They hear him coming, despite his best attempts to sneak up on them. The library is silent and empty, save for them and the night shift work-studies librarian napping in the archival room.
His footsteps aren’t loud, but the steady sound of heavy boots on the old carpet are recognizable enough to be a tell.
The hands that fold over their eyes are cold— not worryingly so, just sort of clammy— and the studded bracelet that brushes their cheek would have given him away if his footsteps hadn’t.
“Guess who,” he singsongs.
“Hi, Colton,” they chuckle.
They’d met Cole through Kacie, the latter having run into them on campus; tapping lightly on the cover of their copy of The Raw Shark Texts, then striking up a conversation about it. One conversation turned to more as they ran into one another between classes, in the library and in student services, then to getting coffee together at the half-decent café just a block or so down from campus and discussing more than literature. Cole had, at some point, joined those discussions. Dolly can’t recall when or how, just that the blond had appeared and made himself comfortable. He obviously already knew Kacie, seemed to have for some time, and had no problem picking up topics with them where his friend had left off.
The pair of them seems to do a lot of things that way; one starts and the other finishes.
It’s cute. Enviable, really.
He pulls his hands away as they crane their neck back to look, and they’re greeted by him blinking down at them, close enough to notice just how long his pale lashes were. The freckles on his cheeks. That he’d traded septum rings with Kacie since the last time they’d seen him, or else had one that matched theirs.
“Are you busy?” Of course they are. It’s the end if the semester and graduate studies are no joke. NASA didn’t take just anyone, and they needed this paper to be as good as it could be, not for the grade but to prove that they were capable of more than just derivative work. They wouldn’t be hunkered down in a fortress of rodent anatomy textbooks on a Friday night if they weren’t.
That, of course, assumed they didn’t keel over from stress before then.
“I thought you were going to see that girl from the geology department, help her set up for the party,” they deflect. They had time for him. Even if they didn’t, it would be good for them. Human interaction was good; Cole is always fun besides that.
“Party got canned,” he explains, sounding distinctly un-disappointed about the fact. He pulls their chair out just enough to drape himself across their lap, one long leg slung over them as he wedges himself between the old oak table and their body. They glance to the still-empty front desk behind them, then back to him as he lays his arms over their shoulders and around their neck.
“She got mono,” he explains with a shift of the hips that they’re sure would have been… difficult, to say the least, had they been built differently.
“Which is spread by saliva transfer,” they remind gently. They don’t think he would, he understands Kacie’s limits so well that they struggle to imagine him misunderstanding their own disability, but catching something like that could ruin everything for them. Better to be careful.
“I didn’t kiss her,” he laughs, resting his forehead against theirs, nose close to brush while his fingers play idly with the short hair at the back of their neck. “Somebody else did, and ratted her out when they went to the school clinic about it. Her sorority shuttered the party.”
It was their turn to laugh; a low pitched thing from beneath the lungs that, even coming from themselves, sounded almost comically villainous.
“So,” he draws the vowel out. “I needed something else to do.” Something they would be perfectly willing to do.
“And now you’re here.” If only he would ask. They rest their hands on his back, fingers laced politely above the hem of his jeans.
“And now I’m here,” he confirms, the corner of his mouth twitching into a smile.
“You’re here and you want something?” Ever the picture of innocence, Cole shakes his head, sending loose strands of pale hair tumbling over his shoulders.
“Nah.” He smiles. They shake their head and take the opportunity to kiss the man, unhooking their mask from the ear with one finger before leaning in.
His hands, as large as their own but considerably friendlier, curl loosely into the back of their hair. They take the same opportunity to slide their own beneath his worn t-shirt, appreciative of both the lines of his body and the soft sounds he makes when they touch them.
After a moment, satisfied by the lack of reprimand from the person meant to be watching the library at this hour, they pull him closer. Hooking their fingers into the belt loops on either side of his hips and using his wallet chain for better leverage, they pull him near-flush against them.
“Can you be quiet,” they whisper. His eyes light up.
“Yeah,” he returns with a nod, equally conspiratorial. “I can be, like, so fucking quiet.”
They bite down a laugh and pop the seatbelt button on his checkerboard belt, followed by the buttons on his fly. There’s a quiet gasp, more of an inhale through the nose really, as they slide his briefs down just enough.
“Cold,” he mumbles in reticent complaint.
“It’s December,” they inform him unsympathetically, then lean to the side to spit into their palm.
“And only for a minute,” they add, then take him in hand.
Cole sighs, unmistakably pleased, and leans in further in to rest his head on their shoulder. His warm breath, broken only slightly by his sighs, makes them shiver as it rolls down their collar.
They stroke him to hardness quickly; by the sound of his breathing, the minor shifts of his hips looking for more than they could give him here, they don’t think this will take long at all.
Which means—
He whines when they let go of him. He sits back, a confused sort of pleading in his eyes as he looks for explanation.
“Turn around for me?” He tilts his head.
“Why?”
They gesture to their torso. Specifically their sweater, a soft, plain ochre knit worn beneath a deeper brown blazer. Their shirt, ivory and beige pinstriped silk found at the same local flea market as the rest of the outfit, socks and boxers excluded, completes the ‘self important over-achiever’ image.
“This is cashmere?” He blinks.
His eyes fall down to his own body. His used-to-be-black Placebo t-shirt is unraveling at the arms, or where the arms used to be, and his jeans are more hole than denim. They slide their hands down to rest on his bare thighs through the holes.
“Dry clean only,” they offer, careful to keep their tone light. “Unless you feel like paying?”
He shakes his head.
“Do I look like I have money?” Around here? You never know. They are, after all, living off of checks from the state of California and wearing cashmere.
“That’s why you need to turn around.”
“And the table is better?” They nod.
“The table is easier to clean, should it come to that.”
“Heh,” he gives a little laugh as he flips himself around. “Come.”
Once situated comfortably, legs propped open on either side of their own, he allows himself be leant back against them. They brush along his stomach, careful of his piercing, until they feel him relax, his weight properly leant against them.
“Spit again?” They hold their hand out. He does so immediately, taking their hand and lathing his tongue across the palm. Maybe more so than needed. It can’t hurt him, but walking across campus in spit soaked jeans wasn’t exactly professional.
Then again, what about what they were doing was?
“This feels, ah,” he takes a breath, “dirtier, somehow.” They hum in consensus, picking up the same rhythm as before. Slow and steady, snug around him.
“Nothing hiding you from someone walking in, no question about what’s going on…” They let his mind fill the rest of the thought and press a kiss to the bare portion of his neck.
“Anyone could see you like this.” The words make him shiver, fingers digging into the arms of the chair. They only tease because they know he likes it.
Murmuring quiet reminders of where they are, just how public a space it is, into his ear until—
“I—uh, unless you want me to make some,” his breath hitches, “some notations on your stuff, here, you might wanna—“
They press their palm over the tip, rubbing gently as their other hand continues to work him. His hand comes up to cover theirs and they aren’t sure if it’s an effort to assist in not making a mess, or the natural reflex to hold onto something when you’re on the brink of losing control.
Motives disregarded, Cole arches back, head falling onto their shoulder and muffling his sound in the sleeve of his jacket as they work him through his climax.
They stop as he lets out a final, heavy sigh, a signal to stop before the sensation becomes unpleasant. He takes a moment to regain his breath before stretching his legs out and getting to his feet.
They lean out of the chair to grab the package of antibacterial wipes from their backpack with their un-sticky hand. Once they’re satisfactorily clean, for the moment, they offer the package to Cole, still standing before them.
He shakes his head. His face is flush, eyes dark, and though he’s tucked himself away, he’s left his belt open, pants just barely clinging to his narrow hips.
He looks good. Good enough that even if they possessed the herculean will to remain unaffected by what they’d just done, they would still be considering it.
“You sure you wanna get cleaned up already?” He shifts his weight from foot to foot. Warmed up and ready for more.
They spare a glance to their paper, waiting patiently on the table behind him to be finished. Then to him.
He’s looking for it—Christ, he just wants to find it. Has to find it. He feels the pressure building behind his eyes and refuses to acknowledge it. Can’t let himself cry any more—won’t let himself cry anymore. It’s pathetic, it’s small and weak; and everything Mbabazi had taught him not to be.
Xavier thinks of those giant, warm hands folding over his shoulders. Shaking him slightly, laughing at his own joke. Thinks of Mbabazi slipping him a chilled glass bottle of coke, the syrupy original recipe kind. The wink and the laugh, and his big barrel chest and the way he was always in perfect regulation form for uniform except he seemed to miss the buttons on his shirt.
That’s what his dad says, when they’re finally alone. James Wolffe slides paperwork around on his desk, back to his son, awkwardly hunched. He’d not said it, he’d mumbled it. Like maybe he’d not meant it to be heard, but no, Xavier knows the truth. His dad is like this. Those comments under his breath are his loudest statements. He bleeds passive aggression from his fucking pores. And with one thumb in his mouth, gnawing hard at a cuticle, Xavier tastes blood and knows, this one won’t slide.
“What did you say?” he pops his thumb from his mouth and stands from the chair wedged next to the desk.
They’re at a shitty diner, the kind with sticky floors and a tired waitress that refills the black coffee and smiles at Tino whenever she passes by. They’d gotten a booth all the way down at the end in the back, and they didn’t exactly look conspicuous; all in black, Tino in his cassock.
Without Peril, he feels exposed and vulnerable, which makes him mean. Nasty edged and a little anxious—they’re outside, with Tino, making a phone call on one of the worlds last phone booths. They’ll get burner cells tomorrow. Everything comes together.
Except Xavier and this fucking guy. They don’t come together. He sits there with a platter of fries in front of him, but arms crossed over his chest. He has thick biceps, apparent even under the black jacket he wears. Fabric strains around them—what a fucking show off. Benji, whose name is entirely too sweet and soft, for such a caustic looking man, has not said a word to him since Peril had dumped him down at this table and stepped away.
Xavier holds his terrible diner burger in both hands and takes a bite that’s too big. Makes sure to chew with almost too much effort. He licks a sauced covered tongue up over his lip and tilts his head, staring at Benji—who could get his shirts sized up or something. Could find a way to fit into clothes that didn’t make all that strength so fucking obvious. Xavier swallows his chew, clears his throat and takes a long sip from his soda.
Then he leans across the table, takes a fry off Benji’s plate and dabs it into ketchup; the fry to sauce ratio is pretty bad and when Xavier chews it up, he makes sure to keep his lips peeled back to be as stupidly disgusting as he possibly can be. Benji’s gaze is flat, his dark brows pulled in only a hair. His mouth is settling itself into a position, like he might say something. Which, good. Xavier is trying to get him to say something. Trying to get him to say something that would give Xavier an excuse.
Suddenly, Tino is there, sweeping into the seat beside Benji. Xavier makes a bit of a noise, slapping a napkin over his mouth as he slips further into the booth seat, crunching his incredibly long body up uncomfortably.
“Elbows off the table,” Tino chastises, putting his hat on the edge of the table.
“Yes, sir,” Xavier mumbles in a quiet tone as he tucks his elbows right off. His eyes flicker back over to Benji, whose mouth is now set in a deeply satisfied grin. Xavier’s chest goes hot, that flush creeping up his throat and over his cheeks. He doesn’t kick Benji, but his boot lifts and gently presses into the inside of Benji’s thigh—sort of an accident. He’d been going for the knee, but Benji also slouches.
Peril slides into the seat beside him and Xavier snaps back up straight (elbows still off the table). His lieutenant gives him a quick, furtive glance, one blond eyebrow arched slightly. It says, are you good? And Xavier cannot decide on an answer.
She catches them on the security cameras, because Nomi is always watching the security cameras. Even in her private quarters; she’s not supposed to be tapped in like that, but what are they going to do? Stop her? They’d have to notice first. So instead, Nomi sits in her chair, over abundance of monitors glowing blue in the dark. She keeps her knees tucked up, chin between them, one hand on the keyboard. She finds this easier than sleeping, the bed still freshly made, sheets tugged tight and crisp to the corners. She likes watching.
That’s how she notices that Sergeant Tillman and Corporal Wolffe are sleeping together.
He’s thinking about that stolen kiss when Peril’s hips were ground into his, the slide of their slick skin when Xavier had leaned in; their hand on his hip, his hand on their rib, and someone’s elbow digging into his back and a stranger shouting over their shoulder.
The music pulsing, thrumming, vibrating both their bodies together. Mutual trembles running up and down them, electric with the pounding of the bass. The way everyone had come together, thrashing and tossing their bodies back and forth and Xavier’s tongue had found Peril’s and they’d kissed. His big hand cupping the back of Peril’s neck, and Peril’s hands sliding up Xavier’s body and making him shiver harder; harder and harder and harder.
Mouse was breathing hard, air catching in her wrong. Maybe…maybe a sprain in her side that she couldn’t think about too hard (God, he’d kicked her hard, his steel toed boot almost ending her there, if König hadn’t stopped him). Hurt, too, but, she was so good at packing away the hurt by now. Nothing could hurt like—she skated the thought away before it touched her and instead, her fingers just tightened into this beautiful woman’s hair.
It was smooth—and she hated that. What mercenary had such smooth hair? Soft and silky and nice. Smelled good too—what, she didn’t use the military soap the rest of them did? Was she special? Was that it? Mouse’s hand jerked, ripped back and presented a slim and pale throat. Had to be fucking special, because the giant red head sure was fighting hard to keep her alive.
But when Mouse’s knife slipped from her vest in the hand not knuckle deep in her hair, the fighting momentarily stopped.
“Fuck— you—“ Benji hisses at the thing, even though he knows it’s not gonna understand him. English is too young of a language for its torn, black flesh ears to decipher. He says it because it feels good to say. Chat shit.
Also because it makes his chest expand as he draws the air and the massive, burning paw centered heavy on his chest lifts slightly.
The other paw — one of them, the fucking thing’s got so many and it seems to sprout more and retract others, all smoldering at the edges like inky licks of flame — pins his arm to the ground.
He can’t get a good grip on the axe, with his elbow twisted like that. The dull ache of bones ground together is nothing to the burn from the pads of its feet. Claws, he’s not sure how many, digging tips sharp like diamond and feel as if they multiply as they sink into the border of a wound that will definitely blister.
Neither is a pain that would compare to the puncture of those gnashing, saliva and ichor-dripping fangs sinking into his throat. It would be brief, but it’s not a pleasant way to go.
It’s doing the best it can to manage that. Jaw clicking shut, head tilting and adjusting, hinge of it and multilayered expanse of teeth in its smoking gullet snapping down closer and closer —
A droplet of that ichor or drips onto his cheek, sizzles the flesh, and the snap of pain so close to his eye and that scar is enough to enrage him.
Strong thing, anger. And it makes him strong.
“Fuck you,” he grinds out again, and then bucks. Enough for the thing to have to readjust.
Benji takes that opportunity. Lifts his arm with a heave and spins the long handle of the axe over his wrist, gets a grip on it nearer the head.
Better angle — he swings. The base of the handle kicks up sparks on the ground as it drags quick, flashing snap through the air.
Dull, wet thuck as it buried deep. Howl from the beast because the silver axehead rends it proper; been smelted and etched with all the best sigils. It melts flesh and bone and whatever cursed shit these things are made up of, if they’re flesh and bone and all, and buries deep.
The thing begins to slow. Mindless survival before it stops moving. Kicks once, hind legs. Benji shoves it off to get to his feet, and then puts his boot over its slack-jawed, tongue-out, dripping mouth. Uses the leverage there to yank the axe out of its skull with a strange, hissing suck. A grunt.
“Pissin’ hate hellhounds,” Benji huffs, shaking his gloves off. And then he shakes himself a bit, a shiver, and looks over to see how the others are faring.
“Feels fucked, yeah, like I shouldn’t have to deal with this shit, if I don’t believe in it?”
Peril, stood over the corpse of another hound they’d taken down with the help of their — fuckin’ whatever — laughs. They brush hair from their face, streaking black and red into the soft pink-spun gold.
He’s gotta look away. Has a brief flicker of a vision, thinks he might want to wash it out with a gentle hand, and he can’t — he can’t think like that. Shouldn’t. Not when their — not with Xavier standing there too, staring at him.
“T’fuck are you lookin’ at?” He sneers, lip curling like he might gnash his teeth, too.
The tall man’s wide-eyed expression twists angry, like Benji’s stunned him out of it by being a prick. Coaxed him out of it with the distaste for him alone. Good.
Get angry. Dickhead.
Peril puts a placating hand on Xavier’s shoulder, intimate — and it makes the anger burst up and twist and fizzle into something worse. Tight, gripping cold and sharp in his chest. Aching sort of sadness.
You do that for me. You did that for me, suppose, when we were — when you’d see me getting proper riled about something. You can tell and you’d do that, touch me like that, and it’d always be enough. It’d be enough now. You’re always enough.
We weren’t, huh? Except right now it’s more: I wasn’t. Found another shoulder to touch.
Before Xavier can open his mouth to retaliate, or Benji can slip the knife from his tongue to dig in more, Tino rounds the corner.
“Imps.” He says, flicking the cassock around his neck and sighing. “God, y’all remember when it was just a poltergeist or two? Nowadays kids are summoning —“
He pauses, Tino-sensing at the ripple of tension. He narrows his eyes, flicking between them, assessing: who started it.
“Benji,” because obviously. Tino says his name in that voice. The familiar one. The careful one, the vaguely disappointed one, the concerned one.
“Yeah.” He says, trying not to roll his eyes or pout like the petulant child he feels, sometimes. “Yeah, whatever. I’m not apologizing though.”
Xavier sticks his tongue out, and Benji nearly lunges at him.
me: i have writers block
also me: writes 1.8k of porn
includes guy jerking off while other guy encourages him right through it. so tags for a dude absolutely whacking it and then making a mess of it and also dirty talk. a lot of dirty talk.
benji belongs to @fr0ntier
It’s still dark out when Xavier wakes up, earlier than his alarm. Night bleeds into the room, makes his eyes feel fuzzy as he adjusts to the smallest bit of light eeking in through parted curtains. The street lights, casting orange glows through the panes, making everything look hazy and strange. He can’t remember the dream, it slips through his fingers, recedes back into his subconscious to plague him at a later date. But Xavier knows it had been a good one.
Explains the aching beginning of hardness in his briefs. He palms his hand down over it, groans out a sound as he flattens his hand over his eyes. Xavier’s tongue feels thick in his mouth, sleepiness making crust around his eyelashes, making him blink rapidly to try and clear the fog over his pupils.
“Benji,” he mumbles like the name was resting right on the tip of that fat, tired tongue. “You awake, man?”
fellas is it normal to bring the enemy to your own fucking apartment adn get them high…..asking for a friend
aka benji/xavier getting high in his apartment and its….reeeeall fucking fluffy
“You can just put your shit anywhere.” Xavier is saying it as he’s half slamming the door shut, mumbles a it gets stuck about it in explanation when Benji stares.
The man seems to take Xavier’s words literally and throws his duffle bag into the living room. Kicks off the big, heavy military boots and kicks them as well; it doesn’t fail to make Xavier’s eyes twitch a little, but he lets that go.
more....boys ...so much boys.... i cannot stop writing them.......someone help
benji x xavier | 4.2k (im insane)
xavier of course from @day0walker
Benji’s got this habit. It’s a weird one, and he knows it. Understands, too, that it’s not exactly healthy.
Everybody else in the unit calls him out on it, even if they watch him with some modicum of distant respect and wariness. They think it’s fucked up, think he is, because he has never elaborated on the motivation.
He’s gotta be the most level-headed guy on the field when it goes belly-up — when the limbs start flying and the guts start spilling. This habit, and the way he maintains that composure around the visceral, gory reality of their day-to-day, well. Benji earns a reputation. A very specific one. Something he’d refute, if it didn’t keep everybody so effectively off his arse.
So yeah, he’s gotta deal with some fucking disgusting jokes about being kept away from funeral homes, held back from hospital morgues.
It’s not like that, though. He takes the helmets off the bodies because he needs to see, not because he wants to.
At first, it began as a reality check — punishment. Benji forces himself to look at every single face, if he can. It’s another thing if they’re blown to bits or the face is gone, of course. Like if he lands a lucky dead-center shot to the skull. Benji doesn’t like aiming for the skull, and it gets him reprimanded frequently. But he has to look at the face after. He has to. He needs to see every single one so that he can remember.
Acting on his own free will, isn’t he? Being perceptive in the pursuit of knowledge. That’s what his mum would want him to do, and he’s doing it. He’s doing a good thing. Being a good man. He’s choosing to undo the straps of those helmets, to gaze blankly into milky eyes washed empty by death. To remember features, scars, birth marks. Human quirks. They’re not faces he’s going to forget, and he’ll make fucking well sure of it.
Anyway, that’s what he was doing at first — memorizing. It’s not entirely just that, anymore. The point of the habit now is less about memorizing and more about…seeking. Anticipating.
Because when Benji pulls one of those helmets off? Every time he’s made to yank down a balaclava and peer over a cold, lifeless body?
He holds his breath.
Benji holds his breath and prepares to put one specific face to memory. And to leave it there. Bitter anger seeps through him when he thinks about the fact that his last glimpse of it might be a mask of death. But anger isn’t what tinges his morbid habit anymore. It becomes something far worse than fear or dread, and he’s got….
No idea why.
That fear curdles through him a little now. Sour in his gut.
He understand it’s a real fucking bad thing, that he hesitates like this over every body. It’s gonna get him killed or worse, that he pauses.
The fight is long over, the deafening rhythm of mortar and gunfire tapered off but still bouncing around his skull, ringing. Gun-ring is different than drum-ring. The latter is the kind that comes after sitting too close to speakers for too long; the heartbeat a bass rocking in his chest, an ache sweet and explosive and familiar. It’s a good ring in his ears.
Now it’s his actual heart kicked up a notch instead of a bass, the high-whine in his ears from all the bullets he’s unloaded. A bad ring. Everything is distant. He’s a little mindless as he clears the building, operating on instinct and muscle memory alone.
It’s how he’d gotten the Shadow currently on the other end of his boot there. Had come across the body, clearly prone and in piss-poor shape. He’d strode over and put his foot in the center of that chest without thought, and now that he can manage some space in his brain for it, that makes him sick.
Judging from the lack of blood around, this Shadow’s not mortally wounded, just clearly injured. Slowed, maybe, by a crunched femur or shaped ankle. Benji’s not sure without inspecting.
But he’s not here to inspect.
He levels his rifle at center-left on the Shadow’s chest, next to the sole of his boot. The poor fuck’s gonna die in pain, but the least he can do is make it quick. Benji always tries to make it quick.
But —the body under his boot keeps writhing, trying to buck him off. Fucking his aim up. Benji leans forward, pressing his full weight down until the Shadow wheezes. It rattles wet at the edges, less like he’s got a wound to the lung and more like he’s been laying there awhile. Resting, maybe?
“M’sorry, mate,” Benji whispers. “My commander’s about. Promise I’m the better choice here. You really don’t want him bein’ the prick to find you.”
“Oh,” breathes the Shadow, and stills entirely. “Hellooo, nurse.”
Benji, swallowing the lump in his throat, abruptly tears off the helmet. No longer fearing it’ll be that face, but hoping.
“Fuckin’ hell. Xavier?”
That pink mouth curls; a familiar flash of it in his memory. In the dark, on his skin. His heart kicks up a frantic beat, because fuck, fuck fuck. Ghost is —
“People are gonna talk if we keep running into each other like this,” Xavier purrs. It’s a touch too loud, and Benji starts to panic. He aims a glare at him in warning that isn’t visible with his visor, so he takes his helmet off as well. Tries very hard to ignore the audibly appreciative sigh the man on the ground loosens. He doesn’t even seem aware he’s made the noise, anyway.
“What are you doing here?”
Xavier tucks an arm behind his head, lifting the other in the air. “Oh, you know. On vacation.” Benji does not laugh. “I’m stuck here, dude, what’s it look like? You assholes are everywhere…I mean not you, ‘course, but...”
A gunshot from a few stories below them echoes out. Xavier’s head snaps to the side.
Benji puts a finger up to his lips when his focus returns, pretty eyes a little less bright than a moment before. Serious and dulled by something he recognizes.
He mouths: cover your ears, and then the second Xavier does as instructed, Benji pulls his arm to the side and fires a shot into the ground. Far enough away that there’s no chance of ricochet or breaking the poor fucker’s eardrums open, but he bets it rings, regardless. Bad ring. He apologizes in his head.
“Sticks?” Ghost voice bellows up the dilapidated stairs. It’s dead silent otherwise, but he panics a little more as he imagines him taking them two at a time, even thought he knows he’s probably not.
“Sorry, sir,” Benji calls back. “All good. Clearing out. Shoulda called the shot — found a Shadow still breathin’.”
And there is, anyway, so it’s not entirely a lie. Under the heel of his boot, Xavier’s chest rises and falls steadily, lifting his knee up a little with every ebbing motion. He tries to keep the words even — his professional, clipped combat voice. It’s alarmingly difficult not to allow any of the genuine relief to worm through.
Shadow still breathin’, Benji thinks as he stares down into the other man’s eyes. Still fucking breathing.
How many times does he think that, wonder it, a day? And when did he start, for that matter? Each time he sees the bastard, it might be the last. The sick, twisting fear: when it is, he’ll never get any fucking warning.
Started around the same time Benji began to hold his breath every time he went up against a Shadow. His finger, curled around the trigger of a weapon aimed at a black-clad chest, had taken up the traitorous habit of hesitation. It twitches before each squeeze. He feels sick when a bullet tears through dark fiber and further: flesh and sinew and bone. Imagines underneath that vest is an increasingly-familiar chest, once freckled and warm under his palm, now punched with oozing red circles. It’s the chambers of his organ that stutter and stop and pump the remaining liquid spill of life onto the ground as Benji watches.
Benji’s heart stutters too, nowadays. Because he might kill Xavier. He should, shouldn’t he? Could — right now.
Xavier is looking up at him like the thought has crossed his mind as well, and is making no move to stop that from happening.
“Well, how copy?” Ghost asks after an extended silence. The boom of his voice breaks the spell, and Benji jumps a little, because it’s alarmingly easy to go someplace else when he’s looking at Xavier.
“Gave him a third eye, sir.” He says, grinning. His chest twists when Xavier mirrors it, looking a little dopey. Benji wonders if it’s a head wound.
There’s a morbid chuckle from the stairwell. “Christ, Sticks. You gotta be creepy about it?”
Benji tears his gaze away, lets it drift towards the door. The words are hard to say, otherwise. Especially with this particular audience. “You like creepy, Lt.”
Another pause, then: “Clear fast, rookie. Meet me up a floor when you’re done.”
Benji nods and realizes he’s not gonna hear that. “Aye, sir. On it.”
Jostling beneath him, movement, and Benji snaps his rifle back into position without really realizing.
Xavier freezes, and it’s only with the bubble of shame and guilt that Benji remembers the boot is still fucking square in the center of his chest.
“Fuck,” he hisses, relaxing his gun, hand rubbing over his jaw. “Fuck.”
Benji starts to lift his foot, his weight. Shifting back enough that he almost topples over when a grip catches around his calf.
“Said it before,” Xavier mumbles suggestively, tracing a finger under the edge of his pants. He pulls annoyingly on Benji's leg hair, smirking. “This whole thing? Really doing it for me.”
“I’ve just pointed a weapon at you.” Benji whispers, the words hissing through his teeth. It’s hard not to betray his amusement, his incredulity at Xavier’s constant commitment to being as flirtatious as possible.
“Yeah, you get it,” the redhead purrs back. He squirms in a way that makes Benji believe he needs up. He lifts a little to allow an escape, expecting Xavier to roll onto away.
But he doesn’t. He adjusts, sure, just not in the way Benji is expecting. Xavier wiggles across the ground, further away, and Benji’s boot drags down his chest as a result. Further, tracing a line across that firm stomach, until —
Xavier falls back on his elbows, chin tilting towards his chest to watch its journey.
“Are you serious.” Benji demands, because when he stops moving it’s conveniently with his crotch pressed to the sole of Benji’s boot.
“You’ve gotten stuck in the middle of SAS territory, you don’t have a fuckin’ piece on you. Is this the time for it, mate?”
“Silly Benji. With you? I’ll make time,” Xavier laughs throatily, and the noise breaks off into a quiet whimper as he shifts again. Admittedly, Benji is a little hypnotized. His fluffy hair is wild in his face, hanging loose with his neck tilted back. Benji could pull away. Should. But Xavier starts to rock his hips, tac belt jingling against the concrete floor, and it is really fucking hard to look away from him like that.
His head is tilted back, but he hasn’t yet broken eye contact with Benji. It gives him the luxury of watching those mischievous eyes darken.
“Xavier…”
“Fuck, that’s good. I told you. The uniform? Really working wonders, dude.”
“You gotta get out of here,” Benji says, voice rough, but he doesn’t move. Xavier’s face is beginning to flush, his bottom lip stuck between his teeth, and every distancing pull of his hips gives Benji a flash of the outline in his pants. It makes his tongue feel heavy in his mouth.
He tries again, clearing his throat and trying to sound more serious: “Xavier. Listen, you bastard, I —”
“Ooh,” Xavier sighs, “I do miss it when you’re not snippin’ at me.” His eyes have fluttered shut with the friction, but now one cracks open. A lazy, sultry wink. “You little shit.”
Benji’s mouth snaps shut. His face gets hot, too, because those words do something real awful, real fuckin’ deep. Miss it, Xavier says. Like he means miss you. Except Benji knows that’s his traitorous fucking brain going at it. Just hearing what it’d like to hear, even if the words are from some merc he barely knows humping against his leg.
Miss it, he says. Benji wants to tell him that every time he pulls a helmet from a dead Shadow’s skull, he worries it’ll be his face beneath.
Miss you, Benji thinks, the words bubbling ups his throat dangerously. He opens his mouth and —
“Takin’ an awful long time,” comes Ghost’s voice. It is right in the doorway, round the corner, and that is too fucking close.
“Fuck!” Benji yelps. Xavier is shielded from view, prone as he is on the ground and behind a mess of concrete and rebar, but Benji still leans forward a little. The motion is instinctual, protective. As if his frame, as much bigger as he looks in all the gear, would be enough to hide a man of Xavier’s size.
“Lt, piss off. Please, fuckin’ announce yourself. Like a — I don’t even know what, mate, you are silent.” He quickly lifts his foot off and away, ashamed like he’s been caught, even if there’s no hint of awareness Ghost’s mask-darkened countenance.
“Sorry.” The lieutenant quips, lacing it with enough acerbic sarcasm for Benji to get the message that he’s very much not. “All done here, then?”
Benji glances down, pinned momentarily in place like it’s him on the ground. Xavier, in turn, gazes up at him with that bright countenance, a smirk tugging the corner of his mouth. His eyes are shiny with their typical mirth, but edged with the steely glint Benji has only seen once. When Xavier had his boot wet in the sopping, red-shard remnants of a man’s skull.
Xavier is preparing for a fight. He won’t fucking win against Ghost, that much Benji knows for sure. Couldn’t name a man that might come out victorious, not even in 141 — Ghost takes ‘em all, easily.
“Aye, sir,” Benji says. He hopes the dart of his eyes about the room isn’t as obviously nervous as he feels. Piece of loose rebar in the corner. Piles of dusty office papers scattered in the last few mortar drops. A shovel, propped against the far windowsill. “Almost.”
“Almost?”
Benji nudges Xavier’s side so the belts on his vest, the fabric, slip and make noise. Jingle. Really sell the fact that there’s a body under his boot. And not one that hasn’t just been rubbing its hard cock against him.
“Almost.” He says, aiming for bashful. It’s hard when he’s starting to sweat, feel tight and jittery at his edges. His eyes dart to the window again. Three stories, if he counted the stairs correctly. Glass doesn’t look breakable. “Sorry I’m trying to keep us all up, y’dickhead. This one was a medic, figured I’d refill what I could.”
It slips out of him easily, the lie, but it’s not one he’s going to be able to substantiate if prompted. Benji’s kit is mostly full, and Ghost is thorough enough about his soldiers (heh, he thinks) that he knows what all of them carry.
But Ghost doesn’t prompt, just takes him at his word.
“Shoppin’, then.” He chuckles, a warm rumble that would usually have Benji’s stomach flipping with heat. It only makes him more edgy, now. The way Ghost laughs sometimes is…frightening. Like he’s in on his own secret, always. “Pick somethin’ out in my size and color, hey?”
Xavier’s hand slides from the floor, over the toe of his boot and up higher. Those long, pale fingers snake under the hem of his pant leg once Moree, and curl about his ankle. Squeeze. Stroke. Benji bites the inside of his cheek.
“Sure, Lt,” Benji says, his mouth suddenly dry. Ghost’s trigger finger is proper, nice and safe on the side of his rifle. The issue is that the rifle is out. Wouldn’t take more than a second for him to lift, given a reason. And he has a sidearm like Benji. Probably more that he can’t see, knives and other deadly shite tucked beneath all thet black fabric. There’s no way —
“Rendezvouz on level three. Make it fast, trooper — we got pickup in ten.”
“Aye, sir.”
Ghost’s broad shoulders nearly fill the doorway completely; he turns to make them fit, leaving Benji stood there. It’s several seconds before he lets the breath he’d been holding out, torso slumping forward in relief.
He glances down only to find himself at the end of a strangely assessing green stare. Benji feels it settle over him, then. The drive, the awareness: clinical and anticipatory, but none of the jitters. Like he’s about to get into it, finger on the trigger, fists in front of his face.
Pickup in ten. It’s a three minute walk back to their meeting point. That leaves him maybe six to get Xavier safely away.
“Don’t go down the stairs,” Benji says, pointing at the ground like Xavier’s a dog needing orders. “Let five minutes go, and then get yourself the fuck out of here.”
“Huh?” There’s a frown on his face like he’s about to argue. Benji fucking hates seeing it twisted like that.
“Look, mate, if Ghost — if he spots you?” Benji shakes his head, cutting the air with a flat palm. “That’s it. Xavier, listen. Do you get what I’m telling you, right now? That’s it. You gotta swerve ‘em, and I can make sure — I’m buyin’ you time, dickhead.”
“Buying time,” Xavier says distantly, as if he’s taken a bite of the word and doesn’t like the taste, can’t quite place why. “With that big skull fucker?”
Benji nods. “Skull fucker. Not in a shag way.” A filthy grin tugs at the corner of his mouth. He swallows the but kinda that threatens to slip out.
“Christ.” Xavier huffs. “I hope you have a great conversation. Make it a long one. I am moving slow.”
“Something like that,” he says, and then sobers at the pull of Xavier’s brow again. He wants to ask where he’s hurt, what’s causing that wrinkle — he has the sudden flash of smoothing it with a thumb, but again. Time.
“Hey. Don’t worry, sweetheart. Not your first rodeo, yeah?” He laughs nervously. “S’what you fuckin’ Yanks say. You’re a sharp one, a’right? You’ll get out.” Benji is rambling, nerves a live wire that sparks and jumps just under the surface of his skin.
The hopeful sales pitch, the chipper words…they’re meant as much for himself as they are Xavier, because there’s a flash of an alternate in his mind. Not an escape, but — he shudders, elbows pressed inwards like he’s protecting himself from the thought as it scrapes at his skull. Xavier lying broken somewhere, bleeding in ways no amount of gauze or stitches can fix. Mangled, maybe by Benji’s own fucking lieutenant.
Benji imagines that he’s pulled the helmet off to find a mess of bone and flesh like Robson’s, topped sickeningly with dark red hair. Almost upturns the contents of his stomach.
He goes quiet, stares at Xavier for a long moment. And then, because he can’t help it, because he feels like he might fucking lose his mind if he doesn’t, he fists a hand in the edge of that black tactical vest. Pulls the entire top portion of Xavier’s body from the ground. It doesn’t take much effort to yank the other man into a mouth-crushing kiss — might be the last, that monstrous anxiety quips. And Benji squeezes his eyes shut. He can’t handle looking at Xavier for this.
No finesse to it whatsoever, even though he would really like to add some. Be slow and thorough, like they’ve time to spare. They don’t, and he hasn’t got the seconds to savor anything. Wants to, though.
He thinks about Xavier’s taste a lot. His mouth, sure, saliva and teeth and tongue. But also the flavor of the spot right at the hollow of his throat, the dipped connection of those pretty, pronounced collarbones. Sweat and skin and…Xavier-taste. He’s got no other word for it.
This kiss as one for the books, but Xavier doesn’t seem to mind. He whimpers into it like Benji’s licking at his mouth, and when they pull apart his green eyes are shot-through; dark, dilated. Benji doesn’t know why. It was just a peck, really.
Except…he’s breathing awful hard too, isn’t he?
He tosses his pack to the ground. A raunchy smirk spreads Xavier’s cheeks, and Benji rolls his eyes.
“You’re not gettin’ tail, you prick. Relax.” He fishes his kit back out of his bag and rifles through it. Finds what he’s looking for, pops the top off the plastic containing it, and holds it up between their faces.
“Whatever is about to happen,” Xavier says, “I’m scared. But also into it.”
“You are so fuckin’ insufferable sometimes, do you know that?” Benji hisses, patience fraying. He reaches down and takes Xavier’s wrist, wraps their fingers together around the handle of the scalpel. Xavier’s hand is warm and dry, gritty with dirty and a few scrapes along his knuckles. It’s too big for Benji to get a proper full cover of it under his own palm. He pulls their hands, and the glistening metal sharp-edge first, towards his own throat.
“See anybody and get close enough — look, here y’are. Go for ‘em right there, okay? This spot — ” He angles it better, tip of the blade right above his artery, and does not think about the fact that he is showing Xavier how to kill another soldier. Kill him. “They’ll go down fast enough for you to grab a gun.”
The expression that settles across the other man’s face is made up of quite a few emotions — none of which Benji can begin to categorize. Scared to, in fact. So he doesn’t try.
He moves their hands down, shifts closer to accommodate the demonstration. Guides the scalpel behind his back until he feels the sharp kiss of it near the small of his back, tucked just so under the bottom half of his vest. He adjusts the grip, angles it up, and shakes Xavier’s fist in his hand. He hasn’t blinked, hasn’t broken eye contact — brown on green — and Benji watches his pretty eyelashes flutter. Ruddy and delicate, like desaturated saffron. His chest hurts.
“Or here,” he breathes, their faces just inches apart enough that the air lifts a sweaty lock of hair off Xavier’s forehead. “Goes right to the kidney, this way.”
“Man,” Xavier whines. “You are so goddamn hot.”
Somehow, he gets Xavier sat upright. Slings a gangly arm over his shoulders to get him steady. Less time now, the seconds counting away. Benji’s savoring every single one, because each is another that he has a guarantee of Xavier being alive and warm next to him.
They don’t say much as Benji rights himself, slings his pack on, strides out the little room he’d found the Shadow and down the ruined hall. There’s light filtering in from the stairwell, and it makes him narrow his eyes.
As he descends the stairs, Benji spares a last glance at the doorway of the room. Pauses. Xavier stands there — leaning, rather, against the frame. He’s got an arm wrapped around his midsection, and Benji wishes he could put more effort into finding out how bad those injuries are, because he surely has a few. Enough to knock him down for the count, awhile. And yet he’d gotten up. Stood and limped, probably, to the door to watch him go.
For some reason, it makes his face get hot.
Benji shoots him a thumbs up, swallowing the feeling down, and Xavier’s brow pinches before he raises the scalpel-wielding fist and mirrors it.
Good boy, he mouths, because he wants to say it and can’t. Too loud, Ghost too near.
Instead: “Lt. All clear, sir. Found somethin’ pretty for you, too.” He turns his back to Xavier with one final wink, and takes the stairs two at a time.
There’s a warm trickle creeping into the edge of his shirt, pinpointed at the spot on his neck. Benji swipes with his thumb, collects the crimson glob. Studies it for a second, shiny and wet on the pad of his thumb, then licks it clean. He’s had a specific taste on his mind for awhile, and the coppery tang doesn’t compare in the slightest — it just tastes of blood.
That strange buzz of anticipation and fear while talking to Ghost will only come as a realization later. Much later, on his next leave, when he’s laying in bed alone and staring up at the ceiling. He’d been assessing the room, Ghost and his kit and his fight pattern, as a reflex. He does it before every brawl, every spar — assesses. Learns patterns like he’s reading music, figuring out which rhythm is gonna work best with his beat. Preparing himself to lay into that beat — hit, stomp, roll — adapt it into something that fits, that works.
