New Southland Ficlet: Between the Bars
Title: Between the Bars
Pairing: Ben, Cooper (Gen, Pre-slash if you choose to read it that way)
Rating: G
Spoilers: Season 3 Finale
Summary: Ben takes care
Author's notes: This image has been rattling around my head since the season ended. Just needed to get it out
The first time Ben visits John in the hospital, it’s ugly.
So are the second and third, and, well. It takes a while before John does much more than glare at him, but Ben knows John well enough to read what’s behind the glare. Layers and layers of emotion there, and someplace buried is gratitude for finally being able to move forward.
Ben knows how that feels.
He stops by John’s place to pick up a laundry list written on the back of what appear to be hospital orders. He almost runs smack dab into Caesar, who he met once, sort of, at a retirement party, and the whole run-in feels awkward.
“You’re the kid, right?” Caesar asks, eyebrow slightly raised. “You rode with John.”
“Sherman. Ben. Used to be John’s trainee. He sent me to get some stuff,” Ben says, holding up the crumpled piece of paper. He’s wondered more than once why Caesar isn’t the one doing this but there are lots of places that he and John have carefully walked around over the course of their partnership and this is pretty much ground zero.
Caesar nods. “I was grabbing a couple things from the garage, if he asks,” he says, steps around Ben and heads down the walk, leaves Ben staring after him, chewing on his lip.
It’s not like John doesn’t have visitors. He does. Laurie’s who Ben sees most often, who always has a tired smile for him, always makes Ben think that maybe it’s the nice girls that finish last when he watches how she carries herself.
Most of the time, though, John is alone, sweating bullets and pushing himself through rehab exercises, the flicker of relief in those eyes as much because Ben’s arrival allows for a break in routine as it is the arrival of Ben himself. He never kids himself about what he means to John. He never lets himself think much about it, to be honest.
He sneaks in decent food and the two of them talk shop over cards and fries; John may not be his TO anymore but he still finds himself holding onto those moments of begrudging approval in voice or eyes, a half-grunt of recognition that he’s made the right call. Sammy’s great, but he’s not John.
Ben feels like he’s buying time, most days, trying to hang on for the first sure thing in his life in a long time. Somewhere in the course of days spent patrolling and picking at each other and learning from each other John’s become this part of Ben’s life he didn’t realize he was missing. Family, in ways his sister or his mother are incapable of understanding and his father could never dream of being. He’s as lonely as John has ever been, if never quite so lost.
“I’m reasonably certain you have someplace better to be,” John says, poking at his burger.
“Probably,” Ben shrugs, then grins as a John throws a slice of pickle at him. “Watch it, Grandpa, I just got this shirt.”
“Sorry, Princess,” John mutters, but he’s smiling, too.
The day will come when everything changes, but for now, for now. He’s got food and stories of a day full of crazy calls and the curve of John’s smile when he walks into the room. He’ll take it.