here you go you little masochist ;)
capsize | sparrow ben x reader angst
Every second he looked at them was pain; cold, hard icicles that stabbed at the walls of his heart when their eyes met his– Ben felt its inevitability all throughout the relationship, the impending tumultuousness, the exact moment that he'd say something he'd regret, and then it happened with the suddenness of gunfire. He said it, and they wouldn't let him take it back, leaving his harshness as the sour taste that poisoned his mouth.
"I wish I never had the unlucky chance to meet someone like you."
Tears did not fall. Hell, Ben and them fought for nothing more than a simple suggestion.
"You and I haven't spent time together in a while," their head rested on their shoulder, his face buried by his work.
"I've just been really busy is all," looking back, his initial dismissiveness was the true catalyst.
"So that's why we should take a break," they prodded Ben's arm; the irritability he'd already been holding inside of him from the difficult task at hand boiled over, and his body shook them off.
"You are so clingy sometimes."
"God forbid I ask my boyfriend to spend time together,"
"Jesus Christ, you act like you're like, entitled to me dropping everything to give you attention." His temper spilled from its proverbial pot, his tine growing hostile. Once this started in him, there was no going back, two years the back of his mind were going to allow to go to waste.
"Maybe it's not just about attention and it's that I care enough to try and cheer you up?" Their voice was high, their frame moving far from Ben's.
"Don't fucking do that." His mouth, dry and sore, kept opening no matter how many times the other side of his brain shouted at him to shut up. "Don't pretend like you actually care."
"I hate to break it to you, Ben, but I do care about you." They breathed shrilly. "I'm sorry if that's such a burden to you."
"God, now you're just guilt-tripping me." But they weren't. If only he let people in, allow them to worry for him, and stopped pushing. "I wish I never had the unlucky chance to meet someone like you." His wording made it sound like a true matter of the heart when in actuality it just slipped out, which, still, it never should have and there was no excuse.
Who the hell lets shit like that just slip out? He knew just how wrong that was, but he still used it as an excuse. "I thought you were a better man than that, Hargreeves." The last word was a sting by a wasp; he hadn't heard his surname come out of their mouth in years, which was a paradoxically wordless message that yes, it was over and there was no salvaging what was them.
Ben watched as their eyes sat red and puffy, downing a cold whiskey every few minutes to become numb. He'd be lying if he didn't detail that he'd cried as a mournful crow, loud sobs that racked his body and sobs they wouldn't hear. Or, they did hear, and they just didn't care to check up on him because he'd just do the same thing– push them away.
It was the end of the week when he'd built the courage to speak to them again, but the wall of his heart still bore the claw marks of them trying so hard to get inside. "Hey,"
They remained at their perch on the stool, shelving novels. "Hey,"
And the conversation never sprung further, staying as about acquaintance-like gesture. Ben turned back into his thoughts, sulking. Maybe that's what they always were; a ship sailing at at sea, teetering at the edge if his iceberg, cruising at the surface before its inevitable
