copper toned tuesdays / grady&benji

b e n j i .

"If I had an orchard,
I'd work 'til I'm sore"

Cleo is dead and Stella sends Benji to Grady to comfort him. Benji stands on the edge of the riverbank at five in the morning and he thinks about walking into it until his head is covered, it'd be the same as breathing air right now. His lungs burn, the world burns around him and he tries to remember what it's like to not be in pain.

How does someone smother a fire like that and not even leave a trace?

There are flowers in his grasp when he rings Grady's doorbell hours later. His eyes run over the architecture, taking in old money that never learned that a buttress was never a style choice, just there for support. "Too many," he mutters and there are tears in his eyes for a moment. Then the door is opened and Benji is ushered through the house and out into a back garden.

The studio pointed out to him is an architect's dream, in great need of adjustment. Ivy holds the structure in its clutches to the point that if one were to tear it away, the brickwork would crumble with it.

Benji knocks, intending to pass the flowers over and just leave. Their last conversation wasn't so great but Stella doesn't know that and it's easier to just do as she says without complaint.

But then Grady slams the door in his face and for a brief moment, Benji is irrationally angry about that one tiny thing. One tiny kiss in the summer and Grady looks at him like he's the devil incarnate. There are so many worse things that he's done, that he deserves to be despised for and he chooses a kiss.

He looks at the door and then tries the knob. Locked. Then he looks at the hinges, they're Abbotsfords. What kind of lunatic uses an Abbotsford door hinge on any door nowadays? Benji scoffs.

Then he kicks the door in and it splinters off of its shitty hinges in one go.

"Weak hinges, I don't know who does your building but tell them to use Mortise next time," he says as he steps over the mess.

"I brought you flowers, from Stell," he says and he holds them out, intending to turn and leave in the next breath. Something stalls him, his eyes fall on Grady's paintings and for a moment, he forgets that there is water in his lungs.

b e n j i .

"If I had an orchard,
I'd work 'til I'm sore"

Grady protests, of course, but Benji isn't listening. Once his attention is captured by anything, it's hard to get through to him, he's been that way a long time. It's usually when he's drawing, he always loses track. Still, the flowers leaving the room via the window is in his peripheral and it brings a slight smile to his lips.

But the painting calls out to him.

A half-finished form gazes out of the canvas, facing the West as if she can see out the window, yet her eyes are trained over her shoulder. Her left hand is held to her chest, her fingers slightly curled, the hint of a clutch. The background is nondescript, the table she sits at clothed and flowered.

Then there's her hand, open loosely on the table in front of her in such a way that he grimaces at the sight of it, it's painful. He doesn't like how easy it is to identify with it, how he looks too hard at that hand and thinks about Cleo, running her finger down his jawline.

It stings to think about how he's slowly losing the women in his life, as if someone is picking them off one by one.

It doesn't feel real quite yet that Cleo is gone.

It feels as if she's about to come stomping through the doorway, heels clicking loudly on the concrete flooring. She'd be losing her mind over the rumours of her death, loudly swearing revenge.

And her perfume would linger behind her after every step. Her arms would wrap around Grady's neck even as she tipped her head back to wink at Benji.

And he'd smile.

Grady steps in front of him and Benji blinks coming back from a daydream abruptly. He doesn't leave as Grady has asked him to, the odd pain in his chest keeping him rooted. Maybe Grady hates him but that's never bothered Benji.

"Are you," he starts, hesitating because he's never done this before, "Are you doing okay?"