Goodnight, Alex
The sun was long gone, and the dark clouds overhead warned of rain.
Most were already inside, but Ben stood just outside the overhang of his porch, arms folded and head tilted back to look at the impending blackness overhead. He could already hear the metallic plink of raindrops on the gardening equipment Colleen was rushing into the shed. Despite knowing better, he watched for nearly a minute longer, when the drops turned heavy and cold.
Rain was never a good thing. Not on this island.
Turning on heel, Benjamin Linus took up the few stairs to his porch and left the outdoors to itself.
He pushed the glasses up the bridge of his nose as he switched on his desk lamp and settled into his chair. Several papers, stark white in the bright lamplight, sat waiting for him. As his hand hovered over his pen, a noise at the periphery of his study caught his ear, and he had only to barely turn his head to see what had caused it.
A girl not yet seven, a stuffed bear dangling from one hand and the other playing in her messy dark curls. She looked half ready for bed, her nightgown supplemented with the day's dirty socks and a yawn to show two front teeth missing.
"Daddy?"
"Alex?" He turned in his chair to turn almost fully to the girl in the doorway. "You should be in bed."
"Can't sleep," she said, pouting at the floor. "The rain makes my hair poof out, and it gets in my mouth."
"I have a lot of work that needs doing, Alex," he responded, leaning back in his chair slightly on seeing no emergency.
"Please, Daddy?" Her second hand rose idle from her side to hold her bear close to her chest, and her eyes shifted up from the floor to hang on his. Fingers tapped once in a row beside his pen, still waiting to be picked up. Then, a conceding twitch to one side of his mouth, and Ben rocked himself up and out of his chair.
"All right," he relinquished. "But then you have to promise me you'll go to bed."
"Promise," she said, a smile bounding to her lips.
Ben squatted to her level, fixing her with a serious stare, and held out his pinky between them. Alex linked her pinky with his and firmly shook on it.
She sat before him, knees curled up under her on the ground as he sat on the often-empty sofa. Outside, lightning flashed in the darkness, illuminating the translucent lines of rain down the window panes. Alex jumped at the loud burst of thunder overhead, and the brush caught in her hair. Ben sighed through his nose, speaking around the barrettes held between his teeth.
"Don't jerk, Alex. You're a bird's nest enough as it is."
She stuffed the cookie into her mouth to comfort herself. The rain drummed the roof and echoed all through the house. Ben moved the brush methodically through Alex's thick, unyielding curls. She winced when the inevitable knots tangled and had to be brushed through, but she never made any noise of distress.
After another silent minute of quiet brushing, Ben tried to mutter something around the white barrettes held in his teeth. Alex giggled quietly, her little shoulders shaking.
Once he could speak past the barrettes, he managed: "All better?"
She nodded, flicking her tongue through the space where her front teeth should have been. Ben smiled softly at the back of her head, gathering what he could of her hair in his hands to tie it back with a hair tie. She played with last dangling strands that hung into her face, only to have Ben brush them away and pin them down with the barrettes.
"There," he said upon completion. "Problem solved."
She stood, teddy bear and all, to twirl around the living room in her nightgown and dirty socks. "Thank you, Daddy, it's much better! I feel like a princess."
He stopped her spinning with gentle hands on her shoulders. "Little princesses off to bed."
He steered her off to her bedroom and turned away to head back for his study.
"Daddy," she called to his back.
Ben stopped, turned and caught her in the dim yellow shaft of light through her doorway. She smiled her gapped smile and pointed to the spot between her eyebrows.
He shook his head, finally smirking. In three steps he was in front of her again, where he leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
"Goodnight, Alex."
"I love you, Daddy."
He couldn't make his smile part to form the words, and all he could manage was to nod back, tweaking her ear fondly. She turned with a flutter of her nightgown and bounded into bed.
The lights went dark and Ben was left alone with the plinking sound of rain and the distant growl of angry thunder.
AN: Wow, uh... I just wrote a BenFic. I've been writing DanFic for a while (and CharlieFic waaaay back), so some of y'all might recognize me, but I never thought I'd write BenFic. Mostly because it's only recently I realized that he's my favorite character and has been for a very long time. Just like Ben, isn't it, to make you realize he's been your favorite ALL ALONG!! Anyway, after "The Shape of Things to Come" I felt I had to write something nice for Ben and Alex. I have a feeling that he'd be an awkward sort of dad, but an okay dad. At least while she was too young to resent him. I'm rambling aren't i? Sorry. Anyway, tell me what you think, and leave me (and Ben!) your love!