Work Text:
Benjamin gripped the edge of the sink, staring into the mirror and watching his own eye twitch as he quietly whispered to himself, “Come on, come on, come on.”
He could do this.
Or, rather, in theory he could do this, but there were a lot of things that only worked in theory alone; quantum theory, string theory, the theory of relativity, so many things yet to be proven and yet held near and dear as though infallible. He wouldn’t pretend to understand any of it, or this, least of all this, but he could make a couple of well-informed guesses.
If Captain Underpants could fly, and he was Captain Underpants, then by all reason, he too, as Benjamin Krupp, should be able to fly.
Ben took a shuddering breath and bit back the thought that this entire thing was stupid.
“Come on, come on, come on.”
It had been Edith who finally broke to him the truth after he had spent another sleepless night pacing a ditch into his living room carpet with fresh antiseptic and bandages. She had sat him down on her weathered apartment couch and forced him to see the logic, forced him to listen until there was nothing left to deny. When he was ready, and that took hours, she transported words from his mouth to Captain’s ears and vice versa between snaps and a spray bottle of water.
The results, however, were a soaked shirt and fifty million more questions.
Everything could be hypothetically solved with theories. Nothing could actually be answered.
So at 6:45am on a school day after a month of letting all of the information sink in, there he was, at the vanity in his bathroom, trying to get at least one solid answer. In the spluttering light of the overhead lamp though, in his khaki pants and dress shirt, he didn’t very much feel like a super hero.
He felt like him.
“He says you need to learn how to have fun,” Edith had said after he wiped the water from his face again, “learn how to lighten up and allow yourself to enjoy things.”
“Well that’s nice.”
“…He’s right, Ben.”
He remembered how he ground his teeth, “Please tell Captain Underoos that all I want to know is if this is the reason I ripped the doorhandle out of my front door last week.”
“But-”
“All he’s been doing is talking in circles! I’m not taking some mamby-pamby garbage from a man that runs around in his underwear and-… Don’t give me that look. Edith-…Edith, please. Just ask him again. I just want a real answer.”
But Ben never got a real answer.
It was a convoluted trailing curlicue of half admissions and possibilities and maybes and it’s entirely possibles and theories that usually revolved around an axis made almost solely of the Captain insisting that Benjamin, ‘Needed to lighten up.’
Needed to lighten up. Lighten up? Oh he’d show him what it meant to lighten the fuck up. God, if he could have just gotten his hands on that guy he-
The sink broke.
Shattered, really, in his hands. Bits of white crumbled away as he pulled back from the wreckage and observed, open mouthed, the two gaping holes on either side of the vanity.
The first thought that came to his head was, ‘That’ll be expensive to fix.’
The second was, ‘When I get my hands on that asshole.’
The third told him to wait.
Wait.
Wait.
Ben looked at his hands.
Every time he got angry, every time, something ended up broken beyond repair. Now it was the sink but before it was the front door handle, and two weeks before that it was the post box who’s door he had accidentally slammed so hard the whole thing went sailing off its post.
He took a deep breath and changed his theory, just enough, just a little.
Right.
He stepped back, sitting down on the toilet lid as he rested his face in his hands.
Right.
“Come on, come on, come on.”
Good feelings are hard to come by when you’re sitting in a bathroom surrounded by pieces of a broken sink, however, and eventually, he had to leave for work.
The day dragged like dress shoes through mud. Between the barrage of phone calls and people banging on his door, he felt his mind whirling away to other thoughts which left him scrambling in a fuzzy haze to still function as he should, to still act as if he knew no better. In the moment his body was juggling responsibilities like a circus clown on half pay, but his brain was digging through itself wondering what could possibly work. By 10am he found himself staring at a pile of papers that had yet to be touched since 9, and it was around that time that he realized this was a losing battle.
Ben let his forehead connect with the desk and sighed.
He should probably give up on this.
It was weird, the kind of badly-written-musical awful weird, really, that he was Captain Underpants. How long had he looked up to that guy? When he was sitting in his living room nursing splinters out of his hands and resetting knuckle bones, he had watched the news and looked for signs of the Captain because that guy, THAT guy, was a hero. If heroes existed, then the world couldn’t be that bad, right? If the Captain could get out of bed every morning and do his best to make the world a better place, then Krupp could handle a few dislocated bones and bruises, right?
He WAS the Captain though. He HAD gotten up and done all those things, even if he didn’t remember it. He WAS the hero but… how could he, Benjamin Krupp, standard white overweight middle-class middle-aged bald guy, be Captain fucking Underpants?
Ben still couldn’t wrap his head around it.
He didn’t very much feel like a hero.
That was another bone of contention.
“What did he say?” he had asked wiping water from his face, “And is there any other way you can get be me back without using the spritzer?”
“I don’t think so, and he just said, ‘Anyone could be a hero.’”
Ben had thrown his hands into the air, “That doesn’t answer my question! I want to know how HE got here, how HE got to be a hero living in MY head!”
“Maybe if we just rephrase the question?” she had reasoned, “Maybe he just doesn’t understand what you’re asking.”
“I’m the one asking myself the question though! I should be able to understand!”
“But you don’t, and he’s doesn’t.”
Benjamin clicked his tongue and, in a moment of lazy viciousness, slowly pushed the papers off his desk where they thundered to the ground in a flurry.
He’d clean it up later.
There were more pressing things to be dealt with.
Ben shut his eyes and, for a split second, he was flying.
A sudden jerk of motion sickness overwhelmed him and he snapped his eyes back open.
For the past several months, this is what his dreams had consisted of; flying. It was through trees, or around the city, always zipping and dipping and diving and then rocketing back up. At first he thought it was just his imagination getting away from him but now he wondered if maybe it wasn’t dreaming so much as it was remembering, bits of what he had done as Captain making their way into the rest of his brain to be processed. After Edith had made the two of them talk, the dreams had gotten more vivid, more full body sensory, and he’d woken up to little notes on the nightstand reading things like, “You’re already capable of doing what you want to do, so go do it,” or, “Dreams are never out of reach.”
They all read like Disney princess birthday cards. He’d throw them out.
After a while though, the messages showed up in his lunch bag, on the corners of papers when he wasn’t looking, as a little voice in the back of his head whispering. He felt like a counselor trying to psychoanalyze himself, like he was his own worst nightmare of an overbearing friend trying to fix a problem, but he couldn’t remember doing it and he couldn’t make himself stop. It was an incessant barrage of cheering that he just didn’t feel.
How could he be so miserable and exhausted most days and then turn around and be that radioactive cesspit of explosive happiness?
This whole thing was nuts.
And the worst thing was, the real truth was of it was, he had wanted to be a hero once. Raised on Wonder Woman and Baron von Red Berry cereal, Saturday mornings were a time to dream of that. He could remember sitting in his mom’s lap on the couch and banging his spoon in time to the theme song. She’d laugh and sing along, letting him feed her dry cereal because he couldn’t stand it with milk. Every once in a while, she’d run her fingers through his hair and kiss the back of his head, telling him, “You’re my little super hero, Benny boy, just like Wonder Woman.”
She had made him a cape and everything one Halloween, with a big ‘B’ on the back. He had kept that right up until the day she died.
Ben had wanted to be a hero once, but not now.
Still, he wished he hadn’t thrown that cape away.
‘Happiness is a split second in a moment that you can’t hold on to. You just have to remember and appreciate it for what it was.’ That was the note on his nightstand this morning. He threw it out like the rest, but now it came back to him now, sitting here, with his head on his desk starting sightlessly out the window. Who knew that a guy in his underwear could be so philosophic? Then again, kids could be pretty on point with things that adults had long since forgotten. Captain wasn’t a kid though, Captain was…him.
When the hell had HE gotten so philosophic?
Also, why the hell couldn’t Captain have been around when he had to take all those Child Psychology classes for his MA? It would have made everything so much easier.
Ben snorted, folding his arms under his head and smirking into the crook of his elbow.
Nothing ever happened on time.
He shut his eyes again, just for a moment, and this time he saw ocean waves whizzing by.
Waves upon waves upon waves. He felt so light. He felt so-
He snapped awake as a distant bell signified the end of lunch, wincing as his eyes readjusted to the low sun. Ben groaned. Sitting up, he felt something slip from his shoulders and, turning to look, found his jacket on the floor.
Edith must have come in to check on him.
Something fluttered in his chest pleasantly as he retrieved the jacket and put it around his chair. Just as he was smoothing out the shoulders, however, it clicked.
That was it.
That was the feeling, that light, fluttery feeling which followed him in his dreams. That was it. It wasn’t a solid emotion he needed, it was that fluid slippery thing.
Happiness.
Real happiness.
“Shit,” he whispered.
The Captain had said so himself, happiness was just a thing that lived within the split second of an instance. It couldn’t be captured, couldn’t be contained, couldn’t be forever. As soon as it came, it went. That was it.
Ben groaned again, louder, smacking his forehead with his hand. Of course it would be easy for Underpants to fly then, of fucking course. That giggly moron, with his too-big-to-fail ego and a heart the size of a nuclear reactor. Bet he never had a bad day in his stupid life. Bet he never once, not once, had to deal with self-doubt or fear or frustrations of any sort. Fucker ran around in his god damn UNDERWEAR and fought TOILETS and SENTIENT SNOT and thought life was a game. Stock Market? What’s that? Oh just the monetary hydra you can’t punch in the face even when it’s about to eat your entire life in one go. WMD’s? You know, the thing we went to war over that didn’t exist. What do you mean when you say high blood pressure? It means in about two seconds if you don’t get out of my way I’m about to suplex your stupid fucking fat face you absolute moron.
Ben got up from his desk and moved away, knowing full well he could break something in that moment.
How? Just How? Just how was he Captain Underpants? How could he be these two polar people? It was insane.
“Ben –”
“I’ve got water in my ear- hold on.”
“Ben, we’ve been at this for hours.”
The sun had been gone when Edith said that, face taunt with worry. He couldn’t relent though, he couldn’t give up. The answers felt so close.
“Just tell me what he said.”
“And if I do, can we stop? We can do this again later if you need to but we’ve both got work in the morning and I really think you’re doing more harm to yourself than good at this point.”
“Edith, please, just-“
“You have to promise me first that we’re done.”
He had drug his hands down his face, feeling the water he didn’t care to wipe away anymore bead and run between his fingers, “Yes, I promise, yes, please.”
“He said that, ‘Bravery isn’t the lack of fear, but the determination to work through it so as to achieve greatness.’” She had tapped the pad of paper on her leg as she said this, adding, “He made me write it down for you. Thought you could use it.”
“That wasn’t what I asked him!”
“Ben-,”
“He doesn’t know when to stop! He thinks it’s fine but I keep waking up half dead in my underwear and he won’t stop! Why won’t he stop?”
“He thinks he’s doing the right thing! He doesn’t know any better!”
That was bullshit though.
The more Benjamin thought it over, the more he realized that.
The Captain wasn’t stupid. He knew what he was getting into. He just chose to do ignore the consequences and-
No.
No, that wasn’t it either.
He was aware of the consequences.
Ben stopped, staring out the window, seeing nothing as the gears in his head turned.
He was aware of the consequences, was aware of what he was doing, was aware he could get killed- get them both killed- but he did it anyway because he felt it was the right thing to do. Not the only option, but the only good option.
Quietly, Benjamin undid the button on one sleeve of his dress shirt and rolled it back, taking in every scar and bruise and unhealed scrape. He turned his arm this way and that, looking at the uneven scar tissue, the way the skin shone in the light from outside. The Captain- He- HE, Benjamin Krupp, some part of him, chose to go through hell and back because way deep down, he believed he needed to.
He, Benjamin Krupp, chose to be brave, even if he didn’t remember it.
Knees buckling, Ben reached out and gripped his desk to steady himself.
Well there was a revelation.
But then, for all the things that Captain was, including being brave, then that meant he…could…be…
Happy.
Happy without fear.
A noise somewhere between a whine and a gurgle slipped between his teeth as he pulled himself to sit on the edge of his desk, face slack with shock.
Every good psychology class had taught him the same theory, that fear was a combination of nature and nurture. There were things children were afraid of because they needed to be in order to survive and things children were afraid of because they were taught to fear them. As people grew older, those fears grew in number and size. Nobody wants to fall because everyone learns what pain is. Nobody wants to try because everyone knows what failure is. Nobody wants to be happy because everyone knows…it doesn’t last.
It never lasts.
It’s just a split second in a moment that you can’t hold on to.
So you had to…learn how to enjoy things again. Learn to have fun, to let go, to lighten up. To appreciate what comes and be graceful in letting it go so that you could remember it fondly.
You needed to be…brave…to be happy, because by this point, you already know what it’s like to lose everything. It wasn’t felt because of a lack of fear, it was relished despite it.
…Son of a bitch.
When had he gotten so old that he lost all of that?
But no, he could be these things. In fact, already was. That was proven by Captain. It wasn’t that he had never had it in him, it was whispering right there at the back of his head. It was just all the other voices were so much louder, so he kept his feet on the ground, kept his head down, never got his hopes up because he never listened to the tiniest voice, the one he now knew was the Captain.
…Son of a bitch!
This was like some weird psychological Pandora ’s Box thing. Freud would have had a field day. His focus wasn’t on Freud though, it was on that last theory, the first question at the forefront of his mind. Gears turned and the hypothesis was altered.
Ben moved to the center of the room.
“Come on,” he whispered, breathing in, hold it, letting the air burn his lungs, letting it go with a hushed, “come on, come on.”
This time, it came flooding to him.
The first time he rode a bike, the day his little sister Lisa was brought home, getting quarters from the tooth fairy, when his father would ride with him in his little red wagon down the biggest hill in the neighborhood, the first time he remembered seeing snow. In middle school, that wrestling ribbon clenched in his sweaty fist as he held it up for his parents to see, those report cards where he’d get fifty cents for every A, those summer days spent out in the woods that would one day become a neighboring development but not then, not then. The first time he caught a frog. The first time he watched copper wire be thrown into a fire and the whole thing burst into blues and greens and his old man laughed to watch Ben’s face, oh. That job at the fast food joint down the road from home, how he saved every penny and bought himself that absolute junker of a car but it was his, and when the water pump went and the entire interior was filled with thick yellow smoke it still tasted like freedom to him. The first time he grew a moustache. High school graduation, being in those academic robes and walking up stage to get the fake diploma knowing full well the real one was back stage, but the wait made the victory all the sweeter. Those long college years, but how they went so fast. How many winter days spent in the quad dripping with sweat and water and flinging snowballs, how many nights spent on winding back streets under the lamplight walking, just walking, just walking and talking and falling in love with the small-town evening still? His fist kiss, under Christmas lights strung over a makeshift bar in a friend’s basement, her tongue tasting of Patrón. Oh, those crazy parties and those silent evenings spent alone, so sure it would last forever, and then that long and arduous graduation in the middle of that heavy May air and the cheer right at the end, how loud he had been, how loud all of them had been. Being the best man for the job at Jerome Horwitz. Being the best man for Lisa’s husband at their wedding. Watching the kids that he had taken care of from Kindergarten to fourth grade graduate and how proud he had been. The first time he kept the school from closing, put in all the hours and the papers and got all the numbers to line up just so. The first time he had to hire a teacher and was so sure everything was going to turn out perfect. The first time he took Edith out to dinner and every time he held her hand since, the first time he kissed her and could taste all of summer in her mouth and every kiss after that. Buying his mother the headstone that she deserved because she deserved it god damn she did, and maybe it was a bitter sort of happiness there but he was glad he became the man she hoped he’d be, glad he didn’t let her down.
The top of his head brushed something.
He gasped, eyes snapping open, suddenly aware of the fact that his face was wet with tears and that he was-
He was-
Ben crashed to the ground, unable to hold the overwhelming tidal wave of everything in so he just let it take him. Sprawled against the cool tile, he laughed and cried until he wore himself out, unable to do anything but breathe and watch the dust float across the sunbeam streaming through his window.
Like the last bits of a trailing comet, he remembered the feeling of his mother’s lips as she kissed the crown of his hair and said, “You’re my little super hero, Benny boy.”
And the voice at the back of his mind whispered in reply, “Yes, I am.”