versusnurture | seventh ♢ private + spam

private, thursday } ben

[She wasn't lying or exaggerating or being overdramatic: she meant what she said. To Ben, and to everyone. She needed time. She did understand, does understand, the differences between there and here. She knows that Ben is on her side.]

[It's just that she needed time to remember the Ben who came before the one who let other people hurt her, the Ben who is kind and doesn't like being called a good person. She remembers him now. And, true to her word, she gets in touch.]

[The video clicks on to reveal her on her bed. Everything is tidied now, a good indication that she is at least stable, if not necessarily stable in a good place. She's holding the teddy bear he gave her, making it kick its little feet.]

I bet you've never carved a pumpkin before.

spam, saturday } nathan

[Abigail doesn't realize she's affected. Not yet. After this, she's going to go hole up in her room and pretend she's invisible until the urge to be super super nice goes away. But for the moment, she's going to do her job.]

[Which, right now, means re-organizing everything that exists in the art room. All the paintbrushes go in cups by order of size. She finds herself thinking fondly and only fondly of Hannibal, for the first time in a month, of the way he keeps things perfectly tidy, and wonders if he would be proud of the work that she's doing here. The oddness of that thought doesn't occur to her.]

[Whenever Nathan shows up for his shift, or she happens to notice him, she gives him one of her brightest and most genuine smiles, the kind she ordinarily saves for the known-as-damaged, for Harvey or Ben or Arkin. For Elena.]

Hi.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Ben accepts the corrections to his phrasing with directionless attentiveness, making note of it for the future. It will, he thinks, come up again - the distinction between normal, common, and expected.

Put that way, he understands exactly why there is such a difference.]

What are your designs of choice for such a project? [It doesn't take him long to close the initial cut, nor to set the knife down and carefully lever the lid off using the stem. He's distracted for a moment, peering inside, startled by the scatter of seeds strung together in flesh webbing. He pauses, eyes tracing everything he can see, before he sets it down carefully and reaches to touch the bits of pulp sticking to the underside of the piece he pulled off: this is why the bucket, he understands immediately, and glances up at her.]

[She's silent for a moment, leaning forward on her hands a little to watch Ben pry the lid off. He's so careful, as though his hands are likely to break every little thing they touch, and maybe they are. Maybe that's how he manages gentleness so often, through caution.]

[When he looks inside, he seems surprised and then blooms with understanding. It makes her grin, and she peers inside, too, even though she knows what's in there, maybe getting a little too close in his personal space but too excited to register it.]

Gross, right? Sticky. But like I said, the seeds are good. And pie.

[She backs up at the question, frowning and trying to remember.]

I . . . used to make faces in the pumpkins. Scary ones or mean ones. My mom always made them smiling, but I thought that was dumb. You're supposed to be scared on Hallowe'en.

[A small, bittersweet smile.]

Maybe she was right, I don't know. I think I might just . . . make designs this time. Something pretty for the light to show through.

Perhaps I'll ask Riddick if he would make something with them, or Ned once he takes up baking again. Or both.

[Ben doesn't really react to her lean, except that he waits until she's backed off again to move himself. Now that he can see the interior of the pumpkin, several of the items she requested make a lot more sense and he's moving: he strips off his field jacket to keep the long sleeves clean, twisting to hang it on the back of a chair instead. Down to his t-shirt and BDU pants, he glances over at her as she speaks.]

I don't understand why anyone would choose to be scared. [A statement of fact, not any kind of judgment. Simple, honest. He looks at the pumpkin in front of him even as he reaches to move the bucket, begins to spread out a towel under the one he's already cut into. Then he picks up the knife again and reaches for the second one, more confident this time but no less careful.]

Unless it is because of the certainty of feeling safe despite it. Of knowing whatever caused the fear is not a viable threat. I think I would like to make a design as well.

[One of the things Abigail doesn't always realize she appreciates about Ben is the way he helps her deconstruct the weird things that people do from the outside. She could never have done that without him. He's right, too - it's weird. Why choose to be scared? Being scared is awful.]

I think that has to be right. Unless you know nothing can hurt you, being scared is - it's the worst thing.

[She pulls the pumpkin he already opened up towards herself and starts tugging out the insides, dumping them in the bucket. Besides a curious look sideways at Ben, she focuses most of her attention on feeling the cold eeriness of the inside of the gourd, the way it squishes between her fingers.]

[It's fun. She's having fun.]

What design are you going to make?

I know.

[Also simple, honest, his voice gentle in a way he normally isn't. They both know down to their core that being scared is the worst thing. Being powerless and choiceless. Ben doesn't stop, now, to acknowledge it more than that on either end, letting it stand for them both. His eyes never leave the work of his hands.

Soon he's setting down the second lid beside the first and, gazing sidelong at Abigail a moment after her own glance, watching what she's doing. He picks up the other spoon he brought and begins mimicking her, careful at first, then with more confidence.

He is learning. Ben likes to learn.

Constellations. [He states it definitively enough, but then there's a knife-quick glance up as if to check if that's right, if it's okay. He lifts his head then from his work, and leans to look more closely at hers.] What is the goal of the next step?

[At the warmth in his voice, Abigail ducks her head and smiles. She moves a little closer to him, too, not enough to make him uncomfortable; it's just that she wants to feel the solid protectiveness of him close by, the attention of his posture, the attentiveness of his gaze. She missed him so much. It hurt.]

Constellations. [She says this with some wonder: it's an excellent idea, and she's never considered it. But his question confuses her, and she looks up at him for clarification.]

The carving, you mean?

[Ben lets her come closer without protest; he's okay with proximity without expectation. It's only when he feels like he doesn't understand what it means, or that it might mean something different to someone else than it does to him, that he becomes anxious. He missed her as well, even if he was confident he would not lose her completely. Waiting was hard, not the least because he has spent so much of his life waiting for others to come back to him.]

No. [He holds up the strings of pumpkin guts, trailing off the end of the spoon and over his knuckles.] How much do we remove? What is ideal?

Oh.

[She grins at him. He looks silly, just holding the pumpkin's soft parts like that. Like a friend, but better than a friend. A friend who knows all your awful secrets and holds them in the warmth of his hands with no fear, no flinching.]

As much as possible. The more that stays in, the more quickly it goes bad. And you want it to last a while, so you can look at it for longer.

Acknowledged.

[He feels awkward just sitting there, but she's smiling at him, happy, and that makes him happy too.

He smiles back by dropping his eyes away, turning his head slightly, glancing back up. Away again to his task. Two spoonfuls more of seeds and innards make it into the bowl beside his knee, then he looks up again from craning his neck so he can see better down inside.]

Did you have somewhere in mind to display them?

[She is almost done scooping her own out by now, working more efficiently than him because she's used to this task, able to easily catch up. His question is a good one, and one which she hadn't really considered before now; she just wanted the doing of it, but now that she thinks about it, they ought to be displayed. They're going to be perfect and beautiful, after all. Obviously.]

Maybe the art room? If that's okay. I would say the CES but they might disappear, and someone might accidentally kick them off the deck into space. Like a soccer ball.

[Soccer gourd. These are serious concerns.]

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