bury the heart / stella & benji

[gamemaker 🍒 maryn hale]

"If it's not one thing, it's another."

She adjusts her nightgown in the mirror, lowering her sleeve down past her shoulder. It's tasteful, not sinful. Not that she really gives a damn. She glances up to see Benji's reflection staring at her through the glass, and she offers him a playful smirk. "A nobody goes missing, and it's just the same old story. Leave it to Cleo to make this whole situation about herself." It's a raw nerve she's touching. He had been the one to find her.

"It's just ridiculous. My education is being jeopardized, and for what? A bottle blonde's made-up murder story?" She huffs dramatically, rising from her chair and moving closer to the boy she cares about so deeply — and resents so quietly. "I'm convinced she's hooked on something, or maybe this is all some elaborate prank. What I hate is that it's hurting you, too." Her palm finds his cheek, radiating warmth. Taking it away from him.

"You're a hero, and she has no right to take advantage of that. When I find out she's lying about this, I'll deal with her myself." It's an ominous statement, but it needs to be said. Stella is a lot of things, but a loser is not one. It doesn't matter who has the ball in their court. That's not how you win this game, and it's about time she taught her bestie that lesson. "Either way, I'm meeting her for breakfast tomorrow. She needs my support."

And then the conversation is over, quick as a snap of her fingers. "There's really nothing to be done about the project. They gave us a topic any idiot in our class could ace." She sits down beside him, grabbing her notebook and pencil. "I don't mind doing it myself. Honestly, I'd prefer it. I know how to get the top score." She starts writing down her notes and ideas, looking up at Benji after a short pause. She smiles sweetly.

"Your name will be right beside mine. Don't you worry."

Always and forever. Until he fucks her over again.

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

b e n j i .

"i'm not here
i'm just
a mirror"

Stella's movement is gentle, glaringly so, despite her words.

Benji watches her from his place on her bed, back resting against the headboard. An empty notebook sits in his lap and he brushes the pencil in his hand over it absently. A building comes to life slowly beneath his fingertips as Stella adjusts her nightgown. She reveals a shoulder slowly as if he hasn't seen all of her hundreds of times.

It's oddly charming.

He stares at her as she speaks, only half-listening to her chatter. Stella's been a talker for as long as he's known her and over the years it's become easier to tune her out than to let her push his buttons. She's fond of making decisions for him, of telling him what he likes and doesn't like, but the more she does that the more he knows that she doesn't love him. It's alright, a relationship doesn't need to have that.

She brings up Cleo and he shuts his eyes, fingers tightening on the pencil. Finding her in the dark the other night had felt like a bad case of deja-vu. Benji hadn't been the one to find Scarlet but he'd dreamed about it so many times that he might as well have been and finding Cleo had brought all those memories back in full force.

When Stella reaches for him, he lets his cheek fall against her palm. Her hand is icy against his cheek and he raises a hand to keep hers there for a moment. It's a reflex, done out of necessity. He hasn't been feeling well for a while but it isn't his illness, it's something else.

There's something fractured within him.

Benji ignores it and sets his notebook aside, Stella a welcome distraction from his thoughts. The two of them were assigned the reproductive system, something that they both knew far too well.

"Maybe we should start with some practical experience," he suggests and turns towards her on the bed, "Just to get those ideas flowing."

He presses his lips against her bare shoulder and places a hand on her stomach. What he and Stella have isn't much but it's the most familiar and constant thing in his life. There's a hollowness between them but no one knows him better than she does, it's kind of a pity.

"Promise me that you won't go anywhere at night without me," he murmurs against her skin. Even through their dysfunction, the idea of losing Stella hurts, "Even if you don't believe her."

[gamemaker 🍒 maryn hale]

"Are you angry with me?"

Her words come out so suddenly, and with such bitterness, that she even stuns herself. His playful remark strikes an exposed nerve, and she jerks away from his touch. It's toxic. Stella is smart enough to recognize all of the warning signs — she can label every different shade of red on the flags that surround them. This is who they have always been. This is the future she chose. This is the man she wants by her side in every family portrait.

Perfection is tied to Benji Rowland.

She places her notebook aside, folding a palm over her eyes just long enough to calm herself. "Or am I doing something terrible, and you're looking to distract yourself from it?" Memories come and go in her mind — all the fights that lead them to her bed, the way she had been tangled up with him when her plan to ruin Scarlet was playing out just downstairs. They're both the bad guy in this. She is a big enough person to admit to her sins.

But she never once aimed her gun at him.

Her bullet wound aches as she brings herself to her feet, walking to the window and crossing her arms over her chest. There's so much she wants to say. Needs to tell him. But there's this awful truth inside of her — that if she confronts the issue, if she finally shares all of her anger and hurt and jealousy with him, there's no going back. And she's already sacrificed everything for this boy. She'll gamble her happiness, too.

It devastates her to know that she loved him with everything she had — enough to build her future around him, to have their wedding planned out to the last detail in her mind, to write the name 'Stella Rowland' in her journal so carefully — only to learn that he doesn't feel the same. She thought she had been okay with it. With the loveless marriage trapped within a white picket fence. But it hurts. It breaks inside of her, and it's agony.

Because he will always be her first choice.

And she'll always be his last.

"I won't promise anything." 'Because you will break it.'

She turns on her heels, and she closes the distance between them with a kiss. Because now she's furious, and she's doing something unforgivable, and this is the only thing they know how to do in these situations. It always comes back to this. This is the forever she gambled on. And it doesn't matter that Scarlet is dead and gone — she will forever haunt Stella. There will always be a void inside of her carved out by the betrayal.

That quiet, terrifying realization that she's making a fool of herself.

His fool. Her own. Theirs.

This is the purgatory they deserve.

"I love you," spoken between kisses, and tragedies.

'And I'm sorry to myself.'

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

b e n j i .

"i'm not here
i'm just
a mirror"

Some of the pieces of them that fit together are good. The reason he always winds up back here, in her bedroom, is because he's supposed to be here, with her.

For a moment, a brief dream, he thought he might be different. He held Scars's hand in his and the world finally slid into place in a way that made sense. Then Stella happened, in the same way that she always did, how she'd always known how to.

And he was fucking her when Scarlet was being butchered.

"Are you angry with me?"

"No," he answers truthfully even as she gets up and leaves him. His side is colder where she was pressed against him and Benji shudders a little. His blood circulation has always been bad.

Like always, he wishes to be less weak, less of a fraud.

Stella's sudden anxiety is out of character and Benji tries to remember the last time he saw her so vulnerable. It's hard to say, maybe the first time they fucked after he'd started dating Scar. Two o'clock, Scar was in math class and Stella had a spare. Tuesday afternoon was meant to see Benji in trig but he'd skipped it.

He could blame Stell for it but it wasn't her fault.

"Why," he asks, "Are you mad at me?"

Maybe she knows he's been fucking Cleo during their spares. Part of him hopes that she does, so that she can burn just beneath her skin too.

Parts of him died with Scarlet. Parts of him burned the night he found Cleo laying in the dirt, broken.

But so many pieces of hm still bloom at Stella's fingertips. It feels alright to be known when she's knowing him.

benji stands but doesn't go to Stella. He can recognize her with her arms crossed, her hair on end. She can't be touched like that, a livewire in a lightning storm. so he waits there instead, palms open on his lap. He opens his mouth, the emptiness inside of him spilling out, but the words stop dead on his tongue.

"Stell, I think I need help," he wants to tell her, "I don't think I've been okay for a long time."

But he sits there in silence instead, until she's done being upset with him because she always will be. For all the ways that they work, there are a hundred more reasons why they're terrible for each other. It helps with the emptiness a little, knowing that she'll be there, being miserable with him for a long time.

"I think..." he says, carefully, "I think I just miss seeing you like this."

He doesn't mean in pain.

"I mean human?"

Something he doesn't know how to be either. They both grew up with parents too focused on appearances to form a real connection.

"I love you," she says but the phrase feels flat, just a formality.

She falls into him, kissing to end the conversation in the same way that they always have and Benji does it too. He lets it happen, falls back and his head hits the mattress. her weight on top of him is heavy, warm. It's perfect, she fits perfect, she always has.

Right?

"Wait," he says softly and puts a finger against her lips, "Why?"

[gamemaker 🍒 maryn hale]

She's always been a tightly wound string.

It shouldn't come as a shock that she's starting to fray at the edges. It's not enough that Benji reassures her that he's not upset — because they both know there will always be a silent, ever raging fury that connects them — and just because he's standing at a distance, it doesn't mean that she can't feel the heat of him behind her. For a boy so cold, he always makes her think of the sun.

And she hates going outside. How strange.

He talks like wind against glass, a tiny little whisper that echoes into a full voice. "No, I'm not." Of all the dances she's learned, this is the one she is most comfortable performing. Standing here with him, aching from a deep cut they both share, and never once addressing the bleeding. They're a stubborn pair, that much is true. There's a reason she built all of her dreams around him.

"I think... I think I just miss seeing you like this."

Another knife in her chest — because she's always been right here. For this one person, she has never changed. Stella is a girl with many secrets, and quiet insecurities, but they go away when Benji takes her in his arms. Until he lets her go, and she's alone again, and she has to wonder if he'll find his way back. She feels terrible for thinking it, but she can't blame him for losing his way. If she could walk away from herself, well...

We can unpack that later.

"I mean human?"

How convincing. How flattering, even. Maybe the worst thing about her is that she's tried so hard to strip away all of her humanity — because, yes, she wants to be perfect. The best grades, the best dancer, the best love to share her future with. Perfection is the goal, always. A dream journal with no pages left to fill. That's her. And she's a fraud, she knows, but it's nice to pretend. It's terrifying to stop.

Maybe that's a red flag.

He loves her most when she hates herself.

But there's not much to say when someone makes you feel like a ghost in your own room — a spirit without a body, colliding with his soul. It always goes like this. They fight, say something profound, and then she covers it all up with kisses and sweet nothings meant only for his ears. Maybe that's why it makes her jolt, just for a moment, when his finger finds her lips and his eyes stare deep into hers. "Wait," and she holds her breath.

"Why?"

Well, that's not easily answered. Her head dips forward, forehead resting on the curve of his shoulder. She exhales, and breathes him in, trying to find an explanation that they both know she can't give. "Because I just do." 'Because I already invested everything in you.' She sighs, lifting her hand to catch a tear before it can fall and meet his skin. It's her own fault. She fell for a boy as broken and fucked up as she is.

She planted all her hopes in his soil.

And now nothing will grow, nothing beautiful.

"Can't that be reason enough?"

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

b e n j i .

"i'm not here
i'm just
a mirror"

Maybe part of him wants to hurt her and that's why he asks.

In all the times before when she'd whispered the phrase, Benji had never asked her for a reason. He'd never once considered the deep well that those three words came from, only the way that they felt like a balm on his skin, in a constant state of burning. He used to feel special somehow when she said, 'I love you'.

But it doesn't feel the same anymore when she says it. It feels scripted, like just something she's supposed to say or a way to end a conversation that she doesn't want to have.

Benji knows now that 'I love you' doesn't solve anything. In fact, it hardly matters outside of these four walls, it's useless. No matter how many times he whispered it shy and soft into the top of Scar's head as she slept, unhearing, it didn't save her.

"Because I just do."

"It feels like a lie," he interrupts, gazing up at her, "When you say it to shut me up."

A tear slips down her cheek, reaching for him and he waits for it to fall and land on his cheek, steels himself even but then Stella is wiping it away before it can. Afraid again to give him everything probably because she knows deep down, what they both know.

"Can't that be reason enough?"

"No," he says but he doesn't push her off of him because they both know that he never will. In the same way that Stella's envisioned a life with him, Benji can't fathom a future without her in it.

But there's a secret hidden piece of himself that only one person ever got to see and that person is dead. He keeps waiting for that pain to subside, works to fill it with warmth elsewhere but he can't. There's so much guilt and shame around Scarlet's death that Benji knows he might never be alright.

Part of him blames her.

It's a new piece of him, something he's never given to Stella and it's so loud and sharp that he's afraid to let her hold that piece. Maybe when she does, it'll cut her, then she won't say, 'I love you' anymore.

"How can you love me after everything?" he asks, "And how can I love you?"

But this time when another tear starts to fall he reaches up to trap it with his thumb against her cheek, fingertips gentle on her skin, he loves her without words.

[gamemaker 🍒 maryn hale]

"It feels like a lie when you say it to shut me up."

The taste of him is still in her mouth when she speaks, "if that's all I wanted, Benji, then I'd kiss you." Of all her dances, perhaps this is the one that she knows most fondly. When she steps away from him, he closes in, and when she twists, he pulls; she follows, he folds, she freezes. In a single movement, they've expressed more emotion than they've ever dared to say to the other.

When his fist closes around her throat, it's not really him. And when she drags her blade down his spine, that person isn't someone she recognizes in the mirror. Maybe it's the same when he caresses her cheek, and when she whispers all of her hopes and dreams against the curve of his neck. They are intangible bodies, lovers and enemies alike trapped together in the astral plane.

Perhaps a constellation can be two bitter, broken souls reaching out for the other.

She cries openly in front of him because only he is allowed to see her this raw and exposed. Or maybe it's because he's the one with all of her armor in his hands; the salt in her wound, the herb she seeks out, the flayer and the lamb on opposite ends of the stage. She's in pain, but looking at him is like looking at springtime; and metaphorically, there's an axe in her grasp, a deep hurt that has festered inside of her in the dark places where the light doesn't reach. As much as she wants a future with him, she also wants to carve out the past they share.

Loving Benji Rowland is like a gunshot to her carotid; the trauma doesn't look so scary when you bury it beneath more trauma. At the end of the day, a good twenty years from now she'll be retiring from her successful career as a ballet dancer and starting her run for office. She'll be the mayor of Six, and he'll be by her side, and when she's achieved all the things taped to her vision board, maybe then will she be able to blink away the hot burn of tears. Today is not the first day Stella has wondered if her boyfriend truly gives a damn about her.

And today will not be the last day she sinks her claws into him, begging him not to leave her. All of his betrayals have been by his choice. Like his cold fingertips on her skin, his voice so soft that she stares and waits for him to shatter. But for all the terrors the both of them have caused, it seems neither of them will ever have to face the consequences of their actions. They lounge on their yacht, soul touching soul, and they watch the whole wide world flood.

"How can you love me after everything?"

Instinctively, inevitably; "and how can I love you?" She sighs, a soft and fleeting sound, and her fingers rise to meet the smooth skin of his knuckles. They trace his veins, the pulse of his blood, the beat of his heart. When she pulls away this time, she does it gently, closing the distance between her and a conveniently placed bottle of wine. She pops the cork, and shamelessly, she takes a long swig. When she stops, she meets his gaze, and her smile is like a train flying off the rails straight at him.

If they are always fated to fall for the other / when will they breathe again?

"Because who else is going to love me, wicked scheming hateful bitch that I am?" She stares longingly at him, and it's like looking at the love of her life; like slipping below the waves and watching a shark appear. "And who else would love you, lying pitiful cheating bastard that you are?" She doesn't say this cruelly. Only honestly. For every cut he's given her, she's given him two. When they've finally damaged everyone else, then who's going to be left but them? She takes another quick gulp, then sets the bottle down with a resounding thud.

"For me, it's always going to be you. And I stopped asking myself why a long time ago." She nods her head at the window, the glow of firelight distracting her from the tension that has seeped into the room. "Anymore demons to exorcise, darling, or can we go have some fun and be done with the unscheduled therapy?"