Ben was just staring at him, wordlessly, endlessly, like he couldn’t fathom the sentence, couldn’t comprehend. Ari wanted to walk back the words, or amend them to I love you, I still love you more than anything, but that wouldn’t fix anything in reality, no matter how much he wanted it to. They couldn’t keep living like this.
He trusted Ben’s glance around them enough not to check for himself that they were still alone. He almost hoped someone would appear, to force them to scatter the conversation and to stop Ben from arguing back. But no one saved Ari from this, so he had to look into Ben’s eyes and hurt him again, still more deliberately than last time. “Because I can’t be with you,” Ari said, crushed, through gritted teeth. “Because you’re better off without me.” (That was true. Who wouldn’t have been better off without him?)
“And you’ll be happy sooner or later,” he added, falsely calm; Ben should just go back to the man he’d used to be. The boisterous flirt, the dashing auror, the eligible bachelor, the best friend he’d always loved. (They could not continue to be best friends anymore either, that was too much to ask, but...) “You were always happy before.”
He trusted Ben’s glance around them enough not to check for himself that they were still alone. He almost hoped someone would appear, to force them to scatter the conversation and to stop Ben from arguing back. But no one saved Ari from this, so he had to look into Ben’s eyes and hurt him again, still more deliberately than last time. “Because I can’t be with you,” Ari said, crushed, through gritted teeth. “Because you’re better off without me.” (That was true. Who wouldn’t have been better off without him?)
“And you’ll be happy sooner or later,” he added, falsely calm; Ben should just go back to the man he’d used to be. The boisterous flirt, the dashing auror, the eligible bachelor, the best friend he’d always loved. (They could not continue to be best friends anymore either, that was too much to ask, but...) “You were always happy before.”
