📸 { beep boop 💕 }

I see your face every time I dream || Accepting

{{His maddah say he nevah smile....but he does, for me... he does for me.}}

{{Give him alla world, 'f aks...but he nevah does. So I'll give him alla me, an' hope dat's enough.}}

Have a beach day with, watch the sunrise with, have dinner at a fancy restaurant with: Ben, Chris, Peter Parker

Three of a Kind || Accepting {{ tagging @kylo-wrecked and @tangleweave for reasons}}

The question makes her laugh and this is one of those rare few that show her teeth and wrinkles her nose. A real smile that doesn't have any strings trying to tie it shut. "Oh, see? I really expected you to go hard on me wi' dis one, mebbe only for me to do whole 'Never go in against a Sicilian when deat' is on da line!' scene." Each of her friends come up in the forefront of her mind. "Beach day is absolutely Petah. I no can remembah las' time he actually took time for himself an' set down alla his responsibilities in favour of have some fun. But I will also hafta require his body-weight in sunscreen cause he is surprisingly pale under his...tee-shirts an' stuff." She runs fingers through her hair. "How many times have we spent whole night talkin' an' tradin' comics, or listenin' t' music until wee hours of da morning before? We got our sunrise blanket, you bring da donuts or cinnamon rolls, an' I bring da coffee. We got our spot on da mountain wi' dat really great view. So why risk a good kine when ours is already perfect? Sunrise wi' you." Her face softens a little as she thinks of the third name. Ben's been going through a bit of a rough time lately. Its unusual for him to put off plans or text her an hour after they're supposed to meet up so she knows she shouldn't wait for him. "An' while I know he hates da kine, I'd make Ben do fancy grindz. If we're in a restaurant li'dat...is because his mom or da Admiral are makin' us do it for da 'optics', you know...whole situation dat tastes a lot like poison to us. An' if we get to pick da restaurant, den he an' I already got escape routes an' hide-outs mapped out in our heads from years of experience."

“I’m sorry I don’t fit. That’s my bad. Completely my bad. As penance, I offer you my body to do whatever you want with for fifteen minutes.” { terrible Sinday “pick up lines” with Sen!Son }

And Way Down We Go || Accepting

"What in da world, even!" Beth's make up was set. Her hair ~every lush dark wave~ professionally styled to look as pretty as possible. And all of it nearly gets destroyed by her hand coming up and smearing the nude lip look, but instead her fingers pinch the bridge of her nose as she tilts her head back to laugh. Not the polite little thing reserved for people like his mother, like the Admiral, like journalists. Not the tinkling of wind chimes or little bells that is given to their friends. Not the fangy-laugh, the eye-and-nose crinkling one she reserves for him when he's in a playful mood, like now. No this one is full throated but new. Unreserved by anything. It was the dress that did it. A few hundred thousand dollars worth of Swarovski crystals, chiffon and silk taffeta, all custom sewn to fit her size-0 frame. Tightly. She is impressed he got in on all the way up one thigh. His feet though? Not even close to getting into matching silk and platinum stiletto heels, size five.

When she finally has herself mostly under control, so long as she doesn't look anywhere but at his face, her voice is breathless and her chest heaves beneath her strapless slip. "Okay, so...firs' I need you to very carefully slip dat off, oddahwise I am likely gonna be a floater in da Eas'Rivah tomorrow an' you'll feel so guilty hearin' 4 New York announce beautiful heiress slain. Second...if ya really t'ink it only gonna take me fifteen minutes t' do t' you wha' I wan...you have no grasp on reality but I can make somet'ing work. Jus' off wi' ya da boxer-briefs...aftah da dress." A pause, a calculating look. "Actually, no. First dress. Still careful-careful. Den...I wan you to be waitin' outside da hotel at exactly 'leven-twenty. I don' care wha' ya drive, or Uber or Cab or beg, borrow, steal. If you prefer, once I am in da car I can drive. And tonight? We go anywhere but here. And stay wi' me. Jus' me an' you. How 'bout it?" Another pause. Thirteen minutes, five seconds. "Or...let's fly to Vegas. Marry me. Time it takes you f' decide doesn't count against my Twelve minutes, fifty-two seconds."

@kylo-wrecked {{xx}}

Ben would not have been out of place of the drawing rooms of the Romantics, wan of skin though towering in stature, a certain gloom casting a pall over his innate beauty and throwing his intellect into sharper relief. She swears she might see sparks of life, of happiness, reflected in his eyes or she could just be imagining what she wants to see. His tranquillity, his joy are things she considers more important than anything else. She recognises worry though when she sees it. Both etched into him ~curse of bones growing too quickly, too awkwardly to make the man comfortable~ and in the world around him. She saw the furtive glance at the cars parked practically half on the sidewalk already. And so the little gremlin that she is insists on powdery white fun where it can be had, daring him to react out of spite or at least impish temperament. He already knows that New York was the first time she'd ever experienced snow in her life ~it doesn't fall on O'ahu~ and that the first time it happens each winter is like magick to her. She plans on dragging Ben to go ice-skating. Does he know how? They'll stop at vendor shops along the way; cocoa, real chestnuts roasted and served steaming in newspaper cones, maybe end the day in front of her fire place. "Not f' you bein' ridiculously tall. Is f' hoardin' snowflake before it has a chance to reach ground." She makes no sense and that's just fine. She laughs and it's all silver bells and fairy-floss. He kisses her on the curb. In sight of everyone and their grandmother shovelling walkways for all the good it will do. Not even an ounce ashamed of her and her glossy shark-patterned galoshes. She keeps him there with her own mittened hands. She can't tell him why her heart suddenly hurts, or how it does so in a good way, the kind of way that can't be pantsed to put on tears. She pulls her face away only so that her spiky damp lashes brush against his chin. "You're a very silly man," she tells him. AndIloveyou.

🥂💋 { new year’s kiss, dealer’s choice on verse }

Champagne Kisses || Accepting

Inside her palatial apartment friends and strangers alike drop in and out. Her door remains unlocked and the entire neighbourhood seems intent on filing through. They pick and choose from tables laden with traditional New Year's food from various cultures, including her own, and a high-end bar's monthly stock of alcohol; champagne, wine, cocktails. The music is just loud enough to make every conversation private, to make every dance feel connected to the universal heartbeat. And for all of the celebration and the feasting, different shades of general debauchery, Beth chooses to barricade herself in her room. French doors with sound-dampening glass are closed to the small balcony, though the sheer curtains do nothing to drown out the light from fireworks, from traffic, even the crowd in Time's Square waiting for the ball to drop can be heard all the way out here. She almost regrets spending the New Year in the city. But if she hadn't, it wouldn't be likely that Ben would have been able to be at her chaotic soiree. She turns from her spot at her vanity, and tips her champagne flute toward him. "Dunno what kind of year we can wish for, good or bad or mix of bo'd, but I do know dat wha'evah comes, I wanna share it wi' you." Her whole face twists for a moment and in the candle light, it's hard to tell if it's a frown or a sheltered smile. "Dat sounds really lame, I know, but is true." She takes a sip and puts the delicately stemmed glass down beside the various little jars on the table. Behind her the mirror is draped with scarves, necklaces, photos. No reflection could squeeze itself around all of it. She slips out of the chair and pads her way over, climbing first onto the bed, and then onto Ben. Her knees pin his hips and she gathers his wrists in her hands, pressing them above his head. Her lips hover just over his own, a kiss prolonged only by breath. Between each word, she slowly rolls against him. Rising and falling like waves. "If ya lucky wi' a kiss a' midnight….wha' happen if you start it…?"

Ben spends the fifteen minutes Beth takes coming downstairs tracing a giant cartoon cat in the snow with his boots, with a swollen, misshapen smile, and a dripping slush eye. Later, in her messy sheets, messied by Ben and a little by her, Ben traces spirals around Beth's belly button with a close-cut nail. Gazing at her is another dopey cat in a man's shape. "Look at you," he says, also dopily. "I'm going to eat you someday."

She almost mumbles something sleepily under her breath about how he's already done that but she reels it back in at the last minute. She's born witness to a million different expressions that come across his face; sometimes sad, sometimes full of stifled rage, often a bittersweet regret or sorrow. Ben rarely allows himself to be silly, to be sweet and to be playful, even when he thinks he is. It started with the cat that could only be seen in its truest majesty from her kitchen fire-escape where she likes to sun herself on blistering summer afternoons until the smell of the city drives her back inside. Beyond the snow-cat's girth and general air of fluffiness it bears no real resemblance to her own feline ~who doesn't watch them out of disdain by perching atop her armoire where she keeps her extra linens and quilts, and that one little black lace affair that she knows Ben likes because of the pattern it leaves on her skin~ but she can hardly expect perfection of that sort on the street surface. It made her smile and when she tried to thank him he shushed her with a conveniently cute brush of his lips across her forehead. It did nothing to ruin their walk to the subway for one of those boring parties where she knows no-one and can't really keep up with the conversation. It was a work thing and the invitation was something about preventing him from hanging himself in the washroom and therefore making him have to spend eternity haunting Morningside Heights. The least she could do was help him make it to Riverside Park where he could at least entertain conversations with the hadrosaur. How could a girl refuse. Even with it being dark and so cold her bones ache.

Now though, she's biting back the urge to squirm. To keep her ticklishness to herself. Maybe in a minute she'll draw that very same hand a little lower and to the right, let him play with the sub-dermal piercings that she's never explained beyond it being the result of a drunken escapade with a friend, who insisted on the number ~three~ and the stone ~aquamarine~ and she'd agreed without a second thought. She glances up at him and there's no one in the world who can't tell that she is stupidly in love with Ben. She walks her fingertips slowly up his forearm, following the tracery of his veins beneath his skin then cutting across to the plateau of his clavicles. Up his throat and there to settle around his jaw. Her grip tightens as she uses it to pull herself up just that much closer. Her lips taste like his skin as she whispers across his mouth. "Didn' peg you quite like one cannibal, kuu mahina. How you start? Softer bits or tougher ones? Piece at a time or whole?" She traces the seam between his lips and then kisses him gently.

•3• { for any ben }

My Songs Know What You Did || Accepting Now that I've lost everything to you And you bring me to my knees This will all fall down Where you go, I will follow Close the door on a short night

She writes it in black permanent marker. Small sweeping strokes, half cursive half print. When she's finished, she presses ruby red painted lips to the very pale skin with even paler lines near the small of his back as a signature. She takes so much care not to wake him before she slides restlessly out from between the sheets. Takes a moment more to admire both her poetry and the beauty of him sleeping, limbs akimbo, dark hair pressed against his pillow. Then she turns and pads her way toward the window to look out on the wet cityscape. To press her hands against the chilly damp glass. She sees the spectral reflection of herself in his shirt, rumpled and too long for her body. She leaves her mark behind when she finally shivers with cold, and makes her way to the couch, where she left her bag earlier, when she suggested he get some rest. She'd kept him company, listening to the steady stream of his murmurs until they turned into deep breaths. And now she's on his couch, under a throw blanket, with a thermos of tea. The book she was in the middle of reading, and her glasses perched on the end of her nose. Not everyone sleeps the same way.

@kylo-wrecked​

Beth knew all about press junkets and she knew that in an era of required transparency, that people like the Admiral, like Senator Organa-Solo were almost required to invite the reporters into their homes and that everything had to be sanitised to within an inch of its life. What made it difficult wasn’t the fact that it was being broadcast across multiple channels or even that Ben would have to be seen on screen. It was how he came across.  So polished, so pristine in his suit standing beside his attache {more like being on a trainer’s leash} with his mother’s aide greeting the press. His mother’s home was beautiful as of course it had to be. Beth almost smiled at the piano tucked away behind the sofa, almost exactly in the same place the one in her apartment was. She had to wonder if that was some kind of political checkbox somewhere. Appointed to office? Get a baby Grand! Monochrome tree. How he barely spoke. How she hadn’t seen him since the Gala. Beth looks around her own apartment. Everything warm and bright. All of it aglow. Stockings on the mantle. One for him, one for herself. Even empty as it is, it still feels so much more inviting, so much more welcoming than his mother’s home. She tells herself she won’t call. She tells her not to pick up her phone. She tells herself a lot of things.  She tells Ben “....Uhm. Mele Kalikimaka.” She doesn’t know what to expect when the doorbell rings, but it’s certainly not Ben. Not roses either.

@kylo-wrecked  {{XX}}

Though she cannot see his face, she can vividly imagine the lack of animation to it. It is often that the only life that can be found is in the depths of his atramentous gaze. As if the whole of everything could be sucked down into it if he wanted it to be. And yet, he settles for her. Ben has always been like that. Ben also deserves so much more.

He’s too quick to agree and isn’t taking her seriously, because of course he wouldn’t. She counts every counter-argument lodged in the whorls of his fingertips against sun warmed skin. She also feels when the words are finally mined from somewhere inside that she can never seem to reach.

He looks down and she looks up. Ends up crashing like very soft, very gently moving tectonic plates and she leaves a soft kiss as an apology before she’s moving away, taking some of the sheets with her to cover her embarrassment.  “Den ya go put Elissabat back onna shelf, an’ follow ya bliss. Or ya know. Take out a restrainin’ order, or somet’in.”

She looks back over her shoulder at him when she reaches the edge of the bed. “But promise me, no maddah what...don’t be so alone dat ya lose yaself.”

@kylo-wrecked​ 

“You nevah should leave ya window unlock,” she says. She says a lot of things but this very moment she’s admitting to have; a: broken into his apartment, b: done so with premeditation, c: as evidenced that she brought drinks with her, d: and for a reason. What exactly that reason is doesn’t become evident at first. She is simply waiting for him to soak up her presence on his kitchen counter. In the shirt he lost six months ago.

She moves. Reaches one foot until her toes, bare and polished and the one bearing that silver little ring, touch the floor with all of her feline grace. Once she makes solid contact the rest of her hops down. A leap of faith with some assurances. And that is really how you could describe her in any situation.

She leaves the glass behind but grabs the bottle. Pads her way to close the short distance between them. Takes hold of his wrist with the unoccupied set of fingers. She cranes her neck and looks up at him from somewhere below the mid of his chest. There’s a whole foot and some of uncharted territory here.  And while her ‘advice’ might have been a little flippant, the look on her face isn’t. There’s shades of concern. There’s pitfalls he could fall forever into that have no clear and defined edges. She sums it all up in one more sentence. “Ya nevah been sleeping. C’mon.”

With a soft sigh, she leads him not toward his bedroom, but his couch.

@kylo-wrecked   {{XX}}

“Not gross, sticky. Big difference. Huuuuuge.”

Her own laugh echoes shyly around the edges of his, just as quiet as the rest of her tends to be. There isn’t an ounce of remorse hidden away anywhere as she looks down affectionately.

A thousand innocent souls died to make her a real girl.

Right before her brows knit and her lips purse momentarily.  Offence squirms through her teeth. “Excuse you, I am a’leas’ t’ree of da cutest people you know. Is like...is like I don’ even know who ya are any more.” Mock disgust as she unhands him and throws hers up to wave airily.

The grin that gives everything she said proof of fabrication freezes a moment when he chases the lingering candy-sweet off his lips, and she swallows, mouth slightly parted before she returns to her senses and shivers over him.

She meets that look head on and generations of instinct ignites in her veins, burning like barium, lithium salts, and potassium nitrate. She absolutely intends to tell him it’s not her fault that she mistook him for a custom longboard. That he’s an easy target. She intends to tell him a lot of things but they don’t quite make it out of her, do they?

Maybe they got lost between that look on his face and the graceful length of his throat.

She has no choice but to reclaim them. Very gently, her teeth graze the line of his carotid artery. Soft. Damp. Warm breath.

Totally friendly. Totally platonic. Totally.