Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bassy music rumbles up Riley’s spine, loud enough to make his teeth chatter against his glass when he takes another swig of beer. It tastes like shit, and it barely has enough alcohol to keep him warm, but he’s not trying to get drunk. Really, he’s only drinking for something to do. His only other option is to watch as yet another of his roommate Tom’s friends walk up to the blonde at the bar and strike out, and that stopped being funny half an hour ago.

Groaning, he slumps in his seat, elbows akimbo on the sticky wooden table. The beer really does taste like piss, and these flashing lights are starting to give him a headache. He spends his whole day staring at computer screens, he doesn’t need to damage his eyes even more.

Tom flops into the stool next to him. He’s covered in sweat, hair plastered to his temples. There’s a lipstick mark smudged on the corner of his jaw.

“Poole, my man,” he slurs, bumping Riley’s shoulder. When he bumps it again, it’s pretty clear it’s just drunken clumsiness and not one of those bro-y camaraderie things. “You gotta get out there! Live it up!” He slaps Riley’s shoulder, hard. Riley bites his lip and tries not to wince. “It’s your birthday! The big twenty-one!”

“I’m twenty-two.” He’s said this already. Once, when Tom decided he was going to drag him out for his birthday. Again when Tom shoved this shitty glass of beer across the table and proudly told him to taste his first sip of legal alcohol.

Oh, yeah. Best birthday ever.

Like the other two times, Tom doesn’t seem like he’s heard. He just slaps Riley’s shoulder again, laughing. “Yeah, yeah, man. Oh, hey, y’know what we should do?”

There’s a glint in his eye that makes Riley nervous. “You tell me, Tom.”

The glint gets brighter. Tom grins, eyebrows waggling. “We gotta get you laid, little buddy.”

“I resent the ‘little buddy’ remark,” Riley says, so he doesn’t have to comment on the other thing. “You know the average height for men worldwide is 5 feet and 7 inches? Going by averages I’m not even short.”

Tom, as usual, steamrolls over everything Riley just said. “What’s your type? I bet we can find some chick who’d go home with you.” He laughs. His breath is hot on Riley’s cheek, bitter with the scent of those hard shots he did the second they got to the bar. Riley inches away, as much as he can with Tom’s meaty hand keeping a surprisingly tight grip on his shoulder. “Actually, I’m probably gonna be using the room, if you know what I mean. So you gotta find somewhere else.”

Great. Another night Riley’ll have to nap on that lumpy couch in the computer lab that smells like mothballs and mildew, way down in the windowless prison cell the school calls ‘The Basement’. 

“Cool. Thanks, roomie.”

Tom grins sloppily. “Don’t thank me yet, we still gotta find you a girl.”

Riley really can’t emphasize how much he does not want to do that. He’d sooner run into traffic than let Tom set him up with someone. 

“You know what, you work on that,” he says, easing out from under Tom’s hand and sliding off the stool. “I’m gonna go get another drink.”

Tom nods sagely, holding out his fist. Riley begrudgingly bumps it.

Then he absconds with his half-full glass of beer as fast as he can manage.

The floor’s crowded enough that he has to dodge around people, clutching the glass close to his chest so it doesn’t get swatted away by some flailing hands. He doesn’t have a destination in mind, just away from Tom. If he can just avoid him until he gets to the point of slurring, blackout drunkenness, he won’t have to dodge the Let’s Get Riley Laid campaign that Tom’s apparently decided to start gunning for.

Jesus, just because he doesn’t constantly bring his conquests back to the dorm doesn’t mean he’s a virgin. He does just fine for himself, thanks. 

In the squirming, sweaty press of bodies, Riley’s not really sure where it comes from—only that an elbow or a shoulder shoves between his shoulder blades. A high-pitched yelp squeaks past his throat and he goes teetering, the world rushing past his ears, hands flailing out for balance. He can’t see where he’s landing in the flashing lights. He just knows he’s landed when his knee hits squeaky fake leather and his hand finds soft fabric and his drink ends up in a lukewarm spill over his knuckles and down his wrist.

“Ow,” says a deadpan voice that’s definitely not Riley’s, and he blinks the unbridled panic out of his eyes to see a man’s face only a couple inches from his own.

Nice eyes, is the first thing Riley thinks. Intense, bright blue, shadowed by quirked eyebrows.

The second thing he thinks is more of a realization, which is that the guy’s shirt is soaked in beer. Somehow, in between falling and landing half-sprawled across the guy’s lap, knee digging into his thigh and hand clutching at his shoulder, the beer ended up everywhere. It’s soaking through his white cotton t-shirt, clinging to the shape of his pecs and the soft muscle of his abdomen…

Shit. Focus.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Riley blurts, fumbling for somewhere to put the empty glass. He settles for the fake leather bench seat next to the man’s thigh, where it promptly rolls off and falls to the floor with a dull clunk. 

The man arches his brows. He doesn’t look impressed. “How drunk are you, kid?”

“Not at all.” Riley’s hand flexes on the man’s shoulder. The fabric of his shirt is soft, but there’s hard muscle beneath. “These things just happen to me.”

“Oh, well.” There’s a sudden, slight pressure of a hand finding Riley’s hip. A shiver runs through him, heat spreading from the broad contact of the guy’s hand. “It’s good to know it’s poor providence that got me soaked in beer, and not drunkenness.”

“That’s me,” Riley says, voice catching. “Magnet for bad luck.”

Multicoloured lights catch the sharp angles of the man’s face as he stares at Riley; the slope of his nose, the furrow between his brows. There’s a touch of sweat glistening in the hollow of his collarbones, just slightly revealed by the worn-out collar of his t-shirt—actually, that might be Riley’s beer. Riley almost wishes he were drunk; then he could blame it on the alcohol if he leaned in to lick it up like he wants to. Instead, he just clutches at the guy’s shirt again, shifting his balance and feeling heat curl in his groin when his inner thigh brushes the guy’s knee.

The guy lifts his eyebrows again, mouth pursing into an expression that Riley’s not sure is more a laugh or a frown. A thumb presses gently against Riley’s hipbone and makes his thigh muscle jitter.

“Are you going to spend the rest of your evening here, or…?”

Embarrassment floods Riley’s cheeks. “Oh, right, right.” He shoves himself away too fast, overcorrects, and almost ends up falling on his ass. Another body breaks his momentum and turns it into an awkward stumble back instead. The guy watches him the entire time, eyebrows still doing this thing that makes Riley feel like he’s being heavily judged. His face is burning by the time he’s finally got his balance. “Sorry,” he says again, scratching the stubble on his cheek. “I’m Riley, by the way.”

Dumbass. Why is he introducing himself to the guy he spilled beer on?

Unless that’s the polite thing to do. Riley wouldn’t know, on account of not being the kind of guy who regularly spills beer on people.

All his internal ramblings fizzle away when the man holds out his hand. “Ben,” he says simply. He says it with finality. It’s a statement more than it’s an introduction.

Riley takes his hand. He’s got a strong grip and callouses on his palms, and his hand is big enough that Riley’s mouth gets a little dry imagining that broad hand on his hip again, or on his thigh—maybe under his knee, hitching his leg up—

Ben’s giving him that look again. This time he’s definitely smiling a little, this little quirk of his lips that makes the back of Riley’s neck burn. It takes Riley two more seconds to realize they’re still shaking hands, and he rips his hand away and shoves both into his hoodie pocket so he doesn’t do something stupid, like grab the guy’s face and drag him into a kiss. He’s embarrassed himself enough already, and he’s got a pretty high tolerance for it.

After a few more seconds—Riley should probably just cut his losses and walk away by now—Ben pushes himself up off the bench seat. He’s taller than Riley by a few noticeable inches, the (still wet, still clinging) t-shirt emphasizing broad shoulders and solid muscle in his arms.

“C’mon,” he says, then turns and starts walking without waiting for a response.

Riley, bewildered and feeling a little like he’s caught in a magnetic field, follows.

They end up in the men’s bathroom. It’s not as filthy as Riley thought it’d be, in that the tile walls are covered in grime and marker graffiti but not any vomit or piss, as far as he can tell, and it smells more like bleach than any bodily fluids. One of the fluorescent lights is flickering in a way that’s gonna make Riley’s growing headache even worse if he stays in here much longer.

Ben steps right up to the counter and peers at himself in the wall-wide mirror, brow furrowed as he plucks the wet t-shirt from his chest and lets it drape back against his skin. Riley tries really, really hard not to stare at the tanned skin bleeding through the translucent white fabric.

Grunting, Ben pulls at the shirt again. “Okay.”

He’s tugging it up over his back before Riley even has time to recognize the high-pitched noise rising in his throat, let alone swallow it. He manages to stifle it as Ben yanks the shirt over his wide shoulders, but it still comes out in the relative silence of the bathroom and echoes like a gunshot. Well, not really, but it might as well—especially when Ben smirks at him again, just a little flick of his gaze in Riley’s direction before he goes back to staring at himself in the mirror.

Riley’s face burns, his gut flipping.

Ben’s…really hot. Hot in that devastatingly human way, with dark hair on his chest and his arms, built solid all the way through with a layer of soft skin over all that practical muscle. His pelvic bone is a pretty defined vee, narrowing to a hidden point beneath his low-slung jeans. He looks like an actual grown man, all broad shoulders and hairy chest and casual confidence, and Riley feels young and gawky in comparison. 

There’s also a filthy professor-student fantasy suddenly sprouting in his head, which is not helpful, thanks, brain.

“Uh,” Riley says, then snaps his mouth shut so fast his teeth rattle. He didn’t mean to sound so breathless.

Ben snaps his fingers, pointing in Riley’s direction. “Paper towels,” he says brusquely, and Riley scrambles to grab a few sheets from the dispenser at his back. He stuffs them into Ben’s hands with a little more force than necessary, shivers running up his arms when his fingertips brush Ben’s calloused palms. 

Ben runs the papers towels under some water then wipes himself down. Riley winces in sympathy at the thought of the stickiness of spilled beer drying on skin; his hand and wrist are already feeling pretty tacky. 

His sympathy doesn’t last long. It gets pushed aside by the sight of Ben’s arms flexing as he scrubs around his throat until the skin’s pink.

Eventually, Ben seems satisfied. He tosses the paper towels and the beer-soaked t-shirt in the trash under the sinks, then turns to Riley with his hip propped up against the counter’s edge. Eyes narrowing, his gaze sweeps from Riley’s ratty Chucks, up his ill-fitting jeans, up to his narrow, hunched shoulders. The inspection gives Riley a flutter of nerves and a jolt of heat between his legs.

Then Ben says, “give me your hoodie,” like he just expects Riley to bend to his whims.

Riley blinks. He blinks again, but Ben’s still standing shirtless and damp at the bar bathroom sinks, arms crossed over his chest and gaze resting expectantly on Riley’s. It’s a good look, the shirtlessness. 

“Dude,” Riley says, stumbling over his own disbelief, “it’s my hoodie.”

Ben raises one imperious eyebrow. Riley’s gut flips. “You ruined my shirt. You’ll survive without the hoodie for just one night.”

Halfway through the second sentence, Riley’s already pulling the hoodie up over his head. He wrestles it off—it snags on his ears for a second and he almost goes stumbling into the wall in his haste to get himself unstuck, cheeks burning—and pauses with it bundled in his arms, wondering why exactly he’s giving a virtual stranger his favourite hoodie just because the guy told him to. There’s something about Ben’s voice; this certainty that the world is gonna go his way. 

Well, if it’s Ben’s world, Riley’s just living in it. Maybe that’s why he tosses it over without another thought.

The hoodie is baggy on Riley, which means it almost kind of fits on Ben, just a bit tight across the shoulders. Riley shoves his hands in the ratty pockets of his jeans and tries not to think too hard about Ben’s shoulders, or his arms, or his hands, or how easy it’d probably be for Ben to crawl on top of him and blanket his entire body. He very definitely does not think about that last part.

Ben rolls his shoulders, giving himself one last glance in the mirror. Then he turns to Riley with a barely-there smile. “Good. Thanks, Riley.”

Riley swallows hard. His blush has spread down to his chest. “I better get that back.”

“I told you. Just one night, and then it’s all yours.”

“Good.” 

It comes out a lot more childish than it sounded in his head.

Ben’s mouth twitches, which probably means he’s laughing at him. He pushes away from the counter, approaching Riley with long, easy strides, getting close enough that Riley backs up into the door and bumps his elbow on the metal handle so hard his whole arm buzzes. Ben smirks like he’s laughing at that, too. 

Well, great. How wonderful that he’s getting a kick out of Riley’s suffering. At least someone’s enjoying the free show.

Ben doesn’t stop until he’s half a foot away, pressing into Riley’s space by virtue of standing so close. It’s hard to even drag in a full breath, with him looming. That’s what he’s doing—looming. Putting those few inches of height difference to good use and sending all of Riley’s blood away from his panicking brain.

“It’s been a really long day,” Ben says drily. His eyes flick down, then back up. Riley’s mouth tingles. 

“You think you’ve got it bad?” He’s still pressed up against the door, but it’s starting to get more comfortable, his body going a little looser under Ben’s attention. He rolls his eyes exaggeratedly. “Today’s my birthday. I’m miserable.”

Ben’s eyes glimmer. Again, he looks down. 

He’s gotta be looking at Riley’s mouth, right? That’s a pretty obvious signal. Well, that and the whole pressing-him-up-against-the-door-without-touching-him thing. And the sexy looming thing. And the little half-smirk that’s permanently tugging at the corner of his mouth and making Riley’s heart hammer like a thunderstorm.

“Well,” Ben says slowly, dragging it out. He leans in a little closer, the shadow of his brow turning his gaze into something intense and shadowed. “We could always end our night on a high note.”

Riley’s pulse jumps. Swallowing, he flexes his fingers in his pockets, then meets Ben’s gaze with a nod that he hopes is casual. “Sure, we can do that.”

With a quiet huff of laughter, Ben straightens. He’s still standing close enough that Riley couldn’t really step away from him without pushing him back a bit.

“You’re trying really hard to play this cool, huh?”

Riley flushes, but Ben’s expression is half-teasing and half-intrigue and makes him feel, well, wanted. Desired, even. Like Ben finds the way he’s been fumbling through this entire encounter charming, or something.

So he grins, feeling a little goofy. “Yeah. Is it working?”

“Sure. We can say it is.” 

He slips a hand between Riley’s back and the bathroom door and walks them both a few steps away. He’s not pulling Riley with him—the tips of his fingers are barely pressed to his back, just a guiding pressure to steer Riley where he wants him—but even just that suggestion of touch is doing something. Riley’s dick gives an interested twitch in his pants.

When Ben opens the bathroom door, a rush of noise crashes into the weird, intimate atmosphere they’ve got clouding this grungy bar bathroom. Reality comes sweeping back in; like, Riley’s actually about to go home with a complete stranger who must be at least ten years older than him. Presumably for sex, unless he’s been reading all of these signals wrong.

Heat pools in his gut. 

Maybe, just maybe, he can still turn this terrible birthday around.

Riley’s strategy for walking through the bar is somewhere between fake-it-til-you-make-it and ostriching: he’s not going to shuffle through the shadows like he’s doing something wrong, but he’s also fully going to pretend that if he can’t see Tom or any of Tom’s friends, then they can’t see him. Hopefully, there’s been enough alcohol consumption that he’s not too far off with that delusion.

Bitterly cold wind hits Riley the second he steps outside. Oh, yeah. That’s why he was wearing the hoodie. Shivering, he wraps his arms around his torso and internally bemoans his skinny physique—seriously, apparently there’s not an inch of insulation on him, because the wind’s cutting right through him and stealing all the heat he’d just been burning up in.

An arm wraps solidly around his shoulders. Warmth soaks through Riley’s thin cotton t-shirt and into his chilled skin, and he shivers for a whole different reason as he’s tucked snugly against Ben’s side.

“You should have brought a jacket,” Ben says, which. Riley isn’t going to dignify that with any response other than digging his elbow into Ben’s ribs.

It’s only a couple blocks to Ben’s car, an oldie that’s in just rough enough shape that Riley can’t really qualify it as ‘vintage’. Ben guides him into the passenger seat with a warm hand on the small of his back and closes the door for him like an old-time gentleman, and Riley feels flustered from just how much he likes it. Inside the car is messy but not dirty, the backseat scattered with haphazard folders filled with papers Riley’s interminably curious about. He cranes around in the seat, poking at the nearest folder until a glossy photograph of some museum piece spills halfway out—and then he jolts, when the car rocks as Ben collapses into the driver’s seat and pulls the door closed.

The photograph slips to the floor, joining a pile of its brethren. Riley winces.

“Oops.” The back of his neck burning, he turns around and settles into his seat, meeting Ben’s pointed stare. “In my defence, I can’t have made more of a mess than there already was.”

Ben huffs another little laugh. “First my shirt, now my car.”

“Last chance to back out,” Riley drawls, only halfway regretting it when it slips out. At this point, he’s pretty sure Ben’s not about to kick him out of his car. 

“Seatbelt,” Ben says bluntly. 

As soon as Riley’s buckled in, Ben pulls into the street with a groan of the car’s engine. The first swerving turn has Riley white-knuckling the centre console. Apparently, Ben’s a reckless driver. Not even in that annoying way, like he’s trying to impress Riley or prove a point or something else asinine and obnoxious. 

Riley’s heart kicks up into his throat. He glances at Ben—he’s got one hand on the wheel, another spread on his thigh, face set in stony concentration that’s really doing something for Riley’s bewildered arousal—then out the windshield at the passing streetlights and streaky red-and-white lights of traffic.

“Are we in a rush, or something?”

Ben doesn’t look away from the road. He also doesn’t really answer, just makes this semi-inquisitive hum in his throat, like he’s only half listening and doesn’t know why Riley just asked.

It’s…weirdly hot. Does that say something about Riley, that he’s kinda into Ben ignoring him?

Well, it kinda fits into that whole professor-student thing.

By the time they’re pulling into the parking lot of an apartment building, Riley’s nerves have revved back up again. He hasn’t really hooked up with an older guy before. With other college students, it’s been simple; you get back to whichever dorm room or apartment you’ve chosen for the night, strip down to underwear, and find the most convenient flat surface to start making out on. With an adult—an actual adult, with a mortgage and a job, not a wannabe Adult-in-Training like Riley—there’s probably different expectations. Like, are they supposed to talk? Sit down for coffee? Should Riley comment on Ben’s home decor, or something?

He’s still mildly panicking about it when Ben parks, turns off the car, then swivels to face Riley and points at him. “Don’t move,” he says, and Riley freezes with his hand halfway to the door handle.

Ben climbs out of the car, goes around the front, and opens Riley’s door for him. At least he doesn’t offer a hand to help Riley up, but he does do the whole thing where he slides his hand from Riley’s shoulderblades down to the small of his back, just above his ass. It could almost pass for respectable if he wasn’t literally escorting Riley back to his place for sex.

“Is this part of some routine, Romeo?” He leans a little closer into Ben’s side, mostly because he’s warm but also because he smells good. Fading cologne with the tang of sweat. “Seems like a lot of effort for a done deal.”

“That chivalry is dead doesn’t mean we should forsake it,” Ben says gravely, his voice low and intimate as they approach the doors. His hand is still a warm, steady pressure at the small of Riley’s back, his fingertips stroking up and down the dip of Riley’s waist. It’s so distracting that Riley can almost forgive him the weird shit he just said.

“Right,” Riley says, mind going a little fuzzy from those gentle touches. “Chivalry. Yep.”

Heat blasts them the second they step inside the little vestibule. Riley soaks it in as Ben fumbles a key from his pocket and unlocks the door to enter the apartment building proper, sticking close by Ben’s side while they step inside and head into the elevator. It’s a nice little building; it looks a little old-fashioned, but well-maintained and modernized where it counts. The elevator’s a cozy little box with carpeted flooring, and Riley leans his hips back against the handrail while Ben does something with the panel.

“The buttons don’t always work,” he offers as explanation. 

From a quick glance, Riley’s pretty sure he could fix it in five minutes. He’d have to actually dig into its guts to confirm, but from the outside it doesn’t seem like a complicated piece of wiring. Definitely not any more complicated than the electronic locks on the computer lab that he’s had to hack when he needs to sleep on the lumpy lab couch—

Oh.

Riley’s been thinking about that stupid couch, and here’s Ben, crowding in close and curling both hands around the handrail on either side of Riley’s hips, caging him in on all sides. His eyes are sharp and focused, and all that attention narrowed on Riley gets his heart pounding and sends arousal rushing south.

“Uh—”

“Shut up,” Ben says good-naturedly, and kisses him.

Oh.

Ben does not kiss like it’s the first time they’ve kissed. He kisses Riley slowly, insistently, intimately in a way that makes Riley’s legs almost give out. He kisses Riley like there’s nothing else in the world he’d rather be doing, like they have forever to just stand here and kiss. It’s overwhelming. 

His teeth brush Riley’s lower lip and the world lurches—Riley grabs Ben’s wrists, clutching to keep his balance. These little noises keep catching in his throat, muffled against the languid press of Ben’s mouth and the first brushes of tongue. It’s embarrassing in a way that almost has him turning away.

Instead, Ben pulls back first. When Riley’s eyes flutter open, Ben’s watching him with an intensity that knots up Riley’s anxiety and his arousal and makes him sag a little heavier against the wall behind him.

Ben doesn’t say anything. He just backs away, double-tapping the ‘open doors’ button on the elevator panel. That’s when Riley realizes the elevator isn’t moving, and hasn’t been for a while; they must’ve reached Ben’s floor at some point and kept kissing right through it. Riley didn’t even notice. His overheated face burns even hotter, lips still buzzing.

He follows Ben to his apartment door. He feels like a duckling, just following Ben awkwardly, not quite sure what to say or where to put his hands. He feels like an inexperienced virgin, which he’s not. 

“You’re freaking out,” Ben says quietly as he opens his apartment door.

“I’m not freaking out!” Riley says, completely unconvincingly. Wincing, he follows Ben into an apartment that smells like old parchment and treated wood. It’s like an untidy museum collection in here; tables covered in old, cracked-open books and framed photographs and half a dozen too many table lamps, a bunch of—Riley will charitably not call it junk, even though he’s not sure how else to categorize it—stuff tucked away in antique looking display cabinets. Like the car, it’s messy but not dirty. Despite all those surfaces Riley can’t see a speck of dust. 

Ben closes the door behind them. The finality of the lock clicking jackknifes Riley’s nerves again.

He swallows hard. “You know what, let’s just go back to pretending I’m playing this really cool. I liked that; you liked that. That was working for us.”

“Okay,” Ben says drily. He sounds further away. Riley spins to see him halfway down a hallway filled with over a dozen unrecognizably old maps, walking backwards with his hands in the hoodie pocket and one eyebrow raised. “Are you coming? You can stand there freaking out more, if you need to.”

“Not freaking out,” Riley grumbles under his breath, and follows on ungainly legs.

They don’t end up in a bedroom, like Riley was expecting. Instead he turns into the doorway Ben disappeared into and sees an office-meets-library situation. 

Okay. It really looks like the office of a professor, from the huge cherry wood desk to the shelves upon shelves of old leatherbound books to the rug spread across the floor that looks more expensive than Riley’s tuition. Ben, leaning up against the desk with his arms crossed over his chest and his brows raised in patient expectation, really isn’t detracting from the vibe. Shit, this might as well be Riley’s depraved professor-student fantasy come to life. If Ben was wearing glasses, and maybe one of those Indiana Jones-style tweed suits—

“Are you going to stand there all night?” Ben’s voice, verging on impatient, startles Riley out of his reverie. The back of Riley’s neck burns as he approaches.

He’s back to not knowing what to do with his hands. He really needs to get it together. 

At least Ben seems amused by it. He’s not smiling, but he doesn’t seem to smile much—he’s just got this openness to his gaze and a quirk to the corner of his mouth. Of course, that’s not really helping Riley get it together, but it gives him enough confidence to finish crossing the room and come to a stop in front of Ben.

Ben doesn’t hesitate; he curls a warm, broad hand around the nape of Riley’s neck and pulls him slowly but insistently into another kiss.

Riley tries to give back as good as he’s getting, but it’s hard to keep up—especially when Ben’s other hand winds around his waist and pulls him in. A choked gasp slips out at the pressure of his half-hard cock against Ben’s, the heat and weight of it. His hips twitch forward without thinking, mouth falling half open in a pant. 

It’s all a little—a lot—overwhelming. Sex has never really been overwhelming for Riley. But with Ben, caging him in with sure hands and a solid, kneading grip on the back of his neck, biting at his bottom lip and letting him grind against him in pathetic little rolls of his hips like he’s indulging him, it’s just. It’s almost too much.

Oh, god. Riley could come in his pants like this. Like a fucking teenager.

He breaks away with both hands planted on Ben’s shoulders. The air between them feels like it’s filled with steam, clouding up Riley’s head and making it hard to think. He tugs on the strings of the hoodie—his hoodie. 

Ben’s thumb sweeps steady up and down the side of Riley’s throat, right over his carotid. A shiver runs down Riley’s spine. “You’ve done this before, right?” Ben asks, sounding more curious than concerned.

Riley heaves in a breath. “Yeah. Duh.”

Ben makes a noncommittal humming noise, narrowed eyes dropping to Riley’s mouth, then further down. Riley really can’t tell whether that was a sound of approval or disappointment.

“Wait, would you still have brought me home if you thought I was a virgin?”

Ben’s face twists into a grimace. “I think I’ll decline to answer.”

The hand on Riley’s back comes up to cup his jaw, trailing shivers over his waist and up his chest on the way. With a singular focus that burns low in Riley’s gut, Ben gently drags his thumb over Riley’s lips. The calloused touch sends a throb of arousal to Riley’s cock. Then Ben slips his thumb between Riley’s parted lips and hooks it over his bottom teeth and pulls, forcing his mouth open.

A guttural moans rips out of Riley’s throat. He grabs Ben’s wrist instinctively—not to pull him away, just to have something to hang onto. Something to steady himself with.

When Ben drags the hand from Riley’s neck to his shoulder and pushes down, Riley goes.

It’s not elegant. It’s more of a controlled fall. But he drops to his knees without tilting off-balance or fumbling face-first into Ben’s crotch, Ben’s thumb still tucked between his teeth, so he sinks into the heat burning under his skin and calls it a win.

A few moments pass. Riley mouths at Ben’s thumb almost absentmindedly, cushioning it with his tongue. Ben stares at him, quiet and unmoving except for the thumb sweeping along the length of Riley’s collarbone.

Riley lifts his hands to go for Ben’s fly—and Ben catches his wrist.

“Wait,” he says quietly, in a voice that’s dropped into something soft and intimate. 

Something in Riley starts to sink. It’s not a bad feeling, not at all. But he feels like he’s submerging himself in a pool, and it’s a little unmooring. He lets his hand hang loose where Ben’s still holding his wrist, fingertips pressed to his pulse, and it’s…it’s nice. It’s a weird way to think about it, when seconds ago he was pretty convinced he was about to get his mouth on Ben’s cock, but. It really is nice.

The longer he kneels there, the more everything seems to settle. The nerves fluttering in his chest, his thudding heartbeat, the ache of arousal in his groan; it all slows down to match Ben’s slow, steady breathing and the rhythmic tightening of his hand around Riley’s wrist.

Slowly, like waking up halfway through a disorienting dream, Riley realizes he’s not freaking out anymore.

“Okay,” Ben says after an indeterminate amount of time. He digs his thumb soothingly into Riley’s palm, making his lashes flutter and his eyelids heavy. “There you go.”

His thumb slips out of Riley’s mouth, dragging saliva over his lip and down the slope of his jaw. It’s kinda gross, but Riley can’t muster up the energy to be all that bothered by it. Really, he’s just caught up with whatever that was. The slow, heady silence of it all, the way Ben’s hands kept Riley pinned in place and settled in himself.

He’s never had a guy tell him to slow down when he was about to blow them before. That’s new. Was it just about waiting to do things on Ben’s terms?

Okay. If that’s what it was—okay.

Riley blinks lazily up at Ben. He’s pretty sure he’s got a goofy smile on his face, but he doesn’t even care. “Cool.” 

Ben’s mouth quirks. “Cool,” he imitates.

Riley leans into the fingers still curled against his jaw. “So…can I, y’know.” His gaze flicks down to Ben’s crotch, to the bulge straining against his jeans.

Ben makes this little huff of laughter. The hand around Riley’s wrist tightens, the fingers at his jaw sliding around the cup the back of his neck against and thread through strands of hair that could really use a haircut. “C’mere,” Ben says, hauling Riley to his feet with a grunt of effort and some wobbly, disoriented assistance from Riley once he processes what’s happening. 

Okay, so, he didn’t push Riley to his knees just so he could have his dick sucked? He just…did it?

Maybe Riley’s confusion (read: sheer fucking bafflement) is all over his face, because Ben chuckles and says, “don’t overthink it,” in this low voice that rumbles through his chest to Riley’s like a purring engine.

“Jokes on you, overthinking is what I do,” Riley mumbles, barely meaning it. Honestly, it just seems easier to do what Ben’s saying and let his brain turn off. Which is probably the first time he’s ever had that thought, so, that’s kinda fun.

So he goes with it when Ben tugs him close and slots their mouths together. An arm winds around Riley’s waist and drags him in until they’re pressed together from thigh to chest. Ben clutches him close, crushing him into place with a surety that makes it even easier for Riley to just let it happen and fall headfirst into making out and rolling his hips and trying to swallow the low little moans that keep climbing his throat. He goes with it when Ben spins them and presses him back against the desk, the bevelled wooden edge digging into the backs of his thighs, maybe hard enough that it’ll bruise.

Really, he just wraps his arms around Ben’s broad shoulders, fingers twisting in the fabric of his hoodie, and hangs on.

Time fades away, the longer they stand there making out. Riley slumps against the desk while Ben looms over him; at some point Ben gets a thigh between Riley’s, a solid, warm pressure to grind on. Riley’s arousal reignites, burning low in his gut and pulsing whenever he hitches his hips.

Eventually Ben starts mouthing along Riley’s cheek, his jaw, down the arch of his throat. Riley’s mouth falls open on a long, embarrassingly high-pitched keen, hips jerking forward to grind his cock against the rough pressure of his too-tight jeans.

“Question,” Riley huffs, head tilted back to give Ben more room.

Ben bites his Adam’s apple. “Shoot.”

“Why aren’t we doing this in bed?”

“Hm.” Another drag of teeth, right over a delicate vein in his throat. Riley shivers. “Mostly because I want to do this.”

Which apparently means hefting Riley up with both broad hands on his ass and dumping him on the edge of the desk. Immediately, Ben grabs Riley’s thighs and pushes them apart, making space for himself to step between them and press right up against him again. The blatant manhandling—and the thumbs digging hard into his inner thighs—douses Riley’s arousal with gasoline. He really, really needs Ben to fuck him, or get a hand on his cock, or something.

Fuck going with it. He’s getting these pants off now.

Fumbling his hands into the nonexistent space between them and pawing ineffectively at his jeans catches Ben’s attention. He leans back, hands still planted on Riley’s thighs. On one hand; good, gives Riley more space to pop his button open and start wrestling with his fly. On the other hand; awful, means he isn’t pressed up against Riley and smothering him with warmth, leaves enough distance that he can give Riley a look.

Finally, the shitty zipper on Riley’s jeans gives. He yanks it down, pressing the heel of his hand to his leaking cock with a whimper and a surge of arousal.

Ben’s pale, sharp-edged gaze flicks down. 

Riley grinds against his hand. His cheeks are hot from how obscene he probably looks, but he can’t make his hips stop moving. Especially not with Ben looking at him like that.

“Are all the kids so impatient these days?” Ben asks with the hint of a grin, and Riley’s face and chest burn with the sticky, chastising tone. His dick also twitches in his boxers, a shocked, desperate noise lurching up his throat. Oh, god. He curls forward, tucking his burning face into Ben’s throat.

“Shut up. God, you dick.”

“No call to be rude,” Ben says mildly, before pulling Riley’s hand away and sliding his own hand under the waistband of Riley’s boxers. Riley chokes a few whispered curses into Ben’s skin, hips jerking so violently he almost slips off the desk. Ben’s hand is bigger than his, more solid, calloused just enough that there’s a rough edge even when he thumbs precome from the tip and slicks up Riley’s cock.

Riley gets to the edge embarrassingly quickly. His balls draw up tight and his thighs clench, and he shoves clumsily at Ben’s hands while panting into his throat, “oh, shit, wait—”

Ben twists his wrist, applies just the right side of too-much pressure, and Riley’s gone.

He comes with a wet, shattered gasp, stars bursting behind his eyes as arousal rocks through him in a flashfire. Ben strokes him through it, sucking a bruise just under the corner of Riley’s jaw. 

Just when he starts getting too sensitive, Ben slows. He kisses the mark he left under Riley’s jaw and pulls back just enough to look at him. Riley, a little out of his mind and still shuddering, thighs trembling on the desk, stares back with parted lips and blood rushing in his ears.

Ben brings up his come-slick hand like he’s about to wipe it on the hoodie, then pauses. His brow furrows. Riley would call it cute if he wasn’t still gasping on the last aftershocks of a pretty overwhelming orgasm and had the braincells to spare. For a second, Ben just stands there, his hand covered in Riley’s come—then he grimaces and wipes it on his own jeans. It must be the lingering orgasm and Riley’s lust-drunk brain that has him thinking that’s sweet.

Slowly, Riley lets himself collapse back on the desk. His t-shirt bunches uncomfortably at his waist, his spine flexing and aching from the hard wooden surface. Post-orgasmic exhaustion drags his eyes closed.

“Are you going somewhere?” Ben sounds amused.

“No,” Riley drawls, maybe a little whiny, swollen lips slurring the word. “Just taking a second. That cool with you?”

“Yeah, it’s cool. Take your time.” 

Fingertips dance along the edge of Riley’s pants, sending shivers up the bare skin of his stomach. Those same fingers hook into Riley’s waistband and pull, and he only catches up to what’s happening by the time his jeans and boxers are being wrestled off his feet. When he cranes his neck up, eyes widening, he gets to see Ben stripping off the hoodie and tossing it onto an armchair in the corner of the room. He looks even better in this soft, gold-edged lighting. He looks really good shirtless between Riley’s splayed-open, naked thighs.

“Second drawer down on your right,” Ben says bluntly. “There might be lube and condoms in there.”

Red flushes from Riley’s cheeks all the way down his chest. 

It’s not like he didn’t expect it to go, well, there. He’s done this before. Not a lot, but he has. He just got lost along the way, with the making out and the frankly spectacular handjob; not to mention the way Ben tucked him down to his knees and held him there, until the nerves in his chest soothed into something more pleasant. Just the thought of even Ben’s fingers inside him is like lightning up his spine.

Awkwardly, Riley wriggles until he’s half on his side. The drawer slides open to reveal office supplies, a few seemingly unrelated cooking utensils, and—after some fumbling and swearing and flustered embarrassment crawling up the back of his neck—a tub of lube and an opened box of condoms.

“Success,” he hisses, then promptly regrets it. It’s lucky that Ben seems to be endeared by how much of a loser he is.

When he rolls onto his back, Ben’s eyes flick up conspicuously. Red-faced at the idea that Ben was probably just staring at his ass, he fumbles the supplies at Ben in an awkward ‘take these’ gesture.

Ben takes them and dumps them unceremoniously on the desk, instead grabbing Riley’s hands and pulling him back up so fast that Riley wheezes. He kisses Riley again—he really seems to like doing that, but he’s mind-numbingly good at it, so Riley’s not about to complain—and curls both hands around Riley’s hips. His thumbs rub smooth little circles into Riley’s bony hip bones, soothing and electrifying at the same time.

Riley breaks away from the kiss with a gasp.

“You know, for the record, I’m not against this?” His voice is roughened by arousal and trembling at the edges. “But I feel like I’m a little…” He glances down at his spent, come-spattered cock. “Out of the game. I’m starting at a disadvantage here.”

“You’re young,” Ben says, broad hands sweeping up Riley’s waist and dragging his t-shirt up with them. His eyes glint dangerously. “I think we can make this happen twice.”

Riley’s spent cock gives a valiant twitch against his thigh. “Jesus Christ, Ben.”

Together they wrestle Riley’s t-shirt off; it goes flying the same general direction as the hoodie. Ben kisses Riley, nips at the tip of his chin, then spreads his hand on Riley’s chest and pushes him back. Riley goes slowly, heart pounding so hard he wonders if Ben can feel it slamming against the hot, sweaty press of his palm. He keeps himself propped on his elbows so he can watch as Ben grabs his thighs, wraps one around around his waist, and—oh god—hitches the other one up under the knee to prop Riley’s ankle on his shoulder.

Riley isn’t proud of the sound he makes. Ben just looks at him, brows raised.

“Okay,” Riley says, dropping flat on his back with a huff. “Shut up.”

When he hears the sound of Ben slicking up his fingers with lube, he starts sinking back into that cool, floating sensation, even with all the sharp arousal buzzing under his skin. Riley’s always liked this part. He spreads his thighs wider, toes curling behind Ben’s back. At the first warm, slick touch of Ben’s blunt fingers between his thighs, he lets out a long, slow exhale through his nose. He’s sinking, something soft lapping at his skin like ripples in a pond.

Ben doesn’t rush, but he doesn’t linger. His finger drags over Riley’s hole, then presses in and curls.

A hum rumbles in Riley’s chest. Pleasure spreads slowly from Ben’s touch, warm and buzzy. 

It doesn’t take long before Ben has two fingers inside him, curling and rubbing and making Riley lose his mind. He’s hitching his hips back because he can’t help it, thighs trembling from the waves of heat and arousal coursing through him like a soft, slow adrenaline. He’s keeping himself quiet, at least; he’s chewing his bottom lip to keep anything more than a throaty noise from spilling out.

Ben’s other hand sweeps a long path up Riley’s stomach, his chest, curling around the side of his throat. His thumb tugs at Riley’s mouth. “You can make a little more noise,” he says, eyes heavy and sharp in a way that feels like it’s not really an offer. More of an expectation.

Embarrassment burns Riley’s chest. He shakes his head, gaze slipping away from Ben’s.

He already feels like he’s being indulged by Ben. He doesn’t wanna embarrass himself by letting loose all the noises bubbling up and bursting in his chest. 

Ben’s grip slides down to his jaw, tightening hard enough it stings. He keeps his eyes on Riley’s as he slips his fingers out, as he audibly unzips his jeans and tears open a condom wrapper—Riley feels real disappointment that he won’t get a glimpse of Ben’s cock—and when he blood-hot, slick head of his cock lines up against Riley’s hole, he grinds his thumb into Riley’s jaw and stares him down. The eye contact is overwhelming; Riley’s not sure if it’s in a good or bad way. Just that he can’t keep it up without feeling dizzy.

Then—then the eye contact doesn’t matter, because Ben’s splitting him open.

“Oh,” Riley says dumbly. 

Ben grinds in impossibly slowly, expression sharp with concentration. His cock is thick, and so hot it’s igniting Riley’s steady thrum of arousal into something immediate, something panicky.

It feels like forever before he bottoms out. By then Riley’s panting open-mouthed, swallowing hard to keep drool from spilling over his lips. He’s not sure where to put his hands—he’s got one gripping at Ben’s hand where it’s clutched too-tight around his jaw, the other digging pinpoint bruises into his own inner thigh. He’s shaking apart from how aroused he is, how oversensitive and overhot he feels around Ben’s cock.

“Shit,” Ben says lowly. A bead of sweat runs from his temple, over his jaw, down the slope of his neck. 

“Hah. Yeah, dude.”

Ben’s brow furrows. “Please don’t call me ‘dude’ while I’m inside you.”

Oh. Oops. Riley nods, too flustered to wrangle his voice into actual coherent words. 

Ben pulls out slowly. The drag of his cock against Riley’s prostate makes them both hiss, Ben’s fingers digging deeper into the hinge of Riley’s jaw. The best kind of ache lingers in the emptiness Ben leaves behind, before he slides back in and forces shared gasps out of them both.

It’s like everything else so far—the pace Ben sets isn’t fast, but it’s insistent. It’s a steady, inescapable build of arousal forced through Riley’s overheated body, catching him off-guard every time he tries to breathe, filling him overwhelmingly with each unrelenting thrust. 

“You feel—incredible,” Ben forces out. His stare sets fire to Riley’s already burning face. 

“Yeah,” Riley gasps. Then, because he can’t just keep his goddamn mouth shut, “right back atcha.”

Ben huffs a strained, delighted little laugh, so Riley doesn’t let himself feel too humiliated. This is why Riley doesn’t let himself make noise; if he’s not careful, he’ll say shit like that. At least Ben’s amused by it.

Ben’s free hand grips Riley thigh, using it as leverage to pull him back onto his cock. It’s so blisteringly hot that Riley thunks his head back against the desk and gives up on holding back the stupid, embarrassing noises Ben’s cock is punching out of him. It’s a little humiliating, but it’s more devastatingly good to let himself and all his desperately clinging control just. Drop. His brain can just shut the fuck up and take it. 

“Much better, Riley,” Ben says, and the sound of Riley’s name in that deep, pleased voice winds his impending orgasm right up to a boiling point.

Desperate, Riley claws a hand down his stomach and fumbles for his dick.

Ben yanks his hand away. He pins it against Riley’s abdomen with fingers painfully tight around his wrist, pressing hard into his stomach. “No touching,” he says in clipped, rumbling tones, and Riley’s cock twitches and spurts precome. He tries tugging his hand out of Ben’s grip and can’t.

Just that thought sets his brain on fire.

Ben just does what he wants, has been doing what he wants with Riley’s body—if he pinned Riley down, could Riley even get up? Or maybe, if he held Riley down with rope or handcuffs or—

When Ben gets a rough hand on his dick, Riley’s spine arches halfway off the desk and he comes with a choked, guttural shout. It’s so good his vision goes white.

“That’s it,” Ben murmurs, working Riley through it. “That’s it, come on. Come on.”

Riley swallows a whine and squeezes his eyes shut. 

Everything’s too much, suddenly. Like that orgasm frazzled all his nerve endings and left them frayed and sensitive. 

Ben’s courteous enough that he only fucks Riley for a couple more minutes before his thrusts stutter and speed up, right when Riley’s about to tip the edge from buzzing with his orgasm to buzzing with painful oversensitivity. Ben grinds his orgasm to completion in Riley’s ass, still holding Riley’s hand pinned to his stomach. That grip’s somehow keeping Riley anchored while also being the tide trying to pull him out to sea.

Riley drifts a little, while Ben deals with the condom then disappears and returns with a warm, wet washcloth that he uses to clean them both up. 

Compared to the dirty t-shirts picked up off the floor that Riley’s used to from the guys he usually sleeps with, it’s downright luxurious.

He takes Ben’s hands when they’re offered and lets Ben pull him up and off the desk, only staggering a little when he gets his feet under him. He bends down to pull on his boxers and snatch up his rumpled jeans; when he stands, Ben’s there to give him a soft, lingering kiss.

“Here,” Ben says, pushing the hoodie into Riley’s arms. “You’ve earned this back.”

“You can’t bestow upon me my own hoodie.”

He tugs it on anyway. It smells like Ben, and it’s warm now that Riley’s suddenly shivering in the cool temperature of Ben’s apartment.

He’s not sure if Ben’s expecting him to catch a cab home or stay the night, but when Ben wanders away without saying anything, Riley decides to follow. They end up in a bedroom. It’s a nice bedroom, with a decently big window overlooking the golden glow of streetlights, but the bed is an absolute mess of huge, open tomes and boxes filled with papers and folders and even more books.

“So when I asked why you didn’t want to have sex in a bedroom, you lied,” Riley says.

Ben gives this awkward little half shrug, mouth twisting into a grimace. “I figured it might ruin the mood if we had to clear this off before we could have sex.” He hefts a box onto the floor, then fixes Riley with a pointed look. “You could help, you know.”

Which is probably as much of an invitation to sleep here as anything.

Even with two of them, it takes several minutes to clear everything off the bed. Mostly because Ben keeps making these distressed, angry noises when Riley picks something up without the apparently appropriate level of care. At one point Riley asks what all of this even is, and gets nothing but a blunt, “research,” in response, which doesn’t really answer anything.

Finally, they get everything tucked into one corner of Ben’s bedroom.

Riley’s not about to share a toothbrush, so he swishes around a mouthful of mouthwash while Ben brushes his teeth and watches Riley in the mirror like he’s something to be studied. It’s a weird feeling, prickling heat under Riley’s skin.

There’s a bit of tension when they get into bed—mostly just Ben tersely telling Riley, “that’s my side, scoot over,” when Riley crawls into the right side of the bed—but soon enough they get settled. Ben’s on his back, Riley curled on his side facing away from him. Their legs are touching, just little brushes of warm skin that send jolts up Riley’s leg. The dark, quiet room falls heavy on them like a blanket of snow.

Riley spends about five minutes feeling an overwhelming sense of awkwardness before even that can’t keep him awake anymore, and he tumbles headfirst into a deep sleep.

Riley wakes up to the smell of something sweet sizzling in a pan full of butter. To a mildly malnourished college student, it smells goddamn heavenly.

Fumbling at the sheets reveals that Ben’s out of bed—of course he is, someone has to be making those pancakes—and the sheets have long since cooled since he got up. Blearily, Riley struggles out of a tangle of bedsheets to free his legs and swing them over the edge of the bed. 

There’s a pleasant twinge in his knees and hip flexors when he stands. It’s a very tangible reminder that he actually did have sex last night, if the whole waking-up-in-an-unfamiliar-bed wasn’t enough.

The apartment’s still kinda dark when Riley stumbles out into the hallway. He finds his way to the kitchen to see most of the lights left off except for a few of those scattered table lamps, the closed curtains leaving the main room in a hazy, dim darkness that Riley’s oversensitive eyes appreciate. Standing at the stove is Ben, broad shoulders clad in a knit sweater that looks so absurdly soft that Riley kind of wants to rub his face against it like a cat.

Trying to tame his hair and blinking the fuzziness of sleep from his eyes, he peers around Ben’s shoulder to see him pouring batter into a greased pan. “Did you make pancakes?” he asks, his voice quiet and croaky from sleep. Sure enough, when Ben shifts a little to look over his shoulder, Riley sees a plate stacked with slightly-misshapen pancakes, a little overcooked around the edges. “I love pancakes.”

Ben smoothly hands him the stack of pancakes. “Don’t expect too much; they’re from a box.”

“I live in a dorm room.” Riley spears a few pancakes and slides them to one of the plates already set up at the breakfast bar. He smears them with butter and drowns them in syrup, because Ben was conscientious enough to set both out along with cutlery. “This is the height of luxury.”

Ben joins him at the breakfast bar not long after. They don’t really talk while they’re eating, which is just fine for Riley; he’s not sure, exactly, how to talk to someone after hooking up with them. Usually he just slips out the night of or the morning after, maybe with a quick, “that was fun, okay, bye,” if the person’s awake.

A few minutes into eating, there’s a knock on the door. Ben glances up from his pancakes, looking thoroughly confused.

“Excuse me,” he says, before slipping off his stool and heading for the door.

Riley makes extra sure his bare legs are tucked behind the counter and out of sight before Ben answers. He’s extremely grateful for his own foresight when Ben opens the door to an older man and says, “Dad?”

God, this is just Riley’s luck. 

Red-faced, he dives back into his pancakes with reckless abandon. Time to employ the ostrich strategy again. If he doesn’t pay attention to Ben’s dad, Ben’s dad won’t pay attention to him. They can all get through this without Riley actually bursting out of his skin from sheer embarrassment.

“Now’s really not a good time,” Ben’s saying.

“I came all the way over,” Ben’s dad replies. “Are you really going to make your father stand out on your doorstep?”

“I don’t think it counts as a doorstep when it’s inside an insulated building,” Ben says, but he swings the door open all the way and leaves it open for his dad to step inside, returning to the breakfast bar. There’s defeat written all over the slump of his shoulders and the exasperated furrow of his brow. 

From the corner of his eye, Riley sees Ben’s dad peering around him. He actually feels it when he catches a glimpse of Riley; the tension in the room magnifies tenfold, thick enough that Riley almost chokes on it.

“So this is your reason for leaving me out in the cold?” Ben’s dad pins Riley with a stare that’s uncannily almost as intense as Ben’s. “Is he legal?”

Ben pinches the bridge of his nose, grimacing. “Dad—”

“I’m twenty-two,” Riley snaps, maybe a little too defensively. It’s not his fault; he grows out his facial hair specifically to combat his babyface. He knows he doesn’t look younger than twenty, at least. Suggesting anything else is just insulting.

That doesn’t seem to placate Ben’s dad. The man’s eyes widen, gaze landing back on Ben—who’s slumped with his elbows on the breakfast bar, hands gripping his hair. “Jesus, Ben, he’s almost fifteen years younger than you.”

“Well, maybe I’m having an early mid-life crisis.” With a heavy sigh, Ben lifts his head. “Why are you here, Dad?”

Ben’s dad produces a bundled…something from inside his jacket. “You said you were going to come and pick this up yesterday,” he says disapprovingly, still glancing at Riley every second word. “You made it seem like such a big deal, and I was waiting for you, but you never showed up.” He places the lumpy, cloth-bound thing on Ben’s kitchen counter then crosses his arms with a scowl that’s very reminiscent of Ben’s. “I had errands to run in this corner of town, and I figured, what the hell, he’ll probably still want it…”

Ben perks up. “You brought the sextant?”

“Oh, look, now he’s happy to see me,” Ben’s dad grumbles.

Ben runs his hands reverently over the bundle of cloth. Riley stares, and tries really hard not to think about how those hands felt sweeping up his skin, or curled around his cock. He mostly succeeds by virtue of shoving a forkful of pancakes in his mouth and stabbing himself in the gums with his fork.

“Did you find its twin?” Ben asks in a hush, fingers still splayed delicately on the bundled up sextant.

Ben’s dad rubs the back of his neck. “About that. I…think your mother might have taken the other one.”

“You could have just called to ask her, Dad.”

“Like she would’ve answered. And anyway, you’re the one who wants it! You can ask her yourself.”

Riley stabs his pancakes a little too vigorously, trying to drown out this obviously very personal, very well-tread argument between his hookup and his hookup’s father. 

He’s not very successful.

Okay. He’s had a good run here, despite himself, but it’s time to exeunt. No box-mix pancakes and good dick are worth this absurd level of awkwardness. “I should get going,” he says, trying to slide off his seat.

‘Trying’ being the operative word, because Ben’s trapping him against the counter and slipping the oldest, chunkiest cell phone Riley’s ever seen into his hands. “Put in your number,” he says, like it’s a given that Riley wants to see him again. Not that he’s wrong. Riley just didn’t expect this to be anything more than a one-off; none of his other sexual experiences have been any different.

He makes himself a contact in Ben’s phone (he thinks about snapping a picture, looks at Ben’s dad watching them with severe and long-suffering disapproval, and decides against it) then hands it back. And then, because he does actually have class this afternoon, he hops off the barstool and ignores that his gangly, bare legs are on display for Ben’s dad now. 

Ben’s either shameless or oblivious, because he grabs Riley gently by the chin and drops a soft, short kiss on his mouth. “I’ll call you a cab.”

Riley almost trips over himself in his haste to flee to Ben’s bedroom.

Even though Ben’s the one who asked for his number, Riley isn’t actually expecting to hear from him. He settles back into his routine; classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, meetings with his advisor on Wednesdays, almost eight hours a day of research and caffeine-fuelled coding and taking motherboards apart just to put them back together again. Tom doesn’t even comment when Riley comes back to their dorm room after leaving Ben’s apartment, even though he’s got a sizeable hickey under his jaw, which shows just how much attention Tom actually pays him outside of opportunities to get drunk or have homework help.

Then Ben invites him over. Ostensibly, it’s for after-dinner drinks, but Ben quashes any uncertainty when he texts, This is an invitation for sex. In case that wasn’t clear.

So Riley goes, and ends up with bruises around his wrists where Ben kept them pinned above his head the whole time. And the next time Ben texts him in the middle of the night, he takes him up on the offer of cab fare and slinks out of his dorm room without waking Tom. 

By the twelfth time it happens, Riley has to admit it: he's sleeping with Benjamin Franklin Gates (a name that he still doesn't entirely believe is real). This has gone so far beyond a really satisfying hookup spurred on by accidental drink spilling and a terrible birthday.

Which. Whatever. He's regularly sleeping with a hot, intelligent guy fourteen years his senior. He's winning bi college student olympics.

What surprises him is that outside of sleeping together, he's pretty sure he and Ben are friends.

Like, here he is, wrist-deep in the guts of an elevator panel while Ben tells him about an old lost ship called the Charlotte.

There’s an entire tale associated with it; it starts with god-kings and pharaohs and emperors, warring over the greatest collection of treasure the world has ever seen. It crawls through centuries of secret societies guarding this secret cache of spoils, up until a dismal, rainy night where an ancestor of Ben’s was given the final clue to the treasure’s resting place:

“‘The secret lies with Charlotte’,” Ben says gravely, his voice taking on that deep, gentle quality he sometimes gets when he’s talking about history. It always sends a shivery little thrill down Riley’s spine, makes him feel the magnitude of history cradling the weight of the entire modern world. He’s never cared much about history, but when Ben talks about it, he’s enraptured. “In 1784, a merchant ship was built and named for the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland at the time, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The Charlotte.

“On her final voyage, her captain—a Freemason, by all historical accounts—was said to be transporting precious cargo; it was so precious that he sailed with a minimal crew composed only of men he trusted.” Ben’s voice drops to nearly a whisper; Riley’s hands still amongst wires, attention transfixed. “His devotion to secrecy was Charlotte’s downfall. She set sail from Quebec to Liverpool and disappeared in vicious storms off the Newfoundland coast, never to be seen again.”

Riley swallows. He falls back to sit on his heels, hands dropping to his lap. “And all that treasure…it’s on-board the Charlotte?”

“Nobody knows,” Ben says softly. “But whatever the captain was protecting on that final voyage, he risked his life and the lives of his crew for it. Some say he had another agenda; that he diverted course after departing, whether to protect what was on-board from those who would use it for evil, or to bury the secret that would lead to the treasure once and for all.”

Riley feels like he’s sinking. “And…? Did he?”

“Charlotte’s wreck has never been found, despite extensive fishing effort in the region she was purported to have sunk,” Ben says lowly, the words washing over Riley like physical touch. His eyes meet Riley’s with an intensity that makes his gut lurch. “So you tell me, Riley: did Charlotte’s captain have a secret so precious, he would have died for it?”

“I mean,” Riley says, then loses his ability to say anything else. 

For a moment he forgets where he is; knelt in an elevator at two in the morning, looking up at Ben where he’s leaning against the doorway to keep it from sliding closed. He just stares at Ben, feeling nerves flutter to life in his chest for only seconds by they’re immediately extinguished by the warm, heavy blanket of Ben’s gaze on his. The world around them is so quiet it feels like they’re underwater.

Ben shifts his weight, leaning forward. “Do you think I’m crazy with all this, or what?”

Riley swallows again, then shakes his head. “I believe you,” he says, too sincerely.

Or maybe not too sincerely, when Ben stares at him with something approaching wonder. A second later he smiles broadly and reaches forward to ruffle his hand through Riley’s hair. “Thank you, Riley,” he says, quiet but so intent that Riley feels it in his heartbeat. “That really means something to me.”

Riley nods. Anything else would feel too—too much.

Eventually, Riley scrapes together enough energy to drag himself out of the floaty headspace he’s dropped into and get back to the elevator repair. Like he thought, it’s not an especially difficult fix; it’d actually be a lot easier if whoever wired this elevator had done it with any competency beyond just knowing that A goes into B goes into C. Or if they didn’t love dangerously confusing redundancy.

He fixes it—and cleans up the wiring work to boot—and screws the panel back into place. Ben leans over him to test the buttons, making a thoughtful noise when they light up immediately without needing to be held two seconds or double-tapped. The elevator lurches into movement, swinging Riley’s stomach up into his throat as he kneels there, Ben standing next to him with a hand on his shoulder seemingly absentmindedly.

After a few tries go perfectly, Ben finally deigns to help him to his feet. Not that Riley couldn’t have gotten up on his own before then. He just…didn’t.

He just didn’t.

“You’re really good with this stuff,” Ben says thoughtfully, as the elevator inches back up to his floor.

“Well, yeah. I’m doing a whole grad degree in it, so I probably should be good.” Shrugging, Riley leans back against the handrail. “Hardware, software—if it runs on electricity, I can probably figure out a way to take it apart and put it back together even better.”

Ben gets a glint in his eye that Riley’s starting learning to be nervous about. “How good?” he asks, challenge thrumming in his tone.

Which is how Riley ends up back on campus at three in the morning, sneaking through one of the libraries under cover of darkness with Ben prowling silently behind him.

There are archives on Riley’s campus, according to Ben, that might contain the journal of someone who might have details about the Charlotte’s supposed change of course. Naturally, these are protected archives that are kept behind keypad locks, and only those with reason to see them are allowed access.

Ben told him all his, then asked if he could (or would) get through those locks. Riley, an idiot who doesn’t even have the excuse of being dick-drunk, told him yes.

Which wasn’t a lie. He just didn’t expect Ben to take him up on it immediately.

The building is dreadfully quiet, only lit by dim, sporadically-placed yellow lights. They’re between security guard patrols for the next half hour—it was actually surprisingly easy to hack into the school’s employee network and find schedules, which means that Riley has a promising life of petty crime if computer science doesn’t work out—so there’s nobody around but the two of them, creeping down a narrow basement corridor to the archive room at the end.

When they reach it, Riley’s half-relieved to see that it’s the exact same kind of lock as the one to his computer lab. He probably could’ve hacked it anyway, but this way he (hopefully) won’t make a fool of himself. With one last glance down the empty hallway behind them, he crouches in front of the lock.

“I’m pretty sure you can just ask to see this stuff,” Riley hisses, heart pounding in his throat and the tips of his fingertips. He fumbles with his thumb drive, sweaty fingers clinging too tightly to the little metal stick that’s about to become accessory for an expellable offence. “Please tell me you know that.”

“I know.” Ben raises his brows; his silent command to ‘get to it’. “They said no. I’m not…well-respected in these circles.”

Riley tucks the thumb drive into his back pocket, pulling out a set of screwdrivers to start cracking open the electronic lock to the archives. It’s so much more nervewracking than cracking the e-lock on the computer lab. For one, Riley at least has plausible reason to be in there. For two, Ben’s here.

“So you think breaking and entering will improve that reputation.”

“Riley, look at me.” So help him, Riley does. Ben stares down at him, and it’s a lot like in the elevator, Riley crouched on his knees and Ben standing over him. “Do you think I care about my reputation?”

Riley sighs, rolling his eyes back to the e-lock’s front casing. “I know, I know.”

He hasn’t really known Ben that long, all things considered. But he has noticed Ben generally has a chronic disregard for what people think of him, even if that gets him into trouble. It’s a funny counterpart to Riley, who’s sometimes so deliberately aware of how other people see him, even though half the time he has no earthly idea.

He’s barely even paying attention to what his hands are doing; he doesn’t realize he’s unlocked the door until the light beeps green and Ben’s hand lands on his shoulder. 

“Great, Riley,” he says sincerely, and it washes over Riley like something golden.

He preens a little, chest puffing up. “Yeah, I am pretty great.”

“You’re fantastic,” Ben says, which is a punch right to the chest, then steps through the door like he didn’t just turn Riley into a live wire with two words.

After a few seconds getting himself under control, Riley scrambles up to follow Ben into the archive. It’s an old, unlit room, filled with intimidatingly heavy-duty rows of mobile shelving. Ben seems to know exactly where he’s going; he flicks on a lightswitch that makes rows of fluorescents buzz to flickering life, quietly counting each row as he passes until he finally comes to what he’s looking for. He gestures Riley over, and together they roll each row over until the right one’s left exposed.

“How good do you think our chances are that nobody heard that?” Riley asks, glancing at the closed door.

“Maybe my good luck will cancel out your bad luck.”

Riley wrinkles his nose. “Do you have good luck?”

“On the night my request to see these archives was rejected, I went out for a drink and happened to bring home someone who was not only able, but willing to get me inside regardless.” Ben tosses him an impish little grin over his shoulder. “So you tell me.”

Defeated, Riley crosses his arms and leans against the shelf next to him—

“Don’t touch that.”

—Then promptly almost trips over himself trying to straighten up. “Sorry.”

This is really not Riley’s area of expertise—he just kinda keeps himself awkwardly out of the way while Ben peers up and down the aisle. It’s not clear what, exactly, Ben’s looking for. All Riley sees is a bunch of neatly labelled cardboard boxes.

When Ben does seem to find something, it’s just one cardboard box of many. He pulls it off the shelf like it contains the answer to all the world’s secrets, though; his eyes wide with disbelief, his hands cradling it like something precious.

“Hold this,” Ben says, carefully pushing the box at Riley’s chest, like he’s expecting Riley to just snap to attention and follow orders.

Riley rolls his eyes, but clutches the box cautiously in his arms. Which probably says more about him than it does about Ben’s shitty entitled attitude. Or maybe what he should really be concerned with is the hot little thrill that runs through him when Ben goes around like he just expects Riley to accommodate him. 

Ben pulls a pair of nitrile gloves from a little plastic baggie in his pocket, pulling them on with a few sharp snaps. He removes the lid and puts it in the empty space on the shelf. Inside, there’s a little laminated card with details in tiny handwritten script that Riley can’t read upside-down, and a small journal bound in engraved leather and filled with rough-edged, weathered yellow paper. A small sense of wonder swells at the back of Riley’s head, staring down at that journal. It’s weird to think that he’s indirectly holding something that someone almost two hundred years ago held, and owned, and used.

With the tips of his fingers, Ben plucks up the laminated card. His eyes widen as he scans it.

“You look surprised,” Riley says, nerves making him babbly. “Is that good or bad? If it’s bad, you don’t have to answer that.”

“Good,” Ben says. He tucks the card back into the box and stares at the journal like it’s his salvation.

Riley starts to shift back and forth, then forces himself to keep still. “Well? Don’t keep me in suspense.”

Slowly, carefully, Ben lifts the journal from the box. From this angle Riley can see an inkblot staining the edges of the paper, such a human little detail. “This journal was kept by someone who not only worked under the same shipping company as Charlotte,” Ben says reverently, his voice a hush that sends shivers over Riley’s shoulders, “but someone who sailed alongside her. March 11th, 1806, after the British invasion of the Cape of Good Hope, two ships depart as cartel ships carrying prisoners. Charlotte and Anacreon.”

Quiet descends over the archive room again, as Ben delicately turns each page. His intense focus is enough to keep Riley from tapping his feet or bouncing from one leg to the other, like he wants to; he can’t disturb this stillness, this narrowed stretch of time.

They still have ten minutes before someone comes by. Assuming they stick to the schedule.

Shit. That’d be just Riley’s luck if he hacked into the school’s private network just to get a schedule nobody keeps to.

“Hush,” Ben mutters. 

“I didn’t say anything!”

“I can hear you panicking; it’s very distracting.”

“One of us should be wary that we’re trespassing on private property,” Riley grumbles, but then he presses his lips together and tries not to think about anything at all. It’s entirely unsuccessful. Ben only gives him an exasperated look, though, and no more annoyed comments. That’s good enough.

Riley grips the box tighter and tries to curb the impulse to pick apart the seams with his fingernails.

The silence breaks with one of Ben’s contemplative hums. “That’s strange.”

Riley glances at the door, then back at Ben. He feels frazzled. “What? Find something?”

“Not exactly…” Ben’s brow furrows. “There are about ten pages missing.” He runs a gloved fingertip down the centre of the book, over a ruffle of torn paper edges, then flips through the pages on either side of the tear with a growing frown. “…Right around the time when Charlotte departed for Liverpool.”

“Spooky,” Riley says, ignoring the very real shiver creeping up his spine.

“Suspicious,” Ben corrects.

Here, in the dim, liminal atmosphere of the archives, the thought fills Riley with a creeping anxiety. It balloons from his chest, forcing the air from his lungs in a sharp, shaky huff. “So…now what?”

“Now, we find the next piece of the puzzle.”

We. Riley’s cheeks go warm.

Ben meticulously photographs each page of the journal, the cluster of torn page edges, the front and back cover—and the little descriptive card, seemingly for good measure. Then he replaces everything exactly how he found it, puts the lid back on, and slides the box into its empty space on the shelf. 

Together, they roll all the shelves back into the configuration they found them in. Riley fiddles with the e-lock to make sure it doesn’t look like it’s been tampered with, then gets up and offers Ben a half-shocked little grin as they start heading back down the dimly lit hallway. He’s buzzing with adrenaline; they might actually get away with this.

That’s when Riley hears footsteps.

“Shit—!”

He surges toward the nearest door, grabs Ben by his jacket, and sends them both stumbling inside a dark, narrow bathroom that’s only barely lit by slivers of light streaming in through one tiny window right along the ceiling. He pulls Ben away from the door, backing himself up into a tiny nook next to the first stall. There’s an air dryer digging uncomfortably into his spine but Riley barely feels it—he’s too busy trying not to pass out from that little surge of panic.

Muffled footsteps approach the bathroom door. Riley sucks in a mouthful of air and holds it, heart pounding against his ribs as the footsteps get closer, stop, then gradually fade away as whoever it is heads back the way they came.

The flare of panic slowly settles into a buzzy, twitchy feeling rushing through Riley’s whole body. He heaves in a hard breath, letting his head fall forward onto Ben’s shoulder.

One of Ben’s hands winds around the nape of his neck and squeezes, and Riley lets himself go boneless. “You don’t really handle stress well, huh.”

“Shut up, Ben,” Riley says, adrenaline shuddering through him. “If I get expelled, I’m blaming you.” 

Chapter Text

Riley doesn’t get expelled.

It’s…so much more mundane than that.

His academic advisor calls him in for a meeting, where she sits him down and tells him that the organization in charge of his scholarship is no longer in the financial position to provide the ongoing funding that was promised. She lays out his options—student loans, bursaries, other scholarships—and Riley realizes with a creeping finality that approximately none of them are viable. His credit score’s been tanked since he was eighteen and struggling to keep himself afloat, his undergrad grades were dashed by burnout and, frankly, were barely enough to get him into his MSc program, let alone an academic scholarship…and any bursaries he might get just wouldn’t be enough. 

His advisor keeps talking, and talking, and Riley’s mind slowly turns to white noise. Numbness spreads from the sunken pit in his chest. He croaks out a barely-audible, “thank you,” and leaves her office with pamphlets that get folded and shoved into his back pocket before the door’s even swung shut behind him.

The admin office is quiet. Riley hears every keyboard click and scratching pen like nails scraping the inside of his skull.

He can’t go back to his dorm room. He can’t go to the computer lab. 

He just wants to burrow into some cold, dark place and disappear, for a little while. Just for a little while. Just until the world stops crumbling around him, which shouldn’t take too long, right?

When he starts walking, he doesn’t have a destination in mind.

An hour later, ears burning from the cold and feet aching, he starts to recognize where he’s gone. He’s seen a lot of this street, and Ben’s apartment building, in the past handful of months. Right now it’s like he’s looking at it all through someone else’s eyes. Like, yeah, he knows that crack in the sidewalk, and he knows that ratty half-torn concert poster that’s been taped to the lamppost outside the apartment for weeks now. He’s just not really seeing any of it.

Riley stops, standing there with his hands in his pocket. Wind whips through his thin jacket. He’s shivering, but he can’t feel it.

And then—overwhelm burns away the numbness. It crashes through him, staticky, crushing his chest and shaking in his hands.

God, not here. Not now, not yet.

Get somewhere safe, Riley thinks, then repeats on an infinite loop. Get somewhere safe get somewhere safe getsomewheresafe—

He steps into the vestibule. He buzzes for Ben’s apartment—if Ben isn’t home, fuck, what is he gonna do—and waits with his hands curled protectively near his chest, his shoulders hunched over and his mouth open as he just tries to breathe. When Ben answers Riley barely hears him, and barely knows what he says in response, only that it’s enough to get Ben to unlock the door for him.

He stumbles into the elevator, accidentally pressing the buttons for two floors above Ben’s before he gets the right one. The ride up takes longer than it usually does, Riley’s pretty sure.

When he gets to Ben’s door, Ben’s right there in the doorway, staring at him with some expression Riley can’t parse but that hurts in the hollow of his chest. “Riley,” he says softly, stepping back to give Riley space to step inside. His apartment is dimly lit, the way it always is. “Did something happen?”

Riley opens his mouth; nothing comes out but a staggered, raspy, “uhhh.”

The second Ben closes the door, the second the outside world gets put away—something snaps.

Riley staggers halfway through the room before he can’t convince himself to keep standing anymore. His legs don’t give out, really, he just. Lets himself drop. He lands hard on his knees, curls over himself, grinding his forehead into the hardwood floor. A sick feeling crawls from his gut, up his throat, and it comes out in a wet sob and the hot press of tears behind his eyes.

It’s too much. It’s all way too much.

The silence of Ben’s apartment hurts. Riley wraps both arms around his head, trying to cut that silence out. 

“Riley.”

Riley’s mouth drops open—he can’t get himself to talk. He can’t look up at Ben, because he can’t move from the curled-up position he’s in at all. It’s torture, because it feels like if he doesn’t move he’ll burst out of his skin, but his body’s completely locked. Moving would make him vulnerable. 

“Riley, I need to know what to do here.”

Riley winds his hands through his own hair and grips tight enough to hurt. That—that helps, almost, so he holds tighter and rolls his head back and forth to feel the dull ache across his scalp. He wants to answer Ben—not that he knows what he’d say, because he doesn’t know what the hell Ben’s supposed to do either—but it’s like his voice is caught in a knot in his throat, and he can’t figure out how to unravel it. Not without hurting himself.

Distantly, muffled by his own arms and the dull scream roaring through his head, he hears movement. He feels the floor shift as Ben steps past him, and then a bigger shift when Ben settles in front of him.

“Riley,” Ben says again, and it’s like he’s throwing out Riley’s name as a lifeline. His voice is low and steady. Perfectly calm. “Can I touch you?”

This desperate noise rips past the knot in Riley’s throat. Somehow, his frozen body finds the inches to shuffle forward, his head bumping up against something he’s pretty sure is Ben’s leg.

Slowly, Ben’s hands flatten across his shoulders, warm and heavy. He slides one over, fingers splayed between Riley’s shoulder blades. The other drags up to curl around the nape of Riley’s neck, almost cradling the base of his skull. The heel of his hand bumps up against Riley’s fingers where they’re still threaded through his hair.

A shudder runs from Riley’s toes to the crown of his skull. Panting, he arches up into Ben’s touch, barely in control of his own body.

This kind of freakout has happened to him before. Hell, he used to break down like this almost weekly, those first couple years he was out of the system and struggling to keep himself out of shelters. He learned how to scream without making any noise, so he wouldn’t disturb the neighbours of his shitty, thin-walled apartments. But he didn’t know—

He had no idea how good it’d feel, having someone’s hands hold him together.

Not just someone, actually. It matters that it’s Ben.

Humiliatingly, another sob spills out before he can catch it. Riley makes a frustrated sound, all tangled in his throat, hiccupping and almost choking on his next inhale.

He loses track of time, and doesn’t surface until the nauseating cloud of too much bursting in him burns itself out. It disappears as suddenly as it happened. Riley takes a shaky breath, and when he lets it out, all the frantic energy dissolves. Then there’s nothing but exhaustion and a bunch of words still knotted in his throat. He’s still shaking, a little bit. He still doesn’t want to move, but it feels a little less impossible.

Ben’s hands, still spread across his back and curled around the nape of his neck, feel like weights dragging him underwater. He almost wants to shake them off, but he doesn’t. It’d be worse if Ben wasn’t touching him. Somehow he’s completely certain of that.

In inches, he breaks his body’s taut stillness. First it’s just fingers tapping on his skull, where he’s still got his arms wrapped around his head. Then he rocks his hips back and forth, the hardwood floor creaking softly every time his weight shifts. It takes a while—Riley’s not sure, actually, how long it takes, because his sense of time has completely tunnelled—but he manages to pull himself forward enough to drop his head into Ben’s lap, bringing his arms down to curl protectively against his chest with a sharp breath and a burst of panic.

Throughout it all, Ben keeps both hands on him; he shifts a little, moving the hand on Riley’s back to his ribs when Riley rolls halfway onto his side, but never pulls his hands away. He’s breathing slowly, not asking any questions. He’s a steady presence. It feels good, burrowing into him.

There’s this deep sense of shame lingering under it all, that he’s a grown man curled up on the floor. It almost makes Riley feel nauseous. He’s just…too tired to meet it head on.

Eventually, Riley unravels the knot in his throat. 

“They, uh.” Each word catches like fishhooks. He squeezes his eyes shut. “My scholarship lost its funding.”

Ben’s hand squeezes where it’s splayed over Riley’s ribs. “Oh, Riley.”

“Can’t get loans, either,” he whispers, knees drawing up against his chest. Maybe if he crushes himself into a tight enough ball—hell, maybe if Ben crushes him tightly enough—he’ll stop feeling so awful. “Really shitty credit.”

Ben doesn’t say anything saccharine, like that he’s sorry, or that he’s sure there will be other options, or—god forbid—that everything’ll be okay. He doesn’t say anything at all. His thumb sweeps slowly up and down the side of Riley’s throat, and he keeps quiet except for his slow, steady breathing.

“I don’t have savings. Or family to rely on.” An uncomfortable, acidic feeling starts bubbling up in his chest. He nuzzles against Ben’s thigh, barely even feeling the rough scratch of his jeans. “I. I actually don’t know. What I’m gonna do.” The sound he makes could, charitably, be called adjacent to a laugh. Uncharitably—realistically—it’s probably a lot closer to a sob.

Warm fingertips dig into the aching muscles running up the nape of Riley’s neck. 

“I have a spare bedroom,” Ben says, blunt but gentle enough that Riley doesn’t startle. “I don’t mind putting you up while you get back on your feet.”

Riley’s throat tightens up. He blinks hard, swallowing. He’s not going to start crying again. Once was way more than enough.

He has to close his eyes before he can get the words out. “You—you can’t just. Offer that.”

Ben makes an unreadable noise. “Wouldn’t you?”

Which. Is an absurd hypothetical in the first place. Riley’s never had financial security in his life, he’d never be the guy with the means to let a friend stay rent-free. Sure, he let a couple kids he knew from foster homes crash on his couch a few times, but never this.

“If one has the means, one has the responsibility,” Ben says lowly. He squeezes the nape of Riley’s neck; his thumb digs briefly into Riley’s carotid, just long enough that black stars sparkle behind his closed lids and his head goes fuzzy. “It’s just an offer, Riley. You don’t have to take it, but I…it’s an option if you want it.”

If Riley weren’t so dead-end empty, he’d laugh. 

‘Just an offer’, like it’s not the kindest thing someone’s ever done for him. Right, yeah. 

Riley already knows he’s going to say yes. He’s not under any delusions that he can afford otherwise. And he’s not one of those guys with a chip on his shoulder about not taking handouts. He just—he can’t handle the instability again. Nobody’s built to tread water as long as he’s had to. He should probably say some of this to Ben, but everything’s starting to shutter away and shut down. Anything he’d wanna say gets locked inside his shell.

Right now, he just wants to sleep. He can’t wrangle any more words together to tell Ben that, though.

He’ll just…stay here, with his head in Ben’s lap and his shoulder aching on the hardwood floor, a little while longer.

Living with Ben is surprisingly easy.

They get him set up pretty quickly; Riley didn’t have anything other than the stuff in his dorm, so it takes one trip to pack everything up in Ben’s shitty old car and bring it back. Ben’s spare bedroom is inoffensively sparse, all dark woods and neutrals, but the dresser has enough space for Riley’s clothes and there are enough outlets for him to charge both of his laptops, his cell phone, and to plug in the PlayStation he got cheap a couple years ago.

He discovers, shoulder-to-shoulder with Ben on his bed while they watch glitchy graphics on one of Riley’s laptop screens, that Ben has no interest in Resident Hill or Silent Evil, but can kick his ass pretty consistently at Pro Skater. They make out like teenagers, then grind on each other like even sloppier teenagers. That’s the first night one of them falls asleep in the other’s bed.

There’s little things about living together that they seem to fall into easily. Ben likes the lights low and the apartment quiet; Riley gets jittery if he sits in silence too long, so he’ll often spend evenings on his laptop with his headphones plugged in, feet in Ben’s lap while he reads whatever book or researches whatever mystery he’s decided to investigate that week.

Then there’s big things. Like—

Ben doesn’t kick him out when he lands himself a job. It’s a 9-to-5 data entry gig in a tiny carpeted cubicle, where Riley can at least plug in his tangled earbuds and listen to music for eight hours of repetitive work and try to ignore the water cooler chatter that unfortunately happens to be right behind him. Ben doesn’t even gently suggest that Riley start looking for a place of his own; he just says, “we can start splitting rent, now,” like it’s just that simple. Riley feels like maybe he should push back against that, just for posterity, but he really does hate apartment hunting. Also, nothing he could afford on his own would be half as nice as Ben’s place.

Their place. Maybe. It still feels like Ben's, that Riley's just another piece of that space now. 

It's not a bad thing.

Somehow, weeks turn to months, and Riley’s still living there. Honestly, it’s a pretty ideal situation. They take turns cooking (or, more often, split the cost of takeout), they divvy up household chores, and they have a lot of really great sex.

There is the increasingly alarming matter that Riley is a little bit in love with Ben. But really, that’s the only problem with this whole roommates situation they have going, so overall—a positive experience.

Lately, Ben’s been…it seems uncharitable to say obsessive, but only because it’s true. He’s on the trail of something. He’s been emailing back and forth with some rich, private collector of antiquities about the Charlotte and his search for her, and he’s gotten progressively more intense about pretty much everything for the past two weeks.

Which is why it’s not, like, surprising, when Riley comes down to the lobby of his office building when he’s leaving work for the weekend to see Ben standing near the door. “We found something,” he says when Riley gets closer, eyes gleaming.

Anticipation thrills up Riley’s spine. “Let me guess, you need my expert hacking skills again.”

“No.” Ben wraps an arm around his shoulder, steering him out into a cold drizzle. “I need your manual labour.”

“You might be the first person to ever say that to me.”

He lets Ben bundle him into the passenger seat of his ratty car, one hand brushing the small of his back. He half-listens while they’re pulling out of the lot as Ben explains something about primary sources, and journal pages, and secret Freemason networks. He wheedles Ben into pulling into a drive-through after Ben admits they’re gonna be driving for hours—it’s nearing 5:30 and Riley may have forgotten to eat lunch today—and graciously shares his milkshake and a few fries even though Ben claimed he wasn’t interested in ordering anything.

The gentle patter of rain against the car windows and the slowly darkening sky lull Riley to drowsiness. Eyes drifting shut, he reclines in his seat and mumbles his way through a pretty boring story about the broken copier when Ben asks him how his day was.

At some point, he must actually drift off.

“Hey, Riley.” Ben’s low voice pulls him out of the warm, fuzzy darkness of his nap. Fingertips touch just under his jaw. “We’re here.”

Riley’s eyes flutter open. “Where’s here?” he slurs, pawing at Ben’s wrist. 

Ben catches his hand. “You’ll see. Come on, this might take a while.”

Blearily, Riley climbs out of the car, mostly without Ben’s help. Wet, muddy gravel slips under his sneakers. He takes in their surroundings while Ben grabs something from his trunk; they’re in what could charitably be called a parking lot, surrounded by scraggly trees and a few flickering streetlamps. Beyond a tall, black-iron gate, rows of headstones stretch as far as Riley can see through the steady mist of rain.

“This is romantic,” he deadpans, as Ben hands him a flashlight.

His own flashlight in hand, Ben sets off for the gate. “We’re looking for the name Charles Stannard.”

“Okay,” Riley says, scrambling to catch up with Ben’s long legs. “Why are we looking for poor old Charles Stannard?”

Ben doesn’t respond. It’s like he didn’t even hear Riley speaking, which is entirely possible. He has a tendency to get absorbed. Instead, he points down a row of tombstones and says, “you take the east side, and I’ll take the west, and we’ll shout if we find anything.”

“You want me to wander through a graveyard alone, in the dark?” Ben’s already walking away. “Ben?”

And…he’s officially not listening. 

“Get it together,” Riley mutters to himself, before setting off down the row and swinging his flashlight to catch the names on each tombstone. “You have more self respect than this.” Which would be a much more effective admonishment if he wasn’t still checking tombstones just because Ben told him to.

Mud and grass cling to his shoes as he walks, rain misting up his glasses every few seconds, because of course Ben had to drag him out in the rain on a day he didn’t wear his contacts. He gives up on the glasses after he tries to wipe them off and just leaves them smeared. He’ll deal with having to squint and lean closer to read what’s carved into each grave. It’s harder dealing with the growing cold. There isn’t any wind, but the persistent rain and lack of sunlight leach warmth from Riley’s body, turning him into a shivering mess not fifteen minutes into this little excursion.

Luckily, two minutes after that, his flashlight catches two words that make anticipation and stark relief flood through him: ‘Charles Stannard’, underscored by the years, ‘1784 - 1818’.

“Ben!” he calls, hands cupped around his mouth. “Found it!”

A few minutes of calling out directions later, and Ben shows up. His hair’s plastered to his forehead from the rain, eyes wide and dark in the low light of the tall lamps sparsely decorating the cemetery and their lowered flashlights. He gives Riley a pleased look that runs through Riley like a current before dropping to a crouch in front of Charles Stannard’s grave, flashlight sweeping over every inch of well-carved stone.

“Charles Stannard,” Ben says quietly, reverently. “Found you.”

“Excuse you,” Riley says, pretending to be offended.

Ben looks over his shoulder just to roll his eyes, which fills Riley with the same glowing pride he always feels when he catches Ben’s attention. Pathetic, yes. At least he’s self-aware.

Ben’s fingertips sweep over the years spanning Charles Stannard’s life. He brushes his thumb over the small, worn symbol just beneath, the Square-and-Compass Riley recognizes by now as belonging to the Freemasons. Below that is another symbol Riley doesn’t know, a five-pointed star with strange wiggly lines emerging from behind it like rays of sunlight. It seems significant enough to Ben, who traces its edges like he’s touching precious metal and not rough, eroded stone.

Ben springs to his feet. Riley almost shouts, stumbling back a couple feet while his heart goes into overdrive.

“Stay here,” Ben says, then disappears into the rain and darkness at a half-jog. 

Leaving Riley alone, once again, in a rainy graveyard in the dark.

“Sure,” he calls at Ben’s retreating back, trying and failing not to sound too whiny. “I’ll just be here, knowing nothing, waiting for the great Benjamin Gates to explain why he dragged me out here after work!” He’s reasonably sure Ben’ll hear at least half of his complaining. He’s just not sure Ben will listen to any of it. 

When his own voice fades away into the dark, Riley’s left with nothing but the quiet sound of rain and his own breathing. Dread creeps slowly up his spine. He keeps his flashlight fixed on the gravestone; if anything that goes bump in the night shows up, Riley’s not gonna go out looking his horrifying, supernatural death in the face. Instead, he’ll just stand here shivering and clutching his thin coat tighter around his shoulders, straining to hear the sound of Ben’s footsteps.

At some point, he really will learn enough self-respect to put his foot down and tell Ben ‘no’.

He will.

And he’ll ignore the little voice in his head reminding him that maybe, sometimes, he likes it when Ben just expects him to do as he’s told.

A few minutes pass. Rain soaks through Riley’s jacket and his jeans. He dances back and forth from foot to foot, trying to generate a little heat, hands tucked into his armpits so his fingers don’t go numb.

Then Ben comes back with shovels.

“Nope.” Riley backs up two steps, shaking his head. “No, I am not digging up a grave with you. I know I’ve played with the fringes of legality for you, but we are not gonna be graverobbers, Ben, what the hell is wrong with you?” Then, because Ben’s just staring at him with that familiar unimpressed look and one raised eyebrow, Riley throws his hands up in the air. “No! You cannot intend to dig up a grave! Not only is that illegal, it’s, like, morally abhorrent!”

Ben raises his other eyebrow to join the first. “Are you done?”

“Not even close! Give me those!” He darts forward, intending to grab the shovels—and fails miserably when Ben moves them out of his reach with a stern look, like Riley’s an unruly child. Kinda hot, mostly really annoying. Especially considering the circumstances. “I’m not letting you dig up some poor old guy’s bones. Who’s gonna pay your half of the rent if you go to jail, huh?”

He makes another grab for the shovels. Ben pulls them away and pushes Riley back with a jab of his flashlight to Riley’s chest. With a grunt, Riley stumbles back.

“Will you let me speak now, or do you want to keep yelling at me?” The edge to Ben’s voice cuts right through the words bubbling up Riley’s throat. He sounds pissed. Not that pissed—Riley’s never heard him sound angry, ever—but enough that it’s audible in his voice and visible in the sharpness of his gaze. Swallowing, Riley steps back with his hands raised in temporary surrender, trying to ignore the spark of arousal between his thighs. Ben sighs. “Thank you.”

He drops the shovels across Charles Stannard’s grave with a clatter, then swings his flashlight to the weird star symbol.

“That,” he says pointedly, eyes narrowed at Riley, “is the Blazing Star. The Star is a Masonic symbol of the light cast by the divine, guiding us all on our journeys. Now, any guesses as to what that means?”

Heat colours Riley’s cheeks, despite the chill in the air. Condescension drips off Ben’s voice. He always speaks like he knows everything, but not usually like he knows better than Riley.

“You’re about to tell me,” Riley mutters childishly. “That’s my guess.”

“The Freemasons carved this symbol to represent pathways of knowledge and understanding. Ordinarily, that could mean that Charles Stannard was a particularly renowned scholar—but then we have to assume that Charles Stannard actually existed.” Ben gives Riley a look. It’s much harsher than the one he’s used to. Honestly, it’s a lot more in line with those professor-student fantasies Riley has totally grown out of in the months he’s known Ben, and he feels the back of his neck grow hot under that stare. “Does it come as a surprise to learn that he didn’t?”

Riley crosses his arms. “Well, it doesn’t now.”

Ben stoops down to scoop up the shovels. “Treat this as a lesson in letting me explain before you start freaking out.” He hands Riley one of the shovels, positions his own in the grass, and drives it down with a heavy stomp of his boot.

Riley glares at him for two seconds longer. Then he follows suit.

It occurs to him, two feet into the mud, that Ben might be wrong. They might be digging up some poor soul’s grave, and Riley acquiesced without further argument when Ben told him, in simple terms, that it was fine. Part of Riley feels hotly embarrassed at just how easily he buckled. The rest…well, the rest has just kind of accepted it. When it comes to Ben, he’s all-in.

By the time Ben’s shovel crashes into something hard with a noise that rings through Riley’s teeth, Riley’s soaked through with sweat and rain. The steady drizzle has turned into a steady rain, and the distant lightning strikes that light the cloudy horizon in flashes of white and blue seem like an omen of much worse to come. When Ben strikes wood they both freeze, Riley’s hands almost slipping on the handle of his shovel. He looks up at Ben, then down at their filthy shoes and the splinter of wood sticking up through thick black mud. His heart does about four kickflips up into his throat.

Immediately—almost frantically, honestly—Ben starts shovelling dirt aside to reveal more wood. After a few seconds frozen, Riley joins him. 

He feels like he’s on a precipice, seconds away from falling. He’s having trouble breathing. Granted, that could be because aside from sex, this is the most exercize he’s had in months.

Eventually, they clear off a square foot of mud, revealing rotting wooden boards stamped with remnants of an ink symbol that’s long since dissolved. Ben tosses his shovel on the grass a few feet away and crouches, already grabbing the broken edge of one of those boards and yanking until it snaps.

Riley crouches too, flashlight angled at Ben’s hands. He watches, breath stuck somewhere in his chest and words trapped behind his teeth, as Ben breaks open the box.

Something metallic glints inside the darkness.

Anticipation shivers across Riley’s shoulders. “What is that?”

“Hush,” Ben says. His arm brushes Riley’s with a frisson of lightning as he bends down further, reaching into the black. When his hand emerges, it’s clutching something wrapped in sturdy, half-rotted cloth. The slick shine of metal peeks through every frayed and rotted-away hole in the cloth.

Riley curls a hand around Ben’s wrist; he can’t really help it. It’s instinctive.

When Ben carefully peels back the mud-smeared, ratty cloth, he reveals an intricately crafted box made of dark wood and tarnished metal. It’s a perfect cube, with strange symbols carved into its sides and what look like strange knobs, levers, and buttons scattered over every part. No two surfaces are the same. Ben turns it over and over, hands curled around it like it’s something precious. Riley, still clutching Ben’s wrist, watches with a terrifying feeling of wonder bursting from the seams of his chest.

“It’s beautiful,” Riley whispers.

“It’s a Spohr box. There aren’t meant to be any still in existence left functional and unsolved.” Ben sounds breathless. His broad fingers sweep over one of the box’s intricately carved reliefs. “I never thought I would set my eyes on one, let alone…”

Emotion prickles the corners of Riley’s eyes. He gnaws on his lower lip, leaning a little heavier into Ben’s side. “Tell me this isn’t some kind of Hellraiser situation.”

Ben huffs a laugh. “It’s an early nineteenth century puzzle box crafted by Freemasons for hiding precious secrets. Each one is unique, and each one is only solvable with knowledge and understanding of one of Louis Spohr’s works.” His fingertips run over one edge of the box. “Each box portrays its own key. If you can deduce the piece around which it was crafted, you have the key to solve every puzzle and unlock the box.”

A little breathless, Riley bumps his chin against Ben’s shoulder. “How is this your life? Mysteries and secret codes and puzzle boxes.”

“Don’t count yourself out,” Ben says quietly. “This is your life, too.”

Riley’s entire body goes warm at that.

Carefully, Ben rewraps the box in its tattered cloth, then tucks it into the pocket of his coat. He climbs out of the makeshift grave and offers both hands to haul Riley up after him; they stumble a little, Ben’s hands landing warm and heavy on Riley’s waist to keep him steady, and Riley soaks in the warmth and the touch for the long seconds before Ben pulls away.

Ben scoops up their shovels again, hands one to Riley, and they start the arduous work of filling in the hole.

When they’re packing down the dirt with the flats of their shovels, thunder rumbles so loud Riley feels it echoing in his skull. Then, with a flash of lightning, the sky cracks open. A downpour surges over them. The rain’s thick enough Riley can barely see through it, squinting at Ben’s shocked face, barely caught by the edge of his flashlight’s beam. Riley’s quiet, “oh, shit,” drowns in the overwhelming sound of rainfall.

Sprinting back to the car’s almost a disaster—Riley nearly slips in mud, and Ben does slip and stumble down to one knee on the wet grass, dropping his shovel and clutching protectively at his pocket with a curse—but they skid to a stop in the gravel parking lot in record time. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Riley chants, while Ben fumbles to unlock the door. Then Ben yanks the backseat door open and practically shoves Riley inside. Riley lands awkwardly with one elbow and one knee on the seat, wet clothes sliding along the leather enough that he bumps his head against the far door. The car’s rocking when Ben climbs in and yanks the door shut almost sends Riley sprawling to the floor.

“Scoot, please,” Ben says, grabbing Riley’s thigh and pushing him out of the way so he can reach up front and turn the key. The engine rumbles to life around them; a few seconds later, the heat kicks in.

Heaving a sigh, Ben collapses back against the seat. Riley fumbles clumsily to get himself in a slightly more dignified position than being sprawled across the backseat with his face mashed into the leather. It doesn’t help that Ben’s watching with distinct amusement while Riley gets himself mostly sitting up and with only one leg twisted up underneath himself.

“Glad you’re enjoying the show,” he mutters. 

Sheets of rain slam crash against the car’s windows like rough waves. A near-constant rumble of thunder rattles around in Riley’s skull, lightning lighting up the darkness like a strobe light. The wind’s suddenly picked up, whistling around the car, whipping the spindly trees into a frenzy. It’s like they’re trapped inside a horror movie. Riley sneaks a glance at Ben’s pocket, nerves fluttering in his stomach. Maybe it is a Hellraiser situation.

Slowly, the heat flooding the car warms Riley up enough that he’s not shivering. He struggles out of his soaked jacket, dropping it in a wet heap on the floor; his t-shirt underneath isn’t much better, but it’s not weighing as heavily—or as coldly, fuck—as the jacket.

Ben raises his eyebrows, staring at Riley with an intensity that makes him shiver all over again.

That’s when Riley realizes his t-shirt is white, and thin, and really not leaving much to the imagination. He crosses his arms over his chest before he remembers it’s nothing Ben hasn’t seen before, and he’s acting like a blushing virgin for no reason. 

“So, are we leaving anytime soon, or…”

“I’m not driving in this storm,” Ben says bluntly. “If you want to give it a try, be my guest.”

Riley rolls his eyes. “Oh, yeah, I can’t think of anything more fun than dealing with your backseat driving while I try to get us through a storm.” Frustrated, he kicks off his mud-soaked sneakers, curling up on the seat with his feet tucked under his ass. “Y’know, this probably could have waited for a night that wasn’t forecasted to be the biggest rainstorm of the season.” 

Ben opens his mouth. Riley already knows exactly what he’s about to say.

“I know,” he stresses. “This isn’t actually the biggest storm of the season. I was employing something called hyperbole to make a point. I was being facetious.”

He’s also being a brat. But he’s soggy, he’s exhausted, his stomach’s starting to cramp from hunger, and the backseat of Ben’s car is way too small for two grown men.

Ben stares at him. “One day,” he says slowly, “and I truly believe this, you will learn to appreciate the act of shutting up.”

It’d be way too easy to say, ‘make me,’ in response. Which is why Riley only thinks it really, really loud.

Historically, he doesn’t have a very good track record of keeping his emotions off his face. Ben must be able to read what he’s thinking from his expression, somehow, because he shakes his head and manages to look exasperated, annoyed, and intrigued at the same time. Then he hooks two fingers in the collar of Riley’s shirt and hauls him forward. Riley yelps, fumbling for balance, grappling at Ben’s wet jacket and wet jeans to keep himself from faceplanting in Ben’s lap. 

“Smooth,” Ben says, sounding like he’s trying not to laugh.

“Yeah, well, some warning would—”

Ben kisses him. He bites Riley’s mouth open and shoves his tongue down Riley’s throat, and all Riley can do is grab at Ben’s thigh and stifle desperate noises into the kiss. 

The hand hooked in Riley’s collar drags up, spanning the width of Riley’s throat as it nestles just under his jaw. Ben’s fingers rest conspicuously over his carotid, sending a dangerous thrill through Riley’s blood. He shifts his weight, arching up into the hot press of Ben’s mouth, knees slipping on the seat as he scoots closer. 

Ben tightens the hand around Riley’s throat—black sparks across his vision, head fogging up with an embarrassing flush of heat—and pushes him back just far enough to bump their foreheads together. He drags his thumb over Riley’s chin and across his lower lip, focus narrowed to that singular point. 

Then his other hand wraps firmly around the nape of Riley’s neck and pushes him down. Riley goes, maybe a little too easily. He shifts to get his knees under him a little more solidly, one cold-numbed hand already fumbling at Ben’s jeans. It takes a bit of effort, but he eventually manages to peel open Ben’s wet jeans and tug down his boxers, freeing Ben’s half-hard cock.

Red-faced, Riley dips down to nuzzle the base of Ben’s cock, to mouth his way up its length. He’s kinda grateful for this position. This way he can’t see Ben watching him, when he takes the head into his mouth.

Ben groans quietly, almost drowned out by the sound of rain and thunder. An answering hum climbs Riley’s throat before he can stop it.

He swallows half of Ben’s cock in one slow, smooth movement. The taste—clean skin, salt-sweat and musk—and the weight pressing on his tongue are so heady Riley nearly tumbles the rest of the way down. He inhales sharply through his nose, then closes his lips around Ben’s cock and sucks. A burst of bitter precome floods his mouth.

Riley swallows the moan trying to escape.

He really likes doing this. He likes things he’s good at, he likes pleasing Ben—but really, he likes the weight of it in his mouth, the stretch of his lips and the ache of his jaw. He’s addicted to the warmth of Ben’s hand at the base of his skull, holding him gently, but not like he’s breakable. He even likes the discomfort burning in his knees and the flex of his hips, bent into an uncomfortable shape so he can get Ben’s cock down his throat. He really shouldn’t like it as much as he does. 

Riley pushes past the burn of humiliation in his chest and sinks deeper, until the head bumps the back of his throat. His throat spasms involuntarily, lungs sucking in a panicked breath.

Ben’s hand tightens in his hair. Pain sparks across Riley’s scalp, pulling a wrecked, muffled moan from his chest.

“Hands,” Ben says, and Riley shifts his balance to his knees and offers his hands without thinking. 

Ben brings them behind his back, slots his wrists together and gathers them in one broad, sweat-slick hand. Arousal throbs between Riley’s legs. His throat catches on a shocked little gasp, lips brushing the head of Ben’s cock. He gives a little roll of his shoulders just to see if he can pull away. Ben’s grip just tightens, hard enough it hurts. His other hand lands on Riley’s head and pushes him down, lowering him back onto Ben’s cock. And Riley realizes—he doesn’t have control over this blowjob anymore, if he ever really did. It’s all at Ben’s pace. It’s all up to the soothing, domineering hand Ben’s got curled around the back of his skull, pinning him in place. 

That should probably freak him out, and it does. It also makes his cock jerk and his head go all fuzzy with arousal.

Ben pushes him down further. Riley forces his throat to relax and sinks down until his nose scrapes against Ben’s open zipper. He can’t breathe like this, can’t really do anything but flatten his tongue against the side of Ben’s cock and swallow the drool pooling in his mouth. 

When his lungs start aching, he tries to pull back.

Ben tightens his grip and keeps him there.

Riley’s pretty sure he makes a noise. He can’t really hear it over the sudden thud of his heartbeat in his ears. He swallows instinctively, half-choking when his body tries to breathe at the same time and he almost inhales his own saliva. Slowly mounting panic climbs in his chest, then screams into overdrive when his head starts going fuzzy. Fuck, he really can’t—

Ben’s hand threads through his hair and hauls him halfway up his cock. Riley coughs, gasps for air, chest heaving with it.

Drool spills over his lower lip as he hangs there, mouth open around Ben’s dick. Embarrassment and something a little more visceral burn under his skin. That panic that was creeping into his vision’s still lingering at the edges, barely fading.

He’s never been so hard in his life.

The hand pinning Riley’s wrists squeezes; it’s almost comforting. “Alright?” Ben asks softly, voice gone rough and deep. A painful shudder runs up the length of Riley’s spine.

Riley hesitates, then manages to fold his fingers into a thumbs-up.

Ben huffs a laugh. “Good, Riley. Good.”

His voice sinks into Riley like molten metal. A broken noise catches in Riley’s throat, skin burning from how much he wants.

It feels good, when Ben praises him. It feels so horrifically, humiliatingly good.

Ben lets him set the pace again, for a few minutes; he keeps a loose grip on Riley’s hair while Riley bobs his head and suckles at the head of Ben’s cock. Then he pushes, and Riley sinks down until he can’t breathe. 

He’s a little more prepared this time. He swallows hard, hot tears prickling at the corners of his eyes, hands clenching and unclenching at the small of his back. Breathlessness surges way too quickly. His head fades into a buzzing mess, a thick lump of fear gathering in his chest when he tries to breathe and chokes instead. He can’t—he can’t breathe. His eyes are tearing up and his face is blood-hot and his chest is about to explode, and he can’t breathe. 

Oh. Oh, fuck. 

Ben’s holding him down—Ben’s not letting him breathe—

Riley hits the edge of blinding panic with a thrash of his shoulders—and tips over into cloudless, empty sky. There’s not quite a sensation of falling; more like sinking into something warm and deep and clinging. His lungs are still burning but he feels it through a haze. Everything’s in a haze.

When Ben pulls him up, he doesn’t choke this time. He just sucks in a long, slow breath of air and goes lax in Ben’s grip.

It’s…nice. It’s nice.

He isn’t really expecting it, when Ben carefully lets go of Riley’s wrists and hauls him into a clumsy sprawl, straddling his lap. He’s not expecting anything. He just slumps into Ben’s shoulder and nuzzles into Ben’s collarbone, breath hitching around a soft keen when Ben’s arm wraps around his back and crushes them together. A big, warm hand spans his jaw and the side of his throat and pushes him so he’s face-to-face with Ben.

Slowly, lazily, Riley blinks at him. Ben’s wide-eyed stare narrows somewhere just below his eye; it takes Riley a second to realize it’s a tear, cutting a path down the slope of his cheek.

Ben leans close and kisses it away.

“Oh,” Riley says dumbly.

“This is a good look on you,” Ben says. His face does something complicated, a grimace like he didn’t mean to let that out. 

Heat crawls up the back of Riley’s neck. He laughs, stuttery and ruined, pushing his face into the solid shape of Ben’s hand. It’s funny, not just because it’s always kinda funny when Ben gets flustered—it’s also that Riley knows he looks like a mess right now. Red-faced, drool and precome smeared on his lips, tear tracks cutting slow paths down his face. Seriously, he’d be embarrassed about it if he had the brainpower to care about anything beyond Ben’s warmth between his thighs and the strain of his erection in his jeans.

Ben gives him this weird, fond look and draws him into a kiss. It’s slow but dizzyingly intense, turning Riley’s insides molten, setting fire just under his skin as he grips at Ben’s shoulders and rocks their hips together.

Both of them fumble at Riley’s pants, until Ben frees his dick and Riley lets out a noise that he doesn’t even recognize. With a hand on his hip Ben drags Riley closer.

Ben’s hand wraps around both their cocks, sending a shock of arousal up Riley’s spine. Stifling a groan, he tucks his face into Ben’s throat and hitches his hips, pathetic little rolls up into the tight channel of Ben’s fist and the solid weight of his cock. Something about this—caught in Ben’s shitty old car in a rumbling storm, clothes and hair still rain-slick and smudged with mud, rolling their hips together like a couple teenagers on prom night—feels more illicit than the many, many times Ben’s tied him up. Riley feels desperate in a way he’s not used to. Desperate to swallow mouthfuls of overheated air, desperate to keep Ben’s hand around his dick and Ben’s arm clutching him close. 

He’s…a little out of his mind with it. A little out of his mind in general. Everything’s narrowed to Ben, collapsing around him like he’s a singularity. 

After all these months, Ben knows just how to touch him. Slow, intense, a little aggressive.

Riley’s orgasm sneaks up on him and hits like a punch to the gut. Pleasure wrenches him in Ben’s lap, making his back arch. He latches his teeth around the meat of Ben’s shoulder and moans, coming over Ben’s hand, thighs shaking almost painfully with the feeling.

“Shh,” Ben hushes against his hair. His arm tightens across Riley’s back, hand sweeping up to grip him by the nape of the neck and squeeze. 

That breathless, sparks-across-the-eyes fog leeches into Riley’s head again, and—

He goes limp. He collapses against Ben, aftershocks making him tremble. He breathes out a long, warbly curse against Ben’s sweaty skin and lets himself sink.

Ben curses quietly. It doesn’t take him long to find his own orgasm; his thighs go tense against Riley’s, hand losing its rhythm. He pants against Riley’s hair, crushing them even tighter together. Crushing the air from Riley’s lungs, which probably shouldn’t make him nuzzle at Ben’s throat and moan breathlessly, but that’s where he’s at.

Eventually, Ben grips the junction of Riley’s shoulder and neck and pulls him back just enough to look at him. Riley blinks sluggishly back, feeling like molten metal just barely keeping its shape. Being under Ben’s undivided attention doesn’t help him feel any more together.

Ben brings up the hand covered in their come and nearly curls it around Riley’s cheek. His eyes narrow just as his thumb’s brushing Riley’s lips, realization passing over his gaze that Riley’s only just lucid enough to recognize. “Oops.” His hand is still lingering between them, though, and Riley—who’s spent full minutes sucking on Ben’s fingers, not even as a prelude to sucking him off—really wants to get his mouth on it.

So he doesn’t think about it; he licks a long stripe up the arch of Ben’s thumb, sweeping up bitter come with the flat of his tongue. Ben makes a low, interested noise, so he does it again. 

It feels good. He likes Ben’s hands. They’re always warm, always calloused. Riley clutches Ben’s wrist in both hands, bumping up against his watch, and licks his hand clean slowly and deliberately. There’s something…soothing about it, like it’s another soft, foggy void he’s sinking into. 

When he’s finished, he nuzzles into Ben’s hand, not caring about the saliva he’s smearing across his cheek and down the slope of his nose. He just wants Ben close. He wants Ben’s hands on him. Ben must know; he cups Riley’s face in both hands, big and warm and spanning his cheeks to the sensitive sliver of skin just under his jaw, and pulls him into another kiss. This one is soothing, lulling Riley along the cobwebs he’s caught in. 

Ben tucks them both away and carefully does up the zip on Riley’s jeans. He keeps kissing him. Tiny little flutters of his mouth on Riley’s cheeks, his nose, his jaw. Only a couple land on the corner of his mouth or the swollen curve of his lower lip.

It’s really, really good. 

It takes a few more minutes for Riley’s mind to start piecing itself back together. First it’s slow, disparate puzzle pieces coming together with no connective tissue keeping them together. Then he starts dragging himself back to lucidity, blinking stars out of his eyes. He slips off Ben’s lap and watches rain pepper the window for a long few minutes while he just sits there and breathes.

Then his eyes flick down—totally involuntarily—to Ben’s hand.  

“Oh, god.” He’s—he’s mortified. He covers his face with both hands and collapses back against the door, heels of his hands pressing the prickly-hot feeling of humiliation out of his eyes. That whole come-eating business was so…exactly like something out of a terrible gay porn. And Riley just did that enthusiastically, no bullshit, no embellishment. “Let’s pretend that didn’t happen.” His voice croaks, almost breaking. A knot of embarrassment burns in his chest, and for a second he’s kind of terrified that he might actually cry. 

Maybe he could pass it off as being leftover from choking on Ben’s dick. That—that’s believable. 

Not really.

“Please explain why we’re pretending that didn’t happen,” Ben says, cutting through Riley’s internal panic, and Riley can hear the raised brows and unimpressed, sharp-eyed gaze. “And while you’re at it, explain what ‘that’ is.”

Riley releases a ragged sigh. His voice sounds completely ruined.

“You know, the—“ He wiggles his own hand in the air, the other firmly covering his eyes. Ostrich strategy; a tried and true method. “And we’re pretending because that was embarrassing.”

Ben huffs a quiet laugh. It’s only kind of mean.

“You surprised me,” he murmurs, softly enough that it lands on Riley’s sensitive skin like a touch and makes him shiver. “But I enjoyed it.”

Riley’s face burns. “This is distinctly not pretending it didn’t happen,” he says, muffled into the heel of his hand.

“Hey, look at me.” Ben closes a hand briefly around Riley’s ankle, shaking him not-very-gently. It’s very obvious from the edge in his voice that he’s trying not to laugh out loud at Riley, which just makes Riley feel even more embarrassed than if he was being outright. He shakes his head. “Riley.”

Oh, that’s a voice. Not disappointment, but not not disappointment. Almost scolding, in a way that’s humiliating and blisteringly hot.

Riley feels the seat shift and the warmth of Ben crawling closer, knee nudging between Riley’s legs. A broad hand closes around Riley’s wrist and gently tugs his hand away from his face; Riley keeps his eyes tightly shut, trying to ignore the weight of Ben staring at him so intently. It’s a little too much, right now. He feels a little too exposed. It doesn’t help when Ben’s other hand trails up the front of his throat and over his chin, fingertips nudging at the seam of Riley’s mouth.

Riley’s the one who lets those calloused fingers slip inside his mouth and stroke along his tongue, though. He’s a parody of himself. He’s so mortified his chest hurts.

“You have nothing to be embarrassed about,” Ben says softly. “Unless you want to be.”

Riley makes a pleading noise, which roughly translates to, ‘why would I want to be embarrassed?’

Ben must understand. He usually does; he knows Riley pretty well, at this point. He ducks closer, a shadow over the thin skin of Riley’s eyelids. “You let yourself do these things because you trust me. You know that turns me on, right?” He kisses the corner of Riley’s mouth, presses his fingers hard on Riley’s tongue. “I like you desperate, Riley. Actually, I probably should be embarrassed by some of the things I like.”

Another broken noise catches in Riley’s throat. That’s not playing fair.

Ben knocks their foreheads together gently, then pulls back. He slowly slips his fingers out of Riley’s mouth, leaving a slick trail of saliva over Riley’s lips and down  his chin. His palm splays high on Riley’s chest, a finger tucked into the hollow between Riley’s collarbones. Shaky warmth runs through Riley’s body and burns under his skin from that touch. He drags in a shuddery breath, feeling the weight of Ben’s hand move with the inhale.

Even after all the time they’ve spent sleeping together, Riley’s always desperate for Ben’s touch. Right now, more than usual. He can pretend Ben’s pressing him into a mold of his own shape, keeping him trapped in his own skin. He can pretend that Ben’s gonna hold him there forever, that Ben will keep him. He could probably pretend Ben loves him.

He won’t, because he doesn’t hate himself that much. But he could. And that knowledge is almost as gut-wrenching and lovely as the pretending would be.

“I’ve never really thought of myself as a classical music guy,” Riley says, slumping further in the tub, hot water lapping just under his chin. He skims his fingers back and forth across the water’s surface. “This is actually kinda nice.”

‘This’ being Louis Spohr’s Symphony No. 6 in G major, filling the bathroom from the tinny speakers of Riley’s laptop, balanced somewhat precariously on the edge of the sink. Ben seems reasonably convinced that the key to their Spohr box is going to be one of the symphonies, so they’re listening to all of them, searching for…something. In all honesty, Riley still doesn’t really know what Ben’s listening for.

Ben hums thoughtfully. The sound rumbles through Riley’s back, where he’s leaning against Ben’s chest.

It’s the only way they both fit in the bath, using a generous definition of ‘fit’.

Riley suggested a hot shower, to avoid this exact predicament but still warm themselves up from getting caught in the rain hours ago. Ben wanted a bath, though, and the hot water was too inviting once he’d actually filled the tub. Riley’s not really complaining, anyway. Being plastered against Ben’s warm, wet skin, one of Ben’s hands wrapped loosely around Riley’s wrist under the water, their knees knocking together in the cold air of the bathroom—it’s easy to get drunk on it. 

It’s dangerous, because it feels way too domestic, like they’re actually a couple and not just friends-who-live-together-and-also-fuck. But Riley probably lost his chance to worry about that when he took Ben up on his offer to move in.

He does need to stop thinking about this. Or else he might do the unthinkable, like blurting out that he’s in love with Ben.

“Next time,” he starts, not really sure where he’s going yet, “I still want to come, don’t get me wrong, but you can’t just show up and drag me to a graveyard after work. On a Friday.” He taps the water’s surface with his fingertips. “I think unearthing a grave is illegal even if nobody is buried there. So we might be criminals.” He thinks about his university’s private archive. His heart hurts, just a little. “Again.”

“Hush,” Ben says against his hair. “Music. I’m listening.”

“That was barely coherent,” Riley mumbles, eyes fluttering shut.

But he does shut up. Even though his legs are starting to cramp a little from being tucked up into the bathtub, everything else is soothing. The hot water suffusing him with warmth, the way Ben’s wrapped around him, the soft sound of the symphony. Riley slumps until the water’s at his mouth and focuses on the music, because if Ben’s listening he might as well too.

There’s a jaunty little tune bobbing along just underneath the swell of the rest of the orchestra, and the distinct notes, their little ups and downs, almost remind Riley of morse code. Or, wait. Not morse code. Binary.

He almost stumbles climbing out of the tub, ignoring Ben’s hands smoothing over his thighs and Ben asking him where he’s going in favour of scrubbing his feet mostly dry on the bathmat and sliding over to his laptop. He rewinds the song until the little tune starts—right around the beginning of the second movement—and ducks his head low to listen as it pitches out of his low quality speakers.

Huh. It’s not perfect, but it’s there. Or maybe Riley’s just hearing things, but there’s something about it that’s spinning together in his head. 

After an entire undergraduate degree spent converting everything to binary—it seemed prudent to learn everything in its most basic language and then build a knowledge base on top of that, and also Riley was a loser with nothing better to do with his time—it comes easy to him now. It’s like speaking a second language. There’s a mixed metaphor in there about riding a bike, which Riley discards in favour of listening to the music.

“Riley?” Ben’s voice drifts in, overshadowed by the symphony. “What are you doing?”

Riley isn’t really listening. 

He could probably whip up a program fairly quickly to generate all the possible translations. Assuming it is base-2, and Riley’s getting more and more confident that it is, there’s no easy way to distinguish between segments by sight and sound alone. 

“Riley,” Ben snaps.

“You know how binary was invented in the 1600s?” Riley asks absently, tapping his pruney fingers on the sink’s edge. Yeah, if he just transcribes the ones and zeros, it shouldn’t be too hard to…

Ben’s quiet. 

Riley pauses the music, turning his head to see Ben staring at him, brows furrowed and mouth pressed in a thin, tight-lipped line. Realization strikes with a perverse sense of glee. “Did you not know that?” He can’t help it; his mouth twitches into a grin. Ben’s brow furrows even deeper. “You totally didn’t know that. Wow. Is this what winning the lottery feels like?”

Ben frowns. His face is flushed red, but that could just be from the heat of the bath. “I assume you’re eventually gonna get to why that’s important?”

“I think,” Riley says, knocking his knuckle against his laptop’s screen, “there’s a code in this symphony written in binary.”

Ben’s demeanour changes instantly. The frown drops, his eyes lighting up with that dangerous glint that makes Riley think of a hawk that’s caught sight of its prey. He surges forward, water splashing over the sides of the tub from how fast he moves. “Can you decode it?”

Riley grins, feeling self-conscious under the weight of Ben’s relentless stare. “No, but I can create a program that’ll decode all possible interpretations, and write an algorithm that’ll rank the interpretations based on whatever filters we decide are relevant. So…”

“Riley Poole,” Ben says gravely, “I love your brain.”

He really does know exactly what to say to punch Riley right in the gut.

The night he’s scheduled to meet Ian Howe in person for the first time, Ben’s as much of a flustered mess as Riley’s ever seen him. Someone who doesn’t know him as well might not see it; sometimes Ben does this thing where his emotions just don’t show up on his face, and you have to be able to spot all the other tells that indicate that he’s totally freaking out. Like, right now, he’s staring at himself in the mirror with a completely blank expression and his fingers buttoning and unbuttoning the top button of his shirt, and Riley feels like he’s about to have a panic attack just from watching him.

After a few more seconds of watching, Riley takes pity on him. He shoves his laptop to the side and swings his legs over the side of Ben’s bed, approaching him. Ben doesn’t look away from his reflection. He’s staring at himself so hard Riley feels intimidated just catching the edge of that glare.

There’s not a lot of space between Ben and the mirror, but Riley squeezes himself between them anyway.

“You’re going to give yourself an aneurism,” Riley says, batting Ben’s hands away from his buttons.

“Riley,” Ben says, in that warning tone that always makes Riley’s stomach flip.

“Sorry, but I don’t think one button is gonna make much of a difference.” Riley gives Ben a once-over, unbuttons the button, and brushes imaginary wrinkles out of the collar of his shirt. The unbuttoned, dishevelled professor look is the way to go. Not just because Riley’s a little obsessed with the chest hair peeking up from the open vee of Ben’s collar. “You know you’re gonna crush this meeting, dude.”

Ben grimaces. “I don’t have the best track record with getting funders on board.”

“Okay, true…but this guy already knows about your crazy plans, and he hasn’t run away yet. That counts for something.” Carefully, he leans back against the mirror. “Remember when you told me about the Charlotte? Just do that again. I was on board the second you started talking, and I had no idea what a Freemason was.”

For a few seconds, Ben just stares at him. It goes on long enough that Riley starts wondering if he totally fucked up and said something stupid. Nerves tighten his throat, everything he just said running through his head on overdrive.

Then Ben brings both hands up and cups Riley’s face. His hands are big, and warm, and a little sweaty with nerves. Riley almost melts.

“You should come with me,” Ben says sincerely, eyes boring into Riley’s. “I wouldn’t have all these pieces of the puzzle without you.”

Heat climbs Riley’s neck. 

He doesn’t know if that’s true. Sure, he helped a few times, lent his expertise a couple others…but Ben would’ve found another way without Riley’s help. That’s just the way it goes; Ben moves through the world with impenetrable certainty that it’ll shape itself the way he expects it to, and eventually, it always does. 

“I think I’d just get in the way,” Riley says, voice a little pitchy since Ben’s still holding his face like he’s something precious. “You’re the history expert.”

“And you’re the tech genius.” Ben’s mouth quirks, not quite a smile. “I’m not gonna be able to explain the binary code or the Spohr box solutions nearly as well as you. Frankly, I’d rather let you explain it.”

“This is your thing, though. You’ve been on this trail your whole life, and I’ve been tagging along for, what, a few months? Less than a year?” He shakes his head, huffing out a weird little laugh that gets caught halfway in his throat. Maybe Ben’s anxiety’s rubbing off on him, because he feels dizzy suddenly, a little off-balance. It’s just—it feels like too much pressure. “And I don’t think you want me around when you’re trying to impress somebody. I don’t really do, uh, charming.”

Ben raises his brows. “You charmed me.”

Something ugly claws up from Riley’s chest. His face goes hot. “Ben—”

Ben leans close. His forehead nudges Riley’s, noses bumping together. His eyes are pale and fierce in the light of his bedroom, cutting through Riley’s denials and pinning him like a butterfly. “Stop arguing,” Ben murmurs. “Just say yes.”

Riley swallows. “Okay. Yes.”

It’s always gonna be the same. Ben tells him to jump, Riley asks how high.

Chapter Text

After two years, over a dozen dead-end breadcrumb trails and irrelevant clues, and countless hours of historical environmental modelling using some of the least robust data Riley's ever worked with, they find her. Charlotte, buried in ice and snow, slowly crawling back to the light of day as she’s unearthed by Ian’s team. Riley watches Ben watching, a knot of emotion tangled in his chest. He’ll blame the one tear that leaks out on cold and windburn, and not the way-too-sappy truth that he’s witnessing the man he loves realize a dream that’s been carried through generations.

Even when they get inside and find nothing but gunpowder and corpses in the cargo hold, Ben keeps searching until he finds the one clue amidst all the rest. An intricately carved pipe; a riddle, written in Ben’s blood.

Ben’s doing that thing where he runs intellectual circles around everyone in the room, deciphering clues out loud, following whatever insane branching paths bloom to life in his brain. Riley watches, trying not to look too enamoured. It’s just. This is everything Ben’s been working toward for decades. Hell, Riley’s been working for this for two years.

It all starts crumbling when Ben mentions the Declaration of Independence. Riley voices doubt because he feels like someone should—buying into secret societies and hidden treasure is one thing, but tying that to one of the most important documents in the history of the United States is completely different—and nobody listens, but that’s not where things go downhill. Ian starts talking about stealing the Declaration, and Ben reacts with quiet outrage because he’s pulled his own ‘operations of questionable legality’ but there’s a difference between that and stealing a national symbol, and then—

And then Shaw goes and pulls out the fucking gun.

He points it at Ben, and Riley—Riley’s whole body locks up with white-hot panic. He shouts without thinking, staring between the steady barrel of Shaw’s gun and Ben’s not-so-calm, not-so-controlled face. Everything unravels, staring at that gun. The realization makes Riley sick—one little twitch of a finger and his whole world crumbles apart. Ben could die.

Ben could die. Ben could die.

“Well you can’t shoot me,” Ben’s saying, tension in his voice. He’s almost drowned out by the fear crashing through Riley’s head. “There’s more to the riddle. Information you don’t have; I do.” That makes Ian pause. Riley’s whole body shudders. Ben, wide-eyed and tense, looks like he always does—like he has complete control of the situation even as it’s turning to sand. “I’m the only one who can figure it out and you know that.”

And that’s Ben. Always talking himself out of the trouble he gets himself into. There’s a gun pointed at him and he’s acting like he’s got the upper hand.

But there’s a problem. That being the fucking gun.

Riley wants to say something. He wants to tackle Shaw. His body won’t let him do either of those things. Instead he’s standing here surrounded by the wreckage of Ben’s lifelong dream, eyes stuck on the gun aimed at Ben’s head, trying to suck down enough frigid, stale air to keep himself from passing out. 

Then the gun swings his direction. “Hey,” he blurts out, heartrate spiking. Snow slips under his feet as he stumbles back, grabbing onto whatever’s nearest.

Ben’s gaze lands on him. There’s panic in his eyes. 

In a jerk of movement, the cargo hold lights up in flickering red. A flare, burning brightly in Ben’s outstretched hand.

That gets both Ian and Shaw’s attention—which isn’t an improvement, because now the gun’s on Ben again. Riley swallows hard twice in succession, breathing through his closing throat. He’s pretty sure he’s about to have a panic attack. 

“Look where you’re standing,” Ben says, gesturing at Ian and Shaw’s feet. Riley’s gaze flicks down on instinct, and with a sudden shock of dread, he remembers the mess of gunpowder. “All that gunpowder. You shoot me, I drop this—we all go up.”

“Ben,” Riley grinds out. This is what he gets, expecting impulsive, devil-may-care Ben to come up with a solution to the gun problem. Sure, yeah, they can’t get shot if they all explode.

Ben doesn’t look in his direction. He stares at Ian and Shaw, the flare’s red light casting his face in sharp, slightly eerie angles.

“What happens when the flare burns down?” Ian asks, surprisingly calm. 

Ben swallows. He clearly didn’t think of that possibility. 

Riley huffs a little breath between his teeth, hands clenched so tightly his knuckles sting. So, death by gunshot is back on the table. Fantastic. If they weren’t in a literal life-or-death situation, he’d march right over to Ben and smack him. Also, if the idea of moving from his frozen stillness didn’t make him want to vomit.

“Tell me what I need to know, Ben.”

Ben’s gaze flicks back and forth between Shaw and Ian. He’s thinking again. “You need to know…” It’s obvious when he’s come up with a decision. Something about the glint in his eyes tells Riley he’s not gonna like it. Ben breathes in sharply. “If Shaw can catch.”

He throws the flare.

Riley squeezes his eyes shut. He waits for the overwhelming flare of heat, the deafening boom of gunpowder igniting and exploding. 

Nothing.

When Riley opens one eye, it’s to see Ian holding the flare, eyes wide with surprise and a smug half-smile crooking his mouth. He points the flare at Ben, grinning like he’s actually delighted that Ben pulled something so stupid. “Nice try, though, you—”

His arm catches fire. 

Riley sees the flare drop almost in slow motion; the way it tumbles through the air, the way it hits the ground with a flare of sparks. Then he doesn’t see anything—fire erupts as the gunpowder ignites, turning everything to a shock of white and red and searing heat that burns against Riley’s frigid skin. He dives when gunshots ring out, landing hard on his side, wood splintering and snapping under his weight. 

Sharp pain slams through his ribs. His mouth tears open in a shout—nothing comes out but a cough. He gulps down air that’s bitter with the taste of smoke, blinking hard to clear the blur from his vision. 

“Riley!” Ben screams over the roar of the fire. “Get over here!”

Riley scrambles to his feet. He almost skids into Ben just as Ben’s opening a hatch in the floor. “What is this?”

Ben’s hands land heavily on him. “Smuggler’s hold. Get in!”

He all but shoves Riley down. There’s a cramped, snow-filled tunnel beneath, and Riley fumbles for his bearings, half-blind with panic until Ben slips down and yanks the hatch closed behind him. He barks at Riley to follow. Riley can still hear fire crackling and roaring behind them as they run through the tunnel. He’s already wheezing with panic by the time Ben stumbles through another open hatch.

“Get down!” Ben hauls him through and throws him facedown. Riley lands with a yelp and a mouthful of snow, scrabbling to get his arms over his head. Ben’s elbow knocks against his as Ben throws himself down, and then—

Sound knocks into Riley like a truck. Chunks of wood land hard across his back—the pain’s drowned out by the explosion rattling through him. 

The noise lasts a long time. Riley can’t pick out anything specific—it’s just constant sound, muffled by his hood and his arms and a blanket of loose snow but still loud enough to make his ears ring. His skull still feels like it’s vibrating even when the noise fades into a rush of silence. There’s an ache in his teeth. His heart’s thumping so hard it actually hurts, his stomach cramping on nausea and acidic fear.

He feels Ben shift first. That’s when Riley realizes the world’s stopped shaking; it’s just him, trembling so hard his teeth are rattling.

Snow and soot fall around him as he scrambles off his stomach. Gasping hard, heart hammering, he shoves himself back against the wall behind him. It helps, having something solid at his back. It’s a surface to ground himself on. He sucks in a few more lungfuls of air, and then the blind panic swirling in his chest bubbles up in a breathless, delirious laugh. 

He catches Ben’s eye. Ben’s watching him with this kinda-amused, kinda-worried look, and that only pulls more hiccuping laughter from Riley’s heaving chest. Now that imminent danger has passed his whole body’s buzzing with adrenaline, an itch under his skin that’s only getting worse.

Riley doesn’t even think—he just grabs Ben by the fur of his hood and drags him forward. Their mouths come together in a mash of noses and the sharp cut of Ben’s tooth into Riley’s lip. It ignites lightning in Riley’s gut, drags up a moan that cuts through the laughter and turns his shaking even more violent. 

It takes Ben a second to react. When he does, Riley’s gone; he clutches Riley’s arms and presses himself forward, crushing him up against the wall. Ben kisses exactly like someone who almost just died in an explosion.

“Fuck,” Riley mumbles against Ben’s mouth, shuddering when Ben’s tongue sweeps over a new cut in his lip. “We just—we just—”

“Quiet,” Ben says sharply, and Riley’s throat closes around a desperate sound.

He pulls his mitts off with clumsy hands, dropping them somewhere in the snow. Panting against Ben’s mouth, he fumbles at his own coat until it’s open, cold immediately soaking into his sweaty clothes. Ben shifts his weight, then grabs Riley by the hips and yanks him in a better position for Ben to get on top of him, which is blisteringly hot and floods Riley’s body with arousal. Together, they open up Ben’s coat, then Riley’s hips jerk up and catch against Ben’s and they both choke out groans.

It’s not elegant. It’s Riley half-propped against a frost-covered wall, Ben’s thighs slotted with his as they grind their hips. They’re kissing, but it’s more like breathing together and biting at each other and Ben muffling all the noises Riley can’t stop himself from making.

Riley’s orgasm builds way too quickly. He rolls his hips and blinks hard and it crashes through him, white-hot arousal and a tension that curls his toes and arches his spine. 

With a choking gasp, he realizes he’s crying. A couple tears gather on his lashes and spill over, cutting hot trails down the frostbitten cold of Riley’s cheeks.

He doesn’t know why he’s crying. It’s just—it’s all way too much.

When he catches Ben’s gaze, he sees the gleam in Ben’s eyes even through the blur of tears. He looks feral and half-wild, cheeks flushed and sweaty strands of hair emerging from under his hat. His tongue sweeps across Riley’s cheekbone—licking a tear away, what the fuck—and then his teeth latch around Riley’s jaw and bite down, hard. Riley’s hips jerk with one last spurt of come, groan catching on the sob knotted in his throat.

Ben hauls Riley down until he’s on his back, Ben laid out on top of him. It only takes a few more desperate rolls of Ben’s hips until he comes, biting Riley’s chin and making a rough, growly sound that goes straight to Riley’s spent cock.

All that adrenaline drains. Riley feels hollowed out.

He clutches at Ben’s back, even though the snow-dusted fabric is freezing on his bare fingers. Another sob unravels in his throat. It’s embarrassing, but he can’t get himself to stop. It’s not like he’s emotional, it’s just that he’s overwhelmed and overflowing and it’s all spilling out.

Ben doesn’t offer any words of comfort. He lifts himself—Riley turns his head away, because he really doesn’t need Ben to see him crying. “Hey,” Ben says quietly, his thumb sweeping over Riley’s cheek. “Cut that out.”

When Riley’s gaze flicks over to meet Ben’s, he’s still got that feral look in his eyes.

“I’m good,” Riley says. It’s ruined by his stuttering, hiccuping breaths. “I—I’m good, I’m good. I’m good. I’m fine.”

“Oh, yeah.” Ben’s voice drags, his eyebrows raising. “You sound great.”

His thumb rubs over Riley’s cheek again. Buzzing heat sparks wherever he touches, heat soaking into Riley’s cold skin. It’s the kind of heat that aches.

By the time they’ve chartered a bush plane to Iqaluit, grabbed their gear and cleaned up with quick showers in the hotel that Ian and his crew have apparently long since abandoned, and caught the earliest possible flight south, Ben’s gotten…quiet. He was subdued all the way up to that point, but it becomes glaringly obvious when they’re up in the air and he nudges Riley, gesturing wordlessly at the tangled earphones in Riley’s carry-on. He doesn’t even say ‘thanks’ when Riley pulls them out and hands them over.

Silently, Ben plugs them into his phone. He sinks back into his seat with an inaudible sigh, eyes dropping shut. A faint tremor runs through his hands before he tightens them.

This isn’t the first time Riley’s seen Ben get like this. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes he just shuts off completely. Riley knows not to say anything unless Ben talks first; he knows not to touch unless Ben invites it. 

He still can’t help glancing at Ben every few seconds. His body’s a live wire of tension, his hands clenched into tight fists on the armrests, his brow furrowed over tightly-closed eyes. His chest rises and falls with slow, shallow breaths. His cheek twitches every time the kid a few rows down bursts out in a peal of loud, high-pitched laughter. Riley winces in sympathy, and a little bit because the kid really is grating on his sensitive eardrums.

Usually, when Ben shuts down like this, he turns off all the lights in the apartment and retreats to his bedroom. Sometimes he drags Riley with him. But now they’re on a plane flying over the Canadian Arctic. There’s nowhere for Ben to escape to that isn’t right here.

Well, Riley can at least be non-disruptive. He can keep still. Even if his body’s humming with excess energy and he feels like it’ll build up and burst through his skin if he doesn’t shake it out somehow.

It’s just that sometimes, Ben wants to be touched when he’s like this. He says it’s grounding. 

And Riley wants to touch. Riley could use some grounding. He needs something to bundle him up and pin him back inside the shape of his body. It’s kinda hitting him in stages, that they almost got shot, they did get blown up, and all over a secret treasure map that’s apparently on the back of the goddamn Declaration of Independence.

“Riley.” Ben’s clipped monotone cuts through the thoughts racing around Riley’s skull. He looks over, but Ben’s still grimacing, still squeezing his eyes shut. A sick feeling of guilt floods Riley’s chest—he probably wasn’t being as non-disruptive as he thought—until Ben’s hand twitches off the armrest and lands in Riley’s lap. It splays broad across Riley’s thigh, fingertips digging just above the inner seam of Riley’s pants. “It’s okay.”

The knot comes back to Riley’s throat. He tucks one hand over Ben’s, fingers slotted together, and circles the other around Ben’s wrist. Ben’s pulse beats steadily against his fingerprints.

Yeah. It’s okay. It’s okay.

Of course, it all goes spectacularly to shit when Ben not only decides he wants to steal the Declaration of Independence—he actually does it, and makes Riley a voluntary accessory while he’s at it. This is one of those instances where Riley should’ve gotten over his desperate need to please Ben and just say no. But he doesn’t, and they end the night of the National Archive Gala with the Declaration, Dr. Abigail Chase, and another series of numbers in the long string of clues that’ve led them here.

They cross the Benjamin Franklin Bridge into Philadelphia at sunrise—Riley perks up from his slouch in the backseat just enough to say, “hey, it’s the You Bridge,” then collapses back into restless half-sleep while Ben huffs a little snort of laughter—and as far as Riley can tell, none of them manage to sleep. He knows he’s running on fumes, and he didn’t even get shot at or dangle out the back of a van.

Ben pulls into a gas station parking lot so Riley can run inside and grab as many snacks as he can carry. Then they end up in the back alley lot of some seedy motel, waiting for Ben to get them a room.

When they finally stumble into a two-queen room, Riley feels like he’s about to fall asleep on his feet. His hands are shaking, though whether that’s from sleep deprivation or low blood sugar, he’s really not sure.

Ben snags the plastic bags of snacks from Riley’s hands and dumps them in a pile on the bed. “Eat,” he orders, snagging two granola bars, a bruised banana, and a bottle of gatorade. “Then we sleep.”

Reverently, Abigail lays the tube containing the Declaration across the lone armchair. Then she clambers cross-legged onto the bed and hauls an armful of food into her lap.

“Riley.” Ben tosses him a crinkly bag; it smacks harmlessly off his chest. A few seconds later his fingers twitch in reaction. “That trail mix you like.”

Riley collapses on his ass right there on the ground. Anything else would be too much effort.

“Do you two have a criminal history?” Digging into a pudding cup with a plastic spoon, Abigail looks between them with wide, curious eyes. She shifts over when Ben climbs onto the bed next to her; Riley’s heart gives a weird little pang at the sight of them sitting together. They’re just sitting together, but still. Abigail thumbs a smudge of pudding off her lip. “You’re very practiced at this.”

Ben hums. “No…nothing like this.”

Her eyes sparkle. Riley’s heart plummets to his stomach.

“That sounds like you have engaged in criminal behaviour,” Abigail says impishly. Her gaze flicks to Riley, then back to Ben. She hides her smile against the opening of her water bottle.

Red burns the tips of Ben’s ears. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. 

“That depends,” Riley drawls. “Is graverobbing a crime when there’s no body in the grave?”

“Riley.”

“Legally, yes,” Abigail says, propping her elbows on her knees and leaning forward, chin held up by her laced fingers. She stares at Riley with a glint in her eyes that makes him nervous. “But I am interested about the distinction. What did you find, if not a body?”

“A Spohr box,” Ben tells her, and her entire face lights up.

Riley tries to keep his wince internal as they start babbling history at each other, finishing each other’s sentences with increasingly giddy, out-of-breath voices. Abigail’s eyes are shining and Ben’s got that quirk to his mouth that means he’s properly excited, and Riley’s starting to feel like a third wheel. Even Ben’s insistent mention that Riley was the one to unlock the key (“he wrote up a program to translate the binary code, it was incredible,”) only makes him feel a little flicker of butterflies.

After they’ve packed away a truly absurd amount of shitty gas station snacks, Abigail collapses backwards. “I want this bed,” she says, kicking at the last few snacks until they tumble over the edge. Her big fluffy skirt tangles with her legs. “And I hope you don’t expect me to share.”

“No, of course not.” Ben climbs off the bed. “I’m sharing with Riley.”

Riley lifts his head, blinking sluggishly. “You are?”

“You don’t kick and you barely snore.” With an exaggerated yawn, Ben ambles over. He stoops down to wrap a broad hand around Riley’s bicep, hauling him to his feet with a grunt of effort and a show of strength that’d really do something for Riley if he wasn’t so damn tired. Ben shakes him a little, meeting his gaze with half-lidded eyes. “You’re not a bad bedmate.”

“Neither am I,” Abigail says, arms spread to either side of her. Her eyes are closed, a funny little smile playing on her lips.

“That’s a shame, because it looks like neither of us will get to find out.”

“Very good, Mr. Gates.” She cracks open one eye, watching as Ben escorts-slash-hauls Riley across the room to the second bed. She seems amused.

“Nobody ever calls me good,” Riley grumbles under his breath, as Ben bullies him out of his jacket. He toes off his shoes at Ben’s gruff instructions, then accepts defeat as Ben pulls back the sheets and pushes him onto the bed. He lands with a bounce, skull rattling with it. His legs tangle with the sheets when he tucks them under the comforter. 

“I do,” Ben says, crawling under the covers behind Riley. “All the time.”

And—

Riley’s face burns red. “I didn’t mean like that.”

“I don’t see why the context of the compliment should matter.”

The context, of course, being about 90% during sex, which Riley cannot believe Ben is bringing up in front of Abigail. Indirectly and vaguely, sure, but still. He drags the bedsheets up over his head, curling into himself until his knees are tucked against his chest. A hot, flustered feeling blazes in his chest. It doesn’t get any better when Ben slides in close, wrapping around Riley’s back and trapping him with an arm across his chest. Riley just barely keeps himself from squeaking, or doing something even more embarrassing like blurting out his feelings.

“You’re good, Riley,” Ben murmurs, low and soft, sinking into Riley’s skin and setting his nerves on fire. Lips brush the shell of Riley’s ear. He does make a tiny noise at that, one he manages to stifle. “Now please go to sleep.”

Riley likes to think he’s gotten a little better about the whole dead body thing. Case in point: when a carcass of bones and rotted cloth tumble out of the bottom of the casket at Trinity Church, he only flinches as much as anyone else. Sure, he instinctively reaches out to grab someone—it ends up being Abigail, his fingertips digging into the fluttering pulse at her wrist—but he doesn’t fall over or shriek like he did last time. 

Carefully, Ben and Ian and the goons set down the rotted casket. When they shine a flashlight down the cramped, filthy tunnel that lays beyond, it catches on layers of thick cobwebs and the shadows of something beyond the tomb.

Of course.

Ben climbs through first, because of course he does. The rest follow; when it’s Riley’s turn, he hunches himself as narrow as he can get, lips pressed tightly together so he doesn’t get dirt or cobweb in his mouth, shuddering every time his shoulders or his back brush the walls and ceiling of the tunnel. His heart slams against his ribs as the darkness swallows him whole. By the time he’s climbing out into the larger space beyond, there’s dirt dug deep beneath his fingernails and ground into the lines of his palms. He rubs the worst of it off on his jeans, trying to ignore the shivery feeling like there are spiders crawling under his skin.

They keep moving, now lit by flickering orange torchlight that casts everything into eerie, moving shadows. Riley sucks in a short, sharp breath. Now is really, really not the time to freak out.

When he passes by Ben, Ben’s hand finds his back. Riley clutches at Ben’s shoulder.

They could die here. They could find a fortune here.

The hand on Riley’s back sweeps up, warm and heavy. Ben drags it up Riley’s neck and cups it just under the angle of Riley’s jaw, thumb digging into the soft skin at the corner of Riley’s mouth. Another shudder runs from Riley’s toes to the base of his skull, a new sense of calm sinking into his chest. Whatever happens, it was worth it. 

Ben stares at him, expression grave. He gives a couple short nods, and Riley deludes himself into thinking that Ben knows what he’s thinking, and that he agrees. 

He squeezes Ben’s shoulder, then keeps moving.

Behind him, he hears Ben’s voice, soft and a little sad, “I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”

A light little laugh fills the space. “It might have been worth it,” Abigail says, just as quietly as Ben. Riley’s slowed his steps a little, straining to listen. “I’ll let you know in a few minutes.”

Ben huffs a laugh.

The path leads further down, into air that tastes like old wood and dry, rotting dirt. Grit and stone turn to slatted wood under their feet, creaking with every step. Riley steps carefully around the splintered edges of a hole with his breath held, sweaty hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. 

When Ben lights up the old wooden chandelier and illuminates the entire room, a horrific sense of wonder swells in Riley’s chest. Dizzying vertigo makes him blink hard as he peers over the edge of the railing, down, down, down. The staircase seems to go on forever, disappearing into gloomy black. The scale of it—the idea that there’s this massive pit carved into the earth beneath New York, centuries-old wooden staircases and platforms and elevators still lingering, like fingerprints from those who built this place—squeezes around his chest until he’s breathless. And that’s not even considering that there’s supposed to be treasure down at the bottom of all this.

Wood groans when Riley takes his first step down the staircase. He flinches.

“It’s okay, Riley,” Abigail says from behind him; when he glances over his shoulder, she’s taking her first tentative steps down. Her eyes stay locked on her feet when she continues, “a fall from this height would be an instant death, at least.”

Dread knots Riley’s throat. “Oh, thanks. Thanks.”

A few steps ahead of them, Ben laughs.

Slowly, they continue down the circular staircase. Riley keeps one hand on the wooden railing and one hand dragging over the roughened dirt-and-stone wall next to him. It feels better having a hand on it, like if the wood collapsed beneath him he could at least make a grab for the wall itself. The deeper they descend, though, the more Riley’s buzzing nerves start to settle. The wood creaks and buckles and sways a little with each step, but it hasn’t cracked yet. 

Then the entire world shudders. Riley’s heart jackknifes into his throat. “What is that?” he says, barely anything louder than a whisper.

Grit and dirt fall around them, clouding the air like snowflakes. Riley paws at Ben’s broad back, clumsily trying to grab his jacket or the strap of the tube canister just for something to cling to. Everything rattles around them, under them. Abigail grabs his wrist and digs in, painfully sharp even through his jacket.

As quickly as it started, it stops. The ground around them settles back into quiet stillness.

“Subway,” Ian says incredulously.

Oh. Right. It was easy to forget, for a second there, that they’re still in modern New York.

Riley’s heartbeat calms. The hand Abigail has clawed around his wrist loosens and drops away. Everyone lingers for a moment longer, looking around like they’re waiting for someone else to make the first move. There’s almost a collective exhale, and then everyone starts shuffling down the staircase again—

Wood splinters and cracks. Shaw screams, this fucking awful sound, as the floor collapses beneath him. 

He disappears into the black, still screaming. A vicious thud cuts everything into silence again.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Riley clutches at his shirt, tearing the collar away from his throat. He’s having trouble breathing. Everything’s gone sideways. He can’t stop staring at the place where Shaw disappeared; he can’t stop hearing the sick wet thud of his body hitting the ground far, far below.

It’s so sickeningly quiet. 

One wrong step. That’s all it takes.

Slightly deliriously, Riley thinks of the first time he met Ben, calling himself a magnet for bad luck. If that’s true…

There’s a lurch—

Riley falls on his ass, flailing for balance. He half-registers Abigail leaping for another platform, landing with a sharp sound of pain and more creaking wood.

The staircase collapses.

“Ben!” Riley scrambles forward, reaching out for Ben as he slides down the broken steps. Their sweaty hands slip the first time—Riley grabs for him again, and this time he gets a hold of Ben’s wrist. “C’mon, c’mon—”

He hauls Ben up. The wood shakes and creaks beneath them. “Get on,” Ben barks, shoving Riley onto the swaying elevator, caging him in with a tight grip on the ropes and railings.

“Ben!” Abigail has her hand outstretched, other hand wrapped around a fence post to keep her balance. Ben reaches for her, the Declaration in his offered hand—

The ropes snap. The elevator plummets, knocking Riley back against the barrier with enough force to make his head whip back. He screams, grabbing at anything in reach, sweaty hands slipping before he can find purchase. Everything narrows to the sensation of his stomach in his throat. He barely feels Ben’s arms wrap around him.

Metal crashes as they slam to a stop. The floor keels the wrong way and Riley loses his balance, crumples out of Ben’s arms and drops on one hip. He feels himself sliding two seconds before he can get his body to react, scrabbling for anything to hold onto, panic bolting through him when he sees all that darkness beneath and feels himself falling toward it—

A hand closes around his, big and warm and tight enough to bruise. Riley’s ribs slam against the edge of the elevator and he chokes, pain blooming across his chest.

He looks up. Ben looks back, determined and terrified, holding Riley’s hand so tight his knuckles are white.

“Ben—”

The elevator swings. Violent nausea climbs Riley’s throat, his legs dangling over emptiness.

Behind Ben, the Declaration rolls across the wooden slats. It catches right on the edge. Ben glances back at it, panic in his eyes. 

Somewhere high above, Abigail shrieks.

Riley claws at the elevator, trying to get enough grip to pull himself up. He can’t get enough leverage. He’s dangling over a death drop by nothing but Ben’s hand, and Ben keeps glancing back at the goddamn Declaration. A frustrated, panicky little noise slips between his clenched teeth, and finally Ben looks back at him.

A second passes. Something clicks behind Ben’s eyes.

“Riley, focus on me,” Ben says, voice ragged, “do you trust me?”

Riley kicks his legs, throat tight with fear. “Ben, what?”

The elevator swings again, Ben gives him the softest look, and—and fucking drops him. Riley’s heart lurches into his mouth. His scream comes out like a wrecked squeak, air whistling past his ears.

His back slams against wood. It punches the air from his lungs with a sharp cough. Instinct makes him roll onto his hands and knees and scramble away from the edge even as he’s dry heaving from panic and pain. When he snaps his head up, Ben’s got the Declaration slung across his back again, getting to his feet as he locks eyes with Riley and almost smiles.

Then the elevator breaks again, almost snapping in half. 

“Fuck—Ben!” Riley makes it halfway to his feet before his legs give out. 

Now Ben’s the one dangling off the edge. The elevator swings wildly as Ben kicks his feet and tries to haul himself up—all he does is yank off a plank of wood that goes tumbling into the darkness, clattering to pieces somewhere far below while Ben struggles to keep his grip.

A sob lodges in Riley’s throat. “No, no, you—”

A rope falls from above. A fucking godsend. Ben grabs it and swings to the platform next to Riley’s, clambering over the wooden railing, and Riley staggers to his feet with tears burning in his eyes.

He’s not sure whether to feel relief that Ben’s alive, or furious. Or, wait, no, he knows exactly what he should be feeling. It’s burning him up from the inside out.

“You dropped me?” he chokes out.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Ben grabs him with two hands cupping his jaw, roughly dragging Riley closer. His eyes look wild. “I knew you would be fine. You’re fine. Right?”

Something hot bursts in Riley’s chest. He grabs the strap across Ben’s chest with a violently shaking hand. “You dropped me to save some fucking paper!”

Ben’s brow furrows. “It’s the Declaration of Independence,” he says, incredulous, like that explains everything.

God. 

Riley rears back and punches him in the face. It hurts, because Riley’s never thrown a punch in his life and Ben’s cheekbones are too sharp, but it feels warranted. He hisses and shakes his hand while Ben staggers back, fingertips immediately flying up to the spot on his cheek where Riley punched him. His eyes are even more wild, bright and fierce when they land on Riley.

Riley doesn’t know what he expected, after that—

But it’s not Ben cupping his jaw again and yanking him into a kiss.

It’s all teeth. The kiss tastes like blood and Riley surges into it, trembling with emotional (and probably physical) whiplash. Ben’s mouth is hot and wet and desperately violent, and Riley can’t figure out how to catch his breath.

He’s panting when Ben rears back. “Riley,” Ben says gravely, a weirdly reverent warmth in his eyes, “I think I’m in love with you.”

Riley freezes. He blinks.

What. What.

“You think?” he stammers, because that’s all he can wrangle together to say.

Ben gives him a look. “Well I haven’t exactly had time to think it over, have I?”

And that’s. That’s so ridiculous that Riley almost laughs. He doesn’t, but only because if he does, he’ll probably burst into tears. It’s bad enough that his eyes are wet right now.

“Ben. You.” He shakes his head. “You have had two and a half years to think it over.”

Distantly, he hears Ben’s dad make a frustrated sound, hears him say, “oh, now he finally realizes, of course it had to be something like this,” but Riley’s not really listening. He’s just staring at Ben’s sincere expression while his whole world shatters around him. It just doesn’t make any sense, is where he keeps getting stuck. He’s in love with Ben, not the other way around. Because if that were true, then—

That’s too much to think about. Especially right now. Riley doesn’t have time for his world to figuratively crumble when the world is actually crumbling.

Luckily, he doesn’t have to think about it for too long. He hears a sharp intake of breath and turns to see Abigail hopping down the stairs, light on her feet. She approaches with a beaming smile and yanks them both into a hug—Riley almost stumbles, only avoiding it because Ben grabs the back of his jacket and holds him upright. “Good, you’re both okay,” Abigail says breathlessly.

Then she shoves them away and ducks around to Ben’s side, so she can check on the Declaration.

“You’re insane,” Riley says, looking between Ben’s fond smile and Abigail’s stark relief when she finds the Declaration unharmed. “You’re both insane. Absolute freaks.”

Abigail, at least, has the decency to look a bit abashed.

The elevator descends to their level with loud, sharp creaks. Ben’s entreaty to give up falls on deaf ears, and they’re all ushered onto the elevator. It sways perilously under their weight.

Riley flinches. A second later, a warm hand finds his wrist, two calloused fingers tucked into the hollow of his palm and pressing in.

Achingly slowly, they take the elevator down. The final landing emerges from the gloom, dimly lit by the chandelier swinging high overhead and the flicker of Ben’s torch. They tie the elevator off and step onto the landing; Riley’s heart’s beating in overdrive, and his body can’t decide if it’s from anticipation or sheer terror. Tension swells between all of them, this weird, visceral feeling that aches in his gums.

It feels like it’s reaching a crescendo. The end is approaching. Despite the all-consuming horror still racing through Riley’s head—he keeps seeing Shaw’s body tumbling down, keeps feeling that stomach-flipping sensation of dangling over nothing but air—he can’t stop thinking about the first time Ben told him about the Charlotte, and the treasure, and the mystery of it all.

This is years, decades, centuries in the making. And it’s all coming to this—

Then they step through the doorway, and the world drops from beneath Riley’s feet.

Not literally, this time. But it might as well. Because where he expected treasure, or—or another doorway, a passage further into this hellscape, there’s just nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just a small, octagonal stone room filled with arches and a lone dangling lantern, floors and walls covered in years and years of grit and grime.

“What is this?” he asks, bitterness seeping into his voice. Ben looks sharply in his direction, brows furrowed.

“So where’s the treasure?” Powell asks, and Riley’s thinking the exact same thing.

Ben…Ben doesn’t say anything.

Ian shakes his head. “Well?”

Ben lets out a quiet sigh. His gaze falls to the ground, something complicated passing over his face that’s there and gone in a blink.

Something tightens in Riley’s chest. “This is it?” He tries to catch Ben’s gaze, waiting for him to swoop in with a clever deduction, a historical fact that’ll point them exactly where they need to go. He wants Ben to say something so badly it hurts. But Ben won’t look at him; Ben won’t look at any of them. That tightness behind Riley’s ribs aches. “We came all this way for a dead end?”

His voice almost breaks. He doesn’t even care.

Ben digs his fingertips into the furrow of his brow. “Yes,” he bites out, so quiet it’s almost a whisper.

Again, the world’s flipping upside down and crumbling. Riley has never seen Ben defeated like this. Frustrated, yeah, and temporarily stumped more times than he can count, but not…not defeated. He’s never seen this slouch in Ben’s shoulders. He’s never heard Ben’s voice on the edge of cracking like this.

“There’s gotta be something else,” he says, feeling just a little desperate. 

Ben shakes his head. “Riley, there’s nothing more.”

“Another clue, a—”

“No—there are no more clues!” Ben yells, eyes wild, looming over Riley and pressing the height advantage like he’s trying to make Riley feel small. “That’s it, okay? It’s over. End of the road. The treasure’s gone—moved, taken somewhere else.” He’s panting, glaring down at Riley.

Yeah. Fuck. Riley feels small.

He shrinks away from Ben, a sick feeling swirling in his chest. The silence between them is tangible and sour.

Ian breaks it. And when Ben answers, when Ben says with all the grave sincerity Riley’s ever heard that this really is a dead end—and god, what a punch to the gut—Ian stares at him like he’s trying to discern every secret in Ben’s head.

Then—

“Okay, go,” Ian tells Powell, before turning back in a rush.

Riley’s panic flares back into a wildfire. He stumbles after the rest of them, stumbling over his words as Ian and Powell step onto the elevator and start the mechanism that slowly begins dragging them back up.

“Don’t do this,” Ben says, punctuated by Abigail’s furious, “you can’t just leave us here!”

Ian stares down at them, shoulders heaving. “Yes, I can. Unless Ben tells me the next clue.”

“There isn’t another clue!”

Riley’s hand trembles, sweaty grip almost slipping around the torch. “Ian, listen,” he says, caught somewhere between pissed off and terrified. Ben reaches back, fumbling at Riley’s chest, hand spreading over the slope where Riley’s neck meets his shoulder. “Why don’t you come back down here, and we can talk through this together—”

In a flash of movement, there’s a gun pointed at Riley’s face. Ben’s thumb digs into the hollow of his throat. “Don’t speak again,” Ian practically growls.

Riley’s gut clenches around acidic fear. “Okay.”

“The clue,” Ian says, eyes narrowing as his gaze sweeps over all four of them. “Where’s the treasure?”

Nobody says anything.

Something sharpens in Ian’s eyes. The aim of the gun lands firmly on Ben; Riley’s heart does a painful lurch in his chest, his hand twitching uselessly in Ben’s direction. “Ben,” Ian snaps, and then he pulls the hammer back with a sharp, resonating click.

“The lantern,” Patrick blurts, and all attention snaps to him.

Ben and his father start a whole spiel about Freemasons, and lanterns, and the British invasion, and Riley feels even more lost than he usually does when the Gates family starts talking history. The gun Ian has pointed at all of them probably isn’t helping his focus. Everything sorta blurs together until the moment Powell cranks the elevator back into motion—without them. Riley’s desperate shouting gets lost in everyone else’s.

The elevator slowly disappears from view. Riley’s hopes for making it out alive go with it.

He waits until Ian is out of earshot, and therefore out of range to shoot Riley if he hears him speak again, before he lets himself sag. “We’re all gonna die.”

“It’s gonna be okay, Riley.” Ben’s voice is painfully soft. He turns, carving into Riley with his gaze, bringing one broad hand up to cup the side of Riley’s neck. His thumb digs into the soft flesh just under Riley’s chin. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

He ducks past Riley, face set in determination.

Patrick Gates follows, patting Riley jovially on the shoulder. “It’s okay, kiddo.”

That’s. Huh.

Riley has no idea what just happened.

He watches, bewildered and reeling from yet another instance of emotional whiplash (and the mild concussion he’s about 80% sure he’s suffering from), as Ben and his dad find the all-seeing eye and start pushing. The stone creaks and groans, opening inches by inches, and Riley’s heart starts beating wildly again. The treasure—and more importantly, a way out—is so close he can almost taste it. He climbs through after everyone else, almost tripping over his own gangly legs.

And then it’s just…nothing. An empty room filled with dirt and cobwebs.

Riley thought he’d seen Ben defeated before, when Ben was bluffing. It’s nothing compared to this. All the light’s gone from his eyes, leaving his face looking hollow and flat. He doesn’t just look defeated; he looks lost. Emotion tightens Riley’s throat just watching him. 

Literally the entire time Riley’s known him, Ben has known exactly who he is and what he wants. Riley’s seen him move through the world like it’s a given it’ll shape itself to those expectations, a combination of confidence and blind hope—this, him standing in the middle of an empty room with his shoulders slumped and his quiet distress written all over his face, doesn’t fit with everything Riley knows.

“I just…” A sigh passes Ben’s lips as he sits, shaking his head. “Really thought I was gonna find the treasure.” 

“Okay,” Patrick says softly, “then we just keep looking for it.”

Abigail steps forward. “I’m in.”

Until the end of the line, Riley thinks, then he has the morbid realization that that’s gonna be in about three days, unless Ian comes back to finish the job sooner. 

Maybe he should keep that thought to himself. It comes tumbling out anyway. 

It turns out that was the right call, though, when it piques Ben’s interest and drags him right out of his funk. He goes on about the builders having to dig a secondary shaft for safety, pacing across the room with increasingly frantic energy. He sweeps a hand over something on the wall, his gaze going so intense that Riley feels a shiver under his skin from all the way over here, not even close to being under Ben’s attention. 

Eyebrows raising, Ben digs in his pocket. He pulls out the carved pipe, cradling it in his hands.

“The secret lies with Charlotte,” Ben whispers, and Riley’s heart gives a weird little lurch.

Nearly getting blown up on the Charlotte feels like something that happened years ago. Compared to the turn Riley’s life has taken since, it seems downright mundane. Oh, yeah, they almost exploded in a centuries-old lost ship. Not a big deal. 

Ben inserts the pipe into the wall, spins a strange contraption.

With a rush of cold, stale air that ruffles Riley’s hair and makes the torches flicker, a crack appears in the wall. Stone mechanisms groan as it swings open, revealing a doorway into thick, murky black. Riley slowly stands, some unnamed emotion clawing up his throat, heartbeat rushing in his ears. He follows Abigail, and Ben’s dad, fingertips brushing against the back of Ben’s hand as he’s pulled almost magnetically into that darkness.

They all step through the doorway, and Riley loses the ability to breathe. He’s pretty sure he’s not the only one.

The treasure…Riley never could’ve imagined it. He tried, and all his ideas never even came close to the real thing. An overwhelming awe swells in his chest, looking out over the sea of antiquities, artifacts from countless ages, all collected here to keep them out of the wrong hands. All found centuries later by one determined, reckless, idiotic genius and his band of misfit toys.

And on the far side of the room—some goddamn stairs.

Riley nearly falls to his knees and weeps.

He mostly hangs back while the rest of them sweep through the rows upon rows of treasure, edging his way towards the stairs and lingering near anything interesting enough to catch his attention. It’s all beautiful, sure, and Riley’s mouth is actually watering from just how much money he’s surrounded by, but he doesn’t get it the way the rest of them do. He doesn’t need to. He just keeps glancing over at Ben, watching the way the firelight catches his eyes, or how his hands sweep around animatedly as he talks to Abigail about something specific amidst all the rest.

Two and a half years of Riley’s life. Two decades of Ben’s. And here it all is—actually real.

Eventually, though, the shock and awe routine starts to fade. Anxious, fidgety energy replaces it; Riley shifts his weight from foot to foot, rubbing his palms down his thighs to soothe away some of that excess energy. It doesn’t work. All he can think about is stepping out into daylight and taking a huge breath of fresh air.

“Can we postpone the rest of the marvelling for later?” He scratches the stubble on his jaw. “I’m ready to see sunlight again. Or a tree.”

Abigail’s head pops up from behind a statue. “You’re a killjoy, Riley.”

“I want to go home,” Riley stresses, and inadvertently glances in Ben’s direction.

Ben’s looking at him with the kind of look he usually reserves for ancient manuscripts or pieces of history; soft around the edges, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Heat climbs the back of Riley’s neck. His heart feels like it’s hammering against his ribcage. He spins, tearing his eyes away from Ben’s stare like that’ll make him stop feeling it on his back.

Ostrich strategy, he orders himself. It never fails.

Right before Riley’s about to take his first step up the wooden staircase, a hand closes around his shoulder and spins him gently in place. Riley’s about to start complaining when he sees the look on Ben’s face. It’s serious, and so warm it kinda makes him dizzy. When Ben curls both hands around his cheeks, Riley sways into the touch and tries not to look too stupidly lovestruck in front of Ben’s dad.

“I’ve thought about it,” Ben says quietly.

Riley blinks. “What are we talking about?”

“I’ve had time to think it over.” His mouth quirks in a helpless little smile, fingers rubbing tiny, soothing circles into Riley’s scalp. “I’ve decided that I am, in fact, unequivocally in love with you. That is, if you’re amenable to that.” He makes a face. “I hope you’re amenable to that.”

Warmth flushes up to the roots of Riley’s hair. He sways forward instinctively—then plants his hands on Ben’s chest to keep himself from sinking into him. “You have the worst timing,” he says under his breath, eyes flicking to the side, where Patrick’s standing with his arms crossed and his gaze averted and Abigail’s watching with blatant curiosity. “I’m not gonna have this conversation in front of your dad.”

The words he should be saying are trapped just behind his teeth. ‘I love you, Ben Gates’. He’s been thinking it every single day for over two years, but he can’t rip them out of his throat and turn them into something real. Especially not with an audience.

So instead, he meets Ben’s steady gaze. He reaches up to curl his hands around Ben’s wrists, anchoring himself, anchoring Ben in place. He nods twice, pouring everything into his eyes. His emotions always did write themselves all over his face.

Judging by Ben’s softening smile, he can read Riley perfectly.

“Quit complaining, please,” Ben says softly, brows quirking. “This can’t be any more awkward than the first time you met him.”

“And I’ve been waiting years for you two to get your act together,” Patrick grumbles. Riley glances at him in embarrassment and horror—god, did he know about Riley’s pathetic pining, just how obvious was it—but Patrick just waves him off, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Go on, go on. Pretend I’m not here.”

Impossible, but whatever. Riley drags in a deep breath. “You have a way different metric for awkward than most people. Also, yes, it totally is.”

“Well, I’m very sorry. I’ll be sure to choose better circumstances when I propose.”

“Wha—Ben!”

Their first night in the new house is, in Riley’s opinion, kinda spooky. It’s fully furnished, so at least it doesn’t have that liminal, empty cavernous house feel, but most of their stuff is still back at the apartment so it doesn’t really feel like their house yet. It doesn’t help that most of the furniture—except for everything in Riley’s office—is antique. That just makes it feel like a museum after hours, and Riley used to have nightmares about being trapped in a haunted museum in the dark, surrounded by all those ancient ghosts. It’s a hangup he never really realized affected him this much until now.

It’s possible Riley chose the wrong man to tie his life to.

Once the delivery gets there, though, and they open a couple bottles of beer and pull some steaming, cheesy pizza onto plates, the eerie atmosphere starts to fade. Ben also keeps brushing against him, little lingering touches. He drops innocuous little kisses on Riley's cheek and the nape of Riley's neck when he passes by, like he's doing it totally without thinking, and Riley gets a weird sense of butterflies from being so caught up in Ben's divided attention.

It’s all very romantic until Ben brushes against his shoulder and, somehow, fumbles his glass and spills frigid beer down Riley’s back. Riley yelps at the cold shock, jumping forward and only managing to bump his hip bones against the kitchen counter.

“Shit, sorry.” Ben sets his glass on the counter with a rattle of ice cubes, hands brushing Riley’s hips. “Here, I’ll help.”

They peel Riley’s sticky, wet shirt off together. Ben probably drags his knuckles along Riley’s ribs a little more intensely than necessary, but Riley isn’t complaining. Once it’s off he drops it in a wet heap in the sink. The house is warm, but goosebumps prickle on his chest and shoulders.

“Ugh, Ben.” He makes a face. “Now I’m sticky.”

It comes out a little whinier than he intended. Well, he’s wet and tacky with beer and all his other clothes are still at the apartment; he’s allowed to be a little whiny.

“You’ll live,” Ben says, grabbing a dishcloth from the sink and running it under warm water. “Hold still.”

His hand clamps tight around the back of his neck, bending Riley’s head down. Ben’s knee digs into the back of Riley’s and pins him in place against the counter. A warm, wet cloth wipes him down, slow and dragging. It’s actually kind of soothing, and Riley lets his eyes fall shut and his head bow forward as he sinks into it.

Eventually, Ben finishes and tosses the wet cloth into the sink with Riley’s shirt. Another kiss brushes the top of Riley’s spine, so faint it sends shivers down his back and across his shoulders.

Fabric rustles. When Riley turns, Ben’s holding out his sweater, down to only his thin cotton t-shirt underneath. The memory of a dingy bar bathroom comes crawling back to life in Riley’s head, Ben demanding Riley’s hoodie and getting it without much argument. It gives him vertigo. He actually has to lean back against the counter so he doesn't feel faint, that's how hard it hits him.

“Woah.” Riley takes the sweater, clutching it in his arms. “Deja vu.”

If his voice comes out a little croaky, Ben doesn’t call him on it. He just steps in close again, bracing his hands on the counter on either side of Riley’s hips. He doesn’t go for the kiss; he just ducks down and presses his forehead against Riley’s. That feels even more intimate.

“Where would I be without you, Riley Poole?” He says it with an incredulous little huff of laughter, like the idea’s ridiculous all on its own. 

“Poorer, more desperate, still the laughingstock of the historian community?”

Ben pulls back. He gives Riley a look, sharp-eyed and serious, and Riley’s stomach swoops. “I would still be lonely,” he says, like that’s the answer Riley was supposed to give all along. Trust Ben to turn a hypothetical into a test. Trust Ben to say something as sappy as that with a completely straight face.

Riley’s whole body flushes with warmth. “Oh. Well, that too.”

Ben rolls his eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”

Riley kisses him. Ben always kisses with urgency, but this one feels a little more relaxed. A little less like they're running out of time. Ben hums into the kiss and leans in so close Riley can feel both their heartbeats thudding through his ribcage in tandem. He wraps his arms around Ben's shoulders and ducks away from the kiss so he can yank Ben into a crushing hug, rubbing his stubble against Ben's cheek. It feels good, being able to do this without his mind running in overdrive. It actually quiets everything down and drags it all to a stop, and for once Riley can just stand there and breathe.

“Love you too,” Riley says, and if he still gets a little giddy every time he says it, that’s nobody’s business but his.