copper toned tuesdays / grady&benji

[tick 12a / calla]

g r a d y .

It's early afternoon and your hair is still damp. Criminal, you know, but you've discovered that when you're up all night because the sound of your own heartbeat keeps jolting you awake, getting up late and not wanting to do much of anything is the norm.

Cleo is dead. And it's a miracle that you even pulled yourself out of bed. It's not because you're in mourning, but it's because thinking about her makes your blood burn and your throat close and you still see Naomi sitting all alone in her infirmary bed, and it's all too much.

You've already lashed out at your brother, not that he made it hard to do, but the words still felt acidic when you spat them at him from across the dining table. It was familiar, but in a way that made your stomach turn.

Maybe you've just let yourself go lax in the time you've been off campus. Being home is a different sort of battle, and you don't truly realize how much it's drained you until you're standing in front of a blank canvas, hair still wet from the shower and wearing actual sweatpants.

You didn't even know you owned sweatpants.

But you've still got your shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow because there's no way in hell you're getting oil paint on an import straight from Eight. It still doesn't stop a few flecks from clinging to your arms, and you cringe when you reach up to scratch your forehead, ending up with a swipe of blue above your eyebrow.

The knock on the studio door makes you groan, looking down at your hands stained green and gold, and then to the doorknob. Owen never has the decency to knock, and you know that your parents wouldn't even bother.

The moment you open the door and see Benji Rowland on the other side, you turn around and slam it in his face.

[gamemaker kelsier]

b e n j i .

"If I had an orchard,
I'd work 'til I'm sore"

Cleo is dead and Stella sends Benji to Grady to comfort him. Benji stands on the edge of the riverbank at five in the morning and he thinks about walking into it until his head is covered, it'd be the same as breathing air right now. His lungs burn, the world burns around him and he tries to remember what it's like to not be in pain.

How does someone smother a fire like that and not even leave a trace?

There are flowers in his grasp when he rings Grady's doorbell hours later. His eyes run over the architecture, taking in old money that never learned that a buttress was never a style choice, just there for support. "Too many," he mutters and there are tears in his eyes for a moment. Then the door is opened and Benji is ushered through the house and out into a back garden.

The studio pointed out to him is an architect's dream, in great need of adjustment. Ivy holds the structure in its clutches to the point that if one were to tear it away, the brickwork would crumble with it.

Benji knocks, intending to pass the flowers over and just leave. Their last conversation wasn't so great but Stella doesn't know that and it's easier to just do as she says without complaint.

But then Grady slams the door in his face and for a brief moment, Benji is irrationally angry about that one tiny thing. One tiny kiss in the summer and Grady looks at him like he's the devil incarnate. There are so many worse things that he's done, that he deserves to be despised for and he chooses a kiss.

He looks at the door and then tries the knob. Locked. Then he looks at the hinges, they're Abbotsfords. What kind of lunatic uses an Abbotsford door hinge on any door nowadays? Benji scoffs.

Then he kicks the door in and it splinters off of its shitty hinges in one go.

"Weak hinges, I don't know who does your building but tell them to use Mortise next time," he says as he steps over the mess.

"I brought you flowers, from Stell," he says and he holds them out, intending to turn and leave in the next breath. Something stalls him, his eyes fall on Grady's paintings and for a moment, he forgets that there is water in his lungs.

[tick 12a / calla]

g r a d y .

It takes you about five seconds to realize what you've done. Everything lags behind then, because Benji Rowland is in your house, he's on your property, and you just slammed a door in his face. Who even let him in? Beckerson? Owen? God, if it was Owen then you're screwed. One thousand percent screwed.

Maybe he was just a stress hallucination. You consider cracking the door back open to check, just to see, but it quite literally explodes before you get the chance. The whole thing caves in, sound cracking through the room, "WHAT THE-"

Then there's the door on the floor, and there's Benji standing where it used to be.

"What is wrong with you?"

That's when you notice the flowers in his hands, and you feel like you might throw up because there's no way in hell- you can't handle anything else this week let alone Benji suddenly confessing his love. You knew the whole summer fiasco would come back to bite you and now here he is - standing in your broken doorway like some kind of pseudo Romeo.

But then he says the flowers are from Stella. And you still feel like throwing up.

You take them from him gingerly, hold them out at an arms length, then you stride over to the window and chuck them out.

"I'm allergic." You say, watching the bouquet sail down to the ground. Stella knows you're allergic. You know that Stella knows you're allergic. It's a fun little inside joke she likes to tell.

And you expect some kind of remark to that, but Benji stays quiet. It seems a far cry from when you confronted him at the quad, when you challenged him and he didn't back down. When that had made you hate him just a little bit more. Because he was the one that kissed you. He didn't want to take your money, so he doesn't get to say shit.

A terrible little thing reminds you - at least you don't have to worry about Cleo finding out about it anymore.

You huff at Benji's stubborn silence and turn back from the window, stomping your way back over, but you stop when you sees what he's looking at. There's an unfinished canvas sitting on the easel, still more sketch than paint, and the way he looks at it makes you feel naked. You step between him and it purposefully, because really no one, not even Naomi or Maverick, had ever been allowed to see your art like that - all unfinished and raw and much too personal.

So it's like a dismissal when you gesture to the door and give him a smile so fake that it hurts, "You've done her bidding. You can go now."

[gamemaker kelsier]

b e n j i .

"If I had an orchard,
I'd work 'til I'm sore"

Grady protests, of course, but Benji isn't listening. Once his attention is captured by anything, it's hard to get through to him, he's been that way a long time. It's usually when he's drawing, he always loses track. Still, the flowers leaving the room via the window is in his peripheral and it brings a slight smile to his lips.

But the painting calls out to him.

A half-finished form gazes out of the canvas, facing the West as if she can see out the window, yet her eyes are trained over her shoulder. Her left hand is held to her chest, her fingers slightly curled, the hint of a clutch. The background is nondescript, the table she sits at clothed and flowered.

Then there's her hand, open loosely on the table in front of her in such a way that he grimaces at the sight of it, it's painful. He doesn't like how easy it is to identify with it, how he looks too hard at that hand and thinks about Cleo, running her finger down his jawline.

It stings to think about how he's slowly losing the women in his life, as if someone is picking them off one by one.

It doesn't feel real quite yet that Cleo is gone.

It feels as if she's about to come stomping through the doorway, heels clicking loudly on the concrete flooring. She'd be losing her mind over the rumours of her death, loudly swearing revenge.

And her perfume would linger behind her after every step. Her arms would wrap around Grady's neck even as she tipped her head back to wink at Benji.

And he'd smile.

Grady steps in front of him and Benji blinks coming back from a daydream abruptly. He doesn't leave as Grady has asked him to, the odd pain in his chest keeping him rooted. Maybe Grady hates him but that's never bothered Benji.

"Are you," he starts, hesitating because he's never done this before, "Are you doing okay?"

[tick 12a / calla]

g r a d y .

"Am I doing okay?" And, god, you sound- you almost sound hysterical. You narrow your eyes at Benji, looking for some kind of trick, because that has to be what this is.

People don't just ask that. They don't check up on you. And if they do, then they want something.

So of all people, Benji is the one to break? Something about that doesn't check out.

He stands there like a stupid impassive statue and you're tempted to grab a canvas and smash it over his head just so that he'll do something. Is this what people think when they talk to you? Do they get this infuriated when you're the one keeping every emotion behind a mask?

Your nerves feel like they're this close to snapping. The longer you look at his blank stare, the worse it gets.

"No, Benji, I am not doing okay." You snap at him out of reflex, "My girlfriend is dead, and my own parents think I'm the one that did it."

Everything has been wound tight around your chest for so long, it's been suffocating. Between Elaina and Naomi and Parker, all in the span of a week, the effort of keeping up this illusion makes your head spin.

The paint on your palms cracks when you run a hand through your hair.

Maybe the best part of Benji being so hard to read is the fact that it just makes him a brick wall. It's doesn't feel like you're talking to one of the little cockroaches at school or one of the snakes in your house. And once you start you can't stop, because your voice just gets louder and it feels a little like you're falling apart.

"My reputation is tanking." You steamroll through, ticking things off as you press fingers to your temples, "I'm being followed by a psychopath who's made it her personal mission to ruin my life. I can't even go two seconds without someone either expecting me to cry on their shoulder or stab them in the throat."

No one's allowed to know you. That's been one of the biggest rules you've had through all of this. Ever since Maverick and Naomi and the burn of them leaving you, you took that pathetic part of yourself and locked him up. It's easier that way, because everyone wants something from you, they always have, but at least this way you can control which parts of you they get. There's no risk of them seeing that old heart of yours when it's long dead and gone.

You whirl on Benji so suddenly then, before your brain can catch up to your words.

"So which one are you here for? The tears or the knife?"