A/n-Look, it's something a tiny bit different from me! I'm going for the friendship and a tiny bit of mental angst instead of the usual beatings that I prefer. Not to say I won't be returning to the usual beatings, that is! Anyway, I wrote this for my beta, Rhiannon Aurorafai, who turns 18 today. Everyone wish her a happy birthday! Needless to say, this hasn't been betaed (because I needed to keep it a surprise), so you can blame me for any blatant errors. I hope you enjoy!
Extra brownie points to anyone who recognizes the title. It's from Modest Mussorgsky's suite of the same name. I'm a band nerd (seven years of flute will do that to you), what can I say?
Disclaimer-I don't own anything National Treasure related, though I would like a piece of Justin Bartha (don't tell my boyfriend). I do own Brynn Gallagher, though she's really only mentioned a few times in passing. I also don't own the suite "Pictures at an Exhibition" or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (which is an amazing book and movie).
Note: takes place before NT2, before Abigail and Ben split up.
Ben didn't really notice anything amiss the first time he went to Riley's apartment. He fed the fish, watered the plants, and collected the mail, as per Riley's instructions. He was also supposed to bring in the newspaper, but he couldn't find it on the front step of the small apartment building so he simply ignored that instruction. He figured that if Riley really wanted to know what was going on in DC and the rest of the world while he was out of town, he could find the newspaper online and read it that way. He locked up the apartment, stopped to chat for a moment with one of Riley's neighbors, and headed back home.
The second day he took a bit longer around the place, inspecting Riley's extensive DVD collection and perusing the pile of books left next to Riley's bed. To Ben's immense amusement, Riley appeared to have a bit of an affinity towards Clive Cussler novels, which could explain the younger man's insistence on joining the Templar expedition in the first place. Looking around the bedroom, Ben frowned. Something was amiss; he just couldn't figure out what it was. With a shrug Ben resolved to investigate further the next day. Abigail was expecting him home for dinner.
The third day was when Ben went through Riley's house with a fine-tooth comb. He uncovered a Bluetooth headset, forty-three cents, and (to Ben's surprise) a well-worn copy of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. None of these were what was wrong with Riley's apartment, though Ben had a sneaking suspicion that Riley would be quite happy to have both the headset and the book back. Looking around the apartment again, Ben was suddenly struck by what was missing.
There were no photographs anywhere.
In Ben's house, he had albums of family photos from his childhood up until his recent engagement to Abigail. Framed photos adorned the walls, his desk, and various shelves and tables. Abigail had her own collection of old pictures from Germany, as well as a smaller group of those taken since her move to America. Riley, on the other hand, had nothing. There were poster s on the walls, sure. A pennant from his alma mater here, a poster for his favorite band there…that was it. No photos. None of friends or family or crowning achievements in his life. The closest thing to a photo in the apartment was the original newspaper article about the discovery of the Templar treasure, which was taped to one of the walls in his bedroom. Even so, the article barely mentioned Riley's involvement in the treasure hunt, something the young man had complained about intermittently since then.
Ben frowned. There had to be pictures somewhere. Riley was 24, for crying out loud! Surely there was some real, photographic evidence of his existence! Some picture of Riley's family, from when he was a kid! Something from his college years, which Ben heard about whenever he was with Riley and Brynn!
Ben paused for a second. Yeah, he had a photo or two of Riley back home. Not nearly enough to indicate the level of friendship between the two. It wasn't because of the digital camera craze; any existing pictures of Riley were not lost on a computer somewhere, unless that's where Riley kept all his pictures. No, Ben made a point of printing out all his pictures. After all, how else would anyone see them? Perhaps the glossy paper was a little more expensive, but price wasn't exactly something Ben was worried about anymore. Riley just never seemed to be in photos. Ben couldn't seem to recall Riley making himself scarce whenever a camera was around; it wasn't a fear of being caught on film that explained the lack of pictures. He simply didn't have any, and Ben wanted to fix that.
With that thought in mind, Ben completed the fish-feeding for the day and returned home, with the intent of going through every picture he had in order to find some photo to put in the young man's house.
Before going to Riley's on the fourth day, Ben stopped off at a store and bought a handful of picture frames. He'd have to work fast; Riley was due home from his conference that day. Riley had tried to explain the reason for his "vacation", but there was entirely too much technical jargon involved. All Ben had gathered was that it was a convention for those who were technologically inclined, and that Riley was pretty excited about going. Then again, anything involving computers was liable to excite the kid.
Ben was midway through his task when he heard the telltale sound of a key in the door. Riley had come home early, Ben realized, as he shoved the frames and photos back into the bag and tried to hide it under the kitchen table.
Riley entered the apartment, muttering unhappily under his breath and apparently not noticing Ben's presence. He nudged the door closed with his foot, dropped his duffel bag, and made his way to the couch.
"Riley, you look terrible!" Ben was unable to keep the astonishment out of his voice. He'd fully expected the younger man to return happy, fulfilled, and practically vibrating with the need to give Ben the play-by-play of absolutely everything that happened at the conference. Instead Riley had come back scruffy-looking, wearing his glasses, and downright exhausted.
Riley jumped, not expecting Ben's voice. "Ben! Why…what are you doing here?"
"Feeding your fish, tending your plants, and gathering your mail, as you asked. Though I couldn't find your newspaper. Are you sure you didn't cancel it and forget?" Ben needed to know exactly what was wrong with his friend, though he also knew he had to ask in a roundabout way. Riley rarely ever admitted to being "not alright" if he could get away with it. Ben hated having to wheedle it out of him, but it was Riley's character to downplay any serious illness or injury. He'd whine for hours about a paper cut, but he wouldn't call anyone if he was down with a serious case of the flu and was puking his guts out.
Ben shuddered. That was certainly a memory for another time.
"Ugh…the newspaper thief strikes again," Riley moaned, practically face-down on the couch. Ben wasn't sure how Riley was able to manage such a position without removing his glasses first, but decided that Riley was probably too tired to care. "I'll catch him someday."
"How was the conference?" Ben asked, hoping for some insight on his friend's condition. Riley rolled onto his side in order to speak easier.
"If I ever express an interest of going to one of those ever again, knock me out, tie me up, and lock me in a closet until the thing is well over," Riley replied.
"That bad, huh?"
"Yeah. They had us staying in this hotel where the walls were paper-thin, and this huge guy in the room next to me snored the entire time. I don't think I slept at all in the whole three nights I was there. Though the conference itself was so mind-numbing I probably could've caught a few Z's during that, but there was always some idiot sitting next to me with the loudest keyboard you could imagine. I would be just dropping off when I'd hear this obnoxious 'click click clickity click click click'. And they'd always type at, like, 160," Riley's voice rose with every grievance. Ben nodded sympathetically. The lack of sleep wasn't extreme enough for Riley to try to hide it, and it explained the younger man's exhaustion and disheveled appearance. A few hours back in his own bed would do him a world of good, Ben decided.
"I could've warned you that conferences weren't as cracked up as the pamphlets make them out to be," Ben empathized.
"I'm not through yet," Riley groused. "And on the flight back from 'sunny Washington', the airline people screwed up my reservation and had me in coach. Coach! I spent the entire flight squished up against the window because the woman next to me was spilling into my seat. And that's putting it nicely. When I asked her to give me a little more room, she practically started shrieking at me. It was probably the worst five hours of my life. I won't even start on coach airplane food and the fact that the in-flight movie was some cliché romance-type movie."
"You look exhausted. You should probably get some sleep," Ben encouraged, gesturing towards Riley's room. The younger man sighed.
"I would love some sleep. No greater invention," he sighed happily. "And I'm quite comfortable right here. I don't think you could get me to move if you told me the building was on fire. But seriously, what are you still doing here? It takes, like, five minutes to feed the fish and gather the mail. Were you using my painstakingly constructed TV system? 'Cause I explicitly told you not to touch that." Riley raised his head to look over at Ben.
"I told you I wasn't going to touch your TV. I didn't break anything," Ben held up his hands in a peacekeeping gesture and smiled. Riley was much too tired to attempt any sort of revenge, even if Ben had touched the TV. But after Riley caught up with his sleep…Ben was quite happy he'd allayed the urge to watch a movie on the wide-screen, ridiculously large TV with accompanying surround sound. It wouldn't have been worth it.
"You look like you're up to something," Riley inspected him suspiciously. "What's in the bag you're utterly failing to conceal with your leg? Did you get me a 'welcome back' present?" Riley's tired eyes sparkled with sudden excitement.
"Um, sorta. Not exactly," Ben admitted. Riley sighed.
"You're going to force me to get up and look, aren't you? Fine," With a deep breath, Riley hauled himself off the couch and staggered to the kitchen table. He promptly collapsed in one of the chairs and fumbled under the table for the bag. He hauled it on the table and peeked in. He looked up at Ben, completely surprised.
"I know it's not really a gift, but I noticed you don't have any photos anywhere. So I figured you ought to have some," Ben gave a small grin.
"I have photos," Riley argued back. "They're in an album. I'll show you!" Hauling himself up from the table, Riley disappeared into his bedroom. After a few moments of rustling, Ben heard a loud thump and a string of muttered curses. A second later Riley reentered the kitchen with a suspiciously thin photo album.
"That's it?" Ben asked.
"This is it," Riley confirmed, handing it to Ben. Ben thumbed through it, noting that the first picture was of Riley standing awkwardly in front of his college. There were a handful of an awkward or surprised-looking Riley, causing Ben to assume that the pictures had been taken spur-of-the-moment. Another few were of Riley not paying attention, usually because he was engrossed in his computer. A page later and Brynn appeared. There were more pictures of Riley and Brynn, sometimes with several other people, than there were of anything or anyone else in the entire photo album.
Then came graduation. Riley, Brynn, and a few other familiar faces from other pictures were decked out in their caps and gowns. After that there were a handful of other pictures, such one of Riley in a hideous suit that Ben recognized as Riley's "work attire" and another of Riley standing proudly in an empty apartment. After that, the album was empty.
"Seriously, this is it?" Ben asked, pointing at the album.
"Yup," Riley nodded.
"What about when you were a kid?" Ben asked. "You've got to have family pictures or something." Riley hesitated. Something was eating at the younger man, Ben realized. Riley heaved a sigh.
"Hold a sec," he disappeared into his room again, remerging a few moments later with an old-looking photo in his hand. He gave it to Ben.
"What's this?" Ben asked, looking at the faded photo. It was of a young man and woman. The woman was holding a baby, and the man had his arms wrapped around the woman. The two adults were smiling at the camera, and the baby had the silly grin that all happy babies wore.
"My, um, parents," Riley admitted, looking away. "This is the only picture I have of them. They died in a car crash when I was one. My mom's sister and her husband took me in, but they weren't exactly the camera-wielding type."
Ben was stunned. He hadn't known that Riley was an orphan. It explained why there were so few pictures of him, and why there were none of his childhood. Ben had the impression that Riley's aunt and uncle weren't exactly the parental type, either, but he wasn't about to press his visibly-exhausted friend into revealing his entire youth. Judging by Riley's reluctance to bring it up, it was apparently still a bit of a painful subject.
"I'm sorry," Ben was unsure of what else to say. Riley shrugged.
"It was a long time ago. If you don't mind, I'm going to hit the sack. You're welcome to stay, I guess…" Riley shrugged again and vanished into his bedroom. Ben sat in silence for another moment before reclaiming his bag of photos. He picked up Riley's photo album and paused. After a moment of deliberation he added it, and the photo of Riley's parents, to his bag and silently left the apartment.
To say that Riley had never slept so well would've been an understatement. It was a good twelve hours before he woke up, and another hour before he could coax his body out of bed. He was just rolling out of bed when he remembered the conversation he'd had with Ben right before he'd passed out.
"Oh man," he muttered to himself. That had to have been an awkward situation. Riley didn't really like to talk about the past. So what if his uncle and aunt had neglected him as a child? He'd turned out alright. Sure, he wasn't entirely fond of small, dark spaces, but plenty of normal people were claustrophobic. It didn't mean anything.
He stumbled out into the kitchenette, surprised to see the bag still sitting on the kitchen table. He shrugged, assuming Ben had left it. Noting that the photo album was more or less right where he'd left it, he began to search for food.
It wasn't until he was midway through a bowl of Capt'n Crunch that he realized what was missing. The picture of his parents was no longer on the kitchen table. He looked under the table, wondering if it had fallen off. Nope, the floor was spotless. Growing frantic, Riley searched the entire house for the precious photo, only to come up empty handed. He returned to his now-soggy cereal with tears threatening to fall from his eyes. That picture was one of his most prized possessions. It had survived his foster family, it had survived all the hazing in college, and it had survived the FBI searching his house during the treasure hunt, only for him to lose it in some boneheaded move. He never should've taken it out in the first place.
Riley wiped his eyes furiously. He didn't cry; he rarely ever cried. That incident beneath Trinity Church had been the first time he'd cried in years. He'd held Brynn when she cried during their graduation, but he'd remained dry-eyed. Nobody had come for him, and her entire family had come for hers. Though he had been quite surprised to discover that her parents had gotten him a graduation gift, too. He still had all those DVDs and that sweater.
One of the newly-framed pictures had fallen out of the bag. Riley moved forward to shove it back in, but something made him stop. He pulled out the frame, and nearly collapsed into tears again.
Ben had taken the photo of his parents, which was usually punishable by slow, painful death. However, Ben had done something to the photo that Riley would never be able to forget. He'd taken it to one of those places that fixed them. He'd been able to restore the color and repair the small tears, and had printed out the restored copy and framed it. Riley could practically see the colors of his parents' eyes: blue for his dad, green for his mom. The original was also in the bag, also framed.
Riley looked through the other framed pictures. There was the one from graduation, with him, Brynn, Alec, Genevieve, Connor…all the old college friends he hadn't talked to in years. There was the one from orientation, his first day on campus; one of the tour guides had insisted on taking everyone's pictures in front of the iconic bell tower.
There were some more recent pictures, too. One of him, Ben, and Abigail, taken not long after the discovery of the treasure. It had been for a magazine, which had ended up not using it. How Ben got the copy, Riley had no idea. There was another of him throwing a snowball at Ben's head, taken last winter. It was directly followed by one of Ben shoving a fistful of snow down Riley's back, which made Riley laugh through the tears.
He went through every picture, from both his college years and from more recent times. After a quick trip to the closest hardware store, he spent the next two hours artistically arranging them around the house. The restored one of his parents found a new home on his nightstand, along with the graduation picture and the magazine reject.
Digging his digital camera out of his closet, Riley resolved that he was not going to let life get away unrecorded. Not this time.
Besides, he needed a good blackmail shot of Ben with at 6am, when even the great treasure protector looked terrible. What better way to show his appreciation for everything Ben had done than to tease and blackmail him mercilessly? It was how he showed his love. Always had been, and always would be.