InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Save the cheerleader"

benjy wolfe ✍️ henry mills (nextchapters) wrote in dunhavenic,
@ 2019-06-01 18:58:00

Entry tags:

!log, * jach, * kit, c: benjamin wolfe, c: jasmine reed

WHO: Benjy & Jas.
WHERE: The woods.
WHEN: Memorial Day weekend; Saturday evening.
WHAT: Some feelings are confronted.
RATING: Low.
STATUS: log; complete.

The weekend away from everything was much needed for all of them. After they’d finished their finals on Thursday, Benjy, Jas, Aria, and Drew had loaded up Jack’s car with camping supplies and had headed outside of Dunhaven’s town limits.

Everything had just gotten extremely loud lately. Between the regular pressures of life and school, combined with everything that had been going on with their dream personas...Benjy had sensed they were all getting overwhelmed and could use the break.

They’d spent the weekend hiking, swimming, stuffing their faces with food, playing spikeball, and just enjoying each other’s company. Saturday evening was their last night before heading back home, and the four of them milked it for all it was worth. They’d grilled up an especially grand dinner and used up the last of the s’more supplies. Benjy entertained them with songs on his guitar and they all laughed until their stomachs hurt.

Eventually Drew and Aria headed off to their tent together, which left Benjy and Jas alone to tend the fire. It crackled cheerfully and the stars above them shone exactly as they should outside of the city. It was peaceful, and Benjy felt calm. He was softly strumming a cover of Old Town Road that he’d been working on, while watching Jasmine’s profile in the firelight. Not for the first time lately he found himself admiring her. Not just for her looks (although they were certainly incredible), but for everything about her. Her brain, her humor, the fact that she’d always been there for him no matter what and she was the person he trusted more than anyone else on the planet.

He finished the song and lay the guitar in a resting position on his lap.

The weekend had been a good one, Jasmine thought. Between cramming for finals, and life in general, she had been more than ready for some time away with her favorite people and she knew that her favorite people needed it even more than she did. Amidst the rest and relaxation, though, it had become uncomfortably clear that she had not left all of the things that had been plaguing her behind in Dunhaven. She’d brought one of them here with her.

Or, more accurately, one of those things had brought her here with him.

Because Jasmine Reed had about ninety-nine problems and they were all her varying shades of feelings for Benjy Wolfe. Benjy had been her best friend for as long as she could remember, and for as long as she could remember, she had thought he was the most beautiful boy she’d ever known. Her feelings for him had been unsurprising, and she’d known about them for almost as long as she’d known that she liked boys, at all. The problem wasn’t that she had feelings for him. After all, she’d always held firm with the truth that she could be content with having 90% of what she wanted with him because his friendship mattered far more to her than anything else uncertain that she could potentially have. The problem was that those feelings had begun to change in an irrevocable and infuriating way.

It had all started the day she’d done the thing she’d sworn she’d never do: read the comments. In general, not reading the comments was a good philosophy to live by, whether the conversation was about politics, or religion, or sports. She’d known this should apply to Benjy, too, but her natural state of curiosity had gotten the best of her when she’d watched the video of him covering a Jonas Brothers song and the most relevant comment just beneath the unexpanded summary section had been about the things some random girl on the internet wanted to do with him.

Never was there a more terrible curse than to be born with an insatiable curiosity and an overactive imagination.

That, Jasmine knew, had been the moment that she’d known one simple truth: she could always be content with having nothing more than Benjy’s friendship, but she would never be able to imagine him with another girl without feelings of rage and devastation rousing inside of her like an unfurling, untamed, and starved dragon. And the truth of it was that neither of those feelings could coexist. Forcing them to try to do so over the past several weeks had been, quite frankly, torture, and even though she knew he must have noticed the change in her moods, it was something she hadn’t been quite ready to address. She could be as self-aware as she wanted to be, but it didn’t mean she liked to acknowledge it.

Even so, Jasmine had done her best that weekend to be who she had always been, and to just enjoy being in the presence of the people she’d chosen as family a long time ago. She’d been making a mess of her hands with Aria’s devilish s’mores concoctions and enjoying the gentle melodies that Benjy’s talented hands strummed out on his guitar. She could spend forever sitting by a fire and listening to his music--that was probably a problem, too. She had only just managed to get the last bits of sticky, melted marshmallow off of her fingers when the music came to an end and she chanced a glance up over at him as he set the guitar down in his lap.

Not for the first time that weekend, or in the many years she’d known him, her heart seemed to skip a beat as his eyes caught hers looking at him. She smiled and then made the impulsive decision to leave her perch near Aria and the snacks, and walked over to Benjy, instead, taking a seat beside him. Their arms and legs touched the way they always seemed to when they sat near each other and there were no amount of complicated feelings inside of her that could make her put distance between them. Maybe self-destructive was a trait she could add to the things she was born with.

“That might be the first and only time I’ve liked that song, for the record,” she said, tucking her naturally curly hair behind her ears. “Worlds better than the original.”

He grinned at her as she abandoned her previous spot and came to sit near him. There was something about her being close that simultaneously calmed him and woke him up at the same time. “The highest praise. Any other requests?”

Jasmine laughed, wrapping her arms around herself as she leaned forward. “I mean, my praise is considered the ultimate form of validation in the biz. It’s how an artist knows they’ve made it,” she replied. It was so easy to sit here and laugh and joke and tease just like she’d always done. And maybe that was a good thing. The easier it was the pretend that nothing had changed, the less likely she was to lose everything by ruining it.

She bunched her lips to the side and looked up at the night sky, giving the question actual thought. “Hm. I’ve been on a Vamps kick lately. Know any of those off the top of your head?” He probably did. There was very little she thought he couldn’t do.

His laughter mingled with hers. “Well it’s certainly the reason I knew I was destined for greatness. The Jas Reed seal of approval was all I needed.” He strummed a chord as punctuation.

Blue eyes roamed across her profile as she watched the stars while thinking about her answer. He found himself focused on the curve of her neck when she spoke again. Truth be told, nearly every part of her captivated him. Including her tastes in music.

One of the things Benjy enjoyed doing was keeping an eye on her spotify habits. When he caught her listening to sad playlists, he’d make sure to check in on her. And just as important, when he saw her listening to a new artist a lot, he paid close attention to their work. So yes, he knew she’d been on a Vamps kick lately, and yes, he’d gone out of his way to learn a few of the songs he saw her listening to most frequently. Not that he told her any of this.

“I think so.”

The guitar was readjusted in his lap, and Benjy turned slightly so he wouldn’t jab her with his elbow while playing. This, of course, had the added bonus of allowing him to look more directly at her as he started playing. Which was important to him, because this was her song, after all.

“You just know. Sometimes you feel it in your bones. Though we’ve heard that hearts can still be wrong, something’s telling me that you’re the one.” Nimble fingers brought the music to life around them, and Benjy smiled at her as he sang. “I’d burn it down, I’d light it up, for you I’d risk it all. I’d rather crash, I’d rather crawl. Than never have your love at all. With only bricks to break my fall, for you I’d risk it all.”

It wasn’t a song he’d picked arbitrarily. Benjy may not have been the smartest in town, or even the smartest in his family...but he understood music. He understood how powerful lyrics could be. He’d picked up on the shift in Jasmine’s moods since that day with the comments. He’d put two and two together and worked out the meaning behind it all. And he found that he liked it.

His feelings for her had been there for awhile, and like her, he’d been content to enjoy their friendship as it was because it gave them 90% of what they wanted. It seemed easier. It seemed simpler. And as neither of them had seemed all that interested in pursuing romantic relationships elsewhere, it worked. But Henry Mills was becoming an ever-growing influence on Benjy Wolfe, and Henry was never content with the easiest or simplest route. Henry believed in the good. Henry believed the risk was worth it. And Benjy found himself believing the same.

Okay, so maybe Jasmine couldn’t sit here near the fire and listen to Benjy play forever. Not when he was singing those words she’d been playing on repeat like some silly, lovesick teenager, though she was exactly that when it came to him. Feeling like her heart might actually burst from how much it hear him bring her words to life when he didn’t know what they actually meant to her, she reached out and wrapped her hand around the neck of the guitar, abruptly muting it the way she’d been trying (though failing) to mute her feelings for him.

“Not that one,” she said, the corners of her lips turning downward as she glanced away from him.

That caught him off guard, and Benjy’s brow furrowed deeply. His knee-jerk response to the situation was to be hurt, and he emotionally retreated from the situation quickly. “Oh. Sorry.”

His hands fell away from the guitar strings and he looked away from her, opting to stare at the fire instead.

Jasmine silently cursed herself and her heart for causing that look on his face. She hated the way she could see his walls go up, and hated that she knew hers were going up, too. Taking a deep breath, she carefully considered what she could possibly say just then but all of her words fell flat. She wasn’t good at them the way he was. She was all facts and history and places and...nothing that could help her right now. She shut her eyes tight and, after a moment, she stood up.

“Sorry, I just--” she said quickly and started walking off toward the lake before she could come up with whatever she just. Maybe she just needed the fresh air to put her head back where it ought to have been.

Hurt though he may have been, there was zero chance of Benjy letting Jasmine be alone in that moment. As soon as she started heading in the direction of the lake, he tried to compose himself. He set the guitar aside, stood up, and followed after her.

“Jas, wait.”

The smart thing to do would have been to keep walking. Jasmine knew it. She was too caught up in her head and her heart to be reasonable and being unreasonable lent to having no control over the situation. Jasmine liked being in control. She liked being able to assess the situation, see all possible outcomes, and choose the one the best aligned with what she needed, or wanted. Despite knowing that she needed to cool off before she talked to Benjy, though, she stopped, let him catch up to her and then turned to face him knowing that he could read her better than anyone.

“It’s fine, Benj,”she heard herself saying. “I’m just feeling a little off? I’m sorry, really I am. It’s not your fault.”

He caught up with her quickly and it only took a glance to see that nothing about her body language or expression matched up with her words. He wrapped her in a hug. “It will be fine, yes. But you’re not. And I’m not. And we need to talk about it. Even if it’s scary.”

He released her from the hug and took a step back to see her more clearly. He and Jasmine were so often on the same wavelength that he could sometimes forget she couldn’t actually read his mind at times. If he’d been smarter about this whole thing, he’d have considered that before launching into the song. “Is that okay?”

For a moment, everything was fine and then...and then his arms weren’t around her anymore and Jasmine let out a shaky, uncertain breath. It wasn’t okay, not if this was the moment that everything irrevocably changed in a way she wasn’t sure she could live with, but she trusted Benjy more than she trusted anyone else in her life and if he told her it would be fine, it would be. If she had to do something she was terrified of, wasn’t he the only person in the world she wanted to do it with?

With only a slight hesitation, Jasmine nodded. “Okay. Okay, yeah. We-- We can do that,” she started. And then, before she could lose her nerve and walk away again, she made a choice and said, “Music is your thing, Benj, and you’re so good at it. But I’m not, you know? I’m not good at telling you where my head’s at and I usually don’t have to because you just know. That’s why you’ve always been my best friend because you just know me in a way that nobody else does. But those words, the words in that song…” She paused, holding her hand up to her heart, barely taking a breath before she let the words keep falling out of her mouth. “Benj, those are my words. I feel them. I feel them all the time and I don’t know what to do with them because I feel them about you. Only it’s one thing to feel like I’d risk everything to know what it was like to really be loved by you, and it’s another to know that everything includes this friendship that’s as important to me as...as breathing, Benj. I would risk everything but that. I can’t ever lose that. You understand that, I know you do. I can’t ever lose that.”

He listened intently, hardly moving a muscle while she spoke. Benjy understood how scary it was and how much nerve it took to say these things out loud, and while he was still terrified himself, he was also so damn proud of her for being able to say these things out loud.

When she finally reached a stopping point, he reached and and took her hand in his. “Of course I understand it. And we’ve always stopped at the precipice of anything more than this friendship because of it. But here’s the thing, Jas. We limit ourselves to thinking of the negative What Ifs. What if things go wrong? What if it ruins what we have? But why don’t we ever think of the positives? Isn’t there way more evidence here that this would go amazingly well? What if things go right? What if what we have now can be even better? Maybe it’s Henry’s influence, but that’s where my head has been at lately, and I feel like I have to try.”

He squeezed her hand and exhaled deeply then. “But this only works if we’re both in that place. And I’m not asking you to force it. We know things can be good like this. We can stay just like we are now and I won’t ever complain.” And he meant that sincerely. If Jasmine wanted to keep things like they were, he would be okay with that. “But if you take some time to think about it. And you decide you want to try, I’m telling you I’m right here with you.”

Hearing those words from Benjy should have felt like coming home and mostly they did. But they also scared her because she didn’t quite know how to let go of the negative what-ifs. Those what-ifs were monumental. She let go of his hand to step closer and wrap her arms around his middle, resting her head against his chest in a way that always brought her comfort, even now when everything felt strange and uncertain.

“I want to be able to look at it like that,” she started, closing her eyes as his heart beat rhythmically, steadily beneath her ear. “I do. But where you have Henry giving you this optimism and this hope, I have Carmen who doesn’t have room in her life to risk everything to follow her heart, who doesn’t trust that sort of hope anymore. I don’t want to be like her, Benjy, but I am afraid of losing you.” She let out a huff of air and the glanced up, tilting her head back to look at him.

“But even while I feel those fears, I also feel this certainty that I can’t handle watching you love someone else, either. So I’m also afraid that either choice we make here has equal potential to end terribly. And I just… I guess I just want to know where I’m going to land when I jump, to know that I can even make the jump.” Jasmine was pretty sure none of it made sense, feelings rarely did. She had to talk through it, though, and that unfortunately meant that she had to think out loud. She wished she’d thought this through before now, that she’d chosen the right things to say. “I want everything that we could be, Benjy,” she finally said. “I know I do. I just don’t know how to get there from here.”

He wrapped her tightly back up in his arms again then, and pulled her close. His chin rested on top of her head and they just stood there for a long moment. “We don’t have to decide right now, Jas. I wanted us to talk tonight because it was important to me that you know where I’m at. But I know you. And I know you have a different way of processing things than I do.” He smiled and gave a small chuckle. “Plus, I probably blindsided you a little with all this, right?” He kissed her hair.

“I’m not planning on loving anyone else anytime soon. So maybe we just leave things here right now. And you can have some time to think about everything?”

In retrospect, Jasmine really shouldn’t have been all that surprised that she’d fallen in love with her best friend. He knew exactly what to say to put her at ease, always knew how to calm her constantly churning thoughts, and always knew how to make her feel…safe.

She shook her head once. “Not blindsided, no. I’ve been thinking about it for weeks but was too scared to say anything,” she admitted. “But if you promise not to become anyone else’s various types of furniture in the near future, I promise I won’t take too long to get my head and my heart on the same page.”

He laughed again. “Cross my heart. Come on. Want to head back to the campfire? You can make us some s’mores and I promise I’ll stick to Taylor Swift songs for the rest of the night.”

Letting out a relieved sigh, Jasmine nodded. “Yeah, that sounds perfect. Though, to be fair, I’ve got a real heart on for her songs, too, so I’m not sure how effective that promise actually is.” But then she grinned, feeling like this conversation couldn’t have actually gone much better. There were so many reasons why Benjy Wolfe was her best friend and everything about this conversation just further proved that no one knew her, or cared as much about her well-being as he did. And that was only a small fraction of the reasons she’d fallen for him.

Linking her arm through his, she lead them back toward the campfire and silently hoped that reconciling her head and her heart happened much sooner rather than later.