dira | Southland Fic: A Little Mental Yoga

Happy Southland TNT Premiere Eve! I come bearing fic! (Funny story: I was determined when I started writing it in July to have this story posted before season two premiered. And then I kept getting ... extensions.) This was--I don't know if you remember this, it was kind of a thing in the last decade, but this was a cliche bingo story. What's that, you say? I already posted a telepathy story for cliche bingo? Months ago? I was supposed to write a hallucination story in Southland? Yeah, you're not helping.

Anyway! Fic! With many many thanks to

iulia for beta and

omphale23 and

missmollyetc and a lot of other people for listening.

Sherman/Cooper. Explicit. 17,000 words.
post-Season 1. Telepathy and prescription drugs.

John was abruptly angry, the special anger that was reserved for the obviously guilty, because Ben had Yeah, I did it written all over him.

You can read under the cut or at the AO3.

A Little Mental Yoga

John had gotten out of the habit of being surprised by anything. After twenty years on the beat in LA, he had a pretty good idea of the range of potential shit he could find himself stepping into on any given day. His instincts were honed, to say nothing of his habit of constantly calculating the worst case scenario. Fires, earthquakes, cop ambushes, rapes and murders and batshit crazy people of every kind. John had seen just about everything.

So afterward, when he had a chance to think about it, he was pretty sure it was just that it was such a goddamned genuine surprise that made him react like he did.

He'd had Ben Sherman as his trainee for about ten weeks, long enough to get a real good idea of whether he was going to break (he wasn't, but there was no point telling him that) and the ways he was likeliest to fuck up in the long run (burnout from caring too much was the main one; he'd gotten past that overconfident shit in a hurry). They were getting into a good rhythm, and he didn't have to tell the kid anything twice, which was nearly as rare as a kid who looked like he'd walked straight out of rookie cop twink porn actually wearing the badge.

This was probably the shittiest watch they'd had so far, though. Anytime you finished dealing with the screaming parents of a dead child and then still had six hours to go on the clock, you knew there was going to be no answer for the day but to get truly, deeply hammered at the end of it. Ben had been pale and silent ever since then, but that was it as far as John could tell. If this day had come any earlier, John might have needled him a little just to get a read on him, but by now he knew Ben well enough to just watch. He'd done fine, but it was obvious he wanted off shift and out of his uniform like nothing else.

John wasn't inclined to argue with that, and didn't say anything he didn't have to until they'd both gotten through the locker room, showered and changed. Ben came out looking a little scrubbed-raw, but he was doing better than plenty of rookies after a day like this. They walked out together, Ben following John out to the parking lot and pulling even with him once they were on the asphalt.

John dragged his steps a little, debating whether to take the kid out somewhere and personally see to getting him plastered.

Ben shook his head wearily and said, "Believe me, man, it would just make it worse."

John stopped short and looked over at Ben. He knew for a fucking fact he hadn't somehow spoken without meaning to--and he saw Ben freeze, eyes going wide as he stared at the asphalt, every inch of his body bracing for a blow.

John was abruptly angry, the special anger that was reserved for the obviously guilty, because Ben had Yeah, I did it written all over him. It didn't even make sense, and John glared at him, furious, wanting to hit him, wanting to walk away, because he did not want to deal with this shit. What did you do? What the fuck did you do? What do I have to fucking deal with now?

Ben was looking up at him with that frozen wide-eyed stare, because Ben had crumpled to his knees. John abruptly realized that he himself hadn't moved or made a sound. All he'd done was get angry and think--

"Shit," John breathed. His anger deserted him all at once as he knelt down next to the kid, who sure as fuck hadn't deserved--whatever that was--after the day they'd had. John reached out a hand but didn't know where he could touch, how to check, after what the fuck had just happened. "You all right? What...."

Ben flinched away from him. "Well, my splitting headache just went fucking nuclear, so no, actually, not all right."

"Ben, what...."

John couldn't finish that sentence to save his life.

Ben dropped his head, rubbing at his face with one hand. "Gimme a tab of whatever's in your pocket and take me somewhere quiet, and I'll tell you. Jesus Fucking Christ, I don't think I can drive. Fuck, ow, fucking fuck."

John stared for a second, but despite the warm night Ben was starting to shake. Even the back of his neck was looking sickly pale, beaded with sweat. John reached for his duffel, unzipped a pocket and dug out the little orange bottle. He offered the whole thing to Ben.

Ben read the label, or at least looked at it. He opened it on the second try, tipped out a single tablet and looked at it, too--it was faintly reassuring, to know the kid probably wouldn't just take whatever John handed him--and then knocked it back. John heard it crunch between his teeth and gave him a sharp look, but Ben didn't meet his eyes, just held out the bottle and swallowed hard.

John put the bottle away, automatically adjusting his mental inventory--eight pills left now--as he did. He looked around sharply as he zipped the bag; it sounded loud all of a sudden. Jesus Christ, they were still in the precinct lot, someone was going to walk out and find them in a second; he was unbelievably fucking lucky no one had walked out in the last minute and seen them already.

Ben reached out and dropped his hand short of touching John's arm; when John looked at him he shook his head slightly. It took a second, and then John realized what he was trying to say.

Ben would have known if anyone was coming. Fuck.

He got to his feet, then reached down and hauled Ben up by the back of his shirt, ignoring the way his own back protested. It was nothing compared to whatever was happening to Ben--whatever he'd done to Ben, or at least helped to do. For his part, Ben managed to hold himself steady on his feet, though he still had his head down and one hand over his eyes, fingertips digging into his temple like he could reach through his skin and pull the pain out. John steered him slowly over to his car and opened the door for him, and Ben dropped clumsily into the seat and curled forward, one arm braced across the dash.

John stood there for a second looking down at him, considering the odds of the kid puking all over his own feet before the Percocet had time to kick in.

Ben shook his head again, and John held down his own reaction to a cold shock through the guts. He shut the door and went around to the trunk to throw his bag in, and then back across the parking lot to pick up Ben's where he'd dropped it and throw that in, too. He stared at the two duffels side by side for a second and then realized what he was doing, felt the pounding of his own pulse and the sweat down his spine.

He had to focus on an objective. Ben was in a lot of pain and needed to get to someplace quiet; LA wasn't exactly a target-rich environment for quiet places, but he figured he had an idea of what kind of quiet was required, and where he could drive to without thinking about it. He could focus on that. Quiet places. Places where Ben would feel all right. Out in the desert somewhere, maybe. He'd probably like that.

He got behind the wheel and then sighed and said, "Seatbelt, kid."

Ben mumbled something incoherent and miserable, but uncurled enough to get a seatbelt on. He twisted away again, toward the window this time. That meant now if he puked it'd be all over the door and himself, but John wasn't looking.

John was thinking about the desert and driving.

John drove and thought about the wide empty sky and the quiet desert. He thought about Baker to Vegas, the pack of runners pounding through the emptiness, with nothing in their heads but the next mile and the one after that. He thought about Ben's speed in foot chases and wondered whether he'd ever done distance running. He pictured Ben out there like Chickie on the long race through the desert. Chickie told him once that by the third day it felt like there was nothing else in the world but the desert and the run.

Beside him, Ben sighed, and there was a fabric-on-leather sound. John glanced sideways and saw Ben slumped against the door--he was visibly breathing, but all the tension had gone out of him, and if he wasn't actually unconscious he wasn't far from it. John knew how that was. The sudden cessation of pain (back when he ever managed to get complete relief, back when anything ever made it stop completely) was better than sex, and could knock you over harder than an orgasm, leave you half-passed out from sheer relief.

John faced front and thought about driving. Driving and sleeping and nothing hurting anymore and nothing else.

When John turned the car off Ben lifted his head and made a noise halfway between sleepy and stoned. He curled forward, his arms extended and fingers brushing the windshield, stretching his back in a sinuous curve. His t-shirt rode up over the small of his back, and John felt more envy for his flexibility than real appreciation of the view. He felt old for a second--and then older, when he opened his door and unfolded himself stiffly out of the car. He went around and got the bags from the trunk, and by the time he reached the passenger door with them both in hand, Ben was standing there, looking slowly and thoughtfully up and down John's street.

"Quiet enough for you?"

Ben blinked, focusing on him, and then flashed a sweet smile that only lasted a second and was at least forty percent pure oxycodone. Even when the smile vanished, the kid's face seemed softer around the edges than usual. "Yeah. Let's do this."

John rolled his eyes and headed into the house, unlocking the door and letting Ben follow him in; he dropped both bags on the kitchen floor and turned to wave Ben toward the living room and the couch. "Sit down, kid."

"Yeah, yeah," Ben said. He took a long look around first, then sprawled in the middle of the couch, head tipped back, arms and legs splayed out. It was nothing like Ben's usual body language, which was all straight lines and containment. So how much of the usual Ben on duty was....

Right, they were somewhere quiet. It was time to talk.

John sat down in a chair, keeping his distance but giving himself a good angle on Ben's face in profile. "So drinking makes it worse but painkillers don’t?"

Ben shrugged, the motion almost lost in the spread of his arms along the back of the couch. "Percocet makes it worse, keeps me from caring, and knocks out the headache all at the same time. Although if anybody dies violently within about fifty feet of here, I'll scream like a girl in a horror movie, just so you know."

"Just try to point to where it's coming from while you're screaming," John suggested, making a mental note. Fifty feet. Ben snorted, but smiled a little.

"Yeah, it's really not as much help as you'd think." Ben waved one hand vaguely. "Nobody thinks in complete sentences when you need them to, and...."

John waited out the silence and didn't tell Ben to get his shoes off the coffee table when he propped his feet on the edge--knees bent, body curling in again, defensive posture even though his arms were still thrown wide, throat exposed.

"It's not that I can read people's thoughts," Ben said carefully. John felt muscles in his aching back tense that little bit more, stiffening his spine, and knew he was hearing a confession being given for the first time. "I don't see them, or hear them, and I definitely don't look for them. They just get into my head. I guess they have since I was a kid. I started noticing what it was when I was about six. Olivia."

Half-sister. Parents hadn't divorced until he was ten. So it was like that. "You knew what she was thinking?"

Ben snorted. "No. I mean, yeah, once I met her, I did, but no--I told my parents what I could do, that I knew what they were thinking, and bam, my dad was thinking about Olivia and her mom. I wanted to show off, so I told them that was what he was thinking of."

John gave that a slow nod, thinking out the likely results of that little firecracker set off by a six-year-old kid. Showing off, Jesus. "Your mom didn't know?"

Ben's head rolled slowly back and forth. "The worst part was my dad. For a second, before he convinced himself I had made up the psychic thing to cover however I really found out ... he was scared of me. Just this blast of fear and...."

And pretty much exactly the kind of thing John had hit the kid's brain with when he figured it out. Fucking great.

"You're not in denial, though," Ben said. He rolled his head to the side and met John's gaze directly, eyes wide and serious like people only got when they were high on something. "It's really cool that you're not in denial."

John decided not to wonder why he wasn't, like any sane person would be. "Yeah, well. Sorry about earlier."

Ben shrugged again, looking back up to the ceiling as he flapped one hand, dismissing John's words. "Yeah, before the Percocet kicked in I had a lot of fond thoughts about punching you in the spine sometime."

John grinned. Attaboy. "And after?"

Ben smiled again, slow and pretty. "I thought I'd rather get over it than get even. I have stuff for migraines, but this is way better."

John snorted again, and then the inevitable happened, the way inevitable things did. His thoughts came with a weird double vision-- the image of what he could be doing to a grateful and pliant Ben on his couch (kneeling over him, pants unzipped, cock in the heat of an easy mouth, pretty smiling lips stretched wide, blue eyes looking up at him, gone mostly pupil-black) was overlaid with resigned thankfulness that he'd managed to put it off that long.

Ben's smile widened, and he huffed a laugh. "Oh, man, you have no idea how threatening that isn't."

John raised his eyebrows--there were plenty of ways to interpret that statement. None of them were quite what he would have expected out of young Officer Sherman.

"It's not like I don't know what I look like to people," Ben said. "And there's--I mean, you can hear the difference between me saying I want to punch you in the spine and somebody who's actually going to do it, right? It's like that, like tone of voice. That was the thing I least want him to catch me thinking tone of voice, not I'm coming over there."

"Uh-huh," John said. He wasn't exactly reassured. He wasn't ever going to be reassured. The kid was fucking psychic. Still, if Ben was using it to gain himself anything at all, or could even contemplate using it, there wasn't a goddamn sign John could see. All he wanted was to be normal, just like everybody. That was something.

"Does it always hurt, when people get in your head?"

"Pretty much," Ben said.

John made a mental note. Pretty much wasn't yes.

"People are fucking miserable. They're angry, they're sad, they hurt, they want things they can't get, they lie to themselves--the insides and the outsides of people's heads are so fucking different sometimes I can't even figure out what goes with who. That's what hurts the worst. Like nails on a chalkboard."

"Huh," John said, and wondered if there was any point to saying that much; the kid could tell he was paying attention. There wasn't even a silence, for him, when John waited him out.

"It shut off for a while," Ben said. "Shut down. When I was ten, after--after that night, when they came to our house, they--"

John pictured it for a second, all the thoughts that would have gotten into a ten-year-old's head that night. Ben winced, and John forced himself to focus. Ben was talking, he was listening, and not thinking of anything but this.

"Yeah," Ben said. "I woke up in the hospital after and I couldn't... there was nothing. Just nothing in my head but me. I didn't know how to think about things, how to feel anything, when no one else was in my head thinking or feeling or anything. Gave me nightmares, I couldn't sleep. It took about a year to start coming back, but it stays shut now almost all the time, except when I'm...."

He waved a hand back toward the front door and, John figured, their entire day on the other side of it. "Hungry, angry, lonely, tired, you know?"

That was an AA formula, but John got it, and nodded. Anything that lowered Ben's defenses made his brain vulnerable.

"Or if I'm sick, or in pain, or on anything whatsoever, or just had sex...." Ben sighed. "It gets to be a vicious cycle at some point because anything that makes the headache better or distracts me from it makes the actual thing worse. I just have to wait it out, and eventually it goes away and I'm fine. Most of the time it's shut off, and it just makes me kind of...."

Ben screwed up his face into a scrunchy frown. John did not let himself spend more than a second thinking it was cute.

"Sensitive. I don't misunderstand people unless they're lying. I usually know when people are lying. Like that."

"All right," John said, finally, when it seemed like Ben was done briefing him. "Good to know. You want to crash on the couch here?"

Ben nodded, not bothering to make any kind of polite resistance--he had to know John wasn't letting him out of his sight in this condition. Ben squirmed over to lie flat and toed off his shoes. John sat still and watched for a second--long enough for the kid to reach down and unbuckle his belt, ruck up his t-shirt and scratch idly at his stomach.

Side effect, John thought, remembering the time he'd taken a few Percocet and then scratched the hell out of his own legs from the edge of his boxers to his knees, and how much it had hurt to put his pants on the next day.

Ben's fingers went suddenly flat to his skin, and John felt his face go hot. He got up and went to get a blanket from the linen closet, in case the A/C got to the kid overnight. It was barely twilight outside, just getting dim in the house with the shades still drawn from when he left that morning. John dropped the blanket on the coffee table. Ben had one arm over his face, but his hand was still lying carefully flat on top of his t-shirt, consciously not-scratching. He was awake.

John turned away, heading for the kitchen and a beer he goddamn deserved more than he'd ever deserved anything, and Ben said quietly, "It doesn't always hurt."

John stood still and waited.

"Some people don't hurt," Ben said quietly, the words coming slow but steady, like reading the damn Miranda off a card, like this was something Ben had to say. "You don't. If you did--if you weren't like you are, I wouldn't have lasted long enough to learn to hold it together on the job."

John glanced back over his shoulder, and Ben twisted over to lie on his side, face to the back of the couch, shirt riding up and his boxers peeking over the sagging top of his jeans.

"Go to sleep, then," John said, and went into the kitchen, wondering whether it was fifty feet from the couch to the back of his yard.

John startled awake in the dark--3:26, and it had been a small sound inside the house but outside the bedroom, probably a footstep. He heard the soft tap on his bedroom door before it opened just enough to show him a sliver of Ben's silhouette in the light from another room.

Ben ... would know he was awake without him saying anything.

Ben nodded slightly. "Called a cab, I'll see you at the station."

John nodded back. "You freaking out, Boo?"

Ben snorted, which sounded like a yeah, so what else is new to John. "Are you?"

John rubbed a hand over his face. Mostly he was tired, and glad that he didn’t actually have to get up yet. He poked around for freakout and didn't find much. "Guess not. You feeling like punching me in the spine?"

Ben smiled at that, light glinting briefly off his teeth. "Your couch is actually pretty comfy, so no. I'm good if you are."

"Yeah," John said. "Your bag's in the kitchen."

"Found it," Ben said, nodded again, and started to shut the door.

"Hey," John said, and Ben went still. "You know this just begs the question. What the fuck were you doing becoming a cop? You had to know it'd be like this sometimes."

Ben kept still, and John couldn't read a thing from his profile; the numbers of the alarm clock had moved on by the time Ben said, "I can't juggle."

John squeezed his eyes shut tight and then opened them, but... no, he was awake, and not any more medicated than usual. "You can't juggle."

Ben pulled the door open a little, let John see his grin, and John smiled back automatically. "I tried to think of a job that only involved being around happy people--all I came up with was being a magician for kids' parties. But I can't juggle."

John gave up and started laughing, even as he was thinking that, actually, the kind of moms who hired magicians for their kids--

"Yeah, that too," Ben said, and before John could stop laughing, there was a honk from the street. "Right. Gotta go."

He didn't quite pull the door all the way closed behind him, and John stayed in bed for another minute, not laughing anymore, just piecing this shit together. He waited until he heard the front door close behind Ben. Then he got up and watched out the window until Ben was actually in the cab, watched the cab pull away, and turned the locks.

He walked slowly back to bed, still not thinking of anything in particular: there was a stop sign at the end of the street, the cab would ease its quiet way out of the neighborhood, Ben was awake and upright again in the backseat. He'd sounded like he'd sobered up.

John was barely flat on the bed before he shoved his hand into his boxers, jerking off like it was about to be outlawed. He thought of Ben on his knees, Ben in his car, on his couch, in his bed, Ben making stupid jokes, and all he thought, over and over, was I am coming over there. John came fast, and hard, and fell asleep after like somebody'd just put out the lights. If his back hurt right then, he didn't care.

John had had plenty of trainees, and most of them had fixated on him in some way: crushes, hero worship, rebellion, daddy issues, and various disturbing cocktails of all of the above. Being the guy who didn't hurt Ben's head was kind of a new one, but kind of the same old shit from a different bright-eyed kid. Finding the bright-eyed kid in question breathtakingly hot wasn't new at all, although knowing for sure that Ben knew was. He hadn't developed a gruff exterior completely to entertain himself.

The whole brain-cramping circle of John knowing Ben knew John knew Ben knew was exactly the kind of endless idiotic mindfuck John knew better than to walk himself into. The way to handle all of it, in the end, was the way he'd always handled this kind of thing with his trainees: ignore it unless and until it endangered somebody's job or safety. If a trainee was going to make any kind of cop, they'd have to be able to deal with their feelings about their fellow cops, good or bad or really complicated. Ben was no different.

Anyway, John had gotten to be the guy who didn't hurt Ben's head without even trying in the first place. Thinking too hard about it--beyond a rock-solid determination never to actually hurt the kid like he had the first time--was bound to fuck it all up. So John pretty much ignored the fact that Ben was sometimes psychic, like he'd ignored the glances or glares he used to get from other trainees, to say nothing of that freaky facial tic Ramirez had had for the last eleven days before he gave up and turned in his badge.

Ignoring wasn't the same as not knowing, of course. John knew when Ben had a headache, and if he had nothing better to do he tried to think quiet thoughts at moments like that, just like he didn't make sudden moves around Ramirez for those last eleven days, and never made idle conversation with Shawna before she'd had her second coffee, even if their shift started well into daylight. It was polite, and Ben had reached the point where John wasn't rude to him just for the hell of it.

Of course, the instant he had anything at all better to do, he did it, just like always, and didn't worry about baby Ben's poor little brain. He would notice if Ben was in real serious trouble--he'd noticed the first time, when he hadn't even known there was anything to watch out for. There wasn't anything more to do about it, and definitely no point in saying anything, because Ben would already know what John would have said.

So it surprised John as much as anyone, when it happened. In the middle of a run of garbage calls, facing some idiot who'd called 911 and now insisted that it hadn't been him and he didn't know what they were talking about, John gave in to irritation and said, "Look, sir, I honestly don't care what you were doing or what you're trying to keep us from finding, but my partner gets these headaches when people lie to his face and it makes him bitchy, so either tell us what happened or stop talking, all right?"

In his peripheral vision, Ben--who had in fact been pinching the bridge of his nose and rubbing his temples on and off since they'd gotten stuck eating lunch next to a furiously silent couple--froze for a second.

Then, totally expressionless, Ben said, "It's true, sir. Pretty obvious. Now come on, what's up? Girlfriend?"

The guy looked halfway between terrified and ready to take a swing at them, and he said, "Okay! Yes, Jesus! I said if she touched my comics I was calling the cops, she did, I did, and then I realized what a stupid idea that was and hung up!"

John turned away, headed back toward the car, and the guy yelled after him, "Can I press charges against her for being a philistine?"

John glanced back just far enough to see that Ben was following, and that the slight frown he'd been wearing all afternoon was an actual scowl, now.

That had been incredibly, unnecessarily stupid--and mean, too, because John knew firsthand that people's reactions to finding out, or even suspecting, what Ben could do just hurt Ben worse. Fuck, he might as well just punch the kid in the head himself, if he was going to go around doing that to him.

John shook his head and got into the car, let Ben radio in that they were finished with the last call, and turned his thoughts to counting down the minutes left in the watch. Not too many now, but probably enough time to get stuck with one or two more idiots--maybe an honest to God cat-stuck-somewhere call, he'd gotten a couple dozen of those in twenty years. They were probably due.

Beside him, Ben said, "Was that rhetorical?"

John glanced sideways and raised his eyebrows.

Ben was frowning at the dash, and he didn't look up as he added, "Do I actually get bitchy when I have a headache, or were you just saying that for something to say?"

He sounded faintly worried, like he was actually scared he was fucking up somehow. Of course, something like that would be the first sign, if this psychic thing was going to affect his performance as a cop.

"Nah," John said, eyes on the road. "You're fine. I didn't even notice for the first two months."

Ben nodded slightly and John stole another glance. It was hard to tell if he looked reassured, because he still looked like his head hurt pretty bad.

"You thinking about punching me in the spine right now?" John asked.

Ben snorted, and flicked a look over at him. "Wouldn't you like to know."

His tone of voice wasn't threatening at all, though.

"Guess not," John said, considering it. "That'd be a hell of a feedback loop."

And then, whoops, he was thinking about what it'd be like if he was thinking of Ben naked and knew what Ben thought of him thinking it, and Ben knew what he--well, that would also be a hell of a feedback loop.

Ben actually laughed at that, sounding tired but not angry at all. "Yeah," he muttered, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. "That'd be a mess."

The thing about it was that it was easy to ignore, when John didn't go poking Ben with sticks over it. Ben never replied to an unspoken thought after that first time. He didn't acknowledge the things John was thinking. He didn't repeat them. He acted like all he got out of the deal was bad headaches, and it seemed like it was true.

"Migraines, yeah," he said, when Chickie asked him about it. "Diagnosed and medicated and everything. I put it down on my application to the Academy, and they asked me about a thousand questions about it and made me hand over some medical records, but after I convinced them I wasn't going to be fainting in the squad car they took me anyway."

Ben shot him a look, like he was trying to make some smart point about how the Department was willing to work with erratic pain conditions. John rolled his eyes. "You start fainting in my car, kid, you're going to get a hell of a lot more than a request for your medical records."

Chickie shook her head. "For the record, Cooper, I had a head injury--"

Ben's face lit up. "Wait, you fainted?"

"No," Chickie and John retorted at the same time, and they were off and running.

John had known for a couple of weeks the night they took an Unknown Trouble. Ben radioed for backup just like he'd been taught, when they pulled into the driveway and the house was quiet. It was going to take a couple of minutes for their backup to arrive, and the silence was giving John a bad, bad feeling. He glanced over at Ben, who was also frowning intently at the house, and John couldn't tell whether the frown was just concentration, or something more.

"Can you tell what we're walking into?"

Ben looked over at him, startled. "I'm off. But I guess I could try--"

Before John could say that he'd just been asking if the kid knew, not asking him to open up his brain to whatever might wander into it on this call--and hell, maybe he had meant it like that, Ben didn't usually misunderstand him even when he wasn't picking up broadcasts from John's brain--Ben had squeezed his eyes shut. John watched, fascinated, so he caught the second when Ben's face relaxed, eyelids smooth and mouth half-open, right before he snapped into wide-eyed overdrive.

"Now, we have to move now," Ben said, before he grabbed the radio and requested an ambulance in a dead-level voice. He clicked off and was already getting out of the car as he whispered, "He's going to kill her this time and they both know it."

John followed him and didn't argue, because, dammit, he was the idiot who asked.

Ben was almost fucking manic, afterward, which was a really weird look on the kid. He kept it down to a dull roar--a smile that kept creeping onto his face when he wasn't remembering to flatten it out--until the ambulance had left with the woman. Their backup had already hustled the husband off to lockup, leaving John and Ben to hold the scene. Forensics had higher priorities than a non-fatal stabbing with two cops as eyewitnesses, so for a little while it was just the two of them and a pool of blood on the kitchen floor.

"Oh my God," Ben whispered, pacing carefully around the clear space outside the spatter zone. "Oh my God, I saved her life. I--my--"

Ben waved at his head. "I saved her life," he repeated. "I did that. I honestly never--oh my God, I saved her life."

Ben had a serious yes-Virginia-there-is-a-Santa-Claus grin on his face, and when he turned it on John it was like a damn searchlight. It was weird as hell, and it made the hair stand up on John's arms--this was trouble wrapped up in a shiny package, and he knew it. Even knowing, though, he couldn't help grinning back at the kid.

"We," was all John said, because sure, he wasn't psychic, but he had gotten hold of the damn knife, thank you very much. "We saved her life."

Ben's smile just widened to truly impossible proportions.

"We saved her life," Ben repeated, and turned away from his pacing, bouncing straight into John's personal space. He grabbed John's hand--maybe to check out the little nothing of a cut he'd gotten bandaged by that gorgeous EMT, maybe just because he needed something to hold on to. John was suddenly very conscious that they were alone, and that Ben was close enough to put his arm around. Ben's wide eyes met his--Ben knew John knew Ben knew John knew--

A voice from just outside the door called out, "LAPD Forensics, anybody home?"

Ben turned away on a dime, and John went to the door to direct traffic; by the time they walked out Ben was wearing something like a straight face. The hair on John's arms had stopped reporting danger, but he fought the feeling of something's coming for the rest of the watch.

In daylight, at arm's length or more, it didn't seem like such a bad thing. Ben veered suddenly during a footchase and wound up cornering the fleeing suspect. Sometimes he called for backup before John had decided they needed it. It wasn't all the time, but when Ben seemed to be using it, it seemed to work.

And when John saw him pull his own little orange bottle out of his locker and pop a couple of pills, swallowing them dry, he raised his eyebrows. Ben held out the bottle with no expression on his face, but John barely had to glance at it to know it was Ben's very own legally prescribed headache medicine. The kid seemed to be in pain just about all the time these days--maybe John was just noticing more, because he knew and Ben didn't feel like he had to hide it, but maybe he was doing it to himself, on purpose, because John had wanted to know and Ben had wanted to please him, or impress him, or--

Ben rolled his eyes, but John hadn't said anything out loud, so Ben couldn't shoot that down out loud, however badly he obviously wanted to.

John handed the bottle back and said, "Seriously, though, why'd you become a cop?"

Ben didn't miss a beat, and didn't crack a smile. "Excellent prescription coverage."

He turned away, put the bottle back and took off his shirt. End of conversation.

When the summer heat hit and the crazies started stirring up like they always did, they hit a rough patch, working double shifts of nonstop insanity. John found himself wishing for garbage calls. Ben was pale and exhausted and silent all the time, though John didn't think he was doing much worse than the average trainee. John was running on fumes himself.

It got so bad he actually lost fucking track of how fast he was going through pills, so he had to drag himself to the bar after working a double, closing in fast on last call and praying his favorite greasy little trick would show up. He nursed a single beer and concentrated on not passing out for nearly an hour; when he finally spotted the guy he barely bothered to make eye contact before he headed to the bathroom.

He didn't have long to wait before--his dealer--the guy showed up, and they swapped cash for little orange bottle without a word. John glanced at the label and then popped one, like usual.

The guy didn't slip back out right away. John glanced at him, raised an eyebrow as he washed down the pill with the piss-warm last of his beer.

The guy shrugged. "You're going to qualify for a frequent shopper card soon, man."

John went still--not a freeze, but a nasty, predatory stillness, letting his gaze sharpen and not saying a word.

The guy raised his hands, waving them slightly, but didn't look really scared. "Hey, no, just saying. You're a good customer, okay? You're kind of decent. I'm nobody to be saying anything but that."

John lowered the bottle and closed his eyes. It couldn't possibly be that the drugs were kicking in already, but the knot in his back was loosening just knowing relief was on the way. If he weren't so tired, if the pain weren't already ebbing in that head-rush way it did sometimes, he wouldn't be closing his eyes with this guy standing right there, but he did it. Pretty stupid, he thought vaguely, but he didn't open his eyes.

"Hey," the guy said, softly, and a shift in the air cued John to open his eyes and see that the guy had closed the little distance between them, though he still wasn't quite touching John.

"I mean it," the guy said. "You're really--you're all right. If you want anything else, something to take the edge off--not a business transaction, just--you're all right. I could help you out."

The guy glanced down at John's crotch, and John exhaled, almost a laugh and definitely not a sigh, at the thought of getting it up right now.

Not that it wouldn't be nice, if bar-bathroom hookups were his deal. Fuck, it'd been a long time since anyone had gone down on him. Cesar, he thought, during their last whirl through friends-with-benefits, and then things with Ben had blown up and that had fallen apart again like it always did. And now he was getting offered free pity sex by a trick dumb enough to get picked up by vice.

And if he took him up on it, Ben would know by the end of their next shift, and John thought that might just cross some kind of line. Get an actual rise out of the kid, finally disgust him.

The trick smiled. "Come on, your boyfriend won't know."

John actually laughed. Fuck, maybe everybody was psychic but him. "You have no idea, man, he's got a sense about this shit."

He was halfway home before he realized that he hadn't even thought twice about the word boyfriend and Ben, and then he laughed again. From far off he thought he really needed to get a grip. Just the lessening of pain was making him fucking loopy.

Fourteen hours into an endless shift, brain going numb, John tried it again. "Really, why did you become a cop?"

Ben blinked a few times, almost in slow motion, and then said, "I don't know what you want me to say."

John glanced sideways and realized, abruptly, that Ben was speaking literally. He was working on not being disturbed by that when Ben shrugged and said, "Faster way to piss off my dad than going to law school and getting a job at the prosecutor's office. That work?"

John shook his head. He'd seen Ben with his dad, and he'd seen Ben on the job. Ben wasn't that kind of angry, the long slow burn that shaped an entire life. He hated his dad, sure, but it started and ended with his dad.

"I don't know what you want me to say," Ben repeated, right before an SUV blew through a light ten yards ahead of them and John had to swerve halfway onto the sidewalk to avoid being part of the six-car accident. Because a badly-jarred back and an accident scene to secure were exactly what his day needed.

For a few seconds before he got professional and worried, Ben seemed relieved. John wasn't going to ask him again, and they both knew it.

John glanced in Ben's direction even before Ben tapped his shoulder. Ben had come on shift already nursing a headache, and heading in to execute an arrest warrant on a guy with a long, violent rap sheet was time to take any advantage they could get. Ben mouthed Wait, and John held up a hand to stall the rest of the team.

Ben pressed an ear to the wall, beckoning John closer--good, that would be some kind of cover for whatever Ben was about to tell him.

"Kids," he whispered. "At least two. Watching cartoons. Dad's in another room."

Dad was on the arrest warrant. Nobody'd mentioned kids in the household, and if they had to wait for Family Services to get down here to handle it they'd lose the guy. This was going to be a mess.

Ben shook his head, glancing quickly past John toward the others. "Let me take point. Quietly."

"Sherman..."

"I can get us in and them out," Ben whispered. "They don't need to see this."

John had been nine years old the last time the cops came to his house. He heard the shout of "Police!" and he knew why, heard his dad shouting back and the sounds of things crashing and breaking. He made himself open his bedroom door and go and look, just in time to see the big men in uniform hustling his dad out through the broken door, still struggling. None of them looked back to see him standing there.

Ben gave him a big-eyed startled look and shook his head slightly. He obviously hadn't meant to bring that up. Ben looked away, past John--toward the door, this time, and probably the kids on the other side. "Let me take point."

John stepped away, gesturing Ben to the door. On the other side of the door, Davis and Muñez raised their eyebrows at the change of order, but didn't argue. Ben walked to the door, looked around at all three of them, and then crouched down in front of the door and brushed his knuckles over the outside of the door. It was pretty flimsy, and the sound would be audible from inside, barely, if the cartoons weren't turned up too loud.

Davis whispered something to Muñez; John didn't hear what, but he saw Ben grit his teeth. Ben switched to tapping his fingers gently against the door, low down. After almost a solid minute, the lock rattled and the doorknob twisted. All three of them flanking Ben had their hands on their weapons.

The door opened slowly, just to the limit of the safety chain, and the kid peeking through was barely taller than the knob. Ben was at his eye level down there, and the kid didn't even look away from him. Ben silently held out his badge, and said softly, "Hi, my name is Ben. I'm a police officer, and I need to come inside."

"What for?" The kid whispered right back. John, looking past Ben, could see a sliver of the apartment beyond. He could hear cartoons playing. A tiny little girl, still in pajamas at five in the afternoon, toddled toward the door, looking for her big brother and sucking her thumb.

"You know why," Ben said quietly, and the kid glanced back into the house. "We have to come in. That's not your fault. You need to look out for yourself and your sister now. Why don't you come on out, we'll call your mom to come home."

"Mom's at work," the kid whispered, but he glanced toward the apartment across the hall, and Ben didn't even need that much of a tell.

"I bet you could stay a little while with your neighbor, though, right?"

The kid shrugged, but he shut the door without a sound. John glanced at Davis and Muñez, who were both looking impressed--with Ben's balls, if not his technique, John figured--as the soft sound of the chain being taken off the door came from the other side. When the door swung open again, the kid had his little sister by the hand, and Ben stood up as they slipped out through the door.

"Anyone else at home right now?" John asked softly, glancing toward the door standing open, listening for somebody bolting through a window.

Ben looked over his shoulder, shaking his head slightly even as the wide-eyed kid did the same, spotting John and Muñez and Davis for the first time. Ben offered his hand to the kid, and the kid took it quickly, edging closer to Ben. He led the kids away from the door, across the hall to the neighbor's place, even as John waved the other two through the open door, weapons up, calling out, "Police!"

Afterward, back in the car and rolling, Ben kept shooting him little sideways looks. It took him about ten minutes to finally say, "I want to tell you something."

John didn't make a sound, didn't even know what he wanted to say. He could imagine a lot of things Ben might want to say to him, and knowing Ben it wouldn't be any of them.

"Yeah," Ben said. He shot John another little glance, then stared out at the street again.

"You wanted to know why I became a cop, and I didn't... I don't have the kind of answer you want. But I realized today that I became a cop because of you."

John didn't say a damn thing through the next two stoplights; he didn't even know what he was thinking, what Ben was picking up. His brain just kept circling around those words and the possibilities they brought up--fucking destiny?--and then backing off fast.

"Really," was what John finally said.

"Really," Ben agreed. "I didn't know it was you, not until today. When you remembered about your dad, I recognized that. See, that night--the night they broke into our house, the night me and my mom got beaten up ... we had an alarm system. The cops came."

John counted back fourteen years, tried to remember who he'd been working with, but--fuck, all the fancy houses with horrible insides blurred together. It was a long time ago.

"I know," Ben said. "But this cop came over and knelt down next to me and told me I was going to be okay, and so was my mom. I was still receiving right then, after everything. Even when the dealers were gone, my mom was so scared and hurt and so angry at my dad. My teeth were on the floor, I was covered in blood, and there was this one thing that didn't hurt, this one guy. He wasn't lying to me. He knew that we really would be okay, even if he also knew it would kind of fuck me up. He remembered what happened to him, when he was a kid, his dad getting taken away, and he was okay, even if it messed him up a little. He was okay, and I was going to be okay too."

John nodded slightly. He couldn't remember it, but he could picture it. He knew Ben, he'd seen kids in rough shape. He could put it together.

He wondered if he'd have thought Ben was going to be fine if he'd known that the way that night would fuck him up was to send him here, to the force, to a job that took him back to nights like that over and over. The kid was already in pain every damn day, hurting himself more and more because it let him do his job better, and whose bright idea had that been? All because John had told him he'd be okay that night.

Hell, what had he even known about it back then? Fourteen years ago John had been fine--not quite thirty, in love with Laura but not married yet, never mind divorced and gay. He'd never been seriously injured, never doped himself on anything stronger than a stiff drink. He'd had no idea what the fuck he was talking about. He'd lied to that bloodied, beaten kid without even knowing it.

Ben shook his head. "When I woke up in the hospital and I was all shut down, I remembered that you thought it would fuck me up. I didn't... I was used to not saying things, right? I didn't swear. But I would say that to myself, out loud, in my head, whatever. I was fucked up but I was okay. I had a label to put on it, so I could deal."

John frowned out at LA, looking for something to drag him away from this conversation and finding nothing. "So you became a cop because a cop was nice to you and gave you permission to drop f-bombs."

That... yeah, that John could believe from Ben. Not the shiny badge and a gun to wave around, just a pat on the head and a little language.

Ben shrugged. "I wanted to be able to tell somebody they were going to be okay, even if it fucked them up. I wanted to know it was true." Ben shifted in his seat. "Today, those kids. They..."

Neither of them could possibly know if those kids were okay. John might still turn out to be wrong about Ben, for fuck's sake--it'd been fourteen years and the jury was still out.

Ben shook his head, looking out at the street signs as they passed. "Never mind. Thanks for letting me lead, back there."

John kept his eyes on the street and kept on not thinking about where he'd been fourteen years ago, about a hurt kid who heard more than John ever said. "Don't mention it."

They'd been on duty forty-eight hours of the last seventy-two, which was as bad as it ever ought to get, short of earthquakes or riots. Except it was about to get worse, because some genius was shuffling everybody trying to get off-shift into a briefing, probably the department shrink telling them all about how to cope with sleep deprivation.

Ben slouched into a seat in the back next to John instead of his usual front-and-center spot. He leaned his head back against the wall, looking halfway to passed out. He'd been quiet all night, popped his pills with a burrito a few hours ago. John forced himself to quit being pissed off about being stuck here and think of something quiet, for whatever good it would do the kid while he was stuck in a roomful of overworked cops.

At least it was just a briefing--they were changing the fucking time cards, again, and introducing a whole new overtime-reporting procedure, again, which was just what everybody in this room wanted to hear about right now. But this couldn't possibly go longer than twenty minutes before everybody got up and walked out, and there weren't going to be any earthquakes or riots, not for the next twenty-four beautiful, union-mandated hours. They'd get out of here soon, they'd get cleaned up and get home--John skipped fast over the likely aggravation of traffic on the way--home, into the quiet and peace.

He'd maybe have a beer--he'd get one out of the fridge, anyway, crack it open on the way to his bedroom and knock back a couple of pills--take his clothes off and lay himself down and sleep for at least twelve hours straight.

It sounded so good John almost couldn't stand it--not knowing he was still in uniform, still in this stuffy overcrowded room, still subject to something happening before he got there. It was also kind of brief, and depressing, and easy to picture because it was exactly what he did on a lot of long days after he got off shift. It was what he had already done twice in the last three days.

It'd be nice if there were something better to do tonight--this morning, Christ, the accountant droning away up there must just be coming to work--to celebrate the end of this fuck of a run they'd been having. Something that didn't actually involve any more exertion than going home and falling into bed, like--like taking two beers out of the fridge, and handing one across to Ben, maybe leaning against the counter and watching him drink.

The kid chugs his, Adam's apple working as he swallows and swallows and swallows, and when he lowers the bottle he drags the back of his other hand across his mouth, though he didn't spill a drop. A little of the awful tension goes out of his shoulders, and his cheeks pink up, so he doesn't look quite so dead under his Beverly Hills tan.

Ben's not one to waste time, so after that he turns and heads for the bedroom, and John follows, remembering to actually drink some of his beer along the way. He sets it down on the first handy surface when he clears the bedroom door, because Ben's already halfway undressed, shirt gone and sitting on the edge of the bed, bending to get his socks off. Maybe one more pull from the bottle as he watches the easy flex of Ben's back, the careless young strength of him as he stands again to shove down his pants.

Then Ben glances over his shoulder and gives John a smile that's halfway to a smirk, eyebrows tilting. Right, it's not a free show, it's John's turn to get his clothes off. Skip fast over that part, so they're in bed, trading lazy kisses, hands moving idly. John's hand rests on the small of Ben's back, sliding slowly down to his ass without any real intent, just to touch.

Ben's shoulder bumped roughly against his, and John took an instruction sheet--Jesus, there were screen shots with arrows and circles--and passed on the rest. Everyone was shuffling and fidgeting with the paper and Ben muttered, "Sorry, did I interrupt?"

John looked over at him sharply, suddenly aware of just what he'd done--he'd been out of it, all but hypnotized by department bullshit. Ben didn't look over at him, though, just stared intently down at the page in his hand. His ear was bright pink, flushed. John glanced around, but everybody in the room--maybe including the accountant--was asleep with their eyes open or already doodling on the instruction sheets.

He spent a couple of seconds being horribly aware of what Ben had seen, what Ben knew (a hell of a lot more private than fucking), and then John pulled himself together. He wasn't going to show fear, and he wasn't going to edit the inside of his own brain if Ben wasn't going to ask him to, which Ben hadn't.

He sat there for another second, waiting, but Ben didn't say a thing. Didn't get up and walk out, either, which he could, even if it was a briefing and everyone would see him go--his supervisory officer would sure as fuck know why. Ben shifted in his seat, his shoulder brushing John's again. He didn't look up and he didn't move. Well, fine. John would just have to entertain himself through the rest of this briefing, then.

So he's in bed with Ben and they're making out--no, slower than that--trading sleepy sloppy kisses back and forth, both of them comfortably collapsed in bed, next best thing to weightless after a sixteen hour shift. John's on the fuzzy edge of sleep, fading in and out of dreams, but it's all the same, Ben in his bed, him in his bed, the long run of long days over and a little quiet celebration in progress.

Ben's young, though, and even if most of him is tired enough to fall asleep with John, his dick isn't going down so easy. John wraps a hand around Ben's dick and starts jerking him off, lazy and too slow, too gentle, still kissing him, until Ben gets impatient enough to start fucking John's fist. John pulls back and opens his eyes, watching Ben's face as he speeds up his strokes, moving Ben ruthlessly toward an orgasm and just waiting to see it. Ben's got his eyes closed, but his cheeks are going red and there's sweat on his forehead despite the air conditioning.

When he finally loses it--hips jerking unevenly, come hot and sticky over John's fingers--his face changes, his mouth going slack and his eyelids fluttering. After, he opens his eyes and gives John an easy, honest smile, like nothing hurts. He's wide open now, John knows, and riding the very best of feedback loops; they both fall asleep like that, barely touching, but it's more than enough.

The door hit the wall with a bang as it was yanked open. There was a clatter of shoes and chairs and everybody was heading for the door, Ben included. He dropped his crumpled instruction sheet as he went. John sat still until Ben had cleared the door, and then bent slowly down--the little punk knew exactly how much that would hurt--and picked it up.

Written across the top, in a sloppy, degenerate form of Ben's tidy handwriting: Not tonight, I've got a headache.

John was way too old to seriously wonder what the fuck that meant. Instead, he straightened all the way up and leaned his head back against the wall, banged it a couple of times to try to knock some sense back into it before he had to stand up. Christ, he was tired.

Ben played it as cool as ever when they were back on shift, twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes later. John took one look at his face and thought Good, he's closed off and then wondered exactly when he'd started being able to spot that at a glance with certainty. Whether Ben could hear it or not, he shut down that train of thought right away. They had work to do.

It seemed for a while like it might be only a normally shitty watch, and then they got the call to join a canvass. Missing kid. They got briefed by a detective and sent out to quarter the neighborhood, and John only had time to turn toward Ben, intending to rattle off tips for how to handle this, before he realized exactly how quickly and completely this was going to go to hell.

Ben's eyes were already closed, face going blank. John just had time to think Distract him, break his concentration, don't let him do this, and then Ben's eyes flashed open wide. The color drained from his face and he tipped forward slightly, catching John's arm for support. He'd just wrenched his brain wide open in the middle of a street full of people who were all thinking of everything that could be happening to that kid right now, including the kid's parents.

John glanced around, but they hadn't drawn any attention so far. That probably wouldn't last, if Ben was about to fall down screaming, or fall down silent, or--

"Yeah," Ben gasped, his grip tightening to the point of pain on John's arm, sweat already slick between their skin. "You're really not helping here."

John looked Ben in the eye--his pupils were pulsing, what did that mean?--and tried to get a handle on himself.

"Come here," John said quietly, getting his free hand on Ben's shoulder and walking him slowly back toward their car. He kept his mouth shut, teeth clenched, but with every step he thought the words as plainly as he could, in complete sentences, because Ben needed them.

This is going to work. You are going to be fine. This is going to work. You can do this. You are going to be fine.

Ben's hand loosened and tightened, which might have been an attempt at communication. John kept thinking in circles and made an automatic, Yeah, he's a rookie, what can you do face at every cop he passed on the way back to their squad car. Nobody got in their way.

"I got--" Ben whispered, and John didn't even have to fake the terrified pride and hope that filled his mind at those two little words. He propped Ben against the side of the car, and Ben curled down a little, raising a hand to cover his face, so white his skin looked almost gray, his hair already going dark with sweat.

"I think. Two houses down. Next street," Ben swayed sideways, and John tightened his grip and then realized it was a directional nod that got out of hand. He glanced where Ben had indicated and marked the spot, hoping to hell that Ben knew what he was pointing at.

"Think so. Guy there. Rattled. Different. He feels weird. Go fast, before he calms down."

John glanced over again--Chickie'd been assigned to that street. He couldn't send her there alone if Ben was right, but he couldn't leave Ben alone--

"Kid, I think," Ben whispered, short fingernails digging in to John's skin. "Somebody. Scared. Feels young. Not far from the guy--basement, maybe. Shed. Something. Go."

John hesitated, and Ben peeled his hand off John's arm. His voice came out thickly, wet, as he said, "I'll be fine."

He still wouldn't raise his head, was now covering his face with both hands--but if they could get this to a good ending and do it fast, it would take a hell of a lot of the stress off the kid. John remembered how he'd been after they saved the Unknown Trouble woman.

He nodded, turned on his heel, and clicked on his radio. "Brown? Cooper. Just got a tip, I want to check one of your houses with you."

John didn't manage to play it perfectly straight--he got a look from Chickie, halfway into leaning on the guy Ben had pointed him at. She was going to be asking him questions, later, about this tip he'd gotten. Still, five minutes after that the guy was down on the ground in handcuffs surrounded by a crowd of uniforms, and they were watching the paramedics load up the kid. Chickie moved to hold the screaming mother back from throwing herself on the stretcher, and John took the chance to get the hell out of there and find Ben.

He got close enough to the car to see that Ben's door was open, and the hair stood up on the back of his neck. John circled around the back of the car, resisting the pointless impulse to draw his weapon, and then stopped dead.

Ben hadn't made it into the car. He was sitting on the ground with his arm flung over the seat, his head tipped back against the open door. The blood was vividly red over skin the color of concrete, down his throat and staining his t-shirt, darkly gleaming on the blue of his uniform. In the same instant that John was telling himself that he knew perfectly well what a cut throat looked like and that wasn't it--but that was a lot of blood and Ben wasn't moving--Ben moved.

He sat up, eyes flashing wide--he'd caught John's--he knew--he said, "It's a fucking nosebleed."

Nosebleed. It was a gruesome fucking mess, was what it was, but if a bad day could make him bleed...

The image popped into his head, the fake exploding head, the red-paint blood, and Ben glared at him even as he let his head fall back. "This isn't Scanners, I'm not going to--"

"You popped one blood vessel in your head," John said. It came out hoarse, and he cleared his throat and finally came over and hunkered down right in front of the kid. "It could have been a different one."

That was a fucking stroke right there, waiting to happen--one little blood vessel in the brain and Ben would never walk or talk or smile again.

Ben pinched the bridge of his nose, keeping his eyes open just enough to give John a scornful look that didn't really work next to all that goddamn blood. "It's a nosebleed. I used to get them when I was a kid, before my dad left, when my parents--it's just stress. High blood pressure, nosebleeds, lots of people get them and don't stroke out. I'm twenty-four years old. I'm not going to die."

But nobody else's brain was like Ben's, so what the fuck did that mean? Twenty-four was young enough to be goddamn stupid, even if Ben of all people should know better.

"You don't do this again," John whispered fiercely, even as twenty years of experience pointed out blandly that that was exactly the wrong way to go about it. "I know I asked you to try, but that was a dumb mistake and it doesn't need to get any dumber. You knock this shit off right now, you stay buttoned up on duty as much as you can, and you definitely do not go looking for trouble, or so help me God I will run you the fuck out of the LAPD."

"Oh," Ben said, without any expression in his voice. "You're going to run me out."

He didn't stress you or me. He didn't have to. It was a threat, and they both knew it. John could threaten right back--he felt fury and fear wash through his veins and up his spine, and if he didn't keep a lid on that it'd do the job for him. He could hurt Ben bad, make it impossible for him to work. Ben knew more than enough to destroy John. Here they were.

So walk it the fuck back, Cooper.

John shook his head, pushing away the awful trapped feeling of the deadlock, pushing away the anger at Ben for daring to say it, the guilt for daring to think it.

"Rule one in a crisis situation," John said, gentling his voice like--well, like he was talking to a kid backed into a corner and covered in blood. Apparently he was good at that.

"You don't add to the casualties. Not even to save a kid, you don't risk making yourself another victim. You don't go where your partner can't follow you, you copy?"

"We risk--" Ben started, but the fight had gone out of his voice.

"We know what we're risking. We wear our vests and carry our weapons. We don't know what kind of danger you're putting yourself into here. You have got to take care of yourself, Sherman."

Ben's head came forward--maybe a nod, but it flowed right into him pushing himself forward, getting his feet under him. John straightened up--pulled himself up on the car, wincing--and didn't offer a hand.

When Ben was upright, giving John a look at the blood in direct sunlight, John said, "You're going home sick."

Ben nodded distractedly, dabbed at his face with the back of one hand--there was blood all over his wrists, John realized, from doing exactly that. He made to edge past John, away from the car. John stood his ground.

Ben looked up, met his eyes for almost the first time since he'd done this to himself. Maybe twenty minutes altogether, probably less.

"I need to get a ride from someone who doesn't think I'm about to die," Ben said quietly. There was no accusation in his tone; it just was what it was. Right now, anybody would probably hurt Ben less than John would.

John stepped aside and let him go.

An hour later John limped through his own front door, off sick as surely as Ben. His back had seized up while he was driving around with an empty passenger seat, and he wasn't stupid enough to try to keep going through that. It was clear he was done.

His back was only part of the problem, maybe the least of the problem. He felt off-balance without a rookie riding shotgun--without this rookie riding shotgun, forcing him to keep his thoughts quiet and still. With an empty seat beside him his thoughts kept circling around the image of Ben on the ground, covered in blood.

John took off his shirt in the kitchen, ripped the brace off and pressed the heels of his hands to his back. It didn't help any, but making it hurt worse, or different, was the only control he could exert over his own pain without the help of the little goddamn pills anymore. He did it sometimes, just to know that he could.

Then he reached for the little goddamn pills, because he'd been poking his back and it hurt like a motherfucker. Even before he touched the bottle, he was working out the math that was always going on at some level, in the back of his head--how many he needed, how many he could afford to take, how many he had.

Even before he touched the bottle and heard the lonely rattle, he remembered that he had one pill left. He'd meant to go by the bar at the end of shift--but end of shift was still nearly six hours away, and he needed something now. One pill would take the edge off, would have gotten him through the day working alongside Ben, but it wouldn't let him sleep, and it wouldn't get him away from this day and his endlessly circling thoughts.

He shouldn't keep coming back to that. It wasn't like Ben had gotten hurt badly. It wasn't like John had fucked up and got him hurt (except for how Ben had, and John had). But mostly, it shouldn't bother him this fucking much when he did think about it, because what he felt wasn't anger at Ben or himself for fucking up. It was something scarier, something that changed the math in the back of his head to how many pills he wanted to take so he could avoid thinking about any of this.

John shook the bottle, listening to the one pill rattle, and thought--in a complete sentence, like somebody needed to hear it--So I have a problem. I have two problems.

Somebody pounded on the front door, and John froze for a second, like he'd been caught--but he had, and he knew it. He let out the breath he'd been half-consciously holding, waiting for this, even before Ben called out, "Yeah, so let me in. I'm not going anywhere."

John scrubbed a hand over his face and then gave up and walked over to the front door, turning back the locks and pulling it open to reveal Ben standing on the step. He was in jeans and a clean t-shirt, and he looked fine, looked normal. Looked like he was in pain, and that had been normal for a long time now, and that was what working with John had done to the kid. He had a heavy-looking shopping bag in one hand and the white cap of an orange prescription bottle peeking from his hip pocket.

It could have been just his own headache medicine--God knew the kid should be tanked on it after the day he'd had--but a glance at his face told John that that wasn't what was going on here. He didn't think; he grabbed Ben by the shoulder and hauled him inside, slamming the door and pushing him up against it. Ben raised both hands and opened them, palm out with the shopping bag hooked over his thumb, even as John dug the bottle out of his pocket.

"What the fuck is this?" he demanded, out loud. He was pretty sure he said it out loud. Ben answered out loud, anyway.

"Oxy. First thing I could get my hands on."

John actually closed his eyes, teeth clenched, and counted pounding beats of his heart. There was a rushing sound in his ears and a weird, perfect clarity to his thoughts. Clarity. That was exactly the word.

He could see rock bottom from here. He wouldn't go down like Dewey, leaving a partner who finally did the necessary thing and took a beating for it. Oh, no. He'd take Ben Sherman--who only wanted to be a cop so he could save kids, for fuck's sake, who honest to God backed his badge with pride and honor and honesty--he'd take Ben Sherman right on down with him, starting right here, right now. Or, no--starting who the fuck even knew how long ago, when the kid had seen what he was and followed him anyway, believed in him....

"It's not like that," Ben whispered, and John's eyes flashed open.

"Wrong answer," John replied. Ben hadn't said That isn't going to happen.

John saw Ben get it, saw his lips press flat. He was irritated, or frustrated, or thought John was worrying over nothing, or... who the fuck knew what he felt, or what he was thinking? Not John.

He shook his head a little and turned away, walking back into the kitchen; he'd nearly reached the island when he heard Ben peel himself off the door and follow. John slapped down the Oxy on the counter and picked up the orange bottle with one pill left inside. He walked past the island, to the fridge, and he popped the top on the prescription bottle even before he reached for a beer.

Something made him look, as he stood there with the fridge open. He found Ben standing there on the other side, looking tired, looking drained and in pain and exactly like John had pictured him yesterday, right before he pictured himself passing Ben a beer and then watching him drink. And then everything else he'd thought about, that Ben had heard...

"Okay, yeah, we're going to have to actually talk about that," Ben said, snapping John out of the instant of déjà vu.

John scowled, and pointedly took just one beer from the fridge, knocked back the one pill he had left and then twisted the top off the beer to wash it down. That is not what we have to talk about.

When he came up for air, he said it out loud. "Where the fuck did you get the drugs, Sherman?"

Ben leaned over and picked up the bottle, held it out to John as easily as he had his own medication. "My name's on the bottle. Sir."

John snatched it out of his hand and looked--Ben did have a chronic fucking pain condition, could he possibly have gotten an actual...?

It said Ben Sherman, but the address underneath wasn't Ben's. John could make a guess at the tax bracket, though, which meant... "This is your dad's."

Ben's gaze was steady on John's, but his shrug was too stiff for the casual tone of voice he was trying on. "He can get a refill. It was in my mom's medicine cabinet, anyway, so--whatever. It's not a big deal."

"It's not a big deal," John repeated. His voice was icily level, but Ben knew just how much suppressed panic was beating at the inside of John's skull, which probably ruined the effect. "Sherman, you stole drugs. You..."

There wasn't really anything to say. John couldn't lecture him on this, couldn't deliver any kind of self-righteous tirade. Ben had seen him rifling rich people's medicine cabinets; Ben had gone out and done the same thing more efficiently. This wasn't the moment for a lecture, anyway, not even the moment for ripping the rookie a new asshole. This was the moment for I am reporting you and that was exactly what they both knew John couldn't do.

He set down the Oxy. He took another sip of his beer. He watched Ben, who was watching him, and who would know what he was going to say before he said it, would know before he did if he figured out what the fuck to do about this.

"Ultimatums aren't really going to help," Ben offered, like he was giving John a hint to a puzzle he'd already figured out.

John shook his head slightly. The student had become the fucking master and now what? He'd met his match? He'd gotten to the end of his rope? He had nothing to teach this batshit crazy kid?

Ben dropped his gaze and ducked his head. "Where do you think I'm getting this from, man?"

Okay, that was just a fucking riddle.

Ben glanced up and then looked away again. "I came because you keep count in the back of your head. You always know how many you have. So I always know. I realized you would run out, and I thought you'd probably come home. I had Chickie drop me at my mom's because it wasn't as far out of her way as my place, I checked the medicine cabinet to see if she had anything I could take for my headache before I headed home, and I saw that."

There was still a big fucking piece missing out of the middle of that motive. That was just opportunity, in fact. Motive was something more like...

Ben stayed silent this time, and John actually looked at him, studying his face and body language, like it could actually tell John anything. Like Ben wasn't the world's greatest living goddamn expert in not letting anyone know what you're thinking.

Still, John could look at the simple facts. An hour ago Ben had been on the ground covered in blood--for the sake of trying to save a kid, though he'd had no way of knowing it would actually do anything but hurt like hell. He hadn't let Chickie take him home, but insisted on going to his mom's, even though his own medication and his own quiet space alone were at his place. Maybe he'd been trying to make it easy on Chickie; maybe, even in that much pain, Ben had felt an obligation to check in with his mom and see that she was all right. After all, he'd just been forcibly reminded of how much moms worried about their kids, and how right they were to do it.

Ben's mouth twitched into an unreadable grimace, and he ducked his head but didn’t turn away.

John was on to something. He kept picking away at it.

Ben had done all that, for the various people he could help, and then he'd taken the drugs from his mom--protecting his mom as much as hurting his dad?--and brought them here, to John, who Ben thought needed them. Who wanted them, for fucking sure, no matter how determined he was not to take them. So there was a string of people Ben had done something to help, at some cost to himself, even when he'd have been completely justified if he focused on looking after himself.

Helping the kid, and the parents of the kid, that was just the extreme extension of Ben's personal motives for taking this job in the first place, and maybe too much faith in following John's lead when John encouraged him to use this thing for the work. So that was mostly easy to explain, but it maybe also connected to John...

"I'm in love with you, okay?" Ben blurted. "Did I need to make a sign? I'm in love with you and you're in love with me and don't even fucking argue with me about this, you think about cooking me breakfast almost as often as you think about fucking me."

John tilted his head, watching Ben try to pick an expression. So there was a way to make the silent treatment work on somebody who knew what you were thinking.

"Fuck you," Ben muttered. He turned away, but not fast enough for John to miss the smile he was fighting with, and the blush lit up the back of his neck as much as his face.

"What, now?" John said, grinning despite everything. The kid was really going to have to learn not to hand John a straight line like that. "I thought you had a headache, baby."

Ben turned back, smiling a little, looking John up and down; John was abruptly aware that he had his shirt off, and had since before he found Ben on his doorstep.

Ben reached for the Oxy. "As a matter of fact--"

John didn't decide to do it; his hand was on Ben's wrist, holding it motionless a good six inches short of the orange bottle. They were not going down this road on John's watch, no matter what Ben was looking at.

Ben's smile dropped away. "Okay, I actually do know what you're thinking, and it's not going to happen."

So at least the kid knew what he should say this time.

Ben rolled his eyes. "I'm going to take one, right now, because you seriously have no idea how bad my head hurts, and you can flush the rest if you want to, I don't give a shit. I just want to be able to think straight when we finally have this conversation."

John stared into Ben's eyes for a minute, thinking about how fucking useless it was, how much nothing it told him about what was actually going on in there, but Ben looked back steadily, waiting him out.

Ben had said where do you think I'm getting this from, and the obvious answer was from him, from John. If John had had a moment of clarity today, Ben had, too. So if John was going to pop one more pill to get him through the afternoon before he figured out how to fix this for good....

He opened his hand and Ben nodded a little before he reached for the bottle. John hesitated half a second, considering--saw the smile twitch across Ben's mouth as he dropped a single pill into his palm--and then put the beer in Ben's hand when he reached out, and watched him wash it down.

Déjà vu all fucking over again.

Ben lowered the beer, swiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and started laughing just when John was about to pinch himself. John rolled his eyes, then, reached out and took his beer back from Ben's unresisting hand. "Asshole."

Ben shrugged. "So I know what you like, you can't tell me that's a bad thing."

John took a swig of his beer and absolutely did not consider the possibilities. "Are you ready to have whatever conversation you think we're going to have now?"

"Sure," Ben said, although the drugs couldn't possibly have kicked in yet, beyond the relief of knowing they were on the way. "I'm crazy about you and you feel the same. I know acting on it is a bad idea, but I think we're past the point of worrying too much about bad ideas."

To tell the truth, John had seen worse ideas work out all right, or at least without anyone getting fired or arrested or shot. He drank more beer and watched Ben, who said nothing about that one. The kid had enough sense not to actually pounce on it.

"You sure this isn't some kind of feedback thing?"

Ben nodded. "I feel the same whether I'm switched on or not, whether you're in range or not. And I was in love with you first, so unless you're suddenly also psychic, feedback doesn't really work that way."

This was officially the weirdest conversation John had ever had about his feelings, including therapy and coming out to his ex-wife.

He wanted to ask why, what the fuck Ben saw in a guy like him, but he thought that if he asked right now Ben would probably answer, and he was pretty sure he didn't actually want to know. Ben smiled a little, eyes flicking down over John's body again. He shrugged, and that was more than enough answer to that.

John took another sip of his beer, reached out and caught Ben by the front of his probably stupidly expensive plain t-shirt, reeling him in.

Ben mumbled, "Target, I swe--" and John thought Like I give a fuck and shut him up with a kiss.

Ben kissed like a kid, eager and impatient, his hands spread on John's sides trying to feel as much skin as he could get. But Ben knew where this was going--Ben already had a pretty good idea of what this was like--while John was just learning the real Ben for the first time. He pushed back against Ben's chest, making the kiss shallow and slow until the kid was all but shaking with frustration.

John pulled back just far enough to smile and say, "This has been all one way for too long. You're going to have to tell me what you want. Out loud."

Ben leaned in, and John let their lips brush before he pulled away again. Ben made a frustrated little noise, shoving up against John--hard already, not really a surprise, but damn nice to feel. John ground his hips against Ben's but tilted his head back, keeping their mouths apart.

"Out loud," he repeated, and his voice came out pretty even considering how hard he was laughing at the kid on the inside.

Ben met his eyes, not quite pulling off a glare since he was still rubbing his dick up against John's, despite the layers of clothes between. "What if I want you to shove me up against the wall and--"

John knew that one. He hadn't thought he'd ever let it slip when Ben was around, but obviously enough of it had.

Ben smirked.

"No way," John said. "No copying. You tell me what you want or I might start thinking I’m taking advantage of you and make you spend an hour convincing me I'm not."

Ben actually did manage to glare at him, then, his hips stopping their motion and everything.

"Fine," he snapped. "Blow me."

John snorted, kissed Ben's mouth, hard and fast and thorough, and then dragged his mouth down the side of the kid's throat.

"Oh no," he muttered. "Please, anything but that. God, if there's one thing I can't stand it's cock--"

Ben shoved him a little, but his shoulders were shaking with laughter, and John met his eyes with a smile as he tucked his fingers into the front of Ben's jeans.

"Seriously, though, bedroom. I don't get down on my knees for this shit anymore."

Ben raised his eyebrows, smirking again--because Ben knew as well as John knew that it wasn't so much getting down on his knees as getting back up off them that was a problem these days--and started walking backward toward the bedroom.

John followed, wondering if the kid could actually navigate it without looking, and Ben smiled wider and closed his eyes, then stepped neatly sideways around the corner of the hallway--because he could see what John could see, knew what John knew. And if he felt what John felt....

"Yeah, feedback's not all bad," Ben muttered, as he walked through the door of John's bedroom and threw himself back onto the bed, finally breaking John's grip.

He opened his eyes. "Your move."

John allowed himself a smirk, and got onto the bed. There was no skipping over that careful physical negotiation, here in the actual real world where Ben Sherman was actually in his bed demanding a blow job, but he didn't linger over it either. Ben shifted toward the head of the bed so John could get comfortably level with his dick, and John tucked his fingers back into the front of Ben's jeans.

"So," John said, thumb circling the button. "You were telling me what you wanted?"

"You're not--" Ben said, and John raised an eyebrow. Ben's head tipped back against the pillow--John's pillow--baring his throat in defeat.

"You're serious," Ben admitted. "Jesus. Undo my pants. I want you to go down on me."

"Uh-huh," John said. "All right. I want you to watch."

Ben lifted his head just enough to look through his eyelashes at John, but that was enough. John wasn't, actually, all that into playing Big Tough Bad Cop in bed.

Ben's mouth quirked up at that.

"You shut up, rookie," John muttered, and finally tugged open the button on his jeans, pulling the zipper down almost in the same motion. His boxers were plain blue cotton. John rubbed Ben's cock through the thin cloth, getting to know the heat and size and feel of him.

He watched Ben's mouth, waiting out a few false starts before Ben finally managed to say, "Pull them down. Take my dick out."

John eased Ben's boxers down just far enough to get his dick free, boxers and jeans still around his thighs, keeping him from moving too much. His dick was a good size, curved a little and blushing dark with blood--

"Fuck, I've said it three times already," Ben said, sounding a little breathless and desperate but not whining. John liked that about him.

"Must be true, then," John agreed, and curled himself over Ben's hips--he wasn't going to be able to do it for all that long, but he had a feeling this wouldn't last forever anyway--and let his mouth slide down over Ben's cock.

John let his own eyes close, focusing on the taste of him, the weight on his tongue and the way Ben's cock stretched his lips and pushed against the back of his mouth. He sucked as he pulled up, and Ben exhaled shakily, almost silently. Even before John looked up at him--his lower lip was shiny and pink like he'd been biting it--he was saying, "Yeah, yes, like--like that. Do that again."

So John did it again, and again, slower each time, until Ben said, "Harder, please, just--more, your hand--"

John could interpret that one plenty of ways, but he played it safe, curling his hand around the base of Ben's cock, stroking along with the motion of his mouth--squeezing a little, sucking harder, like Ben asked.

"Faster," Ben added, and, "please," so apparently he really was that polite all the time.

"Shut the fuck up and suck me," Ben snapped after that, and John had to pull off for a second so he could laugh without choking. He kept his hand moving on Ben's cock while he did, and Ben didn't make a sound until John licked his cockhead. Even then it was just, "Oh, yeah, yeah."

So John kept licking--down under the crown, finding Ben's circumcision scar and the spots that made his hips jump and his breath catch--until Ben said, "Suck me," again in a completely different tone of voice.

John's mouth was completely full, lips brushing his fingers at the base of Ben's cock, when Ben said, "Oh, fuck, you really love this, fuck, yeah, do it."

So John gave it a try, shifting his hand to Ben's hip to hold him steady and relaxing his throat to take as much of Ben's cock as he could. He wasn't a porn star, but he'd had some practice, and Ben was shaking by the time John pulled up again, sucking hard at the head.

"I'm--I'm gonna," Ben said. "Can--do you--"

That was almost like asking for it--better than John did half the time in the same situation--so he pressed his tongue to the underside of Ben's cock and swallowed when Ben came in his mouth half a second later.

John rolled onto his side and then his back, catching his breath and waiting to see what Ben would do next. If he fell asleep John would probably never let him live it down.

"No way, now it's my turn," Ben said, and John looked over and watched without moving as Ben rolled off the bed and onto his feet. Ben shoved his pants down and then pulled his shirt off before sitting down mostly-naked on John's bed to get his shoes off. John smiled, watching.

"I thought that was your turn," he said, when Ben turned back around and knelt up on the bed, although the kid was still half-hard and twenty-four years old, so anything was possible.

Ben grinned. "Yeah, that was just to take the edge off. Now I'm going to get you naked, and we're going to fuck, and if you even think about how you're taking advantage of me I will fucking handcuff you to something."

"Oh," John said, and folded his arms behind his head. "That's what we're doing."

"Yep. That's the plan." Ben straddled him and undid John's pants, which was a relief. He was hard, and had been for a while, and would be for a while, because that was what it was like being this side of forty and on opiates. Ben shot him a glance and said, "Yeah, so we'll take our time."

John wondered whether that Oxy had kicked in yet, or would soon. Ben smiled, bent over and kissed John while slowly jacking his cock. John opened his mouth, letting Ben have a taste of himself, and Ben took it, licking around John's mouth before he lifted his head and said, "I'm feeling pretty fucking good, either way."

He pulled back then. John closed his eyes and listened while Ben pulled his boots off and peeled his jeans and boxers down and got lube and a condom from the nightstand, just exactly like he already knew where they were.

John opened his eyes when he felt Ben moving on the bed, and watched him settle his knees on either side of John's hips. It was a good view--especially the eager look on Ben's face. John unfolded one arm, reaching up for Ben, but Ben caught his wrist and pushed his hand back down.

"My turn," he said firmly. "Let me do this."

John raised his eyebrows--somebody in this bed liked to play Big Tough Cop. Ben squeezed tighter on John's wrist and almost managed to keep a completely straight face as he said, "Yeah, and don't you forget it."

John tucked his hand back behind his head and kept still, raking his eyes up and down Ben's body as he twisted to the side--picking up the lube--and silently letting him know exactly how good he looked. Ben didn't say anything, but the jut of his cock was a pretty good sign that Ben didn't mind the view from his side either.

Ben bent low over John and kissed him, and John tilted his face up into it and opened his mouth to Ben's tongue. Far be it from him to object at this point if Ben knew exactly how much this was like the kisses John had imagined--yesterday, Jesus--except a lot more wide awake. And real.

Ben seemed to smile a little, still kissing John slowly and softly, but his breath hitched all out of rhythm with the kiss, once and then twice. John opened his eyes as Ben's hips jerked, his cock brushing John's teasingly, and he tilted his head enough to see that Ben had one arm bent awkwardly back behind him. His shoulder rolled with the motion, slow and repetitive, and John's cock jumped. Ben was fingering himself open.

"Pretty relaxed," Ben murmured against his mouth, and John looked into his eyes--his pupils were wide, nearly swallowing up the blue of his eyes. He had to be about as relaxed as he could be and stay conscious, between the orgasm and the painkillers.

"Yeah," Ben murmured, and then glanced down between them as he rolled his hips, his cock sliding against John's with a teasing, brief friction. "Fuck, condom."

"I got it," John said, and reached for the little packet, groping along the bed past Ben's knee. Ben nodded, catching John's mouth for one more awkward, distracted kiss, and then knelt up, giving John an even better view of what he was doing. John could only stare for a solid minute--he could see Ben's hand moving between his spread legs, his cock bouncing with the motion. Ben was breathing fast, loud in the stillness of the bedroom, and his skin was shiny with sweat.

"Condom," Ben repeated, and John pulled himself together and got the thing opened and on, stroking his own cock a little in the process. He was so hard it almost hurt, so hard he wondered if being twenty-four wasn't a little contagious. Ben smirked and placed his hand flat on John's chest, brushing John's other hand away from his dick and taking hold of it himself. "Let me handle this."

John rolled his eyes but dropped his hands, pressing his back flat to the mattress. He forced himself to just watch as Ben lowered himself onto John's cock, inch by inch. He felt better than anything John had ever imagined: every fluttering movement, every drop of sweat, every awkward catch of his breath--this wasn't something Ben had done a hell of a lot of, and John was going to worry about that sometime when he had more than one brain cell working--every dark-eyed glare. It was all really happening now, and John was, as goddamn ever, taken by surprise by Ben Sherman.

Ben grinned and shifted his hand on John's chest to his shoulder, leaning forward to brace himself as he started to move. John's hands jumped, landing on Ben's thighs, and this time Ben didn't argue. John held on, digging his fingers in a little, as muscle bunched and released under his hands, as Ben pushed himself up and dropped down, fucking himself on John's cock. He had his head down, his eyes closed, and he was biting his lip and frowning a little. He was concentrating, John realized, feeling a little dizzy even flat on his back. Ben kept varying the motion slightly, changing the angle, changing the speed--squeezing--because he was trying to figure out exactly what John liked.

John wished him fucking luck with that, because all it felt was good, amazing, impossible, Ben, fuck--

Ben laid one hand over John's mouth, opening his eyes enough to squint at him. John opened his mouth and licked Ben's palm, but he tried not to think so loudly. Ben moved faster, and John glanced down to see Ben's cock, drawn up nearly flat against his belly. He got his hand around it--bad angle, with him flat on his back, but Ben made a broken noise and seemed to lose track of what he was doing.

John did it again, feeling the movement of his own hand echo to his cock through the reaction of Ben's body. Ben still had his eyes squeezed shut, face set almost like he was in pain. John squeezed his cock again, gave a twisting stroke that made Ben moan out loud.

It wasn't pain, but Ben had to be almost overwhelmed, feeling all of this from both sides, getting fucked and fucking, feeling his own cock and John's hand stroking it.

"Fuck," Ben gasped, and shoved his dick into John's hand, his fingernails digging into John's shoulder. John grinned and kept his hand moving as Ben came, and oh, Christ, that felt incredible around his dick, to say nothing of the sight of Ben falling apart again.

Ben never stopped moving, and eventually he opened his eyes. He took his hand off John's shoulder and grabbed John's wrist, pushing his hand away from Ben's dick as it finally went soft. Ben straightened, head thrown back, and rode John for all he was worth. John started grinding up into him, unable to keep still when he was so fucking close. John twisted his wrist under Ben's grip, caught Ben's hand and tugged on it, pulling him down.

Ben opened his eyes as he folded down, and he looked dazed. John pushed up onto one elbow and kissed him, and Ben seemed to take it as a challenge, biting John's lip, shoving his tongue into John's mouth. John groaned and kissed him back and came so hard he forgot to breathe.

Ben collapsed on top of him, dead weight, and after a while John realized he was having actual difficulty breathing. "Hey."

"Yeah," Ben mumbled, with his face pressed into John's throat. "Yeah, one second."

John laughed silently, and Ben punched his shoulder weakly but still didn't move. John pulled himself together and rolled onto his side, dumping the kid onto the mattress. Ben made a single little whining noise and then went boneless again, and John shook his head, peeled off the condom, and got up to get rid of it.

He glanced at himself in the mirror, but nothing looked different except the idiotic smile on his face.

John went back into the bedroom to find Ben lying diagonally across the bed, golden tan in the bright daylight. John had to lie down and then shove at him to get Ben to move into a reasonable position, and when he finally succeeded Ben just cuddled up against him. It felt good in the air-conditioned chill, sweat going cool on John's skin. He raised one hand and ruffled Ben's short hair, making it stand up in sweaty points. Ben smiled without opening his eyes and tucked his face against John's shoulder, looking happier and more at ease than John had ever seen him.

This might just be it, John realized. This might genuinely be all Ben wanted, just a day when he did good work, saved a life, and then came home with John at the end of it. It might actually be that simple.

Ben didn't stop smiling, and the certainty solidified in John. As extraordinary and impossible as Ben was, he was also more straightforward than anyone John knew. This was all he wanted. Right here, right now, despite everything they were both going to have to deal with--right this second, Ben was happy.

I've got you now, he thought, running his fingers through Ben's hair again. I know where you live.

Ben sighed against John's shoulder, but still didn't open his eyes. He still smiled. In a low, scratchy voice, he muttered, "Yeah, you always did."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I never in a million years would have thought of this particular cliche with this fandom, but you pulled it off most excellently!

Thank you! It was sort of this slippery slope of "Well, if there WERE telepathy in a Southland fic, it would have to be the MOST UNPLEASANT TELEPATHY EVER." And this was my attempt at that. :)

Southland Fic: A Little Mental Yoga

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