#core au

First of all, of course we have the Everybody Lives AU. No explanation needed, except maybe that my version of this has KK, Erika, Akito, and Mari all with the final stage of affinity unlocked (in other words, powers!) and they're all working together with Rinko, Ed and Dale. I also wrote a fic with this AU, posted here.

I call this one Core AU. It's where post-game everything is the same except KK stayed inside Akito's body as his core. (There's a lot of explanation needed on this. I'm leaving that part to Ed.) The full name of this AU is It's all about learning to live together, inspired by KK's line during the final boss fight in the game. So the story is mostly about, well, actually learning to live together.

Soujutsuki!KK AU. Post-game, KK got his body back but it has some... modifications. He got... umm... onificated... and could turn into the Soujutsuki form when in another world (just like Yaseotoko.) KK has full control of everything, though.

Next one is Purifier!Akito AU. (I don't have any drawings of this AU yet, sorry.) This one is basically an actual post-game where Akito is trying to go back into living normally but he just can't ignore the things happening around him and is still trying to resolve it any way he can (he doesn't have powers, but still have access to things like the bow/arrow and kifuda.) Until one day he meet again with the Tatari, who keeps calling him Purifier, which make him mad because "KK is dead, I'm not him." But the Tatari responded calmly with "aren't you the new Purifier?" (Akito will end up unlocking his powers later because he keeps involving himself in underworldy stuff.)

Now, I know I'm really focused on Canon Compliant and Canon Divergent AUs but I have something that isn't that. Megitsune!Akito AU. Where KK is just trying to live his life as a detective, ignoring his 'sixth sense' he knows he has (it's actually really bothering him.) But one day, he saw someone that he knows isn't a human, so he followed them. They turned out to be a Kitsune. (Chaos ensues. Or something like that.)

For some reason, the little clink of the jar going atop the fridge sticks in his memory.

“There.” Amma says, turning back to Benji with her hands on her hips.

He’s young, still particularly small — in the memory, she peers down her nose at him, nose wrinkled. He can’t tell if she’s upset with him or just joking. So he sticks his bottom lip out, makes tears start to spill over. 

“Oh, you little manipulative bast—” Her dark eyes cut to the kitchen table, where Saha’s working on a school project. Snitch. She’d gone running when she heard Benji pull a chair to get at the jar of biscuits (now jailed far out of reach).

Amma scoops him up. He clutches at her shawl, tries to use it as leverage to kick a bit higher on her hip and push up to just brush little fingers against the jar —

“Ooh!” 

And suddenly his world goes tipsy, upside down, and the swing of gravity forces a strange lump into his throat that makes him burst into giggles. Saha glares at him from the kitchen table. He sticks out his tongue. 

“Monster.” Amma accuses, leaning over to pinch his cheeks with her free hand. She shakes him with the other, making the laughter louder and louder. Saha puts a hand over her mouth. Hides the smile.

“So much for out of sight, mum.” She says. Benji likes her sing-song. If he’s nice enough, she’ll read to him before bed, after Amma has finished her last story. She does different voices, but not as well as their father.

“I’ll say!” Amma agrees. She scoops Benji upright and dances away, keeping his flapping arms just far enough there’s no hope for more treats.

But, true to theory, Benji only thinks about them for the next few hours. He whinges a bit as he’s tucked in, arms crossed over his chest, and Amma indulges it only as long as it takes her to become stern.

“You’ll make me cry, Benji, with all that.” Her slim fingers tuck under his chin, lift it enough to pull the blanket snug how he likes. Then she tucks him in at the sides, a tiny tight burrow nestling childish frustration. 

“Amma can’t cry.” Benji argues. His bottom lip juts out. “You can reach them.”

“You like the biscuits better than my cooking?” Now her eyes go wide. They sparkle with little star shapes projected from the nightlight in the corner — Benji doesn’t like being denied, but he hates the dark more.

He frowns, mouth softening from its anger. “No…”

“Well you won’t mind those being up for a bit, will you?” Amma’s happiness comes back, beaming the same as the sun as it spills through his window in the mornings. She leans forward, brushing their noses together. “I’ll make you better ones, hey? Forget those store ones. Out of sight out of mind.”

He stares up at her a moment, eyes thinned. Then he squirms an arm out of the blanket cocoon to tap his chin the way he’s seen Saha do over a tough maths problem. 

“Okay.But only for a little. And then I want them again, amma. Please and thank you.”

Amma softens at his switch. She pecks him on the forehead and agrees to his demand, but only because she knows Benji better than himself at that point.

The biscuits go forgotten for weeks. Benji doesn’t think of them again until he bumps into the fridge roughhousing with Maran and the jar comes clattering to the floor. It shatters. They will, when soon confronted, pin the jagged chunk in his mother’s kitchen floor on the other.

*

When Benji’s grown, many lessons and sayings from childhood lose their magic. Their power. He supposes that’s the melancholic nature of growing up, really. The grandeur seeps from everything and it’s never so easy as bringing it back by shattering the cookie jar.

Out of sight, out of mind. It’s one of those things that loses its hold. Or muddies itself, rather, in the complexities of an adult conscious. Benji forgets things if they’re under or behind or within. But only bits and bobs like the remote, or a hair tie, or a document he purposefully tucks somewhere separate from the others, somewhere  so unique he’llnever forget its hiding spot (he does, always).

But some things are never out of mind. When they’re not in front of him, they’re there more, actually. Always, at best, swimming about the back of his skull — at worst, stuck to the interior of his forehead like a nasty post-it.

When Xavier first tells him about wanting to find employment, it slaps into his head before they’ve even ironed out the details. Or, in the case of a former mercenary, sorted the necessary forged documents. 

The note would read: Xavier’s gone. Out of sight. Xavier’s gone. What if — what if — what if. Never, never out of mind.  

And really, it shouldn’t be so hard, should it? After all, they’ve spent so much time apart — more, Benji thinks, than they have together. Although it’s been nearly two months. A fantastic two months; too much carry-out, not enough leaving the house. Tangled up or at the very least close, learning things about one another that have gone unsaid. Not even just sex, though certainly plenty of it — they learn each other, and Benji learns a bit of himself too. 

A job would be good for him. A job would help stifle a bit of the guilt, the burgeoning energy of burden that somehow hangs around his freckled shoulders. That makes him push another chore, do another task, seek Benji’s approval. Benji tries to tell him it’s enough. That his presence and safety is all that matters; he could do nothing but lounge around and it would carry Benji another fifty years of happiness, easily. 

And yet, for all his endearing layaboutness, that nasty history trails just as heavy as the taken care of guilt. Orders and tasks and approval and validation and one after the other, the serotonin of a job well done, of a pat on the shoulder, of  a finish line —

Benji gets it. He does. But it’s hard to swallow the sickness when Xavier out of his sight has always meant Xavier in the sights of someone else. It’s difficult thing to separate aside the safety of this shared idyllic existence, which feels most days like a dream. 

Benji is always sort of waiting to wake up.

*

 The first few weeks of Xavier’s new job, Benji gets more done in the house than he had spread over all his leaves combined. He’s hesitant to admit he overdoes it, although he does; hesitant to admit that he’s lonely, although he is — even though Xavier starts off part time, the absence aches. Benji felt silly for it, but each time Xavier loped down the porch steps (despite how thoroughly kissed) the fear crept up each brick in his place. He was reminded, each time Xavier rounded the bush at the end of the drive in that awful, loud truck, of how often he would disappear around the edge of a building, over the horizon, out of a room. Dressed in a different uniform, with a different glint to his eye, a different destination. Always away from Benji. Further and further out of reach.

It could be the last time hung over his head jus as loud and obtrusive as it always had — Benji had been real fucking disappointed to find that fear lingered. Although it was more mundane now, it didn’t shake him any less. The threat of allied bullets punching into him felt eons away, but the mad compulsive terror was just as close: What if he got in a crash? What if they’ve found him? What if he gets crushed in some freak fucking accident that a mechanic gets in, I dunno, an engine falls on him, a tire pops —

Sometimes it brings him down the path towards the driver’s side door, tossing himself halfway in just for another kiss. Another. Just in case. Another. 

Out of sight, always in mind.

Another. Another. Another, another.

Until, breathlessly: “I can just call in sick.”

Every time, Benji snorts and pushes his face fondly away and shakes his head — although he wants to say yes. Wants to ask if they can return to those filthy, soft, first few weeks; too much take out, never leaving. In sight.

It wouldn’t be good for Xavier. He wants to only ever do what’s good for Xavier, from now on. 

“G’wed, you loon,” he says instead, waiting for the jar to shatter, waiting for the dream to end.

*

Benji does what he always has with that twisting, anxious energy. He shoves it down into something compact and useable. He rents a machine to repave the back patio. He watches two videos on reshingling a roof and then does it — proper expert work, no leaks. He cleans and buffs and stains the pretty wood floor in the sitting room, finds a comfortable chair big enough to fit someone, say, nearly a foot taller. 

It starts to feel more and more like a finished home, instead of a distracting project. He has something to work towards instead of something to keep him busy, something to return to. Something too pragmatic to off himself and leave unfinished. 

Still, he spends nearly every spare moment he’s got to himself fearing the day — convinced it’s inevitable —  he’ll once again be the sole occupant. What else is there in a life that has felt, in so many ways, like its fingers were parted just enough for control to slip through the gaps?

*

Saha comes around for tea, oohing and aahing meanly about how clean the foyer is. 

“Not a single spider or mud track.” She acknowledges, nasty little smirk on her mouth. “You pay him fair, right? I like that one.”

“Fuck off,” Benji mutters. His cheeks flush for a reason he can’t quite place. Although the coat rack has one rung free because Xavier’s up early for his shift, Benji tosses it over the back of the couch.

She doesn’t — fuck off, that is. He’s glad for it. She deserve to. She really should. Saha has been much too patient with him. Much too kind. Five years and minimal communication would be more than enough reason to be a bit cold. They’d grown up with enough years between them even before he’d gone off to play at soldiering that he couldn’t blame any tinge of stranger that infected their relationship. 

Yet Saha is all sister as she sits at his kitchen table and lets him whine about his worries, albeit censored of the (goryconfidentialshameful) specific details. She still hasn’t a clue the nature of his work, aside the normal enlisted activities.  And frankly he’d like to keep it that way. The urge to tell her the truth was strong; the urge to keep at least a shred of his humanity in her eyes, stronger. 

“Well, you’ve really not talked to anybody about it.” 

“Sell yourself short.” Benji deflects, brow pulling inwards as he takes a sip of tea. 

Saha scoffs, eyes rolling up to the ceiling — there’s no longer a hole there, or a mottled bit of moisture damage. He’d gotten to those spots the previous week, although getting up the ladder and tilting at that angle to work had been a bastard to his side.

“M’not talking about me you fucking bellend.” Saha admonishes. He smiles; he loves when her accent returns. The longer she’s back in town, the more she’s around the old haunts, more it twists familiar. “Saying, y’know, proper professional like.”

“I did my discharge interviews?” Benji mutters. He’d really been hoping the conversation wouldn’t turn this way. “Got cleared.”

“That’s not — Sure, yeah. I’m sure they’re real thorough about taking care of you lot once you’re done sellin’ it for whatever — listen, Benj. Circling a bunch of boxes saying no, I don’t want to kill myself or, like, no, I’ve not thought of committing acts of violence isn’t really taking care of yourself.”

“I got cleared —“

“You were sixteen, Benji.”

His head snaps up at the rough, wet tone of her voice. 

Saha leans half over the table, one slender brown arm reaching across the distance — and yet still out of his space, fingers extended but curling as if pressed against a barrier. Her big eyes are shiny with tears that only spill once she blinks. An image of their mother crying the same way snaps across his thoughts like a lightning strike.

“I’m not trying to assume anything. And I’m sorry if this is like, helicopter behavior. You were sixteen. You’re sitting here telling me you worry about — about some fuckin’ mad stuff, Benji, alright? It’s…I don’t want to say it’s abnormal. It’s not, all things considering. I’m sure you’ve been through it. But.” 

That word lingers between them, hanging tinny and thin. When it drops off, only the silence remains. It’s awkward but not unmanageable — or wouldn’t be, if Saha’s tears weren’t dripping audibly onto the table.

Benji stands and rounds to to her, scooping her up in as tight a hug as he dares. She smells familiar, and he has a sudden burst of memories — fuzzy ones, from when he was young young. Hair oil frying under a straightener in the morning, way too much cheap perfume borrowed from one of her school friends, the powder detergent of their shared childhood. He slumps a little and fights not to go to his knees. 

“I’ll look into it,” Benji promises. When she sniffles, he rubs his nose into her shoulder and tries not to cry, too. “Let’s go see something, yeah? Enough sad. There’s this shit fucking romcom out. Bets on if the theater off Kensington still has that nasty gloryhole in the bathroom?“

Saha sniffles again, but this time it’s accompanied by a wet, disgusted laugh. She cups the back of his head and ruffles his hair, then pushes away to glare down at him. 

“You are so fuckin’ nasty. He should break up with you.” Then her grin widens. “Also, definitely. You’re gonna owe me a fiver.” 

*

The next day, Benji pauses his drywall duties in the guest room to meander down to the fridge and scrounge for a snack. He scowls when he realizes that Xavier’s forgotten his packed lunch, then he blushes because of the whole scenario — Benji had cooked it for him, packed it for him, liked to send him off with food because he still was so willowy and some extra would do him good. 

It’s so domestic that he stands there, bludgeoned and silent. The fear starts to creep in: how long have we got this for? How long until something goe belly-up? How long, how long?

And why him, of all people? Of all the stupid fucking twats to be at either end of a rifle has Benji made it out on the other side. Back to normal life, where the air smelled like a candle Saha insisted on leaving with him and wood shavings and crisp fall air from the open windows. Why him, and surely not any of his own merit, and why —

Sixteen.

Benji shuts his eyes and takes a deep, slow breath. Then he snatches the lunchbox from the shelf, his keys from the hooks Xavier had insisted he put up near the front door, and heads for the car.

*

It’s a tiny place. Not in quite as old a building as their house, but the sun-faded brick certainly stands out among some of the newer buildings in the city. Wedged on the unkept end of a winding hilltop street that refuses the deep-pocketed developers, the mechanic and its flank of rusted parts and wrecks behind chainlink is an eyesore. To patrons of the nearby vegan bakery and residents of its neighboring luxury flats, its nothing but ugly. To the working class people of the neighborhood who don’t want to be scammed over premium oil, it’s a necessity and word-of-mouth hero. And despite the vines that crawl up the east wall, the hedge that really ought to be trimmed soon, it’s really not all that ugly. A well-kept place, considering.

Benji pauses beneath its big acrylic sign (not crisp LED faux-neon, but charmingly yellowed and outdated font). Family owned! is plastered in neat black script beneath the name of the business. That bit is true and not just for marketing. He’d gone to secondary with the owner’s daughter, although they hadn’t known each other well at all. The building had been standing there for as long as he could remember.

Some things about the place are new. In particular, the blinking open sign hung in the front window. Beneath it, a notebook paper has been messily torn. Updated hours have been scrawled in very familiar handwriting, and an absolutely shit doodle of a dog leaning out the driver’s side door (left, wrong side, the American side). It makes him huff, quiet and fond).

Noon crawls syrup-thick and orange in a lazy Friday lunchtime, but Benji isn’t expecting the shop to be quite so…absolutely empty. The front garages have been shuttered, but the fluorescent light above the reception counter is on. Benji ignores the little bell that sits near a fake potted plant: he knows from experience that it’s broken, anyway. Someone had nearly started a fight with some dickhead customer that had kept slapping it, and pried the striker from inside. 

That same someone, Benji suspects, is likely the source of the thump thump thump bass-heavy music that floats from behind the half-wall separating the workspace and waiting area. He fights a smile, because he’s imagining the reaction his sudden appearance is about to earn. 

Oh well, no way around it, bastard shouldn’t have his music up so high if he’s not looking to get surprised. 

It makes him pause. A full-body, anxious sort of stiffening. Every muscle locks up and Benji braces himself against the wall.

He imagines a different scenario. Of stomping his feet much louder than necessary, of waving an arm around a corner; of a different time, and place, and sometimes, it feels, like they’re the awful, bitter remnants of a different person altogether.

He swallows hard and lifts his free hand to his side, cupping the wound that still bothers him if he moves too quick, exercises too hard, twists a certain way. He squeezes. Feels his fingers indent to the strange, soft-tough scar tissue. It’s the strangest sensation. The nerves underneath have largely died, but his body still, still, still tries to solve them. Something reconnects in a funny enough way that makes it ache. If he presses hard enough, he gets a twinge down by his hip, like an itch under the skin: that strange reconnection of wiring that didn’t quite fail, just got confused. 

The sensation is enough to bring him out of the not-quite memory. Crumbling concrete and distant cracks fade away, the throb of bass returns and his surroundings refresh. He shakes his head and straightens and hope he doesn’t look half as sweaty and pale as the brief clutch of that fear has made him feel.

The bit of comfort that carries him forward is the knowledge that he doesn’t need to lift his feet higher, bring his boots down harder. It isn’t dangerous to startle Xavier, anymore. 

It’s just fun.

*

He pauses next to the cheap Bluetooth speaker, head tilted as he tries to place the lyrics. 

“That Portuguese?”

There’s a yelp, a loud metallic clank, and then a painful sounding thump of flesh on something hard. All three noises echo, to varying degrees, in the closed garage.

“Jesus—!” Xavier shrieks. Then, “Fuck!”. Then, finally: “Owww.”

Benji sucks his teeth apologetically, hands leaving the pockets of his jacket as he rounds the disemboweled car. It’s shiny red front panel is propped open, obscuring Xavier as he leans over its contents.

He’s pouting adorably. The expression hasn’t yet washed all the lingering startle from his face, and the combination of his jutting lip and upturned brow pull a softer, more sincere noise from Benji as he approaches. As he does, he’s nearly bludgeoned; Xavier’s pout morphs slowly into a smile.

“Oh, you look hot.” He rubs at the crown of his head, smudging something dark into the roots. He doesn’t seem to care. “Okay. Forgiven.”

“Boss in?”

Xavier’s lip quirks attractively naughty. “Maybeeee,” he drawls. “Why?”

Benji chuckles and wraps an arm around his shoulders, pulling with enough force that Xavier bends low. He ignores the smell of oil mixing with shampoo; its Xavier’s usual scent. The sore spot on his skull receives a soft, careful kiss. 

“Hope you survive that one.” He teases. “Not a mortal wound, yeah?” 

Xavier straightens back up, aiming that grin down his nose at Benji properly now. “I don’t know. Think I should get a second opinion. From like, —“

Benji groans, shoving back with an eye roll. Xavier stumbles comically just to earn a laugh at the tail end of it, and is successful. 

“Awh, mate, fuckin’ drop it already.”

“Haha, but I need head treatment.” Xavier waggles his eyebrows, sets aside the tool in his hand in favor of creeping closer with raised hands and greedy, flexing fingers. “Get it?”

“I brought you food, and you fuckin’ repay me like this? Steal five years off my life with an awful bit—“

“You brought food?” Xavier perks up. All that lurid, nasty charm filters innocent. Sweet. It’s one of Benji’s favorite looks on him. They’d both been too used to fear. Too accustomed to making the other’s terror and anxiety a third bedfellow. Sweet and excited is how he ought to be. All of the time. 

Benji holds up the canvas tote dangling from his other hand, tucked hidden behind his back. 

“Forgot your bag on the table again,” he explains as well as he can, attacked by thankful kisses all over his face. “Leftovers anyway. And I ended up not goin’ in because they were — well, doesn’t matter. Not having you go a day on an empty stomach and then come back and clear our fuckin’ cupboards out.”

Our.

They both pause at that. Benji’s face is warm from the attention and the admission, the simple domesticity of the task he’d left the house for (bringing lunch felt so normal, so out of reach and now right here, just for them). Except when the pause lingers, companioned to the stare they pin each other with, his cheeks go properly hot.

Our. 

He can’t quite remember when that first slip happened. With each day that passed, each day that they woke up together, existed in the same space without the heavy threat of unpredictable violence — Xavier has started to feel less like a figment of his imagination or an impossibility. His jacket on the coatrack, rain-wet work boots at the door, shirts tucked neatly in a dresser that had been just Benji’s for so long.

“Well?”

Xavier’s eyelids flutter. His gaze snaps down and then back up, before his own shyness ebbs a bit. Enough for him to smile, almost-normal.

“You made me food.” He says. A pale hand touches to Benji’s forearm, drifts up to squeeze his shoulder. “That’s so—”

“Is it Portuguese?” Benji blurts.

“It’s…you —“ Xavier shakes his head. Benji watches the tickle of sweat-slick curls stick to his temple. He becomes even more aware, if he hadn’t been too aware already, of how close they stand. That Xavier’s maddeningly adorable jumpsuit has been unzipped and peeled from his chest and tied around his waist, that the white undershirt beneath is a little translucent with sweat, that his defined arms are bare. 

Benji wets his lips. He feels that cold shiver of excitement race up his shoulders.

“I’m pretty sure it’s Brazilian? Matilda sent me the album to listen to.”

And sure, he’s fond of her, from what little he knows. Did Xavier more than a few solids to get him out. But frankly, he really couldn’t really give less of a shit about the source. Not now. They’ve stood too close for too long, and the four hours apart feel boiling when he considers the sudden drop of heat into his stomach. 

Four whole hours? How’d we ever do more? 

“You off at the normal time?”

Xavier’s smile widens and he tucks his chin to better level their faces towards one another. “Why? You bring me lunch and make date plans?” His hand squeezes again before slipping around the back of Benji’s neck and winding into his hair gently. “People are going to think you like me or something, dude. Careful.”

Benji regards him for a moment before slowly reaching back and taking his wrist. He’s slow about lifting that big palm to his face; holds lidded eye contact while his jaw drops and he laves a wet streak from the thrumming pulse at the base of Xavier’s thumb up to the tip of his middle finger. It’s his clean hand, but there’s something still vaguely metallic to the regular taste of skin. Sort of gross, sort of hot. They’re close; he feels Xavier twitch against his thigh.

“Close up fast.” Benji recommends, enjoying the dizzy look of astonishment plastered across that handsome face. Without Benji’s grip around his wrist, Xavier’s hand falls, leaden, back to his side. Halfway back towards the front door, he tosses another grin over his shoulder. 

“Extra bread in there for you, handsome.”

He’s got the song blaring from that speaker stuck in his head the rest of the afternoon.

*

When six finally rolls around, Benji lingers at the front of the house so he can better hear the under-tire crunch of gravel. There’s faint, congenial shouting; he often gets a ride from his boss, who must have been out for lunch of his own when Benji swung by. 

Loping footsteps approaching the door make him feel shy from their eagerness. He doesn’t want to seem too desperate in comparison, waiting by the door. He retreats into the living room once those steps draw closer, sitting awkwardly on the sofa. 

There’s the sound of a key in the lock. Another thing he orchestrated and will, under interrogation, pretend not to know anything about. If he likes the reminder of that metal in Xavier’s pocket, so what?

“Holy shit.” Xavier exclaims, his loud, excited sing-song echoing all the way down the hall. It makes Benji grin. “You outdid yourself.”

Xavier crosses to him in half as many steps as  it usually takes him; Benji even double that. Big hands close around his wrists and then he’s tugged upright, stumbling with the force of the pull into Xavier’s chest. They bump together and laugh. Benji presses his cheek over his warm sternum, eyes fluttering closed. He must be smiling like a proper fucking idiot, now. It stretches so much his cheeks start to hurt. So does his chest.

“Yeah?” 

He isn’t sure why his voice sounds that small. That quiet. That, I missed you so fucking much, but we just saw each other. 

Xavier launches into a riveting,raving, Hell’s Kitchen-esque review of the meal. Naan, of course, ranking as high as it could possibly go.

When Benji opens his eyes, he’s looking out the patio doors across the dusk-golden pond. Sunlight ripples at its softly lapping edges. And the two of them are there, in the glass reflection of the door, arms around each other. Benji doesn’t like how the cross of molding across the door cuts them in quarters, and feels immediately insane for that thought. 

He swallows the shame of that desire and tilts his head to look up at Xavier instead, intending on interrupting the detailed food review. He doesn’t need to, after all. Their gazes touch softly together; Xavier’s mouth falls silently open. 

“Xavier?” 

“Uh — yeah.” 

Benji grins, and one of the arms wound around his waist travels up a spine that flexes beneath the touch. 

“Gotta clean up a bit. Messy project today, tile n’sealer n’shit.”

“Right.” 

Benji grins, his eyes lidding at the soft, eagerly hypnotized tone. “Go shower for me?”

Xavier blinks down at him slowly, eyelashes fluttering against his cheekbone — which goes immediately, beautifully red. “A-Ah. Okay. Yeah. Sure.”  

*

Benji tucks his nose against a slick jaw, mouth open against the pale column of Xavier’s throat as they both pant. He has got two long legs hitched over his elbows, the muscles tense with how close he is. How close they both are, really. It’d been frantic and messy to begin, but they’ve slowed substantially. Xavier’s needy, gorgeous noises have gone softer and longer; they leave him in low, pulling notes rather than the usual short gasps or punchy hiccups of sound. Yanked out of him by steady thrusts meant to drag everything out — so what if Benji does it purposefully? They feel so good connected like this  that Benji has to squeeze his eyes shut at the beginning, usually. Otherwise. Otherwise. 

“Fuckin’ love you,” Benji groans. 

“I’m gonna —“ Xavier whines in response, breaths thick against his cheek. 

It makes Benji laugh throatily, the noise tucked into sweat-slick skin. He slows even more until the pace is almost paused entirely. Until there’s no more proper thrusting, drives of his hips forward, but little rocking cants of motion. The denial makes Xavier dig nails into his biceps, and that in turn makes Benji moan. 

He muffles the noise against Xavier’s jaw, his tongue brushing along a raised portion of skin. He knows that spot. He sees it every time he pictures Xavier, often of course. It’s a part of him, just as lovely to the whole package as bright eyes or a mischievous smile. It’s apart of him, because it’s a scar, because someone took a knife to Xavier at some point and broke him open and he bled and had to heal and that bit is there forever because all of it is inescapable, is permanent, is —

A dream. Too good to last. The dream can end. It will end. Out of sight. 

Benji freezes. He goes — well. Out of mind.  He isn’t quite sure where he goes, actually. All he has the sensation of is the strange, heavy return. 

*

He settles back into himself slowly. He’s still naked. He’s sat in the chair in the corner of the bedroom, some ugly piece from the charity shop he’s been meaning to fix up. He’s shivering, toes numb but fingers warm —he’s holding a cup of tea. Herbal, from the smell. It’s late. Xavier probably doesn’t want him to drink caffeine. 

Xavier.

Benji lifts his chin towards the bed, that awareness so bone-deep and interlinked in his marrow that he doesn’t even have to guess at where Xavier is in the room. He knows. 

He sits on the edge of the bed, one knee bouncing at the other propping an elbow which in turn props a chin. Xavier is rarely vacant — but this expression is close to it. His brow isn’t worriedly pinched, but slack. Mouth in a neutral line, eyes glossy and unfocused to a spot on the floor.

When Benji makes a soft noise, he jumps. And then he’s across the room, knees knocking in a painful sounding thump as he goes to the ground in front of the chair. Warm palms smooth up Benji’s side and then immediately retreat, snatched into his chest with guilt that makes Benji’s own feel tight and sad and wrong. 

Please, he thinks. Or maybe says, because the touch return. It spreads over his knees and thighs, coasts up his chest to hover above his heart and then press. 

When Xavier tugs him — carries, really — back to the bed and tucks them both into a safe, tight cocoon of blankets, is when the tears come. He tries to apologize but the sentiment is angrily kissed from his mouth, hands buried in his hair to take that oiliness from him. No need, the touches over his face insist, no need, I get it, I get you, I have you, I’m here.

He dreams of wading into the pond and slicing his heel open on a familiar ceramic shard, interlaced with dated pink vines and yellow flowers. He dreams of warm hands touching his face while more wrap gauze around the wet, broken skin. He dreams of being carried into the house, up the stairs of a patio unfinished in the waking world. 

The dream ends.

*

Xavier laughs hesitantly and holds Benji a careful distance away with hands flat to his chest. His fingers twitch a little, gently indenting flesh like they can’t help but make that greedy connection. 

“Hold on— oh, wait, yeah — yeah, keep going.“

Benji presses his face into Xavier’s neck, tongue darting across the beautiful silvery line that drags across a freckled jaw. It doesn’t taste like anything but skin and sweat. It doesn’t taste of blood or gunpowder. 

“If anything happens to you I’ll go mental.”Benji admits, pawing at pale thighs to bring them around his hips. Morning after, his soul touching the interior of his chest again, that post-it ripped from his brain and crumpled and tossed in the corner. Only way to get it out is pull it into the now, read aloud what’s scrawled across the sick neon yellow.

“I’m so fuckin’ terrified of losing this.” Benji continues, pushing frantically at both of their sweats. He traces a thumb over a raised hipbone, drags that up until Xavier squeaks and softly giggles at the touch. 

Benji’s eyes snap up to his face at the same time his hand wraps around Xavier’s half-hard cock. “Not like, just this, but —“  

Xavier gasps his name in a voice morning-rough, with chord of need that anchors Benji in the moment. His fingers toy and wind through curls, tugging with a reverent touch. Its entirely without insistence; patient and petting, waiting, allowing Benji to move in comfort.

They try again and are, judging from the litany of noises filtering into the morning air, largely successful. He’s a bit more frantic than the snail’s pace of the previous night, but no less greedy. He hooks an arm around Xavier’s shoulders and lifts their torsos together, hot and tight and tacky. Each time green eyes flutter shut, Benji stops. Touches fingers to his cheek, a bunched eyebrow, part lips. He forces Xavier to open them, watches the green swim prettily to find his own. 

For the duration (rather quick, frankly, but he refuses to feel shame about it because fuck is it good), Xavier is forced into heated eye contact. Benji graces him a few kisses, particularly when the tears spring up and those noises become properly desperate. Otherwise, their eyes lock together. Benji makes sure of it. He’s scared of what will replace Xavier in his mind if he breaks that.

He watches even after Xavier arches and cries out and writhes, pretty in the sunlight, to fall limp into their messy bed. 

Our. Benji thinks. He watches the path of his hand as it strokes up a slightly fuzzy thigh, over a heaving stomach. 

“We— we should probably talk about that.” Xavier pants, lifting the arm over his eyes to find Benji. 

Benji nods, fingers curling over his chin. He looks at that thin scar, looks at the others trailing over glistening shoulders and a panting chest. He nods again, then fits his palm to Xavier’s cheek and leans down for a slow kiss that lacks all of their usual messiness. He hopes none of the fear seeps in; he thinks Xavier sees it, anyway.

When they part, Benji touches fingers to his mouth. His nose is pink from the kissing, from his own flush — lips from the rough friction of facial hair. Looking at Xavier, laying sated beneath him in a mess of their sheets on their bed in their home, has Benji swallowing a thickness in his throat.

“Breakfast?”

The parking lot to the office building is dead empty. It used to make him nervous—parking lots at night, big empty space. A flood light flickers and barely illuminates his path up to the stone steps. Windows line the front, real two way mirror like. Can’t see out as well as you can see in. That also used to make him nervous—Xavier figures he was a pretty nervous man before. But when he shakes off his coat and tosses it onto a rack aside the door, a man at the welcome counter whistles. It relaxes him instantly, this friendly greeting, this familiar face.

“Wolffe, you see that plan on last nights game? Whiffed it, he fuckin’ did, yeah?”

“Go easy on the guy. First time playing after a knee injury? Like you could do better.” Xavier leans over the counter to fish for a pen on a messy desk. Banner heaves back in the office chair, booted feet propped up on the counter. The toes are scuffed to death and they’re clunky and militant, obviously old. He’s former…something. Xavier never actually remembers—which is sort of nice. It’s hazy anyway, just like his own flimsy background that has somehow held for as long as it has. Most of the British don’t seem to care if he was Air Force, Navy, Marine or what.

“I’d hold it down, my own. ‘Fore the—”

“Before the bullet, right, right.” Xavier nods along, grinning toothily as he signs his name into visitors. Not entirely necessary, but since his paperwork is also flimsy, he likes following rules. Makes it easier. Lessens the everyday hovering fear that something will one day happen to take all this away. “Tell Eden I said hello. Meant to bring in the casserole dish, but—” he gestures to the oil stained mechanics jumpsuit.

“Right off from work?”

“Cut out early.”

“Lazy dog!”

“Woof,” Xavier jokes, tongue out as he pushes through the side door that leads into a long, beige hallway.

Used to be Xavier couldn’t stand the color. Reminds him of…

He hangs a right, sidesteps a short woman whose hair is pulled back in a severe bun.

“Going to call security on you one day,” she comments, eyes cutting up above small, rectangular glasses. Xavier presses both hands to his heart, attempts his sweetest, most good boy smile. It might not land, with the little bit of gray that’s seemed to finally push through at his temples. Luckily, the office he’s looking for is only a few steps backward and to the left. Xavier’s hand closes around the little gold knob just as the woman is rolling her eyes and turning back to a printer that will likely occupy her for a full night.

“Oh, sorry,” he says, holding up his broad hands in surprise. Xavier frowns, brows pulling together. He makes a quick glance behind him to the glass window pane that has a last name on it, in big black lettering. “I’m looking for someone. Have you seen,” he turns and steps forward, hands closing onto the back of a chair. It’s nice than those standard wooden chairs in some of the other offices—someone had clearly thought of comfort first, when putting these in here. For whoever might be in The Veterans Affairs office—who might need comfort before anything else.

“My husband? He’s around this tall,” Xavier touches his chest, admittedly a bit suggestively. “Dresses almost entirely in black and has the prettiest eyes. I haven’t seen him in, like, a week?”

“Oh, fuck off,” Benji sighs, tossing paperwork onto his desk.

Maybe it was because Xavier had only just been sitting in his car, looking through old pictures on his phone that Benji’s appearance strikes a hard chord inside his heart. It’s devastating occasionally, knowing time just sort of passes like it does. Xavier feels it slip through his fingers, that metaphor of sand or water or whatever the fuck getting away too quickly. One day, he was standing in front of a job fair booth, making the worst decision of his life; the next day, he was waking up next to a result of that decision and the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

Benji removes his glasses, tossing them alongside the paperwork. He pinches the bridge of his handsome, curved nose. He must have been the last of his soldiers already, because he’s yanked all his hair back haphazardly with a claw clip that barely contains all those curls. Gray weaves through them, a thick band that sprouts from one temple and blends with his raven ink colored hair.

He’d gone gray first. Xavier thinks it started back in the forest, with the wound. Benji had aged ten years in that moment, knife slit in his side. Xavier, when he’d finally found himself back in his lovers arms, months and months later, had found the first gray hair. He’d put his lips to it, his nose to it, in that way Xavier showed affection and breathed Benji in and made peace with the fact that the gray would stay.

A dog breathes in the corner, a soft snuffling sounds. Anika lays there, in her SERVICE ANIMAL vest, utterly tuckered out and asleep. Her side rises and falls in that soothing, animal pattern. One of her back legs kick, like she’s firmly inside a nice, sunny dream.

Xavier slinks around the chair he’d been leaning on, hand walking across Benji’s desk. He pokes fingers into paperwork, slides it just a bit further away. Benji snorts at the gesture and it makes Xavier pouty, until he’s firmly on the other side of the desk. Then he can’t hel smiling again, leaning back against Benji’s messy workspace, feet spread to make himself a bit shorter for his husband.

“Promise I didn’t come to revisit the old argument,” Xavier says, holding up his hand in a mock scout salute. Benji’s long hours, huge case load, dedication to his job, all had already been a sore spot at more than one dinner table argument. But sometimes Xavier liked that—what they argued about seemed simple and domestic and sweet because of it. Letting the laundry sit too long so it got wrinkled, or ordering the wrong sized door for the shed they were building, or that Benji worked himself to death sometimes or that Xavier felt he didn’t work enough, didn’t pull his weight, didn’t really add enough to their income.

Benji’s dark hands lift, slide around Xavier’s thighs and squeeze. He pulls himself closer, resting his cheek against the rough material of the mechanics jumpsuit on Xavier’s stomach.

“Mm,” he hums. “Love you in this, y’know.”

“Do you want me to leave and walk back in and pretend I’m just some lost mechanic? Get a little roleplay with it?” Benji’s laugh is a soft bark, something that moves his shoulders. Xavier brushes fingers through that jet black and steel gray hair, appreciating how it causes Benji’s hands to tighten around his thighs as if in reflex.

“Naw,” he drawls and tilts his head back until his chin is resting on the lower part of Xavier’s stomach. A strong current of hot blood suddenly rushes straight to that spot, leaving Xavier dry mouthed and dizzy. “I wanna go home.” Benji’s dark, husky voice makes that hot blood pool painfully lower. Those pretty eyes blink up at him, making it even worse. Xavier groans, loudly, completely unashamed of the sudden and intense desire for his husband.

“Say fucking less,” he mumbles, quickly bending to dark a few kisses to Benji’s mouth and cheek and accidentally, his eyebrow. It causes more laughter, which does not make his hard on any less hard.

—

It’s not noise or temperature or a dream that wakes Xavier up. It’s sheer absence of a body next to his own, when nightly, there is a body beside him. His pale hand pats around the bed, searching for Benji and coming up empty. Xavier lays flat on his stomach, still half asleep, drifting in and out of a dream that was all green and blue and warm. He blinks himself awake, forces consciousness in the wake of realizing he’s alone in their bed. He rises, stumbling a little bit.

Xavier’s long body tips over as his hands scramble along the floor to find his boxers. He tugs them on, yawning with his head tilted back. The elastic snaps on his hips. He notices how much tighter they feel, a little roll of fat above the band. He pinches it, grumbling to himself, because he wasn’t sure where all that came from.

He leaves the bedroom, scratching idly at an itch on his side. Fingers run accidentally on scar tissue, but he pays it no attention because it’s an old wound. A before wound—a knife slipped up to take his life and having missed, just made his pale, freckly skin less pretty there. Xavier doesn’t think about that old scar anymore, barely thinks of any of them. Not even the one along his jaw, since he’s regularly kept just a thin layer of five o’clock shadow. Now that it doesn’t grow in so God damn patchy.

Sleepiness still clings to him, dragging him down like a warm blanket, so he nearly trips over Anika. She’s laid on her side, in the hallway, which is where she tends to sleep if Benji’s left the bedroom. The poor girl raises a head and then lays it back down, her tail thumping softly.

“I know, girl,” Xavier says, bending to pet her big, blocky head. He gives her a sweet kiss to the face, a thank you for forever protecting his husband when Benji refuses to wake Xavier up.

It was funny that the insomnia didn’t really go away. There were good stretches of time where Benji slept fine. Better than fine, there were Sundays were they overslept and stayed in bed and cat napped through out the day. Most days, Xavier woke up before Benji to be at the shop early—and Benji was still asleep. Not the half sleep he’d become accustomed too when he’d first come home (here, home). Benji, flitting through a hundred different nightmares, on the precipice of being awake during every single one. That wasn’t real rest.

But Benji did get real rest these days. Most of the time. Love was not a cure all for everything, though. And the insomnia stuck around more often than Xavier would have liked.

The TV is on, but the sound is so soft it’s more for light than anything else. Benji lays on the couch, arms around himself, tucked inward. His side rises and falls softly, but Xavier doesn’t believe for a second he’s truly asleep. It’s that half state again. He can tell because Benji’s fingers dance, twitching here and there.

Xavier says nothing as he approaches. He continues to say nothing as he takes Benji’s wrist and slowly unravels the former medic. Benji makes a few noises himself, a grunt here and there. A resigned sigh. Xavier doesn’t care and he doesn’t stop. He merely tugs Benji up from the couch and starts the walk back to their bedroom. It’s almost child like, pulling him along. He can picture the dour, petulant expression across Benji’s face; caught in his ridiculous independent act. He didn’t like bothering Xavier, he didn’t want to toss and turn in bed when the other man needed sleep. Even years together, Benji had a hard time asking for things.

There’s no use arguing over it. And besides, before it made Xavier angry. Now, he feels nothing but this surging, protective affection that makes him yank back the blankets and shove at Benji to get back into the bed.

“Dickhead,” he mumbles grouchily.

“Mhm,” Xavier hums, climbing in as well. Mean old fuck, Xavier thinks fondly, lovingly, happily. He tucks arms around Benji’s broad torso and yanks him back into the cushion of his chest and thighs, spoons around him like a warm blanket. Benji mumbles something else, not really meant to be heard. Xavier presses a kiss to skin, anywhere he can find it. Shoulder, neck, behind Benji’s ear.

“Sorry,” Benji finally folds. “Not a nightmare, alright? Just couldn’t sleep. Didn’t want to—”

“Just bother me,” Xavier interrupts. “I like being bothered.” He flattens a hand and gropes across Benji’s chest to make him laugh. It’s a lovely, husky sound. Xavier presses another aimless kiss. “Besides, I already called off tomorrow.”

“You never call off work.” Which was true. Xavier’s loyalty and work ethic combined was dog like. Anika would be jealous. Or, if she could communicate, she’d probably tell her stupid humans to stop being so stubborn, so annoying and also to buy more quail eggs for her. Before Xavier can answer, Benji is hauling away from him and patting at the bedside table. There’s a brief illumination—the pale sickly light of technology—and then the thumb patting sound of Benji texting. The phone’s put down and then Benji wiggles back into place—which is both adorable and very hilarious, considering he’d been the one to wander out of the bedroom in the first place.

Xavier does not point out the sudden change of heart. Instead, his fingers brush softly through coarse, black body hair at Benji’s navel.

“I just texted Graham and said I was using a sick day.”