Re: Times Square: Ronan/Ben
[It isn't a surprise when he hears the upstairs shower turn on. Ronan loves his showers and as long as Ben doesn't think too much about why he craves one now or what he's washing off, the house doesn't feel like it's compressing inward on him.
He feeds the dogs and it's all by rote, and logically they should eat too, but he doubts that either one of them is going to be able to taste anything or keep it down. The dogs eat quickly and quietly, sensing that something is very wrong with the two human occupants of their house and when he returns to the living room, they follow him.
Ben grabs the single, ridiculous accent pillow they have. He never saw a point to them though they were always in his houses growing up and really, most of the time they spend with this pillow is tossing it out of their way. Except now, when he tosses it down on the floor and sits on it, legs folding up into lotus.
He breathes in, he breathes out. One hand rests on Freki's head, the other on Geri's, and they're content to lay one either side of him while he meditates.
True meditation is beyond him though. His emotions are in too much tumult. Anger is the easiest and fastest of these to recognized, but it's tied to something deeper, to the hurt that he can't justify. On one hand, they all believed it to be a dream. On the other, at some point Ronan had the conscious though that this was wrong and proceeded anyway.
Is that better or worse than not being thought of at all? That question floats around his cranium like a balloon caught on the wind.
And then Ronan told him. He didn't hide it for months like Liam, but waited only until they were face to face to say it. That whole phone conversation - now it made sense why he was crying so hard. His fingers flex outward over the dog's heads and a few minutes later, when he rises, he knows what he has to do.
Up the stairs he goes, to their bedroom where their bed is still mussed from the other - yesterday? Was it really yesterday? - morning when they'd had sex and Ben hadn't yet bothered to make it. He inhales. Grabs a bag and starts throwing a few of his own things in it. The rest is in the bathroom and he sits, on the edge of their bed, to wait for Ronan, the dogs lying at his feet.]