[AN: This is a sequel to my previous bxg oneshot, Lemonade. A reviewer for that said they'd like to see it continued on from Ben's POV and I thought it'd be a neat idea (so thank you for suggesting it – I believe your pen name is TvMatchMaker or something to that effect!)
Anyway, I don't want to make the original oneshot a chapter story though, soo I decided to continue to story's idea in the form of a two shot, told from Ben's point of view as suggested. Oh, and this chapter will again feature Eunice, of course. It might not make complete sense w/o reading Lemonade first. Thanks for reading! [/AN]

As Ben looked back to his cousin, he felt a jolt of feeling akin to – strangely enough – electricity bolt up his spine. They were still hand-in-hand, after she'd helped him to his feet by pulling him up from the shallow water the pair had fallen into together. Feeling a splash of water strike his face from somewhere off to the side, the brown-haired and green-eyed young man was snapped out of his seconds' long reverie; releasing Gwen's hand, he turned to look at who'd splashed him.

"What's with you?" Eunice asked him as he looked over to her, a goofy grin on her face. "You're staring at Gwen like you've never seen her before in your life, silly."

Using this as a chance to turn her head away and conceal her momentary blush, Gwen did just that and gave a slightly forced laugh before saying, "Yeah, you're so odd sometimes, Ben."

Ben looked back at his cousin with a slightly raised eyebrow. He had noticed the strange way in which she'd spoken, and he was curious to understand what was going on, if something was indeed going on. "Gwen?" he said to her. "Uh, what's with the weird laugh?"

"What weird laugh?" she asked, before reaching down and splashing him in the face with water, and then doing the same to Eunice, who returned the splash with a laugh.

The girls certainly were laughing a lot for some reason. Ben noticed this and again, he wanted to know what was up with it, but evidently Gwen wasn't going to tell him and just forget about asking Eunice, who was clearly having too much fun to be serious with him. Still, Ben supposed it was admirable enough. Eunice's carefree smile and playful nature was great to see, considering how upset he'd seen her be in times past.

This made him finally give in and smile. After all, maybe he should just be carefree once in a while, too. This was a day off from his hero time responsibilities anyway, right?

"Alright, alright – two can play at this game," he said aloud then, before squatting downward in the shallow part of the water and waving his arms through the water on either side of him, causing two large splashes to be aimed right at Gwen and Eunice at the same time.

"Hey!" the latter called out, before using both hands to throw water right back at Ben.

"You started it!" he returned, splashing her again, before throwing his arms over his face as Gwen aimed another splash in his direction.

Getting an idea and growing a spontaneous, mischievous grin, Ben called for a time out and turned around, not facing either of the girls. He knew what he'd do. He had a not-so-secret weapon right on his wrist, after all.

"Oh, no you don't!" Gwen cried out as she cottoned on, wading as quickly as was possible toward her cousin as he began to glow and change. "That's totally cheating, Ben!"

But it was too late to do much of anything about it really, and soon enough the teenaged Tennyson had morphed into a far taller, broad-shouldered, monstrous looking alien form from his Watch. "Ultimate Humungousaur!"

"Oh boy," Gwen said, bringing a hand to her face. "Forget cheating – this is commandeering the entire splash fight!"

"Nobody likes a sore loser, Gwen," the alien dinosaur form said in its deep voice, before reaching down and paddling with his arms, creating a small wave that soon crashed forward over both the girls.

However, to his slight surprise, Ben soon looked onward to find that the girls hadn't been remotely splashed by his actions. Rather, a vast, purple-colored shield of sorts was cast over Gwen and Eunice both. "And you call me a cheater!"

"Like you said earlier Ben, two can play at this game," Gwen called back.

Sighing, Ultimate Humungousaur charged forward into a deeper part of the water, before knocking wave after wave of water in Gwen's direction ceaselessly, until at long last the Anodite protective shield was gone, leaving the blond and the redhead both to be knocked over by the last blow.

Laughing loudly in his Ultimate Humungousaur form, Ben soon changed back to his normal self, before watching as Eunice slowly shook off the wave and got back to her feet in the water to offer a hand up to Gwen, who thanked her and got to her feet also.

"I guess we're even now, huh?" Ben said, grinning in a smug manner as he folded his arms across his chest.

Wading a few steps forward, Gwen lifted one of her arms to seemingly scratch at her other arm.

"Finally conceding to loss then, are yo –" Ben's words were unexpectedly cut short when he watched his cousin swiftly outstretch her raised arm in his direction as if she were throwing a ball at him; in reality, she had thrown a light blast of her Anodite powers his way, and he soon felt its wrath as it knocked him backward into the water.

"Now we're even," Gwen said, exchanging a smile with Eunice before looking back to surely watch Ben struggle to upright himself in the deep water, before conceding defeat his own self.

Ben heard his cousin's words, and while he correctly assumed that she'd be expecting him to say she had won this round and thusly the entire water-war, he was having none of it. No, to him they weren'tquite even. He could still be plenty mischievous if he so chose. Surely this simple fact had not slipped from Gwen's mind since their earlier adventures together, when they took their vacation with Grandpa Max at only the age of ten years old?

Growing quite still, Ben allowed himself to float upward to the water face-first, though he drew his much needed breath as subtle as was possible. He needed to if he was going to pull this off. Sure enough, he decided that he was likely being convincing enough he soon found, for Gwen was beginning to call out his name. Sure, she sounded annoyed now, but just wait until he still wouldn't stir – let's see how annoyed, smug and proud she'd be then, he thought to himself.

You know, she is going to beat you senseless once she realizes what prank you're pulling, Ben's inner voice said to him. Maybe so, but it was what it was – a prank. She'd pulled pranks on him before. But you're almost an adult now and this is whole-heartedly immature.

"Ben! Come on and get up already. You're not convincing and you're definitely not funny so there's no need to keep on doing this! Stop acting like a jerk and sore loser already."

On the other hand, she's not being that great at the moment either, calling you names and shouting at you. And while Ben's first inward inclination about not trying to toy with Gwen would have likely been better to go with, it was this last inward notion that he chose to fully side with. If he was already acting like a jerk, why stop now? he thought. And then he heard motion – water parting somewhat.

"Maybe he really is hurt!" Eunice's voice cried aloud, clearly a little alarmed.

"I don't know . . ." Gwen's voice answered her. "Pretending to be hurt is just like something he'd do to get back at me. Trust me on this."

"But we should maybe check on him, just in case," Eunice insisted, and then Ben heard more wading sounds; he felt slight changes in the way the water brushed against him as he floated there – they were both heading toward him now.

"Well, okay, I guess checking on him wouldn't be a bad idea or anything."

It bothered him that Eunice felt so genuinely spooked by his actions, but if he could just hold out a little more, then he could really get Gwen good. After all, she wasn't exactly rushing to his aid at the moment; no, she'd just presume he was pulling a prank first. Well what if I was hurt? Ben thought inwardly, imagining himself lying good-as-dead somewhere while Gwen stood merely feet away, annoyed with him rather than worried about him.

Still, even as he thought this, a pang of guilt resonated somewhere within the pit of his stomach. . . . I'm such a jerk – she's right. If I was really hurt, Gwen would be the first person at my side, and I know it. This is stupid. I'm being stupid.

"Alright, alright!" he called out suddenly, moving to paddle forward just slightly as he looked back at Gwen and Eunice both. "I'm not hurt – I was just kidding."

Exchanging glances with each other before glaring back at him, Ben flinched as the two girls simultaneously – and in the same, pitch-perfect synched tone of voice as well – shouted at him in a scolding manner, saying, "You had me scared to death!"

Now, not that it was really a surprise to be shouted at for what he'd done (Ben figured he pretty much deserved it anyway) but as he watched Gwen and Eunice match each other action for action, motion for motion, shout for shout and glare for glare at him, a strange realization fell over him at once. It was nothing new. It was something he'd known for a good long while now and yet for whatever the reason, it was now that it struck a chord with him and caused a light bulb to click on in his mind.

The Unitrix took after Gwen when it became Eunice, he thought to himself. He'd thought about it a few times before, but it was different this time. Ben figured it was like looking at one of those optical illusion pictures which had two completely different images within it despite the fact that you could only see whatever your eyes decide to let you see at first. Sometimes it took a long time to see the other, hidden image within. Well this was like that, more or less. He had figured it was interesting that the Unitrix took after Gwen before, but not in any particular way. And yet, now he was.

Now he really was.

"I'm sorry – I'm really sorry about trying to prank you like that," he said aloud, and he was trying to sound as sincere as he felt, even if he was a bit preoccupied now with his memory of falling near instantly for Eunice; Eunice was almost perfect in his eyes – even with Julie considered (and he happened to consider her to be great) Eunice was somehow more special; Eunice was technically not a human all the time, however – she had become one when she took after Gwen.

Gwen . . . Ben thought, and he looked directly into Eunice's eyes, before slowly turning his head to look into his cousin's instead, and interestingly enough, his earlier bolt of electrical feeling returned. This, along with a strange gnawing feeling in his stomach – it was enough to make Ben feel almost lightheaded from the inward revelation of it all. And to think, the two girls before him clearly had no idea what he was thinking, and he himself had no clear idea what they'd think about what he was thinking if they had any idea.

"Seriously," he said aloud, in a quiet and somewhat distant sounding voice as he stepped forward, placing one hand on Eunice's shoulder while the other reached for Gwen's hand, grasping it. "I should've known better than to scare you."

"It's okay," Eunice was the first to say. "But please don't do that again."

"I won't," Ben promised her, before giving Gwen's hand a squeeze. "Gwen, do you forgive me too?"

"Of course I do," she said, even if she did grow strangely still in the water as he squeezed her hand more tightly. "But she's right. Even if you only keep your promise so that you don't scare Eunice anymore – I can understand that; I'm supposed to be used to you being a dofus, right? Well - still, just keep the promise for her sake all the same."

"I made the promise to you too, Gwen," he clarified, before saying to Eunice, "Would you mind if I had a word with my cousin for a minute?"

"Oh, okay," Eunice said nonchalantly. "I'll go see what Kevin's up to then. He's being kinda quiet today, isn't he?"

"Yeah – kind of," Ben replied, keeping his hold on Gwen's hand as Eunice turned and waded toward the somewhat steep bank that would lead her out onto dry land.

"What is it, Ben?" Gwen asked him, though she kept her face turned away from him.

"Well, I just wanted to ask why you thought I'd make sure Eunice was okay but not make sure you were okay about something?" he asked, for he had been perhaps a little hurt to find that Gwen considered this a possibility at all. "I don't take my concern for you lightly."

"Yet you tried to make me think you were hurt," Gwen pointed out.

"You said you forgive me!"

"And I do forgive you! I'm just saying, I figured it was Eunice that made you decide against the prank more than anything else."

"You know, I realized something today," Ben said, and as he spoke, he stepped back slightly and moved to face Gwen, looking back into her eyes as he continued to hold her hand all the same.

"I did, too – up there by your car just earlier today, as a matter of fact," Gwen replied, and though he hadn't expected this answer, he continued on to try to make his initial point anyway.

"I thought about the day we met Eunice – I thought about what we ended up finding out about Eunice," he said, before squeezing Gwen's hand once again before finally letting it go.

"Oh," she replied in a bit of a fallen voice, slowly withdrawing her released hand. "Well . . . when you thought about Eunice, what did you realize exactly? Was it that she's more, for lack of a better term . . .interesting to you than, say . . . Julie is?"

"With all due respect to Julie, yes, that was kind of part of it," Ben admitted, and he marveled at how Gwen could know so much about him without him saying a word about it in the first place.

"I kind of sort of figured this would end up happening, to be honest," Gwen said to him then.

"You did?" Ben replied; he was surprised for he considered Gwen to mean that she kind of sort of figured that he would end up making his big epiphany about she herself – not specifically just the part about how Julie factored into it.

"Well of course I did, Ben," Gwen said, a strangely sad look on her face. "It's obvious that there's something about Eunice that really gets to you. There's something strange about her that puts everything you see into this whole new perspective. I have no idea what it is, but it's there."

"You have no idea what it is, but I do," Ben said, now understanding more what Gwen had meant before. "That's what I was getting to anyway – the something I see in Eunice, well . . ."

"Well . . . what?" Gwen asked.

"The something is you. She got it from you, and you've always had it all along. I guess the way things being the way they are it just wasn't obvious to me. You are my cousin. You are with Kevin."

"Ben . . ." Gwen said in a cautious sort of voice, her eyes locked with his. "I am with Kevin and yes, you and I are family. We can't pretend either of those aren't the case because it's not right or fair to Kevin, and because well, you can't change who you born to be."

"What if who you were born to be – or, who you were born to be around – what if you already have it despite circumstances like these?" Ben asked, and he noted Gwen's surprised look; he didn't blame her – he himself had his doubts as to whether he'd tried to string together a sentence as articulate as that before in all his life without complete failure – maybe he'd managed to make sense, though.

"You know that you're my dofus cousin and that I love you," Gwen said to him, before hesitating and then adding, "But . . . it's also the case that you're just Ben and I still love you but not because you're my dofus cousin."

"So you do understand everything I'm trying to say," Ben said, and though his veins surged with currents of electricity to the point of making him feel almost actively on fire, a strange ache in his stomach came along with it; it was the ache that comes with having something you want or need just within grasp but also just without your grasp at exactly the same time.

"I understand, yeah," Gwen replied, her heart sinking slightly as she heard the sound of Kevin's voice as he conversed with Eunice.

Hearing Kevin as well, Ben said, "But you're still with Kevin. And I'm your dofus cousin no matter how many ways you look at me."

"Well you know . . . maybe we could just pretend for a moment that it's different – that it's all different."

"What do you mean, Gwen?"

"Look," she said, reaching out to take hold of Ben's hand suddenly; he reacted by squeezing it in return, before placing his other atop hers as well. "Just pretend for the next sixty seconds that this water we're in is some distant planet and we're not attached to anyone else, in any sense of the term. No one else is here but us and we can be whatever and whoever we want."

"Okay," Ben said. "We're on a distant planet, in a completely different universe even. We're just here, and all that matters is the next sixty seconds, because once it's up, we're back on Earth."

"Back on Earth," Gwen repeated back, before giving a bit of a laugh and then saying, "It's strange- I think it's harder to breathe on Earth than it is on this foreign planet."

"I know what you mean," Ben replied, before catching sight of Kevin and Eunice as they began to head for the water together. "Still, it looks like we're in for a crash landing right back to it anyway."

Hearing Eunice's voice grow nearer from behind her, Gwen gently withdrew her hand from Ben and simply looked back at him as she heard Kevin answer whatever the blond girl had asked him.

"What's up with you two?" Kevin then called aloud to them from the bank. "Are you just gonna stand out here all day or something?"

"If only we could," Gwen murmured, in a voice only loud enough for Ben to hear, before she reluctantly turned to wade toward the bank.

Following after her, Ben had no idea what to think or feel at the moment– and he certainly had no ideas about what to do with his thoughts and feelings once he did pinpoint them for certain. He just knew that for those few seconds he'd reached a new, higher plain of thought and possibility. He figured that, even though it did result in a crash and burn . . .

. . . Gwen would always be beyond worth it.