Ben's heart breaks all over again when he sees Cole's upturned face, red-eyed and tear-streaked. It's a combination of an instinctual reaction to someone who is so vulnerable, and a reaction to the fact that this is Cole, someone Ben has come to care for a great deal.
Cole's words of gratitude, the certainty with which he says that he wouldn't have made it out without Ben, send a spike of fear through Ben, cold and paralyzing. What if Cole is right? He's strong, Ben knows that. Invulnerable in many ways that Ben himself is not. But he is fragile, too. What if Ben had left the goop festival (god that feels like it was a year ago now, how can it only have been earlier today?) and Cole had stayed, stepped through the door to the Pit on his own a little later? What if it had swallowed him up and Ben had never seen him again? If he'd just disappeared with no trace?
What if Ben had lost him?
It's an old wound, that that fear touches. So many years of being terrified for Klaus, of being convinced each morning that this was going to be the day that he lost him. There is little that scares Ben so deeply, so immediately and beyond words, as the thought of losing the people who matter to him. Cole is one of those people now.
His voice comes out choked and halting as he says:
"Then I'm- really really really glad - I was with you- when it- happened."
Ben is a little startled at Cole burying his face against his stomach, clinging to him like a frightened child trying to hide. But he is so awash in the belated terror that comes from the thought that he might have never seen Cole again that he is more than glad to be hugged tightly like that. He clutches Cole against him, one hand on the top of his pale-haired head, the other gripping his upper arm, just holding onto him. Reinforcing for himself that Cole is solid and real and alright, and he is solid and real and alright, and they made it out okay.
"I'm sorry- you had to see that horrible place again. I'm sorry... any of it happened. It shouldn't have happened. You- deserve never to be in a place like that again."
no subject
Cole's words of gratitude, the certainty with which he says that he wouldn't have made it out without Ben, send a spike of fear through Ben, cold and paralyzing. What if Cole is right? He's strong, Ben knows that. Invulnerable in many ways that Ben himself is not. But he is fragile, too. What if Ben had left the goop festival (god that feels like it was a year ago now, how can it only have been earlier today?) and Cole had stayed, stepped through the door to the Pit on his own a little later? What if it had swallowed him up and Ben had never seen him again? If he'd just disappeared with no trace?
What if Ben had lost him?
It's an old wound, that that fear touches. So many years of being terrified for Klaus, of being convinced each morning that this was going to be the day that he lost him. There is little that scares Ben so deeply, so immediately and beyond words, as the thought of losing the people who matter to him. Cole is one of those people now.
His voice comes out choked and halting as he says:
"Then I'm- really really really glad - I was with you- when it- happened."
Ben is a little startled at Cole burying his face against his stomach, clinging to him like a frightened child trying to hide. But he is so awash in the belated terror that comes from the thought that he might have never seen Cole again that he is more than glad to be hugged tightly like that. He clutches Cole against him, one hand on the top of his pale-haired head, the other gripping his upper arm, just holding onto him. Reinforcing for himself that Cole is solid and real and alright, and he is solid and real and alright, and they made it out okay.
"I'm sorry- you had to see that horrible place again. I'm sorry... any of it happened. It shouldn't have happened. You- deserve never to be in a place like that again."