Disclaimer: None of the RENT characters are mine. They just like to pounce on me a lot, and talk to me… And even then, only a few of them really talk to me. I get the feeling Maureen doesn't even really like me, which is a pity, because I love her. Anyway.
A/N: Benny/Maureen, my OTP. Alex gave me the first line, ages ago… it took me a while to get to writing it. I have no clue why I didn't refer to Maureen by name anywhere in the story… it just felt right.
She was the last woman he ever thought he'd fall in love with.
But he did, almost from the first time he met her, though it took him much longer to realize it. And once he did, she always belonged to someone else—never the same person, never for very long, but just the same, off limits and out of reach.
Besides, he could never marry a girl like her. He was Benjamin Coffin III, future owner of CyberArts Studio, and she… she was wild and passionate and everything he couldn't have. He made her his in little ways, the things no one—not even she—would notice. The way he called her babe—only her, no one else. The notes he left her each morning before he left for work, before she was even awake. The ring he gave her one Christmas, with the inscription on the inside she probably never noticed.
And then… there was Alison. By that time, she belonged to Mark, and Alison was her polar opposite. Always cool, collected, composed… She fit an image, and he thought he could love her, that the debutante could make him forget his diva, though she never had been his, really.
Anyway, it didn't do any good. He married Alison, and his diva only hated him for betraying his friends, betraying her. She refused to speak to him after that, and he tried his best to forget her.
But seeing her again that Christmas Eve, watching her with all of her beauty and passion and her dark eyes bright with fury, he knew. The last woman he ever thought he'd fall in love with… and the one he could never have.