by Brynn Stein
Elliot runs his hands over Ben’s tanned flesh without worrying about the irony of a ghost being tanned. Elliot gets so lost in sensations that he barely notices when Ben rolls him onto his back again and covers Elliot’s body with his own. Elliot’s always been the one on top during any sexual encounter, or he doesn’t participate. He likes the control. Being on the bottom is too vulnerable, and he’s never trusted anyone enough to tolerate it. But with Ben it barely registers in Elliot’s mind that he’s even on the bottom. It crosses Elliot’s mind that it might only be because he knows this is a dream and that he can’t get hurt here, but it’s more than that. He trusts Ben implicitly and realizes that he would allow this—actually encourage it—even if he was wide-awake. He’s never felt anything like this before. He feels complete around Ben in a way he never has with anyone.
When he shakes himself out of his thoughts, Ben has started to slide back down his body again, following that trail of hair his hands mapped out earlier.
Even as Elliot is overwhelmed by the sensations, he has a scary realization. “I love Ben,” he mumbles to himself, then belatedly hopes Ben didn’t hear it.
Elliot “Run from Relationships” Graham is in love. If Ben were alive, he’d be in deep shit. He’d be picking out rings and talking to pastors. But Ben’s not alive. And this is all they can have. Elliot’s mood crashes, just like that. Even Ben’s physical ministrations don’t take his mind off that fact.
Ben senses a change in Elliot’s mood and trails kisses back up his body. “What’s up?” He looks at Elliot seriously.
Elliot wonders if he can say nothing and get away with it, but that won’t work. “I’m just—” He searches for the word he wants. “—sad that this is all we can have.”
The smile falls off Ben’s face, and Elliot is immediately sorry he caused that.
Ben slides off Elliot and snuggles into his side, but he never breaks eye contact. “This is all I can offer right now. Maybe someday we can have more, but—”
“I don’t see how, Ben.” Elliot pets Ben’s hair to take the sting from the words.
“I know.” He buries his head into Elliot’s chest, allowing Elliot to continue his petting. Ben pulls the blankets over them, and Elliot feels the odd sensation of falling asleep inside a dream.
ELLIOT, AS usual after a night where he and Ben had a significant conversation about their relationship, was waiting for the next morning to be uncomfortable. It wasn’t. He entered the kitchen, flipped open the laptop, and said, “Morning, Ben,” as he started toward the coffeemaker.
Keys clattered while Elliot pulled some frozen pancakes out of the freezer and popped them into the microwave.
U know u can say good morning 2 me anywhere in the house. Don’t u?
As Elliot read the words, he could almost feel Ben laughing.
“Yeah, but it’s kind of become routine to start the morning in the kitchen.” Elliot answered while getting the butter and syrup out of their respective storage.
You have your laptop in the bedroom. You can open it there and start our conversation earlier.
Elliot wasn’t sure why he hadn’t thought of that. All that intellect and u didn’t think of that. Did u?
“No,” Elliot groused, slapping butter onto the pancake he’d retrieved from the microwave. “But hush it.”
LOL
“You know it freaks me out when you use textspeak.”
That’s part of why I do it.
“That figures.” Elliot cut a section of pancake and shoveled a forkful into his mouth when a knock at the door interrupted their conversation. Elliot stood to answer it, but Sheri never respected personal boundaries, so she waltzed on in without Elliot’s direction.
“Hey, Ellie. Do you have company? I heard you talking.”
“Sort of,” Elliot answered with a grin. He took a single-serving bottle of orange juice out of the refrigerator and silently offered it to her. “But you won’t believe me.”
“Ah, really? The ghost?” She rolled her eyes even as she nodded to accept the offer of a beverage.
“Okay. Enough of this.” Elliot gave her the bottle but remained standing. He put both his hands in clear view on the table. “Show her, Ben.”
The keys immediately started pressing themselves. Hi Sheri. Elliot talks about u all the time.
Sheri’s eyes went wide. “How are you doing that?”
“Sheri, you know I love you.” Elliot put his hand on her shoulder. “And I love that you’re so cynical. Really I do. Usually. But come on. When have I ever lied to you or made up stuff like this? Ben’s here.” Elliot sank down into the chair beside her.
:-)
Sheri cocked her head and looked at Elliot incredulously, still holding her unopened bottle of OJ.
Elliot looked at the laptop. “Yeah, I know. He likes emoticons. What can I say?”
“I still don’t want to believe this, Ellie.”
“Well, Cher, we don’t always get what we want, now do we?”
Would you like a pancake? That seems to be what’s for breakfast this morning
Sheri smiled. “He’s a better host than you are, Elle.”
“Yeah, well, he can offer all day, but I’m the one who actually has to get it.” Elliot wiped a spot of syrup from his chin. “Besides, I got you a drink.”
LOL appeared on the screen.
Elliot laughed. “Really, Ben, you get entirely too much pleasure out of all the text abbreviations.”
The teens in the last family used it a lot
“Doesn’t mean you have to.”
LOL
Elliot rolled his eyes.
Sheri swiveled her head from Elliot to the laptop. She smiled. “You two are like a married couple.”
Elliot wasn’t sure why, but that made him really sad. He would move on someday, when he finished the house, possibly, or when he got wanderlust again. But Ben was stuck here. Elliot didn’t ever want to leave Ben. At least, that was the way he felt now, but he knew himself. He wouldn’t be happy in one place for long. He vowed to start Operation: Convince Ben to Cross Over as soon as possible, but right now he’d concentrate on being a good host.
“So,” he said, getting up from his chair to put his dishes in the sink, “do you want a pancake?” When Sheri shook her head, he added, “How about another drink? Then we’ll go into the living room to talk.”
Sheri was obviously still trying to digest everything. “Do you have any hard stuff?”
“Cher, it’s ten in the morning.”
“Yeah, well, I think meeting a ghost is an extenuating circumstance.”
Elliot shook his head. “No hard stuff at ten in the morning. I just drank the last cup of coffee in the house. I have to buy more. So it’s orange juice, tea or lemonade.”
“You made tea and lemonade?” Sheri asked incredulously, handing her bottle to him for him to put in the recyclables.
Elliot laughed. “One of the beauties of living in the South. Both are sold at the local grocery store. You want a glass or not?”
“Sure.” She nodded absently. “Tea.”
Elliot opened the refrigerator to get the gallon jug, but Sheri was no longer watching him. He followed her gaze and laughed when he saw a cabinet door open and a plastic glass float down to the counter.
“Um,” she started. “Ben? Could you maybe not do that? It’s freaking me out.”
“Well, at least now you believe he’s here.” Elliot poured the tea into the proffered glass and turned to put the jug back in the fridge.
The keys on the laptop clicked at the same time. Sorry Sheri. Just trying 2 b helpful.
“Great, Cher,” Elliot admonished, but he was smiling as he clasped her shoulder. “Make my ghost feel bad, why don’t you?”
“I, um…,” she sputtered until she realized he was joking, then hit him, almost spilling her tea.
THE REST of the morning was fairly uneventful. Sheri visited for a while; then Ben and Elliot went over some plans Elliot had for the
back porch.
Elliot was surprised when he heard yet another knock at the door around three o’clock while he was doing dishes.
“Who could that be?” Elliot wondered aloud. “Sheri’s been and gone, and Daniel didn’t say anything about coming around in his text earlier.”
It’s the guy who was with Sheri when they brought u home from the hospital.
“Malcolm?”
Yeah, that was his name.
“What does he want?”
I can c everything that goes on in the house, including the porch, but I can’t read minds.
“Probably a good thing,” Elliot muttered, as he dried his hands so he could answer the door. But Ben was typing something else.
Let me answer it. Elliot could almost swear he heard—or rather felt—Ben laughing. It’ll save him having 2 do aerobics later. Get his heart rate up.
“You’re evil.” Elliot spoke to the laptop. “Besides, he’d probably like it. He’s been in my corner with all the ghost stuff, even when he probably had to sleep on the couch over it a few nights. Sheri doesn’t like being argued with.”
LOL
“Oh, stop that and go get the door.”
REALLY?!?
Elliot imagined Ben dancing around in excitement. “Better hurry before I change my mind.” He started slowly toward the door, if only to catch Malcolm when he keeled over from fright.
It wasn’t two seconds before he heard the front door open followed by Malcolm’s not-so-manly squeal. “Elliot?”
Elliot was chuckling as he neared the door to greet Malcolm properly.
Malcolm stepped just inside the door. “Was that Ben?” He was wide-eyed and looking around the foyer as though he could see Ben if he tried hard enough.
Elliot laughed even harder and shut the door behind Malcolm. “How many ghosts do you think I have? Of course it was Ben.”
Malcolm was doing the same thing Elliot used to do before starting to treat the laptop as though it were Ben. He was talking to the air slightly above his head. “You scared me half to death.”
Elliot could almost feel Ben laugh again. “I think that’s why he wanted to do it.” He gestured toward the folder in Malcolm’s hands while turning toward the living room. “What brings you out here today?”
“Oh.” Malcolm looked at the files as if they had suddenly appeared there. “I did some more research on your ghost.” He looked up and raised his voice a little. “I hope you don’t mind, Ben.” Then he faced Elliot again and handed him the folder. Elliot put it on top of the closed laptop. “I thought you’d like to know more about him. There’s not much, really. It’s not like they kept good records during the Civil War, and even of the ones they did keep, not many survived. But there are pictures taken by journalists of various Union soldiers in the area and an obituary for Ben’s parents from a Pennsylvania newspaper. Stuff like that.”
Malcolm followed Elliot into the living room and they both sat on the sofa, and Elliot set up the laptop on the coffee table. He did want to know more about Ben. He felt like he already knew him, between Ben having given him his memories and just a general sense of familiarity. But he wanted to know everything there was to know. A lot—most—of it, he could learn by just asking Ben, but this information felt precious just the same. Again he was struck by just how much time Malcolm was spending on this.
“Thanks, Malcolm.”
Elliot opened the folder immediately and started going through the photographs of various battles and miscellaneous soldiers, as well as photocopies of newspaper articles. Ben commented here and there via laptop.
Until they came to one specific photo: a young soldier lying on his back with his unseeing, dead eyes facing the camera, blood from his nose and mouth caked to his face. Elliot could tell Ben was suddenly no longer in the living room with him. And he knew why. He recognized the young man from all of Ben’s memories. It was Patrick.
ELLIOT SLOWLY crawls onto the bed beside Ben. He’s already stretched out, prone, with his face buried in his arms, and looks utterly defeated.
“That was Patrick, wasn’t it?” Elliot lies down beside Ben and strokes his hair from his face.
Ben nods, then turns toward Elliot. “I knew… he… was dead.” Ben has been crying and his voice is hoarse. “Intellectually. I knew he died. And I even know it was only his body in that picture. His spirit is still alive. I didn’t lose him. I know that for a fact.” He takes a deep shuttering breath. “But seeing him like that….”
Elliot continues petting Ben’s hair. “At least you know now why he didn’t come back for you like he promised.”
Ben nods, wipes his eyes, and turns on his side so he can see Elliot better. “I knew when he promised that I wouldn’t be there in body.” A tear rolls down Ben’s face, and Elliot wipes it away with his thumb so Ben can continue. “I think he knew that too. He may have even known that he wouldn’t be able to get back to me in body. But he was always talking about spirits and how we were connected in more than the physical realm. I always knew he meant his spirit would return for me, not necessarily his body. He’s keeping that promise. I just need to be patient.”
“Ben.” Elliot is getting a little upset with Ben about this. “How much more patient can you be? You’ve waited all this time. If he hasn’t come back by now, he’s not coming.” His voice is sharper than he wanted it to be, and Ben winces in response. Elliot cups Ben’s cheek and quiets his tone. “He probably crossed over a long time ago and is waiting for you there… whatever or wherever there is. But if there are no other ghosts here, they went somewhere, right?”
Ben smiles and leans his face into Elliot’s hand. “There’s a place to cross over to. And yes, the other people who died here did that, but I can’t. I told him I’d wait here. This is where he knew to come find me.”
“Ben.” Elliot feels he has to get Ben to see reason. He plans to leave here at some point, and it kills him to think Ben will be all alone again, waiting for someone who will never come. But Elliot is careful to keep his voice gentle. He doesn’t want to add to Ben’s pain. “Patrick crossed over a long time ago. And if he didn’t, he’s stuck haunting a battleground.” Elliot reaches his arm out as an invitation for Ben to snuggle.
Ben burrows eagerly into Elliot’s chest. “He crossed over. He would have known he couldn’t get to me if he stayed on the battlefield. But he came back.”
“Reincarnation?” Elliot’s not sure why he can believe in ghosts but has a problem with reincarnation. Of course, he hadn’t believed in ghosts until he had overwhelming proof. “You mentioned that before. You really believe in that?” Elliot closes his arms around Ben and rolls onto his back, taking Ben with him.
Ben nods against Elliot’s chest. “Patrick was fascinated with it. And we never talked about it, as it applied to us after we died, but it makes sense that he would have found a way.”
“Ben, you know how far-fetched that sounds, right?” Elliot strokes Ben’s back and hair as he lies against him. “Even if he’s reincarnated, why hasn’t he come for you by now?”
“He doesn’t remember he’s Patrick. He’ll figure it out someday. And when he does, I have to be here.” Ben snuggles even closer to Elliot, who wouldn’t have thought that possible just a moment ago.
Elliot feels so sorry for Ben. “Ben.” But he doesn’t know what else to say, so he holds him close and kisses his hair.
Chapter 7
ELLIOT CONTINUED working on the minor repairs around the house, going to doctor’s appointments, and having lunches or dinners with Sheri and Malcolm. The major change in his life was Daniel.
When they first started meeting only at Daniel’s house, nothing had changed in their relationship. They had still gotten together just as often, still went to the club or out to eat. But, the longer the arrangement lasted, and the closer Elliot got to Ben, the more things started to change.
“So why don’t you come out to the club tonight, Elliot?” Daniel asked one Friday evening over the phone.
>
“Well.” Elliot was putting the finishing touches on plans he had for the upstairs room. “I’m not feeling all that well.”
“Are you okay?” Daniel sounded concerned.
“It’s nothing serious,” Elliot reassured him. He hadn’t realized that Daniel would assume it was something to do with his heart. “I just don’t feel like going out.”
“Come on, Elliot. You stay cooped up in that house all the time with no one to talk to. At least come to dinner.”
“I have someone to talk to.” Elliot looked up from his work, giving the conversation more attention.
“A ghost. Like that’s healthy.” Daniel’s sneer could almost be heard in his voice. “Come on, Elliot. Dinner.”
“I….” Elliot really didn’t want to go but wasn’t sure what else to say.
“I’m not taking no for an answer. You either meet me at the diner for supper, or I’m bringing something over there.”
Elliot didn’t like ultimatums, but he knew Daniel would do it and also knew Ben wouldn’t like it if Daniel came to the house.
“Okay, dinner.” Elliot stood up and started to pace. “I’ll meet you at the diner at seven.”
“You better.”
“I will,” Elliot sneered at the phone. “I don’t say something then not follow through.”
Elliot stabbed End and put the phone back in his pocket.
Items started flying off the furniture.
“Stop the temper tantrum, Ben.” Elliot was still pacing, and some of the annoyance he felt at Daniel’s demand came out toward Ben. “It’s only dinner.”
Elliot stomped into the kitchen and slammed open the laptop. “Okay, there. Now tell me what your problem is.”
YOU KNOW DAMNED WELL WHAT MY PROBLEM IS.
“You’re going to cuss and shout at me now?” Elliot didn’t even ask where Ben had learned that capitals denoted shouting.
YES. WHY? R U GOING TO WASH MY MOUTH OUT WITH SOAP?
“Dammit, Ben, you’re being a baby.” Elliot turned away from the laptop and got a drink from the fridge. It was the closest he could get to turning his back on Ben during an argument, but of course, if he was going to let Ben ‘speak,’ he had to turn back. He didn’t have to do it quickly, though, so he took his sweet time opening the lid of the twelve-ounce juice bottle and taking a huge gulp. “I’m going out with a friend. You don’t have a problem with me going out to eat with Sheri or Malcolm.”