FORGERY . . . THE BOYS ! [1]

nine.

If Ben thought she was going to fuck him after she just tried to kill him, after he just made her cry, after only having gotten to see his face for the first time in decades for a few moments–

Well, Ben was unfortunately right.

But she wasn't going to be happy about it. No, she was going to be very, very unhappy the entire time.

The car ride back is extremely awkward but not because of the expected reasons, but because Hughie is naked. Brooke tried to hand him back his clothes and Butcher said they didn't have time. Said that if he truly insisted, he could get dressed as they drove. Said that it wasn't much to look at anyways.

So Hughie sat in the front seat with his balls pinned to leather, Butcher drove them to a potentially fatal second destination (though, realistically, it was just a hotel, but Brooke did not necessarily trust anyone in this car) and Ben sat straight beside her. Completely, stick-up-his-ass straight.

Brooke elbows him in the side. "What is your problem?"

"I didn't know I had a problem," Ben answers, a dimple poking through the skin of his cheek. He is so pretty. She still wants to deck him. "But I'm sure you're going to enlighten me."

"You're sitting like you've got a stick up your ass," Brooke huffs, using that moment to nod toward his ass, and allowing herself a glance. As a treat. "If you're so tense about this plan, why'd you agree to it?"

"Oh, I'm not tense about anything." He turned ever so slightly. Enough to look at her. "Payback on Payback? Dealing with whatever their dirty laundry is? Piece of cake for me."

Brooke bristles. "So what–"

"Have you ever considered," Ben leans impossibly close, his green eyes so impossibly green and simmering, "that maybe, it's impossible to sit this close to my wife and not be able to touch her?"

There's the painful sound of skin unsticking from leather, and then an uncomfortable, "oooookay" sighed from Hughie in the front seat.

Butcher, on the other hand, fixes his gaze on Brooke in the rearview mirror. "Wife? You two marry each other outside Crimson Countess' remains or something?"

Brooke actually flushes against her will. It's embarrassing to be so petty and aggressive in one moment and to deal with the deflation the next. It's also amazing how quickly the presence of someone familiar can calm her, how she feels so much less hostile with Ben at her side, even if he's instigating conversations that she is behooved to have.

She clears her throat, though, and looks Butcher's reflection in the eye. "We got married in Russia."

"They hold a ceremony in between all that torture, did they?" Oh, that smirk is going to get his head blown up one day. Brooke will make sure of it if she has to.

"No. It was– Well, it was just an unofficial thing," her face is blazing hot, this really is embarrassing, defending her fake marriage to these very real people, "I thought I was going to die, and I just– didn't want to die with him as my boyfriend. After all we'd gone through so far."

"Touching." Butcher's fingers drum on the steering wheel. Brooke's eye actually twitches.

Hughie twists around in the seat just enough for Brooke to see one of his eyes. "You called him your boyfriend."

Ben's suit shifts next to her. He's fully sitting sideways in the seat now, staring at her. No traces of anger on his face, just pure amusement. Is she seriously this red? She's going to blow up this entire car. She's mortified. "You demoted me without me here to defend myself?"