hauntedjpegcollection

[hauntedjpegcollection]

losers

There were few things Nomi wouldn’t do for Matilda, if asked.

In their decade of friendship, her best friend has rarely heard the word no. Nomi guesses, in fact, that most people have a hard time telling Matilda anything besides; and so that spans back further than just two awkward pre-teen trans girls becoming friends.

Nomi doesn’t lie, but that’s more because she can’t than because she won’t (and she’s tried, the results are just usually more miserable than Nomi telling the truth.) ((“Terrible lying face, Noms, but so cute.”)) She doesn’t mind theft, manipulations or anything else pragmatic of the sort. Nomi’s even been up late, twenty tabs open in a browser, so knee deep in someones online history that it’s bordering on potentially illegal — but again, she’s a pragmatic sort. Sometimes illegal things are only illegal for silly reasons anyway.

Nomi loves Matilda. That love has been such a sturdy, constant in her life that the mere idea of it’s absence has triggered anxiety attacks the likes of which her therapist should hear about. Nomi loves Matilda.

“Oh, fucking — piss and shite, I swear — Oh my — fucking — ”

But Nomi has never hated Matilda more than in this moment. A confectioners piping bag held in her sticky hands, pastel blue icing leaking out from split sides. Her oversized glasses slip further down her nose, her hairline sweat slicked from over stimulation. Nomi stares down at the cupcakes, the pathetic line of them she’s done up already. And she swears that she’ll go back in time and tell her mum to never let this skinny bitch sleep over that one fateful night.

“Looking good.” A voice beside her has Nomi startling. Scuttling sideways and rearing backward, as if presented with a giant, man eating spider. Only it’s worse than that. More dangerous, far more avoided than a brown recluse, probably.

Benny stands there, in the entry to Matilda’s kitchen, hands in his pockets. Sunglasses low on his nose as he stares at her. He’s in one of those ridiculous button up shirts, a hideous floral print that clashes well with his tattered black jeans. He looks awful. Her stomach feels uneasy, some fluttering in her chest painful. Nomi pushes glasses up her nose with her knuckles and is annoyed to find icing somehow still gets on the lens.

“The cupcakes,” Ben clarifies, stepping into the kitchen. He’s too big. Taller than her and broad, the sleeves of his shirt stupidly tight around a bicep. Size up, you bastard, she thinks.

“Oh, wouldn’t want to confuse myself, think you’re flirting with me,” Nomi replies off handedly, bending over the cupcakes once more. The floor stops creaking. He doesn’t come any closer. She can’t concentrate on the idiotic flower she’s meant to be piping onto this cupcake. Matilda and her volunteer effort, something, something looks good to her adviser, something, something influencer, art, community. Nomi thinks it’s her mother somehow; thinks maybe Jack has said something or done something to make Matilda’s secret, fragile insides splinter on a single sentence crack.

Doesn’t matter — Matilda’s too busy. Exhibit coming up, work to be done and Nomi? Well. She isn’t in school. She’s got her job and all, but she can’t tell how serious she is about it yet. If she’s serious about anything. Her plushes on the bed, her anime habit, her —

“I was joking,” Benny says, leaning against the kitchen counter beside her. He smells like nicotine and cloves and the very specific brand of laundry detergent he must have started using in his teens and then never stopped buying. She glances over her shoulder, but doesn’t look up. Stares instead at a pale hand on the counter, little eye tattoos between the webbings of fingers. “Hey, c’mon, I s-swear, you look better than the cupcakes. I mean, look at them.”

“You’re such a dick,” Nomi sputters, but it’s alongside a laugh too. Benny smiles at her. Shows just a hint of his crooked teeth. She thinks it’s made up, but there’s some part of her that might remember what his crooked teeth felt like, when she’d kissed him. Her tongue passing over a pointed canine before meeting his tongue; it had been a brief kiss. She’s making details up in some strange, desperate attempt to cling to it. It had been a good kiss.

“Til told me to come ch-check on you.”

“Tell her she’s evil and I hate her.”

“Wouldn’t believe me.”

“No, ‘spose she wouldn’t,” Nomi sighs. The flower she tries to make turns out looking like a malformed dolphin. She moves onto another cupcake, wondering how many of these Matilda will secretly have to discard. There’s a strange companionable silence with Benny then — he stands there, watching and she continues piping. Her glasses sliding ever further down her nose.

Then he reaches across her and takes the second piping bag she has lined up for when she wastes the rest of this one. It’s a soft pastel pink. Nomi watches as he picks up a cupcake, places the pipette tip, and in one simple squeeze, manages the perfect flower.

“Fuck off?” She gasps, staring at him over her glasses.

“Do I g-get to eat any?” Benny asks, sly, crooked smile on his handsome face. He picks up another, and pipes a flawless looking flower once more. Nomi shakes her head, dismissing him, returning to her Toxic Avenger cupcakes. Silence follows them once more — enjoyable because it isn’t real silence. The slight jangle of chains at his hip, the small tap he does with his foot occasionally. Her heart beat.

He ruins it all by turning to look at her, his dark red sunglasses obscuring his pretty blue eyes, and asking, “I heard you’re dating Tyler Smith.”

Nomi’s glasses tip off her nose and land onto a cupcake with a dull smack.

“Dating is…a strong word.”

His expression is unreadable. To Nomi, almost all expressions are unreadable. A tangle of emotions she can never decipher. She relies on words and even those can sometimes be misleading — no one ever says what they actually mean. Sometimes they even pair a phrase with an expression and neither matches the other. Benny isn’t an exception. The blankness to his face could mean anything. And she can’t even see his eyes, hidden behind his sunglasses. His foot does tap the floor more. A rapid little, tap, tap, tap that rustles the chains from his belt to the back of his jeans.

She realizes, maybe too late, that he wants her to say she isn’t dating Tyler Smith.

“We’re just sort of seeing each other, is all,” Nomi says, which is somehow worse than not saying yes or no. It makes Benny’s dark blond brows pinch together. When he furrows them, wrinkles appear. She finds that endearing usually. Now, her stomach flips. Over and over. She takes her glasses off the cupcake. He reaches forward. And for some weak reason, Nomi lets Benny take the glasses and turn toward the sink.

“Tyler sucks,” he says, voice flat.

“Oh Ben, shut up…”

“No, sh-she does,” he continues. He turns and uses a dish towel to finish drying her glasses. “She has a Harry Potter bumper sticker. She talks d-down to everyone around her about her nerd shit — ”

“Nerd shit?” Nomi snaps, ignoring her own glasses held out to her. Her hand, shaking, squeezes around the piping bag. A spiral of blue icing erupts from it, onto the counter. “I like that nerd shit.” She watches him tongue a canine tooth, eye brow raised in defiant question at that. But he doesn’t know her. He doesn’t know her — he doesn’t. And Tyler likely doesn’t either — and maybe even Matilda. Maybe no one. Maybe that’s why it’s so awful, maybe that’s why it never works out. Maybe that’s why she’s too terrified to let herself try with him.

“Not my fault you date losers, Nomi,” Benny sneers, placing her glasses down. He squares up the piping bag, not looking at her. There’s this too, isn’t there? That he’s like this sometimes; that he can’t help but be like this. That he has some meanness inside him that slips out. Is that any worse than Tyler, who makes her feel stupid sometimes if she doesn’t get a joke? With her fucking Harry Potter bumper sticker. Yes, some traitorous part of her whispers. It is worse; you don’t even like kissing her. You liked kissing him. When does that happen? Does that ever happen?

“You know,” Nomi says, picking up her glasses. She unfolds them and slides them on. “One day you’re going to say something cruel to someone, and they are not going to forgive you for it, Ben.” Then, she slaps the piping bag from his hand, watching it explode pink icing against Matilda’s white kitchen wall. And she leaves.

—

Of course, an hour later, she is rushing back into Matilda’s apartment. Frantic to clean and to finish these fucking cupcakes.

Only there is no mess. No icing on the wall. None on the counters, or even the floor. And the cupcakes are lined up and finished. They’re perfect, in fact. The ones she’d made are gone. And Matilda loves them — showers her in all of the girlish affection Nomi craves. Makes her burst into grateful tears and they both indulge in at least four of the cupcakes each.

The next time she sees Benny, he doesn’t apologize. But he does something worse; she stumbles on pavement in a pair of platforms she’s not worn yet before, and he catches her, one hand under the elbow. Xavier chatting with Tyler at the end of the road, a friendly (or heated?) argument over something she would never understand. He holds her elbow for a moment longer than he should. He looks down at her and he smiles, showing her crooked his teeth.

“I’m still mad at you,” Nomi says. Her heart feels like it’s pumping somewhere directly inside her throat.

“I love it when you’re mad at me,” he whispers back and Nomi, unfortunately, lives with that echoing in her head for the remainder of her relationship with Tyler Smith.

***

Nomi meets Maran on the day she breaks up with her girlfriend.

She hates the outdoor parties the most. Can barely understand the appeal behind a house party, all those bodies jostling together, too much alcohol and none of it good — take it to a park? A lake? Worse, the beach? She’s usually the one to say no; but say no too many times and people start to look at you funny. People start to think you’re no fun. Start to wonder why you should be invited in the first place. And that was the thing for Nomi — she doesn’t like going, but there is some social part of her that is terrified of the day everyone forgets about her. So she goes.

She limps along in enjoyment. She smiles when she thinks she’s supposed to, fills red solo cups with sprite and pretends it vodka. Mostly devours any and all snacks she can come across from boredom. The music at these gatherings is never good. Outdoors it becomes worse, because it’s all hosted off little bluetooth speakers that shouldn’t be sitting on the sand like that. The section of the beach college students have taken over is too big a span for those speakers — it sounds tinny, garbled, nonsensical. And is just generally shite music.

It’s night time, the sound of the waves prettier as they crash along a shoreline that people scream happily run from. She’s discarded her boots. Her steps are wobbly on the sand, one hand clutching an unopened wine bottle, the other balancing in front of her. The salty air whips her hair back and forth, creating a curly, navy mess.

Nomi doesn’t say anything as she throws herself down onto the couch someone’s dragged to the beach and left to rot. It sinks underneath her, makes her rearrange. She doesn’t make words, but inarticulate grumbles as she situates herself. One leg underneath her, the other drawn up, hiking her dress far shorter than she means for it to. Nomi wrangles the wine bottle, making desperate sounds in a weak attempt to get the cork out. Propped between her thighs, thumbs pressing together at the bottles neck.

“You want help with that?”

She’d noticed the back of someone as she’d approached the couch, but Nomi hadn’t really cared. She was tired of idle chit chat, standing around. She was mostly tired of standing at all, and she knew of this couch, where it was placed high on a sandy hill, overlooking the beach, the ocean. So when she’d seen someone else, all she thought was that they were going to have to fucking share.

Now, she stares at the stranger. Her lips parted, eyes wide. She bursts into a laugh that startles him. She follows it up with another laugh, tilting toward him.

“A scouser? In my neck of the woods?”

“Oh!” He smiles. In the dark beach lighting, she can make out most of his features. Handsome, he is. Big smile, brown skin. His hair is buzzed close, bleached she thinks. He has nice eyes. Those stand out the most, big and full lashed and a dark brown. The beach floodlights make them sparkle. “Wait, wait, let me guess where you’re from — say something else.”

“Absolutely not! Anything you guess will offend, babe, trust.” She works at the cork a little more, but stays looking at him. Finding a smile on her own face, her cheeks warm. She’d had at least two hard seltzers, one of the few things she tolerates because they’re mostly fruity. Doesn’t feel like enough to get her buzzed, but she feels buzzy. Her new stranger pouts, throws an arm around the back of the couch. Relaxes. “Alright, fine. Bristol.”

“That makes sense,” he says, nodding gravely. “Pretty girls are always from down south.”

“Oh, really?” The skin on her neck starts feeling warm too. The waves drown out the sound of all those awful, water damaged speakers.

“Here.” He extends a hand. She notices how he seems respectful about there being a bit of space between them. Nomi slowly hands him the wine. She watches as he fusses with his pocket, rummaging. Finds a keychain dangling with a few charms, an actual key and one of those pocket toolkits. He unfolds something, uses it to wedge into the cork. While he works, Nomi stares at him.

Notably, she stares at the bunched muscle of his bicep, her head tilting. Wind sweeps strands of her hair across her face, but she doesn’t move. He looks up at her when the cork pops — his expression goes from ecstatic to something else. Something she can’t put a name too, not with the hard seltzers and the break up lingering in the back of her head. She doesn’t think it’s a bad expression at all, though. She holds out her hand and takes the wine as he passes it over.

“I’m Nomi.”

“Maran.”

“Oh!” She’s mid swig when he says his name, a little wine spilling from the bottle on her chin. She makes a humming sound as she uses her sleeve to wipe at it, wedging the bottle between them and the couch’s saggy cushions. “You!”

“Me?” He points at himself, back to smiling that wide grin. She’s gotten used to the dark. She can see him clearer. Something about him animates, an animal perking up at attention. She likes that. Nomi laughs again, wiggling her way just a bit closer.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard of you. Benji’s lad.”

“Mm, Benji’s lad.”

“Best mates really,” Nomi continues, tucking her wind blown hair behind her ears. “He talks about you a lot. Gets this fond look in his eye. Bit of a grumpy fucker usually, that one, eh?” Playful like, she uses fingers as caterpillar like eyebrows, slanting them on her forehead, pushing her face into a grimacing expression. Maran stares at her and then a laugh bubbles up from his chest, near bewildered by it. His laugh carries on the wind prettily. Nomi laughs too, though she isn’t sure why. Maybe she’s funnier than she thinks she is?

“How do you know Benji?” Maran asks, turning so he’s facing her. One of his arms splays across the back of the couch again.

“Matilda — ”

“I love Matilda.”

“Oh,” Nomi feels a twist in her gut. She takes a healthy pull from the wine. It’s a nice, dry red. “Sorry, babe, she is head over heels with — have you met Lark?”

“Love Lark!” Maran declares, throwing hands into the air happily.

“Bit of a lover, huh?” Nomi, who hasn’t necessarily tried much vocal training, speaks softly with a bit of a rasp to her voice. Gets it from her mother, that’s what she likes to think. Her mother had one of those old Hollywood actress voices, sultry and deep. The wine is sitting heavy in her stomach and lightly in her head, making her sag against the couch a bit, thumb brushing around the tip of the bottle. “Matilda is my best friend, so I always come to these things with her. Not really — not my crowd.” She tests her American accent to watch Maran smile more — and it works. He does, a little half smile.

She offers the wine bottle. He takes it, stares at it and then goes to give it a tentative swig.

“Oh, wait.” Nomi reaches out, using a paw made from her sweater to wipe furiously at the bottle’s mouth. “There you are. Don’t want you to get my lipstick on you. Not your shade, I don’t think.” The wine bottle sits between his knees. He doesn’t reach back for it for a long moment.

“How did you meet Til?” He clears his throat on a huskiness to his voice. Then he takes a curious sip from the wine bottle. Maran’s face immediately crumples into distaste, brown eyes wide at her. Nomi tips the bottom of it with a cheeky hand and he takes one last long gulp before passing it to her. She laughs. He does too.

“Her mum and my mum know each other,” Nomi explains, taking a quick sip of wine. Her head spins a bit as she gets comfortable on the couch once more. The beachy summer air is cool against her bare legs. “And Mati’s mum really loved Bath. They spent a lot of vacationing here — I mean there, right we’re not home. Anyway, she got to do a year abroad.” Here, Nomi pauses. She doesn’t realize that the story is quickly heading into somewhat vulnerable territory.

Nomi doesn’t have to explain that her mum had desperately asked Jacquelin Rhoades to introduce Matilda to her for one purpose; gender. The transformative nature of it. Nomi was a few years into her transition at that point. She was awkward and strange and friendless — and her mum knew of a perfection solution. Of course, Nomi, who was thirteen, hated her for that. Hated that the only way for her to make a friend was through a prearranged ceremony of it all. Hated that it had to be someone else that was transgender because no one else was going to do it, eh? No one else was going to be her friend.

Only maybe mums knew more than Nomi ever gave them credit for, because, well. Here she was now.

“Well, my mum knew I needed a friend that sort of — yunno. Got it. The whole — well Matilda and I transitioned at similar ages, yeah? And I—I didn’t have a lot of friends and — it was actually really funny, when she slept over for the first time. Asked me if I could legally buy cigarettes, ‘cause we were in Europe. Oh, don’t repeat that to her, she’d hate me for exposing her little American quirks. She was thirteen!”

Maran in that moment, reminds Nomi of Xavier. The way he’s leaned in, one of his hands drumming on the couch, his eyes never leaving her. How interested he is — how authentic that feels. Nomi’s never had an audience like this before, except for with the aforementioned boy. She isn’t sure why it feels a little different than when Xavier smiles at her. Nomi reaches for a desperate sip of the wine.

“That’s fucking wicked,” Maran says, surprising her with a slip of Xavier’s mannerisms. Something in her warms to think of them as friends. To imagine the two of them together. Xavier’s a good friend and — and she thinks Maran probably is too, even if he’s a stranger to her, relatively. “Sounds really sweet. No, really! I mean it!”

“Can’t all have known each other since birth,” Nomi laughs with a friendly roll of her eyes. “God, enough about me. Why are you over here? Party is all happening down on the beach, yeah?”

Maran goes — uncharacteristically, by her newfound accounting of him — quiet. He looks out to the waves that recede and crash. The way the ocean eats slowly at the sand, pulling small bits of it deeper into it’s belly. Nomi looks at the tautness in his throat. There’s something somber about him suddenly. She isn’t usually good at reading an emotion shift like that. They’re lost on her, but it’s so undeniable on him. Nomi pulls her sleeves back over her hands, wreathing them around the wine bottles throat.

“Oh, well, yeah,” he laughs and looks back to her. “My girlfriend, Fiadh. She asked me to come out to this party — but she started to feel a little ill, or somethin’.”

Nomi wonders at the odd hollow drop of her heart. What it means. She rubs a sweater covered thumb over the mouth of the wine bottle. She doesn’t say anything, but continues looking at him. It isn’t really an explanation for why he’s sat there, on the couch then. Shouldn’t he be…with her?

“She went home with some friends, s’all. Asked if I could hitch a ride with Xavier. Maybe sleep at his place.” He has an airy tone. A flippant raised hand, a smile aimed at her. Nomi tilts her head again, staring at him, strands of her dark navy hair sticking to her now surely messy lipstick. She chews the inside of her cheek. She continues to stare. The rowdy party of college students and company get louder as they pass underneath them, sand whispering as it’s moved gently by wind.

“I just broke up with my girlfriend,” Nomi confesses suddenly. She’s embarrassed by the sudden prickling of treacherous tears behind her eyes, the instant stuffiness to her nose. She wipes a sweater clad hand under her nose, smiling at him with pinched, upturned brows. The alcohol in her system makes everything feel far too fuzzy at the edges, reminding her of why she never drinks at these gatherings in the first place. But she’d had that first seltzer for courage.

The second had been when the whole thing was wrapped up. No more girlfriend. Just a vague sense of hollowness and time passed uninterestingly.

“My condolences to her,” Maran says, shifting closer. His eyes have softened up once more, no longer that cloudy, far away, hurt look. “Really. Bet her life is about to start nose divin’.” He whistles dramatically, uses a hand to imitate the crashing of a plane against the mouth of the wine bottle between them.

“No it won’t,” Nomi laughs, sniffling up her tears and using the edges of her sleeves to pat at mascara she knows must be running shamefully. A sensation wells up inside her; this desperate need for Nomi to make sure this man, who was just a stranger to her an hour ago, knows that she doesn’t exclusively date women. “My ex boyfriend — before Tyler — his life just got keener. He lives in Quebec now. Dog walking business. Four stars on Google, swear.”

Maran’s hand moves around the neck of the wine bottle, gently drawing it away from her. He sighs. Takes a long sing. Still cringes back from it’s bitter taste. Then he says, “I’ve never review bombed anything before, but there’s a first time for everything.”

“You’re — ” Nomi can’t help her watery laugh. She shoves at his arm with both hands, jostling him. He gives her another smile. It’s so — it is so…Girlfriend, her drunken mind hisses. Fiadh? Girlfriend. “You’re too good is what you are. You’d never. You’re a good boy, aren’t you, Maran? I can tell.”

The wind whisks at them. At the sand around them. At the other party goers. The moon hangs obscured mostly by thick, grey clouds that paint a pretty scene above them. Nomi asks Maran about his shirt — anime — and they dissolve into a conversation about that. And then more conversations after that; Nomi tells him she’ll be back home in a week to see her mother for some time. The wine bottle finishes, Nomi shocked by that. She feels warm and content and she’d broken up with her girlfriend hours ago, why didn’t she feel worse? Would she sleep alone tonight and feel the physical absence of Tyler beside her? Or be grateful for the peace?

“Oof.” Maran’s spread himself out more on the couch, legs thrown in front of him, converses digging at crab grass and sand. One arm close to her over the back of the couch, the other lazily resting on his abdomen. She thinks the wine might have gotten to him too, but that’s also comforting. To not be alone She notices that he’s staring downhill, where people are starting to thin out. Party ending. Nomi’s never been sad to see it go before.

Her tea colored eyes follow his line of sight and land on Benny.

A terrifying shock tingles her from nose to a spot behind her belly button.

Benny isn’t being shy about staring up at them. He stands there, moonlight making him paler than he already is, which is proper poltergeist worthy on a good day. He’s in one of his denim jackets, worn through with age at the elbows, tattered at the seams. She knows the smell of them. She knows how enjoyable the texture is underneath the pads of her fingertips. Benny wears a baseball cap as well, turned backwards, strands of his blond hair poking through. She’d always thought he looked good like that. He stares with his chin tilted down. She can’t tell if he’s smiling. She feels like he’s smiling at her.

Has he heard? Her heart does an awful squeeze.

“Think that one hates me,” Maran sighs beside her, turning on his hip to look at her. He tucks a leg up underneath himself — and the wine bottle rolls away. All down the hill, landing ironically just a foot away from Benny. He doesn’t look at it. Nomi’s skin feels anxiously tight.

“Wait, what?” Only then does she turn away from Benny, to look at Maran. He grimaces. Idle fingers tug out cream colored stuffing from the dying couch beneath them. “Oh, please. No, he doesn’t.” Nomi leans forward and swats at Maran’s hand, to stop him from deconstructing the rather comfortable furniture they’re at upon together. “Ben? He’s a softie at heart. Oh, don’t make that face at me! Cheeky, you. No, he is. He really, really is.” She leans in close, wicked smile on her lipstick smudged lips.

“Here’s a secret,” Nomi says, raising a finger. “He looks so tough, yeah? Well. He’s actually really, really into flowers.”

“Flowers,” Maran replies, cross eyed staring at the finger in front of him. “Xavier’s flat mate? Same lad? Flowers?”

“Flowers.”

“Should I get him some?”

“If you do, take a picture.” Nomi leans back, settling comfortable into the couch. Out the corner of her eye, the pale ghost that is Benny — her Benny — disappears. “I think it’s wrapping up out there, hey? I see Xavier’s big truck. That’s your ride home, yeah?” Maran stands from the couch, dusting sand from his jeans, from his hands. He offers her one. Nomi tries to stand on her own, but her pride has no sway over her inebriation, and she ends up clasping onto his hand with both of her own anyway.

They stand there at the top of the hill. It really is beautiful. The ocean, the dark horizon, the moon and her clouds. Nomi can’t remember, through the wine and the break up, and now Maran, why she hates coming to these. Why she avoids them so much. Then she turns to Maran.

“Do you want to trade numbers? I mean, since I’ll — I’ll be back home for a bit. Might be nice to have a friend to chat with.” When he looks at her, the clouds moving to provide that special sort of moonlight that turns a persons eyes iridescent, she feels a twinge of pure nerves that she’s said something wrong. Until his free hand scrambles at his pocket for his phone. Then she steps closer, admires the way his face looks from the blue light of his phone when he taps it awake.

[hauntedjpegcollection]

nightmares exist outside logic

“Camp Cold Hollow, established in 1952, was originally an all boys scout summer camp that embodied the rugged spirit of post-war America. By the end of summer, our boys left Camp Cold Hollow sunburnt, calloused and as life long friends. Now, two decades later —”

“It really says that?

“Really says what?”

Benji pulls himself to a stop from the cleaning work he’d been tasted with, hands tucking into the kangaroo pocket of the hoodie he’s all but stolen off Xavier’s back. His face is twisted delightfully handsome into a pinched, disbelieving grimace. The slight twitching at the corners of his lips are the only indication he finds this funny at all.

“Embodied the rugged post-war America spirit shite. It says that?”

Xavier laughs, flapping the old pamphlet against his sunburnt thigh. He’s lazy spread out on a couch that’s seen better days; deflated from years of children crawling all over it, sitting cockeyed in the corner of the music room, dusty and well loved. The sun makes dust motes dance across the room, across the instruments and across the boy in front of him. A chord is plucked in Xavier’s chest, his heart thrumming with an acute pain he recognizes as some bittersweet fruit. He already misses seeing Benji just like this, before it’s even over. Standing there, annoyed and in a Camp Cold Hollow sweatshirt, denim jeans all torn up and patched a thousand times over. His heavy boots make a thunk, thunk, thunk of a sound as he gets closer.

“Cold Hollow is super prestigious, Benji,” Xavier drawls, fanning himself with the pamphlet, eyes lingering on the other counselor and every single step he takes closer. Benji pretends to glance around the room, but it’s already tidied. Xavier, actually, had done most of that, because he wanted — he needed — Benji to wrap up for the day. So they can be together. But there’s something charming about the way he’s lingering there. Waiting.

Xavier reaches out. His long arm covers the distance easily, sunburn on his knuckles peeling. His fingers wrapping around Benji’s wrist. Playfully, he tugs. And Benji, who is very solid and very strong, could easily stand his ground against it — and doesn’t. Instead he trails forward, his grimace turning into something Xavier covets. Something almost bashful, a little humored. A smile that shows the peek of teeth.

“I never asked you why you came to work here,” Xavier says, hands sliding around Benji’s thighs. He pulls so they’re that much closer, his chin touching Benji’s hip, his head tilted back. A dark brown hand reaches out and cards through his messy red hair, making eyes roll close, a throaty hum of appreciation following nearly obscene. His hands take on a life of their own, he swears, as they slide from Benji’s thighs to the curve of his ass. Then squeeze, eliciting a raised eyebrow, a huffing chuckle.

“Why d’you wanna know?”

“Benji,” Xavier laughs, pushing his nose into the barest sliver of where sweatshirt should meet jeans and instead reveal skin, thinking of kissing until he finds more body hair, relishing the newness of what that feels like on his lips. Instead he forces himself away, throwing his back to the couch. “Why are you still surprised I want to know about you? I fucking swear, I ask your favorite color and you’re like, why, what are you going to do with it? Paint a birdhouse?”

His imitation of Benji is poor and for some reason, high pitched and girlish — probably closer to Nomi’s accent than it is Liverpool rough.

Still makes Benji laugh. Still punches a hole through Xavier’s chest hearing him laugh. Makes him stare, lips parted, eyes dancing everywhere, trying to find that secret. The place where Benji keeps everything hidden, where someone made him lock it all up and lose the key. He thinks Benji is about to tell him when they’re interrupted.

“Yo.”

“Lark!” Xavier screams, scrambling from the couch, bumping against Benji, who doesn’t move much, all things considered. It causes them to become briefly entangled, Xavier’s overlong legs going in two opposite directions, his arm slinging across Benji’s torso as he tries to get around him — looks absolutely ridiculous, especially with Lark slowly closing the barn door and standing there, stone faced as ever.

“They don’t knock in California?” Benji asks, lip curled up in a sneer.

“They don’t have barns in California,” Lark replies, in equal measure of sarcasm, black eyes narrowed. “Where guys go to make out — you know it’s not locked, like anyone could come in here?” They dissolve into grinning at each other and Xavier only feels a little left out by what looks like an inside joke. His arm is still wrapped around Benji. He doesn’t want to step away but he does, hands raising to fix his hair with scrubbing palms. Embarrassingly, he has to somewhat rearrange his clothes as well, unsure how he became so disheveled so quickly, when nothing had even happened.

“You got tagged for perimeter duty.”

“Fuckin’ hell. ‘Course. Dodged out of it last time, so he has my number now.”

“Vic even use that clipboard?” Lark tosses himself down onto the couch Xavier had made plans with. “I think he holds it up so no one can try talking to him.” Pantomimes the gesture, stern face an imitation of the camp manager. Lark makes himself comfortable, legs crossed at the ankles, hands behind his head. “Anyway. In ten minutes, yunno, me and — ”

“Eugh,” Xavier groans, slipping his hand into Benji’s. He tightens his grip around it, begins tugging them toward the door.

“Vic only said Benji.”

“Well, he’s getting two happy campers, man, dunno what to tell you.”

—

But it turns out to be three.

Tao stands at the dark forest edge, rocking back and forth on his heels. Both hands shoved in the back pockets of his denim shorts, long legs golden tan. His hair a messy brown mop that he blows at occasionally, strands lifting off from his face. It’s summer night, so it’s cooler than it usually is, but he still has a slight lingering sheen of sweat — as though he’d been pulled from soccer, volleyball or some other sporty activity with the kids. Tao is good with the kids, popular with the other campers, handsome. Tall. Tao is Benji’s old hook up from last year. Not that many know that, because Benji had been very specific about making sure no one knew that, apparently.

When he turns and finds Xavier, finds Benji, Tao looks like a squirming creature underneath a freshly peeled back dead log. His face drops into surprise and then wariness — and looking at Xavier, no small amount of annoyance. They’d never been friends, but they had been similar animals; the sort of effortlessly good looking men in small populations that found an easy audience. Xavier had once wondered if Tao ever felt as lonely as he did, being that animal, and now he didn’t care. He didn’t care at all how Tao felt.

“Bollocks.” Benji intones the word roughly and then proceeds into the forest without so much as a glance back.

Xavier and Tao stare at each other. Xavier’s posture straightens. He lets himself be the few inches taller than Tao he actually is. Then he prowls forward, eyes not leaving the other camper as he follows Benji into the woods. The sun starts to dip slowly, the tree line scattering shadows across underbrush as Tao steps toward it as well.

—

Xavier’s had two girlfriends his entire life.

There was Margot, his high school girlfriend he promised to marry.

And there was Sarah, the girl who he dated the year after Margot broke up with him. After that, there were strings of girls; three alone at camp in the year prior, when he’d been reckless and too high most nights after the little ones were all forced into their respective cabins. Three he didn’t even much talk to anymore.

Inexperienced wasn’t the word for Xavier, not according to him anyway. There was Margot, wasn’t there? Sarah? There were the girls, the one night, sometimes two night stands. There were beds and sleeping bags and sometimes couches, if nothing else worked. The months here and there sort of thing where he accrued plenty of experience.

But there was also Benji. Sometimes, Xavier had no word for the way it felt with Benji, the way he wasn’t experienced at all, the way it was brand new every brush of fingertips. Wasn’t sure if it was because Benji wasn’t a girl, or if it was something else. That something else felt scarier than Xavier realizing he wasn’t straight. It felt bigger. When they kissed, when they touched, when they were alone. It wasn’t supposed to be like that — it was meant to be like the others; couches, sleeping bags, expiry date. But it wasn’t. It isn’t.

The forest surrounding Cold Hollow is that odd sepia tone, the soft yellow hues of green foliage under nearly dying light. Summer day bleeding into summer evening, the temperature now cooler, making all the exposed skin on his arms and legs prickly with goosebumps. Xavier keeps hands in his pockets as he walks, chin dipped, eyes on the nape of Benji’s neck where black curls have gotten stuck in the collar of the sweatshirt. Xavier chews his bottom lip until it hurts, until it tastes a little like metal.

Either Tao has lost them, or they’ve lost Tao, because it’s just Xavier and Benji now. A little more distance between them than there has been the last week or so. There’s a stiffness to Benji’s shoulders, even with his pretend relaxed posture, tromping forward through the underbrush to reach the property line. They’re meant to scope the gates and head back — it’s easy work, but no one likes being in the thick of the woods, especially so close to actual sundown.

Xavier doesn’t mind the forest. The dark, though…

“Hey.” With legs as long as his, he catches up to Benji’s pace easy. His sneakers sound different than Benji’s heavy combat boots. “Hey,” Xavier repeats, hand unraveling from his pocket, taking hold of the extra sweatshirt material at the drop of Benji’s elbow. “Benji, hello, hey.”

“Wot?” The other camp counselor stops and spins, heavy brows set slanted down angrily. Xavier’s hand drops away from him.

“Why are you walking so fast?”

“So we can get this shite over with?”

A bird makes a lonesome, warbling sound. Nothing calls in return. Xavier crosses arms over his chest, head tilted like a curious pointer dog that’s spotted something worth shotting. There’s the somewhat far off sound of Tao, crunching his way through the forest as well, not yet reaching them. Neither of them say anything more, but there is an unease, a building of some tension that makes Xavier’s stomach muscles coil.

“Alright?” Benji turns on his heel once more. Xavier darts forward. “Alright?” He repeats, chin thrown back over his shoulders, dark eyes pointed upward to meet Xavier’s. Their height difference feels so visible when they’re close like this — and that makes his stomach muscles twist funnily again. He recognizes some strange building hunger, annoyance and arousal intertwined.

“Don’t make fun of me,” Xavier laughs breathily, a giant hand landing on Benji’s lower back. That hunger drags claws on his insides. “I’m just — the dark freaks me out, alright? Like bad.”

Maybe before they’d ever kissed, before Xavier had ever questioned what that kiss might even be like (now, of course, he’s well aware what facial hair feels like scratching along his jawline when a kiss descends to the throbbing pulse in his throat, heartbeat over fast) Xavier had been so stupid attracted to Benji’s eyes. He hadn’t know what word to use, but that didn’t matter. He’d stare until Benji looked at him, he’d stare even when Benji wasn’t looking at him, he’d stare at dark brown eyes, thick black down turned lashes and feel fizzy all over. Lightheaded. Dumb with an inability to understand — only now of course, he does.

Benji looks at him. His eyes half lidded in that sleepy, menacing stare. His jaw works. Xavier’s hand stays put on his lower back. Benji reaches out, curls a large hand around Xavier’s hip, making his knees instantly go to water.

“You’re not fuckin’ with me, Xavier?”

“What? No! Man, I swear,” he laughs, inching closer. “I’ve been afraid of the dark since my sister ditched me in the woods once.”

The hand on his hip — warm, big, strong — squeezes. Makes his knees weaker and a twinge in his lower belly shoot directly further downward. Benji laughs, shakes him by that hip once and then turns to continue walking. Only much slower.

“S’alright, Xavier, I’m protecting you, don’t worry.

—

The crunching sound of Tao’s sneakers on dead leaves follows behind them though, like a third party to the conversation they’re not actually having. At some point, they accrue distance once more — Benji too far in front and Xavier flagging despite his longer gait. They’ve lost more sun, the forest turning reddish, turning haunted. He stares at Benji’s back, at the white Camp Cold Hollow Logo across the back of it. The way it gets tighter and tighter in posture, hiking higher and higher. His curls get windblown, his beanie forgotten in the band room where Lark has the night Xavier was meant to have.

I really am scared of the dark, Xavier mopes, hands shoved into his pockets. He imagines if the sounds of a third person weren’t getting closer and closer, maybe that come on would have caught better. Gotten him kissed hard, back up against a tree. Wasn’t even really Xavier being flirty — the closer the sun gets to disappearing, the more anxiety replaces the blood in his veins with battery acid.

“Why’s Tao so far behind? Lazy ass.” Xavier finally groans aloud, eyes up toward the tree scattered sky. Benji stops walking and they nearly collide.

“He’s not lazy.”

“What? Yeah he is.”

“No he’s not.” Benji’s brows pinch in, his lip curling in a grimace. Xavier feels an uncomfortable knot behind his sternum. They stand there, under too tall trees, night approaching, staring at each other.

“What the fuck, why are you defending Tao?” Xavier laughs, raising hands awkwardly.

“I’m not,” Benji replies, bewildered. “M’saying, s’all. He’s not.”

“Are you still into him?” It comes out quick and angry and Xavier instantly regrets it, like everything he’s ever done when anger has it’s tight fist around him. Benji’s face shutters into something almost horrified and then into something mean. Wrinkles on his nose, brows drawn tight, mouth set in a harsh line. A heartbeat pulses down Xavier’s arms, on his palms.

“You think I’m into tons of guys like that, yeah? You, him, who else? Think I’m into Ben too? Why not toss another on the list, you think it’s like that.”

“I don’t! I don’t think that,” Xavier starts forward, his stomach dropping when Benji takes a step backward. “I shouldn’t have said that — ”

“Nah, say what you mean, Xavier.”

“That’s not what I fucking mean,” he snarls, pressing a finger forward into Benji’s chest, shocking himself at the way his voice drops. “I just don’t know why you’d defend a guy like that, that treated you like that.”

“Defend? I’m not defending him?” Benji bursts into sarcastic laughter. “You don’t like being corrected. He’s not lazy, he’s avoiding me!” The word is shouted, sending scattering birds sleeping from branches into the reddish sky. Xavier stands there, his hand unfurling, reaching to take Benji’s shoulder, but stopping. Unsure if that touch is wanted. Benji’s face stays mean, but his eyes are too wide, too glassy to sell it. “He made that real fuckin’ clear last year, Xavier. Alright? And I don’t want t’be near him, either.”

Benji turns, he starts forward again. Xavier gasps, terror welling in his belly, like cold worms finding a frantic home in his guts. He darts forward, grasping at Benji’s bicep.

“What the fuck, Xavier?”

“Stop, Benji, stop, don’t go any further — ”

“What are — ”

“Stop!” Xavier finally yells, his arms wrapping around Benji quickly, yanking them close. His heart thunders at his sternum, a buzzing in his ear drowning everything out. A tinny sound narrowing his focus. His vision tunneling, black at the edges. His hand slips into Benji’s hair, protectively tucking him closer, his arms shivering with an uncontrollable nervousness. He stares at the place where Benji’s foot had almost landed.

“I fucking knew it! I knew it, Benji!” Tao behind them — the coward, finally making his appearance. His soft crunching through grass turns into hard stomping. “With him? Of all people, with — ”

“Tao, don’t fucking move,” Xavier barks, his voice a rough edged promised threat. He turns his head, only just barely able to see Tao in the dim setting sunlight. He’s frozen, hands up in alarm, his golden face drained of color, brown eyes blown wide and fearful.

“What?” Benji asks, his voice thin, eyes searching both Xavier and the forest in front of them.

“Just — Just, shhh. Just — ” Xavier can’t find words at all. Instead, he unwinds one arm from Benji — reluctantly — and reaches for a low hanging branch beside them. He snaps it easily, like it’s nothing but a piece of kindling. He takes a slow step forward, but just barely. In his head, he still sees Benji, his heavy march forward. Xavier’s stomach lurches. He reaches out with the tree branch, the tip quivering as his nerves take over.

When he jabs downward, the branch does not simply snap from the bear traps jaw. It’s obliterated, sending shards of wood splattering around them. The spring metal sound of it is like a gunshot, the clamp slapping together and echoing in the woods. Benji startles against him, one of his hands shooting out to take Xavier by the forearm, as though to yank him back from the trap.

Only he isn’t done.

Using the now shortened end of the branch, he pokes once more and a second trap beside the first snaps shut. It sends underbrush and tree branch everywhere.

“Holy shit,” Tao whimpers.

“Shut up,” Xavier replies, his voice a hoarse whisper. “There’s one more.” He bends. Benji’s hand skate across him, digging into his shirt, keeping them close. Like he might pull Xavier from a shark infested shoreline. He manages to find another branch on the forest floor and tosses it — then watches the third bear trap clamp shut around it, rending it to sawdust. What would it do to bone? To flesh? To Benji?

Hands shaking, he smears them on his shorts, sweat and dirt gritty on his palms.

“People can’t hunt out here,” Tao says quietly. “They’re — They’re not allowed to hunt out here.”

Xavier says nothing. He slowly crouches. Benji’s hand grips his shoulder roughly, but Xavier only loops his own around Benji’s wrist, soothing thumb brushing up and down a jumping, terrified pulse.

“Hunters mark these,” he explains, slowly pulling one closer. All three are linked by a rusted chain. Sat close enough together for it to be ineffective for anything other than maiming. “They’re supposed to anyway. With their names.”

“Up on your tetanus shots, gorgeous?” Benji asks quietly, shocking him into a bubble of laughter. The hand on his shoulder doesn’t loosen it’s grip, but moves up the back of his neck, holding him in a way that is so stunningly comforting it makes his entire body go slack for a dizzying and vulnerable second. His chin touches his chest, a vision of Benji’s mangled leg behind his eyes. No — worse. Three traps, all lined up. Jesus. Jesus Christ.

Xavier pulls the clustered trio of traps closer. The chains clink together, metal on metal rustling. The traps themselves are far bigger than any he’s seen before; not that he’s ever hunted bear. Still, he remembers his uncles trapping shed, the lined up tools on the wall and nothing even close to resembling this sort of beast. Even just one is heavy, but all three make his bicep strain as he slowly straightens and stands. A thorough look over them results in…nothing. Not a single indicating mark.

He and Benji share a look.

“No fucking way,” Tao says, making Xavier’s fury spike blindingly high for just one moment. “No fucking way! People can’t hunt out here, it’s like, it’s literally not allowed?”

“You don’t put traps side by side like this,” Xavier says slowly, looking over his shoulder. He hefts them up. They clang noisily together. They’re rusted a bit at the teeth, on the chain. “That’s not how you trap. This isn’t for hunting.”

That reality sits with all three of them. Wind whistles just enough through a tree to make the hairs raise over Xavier’s body, his arm straining still from holding the traps up. He relaxes, letting them dangle onto the ground, until Benji finally takes them from him. Slings them over his shoulder, eyes hardened and shiny in the dark.

“The kids come out here,” Tao says.

“Yeah,” Xavier replies, scrubbing a hand over the top of his head, his shaggy red hair going in every direction.

“We bring it to Vic,” Benji says, his voice a grave finality. The conversation’s door slamming shut. Xavier is thankful for it — he doesn’t think Tao is equipped to handle the fear he knows is bubbling up inside of them, all of them. Discussing it, out here, in the dark, in the woods would make it worse. “Fuck the gates, we just head back now.”

“What if there’s more?”

“Tao,” Xavier seethes, rounding on him, stepping closer. “Shut up. We’re going to walk a line back to camp. You take the last spot, if you’re so scared.”

“Who put you in charge, Xavier? You think because you’re some hick you — ”

“What if someone’s out here?” Benji asks, making Tao’s jaw snap shut. Eyes go overlarge and wet. He glances between them, then the forest around them. It’s darkness closes in, creeping closer. The silence — the lack of animals, the birds, the rustling of bunnies. Cold Hollow becomes a different place at night. “I’ll bring up the back. Tao can be in the middle.”

Xavier opens his mouth to protest, but there’s a simple arch to Benji’s eyebrow that shuts him up. What if someone’s out here? They continue staring at each other, Tao squaring up silently between them, staring at the ground like a scared, petulant kid. Xavier glances once more to the canopy of trees above them, the small cut outs of the now dark sky. Then he turns them toward home and begins walking.

—

Vic was well liked by the kids. He was the sort of person that could never smile and somehow put a room of children at ease despite that; there was something warm about him, maybe the accent, maybe the well worn boots he had on that announced his presence before he reached you. Maybe it was a kind squeeze to a kids shoulder when they were crying about their summer craft project, or maybe it was the way he knelt down to get closer to their eye level, when they had a busted knee. Vic was manager (Bunny was owner) but he wasn’t scary, not to them.

Xavier, however, feels the entire weight of an adult’s authoritative stare. He doesn’t sit down the way Tao has, sprawled into a chair across from Vic’s desk, head in his hands. He doesn’t dare lean against the wall the way Benji does, antagonistic stare directed at Tao’s idiot head. Xavier stands there, with hands at his sides, church perfect, sweat cooling on his lower back. He swallows. Vic stares at him, out of the three counselors.

“I thought you were on bedtime rounds.” He has a unique, slow, southern drawl that Xavier can’t place. Usually, he’s pretty decent with accents. He once, drunkenly, recited every American state in Alphabetical order — then did it backward. He was shockingly, a bit of a geographical fucking geek. And yet, Vic eludes him. A toothpick switches from one side of the mans mouth to the other. “Am I wrong, Xavier?”

“No, sir,” he answers automatically. Tao snickers.

“You find something funny, Tao? ‘Cause I don’t find a thing humorous at this precise moment. Not a damn thing.” Every word is enunciated. Vic sits at his desk, chair leaned back, arms crossed over his broad chest. The toothpick bobs. “I send these two out, and three come back. With this.” Vic’s hand gestures to the bear traps Benji had laid out on his desk.

“We found it,” Tao says quickly. “I mean — well, he found it.”

“You know, that is precisely what I’m asking.”

“Oh.” Tao glances behind himself to Xavier. He gives him one long up and down stare. Then his eyes slide toward Benji, who slowly unravels from the casual lean he’s protected himself with. “That’s because — ”

“I wanted to sneak off with Benji so we could make out somewhere,” Xavier says. There is stunned silence that follows. It feels insignificant. Who cares? He wants to say. Who cares? Why did Tao care? Why did he fucking care, how could he have cared like that? “Fire me, man — it doesn’t matter, do you know we weren’t even to the gates when we found these? Kids go into the woods all the time — ”

“Without a counselor?” Vic interrupts. Xavier’s teeth click shut.

“Nah,” Benji interjects. The floorboards creak underneath him as he shifts on his booted feet. “Promise we headcount them every hour.”

“You,” Vic says, raising a finger. He pauses, staring at Benji with the quizzical look of someone puzzling something together and wondering where to start with the findings. Vic slowly crosses his arms once more. “Expect better out of you.”

“What? We found — this is serious!” Xavier exclaims, pointing toward the bear traps. They look…cleaner under the lighting in Vic’s cabin office. They look less threatening, less mean, less capable of snapping someones tibia in two. They don’t look like a raving maniac’s torture device; they look like simple traps. Unmarked, no hunters details, but simple. Xavier stops protesting when Vic slowly rises to a stand. He’s taller than the camp manager, but he doesn’t feel it in that moment.

“Tao, Xavier, y’all step outside — actually, why don’t you both go back to your cabins, alright? Me and Benji are havin’ a word.”

“If he’s in trouble, I’m in trouble — look, Vic, c’mon, it was my idea. I wanted to go, I wanted to be with him and — ”

“Xavier,” Benji says his name quietly enough to silence him completely. The chair Tao has been sitting in scuffs the floor as he rises. The door opens and slams shut, the sound too loud in the small, stuffy cabin. Something feels incredibly wrong, but Xavier isn’t sure what, head aching behind his ears, a dull ringing following pain. Strangely, the image of Benji stepping down onto the pressure plate of a bear trap springs forth to him once more, making his whole body twitch.

“Fine,” he concedes in a bitter voice, nose wrinkled and lip curled with heat. “Fine.” He repeats, and follows suit with Tao, slamming the door as well.

—

Xavier wants a fight. He thinks its a generational thing. His father and his father’s father and so on; all of them Irish hot blooded and wanting to start and end a fight. Xavier wants to take his anger — and fear — out on something else. Imagines it being Tao, only he doesn’t linger. The small space of time Xavier had spent standing idiotically in Vic’s cabin, an unwanted guest to a two party conversation, had been enough for Tao to scurry away. Like a fucking rat.

Instead, once Xavier hops the last step leading up to Vic’s cabin, he turns and kicks the side of it. The hardwood makes a dull thunk of a sound, loud enough for his tail to dip between his legs like the hunting dog caught snapping at ducks on his own. He skips backward, gears up for maybe a pitiful second one — a markedly lighter kick, satisfying only in the pumping action of his leg — when a laugh beside him makes him stumble. One foot still up in the air.

“Heard fires more effective.”

A stranger. There is a flickering bulb hanging from Vic’s cabin, providing a circle of light just wide enough, but he stands directly on the skirts of it. Makes an ethereal, uncomfortable darkness curl around him. Xavier stares, an unease curling in his lower stomach, leg slowly lowering. New England summer nights are always colder than they should be; and he’s dressed for the blistering day time heat. He shivers and blames it entirely on just that, the cold and not this new, eerie silhouette.

“You’re not a counselor.”

“Oh. How did you know?” he draws the word out, raising splayed hands. Steps a bit closer into the light. He’s young, early twenties. Pretty. The only word Xavier can find at the moment, because it’s true. Long black hair and brown skin and not wearing Cold Hollow gear. Xavier says nothing. His hands curl and uncurl at his sides. He thinks of the traps. “Whoa, relax. I thought northerners were known for their hospitality?”

“Who are you?”

“Who are you?” the stranger asks, folded arms over his chest, head tilted. A strand of his long dark hair parts over his face, framing one of his eyes.

“Man, you’re at my camp — ”

“Really? Big guy inside work for you?”

“Jesus Christ,” Xavier mutters, hands in his pockets. He steps closer to say something, thinking he might have found his fight — when the door to Vic’s bangs open. Benji all but tumbles out, his boots heavy on the steps. He doesn’t look up — and someone else follows behind him. Even in the shoddy, yellowy outdoor cabin light, Xavier instantly recognizes her. The strangers perfect twin in nearly everything except height and the slight here and there twist of features. Her, in a tank top and shorts and him in jeans and a long sleeve. Her, with bigger eyes and a narrower mouth and him with a sleepy gaze and haughty smile. Twins, authentically.

“Wow, you find someone to sleep with already?”

Xavier’s face burns, but the man beside him laughs.

“What, you too?” He throws a hand in Benji’s direction and Xavier feels an immediate urge to swat it away. The implication makes his insides burn, even knowing Benji’s preferences. The twins detach from either of the counselors, huddling together, heads tilted close — eyes on them, but communicating in some other manner, some secret body language. Xavier, disturbed, decides to ignore them.

“Hey, I’m sorry if I got you in trouble, I — ” He trails off as Benji stares at him. There is worrisome weariness to his eyes, which once felt closed off and tired and now were the most expressive part of him. Benji thinks to reach out, to close hands around his shoulders or biceps and bring them closer. Only those eerie twins stare at them from under the yellow cabin light.

“S’alright. Listen, Vic put me on watch duty for these two.” Benji jerks a thumb behind his shoulder toward the strangers. “Supposed to set them up with beds tonight.”

“Oh,” Xavier nods. “Okay.”

“Right.”

“Well.”

One of the twins, and for some reason, he cannot tell which, says something in a lilting, laughing Spanish. It makes the burn in Xavier’s cheeks even hotter, one of his hands brushing up and down the back of his head. He nods again, breathing out heavily. Then he leans forward. He cups Benji’s cheeks, he tilts their faces together — he finds his soft lips and presses his own there. The shorter twin whistles and Xavier immediately steps backward.

“Puttin’ em up in spider cabin for that,” Benji promises, his eyes skimming the ground, one corner of his lips twitched upward. His heavy mass of curls fall forward, obscuring his face.

“That’s a joke right?”

“I don’t think he’s joking, Yas.”

“Yes, he is. He’s joking. No fucking spiders, man.”

Xavier watches Benji turn. He watches those new — scary — twins follow. Something tells him to keep watching. To watch the entire time, his stomach turning anxiously. To stand there, outside Vic’s cabin and stare and wonder why Benji? Why Benji. But eventually, he becomes obscured by another cabin. The twins disappear as well. And all Xavier can look at then, is the dark silhouette of Vic standing at the door, looking out at him.

“Xavier,” he calls through that wire screen door.

“Sir?”

“Did alright with those traps, Xavier.”

A burst of pride makes him feel sunny even in the dead of dark night. He nods, smiling and finally steps away.

[hauntedjpegcollection]

not broken

Asshole.

Benny can’t find his fucking cards. Stomps round the edge of a wall into a gaggle of girls that shriek and part for him — and he shoves through them anyway, eyes bloodshot with exhaustion, annoyance and…hurt. Cards. He’d find wherever his deck went and leave. Too partial to that pack, first deck he bought his freshmen year, he knew the cards like the back of his hand. Or up his sleeve where he tucks the winners card every time. Matilda could yell at him later, her and her parties that were excuses for people to take pictures in her apartment (her cool, neon artwork in the background, blurry and artsy). Make her look good online.

Well. Fuck it. He was going to yell back at her anyway. She’d invited Cael.

Or hadn’t and some group chat of a group chat of a group chat had added too many people and too many connections that all sprawled back to them. Some sober part of Benny, rather far back and crushed underneath more than a few shots of whiskey, recognizes none of this to be Matilda’s fault. Rather, he could probably be an utter bitch to her and she wouldn’t stop being his friend. Probably. She had tougher skin than people thought, only with a bit of glassiness underneath if someone managed through it.

Fucker, his own brain continues anyway, thinking of Cael in that cute oversized jumpsuit. A flimsy crop top underneath concealing not nearly enough. Tawny skin he misses touching, skin he misses putting his cheek to and feeling the in and out of another person’s breathing. The quiet solitude of intimacy before it gets ruined. Nothing in his inner monologue is coherent then, just downright miserable and self pitying and —

“Oi, fuck? Alright, yeah?”

Benny stumbles, much of his weight falling on his left boot as his right half catches someone. Someone that does not move despite all two-hundred-plus pounds of Benny crashing into them. The cardless magician pulls himself to a stop, hand to the wall beside him. And he stares. Then Benny adjusts his eye line a bit lower to someone a bit shorter.

“Benji,” Benny says, in no way a greeting. This would be maybe the second time he’s ever said a word to Matilda’s strange, international friend. The first word likely being a grunt of acknowledgment. Or a sneeze. Benji stares at him, his face arranged into something tired, haughty and mean. It’s a good face, though; he probably knows that too, egotistical bastard. He’s all relaxed posture, one hand shoved into tattered jeans, arms displayed from a shirt that lost it’s sleeves to fabric scissors in a mangled way. Nice arms too. Very nice arms.

“Startin’ a fire or puttin’ one out?” Benji asks, head tilted askew, grin knowing and cutting. Yeah, fuck this guy, Benny thinks as the whiskey becomes a physical, prowling presence inside his skull. Fucking weirdo hot guy, the world has enough of these types.

Benny sucks his teeth, hands raised, fingers waggling, his own smile a sinister little thing. “Smoked my last cig, y-you can bum off someone else.” Benji’s reply is to untuck his hand from his jeans, where a slightly crumpled pack rests in his palm. He smiles wider, cheeks dimpling. Benji has very soft looking facial hair, the kind that wouldn’t leave a burn on your thighs so much as a very, very pleasant reminder.

Oh, fuck you. Fuck you. Cowardly as he is, Benny doesn’t reply at all. Instead he side steps around the shorter man, tossing a vulgar hand gesture as he moves.

“Think Til has your cards, mate! On the roof. Real high wind out there t’night.”

Even Benji’s laugh is tired and handsome as it follows Benny.

—

Actually, he can’t stay mad at Matilda. She drapes her long, slim arms around his shoulders. Her smile so big, so flawlessly pretty it makes a flutter happen between his ribs. Toooo fucking pretty. Way too fucking pretty for you, man. And she hadn’t lost a single card. Had even done the shuffle he’d taught her perfectly, to a little group of people who looked rightfully impressed and similarly wasted. Kudos and all that, so Benny doesn’t find it in himself to complain about Cael either.

But he wants to. He can feel it pressing against the roof of his mouth in every glance he takes, wondering if they’re right behind him. If they’re talking to someone — if they’re seeing someone new. If they’re doing okay, if they got any new acting gigs, if they still wake up too early and can’t fall back asleep without a hand soothing up and down their back. Benny’s throat becomes very dry very suddenly, and he decides to wet it with another beer. Finds Xavier instead of his ex, sitting on the counter, a beer can pressed to his face.

“You broken?” Benny asks, reaching up, taking the can. And even though he could spend an entire evening drunkenly pining for Cael, there is no denying that Xavier is without a doubt the prettiest man Benny’s ever met. Manages to quickly eradicate any thoughts of another person. Even with what looks like a freshly bruised nose, Xavier’s a bit all encompassing. Maybe prettier with it, because it’s lined his eyes with sparkly tears and made his cheeks a lovely red color. Xavier inhales hard, scrunching his nose, closing his eyes.

“One of Matilda’s friends brought their yappy little fucking purse dog tonight,” he explains, his voice thick in accent, drink and pain. “And I tripped over it and smashed into the wall.”

“Dog okay?”

“Dog not okay,” Xavier replies, pointing to himself, his smile becoming big and goofy. A little trickle of blood runs from nostril to the top of his lip, tongue darting out to catch it. Fuck it. Should I sleep with Xavier tonight, then? No. Bad idea. Such a bad idea. Benny cracks the beer open, taking a healthy gulp before passing it over to the unfortunate red head. The best part of Xavier is he lets them linger in silence for a moment; Benny reshuffling his cards into the order he prefers them, Xavier drinking slowly, sniffing occasionally. The music in Matilda’s apartment has dulled to a distant throbbing sort of sound, whatever soundcloud rapper she has on her friends list taking over the playlist.

The silence ends when Xavier clears his throat and smiles a little more twitchy.

“What?” Benny asks. He’s found his sunglasses and shoved them onto his face, so the whole world is washed red just like Xavier’s bloody nose.

“Have you seen a guy around the party?”

“More th-than a few.”

“Fuck you,” Xavier laughs, sliding off the counter. His too long body sways, a drunken arm slipping around Benny’s shoulders and pulling them in close. Anyone else and Benny would have taken a bite out their throat in a terrified, panicky, purse dog way. But it’s Xavier. So Benny stands there, staring into drunken pond colored eyes, his glasses tilted on his nose. “I mean — There’s this guy. Shorter. Black hair, curly. British. Cute. Really, really cute.”

Benny grunts.

Xavier stares.

Benny pulls out the ace of hearts and tucks it into the front pocket of Xavier’s t-shirt, where a lighter waits patiently to be used. Benji had a few extra cigarettes in that crumpled pack, didn’t he?

“Haven’t seen ‘im.”

—

Makes sense that upon leaving Xavier in the kitchen — mopey, bloody and pining — he runs into Benji.

Benji and Cael.

And running into isn’t exactly the correct phrase, because in reality he stumbles. Doesn’t run anywhere but away. Dips behind one of those big modern bookcases, filled to the brim with coffee table art books and shoved behind that, those serial romances he thinks Nomi’s been lending her. Paperback thin and smutty. Architecture wise, it’s mostly a yellow flimsy wire creation, but does a good job of keeping him away from whatever is happening on the other side. Matilda’s apartment is a studio — not that big, not enough space to get around this unscathed.

Cael’s laugh, which had once been so familiar, sounds exaggerated. They have a smoky sort of laugh, a little rough around the edges in an almost sensual way. Usually softer, hard to dig out of them — but here, with the soundcloud rapper’s music too loud and the conversation on the stairs beside them, Cael’s laugh is sharp. Forced.

Benny moves a stack of books (he’s right of coursel; he recognizes this twelve book series from Nomi, who had explained the plot in such thorough detail to him, he could visualize the breasty main character and her Scottish love interest). There would be time to ruminate on how eerie it feels watching this scene later, when he’s sober, or hungover, or ready to feel pitiful about himself. Instead, he stands there, a pale, tattooed hand on one of those serialized romance novels, barely thinking at all.

Luckily, he can’t actually hear anything — that cracking bell like sound of Cael’s laugh once, and that’s it. Benji’s face not softer but not nearly as glinting mean as it usually is. Sleepy eyed, standing with a shoulder braced to a wall, chin tilted up to look at Cael. Who stands there, beer bottle tapping against their thigh, their other hand looking lonesome dangling there by their side. Working up bravery to maybe reach out, to place a flirty touch on someone like Benji; who feels so untouchable and yet so desirable at the same time. Cael’s type. Really. Fucking really.

He imagines this scene playing out. He can’t not imagine this scene playing out; it feels like the scene is injected into his fucking brain through a needle up the fucking nose, right through to gray matter. Benny doesn’t care and he’s not jealous and it doesn’t matter but he can’t stop fucking thinking of it. And thinking of his bedroom at home, Benny thinking of how lonely it feels to be the only person in it, an arm wrapped around a stray pillow, cold blue eye blinking at the light coming in through a window he should have put black out curtains over.

A loud and frankly really fucking obnoxious ring tone cuts both through music, conversation and Benny’s spiraling. He looks back through the slim opening between romance novel and art nouveau. Benji stands, twisted away from Cael, a cell phone to his ear, expression dour. One long black curl keeps falling into his face, making his nose scrunch. Cael’s lonesome hand raises, falls, raises itself once more and then drops again.

“The wi-fi code, mate? Nah. It’s written down. I wrote it down, Mar. I did — not my fault issit, you not looking around? Not my handwritin’ — I don’t care how jet lagged — you slept fourteen hours. Still tired? What d’you need internet for, then? S’what I thought.”

Benny watches, pulled in like when he accidentally catches the last ten minutes of a show Xavier’s got on. He watches Cael continue standing there. He watches Benji twist and turn and shrug a shoulder at them. He watches Cael slowly side step away, confused, tucking their long hair behind their ears. They linger for a moment longer, as Benji fiddles with their phone. And then Cael sways away, back into the crowded living area where Matilda holds court with a party game that involves alcohol, weed or both.

For a moment — a very long or very short moment, inebriation a factor into Benny’s presumed reality — neither he nor Benji moves. Benny, behind the bookcase and Benji, against the wall. Looking at his phone. Then glancing around his shoulder. Then sliding the phone away, continuing a blank stare at the ground. Benny slips around the book case, hands in his pockets, chin dipped. Sunglasses low on his long nose, eyes pinning Benji.

“What?”

“You.” Benny uses a long, pale, tattooed finger to point at Benji. His blue eyes pale in excited interest. “You’re doing the whole m-medical degree shit, right?”

“You know piss all about me,” Benji declares confidently, pushing himself off the wall.

“Yeah, true, do m-me a favor, though?” Benny asks, a hand draping over his heart dramatically. Benji’s thick brow arches, his face smoothing into something disinterested. Ready to be annoyed. No way, I got your number, man. I got your number. “Friend of mine, in the kitchen w-with a bloody nose. Probably not broken. But, you never know. You, uh, you’ve m-met Xavier right?”

There’s a feathering twitch in Benji’s cheek. He rubs the side of his nose with a finger, eyes sideways, expression bored. Benny pulls his pack of cards from his pocket. He thumbs through and finds the king of hearts, slowly leaning forward to push it to Benji’s chest. Once the card is taken, he bows.

“Fuck you? Weird one, aren’t you.”

“Kitchen,” Benny repeats and then sidesteps away.

—

They have to, in a surprising twist of events, call a rideshare. Benny doesn’t drive drunk — its one of the few white trash stereotypes he doesn’t indulge in. Instead, they pile into the back of someone’s Suburu that smells like dog and road salt. Lark makes horrible noises about being pushed to the side, while Xavier totters in the middle and Benny gets in last. Not even relenting at the spread of his knees, letting himself be drunkenly comfortable.

“Are you Brandon?” the rideshare driver asks, adjusting her rearview mirror. She has glasses that are ten times too big, sits with herself directly against her steering wheel. He can imagine her in socks and sandals. Benny gives a thumbs up. She turns on music very low, very soft and very soothing.

He gets an arm around Xavier’s shoulders, slowly pulling him down until he’s crunched nearly in half and draped into Benny’s lap. One of his hands even skims the dubiously cleaned mats on the car floor. Lark makes another protesting sound.

“Hows your nose?” Benny whispers into Xavier’s ear, watching red strands of hair flicker with his breath. There’s no reply, the Suburu taking a left hand turn as slowly as it can possibly manage. Then Xavier tilts his head, one green eye peeking up at him, his cheek flushed, a little bit of blood still crusted around a nostril. He smiles.

“Not broken!”

[hauntedjpegcollection]

chlorine

If Benny were to count on both hands the places he’d rather die than step foot inside, Winsett Country Club was early on in the tally. Probably a middle finger, even. It was half a hour drive (one hour by bus and probably worse on foot) north from the central hub they lived in, where city bled into ugly suburb quite quickly. New England suburb, which was worse somehow in it’s severity, it’s dedication to the color green and wind chimes. It was about golfing and exclusivity and had a rooftop bar. An outdoor pool.

Driving there, he wonders how long it takes Maran on his bike. At a red light, he drums fingers across the steering wheel, one tattooed arm hung out the window while a pedestrian stares at him with too wide eyes. He does not turn his music down. But he does smile at them. Longer than the bus? Shorter? Forty five minutes? He thinks of the bunched baseball of Maran’s calf muscle, the tendons in his ankle as he peddles. He also thinks — and nearly sits through a green light — about the sweat collecting on a bleached hairline, the shorn fuzz of a buzz cut. The way exertion puts blush on a mans cheek.

“Eugh,” Benny articulates aloud, hitting the gas too hard, the car leaping forward like a creature. It’s safe to say that Benny does not have a membership for the Winsett Country Club. Nor would he ever have a membership, and if ever did, it would be under threat of torture, death or failing his PhD program.

He does, however, have a plan.

—

He finds out through Xavier, who has never kept a secret a day in his sweet Catholic life.

“Oh, yeah,” he comments, over a McDonald’s breakfast of three different sandwiches. Chews heartily through a hash brown. Salt lingers on the top of his cupids bow and looks very cute. “Mar works the pool at that fancy place Fiadh’s dad owns. I think he lifeguards.”

“Lifeguards,” Benny repeats. “Under the table?”

“Rich people do not give a fuck about safety,” Xavier concludes, offering a hash brown (with eyes that say, you don’t really want this do you?). Benny takes it, enjoys the sad look that follows, and eats it happily while he ponders.

No work visa. Living off an air mattress in Benji’s apartment, cobbled together cash for a bike, did the food delivery thing for a bit, until — Benny’s jaw has to twitch a bit to think her name and it’s pretty pronunciation. Her pretty wheat colored hair and her pretty eyes. Benny imagines briefly the beautiful possibility that Fiadh could always get hit by a bus. Mean Girls style. He’d pay Matilda to do it and it would be her rich parents against Fiadh’s and —

“Wh-What shift?” Benny asks. The hashbrown makes him thristy. Xavier, pursing salty lips squishing together, narrows his eyes. “Maybe I can give him a ride sometimes. Th-That’s all. Streets are dangerous in blue blood territory.”

There is a significant pause, where Benny thinks Xavier’s preternatural dog like senses prickle. Then, he chomps through another sandwich, shrugging big, freckled shoulders.

“Think he does evenings.”

—

The plan is — well, he’s hopping the fence.

Rich people thought highly of fences. Something about big, black, iron bars really made one pause and think; now this place is private! But Benny isn’t rich. He has a hundred dollars in his account to keep until the end of the week. He sees a fence and he sees opportunity.

First, he parks. Finds a nice spot in a parking lot attached to a cute bookstore that he would actually browse if he had the time. An older man sits out front — sixties, seventies, bushy mustached kind with the transition lenses that turned dark in the sunlight — sipping from a branded coffee cup. They stare at one another. Him with his mustache and James Patterson paperback. Benny, in a hoodie despite the weather, and his neck tattoos.

The mans eyes slide to the Chevrolet Biscayne and back. He shrugs, a chin dip of appreciation, and resumes reading. Benny salutes, two fingered, and feels safe assuming he isn’t going to get towed for, minimum, an hour.

Then he sheds the sweatshirt.

—

Once inside, he detours to the micromart. This was real rich people shit, an umanned stall with food and drinks lined up. Nothing but a card reader and the assuredness that rich people didn’t steal the small stuff. Just tax evasion, worker exploitation, etc, etc. They paid for their granola bars. Benny imagines shaking up every soda, or lining up the bags of chips and stomping on them. Instead, he steals. Two treats. One for him and one for Maran. Gives the camera in the corner an obscene gesture and continues on.

Then, when Benny sees Maran, he turns around and walks back inside.

He puts a hand over his chest, the cold ice cream pops he’d been holding nearly crushed in the pocket of his shorts. He breathes out a strange, shaky breath, his throat tight. He looks at the concrete underneath him. The smell of chlorine permeates through the glass doors he’d pushed his way through. It pinches the back of his nose. It stings. The nape of his neck is very, very hot.

Then Benny shoves his way back out into the pool area.

He’s completely out of place, of course. There’s no spare inch of skin that isn’t tattooed. He’s far too pale underneath those, and his stringy blond hair is held back only by sunglasses perched on his head. The swim trunks he’s wearing have skulls on them, which are far too detailed and a little strange to be corny or funny. He’d switched into an old pair of sneakers that were worn through and ugly. They slap the concrete beneath him as he approaches Maran’s high chair.

The sun must love him, must be delighted just to touch him; it’s warmed his skin an even richer brown, pinkened his cheeks and his bare knees and the insides of his forearms where the skin is sensitive and often hidden. His freckles appear starker, little kissed spots. He sits there, one bored hand under his chin, the other fiddling with the whistle around his neck. He’s in flip flops so thin he’s nearly barefoot, which feels erotic enough to trigger a manic episode for Benny.

Those red shorts make everything so much worse, too.

Maran glances down. His face splits into a smile so wide, so beautiful that Benny can only sneer up at him in response. There’s a fluttering uncomfortable feeling behind his sternum.

He proffers the nearly crushed creamsicle push pop.

“Hey. I’m your ride home tonight.”

—

Two months later and Benny finally convinces Maran to break into The Winsett Country Club with him. After hours, midnight dark and just the two of them.

In the span of two months — all sixty one days — they’ve become friends. Before they were people who knew each other, who were around each other sometimes; Benny was an available ride or Maran was someone to talk to at a party if everyone else found Benny too exhausting. But now they’ve become two instead of one. They’ve become the sort of friends that always find each other in a group, the sort of friends that watch movies sitting too close, the sort of friends that talk on the phone when there’s nothing left to say at the end of the day. Fall asleep with the video call still running. Good morning text messages. The sort of friends that look at each other a little too long.

Break into ex girlfriend’s dad’s country club sort of friends.

Benny has flirted with the idea of being out of his fucking mind more than once — someone simply didn’t survive his childhood, adolescence or military experience without being a little insane. But being with Maran (not…with Maran, side by side with Maran, existing in the same space as him, with him) is a special sort of surrealism. Terrible B-rated horror movie on and Maran’s head lolling to the side to smile at him between fingers, hands covering his face, body language saying hold me, I’m so scared, Ben. Just friends. Just friends.

“How do you get over?” Maran asks, staring at the iron fence Benny had hopped sixty one days ago. Benny hooks a hand into his sweatshirt, at the back of his neck and tugs it off less than gently. It ruffles his already messy hair, sticking strands of blond everywhere. He hops a little to throw the sweatshirt over the fencing. Then crouches and offers his cupped hands.

“Oh, real movie shit here, Ben. Like — cin-e-matic.” Maran’s smiling that big, boyish grin that makes Benny feel floaty and weird. He watches as a dirty converse steps one into his laced together palms.

“The spikes c-can still hurt, so be quick on getting over alright?”

Benny hefts, biceps straining under Maran’s weight as he scrambles upward. Hooks his arms over the fence — nearly upends onto concrete on the other side. Splatter art, Maran style, but he actually just stumbles as he lands. Arms pinwheeling adorably to keep his balance. Benny is momentarily struck, staring through the black bars, watching Maran totter on his heels and then straighten, smiling. Dimples on his freckled cheeks. The constant motion of him is dizzying. Maran holds in a laugh with his teeth on his bottom lip, the indentation inviting, hands on his hips like a triumphant Olympian.

“Wait, how are you gettin’ over?” Maran’s face falls, hands slipping from his waist.

Benny doesn’t answer. Instead, he jumps. Clasps hands at the top of the fence, around a spike and pulls. It’s easy enough, upper body strength on his side as he slips up and over. Snatches the sweatshirt down with him as he lands. Benny braces with his knees bent so he doesn’t stumble the way Maran had — and when he straightens, his friend is staring at him with eyes widened and lips parted.

They stand there. Maran slow claps.

“That was fuckin’ cool, Ben.”

“Shut up,” he replies, wondering at the possibility of sunburn on his cheeks. “Brought y-your work keys?”

Pool safety lights flicker on as soon as movement is near them, washing them both yellow orange against the blue cast hues. The water is almost eerie like that, the chlorine even stronger than usual. Ethereal with a layer of fog that rises up across the heated surface. They move toward the gated doors, Maran holding up a lanyard with dangling keys. Some spiky haired video game character attached to it that squeezes Benny’s heart. He imagines Maran picking that out in some store, attaching it fondly — and Benny realizes he’s so absurdly fucked when even that thought makes something in him bleed.

He watches the padlock get opened, chains unslung, gate pushed apart.

They both pad into the pool area. Sounds are muffled by the filter bubbling in the corner. Silence, other than an imperceptible wind rustling canvas over the towel cart. Both men have dressed to swim — that was the intention of course, of breaking into the pool. Maran’s in a too-big white shirt and those life guard shorts, red and short, skimming just slightly above mid thigh. He has one freckle on his inner thigh that peeks visible every time he walks. Benny’s eyes skate across foggy, warm pool water.

“It’s nice,” he says suddenly. “Without all the fucking people.”

“Yeah.” Maran’s reply is quiet. “Actually — kind of like it like this. Noisy as fuck durin’ the day, y’know?” When he glances over, Benny isn’t sure what to say.

Standing next to Maran, it’s hard not to be self conscious. To not feel awkward in his own pale flesh. Maybe some part of him was appealing (he didn’t exactly lack for options in getting laid), but it felt small in comparison to his crooked teeth, to his stutter, to his stringy, messy hair. And when Maran looks over at him, he feels that shame stronger with how piercing his dark, brown eyes become in the night. In the pool lighting. The blue pool casting a pretty shadow from bottom up.

“Stretch before swimming, yeah? S’what I have to tell the little ones,” Maran teases, arms thrown above his head. He groans theatrically, arching himself back, thin cotton white shirt skimming up his brown stomach. He almost stumbles with the satisfaction of the stretch — a long pleasant sigh accompanying his moan as he bends to touch his toes. When he rises again, smiling, as he always is smiling, Benny sneaks forward and slips a hand into the pocket of those horrible, little red shorts.

“Who are you calling little? He asks, sneer in his voice as he takes Maran’s phone in one hand and flattens his other to the mans chest. His heartbeat sits right behind Benny’s palm for all but a fraction of a second — and then Benny shoves.

Maran goes pinwheeling again, heel catching on the lip of the pool — then he crashes in, water slopping over the side and turning pale concrete dark gray. Benny can’t help his laugh, loud and electric, as Maran pops up from the water, sputtering and wiping his eyes.

“Oh, you fucking wanker!” He snaps playfully, his accent harsh.

“Wanker,” Benny imitates, tossing his sweatshirt onto the ground behind him. He places Maran’s phone there next, covering it with the sleeve, for extra protection. A wet converse lands beside him with a wet slap. Another nearly clips him as it soars across and lands near a pool chair that hadn’t been folded up neatly with the rest. Benny kicks off his own sneakers, feeling only a little bad about the converses, amused at how the chlorine might bleach them back to white.

“Help me out, yeah? Forgot to get us towels.”

Benny knows its a trick even as he approaches. He can see the mischief in Maran’s dark eyes, the pool water rippling around him, white t-shirt billowy. He shouldn’t fall for it, can even see Maran’s hands sneaking up and over the side of the pool. But Benny kneels by the edge of the pool, panther tattooed knee down. The shirt has gone translucent, clinging to brown skin. Pool safety lights carve out the shadows of Maran’s face, his high cheek bones. Indigo pool water such a beautiful backdrop on him.

Maran reaches out a hand. Benny takes it. Doesn’t even try and fight it.

He’s yanked in. Hears the tail end of Maran’s chest deep, gorgeous laugh before he’s completely submerged. Water roars around his ears, not strong enough to subdue the echo of that laugh and for a second he’s blissfully weightless. He’s in zero gravity, in space, the waters chill making goosebumps rise along his body. He tumbles through the sharp tang of chlorinated pool water, arms spreading out lazily. His hands find Maran’s arms, even though his eyes aren’t open. Fingers curl around a forearm, feeling muscle. Feeling warmth. He pops up from the water, shaking out his hair like a mangy, wet creature. Doesn’t even bother opening his eyes yet, Maran’s laugh reverberating through the pool.

“Th-Think you’re so fucking funny?” Benny asks, slapping a hand across the water to send a splash toward Maran’s face. He backs away from it — but not too far. Benny’s other hand is still curled around his forearm, forcing them clse.

“I’ll be here all week,” Maran shoots back, cupping water and launching it toward Benny. Makes them both laugh, their breaths hanging in the air, their feet finding the pool ground together. He feels leaden in the tank top, so he yanks at it frantically until the slick fabric is free. Lands with a wet smack against concrete wherever he’d tossed it.

The water ripples outward from Maran in a pretty little design of circles. He gets closer. They’re both sternum deep, middle section of the floor. Same height — something Benny likes. He watches Maran get closer. And closer. The fabric of his shirt billows, formless and spooky. Benny could slip his hands underneath, he could feel all that exposed skin, he could find freckles he’s never seen before. He could touch and he wants to touch. He wants to touch so bad it’s making him nervous, energy like static in the water.

Maran gets so close, the water nearly pushes them apart. Nearly.

“Why do you still work here?” Benny asks, unable to stop the part of himself that picks at scabs, that likes a little sting. He watches the way water droplets slip off Maran’s thick black lashes. The light scatters the top of the pool water. His friend looks down at his own reflection in the water, a hand brushing over the top of his shaved head, more water droplets gathering and falling from his chin.

“What do you mean?” Maran asks. He smiles — that sad, lonely smile he flashes sometimes, the one that annoys Benny, that is worse than a scab or the sting of it. Benny licks pool water from his upper lip, shrugging a shoulder, hands parting water as he walks a step back into the deeper end of the pool.

“Don’t y-you see her all the time?”

“No.” His response is mumbled toward the water. His arms swaying back and forth, treading even as he’s standing. His white shirt like a ghostly apparition between them. “I mean, yeah, well. Sure. Yeah, I do. It’s not that bad.”

“If I s-saw my ex all the time,” Benny says, leaning his head back, letting his hair spread in the water, become leaden with it. “I’d f-fucking shoot myself.”

The water splashes a bit. It ripples, it moves him with the waves as he feels Maran getting closer. A hand reaches and touches his wrist, fingers sliding around it. Closing. Holding. There is a cheeky tattoo there covering up a scar. Maran’s thumb seems to find that scar immediately, brushing it. Benny slides a stare to the side. Maran is looking at him. His face wiped clean of that lonely, fake smile, replaced with something serious. Something heavy.

“Are you asking ‘cause this place makes you think of her?”

“What? Of course it does,” Benny snorts, an uneasy sensation in his chest that has nothing to do with the continued descent to the deeper end of the pool. “She fu-fucking owns the place, doesn’t she?”

“Well, her da’ does, or what’ver.”

“Same thing?”

“Dunno how America does inheritance, Ben.” Maran’s serious expression cracks at that a bit, an upward tilt of his eyebrows, a smile pulling the corner of his lips. “You don’t know, yeah? Can’t read my mind, can you? Guess not. Ben, you know why I don’t quit this shit job, right?”

Pale, blue eyes search frantically across Maran’s face, a breathless worried feeling blossoming between his ribs. The closeness coupled with the weightlessness, the way the bottom of the pool keeps giving out, makes Benny’s nerve endings alight with a feeling so close to fear. He laughs, tongue flicking out to catch another droplet of pool water on his lip. He shakes his head. Little strings of blond hair stick to his temples, curve around his cheekbones.

“’Cause you drive me,” Maran replies, the simplicity of the statement as insignificant as a shark bite. Benny stares at him. He blinks water from his pale lashes. Maran bobs closer. “You drive me in. And pick me up — and I liked that. I like it. Gives us time alone together. You let me pick the music. And everyones always ‘round, Ben, all the time, but it’s just, for that hour, yeah? Just us and…I like it.”

A pause swells at the end of his sentence, silence except the gurgling filter in the pool directly behind them. The water gently lapping at the curved lip concrete edges. One of the safety lights buzzes, perhaps short of dying. Benny stares at Maran. At the blush spreading across his cheeks, down his throat. At the shy pinch at the corners of his eyes. He stares. He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it.

Maran’s body slips closer. Their knees jostle together.

“What the fuck,” Benny says, surprised at the words slipping out of him, aloud. “Holy shit, Maran — kiss me.”

The laughter that escapes them both — loud, a little hysterical, surprised — is immediately cut off by the press of lips together. By their bodies coming together, tangling up, messy in the water. Benny’s hands find Maran’s hips, fingers touching bare skin, indenting into softness because his grip is so much harder than he means for it to be. He pulls at the same time Maran dives in, their mouths crashing together. He thinks of Maran smiling at him at the other end of the couch, of Maran finding him at a party when he’s lonely, of Maran in the passenger seat of his car, singing along to an old R&B song that he loves, with his sneakered feet on the dashboard, one hand out the window, fingers playing in the wind.

The kiss is so immediately hungry, it almost causes them to go under the water. Maran’s hand reaches out, grasping desperately at the edge of the pool — their chests bump together, Benny’s back to concrete, small gasp escaping between the twist of their heads as they find a new angle to kiss. Maran’s free hand makes a greedy, pointed path across Benny’s chest, as if unleashed, as if Maran’s thinking of a montage of Benny the same, thinking of all the built up desire.

Their tongues roll together, Benny’s hand using bruising force on the back of Maran’s neck to yank them closer and the sounds they make echo loudly, almost obscene in the pool Fiadh’s dad owns. And every part of them is touching too much, is creating so much heat that Benny has to pull away just to breathe and when he does, Maran only leans in closer. Takes another kiss, another greedy, messy kiss.

“Okay,” Benny breathes, sliding a hand across Maran’s face, cupping across his mouth, physically preventing another. Maran’s dark brown eyes are alight in a way he’s never seen them, pupils dilating. “Okay,” he repeats, laughing, panting. The water rocks them gently, their movement having upset it, having splashed a great deal over the edge. He glances back to make sure it hasn’t reached his sweatshirt, his phone. He feels Maran moving, he feels Maran’s lips touching his neck.

“You,” he manages to get out between painful breathes, wrestling them so Maran is pinned to the wall instead. “You are — you are dangerous,” he seethes, touching their foreheads together.

“What? We’re not in the deep end yet!”

“Is th-that always how you kiss someone?”

Maran relaxes. Entirely. One of his legs keeps brushing against Benny’s, causing a painful hot feeling to pour down his body. Maran smiles. Sweet, big, boyish.

“Nah, it’s different. I’m kissing you, Ben — ” He sputters as he’s pushed down into the water, his arms bracing around Benny and holding tight. When he comes back up, he’s laughing, and that laugh just gets cut off by Benny’s mouth sealing over his for another kiss.

—

There’s something so specific about Xavier that Benny hates. It’s a confidence that has to be born from a loving childhood; two parents, lots of siblings, a pet golden retriever he named Spike. Good teeth, handsome, affable. Xavier knew he was good at everything, it was a skill that came so easy, he didn’t even have to try, didn’t even have to brag. He could pick up a lacrosse stick and be as good as any of the university players. He could probably butterfly backstroke, whatever fucking stroke like Michael Phelps if he wanted to. Xavier could probably bowl well on his first try.

It was actually easier to dislike Xavier than it was to like him sometimes; that makes it easy to be mean to him on the court, too.

“Ahck — Fuck you, Benny!” Xavier recovers from his stumble, Benny’s cross check causing him to lose balance for a minute. Lanky limbs going everywhere while Benny slides right by, easy. He lines up the shot, nice and quick. Watches the basketball go through the hoop, no rim. His fingertips tingle from the throw. Good feeling.

“Man, you’re like genetically predisposed to be good at basketball.” Lark fans himself by the collar of his shirt, tired eyes on the ball as it bounces toward the chicken wire fencing, enclosing Benny’s favorite basketball court. None of them make any moves for it. “Never met a trashy white guy that isn’t good at basketball. East coast sucks.”

Benny glances sideways to the rickety benches lined up across the side of the court, placed against the community center brick wall. Just enough shade to keep most of Maran out of the sun, except knees, shins and converses that wiggle back and forth as he sits there. Through the slight shadow, Benny can see him smiling, raising a shy hand. Sitting there beside Benji, hunched over a sketchbook, moody creature.

They’ve only been together for a week. Exactly seven days. Benny knows because they’d kissed on a Tuesday, in that shitty country club pool. He’d had labs the next morning. He’d spent much of it examining his pruny fingertips, wondering about the imprints they’d left on Maran’s hips, how he was capable of holding someone that hard. How he wanted to hold him harder. Only together for a week.

Benny lopes toward the benches, listening to the creaky sound of one as Benji shifts weight onto his other thigh, glances up at Benny, dismisses him outright and continues drawing.

“Not bored?” Benny asks, directing the question to Maran. A dirty converse flattens against his shin, tapping away at the panther tattooed directly above it.

“No, I like watching!”

“Oh?” He hooks the end of his shirt with a hand, using it to wipe sweat from his brow, from his neck. When it drops, Maran’s staring at him with upturned brows, teeth bitten into his lower lip hard. “Kinda pervy.” Benji snorts, which he considers a win. Maran doesn’t, though — instead he presses his converse a bit harder, his eyes darting to Benji and then Lark as he settles himself onto the bench beside Benji and then Xavier looming behind Benny. His eyes turn down to the ground and then up again. He has a buzzing energy about him, an inescapable electricity that says, I want to be touching you.

Benny can relate. He’d liked to be touched.

So he decides to sit on the ground. Throw himself there, laze himself between Maran’s knees, head thrown back into his lap. One hand wrapped appreciatively around a bare calf, feeling the heat of Maran’s body and the way the sun has warmed him. He’s pleased when he feels sunglasses being slid on for him, the cool metal settling on the bridge of his maybe sunburnt nose. A finger touches there, gentle and soothing, brushing alongside the curve of his cheekbone.

Benji’s snort is louder this time. His pencil scratching stops. “’Bout fucking time. Maybe won’t hear you pining anymore — ”

“Prick, shut up, Benji, swear — ”

“How come no one told me?”

“Xavier, not everyone has to tell you something, alright?”

“Yeah they do!”

Benny keeps his eyes closed through the exchange, lefts his boyfriend handle it.

***

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A month later, Lark pauses on the hiking trail. He stands there, slowly turning to stare at Maran. He had on new boots, which are such an upgrade from those converses he’s always wearing.

“Wait,” Lark says, blinking. “You and Benny are dating?”

“Lark,” Maran replies, in utter disbelief. “Lark, you knew that didn’t you?”

A bird caws overhead, as if laughing.

[hauntedjpegcollection]

impression one

“You know,” Isaac starts, leaning forward, teeth chomping down around a plastic straw. He slurps at some of the water-soda at the bottom of his drink, eyes on the man across from him. HOT AND FRESH EVEN AFTER MIDNIGHT is the sign beside them, blaring out neon to the city street, blinking dully toward them. The inside of the place is small time bustle; some of his own cast members and a few others he recognize. “J’s never introduced one of his guys to me before.”

He must phrase it wrong, because Maran’s cute face pinches slightly. His brows — expressive with a few vanity cuts at the tail end of one — slant down, cheeks puffing round. He isn’t too young looking. He’s boyish, but not childish. Even though he’s nervously tapping a converse clad foot over and over on the linoleum floor.

Isaac gets the impression Maran doesn’t like him. Which is fine. J doesn’t seem to understand that for most people the thin line between friend and ex-boyfriend all but dissolves when the later is involved at all. Sweet guy, his J, but damn stupid when it came to his significant others sometimes.

“Well,” Maran draws out, rocking a bit in the booth, one of his hands reaching for another slice of the greasy pizza in front of them. “Busy? Or — been single for a bit?” That is a bit of a question and it shocks Isaac. Makes him grin, eyes hooding as he leans back. Sneaky. He appreciates sneaky.

The thing is, he actually likes Maran. He likes seeing J stare at him like the whole galaxy big banged it’s way out of this kid; like everything starts, stops, revolves and keeps going when Maran is smiling. He likes that Maran sort of has the same look on his face whenever J isn’t watching, whenever he’s rambling about something, using his hands to speak, finishing his soda. Squeezing Maran’s thigh before getting up to go use the bathroom. Leaving them alone together.

Yeah, he likes Maran. Likes his style, his fading pink buzz cut, and that he didn’t dress up for the show, that when he does get into the conversation, he’s an infectious chatterer. He doesn’t mind if Maran doesn’t like him, though. He doesn’t have to. J’s the important party after all.

“Do you wanna see something?” Isaac asks, fiddling with the straw in his now fully empty drink. Maran looks cautious, but when he smiles, Jesus, Isaac sort of gets the whole galaxy thing. He is really devastatingly good looking. What a lucky bastard, Isaac thinks fondly as he slides out of his side of the booth and tucks himself over on Maran’s side. Their elbows jostle together a bit, but it doesn’t feel nearly as uncomfortable as Isaac was thinking it might. Maran peeks at him from the side and Isaac gets the impression maybe this sweet kid is also sort of used to being mocked. Joked on. He remembers J calling him lonely.

“Wassit?” Maran asks, leaning in when Isaac produces his phone.

“I gotta do my due diligence, man.”

“What does that mean?”

“J doesn’t have parents to fawn over him,” Isaac explains, navigating to his pictures on his phone, finding a specific album. “So, like, I gotta fill in their really fucking tiny shoes. You get me?”

“Small shoes,” Maran repeats, raising his hands and pushing them together. “Could phrase it meaner, y’know, yeah? Fucking pieces of— ”

“Look at this,” Isaac says, angling his phone so Maran gets to see the awkward, pitiful version of J at eleven years old. Scrawny in someone’s hand-me-down Metallica shirt, his hair long and stringy. His smile giant, showing off all his crooked shark teeth. Isaac’s head is a blur because he was moving to the music in the background. It doesn’t matter, he knows Maran will only see one person in this photo.

His freckled hand extends, reaching for the phone. Isaac lets him have it. In fact, he swipes and reveals another photo of J. Slightly older, his hair cut raggedy short. His smile still giant, encompassing the whole of his face, pale eyes crinkled in delight. Isaac next to him, holding a bunny aloft. The petting zoo attendant is also a blur in the background, reaching for them both. J has a black eye, but the photo is sort of faded enough it’s not too prominent. Maran might think it’s just a shadow. Isaac swipes again and there J is once more, basketball in his hand, smiling at the camera. The sky is purpling behind him, the Summer sunlight finally fading. On the cusp of seventeen.

“He was so skinny.” Maran’s whisper is so soft and gentle that Isaac looks over. He’s shiny eyed, staring at the phone. He blinks a few times, glances to Isaac and then back down. “Fuck, he was cute, he was so cute. I’m gonna throw up, I think.”

Isaac howls with a laugh, slinging his arm around Maran’s shoulders and crushing them together. “I know, right? What the fuck happened? Now he’s all — eugh. He’s so big now.”

“He eats a lot of pizza,” Maran explains, wiping a thumb under his eye, smiling sheepishly. “Like, a real fucking lot of pizza.” But Isaac doesn’t think it’s just that. He doesn’t think Maran believes that either.

“Wh-What the fuck are you two doing?” J asks, throwing himself into Isaac’s empty side of the booth. He looks suspicious — and nervous. That twitch to his cheek, one eye slightly more narrowed than the other. His hands pat at himself nervously, looking for a lighter to fidget with. Isaac slumps back in the booth, his arm still around Maran’s shoulders. “Stop groping my boyfriend.”

“Sorry, Maran and I are dating now. We’re deeply in love — whoa, man.” He laughs, watching the pink haired boy crawl over the table, literally. Nearly puts a foot in the rest of the pie. Watches him all but fall on the other side, arms slinging around J’s shoulders and pulling them tight enough the blond grunts. His eyes — those icy, scary eyes — are giant, flickering between Maran and Isaac, as if to ask ‘what the fuck is happening?’. Isaac shrugs, fully knowing, smiling. Loving Maran in that moment as he pushes a hard kiss to J’s temple, ruffling his already messy hair.

“W-Well whatever you did to him,” J jokes, his arms rising and wrapping around Maran, “keeping fucking doing it.” And the width of him is still somewhat shocking to Isaac, the broad way he’s filled out, healthy and happy. Yes, Isaac loves Maran. Loves him.

[hauntedjpegcollection]

always just beyond my touch

wc: 9728 au: college au ch: maran, xavier, matilda, benny

“I feel kind of weird about this.”

Xavier, fistfuls of clothes in his hands, unfolds from his crouch inside the closet. He looks to Maran as he leans against a desk, messy with regular use. A textbook is literally cracked open, a laptop as well but not yet turned on, piles of index cards brimming full of text and ready to be used. A student clearly invested in learning owns this desk. The tin trash can beside it is full of foil wrapping of gas station sandwiches; so not a very rich or healthy one. And on the chair, cocked sideways against the desk, a pile of shirts that Xavier has already gone through and decided against.

“Don’t be a homophobe,” Matilda quips, looking up from her phone, but only briefly. Her hazel eyes flick to either boy in front of her and then right back to text messages with her own boy. She sits on the edge of Benny’s equally distressed bed, where blankets pool around her. Which feels bold, considering Xavier doesn’t know how often Benny actually does his laundry—but he is certain Benny does more than just sleep in those sheets. The room doesn’t smell, oddly enough, considering Benny’s overall appearance. It has a musky, cologne scent to it—a lingering undertone of the cigarettes Benny uses. Not unpleasant.

Benny, himself—owner of the room—lays on his bed, ignoring all three of them. His gaze goes steadily stormier by the minute, but he says nothing. Continues reading the NatGeo magazine he’d scooped off the ground when the trio (Xavier, Matilda, Maran) had burst into his room, uninvited. He turns a page noisily enough to get his point across. A penguin on the cover stares at Xavier.

“What?” Maran squeaks at the accusation, his arms unfolding, hands held aloft. “It’s—it’s like worse to be straight and go to a gay club, yeah? I feel like I’m taking up space, or—dunno. That’s a thing, right?” He glances to Benny, who merely raises pale eyebrows in reply. Xavier has a feeling they’ve talked about this before—which hurts his feelings only slightly, knowing that Maran goes to Benny primarily for nearly everything.

“Only if you’re on Twitter too often,” Matilda replies, her fingers still tapping furiously on her phone screen.

“What does that mean?” Maran asks helplessly, staring down at Benny, as though he has all the answers.

“Mar,” Xavier laughs, pulling another shirt from the catastrophically unorganized closet. “Straight people go to gay clubs all the time.” He and Matilda share a look at the word straight; a knowing and almost pitying look. Benny shoots Xavier a poisonous glare at that silent exchange. And Maran doesn’t seem to notice any of it as he looks to the shirt in Xavier’s hand. It’s a meshy fishnet material with more than a few holes. Probably a little excessive. Xavier holds it up in silent question.

“What?” Benny finally asks, eyes back on his magazine. He has his ankles crossed, but his entire body is rigid with annoyance. The penguin, slightly folded now, continues to stare.

“I need a shirt that’s less slutty than this, but still slutty.”

“Xavier,” Benny purrs, tilting his head to look at him, fluttering blond lashes. “Are you calling m-me a slut?”

“He’s not saying that,” Maran interjects, laughing in a high pitched way, voice thin and awkward. He clears his throat, palms his short bleached buzz cut and turns to face Xavier. Benny’s pale eyes follow him intently before they drop back to his magazine. “What’s wrong with this shirt?”

Maran opens his arms, spinning to inspect himself, smiling widely in that very boyish way that dimples his cheeks. There’s nothing wrong with Maran’s shirt actually; it’s pretty cute, all things considered. It’s on theme for everything else Maran wears, which seems to be a mixture of ‘I got this when I was fourteen’ and ‘I definitely lifted this without paying at a thrift store’. Bright colors, video game characters, funny slogans. They’re all a little worn in and soft. His current shirt—a baby blue long sleeve with the white imprint of a video game brand on it—is perfectly fine.

“Its your first club experience,” Xavier says, holding out the fishnet shirt. “I want you to get free drinks. And you’ll look really hot in this—”

It’s snatched free from his hands faster than Xavier had even seen Benny get up from the bed. His fist pale, tattoos standing out starkly as he holds it and glares daggers at Xavier. The effect would be scary—Benny’s eyes are always vaguely a little scary—but he’s a few inches shorter and his ears are pink with blush. It makes Xavier have to tuck his lips into his teeth to stop a laugh.

The shirt gets shoved back into the chaos of the overflowing closet. Benny rummages for what feels like a solid minute before pulling out a different top.

It’s one of his button ups. Those nice, sleek ones he’s fond of. Not even an ugly pattern this time; something with color blocking in dark blues, slightly shimmery with the material. Without looking, Benny shoves it into Maran’s chest and then throws himself back down onto the bed, not facing any of them. Xavier pinches the shoulders of the shirt and holds it up to Maran, who has an equally pinkened look to his cheeks.

“Perfect,” he declares with a wide, wolfy grin.

—

Matilda’s okay with letting people think they’re arguing. In a way she isn’t even letting them do anything; they’re busy with their ignorant opinions, and she isn’t dissuading them of anything. Waste of time, energy, etc. Instead, she sits, slim legs crossed at the bar, her fingers tapping excitedly across the phone screen. She’d pulled together her outfit in less than fifteen minutes; and a five minute portion of that was Nomi begging to let her do her hair in some intricate manic pixie dream girl inspiration. Matilda looked good underneath all those neon lights with the mismatched colors and the mismatched styles from mismatched eras.

Sometimes it’s a treat—letting people think shes a vapid girl attached to her cell phone, bored and insipid. Fun to twist the perception on it’s head with a cruel word that would probably make it into someones therapy session. Matilda—who never wanted to fit in and always wanted to fit in at the same time—likes when someone gets something wrong.

“Boyfriend’s mad, huh, pretty?” the bartender—a stud named Rory—leans with elbows on the plexiglass bar counter. Underneath that faux glass barrier are swirls of smoke and lights, in every single RGB color imaginable. She liked Cubics. The atmosphere was queer club at midnight, but it did it with style. It did it with lights. And she liked that. Maybe that was too cliche, considering her art. But it always complimented her pale skin, whatever color she dyed her hair, blended well with music. And drugs, eventually, when Xavier got those out.

“Hm?” she toys a piece of hair between her fingers, glancing at Rory (who has other patrons that are needily grabbing for her attention and drinks and probably also drugs). “Who said I have a boyfriend?” Who says he’s mad? Do I look like the kind of idiot that dates a guy whose mad I go to clubs? Perception, perceived, incorrect, etc.

Her eyes fall back to the text messages, though.

[12:02 AM] drink water have fun love u

And a flick of her thumb upward across the screen; a selfie of Lark shirtless, ridiculously fit with that long toned torso, a stuffed animal tucked under his arm. Toothbrush hanging out his mouth, sweatpants dangerously low, her girlish bed behind him. Goodnight! Fucking heart emoji. He looks so good like that, being there in the club feels…wrong. She taps her thumbnail against his face, imagines the press of their lips together and the roughness with which he grabs her jaw to steal that kiss.

“Maran got to see his first club bathroom!” Xavier, loud and excited at her side. His Boston accent cuts through any music, and is inarguably rougher when he starts drinking.

Matilda slips her phone into his pocket, because she has no room in anything she’s wearing. He dutifully pats it. Their routine. Xavier’s smile is so white in the club lighting that it looks shiny and reflective. She thinks of Benji, her sweet, clueless fucking Benji, and how those giant, white teeth probably make him weak kneed. Good thing he so politely (“fuck no, couldn’t fuckin’ pay me, Til”) declines these invitations, because Xavier’s also in some flimsy black shirt that’s too tight and will just get sweaty, translucent and gross as the night goes on.

“I’ve seen a club bathroom,” Maran says, popping up on her other side. He’s in Ben’s shirt; boxy, billowy cut silk with a prettier pattern than usual. Keeps sliding down on one of his shoulders, exposing collarbone. The dark blues contrast well with his brown skin. “Well—right, so Benji would bring me to venue’s and all—for music. Not like, clubs. But—grosser than that actually. Really. Solid work in those stalls.”

“Is he rambling because you let him hit your pen?” Matilda asks, grinning at Maran. His face goes innocent; big eyes, raised brows, ‘oops, who me?’ expression. So cute sometimes it makes her feel teary eyed over it. Xavier and Maran huddle in closer, the throng of people trying to squeeze their way to the dance floor pushing the trio toward the flashy bar. It digs into her lower back, but isn’t entirely uncomfortable. Her element. The sweat and musk of so many bodies is the perfume of a good night out.

Rory slides two drinks around either side of Matilda. One for Xavier and one for Maran.

“You let me know when that boyfriend finally pisses you off.” Is purred close to her ear and then the bartenders presence is swiftly gone. Off to attend and flirt with others. Matilda watches Xavier drink half of his cocktail in one, swift go while Maran tries to fight the little black straw into his mouth. She feels a fondness for both of them that is so visceral, so dangerous, that she snaps fingers at Xavier.

“You have our friend Molly?”

“Whose Molly?” Maran asks, still sucking down his cocktail. The ice rattles—he’s cleared it just as fast as the other two he’s already had. There’s a glassy prettiness to his eyes now.

“Oh, right.” Xavier’s big hands go searching through his pockets before finding a small plastic bag. While he looks, Matilda takes the rest of his drink—he doesn’t even notice and that’s probably because it’s his fourth or maybe fifth. Xavier never went light when it came to a night out.

“Tada!” There goes that brilliant white smile. Stamp it on Benji’s death certificate.

“Sweet!” Maran fits his way against Matilda’s hip, one arm slung around her happily. He has the slight tang of Benny’s cigarette’s, a bone deep scent that the blond will never get rid of. Funny to think of it soaking into Maran. “I’m getting one of those right?”

“Are you fucking with me?” Xavier’s laugh is howling loud over the music, which has been ebbing and flowing between different cycles of too fast and too slow, just the way clubs are meant to be. At some point, it’ll be DJ remixes of Cher or Brittany Spears and she wants them all to be very intoxicated for that. A few people look over, because Xavier’s too big not to take notice of. Too big, too handsome, too loud.

“Rough,” Matilda pouts to Maran over her shoulder. “He’s so mean.”

“You’re fucking right, he is!”

“No way I’m giving you ecstasy, Maran.” Xavier does however pop a little pill into Matilda’s outstretched hand. “Benny would fucking kill me.”

“Benji’s not gonna care?” Maran’s laugh is loud against Matilda’s shoulder, his breath warm on her neck as he leans his chin there. She can feel the energy and excitement coming off of him; like a sun you could pocket and fuel yourself for days off of. She quirks a perfectly plucked brow at Xavier. The lanky, similarly too-cute-to-be-real redhead narrows his eyes playfully. He smiles, like he’s trying to find the joke. Matilda doesn’t say anything, because the confusion between both of them is amusing—and she’s tipsy.

“Dude, I said Benny.”

“What?” Maran’s ‘a’ becomes an ‘o’ there as he rears back, one of his arms still wrapped around her.

“Benny. Benson. Ben. The creepy scientist down the hall, probably making uh—what’s the big green guy?”

Maran says, “The Hulk?” at the same time Matilda snorts, “Frakenstein.”

And then Maran fully slinks off her to stand closer to Xavier, who has popped his own pill right into his mouth with not a single second thought. Matilda crunches hers between her molars, still content to observe and drink the murky water at the bottom of Xavier’s cocktail glass. Her gloss leaves a smudged imprint of her lips in the curve of a grin.

“Why would Ben be angry at you for giving me drugs? Which,” Maran points a finger over his shoulder, to the shadowy corner of the club where a large vaguely ‘restroom’ shaped sign is lit up and flickering. “You did give me drugs in the bathroom.”

“Bathroom drugs,” Matila adds. “Classic.”

“Well, that was weed,” Xavier explains with a guilty, humored expression. “Dude, everyone smokes weed. My grandma had a card for the medical stuff before—well, rest in peace, Grams.” Xavier squares up, taking Maran by his shoulders. The shirt, oversized as it is, still hangs just a little too loose on one shoulder. Xavier, with his undiagnosed OCD, immediately corrects it. “Yunno, Benny just cares about you, so I guess he figured someone—” Matilda and Xavier share a devious grin, “should watch out for you.”

Cubics ethereal club light show makes Maran’s already over sized brown eyes beautiful; but the way his pupils dilate looks like he’s already two tabs ahead of Xavier and Matilda. She thinks if she laid her hand against his cheek, it would be worse than a sunburn. The dark bloody stain of a blush across the bridge of his nose, all the way to his ears only sweetens him. She fixes the awkward way a button has snagged on his—Benny’s—shirt.

“Oh,” he pops the sound loud over the music. Then his smile shifts, changing into something familiar. The twist of it slanted cocky and a little bashful at the same time. “It would make him pretty mad, huh?”

“So mad,” Xavier agrees. He pulls a pill from the bag.

“I had no part in this when he goes postal,” Matilda announces, tossing her hands into the air. She does not miss the satisfied expression Maran has at the idea of having so much sway over Benny’s emotions. If she needed any more confirmation of where that friendship was going, it wasn’t even the borrowed shirt. It was that smile alone.

Xavier uses his canine tooth (the one not nub broken) to snap a piece off the ecstasy. Maran looks like he’s going to argue, but stops at the rather severe glance from Xavier, who is a bad influence, but also an older brother. The small piece of the tablet gets put into Maran’s hand. It’ll be far duller than their own high, but in combination with the weed and the drinks, Maran will likely be more over the line than he’s been since landing in America. Maybe since ever.

He raises his hand, slowly at first, as though contemplating it—then chucks the pill piece into his mouth and swallows, dry. Maran shakes all over, laughing and Xavier and Matilda descend onto him. Arms wrapped around the younger boy, Matilda’s lip gloss staining his cheek as she gives him an affectionate kiss. His short, bleached hair already static ruffled from Xavier’s overlarge palm. His laughter gets louder, his arms wrapping around them both. The dance floor is right there, and Xavier doesn’t let them forget it.

—

Maran knows they think he’s sheltered. Sometimes, embarrassingly, he agrees. Tries to convince himself there’s no shame in not knowing, not experiencing, not being part of it all. On the outside, looking in; unable to laugh at the joke everyone else gets, but laughing along anyway. Secretly, it’s like a thorn he can’t worm out from under his thumbnail. Not always painful until he touches something. Doesn’t always bleed until he’s tried getting it out.

He’s been dancing before. He thinks of the feel of pressed together bodies. The overly moist air of a house party and a girl he’d found pretty, or a girl who had found him pretty. A sort of one night thing that happens too frequently. Not recognizing most of the music and not knowing if it was just because England and America really are that different. This isn’t even the first time he’s been high, though he’s never been high like this. Not with the way all the colors keep popping around him and the whole world keeps spinning and his entire body feels like an exposed, overjoyed nerve.

Still, the experience feels new, even if he’s been here before. He thinks it’s not because he’s far drunker than he’s ever been, or because he’s finally tried some upper he’s always been vaguely nervous about. He thinks its them. He thinks that it should feel sexual—the way Xavier is pressed behind him and the way Matilda has her slender arms around his neck. He thinks to anyone else, this probably would be arousing and instead, it’s like he’s in a warm bath thats filled right to the edge. Content and watery and too warm, boiling inside, but so, so fucking happy.

Xavier’s bear paw sized hands hold him around the middle, gentle—at odds with the fast moving way they’re jumping to music. His chin tucked onto Maran’s shoulder, his laughter a gust of warm, alcohol tinged air. Matilda, head back, her slender neck long and pretty. A silver chain with a letter charm at the end like a little metallic cut across her throat. At some point, whatever pins had been holding her hair together had fallen out—and she looks like an artists rendition of messy. Even her slightly smudged mascara, giving her shadows under blown out hazel eyes turned black, is beautiful.

Some part of him (maybe the vulnerable ten year old that lives somewhere, still) thinks the only thing better would have been Benji, somehow sandwiched between them all. His surly face under the lights, his awkward dislike of such close contact, as Xavier and Matilda enshroud him too—it all makes Maran burst into laughter, arms above his head, music dancing up and down him in little vibrations. Xavier, close behind him, yells into his ear; what’s so funny? And Matilda, in front of him—her long, messy hair in her face, like the image of some ethereal nymph dragged up from the pond into night club. Funny? The drug and drink spin wildly inside his skull, making the laughter tumble out harder, hiccuping, unstoppable.

“Ah,” Xavier’s saying, right against his temple. One of his big hands pats gently against Maran’s side. “Someone needs a break.”

They move as a unit, but Maran is barely aware of that—feels like his legs are guided by a different part of his brain, while the active part is still thinking of music and nymphs and his best friends face. And for some reason, that also makes him tear up a little.

—

The bathroom is stark white in comparison to the rest of the club. Not in cleanliness, which is sorely lacking, by the molded corners and also the spills across the ground, sticky underneath his converses. No, it’s just bright, and with the music muffled, it feels clinical and strange. Xavier stands with one hand pressed against the wall, mumble singing to himself as he pisses mostly straight. Maran leans against the row of sinks, palms wedged into his eyes, wondering why they don’t keep the neon red, yellow, blues in the bathroom as well. He feels hospitalized by this bathroom.

When he tries to capture a memory of anything that’s happened even minutes before, it slips between his fingers, little fish darting away. Maran turns to the mirrors, hands cupping his cheeks, blinking bleary eyed at the blurry vision of himself. There’s notes written over the cracked glass; someone’s phone number, a lewd drawing of a woman, advertisement for a different club. And despite all that, Maran stares at himself.

The midnight hues of the shirt do look nice, he thinks. Dark against his warm skin, not as deeply shaded as Benji’s. The cut is square—off a little bit, hanging across the line of his shoulders. He’s never actually seen Benny in this shirt before, and some drunk, high part of himself finds that a shame. It would look different, wouldn’t it? Benny—broader, heftier—would fill it out a bit. It would be a different shade altogether on his pale, tattooed skin. Maran’s thoughts slip from that to those tattoos, a strange mental inventory of all the ones he’s seen; dagger on a bicep, scorpion on the throat, barb wire across a wrist. Spider underneath a belly button. Dirty blond hair peeking above the waistband of boxers.

Every soft and vulnerable part of him feels deeply exposed by that thought, that sudden image and he remembers the exact minute, hour, day he’d seen Benny stretching, shirt lifting and exposing skin and tattoos and body hair and why had Maran stared and remembered and thought of it later like that? Why was he standing there, hands fisted into the silky fabric of his friends shirt, face buried into it like he could hide the shameful cinema in his head? The smoky smell of clovers and nicotine, that Benny scent combo. His hip hurts where he’s tucked himself too close to the sink, at an awkward angle and something about that pain feels…sweet.

“Okay!” Xavier claps hands on Maran’s shoulders, making him screech. The lanky red head peers over Maran’s shoulder into the mirror, staring at his reflection. He’s warped funny and elongated even further by it. “Ready for round…uh, what is this, six?”

Maran turns to the side and throws up into a suspicious looking puddle on the ground, a hand braced on the sink. That giant hand that’s been keeping him close the entire night, bubble wrapped in protective, loving friendship, pats his back softly.

“Oookay, I’ll call Benny to pick us up.”

—

He had bought the mustang on a whim. Saw it in a parking lot with with a red FOR SALE sign, had enough money for once in his life after discharge from the Air Force. He’d never needed a car in New York; subway memorized like the back of his hand since he was eight years old (two years later and he’d be riding it alone, anyway). Didn’t much like the idea of registering anything either—which after the first year, he’d never done again anyway. But, Bennny loves his car. Probably one of the few things he takes care of, when he’s running on empty himself.

There were perks, of course, to being the only friend with a vehicle that could seat more than one passenger. Xavier’s truck—terrible on gas and loud, frankly fucking ugly too—was mostly a Benji mobile these days. And Lark refused almost everyone on his bike after officially sealing some sort of deal with Matilda (sealed in blood, spit, or cum). Benny was often the one in control of where they went. He was the one who got to decide when they stopped at the gas stations on road trips. People had to ask him for things.

He’s able to help and Benny…likes helping. Likes being the reliable friend. Picking people up, driving them places, grocery trips or dentist visits or an hour long ride home. Likes the praise that comes along with it, even if a gun to his head couldn’t get him to admit it.

Even if reliable means three in the morning, outside a nasty looking gay club that could have used a remodel from the year it was burst into existence with a glory hole already pre-drilled in it. Mustang parked almost on the curb. Hanging out the window and shouting at Xavier like a murder witness, or the murderer trying to scare off the murder witness. No real witnesses besides a clump of other club goers suspiciously inching closer—like he might be an Uber that’ll accept cash. They need only one sinister grin from Benny to shuffle closer to each other and look away.

Once a thorough fight over the front passenger seat is made, the three drunks pile into Benny’s well loved car. They bring a smell of alcohol, sweat and human along with them that Benny doesn’t necessarily mind. The doors slam shut and it quiets everything to a hushed sleepiness that he also doesn’t really mind. Matilda slumps into the much coveted passenger seat, kicking heels off promptly, tucking stocking feet up underneath herself. She says nothing, but stares at him with red rimmed hazel eyes. A very pointed stare.

“I’m t-taking her home first,” Benny says, looking into the backseat. Xavier sits with a long leg thrown over Maran’s lap, his temple pressed to the cool glass window. He has the dopey expression of someone whose danced too long and drank too much. Benny has to hope that doesn’t mean he’s going to vomit anytime soon.

“Makes sense!”

He swivels pale eyes from Xavier to Maran, whose hands curl around the denim clad calf splayed across his lap, almost like one might a stuffed animal before sleep. And he looks sleepy—this dreamy, pleasant expression that has subdued his usual giant smile. There’s lines at the corners of Maran’s eyes, a subtle hint of where wrinkles will someday be permanent from how often the boy is caught grinning just like that. His waterlines are red, likely from crying or just being so fucking high, or drunk or both or all of it. His droopy lids make his thick black lashes skim his cheeks when he blinks. And he does. Slowly.

“D-Don’t throw up in my car,” Benny snaps to both of them and then faces forward, an awkward pain in his chest, right underneath his ribcage.

—

With an arm around her middle and Matilda’s head against his shoulder, together they sway back and forth to bad elevator music; pleasant contrast from the club she’d just crawled her way out of. It moves at the luxurious pace of the rich—unhurried and smooth. Air conditioned, with a little camera in the corner. Button face plate pristine. No graffiti, even if it would improve the aesthetic in Benny’s opinion. Matilda’s studio apartment wasn’t even the nicest on this strip, but it was a cut above the under the table three bedroom Benny ‘rented’ from a man that lived in Florida. The elevator in his complex skipped odd floors. The buttons stuck and a rat absolutely lived in the ceiling.

For a long while, Benny had been determined to dislike Matilda. He had assumed she’d be easy to dislike—look at her. There was no hiding money. Not from people like Benny—whose absence of it was so stark, so obvious and influential in it’s lacking. From silver fillings in stained teeth to making the gallon of milk last another week with a little added water. Her nose in the air, pretty and dignified. But Matilda had never tried to hide it either. That would have been worse. More insulting. Nothing nastier than a rich girl that wanted to fit in so bad she lied about it.

So it became somewhat impossible to dislike her. Authenticity was something that mattered to a liar like Benny. Sometimes, he’d wager, he liked her a lot.

“Maran had a lot of fun,” Matilda mumbles against his shoulder, deceptively sleepy.

He decides to actively start disliking her in that moment.

“I will dr-drop you off on some random floor.”

“He’s a good dancer, too,” she adds, including a mean teasing squeeze from her arm around his middle. Her hair smells like fruity cocktail mix, leaving him to wonder what the end of the night was like for the three of them.

“We’re not sleeping together, s-so I don’t know why you’re tr-trying to piss me off,” Benny retorts as the elevator comes to a crawling stop—a gentle sway that barely pops or shudders at all. Back home, if you jumped in the elevator at a certain time you could touch the ceiling with how sudden it would pull up from underneath you. Benny’s disappointed in the lack of fanfare on this one, but Matilda stumbling away from him and out into the wood paneled hallway provides enough entertainment.

There are only three other units on her floor. All of them spaced out. The lighting in the hallway is a little too tastefully dim.

“I forgot my heels?” Matilda says it like a question, but stands there, staring at her stocking clad feet with annoyance more than confusion. Without them, she’s still tall—only a few inches shorter than him. But she also looks oddly delicate. Younger, with her make up splotchy around her eyes and her nose red from who knows what. He reaches out and loops an arm around hers to keep her close and Matilda, notorious hellcat, doesn’t even try to wiggle away.

In fact, her head tilts sideways again until her temple touches his shoulder and together they find her apartment just like that.

—

Getting her inside isn’t actually difficult. It’s almost like the ‘act’ is over once Matilda crosses the threshold into her apartment. The lights in the kitchen have been left on, like a little beacon for her (or really, for Benny). Any part of Matilda that maybe wants to pretend she desires anything other than to be inside a bed completely dissipates. Authenticity. He respects it.

Still, getting her to her bedroom becomes a bit of a chore; lets her snip and snark at him for going this far, knowing she secretly wells up with tears at the idea of someone caring so much. Benny wishes he could hate her, not just for being rich, but because he sees in her too much of what he sees in himself too. That aching; oh you’re doing this because you care? You care? You care about me? So he lets her throw a bit of a tantrum getting her hair into a ponytail in her bathroom, brushing her teeth with a stormy expression that’s just exhaustion and come down from whatever drug Xavier had on hand. It’s kind of cute, but he suppresses a smile so she doesn’t get angrier.

All pretenses are gone when her bedroom door swings open and Lark sits up. Scruffy, bleary eyed, shirtless and nearly unconscious. He mumbles something, then falls backward, arms outstretched into the air above him. She needs no other invitation and quickly crawls forward onto her bed. It’s one of those girlish things, with a plush comforter and more than a few stuffed animals fallen to the ground. Lark looks like a magazine cut out from a Warped Tour ad in the midst of it. But he’s smiling, which is sort of rare on him.

She presses right up underneath his chin, burrowing and he wraps her up in his arms.

“S-So I’m not invited?”

“Fuck off, Ben.”

—

The car door slams behind him, the mustang rocking back and forth with his not inconsiderable weight as Benny slumps himself into the drivers seat. There’s no need for Maran to say anything; his presence is an all consuming sudden ball of heat in the passenger seat. His big pretty eyes blink in the night’s watery darkness — that hazy almost gray color when it’s turned so far late it’s nearing morning. He sits mostly turned in the seat, one leg underneath himself. For some unbearable reason, he’s tying and retying one of his converses, almost like a self soothing tic. And smiling. Of course. Smiling big.

“You too good to ride in the back?” Benny asks, dripping in dry sarcasm. Maran doesn’t even blink, chin tilted down as he continues showing that pretty smile. He’s so devastatingly stupid cute it makes some inside part of Benny feel raw. And annoyed, if an organ can be annoyed.

“Xavier’s like too long to share,” Maran complains, driving Ben to look into the back seat. True to word, Xavier has his six-foot-four self laid out on the back seat. His legs need to be bent, one arm cradling around his ribs while his other hand holds a cell phone tucked to his ear. He lays mostly facing the seats and mumbles mostly incoherently into the phone. The case is a bright yellow color. So not his.

“His died or he l-leave it at Cubics?”

“Oh, dead.” Maran crosses his eyes, hands briefly going to his throat, tongue out to imitate the gesture. Benny’s brain shivers with a brief and horrible intrusive thought before his icy eyes turn back to Xavier. Nearly asleep and barely conscious and still talking in that terrible Boston accent. “He wanted to chat shit with Benj. Who should be sleeping, ‘cause he said he didn’t want t’come out ‘cause he had to study!”

The last part is yelled, Maran leaning back over the seats to get closer to Xavier. The red head laughs, eyes closed, cheeks flushed and sweaty.

“Sit down,” Benny orders and watches Maran fall right onto his ass. He blinks with surprise, hands resuming their place at his shoe, to pick up laces that were once white and are now filthy, constantly underfoot. The car turns over, but Benny idles for a moment, staring at Maran, who stares back at him.

“Seat belt,” he demands next, gesturing with an index finger. This time, Maran’s response is not nearly as immediate. Instead, he yanks his laces tight with a hand and then wiggles his way into the passenger seat, knees touching the dashboard. It doesn’t take the wafting smell of pure alcohol off him to know he’s drunk — and more drunk than Benny’s actually seen him. It’s also in the expression, that still dreamy, sleepy look and his watery eyes. He folds arms over his chest.

“Xavier never makes me use a seat belt.”

Benny swings a stare into the back seat. Xavier looks fully awake at that, and pale as death.

“Dude,” he moans. Dog like in his guilty avoidance, Xavier turns away, the outline of his spine pressing into the thin black material of his shirt as he faces the back seats. “Your best friend is a snitch,” he mumbles into the cell phone clutched to his ear. There’s a laugh on the other end loud enough to hear, crackly and amused.

When Benny turns back to look at Maran, the smile hasn’t diminished one bit. It’s nearly proud, brown and freckled cheeks dimpled. The drunken gleam in his eyes is so beautifully mischievous. There’s a lingering moment where Benny continues to simply look at him, testing to see how long until Maran wiggles uncomfortably into obedience. But that doesn’t happen. So instead, he reaches over and places his hands on the knees pressed to the mustangs dashboard. He shoves — not hard, but forceful and watches Maran’s legs drop.

And then Benny reaches across him, taking the belt. Maran’s pretty brown eyes follow the movement as it crosses his chest and clicks into place. Benny gives it a light, playful tug and then situates himself back into the drivers seat — his turn to be smiling ear to ear, sinister in the dark of the car.

“There’s my passenger princess,” Benny teases, as he turns the car over and feels it rumble to life. Maran is silent as he tucks one of his feet back up onto the passenger seat and begins that little, sweet ritual of tying and untying his shoe lace. Face tilted down, smile pursed and cheeks red.

—

Getting Xavier up into the apartment is far more difficult than Matilda, even with the two of them. Too tall, too lanky, too drunk. He sprawls over both Benny and Maran with his overlong arms around either of them. Affectionate and exhausted and barely able to take one step after the other. The cell phone, somehow, still tucked between his cheek and shoulder. Daylight peeks through the lobby windows, spring like yellow with an almost green tint to it. Maran blinks blearily at it, his energy fraying at the edges finally. He has both arms around Xavier’s torso, holding him up as much as using him as a support beam.

“You want to sleep here?” Benny finally asks, once they’re in the elevator. Xavier slumps against the wall, no longer party to the conversation. “S-So I don’t have to drive you all the way back to Benji’s.” He says it like Maran would be doing him a favor. Makes it easier for that smile to return, chin dipped to his chest as he leans against the elevator door. Benny reaches out and grabs him by the bicep right before the whole thing comes to a jarring, terrible stop and those doors creak their way open.

The apartment — which has been Benny’s home for two years now — is silent and comforting, with morning light dappling the floor and across furniture that’s been hauled off curbs for free. It feels almost alive, like a breathing, slumbering beast, welcoming the three men in. Benny lets Maran endure the brunt of Xavier’s weight as he side steps and quickly snaps the shades shut, plunging the apartment into a cool darkness.

“I’m not even sleepy,” Xavier protests, as he’s hauled toward his bedroom.

Benny, barely able to conceal his frustrated amusement can only reply, “Sure thing, big guy.”

“Really! I could go in to work like this, got a Honda that needs her whole front end redone — Did Benji hang up on me? Benji?”

Maran swipes the phone, his phone, and reveals a black screen. It doesn’t light up even when tapped. Button pressed and nothing but a desperate empty battery in violent green, dead as a door nail in Maran’s hand. He doesn’t even look mad, just tired and humored. Benny can’t imagine being on the phone with an intoxicated Xavier until it dies, sounding like a garbled Boston accented nightmare. More like Benny would die.

Xavier’s face pinches pathetically, dark brows slanted upward and mouth pouting. Handsome even in the dark, maybe more so with the pitiful expression. He’s only a few steps from his bedroom, but that feels like a mountainous task when run into a problem that can’t possibly be solved. Benny contemplates the couch and how cruel it would be to put him — tall as he is — on it instead.

“I’ll leave it with ya!” Maran offers, patting Xavier’s side sympathetically. “G’on then. Sleep, yeah?”

“You had fun, right?”

“Yep!”

“Okay, good. Where is Matilda?”

“Ben dropped her off first. Lark’s got her, no worries. You’re such a brother sometimes, know that? Give Saha a run for her money, all your worrying.”

The conversation slowly becomes inaudible as Maran gets Xavier through his doorway and into his bedroom, presumably into his bed as well. Benny stands there and despite the home around him, feels nearly awkward about it. Hovering, watching through a slightly opened door as a phone that doesn’t belong to him is plugged in beside Xavier’s head. Maran crouched down, mumbling happy platitudes to a boy a few years older than him, likely just as drunk or high himself.

Benny scuffs his boot on the floor a little. No seatbelt. He was never letting Maran in that stupid fucking truck again.

He jumps at the sound of Xavier’s door closing. Maran dusts his hands together proudly. All in a drunk club nights work.

And then they’re both silent.

For longer than what feels like a minute. Maybe even more. In reality it’s likely only a few heartbeats and yet those heartbeats feel loud and prolonged. The shades don’t quite put out the sunlight in it’s morning entirety; the apartment is left gray and Maran in that blue shirt looks so vibrant. Benny leans his shoulder against the wall, arms crossed over his chest.

“Well,” Maran says, rocking on his heels, hands tucked into his pockets. “Do you — could watch a movie. In your room, I mean. Or finish that one we started.”

Ashamed of himself, Benny contemplates it. Contemplates the road it would go down. Thinks briefly of the walk to his bedroom. The climb onto the mattress. The arrangement. Side by side. He thinks of Maran, drunk and high and feeling immortal and bold, like all young people do when they’ve been awake long enough to greet the sun and still feel buzzed. He thinks — he knows — that all it would take would be for a hand to wander. Across Maran’s shoulder, fingers grazing the vulnerable, thin skin behind his ear. Down, across a pulse point, up again and under the jawline.

Benny noticed Maran looking at him so long ago that sometimes he forgets he isn’t supposed to know Maran has a crush on him at all. Ignoring that heated belly rush every time Maran’s eyes linger too long, or he stands too close, or he toes the line of flirting the way he would with a pretty girl at a party. Benny knows that if they went to ‘watch a movie’ what would happen. And the thought of it happening when Maran is drunk enough that his accent slurs almost all his words together, is a cold, cold compress to any arousal.

“You’re going to sleep,” Benny says, pushing himself off from the wall. “Lark’s r-room is open.” He offers an outstretched hand. Blessedly, Maran looks more confused about being turned down than he does sad — because likely, Benny would have caved if Maran had turned those doe eyes on him. Instead, Maran’s dry palm slides against his own. He smiles and pumps their hands up and down once.

“Cheers. I know the way.”

Stunned silent, Benny’s head swivels to follow him. Then, “You l-little shit, I should kill you. You’re going — th-that’s my — Maran.”

His laughter, which is too loud for whatever morning hour they’re in, echoes in the apartment, small as it is. It follows all the way to Lark’s room, where Maran is finally wrestled to.

—

There is no bed frame, just the mattress on the floor, squashed into the corner. Still, the blankets look comfortable, particularly as Maran settles himself down into them. He sits up long enough to pinch an adorable pink tongue between his teeth, concentrating as he kicks his converses off. The thunk across the floor, which is covered in clothes that Lark has forgotten about. Benny, feeling rather related to Xavier in that moment, stoops briefly just to pick up the converses and set them by the door. Considering all the other shoes in the room, it’s mostly so Maran doesn’t try putting on shoes three sizes too small tomorrow.

Then, once Maran is under the blankets, on his stomach, Benny sits down on the floor beside him.

“That movie has a sh-shitty ending, anyway,” he says.

“Mm, you watch a lot of shitty movies.”

“With you,” Benny counters. He watches Maran’s shoulders huff with a barely there laugh. The night seems to finally catch up to him then. Even though he faces away from Benny, he can see all the tension slowly slide out of him. Muscles uncoiling, consciousness slowly beginning to fade. Benny reaches out. For a moment, his hand hovers just above the nape of Maran’s neck. It stays there, imagining the curve, the way it would fit.

“Yunno,” Maran says, turning over. Benny’s hand snaps away so quick, his elbow collides with his own ribs, smarting furiously. He clears his throat, and Maran smiles. “Xavier’s kind of a shite dancer for a guy that loves the club so much.”

“Yeah, well,” Benny holds up a hand, tilting it side to side, sneering. “Xavier’s hot. He doesn’t have to be good at anything besides that.”

“Nngh.” Maran makes an audible and strange sound at that. Almost insulted, very annoyed. He throws an arm across his face, heaving out a heavy sigh. Benny, confused, thinks to get a water bottle. Maybe a bowl in case he hurls and ruins one of Lark’s many black shirts. “You think — Xavier, I mean.”

Sitting there, perched beside a mattress with no bed frame and a boy very drunk, very high and very tired, Benny stares down at the little sliver of Maran’s freckled face. He has to bite his own tongue to stop himself from laughing. The jealousy pinkens Maran’s skin. Makes him look sweet.

“Nah. Not really my type.” His knees make a protesting sound as he stands. “Night, Mar.” There’s a rustling in the blankets. Maran getting comfortable, tossing himself over onto his stomach once more. A little mumbled something.

Then louder, “Night, Ben!”

—

Of course he dreams. There isn’t anything else to do but dream. The drugs in his system pass through his blood stream, up into his head, continue the music there instead. Loud. He dreams about…clouds. Fluffy, pastel. One of the first things he learned in school and found it stuck; clouds are water. Staring up at the sky, thinking, that’s just water up there, but in shapes. Pikachu, a car and — himself. But floaty. The drugs had made him feel that way. Up in the sky. Iridescent too, sunrise sort of clouds, all oranges and purples and pinks that swirl together. But water. So — cold. Wet. Uncomfortable? Strange.

And that strange twist leads him elsewhere, his mind taking the subconscious cue — no bad thoughts right now! — and turning. Embarrassingly, a comfort dream, because nothing soothed Maran the way kissing did. Like plaster, he thinks, for a cut. Instead, it’s a feeling. A kiss that makes everything easier. Reminding him of a skinned knee, blood on someone’s lip, the halo lighting of a street lamp on blond hair.

The start of kissing, the anticipation and build up. One to his cheek, the other to the corner of his mouth, teasing and barely there. A kiss that makes everything easier… Fingers touching the sensitive skin of his throat, dancing up and under his chin. Coaxing him closer. Maran, with his eyes closed and yet still seeing that vast horizon of early morning, chill sky, smiling. Dreaming.

“That feels good,” he says aloud, accidentally, because he’s dreaming. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s dreamed of Fiadh since their break up, but a sensation of shame unfurls in his stomach none the less. Both hot and cold at the same time (a familiar memory with her). He’s dreamed of her and woke up sad. Hands touching him, her lips, plush and soft and sweet before they were ever mean.

Only, he remembers her feeling less…solid. He remembers her being small against him, tucked into his chest, her hands resting near dainty on his collarbone. He remembers her bedding — because they are prone in a bed, he can sense that much — how uncomfortable it was; too expensive to actually be soft. Maran sits up then, his eyes finally open, expecting the beige of her walls, the little portraits of bugs mixed with the polaroid pictures of her friends and their trips across Italy, Rome, Iceland.

It isn’t. The room is dark. There’s tiny stars on the ceiling that he stares at, uncomprehending. Wondering where the fuck the horizon is, where it went and where he went with it.

A hand slides up his arm. Finds the notch of muscle bisecting shoulder and bicep, rests there. It too, feels different. Broader. Stronger. Still, he’s touched in just the right way he likes to be touched; firm, affectionate, thumb rubbing a circle on his skin. His attention is caught, glancing toward pale, tattooed skin. Blunt fingernails, painted black, polish chipping away. Maran’s eyes slide down a bare forearm, across a well muscled bicep. The way it flexes makes a hot, hungry feeling well up inside him. He recognizes every single tattoo on this arm.

“Ben?”

“Why’d you sit up?” he asks, in that undeniably cute American accent. All his words smushed together, whydyasiddup? Benny smiles, teeth crooked. Maran always found that endearing, the way the bottom row didn’t line up correct, the way his canines sit just slightly askew. It made him look at Benny the first time he’d laughed, really look at him, just so he could see. And he’d never really stopped looking after.

“Are you shirtless?” Maran asks, his voice coming out thin and funny to his own ears. Distant, not necessarily a part of himself. Maran can’t seem to stop looking and there’s so much to look at. Benny’s head tilts, a lock of hair flopping across his brow and obscuring one of his eyes. He looks so…pretty. It’s dark yet he’s there, exposed, just there, laying in his bed (Ben’s bed!), all of him so just there. There. The hungry feeling in Maran’s stomach gnaws and hurts.

“You’re funny,” Benny says in a breathy sort of way. He braces himself up on one elbow. His stomach muscles flex. The gun at his hip. That spider below his belly button. The dark blond hair that trails up his stomach. Maran’s brain short circuits, fizzy and drugged all over again. “C’mere.” His hand moves from Maran’s arm to the back of his neck, eliciting electric tingles all over Maran’s body. And then, in one powerful motion, he pulls.

Their bodies do what bodies do when pressed together. They line up. Arrange. Maran finds himself pressed between Benny’s thighs, just like he likes to be. He can feel a leg curling around his waist, hips hiking up, the heated friction nearly painful. He can feel the slide of their bodies, he can feel the way Benny has muscles in his thighs and how taut they are. He can feel the tickle of chest hair against his own bare chest. It drives him so stupid and insane that he’s panting. Big, deep gulps of air.

It’s a dream. It’s fuzzy at the edges. Immaterial and sharp at the same time. The bed blurs and makes little sense, but every single one of Benny’s pale blond eye lashes are stark. Whatever cotton material separates them feels distant and forgettable, like his dream is one good thought away from making it disappear. Maran, greedy, finds his hands going places he’s secretly maybe always wanted to touch. Benny’s waist. His ribs. Up and around the back of him, clutching shoulders as he sways forward. As that cotton material bunches together on them both.

“That feels good,” Benny whispers, his lips to the side of Maran’s temple. Their heads tilt, facing each other. Something distant in Maran’s head thinks this is Ben, this is my friend, and I want to kiss him, I want to fuck him, I want to be in him, oh fuck, I want that. Benny smiles again, those sharp canines awkward and cute and that distant screaming gets louder. “Well, don’t fucking stop now, Mar.”

The kiss is messy. Wet and steaming, their mouths open and moving together, Benny’s hand hard around the back of his next. Benny hard and Maran wanting to pursue that. Their breathing is loud, the kissing louder, the sounds they both make between each desperate press of tongue and lips louder. The movements change, the sensations with it, Maran’s eyes pinching shut, his forehead falling to Benny’s shoulder, his body tense, his hands digging into bedding, Benny’s laugh in his ear, Benny’s legs, tight around his waist.

I’m gonna cum, Maran thinks bluntly.

Then wakes up.

—

The hangover becomes a brutal third party in his head. It’s a literal bruise on his skull cap, throbbing and pulsing, there and behind his eyes. An ache so strong that it momentarily makes everything else feel dull. The sunlight from Lark’s open window wakes him up, reminds him there are hurts other places too. His hands desperately pat at the curtain Lark uses as shade. He nearly rips it off the wall. His stomach rolls in protest with every movement, his limbs feeling sore. Detached and still in pain. Maran groans without meaning to and even his jaw hurts.

Worse is the erection pressing heavily against his boxers. It’s a needy sensation, almost more painful than the hangover. Maran sits up, staring down at himself, then up to the window where the light peeks through the curtain. He blinks and is all too aware of his eyelids, his wet lashes clinging together. He scrubs a hand over his mouth.

He can’t stop thinking of Benny’s mouth. His tongue. His laugh at climax.

It makes Maran shoot up standing, which triggers a cluster of pain to erupt in his head. The stars behind his eyes are a horrible reminder of the dream. He presses hands to his eyes, breathing in short, concentrated bursts. He stumbles over something in Lark’s room, nearly tripping and going down.

And then Maran makes efficient, short work of putting on clothes and sneaking outside the room.

It’s silent in the apartment. He isn’t sure what time it is — where his phone is — but he knows the men that live here. Had a naughty fucking dream about one of them, didn’t ya? He knows they sleep in late, knows their routines. Xavier’s jacket still hung up, combat boots by the front door, Benny not yet left. The silence feels calming, instead of suffocating. Maran stands in the hallway, breathing in the smell of the place. Cigarettes, motor oil, nice cologne, air conditioner, everything he’s grown to enjoy.

He takes a right into the kitchen, and then stands there dumbly.

Benny sits at the kitchen table, their round little pub style thing that has all their initials (and then some) carved into it. He sits, one arm draped loosely over his stomach, slouched in the chair. In his hand, a beat up paperback, cover bent back to read easier. His hair is pushed back by sunglasses that sit atop his head. Those red, round sunglasses he wears to keep the sun out his sensitive eyes. They lift from the book to Maran, cold and brilliant.

“Hi,” Maran croaks. He coughs into his fist. “Hi,” he repeats.

Benny stands. He puts the book down on the table, next to a plate of toast he’d clearly been chewing through. One slice left, one bite taken out of it. He points to another chair by the table. Maran, dizzy and without thinking, obeys placidly. He sits down slowly, arms folding around his middle. He watches Benny as the older man opens a cupboard and takes out a glass. Watches him fill it with water and then put it down on the table in front of him. Benny stands there, in front of him. Solid. And very tall while Maran sits. He’s in sweatpants and a tank top thats seen better days. Maran got all the tattoos right in his dream. What did that say about him?

“Jesus, you’re wr-wrecked, huh, baby?”

“What?” Maran squeaks and then laughs. He pats himself on the chest, giving Benny a bashful grin.

“Next time, drink more water before.” Benny goes back to his seat. He contemplates for a moment and then pushes the plate of half eaten toast toward Maran. “Th-That’ll make you feel better too. Should eat before Ibuprofen.”

Whatever conversation they were about to have is interrupted. Xavier — dramatic and big — nearly falls into the kitchen, leaning against the counter and groaning loudly. He’s in nothing but shorts that sling low on his hips. Maran wonders why that does nothing for him in comparison to the way Benny idly scratches a hand up underneath his tank top, eyes back on his paperback. Maran wonders why he can’t stop watching that movement. He blinks blearily at Xavier.

“Aw,” the red head croons. “C’mon, you had fun right?”

“Loads,” Maran promises, with a cheek hurting smile. Xavier, so authentic, is infectious. Makes his hangover feel a bit better.

“And this guy,” Xavier purrs, lanky body swaying closer to Benny, who ignores him outright. “Our knight in shining muscle car.” His big, freckled hand lands on Benny’s head, knocking the sunglasses askew. Fingers thread into blond hair, tugging softly. Maran’s is shocked by the piercing annoyance that skewers him, pinning his hand on the glass of water and not letting him move.

“Fuck you,” Benny replies, swatting lazily.

“Naw, you’re such a good friend, Benny,” Xavier coos, folding down over top of him. This isn’t new — Maran’s watched Xavier do this routine to, well, everyone. He’s been on the receiving end of the affection. He’s been picked up and tossed over Xavier’s shoulder, carried around, laughing his head off. But still, his teeth grind together, his headache resuming it’s previous construction work between his temples.

When Xavier presses quick kisses all across Benny’s head, catching his eyebrow, his cheek bone, Maran feels that jealousy like a physical thing in his chest. It manifests and Benny’s shrill laugh only feeds it.

He reaches forward and snatches the toast off the plate, moody and awful as Xavier dances away to fall onto the third chair. Maran stares at it. Stares at the indent of Benny’s teeth, the way his mouth carved out a piece. Maran stares harder, his head foggy and his body hurting. He puts the toast to his mouth, lining up the same place Benny’s was. He takes a bite, thinking, I am so pathetic. And when he looks up, Benny is staring at him.

Smiling. Canine tooth popping free and indenting his lower lip.

“Want to f-finish that movie now?” He asks, eyes hooded.

Maran blinks. Rapidly. Smiles, with his chin tucked down. His cheeks burn. But he nods, happy.

[hauntedjpegcollection]

and if you go, i want to go with you

Later, he will look on this scene with romanticism.

He will wonder at the sunlight through the trees, filtering shards of buttery yellow across the soft, moist dirt below him. The smell of loam, fresh and clean. Birds—he’ll recall their song, their early morning flight and the sound of their fluttering wings in the sky. Everything will be greener when he imagines it; saturated the way only a memory can be, tangled around itself beautifully. Later, it will still hurt, but he will tell others how much that hurt was worth it in the end. How much it saved his life, this sacrifice, pain in this sunlit grove.

“Can’t you hurry it the fuck up?”

And it is painful; not a physical wound, not like the ring of old and new marks around wrists, ankles, throat. Skin rubbed raw and weeping to nasty near permanent scabs. Not like the burn in his lungs from running, or the cramping in tired muscles. His malnourished body, desperate for relief. What it would feel like to lay down on this soil and not get up, the alluring notion of everything ending and it being his choice.

“Fuck off, Ciar,” Sai seethes, blood in his veins racing so hard his hands twitch. Dirt crusts them to his elbows. The grave he’s dug is deep. He doesn’t want an animal snuffling it’s way along and finding his sacrifice. The young man feels the pinprick of tears again, his face already wet with them—and the dirt. He rubs the back of one hand across a cheek, smearing more into his dark brown skin. The tears are good. He worries fingers into the once blue fabric of his mother’s scarf. The tears make it worse. Hurts more, this way.

The scarf is the last thing he has of her, what little tatters of it remain. Sometimes, when he’d been curled around himself, falling asleep on one of the dozens of mats squashed inside the low ceilinged building they’d shoved the prisoners into nightly, Sai swore he could remember the smell of her. The jamun scent, dark purple behind his eyes mingling with her laugh, now the color of bruises to him, once the color of a jam spread across thin bread. Her laugh, her hands, holding his. Her hair, dark and curly and windswept.

Sai pushes the scarf deep into the hole he’d dug with his own hands. Then he touches them to his forehead, trembling. On his knees, bowed over the hole, he touches fingertips to his heart, whispering a prayer. Tears gather on his chin, fat and ripe with misery. They only waver a bit before sliding down the hollow of his throat, the grave for his mother and the last connection to her, denied that.

“Gettup,” Ciar hisses, the sound of his anxious feet on underbrush interrupting Sai’s fevered prayer. He keeps his eyes closed, touching fingers to forehead, mouth, heart and ground. “There’s no Gods out here.”

“For you,” Sai mumbles, pulling himself up. He stumbles, a hand outstretched and caught by Ciar’s. It’s big. Blocky and rough from years in the penal colony; scarred across knuckles and all the way up to his elbows. Scraper scars, they called them, because Ciar was put to work scooping out precious ore from crevices in the mines, blown open by explosives. Sai was almost chosen for that work—slender and long limbed, he would have been a good digger. But he could also read many languages—and write them just as well—and so between back breaking labor pushing the carts, Sai helped sort records for the colony Warden.

It only let him see how much each of their meager lives cost. Profit, that’s all they were.

"Aye,” Ciar says, with a gnashed together snarl of a grin. “If you were sacrificing to my Gods, you’d need blood.”

“He doesn’t ask for that,” Sai mutters, pulling his hand back to wipe the dirt along the shabby rough spun cloth that serves for clothes. He’d left soil on Ciar’s pale hand, but the other prisoner makes no move to clean it off. “Just something that hurts.”

“Huh. Godly enough if you ask me.”

“I didn’t.”

“Oh, I know.” Ciar starts into the forest around them, battering away hanging branches with thick, pale arms. Sai watches. For a moment, watching is all he can do. Stand there, exhausted and dirty and marvel that there is no longer a stretch of chain that connects them. For the first time in years, either man moves without the sound of clinking metal, without the stretch of a chain leash that connects wounds at any given moment.

A glance into the sky, burned out yellow and white, Sai doesn’t feel that freedom yet. The ghost of it lingers around his wrists, as though the farther Ciar gets, the yank will come at last.

—

Their journey is that of shared silence and misery. The sun above them does little for actual warmth; both prisoners are reduced to trembling shivers, their flea bitten cloth tunics thin and worn, retaining not even the idea of heat. Malnourished. Underfed. Weak despite years of labor. Barefoot, both of them have bloodied heels and cracked toes. The pain is a dull throb of an ache through Sai’s legs, but he says nothing for it—neither does Ciar and it becomes a point of personal pride, to not complain when the Northerner isn’t.

Especially as Ciar moves like a machine, trudging forward wordlessly. Part of that frightens Sai; his ability to keep moving, as though a force of nature. A creature merely following instincts. It doesn’t matter. His back becomes Sai’s north star, leading him forward through the forest.

When the man pulls up short, lifting an arm to stop Sai from continuing, everything tilts inside. His entire existence has boiled down to simply that—walking. Through the pain, over grass and rocks and twigs. Walking with his tired, dehydrated eyes pinned between Ciar’s shoulder blades, watching the way the muscles moved beneath his tunic. His blood drying between his toes, the wind rustling his unwashed hair. He’d grown so used to moving forward that suddenly stumbling to a stop dizzies him. Spins the world around him. Nearly collides him with the Ciar and his raised arm, who grunts and glances over his shoulder.

“What?” Sai asks, his voice a dry rasp. He can’t remember the last time he had water.

Ciar doesn’t answer immediately. The absence of it creates a swell of fear in Sai’s stomach. He isn’t sure how much of a well there is left for that. Endless though it seems, as some point, maybe Sai just won’t be afraid anymore. It feels far off, wishful thinking. Ciar’s shoulders are a rigid line, every muscle taut and coiled, tight underneath wan skin. Sweat has beaded along his pale hair line, little gems sliding down his throat, disappearing beneath the dull white tunic. Sai finds it hard to take a step forward, not just because of the pain, but because it feels easy to keep staring at that. Simple, easy, the world far too large, too colorful outside the penal colony.

And then Ciar steps aside for him, turning to look at Sai, with wide eyes. And a smile. Sai’s never seen Ciar smile before. It seems out of place—almost scary.

“Look at them.”

Somehow, he manages to tear himself away. He steps around Ciar and looks into a small clearing, made wider by the natural decay of trees. One split open, perhaps by lightening—maybe an animal, striving to deshed antlers. It would almost be a horrifying thought to imagine an animal so large, if it weren’t for the beauty the prisoners have stepped into.

Every surface of that clearing is covered—impossibly—in butterflies. Soft, delicate insects, their wings fluttering lazily. The smell of them is oddly sweet, as though the butterflies are covered in flower pollen. The air about them is hazy, the sunlight nearly a physical thing. The butterflies are every single color Sai hasn’t seen in years; blues and purples and yellows and greens. Iridescent, glittering. A patch of them lift from a fallen tree and scatter into the wind, tumbling around the way only small, pitiful creatures can. Sai stares at them, at the blanket of them all over everything. His throat bobs, his hand touching a spot in the middle of his chest.

And before he can say anything, the entire swarm of them rise, up into the air. They disperse, like a cloudy rainbow, disappearing into the sky and into the forest. Like they were never there to begin with. Only, without them, the forest doesn’t look ugly anymore. Just a remnant of the butterfly swarms resting space. Capable of being strangely beautiful now.

“Bugs,” Ciar says, cutting through the peacefulness. His voice is near, making Sai stumble, arms interlocking around his slim midsection. The other man has an oddly bashful look about him, glancing sideways and then away—then back again. It makes Sai smille back.

“Bugs,” he replies, in wearily happy agreement.

—

“Property line.”

“What?”

It’s the first time either of them have spoken since the swarm. Sai had almost forgotten either of them could even make noise, his existence once again reduced to shambling along behind the other big, snowy prisoner.

Ciar’s arm twists, a finger jabbing toward a tree with a near invisible mark made upon it. A carved symbol, no bigger than a palm and nearly worn away by time. Letter or glyph. Sai approaches, limping slightly with a hand raised to touch it.

“How do you know this?”

“Just because I’m from Aerland doesn’t mean I don’t know what a property line is. You just think all my people run around like barbarians, don’t you? Don’t even keep track of who lives where.”

Sai’s hand drops. He twists to stare at Ciar with a flat expression, only to be met with a savage gleeful one. He stands there, hands on his hips, crooked teeth in a slanted sneering smile. How he has the energy even for that, Sai doesn’t know. It exhausts him.

“I don’t think about you at all, Ciar. Or Aerland.”

“That mark was on another tree, little while back.” Twigs, dirt and dry grass crunch beneath Ciar’s feet as he steps closer. His eyes dart around the forest behind them, a nervous twitch, his humor depleting. The sun has diminished, turning the sky cool and purpling. Sai closes his eyes to it, a fluttering behind his lids, like the butterflies. He presses the heels of his hands into them, his anxieties darting fish in his empty, cramping stomach.

“We risk it,” Sai finally says, not daring to pull his hands away.

There’s silence. As much silence as the forest has to offer, with wind in the trees, scattering the leaves that had made up their trail. Then—Ciar’s foot steps. His north star, moving once more.

—

The woods slowly turn into a field not too unlike the clearing, which slowly becomes a dirt path that blooms into stone path and finally, a lords home. Or the bones of one, the remains of something that once must have been grand and was now only a graveyard. The barns are scavenged through, one collapsed in on itself, the other missing a roof entirely. No clucking hens or braying beasts. The absolute absence of sounds, in stark contrast with the emptiness as well, makes their flesh dimple with nerves.

“Think they had a wine cellar?” Sai asks. Ciar barks a surprised laugh. “We’ll find something for you.”

Which proves mostly an empty promise, as Ciar breaks them in through the side; a kitchen’s entrance, where servants most likely entered and exited. The kitchens themselves relatively bare, scraped clean by looters long before the prisoners. It isn’t nearly as run down as Sai had been expecting—the walls are standing, the ornate runners rug through the hallway they tepidly walk down isn’t nearly as stained as it should be. It’s empty, however, of most things and certainly anything alive. It creaks along with them, but the sound is so subtle, it’s like the manors lost its voice.

Sai runs a hand over a wall as they walk in search now for just clothes and comfort and a place to simply rest.

“In my country, all homes are one story. A long, flat building that connects through a middle room.” He pauses outside of a cracked door, the mahogany dull, the rusted nail hinges coming loose. Ciar grunts behind him, acknowledging. “And you add rooms as the family gets bigger. So everyone can stay together.”

Using his broad shoulder, Ciar shoves against the door and watches it fall flat onto the ground with a startling thump. Dust rains from the ceiling, like snow in Ciar’s hair. He pauses, unnaturally so, with his face screwed up—then bursts into a sneeze. Then another, then a fit of them that shakes the poor mans entire body until Sai is exploding as well, only into belly aching laughter. Holding himself up against the door frame, wiping a dirty hand underneath his eye to catch tears as Ciar swears in Aer, over and over.

"Get over yourself,” he finally snaps, gesturing around the bedroom they’ve found themselves in. “Something ought fit either of us. Need boots more than anything. You need a coat. More than one coat.”

Sai leaves him to his rambling exploration of the molding wardrobe he’s ripped open. Hearing Ciar talk the first time had been shocking—not just that he spoke common, a language that had colonized both their people. But that when he started, sometimes Ciar simply didn’t stop and mostly it was to himself. Sai had been fascinated by that unending torrent when they’d cleared the rusted, sharp fences of the penal colony. It had been raining, water collecting in the deep pockets of their eyes, both of them hollowed and exhausted. Ciar had talked until he was spitting water from his mouth, like a rain trap overflowing.

Sai finds a window, just enough of a sill to sit on, looking out cracked glass at the sky as it slowly bleeds to death. The wind has begun howling at the manor, at it’s broken body. It rattles that window, so he lays a hand flat on it and feels the vibrations. Reminds him of the mines, the bombs going off, so his hand twitches away.

“Gah!” He sputters when clothing hits him, pooling across him, smelling old and unused. It’s finer material than he’s ever worn before, but he’d liked his clothes before the prison. Simple tunics, easy draping, thin and made to cover skin but breathable for the heat this country absolutely never has.

“Think that’ll fit, but you’ll be showing ankles. Make them tall where you’re from.”

“Or Aerlanders are short.”

“Ah,” Ciar tugs at the prisoners tunic, roughly yanking it from himself. “You don’t think of us, though?”

He has nasty, white scars across his back that Sai does not have to ask about. A common occurrence to be whipped nearly to bone; only months ago it was likely Ciar had been tied to the post for something he’d done. Minor or not. Sai looks down at the clothing in his hands, a rich velvet black. His scars are around his wrists, his ankle. A worn pale line around his throat, from the iron collar that they’d managed to pry open.

Sai stands swiftly and begins pulling at his own scratchy, dirty tunic. Feels wrong to put the clothes on when he’s still so dirty, but he has no illusions they’ll find water to clean themselves just yet. Once the leggings are up and the shirt—an equally lavish, if not thin with age material, only this time in a mossy green. He looks up to Ciar and both men blink at each other.

Smiling, Ciar says, “Look different without your scrawny legs out.”

“You’re shoved into that material like it was made for a man ten years younger,” Sai replies, stepping swiftly over the broken down door and out into the hallway.

—

Crumbling stairs descend below the estate, the cellar earthy and the air moist. It’s unfinished, more a carving of a space than anything else, not in disrepair from neglect, but a project that had never seen completion. Not for the first time, Sai wonders who lived here. A family, likely? A mother, father, children. Arms tucked around his middle, he’s forced also to confront that he doesn’t know where here is. He doesn’t know what region he’s in; months ago, that miserable train of wagons—cells, really—had been uncovered only at night to allow prisoners brief respite of clean air. Sometimes, when it rained, they’d be pulled from those wagons and allowed to stand under the downpour. The only way they’d get clean.

Sai further wonders what memory that’s replaced of his. What of his childhood can’t he remember now, in place of standing under rain, unblinking as water fills his eyes. Staring at the muted night sky colors, wondering if it wouldn’t be easier to run and die. His sisters voice, his brothers poor cooking, his father, his aunt. Their mouser cats. The lemon tree that had been planted when his grandparents were wed. Where were those memories?

“So much for wine,” Ciar comments, peering through the space with slitted, suspicious eyes. There’s clothed walls dividing some areas, hanging like phantoms. “I used to like drinking on an empty stomach.”

“What? Why?” Sai uses knuckles to brush cloth aside, finding crates, lids slid off to reveal nothing but straw. His skin crawls at the idea of searching through them.

“Never done that, aye? It’s fun. Take to the drink faster, don’t remember a thing the day after.”

“How is that fun?”

“Well,” Ciar’s rumbling voice comes from the corner somewhere. Sai continues pushing cloth aside, coughing at the filmy dust and residue. “You know—find someone to drink with, then a barn. Go from there.” Brown hand fisted in moldy white cloth, Sai yanks until it comes free, upsetting even more dirt as it falls from a mostly unfinished ceiling. He coughs, clears his throat, throws the fabric aside.

Then gasps.

Though he swore that Ciar was across the cellar, he’s suddenly there, brushing against his shoulder. The entire line of him that Sai can feel, pressed from bicep to the lightest brush of knuckles, is taut, a fist of muscles clenched. He doesn’t step away, though that sudden closeness makes something flip over inside his empty stomach.

“What is that?” Sai asks, quietly.

Ciar doesn’t answer. The air is stale around them, sucked clean of warmth. The skin on Sai’s scalp tightens, fingers curling into shaky fists. Their footsteps are muffled on the dirt flooring as they both step closer, into this forgotten corner. The only light is from slashes of what would be windows at the tops of the wall, dawn light pouring in to illuminate—a marble statue.

Massive, standing atop a small pedestal, it brushes the top of the unfinished ceiling. Motes of dust dance around it. Beautifully done, muscles rendered to exact likeness—a soldier, holding a great war hammer in a restful pose. The chain mail beneath plate armor so detailed, Sai can imagine the texture beneath his fingertips, though he’s never armor before. And moreover, it’s clean. No dirt at all to mar the perfect marble carving, it’s pristine white—and they are like moths drawn toward it.

Cloth drapes over the face of the statue, obscuring it and draping down it’s shoulders like a cloak. The statue is so perfect, the model even has fingernails. Short, bitten, realistic. A vein in his forearm, a ripple in fabric bunched under plate. A perfectly white, indented scuff mark on a boot.

"This,” Ciar whispers, lifting a hand, but never connecting a touch. Though tall, Sai doesn’t even reach to the chest of the soldier. He scoots closer behind Ciar as he approaches, who stares with reverent eyes. “This—how did this get here?”

That pulls Sai to a stop. He glances around the small space, looking for tools, indicating a master craftsman’s abandoned work. There is nothing but the worn out remains of candles, burned nearly wickless, puddles of wax the only audience for the statue.

“Well. Clearly they owned it.”

“How?”

“How did they get it down here, you mean?” Sai steps further around Ciar to look closer at the hammer. It’s a simple thing, not ornate at all, the shafts wood grain detailed. Truly just a soldiers weapon, though. Almost easy to imagine it bloodied. Altogether, he can’t fathom how much the thing weighs—how much it values at.

“Careful,” Ciar says, a hand landing gently on Sai’s shoulder. Gone and there, as quick as the butterflies back in the forest earlier. “I know this statue.”

“You do?”

“Know who it’s depicting.” Ciar answers with a grunt. Then grins his sneering, awful smile once he has Sai’s full attention. One of his canines sits wrong, protruding a bit, dimpling his lower lip. There is a scar there, something clean and white straight down to the curve of his chin. “You were praying earlier. To who?”

Sai sits on that for a moment, unsure how to express religion to this Northern stranger. Not so much a stranger, some strange voice inside of him whispers. Matching scars around his throat, after all. Shared misery. Shared fear. Freedom. Finally, cautiously, he answers, “Sacrifice.”

Ciar blinks away shock, shrugging a massive shoulder. “This is the Dog Soldier.”

“The what?”

“One of mine.” He straightens proudly, gesturing a savage thumb to himself, mouth spread in an even wider grin. “A God of my people. The Hound of Righteous Rage. God of Vengeance, God of Soldiers. Xavier—the Killer of Betrayers.”

“Ah,” Sai mumbles, turning back to the marble rendition of what he thinks is but a young man. Something about the statue seems lonely. Shoved in a corner in derelict, abandoned home. Beautiful and forgotten, left to obscurity and darkness. He reaches up to yank away the cloth draped over him and then Ciar really does take him by the shoulder. Pulls him backward, not roughly, but quickly. Sai stumbles, twisting and shoving himself backward.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re not supposed to look at him,” Ciar explains, all boastful pride gone. Replaced by the serious twist of an anxious expression, a feathering twitch in his jaw. He seems paler, somehow—slightly blue from the barely there midnight light coming through the slashes of windows. “We don’t have anything this fancy back home—but the wooden carvings of Xavier, they’re all blindfolded after they’re made. You’re not meant to look ‘im in the eye, y’see. If you do, he can possess you.” The spidery feeling of anxiety crawling down his back, Sai flicks eyes back to the clothed statue. Again, the intensity of it’s loneliness makes him feel small.

“He takes young soldiers on the battle field sometimes, turns them into machines, naught for killing.” Ciar’s lips spread into a smile once more. “Only your enemies, surely.”

“Stop trying to frighten me, Ciar,” Sai snaps, shoving the other prisoner once more. Made of nothing but solid flesh, the other man doesn’t even budge. But it feels satisfying regardless, so Sai pushes his way past him, as far from the haunting Dog Soldier as he can.

—

“Look as though you’re going to cry.”

“No.”

“Could, if you really wanted to. I’d turn around, if y’d’like.”

“How generous,” Sai replies flatly. “Didn’t even do that when I was changing.”

Ciar laughs as he shreds another book between his broad hands. There’s a strange pink to his cheeks all the way to his ears. A reflection of the meager fire they’ve cobbled together, dancing over his the pallor of his skin. Ciar had been pragmatic when he’d suggested the books, but Sai couldn’t bring himself to the task. Instead he’d held a few of them—cherished the tomes in his hands, the feel of their supple leather covers, the smell of their pages. Not rotted and damp like the cellar, nor musty like the clothes they’d been forced to scavenge.

Now, there was just the stinging smell of smoke in the library they’d found themselves in. It collects toward the ceiling, pillowing there. Ciar had opened the large bay windows, to let out some of the smoke, but it had made both of them nervous.

After adding a few more books to the fire, Ciar settles down the opposite side. And then remarkably, he relaxes. For the first time—not even since they’d escaped, but before even that—the man seems to come…uncoiled. He lays flat on his back, hands on his stomach. His eyes closed, legs kicked wide and lazy. The nervous thrum of energy that had kept them going through the forest, had kept them going through everything, seems to dissolve into the air with the smoke from burned books.

Oddly, it makes Sai nervous. He sits there, knees to his chest, arms wrapped around shins, staring at Ciar and thinks that it can’t be this easy. They hadn’t found food, but they had found a well outside—and skins to fill with cool, clean water. And they’d both drank enough of it to throw it back up and then drink more, like it was the wine Sai had hoped for. They’re warm—and it’s quiet. Feels terrifying to close his eyes, the way Ciar has. To rest any muscle that might be needed next for running, fighting, freedom.

“Our homes were the same way,” Ciar suddenly says, his words slurring together. His chest rises and falls so steadily, so slowly.

“The same way?” Sai watches him through the meager fire. The shadows grow large against the walls, their shelves.

“’Fore, you were talking about where you’re from. Said the houses were one floor—everyone together. Big family. I…” Ciar’s eye lids flicker as he trails off. The veins along them are spidery and soft.

“Did you have a big family?” Sai asks. The heat of the fire makes his eyes burn watery.

“I did.”

They’re silent then, for so long that Sai wonders if Ciar has finally fallen asleep. Only when he looks away from the fire, the northerners pale eyes are staring at him, glossy with the reflection of flame. Then they’re closed once more, so quick—it’s almost easy to mistake whether they were ever really looking at him at all.

—

Sai doesn’t dream, but he wakes up without a shred of lucidity. His mind jumbles together, thinking of purple jam, his mother’s smile, grass underneath his feet in a way that doesn’t hurt—a white statue and stained cloth, the flutter of insect wings, water filling his empty belly until it hurts. Fire—and Ciar.

Ciar, shaking him. Ciar, holding his shoulders, his face close.

“What?” The word comes out as a hoarse whisper and no more follow as a hand clamps over his face. Then Sai really is awake, startling upright, but not fully able to shove Ciar away. The other man crouches over him, a strangle tangle of their bodies. His hand still plastered to Sai’s mouth, his other held up in a curious signal that must be pure muscle memory from a life before imprisonment. Dread, cold and black and familiar, fills Sai’s belly with ice. Footsteps. The creak of wood. Voices. So soft and barely there.

Unconsciously, Sai begins shaking his head, eyes pinned open with the feral terror only a prey animal understands. His hands tremble, clasping around Ciar’s arm. He is the most sturdy thing there is. Slowly, he’s pulled to his feet by the other man, gently maneuvered closer to the windows. Everything feels so incredibly distant, as though Sai has joined the smoke stains on the ceiling and he is watching this, like an amusing puppet show. Two prisoners, who didn’t run far enough; the shorter of the two slowly pushing open a window—and further pushing the taller to it.

“No,” Sai hisses, grasping weak hands into Ciar’s tunic. He gets no answer. Staring, he realizes that Ciar has the oddest ring of dark blue around his iris, when the rest of it is like storm cloud gray. Sai shakes his head again, a pressure building up in his skull, pushing and pushing and pushing. “No, no, no. Ciar. No.”

Again, he’s met with resolute silence. Ciar, saying nothing more, pushes the windows open. He throws a terrified glance over his shoulder—another creak of footsteps. Another voice. Sai watches his throat bob and the sudden impossibilities fill him to the brim. The knowledge that so much could be different and that all roads were now gone. Lost. Burned right before him. His chest tightens on the realization that Ciar is going to die.

Everything else seems so small.

“I won’t make it easy for ‘em,” Ciar promises, in a harsh whisper. His knuckles are bone white as his hand curls around the edge of the window. Sai touches his forearm, slides a hand around his wrist, finds the rough texture of scars. Fat tears spill down his cheeks to his chin. Ciar smiles and it’s soft and sad. Strange, on his features.

A bump from somewhere distant makes both of them startle, fear a pulse between them, inside them. And then, there is no more time for soft touches, for crying, for shared looks or the shared intimate awareness that something else could have happened, something more. Instead, Sai is tumbling from the window, his hands skidding across crumbling roofing. Slender legs kicking to catch himself better—blessedly finding the lips edge and pausing.

Then falling.

Noiselessly.

Safely.

Sai runs for the long dead field behind the lord’s home. He sprints. Stumbles. A sob catching in his chest that he silences with hands slapped across his mouth. A burning reminder of another mans hand having just been there. Boots Ciar had found, one size too small, catching on the uneven ground. The night sky, so dark and everything around him so unrecognizable. Unbidden, unwanted, the memories of the penal colony; those buildings they were shoved into like animals, the mines and dirt and the never ending sounds of pain and misery. The tasteless gruel for food, the coppery unfiltered rain water they rationed. The collar, the chains, the books he helped balanced that put an exact price on Hell. The whipping post. Uneven ground catches him by surprise and he tilts forward—momentum bringing him straight to his hands and knees, pain a sudden shock through his bones. Help, Sai thinks. Someone, please. Please, help us.

The wind shifts, battering him as he scrambles up. It howls around him and the lone, dead field of wasted crops. Tears make everything blurry, the moon fat and high in the sky and her moonlight causing the world around him to go pale, for shadows in the field to elongate and twist. Sai breathes in panicky, short bursts.

And in front of him, only a span of a distance, a figure. Pearlescent under the moon, a dirty white cloth rippling in the wind. A whisper in the air. A voice, low and humming, full of sorrow and fury. The world around Sai shrinks, rippling as though it’s breathing, pulsing and bringing him toward the statue of the soldier. One terrible step after the other.

There it stands, no longer on it’s pedestal. Hands, holding its hammer outstretched before him like a gift. The voice—a haunting, terrible murmur—grows louder as he stumbles toward it. The moon rises, just as white, just as untouched, behind the statues clothed head, like a halo. With every brush of wind, Sai can just faintly see the curve of a jaw, as perfectly sculpted as the rest of the statue.

He reaches a hand out, fingers curling around the proffered hammer. It’s cold like winter; almost so cold that it burns, sears his palm as he steps closer. Some reasonable part of him, small and denied, screams that taking that hammer means he will never let it go. It’s scalding to his skin, fusing. The terrified animal inside him ignores this, reaching with another hand to grasp cloth covering the face of the God of Vengeance.

Swiftly, but dreamily, as though none of this is real, he pulls it away. And Sai is looking up, into the face of a beautiful young man, smiling ear to ear with a violent, inhuman rage. Eyes, green like it’s alive, with pin pricks for pupils, staring directly into his own. There’s time enough for a gasp—and then there’s no time left at all.

—

For a moment, a soldiers hands reach out. Chain mailed, but gentle. Searching. Desperate. Looking for someone and finding nothing.

Finding nothing.

—

There is one memory they could never take from Ciar.

He realized quickly that’s what the colony was really for. Not mining. Not working ore and gem—it wasn’t even really about punishment, though they loved to punish. It was a game for the Inquisition. It was a test—scholarly pursuit, even. A way to discover how to remake a man. To take everything from him—every thought or feeling he’d ever expressed outside those fenced in walls—and fill him with something new. Something horrid. To see how much of a push could be made, until a man died a completely different soul.

And they’d never won with Ciar.

In the memory, his mother is braiding his hair. Once past his shoulders, his first night they’d shorn it to his scalp. There was still a scar around the curve of his skull where the inquisitor set to the task had done so roughly and without care. Ciar never grew it out further after that, but he could remember the feel of his mothers fingers gently putting beads into the strands, braiding one side slowly and deftly.

She’d sing to him, old warrior songs. But in her voice they had only ever been lovely. He conjures the image of her, in that dusty ruin of abandoned opulence. He kneels in the hallway where he’d been caught, a crossbow bolt deep in his bicep. His mother, brave and tall and fierce and just as lovely as her song. He had promised Sai he wouldn’t make it easy—he didn’t intend to.

And alongside her, he lets himself one last vision of him as well. Slender like a blade with eyes just as sharp; dark and intelligent and judgmental. A narrow face, a pointed chin. Eyelashes flickering against sweat as it pours down his face, Ciar thinks, this is worth it then. Sai likely won’t live much longer, but any hour he can give. A day, even. Outside of the colony with sun. That makes Ciar smile, his horrible, snarling grin. Yes, let Sai die in the sun at least. He can do that. It’s what his mother would have wanted too.

“Something amusing, prisoner?”

There are three inquisitors—one dog. It stands near to its master, black lips rippled as it growls. Foamy spit drips from it’s canines, smearing on the dusty rug beneath it. The inquisitors are swathed in their expensive black cloaks. Mimics of each other, yet one stands in front of them all. A wide brimmed hat sits slightly tilted, nearly obscuring one eye. Even his hair is black, lanky and greasy as it spools over his shoulders.

Ciar grins wider, exposing more of his crooked teeth. He responds in Aer, an insult to all four, the dog and their mothers. Being as none of them speak Aer, they don’t flinch or respond, but the head inquisitor tilts his head curiously.

“You have much vitality for an escaped convict,” he drawls, examining a leather clad hand, as though Ciar is not worth addressing directly. The dog barks once, in response to its masters voice. Then dissolves into more frothy snarls. “Perhaps we did not give you enough to do, back home.”

“Home,” Ciar hisses, nausea welling in his stomach. He slips a hand over his punctured arm, feeling it dead and useless at his side. The hot blood gives him strength. “Fuck you—and your prison.”

A crossbow bolt sticks into the ground in front of him, the distinct twang of the device loud in the hallway. Ciar doesn’t flinch from it, which makes the man wielding it look…annoyed.

“Where is the other one?” The inquisitor closest to the manors excessive entrance asks. The doors are slightly bent inward, a breeze coming from outside soft and sweet smelling. Ciar had made his way opposite of the library, intending to be caught quickly and dealt with slowly. The squirming fear of torture in his belly is hard to ignore,, but he thinks again of those dark eyes. The slenderness of Sai’s wrists, and the delicate circle of scars on his dark skin. Ciar’s hand, resting on his thigh turns to a fist. Surely, he can kill one of them. Just one.

“Fucked off when we got past the fences.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes,” Ciar seethes, eyes narrowing on the inquisitor before him and his ridiculous hat. “Didn’t want that Indaran fuck anywhere near me. Had to take him when I went—you keep us chained like that on purpose, don’t you? Should have used him for food, maybe.” Ciar shrugs his unwounded shoulder, nonchalant. But these are inquisitors, men of the Realm. Men who rape and torture and sleep easy after; men who are responsible for the crisscrossing scars on his back, who delighted in it every time. Men responsible for worse.

They merely stare, their beady eyes unimpressed by Ciar’s lies.

“We could be merciful.”

“But you aren’t, are you?”

“But we could be,” the lead inquisitor says softly, petting a gloved hand between his beasts pinned, black ears. The dog’s snarling only seems to get louder in response. Ciar thinks of it savaging him, tearing at a limb, while he struggles. Dogs. He never really liked dogs. “If you tell us where the other one went, we’ll make your death quick. No pain.”

“No pain?” Ciar asks sarcastically, squeezing his bicep, a fresh flow of blood relenting down his arm, pooling in his hand. “You wouldn’t deny yourself it. Probably all fuck each other stupid after, don’t you?” Again, they stare. Until one of them smiles, his large, square teeth blackened at the edges. And then the fear really begins, a slow creep that kills Ciar’s smile. A horror, both for what he is going to endure for it is sure to be agony, and knowing that when they find Sai, they have no plans to kill him. Too valuable.

He rips the bolt from his arm, intending somehow to use it.

And then the inquisitor looses the dog.

But as quickly as it jolts forward—it suddenly stops. The great big beast goes prone, it’s ears flattening. It releases a piteous whine, it’s entire body shuddering. All of them stare at the creature, reduced from snarling, vicious weapon, to pathetic pup. A smell of urine and a dark, wet circle beneath it and then the dog is up. Sprinting wildly down the hall, directly past Ciar. It makes terrified, yipping yowls as it goes that slowly disappear.

No one says anything. There is nothing but Ciar’s ragged breathing. Maybe the slow drip of his blood from his fingers, if one listens close enough.

And then, the doors burst open.

In the dark, with nothing but moonlight behind from the outside, Sai looks like a shadow. Something white, nearly luminous is clutched in his thin hands. Ciar’s heart rises, treacherous in it’s misguided, uninformed delight at the mans appearance. Unharmed, with black hair dancing in the wind pouring through the now broken doors. Just like the dog; his heart rises and then plummets just as quickly.

“No,” starts as a whisper. And then, yelling, “No! Sai, I told you to—” His words become a strangled sound as moonlight illuminates the mans face. A smile, twisted wide and terrifying. Curving his cheeks to narrow his eyes, which are no longer dark and pretty. But poisonous green, glossy—and brimming with hate. Not Sai, then. Couldn’t be Sai.

“There you are,” the dog master purrs, slowly removing his wide brimmed hat. He doesn’t know something is wrong. That it isn’t Sai standing there, feet spread in a violent stance, his hands gripping a white hammer of all things.

“You.” The word is loud, like a thunder clap, echoing down the long length of the old manors entrance hallway. Ciar rises to his feet, his stomach made of water. His eyes on the hammer as brown hands curl and uncurl around it, in anticipation of violence. “You.”

“Kill the other one,” the head inquisitor says flippantly, tossing a look over his shoulder. That look proves to be his last, as the hammer smashes into the side of his skull, caving it in like it was overripe melon. The body slams to the floor loudly, head cracking further and bursting bloodily.

And then it all dissolves to chaos.

A crossbow bolt flies, sticking in the wall beside Sai, who moves so deftly it seems preternatural. The creature that has become Sai smiles on, thundering toward the inquisitor with a single minded, blood thirsty purpose. He struggles with the crossbow and for the first time, Ciar sees true fear in the inquisitors eyes. It should be glorious; it should satiate every vengeful desire Ciar’s ever had against these brutal beasts, but it doesn’t.

Instead, Ciar has to scramble forward to catch the third inquisitor around the throat before he can descend into the fray. And as he does, they both get to bear witness to Sai’s slaughter.

He lashes out with the hammer. It connects to a black clad chest with a sickening crunch of a sound. Dark, frothy blood—much like the dogs spit—bubbles from the inquisitors mouth as he stumbles backward. Regaining maybe only a few senses, or pure muscle memory, the big fisted man tumbles forward to catch at Sai. To grapple with him. Only the hammer descends once more, cracking across the collarbone this time, snapping the bones like mere twigs. The inquisitor makes a high pitched, squealing sound.

The one in Ciar’s arm struggles and frees himself easily. Every muscle in Ciar’s body has slackened, watching spurts of blood hit Sai across the chest and face. As the hammer hits blow after blow on the twitching inquisitor and his slow dying body. The last one pulls a dagger. As though sensing the blade’s appearance, Sai swivels on swift feet. His body is so beautiful, all elegant lines and shapes, twisted in a soldiers dance.

“Betrayer,” Sai whispers, gripping bloody hands on the marble hammer. The word…flexes the air around him. Rippling the mere air around them. Ciar’s eyes flicker with a barely held on consciousness.

And then, Sai kills the last of their abusers. He dodges every thrust of the blade as though he’s studied them all his life. He parries easily, spirals sideways and thrusts out the hammer—it connects with the inquisitors face, breaking nose, splitting lips. Teeth spurt free, scattering on the ground. He moans, hands raised in a strange plea like so many who had once been before him. Sai, merciless and smiling all the while, brings the hammer down. Twice, with vicious, terrifying justice.

The wind howls through the broken doors. There’s no other sound than that. Ciar falls to his knees, one hand cradling his wounded arm as he stares. Sai—or the creature that has taken possession of Sai—stills and looks to him. The thing behind those once dark eyes is smiling still, but Ciar can see the truth in that smile. Can see that it is a scream. Can see the tears welling up in eyes as green as the forest.

Then he raises the hammer, one last time.

— Sai isn’t sure if it can be called waking up, what he does just then. Maybe it’s like being born, once again. He is there suddenly, conscious, and laying on soft soil. His eyes flicker into a light that seems to be coming from nowhere. A wide circle of it, in an otherwise dark expanse. Foggy, the air around him is dense and wet. He hums a sound, swallowing, rising to his knees. His hands brush across his face, back over his hair, resting on his shoulders. His eyes, which feel weak and unused, like he truly is some new born calf, swim around.

This isn’t a cave. Yet there is no sky. He can tell there is no…end. That there is no ceiling, but there is a darkness above him. Almost like a presence.

There’s a sound as well. A clinking. Chains. The sound sends a ripple of fear through him, propelling him to stand and turn.

He shares this space with an animal. It’s shaggy fur the color of fresh blood, its flank rising and falling in quick, fervent breathes. A hammer, taller than any tree he’s ever stood under, is beside it. And around the wooden shaft, are the chains. Barbed and sinister, glistening wet. They loop around the creature, fastened to a hind leg. Sai, staring for an uncomprehending amount of time, only realizes that it’s a dog when he it turns it’s massive head toward him.

As big as a cart horse, the animal shakes itself all over, a rolling of flesh and fur. It pants, its maw parted, hot breaths rustling the dirt around them. It’s eyes are glistening with pain, wide and green, as large as Sai’s palm.

The creature shifts and makes a terrible agonized whine. Its nose brushes against it’s hind leg. Sai starts forward, hands raised.

“I’ll help,” he says, his voice feeling muffled and underwater. He reaches forward but the dog snarls, it’s lips rippling back over glistening teeth. It snaps its jaws and then cries out, shaking all over. It’s paws scramble in the dirt. Blood, both old and new, all over the poor beast. In puddles around it, sticky on the earth. Sai watches, horrified, as the massive dog savages it’s own leg. Massive teeth snapping around the ankle bone, shaking furiously in a desperate attempt to free itself. Flecks of blood and saliva, eyes white with a rolling madness, more whining from between it’s clamped jaws.

“Stop,” Sai pleads. He feels tears gathering in his eyes. “Stop, please.” But the dog cries as well, its pitiful sounds muffled by the way it devours at it’s own chain bound leg. Tears, impossible for an animal, well in it’s somber green eyes and carve tracks in its fur. Sai’s shoulders tremble. The dog unwinds itself, snapping jaws, snarling, shaking, howling and all he can do is stumble back. Fall upon the ground, hands covering his face, to hide from the poor beasts agony.

“Up now,” a gruff voice says behind him. Before he has a chance to look, hands slip under his arms and haul him standing once more. The surrealistic landscape totters, as does Sai, but warm hands hold him steady. Sai blinks down at a much shorter man. He is broad and shaped similarly; the curve of his nose familiar, the deep set darkness of his eyes and the curls of black hair pinned messily from his face. He wears simple clothes but one fine, gold necklace that disappears into thin cloth.

The stranger smiles, a sardonic thing, with an arched dark brow. Sai collapses, hands touching his forehead. His heart beats thunderously in his throat, as he realizes that there is a God standing in front of him. The very one he had been praying to, not that long ago though it feels like another life. More dream than this inky, strange reality he’s in now.

“Ah,” the Sacrifice says, his voice abashed and awkward, not a thing expected of such a creature. “Don’t do that. Up. Alright, yeah? Up.”

Teary eyed still, Sai pulls himself up. He realizes the sound of savagery has disappeared—and when he glances to the captured animal, Sai sees it laying still. Great, bloodied snout between forepaws, eyes wide and still crying. It doesn’t seem to see Sai at all. A pitiful soft breathy sound exits it’s blood crusted nose. A feeling fills Sai’s insides; a longing, yearning, horrible feeling, a painful emotion that can’t have a name at all.

“I know,” the other God says softly.

“What is it?” Sai asks, his voice quiet amidst the sound of deities.

“It?” Sacrifice asks, his handsome, tired face creasing. His eyes stray to the side, softening, though no less exhausted. When Sai glances there as well, it isn’t the dog anymore. But a man. The painful roil of sadness and yearning remains, heavy in the air with the fog, but no longer an animal; the soldier, the marble soldier made flesh. Sweat slicked red hair plastered to his pale, freckled skin. Blood dripping from his nose and onto the ground, as he kneels there. Head tilted just enough to look from under his lashes. Still hauntingly beautiful, like something untouchable and frightening.

“He,” Sai’s sentence starts. Green eyes never sway from Sai’s God, though. “He was a statue.”

The God of Sacrifice snorts, rolls his eyes derisively, waves a hand in the air. “Fancy shit, yeah? They get his nose wrong. Or—so I’ve heard anyway. Right.” He clears his throat into a fist. “Have things handled here. I’ll—I can take care of ‘im. You need back in your body.” Sai isn’t sure how to answer. Every thought feels more jumbled than the last, syrupy and slow and hard to hold onto. He can still hear the steady, awful drip of blood off the soldier.

“Thank you,” Sai mumbles, unsure what else to say. The urge and desire to supplicant himself again, yet the God looks at him with eyes that so similarly remind him of…family. His older brother or an uncle. Even that soft, near awkward smile, and the tired shadows on his face make him more human than God. But there is a singular sense of power as well; something solid and comforting and otherworldy. Sacrifice slowly pulls a blue scarf from his pockets. Unraveling it between his hands.

Sai whimpers at the sight of it, his dirtied hands reaching out but never touching.

“It was a worthy thing,” the God says softly. Chains rustle beside them. The sound of them drawing taut is a memory that Sai can’t forget. He closes his eye to the sound, but that overpowering emotion of fear and pain and craving feels physically present. The darkness seems to swirl, even behind his lids. His body goes light, as if suspended in water. The upside down feeling of sinking. And overhearing;

It hurts.

Again, whispered once more, I know.

The sound of rustling—clothes and limbs, embracing, a warm burst of something colorful. Then;

—

It’s the sound of birds, first. Sai hears them, even with his eyes, gummy and exhausted, still sealed shut. Birds. Calling to one another, beautiful spring time songs. Then, the rocking motion. Back and forth, and wheels along a hard packed dirt road. Terrified, Sai sits up, gasping in a heavy lungful of clear, sweet air.

“You’re awake.”

He’s not in the closed in space of a cell wagon; dirt and urine and blood and sweat and jam packed bodies on all sides of him. Hot, fetid air, thinking only of the next time there would be rain and he would be allowed to stand under it. No—he isn’t there. Instead, the back of the wagon has a clothed tarp, parted slightly at the front and back to allow air and the sight of the sky. Blue and pure. The crates he’s laid across even have quilted blankets, scratchy from old age, but more luxurious than anything he’s touched in years.

Sai looks beside him, where Ciar sits. A knife glints in his hand as he slowly pars slices of apple.

“What?”

“Hit your head on the way out the window,” Ciar says, snorting his vicious laugh. He takes a slice of the apple, spearing it and holding it out. Sai’s trembling, weak hand reaches forward and takes the slice of fruit.

“How did—where are—”

“Carried you,” the northerner explains, biting into a slice of apple. It crunches crisply between his crooked teeth. A little rivulet of juice runs down his chin and it is so distracting a sight that Sai has to look down to his own, pale bit of fruit. “Made it to a road. Found some of your people, of all things.”

“My people?” Sai looks to the wagons front, where a couple sit. Dark brown like him. The woman turns, her creased face lined softly with age and warmth. She smiles; her hair is tucked away neatly with a blue scarf. Trembling hands slowly bring the slice of apple to his lips. Sai catches the briefest glimpse of his own fingers—and the dried blood underneath his nails.

“Probably should sleep more,” Ciar rambles, crunching further into the apple. He tosses the core out the back, lounging back on the crates like a predator cat freshly satisfied. Sai’s heart beats an unsteady rhythm in his throat as he eats the slice of apple. “Hit your head hard.”

He’s lying, Sai realizes. Ciar gazes out the back of the wagon, his pale throat trembling. His jaw clenched. No, Sai thinks, the fruit sweet on his tongue. Sweeter than anything he’s ever tasted. Big idiot. The voice in his head turns fond. Thinks he’s protecting me.

But he does as Ciar suggests. He lays himself, curved to fit his height, along on the crates, hands tucked up underneath his cheek. His eyes closed just enough that he can still see Ciar, the fluttery image of him shadowy behind Sai’s dark lashes. He finally relaxes, head lolling back, a smile on his face that looks—even to Sai’s barely opened eyes—finally happy.

[hauntedjpegcollection]

life saving wound

wc: 3650 au: fantasy au 2 ch: xavier, benji

Night descends on the army camp like a midnight blanket, dampening everything, muting light but for torches and pitiful camp fires. Conversations turned down to whispers around the barely there orange glow, tired faces illuminated enough to show that exhaustion. Boot steps of soldiers crossing camp soft on damp soil, muffled. The only sound that of a snoring guard, standing out front the surgeons tent. Impressive that, pulls Xavier up to a stop to stare. When the corporal clears his throat—another intrusion into that dark realm of night after a battle—the guard snaps to a harried attention.

“Wasn’t asleep,” he says quickly, battering an eye with a closed fist, making an innocent expression. A spear leans on his shoulder, looking more toy than weapon in the sleepy mans cradled grasp.

Mercifully ignoring that, Xavier asks, “This necessary?” He gestures to the guard and the large tarped in area for medical. A light drizzle of rain—mere suggestion, not enough to kill a fire or force a soldier into his tent early—patters against the sloped oilskin roof of it. The man grunts, shifting on uneasy feet and gesturing behind himself with a jerking thumb.

“Inventory’s been a bit off lately when they run it,” the guard explains with a hapless shrug. “Captain don’t want no one botherin’ the medics neither. Know how that can be.” Xavier rubs at the scar beneath his eye, which itches fiercely no matter what he does. The guard coughs into a fist, brows tilted apologetically. “Not that I’d accuse an officer of that—not at all.”

“Easy,” Xavier says, laughing and raising an open palm. “Got an old wound that acts up in the rain is all. Hoping for something to help me sleep.”

“Oh aye,” the guard says quickly, gesturing to his knee. “Ask for talla root.”

“Yeah?”

“Mum runs an apothecary,” the guard says with a proud puff of his chest. “All’s well, sir, I’ll mind my post.”

“Thank you,” Xavier says with genuine gratitude, clasping the mans shoulder before slipping through the cloth entrance. The smell is clean and slightly bitter inside, with a hint of smokiness from the gaslamps lit around the wide open area. To the immediate left, nothing but the cots for wounded. There’s no wailing, no tortured sounds of anguish and for that Xavier can only be grateful. It’s quiet, a murmured suggestion of a few soldiers, being kept awake by the medics, comforted by company.

To his right, Xavier darts through a series of makeshift cloths walls. He isn’t in search of one single thing—not talla root, or a medicine to ease sleep, or anything to help the infernal itching under his eye—but a person.

Benji stands in front of a beaten metal pot, one hand on his hip while the other stirs soaking, boiled bandages. In this small, cut off area, the air is hot and near damp, the smell of medicine stronger. It brings a heated flush to Benji’s cheeks, the color rich and dark. His hair is scraped back from his face and tied in a messy knot, curls dropping here and there to cling sweatily to his skin. Xavier’s chest feels scooped clean, breath struggling to find a place to live. His hands flex at his sides, a sudden broiling sensation crisping at his skin.

The medic glances over his shoulder, dark eyes widening just a fraction. Enough to make Xavier’s throbbing heart stutter happily. He smiles. Benji frowns.

“You’ve got blood on your cheek.”

“I do?” Xavier pats at the scar beneath his eye, finding it slightly damp. “Hell.”

“Told you not to—”

“Benji, it itches—”

“Yeah? Like I don’t know about scars,” Benji cuts him off with a snort and an eye roll. The gentle reminder of the mage’s arms, the criss cross of magic’s evidence across his skin makes Xavier’s heart shudder once more. His stomach fluttering with a feeling he shouldn’t have, Xavier palms the back of his neck. He takes a small step closer. The lighting in this small, enclosed area feels intimate and delicate, the lantern light highlighting the points of Benji’s features. His eyes, black and shadowy with exhaustion, follow Xavier’s bashful slink forward.

Only when he gets closer does he realize Xavier has no idea where to put himself. Where to put his hands, where to stand—what to say, what to do. There’s a strong beating current inside his veins, a desperate ache to be closer to the mage that he doesn’t think has anything to do with the magic Benji had put inside him. Merely—it’s desire. A very, very strong desire that Xavier thought he knew what to do with.

Not a virgin, he’s well equipped with flirting and everything that comes after. Only, Benji standing there, curly hair sweat slicked and skin shiny at the base of his throat—where his beard becomes small, short hairs, a strangely erotic sight—completely unbalances him. Xavier’s eyes flicker instead to the boiled bandages, a stark reminder of everything existing outside of the tension between the two of them.

“Could get you something for it.” Benji says, suddenly breaking Xavier of the emotional hyperfocus. He blinks and then his smile is giddy and too big, creasing his cheeks, placing small dimples on them.

“Talla root?” Benji’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “Guard out front—” The medic mage snorts and flaps a hand, face scrunched in a mean sneer. It only makes Xavier feel like kissing him more—like taking his face and smashing his own against it, devouring that expression like a hungry beast. Instead he fingers the scar under his eye again.

“Quit,” Benji snaps, taking him by the elbow. He turns to the bandages, shoving the metal pot aside to rifle through more of his supplies. Everything is scattered across a low, oaken table that’s scarred more than Benji must be. It’s leg wobbles with every movement. Xavier could fix that. If he weren’t a corporal in an active war that he doesn’t really understand or want to be part of at all. He’d be good about fixing the table, so Benji never had to shove anything under the leg to keep it even.

The gaslamp soft light illuminates the skin at the back of Benji’s neck. The sweat glistening underneath the line of his hair, curls hanging from the knot tied up and out of the way. Xavier—captured and absolutely seduced—curves himself around Benji, chest to the mage’s back. He’s taller—much, much taller—but he feels like a pond reed in comparison to the other man. Still, his chest flattens against Benji’s back, curling closer, his hands smoothing along Benji’s considerable biceps and down his arms, cupping elbows. His nose tucks into brown, inviting skin. He inhales deeply.

“You smell so good,” Xavier murmurs, his breath skating across Benji’s skin and fluttering curls of black hair.

“Can’t expect me to believe that.” Benji’s gruff reply comes out shaky. His hands flatten onto the oak table in front of him. The talla root forgotten—all of his supplies in front of him completely ignored. His hands, Xavier notices, are broad, with small nicks and scars across them. He recognizes the ones between thumb and index finger; blades drawn too quickly nipping at sensitive skin.

“No, you do,” Xavier laughs, tucking his nose closer, brushing against warm skin. “Thought you said you could trust me.”

No words are exchanged then, as Xavier’s large palms slide down Benji’s arms. One clasps his forearm, feeling the tense strength there. The tautness in Benji’s body making a part of Xavier yearn for nothing more than to soothe it away. The other hand, however, continues it’s pursuit. Fingers, long and deft curl under the edge of Benji’s sleeve. Rough callused fingertips search and find the edge of a bandage—one discrete and small, wrapped around a cut made only a few weeks prior.

Benji’s breathing comes heavier as Xavier presses them closer. Closer together and closer to the table. The bandage is pressed softly, fingertip searching below it for that life saving wound.

The moaning sound of his name makes Xavier feel like a hunting blood hound on a pursuit, his nose still buried deeper into the side of Benji’s throat, his other hand holding harder and harder to his forearm. Feeling his heart beat pulsing. Thickness to the air makes it hard for him to breathe too and his cheeks hurt, of all things. His cheeks hurt from how wide his smile is, his lips parted, his breathing harsh directly on Benji’s skin. His tongue could so easily draw a path, taste beads of sweat—

All at once, the corporal steps away, yanking himself and his hands back, eyes blown wide. Benji, looking like a ruffled cat whose furs been rubbed the wrong way, glances over his shoulder with nearly hurt eyes. The expression changes when he too hears the sound of boot steps, their cadence hinting to a hurried, insolent arrogance. Benji hisses, scrambling across the table top for sheaths of paper. Shoves them into Xavier’s hand, pointing to shelving in the corner. Supplies. Inventorying.

Stepping toward it quickly, Xavier scrubs a hand across his mouth, heart thundering painfully against his ribs. Eyes skitter frantically over rows of jars, small, cloth packages holding precious supplies. Bothering the medics. Of course he’s bothering a medic—him, an officer no less. Can’t help he’s a healer. Stupid, he feels stupid and lightheaded with it and then, suddenly, the footsteps are directly behind him.

Not one man, but two. An officer, tall and broad and clearly the owner of the clipped, hard boot steps. The other—an aide, an assistant, a scribe?—short and gaunt with a pale, harried expression and smudges of of exhaustion under watery gray eyes.

“What?” Benji’s resumed task, pulling bandages from water and wrenching them dry. The water splatters the ground around him, droplets on his white tunic, little dots of charcoal gray now. Benji—Xavier’s caring, gentle handed mage—stares at the newly appeared sergeant with an expression so fantastically annoyed and less than impressed. “Need something?” The rough insinuation in his tone makes all the hairs along Xavier’s skin stand on end, chest constricting as if it’s one of those flimsy little bandages being wrung out roughly.

Benji, he thinks with an inward groan. Benji, why do you fast track ways to piss people off?

“Bandages,” the aid blurts out, as the sergeant opens his mouth. Tall and sloppily put together, on second glance the officer looks like he needs bandages. Deep red stains over the shoulder of his navy coat (one nicer, but matching Xavier’s), down the arm, to bloody crusted fingers. He’s sturdy enough. Tall, with the appearance of a soldier, not like an outfitted officer who was merely given rank. He also sneers a scarred lip curled back, black eyes narrowed. He’s pale. Long featured. Maybe northern like Xavier. The name comes to him then—Sergeant Bier.

“Think you can manage that for me?” his voice is tight—maybe with pain—as he steps closer into the small supply corner.

“Naw, these just for show,” Benji replies, holding up a strip of cloth bandage. It drips. There’s a stunned pause that hangs under the pitter-patter of rain on the oil tarped roof over top them all. Then Xavier is scrambling off a cloth bag of bandages and stepping forward, holding them aloft.

Unfortunately, Bier recognizes him as well and cuts him off before he can even say anything.

“Wolffe,” the sergeant growls, brows flattening with derision. A summary of how he feels about Xavier is within the contempt of that single word. Wolffe. Like a curse. Xavier’s hand wilts, but a quick glance to Benji’s ever present glare—directed right at the sergeant—makes him extend it once more.

“Here, sir. Bandages.”

“Ah,” the aide rounds the sergeant. His lips twitch at the corners, almost like a nervous smile. Xavier’s oddly grateful for it. “Thank you. But—but, I was hoping that—I was trying to bring the sergeant—his shoulder, you see. I don’t think he can reach it himself—”

 “Don’t tell them what I can or can’t do, Killjoy.” The aid nods furiously, stepping back without taking the bandages, which sit uselessly in Xavier’s outstretched palm. “Look, I’ve found one them—” Bier makes an off handed gesture to Benji, whose expression has frosted over darkly. Winter’s kill. “Be on your way, and tell the captain it’s being looked after.”

“Yes. Right away.” There’s a moment where Killjoy just stands there, staring blankly at Xavier. Then he scurries away.

Sergeant Bier yanks a wooden chair toward himself. It scrapes along the ground, a knife’s along against Xavier’s spine. He tucks the bandages toward his chest, staring down at them, a foolish embarrassment heating his cheeks. Bier unloads his considerable bulk onto the chair, legs thrown outward as he heaves a burdened sigh. Benji doesn’t move at all; like a stone statue, holding a bandage between his hands in a fashion similar to an assassin with their garrote. He exchanges a glance with Xavier.

Then Benji approaches.

“Took a lance to the shoulder.”

“Mm.”

“Can’t believe they let lancers even get that close. What’s calvary for? Fifth army never had this issue.”

Xavier, pretending to be back at the task of inventorying, has to grind teeth together. Calvary against lances. Stupid. Go back to the fucking Fifth then. He drags a finger across the parchment, finding the words smudged and messy—Benji’s handwriting. Something about that makes a small spark of affection blossom in his chest, vulnerable and soft. Benji’s handwriting—tiny, scrawling, messy and incoherent. His index finger trails a sentence—he can pick out a word here or there. It’s a letter, Xavier realizes. That feels too personal, so he fumbles with the supplies instead.

“How long since you changed this bandage?” Benji’s voice is flatter than usual, stripped of his sardonic humor, or sometimes soft gruffness.

“That why it’s tugging all my fucking chest hair to get it off?”

“Plastered on with blood, yeah? What else you expect it to do?”

Later, he regrets it, but just then Xavier looks over his shoulder. Absolutely nothing could have stopped the immediate surge of jealousy that makes his belly hot. His throat closes, a wrinkle on the bridge of his nose appearing from the sudden grimace on his face. Benji wraps a long, swooping bandage from side to over the sergeant’s left shoulder, careful with the application. Deft fingered, attentive. Black curls hanging across his brow. Bier sits there, legs out, head tilted back, as if enjoying the attention. For a man so hell bent on doing it himself, he seems only too happy to let another patch him up.

“Weren’t in the fighting, were you, Wolffe?”

The sudden attention makes him jump, fumbling Benji’s letter. He smooths it carefully, placing it on the table face down. Clears his throat with his fingers still spread across the parchment and table.

“No. Captain gave me the saboteur team. Not front line.”

A fond memory of Benji’s expression at the news makes him blush then; when he’d explained that he and his few soldiers would be far, far from the front lines, Benji had…melted. There’d be no other word for it. He’d softened all over, a sigh of pent up relief between parted lips. Brows smoothing, the corners of his lips lifting, eyes gentling. It had been such a small thing, such a briefly there glance, but it had meant so much to Xavier.

Bier spits on the floor, which pulls Benji up from his bandaging.

“Barely soldiers, those ones. Can’t even remember the last time any of ‘em have pulled a sword.”

“Yesterday morning,” Xavier replies coolly. “We do drills, same as the others.”

“Well, what a good officer you are.” The pause lets Xavier know that Bier doesn’t really think that. He then gestures one flat, wide hand toward the supplies. “Can get back to that. Bit surprised they have you doing it.”

“Ah…Someone has to.”

“Surprised you can read, is all—grrk.” Bier jerks with the sudden seesawing motion of Benji’s hands, snapping the bandage on tightly.

“All done.” His teeth click together audibly on the sentence, nearly as violent as his hands tying of the bandage. It has an opposite affect than intended, Bier’s attention suddenly sharp on Benji—appreciative. His eyes flicker up and down, rapidly, settling on dark brown hands wrapping up the remainder of a bandage. A painful sensation settles into Xavier’s stomach; into his hands, which becomes closed fists, looking at the way Bier is looking at Benji.

“What is your name, healer?” Bier asked, his voice a faint purr. When Benji doesn’t answer, the sergeant leans forward, hanging hands between his knees.

All at once Xavier is reminded of gutting fish as a young boy. Once, he would have been a fisherman, like his father. He would have caught haul and brought it to the docks, he would have helped load catch into baskets, flipping and jerking their lives away until the animals suffocated. He would have helped, with a gutting knife, remove their insides. Had that traveling group of soldiers not conscripted him, had his life not careened so far off balance—yet found balance, somewhat here—he would have been at home with a gutters knife.

Instead, all he has in the short dagger against his breast that his hand itches for. Instead, he breathes out a short, furious snort that goes unnoticed by the sergeant and his flinty stare toward Xavier’s healer.

“I said—”

“Heard you,” Benji drawls with a sneer.

And before anything can get worse, Captain Sotto brushes underneath the clothed entrance, dusting hands together.

“Ah, Bier, perfect.” The captain claps his hands together. His uniform is only slightly rumpled—hints of a mail hauberk underneath—his yellow eyes piercing in the candlelit darkness of the modest infirmary. Sotto, dark and handsome and regal the way Xavier had always pictured military officers to be, smiles at all three of them. Underneath that smile is something wise, a hard glint that implies he’s too aware of the tension he’d sawed through with razor teeth. Xavier’s knees go only slightly boneless.

“Cap’n,” Sergeant Bier gives a lazy salute that Xavier delivers with much more precision—closed fist to chest, slight bow. Benji does nothing, but continue to wrap the bandages.

“First,” Sotto steps through the entrance fully and then gestures to it. “G’on, Benji, you don’t need to be bored by all this.”

That Sotto is on first name with a medic, one of probably dozens, surprises Xavier. The familiarity behind the gesture and the tone makes him wonder if there’s more to that—but his thoughts pull toward Bier’s satisfied expression, aimed nastily toward the departing medic. Xavier watches Benji leave and his departure creates an absence in the corporals chest, something physically aching. He soothes a hand there, his blood swimming with anxieties. He’d not liked that look from Bier—he’d liked even less how quickly Benji had followed someones order.

Like gutting fish, Xavier feels some core part of himself awakening under Sotto’s stare. A good dog, maybe. Loyal—with a good salute. He swallows a thickness in his throat, folding the letter on Benji’s table and sliding it beneath the rest of his scattered items.

“List of casualties was empty,” Sotto says slowly, folding hands in front of himself, as though he is the foot soldier at ease. Head tilted, looking at Bier, he smiles still. “I’m a fan of that. Whatever tactic employed made that work.”

“Quick retreat,” the sergeant replies with a dark chuckle. He runs a hand back and forth over his newly bandaged wound. Slips fingers underneath the tied off edge to loosen it with a grimace—Xavier finds a sick sort of satisfaction watching that.

“Xavier.”

“Yes?”

“Could you find your alchemist for me?”

“Benny?” Xavier can’t help but smile. “Need something blown up, sir?”

“Oh, always,” Sotto says, with a laugh and a small warding gesture. Something Xavier thinks is unconscious, something many do when talking about Ben. He gives his captain a nod and then pauses on his way to the clothed entrance. Technically, he should acknowledge Bier…only he doesn’t. Xavier glances the mans way—his eyes two large, haunted ponds of green ice that seem to make Bier cringe, thick neck creasing, chin lowered to his collarbone—and then he steps into the main surgeons tent and away from the two officers.

—

He doesn’t look for Ben at first.

Xavier should—he knows he should, and that loyal dog that sleeps within his heart, all too ready to be called good and rewarded for it, knows he should. But he doesn’t.

Instead, Xavier spends half the hour wandering in search of Benji. He checks all the places he knows the medic lurks; pond side where a hatchling hord of baby ducks have made a home and often squawk at him for bits of food, the modest tents of housing for the healers, his own far off in the corner, where he must have placed it himself. A makeshift drink spot, where Benji never really goes to drink, but sits alongside companions with a sleepy, fond smile and a cigarette dangling loosely from his lips. He checks all of them and then more—and then finds other medics and the few soldiers Benji speaks with and asks them all the same;

Have you seen Benji?

And none have.

At some point, he has to give up the search, but there’s another dog inside him that doesn’t like that either. He shoves feelings beneath his rib cage, leaving them there to suffer and examine later and finds the alchemist instead. But he’s lonely all the while he does it.

[hauntedjpegcollection]

safehouse

wc: 3850 au: college au ch: xavier, benji

Xavier wakes up with all the finesse of a street dog kicked to alertness. That’s to say—limbs everywhere, giant gasping inhale, eyes snapped open frantically (probably a whimper, similar to the metaphorical alley stray). His heart doesn’t immediately catch up with the movement of his body; it stutters instead, thumping sideways and awkward inside his chest as he sits up.

He huffs another gasp, sliding a sweat slicked hand across his face—and God, all of him is sweaty. Disgusting. The sheets stick to him, the blankets bunched between his overlong legs. The window’s open, but it’s so early that the light pouring in is hazy and gray, like badly steeped tea. Xavier’s hands clasp behind his neck, his breathing stumbling out in a haphazard rhythm. A bead of sweat slips into his eye and he digs knuckles into the socket almost frantically at the feeling. His eye. He’d nearly lost it in the dream…

“Mm?”

The body beside him stirs at all the commotion. A cool, dry hand slips across his thigh and then higher. Settles on the notch of his hip. The fingertips belonging to that hand are callused and rough and delightful sending a shiver across his entire body. Xavier takes the hand, pressing it to his cheek, feeling instantly comforted by Benji’s presence.

Then the dream catches up with him once more and then he’s not entirely sure what he’s feeling.

“Time issit?” Benji’s voice is scratchy and partially hidden, his face still pressed into a pillow. Xavier doesn’t say anything. He isn’t sure he can muster words. Instead, he stares. Still holding his boyfriend’s hand, cradled against his face. Able to feel the calluses from drumming on the curves of Benji’s fingers. Their distinct difference in body temperature is usually so soothing. Wasn’t a rare occurrence for Xavier to make big, pretty eyes and ask Benji to rub his much cooler hands across Xavier’s back; caressing sore muscles that were tight and tired after days spent hunched over car engines.

And it’s not…not soothing. Just…

Xavier distracts himself finding his phone with his free hand, tapping it awake. A cracked screen and a picture of the two of them illuminate him briefly.

“Five oh three.”

“Disgustin’,” Benji grumbles, turning onto his side with a frustrated huff. Then he rolls onto back. His arm drapes over his middle. The subtle rise and fall of his chest makes Xavier’s fear risen hackles slowly recede. He brushes Benji’s knuckles over his lips, remembering the tactile sensation of these fingers but gloved. He remembers the taste of the nitrile, the feel of pain in his cheek, the taste of blood, spit rolling down his chin. He remembers whimpering and moaning and begging for it, the hurt and the cruelty and the passion.

His shoulders jump as Benji’s head lolls to the side, eyes blinking open. There’s no garish scar bisecting one of them. No nasty little sneer. There’s just—Benji. Morning Benji. Sleepy Benji. Xavier’s Benji. Dark eyes blinking awake, the hint of a smile in the curve of his cheek, his dark facial hair soft and alluring. No gloves or scars or guns or combat boots. Xavier’s mouth is dry and he’s suddenly painfully aware of his erection, straining heavily in his boxers.

“Had a weird dream,” he admits, smiling and tucking that smile shyly behind Benji’s hand.

“How weird?”

“Oh, fucking weird, Benj.”

There’s flashes of his lover; the sinister and terrifying shine of Benji’s eyes, the dark swell of arousal in Xavier’s belly, the anticipation and the fear and the lust and the strange love he’d found in it all. Underneath the viscera, underneath the strangest fucking dream he’d ever had, whatever version of them that existed theatrical and apoplectic in his subconscious, was still very much in love. It’s the only thing that makes his shoulders relax slightly.

He isn’t holding the dream against Benji. He is holding it against himself a little—because what the fuck? Why dream that?

“That sort of weird?” Benji’s eyes glance down to the outline of Xavier’s cock, pressed painfully on display against thin fabric. A small dot of transparency highlights the overwhelming need for action. Xavier’s cheeks warm, tingling a path down his throat, across his collarbone. The hand he’s holding against his mouth turns, fingers sliding over his lips, over his jawline.

“Need help with it?” Benji pauses and considers. Then, “Want a hand?”

“Oh my God,” Xavier snorts, falling backward into the bed, listening to Benji’s soft giggling beside him.

“Was a good one.”

“No, it wasn—ah. Okay. It was—so good.”

His eyes flutter shut, enjoying the sensation of a palm closing around him. Xavier’s toes curl with it, calves tightening, chest rising, hands knotting into the sheets underneath him. When his head falls to the side, lips parted, Benji’s mouth is already there to greet him. To kiss him through the lazy, morning handjob. It’s not at all like the dream, which is a balm to the strange guilt he files away to examine later.

After he cums—it doesn’t exactly require that many strokes and Benji’s sort of perfected the technique by now, since they’d moved in together two months ago—they don’t even get out of bed. He apologizes to the shirt he finds on the floor to clean up his stomach and then—well. Then they roll themselves together, a cocoon of blankets and body parts and breathing and soft murmured words until they’re asleep again.

Xavier’s almost late to therapy because of it.

—

The red stress ball has a satisfying thwak of a sound when it connects with Xavier’s palm. Thwak, thwak, thwak, in between sentences and words and huffs and sighs. They’re twenty minutes into an hour and a half long session that has been promised to go longer if it’s necessary. He hopes it isn’t necessary.

“I’m never taking a tolerance break again,” Xavier complains, palming the ball and tossing it up in the air a few times before pitcher throwing it to his therapist.

Dr. Wright catches it smoothly, passes it to himself behind his back, a fancy trick before tossing it back to Xavier. Wright isn’t the first therapist Xavier’s had. In fact, he found that therapy was a lot like trying to date and there could be many first awkward dates. And many first awkward therapy sessions. He’d settled on his third try, mostly out of exhaustion, but also because Dr. Wright had a framed photo of a hockey player on his desk and that felt socially weird enough for Xavier.

For a while he didn’t think he could have a therapist that was a man. One of the few things he’d learned in his bumbling first tries with his other therapists was that Xavier had an issue with men in authority roles over him. Everyone was, at the end of the day, his dad. And Xavier would do pretty much anything for the approval of his father, which would lend absolutely nothing to therapy. Xavier couldn’t get a winning score in therapy. It wasn’t how it worked.

But it explained a lot.

Dr. Wright couldn’t be further from James Wolffe if he tried. Besides being short and Black, he wasn’t an asshole and he was gay. Xavier’s father was a lot of things, but he certainly wasn’t gay (or Black).

“So, you plan on smoking again?” Dr. Wright asks, catching the ball once more. Like most questions from a therapist, this feels like a trap, but Xavier is less anxious than he used to be. Traps have worked before. Caught him by surprise and worked information out of him he’d otherwise have taken to the grave. But it felt safe here. That was important.

“Dunno.”

Xavier waves a hand to indicate he’s done with the stress ball. He throws himself down into the plush chair that sits cocked sideways to Dr. Wrights. Comfortable, oversized, and smelling faintly like Wright’s gorgeous German Shepherd, it is the most relaxing place in his at home office. Xavier’s therapist lives in a fancy place downtown, a stone’s throw from a restaurant that would be too expensive even for his five-star chef sister. He takes clients at home and Xavier’s health insurance somehow covers it, but only for once-a-month sessions.

Any additional would be billed directly to him. Dr. Wright thus far, has given Xavier three sessions outside the monthly and somehow the bill was sort of…lost in the mail, he claimed.

“Dunno is not a complete sentence.”

“Okay,” Xavier huffs indignantly, crossing slenders arms over his chest. He slumps in the chair more. “Since Benji and I got a place together, I don’t feel like smoking as much. I like being—yunno. Like, present, around him.” He wonders when he’ll stop blushing at the mention of Benji and not just because Xavier had gone into explicit detail about the terrifying sex dream he’d had of his boyfriend just moments prior. Xavier is always blushing about Benji in therapy. Something about talking so intimately about a partner in front of another man was always going to be uncomfortable, probably.

Dr. Wright blamed Catholicism. Openly. And often.

“I just don’t wanna have any more weird fucking dreams,” Xavier mumbles, sheepish eyes flickering to Dr. Wright as he settles into his own chair. He’s dressed like one would expect from a therapist—cardigan with patches at the elbows, dark denim that’s rolled at the ankles and loafers to match. He’s handsomely older, with a short, square beard and kind eyes. Has a black band for a wedding ring and a silver bracelet that Xavier has never seen him without.

“Let’s talk about the dream,” Dr. Wright says, lacing his hands together and placing them on a crossed knee.

“I thought we were talking about the dream.”

“Mm,” his therapist hums, tilting his head. “You were talking about the dream. Now I’m going to talk to you about the dream.”

Xavier groans, head falling back against the chair. But he doesn’t disagree. That was another thing about Dr. Wright that he liked (and another thing that distinctly set the man apart from his dad)—he was okay with being told no. He was okay when Xavier didn’t want to explore a topic; he let things lay. He didn’t always push. Xavier always felt it was a therapist’s job to dig. To get underneath the muscle and pry out whatever lived there, toxic and rotting that was threatening the whole limb. Maybe it was, but Dr. Wright didn’t treat therapy like that sort of surgery.

And because of that, through those methods (of gentleness that he is very unused to from authority figures), Xavier has formed a deep trust for the man. Like an anxious, beaten stray that needs a gentle hand, Xavier has found himself relaxing.

So, he doesn’t raise a concern. He doesn’t say anything or change the subject. He sighs instead. He looks at Wright and flops a nervous hand back and forth wordlessly agreeing. As much as it’s probably going to hurt.

“Xavier,” Dr. Wright says his name softly, sitting and leaning forward in his own chair. It’s one of those nice kinds that would always be too expensive for Xavier to own; leather and with a quilted blanket thrown over it. Decorative pillows. He’s thrown one of them before, angrily, before sitting down to cry. Xavier takes one now, tucking it instead to his stomach. He meets Wright’s eyes with wariness. “Did you know that it’s very common for sexual abuse survivors to sort of—act out whats happened to them?”

Xavier’s throat closes, a cold sweat suddenly pooling under his arms. The lights in Dr. Wright’s at home office are suddenly far too bright, creating little dots of color everywhere. He lifts his hands, smiling in a twitchy way.

“But I’m not—”

“I know,” Dr. Wright continues, his tone measured and soft. “Your ex partners—”

“Didn’t!” Xavier interrupts, his voice going thin and a little shrill. “They were just assholes.”

“You don’t have to convince me,” Dr. Wright says dryly, arching an eyebrow. The sweat continues pouring, coating the back of his neck now, where his hair has grown out too much. “And I’m not implying anything. I’m just telling you. Morgan and Everett were terrible people. Awful fucking people, Xavier. You deserved better.” They’ve been down this road, though. Xavier knows there’s more to it. His breathing hitches and he presses the pillow harder to his stomach. “I’m saying, that sometimes when people go through something, they’ll think about it. A lot. And it creeps into their life. And I’m not saying it’s always healthy. Or always good. But it always normal, Xavier.”

He pauses. His therapist pause. Instead of replying, Xavier only nods. Sure. Normal. Nothing about that dream felt normal.

“I think it says a lot, in fact,” Wright continues, leaning back in his chair, hands hooked around a crossed knee. “That Benji was in the dream. Don’t you think?”

“Why?” Xavier doesn’t look up. The pillow he’s snatched has a very interesting paisley pattern to it. But it is also a very ugly orange color—like cat vomit or something.

“Because you feel safe with Benji.”

It’s too simple a statement. Too broad. Xavier doesn’t just feel safe with Benji he feels—home. He feels like he’s driven a car for too long and gotten out, wobbly, just finally waking up to realize that he’s home. He feels like some strange muscle in him has been aching for years—maybe his entire life—and is only now finally relaxing. He doesn’t feel safe, he feels protected. He feels like he could walk on inch thin ice and nothing would crack underneath him. That he could wake up and say anything and Benji would just smile at him. That they can have every single argument a couple can have, and cry and scream and be angry and it’ll end up okay. Xavier folds his hands around the back of his neck, realizing tears prickle at the edges of his eyes. Yes, sure. He feels safe. He feels very safe.

“Safe enough that even in a dream maybe slightly motivated by BDSM—who am I to say?—that the dominant party materializes as your current partner. And you know, Xavier, a lot of people have sex dreams about strangers.”

“Gross,” he croaks out, laughing. “No thanks.” Dr. Wright smiles that ever patient, therapist smile. Xavier thinks it might be somewhat fond too. Like Dr. Wright does actually like him outside of the bill.

There’s a moment of silence, where Dr. Wright doesn’t push and Xavier doesn’t say anything. He lets feeling return to his hands, which have been holding himself so tightly it almost hurts.

“You know, you don’t have any obligation to tell Benji either.”

“What do you mean?” Xavier’s eyebrows pinch in concern.

“It was just a dream. If you want to keep your dream to yourself, there’s no shame in that either. It can just be a weird dream you had on a random Tuesday, Xavier.”

He thinks about that.

—

Then, he immediately tells Benji.

It spills out of him, in such explicit detail he starts to feel ashamed of himself. In ways he wasn’t when he was telling Dr. Wright—but he’s telling Benji now. Benji, who in the dream, finger fucked his bloody mouth with gloves on. Benji who was scary and cruel and still so Benji in a hundred different ways. Xavier laughs a few times, but it’s awkward and bumbling and he gets caught up in his words and gives himself a headache. A pulsing feeling behind his eyes.

Because for a moment, Benji seems…upset. His brows turn upward, his mouth thins, a muscle in his jaw feathering. He listens and doesn’t interrupt, and in the beginning had smiled at the idea of a sex dream, lengthy and theatrical. But the more unravels, the more he looks uncomfortable. Worried. Unsure. And then finally, guilty. Like he’d actually done any of it.

Until.

“And uh, Dr. Wright said—” Xavier cuts off there. They’re seated on their bed together. Their bed. Blankets shared, too many pillows when Xavier only needs one and Benji needs more. Especially when Xavier isn’t there and something else has to get crushed into his chest to be held. It smells like Benji, it smells like Xavier too—both of them. They wake up in this bed, they have sex in it, they watch Youtube on their phones, because they haven’t gotten a second TV for the bedroom, because who can afford that?

They’re sitting there, together. One of Benji’s hands resting curled around Xavier’s knee. He stares at it. His eyes go fuzzy, feeling the pressure building up again. He scratches nervously at his throat.

“He said—uh, well. He said some stuff about—About, uh.” He takes a rattling, wet breath. Benji scoots closer.

“What did he say?”

“Something about,” Xavier pauses, staring at Benji, feeling his eyes getting bigger and bigger and unable to stop them. “About how sometimes people who have been—like hurt before, or something. Uh, people who have been—I mean this is his word, right?” He laughs awkwardly, throat tightening. “But people who have been abused before, they sort of act that stuff out. But you know, for me, it’s like. It’s you.”

Jesus, he isn’t saying any of this right. He feels so stupid. He huffs angrily, palms over his eyes.

“Like it was you, in the dream, because—because you would never—and so my brain thought—like it thought of that stuff, but it gave me you. So it didn’t even hurt, it just felt good. Because it was you.” He can’t peel his hands away to look at Benji. He can’t stomach the thought of having hurt him, in anyway, through some stupid dream. It’s their fault—it’s them, who hurt him and made him weird.

Gently, Benji’s hands find his wrists and pull them away.

His eyes are shiny. Dark and beautiful and always a little tired. Xavier doesn’t know what to do, but that feels fine. In this exact moment, it feels fine not to know what to do. Benji—who holds his wrists so softly—leans in. Kissing distance.

Instead, he says, “Do you remember that word, from before? You said it, we’d stop whatever we were doing.”

Xavier blinks, rust colored lashes catching a few stray tears. He laughs, unexpected, like a bubble bursting. He sniffs a few times, nodding his head. Benji tilts his chin down, his eyes darkening meaningfully.

“Seven. Right? It was seven.”

Benji touches their foreheads. His black curly hair tickles against Xavier’s skin. He leans back. He says, “Good boy.” And every thought Xavier’s ever had puffs from existence. Benji pulls himself up from the bed, leaving Xavier dazed, hands limp in his lap. Mouth slightly ajar as he watches Benji cross their bedroom. Everything feels a bit blurred at the edges, but soft…almost comfortable. He watches Benji bend to rifle through the bag he carries to and from work. Watches him find a box of gloves and tug a pair out.

“Oh,” Xavier whispers. “Oh.” The snap of the gloves does something to him, a dark pool of arousal swelling in his lower belly. He leans back on the bed, braced by his hands. Benji approaches, wedged between happily splayed knees to accommodate him. Xavier distantly wonders why his cheeks hurt so much—and later will realize it was the smile, the excitement palpable on every inch of him.

—

They had argued about where to put the bed at first.

Actually, they’d argued a lot when they’d first moved in together. It seemed an easy occurrence as they both struggled to fit together work, life and each other. Every fight was made up of course, sometimes in the very bed they fought over. Sometimes over dinner, with their foreheads together, hands touching in different soothing and utterly non sexual ways. Sometimes they fought and made up in the car, or outside of their friends place during a party, or in a convenient store where when they’d remind each other they were trying to quit smoking.

They’d gotten most of it out of their systems within the first week, before they both, stupidly, realized they were just afraid.

Afraid like they’d been before, when they’d both known they loved the other and couldn’t risk losing them for fear of saying anything. It had been a big step. Living together was something. Meant something.

And they’d argued about the damn bed, because Xavier liked being under a cool open window. And Benji would lose his fucking mind if the sunlight hit him in the morning. They’d compromised by putting it directly in the middle of the room. Threw off the fung-sway according to Matilda, who complained every time she saw it.

But it also made the bed feel like an island. Xavier likes that.

He lays there, one arm thrown over his face, the other splayed to the side. His chest rises and falls, heavy and quick and desperate for air. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get enough, so out of breath it’s almost hurting. His skin is sweat slick. His hair clumps to his temples, to his neck, in ways he almost always hates. Xavier’s breathing becomes a soft and satisfied humming that vibrates within him, like happiness.

He instantly snatches a hand as fingertips dance around his nipple.

“Dude,” he mutters, eyes opening to glance at Benji. The sunlight never reaches him—as per his own request—but he also looks equally gorgeous in the afternoon’s near midnight darkness. Eyes alight with mischief. He’s just as sweaty, breathing just as hard, and there’s an incredibly smug tilt to his expression. He wiggles his fingers in Xavier’s grasp. They nearly touch the reddened raw sensitive nipple that they’d been aiming for. Instead, Xavier brings them to his lips. Kisses them.

“Was just checkin’ on it.”

“Think you checked on it plenty.”

“Naw, that was biting. Different sort of thing—biting and checking.”

“Please,” Xavier laughs, eyes closed again. “I can’t cum again, Benji. I’ll die.”

“Can’t have that.” It’s whispered close to his ear as his lover curls around him, one bare leg sliding over his own. Every part of him feels sore and used; beautifully so. His arms are tired, his thigh gives a sort of tremble here and there, a delicious aftershock. His shoulders burn, his neck is just as savagely kissed as his nipple had been. He knows a few of those love bruises will last longer than they maybe should. But it’s the sort of sex exhausted that is like a work out that went too long and hurt a little, but feels amazing.

He never had to use the word. He’d never felt pushed to the point of saying it. It was Benji, after all. Everything—even when it got rough in a way that was so different than usual—was still so safe.

[hauntedjpegcollection]

gay card

wc: 1934 au: college au ch: xavier, lark, benny, benji

“I don’t wanna have this argument with you, man.”

“It’s not an ar-argument, because I’m right.”

Xavier’s sighs with exaggerated defeat, hands thrown in the air, hip cocked against the kitchen counter. He gathers the energy to argue with Benny—a man who is very good at arguing—and says, “Look, I just don’t think armpits are hot.”

Benny makes an affronted noise, finally dog earing a page in his book and tossing it down on the pub style table. It was a stolen piece of furniture they’d hauled as a unit up to the apartment a year and a half ago, with knife marks and graffiti covering it. It was home to the three of them, more than the apartment, because they so often gather there—as they are right then. Lark sits across from Benny, early morning scruffy hair messy and eyes bleary with sleep. Despite being the youngest of the three friends, he seems a great deal more mature, bowing out of the conversation with his nose in his phone. His eyes still blink as if in slow motion, though, the night prior clinging to him in every way.

 “You are denying a f-fundamental part of yourself, Xavier,” Benny protests, folding thick arms over his chest. He’s arguably the most awake of them all; but it’s also likely he’s just not slept yet, either. Benny kept strange habits and one of those habits was not having a habit involving sleep at all. “Lark, help me out.”

“No,” the runner answers quickly and simply. His slim, pale thumb flicks his phone screen—if someone were to peer over his shoulder, they would see a social media feed. A loop of people’s various complaints and diary entries interspersed with the very pretty pictures of his girlfriend. Pictures he was trying not to linger on, else he start checking who is interacting with them and putting himself in a sour mood all before breakfast. “Don’t start a queer culture lecture, it ended badly last time.”

At that, all of them turn to look at a crack in the kitchen wall; an indent made by Benny’s shoulder from a collision. Xavier having shoved far harder than he probably meant to, during a nasty spat that could have stopped before it started if Benny was any better about not pressing a point when he felt he was in the right.

Which was most of the time.

“I’m not lecturing,” Benny says, in a tone that suggests otherwise. He tucks fists in front of his head, then wiggles fingers outward. His blue eyes are so wide, the pale irises are full circles. “I’m expanding y-your mind.”

“I feel like expanding your mind shouldn’t happen before ten thirty in the morning,” Xavier complains.

“Okay, imagine a h-hot guy.”

Unbidden—and quite simply, immediately—images of Benji swim into Xavier’s conscious. Benji after rugby practice, using the edge of his shirt to wipe sweat from his face. Benji taking cautious sips from a pint of beer, wincing at the pale ale foam that he doesn’t really enjoy. Benji glancing up at him from under thick lashes, smiling at a stupid joke Xavier had made in an attempt to see that smile. Benji. Crouching on the sidewalk to pet an alley cat that hated everyone but chirruped to see him. Benji. Benji. With his rich, brown skin and his defined, curving nose. Benji. Broad palmed and thick legged, his deep voice and Benji—Benji, standing in Xavier’s room, asking what he wanted to do today, with the simple implication that it would be done together.

“Uh,” Xavier mumbles, scratching a shy finger down the bridge of his long, thin nose. “Okay.”

“Now picture,” Benny continues, in a whispering voice, standing from the table and moving his hands in front of Xavier’s eyes like a hypnotist. “Picture th-that hot guy laying in bed.” Oh no. “And he’s shirtless.” Oh. Fuck. Oh no. “And h-he’s got his arms up, hands tucked behind h-his head.”

Benny slaps both hands on Xavier’s shoulders, his face deadly serious.

“Where do you look first?”

“Not his fucking armpits!”

“You f-fucking suck, Xavier, you know that?”

“Please,” Lark groans, smacking his phone face down onto the sacred breakfast table. Benny’s half filled mug of coffee that he doesn’t need jumps with the force. Lark pinches the bridge of his nose, expression twisted with annoyance. “Please. Til broke up with me last night, can you guys shut the fuck up?”

Xavier and Benny share a glance between them then—a unifying look, that bonds them despite their differing opinions on mens armpits. It’s one of pity and also understanding that both of them should probably leave the apartment, or they’ll be there for the entirety of the couples fight and reconciliation.

—

Xavier’s still thinking about it hours later, though.

Doesn’t help that hours later, he’s laying on Benji’s bed, staring at Benji’s ceiling, while Benji sits at a meager desk and taps angrily at a nearly broken laptop. His hair falls messily in several directions, a hand continually scruffing through it in frustration. He sits there, grunting stormily, mumbling under his breath, a knee bouncing. Sits there in sweatpants that are cotton soft and thin, charcoal gray and flimsy. In an oversized band t-shirt that’s had the arms all but ripped off.

The rubik’s cube he’s been slowly solving slips from his hands and smacks into his brow bone, making Xavier yelp.

“Good?” Benji asks, looking over his shoulder. His wild hair nearly obscures that single, dark eye. That look pierces through Xavier’s stomach, filling him with heat and butterflies and also pain and agony and a horniness that feels nearly illegal.

“Good!” Xavier grins widely, flashing two thumbs up. Benji snorts, shakes his head and turns back to his work. Xavier doesn’t resume the cube; he would have solved it by now if he were taking it seriously. Benji always had a random one in his room, for whenever Xavier needed to sit and think and move his hands. Only Xavier can’t sit and think and move his hands right now. It’s only making it worse. He tosses the cube to the end of the bed and tucks his hands behind his head. That pose suddenly makes it much worse, so he folds them over his stomach instead.

It simmers hotly, a feeling that overtakes his legs and up through his chest. Xavier feels as though he is suffering a terrible curse that Benny has explicitly put him under for crimes of being…not gay enough. Which feels contradictory to the thoughts he’s having about the man just a foot away from him—foot, Xavier thinks, snickering to himself. There’s a joke at Benny’s expense somewhere in there…

“Sure you’re good? Quiet.” Benji leans with an arm slung around the back of his chair. It creaks as he rocks back, tilting until it’s on two legs.

“I got a question for you.”

“’Aven’t got an answer.”

“Fuck off,” Xavier swings a leg off the bed, kicking at Benji, who snickers to himself. He swats at the socked foot that threatens a chair leg. “It’s Benny’s fault.”

“Pfft. Even less of an answer for that one, mate.”

“When you figured out you liked guys—” Xavier pauses, swinging his attention to the ceiling, his cheeks pink. “What did you notice first?”

The stretch of silence cools the warm, syrupy feeling that had replaced his blood. Nervous, he glances Benji’s way, to see him hunched back over his anatomy textbook. The muscles in his arm look sculpted, his tattoos black on his dark brown skin. So many of them, so many hinting at more he can’t see. His shirt, hanging open, revealing the curve of his pectoral. The slight peek of dark underarm hair. Maybe it was sexy. Was it sexy? He liked the hair on Benji’s forearms and his stomach—the heat returns, pleasant until he realizes his friend still hasn’t spoken.

When he sits up, thinking something might be wrong, Benji shrugs his shoulders. A curl of black hair falls messily into his face. Benji flips a page in his text book.

“Always been partial to arms.”

Xavier pauses, sitting there, staring at the back of Benji’s head, as if he’s going to memorize all those messy strands.

—

“Eighteen—nineteen—twenty—”

“Is he asleep?”

Xavier lowers the weight in his hand until its resting on his thigh, though his arm trembles at the movement. Lark—one leg bent, sneakered foot in hand for a hamstring stretch—points at a figure laying on the ground beside them both. Benny’s chest moves in a soft, even rhythm. A sweatshirt lays over his face, hands folded across his stomach. His shirt has slid up slightly to reveal his pale tattooed stomach, the legs of a spider and the hint of a handgun. There’s no snoring, but it’s sort of obvious that he’s asleep.

“Yeah.”

“Dude, gross. These floors have every version of bacteria a place can have. It’s a fucking gym.”

Xavier hefts the weight in his hand up, curling his arm and breathing out through his mouth. Beads of sweat linger at his hairline. He’s lost his rep count, but maybe he should just go until his biceps hurt. More than they already do. He switches the weight into his other hand and then hefts, curling his arm, muscle bunching in protest. Benny shifts on the ground beside him, groaning and flopping arms above his head. The way they bend stretches the fabric of his short sleeve shirt, tightening around considerably thick muscled arms.

“Why,” Xavier says, huffing through his mouth, curling his arm once more. “Does Benny have—any muscle mass—when he does nothing?” Lark switches legs, looking like a bleached flamingo. The stretch is so easy for him, he barely needs to move; just pops a foot up and balances. A duo of girls wanders by, flirtatious in their staring, but he pretends not to notice them. The public gym was always a gamble for Lark, on who would recognize him.

“White trash strength,” he explains with a sneer.

“Fuck you,” comes huffily from underneath the sweatshirt draped over Benny’s face. Xavier tilts his head like a curious dog, examining the tattoos that disappear underneath the edge of Benny’s shirt at his torso, at the middle of his biceps. Unlike Benji, he has seen everything Benny has to offer in terms of body art—and most of it was rather pretty, even if he’d gotten it to make himself look scary. Xavier puts the toe of his sneaker to Benny’s arm, slowly pressing down.

“I can see your pit hair.”

“Pretty h-hot, right?”

“I wish I was dead,” Lark comments, slouching himself to the ground as well, upper body stretching out between his legs, elbows resting on the ground. “Matilda wants me to come with her to Pennsylvania on break and—” Lark cuts off, hands wrapping around the bottoms of his sneakers, stretching forward. He stares at Xavier in annoyed pause, then frowns.

“Is that Benji’s shirt?”

Xavier’s face flushes and he quickly sets the weights down. He hadn’t forgotten that his was Benji’s—he’s never even heard of whatever band it is—but he didn’t realize how obviously not his it would be. It just fits nice; oversized and comfortable and familiar. Benny tears the sweatshirt from his face, sitting up and laughing like an electrified hyena.

“Oh,” Benny snatches at Xavier’s calf, yanking him closer, eliciting yelps. “Y-You’re s-so fucking gay, man.”

Well. So long as he earns the card back, he’s fine with that.

[hauntedjpegcollection]

one of the few

wc: 7k au: new fantasy ch: xavier, benji

When he lays there, in a field of grass, with the sunlight warming even his eyelids, Xavier can almost pretend he’s at sea. That the wind whispering through the field is passing over endless, blue waves. Though he’s flat on his back, hands tucked behind his head, he can imagine that he’s rocked softly by his father’s boat; just as everything was when he was a child, salt curling his red hair, sun kissing freckles onto his skin. Regret doesn’t touch him here. He doesn’t let it.

But he isn’t home. Hasn’t been for a long time—hasn’t seen his family either, and won’t. The army is going in the wrong direction for it, but he has to be thankful for that. The war isn’t anywhere near The Isles. He thinks of his father’s boat, docked. Lonesome, waiting for him, the waves calling him home. In the dreariness of the wet countryside and it’s never ending forests, sometimes Xavier has to pretend.

He crosses and uncrosses his ankles, then folds his legs lazily once more. It’s only mid day, the sun the warmest it will be as summer finally comes to an end. The soldiers long for it; the marches are hell in the heat. Xavier knows better. This isn’t his first winter away from home and he can still remember the brutality of all that desolate, cold whiteness. No chance to even pretend it’s the sea then.

Whoever approaches must think he can’t hear their footsteps. Xavier’s nose twitches.

The ground is soft and the grass is even softer (nothing like the rocky beach he’d grown up beside), but that doesn’t muffle the noise of boots entirely. All soldiers are outfitted with a few pairs, though most have worn through the toes of one by now. Xavier’s hold on for dear life. It was hard enough requisitioning clothes that fit his lanky frame, those over long legs. Boots were a luxury this deep into the war.

A dark green eye opens to examine the toe of one of those very boots, the double wrap of cloth he has around it to hold the sole together. Only a flash of steel catches his attention, bright against buttery country sunlight—then Xavier is gasping and rolling onto his side.

The steel slides almost noiselessly into the ground, half of the sword sunk into the dirt. The remainder sways with the force behind the thrust.

Xavier pops from the ground, a hand darting to his belt knife, tossing it to his other palm quickly. It’s menacing, with a curved tip that he’d used to gut fish when he was a child. Lips pulled from his teeth, the tired, youthful soldier looks more like a mangy dog than a young man. A few strands of his hair fall across his brow, tickling long eyelashes.

“Think you were going to get away with it, then?”

It takes only a moment to realize that the sword driven into the ground is his own. Xavier had taken it off and laid the weapon beside himself while he’d indulged in his half nap. The embarrassment of that—his own fucking sword—seems to snap him free of the feral posture he’d adapted. Hackle raised shoulders droop, his knife hand similarly flagging. Xavier blinks, staring at the stranger in front of him.

They are more than a few inches shorter than him, but most seem to be. Especially here. Xavier’s height was something of an oddity amongst the other soldiers. Many were farmers and those men were broad and short; much like this one. Xavier doesn’t recognize him, but the patch on his shoulder is that of a medic. A red flower, sewn delicately. Medics had their loved ones put the patches on for them and whoever had done so was steady handed. Their cloak is closed with a broach of loyalty to the same prince Xavier fights under, though the clothing is sloppy and worn.

The stranger folds arms across his chest, accentuating the width of him. A closer look puts him at likely the same age as Xavier—young, possibly too much so to be fighting a war that had nothing to do with him. Or, Xavier was fighting. This one, by the flower motif, was not fighting at all. Hell, he should be, Xavier thinks, eying the way a beige tunic strains at the strangers biceps. He wears no chain mail over top, the way Xavier does. It’s one of the few things that makes the reedy red head slightly fuller looking.

“Get away with what?” He cocks his head, reaching for the sword slowly. It wouldn’t have gone straight through him, especially not with the mail. But it would have fucking hurt. The stranger narrows dark, tired eyes. He has shadowy impressions beneath them, bruises that hollow the sockets. Xavier feels a slightly uncomfortable warmth across his cheeks, down his throat, over his chest. Making eye contact suddenly feels very, very difficult.

He yanks the sword from the ground, cleaning it along the inside of his elbow. No it wouldn’t have hurt. The medic hadn’t actually been aiming for him, but rather the space beside him. It would have scared the piss out of him—fighting instinct had been the only thing saving him from that embarrassment.

“Whole camp is up and movin’.” The medic has an accent. Something rural. His voice is low and raspy, lip curling into a mean little sneer. Xavier finds himself staring at that, head tilting further. He fumbles his sword belt back on, cinching it tight and double looping the strap. The medic looks—impossibly—angrier about that. He has rich, brown skin, thick and smooth looking facial hair. Curly black hair sits messily around his face, skimming his shoulders. “Think you just get to lay out here while we do all the work then? Shockin’. Real shocking.”

Xavier finds himself smiling. It’s as warm as the sun he’d been pretending under. That heat turns into a flush that pinkens his pale cheeks and throat.

“Came out here to kill me for being lazy?”

“Wouldn’t have killed you,” the medic snorts. “Would have ruptured something you don’t want fucking ruptured, though.”

“Guess you know all the important parts, huh?”

“They put all the smart ones in infantry, yeah?”

A bark of a laugh escapes him and it’s a pleasant surprise. The medic doesn’t smile, but something in his expression changes. Like something loosening. Just enough to make Xavier step forward. He towers tall and willowy in comparison to this new stranger. Xavier usually hunches around people shorter than him; a sergeant will always scream for a straight posture until that posture makes him look small. Xavier lets himself stand straight, one hand lazy and insolent on his sword hilt. He wets his lips and they curl into a mischievous grin.

“You’re jealous.”

“Of?” The medic raises a dark, thick brow, expression stormy and snide all at the same time. His black eyes are thickly lashed, narrowed and sleepy. “Not me that nearly got skewered because of a nap.”

“If you want to stay out here with me and skirt duties, I wouldn’t mind.” Xavier lifts his sword, the hilt touching the edge of the medics cloak, flicking it outward. A brown hand swats at the sword and Xavier retreats a few steps, laughing playfully. “I could teach you to tie that properly.”

“What? S’tied fine.” The medic frowns. His cheeks turn a shade darker than brown. He glances to the cloak, suspicious.

“It’s wrong around the shoulders.”

“You’re wrong.” The medic pauses. “In the head.” He stops himself once more and then looks satisfied, a curling grin in place of the sneer. When Xavier laughs again—shocked and enamored all the same—the satisfied expression wipes itself away. Dark features reassemble to moodiness, chin tilted down and eyes annoyed. Without entertaining Xavier further, the medic turns on a booted heal and begins stomping through the field.

“Wait!” His own shoddy boots skid on the grass as he rushes forward. The cotton wrapping dirties further. “Who are you? We’re in the same camp. I’ve never met you. Are you new?”

“Think because you’ve not met someone they’re new? Lazy and self important hand in hand.”

“Ouch.” Xavier lays a hand over his chest, lanky legs able to keep up with the shorter medic easily. His grin stretches ear to ear. He feels oddly out of breathe. “I’m—”

“Wolffe. I know.”

“Oh?” Xavier’s voice peaks with pleasure, oxblood colored brows rising on his pale forehead. When the medic glances over his shoulder, Xavier’s ego is punctured brutally and leaks steadily. “Oh. If you know my name, I should know—”

“Wolffe, you shit.”

“Sergeant!” Xavier yelps, scrambling past the medic toward the imposing man standing atop a small knoll. His fingers catch on grass as he ascends to find the killing field the war camp has spent the last month living on. It’s as the medic’s already said—half the camp is deconstructed, turning from a (depressing) livable space into a buzz of caravans, platoons squared for marching and nervous horses stamping their hooves.

“You go off one more time, Wolffe,” Sergeant Taleb seethes, raising a gloved finger. Xavier is envious of that leather; his hands had bled painfully his first few years as a soldier, when he’d trained with the spear. Now they’re as hard as stone, but still able to get fucking cold.

“Won’t happen again, sir.”

“It sure fucking won’t, Wolffe. I mean it this time, no matter the captainlord likes you. I’ll take you out back myself. Like the dog you are. Fall in.”

He’s weathered worse, but the medic, snickering his way off to the side, makes Xavier’s insides curl and his face darken from pink to red. He mumbles more to himself than his sergeant, straying in an opposite direction of the stranger. Xavier can’t stop himself from stealing glances, until finally the beige tunic and red wildflower disappears amongst the crowd.

“Going to get killed, Xavier.”

The poor soldier screams, jumping into the air as another laughs beside him. The sullen younger boy has the hood of his cloak up, shadowing much of his pretty face. Even in the summer, Lark had kept the cloak nearby. His grin peers out from underneath the rough spun cloth, black eyes narrowed accusingly. Xavier could strangle him with his bare hands, but he loves the boy too much. Instead, he loops an arm around Lark’s shoulders, pulling him close.

“Did you see the medic?”

“The one Taleb sent after you?”

“Aw, fuck,” Xavier groans, putting his cheek to the top of Lark’s cloaked head. What an impression, he thinks morosely, his eyes straining for another peek at that mass of curly black hair, that dark, handsome face. His stomach tightens, a strange fluttering up into his ribs. “You know him?”

Lark’s silence is enough of an answer. There’s an odd surge of powerful jealousy that grabs hold of Xavier, icing the veins along his throat, pinching painfully somewhere underneath his jaw.

“They call me a dog,” Xavier mutters, pushing Lark’s head away.

“It’s not like that.”

“I have a reputation and you’re the one snatching up the pretty medics—”

“I said, it’s not like that,” Lark hisses, stomping after Xavier, who makes his way toward their platoon. He’s pleased to find most things already put away; likely, they’ll just have to take down their captainlords tent. It was only a nightmare because the man kept so many maps. And Xavier hasn’t been able to see a single one of them. He’d love to get a look. Just one, to run his fingers over the ink and stare at the patterns. He’d been good with maps, back when—well, before this.

“Do you remember a winter ago?” Lark keeps close to him, quiet.

“I try not to.”

“Right, we all got sick. Not enough fruit.”

“I still don’t buy that,” Xavier says, pointing a finger at Lark as he moves toward the tents. He’d be roped into this duty anyway, on account of his height. Might as well start before someone started barking at him. But I’m the dog. He snorts and shakes his head. “I don’t understand how not eating fruit got all of us sick. Think it’s more likely the grain soiled.”

“Xavier.” Lark manages to say his name like a curse, same way folks will swear by a God when they stub a toe. All it does is make the red headed soldier grin lazily, throwing hands into the air, acquiescing defeat. “Everyone’s scars started opening up, bleeding again. Ghost of past battles and all; they pulled in all those clerics, thought we was haunted and all. When I was taken into the surgeons tent, it was him who helped.”

Lark looks like a black fletched arrow stuck in the ground, cloak up as it is, draped over him. He’s an intimidating figure like that; cut slim and suspicious. Xavier can remember the terrified teenager he’d scooped up off the battlefield a few years ago—Lark had joined a day before and a day later was seeing real battle. He should have died. Xavier hadn’t let him. And he never would.

“He wasn’t weird about it, that’s all.”

Back then, Xavier had thought Lark snuck into the army pretending to be man—wasn’t strictly necessary. There were women amongst their crew, but some people preferred it for safety reasons, he suspected. Lot of bad could happen during a war, not always on a battlefield. It had taken quite a few conversations—repeated and sometimes verging on furious—before he understood Lark wasn’t pretending anything.

He simply was.

Xavier scratches with one finger at the long bridge of his nose, eyes back to wandering toward the eastern side of the camp, where surgeon tents are slowly being packed away. Something settles into him, some sort of knowing that he can’t explain; only that he thinks the last few years have been wasted, if that medic had been here the entire time and Xavier’s never spoken to him. Not even once? What game was fate playing?

“So.” Xavier puts hands to his hips. “His name?”

Lark tilts his chin down, smiling from underneath the hood of his cloak. He looks downright villainous like that, and Xavier can almost understand why some of the soldiers keep a distance from him. Well, the soldiers, but there were plenty of women in the camp that certainly didn’t. Xavier whines, low in his throat, his hands tossing back into the air.

But Lark only turns, his cloak snapping in the wind as he laughs and keeps the secret to himself.

—

Xavier can only see out of one eye, but that’s enough. He stands there, amidst ruin, smoke rising and pluming into the air. The sky smears charcoal gray, dotted with black; swarms of crows and ravens come to pick over the dead. Xavier wishes he couldn’t see at all. Even though the fighting is done, he can’t bring himself to sit down. An old sergeant is in his ear telling him ‘locked knees is fainting waiting to happen’ but he can’t move. A certain hungry numbness eats away at his insides, piece by piece, until he feels his guts are nothing but hollowness. The heart thumps on, loud in his ear. A testament that he still lives.

His hands are cold. He can’t look away. There’s moaning out on the battlefield, the carrion cawing.

“We did it.” The young man beside him cradles a broken hand to his breastplate. It’s crusted with blood and dirt, chain mail blown wide on his bicep where an arrow had punctured through. Field surgeon had dug it out and the soldier had just kept going—they all had. Like hounds on a hunt, with no master to recall them. Xavier, leading them, sword in hand with his bloody eye.

I must have looked like a monster, he thinks and even that doesn’t stir some semblance of emotion.

Xavier sways. Then he falls backward, arms splayed out beside him. The young soldier—Ghen, that’s his name—yelps in surprise. Then screams for the surgeons.

—

A fresh bandage is wound around Xavier’s head, crossing gauze over his eye. He won’t lose it—good thing too, the surgeons assistant had said, smiling shyly. Too pretty to lose. Xavier had wanted to feel anything in reply to that. For the hunger inside him to shift elsewhere, to a lusty appreciation for her pretty smile, or her gentle hands. Instead, he’d sat there, dutifully quiet and appropriately docile as his other wounds were looked over. It was the eye was the worst, but even that will heal.

“You did fine work out there, son.” Captain Sotto sits at his desk, one hand brushing through thinning grey hair. He has dark skin, but clear yellow eyes and the angular face of a northerner. Handsome, though he’s older and bears more than a few scars. They share a same slimness to their features; Xavier had inherited his father’s long, distinguished nose and thin lips. His mother had gifted him his sage colored eyes. Sotto’s yellow hints at a mother that doesn’t match his other features as well.

Despite everything, Xavier swells under the small bit of praise. It makes him stand straighter, push out his chest. There’s an ache all over, from head wound to sprained ankle, but it doesn’t matter. He can’t help the pathetic tatters of his uniform, or the gauze around his head, but he can stand properly.

“How did you know that we’d be flanked?”

“Didn’t, sir.”

“You saw them?”

Xavier shifts. He glances uncomfortably to the ground before raising his eyes to stare at the maps pinned to the tent walls behind Captain Sotto’s desk. His sister had always let him draw in the rivers and the oceans. He liked the cross hatching work done along coasts. Xavier brings his hands together in front of him, breaking his perfect posture, wringing them together.

“I saw the opening is all. I noticed we were weaker on our western side and I thought that if I were to—if it were me…trying to break apart a charge. I would go for that weak point. The trees only look like they’ll choke you in somewhere rough, but they’re sparse along that area.”

“You take naps out there, that’s how you know?”

His teeth click together, cheeks burning bright. A bit of the pride ebbs away. Xavier doesn’t answer. He isn’t a good liar to begin with, and he has a sense that the captain would know better anyway. Still, Sotto smiles wryly, a hand cupping his jaw as he examines Xavier with those feline eyes.

“I am impressed.” Sotto slowly rises, hands folding behind his back. The man is a good few inches shorter than Xavier, but when he approaches, he doesn’t seem small in the slightest. Though he’s slight in build, he is imposing. Candles flicker across the tent walls, across both their faces. Xavier stares straight ahead instead of meeting Sotto’s stare. “You’re from the north.”

“The Isles, sir.”

“Raiders?”

“No.” Xavier’s teeth click once more, his lip curling back, the bridge of his nose wrinkling. “My da is a fisherman, ma’s a laundress at the manor inland.”

“Small folk, then.”

He tilts his head, glancing down at himself and then back to his captain. Xavier smiles, his lips crooked and a little too wide for his face. “Actually, we’re a bit tall in my family.” Sotto laughs at that, surprisingly.

“Common, though.”

“Yessir.”

A silence swells between them. A guard outside the tent coughs. Xavier isn’t sure what he’s meant to do, as Sotto continues looking up at him. The captain breaks eye contact first, swiveling on a boot and crossing toward his desk. He rummages for a moment, before he comes back to Xavier. Without speaking, he reaches for the edge of Xavier’s military collar, pressing a pin there. He sweeps a satisfied hand over the young soldier’s shoulder and steps back with a decisive nod.

“I’ve promoted you to Corporal.”

Xavier glances down to the pin on his collar, the single bar of an officer. He continues blinking at it until the words catch up and then he’s stepping forward.

“Sir, are—”

“Don’t,” Sotto says, raising a finger as he sits back down at his desk, “ask me if I’m sure. The first thing you learn as an officer is to not ask that.” The older man folds his hands placing them on the table amongst papers and a plate of half eaten food. Xavier’s stomach flips over and over itself, his hands feeling unattached and awkward. His smile grows. “I do not do things without being sure.”

He flicks a hand toward the tent flap, where the guard outside coughs once more.

—

It’s near dark as Xavier steps from the tent. The sky is a purpling sort of bruise above them; beautiful and soft. She isn’t the sky he remembers from childhood—that was golden and burnt red, as the sun touches the ocean’s horizon—but he likes this sky too.

He darts away from the tent, trying to hold in all that energy that now threatens to tear him apart at the seams. It zips up and down his limbs, erratic inside his chest like an animal caged. The camp is as lively as he feels, makeshift stalls erected, soldiers milling. Tents full of people spill out, bursting alive. A drink. Yes. That’s what he wants. To celebrate; to find Lark and their strange alchemist, to sit and drink and bask in the glory. The pain in his eye feels secondary to the praise, to accomplishment, to recognition.

The soldier—now corporal—pulls up short from his pursuit when he notices curly dark hair, tousled from the wind. Black, unruly, falling around a brown face. The medic sits on a roughly made stool in front of a barrel used as a table, housing candles for light. He has a sketching pad open on his knee, clutched in one hand while he draws with furious, short strokes. His brows pinched in concentration, mouth set in a grimace. The candles flame makes his dark skin an even richer color.

Xavier’s breath catches.

I want him, he thinks, the thought suddenly maddening. Almost, he forgets the promotion. Almost, Xavier forgets everything that isn’t tunneled to this stranger. He stares for a moment longer, admiring the curve of the other man’s nose, the furrows between his brows. Then he startles himself to attention. He hastily ducks into a larger, circular tent. Inside, rowdy soldiers drink to their hearts content. They’ll neither be marching nor fighting tomorrow. Most of soldiering was waiting around and then being yelled at for waiting around. Drinking and camaraderie was the only thing they had.

“Two, please,” Xavier tells the pretty young man at what would be a counter in a tavern. Instead, it’s a block of wood across more barrels, set up like a bar. Shelves of haphazard design and poor build stand behind him with liquor and drink lined up. The youth grins at Xavier, filling two large tin cups with foamy ale.

“Discounted tonight,” the young man says in a rough, southern accent. “On account of the winning. Here’s hopin’ you do it again, yeah?”

The boy pours a few fingers of ale for himself, taking a quick shot of it before turning on to the next crowd of soldiers. They’re boisterous, excited, but spill good coin onto the wood. Many soldiers know better than to piss where they drink; a good ale house—if the tent could be called that—was important. It would stand the night and the young man tending the drinks wouldn’t find much trouble for himself.

Xavier breaks back into the night, finding the lavender sky darkened to an almost midnight purple. He takes a moment to stare up at it; almost drunk, he feels like the night has slipped away from him. Just a few hours ago, he’d been staring down death, his own and so many others. When he finally pulls himself away, Xavier jumps to attention.

The medic has disappeared.

—

“Mm, saw ‘im go tha’ way.”

“Saint, thank you.” Xavier holds the ale up like a cheer and the older woman laughs. She waves a hand in the direction she’s indicated; a little excuse for an alleyway between two larger ramshackle buildings. These fortifications are easily assembled, and brought back down when necessary. Stabling for horses and an armory for the weaponsmiths. A war could not run without swords and horses, after all.

The last swell of summer must be happening this very night, because sweat pools along Xavier’s collarbone, down uncomfortably across his chest. He doesn’t regret tossing his coat and mail off, stripping down to tunic, trousers and boots. He only regrets that the tunic has more than a few spots of blood. The moist air croaks around them, the sounds of forest life surrounding their war camp. He thinks a pond must be nearby, for the sound of toads. A birds call through the night, one lonesome loon.

Xavier dashes behind the make shift building.

“Hey!”

The medic pauses, hands shoved into the pockets of his trousers. He similarly has more than a little blood on him from earlier. He would have been on the field after the charge, tending to those soldiers. Xavier can’t remember the one who had come for him. The medic doesn’t turn. Xavier steps closer, a bit of the ale slopping over the rim of the tin cup and wetting his hand. He licks across the back of it, staring eager eyes at the silhouette in the dark as it slowly turns. Though it’s night, the mans face seems perfectly lit for Xavier to see every inch of his annoyed expression. The cautious bunch of his shoulders and the tension in his body.

“Congrats.”

“What?” Xavier blinks with surprise. The ale on the back of his hand is sticky against the night time air. The sun has fully left them now, plunging the camp into darkness and nothing but the wind. The only light comes from torches around the camp, but there are none near them. The darkness feels…intimate.

“Promoted, yeah?”

“You heard that already?”

The medic jabs a finger. The pin on Xavier’s collar—of course. He wasn’t used to that being there. He’d get a new coat soon, Xavier realizes. One with an actual military rank on the shoulder. His face warms and he’s suddenly glad for that darkness. Though, if the other man had been able to see the pin, he likely can see the pink on the high points of Xavier’s cheekbones.

“Thought maybe…would you want to celebrate with me?”

“Thought you could start givin’ orders early?”

“Fucking—” Xavier snaps, huffing a furious breath, biting off a further curse. “I’m not—I just wanted to—Fine.” In one quick throw, Xavier downs a cup of ale. It takes only two practiced swallows and the cool alcohol feels heavy the entire way down. It explodes dizziness inside his skull. Xavier clears his throat, licking foam from his lips and then stepping forward. He thrusts out the other cup, glaring. “At least take it. I paid for it, you know. With my fancy officers salary, suppose.”

For once, the other mans expression is that of surprise and not derision. His thick brows are raised on his forehead, lips parted. Xavier meets his stare and doesn’t relent, the ale held out in front of him. Then he bends, head bobbing forward as if he’ll suck the foam from the top of the proffered drink, but it’s suddenly snatched from his hand instead.

“It’s Benji.”

“Huh?”

“My name,” he—Benji—snaps, taking a sip from the tin cup. “Eugh, this might as well be piss.”

“You, uh,” Xavier grins, “know a lot about the taste of piss?”

“Fuck off?” But Benji laughs. He laughs and it’s full chested, husky and beautiful. Xavier’s knees weaken, his stomach pooling heat in his lower belly. He steps closer as Benji takes another sip of the beer, frowning down at the drink. He licks foam from his upper lip, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. A soft throb starts up inside Xavier and it has nothing to do with the injuries from earlier.

“Benji.”

“Hm?” he looks up at the sound of his name, his eyes tired and suspicious. “What? What?”

“No, it’s a good name.” Xavier fingers the edge of his bandage, his hand still sticky with the ale. “It’s cute, I like it.”

“Well,” Benji looks down, frowning further. It does nothing but make him look more handsome, somehow. “Go sit there, alright?”

“Why?”

“Sit.” Benji gestures toward a crate of supplies, lid half off. Xavier fixes it before settling himself down, long legs extended in front of him. He drums his hands on the crate underneath him, between his thighs, smiling broadly. The one pint of ale surely wasn’t enough for him to be so warm, so lazy headed. He watches, curious as Benji rifles through the tool kit as his side, pushing aside the sketch pad, digging for another canvas pouch.

He approaches, with a stretch of gauze in his hand, another soft pad of cotton. Xavier tilts his chin, head back, staring up at Benji as he stands there. For a moment, nothing happens. Nothing, save for either of them looking at each other. The only sound is a slight rustle with every breath Xavier takes, his uniform stiff from sweat and blood.

“Do you want me to, uh, take it off?”

“What?” Benji shakes his head. “No. Got it myself. Relax.”

“Okay. I am good at relaxing, trust me. The best at it.”

“Xavier, alright, get it.”

He blossoms at hearing his name, crooked smile widening, eyes—or eye crinkling with delight. Benji looks frustrated by that, one hand unspooling the gauze wrapped around Xavier’s head. It unravels slowly, dropping around his pale throat. Xavier shivers at the sensation. The pain is so dull he had forgotten it was there, but as the eye is exposed, he winces. Memories of earlier threaten him, the numbness inside creeping forward like a slinking beast aware of blood. He closes his eyes against it, brows tilting inward.

Benji’s fingers are gentle. He pauses.

“Hurt?”

“Yunno,” Xavier hums. “Feel like there’s some medicine for it. Something, something kiss it better.” He draws the word out with a suggestive raise of his brows, though he can feel the swelling on his eye when he does that. Benji stares, blinking—then his cheeks go a dark red and he snorts, lips curling into a sneer that’s less mean than Xavier’s seen it. He wraps the new gauze pulled from his kit slowly and carefully. Uses fingers to gently press the cotton pad over Xavier’s eye, mumbling for him to hold it there while he finishes it off.

And when that’s done, they have nothing else to say to each other for a moment. Both are caught off guard by that; the simplicity of staring at another person, in the dark, in silence. The rhythm of the forest around them—no longer a stranger to Xavier. In that space of time, he finds it easy to forget everything. Including the promotion that he’s worked so hard for; it seems pale compared to the soft touch of finger tips underneath his jaw, the inspection Benji does on the bandage, as if he’d not just wrapped it himself. His hands fidget in his lap, unable to reach up like they want. Hands deeply callused from spear shaft, sword grip, fighting.

Instead, he shifts slightly to the side, making space for Benji to sit.

“I was planning on staying out here a bit,” Xavier comments idly, fumbling through the inner lining of his military jacket to find the tin can of tobacco he keeps safely tucked away. “If you—”

“Yeah,” Benji says, leaning back on the crate, arms folded across his front, eyes up at the dark sky above them. “Well. Wasn’t tired, anyway.” That seems a lie, from the permanent exhaustion sketched underneath his dark eyes. But Xavier doesn’t call him on it. Instead, he expertly rolls the tobacco, wetting the sides with the tip of his tongue to keep them together. Benji shifts beside him, the gap between them disappearing. Xavier lights both tobacco rolls between his lips, puffing a bit to get them started and then smiling with each pinched between his teeth.

Benji swipes one from his mouth.

“Dog,” he mumbles, taking a drag from the roll. Smoke plumes from his nose, up into the air above them.

“Woof,” Xavier jokes, bumping their elbows, not at all insulted.

—

Where Xavier’s from, they don’t bury their dead. A boat is made by the family—something small and modest, for a single occupant—and adorned with the dead’s belongings. If Xavier were home, what would it be? The wooden practice sword he’d loved as a small child. The miniature figures he’d carved himself. The scarf he’d forgotten to take when he left to join the army, mother made with love and care. They’d put sand at the bottom of the boat, so he could take a bit of home with him; they’d layer shells and rocks, things he collected as an awkward teen. And then, when they were ready, the boat would be pushed out into the current, where loved ones watch.

With dirt and sweat on his face, blood pooling down his side, Xavier realizes he will never be set out to sea—he’s going to be burned. In a grave pile of other dead soldiers, reduced to ash if they even let the fire burn that long before covering the grave with soil. He’ll never seen home again. Never feel his mother’s hands on his cheeks, tutting over how long his hair has gotten. Nor his father’s proud hand on his shoulder, the two of them finally at peace. He’d never see his sisters; never know what became of any three of them.

Xavier coughs blood into a gloved palm, leaning back against a tree. The remains of a tree, hollowed out mostly and torn in two by a lightning strike. He can smell the burnt bark, the dead leaves rustling in the stale air. He looks at the dark blood against leather and all he can do is laugh. He sags backward, head thumping dead wood. The only clear marks on his face are twin lines beneath each eye, clean of dirt and blood from tears.

“Ah,” he groans, his hand pressing against the wound on his side. It’s bad that he can barely feel it. There’s a deep rooted pain there, making his entire left side useless, and yet it doesn’t…doesn’t really hurt. That’s what scares him.

An arrow sits halfway through his shoulder, another buried in his thigh. Even those, he cannot really feel. Blood fills up his mouth again and instead of spitting, or coughing, he merely leans to the side and lets it drool out. Xavier’s dying. The sword had pierced right through his gut and then slid out, nicking something deeply vital to keeping the young corporal alive.

He would have liked to have been set out to sea.

Everything in his vision darkens, his body slackening further, the arm around his middle cradling his insides relaxing. He blinks and time slips from him, mingling with the screaming fighting happening just down the battlefield. He thinks they’re losing, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

He moans wetly, more tears sliding down his cheeks as he tries to sit back up. Then suddenly, hands are gripping him. They curl into the uniform beneath his mail and plate. It’s yanked from him—Xavier lifts a weak hand, woozy as he tries to fend off the scavenger. He wanted to fix things with his da before he died, he wanted to move his ma into a home that stood above the riptide. He wanted to see his sister and apologize to her, for letting her down. The plate across his chest shifts and Xavier makes a pitiful sound.

“Nah, you’re alright—you’re alright, Xavier, look at me. You’re alright.” Hands brush across his cheeks, cup his jaw, lift his head. His eyes flutter open and close. “No, no. No. Gotta wake up, Xavier—gotta stay awake, alright? Alright?”

“Anyone ever told you,” Xavier mumbles, “how mean you are?”

Benji laughs, but it sounds oddly wet. He clears his throat, sniffs hard and pulls Xavier’s head back up by the jaw. His thumbs soothe across Xavier’s dirty cheeks, making the dying man open his eyes fully. He has to blink rapidly for a moment to be able to focus. Benji’s dark brown skin is ashen, his eyes wide, sweat slicking curls of black hair to his temple and cheeks.

“Wow, you look great, Benji.”

“Oh, you fucking—keep talking, alright? Need you to focus on that, ‘cause this is gonna hurt, but I need to look—need to look at it, yeah?”

“Wouldn’t say you need to,” Xavier slurs, feeling his arm slowly unwound from his middle. He can’t even control that any longer, his limbs feeling detached and numb. He breathes and there’s a wheeze to it. “You just r-really want to see me shirtless.” He feels the tunic, wet with his blood, as it’s slowly peeled back. Benji doesn’t say anything. His face pales further, his eyes still wide, lips thinned to a tight, terrified line. Benji’s jaw trembles, his hands withdrawing from the wound. Xavier watches, his cheek to his own shoulder.

He closes his eyes. He would have…he really would have liked to have seen the sea one last time.

Benji’s bloody fingers touch his face once more. They pet his sweat slicked, dirty hair from his face. They touch the scar underneath his eye, a wound he’d tended to so many months ago, when he’d first learned Benji’s name. Xavier sighs out softly. Not a single part of him hurts any longer, it’s all just cold. Very cold.

“Everyone in camp says you’re the most loyal fucking man alive, Xavier.”

“You…talking to people about…me?”

“It’s true, yeah? It is. You’re good, aren’t you? One of the few.”

He doesn’t have any energy to reply, his head leaned back against the dead tree behind him. His heart stutters, beating wildly, desperately.

“I can trust you. That’s scary, Xavier. You have to know that’s scary, right? That is.”

His eyes flutter at the sound a knife makes, unsheathing. The whispering scrape of it. They roll for a moment, before focusing on the dagger in Benji’s hand. It’s simple, a small curve to it, a modest grip with an etching. A good blade. Xavier stares at it. He watches as Benji yanks the sleeve of his shirt to his elbow, exposing his forearm. Xavier stares at that then; even dying, he pays attention to the little bits of Benji revealed to him. His brows pinch at the sight of scars, many layered on top of each other, but they’re shallow and light.

His bloody lips part in a gasp when Benji draws the blade across his skin. It splits, welling dark blood to the surface. The blood continues, rising. Not stopping to pool along the skin, into the crook of an elbow, or the top of a wrist. It rises, into the air, undulating, coaxed by Benji’s hand as it drops the dagger. He murmurs, the pupils of his eyes blossoming and darkening and taking the entirety of Benji’s eyes. The wind whistles around them, dirt pulsing underneath Xavier, the dead tree behind him groaning as it twists.

“Benji,” Xavier whispers, watching the blood magic with wide, uncomprehending eyes.

And then the blood is with him, is in him, isn’t blood any longer but magic; it slithers amongst his insides, finding rip and tear and ruin and healing. It pulls Xavier together. The arrows worm out of his muscles, out of his flesh, dropping uselessly to the ground. He feels a burning itch as the skin closes with nothing more than white scarring. Xavier’s entire body trembles as his side is repaired, as more blood from Benji’s arm rises into the air. He doesn’t speak; no chanting or murmuring. Benji stares, expression grim and determined.

Xavier gasps and his head feels wrenched back, mouth open as blood moves from inside him. As it exits his lungs and leaves, falls wetly to the ground. He inhales and exhales, no burden on rips that had been broken now fully healed. He gasps, a hand going to his side, the other going to his shoulder, where the arrow had pierced through him. Xavier pants, looking from wound to wound, each now fully healed.

And then he looks to Benji, who sits back on his haunches.

His forearm still bleeds. It’s only Xavier that’s been healed.

I can trust you. Benji is a blood mage. That secret could get him worse than killed. You’re good, aren’t you?

Xavier reaches out. He can see the relief in Benji’s eyes, mingled with fear. The most beautiful eyes Xavier has ever seen in his life; nearly black, but a melted, rich brown when the sunlight hits directly. His shaking, bloodied hand reaches Benji, wrapping around his forearm. He closes his palm directly over the cut Benji had made to save him. He pulls them closer, hiding that wound from everyone else. Xavier says nothing.

He merely puts their foreheads together, his heavy breathing mingling with Benji’s. There’s nothing to say; he couldn’t articulate it even if he tried. But Benji is right, he is loyal. And good. And now, with his bloody hand around Benji’s bloody wrist, more committed than he’s ever been in his entire life.

And with that, Xavier Wolffe lives.

[hauntedjpegcollection]

short term

wc: 5962 au: band au ch: xavier, benji

They had kissed two weeks ago and not once since then.

And to be fair, things were busy. Weren’t they? Summer tour transition to fall lineup wasn’t something Xavier was prepared for. He wasn’t part of the process; he was paid to stand there and look menacing in between power naps on a tour bus that usually smelled of bodies. Not necessarily unwashed bodies, but also not necessarily fresh. Instead of being involved, Xavier watches the moving parts of the tour—the roadies and the techs and assistants, all of them frantic in their preparations.

Lark’s routine fall cold makes an appearance, leaving the singer sleeping in the passenger seat up front, swaddled in more than a few blankets. Sniffling pathetically as Matilda sits on the arm rest with bottles of water mixed with electrolyte packets. They break up and get back together in the span of a week usually, but when he’s pale and tired and in pain, Matilda seems less inclined to leave his side than usual.

Benji too.

He hovers. He just doesn’t make it as obvious.

Xavier watches the drummer interrupt the couple, sliding his way onto the dashboard of the big tour bus, right next to one of those old fashion pin-up women that dance as traffic moves. Xavier can’t hear them, down the aisle, helping some poor girl pull off bags of wires and equipment from overhead racks—but he can see perfectly fine. Well, he can see Benji, anyway. He can’t see Lark, knees up in the passenger seat, or Matilda as she squeezes next to him. Just her slim shoulder around the back of the passenger seat.

But he can see Benji and that feels like the most important part. He leans with hands behind him, resting on palms (that Xavier personally now knows are roughly calloused and broad). His inky curls fall messily down onto his shoulders, one single clip trying to reign in tresses of it. Jeans stretch a little too tight across his thighs, booted feet kicking here and there as he talks Lark down from whatever precipice of misery he’s sat on, sick as he is. He looks impossibly relaxed, tired eyes fond. Even the way his chest moves, as he breathes makes Xavier feel so warm its painful like a burn.

“Oh no,” the girl in front of him squeaks, as a bag crashes down on top of his head and sends Xavier sprawling.

“Ow.”

The tour bus spins when he stands, rubbing hands over the back of his skull. He gestures placatingly at the girl, standing there fretting over him with anxious pats to his arm. He tries smiling, wincing with an eye closed, his face and throat flushed furiously with embarrassment. When he looks back down the aisle, Xavier isn’t surprised that Benji is staring at him.

All the air feels suctioned out of that small space, the distance suddenly minute and barely there. They could be touching, that’s how close that stare feels. Xavier can only look back at the barest curve of Benji’s lips into a small, humored smile. His dark, heavy brows pinch, in what might be genuine concern.

In return, Xavier gives him a cheery double thumbs up. Makes the drummer snort and shake his head.

Alright? Benji mouths, lifting his brows incredulously, pointing.

Xavier ruffles his hair with pale palms, adopting a pout. Kiss? He asks silently. He taps a finger to the back of his head, where it truly does hurt the worst. Benji’s eyes lid heavy and darken at the mere suggestion, sending a dancing nerve of electricity up Xavier’s spine. It’s all too easy for him to feel greedy and jealous and frustrated; he wants them to find an empty, dark parking lot again. The taste of Benji’s mouth is seared into his memories, but a memory isn’t enough. He wants them to be alone and they haven’t had a single second of that.

More than anything, even more than desperately wanting to be kissed again, Xavier wants to know what Benji is thinking. If he’s thinking about it at all. If he’s spending nights in the swaying hammocks on the tour bus, eyes closed and imagining the kiss over and over the way Xavier is. He wants to talk to him, even if it isn’t about that. He’d take a conversation about the fucking weather if it could just be them.

Lark’s bleach blond curls pop up in front of Benji, severing their connection. The singer slowly turns to look down the aisle, sleepy eyes barely open.

He sneezes, viciously.

“You okay, dude?” Lark calls out to him, blinking blearily. His nose is a violent shade of red.

“Are you?” Xavier replies, hefting the bag of wires over his shoulder. He reminds himself to call his mom, who panics every single time Lark even sniffles too hard. She’d find a way to get a care package of every single one of his favorites (and vapor rub) to the very next city post office they land in. Xavier can practically hear her chanting. Vitamins, Lark, vitamins!

“Careful with that,” Matilda comments about the bag slung over Xavier’s shoulder, sliding off of Lark’s lap and standing. The motion completely obscures Benji. Matilda folds her long, slim arms across her chest. “Nomi will skin you with her teeth if anything in there is broken.”

“Like an apple,” Lark adds, pantomiming biting into fruit. “Bet you’d be into it, huh?” He punctuates that with a low whistle, raised eyebrows. Then a dramatic cough. Matilda’s arm unwinds, just for one of her hands to gently card through his wavy, beach perfect hair.

“So into it,” she chimes, tongue pinched between her teeth, pretty hazel eyes narrowed playfully. Xavier is all too aware of the hot flush across his cheeks, down his throat. He doesn’t have a quick enough comeback for them, shifting awkwardly as the tech moves past him and hops off the tour bus.

“Alright, leave ‘im be, yeah?” Benji’s voice cuts through, gravely and edged a little firm.

Xavier’s heart does a quick stutter, tumbling around his ribcage like it’s never been connected before. He steps closer, wedges himself into the forward compartment. It feels even smaller with him there. Not enough room for his too big body. He makes shy glances to Benji, but tries desperately to look relaxed as he leans against the broad truck dashboard. The duffle on his shoulder is unfortunately getting heavier by the second.

“The arguin’ is gonna start back up now that they can’t bully you,” Benji says, lolling his head to the side. He’s still sprawled up on the dashboard, insolent looking and bored. He grins crookedly and that grin shoots something warm directly into Xavier’s belly. His mouth dries as he nods, though he isn’t sure what he’s agreeing with.

“Who’s arguing? I’m not arguing. Are you arguing, Lark?”

The collection of blankets that have become Lark slowly deflates in a sigh. He melts further into them, huffing quietly and then coughing loudly.

“There’s no arguing with you.”

“Glad you agree.”

“What are they arguing about?” Xavier asks. He pushes his shoulder against Benji, smiling down at him. He gets a few blinks in response, which is…cute. Almost too cute.

“Gaslighting is illegal,” Matilda quips icily as she steps toward the tour bus door. She looks regal even in leggings and an oversized Ratspit hoodie, her hair thrown into something artfully messy. Xavier remembers how smitten Lark had been since the first day she’d auditioned, his phone exploding with text after text of candid photos where Matilda really did look stunning in every single one.

“No one’s gaslighting you!” Lark yells, his voice a harsh rasp.

“That is literally gaslighting.” She punctuates the sentence with a slam of the door as she exits. A silence rings between all three of them. Matilda’s after image is imprinted on the tour bus, her bright fiery hair and her pale, perfect face.

“What’s gaslighting?” Xavier asks, confused brows pinched in.

“She’s mad at me because I told her to go out tonight.” Lark groans, shifting in the blankets, hands scruffing through his hair, making it stand in every direction. Dark shadows hollow the underneaths of his eyes, but Xavier can’t tell what it’s from exactly. The cold was bad. But touring was something he was quickly discovering wasn’t exactly relaxing. “It’s Halloween, I’m not asking her to be stuck on the fucking tour bus with me just because I feel like shit.”

Benji snorts and slides off the bus dashboard, his movements all too similar to a predator cat slinking away.

“Have you thought maybe she’d enjoy being here with you more than out there without you?” Lark’s cheeks flush with color, but he doesn’t answer, squeezing his eyes shut in a pinched and angry way. Benji makes another huffing laugh of a sound. When it’s obvious that Lark is ignoring him, he makes to leave.

As he passes, his fingertips trail over Xavier’s hip ever so gently, searing a trail of fire across his belly. Xavier has to clamp his teeth to stop a squeak of a noise escaping.

Then the tour bus slams for the second time and Xavier is alone with Lark.

“Bossy asshole,” Lark grumbles. “Both of them.”

“Well, guess you have a type, huh?”

Lark opens one furious eye and rolls away from Xavier to face the truck window.

—

“It’s fine, Xavier.”

Nomi stands with an arm across her stomach, an elbow in her palm and fingertips to her chin. She looks down at the duffle bag filled with cords, wires, and electronics that Xavier could never put a name to. Her light brown eyes flicker over it and then to him, crinkling with amusement, as his skin warms under her humored glare. He palms the back of his neck shyly, scuffing a boot across the parking lot asphalt.

“Matilda said you’d be mad.”

“She’s projecting, love.”

Xavier pretends to glance around in terror as though the keyboardist might be near, which prompts Nomi into dainty giggles. It’s a world conquering feeling to get those out of her. As a catch-all technician, Nomi was sometimes the most stressed of them all (aside the musicians). She bends to begin digging through the equipment, strands of her navy hair falling to frame her pale heart shaped face. She mumbles here and there to herself before sighing, leaning back on her haunches.

“So, you’re coming?” She asks.

“What?” Xavier blinks.

A moment passes. Then, Nomi stands swiftly, toeing the duffle bag closer to the roadie van. She looks at him, as though she’s confused on why he’s confused—but she does this. Nomi had been interesting to get to know the first few months of tour. She spoke like everyone was already aware of what she was thinking, and that it was odd no one had figured out telepathy yet. It was endearing, but made conversations bouncy.

“There’s this big haunted festival type thing that everyone is going to. Famous, like. ‘Round here, anyway. Wherever here is.”

“Oh.”

Xavier nods along, palming the back of his neck, staring at the concrete. There wasn’t much around them besides corn fields, cow pastures and the high occupancy vehicle parking lot, which was empty except for them. A few more hours of driving would get them to their rest stop, but they’d paused here for…more resting before more resting. There were long stretches of boredom on tour followed by intense stretches of frantic business.

A bubble of uncertainty in his chest expands between ribs.

“Benji would be happy if you did,” Nomi comments casually, not looking directly at him.

“He would?” The bubble bursts and fills him with something carbonated, tingling. Head to toe, his body reacts and begs the question; could he find time to be with Benji alone? Nomi blinks her giant, light brown eyes as if sending a telepathic signal saying; yes, yes you could be alone with Benji, and it is painfully obvious how bad you want that. He doesn’t even have time to feel embarrassed, because he’s lightheaded with the idea of it.

Unexpectedly, arms slide around him from behind, pale except for the black tattoos that darken them. Xavier huffs out a noise when they squeeze suddenly tight around his tors and Benny’s high-pitched laughter tickles the back of his neck.

“Of course he’s f-fucking going. You’d leave me by m-myself with these weirdos?”

“Who are you calling weird?”

“Aw, I didn’t m-mean you, Nomi.”

“Well. Now I’m offended you didn’t.”

One of Benny’s arms stays slung around his waist as Nomi and Benny dissolve into a conversation Xavier doesn’t participate in. His breathing is off kilter, a different pattern than it should be. The arm around him is warm and grounding. Solid. Safe. Xavier’s fingers lace in front of his chest, twisting around themselves. As he looks away from Benny and Nomi flirting, he sees a figure darting around the tour bus. As if they were listening to the conversation, wondering what Xavier’s answer might be.

“Yeah, I’m going.” It sounds so resolute that Benny turns to look at him, brows knitted. Maybe he thought Xavier would put up more of a fight. “How scary can it be?”

“Oh.” He feels a hand patting him condescendingly on the side. “You poor f-fucking thing.”

—

This is awful. This is so fucking awful.

A child screams past him, running and dissolving to high pitched giggles as a parent catches them. They’re swung up onto a hip, peppered in kisses and the man chasing with a big cartoonish clown mask also bursts into laughter. Like there’s anything funny about all of that—there isn’t. Xavier shudders, hands shoved into his pockets, turning away. Fucking clowns.

The rest of the fair isn’t much better. A circular event, with food vendors on the outside (the only good part) and amusement in the middle, it seems like it might be the singularly most important thing that happens to the local town. Everyone is out in full, in costumes whether they’re part of it or not. If only it was Christmas. He’d really prefer a Christmas festival.

Instead, it’s dusk, bleeding fully into night and the lights decorating the fair are on theme; reds and oranges and pops of neon greens. It’s not cold, not to Xavier anyway, but people are bundled, carrying steaming paper cups of hot chocolate. Scare actors wander the fair, ready to make people scream and drop them, as if they are nearly ten dollars for one cup. He was going to treat himself to exactly one and probably two corn dogs—and maybe a funnel cake. That was it.

Xavier has to admit there is one good thing about the night. Not just the food, anyway.

“How do they all piss in these outfits, yeah?” Benji asks cheekily, leaning in close to Xavier as he points to a scarecrow—or rather a man in farmer overalls stuffed with hay. His makeup is disgustingly good, with bits of bloodied straw sticking from his face in patches. Whatever small town this festival was connected to was very proud of those special effects. A rusty, broken down bus of dead high school football players had made him so nauseas, he’d had to turn the other way while they passed by it.

There’s no telling if Benji is humoring him in a good natured way or thinks Xavier is so pathetic he might actually faint if he gets too close to the chainsaw actors. He’s okay with either option really, because Benji hasn’t left his side since they got to the fair. They aren’t touching. He wishes they were holding hands; he imagines even, day dreaming between avoiding making eye contact with scare actors, of their hands interlocked.

“Catheter,” Benny answers before he gets a chance, leaning around Xavier, staring down at Benji with wide, serious eyes. They’re pale enough to pass for some of the actors contacts. “Committed to th-the bit hard.”

“Heh,” Benji’s laugh comes out like a little breath, chin touching his own shoulder as he looks up and over at Xavier. The effect this look has on Xavier’s ability to breathe is downright devastating, so he looks away quickly.

“We’re going on s-some rides,” Benny says, hitching a thumb over his shoulder toward a rotating death trap that looks like it was made in the eighties and forgotten about. Every whirl of it creaks worse than the last, but the people packed inside laugh themselves stupid. Nomi’s eyes throw sparkles as she stares. Benny had shrugged off his hoodie and given it to her, which was swallowing her up so that she was just a pale heart shaped face and oversized glasses.

“We’re goin’ in the haunted house,” Benji replies.

“We are?” Xavier is only slightly embarrassed by how high pitched his voice comes out. Benji doesn’t reach for his hand—but his arm moves, just enough so that their elbows are touching. Brushing. The hint of an invitation. Xavier stares down at him, into those sleepy, beautiful eyes. “Oh. Right, no, yeah, we are.”

“Hah!” Benny’s laugh is more of a shout than anything else. “Hah!” It continues, like a hyena, and echoes the entire walk they make toward that haunted house.

—

“Don’t have to, y’know.”

“No, I want to.”

“Nah, mate, you so clearly don’t.”

Benji’s laugh is welcome; like a shot of whiskey in coffee, something that strikes the bloodstream with a vicious ability to wake you up. It tingles in his veins, makes him jittery. Xavier’s breath comes out like a wisp in contrast, his pond green eyes dropping to the half frozen dirt beneath them. The toe of his sneaker keeps scuffing a spot until its well worn to actual moist earth.

The haunted house looms, a small line queuing in front of it—the two of them included. He can hear wailing inside, overlaid crackly Youtube videos of doors creaking and steps in a hallway, ambient spookiness. People’s laughter as they funnel out the back, groups clumped together clinging to each other.

Xavier pops a thumbnail into his mouth, eying the entrance.

“Not an act, is it?” Benji’s elbow bumps his again. He has his hands shoved lazily into the pockets of his leather jacket, eyes keen and narrowed. He’s smiling that impish little grin that makes Xavier dizzy.

“Dude, please,” Xavier laughs, brushing a hand back through his hair, making it fluffy as a chicken. “Like, I get it. Boot camp was probably scarier than this—I’m just—I’m jumpy, okay?” Thinking about it makes his heart speed up; would he have an attack in the haunted house? Would some flashing light remind him of something far more sinister? Would he embarrass himself? Who would Lark call, his sister? Mother? Father?

Xavier’s hands drop to his sides, shoulders squaring up bravely. It was just a haunted house in the middle of Kansa-Idah-Ohio or wherever. He can’t entirely blame the haunted house for the way his heart racketeers inside his ribcage. His nerves strike hard and constant, like a heartbeat. Until Benji’s palm slowly drifts across his own, fingers beginning to lace between his own.

Xavier, to his credit, does not immediately look down like a blushing teenager.

Instead, he squeezes Benji’s hand, grinning ear to ear.

—

Within only a minute of stepping into the ramshackle house—clearly just shacks strung together that are easily assembled and taken down for this festival—Xavier screams. A woman with hair too long, covered in fish hooks threaded through bare skin, laughs her head off as he flattens himself to a wall, hand to his chest.

“Holy shit,” he whispers, his other hand still firmly held by a drummers warm callused palm. “What the fuck?”

“Seen worse,” Benji comments, tugging them along a darkened corridor lit up with flashing lights. Cobwebs and dirty cloth hang from the ceiling, broken glass from destroyed paintings on the ground. Benji’s boot crunch and Xavier’s sneakers scuff. Xavier follows, sweat pooling down his sides, along his lower back.

“How are you not—bwah!” Xavier screams again, throwing himself around Benji as a chainsaw slides through an barely open door, revving loudly. A man cackles wickedly, jabbing the chainless chainsaw. The effect is ruined slightly by someone standing behind him, smoking a cigarette and checking their phone. Xavier’s heart still thunders as his arms tighten around Benji’s shoulders.

“You not do Halloween as a kid?” Benji asks.

“I dunno if you uh, know this about me,” Xavier mumbles as he finally unravels himself. His hand is quickly caught up again, brown fingers folding alongside pale freckled ones. Xavier flushes so warm the sweating continues at his hairline. He clears his throat, takes baby steps after Benji, who begins down the linear haunted pathway. “I’m like—well, my parents are—severely Catholic.”

“No way,” Benji replies, with wide shocked eyes, a hand to his mouth.

“Hey, fuck you, c’mon.”

“Nah, mate, s’real obvious. You wear that necklace. Comes out your shirt sometimes when you’re bent over.”

“Oh, I suppose you’re watching me bend ov—fuck!”

Xavier’s voice pitches high and distraught as an animatronic werewolf launches from the wall at him; it’s fake recorded growl is entirely too realistic. It’s raised, plastic clawed hands nearly brush his face, making him recoil, duck and slide around Benji. He makes a pathetic whimpering sound, entirely unintentional, that feels very loud despite the music and atmospheric soundtrack.

Defeated, he puts his forehead to the back of Benji’s shoulder.

“Anyway, we didn’t do a lot of Halloween as kids. We dressed up as PG-13 characters and went trunk or treating at the local church.”

“Ah.” They don’t move for a second, caught beside the fake werewolf as it slowly retracts into place. Xavier’s hands curl around Benji’s biceps from behind. His heart keeps going, racing and racing and racing. He can smell Benji’s hair, this close. The worn leather of his jacket. If he moved—if he just put his nose to the back of Benji’s neck, he’d smell his skin instead.

“Gonna stay like that?” Benji asks.

“Oops.” Xavier unfolds to his full height, hands slipping off Benji’s arms—until one is caught again. His heart hurts then, the way it pounds. He can feel electricity inside his veins, zapping along nerve endings. Benji in the haunted house looks so beautiful, the flashing strobe lights, the fog machine working smoke up to their knees. Xavier’s mouth goes dry and he smiles again, one of his canines snagging on his lower lip.

Benji leans up. Xavier, shivery with excitement, leans down.

The werewolf deploys again, growling and Xavier screams and leaps himself nearly into Benji’s arms.

—

They exit. Xavier, dramatically, shoving his way through the doubled doors at the end and finding himself into cool, night air. Benji, strolling behind, laughing lowly. The wind bathes his skin briefly in a tingling sensation, his sweat slick neck rising with goosebumps. He almost wants for a heavier jacket, but only briefly. His skin flushes warm once again the second Benji’s smiling up at him.

“Oh my God, finally,” Xavier exclaims, feeling giddy as he throws his arms into the air. He tilts his head back, the sky above him a blanket of whirling grey clouds and night time stars. All of the daylight had retreated during just that short walk through the house. The moon is but a small sliver, barely on her way to newness. Xavier’s heart beats so hard in his throat, he can feel it pulse with residual terror. The doll room had been very fucked up.

“You survived,” Benji comments, his voice a close purr. Xavier jumps, yelping a sound so embarrassing his pale face goes as red as his hair. Benji eyes him, gaze bouncing up and down, assessing with his crooked, smug grin. “Thought you were done for in that last room. Not a fan of hospitals, yeah?”

“Dude.” Xavier breathes out, closing his eyes, putting hands to his chest. His entire body feels altogether too light, like a ship whose anchor has been cut. The giddiness tingles all the way to his fingertips. “My heart is still racing. Man, feel, I swear.”

He doesn’t think about it. Xavier just acts. His long fingers loop around Benji’s wrist; in that moment there is no thought put into it. How every touch so far—besides his frantic, terrified manhandling—has been initiated from Benji. His bubble; how the drummer puts himself around every one else, how careful he is to not touch others, give himself space. Xavier doesn’t think of anything.

Instead, he tucks Benji’s palm to his sternum. Through the thin cotton fabric of his shirt, he can nearly feel Benji’s calluses. His heart pulses, a wild, erratic drum, just below the bone. Benji’s hand is so solid. So warm. So big. His fingers curl just slightly, bunching Xavier’s thin cotton shirt. His heart beat gallops, faster than it had for even a second back in the haunted house.

Xavier blinks at Benji, wide eyed.

Benji stares up at him.

Another yelp—embarrassing and loud just like before—follows as Xavier is yanked around the side of the building.

—

Straw pokes uncomfortably at his skin, the barest sliver exposed on the lowest part of his back, between shirt and the edge of his jeans. Xavier refuses to complain, even as it scratches little red lines that will be there hours from now. Stack upon stack of haybale conceal them from the rest of the festival and also provide a rather convenient spot for Benji to shove Xavier down. He sits eagerly, happily staring up at Benji, hands falling back onto the haybale to support himself. Xavier kicks his long legs out, thighs parting easily as Benji comes to stand between them.

He's warm to the very tips of his ears, all the way down to his toes. His breathing is hitchy and excited. Overly so, probably. Xavier wants to slow himself down, find a way to be less puppyish in his enthusiasm. But he can’t. It takes him over, presenting a little tremble to his shoulders, as if he’s held back on a leash when all he wants is to launch himself forward.

Benji doesn’t seem to mind.

Standing there, his eyes liquid dark, a ring of gold behind his inky curls from a floodlight around the haunted house. Jesus, he looks beautiful. But all Xavier can get out is, “Wow, you are so hot.”

“Oh, yeah?” Benji pauses, a hand raised, about to touch Xavier’s chin. He feels anticipation rising along his skin, the desire to be touched so strong it makes him nearly whine. Xavier clamps his teeth shut, eyes widening innocently.

“I mean—you’re—well, you arelike, the hottest person I’ve ever met, Benji. Swear. I uh, wait, I can say this better—” His rambling is cut off by a hand sliding under his jaw, cupping it. He wets his lips with a quick touch of his tongue, nodding into the touch. “Or we could kiss. We should kiss. If you want to. I thought we might, in the haunted house, but—”

“You want a kiss, Xavier?” The question is murmured, their faces so close that Benji’s breath warms his lips. He swallows a thick feeling in his throat, legs automatically closing tighter around Benji, yanking them together. The other man grunts at the sudden feeling, but the noise is quickly swallowed by the press of Xavier’s mouth. Their lips meet, not exactly soft, but not hard.

Somehow, it’s the best closed mouth kiss of Xavier’s life.

Then Benji opens his mouth, and it’s the actual best kiss of his life.

Their heads tilt, tongues rolling together, hands gripping into one another. Xavier’s hands bury themselves into the backs of Benji’s thighs, clutching him tighter. Benji’s dig into Xavier’s hair, the auburn locks messy and tangled already. They kiss hungrily, messily. They pant between quick breaks, Xavier recapturing the kiss eagerly, hands moving upward. Sneakily, he cups Benji’s ass, groaning with their mouths together as he gets handfuls.

Benji’s husky laugh interrupts the kiss, but only for a brief moment before Xavier dives upward for another. It trails off to something smaller before his head hangs backward, as if cut from a string. Unhinged. He smiles dizzily, eyes closed, enjoying the lingering taste of Benji’s mouth. Everything feels syrupy and slow and perfect.

Fingertips brush over his jawline, over his lips, his cheekbones, the long bridge of his nose. Xavier hums, content in a way that blooms from a place deep in his chest. There’s nothing, in that moment, except Benji and the straw poking uncomfortably at his skin. His needy hands come loose, his arms folding around Benji’s thighs instead, embracing him.

“Alright kisser,” Benji comments, his voice only slightly strained breathless. Xavier smiles, eyes still closed.

“Rate me on a scale of one through ten.”

“Solid seven.”

“How do I get to eight?”

He feels lips brush his own again and Xavier wants to melt. Dissolve. Pretend that the laughter and screaming excitement behind them isn’t there; that no one is there at all. The tour bus lingers in the back of his mind; the commitments. The security shirt that he’s foregone for the night. Getting back to Lark; the hours of traveling they’ll make tomorrow. The lines upon lines of fans standing in near rapture like excitement.

“Do you like touring in the summer or fall better?” Xavier asks, the question coming out only slightly muffled by the tongue that’s swept his own. Benji withdraws, blinking. A curl has fallen into his face, across his defined, curving nose. Xavier lifts a hand and pushes it back, tucks it behind an ear.

“Why?”

“I wasn’t here for the summer one.”

“S’alright.”

“Yeah, but,” Xavier laughs, his arms folding once more around Benji, comfortable. “Do you have a preference?”

A long and somewhat uncomfortable moment swells between them. Benji’s hands linger on Xavier’s shoulders. One of them captures the lapel of his jacket, thumbing the corduroy material over and over. Once, Xavier might have taken that slightly hooded eyed stare to be angry or dissatisfied, tired, or bored. Now, it feels obvious that Benji is anxious.

“It’s just a question,” Xavier promises, squeezing his arms, head cocking curiously.

“Yeah? Know that. Just—don’t have much time, do we? Nomi’ll come looking. Can’t imagine Benson won’t want your attention sooner rather than later. Have a corn dog eating competition, something dull. So,” Benji’s nervous hand flits to Xavier’s face, as though trying to imitate that sensual touch from earlier. It’s slightly off kilter. Xavier leans into it anyway, brows bunching in confusion.

Benji huffs a laugh, eyes wandering.

“Don’t you wanna take advantage of it? We could kiss longer. Was only kiddin’ when I said you were just alright.”

It’s Xavier’s turn to be silent—or almost. His breathing is still louder than it should be, and the kissing wasn’t even an athletic pursuit, just stolen oxygen. He licks his lips a few times, trying to gather a thought in the molasses slow part of his brain that is still kicking its foot with pleasure. Benji’s hand lingers on his jaw, holding it.

“Yeah, no, trust me. I am very about kissing. As much as we can.” Xavier’s arms unwind, hands flattening over Benji’s thighs. He rubs softly, his smile broadening. “But we also have had like no time alone, either. Not even to just hang out. Talk. You’re right, yunno. Nomi’s definitely going to come looking for you. I can’t afford a corn dog competition but Benny is like—wicked needy at times, sure.”

Xavier’s hands still and curl harder. Holding. Squeezing them closer once more. He puts his chin to Benji’s stomach, head back, smiling. “So, I think we should kiss and you can tell me what season you like touring in.”

Someone screams inside the haunted house beside them, petering off with high pitched laughter. Xavier watches Benji’s eyes, the amber lighting of the festival making them shiny. Gorgeous. That’s what he should have said earlier; you have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.

Again, Xavier yelps, high pitched and caught off guard, as Benji shoves him back harder onto the hay and crawls over top of him.

“Spring.” And then he’s kissed hard.

—

“Lark.”

“Uhhhnnngh.”

“Right. Lark.”

“Nnhhmmmhm.”

“You’re droolin’ on Matilda.”

It takes a moment for Lark to realize he’s waking up, his eyes crusty and exhausted. A dream clings to him, but no part of it actually remains. Only that he knows he was dreaming, and it was something pleasant. Warm and inviting and not at all his fatigued reality. His limbs hurt, but that can maybe be attributed to the figure that sleeps, tucked into his lap. Matilda snores softly in his ear, her head tucked against his shoulder and chest. Her long limbs are folded haphazardly, one of her feet cocked up against the window.

He'd fallen asleep in the passenger seat of the tour bus. No one had moved him. He shifts and Matilda doesn’t wake up—sick as he is, as he knows he is, Lark tries not disturb her.

“Feelin’ better?”

“I wish I was dead,” Lark replies, looking over at Benji, as he leans against the dashboard. It’s so dark, that he only knows it is Benji not just by the accented voice, but by the shape of him. Lark would know Benji anywhere, could probably pick him out by bootsteps alone. Though he’s sick, with Matilda in his lap, and Benji right there, he doesn’t feel so bad.

“How did you meet Xavier?”

The question catches him off guard. Lark shakes his head, sniffling hard, barely taking in any air. He groans and coughs and gestures for the water bottle he’d left on the ground. Once given to him, he swallows mouthfuls before answering.

“I lived with him and his family before I came to Liverpool. That was uh, right after my parents kicked me out. I stayed for a year and then you offered me up a spot.”

Wind rocks against the tour bus, scratching softly at the windows. Matilda shifts in his arms, her snoring turning into soft breathing. He pets his hand up and down her back a few times, enjoying the way she snuggles in her sleep, as though seeking him out.

“He’s interesting.”

“I know he’s a lot,” Lark sighs, tossing the water bottle into the driver’s seat, arms folding around Matilda’s thin frame. “But he’s a good guy, I swear. Can you just try to get along with him? Make his life easier? It might be a short term thing, anyway. You know he’s—a lot of shit has happened to him and he just needs a break.”

Benji doesn’t answer. Lark’s eyes blink, bleary, adjusting to the darkness.

“How short term?”

“What?”

The shadow of Benji’s silhouette shoves off the dashboard. Lark narrows tired eyes, peering in the night at his friend.

“Do you have…hay on you?”

“Fuck off,” Benji snaps, waving a hand. “No. M’running to the gas station with Xavier, gettin’ extra cold medicine alright. Probably some sour candy for that one when she wakes up—she’ll be a nightmare with a headache from how she’s sleeping.”

“Fuck, I know,” Lark sighs, but doesn’t even remotely attempt to move her. “Thanks, Benj.”

“Yeah. Well. Anything for you.”

Lark hums in response, head falling back against the cold window. It’s soothing to his warm skin. He can hear a whispered conversation behind him, but doesn’t pick much out. Just:

Short term?

A pause.

Nah. I sort of want to see the tour in spring.

[hauntedjpegcollection]

loose tooth

wc: 1762 au: cyberpunk au ch: benny, maran

The bruises look worse under the flickering bathroom light, neon for a devastating effect on his sensitive eyes. The bruises have only just begun underneath the skin, swelling the cheekbone, a split in the eyebrow drying dark blood. Crusting around pathways for an implant along his temple; little voice in his ear lets him know police are around. Probably broken now.

Benny’s fingers are dug into his own mouth or he’d maybe pay attention to cleaning that first. His immediate concern is a molar in the back bottom row. Every time his finger presses, pain sparks icy and hot all the same underneath his jaw. Blood pools along his tongue, drips over his lip, down into dirty blond facial hair.

Son of a fucking bitch, but he wasn’t going to go to a ripper doc to get that fixed. How expensive were they for dental work? He’d get his lungs replaced again over teeth. His finger pushes the molar, feels it tilt—Benny moans, eyes pinching shut, shoulders tensing. His fingers withdraw and he spits blood into the dirty bathroom sink, hands gripping the sides, head hanging. There’s a plink, plink, plink sound alongside the leaky faucet and his blood.

When the door creaks open, his hand slips into his pocket.

“Ben?”

Too late, he realizes it’s Maran—he’s already turned, mechanical knife in hand flicking out with a shhkk sound. It’s not his best, but wicked looking. Teal iridescent blade, serrated for horrific reasons. Poor scammer startles back, hands raised in front of him. Benny, slumped against the sink, only stares at him. The knife rests on his thigh for a moment, somewhat contemplative. Maran’s big, pretty eyes flicker there. It’s almost unnatural how normal those eyes are; brown and framed with dark lashes, everything organic. Maran’s lack of modifications makes him the most interesting thing in the room at any given moment.

Well, it’s a bathroom, so the only other thing is a graffitied stall, a broken mirror and himself.

“You f-following me?” Benny asks, raising the knife, pressing a button. The blade retracts as quick as it had flicked out, with the same eerie sound. Maran watches that movement, hands still raised in front of him. Then, stunningly, he smiles. Benny’s stomach flips a few times, pain pulsing in his skull diminishing briefly under a wave of hormones that want one thing very badly.

“You’re hurt.” Maran inches closer, his sneakers scuffing on the bathroom tile. Benny watches those sneakers get closer and closer, his eyes blurry from a few unshed tears due to his own shoddy work with finger and tooth. They raise slowly, watching Maran as the space between them is narrowed. The bathroom isn’t that big to begin with. The lights flicker once more and there’s the smallest whirring sound as Benny’s modified eyes adjust to light and dark over and over.

Maran slides his hands into his back pockets, chin tilted down. His eyelashes cast shadows along his cheekbones. He has so many freckles it would likely take hours to count them all, but Benny would. He really would.

Instead, he snorts, brushing a thumb across his bloodied lip.

“Barely.” He notices the way Maran winces. The pawn shop owner looks down at the floor, bumping one of his sneakers closer to Benny’s booted foot. “Y-You squeamish?”

“Oh, tons, yeah. Don’t like blood that much.”

“Th-That why you don’t have any implants?”

“Well, they keep you up for it!” Maran throws a hand up, laughing and somehow another inch has disappeared. Benny’s hands tighten around the sink behind him as he leans back against it, tendons straining in his arms. The blood in his mouth is coppery and strong. His eye throbs, no doubt blackening second by second. “And it’s just—nasty, yeah? Don’t need to see my own insides. Shit, Ben, y’look awful, though. Sure it doesn’t hurt?”

Maran fumbles past Ben for the lackluster excuse of a paper dispenser. Jerks at a few, fumbles more as he seems to try to find a way to lean around Benny and get to the sink. The blond mercenary doesn’t move, chin to his shoulder as he stares Maran down. He can feel another trickle of blood from his eyebrow, curving along his temple and down his cheekbone. Maran stares for a long moment, his pupils getting larger and larger until he finally shivers and holds out the paper towel himself.

“It look th-that bad?” Benny doesn’t reach out to take what’s offered. Instead, he pushes himself from the sink, standing tall. They’re the same height, but Benny’s combat boots have given him a slight advantage. It’s barely enough to stare down and Maran, to his credit, doesn’t sway. He blinks instead. It’s strangely intoxicating, watching those big eyes open and look up at him.

“You don’t look bad—mean, for havin’ fought like that. Guess Xavier scrapped most of ‘em, though?”

“Ouch. My ego.”

“Is doing better than your face, I’d wager.” Maran looks proud of his sharp quip, his plush lips curling mischievously.

Benny takes the paper towels and places them in the sink behind him, where they’ll soak up water and the blood he’d already spit there. Maran’s eyes follow every minute movement, from hands to sink. And then further, when Benny reaches behind Maran and locks the bathroom door.

The click of it is agonizingly loud.

Air between them is suddenly thin and nonexistent. They both breathe like there isn’t nearly enough room for it. For a moment, Benny is aware of more blood on his tongue and the strange way all the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Maran doesn’t look aware of anything other than the solid, near aggressive presence in front of him. It makes his pupils go, if possible, even wider.

And then Benny touches Maran’s hip, fingertips bloody but mostly dry. There’s nothing but the slightest smudge of dark, nearly black blood. He slips underneath the white cotton shirt that the younger man wears, touching warm flushed skin. The curve of his hip is surprisingly soft where Benny might have expected hard muscle—like others he’s touched here. He finds that softness somewhat addicting, placing his entire palm there.

And then squeezing, rather harshly.

Maran’s body jumps, his hands scrambling up Benny’s biceps, grabbing the rough material of his denim jacket.

“You’re flirting with me,” Benny says in a quiet voice. He tilts his head, a strand of blond hair falling across his brow.

“Oh. Right. Yeah. I really fucking am, Ben. I—” Maran’s breath leaves him in a rush as Benny steps forward and all space is then truly gone—and Maran has nowhere to go but back against the door, eyes wide. Flickering from Benny’s bloodied bruised mouth and up again to his cold, blue eyes. Over and over and over until his entire body goes supple and his lips part and he leans forward and Benny takes that space too and—

—

Lark’s so fucking annoyed he could snap the semi-automatic in half. Instead, he continues disassembling it. Same way Xavier had taught him years ago, when they were angry, hungry teenagers and owning one of these would have been awe inducing. Now, it’s just routine to pop it open, oil and cloth beside him. He didn’t like being on cleaning duty like this, but sometimes these older models jammed and if they wanted better, they had to use what they had until worse was gone.

Didn’t mean he had to enjoy it. Wasn’t at all meditative the way Xavier liked to say it was. He dips the rag into the oil, smoothing it across the barrel. He’d move onto the magazines next, use the auto-loader they had and hope nothing exploded.

The couch he sits on is relatively run down, insides spilling out at the sides where seams have split. The warehouse in general is rather lackluster; no hint of the dream they’d had as those scrawny teenagers. Night City screams outside the large windows, never asleep. Music plays from somewhere deeper in the warehouse.

Suddenly, weight beside him on the couch makes Lark glance over.

Then double take. Then cringe.

He reaches down between his feet to the cooler, where drinks are left to soak in ice water. He tosses a canned beer to the boy next to him, who catches it clumsily, face a little shell shocked. Poor Maran.

“Didn’t know you got caught in the fight,” Lark says, grimacing as he sets the oiled cloth and gun down. He turns, adjusting so one leg is tucked underneath him, arm slung around the back of the couch. Maran blinks at him, finger wedging under the beer can tab and cracking it open. His shirt has separated from the collar, a thin hole peeking through to show light brown skin. Though he looks relatively unhurt, he’s got the appearance of somewhat having been absolutely manhandled.

“What?”

“Your lip,” Lark says, gesturing. “Blood. You should let Xavier handle the fist fights, man.”

Maran startles and raises a hand to his mouth, furiously swiping swollen lips. He mutters something, taking hurried sips of his beer and sinking further down into the couch. It forms around him snugly, the sort of couch that is ugly in appearance and so comfortable after years and years of men doing exactly that gesture. Lark snorts and shakes his head, unwilling to go back to his cleaning task.

Booted footsteps make him look up, just in time to watch Benny stoop down and scoop his own beer from the cooler. He looks the worst naturally, having been the one to start the bar fight. His black eye sits painfully, his lips looking even more bruised somehow. He moves slowly, but oddly graceful as he throws himself down onto another couch, cocked sideways to the table of guns. Benny, languid and insolent in movement, throws a combat boot onto the table, making the gun and ammo jump.

“Cheers.” He cracks the tab on the beer and takes a slurp of foam that bubbles out from the top. Then sighs appreciatively, slouching down in the couch and smiling at Lark in a suspicious, satisfied way.

Lark shakes his head, leans over to conspiratorially nudge Maran with an elbow.

“Avoid that guy, know what I mean?”

Maran stares at Lark with an uncharacteristically blank face. He slowly pushes his cold can of beer against his reddened lips and nods, eyes wide and fluttering. Benny, behind Lark, cackles a horrible laugh and Lark is forced to sigh and shake his head.

[hauntedjpegcollection]

the outlier

wc: 4392 au: college au ch: nomi, fiadh, maran, benny

struct group_info init_groups = { .usage = ATOMIC_INIT(2) };

struct group_info *groups_alloc(int gidsetsize){

     struct group_info *group_info;

     int nblocks;

     int i;

     nblocks = (gidsetsize + NGROUPS_PER_BLOCK - 1) / NGROUPS_PER_BLOCK;

/* Make sure we always allocate at least one indirect block pointer */

     nblocks = nblocks ? : 1;

     group_info = kmalloc(sizeof(*group_info) + nblocks*sizeof(gid_t *), GFP_USER);

     if (!group_info)

               return NULL;

None of which makes sense, of course.

A groan escapes through teeth clamped down around a plastic straw. Nomi’s hands don’t lift from her laptop, acrylic nails tapping indecisively. The coffee sits situated in front of her for ease of access, shoulders bunched. There’s a knot of tension at the nape of her neck that feel similar to fingers digging claws down into her muscle. Nomi rolls her head side to side, but it does nothing for the stiffness. The code blinks at her, furiously indecipherable, her nearly empty ice coffee rattling as she chews the straw thoroughly.

This is the problem with freelancing to indie game developers; she loves them, truly, their passion being endless and inspiring. But they often had little bugs that turned out to be cockroach infestations that could never be truly eradicated if the foundation itself wasn’t fucking razed to hell. And no indie developer wanted to start from scratch, because it was years worth of work that they couldn’t afford to do over.

And Nomi is already taking this gig at a bit of a discount, because she likes Zephyr. Also—she was sort of in love with the dating sim already. Especially this one character who reminded her a little of…well…

Her eyes flicker to the side, where her phone sits, face down, notifications off. It’s the way it has to be; a single text from Maran would absolutely destroy her concentration and send her spiraling into hours worth of ping pong conversations that were half actual texts and half abstract memes. Third half being links to funny videos. Fourth half might be shy flirting.

Nomi drags in a breath, leaning back in the stiff wooden seat. It’s the same café Benji comes to do all his studying. Nomi had picked it up from him, morning after a party where she was the only one who had stayed sober and Benji was the only one scraping together mental fortitude to still work on class projects after. She likes the place, but it’s authentic in its style. Meaning the chair really is made out of wood imported from a cute farm in Vermont and her ass hurts.

The code continues blinking. She pivots, thinking to stand and buy another overpriced, over sugared coffee; instead of rising, she shrinks.

“Whoa, Nomi! It’s so weird seeing you in daylight.”

“Ah.” It’s the only noise she can make. The sudden trio of girls in front of her makes Nomi’s insides turn over like a caught fish on a dock, waiting to die. Her skin flushes cold and then humiliatingly hot under their collective six eyed stare.

“Get it? Because of the goth thing.” Ria mimics claws and hisses playfully, giggling when she catches an elbow from the other girl beside her. Lew chews a thumbnail, as if obscuring a smile—but it’s Fiadh standing at the apex of the three girls that really makes Nomi want to disappear.

“That’s not even funny,” she says, a hint of reproach in her eyes. She crosses arms over her chest, shiny honey colored hair in a lovely half braid that’s artfully messy. It lays across her shoulder, wisps of hair looking dainty and honest. Fiadh turns her gaze on Nomi, apologetic and commiserating all at the same time. This sort of ‘can you believe my friends? Ugh!’ look that makes Nomi feel worse.

“Hello,” Nomi says awkwardly, unsure of what else to say, with all three of them are standing there.

“Is Matilda with you?” Lew asks in a hopeful voice for obvious reasons—she’d follow Matilda into the bathroom if she could, so obsessed with her to the point of making it weird. Nomi wants to say that (and say it mean, nasty, snide), but instead, she shakes her head mutely. She becomes oddly, painfully aware that her own navy dark hair has been thrown into a lazy bun. A look that is so obviously girl coded for I did not shower today.

“Lame.”

“Did you go to her New Years party? I was like, expecting more?”

“Right, no totally? I thought like, fireworks at least?”

“Well, you know she’s dating Daisuke Tanaka, right? And he’s on a warning for—well, I mean if the cops showed up? Right?”

“Are they dating or are they dating, though?”

“Aren’t you and Matilda tight?”

The conversation goes so quickly that Nomi isn’t sure she’s meant to catch up. Lew and Ria have conflicting accents; Lew something bastardizing Lark’s mostly cute California accent. Ria, a small twang of what Nomi believed was southern. Fiadh hasn’t said anything yet, glued to her phone, nails clicking every once in a while on the screen. The line for coffee moves, yet they don’t move toward it.

“I was surprised by that,” Ria says, folding an arm under her breasts, resting knuckles under her chin. She briefly uncurls her fist to wiggle fingers and grin at someone across the café. Nomi is busy looking for the phantom person receiving the little wave when Lew continues. “You’re like…so different.”

“What d’you mean?” Nomi’s head turns slowly to look at the girls. Aside from the line of take out customers, the café is largely empty. Was anyone actually there?

“Oh, I think Lew just means like, I mean you two look so totally different.”

“Different?” Nomi’s lips purse, brows bunching. “What? ‘Cause she’s thin like?” She tries laughing, but it sounds like a stutter, awkward and unsure. The code she should be working on continues blinking, as if it’s a third party to the conversation. A robot weeping for her inability to interact with humans normally.

“Oh my God, no! Whoa, time out, I am so not saying—”

“Well, you’re just all doom and gloom and Matilda is like a neon artist, isn’t she?”

“And popular!”

The duo of girls stare at each other with wide eyes, as if they can’t believe their own audacity. Can you believe I just said that, Oh my God, haha I can’t believe I just said that, can you believe we’re being like such total absolute cunts right now? This is so, so wild.

The reality is this; Nomi is very aware that Matilda is, as dim witted as it is to say, popular. She also knows that she is not. Prior to the strange sort of merging that Matilda’s friend group had done with Lark’s, Nomi hadn’t really had many friends offline. She was fairly popular (if the word had to be used) in online circles for gamers, hackers, tech enthusiasts. She blended with certain crowds that had certain aesthetics—she was tight knit in a kink community solely because she was a model for a very popular gear designer.

Never has Nomi ever felt embarrassed about being different before.

Before this, anyway.

She braces herself for courage to say something. Like telling them to fuck off, or screaming something crazy in the middle of the café so everyone looks at them and then all four of them can feel the humiliation that’s been broiling under her skin. She thinks of stomping on one of their shoes (pretty, lacy ballet flats) and then not apologizing for a broken toe. Deportation might be worth it.

Instead, Fiadh finally sighs and puts her phone away.

“Will you two birds just finally go order your coffees?”

It effectively silences the duo of girls as if they’d had their collars yanked. They blink big, innocent eyes but slink toward the coffee line. Fiadh tells them her coffee order—an iced Americano with no room for cream. Fill it up to the top, thanks, just the coffee. Something about it makes Nomi want to hate her, but she is also so desperately grateful for the other two girls to go away.

It almost makes her forget how much she despises Fiadh.

“I can’t believe you let them chat your ear off like that for so long.” She puts a pretty hand in front of her mouth, as though embarrassed of the pretty smile hiding behind it. “They can really go at it, aye? They’re dead on sometimes, but otherwise feel like splitting on ‘em both. Wish I had a thing like you and Matilda.”

Sometimes when Nomi is forced to look at Fiadh, she feels vaguely nauseas. There’s nothing really wrong with the girl at all. She’s short and curvy and her skin is flushed from the weather outside. She has a sweet curve to her lips that seems to invite the idea of kissing. Her brows are well trimmed, but not perfect. Every flaw only makes her prettier, authentic instead of arranged.

And Maran had—well. Had he loved her at one point? Nomi’s throat closes and she massages a hand over it, smiling weakly.

“Oh, yunno. Friendship like that comes around once in a lifetime, s’pose. Lucky me.”

“So true,” Fiadh says, with an odd note of sincerity. “Listen, sorry about all their nonsense. It’s just that I came over because I wanted to say hullo to you, is all. Look busy, though, don’t you? I’m so impressed by all that.” She waves a gentle hand in the direction of Nomi’s laptop. A surge of fresh new embarrassment flushes Nomi’s cheeks and throat as she looks over at it.

Crumbs from a pastry sit on a plate beside the laptop, more stickers than any one person needs plastering the thing. The keyboard glows in a rainbow array. It’s not the cute, dainty Apple product that all the girls at university seem to have. Nomi likes her laptop—she’d purchased it with one of her first big paychecks. But the thing is giant and the charger is clunky and it feels so…masculine. She quickly taps fingers across the keyboard, minimizing her work.

The laptop wallpaper is a picture of Nomi and her two boyfriends, one of who is Fiadh’s ex-boyfriend. It’s something blurry that Maran had taken, his lips smashed against Ben’s pale stubbled cheek while Nomi wrangled arms around his tattooed neck and kept him in the picture. She’s smiling so wide that it turns her eyes into nothing but narrowed slits. Benny looks harried and nervous, as he usually does, but there is a slight twitch of a smile to his lips.

Nomi loves this picture more than anything in the world because of that.

When she looks up, she swears for just a split second, whatever mask Fiadh wears to make people like her is missing. There is an undeniable squirming cold to her features, the neutrality of fury that blanks a person’s expression into nothing. Abyss like and somewhat terrifying in it’s otherness.

“I love your nails, by the by,” Fiadh says and that split second disappears if it ever existed. Instead, she’s smiling. It’s something sweet, almost encouraging. She points to Nomi’s acrylics. They’re almond shaped and longer than usual, needing a fill. She wants to say something clever and cutting and rude; Maran likes them, you know, he likes them a lot.

Instead, she says, “Thanks.”

“Anyway, so.” Fiadh leans her hip against the café table. Nomi catches a note of her perfume, something earthy and sweet and just as soft as Fiadh must be. She can imagine that smell lingers. How it must have clung to Maran’s clothes for days after. Nomi folds her hands in her lap, curling her fingers, feeling the nails biting into her palms.

“Listen, I feel like you’ll understand where I’m comin’ from with this, and it’s sort of why I came over here.” Nomi’s heart beats against the side of her throat, loud and obvious. Her eyes dart all over Fiadh’s face, heart shaped and beautiful. “It’s just that I noticed you get your lattes with a plastic straw. And I sort of feel like I have to be that person to tell everyone they should get a reusable one.” Fiadh digs into the tote bag at her side—it has tiny sewn on patches of bugs and stars.

She produces a bright yellow reusable metal straw.

“It’s just so much better for the environment and everything.”

Nomi stares at the straw, as if it’s the most confusing thing she’s ever seen in her life. After a few more blinks, she tilts her head, smiling.

“Oh, are you into this stuff ‘cause of the bugs?”

“The…what?”

“The bugs. Right, ‘cause you’re all about the bugs and everythin’, so you must know about composting and all of it—‘cause bugs live in the dirt. And, and because—” Nomi’s voice loses its confidence the more she goes and the more Fiadh looks bewildered. She’s taken a step on the stairs, thinking there’d be another, only to come up flat on the end. It’s like expecting a hand railing and crashing into the wall instead, or thinking someone’s going to ask a question and saying yes, when they’ve really asked a statement. Nomi’s lost the thread.

“No, yeah.” Fiadh flaps a hand, shoving the straw back into her bag. “Well, was nice catching up! Tell Maran hullo from me, too. Pool should be opening back up soon, if he wants to pick his shifts up again!”

“I’ll let him know.”

When Fiadh returns to her friends, Nomi starts to gather her things. There’s an odd shifted sensation inside her skull, like something went very wrong there but she can’t understand how. Worse, she can’t understand why she let it. Matilda’s in her head, laughing, saying, you are such a scary bitch sometimes after Nomi’s ripped into someone. Xavier, shivering, smiling at her, you don’t let anyone get away with anything, Nomi. Benny, her sweet, perfect Benny, cupping her cheek, ouch, remind me not to piss you off.

Nomi wants to cry, but stuffs everything away into her laptop bag. There are pins all over it of every anime she’s ever watched, and it makes her feel wildly embarrassed. She feels childish. Why does she get the latte with a plastic straw every time? Save the sea turtles and all that.

It’s worse when she stands up and pauses at the door. Ria and Lew, stuffed close together giggling. Fiadh standing there, scolding them quietly, hands on her hips. Then a look of pity she tosses Nomi’s way.

—

Maran’s so dramatic about losing. It’s one of her favorite things (among many) about him—he’s animated. Like a video game character left to idle, stretching and swaying and bouncing on it’s feet. He’s cute like this, on her couch and leaning left and right with the controller in his hands. Maran whispers under his breath, encouragement to the character on the screen. He button mashes, hunched forward until finally leaning back with exaggerated huffs of defeat.

There’s take out sitting on her loveseat (it’s often a collection for things instead of a place people sit), Chinese that they’d rifled through like racoons together. Nomi had offered him wine, but he’d taken a sip and recoiled and truthfully, he’s right. The wife doesn’t really pair with the lo mein all that well.

Nomi, despite that, polishes off her second glass and sinks into the warm tipsy feeling. It’s a soothing balm over frayed nerves, raw and exposed from the earlier interaction that she’s avoid telling him about. She thinks he’d get it. She thinks he’d even be upset for her, but the idea of bringing Fiadh up between them is more nightmarish than having to see her occasionally.

“Rotten,” Maran quips, slouching low and sighing heavily. Nomi admires his profile, his brow line and nose. His lips, plush and pretty, pouting currently. She never has the lights fully on in her flat, preferring ambient colors, blues and purples. It makes his bleached hair look green; she has dye in the bathroom that they’ll eventually get to, tonight or tomorrow. She wants a fun new design, and he wants to sit there for her like a good boy while she experiments.

“Think I’m over this one, Noms,” he says with defeat. Maran navigates the video games menu, opens his achievements to browse them. He hums along with the music, foot tapping on the floor. “Oh, least I unlocked the special outfit you wanted, yeah? Ace.”

“Mar, you know I’m autistic, right?”

“Right, yeah. ‘Course? The photography—and also the makeup, wicked creative.”

Nomi blinks a few times, watching him bite his lower lip and frown at the video game before him. Then she bursts into laughter so loud it startles the controller right out of his hand—poor thing clatters to the ground and skids away. Her arms wrap around her middle, her laughter getting breathier until she wheezes. The wine makes her cheeks impossibly warm.

“Mar, babe, I said autistic not artistic.”

“No!” His expression is horrified as he hunches over her. Maran’s hands (strong, roughly calloused, beautifully gentle) wrap around her shoulders. He holds her so softly sometimes that she feels like she might combust, become a black hole or a collection of stars dying to create some catastrophic event. Feels world ending how caring he is with her. “No—Nomi, oh fuck, Nomi, your—your accent, I thought you said—Nomi, promise, swear, it’s your accent!”

“My accent?” Nomi flutters her lashes, smiling at him, sinking further into the couch. The blues and purples twinkle above them. She likes the way he looks just then, leaned over her like he is. The necklace he wears—a cute heart, a word inscribed, maybe a gift from Benny—comes loose from his shirt. She hooks a finger in it, smiling coy with narrowed eyes. “What’s wrong with my accent?”

“Nothing!”

“’Cause I’m posh?”

“Well, it’s a bit posh, but I like it.”

“Bet your lads back home would make fun of you for dating me, yeah?”

“No.” Maran’s voice goes unexpectedly hard. It makes her pulse jump. Heat in her belly. Then he clears his throat, his lips relaxing into his sweet smile and that smile does things to her that feel downright illegal. “Wouldn’t let ‘em. Anyway, think a few of ‘em would like you lots, Nom. Hen would, he taught me skateboarding. Actually, he’d be jealous.”

“Of?”

A flush creeps across Maran’s cheeks and down his throat. The freckles that scatter his features stand out so much more when he’s blushing. She wants to kiss there and feel his heated skin. She wants to bite into him and shake her head like an animal. She sort of understands why Maran wanders out of Benny’s bedroom with a dizzy happy look on his face and hand shaped bruises all over.

“Well.” He doesn’t finish that thought at all. It lingers for a moment. Maran relaxes above her, sliding hands down her arms to tuck around her waist. His thumbs press ever so slightly into her soft middle. He seems distracted by that, looking at her hands, her body, the give of her against him. She tugs the necklace once more to get his attention and he startles. Then eases more on top of her, his weight so comforting and pleasant. She slowly slides a leg around his waist, refusing to let him leave now that he’s there.

Fiadh is a fucking lunatic, Nomi thinks, winding hands around the back of Maran’s neck to pull him closer. Their lips are so close she can feel the heat of his breath. He’d taste like Chinese food and fizzy drink and that sweet unique Maran taste.

Instead of kissing, he cups her cheek and their noses brush.

“I like you, Nomi. Everything about you, really. Doesn’t—feel like an ass to even say, doesn’t bother me or something, ‘cause it’s not—it shouldn’t bother anyone, and all and—”

“You’re hard right now.”

Maran blinks rapidly, eyes darting everywhere for a moment. Nomi’s hands slide to his lower back, pushing their bodies together. She can feel the truth of that statement against her thigh and very much enjoys the way it feels.

“Yeah? You’re very pretty and very warm and I’m very into kissing you.”

“We haven’t even done that yet.”

“Oh, I was thinking about kissing the whole time, though.”

Nomi’s chest jumps with her laugh and Maran’s forehead crashes to her shoulder as he groans, sharp acrylic nails digging into his lower back.

“Do you wanna have sex then?”

“So bad, but I also want you to know—”

“I know, Mar.” And finds that statement true, that she does know. That he’s never been anything but authentic with her. That sometimes his body language is confusing or he says something bewildering to her or she feels out of place standing in a room even if he’s there—that none of those feelings ever disappear, because whatever part of her brain functions in a different wavelength doesn’t disappear. But it syncs sometimes, its little lines wavering with his to form something pretty and nice as she imagines it in her head. That feels like enough, that feels like more than enough even. It feels like how it’s meant to be; like Matilda and Lark. Not passing for normal under scrutiny, but fucking right.

She wiggles to get Maran to pull back. And he looks stunningly gorgeous as she yanks her shirt off and tosses it to the side, his eyes popping wide and his jaw slackening as if he’s not seen her topless a hundred times before.

—

Nomi never knew sex was passionate like this—she’d dreamed of it. She’d read about it, in countless romance novels that lined a shelf in her bedroom, often overlooked in favor of the computer parts. She’d thought of it, she’d imagined favorite fictional characters in a hundred different ways and then when it came to the real thing, with real people, she was laid back on pillows and sheets and blankets and bored. She was unable to connect to it, frustrated in a way that was painful. She was the outlier, the confusing part of the pie chart that was one tiny sliver that just said UNABLE TO CLIMAX, SEX TOO CONFUSING, NOT WEIRD ENOUGH, NEEDS MORE KINK, NEEDS MORE ROMANCE, UNABLE TO FIGURE IT THE FUCK OUT!

Maran’s hand cups behind her neck, cradling her as they kiss. Their mouths part here and there because of their rhythm, which gets harder but never frantic. Which never loses the edge of gentle softness that makes Maran perfect. Her nails dig angry red lines into his back, proof of pleasure, the opposite of his hands that never so much as bruise her. Job well done, Benny would quip in his nasty condescending voice, kissing Maran messily.

She thought missionary was supposed to be boring. The vanilla, heterosexual couples position. Instead, his chest is pressed against hers, his face burying into her neck as he tenses, as he gets close. Maybe she liked all the strange, fun positions that had them all twisted into knots, maybe she liked all three of them to be exhausted and depleted and sore because of it the next day.

But with him, just him, Nomi likes this best. She feels special like this. Coveted. Not at all broken or confused.

When he cums—on her stomach like she’d asked, because she likes watching him pull out, tug himself to a finish, brows pinched and eyes glossy in concentration and pleasure—she feels that sort of stars exploding behind the eyes feeling. Watches the muscles bunch in his biceps, stomach flexing with the orgasm. She drags nails down his chest then, just like she’d done to his back, listening to the soft whimper moan it elicits.

Without asking, he sinks lower, to make sure she finishes next.

—

“Can’t believe you guys h-had sex without me.”

“Oh, stop bein’ such a baby.”

“And you got food without me, too.”

Nomi watches Benny undress, exhaustion pulling at him. He fumbles with his jeans, the button, the zipper. He mumbles his words, when he already has a terrible American accent. It’s dark in the room, so she can’t see him fully, but she can imagine the bruises imprinted beneath his pretty blue eyes. She can imagine the lines on his forehead from the constant furrowing of his brow. Her stupid academic boy.

Maran snores softly beside her, face down in the bed. Benny has just enough room to slide in on the other side of him—and he rouses for just a moment, a softly whispered ‘Ben?’ that he replies to with a soothing kiss to Maran’s brow. He’s swiftly asleep again after that and Nomi is left to look at Benny over the silhouette of him. The curve of his shoulders and the nape of his neck. Benny looks at her as well and she feels whole and complete now that he’s there.

“I think we should get hitched.”

“Nomi, Jesus Christ.”

“I really do. I think we should elope.”

“Did he do s-something extra romantic tonight?”

Nomi hums, reaching a hand over Maran’s back, finding Benny’s already reaching for hers. Everyone thinks he’s weird or scary or intimidating or freaky, creepy, strange, off putting. His thumb brushes the back of her hand, over and over in a soothing rhythm she could fall asleep too. She suddenly feels like crying, which is ridiculous and beautiful.

Instead, she leans over the sleeping boy, making Maran hum softly in his sleep (her breasts, pressed against his back, something that could wake him from a dead coma). Benny is smiling, she can tell, even in the dark. The smile he reserves solely for the either of them.

They’re going to kiss, her and Benny. Their mouths are close. She’s struck with an idea.

“Would that make Maran have a triple hyphenated last name? Giarizzo-Cohn-Walker?”

Benny has to cover his hand to stop the sudden laugh, head tilted back on the pillow. Maran rouses just slightly underneath her, his hand patting its way across the bed to curl against Benny’s tattooed chest, his mumbling incoherent. Nomi doesn’t have to feel like the moment was ruined, or she made any missteps when Benny smiles like that.

[hauntedjpegcollection]

loneliest boy in the world

wc: 3214 au: college au ch: benny, maran

Benny had stopped enjoying parties a long time ago.

When he’d been a freshman, it was an every night sort of thing for him. Fell into a bit of a bad habit of drinking too much and barely surviving class the next morning—and school meant something to Benny. Wasn’t just a place to occupy for four years before fucking off to find some menial labor job. Which was generally expected of someone who looked like him. Class mattered, his grades mattered, staying in school mattered. The PhD mattered, getting a good job afterwards mattered.

So, he doesn’t do parties anymore, unless they’re thrown at his own apartment (still enjoys these, likes the attention more often than not) or he’s roped in because of transportation. Being the oldest of his room mates and the only one with a car that could seat more than two people, he found himself more often than not going wherever he was asked. Xavier’s big puppy eyes generally worked, if Lark’s didn’t.

It lands him at a party he doesn’t really want to be at and mostly sober—because he’s driving them all home.

“I just feel like I never see you outside class.”

He’s found a secluded hallway with Sujin, leaning against a wall, nursing a lukewarm beer in a red solo cup. The other man smiles up at him, a good five inches shorter. Benny likes the way he keeps his hair, short with bleached tips. He clearly spends more time on it than he’d want people to think, but it has the effect that all he did was scrub a hand through it and leave.

“Do y-you need to see me outside class?” Benny asks, lip’s curling into a smile that most wouldn’t consider friendly. Sujin blushes. Benny knew he would.

“Parties aren’t your thing.” Sujin fidgets with the ends of his sleeves and doesn’t look up this time.

“I like parties.” Lie. “I d-don’t like hockey players.” Truth. He gestures to the Hockey House around them; it’s sat on a long road down campus, right outside the lake that doesn’t actually freeze over fully enough for the players to play on. The house is nice enough considering so many men live there. The walls are practically moist with the number of bodies they have packed in to it for the night. They vibrate so harsh with the music it’s a surprise their framed pictures of past teams stay up on the walls.

“Did Xavier make you come out?”

Benny isn’t sure how to feel about the familiarity of the statement. He’s almost positive Xavier and Sujin have never really met, otherwise Sujin’s crush would be on Xavier instead of Benny. There’s a strange squirm in his stomach that maybe he’s talked too much and now someone knows more about him than they should; nobody should be aware that Xavier can make Benny do things with a simple, please?

But Sujin likes him. He must pay attention.

For now, anyway. He makes big eyes at him and asks about class and borrows his notes and tries texting him (Benny hardly ever actually has his phone on him to answer). And he’s sweet and attractive and they share a few things in common. Benny can imagine Sujin’s tongue piercing and how it would feel if they’d kiss. Can picture pushing up his black sweater and finding pale skin and both of them having a good time.

But it’s also an exhausting thing to picture once the daydreams end. Fitting someone into his life. Introducing them to his (much more attractive) friends. Being more reliable for communication—he’s dated before and it never ends well. People want things in relationships. Benny wants a cure for insomnia and a large cheese pizza.

Still. Sujin. He’s good—he’s nice.

“Xavier’s m-made plenty of people come out th-the closet.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Sujin replies, laughing, punching Benny softly in the side. “You suck, you know that?”

Flirting feels nice. Benny smiles into it, takes a sip from his cup, watches Sujin’s eyes flicker there and then away. The tops of his pale cheekbones turn pink. He really is cute.

They talk about class, about the annoying poli-sci major that raises their hand too often. They talk about a TV show that Benny hasn’t seen. Sujin explains the pilot in detail and creeps closer with every exaggerated gesture. Lots of explosions in this TV show, lots of hand movements to follow explanations of those explosions. They talk about Benny’s car, which he didn’t realize people took such notice of. They talk about Sujin’s summer vacation plans, if he’s going to go back home for a bit. The entire time, Benny wonders when he should make a move.

“Are you coming home with us?” A new voice pipes up at the end of the hallway, cutting over the music, over their conversation and Benny’s waffling decisions on if he should kiss Sujin or not. He glances over his shoulder, finds a tiny girl with giant glasses and an annoyed expression.

“Me?” Benny points to his chest, hand still holding the now empty red solo cup.

“Ew,” the girl replies, with a scrunched nose. “You’d need a thousand showers before I let you in my apartment.”

“Mina!”

“What?” She props hands on her hips. A lanyard with far too many keychains attached to it jangles in her hand. Benny stares down at her with a bored expression and she doesn’t even flinch. Instead, her dark eyes slide around him and to Sujin. “Like, are you staying here? Are you finding a ride home? What are you doing, because I’m leaving and I drove you here.”

It clicks into place then—Sujin’s older sister, a year ahead of him and attending the same college. They had an apartment together, rather than rooming on campus, even though they were from…Benny struggles to remember where Sujin is from. His face must go through an impressive look of concentration, because Mina appears disgusted and steps away from him.

“Uh.” Sujin looks up at him.

Unfortunately, there is something so deeply hopeful in his eyes that it makes Benny’s insides curl up. A feeling of near black out inducing panic thrums across his vision for a moment. There’s an announcer inside his head—loud, comical, and horrifying—screaming, decision time, you whore! The audience laughs to trivia show music. Benny realizes too late that he’s taken far too long to say anything, while Sujin’s blush drains and his eyebrows awkwardly tilt upward.

“C’mon,” Mina huffs, darting a hand out to scoop her brother closer. “You need better taste, you know that?”

“Mina, fuck you—Oh my God.” He flicks a look over his shoulder, a clear attempt at civility, though his smile is somewhat dimmed. “Bye, Benny.”

See? See? I’m shit at this. I’m the worst at it. The fucking worst.

And though it shouldn’t be able to get any worse than missing a chance to hook up with a cute boy from class—and one he actually liked—Benny can feel a hand at his back pocket. Someone thinking they’re being sneaky and light fingered, when they are most certainly not. He waits a moment, staring at Mina and Sujin as they trek through a packed room. Then he jerks around, snatching at a wrist—hand caught right as it’s about to free his car keys of his possession.

“What are you doing?” Benny asks Maran, tone flat.

“Huh?”

He’s clearly been drinking. Maran’s cheeks get flushed when he’s been to the keg one too many times, and it’s only gotten worse since Xavier has introduced him to those fruity little cocktails that Matilda makes. His dark brown eyes are shiny, the neck of his shirt yoked, revealing the silver line of a necklace. He has a small stain on the front of his jeans, where Benny can guess a shot of liquor was spit out. Maran smiles and it has a horrifying effect on Benny’s ability to stand.

Luckily, he doesn’t collapse. Instead, he slowly leans his shoulder against the wall and stares at Maran. He smiles wider, withdrawing his hand and slowly tucking it into his own front pocket. Maran’s shoulders raise, converse sneakered feet tucking in slightly. Who me? I’m just a guy, please don’t be mad I almost stole your car keys. It makes Benny’s stomach warm in a way it shouldn’t.

“Didn’t wanna interrupt you and—” Maran’s hand raises and flaps in the direction Sujin was towed off in. His expression briefly changes to something colder. Benny is stunned, because he didn’t realize that he and Sujin had an audience. How long had Maran been standing down the hallway, waiting to approach?

It shouldn’t, but that realization makes him smile. Slowly. And a little mean. A rude curl to his mouth, blue eyes narrowing.

“Wh-What would you be interrupting?” Benny asks, crossing his arms over his chest. Maran huffs a sound, scuffing his shoe across the floor. He slowly slides it until the once white rubber tip touches Benny’s beaten up combat boot. His eyes don’t lift and meet Benny’s. They hover somewhere underneath his chin, around his arms.

“Clearly nothing, huh?”

Oh, Benny thinks, stomach warming further. You little shit.

“You think so?” He lifts his boot and presses it down over Maran’s shoe, so it can stop it’s nudging against him. Benny leans in, so they’re closer. Maran smells a little like alcohol and this sweet, boyish scent. Like he’s been using the same body spray since he was a teenager and never let it go. He radiates body heat so desirable that it hurts to be near him like this. Benny can’t imagine what Maran’s skin feels like to the touch.

“Lad clearly likes you.” Maran is a little drunk, so his accent is even thicker. Maybe a little rougher.

“I’m a likeable guy.”

“I’m not disagreein’ there, you know. Clearly, I think you’re well likeable.” There’s a hum as he sucks his teeth, rolls his eyes to the side, lifts a hand and waves it slightly. Benny follows it like a hound dog finding a bird in the sky. “Just thought his flirting could use some work.”

“Maybe you c-can give him lessons.”

“I’m not flirting with anyone,” Maran says with an indignant tone, putting a hand to his chest. His eyes flash, pretty and challenging.

“I think every girl you come across w-would think otherwise.”

“You’d have to ask them after you got over your fear of talkin’ to girls.”

It’s so unexpected, Benny bursts out with a laugh. It’s high pitched and ends with a giggle as he slaps a hand over his mouth. Someone would think Maran won the fucking lottery the way his face lights up. He inches closer, angling himself to peer up at Benny.

“Got you, Ben. What’s it all when you nail someone in checkers?”

“Chess. It’s a ch-checkmate.”

“Checkmate.” Maran flicks a finger in the air. The triumph in his dark, drunken eyes makes Benny’s chest feel tight. He breathes in nice and slow in an attempt to get oxygen to his brain but all that does is make Maran’s eyes drop to his chest again. His cheeks go dark as he leans back and slumps against the wall. Benny has an overwhelming desire to put an arm between Maran and the hockey player’s nasty wallpaper.

“Why did you want to go sit in my car?” Benny pulls his keys from his back pocket, giving them a glance. Maran doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he goes quiet and somber, linking his hands in front of himself, pushing on his stomach. He glances down at the floor, where Benny’s booted foot is still resting on top of Maran’s converses.

“Just—Drank a bit much, hey?” His nose scrunches a bit, wrinkling as he smiles ruefully. “Well, found myself a bit alone in it all. Then I was wandering and found—and anyway…Guess I wanted to find a place to just fuck off and be lonely?”

“Poor baby.” Benny huffs a laugh, his arms feeling heavy and full of desire as they unwind. “Lonely baby.”

“What?”

Benny rolls his eyes. He reaches out, taking Maran by the wrist. He can feel the boys heart beat crashing against the thin skin, vein throbbing with the pulse. He is warm. He is so fucking warm.

The keys get placed in his palm. Benny slowly closes his fingers around them.

“I’ll be there in a minute.” Maran stares at him, blinking those awful, beautiful eyes.

—

The hockey house has a long, winding drive way that bleeds out onto the street. Cars line the entire way like a trail of ants. Benny had gotten a shit spot, because he’d arrived late—which was largely Lark’s fault. If he showed up to things early, it would look back for his casual attitude. Being on time was even worse. It was halfway through the party or nothing.

Benny finds his car underneath a street light, a cone of amber around it. Sometimes, the light flickers, in a strange little rhythm. On for a long moment, then stuttering in three quick successions and then on once more. Benny only knows because he’s been standing there for a long while, two water bottles in his hands. He contemplates smoking an entire cigarette before he gets into the car.

He can see Maran’s silhouette. The shape of him, in the dark. The light of his phone—or that adorable Game Boy—makes his face a light blue. It clashes with the sepia toned street light. Benny doesn’t want to think about what his heart is doing inside his chest. An hour earlier, he had been contemplating kissing Sujin. He’d thought, even briefly, about bringing him home. Back to his apartment.

Benny shakes himself all over like a dog and then swiftly shoves himself into the backseat of his car.

“Drink this.”

The water bottle gets shoved into Maran’s hand before he can disagree. With them both in the backseat, they arrange to fit better; for some reason it’s entirely natural. Maran scoots into a corner, back against the car door, one leg extended and the other dropped on the floor. Benny sits with one foot extended onto the console and the other tucked up, knee under his chin. They are tangled and close and the heat inside the car suddenly feels unbearable. He wishes he’d stopped to think about rolling the windows down before getting in.

Too late, he supposes. Not even the end of the world could pull him from this car.

Both of them are silent for a bit, sitting there and staring at each other. It isn’t nearly as uncomfortable as it should be and Benny figures maybe that’s because Maran is drunk. He shifts, his leg touching Benny. Without thinking, he closes his pale palm around Maran’s ankle.

“Do you like that guy?” Maran suddenly asks, taking a healthy sip from his water bottle. The condensation on it must bother, because he wipes his palms on his jeans.

“He’s nice.” Maran’s face looks dubious. Benny snorts, uncaps his own water, takes a healthy chug. It unseats his dry tongue, thankfully. He swishes the water and takes his time swallowing. “I’m n-not a good boyfriend. Done it once or twice, d-don’t really live up to the hype.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You th-think I’d be a good boyfriend?” Benny bats his eyelashes in an exaggerated way and fucking lives for the flush that goes from Maran’s cheeks down his throat. It’s a dangerous game to play, teasing at Benji’s straight friend like this. Sometimes he can’t help it; there’s something clearly wrong with him for being so masochistic about it. What ever comes from flirting with straight boys but headaches? Only Maran is so sweet about it—so authentic. As though he really feels it, sometimes. Like he means it, when he flirts back.

“Nice, being away from the noise,” Maran says, letting himself slump sideways against the car seat. His eyes flutter close. He tucks the cold water bottle up near his neck. His chest rises and falls heavily, making Benny look there. It’s like a Victorian peeking at an ankle the way Benny’s stomach muscles clench.

“You know you don’t ha-have to come out every time Xavier asks, right?”

“Right, but he gets excited. And I like it—just lately him and Benj keep disappearin’. Fucking off and all that. And I guess that’s alright, I don’t need to be hip to hip with Benji, alright? I’ve made some friends here. And I like making new ones. I can make friends easy.”

Benny doesn’t need to be convinced. Maran has a personality that sort of moths-to-flame’s people. He’s handsome. He has an accent and American’s love accents. Benny thinks about Sujin—about how he knew bits and pieces of Benny just piecing them together from odd here and there conversations. How terrifying it was to think that Benny might have to supply more. It’s lonely, but it’s safer.

“Jesus,” Benny lets his head bang backward against the car window. “I should be drunk for this.”

“Tell me if I’m bothering you,” Maran mumbles. His foot taps against Benny’s thigh until the hand around his ankle squeezes hard.

“Don’t be a brat.” He watches Maran’s eyes go shiny and wide. Dangerous. Flirting with straight guys was always dangerous and Benny couldn’t help it. This was a straight guy he was going to indulge in. Safer, right? He sighs out his nose, squeezing Maran’s ankle once more before rolling his head to the side, leaning on the car seat as well.

“I meant I should b-be drunk for twenty questions.”

“Twenty questions?”

“You ask first.”

There’s silence between them while Maran’s drunken brain catches up. Then he’s smiling eagerly, scooting forward. He hunches over, crossing his legs underneath him, hands patting on Benny’s calf. The little tap, tap, tap drives him near to insanity. There’s a tattoo of a dagger there; he thinks Maran would like it, would look at it and peer closely and compare it to something from one of his little fantasy games he’s played with Xavier.

“Favorite color?”

“Lame. Blue.”

“That’s so vain!” Maran howls, laughing. “Blue, like your eyes?”

“Dark blue,” Benny replies, grinning despite himself. Unable to stop himself, but Jesus who could look at Maran laughing like that and not smile? “Think Nomi’s hair.”

Maran clears his throat with a fist to his mouth, shoulders shrugging a few times.

“Well, I like blue fine. Nomi’s blue, or light blue. Sort of snowy like blue? Guess snow is white, yeah, but winter blue is good—ask me, now.”

Benny could think of a thousand things, but he doesn’t rush. He settles himself in the car, slouching. It shoves his leg up underneath Maran’s crossed ones. He doesn’t seem to mind at all. The hands that had tapped furiously at him stay there. They pluck gently at black denim. Nervous or excited or both. Benny could think of a thousand things and never be satisfied, but that’s fine. He points to the water bottle and Maran dutifully drinks.

And they play the twenty questions game for far more than twenty questions.

[hauntedjpegcollection]

in my restless dreams, i see that town

wc: 5398 au: silent hill au ch: yasiel, benji, lethe

My favorite memory of you is the swing set. Rusty and neglected, lonely and ignored.

Our backyard, you remember? You finally let me push you until we thought you’d go the whole way around. You didn’t, but it was enough that we thought it was possible. And you let me and I never told you how much that meant to me. You trusted me. No one ever trusts me.

Don’t come for me, Yas.

It isn’t safe. And you’re not strong enough.

I’m sorry.

I love you, but I’m sorry. I’m sorry and I love you.

Don’t

—

The rustle of the forest is like whispers; ominous, cruel, and taunting. So similar to his twin. Nelsy could be a forest, undefinable by map with too many paths that wind to no true destination. Nowhere authentically safe. She was scary and unknowable and cold—and so is Yasiel. Standing on the overpass that leads to Silent Hill, the wind sending murmurs through the leaves, cutting the bare skin of his high, freckled cheekbones.

He's fucking cold.

Yasiel’s lighter clicks a few times before it finally sparks and washes his light brown face in ambers and reds. The flame flickers a few times and threatens to go out before it can complete its simple job of lighting the cigarette dangling between his lips. The nicotine doesn’t warm him up, but it soothes a thrumming nerve inside him. An anxiety that can’t ever truly calm.

Don’t come for me, Yas.

His head tilts back, smoke pluming above him from parted lips. The sky above is cottony with roiling clouds, dark and fat on rain that hasn’t shed yet. Mouse had picked a perfect time to disappear; she always knew he hated fall. The slow death to winter. A season that held too many bad memories for both of them. And he hates the fucking cold. His black denim jacket is all flash and no substance, made to make him look pretty but not offer any actual warmth.

Maybe being warm would just make him feel guilty anyway. What does he deserve, after all? What, indeed.

Yasiel stamps the cigarette out on the railing of the overpass, then flicks the butt out into nature, watching it fall down the steep ravine into the forest surrounding Silent Hill. Adverts online made it seem like a pretty little place, someone’s cozy small town getaway. Writers would book a motel room and finish their next big project, or dads would drag their families to move in and start new. The sheriff from a town over takes a new placement in Silent Hill and feels restless because people aren’t doing cocaine off each other in bathrooms and ending their night jacking cars.

There’s no seeing the town from this far away, but the road into town is shut down. Looks permanent, no less. A rusted gate is padlocked closed, a few plywood boards haphazardly strapped to it. People have dumped trash all around it, like the dumpster off to the side was a suggestion to ignore. Yasiel, if he were athletic like his sister, might have been able to vault over the fence.

Instead, he’s forced to leave his car and take the scenic trail.

According to the map he’d snagged from a rest stop a hundred miles prior, that route funnels directly into Silent Hill’s graveyard before opening up into town.

“My fucking luck,” he mutters aloud to no one but the haughty, laughing wind. Yas folds the map, tucks it into his back pocket along with his lighter.

Then he descends.

—

The fog only seems to thicken the closer Yasiel gets to Silent Hill, and with it a palpable sense of dread. What starts as a modest mist quickly turns into a heavy blanket—and the way forward becomes trickier and tricker. He stumbles over forest roots, slides down the path as it suddenly becomes a gravely hill. More than once, he slips and palms a tree beside him and comes away with a scrape on his hand. The sting follows him.

So does the growing frustration that simmers into fury.

A farm sits desolate beside the trail as it opens from forest into wide open dirt path. A rusted windmill creaks slowly in the wind, the shadow falling over him. The sun is barely able to peek through the grey fog, the heavyset clouds. The farm makes him feel uneasy. It reminds him of an empty airport at four in the morning, or a lot to a gas station where the OPEN light flickers nonstop where he’s the only car parked. He’s reminded of the stairwell in his apartment building, how it goes on and on and on forever as he stands at the top and stares down. It’s a place abandoned except for him.

Yasiel’s heartbeat is loud in his ears as he walks past the abandoned farm. His breathing is uneven and raspy and he can’t entirely blame it on the hike. Grass and dirt crunch underneath his sneakers but otherwise, there is no noise. The severe lack of it is almost loud. He pats down the inside pocket of his denim jacket, reminding himself of the inhaler kept there. It does little to comfort him.

He resolves to hate his sister a little harder as he finally finds the winding path to the graveyard. Flowers, dying of course, line the path like droopy used tissues. The gate is as worn down as everything else Yasiel has encountered, but the rusted chain that barely keeps the back entrance together is easily yanked off. He rubs the metallic dust from his hand onto his jeans, slipping in through the little opening he’s made.

A “Welcome to Silent Hill” sign would have been appreciated and yet all he has is the fog, the tombs like broken teeth burst from the ground and a dark silhouette just a few paces in front of him.

—

“Hello?”

The stranger whirls to face him and Yasiel regrets saying anything. He’s not sure what made him approach in the first place—herd mentality perhaps. The fear of being alone and spotting the singular other person he’s seen since the rest stop prior to entering Silent Hill’s radius.

Rusty and neglected, lonely and ignored.

Whoever they are, they’re angry. The word might not even justify it. Their jacket hood is up, but snakes of curly black hair peek from underneath it, framing his furious expression. Thick, dark brows pull in tight, creating a crease on their brown forehead. The stranger’s eyes are red rimmed and shiny, deep set with purpling bruises underneath them. His lip curls up, revealing teeth in a snarling expression.

Yasiel instinctively steps back.

“You from this fuckin’ town?”

“What? No, I—”

“Is this a joke? Some dickhead havin’ a proper fuckin’ laugh at me, then? Who did this?” The graveyard stranger throws a hand toward the tombstone he’d been standing in front of. Yasiel only realizes then that there is a hole in the ground, coffin shaped and six feet deep. A plot freshly dug for a burial. Nausea wells in his stomach.

“Man, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about! I don’t live here, I just—I just got here. I’m looking for—” He cuts off as the stranger’s face flickers with fear and pain and then lastly, worry. All three mingle into something devastating before it’s wiped clean, flat and apprehensive.

Yasiel looks at the tombstone once more. There doesn’t seem to be anything else he can do.

XAVIER WOLFFE

1996 – 2024

ARE YOU GOING TO STOP IT, BENJI?

YOU SHOULD TRY, IT MIGHT BE FUN!

A booted foot kicks out, striking the tombstone and sending it falling backward, the sound of marble slapping on loamy soil a wet smack. Yasiel flinches, taking a sidestep from the man—from Benji? He’s shorter, but broad and his hands, clenched at his sides, shake with unrepentant fury. There’s a glint of something gold at his neck, but Yasiel doesn’t look closer.

“Who is it?” he asks, taking another step away, cautious. Yasiel glances down into the grave to make sure it really is empty—there’s no dead body or even an empty casket, just a depression in the dirt, man sized. The hairs along his arms and the ones at the back of his neck stand to attention. The fog rolls in on the two of them, no less heavy, no less dense. It’s day time and yet the ever present grey makes this graveyard feel like a bog.

Mouse had read Wuthering Heights to shreds, he remembers. Her paperback copy had fallen apart in her hands one night, as she sat bent over in bed, a pen behind her ear. She would have loved this graveyard, and this chilling stranger.

Benji—if that’s who he is—doesn’t answer the question. He stares down at the tombstone, a muscle in his jaw feathering. He looks like he hasn’t slept for days, his clothes rumpled. There’s a drawstring bag slung over his shoulder.

“Hey, listen,” Yasiel says quietly. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Who isn’t?” Benji snaps back, black eyes sliding upward to him. “I’m looking for him.”

“For—For Xavier?”

“He’s not dead if that’s what you’re thinkin’. Someone did this, someone fuckin’ sick and disgustin’ did this.”

Yasiel can’t place the man’s accent directly, besides distinctly British. His voice is rumbly, from the chest and deeply hurt. Words fracture a bit here and there, notably on dead and disgusting. Yasiel goes to ask another question—when’s the last time you saw him or where are you from—any semblance of polite socialization that might lead him down a path where he can ask about Mouse.

Instead, he sees another figure. Not that far from them, partially hidden by a statue of a crumbling angel. The mist in the graveyard has made it almost impossible to see anything other than the smattering of graves and Benji. It thins, only just barely. As though the graveyard wants them to see this.

Only, Yasiel doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to know. He steps back, eyes wide as the dark silhouette materializes little by little. Fear makes his veins cold, make his limbs feel limp and useless. His hand twitches to his lower back, underneath his jacket. He’s horrified at himself, at the sudden dread and terror that seems to be controlling his actions. So, his hand pauses.

That’s when the figure shambles forward.

“Xavier?” Benji asks, startled, his voice tipping high with hope. Dirt scatters into the open grave as he steps closer. Mist unravels around them. Yasiel’s hand shoots out and grabs him by the bicep, earning a dangerous look—he misses it entirely. Benji’s warning glare is wasted on him, because all Yasiel looks at is…is…it.

A distinctly canine jaw opens, mangled tongue lolling from its maw, high pitched whine splitting the otherwise silent graveyard. Drool pours from it’s mouth, mixing with dark, oily blood. The beast is shaped mostly man like; it stands on two long denim clad legs, nude lengthy pale torso tapered to wide shoulders, it’s arms behind it’s back cruelly bent and bound by slick wire. For a moment, a feeling of odd, misplaced sympathy cuts through the fear. It’s in pain, wolflike head rolling back and forth, nose snuffling the air, whimpering. It’s fur is dark auburn and shaggy.

“Xavier?” Benji repeats, his voice a horrified whisper.

The dog head snaps up, large white teeth gnashing together.

“Holy shit,” Yasiel whispers. Then screams as the beast charges toward him.

Everything happens too quickly. The breath is knocked from him as he collides with the ground—Yasiel raises an arm in defense, screaming wildly as an eyetooth catches on his wrist. The skin splits, fresh blood splattering across his denim jacket. Adrenaline is the only thing that keeps him from feeling the pain immediately. Yasiel kicks out his legs, flailing underneath the creature as it snaps its jaws open and close. Its wide open mouth smells like a dead thing, breath hot and foul. It snarls, lips curled back, snout wrinkled.

Then it squeals, spasming on top of Yasiel, who jerks out from under it. He rolls away on the grass, scrambling backward. There’s more blood on him. Dark and slick. This time, it belongs to the creature. Benji straddles it, with something wicked and glinting sharp in the grey filtered sunlight held aloft in his hand.

The doglike sounds of pain continue as Benji stabs, his own voice frantic and loud. Over and over, he plunges the—scalpel? The scalpel. Over and over until the wolf man is just twitching on the ground, bent at a horrible angle with it’s arms tied behind its back. Then slowly, it sighs out one last sound and—and it dies.

“Fuck!” Benji screams standing. He kicks, one final slam of his boot against pale flesh. “Fuck!”

Yasiel must say something too, but he isn’t sure what. It draws Benji’s attention, his focus sharp. And then he’s there, kneeling beside him, holding Yasiel’s hand, as his wrist continues bleeding. The wound is looked over with a clinical eye. It hasn’t started hurting yet; it only burns, like he’s gotten too close to campfire, like he’s laid out under the sun too long, like he’s fallen asleep in a car, baking in the backseat.

“Oh my God,” Yasiel whispers, realizing that it’s not the first time he’s said it. That maybe he’s been repeating it ever since the dog had been pulled off him and killed. His entire body shakes, a pit of cold opening in his chest. Yasiel’s vision is blurry until he realizes that his glasses had been knocked off. Awkwardly, he pulls himself away from Benji to pick them up. When he stands, he stumbles. His elbow is caught, steadying him enough to stand there without falling.

“Thank you,” he says, awe struck and dumb.

“Gonna faint?”

“No.”

“Y’sure?”

“No, I—What—what the fuck was that?”

Benji shakes his head. Yasiel didn’t expect him to know, and yet he still feels lost. Is this a dream? It can’t be. Oh God, it can’t be. He knows it isn’t and that’s worse. That makes it all so much worse. Reality catches up to him, the adrenaline dump draining; and then he’s doubling over, vomiting onto the blood stained grass. He heaves, hands on his knees, panting, stomach muscles clenching. He raises a shaky hand to stop his glasses from falling off once more.

“Can you get back then?”

“What?” Yas straightens slowly, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. The bile’s made his lips burn. He almost registers that more than the slash on his wrist, even as the blood clots and dries.

“Up the way you came, yeah? Trail in the woods leads to the road, right?”

“Yes. Yeah, it does.”

“Can you get back?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not leaving this fucking place without my husband,” Benji points into the fog. Into Silent Hill. His hand trembles, but his expression is hard and final. Yasiel can still taste vomit in his mouth, the bitter tang of it on the back of his tongue. He looks down at his hand, where blood has pooled into his palm, into the creases. His life line, his love line, the identical match to his sisters.

It isn’t safe. And you’re not strong enough.

“Let me come with you,” Yasiel pleads, stumbling toward Benji, hands upraised. The scalpels been cleaned on his jeans, making it shine in the dull fog once more. Benji’s hand tightens around it, tendons standing out starkly. Yasiel doesn’t even flinch. He can’t afford to be afraid, but he is. He is so afraid. “My sister is here. I’m looking for her—I have to find her. I’m not leaving, either.”

Wherever she is. Yasiel thinks of the dead wolf man creature on the ground, blood soaking into the dirt and a spasm of fear tightens his chest. His heart turns over wildly. Half of him is out there, in this town, with these things.

“You don’t get in my way of finding him,” Benji says calmly, slowly. The scalpel disappears into a pocket. He pulls his hood back, letting tangles of black curls free. The subtle graveyard wind shifts around them, tickling exposed skin, laughing in their ears. “Then, c’mon.”

—

They don’t encounter another creature—they don’t encounter anything at all. No people, no remains of them either. Just emptiness; cars parked with nothing in them, flyers and newspapers scattering empty roads. Everything is covered in layers of grime, as if Silent Hill stopped being a town a decade ago, frozen in time but not immune to decay.

Which doesn’t make sense because Mouse had been here just last year. Yasiel had dropped her off at the train, watched her go, and then picked her back up just a week later. Silent Hill had existed back then, as a town full of people and life—a hotel to stay in, doctors and nurses and medication and a little diner that she took pictures of. Mouse had even charmed her way onto someone’s tug boat for a ride on the lake. Like it was a vacation, a holiday stay, instead of a sleep study to solve her night terrors.

“Why did your husband come here?” Yasiel asks, breaking the long, cautious silence that’s crept up on them. They walk down an empty street, the fog everlasting and obscuring anything not ten feet in front of them. He’s anxiously straining to hear anything that might resemble a dog. Whining, barking, that terrible sniffing. But it’s just been his own heavy breathing.

“You wanna chat right now?” Benji throws Yasiel an incredulous stare, a pinch between his brows. “More of those fuckin’ things could be out here.”

Yasiel stays quiet for a moment, observing the abandoned street. They pass storefronts, equally empty or boarded shut. Some of them have broken windows, glass scattering the sidewalk. A chill makes him bundle into his denim jacket further.

Then he finally clears his throat and says, “You called it Xavier?”

“Listen, dickhead.” Benji rounds toward Yasiel. His face pales and his hand reaches out, jerking the slender painter by his jacket. Yasiel stumbles, feeling Benji’s body heat suddenly; the clarity that he is a real, living person. “More of ‘em. Like I said. Down the alley.” A tremor runs up Yasiel’s spine, sweat pooling under his arms. He dares to look sideways, shaking so bad even his glasses slide down the tip of his nose.

And Benji’s right. There are more of them, these half human dog wolf things. A bundle of them down a decrepit alleyway, a dumpster overturned, ancient trash piled everywhere alongside cardboard boxes, a rusted shopping cart. Two of the wolves fight each other, arms bound, snapping their maws, catching delicate pale skin and rending flesh. Without balance, they fall on each other, on the ground, tangling and fighting still. They howl and yip and snarl and bark madly, while three stand around them, watching. The bystanders cackle, fangs dripping spit and blood. They laugh, like hyenas, heads rolling back and forth, unhinged.

Yasiel slaps a hand over his mouth to stop a whimper.

“We’re gonna cut this way, alright?” Benji’s voice is close. Real. Real person, really alive. “Slowly. Goin’ for the diner behind us.”

Mouse’s diner. For a moment, he thinks of the picture she’d sent him of the burger she’d ordered. Stacked with the works, as she liked it, thick cut fries and her mayonnaise and ketchup mixture on a side plate. Yasiel wants to cry. He wants to burst into tears and run away screaming, he wants to pretend this isn’t happening. The dogs scream down the alley. Benji’s hand tightens on his jacket.

Yasiel looks over his shoulder. The neon light—Diner 52—miraculously flickers. The glass windows are intact. One single car sits parallel parked outside of it, door open and almost off its hinges. His tongue is dry in his mouth, awkward and fat. He nods once and Benji slowly eases himself off the sidewalk.

The dog wolves never pay them any attention. They kill each other in the alleyway, laughing and barking.

—

The diner tables are dusty, as is the bar where residents must have sat and drank milkshakes and asked a waitress named Marge for the “slamming special” as it’s called on the crumbling menu board. The floor is dirt caked, but the inside of the diner feels oddly safe. Secluded, almost. Respite from whatever is happening outside, with the monsters. Yasiel sits himself down on a stool, peeling his jacket sleeve back to look at his…bite wound.

“Lemme see.”

Benji slings his bag up onto the counter and begins to rifle through it. He’s handsome, despite the anger and the hostility. He has a curved nose and thick facial hair, the kind that looks soft to the touch. When he pushes his black curls from his face, the effect is downright astounding. Lucky bastard, Yasiel thinks of Xavier, then immediately feels guilty for it. Not really time or place, but he’d never been very good at that.

Slut. Mouse’s voice, affectionate and teasing. Her needling fingers tickling his sides, laughing while they smoke on his balcony. Get it out the gutter, Yassy. She’d hated his last girlfriend and loved his last boyfriend and declared herself free from accusations of misogyny anyway. He just simply had bad taste fifty percent of the time, and fifty percent of the time he’d be dating a woman. Yasiel closes a hand over his mouth again, when his throat thickens with the feeling of tears.

He holds his arm outstretched.

Benji’s poured something onto gauze, a little white kit open in front of him.

“Are you a nurse?” He grunts in reply as he begins cleaning the small gash on Yasiel’s arm. The rubbing alcohol burns so bad he flinches, earning a severely annoyed look. “Kind of a pussy, if you haven’t noticed.” It softens Benji’s expression. He snorts out what must be a laugh and reaches for his supplies.

“S’how I met ‘im.” The wound gets dressed tightly. Benji’s efficient, but his movements slow. His eyes stray to the side. “Poor fucking boy got a concussion playing hockey. Came in to the ER and was on my chart. When I was pokin’ him with the IV, he asked to marry me. Was fucking stunned out my mind. Couldn’t really do anything but laugh. Then he got all teary eyed with it. Told me if I gave him my number, we’d end up married someday.”

“Wow.” Yasiel lets his hands fall between his knees. He realizes he’s smiling, but doesn’t feel like trying to stop himself. Benji’s eyes narrow, a nasty smelling sanitizer rubbed between his hands as a poor mans bath.

“Don’t really tell that story,” he admits quietly.

“Guess I have the sort of face that invites honesty.”

Benji’s nose wrinkles, face screwing up as if he can’t tell whether or not Yasiel is joking. He is, for what it’s worth, but Benji still snorts again and says, “You really don’t, mate.”

They lapse into silence. Not long enough either of them can adjust to the insanity of their situation. Yasiel suddenly pulls his cell phone from his pocket. He has no service and he didn’t expect to either—this wouldn’t be a nightmare if he could just call 911 and be done with it all. Still, seeing the NO SERVICE at the top of the screen, where his battery symbol waits at 75% makes his heart plunge.

“This is my sister,” Yasiel says, handing over the phone. On screen, Mouse smiles in her knife like way. They have the same eyes, same heterochromia. One brown, one a green hazel that looks brighter under direct sunlight. She sits on the beach, her knees tucked to her chest, one of Yasiel’s baseball caps backwards on her head. Waves of her wild, brown hair are sea salt tangled. He can’t think of a picture that describes her better. And he can’t look at it as Benji does.

“You’re twins.”

“Oh, yeah,” Yasiel replies, locking the phone and tucking it back into his pocket beside his inhaler. “Down to the eyes and everything. When we were little, people would get us confused all the time. We’re uh, nothing alike in personality.”

“Feel like I know her,” Benji murmurs, his eyes on the floor. “The picture of her. Just felt familiar, that.” Finally, his hand pats his back pocket. First, he pulls out a pack of cigarettes, lazily lighting on. Yasiel wants to point out that they’re inside, but realizes how stupid that is. Then, Benji finds his wallet and flips it open.

There’s something sweet about him having a polaroid tucked in with a few bills and a receipt. They’re perfect strangers, yet Yasiel feels like that makes sense. Benji holds it for a second, as though unwilling for it to leave his possession even for a moment. Then finally, he holds it out, taking a long drag on his cigarette and looking away.

Yasiel’s heart betrays him and he thinks of the gravesite. The tombstone. He looks down at the picture and wonders if this man is actually dead and Benji is insane—but that would make two of them probably. They both saw those dogs. Yasiel grits his teeth, breathes evenly through his nose, and forces himself to look at the picture and think—alive. Missing. Just like Mouse. Needs to be found. Loved. So loved.

And he is, if the picture indicates anything. Benji has a subdued sort of smile, his eyes purely on Xavier. The photo is of both of them, sitting in a bar, with low lighting and pints of half drank beer on their table. A pale, tattooed hand peeks into the photo, holds fingers behind Benji’s head, in a mockery of bunny ears. Xavier takes up most of the frame, this giant, lanky red head, who is smiling ear to ear. He has an arm slung around Benji’s shoulders, pulling them together close. He is so traditionally handsome that it seems fake, for someone to be that pretty.

Yasiel thinks of the wolf thing, half human. Pale, with its shaggy oxblood fur. He forces the image away, commits Xavier to memory instead.

“I think I know what you mean,” he says, handing the photo back. Benji takes another hard drag on his cigarette, flicking ash onto the already dirty tile floor. The smell of nicotine is oddly comforting. “I mean, he sort of has one of those smiles, but—feels like I know him. Like we’ve met before.”

He’s about to ask what made Xavier come here. Why would anyone come here? Why had Mouse? But it used to be a town before, used to be a real place, where people got hamburgers with all the toppings, and took tugboat rides on the lake. It used to be. But right as he’s about to ask, an old fashion radio crackles to life down the counter.

“The fuck?” Benji startles off the stool, standing in front of it. His cigarette drops to the ground, cherry burning. Something old fashioned, classical plays from the staticky speakers. Crooning and lullaby like, a piano melody that makes Yasiel’s temples throb. He presses the heels of his palms to the sides of his head, groaning for a moment.

Then a voice, clear and direct.

“Listeners, are you out there?”

It’s a soft voice. Spoken with deliberate care and enunciation. As melodic as the music, as distinct and otherworldly.

“What is this?” Yasiel mumbles, stepping closer. He drags the radio closer. Dust puffs into the air around it, leaves an almost clean streak across the counter. The dial lights up, flickering with the radio waves. Something old and show tune like plays beneath the voice. Benji crowds in closer, a nervous look over his shoulder to the windows still blanketed in grime and fog.

“This is your host, Lethe, and tonight I’ll be your guide. Are you out there? Are you listening? No ad breaks tonight, darling. I’m here for you, if you’re here to listen.”

Yasiel fumbles for the map in his pocket, yanking it free and spreading it across the counter in front of him. He trails an ink stained finger until he finds SILENT HILL RADIO TOWER. It’s not close.

“I know it’s hairy out there right now, listeners. Trust me, I know.”

The voice is dry, doesn’t chuckle, but the laughter is nearly implied. Benji and Yasiel share a look toward each other, a mixture of shock, revulsion, and an eerie sense of hope. Someone else in the town. Someone else who knows about the monsters.

“Things have gotten spooky in our lovely Silent Hill. But I want to help you—you want my help, don’t you?”

“Who is this fucking loon?” Benji asks, voice quivering. Yasiel’s fingers scramble over the radio, turning it up a fraction. His heart slams against his rib cage, working up his throat. What a beautiful voice, he thinks, his head fuzzy and aching. “What you doin’?”

“Note down these roads for me, listeners. They’re the bad ones you don’t want to get lost down. Avoid them and follow the posters. The Radio Tower is open, and the call line is on. You have me all night. Do you hear that? All night.”

The radio crackles. Yasiel leans in. He swears if he gets close enough, he hears something else. He hears the radio jockey—he hears Lethe—saying his name. Do you hear that? All night, Yasiel. A series of streets follow in staccato rhythm. He yanks a pen from his back pocket, a trusty friend he’s never without, and hastily slashes out roads as Lethe lists them out.

“Are you listening?”

“Yes,” Yasiel whispers, staring at the map.

“See you soon.” Yasiel.

The radio crackles to dead silence.

“I know what to do,” Yasiel says, turning to Benji, holding up the map. His shaking finger stabs at the Silent Hill radio tower.

“Alright, mate, no offense—you got off to a lunatic on a radio with a smooth voice, and I’m not here to judge, even if m’judgin’ a bit, yeah—”

“No! Shut up!” Yasiel shakes out the map again, bumping their shoulders together, forcing Benji to look. He grunts in disapproval, moves just a bit so their arms are no longer touching. “If this person—this, Lethe—is playing on the radio, we can get them to broadcast something. Do you get me?”

A flicker of understanding plays across Benji’s face. He rears back, staring at Yasiel with wide eyes. A stray curl falls across his forehead. There’s blood on the underside of his jaw, from the thing he’d killed earlier.

“If—” Yasiel starts and then stops and stares at this stranger. Someone he hardly knows, has only just met, has been saved by once. He licks his lips and nods toward the radio.

“If you ask Xavier to come, will he?”

“Yes,” Benji answers with no hesitation. His jaw flexes, tightening, nostrils flaring. He looks to the ground, where the cherry of his cigarette slowly dies, smoke curling in the air.

“Yes. Always.”

—

Alright, listener. Don’t lose me. Everything’s too easy to lose in Silent Hill if you’re not careful—and you are careful, aren’t you? With your possessions and your people.

Are you shocked I know so much? Don’t be. You’ll find out more about me too. We’ll never be on an even playing ground, you and I, but we can get close. If you’d like.

I’m going to help you out of here, but you have to be careful. Have to listen, understand? Don’t trust anyone else. Not even yourself. You know that already, don’t you?

Never have been good with trust. If I say I’m honored to have yours, would it be inaccurate to imagine you blushing? Too far, listener? I understand, but you’ll forgive me. I’m going to be with you through it all.

Why?

You shouldn’t ask those kinds of things.

You’re going to remember soon enough and then you might turn this station off. Things are easy to lose in Silent Hill, after all.

I don’t want to lose you just yet.

[hauntedjpegcollection]

shark/revenge

wc: 1397 au: college au ch: benny, benji, maran, xavier

All Benny can do is stare as the duo walks into his apartment (he thinks of them like that sometimes, the duo, a two for one deal, not always attached at the hip but sort of cosmically linked, unfortunately not in a horny way). He stands in the kitchen, bowl of cereal in hand—knock off Fruit Loops, definitely bought by Xavier—tired in a way that can’t be explained in words. His eyes blink, not in rhythm. A drop of milk slides into his dirty blond facial hair and then tattooed fingers slowly scrub it away.

“Wh-Who the fuck gave you a key?” Benny asks, in a raspy, morning voice.

Benji turns to look at him, as if suddenly noticing the apartment he’s lazily strolled into is actually occupied. By the original tenant no less, Benny would like to add.

“Morning,” is all Benji says with a curl of his lip in a smug little sneer. Bastard.

“Oh, morning!” Maran steps out from behind Benji. He waves. His eyes crinkle at the corners with the force of his toothy smile. No one should be that awake or devastatingly beautiful so early in the day. Bastard, but in such a worse way. Makes Benny’s fingers tingle.

Benji’s sneer grows, exposing teeth.

“Here for Xavier?” Benny asks, in a voice none too friendly. It’s mocking and more than a little mean. With hooded, pale eyes, he stares at Benji, whose own sleepy, dark eyes narrow back.

“We’re going to the lake!” Maran, who bounces on his feet when he walks, gets closer. It’s just the beginning of summer, which excuses the shorts he has on, even if they reveal far too much brown skin and freckles. On his knees, even, Jesus Christ, he has freckles on his knees. “Xavier has an extra pole—” “Heh.” “Oh, fuck off, Benj. Anyway, he wants to go fishing.” As he talks, Maran walks fingers across the kitchen table, eyelashes fluttering as he does quick little glances at Benny.

Instead of replying, Benny takes a large bite of cereal and although it’s very tempting to continue watching Maran (the freckles, the smile, the way he keeps getting closer) Benny glances at Benji. Who continues having that smug, I know something you don’t know, smile.

“Well,” Benny says, setting his cereal down so quickly that milk sloshes over the side onto the kitchen counter. “I’ll go g-get him for you. Think he’s sh-showering, but I bet he’d wanna know you’re here.”

The smile drops off Benji’s face comically quick.

“Nah, not—”

“No, it’s f-fine, I’ll get him for you.”

“Ben—”

He crosses the apartment, smiling ear to ear like someone’s cut his mouth open. Benny’s sense of revenge is blood in the water for a shark. He hasn’t forgotten the way Maran sneakily knocked a pile of clothes from his desk onto DVD boxset Willow had gifted him a month earlier. Not that Benny was reading into things—there wasn’t a real reason to read into things, Maran had a giant sign above his head that was blinking, rapidly and on all the time. Benny was just trying to be good about Benji’s straight friend having his first bi-curious crush.

He has no interest in being a good person when he raises his fist to the bathroom door. Benji’s eyes look panicked, even as his expression stays flat. The shower sounds are just barely there, making Benny feel cruelly satisfied. Something about being Catholic made Xavier take stupidly long showers.

“Benny.”

The warning hiss, like a snake trodden underbrush or just a very, very nervous person with a crush that is so large scientists on a space station could study it, does nothing to stop Benny from pounding a closed fist on the bathroom door.

“Xavier!”

He waits a second. Then raps his fist on the door, harder this time.

“Xavier!”

“What?”

The door bursts open and out tumbles six-foot-four of mostly naked Xavier. A towel is wrapped around his waist, but otherwise, it’s pale, wet skin. His cheeks are flushed either from the shower, or the annoyance. Probably needs a hair cut (that he’ll beg off from Matilda) because the dark wet strands fall into his face and he’s forced to shove them back with a large hand. Because he’s mostly not clothed, his few tattoos are visible. Notably, the large stomach one that draws the eye.

Even Benny had paused at that serif font SWEET BOY on Xavier’s pale torso a few years ago when they’d had their one-night stand. He’s not a hairy individual, probably struggles to get the sometimes five o’clock shadow he has after a string of doubles at the mechanics, but he does have the smallest red happy trail that parts clusters of freckles on his hips.

Benny, a creature of pure evil, looks at Benji with a wide smile. It is decidedly not reciprocated.

“Benji and Maran are here.”

“Oh.” The word drops out Xavier’s mouth, his jaw unhinged. His fist tightens on the towel slung around his hips. He raises his other hand in a wave. “Hi.”

“Is that Halo?”

Everyone’s attention turns to the towel. It has a symbol on it, that does not look like an angel’s halo, but what does Benny know? Xavier lights up in excitement, brushing back his wet hair again. His eyes glitter.

“Dude, yes, I’ve had this towel since I was like fifteen.”

“Wicked,” Maran replies, with a laugh. Benny’s gleeful expression disappears, listening to that laugh followed by a word he’s definitely picked up from the wet Boston native beside him.

“G-Go get dressed, y-you fucking lanky beast,” Benny finally snaps, waving a hand and retreating back into the kitchen.

“Hi, Benji. Morning.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll be right back, do you want a hoodie, it’s going to be a little colder on the lake?”

“S’alright—well, mean, if you have one, yeah, alright.”

“Cool, right, one second.”

Benny leans against the kitchen counter, returning to his cereal, but when he turns, he squeaks at the suddenness of Maran right there. He clears his throat, to cover for the terrible unexpected noise. Maran blinks, full lashed, pretty eyes but doesn’t take a step back. Instead, he stands there, hands linked behind his back, smiling. He’s in one of those swishy, awful track jackets, that Benny figures he’s borrowed off Lark after not bringing nearly enough clothes for his US visit.

“So, you gonna come?”

Benny sputters again, dropping the cereal bowl back onto the counter. More milk joins the small puddle from before. Over Maran’s shoulder, Benji’s deer in red headlights expression has shifted to one of smug menace once more.

“What?” Benny swipes the back of his hand across his mouth, still slouched against the counter. His pale eyes flicker all over Maran and he wishes he had his sunglasses so it wasn’t as obvious he was staring.

“To the lake? Think Xavier only has two poles—” “Pff.” “But thought maybe you’d wanna come with us.”

“Xavier’s truck doesn’t have r-room.”

“Oh.” Maran rocks on his heels, brows upturned. Benny’s hands begin sweating so uncontrollably that he has to briefly wipe them across his shirt. Benji is smiling wider, fully recovered from half-naked Xavier (until perhaps later when he’s alone, Benny thinks satisfied and mean, but takes little solace in that for the moment). “Well, could take your car too, yeah? I could ride with you!”

“Yeah,” Benji sing songs. “Could ride with you, Ben.”

“Shut up—you and Xavier have a rotten playlist—can’t go from Deftones to Britney Spears, it’s awful, Benji—and Ben lets me control the radio, ‘cause he’s nicer than you, isn’t he?”

Maran’s half turned to look back at his friend now, huffy about it, with a brattish twist to his features. Oh God, Benny is in hell, he’s in hell and he probably deserves it. He stares at Benji, who whistles and rolls his eyes and makes a terrible, vulgar motion with his fist. They two British accents dissolve into a petty little argument as Benny scoops his car keys from the little alien figure on the kitchen counter.

Xavier bursts from his room, fully dressed now, hair still just a bit wet.

He holds up a sweatshirt, triumphantly. It’s tie dye. Benji stares at it and then Benny bursts into high pitched giggles, imagining it on the little fucking punk.