Fic: Indelible (1/1)
Title: Indelible
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Richard/Ben, Richard/Miles
Word Count: 2,425
Summary: The things that get forgotten. For bittersweet325, who requested “Richard and the Modern World” at The lostsquee 2010 Lost Summer Luau. Warning for implied/impending character death. Spoilers through 6.17 - The End.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For bittersweet325: This was desperately strange for me to write, and has a very different feel than what I’d planned to do, and even from what I usually write in general. Upon seeing your prompt, I knew I wanted to write Ben/Richard for you. And assuming that Ben takes the “Richard” post on the Island, it seems to me he’ll be getting some shore leave every so often, right? So, with that in mind, I’d intended for a little something more lighthearted, but instead, it came out as something rather different -- both sparse and ANGSTY with capital letters, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Plus it ended up involving decidedly more Ben and Miles than your prompt asked for, for which I apologize.
Indelible
He doesn’t realize how much he’d forgotten about the world until he returns to it.
He forgets, for a moment, whether he likes regular or decaf when the stewardess asks him; his legs are shaky on the segue when he disembarks. He takes a cab from the terminal, because driving seems foreign, and he has to think twice before he can properly count his change as they pull up on the curb: he wonders if this is how it is for everyone -- wonders just how many came before, like him.
As he walks on concrete -- so different from soil, from sand, he sifts through the scattered moments that had led to this one: watching shadows play in descent from the Lighthouse, sad eyes and a strong hand on his arm, limp curls dangling against the rainy season -- you’re needed, he’d said, and Ben hadn’t questioned, hadn’t thought twice. He steps through the automatic doors with purpose, with intent, and he recalls, however briefly, a time when he’d thought that he knew things, understood things. Thought he had power, somehow, even when he was powerless.
Here, though, and now: white walls, white floors, scuff marks from sneakers and gurney wheels, stains in the tiling that draw bile to the back of his throat -- here, there is no power. Not for him.
He breathes in deep, lets harsh reality and antiseptics dull his senses as he approaches the nurse at the desk, her seafoam scrubs too bright, too much.
He lets his eyes slide closed before he asks.
“I’m looking for a patient,” and his voice is too high -- strained and cracking on the consonants; he clears it before he says the name he’d sworn never to say again:
“Richard Alpert.”
_______________________________
Room 734 at St. Sebastian’s is small, would be cramped if there had been an occupant in the far bed near the window, but there’s only one name on the placard at the door; something like fear seizes in Ben’s chest when he sees it, stark letters spelling out the patient’s identity -- truth like poison in his veins. When he enters, he lingers in the doorway; immediately takes in the man in the bed, the lines and leads wiring him to an array of machines at either side -- it takes longer for him to reconcile the person in front of him as the man he used to know, used to be with; used to...
He can only take so much of the pasty skin, the wrinkles, the bruises of time and wear beneath eyes that had weathered everything, anything; and so he looks away, gaze trailing along the privacy curtain where it’s drawn back, a half-eaten meal on a tray, too far from the bed to be Richard’s -- and it’s then that he sees the person in the chair, slumped low. In truth, he’s not entirely surprised to see the grey-haired head of Miles Straume bowed, almost reverently, over Richard’s resting form.
Ben knows a lot about Miles, trivial details he hasn’t forgotten: what size shoe he wears, that he isn’t sensitive to poison ivy, that he broke his arm at the age of thirteen and that absolutely hates chicken -- prefers fish in his tacos. Ben also knows that Miles Straume can be bought if the price is right, and that he suffers a barbeque wing once in a while because Mr. Cluck’s reminds him of a friend. He remembers Mrs. Chang letting him hold her newborn baby, remembers her proud, if tired, smile as he’d stared at her, terrified, fiddling with his glasses before cradling the swaddled little person against his chest -- he knows the Miles’ grip is strong, from the first time his tiny finger had encircled Ben’s own as a boy, and that his eyes are bright, and he knows that death is everywhere, and that Miles is the one who has to feel it like his own.
Feel this, like his own.
But for all it: seeing him here, now, his hands cupped carefully around Richard’s, thumb stroking at his wrist, mindful of the pulse oximeter clipped against his finger -- he knows that Miles Straume can love, and it’s a blessing, a relief; it’s all he needs to know.
He steps in without knocking, or announcing himself; waits until Miles senses the shift of his presence and turns his gaze. Recognition dawns in his eyes between blinks, the crow’s-feet at the corners deepening, and Ben wonders at just how long, exactly, he’s been gone.
Miles doesn’t speak, simply brings Richard’s hands to his mouth and presses his lips to the skin stretched taunt across the knuckles -- spotted with age and loose against the bone -- before he stands, leaves them.
Ben takes one step, and then another; an eternity before Richard is close enough to touch -- the urge is strong, even now, but Ben resists; still hopes that this is a nightmare, though he hasn’t dreamed in far too long.
He opens his mouth, closes it, tries to speak again for the sob in his throat: “I understand, now,” he manages, a teetering wisp of words, and he can’t help reach out, just letting his palm lie flat against the thin, starched bedclothes, his fingertips a breath from Richard’s own. “What it was like for you.” Why Richard had never been able to give Ben what he’d wanted, what he’d needed; why Richard hadn’t been able to give Ben the things -- everything -- that Ben had tried so desperately to give to him.
He only stares at their hands when he murmurs the hardest words he knows.
“I’m sorry.” The words themselves sound shattered; broken.
“This... this isn’t how it was supposed to be,” he stumbles, because on the Island, after everything, things had started to make sense again; and this -- this makes no sense. He bends a little, catches a strand or two of Richard’s fine, peppered hair against his thumb. “Not for you.”
“I hope that you were happy,” Ben tells him, breath against his ear, but when his lip catches the skin of Richard’s jaw in retreat, when his fingers touch scalp too often as they card gently through Richard’s thinning hair, the flesh is too dry, too cold, and Ben feels lost: he’d only ever known a Richard with the heat of the sun in his veins.
He steps backward, eyes wide at the loss when Richard flinches, squints -- his wizened lips downturned with a frown.
“Miles,” Richard moans, his voice hoarse, lost, but light somehow -- there’s a gravity, a weight that isn’t there anymore; a weight that Ben had noticed creeping into his own tone over the decades -- that he had cherished, because it connected them from across the sea.
He is still for an instant that spreads and stretches, fine and tenuous between them, and Ben wants to turn, to find Miles so that Richard can have what he wants, but he can’t walk away from those blinking eyes as they open -- the same color as they’d always been, but different; so different.
Richard’s pupils contract, expand, something hazy lifting first, pervading, and then clearing again in the low light -- Ben is rooted to the spot, his heart pounding hard against his ribs, his breaths heavy as he fights to keep them quiet, controlled.
“Ben?” he asks, and there’s hurt in that voice like Ben’s never known; he can’t help himself, merely does what comes naturally between them -- what Ben can’t help but wonder if Richard even remembers, anymore, as he leans in and sees that Richard’s forgotten how they move, how they fit.
It’s chaste, for them -- soft and slow and tender, Ben doing the giving, the moving against dry, cracking lips, while Richard simply takes; and Ben can tell that the taste of him is dampened, dimmed -- like everything else, it seems -- but what’s left beneath the fog and tang is solid, sure: unchanging as the beat between them -- a thud, a split second before the accompanying beep like a dagger on the monitor behind him, and Ben catches the jump on the screen in his periphery, the peak of a line in the black, and it kills something in him, takes something vital away.
He draws back, slow as death, and there are tears on his cheeks that he’s too proud, too desperate to wipe away.
“Ben,” and it isn’t a question, not this time, as the muscles in Richard’s shoulder visibly relax, as he sinks back into the bedding tucked around him, keeping him comfortable. Ben can’t help the swell of hope at the fact that Richard sounds grateful, happy underneath the strain; that Richard’s voice around his name still wraps the same way.
Silence barely has a chance to settle between them before Richard starts to cough, half-heartedly; the sound rumbles and rattles in his chest as he hacks, and Ben feels useless, miserable -- the only thing he can bring himself to do is reach, to splay fingers against Richard’s clavicle and stroke, soothing, feeling the wrenching and the breathing and the pulse: all so languid, so weak, but still life. Still there.
Richard settles soon enough, but not before Ben hears footsteps approach, linger, and retreat again -- he smiles just a little, just enough, because to know that Richard is taken care of is what matters, now; he’s not selfish enough -- not anymore -- to begrudge the man details like how and by whom, even if it hurts more than he knows how to stand.
“I’m glad you’re not lonely,” Ben whispers, reaching out to cup Richard’s cheek, and he means it; because while there will always be a part of him that belongs to Richard Alpert -- a piece of his soul he’d surrendered to hell that Richard alone had managed to retrieve -- he knows that love isn’t like in the novels, the stories, and his heart’s sore enough without resentment burning through.
The time it takes for Richard to reach up and catch Ben’s hand in his own measures the space between too many breaths, but the rough, warm touch that cradles his own -- it means everything, and Ben draws an unsteady breath as he meets Richard’s eyes; sees the warmth in them he’d always longed for, all bleeding out for him, and no one else.
“I’m sorry,” Richard rasps, “that you have to be alone, now.”
Ben doesn’t know what to say, at first; sucks a breath in sharp through his teeth before he even makes an attempt to reply. “It’s not so bad, really,” he tries to smile, manages a grimace. “I think maybe I always was.” He swallows, hard: “Lonely.”
Richard smiles, shaky, but there’s something timeless in it that soothes Ben’s soul over the pain: “Not always.”
Ben heaves a shivering sort of sigh, so deep it sears; lets his eyes drop closed as relishes to burn, lets it brand into him: the one undying thing that can be salvaged here, between them.
“You don’t belong here,” Ben says suddenly, mournfully, eyes trained against the sheets, so white; against the line of Richard’s body beneath them. “This isn’t how it’s meant to end.”
Because Richard, he’s supposed to die amidst green, upon sand; he’s supposed to burn on a pyre, or be lowered below the horizon with a marker made of sticks and stones. He’s supposed to die a legend, a protector: untouched by the world but forever a part of it, having watched it change and grown and burn like a shepherd over his flock, a father to his wayward sons. A friend. A god.
A lover.
He was never supposed to die.
But Richard, he just smiles again -- sad, knowing, resigned -- fulfilled, maybe; Ben hopes so, as he lets his fingers dance in the wrinkles of Richard’s face, lets himself relearn what’s changed, rediscover what hasn’t. The dip of his upper lip is still sensitive, for the way his breathing changes; the shape of his jaw still strong. His brows are grey, now, approaching white, though his lashes never lightened -- soft, thick lines where the skin thins, wrinkles deep into furrows like embossment, careful secrets traced beneath Ben’s touch. He doesn’t imagine that Richard leans into his exploring hands, and he savors it, the moment. The last moment, far too soon, and there’s the difference, really -- there’s what makes this impossible to bear.
He still thinks about having more time, where Richard’s long since had too much.
He draws back, half-reluctant, but Richard knows; has stood where Ben is, has felt what’s ripping him to pieces inside more times than Ben cares to fathom. His heart breaks a little as he watches Richard’s lips quirk a little, parted around his labored panting, the breaths ragged as time grows short; ever shorter, as Richard’s eyes dim and his lids grow heavy.
“I’m glad,” Richard whispers before sleep takes him again, for however long, and while he doesn’t say what for, Ben thinks he knows what isn’t said.
He watches Richard’s chest rise and fall with that low and ominous rumble, counting the breaths until the space between them starts to scare him with its length; he doesn’t say goodbye, but when he walks away, nods to Miles where he stands between Rooms 730 and 728, waiting to return; he knows he’ll never see them again.
He walks back through the main lobby, checks his tickets for the red-eye back home, and things feel like they should feel, he thinks, even if they don’t quite feel right.
He lets his mind fall back to better days, harder days; let’s himself get lost in the smooth splay of Richard’s skin under the Island sun, the taste of sweat on him, and those ageless eyes, like diamonds: bright and unbreakable, born of blood and ache -- so blissfully unlike the man in that bed.
And Ben, he’s glad, too: because the road, it might be long -- too long -- but it seems as if there’s peace at its end.
He wipes away one last tear, and breathes cold air through the night; a thousand nights.
He guesses it’s something to look forward to.
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Richard/Ben, Richard/Miles
Word Count: 2,425
Summary: The things that get forgotten. For bittersweet325, who requested “Richard and the Modern World” at The lostsquee 2010 Lost Summer Luau. Warning for implied/impending character death. Spoilers through 6.17 - The End.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For bittersweet325: This was desperately strange for me to write, and has a very different feel than what I’d planned to do, and even from what I usually write in general. Upon seeing your prompt, I knew I wanted to write Ben/Richard for you. And assuming that Ben takes the “Richard” post on the Island, it seems to me he’ll be getting some shore leave every so often, right? So, with that in mind, I’d intended for a little something more lighthearted, but instead, it came out as something rather different -- both sparse and ANGSTY with capital letters, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Plus it ended up involving decidedly more Ben and Miles than your prompt asked for, for which I apologize.
Indelible
He doesn’t realize how much he’d forgotten about the world until he returns to it.
He forgets, for a moment, whether he likes regular or decaf when the stewardess asks him; his legs are shaky on the segue when he disembarks. He takes a cab from the terminal, because driving seems foreign, and he has to think twice before he can properly count his change as they pull up on the curb: he wonders if this is how it is for everyone -- wonders just how many came before, like him.
As he walks on concrete -- so different from soil, from sand, he sifts through the scattered moments that had led to this one: watching shadows play in descent from the Lighthouse, sad eyes and a strong hand on his arm, limp curls dangling against the rainy season -- you’re needed, he’d said, and Ben hadn’t questioned, hadn’t thought twice. He steps through the automatic doors with purpose, with intent, and he recalls, however briefly, a time when he’d thought that he knew things, understood things. Thought he had power, somehow, even when he was powerless.
Here, though, and now: white walls, white floors, scuff marks from sneakers and gurney wheels, stains in the tiling that draw bile to the back of his throat -- here, there is no power. Not for him.
He breathes in deep, lets harsh reality and antiseptics dull his senses as he approaches the nurse at the desk, her seafoam scrubs too bright, too much.
He lets his eyes slide closed before he asks.
“I’m looking for a patient,” and his voice is too high -- strained and cracking on the consonants; he clears it before he says the name he’d sworn never to say again:
“Richard Alpert.”
_______________________________
Room 734 at St. Sebastian’s is small, would be cramped if there had been an occupant in the far bed near the window, but there’s only one name on the placard at the door; something like fear seizes in Ben’s chest when he sees it, stark letters spelling out the patient’s identity -- truth like poison in his veins. When he enters, he lingers in the doorway; immediately takes in the man in the bed, the lines and leads wiring him to an array of machines at either side -- it takes longer for him to reconcile the person in front of him as the man he used to know, used to be with; used to...
He can only take so much of the pasty skin, the wrinkles, the bruises of time and wear beneath eyes that had weathered everything, anything; and so he looks away, gaze trailing along the privacy curtain where it’s drawn back, a half-eaten meal on a tray, too far from the bed to be Richard’s -- and it’s then that he sees the person in the chair, slumped low. In truth, he’s not entirely surprised to see the grey-haired head of Miles Straume bowed, almost reverently, over Richard’s resting form.
Ben knows a lot about Miles, trivial details he hasn’t forgotten: what size shoe he wears, that he isn’t sensitive to poison ivy, that he broke his arm at the age of thirteen and that absolutely hates chicken -- prefers fish in his tacos. Ben also knows that Miles Straume can be bought if the price is right, and that he suffers a barbeque wing once in a while because Mr. Cluck’s reminds him of a friend. He remembers Mrs. Chang letting him hold her newborn baby, remembers her proud, if tired, smile as he’d stared at her, terrified, fiddling with his glasses before cradling the swaddled little person against his chest -- he knows the Miles’ grip is strong, from the first time his tiny finger had encircled Ben’s own as a boy, and that his eyes are bright, and he knows that death is everywhere, and that Miles is the one who has to feel it like his own.
Feel this, like his own.
But for all it: seeing him here, now, his hands cupped carefully around Richard’s, thumb stroking at his wrist, mindful of the pulse oximeter clipped against his finger -- he knows that Miles Straume can love, and it’s a blessing, a relief; it’s all he needs to know.
He steps in without knocking, or announcing himself; waits until Miles senses the shift of his presence and turns his gaze. Recognition dawns in his eyes between blinks, the crow’s-feet at the corners deepening, and Ben wonders at just how long, exactly, he’s been gone.
Miles doesn’t speak, simply brings Richard’s hands to his mouth and presses his lips to the skin stretched taunt across the knuckles -- spotted with age and loose against the bone -- before he stands, leaves them.
Ben takes one step, and then another; an eternity before Richard is close enough to touch -- the urge is strong, even now, but Ben resists; still hopes that this is a nightmare, though he hasn’t dreamed in far too long.
He opens his mouth, closes it, tries to speak again for the sob in his throat: “I understand, now,” he manages, a teetering wisp of words, and he can’t help reach out, just letting his palm lie flat against the thin, starched bedclothes, his fingertips a breath from Richard’s own. “What it was like for you.” Why Richard had never been able to give Ben what he’d wanted, what he’d needed; why Richard hadn’t been able to give Ben the things -- everything -- that Ben had tried so desperately to give to him.
He only stares at their hands when he murmurs the hardest words he knows.
“I’m sorry.” The words themselves sound shattered; broken.
“This... this isn’t how it was supposed to be,” he stumbles, because on the Island, after everything, things had started to make sense again; and this -- this makes no sense. He bends a little, catches a strand or two of Richard’s fine, peppered hair against his thumb. “Not for you.”
“I hope that you were happy,” Ben tells him, breath against his ear, but when his lip catches the skin of Richard’s jaw in retreat, when his fingers touch scalp too often as they card gently through Richard’s thinning hair, the flesh is too dry, too cold, and Ben feels lost: he’d only ever known a Richard with the heat of the sun in his veins.
He steps backward, eyes wide at the loss when Richard flinches, squints -- his wizened lips downturned with a frown.
“Miles,” Richard moans, his voice hoarse, lost, but light somehow -- there’s a gravity, a weight that isn’t there anymore; a weight that Ben had noticed creeping into his own tone over the decades -- that he had cherished, because it connected them from across the sea.
He is still for an instant that spreads and stretches, fine and tenuous between them, and Ben wants to turn, to find Miles so that Richard can have what he wants, but he can’t walk away from those blinking eyes as they open -- the same color as they’d always been, but different; so different.
Richard’s pupils contract, expand, something hazy lifting first, pervading, and then clearing again in the low light -- Ben is rooted to the spot, his heart pounding hard against his ribs, his breaths heavy as he fights to keep them quiet, controlled.
“Ben?” he asks, and there’s hurt in that voice like Ben’s never known; he can’t help himself, merely does what comes naturally between them -- what Ben can’t help but wonder if Richard even remembers, anymore, as he leans in and sees that Richard’s forgotten how they move, how they fit.
It’s chaste, for them -- soft and slow and tender, Ben doing the giving, the moving against dry, cracking lips, while Richard simply takes; and Ben can tell that the taste of him is dampened, dimmed -- like everything else, it seems -- but what’s left beneath the fog and tang is solid, sure: unchanging as the beat between them -- a thud, a split second before the accompanying beep like a dagger on the monitor behind him, and Ben catches the jump on the screen in his periphery, the peak of a line in the black, and it kills something in him, takes something vital away.
He draws back, slow as death, and there are tears on his cheeks that he’s too proud, too desperate to wipe away.
“Ben,” and it isn’t a question, not this time, as the muscles in Richard’s shoulder visibly relax, as he sinks back into the bedding tucked around him, keeping him comfortable. Ben can’t help the swell of hope at the fact that Richard sounds grateful, happy underneath the strain; that Richard’s voice around his name still wraps the same way.
Silence barely has a chance to settle between them before Richard starts to cough, half-heartedly; the sound rumbles and rattles in his chest as he hacks, and Ben feels useless, miserable -- the only thing he can bring himself to do is reach, to splay fingers against Richard’s clavicle and stroke, soothing, feeling the wrenching and the breathing and the pulse: all so languid, so weak, but still life. Still there.
Richard settles soon enough, but not before Ben hears footsteps approach, linger, and retreat again -- he smiles just a little, just enough, because to know that Richard is taken care of is what matters, now; he’s not selfish enough -- not anymore -- to begrudge the man details like how and by whom, even if it hurts more than he knows how to stand.
“I’m glad you’re not lonely,” Ben whispers, reaching out to cup Richard’s cheek, and he means it; because while there will always be a part of him that belongs to Richard Alpert -- a piece of his soul he’d surrendered to hell that Richard alone had managed to retrieve -- he knows that love isn’t like in the novels, the stories, and his heart’s sore enough without resentment burning through.
The time it takes for Richard to reach up and catch Ben’s hand in his own measures the space between too many breaths, but the rough, warm touch that cradles his own -- it means everything, and Ben draws an unsteady breath as he meets Richard’s eyes; sees the warmth in them he’d always longed for, all bleeding out for him, and no one else.
“I’m sorry,” Richard rasps, “that you have to be alone, now.”
Ben doesn’t know what to say, at first; sucks a breath in sharp through his teeth before he even makes an attempt to reply. “It’s not so bad, really,” he tries to smile, manages a grimace. “I think maybe I always was.” He swallows, hard: “Lonely.”
Richard smiles, shaky, but there’s something timeless in it that soothes Ben’s soul over the pain: “Not always.”
Ben heaves a shivering sort of sigh, so deep it sears; lets his eyes drop closed as relishes to burn, lets it brand into him: the one undying thing that can be salvaged here, between them.
“You don’t belong here,” Ben says suddenly, mournfully, eyes trained against the sheets, so white; against the line of Richard’s body beneath them. “This isn’t how it’s meant to end.”
Because Richard, he’s supposed to die amidst green, upon sand; he’s supposed to burn on a pyre, or be lowered below the horizon with a marker made of sticks and stones. He’s supposed to die a legend, a protector: untouched by the world but forever a part of it, having watched it change and grown and burn like a shepherd over his flock, a father to his wayward sons. A friend. A god.
A lover.
He was never supposed to die.
But Richard, he just smiles again -- sad, knowing, resigned -- fulfilled, maybe; Ben hopes so, as he lets his fingers dance in the wrinkles of Richard’s face, lets himself relearn what’s changed, rediscover what hasn’t. The dip of his upper lip is still sensitive, for the way his breathing changes; the shape of his jaw still strong. His brows are grey, now, approaching white, though his lashes never lightened -- soft, thick lines where the skin thins, wrinkles deep into furrows like embossment, careful secrets traced beneath Ben’s touch. He doesn’t imagine that Richard leans into his exploring hands, and he savors it, the moment. The last moment, far too soon, and there’s the difference, really -- there’s what makes this impossible to bear.
He still thinks about having more time, where Richard’s long since had too much.
He draws back, half-reluctant, but Richard knows; has stood where Ben is, has felt what’s ripping him to pieces inside more times than Ben cares to fathom. His heart breaks a little as he watches Richard’s lips quirk a little, parted around his labored panting, the breaths ragged as time grows short; ever shorter, as Richard’s eyes dim and his lids grow heavy.
“I’m glad,” Richard whispers before sleep takes him again, for however long, and while he doesn’t say what for, Ben thinks he knows what isn’t said.
He watches Richard’s chest rise and fall with that low and ominous rumble, counting the breaths until the space between them starts to scare him with its length; he doesn’t say goodbye, but when he walks away, nods to Miles where he stands between Rooms 730 and 728, waiting to return; he knows he’ll never see them again.
He walks back through the main lobby, checks his tickets for the red-eye back home, and things feel like they should feel, he thinks, even if they don’t quite feel right.
He lets his mind fall back to better days, harder days; let’s himself get lost in the smooth splay of Richard’s skin under the Island sun, the taste of sweat on him, and those ageless eyes, like diamonds: bright and unbreakable, born of blood and ache -- so blissfully unlike the man in that bed.
And Ben, he’s glad, too: because the road, it might be long -- too long -- but it seems as if there’s peace at its end.
He wipes away one last tear, and breathes cold air through the night; a thousand nights.
He guesses it’s something to look forward to.