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stupid

wc: 2.5k

Xavier follows him out the blast-open door into the courtyard. The hospital was abandoned when the frontline was pushed back, and evacuations spread over this side of the continent. Like the vine-locked graveyard of a picnic space, the land is battle-torn and desolate.

Perfect place for them to meet. Perfect sort of circumstances; upcoming leave for Benji, a longer period of time to spare. Lovely day, really — blue sky, lack of clouds, cool breeze.

Was perfect. Until one of them had rustled Xavier’s gear wrong, and something unexpected had rolled out.

“Benji—”

He walks faster.

“Benji!”

When he whirls, Xavier is closer than he thought. They nearly collide. For some reason, the possibility is worse than what reality has just offered.

Betrayal, says the back of Benji’s skull, his gut instinct, his bitterness. You were right to worry. It was too good to be true.

Xavier stands before him, eyebrows pulled but not much else. Benji realizes that, maybe for the first time they’ve been around one another, Xavier is trying to control his expression.

He tries not to be hurt by that. There’s so much more to be hurt about.

That’s what all this was, anyway. A larger plan with a gullible mark. Theft — of a worse sort than Benji previously thought possible.

“It’s not—“

“What it looks like?” Benji finishes.

Xavier’s whole face puckers with the force of his wince.

“Oh fuck,” Benji barrels on, ignoring him. “I’m so bloody stupid.”

“No.”

“Yes.” Benji snaps. His heart clenches painfully. He winds a shaking hand up into his hair, pets it back until it lays flat. “Fuckin’ hell, you made it so fun.”

Xavier lifts a hand, eyes searching Benji’s face. The hand drops.

“Makes sense, don’t it?” Benji asks monotonously, gaze locked to a spot just left of Xavier’s ear. He likes the cowlick just there, more curled than the rest of his choppy red. “I mean, me. Didn’t put up much of a fight.”

Xavier stares at him, face still flush. His anger-locked jaw begins to soften with something; but seeing it, that tiny fragment of — of pity, fuck, if it’s pity he’ll —

Seeing it makes Benji steam hotter. Abnormally so. Suddenly, he hasn’t felt as out of control of his emotions as he had as a teenager. And with that realization comes shame, which makes the anger burn bright, which forces his mouth open.

“And you? Probably you specifically, wasn’t it?” Benji’s laugh is as far from humor as it could possibly be. “Oh, fuck. I knew.”

“Knew what? Benji.”

Benji takes a step back. He starts to unravel inside. “I thought you were laying it on thick, yeah? Direct right from the beginning, weren’t you. You’re a shit spy, Xavier, now that I think about it.”

And he was. He was thinking about it, and spiraling, and thinking about it, and—

He swallows hard. What must have been a manic, awful mask of humor slips from him entirely. He is very cold, all of a sudden.

Iced, Benji takes another step, arms crossing over his chest. Try as he is, suddenly ducking with surrendered hands and worried brow, Xavier cannot pull his eyes from the ground.

“Fuck away from me.” Benji whispers. Xavier flinches, then freezes in place. He won’t look at that face any longer.

(can’t)

His eyes burn. He swallows again.

“When I was wounded, probably mortally, just lucky to run into somebody merciful. It’s so stereotypical. Enemy soldier in an alley, Benji? Yeah? Just happens find you, just happens to have the last of his supplies, isn’t that generous, and just happens to need to touch you to save you, what an angel. And smiles like that, because of course he does, mate, and flirts with you, asks about you, just wants you to like him, Benji, you fucking stupid —”

There’s a muffled thud, pain shoots up his hand and wrist and arm and shoulder. Paint that quite nearly wakes him out of it.

He drops his arm, hand throbbing, heart pumping blood to new bruises. His lungs push the air from his chest to leave his mouth.

His eyes unfocus.

Benji stares a particular section of pavement at his feet; about one millimeter from where it begins, it arches in a strange pattern.

He floats a bit away, then. Or maybe he already had, the second he pulled a cool, familiar sphere of material from Xavier’s pack.

He feels rather than experiences himself move. His body move, anyway. Lungs push air in and out. Spine bends to lift, bicep contracts to adjust weight. Arm reaches for pack, for gun and holster and (most embarrassing of all) helmet.

In training, Benji had been a record-breaker for equipment up and off. Something about the routine of all those buckles and belts did a funny thing to his brain, made the time move quicker. He’s training-efficient now; he turns to Xavier within fifteen seconds, to his estimation. Unlike training, he hadn’t been timing himself.

They don’t announce themselves. We sit here and wait for a new hole to be torn in the world. So if you want to be a sitting duck, take your time with the laces. If not, if you want to be a bastard served in a confit, then learn to move your arse quicker.

Lieutenant, permission to inquire?

Palanivel, don’t make me regret this.

Thank you LT. Respectfully, sir, you think any of these these ones are cultured enough to get what you mean by a fuckin’ confit?

Benji. Private.

Sir.

You’re going to get yourself in shit someone won’t let slip, someday.

Benji laughs again. Dull, as he stares Xavier straight-on. He hasn’t got any dignity left, which means he hasn’t enough ego for shame, which means eye contact is as easy as breathing.

Xavier’s irises look even greener wet at the edges. Such a pretty color that Benji can’t help but admire it, even now.

“I killed for you,” Benji whispers. He feels his face curls into something ugly.

Xavier makes a breathy noise. He stumbles forward, fingers patting up Benji’s arm to cup his elbow.

“Benji!“

And Benji does what he hasn’t done this whole time. What he should have done to begin with.

He moves out of reach. He hopes one day his brain will let go of this particular memory. For now, the expression that falls across Xavier’s face is one that will stick — guilty and glue-like in the pit of his stomach — for awhile.

Worse, he sticks to the act: he tries.

“Will you listen to me for a second?” Xavier hisses. His breathing is deep and slow. Benji’s isn’t; even that makes him angry.

“I think I have been, right?” Benji hisses. “Hope you get paid overtime. Or was that all of that punched in?”

“I’m not getting—“ Xavier grits his teeth, squeezes his eyes shut. “I mean, like. I am, okay, not like that?”

“Right.” Benji laughs. “Right, sorry, you just get paid to kill. Not to lie and — and —”

For a second, fury splits over Xavier’s face. He burns to his hairline, eyes flashing, fists clenched at his side. Still, he doesn’t move into Benji’s created space.

Then it all drains out.

Benji watches how a hundred little movements point to the sort of…deflating Xavier does then. He wonders how he ever could have believed him in the first place, when he wears everything on his sleeve like that.

“You believe that?”

Benji turns away. “Mate,” — hates himself for hanging onto that — “stop, alright? You got me. Don’t be a sore winner.”

“I’m not,” Xavier insists weakly. Throat dry like that, he sounds injured. His mouth twitches into a ghoulish line. It is not, but is trying desperately to be, a smile.

“This…this is just a massive miscommunication.”

Benji pushes him aside to go for the discarded pack. He tears through it and then finds Xavier’s tiny heist.

“A miscommunication. Fuckin’ likely. What’s this? I mean, for all I know this isn’t the first. You’ve been taking. Stealing! The very fuckin’ thing that started this whole shit—”

“You think it’s great back home?” Xavier snarls. “You think you’re the only sad asshole worrying about his family?” His palms slap to his chest. “Fine, if you don’t want to believe me about — about that, believe me when I say I’m not taking it for some higher up.”

“Oh, you’re bein’ altruistic?” Benji scoffs. “Gonna give it away so somebody can power something they really need, or sell it for cash?”

“My sister wants to go to school.” Xavier shouts. He gets animated it about it, hands thrown to the sky. “Alright? Fuck you.”

“No, Xavier, fuck you.” Benji brings them nearly chest to chest. “You got all you need, don’t you. That,” he gestures with the sphere. “Intel, I’m sure.” He resists the urge to eave a hand at himself, too. You got that, he thinks, and this.

“I couldn’t be an intel officer if I wanted,” Xavier says heatedly. “I’m not—”

He falls silent. It lingers.

“What do you do for them?” Benji finally whispers. They’re still close, but they don’t touch.

Xavier’s head tips forward. His skull knocks dully against Benji’s helmet.

“Entry and Extraction.” Xavier replies, just as quiet. “I’m a corporal.”

Benji huffs. “Aw, fuck. You’re not helping. That’s either a coincidence, or —”

“Or I was assigned this,” Xavier’s hand closes around the fist Benji makes. They squeeze the sphere together. “To what, fuck with you?”

“I told you troop movements. I talked about people in my company by name.” Benji sways a bit, and Xavier’s lean becomes heavier. His forehead slips to Benji’s shoulder. The strap of his pack can’t be comfortable, but Xavier brushes his face there like a pillow. Stop, Benji wants to tell him, but is unable.

“You could have been wired this whole time. We know your radios work.” Benji slips a hand up his curved spine, feeling for a wire bulge beneath his shirt. “It’s probably more advanced than that, huh? You wearing a mic, handsome? You been wearing one this whole fuckin’ time?”

Xavier’s shoulders shake with a dead laugh, too. “Yes.”

Benji smiles despite himself, despite the situation, feeling absolutely mad. “But?”

“I turn it off when I’m with you.” Xavier still doesn’t touch him, hands limp at his sides. His chin tilts, their noses almost brushing. “Which I get is what somebody would say—”

Benji snorts loudly. Bastard has him going even now.

“I really, really want to believe you. Fuck, Xavier. You’ve no idea.”

“It’s the truth,” Xavier insists. He sounds so, so sincere. He’s sounded so sincere this whole time.

Benji swallows. It’s a pit in his throat, now. He pulls his hand free of Xavier’s and then unfurls each pale digit one at a time. Benji puts the radianite into his palm. Pushes it away, into Xavier’s own chest.

“What’s she want to go to school for?”

Xavier blinks at him. “Literature. Total collapse of our fucking world, and Em’s content to read Jane Austen right to the end.”

Benji smiles a little sadly. “Funny she exists over on your end, too. My sister loved Wuthering Heights.”

“That’s Brontë, Benji. Jesus, get it together.”

Benji has to escape then. He squirms out of Xavier’s orbit before he crashes to the surface. Xavier lets him go, but it takes the mercenary a moment to stand up straight.

“Have you got the extra bandages I gave you?”

“You know they overstock special boys like me, right?” Xavier says, but he kneels and reaches to the pack Benji discarded and holds it open, shows him the spare kit he tucked inside.

Benji stares down at him. He wants, very badly, to touch Xavier’s boyishly smiling face.

Believe me, it says up at him. We can go back to kissing and talking and playing stupid card games. Wasn’t that nice? Wasn’t that fun?

Benji reaches up. He touches two fingers briefly to the corner of Xavier’s frowning mouth.

“Stay away from mine, and I’ll stay away from yours, alright?” Xavier’s eyes stay locked to him as he backs up, towards the hole in the fence.

“Stay, Benji? Please? We can talk—” But Xavier doesn’t move. Xavier has stopped following. We can talk about it.

You could, Benji thinks. You could talk me into it. I can’t let that happen. I have to get back.

He turns his back.

I have to confess.

*

Quinn doesn’t rage. He doesn’t act disappointed. He doesn’t discharge Benji right then there, or hang him for treason, or react, really, whatsoever.

He watches Benji from the other side of his desk on base. Well. Metal folding table, and with more than a few dents. It squeaks when he stands, spreads his palms.

Benji has lied again.

He watches Quinn fiddle with the crushed bit of electronics in his palm. Xavier’s tactical mic; Benji had nicked it, a quick slip of his hand into Xavier’s back pocket. He’d plucked it free of the nylon strap. Kept that. Sentimental, even now.

“This is…manageable.”

His stomach drops. He clears his throat, trying not to sound worried. “We can track it, sir?”

Quinn laughs. He meanders around the edge of the table slowly. “Naw,” he drawls. “Crushed to all hell like this, not a chance. At least, no ‘verse tech interns to spare. You want to know something funny? Based on our intel, I think it was Wolffe’s team that planted the device that took that corporate office out.”

Benji swallows. He feels ill. “Civilians. Quinn. I thought—”

“They’re fucking savage beasts.” Quinn says. He kneels down to put both hands on Benji’s knees. “I know it seems like us. I know they seem — familiar. But you have to understand, Benj, that world’s not ours. They’re different. And Wolffe.”

Benji doesn’t meet his gaze until his chin is tilted up.

“Benji, you’re lucky, alright? That one is a piece of work. Nearly running into him? The fact you could slip him…the fact you even got in close enough to grab this.” He holds up the crushed mic.

“I was talking on the radio to Officer Katsidis about rendezvous. About movements.” Benji blurts the lie. He blinks what he hopes are sufficiently sad eyes. “I wasn’t secure with the perimeter. I wasn’t careful. Shouldn’t—“

“No.” Quinn says. His palm flattens over Benji’s shoulder.

“But I—”

“It’s manageable,” Quinn says. “I can deal with it. We can.”

We.

Benji stares at him. “I saw him leave.”

“I’m not planning on chasing.” Quinn straightens, hands on his knees. “You know about roaches, Benji?”

They had roaches briefly, when he was a child. He barely remembers, but Saha’s was nine — old enough to pick up weird cleaning compulsions from the experience.

“A bit, LT.”

Quinn rounds his desk. He peers out the flapped tent window, across the yard. “They need such tiny amounts of food and water. But they do need it. And once they know where they can find both, they keep coming back.” He looks over his shoulder at Benji. “They’ll even walk over poison traps, empty-headed bastards, until enough of ‘em die.”

Benji, not for the first time, begins to regret seeking punishment. “Do we have poison traps on hand?”

Before Quinn fully turns towards the window, obscuring his face, Benji catches the edge of his smile.

hang out

wc: 1.7k

Someone grabs him from behind.

Benji lifts from his body, eyes shuttering like they always do, and bursts into motion.

He drops to a knee as he spins out of grasp, shrugging away the shoulder pawed by a stranger’s hand. And then in a series of movements, he has the unlucky bastard’s knee knocked to the side, spun off-balance. It gets Benji in range. Benji’s awful in range. Up-close.

But in the back of his mind, he’s prompted into harsh movements by something even worse than in-range training.

Betrayed, a little voice hisses. Compromised.

It’s that special rage that pushes Benji back to his feet, the body of his attacker in tow. It’s that rage that spins it by the shoulders to face him, momentum throwing the person into rapid, desperate stumbles as Benji walks them both forward. Directly, and without much care for gentleness, further into the depths of the alley. Towards the brick.

As his back hits the wall, Xavier makes a cartoonish sort of ack! sound. It’s so absurd Benji immediately snaps from wherever his head had gone. Not knowing whether it’s unintentional or intentional (but, knowing this one: with a desperate need for Benji to agree with his humor).

That thought, really, is what snaps him out of it. That it’s Xavier trying to make him laugh, even with a forearm to his throat.

“Dude,” Xavier wheezes, grinning even as his breath cuts short. It makes him sound funny, and he must agree, because he’s grinning like a lunatic while he says it. “I just wanted to hang out.”

*

They do. A not-so-carefully organized rendezvous whose coordinates were delivered in code over an agreed frequency. How Xavier manages to get this deep behind lines, Benji isn’t sure — but he figures it has something to do with the arsenal of networking and connections Xavier has established for himself amongst his group. Or so he assumes, based on how much the bastard yaps.

For twenty minutes. For twenty minutes, they converse. They joke. For twenty minutes, (Benji counts as discretely as he can with glances at his watch) they circle the outer path of the city. It’s mostly an entertainment and commercial distract; these days, it houses a quickly dwindling array of shops and venues.

“It used to be cool.”

“It’s still pretty cool,” Xavier says. He can’t stop looking above them, through the great glass dome encapsulating the city. “I mean, we don’t have anything like this —oh fuck! Is that a whale?”

Benji nods, but he doesn’t have the attention for it. Xavier’s darted down a path, eyes wide with childish excitement as he watches the great, dark shape in the far distance traverse the ocean floor like a hawk in the sky. Slowly, inch by inch, it fades the same mottled black-blue of the horizon until its gone, swallowed up by the dark water beyond.

Maran hates this place. He’d been here exactly once, to the comic store around the corner from where Benji leads them now. And then he had sworn, as typical, to never ever fucking come back.

“Is this what you wanted to show me?”

Benji snaps out of his thoughts. He’d been walking with Xavier close behind, the enemy soldier at his back —

The enemy soldier, Benji thinks, grounding himself. At his back.

He slows until Xavier passes him. His brow furrows. He feels no apprehension or fear or adrenaline; he should have. Xavier is armed. And Xavier is — Xavier. Benji’s seen him in the midst of it.

“Yes,” Benji confirms. He steps up to the shopfront, shoulder to chest with the other man. “You said you liked music.”

Xavier tilts to smile at him. “Fuck, dude. I meant like — I go to the club and like music.” He gestures broadly at the store. “Not, like, actual real music. Or making it.”

Benji shrugs. “Club music’s still music, mate. Got a decent beat.”

“Tell me about it.” Xavier adopts a strange stance, then lifts both arms in the air and drops his chin as he bounces in place, unce-unce-unce of his own bad synth impression serving as tempo. When he stops, his hair’s a bit of a mess and his cheeks are flushed.

Benji clears his throat. “Ah, well. My bad. Can’t really recommend you clubs. Y’know. Considering. I, uh. Like this place,”

“Yeah? Can I guess?”

“Guess?” Benji asks, flustered.

Xavier laughs. “Yeah, dude. What you play.” At Benjis surprised expression, his laughter bursts forth again. “Benji, come on. You’re totally obvious.”

“Alright, then, if I’m obvious. What?”

“Hm.” Xavier says, eons of philosophers providing wisdom to that single, brief noise. “Saxophone.”

“Fuck yourself!” Benji splutters. He shoves Xavier, who stumbles a bit into the brick behind him. “Dickhead.”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” Xavier leans back into Benji’s space, as if forced by gravity. “Um. Bass?”

“Drums.” Benji holds up his hands, flexes them. “Couldn’t tell?”

Xavier swallows. His eyes dart between Benji’s raised fingers, green finding brown in the gaps. “I was wondering.”

“Used shit sticks as a kid.” Benji says. He taps a finger against the window. “Like those.”

Xavier looks to where he points. “What’s that brand?”

“Why, you lookin’ to upstage me?”

Xavier smile stays turned toward him a split second longer than Benji thinks it ought to. Only after that lingering beat does his pale, freckled chin turn towards the store display. Brass and cherry-red candy paint acrylic guitars gleaming new behind an already glossy window. It looks like its cared after regularly and maybe even obsessively. There’s a bright yellow sale sticker in the bottom left, shaped like a star: voted best manufacturer by DRUM! four years in a row.

“Never heard of this one. Don’t have it.” Xavier sways forward and taps the glass. “Amazon Basics. You can get, like, everything.” He frowns. “Uh, mostly because they like. Own...everything.”

Benji thinks back to his main supply pack, propped against the bottom of his cot on base. There’s a pair of worn and oil-darkened sticks tucked inside for luck.

He frowns, staring at the laser-etched logo. “Mad.” He notes, drawing the vowel long.

“What?”

“We’ve got a few — brands, I mean. Myself, m’kinda sentimental. Only used Yamaha growin’ up ‘cause they were cheap.” He looks up at Xavier. “Never heard of Amazon. Instrument company?”

“Dude.”

Benji’s turn. “What?”

“Dude.” Xavier repeats, answering absolutely nothing. He takes Benji by the shoulders and shakes him. “You don’t have Amazon over there? Oh, fuck, that’s like…wicked inconvenient.”

Benji blinks at him.

Xavier smiles wider. “Imagine overnight shipping. Same hour shipping. You guys got that?”

Benji blinks at him again, then scoffs. “Mate, we’re lucky to get three weeks. You lot keep comin’ and pinchin’ the majority of our power source, remember?”

Xavier’s laugh is slightly delayed. Once it comes, it’s a big, bark of a sound.

Then he sobers. Benji’s smile dies a bit, too. Suddenly the moment is too visceral, the conflict around them closing in less backdrop.

It feels so different with you, Benji thinks. It feels slower. I forget. The fondness rolls his stomach with a knife-twist sharp like anxiety, serrated like fear.

“Do you want me to break in and steal you the cool multidimensional drum sticks?” Xavier whispers. His voice is dead serious, pitched low. But there’s a little slippery twist to the words that lets Benji know he’s being…teased?

He snorts.

“Aw, you’re a right evil bastard, aren’t you?” Benji grins, spurned on by the shamed flush on Xavier’s face. “The family owned shop? I’d judge you.”

“I don’t want you judging me,” Xavier sing-songs. He tucks his hands in his pants pockets, swaying. “I just want you to like me.”

Benji rolls his eyes. “You’re alright.”

Xavier takes a step. Benji has to tilt his chin up to keep their eyes level.

“Just alright?”

He lifts a gloved hand, pinches index and thumb together. “Fine. Bit better than alright.”

Xavier must mean for his next look to be silly; outrageously flirty. But without trying, mostly because of how his eyes slip half-closed, he manages to land between coy and sultry. It, Benji thinks, is a dangerous place for him to be.

“You gonna give it up any time soon?”

Xavier’s brows waggle. “Literally the second you say flip, I am fucking flipping.”

“Can you?”

“Fuck off.” Xavier laughs. His hands finally slip from Benji’s shoulders, although they don’t go without a friendly (friendly?) squeeze. “Maybe not, actually. Haven’t tried.”

“I meant,” Benji laughs. “I meant if you’re gonna give up the act, Xavier.”

“The act.”

“The act.” Benji says.

“The…act.”

He throws his hands up in the air, laughing. “Fuckin’ hell. Got myself a shadow and a damn echo.”

But every light moment seems to catch wrong on the edges; when Benji tosses his head back, he sees not just the deep, sun-mottled blue of the ocean above, but each explosive orange burst of the battle outside the domed city’s safety.

He remembers, suddenly, that he stands in one of the most secure bastions of that — safety — left. Because of the man in front of him, smiling with his fingers tucked a millimeter beneath his sleeve. Benji glances down at that, and tries a hundred different ways not to romanticize the touch’s softness in direct comparison to the literal war being raged above.

He tries, anyway.

“When I found you in that alleyway,” Xavier starts, his fingers drawing circles on Benji’s skin, “I was going to kill you and loot you and sneak back home in your uniform.”

Benji wonders if he’ll ever tire of the up-downs of being around Xavier, the constant shifts in energy and tone — without the sensation of being yanked about, Benji likes being kept on his toes.

“Now there’s a thing to admit,” Benji says wryly. “And of your own free will n’volition, too.”

Xavier moves again. Another step. The smallest he seems capable of taking; he’s in Benji’s space, barely, and touching, but only just. Benji can’t figure out which side of the other soldier this is: purposeful or natural.

“Shut up, I’m not done.” His hand trails up Benji’s forearm, squeezes. “When I got closer I was like, well no fucking shot. Right? You’re just —”

“Got a bit on you, hey?” Benji teases. His eyes feel heavy, but without exhaustion. “And you on me, suppose?”

Xavier blinks sluggishly at him. His mouth, lips slightly parted, splits into another wild grin.

“Hah. That’s what she said.”

Benji gives him a quizzical look. “What?”

“Wot?” Xavier shakes his head. “You don’t have The Office either? Man. This universe sucks.” He winks. “At least it has you.”

“Awful,” Benji amends, ducking his head slightly. “Amended to awful, not alright.”

“Benji.”

He glances up. Xavier cradles the side of his face like that means something.

“We’re — I have to —” his eyes dart between Benji’s own. There’s an unreadable expression on his face. Xavier is not smiling. “I want — fuck. Can we kiss again?”

Benji nods, tongue glued thick to the roof of his mouth. As Xavier leans forward, ducking down in the grim blue light, he catches one last glimpse of the fiery battle above.

One they both should be fighting.

waves

wc: 2k

He could wait until after his scheduled rounds to visit the chapel – church? He could never remember which – but he’s always keen to get out of emergency drills. Haven’t changed much in the months they’ve been under. And, usually alone whilst peak paranoia, Maran has begun to wonder at their effectiveness entirely.

Fire safety and evacuation maps and lessons of psychologically soothing those under duress. Maran still remembers the security team’s guest lecture on that from Dr. Rhoades; he’d had strange goosebumps on the back of his neck entire time. Her soft, lilting, academic tone reciting horrid details about hallucinatory symptoms of madness had been confusing, to say the very least. But also kind of –

Maran shakes his head. Drifting, again. Always fucking drifting.

He’s here to check on the priest, which he figures is a task not yet doled out on the facility rotating task chart. There’s been a string of nasty things – that creature Ben talked about, the readings from the radio lab, the chatter about new thermal vents opening and sediment resettling and quakes miles out and then – then –

His imagination offers a massive wave, crashing towards him, water so black it’s solid.

He squeezes his eyes shut. He takes a steadying breath.

Then he knocks twice on the hydraulic door. Someone has covered it with a sheet of patterned adhesive; the dark faux wood is stark against the rest of the base’s cool brushed metal walls and floors.

It can't wait until after rounds.

*

He isn’t sure how long he sits patiently in a pew. The room is eerie and empty this late, but then again it would be eerie in the middle of day. There’s no amount of tweaking the warmth settings on the overhead lighting that will ever fool the effect of sunlight through windows. Maran misses it like nothing else, how it would spill through the curtain cracks in his room back home, light up a spot in the kitchen while his mum cooked.

A door opens across the chapel. Maran jumps, palms slapping onto the seat.

“Oh, fuck. You scared me.”

Xavier meanders down the middle aisle. He isn’t dressed down yet, still in his dark robes (there’s another word for those, it escapes him) and neck draped in a shiny crucifix. Maran wants to ask if the outfit’s required. If it’s a suggestion, or a uniform. He’s seen priests (pastors?) older than Xavier wear jeans, polos, sandals, trainers.

“Watch it. No swearing in the house of god.”

Maran holds his hands up. “Apologies.”

“I’m just joking.” Xavier says with a warm, beneficent smile. It doesn’t quite pull high enough at the edges for Maran’s liking. “You alright?”

“Could ask you the same.” Maran gestures uselessly. “S’why I came.”

“I don’t know what you mean?”

Maran shuts his eyes briefly, sees that wave, hears the hiss of the hydraulic doors on base opening, closing. He turns to glance up at Xavier, towering above him still in the aisle.

“My mum’s rabbi always used to say he heard God in everything.” Maran says mildly. His eyes skate nonsense patterns on the ceiling. Not a rivet out of place, no cracks, no groans of sheet metal as they separated and burst at the seams. “Heard, saw, felt. Everything. I can never wrap my head around the fact he was probably bein’ literal. Just can’t get this image of God as some old man out of my head. Can’t see an old man in a sunrise, y’know?”

Beside him, the gloomy priest offers only a soft hm.

“Know a bunch o’preachers are always going on about that, too. Those toupee fucks askin’ for money. They hear God, so give ‘em a fiver, there’s a lad, be sure to send along your message thanks!”

Maran swallows heavily. His raised fist drops into his lap.

Xavier says nothing.

“Sorry.” Maran blurts. “I didn’t mean – I don’t want to insult you, wasn’t going about it like that –”

The priest waves a hand between them. A slow backwards scoop: make room. Maran does.

They haven’t met like this. Maran only runs into him in the food line, in the fitness room, and once on a late weeknight standing sullenly in one of the green spaces, sharp pale chin tilted up to the projected dome sky.

They haven’t met like this – it makes him more nervous than the expression he’d seen, that night. He feels something more intense than out of place, and a little bubble of shame makes him snap his comfortably spread knees back together. He was only allowed to be comfortable in places he belonged.

“I was just – chattin’ circles, really. Because I’ve been thinking about it.”

“It.”

“Come on.” Maran says, tilting his head to indicate to Xavier that he is not buying it. “The big D, the big it. Priests are supposed to get it more than the average bastard. But I heard that you... Tanaka said –” He pauses. “I hope the investigation team didn’t give you much shit.”

Xavier sighs and winds his fingers together in what strikes Maran as an incredibly exhausted gesture. “Tanaka said what?”

Maran swallows. He assesses Xavier, silent, for a moment. He doesn’t feel entirely successful when he’s done.

“Tanaka said you were the last one to speak to her.”

Her.

One of the techs. Bright, nice, youthfully pretty in a way that wasn’t Maran’s particularly type, but drew him like a moth regardless. They hadn’t spoken for some time, not since he’d started switching shifts. Then suddenly, she’d had some sort of breakdown the week prior, screaming her head off and tearing chunks of hair in the mess. Talking nonsense, real scary see-stuff shit. And the entire base had been awoken the next evening: red strobes melting shadow and shape into the dark recesses of the facility, sirens wailing like she had.

The post by exit East A1 had been Maran’s, originally. He’d traded it for the lab, and then it had been traded by that person, and then someone had lost track of their hours and no one was posted. If someone had been (if Maran had been), they would have been able to prevent that sleepless tech from stepping into the pressure chamber, overriding the emergency failsafe protocol, and –

Doing whatever humans do, physically, when faced with millions of square tonnes of pressure. He imagines the wave.

Maran shudders.

“That last one to speak to her.” Xavier repeats, unaware of Maran’s drifting or kind enough to ignore it. Or distracted; he almost sounds like he’s musing over the words. “I guess, yeah. You know, I thought it was strange that I got a visit from investigation that morning. I talk to so many people – and I slept late, I never do except that morning. So I hadn’t heard the news. And you know.”

Xavier laughs. It’s a chilling, base sound.

“You know, when they told me her name, I had to think for a second. It was just the last night. But I talk to so many people. I hear so many people out, try and make it a bit better –” In his lap, his fingers squeeze tight. “Not enough, sometimes.”

“Days since last incident.” Maran draws a morbid circle in the air. “Part of life down here. That’s what I was askin’ – you know. Think he’s down here? Would the rabbi see ‘em? It makes me wonder what happens when you –”

Xavier shakes his head. He’s looking off into some corner of the chapel, eyes dull and unfocused.

“No.” He says. “Priests being joyous mouthpieces for the almighty message, pft. Receiving visions. Being blessed. No. I know what you’re talking about. ”He tilts to look at Maran, then. “I never have.”

Maran stares back. Then he whistles low and long. “Fuckin’ hell. Benji weren’t kiddin’. Catholics – you lot love suffering.”

For a moment, Maran wonders if he’s overstepped again. Offended. Crossed a line that he always feels these occasional chats with Xavier toed; he imagined the other man knew some of the questions and curiosities Maran had, and was withholding. They probably weren’t anything new. People had probably asked those questions to each other for centuries, smarter people than him.

Thanks for indulging me. Maran thinks hard at him, because he’s too shy to say it.

And it must work somehow, that urged thought. Because shockingly, the priest snorts.

“We’re kind of famous for it. And complaining.”

“Us too.” Maran says cheerfully.

*

They talk for a bit more until Maran slips he knows about the wine. To his shock, it doesn’t take much goading for Xavier to retrieve it. And by the time that carafe has drained down to half, they’re leaning each other for balance. The room (chapel?) is swaying, after all.

“Suffering and sinful stuff.”

“What?” Xavier asks, voice slow and sloshy.

Maran tilts his chin to the ceiling. It squishes his sore neck to the carved part of the pew backrest, and he winces.

“I mean.” He glances at Xavier. “Sinful. Catholics. You lot made those confessionals booths naughty on purpose, right? Like, they’re meant to be sexy?” A little swell of guilt for making fun, but Maran’s snort overrides the soft wash of it. Xavier will know a joke when he hears one.

Maran presses: “No way nobody wasn’t horny durin’ that particular decision.”

The priest doesn’t turn to look at him. Instead, Xavier’s face stays primly forward, lightly and sweetly expressionless; not cruel, just professional. Maran always gets the impression that Xavier’s head operates ages older than the rest of him.

But his cheeks start to flame.

“Hi. Welcome back to WatchMojo. Here’s our list of top ten things you should never say again, please god.”

Xavier does that intriguing motion he’d always seen Fiadh’s family do. Father Son Holy Spirit. Maran can never remember which order it went.

“Please him?” Maran leans over to nudge their shoulders together. “I hardly know him!”

Xavier breaks immediately. He doesn’t particularly like thinking of the fact they’re enclosed by the ocean on all sides. But when Xavier laughs…

It’s so sweet and boisterous a sound, he imagines shockwaves coming off it. Waves. Maran imagines he fish outside scattering, panicked and cartoonish. The laugh burrows into him a little too; everyone’s so serious, everyone’s always sticking to schedule, everyone’s always grim-faced ashen with stress, everyone’s always so fucking sad and scared and hopeless.

Maran leans into the sound and Xavier. He’s smiling, lips split wide. The kind of grin he knows will make his cheeks sore if it sticks around as long as it feels like it might. He wants more of that laugh, more of that hope.

We’ll be fine, mate, right? This means we’ll be fine. It feels nice to forget a second, doesn’t it?

“Does it count if I’m sacrilegious?” He glances sideways at the massive metal cross welded to the back wall (that seems more structurally integral to the tiny room, and less holy). Maran kisses his fist and holds it up. “Hey, mate -- we’re cool yeah? M’close ‘nough not to get struck down, Catholic God?”

“Catholic god!” Xavier wheezes. He’s tossed forward with the weight of those laughs, sounding right from the stomach; his hand on Maran’s shoulder is only a fraction of that sound’s warmth.

“Man.” Maran says into the vast chapel – church? – after they’ve quieted enough for the walls to start singing back their laughter. “Man, the old internet was good.”

“WatchMojo!” Xavier emphasizes between hiccupy, breathless giggles. He’s still trying to control himself. “Oh, fuck. I miss YouTube.”

“Worst part of the world nearly about to end.” Maran says. He shakes his head mournfully. “My playlists.”

Xavier kicks off again – Maran is not totally sure what’s particularly funny about that. He really does miss those playlists. But he won’t point out the total lack of humor. Xavier seems to have needed the laugh as much as Maran needed to hear it.

Yeah, mate. He thinks, watching Xavier dab at the corners of his eyes with black fabric. Yeah, I reckon we’ll be fine.

“Like your sash.”

Xavier turns and deer-blinks at him, mouth slightly open. Then his eyes squint violently shut and he tips back and kicks his legs so hard the pew in front of them rattles. He laughs and laughs, heaves of it for the nicest few seconds. And when he can catch his breath – not well, but enough to speak – he’s still out of sorts.

“It’s called a fascia,” Xavier insists.

Maran’s face scrunches. “Thought those were the bellends?”

ch-ch-cherry bomb

wc: 13.9k (yes ik)

It’s maybe a little early in the spring for a bonfire, but unless it served her well to do so, Matilda didn’t like to make a habit of swaying to the breeze of social decorum.

“You’re been staring at Benji down there for, like, forty seconds.”

At the sound of her classmate’s voice, Matilda wobbles wher she stands. She turns (and Christ she really should not have had that last shot because it has gotten to the the point where the world’s started to turn with her) to face Claire. Or, slightly to the right of Claire. One tiny, totally unnoticeable adjustment to her posture fixes that mistake.

She clears her throat to lie: “I am not staring at Benji.”

“You totally are.” Claire laughs. “I mean, I thought everybody knew—“

Okay. Maybe her lie was not as smooth as she wanted it.

“Ew! God.” Matilda shakes both hands out, then giggles because she thinks: gross, cooties! “Claire, like. I’m drunk, not stupid? Or blind. I know. I’m — I’m not staring. I am chaperoning him.”

Matilda spells out the word in the air with her index finger in prim, pretty cursive like a Disney star. Claire watches patiently although the p might get written twice and there seems to be some confusion whether the n isn’t two or three m’s instead.

“For what?”

Matilda scoffs.

“He needs to talk to people more. And I really thought helping him get his little friend over here would help, or whatever.”

Matilda fishes in her jacket pocket for her vape. Now that she knows it’s close, her stomach bubbles a bit and her words become clipped and sharp. Fuck, she needs to quit.

She takes a longer hit than usual, fist closed around the familiar shape. The rhinestones encapsulating it rub against the pad of her thumb, a pleasantly grounding sensation. She squeezes until it starts to hurt a bit, and the night comes quickly back into focus. Claire watches, then its her turn to attempt subtlety and fail.

“The cute one?” She asks.

Matilda rolls her eyes. It is a sure-fire signal of Matilda’s depleted patience and slash or good will.

“Oh my God, just go ask him out. He’s such a social butterfly it’s disgusting. You’ll get along.” Her eyes narrow. “Claire, were you just trying to sneak in a way to talk about him? You don’t care that I was staring — it wasn’t really like, even that much staring — you just were fishing for information on Maran.”

“No.” Claire says, too quick to be honest. Her lips stay parted. Clearly, she has something further to add. But Matilda only turns that alleged stare on her, pulling at the vape again before primly crossing her arms. “What?”

“He was inside,” Matilda says, pointing with her eyes to the A-frame cabin she’d rented to host. Stupid fucking investment banker owner, trying to gouge the price threefold on one of those short-term rental websites. He had been so generous and given her night for free. And all it had taken was an emailed picture of her, face girlish and horrified, holding up a hidden camera she’d totally found tucked on a shelf in the bathroom.

“Wh-what?”

“He’s inside,” Matilda says again, voice rising snappy and high before she lets out a sigh. “By the drinks. Since you are literally frothing to talk to him.” She hooks a thumb over her shoulder past the throng of partygoers dancing on the raised deck, down towards the lawn. “I’m gonna go see if mama bird’s doing okay.”

Out on the grass below, people have begun to pull chairs and blankets to encircle the crackling fire. Benji sits a few paces away from the rest of the crowd, just outside a socially acceptable distance. He’s found a massive log, preferring not to use it as a seat but rather as a reclining feature. He sits on the ground, no barrier between his jeans and the damp grass. Even to her, who boasts his rare and coveted label of friend, Benji looks difficult to approach.

She does it anyway.

Matilda marches down the steps, ignoring several prompts for pause and conversation. Instead off being lulled into a few chatting groups, she beelines towards Benji.

His dramatic little spot isn’t far enough out that the night air has completely soaked the fire’s warmth, but it’s certainly chillier than she’d prefer. She tucks arms around herself as she drapes over the top of the log behind him, one leg knee-bent to nudge between his shoulders. Benji snorts.

She turns to look at him side-long, and gets caught out. His profile half-lit. Benji’s pretty anyway, but there’s something about where he hovers. The glowing circle of the fire doesn’t quite reach all the way, creating a few centimeters of liminal space where orange flickering dies into purple twilight. Benji’s sat right in that spot, and the lighting makes him downright, jealousy-inducing, disturbingly gorgeous.

Matilda could tell him as much, but he’d scowl at her. Maybe even get up and leave. She doesn’t want Benji to leave. She wants Benji attached to her, clearly with her, her cool friend, her invitee, her guest.

Fuck. She really shouldn’t have had that last one.

“Sorry to disappoint.” Matilda monotones. “Just me. I’m sure you were waiting for some other sad, lonely homosexual to wander over and like, My Chemical Romance meet-cute woo you to bed.”

Benji doesn’t twitch, even though she thought that one was particularly good. Instead, he has what looks like a nasty smile pulling at his mouth.

“When I opened the mixer cooler, all the ice was melted and lukewarm.”

Matilda sits bolt upright, her heart snagging in her chest. “You’re lying.”

“There was a fly in there, too.” Benji pouts. “Didn’t make it.”

“You’re lying.”

“Yep.” He pops the p in a frustratingly charming mockery of her, vocal fry and all. “Don’t dish and you won’t have to take.”

She could check him with her knee, pulled up to nudge right at the sensitive spot between shoulder and neck. She could pluck a hair from the top of his scalp and do a lie herself, marvel at it being gray. But Benji’s a youngest too; he’s anticipating all this.

She takes what some might call the high road, but she prefers to call a strategic and temporary retreat. Matilda lies back down, lacing her fingers over her stomach.

“You’re such an asshole. I was going to warn you that your Cabbage Patch Kid was getting slobbered on in there.”

Benji twitches, then.

Aha, she thinks. There’s the gap in the armor.

The movement is just a slight kick of his foot out. A few fingers tightening on his own knee. But he softens it as quick as the tells had come: Matilda recognized that shuttering and admired it, the first time they met.

Benji was so careful of himself, so in-control but charmingly messy with his demeanor. She wished she could pull it all together, pack it up, hide it away like he could, sometimes. She’s too proud to admit she takes mental notes every time they speak. She’s too honest with herself to deny that she knows she’ll never replicate that easy mystery, because with people like Benji it was natural. Unduplicable— undupli—

Matilda scrunches her nose, the word falling to bits in her head. Fuck, she should not have had that last drink.

“He’ll live.”

“Maybe not. Did you leave him with pedialyte? Not even a water bottle?” She pouts.

“He’s a big boy,” Benji says, although now he’s got just a tiny little note of worried guilt to him. Matilda beams evilly up at the sky.

“I’m just kidding. I sent him off with my friend from class. She’s safe. And, like, I think celibate by choice, so if you’re worried—”

Benji groans and rubs fists into his eyes. “C’mon.”

“I’m just saying. We should be fine, but like—”

“Til.”

“—he’s very cute, so anything could happen really, but I’m just trying to assure you I do have the money to cover a Plan B for him if he needs it in the morning, because you should probably expect—”

Benji reaches around deftly to pinch the sensitive skin behind her knee. Matilda yelps and rubs at it, eyes narrowed to slits just like his.

Fucking youngest sibling behavior. She tells him as much.

“I warned you.” Benji laughs.

It’s a nice enough sound she largely forgives him.

“He’s gonna have so much fun. We’ll give him,” she spreads her fingers against the night sky and tries her very best to emulate their accent. “The proper American experience, mate.”

“You’re off it.”

Matilda nods and the whole expanse of the galaxy, the universe, starry gorgeous planetary system they rotate around spins even harder and faster than it usually is. She leans over the log to press her forehead to Benji’s cool, leather-clad shoulder.

“Do you want to hear the drag idea I had.”

Benji snorts again. His hand reaches up to brush back hair from her face. Just a moment before she was cognitively aware the curtain of it in her eyes was bothering.

“Why’re you askin’ me? Your token poof, hey? Think I give a fuck about drag?”

“You do.” Matilda says. She rubs her forehead on his shoulder. “If you’re not transphobic, you’ll let me speak my truth.”

“Oi! Don’t you think assumin’ I wanna hear your dogshit idea means you’re working a bit of the other ‘phobia there, mate?”

“Mate.” Matilda parrots childishly. Youngest sibling behavior. “Well. Do you?”

A pause. Then:

“Yeah, a’right. Lay it on me.”

“Blo.” Matilda intones seriously. She palms the side of his head, pressing her cheek to his temple at a strange perpendicular and tilting his face up to the stars. “Like, blow. Obviously. But Blo from Regressive. The insurance lady.” She gestures a circle around her head. “I’ll do the whole wig.”

“From those bloody stupid commercials?”

Matilda sights. “God, of course you wouldn’t get the vision. It’s too tastefully referential to everyday American media culture—”

“I’d rather hear about Maran’s’ night unfiltered than listen to you chat shit on your own genius.” Benji teases meanly, gesturing a fist at his hip. “I’d rather listen to Maran talk about his figurines—“

“Bioncles.”

“Til, what? He’s already got you sucked in?”

“I’m going to be worse than you.” Matilda admits suddenly. She has only had one single conversation with Maran. In her car, which they had picked him up from the airport in, there’d be no time to chat. He had been entirely engrossed in his catch-up with Benji. She had watched his face light up in the rear view mirror as they talked non-stop for the drive back to Benji’s apartment, where an air mattress and touch light courtesy of her online shopping return pile were waiting.

But when Benji went to the bathroom at lunch — McDonald’s, because Maran insisted on trying the superior version of fries — he’d turned to her and beamed. Thanks her for the ride, her hospitality, her favor to Benji. Matilda had never met a friend-of-a-friend without it being slightly awkward, but Maran had something about him. He gestured to the toy display on the mustard yellow wall and had jumped into a regaling tale about McDonald’s toys from his childhood, and the little robot he had sat on his windowsill at home.

And Matilda, who did not give a single fuck about Legos or building blocks or robot action figures or whatever the hell exposition he was explaining about the larger universe, had sat there and listened.

“What do you mean, you’re going to be worse than me?” Benji asks, yanking her from the reverie.

But, prompted to explain, Matilda’s mouth dries.

She didn’t really have words to describe Benji’s childhood friend just yet. He was probably one of the most charming people she’d ever met. And yet he had this flighty aura about him. Almost shy, but not quite. Not scatterbrained, either, because he seemed to be totally present in the moment. Maybe sort of sad. Sort of lonely, even surrounded by people. Even beaming, the way he did.

It had always been sort of obvious to Matilda when a person had either no friends or a single person they held close. Maran had been looking at Benji in her reareview mirror as they chatted with the grateful reverence someone who had expecting to be on their own for awhile longer.

“I mean.” She starts, and stops.

Benji simply quirks a brow.

“Ugh! I don’t know, okay. I had like. Two franken-lemon drops.” She circles a wrist in the air. “Whatever replaced the vodka assault and batteried my sobriety.”

“Way to put it.” Benji chuckles.

Matilda slouches to the side, nearly draping herself across his shoulders. There’s a lull in conversation from the other side of the bonfire as she rolls herself bodily into his lap. It is partially to find a softer recline than the log under her back. Partially to converse with him better,. Partially because she knows that nearly every person is looking at them, wondering about their quiet and intimate conversation, wondering what they could be talking about, wondering at the hidden aspects of their friendship and hoping it could be made public — or, maybe, have that feeling shared.

Matilda swings her eyes around the circle of partygoers. They double and triple and bob and swim in her vision. She smiles.

“You’re going to have to keep an eye on him.”

“What?” Benji asks, elongating that vowel like a motherfucker.

Matilda pushes up with a palm in the grass between his knees. He scowls at her, their noses almost touching. “Benji, I know you are totally dense about some things. I love that for you, really. I do. It adds to the whole —“ she waves her fingers in a circle chest-level. “That.”

He glares at her.

Matilda sighs. “But honestly, it gets old sometimes! I’m just trying to be a good friend, okay? Maran seems like a sweetie.”

“He’s a nice lad, Til, I swear. Told y’we got up to it as kids, but we’ve mostly leveled—“

“I don’t care!” Matilda laughs. Her hands raise as if she’ll cup his cheeks and squeeze, but the warning glare on his face is enough to deter that drunken thought. “Benji. That’s not what I’m saying. Look, Maran is basically this little offshoot of you, right? And everybody here wants something to do with you.”

Benji scoffs again. This time, it’s ‘genuinely incredulous’ rather than his usual ‘moderately humored’.

Matilda’s lip curls. “You’re so joking right now. Benji — oh my God, I’m not therapying you. I’m too drunk to even bother, okay, because that is a well to the center of the earth full of content to pick through and even the most seasoned psych would—“

“You’re full of fuckin’—“

Someone shouts his name. They both turn to look up towards the deck, where the voice’s owner stands backlit by the golden patio light. Whatever Maran calls down to him is lost over the thrum of a dozen conversations and the crackle of the fire. But he sports such a sweet, eagerly excited smile…

“Maran makes me feel like when you see a mortally wounded fawn on the side of the road and you know it’s going to just croak right there but you’re like, oh my God, I can help.” Matilda muses. “You know?”

Benji is silent for a moment before gingerly lifting her by the biceps to her feet, rising with her. He tucks a hand behind her neck and pulls her down for a kiss to the forehead, which Matilda tilts into despite the spinny nausea of being made to stand so fast. It’s the most affectionate Benji’s ever been with her, and she wonders if that is what Maran does — softens him.

“And I need therapy?”

“I’m going to hate, like, every single girl he dates.” Matilda promises, voice hushed. “Not in a creepy way. In a cute roadkill way.” She holds up both hands, fingers spread like claws. “Stay away from my little fawn and his broken femur.”

“Therapy.” Benji suggests. He holds a finger up. “Ah, water. Carbs. Sleep. Then therapy.”

Matilda watches him jog across the lawn towards the deck stairs, which he takes impressively quick and two at a time.

And, a few weeks later at the sequel to that wildly successful totally illegal bonfire at a blackmailed rental, Matilda watches him descend the same steps.

The log has become their spot, of sorts. With every face Benji passes, she feels the thick rise of tension in the air like ozone; lightning on spiking her hair before a storm. It is so, so delicious — she turns her head and catches no less than three people staring at them as Benji lowers to an artfully lazy slump beside her.

He’s so fucking blind.

But right now, he has the energy of someone who wants to gossip, so Matilda turns to lay her cheek on his shoulder. She maintains a sweep of the partying crowd.

“Can I be honest with you?”

Benji, who certainly knows what this is about, offers her a noise that is half grunt, half laugh. “G’wed.”

“I really cannot stand this new one.” Matilda admits. “In a way that makes me concerned about my own internalized shit. You know when you hate someone that bad?”

Benji is silent for a long, working moment. Whatever goes on between his ears is lost to everyone but him. Then: “She’s sound, I guess.”

It is way more diplomatic than Matilda was expecting. It’s way more sly than she thinks he means to slip. So she throws her head back and laughs.

Up on the deck, the sleight blonde tucked against Maran’s side —short enough to dodge his waving arm — moves closer.

And although it would tickle her fucking pink to hear, Matilda isn’t close enough to catch what Fiadh whispers, anxious, in his ear:

Why do I get the feeling Benji’s friend hates me?

*

Years prior:

The step stool scrapes across nonna’s hardwood floor. Maran snaps into guilty shape before she turns to him, attention pulled from the kitchen’s ancient stone sink.

“Have I told you once or twice?” Nonna asks.

Maran holds up two fingers.

Nonna laughs, then catches herself. She wags her own wrinkled digit before wiping both hands on the faded floral apron tied at her waist.

“Maybe even three, eh? Maran. Pick it up, care for papa’s hard work.”

“Sorry,” Maran says.

He does as requested, then walks himself up the steps beside her at the counter; in a year, he won’t need the stool. In four, he’ll dwarf his grandmother, even though she stands tall for a woman of her age.

The spite, his mum’s disembodied voice whispers impishly in his head. That’s the ingredient. Maran isn’t sure what exactly spite is — he’s a bit behind the rest of his classmates, and tries not to let them see him trailing behind in the vocabulary workbook — but he figures that he shouldn’t ask Nonna.

“Maran,” Nonna admonishes his apology. “Ah-ah. Per favore.”

“Scusa, nonna.” Maran responds dutifully, but it’s not quite enough. Nonna narrows her eyes. He sighs, propping his chin on the cool countertop, and can barely hide the attitude when he corrects: “Mi dispiace. Molto, molto, molto.”

“Ah, marrona! Smart ass.”

But Nonna laughs. She has a wrinkled and sun-dotted brown hand pressed to her chest in a youthfully ladylike gesture.

Maran has helped her in the garden, both of their knees and fingernails black from the soil; has helped her chop firewood for the stone oven on the patio; has watched her pluck a horrible, scary splinter from her finger after an afternoon of patching and waxing their old boat, made reliable from decades of unselfconscious and hearty care. She’s a woman that has worked nearly every day of her life — still, with that dainty hand accompanying the look of reproach, Maran has never felt more that she ought to be the queen of something, somewhere.

“Tantissimo.” Maran chirps. He’s smiling, mischievous; genetics clear in their reflected, crooked mouths. And now he means it, really. He’s sorry a hundred times for not listening, for maybe scratching the floor. And he peers up at her with thick-lashed eyes, hoping that comes across. He’s never meant anything more (except for maybe later that evening when they’re sitting on the rocky beach with their feet in the lapping waves, watching the sun descend the water, when he’ll turn and see her cast orange and tell her if there’s ever a summer he doesn’t get to visit, he’ll die).

“Oh, tantissimo, really?” Nonna flattens her queenly hand against her forehead now. “He is too above us. Mannaggia la miseria, he won’t eat at our humble table. Best we save all of this food for the common folk —“

Maran casts a quick glance into the sink. Fresh picked cherries, stems already plucked free, bob in the water. The original goal of his step stool. His mouth waters.

“I said sorry,” he pouts, sneaking a finger to swirl the water. He debates on plucking a cherry, but none of them have been pitted yet. And also, he’d get a slap to the hand for it. But maybe…Maran perks up.

“Can I have some if I help?”

And suddenly he’s scooped up in her warm, soft arms, feet dangling just an inch or so above the top step of her stool. Nonna smells like sun and salt and her coconut lotion as she lays kisses across his face. He’d be embarrassed, if any of his school friends were watching. But they’re not — it’s summer, they’re stuck home in rainy, boring Liverpool, and Maran gets to be here, with her, so he allows the attack. Giggles through it, even. He loves her so, so much.

“Can he have some if he helps! What a good boy, my Maran. Here,” Nonna gestures. She hands him a tool he’s seen in the drawer, but never used. It’s made of two equal sized pieces of smooth, sanded wood. The stain has worn off in places, the grain light underneath. Maran puts his hand to those impressions. Although they’re much larger than his own palm, the use-worn nooks make obvious how to handle the thing.

Nonna fishes a handful of cherries from the water. With careful instruction, Maran learns to nestle them one at a time into the hammered metal cup wedged between two bits of wood. With wrinkled fingers curled around his, he squeezes the device —

Out pops the cherry pit, spit into the sink. The pulpy fruit still clings to the outside, feathering out in the clear water. It slowly begins to spiral pink. “Oh! Mum does this with a knife.”

Nonna tsks. “And I bet she has cut a finger. I told that girl to find her one.”

Maran picks up another cherry, proudly pitting it on his own. He examines the tool. “One of these?”

At that moment, the back door swings open. Nonno barges in — loud and brash and heavy feet, as usual. He swings the parchment from the butcher onto the counter and pulls nonna into a barrage of kisses to the face, not unlike the ones Maran had just received.

“No, Maran, one of these—” and then she’s laughing girlishly. Her husband’s big form crosses the kitchen to sweep her into a crushing hug.

Nonna says something to him that Maran isn’t yet able to translate — the words are too fast, too big, too messy and noisy and adult in their dialect for his beginner Italian to catch.

“Maran!” Nonno barks, startling him out of his thoughts. Maran pits another cherry and lifts it up to show him. Nonno opens his jaw wide, snapping his teeth and pretending to bite at Maran’s fingers before the cherry disappears.

“I think that they taste better when you do them!” Nonno whispers (although he’s never been capable, it’s still a yell in his booming, clear voice).

“Chi si duci,” Nonna deadpans. She plucks the other pitted cherry from the water and tests it, eyes widening. “Wait, it is true. Maran has the touch.”

And he’s old enough to know they’re being silly with him, making him feel good about being new at a task. Still, he beams as he pits the rest of the cherries and listens to their lilting conversation. He picks up what he can, here and there, but even though most of the words are lost to him he doesn’t feel lost. He feels right at home. Involved.

When he places the bowl of cherries in front of them at the kitchen table, pitting tool in hand, Nonno beams.

“You!” He says, and plucks Nonna’s sun-kissed hand from where it curls under her chin. “Every time it is used it, I am loved more.”

Maran glances down at the pieces of wood, his thumb brushing the light spots again and again. He remembers the knife and chisel Nonno carries in his pocket, the spare in his work apron, the stark white raised scars on his dark brown knuckles.

Oh, Maran realizes, but can’t name the realization. Oh, Maran feels something click into place, but can’t name what or where.

“Maran,” Nonna says, snapping him from his thoughts. She’s not looking at him, but smiling gently at Nonno across the table. “You have permission to go find Giuliano and play until dinner. When you come back, we’ll have crostata ready to eat.”

Maran loves crostata. He loves it so much he can almost smell it cooking right then. His posture straightens and he puts the tool on the table beside his grandparents’ twined hands, and then offers them a little salute and sprints out the door.

*

Just the other month:

Maran has never traveled anywhere on his own, besides those annual trips to his grandparents’ home. That flight has barely changed in the decade and some years he’d been flying it. Even then, it’s quick — he always slept.

On the international charter he takes to the States, Maran doesn’t sleep at all.

He isn’t sure why he’s so nervous. Why, despite the anticipation and excitement months in the making, he suddenly feels a pang of something worryingly similar to guilt.

It will be the first summer he doesn’t visit his nonna. Coincidentally, it will be her second year without nonno.

When Benji had first invited him for a holiday stateside, nonna was the first person he told. He supposes now it was more asking permission.

Live your life! It’s for you, anyway.

Maran settles back in his seat, legs tucked. They’ll start to ache soon, give him pins and needle — but he’s too wrapped in his own thoughts to mind. He barely notices when the plane ascends.

He wonders how she knows exactly what to say, nonna. Because lately, all he’s been able to think about is that he’s only been living life for himself. And even then, just barely. He worried that this decision to holiday was just another impulse-driven tick of the box. Doing things because someone asked, because it was offered, because the opportunity presented itself. If he was thinking critically, he’d spend the summer with nonna because potentially — it might be — she was getting up there, was all, and —

Maran swallows hard. When his eyes crack open, they scan not a beautiful seaside sky touched gold by sundown, but the dull grey cabin interior. The seatbelt light’s gone off, so Maran unbuckles himself. He pretends that the nasty, dramatic thoughts of nonna and the wiggle of guilt escape him. Like they’d been held in by the seatbelt and he had no choice but to think them.

Except the anxiety lingers. It turns to other things: what if the plan went down, and what if it Benji was extending a pity invitation? What if the way he lived — impulsive, thoughtless — worried his friend. Was he living at all, really? No prospects, when he eventually returned to Liverpool. No school or certificates or job offers or apprenticeships.

Nothing but a day and the next, aimless and unable to focus on anytihng but the scroll of a feed beneath his thumb. For fuck’s sake, last year he’d nearly enlisted.

He imagines Benji’s voice, dreamlike and mean, amongst his own thoughts: what would he do if he were alone? What would Maran do, left to his own devices? Look at all his choices so far. Barely choices, innit? Wouldn’t be anything responsible.

The voice is meaner than Benji would ever really be, but he’s in such a fucking state that the anxiety rockets up another notch anyway. When the flight attendant next passes by, Maran gently reaches to touch her elbow. He hopes his smile is just that, not the grimace he worries betrays his mood.

“I know this is so inappropriate.” He starts, already apologetic. “I promise I’m not bein’ difficult—“

Her dark eyes narrow in that service industry way Maran recognizes. Anticipatory. He tries not to wince and barely manages to keep sheepish smile plastered on his face.

“I’m getting a bit nervy,” Maran admits, as if it embarrasses him. It does embarrass him. There’s no reason he should be in it like this. He’s flown before “Haven’t flown before. D’you think I can get a little—“ he clicks his tongue, gestures with thumb and forefinger.

“I’ll need to see identification.” The flight attendant says.

Maran stares up at her. “Wait, what? I look that young?” He beams. “Swear.”

She seems to be fighting a smile of her own. “Do you have it, or not?”

He fights it from his pocket, blushing hot when she watches him pull it from a bright pink wallet. The top sleeve sports his big eyes, the iris color rubbed off by use. The bottom unfolds into his gaping mouth, and its from there Maran fights his card out.

The flight attendant watches silently until its placed in her palm.

“This isn’t a fake, is it?” She teases, gesturing to the wallet. “I think my nephew has that.”

And then Maran has a little plastic cup half-filled with a mixture of Coke and rum — he didn’t particularly like rum, but he also didn’t particularly know anytihng about drinks, and this was the thing his girlfriends always ordered at a bar while Maran was stuck sipping at a pint he didn’t actually like. Might as well enjoy if he was also going to kill the nerves.

When he thanks the flight attendant (very sincerely, mind) she blushes. Maran doesn’t sleep even after he finishes his drink, but something about making her blush settles him more than the alcohol.

He isn’t sure why.

*

A bit after that:

Maran whistles, low and impressed.

Benji’s only been at the flat for a few months, or so he claims. The incredible array of fucking mess could be attribute to a shut-in of several years. And diagnoses.

For saying as much during their tight hug, Maran gets a solid thump to the back of his shoulder.

“Dickhead,” Benji says, but his sneer is missing. When they pull away, his eyes seem brighter than Maran’s ever seen them — especially in all the blurry, silly, nose-up selfies they’ve sent each other during Benji’s first year abroad. He looks…he looks happy, Maran thinks, and privately defends that as a regular show of emotiona for his friend. People tend to assume otherwise.

He has a bit of a hard time piecing together the fact that Benji’s happiness in that moment is a result of his presence. They’re best mates, sure, and that’s how it ought to be — but lingering on it makes little pricks of tears gather at the corners of his eyes.

“Don’t pop off.”

Maran huffs and socks him back. He’s hoping for that nasty look, maybe a fond and laughingly delivered insult. But instead Benji’s brow pulls. It’s that knowingly empathetic scrunch. He reaches for Maran again, tossing aside the duffel he’d slung about his shoulder to carry in.

Nice of him, that walk up was four flights, Maran thinks as he’s pulled into another crushing hug. And then he starts properly crying.

He won’t pretend Benji’s own sniffle is quiet. Or that he doesn’t feel the eye-spaced wet spots growing on his shirt. They’re being babies, sure, clutching at each other and sniffling like its been a decade, not a year. Maran is incapable of pretending that doesn’t mean something. They’ve known each other since birth, after all. Earlier, if he’s keen to get philosophical.

He can’t really piece together the fact that Benji’s happiness and his own presence might be related; lingering on that thought makes tears prick at his eyes.

“I missed you, mate.”

“You’re my favorite,” Maran replies immediately. The words don’t pass through his brain on the way out his mouth, but he means them. Really, really means them.

Benji thumps him again. Naturally Maran socks him back. He’s hoping for a bit of a sneer, a laughingly delivered insult. But instead Benji’s brow pulls.

Nice of him, that walk up was four flights. Maran thinks as he’s squeezed tight.

He even allows Maran to squeeze him back, and then they’re moving in a clumsy sort-of waltz circle in the center of what could be a spacious living area if the bastard could pick up after himself.

Maran says that, too. Benji gives him another thump for it, but he’s also still sniffling.

“Mate.” Maran starts.

“Fuck off.” Benji mumbles warningly, but it’s no use.

“Missed you so fuckin’ much.”

Another half-hearted swat to his back. “Oh, fuck yourself.”

Benji does another soft little noise, one that gets Maran actually worried for the state of his shirt. But he gives a fuck, he gives a fuck, he can’t pretend not to — so he pulls Benji in for another hug when he backs off, stiff with embarrassment.

I’m glad I wasn’t the only one lonely, Maran thinks. Benji, sometime I’m gonna ask you about that: do you get lonely? Is that normal? I think I care too much. And when I’ve got nothing to care over —

Benji’s next noise isn’t a cry or a sniffle, but a wheeze.

“Oi!” He snaps, laughing through their shared emotion. “M’fuckin’ lungs, man. Keep bein’ mean to me and I won’t invite you—“

Maran perks immediately. “Where? S’cool place, though. Say it’s cool. Oh, mate, are you taking me somewhere cool for my first night?”

Benji’s cheeks look warm beneath the yellowy light. He needs more lamps; they would make the place less sad and stuffy. Maran’s just opening his mouth to say as much when Benji pulls him in for their most crushing hug yet.

“What!” He wheeze-laughs, arms stuck to his sides.”Fuckin’ hell.”

“I missed you. Oh, fuck, Maran, I missed you.”

Maran warms a bit, too. In the hall mirror, over Benji’s shoulder, he realizes that tears and emotion have painted his nose a cherry-red.

Clown, Maran thinks fondly at his reflection. Worrying over what?

*

A couple weeks?:

Looking back, Maran isn’t sure if it was a romantic one-after-another of chance encounters moonlighting as capital S signs, or if the universe had been offering him him string after string of warnings.

Everyone had urged him to have fun on this summer trip; Benji might be busy, sure, but that didn’t mean Maran couldn’t dive the deep end. How many opportunities would he have, anyway? Realistically, when would he ever be able to travel the world again? He hadn’t, unlike his best friend, had the foresight to set himself up a future. An educated or well-paying one, anyway. Hadn’t been smart to save or invest or open — what did Saha call it? high yield? — or get a bank.

And, unlike Benji (yet again), he didn’t have a responsible and welcoming older sibling in whose footsteps he could follow.

What he had was the money saved from a summer job (he’d planned on putting it towards driving lessons, towards a car). Maran had a friend on the precipice of a massive life change. Maran had —

Maran had more things, for sure. He just couldn’t think of them at the moment.

But.

No prospects, really. No motivation. No path ahead. No job lined up. No dreams — at least, not for the nebulous, adult ‘future’.

So although he was tagging along (as Maran did, he always tagged along, that was Maran, following), he was being a bit of a cunt about it all.

“Nah, it’ll be good for you. I feel a bit like a shit dog owner, yeah? Leavin’ you alone when I’m in class half the week.” Benji insists on Maran’s phone screen. In the little boxed background, Maran can make out a shelf and the telltale orange stained wood of public space furniture.

“You at the library again, mate?” Thanks to his mood, Maran sounds a bit nastier than he intends. Benji doesn’t seem to notice. Or, in his patiently diplomatic way, doesn’t care.

Benji turns to look at the array of books behind him. “Bit obvious.”

“You are a proper fucking loser,” Maran says sweetly. He pretends to be offended at the finger Benji raises.

“Who’s dropping an application off to deliver pizza—“

“You just said you approved and it’ll be good for me.”

“The exercise will. How much that piece of absolute shit cost you, man?”

“Couple quid.” Maran chirps, automatic. Then he frowns. “No. Uh. Dollars. Like, two hundred.”

“Scammed!” Benji hisses. “You been here a week and you got scammed by some fuck on Facebook. I told you to be careful.”

Maran sours even further. He doesn’t want Benji to seem his childish slouch, the moody tuck of his arms, the severe pout his mouth draws.

What are you doing, Maran? What are your plans? Have we just fucked off, no prospects, to spend a summer — what? Faffing about, doing fuck-all, being nobody, spending money you shouldn’t be spending?

It felt — it sounded— familiar. It sounded like—

Bastard.

Maran silences the little voice with that, just to be wily. He musters up his own. He finds nonna’s, his mother’s, Kay and Saha all assuring him it would be good for them both. That Maran could have fun.

Have fun. Have fun. Have fun.

And what else?

What else?

Maran hopes the moment has stretched too long, too awkward; judging from the blank look on Benji’s face, it hasn’t. Or…he hasn’t noticed, bless him.

“S’fine. Got the bike. And I’ll be careful,” Maran says. He beams into the camera. It isn’t fake, his smile. It’s sincere. It’s —

What else?

They chat as Benji packs up his studying material. When he hangs up to enjoy his walk home in solitude (but not silence, he always has that fucking noise too high in his earbuds), Maran simply lays on the air mattress and counts the minutes. It usually takes ten and a half, traffic considering, for Benji to meaner across campus towards his flat. At nine minutes thirty, Maran abruptly stands. He drags himself from the bedroom, fixing his mattress-flattened hair. With a sneaky glance out the curtains, he confirms Benji’s making the final trek up the sidewalk towards the building.

Then Maran positions himself on the couch, a book he’s never read opened halfway through and flat over his knee. He pullshis phone from his pocket, places it screen-up on the coffee table and open to a group chat that looks active from a distance but hasn’t been touched in two months minimum.

Look, Benji. I have a life outside you, Maran thinks, and lifts his head just as the front door rattles and swings open.

*

Maybe a week after that:

Maran doesn’t have a license, but he doesn’t need one to ride the bike. So he signs up to as many of the delivery apps as he can as a rider. Money he’ll need, if he wants to enjoy the stay at all and not loaf about on Benji’s dime. And something to do, because if he spends another Thursday afternoon by himself he’s liable to do something desperate. Like, join in on the mid morning pickleball matches that the complex’s elderly folk enjoy out on the lawn. Maran doesn’t even fucking know what pickleball is.

What he does know is that the hill is a fucking riot to shoot down on his bike, but a bitch to pedal back up at the end of a working day. He tries to go for the dinner rush only, and keep the trips short. But the tips roll in meager — cagey, stingy suburban fucks and poor college students make up the majority of his clientele.

Maran prefers his skateboard to the bike, which makes him use muscles in his legs but also his core, which he didn’t even know you needed to ride a bloody fucking bike in the first place. But he can’t ride the road on his skateboard, and the tips roll in faster the quicker he is between deliveries, and so he resigns himself to the hard work between parties and bowling and filthy underground shows Benji drags him along to as a plus-one.

Occasionally, the good tip rolls in. Maran is quick to nab them up.

This latest one is a sizeable amount — shockingly good, considering the upscale neighborhood the app directs his delivery towards.

Shockingly, considering the shiny copper roofs of the gated apartment community. Shockingly, despite the curling script font of the welcome mat: soooo happy you’re here!

Maran sighs and braces himself to knock. The instructions hadn’t said leave at door, so he’s anticipating someone who wants to chat. Or be strange. He’d had a fellow open the door just last week, shirtless but for a comically large bib around his neck and a pacifier in his mouth.

The girl that opens the door has neither of those things. But frankly, she’s pretty enough Maran wouldn’t blink twice otherwise.

“Hi.” He says, and stands there like a numb fucking idiot before he remembers the food in his bag. He slings it off his shoulder and to the ground, holding the girl’s eye as long as he can before slippery fingers on the zipper make him break it.

“Um.” He straightens. Pauses again, because their eyes meet. She is pretty. Gorgeous, even. Springy strawberry-blonde curls that are long enough to frame a trim waist, eyes that are just a size too big that seem to twinkle up at him. Even the little wrinkle between her brows is pretty — oh, fucking hell. She’s frowning.

Maran swallows. “Name?”

“Isn’t it on there?” The girl asks, gesturing at the phone loose in his free hand. He’d been close to dropping it.

“Yeah, but—“ he fumbles the white paper satchel containing her food, barely managing to catch it mid air before it spills all over her sequin butterfly top. “Oh, fuck. Woulda fumbled that tip, huh?”

The girl laughs. He brightens too, even if it’s just a little giggle. Her eyes crinkle when she does it, but she hides what her mouth does behind her hand.

“You’re nothin’ local,” she says as she takes the bag from him. Their fingers brush.

“Sorry?”

She flaps her hand, laughing again. Now she doens’t have one free to hide her smile. She’s got a gorgeous one of that, too. Teeth straight and white and just a bit too big for her mouth in as endearing a magnification as her honey-colored eyes.

“Not local.” She says. She taps at her phone, bag propped on the swell of a hip for better motor control. Maran’s phone, still slightly slack in his hand, pings. She’s added another five to the tip.

Maran tries to come back down to earth a bit, and process. “Uh. No. M’from—“

“Can I guess?”

For the first time in their interaction, he notices her accent.

“Wait a second.” He laughs. “Hold on, ‘fore we go further with this.”

“Oh, further, are we?”

“Irish.” Maran says confidently. “North?”

“How dare.”

Maran laughs harder, his smile widening at her tone. She’s nice to talk to. “So sorry! I’ll guess.”

“I asked first.”

“Uh, Dublin.”

“Easy cheat, that. Nearly everybody is. No, Cork.”

He pouts, watching a spot of color rise to each of her cheek. “Aw. I was guessin’.”

“Let me take over for you, then?” The girl switches the bag to her other hip, and Maran tries not to let his focus drift there too long. “Um. Oh, I’m so shite at this. Ah, can I get a hint?”

Maran stares at her, perplexed. “What, me talkin’ s’not enough for you?”

She blinks owlishly, then flushes even pinker. “Alright then, yeah. Liverpool.”

“Bit obvious!” Maran laughs. He hadn’t been aware until just then that he’s leaned against her doorway. He jumps back from it, sheepish. “Aw, fuckin’ hell. I’ve got to get to others— you were on the way—“

“You make me feel very special,” the girl cheeks. She hefts the food up, because the bag is rather full and she’s nearly a foot shorter and proportionate in musculature. That is, to say, not owning much at all. Her straining bicep flashes a bit of ink below the sleeve.

Maran glances down at his phone screen. Then back up at her, smiling. “Fiadh. Nice to meet you.”

Fiadh giggles when he tips a fake hat, bowing low. She peeks at her phone, then sets a storm of butterflies in his gut: “Maran. Let’s run into each other again.”

He’s stunned from words by the easy, sweet confidence of her tone. Maran stares at the flat orange color of her shut door for a moment long after it’s been shut in his face. Then he lets go of a deep breath, turning from the door before slipping both hands over his wild, smiling face.

It isn’t until he’s back at his bike that Maran realizes he’s left the cherry milkshake from her order to melt in the drink holder.

*

Day or two, maybe:

The three of them stumble into the on-campus diner far too late in the evening. It’s university affiliated, which stateside Maran has begun to understand means massively inflated money-wise, but the food’s the best they’ve found so far. And by best, of course, the greasiest and fattiest most disgusting post-bar hop food available.

Maran is picking at the remainder of their wings when Benji abruptly stands, teetering slightly on his feet. He spreads both palms on the laminate table, prompting Maran and Naima to look up.

“You okay, chief?” Naima asks. She sounds (and looks) the least sloshed of them. Her handmade crochet top, loops tastefully open to show skin, doesn’t have a single smudge of wing sauce.

Maran pouts down at his own shirt, wishing Matilda were there — she always carries one of those handy little stain pens with her. He wipes at his mouth, uncomfortably anxious that he’s got stains at the corners like a child.

“Yeah, Benj. You good?”

Benji, who has stood there silent for a long moment, shakes himself. His eyes swim somewhere halfway between the pair, then swing towards the corner of the diner.

“Ah. Needta piss.”

Several heads turn their direction; alcohol always fucks with Benji’s volume controls. But thankfully, all the other patrons seem either too eclipsed in their own business or alcohol levels to care.

“G’wed, then.” Maran prompts. He flaps a hand at Benji. “Well. ‘Fore we gotta give you a new nickname, Benj.”

“Piss King Supreme.” Naima intones.

“PeePee Palanivel.”

“Fuck yourself,” Benji says, pointing at Naima. He sways as he turns to Maran with the same finger. “Fuck yourself extra.”

“Don’t get lost!” Maran calls, equally at odds with his volume controls, as Benji teeters towards the door marked with a stick figure in a top hat.

The second he’s up and out of earshot, Maran spreads both arms across the booth towards her.

“Yes?”

Naima sips her Coke, knuckle pressed to the deep sleepless circle under her left eye. It’s Thursday night, which means tomorrow (today, if it’s past midnight?) is Friday, which means she’s got an early morning lecture, which means she’ll hit totally Benji-like levels of cranky if they stay up much later. He mentally strikes off the idea to ask her if she’d like to go see a late movie.

“M’gonna die alone.”

She wrinkles her nose at him. It looks a mix of humored, intrigued as to where this conversation will go and why Benji couldn’t be around to partake, and exhausted with his antics.

“Man, what? You sneak another drink when I wasn’t looking?”

Maran shakes his head innocently. The room spins once he’s done, and Naima sucks her teeth.

“Are we doing the late night existential loneliness thing?” She swirls her straw. “Ugh. Why’d you wait for Benji to get up? He’s the expert.”

“Ha.” Maran snorts, momentarily distracted from his own self pity. Then he sobers a bit…just not much. Whatever had been in those drinks at her friend’s house party were strong.

“Oh shit.” Naima says, slow and sage. “You weren’t joking. That’s only forty percent alcohol talking.”

Maran peers down into his plate of suddenly unappetizing fried food. He thinks of all the truthful things that he could tell Naima, in this moment. But she hates giving advice. Secretly, he knows, hates being responsible. Hates when people box her into the mom friend category. The perpetual eldest sibling.

Maran doesn’t know what that is like. He does, sort of, considering Saha. But —

That’s one of the truthful things. And they usually start with: when Benji’s gone, I’ve gotta stand on my own Like, as a person. As an interesting person, with something to say. When Benji’s gone, I feel alone, sometimes. Even sat across you, Naima. I wish I had little siblings to poke at me for more than I can give. I wish I had more friends here, not that you and Benji and acquaintances and the party regulars and stuff aren’t enough. It’s enough. It is enough.

Why doesn’t it feel like enough?

Maran blinks. It’s sluggish to his brain slurry, but probably normal. Silently, he turns both arms palm-to-ceiling, fingers spread beseechingly.

Naima sighs. But she puts her own hands, warm and dry, on top of his — although there’s a slightly dubious quirk to her brow.

“Hypothetically—”

Naima sighs and begins to retract her hands. She scowls a bit when Maran encloses her fingers again.

“Motherfucker. You are out of it, Maran. I think we can cross off vodka from your list.” She casts a dramatic, searching look over her shoulder. “How slow does that guy piss?”

“Hypothetically,” Maran insists, whinging for her attention again, shaking her hand. “I mean, am I dataeable?”

Naima pretends to stand.

He wails (admittedly too loud) as she tries to pull away.

“Fuckable, at least?Naima. Nai, come on.”

She’s trying to be put-off by the question, but she’s predictable — Naima’s always had a weak spot for the sort of humor that puts her on the spot. So they’re both grinning and giggling as she tries to get away from the booth and he nearly tumbles off the side seat, shoulders shaking.

They’re drawing a bit of attention, but no more than drunk, grease-seeking college kids at a diner. So the blush on Maran’s cheeks isn’t as full-force as it could be.

“Can’t take you two anywhere.”

Maran cranes his neck to see Benji stood there, arms crossed. He is clearly, judging from the lifted brow and smile pulling at one side of his mouth, assessing how quickly things have fallen apart in his absence.

Maran grins up at him. “We’re wallowing. Y’should join, mate.”

“Don’t look like wallowing.” Benji mumbles, nudging Maran back into the corner of the booth so he can slide in again.

“It wasn’t wallowing.” Naima announces. The words are mischievous, leading. Maran narrows heavy eyelids at her warningly, but she ignores him. “Mar was just begging me to fuck him. It was real weird.”

His jaw drops and a shocked, embarrassed noise escapes him. “You!”

“You!” Naima accuses in turn, pointing at him. “You gonna look Benji in the eye and lie to him? To that face? Look at that face, Maran.”

Maran cannot.

“Gotta be careful with this one.” Benji says. His tone is evil, even. “Has a reputation.”

Maran’s just drunk enough that it stings, a bit. He knows it’s a joke — knows Benji would never lob something like that with an insult intended. But…but the drinks were strong —

“Nice job.” Naima says.

“Huh?”

“You are so dense.” She insists.

Benji leans over to peek at him, but Maran only tucks his chin down into his palm and turns away.

“Did you just hmph?” Benji asks, incredulous. Maran’s temper bubbles at that laugh.

“I don’t have a fuckin—“

“Excuse me.”

All three of their heads whip to the side at the introduction of a new, unfamiliar voice. Maran, head swimming and still emotional, sort of likes the sound. And when he sees who it comes from, he likes the sound even more.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” The blonde lifts her fingers just above her hip, which he chooses to interpret as a subtle wave meant just for him.”Um, I’m glad you lot are having fun, but you’re being really loud.”

Benji and Naima pull faces in unison, staring at the freckled face. It’s familiar to Maran, but not them; they share a quick conversation contained in two twin looks: the audacity, then, wait — are we actually being that loud?

“We’re really sorry,” Maran says. There’s a quiet, grumbling chorus from the other two that he ignores. He casts a shyly embarrassed glance around the diner; people stare back, some angrily.

“It’s Waffle House on the outskirts of a college town at —“ Across from him, Naima pauses her grumble to reach out and check Benji’s watch. “One twenty-five in the morning.”

Fiadh crosses her arms, but it doesn't look intimidating the way it does on Benji. She looks like she’s trying to hug herself, and her mouth is twisted into a strange pout, and her eyes have gone a bit shiny.

“I’m not trying to cause any issues, alright? My friend just had a rough night — like, a proper rough breakup.”

Maran glances between them. He can see the debate play out on Naima’s face; keep arguing, cause more of a scene, be the bad guy even though it is sort of silly to expect full quiet in a restaurant like this one. Or let it slide. It’s only a matter of tension for Naima because her stubborn streak is wider than Benji’s moodiness.

Maran turns back to the recognizable face. “I didn’t get your full name, last time?”

Beside him, Benji snorts and leans back in the booth so Maran can talk more directly to her. “Last time.”

Beneath the table, Maran digs his heels into Benji’s ankle until that loftily amused noise becomes pained.

“Why do you need my legal name, Maran?”

Naima and Benji share another look. He tries very hard to ignore the fact that they’re privy to this interaction. He wishes it was just the two of them, him and this beautiful girl that seems interested in speaking.

“Um.”

“So he can look you up on the ‘gram,” Naima fills in. She wiggles her fingers. “See if you’re one of those Bible verse in the bio types.”

“I was not—“

Beside her, Benji snorts.

Maran stands abruptly. It startles Fiadh, even, who jumps away from the end of their table. Over her shoulder, a gaggle of other girls —her friends, presumably, who are pretending to not pay attention— move as one single-felled unit. They all lean forward, all narrow their eyes, and Maran realizes he s not the only one with an audience.

“D’you want to go for a walk?” Maran blurts. He casts a glance back down at their unfinished food, at the spot in front of Benji’s arm which is staining the laminate diner table a buffalo chicken orange. He’s embarrassed, all of a sudden. He isn’t sure why.

Fiadh, in a fluffy neon furred coat that matches the color of the glitter carefully applied to her eyelids, smiles at him. He’s a bit stunned by it — not just at the wattage, or hypnotizingly shy coax to it, but that she gives it to him at all. Him.

“Yeah, sure.”

*

Twenty minutes, ish:

“It’s a bit rough, I hear.”

Maran tilts his head a bit. She looks very pretty, even under the ebb of harsh street lights — he’s not sure what that means, really, only that Saha was always complaining about it growing up.

Fluorescence is a sin.

“What? Liverpool?”

Fiadh giggles behind her hand. The balloon in Maran’s chest swells and bursts at the sound. He hopes the grin remains normal, even though it doesn’t feel it.

“The way you say that — great. Yeah, Liverpool. Where else?”

He laughs, a bit shy. “It’s nice. I miss it. Honest, found it impressive that you guessed point-blank. Some people can’t distinguish, y’know? As distinct we think it is. Haven’t been used t’people pickin’ up on it much, over here.”

“They guess London?”

He slaps a hand down on the table, eyebrows raised. “Would you believe? Me, posh. But, yeah. To answer you, yeah, it’s nice. Miss it.” Maran’s stomach twists strangely. He feels a strangely defensive need to give his hometown to credit. “Really though, s’not, like…more rough than anywhere else?”

Fiadh blinks up at him, honey-brown brows tilted slightly.

He considers for a moment, then flips his palm ceiling to floor and back. “Right, well. Okay, maybe a bit. Certain places. That’s anywhere, though. You ask the right person and you’ll get a great rant about why that is. Lots of, y’know, industrial exploitation and immigration and —“

Fiadh’s brow is no longer pinched. Her grin more humored than it was a moment before. Maran snaps his mouth shut.

“You the right person, then?”

There’s an unreadable note to her voice Maran can’t place.

“Not for that one, no.” Maran says. He squirms in his seat a bit. “M’best mate, Benji — he goes here, too. Nursing. Oh well. Not, like, same I guess. Nursing’s on main, and you said you were a bit ways up the road, at the STEM campus. Anyway. Benji’s the right one to ask about all that sort of stuff. ‘Bad’ neighborhoods and housin’ and crime and — fuckin’ hell. Talk your ear off on it, you get him going.”

“You have that in common, then. Fiadh says.

Her demure grin drops at the expression Maran makes at that. “Oh, no! No, oh my God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that—“ She reaches across and tucks her slim, ringed fingers into Maran’s. Her skin is smooth, slightly tacky from the lotion she’d put on when they came inside. Maran feels his grin bounce back, and squeezes her hand.

“Naw, don’t worry. Do that all the time.” He chuckles. “I mean, the rantin’, but also — also saying the wrong thing, yeah? Worry about it always.”

“Always,” Fiadh insists in agreement. Her voice is so pretty and soft, even more attractive with the lilt of her accent. He’d really like her to say his name again. “I’m so glad you get it, Maran.” She blinks at him for a moment, then ducks her head so that a strand of curly gold falls into her eyes. His chest feels loose, all of a sudden.

“I’m so glad we met.”

“Yes.” Maran breathes back, and then shakes his head a bit. “I mean, yes. Me too, yeah.”

*

Two hours later, in Benji’s flat, almost sober:

Naima stands at the foot of his air mattress in a pair of Benji’s briefs and an oversized shirt nabbed from Maran’s plastic drawers serving as a dresser.

“You what.”

“Walked her home?” Maran asks, not sure why he’s asking. That’s what happened. He walked Fiadh home.

“Probably a good thing,” Benji calls from the living room.

“Stop eavesdroppin’, bastard.”

“Stop fumblin’, bastard!” His best friend shouts.

“Shut up, both of you.” Naima suggests. “It’s almost four in the morning.”

Maran tilts his face up at her, and she gets that sibling look about. Without prompting, Naima rounds the mattress to sit on its edge. Maran rolls dramatically towards her as the air rebalances him, pitching himself into her side She smells like whatever spicy, neutral scent Benji’s body wash has and that he is largely obtuse to. She smells like the lingering drip of too-sweet maple syrup poured from a diner bottle. She smells like the pine out front, as if she and Benji had accidentally tumbled against it on their own drunk walk home.

“What’s up, Marvin?”

Maran smiles slightly, tilting his forehead into her hip. He likes being babied, likes that Naima won’t do this with just anybody, likes that he gets a hint of what her sister mode looks like. She only ever calls him that silly nickname when its jsut the two of them. And despite the thin walls and Benji’s nosiness, he’s gone silent in the living room.

“Thanks for talking to me.” Maran says earnestly. He’s sobered up in the chilly night air, enough that the words are strong and sincere.

Except Naima reaches up and pats his hair, warm palm brushing past his hairline to tuck at the crown. With that leverage, she pulls him up to plant a kiss to the center of his forehead. Maran can feel a bit of residue there from her dark lipstick. Dark Cherry Kiss, or something. He’s watched her apply it in the mirror before a night out.

“Don’t be silly, Mar.” Naima says. Her voice is lilting and quiet. Affectionate, but humored. Maran’s stomach sours.

Like she’s assuring a child.

“i’m not being—“

“You are,” she insists, kissing the same spot on his forehead again. Maran resists the urge to wipe it off. “And I’m telling you there’s no reason to do that, okay? Get some sleep. And there’s water on the floor if you need it.”

Thanks, he withholds. He thinks maybe he does that out of spite.

*

Twooo…three days later?:

Maran is delivering again.

The notification for Fiadh’s address is half down the list of orders, and it’s out of the way, but he’s thinking in Benji’s voice, in Naima’s knowing laugh. Before he knows it, he’s tapping the accept order button.

He waits: sat on the sofa, legs tossed over the arm; slumped until his spine hurt in one of the rickety kitchen stools; starfish spread on the ground, phone screen to his forehead.

And then finally, there’s a little ping that signals the app is connecting him with the customer.

Fiadh: Not to be insane, but I was hoping it would be you. Is that stupid?

Maran: I’m happy to be delivering your order today :thumbs_up: also no, it’s definitely not. I have maybe been thinking about you a bit.

Fiadh: Just a bit?

Maran: Alright, fine, yeah. A lot. :blushing:

His phone pings again.The restaurant’s finished her order, and now he’s got to go pick-up. Maran practically skips out the front door, sticking his upper half back in to grab the keys he’d forgotten.

And he nearly trips down the steps. Maran stares at the latest notification at the top of his screen, knuckles white where they clutch the edges.

! Customer [Fiadh] has added items from secondary pickup location. This location is on your route; the amount from this order will be added to their customer total, but delivery specialists do not receive a second payout. !

Customer [Fiadh] has added the following items to the order:

- 1 pack evergreen mint gum

- 2 BoomBam energy drinks, very berry and lemonade

- 1 pack condoms, medium

Maran fumbles his keys in the ignition once, twice, three — swear — four times.

*

Ten minutes later:

Maran feels more than a bit awkward waiting for the door to open. He dries his free hand on his thigh. The plastic bags around his wrist dig just shy of painful; he’d doubled bagged them. With how fast he’d taken the stairs up to Fiadh’s floor, they’d spun and wound themselves tight around flesh.

The door cracks, and Maran abruptly stops fidgeting.

It’s her cute slippers he notices first. Leopard or cheetah or the markings of some other big cat, the faux fur lining them almost too fluffy.

Then Maran’s eyes drag up the rest of her.

Maran blinks. She’s wearing a too-big shirt that reads Take me back to Cabo! Richard n’ Karol 2016 in peeling, faded letters. She’s wearing those cute slippers and a soft looking, her silly Cabo too-big shirt —and not much else.

“Uh.” He glances down to the bags around his wrist, then peers back up at her with a sheepish shrug. “I was going to ask if maybe that was a mistake…?”

Fiadh’s big, pretty eyes pop wider. “You still think —“ She pinches the bridge of her nose. For some reason, the curl of her lips makes something nervous slip into his stomach.

Is she laughing at me? Maran briefly wonders. But only briefly, because a small fist knots in the front of his own shirt and yanks him across the threshold.

*

Three weeks later:

“Why—” Maran tries to place it. “Endocrinology.”

She laughs. “Wrong one. Entomology.”

“Bugs.” Maran offers. The blunder pinks his cheeks, makes his foot tap.”I guess, insects? Use the respectable term, right? S’like,” he laughs, and is the only one of them to do so. Which makes him laugh more, awkward and hard, which dissipates whatever shred of humor remained of the bombed joke because Fiadh’s only silent and staring at him with her big, deep eyes.

“Well.” Maran breaks off before he carries on — s’like, is bugs a slur? y’think they get offended, prefer insects? wouldn’t that be funny, you get chewed out because you’ve broken some insect social blunder, who’d you think is the most formal of ‘em, if you had to guess, but you don’t because you study ‘em, so ladybugs, for sure, and cockroaches probably —

“Well,” Maran says again. He tips back until the playground horse’s spring groans under him. Somehow, even that sound is embarrassing. “Whatever. Fuckin’ hell, I’ve had a bit much, I think.”

“I chose it because I liked butterflies as a kid.”

He blinks at her. He expected to continue filling the awful void himself, until she tired of it and left. He was always sort of waiting for Fiadh to sigh in that way of hers, stand with her arms pin straight at her sides, and walk off in exasperation.

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” Fiadh answers from a thousand miles away. Her mouth quirks in one of the softest, most genuine smiles he’s ever seen. “We had this greenhouse — more a conservatory, really, the size of it.” She has the decency to cast a sheepish glance askew, out over the woodchips. “One year da had monarchs shipped in. The caterpillars, I mean. Danaus plexippus.”

She pauses, peeks at him, then beams because Maran frees an impressed whistle as cued.

“Big words in endocrinology.”

He laughs. “I’ll bet! Not like either of us know. So — the caterpillars.”

“Larvae, technically.” Fiadh says. He wrinkles his nose. “The most interesting stage.”

“You’re getting to the part where they’re all pretty n’orange, not squirmy?”

Fiadh huffs a laugh — she always does that, just a little bit of a breath. Barely a noise. Sometimes he wonders if it’s purposeful; if she knows what he wants, a proper laugh, and withholds it; if she can tell that he needs it, in a way.

“Right. So he’s got them sent in, you follow? Tells me it’s my job as lady of the house to fill it up with plants and butterflies and the like. We’d gone to a butterfly house in Denmark when I was — oh, eight, hell, just a baby.”

“Made an impression, I guess. Lifelong learner out of you.”

Her mouth pulls strangely. “Suppose. Sometimes—”

It’s a perfect night for this sort of conversation. Humid enough that his shirt clings a bit, but not muggy. A breeze gentling across the field, strokes of shifting grass blue in the moonlight. He feels the shift in her tone, in the mood of their discussion, like a change in the wind.

Maran slips himself from the horse contraption, eyes glued to Fiadh where she sits on her own. She’s sleight against the backdrop of the chain link fence: hair fluttering in picturesque wisps, the soft and pale angle of her upturned nose absurdly perfect as if drawn.

He tries to be quiet, but shuffling towards her across the woodchips proves the effort’s misplaced. Whatever memory or winding thought has transfixed her nearly breaks, but Fiadh doesn’t move as he approaches. She shifts only slightly, thighs tensing as Maran slips in behind her on the spring-bound creature. Her hand rests on its — a badger? a beaver? — forehead, thumb stroking a circle. The place she touches must have been touched similarly by a thousand other thumbs, because it’s shinier than other parts of the old play attraction.

“Maybe I’m a bit more sloshed than I thought, too.”

Maran hums, chin tucking to a shoulder, arms around a waist, honey curls touching his nose. It’s humid — with them pressed together precariously balanced on the teeter-totter animal, it’s worse.

But she draws a breath like she’ll speak more, if he’s just quiet. So he is.

“Sometimes.”

He can’t help it. “But not often?”

“I think it was nice to have a thing.” Fiadh’s gone again. Her eyes are far off on the dim and foggy horizon. Dragging the rest of her, thoughts first, with them. Maran thinks he might not even exist to her as it unravels:

“It’s like when you tell a family member you like something— or even, they bring it up first and you barely express interest, really, but then that just becomes.” Her wrist stirs the air, fingers splayed like the explanation is tucked between the webs. She’s so pale the moon turns that thin skin purple; blood and night sky.

“Your thing?”

“Right.” She faces way from him, but Maran can hear that bit of her voice about to break. “Sometimes I don’t even know if I’m into it at all. Or if it’s comfortable. If I’m just doing something I know, just…coasting?”

Maran isn’t sure why he shivers, but goosebumps prick at his arms uncaring of his awareness. He brushes a hand down her arm, tracing the path of a dragonfly’s thorax and wingspan even though he can’t see it well: it was one of her earliest, he remembers, so that’s why it’s faded, and that’s why it’s also his favorite.

“Y’got all these guys, though.” He points out. “That’s commitment, yeah? Passionate, not coastin’.”

Fiadh slumps into his chest a bit. “I’m not so sure.” Suddenly, she twists at the waist to find his gaze. “If I say something awful, will you judge me?”

“No,” Maran says immediately. Maran responds before processing frequently, but he’s mostly sure he means that ‘no’. Mostly.

“I like telling people.” Fiadh admits. It’s a flurry of words just as quick as his assurance. He wonders (briefly, and guiltily for even that split second) if they might have come out regardless of his answer.

“Telling people?”

“That it’s what I’m studying. I feel like everyone’s got this image of me, yeah? Like,” she spreads both hands, index and thumb ninety degrees, to frame a portion of the sky above. “Real specific but totally inaccurate. I know what I look like, and I think people assume. I use my brain just like anybody else, sometimes better. So I like when people think I’m smart. I like that they look at my and don’t expect bugs.”

“Insects,” Maran corrects gently.

Fiadh is quiet for a moment. Then she wrenches herself from Maran’s arms, nearly clipping him sensitive with a knee as she heaves off the rocker.

Backed by a big, sparkling, romantic moon,Maran can only stare up at her. She’s worked up from something,maybe speaking, her eyes bright and wide and —maybe, he worries, terrified?

Maran smiles at her as soft as he can manage: I get it, keep talking, keep explaining, I’ll do my best to understand, I want to know, I can understand, I can make it better if you want, I know what to say—

“What if I’m meant to do something else, you know? Something bigger, or even better or something —something.”

“Somethingsomething,” Maran sing-songs, humoring himself.

“Somehing not studying wings under a microscope and pinning for display and identifying instars in freshwater populations and egg cycles and living in an apartment that—“

Maran rather likes her apartment; it’s the fanciest one he’s ever been in, all light (vulnerable, stainable) wood and stainless steel and new appliances.

“—a covered parking space, drinking cup after cup of leftover pours and going-bad mixers and no job prospects besides conservation or preservation and barely a social life and dating —“

Maran blinks at her. She blinks at him. Then Fiadh bends and retches into the woodchips.

“Oh.” Maran says helplessly. He’s standing, suddenly. His stomach feels cold.

She tries to speak between pathetic, sniffling heaves. “I—too much— oh, the worst. I’m —the worst.”

She’s not, her assures her, she’s not. She’s so far from the worst they’ve got to come up with a new unit of measurement just to find the distance, he assures her. She jdanced a little too hard, but she looked very cute doing it, he assures her, he got a very cute slow-mo of her jumping in a circle, he’ll send it to her.

Maran orders the car. Maran assures her. Maran shuffles her to the elevator of her building, assures her and the doorman he’s meant to be there. Maran gets her water and a pill,gets himself one of each after he’s done assuring her, tucking her in, pulling the sheet to her chin because she keeps the apartment at a cool sixty-eight even when she’s gone because she’s sensitive to heat—

Maran pulls the sheet back down to her stomach, because she’s sensitive to heat, and she’s just been sick, and she’s laying there staring up at him with the saddest eyes he could possible imagine. He assures her right to sleep. He assures her with a thumb circling the back of her hand, held in his own. He assures her and imagines the spot goes shiny, but that his is the only thumb that polishes it.

Dating— he’s thinking as he falls asleep on her couch, even though he’s more than welcome in the bed. The couch is comfier, firm where the bed sawllows him, sinks him into uncomfortably expensive depth.s.

Dating—he thinks, eyes shut, memory and its embellishment giving him a vision of the little spindly veins in her hands as she stretched towards the moon.

*

Sometime later:

It doesn’t take long, after that. He isn’t stupid — he can tell the second it happens. Rain checked brunch. Museum tripped pushed the next week. A phone call unreturned. Hours between texts, when usually he was hard pressed to get her to stop.

At a party a few days after they decide friends is better, he’s venting.

“And it was mutual.” Maran tries not to let himself sound bitter or sad ora’s fucking hurt as he is, but it’s difficult with the taste of the mixed drinks still heavy on his tongue, in the back of his throat. “Well.”

“That’s such a lie, dude. Like it’s always a lie. No offense. Someone wanted it, someone didn’t. Or, fuck. Someone wanted it less.” His fresh friend tilts back nearly off the railing they lean against. They’ve meandered a few blocks from the house party towards a public park. It’s more a square of greenery between two criss-crossed streets, but there’s a bench and that is enough of a qualifier for Maran.

“Been through it recently too, then?”

“Hah. I guess — not like this. But kinda.”

Maran tilts his chin back, head loose on his neck. “I just don’t get it, y’know? Like, m’not planning on staying so…all’s fair, right. But I don’t know how she can go from tellin’ me, oh, Mar, I’ve never connected with someone like this, I thought I was going to be alone.

His drinking buddy sits upright beside him on the bench. A massive hand flattens to his chest, nudging him back against the wrought iron perhaps harder than it means to.

“Oh that is —that’s wicked fucking eerie, dude, I had like almost the same thing said to me.” The other man shoves a hand back through his hair. “Almost word for word. Jesus H., it’s probably from some stupid viral top ten ways ways to nicely break up with someone you’re too scared to admit you fell out of love with or were never in love with at all TikTok.”

“Psychopaths.” Maran blinks at his new, nameless friend. “You sound, man?”

He shakes his wild mop of red hair.

“Peachy keen.” His wide-split smiling mouth twists curiously. “Why don’t we say like…cherry keen, or something? Peary keen?”

Maran sticks his hand out with a grin, pumping his new friend’s much larger on. “Banana-y keen.”

The other boy barks a laugh, charming and brash and too loud; nobody says a word about their volume control as they go on and on, until they run out of fruit.

*

At the beginning:

“Whoa.”

Maran stumbles against the sudden grip tight around his lower arm. He’s two in. Benji cleared out not twenty minutes ago, so he’s alone and skittish but hiding it well, would be hiding it well if he had another—

“Leggo of me, man, fuckin’ hell.”

Maran wrenches himself away from the grip, his face set in an uncharacteristic frown. He knows he looks angry, looks unapproachable, looks as though he’s not willing to have a conversation when all he really wants is for someone to fucking say something to him, anything, anyone.

Maran turns to the person he’d bumped into, then pauses.

“Oh.”

Benny’s forehead wrinkles with his hitching eyebrows. “Christ, Maran. K-Kill a guy with enthusiasm, will you?”

Maran nudges around his shoulder, peering behind the wide set of Benny’s shoulders towards the drink table behind him. There’s a variety of bottles and mixers set out. Two women with short-cropped hair stand behind the folding table, twin-like in their choice of leather jackets despite the humidity.

Briefly, he remembers Naima’s fluttering dramatic sigh before they departed the flat: Matilda’s butch barmaid bouncers are going to be back.

“I’ll be a bit more enthusiastic once I get at those l’il beauties.” Maran sing-songs, pointing at the table.

Benny turns at the waist. His button-up sleeve strains a bit against his bicep, cutting into skin in a way that looks uncomfortable. Maran reaches out and tucks a finger into the taut fabric, pulling it away.

“Don’t think Jules n’Stella are your t-type.” Benny quips, turning back to look down at the finger tucked into his shirt and then back at Maran’s face.

“You’d be wrong about that,” one of the women crows. Maran feels heat sweep into his face when her shrewd, pretty green eyes dip down him. “Come hang out with us for the rest of the party, sweetheart.”

Benny tucks an arm around Maran’s waist abruptly, tugging him a stumbling step closer. They touch flush from thigh to shoulder, Maran slightly tucked into his chest. He freezes, but Benny doesn’t seem to notice.

“Ooh, stop it you.” He squeezes a broad palm around Maran’s shoulder. His middle finger, ringed by a band of steel with a silly skull welded to the middle, digs uncomfortable into Maran’s collarbone. He could move away. It hurts, and he could move away, but — but—

“I just want another Cherry Bomb.”

Benny glances at the list of drinks Matilda had typed up. “Zombie. Cherry Bomb. Rumming up that Hill. One Way or Another…Shot. Oh, fuck. Matilda is a fucking l-loser.”

“I think they’re funny.” Maran mumbles. “They’re all lady band songs.”

“Lady band songs.” Jules or Stella echoes. “Benson, leave him with us. We can be trusted. You can trust us with the super cute little—”

Benny hisses like a cat, lifting his other arm to tuck around Maran and pull him in even tighter. It’s not like his hug with Benji, or Fiadh tucking herself against his chest and asking if he’s mad, if he’ll quit his job at her father’s pool, if they’ll keep talking, if he’ll leave her alone, if he’ll hug her again.

Maran sways a bit, and Benny readjusts to keep him upright. They stumble together towards the exit. At least, Maran thinks its the exit.

“Wher’we goin’?” He asks, suddenly sleepy with the overwhelming scent of — pine, maybe, the woods, something salty like an ocean spray— “Are you wearin’ cologne? Smells nice.”

Benny pauses briefly. Then, somehow miraculously shouldering the door open, dodging an influx of new partygoers, and keeping them tight together, they stumble out into the cool night air.

“We,” Benny announces, finally taking space for himself and allowing Maran his own bubble back, “Are going to go load up on ch-ch-chili cheese dogs.”

Maran’s stomach flips. He puts a hand to it. “I might puke.”

“Maran, baby.” Benny slaps a hand to his back, nudging him a step forward into the night. “Pukin’ the dogs back up is ninety p-percent of the American dream.”

Maran smiles wryly, thinking of Benji’s bitchily pulled brow and mouth open to rant. “I thought that was trickle down economics.”

Beside him, Benny is silent for so long a moment that Maran tilts his face back from the breezy midnight air and opens his eyes. When he does, Benny’s hair rustles in the wind as he turns away. It brushes his cheek, and Maran’s stomach flips again.

“I love those t-two, but I will fight them—“

“I might actually be sick—“

“Sh,” Benny says, cupping the back of his neck. He rubs there a second, and Maran floats off elsewhere on— on the wave of nausea from the drinks. He had too many drinks. He had too many, for sure. “I will fight them.”

“Don’t gotta fight nobody.” Maran assures. “They’re nice n’all, real flattering. But I like you better, don’t worry mate. You do the magic tricks.”

Benny pauses their sidewalk march and turns Maran towards him with hands on his shoulders. Maran blinks owlishly.

“You’re goddamn right I do the t-tricks.” Benny intones. His voice is low and earnest, theatrically approving for Maran’s ears and his ears only. “You are goddamn right.”

Maran isn’t sure what to do, then, other than laugh.

“Cute socks, b-by the way.” Benny points out, once they’re a ways down the street. The dim glow of the downtown district looms at the top of the gentle hill. At one point in the spring, Maran had struggled to peddle up it.

“Thanks,” he says, still beaming for some silly reason. “There’s little cherries on the bottom. Can’t remember where I got ‘em.”

“Nice, nice.” Benny says. He drops his arm off Maran’s shoulders, but keeps his strange waltzing gait even with Maran’s so the brush every so often. It’s comforting. Maran doesn’t feel alone, in the cool night. “You have a good time?”

Maran thinks about this question. He thinks about it more than he’s thought a lot of decisions through, recently. Then he turns to offer Benny a smile with his answer: “Yeah. A blast.”

and die

wc: 1.2k

[[Voice note recording begins]]

JOE: Cool, alright. Now that we’ve covered introductions, the signal, and some hints about the next release, let’s get a bit more in the weeds.

BENJI: Heh.

MATILDA: Ignore him.

LARK: Easier said than done.

BENJI: **** you, ****head.

JOE: Okay. What would you each say is the biggest or most exciting thing to happen to you the past six months?

MATILDA: Boilerplate

LARK: Matilda’s Boilerplate.

MOUSE: Oh ****, that was fun.

BENJI: How would you know? Heard that many Long Islands can cause brain death.

MOUSE: Prick.

JOE: Okay, I’m glad to get this answer — from you two at least. Matilda, I wanted to ask you about that set.

MATILDA: Oh, boy! I bet it’s a question I haven’t ever heard.

JOE: Uh, right. Maybe I can phrase it in a more exciting way.

MOUSE: Criiiinge.

LARK: Don’t perform for her amusement—

MATILDA: Oh my gosh, babe, do you remember those adorable little dancing monkeys at that party—

MOUSE: Haha. Harsh.

JOE: Ahem. Anyway. There was a bit of a scandal.

MOUSE: Like, a dozen videos on TikTok with under fifty thousand likes…

LARK: Mouse.

BENJI: …that a lot, Til?

LARK: Benji.

MATILDA: No, it’s not. It’s basically an embarrassingly low amount of engagement. So it’s sort of irrelevant, or at least — I assumed to most people. But we’re with a popular online music critic, so I guess we’re not with most people.

JOE: What—

MATILDA: Oh my gosh. That sounded, like, totally ****y. I mean it’s your job to care about these little things more.

LARK: I don’t know if that’s any better.

JOE: We’re going to have to edit this anyway. We have your team — your manager let us know that final cuts—

LARK: Right, all the dead air.

JOE: The…I mean. Sure.

MATILDA: I’m sure our manager did let you know. Bunny is super on top of things. That might be my favorite part of the last six months. She’s worked so hard in negotiating a better streaming deal, and you didn’t hear it from me but we’re working on an independent label —

BENJI: Business. Hey, what was your question ‘bout the boiler set?

MOUSE: Drama fiend.

LARK: We can move on from that, maybe?

MATILDA: No, no. Ask.

JOE: Well, I—

MATILDA: Ask.

JOE: So, you did your set. And there was a little blowback about how it went. Not to sound like a broken record in a big media byline, but you went viral.

MATILDA: Barely, but sure.

JOE: And some argued for the wrong reasons. So I guess my question is…the band has had a decent amount of controversy, both within the scene for various reasons and without. This one was from the outside. Given the difference in audience, and that you’re essentially one of the faces of the band, and with your music’s stream and social media presence where young fans—

LARK: Man.

MOUSE: Wait, no way.

MATILDA: Are we really doing the, ‘aren’t you concerned with being a good role model to your young fans’ thing, right now?

JOE: Well— you were visibly intoxicated.

BENJI: Under the influence at a rave. Tsk. Unheard.

MATILDA: Oh my God. Just ask me if I condone drug use and promiscuous behavior among minors. I know that’s what you want to ask. You’re not bringing up the coverage because you want to have an intelligent, nuanced conversation about celebrity worship or reactionary rhetoric or drug abuse or privacy for public figures. You want the clicks. Like, why me in particular? Why me? Why didn’t you ask any of the others? Mouse was on People’s July cover with her nipples out in that top from the Denver show.

MOUSE: ****. I forgot that picture. The one they used little star emojis to censor? ****. That picture is the ****. Can you send that to me?

BENJI: I have it. Yeah, after.

MOUSE: Dude you’re going to have to cut so much from this interview, sorry.

MATILDA: I was making a point.

MOUSE: My bad. Go ahead, babe.

MATILDA: You didn’t answer the question.

JOE: I was trying! I—

LARK: You take any longer and she’s going to get bored. That’s gonna be bad for you.

JOE: I know you’re insinuating because you’re—

MATILDA: Listen, the E was really good. Is that what you want to hear? I had a ****ing blast on a different planet listening to a mix of some of my favorite music and the sounds that the people closest to me have put their whole souls into creating. I was enjoying my night with my friends, and making sure other people could enjoy too. And that set did thirty-five million on Youtube alone. That bit — the audio meme part everyone was talking about? The people in your day job ****ing office talked and joked about by the water cooler before clocking out. That audio trended on Weibo. You’re online, Joe. Clearly. You know how hard it can be to bridge the west-east vitality gap, I’m sure. You do your research, right? You researched, like, every single guest of mine in the background of the set and reached out to them for comment on my ‘very public increase in drug use’.

JOE: I—

MATILDA: You know how our manager got in touch to your request and agreed to this interview? This industry knows how she operates. You think we couldn’t be anywhere else right now, with Bunny making the decisions? Do you think, like at all? You think we’re interested in this low-tier voice for radio, taste for the dumpster five-year-old mic setup of yours?

MOUSE: Stop, stop, he’s already dead.

BENJI: [Abrupt laugh peaks the mic]

MATILDA: Aww, Mouse’s cute little twin reached out in DMs with a connect offer out of the goodness of his heart. Or maybe because he was a fan. Or…ooh, he just thought you were sooo cute. Please. Get honest with yourself, you ****. And before you do that, try and remember that nasty ****ing role you played in the **** last year with Benji. No, we’re not fans of your stupid biased YouTube show. You know what, I’ll call it misogynistic too. You totally ignored [producer name redacted for privacy]. You gave [album name and artist redacted for privacy] a four. That’s worse than ****ing Pitchfork.

MOUSE: Bro. How do you be worse than ****ing Pitchfork.

LARK: Hah.

BENJI: So, uh. That silence was long. Did y’want to ask any more questions, or—

JOE: No. No. That won’t be necessary. I get the idea.

MATILDA: That picture your photographer took of us outside was cute. Send that to me if it’s going to be the header of this article.

BENJI: Hopefully you got enough content outta us, on that thing? ****ing hell, respect you for keeping that recording. Might need to make some edits before it’s published, hey?

JOE: …Yeah. Yeah, If I publish it. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you, guys.

MATILDA: Oh, before we go. First, you’re calling the car, right? I know we didn’t lay out any requests, but I think it’s the least you can do.

JOE: I — sure.

MOUSE: Oh, oh. Mati, ask about —

MATILDA: Right! Ok, so like — Jaqueline’s on third, or The Gunhouse on the corner of Milton, back behind the stadium?

JOE: You…mean the seafood?

MATILDA: Yes, for the ****ing seafood. No, I’m asking between two seafood restaurants to get your opinion on the chicken parm. Jesus.

JOE: I like Jacqueline’s better.

MATILDA: The Gunhouse it is. Thanks Beau.

JOE: It’s —

BENJI: She’s out, sorry mate. Quick on the escape when she wants to be, heh. Uh. Well. Take care.

JOE: You as well. Uh, listen. Thanks. About —

MOUSE: Eat **** and die, Joe. C’mon, Benj.

[[Voice memo ends]]

invincible

wc: 7.0k

The shed has become overgrown.

Partly, Benji suspects, because it carries with it a weight. An aura. Just as the plants and vines and weeds have crawled around the base, nipping at the heels of the structure, so too has a blanket of sheer bone-chattering energy fallen over it. To Benji, it feels as if the moment before you wake from a dream. The sick awareness and split second of terror when a nightmare clings in a way it really, really should not.

And, Benji supposes, the shed has become overgrown because the groundskeepers know better than to come near it. The strange, invisible inkiness that lingers in the air like humidity and vines are not the only enshrouding forces to the area.

Benji lingers there, too. Like a nightmare.

The estate has grown since Xavier’s passing. As if a plague humanized, Gabriel has spread his power another two city blocks — where once the shed sat just at the cusp of the gardens, it sits at the far edge. The newer staff refer to it as the graveyard, which is more apt a name than they realize. Countless pets (and, Benji suspects, even a few bodies) have found their way beneath the dirt.

Now, it’s just all those bones and him. Just Benji and the dilapidated shed.

And what the shed contains.

*

Once, it had been a refuge. Benji had spent countless hours here. Although that time stretched in each moment, cloying and tacky like honey between fingers, now those memories are…fleeting. He isn’t sure if it’s the heaviness in the air that makes them harder to access. If he’s ruined that beautiful time with his actions of the last few years.

He wonders if he’ll ever be able to look at the shed and see it for what it had once been — shelter. A home, of sorts. A place to go when he needed— when Benji needed—

He’s sat in the dusty maze of linen-covered furniture and purposefully rotated shelves; the interior of the shed is no longer sparkling clean and organized.

Once, when it had been a refuge, it had also smelled of wood polish and sprigs of wildflower. A vase still sits, dusty and cracked at the opaque rim, on the windowsill.

Once, when the shed had been a refuge, when it had been a home —

The door swings open.

Benji stands, but he isn’t startled by the noise. Once, when the shed had long since stopped being a refuge, Benji had taken what bits and barbs of baubles of memory he had. Once, not long after that terrible loss, he’d come here on a day that soaked the grounds with enough rain to form puddles. In a fit of absolute rage, he’d trashed the interior nearly unrecognizable.

And then he had spent one afternoon, two, three repairing it back to standard. It had, at the time, felt like a worthy sort of penance. The blisters and splinters, knees red and torn from the work.

It hadn’t sparkled with the same sort of well-loved care and cleanliness as it once had, as a refuge. As a home.

So Benji had rearranged it as a tomb. And in the depths of his near-mad grief, he’d forgotten that graveyards are for visiting.

*

No, he isn’t startled when the door swings open.

It has swung open countless times, ever since Benji had constructed the strange maze of shelves and furniture. Most visitors came while he was gone; he’d learned some time ago that he had a predisposition to rot here. He tried not to linger, lest he end up like the floorboards on the west wall being slowly consumed by some sort of colorful fungi.

Benji is staring at the colony of waxy, white-spotted crimson heads while the unnamed visitor navigates the shed. They walk with heavy, disjointed footsteps, occasionally retracing a path and finding another corner. He knows immediately this is their first time here.

He wonders how they heard about it, the shrine. Some people, when prompted, say they heard through gossip. Some, had just felt it. The inkiness, the heaviness. It called to them.

Like the shed had long stopped being a shelter, the pile of things and trinkets and baubles and vases and flowers and candles had long stopped being for Benji. Had long stopped being a memorial.

The draping structure of it hums, sometimes. Like a song. It hadn’t always done that. Maybe that was what called people to it. Maybe its construction, those years ago, had just been another mistake in Benji’s line of them.

He hasn’t time to ruminate on that; the footsteps draw closer. There’s a whisper of the old sheet hung by the rafters to separate the rest of the shed from its hidden treasure, and the quiet shffff of that is nearly louder than the person’s shocked inhalation.

“Oh,” they say.

There is a long, dreadful beat of silence.

“Of course it’d be fucking you.”

Benji, back still turned, squeezes his eyes shut. He recognizes the voice. He just hadn’t expected to ever hear it again.

Why didn’t you go? Why didn’t anyone go with him? Why was he alone? My baby brother was alone.

Benji steels himself. “‘Lo, Tess.”

“You don’t have to talk to me.”

The acidity, the venom laced in those words — at one point, it would have completely destroyed him. At one point, it had. A final line of connection, a delicately threaded tragedy burned with a match held between his own shaking fingers.

Well, who sent him to Dunwall in the first place?

“I won’t, if you prefer.” Benji rises slowly, so as to give her warning of the movement. He doesn’t know her well enough to know if she’s jump, like —

Well, it doesn’t matter. He won’t know her well or at all now, anyway.

“I would.” Tess strides forward, brushing past him towards the spread of the shrine.

It’s grown in the years. Adorned now not just with dried flowers and trinkets, but drawings and books and tied scrolls, parchment meant to bless and soothe and curse and harm alike.

It’s not his place anymore. It never was, maybe. Perhaps it had always been meant to become this. Perhaps it was always meant to be of the Outsider, rather than the man he was molded from.

Benji has to look away as she stands in front of it. With her height, her shoulders, her familiar shock of red hair — the vision is too much.

“I can leave,” Benji says after a spell of awkward silence, and his body moves to do so.

“Do you stay here?”

Benji pauses. His boot scuffs a particularly filthy section of the floor, dust settled into the wood grain. Closer to the front of the shrine, the path through the shed that leads to it, there are a myriad of footprints. In the corner where Benji chooses to lurk, it is usually just his own recognizable pair of treads.

“Like —“

Tess whirls around. There are tears rimming her eyes. Benji can’t meet them. She’s too familiar: the bright fury of her cheeks, the low-lit green rounding her pupils, the freckle spray across her nose.

He stares at the torn leather just at the toe of his boot. He grinds his teeth.

“Do you live in here.”

Benji tries not to let his wince show. The disgust in her voice—

“No, I don’t live here.” He says truthfully.

“How often are you lurking?”

His eyes snap up and then immediately back down.

“One or two nights a week,” Benji says, dishonestly.

Tess turns back to the shrine. Her shrewd sharp gaze off him is a relief, and Benji releases a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding.

“You should move on.” Tess says coldly, driving the blade of that right underneath his rib cage. Slipped between the notches, directly into his heart. Benji hopes the pain of those words will kill him, but nowadays — now awful shit spewed like that is only barely a pinch. He knows more worthwhile pains.

Tess pulls something from the bag at her side. Benji watches as best he can, several paces behind and over her broad shoulder, as she rotates it in her hands. She sniffles.

Mistakenly, he takes a step forward.

“Don’t.” She bites out just as frigidly. Her spine straightens, rigid. “Don’t come any closer.”

“I didn’t—“

“I know I shouldn’t blame you.” Tess blurts. “I know it’s not good for me. I know it’s not good for this…this rot in my chest. I know you’re suffering just as much.” She turns to him. Now, strangely, Benji can’t look anywhere but her face. “But I still hate you. I really do, I mean that. He wrote about you. Did I tell you that, when we met? I came all this way just to tell you, because he wrote about you. And I thought — well, someone has to let him know. And when I did— you remember that day, right? I do. I won’t forget. You didn’t cry. Your friend did. Xavier’s friend did. And I could tell — oh, fuck, I could tell — I could see that you knew. Maybe not knew, but that something had happened before he left. That you had one of those gut feelings. That you didn’t act on it — if you had—”

She’s weeping openly by the time her words trail off into undignified gasps. Tess shrivels in her mourning: her shoulders wind in, her lofty chin tilts to her chest. She gets smaller. Weaker, in a way Benji knows for a fact none of those Wolffe kids are made to be.

She drops the parcel in her hands. With a traumatic crack, the little wooden boat spills from the fabric it’d been wrapped in onto the floor.

Tess wails in a way Benji has only ever heard once before.

She’s really, really gone, Benji. I don’t — and he didn’t even let me — the casket — it wasn’t supposed to be that way, my nonna woulda—

Benji stoops immediately, because Tess doesn’t seem capable of doing more than cradle herself. He can’t blame her. He feels like doing much the same when he turns the ancient looking mast-cracked toy sailboat in his hands and discovers a messy engraving on its underside:

PROPERTY OF XW!

He swallows.

Tess doesn’t make a sound, other than her pathetic little sobs, as he turns to retrieve a tub of wood glue kept in a specific drawer in a specific part of the shed. All sorts of people may know its location, but none of them know the contents of this place like Benji. There are socks in a dresser he’s not been able to pick through, a moth-bitten coat on a rack, a set of woodcarving tools, a handmade winter quilt — once after this place stopped being a home, he’d thought about stringing that one to the rafters.

Funnily, Tess stands beneath a beam he’d identified as the best candidate in those dark times. He stares up at it, rather than her face, when he hands the repaired boat back to her.

“Don’t touch that part,” he mumbles. He waves a few fingers at the glued mast before tucking awkwardly into his pockets. “S’gotta dry. Takes a day.”

The toy clunks softly against the tabletop behind Tess. There’s the quiet shuffle of objects as she decides a place for it amongst the pile. When she moves, Benji catches a glimpse of it near a charcoal kid’s drawing that had appeared one afternoon. Its subject eerily accurate down to the slight offset jaw beneath a strange mask.

He remembers touching knuckles to that spot. The drawing is another thing he can’t look at too long. The pinhole eyes within the mask seem to move, and it churns his stomach.

“If things had been different,” Tess begins. The sentence dies its first death on her tongue before the rest manages.

“I would have liked to know you.”

Tess’s sharp emerald stare burrows somewhere fragile in him. She turns to the door, to retrace her steps back to the exit, and then freezes. With a frustrated, deliberative sound she returns to him.

Unceremoniously, she shoves her fist into his and drops something into his palm. When Benji uncurls his fingers to look, her pale ones grasp tighter to keep it closed.

“He wrote about you,” Tess echoes. The air feels heavier than a moment before, and he feels a headache bloom between his eyes. The metal in his fist feels hot, as though it’s burning. He hopes, briefly and madly, that he’s just been poisoned. What a way to be found, he thinks, poor fuckin’ Maran.

“Not here,” she goes on. “Go somewhere else and look. Give it away, sell it, chuck it in the fuckin’ river for all I care. It’s not technically yours, but none of us — none of us want it. We can’t.”

She’s faster on departure. And despite her heated plea, Benji doesn’t go elsewhere to look. He only waits for the shed’s rusty-hinged door to creak shut before prying his fingers open like a vice welded them shut.

And then Benji buries the tarnished metal circle near a long-dead sapling whose roots never quite took to Dunwall soil.

*

Four months prior, Benji watches from behind a row of hedges as someone disappears into the shed. The mottled windows flicker as several candles come on. he hadn’t taken the. old man he’d been trailing for a witch or worshipper, but you really couldn’t tell with these sorts of folk. He’d learned that the hard way, standing over a sweet elderly woman as she bled out onto his boots.

There’s a tear in the toe. He’ll have to get that fixed.

And then Benji snorts derisively into the cool night air, because the man he’s trailing is a cobbler.

A humble one, of course. From the south-east edge of Dunwall’s shore, not quite the slums but close. Far enough from the certified, university-trained artisans who serviced the city’s elite and their satin-lined slippers, but close enough to the laboring class that he could make a living based on necessity alone.

The old man spends close to an hour in the shed, at the shrine. Benji lurks beneath one of the orange-flickering windows, waiting for whatever strange ritual he’s conducting to be complete. He hasn’t a clue how to counteract that sort of — magic he supposes, is not yet a concept he’s allowed to take root in his understanding — business.

So all he can do is wait for he man to leave; he closes the shed door behind him kindly, presses a palm to his lower back and stretches. Then, the cobbler continues towards the hidden entrance in the estate wall that people always find to slip inside. This part of the gardens has been dying for months; no one dares come close, given the history. No one except the visitors.

Benji is expecting a cauldron of animal fat and congealing blood. Maybe a bone or two, the ripped claw of a dog or a canine curved fang. He finds that sort of business sometimes, when the unbelieving play-pretenders decide they want to do a bit of the occult.

But all he discovers is an old, crumbling wooden box. It looks similar to the cheap things Maran would make to bury fish from the aquarium, butterflies from the conservatory room.

Inside is a pair of children’s shoes. Benji recognizes them as a type of shoe used by young men for recreation: the bottoms are covered in spikes of various sizes, meant to provide traction in slick Dunwall mud or grass. They’re in pristine condition, but clearly far out of fashion as though the man has been hanging onto them for at least a decade.

And tucked beneath the fine leather laces is a piece of parchment. Cheap, given how the penmanship bleeds through. Benji shouldn’t read it. He doesn’t technically read it, really, because he doesn’t break the wax seal or unfold the paper — he just reads portions of backwards bled letters before he can stop himself.

You might not remember me — you might not know anything at all, I can’t rightly say why I’m speaking to a dead man. But I knew you as a living boy — every time your mother brought you in was a joy— I’m sick — desperate for one more day with my —if it’s inappropriate to ask a favor — just a last resort —

Benji slaps the lid of the box shut. It’s been placed delicately on another trinket left to the building pile; a fine square of silk embroidered with a less fine (and far more crass) anatomical design. Benji smiles, despite the wedge of pain trying to slip into his chest, and touches the edge.

*

“S’foul.”

Maran nearly leaps into the air. He’s never been the jumpier of the three — the two — until recently.

“Talk about it.” Maran says, once he’s recovered his heart from wherever it’d shot out his throat. “Oh, fuck. You scared me. But not as much as this.”

Benji watches his arms flap, gesturing about the interior of the shed.

“So what are you doing here?”

His best friend’s face softens. “I can feel him sometimes. I just wanted to —I wanted to feel closer than that. It’s like, I get him once in a dream. We’re fishing or something, snekaing the North End and stickin’ fish in some politician’s chimney so it all reeks — and then he’s just gone again and —“

Benji swallows. He looks away from the earnest tears plucking Maran’s sweet face contrite, and wills away stinging ones of his own.

He hasn’t dreamed of Xavier. Not once. And the jealousy bubbling up threatens to unfurl something nasty and unfair.

“What did you bring?”

Maran turns his freckled fist palm-to-ceiling. Nestled there are a few water-smooth river rocks wrapped in fine silk.

Benji grins. He recognizes the embroidery. “Yeah, thought so. Foul of you.”

Maran tosses his shoulders. “Well, I dunno. Leave ‘em on my mum’s stone. S’tradition. So I thought—“

Xavier isn’t buried here. Benji thinks, staring at him. What his family got back in that urn wasn’t him at all. It could have been ash from a cold fire pit. It could be cow patty charcoal. It’s not him. This place isn’t him.

“That’s nice, Mar,” Benji says. He waves his hand towards the table that had once served as a two-seat breakfast spot. Maran puts the handkerchief carefully in place, rearranges the rocks, and makes sure one corner of the material is folded to show its immature design.

“I’ll make something better,” Maran says, crossing to Benji. He’s folded into a squeezing hug that would motivate beheading from anyone else. “I know that’s awful, yeah, but he would—“

“He’d laugh.” Benji whispers into the crook of Maran’s neck, and is only slightly startled when his best friend begins sobbing.

*

Cigarettes taste worse, after. He hadn’t anticipated that. Benji pulls the usual brand from his mouth, contemplating the cherry end.

“Sorry. Should have asked you if I could before I went for it.”

His companion that evening shocks him by scoffing and reaching across the distance. Maran plucks the cigarette from Benji and pulls at it for so hard and long he begins to wheeze.

“Aw fuck— ack — aw, shit, I thought it would — why—“

Benji laughs, laughs, laughs. He can’t remember the last time he laughed that way. “Mate, bloody fuckin’ hell, you just — your lungs, you gotta— oh, Xavier’d have you tarred and fuckin’ feathered for even—“

“Well, what’s he going to do?” Maran’s eyes are red-rimmed both from the coughing fit and the sting of cool air; they’ve come out to the roof to discuss Benji’s return, because all big conversations were meant for the roof.

It was, like Maran is not ever allowed to start smoking, one of Xavier’s rules.

“What’s he going to do?”

Maran snorts and bumps his chest with a fist. “Yeah, — hack! — right? Like, stop me?”

There’s a split second of silence.

“Awful.” Benji says, but he’s chuckling still. “Oh, morbid. You’re fucked for that.”

“I’m fucked?” Maran leans into his space, wet eyes big and wide. They, maybe, have been drinking too. “You were gone for — Benji. Nah. I don’t wanna start up again. Did that enough when you showed this morning outta nowhere. Nah….but, mate. You think I’m fucked? You’ve been — well, doing whatever. And I’m not going to ask.”

Benji, mood souring like a storm on the horizon, frowns. “Good. I won’t tell you.”

“I’m not going to ask,” Maran ignores him, “But I’m not the fucked one. Whatever you did— whoever you got for him, like got got, I mean, don’t you think—“

Benji does not like to think about it. He does not like to think about a lot of things, these days. He contemplates telling Maran something of them, in that exact moment.

He looks at Maran and wants to say:

Do you ever think about it? Do you ever think about how it was? You think he drowned. Maybe you’re suspicious, Mar, ‘cuz you’re smart. I know that’s not how it was. I think about it. I think about it all the fucking time. I think about how terrified you have to be, when you’re dyin’ and know it. What that sort of fear is like. I’ve never been scared like that before. I bet that’s real fear. I bet that fear is where nightmares come from. I bet it hurt; I think about how it hurt; I think about making it hurt for people; I think about the people that deserve it. I think about your dad being one of them. I think about you being from him. I wonder what you’re capable of. Because, Mar. Now I know what I’m capable of.

Instead, Benji takes the cigarette back from him.

“We oughta go inside, now that we’ve sorted this. It’s getting cold.”

“Is Serkonos cold?” Maran wonders absently as Benji helps him to stand. He keeps a warm arm around Maran’s back as they return to the open window. To stop him from falling. Benji peers over the side of the roof and imagines them both broken and bloody on the cobble below.

He imagines Xavier the same.

He hadn’t seen the scene for himself, just the aftermath. Just the eyewitness recollection, tortured from the perpetrators with fist or blade, depending on how he’d felt at the time.

“It can be, yeah.” Benji says. Once they’re back inside, he shutters and locks the door before also closing the blinds. Maran’s little disagreeing noise is ignored — it’s safer, if no one can see in.

“The wind turbines?”

Benji nods.

“I hear the mountain howls at night,” Maran says, no idea how eerie he sounds. “Because of the way the wind hits. That it sounds like screams.”

“I never heard it.” Benji lies.

Maran turns to him in the center of the room, his tan hands wound together in a heartbreakingly familiar gesture.

“Will you sleep with me tonight?”

Benji thinks about the cot he’s just set up at the shed, in a cobweb-heavy corner. He thinks about the shirt he’d tucked into a neat square and set on a dusty, now-unused kitchen table. He thinks about the spare key to the shed he’d been given, folded tightly into that shirt.

One day, it would stop smelling familiar and start smelling like rot.

Benji swallows. He nods. “Yeah, mate. ‘Course.”

Maran flips back both sides of the duvet and shucks a spare two pillows towards Benji’s usual side. They land exactly like how he’d prop them to get comfortable.

That’s when the tears come.

“Oh,” Maran whispers. “Oh, fuck off. Don’t you start. I missed you too much, I miss him — aw, Benji, fuck yourself—”

But it’s too late. They kick off, and its really only exhaustion that makes them both find rest.

The next morning, there is a new addition to the make-shift memorial. It’s not from Benji, and no one else knows the shed’s been in use since—

Anyway. It’s not from Benji. The silver pin is foreign, and nearly unrecognizable besides; its a bird mid-flight, wings outstretched. The feathers are worn shiny and round by the telltale touch of a fidget. It’s loved, clearly, and so it stays.

With the rest of the loved things.

*

“There’s a bunch of people out there.”

Benji takes a moment to settle back into the reality of his body; the summer noonday sun is high in the sky, baking him where he lays on the dock.

His knees hang off the side, dipped into the cool water — that keeps him the perfect temperature, the cold crawling up just to his ankles while the rest of him is wonderfully basking.

Like a turtle on a rock, Maran would tease him.

Benji unfolds his arms from behind his head and cracks an eye open. His lips twitch at the upside-down frown above. Xavier’s head halos golden orange in the sun, blocking out the sweltering heat and cooling Benji’s face.

“Well, yeah. ‘Course there are. Good day for it — sailin’, I mean.” He props on his elbows, squirming to the side so Xavier has room to lay beside him. Their shoulders brush, and Benji tilts his head to sniff. “Aw, good boy. Put your lotion on.”

“Fuck—“

“You know what happened last time.” Benji teases. His back touches previously unoccupied wood, sun-baked near scorching, but he doesn’t move. The heat feels nice, the breeze lifting cool water into the air, filling his lungs with fresh air, the scent of summer, Xavier’s familiar smell.

“Maran really let the lobster bit go too long.”

“Disagree.” Benji says loftily, then yelps when he’s splashed with water. “Hey!”

“There are people.”

“Right, you said that already?” He laughs, sits up again. Xavier doesn’t seem to mind the arm Benji braces up with across his chest. “Something wrong with them enjoying their time?”

Xavier’s got his nose scrunched in that way. “You don’t have a shirt.”

Benji barks a proper, chest-deep laugh. He leans harder onto Xavier and tucks their faces close, noses touching. This point in the summer, Xavier’s sun kissed a bit more tan. A bit more freckled. He doesn’t have a single irritated red splotch on him; learned his lesson. But the color and the sun protection don’t do anything to mask the way his cheeks light up pink the closer Benji gets.

“Are you jealous, mate?” Benji asks, faux-incredulous. “Nah. Be serious.”

“Some rich vacationing Karnaca investor is going to steal you away.” Xavier pouts. He’s doing it for attention; he’s doing it so Benji will wind fingers into his sweaty red hair; he’s doing it to get a series of kisses spread over his warming cheeks; he’s doing it to make Benji laugh.

Benji marvels at the silky texture of his hair, the softness of freckled skin beneath his lips, the fullness of the laugh that stutters from him.

“Not enough money in the whole of the isles.”

Xavier grins back, brilliant and golden. Just for a moment, though. Then he masks it with another dramatic and unbelievable pout. “So there is enough money. Just, like, the whole world?”

“Oh! Bastard!”

The wrestling starts up then. There’s something about summer that regresses them. Summer pulls the childhood away from the tacky foginess of memory. Benji tosses them about, takes a knee to the thigh, cackles wildly as they pull and elbow and fight dirty. He’s reminded of tussles in the dirt, stumbling back home with thorn scratches or a bruise or two and grinning madly.

In the present, they roll about on the dock so hard that it creaks. And then they roll about so hard they tip right over the edge of it.

Benji splutters as he comes up, water dripping into the back of his throat: he’d been laughing hard when they tumbled in, and taken a mouthful for the trouble.

Xavier isn’t so quick to surface. But the worry that ought to be there is absent: Xavier won’t go drowning. It’s impossible for him. Fucking born in the water, most likely.

And as expected, his mop of hair bursts the surface a moment later. He growls, arms outstretched as he treads towards Benji — who has the benevolence to at least pretend to be shocked, his expression set in a manner of surprise almost as unbelievable as Xavier’s petulance.

“Sea monster bit again?” Benji asks, easily fighting the pressure of big hands on his shoulders as Xavier attempts to dunk him.

“Man, would you — stop cheating, just go under—“

Benji gets both arms around his waist, then. He braces and then pulls them against the resistance of the water, using all his strength to lift Xavier and toss him with a splash.

When he surfaces again, it’s with flaming cheeks just barely cresting the wavy surface.

“That was kinda—“

“You ever not think with it, mate?”

“No.” Xavier confirms.

He rises and wades with Benji back to the dock. Benji hefts himself out for the water, and is also kind enough not to mention the casual grope he receives before Xavier follows.

They’re both out of breath when they flop back down onto the wood. They drip water onto it, cooling the surface substantially. Benji watches the grain darken under Xavier’s neck, little beads dripping off a strong jaw.

He thinks about a parcel hidden in his winter clothes, in the back of a closet at the estate. He almost brought it with him today — what a fucking tragedy it would have been, losing it in the bottom of the sound where the boats and other summer-goers could churn it somewhere no ring would ever be found.

“You got plans the rest of the day?”

Xavier, whose eyes have also fluttered shut, hums contentedly. “This. Nap. Lunch. Nap.” One of them cracks open. “Then—“

Benji snorts at the rank look and jostles his shoulder.

They grin at each other.

Today. It should be today. Benji blinks against the thought. Tell him.

“This is nice.” Benji says after a moment lingers where they settle into comfortable silence. The only sounds are the waves lapping at the shore around them, Xavier’s gentle kicking in the water, the gulls overhead, a hum that Benji hadn’t been aware was rising from his chest.

Xavier’s got a hand flat over his stomach, but he lifts it to find Benji’s own palm. Their fingers twine together, despite the heat and the stick of sweat.

“This is the best.” He corrects earnestly. His eyes still don’t open; Benji turns his chin to stare. He thinks to memorize the moment, because he wants to do it then. Touch Xavier’s cheek for attention, so he’ll look. So Benji can tell him, stare into those familiar eyes and offer.

But it feels so strange to say. It feels mature. They’re not even twenty-five, yet. Benji feels he isn’t nearly grown enough to say it: there’s a parcel of land available up north. That’s the kind of thing you say when you’re wizened, when you’re ready, when you’re grown. A parcel of land, and I thought maybe — it’s on a lake, like this. Not in a city. Sleepy little town. You’d like it. And there’s enough room I could—

He’s never built a house before. But he’d been thinking of doing it, lately. He’s been imagining it. He’s been imagining the paint he’d use —

Xavier’s eyes crack open without prompting. He turns his head to stare at Benji, who thinks: green.

Who doesn’t open his mouth to speak, or to ask. Who is so overwhelmed by the possibility of asking such a question, so overwhelmed by anxiety, so overwhelmed by the sun-hot feeling in his chest at that exact moment of connection that the memory gets tucked away fuzzy at the edges and imperfect.

(He will resent that, down the line. He’ll resent a lot of things.)

Benji will eventually become a different man; for now, this one lives exuberantly and with joy, kiss-drunk and eventually the regular sort of drunk. They spend the dwindling sunset tasting wine that might be off, but is finished because Xavier had poached it from the nicest shelf in the cellar. They eat fruit gifted from the kitchen staff, berries too ugly to grace the duke’s plate.

Benji watches berry after berry disappear into Xavier’s mouth, watches the juice stain his chin, warns him that he’ll be sick over the sheer amount he points away, laughs and accepts a kiss and then another, then thinks how beautiful is he, nauseous from indulging and laughing and stained with fruit and mine, here, mine.

Right here in front of me.

*

Years prior, Xavier kisses him in that same spot, on that same dock, on the same sort of summer day. Benji is so stunned by it that he’s speechless.

Habit.

They walk silently back over rolling hills, catch a cart back into Dunwall’s gloomy interior; even in the summer, the shroud of grey somehow lingers over the city.

But in the estate, Xavier stops him from turning down the hall towards his quarters. In front of a giant painting, wisteria blossoms draped over the sloping edge of a knoll and branches tickling the oil stroked waves of blue, Xavier takes his hand.

“I kissed you,” Xavier starts intelligently. He trails off when the words bring about the memory for Benji, cause his mouth to curl at the edges. “Oh. I mean, I—”

“I was there, mate.” Benji says laughingly. He feels lighter than he ever does, existing in the cold interior of the estate.

“You were. Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Xavier’s had a growth spurt the last year. He has to tilt his chin down to look Benji in the eye. It’s — overwhelming.

“I want to do it again.” Xavier blurts. His cheeks pinken with shame when Benji laughs, and the curl of fingers against his palm make Benji’s own tighten.

No, he thinks, don’t pull away yet. Let me figure out what to say. Give me a second, I need to say it right—

“Right now?” Benji finds himself asking coyly. “Or—“

“All the time.” The other teenager insists. He’s so earnest and quick about it that it becomes Benji’s turn for a blush.

“Should just be at your beck and call for it whenever you’d like, is that it?” He teases. “You’ll make Maran look well-adjusted and humble, actin’ spoiled like.”

Xavier squeezes his eyes shut. His mouth does a funny twist. “Man, don’t mention Maran right now—“

“Right now,” Benji repeats, “Forgot, sorry. You’d like to kiss again, you said?”

Xavier is quick to cup his cheeks and lean down. But right before their lips brush, he pauses. When he speaks, the air puffs over Benji’s face— he’s got no idea why that detail flips his stomach the way it does, but he’ll remember the feeling forever.

“Will this — am I ruining it? I don’t want—“

“Couldn’t if you tried.” Benji whispers, isn’t sure why he’s whispering, and hooks an arm around Xavier’s shoulders to pull him in.

Wisteria’s best to plant between the early fall and late spring; the soil has to be well drained and watered, so they’re easier to care for into the winter. Benji nods along as the estate gardener gives him this information, helps him dig the hole near the western wall’s ancient pergola.

He tends that sapling himself. No one else is allowed to touch it. And when it’s big enough to move, when Benji has found the courage to wrench himself free from under the thumb of Maran’s family burden, he’ll find a spot to plant it. Maybe next to a pond, like that painting now etched in his memory.

*

Before she passes, Lia takes the three of them out to the countryside.

Maran spends the majority of the trip indoors; he has a reaction to the tall grass, gets covered in itchy red splotches and cries until he’s babied.

“I feel bad playin’ without Mar.”

Xavier admits this to Benji once Lia sends them out of the summer cottage to play. Neither of them overhear her say one cruel thing about the youngest boy’s misery; Benji likes Lia better for that, because Maran’s dad isn’t nearly as sweet. He calls Maran manipulative (which Benji isn’t quite sure the meaning of) and pathetic (which he absolutely does).

“He’ll be alright.” Benji says. He drops the ball into the gravel and gently kicks it over to Xavier. With a bit of hassle, and nearly tripping over his too-long legs, Xavier volleys it back. “Saha says sometimes you’ve got to just cry about it.”

“Hope I’m not ‘lergic to anything.” Xavier says thoughtfully as they meander towards their usual play spot — they’re not technically allowed into the woods beyond the cottage, but they’ve got each other if not Lia’s line of sight.

“Aren’t you?”

Xavier frowns. “No.”

“No?” Their journey towards the tree line is impeded by an ancient, near-rotted fence. Benji casts a look back towards the distant cottage and its plume of rising smoke (Maran had convinced a warm snack out of his mum, it seems, despite the heat). Then he lifts a loose plank.

He’s not sure why he tries to make it look effortless. It’s not. But he doesn’t betray the tight pull of muscle or zap of pain in his shoulder, and Xavier whistles.

“Think you are.”

“M’not.” Xavier insists. He has to duck more than Benji to get his taller frame beyond the fence, squeezing himself into the space.

“Yeah huh. Soap.”

Xavier straightens and stares at him.

Benji’s grin is full. “‘Cuz you reek, mate.”

With a sharp little cry, Xavier launches at him. They take off towards the tree line, cackling and shouting at each other. The wind whips at Benji’s cheeks, flutters his hair against the thick humidity of the day. He feels good, he feels free, and Xavier—

Xavier follows along. Xavier follows, follows. Even when Benji guides them deeper into the forest than they’ve ever gone. Even when the canopy above becomes thick enough the sun dapples through, sparse. He begins to wring his hands, tucks closer, shoes catching the back of Benji’s heels occasionally. The forest becomes thicker, the path disappears.

But Benji knows his directions well, and he makes sure to steer them in a straight line.

A twig snaps in the distance, and its echo is eerie enough to make even Benji’s shoulders shiver.

“What was that?” Xavier whines. He clutches at Benji’s elbow, spindly fingers warming the goosebumps away; the forest is cooler for the shade, and Benji’s linen shirt and hand-me-down shorts aren’t quite warm enough here.

“Oh,” Benji says, adopting the tone of voice Saha uses when she wants to scare him. “Monster, I reckon.”

“Benji,” Xavier whines. He shakes Benji a little, pulling him backwards enough they jostle together. “That’s not funny.”

“We’re just gonna find out if you’re ‘lergic to monsters.” Benji keeps on, his eyes slitting evilly. It’s too much, though — Xavier’s own bubble up with frightened tears.

“Aw,” Benji says, and then because his mum or Lia aren’t around: “Aw, fuck. M’sorry.”

Xavier sniffles and squats in the dirt, wrapping his long, skinny arms around his equally bony knees.

“I’m not goin’ any far-er.” He insists petulantly, red brows scrunched in fearful anger. “That wasn’t nice. I just wanted to play ball.”

Benji had left it propped against the fence. He feels bad for that, on top of making Xavier scared. He squats too.

“We can, okay? I’m sorry Xavier.” His friend lifts his tear-wet chin to glare. “I am.”

“I wanna go back.”

“Alright.”

Xavier seems to think a moment. “You gotta let me win.”

Benji frowns. He likes winning their made-up ball game. “But—“

“I’ll tell Lia you scared me on purpose.”

Benji’s jaw drops a bit, a little lick of childish anger bubbling up. “That’s not— but you do it all the time, when we’re sleepin’ over at Mar’s and it’s dark. You always say—“

“And I want your dessert tonight.”

Benji stares down at him. Xavier stares up.

“You’re a prick,” Benji says, which is also not a word he’d otherwise say if an adult was around. Despite the insult, Xavier must hear something he finds agreeable in Benji’s tone. He beams, victorious, and shoots upright. He scrubs at his own cheeks to wipe the tears.

His palm is still wet with them when he slips it into Benji’s.

“You gotta lead back, though. I’m still scared and I wasn’t watching where we were going.”

Benji nods. Then he brushes past, back turned to hide the warmth he feels it’s obvious in his face. He isn’t sure why. The forest is cool. And Xavier’s eyes are almost the same shade as the lively, vibrant leaves, and —

Benji stumbles. Over a root, or a rock — over something.

Xavier’s fingers slip around his elbow again and barely manage to keep him upright. When Benji rights himself and turns, his brows are hitched high on his forehead, concerned.

“You okay, Benj?”

Benji blinks at him. His eyes really the same sort of green as the forest. Deep as, too.

“Yes,” he squeaks. He laces their fingers again. “I’m sorry I scared you, really. It’s not even a five minute walk out — you can go first, if you want.”

Xavier beams at him, seemingly. content with this apology. He swings their joined hands once, twice.

“It’s okay. I forgive you.” He tilts his head a little. “Go on, I’ll follow. I’ll fight the monsters back here.”

Benji notices that his moppy hair isn’t just messy, but curled around his ears. It looks — it looks—

He swallows.

But: they’re brave; the world is huge; they have each other; time stretches into an endless childhood summer.

“You won’t have to fight nothin’,” Benji assures him, “‘Cuz I’m protectin’ you.”

At the age of ten, they’re just tragically shy of invincible.

luck

wc: 5.1k

In her particular line of work, thoroughness is just as important as manipulation. She prides herself on seeing a job done well — not by her own hands, mind you. Never. Dirt, as far as Dr. Sullivan’s considered, belongs beneath your feet. Not under the nails.

Shoulder to shoulder with Jacqueline Rhoades, staring over the worn-smooth wood of a hand-me-down crib, Bunny can only stare at the wrinkles of her knuckles. She imagines dust and dirt settling into the cracks; she’s fucked up, this time. She’s gotten her hands filthy.

“Shoulda just left the l’il bastard,” she mutters, incensed to find not a lick of heat (nor truthfulness) laces those words. It’s the first time in a long, long time that Bunny has found herself at all concerned about truthfulness. But if she doesn’t mean that…if she really doesn’t regret the decision to tuck the tiny bundle of babbling energy under her arm as she fled —

“You don’t mean that.” Jack says. She has a lovely smile on her face. Gentle, the way a mother’s goes. For a sick split second, she envisions another maternal crescent; sharp and clever, tan lips instead of pink, friendliness radiating.

She shakes her head of the image. Lately thinking of that deceased friend brings up an image of her dead husband on the ground, her dull eyes pointed at the ceiling. They’re the same eyes reflected up at her in the cherubic cheeks of the baby she’d rescued from that massacre.

She’d rescued.

Christ alive.

“I mean it with my whole chest. God strike me down if I’m lyin’.” Bunny shuffles a step away from the window, closer to Jack. Just in case.

“And you don’t do that.”

“Certainly not.”

Jack’s pale finger, held loftily over the baby’s face, is wound in chubby fingers. Her smile widens. Bunny doesn’t have a shred of that instinct in her; for a moment, she feels weak. She feels like asking Jack to take the creature with her, mind after it better than Bunny ever could. She’s thorough, but—

“Jaqueline.” Bunny says. Her voice sounds a mite strained. She clears it, because that just ain’t her, even if the woman wouldn’t judge. Or, well, that ain’t true. She will judge, but she’ll nicely lie to the contrary. “I didn’t think this through.”

Madam Rhoades, proprietor by suspiciously widowed right of several legal and illegal businesses in town, finally lifts her shrewd gaze up to Bunny.

“There hasn’t been a parent ever in their life to say that,” she teases. Jacqueline Rhoades does not tease. She is cruel, like Bunny. She is thorough. But here?

Jack is merciful, when it suits her. Kind, even rarer. And now, before she winds out of the cluttered spare room into which they’ve hauled the crib, she tucks the blanket up under the baby’s fat-rolled chin.

Nice. Kind.

The same hand, softened by the instinct of the moment maybe, cups Bunny’s shoulder as she passes towards the door.

“You‘ll be fine. All’s it is shakes out to be love, anyway.” At the door Jacqueline stands framed by the orange setting sun as it trickles down the hall of Bunny’s home. She casts a long, long shadow right back into the baby’s — into the spare room. As it crawls up the wall above the crib, Bunny imagines the distorted ink of its head grows teeth.

Jacqueline would be thorough too, if anything happened to the little bugger. Maybe fear’s a bigger motivator. Maybe fear’s the way to go.

But all Bunny can manage in that moment, staring down at the little brown face beneath a blanket she worries ain’t soft enough is — well, it’s —

All it shakes out to be—

“Bah.” Bunny dismisses. “Or just plain toleratin’.”

He hasn’t the brain to do much more than giggle up at her and gurgle in that stupid, simple way babies tend. Maybe he won’t ever have the brain for more. Bunny hopes that’s the case; judging from what she knows of Jack’s sons, nothing good comes out of a smart child.

“You gonna be nice and simple for me, kid? You gonna make the toleratin’ easy?” She leans over the crib. She does not acknowledge the white-knuckled grip she has around the wooden edge, nor that her fingers shake with something other than fear. “Or we gotta do this the hard way?”

At the sound of her voice again, the baby’s big eyes blinks open. He stares up at her (or rather, where she might be — Jack said kids don’t got good sight for awhile). He squirms in the swaddle she’d half-assed, then lets out a little noise before his face shutters into peaceful sleepiness once more.

Bunny finds her mouth pulling dangerously close to a smile.

*

The thump scares her to jumping. Every nasty thought, every awful possibility swims through her head. It’s only ten steps down the hall, a jump of the last few stairs to the landing. But it feels like an eternity in the silence.

Benji ain’t crying until she peeks her frantic face into the kitchen. And as she steps the threshold, he’s in loud, pitiful tears.

Attention seeking, she thinks, but the ire is dulled in her relief. But Bunny’s been the one raising him, teaching him, influencing him — Your own goddamn fault, Sullivan. Your own fault. Toleratin’!

“You better not have knocked nothin’ important over.” Bunny threatens. “Better be a broken bone, you wailin’ like that.”

Now that he’s got her in front of him, Benji’s dramatic wailing quiets. His cheeks aren’t even wet. Manipulative shit.

She struggles to keep her voice firmly annoyed, rather than amused.

“By God I’ve got that meeting with Miss Thomas at noon. But if you’ve broken something and I gotta take your sorry hide down to town for a stitch, I’ll—“

Benji’s sat with his chubby legs kicked out, his toddler face openly curious... if not a bit impatient. The little red mark on his knee, a broken plant pot from the window sill, and a toppled stool near his hip are the only indication that anything has gone wrong. He sniffles and wipes cheeks with an off-target pudgy fist. Then he waves it nebulously towards the window, which streams early-morning light into the room.

Bastard, Bunny seethes. Not for the first, second, hundredth time since she took the orphan under her own wing.

“Use your words, kid,” Bunny sighs, although she knows it’s no use. Benji’s far past the point of first words, though he’s proven he’s clever enough to use them otherwise. Clever enough to shock Jacqueline when she comes for a visit.

Bunny kneels — joints creaking, dammit, louder than they ever had before a toddler was a core function of her daily life— to scoop him up. He resists the motion with a huff.

“Hey, what I just say?”

Benji flaps his chubby arm again, towards the window. He makes a stressed, fighting sort of sound. He does that, sometimes — warning her against her actions if they’re on the path to cause a tantrum. But still, he doesn’t speak.

Jacqueline says sometimes they just are quieter. None of Jacqueline’s kids are even a hair quiet, though, so Bunny’s got no idea what that’s meant to mean. She reads to him, although she’d rather hang than admit it. Makes all the right sounds you oughta when teaching a kid to speak. Shows him newspaper clippings, stories, awful penny dreadfuls that he might be a bit too young to really hear. Benji’s at the age that he should be talking.

Yet —

He waves a third time up at the window. Gestures with his fist at the stool. Rubs his knee and pouts up at her.

Bunny lifts the blinds, peeking out into the mess of branches and leaves that dot the eastern wall of her home.

“You smart enough to haul that stool over here, smart enough to wanna look out the window, you smart enough to use your big fuckin’ words.”

Benji stares. His fist flops to the side, and his face does something remarkably adult — his dark little brows tighten, nearly hidden under the mess of hair.

Then he opens his mouth:

“Fuh.”

“Aw, fuc—no, Benji. Not that one, a’right? That’s not —“ Bunny pinches her own brow, sighing.

A rhythmic taptaptap against the window pulls her attention from the toddler.

Bunny tucks him against her hip so she’s got a free hand to wrench open the lever. The cool spring air hits her in a pleasant wave of honeysuckle and prairie grass toasted under the sun. And underneath that all is something decidedly less pleasant. Something that smells to Bunny suspiciously of animal.

She follows Benji’s keen, curious gaze to the corner of the sill, where a mottled bunch of twigs and what seems to be fur has been nestled near the siding of her home.

“Oh for the love of —“ she begins to swear, but a quick glance sideways tells her it might just get picked up as vocabulary. And as much as she’d like him to pick up on the skill of communication (if only for it making certain things much easier, she’s lazy after all), it feels like she ought to be at least a little responsible. about it. Heaven forbid she rides, already a pariah, into town with a toddler penchant towards the four letters and taking certain almighty names in vain — her business would plummet. The religious folk are extra gullible.

“Fuh.” Benji intones. His weight is nothing to scoff at; he leans forward, pressing his forehead into the latch of the window to get a better look at the bird’s nest gracing the sill.

“Not quite.” She props him a bit, and the feathery couple that have built without permission come into view. “Mourning doves.”

She could stop herself from mimicking their sound. She ought to. She ain’t soft, and it’s bad to rot that way in her line of work. And yet, Benji’s keen interest and his big eyes shining with excitement work against her. Tongue curled to the roof of her mouth, Bunny calls at them. Both long-necked grey heads turn at the same time.

And almighty help her, but Benji’s sweet tummy-deep laugh and his clapping pudgy hands makes the indignity worth it.

*

The doves return each spring. And each spring, Bunny lacks the coldness required to pick the nest up and vacate them to some less irritating part of the property. Or toss it out entirely. Benji starts talking, eventually. Once he's a bit older, once he can formulate curiosity into words, one of the first questions he asks her is —

"Marry?"

“No!” Bunny barks out her laugh, incredulously amused by a child’s curiosity. “They ain’t married. Birds don’t do that.”

“Same birds.” Benji says. He’s quiet in his youth. She supposes she’s thankful for that; Jacqueline’s boys get more rambunctious every year. Benji prefers to trail behind her, a fist in her trousers at the calf or tugging at her waist coat. Sometimes she catches him having slipped her pocket watch from its domain just to watch the arms hypnotize with their tick tick tick.

Benji’s quiet, which is a blessing. But he’s curious and smart, which is more of a curse than a loud child ever could be. He asks her questions she sometimes doesn’t have the answer for— certain questions are easy.

Did I hatch from an egg? Course not.

Well then where’s my nest? Now that’s a bit of a challenge.

“They love.” Benji says matter-of-factly. He watches one of the pair swoop in from the sky, food in beak, to feed the other sitting watch over their brood. Any day now, they’ll hatch. The symphony of little calls that grace their morning breakfast will double — quadruple, if it’s been a good year.

“Some birds mate for life.” Bunny responds.

She’s cleaning a gun at the table; the mechanics of this have long nudged Benji’s interest and been perfected. Not yet ten, and the boy can reload a revolver with his eyes closed.

“These?”

“Naw.”

“Which.”

“I dunno, Benji. The kind that do.”

“But—“

She pinches her brow, sets the gun aside. “Benji.”

“Die at the same time?”

It’s one of those flummoxing questions. One of the ones Bunny doesn’t know how to answer. She hasn’t had that conversation with him. She’s got no idea where to start. But Benji’s clever. He’s smart, if not a little quiet. He’s figured some things out.

And his desire to figure out the rest makes her anxious.

So she doesn’t respond. She is, like he was in his younger years, devoid of words.

Bunny shrugs. “Maybe. Bad storm or bad luck, either.”

*

And on the horizon, for them, are plenty of each. Bunny hires extra muscle, but only enough that’ll not give her the impression of being paranoid. Each month passes a tighter cinch of the reins around her fist. She is so close to having the entire town — no, the entire goddamn dry dusty county — under her thumb.

Her contacts say it would go faster if she (and they must assume she’s prone to taking advice from thick-skulled fools) reprioritizes. They always say this while avoiding her eye; Benji’s known. The sticky part of it is trying to convince everybody that he’s just some hired muscle, which becomes easier to believe the older he gets. Can’t tell nobody shes’s doin’ a favor — Dr. Sullivan would prefer not to make a habit of those. And surely can’t tell nobody he’s — that he’s —

Goddammit.

*

Try as she might otherwise, Bunny finds that life often takes her beside herself over the boy. She scowls, but worries scrapes. Rolls her eyes, but makes sure he’s got good, lasting clothes. Snaps at him nastily, but still lets him take home an egg from the market, lets the little chick that hatches run about her kitchen while he chases after.

She holds Benji’s hand when they bury it not two years later, an unfortunate (but unsurprising) mangled victim of the foxes that call the nearby hills home.

“They hadta eat, too,” Benji says in a near-whisper as he throws a fistful of dirt into the shallow grave. He’s reached the age where his voice starts to croak at the edges, and between that and the sniffles he tries to hide from her, he’s downright pathetic.

“We’ll get two dozen of ‘em,” Bunny pleads with him after he’s spent a mopey week in bed. She isn’t so much exhausted of him not picking up his chores than she is of seeing his face miserably darkened. He’s not much for conversation that entire week, even the quiet matter-of-fact sort that he’s settled into as a sullen teen.

“Nah,” he mutters, tucking himself down lower into the bed. He tugs at the blanket until Bunny stands to watch him pull it over his messy hair. “Hurt too much just the one.”

God, but he breaks her heart with that big bloody weeping one of his own.

*

Bunny shrugs.

Benji doesn’t take that as an acceptable answer, anymore. Jacqueline says girls are harder at that age; she’s got one of her own who’d come along just two or so years after Benji. Strange little creature that Bunny had taken a shining to just the same. Terrified her in all same ways.

“Well why fuckin’ not?”

“That wasn’t a no.”

“Weren’t a yes, were it.”

Bunny hates these — the arguments. Not really arguments, not the way Benji gets after them. Too smart for his own good; clever and quick enough to meet her right where draws the line, stubborn enough to toe over it. All her own fault.

And it’s also her own fault she’s as soft to those boundary nudges. Why he’s even sniffing after the family business, as he calls it.

The day he warmly refers to her enterprise as that, the second rotten ol’ bastard fondly leaves Benji’s mouth, the second he slips that my old man into conversation?

That’s the day Bunny knows she’s gotta change things.

*

The moods, as he grows, linger. Bunny does all she can (and feels pathetic

They spend a time abroad, in the region where his parents hail. Benji’s got other family out there, evidently; she’d wasted no penny in paying investigators to track them down, scouring records and purchases and whatever else was necessary to find him —

Well. Anybody, really. Not that she could possibly slough the fucking rascal off now, though. Nobody’ll take him (and she couldn’t bare it, the thought gives her a pain in the back of her skull right where it touches her neck that has nothing to do with age, with rolling over and finding a muscle tight).

Bunny travels while he’s busy accumulating himself a family he never knew existed. He learns things about his parents — at least she hopes. Bunny hadn’t thought her rescue mission through, all those years ago. But she’s had over a decade to give it some consideration, and the least she can do is bring him a bit of what he missed back.

Even if it means they don’t see each other some weeks at a time. Even if Bunny takes to writing her own correspondence to her business associates back Stateside, her penmanship nowhere near as careful as Benji’s, her verbiage lacking his wit, tact, or spurious threat (whichever the situation required). Even if when they do circle back together for dinners every once in awhile, visits to the estate she’s borrowing from one of those contacts, he starts to sound…

*

“Sit up straight, kid,” Bunny mutters, peeking at him over the rim of her reading glasses. They tip off her nose as she speaks, dangling from the thick gold chain (custom, but not for her, because stolen).

“I am.” Benji interjects this sharp retort into his own story, cutting himself off. “Fuckin’ hell, can’t even get to the good part before I’ve got you barkin’ at me—“

“And get the goddamn marbles out of your mouth.” She laughs, slapping a palm to the table. “Christ, all those worldly tutors I got for you over there and you wind up sounding like one of the English anyway.”

“Liverpool’s not English,” Benji corrects, his nose tipped loftily as if Liverpool’s got half the class his teenage brain thinks. “And half those tutors weren’t even paid, you crook, they were fuckin’ doin’ a favor so you didn’t have somebody come to their house to collect —“

“A very moral and completely legally clear debt, Benji.” Bunny’s turn to interrupt.

They peer at each other across the table, two sets of similar yet unrelated eyes locked both testy and mirthful. She thinks an awful thought of his big shiny eyes looking up at her from the mangled mess of a poor swaddle (she never learned right, too much fucking work), cast gold in morning light when he forced her to recite facts on the little animals that found their way to the unintended shelter of her windowsill.

“Abigail Charles’ father says —“

“Oh, the stuffy solicitor who can’t keep his nose out of my business?”

“He says debts—“

“What, let me guess? The thing that's frayin’ the whole west?”She flips a page in her book, but she's not reading it. "Think he's got a few more problems worth lookin' at, legally speaking, if he wants to tackle that problem."

With a heavy boot, Benji nudges her feet off the fancy velvet footstool they rest upon. She is reminded daily that his strength is far better suited (and completely less frightening) on her side, so she offers him nothing but a disapprovingly lifted eyebrow.

“Abi keep bringin’ you those little honey candies?”

Benji’s whole face does that great big scrunch he’s fondly of when annoyed. Or when caught out. Beside his hip, right about level with his pocket, his fingers twitch. So Bunny knows immediately that’s where the little sweets have been pocketed.

“She said she was glad to see me after the holiday.” Benji says slowly. He’s clearly dubious of the trouble-making smirk growing Bunny’s mouth into its standard slanted curve.

Why?

She watches amused as Benji clearly fights to swallow down that question. He has no fuckin’ idea, blasted angel, and she has no intent on doing anything but let him figure this one out himself. Judging from where she’s caught his eye straying (undoubtedly not in the direction of poor besotted Miss Charles), that train’s due any day.

*

Any fucking day.

When Benji’s nineteen, Keaton Welles’s group rolls into town.

Bunny doesn’t much like dealing with Welles. He’s a mean sonofabitch — somehow nastier than the lady herself.

Bunny likes dealing with him even less, were it possible, when she finds the wide breadth of his shoulders caging Benji against the east side of the barn, shaded from much of view by the old willow that waterfalls mint-green fingers down its weathered oak paneling.

She spares them the dignity of a proper by scuffing her boots loud on the approach. Benji doesn’t much react besides a duck of his head. Keaton, opposite, is slow to glance up. He’s got a nasty grin on his scarred mouth. It’s mottled on one side from an accident he don’t like talking about — dynamite, or a well-aimed horse kick, or something embarrassing besides.

“Keaton, that’s lookin’ a mite bit aggravated.” Bunny says. She hooks a thumb over her shoulder down the road, into town. “Take you to the good doc? Oughta have that seen to.”

Keaton’s grin falls off immediately, but he dares not snarl at her. Her reins are as tight as they’ve ever been. Any bastard looking to salt the earth with crime and punishment worth their shit knows she’s the one to go to. That the jobs will dry up for them faster than she can snap her fingers.

Bunny snaps them then. Twice, purposeful. Right in his face. He ain’t ugly, but she’s fixing to see him made so if he keeps a hand on Benji’s shoulder.

“G’on.”

And off he goes. She doesn’t make comment on the jingle of his belt as he turns away, or the grumbling that spills forth when he thinks he’s far enough she won’t hear it.

When he’s actually out of earshot, Bunny crosses her arms.

Benji’s quicker than her snap, or the parting of her lips: “Fuck off. M’grown.”

“And that leathery bastard is grown twice over.” She shakes her head, disgusted. “Reckon you can do better, don’t you? Settle for ugly or settle for can’t count to three, but never both.”

“Fuck you.” He says again. His cheeks are heating rapidly, his eyes sparking with a threat of real anger. The embarrassed sort young men get, that Bunny maybe could have done a better job of breaking before it became a habit.

“Twice your age! Not that he won’t live much longer, his line of work.”

Bunny follows him as he rounds the barn, following a path back towards the house. She doesn’t know why — she keeps goading them as they move, legs swinging quicker to keep pace.

“Pick a nice banker, or something. Get me a little in with the Tyson group down south. Vaults as packed as full and as vast and as gold as the eye can see.” She spreads her hands against the great blue sky.

Benji whirls to face her, stomping the several paces that span them. His boots splatter dirt against her trousers. His face is set in a violent snarl.

“You’re the one with a taste of it!” He accuses. His finger pokes into her chest, and Bunny steels herself not to sway against the significant force. “I don’t want that. I don’t want fuckin’ money, you old prick, I want—“

The wind whips around them. Out here, just the sound of his dozens of chickens and the retreating steps of Welles’s equally ugly horse fill the void of his voice gone quiet.

And Bunny, who has always despite her wisdom and efforts and generally sound mind given him anything he’s asked for, stares.

“What?” She prompts. “You want what?”

Benji is quiet for a long, long moment. They stare at each other until his chest stops heavy so hard, until the livid color drains from his face.

She isn’t sure she hears him right when he turns quickly on his heel, over the sniffles. It sounds alarmingly like:

“Bit of luck.”

*

The explosion rings down the mountainside. Neither of their horses startle, thank whatever luck remains on their side. But the acidic smoke is quick to billow with the wind; Bunny’s eyes sting, and Benji’s are properly red-ringed once they dismount at the edge of the hellish mine.

Or, what was once the mine.

Now it’s a pile of rubble. Bunny’s sound investment, gone with a flash and a crying swear of the rebellious outlaws who’d made off with her carvan’s loot.

Not her caravan, anyway — just one under her protection. A rather important one, stuffed full to the brim with beautiful little tinctures of opium.

“Step back,”Bunny says, remembering that fact suddenly. Her arm braces across Benji’s broad chest to push him back; shockingly, he goes.

“They were in there.” He says dumbly.

Bunny turns to glance at him. “Who?”

“The — Welles’s men. Ian and Hank. They were—“ his mouth snaps shut.

Her stomach fills with ice, a dull ringing far off that seems to whistle through the air and settle right against her eardrum.

He knew.

“Benji.”

“Oh, fuck.” Her boy reaches up to knot both hands in his hair. He yanks in obvious distress. “Oh, fuck! That’s what they meant. That’s what end it meant. I thought…I thought they were gonna turn. That Keaton had pissed ‘em off enough that they’d—“ He turns to Bunny. “The contract. Ian couldn’t get his broke, no matter the money he offered. And they were tired of —“

“You fuck.” Bunny addresses him. “You fuck. You knew they were gonna pull this? You knew those brain-rotted frilly little weasle bastards—“

Benji stares at the smoldering mouth of the mine. He isn’t familiar with the smell of that burning drug, but Bunny is. She figures the flaming stash, taken from her caravan, had been a last bit of revenge against a tight-fisted boss.

She can almost respect it. If it hadn’t put such a hole in her pocketbook.

“You know how much ledger work this is gonna cost me?” It’s not. Bunny’s got a guy on payroll for that. But it is gonna be awful annoying sending the permits for cleanup, the apology letters and accompanying stipend to the mayor—

Benji’s not listening to her rant about these inconveniences. He’s staring into the flames, his face a mask of something she feels a bit out of her depth to name. Not quite sadness. Not quite horror.

Before Benji can ask one of those tough questions, she turns to yank him away from the head-swimming scene of an act she really, really hope, for his sake, won’t make the wrong lasting impression.

But he takes a moment longer than expected to follow her back down the cresting hill towards their horses; she worries that impression has long been made.

*

“You must be the dumb muscle we been hearing about.”

The outlaw is awfully mouthy, given someone of his situation. Bunny had, as was her want and right, insisted on a dramatic noonday meeting. She’s got no doubt from the scrawny look of him that he’s only part of an outfit. The others must be waiting nearby. She communicates as much using a steady hand on Benji’s shoulder. He inclines his head only slightly to indicate he’s heard her; too busy is he with aiming that gnarly sawed-off of his in the direction of their captured doe eyed outlaw.

“Kicked dogs holler,” Bunny reminds him, voice dripping fake-kind. Sometimes, she feels as though her best sense is the one that tells her when Benji’s about to spoil a transaction by running his mouth.

Fortunately, he purses it tightly shut.

“You know, you’re lucky.” Bunny says.

She strides lazily forward, crossing the distance. The outlaw looks unarmed; but who’s to say the windows in the abandoned square don’t hold his staked-out counterparts, his honor guard? She wouldn’t put the organization of a group past him, but he’d been the one to get in touch. Been the one to request a meeting with the intrepid Dr. Sullivan. If it hadn’t been him to write it, whoever had penned that little missive had at least done her the favor of being complimentary.

Bunny didn’t trust that as far as she could throw this one —well. As far as Benji could, anyway.

“I don’t usually do favors.”

“Is that what we’re doing here, sir?” The young man asks. He’s about Benji’s height or just shy, but with the defiance radiating off him like a stench, he seems taller.

“Nice manners. But you’re certainly ain't in any bargainin’ position,” Bunny notes, casting a dubious glance around. “And I’m trusting this ain’t a stick-up. You seem a bit more polished between the ears than that, at least.”

The outlaw smirks. “Do I?”

Bunny pinches her fingers together.

His grin grows, but then he seems to remember something; the expression cools.”You got information I need.”

She tucks both arms behind her back. Bunny isn’t much of a fighter, but she trusts the space she keeps between herself and danger — danger being her stalwart charge, of course, not this willowy shrub.

“If I had a penny for every time I’d heard that, I’d be swimming in it.” She winks. “And I already can buy out your sad little hometown.”

“I believe it.”

He moves in a flash. One blink and Bunny finds an elbow locked around her neck, the other pointing a gnarly looking hunting knife right between each section of her rib cage. Just a shove upwards, the split of flesh, and she’s disemboweled in the ugly red dirt.

“The hell do I pay you for?”

Benji, who hasn’t moved an inch, shrugs. His fingers have tightened on the stock of his shotgun, though — it’s a tell she wonders is obvious to anyone but her.

“You got in range, boss.”

The boy holding her hostage snorts, lifting hair at her temple. “You oughta be careful with that trigger finger, friend. Might blow us both away.”

“Been tempted.” Benji deadpans.

“What’s your knife say?”

The outlaw’s focus wavers just a moment. He glances down to where Bunny’s looking — at the flinty edge blooming a poppy in the center of her nice white dress shirt. There’s something inscribed on the flat of its blade. Script Bunny doesn’t recognize, nor can read as the reflection of the noon sun sections it illegible.

“Akari.”

“That mean something?”

The outlaw laughs again. It’s slightly less humored than before, but Bunny knows enough about amusement to understand how layered that noise is.

“Yessir.” He says, tightening the elbow around her throat. “Means backstabber.”

Bunny lifts her eyes up to Benji, who has stealthily shimmied closer but is not attempting to stifle his rancid grin even a bit.

“Gotta be honest, pops. Kinda like this one.”

"Am I in a bargaining position now, Dr. Sullivan?"

And even though it makes the blade dig into her sternum painfully, Bunny shrugs.She hates agreeing with Benji. Being right makes him insufferable.

paid promo

wc: 4.5k

Saha has that song stuck in her head. The one she had first listened to a week ago, in a business meeting. Then, it’d been raw; underproduced. Still with enough soul the right beat could take it somewhere great.

She blinks up at the ceiling. Fuckin’ hell, I sound like —

Her cringe is so severe her eyes scrunch fully shut. The view of the spackled ceiling disappears, along with the strange stain in the left-most corner. She’d meant to say something about that, earlier. You oughta get that spot checked. Looks like it could be a mold bloom, love.

Earlier. Before they got to — this point.

It’s a concentrated effort to unscrew her awful expression. As a kid, Saha had been taught a sure-fire way to go to sleep. Tense up all your muscles, close your eyes, and relax each muscle one-by-one. Focus on feeling it.

She starts to do that, just out of habit. The shoulders wedged between her thighs jerk.

“Shit—p”

“I’m not—”

Saha pulls herself back at the same moment as her hookup. They stare at each other for a winding moment. The longer it goes, the more she feels ashamed heat crawl up the back of her neck. She blushes; the rim of heat touches beneath her eyes.

Quickly, she untwists her fingers from between Grace’s and cradles her own cheeks.

“It really fucks me up that you seem so into it and then —“ Grace waves a hand between them. “It’s literally this every time. I’m not trying to be shitty, Saha. I know how that sounds, okay?”

Saha covers her eyes instead, sighing. “I get it,” she assures Grace. They’ve been friends four years now, with occasional benefits for most of that; she knows Grace doesn’t mean it how it admittedly sounds. She has never been anything but an honest and respectful communicator, even if she could be a bit blunt.

Saha stiffens and then rubs her fists hard enough colors burst in the dark. Fuckin’ hell. No wonder this shit keeps happening. Where is your brain, idiot? Some very nice head won’t even shut it off long enough to cum?

“It’s—“

“Mindset.” Grace responds with a slick eye roll. Saha always thought they looked so cool doing that. Naturally above it or humored in a way that wasn’t put on at all. When Saha rolled her eyes, she looked unattractively petulant.

Grace rolls off the bed, collecting their shirt off the floor. They toss satin into Saha’s lap at the same time. She needs to put lotion on; when she catches the dress she’d worn to go out, her fingers catch the fabric.

“I get it,” Grace repeats. Saha can’t quite tell if it’s mocking or not. They hold up their hands. “I’m not pressuring, I’m not mad. I just would prefer to feel wanted while I fuck somebody, fair?”

Saha nods. “Fair.”

Grace fans their hands out with a shrug. There, was that so hard? “I’m showering first. I’ll send you off with Thai if you ring it, but you are going home.”

With that, they pad out of the bedroom and down the hall. Their footsteps echo a bit; Grace was into the whole minimalist thing now. Just their latest in aesthetic noncommittal.

Saha frowns at that, staring up at that off-white spot in the corner with her arms angel spread into the sheets. Can focus on the interior design choices in flat’s not even yours, and you can’t fucking — stupid.

*

She smiles at the rideshare driver and approaches the passenger door slowly, holding her phone out for the other girl to see the app home screen: her beaming, prettily-made up face, a few emojis, and a standard quip as her bio.

The girl, maybe twenty-three at most, widens her eyes. “No. Oh my God, I follow you.”

Saha smile doesn’t falter. And even though it burns her eyes, she refuses the urge to blink — with this grin, she’d look unhinged. Instead, she puts on a pleasantly bashful tone.

“Really? That’s so nice.”

The girls’ brow pulls in slightly, a little drop to the corner of her mouth.

Fuck. Saha thinks. Sounded insincere, hey? Wonderful, Saha. really.

When the girl drops her at the entrance to her gated flat community, the car idles with wet red rear eyes fixed on Saha. She stands there, hand paused where it delves halfway into her bag.

Then those red eyes blink off and the car peels away down the street. It comes close to splashing a couple at the bottom of the hill. They laugh swears in unison; neither looks away from the other as they jump to dodge the spray, clutch each other, and giggle before moving along.

Saha’s phone ping. She glances down at it.

Andrea has rated you!

Her phone pings again.

Your average trip rating has gone down -.75 stars. Your average is now 4.25.

She rolls her eyes.

In the bathroom mirror that night, she debates on the number of slight mounds rising on her cheek; she had tried a new moisturizer for a collaboration, and now she was dealing with the beginning of what was likely to be a nasty breakout.

Wind-down stories. Three slides max: it’s late enough engagement falls with the nine-to-five business demo. Add those sponsor candles, two bird one stone with a face mask to damage-control. And you can make sure Tuesday’s no-makeup-makeup advert doesn’t have to get spackled on the surface of the fucking moon.

Saha smiles at herself in the mirror. Her left cheek doesn’t pull quite as high. She imagines that muscle tensing and loosening. If a level could be taken to her top lip, would the bubble be centered?

She leans away from the mirror, palms to cold tile, and frowns. Then she rolls her eyes.

Still petulant.

*

Her dates the next few weeks die off in similar fashion. Her inbox is mostly dried-up conversations; the only two serious (and weirdo-vetted) matches had ghosted her after one date each. Granted, both had been agonizing sessions of twin dysfunction and insistence to keep going, almost there.

One of her girlfriends — of the platonic type — urged her to give it a rest for a bit. Not out of denial, but the insistence that putting the pressure was only adding to her mindset problem. ‘Who cares how long it’s been? You’ll only psych yourself out thinking about that!’

I care, Ines. I care very fucking much how long it’s been.

How much she cares becomes painfully obvious during that time, when Saha has little to occupy her other than work. She likes to date — she’s good at dating, finds meeting people fun. Maybe stereotypically, a lot of her closest friends had started as a match on an app or at throwback night at the club. She and Grace had met at a campy Kate Bush drag act.

It isn’t necessarily an excuse for why she ends up lingering on one of Tess’s Instagram stories. And she doesn’t want to make it seem like the draw is only from a source of loneliness or strikes out elsewhere; from what little she knows, Tess is better than that.

Not that Saha would know. Twice now she’s chickened out on the visit to that restaurant. She has a permanent outline of the building’s fine angles and big windows, the reflection of water in smooth glass, from looking the address up online so often. Sometimes when she’s in line at the club or waiting on a package label to print, she looks up its reviews. Scrolls through them, scowls at the nasty ones (few), smiles at the glowing recommendations (many).

It’s a bit weird, isn’t it? But no — Tess is close enough to her she can care about something like that. My little brother’s partner’s sister? My sister in law?

Saha winces.

*

She ends up in Seattle, only a little guilty for the overly-warm message sent asking after things like schedules and busy seasons and big catering events.

They go back and forth a bit, like that. Just for a few weeks. Proper, polite, somewhat detached chatter back and forth. About the boys, at first —did you see that picture Xavier sent. Then Tess sends her a video, an event invite hosted at the restaurant that Saha leaves on read —

“Listen,” her final straw in the form of a Saturday evening wine date sighs. “You’re really hot. But I need literally anything. Something.”

Saha sits upright. She’d been staring at the ceiling (a different flat, a different person, no stain, still finding patterns in the paint job rather than focus on the task at hand). When she drops her eyes to the other woman, she blinks.

“Why is it always really hot?” Saha asks her.

“Huh? I mean, isn’t that—“

“Right, yeah. Thanks. Appreciate it.” Saha waves a hand between them. She folds her arms over her bare knees. They’re chilly to the touch; her date leaves their room too cold, and the chill was part of the reason Saha hadn’t been able to fucking focus.

“I mean, why hot?”

“Because—“

“‘Cuz, I’m watching this new series of a show I adore, yeah.” She drops both feet to the floor, digging black-painted toes into the rug clumps. “And the love interest, she’s always going oh, you’re lovely and sweet.”

Her date stares at her.

“You said hot. Not lovely. Or sweet.” Saha frowns. “Not that I need to hear anybody say that. But — aren’t I? Why’s it always that?”

There’s a beat of silence before her date stands, posted at the foot of her bed with knuckles on her bare hips. “I was really happy you wanted to come out with me, Saha. And then you made me take a different way here in my own car because one of the streets had a pothole and you wouldn't stop worrying about me fucking the transmission.”

“I don’t see why you’re bringing this up.” Saha mumbles, the lie slippery on her tongue. An embarrassed blush once again heats her cheeks.

Her date leans over and kisses her cheek. “You’re really high strung. And hot. And, uh, I think you should probably reflect on that first part.”

*

Saha does not fucking reflect on anything. The second her own flat door’s slammed shut behind her (scuffed with a black rubber-mark that she’ll get on hands and knees to wipe off later), her phone is open to an airline. She charges the ticket to her personal card, rather than from her business account.

She’s got no idea why she does that.

*

Seattle is wet. It smells different than London, wet. Similarly metallic and biological, but different. She sort of imagined it would be better than what is is — another clogged city. Doesn’t even have the audacity to smell like the gorgeous pines blanketing it.

She knows the address, and fortunately when the door swings open for her the place isn’t too packed. The hostess is a teenager with pretty, but red-ringed, eyes. In her head, a picture of a stressed student barely balancing grades and a job and friends forms.

“Hi,” the girl says with a peppery, high-toned voice. “Do you need a menu?”

“I need—“ Saha glances around the pillar that separates the entrance and dining area. “Oh, this is going to make me sound like a dickhead, so I’m sorry. I’m here to see Tess.”

The girl’s eyebrows shoot up. “The owner? Um. I don’t think really takes, like, media things?”

Tess nods, smiles in a way she hopes sticks normal to her face. “No, I totally get it. Here, look. I’ve got — she wanted me to come do a review—“

“Is that your dog?”

Saha pulls her phone screen back towards her own face, where her scrolling through messages with Tess has paused on a picture of Opal.

“Yes,” Saha says with a laugh. “You want to see more?”

“Yes.”He hostess whispers back, tossing two looks over her shoulders. “This shift manager is such an asshole though, make it quick.” She squeals delightedly at the next video Saha scrolls past. “Oh my God, precious! Okay, fine. Consider me bribed. Stay right here.”

The interior of the restaurant is modern, but not cold; stylish, just not chic. Plenty of reviewers and articles have mentioned the decor being one of the downsides to the restaurant, but Saha disagrees. It’s…sweet, really. Unique and homey — messy, what the stick-arsed food critics had decided on. There are posters from and adverts for local bands and art exhibitions framed along the walls. Behind the till, a showcase of a local high school’s international pen pal art exchange. Report cards, letters in envelopes, band flyers — the walls, actually, are so full that things overlap. Saha wonders if Benji’s been here yet, if he likes seeing the sharp curves of hand drawn punk bands.

Saha’s staring at one when the swing door to the kitchen slaps against the wall. She turns to look, fingers clutched comfortingly around her crossed wrists, and its —

Well, it’s a Wolffe. That’s for sure.

Saha lifts a hand, two fingers raised in greeting. She worries her smile might be too reserved. But where that concern passes over her like an anxious bubble about to burst (what if I say this wrong, do this wrong, what if they don’t like me, she doesn’t like me?), Tess looks the complete opposite.

At first, actually, she looks confused. Saha can only imagine what her teenage hostess had described to her. She probably used the word influencer. That would certainly contribute to the confusion — but it lasts only a second. Then Tess’s face splits into a massive smile she recognizes.

“Hullo,” Saha calls, offering another little wave before she feels stupid and drops her hand. “Uh. I’m really sorry to crash in. I was finally in town—“

Lie.

“Oh my God! You finally showed!”

She moves swiftly around the counter, wiping wet hands on a white rag she tucks back into a pocket on her apron. It’s mostly pristine, except for what look like a few skins of carrot. Tess glances down and brushes them off, her grin going sheepish.

“You didn’t even warn me—“

“Sorry!” Saha laughs, too. “It was a…well, honestly. It was a spur of the moment thing.”

They’re smiling at each other for a beat, right then. No speaking, no noise aside the distance clatter from the kitchen. Someone sat out at the patio listening to music too loud. The quiet shuffle of waiters to the few full tables, the chatter of a loyal crowd at an unpopular time.

“I thought I was going to have to pitch it to you.” Tess blurts. “Like, little old restaurant, we’re not good enough for—“

“Stop!”

“I can’t!” Tess whisper-yells back at her. She reaches out to close her hands around Saha’s arms, shake her. “Oh fuck! You actually showed up. I have to make you something.”

Saha glances around. “Only if you’re not too busy. And I’ll pay.”

Tess’s face goes stony, her eyes dead serious. “Over my fucking corpse.”

*

There’s still a bit of a rush for Tess to get through, so Saha ends up in a secluded corner. There’s a few news clippings tucked under the glass of her table, which she reads while sipping at a glass of wine she probably could have forgone. Each of the stories seems to be about a local kid — Seattle or Boston, the quantity of accomplishments split evenly between the two. There’s a story behind all the memorabilia, and Saha’s starting to put it together.

Especially when she picks up the menu and discovers there is only one category under which everything is listed: comfort food.

Eventually Tess quiets the meager rush of customers; Saha can hear her herding cats, as close as she is to the swinging kitchen doors. She’s never worked in a kitchen before, unlike her mum. Even just the thought of it makes her want to puke. All those mistakes to make. All the pressure.

When Tess returns to her table, she hooks a booted foot around the chair leg and practically throws herself down into the seat.

“Long day?” Saha prompts, chin propped in her palm. Tess looks glowy, rather than sweaty — but she does smell like some strange mixture of ingredients that Saha isn’t sure go together. Perils of the job, and all that.

“Sort of.” Tess responds dutifully, shrugging. Her smile goes a bit wicked then. “It just recently got better.”

She isn’t sure what to say to that, other than huff politely. Other than — not watch when Tess leans back, body stretched long, to untie the apron from around her waist. Other than blink, other than turn her head away.

Don’t fuck up, something sinister in her chest bubbles out. You’d make it awkward. You’d ruin Benji’s good thing.

I’m not going to do anything but be very cordial and polite with Xavier’s sister. Saha is fully aware she’s got two voices in her head, snipping back and forth. She is also, unfortunately, totally unable to stop them.

“Did you want to—“

“I had a question about—“

Tess’s teeth show again; she covers them with a pale palm, eyebrows raised. No, you.

Saha rolls her wrist. “Go on, then.”

Red eyebrows hitch up. The ends are lighter, almost white; she wonders how long ago Tess had bleached them. “Hm?”

She repeats that motion. “G’on.”

Tess smiles a little, chin tilting. “G’on. That’s cute. I was tempted to make you go first, but that was like. Absolutely distracting. G’on. Elaborate so I can do literally whatever you ask.”

Saha’s lips part on a tiny breath. “Ah. Shameless.”She chides teasingly (fuck, don’t flirt back, Saha). Saha clears her throat. “Anyway — you said. You said you could pitch it, right? So pitch it.”

“Huh?”

God, but she looks cute confused. Saha steels herself quite bravely. “Sell the restaurant to me, Wolffe.”

Tess has the audacity to tinge her smile sheepish. “Oh. Okay. Well —”

Saha watches, perhaps a bit too rapt, as the head chef adopts a posture fit for her. Tess goes from someone you might mistake for a particularly cheeky bartender, knowledgeable and expert without the optimism of a restaurateur, to the owner. It’s the pride, Saha decides. Earnest and obvious, the secret ingredient of the establishment’s success has to found in that sweet charisma.

And if Saha thought that was rosy-colored enough, she hadn’t been prepared for the actual pitch.

“Well, you saw the menus. All snacks? Like, nothing heavy. That was the whole point. Everything is based off some iconic snack food. But nothing corporate, right? We don’t do — fucking—“ Tess makes a disgusted face, and Saha stifles a laugh behind her hand. “I don’t know, orange cheddar organic cheese crispy triangles.”

“Doritos is the first thing that comes to mind?” Saha twists in her stool, peers over each shoulder. “I thought this was a respectable establishment with worldly staff.”

Tess’s cheeks are pink. “Watch it.”

“Right, right. GO on. Nothing corporate.”

Tess nods. The color doesn’t fade. “Right, nothing corporate. Anyway. We’ll do things like, dunno. Recreate those cheap veggie party platters you’d get in grocery stores. Or, hm, we have roasted chickpeas. Onigiri. Everything is basically from me or one of the other team’s childhood. Health, wildly unhealthy. Steve, our dishwasher? We have the marshmallow peanut butter sablé cookies because his mom would make him marshmallow peanut butter sandwiches for lunch.”

“That sounds incredibly American, actually.”

When Tess laughs, she puts her whole body into it. “Oh my God. It super fucking is, isn’t it?”

Saha smiles a little distantly. “My mum used to do toast pizzas for us. With this specific — well, it’s a tomato chili sauce. And she’d throw whatever cheese we had left, and veggie scraps —“

“And you had probably like, the best pizza ever to your kid brain.”

She nods. Tess mirrors it, excitedly leaning forward.

“That’s exactly the point. And we’ve got, like, community weekends. We’ll put out a blast for people to come in and give us suggestions and sometimes they get added to the menu. Our special board is a weekly rotation from background. There’s a decent Vietnamese community a few blocks down, so we had people tell us what their favorites were. We’ll do these really good rolls, basically, of sesame seed and coconut and rice paper —“

Saha’s hand brushes up her throat. She’s perplexed by the sudden lump in it for only a moment. Then she realizes the source of the emotion: that passion. It was the same food passion her mum had, the same Benji had picked up. Tess, she guessed, was someone who had food centered for her in some way. Based on what she knows about their upbringing from Xavier (and plenty of nosy assumptions), Saha figures that introduction happened outside their home.

She imagines Tess as a toothy, charming kid. Wide-eyed at a plate she didn’t recognize, but eager to try.

“What should I get?”

Tess tucks her arms behind her back, adopting a professional posture that seems almost uncharacteristic to the woman Saha (if only slightly) knows.

“Well, if you want to start I would recommend—“

Saha snorts. Tess cuts herself off, eyebrows up. “No, I mean. What would you make? What would you get?”

*

It’s the right or wrong question to ask, depending.

She eats so much Saha suspects she might be slumped over in the booth, when Tess finds her again.

“Satisfied?”

Saha blinks up at her, eyes glossy from the carbs and late hour. “I took so many pictures, I am so sorry. All I was doing was sitting here, eating your food, taking pictures.”

When Tess tucks her hands behind her back, rocking slightly on her heels, Saha’s fucking skull buzzes. “Aw, shucks. I mean. I’ll take that as a positive review? And endorsement?” She picks up a few plates. “But, um. I’m letting the kids go early since it’s a game day. If you want —only if you want — I’ll save a few slices of this weekend’s dessert.”

Saha’s turn to raise her brows expectantly.

Tess clears her throat, gaze bouncing off to the side. “The office is down the hall, past the catering closet—“

“Oh, special treatment?”

She means for it to be lighthearted. A funny jab. But Tess only holds her stare, green eyes so intense where they hold Saha’s that she nearly feels it.

“Yeah,” Tess breathes, or whispers, or promises, really.

Saha strands abruptly, her knee knocking against the side of the table. “I’ll meet you there. I just — I need to get air. Ate too much.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” Saha stumbles backwards, swearing under her breath. “Oh for —okay. Okay. It was so good, Tess, really. Such good food.”

“G’on!” Tess mocks, flapping both her hands. “I’ll get forks.”

*

Their plates are long empty by the time their conversation slows, the dainty and once-moist yellow cake crumbs dry and stuck to paper. They were boxed caked cookies, as Tess referred to them lovingly, except with none of the pre-packing. A simply modified recipe the Wolffe matriarch would make often for dessert — because it was quick and cheap. Just two eggs and some oil. Saha has never had those in originality, so Tess’s fine dining twist immediately move to her number one spot.

A lot of the foods tonight have shattered Saha’s lists and records. She has no idea where to start with the review they’ve been teasing about. If she even wants to write it at all. It’s not egotistical for her to be concerned about the state of the place after Saha blasts it to her following. Sometimes, she goes back to places she’s visited and found that the fame and online traction had made everything worse.

I got a nice cupcake lady doxxed. Saha admits silently, staring at a crumb on Tess’s chin while she offers an animated narration to a recent local restaurant drama. I got a food truck shut down over a silly code ruling that people reported becuase of the increase in business.

“I’ve got to go,” Saha finally hedges once Tess’s latest story has wrapped. She lifts her watch and turns it so the other woman can see. “Tess, fuckin’ hell? We’ve been at it four hours now. When do you open?”

Tess opens and closes her mouth a few times. “Um. Early. For brunch.”

“Shit!” She slaps her forehead a bit too hard (another glass of maybe-shouldn’t wine had paired with dessert nicely). They both giggle at the noise; Tess snatches up her hand and holds it still.

“Jesus, don’t literally beat yourself up? This was great. This was so fun. It’s worth like, four hours of sleep. I’m glad—“

“Oh, don’t.” Saha pleads, waving her hand in the air. She’s a little tipsy and the sentimental sway of the conversation will make her rebalance with tears. “Oh, don’t be nice.”

Tess squeezes her hand. “I’m serious. I’m so glad you came. I’m glad you got to see it — I’m glad —“

They both pause. Tess chews on her lip, palm lingering its gentle cup around Saha’s knuckles.

“I’m really glad Benji, you know. I’m glad your brother has someone like you.” Tess is looking at her that way. Saha leans back in the chair with tremendous effort. The office is small, compared to the rest of Tess’s gorgeous establishment; it houses not much more than a desk, some record shelves, and the two uncomfortable spinning office chairs they perch in. The space feels even smaller, now that Saha is aware she’s being…observed.

“Yeah,” she says around that lump in her throat. “Yeah, me too. I mean — I’m glad Xavier —“

“I know.” Tess laughs. She pumps Saha’s hand firmly like it’s their first time meeting. “We should do this more.”

No. No, definitely not.

“Okay,” Saha says instead. “Can. Sorry if this is strange. I know, right, that — I mean. I really appreciate all this. You staying after. And being a good host. And I’m glad we can do this, right? Get along.”

Tess stares at her. she looks as though she wants to stand. Wants to pace.

So Saha rises first; before she realizes what she’s doing, her arms spread. “If you’re not a hugger…”

Tess barrels into her, arms winding tight around Saha’s waist before she’s squeezed nearly in half.

*

Once she’s back home, Saha finds a local Seattle florist online. She sends along a thank-you arrangement, which seems the least she can do: strands of gorgeous green pine, alpine strawberry leaves, and dainty camas. She isn’t sure what they all mean — but the florist was local, the way Tess appreciated, and the flowers were too, and — and it felt fitting, saying thank you. For more than just a meal.

The weekend after her present is delivered, Saha stands in uncomfortably tall heels at a gallery showing. Right as she’s nearly sucked into another inane high society bit of chatter, her phone goes off.

Tess has posted a new picture of the restaurant; it’s a magazine clipping of a news piece. In the background, each of those memory-plastered tables has been topped with a familiar bouquet.

Saha rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling.

maslow's hierarchy

wc: 6.8k

Benji drags himself out of bed a moment before the alarm kicks off.

By now, he’s developed somewhat of a sixth sense for certain happenings around base. It’s a sense that might, were the more superstitious recruits given a crack at describing it, be called preternatural.

Lately those murmurs have picked up both in popularity and frequency; Benji likes that. It could be any number of things to thank for the increasing number of terrified soldiers bumbling out of his path, avoiding trips to medical. It could be Benson has resumed his charming habit of fabricated ghost stories about the resident medic. It could be Benji’s own doing, really: his recent predilection for hanging around the terrifyingly unpredictable corporal hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Whatever it is, Benji’s thankful. Any time another set of eyes pops wide and snaps away from his face, it’s like a needle has split his vein and shot something straight to his heart. Something that makes his head swim, something that blows his pupils wide, something that makes his mouth twist with pleased adrenaline.

Something wicked nice, as the corporal might put it.

*

He takes his time meandering down to the clinic, where his on-call alarm had been directing him. Benji hadn’t been fortunate enough to be on the mission from which all the trembling, blood-soaked soldiers return. But his luck is good enough that there are a fat number of them, wet with fear’s sweat and stinking of that post-fight metallic tinge.

He likes being there when it happens. Not just because a body will open in any number of interesting and memorable ways. Not just because they cry and scream out of fear and pain alike. Nah. Benji likes being there when it happens because inevitably, once the fog of sleepy shock passes, once they realize the predicament they’ve gotten themselves into with whatever nasty, painful misfortunate —

They look at Benji. They know he’s there. Know why. Know that he holds, in eager glove-clad hands, the tools to fix them. To make it stop hurting.

(Whether he will or not is another story entirely.)

Benji likes watching the injured take that journey. It always plays out so obviously on their face as the path winds, tugs them along. This hurts, turns into someone help me, turns into oh fuck, not him, not him. Benji might not have their friendship. He might not have their trust. He certainly doesn’t have their loyalty.

But he does have their reliance. Their need. To stop the bleeding, to close the wound, to make the pain stop. They fear him, but they need him — and Benji likes looking at a face and seeing need swiped across it like splatter. He likes it almost more than the fear.

*

The first injured mercenary he attends to is green. New enough that he doesn’t know any better. As Benji approaches the door, light gleaming through the cracks of the frame, he hears the soldier’s dismay.

“Not him,” the mercenary is chanting, over and over. Pleading, really. He must have seen Benji’s name on his chart. New enough that he dodesn’t know better, but been here long enough to be warned. Maybe to hear a story or two.

“Please, please. Not him. You can do it— right, Dr. Toussa—doctor? You can, can’t you? Please, man.”

“Mais no,” Nick responds, his familiar and even tone carrying through the crack in the door. He sounds amused. It’s nearly a laugh. “What a preposterous assumption, private. I will be retiring for the evening. Perhaps — oui. A nice glass of chardonnay awaits, I think. Une récompense, you see, pour mon travail acharné.“

Benji waits beyond the door, listening to the near-tearful begging of the injured soldier. The quiet shuffle of fabric as Nick undoubtedly removes his stark white coat, lays it carefully on the coat rack he keeps by the door.

Which swings open. The arc throws just shy of the tip of Benji’s nose — only a few centimeters.

He doesn’t move.

“Ah.” Nick says, as congenially as he seems capable. “Bonsoir, Benji.”

“Evenin’, Nick.” Benji tilts an imaginary hat. He feels his mouth already pulling into a grin. “Leave some for me?”

“And otherwise?” Nick chuckles. “Do labor of myself when you are so happy to help? Non.”

Despite the congeniality, despite Nick’s seemingly high spirits, despite Benji’s grin — the hallway is tense. Benji stands in front of him, short but broad. Unmoving. Arms tucked behind his back.

Nick doesn’t move an inch, despite leaving medical with hastened steps. He doesn’t look to be in a hurry home any longer. He looks frozen. He looks careful.

Benji’s smile widens. After a beat, he moves to the left with a single sidestep. The hall now open to him, Nick moves as well. But like always, he rotates the parallel to Benji’s shoulders. Keeping them facing each other, eyes locked to his, grey-dotted jaw soft but shut.

“Well, y’know how it is.” Benji tilts his head, showing teeth now. “You have to be real passionate in the healthcare industry, yeah.”

“Thankless work.” Nick agrees. He has begun to walk backwards, towards the exit at its far end. The stark red letters of the sign blink in a halo around his pale hair.

Benji clicks his tongue sorrowfully. He folds both hands over his heart. “Well, gosh. Thanks an awful much, doctor.”

The moment hangs just one long, delightful silence longer. Then Nick tilts his chin (head tipping only enough to dip his nose, his eyes staying locked to Benji) and tips an invisible brim of his own.

“Certainement. And, merci à toi, of course.” Nick takes another step. “Goodnight.”

Benji smiles wider. For a split second, Nick begins to turn as if he intends on giving Benji his back. His steps stutter only that second, though. Benji has the pleasure of watching him twitch and still. Briefly. Almost impercitbly; Nick is more than that. Better than.

But Benji notices.

So Benji waits until Nick is halfway down the hall, halfway to putting Benji and the base in his rear view, to call out.

“Nicky.” He says, lifting his voice only slightly over the distance. “Is that what Margot used to call you?”

Nick stops walking abruptly.

He can’t tell if Nick swallows. If he has any sort of response to what is, as they both well understand, a cruel jeer despite Benji’s friendly tone. He doesn’t know if Nick fears him. He sort of doubts it. But what he does get, what he sees plain as day:

Need.

I need you to stop talking. Nick’s eyes say, boring into his like drills. I need to be away from you. I need a glass of wine.

Benji’s wide smile twitches, as if it wants to pull wider. He likes the need.

“Oui.” Nick admits evenly. Barely three breathes have passed between them. “Sometimes.”

“Well. Not anymore, anyway.”

Benji waits a few breaths, too. Then he nods, smile tilting into an intrigued upside-down frown, and happily ducks into medical for his emergency shift.

*

The blubbering private nearly pisses himself when Benji steps into his “room”. In reality, the curtain-separated cubbies are barely more than a gurney and what little equipment can be crammed into the space. For this unlucky bastard, it’s just Benji and his kit and his eager hands.

Benji snaps gloves onto them as the new merc watches. His tan hands are white-knuckled on the edge of the gurney, fingers tight between the rungs as if he’s holding on to avoid being washed out to sea.

“I heard you talking to Dr. Toussaint about me.” Benji says, retrieving his suture kit and gauze. He holds the paper wrapped square up to the light, pretending to assess it for unsterile tears or rips.

The soldier before him says nothing, but his breathing picks up. Any quicker, and the monitor’ll start going off. If he’s expecting Benji to lash out, or to hurt him, or do something worse like any number of the vile acts he’s committed in stories…he’s probably surprised by Benji’s careful, expert treatment.

The wound on his leg is thoroughly cleaned, sterilized, and adequately closed up. Benji isn’t cruel for a second of it, although the desire to touch two centimeters deep in the split of red-weeping tissue sits fresh at the front of his brain.

“I heard rumors.” The private brushes fingers against his thigh. He doesn’t sound terrified anymore. Maybe just a bit wary.

“Most of you have.” Benji says. He turns with a shrug to pluck the gloves off and wash his hands. He closes the lid on the empty numbing syringe, tucks it dutifully into the sharps container, and does everything quick, correct, and by the book.

If not…uncharacteristically kind.

“Guess they’re wrong?”

Benji turns and props himself against the sink, arms crossed over his chest. When the private’s eyes stray down, Benji corrects the expression on his face by making it softer.

“Are you asking, or telling.”

His nearly-silent words make the other soldier smile slightly. He leans forward, wound in his leg forgotten, fear put out back.

“I guess I’m telling.”

Benji ducks his head, as if shy. “I’m not like that.” He asserts. He sounds how he ought to — kindly assertive, but not defensive; humbled, but hurt. He sounds like it bothers him, what people think. That it wounds him.

“At least not that I’ve seen.”

Benji takes a step closer. The private doesn’t seem concerned by the fact that the door — his one escape — is now on the other side of the medic.

“I just,” Benji says, dragging from the end of the gurney to close his palm lightly around the soldier’s gauzed thigh. “Really am fulfilled making people feel better again. Like…making them feel good.”

The private smiles at him, eyelashes fluttering.

Benji smiles back. Then he squeezes.

Hard.

*

But he goes back to his quarters alone. Worse, he goes back to his quarters unsatisfied. There was no nice throb in his gut, no half-hard tightness to his trousers, no telling flush or sweaty neck or arousal of any fucking sort. Usually, he wouldn’t be alone. The private was exactly the sort who accompanied him — scared but intrigued, confused about the source of their need.

And yet Benji had sent him off practically with a lollipop. Sure, the reopening of the gash in his legs had hurt — if his soulful shriek of pain was anything to go by — but that’s where the evening had found its end. Not in more pain, or a kiss to along with it, or more on top.

He could have added threats. Another welt to go with the seatbelt criss-crossing his chest. The wounds: blade to the thigh, stripe of red along his sternum; Benji’s teeth printing his neck.

Except.

Benji goes back to his quarters alone. Nothing lingers with him about that night, about the treatments. Not even that sad little sound that he’d rung out as if from a rag. Benji’s usually all about those sounds. Pain or pleasure, they meant a job well done, that he’d accomplished either. It was do no harm, after all, not do no pain.

As for pleasure?

*

Midnight creeps by. Then one, then two. He lays still, for the most part, the length of those hours before his patience (thin, already, the mood he’s in) snaps entirely.

Benji sits up with a snarl, legs hanging over the side of the bed. He scrubs at his eyes. He’s getting —he’s remembering — and there aren’t any lovely sounds or flashy colors or sticky, wet insides to dance in front of those memories. He’s stuck with them for the moment, faint and blurry but there nonetheless, fuck.

And then—

He hears a laugh resound the length of the hall. It’s peppy but full, a winding sort of off-key at the end. For each second that it echoes on, that sort from the sort of humor that shocked, Benji’s foot taps quicker.

What’s so funny, corporal? He thinks. Benji is no stranger to venomous thoughts, but the bitterness layered in that surprises him. Who’s making you laugh? Tell them they’re late on their physical, hey? Send them down. I wanna hear the joke, too.

Benji tosses himself back on the bed. His thoughts bump around together: collide, bounce away, overlap, muddy up. One of the only consistents is a mess of red hair. That laugh lingering. He imagines it as a creature attached inside his ear.

Benji slips his hand down his chest. Rests it there, finger pressed into the divot of an old bullet graze across his pectoral. It presses slightly. On that particular spot of tough scar tissue, the touch causes a strange sensation he’s never found a similar feeling. It’s almost like an ache. Almost like a nerve was reattached wrong in the healing process. Pressing down there makes something tug slightly beneath the skin, an almost hurt.

Benji swallows and huffs out his air. Then he keeps the touch moving down. The slope of his stomach; hipbone; thigh.

He’s quick about it. Or…it’s quick. He has a laugh stuck to the interior of his skull. The more he loses himself in the easy rhythm of his hand, eyes pinched shut so he can better connect to memory, the fainter that laugh gets. It turns instead to certain noises he’s heard before. Recently, in fact. The yelp from the soldier, he imagines as Xavier’s own higher whine. A little cry of pain, a swear or snarl with that messy accent.

Benji imagines the heave of these noises in a warm chest. Skin under his palm. He imagines pressing down with his weight. Holding down. The stutter of the chest, a noise turned into a pitiful gasp for air.

In his mind, he lets up. The cruel — potentially lethal — fantasy lingers in the pricks of tears to green eyes, pinched-angry red nipples, a plummy bruise of incisors to his shoulder. But Benji feels the body beneath his pulls in a breath from that brief imagined mercy —

Then he imagines it laughing.

Holy shit, Xavier says in his head. That one kind of hurt.

Benji’s — well. It’s quick, after that.

*

The following week, Benji lingers after a briefing. The remainder of the company flow around him, trickling from the room like shadowy fish on a current. The number of soldiers at the base dwindles by day; they’re all aware of the ones who don’t come back from missions, who disappear after a meltdown by the commando, or leave in the middle of the night. Benji’d caught Tanaka at the far side just that Friday evening, shuffling some big-eyed redhead out a breach in the perimeter. He’d nudged her slightly behind him in some last-ditch show of heroics, but Benji had only shrugged and tapped his nose.

His silence was another favor to collect on. Tanaka was smart enough to know it.

Tanaka is also smart enough to pay little attention to Benji’s behavior. Their eyes briefly amongst the crowd, two pairs of dark pools magnetizing together before one bounces away. Always observing, that one. Benji was glad to have a pair of eyes when he’d need them, and even happier to know that Tanaka respected threats when they were given in earnest. Or implied.

Benji gives him a cheeky little nod anyway. The other man disappears around the corner, a tail-end of the crowd of black uniformed bodies. And once everyone has gone, Benji goes back into the room.

He knows Tanaka’s probably still waiting around that corner, protective but wary.

I’m not gonna kick your dog, mate. Benji thinks as he strides across the room. Don’t you worry.

His footfalls are quiet, but not silent. It doesn’t shock him to discover that the corporal is otherwise occupied, when he wrenches open the door to the meeting room’s supply attaché, as Nick calls them. Fucking supply closet, the rest.

In the blurry darkness, Benji can make out the corporal’s tall form tucked into a corner. His back is to the door (sloppy), shoulders curled and head hung between them. Benji opens the door further; light spills in near his boot. It does a wonderful job of illuminating, like a work of shadow art, the frantic movements of his wrist. But it also alerts Xavier to the fact that someone has discovered him in an incredibly compromising position.

Wouldn’t be the first time, Benji knows from rumor. It’ll have to be memorable.

“Oh God,” Xavier whimpers, dropping his chin. He sees the yellow sliver of outside light and lets out a shocked yelp. “Don’t—“

Benji shuts the door behind him, casting them in pitch-black. Xavier stumbles, whirls around, shoots an arm out that nearly catches Benji in the face. He dodges it and then makes a guess whereabouts —

“Jesus!” Xavier squeaks, making something fuzzy and predatory pound between Benji’s eyes. “I’m — I thought—“

“Relax.” Benji says, pulling himself towards Xavier with the grip he’s caught on his sleeve. His fingers trace up a slim wrist, find Xavier’s own palm. It’s slick and warm from arousal, the heat of his own body.

“Just me.”

Xavier goes quiet and then makes a similar sort of noise to just a moment prior. Except — hungrier. Weak. His big body sways towards Benji, an arm slinging around his shoulders. Xavier tucks his face almost immediately down, knocking their foreheads together.

“In that case, I think it’s please don’t charge me with public indecency and more w-ooow you have such good timing.”

Benji holds onto his forearm while Xavier leans back into the corner, his feet bracketing Benji’s boots and barely keeping himself upright. They knock together, one of the only indicators Benji has of their proximity.

“You know people keep talking about the closet masturbator?”

Xavier freezes. His arm halts the lazy tug he’d taken back up. “They have?”

“No.” Benji huffs after a beat. “But you fuckin’ believed me, huh. Nah, Xavier. Just saw you duck in here last week.” He leans in until he finds the coarse material of Xavier’s shirt. He tugs at the fabric with his teeth, then readjusts and catches skin with the next bite. Xavier squeaks again, then moans.

“Oh. I—“

“Was doing this, huh?” Benji reaches between them to cover Xavier’s hand with his own. He squeezes.

Hard.

“Fuck.”

“Not quite. That what this is about, huh? You thinkin’ about it?”

“Yes.” Xavier admits. “I mean, no — it’s not what—“

“The sitrep, then?” Benji’s laugh is incredulously mean. “You get off going to boring ass meetings, Xavier — that’s fuckin’ pitiful.”

He can’t see Xavier’s angry blush, his pinched expression of contrite, prissy annoyance. He wishes he could. But he can only feel the little throb in his hands, the way Xavier shuffles and tries to get closer even as he sounds angry.

“No, I am not fucking jacking it to the meeting, you asshole. God. You’ve done a lot of shit to me, but that insult might be..like, it.”

Benji squeezes him again, drags the touch along with Xavier’s hand upwards, trying to get his rhythm back. “You not feeling fulfilled, Xavier? Gotta come look for it among this lot? Two weeks in a row you come take care of it alone. That’s what you were doing last week, yeah? Not snortin’ blow or fucking around. You were alone.”

Xavier swallows audibly. His weak thrashes, his attempts at getting away — they halt. He makes a soft noise, and then those attempts redouble. Benji holds him still throughout the squirming. Benji allows it for a moment longer before switching both hands to Xavier’s biceps and firmly pinning him to the wall.

He steps close enough that he knows the front of his shirt brushes up against very vulnerable skin. On cue, Xavier gasps and throws his head back with a resounding clang to the metal shelf behind him.

“Ah, fuck. You’re — you are awful close.” Xavier says nervously. He tries to move again. “I’m freaking out a little, here. I don’t like — it’s dark, this is a small —“

“Are you alone right now?”

He imagines Xavier’s big, sweet eyes plink-plink together.

“No.” The corporal breathes. He arches closer to Benji; his eyes haven’t adjusted to the light fully, but now he can make out Xavier’s towering silhouette before him.With his free hand, he reaches up to touch where Xavier’s mouth ought to be. Instead, they brush against a chin.

Benji adjusts and slips them inside, pressing and pulling down on Xavier’s tongue.

“Were you last week?”

It sounds vitriolic. Angry. But Xavier doesn’t seem to mind the rough interrogation.

“Yeah,” he admits. His own voice is shot through and rough with arousal. He sounds as though he’d been breathing hard right before Benji discovered him. He wonders how close the poor bastard is. How close he can get him, before he starts making more noises.

“You gonna be alone tonight?”

Here, Xavier hesitates. Benji can tell there are eyes searching for his, even in the dark.

“I don’t need to be.” Xavier finally settles on, the words hot around Benji’s fingers. He pulls them from Xavier’s mouth and curls a fist in his shirt.

“Then you won’t.” He says. With a hard yank, Benji pulls their faces together. Expectedly, they collide off-course. He feels his gums split in his mouth, the taste of copper as his lip connects with Xavier’s jaw.

From there, though, it’s not a difficult adjustment. Their mouths fit together, Xavier’s breathy noises intoxicating him from the inside out as he swallows them down with each kiss.

When Benji thrusts a hand into his hair, Xavier’s chest heaves out of sync.

“I’m going to —“

“No.”

Xavier’s mouth drops open against his cheek. He wails a little, clearly trying to keep his voice down. Benji dares anyone to come investigate those noises; he assumes that is what Xavier’s scared of, but he’d sooner kill than share those noises with another soul.

“Not until you come see me tonight.” Benji purrs against his throat. He bites down, front teeth digging in to a sharp collarbone, and Xavier hiccups a telling sob. “No pun intended.”

*

He makes it quick for Xavier. Or — it’s quick.

He’s barely got his hand around that pale cock before Xavier’s breath hitches. The noises he lets loose are uncharacteristically quiet, few and far between. Benji gets a strange, crushing disappointment in his chest before he realizes why.

When the orgasm passes, Xavier’s eyes flutter back from his skull and settle wetly on Benji. His hand strokes up and down Benji’s forearm, where a tendon is still taut from the firm grip he maintains. His breathing returns to normal, the heave of his chest all that remains of the particularly strong orgasm.

“Your hand felt too good,” Xavier whines this explanation, his tone sweet and sleepy and shy. Benji thinks back to the prior month, where he’d watch Xavier pummel a man to death. Until his teeth were stuck with blood, until the creature that lived in him shone out through his eyes. His stomach flips, but it’s an alien sensation he can’t compare to anything else — like the press of his thumb into that divoted scar.

*

Xavier is eager. He likes to play games when they’re fun and when they’re dangerous. It’s barely any work at all to get him to agree to the little wager Benji sets out, once they’ve both cum another time and have melded together sticky. Xavier agrees to his dare with an adorable, competitive snicker.

“That’ll be easy,” he says, crossing an X over the left side of his chest with a finger. “With that reward? Pft. Not even a challenge.”

But he doesn’t sound sure; Benji has been a first-hand witness to the ways that the corporal approaches sex: ready, willing, happy to be there and find attention lavished upon him. Even if however brief. Even despite Benji’s teasing of his appetite, his proclivities, his lack of will power when it came to getting himself off…Xavier simply smiles at him, head cocked and eyes glinting.

Can touch yourself ‘til we see each other again, but not finish. I’ll handle it for you, if you can —but I bet not.

“How long will you be gone” is only a question Xavier thinks to ask after he’s agreed to the terms of the dare. And when he sees the smug, victorious look on Benji’s face — well. He seems a little fearful, a little needy.

*

It’s a week Benji’s away. A mission he gets assigned to, rather than waiting duty back on base. He knows it’s only because their numbers have dropped so low. He knows he’s a liability out here, as likely to hurt an ally as a foe if the mood struck. He knows that’s why every soul up to the commander avoid him, try to keep him off rosters.

“Spooky fucker,” one of the bomb-unit boys mutters as he passes by. Benji is in a good mood. Instead of whirling with the knife tucked in his belt, opening up the other soldier’s throat, Benji simply smiles.

“Boo,” he says, widening his eyes. He has, as Nick would say, une récompense waiting. All he’s gotta do is behave.

*

Lately, Benji’s been real good at behaving.

Except when he returns to base, he’s faced with a bit of a problem. Tanaka finds him in the equipment space, storing his dusty pack for the next time they need a butcher on-field.

He knows immediately something is wrong.

“While you were all gone, there was a breach — not my spot, don’t fucking look at me like that. Someone tried to get to the commander, and Xavier—he’s asking for you.”

“Aw.” Benji pouts. “He needs a little home visit?”

As he goes to leave, Tanaka’s hand closes around his wrist. Benji could turn that touch immediately, break his fingers, break his wrist — maybe keep going up the arm. He coldly turns back to the other soldier, instead.

“Whatever the fuck you’re doing to him, it’s gotta stop.” Tanaka hisses. “I had to convince him to let somebody look at him. Got fucked up in that fight, protecting everybody. And he just kept saying you’d take care of him. That you’d do it.”

Benji allows himself to be shaken. His face remains neutral.

“Whatever you’re doing,” Tanaka growls. “It’s gotta end soon. Do you hear me, man? I will kill you.”

Benji smiles at him instead of responding. The big ones are all bark. The little ones go for a bite — then return for seconds. He

*

Benji finds him exactly where Tanaka told him he could be found; sat atop one of the exam stations in medical, close to Benji’s usual haunt. Xavier has an arm in a wrapped bandage, tattoos peeking out from the top of the blood-pinked gauze. There’s a knot developing on his temple, his lip has managed to split again, and a bruise develops like a blossom on his jaw.

Benji whistles as he enters the clinic. The corporal’s smiling before his eyes even rise fully from the ground.

Then it drops into a glare.

“You fucker. You didn’t say a week.”

“Had it handed to you, huh Wolffe?” Benji sing-songs, ignoring him. “Look more roughed up than usual. Problems focusing will do that.”

“I’m not having trouble focusing—“

Benji fits his tongue to the side of his cheek, gesturing lewdly in the air between them. He tops it off by frowning and miming flaccidity with his finger.

“Fuck you.” Xavier grumbles, cheeks heating.

“Ooh,” Benji cooes. “Proper grumpy, huh?”

After a perfunctory wash of his hands, he turns to the supply cabinet and retrieves a new roll of gauze and some other tools. The box of gloves he debates on — then tucks surreptitiously under his arm. “You know, you didn’t have to wait.”

Xavier’s cool, intelligent eyes follow him as he moves; its not the same wariness as Nick, or the hateful fear-touched ice of Tanaka. Specific to Xavier, specific to Xavier’s eyes on him.

“You asked.”

Benji drops his armful of goodies on the rolling tray beside the gurney and pulls it closer. He steps between Xavier’s knees. They widen slightly to offer space — Benji feels saliva pool in his mouth at how quick and habitual it seems.

You asked. The implication: I obeyed.

“I said.” Benji corrects evenly. “Seems like you just interpreted it as a request, hey?” His head tilts coyly so he can peer up at Xavier while still unwrapping everything. Surprise, surprise: ruddy splotches of color have flooded the corporal’s cheeks. “Or— or a command? Xavier. Nasty. You wanted that?”

Xavier scoots forward. His long legs tuck around the back of Benji’s thighs, ankles locked. He glares at Benji, regardless of the warm contact of their bodies or sneaky climb of a broad hand up Benji’s side.

“I wanted you,” Xavier says. The clarification drops a hot weight of arousal into Benji’s stomach, even if he knows that snide half-grin and fluttering lashes are purposeful.

Benji takes his jaw roughly, without warning. His fingers dig in to softly stubbled skin. This touch earns a gasp — and then the other hand Benji fits over his thigh earns another.

“Bullshit,” Benji purrs, bringing their faces together as if he’s going to grant a benevolent kiss. “You just wanted to cum. Sick fuckin’ dog. Couldn’t even wait a week, huh?” He shakes Xavier’s head, squeezing those adorable freckled cheeks before letting go. “Oughta be ashamed.”

Xavier’s face floods with more color, but those big excited eyes don’t stray from Benji. He’s too earnest when he speaks: “I’m not.”

Another flip of his stomach, alien in sensation only because of the context — intimate, truthful, soft. Benji already lets Xavier hold him, when he’s given the opportunity to linger after one of the explosive times they slip away together. Benji already lets him do so many things he shouldn’t; make enough allowances and something will go soft. Spoil. Not in the good sort of rotting way.

Benji ignores that gentle admission, the hand tucked beseechingly into his waistband to touch skin. He wipes sterile his supplies and is meticulous about setting them out, ready and available for whatever wounds Xavier’s been hiding. Maimed creature under the porch sort.

“Fuckin’ stupid for not letting anybody look at you.” Benji notes, gesturing to the half-hearted gauze wrapped around his arm. “You do that?”

Xavier glances down at it. “Yeah. Learned watching you.”

Benji snorts. “That so? Well you’ll be ready for the big leagues soon, right?” He starts a slow unwind of the wrapping, fingers electrified whenever they brush skin. “Nick’s the surgery guy. Bet he’ll let you sit in, watch ‘em fish some shrapnel out of guts— if that’s so interesting.”

His wrist is suddenly enclosed in a tight grip. When he peeks up at Xavier’s face, its stony and disgusted. “Stop fucking with me.”

“Stop showin’ up and making yourself a target,” Benji sing-songs back. When he gets at the wound along Xavier’s forearm, he pouts; it’s nearly all healed. The edges of the laceration — from a serrated blade, just a light enough swipe not to tear — aren’t even pink with inflammation.

“Boring.”

Xavier laughs at his yawn. “Man, can you be normal even for a second? You can just get me some Tylenol, an ice pack for my head maybe. Call it a day.”

Benji leans forward and spreads his hands on either side of Xavier’s hips. The taller man sits upright a little more, eyes widening. Every possible point of contact between them drifts closer, but Benji is careful about keeping them separate. Just close enough. Just almost there. Hasn’t that been the whole point?

“Would that make you feel better, corporal? Gettin’ taken care of?” He asks, voice dropped low enough Xavier needs to sway forward to hear each word. “Wanna bandaid for your booboos? Want me to kiss it better?”

Xavier lets out a shaky breath. “I want—”

The snap of a glove fills the room. It’s loud and unexpected enough a noise that Xavier jumps. His whole form twitches between Benji’s arms, shoulders pulling up to his ears before relaxing.

“Jumpy bastard.” Benji notes, a fond note unfolding alongside the mean tease. “How’d you even manage it, a fight? All scared and…” he glances down to Xavier’s lap. “On edge.”

“I’m very good at what I do.” Xavier mumbles defensively.

“Hm.” Benji tsks. That hiss between his teeth nearly covering the soft snap! the button on Xavier’s black trousers offers. “Me too.”

Before he’s even snuck a hand down that split fabric, knuckles grazing the zipper, Xavier falls back on his elbows. He nearly careens over the opposite side of the gurney, and Benji has to swallow a laugh at the shocked yelp that escapes him. The legs stuck around his waist tighten as Xavier adjusts for balance, shuffling closer. Benji shoves his shirt up his stomach to watch how it ripples with breath, abdomen taut with the long stretch of his body.

“Oh. Thought I was gettin’ medical attention.” Xavier finds his voice to snark. “Guess this isn’t as professional an establishment as I thought.”

Benji leans forward to drag teeth over his hipbone, tugging the fabric down until it bunches at the thighs. He’s unwilling to move further away to take them off entirely, but Xavier doesn’t seem to mind either; he kicks his long legs, finds them mostly trapped, and then whimpers pathetically.

“How often?”

This doesn’t receive a response right away: Benji’s pulling on the nitrile exam gloves. Each careful movement as his hands are covered is carefully monitored by Xavier. Green eyes darkened, lids heavy, lips parted.

“Are you going to jack me off with those.” He says intelligently.

Benji can’t help the amused snort. “I’m unprofessional?”

“It’s been a week.”

Even without prior knowledge, even if that had been an admission — Benji can tell. He can tell because when he wraps his hand around the half-hard cock between Xavier’s legs, they kick.

“Oh fuck—“ Xavier goes, in that tell-tale way. Benji snorts again, mean and judgmental, and tightens his fist around the base.

“Naw, mate. Really. That’s just embarrassing, isn’t it?” Despite this, Benji strokes once. Just once. But firmly enough Xavier throws his head back.

“Seven days!” He squeaks. His hand shoots up to wrap around Benji’s wrist, tugging at him pathetically. Trying to get more — trying to get enough.

“Benji —come on, man.”

“Dunno,” Benji hesitates. His free hand lifts to Xavier’s thigh. He digs fingernails in to the muscle. Hard, hard — until Xavier whines and tries to twist away from that grip. “How’d I know you kept your word?”

“I did,” the corporal promises weakly. He’s already close to begging; his head’s tossed back again. Pretty auburn hair frames in a loose sweaty curl around the shell of his ear. Benji fixates there for a moment, at the bruise near his temple. His fingernails dig into Xavier’s thigh more, other fist squeezing around Xavier’s rapidly filling erection.

“I promise. Not a — I didn’t — the whole time—”

“Hm.” Benji murmurs. He goes for thoughtful. He goes for benevolent. “You sayin’ you deserve it, Wolffe? You deserve one real good one? You been good, s’what you’re saying?”

“Yes,” Xavier whines. He’s barely been touched, but when his chin drops to his chest Benji can see tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.

“You’re not sayin’ it.”

The poor bastard’s face goes so red Benji imagines him exploding in a shower of viscera. He nods desperately, then swallows to find his voice.

“I’m —I’ve been good.”

“Again.” Benji starts a slow rhythm. “You’re what?”

“I’ve — I’m good.” Xavier whisper-whines, his eyes fluttering quickly as Benji’s wrist picks up speed. “Oh, fuck. M’good.”

One, two, three— at four pumps, Benji slows. At five, he stops entirely.

Xavier reacts. His whole body shudders, shoulderspulling back as he drops forward. He makes an angry, mournful sort of noise, heels tapping incessantly and mad behind Benji’s back.

The corporal is not know to be a patient man. Benji has heard stories — and witnessed, on more than one occasion — how he gets when that thread has gone thin. When it snaps. Properly frustrated, Xavier is lethal. Properly mad? Another story entirely. Lethal would be a blessing.

Benji nudges their foreheads together to find his eyes; they’re seething, burning. And yet he doesn’t move. He doesn’t shove Benji away. He takes a big breath, rubs his nose along Benji’s, lets out a hitching sound from his chest.

The tears start up properly.

“Please?” Xavier whines. When Benji doesn’t offer a response, simply observes, the meltdown begins. “Please — please. I was good. I did what you said. You can’t just — that’s cruel, you can’t. I waited. I didn’t — I just need—“

Need. Yeah. That’s what it is, the illumination behind the tears and bright green irises under the clinic’s harsh light. It’s need, behind the frustration and genuine anger and (humiliatingly, to Xavier) desperation.

Benji is, by some force too brutal and big and grotesque to name, dropped to his knees. He pulls Xavier to the end of the gurney, letting go of his thigh for only a moment to find the lever that lowers it. Xavier’s boots thump the ground. Now his lap is a decent height for Benji to press his cheek to skin he’d bruised with fingernails. He rubs his face there, breathing hard as he swipes his tongue over the purpling crescents. He keeps it out, saliva pooling once more, as he tugs Xavier with more purpose and finesse.

“I’ll blow you next time,” Benji says matter-of-factly. It’s not an offer. Not a promise. He’s going to. He will. No question, no command. “You can cum on me.”

Xavier’s mouth drops open. His eyes pop wide and then squeeze shut and then Benji can’t make out the rest of the expression that follows because his head goes slack on his neck, totally weightless. His bottom half lifts off the gurney entirely, hips punching up just a few times before he lets go — not just of the long-delayed uncoiling of an orgasm, but of a noise. Unlike the random private, it sinks into him; as if his chest is porous, permeable, waiting to be filled.

It’s not the only sound — Xavier’s slick in his hand, gets messier and downright filthy as he chases more of the touch. He’s not even fully hard when he comes. Benji wonders if it hurts like that. Hopes so. Xavier likes a little of the hurt.

Benji pulls away; he waits until Xavier glances back down at him to drag his tongue between his fingers, along the black material.

“Jesus?” Xavier pants. His hand lifts — but its the elbow keeping him propped and upright, so he starts to fall backwards. Benji gets an arm around his waist as he rises, stepping between Xavier’s knees again. He pulls the gloves off while Xavier recovers his breath. Those green eyes follow them in the arc towards the trash.

“All better?”

Xavier snaps to him. He looks — Benji doesn’t want to break him open, in that moment. He just wants to watch. His torso is slick with sweat, a decently messy splatter of cum across a pale stomach. Benji reaches out to touch it, spread his hand through it…and stops.

Always observant, the corporal notices this hesitation. His doped smile slips off to be replaced by a pinched brow.

“Was that too quick?” He asks, gathering himself up. He yanks his shirt down, shoulders rounding.

“Certainly wasn’t a long while, was it?” Benji teases. He jerks at the air again, wide motions of his elbow. “Weren’t long enough to gimme a cramp, so. Thanks for that, s’pose.”

Xavier’s expression doesn’t soften. Or change at all. Benji feels that thread thin; an awareness of the corporal’s mood has engrained in him, embedded like shrapnel beneath the skin. He might ask Nick to dig around, just in case it’s really there. Fuck.

“Do you even—“ Xavier croaks. He sounds pathetic. “I mean. I know…I know this isn’t normal. It’s…” he takes a shuddering breath. “It’s not good. I know that. I’m not fucking stupid. But do you even —”

Benji’s hands snap up to frame his face. The touch is anything but gentle; his palms fit there, anyway. They’re eye-level with the gurney lowered, with Xavier sat. He seems shy about the sudden intimacy. Or maybe the fact that his pants are still undone, that he’s still vulnerable and exposed in another fashion than this desperate request for clarity.

“I take care of you,” Benji asserts. “Me, alright.”

He drops one side of Xavier’s burning face to reach for the gauze, some antiseptic. One handed, wrapping a fresh protective layer around the healing gash on Xavier’s arm is a bit of a challenge, even for him. He’s not looking, either. He maintains that prickling eye contact, focus drooping to Xavier’s mouth for only a moment: when he draws in a sharp gasp as the gauze is pulled tight.

Benji is gentle about it otherwise, even if the fingers of the hand cupping Xavier’s cheek pinch in, dig crescents to match the ones on his thigh.

“You.” Xavier breathes when he’s done.

“Come see me tonight?”

The corporal nods dreamily. He looks fuzzier in the eyes than a moment before, when pleasure had spaced him out entirely. Because it’s a question, not a command. Come see me— do you even —

What, Benji wonders. Care? Dunno. But I’m satisfied.

right tools

wc: 6.4k

The first time Benji watches someone stitch a wound, he’s eight. It happens in the kitchen, rather than the far future’s dusty alley or pollen-heavy clearing or crumbling ruin of an office park. It would be nice to look back and say that the majority of cuts and scrapes and pokes happened here: a modest, permanently yellow-tinged kitchen from the hue of the cabinets, the shade of curtain.

Yeah. It would be nice.

*

So. He’s eight, in the kitchen. Appa says:

“Don’t tell her.”

It’s a warning as much as it is a laugh, but his father’s face (a face Benji will one day soon grow into) is set in a severe, pained grimace.

Benji’s eight, in the kitchen, and he watches. Watches with his nose tucked to the counter, fingers holding onto the cool tile, as appa washes at the knife wound. The water in the sink floods with a rosy tint. Benji watches the spot, on the back of his hand between thumb and index, where the red bubbles undiluted.

“When’s it stop, appa?”

“Shush,” he responds in his softly firm way. Benji’s young enough that the note of concern in his tone worries. Makes his shoulders tighten.

“Well? When?”

“Go get the first aid box, will you?”

Benji goes. He returns, the padded fabric box a balanced like a holy relic in his small palms. He won’t know it until he’s older, but his mum keeps it becuase of her job at the bakery — seeing wet hands fumble a knife or fingertips inch too close to a hot oven rack. She likes to be prepared, now.

And now is when Benji’s eight, in the kitchen. He watches: appa pinching skin together, blood welling up but slowed, the careful glide of a curved needle through skin. It fascinates him in a way that he won’t express with words for a good number of years. Something about the resilience — the complexity — of the human body. The things it can overcome with just the right tools. Not so hopeless if you’ve prepared. If you have the right tools.

It isn’t long before that sweet, optimistic little truism wipes near-clean of him. The human body is resilient, but—

Benji doesn’t stay prepared. Benji doesn’t always carry the right tools.

*

He doesn’t like to think about that day on the wharf; when something serious and big settles in him. Fear, yes, because he’s holding skin together like appa had that first time, but not just fear. If, at sixteen, he had trust in the extraordinary, Benji might label it as some cosmic understanding. The weight of it settles over top of him like a blanket, comforting instead of smothering. It brings the quiet crisis-calm that will make him so good at what he does in just a few short years.

He feels hysterical, wants to laugh all mad and anxious like the body beneath him is — fucker can’t keep it serious even in an awful moment like this.

It’s a memory that, when it pulls to the surface, makes Benji cringe. Not because of the nastiness of the wound itself (because it is, it is, it’s just about the most enthrallingly disgusting thing you can’t look away from) or how he’d handled it all.

The laugh hurts to remember. He hasn’t heard it, save for news or interviews or recordings, in years. He starts shoving the memory of the wharf down: the blood in the sand, the nostril-sting of sea salt and copper, that laugh. It hurts. Hurts more than any wound he’ll get or fix or assess with pity.

For Benji, it’s a reminder: he doesn’t always carry the right tools.

*

He gets good at pushing things down. At twenty-one, in some shithole somewhere, he’s proving his worth to a team into which he barely remembers being recruited.

It all gets fuzzy, which is nice. His first year of training he’d spent stifling late night home-sick cries into his pillow, lonely for so much more than he realized he could miss.

He shoves at it, though. Doesn’t stop shoving. And eventually the crying peters out to maybe once a year, if that. Benji patches more bullet holes and sewn more tissue and smelled more copper. He gets used to it all. The things to be fixed are no longer shallow kitchen knife cuts, and even if he hasn’t the preparation or the right tools, Benji gets good at adapting, too.

He’s twenty-one. He grits his teeth as he stands, tips of his fingers warm and tingling from where they’d been pressed to the underside of a jaw. The skin was cool to the touch, but checking the pulse is mandatory despite blue lips and a tacky pool of ichor gluing the dead soldier to the floor.

Benji hasn’t adapted to this part, yet. But he will.

*

He takes up the habit around the time they take up, too.

Quinn’s his superior. And unlike superiors in the past, Quinn’s a person. They’ve got some years between them, but it doesn’t stop the fast click of their personalities. Benji gets sent to him for reprimand. He’s still twenty-one, still not used to certain things, but he knows the flicker of interest in somebody’s eyes. He adapts: he cracks a joke, even though he knows better. Quinn laughs, even though he really, really knows better.

It starts like that.

And the habit starts like this:

He recognizes the pin on the front of the gunner’s vest. It’s splattered, very aesthetically, with flaky blood. The color covers the face of the cartoon character; Williams had fished it out of a stamped envelope from his family not a week prior.

“From my sister,” he’d said, holding the silly thing up for Benji to see. “Used to watch this shit after I walked her home from school.”

They’d talked about family briefly, then. It was the first time Benji had done so in years. It would be the last time in years, too.

Quinn’s covering him while he checks for a pulse. He watches Benji’s uncharacteristically shaky hand touch to a brown wrist, then under a jaw just in case, and then to an inner elbow, sleeve pushed up, and then —

“Benji.” He warns, firm and somewhat tired. Quinn’s adapted too. They all have.

Benji ignores him, though. He isn’t sure why this is different. Why it feels —

My sister.

He swallows a sound, eyebrows drawn tight. And then Benji reaches for the clasp of the dead soldier’s helmet. It clatters loudly against concrete as it rolls away.

Williams has his eyes popped open, lips slightly parted. Benji’s been at it long enough that ‘sometimes they look at peace’ is a crock of shit meant to cope. Williams doesn’t look peaceful. He looks, as most of the young soldiers Benji’s patched or coded look: fucking terrified.

My sister.

When he collects the tags, he plucks the pin off too. Both get put in a separate pocket from the others he collects in these morbid appointments.

Quinn watches him. Something like judgment prickles at the back of his neck from that stare. Benji hopes its soothed later with a touch.

*

The mud beneath his boot squelches like some sort of creature — it’s thick with rain and blood alike. Despite the tight lacing, it nearly pulls his foot free. Without much care for etiquette, Benji shakes his foot with a grimace. It knocks against the shoulder of a body half-buried in the mud.

“I need new socks.” He grumbles.

“Priorities.”

Benji turns to cast a short look at his lieutenant. By now, Benji’s twenty-three. Quinn is not.

“Right.” He kneels to collect the body’s tags from around its neck. He thinks of it like that, because it’s easy than thinking Pvt Johnson. Always got biscuits from the vending machine. Threw a fit if they were out of stock, but it was just his fault, right? Only one who liked the awful fucking things. Proper bricks. Pvt. Johnson and his fucking bricks.

Johnson’s not got a head anymore to chat back, when he usually would. The tags are easier to lift away, as a result.

“Can’t do your weird thing,” Quinn points out. He’s half-paying attention; multi-tasking, as is necessity and habit, by watching Benji with eyes in the back of his head and scanning the horizon ahead.

“Don’t got a weird thing.” Benji says, rising from his crouch. He tucks the tags into Quinn’s front left pocket, reaching around his hip to do it.

“C’mon,” he cajoles, offering a warm squeeze to the connection of Benji’s shoulder and neck. He likes being touched that way. With familiarity. “Everybody knows you got plenty of weird things.”

“Fuck off.” He sputters regardless, brushing off a hand he’d rather have stay in place. Because—

“Right. Fuckin’ hell, you the only one allowed to make jokes, is it?” Quinn snorts. It isn’t properly annoyed, the way Benji is and trying not to show. “I’m a pass-around, too.”

He turns towards the window, arms crossed.

“Should get movin’. Enough standup, ‘cuz we’ve got what — half-dozen missing specialists?”

“Benj—“

“You leading or am I?”

There are times he wishes that nickname were softer. But he also imagines an idyllic world where he hadn’t let the term slip into his lieutenant’s lexicon. Corrected him from the jump. There had been plenty of call signs, plenty of foul or nasty or inside-joke laced names he could use.

But Quinn had started off with it, hadn’t he? That Benj. It’d become a personal touch to their otherwise professional conversations. It had been something he started to listen for. Something he started to hope for.

By the time that hope had needled in, it was too late. It was a habit. And like weird things, Benji had plenty of those.

*

So. Benji develops a habit.

It doesn’t spiral out of control. He doesn’t get manic about it. He’s gotta be the most level-headed guy on the field, after all. Cool under pressure. When shit goes belly-up, when limbs start flying, blood weeping— he’s got to stay cool.

He does, for the most part. So much that he develops a bit of a reputation. He shoulders off the jokes about being kept from funeral homes, held back from the base hospital’s morgue.

It’s not like that, of course. He takes the helmets off the bodies because he needs to see. Not because he wants to. Not because he likes it.

But because Benji has developed a habit.

It starts as a reality check. It starts as a reminder. It becomes, very quickly, punishment.

He forces himself to look at every single face. Ally or enemy, doesn’t matter which. He looks…if he can, anyway — it’s another thing entirely if they’re blown to bits, or the face is gone. He doesn’t like when that happens. The times he’s in combat, Benji never aims for the skull. He gets reprimanded for being a poor shot, for being cruel, for making it slow on purpose. It’s none of those things. He wants them to be recognizable. He wants them to be remembered.

Benji has to remember, too.

Because he’s stifled a lot, hasn’t he? At twenty-seven now, the majority of his service blurs. He pushes so much down its like looking into a muddy pool to pull something back up. It’s a cop-out, isn’t it? He’s getting off easy. So he’s got to see the faces. He has to remember. If he pushes down things like unique scars or birth marks, the human quirks of a face, he’s just skating by. He’s not suffering enough for the things he’s done.

For the things he knows he’ll be doing.

*

Recently, the habit has taken a turn. At first it’s just about memorizing. Recently, it’s about…anticipating.

Recently, it’s about —

Now, when Benji pulls a helmet off, he does something he’s never done in these moments.

He holds his breath.

It’s about the preparation. It’s about the right tools. And deep down, Benji knows he’s not equipped with either if what he fears comes to pass. If he pulls a helmet off and he sees — he remembers —

So he holds his breath. He prepares to put one specific face to memory…and leave it there.

Benji thinks about the fact that his last glimpse of a particular face might be a mask of death. And he’s filled with a lot of strong emotions at the thought — none of which he feels entitled to. It doesn’t make sense, that such a fucking intense onslaught overcomes him. Makes his fingers shake if the skin beneath a helmet is particularly pale, or the stubble any semblance of auburn.

The fear always accompanies the anger, sours in his chest and his gut.

And then the relief. He hates himself for that most of all, the relief.

*

Benji pauses now. He crouches above a body and pauses. He knows its real fucking bad, proper irresponsible, to be doing that. Hesitation is the real killer.

He’s twenty-seven, and the fight is long over. A deafening rhythm of mortar and gunfire and other impossible sounds of combat echoes in his skull, makes his ears ring.

His heart’s pounding, too, but that has less to do with the remnants of a fight than the now-adrenaline of an enemy in front of him.

Under him, rather.

He and the lieutenant are on their usual post-mission round up. Respectively: collecting wounds or bodies, gathering intel and reports on enemy movement. They’ve been working together more than six years, now. Long enough that Benji can pick up new lines on Quinn’s face, the streak of gray at his temple. Tino scoffs when Quinn gets called old (always behind his back, of course; everybody’s got a death wish, but not that sort). The two men only have a few years between them, and Tino can’t appreciate a good dig if he’s adjacent.

Anyway, they clear fast together. They’re incredibly effective. Quinn trusts him to handle his own. It’s the only reason Benji’s alone when the soldier catches him by surprise, that trust. He shouldn’t be off-guard; as capable and trained and deadly as he is, he’s just kitted for a medic. He shouldn’t be alone. He hasn’t the preparation or tools to handle a more dangerous enemy than the average soldier.

And this, if their brief struggle is any indication, is not the average soldier.

Benji’s panting from the effort. Even clearly wounded, weakened, in piss-poor exhausted shape…the soldier hadn’t made it easy.

“Wanker.” Benji hisses. The soldier twitches, a breath of air that might be a laugh jostling his prone form. Benji scowls and puts more weight down, right into the center of his chest. He sniffs hard, tasting blood in the back of his throat from a snapped elbow to the face.

“Oh, wanker.” He levels his rifle center-left on the enemy’s black-clad chest. He’ll go for a vital, but not the head: the poor fuck’s gonna go in pain, but the least he can do is not contribute to more of it. Benji makes it quick. Benji always tries to make it quick.

But the body beneath him is still putting up a fight, trying to buck him off. It fucks his aim off — he can’t get a good shot in close quarters, and he doesn’t want to concede any more space because he’d prefer not to be in another headlock.

Benji leans in again, full weight now. The soldier wheezes. Its a rattle wet at the edges; less like he’s got a wound to the lung and more like he’s been here awhile. Resting, maybe? Regaining strength? Trying to heal without the proper tools.

There’s a clatter from a floor below. Both their heads whip to the side, alert.

“Benji?” Quinn calls.

Benji swears. Then he returns his focus to the enemy soldier, who has thankfully stopped moving as much. In fact, he’s still as death now, the only indication of awareness his chin tilted to the side.

“Mate,” Benji says to get his attention. The gleam of his helmet’s visor turns on Benji again. “Listen. Lieutenant’s about. Nasty prick, okay? It’s either me—“ he moves a gloved hand to his hip, the pistol tucked there. “Or him.You really don’t want it to me him.”

There’s a pregnant pause. Benji assumes, incorrectly, that the man’s weighing his final option. But then the soldier lets out a long breath. It sounds…relieved.

“Hello nurse.”

Benji freezes. It’s the first time he’s spoken. During the fight, he’d been silent except for the usual grunt of pain or effort. And now, that voice — the man — soldier —

Benji recognizes it.

“Fuckin’ hell.” It slips out of him, consonants elongated in a sizzling whisper. “Xavier?”

The shiny black shell obscuring his face tilts coyly. Benji, swallowing the lump in his throat that builds at the muscle memory action of tucking his finger beneath polymer and bullet resistant material, tears off the helmet.

He sees Xavier’s face, memorizes. Wants to immediately put it back on. Because the last time — it’d been the only thing keeping Xavier in one piece.

“Xavier.” Benji says again, more breath than anything.

That pink mouth curls; it’s another familiar flash of memory in the back of his skull. He sees it close, that moment Xavier had leaned in. Feels it, almost, on his skin.

Benji’s heart kicks up frantically. Quinn’s —

“People are gonna talk if we run into each other like this.” Xavier teases. His voice is a purr, but it’s also a touch too loud.

The panic properly overtakes Benji, then. He glares at Xavier, hoping to reprimand, and then realizes his own helmet obscures the withering look. So he takes it off.

They stare at each other; vulnerable in the worst ways a soldier can be around an enemy.

But it’s Xavier — who lets out an appreciative sigh the second their eyes touch. He slumps back a little, like the ground is a perfectly comfortable place to rest.

“What are you doing here?” Benji seethes. He glances over his shoulder, out the ruined window at the far end of the little room Xavier’s taken up shelter in.

“Oh, you know.” Xavier tucks an arm behind his head, winding his other wrist in the air. “Vacation.”

Benji does not laugh, so he throws both hands in the air, letting them flop outstretched either side.

“Man, what does it look like?” A note of discomfort betrays his humored mood. “I’m stuck here, alright? You assholes are everywhere — not you, I mean. Obviously. But —“

“Quinn.”

Xavier’s face darkens to something so nasty that its genuinely shocking. He opens his mouth to speak, but a gunshot below them echoes in the ruined building. Their gazes fix to the side once more in tandem.

Benji lifts a finger to his mouth. Xavier nods. The bright mischief in his eyes has dulled. It’s a prepared, ready look that Benji recognizes.

So he reaches his hands up to either side off his head, covers his ears. Xavier nod and does as instructed, watching with those green eyes as Benji swings to the side, fires a single shot out the window. It rings, regardless. Loud.

“Benj?” Quinn’s voice is a bit more insistent than the last call, the echo winding upwards. It’s dead silent otherwise; he hasn’t started to climb the stairs yet.

Benji takes quick stock of the situation, eyes traveling circles around Xavier’s face. Then:

“Sorry, sir.” Benji shouts back. “All good. Clearin’ out, couldn’t hear you. Shoulda called the shot — found one still breathin’.”

Xavier’s chest lifts beneath his boot. Still breathing. Benji glances towards the helmet that’s been tossed aside. He cannot look away from the distorted reflection of them in the shiny visor.

Benji’s finger is still on the trigger. He tucks it back into its holster, trying to fight the ebb of nauseous fear from deep within. He imagines a crueler world, where they’re not known to each other. Where his bullet lodges into a chest instead of a post-skirmish, smoke dimmed sky.

“Well? How copy?”

Quinn’s next call startles them both. It’s close— close. Benji turns, and Quinn’s head bobs up the stairs.

The only thing keeping Xavier out of sight, beneath Benji’s boot, is the ruined mound of rubble he’d chosen as shelter, obscuring his resting spot from the doorway. Although it’s concrete and rebar, built to last, Benji can think nothing of it other than fragile. All that stands between Xavier and death is —

The rubble. The rubble and Benji.

Benji swallows. He blinks down at Xavier, then lifts his head to the side.

“Gave ‘em a third eye.”

Quinn quirks an eyebrow as he climbs the final step, making his way down the hall towards the blown-open doorway of the room. He stops, somewhat fate-designed, just shy of an angle that will bring Xavier into view.

“Unlike you, mate.” Quinn says. As Benji’s unit commander, he’s deeply aware of his combat habits — and the rumors.

Benji’s mouth scrunches in a half-scowl as he debates this slip up. Then, he offers: “He fought me.”

Quinn snorts. He leans a broad shoulder against the crumbling doorway, knocking loose a piece of concrete. He isn’t wearing his helmet, either. Quinn’s just a different kind of crazy.

“Pissed you off?”

“Like I said. Fought me.” Benji glances down at Xavier only briefly— he’s worried what his face might do if their eyes linger. If he’ll betray his anxiety. Quinn will sniff it out.

“Fought dirty.”

Xavier grins dirty, too. Benji has to tear his gaze away.

“They always do. Fuckin’ roaches.”

Xavier’s face twists. Cold, emotionless.

“Yeah, well. Lucky scapel’s in the kit.”

Quinn whistles, nose scrunching distastefully. “S’nasty, mate. Come on. You gotta be so creepy with it?”

Benji has a reputation carried by rumors — Quinn’s probably one of three who knows they carry no weight. But he also knows Benji’s off enough for them to exist in the first place.

“You like creepy, Lt.”

He isn’t sure what makes him say it. What twists the words flirtatious. But Benji’s adaptable. He’s finding the right tools. And he isn’t sure what wound Xavier sports, if it’s serious, if it needs sutured. But he knows he isn’t prepared for the one Quinn would give him, if he was discovered. The helmet’s off, and Benji wouldn’t get the option of remembering that face. He wouldn’t be able to look away. He wouldn’t be able to forget.

There’s another pause. When he was younger, just Quinn’s intense stare directed at him, on him, had been enough to flood his stomach with heat. Now it just makes him cold and nervous.

Take the bite, he begs internally. C’mon. Get the fucking worm.

“I’m going up to four.” Quinn announces. “Bird in the sky says we’ve got visuals of somebody I’ve been looking for, ‘round here and this fight.”

“Alright.” Benji says hesitantly. “And—“

“And I’ll be quick.” The lieutenant promises. He’s so level all the time that Benji has become an expert on picking up those little deviations. Now, there’s just that tiny degree of heat in his tone. Hook through the cheek.

“And then?” Benji prompts, voice equally low. He turns at the waist, giving Quinn more attention. He kicks at Xavier’s belt, jostling his body. “What are my orders after I’m done resupplying with this one?”

Quinn’s eyelids droop slightly, but like the rest of his tics, it’s barely noticeable. “Then you meet me a floor up, and we go from there.”

“Aye, sir. On it.”

“Fast.” Quinn amends, backing slowly out of the door. “Be fast about it, Benj.”

He snorts, offers his superior a flicking salute from the temple. “Heard, Q. Fast about it.”

The lieutenant’s steps down the hall are loud, and Benji wonders how truly distracted he’d been not to hear the man coming in the first place. He’d been more occupied than he thought with—

The body beneath his boot hustles suddenly. Benji snaps his rifle back into position without realizing it.

Xavier freezes.

“Fuck.” Benji swears, holstering it and then rubbing an embarrassed hand over his jaw. “Sorry. Fuck.”

Benji starts to lift his foot, free Xavier of his weight. He shifts himself back enough that he nearly falls over when a broad palm circles his calf. Keeps him in place.

“Dude, sorry.” Xavier chuckles quietly. His long arm can push that grip as high as the top of Benji’s thigh, which is squeezed hard enough to make a lump of heat drop into his stomach.

“This whole thing is, like, kind of doing it for me.” He flirts, fingers dropping again to the top of Benji’s boot. They worm beneath the cuff of his pants, find skin, tug annoyingly on leg hair. He’s smirking, wanting attention, wanting Benji’s focus — and he has it.

“I’ve just pointed a weapon at you,” Benji whispers back.It’s hard not to betray his amusement, though, and his annoyed tone only makes Xavier grin wider. The incredulity is funny to him.

“Yep. Exactly. Man, you get it, huh?” He squirms in a way that makes Benji believe he needs up. When he lifts a little to allow an escape, he expects Xavier to roll away.

But he doesn’t. He moves, but —

Xavier pushes himself further away, and Benji’s boot drags down his chest. Further, down a heaving stomach until the pressure rests just at Xavier’s groin.

The soldier falls back on his elbows, chin tilting towards his chest to watch the path of Benji’s boot. And then it tips back towards the ceiling when he sighs roughly. More of a moan, really.

“Are you serious.”

Xavier peers down his nose, cheeks flushed but expression mischievous.

“You are.”

“Deadly.”

Benji snorts. “You’re in the middle of enemy territory, mate. Just nearly had a run in. And clearly out of sorts. You don’t have a fucking piece on you, and…is this the time for it, man?”

Xavier blinks up at him innocently. “Has anyone ever told you it’s so hot when —“

“Xavier.”

He holds both hands up in surrender, but Benji’s conscious of the rhythmic shifting of his body. “I mean, is this how we’re going to spend quality time? Becuase if it is, I will make so much time for this.”

“Xavier.”

“Like so much.”

Admittedly, Benji’s a bit hypnotized. He’s not pulling away. Not reprimanding as much as he ought to. Xavier’s hair is fluffy and wild in his face from the helmet, hanging loose in a mess around his pretty features with his neck tilted back like that. Benji could pull away. He really should. But Xavier starts to really rock his hips and it launches the moment from sort of joking, sort of serious territory to — to —

“I could get off on this,” Xavier admits in a heinously filthy whisper.

“Xavier.” Benji says a third time. There’s no real hint of annoyance in it, now. It just sounds…well. Turned on.

“Oh man,” Xavier laughs. “That’s good. Really. That and the uniform? Yeah, I could—“

“You gotta get out of here.” Benji insists. His voice is rough, but insistent. He knows better. He needs Xavier to prepare. Needs him to survive. And this is putting a very real roadblock in that. If Quinn takes too long — if he suspects —

Xavier’s teeth dig into his lip to stifle a moan. His face is beginning to go properly pink, and every nudging pull of his hips gives Benji a brief peek at the obvious outline in his pants. The sight makes his tongue heavy in his mouth.

“Xavier, listen. You fuckin’ bastard, I—“

“I miss when you’re not nagging at me.” Xavier whispers conspiratorially, his sleepy-lidded eyes twinkling. One of them winks. “You little shit.”

The words do something to Benji he can’t explain. He doens’t want to think about. Because they go real real fucking deep.

Miss it, Xavier says. Like he means miss you.

Benji wants to tell him that every time he pulls a helmet from a skull, from one of Xavier’s fellow soldiers especially, he worries it will be his face staring lifelessly back up at Benji. Benji wants to tell him about the wharf story. Benji wants to tell him about his sister. Benji wants —

“That ain’t quick.”

They jump again. Benji stumbles back to both feet, arms shot out to hold himself steady.

“Fuck!” Benji yelps. He leans forward a little, although Xavier’s still obscured from the sudden reappearance of the Lieutenant. It’s instinctual. Protective.

Benji swings his head back at the ceiling, trying to keep his cool. Benji is good at that, keeping cool. He’s good at adapting. He can do it.

“Mate. Piss off. Please announce yourself. S’like being haunted, yeah? You just fuckin’ pop up, all silent.”

“Sorry.” Quinn clips out, humor-laced and not apologetic whatsoever. “All done here, then? Must have been awfully loaded.”

Benji glances back down. Then he kneels and pats at Xavier’s chest, his side pockets, looking for anything that he can use an excuse —

Xavier’s fingers circle his wrist, drag his hand down his thigh to a buckled pocket. Their eyes fit together when Benji squeezes, fishes out what is inside.

He rises from his crouch and holds his hand out to Quinn, who takes the contents of his fist wordlessly. Benji watches as he unfolds the crumpled note.

“What is it?”

Quinn’s eyes lift to the top and read down the scrawl again. He swears and clenches it in his fist. “Intel was right. That —“

Benji’s eyes snap to his hairline at the spitting vitriol.

One of Quinn’s big hands rubs over his face. “Intel was right. The target was here, except it looks as though his evac was hours ago. Might make our way there, see if we can pick up the trail.”

Hours ago. Benji casts a side-glance towards the man still prone. He’s stuck here?

“Did this one—“

Benji tenses. Below him, he senses Xavier tense. The hesitation in Quinn belies a need for more information. If he’s curious about the source of this note, he might ask to see the body. He might—

Xavier shifts again. Benji recognizes, from their recent bout, that he’s preparing for a fight. He won’t fucking win against Quinn. That much Benji knows for sure. He’d be pressed to name a man, himself included, that would leave a fight with the lieutenant victorious…or leave a fight alive, at all.

“Aye, Q.” Benji says slowly. “Just a poor fuckin’ radiant target, this one. Target your after the type to leave ‘em behind? Might’ve been distraction to make evac.”

Quinn’s eyes darken with pure hate. It’s intense enough to make Benji feel frozen in place. “He’s the type to do whatever he needs to do.”

Benji doesn’t spare another lingering glance downwards. He can’t. He’ll do something regrettable. He’ll do something worse than dropping a squad mate, of letting himself be captured and hauled out by Xavier’s compatriots. He worries that what he’d do is quickly becoming anything.

“Think they’ll come back for him?” Quinn finally asks, watching Benji round the rubble towards him. He sounds annoyed still, but his eyes follow Benji’s movements with that sort of focus. So.

“Maybe. Don’t think the two of us ought to chance anything with a potential entire group though, Lt.” Benji says. He stops in front of Quinn. He stops an unprofessional distance away from Quinn. A familiar distance. Benji looks up at him.

“I’ll follow you whatever the call, sir, but —“ Benji knocks the back of his knuckle against Quinn’s vest. “Promised a tour of floor four, wasn’t I?”

Quinn’s eyes narrow briefly, but the pupils are blown. “Did I?”

“Let me pick through the rest of this one’s kit, hey?” Benji hooks a thumb over his shoulder. “Medic. And then I’ll be right up to bed.”

Quinn’s silences make him nervous. But, fortunately, the next one is punctuated with an amused huff. The lieutenant doesn’t speak again, simply turns about and heads back up the way he came.

Benji waits until he’s out of view, out of earshot, to whirl back around. He doesn’t even realize that his fists are clenched. That it’s settled over him, while they flirted: that awareness. The clinical anticipation, but none of the pre-fight adrenaline jitters.

He was preparing. He was gathering his tools to fix a problem. Because that’s what it would have been, right? If Quinn hadn’t bought it. If he’d pressed to see the so-called corpse. It would have been a fucking problem.

“Don’t go down the stairs.” Benji says quickly, dropping back into a crouch next to Xavier’s prone form. He points at the ground like Xavier’s a dog that needs the physical order, too. “Let five minutes go, then get yourself the fuck outta here. East wall has a structure break — you can scale off the side. But be fuckin’ careful, yeah? I’m not fixing a broken bone.”

“Benji—“

Benji grabs the front of his shirt. “Mate. If Quinn sees you — if he sees you, yeah?” He shakes Xavier. “That’s it. That is it, okay? Do you get what I’m saying? I can’t — that’s it. You gotta swerve ‘em. Our pick-up crew, too. You got ten minutes to get out and avoid that.”

“Benji.” Xavier tries again. Benji won’t let him waste the time for a third plead.

“Xavier.” He snaps. “I’m buying you time, dickhead.”

“Buying time,” Xavier says distantly, as if he’s taken a bite of the word and doesn’t like the taste. Benji throws his own pack off and begins fishing for it. “The big ugly fucker—“

“You didn’t even see him.” Benji argues, pulling a scalpel from his kit.

“Did too.” Xavier argues mullishly, his face twisted like a spoiled child’s ready to argue. “He’s —“

“Xavier, take this. You’re a sharp one, yeah? You’ll get out. You’ve got time. We’ll get you out, and then you can tell me all about how you managed it. All the drama and details next time—“ Benji pauses, his fist curled around Xavier’s hand where he’s curled long pale fingers around the handle of the scalpel.

Next time.

Benji suddenly imagines a helmet pulled off, tossed to the side, a dead body beneath him instead of this alive, flushed, argumentative one. He imagines a mess of bone and flesh — imagines the mangled face of his squad mate, flattened by Xavier’s boot. Imagines it on Xavier’s pretty neck instead.

It nearly makes him sick, but he bites his tongue until the nausea passes.

And when it does, Benji can’t help it. He leans forward and crashes their mouths together. He’ll lose his mind if he doesn’t. If he hasn’t got the taste of Xavier on his tongue when he leaves, something that lingers alive. He scoops an arm under Xavier’s shoulders and pulls him entirely off the ground, other hand gripping his chin to hold him still.

It’s not more than a messy, crushing, painful smack of their faces together. It’s nothing messy like their first. Nothing that feels as though it could build into more, turn so hot and stifling until there’s nothing to be done but to begin to remove clothes.

But it is passionate in his desperation for that bruising contact. It’s a might be the last sort of kiss, Benji’s monstrously building anxiety warns. So he softens it at the last moment, squeezes his eyes shut, and makes it sweet for just a heartbeat.

Xavier whimpers like the kiss is more, anyway. When Benji pulls away he’s licking at his own lips. His eyes are shot-through dark; the electric green of spring leaves. Benji wants to go in for another. Another — but they don’t have the time.

“You’re not gettin’ anything,” Benji teases breathlessly. “Relax, you prick. Don’t got the time.”

He squeezes his hand around the scalpel in Xavier’s —they’ve both nearly forgotten about it. But now, Benji lifts it to touch to a spot on his neck, his side, and the small of his back.

“Here, quick. Or a jab and twist here, that’s close to the stomach. This, back here? Do it fast and it’s right to the kidney. Hurts like a fucker. Definitely lethal if you do it right, okay?”

“Okay.” Xavier breathes, staring at each vulnerable spot as Benji guides his hand.

“Look. They'll go down long enough for you to —“ he pauses, swallows. “For you to do whatever you need to do. And you fuckin’ do it, Xavier, okay? You get out of here.”

“Man.” Xavier breathes, and the way it flutters at Benji’s hair is the only reason he realizes their faces have drawn closer again. “You are so goddamn hot, you know that?”

Benji can’t help it. He kisses the enemy firmly again, fingers dug into his soft, flushed cheek.

Then he straightens; adapting, preparing, fishing out the right tools for the job.

“Lt,” he calls, staring down at Xavier. “All clear. Headin’ up now.”

*

When Benji pulls his shirt off later that night, back on base, it clings to him painfully. He winces and pulls harder until it peels away from a spot on the small of his back. A quick march towards the shared bathroom, a twist of his spine to glance over his shoulder, reveals the issue:

Where he’d guided the scalpel in Xavier’s hand, a smear of dried blood. He swipes at the wound with his thumb, a slow peel of each section of skin until it begins weeping red again.

He isn’t sure how long he stands there, in the low blue light. How long he stands there, staring at a wound he’d guided the enemy to give.

Benji presses his fingers to the spot again. Then he snaps the faucet on, perfunctorily cleans the area, and heads back to his quarters.

He keeps a first aid kit stashed beneath his bed. Not his field kit, but a personal one for emergencies. This isn’t an emergency, but Benji lifts the familiar padded top of the kit and finds thread, a suturing needle, and gauze.

He’s good at this. Good enough that he can stare ahead at the blank wall across from his bed, arms behind his back to sew himself together, and think.

A weapon tucked into the enemy’s hand, directions on how to kill effectively. And right before that moment, rather than fear or dread, Benji had been coolly preparing for a fight.

Just not against Xavier.

inconsequential

wc: 2.7k

The first time is inconsequential — that’s the word Saha uses on the phone once he explains it all, anyway.

And it’s Saha because…well. He isn’t sure who else to go to about it. Benji’s too deep in his own post-breakup angst

“And then what?”

“Then she asked if I wanted to sneak off and have a smoke.” Maran says. His brow wrinkles as he relates this information. He’s got the phone set on his dresser; he needs his hands to sort through all his (dirty? clean?) clothes, figure out what he ought to wear tomorrow. Even though its a cheap brick of a phone and probably water damaged, even though Saha’s voice comes out the crackly speaker all wrong, he still feels a wash of relief as she walks him through the day’s events.

Well, event. Just one astoundingly fucking life altering event.

“And…?”

Maran pauses, his confused expression deepening. “I said no?”

“Maran.”

“Well, I don’t smoke!”

Saha’s laugh cuts in the middle, volume distorting over the poor connectivity. She’s in London these days, in the middle of her studies — nothing is more indicative of the distance to him than those occasional dropped calls.

“She didn’t care about all that, though. She was just trying to get you alone and suck face more.”

His cheeks heat. Maran drops the trousers clutched in his clammy hand and presses a palm over the warmth. “It wasn’t suckin’ face, Saha, c’mon.”

“Well now it really won’t be! You turned her down.” She laughs. “So it’s inconsequential, right?”

“Is that the rules?” He wonders, edging for humor because the unfamiliar depth of that word makes him anxious. He fumbled, so… — he imagines Raquel dusting her hands, shrugging, flouncing off —

So that’s it?

“S’no rules to it, Maran.” Saha laughs. He can hear her set down her own phone, and the noises of a gas stove switching on. Saha was a shit cook, never had need to learn, so he wonders what’s prompted her to learn now. A girl, maybe. Probably.

Maran sighs and goes back to scrounging in his basket, searching for a nicer shirt. He’d learn to cook for Raquel, if she wanted to kiss again. He could make noodles. Probably.

“‘Sides, why would you want to hang about with somebody who does that and then laughs after? She told you it was a dare.”

“But you just said she was trying to—“

“Yeah, think about it.” Saha insists. Maran snaps his mouth shut and tries to, but whatsoever answer she expects him to formulate must not come quick enough. He hears her shuffle around and then pull out a chair, fall into it with a huff, and then—

Then she goes absolutely off about the whole thing with a clarity that he had never considered. That point she was trying to get him to think of himself, maybe. How Raquel might like him fine enough, might even want to kiss more after all but stealing his first proper one for a laugh. But how she also didn’t have the respect to let other people see her attraction without covering it up under humor. How he deserved better than that.

Maran listens the whole way through, of course. He’s fourteen and a bit lost; he’s been eleven and lost; six and lost. Saha has always been one of the people he felt comfortable slipping his hand into so he could be guided back onto the path. So he listens, and he really does try to think about it—

But the more he thinks about it, the more he thinks about how nice Raquel’s hair had smelled (lavender and coconut) and how soft her lips had been, and any sort of wisdom about worthiness or equity in partnership or whatever else Saha’s prattling on about kinda go in one ear and out the other.

“But what if I go apologize to her—“

“Maran!” Saha laughs incredulously, cut from her sentence midway. “Have you listened to a single word? Oh, bastard — you’re hopeless!”

*

The kisses after that are nice. He’s got a girlfriend (of sorts, loosely, no labels) and then another, another — and then a string of girls because Americans are pretty poor at differentiating accents. Unlike back home, nobody seems to get on him about sounding low-class or rough.

“I really ought to think the One Direction lads should be knighted.” Maran notes to Benji. They’re stood outside a loud house party, watching Maran’s latest girlfriend flounce off with a few of her friends in tow towards a ride share. He waves, but she ducks in without looking over her shoulder. “I mean, what they’ve done for UK-US relations alone—“

Benji’s eyes flick up at him, darkly humored even in the near-pitch black of night. “Knighthood’s a scam, mate. Upholds the empire. Whole thing should be binned.”

“You should be binned.”

“Naw, you.” Benji snorts back. The hand holding his cigarette flicks towards the retreating car, then snubs out the ember on the patio railing. “Fuckin’ dog, you are.”

Maran flattens a hand over his chest. “I’m very respectful.”

“Y’think you’re invisible ‘cuz you’ve got yourself tucked in the corner? Mate, everybody might as well seen your tongue touch ‘er tonsils.”

Maran purses his lips to fight a grin. “A’right, mostly respectful. Most of the time.”

“Hasn’t she got the same name as the last girl?”

He opens his mouth to argue, and then smartly snaps it shut.

*

The truth of it is that Maran hasn’t had a proper committed relationship since before he’d followed Benji stateside. Meeting Fiadh is a fluke and a blessing and, later…

Later, Fiadh’s something worse. Something he feels too guilty to name. He tells himself for a time that it wasn’t her; they just weren’t a proper fit; it was the relationship itself; it was Maran himself. When they meet, everything is washed in a honey-sweet tinge of familiarity and excitement. But when they part, it’s a nastiness — one that he would prefer not to attribute to her.

It just seems impossible. It’s Fiadh, after all.

At first, being with her reminds him of water after mint. She’s sweet and fun and invigorating. She keeps that coiled ball of new relationship excitement high in his chest, tucked just beneath a pounding heart and clammy hands. Being with Fiadh feels like standing out on the school grounds, watching Raquel march up to him with a determined glint in her eye. She feels like a first kiss a thousand times over.

And then she feels like: eugh, told you I could, easiest dare of m’life!

It isn’t Fiadh. Not really. He reasons it out to keep her as far from the blame as possible. Maran knows he has a few hang ups — he knows what projection is, he knows that he —

Well. He hasn’t had a proper committed relationship since he followed Benji stateside. And he knows that might leave a bit of grit, a bit of friction, in any future thing he jumps into.

(Maran thinks he might always, always jump without looking. Hesitating is unfair, isn’t it? Hesitating means he isn’t being trustworthy.)

“Really?” Fiadh exclaims when he tells her.

How funny is it, first girl I’ve properly, seriously dated over here isn’t even American?

“Oi!” He leans over her until she flattens to the grass, his shadow slipping over her to block the afternoon sun. Fiadh looks good in the afternoon sun — she spills all pretty and golden, orange caught in the wispy white edges of her blonde hair.

Maran tucks fingers into her waist, squeezing impishly to tickle. She offers a single reserved laugh (a huff, really, and maybe he hears more amusement in it than really exists) before batting his hands away.

“S’that supposed to mean?” He asks, intensely afraid the second the words slip out of him.

“Ach.” Fiadh dismisses, a flap of her hand and that throaty little vocal filler he loved so much. “Y’know what I mean. It’s just…well, girls talk, don’t they.”

Girls talk.

Fiadh reaches up to tuck the collar of his shirt crisp and neat against his shoulder again, smoothing her hand over it primly before pressing a kiss to his jaw and urging him back on his patch of grass.

Later, once they’ve broken up, he’ll reflect on those sorts of moments. When she’d freshen him up, or recommend a different pair of nicer trousers, or ask when he’d grow out of the dye, or twist her beautiful face into something almost offended when he’d attribute an outfit to the thrift shop.

Like I was a doll, or something, he’d thought exactly once, fresh post breakup phone call with Saha, red-eyed and crying so hard he’d given himself a headache. And then he’d never thought it again. Because the insinuation was cruel, wasn’t it? Too cruel for Fiadh.

As cruel as a dare.

*

The door to the flat swings open. Just in time, too — Maran’s been pacing so hard he had started to fear leaving a sad little track in the hall carpet.

“Hey, dude.” Lark squeezes one sleepy eye shut with a yawn. “You good? It’s like…holy shit. Three am.”

His acknowledgement of the hour seems to wake him up a bit more. Maran watches guiltily as awareness plucks at the sleepy veil making Lark’s under eyes puffy, his shoulders rounded.

“M’sosososososo sorry, mate.” Maran spitfires. He lifts his empty hands from his pockets for just a split second, then shoves them back inside. They’re shaking. “I’m just — I forgot to give— uh. Is Ben asleep?”

Lark tosses a look over his shoulder. “I hear his TV going.”

Maran’s face starts to split into a grin. “So fifty-fifty.” He imagines Benny up at his desk, shoulders hunched with awful posture Maran wants to correct with a soft touch. Or passed out, arm over his eyes, as X-Files reruns blare on as background noise.

Instead of responding, Lark shuffles blearily to the side to make room.

Maran can count on one hand how many times he’s paused outside Benny’s door. Even fewer, when he’d knocked. He should. Everybody’s entitled to their privacy. But that had never felt like a necessity with the two of them. Even before—

Maran lifts a hand, palm wiping over his smiling mouth. It hasn’t even been two hours since their dunk at the pool.

Even before they were together.

His knuckles are about to make contact with the door. But he drops his fist, still trembling, to wiggle the handle instead.

On his bed, Ben’s spread out exactly how he’d get situated right before a nap. Or, considering the time, a proper sleep.

But his eyes are open. Maybe too open, as they land on Maran. He doesn’t seem shocked though, just — they’re awful wide. A pulsing anxiety lodges in Maran’s chest, but it isn’t that new-relationship feeling, the tightly coiled knot, the anticipation of approach.

He takes a step into the room. “I’m sorry.”

“Mar?” Ben asks, brows briefly dropping before he grins. Clearly confused, but — Maran smiles too, feeling it stretch stupid and full across his face.

“Sorry,” he says again, making himself laugh. “Not for anything — well for barging in. But I can’t…you dropped me off and I just can’t—“

Ben stands from the bed, bare legs swung over the side. Maran had spent the better portion of the evening looking at him (and touching and tasting), but he finds it hard to fight the stray of his eyes across black ink. There’s the faint smell of chlorine clinging to him. Or to Maran. Or to both of them.

He stands in place, letting Ben close the distance.

“Couldn’t s-sleep?”

Maran swallows, teeth sinking into his lip. He can’t do anything but stare at Ben; the soft texture of his hair where it hangs in front of an icy stare, the gentle smile lines around his mouth, the pitchfork crinkle spread out from the corners of his eyes.

Ben doesn’t feel golden like sunlight or guilty when they press together, chest to chest and hips bumping. An arm slings around Maran’s back, notched right where his spine ends. He shivers.

“Me either. Wanna stay here?”

Maran does his best to make sure the kiss he plants on Ben’s shy, smiling mouth leaves nothing up to a delayed interpretation. It’s everything but inconsequential.

*

They don’t really announce it. Not right away, anyhow.

The next evening, at an illegal bonfire on some rich somebody’s lawn, Maran drops himself into Ben’s lap.

Chatter lifts and ebbs around them, akin to the buzz of beach flies and summer lightning. In his immediate vicinity, Matilda and Benji’s conversation silences.

Maran is quiet, too. He hadn’t been anticipating the feeling that came with doing this. He’s plenty affectionate with everyone. He’s used to an arm slung around his shoulders or Xavier lifting him around the waist, creating a space-reaching beast when Maran scrabbles up around his shoulders.

But Ben’s thigh beneath his is a different sensation entirely. A different sort of kind, gentle warmth. He wraps an arm around Maran, fingers digging into the ticklish spot along his flank. He knows it’s there. But he squeezes anyway, maybe just to make Maran yelp and laugh — and then the arm gets tighter.

He laughs until it comes out a bit too breathy. Then Maran quiets.

It doesn’t feel like a laughing matter. It feels like— he can’t —

He’s held.

*

The next morning, he catches a bus to campus and sprints across with only moments to spare, only to realize: there’s someone in Ben’s lab.

Maran lifts his face away from the glass with a pout. He leans back to double check the label next to the door — yes, right number — and then peers inside once more.

And then, like he’d heard Maran’s desperate little thoughts, Ben appears from the blind spot in the corner of the room. The other person (his lab partner?) tosses their head back and laughs at something he says.

Maran wrenches the door open.

Both students whirl around to stare as he dances into the room, bag of take-out held aloft and balanced on his head. He’s causing a commotion, he knows. Probably interrupting something important. Maran thinks of a constant needle from Fiadh — childish — but only for a brief moment. He forces the grin bright once more and slips over to a desk.

It’s strewn with papers and diagrams, but nothing that looks important — or breakable. Ben’s bag, simple black canvas with several patches and hand-sewn designs, rests atop another he doesn’t recognize.

Maran sets the take-out down and taps the shiny silver strap.

“I like this color,” he lies, smiling big and charming at Ben’s lab partner.

They don’t speak. He frowns, glances at Ben.

“Is th-that from the pho place?”

The smile returns. “You forgot your lunch in the fridge.”

Ben pushes his safety goggles up, making blond hair spring everywhere, as Maran approaches in a zig-zag. His blue eyes follow the movements, clearly humored by the display. And the amusement makes him look less tired. Less stressed.

“You c-c-could have just brought it to me?”

Maran shrugs. “Yeah, I guess. But you like this stuff.”

Ben’s lab partner interjects with a short laugh, but when both their heads turn they look deadly serious.

“Something funny, Gee?”

They flap a hand in the air, lips parted as if they plan to respond to Benny’s needling. But — then their eyes stray towards Maran and go a bit wider.

They don’t know?

Maran thinks of sunlight in hair, of plain chapstick briefly touching his mouth, a body against his at a party who he can never name, a string of girls he probably didn’t treat as well as he could have, and —

He thinks of Raquel, her laugh; he thinks of her offer for a smoke. In private. The back of a girl’s head as she ducks into a car.

“Gigi,” Ben says, startling Maran a bit with how close his voice is. “This is M-Maran.” He tucks a strong arm around Maran’s waist (held, smaller, vulnerable, held) and shuffles him closer. “Mar, this is Eugene. We’re carrying each other this s-s-semester with a hope and a fuckin’ dream.”

Maran and Gigi blink at each other. Then Gigi offers a curling, hesitant smile.

“And science.” Gigi adds.

Ben snorts, puts the fist not squeezing unapologetically at Maran’s hip into the air. “And science.”

“I thought Benson was making you up.” They say. Their voice isn’t soft or waifish, just quiet. Maran likes that he’d got to lean closer to hear. “At some point you’re just like — wow, nobody has that many stories and is telling the truth.”

“Fucker.” Benny sneers fondly, although there’s a suspicious flush to his cheeks when he looks down at Maran.

You talked about me, Maran thinks, head fuzzy. How funny.

movie

wc: 3.3k

CAMERA SHOT - EXT. - A FIELD FROM ABOVE. YELLOW-TINGED, PERHAPS EARLY SPRING OR LATE FALL. PERHAPS AMERICAN MIDWEST.

CUT TO:

The CAMERA drops from far above. Then the CAMERA rises from a yellow-tinged grassy field like a shark from water. It moves forward, slowly, down a rolling hill. There are trees around the clearing; there is no wind, and they do not sway. But as it parts, the grass shakes and shivers.

CAMERA SHOT - EXT. A BACK-FACING VIEW - SUN SETTING OVER HORIZON

The silhouettes of four INDIVIDUALS, of varying heights. They are following a self-made path through the grass. Most of the field lays behind them; based on the distance and the exhausted slouch of shoulders, they clearly been walking for some time.

CAMERA SHOT - EXT. THE FIELD FROM BEHIND THEM - PEEKING FROM THE GRASS

The CAMERA winding through the field. It begins to move faster, parting blades of dry shrubbery. Faster. Faster. Blurry shapes in the distance: the INDIVIDUALS. The camera draws closer, jittery and snakelike, to the quartet. They don’t seem aware: their conversation and idle travel-chatter is increasingly (but barely) audible over the sound of wind, of grass parting.

CUT TO:

A forwards-facing view of the INDIVIDUALS. From left to right: BENJI, who wears a worn leather jacket and scowl; LARK, whose roots need rebleached and seems the least tired of the four; TINO, sun-kissed and older than the others, but dewey and in good spirits; finally, XAVIER, who towers over the other three and is the only one carrying two backpacks.

Behind them, the grass flattens in a zig-zagging line. There is SOMETHING following the four men; none of them are aware. It moves closer. It moves faster. FASTER, FASTER, UNTIL IT IS RIGHT BEHIND THEM.

CUT TO:

CAMERA SHOT - CLOSE-UP OF XAVIER

There is a sound like hundreds of voices whispering. The noise grows louder as whatever cuts through the grass towards them, and seems to trail up XAVIER - right next to his ear.

XAVIER (yelps, stumbles) Ah!

In tandem:

LARK (stopping) What? What?

TINO (also pauses) Y’alright son?

BENJI continues walking for several paces. Then he sighs heavily and turns back with his arms crossed.

BENJI More drama?

XAVIER swats at his ears repeatedly, hands protectively cupped around them for a moment. He heard the whispers: he seems to be the only one who did.Obviously perturbed, he glares up at BENJI, who is now snickering.

XAVIER I heard - something touched me -

He looks over his shoulder. The others peer around him, back towards the smooth field. The acres of grass sway in tandem; there is no longer a bent trail besides their own.

BENJI (snorts) That hard up for it? Imagining the grass gettin’ fresh?

TINO (exasperated, ‘disappointed dad’ tone) Benji.

XAVIER Fuck you-

LARK Can the fight wait, like, a half mile? We’re almost there-

BENJI Won’t make it if we stop every five seconds to hallucinate-

TINO (serious, final) Benji.

CAMERA SHOT - EXT. - OVERVIEW OF THE QUARTET AS THEY BICKER.

FADE OUT

FADE IN

CAMERA SHOT - EXT. TO INT. - A DILAPIDATED WAITING ROOM OF SORTS

A large double-door creaks open; stood in the low afternoon light, framed by the waning sun, is TINO. He fidgets shapelessly at his hip for a moment, and then the camera is flooded with brilliant white from a flashlight.

CAMERA SHOT - INT. - FURTHER INTO THE WAITING ROOM.

Something in the darkness, hidden from the yellowy cone of light, sinks around a corner further into the shadows.

XAVIER stands slightly behind TINO and BENJI. He has one hand curled (protectively or requesting protection, unclear) around TINO’S arm. The other hovers near BENJI’S bicep. XAVIER glances down, realizes the proximity, and then snatches his hand closer to himself.

XAVIER Did you see that?

TINO Nope. What was it?

BENJI (muttering) Figment of his imagination, probably.

XAVIER flushes. It could be embarrassment or anger.

XAVIER Would it kill you to-

BENJI (flatly) Yes.

TINO lowers the flashlight with a sigh. The darkness looms closer, but otherwise the only sound is the distant chirp of birds and rustling of nature.

TINO Okay. Xavier, son, how about you go help Lark get everything sorted in the equipment tent? You know how he is with those posts - can’t get them anchored for nothin’.

CAMERA SHOT - EXT. COURTYARD - OVER TINO’S SHOULDER

In the vine-encrusted, time-worn courtyard just behind them, LARK pauses from his unpacking of their backpacks, straightens, and waves enthusiastically. He puts both fists on his hips and smiles. He is totally unaware of the tension.

CAMERA SHOT - INT. WAITING ROOM - BENJI AND XAVIER GLARING

BENJI Right. Go run along then, yeah? Brought you to be the muscle, not jump n’ piss yourself at every sound.

XAVIER (heated, losing his temper) Tino invited me along to help with data collection, you didn’t bring anything other than your shitty fucking - hey! Go fuck yourself -!

As he’s talking, BENJI has lifted a hand between their faces. Fingers and thumb press together to make a mouth, which he opens and closes alongside XAVIER’S Boston drawl.

TINO (fully done babysitting/peacekeeping) Benji. Stop. Xavier. Go help.

XAVIER and BENJI stare at each other a moment longer; XAVIER glares, BENJI smirks victoriously.

XAVIER (to TINO) Yes sir. (to BENJI: lifts his middle finger)

TINO and BENJI watch him lope down the stairs to the building. Lark spreads his arms, gesturing as the taller man nears. Xavier waves his own, his venting about the situation at hand audible even across the distance.

TINO (turns to BENJI) What in the hell has gotten into you lately?

BENJI (innocent, but he’s not even buying what he’s selling) I don’t know what you mean, Ti.

TINO You know, the rest of us don’t have even a hint of a problem with that boy. He’s been nothin’ but nice, and you -

BENJI (mood souring, expression shuttering) Pft. Nice.

TINO Listen. Job needs done. We don’t got a lot of time to hash this out now. (He pokes a finger into the shorter man’s chest) But you best not take that as a…sweeping’ it under the rug situation.

BENJI What would we even sweep?

He’s glaring over his shoulder, where LARK and XAVIER are animatedly chatting to each other. They look comfortable, close, and like they’re having the time of their lives - even as they just unpacking a variety of electronic equipment and other supplies.

BENJI’S expression sours further. His brow is wrinkled in displeasure.

BENJI Nothin’ to sweep.

TINO (bad impression of a buzzer)

BENJI Aw, come off it - there’s nothin’, Ti, I don’t-

TINO (another buzzer noise, somehow worse)

BENJI I’m not allowed to dislike the guy?

TINO (smiles, affirmative) Ding ding ding. Right answer. What’s your prize?

BENJI (taking the flashlight out of his hand grumpily) Five minutes alone. Let me do the survey.

TINO shrugs and begins to walk backwards out the door, and down the stairs. He has a pep in his step; optimistic, maybe, of solving the apparent bad blood. He does a pause, brow furrowing, and then quickly turns and catches BENJI by the elbow.

BENJI Wh-

TINO We’re talking about this once we get home, Benj. I’m not letting y’all fester whatever nastiness is going on. And I’m not (he pokes again, more firmly) letting it put anybody in danger. You hear me?

BENJI pauses. Then, begrudgingly, but still in a mocking impression of XAVIER:

BENJI Yes sir.

CUT TO:

CAMERA SHOT - INT. - A DARK ROOM - CLOSE-UP OF XAVIER - HAND-CAM, GRITTY FILTER, UNSTEADY.

XAVIERadjusts the camera and the picture gains some clarity. He steps back, more of him coming into frame. He spreads his arms and strikes a pose.

XAVIER What’s up guys, it’s me, Zac Brogans, and it’s another episode of Ghost -

LARK (out of frame) That’s not his name.

XAVIER …Zachary?

LARK Naw, man. It’s Bagans.

XAVIER (confidently) I think you’re wrong about that.

He comes towards the camera again, and the frame swings. There is a brief shot up his nose and the sound of fingers tapping away at a screen. Then XAVIER pouts.

LARK Google says I’m right, doesn’t it?

XAVIER (mockingly) Google says I was - (normal voice) Listen. I’ve been through a lot today. I’ve been bullied. Leave me alone.

LARK moves into frame. He glances at the phone in XAVIER’S hands. Their foreheads briefly knock together, and they share a quick grin.

LARK (sobering) What’s up with that, by the way?

XAVIER makes a noncommittal, distracting noise. It does not work.

LARK (unwilling to drop it) C’mon. You and Benji. You don’t have to be at each other’s throats all the time.

XAVIER If he wasn’t such an asshole-

LARK He’s not- (pause) Well. He’s just kinda - (pause) Benji is -

XAVIER An asshole.

LARK He cares, okay? And you care. Tino does. I do! So if something is going on - (another awkward pause) We can talk about -

XAVIER drops the camera back onto the surface he’d propped it against. He slaps his hands over his ears.

LARK (exasperated) I don’t mean that -

XAVIER (shouting) GOOD. I AM GOING TO GO SET UP THE REST OF THE CAMERAS. AND I AM NOT GOING TO THINK ABOUT ANYTHING RELATED TO-

LONG PAUSE. WIND WHISTLES THROUGH THE EMPTY ROOM WITH THEM.

XAVIER AUGH. FUCK YOU I THOUGHT ABOUT IT.

LARK barely muffles his laughter as XAVIER flees, a variety of microphones, EMF readers, and handheld video cameras in his arms.

CUT TO:

CAMERA SHOT - INT. - A DARK HALLWAY - CLOSE-UP OF XAVIER - HE IS RUNNING

XAVIER Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Behind him, as he runs, doors on either side of the hallway SLAM open and closed. The noise is deafening; XAVIER winces against it as he runs. And then, skidding, he stops outside a door with some light spilling from its window. He darts inside. He slams the door and leans against it, the camera hovering near his chin. It is trembling, as if XAVIER’S hands are, too.

XAVIER What the fuck-

DISEMBODIED VOICE RUN.

XAVIER screams. He throws himself to the side.

CAMERA SHOT - INT. - A ROOM LIT BY A SINGLE CANDLE

Prone and panting, XAVIER scrabbles backward across the ground as a figure strides out of the darkness. The CAMERA, his phone, has been flung in his terror. An angled frame of the room shows this confrontation occurring upside-down.

THE FIGURE draws closer. The doors slamming outside have stopped; the only sound is XAVIER’S exhausted wheezing. He jumps to his feet, hands outstretched. He seems to be brandishing something in his left - a crucifix.

FIGURE/DISEMBODIED VOICE Bit presumptuous, yeah?

XAVIER goes still, then snarls.

XAVIER Jesus!

He raises a fist, clenches it, waves it mid-air between then. Then, as if it takes a tremendous amount of willpower, lowers it to his side.

XAVIER (absolutely exasperated) Jesus. You get off on that or something?

BENJI drifts out from the shadows. He is smirking, much too proud of himself for the scare.

BENJI Hm?

XAVIER I said - God, you are such an asshole. I said do you get off on that? Messing with me for no reason?

CAMERA SHOT - XAVIER’S ANNOYED, YET STILL STARTLED - FROWN, FRAMED IN THE SPACE BETWEEN BENJI’S COCKED HIP AND ELBOW.

BENJI immaturely pumps his own fist in the air, sneering.

BENJI Awful concerned about the circumstances of my gettin’ off, huh? Freak.

XAVIER You - oh, man. We really don’t have time for this. Didn’t you hear that shit?

BENJI Mate, I’ve been setting up for the past hour.

He taps a pair of headphones around his ears. They’re connected to a blinking microphone in the corner of the room.

BENJI Haven’t heard nothin’ but this.

XAVIER This is — we’ve been here an hour?

BENJI stares at him incredulously.

BENJI Why the fuck would Tino send you off on your own if you can’t handle a little asylum over-nighter? This is basic shit, mate. I thought you had some experience. (scoffs) Lark didn’t say you were a total rookie.

XAVIER grits his teeth. He points at BENJI. His finger shakes. He is clearly doing everything in his power to control his temper.

XAVIER I just got chased by something. And then scared by you. And now you’re being — I can’t - you are so -

BENJI rolls his eyes. He moves across the room towards XAVIER’S discarded phone and picks it up to hand over. Then he squeezes past the taller man, bodily moving hims away from the doorframe.

XAVIER Don’t fucking-

BENJI (exasperated, but edgy; he is close to a temper snap too) Would you cool off? Fuckin’ hell, man. Go finish your set up.

BENJI leaves the room with a cheeky two-finger salute over his shoulder. He hesitates in the hallway, unbeknownst to XAVIER, who has turned his back to assess the new crack in his phone screen. He seems like he wants to say something. But then he turns and disappears in the direction XAVIER had initially fled.

CUT TO:

CAMERA SHOT - INT. - A LARGE, DARK AND EMPTY CAFETERIA

On the southern wall of the tiled floor, a set of bars separates the kitchen area of the cafeteria to the rest of the space. There are a variety of tables and chairs, dusty and askew from the years of disuse, scattered around. On one of them, closet to the jail-like barrier, rests a stack of equipment. A mic pack, a handful of spare batteries, and a phone. It is face-down, its case covered with a variety of fading band stickers. It rings and rings; a looping stanza of string-heavy music from a classical Japanese orchestral piece.

LARK sits on the other side of the bars, trapped in the small kitchen space. He has both hands covering his ears, his face twisted in a terrified, angry grimace.

LARK SHUT UP. SHUT UP!

The phone’s tune increases in volume.

VOICE Lark?

LARK No. Shut up-

He avoids eye contact with the ringing phone. He needs to use it to call for help — although he’s small, there is no way he can squeeze through the bars.

VOICE (coming closer) Lark?

BENJI and TINO round the corner. They stand shoulder-to-shoulder, looking terrified as well. BENJI’S hair is a mess; TINO is covered in a layer of grime and soot.

LARK (sobbing with relief) Oh. Fuck. It’s — oh fuck, get me out of here.

TINO darts towards the bars, fingers wrapping around them. He shakes, testing the resistance.

LARK Turn the phone off, I can’t -

BENJI Phone?

TINO Has he been in here all night - ? Alone? I thought you checked on him, Benji.

BENJI (defensive) I did! Half past two, like you asked.

TINO That was three hours ago! What were you thinkin’? You saw the readings - you heard what Xavier said about the boiler room-

BENJI (scoffing) Yeah, and he’s been seein’ things all night. Just green, Tino. He’s just a fuckin’ coward and green-

TINO whirls around. He looks angry now, but his eyes shine with a bit of genuine fear. BENJI takes a step back, shocked to see that particular display of emotion. TINO is not green. TINO taught them what they know - he is usually unflappable, a constant calm even when shit hits the proverbial fan.

TINO (voice shaking, loud but not yet yelling) He ain’t green. And you ain’t - (pause)

BENJI (pause, then cold) Ain’t what, Ti?

TINO Ain’t actin’ right, lately. Now you pack up whatever the hells goin’ on in your head and help me get Lark outta here. Look at ‘em. Hang it up, Benji.

LARK is trying to put a brave face on, witness to this rare almost-fight between the two. But there are clearly drying tracks of tears down his cheeks. TINO moves away, down the hall.

BENJI crosses over to the table to collect LARK’S phone. He taps at the screen repeatedly.

BENJI Here, mate, let’s get some music playin’ while we look for the keys or another way outta there, yeah? Get you right and sorted, but at least some good tunes will distract you - (he frowns, pauses) The hell, Lark? How long’s your phone been dead for?

LARK stares up at him through the bars. He looks at Tino. He looks at the phone. Then the tears start freely again, his head hanging to hide their intensity.

LARK It was ringing - it was my mom’s ringtone - it was ringing, Benj. It was. I’m not hearing things. I swear.

BENJI (disturbed, trying not to show it) Okay, man. Okay. I har you. I believe you Lark, okay?

BENJI looks up at TINO, who has reappeared with a pair of bolt cutters.

BENJI Xavier’s still not checked in?

TINO (intensely worried, now) No. Fuck, no.

CUT TO:

CAMERA SHOT - INT. - AN ABANDONED LIBRARY - CLOSE-UP OF XAVIER - HAND-CAM, GRITTY FILTER, UNSTEADY.

XAVIER Ok, now check this out-

He jogs backwards, arms out for balance. Tongue stuck out in concentration, XAVIER does a little wiggle to assess the space he takes up. And then he tucks his long legs and leaps in the air, arms pinwheeling as he attempts a jumping backflip. Out of frame, a variety of paranormal equipment begins beeping. XAVIER doesn’t hear, initially - he is busy recovering from the failed attempt, rubbing his sore hip.

FOOTSTEPS slowly walk across the room; they can be heard above XAVIER’S petulant whining, but their source unseen.

XAVIER Ow. That - ow.

VOICE (echoing, multilayered) Making a movie?

XAVIER freezes. Palms flat to the ground, his fear-widened eyes go even bigger as the footsteps draw closer. He’s looking off to the side, pupils growing larger and larger in the dim night vision as something the CAMERA cannot see moves closer.

Finally, a foot pads into frame. It is just sinew and muscle, dripping a wet puddle where it stands. XAVIER’S terrified eyes draw upwards.

VOICE (slowly becoming more corporeal as it speaks) I love movies. And you already set up all the shots for me. All this fancy equipment.

XAVIER whimpers in pure terror, his arms drawing closer to his body like he’s getting ready to run again. His face goes slack with panic: he can’t move.

VOICE Let’s go find your friends, though. We have the star -

A similarly wet, stripped arm floats into frame; the VOICE points a long, bony finger in XAVIER’S direction.

VOICE ... and the crew.

The arm folds, making a disgusting squelching sound as the VOICE ostensibly presses a hand to its raw chest.

VOICE Now we just need the supporting cast.

CUT TO:

CAMERA SHOT - INT. - SECURITY CAMERA IN THE CAFETERIA - TOP-DOWN VIEW

TINO We know there are some restless spirits here, son, there’s bound to be some activity.

BENJI and TINO help LARK to his feet. The bars have been cut - and, with their combined strength - pried apart to free the terrified man.

LARK (near hysteric) No - no. It’s something else. We have to find Xavier-

ALL THREE MEN slap hands to their ears as a piercing, awful noise that rises from the bowels of the old building. It seems to come from the walls, below them, and deeper into the depths all at once. It’s the sound of a thousand or two thousand or ten thousand machines all jamming at once, gears and pipes bursting, not an explosion but worse.

VOICE (off camera, all around, echoing) Beat you to it, cutie.

CAMERA SHOT - INT. - THE CAFETERIA - CLOSE-UP OF LARK

The CAMERA glitches and goes black.

casualty

wc: 5.1k

Some of the men in his unit, Benji doesn’t care to know. No shock to him that their line of work attracts the worst of the worst — proper scum on the bottom of the shoe types. He doesn’t care to know them, and doesn’t care to think about the fact that they all might be a bit more alike than he wants to believe. He’s here too, after all.

And no matter what kind of bullshit they’re fed, protection or defense or whatever the fuck, Benji knows at the end of the day they’ve all got fingers on the triggers of rifles pointed at bodies. At faces, if you’re one of the real sick ones. At kneecaps or joints or fingers, if you’re Robson.

Robson’s one of the ones Benji doesn’t care to know. He’s a hero, the way everybody tells it. The hero worship, you ask him, has gone to the man’s head. Rotted whatever had been up there (not much) into soft, nasty sludge. Robson spews it wherever he goes. Almost like he leaves a trail of it wherever he goes. One that you’ve got to dance back and forth across if you’ve got the unfortunate task of following him. All the careful avoidance of a kid with hopscotch, lines in the sidewalk — none of the innocent enjoyment.

So Benji tries to avoid him. Not just because he wants to avoid that sick cloud hanging about the bastard, but also because —well. Benji knows himself. He knows his tolerance for the man’s particular brand of bullshit runs real, real thin. And he’s got two warnings on his back already for being happy to throw a few friendly fire right hooks. He isn’t sure if Quinn will accept another attempt to —

“Kiss arse.”

Benji’s eyes flick to the side. The sneer is barely audible over the other sounds of the bar…or at least it would be, if Robson wasn’t trying so bloody hard to make it heard.

He sighs, feeling a headache form between his brows at the tone of the other soldier’s voice. Its not just a needling little accusation. The lieutenant is out of earshot, Robson’s flanked by two of his stupid fucking muscle pals — nah. He wants trouble.

Benji just isn’t sure why Robson’s after it with him, is all. Uncashable checks, and all that.

He really shouldn’t open the door, but Benji wedges his foot in the crack anyway: “Wassit now?”

And, as foreseen, Robson shoves into it to throw it wide. “Buyin’ a round out of the goodness of your heart, or ‘cuz you’re after something with the LT again?”

Benji tries not to let the annoyed stiffness show in his shoulders, but a nasty smirk branches Robson’s thin-lipped mouth. Fail.

“After a better watch posting, if anything.” Benji says, trying for levity. It don’t have to be the way you’re after, is the rippling undercurrent of the joke.

“Posting.” Robson snorts suggestively. “I’ll bet.” Oh, it does.

Benji sighs and sits back in the booth, eyes finally flicking up to where Robson stands at the end of the table, tree trunk arms crossed over his chest. A little tweak here and there, he wouldn’t be too bad — even with the crooked nose. A little tweak here and there, Benji might find him passably attractive. Here and there, and Benji might have found a spot in the late hours of the night where he suspects Robson wants him.

“Very school-yard of you.” Benji notes, following that line of suspicion. “If you’re just filled to the brim with jealousy mate, you oughta just say that.”

His phone buzzes in his pocket then. Robson and both of his flankers watch as Benji pulls it out to inspect the message.

There must be something particularly aggravating about the ease in which his attention has been drawn away from their attempt. Robson scowls and snatches the phone from his hand.

“Oh,’ey. Your pretty sister.” Robson drops and slides into the booth alongside Benji, thumping him jovially on the back with the hand not clutching his generations-dated phone. “You’ll put me in contact with her, yeah? Must be lonely. Y’know, considering all the time you spend here on base. On Quinn’s —“

*

Benji props fists on his knees in the alleyway, face breaking into a sweat as he heaves.

“Oh, shit. Mate.” The lieutenant doesn’t offer him a warm, soothing hand between the shoulders as beer and what was once greasy bar food spills onto the concrete. “Watch the boots, yeah?”

The smell of Quinn’s cigarette doesn’t help his nausea any. And the cold night air slices at the cut on his cheek, where Robson’s sharp knuckled punch had caught just right to split it. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as the blow to his stomach, the nasty bruise forming right above his diaphragm. It’s a curling, aching sort of pain that is much more manageable now that Benji’s emptied his stomach. At least, more so than the initial punch — sharp, immediate oh fuck I’ll die right now sort of pain.

He’s just proud of himself for throwing another good punch of his own, for having made it out the bar before he embarrassed himself void of the night’s drink.

“Real supportive. Thanks.” Benji rasps. He spits into the nasty puddle and winces. “You moved awful fast, pullin’ us apart. Y’know, for a guy ninth percent alcohol at this point.”

He glances up just in time to see Quinn shaking his head, the cigarette dangling out the corner of his mouth. Benji imagines reaching up and taking it. Sharing. Tasting him in ways they usually don’t — not just intimate, but somehow innocent.

Sensing Benji’s next line of inquiring, Quinn scoffs: “Don’t ask to bum one, man.”

“How do you fuckin’ know.” Benji laughs hoarsely. He finally straights up, tips his head towards the night sky and cool air. It feels good. Washes away the last bits of clinging nausea. His cheeks feel a little warm still, but he thinks that might have more to do with the — well, not fond. Not really. If they weren’t occasionally going at it how they do, Quinn could never be accused of being more than absolutely professional. Real platonic. But still.

He knows Benji enough to catch that moping for a smoke before he even asks. Isn’t that nice? asks a soft little voice in the back of his head. He pays attention. He thinks it’s funny. Maybe he even thinks it’s endearing.

“Always want one after you start somethin’,” Quinn says. Observation is much less sweet than mind reading, than knowing, so Benji frowns.

“I didn’t start shit—“

“Benj, you knocked the fucker’s front tooth out. You swung first.”

“He was—“ Benji clenches his fist. “Saha’s off limits, mate. Over my rotting fuckin’ corpse does someone chat nasty about her like that. Even a big dumb idiot like Robson who don’t know better.”

Quinn snorts and then schools his face into that severe neutrality, like he hadn’t meant to let it slip.”Well he knows now, aye?”

She’s not into blokes.

Think I got a shot gettin’ one into her, honestly.

Awh. Robson, man. S’his bloody sister.

But Benji had already been standing, shoving them both out of the booth, eyes not wild but cold as that frantic, angry efficiency had rushed blood in his ears, blackened his vision.

*

The rough part about it is this: Robson only grows more fond of him. He even thinks they’re mates now, proper fucking friends. That they’ve bonded or something, because Benji’s knuckles split red. Robson gets a framed photo of his dental appointment on base and gives it like some sort of peace offering.

Benji shoves it beneath his cot and forgets about it entirely amongst the cobwebs.

He can’t even be all that pissed about the new — albeit misplaced — friendliness. The comments about Saha stop altogether. The needling and intimidation attempts do, too. He isn’t sure what annoys him more; that Saha’s worthy of respect only as she relates to Benji’s humanity now, or that Robson won’t even do him the favor of acting punchable anymore.

*

Quinn thinks they haven’t evened out yet, though. And in his backwards way of handling things, he pairs them up on more than one occasion. Robson’s good muscle. Solid in and out, first contact sort of soldier. Not recon. He’s not careful or skilled or as neurologically gifted as that sort of work requires.

And Benji might be perfectly capable alone, but Quinn makes the rules: medics get a partner. Back-up in case cover is required. Just-in-case muscle, he calls it.

Benji would prefer it anyone else — but. Quinn’s dangling that third write up over his head if he doesn’t acquiesce to the new assignment. Aye, aye LT! it is, then.

*

“Three inside.” Robson tinny voice cuts into Benji’s earpiece.

He winces at the sudden noise, plucking the tech away for just a moment. This close to their inter dimensional quarry, sometimes that happens. Signal jammers or comm blocks or whatever freakish sort of otherworldly tech they bring with them.

“You don’t sound sure.”

“Three inside.” Robson says again, more firmly. Then: “I think.”

Benji sighs and adjusts where he lays on the embankment. His scope drifts along the top of the warehouse's window line. It’s a dilapidated structure; the site of a former skirmish. They’re following some intel that one of theirs has been holed up. Injured. Protecting some piece of tech that the higher ups really want to keep out of enemy hands.

“Roof’s clear.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

Benji’s jaw clenches, annoyance sweeping over him at the mocking repetition. “Well I’m not exactly workin’ with the most clear of info, am I?”

“Reckon they’ve not seen the approach, hey?” Robson wonders, ignoring the jab.

Benji watches his helmet bob along the bottom pane of the windows as he works his way through the structure. He clears the hall. Uniform, precise, snappy. There’s a reason Quinn keeps him around. He’s efficient, if not fucking brick-headed.

“Betcha two pints on Saturday that I get the drop.” Robson sing-songs, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. He turns a corner suddenly, disappearing from the guardianship of Benji’s scope. He frowns.

“Mate. I cannot cover you if you go—”

He’s cut off by the sound of gunfire. It crackles his earpiece painfully. Benji almost tears it from his ear, but more sounds follow: masculine grunts, scuffling. A savage, raw-throated shout. Sounds as if Robson has stumbled upon some sort of fucking wild animal, not an enemy.

That’s what Benji’s hoping for, at least. There’s silence on the other end for a stomach-churning few seconds. And then —

“There were four.” Robson’s broken voice croaks.

The earpiece goes quiet.

*

“Fuck,” Benji chants, his sprint down the hill towards the building more stumble than anything. “Fuck, fuck fuck — shite for brains piece of— fuck!”

Once he’s off the steep knoll, Benji shoulders his rifle in favor of his silenced side piece. Less punch, but gives him the edge that Robson’s loud front door preference lacks.

Benji falters only for a moment as he shoulders the warehouse door to follow Robson’s footsteps. He thinks of their fistfight, the blatant disrespect to his sister, the blanket of dull ignorance that he —and the other soldiers Benji prefers not to know — drape themselves in like a shield.

Robson isn’t the worst of the worst, though. But it isn’t just a desire to avoid guilt that carries his boots forward. Much to his chagrin, it is genuine concern.

“Wanker.” Benji swears under his breath, even though he shouldn’t; if there’s someone nearby, if he’s too late for Robson, he’s close enough they’ll hear.

*

It’s relief like little else when Benji finds him. He’s down the hall, a south-facing area into which none of the afternoon sunlight spreads. Even in the darkness, even with his back to the doorway, Benji recognizes his new partner. Watch his back, Quinn had told him —and he is, as he approaches.

Robson’s kneelt over the prone form of a combatant. An enemy.

(A person, something distant and young and wounded within Benji offers. Another person.

It hurts him to shake that tiny voice from between his ears, but Benji has spent too long stifling that boy to let him come back to the surface.)

The enemy is wearing an inky, mostly-black uniform. Like he’s been cloaked in the shadow itself. Recon, he guesses. Nondescript, but with the tell-tale markings of the counterpart universe interlopers. Thieves. World-enders.

Attempted, at least. It looks as though Robson has put an end to this particular attempt. These ones are tough fuckers. Scary when cornered. Benji has patched many a serrated edge-torn wound from their nasty knives. They’re meant to tear and buy time, get away; these are soldiers, but their info-gatherers first. In and out.

This one, just in. Tough luck. Benji wonders what panic tastes like as it rests on the tongue of a man who will die in a world not his own.

Ther’s a wet crunch. Benji winces, yanked out of his spiraling thoughts.

“C’mon.” He tries. But Robson only brings his fists together, fingers laced, and swings them high above his head.

His eyes are a little crazed when they bounce over his shoulder to find Benji. He grins as he brings his joined fists down for another wet sound. A thudding, skin-on-skin impact.

Benji is reminded about how brutally savage this man can be in combat. Quinn paired them together for a reason. They’re—

(Not alike. Not alike. Not alike.)

“Robson.” Benji tries again. His partner is breathing hard, but his shoulders and hyperventilating chest are the only things moving. No more swings — for now. He looks coiled, though. Ready. He wants to do it again. He wants to cause more hurt.

Robson is worse than the ones he doesn’t want to know, in someways. He’s not particularly skilled, but he’s savage. And he seems to enjoy this sort of thing too much: when things become close. Personal.

And this enemy has seemed to drag something wicked out of him. Something psychotic. Benji saw the hint of it, just now.

“You gotten, you prick.” He says, approaching slowly. He isn’t sure what instinct keeps his gun level with the enemy, when the silencer should be pointed at the ground. “You gottem. Real fuckin’ done in, this one.”

He goes for humor. Brutal, violent humor. It’s worked once with Robson. He bonded to Benji over a fight. Maybe he’ll do it again.

“Naw,” he growls instead. He readies another over-the-head swing. “Naw, I’m not done.”

“You don’t want this,” Benji says.” He isn’t t sure what he’s referring to. None of their palms are clean. None of them are innocent. They’ve all killed. They’ll kill again shortly, most likely. But this—

The body beneath Robson kicks its legs. And that’s when Benji realizes it isn’t a body at all.

The poor fuck’s still alive.

More than that, the poor fuck is putting up a fight.

Robson isn’t a small man. The wrecking-ball swings of his fists weren’t softened. But the merc still has fight in him. Still nearly manages to buck the soldier off him. Almost, almost, and Benji’s nearly rooting for him, especially when the next swing comes. Especially when Robson leans down and laughs in his obscured face.

Benji’s impressed. But his stomach is also rolling dangerously. A taste of distant nausea, a fight not dissimilar to the brutality here. His aches with a ghostly sort of pain. Right where Robson had once split it from the same fists.

There’s blood pooling around Robson’s knees. Not his blood. Benji’s stomach rolls again. It’s an awful lot. It looks thick. It’s from somewhere important.

Awful way to go, another voice in him offers. Medical, succinct, disjointed. Slow.

“Robson—“

“Naw.” He interrupts. It’s a breathless grunt, filling space where a word should be. Benji was right — there’s an animal in this room. Just not who he thought. Robson’s still sharp and cruel with that anger. Benji recognizes that he’ll kill the poor sap before anything else happens; before Benji can pull him away, intervene.

Robson thumbs off his radio. Ice runs through Benji, prickles his scalp.

“He tried to fuckin’ choke me, mate.”

“Alright.” Benji says, voice low and beseeching. He doesn’t want to watch a man be bludgeoned to death, once human to wet and pulpy. “C’mon. Gottem.”

“Fuck no.” Robson hisses. “Sticks, man. You shoulda heard what he said—“

The not-body beneath him wheezes out a wet, gurgling chuckle.

Robson settles back, his head tilted inquisitively. Then he bellows and goes for another punch. Now the man beneath him groans. Now, he sounds weaker. Really, almost dead.

But to Benji’s shock, the noise is followed up with an absolute snarl of intelligible, half-mess words and syllables. Swears.

They trickle out from a mouth filled with blood. Maybe bits of teeth. Robson readies another punch, and settles it right to the man’s chest. Benji’s close over his shoulder now. Close enough to see how the enemy’s helmet has been split right down the center. Red trickles from a crack on the visor, slippery and shiny blood rivuleting down smooth black.

Benji’s focus drags from the crack outwards. To the enemy’s shoulder, which fuzzes in his vision as it settles on a black balaclava. It’s been tossed aside, visibly wet with blood, near the beaten man’s limb arm where it rests on the ground. Pieces of the visor are scattered around it like glass.

Benji takes a step forward.

“Face won’t do you much good when it’s fucking meat, will it?” Robson sneers. He grips the man by his tactical vest and shakes violently, pulling him off the ground somewhat.

As he does so, it brings him more in Benji’s sight.

There’s a pause. A ripple of horrible, awful silence. Benji freezes.

Then the enemy soldier gathers spit and lobs it, loud and wet, directly into Robson’s snarling face.

“Still will get laid more than you, ugly,” he wheezes. There’s an unhinged laugh. Something wild and edgy that cuts through the room, humor driven out by his own base, childish insult. It rings off the concrete walls. Echoes.

Benji’s stomach feels as though it drops out of him onto the floor, further — beneath the earth. Through it.

“Robson.” He says weakly, voice suddenly thin and hoarse. He knows that laugh. He knows that pale jaw, that bump on the nose. “Robson, you gotta stop.”

Except he doesn’t. In fact, he doubles his effort. The next punch is the sickest of them all. It connects and snaps the enemy — snaps his — snaps the head to the side. And before it can loll back to look at either of them, Robson fits his meaty, bloodied fists around — around his neck.

“I wanna watch you die, mate.” Robson says, cold like Benji’s never heard him. “M’gonna watch it fade.”

Benji takes another step forward. There’s no light in the room, but his eyes have adjusted. He recognizes that face, even though it’s bruised and broken in several spots.

There is an unmistakable bunch of red hair springing from another split at the top of the helmet. It breaks through, reminding him of a fragile little planet shoving itself through a crack in the sidewalk. Stubborn to survive, fueled by a spiteful drive for one more day. One more glimpse of sunlight. Benji turns towards the door, where he can see exactly that — golden and beautiful, dripping through the shelled warehouse’s windows.

His fingers twitch. His gun is still up. He doesn’t know why he hasn’t dropped it.

“Robson.” He tries, tries, tries. The plea is edging closer to a warning. “Don’t.”

A pair of familiar eyes cut to him. Well, one. The other is too puffy to open. Benji finds himself quickly assessing the remainder of his— the enemy’s — injuries when an even more familiar mouth opens. Speaks.

“Hey,” says the interloper, the enemy, the other person. Says Xavier.

Benji blinks rapidly. His gun is still up. He hasn’t holstered it yet. He should have holstered it.

“You gotta stop.” He whispers again. Now he’s properly ill. Nauseous, like that night in the bar. Standing next to Quinn, smelling his choice familiar smokes, wanting it wanting it wanting it.

“You have got to stop, mate.”

“You sick fuck,” Xavier croaks. When he tries to smirk, it splits his lip further. His voice is shot through. And Benji doesn’t want to make eye contact, because one of them is swollen in a blackened, bleeding wink so severe it makes Benji’s stomach churn. “How long were you watching?”

He can’t help but bark a laugh, but it sounds near-hysterical.

“I’m fit to kill ‘em, Sticks.” Robson laughs. “Yeah. Yeah, I really oughta.”

He reaches down to his own hip. To retrieve his own weapon. Benji watches as the muzzle is crammed beneath the pale, blood-soaked edge of Xavier’s chin.

His one good green eye looks apologetic. Almost mournful. Tough luck, Benji. Well, it was bound to run out at some point, right?

“No,” Benji says, and he notes the confidently loose grip Robson has on his weapon, and he notes the sticky blood around his knees is from Xavier, and he notes that he’s moving, he’s stepping forward, and he notes that he moves —

He moves. And Robson moves. And they both cry out, they both grunt, they both swing and scrabble for their respective discarded weapons and it’s a fight, it’s fight, it is a fucking fight —

Benji’s cheek is split on the other side when it’s done. He’s got a boot to the center of Robson’s chest. It is the first thing he notes when he drops back into himself. The second is his exhausted, adrenaline-soaked breathing.

The third is the hole that punches through Robson’s own cheek, that exists somewhere near his temple judging from the blood that steadily spews from the wound.

Benji drops to his knees. The wheezing is proper loud, almost cutting through his thoughts. There is a gun in his hands that isn’t his.

He has a vision (a memory, almost through murky water) of Xavier weakly wrenching it out of his own holster. Sliding it across the ground, urging Benji to use it, use it, because Robson’s hands were around his neck.

“Think you got him.”

Benji’s eyes swim to the side. He stares at Xavier and realizes it’s neither of them. Both of them look to Robson at the same time.

“Oooh, fuck.” Xavier groans. He pulls himself to his feet, hand cupped around his rib as he limps closer. “Jinxed it.”

“I—“

“Man. You just did a war crime. You…like, good?”

“Oh fuck.” Benji says. He clutches his temple with his free hand, and then drops the shaking gun immediately. He’s about to fucking lose it, he can feel the absolute fucking panic, the madness, creeping at his edges. “I — I killed him.”

Xavier sucks his teeth. “Nah.”

He crouches next to Robson’s almost-corpse, impressively agile and steady despite his condition. Then he spits into the man’s face again. Straightens to his full height, kicks him in the stomach.

“Nope.” Xavier confirms cheerfully. “He’s definitely alive.”

And then he lifts one long, long leg — capped in a black steel-toed boot— and drops it. Benji watches it as if in slow motion. Watches the give of Robson’s facial bones and tissue as Xavier brings that hard stomp down through his weakened skull.

It makes a sick, wet noise.

Then Xavier does it again.

The second is sloppier. With a crunch, and a sucking sound as if Robson won’t relinquish a hold on Xavier’s ankle. Xavier lifts with a scowl and a shake of his foot; the third stomp is more a thud, because it connects mostly with concrete.

Benji stares, eyes unblinking.

“There!” Xavier chirps after a moment. “Was. Was alive. Now he’s dead.” He comes to crouch next to Benji. “You didn’t kill him. Don’t worry! I did.” He attempts another wink, except its just one side of his bruised face twitching.

“Anyway. Come here often?”

He sounds different. Like his nose might be broken. He sits down across Benji, legs spread out. His wet boot nudges Benji’s hip.

Benji swears and puts his head in both hands. His ears are ringing. Rushing with blood.

“Hey. Look.”

Benji does. He can’t imagine what sort of expression is on his face, but Xavier’s grinning like he hasn’t just gotten beat within an inch of his life. Like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be but sat on a ground wet with mixed gore. With Benji.

“Be honest, Benji. I still have the money maker, right?”

God, his stupid fucking accent. His stupid fucking theatrics, gloved hand waving a circle around his face. Benji can’t help the way his lips twitch. Then curl. Then split wide.

“Bloody hell.” He breathes a laugh. “Mate, shut up? Your timing —Yeah. Fuck.” It’s the truth. “Yeah, you still got it.”

He glances over at the corpse, then. The corpse that shouldn’t be — the one across from him should have taken its place.

“I’m so fucked. I’m gonna get dragged ’fore the court. They won’t even be wrong. I killed—“

Xavier whistles. “Yeah, fuck. Your own guy. For me!”

Benji stares.

“Uh. I mean, sorry. I killed someone for me.” He tilts his chin down, leans closer. “Better?”

“We went out for drinks a few times.” Benji says. Xavier pouts. And he really shouldn’t feel compelled to clarify, but he does: “With the squad, y’know.”

Xavier snorts. “I was about to say. Woof. What a downgrade.”

Benji pushes to his feet abruptly. He’s not all that shocked to find himself unsteady. Xavier follows him with a pained grunt, hand outstretched first to cup Benji’s elbow. Then it roams up his arm, squeezes his shoulder.

Benji thinks maybe more to keep himself upright than to comfort.

“I don’t know what to do.” He admits. He’s thinking about what he’ll say. What he’ll tell Quinn. How his ruined life is about to be ruined more, if possible. How Saha and his mum and certainly his father will never be able to look at him again, once they find out. If they already could stomach to look at him now.

The turmoil must be evident on his face.

“What do you mean?” Xavier laughs. “Lie, duh.” Then he doubles over and vomits onto the ground between their boots.

“Oh.”

“Ugh. I think I have a concussion.”

“Been there.” Benji finds himself joking. He shouldn’t. He’s just — well. And Xavier— “Are you alright? Will you be?”

“Yeah. Got a medic right here.” Another one of those face-wink-twitches. “Joking. You got me enough, right? I have an inbound anyway. Was calling them when that fuck launched at me.” His pretty green eye pops wider. “Oh fuck. They’re inbound. You have to get out of here.”

Xavier backs abruptly towards a windowless exit door at the perimeter of the room. He opens it to check the field beyond, then turns back around.

“Fuck. Now, probably.”

“I—“

“I’ll spare you this time. But next time you might have to bribe me. Or, like, nurse me up real good.”

Benji’s chuckling that manic, hysterical thing as he brushes past Xavier to stand in the doorway. He’s going to have a panic attack. He can feel it rolling sharp in his veins, like the icy shock from earlier. At least he’ll be a safe distance away before it really kicks at his ribs, sends him sobbing to his knees.

“I’m a dogshite liar,” he says for now, head tilted up. Xavier is standing too close to him. He reeks of blood and sweat.

But not fear.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Bail me if it doesn’t work out?”

Xavier sways a little closer. His split lip drips down his chin with the force of his smile. “I’ll drain my savings. Just say the word.”

Benji turns to leave. Several paces away, near his original spot on the hilltop overlooking the warehouse, he turns back.

Xavier stands in the doorway, bent in half with his hands on his knees. When he notices Benji’s pause, he lifts one hand to raise a thumbs up.

*

The official sitrep passes without a hitch.

The unofficial one, unfortunately, is less smooth.

It, as all his usual unofficial meetings with Quinn go, happens in the lietuenant’s quarters. They’re beige and sparse. The walls are un decorated and the same hue as the sheets. Benji’s cheek is leaving a red stain on the pillow; he can feel how wet the fabric is beneath his skin. Know it will stick and pull at the stitches when he inevitably gets up to leave.

His hand is tucked under his chin, other arm bent tight and pulled towards his bare chest. Knees drawn up, spine curved as he regards Quinn next to him. A distance away, of course, because this is a circumstance of necessity and necessity only.

Still, he imagines reaching across and drawing a feather-light touch over Quinn’s bicep anyway.

He’s pulling on another cigarette, arm tucked beneath his head. The ceiling pulls his attention, as it often does when he’s working through a problem. That makes Benji nervous. That Quinn might be working through a problem, related t this whole mess. He’s not a good liar. And his recap to the superiors hadn’t gone anything but smooth — but Quinn isn’t them. He knows Benji.

Just a little.

“Benji. You said how many, again?”

“First sweep, when he went in? Robson said three.” Benji says. Not technically a lie. “I mean, ‘fore — before he went quiet.”

Quinn turns his chin just slightly. Not fully looking at Benji. Not head-on. He’s almost glad for it, even though it makes his chest ache a little. He doesn’t know if he has it in him to lie to his Lieutenant right to his face a second time.

And just like he’s reading Benji’s thoughts again, Quinn shifts to look at him properly. Lidded, intelligent eyes pierce into him. See inside, Benji fears.

“Three?”

Benji swallows. Horrible dread fills him. He untucks his arm and reaches across, fingers resting against the beige sheets just millimeters short of Quinn’s body. He struggles through the fear and offers: “Just three.”

It’s more convincing than he expected. Quinn nods. Then he lifts to an elbow, leaning over Benji.

“Look spooked, still. Go again?”

Benji regards him, eyes saucer-round and lips parted. He thinks about the wet crunch. He wants to go back to his quarters, curl up in his bed, and drown himself in music until he forgets those noises.

Instead:

“Yeah, need it.” He lies, and does his part to close the distance between them.

pathetic

wc: 5.9k

Matilda is nineteen when the inching creep of illness finally takes him.She’s twenty five when it kills.

She collects her bounty from Isaac with a palm-up gesture of victory; he slaps a crisp twenty dollar bill into it and sighs. It’s a remarkably similar noise to the faint shhhhhhf down the hall, where Bunny busies herself dragging his body.

When she passes the entrance to the dining room, where the two younger Rhoades children are completing their deal, she swears and drops the corpse. As it hits the ground, Matilda is not startled to find the thump against gleaming parquet wood so quiet. In the last few years, he’d lost quite a bit of weight.

“Oh, fuck you.” She hisses as she marches up to them, jabbing a finger into Matilda’s shoulder. “What’d you say?”

“Three years four months nine days.”

Bunny’s mouth twitches into an intrigued, yet judgmental, scowl. She clicks her tongue. “That’s incredibly specific and so suspicious.”

Matilda shrugs. “I was going off vibe.”

“I said five.”

“Six.” Isaac signs.

Their father (the only one Matilda has ever cared to know and label and love) sighs and leans heavily against her shoulder, draped like a golden age starlet with a wrist over eyes bracketed with gentle crows feet.

“You’ll donate to my renovation fund, right?” She asks demurely, making her voice all funny and high. The transatlantic accent is as accurate as it can get, not at all put-on: she’d spent a few decades in the late 19th century prowling the east coast for fun.

“I’ve seen the offshore accounts.” Matilda says. She lifts two fingers, the twenty lodged daintily between them. “This isn’t even a drop in the bucket. I think you’ll be fine without my twenty.”

Before she knows what is even happening, Bunny has snatched the bill and zipped back towards the hall with a mean laugh.

“Thank you oh so much, darling, it really is such a generous contribution to my future den of inequity and debauchery!” She pauses at the cracked door, mouth dramatically pouted and brows cinched as she looks back at them over a shoulder. “Do you think the bloody chains are too…you know?”

“Camp?” Isaac spells out slowly, adding a sarcastic twist to each letter.

“Stereotypical.” Matilda offers instead.

*

Their mother insists upon dining as a family together that evening. Even Happy joins them. He sits between the scientist and Leo, arms crossed and unamused brow as heavy as usual. Isaac tells him a story, some gossip circulating in his mundane little friend group. He’s insisted on going to school, getting a degree; to what end, Matilda isn’t sure. She suspects he must like getting out of the home, meeting more people. She suspects it might also have something to do with the sheer volume of eager young men on a college campus, but will withhold that particular dig until he does something to piss her off.

A soft clearing of the throat gathers their collective attention.

“Now. I’m so very pleased we were all able to clear our schedules for this time together.” She touches a hand as far down the table as possible, towards their scientist. “And for those of us who set aside important experiments.”

He shrugs, hands lifted slightly from the tablecloth in polite acknowledgment. “No need. The spinal cord transfusion did not take, as I suspected, and it went through quite the painful looking rejection.”

Everyone around the table, save Happy, make a sympathetic noise. He’s busy playing a word puzzle on his phone.

“As I was saying,” their mother continues, “I’m glad that we are all together today. Although I suspect that none of us has made a sacrifice of lost love, and certainly none of us are toughing through heartache, it can be a confusing thing. Death, I mean.”

“Rot in peace,” Isaac signs. Without looking up from his game, Happy lifts a hand to press thumb and index finger together, jabbing his wrist forward: period.

Their mother fights a smile. “Even so. There can be a variety of mixed feelings with a passing such as this. Although I think we will likely carry the evening as usual, I just want to make it clear that we are a family — we’re here for each other, whenever that need may arise.”

No one looks down the table at Matilda, except her mother: Happy’s phone dings. Isaac and Leo launched into a rapid-fire conversation about some political intrigue of lord so-and-so from wherever seating of the council, a side-show of drama that Matilda would otherwise also be drawn into. The scientist picks at his plate of food (although she’s never seen him eat, the plate will be mysteriously empty the second her eyes drift away and back), and Bunny busies herself shouting word puzzle answers to their accountant although he hasn’t asked or provided the clue.

You, her mother’s eyes seem to say. I am talking about you. I am expecting you to break down. I am expecting mess. Your father, although you never referred to him as such, has died; there’s no way you handle this like you should. I am expecting the worst.

*

Matilda gives her the worst.

The whole third floor is set aflame. She finds an ancient tome on one of the displays in the master bedroom and tears each page until the pieces are as close to molecular as she can manage. Three windows broken, two handmade rugs made ribbon with her nails alone, the moonflower patch she favors near the back patio dug up and salted.

By the end of her rampage, Matilda forgets that it had started as a testament to her mother’s lack of faith entirely. She has just proved a point — but it is exactly what set her to this in the first place. Because she’s right. Matilda could not handle it: every atom of rage within her bubbled to the surface made her wonder. Made her fear.

Is this him? Is this him? Is this him?

No matter the nature of her creation, the mode the means the method — weren’t the pieces of her him, at some point in time? He’s dead. She reminds herself of that. She tries to, as she sits in the dark blue twilight, in the dirt graveyard she’s made of her mother’s beloved creation, but all she can think: this is him.

Undoing. Destruction for the sake of it. Destruction for spite. A burning, unhinged desire to inflict the hurt she feels, the hurt she has no name for; a method to, if she’s fortunate, deflect it. To uproot, to ruin, to deny simple pleasures and love where it dug deep and blossomed. To create something vile from something sacred.

Matilda kneels, shoulders curved and feeling wretched, in the remnants of lily-white blossoms and freshly watered soil for ten more minutes. Then she pushes herself to her feet, knees dirty, to go and tell her mother what she’s done.

*

I understand, she says. I understand, Matilda.

She isn’t angry. But only because she had been right all along. Her palm cups Matilda’s cheek as softly and lovingly as ever. Matilda loosens the hug, but her mother doesn’t let go. Her free arm stays locked tight around Matilda’s shoulders. It feels more like a clutch than a hug.

When they finally part, she’s looking up at Matilda with eyes full of unwavering love…and pity.

Every concern Matilda knows she holds for her youngest child s validated, in that moment. She is unstable, she is incapable of controlling her capability, she is the last of three creations — each more strange and off than the last. She wonders, if she were a bit more wrong, whether she could have been the one in chains.

Loved, of course.

But loved and kept.

*

When she turns the corner down the hall from her mother’s room, fists wiping angrily at her eyes, someone catches her at the elbow and yanks her into an empty room.

She doesn’t yelp or turn with gnashing teeth or scream; there are only a few people in this place, and she trusts them all.

Especially Happy, who it turns out is the one with a firm hand around her elbow.

“You gotta know something, kid.” He says, voice low. She wants to tell him there’s no point in that — that if her mother wants to hear, she will. Privacy is granted as long as one is within the lady of the manor’s good graces. And awarded even after, but with cost. Matilda doesn’t want him to owe anything; she doesn’t want him to pay his debt in pity, either.

“I don’t want to know anything but nothing for a few hours.” She hooks a thumb over her shoulder. “Which is why I’m going to go smoke until I puke and dissociate on, like, another plane of existence. You’re welcome to join.”

Happy ignores the deflection. He even shakes her a bit. Matilda blinks.

“It’s about that decrepit ol’ bastard.”

*

It’s a relief that he’s gone. It’s a pity that he goes as he does, and a crime that it was fast. She would have liked it if he suffered. She would have liked to do it herself. She would have liked her mother to do the honors. Maybe Bunny.

But they hadn’t been given the choice or the chance, because it hadn’t been the exhaustion or the wasting illness he’d survived for so long. When Happy hands her the folder of photographs and receipts and maps and transcript radio communications, he gives that choice back. That chance.

“What is this?” She asks, but the answer to that question becomes starkly clear as the pages flit by. Shipments across sea, substances ordered and smuggled, deals across country lines that break historic alliances. All under the noses of the most powerful vampiric courts in the world. All with a purpose.

“They haven’t perfected it yet.” Happy says when she gets to a glossy, if not slightly blurry, photograph of a ruined lab. There are glass vials shattered amongst the tile, a still pair of shoes out of frame, a bloodied lab coat tossed haphazard to the ground. And there, on one of the tables, is a glass tube of liquid. The color of its contents is hard to describe; all Matilda knows is that it calls to her, even in print. There is something about it that radiates — something.

“It’s toxic so far. Mostly. Well, y’know. Sometimes.” He rotates a wrist in the air. “Kinda dogshit about lab safety, you got a buncha thralls banging around doing—”

She blinks at him.

“Okay. Anyway. Like I said, they haven’t perfected it yet. But they’re close, I think. Got sources. Not sure if it’s supposed to be a street drug, or some kind of control device, or just vampires being weird and fuckin’ evil.” Happy looks off to the side then back at her. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Matilda flips through several more pages. Chemical compounds, notations on phenotypes and Rh factors and all sorts of other scrabbled together research. “He was on this, or something?”

“No. Someone gave it to him. Enough to be lethal.” He shrugs when her eyes snap up. “Well shit, Matilda. None of us, obviously. Only reason I know about all this —” his focus falters again, down the hall. Matilda imagines a little trail going down the stairs, out the west wing, into the sterile cool interior of their scientist’s lab on the grounds. “It’s not done yet. They need someone smart to fix it. Make it…whatever they want it to be. Distributable. And…”

“They want him.” Her fingers tighten on the page. “What was the point?”

“It’s all connected.” Happy says. Then he pauses and snorts, making Matilda’s lips twitch. “That sounded real conspiracy. I know, I know. I mean, serious. I’m being serious as hell right now, all right? Shut up."

All the emotion bubbles up in her again, but this time there’s no destructive itch. She just flattens a hand over her mouth to fight the giggles.

“He was definitely involved in some shit back in the day. I’m sure you know. Or I’m sure you’ve been told, right?” Happy’s head tilts to catch her gaze again. “Vamps in a lotta circles wanted him dead or controlled or worse, and not just because he was a fuckin’ clown. And I think they find out he hadn’t ate shit, and wanted to make it happen.”

“How would anyone know?”

Happy gives her a look. “Which one of us fucks around with ‘em the most?”

*

She finds Leo lounging where he can usually be found. On the rooftop, arms tucked under his mop of golden curls, red-ringed pupils shut to the glow of the moon.

“You’re in my light.”

Matilda doesn’t move away from him, doesn’t cast her shadow politely off to the side. She waits until he cracks a lid open. He’s fed recently; the wet mercury of their eyes gets deeper, gets layered, once they’ve had a little blood. They don’t have to drink like others. Leo just likes to.

Matilda crouches beside him, knees tucked and arms wrapped around her shins. “This is pretty sentimental of you, ‘Lo.”

Leo’s head turns at the old nickname. She wonders if a vision of her, tiny and knobby-kneed, bounces through his head fondly. She wonders if Leo is capable of fondness. “It’s relaxing.”

“Yeah? Is that what he used to yank you up here to do? Relax?”

To her delight, the comment flusters him just enough to pull an annoyed huff. It’s counter intuitive to a good mood, which she needs him in to ask questions, but the sibling need to tease him about an old flame is too tempting.

“I’m putting Benji down on the list of banned topics.”

“My first amendment right.” Matilda says, voice a mask of shock.

He huffs again, and now sits up straight. “Did you come up here to just be fucking annoying, or —”

“Happy thinks somebody killed him.” Matilda blurts. They stare at each other a long moment. She rocks back to fall on her ass, flop backwards to spread her arms and lay against the night cooled material of the roof. There will be twigs and bits of shingle in her hair but…she doesn’t want to move. She can’t. Everything bubbles up again, but there are no giggles now. No destruction. It just feels heavy.

Leo blinks. “Dad?”

“Don’t call him that.”

“He was, Mati. Like, at least by biology a little bit?” He squeezes her knee. “I’m not saying you don’t get to be — you don’t get to feel — Jesus.” Leo swipes a hand down his face. “Just…tell me what Happy said.”

She glares at him, thinking of the folder and its contents store beneath her bed frame. “Did you tell anyone about him?”

Leo is such a shit liar, she thinks. The question smacks into him in an immediate display of shock and then guilt. His eyes go big and no, not me for the barest second. And then everything closes off, expression stony and smooth. He turns it off so well, but he’s still her brother. They’re still made from the same stuff.

(Him?)

“You did.” She hisses. “Who?”

“Nobody.”

“Leo.” Matilda sits up too. Then she stands, the moon to her back. He’s in her shadow again. “Leo. Tell me who.”

Leo tries not to. He really does. But she makes her eyes big, her expression serious and wounded and something akin to the little girl who would come in and tug his sleeve, ask to play, cry for attention, need a hug when she fell. Matilda doesn’t mean to be so good at it. To manipulate so thoroughly. But she learned it from him. She learned so much from Leo.

“Alright.” He says finally, with a sigh. He reaches out with an empty palm, and Matilda knows (in the way that siblings do, silent communication and a shared pattern of thought) to put her phone there. He types in an address to her notes. And then a name.

Matilda’s face scrunches at the letters. “Fi-ah…fi-duh?”

“Her name’s Fiadh.” Leo rolls his eyes. That flustered look is all over him again, shoulders up. She can’t tell if it’s for show. If she’s being a little manipulated, too. “Fee-ah. She — I told her. About him. About the cellar. About — I don’t know, it…it was just one of those moments, you know?”

Matilda doesn’t know. She nods anyway.

“I trusted her. I’m not sure why.” He goes distant, trying to recall the memory. When it seems to elude him, his face scrunches. “I can’t remember telling her, though. She runs this place out in the country. Like a blood bank, except for the pussy ones.” When Matilda offers him an unamused look, he rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean. The no humans losers. The ethical fucks. Stupid. But — she smuggles. I know she does. I don’t know how or what, but it was some shady shit.”

Matilda nods. She stands.

Leo shoots out to grab her ankle. “Mati.”

It’s all he says. Her name, the hold on her, the grip, the concern; she’s kept. She’s weak.

The heaviness returns to her, a weight expanding cylindrical from the center of her out. She’s afraid to burst again. She’s afraid to — him.

She can see the pleading in Leo’s eyes. Sometimes, when he looks at the two of them (his babies, even though he won’t say it, his siblings, his wards, the parts to his whole, three angles fit to make an equal triangle) she doesn’t doubt how deeply he feels.

And then other times, like when she’d caught him burying something stiff and pale in the backyard beneath the willow, she thinks: him.

She’s glad she hadn’t dug that portion of the garden up. There are things she wants to know, and things she doesn’t.

*

Fiadh is pretty. Her little rabbit farm is cute.

Matilda hates her immediately and with a strange stab of red-hot rage so severe that doesn’t shock her so much as catch her by surprise.

Matilda isn’t jealous of her adorable bedroom, painted earthy green and with plenty of tasteful velvet, weave, and jewel tones. She isn’t jealous of sweet little animals that roam the whole farmhouse, nor the pink-painted hutches in the big barn out back, nor the acres of wildflower planted land for them to roam happy and free.

Matilda isn’t sure what she’s jealous of — but it rises up in her just like the heavy anger, the desolate feeling of something being taken.

I don’t know what you did, she thinks, staring at the back of the girl’s head through the sheer-curtain covered window. But you took a right from me. From us. I don’t know how, but I do know how I’m going to get some of it back.

*

Up close, Fiadh’s hair is even prettier. It’s shiny and long, ending in bouncy curled waves by her elbows. Matilda imagines brushing it. She imagines running her fingers through it. She’d call it maybe — amber. Maybe honey. Something darker, layered; just ruddy enough not to be blonde, a color so interesting that people pay hundreds to have it mimicked.

Golden, but ran through with auburn strands; yes, honey. Honey.

Not any, though. The fancy kind; glass jar, organic sticker stamped, tasteful and classy minimalist font. Overpriced. Because at the end of the day — it tastes just the same as any other honey. It’s nothing special. It doesn’t taste better, smell better, come from a better hive.

Matilda fists her hand in that hair and yanks.

*

It’s a short fight. Fiadh’s as strong as any vampire, but she clearly isn’t accustomed to using it. Matilda had waited for all the security vehicles to leave. Had watched as Fiadh stood in the doorway, a robe hanging from one shoulder precariously, to wave them off for the night. It was an awful lot of security for a silly little farm, vampiric clientele aside.

Fiadh isn’t strong, but she knows things that Matilda wants to know. And that isn’t the jealousy, although it stays stuck wet in the bottom of her throat as they glare at each other, all the same.

“I’m going to eat them all.” Matilda reveals in a sultry, winded whisper. Her fist is tight to Fiadh’s throat, the other woman’s close to a similar squeeze under her jaw. She pushes Matilda’s snapping, laughing jaws away with a sharp cry. Her disgust at the admission is enough: Matilda throws her off with enough force that her diminutive form gets air.

Fiadh braces on trembling hands, palms bloody with streaks from Matilda’s sharp nails. She looks pathetic. She looks pretty. Matilda nudges her cheek with a knee, and Fiadh looks at her with wet, terrified eyes through honeyed strands.

Matilda is stronger. Matilda comes from a better hive.

She likes to think she tastes better, too.

*

Fiadh is a good Catholic girl. Or she was, at some point, before turning. She screams and wails and then moans weakly from the chair Matilda has restrained her in. A crucifix taped to the center of her heaving chest is enough to keep her weak.

Matilda wants her weak, not dead. Awake, not out. She wants to make sure she watches.

You took something from me. I don’t know what you did — I just know I want that back.

“It’s your last chance.” She singsongs. She stands in the center of the room, a black and white mottled rabbit tucked in the crook of her elbow. Its fire is so, so soft beneath her fingers. She wanted a rabbit when she was younger. She wanted a whole zoo. Bunny and her scientist had done their best to fulfill every one of her desires, but that particular age had been trouble — she would have torn through anything fragile. She would have torn through anything strong; the willpower had not been a trained skill, then.

It is now. But more often than not, Matilda finds it fun to abandon.

“Please,” Faith sniffles weakly. She looks pathetic. She still looks beautiful. Something nasty and cruel bubbles up Matilda’s chest. “Just tell me what you want, okay? I don’t know what I did. I’m sorry. I’ll make it better. I can help.”

Matilda sneers. She could make it quick. Fiadh had given a merciful death — one that wasn’t hers to give. And that was a luxury. A privilege. A nicety for things that deserved it. Maybe the rabbits deserve a merciful, painless, quick death. But Matilda doesn’t have it in her to offer that, at the moment.

Instead she lifts the rabbit to her mouth. She holds Fiadh’s gaze for the entire of the slow, steel-jawed bite. She sinks her fangs into its neck slowly. She drinks slowly. It gives a little kick and yelp, something sad that twists a piece of her deep down. Then its little fragile chest begins to heave as it dies.

Slowly.

Fiadh watches in horror. Her big bloodied-amber eyes are beautiful and wet, tear-framed as they are. They spill over her cheeks and down her neck, over her clavicle. Matilda hopes they burn when they get to the raw skin where the crucifix rests.

When she’s done with the creature, she tosses it aside in a fluffy heap in the corner of the room. Faith moans again, broken-hearted.

“That wasn’t even your favorite one, was it?” Matilda kneels down to peer at its limp body, the collar around its neck that reads Snowbell. “I want to know which ones are your favorite. No — I want to know which ones you hate. Do you have them all named? Do you mix them up, sometimes? Gosh, some of them look alike. Do you have to put collars on them so you know which is which, because you don’t love them all equally?”

Fiadh sniffles. Her brow isn’t knotted with rage, an expression Matilda might respect. Instead, it’s slack and sad. She’s already given up. One little bunny, and the fight has gone out of her.

Pathetic, Matilda’s thoughts scoff.

“Cunt.”

Her eyebrows shoot up, a grin splitting her messy, gory mouth. “Oh.”

*

Matilda is methodical about it, after that. The brief glimpse of fire in the vampire hadn’t lasted long. She’d returned to her normal sniveling, damsel-in-distress tears just as soon as the insult had passed her lips.

Around rabbit four, she tries to dip her face away. To squeeze her eyes shut. Matilda goes and finds a little white one, fur dyed lilac purple, with an adorable bell collar in an adorable fluffy bed in Fiadh’s adorable, adorable bedroom.

She fists a hand in that pretty hair (streaked with sweat, flyaways, imperfect) and forces Fiadh to watch her drain that one, too. And when she’s done, when the other vampire looks sick and pale and like she would prefer to be anywhere else but in that stifling hot, metallic-scented room, Matilda leans down. She rubs their mouths together until Fiadh recoils with a retching noise, tears flowing freely to mingle with the red stain smearing across her mouth and cheeks.

*

She feeds and feeds and feeds.

Unlike Leo, it isn’t something she does often. She and Isaac prefer the food of the living — more substance, more diversity, more tastes.

But there’s something about the rabbits that makes it incapable to stop gorging herself. The adorable farmhouse and Fiadh’s adorable bedroom will need gallons of stain remover by the time Matilda tires of the tortuous little feast. And still, as she stumbles blood-drunk down the front steps of the wraparound porch, Matilda eyes the rabbit hutches across the yard and hungers.

The walk back into town will take her the remainder of the night. She imagines walking towards the city limits as the sun rises; were she a little different, it would bake her alive. Leave a smear of shadow and ash on the roadside. But she’s not a little different; she’s a little him. And so she walks and walks, waits for the feeling of the sun on her face.

She feels normal until the third mile. It’s then that her steps become strange and off kilter. Her limbs feel tight and heavy. Not with exhaustion, but something else. A dizzying soda carbonation fizz that has her cheeks warm and eyes blown wide. It reminds her of the punch-drunk crossfade of alcohol and a club line offered on a pretty girl’s compact mirror.

By mile six, the feeling has faded into something nasty like withdrawal.

She favors her left side in a heavy, pained limp as she walks. The night air is crisp and wet, the perfect weight of humidity filling her lungs with every step. Honeysuckle and ozone cling to the rainy pavement, mist rising from between its cracked fissures. For a moment, she imagines she moves through prehistory; a fog-filled jungle, instead of the after-rain concrete. Ferns larger than her head — ferns larger than buildings. Creatures of all size and shape, scaled and feathered and fanged or blunt-molared.

But it’s not millions of years in the past. Matilda is the only creature around; things smart enough to avoid her, do.

The operator of the approaching car is not one of those, so it seems. She can feel the rumble of it beneath her bare feet. And even without that, she had heard the heartbeat of its occupant three miles out. Her senses are better when her stomach is full, her tongue slick and heavy with something iron rich. But they’re not usually this good. And surely not from something as meager as a few rabbits. She feels…she feels—

The car approaches, but Matilda doesn’t turn from her steady trek. Her face remains forward until she knows the driver is near enough to see her.

She schools her eyes wide, terror-filled. The tears spring up so quick she feels a tingle of pride. And then she pauses in the center of the road, hair whipping around her face as she turns to be blinded by the headlights. It isn’t acting that brings one bloody palm up to shield her eyes. It isn’t acting that makes her muscles quake, her skin shiver; but it isn’t the weather, either.

Matilda has never felt so warm inside. So snap-fast alive. And when the car slows, she realizes it was not a heartbeat she heard, but a steady bassline.

The driver is not human. There are no lights on in the interior, but her eyes — whatever Faith had been smuggling in those cute little beasts was something else, that was for sure. She can see each individual follicle of peach fuzz on his face, each dark hair that completes the shape of his pretty, concern-scrunched brow.

More than all that, Matilda focuses on the blood-flushed wet meat red of his eyes.

It takes so much willpower to keep her mouth from jumping into a nasty, intrigued grin. But it takes nothing at all to stumble forward, one shaking hand outstretched in a silent plea.

“Help,” Matilda whispers, knowing that he can hear it even twenty feet away, even as quiet as she keeps the word.

The car’s engine does not cut; he’s stupid for that. She could close the distance and pull herself into the front seat of the — well, she’s not sure what sort of car it is. The trashy shine of a classic muscle car likely fifteen years older than she is…they all start to look the same. So do their owners.

Except this one. She likes this one. No pretentious, condescending gleam to his eye. No, howdy, lil girl, no are you all alone out here, do you need a lift, no oh my fucking god oh christ what are you please don’t it hurts.

Not yet, anyway. Her mouth fills with saliva as the driver vacates. He’s graceful about it in a charmingly careful way. Like he doesn’t trust this — like he knows better.

Matilda squeezes her arms tighter around her waist. The cardigan she’d stolen from Fiadh’s closet slips, bunches at her elbows.

He knows better, but his posture relaxes when the pale curve of each shoulder is revealed. She’s almost disappointed in how quickly. How easy, as usual, that they are. Always, always easy — even the ones who know better.

“Help,” Matilda squeaks again, stumbling forward. She falls with a soft noise — nothing too loud, or too sharp. She’s supposed to be weak, after all. She hangs her head to mask the sharp breath she takes when the wind carries his scent over. Dark and rainy, sticky leather like he didn’t care about the state of the seats, something spicy and sharp — boy.

She puts a hand to her mouth to wipe the saliva. And then, because she’s supposed to need help and she’s supposed to be weak, she fakes a sob.

“Did — holy shit.” He must see now how covered and sticky with blood she is; Matilda looks up just in time, bright grey through strands of rain-wet hair, to watch him cover his own face. His eyes have dilated dark and big, lashes fluttering. The fresh smell of it calling to him, most likely. He’s trying to hide what he is from her. He hasn’t noticed yet.

That she’s more like him than a human. More than him, in the first place.

“Are you alright? Fuck. Were you all the way out in the forest? Where’d you come from?”

Matilda stares up at him. You don’t want to know, handsome.

Instead of speaking, she wills the tears back up and begins to sob.

*

The drive back into civilization is long enough that he keeps turning from the drivers seat, assuring her that they’re almost there, she’ll be okay, she’ll be warm soon enough.

That he sits there in one piece, his pretty neck in one piece and untorn by her teeth, is a miracle. He doesn’t seem to realize it. He only sees the shivering figure of a scantily clad girl, a rescue, tucked under his jacket in the backseat.

It smells of him. The car smells of him. And it smells like more than just him. It reeks of a whole crowd, a barrage of sensation that makes her stomach turn.

“Your car is so cool,” Matilda lies. In the rearview mirror, his eyes dart to her when she shifts. He’s quick about turning them away; he doesn’t want her to notice their off-putting color. “If I get sick in it, I’m going to feel awful.”

“It’s not mine,” he laughs. “So don’t worry about that. Aim for the seats if you want. Leather is expensive to clean, apparently.”

Matilda offers what she hopes is an adequately charming and weak giggle. “You hate whoever drives it?” She makes her eyes big. “Or — or. Oh my God. Oh God, you didn’t steal it —”

She can hear how loud his nervous gulp is, even without the recently enhanced senses. “No. I— it’s my friend’s car. I was borrowing. Uh, legally. Legally borrowing.”

Matilda pretends to relax, like she believes him. She tucks the jacket higher around her chin when he looks back again — for a moment too long.

“I’m so glad you were out here. I got lucky — I just. I don’t know where they came from. I don’t know where my friends are.” Her voice hitches. “Do you think — do you think they’re okay? Oh, fuck. You aren’t going to believe me, but…”

“Try me.”

Matilda fights a smile. She tries to channel Fiadh; pouting, pretty, pathetic. “It was supposed to be just a group of us. There’s a place up in the mountains—” she pretends to demure here, withhold details. It flusters him visibly to fill in the blanks. “But when we got there — they... There was so much blood.”

The driver is quiet for a very long moment. His knuckles look extra pale where they grip the wheel, and Matilda loses track of herself staring at the working flex of his jaw.

When he glances at her in the mirror again, he jumps. The car jerks and he overcorrects, veering them in the other direction.

Matilda has moved closer, impossibly silent in the cramped interior. She leans as close as she can without touching, her chin hovering just over his shoulder. Their eyes snap together in the rearview, and something confused passes over expression alongside the momentary terror.

In each pass of the streetlights, Matilda’s eyes look even more otherworldly. She’s fed. She wonders if she can see all that blood beneath the grey. She isn’t masked with fear, traumatized or shaking. Matilda stares at him, head cocked, fanged smile sharp and very close to his neck.

“Help,” Matilda whispers. She inches forward, lips parted, fingers curling around the driver’s seat. Inching closer and closer to a clawlike hold on his shoulder. “Help, help. There are monsters out here.”

The breaks screech. Matilda laughs wildly as the car loses control and careens in a circle; although the blur of their spin-out snaps his attention, she can only stare at him in the mirror. She thinks of spilling blood and the taste of it and the give of flesh beneath her teeth. Slow motion midspin, she reaches up to tuck hair behind his ear. It leaves a smear of wet blood to dry in the bleached strands.

*

When the car settles and the smoking tires slide to a halt, when Lark whips around with hand outstretched and a stake retrieved from the drivers side door (amidst wrappers and receipts and condoms, for fuck’s sake), there is no one in the backseat.

There is no one on the road, either. But he swears he sees the shiny glint of a pair of eyes retreat into the tall grass on the side of the road.

He swears.

even

wc: 5.3k

Benji has never once thought oh good, it’s over. Never once had the first breath of fresh air after a skirmish — fumes and smoke and the tang of something metallic in the back of his mouth, like he’d dusted them between his molars instead of shot them from the barrel of a gun— and thought: ah, it’s done.

For some soldiers, the aftermath is the end. When the relief washes in and the adrenaline dies and the help arrives. Benji’s the help. It’s a crooked, evil phenomena: dreading the end of a fight. Crosses his wires all up in a tangle; it makes him twisted and selfish, doesn’t it, that he dreads the pause in gunfire?

But that doesn’t mean it’s ever silent, after a fight. The explosions and drumbeat of bullets and clinking of mags and spent rounds — it covered the rest of the noise.

He keeps his cool, of course. Part of the job. But if there was ever a portion that tested and stretched the limits of his composure, it was the after-noises.

He’s never thinking ah good, it’s over. He’s thinking: aw fuck, here we go.

*

Benji has the misfortune of taking something to the shoulder. Well. Relative misfortune. The other poor bastard taking cover behind an upturned stack of crates with him is a bit worse off.

“Patch me up.”

Benji winces when he turns his head. It pulls something, tugs some muscle connected to the injury. Blood bubbles up between his fingers, soaks through his glove.

Not so much as what soaks through the infantryman propped beside him. It’s a pool between them, spread out like some uncrossable, ruby-shined sea. Within it, the reflection of the noontime sun transfixes Benji. That, or he’s getting woozy.

He’s silent a beat too long; the other soldier begins to panic. He twitches all over, like he means to move. To grab Benji’s arm, his vest. Maybe he thinks he does move. Maybe, in his mind’s eye, he’s shaking Benji by the shoulders.

Maybe he really does think Benji can help. Because this is the part of the battle — the after — where Benji’s job starts. Where the little red cross on his uniform becomes a beacon, rather than a scrap of fabric with a few stitches loose.

(Benji’s only loose stitches, ever. He prides himself on that.)

But no amount of tight stitching is going to help the other injured man. Benji’s got a through and through, nice and clean. He can tell, the way the wound aches. You get enough of them, wounds that is…well, you start being able to differentiate pain. Being able to tell the difference in missing flesh, the way nerves throb a specific way for a tactical blade’s slash or shrapnel aching deep. The absences feel different. Voids, and all that.

“Patch me up!”

Benji glances up from the nasty, serrated combat knife buried handle-deep in his solar plexus. When the other soldier screams it, his whole torso shudders. That’s how Benji knows what it’s hit — getting winded after a blow to the center of the chest is shit enough. This is a bit worse. It’ll be about now that he realizes he can’t pull another breath: on cue, the soldier’s eyes pop wide. His face starts to lose color.

Benji winces as he props himself up to a kneeling position. He lets go of his own injury, gritting his teeth until he swears he feels one chip.

“Rough way of it,” Benji croaks. He’s not sure if it’s from overuse or not speaking at all; he never knows what happens, in the midst of the during. He goes someplace else. Checks out of the hotel, so to speak. Benji laughs.

“What do —you— mean—?” The infantryman wheezes. Benji wishes he knew the man’s name. But they’re all cannon fodder. Frontline first in bastards, he and this one. His name isn’t known either, or else the man would have used it.

“You’re going to die.” Benji says. With his good arm (not as bad arm, he supposes, because he can feel a nasty fucking bruise blossoming in the crook of his elbow) he reaches across to pinch the man’s eyelids wider. His pupils swim, catching Benji only for a moment before they slip away.

“I’m —no. You…medic.”

“Got a basic med kit, sure.” Benji’s focus drifts back to the wound in his chest. The man heaves a breath — one of his last few — and shudders. Another spot, one Benji hadn’t noticed until just now and one that rests unfairly close to his heart, spits a stream of crimson.

“Hurts—!”

Benji tips the man’s chin up. His head hangs back loose on his shoulders. He shivers again. Somehow, hemusters enough strength to give Benji’s wrist a claw-like grip. Benji welcomes it: the sting of nails into skin distracts from the throb in his shoulder.

“Got painkillers, yeah.” Benji pats his cheek awkwardly. No matter how many times he finds himself in this position, this gunpowder-scented bedside with none of the cool depressed indifference of a hospital room, he knows he’ll never get better at the manner. It’ll eat at him something fierce, sure. He’ll sit up and remember the exact shade of silvery flecks in this man’s eyes. But easing their final closure with kind words or comforting promises or sympathy —

Nah. He’s shit at it. Always will be.

“Got painkillers,” Benji repeats, patting the man’s cheek to stir him a bit. “But it’ll have stopped hurting by now, right? By the time I give ‘em to you, it’ll be done. It’s good to go quick, mate. Promise. You wouldn’t believe how long it takes, sometimes. ‘Sides, you got your brain intact, lucky you. All those nice chemicals of your own’ll be giving you the trip of a —”

The man’s panicked expression slips into something peacefully slack. Doped up. Benji huffs out a laugh that, were it his first time in this exact scenario, might strike him as morbid.

“Lifetime. Aw, ‘pologies. Poor choice on my part.”

Benji makes quick work of the chain around the man’s neck. The little blue tags they kit each of them out with are cheaply made. Transparent, light-catching material, maybe resin, with silver etched letters and numbers. Benji has seen them shatter when dropped. Benji has treated a man who ran chest-first into a wall on leave, crunched his tags against his chest, and needed them fished out with a pair of tweezers. He hadn’t much appreciated the Operation joke Benji’d made, during.

He leaves one of the rounded rectangles in the man’s fist, which needs to be manually closed — so he can be identified, once clean-up touches down.

The other tag he slips into his pocket. It’s the first of the afternoon, the first of this after (Benji’s beginning), but it won’t be the last. By the end of the next hour or so, a half dozen of them will clink together. He might even forget they’re there; he might only remember to take them to his lieutenant, to be transferred to records then shipping then family, the next morning when he’s tossing his trousers into the hamper to take them to the wash on base so the blood from this man’s gaping chest wound which stains his thigh and seeps warm onto his skin can be wrung out and tint the water pink —

Benji blinks. With a gentle hand cupping the back of the dying soldier’s head, he guides that fluttering, distanced gaze down to his own. He holds up the single tag on its chain.

“Rough way.” Benji repeats. He is at his usual, habitual loss for what else to say. “We’ll get it to —well, whoever. Family, or —y’know. Whoever.”

He hopes the man doesn’t slip away to his hapless fumbling. Would be a particularly shit end to his already shit day.

Once the body has gone fully limp, Benji pushes himself to his knees. He does a careful check of his surroundings. Other bodies lie amongst the rubble, some out in the open, some groaning —or dying — from their injuries just out of vision.

Benji slips the tag into his pocket. He bites his glove off, velcro strap ripping loudly but not loud enough to drown the after-noises. The etched letters of this first man are a soothing texture beneath his swiping thumb. But he can’t make out the word they spell. He never learns the man’s name.

He doesn’t want to.

*

When he discovers, after a thorough assessment of the remnants of the firefight, that he is the last of this particular squadron alive, his hands only set to shaking a little.

Benji has not been in this position before. Their leader for this mission, a stalwart and square-jawed woman by the name of Jamison— or maybe Jemison, or Jamesson — lies in a crumpled heap behind the warm exhaust of a generator. The production facility they had been tasked with protecting had come under predicted attack, but it seems as though despite all her experience she had not been able to predict the nasty, forceful blow to her skull.

Her tags get tucked alongside the others. Benji is all too aware of his own, now. They’re nestled against his chest, digging in beneath the strap of his vest. He’s the only survivor. He needs to get a working comms established; their commander’s radio has been crushed by the same weapon that had made jelly of everything above the shoulders.

He’s the only survivor. He needs to find a way to share that information. He needs to find someone to share that information with. He needs to get back to base. He needs a shower. He needs sleep. He needs—

To pay attention.

His gut moves him. He has no control of his muscles, so it must be instinct. Instinct: one single breath to his right, behind a corner. Instinct: the swivel of his hip. Instinct, the steadying placement of one boot back, braced to mitigate the momentum that pushes him back as he catches a swinging weapon by its handle.

It’s instinct that uses both arms to yank his assailant off their feet. But it’s Benji, his shoulder and the pain that comes with this life-saving motion, who screams.

He stumbles with the shock of it. Like lightning. His palm bruises and cramps. HIs whole arm goes limp as it sizzles white-hot up his forearm, wraps his bicep, and settles like a shard of pure electricity in the oozing hole in his shoulder.

“Fuck!” Benji gasps as he falls. Embarrassingly, right on his arse.

“Fuck you!” The weapon-wielder yells back.

It shivers him with déjà vu.

Benji has the sensation of someone looming over him, someone holding him to the ground with a fist in his vest; he has the sensation of instinct and adrenaline seeping from him hand-in-hand. His gut coils weak once more, no longer offering him any help in the face of danger. He’s lost more blood than he realizes. And with that realization comes another:

He’s the last left. There will be no one to deny him painkillers. No one to joke about his assigned method of departure, rough way. No one to tuck his tag in his fist. No one to take it back to base, to identify be identified, to be sent home.

“Benji.” Benji says. He says it. Not instinct. It’s written on his tag. But he wants them to know.

There’s a long pause where he imagines the graceful arc of the weapon he’d briefly caught. He imagines it cutting through the air. He imagines whatever it is burying itself in his skull. Imagines the mess.

Benji blinks his eyes open (when had he squeezed them shut?) and stares, for a moment, blankly.

“Oh shit.”

“Oh.” He breathes. And then, for some reason, he smiles. “Oh shit.”

*

“It’s still cute.”

Benji’s scowl turns into a proper wince; Xavier winds the bandage around his shoulder too tight. He’s not as practiced at this — maybe not at all. And Benji had refused to touch the little bottle of painkillers in his kit.

It felt wrong. He — it just was wrong.

So he bites his knuckle the whole time Xavier tends to him. While the wound is cleaned, while its packed (squeamishly, which is admittedly charming), while a firm hand pulls the strip of white cotton tight, tight, tight.

“Sorry?” He’s still delirious. Head swimming from the blood loss, the wind-down of medical trauma. Of endorphins running out. Of—

(the flash of the warehouse, bodies strewn, guns smoking, the after-noises, the man’s rolling eyes)

“Your name.” Xavier insists. "It's still cute."

He looks no worse for wear; almost as if he hasn’t been in the midst of it at all, aside ruffled hair and a sweat-slicked face. There are circles under his eyes, but then again, Benji hasn’t seen a set without them in quite some time. He just hasn’t been close enough to the enemy (which is what Xavier is, his mind insists) to see how they’d been faring.

Not as bad, if Xavier’s chipper, toothy grin and color-flushed face are anything to go by. They’re not, Benji knows. He is by definition an anomaly. Not of this place, this world, and certainly not the standard by which other battle-pallid faces and distanced eyes should be judged against.

I need a fucking nap, Benji thinks, because his thoughts are rapidly unspooling. He keeps his mouth shut to keep them from escaping that way.

But Xavier nudges him. Friendly like, an elbow to his undamaged shoulder. It jostles enough to hurt, but its numb enough now that he can grit his jaw to it.

“Remember? We ran into each other before.” Xavier snorts. “You threw a gun at me. Kind of stupid.”

“Out of ammo.” Benji defends. “What else am I s’posed to do, I see a big bastard like you comin' at me?”

He pretends not to notice how Xavier’s chest puffs at that, even though it wasn’t a compliment.

“Run, maybe. Although that doesn’t always help.”

“Didn’t.” Benji says. He gestures at the massive gore-slicked hammer propped against a crate adjacent to the position they’ve taken; Xavier had pulled him away from the open-air warehouse floor into a smaller room. Managerial, if he were to guess from the monitors and upended bullet-riddled file cabinets. There are probably useful documents in there he ought to go through and save, bring back for intel.

But Xavier’s smiling. There’s something off about it, a twist that isn’t charming or jovial that hints at a dark few future hours; Xavier had been the only survivor of his crew, too.

“Well, us either. A few of those guys were assholes, though, so —“

Benji laughs incredulously at the awful implication of that.”What, so they deserved it?”

Xavier’s laugh smears right off his face. His eyes do a funny thing: distance and blur.

“Some of them.” He intones quietly, voice dark and monotone. Benji hasn’t known him long enough (doesn’t know him at all!) to determine if that’s uncharacteristic. Given their last encounter, it might be.

And just as quickly it appeared, its gone. Xavier straightens up to his full height, which is fucking up there, and snaps the clasp of Benji’s now-empty med kit shut. He pats it twice, pauses, pats it again. Then tucks it carefully inside Benji’s pack before zipping that shut, too.

“There we go. You’re all set.” He kneels down again. He’s so tall their faces don’t nearly align, but when he tilts his head its just about there. “Are you going to tell people I kissed it better?”

His breath drifts over Benji’s face. It smells sweet, like fruit flavored candy. It also smells like blood; he has a cut on the inside of his mouth somewhere that still leaks, turns the delicate pink between his white teeth a fresh, deranged red.

“I’m not going to tell anybody anything.” Benji says. He doesn’t say it because he’s nervous there’s a threat underlying a smile that is, by all visual clues, absolutely threatening. He says it because —

He says it because he wants Xavier to know he can be trusted. That this isn’t just another good deed, another favor. It isn’t happenstance. A moment of weakness; of mercy. Two’s a pattern. He says it because telling Xavier: if we see each other again —

No. He can’t say that.

Something beeps on Xavier’s person. He pats his chest, then his breast pocket. From there, he pulls a tablet. Or what looks like one. Its transparent screen is peculiarly thin. With the blue glow and digital beeps, Benji gets the impression that its technology is incredibly advanced. Futuristic, even. Certainly nothing he’s ever seen.

And that too is something he should act on: he should pull his side piece from its thigh holster and level it at Xavier’s pale forehead (where a cluster of freckles thins in the center, from brown to nearly his skin tone). He should pull the trigger. He should take the tablet, he should find out if Xavier has tags of his own, he should take the documents, he should turn them all in —

Instead, Benji reaches up and taps his knuckle against the back of the tablet’s screen.

“Tell your mum ‘hullo’ for me, yeah?”

Xavier blinks. And then he laughs, wild and delirious — just how Benji feels.

*

He has no need for them and has never believed in the workings of the universe to as enchanted a level as they require, but the fact that Benji makes it back to base is nothing short of a miracle.

A narrow escape of two enemy patrols. Sliding down a muddy hill (because of course the rain started up) into a drainage ditch. The ambient temperature isn’t too low, but Benji’s injured. And the water is thigh-deep. And the shock of it is enough that he gasps and goes cold all over.

And it should be there they find him, blue in the lips and gray in the face and dead, tag tucked in his own fist and thumb pressed so hard to the name it etches into skin instead of cheap plastic.

It is there they find him. He just isn’t dead.

His lieutenant claps him hard on the back. It’s his injured side. The gauze has, again miraculously, avoided soaking through with the disgustingly muddy runoff that coats the rest of him.

Perhaps because it was wound too tight.

“At ease, mate.” Quinn barks. The rest of the pick-up squad gathers around them. Some start to ask questions — who’s with you, where are the rest, where’s the commander, how’d you bloody do it, private? — but the lieutenant creates a barrier between Benji’s listless, tired gaze and the rest of them.

“Now how have you managed this time, Benj?”

He doesn’t know Benji’s injured. But the squeeze he puts to that wound on his shoulder feels deliberately harsh. Any other time, the informal touch and it’s proximity to affection might stir something in his gut. But whatever heat that could be there has been eaten up to fuel its instinct, instead.

Instinct that had saved him. Instinct that had wandered him blindly through the warehouse and right into the path of —

Benji doesn’t pass out until they have him on the medical transport. But he comes awful close to it then.

“Miracle, sir.” He chirps.

*

It turns out he has a bit of internal bleeding near his spleen. And a concussion. Shoulder-shot is baby shit, so some of the others say. Plenty of them are duty served enough to be ninety percent scar tissue. Benji doesn’t want to go that way. He’d like to be mostly intact when he goes. But more and more, he’s realizing that is a privileged afforded to very few in this line of work.

He spends four days in recovery. A week in post, another on desk duty. He eats up as much of the free time as he can doing things he ought to enjoy. Puzzles. Shooting the shit with some of the other injured, still recovering from missions past. Going over strategy and intelligence with the lieutenant, even though its not information he should be privy to and only knows because its offered under less than professional circumstances.

Benji thinks of the dead man’s rolling eyes on both of those occasions, when they come up.

“Sorry.” He pulls away, feigning a wince. The lieutenant’s quarters are darkened with only the orange glow of a distant desk lamp to illuminate them. Benji faces away from it; there isn’t enough light to show the deceit twisting that expression. “Still sore. Thought I could —“

“Tough through it?” Quinn finishes for him, broad chest under his palm rumbling with a laugh that he finds pleasant. It feels good to touch. To be touched; that’s why he’s here. It’s always why he is. Benji gets too much of the after-noise. The clutching of his wrists, of his vest. The begging. Patch me up. Patch me up.

That’s the real reason he returns to his own quarters, gut icy with something he’s scared to name.

“No need, mate. Go get your shut eye. Need you functioning anyway.”

*

Before he slips under his own covers, in his own room, Benji takes his tags off. The chain tinks against the end table’s edge, and the last thought he has before sleep pulls him under is a fearful one:

Don’t shatter. Don’t shatter. I don’t have tweezers on me. I can’t pull the pieces out. What if it cracks right along my name? Who will know?

*

He’s cleared for the next mission. And just like the previous, things go south very quickly.

Patterns, he’s thinking, lip tucked between his teeth as he patches up a particularly nasty gash. It’s not serrated, or else the damage would be worse — this one had been unfortunate enough to take the blade between clavicle and armpit. It will be a slow heal. It will sting like a bitch. Itch like one, too. But the wound’s recipient seems no worse for this shared information, when Benji informs him of it.

Benji wonders if Xavier is ever worse for the wear. If he’s capable. Even carved up, exhausted. Both of them separated from their respective squads, hunkered up in the same rotted-wood cabin in the middle of nowhere; he should be wary, tired, exhausted, teeth pulled back defensive.

Except when Benji had stumbled into the decrepit old shed, he’d only —

He’d only smiled.

(“Knew it. We were totally due for another one.”)

That jolliness has faded only slightly the longer Benji spends, carefullydisinfecting the edges before pinching the skin together to stitch. He takes his time. He takes time he hasn't got to spare.

“Hurt?” Benji asks, eyebrows pulling in when Xavier shakes his head. “Mate, fuck off. Looks like it does somethin’ fierce. I’ve got pills—?”

Xavier squeezes his eyes shut. The smile slips and then plasters back in place, more plastic-stiff than a moment before.

“You nursed me back to good health, doc.” Xavier somehow manages to purr, despite his obvious state and rough-edged voice. “I’m okay. I can get back. We’re not even, though. So next time—“

“No.” Benji says. He isn’t sure what he’s denying; that they’ll meet again, that they’ll tend to something open and raw and bleeding on the other, that there will be a next anything.

There shouldn’t.

“But we’re two-one. You have to get me back.” Xavier sticks his lower lip out, puppy-eyed and sweet. “Just one more favor?”

Benji winds the gauze too tight around his midsection and yanks the shirt back down over his torso. He’s very professional about it. His gaze does not wander. He does not linger, does not press firm to heaving ribs and note the jump of Xavier’s body beneath him. Not just the movement of breath, a pained gasp, but — but —

“Fuck you.” Benji says, but it doesn’t have the intended effect.

Xavier just smiles.

*

“What?”

Benji isn’t in his bed on base. He sits upright, and the sheets drift off him like water. There and then gone.

He feels his lungs move, his lips part.

There’s a laugh on the other side of the room. He’s suddenly feverish. Sweat sticks to him, his chest heaving with desperate breaths. When a hand flattens to the center of it, right above his solar plexus, it slips like he’s slicker with something other than sweat.

“You woke up, like, all panicked. And went ‘who will know?’. Fucking spooky.” A laugh. “Weird.”

Benji opens his eyes, then. Except — he’d noted the clock on the wall, the second pair of shoes kicked off by the door to his room, so his eyes had already been open…hadn’t they?

There are no windows in his room on base, just four bland gray walls. But he feels a breeze — a stirring of fabric, like curtains in the summer—-

Benji sits up again. His head swims and everything goes funny, colorful.

“What?”

He glances to the side. He’s not in his room. He’s not in his bed, on base. He leans over the side of the mattress. The sheets slip from him like water, and pool on the ground.

Benji realizes he rests on a shitty, thin futon. Right on the ground. It’s been nudged into the corner of the room — the room being a spare. Mostly empty, devoid fo decoration in a house that shares both those qualities. He hasn’t had the time to do much with it, other than agonize over the debt he now runs with his sister.

Debts, the thought drifts airily around him like a physical thing. Two-one. Patterns.

His head swims when he turns it the opposite direction, towards the window on the north side of the room. He’s not on base — there are no rooms. He’s in the house, and he’s with—

Xavier stands against the sunlight that pours in. He fades at the edges, wispy and gold, shimmering like a cartoon oasis. When he finally stands in front of Benji (head tilted and towering, like that high-noon triage in the warehouse weeks ago), he plots out the light. And as he drops to his knees, scooting so that Benji has no choice but to lie back against the mattress, the room is less bright than it was a moment before.

“You talk in your sleep.” Xavier says. He reaches towards the back of his neck, triceps flexing in a distracting enough manner that it draws Benji’s focus there. He pulls a black, sweat-slick shirt off himself slowly; Benji is incapable of doing anything but watch as each pale inch of skin is revealed.

“Do I?” He asks, throat dry.

“Yeah. Wasn’t expecting it.” Xavier smiles and leans over him, braced on stiff arms. He winces; the pull of his brow is cute. “It’s cute.”

Benji laughs. His hand is suddenly full of warm, smooth skin. Xavier doesn’t look pained this time, as he slides that hand up and down prominent ribs. The gnarly blade has barely left its mark; where it had torn him open, there’s barely a scar.

“We shouldn’t. We probably shouldn’t.” Benji says. It stirs a strange feeling in him, something close to familiarity.

“Not your type?” Xavier laughs. It’s that mad and unhinged thing. It doesn’t quite fit the moment. “Bullshit.”

Benji hasn’t the brain power to react to the ego-driven quip with anything but a gasp. Xavier flattens over top of him, a graceful roll of their bodies together. The sheets are back on him; Xavier pulls them off, the last barrier. He’s warm against Benji, pressed chest-to-chest. Smiling that quirked, strange smile. Not soft at all. Benji wonders if it ever softens — and then he wonders nothing at all.

They’re kissing — in the middle of it, suddenly. There’s no build up, but it feels languid as though they’ve been doing it for some time. Xavier’s broad hand, fist clenched like it had been around the handle of that hammer, rests on his chest. The other has wedged between their bodies, is nudging the sheets off, is pushing Benji’s sleep pants down his thighs, is —

Xavier stops kissing him, pulls back just enough to pant against his face. He smells sweet, like he’d just had his body weight in candy floss before they’d gotten to this point. Up until this point, he’s been kissing close-mouthed and shy. But when their cocks touch, squeezed sweetly in together Benji’s hand now, not his, the force of those kisses becomes something else entirely.

The more their hips rock together, skin dragging deliciously, the firmer Xavier’s mouth. He skates kisses across Benji’s jaw, leads teeth down his neck, and then stops to press his forehead to Benji’s chest. To watch.

“Guess I am, huh?” Xavier pants. His voice is soft and humored. Benji laughs about that, shaking his head — that’s something about the other man he’d noticed right away. The sweet, boyish hint of ego laced in every word.

It’s sticky and hot, sweat on his temples and dripping onto Benji’s chest, his cheek. He licks his lips and tastes salt. Tastes metal. When Xavier throws his head back and moans softly, his teeth are bloody.

The beginning of the orgasm tightens his stomach then, a warmth spreading in a swirl beneath his belly button. His thighs flex, calves squeezing enough that a cramp zips up his leg.

“Two-two.” Xavier sighs, face buried in his neck. His hand has wedged between them again, is pulling Benji just the way he likes, with the grip and rhythm he prefers when he’s close, he’s close—

Being pulled from the dream is a fist to the gut.

*

Benji jerks awake with a noise that startles him even more.

His shoulder is still tenderly healing, and now it’s properly sore: that arm is lifted at an uncomfortable angle, maybe has been for awhile. His fingers are tight in his hair, fisted in a clench so severe the joints ache. Benji has little to no warning as both consciousness and orgasm split him in separate, abruptly dizzying directions.

“Fuck,” he grunts, a soft whine slipping alongside the shocked expletive. It’s a longer one than he’s used to; it leaves his hips twitching and abdomen heaving for a good while after the last bit of release cools on his stomach.

He lays there, breathing hard, staring up at the perforated ceiling of his room on base.

Benji turns his head to the side. His tags rest in a tangled heap; he’ll have to pick the knot apart at first-call breakfast. In the dark, he can’t make out the letters of his name. He knows they’re there, etched into the rectangle.

He doesn’t drift off again for another hour. He’s too awake, once he’s pulled himself into the bathroom to wash off the mess, once he’s pulled the scratchy sheet off, once he lays there, shivering and staring up at the ceiling.

The lack of tiredness starts to frustrate him. Benji reaches up and squeezes his shoulder. To the healing divot of new, pink skin Benji presses his thumb, harder, harderharderharder. Until it hurts, until it’s electrifying, until he has to scowl and shut his eyes and think of something else to distract. Some way for his mind to wander around the pain, some distraction—

Benji relents his grip. He turns onto his uninjured side. He dreams of curling into a ball on his thin futon in an otherwise empty room.

*

He gets exactly four hours and eleven minutes of sleep. His eyes are red-rimmed and underscored with purple shadows the next morning, when he sits across from his lieutenant, when he is briefed on another mission

I need to pack extra in the kit this go around, Benji thinks, blinking sleepily. Just in case. Really. Just in case.

The lieutenant, perhaps mistaking his tired stare for something of secretive interest, smiles back at him. A second later, a slip of paper is passed beneath into his stiff fingers. Benji unfolds it across his lap to read:

functioning?

When his eyes lift, the lieutenant’s sear into him. Benji lifts a flat palm and wiggles it.

So-so.

jlb + mgc

wc: 5.3k

It's nearly midnight when he realizes it.

Their flat is sparsely decorated, but as the thought comes to him (a sudden zip of clarity right through his otherwise fuzzy-tired brain, the movie’s shit after all) Maran nearly upends the cute potted plant and several knick-knacks on the coffee table.

“‘Ey!”Benji yelps. His reflexes are somehow quick enough to keep Maran mostly on the couch as he tosses himself upright and catch the little wooden bobble before it hits the floor and, most likely, snaps. “S’from Saha.”

Maran ignores him, because the realization has coalesced into something nastier. An unfurling anxiety in his chest. A snap of cold, unpleasant fear.

If I don’t — If I don’t — he thinks. And what follows is yet another barrage; a worst-case scenario slideshow, mightwhatifmaybe twisted into ugly reality. Or, as real as it gets in his head.

Maran sits even straighter and then curves forward with a groan. “Oh, shit.”

Instead of winding an arm around his shoulders and offering a word of comfort, Benji kicks at Maran’s legs to make room again on the couch. They’d been a bit tangled up but comfortable. His best friend seems to be prioritizing the return of that specific comfort. Rather than…

Palm flat over his chest, Maran groans again. “M’gonna have a heart attack.”

“Shuddup.” Benji drawls, socked foot wiggling under Maran’s thigh for the warmth. “Course you fuckin’ start up during the only good part of this shit.”

“Benji, this is serious.”

In the blue light of the living room, technicolors from their movie washing little flashing patterns over his face, Benji’s dark eyes look pretty. And the sight of them is so familiarly comforting that Maran slumps a bit, feels himself relax. Not all the way. Almost.

Benji’s sleepy gaze tracks around his face for a second — searching — before it narrows.

“Prick.”

“Dickhead.” Maran seethes back, nudging his legsoff the couch. “I’m having a crisis.”

“Bit more quietly, yeah?” Benji tilts his head at the screen once more. There’s a nasty little curl to his mouth. “Said this part—“

They’ve seen this movie about a hundred times. It’s Thursday, third week of the month, and that’s their night — Benji keeps a busy schedule with studies and his on-campus job, and Maran’s got his own gig no matter how ill-paying or illegal). Besides being flatmates, they’re rarely in it at the same time. Sometimes the only times they see each other for a week are if they both end up at the lads’ place.

Thinking about it makes Maran feel a bit bitter for the good ol’ days. When summers felt like a proper holiday, schedules didn’t have to be worked around.

Maran leans forward abruptly and turns the television off. Benji blinks at it. Then he sighs. Then he digs his heel beneath Maran’s knee until it hurts.

“Well? Out with it, please.”

“Haven’ttakenBenoutyet!” Maran pulls his face from his hands to blurt.

They stare at one another. He no longer feels as though his heart’s going to explode from his chest, leave a little smoking hole. But it hurts. It hurts, still.

“You go out for food all the time.” Benji says. His brow is knit. “And you make him go to the skate park with you. And that time you wanted to go to the trampoline place. And the pool, yeah? Movies—“

“That was before.” Maran insists.

Before: soft touches under an elbow or to the small of his back that made him pause. An unpracticed but lovely smile across a loud party. The excited little snap of familiarity when their eyes met and passed a wordless joke.Before Maran even knew that it could feel like that. A stomach’s tight wind. The scratch of stubble on his neck, or how nice it was to fit together at the same height, or waking up to arms wound around his stomach and—

“That was before.” He repeats. “It didn’t count. Plus, those aren’t always dates.”

From the corner of his eye, he notices Benji’s face wash with confusion.

“But…they are, sometimes?”Now it’s his turn to sit upright. “So what makes — well, ok. So say—“

“We’re gettin’ off topic.” Maran declares, standing from the couch to put hands on his hips. “You’re s’posed to keep me in check and here I am being the world’s worst boyfriend?”

“You’re the worst of a lotta things.” Benji says wryly. “M’sorry if I can’t keep track of ‘em all.”

Maran smacks his fist into his palm, ignoring the dig (quite the bigger person move, if he’s asked, especially with that snide victorious grin settling over Benji how it is).

“Gotta make up for it.” He says, already planning. “Gotta be the best date ever—“

“Said that about, aw. Fuck. Whas’her name, started with a J? Took her to that green space on a hike or whatever.” Benji snickers. “And then you turn up back at ours with a leech on your arse and no girl in sight?”

Maran blinks several times then goes dead in the face, hands outstretched into claws. Benji screeches and kicks at him, arms squeezed tight to his sides, but it’s too late. Maran will not take disrespect and leave a survivor.

*

Right on the dot, quarter past five, Ben’s bedroom door swings open. He doesn’t seem shocked to find Maran sat on the edge of his messy bed; it’s where he usually is, every Tuesday and Thursday at exactly this time.

“You get into caffeine?”

“No.” Maran replies immediately. He glances down at his wringing hands, a tapping foot. “Hm. No.”

Ben, from where he’s paused in the doorway, laughs. It makes Maran’s cheeks flood a little, although it’s no different or more suggestive than it usually is. It’s just — it’s a very nice sound, is all. He’s always shocked to pull it as often as he does. Pleasantly, sure. Pleasantly shocked. Shocked all the same.

“Relax.” Ben meanders slow across the room, shucking his bag off his shoulder to thump loudly to the floor. He leans a bit as he slips between Maran’s knees, parting them to accommodate. “I believe you.”

The flush gets warmer. Warm still when Ben cups his cheeks and tilts his face up for a slow, soft kiss.

When it ends, Maran blinks up at him with heavy lids that almost refuse to open again.

“You gonna ask me if I h-had a good day?”

Maran cannot look away from the pink flush around his mouth, up his cheeks. “Huh?”

Ben shakes him a little, then shoves him backwards onto the bed with a palm to the forehead. “Precious. Precious fuckin’ baby.”

Maran sits up on his elbows. He’s trying to remember what he was here for, sitting there eagerly (anxiously) waiting to announce. Except. Ben’s doing his post-class declothing. Boots kicked off, shirt unbuttoned, jeans snapped to scratch below his stomach, belt shhhfing as it’s pulled half out of the waistband —

Maran cannot look away.

“Y-you get your brain eaten today or what?” Ben teases, in front of him once more. He sounds pleased though, a bit shy; he’s noticed the close-watch perusal. He’s enjoying the attention.

“You look nice.” Maran says, slipping hands up the back of his thighs. His fingers brush soft, warm skin either side of his spine (curved a bit, from sitting in the lab stools for several hours) and dig in enough that Ben makes a noise and stumbles forward. “Keep that on?”

Ben’s eyebrows quirk towards the ceiling, a nasty smirk lifting his whole face. “Oh, for like—?”

“I thought,” Maran starts, and then bites his lip.

The sentence is there, right on the tip of his tongue, but Ben’s looking at him. Eyes soft, cheeks also a little warm, hands making a gentle sweep down and up Maran’s skull. He loses his train of thought entirely. But he wants those words out. He wants it to be special.

He wants.

Maran swallows and tucks his face into the familiar, clean smell of laundry. Ben doesn’t usually wear undershirts, so each side of his button up parts at each junction. Maran’s nose tucks into the folds of fabric, finds skin. He presses closer, arms tightening.

“I thought we could go on a date.” Maran says. Except he isn’t sure if that’s loud enough. If he’s heard. And there are certain things that he’s needed Ben to hear. That he’d like to take them on a good, proper first date is one of them. There are more serious things he’d like to say — scary ones — but here seems a good start. If he can fucking get it out. He’s never had trouble like this before. Or, maybe people had been kind to lie otherwise.

“I mean.” Maran lifts his face and tries for definitive. “We’re going on a date, so leave that, yeah? You look nice.”

Ben stares down at him.

*

By the time they’ve made their way down to the lot, most of that usual smarmy confidence Maran’s such a fan of has returned. He gets crowded up against the stairwell door, hand wound around th back of his neck for the kiss Ben’s eager energy insists on. And he’s stopped again at the car, pinned against the drivers side door by the hips. Ben does his best to make a proper mess of his neck.

When Maran flattens hands to his chest, he really does mean to push him gently away. Just enough to breathe a second, collect his thoughts — he’s always swimming in them, with Ben this close. Everything goes nice and soft and fuzzy.

“Hold on—“ he tries, but he’s laughing and Ben knows he doesn’t mean it fully, so teeth return to his neck after a brief pause. He gasps, back arching off the window when five firm fingers press into the valley of his spine. They roam a bit further, both hands greedy over either side of his tailbone; Maran tips his head back and makes eye contact with the camera attached to the light pole above them.

The sky above is muddy grey, washed light with the noon sun fighting to come out. It’s not ideal weather for what Maran has planned, and it’s not ideal that there’s a little red light blinking, but he —

Maran shivers then, eyes fluttering at the black lens. He imagines briefly what it must look like, from that perspective. Arms tight over broad shoulders, hanging on deliriously, Ben’s messy hair beneath his fingers — holding him where he is as much as trying to reign it all in a bit.

“Hold on.” Maran tries again, throat bobbing with a swallow. He sounds serious this time. He is serious this time; Ben relents immediately. Not without leaving a wet, noisy kiss right to the center of his throat. And he doesn’t step back all the way, not cold turkey. They haven’t had long to establish those sorts of things, the important things he calls them, but Ben knows him well enough by now. Well enough that an immediate retreat isn’t what Maran needs, even if he’s asking for space.

It feels better to breathe hard together, chests touching as well as hips (and lower, he tries very hard not to think about).

“This could be the d-date.” Ben tries, nose tucking briefly to Maran’s jaw before he slinks a separation of a few centimeters between their bodies. His foot is still firmly between Maran’s, keeping them close.

“Huh?”

Ben laughs. He jerks his head towards the backseat, tongue tucked between his teeth. “I’m pretty cheap. Push some of that onto the floor and we’re in b-business.”

Maran’s fuzzy thoughts clear up a bit at his tone; he doesn’t stop to interrogate the joke, though. Ben’s diverting. He knows why. Well. At least a bit. A date isn’t exactly what Ben’s used to, self-admittedly. And that’s part of the reason—

“Distractin’ me.” Maran teases, loosening his grip around broad shoulders to rest his wrists loose at the base of Ben’s neck. “You’re so fuckin’ mad I’m not telling you shit.”

Ben scowls at him, dropping the suggestive expression. “I hate surprises.”

Maran nudges him away enough that he can slip into the driver’s side. Technically, he should only ever be a passenger — he’s got no papers, no visa anymore. Matilda had drawn him a little stick figure on a scrap of paper, framed with his name and a nonsense series of numbers. Trust me this is legitimate, had been written in her proper, pretty scrawl underneath.

Ben doesn’t have to know all that, though. For as much as Maran’s told him, he’s got a temporary permit and he’s up to date on all the paperwork.

Instead of rounding the car and going in the normal way, Benny crawls across Maran’s lap and the center console. It’s a moment of scuffling and laughter and hands groping places they really don’t have to be, for the whole process of settling into the passenger seat.

Ben coasts that sneaky hand up his knee as he starts the car, tucking fingers between his thighs. Maran’s eyes go a bit funny, staring straight ahead while that touch moves slowly up and down his jeans seam.

“You’re going to make me—“

Blond eyebrows snap up. The touch goes higher, palming him properly. “Oh, that right? Already?”

“Crash!” Maran insists, cheeks flaming. His skull falls back against the headrest when the teasing squeeze doesn’t stop. “Ben.”

“You haven’t even s-started the car.”

He laughs. He doesn’t feel like laughing. He feels like — “I won’t at this rate.”

“Oh no.” Ben coos, leaning across the console to get properly in his face. Their noses almost brush so Maran glances away, snorting, but he follows. Cranes his neck, lifts up, puts weight on Maran’s thigh to bring their faces together again. His mouth dries up a little. “Oh nooo. That would be so awful. Very very b-bad.”

“Why are you bein’ evil.” Maran whines. The car hums, pleasantly familiar. They’ve fallen asleep under the stars in here. Gone to drive-ins, which Maran is sort of obsessed with. And yeah, like Ben’s trying to get a repeat performance, spent time in the cramped back. More than the soft twist of arousal behind his navel, Maran thinks of the security. The intimacy, the closeness. It’s nice like a messy room. Nice like waking up to fingers stroking his cheek. Nice like a blanket tucked under his legs for a movie, like the last fry handed off with a fond sigh, like —

“We’re doing a date.” Maran asserts. He snaps back into motion, taking Ben’s wrist and offering his knuckles a parting kiss before squaring him away on his own side of the vehicle.

Ben looks cute battered like that, eyes wide and lips parted. It makes Maran’s knuckles on the wheel a bit tighter than they ought to be; he drives slower than he might otherwise, thinking of that paper tucked in his wallet and his clammy palms.

*

When they pull into the grocery store lot, Ben’s huffy about being made to wait in the car.

“I’ll be quick.” Maran promises chipperly, leaning down to peer inside. Ben’s face is contrite. It makes him so cute, so Maran tells him as much.

“Yes p-p-please.” Icy eyes roll up and away. Ben peers across the heat-shimmering asphalt, arms crossed. “Cigarette counter guy always hits on you.”

Maran barks out a laugh at the absurdity of that. “You’re on something.”

His boyfriend — still a novelty, to even think that title — turns back towards the window. “He does. F-Fucker.”

“Then why you comin’ here? Perfectly good gas station nearby.”

Ben’s mouth twists. “Because I like t-talking about you when I pick up a fresh pack. So he knows.”

Maran blinks. Imagines that scenario, for second. Maybe: Ben, still sleep-soft and grumpy from realizing he’s run out of smokes, strolls in looking like the asshole he’s about to be. He could ask for specifics, for quotes but it’s more fun imagining what Ben might say. Maybe he compliments Maran. Makes a suggestive, early-morning like reference. Something about having just seeing him. If he outright shares the label they’ve decided on. Maybe he calls Maran boyfriend.

And then, blush returning, Maran imagines he just plainly says: yeah, that guy? I know that guy. We’ve got a date later. We’re together. Me and him. Me and Maran.

Maran swallows. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

He goes to turn away, but one step is as far as he gets. Ben snags him by the wrist and pulls. Maran, still a bit in his head with the fantasy scenario of being flaunted, doesn’t expect the strength of it. He stumbles and catches himself against the door.

Ben leans out of the window, sunglasses pushed down his nose. The way he peers up at Maran, the way his pink mouth pulls up at the corner, the track of shrewd eyes around Maran’s face, then down his neck where his shirt comes away from his chest —

“I’ll m-miss you.” Ben teases. “Be quick.”

Maran usually stops to chat the nice old woman that works in produce. He usually lingers at the cigarette counter, where he usually pays. Except this time, arms full of an outdoor blanket and food and drinks and a wicker basket, he uses the self-check aisle and tries not to make blushing eye contact with the camera.

When he returns to the car, Ben’s pushed the passenger seat back. He’s dozing, even though Maran had been quick. The summer sun barely cuts into the interior, but enough of it slices across his cheek. When he hears Maran approaching, the bags’ rustling giving it away, he turns his face.

Maran pauses for just a second when their eyes slide together. Then he grins and tries to shake off the too-big shivery feeling that tingles up his scalp.

“No peeking.” He insists.

Ben grins.

*

He’s got an old plaid scarf from the early spring still tucked in the side door. He gestures for it and, as they pull out of the lot, instructs Benny to use it like a blindfold.

“Oh.” Ben breathes. Maran has his eyes on the road, or else he’d see the strange, vulnerable shift of his expression. “Oh, it’s that kind of d-date, huh?”

Maran laughs, even if that bubble of anxiety is working its way back up his core. At the next red light, he watches Ben fix it around his eyes. His pale hands come up in a tada gesture once he’s done. And Maran has to focus on driving again, knuckles white on the wheel— because there is something there, seeing the peek of his suggestive smile.

And it’s that — a smile. Not a nasty, sneaky grin. No watery, insecure sneer. It’s soft at the edges. There’s a bit of pink to his skin, right at the edge of the scar. Ben’s blushing, and he’s smiling a real one because he’s having fun and he feels— and Maran is—

The car swerves. Maran swears, jerks them back into the center of the lane.

“Jesus.” Ben laughs, his hand shot out to grab Maran’s knee. “What the fuck?”

“Cut off!” Maran lies, giggling high and tight. “Oh, shit. Some fucker — uh. Wow. Asshole!”

*

The park’s gravel drive crunches under tire as they pull up the serpentine path. Windows down, fresh summer air flowing and fresh. Ben taps fingers to the tune of the song on the radio, a steady rhythm on Maran’s knee that fulfills his itchy need to fidget by proxy.

“Are we out in the w-woods?” Ben asks, head tilting towards the window.

“A little,” Maran acquiesces.

“I won’t hike.”

“You don’t have to hike.”

“I won’t do it.”

Maran puts the car in park and then leans across to yank a strand of blond hair chastisingly. “You don’t have to, Ben, c’mon. It’s only a short walk.”

“How short?”

“Ten minutes, maybe.”

Ben drops his head back with a groan, as if Maran has just admitted to sentencing him to walk the fucking plank.

Dramatic, he thinks fondly. His touch slips down over Ben’s scarf-covered cheekbone, fingers curling under his scratchy jaw.

“I’m going to make you carry everything too.”

“What is this? A date, or some fucked up labor m-march?” Ben leans closer into where he figures Maran must be, only slightly off the mark. It’s cute how his focus is a bit to Maran’s left. “You t-taking me out in the woods to like, dig my own grave or something?”

“Ben.”

There’s a beat of silence. “That’s kind of hot, actually, like— the d-danger—“

“Ben.” Maran laughs. He twists the keys off and drops them into Benny’s lap with a shake of his head.

*

Maran leads him to the quiet little glade he and Lark had found, last time they’d been out this way. It’s just shy from the path — only five minutes into a random direction. There’s still an abandoned red glove marking the way.

(“She won’t miss it.” Lark had promised him when he’d stuck it on the branch. “She’s got so many pairs of gloves she won’t even notice it’s gone.”)

Ben’s confidence and easy enjoyment of their afternoon drops slightly. The energy cuts through the air like something palpable, touching cool to the nape of Maran’s neck. He’s been made to stand, sighing and grumbling impatiently, while Maran sets up the contents of their mini feast on the blanket.

“Ok, you fuckin’ prick. You can take it off now.”

“You’re going to be naked, right?”

Maran drops onto the blanket with a snort. “For fuck’s sake— just take it off, Ben.”

Ben paws at the back of his head. “Alright, fine. But just because you sound hot making demands—“

He squints against the sunlight, adjusting with a silly one-eyed squint that makes Maran feel like his face is going to split in half. He’s facing just off to the side, their little picnic out of sight, so Maran has the pleasure of watching his expression shift as he turns and notices.

“Oh.”

He tries not to let that tone and the flat look on Ben’s face get to him. Instead he spreads his arm invitingly.

“What’s this for?” Ben asks. His boot nudges the blanket’s edge.

“Customary to picnics, as I understand it.” Maran says primly. He’s getting more and more anxious the longer Ben looks like that. Not — not softly amused, anymore, but — there’s no nice curve to his mouth. No sparkle of something to his gaze. Maran swallows.

“Um. Couldn’t find the brand you like.” He reaches for the six pack behind him and sets it next to the plastic platter of food. It’s cheap — he doesn’t make fancy cheese money. Groceries in the States were a fucking scam. “The website says this was close in taste? Dunno. All that shit is the same to me. And, um. not sure if you like the fruit so I’ll eat it, but I—“

Ben drifts quiet and hare-like closer to the spread of food. Maran doesn’t dare move an inch; he’s afraid to startle. He keeps his arms wrapped around his knees, chin resting between.

And eventually, Ben settles into an awkward cross-legged slouch across from him. For a spread of time, there’s no sound but the quiet, distant bird-song and ambient noise of the forest. It’s a pleasant day; out here, not even the sounds of the city or the rumble of the highway breaches its protective bubble.

“This…this wasn’t really what I had in m-mind when you said date.”

Maran’s heart careens into his stomach. “I—I know it’s lame. I don’t know. I was just thinking…I dunno. We haven’t — we kinda just jumped in, yeah?” He laughs nervously, recalling that blue-tinged night at the pool. “You know. Right in the deep end. Hah. Sorry. We can pack up—“

Ben’s hand shoots out to wrap around his ankle when he pulls it closer, meaning to tuck beneath him and stand. He’s not looking at Maran, but at the six-pack rumbling the blankets between them.

“How long have you been p-planning this?”

“Not long.” Maran assures. “Last Monday? So it’s no worries, yeah, like if you’d want to go back and do somethin’ else. Watch a movie or —y’know, just hang out like we usually do? I like that.”

He’s desperate to earn back that easy, comfortable energy. And, horrifyingly, he’s desperate not to be desperate. The collision of those two desires in him is almost a physical thing. Writhing, sort of, inside his chest.

Is the beer wrong? Are there brown bits on the fruit? Do you like a different brand of biscuits more? Y’think the blanket’s ugly? I sort of just grabbed it becuase the sticker said machine washable, and if its gonna be on the ground — well, we can reuse it for stuff — but if you hate it and this turns out to be a bad time, I don’t know if I can look at it again it’d be too embarrassing—

Ben gets to his knees suddenly, shuffling across. When pale hands cup his face, Maran pretends he can’t feel the shiver to them.

“You’re going to yap yourself s-sick.” It’s a warm tease, more than a warning.

“Fuck off!” Maran yelps, nudging his hands away shyly. Ben catches him, forces him to look once more. That swell of anxiety melts a little. Or, at least becomes a different kind, with all that attention focused directly on him. He has to shift it. Give himself a break, since Ben doesn’t seem interested.

“I— do you want to see what else I brought?”

Ben’s eyebrows hitch. But if he’s expecting more flirtatious banter, if he’s about to pull Maran into his lap…well. That would be nice, right? Maran would go, if tugged.

Instead, he fishes into the deep pocket of his hoodie — not his of course, not technically — and retrieves the mint tin he uses to hold needles and thread. He has a couple of them stowed around because tends to forget them. Or lose them. One in Matilda’s car, one in his winter jacket, one in Xavier’s. Even one tucked behind the contents of Ben’s nights that he doubts the other is aware has even been put there.

“There’s a tree over there by the creek,” Maran starts to explain, threading the needle with muscle memory as he talks. Ben looks only briefly, his focus quickly returning to Maran’s hands. “It’s got, y’know. Oh, I can’t even —” Maran snorts, touching the back of his hand to a warm cheek. “I can’t even say— well. It’s got all those initials, yeah? Like when people carve’em in.”

Ben makes a face. And he has a moment of delight, to be proven right; Maran pulls the other thing in his pocket out, holding it up for Ben to see. His boyfriend takes it, rubbing the green and brown felt between his fingers.

“Thought you wouldn’t like that.” Maran teases. “Nerd. Leave the trees alone and all. So I glued that together— I thought I’d like to take you out here when we found that on our hike. Lark and me, I mean.”

Ben’s staring at him. Maran balks a little, biting his lip, then takes his felt crafted tree back and knots the end of the thread.

“So. I — We can still do that dorky shit, right. Without makin’ that poor tree’s condition worse.”

Ben lurches forward. His palms smack audibly to Maran’s cheeks; he’s dragged forward into a firm, close-lipped kiss.

“You should put it in your lab,” Maran gasps when they part, only for the rest of the sentence to be cut off in another. He gets lost in it a bit, Ben’s thumbs digging into his cheeks to urge his mouth open. Ben shifts closer, knees on either side of Maran’s hips. He keeps them upright with an elbow against the ground, careful to keep his fist curled around the needle as not to poke either of them somewhere important.

“So everyone knows what a big fucking dork you are.” Maran teases. His voice trails off in a dry little hitch because Ben chooses then to bury his nose against Maran’s neck. His face feels hot.

“They’d never let m-me hear the end of it.”

“Your lab partner?” Maran asks. He’s heard about them, an unlikely connection that had started over particularly hard class material. It’d quickly become a fully forged friendship, even if he hesitated to call it that — all his secretive, snarky fondness.

Ben nods, but it seems more like an excuse to rub his face there.

“Well, it is kinda silly.” Maran says. “Kinda kindergarten.”

Ben pulls away slowly to look at him. He’s lovely under the green tinged forest light, especially with flushed cheeks. Quite proud of himself, he swipes a hand up and down the curve of Ben’s spine.

“I felt bad when I realized we hadn’t done this yet. Like. Gone on a proper one. And I wanted it — I want it to be special, I suppose.” Maran beams up at him. “You deserve that.”

A passing beat of silence; the birds overhead, the creek in the distance burbling, a barking dog even further no doubt accompanying its owner on their own trek. Then Ben kisses him firmly once more.

“Show me how to?”

Maran has to take a second to process that question: as Ben asks it, he rearranges himself to prop his head in Maran’s lap, legs stretched out over the picnic blanket. He toes off his boots, kicks them off to the side, and reaches for the needle and thread.

“Okay.” Maran whispers. He hands the tree over and guides pale, tattooed hands into position. If his own fingers linger, lock between them and squeeze — who could blame him? “D’you like grapes?”

Ben is a quick learner. He works diligently at the stitches as Maran points where to poke the needle through, and the letters slowly begin to form. The top of his J is a little wonky, but Maran withholds judgment; first time for everything.

“When I was a kid we didn’t get f-fruit money that often.” Ben recounts. His voice is quiet and slow in concentration, a pleasant cadence that makes Maran sink back a little on his palms. “Always got the green ones, ‘cuz they were cheaper. Hated them.”

“I got the red.” Maran says. He leans over Ben to find the plastic container.

He cracks it open. He pauses, fingers hovering over the shiny red fruit.

He wants to share how much he liked planning this out. Even if it had him dead nervous at every step over the past week, even if there were times he felt stupid and childish. Even if he imagined worse case responses, just to ready himself in the unlikelihood they’d happen: Ben laughing at him, Ben scoffing, Ben refusing to even tag along in the first place. Worse ones: that he’d sit there, staring blankly as Maran tried his fucking arse off, only to ask why hadn’t he taken them somewhere nice or why hadn’t he asked first, what if he had plans?

He’d liked going to the craft store and finding suitable colors for that felt tree. He’d liked picking out the food assortment, the bubble of anxiety and excitement as he traipsed the grocery aisles, knowing that Ben was only a few paces away waiting for him to return. And he’d like the bright smile in the car, when Ben’s usual hatred for the element of surprise had melted into something sweet and soft, just because Maran was the one delivering it.

Because he trusted. Because —

“Can I feed ‘em to you?” Maran asks quietly, ignoring the little roll of shameful humiliation that floods his cheeks at a question like that.

Ben glances up, pink in the face too, and regards him for a moment. There’s a hesitation there — a distrust, almost. Like Maran’s about to laugh and throw them across the clearing, just for cruel casual fun.

“Yeah,” Ben says instead, his voice just as soft.