Ben looks at him. He’s messy, his eyebrows all shagged up and his eyes red. There are splotches on his neck, which Ben thinks for one horrible moment are hickeys, and if they were—but then he realizes it’s just the mottled flush Xander gets when he’s under stress.
“You can’t make it up to me,” Ben says. It’s the plain truth.
“But you have to let me try. Please.”
“I don’t have to let you do anything, Xander. In fact, I think I’ve let you do more than enough. You always get your own way, and I always give in to whatever you want, but this time, no. This time I’m done. I found my limit with you.”
“But I’m going to therapy and—”
“Xander, I don’t care. Okay? I don’t care what you’re doing. I don’t want to know what amazing self-insights you’ve come to. You’ve worn me out.”
“But that’s why I stayed away so long. Because I know you need time to get over things, you’re not like me, you need more time—”
Ben says coldly: “There is not enough time in the world for me to get over what you said that night. And if you think I’m going to believe you’ve been ignoring me for months for my own good, wow, you must be out of your mind.”
“Of course there were other reasons,” Xander says quietly. “I didn’t know what to say, how to talk to you about it. I was completely ashamed of myself. I still am. Because I know now, I get it, you weren’t making fun of me, and I am sorry—” He breaks off and looks at Ben, but Ben still can’t look at him. “I know I fucked up. I know that I’m fucked up.” He’s pleading now, Ben realizes with satisfaction. “But maybe if I can really understand why I do the things I do—why are you laughing?”
Ben can’t help himself. It’s bitter, spiteful laughter, and he’s pleased to see Xander look mortified. “You know what? Your sadistic tendencies are the least of your problems.” Xander goes quiet and still, and Ben keeps spitting out words. “You’re selfish and stubborn. Arrogant. Inflexible. You can’t keep a relationship together because you’re an asshole, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the way you like to fuck. You’re just a goddamn mess.”
Xander is clutching at the sofa seat, his knuckles white. “Thank you for the criticism,” he says, and Ben thinks he’s being sarcastic until he looks at his face. “My therapist suggested that this week, instead of brushing off criticisms, I should say thank you and think about it for a while.”
I don’t care, Ben wants to say, but he’s curious. He makes sure his tone is cynical enough before asking, “And how’s that working out for you?”
“It’s not exactly pleasant,” Xander admits with a brief, pained smile. “If I’d realized I was going to end up here, I might have put it off for another week.”
“What are you doing here?” Ben asks. “I mean, in LA?”
Xander rubs hand over his short hair and looks embarrassed. “I came to see you. I did stay away because I thought you would want me to, but I couldn’t do it anymore—you never called so I…” He trails off at the sight of Ben’s incredulous face. “Okay, I fucked that one up too. I get that now. I should have tried to talk to you before now. I didn’t handle things well and I regret it, more that I can say. My therapist said…he said it might be a good thing, if I tried to talk to you. Apologize. But it doesn’t seem like a good thing so far.”
“Did your therapist also tell you to get wasted before you came over?”
“No,” Xander groans. “I thought that one up all by myself.”
Ben tips his head back to look at the ceiling. He can’t think about Xander, so he thinks about his apartment instead. He likes his apartment. It’s anchored him for many years, but he’s been thinking lately that maybe he should buy a place, now that he has money. Buy a house. Make a home. Be a grown-up.
“You left me,” he says to the white expanse above him. “You didn’t call me, you didn’t email. You continued on with your life, going out to parties and working and seeing friends. You built your fame up like a wall. You let everyone else think that I was the one who broke it off. The way you did that, all of it, was genuinely cruel, Xander. That was a surprise to me, because I really didn’t think you had that in you. I guess I know better now, right?”
And I need to buy a new sofa. And a new bed. It’s time to sort out my shit.
He still can’t look at Xander, but his neck is getting sore, so he looks to the side, at the TV instead. He can see Xander reflected in it, still and slumped.
“I would do anything in the whole world to take it back,” Xander says, his voice hoarse. “You could—you could cut me again, if that would help.”
“It wouldn’t help.”
“You could do something else. Whatever you want. I mean it—I would do anything if we could fix this.”
Ben studies the coffee table next. He’s had it since Berkeley, inherited from a friend of a friend who was moving out and didn’t have room for it in his new place. It’s covered in marks: rings from too-hot coffee cups and black cigarette burns and gouges in the wood. “I don’t want to do anything to you.”
Ben remains virtually scar-free despite the cuts and burns and bites. Xander’s aftercare has always been excellent. But in this moment, it feels like the coffee table is Ben’s modern version of Dorian Gray’s portrait. I should put it out of its misery. Maybe something glass-topped instead.
He says to Xander, “You told me, a long time ago, that the pain was not for punishment. And you made sure that was clear again when we did that trial.”
Xander sits up. “We should never have—”
“I am talking.” Ben gives Xander one quick, venomous glare, and Xander subsides on the couch again. “So I don’t know why you think I would want to hurt you now. The pain stuff—those were acts of love between us, and that’s over now. So, really, Xander, I have no idea why you would think I’d want to do that with you.”
He hears Xander’s sharp intake of breath, and watches as his hands convulse around the sofa seat again. After a moment, he looks up into Xander’s face. Xander’s dark eyes are filling with tears.
“Don’t you…” Xander trails off. The tears are spilling over slowly now, and Ben has never seen him cry, not like this. Silent, despairing. After a few moments, while Ben looks everywhere but at Xander’s face, Xander says, “I know I hurt you, but I didn’t think it was so bad that—I mean I hoped…”
“You hoped that I still loved you.”
“Yes,” Xander whispers.
“And you hoped that I would forgive you and take you back.”
“Yes.”
Ben stands up. He can’t look at those tears anymore. They’re making him feel things, and he doesn’t want to, he can’t. He has his self-preservation to think about. “Well, hope is a cruel thing, Xander. Like you.”
Xander doesn’t move from the sofa, so Ben keeps talking. “You want to know what I did while you were gone? Do you want to know who I fucked, who I played with?”
“I don’t have any right to ask.” What he means, Ben knows, is I don’t want to hear.
“I tried different things, and I experimented. Because you never wanted me to know too much, you never wanted to let me meet anyone in the community, you never—”
“It wasn’t like that,” Xander says defensively. “That’s not how I meant it to be.”
“No ‘thanks for the criticism’ this time? Of course not, that’s just lip service. Do you know what I did, because I didn’t have anyone else around to even talk to about this stuff? I found some guy online, and I went round to his house, and I undressed for him—no, don’t you fucking dare move, you’re going to sit there and listen to every word of this. I undressed for him, like I used to do with you, Xander. And he hit me in the face with a cane, and punched me, here, where the mark still is. You understand what I’m telling you?”
Xander looks dazed.
“And you know what happened then?” Ben pauses. He wants Xander to imagine every terrible thing that might have gone down, just li
ke Ben did in those moments. “I kicked him and I ran. It was mostly luck. But if I hadn’t run, I don’t know how it would have ended.”
“Who was he?” Xander’s voice is distant and polite.
“I’m not going to tell you, because it doesn’t matter.”
“Tell me his name.” Ben sees it then, the predatory, scary flash across Xander’s face, and it’s exactly what he wanted.
“I’m not a fucking damsel in distress,” Ben tells him. “And you are not a knight in shining armor. You’re the bad guy in this story, Xander.”
“He hurt you!”
“Yes. You hurt me, too. At least these cuts and bruises will fade with time. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over what happened between us. What you said that night, it was inexcusable.” He can hear Xander’s breathing, shallow and rapid. “You can get out now. Get out, and don’t come back.”
Chapter Nineteen
Ben goes to bed, and lies there awake for hours. The anger has returned, thick and suffocating when he turns off the light, so he leaves on the reading lamp and simply hopes for sleep. Midnight comes and goes. By 2:33, he decides sleep is not going to happen, so he gets up and prowls around his apartment in the dark. After half an hour of that, he feels trapped, and decides to go out somewhere, and pulls on clothes haphazardly.
As soon as he opens the door, he jumps at the sight of a silhouetted figure slumped against the railing opposite. It’s Xander, his knees drawn up into his chest and his arms wrapped around them. His head is resting on his knees, and Ben thinks for a moment that he’s asleep.
“What the fuck, man?”
Xander raises his head slightly, but doesn’t look at him.
“It’s three in the morning!”
“I meant to go.” Xander’s voice is scratchy. “I was just going to sit here for a minute. I didn’t realize how long I stayed.”
Ben leans against the door frame. “You always had a flair for the dramatic. For fuck’s sake, Xander, go home.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying that, it’s meaningless.”
Xander looks up at him, his face half-shadowed. “Do you remember that time you stormed out of my apartment, but you left your keys at my place? And I came over and you were sitting here, in your own doorway?”
Ben gives a brief shrug. “What about it?”
“I gave you a second chance that night.”
“That was different.”
“You called me a psychopath.”
Fuck.
“You called me a psychopath that night but I still gave you a chance to explain.”
“I don’t owe you anything.”
“Give me a chance, that’s all I’m asking for. Please. I’m begging you. I’ll do anything. Anything you want.”
Ben can hear Xander start to get teary again, and that won’t work. He urges his anger to flare instead, embraces it. “Jesus Christ. I am insane. Alright. Get up.”
Xander gracelessly struggles to his feet, and Ben has to look away from the hope in his eyes.
“You can come inside. Sit on the couch and don’t move, and I’ll bring you a coffee and then—then maybe we can work something out. Maybe there’s something you can do.”
“Oh, my God, thank you, I promise I won’t move, I’ll—”
“Be quiet. Please. Stop talking.”
Xander nods.
He seems to have sobered up. Knowing Xander, Ben thinks, he only had a few drinks anyway. He’s always been a bit of a lightweight, because he never plays under the influence. And Xander always likes to play, so he doesn’t drink often, and never to excess.
Xander always likes to play.
Ben makes him some coffee, and a ham sandwich to soak up the booze. Xander is obviously determined to be good, because there are no sanctimonious inquiries about whether the ham is organic, much less the mustard. He wolfs it down and drains the coffee, and then looks at Ben, eager and expectant.
But Ben is still not ready, not yet.
“Go take a shower. And soak your clothes, man. Seriously. I think you spilled more whiskey on you than you drank.”
“I don’t have anything else to wear.” He’s hesitant, a little on guard.
“There are towels.” Ben waves his hand. They look at each other for a moment, and then Xander shrugs.
“Sure. Okay. I’ll shower.”
Ben argues with himself while the shower runs.
This is a bad decision. These are bad things that you want to do.
Maybe. But it’s not Jake-levels of bad.
That makes it better?
He promised the Doctor he wouldn’t do anything for three months. But that was just about dating, and this—this is different. He justifies it to himself even as he feels guilty. This is different, because this is Xander, and Ben deserves some kind of payback. He thinks momentarily about what the Doctor might say to that and pushes the thought aside with a shiver.
“This is different,” he says aloud, insistent.
“What do you mean?” Xander has come out of the shower, clad only in a towel and his yin-yang necklace, still damp in some places, like he’s given himself the briefest drying possible. “Different in a good way?” He’s so trusting, it makes Ben draw back again from the hot rage burning in his core.
He’s thinner, Ben notices. A lot thinner.
The towel hangs low on his hips, so low that Ben is sure his cock is the only thing keeping it up right now, and then he sees it—the stylized star of Xander’s tattoo, peeking over the white cotton towel. The Pole Star. The one Xander said was supposed to represent Ben.
The fury explodes inside him like a blinding light and Xander must see it in Ben’s face, because he takes a step backwards.
“You want to make things better? You want to fix things?” Ben asks, walks towards him, and clutching his hands into fists so hard his blunt nails are gouging skin.
“Yes. Yes, I do.” Xander retreats to the wall, looking wary.
Ben has never wanted to make Xander hurt so badly in his whole life. Not even that night he found a bunch of leather daddies in Xander’s apartment. Not even when he was cutting into Xander’s chest. Not even after Blood Bond, when Xander was saying those cruel, hateful things.
They are both breathing heavily now, and Ben is right in his face, pushing his forehead up against Xander’s, and holding him against the wall by the shoulders.
“There is one thing you can do,” he tells Xander. “One thing.”
“Name it.” He can see fear in Xander’s eyes, and he knows what it is. Fear that Ben will want to cut him, or hit him, or God forbid, fuck him. “I’ll let you do whatever you want.”
Ben kisses him then, hard, their teeth grinding against each other and he tastes blood, his own or Xander’s, he doesn’t know. And toothpaste.
Xander brushed his teeth.
“I don’t want to do anything to you,” Ben pants, pulling away. “I want you to do this to me.” He grabs Xander’s hands and pulls them up to his own face, covering over his nose and mouth.
There’s blood on Xander’s lip, and he licks it away nervously as Ben stares at him. “That’s—I can’t do that. Not right now.”
Ben pulls the hands away so he can speak, and sees blood on Xander’s palm from his mouth. Okay. So Ben is the one bleeding. As usual. “It’s now or never. Put your money where your mouth is, Alexander.” Xander closes his eyes. “Or get out. It’s your choice.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to understand. This is what I want. And you know, if I really wanted to make things difficult for you, I’d ask you to actually choke me. But you said this way was safer.”
“But why?”
“Ever since we started this thing I have trusted you no matter what, and I don’t know if I do anymore. And if I don’t trust you, I can’t be with you. So are you in or are you out?”
It’s not the only reason. There are too many of them, all jumbled up in each other—Ben wants i
t because he’s angry, because he’s sad, because he misses Xander’s hands on him and the sense of magic and wonder that Xander always brings with him. Ben wants it because it’s dangerous and edgy and unsafe. But most of all he wants it because Xander owes him, and he knows Xander doesn’t want to give this to him, not now, not like this.
And because it will hurt Xander to make him do it.
“I’ve been drinking,” Xander says. He’s getting desperate.
“You’re sober enough now.”
“This was something…I wanted to do this differently. It was supposed to be—”
“Stop making excuses. Do you want me or not?”
“I always want you,” Xander whispers.
“Then either do it or don’t do it. Okay, fine, you’re not doing it. You can borrow some clothes if you like, so you’re not running naked around the streets. I’ll go get some for you.” Ben makes as if to walk away, and Xander grabs his wrist.
“Alright. I’ll do it. But I want to ask one question first. Please.”
“I don’t know, Xander.” Ben pretends to think about it. “You don’t like it when I ask questions.”
“Please.” He’s so pensive that it stops up Ben’s anger for a moment. Just a moment.
“What is it?”
“Do you really think that doing this, doing it now, I mean, is a healthy thing for a future relationship between us?” Later, Ben reflects that if Xander had left it there, he probably would have stopped then and said, You know what, you’re right, I’m just trying to get back at you. But Xander continued. “Because I don’t think my therapist would say it’s healthy. One time he told me—”
“Xander, I swear to God, if you say the word ‘therapist’ again tonight, we’re through.”
Xander stops abruptly. “Okay.”
“And, yeah. Sure. I think it’s healthy enough. We always had a twisted kind of relationship, right?”
Xander lets his wrist drop and lifts a hand to Ben’s face. “But I don’t want our relationship to be twisted, Benjamin. I want it to be—”
Ben jerks his face away. “I answered your question. Are we doing this?”
Break the Rules (Rough Love Book 7) Page 15