and she sets him down on the ground again, watching as he slinks into the living room before turning back to Ben. 

“So?” he asks. 

“So what?” Devi says. 

“What’s the verdict on the date?” 

She bites her lip. “Well, it was—good. Decent.” 

Ben quirks an eyebrow. “That’s all it was?” 

She smirks. “Ben, we hang out like, all the time. This was like us hanging out again.” 

He rolls his eyes. “I’m delighted it stuck in your memory so much.” 

Devi bites her lip, peering up at him through her lashes. “Maybe you should do something to make it a little more memorable.” 

Ben’s eyes flash, like a lightning strike in the night, and his hand sweeps down her back, hand pressed against the small of her back and pulling her close to him. He leans over her, mouth hovering over her own. “Why, David, are you propositioning me?” 

“What if I was?” she shoots back. 

“You know I was raised to be a gentleman—” 

“So why are you such a dick?” she cuts him off. 

“—so I can’t refuse a lady?” he continues, as if she’s said nothing at all. 

Devi smirks. “That true?” 

“Absolutely,” Ben whispers, and then he kisses her. 

She kisses him back and it feels like something is cracking open inside of her. All her life Devi has been waiting for someone to understand her, but Ben makes her feel like she does not need to wait for Ben to understand her. She wants him to know her, and wants to tell him all the parts of her. 

She does not realize that he is pushing her back into her bedroom and onto her bed until the backs of her legs hit her bed, and she nearly topples onto it. 

“Careful,” Ben murmurs. 

He shifts and pulls away from her so he is sitting on the edge of the bed, looking up at her. She cards her hands through his hair, heart fluttering when he closes his eyes. “Do you want to do this?” he whispers. 

Devi looks down at him. She has always trusted Ben, with everything. Her heart, her soul, everything. And it—it’s easy for her to trust him with this now. 

“Yeah,” she whispers. “I do.” 

Ben catches her hand as she cards it through his hair again and drops a gentle kiss on her fingertips, and then one to the inside of her wrist, sending her pulse hammering away. “Ok,” he whispers. “Your call.” 

She blinks at him. “What?” 

“Your call, David,” he says, smirking. “Tell me what you want.” 

Devi’s mouth drops open. “O—oh. Okay.” 

She takes a deep breath, climbing onto the bed and then straddling Ben, hooking her legs around his waist. “Take my shirt off,” she says. 

Ben slides his hands up her back slowly, pulling her shirt off as she goes. She admires the look in his eyes, the reverence. No one has ever looked at her like that before, and her heart stops in her chest. “Ok,” he murmurs. “Now what?” 

Devi leans down. “Kiss me.” 

Ben surges up and captures her lips with his own, messy, teeth clacking against hers, and she gasps into his mouth, kissing her back. 

He kisses her like he has been waiting to do this for years—which, she supposes, is true. 

(and she has been waiting to do this for years as well. ben does not kiss her like she is an oasis in a desert, but like she is the first break of sunlight after being trapped in the dark for weeks. he savors it, enjoys it, and she feels her body melt into his slowly, like eons unfolding onto one another) 

Ben flips her around, pressing her back into the bed. He pulls away from her and kisses her neck, and then down her torso, mouth ghosting over the curve of her bra, before dropping kisses across her chest, following the line of her bra. “You’re beautiful.” 

Devi blushes, her face feeling hot. “Shut the fuck up.” 

“That’s the one thing I’m not going to listen to you for,” he shoots back, skimming his hands down her hips. Ben’s fingers hook in the loops of her jeans, tugging her even closer to him, and he presses a kiss to her stomach before sucking a mark into it. 

Devi gasps, bucking her hips up into his. “Fuck,” she breathes. 

“Is that a command?” Ben says, dragging his teeth over her hip. 

She grapples at his shoulders. “Ben—Ben,” she breathes. “Come up here.” 

He listens instantly, trailing kisses up her body and leaving marks as he brings his head to meet hers. “Hey. What’s up?” 

Devi looks at him, pressing her hands to his face, thumb rubbing over his stubble. “I love you,” she whispers. 

When Ben smiles at her it is like the sun is breaking over the horizon, growing brighter by the second, and she can’t bear to look away from it, from the way his smile warms her from the inside out, warms every inch of her, warms parts of her she didn’t know was cold and dark until he shone a light upon them. “I love you too.” 

Ben’s fingers skim down her stomach, and he turns his head, pressing a kiss to her lips. “Can I—” he says, fingers brushing the button on her jeans. 

Devi nods. “Yeah.” 

His fingers undo the button on her jeans, but instead of pulling them off instantly like she expected him too, he smooths his fingers over her stomach gently, touching her skin slowly. 

Devi has never been touched like this—not like a piece of glass but like a sculpture, like every inch of her is a piece of art and to know her fully, he must touch her with his own hands, must map out her features underneath his fingertips. 

It sets her ablaze, fire licking its way through her veins slowly, and she wonders if she will make it through without combusting. 

“Ben—Ben, please,” she gasps. 

He bumps her gently with his nose, nipping at her waist. “Talk to me, David.” 

“Fuck, oh—okay,” she breathes. “I want you to go down on me.” 

“Okay,” he whispers, hooking his fingers into her belt loops and pulling her jeans down. “And?” 

Devi blinks at him. “And what?” she says. 

Ben peers up at her, smirking. “Go on.” 

“What, do you need me to spell it out or something?” she quips. 

He laughs. “I’m not that hopeless.” Ben skims his fingers up the side of her thighs. “Tell me how to make you feel good, Devi.” 

Her hands twist in his hair at that, and she swallows roughly. “Okay. I—I will.” 

“Good,” he murmurs, sinking his teeth into her hip. “And let me take my time with you.” 

Devi lets herself fall down the rabbit hole with Ben, and the thing about him is—it is not necessarily better than any other sex she has ever had—but it is easier. Because—because she knows Ben, and she trusts him, and so talking to him is easy, natural, almost secondhand. It is better than anything else because he listens to her, and because she is not afraid to talk to him. 

She finds the most pleasure in the way he listens to her, carefully, and when she falls apart because of him, the flush that overcomes her is more intoxicating than she’s ever felt before.

Even when it is over he does not leave, wraps his arms around her and pulls her closer. “Hi,” he murmurs. 

“Hi back.” 

“So,” Ben starts off, easy. “Was that good?” 

Devi pulls back from him, giving him a withering look. “I am not inflating your ego, Benjamin. You’ve got too much confidence as is.” 

He smirks, wagging his eyebrows. “I don’t know. You did a pretty good job with that like ten minutes ago.” 

She reaches up and almost smacks him, then drops her hand on the couch, shaking her head. “You know what, I’m gonna let this go. This one time.” 

“So orgasms are a get out of jail free card?” 

“This one time,” she stresses. 

Ben buries his face into her neck and laughs, sending fireworks sparking down her spine. She runs her fingers up and down his back, reveling in the warmth of him beneath her hands. 

(he is here and alive and in her arms and she has never been more loathe for a moment to end) 

Ben kisses her neck, and then down the line of her collarbone all the way to her shoulder, and then back up again—following the contours and lines of her body. 

“Ben,” she breathes. “Again?” 

“No,” he murmurs, biting her neck. “Just making up for lost time.” 

Devi chokes out a laugh, laying back on the bed and closing her eyes. “You’re ridiculous.” 

“Maybe so, but you’re still here, so. Who’s fault is that?” 

Ben presses a kiss to her cheek before rolling off of her and grabbing the covers, pulling them up as she turns to face him. “Yours, really,” she answers. 

He rolls his eyes. “How?” 

Devi pretends to think about it. “Do you want the exhaustive list or just the highlights?” 

He snorts, shaking his head and then ducking it to press his lips to her forehead. “You know what,” he says, yawning. “Give me the highlights in the morning. I’m tired.” 

She reaches up and trails her fingers across his brow. “Fair enough.” 

“I love you,” he murmurs. He whispered it into every inch of her skin and yet she needs to hear it again from him. It’s addictive, and it gives her an adrenaline rush she savors as it shoots through her blood.

Being with Ben is the best high she has ever experienced. 

Devi lifts his hand up and presses a kiss to his palm before lacing her fingers with his. “I love you too.” 

He smiles at her, slow and soft and like syrup, and she watches as his eyes flutter shut. 

For the first time, Devi realizes, she does not have to wait for him to fall asleep. She does not have to fear that he will leave her once she falls asleep, because right now she feels it, in the air between them, like a promise has been stitched into their skin. 

And so she closes her eyes and tucks herself next to him, and lets herself dream.