Disclaimer: I don't own Ben 10, its characters, or any of its related properties. In fact, if I did, I'd probably be water skiing or whatever you rich folk happen to do. Honestly, I don't own much of anything.
Additional information: My interests include chocolate and sweets, fugato leading to sweeping motifs (ending in strong cadences), and Asian-Hispanic women.
NOTE: These small sections will be grouped, eventually, into a larger (short story) format.
He'd never been with a girl before, either relationship or otherwise, so in the expanding strains of early adolescence Ben Tennyson finally had to put himself to an angry bout of masturbation. It was around two in the morning and the high volume of his portable television had provided a better barrier than a calmed silence could have. He started first by pushing himself against the floor. He rocked and rocked, but it couldn't be helped; there were better ways to get the feeling he wanted. And of course, Ben didn't know what he was doing—he didn't even realize the hot clear liquid that pooled into his hands.
Nights had been fun endeavors for the boy, sure: fighting sleep without a reason other than to do so, playing marathons of video games new and old and generally eating a lot. He neglected the basics of hygiene, too, until his hair became slippery to the touch and his armpits felt red and wet constantly. A pattern of sleep deprivation and sleep, and lack of bathing and hot showers, continued in cycles of around three days, broken apart by a stale buffer of mindless bicycle riding. Ben's cousin had warned against these juvenile habits in her adopted wisdom; she scolded him, or pointed a small finger, or sometimes just laughed sarcastically. But it was a flawed wisdom—a mask of maturity—appropriately not unlike Ben's compulsion to stay up late.
Ben said, "Get out of the—Get out of the way, Gwen."
She crossed over a tangle of wires and picked up a few potato chips that were uncrushed on the permanently flattened carpeting. She'd leave the rest—the chips that hadn't been spared—to vacuuming.
"Alright, doofus. Chill out a second, won't ya?" she said.
To the right of the game console she took a moist rag ("Get it away from my 'box, that thing's gross.") and wiped around the side of it, picking up some more potato chips with her free hand. The cleaning was routine—that is, except for a tough sticky spot near the vents of the Xbox. Gwen looked at the rag innocently, and then accusingly pulled up her eyebrows towards Ben.
"What?" He felt guilt. He hadn't even washed his hands. But he knew already these worries were different from what she wanted him to feel guilty about.
"You didn't go to sleep last night, did you?" she ordered, and slapped off the portable television screen. The image, an overheating plasma rifle and red flash, disappeared.
"Shit! Gwen?" A fat black controller slammed on the floor and a clear blue x-button popped out. Ben's feet smashed some already cracked potato chips into finer particles. "What's your problem? Huh? Man."
"Can it a second. It's only Halo. You've beaten Halo like six times. "
"Yeah but I never got any further than AOTCR on Legendary," he corrected.
"Yes, Ben, yes you did. We both did! We beat it on co-op…" she said, looking around and putting the escapist gaming area into perspective. Chips were rained everywhere, Fruit Rollups wrappers stuck out from underneath furniture. It smelled odd. "Jeez, this place is ridiculous."
"It's fine."
Ben picked his nose and stared at the cooling TV screen, which still felt hot—or at least it did from where his face was. There was sweat on his face, too. He'd been in the middle of a sleep-deprived panic, searching cautiously for a gold Elite, fearing its plasma blue, meter-long sword. He asked without looking at his cousin, "What makes you think I've been up all night?"
Gwen wiped around the room, pulling objects out of corners and cleaning the 'problem spots' (as she liked to refer to them) they hid. But to Ben they were as nonexistent as the bacteria that exploded on his skin.
"Well, you know when people say something's really hot and they're like, "'Wow, I could probably cook some eggs on that?' Well it's kind of like that with the vents on this thing." She waved her hand by the Xbox again, recoiling. "Except instead of 'cooking', try melting. And instead of 'some eggs', try, 'some rocks.'"
He scoffed. "I forgot to turn it off. I still slept...really. There's no proof," he said indignantly. With his hands he played with the tips of the socks on his feet. She seemed to notice this.
"Whatever. Just pick up your clothes, at least. 'Kay?"
The screen did feel warm anymore; it wasn't.
"Uh-huh." He looked at her. "Where's Grandpa? When it's early he's usually coming in to say good morning to me or whatever." And he was right. Gwen's hand tightened, releasing a tiny portion of chips back into the carpet like sand through a sieve. Like sawdust.
"He's…he's probably just out getting things. Y'know, groceries and stuff. Comestibles," she said, remembering the word. "Now come on, help out a bit. And don't groan. Most of this is your mess, Ben." Then she pet him playfully (even against her sense of hygiene), and he laughed.
"Okay, okay! Shit." Ben said, patting her off.
Gwen left the room smiling ("What a mouth…"), a small trash bag full of littered junk foods in her hand. She'd taken the rag too—and had even picked some Fruit Rollups candy wrappers in a-matter-of-fact way, as if they'd been briefly forgotten. She'd done her part. But when she left, Ben didn't care to turn the TV screen back on at all. He got up and stretched, patting his slippery hair. He picked up the controller and, after failing to repair the blue button through aggravated force, placed it down carefully on the table. The table was dustless—even spotless in his coarse, young man's mind. He touched it with a dirt-covered finger; a deposit of greasy film was delivered to the stand's clean top, or the "once-dirty-then-once-clean" top. With destroyed awe Ben tried to wipe it off with his sweat-saturated white undershirt, but the stain simply spread out. And indifferently, the heat of the console began to scold him.
He shut off the Xbox. He picked up his mess of clothes. Then he picked out some clean underwear and a shirt, and headed to the bathroom so he could take a shower. Naked, he turned the water on, the heat soaring way up.