Chapter 2: Longings


Charlotte tucked her scarf into her jacket. She had remembered to dress properly this time, at least. She had arrived in Aurora with little fanfare, her official business started tomorrow and she had asked Kalin to be discreet about her arrival. She saw a suspicion in Kalin's eyes when she had said that, and felt it when she had asked to lodge in the cabin she had last year. She crossed her legs and tapped her foot in the air. Her stomach started to flutter and she realised he might not even turn up. Words are nice but, she knew well enough, they were often untrue. While she hadn't faced suspicion from Elliot for journeying to Aurora, she still had to explain to him why it was necessary for her to inspect progress. That's what reports were for. Still, he hadn't pushed it. The past year had been a big transition. She had been so happy to leave the castle behind in pursuit of the real world. But that same world had placed her back into the world she no longer wanted.

She began to tap her fingers on the stone step beneath her. She waited outside in the hope that the cool air would keep her head clear. All she could think about was how foolish she was for returning to somebody who she shouldn't be seeing. She was interrupted by heavy footsteps behind her. She turned as Ben sat down next to her, picking her hand up and placing a kiss gently on it.

"You came. I wasn't sure you would," he said, rubbing his neck with his free hand.

She smiled at him, and a faint blush spread across her cheeks. "I thought the same of you." She squeezed his hand. "You look really good, by the way." Her blush deepened and she turned her focus to the rising moon. She meant it. He looked more vibrant than before, more colour to his face. He looked like he had started taking more care of himself.

"As do you. I guess they tend to make sure the Queen stays in good condition?" he raised an eyebrow at her.

"Ugh. Something like that." She grimaced, not wanting to think about the palace here.

He smiled at her, before joining her gaze at the moon. "I've missed you a lot."

Hearing that made her chest tingle right down to her fingertips. "I wasn't sure you'd feel the same."

"Please, Charlotte. I don't lie to you and nor you to me. I mean, we lie to everyone else, I'd rather we didn't here as well."

She giggled lightly, then sighed. He wasn't wrong. "You've got a point there."

"Anyway. It's getting bloody freezing out here. Do you want to go inside?" Charlotte nodded at him as he rose and grabbed her hand.

He led her into their cabin. It was warm and the air was heavy with incense. The smell had come to remind her of him when she was lonely in the castle. She breathed in deeply as she took a seat at the small table. "I don't remember this being here last year."

Ben shook his head as he poured them both some wine. "It wasn't. I asked Kalin to put it in here. Really the bed was the only thing to sit on and… I didn't want you to feel like that's all I wanted for in meeting you here."

Charlotte smiled. "No wonder she looked at me strangely when I asked to stay here specifically."

"Ah. She's a shrewd woman. Not exactly judgmental though, at least," he said as he passed her a goblet.

She took a sip. It was very sweet and strong. "I appreciate the thought. I would actually love to hear about your year, more than what I hear in reports please."

He sat across from her and took a sip of wine. He shrugged. "I'm not sure what to say really. Work's taken up most of my time. There's less stuff to blow up around here now, which is both good and bad."

"Shame. I was hoping to shoot some stuff before too many people realised who I was."

Ben laughed. He reached out for her hand across the table. His face softened. "I don't really want to bring the rest of the world here but, I feel I should ask. Elliot?"

"Alive and well. Working with kids in the orphanage…"

"And you're still together?" he stared at their hands and he tensed.

"Yes. And Page?" her eyes didn't leave his face.

He nodded. "Yeah. She comes to visit every so often. But she's still in Industrial."

"Does she know?" Charlotte paused in-between words, unsure of how to phrase anything when around Ben.

"No. She's been nagging me to try to get a transfer to Bowerstone though."

"Oh? You're the Commander of the Royal Forces. You can transfer yourself, you know, General Finn," she smirked. "It's been well over a year since you've overseen the total rebuild of security of Aurora. You're really able to leave if you want…"

"Maybe," he cut her off. "It felt right for me to be here though." He finished his wine in one gulp and let the sentence hang in the air.

"Ben... all that matters right now is that I've missed you. And there was no way I could pass up the chance to see you again. Life isn't feeling right and I know it's because I don't see you…"

Before she could keep talking, Ben pushed his chair out, stood up and picked her off her chair. He held her in his arms as she wrapped her hands around his neck. He kissed her with an urgency she hadn't felt before. When she kissed him back he could feel his pulse race beneath her fingers. He placed her on the bed and extinguished the lanterns. Her eyes widened when she saw he'd lit dozens of small candles around the room which had been masked by the brighter light. He closed the drapes and let the room shine warmly. It was beautiful. Elliot had never done anything like this before. And she suspected Ben had never done anything like this for Page, either.

Charlotte sat cross legged on the bed. Ben sat down the same way, facing her.

"I don't want you to think that you have to sleep with me… or that that's the reason we're here. But when I look at you my brain goes funny, and this feels like the only way I can show you how I feel and…"

Charlotte kneeled and moved towards him, crashing down on his lips. "Ben, we aren't good at talking about feelings. But we feel and that's all that matters."

He groaned as she swept her tongue into his mouth. He pushed her down onto the bed, kissing her so deeply she almost struggled to breathe. He ran his fingers down the length of her neck before running his lips over it. She moaned and slid her hands beneath his shirt. She had missed the feeling of hard muscle beneath her fingers. It made her excitement grow and while she tingled everywhere Ben was making her burn with his mouth. He wore a plain white linen tunic with the sleeves rolled up, making it easy for her to pull it over his head. He broke their kiss to unbutton her jacket and remove it, along with her scarf. She sat up and started to unlace her blouse, but he moved her hands to do it himself, before slowly sliding it down her arms and dropping it over the side of the bed. He pushed her back down and kissed her, hungrily and breathing heavily. He lay on his side and traced the outline of her brassiere with a fingertip, making her shiver.

"You know how to make a woman feel wanted, Finn," she smirked at him. "It's like you can't help yourself when you're with me."

"I'll have you know, I have excellent self-control, thankyou very much!" he cocked an eyebrow at her.

"I've literally never seen you display any self-control!" she laughed, causing him to join her.

"Are you serious, darling?" he continued to smile, even though his brow had started to furrow.

"Would you really be here right now, stripping down with me, if you had any?" the smile was starting to fade from her flushed lips.

He stopped smiling as she rolled to face him. He placed his hand on her waist. "I'm not sure you're joking anymore."

Charlotte bit her lip and stared into his chest. "Are you like this with lots of people?" As soon as she asked she felt a knot in her throat.

Ben pulled her into an embrace and she wrapped her arm around him tightly. He placed a soft kiss on her forehead. "Ah. I don't know how to feel about that question."

"I'm sorry. I kind of just said that without thinking about what it meant. Just forget it," she said softly.

"Well I mean, the answer is no. I'm not even like this with my own girlfriend. Not really. What I mean is that it worries me that you don't know how I feel about you. I don't know what I can do to show you." He ran his fingers through the length of her hair.

She loosened her grip on him and lifted her face to kiss him softly on the lips. She looked into his light blue eyes and could see a longing and sadness in them which she hadn't paid notice to before. She ran her thumb across his cheek. "I trust you with everything, Ben. I just don't understand what you feel. I don't understand how it can be possible for you to feel that way about me."

She kissed him softly, again. This time he returned the kiss, continuing to play with her hair. He swept his tongue against hers and she moaned softly.

He broke away from her. "If I wanted a floozy, Charlotte, then I'd go and get one instead of sacrificing the life I have to grab some scarce time with you." He smirked at her and a small smile crept to her lips as her heart beat harder. "But I'm happy to prove it. I'm not going to have sex with you tonight."

She laughed, louder than she intended. "Are you serious, Finn? I don't believe you don't want to. Not at all…" she grew quiet as she gazed down at how constricted he looked in his leather trousers.

"Oh, nobody said anything about what I wanted. Every single fibre of me wants to pin you down and make rough love to you. I want to make you scream my name out in pleasure. I want to take you right now…" he stopped and she realised she was making her lip hurt with how hard she was biting it. He smiled as he watched how flustered she was becoming. "But I am a stubborn man. So I'm not going to." He shrugged as her eyes widened.

"What? Really? You can't say all of those things and then leave." She shook her head slowly and looked at him sternly.

"I can do whatever, Charlotte. I don't think that a Queen can pull rank in this department." He unbuckled his belt and tossed it to the ground. "Take your boots off though, we've probably walked sand all through this room."

She sighed. "Well you're probably right about that, I'll admit," she said as she sat on the edge of the bed and unlaced her shoes before kicking them off.

Ben stood up and started to blow out the dying candles. Charlotte couldn't remove her eyes from him. He was powerful but so careful with her. She wasn't used to being with someone so physically strong. She was also coming to see how fragile he could be, and she wasn't used to that either.

"Do you remember that last night we spent at Mourningwood Fort? After we killed all those Hollow Men but before Walter and I left for Industrial?" she asked as he blew out the last candle, leaving them in the faint moonlight spilling from the window through the gaps in the drapes.

He sat behind her on the bed and wrapped his arms around her waist and straddled her. He kissed the side of her neck several times, gently nibbling on her flesh. "I do. And the night before we killed all those Hollow Men."

She lightly giggled. "I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again. I wasn't sure if you only got so close to me then because of that. Or because we both thought we could have died."

He bit her hard on the neck and she yelped. "You think some stupid things, Charlotte." He pulled her hair to turn her face towards him. He kissed her forcefully before letting her go and started to pull his fingertips down her shoulders before starting to bite her shoulder blades. Her breaths began to grow shallow. "You're also the one who found Elliot in the sewers just after that," he said before biting her hard at the nape of her neck.

She yelped and he kissed the spot. "It was a confusing time, Finn. I'm trying to apologise and tell you how much you meant to me from the start. Don't be an ass." She rubbed her neck.

Ben slid closer to the pillows and pulled her with him before leaning against the headboard and closing his eyes. "I'm sorry sweetheart," he whispered into her ear. "None of this is fair, but it doesn't stop me being jealous of the man who gets to spend his days with you."

She shook her head. "Just because things are that way doesn't mean I want them to be."

"Tell me why they have to stay that way, then," he said softly as he started to massage her neck.

"Because he hasn't done anything wrong," she let Ben snort in exasperation before continuing. "He's kind. And it's not fair to ruin him because I made a shitty error in judgment when I found him."

"I never asked before, but what were you thinking when you took him back?" Ben asked, moving his hands to her shoulders, rubbing gently.

She brought her feet up to her chest and hugged her legs, focusing on how Ben was unravelling her tension. "Guilt for having left him behind mostly. And…" she stopped and closed her eyes while deeply breathing in. She exhaled slowly. "…it doesn't matter."

Ben slid his arms under hers and pulled her close to him. He placed a row of kisses up her neck, stopping just below her ear. "It all matters, Charlotte. And I like hearing you talk."

"Think about it Ben. I found Elliot after we had started negotiating with Page. I saw how you two were and I heard loads of rumours. I was fairly sure you'd been a thing in the past. And that's fine. But there was obviously something still there. I felt really lonely." She could feel her cheeks burn. She didn't normally let words just fall out of her mouth like that.

He placed his chin on the crook of her neck. "This sounds like I'm paying for being my charming self. Charlotte, I'm like that with everyone."

"Yeah. And now I'm living in a situation I can't get out of without hurting more people," she said slowly.

"I know, darling." He held her tightly. "But I'm really glad you came tonight. I've been thinking about this ever since I last saw you."

She let go of her legs and turned around, tucking them behind the base of Ben's back. He placed his hands on her waist and she placed her hands behind his neck, pulling him in to kiss him deeply. He moaned into her as she nibbled on his lower lip. She gasped as he ran his hands along her body, running his fingers over her clothed nipples.

She stopped kissing him and held his face as she looked into his eyes.

"What's wrong, Charlotte?" he asked, forehead creased.

"You're all I think of Finn," she whispered while she ran her hand long his flesh, just above his pants.

He looked at her, a smirk growing across his face as he pushed her back onto the bed. He unbuttoned her trousers and stripped them from her legs, leaving her laying in only her underwear. He moved onto his own pants and removed them slowly as her eyes widened and savoured the sight of him.

"I'm surprised you're wearing underwear, Ben. This has got to be a first," she grinned.

"I know right? I'm getting classier by the day." He crawled over her, dipping down to kiss her forehead. "I wasn't kidding earlier about being stubborn, though." He ran a hand over her smalls, making her legs tense in anticipation. "I'm not sleeping with you tonight."

Charlotte groaned in exasperation. "You are the most frustrating person I know."

"After you, maybe," he laughed and she playfully punched his shoulder.

He lay on his back and she rolled her head onto his chest and their arms wrapped around one another. "I guess it is getting pretty late and you're probably too old to still even be awake."

"Ouch, Charlotte, you really hit my weak spot. Having a woman in bed whose a few years younger than me is such a drag" he said with a sarcastic drawl and she softly laughed. "We should get some sleep though. We have to wake early tomorrow."

"Not this time. I didn't schedule anything till 10 tomorrow morning so we don't have to rush and sneak about like last year."

"That's nice and all, but it's not why we're getting up early."

"Oh?" she said, noting the lightness in his voice.

"Nope. I might have said I won't take you tonight, but I'll definitely be having you in the morning. We'll just have to get up early to make up for tonight."

She laughed loudly. "I should have known. What if we can't sleep?"

"Then we wait." He kissed the top of her head. "Goodnight Charlotte," he said as he stroked her shoulder with his thumb.

"Goodnight Ben," she said as she listened to his heartbeat, wondering if her own gave away how much she loved him.