Chapter Text
The intersection at 16th Street is already thrumming with people, even though the parade itself won't be here for at least another 30 minutes. The pavement is lined with zombies and ghouls, skeletons and devils, plus a slew of movie characters in futuristic armor and makeup that he probably should know the names of, but doesn't.
A squad of mounted police is trying to keep the spectators off the roads, even though the traffic is thinning already - native New Yorkers know to avoid 6th Avenue on October 31st, it seems - and as one of the officers rides past, Ben absentmindedly thinks how weird it is to see a human face in his direct line of sight. The man ignores him though, focused on a pair of she-devils that have spilled onto the asphalt, even as the dappled gray gelding that he rides gives Ben the side-eye. Talk about horse sense.
Ben's distracted by watching a lion and a witch stumble across the road, both too inebriated to walk in a straight line, when something touches his flank and Ben flinches. His first instinct is to sidestep, to move away from the uninvited touch, but with so many people milling about, surrounding him, chances are that he would crush somebody's foot - which would be bad - so he forces himself to remain still, save for a near-involuntary swish of his tail.
"Wow," someone says near his elbow, "that is the best centaur costume that I've ever seen. Actually, strike that..."
The voice is deep despite being female, smooth, and British, the crisp tones at odds with the jumble of East Coast accents that surround them.
"... that's the best costume I've ever seen, no additional qualifiers needed."
Ben looks down to see a young human standing next to him, hand hovering over his flank, with a sheepish expression on her face.
Her blush deepens once she notices his glare.
"Sorry," she says with a nervous smile, "I should have asked before I touched your costume."
She rubs her thumb back and forth over the side of her index finger thoughtfully, like she's trying to pin down a half-remembered sensation. Ben opens his mouth to say something snide, mostly to get her to leave him alone, but before he can organize his thoughts into something resembling wit she is already talking again.
"It feels so real," she says, more to herself, before looking back up at him. "What is that? Some sort of EVA foam?"
Her small hand reaches for the edge of the horse blanket that covers his rump all the way down to his knees and now he does sidestep to evade her grasp, although he is careful not to crush anyone. His hooves clop on the pavement, audible even over the din of the crowd.
"OK, yeah, sorry," she pulls back. "Hands off, I get it."
She sighs and shoves her hands into the pockets of her jumpsuit. It's the exact same shade of cinnamon brown as his coat.
"Sorry. I don't mean to be this nosy, it's just that your costume is really good." She squints up at him, taking a step back so that she won't have to crane her neck quite as much. "You don't talk much, do you?"
Ben opens his mouth again, and once again she beats him to the punch.
"Oh, dear God, don't tell me you're dumb," her eyes go comically wide not a second later. "I mean mute. Is that right? Gosh, I'm so sorry, I am totally screwing the pooch here."
Ben chuckles lowly. She's obviously quite flustered, and he would be lying if he said that it wasn't cute.
"Oh, I can talk," he says, once she stops stammering. "You're just making it hard to get a word in edgewise."
Her blush impossibly deepens and she looks to the ground.
"Yeah, sorry, I got," she sighs and kicks at the ground, "really self-conscious about touching your costume like that and I, uh, I talk when I get nervous."
"No harm done," he says softly. "But I would appreciate if, in the future, you didn't touch... it without permission."
If she notices the slight hitch in his voice when he talks about his costume, she doesn't show it.
"Yeah, sure thing," she says, then adds with a dazzling smile: "It's really good though."
"So you said," he agrees, feeling somewhere between smug and slightly worried that he's drawn her interest like this.
"I sometimes think about getting into cosplay, and the amount of effort that go into something like that just blows my mind. I mean, it's not like I couldn't - OK, maybe not something like what you got going on there, but like... a Mark XLIX Armor, I think I could make that happen with some trial and error, but who has the time for..." she breaks off with a sheepish smile. "I'm rambling again, aren't I?"
Ben nods solemnly, but he can't quite help the small smile that threatens to break through his stern expression.
"Maybe."
"Sorry, again," she mutters. Then she suddenly sticks her hand out, arm elevated so that is hovers near his hip. "I'm Rey, by the way."
He hesitates for a moment before he grasps the offered hand. It is small against his own, cool and strong and oddly calloused for one so young.
"Ben."
"Hi, Ben," she grins again. "And who are we today?"
He blinks and turns his head, looking at the broad expense of his blanketed back, just in case he has suddenly grown wings, or maybe a scorpion's stinger.
Nope, still all horse.
"Uh, a centaur?" He offers.
She laughs, a surprisingly pleasant sound that he finds he wouldn't mind hearing again.
"Yeah, well, duh," she says. "Let me rephrase: Are you a specific centaur?"
He frowns.
"Like, from Harry Potter or something?" he asks cautiously.
"Or something," she says with another small laugh. "But I was more thinking along the lines of Chiron or Nessus."
"You know your mythology."
"I had a lot of time to read as a kid," she shakes her head, and he gets the impression that she is uncomfortable with the subject. "So, which one is it?"
"Just a centaur, I'm afraid," he shrugs. "Not anyone famous."
"Ben the Centaur, eh?"
"Yup."
"That's still pretty cool, if you ask me."
He hums noncommittally.
"And you?"
"What?"
He gestures to her outfit. A light brown, hooded jumpsuit with some faded black lettering in an unfamiliar alphabet on the right breast pocket, paired with a beige tool belt and what he assumes is a black wig, brown UGGs and a crescent shaped necklace, although he supposes that last item might not be part of the costume.
She does a little double-take as she looks down at herself.
"Oh, Rose Tico."
His expression must show his confusion for she immediately adds: "From Galaxy Wars."
"Ah," he says, as if that means something to him.
Rey sighs.
"I take it you don't go to the movies much?"
You could say that, he thinks, before shooting her a helpless little smile.
"And here I thought we could be friends," the words sting at first, because he thought so too, but then he sees the smile that tugs at the corners of her mouth. Finally she relents, allowing the grin to take over. "OK, maybe not a deal breaker. At least you know who Harry Potter is."
He chuckles lightly.
"That I do. It's got centaurs in it."
"OK, weird horse-people fetish, I get it. I totally had a thing for unicorns when I was about twelve or thirteen," she wriggles her hand, perhaps indicating the merit of having a unicorn-phase, no matter what age one is. "And just like that friends is back in the cards."
"I am glad to hear that," he says, and he truly is glad. This is the weirdest conversation that he's had in years - which is not that hard, given that he rarely talks to people at all - but he also finds this strange, squirrelly girl oddly endearing. "So, uh, your costume?"
"OK, so, Rose is a mechanic in the new Galaxy Wars trilogy. And I have a friend who's called Rose too, and they even look alike, but she can't even change a light bulb without blowing the fuse, so we make fun of her all the time. And," at this point Rey holds a finger up to silence him, even though he hadn't been dreaming of interrupting her, entranced by her obvious energy and enthusiasm as he is, "I know that I'm rambling again, but there is a point to this, which is that she told me, once, that if I am so obsessed with Rose Tico then I should be her - even though she knows that I personally prefer Kira - and here we are, at Halloween, with me in a very toasty Rose Tico costume."
"I see," he says, cautiously, even as he is fighting back a smile.
"I talk too much, don't I?"
"I'll live, I think."
"Good, because I'd hate to be responsible for the demise of Ben the Centaur. You're probably on the endangered species list or something."
That stings a little, hits a little bit too close to home, but she can't know that and she can't know that, so he forces a light laugh.
"I appreciate that," the crowd is getting thicker now as more people a streaming into the intersection. It's only going to get worse in the remaining time before parade is scheduled to arrive and Ben is regretting the decision to wait at the terminus this year. Then he looks down at the small human girl that is still standing by his side, and he amends that thought. Maybe he's not entirely regretting the decision.
But it is only a matter of time before someone bumps into him and discovers that the horse part or his 'costume' is a little more realistic than it should be.
"You want to get out of here?" he asks her. It's a stretch, he knows that she will probably say no, that - if he was but a bystander and overheard how someone else that she hardly knows asked her that - he would want her to say no, but to his surprise she tilts her head up at him.
"The parade isn't even here yet," she says, which he notices isn’t a ‘no’. Her nose scrunches up as she waits for him to answer, and it is more adorable than it has any right to be. Ben finds that he is changing his mind about her and him for the second time in as many minutes. If this girl affects him like that he should be getting out of dodge as fast as his hooves will carry him.
But, instead of turning tail and galloping away from this dangerous place that he’s found himself in, he hears a voice that sounds suspiciously like his own.
"I'll take you next year," the voice says, and Ben finds that he would like to ask the voice how it intends to pull that off.
"Bold of you to think that I would let you take me next year."
Something Ben can only agree with.
He swallows thickly, thinking fast.
Be smooth, Ben, you can do this. The voice in his head sounds suspiciously like his dad, which really should be the last hint that this is a terrible idea, but he finds himself ignoring that voice and with it his last remaining shred of reason.
"Why don't you come with me, and then we'll find out if I'm right?"
He suppresses a wince, because that sounded better in his head, but she just laughs.
"Yeah, why don't we?" she says with a broad grin, before stepping slightly away from him and turning. "Which way, horse boy?"
He looks around, his far superior height giving him a good overview of their surroundings, before pointing up 6th Avenue, where the press of people seems to be less thick.
"That way?" He points over her head.
"What's that way?"
"Uh, fewer people?"
Her smile falters a little.
"If your goal is not to sound like a serial killer, you're doing a piss poor job."
"I'm not..."
She shakes her head and glaces up at him again, head tilted and expression thoughtful.
"You know what? I think you're right," she says softly. "Also a serial killer would probably pick a less memorable costume."
She pulls a phone out of her back pocket and holds the cracked screen up for his inspection.
"Listen, uh," she falters and blushes, nervous about her ask, but still she pushes on. "Is it okay if I shoot a picture of you to my friend? Just, uh, in case..."
"... that I am a serial killer after all?"
She shrugs, seeming genuinely embarrassed.
"Well, yeah."
He shouldn't agree to this. The terrible ideas just keep piling up and before long he's going to be buried beneath an avalanche of poor judgment and snap decisions. He'll have to sell his house, relocate to a new city (if not a new continent), hire some people to cover his tracks and then hire a few more people to cover the tracks of the people that he hired to cover his tracks... but her bright smile and hazel eyes insistently tell him that it will all be fine in the end.
"OK," me mutters, finally.
"OK?"
"Do your worst."
She laughs, confirming that he is utterly screwed.
"Do you have a good side?"
Now it is Ben's turn to flush.
"My backside?" he asks, not entirely joking. "You see that I got going on up here in the ear and nose department, right?"
"Makes you look patrician," she says, rather offhandedly, as she points the camera lens at his face. "Hold still, the light here sucks, but if I don't set the ISO down the noise reduction is going to make you look like a Renaissance painting."
There's a lot of words in there that he doesn't know, but of course his poor brain chooses to concentrate on the fact that she called him 'patrician'. He fights down the compulsion to stomp his hooves, caught somewhere between male pride and nervousness as he is.
The phone makes a tinny fake shutter sound and she squints at the photo for a second; before she nods and then taps the screen a couple of times.
"Is this going to the real Rose Tico?"
"My roommate, Finn, actually. You don't want me to sick Rose on you," her voice is distant as she concentrates on composing a text, "which is precisely what's going to happen once she sees those broad shoulders and that patrician nose situation of yours."
He preens and wills all of his four feet to stay rooted to the ground, as he waits for her to put the phone away.
"Shall we?"
"Lead the way, horse-boy."
Maneuvering his bulk through the crowd is a little more challenging than he thought, but Rey comes to his rescue, politely tapping a pair of kissing - tragically anatomically-incorrect - skeletons on the shoulder.
"Hey, excuse me," she says, brightly, "horse-man coming though."
The pair disengages their lip-less mouths for a second, the man with a frown and the girl-skeleton with a startled squeak as she notices just how tall Ben is looming over them, but they move out of the way politely enough.
"Thanks," Ben murmurs.
"Don't mention it. Skeleton's can't kiss like that, they were disrespecting their costumes, and if you asked me I was doing them a favor by putting a stop to it."
He laughs as she continues to forge a path for him, cheerfully cajoling people out of his way, and before long they are out of the thick of it.
"So are you taking me all the way to Central Park, for the complete creepy stranger experience?"
"That's, uh, a bit of a hike," he says cautiously.
"Oh, I don't mind, I used to walk everywhere in London," her tone grows a little more somber for a moment, "it was cheaper than taking the tube."
Then, before he can say anything to that, she whirls around.
"Unless walking in that thing is torture for you," she slaps her forehead. "I am such an ass, I didn't even think of that. There, uh, isn't someone else in there with you, right? Some poor sod playing the horse's ass?"
She looks at his rump speculatively, and he shifts without thinking, rotating his body to remove his rear from her direct line of sight.
"No," Ben says quietly, "it's just me."
That's true in more than one way, and if he's honest he's rarely felt so isolated as he does right now, walking with this girl who he can talk to so effortlessly that it's like he's known her for all his life... and who doesn't know him at all.
Rey, oblivious to his mood, just gapes at him.
"Well, my regard for your DIY skills just went up a notch, and I don't say that lightly. Also I am very happy that I haven't been rudely ignoring your ass. That would have been so awkward."
He chuckles, even though his heart isn't in it for once, and they walk in silence for a little while as Rey's text notification chimes and she pulls out her phone to check. Despite having a clear view of the screen from his height, he is too far away to make out what the text says, but he can tell that it contains a lot of emojis, including a few distinctly vegetable-shaped ones.
"So," she asks, once she has set her phone to silent and stowed it away in one of the many pockets of her overall again. "What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a writer."
She walks backwards for a few steps, staring up at him again with those curious forest-green eyes, and he finds himself getting ready to catch her should she trip and fall. She doesn't, surprisingly sure-footed for someone bipedal.
"Anything I might have read?"
"Ah," he laughs and scratches his neck. "I'm afraid not. I published a handful of bone-dry academic texts on Greek mythology, and I also consult with Museums on exhibition catalogs and things like that. It's not exactly riveting stuff."
"Greek Mythology, huh?"
"And Roman, yes." He smirks, "but you can't impress girls with that."
"Or so they say," she says, sounding strangely thoughtful. She spins around again and starts walking a little faster, depriving him of a chance to examine her expression more carefully. He thinks she might be flirting with him - a notion that isn't worrying in any way shape or form - but he has so little experience in these matters that he can't say for sure.
"What, ah, do you do?"
That seems like a safe thing to ask at this point.
"Mechanical engineering major by day, vigilante barista by night," she calls over her shoulder.
"But not tonight?"
Another shrug.
"I took the night off to look at the Village Halloween parade, because I've never really done Halloween or parades before, but then I ran into this horse-dude and now it seems I am going to Central Park with a complete stranger," she shoots hims a brief smile, "which is fine, because I've never actually been to Central Park before, and also my gay roommate informs me that the horse-dude isn't so bad to look at."
Ben chooses to ignore the last part, which he finds hard to believe, and focuses on the first, which is almost as difficult to swallow.
"You live in New York, but you've never been to Central Park?"
"I've only been here for a few weeks," she explains. "America is a whole brave new world for me."
"Before that you were in Britain?"
"'ow did ya figure that one out, guv'?" Her accent is comically exaggerated and he laughs.
"Yeah, well, that," he says.
"I'm here on a full-ride scholarship to NYU, their mechanical engineering program is one of the best in the world," she pauses. "Plus you New Yorkers drink a lot of coffee."
"That is true," he agrees. "The bit about the coffee, I mean. I know nothing about mechanical engineering."
"If you ever want to change that I'll be happy to help."
She walks ahead of him for a bit, occasionally checking over her shoulder to see if he's keeping up. The crowd has thinned to the point there they see just a few costumed stragglers hurrying past them in a bid to see the end of the parade, which also means that the few regular people that walk the streets at this time of night are starting to shoot them curious looks.
Ben can't really blame them. He sometimes has to tilt his head in order not to hit the signage of the shops that line the road and his hooves clop merrily on the pavement. If he were human he would also stare.
"So, is your interest in Harry Potter work-related?"
"Huh?"
"Well," she says, "you pretty much said that you're not so much into movies, or, like, anything that was written in the last 2000-odd years, so Harry Potter seems outside of your MO."
"Yeah," he wonders how much detail he should give her. He's hardly known Rey for twenty minutes and he can already tell that she's sharp as a tack. If he tells her too much, she might come to precisely the right conclusions. "I find the depictions of centaurs in different media genuinely fascinating. I guess it's something between a work thing and a hobby. I think that's fairly common in academic circles, to be honest. I have a colleague - I only know them online, mind you - who specializes in Arthurian studies, and you can't get them to shut up about that new robot movie."
She stops for a second and he almost runs into her, sidestepping with a flourish of hooves to avoid trampling her.
"Do you mean Transformers: The Last Knight? That was like 6 years ago."
"That's the one."
"Huh," she shakes her head. "The things we do for the love of science."
She pulls her phone out again, checking for notifications of which there are none. Ben gets the feeling that it's more to cover for her nervousness than anything else. He sort of wishes that he had a phone to check too, but he only brought his wallet. Instead he pushes the long-sleeves of his white Henley up to his elbows, before he immediately pulls them down again, not wanting to look like he's showing off.
"Aren't centaurs supposed to be naked?"
"Excuse me?"
"You're wearing a shirt," she says, pointing at the item in question. "I mean, I'll let the blanket slide, it probably covers up some awkward bits of the costume, no? Are you on stilts underneath there?"
You have no idea, he thinks, fighting back the impulse to laugh nervously.
"Well, I find that it's generally frowned upon to go shirtless in public," he says, ignoring the comment about the stilts, because the less he talks about his 'costume' the less likely she is to run screaming to the police. "Plus it's like 50°F."
"Mhm", she looks up at him, lower lip caught between her even, white teeth. "Stupid weather."
Ben is blushing again. He's only just met her, and she's very much a human, and he is blushing. He still hasn't decided if this was a terrible idea or the best choice he's ever made, but he's fairly certain that she is actually flirting with him. Now, it seems, he just will have to decide what he wants to do about that.
"Aren't you cold?"
Rey smirks at him.
"The costume is really warm. Plus, I'm from London," she says, "and this is nothing. Try having sleet in July."
"Does that happen?"
She is quick to shake her head, before she nods, and then that movement morphs seamlessly into a shrug.
"I'm sure it has happened at some point, London weather is seriously crap, but not while I lived there, no. Have you been?"
"To London?"
"Yeah."
"I don't travel much."
"Part of the whole academic-recluse package?"
Also I don't fit on airplanes.
"Something like that."
"Shame," she starts walking again as she calls over her shoulder: "If you ever go, give me a shout, maybe I can give you some tips."
He's so stunned that he forgets to follow her for a split second, and when he does he trots for a few steps to catch up with her.
"You seem very keen on keeping in touch."
"I am."
She says this so matter-of-factly, almost like it's so fundamental that it's not even worth mentioning - like that the sky is blue or the sun rises in the east - that his stomach swoops. It's a feeling that he's honestly never felt before, and if it wasn't so damn terrifying he would probably enjoy the sensation a lot more. Instead he stumbles, hooves beating a staccato rhythm on the pavement, and she shoots him a curious look.
"Huh," is all he manages to say to that.
Rey seems to take pity on his flustered expression, for she changes the subject.
"Your, uh, hooves sound very realistic. How do you do that?"
"Uhm," he tries to think fast, but his brain is still stuck on a loop of 'pretty girl likes me' interspersed with a decidedly less fun chorus of 'we're not even the same species, what the fuck do you think you're doing, Ben?'.
"Real horseshoes?" he finally offers, managing miraculously not to stammer.
"Makes sense, in a disappointingly obvious way," she agrees. "Still impressive though."
"Thanks."
They've arrived at 53rd street now, and Central Park beckons on the other side of the four lane road.
"I, uh, I wasn't joking though," she says after a lengthy pause during which they wait for the light to turn green, while Ben desperately tries to think of something funny and engaging so say and she fidgets with her phone again. There's a few notifications this time, but she doesn't even pretend to be actually looking at them.
"About staying in touch," she shoots him a look, just peeking though her thick lashes, not really daring to properly tilt her head in his direction. "Before I follow a complete stranger into a sparsely populated park in the dead of night, I feel like I should tell him that I think I like him quite a bit."
"Just in case this particular serial killer has a sentimental streak?"
She sighs, deflates a little, and he knows he's managed to put his hoof in his mouth. The light has turned green now and she starts walking across the four lane road, but where there was a spring in her step before, she's now stomping away from him like her scuffed-up UGGs have somehow offended her ancestors.
"I like you too," he finally blurts out. "I really do."
He should leave it at that, but it seems that once the flood-gates of honesty have opened there's not stopping the deluge that spills forth.
"It's probably a terrible idea, and every fiber of my body tells me that I shouldn't, but maybe I'm the one who's unwisely following someone to my doom."
He remembers a story that he once read, about a unicorn following a maiden to the slaughter, and he thinks that that might be him. Poor mythical beast, so enthralled by the possibility of a human connection, human touch, that he just runs head first into the unknown, irregardless of what dangers might lurk there.
She whirls around, the road and everything around them all but forgotten. She pulls the wig from her head – and, oh, she’s a brunette! Ben never had much occasion to think about hair colors, but he finds that he’s suddenly partial to this one – and glares at it for a second before she stuffs it crudely into her pocket and focuses that same glare on him.
"Why would you say that?" She's stabbing her finger at his belly, which is the only part of his torso that she can reach without stretching uncomfortably. "You don't know me! We might be great together. Do you have any idea how much it just cost me to put myself out there like that? And you... you big equine oaf won't even give this a chance...!"
"Rey," he tries to bat her hands away, but she only pokes harder, until he finally manages to grab her wrist. "Jesus, Rey! Would you... just stop, please... I didn't say that!"
"Let go!"
He's glad that there's no pedestrians in earshot as he hurriedly does as she asks. She stumbles back a few steps, rubbing her wrist.
"Fuck!" She all but yells. "I can't believe I missed the bloody parade for this."
"Rey..." He tries to get closer to her, but she only steps back further.
"Why did you come here with me if you didn't..." she stops, presses her wrist into her abdomen with a bleak expression on her pretty face. "If you didn't at least think this could go anywhere?"
"I don't know," he answers, sounding as miserable as she looks.
"Oh," she says. "Oh. OK."
She nods, and turns away from him, no longer stomping, but walking more as if on auto pilot. Which also means that she's not looking anywhere except at her own feet, and doesn't see the car that rushes towards them with flashing lights and an angry honk. Ben, who's anyway been running on nothing but pure adrenaline ever since she said that she likes him - or possibly since she touched his flank at the intersection of west 16th and 6th Avenue - reacts before he can think and surges forward, grabbing her by the waist and clearing the road and the onrushing car in one large jump, landing with a loud thundering of hooves on the far side of the road, with Rey clutched awkwardly against his chest.
She screams, a sound that is high-pitched and a lot more girly than he thought her capable of, before she slams her elbow into his abdomen and blindly grabs at the only thing that isn't him that she can reach - the horse blanket - to pull herself out of his arms. Ben immediately let's her go, aware of how scary and inappropriate all of this must be to her - and also because his stomach feels like it's on fire - and she slides down his front, in her panic dragging the blanket half off his back.
"Ben! What the...?" she starts to say, more yelling than speaking. She is whirling around to look at him, and he can see the moment when her eyes fall on his newly-exposed rear and it all clicks together with a sickly lurch. "What...? Fuck. How...? You are..."
She stammers, going through a few more half-formed words in quick succession, her mouth gaping open and closed like she's a fish caught on dry land, before her speech center rallies enough for her to form a coherent sentence.
"You're a centaur!"