Chapter Text
“I won’t be long, I promise.” Benjamin said, pushing the sleeves of his soft, grey hoodie halfway up his forearms and relaxing back into the plump cushions as he typed on his phone. “15 minutes? 20 tops.”
“Mmm-hm.”
Benjamin’s focus drifted from the screen and he found himself distracted by the cosy little world Julia had created next to him, with everything she needed within arm’s reach. Bundled up in a chunky, cream sweater, she sat cross-legged on the oversized velvet sofa, thoughtfully studying the dense technical manual in her lap while her left hand absentmindedly tapped her toes through her thick wool socks. This was an unguarded, off-duty version of her that only existed in the safety of their home and he was struck by an overwhelming sense of gratitude every time he witnessed it.
Feeling his gaze lingering on her, Julia looked up with a soft smile. “Get on with it, then,” she murmured. Leaning forward, she retrieved her pink Moomin mug from the coffee table, tracing the two hearts on the handle with her thumb as she took a sip of piping hot tea and turned her attention back to the page.
Benjamin returned to the task at hand, propping his phone up against a stack of maritime textbooks on the coffee table and adjusting the framing to eliminate the view into the bedroom beyond.
“Is this okay?”
“Hmm?” Julia said, looking up from her book again and taking a cursory glance at the screen, noticing that her left knee and shoulder were just visible on the edge of the frame. “Oh yeah, looks good… except…”
She reached out, gently tugged on the tail of his man bun until his hair tumbled over his shoulders, then slid the elastic onto her wrist for safe keeping.
“Oh yeah, thanks,” Benjamin smiled, finger-combing his hair into some sort of order.
Checking the camera’s view one more time, he placed a quick kiss against Julia’s temple, hit the live button and watched the viewer numbers rapidly increase into the thousands.
“Hej hej! Welcome everyone!” he began, his voice suddenly projecting with an energy level more appropriate for a stage than his own living room. “Hello Malmö! Greetings Åbo… and Germany… and Australia… wow! Well, welcome to our little corner of Stockholm for another Friday night live. I hope you’re all doing well,” he said brightly. “I don’t have a lot of time tonight, but let’s see what questions you have for me.”
As more fans joined, the comments began flying up the screen in a blur and he had to scroll back to pick out some interesting questions. One in particular—repeated in a dozen variations—caught his eye and prompted a reflexive twitch of a smile.
“Is my favourite lighthouse here? Yeah, Julia’s here,” he replied, casting a quick, private look to his right that sent a fresh stream of heart emojis floating up the side of the screen. He grinned as she leaned back against his shoulder and her hand crept into the edge of the frame to give a little wave. “She’s reading something very technical about navigation instruments, so we need to try not to disturb her, okay?” Her hand formed a thumbs-up sign before disappearing to turn the page.
“Okay, first question… ‘When is the acoustic EP dropping?’ Well, I’m glad you’re looking forward to it. It’ll be ready soon, I promise. I’m just being a bit of a perfectionist with this one,” he chuckled. That was an understatement. He’d spent months fine-tuning every note, but he knew it would be worth the effort. “But I think a couple more studio sessions and it should be good to go.”
“‘Are you going to be touring this summer?’ Yes, absolutely! We’re just finalising all the dates so stay tuned for announcements on those soon. It’ll be good to see you all again out on the road!” He skimmed his thumb across the screen, searching for actual questions among the barrage of ‘Come to <insert name of a town he’d never heard of in his life>’ requests.
“Umm…‘Will Julia be coming on tour with you?’ He looked towards her, raising an eyebrow in a silent request for approval to share their plans. He received a small nod in return.
“Yeah, hopefully… for some of it at least. She works two weeks on, two weeks off the ship, and we’re trying to plan the tour around that so she can come along for the ride as much as possible.”
He skimmed the comments again, trying to source more music questions, but with Julia’s presence, the fans seemed preoccupied with the logistics of their relationship.
“You guys are relentless,” he laughed, shaking his head. “I’m almost ready to put out new music and all you want to know is what the Captain’s schedule is like. But sure, let’s roll with it.”
“‘How often do you get to go on the ship with her?’ As much as I can,” Benjamin replied, his voice softening as he glanced to the right. “It’s different from being together at home because she’s on call 24/7 on the ship, so it’s not like we can just hang out like we do here. And with gigs and stuff, sometimes my schedule means it’s not practical for me to be on board as much as I’d like. But I have a mini recording studio I can set up in the Captain’s quarters… it's all metal walls, though, so the acoustics aren’t great,” he concluded, searching for the next topic.
“The acoustics of my quarters not good enough for you all of a sudden?” Her dry, mischievous tone was so quiet he wasn’t sure he’d heard it until she added a barely-audible follow-up: “I thought you hit some pretty impressive notes in there last time.” Benjamin could only blink in stunned silence as he felt her shoulder shake against his. Julia let out a silent huff of a laugh into her tea, then placed the mug down on the coffee table, reached towards his phone and began to scroll back through the comments.
“Wait, what are you doing?” Benjamin teased, the tips of his ears flushing pink as he tried to regain control of the narrative. “Aren’t you supposed to be swotting up on the finer points of the…” he peered around her shoulder. “E-C-D-I-S? Whatever that is?”
Julia didn't speak, preferring to remain mysterious, but she swiped until she found the question she was looking for. “Oh, you want me to answer that one?” He leaned in to move her finger out of the way, groaning as he read the text. “Oh, God, of course you do.”
He looked back at the camera. “So Julia wants to know ‘How does it feel to be Sweden’s favourite thirst trap?’”
He hid his face in his hands for a second, sinking further back into the sofa cushions. “I don’t know…I’m not even really sure I know what that means…I guess it’s kind of flattering but…” Julia moved her hands into view, forming a perfect heart shape with her fingers and framing Benjamin’s flushed face right in the middle.
The hearts racing up the screen became so dense the frame rate seemed to stutter and the comments went wild.
‘OMG I love her! 😂’
‘She’s such a queen!’
‘We 🛳️ BenJulia 💖’
Benjamin gave her a withering look, shaking his head while trying and failing to contain a snigger. Suddenly he reached out and grabbed her waist, pulling her to his side and digging his fingers into her ribs, the resulting struggle knocking his phone over and leaving the viewers staring at the ceiling.
“Oh, you think you're funny, do you? Trolling me on my own livestream…” he giggled, his voice muffled by her shoulder as she squirmed and squealed. “I'm trying to be a serious artist here!”
Gasping for breath, Julia wriggled out of his grasp, batting his hands away while she recovered her composure enough to stop laughing and adopt the tone she saved for giving junior crew members a ticking off. “Well then you’d better behave yourself, hadn’t you Bengs?”
He gave a mock ‘well that’s me told’ expression to the camera as he righted the phone, then smiled back at her, completely forgetting for a moment that thousands of people were watching him fall in love all over again in real time.
Looking back to the screen, he saw a flurry of ‘HAHA! He’s so whipped!’ comments as they scrolled past. “Sorry guys, Captain Julia is being unusually disruptive tonight.”
Benjamin took a dramatic intake of breath. “Okay, okay, let’s try to be professional for at least five minutes, shall we?”
He scanned the blur of text until he caught a question that made him tilt his head toward Julia again.
“Someone’s asking if I get to hang out on the bridge while you’re ‘driving the boat’,” Benjamin read aloud, knowing how much the use of the terms ‘driving’ vs ‘piloting’ and ‘boat’ rather than ‘ship’ wound her up. A smirk crossed his lips at her predictable look of disdain.
“No, I don’t go to the bridge that often. She might be a complete rascal when she's off duty, but on the ship, Julia’s got a lot of responsibility. There are two thousand people’s lives in her hands, including mine, and if she’s on the bridge it’s usually because she needs to have all her attention on the job. I don’t want to be a distraction, so I mostly stay out of her way.”
He paused, a softer look crossing his face. “But if it’s quiet and there’s a particularly spectacular sunset, then I might get an invitation to go and watch from the wing… on the condition that I have to be very good and not press any buttons. I mostly just stand at the back, in awe of the view—and her,” he said, batting his eyelashes in her direction.
The heart emojis came thick and fast. Julia rolled her eyes, though the slight blush on her cheeks betrayed her real feelings about his flattery. She reached into the frame, catching his chin in her palm and moving her thumb and forefinger across his lips in a ‘zip it’ motion which only made the fans go into a frenzy of “Find someone who looks at you like Benjamin looks at Julia. 😍🥰” and “Awww… she loves it really! 💖”
He mimed ‘unzipping’ his lips with a wide grin. “Oookay! Moving on,” Benjamin said, clearing his throat as he saw the next prompt. “This person wants to know: ‘What’s the hardest part about the two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off schedule?’”
Their playful energy dissipated into something more grounded as the question focused their attention on the ever-present ticking clock that counted down to her next rotation. Benjamin’s right hand left the frame to interlace his fingers with hers. “The hardest part is right before she has to go back,” he said, his voice losing its professional edge. “Watching her pack her bags and knowing it’s just going to be me here…”
He trailed off, looked towards the opposite side of the room, near the TV console, and his smile returned. He turned to Julia. “Do you want to show them the tracker or shall I?”
He watched as she set her book to one side and padded across the living room. A few seconds later, the bottom left corner of a large, green circuit board was nudged into the edge of the frame and gradually moved around to show the whole board. On it was a printed map of the coastline she navigated every day along with the names of the ports. Chains of LEDs followed the routes of the shipping lanes between them and a single white light was illuminated to show the ship’s current position just before the port turn at Värmdö.
“This was my Christmas present from her,” Benjamin explained. “It’s a live… what’s it called Julia? AIS?” He looked up for her confirmation. “Yeah, AIS feed that’s linked to her ship. It sits right next to the TV so I can look over and see exactly where she is. Cool, right?”
He caught a couple of the comments flitting by:
“AHHH! That’s so adorable, I just can’t… 😭”
“Cutest thing ever! I’m dead!”
Julia returned the tracker to its easel as he continued. “It’s the first thing I check when I wake up and the last thing before I go to bed. So yeah,” he said softly, taking Julia’s hand as she sat back down. “Knowing I’m going to be watching my other half slowly moving backwards and forwards on that display for the next fourteen days…” Her thumb traced a slow, comforting line over his knuckles. “That’s really difficult.”
“Buuut,” Benjamin added, lifting his tone and raising one eyebrow at the camera, “it makes the reunions pretty legendary… Speaking of which,” he said, picking the phone up from its makeshift stand and ignoring the flood of ‘OMG! 🙈’ and ‘WHOA, BENJAMIN! DOWN BOY!’ comments, “She’s only just got home, so I’m going to end this here. Thanks everyone for being here, and for all of your questions, have a great evening and I’ll see you again, same time next week.”
With perfect comic timing, Julia pounced just a fraction of a second before he hit the end button, giving the fans a brief glimpse of her wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing a loud, lingering kiss to his cheek.