unknownjpegs

[unknownjpegs]

coffee shop au

“You are—” The words sort of catch funny from the way his back hits the wall, a little huff that escapes before he grabs onto the mans hips in front of him and jerk them together. Their height difference makes it so Xavier has to hunch over a bit, tilt his head down. It’s not unpleasant, the way it usually is—but then again, his brain is a soft blurry edge dampened by a lot of alcohol. “You are like, the hottest guy I have ever met.”

“S’not really a meeting,” the stranger snorts. He laughs like that; something Xavier had picked up in the very brief couple interactions they’d just had. By the bar, on the dance floor (or rather the outskirts of it, because somehow, even dancing Xavier had been unable to stop talking), now crammed inside the gender neutral bathroom. It’s head to toe in graffiti and enclosed around them small.

It would feel claustrophobic, but being this close feels nice. He’d always liked it chest to chest.

“We’re meeting, right now,” Xavier says, hooking his fingers into the other’s belt loops. His thumbs dip under the black shredded tank top that was what made Xavier stare in the first place. Reveals so much skin. And arms. Very, very thick arms.

“Bit of a talker, yeah?”

“You have no idea,” Xavier whispers in reply, his hands cupping the British man’s cheeks. They’re warm under his palms, flushed dark red under the terrible blinking light of the bathroom. He has thick brows, dark lashes, an interesting curve to his nose. Smooth looking skin that Xavier is thinking would be nice to kiss. He’s pressed back against the brick wall and their hips are so tight together. “What’s your name?” He murmurs it lips that are close together, nearly kissing. They’re soft; they’d already done a bit of this, outside the circle of dancing, just a few until it made it this way. He remembers tasting alcohol on him, the bite and tang of whiskey maybe.

“What’s yours?” he gets prompted instead and that tangle of their warm, whiskey scented breath makes Xavier’s spine shiver. Their noses touch and he gently puts his mouth close to a ear that’s nearly shrouded in curly black hair. Christ, this guy even fucking smells good.

“I’m Xavier.” And then he hooks a finger into the blank tank top that’s torn open at the shoulders and lowers it enough to kiss dark brown skin. That single kiss makes the frantic energy return and he feels strong, deft hands sliding up under his shirt. Feels them move over his ribs and down, around to his lower back. Xavier groans, bringing their mouths back together.

One of his hands still cups a warm, soft cheek, but when they start kissing, he uses it to cup the strangers chin. Kiss him deeper, move his head in a way to bring them closer. He kisses hungrily and maybe—maybe a little too passionately for a bar bathroom. But he tastes good, not just the alcohol on his tongue and Jesus he feels good up against his body like that. Makes Xavier change their positions, makes him twist them around so he’s to the wall now. And it makes him pause, laughing, trailing kisses over a bearded chin.

“Fuck, sorry, you are just—man, you are good at this—and, like looking at you is—” Xavier flattens forearms to the brick wall, leaned over him, panting hard. Brown eyes stare back up, dark and pretty. Xavier’s fingertips run over the mans slightly swollen lips.

“Xavier!” The door pounds, making him startle. He stumbles a little, gripping hold of a broad, strong shoulder to keep himself upright. His heart launches up into his throat as he looks up back over his shoulder. The door pounds again, harder. “Xavier—fucking—get out here, asshole.”

“Boyfriend?”

His head snaps back forward and suddenly those glossy, beautiful eyes have gone completely flat. The set of his mouth is a scowl that would be cute if it wasn’t absolutely aimed poisonously at him. Xavier takes a step back, raising his hands in surrender.

“No! No—” The door pounds harder.

“Right.”

“No, I swear—promise—”

Xavier’s shocked at how strong he is, maneuvering around his much taller body with ease. They bump shoulders—or rather, his shoulder bumps Xavier’s ribs, because of the height difference. Shouldn’t be that shocked, considering how, even short he was clearly muscular. Had been one of the things that made Xavier wander toward him at the end of the bar, offer to buy a drink. Flirted really badly and then lead all the way here. Was supposed to maybe go further but—

The bathroom door snaps open. Lark stands there, arms folded over his chest, chin tilted down. He steps back slightly at the stormy exit of the curly haired, very good kisser that Xavier had just been with in the bathroom. He slips out himself, reaching and snagging his wrist. Truly is soft, his brain supplies, even though this is the absolute worst way this could have gone.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Xavier tries to say until he’s shaken off with a sneer and a curl of a lip.

“Didn’t give it, did I?”

The bar music drowns out what might be a following insult and then curly hair disappears into a throng of people. He hadn’t seemed to like the crowd. He’d seemed to want to get away from it. Xavier stands there, feeling suddenly very sober. Someone angles for the bathroom around him, shoving their way into it. He looks to Lark with big, furious eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that, dude. We open tomorrow.” Lark checks his watch and then rolls his eyes up to the ceiling. “In four fucking hours.”

—

And they do open tomorrow—or four fucking hours later.

Lark slips the CLOSED sign to OPEN on the door to the cafe. Pale morning sunlight filters in through the windows, making his skin feel warm and lazy. Xavier yanks his green apron tighter around his waist and then digs the heels of his palms into his aching eyes. Both of them had gotten three hours—if that. And Lark had been giving him the silent treatment the entire time, which made it hard for Xavier to distract himself.

Even work barely distracts him; shitty morning rush with corporate assholes who snap about black coffee, or corporate assholes who look like they’d rather their black coffee be poisoned. The pretty doctor that makes both Lark and Xavier stumble around their words and always orders a pastry, warmed. The college kid rush that has girls giggling and attempting to flirt with Lark at the end of the mobile pick up. Nothing really gets Xavier out of the funk.

He’d been too embarrassed to argue that morning as Lark had stomped around their apartment, getting ready. Xavier had brushed his teeth in silence, drank orange juice and not even complained about the terrible mixture of mint and citrus. He ate a poptart in silence, glaring at the crumbs that got all over his shirt. Because, truthfully, a part of his brain was still lingering in that shitty bar bathroom.

Should of got his name first, he thinks to himself in the mid afternoon lull. He leans against the counter with his hip cocked, playing with the ties on his apron. Tightening it again and then loosening it, tightening it with a snap. Should of got a number.

“Swap with me,” Lark hisses into his ear, making Xavier jump, nearly knock their illegal tip jar off the counter. They have to stow it anytime the owner is in, because they’re not meant to be taking tips—but fuck managers.

“What?”

“Do the drinks, I want to be cashier.”

“You hate being cashier?” Xavier blinks down at Lark as his room mate best friend combo grabs him by the hips and forcibly swaps them. He begins shoving and Xavier is easy to shove, because he’s lean and Lark is deceptively strong.

“Art Girl is walking down the street and she’s definitely coming in to get a coffee.”

“After you ruined my fucking night?” The entire conversation is had as Lark slowly batters Xavier toward the drink bar. He yanks his visor off and tosses it into the back room. “I liked that guy,” Xavier mourns, watching Lark try and fix his hair in the reflection of the plastic drink menu. The bell on the door rings and both men turn to watch not just the Art Girl that Lark has been love drunk over since she’d popped up a month ago.

An entire stack of cups comes tumbling down when Xavier’s hand accidentally swipes them off the counter. They scatter over the ground around him. He darts straight to the ground to begin picking them up, so maybe he wont have to look at last nights awful hook up in the eye. Lark stares down at him with a piteous look and a roll of his eyes as he walks toward the counter and point of sale. Xavier stays crouched, heart racing up inside his throat.

He slides the cups underneath the counter, because technically, since they’ve even touched the tiles, they should be thrown away.

When he unfolds, he’s doing his best not to look toward the duo at the counter; but he can hear them.

“Usual,” she says to Lark in her pretty voice.

“Name?” he asks, the same he does every single time.

“Hmmmm. I’ll be Jane today.”

This has been going on since she’d first come to the shop, when Lark had made it far too obvious he wanted her name. Xavier couldn’t blame her; she was a willowy, tall woman with high cheek bones and a sharp chin. Big, pretty eyes that she used to make Lark give her continuous discounts. Xavier could tell every time he was putting his employee discount in, the register old fashioned and still beeping. He keeps his back to them, already beginning to fill cups with ice.

“And you?”

“Iced Americano.”

Eugh. Beautiful guy, disgusting taste.

“Name?”

Xavier’s head tilted back slightly, unable to stop himself. It was the first time he was actually trying to get a look again. He regretted it immediately, because instead of looking at Lark, those brown eyes were directly right on him. Xavier couldn’t help but remember how they’d looked, before Lark had ruined it. Deep pools, dark and full. Framed in those pretty, long lashes. Hot and sweet at the same time, searching him, complimented by how hard it had been for Xavier not to keep looking at him.

Then immediately cold when he thought Lark of all fucking people—

“Benji,” he says, eyes still on Xavier. It makes him swallow and turn back to the drinks.

—

“I’m gonna go talk to him.”

They’d picked outside seating. And at some point, Jane, the Art Girl, who was not named Jane, had exited. He still sat there, nursing the drink slowly, a booted foot folded on his knee as he looked down at his phone. Xavier felt odd about how he kept staring at the man’s thumb flick over the touch screen; like, how could a hand be attractive just holding a phone?

“So you’re taking your lunch?”

“Lark, you really suck sometimes.”

It gets him a smile as Lark approaches and yanks Xavier’s visor off. He leans up to run a hand through wild red hair—its gotten far too long. Mullet and wolfish combo that’s tickling his ears too much. Lark seems to fuss a bit more and then goes for the tie on his apron.

“What are you doing?” Lark rolls his eyes and then yanks the ties far too tight, double loops them and knots them off. Xavier wheezes as his sides are smoothed down.

“Trust me—the guys got a look about him. Go get ‘em, tiger.”

It’s warm outside; or maybe Xavier is just warm once he gets outside. The wind blows across his hair, undoing whatever Lark might have done to make it look tamed down. Xavier unconsciously fiddles with the ties on the apron as he approaches the little table Benji sits at. The name feels cute—a little too cute, worryingly maybe fake; a game just like Lark’s girl.

Sitting there, in the sun, he is far too fucking beautiful. He’s worn sunglasses, to block out the overwhelmingly yellow rays and they sit a little low on the curve of his nose. He’s not in that cut off tank top anymore—which is almost a shame, because those arms really deserved to see the sun. Instead, its a long sleeve that’s hooked a little over his knuckles. One hand stays wrapped around the iced coffee, the other still holding his phone. Xavier’s stomach feels awful and warm at the same time.

When his silhouette blots out the sun enough for Benji to notice, he finally looks up.

The sunglasses notch down just a little further so he can look at Xavier from over top of them. He feels instantly like he should turn around and go back inside. Much more confident in the bars low lighting, with drinks in him, giving him a terrible ‘oh, my hands are so much bigger than yours, haha’ line. Much more confident, too, before he’d gotten that severely cold look. His hand keeps fucking with the apron ties.

“Alright, mate?”

“With what?” He asks, blinking. It makes Benji laugh immediately and instead of that big snort he’d gotten from him a few times last night, its a real laugh. He almost looks shocked by it himself, like maybe he hadn’t meant to give Xavier one; but how fucking nice was it to hear that laugh. Makes Xavier’s mouth go wide and toothy in his smile as he stands by the table.

Benji’s eyes rove over him as he slides the sunglasses off. Maybe Lark had been right about tying the apron so hard, because he seems oddly fixed on his torso for a moment.

“Lark’s not my boyfriend,” Xavier says awkwardly after the short moment of silence. “He’s my room mate. And, unfortunately, my team lead.” He jerks a thumb through the window at the man who leans across the counter staring at them. Lark lifts a hand in a lazy wave that Benji returns.

“Single, then?” Benji asks, with his own grin. It’s not nearly the same wide split as Xavier’s, but theres a soft hint of white teeth. He looks good smiling; which Xavier wants to tell him, but he suddenly feels so fucking bashful in the daylight, outside, in his work apron.

“I know, like, what a shocker, right?” He pulls out the metal chair Art Girl Jane had been sitting at and slowly lets himself sit down. Benji seems to adjust slightly, slinging an arm around the back of the chair, hand releasing the drink he’d already finished. Ice had melted, indicating that it had been finished for a long time. “I’m a total catch and it’s a shame no one’s caught me up yet.”

He reaches out the cup and tilts it toward himself. BENJI is written on it in black sharpie, Lark’s tight scrawl on the clear plastic.

“Benji,” he says out loud and likes the way the name sounds on his own tongue. “Mind if I take my lunch with you?” He feels a booted foot softly land on his thigh and fights to look down at it. Maintain eye contact with those gorgeous fucking eyes.

“Won’t be the worst thirty minutes of my life, I suppose,” Benji drawls.

—

It’s actually closer to forty, which is incredibly generous of Lark. At the thirty ninth minute, however, he comes to stand at the glass and stare at Xavier so hard that he has to clear his throat and shove the chair away from the table. Coming, Dad, he thinks bitterly as he stands.

“Worse than a boyfriend, yeah?” Benji laughs—gives him another one of those real laughs that he’d been angling for. He leans forward then, hand outstretched. Xavier stands still as he watches that dark brown hand fish into his apron. His entire body feels overheated, but it’s quick—and Benji pulls back with a sharpie in his hand. “C’mere.”

Xavier steps closer, around the curve of the table. Benji’s hand wraps around his wrist. They’d kissed—a lot. In a shit bar bathroom, tongues rolling together, chest to chest. Xavier had held his face and stared at him for far too long—could have stared for longer. But for some reason, that little touch made goose bumps erupt over his skin. He swallows and watches the cap tuck into Benji’s teeth. He yanks it and then pulls Xavier’s arm closer.

A phone number gets written onto his forearm—probably bigger than it needs to be. His eyes flick from the black writing on his pale, freckled arm to Benji slowly capping the sharpie. As he stands, he tucks it back into Xavier’s apron, and then pats the spot gently. It makes Xavier jump a little and then laugh. He catches Benji’s wrist then, holds it, with looped fingers. Xavier’s thumb brushes his pulse; enjoys feeling that soft skin there so fucking much.

“You are—wow.”

“You’re probably late on your break,” is how Benji replies, sliding by him. “Can call me when you get off?”

“Oh.” Xavier yanks at the tie of his apron, feeling far too constricted, grinning lopsided again. “Oh, definitely. For sure. Absolutely.” He has to watch Benji walk away then. His jeans fit too snug around his thighs and Xavier has to lean his head back and look up at the soft, pale sky instead of lingering on that vision.

Back inside, Lark is holding the cups he’d technically soiled by letting them touch the tiles they religiously clean every night.

“Did you get her name?”

“What?”

He shoves the cups into Xavier’s hands. It makes him look down at the phone number on his arm again; a sensation far too similar to butterflies, like he’s a teenager again, explode up inside his stomach.

“You didn’t even ask him for his friends name? Knowing I’ve been trying to get her to give it to me for a month?”

Xavier lines up and tosses the cups into the trash can in the back room, like throwing a basketball. They go wide and scatter again, making his shoulders drop.

“That’s what you get for interrupting me last night,” he quips loudly as Lark returns to the cash register for a customer.

[unknownjpegs]

cute

He finds the wounded soldier in the thin alley of a downtown city turned war zone. There is the steady firework like sound of guns in the distance, his fingers swiftly turning down the crackling comm at his shoulder—mingled with the unstoppable and terrifying atmosphere of radianites somewhere, fighting. Smoke makes the otherwise bright mid afternoon sun a dull, lifeless corpse in the sky. No clouds. Just the smear of two universes colliding for one resource that is worth the scattered destruction.

Xavier stands at the mouth of the alleyway as the soldiers stares at him. His hand is sealed over a wound at his hip. There isn’t enough blood that it’s lethal—maybe. Unless he can’t get up, find cover, or be rescued by whatever team he might have left when Xavier’s unit is done. He’s not injured, but the evidence of fighting is still there. Dusty rubble on his all black gear. There’s a rip over the side of his black balaclava, red hair poking out like an outburst of fire. His arms are sore, but the sledgehammer is tied neatly to his back again.

Jesus, he thinks. I want to go home.

“Fuck you,” the solider barks, surprisingly sturdy with it. He’s aiming an empty handgun at Xavier. He only knows it’s empty because he’s been staring at this soldier for a long minute, watching as he fumbles out an empty medic bag, as he checks the slide on his handgun, as he slaps the heel of his palm to his forehead and swears under his breath. His accent is muddied and rough. For a while, Xavier’s been trying to place it—he’s pretty good at that. He likes geography.

Glass from a broken window crunches underneath his heavy boots as he walks down the alley. There is a distant sssss like a smoke grenade has been released. The sky lights up briefly green, but the smoke is downwind. Avoids them. The soldier twists a bit, raises the gun more—he’d have an accurate shot. He’d get Xavier right in the head—he has to respect that. Not useless then, just abandoned. Bloody in an alley. Medic used all his medic supplies on others.

Xavier stops only a few footsteps away, his own rifle in his hands. Not aimed yet.

“Well? Fuckin’ do it then—coward. Dickhead,” the wounded one snaps and throws the gun. It hits Xavier in the shoulder, clattering against the ground. In the hazy smoked out sunlight, the enemy looks washed out and exhausted. Sweat makes black curly hair cling to dark brown skin. There are deep bruises underneath big, pretty eyes. The cement beneath him is dark red, smudged, with the way he’d sunk down. He doesn’t look small, even though Xavier is standing at his full height and the enemy is sitting. Injured.

“Need help figurin’ it out, arsehole? The little trigger there, you just aim up that stupid fuckin’ rifle—”

“Do you ever shut up?” Xavier asks, his gloved hand tearing off his balaclava. His sweaty, messy hair sticks up in all directions. His skin is wet with the perspiration, so he wipes a palm across his face. He’s smiling too, that big, nasty wolf like grin that has earned him so much of a reputation. It’s too wide on his long face, shows too much of his teeth.

“Your mum,” the downed soldier snips coldly. His eyes narrow suspiciously, his hand briefly unsealing from his hip wound. He turns pale at that—which makes Xavier wonder what his skin might look like flush and full of life and blood and energy. The hand presses down again.

“Mum,” Xavier imitates as he rips the pack from his side. He approaches and kneels swiftly. There’s a distinct shhhhhk sound and he feels the cold press of a blade to his exposed throat. For a brief moment, the survival instinct pressing inside his skull from some ancient, never lost caveman era has him thinking of violence. Slamming the man forward, wrenching the knife, breaking a wrist.

Instead, he continues to unzip his pack. The knife doesn’t move. His eyes glance up briefly and his smile curls wider. The soldier is staring at him, pupils dilated so wide he looks drugged. Xavier tilts his head to the side somewhat, clicks his tongue.

“You know,” he pulls materials out the bag. “I’m shitty at this.”

“Yeah? You look it, mate. Why are you—”

Xavier wraps a hand around the others wrist, slowly pulls it away from the injury to his hip. He can’t see too well with the gear, plastered to the skin, glued by the tacky, drying blood. He scoots closer and feels the knife slowly slide away. He doesn’t pay it any attention as he gently (he hasn’t been gentle in a long time) peels up the under shirt to reveal a deep and unfortunate knife wound.

“Oh,” he says. “Wow. That fucking sucks.”

“It’s missed the important bits.”

“You don’t say,” Xavier says with a lurid, sarcastic drag of his eyes south of the wound. He wiggles his brows a bit—and is stunned when the soldier laughs. It’s a bitten off sound accompanied by a groan, a hand moving back to the wound. Xavier gets closer still. The smell of sweat and blood and gunpowder is overwhelming, when he should be all too used to it. The distant fighting seems to die away at the sound of the man breathing. He uses his teeth to rip into an alcohol pad and start cleaning at the wound.

Silence falls for a moment. Silence except their breathing. Then—

“Xavier,” he says, tearing open the fancy skin-like pad that covers wounds, keeps them clean. Promotes healing; this level of advancement has always unnerved Xavier. He slowly uses his palm to cup and squeeze it over the soldiers hip. His hand stays there for a moment. Maybe longer than a moment. If he didn’t have his glove on, they’d be skin to skin like that.

“Benji.”

“Really?” Xavier smiles again, brows turned upward.

“What?” His hands are suddenly shoved away, the enemy soldier trying to adjust himself against the wall. His cheeks have more color to them then, a little pinch of a dark red, splotchy and high on his cheekbones. His dark brows tuck together and the menacing sit of his lips is a sneer—but he’s pretty. He’s very pretty, even when he’s staring at Xavier like that. He has eyelashes too long and full. A dark curl sticks to his cheek.

“Just—it’s a cute name. I guess. Wasn’t expecting it.”

He stands then. Xavier is willowy tall, all legs. He puts a hand to the wall, leaning his weight there a bit. He casts a shadow down on the soldier, the sun behind him. He stares down as Benji stares up.

“Guess I’ll see you around, Benji,” he says, with a cocky wink.

“We probably shouldn’t,” the soldier replies.

“No, I got a feeling, you know?” Xavier walks backward as he talks, unslings his rifle from his shoulder. He checks it, inspects the chamber, glances out the end of the alley. More green has appeared in the sky, smearing the view. “Plus, I’m recognizable now. No one forgets a ginger.” He points to the mess of red, sweat damp hair.

“Red heads aren’t my type, mate.”

“Man, bullshit. Red heads are everyones type.”

The crash sound of something big and heavy has Xavier retreating without another word. All fun depleted as he sets himself to running toward the rest of the fighting, at a savage and hard pace. His hand, shaky and awkward turning his comms back on.

That was the last of his supplies.

[unknownjpegs]

unlocked

“The boy dies.”

“Yes.”

“And you get your coin.”

A gloved hand unfolds from inside a cloak. A hint of forearm is pale, save for the scattering of dark, inky swirls of tattoos. Bertram Dodge leans back from the table that separates them, as if that skin is an omen. He sweats, profusely, beads of it pouring down his face and soiling his nice linen shirt. His fat hand clutches a handkerchief, but he doesn’t move, because that pale flesh is still staring at him. The leather clad hand uncurls to fingers, spread carefully over the photo the merchant had brought with him.

An index finger taps against a freckly, boyish face.

“Wh-What’s his crime, then?”

Bertram had not expected small talk, and there hadn’t been any so far. In the dark, cellar bar, there’s been hardly any noise not from the low crooning band that serves as entertainment. Or cover for the dealings, the conversations in low murmur across the filthy den of snakes. Nothing from the phantom seated across from him. Betram looks at Maran Giarizzo-Cohn’s photo; the black and white portrait smiles up at them, handsome and youthful. Disgusting, hot envy bleeds inside the merchants stomach.

“Does it matter? He’s the son.”

The figure shifts. Eyes so blue they’re nearly bone bleach white, peer out from underneath a hood. The assassin’s face is covered by a thick swath of black fabric, but those eyes stare like fog lights in the night harbor. They make Bertram nauseas. When the man stands, the scrapping sound of his chair is just as loud as the music. Causes a poorly paid musician to falter on a note, heads to turn.

“Double it then.”

“What?” Bertram sputters, spit joining his sweat. He mops at his face—it isn’t warm in the cellar. The pour of it is relentless anyway.

“Or I’ll k-kill you. Just for fun, don’t even n-need a contract for it.”

“Double then. Triple—triple for the inconvenience, sir.”

The chair scrapes loudly again as the killer pushes it back into place, almost like someone pantomiming a gentleman. He picks the photo up from the table, giving it another glance. All the world must pity the boy then, to be under such a look, to be under such hideous, repulsive eyes, even in a photo.

All the world must pity him further, because he’ll soon meet Ben in person.

Bertram watches the killer leave, without another word.

***

The night air touches Xavier’s skin, something like a caress. A lovers touch—one he hasn’t known in years. It’s full of salt from the sea, wind curling around his outstretched arms (an embrace), ruffling through his dark red hair (a hand, there, pushing strands back to place a kiss to his forehead). It feels cleansing and peaceful, whispering home. He stands at the top of his clocktowner—his makeshift place of solace, or his self imposed prison—eyes closed. It’s deep toned tick tock tick tock is a constant reminder of time, pressing against his throat like a blade.

Xavier opens his eyes. Is thankful he still has them.

Then he takes a step off the ledge of the clocktower and plummets.

—

It isn’t home. Technically, it never was. Just a place he spent the blurred together days of his childhood; a sprawling estate where three boys ran their youth to the edges. But his heart knows the truth—it isn’t home. Never was. Feels like it. The ghost of memories still swirl up, threaten to overtake him, drag him down into the waters of a previous life that he gave up. The feverish once remembered feeling of hands touching his own, of the softness only a first kiss can be like.

The rain from the storm batters at him, wets his coat and chills him down to the bone. Xavier barely feels it, save the shivering, the way his teeth clatter together. Drops of water gather and drop from his chin, darken his hair, flatten it to his skull.

He sits perched on the edge of a crumbling brick wall, a poor excuse for land security that had been easy to scale. He watches the guard patrol, who never once look up and notice him. There’s a burn deep in his chest (worry, fear, anger, premonition), head tilted like a curious bird as one yawns into a gloved fist. Rain splatters the ground, makes everything muddy. A standard issue rifle rests on a cupped fist, against a shoulder, lazy. If Xavier drew his sword and dropped from above, he could skewer the guard straight through the heart. Silent and quick.

Instead, he runs south along the wall. He doesn’t slip, even though the bricks are slick and wet. Xavier never slips anymore. There isn’t enough human left inside him, for such easy mistakes. He finds the section of the manor he is well aware comes too close to the wall. The gap is easy for him to jump across, hands clasping around the edge of a windowsill. This one is always left open, even though it shouldn’t be.

Don’t, Xavier had said. Don’t leave places for me to get in.

It’s unlocked, he’d gotten in reply. The voice haunts him, in dreams. Stay’s unlocked for you.

Like a wraith, he slips through the opening.

—

The patrol in doors is no better than the one outside, which makes anxiety take hold of his insides. Xavier keeps to the shadows, tucked to the walls and not one servant in the household notices him. Not even the young maid he’d grown up alongside, who had tried to confess once to him—and he’d had to tell her there was already a hand firmly wrapped around his heart. Always would be. Xavier regrets being inside this home; the onslaught of memories makes him dizzy, makes him weak. Weak.

He is looking for one room in particular—but he is also, traitorously waiting for one person to find him. To cross the hallway and look to the side and—

“Xavier?”

For a brief moment, he is sixteen again. Laying on a dock, with his hand trailing the dark water, wondering what lurks underneath it; what scary creature might swallow him whole. He’s sixteen and a boy sits beside him with a sketchbook and when he looks up, the parchment is held out for him, to look at his own visage in scratchy, beautiful pencil lines. Sixteen, and in love, the sun haloing curly dark hair. He wishes, in that memory, that the sun hadn’t been there, because it had left Benji’s face in shadow and every time he thinks of that moment—the dock, the sketchbook, the swift press of their lips together for a first kiss—he wishes he could see himself reflected in Benji’s eyes.

“Hi, Benji,” he says, from the end of the dark hallway. The light is still pouring around his childhood friend, just like that day.

The heavy sound of foot steps makes him step forward with a hand raised. Benji stops with his own braced against the wall (like he needs it, to keep himself upright, he needs something and Xavier wishes he was that something). Underneath the barely there lighting of the hallway, Xavier is treated to the vision of him.

He doesn’t count the days anymore; and time blends for him strange. It doesn’t make sense, it’s upside down and in reverse and occasionally stopped altogether. But, the passing of time has never been as clear as it suddenly is, looking at Benji. Xavier swallows a painful stone inside his throat and lowers his hand, takes one tentative step forward just so he can look more. So he can fully see.

When he’d left, Benji didn’t have such full facial hair. He’d only started to really grow into it. He’d not been this broad, nor this muscled. He’d not looked so…Xavier tucks knuckles under his jaw, his eyes drawing away from the way his simple black outfit sits on him, the gun holstered at his side, the dagger on the other. They draw up, languid and slow to meet Benji’s eyes—and those were different too. They were tired, dark bruises beneath beautiful brown irises. There is gray starting at a temple and Xavier feels a deep wound forming in his heart. Or reopening; something that never healed. They’re the same age—no, Xavier is a year older.

But Benji isn’t old enough for gray.

There is a long beat of silence, where Xavier recognizes that he’s being looked at too. Something human pulses inside him, turns his cheeks a dark red color. He is suddenly self conscious of the much patched jacket he wears, the hair cut he’s been neglecting, the way it clings to his skin still from the rain outside. He brushes his hand back through dark red locks, finds himself shaking only a little and laughs.

“You left the window unlocked.”

“Course I did.” Benji’s eyes follow his hand, and then sweep lower, back to his face. He can almost feel the gaze, like fingers, touching parts of him. Xavier realizes then that Benji is looking at him—looking at him, looking at his scars. The maiming, the long, pale pink slashes crossing over his eye, his nose, parting the corner of his lips and down his chin.

He doesn’t think to be self conscious of them until it’s Benji that is looking at him. Xavier tucks his chin down, head tilting to the side, putting that angle of his face in shadow. He observes the window suddenly, his knuckles running up and down the pane, fat rain drops loud against the glass. It feels painful, to be in this hallway, to be together, for the first time in so long—and to be worried, selfishly, stupidly that Benji would find those scars—

“Where is Maran?” he asks, straightening. Xavier takes an unconscious step toward Benji. A mistake, because Benji steps toward him as well. It makes him retreat; makes Benji’s eyes dart to the window as well. Xavier’s cold, wet hands come together in front of him, fingers twisting. Stop, Xavier wants to tell him. Please, stop.

Benji doesn’t answer.

Instead, he turns and begins walking.

Xavier follows.

Of course he follows.

—

He sits on the edge of the opulent bed and feels, for the first time in a long time, like smiling. Maran sleeps so soundly. On his stomach, an arm tucked under a pillow. His cheek is squished, lips parted, eyes flickering under his lids in peaceful REM sleep. Hope the dreams are nice, Xavier thinks, slipping a hand under the blanket and lifting it higher. He tucks it over Maran’s shoulder, careful not to touch, not to disturb. He feels like smiling, but he doesn’t. He isn’t sure how to make that expression work any longer. His eyes skate off the bed sheets and up to Benji, who stands at the end with his arms crossed.

“It was always a pain,” Xavier comments. “Waking him up from a nap.”

Benji snorts, not a real laugh. Something tired—permeated with exhaustion, really. He shrugs up a shoulder and then his eyes sway toward Xavier.

“Remember how he used to jump on the bed to wake us up?”

“He always woke up first and got mad when we slept in.”

There is a hazy, yellowed memory inside his head; of the three of them sharing the bed too big for one lonely boy. He remembers Maran waking up first, jumping to get their attention, begging to get them going already, to the kitchen, for breakfast. Sweet rolls, with honey. Xavier remembers this one particularly, because he had woken up with Benji’s hand in his own. He’d woken up facing the other boy, a pillow shared between them. He’d woken up and stared at the dark lashes just barely blinking awake. Their knees had been touching too, by accident, he was sure.

“You seemed worried.” Benji swipes a hand through the watery image of nostalgia. It breaks and Xavier’s eyes drop back down to the horrendous print on the bed spread. Something only rich people could enjoy. He tucks his knuckles under his jaw once more.

“I heard a rumor,” he finally says, rising off the edge of the bed. Benji moves as he does. Stop that, Xavier almost says. Stop moving with me. Gravitational. “The killing of sons to hurt fathers—typical.” He has the vision of it—Maran, all that energy, all that constant motion, his knowing smile and pretty eyes. Dead. Gone, forever.

“Nothing’s getting to Maran,” Benji says. Not with confidence—finality. All he has left, something whispers to Xavier. Since you carved out a space and abandoned it. He feels cold, not because he’s soaked with rain water. He hasn’t felt warm in years; not since the dock. Xavier rubs a hand over his face, wicks away the rain water and steps forward again.

When he glances up, Benji is in front of him. Their height difference looms massive between them, and yet Xavier feels delicate. Like a firm push would send him slipping over the bricks. One of his hands raises, lifts on muscle memory alone, like it will grasp hold of Benji’s bicep, once more. Pull him in close. They stand there in front of each other.

“What are you doing?” Xavier asks, the quiet timbre of his voice huskier than he means it to be. He swallows, mouth dry. His eyes can’t stop straying to those few strands of gray at Benji’s temple. He wants to touch his lips there. When he’s alone, in the clocktower, when he’s laying on a thin plywood bed, arms tucked around himself…He remembers what Benji’s hair smells like—it kills him, every time he does and yet he never lets himself forget.

“Looking at you.”

Xavier closes his eyes. He can hear Benji move closer then, foot steps on plush carpet beneath them. Don’t, he thinks and doesn’t mean. Could never mean. What he does mean—what he wants to say—when he opens his eyes and finds Benji inches away from him—

I want to be yours again. I want you to have me again. I want you to take me, to hold me.

“I have to go,” Xavier mumbles, taking an ungraceful step backward. He nearly collides with the bed, shoulders jumping with surprise. He crosses to the other side of the room, footsteps undeniably loud. His hands come back up to his chest, cross and fold together, unfold again, tangle. He tries to make his breathing level and even, normal. He tries as he sits on the windowsill and unlocks it with shaking hands.

When he jerks the window open, Benji is standing next to Maran’s bed. He’s risen up on elbows, is staring like he’s seen a ghost.

“Lock this behind me,” Xavier says and then falls from the window.

[unknownjpegs]

moonlight vigil

Yasiel hates the grove. Doesn’t much like druids either; not his brand of mages. Nature’s never been something he’s found interest in. Nothing still alive ever really held his attention. He thinks fondly of the half-drow, Lark, and the sway of his eyes toward coin at every turn. Dead things and money. That was what made sense to Yasiel. He could do without ivy and birds.

The truth was, the grove makes him uncomfortable. It did, even before the revelation of Kagha’s Shadow Druid bullshit. The cut of sun through leaves, scattering pretty across lush, green grass. The tinkling sound of the water just north of the enclave. That little cheerful hafling that he bought potions from before roaming south and away from it all. Yasiel waited for the veneer to drop—and even with Kagha’s blood spattered corpse across the stone, it never did.

The grove remained a deeply beautiful place. Still.

He lifts a nose to the fresh, clean air that mixes with herbs and roots as it cleaves through Nettie’s infirmary. The murmured conversation of druids in the servants quarters pricks at his ears and his skin. A wolf stares between stone at him, sharp, silver eyes patient and watching. His fingers curl deeper around his own biceps, as his arms sit crossed over his chest.

“Mutt,” Yasiel mumbles to himself. The wolfs long tongue lolls out happily. Reminds him of the paladin he’s waiting to see. An impatient foot tap on moss coated stone flooring brings the dwarf healer to him.

“Best to sit down while you wait,” she says, in her deep brogue of an accent. He likes it. Likes her, actually. Nettie was the only person in the grove Yasiel couldn’t find himself truly hating. Pragmatic, honest, blunt, almost killed him the first time they’d met. Mouse would like her, his thoughts traitorously think. Yasiel snorts and further turns his nose up.

“I’ll stand.”

And he does. For longer probably than necessary, since he does not think Nettie shares the same sentiment for him as he does for her.

—

Once inside the room, Yasiel finds himself actually missing the scenery outside. Xavier’s nestled deep within the infirmary, surrounded by the stones. A cut of it is carved out one of the walls, to overlook the water outside the grove, but the light is still mostly lit by torches. The flames flicker across Xavier’s unconscious face, casting shadows dark from his pronounced, handsome nose. He looks paler than Yasiel last remembers.

But the last time he’d seen Xavier had been in the dark. And all he’d really seen was the shine of night vision, two blinking, haunted poison green eyes in the dark.

“Idiot,” Yasiel says unceremoniously as he sits down in the chair pulled close to Xavier’s bedside. He has to adjust it somewhat to be more comfortable, with how crammed close it had been. He briefly wonders who is keeping moonlight vigils for the paladin.

Then he stops himself from caring, less that care turn to a wound inside himself. Instead, he leans forward, putting a hand to fever warmed skin. His thumb brushes a bisecting scar that runs through a dark auburn eye brow. Yasiel used to hate Xavier for how effortlessly beautiful he was. Put no effort into his face or hair at all. He’d joke, with a flat blade scraping off the small, almost transparent hairs from his face, that he’d trade with Yasiel.

I like dark hair, he’d confessed once. Dark hair and dark eyes are pretty.

Yasiel’s hand sweeps up, pushes Xavier’s red hair back from his forehead.

For a moment, looking down at him, Yasiel digs so deep into himself. With curved, cruel hands he tries to find attraction for him. He digs and digs, trying to locate where it might live; the feeling of sexual desire for Xavier that has to exist somewhere. Because he is tall and handsome and noble. Yasiel tries to force himself to think of leaning over and kissing him, of what his lips would taste like, what his hand would be like cupping Yasiel’s skull. Giant, warm. Comforting.

Instead he cringes at the idea, leans back in the chair with a defeated sigh and dull eyes on the wall across from him. He can’t find it, because it doesn’t exist. Instead, there is that flickering delicate flame of platonic love he isn’t sure how to protect or keep safe.

Yasiel has missed Xavier so much and yet none of that was a burning desire to be taken to bed. He missed Xavier’s absolutely horrific jokes, his inability to cook anything over their campfire. His large, warm, safe presence at his back when Yasiel was doing something stupid and dangerous. He tries to turn that love into hate, because he knows the reason they parted is his own fault. But even that doesn’t work; especially not with Xavier as he is.

Looking small and sick. Wounded.

“Did this to spite me, I reckon,” Yasiel says, glaring at the big knight. “Fucking around with undead when you’re short a necromancer? I despise you.”

“Don’t think he can hear you.”

Yasiel goes immaterial in an instant, nothing but misty air. In the chair and then across the room with the snap of a finger. His hand rests firmly on the dagger at his hip—but he quickly drops it at the new visitor.

The tiefling is shorter than him, but broad—and darkly capable looking, despite his plain garb. His white cotton shirt is open at the throat, sleeves rolled to reveal muscular forearms. Yasiel notes red rope tattooed around the wrists that make him feel oddly warm to look at. He holds a bundle in his arms and Yasiel tilts his head until he recognizes it as another blanket. His two colored eyes slide toward Xavier and then back to the tiefling, whose tail seems upraised in annoyance.

“I could tell ‘im when he wakes up, if you’d like.” The tiefling steps further into the room, goes for the chair that Yasiel had just misty stepped from.

Ah. Dark hair and dark eyes, I see., the fiend inside him purrs. And handsome too. It’s no wonder Xavier never looked your way, Yasiel.

“You must be the cleric,” Yasiel says, with a curling lip. He walks his way to the other side of the bed, Xavier between the two of them. The tiefling’s ears twitch, his tail flicking rapidly as he shakes out the blanket. Benji, he thinks. Maran’s friend. Xavier’s…

Moonlight vigil.

“And you’re the warlock.”

For a moment, Yasiel feels swept up off his feet. Dangled upside down. It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask if Xavier has spoken of him before, but he bites down savagely to stop himself. He stays silent as Benji begins to lay the blanket down over top of Xavier. He barely stirrs, a slight tilt of his head toward the sun coming in from the wall.

Not the sun, Yasiel, his patron teases cruelly.

“He’s hot enough, don’t you think?” Yasiel lays his hand across Xavier’s brow again, even though he’d felt it earlier. The fever continues, makes his skin heated and sweaty. Yasiel looks to Benji, who slowly sits himself down in the chair. He uses the leverage of a clawed hand on the bed to yank himself closer, the sound of the chair on the stone making Yasiel’s shoulders jump.

“Don’t know much about fevers, yeah?”

“I’ll leave that to the healers.”

“You should.”

Yasiel blinks rapidly and then slowly removes his hand from Xavier’s forehead. He tucks both of his behind his back, keeping his nose tilted up still. He remembers playing chess with another wizard once, thinking so far ahead that he’d lost the current of the game and was thrashed in only two deft plays. He gets the sensation that Benji doesn’t play chess—but that he does end things, quickly.

So Yasiel has no choice but to change his tactics, somewhat. There’s a little soft voice inside his head (nothing to do with being pact bound) that reminds him of Maran; he’d swallow a knife point down before hurting that boy. So he sighs, dramatically and and sits himself on the edge of the bed. Down by the paladin’s legs, where he can rest a hand on the vague form of a shin.

Benji’s tail flicks again.

“He spoke of you,” Yasiel says with a roll of his eyes. “Obviously.” The tiefling does not respond, instead leans back in his chair with eyes closed as if meditating. The tail finally settles. His hands rest on his legs—which seems deliberate. Yasiel had never gotten the impression Benji might be private from Xavier. But that could have been because Xavier recounted the Benji he knew.

Yasiel knew a thing or two about being a different person sometimes.

“The last thing he wrote about you,” Benji says, blinking his left eye open. It’s two toned as well, the right that inky dark tiefling color. This left, on him, is shockingly blue and hazel. And infused with magic. Yasiel can’t help but focus on it. “Was that he was worried about you.”

It serves to shut Yasiel up until he finally drags himself out the room. Not before he leans over the bed and presses a swift and selfish kiss into Xavier’s sweaty, red hair.

—

Xavier’s face opens up with that same toothy, wolfish smile he always had. His big, warm paws close around Yasiel’s shoulders, shake him once, then twice until he’s being swatted off with annoyed hands.

“You missed me,” Xavier says confidently, with a bubbling note of bashful happiness. “Rotten little warlock. Of course you did. Got into trouble without me?”

“Who is getting into trouble without who around, you fucking loaf?” Yasiel swats at another encroaching hand. Xavier tucks them both behind his back then, leaning forward with that big open grin. Yasiel still remembers the day he cracked that big, sharp canine. The absolute fear at losing the tooth turning to giddy laughter when he realized it was fine. Only serves to make the fool more fucking handsome, Yasiel thinks, chest filled with jealousy.

“I’ll be coming along,” Yasiel says, dusting his hands together.

“You’ll have to ask Benji.”

“I’m not asking Ilmater anything.”

Xavier’s handsome face darkens quickly, a flicker of that dog inside him at the surface. Yasiel rarely had that look turned on him—yet it still makes the defenses inside him quiver. He sighs and raises both hands in mock surrender, eyes toward the wide bright sky above them.

“You’ll call him Benji, or won’t call him anything,” Xavier says, pulling himself to his full height. In greaves, Xavier stands so tall sometimes that Yasiel has to wonder if even orcs are intimidated by him. They should—he’s seen that sword swing smites so powerful entire family lineages could feel struck. Yasiel taps his foot against the grass. They’ve finally left the grove, at least. He no longer feels suffocated by anything other than the usual.

Impending sense of doom, fear, unworthiness.

“And you think Benji will let me come along?”

Xavier’s face darkens again, but this time in fear and contemplation. It’s only a flicker, so fast someone might mistake it for anger again. But Xavier has always been someone to wear his emotions on the sleeve, if you were someone he allowed to peel the fabric back.

“I think he needs the help,” Xavier says softly. He takes a step toward Yasiel. That towering height blocks out the sunlight, suddenly plunging Yasiel into cold shadows. “And I’m not leaving him again.”

At least someone around here is committed to something. You’d love that trait, wouldn’t you, Yasiel? Pity.

The wind seems to shift and bring the warmth back, as if pulling along the sun. Xavier leans back to observe it scattering fallen leaves. The scar across his face seems to stand out starker, the pale of his skin still sallow from his time being sick. Yasiel looks at his boots instead of observing him any longer.

“Well. Let’s go ask your cleric then.”

“He’s—Not my—”

“Lead the way,” Yasiel says, with a long, suffering sigh, shaking his hand out. The wind switches once more, tickling the back of his neck like a soft kiss. Or warning.

[unknownjpegs]

martyrs

The chill in the night cools Xavier’s searing cheeks. He pats them softly, his supple gloved hands feeling distant and numb from the ale. Xavier huffs out an exhale as he looks up at the blanket of pretty, white stars dotting the nights sky. Brows upturned, he briefly wonders if his patron is looking down, embarrassed of the red heads inability to mingle with the nobility he’d used searing smites to save, only a day prior.

But the celebration had embarrassed Xavier more than the idea of a looming deity disappointed in lending strength to someone who couldn’t be in crowds of people for very long. The respite of the terrace is enough to make his heart stop racing even if it doesn’t help the heat in his face. He should have stopped at the second goblet of wine, and he definitely shouldn’t have chased it with a stein of ale. People had simply kept giving him things; drinks, food, compliments. Touches to his elbow and shoulder and his back. His skin crawls, as if bugs live underneath the borrowed clothes he’d worn for the occasion.

Xavier fishes into the fancy coat pocket for cigarettes he’d rolled just for this occasion, a prepared excuse to need to come outside. He leans with his hip cocked against the stone railing that overlooks the opulent garden. Some of the flowers are so rare that they bloom in colors he’d never even seen before. A young servant girl had tucked a hand under one and named it for him; Smaragdine. She’d laughed, dainty with a blush on her high cheekbones and a hand over her mouth when he’d said ‘looks green to me’.

Xavier reminds himself that the people he’d saved were people, and all people deserved a life free of fear, or pain—even people so rich they owned fenced in gardens, lavish mansions that overlooked a poor town. Smaragdine colored flowers.

He bites a glove off his hand, mumbling under his breath thoughts on nobles as he swaps the glove for a cigarette and holds up a finger. A flame produces from the tip, wavering in the dark.

“Pinch one off you?”

Xavier shouts, nearly climbing into the air. The glove tumbles from his hand, over the railing and down into the darkened garden below. His heart slams against his sternum painfully, shiny night reflective eyes flickering across the terrace to find—

Benji.

“You scared me nearly to piss,” he breathes, teeth having clamped the cigarette to ruin. He spits it over the railing, to join his glove (and secretly he thinks that he won’t bother to find it, hopes that it smacked one of those ugly green flowers right in the face). The tiefling before him steps closer, a hand lifted to brush a crown of dark curls away from his face and back behind his gold adorned horns. His other holds a mostly full goblet of wine, taps it against his hip idly as if trying to find a rhythm better than the one coming from the noble party.

A wide circle of light follows him out the double wide door that he closes with a booted foot.

“Isn’t the expression to death?” In the dark, Xavier can see his expression. He used to think that sneer was mean; like Benji hated him. But it was all different now. Everything felt different. New, sort of untouched. Frail. Weird. Friendly.

“Wouldn’t ‘ave died,” Xavier says as he puts two new cigarettes between his lips. “Just embarrassed myself senseless.” More than I already have, he thinks. Then Xavier lifts a finger again, an ember bursting from the tip once more. He watches Benji step closer and smiles around the cigarettes. “But hells, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?” Right as Xavier is pulling a cigarette from between his lips, the one intended for Benji, the cleric drops to one knee. Begins fussing with his already laced boot. He reties it, head tilted down. He’s in equally lavish clothing, something form fitting and dark red, with calf high boots. Xavier keeps hold of the cigarette, watching. He takes a long drag on his own, letting the smoke pool out from his barely parted teeth. The red looks good on him. It brings out the dark eyes he has.

“Do you remember those gnolls we had to cut down?”

“Why are you thinkin’ of gnolls right now?” Benji finally stands, reaching for the outstretched cigarette. The bite of his nasty smile has lessened somewhat, because he’s not around others. Benji seems to smile softer if there’s no one around to keep a performance up for. Xavier takes his own cigarette from his mouth, head tilted back so the smoke goes straight up into the night air. He leans back against the railing, sighing out with a foot crossed over an ankle.

“I just think I’d be having more fun if we were doing that, then this.”

“I’ll be more fun once I finish this,” Benji comments, holding up the goblet of wine. It’s a dark, disgusting red. Dry and tangy—had made Xavier’s nose sting to drink it. He frowns, taking a puff of the cigarette and shaking his head.

“What’s that mean?”

Benji shrugs, nurses a sip of the wine. Immediately puts his cigarette to his mouth after, shrugs again.

“More fun when I’ve had a few?” His voice turns up at the end like it’s a question. Xavier knows it’s not. He lets silence linger for a minute before he turns swiftly, trapping Benji against the railing. Stands in front of him with a big, wolfish smile.

“I like you sober,” he supplies. Xavier offers his cigarette and Benji takes it, a pinch of confusion to his brows to now be in possession of two. Xavier uses the opportunity to snatch the wine from his hand. Benji’s hand trails after it, but Xavier merely leans back. His taller body easily keeps Benji mostly pinned to the railing—even though none of them is touching.

What if we were, though? What if we were touching? Gods, I want to touch. The thought zips into him so quickly he feels witch bolted. Blinks rapidly before drowning the goblet of all it’s horrible wine. It burns going down, makes him sputter a cough while Benji stares at him, transfixed in disbelief.

“There,” Xavier says, wiping the back of his ungloved hand across his mouth. His tongue automatically flicks to catch a bead of wine he’d missed. “Tell ‘em you drank it. Arseholes. Dickhesds. Like, what are you? Their entertainment? Stay sober. I like you sober, plenty, Benji.” He almost wishes he was sober, because that’s his third glass of wine now, and he’d drained it so quickly, the stars suddenly seem to double. He grips the railing to feel more balanced, but it only brings them a little closer.

His cheeks feel warm again, looking down into those big, pretty tiefling dark eyes. Benji has started growing out his facial hair; or rather, has stopped trying to tame it down altogether. It grows in thick, but it suits his face nicely. Xavier would give anything to brush the back of his knuckles against Benji’s jawline. See what it feels like.

“There you are!”

A high pitched voice makes both of the adventurers freeze. Xavier throws a quick look over his shoulder. The Jarl’s daughter stands there, in a bright and beautiful yellow gown. Her hair was once up, in a powerful braided pattern—and it’s since come tumbling down, cascading over her thin shoulders in hypnotizing patterns. The flush to the high apples of her cheeks suggest that she, too, has had far too much of the wine.

“Lady Alma,” Xavier stutters out, quickly stepping to be beside Benji. The cleric takes the goblet from him. He awkwardly bows and there’s a long pause before Benji also bends slightly at the hip. He did not need to read his friends mind to know what he thought of the Jarl’s daughter; of the entire celebration for their band after the slaughter of the mimics that had infested the mansion.

“You promised me a dance,” she sings, skipping out from the doors and toward them. Xavier glances from Benji to her, eyes widened. He feels the warmth rushing back into his face, crawling up his neck and to his half elf pointed ears. It’s not a pleasant warmth; it’s fresh humiliation and nervousness.

“Me?” He points at himself, then tries to laugh it off when she nods excitedly. “No, my lady, I—I did not promise anything. I’m a terrible dancer.”

“My father said you would.” She stops skipping, reaches Xavier with a hand outstretched. She takes it, her smooth palm feeling oddly foreign and distressing against his, sword rough as it is. “My father isn’t a liar, is he?” Xavier feels the steel cage, slamming shut around him. He’s tugged forward, and though he’s taller—and she can’t weigh more than a kitten, he’s as easy to move as a leashed puppy.

When he glances over his shoulder, he finds Benji looking at the empty goblet of wine.

***

Xavier’s hand glows a faint, lovely blue as he secures it around the nape of Benji’s neck and yanks him backward. His back slams into Xavier’s chest plate, the clanging sound of their armor not nearly as loud in comparison to the shouting in the village. Screaming, the occasional gnashing sound of a predators maw. A pack of demon possessed and lead wolves. Their druid yells above them all, in desperate attempts to bring nature under order.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Xavier snarls into Benji’s ear. Despite the viciousness of his tone, his hand loosens. Guantleted fingers, spread, run across Benji’s neck. Down to his chest. He forces their bodies closer as he thinks of the magic. He feels it draining of him, enlightened and beautiful—he feels it go to Benji. Fill him instead, makes the slash of a wound across his shoulder slowly begin to close. To stop bleeding as profusely as it had.

He smells like blood and nothing else and that scares Xavier. He usually smells so—

“Ge’off me,” Benji protests, turning against the arm across his shoulder, the hand on his chest. “M’tryin’ to get to Myrna—she needs—”

“Myrna has been hoarding potions in her pack since we stepped foot through that bleedin’ forest,” Xavier seethes back, pressing himself forward again. There are dark bruises under Benji’s eyes, a gash across his brow that’s healed to flaky, dark blood. Benji’s hand shakes as he puts it to the wound. The spear in his hand droops. He makes frantic glances around the sudden, overwhelming battlefield they’ve stepped into.

“Then who needs—”

“You!” Xavier yells. He throws the battleaxe in his hand to the ground, stepping forward with arms outstretched to catch Benji again. To pull him close. To think the words, to invoke the patron, to feel that beautiful licking flame of magic and heal the other man.

But Benji pushes his hands away, his brow drawn down into a severe, furious expression.

“Don’t waste the energy.”

Something sparks in Xavier so blinding and furious it does feel like an invocation. Like something is pouring straight through him and it is made of liquid flames. His hand shoots forward, gripping Benji’s breastplate. He yanks them together once more, his teeth clenched painfully, lip curled back. Like one of the demon possessed wolves, like something stepped from Avernus or worse. The magic fills him in flash, powerful and all encompassing and angry. The blue glow blooms from him, even his eyes, no longer green, but holy reflective and seething.

The cut above Benji’s eye disappears. The gnarled, torn skin on his shoulder stitches together. The spell is so powerful, no scar even dares remain.

“Don’t ever say that again,” he says, or commands, in a voice double layered in it’s own magic. He feels like it spills out of his mouth, even. The Blessing, the need for Benji to be safe, unharmed. Unwounded.

The tiefling stares up at him. Dark pools of black for eyes, his own hands wrapped around Xavier’s forearm. Holding tight. He looks at a cut on Benji’s chin, that must have come from his sharp, metal gauntlet when he’d grabbed at him. It still bleeds, unhealed. A drop of it lands on his armor. Xavier looks from it, the way it slides and dilutes across pale, silver plating, up to lips. He stares at them, slightly parted. The hint of white teeth, a pink tongue. He feels Benji’s chest heaving, moving to pull in desperate air. His entire arm shakes with how hard he holds the cleric.

Oh.

They sway toward each other. Heads moving, in a familiar gesture, in a well known motion. Xavier’s head tilts as Benji’s does. He feels warmth breath against his skin—this close, he smells like Benji and not blood.

Before their lips ever touch, Xavier shoves Benji back. He lets go of his breastplate. He stumbles back, his heart feeling swollen, wounded, like a bruise fresh to touch. Sweat flattens his hair to his skull, burns his eyes.

“If you’re going to martyr yourself, don’t do it around me, Benji.”

***

The apology letter comes not long after that; but it is just that. A letter. Embarrassed and short and full of shame. And Benji’s is similar. To the point. Open ended, in the sense that it invites a conversation after; but closed all the same, on the subject itself. Xavier still keeps it, but that is one letter he does not reread, unlike the sheaths of parchment he keeps in his pack to keep himself company.

They continue. On and on, but they do not see each other.

Until…

—

For some reason, Xavier is reminded of that nobleman party. He watches Benji bend, on one knee and unlace his boot and thinks of that scene. The two of them, until they’d been interrupted. The empty goblet he’d handed back. The dance he’d blundered through. It feels oddly intimate to watch Benji undress, so he turns back to the water and throws his arms open. Xavier sighs, content, the rich smell of salty water feeling more rejuvenating than any potion he’d been made to drink in the last few weeks.

Not that he’d tell Nettie that.

“Can you believe there are people out there that have never even seen water like this, Benji?” He feels water splashing at his side and glances over to find Benji already hip deep. His tail flicks the glossy surface, sending droplets across Xavier. He steps back, a hand to the hideous scar he’ll never be rid of, across his ribs and snickers.

“Remember when you stole the space on the beach I’d made for my tent?”

“I did not steal your space,” Benji argues, cupping water to splash across his face. “You cannot claim a spot with a boot.” Xavier watches water droplets roll down Benji’s face, over his neck, escape from his facial hair. He watches Benji tilt his face back to the sun above them, and when his dark, wet lashes part, Xavier is staring at the false eye again.

Where did that come from? He wants to ask. Why haven’t you told me about it already? It has to be something bad, Benji. You’ve never mentioned it in a letter. And you’ve not mentioned it since getting here. What bad thing is happening that you aren’t telling me?

Instead, Xavier falls back into the water, to let himself float. His side only hurts a little, a dull aching throb that reminds him of healing bones.

“Try not to drown. Nettie would have my hide and then my soul right from Avernus if she’d spent weeks tending you, just for you to die in the water right outside the grove.”

“Water’s in my blood, Benji—I’m not drowning easy.”

He feels the water shift around him, the reverberations of Benji’s movement. It feels like that, all the time, even out the water. You in a room. I feel that. Xavier lets his eyes close, the sun warm his bare chest. He thinks of the water droplets continuing to slide. Catching in Benji’s ample chest hair, running along the divots of his abdomen. The ridges of his hip bones, where devil anatomy got trapped under skin.

“Thank you for coming out here with me,” he calls to wherever Benji is.

“You practically begged.”

“I did not beg.”

“You said if you did not get out of the grove infirmary that you would tear your hair out—then you made me imagine you bald. Not a sight I’d like to see any time soon.”

“Oh, you like my hair, then?” Xavier throws back the tease, expecting a laugh, but instead hears a hum. He laughs himself then, because it’s a familiar tune. It’s one the fishers sang, bringing in their haul. He remembers his mother singing it, as she shucked oysters. Xavier’s eyes open, the sun pretty above. The song is pretty in Benji’s voice, even if Benji isn’t a singer. It’s so pretty that he feels himself turning toward it.

“How do you know that song?” Xavier’s voice feels distant, even to him. The sun goes too bright then, makes him cover his eyes with a hand. His side twinges, hurts something awful and then nothing hurts at all. Everything feels warm and calm, and pretty. And Benji’s voice gets louder too, gets nicer. Says,

if only you’d come closer. We could kiss. Like you wanted to do, back then. And didn’t. You’d have done it wrong back then but—you can kiss me now. You missed me—I missed you too. And it’ll all be okay now. This way, Xavier.

When he comes too, he’s sitting on the beach, staring at a dire wolf the size of a cart horse. It rips its head back and forth in savage, cruel motions. It’s maw wraps around a harpy’s arm, making it look as small as a childs. Then it rips. The limb gets torn, dark blood splattering fine, light colored sand. Xavier blinks at it. The harpy screams, feral, claws slicing across the black wolfs side. It can’t get past the thick fur, though—and then the wolf’s jaws close around it’s neck. A quick snap and Xavier can hear the spine break.

But his attention is quickly called to the harpy looming over him—and she bursts into a holy, bright white flame. She screams, wings lifting and opening, shadowing him. Xavier stares, lips parted as she lunges forward. Just to be met with another sacred flame, another burst of fire all across her body. She crumbles backward, her corpse floating out into the water.

“Fuckin’ hells,” Xavier mutters.

“Only you would be recovering from some undead and then get attacked by harpies.” The voice behind him makes Xavier stand. He jumps to his feet, smiling toothily. Wolfishly, one might say, like the one that presses in on his side. Xavier’s hand smooths the fur between Lark’s giant ears, that flicker. The wolf keens, presses closer.

“I’m fine, Lark,” Xavier says, still smiling at Matilda. She stands with her arms crossed, beautiful as she ever is. Her hair, a wilder red than his own, is styled in the latest fashion he’s seen beautiful women like herself putting it in. She manages to make it look effortless, and her pale skin doesn’t look sallow beneath the sun. It looks kissed and pretty. Xavier feels such an unconditional platonic love for her he almost darts forward to scoop her into a hug.

But Lark darts between them. He shakes his fur coat out, splashing water and droplets of harpy blood across them both.

Matilda gasps, furious hands raised.

“Lark!” She snaps. The wolf’s giant maw open in laughter, tongue lolling between teeth big enough to snap bones with ease. He bounds up the sloping hill leading away from the water. “I’ll make a rug out of you!” She yells, chasing after him. Xavier steps backward, like he’s going for the water again, to get some of the dark red off him.

Only a hand touches his side. It’s cold—but familiar in it’s chill. Xavier looks over his shoulder. Benji is still staring at the harpy he’d all but incinerated but then those two colored eyes look up at him. Xavier feels the wind leave him, his hand reaching for Benji’s shoulder. Someone to lean against, his knees feeling oddly weak.

“She’s not wrong, you know. Only you have such bad luck.”

No, Xavier thinks. Your eye, Benji. Your eye…

Instead, he looks up the hill where Matilda has caught up with Lark. He flops himself onto the ground, mouth open as he pants happily and she puts a foot to his side. Even from this far away, he can hear her berate him.

“They’re going to have to admit to being in love with each other someday,” Xavier says fondly.

Benji is silent.

—

“Take me with you,” Xavier comments, almost casually. They sit at the top of the hill, overlooking water one way, the grove the other. Xavier looks at neither. He picks at the prepared lunch, none of it appealing to him. His appetite has not returned; Nettie had told him that was her biggest concern. He’d visited the grove only half a season earlier and nearly ate the druids out of house and home. When your taste for a meal returns, I’ll let you loose. So Xavier stuffs the bread into his mouth anyway.

The sun retreats, bathing their world orange hues and—what had been the color of one of those hideous, lovingly tended flowers? Vermilion. Benji had been wearing red that night too. He thinks of the drop of blood from his chin. Xavier has been too scared to wonder if he’d left a scar. He tucks knuckles against his chin, looks down at the spread of food on the quilted blanket Xavier has no doubt came from Benji’s mum. He fingers the edge of it. Safe texture. Soft cloth.

“Wherever you’re going next,” he continues, shrugging a shoulder. “I’d like to come. You never know when you might need a paladin.”

Benji picks up a grape between his fingers, tossing it into his mouth. He shows a brief flash of those sharp white teeth that makes Xavier’s skin feel hot. Nothing to do with the sun, that.

“Don’t tease me,” Xavier says, shoving a hand against Benji’s knee. He keeps them tucked up, like that, to rest his chin on. He laughs when it unbalances him, but Xavier is just as unbalanced, catching himself palm out on the ground. He smiles, feeling bashful. Feeling silly. Feeling, for the first time, in so long, even without the injury, almost normal. Almost okay. “Just say yes.”

“I wasn’t going to say no,” Benji says, letting his legs unfold. He leans back with his hands braced on the ground. His curls fall back, tucked around his horns. Xavier looks at the dark, rich skin of his throat. The facial hair really does suit him, the bastard. The shirt opens at his chest. Xavier tries hard not to get distracted.

“So that’s a yes?” Xavier rolls onto his knees, grinning like the wolf Lark had wild shaped into. Don’t go somewhere I can’t follow you, Benji. I won’t let you. There’s things I have to tell you too. My Oath.

My Oath.

“Well, you’ve got to finish the food don’t you?”

Xavier hangs his head and groans, long and drawn out and it makes Benji laugh. A snort that turns into full laughter, that comes from the belly. It’s one of the best laughs he’s ever heard, because Benji does it full body when he’s really letting himself go.

“You and Nettie are against me,” Xavier mumbles, stuffing fruits into his mouth. He chews obnoxiously, lips curled back.

“I want you to come,” Benji says, his voice oddly quiet. So he finishes the food quietly, as they both decide which view they prefer. The water or the grove; or each other.

[unknownjpegs]

letters

Item select —> Letter

[A bundle of inexpensive parchment, tidily pressed, tied off with brown twine. Smells faintly of the sea. Fingerprint marks indicate where it’s been read and reread.]

Benji! [This is written larger than the rest of the neat, careful script]

I have found a quiet place inside the crypt, which means that I have found a moment to write to you. We’ve made camp alongside a sarcophagus that we’ve not been able to open—cannot help but judge the poor rogue (Lyana) doing her thief kitting, because Lark could probably get this done with his eyes closed.

Oh, right, you’re probably reading this and wondering where I’ve landed myself now. I’ve taken a contract to eliminate some undead (paladin duties, as you know, the code, oath, all that) with a new group of adventurers. And speaking of judging—Benji. Actually, I will get to the cleric in a moment.

Let me thank you instead for the recipe you sent for that tincture! You know how fucking rotten I am at potions and the like. You made it rather easy, though. Reading the instructions sort of felt like you were over my shoulder, telling me what to do. Admittedly, miss that a bit!

[an ink blot has stained part of the letter here, a smudged fingerprint]

Anyway, I need you to not be angry at what I’ll be writing next. Stop being preemptively angry just by that as well. I can picture you right now, with so much ease. Get that knot in your brow and tilt to your mouth. Might show off a cute fang with a curled lip. Well, the thing is, the crypt is dank and molded and I’ve definitely gotten a cold. Which, actually, you might be laughing at this part. Reading me talk about a cold (likely cramped up inside a tree, aren’t you? Half folded in on yourself, in weird ways. Never could sit right), probably a bit funny.

I guess you’ll be more annoyed that I haven’t spoken up about it. Or tried to ask our Cleric for some assistance. And I could heal myself probably (paladin!) but I don’t want him to see me doing it. Right, I can also imagine you rolling your eyes at me—like you aren’t just as stubborn. I just don’t like him, Benji. And I can’t let him win. He can’t know I’m suffering a common cold from dusty, moist crypts. One Healing Word on myself and he’ll see the blue flash and go ‘Aha! We should not have hired this paladin!’

Which, maybe is true…

Lyana, the rogue who cannot get the sarcophagus open (really easy work, Benji, promise, doesn’t look like alchemy, know what I mean?) is lovely really. Very sweet. I think she disikes me. Like, a lot, Benji. Tried to explain that I should hold the map of the place and she laughed at me. ‘Knights don’t hold maps’. Well. Told her, ‘I’m not a knight. I’m a paladin. And I should hold the map’.

I got a look at it, at least before we went in. So, you know me, memorized it pretty easy. Except, when I told her—and the fucking cleric—where to turn, they went the opposite way. We’re all stuck in this little crypt until someone starts listening to me. Or I lose it and kick the coffin over, wake up whatever’s inside and then maybe they will have use of me. Other than holding torches.

I think they hired me because I’m tall, Benji.

Made me miss [the sentence ends abruptly and the writer seems to pick up on a new page, as if the thought was interrupted or abandoned]

Hope you’re doing well, of course! Bet you hate when I get a long winded one out like this, huh? I traded some rings for parchment from a trader and he laughed at me over it, but I have to say. The rings probably were worth more, but getting to write to you is still probably the only thing keeping me sane on some of these journeys. I’m a bit tired of them. Of it, all, really.

I miss the fishing village. Missing a lot lately [another ink blot and furious smudges]

I’ll be waking up the undead in a minute. By the time this letter reaches you, I’ll have hopefully found a different party to travel with. Might try and find Lark again…

Anyway!

Your friend for as long as you’ll have me and my letters,

Xavier

[There is a crude, poorly drawn dog at the bottom of the last page. The words ‘bark bark’ are written next to it, perhaps to indicate that it is a dog, as the writer is not gifted with artistic talent.]

Item select —> Letter

[This single letter has a decisive, near violent but misaligned fold through the middle of it; as though the recipient read it once and tucked it away with haste.]

Benji, [the script is scratchy and messy and terribly lazy looking]

How are you, my fiendish friend? I’m writing you partially because I found out that you have been corresponding with a paladin we’re both acquaintances with; and yet I have never once received a letter from you. My heart is broken beyond repair. Hopefully you know how your cruelty has affected me. I wait, on a chaise lounge, tuning my violin and waiting for your reply.

[There’s a large, dramatic space.]

Actually, I am writing to you for a reason, not just to be a proper fucking annoyance. Though, you and I know, fond of that. Especially to you—but I’d like for you to be sitting for the next part of this letter.

When Xavier told me he’d been in regular correspondence with you, I felt I should be the one to write to let you know—once again, please be seated—that he was injured recently. Don’t get hasty, as he’s currently healing in a sick bed. Nice and well taken care of by a busty dwarf cleric that seems absolutely fond of the red head. Never seen someone lean over a man so frequently to check a fever.

Well, thought you should know! I’ll disclose the location in the way I always do when sending a secret through courier. I’m sure the man would like to see you. Groaned your name once or twice when they were straightening out those ribs to fix them.

You owe me, by the way.

Charmed as always,

Ben the Bard

[unknownjpegs]

digging

It’s raining as the twins dig. They’re in perfect tandem with each other—as they always are, even when they’re not. Yasiel swings dirt up over his shoulder. Muddy, it slaps the ground, dirties his nice dress slacks. He wipes a bleeding hand over his forehead and it smears pink. His skin’s not made tough for this. Not like his sisters.

Mouse digs frantically. Frenzied and powerful. She’s trying to get all the way to the center of the Earth, with the way she scrapes at the water lodged soil. Right to the middle, there’s lava down there. Careful, the floors made of lava! She pants, the rain pouring over her face in thick rivulets, making it hard to see. But she doesn’t need to. Just needs to keep digging, really. The ground opens up softer because of the rain, but becomes slippery, messy. Her jeans are sodden and her boots are dirty.

Yasiel whistles and she looks up. Lightning cracks across the sky, dramatic and beautiful. Mouse thinks that’s just like nature; to be perfectly in tune with Yasiel’s theatrics. He holds up his bleeding hands, his palms wounded from the rough handle of the shovels. His dark eyes meet hers, his long black hair sticking to his face in little snake patterns. Mouse brushes her own back with the heel of her palm. The rain continues.

“I can’t,” Yasiel explains quietly and she hears him even over the pouring rain, even over thunder. “It hurts.”

The hour-older twin looks above the hole she’s digging herself into. The black tarp has peeled back just enough to glimpse ghost white skin, an arm dangling out of it. She closes her eyes and swings dirt over her shoulder for it to thunk wetly behind her.

“I can keep going,” she tells her twin.

And she continues digging the grave.

—

Yasiel stands outside the car while Mouse attempts to turn it over for the fourth time. It grinds and makes a noise he doesn’t recognize—like an animal hacking up a lung—and then shuts off. He examines the half assed bandages across his palms while Mouse screams inside the car. It rocks back and forth as she kicks and thrashes, throws punches to the steering wheel and dashboard.

Yasiel can see a little bit of red poking through on his left palm, this small circular dot. The first aid kit in the trunk had been ancient, and had barely enough gauze to actually cover both palms. The pain is dull and throbbing and hurts every time he moves his fingers—but he doesn’t dare complain to his sister. Especially not as she storms her way out of the drivers side and back to the front of the car.

“I didn’t know you learned how to fix cars in the last year or so,” he calls mildly, looking up at the dark sky. It’s punctured by bright white stars, stretching as far as the eye can see, until the trees begin to cut it off. Despite the storm they’d just survived (barely), there are no clouds any longer. They’d all smeared away to reveal the most beautiful canopy of stars he’d ever been under.

“Fuck off,” Mouse snarls as she slaps the hood of the car shut. She punches it for good measure and then slumps across it. “Just fuck off.” This is said softer and quieter and more to herself. Yas can hear her sniffling, holding back tears. He’d go to her—he wants to go to her—but he isn’t sure what to do with his bloody hands. Isn’t sure she’d even accept a hug from him.

They stay like that for longer than he wants to admit. The car becomes an island between them, her at the hood, him at the trunk. He’d divide it up into the years they’d spend apart before this night, and yet, he doesn’t have the mental energy. The creativity is drained from him, with the split blisters across his hands. Yasiel looks up at the stars while Mouse’s sniffling slowly peters off.

“We could walk,” he offers.

“I could walk,” she argues. Yasiel bristles slightly, his lips curling from his teeth. He’s ready to argue with her—she’s ready to argue back. It’s like that with them, all of the time. But he’s exhausted and depleted, and afraid he smells like dead body, so instead he shuts up. She shuffles from around the car. She nearly approaches, and then freezes when headlights swing around the bend in the road.

Yasiel steps in front of Mouse without thinking, and she holds his elbow, also without thinking.

The truck rumbles to a stop. For a brief moment, Yasiel is thinking of the knife Mouse keeps on her. The wicked hunting one with a curved edge, a serrated middle used for gutting. His heart makes a quick marathon run into his throat, into his mouth almost, as the window slowly rolls down.

“Y’al’right?” It’s all one word that Yasiel blinks to parse together. Y’all alright? Mouse’s curling hand tightens on his elbow. The face above the trucks window is mostly in shadow. He catches hints of an older man, brushed back black and gray hair. Yasiel peers, with narrowed eyes, tucks the arm Mouse clings to further back around her. “Whoa, now. Lookin’ like you need help s’all. Got a flat er’somethin’?”

“You’re terrible at enunciating, man,” Yasiel comments without thinking. Mouse shoves her fist into his spine, making him jump forward with both hands raised.

To his surprise, it makes the stranger in the truck laugh. He has a rich, deep chested laugh that seems to match the rumbling of his truck. It’s the sort of laugh Yasiel likes. He clears his throat, attempts a smile. His wet clothes cling to him in a way that is not just uncomfortable, but borderline painful. His hair stays flattened mostly to his skull in a wet cap, but the occasional strand frizzes up and flies away, messy like he hates it.

“It broke down on us. We’re not sure what’s wrong with it.”

“Storms goin’ to be comin’ back in.”

“What?” Yasiel glances back to Mouse, whose eyes have gone round and wide. She’s peering into the cab, with curious intensity.

“In the eye of it, right now. It’s movin’ this way again, though. Don’t want to be caught in that.” The offer, although not said aloud, is plain. Yasiel just can’t see where the offer ends, and it makes him nervous. Makes the heart in his mouth go sour so he has to swallow it down. Mouse darts from around him, getting close to the strangers truck window. He’s hissing, grabbing at her waist to yank her back, but she’d always been stronger than him.

“We ain’t hookers,” Mouse says in a deadly cold, serious voice.

“That’s good, I was not lookin’ for hookers on this fine Tuesday night.”

“And what are you doing in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night?”

There’s rustling from inside the truck and then suddenly Mouse is backing away with a flashlight in hand. It looks like the heavy duty kind and Yasiel feels prickling across his skin—could easily become a weapon in her hands. Instead, she clicks it on and waves it across the side of the truck.

CAMP COLD HOLLOW is written across it in bright yellow font.

“Patrolin’ the camps perimeters. Y’all didn’t know you passed onto the camps property line?”

Yasiel feels cold all over, right to his fucked up, ripped up hands. He swallows hard, stepping closer to Mouse, and thus the truck. He can see the man better now. He’s got kind wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and full facial hair thats salt and pepper like the hair. Yasiel’s eyes flicker over his features while his heart beats loudly against his throat. He’s handsome, in a button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Innocuous.

“We’re lost,” he tells the man.

“Picked a helluva night to get lost.”

“Are there good nights to get lost?” Mouse quips back, handing him the flashlight. Yas can tell she likes him; which is good and bad, he supposes. “So you’ll take us into town?”

“Naw. That’s an hour and a half drive. I’ll take you to camp though, so you can rest the night. Call a tow in the morning.”

“We can’t do that, Nelsy.” Yasiel whispers to her in Spanish over her shoulder. Mouse’s long, slender arms cross over her chest. Her dirty boot taps the ground as she thinks. “We have to get out of here. After what we just did?”

“You can’t walk into town. You’ll die, you’re too pathetic.”

“I’m not pathetic!”

Mouse ends the conversation by crossing around the truck to the other side. Yasiel slips across wet dirt following her, his hands stinging painfully as he thoughtlessly curls them into fists. She yanks open the passenger door and the lights in the car spring on. They reveal the man entirely now. He leans against the drivers door, one arm over the passenger seat head rest, the other forward. His wrist lazily dangles on the steering wheel. He’s grinning a bit, almost seems to be regretting his choices as Mouse starts yanking on the passenger seat.

“I’m Mouse,” she says, as she finally gets it to fall forward. The pathetic expanse of a back seat in the truck opens up. “He’s Yasiel. And he’s sitting in the back.”

—

The strangers name is Tino. He keeps the radio on low, to fill the silence that descends into the truck. Mouse keeps herself perched with her back to the door, one leg folded under her, the other hiked up. She’d not even put her seatbelt on, which drives Yasiel insane but he chooses not to say anything. The silence continues up until Mouse decides she wants to ruin it.

“So are you a creepy pervert, working at a Summer camp and all?”

“Nelsy,” Yasiel snaps his teeth together. He’d fished out his glasses that he’d tucked away during the storm. He cleans it furiously on the edge of his shirt, but it only smears around dirt and oil and makes him more angry. He directs it at her. “Behave.”

“Does she not usually?” Tino asks in fluent Spanish, with a backward glance in the rear view mirror. The twins look to each other then, with rounded wide eyes. Yasiel crawls backward in a panic, trying to remember what they’d said before getting in the truck—but it’s a blur. The whole night is slowly becoming a blur. And Tino’s rough, hoarse laugh is oddly soothing. Makes his anxious hands stop clenching and unclenching, spreading the red dots of blood.

“Are you married?” Mouse moves smoothly into a new topic, her dark eyes lidded as she stares at him. The truck sways across the dirt road, bumping up here and there. Tino flexes his hand around the steering wheel, glancing at it, as if to confirm himself. “Married men don’t always wear rings.”

“That’s awfully dishonest of ‘em,” he replies easily. Yasiel tucks himself forward again.

“Don’t engage with her. She gets worse, trust me.”

“Asshole.”

“Bitch.”

“Hey now,” Tino interrupts the two of them with a chastising tongue tut. The heel of his palm turns the steering wheel easily, in a fluid and attractive motion as he pulls in under a large sweeping wooden arch. The camp, Yasiel presumes, is just ahead of them.

“Y’all will have to use the communal showers while I get beds arranged for ya.” He parks the truck and it has to jerk itself to a stop, like turning off is a chore. “Can I trust y’all to sit here and be good while I go get you clothes and a towel?”

Mouse and Yasiel share a glance between each other. His bloodied hands, from the grave digging shovel, feel almost numb. Mouse has dirt on the side of her jaw, when she’d brushed sweat and hair back from her skin, soil from the grave. They look back to Tino and smile at the same time.

“Sure,” Yasiel says.

“No,” Mouse replies at the exact same time.

Tino pauses for a long moment, assessing between the two. He leans across the car, making Mouse slowly back herself against the car door. Then he takes the hat on the dashboard and tucks it on his head. It suits him, a baseball cap with COLD HOLLOW stamped on it. Yasiel tries smiling wider to be convincing.

“Y’all are gonna get along with our counselors,” he says and then steps out the truck.

[unknownjpegs]

crime and punishment

Yasiel hates Johann.

It’s not an exaggeration. He’s easy to hate. Affluent, smug, attractive. He walks the long hallways of Johann’s manor and feels that hate twist inside him, like an ugly tree root nestling in. They meet because Johann goes to the same snide cafe as him—Yasiel doesn’t realize until later that Johann only went because he owned the cafe. Or at least his name did; the assets were wrapped up in something somewhere, a nasty accountant typing up tax write offs somewhere for the rich fuck.

He buys Yasiel a coffee one day. It’s not kindness, but rather, look how little this costs to me. A tossed credit card that is sleek and black on the counter to a barista that can only stare at it with dull, flat eyes. Johann leans against the counter, back to her and front to Yasiel. He smiles, this curling, confident thing. Disgusting. Gross.

Filthy.

That’s sort of what it feels like, being with Johann. Nasty. Yasiel likes to pretend he isn’t into it. That he just hates Johann—and he does. Yasiel doesn’t even pretend not to and he thinks Johann is just as into that as Yasiel is into feeling like he’s doing something wrong.

—

“Stop being a dick—hah.” Yasiel’s hands slide across Johann’s sweat slicked chest, fingernails digging harshly into skin that is unsettlingly pale. He huffs out a shivery breath, one of those fists curling around the other man’s bicep for purchase to give himself leverage—thrust his hips forward and back, grind for pleasure. “I’m trying to get off.”

“I can see that.” Johann’s voice is equally breathy, rough and hoarse but also mean. Smarmy fuck. Yasiel’s two toned eyes flick up to catch that shit eating bastard grin he always has.

“Fuck off.”

“You first?”

Yasiel’s hand slides from Johann’s bicep to his throat, wrapping harder, squeezing. It makes Johann’s hips jump up, enough to make Yasiel fall forward. The weight of himself, bearing down on that hand causes Johann to make a deliciously submissive, whimpering sound. It feels like a suiting punishment considering Johann’s locked hands on Yasiel’s hips were just keeping him from all the length he wanted. Teasing and mean, the way Johann is until—

He squeezes again, watches pale eyes swim up. Yasiel’s thumb brushes, almost affectionately, against the adams apple between his palms. He watches, in savage satisfaction as Johann’s mouth slackens, his eyes squeeze shut, his breath catches. At this angle, he’s handsome. Carved features looking submissive and pretty. Yasiel uses the lapse in his focus to grind himself back, sink further. Deeper. The feeling of Johann, throbbing hard inside him makes his own eyes flutter.

This push and pull is something Johann always seems to demand anytime they come together like this. Like he wont fuck someone if they’re not actively trying to make it into a fight; and Johann likes losing the fight, but it has to be lost well. Yasiel isn’t usually into that. And yet—with Johann, playing some mind game to get what he wants (fucked, filled, stretched, an orgasm that makes his ears ring and his thoughts blur) is fun.

He wishes it wasn’t but…no denying.

Johann’s hands palm across his thighs, up over his sides. They draw down, squeeze appreciatively at his hips again, jerking him forward. Yasiel doesn’t like knowing Johann is stronger than him, but in that moment, it’s good. To be handled a little bit, to be forced forward and back in a familiar fucking motion. Yasiel’s sweaty hair dangles around his face. He moans, head dropping forward until it’s touching Johann’s chest. His hands give another harsh squeeze and Johann responds in desperate kind.

Yasiel’s mouth moves to Johann’s—and they don’t kiss. Not…really. Their lips are close, Yasiel’s brown and hazel eyes staring into Johann’s dark, black abyss of a gaze. They don’t kiss. Their tongues touch, move together, spit slick. They don’t kiss, but Yasiel leans down and closes his eyes and lets Johann’s mouth touch his—it’s not a kiss. He listens to Johann’s desperate sound as his hands give one more, final, cruel tightening grip.

“Touch me,” Yasiel says in a nasty, angry tone, teeth snapping down on Johann’s lip. Make me cum, that’s the part that matters. Just make me cum.

The bite makes Johann’s body jump—the nip of pain always gets him. Yasiel’s learned that early on, the first time, when the absence of it seemed to make Johann petulant. I like it when it hurts. There’s more than a few bites across his pale body, all in the shape of Yasiel’s teeth.

Johann’s hand closes around Yasiel’s cock, giving it a soft and then encouraging tug. Faster and then faster as Yasiel’s hips move in that tandem rhythm. His body bows, arched over Johann as he keeps hold on his throat for leverage. He feels Johann thrusting up, hard, rough bucks of his hips that aren’t graceful, but get the job done. Make Yasiel feel fucking good. Electric tingles over his body with every hammering thrust.

Both of them get loud at that, not words, but obscene moaning until either of them hit that point. An edge that they work each other over; Johann’s fist pumping as release pours over it, drips onto his stomach. And Yasiel’s strong, painters hands holding his throat roughly.

Yasiel slumps, hands braced on the mattress. He trembles with the soft aftershocks, calves tightening. He pants hard, strings of his dark black hair sticking to his face. He looks down at Johann, who smiles at him in that way he smiles. You like me, Yasiel, look at you, getting off on my cock, you’re so into me it’s making you stupid, so stupid. Yasiel seals a hand over Johann’s mouth to cut off that curling grin. He shakes him a bit, watches those dark, soulless eyes flicker with annoyance.

“Did,” Yasiel breathes the word out, shivering at the feel of Johann’s hand moving a slow, almost gentle path over his hip. Cupping his ass, squeezing appreciatively. “Did y-your butler put those towels in your fucking towel warmer?” Rich fuck had an electronic for everything.

“Are you thinking of my butler after I made you cum?”

Yasiel slides off him, to the side, lays on the bed, still breathing hard with a hand across his forehead.

“I’m thinking of showering you off me,” he mumbles. His eyes are closed, so he can’t move away in time to avoid Johann’s sweetly manipulative kiss to his cheek.

—

“This is one of my favorites,” Yasiel mentions, casually pulling the book off the shelf. He’s in those silk pajama bottoms that Johann has in every various shade of red you can buy it in. Costs the same as his rent for just one pair, and Johann has enough he could wear a fresh pair every day for a month and not need to do laundry once. Not that Johann does laundry. There’s maids for that.

“Dostoevsky?” Johann is holding two different ties in a mirror, pretending to decide which one he’ll pick. Yasiel looks over his shoulder and already knows he’s going to go with the black one. He still feels a sickening surge of satisfaction when Johann begins to slide it around his collar.

“Yeah. Didn’t know you were a fan.”

Johann snorts and rolls his eyes. He crosses from his walk in closet (that is the size of Yasiel’s embarrassingly small kitchenette) to his ceiling to floor bookshelf. It’s lined, packed full save for the random decoration that pulls the room together. Modern, chic, intelligent. Artfully planned.

“I asked Nomi to get books for me. Haven’t read any of them. Need to borrow one for school?” He suspects that Johann realizes he’s put too much venom in the statement, prodded at Yasiel a little too much—because he instantly goes a little softer. Rounds his shoulders. His body language feels textbook sometimes. Like he learned how to human from a webinar. Johann steps closer, hands taking Yasiel by the waist and tugging him closer.

“Can I hang out here?” Yasiel asks, instead of rising to the soft bait. He hoods his eyes, pretends to look bored, slides the book back in place with what little room not occupied by Johann’s body he has. He folds his arms across his chest and pretends he’s not looking also at that little, little bruise his thumbs put into Johann’s throat.

“Whatever,” is how Johann replies, with a dismissive flap of his hand. “Order food from the kitchen or something. You’re so skinny.”

—

He doesn’t, because it feels insane to order food inside a house. Well. It’s a mansion, really. Not a house. So many hallways, that he’d once gotten lost before and had to desperately look for one of the many employees Johann had to get himself back to the bedroom. He’d been so embarrassed to ask and they’d not even cared. It made Yasiel wonder how many people got lost in this mansion, looking for a way back to Johann’s bedroom.

But he does read. He lays in the bed, on his stomach, chin in his palm. He’s read the book before. He has an annotated copy back in his own apartment. Not for school. He and Mouse had read it in tandem, chapters together, put notes. Mouse had hated the book. She’d torn it to shreds in the margins, in her scratchy scrawl.

Yasiel didn’t care for it either, but when he reads it, he imagines the pinch of her brow in annoyance and feels comforted.

Mouse would hate Johann too. Actually hate him, the way Yasiel doesn’t really.

“D’you mind?”

Yasiel jumps, snapping the book shut and sitting up on the bed. His breath catches in his chest painfully at the surprise of seeing a man in Johann’s room. But…it’s just The Butler.

They stare at each other then. Yasiel finds himself suddenly exposed, shirtless and clearly in this bedroom for a reason. Tino seems equally embarrassed, his cheeks ruddy underneath his facial hair. He’s looking at the walk in closet, hands neatly folded behind his back. It pushes his barrel chest out, promotes how broad he is. Yasiel’s throat tightens, his tongue fat and mouth dry.

“What?” he manages, laughing awkwardly to cover for himself. He sinks slightly, gets comfortable amongst the messy sheets.

“Need t’get Johann’s laundry. Nomi’s under the weather, not lettin’ her get out of bed—” Tino seems to cut himself off when he realizes that he’s maybe oversharing with Johann’s latest fuck buddy. He gestures to the closet with a black gloved hand. Yasiel stares at that hand for a little longer than necessary. He plucks at the string on the pajama bottoms absently.

“Not like I own the bedroom,” Yasiel teases. “More your place than mine.”

Tino moves swiftly into the closet then. It makes Yasiel’s smile drop off. He waits for a moment. His hand lingers on the book he’d shut. Then in a swift motion, he slides off the bed. His body is undeniably sore—it wasn’t like Johann didn’t give it just as good in bed sometimes. His shoulders burned from the position earlier, where his arms had been locked behind his back. His thighs were tired, trembly, unsteady knees and feet as he wanders to the closet.

He watches as Tino begins sweeping clothes into a sleek black hamper.

“How long have you worked for Johann?” He leans against the door frame. His arms tuck around his middle, shyly. Tino doesn’t look at him. Not directly anyway. There’s an undeniable glance in his peripheral that Yasiel locks onto.

“I don’t wanna bore you, kid,” Tino replies, a bit of a gruff laugh in his voice.

“Do I look bored?” He really looks up then. Tino’s eyes seem to start lower and then walk their way up to Yasiel’s face.

“Tired.”

“Johann wore me out, I guess.” He swears he doesn’t mean it that suggestively, and yet he’s shocked at his own dark tone. He clears his throat and brushes his long, dark hair out his face. “Jesus, sorry. Sometimes, I forget how to be normal after being around him so long.” Tino shrugs a shoulder, non committal. Looks back to the laundry.

Yasiel steps forward.

“You’re rolling your sleeves up wrong,” he comments.

“Pardon?”

His southern accent feels alluring and Yasiel can’t help but keep trying to pluck words out from him. They’re the same height, he realizes, but Tino must have fifty pounds on him. Maybe more. He’s broad. Muscular. That’s what Yasiel is focusing on, the muscles of his forearm. His hand lifts, cups underneath Tino’s elbow. He laughs, feeling winded and silly.

“You’re rolling these wrong. Can I fix it?”

Tino black gloved hand flexes. The tendon in his wrist stands out. Yasiel tilts the arm in his hands and begins working at the white sleeve that’s haphazardly rolled up.

“If you do it like this,” he pauses to glance up at Tino’s dark brown eyes. They’re lovely. Softer than he’d expect, with crows feet stamped at the corners, where he might smile. Nomi, he thinks. That’s who makes him smile. Can’t possibly be Johann. Yasiel’s hand smooths the sleeve down and then starts to roll.

“It’ll look neater,” Yasiel explains as the sleeve folds into a perfect smooth cuff. He angles himself around to get closer to Tino’s other arm. He’s still holding one of Johann’s stupid silk shirts. Yasiel takes it, tosses it into the hamper and then his hands return to Tino’s arm. “You don’t mind me doing this?”

“No.”

Yasiel looks up.

“That’s crazy.”

“What? That I don’t mind you fixin’ my clothes for me?” Tino’s laugh is full chested. Rich. Yasiel slowly closes a hand around Tino’s forearm.

“No. I mean, crazy I can’t even fit my hand around your arm. You’re kind of a thick guy, huh?”

The dark red color is back in his cheeks, eyes turning to flint as they look down. Yasiel has slender hands—he’s only somewhat embarrassed that the evidence of painting clings to his fingernails.

“You’re still here?”

Yasiel jumps backward, away from Tino. The butler turns to his work quickly, stuffing shirts into the hamper. His cuffs are neatly pressed now, folded properly. A heartbeat breaks out across Yasiel’s entire body at the feeling of being caught doing something wrong. He glares at Johann, in the entrance to his closet. He’s sneering, knowing and…pleased.

“Want to stay for dinner?” Johann asks, a possessive paw around Yasiel’s hip, pulling him close.

“No,” he answers, pushing at Johann’s face, to stave off the inevitable devouring kiss thats all for performance and likely for voyeurism. He slips out the other mans grasp, walking into the bedroom to begin looking for his clothes. He feels oily and slick and hot and wanting and annoyed and like he’d really enjoy having dinner on someone elses dime because he’s usually eating ramen and pieces of bread with how little his stipend is.

“Want the book?”

Yasiel pauses, his hand around the strap of his messenger bag. He looks up at Johann, who holds Crime and Punishment out stretched. He looks carefully neutral, face smoothed over into an easy mask of nothing. If it’s a mask at all or if that’s just Johann. Nothing. Yasiel looks over his shoulder to the butler in the closet then reaches for the book. Johann steps closer as he does. His hand lifts to tuck a strand of Yasiel’s hair behind his ear.

“See you soon, Yas,” Johann says confidently.

[unknownjpegs]

leash and collar

On his knees, Johann feels so much smaller. Beneath her. Weakly pliant. So much so that Nomi feels if she tugs the leash any harder, she could upend him entirely. Sprawl him across the floor face first and then she’d put the heel of her boot to the back of his head—rather than where she’s situated it, across the tenting in his nice black slacks. She presses her heel down harder, eliciting such a pretty sounding whine that it reminds her of bells.

Johann pants with his shoulders hunched, face tilted so she can see one of his dark hazel eyes. Him, looking at her, like that—like that—makes all the hairs on her arms rise up, stand to attention. It makes something painful and blistering well up in her, between the points of her hips. Nomi pulls the leash so he’s forced to tilt his face, look at her with both of those disgusting, horrible dark eyes.

“Johann,” she breathes, voice raspy. Throat hoarse. She has to swallow, her tongue suddenly feeling too big for her mouth, watching the way his dips from between his lips and runs over his teeth. He’s smiling at her, in that way he smiles. That ‘you’re looking at me, Nomi, and I know you’re looking at me’ way. The supple feel of the leather leash in her hands becomes more tactile as she yanks. He bows forward, because his chest is pulled, while her boot stays firm. Keeps his lower half right there.

He moans, obscenely filthy as he rubs himself forward. They’re heavy heeled, thick soled. Run all the way to her thighs—it’s then that she realizes the boots are all she wears. His button up is going see through with his sweat. Indicates they’ve been doing this for far longer than it feels. She can’t put a start to it; or figure out where it began. Him on his knees, her standing in front of him, holding the leash connecting to the thick black collar around his throat.

Nomi isn’t sure when Johann blurred the lines. Or if she did. Her stomach roils at the thought, but the undeniable desire mingles and makes it torturous.

Say it, she thinks. My name. Say it. The way I want to hear you say it; say it while I make you hurt the way you like hurting. Say it so I can hear it, so you can finally make me yours and I can own you too. Say it and we’ll both feel good.

“Harder,” he says instead, his voice dark and rough and laced with pleasure. His hips undulate, his hands resting on her calves, brushing up. If he goes higher, he’ll touch skin—she’ll finally know what that’s like. His warm palms, on her. She curls a lip, thinks to yank the leash so hard she really hurts him.

Only then, warm hands cup her hips from behind. They move across her abdomen. Callused and broad. So much so that when he splays hands across her sternum, it’s almost the entire length. Tino’s hand—because she know’s it’s him, would know him anywhere, by the smell of his cologne—continues up until it rests on her collarbone. The other firmly tucks between her thighs and makes Nomi’s black painted lips part in a gasp.

“That’s our Johann, huh, Nomi?” On his knees, Johann smiles, tilts his chin back, looks up at them. His pupils are so blown, so wide, that they erase all that pretty hazel color. “Always fucking askin’ for somethin’, right, darling?” Nomi shivers at the feel of his breath on the crux of her shoulder and neck. There is the barest sensation of his facial hair, enough to make her own hips writhe forward against the press of his hand.

“Always,” Nomi whispers, feeling light headed, out of body, as she leans her head backward. It touches Tino’s shoulder as his mouth finds the side of her neck. He kisses at her pulse in a way that is almost better than his fingers slowly moving against her.

“We’ll give him harder, if that’s what the boss wants.” And Tino’s hand moves from her collarbone, over her bicep. Down her forearm. Joins her hand where she holds the leash. Nomi feels a certain hardness pressed against her lower back. She grinds her heel down on Johann in direct response to that feeling and he nearly howls. He throws his head back, his hands smoothing further upward, cupping her thighs. One more inch, he’d touch her for real.

She inhales a shaky breath, watching the bob of Johann’s throat against the dark leather collar. Tino’s fingers lace with hers on the leash. Her hips gyrate forward on his hand—and his impossible, welcome strength jerks her back against him. Fingers there as well. Nomi watches as Tino wraps the leather once, then twice around their joined hand—and he fucking yanks.

—

The dream sits with her the entire morning. She brushes through her dark navy hair in a daze, staring at her reflection in the vanity. Nomi dots blush on her cheeks to make herself look more alive, but the dark marks underneath each dull brown iris make her look like an insomniac. She feels like one, because when she’d woken from the dream, Nomi had refused to fall back asleep.

She’d sat at her computer desk, knees to her chin, watching a livestream of an aquarium until the alarm on her phone had gone off for her to wake up anyway.

Even after she’s dressed (simplistic, for that day, in just a black dress, barefoot even) and heading to the kitchen, Nomi cannot erase the dream. It stays dizzyingly disjointed in her head, bouncing around the vision of Johann’s face, his hands, touching her and Tino, his warm breath on her skin. She worries her hands together, fidgeting fingers to try and distract herself.

Runs straight into the head butler anyway.

“Jesus,” she swears, a hand flattened to her chest. He holds her by a cupped palm at the elbow, to make sure she doesn’t stumble backward. Tino is not the tallest man she’s ever had the misfortune of knowing—but he is the broadest. Barrel chested, with a thick torso and arms. So running into him feels too akin to hitting a brick wall. Only that morning, she’s thinking of how he’d felt curved around her back, in that horrific dream. He’d felt much…bigger in that.

“Just me, m’fraid,” Tino drawls in his thick southern accent, with a pleasant laugh. He leans against the lavish kitchen counter, an apple half bitten into. He chews, flexing the muscle in his jaws. Nomi had never really noticed it before, because he had facial hair. But it was nicely cut. And eating make the tendons in his neck stand out as well.

“You need a new shirt,” Nomi snips, dancing around him to jerk open the fridge and find something to distract herself.

“What’s wrong with my shirt?”

“Too tight.”

“Issit?”

Nomi pulls away from the fridge, empty handed. She folds arms over her chest, staring at the way Tino pulls at the button up sleeves he’d shoved to his elbows. The thin white fabric strains at his bicep, across his chest. And he has the nerve to keep a button undone at the top, exposing the pretty hollow of his throat. Nomi takes the apple from him, biting into it.

It makes him laugh, that handsome dark chuckle. She licks the juice from the corner of her lip.

“New shirt. Ordering it today. On Johann’s dime.”

“Whose dime?”

Nomi shrieks and throws the apple across the kitchen. It lands into the sink with a hard and solid sound, clatters against a dish that must have been left there overnight. Johann, uncaring, strolls into the kitchen. He wears those ridiculous silk soft pants and they immediately make her angry, because the strings are uneven—and he knows how much she hates looking at them when they’re uneven. Which makes her instantly gravitate toward him.

“Tino’s shirts are ill fitting and I’ll be buying him new ones today,” Nomi clips out, in her posh accent, because she knows he finds it a novelty. He does seem to smile at her, that ugly little grin he does when he’s sleepy. Nomi immediately yanks at the strings on his soft pants to get them the same length but he bats at her hand and yawns.

“Look fine, Tino,” Johann barely compliments. Tino salutes, but makes an easy escape out the side door. He can’t know about her dream—he can’t read it on her face, or smell it on her or sense that she’d dreamed Tino bending her over and fucking her right over top Johann—but Nomi feels like he does. She tries to avoid his gaze, which only seems to make him worry a bit. Tino’s hand grazes over her arm, just barely, this little knowing touch she’s always allowed from him. It feels unusually warm.

Nomi watches Johann as he strolls the kitchen. She can see the muscles of his back moving, underneath the thin stretch of fabric. The knot inside her stomach feels denser. She tucks her arms around her ribs, stares at him from under her lashes as her chin tucks to her chest. Johann turns to smile at her.

I imagined you cumming as I hurt you, she thinks, blinking rapidly behind her glasses. And you said my name when you did.

“Where are my eggs?” He tosses a hand toward the kitchen island, sighing. Johann pouts then, makes himself look sweet and innocent and cute. You loved it, you loved me above you for once. “Nomi, you know I can’t start my day without breakfast.”

She grits her teeth together.

“And eggs are your favorite breakfast,” she snaps. “I know.”

[unknownjpegs]

cool

Ben’s losing the fight.

Not shocking. Of the trio, he’d never been the best fighter. Could take a civilian in a bar easy, or maybe even two if he tried hard enough and didn’t break a bottle to use as a shiv, end the whole thing early. Xavier wins fights. Lark finishes fights. Benny has guns to solve these kinds of issues—at least he usually does. And when a gun doesn’t, a clean cut and run to come back with a gun usually will. Sometimes, something worse than a bullet, like catching a man off guard around a corner with a garrote and nearly sawing through the—doesn’t matter. Benny’s not the best at fighting other fucking assassins.

So he’s losing—split lip, black eye, bruised rib. The courtyard is lit up by floodlights that keep obscuring his view of the other party guest. It had rained earlier that day so he’s slipping on the grass, scrambling with a broken finger that he ducks behind a statue to savagely correct. Eyes rolling up in his head for a minute, he thinks fondly of opening Johann Zahner’s skull with a grenade shoved between the teeth. His own snap together with the pain of that broken ring finger.

“Got you.”

Benny doesn’t have much time to react as he’s hauled out from behind it. The other party guest wears a mask of a rhino—which seems…gaudy. Maybe a little egotistical. Benny is contemplating that—the theme of the rhino—as he’s thrown back onto the ground. His hand connects with the moist earth and shoots an electric buzz through his bones from the broken ring finger. Rhino’s are going extinct, aren’t they? Or, some breed is. Bit of a bad omen.

His own mask, the leather rabbit, is ripped off his head exactly as he slams his booted heel into the giant mans stomach. He grunts and stumbles backward but then darts forward with renewed vigor. It’s also an ugly mask; which, Benny isn’t vain, or he tries not to be, but he’d really liked the rabbit mask. He gets a hand up to punch the man in the face, but he dodges it, wrenches an arm over Ben’s collarbone.

“Kind of shit at fighting, ain’t ya?” He has a thick Australian accent, this Rhino. Benny gathers saliva and blood and then spits it onto the gray leather mask—the horn is a little small, also. For a rhino.

“Yeah—me? Yeah.” Benny is heaving in air. One hand lifts, points to the side. “Not him, though.”

“What?” The rhino glances to the side at the exact moment Xavier swings the golf putter. It makes a disgusting cracking sound as it connects with his jaw—sends the man sprawling off him. Benny shoves himself away, still seated in the wet grass. His shoulders heave as he breathes. A quick glance up, the light floods illuminate around Xavier so he’s in complete darkness, except for the silhouette of white around his frame. Still, Ben is briefly terrified.

Because Xavier looks like that. Like he looks when—well, when he’s about to kill someone.

The man on the ground groans, hands to his face, rolling onto his side. Blood weeps up under the gray leather. Bad omen. Surely, a bad fucking omen. Xavier swings the putter again and it connects to the mans shoulder—he gargles, like he might be attempting a scream but the putter had broken his jaw. Instead he flops onto his stomach, starts a pathetic attempt to crawl away.

Xavier steps over Benny with his long legged stride. He approaches the other assassin on the ground. No longer under the floodlights, Benny can see a bit of him. He has his own mask on, that terrifying black dog mask. He’s not even breathing hard—eerily cool, collected. Xavier’s head tilts slightly before he leans down.

Benny had found Xavier when he was in his early twenties. AWOL’d from the military, fifteen pounds too light for his tall frame, hungry in the eyes and not just for food. And he’d been under his wing for some time now, but something about Xavier flourished when it came to violence in a way it never did for Ben—not even for Lark. Sometimes, Benny thinks, he should have kicked Xavier to a shelter, tried to reroute him somewhere safer. Not for him; for the whole world.

Xavier loose in it sometimes terrified him.

Because he leans down slow and takes the man by the wrists. Flat as he is on his stomach, Xavier suddenly wrenches so his spine is bent. He’s making more pathetic wet noises, but Xavier merely puts the heel of his combat boot to the back of the Rhino’s head. Then he pulls his knee back—Ben looks away for the kick forward, but he hears the definite sound of spine snapping. His stare stays on his slightly crooked ring finger instead. His heart beat throbs in the injury.

Now that Xavier isn’t being stealthy, his boot steps aren’t hidden. They’re loud instead, this ominous, heavy sound that reverberates the courtyard. He comes to stand beside Benny and then swiftly falls into a crouch. His hand cups up underneath Ben’s chin. With his other hand, he pokes fingers under his own dog mask and slowly yanks it off.

“Damn,” he says, smiling that classic, pretty boy smile that disarms people so fast. “That eye looks rough.”

“F-Fuck you. Get to me sooner next ti-time.” Xavier’s hand moves up and into Benny’s hair. He ruffles it a little, affectionate. None of the violence in him any longer, his long body unfolding so he stands and looks around.

“We should find Lark.”

—

Nomi’s scream claws its way out of her throat as she shoves herself away from the computer console. The chair swivels as she stands, stumbling with her hands slapping over her mouth to cut the sound off further. And to stop her stomach from emptying completely. Even with her eyes screwed shut, she sees it. She watches, behind her lids, as the man hikes up a leg and then kicks his foot forward. The absolute inhuman snap of the head on a human neck and then the swing of it—the fucking swing of it like something off a hinge.

“Whoa,” Johann whispers. “Cool.”

His voice startles her into action. She scrambles around his own chair to the row of walkie talkie’s, slapping at them wildly until she finds the one with a green sticker.

“Tino,” she hisses into it, pressing a button with a perfectly manicured black nail. Her other hand grips into the back of Johann’s chair. Somehow, she feels oddly grounded by that. His chair, her hand. Him there. Petulantly, stupidly alive and there, in the chair that she can physically hold. Ensure he is still there. She closes her eyes again—but the brutal scene replays and she makes a whimper of a sound. “Ti—”

“Noms?” And that—just him—soothes her even more. An instant relief of pressure off her chest (she thinks, of that boot, on her sternum, pressing so hard it cracks her in half) at hearing his voice. She presses the walkie talkie to her forehead, settling her breathing, and her rolling stomach. “Ya’right? Sound scared. Do I need to send—”

“The red head,” Nomi snaps into the walkie talkie, cutting Tino off. Her voice has a high twisted pitch to it. “The trio we brought in—the red head—”

“Ah, Wolffe.” Tino’s voice is small and crackling and her heart screams at him to just be here. In this room, with her, even for a moment, because Tino knows what to do. Tino wouldn’t let anything—

“Who cares what his name is?” She shrieks.

“Nomi,” Johann pesters her, turning in his chair. He slaps at her hand. The feeling of his skin makes her own burn, but she doesn’t necessarily pull away. “How do I rewind?” His other hand is hovering over the keyboard and Nomi nearly screams; she darts forward, shoving his hand away from it. He wedges a knee up, so that she has to bend over him, her ribcage protesting as it lands almost directly underneath the fragile bird like bones. “Stop—I wanna see it again.”

“Why would you want to?” You fucking idiot, she wants to scream. Don’t you get it? You’ve gone too far, you have gone too fucking far.

“It was cool.”

“Noms?”

“Tino, find that fucking red head—and kill him.” Nomi seethes it into the walkie talkie, holding it with both hands now. She’s half perched over Johann, the security monitors blinking in front of her. She watches that man—that monster—crouch in front of the rabbit that keeps disarming her traps. He’s fuzzy, blown out with details, but when he removes the mask, she feels like she was see the sadism. He’s going to kill Johann. He’s going to find this room and kill him. He’s going to—

Would that be bad?

“Can you clip it? I want it on my phone.” Johann fiddles with the mouse, trying to figure out how to open software on computers that are hardwired designed for security. She looks at him, the handsome arch of his brows, the graceful, inviting curve of his lips and jawline. Nomi has never hated anyone the way she hates Johann. Disgusting, affluent, little fucking freak. Her heart pounds, imagining the red heads boot off her sternum. On Johann’s temple, pressing down. Squeezing. Eyes popping.

Her hand twitches as it tucks a stray strand of Johann’s dark hair back. He glances up, one brow perked.

“Can you stop freaking the fuck out over this?” He reaches up and snatches the walkie talkie from her hand. Nomi squeaks, diving for it, but he’s already swiveled the chair around. She bangs against the console and nearly howls at the resulting pain shooting up her hip. Nomi dances around the chair, her worried hands up.

“Tino, scratch that.” Johann drums fingers on the security desk, sighing, rolling his eyes in an exaggerated motion. “Nomi is doing that thing she does. Worrying,” he says the word like it’s swear, eyes widening at her condescendingly. Her hands curl to fists at her side, her throat bobbing painfully, mouth dry.

There’s a pause, where Tino must be assessing who to listen to. His boss, or the person desperately trying to keep their boss alive.

“M’sendin’ back up your way. But—I’ll keep an eye on the dog.”

Nomi’s ribs decompress, her hand flattened to her sternum. Her heart beats some terrible, painful music, so hard she can feel it on her palm. Johann tosses the walkie talkie and she just barely catches it. For a moment, a brief, but beautiful moment, she imagines throwing it back and watching it smash into his face. Then she collects herself and tucks it into the pocket of her oversized jacket.

“Aw, Nomi,” Johann sighs and tucks his chin over the back of the chair. He flutters eyelashes boyishly. “Are you mad at me?”

“Yes,” she says flatly and zips the jacket. “Stay here. Do not touch anything.” Nomi watches him dramatically lean forward with a finger raised over the enter button. “I’ve rigged sleeping gas in this room, Johann.”

“No you haven’t,” he sings confidently as he spins the chair back around to watch his show. “Where are you going?”

“To get your fiancée.”

“Susan.” Johann snaps his fingers. He’s thrown his feet up onto the console, spine bowed as he slumps to enjoy the security cameras. Just as Nomi had intended—Johann distracted, as his entire plan goes up in flames and she and Tino get the fire extinguishers.

“Sunshine,” Nomi growls as she stomps her way to the door. Johann’s laugh follows her out as she slams it shut behind her. It blends, seamlessly into the wall. Not even a crease. For a moment, she stands there in front of it, her hand flush to the macabre and hideous wallpaper.

“Cherie,” a voice from behind says in a whisper. Nomi nearly claws her way up the wall, spinning around with a soft noise of surprise.

Guts stands, toweringly tall and beautiful, her hands tucked neatly behind her back. She always angles herself in a way that elongates all that height, keeps her surely above everyone below her. Nomi doesn’t mind—she’d always felt too tall anyway. So she likes being under Guts. She’d tuck herself right below Guts’ fucking chin if she could and stay there, like a lamprey to a shark. Safe and cozy and warm. Instead she deflates and throws hands up into the air.

“Thank fucking God for you, Guts.”

“Perhaps not him,” she replies, her cut of a smile deviously beautiful and dangerous looking. She unfolds an arm from behind her back to pull her sunglasses off. Guts steps forward with one long leg and then tucks them onto Nomi’s face for her. The world descends into navy that instantly soothes the headache forming behind her tired eyes. Nomi relaxes further. She begins to turn, a glance down the hallway.

“Lets go find the damsel.”

“Oui.”

—

Instead of finding Lark, they find another wounded bird.

Kacie Stewart is bleeding and also, pouring sweat. His half dyed hair sticks to his forehead and cheeks, in little wet curls. Whatever shade he is usually is pale and draining color fast. Red’s all over him instead, soaking into the white button up he’d yanked at to free the buttons at his throat. He breathes in and out labored, pretty face pinched in tightly. He sits on the ground in the mansions allway, staring up at the two contract killer with a face grimly set and determined. Like he could take either of them with an arrow through his bicep the way it is. Nasty business, that.

“We shouldn’t waste time.”

“Could b-be useful. Make friends, not all enemies.”

“You a friend?” Xavier puts his boot on Kacie’s knee and slowly presses in until his leg is flattened. Not enough strength to hurt him—just enough so Kacie knows he could. The younger man pants out in painful huffs, his eyes briefly closing before he gestures to the arrow in his arm.

“If you—get this—out of me—I’ll be your friend for fucking life.”

“I love a good li-life debt.” So they both go to their knees. Either of them angle to watch the other end of the hallway; cover each others backs. They’re good that way. Better when Lark is around, but they’re not an awful duo. Have kept each other alive through worse—or, well. It doesn’t get worse than a human Hunting Party, but theres a few times Benny can recall where he was very glad Xavier is as scary as he is.

The red head pulls the knife from his pocket—wicked hunting thing that glints when he unsheathes it.

“I’m Benny,” he says, attempting to distract Kacie from the sharp edge.

“Kacie,” he whispers back, his words wet and pathetic.

“We know,” Xavier replies, taking Kacie’s arm in one hand. He angles it a little and that makes the boy whimper, head tossing back to hit the wall. His leg gives a kick so Benny flattens a hand on his thigh to stop him from making any more unnecessary noise. Draw something scarier than Xavier—if it exists.

“Look at me,” Benny offers, pointing to his eyes. “It’s g-go-gonna fucking hurt.”

But when Xavier starts sawing at the arrow, Kacie’s eyes pop open and then swim, back and forth between the two of them. His mouth opens like he’s going to scream, so Benny quickly leans forward and wedges his palm between his teeth. The party goer clamps down hard and his resulting moan vibrates his whole body. He almost thrashes, but Ben’s hand squeezes down around his thigh hard enough to call attention to pain there, so Kacie squeaks again instead.

Tears roll down his cheeks, his teeth indenting harder. Benny contemplates the pain of that, because it is interesting. It’s fun, during sex, to be bitten. Most people don’t like it outside the bedroom—and it’s not as though Benny’s enjoying it at the moment. The feeling of Kacie’s warm tongue swiping over his skin over and over isn’t entirely unpleasant. But in a way, it’s amusing. He can’t remember the last time he needed someone to help him through something painful.

Well, there was the time Lark had to remove a bullet from his thigh. Come to think of it, he’d nearly chewed through a leather belt during that.

“Good boy, Kacie,” Xavier mutters soothingly, a little bit of amusement in his voice as he starts to pull the arrow free from muscle. “Doing really good.”

“Don’t give him a st-siffy over it, Xavier,” Ben jokes, lips curling into a snide grin. Kacie’s eyes swirl over to meet his. Benny winks, so Kacie quickly shuts them again. Groans once more. Benny shakes his hand, which also shakes Kacie’s head somewhat until he finally relents with his teeth. Ben cleans his hand of drool on his shirt.

He pulls his flask from his inner coat pocket, passing it to Xavier, who pours a bit of whiskey onto the wound. Kacie’s whole body jumps with the sting, but he doesn’t make any more noise than another sniffling whimper. Xavier starts tugging at Kacie’s tie, unraveling it and pulling it free. Then he goes about using it to bandage the arm haphazardly. Ben also removes his suit jacket and uses the leverage of Kacie’s own shirt to tug him away from the wall. He drapes it around Kacie’s shoulders, smiling wide.

“You’re gonna f-fe-feel cold. Shock, probably. And blood loss.”

“I know,” Kacie whispers softly.

“You know about shock or blood loss?” Xavier questions, leaning in closer. He pulls one of Kacie’s eye lids open somewhat to look at his pupil. Kacie’s cheeks are flushing now, as he looks at Xavier. Good to know there’s enough blood loss to blush over a pretty stranger. Benny counts that as a good sign.

“I know about Johann,” he finishes the sentence with an exhausted sound. Xavier’s hand flattens to the wall next to Kacie’s head as he leans in, his eyes narrowing, sharpened. Dog on the fucking hunt. Benny settles himself down and leans against the wall, shoulder to shoulder with the wounded party.

“Kacie,” he says, smiling as he rolls his head to look at him. “You owe us, huh?”

“Tell us everything,” Xavier says, in a quiet, serious, razor thin voice.

[unknownjpegs]

switching shifts

The guard is falling asleep. Has to keep jerking upright as he stands at the door. It doesn’t usually distract Benny, who can rarely be pulled out of what he’s doing if he’s properly engaged, but he’s annoyed. Communications from above sea level have been going dark—not that he cares much about above sea level, not anyone he’s left on dry land whose waiting for him. But that puts shipment behind by a whole week, and Benny’s flask is running awfully dry. His cigarettes are starting to run low. Two a day only kind of deal. Benny is not a two a day only kind of smoker.

Swart flinches and then knocks his boots together to stand at attention, like he’s back in basic training and a drill sergeant is going to threaten to shove something up his ass. All about making them better soldiers, the ass shoving threats, Benny is sure. Something, something, the homoerotic nature of military and all.

“Need a stim, Swart?” Benny asks in a dry voice as he rifles through his notes. He works better with pen and paper, even though his laptop is sat open in front of him. The graph displays data he needs to puzzle through, put together by some analyst who works on the other side of the facility. He doesn’t trust analysts, so he’s puzzling it together himself.

“Boring fuckin’ detail, Doc.”

“You ha-have my deepest sympathies,” Benny replies, shuffling more of the paperwork. Then he snorts. Deep. Underwater. Get it? He almost says to the guard, because he’s admittedly used to someone else, who would enjoy a joke like that. Benny turns back to his work. His pen scratches across the paper in his messy, tiny script. He taps it a few times and then Swart has to snap himself up right again.

“Can usually switch my shift with Giarrizzo. But he’s on another detail tonight,” Swart yawns into a fist. His pen goes wide on an ‘s’, marks across the page. Benny glances over to the guard, chin tucked over his shoulder.

“Giarrizzo-Cohn.” He holds his hands up. Then slowly pushes them together. “It’s hyph-ph-phenated.” Swart always gets this look in his eyes when Benny starts stuttering. This ‘who made this fucking guy the scientist?’ look. It’s equal parts awkward as it is annoyed. Benny might be used to it, but still makes his skin itch. He puts his pen down, scratches a hand through his hair, looks at the puzzled together data instead of the soldier.

“Man, who cares? See—this is why no one wants to be in this lab with you, Doc. Hoity fucking toity.” Swart scuffs a boot, nose wrinkled in annoyance. Must be tough to be him, a soldier on guard for Benny, a guy with a stutter who makes three times more than his pay grade.

“Except Maran,” Benny points out.

“Maybe the fucking guy likes fish?” Swart gestures to the tank in front of him, with a snide and condescending curl to his lip. Benny swivels on his stool.

“Margot is an octopus,” he says. She clings to her coral rock bed, which Ben had painstakingly made himself to ensure she felt properly at home. The water filter bubbles a bit, ambiance in his lab to go along with the whir of computers. Pen scratches, when he’s ignoring the computers.

“So?”

“Octopuses are cephalopods.”

“I hate this fucking job,” Swart mumbles under his breath, eyes upward to avoid looking at either the octopus or her owner.

—

Maran leans over the open topped tank, his hand lazily drifting through the water. He keeps the other propped up, a fist to rest his chin on while he looks at the octopus as she does her fast crawl across the rock bed. One of her arms occasionally swings up, wraps around his fingers, then drifts away. His face is lit up by the water, a little pattern across freckles and tan skin. The lighting in the lab is usually stark and white, but Benny has a headache so he’s turned it down. Dimmed everything except what was necessary for him to look at under the microscope he’s supposed to be paying attention to.

And of course, the little lights in Margot’s tank, so that he can see Maran’s face better.

“Roll your s-sleeve up a bit,” Benny comments. Maran startles, because it’s the first thing he’s said in an hour or so. He pulls his arm from the tank and blinks at Benny. “The chemicals fr-from your shirt might mess with the tank water.”

“Shit,” Maran starts shoving at the tight fabric of his black shirt. The material rolls up to his sleeve, exposing strong forearms that make Benny’s mouth dry. He watches the tendons in his wrist flex, the appearance of a vein in Maran’s hand. His eyes drift from that up, to where he’s pinched a tongue between his teeth as if concentrating. Maran’s own eyes flicker up and his face goes pink under Ben’s cold blue eyed stare.

“Didn’t hurt her, did I?”

Her and not it. Was one of the first things Benny had noticed about Maran. Maybe Swart wasn’t necessarily wrong. Maybe Maran liked animals; he even looked at the sea snails with admiration and sometimes did, admittedly, press too close to the tank of fish to watch them dart around in a makeshift school.

He never looked out the windows though. Into the dark beyond. Benny shuttered them when Maran was around.

“C’mere,” he says instead of answering the question. He stands from his stool and gestures to the microscope. Maran crosses the lab over to him. The sound of his booted foot steps is loud and Benny’s eyes flicker to them. They rise up from laces, to the way his dark tactical pants wrap tightly around his thighs. His belt and then up more until Benny is once again drawn to that pretty face.

Benny was never that shy about checking people out. Usually he did so with open gazed sleaze—he didn’t pretend. It worked in his favor, because the people he attracted usually liked that about him. But Maran’s face begged for attention and Benny’s roaming eyes could never stray far from those features. Strong nose, freckles, high cheek bones. Such a gorgeous mouth. Maran swings his arms out, bracing his hands against the lab table, smiling toothily.

“What is it today?”

“Sample fr-from the scorpion,” Benny says, patting the stool he was just occupying. Maran lowers himself slowly, scooting forward. He’d had no idea how to use a microscope before Benny had showed him, but now his hands sort of move there expertly. Benny stares at those hands for a long moment.

“Scorpion?”

“It’s wh-what we’re calling the creature. The one th-that almost made a snack out of Father Wolffe.”

“You said it was crustacean though.”

Benny’s heart makes a painful squeeze, a little palpitation. He rubs hard at his sternum, wondering if the nicotine withdrawal was going to start killing him. The headache was certainly still there, pulsing behind his ears, crawling up the back of his head. Benny looks at the stretch of Maran’s shirt over his shoulder blades, the taut line of it where it clings between the two.

He flattens his hand there and Maran jumps, so he slides his hand up to cradle the nape of his neck. Keep him looking at the scorpion sample. His skin is as soft as Benny had imagined it would be. His fingers curl just slightly, as though he can’t help it. Maran’s hand slaps onto the desk in reflex.

“Maran, do y-you switch shifts to work in my lab?”

“Uh,” Maran breathes out the word rather than just saying it. He turns slightly, so Benny increases the bit of pressure in his hand. Maran makes a sound then that is even breathier. Spots appear in front of Benny’s vision, little dots of white that he has to blink away. His muscles feel constricted and flexed, his body tensed. His breathing feels difficult. But the heat is the worst, this twitching hot curling sensation that sits in his lower stomach. “Maybe?”

“Why?”

His hand relaxes and Maran turns, twists himself on the stool. His hand on the lab table brushes over paperwork that scatters to the floor—and neither men pay attention to it. Benny is leaned over him, his hand moving from Maran’s neck to the front of his throat, to tuck fingers into the top of his shirt, to feel more skin. Maran’s eyes are glassy as they look up at him. They swerve upward, to the ceiling and Benny cannot look at the roll of his eyes like that. His gaze falls to Maran’s plush lips, as they part just a bit.

“Uh,” Maran repeats and then his lips curve into a smile that Benny absolutely cannot continue looking at. “I like you, Ben.”

Maran makes a noise when Benny crashes down to kiss him. Something that he will memorize and repeat later, listen to, laying in his bed. A noise that is half surprise and pleasure that Benny swallows up with his mouth. His hand cups Maran’s jaw, lips parting to kiss him as hungrily as he’s been for him. Weeks of this soldier standing in his lab, to approaching his tanks, to coming to stand by him while he works. To asking questions. To remembering things he says. Benny’s mouth opens wider, feels Maran chase upward with tongue.

One of Maran’s hands seems to find a place on Benny’s thigh, curling around it. His other hand reaches up but Benny’s snatches it and shoves it down onto the table. That makes Maran moan. Their tongues touch, slide together messily as Maran’s knees knock wider and Benny’s body crowds into his space. The lean can’t be comfortable, the way Maran is curved back against the lab table. But he doesn’t protest, doesn’t stop the kiss upward, his head moving to a new angle.

Benny thinks to memorize the way he tastes, the feel of the lips he’d often stared at. But then, thinks, no need to memorize. They’re not going to stop kissing. Not until it becomes hard to breathe—and when it does, when they’re both open mouth panting against each other, rather than fully kissing, that’s when Benny pulls away.

A string of spit connects their mouths for a moment, until Maran’s tongue flicks out, runs over his bottom lip and catches it.

Benny moans so loudly that even Maran seems startled out of reverie by it. His hand squeezes Ben’s thigh, almost as if on accident. His pretty brown eyes flicker there and then back up and then there again and back up. Benny can’t help his grin, his tilted, slice of a smile across his face. His tongue runs over his teeth, head tilted, chest heaving in and out with air. Benny’s knee wedges hard between Maran’s thighs and the soldier gasps. I need to fuck you, I need to fuck you so hard, I need you.

“Maran, I—”

Water splashes against him from behind, making him jump. He nearly crashes both of them to the ground at the icy sensation. Benny spins and looks at the tank, his sunglasses clattering to the floor from where they’d perched on the top of his head. Margot slinks innocently across the wall of the tank, her long arms inching her along.

“Margot,” Benny snaps, stomping toward the tank. “Don’t be f-fu-fucking rude. I will put the top on this tank—” He sputters as water is splashed up against him again, stumbling backward.

Maran’s loud laughter behind him makes him jump even higher. He turns on a heel, but whatever nasty retort he’d have to the laugh is immediately cut off. Maran’s on the stool, leaned back, elbows on the lab table, his head tilted. His cheeks are flush dark red, all the way to his throat, and his lips are shiny. His knees are still widened from how he’d been all but crushed against by Benny’s body. The scientist’s eyes flicker to the stretch of tac pants and then back up, blinking owlishly.

“Forgot we had company, yeah?” Maran jokes, one of his legs swinging on the stool. His combat boot makes a tap, tap, tap sound against the metal bar. Benny’s dry mouth suddenly floods with the thought of his tongue on the tip of that boot.

“Saying we sh-should go somewhere alone, Mar?”

The confident look on his face drops to be replaced with something startlingly shy. Benny’s insides claw at themselves, his brain screaming again (fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck) as he does a slow approach. His now wet shirt clings to him and he slowly shrugs out of his lab coat, tossing it onto the table. Maran’s eyes blink at the sudden reveal of tattooed arms and then his eyes swivel right back up to the ceiling.

Benny catches him by the chin and slowly tilts his head down to force his gaze back to him.

“I like you too, Maran.”

[unknownjpegs]

sacramental

It begins with the sign of the cross.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

He makes the gesture—forehead, chest, left shoulder, right shoulder. The repetition of it is what soothes Xavier usually, unhitches the knot in his chest and allows him to breathe; not the actual meaning behind the sign. And he feels guilty for that, sitting in confessional of all places, hands crossed and sitting between his thighs. He stares at them and not the grated window to his side as the other man finishes talking himself through the gesture.

“Bless me, F-Father, for I have si-sinned. It has been, uh,” there’s a bit of a pause, where the man counts underneath his breath. Xavier struggles to stop the corners of his mouth from tipping upward. He tucks his chin down instead and closes his eyes. “Probably a we-week, right?”

“I’d say.”

“A week since my last c-confession.”

“And your sins?” Xavier prompts, lifting his head and opening his eyes. There’s a long pause then and rustling from the other side of the window. He waits for another minute, out of respect and then sighs. “Ben?”

“You—You’re not supposed to know who I am, Xavier.”

“And you’re supposed to call me Father.” He hears Ben’s absolute crack of a laugh, barely muffled. The window separating them is fairly opaque, as is the nature of confession. He’s right, Xavier’s not meant to know it’s Benny—but that’s the simple lie that Priests tell everyday. They usually know whose on the other side. It’s usually obvious. Especially in the facility, where few come to take confession or make use of the chapel. And those that do—well, it’s usually obvious.

“Do you w-wanna see something cool?”

“Not in the booth,” Xavier yelps immediately, turning to slam the window open and break the seal. Wouldn’t be the first time he has with Benny on the other side; probably not the last either. He expects to catch the scientist with something in his hands, like the last time he brought along some sort of experiment into confession. Instead he sits there, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, round, red glasses perched on his nose. There is some dark blue liquid on his lab coat that smells sharp and salty, like the sea, but dead.

Xavier leans through the window and snatches the cigarette. Benny raises his hands, in mock surrender and Xavier swipes the zippo from one for good measure.

“Don’t smoke in my confession booth.”

“Is it yours or,” he raises his brows and points both fingers upward. Xavier throws the lighter back (which Benny catches with deft, sleazy grinned ease), but decidedly tucks the cigarette into the pocket of his shirt and pats it. Annoyance tax on the pale, blond that doesn’t leave him alone. Benny grins, leans back in the booth and puts one booted foot up against the wall, underneath the window.

“Come with me to th-the lab.”

“No.”

“Please?”

Xavier pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales slowly. He listens to the rustling again, which seems ever present with Benny and his lab coat and whatever he keeps in those pockets. When he opens his eyes again and tilts his head to the side, the scientist is all but leaning through the narrow confessional window, smiling wider. He can see himself in the reflection of those red sunglasses.

“It’s very cool.”

—

Whatever he’s supposed to be looking at, Xavier is distracted by him.

Which is saying something, because the aquatic monstrosity that sits on the examination table should be an all encompassing thing that demands attention. A morbid underwater curiosity that Benny is prodding at—the source of the dark blue liquid on his lab coat. He speaks into a headset, talking himself through his examination.

The smell of salty dead fish permeates the room, but that hardly feels unusual. Whatever Benny and his team are hunting for, leagues under the ocean, it always comes up smelling like fish. It’s not, as he’s been told a hundred times; whatever it truly is, Xavier isn’t privy too, because that’s not what he’s there for. He’s a priest. He’s not much different than Dr. Rhoades, a cautionary measure to ensure the people trapped underneath the sea don’t lose their minds from cabin fever.

Ben just likes dragging him along. Out of the loneliness of his little, rarely used chapel.

Xavier’s eyes flicker to the side and away from the dark blue liquid slowly spreading across the examination table. It’s not the first time since he’s walked into the sterile, white lab that his eyes have been magnetically pulled sideways. He stands there, hands linked together, wringing themselves roughly and tries so hard not to look at Benji.

But he fails that test of willpower, numerous times over. Shame burns in his stomach from it, but he doesn’t stop. Couldn’t, really, if he tried.

Out his peripheral, Benji stands guard at the door. His boots are some width apart, enough to make him look prepared and sturdy—he’d grown stocky in the years since Xavier had seem him last. Had never been small necessarily, but now he’s muscular and broadened by the tactical gear. His hands stay neatly folded behind his back, shoulders squared. Benji stares forward, his face a harsh, mean grimace that makes Xavier’s chest feel tightened. Strange. His mouth loses all moisture at the occasional moments he thinks Benji might also be looking at him.

“Fu-Fucking fascinating,” Benny ends a long winded sentence into his headset and then yanks it off. He pats it to the side, hardly noticing as it nearly clatters to the ground, doing circles around his table. He snaps his gloves off and tosses them into the waste bin. “It’s almost crustacean.”

“Like a lobster?” Xavier dares a step forward, hands dropping to slide into his pockets. His shoulders hunch up nearly to his ears and he almost flinches when Benny side steps to reveal more of his mystery creature. Decidedly not a fucking lobster—though it is shelled. The meat of a claw is opened from examination, and white, like shell fish. It’s spiky, outer layer is almost the same navy color as its blood. “Lobsters bleed blue.”

“Yes!” Ben whirls and grabs Xavier’s shoulders, giving him a shake. “This has a similar circulatory system.”

“It’s disgusting,” Xavier says mildly, raising a hand and gesturing. Ben frowns, wrinkles across his forehead as he pinches brows together. He rolls his eyes, heaves out a heavy sigh. “Kind of terrifying to look at. How many eyes are there?”

“Six.” Ben’s hands drop and he begins to fish in his lab coat pockets. “D-Do you know why humans are so afraid of sp-spiders, Father?” He finds a little metal container, flicking it open to reveal the cigarettes he gets sent from the surface. Expensive stuff that makes Xavier’s mouth water a bit. He’s suddenly thankful he was able to steal one in the confessional booth, sacrilegious as that is. His rations have been running drastically low—he’d been meaning to quit for years. The habit had only become worse because…

Well, Benji smoked. And sometimes…they smoked together.

His eyes flick over Benny’s shoulder as he pats himself down for his zippo. Benji isn’t looking at him. Or the creature. Or Benny. He keeps his gaze professionally forward. So Xavier looks away.

“Arachnids are the furthest thing f-from human beings.” He slides the cigarette behind his ear, nudging his sunglasses up with his pale knuckles. Benny talks with his hands, making broad, excited gestures. “Humans ha-have two legs and two arms and two—two eyes. The further you get from that, the more scared we get. B-Because we see it as unnatural. We, as humans, are natural.” Benny waves his hand in the air, a great flapping gesture.

“Humans r-respond more positively to octopus than th-they do a spider.” The scientist crouches slightly to peer into the beady six eyed creature. It’s other claw hangs off the table, dripping blue. Xavier wonders about the tape keeping it closed. Something like a scorpions tail also extends, but it stays curled, point upward. “Exoskeleton. Bug. Hm.” He straights and starts for the door. “Anyway, I’ll be back. I’m g-going to tell Martha in engineering to s-suck my dick, because I’m getting my department so much f-fucking funding off this.”

Benny starts for the door and so Benji steps slightly to the side. It hisses open and then the blond departs, leaving the two of them—and the creature—alone. There’s silence except for the ambient noise of the lab; computers whirring, a ticking clock somewhere, the plunk, plunk, plunk of blue blood dripping to the floor.

“Did you order the lobster roll?” Xavier gestures, taking a step closer to the lab table. Benji’s eyes slowly slide toward him and the second those brown irises focus, Xavier feels a terrible heat wash up and down his spine. His hands shiver, so he links them back together awkwardly. Benji’s shoulders seem to fall, relaxing as he untucks his own hands from behind his back.

“Not a fan of seafood,” he replies.

“Do you remember when I tried to make you eat clam chowder?”

“Y’mean, when you tried poisonin’ me, yeah?”

“Claw chowder is a New England delicacy.”

Benji snorts, rolling his eyes upward. It seems unconscious for him to take another step into the lab, away from his silly little post. Xavier doesn’t interact with the guards that much—at least outside the duo. There was no Benji without Maran—no Maran without Benji. Xavier learned that, the day he realized that Benji wasn’t kidding about enlisting. That he was going, he was trailing after the other man. His hands wring again and Benji looks at them.

Then his eyes narrow.

“Xavier—get away from the table.”

There’s an odd, but natural instinct to correct him. People aren’t meant to call him Xavier anymore. His identity is intrinsically linked to being Father Wolffe now, and it’s been that way the last three years. It’s grown almost unnatural to hear his name from anyone other than his family—but pushing up against the instinct is the satisfaction. Of hearing Benji call him by his first name, of using it at all.

“Xavier.”

He blinks a few times as Benji takes a slow, measured step.

Then Xavier looks to the side, where Benny’s creature has flipped onto it’s stomach, spindly legs raising it upright into a predatory alertness. It’s bisected claw dangles, the other straining against the rubber tape keeping it closed. But the worst part, is not the claws, or even the six very alive eyes staring at him with alien intellectuality. It’s the wavering stinger in the air.

“What the fuck?”

It launches itself with a quickness that blurs; pointed, crab like legs digging into Xavier’s chest—the weight of it is shocking, sending him spiraling backward. Feels like being hit with a sack of fucking cement. He stumbles, uncoordinated and terrified—and miraculously, his hand shoots forward to wrap around the stinger that threatens his face. Xavier screams, tail bone connecting painfully with the tiled floor. It’s legs scramble, but it’s remaining claw raises, aims for sensitive, irreplaceable green eyes.

The weight is suddenly gone from his chest.

He hears a disgusting wet crack and unconsciously he continues scrambling backward, long legs kicking out. Xavier watches blue blood splatter across the tiles as Benji slams the creature into the ground once more, wielding it by the tail. The mercenary drops to his knees. His hand not pinning the creature by the tail slaps at his chest until it finds the hilt of his military grade knife—and the shing of it unsheathing makes every hair on Xavier’s body stand upright.

And then Benji begins stabbing. One, twice, three times, vicious and purposeful. Dark navy blood spits against him, wetting his chest. Droplets hit his face. Xavier watches as he maneuvers the creature and in a brutal swipe, removes the stinger. It’s crab like legs curl inward, twitching until it goes still. Xavier looks at the claw, cracked open with the force of Benji’s swing.

He continues kneeling, staring down at the dead thing. Benji’s shoulders rise and fall in vicious, heavy labor, his mouth open and panting with the exertion. When he finally glances toward Xavier, the priest flinches somewhat under the intensity of that stare.

“Can’t leave you two alone.”

“Fuck!” Xavier screams again and scrambles more. Benny stands in the entrance to the lab, the cigarette between his lips not yet lit. Benji slowly begins to stand, the measured control in his body thrumming with slight promise of continued violence. The dead thing on the floor doesn’t move, but Xavier stares at it anyway. It had been dead once already. “Ben—your—your fucking thing—”

“Whew, language, Father.”

“Fuck you,” Xavier snaps in a thin, high pitched voice. Ben only snorts as he walks toward the dead animal (if it is an animal, whatever it is, nothing God’s ever had any part in creating, Xavier’s thoughts whisper). The sound of his boots are loud, but barely cover the sound of Benji’s furious panting. He ignores the mercenary and crouches down to look at the creature. Don’t, Xavier thinks, even though the stinger is clear across the lab from where Benji had thrown it.

“Interesting.” Benny uses the toe of his boot to shift the creature. The legs are stiffened, curled in like a dead—like a fucking dead spider. Blood still weeps from it’s ruined claws and the wound from it’s now missing stinger. Xavier feels nausea welling up, bile threatening his throat. His chest heaves in frantic, animal like fear.

“Interesting?” Benji’s voice is a barely contained snarl through clenched teeth. He flicks the long, wicked looking knife and blue blood splatters droplets across the white floor. He gives it a quick few swipes across his black tactical pants and then snaps it back into the sheath on his vest. “Interestin’ thing nearly fuckin’—”

Benny stands up from his crouch, hands in his lab coat, head tilted. He has those pale, blue eyes pointed at his dead future funding. They’re wickedly intelligent and sharp, assessing. Then he smiles and his eyes slide down to where Xavier still sits. He offers his tattooed hand slowly—and Xavier takes it just as slow. He’s yanked upright, stumbling and then jerking away from the scientist.

“Good th-thing you were there, huh, Benji? S-Saved Father Wolffe—would have b-been a lot of paperwork.” Xavier stomps toward the door of the lab. His pink cheeks and hot searing shame make it too difficult to glance toward the mercenary that had saved him. Instead he throws his hands up in the air as he exits.

“Don’t invite me to this fucking lab again, Ben!”

—

It’s not unusual that he can’t sleep. He stares at himself in the mirror, instead, little circle bruises from the things pointed legs on his chest and abdomen. Xavier brushes his hands over them, turning in the mirror to stare at his pale, freckled skin. The bruises sit dark and purple, will turn yellow and green as days pass. One of them sits so squarely in the middle of his ribcage, he’s surprised it didn’t puncture straight through. Break ribs to get to his lungs, pop one so he’d suffocate under water the way they were all meant to.

His hands drop and so do his eyes.

The room he has is modest. As it’s supposed to be. A priest is not exactly meant to decorate more than the crucifix that hangs on the wall. He crosses to it, and with guilty hands plucks it off. He crosses to the spartan desk shoved against the wall and yanks open a drawer. Jesus Christ gets tucked inside and he feels that burning shame once more as he slowly closes him away.

Mostly, because, he definitely cannot masturbate with the visage of Jesus on the cross hanging directly above his bed. And he’s already decided that it might be the only way he can get his mind to calm down enough to sleep.

Xavier pulls off the light weight, worn in sweatpants he’d changed into after the disaster at the lab. His heart wrenches at the memory of blue blood, makes a new memory of the creature screeching when it had most certainly been quiet the entire attack. Xavier flattens hands on his neck and rubs at the muscles there to try and relax. When that doesn’t work, he finally allows himself to lay down on the little twin bed.

The Diocese had made the decision to send him underwater rather quick. When the company funding the project had reached out, probing hands and offered funds to see if they could capture a priest for the voyage, they’d known Xavier would not say no. One thing Xavier had always been good about during his years as a priest was saying yes. Going where they wanted, studying with who they’d put him with. His life felt rudderless except for the guiding hands of the Catholic Church. Who put him right on a submarine and sent him leagues into dark, black water.

Xavier knew the reason for why he always said yes, and why they also said yes to this placement were the same.

He no longer believed in God. He did not believe in the sermons he memorized to give. He did not care about the politics of the church, nor did he engage in them. Xavier was an easily moved pawn, because he was apathetic to the machinations that might move a pawn to begin with.

Still, even if he’d lost that faith somewhere along the way, he felt incredibly guilty about shoving his briefs down to the middles of his thighs. Not even hard yet and that cold, oily sensation of doing something wrong made him shiver. Xavier didn’t stop being a priest, because he didn’t believe in God. Sometimes, that didn’t even feel like what being a priest was about. Being a priest was about feeling ashamed and feeling self conscious. Or worrying. Which he did. Plenty.

He’d discovered a trick during one of his first placements. Xavier would never be brave enough to look at images or videos; needed to rely on sensation, touch, thought alone. So he curls a hand into a loose fist and lightly, just lightly, begins to brush the back of his knuckles against his prominent hip bone. Not yet touching himself where blood is starting to redirect. The snake like feeling that winds around him, constricts, when he’s doing something wrong starts to fade.

Xavier breathes evenly, his other hand slowly brushing up his stomach. It sinfully curves over his pectoral. The pinch of his palm against his sensitive nipple is enough to make his lips part. Keeps his eyes closed. Better to concentrate. Because, this isn’t about treating himself—does well to remember that. This is just relief. Something to keep his mind off—to keep his mind on track. The tickling sensation on his hip bone makes him shiver again.

Usually the combination of either of his hands here and here is enough to get him hard and then, from there it’s a simple tight fist. A few jerks, a terrible shame filled clean up and he can pass out into something dreamless and dark. Face the next day as Father Wolffe on this terrible research facility. But, in tandem with his hand at his hip and the other on his chest, things pop up, unbidden behind his dark eyelids.

Xavier inhales quick and sharp at the memory of Benji’s intense eyes. The hand on his hip slips to wrap around himself. At first, he only holds his hand there, blinking rapidly to try and forget the way Benji’s lashes framed his eyes. His hand on his chest squeezes, without him necessarily thinking and his palm presses against his pert, sensitive nipple. Xavier’s teeth quickly capture his bottom lip to stifle a sound.

There is no denying it, then. He quickly puts his hand to his mouth, spitting hurriedly into his palm. It’ll be faster this way—something hurried and meaningless, like they always are. Or are meant to be. His fist grasps once more around his fully hardened erection, giving a quick jerking tug. Xavier’s eyes flutter shut once more and he tries to only think about how good it feels.

How good his palm feels, slicker from his spit. He focuses on the tinge of pleasure between his hip bones, the pooling heat of it. His other hand massages his pectoral, which makes his cheeks pinken and go even warmer; Xavier felt humiliated at how good it felt to be touched there. How much he longed to be touched there; how much his mind was suddenly supplying him the thought of a callused hand there instead of his own. Xavier’s were smooth. He handled a bible and a rosary all day.

Benji’s would be—rough. Militant rough. He’d have calluses on his fingers from the way he used that terrifying knife. His brain supplies that image immediately on cue—Benji swiping it across his thigh, shoving it back into sheath, the force of his movements barely hiding his anger. His dark palm veiny in his fury. Xavier’s breathing gets harder as he imagines fingertips, not his own, rubbing the sensitive nub. Toying. Teasing.

“Damn it,” he lets himself whisper, his hand slapping up from his chest to his forehead. His other hand continues moving, a slow rhythm that isn’t getting him necessarily where he needs to get.

Xavier’s head falls to the side, his eyes on the door to his room. It’s locked, of course. But—security can get into any door, can’t they? His eyes close again, his hand moving faster. The spit makes it easier. His thumb brushes the tip of his cock and his mind goes white for a second and he’s thinking, come in.

Come in my door. Come in my room. Benji. Catch me. Look at me. I’m doing this, thinking of you. I can’t pretend I’m not thinking of you. I want you to see me do this. I want you to do this to me. Come in.

Xavier’s thoughts go wild then, the shame of his thoughts making his veins burn, his entire body suddenly alive and electric with the thought of being caught. His hips buck up without him even meaning to, a slight writhe in the body as he imagines it. The sensation of his warm, spit slicked palm makes his toes curl, his calves tighten. His head snaps back, to look at the ceiling. Only, he’s pictures something so much more interesting.

Above him, Benji stands in the bed. That powerful open stance, booted feet on either side of Xavier’s chest. He stands and stares down at him and grins, in that mean way that he seems to smile. Beautiful brown eyes lidded in their lust—for him. For him. Only him. Xavier’s panting gets louder. His hand slips to his mouth to stop the noises he knows he’ll make. The idea of Benji slowly putting a boot to his knee and kicking his legs further apart makes him all but whimper. That whimper almost slips through his fingers.

He imagines the dialogue; let me see, Xavier. Wanna see. Wanna look at you. Aw, look at you. Enjoyin’ yourself? Like that? Is it good? Are you bein’ good for me? And imagining his thick accent, his words makes Xavier immediately slow down. Because he’s cresting. The orgasm threatens to take him by surprise and he won’t let it. His fist stops, fingers tight around the base of his cock as his eyes blink rapidly.

The denial makes his breath hitch, his knees weaken. His stomach muscles roll and tighten and the whimpering moan does break through his hand then.

Xavier lets himself say Benji’s name. Just once. The sinful treat that it is. He lets himself relive the memory of Benji ripping the creature off of him, viciously killing it with his knife. Protecting him. He’d moved from his end of the lab so quickly. He’d come for Xavier so fast. Like instinct. Xavier lets himself remember that look. He whines, his hand finally moving again, in jerky quick motions.

When he comes, it pours over his fist and onto his flexing abdomen. Xavier stares down at it, his hand still working himself through the end of it. His cock twitches, reddened by the furious way he’d gripped it toward the end. He looks at the mess on his stomach, the steadily cooling release sticky against the hair on his navel. Xavier’s fingers uncurl from himself, his eyes looking at his pale, freckly hand and the drip of come there.

Then he groans and falls back against the bed and realizes it didn’t work. That he will absolutely not be sleeping any time soon.

—

So Xavier doesn’t believe anymore. He isn’t sure when he stopped. Knows it wasn’t something like night and day—he didn’t wake up and realize he’d made the wrong choice. Didn’t go to sleep believing in God and then wake up suddenly not. It was something gradual. The boiling frog in a pot metaphor, only God was the boiling pot and Xavier was the man staring at the frog, wondering why it wasn’t jumping out.

But, he does go to the chapel for some peace and quiet.

After he hangs Jesus back up on the wall, cringing and avoiding the little mans carved in eyes.

He doesn’t put on the uniform. Instead, he keeps the soft cotton sweatpants on and puts on a sweater, with sleeves long enough to tuck over his knuckles. He yawns sleepily, not bothering with the lights as he pads down the center aisle. He could—if he was being bold—crack open the communion wine and have a few glasses to try.

“Up late.”

“Shit!” Xavier startles, almost tripping over the aisle runner. His hands slap onto wooden pews, his post-orgasm weak knees almost collapsing on him. Xavier holds a hand to his chest and stares at the man in the middle of the first pew.

Benji is no longer just a manifestation of his lust, but is real just to torment him. Flesh and blood and sitting there with his hands in his pockets. He slouches, knees knocked wide apart. He doesn’t have his tactical vest on, but that somehow makes it worse, because the undershirt is tight and cinched across his broad torso. Xavier blinks a few times, because the darkness of the chapel makes his grin look glinting.

“Can’t sleep,” he admits.

“Bit’a that goin’ ‘round,” Benji replies.

Xavier straightens and suddenly feels deeply self conscious of his attire. Not exactly professional—not that he can claim to be, after what he’d just done. He clears his throat and then makes a turn toward the back room.

“I scare you away?” Benji calls after him.

“Couldn’t if you tried,” Xavier returns, with a slight look over his shoulder.

—

The bottle of wine gets uncorked by Benji’s knife. Xavier has to look away from it, to his jumping knee instead. His arm lounges over the pew, his body tilted so it’s facing Benji. The other man sits with his own up, tucked almost under his chin. Xavier remembers that about him—how he’d never sit normal. Every chair was an exercise for him to find a new way to put his body. He smiles at the memory—the nostalgia of it, but also the innocence.

He can’t wash away the guilt and shame he feels sitting across from Benji after what he’d just done, but the wine definitely helps.

“This is disgustin’, mate,” Benji says, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth after he takes a swig. “Catholics don’t know how to make a wine?”

“It’s not supposed to taste good,” Xavier argues with a laugh. He takes a sip of it, cringing a bit and then licking his lips. He nods a few times, tilts his head this way and that and then laughs. Xavier dares to take another long swallow and then pass it back.

“Y’got those li’l crackers?”

“Sacramental bread?”

“S’not bread, Xavier. It’s a cracker.”

“It’s called—shut up, Benji.” He laughs, shoving his hand against the mercenary’s shoulder as he leans in, grinning his big snide grin. He takes the wine when it’s handed to him, nursing another few sips.

They go back and forth for a bit. The chapel has faux lighting for the stained glass windows, to really simulate the experience. They make Benji’s skin pretty, the golds and reds and green hues all over him. Xavier stumbles over to the switches to turn them down a little, because they distract from the real pretty of Benji’s natural skin tone. He gets back to the pews and they trade jokes, bad ones. They talk until the wine is finished between them and Xavier can almost ignore the sitting heavy weight of his guilt inside his chest.

They’ve also accidentally slid a bit closer. Benji pulls two cigarettes from his pocket.

“Shouldn’t smoke in here,” Xavier says slowly, softly, with pinched brows. The drink makes it hard to form words that don’t get chewed on by his accent.

“Am I corruptin’ you, Xavier?”

He wants to ask Benji to stop saying his name, because he’s supposed to. A gentle correction; please, call me Father. Even if Benji isn’t Catholic, and none of it really matters. He wants to ask, really, because it’s making him shiver every single time. It’s making it feel like fingers are dancing across his hip bones again.

“Incorruptible,” Xavier teases, leaning in. He taps his lips and smiles. “Well, alright—just one.” Benji stares at him, his dark eyes going hooded. He leans closer, lifts the cigarette to put between Xavier’s lips.

Do you remember when we kissed? Xavier almost is drunk enough to actually ask. Because he does. Remembers every moment of it, the press and feel of Benji’s mouth, the taste of his tongue when it had met his own. Remembers their roaming hands. He’d been understudying Father Morgan that year.

And he’d not been thinking of the kiss when he’d been fucking jerking off because it had been the best kiss of his entire life. But it’d not been dirty. It had never been something he’d felt guilty for—possibly the last thing he’d ever let himself have that didn’t pull at his Catholic Guilt strings.

Benji strikes a match and puts it to the cigarette and Xavier inhales deeply.

“Are priests allowed t’smoke?” Benji asks, lighting his own. Xavier exhales, head leaned back so far that his arm over the back of the pew is the only thing that keeps him from sliding out of it.

“We’re not meant to have bodily addictions.”

“Now that’s a term,” Benji says, his voice laced with suggestion. Xavier almost laughs, but he swallows it with another drag of the cigarette, because he is thinking of that dialogue he’d made for Benji in his head. He has to close his eyes to get away from stealing looks. The pew creaks and Xavier’s head rolls to the side and his eyes do crack open then. His fingers trail up and without thinking about it, his fingers touch the side of Benji’s head. Right where all his long curls are shaved off.

Benji doesn’t move as the pads of Xavier’s fingers brush along. His cigarette sits between his lips, smoke drifting up toward the ceiling vents inside the chapel.

“Benji,” Xavier starts (his mind momentarily reminds him he’d only just moaned this name, in his bedroom, an hour earlier) and then doesn’t get to finish the thought. The cigarette in his mouth drops as Benji crashes toward him. His lips part in an immediate moan at the feeling of a warm body crushing him to the end of the pew—no, not a warm body, but Benji’s. The heavy weight of him, a knee wedged between Xavier’s thighs. The sensitivity that gets plucked by that feeling makes him jump, the remembered pleasurable sensation of his palm replaced with a knee. He hiccups a sound before their lips connect.

And they kiss. Hard.

Xavier’s hand drags into Benji’s curls, tightening and tugging. He pulls himself closer, his other arm slapping from around the back of the pew to Benji’s powerful shoulders. Their mouths open to each other, wine flavored tongues rolling together. Their heads twist in different ways, constant parting and coming together just to feel it differently, to get a deeper angle. Xavier slides without thinking, his back flattening to the seat of the pew. Benji leans over him, kissing as his hands cup Xavier’s ribs. His warm palms slide down and then tease at the edge of his sweater.

Then the cherry of one of their cigarette burns Xavier’s collarbone and he yelps loudly. Benji springs away, his hands patting across Xavier’s chest to get the fallen cigarette. He swears when his own fingers touch the embers. Xavier slips off the pew, out from under Benji and stands. His entire body trembles as he pats at the burn on his collarbone, his eyes wild. Xavier almost trips on the rug runner again and he clears his throat.

The tips of his fingers tingle as he looks at Benji, holding the cigarette. His curly, black hair is messy. His tight, black shirt is half shoved up, revealing brown skin. Hints of tattoos. Dark hair underneath his belly button.

“Goodnight,” Xavier says quickly, turning on his heel. He walks quickly down the aisle to the double doors (painted, to appear wooden, to seem authentic), fuzzy around the edges—from the wine. From the wine. Not from the kiss. From the wine, the bottle still discarded. A cigarette still missing, that he might find later, and scoop up and remember it was between Benji’s lips.

[unknownjpegs]

alive again

Xavier regains consciousness on the cold morgue gurney with a husky, rattling gasp. He sits up, propelled by core strength, hands instantly slipping into his hair, as if he’s holding himself together there. His limbs shake, arms and legs, both, the metallic clang of the gurney loud with it. There’s a tremor all through his body and not just from the temperature of the room. Something close to shock, probably. Not easily explained—dying, coming back. And this time had been different too. A fresh hell to experience—being shot in the head—so he tucks it away into the psyche to remember later when he’s alone. Because Xavier is very much not alone.

“What the fuck?” he snarls that out through clenched teeth, wild eyes like an animal snapping to Doctor Nick. There’s a scratchy white sheet that’s making him twitch, the tactile sensation of it on his thighs driving him to even more severe anxiety.

“Ah, that seems like him,” Nick says, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his doctors coat. He taps it against an open palm to get one to shuffle free. The crinkling of it makes Xavier wince, touch his temple. His eyelashes flutter almost shut from the pressure in the sockets, the light so blindingly white. Copper is so strong on the back of his tongue.

“Is that an average response?”

Xavier’s attention gets pulled away from the doctor he knows—and loathes—to a stranger, also in a white coat. Nondescript, but short and dark haired with glasses that he uses knuckles to shove back up. The stranger is smiling at him, the sort of encouraging grin you give an infant that’s about to roll over and crawl.

“Xavier being angry is the most normal thing in the world, I believe.”

“Fuck you,” he snaps in response, sliding from the gurney. Xavier stumbles when his bare feet connect with the cold tile, pins and needles stabbing from heel to shin. He keeps one hand on the sheet, as if attempting to save his own dignity and privacy—though he doesn’t know why. Nick was likely the one to cut the bloody clothes off him anyway. And he wasn’t the first doctor to strip Xavier of that autonomy either.

“Bit different from drowning, no?” Doctor Nick asks coolly, offering his pack of cigarettes. He leans back against his desk, smoke billowing from his nose. In the harsh morgue lighting, Nick looks even more intimidating, more unearthly, if possible.

“Bit,” Xavier bites out just as icily, waving off the offer. He’s never trusted anything from the other man for free. “Never been shot in the head before. Whose this guy?”

The stranger dances forward, a hand shoved out. His eyes are eerily black, like they’re all pupil, no iris. And big. Maybe a little too big for his face, sunk in with dark marks as if he never sleeps. His skin seems sallow, the fluorescents not helping the unnatural tint to him. Xavier looks at the hand and then looks back up to his face, without saying another word.

“I’m—”

A ringing makes Xavier cringe, hand to his temple again. The ringing dulls to something like static, a noise that cuts off even the background ambiance of the morgue. It crawls over the front of his skull, makes him wince harder and pinch the bridge of his nose. Xavier blinks and suddenly, the noise is gone. So is the feeling of something rearranging the brain matter his body had just taken so long to put back together.

“What?” he looks at the short, twitchy man, who keeps pushing his hand closer and closer. Xavier takes a step back from it. The surreal, liminal feeling of the morgue makes him nauseas. Unmoored and adrift and scared. Backed into a corner. Xavier gets mean when he’s scared.

“Name doesn’t matter,” the stranger explains, with a dismissive flap of the rejected hand. He smiles as he tucks it into his pocket and pulls out a notebook, clicks a pen that seems to comically appear with it. “You can call me The Scientist.”

“Old friend,” Nick supplies as he hooks one ankle over the other. He puffs languidly on his cigarette, the ash building long at the end. Xavier sweats, even though it’s cold, and he only has the sheet. “I did not know if you were going to wake up like you.”

Xavier runs a hand back to cup his skull, as though he can feel the exit wound, the shards of broken bone, of blown out skin. Impossible—doesn’t exist, like it had never happened. Same with all the other injuries that had landed him with a relationship with Doctor Fucking Nick. But this time had been different. Xavier can’t recall what it had been like, not being alive for so long, but he feels unbalanced among the living now. Like he doesn’t fit, or isn’t meant to. He sucks his teeth, and levels a flat stare at Nick.

“What he means,” The Scientist says, big, unusual eyes up at Xavier, who towers tall over him. “Well, your brain was fully decimated. For it to regenerate exactly the way it was before the snipers bullet—”

“Do you have the bullet?” Xavier interrupts, attention back to the shady blond doctor. Nick shakes his head, exhales smoke that curls up toward the ceiling vent. Xavier’s teeth click together audibly.

“The brain stops growing in early adolescence—for humans, around five years old.” The Scientist scribbles on his notebook, turns it around to face Xavier, who curls a lip at the crude drawing of a brain. “It doesn’t get heavier the more memories you have. Or bigger, the more intelligent you are. Your brain would have regenerated to it’s exact physical nature, but how did your brain regrow memories? How did it regrow the ability to do math?”

“Can you do math, Xavier?” Nick asks, with a snide chuckle. Xavier’s stomach sours, heat creeping over his cheeks and up to his ears. His hands flex, draw The Scientists attention, who tip toes closer. He looks at Xavier, like he’s a puzzle. Eyes roving across chest, collarbone, shoulders. It should feel invasive, because he’s naked, like he’s being consumed perversely. Instead, it feels clinical.

The Scientist reaches, takes Xavier’s hand softly, holds it up. He contemplates snatching it back, but he’s a deer in the headlights. About to be hit by the semi truck.

“You have tattoos.”

“You have a PhD for a reason, huh?”

“Oh, several. You must have manifested after these, then?” The Scientist continues to heft Xavier’s hand, moving a palm to his elbow. He cannot help but notice how long and thin The Scientist’s fingers are. The notepad gets discarded onto the gurney, along with the pen. The man has oddly soft hands as they twist Xavier’s wrist, to flex the tendons there. He observes them with voracious and hungry black eyes.

“No new tattoos for me,” Xavier replies.

“Can’t compare to a new fully formed brain,” The Scientist titters with a nervous laugh. “Imagine, if we removed a different organ—like the lung, maybe. Your body would simply regrow one it it’s place?” He tuts, tilting his head this way and that, to examine the parts of Xavier’s tattoos that didn’t regrow with a cut or a wound. “No wonder the military wants you.”

Xavier’s hand twists and shoots forward, grabs The Scientist by the throat.

“What did you just say?”

“Xavier—”

“Are you with the fucking military?” Xavier doesn’t even realize he’s walking The Scientist backward until he hits the wall. His giant palm pins his much smaller frame there. The man squeaks, feet scrambling against the tiled floor as Xavier’s straight arm lifts just enough to put pressure on his trachea. Those giant black eyes swivel a bit.

“Oh my,” he rasps out, in that same nervous, laughing tone. Xavier envisions closing his hand so hard he snaps bone.

“Shit, Xavier, fuckin—hell—Xavier!” Hands wrap around his taut forearm. Tanned and freckled, with flaking nail polish. The Liverpool accent scratches at his brain, makes him cringe—says his name like Zavi-ah—and that’s when he realizes that Maran is in the room. He drops The Scientist, taking a few uncoordinated steps backward. Maran’s hands stay wrapped around his forearm, his pretty brown eyes staring up at him.

They barely have a height difference. But when Xavier stands tall, how he is then, he makes everything feel smaller than him.

“Maran?” he drops his shoulders, a hand snatching Maran’s shirt sleeve. He shakes him a few times, as if that will confirm he’s real. “What are—”

“Aw, nasty, man, are you naked?” Xavier blinks, the morgue sheet a pile of wrinkles on the floor at his feet. He glances down and then up and then bursts into a startling laugh as he cups Maran’s cheek. It’s warm and soft. Alive. He withdraws his hand quickly. Something in his head screams, Maran touching you means he can use his powers, means you can die for real, Xavier, go back into all that black scary nothing, careful, careful, Xavier.

“That’s what every guy wants to hear, thanks.”

Xavier crosses the morgue swiftly to a locker, his bare feet loud on the cold tiled floor. He yanks it open confidently, rifling until he finds the duffel bag. He pulls it open, crouching on the floor to find what he’s looking for—change of clothes, a thick envelope that he quickly opens. Xavier gives a glance toward Nick, sitting as he is on the desk. His blond brows raise up, bored set to his mouth. Before Xavier even pulls the clothes on, he counts the bills inside the envelope.

When he does get the clothes on, he pulls a stack from it and slaps it onto the desk beside Nick’s thigh. They share a look for a long moment. Nick tilts his head, raises those thin brows higher. Xavier’s lip curls and he pulls the envelope from his pocket, selects another few bills and then slams them on the desk as well.

Nick slides away to look through his desk.

“Could you urinate in this?” The Scientist has found his way next to Xavier again, holding up a little cup. He blinks expectantly from behind his rectangular glasses, bruising marks already appearing on his slender, pale throat.

“I will kill you,” Xavier snarls out, hand raising to slap the cup away until Maran makes a huffing sigh. His hand drops and he turns to Nick instead as a gun is held out to him. Xavier takes it, checks the chamber for a bullet and the safety, then slides it into the waistband of his jeans at his lower back.

“Perhaps a hair sample?”

“What are you doing with this guy?” Xavier snaps, bending back to the duffel to grab converses to shove onto his feet.

“Maran is a very helpful—”

“Didn’t ask you.” Xavier levels a warning glare to The Scientist then. Something that says, shut the fuck up because that cute sigh only works on me once. Smart little guy seems to take it seriously, back up a few paces, that little cup still in his hand. Xavier can’t seem to place an age on his anxious, pale face. Could be older than him, could be younger. Could be ageless. The purple marks on his neck are getting darker. Maran darts around him to Xavier’s side, shoulders hunched and hands in his jean jacket.

“He’s alright, Xavier. Just been helpin’ ‘im out with a few things here and there. You know how it is.”

Xavier takes a moment to lace his shoe and think about that. Think about the implications of a scientist and Maran. Sometimes, Xavier will feel tugged back, like a hook around his spine has jerked him backward into something—like a memory. For some reason, the experiment that had been the hardest to repress, to forget, to pretend never happened, had been the sleep deprivation one.

Stuck in a little room with barely enough space to stretch limbs and an alarm that went off every thirty minutes, for as long as he could stay awake until the fugue state. They had been just as curious on what parts of Xavier’s brain could heal itself.

“Think I should have called Augustin instead?” Nick slides back up onto his desk and crosses his ankles. Xavier hates watching him, playful like that. Younger than he is. Makes his jaw grind together. “That went well last time.” It hadn’t, actually. Tino, watching Xavier throw up water, until he was alive again from drowning—Tino’s hand, warm on the middle of his back, his anger and concern—had caused a fight between them. A big one, something that he was still trying to piece together.

Xavier stands to his full height once his shoe is finished. He turns toward the double wide morgue doors, one hand around Maran’s wrist as he goes.

—

The night air is soothing on his face as he bursts out from the back door of the city morgue. He throws his arms open to the feeling, breathing in deeply, sucking in the dirty smoggy city air and then sighing it out. His clothes are too light weight for the cold and as he turns to Maran, the man’s already shrugging out of his jacket to hand over to Xavier. He pushes it back, but uses the opportunity to sling an arm around his shoulder, tug him tighter.

“You going to come out with me tonight?”

“Not going home?” Maran seems to keep his voice light, wedge out the obvious concern. Xavier wants to kiss him for it—but he’d already been there, tried that. Actually, he liked that about Maran. That he didn’t want to fuck him. That they could settle into a friendship that felt warm, inviting, sometimes unsteady because, well, Xavier was unsteady. Unstable. Maran was sometimes such a pretty little blip of softness in a world where he got shot in the head by a sniper, and woke up in a morgue.

Maran is very helpful.

Xavier twitches and his arm falls off, hands tucking into his front pockets.

“I need to get laid,” he replies lamely. Maran’s shoulder bumps his once, twice and then Xavier is tucking his arm back into place, grinning his wide, toothy smile. “I was thinking a club, but I can already tell you want to go to an arcade.” Maran’s replying smile is affectionately big; he can see the little tint of worry, glossiness that doesn’t seem to go away. Wont, probably, the whole night. And he thinks Maran might actually be more of a buffer than a wingman, stop Xavier from falling into a vice he should avoid.

But that’s fine. He’ll take that, over being alone, after the darkness.

—

“What are you doing with that boy?”

“What boy?”

The Scientist tears open the black trash bag of Xavier’s ruined clothes. His hands shiver as he holds them up, giddy with the excitement. The smell is strong, potent with the heavy tang of salt and metal. He digs into the clothes, feeling the rough, starchy way they’ve hardened from blood. He pulls out the ruined shirt, examining it with lit up eyes.

“Maran.”

“Maran is twenty-seven.”

“Like I said. A fucking child compared to us.” The Scientist briefly glances up to catch Nick lighting another cigarette. He shakes out the match and tosses it into the waste basket by the desk. The Scientist briefly runs fingers over a dark patch of Xavier’s blood on the shirt. He can’t remember which of them is older, the doctor or The Scientist. Doesn’t matter in the end. He lifts the fabric up underneath his nose, taking a long, deep inhale.

“B negative,” he sighs out. “That is rare.”

“Going to create a clone with that?” Nick puffs on the cigarette, tugs at his neck tie until its loosened.

“No,” he sighs out wistfully. He dabs his tongue against the dark blood, drawing his brows in and humming. “Every clone I’ve created has tried to kill me. Also, they always come out a little too short.” Nick snorts instead of actually replying. “And Maran is helping me with some experiments. Of his own free will mind you.”

“Is that because Nomi left you?”

The Scientist blinks as he starts to shove the clothes into his own plastic, clear bags. He pulls a label from one of his many pockets, patting himself down for a pen until Nick tosses one his way. He scrambles to catch it, smiling appreciatively.

“It was much easier when Nomi was still working with me. My little mind controlling beauty. But I’ve found, it’s also easier when the consent is real. Maran is doing this, because he thinks he’ll be helping the world. A cure for some people would be life saving. It’s very sweet of him.” The Scientist quickly scribbles details on the labels. XAVIER WOLFFE, TWENTY SIX, B NEGATIVE, THREAT LEVEL HIGH.

“And Xavier?”

“Worried?” The Scientist pats down the bags, smiling secretively to himself. “I won’t be taking your best paying customer. Even if I had Nomi, I have a feeling that dog cannot be held on a leash for very long.” Nick hums to himself, flicking ash from his cigarette into a tray beside his desk lamp. He slides from the desk, snatches the black trash bag. Nick tosses it into the waste basket.

“Maran’s a weak spot.”

“Because he can negate the healing—”

“Because the dog is human,” Nick pats The Scientist fondly on the rib, dodging around him. He goes for the exit, waving a hand over his shoulder. “Turn off the lights to my morgue before you leave, oui?” The Scientist watches Nick, the doors swinging as he goes before his eyes dart back to his specimen bags.

He runs a finger over the X he’d hastily scrawled, head tilted, cogs turning.

[unknownjpegs]

good guy

The man startles when he comes into the office, so Xavier raises both hands.

“Not gonna hurt you,” he says quietly, though his voice wavers somewhat.

“Well, shit, son,” the older man drawls, slow hand going for the light switch. “Standin’ in the dark ain’t really convincin’ me.” For some reason, it makes Xavier laugh—maybe it’s how syrup soft his southern accent is, or how there’s no actual fear in the words. The laugh peters off and he clears his throat, drops his hands. Xavier blinks rapidly when the lights get flicked on, a hand shielding his eyes to the light. He’d been there some time, waiting. In the dark.

With the lights on, he gets a solid look at Agustin Lazarro. The first thing Xavier is comforted by is that he’s definitely taller than the man, though he keeps himself mostly slouched behind the desk—it puts distance between them. Just in case. Agustin’s older, gray to his facial hair. And he has laugh lines by his eyes, crows feet. He isn’t smiling at Xavier, but he could be. He could imagine that. This guy smiles at babies in grocery stores, that’s the vibe.

Which is good, because that’s why Xavier is there.

“Someone told me you could help,” he says quietly.

Agustin Lazarro takes a step closer into his office. The desk has paperwork scattered across it. There’s an empty mug that probably gets filled with coffee every day—Xavier wonders how he takes it. Looks like a sugar and cream kind of man. Everything about him says I will help you, but that could be a lie. Xavier, at this point, feels like everything is a lie that he keeps having to swallow. It’s the older mans turn to raise his hands.

“Pro’lly will. But I’m need you to take the gun out your jeans and put it on my desk.”

Xavier blinks, his shoulders dropping, head tilting, eyes narrowing. He doesn’t look military. Doesn’t mean he isn’t former, or could be currently and this Good Samaritan shit is a cover up. Or maybe ex police—no, definitely not ex police. He would have already pulled his own pistol and shot Xavier through the forehead. Police shoot first, ask questions later. So, not police or former. Eases the tension in his shoulders a bit.

Xavier lifts his left hand while his right slowly dips behind him. Underneath the giant sweatshirt he’d stolen from a gas station along the way, his handgun rests tucked into the band of his jeans. In a smooth, efficient and practiced motion, he draws it, ejects the magazine and lays both on the desk.

“Reckon you don’t really need that,” Agustin says with a lifted brow as he steps forward and takes both. He maneuvers to a filing cabinet that’s stuffed with manila folders and tucks the weapon inside. Xavier isn’t leaving without it, one way or another but he doesn’t need to mention that just yet. “You’re here after all.”

Xavier snorts and rolls his eyes.

“Clever way of asking what I can do?”

“We usually start there,” Agustin explains.

“I don’t wanna talk about it—but it’s not dangerous. To you anyway.”

The two men stay silently staring at each other for a long stretch of time, where Agustin must make some sort of decision looking at him. Xavier knows his appearance is deceiving. Because of that power that’s not dangerous to anyone. But himself, really. The opposite of dangerous. Theres no blood or injuries or bruises to make him look as hurt as he is. But Agustin must sense it in him, somewhere. Because he slowly pulls the chair out from the opposite side of his desk and sits down.

“I like your mustache,” Xavier comments, pointing. “You look like a cowboy.”

“Fancy that. M’orderin’ Chinese. You want some?”

Xavier throws himself down into the chair Agustin must sit in every day to do whatever paperwork is required for him at this clinic for wandering, at risk mutants. His feet scuff the floor a little and he sinks into himself, shoulders up. Xavier’s eyes flicker back and forth from Agustin to the door and then down to his hands.

“Could you get extra chicken?”

—

Half an hour later, there’s more food than Xavier can feasibly eat in front of him. But he gives a solid fucking effort, shoveling the food down with reckless abandon. He barely feels himself chewing—can’t actually remember the last time he sat and ate. Let alone ate something that he could taste. Xavier pauses to wipe a napkin across his mouth, nearly bashful when he uses a fork to point at fried rice.

It’s pushed his way and he wastes no time tearing into that as well.

“Can you tell me how old you are?” He’s using a gentle tone, like Xavier might be a terrified animal that will skitter out the window at the first hint of loud. Which, he’s ashamed to admit, could be true. Everyone was loud in the military. Drill sergeants all the way up to the Generals. Even the doctors, who weren’t much better than the drill sergeants. He feels an itch across his skull when he thinks of the doctors.

“Can I, sir?” he asks, in a playful voice, chewing up rice and putting a fist under his chin. “Or, do I remember how old I am?”

“A soft check for amnesia ain’t meant to be offensive.”

“I don’t have amnesia,” Xavier laughs, sneaky fingers going for an egg roll. The bag is shoved his way. Agustin hasn’t actually eaten anything. “I’m twenty-three. It’s Thursday, November sixteenth. Do you want the president? I kind of fucking hate him, but—”

“Alright, alright,” the clinic worker flaps his hand and laughs. He does have a nice laugh. Really rich, from the chest. Makes Xavier’s body feel less tense, so he drops the knee that’s tucked up and leans back in the chair. Remnants remain of the food, but he’d mostly devoured all of it. They fall into that easy, comfortable silence again. The street outside is mostly quiet, except for the occasional car, headlights bouncing off the walls inside the clinic office.

“M’gonna get you set up with a room, alright?” He starts to get up and Xavier leans forward quickly.

“Just for the night,” he says, his voice suddenly strung up—tight with stress. He feels a shiver run over his spine, his fingers curling. He thinks of the gun in the filing cabinet. And the doctors. “People are going to—I just shouldn’t be—Not in one place for too long.” He tries to explain it, but the words tumble out in a mess and he gently folds his hands behind his neck. He looks at the condensation on the can of soda that he’d drained in seconds. His eyes waver up.

“Alright,” he replies softly. Doesn’t push that, or ask any more questions. Instead, he comes around the side of the desk. Xavier slowly moves the chair backward so there’s still a bubble between them. Until the man lifts his hand and extends it. “I’m Tino, by the way. Didn’t introduce myself.”

Xavier is still thinking about the gun. But, he’s also sleepy from all the food. He’s tired from all the running. He looks at the callused palm in front of him and lifts his own pale hand. He gently slides it into the handshake and squeezes.

“I’m Xavier Wolffe.”

“Well, Xavier Wolffe,” Tino says with a big earnest smile. “Lets get you settled in a room.”

[unknownjpegs]

scarf

The water is choppy as his old dinghy carries them over the inlet. The spray wets their jackets and faces, but they’re Innsmouthers. They gear up for the sea, instead of expecting it to mind them—and the salt doesn’t even cut their cheeks any longer. The wind picks up as well, as the wind does in Innsmouth. Batters at them, turns their skin pink. Xavier tucks his chin deeper into the too-short scarf he wears as he navigates the boat.

“Bad omen,” Lark comments, at ease in the dinghy in a way that Benji had not been. He leans back with his arms across his chest, moving in tandem with the waves. He rolls along with the movement of the water, the same way Xavier does. It’s in their blood; it’s generational muscle memory. It had been endearing, though, watching Benji struggle…

“Winds against us,” his friend continues. Remembering the handsome investigators tight grip on either side of the boat, as he’d navigated this exact path, makes Xavier grin to himself. Mainlander, he’d joked with an affection that he’d never used with that term before. An affection he did not usually have with strangers. Were they still strangers?

“We’ve had worse omens,” Xavier replies, with a big wolfish smile. The wind whips his scarf back and forth. Lark sighs and pulls his beanie down over his face, instead of continuing the conversation over the sound of the boat’s engine, or the water churning beneath them.

—

“All this for a scarf?”

Lark holds arms around himself, with quick glances back and forth around the little shack Xavier had spent the night in. He holds Benji’s scarf in his hands, staring at it, trying not to remember the warm press of their bodies together. His thumb indents the material—his arms had fit so nicely. Snug. The haze of morning had been hard to wake up to. Xavier clears his throat and shoves it awkwardly into the pocket of his big rain jacket. Lark pretends not to notice, his eyes constantly swaying to the window.

“I bet Hannah’s wouldn’t sell him another,” Xavier jokes, to try and lessen the tension in his friends shoulders. They’re not that far from where the girl had been killed—not that from from nightfall either. They’re good fishermen. Good Innsmouthers. Wouldn’t be caught dead on water at night, not even if Xavier was determined to have this scarf by the time he makes it back to his parents Bed and Breakfast.

But Lark always has worse things to worry about.

“Your mom would knit him a custom one. Put a little ‘B’ on it.” Lark indicates the one around his own throat, dark black stark against his pale skin. His mother had to restitch a different initial on it, years ago—but Lark had been so humbled and grateful, he wore it anyway. Even with the old letter.

“Probably,” Xavier sighs.

“I heard he knows Ben,” Lark says absentmindedly. He’s shifting, foot to foot. Xavier feels a tiny needle of cold underneath his sternum. The injection spreads the cold, across his chest, down his arms.

“What?”

“Yeah—he was at the morgue. I mean, duh, investigating—Jesus, just what I’ve heard, man.” Lark laughs, must be the look on Xavier’s face. He works his jaw to make it unstick, eyes rolling, a hand rubbing his mouth.

The sound of a boat engine makes both men freeze. Lark’s face, already a ghostly visage, pales even further, to something almost sheet white. Worse than. His black eyes go wide, hands raising almost unconsciously, as if in surrender. Xavier scrambles to the window, to look out across the inlet—and his stomach drops.

“Tell me that’s not—”

“How did you know he was following us?” Xavier’s voice sounds distant even to himself, like someone else is asking the question. Lark yanks the hat from his head, fingers digging into his messy blond hair. He blinks, panicked, a tremor of terror on his jaw. The shack feels colder than it did during the storm. It feels desolate. That girl had been killed so close to here. Xavier had heard her insides had been pulled out.

The police cruiser coasts closer.

“I didn’t—it was just—a feeling—Xavier, I can’t,” Lark presses toward him, kneading the hat in his tattooed hands. “I can’t get picked up by the police again.”

Xavier knows the cruiser. It has a constantly busted right fog light. He’d fixed it once, spent a Saturday working on it. He closes his eyes to that memory, hands touching Lark’s shoulders.

“He’s going to pull up on a dock with the cruiser. I tied the dinghy off out back. Take it and go to Ben’s dock.” Lark reels for a moment, bewildered. But the sound of the boat is suddenly cut off, and that horror comes back swiftly with a vengeance. Glosses Lark’s eyes over and he’s suddenly making an anxious dash for the door.

There is a moment where he glances back that Xavier almost asks him to stay, selfishly. Instead, the door closes behind him and Xavier faces the window.

—

“Detective,” Xavier greets, as he opens the side door to the shack. He steps out, in a playful, long legged gait. A silly stumble. His hands are stuffed into his pockets, one fist wrapped around the purloined scarf. For some reason, it gives him an odd note of comfort. Like he is on a mission—reunite the scarf with the man who lost it.

“I shoulda known.” Detective Ainsworth adopts that pose. That cop pose. One hand on his belt, the other on his hip, leg cocked. Not for the first time, since running into Harrison Ainsworth, does Xavier try and see what he’d first ever saw in him. It’s completely absent now, anyway, when Harrison stares at him with that poisonous, annoyed look.

“You got me,” Xavier laughs, hands raised. He takes a few more steps toward the police detective. Harrison is a good few years older than him, but shorter. Which isn’t hard. Most people find themselves shorter than Xavier. Yet, his height doesn’t make him feel big in front of his former ‘lover’. It makes him feel awkward. Stretched out and worn thin. He clears his throat. “I’m not doing anything, alright? Just came out—”

“This might shock you, Xavier,” Harrison drawls. “But I do not give a fuck what you are doing.”

An awkward silence yawns out between the two of them. Xavier slowly lowers his hands. He tucks them back into his coat pockets. The scarf brushes his fingers.

“Anyone with you?” the detective finally asks in a tired voice. He clips his words out, like he’s practicing for his big city job one day. Innsmouthers run their words together; accidentally formed their own bad accent. Mix of all the worst parts of New England. But Harrison enunciates, slowly. Like Xavier needs to be talked to like a child.

“No.”

“I find that very hard to believe.”

“I thought you said you don’t give a fuck?” Xavier counters, his lip curling. The sudden anger takes hold of his heart and makes him feel hot underneath his layers. He uses his height then, straightens his shoulders, tucks his chin down to stare at the older man. Harrison isn’t impressed—but he has that slight betraying change of expression, no matter how subtle. Xavier recognizes it on everyone he’s ever intimidated. Primal sort of fear, faced with something angry and big.

“Doesn’t mean I’m stupid. You’re either out here trying to find a crime scene—or you found some sad loser to fuck you.”

The anger drains quick like it’s been lanced with a scalpel across his throat. The cold returns, and it’s worse, burrowing into his bones. Turns his insides out—just like the girl; this is his ritual torture. He swallows and glances at the ground, brows furrowed. He tries to find a comeback, something witty but his tongue sits fat behind his teeth. There is none anyway. There is no way to say I’m not like that or remind Harrison that he’d been the one to tell Xavier this isn’t anything serious.

“That your boat? Looks like the sad loser’s abandoning you too.”

He glances up and watches Lark cut expertly through waves. His beanie is back on to hide his stark blond hair. Xavier tries to let that make him feel better; that Harrison clearly doesn’t recognize the little criminal. But there is a void inside him that feels unable to be filled by anything; that void was pulled open by mean, ugly hands just a second ago, leaving tattered edges that burn. He coughs into his hand and shrugs a shoulder.

“Well, get in,” Harrison snaps, pointing to his own boat. Xavier does.

—

“You missed dinner,” his mother says in that naturally accusatory voice as he steps through the mudroom. Xavier has to blink a few times to register he’s been spoken too, and as he does, she softens. Her expression goes from cautiously annoyed to genuinely worried, in the quick fashion mothers are able to change moods. “Are you alright, hon?”

“Uh,” Xavier shrugs off the rain coat. He puts it where he always puts it. Right next to his fathers. His hand lingers on it for a second, then slowly dips into the pocket. He pulls the scarf, trying to keep it close to his chest, so his mother wont ask questions about it.

“Uh is not a complete sentence.”

“I’m actually—I’m going to go to bed,” Xavier says, sidestepping around her.

“It’s only six—”

“I know.”

The Bed and Breakfast is a little explosion of color. His father had tried to keep the theme nautical navy and white, but his mother hadn’t let that stick for very long. The living room opens up wide, all in yellows and oranges. A pirates cutlass hangs above a fireplace that gets used in the harsh, island winters. Pictures line the walls, some of them as recent as a year ago. Some as old as his grandfathers grandfather—and paintings too. All kinds of paintings, none of which go together.

Usually, being in his childhood home turned business was enough to make him feel better. It’s why, despite the constant teasing of his older sister, he’d never tried to move out. That, and real estate in Innsmouth being sparse, to say the least. But The Cove had always been a little place Xavier could feel—could feel good being in. He licks his lips and looks down at the scarf in his hands.

“Xavier,” his mother calls, as he quick steps up the stairs. Her voice is soft and worried, enough to make him hurry the pace.

—

When he wakes up, it’s firmly night. The light from his desk is the only thing on, making eerie shadows dance in the room. His open window lets in a foggy chill, but Xavier has always run hot. He’d torn his shirt off the second he’d gotten into his room, constricted painfully by the fabric. His chest had hurt, had felt knotted and strange, stomach roiling. He’d slept in his jeans, which had twisted uncomfortably around him. Sweat makes his hair itchy and sit messily. And embarrassingly, he finds, he’d also slept with Benji’s scarf wrapped around a tight fist.

For a long while, he stays laying in the bed, staring at his ceiling. There is a water spot in the corner that’s been there as long as he’s been alive. There’s a secret drawing of a sea monster his younger sister had put there, standing on her toes in his bed. There’s a poster on the wall, that hides an envelope full of money that he’s labeled ESCAPE FUNDS, even though he knows he’ll live and die in Innsmouth.

Live and die the disgusting island—

He presses palms to his eyes, feeling a prickling behind them. Xavier tries to breathe, but the feeling gets stuck, like there’s a hand inside his chest holding all the air. His heart squeezes, irregular rhythms. He hiccups, stutters, grinds his teeth together. The scratchy material of the scarf almost hurts his eye—Xavier has good pain tolerance. He’s not bothered by—

He sits up in the bed in a swift motion, staring down at the scarf. The wind whispers underneath the open windowsill. But he always runs hot. Xavier’s thumb brushes the fabric of the scarf, touching it softly. He shivers, bringing it up underneath his nose. For a moment, he feels himself on the dinghy. The rocking of the waves. Benji’s gloved hands holding on for dear life. Laying on the floor together. The morning sun touching their cheeks to wake them up.

Xavier stands up.

—

When Benji opens the door, Xavier can only stare. His eyes are buzzing in his skull, tunnel vision focused anyway—he’d moved from the third floor to the second and to the guest hallway without thinking much. Almost like sleepwalking. There had been static between his ears the entire time, bare feet making no noise because he knew every step that creaked. Xavier’s holding the scarf still, shirt still forgotten back in his room. The button on his jeans is undone, hips barely holding them up.

Xavier realizes he must look like a fucking mess compared to the investigator. Who looks—well. Jesus. Looks as he does; white button up rolled to his forearms, collar undone to expose throat and the subtle peek of chest hair. Suspenders on, and hair messy in a way that looked perfect. Effortless. He looks surprised for a moment and the expression is nice on Benji; lifts his eyebrows, parts his lips. Then he closes that shock quickly, a bit of his snide grin returning as he folds thick arms over his chest.

“Help you, Xavier?” The familiarity of his name makes Xavier shiver. More of that, please.

Something automatic happens to him then. It feels oily and sick, but not something he’s entirely in control of either. He’d known, since he stepped out of his room, that he was coming downstairs for this. Xavier’s shoulder connects with the door frame, his long body leaning. His chin tilted down, smile playfully coy. Look at me, he invites, with careful body language.

“Look what I found.” Even his voice changes. Xavier feels like some strange lizard, scales changing colors to something appealing and pretty. He holds up the scarf in his fist. He’ll miss it, when Benji takes it back. He doesn’t, just yet, though. Benji stands there, one hand still on the open door.

I know you like me. I’m pretty. I know I am. And I know you’d let me in, if I asked, right? And Xavier imagines stepping inside. Or you found some sad loser to fuck you. He imagines making himself forget that miserable fucking scene at the inlets. Running hands up Benji’s chest, tucking fingers under suspenders, pushing them off his broad shoulders. The only way he really knows how to tuck bad memories to the side; bending his head lower, their mouths pressing together. He can almost feel warm palms across his sides, down to his hips and lower.

It wasn’t his fault. Xavier didn’t mean for people to look at him the way they did; and when he’d found out what those looks meant, he didn’t know what else to do with them. He remembers laying on the floor. Chest to his back. Warm sun. He feels like that image is slowly being eaten at the edges, and he can’t stop himself, because the overwhelming urge to not feel sad anymore is pushing him closer. Xavier’s other palm coasts over the door, pushing it wider.

“Xavier,” Benji says.

He blinks. His eyelashes stick somewhat, oddly wet. A dark brown palm is extended in front of him. The sudden sear of rejection presses into his skin like a hot brand, makes his shoulders jump. Whatever layers he’d put on to look appealing drop suddenly. Xavier deflates slightly, looks down at his fist and the scarf wrapped around it. He laughs and slowly extends it.

“Christ, I should leave you alone, huh?” Xavier swallows around the words, posture going vulnerably awkward. He laughs again, trying to ease the tension. He quickly drops his hand from the door, arms folding around his chest. “I don’t even know what time it is—you’re working, probably. I mean, of course you’re fucking working. You’re here. Working. I’ve been—like actually annoying you—”

“Didn’t say that.” Benji is looking down at the scarf, instead of Xavier. His thick, dark brows are knotted together. A curl has fallen across his forehead. It looks oddly boyish. Mars the serious investigator look.

Instead of trying to desperately fill the silence, Xavier sits in it. Watches Benji toss the scarf to the side, onto the bed. Its rumpled, he notices. Actually, the entire room is a bit of a mess. Clothes from the past few days strewn, the hard oak desk covered in papers. A laptop sits on the end of the bed. Guilt and shame make Xavier dizzy for a moment, his eyes blinking up to the ceiling to catch traitorous tears that stick there. He’d be even more humiliated if he cried, even though he feels a lot like crying. Harrison’s words rattle inside his skull, until he hears the door shut.

Xavier jumps back slightly, missing inches between the two of them suddenly making them close. Benji brushes a hand back through his curls, but it hardly does anything to tame the wild black mane.

“M’goin’ outside for some air.” The invitation lingers. It isn’t suggestive, Xavier finds. No look and no suggestion. He tucks knuckles against his jaw, a hand folded under his elbow.

“Well,” Xavier says, smiling. Feeling some of that smile, like he’s back in charge of what he’s doing. Not a ghost inside his own body. “I’d kind of be the shittiest host if I didn’t follow you.”

“You’ve been alright so far,” Benji tosses back easily, his own grin no longer a sneer.

—

Xavier grabs them both hoodies to brave the cold outside. It’s not so bad, because The Cove doesn’t sit as close to the water as other places. Instead beach stretches out from the back porch, slopes downhill. It’s not the prettiest view on Innsmouth—but the chairs are plush and comfortable. Oversized because every Wolffe got too big for normal chairs. Benji sinks into one with a groaning sigh, hands tucked behind his head briefly.

Instead of sitting right away, Xavier leans against the back porch railing, peering out into the pitch black. The only illumination is a half there moon above the ocean. It looks bigger than it is. He’d heard stories that in the city, the moon was smaller, or had the illusion of being small. No stars either.

The spark of a lighter makes him look over his shoulder. Benji holds a cigarette outstretched.

“Oh my God, you’re a fucking saint,” Xavier says, reaching for it as he turns his body and falls into the chair opposite. He tucks a knee up, hand cupping his shin, posture poor as he slumps. He takes a long drag off the cigarette as he watches Benji lighting his own. There is something strangely alluring about the entire scene. He’d taken the chair facing away from the beach, his back to the moon. The clash of black against the flicker of his lighter makes Benji look like a painting.

A bit of the shame returns, but it’s dull. Benji had not mentioned Xavier’s attempt, had accepted the giant hoodie and company.

They fall into comfortable silence together. It lasts until about mid way through their cigarettes, until conversation starts. And then conversation doesn’t stop.

—

“It’s just a rite of passage,” Xavier explains, grinning ear to ear. He sits lower in the chair, long legs thrown out in front of him. One of Benji’s sort of has to be tucked between them because the chairs are close—but it doesn’t feel awkward. It doesn’t feel suggestive, either. The closeness is comforting. It’s warm. Nice.

“How many lose their fingers to hypothermia?”

“Oh, fuck off,” Xavier laughs, plucking at the strings on the hoodie. He pauses for a long, dramatic moment. “Maybe one or two.” Benji snorts at the theatrics, head tilted back. He’s also put himself into an odd position, one leg drawn up, spine bent. He looks younger—maybe its the hoodie. It’s a dark forest green, swallows him. There’s a hole in the collar that sort of opens up, reveals the white of his shirt underneath.

He’d been entertained, hearing about Xavier’s youth on the island. Stupid childrens game of putting hands into the water just as winter started. Whoever lasted the longest was a true Innsmouther. Xavier remembered the biting, numbing feeling—could use that pain as a comparison for the rest of his life. He looks down at his hands, the callouses on his palms from rope work, scars from hauling catch. He can’t ever remember them being small, but they must have been. At least when he was a child.

Benji taps a cigarette from his pack, holding it up.

“Oh,” Xavier purrs, eyes narrowing with a grin. “Last one before we go to bed?”

“Don’t usually chain smoke like this,” Benji says, laughing. He has a nice laugh too, when it’s not just that little snort of air. Well, those are cute, Xavier thinks. Really cute, actually. But his laugh is a little beautiful. Has a rich, deep note to it. “Share?”

Xavier chews on his thumb nail, staring at Benji. The moonlight sort of illuminates him and his dark adjusted eyes can see features. He seems impossibly handsome in that moment, holding up his cigarette between them. Not for the first time does guilt push up through his chest again, that Xavier had tried to—he smiles and leans forward. He takes hold of the bottom of Benji’s chair and uses that as leverage to pull his own closer.

“I’ve already mooched off you all night. What’s one more?”

“I know how you can repay me,” Benji says, as he puts the cigarette into his mouth and lights it. The fire dances, pretty and sharp. Xavier tries not to pay attention to the way his hand closes around that fire to protect it. He has good hands.

“I’m an awful cook,” Xavier says, taking the cigarette when it gets passed to him. He takes a long drag. Tries not to think about how their mouths will be touching the filter, in tandem. “So don’t ask that.”

“Got a library card?”

He sputters out a laugh. His voice is hoarse he realizes. Throat almost sore, from the cigarettes and also the talking. The never ending volley back and forth between them. Xavier lifts his hand for the cigarette again. Their fingers brush.

“M’serious,” Benji says, smiling that new soft smile. Not new, probably. But, new for Xavier. He can picture him smiling like that with his partner, maybe with the captain of the boat he’d come in on. For friends, he smiles like that privately. For his friends. “Need to get a bit of readin’ done up on the place.”

“You’re sitting with an Innsmouth expert.”

“Does the Innsmouth expert have a library card, yeah?”

Xavier laughs, leaning forward to offer the last of the cigarette for Benji. They’re oddly close then, bending toward each other like they’re sharing a secret. Xavier taps a finger on his lips, smiling. His eyes hurt too. They’d been out there so long, sleepiness has started creeping up on him.

“I’ll do you one better.”

“Yeah?”

“My younger sister literally works there.”

They both laugh, even though it isn’t funny. There’s no joke. But there’s something anyway, something draped between them, in the privacy of the night, on the porch, in the waning dark. Xavier thinks and puts a name to it and finds he likes it so much it makes his smile hurt his cheeks. He likes being friends with Benji.

[unknownjpegs]

medical examiner

When they stumble out of the bar, that’s when Benny slides his curling hand around Benji’s hip. It’s a yank of a motion that pulls him backward, his taller chest curving around him, face burying into the crook of his neck. His lips find a pulse immediately to kiss hungrily while the cold night air makes them both shiver. Feels like he’s waited all night for that simple touch—because Benji has a few boundaries he’s already bumped into, little tectonic plates where their preferences don’t necessarily align. Ben never minds adjusting to fit someone else. Never was a good Innsmouther in that way; less stubborn than the whole fucking island it felt like.

But a good indicator it wasn’t going to last, anyway. Only can bump together without fitting correctly for so long. And that’s okay. Ben’s not looking for long term and neither is Benji and that’s why it worked. Even if sometimes it didn’t.

Tonight, it works.

“Come back t-to mine,” Benny says against warm, inviting skin. Benji isn’t his boyfriend, but he also isn’t casual. So sometimes it feels like he’s still holding the door open waiting for the other man to walk through. Sometimes it’s a no, sometimes an enthusiastic yes, sometimes an ambivalent why not?

“Got an exam tomorrow, don’t you?” Benji is fishing for his cigarettes, pulling two free. He holds one up over his shoulder and Benny, hand still possessively tight around Benji’s hip, just leans forward to take it between his teeth. Worm it into position with his mouth.

“I st-study better after I cum once or twice.”

“Well, is it once or twice, Ben?”

Benny leans again to catch the tip of his cigarette in the lighters flame as Benji holds it up. He puffs a few times to get the cherry nice and red and then exhales smoke from his nose. He glances Benji’s way with a snide, curling grin. Both his hands tighten around his casual friend’s hips then.

“Or three times,” he comments and Benji snorts.

—

“Shouldn’t you be studying, yeah?”

“Is this—the best time—hah—to ask?”

Benny leans his weight forward, hands braced on dark brown tattooed thighs. His head hangs, sweat slicked blond strands sticking to his cheeks, to his neck. He pants harshly, hands squeezing. Benji’s warm palms slide appreciatively over his lower back, fingernails pointing and dragging slightly to make him gasp and arch against the feeling. Makes Benji moan for him to shift like that, so he does it again, presses himself backward. It makes his eyes roll because—well, he’s not admitting it aloud to give Benji an ego. Just, he’s never been a man to care about size but the stretched feeling, having to work a little to get all inches when he’s riding like this?

Makes him cautious about sitting in the rigid fucking school desks tomorrow for his anatomy lesson.

“I can study later,” Benny breathes out, shifting until his back is to Benji’s chest. His messy bed barely accommodates them because his stipend is fucking garbage. His apartment is the size of a closet, with a barely working stove a fridge that barely works. He closes his eyes to the sensation of Benji shifting his thighs up, arms around his waist to give himself leverage to continue fucking upward in harsh, powerful strokes.

He sees stars when Benji slams up in a way that makes his whole body jerk and tremble and his hands shoot in different directions—one to grip into a forearm, the other to dig into Benji’s hair behind his head and he isn’t quiet about it either. Loud, desperate, chattered out words of encouragement until they’re both ridiculously sticky and jelly boned and limp.

“Nice,” Benny breathes out, barely able to say the word coherently, glancing at a trembling hand. Full body with that one. Little aftershocks keep making his hips twitch, which keeps making Benji grunt. He can feel his chest rapidly rising and falling underneath him. “Three’s a ch-charm. M’study now, I think.”

—

Benji is content with his phone as Benny reads. He lays in the bed, slightly curled up, just a pillow beneath his head. Ben keeps a highlighter in his mouth for when he needs it.

He thinks that’s what makes this entire thing work so well. Not just the sex, which is far better than Benny was expecting. That was just coming off island though, where half the residents were married and the other half he knew since birth. Benji wasn’t necessarily what he’d consider a stranger, because they’ve gotten closer than he’d expected. Partially has to do with both of them knowing there is an expiration on the horizon, so there is no expectations to fill.

But it works because of that. They go on dates. Out to a restaurant, bar, movie. Spend the night at each others run down apartments. Benny even talks to Benji, who even talks back. About Innsmouth, about college (about what degree he’d rather be getting), about music and poetry and Benji talks about home, his sister, a mysterious man named Maran that comes up in stories too frequently to be anything other than a best friend.

And despite all that, the ease is because they both know, one day Benny’s open door shuts.

Which it does. Has to. They break up amicably and Benji even sees him off the dock. Has that pretty scowl on his face the whole time, cheeks darker for the quick kisses that Benny places across his face, promising nothing. Because, there is nothing to promise. Just a good thank you.

Innsmouth pulls them apart, because even if Benny escaped the island for a while, the island will never let him stay gone for too long.

It’s ironic that Innsmouth brings them together, years and years later.

***

“Your hairs go-gotten longer,” is the first thing Benny says when Benji steps out of the sleek black car. The sea’s angry that day, so the wind is whipping painfully across the dark empty lot. There’s streetlights on this part of town, luckily, but it’s eerie if you’re not used to it. Another man exits the drivers side; someone older, salt and pepper in his facial hair, lines at the corner of his eyes. Handsome in a way that is approachable and not at the same time. That sort of good looking that a man must be aware of, but not use to his advantage until he really needs to. Charm the fucking pants off someone, he’s sure. Tino, Benji had told him. Just Tino.

“So’s your facial hair,” Benji replies back, stepping around him, toward the Innsmouth morgue. No handshake, hug, hello. Benny likes that, would be fake otherwise and he trusted Benji to never fake it. He looks to the partner, Tino, and holds up a pale hand in a greeting. Gets a nod in reply. He bobs his head in mockery, turning to the doors that Benji is already sweeping through, as if he knows the building.

“My m-morgues your morgue, man,” he jokes over his shoulder.

—

Benny loops long fingers into the handle of cold cell locker. All three men stand around it, in the little Innsmouth morgue. The two private investigators look prepared, Benji with a notepad open (classic, of course, old school he would), pen clicked. Tino, with his phone open, camera prepared. Benny pauses to think about how the police would hate him for this—then he smiles. He yanks up the handle and swings it open, uses the same lazy hand to slowly slide Sarah Laun out of her temporary storage.

“Hope you’ve s-seen dead bodies before,” he comments as he steps back from the corpse. Benny pinches the white sheet and pulls it back. When neither men recoil at the sight of Sarah’s pale, dead body, Benny steps back and sits on a stool.

“Cause of death?” Tino asks, clinical note to his voice. His brows are upturned. Morose.

“Asphyxia.” Benny points to his own neck and then gestures toward the body. “She was dead be-before they opened her up, at least. Gloves are behind you.” Tino turns to yank two free and then snap them on himself. He leans in, tilts the blond womans head slightly to the side to get a decent picture of the dark purple mark around her neck.

“Y’know what they used for this?” Benji points his pen along the wicked torn open seam down Sarah’s body. Throat to groin.

“Gut hook,” Benny replies. He turns on his stool to find the clipboard of his notes and then passes it over to Benji, who immediately begins transcribing them. He can see the start of a sketch as well. “Missing all her internals. Ha-haven’t found ‘em yet.”

“Only twenty two,” Tino murmurs, using his knuckles to gently tilt her head back so it’s straight. Benny gets it. Sarah’s end had been brutal, even if she was dead before they’d gutted her. There had been skin samples under her fingernails. She’d fought back, even if it hadn’t helped her keep her life.

“Twenty two and owned a home in Innsmouth,” he comments. Benny stands from the stool, pulling a pack of gum from his pocket. He offers Tino a stick, smiling his condescending sneer. “Mint helps,” is all he says as he shoves some into his own mouth.

“Anyway, she’s rich or h-her parents are, right? That’s why you two are here.” Benji’s lip curls as he looks up—Benny sort of remembers that about him. Real strong sense of right and wrong. Murdering is real wrong, even if the victim was a gentrifying college graduate who romanticized a tiny island that sometimes gets forgotten on maps.

“Police ain’t makin’ much headway,” Tino says in a low tone. He goes from handsome to intimidating fast, eyes dark with disapproval at Benny’s flippant attitude. It makes him want to yank out the other bodies and show him with Innsmouther’s die from—but. He can’t do that. Would be trouble for Benji and Benny still holds a tiny little flame in himself for the curly haired, scowling private eye.

“They w-won’t be,” he says instead, settling back onto his stool.

“Never do,” Benji snips, handing the clipboard back. I missed you, Benny thinks, containing a grin as he tosses his autopsy notes back onto the desk. Not ‘I missed sleeping with you’ but, missed someone else as fucking snide and bitter. Missed interesting personalities, more notes and layers. Benny tucks his elbows back on his desk, legs thrown out. “We’re goin’ to see the crime scene tomorrow. Anythin’ to know?”

“Didn’t see it. How’re you g-getting there?”

“Boat,” Benji says flatly. Benny slaps hands to his cheeks, shocked expression, gasping.

“No fucking way? Around Innsmouth? By boat?”

“Can y’all not start?” Tino is tucking the sheet back over Sarah Laun. He surprises Ben by doing a quick cross over his chest. It subdues him a bit, but he sticks his tongue out petulantly at Benji who pointedly looks back to his notes. “You know Xavier Wolffe?” The pen scratches hard on the notepad, Benji’s head snapping up to Tino who stares at Benny with the same dark, intense expression.

Benny has to sigh then, his head rolling back, loose on his neck as he stares at the ceiling. He kicks himself off the stool and strides toward the body. Benny shoves it back in, with none of the pretense of respect that the older man has, slapping the locker shut.

“Sh-Shouldn’t mess with Xavier,” he says mildly, staring directly at Benji as he says it. Especially you, he conveys with a stare. Benji meets it, chin tilted up slightly, eyes hooded and sleepy. “He’s got a t-temper. Mean with it. Broke a man’s jaw last month. Kicked him s-so hard it snapped.”

“He do jail time for that?” Tino asks with a whistle. He puts hands to his hips, eyes directed toward his shorter partner. Benji doesn’t look up from the notes he’s suddenly become interested in. Ben raised a hand in bored indifference, flapped it back and forth.

“Night in d-drunk tank. Guy deserved it.”

“Some police force,” the older man mumbles, tucking his phone into the inside pocket of his jacket. The two private investigators share a silent language then; tilted brows, shrugged shoulders, steps back from the locker. Benny watches in mute fascination at two people navigating quietly like that. He fingers a strand of his blond hair, leaning against the cold storage, staring at them.

“Innsmouth lives and breathes its fishermen. Xavier’s a f-fishermen.” He pauses and it’s only because he knows Benji that he even continues. Wouldn’t if he didn’t. Benny is as bad as any other local, even if he stayed off island for a long time getting a degree—just to come crawling back. He wouldn’t talk…but it is Benji. “And his dads on t-the local council. Suppose you c-could say he’s got a little sway, is all.”

“Ah,” Tino makes a sound of affirmation. Clears things up for him. “M’steppin’ out, Benji. Wrap up here?” Ben blinks a few times, because he didn’t think it was that obvious how much he wanted the two of them to be alone; or he’d vastly underestimated how observant the older man was. Private investigator and all that. He imagined Tino closing his eyes with his finger to his temple and then repeating his little ah as math equations solved around his head like a dream. This man wants to speak to you alone, Benji.

Benny pouts about it as he stays leaned against the locker.

“Got an issue with Xavier, then?” Benji asks once the morgue doors swing close. He’s sneering a bit with the question. In the years, he’s grown more into his facial hair. Long hair curly and wild with it, his glasses a bit oversized. He also looks tired. A little worn, with dark marks under the eyes. Benny crosses toward Benji, hands in his white coat pockets.

“First name basis w-with a local already?”

“You’re a local.”

“Guess that’s t-two locals.” Benny holds his fingers up, wiggling them. “Hm, gonna make it a th-third?” He teases and takes another step forward. Benji doesn’t give way, stands there, with his notepad in one hand, the other shoved into his dark jacket pocket. He has to tilt his head up for them to make eye contact. Benny tries to find that spark that had ignited between them one day in a bar. Looks into Benji’s dark brown eyes, thick black eye lashes pretty. His hand hovers, just about an inch from touching the investigators hip.

He’d known there were strangers at Innsmouth because there was a new boat in the harbor. Always a bit of a fuss when someone’s taking a spot in the docks that isn’t an islander. Benny had stood on the porch of his little beach cabin, coffee in hand, watching Benji and Tino off board. He’d seen, in just a brief glimpse, the captain of the boat. Shaved head, tanned skin. Maran, he’d somehow known, taking a deep drag on a cigarette and glancing out to the crashing, cruel sea. The best friend.

“You should leave, Benji,” he says quietly. “Innsmouth’s not safe.”

“What the man do?”

“Huh?”

“Why’d Xavier break his jaw?”

Benny blinks, hand falling away and stepping away. He laughs then, tucks it into his pocket shaking his head. It felt funny to know Benji was thinking of someone else, looking up at him, at the exact time Benny was thinking of someone else looking down at him. Before he gets a chance to answer, though, hurried footsteps echo through the concrete steps leading down into the morgue.

The doors push open and Tino stands there, darkly glaring, grimace on his mouth. He stands there, hands on his hips again like a pissed off father staring at the grill where all his salmon has burnt to a crisp.

“Speakin’ of police. Outside.”

The air gets briefly sucked out the room, hairs rising up on Benny’s neck and arms. He washes cold and then hot and grinds his teeth together.

“Got a good feelin’ you aren’t their favorite person, eh, Ben?”

“I’ll handle them,” he says. When he steps around Benji, he briefly puts a hand to his bicep. He squeezes, softly. “The back d-door leads to my cabin.” He spares Tino a twisted smile, raising his brows suggestively as he walks toward the door. “Don’t drink all my beer.”

[unknownjpegs]

private eye

The newcomers arrive on a Monday. Day after rest, so no one’s in a good mood. Particularly not the dockmaster. He stands there, thick arms crossed over his barrel chest, cap tilted down to shadow his eyes. Wiry gray hair peeks out in tufts, beard unruly—wouldn’t be surprised if a fish bone were sticking out the whole time. Not a man to annoy when the sun’s only just rising. It’s high tide for another hour or so and he’s got work to do; he’s telling them such, in much less polite words, as Xavier hauls the crab traps.

He passes them over his shoulder, half facing the strangers. Lark’s deft hands make quick work of snatching and tugging them into the boat. Fresh repairs—something keeps busting in. Stealing the catch. He shakes out his cold, cramping hands and blows warm breath into them. It doesn’t help.

Xavier watches the dockmaster bar them entry. They can maneuver as far as their own station—they’d come in on a boat themselves. Nothing fancy, but a decent sized one with a good paint job, the captain of which looks young. Shaved head, leans over the side with his arms crossed on the railing, listens in on the conversation. Dockmaster Fontaine will respect a sailor, but there’s limits. Not an Innsmouther. So he’s got a fresh dock receipt in his hand, but the two men in black coats will move no further down the line.

“Not on my dock,” Fontaine says in a drawling New Englander accent. He spits for good measure onto the wooden planks and then sniffs something fierce and rude. “Leave m’boys alone. Go’n do your business in town.”

Xavier wants to point out they’re not his boys. He’s just the manager of the fucking dock. Usually a good enough one, helps orchestrate haul and catch. Makes sure fights don’t break out among the fishermen when fires start catching amongst them all. You’re your own man on the docks, though, long as you got a boat. Innsmouth has no overarching employer. Paid by the pound for what you catch commercially to the city that comes sweeping in to take haul. Leeches.

So, if he wants to talk to the strangers, he’s going to talk to the strangers. And he has his eye on one. They’re a duo; one older, one younger. The older is taller, but still a good few inches shorter than Dockmaster Fontaine. But, he doesn’t bend to the ire of the fishermen. Nautical men can be a terrifying sort. The sea makes you brutal sometimes. Unforgiving lifestyle. But the stranger only nods, doesn’t back away yet. He has a salt and pepper beard, wrinkles at the corner of his eyes like he’s the smiling sort. His black jacket is a nice peacoat. Warm. Good for the battering coastal wind that’s slicing up against Xavier’s bare arms and hands.

The shorter one is younger. Looks a lot less impressed by Fontaine; a lot less patient, too. He’s got thick eyebrows that knot in together to form a line between them. His hair is curly, gone unruly from the boat ride over most likely. He keeps having to adjust his thick framed glasses because strands are catching in the hinges. Xavier tilts his head so he can see better around Fontaine’s mass. He’s in a bomber jacket instead of the peacoat. Looks less official. Maybe they play good cop, bad cop.

Xavier stomps a bit, pretends he’s trying to get warm. His thick soled boots make solid, satisfying sounds on the docks planks. The younger of the duo looks over at him then, black eyes furious. He’s handsome, in this gloomy sort of way. Xavier slides his baseball cap so it’s turned around, brim to the back of his neck. He slips his hand into his pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes.

“Don’t be stupid, Xavier.” Lark is leaning over the boat, staring at him. His pale cheeks are wind battered and pink, his eyes narrowed and suspicious.

For a minute, he thinks about the implications of that statement. Knows, full well, what Lark means. But the curly haired man is still looking at him, chin tilted down, eyes forward. The taller of the duo chats with Fontaine like he might be able to whittle him down—or give his partner time to slip away. Chat up a local whose willing. Xavier is, he finds, willing. He gestures with his head to the side, throws out a hand to the dock house. Behind, where they won’t be seen as the fishermen ready for the day. As he should be doing and isn’t.

—

Xavier stands with his shoulders up near his ears, hip cocked against the railing. The water below is murky and unforgiving. Laps up against the docks, foams white and then ebbs back out to black. Their water had never been blue, or pretty. Had always been choppy and inky and something to be scared of. Xavier looks at that dark depth and knows. Feels that knowing to his core—like an Innsmouther would.

“Poor timing for a vacation,” he says as the stranger approaches. He’s got his hands in his pockets. Walks confidently. Up close, Xavier can really see their height difference, even as sloped as he keeps his own shoulders. He’s got height on this man—but not build. The man in black is stocky. Broadly built, with strong looking legs in dark denim. He wears boots, similar to Xavier’s. Just as scuffed, which surprises him for some reason.

He falls prey to the same ideologies that the whole town believes—everyone not from Innsmouth must have some rich, fancy fucking life in the city. He’s too old to keep falling for it, but he does. Is surprised, that the jacket looks equally as worn. Disarms him a bit.

Xavier holds out the pack of cigarettes, one already in his mouth, lit. Smoke makes a hazy little trail into the dreary, overcast sky above.

“Business,” is how the man replies as he reaches forward and takes the pack. He taps out a cigarette and slips it between his lips. Xavier steps forward, lighter upraised.

“I know,” he says, striking the lighter and cupping a pale, freckled hand around the flame. He bends forward, eyes all over the strangers face as he touches the fire to the tip of the cigarette. “Here about the murder.” Dark brown eyes drift from the lighter to him. Feels like there’s a hand slipping up under his ribcage; the intensity of that sleepy gaze makes Xavier step back quickly, flicking the lighter a few times before pocketing it. He catches the cigarette pack when its thrown to him.

“You know somethin’ about it?”

“No.

“Thanks then,” the stranger waves a hand, turns on his heel and the smoke follows him in a little trail.

“Hey, hey,” Xavier’s long stride catches up easy. He skips along in front of him, walking backward, smiling from ear to ear. “You’re not gonna find many locals that will talk to you or your friend.” Gulls screech above them, cut through the air like little grey demons. The water roars on, a continuous crash against the shore, against the legs of the dock. Xavier takes a long drag on his own cigarette, then chews at his thumb nail with his head tilted. He scuffs one of his boots on the dock, looks down at the man from between pretty, light red eyelashes. “You’re not a cop, are you? Woulda forced Fontaine if you were.”

“Investigator.”

“A private eye?” Xavier’s smile goes wide again. He leans back against the railing once more, elbows over it. It’s disgustingly cold out, but he’s only in a short sleeve, because he’s used to Innsmouth’s cold. And once he’s on the boat, he’ll shuck on his slicker. But the freedom from the fishermens uniform feels nice. His baseball cap sits low on his head, red strands of his wolfish cut falling everywhere.

He notices that the stranger notices him.

“We don’t got those here,” he continues, tongue wetting his lips briefly, cold knuckles on his own jawline. “I like your accent.” The stranger snorts, but Xavier isn’t lying. It’s not a good accent—it’s terrible actually. British, sure, but he can’t place it. Not that high posh pretty British he hears on television. He doesn’t sound too far off from a New Englander that chews vowels. Xavier watches the man take a long drag on his cigarette. “Can I see your badge?”

“Don’t got one, mate. Not like it is on the telly.” But he fishes into his pocket anyway and holds up his wallet. It flips open and there’s a state official license behind a clear plastic sleeve. Security Services. It has a pretty little emblem on it. Nice and official. Xavier leans in, takes a step forward, gets into the mans space somewhat. He lifts a hand, fingers touching the bottom of the wallet.

“Benji,” he says out loud. Xavier doesn’t back up, even after the wallet is put away. He takes a hit on the cigarette, tilts his head. “I’m Xavier.”

“Not cold, Xavier?” Benji’s eyes make a slow travel over his collarbone and down his tattooed left arm.

“M’real tough,” Xavier says softly, taking another step forward. The private investigator lifts a hand and presses his fingers into Xavier’s chest then. He gently moves him back. His dark eyes look up through pretty, thick eye lashes. Where those fingers touch, a slight burning sensation runs over his skin. Just the delicate fabric of a cotton white t-shirt between his skin and the investigator. Don’t be stupid, Xavier, Lark’s voice whispers in his ear. So he drops the butt of his cigarette and grinds it with his boot. Xavier picks it up then, tucking it into his back pocket.

“You wanted me to come over here for a reason, yeah?”

“I don’t know nothing about the city girl who died,” Xavier says, rolling his eyes. “You know, some Innsmouther gets gutted and no pretty private investigators show up.” He backs away until he feels the railing again. Leans there and crosses an ankle over the other. He lets his elbows rest on the railing as he looks out over the sea. “You’re going to have a bitch of a time with the local PD.”

“Always do,” Benji says with a smirk. He looks good like that. It’s a half tilted thing, menacing and yet still somehow handsome. Xavier drops his chin to his chest.

“You want some advice?”

“No. Wanna know about the girl.”

Xavier pushes off the railing, shoves hands into his back pockets. He leans forward, dark green eyes roaming everywhere. The sea, the dock, the sky, the gulls. Those dark brown eyes, that had appeared black from far away. They’re deep. He’s sleepless looking; like he could use a whole week to catch up on rest and probably still yawn the day after. Xavier finds himself smiling again at the stranger from the city, the private investigator here to pin some Innsmouther for a murder the PD aren’t really bothering with.

“Don’t go on the water at night,” Xavier says quietly. He gets closer—this time there is no hand to stop him. “Alright? Stay off it. Tell your captain to keep to his cabin at night too.” Benji’s brows pull in hard, suspicious. He tilts his chin up a little, like he might question such disturbing, enigmatic advice. But Xavier puts a finger to his lips and smiles. “And—you’re going to need a boat to get to the inlet to look at the scene.”

“Got a boat.”

“Right—A boat, boat. You need a dinghy. And wouldn’t you know,” Xavier begins to turn, to start walking away. “I got a dinghy. So, you let me know when you need to get there.”

“Confident I’m seein’ you again, Xavier?”

He pauses. He can just barely see Lark on the boat, standing there, waiting for him. The gulls continue overhead, in search food or victim. They scream, endlessly. Everyone raised on Innsmouth has lived their whole lives under the cruel eye of waterfowl and their horrible voices. Xavier turns, hands still in his pockets, lifts his chin. Smiles that big, toothy smile of his.

“Stayin’ at the Wolffe’s Cove Inn?” Benji’s eyes narrow further in disbelief. “S’the only bed and breakfast here, at Innsmouth. And,” Xavier pats his chest, continues his walk backwards. “I’m Xavier Wolffe. Son of the owner of the only bed and breakfast in Innsmouth.”