(2021-10-24) After Bruuk's

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Author:	inkie
Summary:	The night of the 10/20 Bruuk's Corner get-together ("Candy and Chaos"), Ben gets home late.
Rating:	M for Mature 17+

It is well past midnight when the distinctive scrape-and-fumble of someone trying the door unsuccessfully filters into the ground floor of the Ironforge townhouse. A few moments of this pass before the someone at last succeeds and the door swings open. There is a heavy, dragging tread, a stumble and a curse, a long pause, and then a loud, splintering crash.

Light steps are barely audible from the upper floor, and a sleepy voice calls down the stairs, “Ben? You okay?”

Ben swears loudly. He is silent, and then he swears again, less loudly. His voice has a harsh, ragged edge.

“Yeah,” he says finally. He does not sound okay. “Fucken fine.” This last is weary rather than angry.

Sil comes down the stairs in bare feet, shivering a little in the loose shorts and shirt he must’ve been sleeping in. He pushes disorderly brown hair out of his face, and looks around blearily for the source of the crash.

“Is it fixable?” he mumbles.

It is not fixable. Ben is standing only a few steps inside the door — which he hasn’t bothered to shut behind him — holding part of one of the wooden chairs from the little window table. The other part — parts — of the chair are strewn in splintered pieces on the floor along the wall by the woodstove.

Ben himself has lost the jacket he was wearing earlier at Bruuk’s, and is sporting a split lip and an already-purpling swelling of his right eye and temple which promises to be a truly magnificent black eye by morning.

Sil looks from Ben’s damaged face to the fragments of the chair, as if he’s trying to connect the two. Warily, he steps lightly down the stairs, and moves behind Ben to pull the door closed.

“Somethin’ happened after I left?” Sil ventures.

"I fucked up," Ben rasps. He clears his throat and drags his forearm across his face. He drops with a clatter the piece of chair he's still holding, and then sits straight down on the floor in the wreckage as though abruptly deflating. "I fucked up. Wrecked it, Sil."

Sil circles around to sit in front of Ben, pushing a few chair fragments out of the way. Wrecked it. But it seems like he doesn’t mean the chair.

“Okay, what’s been fucked up?” he asks.

"Mizzy," says Ben, and touches the bruising egg on his temple experimentally. He winces, and studies the chair debris bleakly. "Fucked it up with Mizzy. Reckon she —" He halts, can't finish, shakes his head. He casts Sil a bruised look, despondent, but a banked fury shimmers just behind it.

“Did she …” Sil frowns, now trying to connect Ben’s injuries to an altercation with Mizzy but meeting with a failure in imagination. “How did …”

Sil trails off as he meets Ben’s eyes and sees the anger there. Instead of finishing any of the above questions, he just lets the silence sit for a long moment.

The moment ends when Ben looks away again. “Sorry,” he says tiredly. “Reckon I’m pretty drunk.” He gives an uneven laugh and scrubs at his face with his forearm again, smearing blood from his split lip and apparently reviving a nosebleed that had stopped earlier. He eyes the blood on his arm and curses under his breath, then looks up at Sil again, his lips and chin now bloody. “I’m still pissed,” he says thickly, and then considers. “Not … pissed. Frustrate. But I said it wrong. It come out wrong. At you and at her. I was just … tryin’ to think how to say it, is all. She kept askin’ and I kept tryin’, and I ain’t good at … talkin’ when my blood’s up.”

Sil pats at his front, as if looking for a handkerchief. He’s wearing a pajama shirt, though, and no square of tidy cloth is forthcoming. He tugs at the cloth, then, considering for a moment pulling off the entire thing as a bandage. Shaking his head, whether at the shirt or at Ben is unclear, he lets it drop.

“You didn’t say nothin’ at me I didn’t deserve. Trust me, I’ve heard worse for less reason.” He holds out a hand to Ben, and adds, “Anyhow, I’m not drunk anymore, so maybe I ought to help you get cleaned up.”

Ben gives Sil the doleful puppy eyes, which don’t quite work when one of them is swollen mostly closed and he has blood all over his face. “You know you’re my friend, Sil, yeah? I ain’t — I worry about you, about Mizzy but about you too. And I fucked up about the kidnappin’ thing. I did. And I know you’re good, the both of you, I want you to get promote to squads, I do. But I worry. I fucken worry and you run off and do a thing like that — you run off with Mizzy into who fucken knows what kind of Scarlet —”

He closes his eyes again, sits still a moment, gives his head a curt shake. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I keep gettin’ wound up about it. I know I shouldn’t, and I can’t figure out how I don’t. I just —” He smears blood from his nose again with the back of his hand and stares at the wall. “Anyway I … scared Mizzy, or somethin’. Scared her off. I didn’t mean —”

He draws his knees up and wraps his arms around them, folds forward to rest his forehead on them. It’s a defensive and strangely childish posture, the attitude of someone trying to make himself small, to shield himself from something.

“You’re my friend, but that don’t mean you got to protect me from the world,” Sil says, dropping his hand and shifting to sit cross-legged on the floor. “If I thought the fuckin’ Sullivans would hire a bounty hunter, I would’ve said. An’ I’m not gonna stop livin’ my life when you’re not around to protect me, either.”

He sighs, looking at Ben but making no move toward him. “I didn’t think about it as taking Mizzy into danger. We were just friends, goin’ to check somethin’ out. I kept her safe, and she kept me safe.” He pauses, and adds very casually, “All the blood … that from talkin’ to Mizzy, or after?”

Ben doesn’t unfold, his his shoulders jolt with a single, bitter syllable of laughter. “Got in a fight,” he says, muffled. “Was drunk, and pissed off. Had it out with a couple’ve fellows.” A moment elapses in silence, and then he lifts his head and stares at Sil, one-eyed and stricken. “You think — you think I’d come away from Mizzy lookin’ like this?” His voice breaks hoarsely and he stops a moment, collecting himself, still staring. “You think I’d raise a hand?”

Sil shifts uncomfortably. “It’d be hard to imagine … but you come home lookin’ like that, saying you fucked things up with Mizzy …” He shakes his head. “Just tryin’ to figure out what happened. So the fight, it was after — it wasn’t what scared her?”

Ben continues staring for a moment and then turns away again, shifts his shoulders this time as well so that he’s almost got his back to Sil. “No,” he says quietly. “No. She kept askin’ me to explain about why I was upset, and I kept tryin’, and I couldn’t put it right. I got frustrated, and I smacked the table. You know, just — brung a hand down. On the table. Because frustrate.” Another silence, and then even quieter, “She said she wanted to go home. She was cryin’ and she wouldn’t let me — she wanted to go home.”

He rakes both hands through his hair, still with his back to Sil. “And you think — I am, ain’t I? I am tryin’ so fucken hard not to be, but I’m like him anyway. I got Mizzy scared of me, and you thinkin’ that I might put a hand to her.”

“Like …” Sil trails off. He draws up his own knees, leaning on them with crossed arms. “That is not what I was originally thinkin’. I was tryin’ to come up with a likely scenario. Like maybe the two of you got attacked by an asshole at Bruuk’s, and she got scared? You’re the one all messed up, and I know if Mizzy was hurt you would’ve led with that.” He sighs wearily. “She was gonna see you get upset someday. And you her, too.”

Ben turns now to look at Sil. “But I scared her. She left. She pushed away from me and left. Because she was scared of me, Sil. I ain’t — I dunno how to fix that.” He touches his nose with careful fingertips. It seems not to be actively bleeding anymore. “I’m tryin’ so hard, Sil, all the time. I am not like him, I ain’t want to be. But if I can’t fix my temper when I get frustrate — I never would hurt her, not ever. But if she don’t know that, or believe it … Sil, I dunno what to do.”

“I think that’s the kind of thing you got to show over time, not just say,” Sil says carefully. “I mean, maybe say it too, after all this, but … guys who would hurt a girl’d say the same thing, yeah? But she knows you, she knows you never did nothin’ that scared her before. So maybe she’ll …” Sil gesture forward with one hand, “… you know, let you keep showin’ her.”

Sil pauses then, taking stock once more of Ben’s wrecked face. “But like … maybe talk to her after the swellin’s gone down? D’you normally get in fights in bars when you’re temper’s up?”

Ben looks down ashamedly at his bloodied hand. “Yeah. I mean — I try not to, now. Since the time I done it in Stormwind and Mr. Ference and Aunt Nir found out. Mr. Ference told me I had to quit, so I … mostly did.” He frowns at his hand as though it’s just said something profoundly hurtful to him. “Mizzy patched me up that time. So I did not have to go home to Aunt Nir lookin’ like —” He waves his stained hand. “Shit, Sil. I am pretty drunk.”

“I’m not a priest or nothin’, but I can help patch you up some ‘fore you go to sleep. I got some bandages upstairs — need ‘em for knife practicing.” Sil tilts his head, looking at Ben. “I can’t say I’m not guilty of ever picking a fight in a bar when I’m pissed off, but … bein’ a scrawny city kid, well … losin’ a bar fight badly does not put one in a mind for going at it again.”

Ben laughs unevenly again. “S’ why you got to keep a fellow like me, Sil.” He closes his eyes, wincing as if the laugh hurt, and with his eyes still closed, sighs. “I think I might just go sit in a ice-cold tub.”

He remains seated there, though, knees up, eyes still closed, motionless. At length he says, “I don’t know what to do, Sil. If I scared her. If it’s done.”

“Sounds like you scared her, but that don’t mean it’s done,” Sil says. “People fight, people make up. You just gotta talk to her, one way or another. But after your eye’s working again — you’re more handsome with two. Handsome usually helps.”

Ben barely cracks a smile. “Handsome ain’t much if you got nothin’ behind it. Pretty much the story of my Dad.” He grimaces and tests his split lip with cautious fingertips, surveying the wreckage around him. “Sorry. About the chair. It trip me, I lost my temper. Again.”

He drops his hand from his lip and regards Sil with his lopsided gaze. “I’m sorry, Sil. That I did not know you was bein’ kidnapped last week, when she took you. I’m sorry I ain’t made more fuss at the time about … what all was goin’ on with your family, even though I thought it was off. I should’ve … I dunno. Somethin’.” He picks up a piece of chair from the floor beside him, sets it down again.

“You just — Sil, I worry, is all. Okay? I am askin’ you to — think more. About a thing. If I ain’t with you, you got to think, ‘What would Ben say on this?’ Or somethin’. And if Mizzy —” He hesitates. “If Mizzy is with you, Sil, I am askin’ you. Please. To be careful. It ain’t that — I don’t think you can take care of yourself if it come to it. I know you can. Most of the time. But it’s those one time in a hundred you got to watch out for, right? And as … tough and quick as I know Mizz is, you know how she just march up on a thing sometimes and we got to go chasin’ after her. And I can’t — I can not. You have got to be careful, Sil. Of yourself and also of Mizz. Okay? I’m askin’. I ain’t yellin’, I’m askin’.”

“I’ll try to be more careful,” Sil says, nodding. “An’ if I think you wouldn’t think it’s safe enough, I won’t get Mizzy involved, in the future. I’ll be alright, though. You know you ain’t got to protect me, right? I’m not just a scrawny city kid anymore — I got a lotta ways to get out of any fight I decide I don’t want to be in.”

Ben regards him dolefully. “I know you do. I seen you do it. I wish you’d be smart about figurin’ out what fights you do and don’t wanna be in before you get in ‘em.” He pauses, then gives another harsh laugh. “That’s nice, comin’ from me.” He looks down at himself. “Sil. Reckon I’m still pretty drunk. I’m gonna get in a cold bath, an’ … clean this shit up in the morning.” He waves a weary hand over the chair wreckage. “And I got to figure out … I dunno. Mizzy.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll clean it up,” Sil waves him off. “And we can get a new one easy. Just clean yourself up and get some rest. And let me know if you need some bandages. And the rest of it … you can figure out what to do in the morning.”

“Don’t, though.” Ben pushes himself wearily to his feet. “I mean, don’t clean it up. S’ my fault, my mess. And I can —” He waves a hand, a gesture that encompasses his whole battered face. “I’ll manage. S’not like I ain’t had plenty of practice.” He hesitates a moment, as if steeling his resolve, then squares his shoulders and turns to shuffle past Sil toward the stairs. “Thanks, though, Sil. I ’preciate you.”