open & closed | if I get too close and I'm not how you hoped

[maintiensledroit]

Who: Benton Fraser, Wynonna Earp & others
What: early spring catchall: open + closed starters
When: March & April
Where: Milton & Lakeside

Content Warnings: Usual Wynonna warnings of alcoholism and likely violence/aggression apply. All others TBD.

forgive my northern attitude

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[maintiensledroit]

He doesn't move as she kisses his cheek, except to lean a little closer to her, his hand drifting to the small of her back, where his fingers spread, warm and firm. Ben looks down at her, searching her eyes as she tells him that she doesn't want to go back to her own world, to the life she lived there. His voice, when he speaks, is low and a little hoarse with everything he's feeling, everything he has so much trouble releasing from the tight grip he keeps on himself. "I can't imagine being able to continue on without you."

Maybe her friends and allies can. Maybe they don't need her the way he seems to now, with all the light and warmth and joy she's brought into what had been, he knows, a starkly empty life outside of his job and his duty and the work he did with Ray. He blinks, rapid, the import of everything she's saying washing over him. "I think you'd love Chicago."

[balancedlight]

She frowns at the look on his face, but not out of sadness or grief. That look makes her warm with longing, with love, and she buries her face in his chest to stifle the feeling of sadness that comes along with want. Because there are no guarantees. Not here.

"I want to see Chicago," she mutters. "I want to see Chicago with you. I want to live with you and meet Ray and treat all of the people who need help." She can't help it. The words come out in a breathless rush. "I want to marry you, Ben Fraser."

[maintiensledroit]

Words come spilling out of her, and he feels them hit like a flurry of punches to the gut. The stew on the stove is starting to boil; he doesn't notice. "You—"

Of everything he's never allowed himself to imagine, this is the thing he's most careful not to let his thoughts touch. (His parents had been happy, he knows, for the short time they had, and he's always wanted... but there was his duty, and his career, and always another criminal on the run to track down, and the days flowed into each other and when he'd thought of it at all it had been with a certain detached wistfulness for a life he'd never live.)

He blinks rapidly, mouth opening and closing again as he looks down at her. "I'm sorry?"

She didn't just say that, did she? Is he imagining this whole thing, somehow? Is it some new dream, and he'll wake up embarrassed at how great his longing is that he'd dreamed it at all?

[balancedlight]

Of course he doesn't hear her or he doesn't understand or he simply doesn't want it, but she doesn't care. Sveta's been married before; a short lived and short sighted affair that ended amicably enough but neither of them talk to each other anymore. She doesn't care.

Fuck Fate.

She wants this.

"I want to marry you, Benton Fraser," she tells him again with all the fire she can muster.

[maintiensledroit]

...No, he heard her right the first time, which still feels impossible. Like a man in a dream, he reaches to turn the stove off, aware on some level that they shouldn't let the stew boil over and burn, but he never takes his eyes off his face. "Sveta..."

The times in his life when he's been struck truly speechless have been few and far between, but she's managed it. He blinks rapidly, lips parting, but it feels almost impossible to collect the scattered remnants of his thoughts. They're as far-flung as a fistful of marbles tossed into the air, and he catches one at a time, tries to pull the fragments into something, anything meaningful.

He's struck by a longing so powerful it feels like being in a raging river, dragging him along, but he has to give her the chance to be sure. "I can't promise a comfortable life."

A good one, he hopes. He'd do anything and everything it took. But he knows the kind of man he is, and so does she, and though he'd do whatever it took to build a happy, good life together, he knows it might not be the future she'd been expecting or wanting. "Even though you know I'd try to give you whatever you might want."

[balancedlight]

Sveta's eyes flash a little, that sort of flare of affectionate temper that he's seen from her so often. She calls him a very ugly name in Russian and puts her hand on his chest to push him back gently.

"I tell you I want to get married and you worry about comfortable life? Well, perhaps I can give you a comfortable life! I am a very modern woman! You will marry a doctor! You should be happy."

But she isn't going to press that point, especially as it isn't the full truth of what's behind her chest and what's in her heart. Instead, she takes his hand. "Any life I have with you is the life I want."

[maintiensledroit]

She tosses a Russian invective at his head and pushes lightly on his chest and he ducks his head, already chuckling. The reality of it all is settling in, and he feels like his head is filling with pure oxygen.

Ben curls his fingers around her hand and presses it close to his heart, smiling down at her. "Yes, you are a modern woman," he agrees. "I thought I was the one who was supposed to propose."

[balancedlight]

She takes her other hand, grabs his shirt, and kisses him soundly. "You have not answered me," she tells him firmly, as if she can shake a yes or no out of him. "I want to hear you say it. Since I had to be the one to ask!"

Because yes, he was supposed to propose, but she's done waiting on him.

[maintiensledroit]

He's already grinning as she kisses him, and his arms go around her as she pulls him down. He feels punch-drunk, like his head is full of pure oxygen, and he can't stop smiling when he looks back down at her, his beautiful, fiery, brilliant, kind, loving Sveta, the woman who has so thoroughly won his heart.

"Yes," he tells her, laughing a little. "Don't sting me, pchelka. Marry me."

[balancedlight]

She feels the wind leave her lungs, leaving her frozen and breathless and oh so warm. She wraps him up tightly, laughing against his chest, letting the sound get muffled in his shirt. Like it's a secret that's only for him.

"We could all use a wedding," she says with a knowing nod.