Can I Be Close to You?

Part 1

She is warm in his lap, hazelnut strands dangling from her hastily-fashioned bun, tickling his thigh. Her head is a comfortable weight. Suppressing the ache in his stomach, in the cavernous expanse of his rib cage, easing otherwise-spiralling thoughts into a vague hum he can almost ignore.

Eyes on the television so she thinks he is watching it when every nerve in his body is tuned to the frequency of hers.

A groan from his lap. A dramatic sigh. Her face peering up at him, a gaze he meets too quickly.

"So apparently it is statistically impossible for five fully developed adult women to pick a single location for girls night."

Eyes rolling beneath slightly dishevelled eyebrows, tugging at the smile he keeps only for her. Only when she is not looking.

His fingers find the sleeve of her T-shirt, the skin beneath it, easily, smoothly, as though his pulse were not rabbiting in his throat. "Make Rose choose between two options. Always works when it's your turn to choose take-out."

She grips his smirk in one hand, fingers on his cheeks, tugging his face toward hers in a starlit moment that lasts an eternity. "That's rude. You're rude."

Face cold when she releases him. Stare fixed on the blurry mass of television he has not truly focused on for the last thirty minutes. "I believe the word you're looking for is 'honest', Rey."

"I know what I said, Benjamin. And I stand by it." Her finger between his ribs before she turns away from him. Shifts in his lap, chasing comfort, forcing him to swallow a dozen licks of flame.

The risk of a glance at her phone clutched between dainty fingers. "But you're going to do it, aren't you?" Words curling between his smirk.

"Of course. I'm not an idiot."

"Just unbearably cruel to your favourite person in the entire world." A joke, really, just a joke. Words carelessly uttered above clenching fists and frozen lungs.

"I wouldn't dare utter a word against Grandma Maz."

A moment. A breath. "Of course, what was I thinking?" Flat, involuntary sounds. Impossible to pass off as a joke, were he to dare. Her skin is at his fingertips and he does not pull away.

"Silly Ben. You know you're my person." It floats away from him, this simple collation of five humble words. Words rendered solid-gold priceless when wrapped in the gentle timbre of her voice, trembling willow, breeze through grass, the silken beating of butterfly wings.

"Hard to know when you're constantly insulting me." His wandering thumb severely undermines any heat the statement might have possessed.

"Shut up for a minute, Rose is finally texting me back."

Eyes on her phone, hand reaching back to pat him somewhat awkwardly on the cheek, her palm characteristically frigid on his skin. Catching his breath for him, gently forcing it back into his lungs. Compelling his next breath. And another. And each one taken in her presence until he is alone again.

It is easy to touch her, to see the curl of loose hairs at the nape of her neck and twist them around his index finger, to close his eyes in the moment that a part of her surrounds a part of him. It has always been easy. Too easy, effortless since their 'roommates of convenience' arrangement began a year ago. And now it is easier than breathing, to remind himself of her reality whenever he needs. And if that is every moment of every minute they spend in the same space – well, let it be said he is forever grateful mind-reading is a supernaturally impossible talent.

"And we have a decision, ladies and gentlemen." Victory pulls her to sitting. Thigh against thigh, bicep to bicep, every inch of his skin twitching to hold her. "It may be the third dodgiest club I've ever been to, but it is a decision and I'll accept it gladly." Legs tucked to one side. Head on his shoulder. His left hand finds her knee independently of his eyes.