Work Text:
March 2023
Ben hates — really hates — to admit it, but sometimes, he still gets scared.
He swears up and down he’s over his fear of everything but — sometimes, he finds himself stuck in a cage, be it real or imagined, and all he wants is his family. His safety. The people he’d die and burn hell for.
He just never would’ve thought — of all the things to be scared of — a shower would be one of them.
It’s a week after he moved into Darius’s cabin that he thinks of it. All the essential tasks slip past him in his efforts to simply make it to the end of each day. He puts on a smile, but he’s exhausted, in pain all the time, and everything he does is slow and wobbly, even his arms and legs, which doesn’t even make sense. He really thought he’d get away with stitches and orders to be careful for a few weeks. But when he’d spent a week in the hospital without the doctors even letting him out of bed, he was more sceptical. He could barely stomach using a wheelchair the first time, feeling so... restricted. But it was worth it to see the outside air for the first time in what felt like forever. It got slightly easier every time, and now it’s just part of his life, like waking up in the morning.
Even though he’s mostly accepted it now, the physical symptoms follow him every day, and underneath it all there’s a growing sense of impending fear. It’s a concern he hasn’t voiced to anyone, but with all the time he has to sit around doing nothing, he wallows in it day in, day out. Maybe that’s why he needs a shower.
He’s not scared of the water, he knows that much. There’s an invisible demon on the horizon, he just doesn’t know what it is, and it won’t let him forget its presence.
But he knows he can’t go on like this forever. Wet wipes and changing his clothes can only do so much.
So, he swallows his pride, and types out a text to Kenji, staring at it for half an hour, his heart pounding, before he presses send.
Can you help me shower? I’m in the living room
Kenji replies almost instantly: sure thing Benny boy 😉👍 omw
He shows up, dramatically announcing “Your chauffeur is here,” and Ben can’t help but laugh.
“Ease up, Ben, I’m not that funny. Wouldn’t want you pulling a stitch,” Kenji teases, as he helps Ben transfer from the sofa into his wheelchair.
“Oh please, you wish you were that funny.”
“Oi!” Kenji smacks the side of Ben’s head. “I’ll have you know I’m hilarious. Did my sick rapping skills not cheer you up in Biosyn?”
A smile cracks across Ben’s face as he remembers how Kenji did his absolute best to cheer him up, literally shaking his ass and acting like an utter fool just to see Ben smile. He’s always been like that, keeping up a casual, “chillaxed vibe” (his words, not Ben’s) to keep the camp fam happy.
He’s like that now, rambling about nothing as he wheels Ben into the bathroom and parks his wheelchair by the shower.
Which is where Ben realises the problem.
“Uh, Kenji? I’m not sure how I’m supposed to stand in there.”
He expects Kenji to go “Ah, fuck,” and if he’s lucky, string together some way of washing Ben while he sits on the toilet seat or something.
Instead, Kenji grins, whisks the shower curtain to one side, and goes “Ta da!”
Sitting there, parked in the middle of the cubicle like the star of the show, is a shower chair.
“Oh... oh.” Ben doesn’t know what to say. “You guys got this for me?”
“Uh, duh. We were gonna get those railing thingies installed but we’re moving to Texas soon anyway, so we’re getting them done there.”
Ben’s choked up when he says, “Thanks.”
“Don’t even thank us, man. Gia told us to take care of you, so we made good on that.”
The mention of Gia twists Ben’s stomach, and he doesn’t know why. She’s his girlfriend. He loves her. They’re devoted to each other.
Is that why it feels so wrong when Kenji’s fingers curl around his stomach and begin to ease his top off?
Ben flushes bright red, and Kenji immediately hesitates. They’re way too close together, and the residual warmth of the bathroom sticks to their skin.
Kenji rolls Ben’s top back down his front. “Sorry, man. I should’ve asked before I did that. I just assumed—”
“No— no, it’s fine. I need this, I stink.”
Kenji nods. “Yeah, you kinda do.”
“Hey, you weren’t supposed to agree with me!” Ben teases.
“What, you want me to tell you that you smell like roses?” Kenji says, taking a deep, long sniff of Ben’s hair that freezes every cell in Ben’s body for a whole second. “Yeah, I wouldn’t say that. Sorry Benny boy. Now let’s get you into the shower chair.”
With a lot of bumping, and swearing, and a lot of Kenji touching him, Ben gets situated in the shower chair, his body squished against the hard plastic. He feels heavier than he used to be. Before, his muscles were rockets, ready to fire off at the nearest threat. Now, they hang off his bones like dead things, weighing on him like a guilty conscience, reminding him that, no matter what, he might never be the same.
“Shall I take your top off now?” Kenji asks, snapping Ben out of his spiral.
“Yes. Please.”
Kenji is slow and careful, wriggling the fabric off one arm, then the other, before tossing it on the floor behind him. Ben suddenly feels very exposed. The warm air turns cold, as if his skin was scraped off and glistening flesh was left in its wake. His wound dressing conceals what Ben knows to be an ugly, twisted scar.
Yet the way Kenji looks at him, like Ben has the body of a warrior... if he were so bold, he would call the look admiring. But he isn’t bold. He isn’t brave.
He’s so fucking scared.
“Your sweatpants next?” Kenji asks.
Ben braces himself, and the ordeal is just as awkward and humiliating as his top. He hasn’t even been able to comfortably wear jeans — they’re a nightmare to put on sitting down, and he misses them. Joggers just don’t feel the same. (He doesn’t feel the same.)
Ben’s toes curl against the cold shower floor. He jams his legs together, his shoulders hunching, his broken body doing anything he can to make itself smaller. All he’s wearing are boxers, and Kenji is so fucking beautiful and— where did that come from? Ben shakes the thought off before it can plant roots in his head.
“Okay, big Ben,” Kenji says, whipping off his hoodie, and, to Ben’s shock, his shirt, and dumps them on the floor with Ben’s things. “Let’s get you clean.”
Kenji is surprisingly gentle. Ben doesn’t know what he expected of the man who took care of him from the hyperloop to the hospital. His memory, fuzzy and warped as it is, is steeped in warm hands cupping his face, and zipping his hoodie, and cradling his head on Kenji’s shoulder. But Kenji’s hands are just as gentle as he remembers, and Ben stares at the ceiling, relaxing into the shower chair, and...
His eyelids are fluttering shut before he realises. He never shuts his eyes. Not when he’s this vulnerable. Not unless it was between getting a few hours of sleep or being too incoherent to function.
And Ben doesn’t usually trust so blindingly, but this is Kenji. He held Ben’s life in his hands — literally — and after that, Ben can’t help but trust him.
Kenji turns the shower off, pushes the tilted shower chair to a sitting position, and looks back at Ben. “Shall I wash your body now?”
“Yeah— yeah.” Ben opens his eyes. “Tilt me back up?”
Kenji looks a little confused, but says, “Okay,” and lathers shower gel on his hands. “I’ll start on your neck and shoulders, then I’ll do your arms, okay?”
Kenji carries on talking as he moves through the motions, his voice and the shower swirling into a soothing background noise. Ben comes to trust Kenji’s hands, his skin melting into the motions as Kenji washes his body. The steam surrounds them with a warm, soft layer of oblivion, and Ben couldn’t be—
Kenji’s fingers brush the skin near his scar and — before Ben can stop himself — he screams.
“Fuck! I’m so sorry,” Kenji immediately exclaims. “Oh— fuck, are you okay?”
Panting raggedly, Ben pushes out, “Yeah, I’m— I’m okay. Sorry.”
Kenji waits, his hands suspended a few inches above Ben’s stomach. “I won’t touch you there if you don’t want me to. You can do that part yourself.”
“It’s fine, it’s just... tender.” Ben tries not to wince.
“I can imagine.”
Kenji is even slower and gentler on Ben’s abdomen. His fingers hardly touch Ben’s skin at all, and his face is screwed up with concentration, though his words are softer than feathers. “Easy, easy... it’s okay. I’ve got you, I’ve got you...”
After several minutes of silence, Ben says, “You’re a good nurse, Kenj.”
“Thanks.” Ben can almost hear him grinning behind his back. “I must get it from mom.”
“You know nursing skill isn’t a genetic trait, right?”
“Yeah,” Kenji says, grinning. “I know.”
The shower is at minimum pressure, but the water still assaults his skin like a hundred tiny needles. He couldn’t ask Kenji to be any more gentle, but somehow, his skin still prickles, his heart still hammers (he could be in the hyperloop again, half awake and seeing stars around his Kenji like a halo), and he can’t swallow the inevitable sense that something bad will happen. Maybe it’s the memory. Maybe it’s watching five faces fade to darkness and taking what he thought was his last final breath, cradled in this position by arms that love him.
Maybe it’s the part of him that never left Biosyn, that remains there forever like the traces of his blood along the corridors, spilling oxygen and DNA and personality across the vinyl floor.
But Ben is breathing, and then he isn’t, and he’s dying, he’s dying, and it’s happening all over again, and he can barely choke out “Turn— turn it off,” before the struggle swallows him whole.
The water vanishes, and the shower chair tilts him upright. Someone bends down in front of him, a hand tilting his head upright. Blood roars through his ears, and there’s a voice speaking. “Easy, easy... it’s okay.” (And it is okay.) “I’ve got you, I’ve got you...” (And he has got him. He trusts him. Without question.)
Ben breathes again. He blinks, and the someone materialises into Kenji.
“You okay there, dude?”
“Hm? Yeah— yeah, ‘m fine.”
He’s mostly honest, but that doesn’t chase the worry off Kenji’s face. “Shall I stop?”
“No— actually... yeah, I— I think you should for now. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Kenji smiles softly, and steps out of the shower to grab a towel, and begins drying him off. “It’s okay to be scared.”
“I’m— not,” Ben snaps on instinct, but his words are spineless, betrayed by the solid core of evidence to the contrary. His defense is weak. Like him.
Kenji stays silent. Ben knows this tactic. Yaz taught him that tactic, too. Stay silent and wait for the other person to fill the conversation.
Ben won’t fall for it. Ben’s smarter than that.
Ben caves within a minute. “I am scared. I don’t even know why, and I hate it,” he says crossly like a petulant toddler.
“It’s enough to feel the feeling. You don’t have to know why.”
“Sheesh, since when did you talk about feelings?”
“Uh, like I told Darius, I’ve grown. Matured. Like a fine wine,” Kenji says lightly, injecting his own flourish into every word. “I’m done hiding my feelings. I nourish them. Let them grow. Like...”
“Flowers?”
For some reason, Kenji’s entire demeanor goes cold. “No. Not those. More like... trees. Yeah. trees. Little saplings. And I did not spend a month living exclusively with Yaz, Sammy and Brooklynn, getting bullied into talking about my feelings, not to use that now. So.” Kenji’s wet hands land on his hips with a soft smack. “You’re scared. Tell me more.”
“I’m...” Every word in the English language, and a few more in others, lodge in Ben’s throat. “Wrap me in the towel. Please.” He says eventually.
“Okay.” Kenji does so, carefully lifting Ben off the seat so he’s entirely leaning against Kenji, wrapping the towel around his back, and gently lowering Ben back onto the shower chair before folding it over his front, tucking the corners in.
“Is it being exposed?” Kenji asks, almost in a rush, like the words were boiling on the edge of his tongue. “The feeling of needing someone to wash you? Do— do you think that’s what you’re scared of? Being so...” vulnerable is the word he doesn’t say.
“In the jungle, I was invincible,” the words tumble out of him. “Nothing could hurt me that I couldn’t spring back from. Nothing was too big for me to defeat.”
“Not even Toro,” Kenji says nostalgically.
Ben tries a smile, but it fades away with the bitter reminder that now, Toro would eat him in a second.
“Yeah. But now, I’m...” Ben lets out a bitter sigh that carries the weight of everything the camp fam do for him.
Kenji’s hands pause in Ben’s hair. “Waitwaitwait, you think you’re not invincible?” Kenji sounds genuinely surprised.
“You’re literally washing my hair because I can’t do it myself.”
“Yeah— but— but you... your heart literally stopped, and you’re still here.” It’s then, Ben notices the sadness hitching in Kenji’s voice. The tremble of his sigh. The way his fingertips tighten around Ben’s shoulder like he’s trying to save him from something.
Kenji’s chin settles on top of Ben’s head, and his arms slide around Ben’s body, holding him close. “Remember what I said in the hyperloop? About you being the strongest of all of us?”
“How could I forget?”
“That still stands. Kay?” Kenji’s fingers gently squish Ben’s cheeks. “Don’t forget that shit. Okay? You’re strong, but you don’t have to do everything alone. We’re here now. It’s okay to let your guard down.”
Ben can’t help but smile, leaning into the warmth of the steam-clouded room and Kenji’s skin. “Okay.”