Janice firmly believed that Jill was controlling her son. She loved Benjamin to the point of blindness.
Beau has almost zero emotional intelligence, so he assumed that Benjamin hung around Jill for sex. It made sense, from a logical perspective–Jill is Ben’s type, and they were living together.
For the brief amount of time that Henry had to think about it, he was the closest to the truth: Benjamin was acting out on long-time frustrations and unhappiness. Henry never knew the depths of Benjamin’s inner turmoil, but he knew that his youngest child had never quite fit in with the rest of the family. That said, Benjamin’s departure wasn’t a surprise, but his joining a superhero team was. Even Henry didn’t expect Benjamin to be so bold.
Only Eleanor sensed that Benjamin was falling in love with Jill, and while she wasn’t a fan of superheroes, she acknowledged Benjamin’s autonomy in the situation. At the end of the day, Eleanor just wants her baby brother to be happy.
One of my favorite parts of writing Mercury is playing with Deep POV to show subtle differences between him and Jill. For example, Jillian is always honest if she was crying. Benjamin, on the other hand, comes up with a bunch of different euphemisms for his tears.
I’m in such a good mood, here’s a whole paragraph from Mercury:
Reid sat in the dingy vinyl chair next to my hospital bed. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, watching me with exhausted wariness. My head ached as though I’d been hit with a heavy object, but the heat was gone. I moved my head to the side and immediately groaned. “What happened?”
Sorry about the delay! It’s time for Benjamin’s description.
Benjamin Philip Trent is just a hair under six feet tall. As our heroine is fond of noting, he has hazel eyes, dark blond hair (”sandy blond”), and generally fine bone structure. He has pale skin with a spray of faint freckles on his face and shoulders. Due to wildly out-of-control acne in his teenage years that required Accutane, he also has acne scarring on his cheeks. His eyebrows are dark, and on the thick side. His teeth were straightened to Hollywood levels by orthodontia. He has a slightly deviated septum that causes the bridge of his nose to be just slightly off-center.
Benjamin wore his hair a little long after high school, but it is now appropriately short for his line of work. Jillian’s hack job grew out eventually, and he looks quite distinguished.
He’s not thin or frail, his genetics will never let him attain the bulk he desires–the bulk he associates with Manly Superhero Men. He has medium body hair growth, and will probably never have a large amount on his chest. His torso, thighs, and a few other places have stretch marks from when he was younger, and severely overweight. He lost the weight when he was 13-14 by growing six inches in one year. He has very large feet and used to trip over them when he was still growing.
Alright, here’s Benjamin Dances, Ben’s POV of the romantic park scene in early Battlecry. The standard boiler plate applies: Benjamin swears here more than in the book, it’s not been proofread, and it contains spoilers for Sentinel. Also, I think there’s a line or two different from the final version.
Wide Spread Interests 