unknownjpegs

[unknownjpegs]

as mine

“I think I look rather handsome,” Xavier purrs to himself as he turns this way and that, admiring his form in the gilded mirror. It’s large and ostentatious, bigger than it needs to be—and they’d wedged it close to the end of the bed. For…reasons. The crown sits in his dark red hair, glinting silver when the candlelight hits it. The crown is heavy, sits almost awkwardly, because it’s not meant for Xavier. Yet he loves to toss it on anyway. He flattens a hand down his own chest, runs it over his stomach and down to his unlaced trousers. Slim, pale fingers toy with the strings as he tosses a glance over his shoulder to the man in the bed.

To the King in the bed.

The quarters are lavish, luxurious in their opulence. Something Xavier has no doubt Benji will find a way to change in time. Get rid of the massive, imposing armoire and the hideous rugs. The heavy curtains that weigh enough to require two hands to pull apart and admire sunlight. Vases stack up across furniture, other ornate finery that he will likely sell and the gold will be put into something more important than the old King’s priorities.

That was who Benji was—who he was going to be as King. Xavier could tell. He knew things—knew Benji. He’d seen visions of this room before he was ever in it; he’d slept in that very bed, dream sick with it, before he ever knew what it really looked like. And soon after, another dream came along that replaced the bed with something Benji found more suitable.

Still large, because he had a tall lover who liked to spread out across comforting blankets. But, less silks. No more pillows than one actually requires.

“I think,” Benji says, from his position on that very bed, half up on his elbows, chin tucked down to his chest, “that you should come here now.”

The dark, suggestive tone makes Xavier step forward immediately. His hand still teases at the string of his trousers, but as his knees meet the bed, he crawls onto it, hands first. The crown slides a little bit, so he pauses to rise up on his knees and fix it. He’d gotten to Benji’s shins and he pauses there to admire the King in front of him. This is, truthfully, the first time they’ve really been alone since the coronation. Weeks of planning, of ceremonies, of preparing for rule. Advisers fluttering around him, just to be replaced with different advisers who could be more trusted.

There’s a tiredness about Benji that dims Xavier’s smile just a bit. Marks underneath his eyes from not sleeping a full night, a new wrinkle forming between his brow. Xavier’s hands smooth up over legging clad thighs, his bodyweight pressing forward to add pressure to the touch. A slight massage that makes Benji groan, hands cupping Xavier’s forearms and squeezing.

“My King,” he jokes in a playful, sensual voice. “You’re wearing far too much clothes for bed.” There’s a peek of dark chest hair underneath his slightly opened white linen shirt. The hollow of his throat is beautiful, bare, asking to be kissed. But Xavier wants more of him. Wants to see all that dark beautiful skin, the softness in tandem with his hard swells of muscle. Wants to kiss along his sternum, across pectorals.

Finally alone, for the first time in so long.

“Xavier,” Benji says, in a way that immediately makes him slink forward further. He nestles knees on either side of Benji’s hips, his hands playing with the hem of the white shirt. His dark green eyes watch Benji’s face turn softer. “It’s just us—call me Benji.” The please is not there, but Xavier feels wounded to still sense it. He dives forward, captures Benji into a kiss. It’s not the usual hard, messy, hungriness. It’s a press, with weight, just their lips together until Xavier moves his mouth lower.

“Well, Benji,” Xavier says, his teeth touching the shirt that obscures him from all that gorgeous body he wants so badly. “Statement stands. Think you should get properly undressed for bed.”

Benji makes a soft, pleased sound when Xavier’s bare hands slide up under the shirt. His skin dances, muscles flexing with every brush of his lovers warm palms. He shucks it higher and higher, eyes devouring the sight of him. Then Benji laughs, lifts a hand to correct the crown as it nearly slides free of Xavier’s wild, tangled, red hair.

“Leave this on,” Benji says, in a rough, low voice.

—

Xavier has dreamed this before.

That murky remembrance can’t compare to the reality of it; but it mingles in a way that makes it heightened, makes it feverishly hot. He remembers in the dream, he’d twisted his body this way—that way. Up, down. Authentically experienced, in a way he actually isn’t. He remembers in the dream, he’d leaned back, hands to Benji’s thighs—but in the here, now, he’s hunched forward. Xavier keeps his hands to Benji’s chest, to brace himself. Primarily, because the dream had not prepared him for this punched feeling, all the way through his body. This filled sensation that makes it hard to drag in ragged gasps.

He’s blinking through teary eye lashes, his mouth dropped open to draw in another rough breath. Xavier uses the leverage of his hands on Benji’s chest to shove himself further down. The crown slides on top his head, silver beautiful against the messy strands of auburn.

“Xavier,” Benji moans it just as breathlessly. His hands aren’t where they had been in the dream. They’d been tucked around his waist, thumbs digging in a way that made him shiver, tremble, close. Now he has hands fisted into his own inky, curly hair, his face a mask of pleasure that Xavier is becoming addicted to seeing. Brows pinched, lips bitten. His chest moves rapidly with breath. Xavier’s hands slide, cup Benji’s ribs as he rolls his hips forward. Every inch makes him whimper more.

“Ohfuck—you feel—you’re—”

“Me?” Xavier finds his ability to laugh, as pitched and hitching as it is. His long torso straightens, his weight leaning backward. The crown slips again. His long red hair sticks to his shoulders, his collarbone, his chest. Xavier gasps once more and one of his hands reflexively touches his abdomen. Filled. “You,” he groans. “Not a single fucking dream prepared me for—you.”

He finds his rhythm, his inexperience not dulling his enthusiasm. One of Benji’s hands leaves his hair to grab Xavier’s thigh, squeezing hard as he lifts himself—thrusts down and falls forward. Makes Benji strangle out a loud noise of lusty satisfaction. Xavier’s roaming hands scramble over Benji as he pants and moans. Hips thrusting back and forth with frantic passion. He blinks sweat and tears from his eyes, looks down at Benji beneath him.

He oddly remembers their first kiss, in that exact moment; but Xavier’s memory has always been like that. Fading in and out with dreams mingling between. His stomach burns with a sweet, delicious heat, his cock aching and begging for attention that he doesn’t give it. Xavier ruts forward, thinks of that kiss, shared in the grass. Thinks of the sunburn on the tops of his shoulders, of Benji’s hands sliding medicine across them. Xavier buries himself forward, his slick chest to Benji’s. Remembers the smell of nature, the pouring of honey warm yellow sunlight.

Benji’s palms ground him, suddenly holding his cheeks. His head is turned, brought forward for a kiss. The crown fully falls, rolls off the bed, clatters to the floor. Forgotten. His mouth drops open in a noisy moan, tongue out to taste the other man. They kiss hungry and desperate, with loud panting breaths between each. His arms bury around Benji’s shoulders, his body grinding forward. His cock becomes trapped between their bodies, their sweat and his precum making them slick together.

Xavier tears away from the kiss to slap his palms to the wall behind the bed. He makes sharp, loud noises as Benji’s hips thrust harder up into him. He shakes his head viciously, side to side. Not yet, he thinks, dizzy and light headed. Not yet, I want more, I just want more, please, I want more. Benji’s hand wraps around him, tugging him in rhythm to the way his hips buck upward. Xavier practically claws at the wall before he falls. His hands grasp at the bending on either side of Benji’s thighs.

His hips are taken then, Benji half sat up and pulling him toward him.

They look to each other then, Xavier’s eyes wet with tears that slip from the corners of his eyes—and Benji’s dark brown, endless pools. His entire body feels thrumming and hot, warm in a way he almost can’t bear. The continued thrusting of Benji into him makes his body bounce back and forth, his jaw dropped to moan and whimper and beg.

“Keep going—like that—Benji—” The name gets caught on his lips and then it’s only Benji’s name after that, his head tossed back. He loses control of his own movements, this impossibly desperate writhe as Benji keeps hold of his waist. His hands dig just like in the dream, the press of his thumbs on his stomach making Xavier go insane.

“I want to,” Benji manages to pant between gasps. “Inside.”

“Fuck—like you have to ask?” Xavier whimpers out, slapping at Benji’s thigh. He laughs wildly at that movement, and so does Xavier until that laugh becomes something higher pitched and loud. A cry sort of sound when Benji drives so hard into him, he sees white. Warmth pools inside him, this lightning feeling zipping up and down his body. Xavier collapses against the feeling, his upper half between Benji’s strong legs. His hands have nowhere to go but himself, one clutched behind his neck, the other squeezing harshly, painfully at his chest.

His orgasm is bone deep, sweeping his body in fucking waves, making him squirm there for a moment. He’s loud about it, open in his pleasure, warm release pooling over his stomach.

Then the only sound is either of them breathing hard—labored gasping as Benji leans forward. His hands sweep up Xavier’s sides, making him twitch and shiver from the sensitivity. He loops a hand around Benji’s wrist, wet eyes blinking and finding his farm hand. There’s an odd halo around his wild, black hair, from the candlelight sconce on the wall. Xavier’s weak hand pets softly over Benji’s collarbone.

He remembers a dream in another room. Smaller. And looking at Benji, just like this. He’d had gray in his hair in that dream. Odd, that it comes to him right then, because Benji shouldn’t gray for a few more years at least. And that room had been so cozy and warm, but small, modest. Not a king’s luxurious bedroom.

The memory slips him then as Benji’s palm spreads across his release and over his stomach.

“I’m goin’ t’pay a sorcerer,” Benji pants, drawing in deep gasps, his lips parted in a warm, subdued smile. “To fuckin’ bottle the sounds you make.”

“Touch my stomach like that, still inside me, and I’ll be making them all over again—ah! I didn’t mean do it!”

—

Breakfast is brought for the King, but he isn’t in his chambers. The lavish plate of food gets left in the room; is picked up by a servant who brings it to their quarters to eat off of instead. Kings orders, he swears, with big pale eyes as the boys set upon it.

Benji breakfasts with Xavier instead, out by the pond. It’s not the Kings breakfast they had prepared (several kinds of exotic fruits, hard cheese and soft cheese and three different sorts of breads, and spiced wine, warmed perfectly).

“He fell, and the rope was wrapped around his ankle, so it caught him, but his tunic—” Xavier gestures and Benji nearly spits out the apple he’d just bitten into. He laughs, full bodied with it as he falls onto his back, the core tossed off somewhere. Xavier leans over him, his own apple wedged between his teeth. He snaps off a piece of the fruit, chews at it thoughtfully. “Don’t tell Matilda that story. Lark will kill me.”

“I wouldn’t let him,” Benji says, his warm palm cupping Xavier’s cheek.

“Oh, you’ll protect me then?”

The memory of the oath fills him then, warms his cheeks as he glances away to the pond. Benji’s thumb brushes his lower lip, pushes it softly. Xavier opens his mouth to the feeling.

“As mine,” Benji repeats, just as he had, as a farm hand, years ago, in a barn.

#writing #hj #2023 #fantasy au #xw #bp #bp x xw

[unknownjpegs]

little value

“Halt!”

Stepper doesn’t listen to the command, since it’s not from him, so the lumbering beast continues on stepping. Happy watches lazily, arms tucked into his sleeves, folded over his chest. His tortoise takes another lazy step and the Kings Guards on the road start to seem panicky, waving their hands, shouting the command another time.

“Stepper,” Happy calls, whistling. The Great Tortoise pauses then, one massive leg half lifted. He sets it down and swings his massive head toward him, blinking big doe eyes. “S’nough now, yeah? We’ll rest a bit.” He gets another few blinks before the tortoise opens its mouth in a giant yawn and then the beasts stomach hits the ground hard enough to make the two guards stumble a bit.

“You have papers for this beast? For your wares?” One of the guards snaps, coming forward. He’s taller than the other, lanky with floppy brown hair that pokes out underneath his little royal helm. Guard Two stands at a more respectable distance, has shrewd and beady red eyes. Neither of them pay Stepper any mind now that he’s flat to the ground.

“Are you askin’ if I’m a legitimate merchant, or a man with a giant tortoise carrying goods, roaming around for fun?” Happy takes one arm from his sleeve and uses his little finger to scratch inside his ear. Stepper gives another big mouthed yawn for effect, resting its head on the ground lazily.

“Being short with me, merchant?” The first guard snarls, hand on his hilt.

“Least m’bein’ recognized as a merchant,” Happy mutters, waving a hand in mute compliance to have his wares looked at. But neither guard actually move to do so. Instead they come closer, angling looks at each other. Suspicious and furtive, and both rest their hands on their hilts then. Happy looks between them, bored and tired.

“Looking for this man,” the short guard says, yanking out a piece of parchment. He holds it up for Happy to lazily inspect, head lolled to the side and angled down, because he’s much taller.

It’s Tino, of course. An artists rendering, with charcoal perhaps. It has his smooth cheeks, dark hair, the handsome cut of his jaw. Only whoever had done the drawing had also given him a terrible sneer. A cruel curl to his lip that wrinkled his nose. His eyes were glinting with malice, brows drawn in. He looked cartoonish and villainous and nothing like the laughing, good natured man Happy knew. If someone knew Tino, perhaps they’d recognize this as him. But a stranger, who merely glanced between this paper and the smiling, baby faced man they were looking for, might possibly think there was just an unfortunate resemblance.

“Never seen ‘im,” Happy replies.

The guards stare at him, their eyes narrowed. Beads of sweat roll down their faces, because they’re in light armor. He stares back, nonplussed and unimpressed.

“Suppose you’ll be paying the Kings tax ‘fore we let you by,” the shorter guard says then. He sniffs hard and spits snot onto the ground at Happy’s feet. The wind rustles through the trees a bit. He feels rain incoming and truthfully, he’d hoped to be at Tino’s by now. Because the trail is just shortly to their left, leads right into a clearing where the runaway’s built his little home for him and his stolen babe. And if it weren’t for that trail being so close, so happenstance nearby, Happy might have been content to just let them rob him.

Instead, he gives a shake of his head and sighs.

“Already paid my taxes this year.”

The guards unsheathe their swords with a clanging metallic sound. One points the tip to him while the other starts toward his tortoise. Stepper blinks up at the man as he levels the sword with his long leathery neck.

“Not above killing a man’s beast to set him straight,” the tall, sweaty guard says in a snide and malicious voice.

“Know what he is?” Happy asks in reply, gesturing toward his companion. The tortoise blinks at him this time. His great bulk shifts slightly, excited for the attention. Happy can remember the exact day when he got Stepper. Bought from a traveling merchant just like himself. Small enough to fit into his palm.

“A fucking turtle, what else he be?” The short guard prods his sword closer, point neck level with Happy now. He stares down the long glossy metal. It looks mostly unused. Happy understands. Pricks like the Royal Guards that wander the Kings Road, to keep peace, don’t usually have care to swing a sword. They can bully what they want out of people—and Happy is usually too lazy to argue, cuts his own coin purse and tosses it to them most of the time, without a backward look.

But the trail is so close.

“Stepper is a Great Tortoise. Not to be confused with the little tortoise. The ones you might be used to, yeah? The difference between Stepper and the small ones is not that he’s much bigger.” Happy sighs out, as if this is all some great inconvenience and not that he has a sword tip up to him and his animal companion. He lifts up a hand to wave at the tortoise, who raises his giant head in reply. The tall guard startles and takes a stumbling step back. “It’s that he can kill you.”

Steppers head shoots out fast, a blurring quickness. His great maw opens and then snaps shut around the tall guards head. There’s a distinctly wet crunching sound and then the body falls back to the ground with a loud thumping sound. His head does not follow.

Guard Two makes a brave attempt with his sword, screaming as it arcs through the air to catch Stepper on the neck. The thin metal snaps in two as it strikes the tortoise’s skin, the point of it flying and sticking into the soft dirt behind Happy, who’d stepped to the side as he saw it coming. The half broken sword makes a distinct twanging sound and then the guard is knocked to the ground by Stepper’s giant head.

“No! No!” The guard thrashes, screaming, scrambles—not enough. The Great Tortoise puts a great foot to the mans chest, and in one smooth and effortless motion, steps down. There’s the crunching sound of body breaking as well as the creak and groan of metal giving underneath the giant tortoise’s foot. Happy winces a bit as the blood soaks into the dirt road, dark and thick.

“Well,” Happy folds his arms back into his sleeves and looks to his companion. Stepper yawns once more, blood dripping from his pointed beak like mouth. “Suppose we’re in it now, Steps. No going back once you start killin’ the royalty.” Stepper slowly sinks back to the ground, belly flat, rumbling the Earth once more. Happy sighs, knowing he isn’t going to get any help moving the bodies to the forest.

—

The baby coos at Happy, his little fists waving in the air from the chair Tino’s fashioned for him. Something to keep him locked in, while he’s being fed. In the castle, Benji would have been spoiled rotten—held by a maid while another spoon fed him delicately. Now, he sits there with a plate of mixed foods that he smacks at happily, puts into his mouth messily as he smiles toothlessly up at Happy.

A bowl of soup and rice is handed to him then, by the young father. Happy takes it and immediately puts it to the side and then levels a look at Tino.

“Came here to talk to you,” he says in a mild voice. Not that the food didn’t smell amazing. The entire home did; alive with the cooking. The spices and the fire, and the closed in little space. The baby making excited sounds as Tino steps closer to wipe at the corners of his mouth.

“Not just to visit? Diondre, you know you can sit down. Enjoy a meal.”

“I know a witch,” he says instead, leaning against the table by the window. His eyes cut out to look at Stepper, who looks morose to not be involved. “With a babe just his age. Maybe a year younger or older, can’t really remember. She’s not exactly a nice witch, if you understand me.” He feels a chill sort of run up and down his spine, hairs lifting along his arms, like she can hear him. Wouldn’t doubt it if she could. He’d say it to her face, though, so the chill disappears as quickly as it had come on.

Tino stills, his shoulders tightening. Happy’s head tilts to the side, assessing as the younger man moves around the baby. Benji seems to sense the tension, his giant brown eyes going wide and watery. He looks fit to suddenly scream until Tino brushes a soothing hand over his curly hair. The baby has an absolute mop of it, black waves that stick up until Tino is brushing them down.

“Guards were on the road again.”

“Guards are always on the Kingsroad. It’s the Kingsroad.”

“And this,” Happy says, with a gesturing hand toward the placated baby. His little fist is wrapped tightly around one of Tino’s fingers, teething at the tip of it happily. He blinks at Happy, his eye lashes already thick and long. He looks nothing like his father. Not yet anyway. “Is the King’s son.”

The two men make eye contact then. Tino’s capable of a vastly darker look than one might assume him capable of. Nothing like the snide villains sneer on the parchment Happy had been shown. It’s not cruel, but it’s a cobra’s strike of warning. Benji makes happy, bubbling sounds. Happy sighs, takes the bowl from where he’d put it, assumes the soup is finally cooled down enough to eat. He won’t make this argument a third time; Tino will keep the baby, and Happy will keep selling along the Kingsroad to ensure that baby isn’t found.

Stepper breaks the tension by shoving his giant head through the window. Benji shrieks, but not in terror. He waves his hands in the air as the tortoise’s head comes closer. He yells in his babies babble and Stepper’s giant mouth opens, yawning large and wide.

The maw snaps shut on a bundle of herbs just above the mantle. Stepper chews contently, big eyes blinking as Benji continues his cherubic giggling.

Tino swings toward Happy with a delighted smile.

“You’ll be paying for the herbs then?”

Happy’s head rolls back on his neck, sighing out as he fishes for his coin purse.

—

Outside, Happy walks alongside the tortoise. The baby sleeps contently in the basket that Stepper carries inside his mouth. Tino watches from the door of the house, puffing away at the pipe. The smoke carries up into the air, disappears among the pink and purple clouds as the day slowly ends.

“I knew your father,” Happy says to the sleeping baby. Benji is swaddled tightly. He’d been fussing and crying, arguing against his sleep when Happy had scooped him up and placed him into the basket. It’ll help. Babies like the rocking motion, he’d explained as Stepper had taken up the handle without question. They lumber along now. Benji sleeps soundly, little face perfect.

“Well,” Happy continues, hands in his sleeves again. “Your real father, not that one. Know him too, for a bit now.” The edge of the forest greets them, so they make a turn to continue back toward the house. Tino has not moved, watches dutifully. “Not a big fan of the King, Benji.”

Stepper stops suddenly and sinks down onto his stomach lazily. Happy leans over to inspect the baby once more. Nothing but his face pokes out from the layers of blankets that keep him safe and warm. Happy crouches to look closer. He tries to find a shred of The King inside this face, but comes up empty. Not that he looks much like Tino either. Happy suspects, he’ll grow into a face that is uniquely his own.

“They’re going to come for you one day,” he murmurs. Stepper yawns out, puts his head beside the basket. Blinks his eyes closed. Happy sighs, looks up to the slowly darkening sky. Then he fishes within his red robe, pulls out the long necklace he’d stolen before he left. “This was your mothers. She was—well. The light in the halls of the castle, I’d say.” It’s not something a queen would wear, it’s simple, and of little value. It’s gold chain is old and the ornate gem at the end might not even be real.

Happy tucks it into the basket anyway.

#writing #hj #2023 #fantasy #dml #tl

[unknownjpegs]

the way

Even in the dark and even in the rain, Xavier knows the way to the farm. He knows the exact cut through the forest that’ll lead them into a sprawling field. He remembers it in the daylight; honeyed sun making him lazy and warm and content, laid on his back with another man’s hand on his stomach as his hooded eyes watched white clouds slip by. Under the heavy burden of the storm, the field looks lonesome. Widely empty. Devoid of him. Still, Xavier finds he spot in the fences that is easiest to hop—he’d tripped over it the first time he’d ever come crashing into this field. Back then, he’d been lost. Now, he would have this entire land memorized. Forever.

Eddard helps Jyra over the posts. His hands are giant and cup her waist easily, lift her like she weighs absolutely nothing so she doesn’t tear her skirts on the wood. Her soft, pink cloak is drenched and clinging to her petite frame. Xavier’s own hood flattens to his skull under the torrential rain—Eddard hasn’t bothered with any of it. His face is set in that grimly determined grimace that Xavier has come to understand.

She can’t be under the rain much longer, he’d told Xavier, who was quick to agree. This weather battered them both, but Jyra’s pale face was miserably red from the onslaught of cold. She was braving it, though, teeth chattering and arms wrapped around herself, stumbling with them. Not making a fuss, not asking to stop, not complaining. All the same; a weathered illness could kill. You get cold one day and never warm up.

Xavier had not necessarily meant for this detour, even though the closer they got to it, the more his heart burned in his chest. He’s been here (he’s never left here), back when he had come home to try and find—to look for—hoping he’d still be here. To find only the father, no son. He’d not stayed long after that, because the barn had loomed over him, empty of nothing but memories and the smell of hay. Because Tino and—and he—didn’t look alike, features set all differently. And yet being around him, around the man, all he could think—

“Not much further,” Xavier says as he passes the well. He wants to pause, wants to sit on it, wants to remember and can’t. He bunches shoulders to the wind, that has kicked up again and sliced across his cheeks cruelly. Once glance behind his shoulder shows Eddard’s arm tucked around his mistress, his big body attempting to shield her from the spirited storm. It had come on quickly, mercilessly, right after Lark had departed.

Looks like sun for the rest of your journey, Lark had said, with his eyes to the sky. How fortunate for you. Damned fucking thief had cursed him; or his witch had, maybe. For fun.

In the distance, he sees that barn first. His eyes skate over it and to the house instead. His heart thunders, harder and harder. His body cannot catch up to what his brain already knows; that he is not in there. He is not waiting for him. He will not open the door and lean against the frame and ask here to help with the farm chores then, knight? And smile at him, with that handsome face. Xavier’s hand flattens to his chest, attempts to keep himself held together as he closes his eyes and presses forward.

“Be polite,” he calls back over his shoulder. “Manners are important with him. Doesn’t take to disrespect. He’s a kind man; possibly the kindest you’ll find. But, he has his ways.” Xavier laughs then, recalling a day when he’d come by and got caught standing, just staring. Are you going to stare at my son with your tongue out like a dog? Or will you help him cut the fire wood? He was that kind of man. Perceptive, quick tongued and funny and yet after, when they’d joined for dinner he’d given Xavier two helpings. Soldiers rations had been so bad back then, and he was so thankful he almost couldn’t accept it.

The wind threatens to push them back as Xavier reaches the house first.

His heart in his throat. The windows are boarded against the storm. The house is strong, though. Built by the very man inside of it. Xavier tucks his chin down to his chest and then hammers a fist against the door. Once. Twice, then a third time, louder and harder each time. When no one answers, he raises it once more, shaking from fist to elbow from the cold pour of rain.

Then the door swings open.

Benji, Xavier’s heart traitorously thinks, immediately.

Tino stands there, with a flash in his eyes. Prepared—ready, for anything. Xavier quickly swipes the cloak down from his head, wet strands of his hair sticking to his face. There’s a long moment where the two men only stare at each other. Rain threatens to spill over the threshold into Tino’s home. Xavier quickly bows his head.

“Uncle,” he greets with a hoarse voice. There’s a stretch of silence—or, rather, rain filling that silence, howling wind behind him, Jyra sniffling softly, Eddard’s mumbled words to soothe her—and then he looks back up. Tino has his long pipe in his mouth, puffing contemplatively.

“Guests this time, eh?” Xavier swallows hard and nods, eyes downcast to the slowly dampening floor in front of him. “You know the rules.”

“Rules?” Jyra pipes up from behind in a delicate, thin voice. It’s wavering from the cold, hiccuped and stuck in her chest as she clears her throat.

“We’ll help clear any of the debris from the storm in the morning.” Xavier can’t help but smile, his eyes finally rising back to the man. It hurts to look at him as much as it is welcome. To be this close to someone; this close to the memories of his youth. “Is that enough?”

“And you will fix the crank on the well.” Tino puffs some more, his face cracking open into a warm smile. “Inside. Why are you so thin? Not eating enough, clearly. And she,” Tino steps aside to allow them to enter. He tuts, shaking his head. Eddard has to fully duck under the doorway as he helps Jyra inside. “We will get her warm.” Xavier turns to the lady then, carefully pulling away the hood of her cloak. Her brown hair is nearly black from the water log, strands of it sticking across her cheek bones. Makes him laugh a little as he pushes one back and behind her ear.

“Tino is good,” he promises, eyes glancing up to Eddard, who looks, as he always does, like he’s simply assessing with bored (and very, very aware) eyes.

“How do you know him?” She asks, curious despite the obvious aching. Xavier can’t answer, finds himself utterly unable as he glances back to Tino, who shuffles around his modest, beautiful home in search of dry things for them to put on. He swallows the thick lodge of pain in his throat and rubs her shoulders.

“Tino is good,” he softly repeats.

#writing #hj #2023 #fantasy au #xw #tl

[unknownjpegs]

poisoner

The man sits dead, across from her at the table. Slumped back with his jaw dropped open and his eyes rolled back. A little bit of red has slipped from his nose and the bit of it from his mouth is pink from the foam that drips off his chin. He looks waxen and horrifying with the candles lit on the dining table slowly flickering to their own death.

Nomi fidgets with her necklace, a thin thing of gold that looped prettily around her neck, as Nick walks into the room.

“Ah!” He steps toward the corpse, adjusting his glasses. Get them fixed, she wants to snap at him. Just fix them, so they stop sliding everywhere, but she’s well aware that he won’t. Has been living with those over sized glasses for however long his beautiful witch wife has kept him alive. She thinks, he likes it because people think he looks soft. Owlish and demure when he keeps having to slide them back up.

Wolf in sheep’s clothing. Or worse, maybe. Least wolves only killed for food.

Nick taps the mans head, watches it loll forward. Nomi scoots slightly from the table, as if he might spring to life and curse her. You! He’d scream. You killed me!

“Did you use the entire vial?”

“Only half, like you said.” She pulls it from out of her sleeve and holds it aloft. The liquid inside is completely clear. He’d told her that it would have no scent, and hardly dilute the wine at all. He’d taste nothing but the alcohol as he died—quickly. Nick had promised her quickly. Which, it had been. One minute, flirting heavy handed and dark, the next, convulsing and sweaty and foaming and then dead. Real dead.

“Ah,” Nick taps the glass of wine she hadn’t touched. “Clever girl,” he compliments and Nomi tugs harder on her neck. “You knew he was left handed?” Otherwise, she would have had to poison both cups, and only pretend to drink, in the way he’d shown her. Could have still caught herself, bad. Poison can get into your body through your skin, she’d learned. Doesn’t need to be ingested. Terrifying stuff, Nick taught her.

“Yes, when he was eating. His fork was in his left hand, so—” She gestures toward the wineglasses, her brows pinched in hard. The lord had sat both glasses down, filled them himself. He’d looked at her with such suggestively heavy eyes as he did that Nomi felt like a bath would never wash that gaze off. “I figured he would go for the one on my right. I—Was that a good guess?”

“Well, he is dead. So, oui, Nomi. Perfect guess.”

Otherwise it would have been plan b. Which, Nick had a wire in his pocket to garrote the man, distracted as he’d be with Nomi as his dinner guest; but this was less mess. And her master preferred things easier to clean up. Nomi tugged the necklace again and it caught his eye.

“Feeling guilty?” He rounded the table to stand beside her. Sometimes, she forget that Nick was an intimidatingly tall man. He rounded his shoulders often, leaned forward when he talked to people. Made himself smaller. All these little details of him that seemed to slide past peoples eyes. Nomi hadn’t moved, since the man had died. Sat there and looked at him, hands occupied with little things to keep her mind busy while she stared at that pink white foam.

“No. He was a bastard, weren’t he? You—You told me what he did to those servants.”

“What if one day we get asked to do this against someone who is no bastard?”

Nomi snorts, tugs her necklace once more and then drops it. She wrings her fingers together until they look red and aggravated.

“What if one day I get to sit and eat cakes with ladies and indulge in court gossip?”

“Nomi.”

She looks up at him, fingers still tangled together. She’s dressed in finery, that he’d put her in for this night. A dark, velvet gown that had made her feel pretty, until she knew she was meant to be pretty in a way that would make a man want to be alone at a dinner with her. With no guards, no servants. She missed her rough wool dress. The sleeves of this dress clung, form fitting around her slender arms; and that one detail made her feel oddly exposed.

“Your father was a butcher.” It stung, put a little needle into her heart to hear him say it. Like she’d forgotten the smell of it, the slap of meat on a block to be carved. “And he tried to sell you to me for three gold coins.” Nomi bristles further, shoulders hunching up to her ears.

“I will slap you, Nicolaj,” she seethes out her teeth but it only makes him relax more, lean further to look at her. He’s leaned up against the table, his back to the dead man. One of his ankles crosses over the other, his hands in his pockets as he maneuvers himself closer to her.

“Would you not rather be the one who starts the court gossip?” He tilts his head down, those glasses sliding to the end. “Who pulls the strings of those vapid women eating cake?” His hand slides from his pocket and she doesn’t flinch, like she usually does, when he gently takes her chin. “There are three things in this world, Nomi. Un. There is a dog in the street with a cut of meat. Deux. There is a bigger dog, who is going to kill that one for the meat.” He shakes her head in that soft way he does.

“Trois. There is the nobility, who laugh the whole time.”

She wets her lip with her tongue, brows drawn and furrowed. A fly settles on the eye of the corpse.

“What are you then, Master Toussaint?”

“I will be the dog that bites those nobles in their fucking necks. And the King will pay me to do it,” he says it so confidently. So knowingly. All according to some plan. Endlessly, he serves only one master; love. For his wife. But there is something dark inside him that seems to call to his chosen career. And kingdoms have need for men that do this. Women, she supposes, who do this. “You can come, if you would like.” He straightens then, to that full, looming and swaying height. The doctor fixes the glasses on the edge of his nose and begins to go for the door.

“Nick.” Nomi stands from the chair. Her knees don’t feel fully there, but she still manages, one hand braced on the table. She looks at it, watches the tremble against her pale skin, blue veins standing out fine and ugly. She curls it into the white tablecloth and then smiles. “Maybe, one day, I will be both dog and lady. I like cakes, is all.”

He laughs, hand on the door knob.

“Beautiful. First, though, we will sharpen your teeth a bit.”

#writing #hj #2023 #fantasy #nw #nt

[unknownjpegs]

delicate

“You look smaller outside the armor.” It’s the first thing Nomi says, and instantly regrets it as well. Her hand folds up over her mouth, eyes wide and shocked at the knight. But, well, they do. Dressed down, in plain tan trousers and a long sleeve white wool shirt. It’s open slightly at their throat, which proves more distracting than Nomi likes so her eyes skate down to their boots. Much safer there.

“I apologize—”

“No,” Jory raises their hand, drawing Nomi’s attention up toward their face again. They’re smiling, softly, brows gently pinched and they look so different. So approachable like this. But also, so…melancholic. Sometimes, Nomi wonders if anyone else sees that; or if they all avoid that aspect of them. They skate by the truth of their nature, because it’s easier—or because Jory is a knight, the Knight. Who bested the King’s favorite, who did not strike a final blow. Not now, though. No armor. Just trousers and a shirt. “If it’s a true statement, you shouldn’t apologize.”

“I meant to say—well, I meant, you just look—more—” She tries to get her words out with gestures, softly taking steps toward Jory. They’re in the courtyard. Flowers are blooming, lovingly tended by the lady Sunshine. The colors of them make Nomi’s eyes hurt—so many soft pastels of pinks and purples. She glances to the basket in her hands, realizes, she might be too used to red. Dark, mottled, browning red.

“I don’t know what I meant…”

She’d been thinking human, but that was so rude, even Nomi wouldn’t say it aloud.

The sunlight dapples across the courtyard, peeks through the trees and their leaves. It makes the fine reddish-gold of Jory’s hair almost look translucent. She remembers the first time meeting the knight, with their slightly wounded side. She’d found them regal then, mysterious. Something truly pulled from a story.

She continues forward until they’re close enough Nomi has to tilt her head up to look at them. She comes to their chin, or just under. Usually, when they’re taller, she hates that. Doesn’t like having that disadvantage—can usually smell them too, and it’s always awful. But, Jory’s collarbone, which shows slightly through their shirt, looks delicately fragile. Like a good smash from a sword hilt could break it—she’d seen wounds like that before.

And, well, they smell nice enough.

“Here,” she reaches into her basket and pulls something out, holding it aloft.

Both of them blink at the block of hard cheese in Nomi’s hand.

“Ah,” she says, as if that explains it at all. Then she clears her throat and gently puts it back into the basket. “I was wondering—” No. Start again. “Perhaps you would like—” Not like that either. Nomi squares her shoulders, draws in a large breath and firmly stares into those endlessly gray eyes. Like little storm clouds, morose with imminent rain. “Come with me to the lake. We’re going to have lunch there together.”

They blink. A slight glimpse down to the basket in Nomi’s arm before rising back up. Then, they offer her their arm. Not like a knight, but simply like a friend. And, Nomi thinks, you need one too, don’t you, Jory?

—

Two swans cut through the lake. Glide softly over its glassy surface, the ripples dying out before they reach the edge that Jory and Nomi sit at. The sun reflects over all that water, kicks up light and makes it a little hard for her to look at. Focuses on the bread in her hands as she rips off a piece.

“Fresh,” she comments. “Chef is—well. Name makes sense, yeah?” She uses a small parring knife to slice off a piece of the cheese and place it on the bread. Then she passes it over, and her and the knight slowly eat the bread and cheese together while the swans laze across the water. What Nomi wants to say is, you look like you don’t eat enough, but she’s insulted her new friend enough for one day.

Means it wholeheartedly though. They’re not slim, not in the way she is. And they have muscles—their biceps are thick in their shirt, fill it out well there, but it isn’t musculature that Nomi is thinking of. When she thinks, you’re not taking care of yourself, that’s what it means. She taps her piece of bread against her lips and looks at the swans and their lake. They scare her; big creatures, brutish with those wings, black eyes that look ominous. They’re meant to be beautiful, but for Nomi she just sort of sees a giant predator.

“Thank you,” Jory says. Her cheeks radiate suddenly with warmth that has nothing to do with the way the sun has started to angle to bear down on them. She tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear and looks sideways. The sun does them well. Go out into it more, she thinks. Instead she reaches up and takes a curl of red-blond hair.

“Would you like me to shape up your hair for you, Ser?”

“What if I grew it out?”

“Make half the court ladies swoon with tha’, you would.”

Jory laughs, but its more of a release of air than anything else. Doesn’t have the same sound to it as she’s heard before, the same beautiful little note. You don’t want that attention, do you? Nomi thinks. Me neither. She toys with the blanket in the basket, looking at it. Wants to apologize, but it’ll be easier if she doesn’t. Instead, she pulls it away and turns to the knight.

She remembers, once, catching them on the stairs as they came up. Surrounded by cold stone that lead down to the prisoners cell. In the moment before Jory had looked up, their face had been tight. Had been concerned, laced with a worry they weren’t letting anyone else see; that they probably didn’t mean to let Nomi see either, because the second they lifted their chin and met her eyes, it was smoothed away. Masked into a neutral expression that would have scared her on anyone else.

Made her sad, looking down at this knight. Mighty, noble, enigmatic. The Knight who bested the best. Reduced to, well, this. Someone who stole into the prisoners quarters at night, to make sure Ser Graves—she skated right off the thought of that man. They’d passed each other in the stairs then, Nomi tucked close to the bricks and Jory avoiding her eye.

“I brought you this,” she says, pulling away the blanket. And tucked inside, underneath where she’d kept their lunch, was supplies. Rolls of bandages, a poultice in case the man had an infection, or might get one. A canteen of water, fresh and mixed with slices of fruit to give it a sweetness that might nourish. Nomi brushes her fingers over it. “For—For him. Well. For you, but for—” She breaks off then.

The silence between them stretches long. But not uncomfortably, as Jory takes the basket closer to themselves. Inspects slightly, with their long, slim fingers. Their mouth opens, as though they might object and Nomi swiftly pulls the blanket back over the basket and smiles at them. Through the fabric, her hands close over Jory’s; two of hers can close easily over the knight’s one. Just the blankets thin material between them.

“I stole it from Nick. He doesn’t pay me enough, you know,” she teases. Jory’s gray eyes wander her face enough to make her look down. “I don’t think—what you’re doing is not noble.” It sounds harsh, more than she meant for it to. But, she continues. “But I understand it. Because he means something to you—and isn’t that—well, it’s what makes us people, at the end of the day. I do not like men, Jory.” She squeezes her hands, feels those deft fingers move, turn up and their palms touch. The blanket still is there, obscuring their skin to skin contact.

“I only make the exception for Nick—and others, I suppose. But,” Nomi licks her lips and glances up, under her lashes. “It’s those exceptions, right? Little things we let slide past our battlements. Spies and all that, in our hearts, in the night. He means a great deal to you. And that’s sad, you know? It is,” she presses on, terrified, but unable to stop herself. Thinks, if Jory can withstand taking swords to their sides, they can hear the ugly, but also lovely, simplistic truth. “But, I admire you for it.”

“He has no one but me,” Jory replies. She slides her hands away and begins to stand. Leverages herself on her knees and slowly brings herself up. Even sitting, as they are, Jory is tall enough that Nomi doesn’t tower.

“Then he is a very lucky man, despite it all.”

She tries desperately to tuck dark blue locks of hair up underneath her bandanna, not realizing how much of it has fallen out. She glances around, back to the lake, to the swans, but they’ve left.

“I would like—” No. She pats her dress down. “I will visit you. In the tower. And you’ll teach me about,” she gestures up, into the mid afternoon sky. Clouds draw across the sky, fat and lazy and content. “I think I might be more suited for stars than whatever Nick is trying to teach me.”

The wind picks up a little, buffets them both and makes Jory’s high, pretty cheekbones look pink. They glance up at the sky that Nomi is indicating, and she can see that they love that sky, and what’s higher—that they look whats beyond it. Shame, that all that love, is also tied to a man underneath a castle, in a dungeon cell. Waiting for those bandages.

“I would love that, Nomi,” they reply and Nomi turns before either of them can say anything else. 

When she’s stepped far enough away, she dares look over her shoulder. See’s Jory leaned back on their elbows, still looking up at the sky. A long, pale slice over the green grass, looking lonesome and distant from others. When Jory’s head tilts to look at her, Nomi quickly looks away and continues. Little blue shadow on that green to find another place to hide for the day.

#writing #hj #2023 #fantasy au #nw

[unknownjpegs]

rat and executioner

He uses his chest armor, propped up against a tree as a mirror. It hardly works—Xavier’s is dusty and dented and more than a little worn. He thinks about polishing it sometimes, but it hardly feels worth it. Just gets dinged up again, don’t it?

Still, this is a ritual for him. Never grows tired of it, even if sometimes his emotions waver over the old tradition. Days when he feels elated, hopeful, fingers working through his hair quickly. Excited. Other days when he’s staring at himself, at the dull and warped reflection, his green eyes forest like and sad, he wishes he could stop. Never would—never would. Yet, his heart grows so heavy sometimes, waterlogged and leaking.

Xavier begins by coming out his gnarled red hair. Admittedly doesn’t do this bit often enough. Uses his fingers mostly to yank through his waves. Most days, he thinks of cutting his hair short, but then, well, he wouldn’t have the braid. When that’s over with, he stretches out his back and then sits again on the ground. He pauses, wonders, will I look that different to him when he sees me after all these years?

“I could help you.”

The lady’s voice yanks him out of his reverie, pulls him instantly to a present that doesn’t smell of hay and horse and him. Xavier looks over to her as she approaches. Those softly slippered feet that are sure to be hurting in time. He thinks they’ll have to stop in a town, buy her something better. Can’t risk bringing her in, but how do you get a woman shoes if she can’t try them on? He bites his lips, still looking at her feet before she shuffles closer.

“Ser?”

“Oh,” he tilts his head back to take her in. Despite travel, Jyra doesn’t look tattered or worn. Yet, at least. Only a little tired, likely use to longer rest than he can allow them. Up as soon as the sun begins to touch the sky, orange and pink and beautiful. “With what?”

Jyra crouches, wrapping arms around her knees. Her smile is softly beautiful. She looks like all the paintings of women he’s seen, radiant, with graceful cheekbones and dainty chins. Her nose has a smattering of freckles, not even a fraction of the ones that wash over him. But she’s different, because she smiles at him. She shouldn’t grace him with such favors considering the difference in their stations, and it always makes him a little anxious.

“Your hair,” she offers, looking at where one of his hands has poised itself. “I am,” Jyra pauses and her eyes divert to the ground, her cheeks spilling beautifully pink. “Well, I am good at it.”

Truly. Her own hair was braided in fine fashion; it had been tucked up properly when they’d first started traveling together. Only now, she let it hang over her shoulder. Sometimes, Xavier had such a strong and mysterious urge to take it in his hands and feel how soft it was.

“Ah,” he replies, suddenly not knowing what to say. She looks so kind that he thinks, maybe. Wouldn’t it be nice? To have someone be kind to him? But, he thinks instead, of him, forcing Xavier onto a hay bale with those strong arms. His hands brushing into his red hair, fingers more deft than they’d seemed. Braiding from the temple back and Xavier getting to look up at him while he did. And he had looked; eyes lifted and staring, watching while he’d talked. Xavier can feel that voice. Somewhere.

“I’m sorry, my lady. It’s that—Someone very special to me used to do this. And I—” Xavier swallows the roughness in his throat, looks at the warbled view of himself in his plate armor. “I do it to remember him, is all.” And begs for it to not stay a memory forever. Can’t bear it only ever being a memory.

There’s a brief pause before Jyra leans closer to him.

“Would you like to talk about him, maybe?”

Xavier is stunned that she’d ask. So much so that he openly stares at her, with his jaw unhinged. She’s grinning ear to ear when she courageously leans in and touches his chin. Jyra gently prods his mouth close and he laughs, turning away from her because, its not right for him to stare at her like this. Nor was it for her to touch him. And yet.

He looks back to the armor and his hands begin working through his hair. He starts the braid at the same place, every time, and he follows the path it had first been braided into so long ago.

“He almost killed me with an axe, the first time we met.” He starts the story for her there. It’s his favorite part.

—

The tree blocks the path onward. The kings road has narrowed, a dusty trail between dark, thick forestry—it presses in on them, heavy and creaking with the wind. Alive and full of—well. Xavier stares at the fallen tree and already knows what’s going to happen.

“That looks bad,” Eddard says, on the other side of Hilda, his mare. His voice is flat and tired, but it has a note of knowing tension. Hilda side steps, immediately anxious and aware, nostrils flared. Xavier pats her neck softly, murmuring to her soothing words before he glances up to Jyra.

“Stay on my horse,” he whispers to her. She looks down at him, brows pinched in confusion. She doesn’t have any idea what a tree on the road means. “When they come out, turn Hilda and run. Eddard and I will come find you after—”

But when he looks down the way they’d come, the man is already there. Blocking them against the tree—and when he looks back to that, head snapping quickly to the side, she stands there now. Trapping them in. The wind rustles the leaves, a soft skittering sound as one slips over the road. It makes Hilda snort, stomp a hoof.

Xavier takes two steps back from his horse and slowly unsheathes the sword at his hip. Hilda is trained well, but still makes noises of contempt, muted nickering sounds, eyes rolling a little. He thinks for a moment to yank the horse around, to turn her and see if Jyra could make it past the man. But when his eyes return there, he watches as he hefts a poleaxe.

Horse slayer. Used to spear the poor creatures directly in the chest and bring them—and knights—down to die on the ground. Xavier’s mouth goes dry.

“Can you help us?” The woman calls out and he doesn’t want to turn his head from the man, who is cloaked and dark. Even from this distance, Xavier can tell he’s big. Not always a good thing in a fight, but—

“She’s asking for help,” Jyra says quickly, hopefully. “Maybe—”

���Yes!” The woman laughs as she begins to approach. “We’ve lost our way.” Xavier feels sweat gathering on his back, sliding down, making him shiver. His sword is a familiar weight in his hands, comforting, but not enough. She’s small, like Jyra is, but bulky with gear. Thick, padded armor and a cap on her head that nearly obscures bouncing brown curls. But they poke out wildly (remind him, distantly of curls he’d brushed his hand through, had kissed) and her face is pale and beautiful.

She has a slash of a scar across her eye and a sword on her back.

“He’s done that,” Xavier says, pointing to the tree.

“With his bare hands,” the woman replies, hands on her hips. He doesn’t like the way she says it. Not to impress; to warn. “Are you going to help us, or will this become difficult?”

“I have coin,” Jyra says, her voice a high note of frantic and Xavier briefly shuts his eyes. He wants to tell her, this is not a story. And some thieves do not just want coin.

“Well,” the thief claps her hands, laughing, looking at Xavier with big, delighted eyes. He hears the sound of heavy footsteps, but her eyes are so terrifyingly red and predatory that he can’t look to watch the man approach them. He feels prey fear skittering up his spine. Xavier thinks, he could take them. They’re underestimating him, because he’s young and he’s pretty—and they always underestimate him for that exact reason.

But Jyra. And Eddard. His sword dips slightly and the woman smiles wider.

“Lay it down, knight,” the man says behind him. His voice is slightly accented and soft. When Xavier tilts his head to look at him, he’s obscured entirely by a hood. An executioners hood, it looks like. For a brief, solitary moment, he wants to laugh at that. An executioner and a thief. Instead he slowly sheaths the sword.

“It was my fathers,” Xavier replies, slowly bending to put it to ground.

“Who gives a shit?” the woman laughs. But the executioner gently puts a booted foot on it and shoves the sword away carefully. Seems oddly respectful about it, until the sharp blade of the poleaxe comes up to meet Xavier’s throat.

“Please! No—Don’t hurt him,” Jyra is whimpering as she scrambles from the horse, as she drops down clumsily. Her stumble is caught by Eddard, quickly, whose darted to the other side of Hilda—Maker fucking bless the man, but he immediately puts himself between her and the hooded monster. A blade sinks into the ground directly between them, though. Their backs are to her now.

“Step toward my husband again, bitch—I’ll open your fuckin’ throat.”

Fat tears roll down Jyra’s cheeks—they’re pale, color drained out of her, red rimmed eyes giant which makes her freckles stand out. Xavier’s eyes met Eddard’s. Sweats collected on his forehead as his hand slowly goes to his belt knife.

“I don’t recommend tha’.” The lady thief stalks toward them. “Move away from the horse, or he’ll lose his head.” She’s barking at them now, and Eddard seems to try and angle their departure from Hilda in a way that still keeps Jyra behind him. He’s tall—not like the one standing beside Xavier, weapon cool and ready against his throat. But the kitchen servant looks capable, in ways that they might underestimate. He’d taken that knife with a hand that seemed like it understood how it worked.

But Jyra. They can’t, not with her.

“Get him on the ground. Don’t like how big he is,” the woman says petulantly. All at once Xavier’s feet are swept out from under him and he clangs to the ground, chin snapping up and sharp canines cutting into his lip. The blood is immediate and hot, tangy and slips out from his lips messy with spit. Jyra’s calling out again—a plea for mercy, but the giant’s foot pins him down. Grinds, hard. No mercy for him. Not now.

She begins her ransacking, tearing open packs, digging through things. Xavier watches the poleaxe sink into the ground directly beside his shoulder. A warning. He closes his eyes and breathes evenly. Hopes that these thieves don’t see what his thief had seen—that Jyra was someone important, of value. Otherwise he and Eddard were looking at slit throats and Jyra—well, it’d be worse for Jyra.

When the bags are done, the woman stands in front of Xavier and smiles. There is a long stretch of time where she merely looks down at him while he looks up, flat to his stomach. Blood drips onto the dirt below him. His hands grip into it. Fury slips through his bones, makes him snap his teeth together, glare at her. It only seems to make her smile grow wider and wider and wider. Then she turns and begins walking toward the other two and Xavier regrets it.

“Leave them alone!” He shouts, trying to struggle his way out from under the beast above him. “I said, leave them alone, you fucking—” the boot crushes harder on his back and makes him wheeze, makes blood spit out from his mouth in a tiny splatter.

“Leave them alone, leave them alone,” she mocks him, in high pitched joy. “Oh, Leon, don’t kill him yet. I want him to watch.” And then the brute bends, picks Xavier up by the neck of his armor and makes him kneel. The poleaxe comes up again, the thin blade catching underneath his chin. It splits his skin, only a little—but that little bit shows how sharpened it is. How much this monster must love his weapon.

“I won’t let you hurt her,” Eddard says, the shhhing sound of his belt knife leaving the sheath loud. He says it confidently—chin tilted down, eyes hard and toward her. Xavier licks the blood off his lip, breathes haggard and hard. The executioner shifts slightly and ah. That clicks into place with husband. He does have a weak point then. It’s the little thief. And if Eddard can exploit that…

But she only laughs and draws that sword from her back. It’s polished beautifully, lovingly cared for. She hefts it a little, swings it in an arc, handle gracing the back of her hand, in expert form. Catches it deftly. Fuck, Xavier thinks. Fuck, she’s trained.

Then, instead of cutting Eddard’s head from his body, she drives it into the wet earth.

“Princess,” she whispers, leaning over it, smiling. “Little bit greedy, ain’t it? Two men and you? One on either end of ya, if I can boldly ask?”

“Do not—” Eddard begins, his cheeks ruddy, same time as Xavier,

“How dare you—”

And Jyra’s giant wet eyes look horrified with the knowledge that someone can simply speak to her that way; didn’t even need to use a blade to hurt her. The insult has cut deep to the romantic, tender girl’s heart and Xavier bites his bleeding lip and looks to the dreary, gray sky. How to get this fucking executioner to focus on his wife, to get his sword. To help.

“Chivalrous. M’killing them slow, then.” She leans further over the sword, chin to the hilt as she smiles. “Pretty girl, watch. I want to give you nightmares.” Then she swipes her hands up and over her eyes, as if playing a game with a child. Xavier watches, in mute and terrified fascination as she slowly drags those hands down her face—what was once a red brown has gone entirely milky white. Fingers hook into the lower lids and drag, make them look haunting and dead. “Bleh,” she says, unceremoniously.

Then the rats descend.

Screaming, shrieking, hundreds of them. They blanket the forest floor in writhing, black, gray, white mass. Xavier watches them, his mouth gaping open. Hears Hilda screaming, hears her heavy hooves trying to stomp, until she gives up and runs. Her gallop echoes in his ears, in his head and heart, but he can’t seem to tear his eyes away from the pestilent horde. The plague that’s swarming them.

Eddard pulls Jyra, swiftly, into his arms—but that means he can’t use his knife. She’s clinging around his neck, barely suppressing a scream as the man attempts to shake his legs to stop the rats from worming up his body.

And the woman laughs, but her laughs slowly become an open mouth of rat sounds. Squeaks and shrills.

“Leon—kill the knight,” she says, in the voice of a thousand rodents.

Xavier thinks, no. Please. I told him to wait for me. I told him I’d come back.

***

“Need that back,” Lark says, pushing a knife into his boot. His eyes scan the room in attempt to find the last one, but the swish of his cloak draws his eyes.

“Need a new one,” Matilda sneers, in her pretty way; which would annoy him usually, but she’s wrung him out. Satiated him into submission, or at the very least, he’s not as quick to snip back at her. The cloak is perfect for him, so naturally, it’s short on her. Skims up across her shins, her pale skin revealed. And although he’s seen her stark naked, Lark perks up a little at the delicate bone in her ankle.

“Like that one just fine.” He leans back with his hands braced on the bed they’d just made a thorough mess of. “Fits me.” Lark is not self conscious of his height, in a world of tall, gallant knights. Being short makes it easy to get into places he shouldn’t—and besides. Not like it deterred her from him. His eyes linger on those pale ankles, her bare feet.

Matilda can practically read his mind—or at the very least, his perverse and open stare—so she slides her leg from the cloak. She’s nude underneath it. He’ll smell like her now; herbs and spices and something sensual he can’t name. It lingers on his tongue. She has creamy skin, soft and warm and his hands, in his gloves twitch.

“Give me my cloak,” he says and raises a hand for it. Instead, she trails to his provisions. A hint of her body is revealed from the slit in the cloak. It almost makes him groan. She puts a fingernail against an apple, half poking from his pack. She begins to dig into it. “Matilda. Do not bruise my fruit.” It makes her snicker and he rolls his eyes up to the ceiling.

“Make sure you don’t rest on the road until you’re well deep in the forest. Eat the apple when it’s too thick for anyone to see you from the road.” All things he knows—and she says it in a dreamy, soft voice that makes him think she’s less telling him thief knowledge than she’s thinking aloud. She turns to him then, the cloak opening again and making him fall flat back against the bed with an annoyed huff. He listens to the swish of the cloak, glances down as she finds herself between his knees.

“Was meant to be on that road by now,” he mumbles. She leans over him, the cloak opening, falling over her bare shoulders. Lark’s eyes trail over her collarbone, down her breasts—focus far too hard on her pert, pink nipples. The witches hands come to rest on his thighs and her gaze strays down to his belt—that he’d just gotten back on. “Matilda, I am losing daylight—ah.”

He falls quiet when her knee wedges between his and drag over what’s already beginning to harden again, not unkindly. Suggestive, even as her grin curls a little mean.

Alright, Lark thinks. Maybe another.

—

He should stop them.

Lark’s teeth sink into the half eaten apple. A bit of juice slips down his chin and he scruffs it away with his gloved hand. He should definitely intervene. Especially when Mouse does her plague thing—nasty that. Lark watches the rats, swarming, roving and loud. He bites into the apple again, gets a chunk and chews.

Then he looks at it, in wonder. Maker. Did women always know something he didn’t?

It makes Lark sigh as he tosses the core into the forest. He kneels on the branch, pulling the crossbow from its latch on his back. Steadies himself as he raises it. He breathes in, holds that breath in his chest with practiced, steady motion and when he releases the bolt, it finds the target. Straight into the tree just directly beside Mouse.

Then he has to jump, quickly, because the poleaxe becomes a spear—crashes through the branches and slams into the tree. It had only narrowly missed him, nearly caught the shoulder of his cloak, or his actual shoulder. Would have pinned him, shattered his bones. Lark has seen Leon use that weapon in ways that make men into pulp.

As he steps onto the road, Lark scoops up one of the many rats. Pinches it between his fingers. It shrieks, scrambling until he lifts a finger and pets it softly on its belly. The little creatures squirming halts a little before he can plop it into his palm.

“Hoo there, Pied Piper.” Lark calls out, avoiding more of the rats as he continues forward.

Mouse looks at him, with those horrendous white eyes. Her mouth is open and a rats tail whips from it, up along her cheekbone. The revulsion is instant, a crawling, disgusting feeling covering his body.

“Put my rat down,” she says in that layered, terrible voice.

“Hello, Leon,” Lark calls, ignoring her.

“Lark,” the giant, hooded man greets back. “Are you well?”

“As one can be during these dreary and miserable times.” He shakes a rat from his boot. “Would you kindly release my knight? Don’t much like the look of that blood on his chin.” Xavier is panting, pulling in air through a wheeze. He’s got a rib injury, an old one, that makes Lark a little nervous to look at him and see that wet red. His eyes dart toward the woman and the servant, like he’s trying to get Lark’s attention to them.

Instead, he rolls his eyes.

“Apologies about your poleaxe, friend. Needed to disarm you.”

“I am not truly disarmed, Lark,” Leon replies. Then he releases Xavier, pushing him gently away. The knight scrambles up and looks like he might go for them—but Leon raises a hand in warning.

“Mouse?” He holds the rat aloft slightly. Slowly, the rat queen unfolds from her position over her sword. She tilts her head, a white eye aimed at him. Then she grunts and slaps hands over her eyes. Upon removing them, he’s greeted by that red-brown—and the rats scatter. Back to wherever they go when they’re waiting for her. Even the cute, white one in his hand scurries, down his arm and away.

“You tryin’ to steal my mark?” She snaps, petulant and annoyed.

“This is Red Barron territory. You paying him out a cut?”

“Killed the Red Barron,” Leon says in his gentle voice. Alright then. It was Pied Piper and The Executioner King’s territory now. Pleasant.

“Then I will simply be taking my knight and leaving.”

“Lark!” Xavier seethes, stepping toward him.

“Headache,” Lark snaps back. The knight’s face turns red in anger and Lark knows that anger. Knows that, Leon without his weapon is still terrifying. Still dangerous, but that Xavier, when mad, is a thing of primal, dog like fury. His eyes slide to Mouse, who has a hand on the hilt of her sword.

The cordiality between the three thieves is not necessarily born out of having the same career—or having worked together in the past. They’re dancing around what all three of them know is the truth. Xavier could kill Leon. Lark could kill Mouse. This is why things haven’t gone sideways yet—that being the key fucking word and is Xavier get’s up in arms, if he dives for that heirloom sword—Lark snorts and folds his arms across his chest.

“The servant and the woman too.”

“I’m keeping the woman.”

“You are not,” the servant man snarls, clutching the woman closer. Though the rats are gone, he’s not yet put her down. Lark slaps a hand to his forehead in exasperation. This is why he just didn’t deal with women like this. Noble, high and mighty, snotty with noses in the air, pinching their skirts as they walked. She looked properly terrified from Mouse’s rat show, but it doesn’t make him empathetic so much as it makes him tired.

“Mouse,” he says, stepping toward her. Leon shifts and he watches Xavier’s perceptive, gleaming eyes catch that movement too. He’s not stupid, not the way they always think he is; pegged the big guy for the soft one. Of course. “You owe me.”

She stares at him, lips pouty and eyes ice cold. She lifts the sword from the earth and then swipes it through the crux of her elbow to clean the dirt. She sheaths it slowly and tilts her head this way and that.

“Their lives are yours.” She looks back at the servant and the woman, curls a sneering lip. “But I’m keeping their fuckin’ gold.”

—

When the thief duo departs, much richer than they’d started, Lark approaches the lady. Wants to see a bit what the fuss is. She’s shaking, all over, trembling like a leaf, or a wet kitten. He thinks she’s pretty, of course. They’re bred to be that way aren’t they? He can smell her noble blood and finds it lacking, but yes, she’s pretty. High cheekbones and fine brows. Truthfully, Lark would have gone for the servant before her, who he also offers a respectful brow.

“Thanks for not letting us die,” he replies, in a deadpan voice. Yes. Okay, Lark likes this one.

“Lady,” he greets, with a little bit of a bow.

“Thank you. Y-You have my gratitude and we are in your debt.” She is tucked slightly behind the servant a little, her hand wrapped around his arm. For a moment, Lark considers what Matilda might actually have done in this situation—of course, she’d probably end up friends with the Pied Piper and it’d just be a fucking mess for him.

Ah fuck. Thinking of her again. He blinks rapidly, forgetting for a moment he’s meant to respond.

“Apologies, my lady. Believe my lady cursed me—anytime I’m ‘round one of the opposite sex, visions of her flash behind my eyelids.” The woman, noble (or not, he snickers to himself) and dignified looked more than a mite mortified by him. Tucks herself further behind her servant. “Don’t feel too badly for me. She’s wearing naught but my cloak, so it is not an awful curse, I assure you, princess.” Her recoil was even harder at that.

Actually, Lark had paid a curse-sniffer to check for that; let the haggard old, sweaty man shove his nose right into his hair and scramble about him. In the end, the poor blind man had only shrugged and said, ‘Pologies, master, don’t fink you got no curse. Finkin’ you got yourself a l’il curse o’ feelings, s’all.

Hm. Well. He turned from her then, back to Xavier.

“Told you so,” Lark said as they approached one another.

“Don’t get me started—I’m very mad at you right now.” He slides his sword into his belt, adjusting it a little. The blood on his chin is mostly wiped away, but it lingers around the corner of his mouth. Lark takes his face in his hands, rubbing his thumb there, grinding the red into his pale skin. “A witch.” He says softly, pinching brows together.

“Ah, the medicine didn’t work?”

“No—it smelled awful and did nothing. A witch, Lark?”

“A very, very beautiful one.”

Xavier claps hands over his shoulders in exhaustion.

“Thank you,” Xavier says earnestly, patting Lark’s cheek in affection, shaking him slightly. He’s so tall, he makes Lark feel miniature sometimes, like he could pluck him up and toss him over his shoulder. “You could come with us, you know. I could use maybe a little extra protection.” The thief snorts and rolls his eyes skyward, looks at all that gray. Oddly enough a flock of black birds dart across the sky, smooth and agile and beautiful.

“Think I have better things to do, Baby. You finish your quest. Thieves don’t have those, you know. Just marks—and—” He blinks at the sky, watches the last bird slide away. “Hm. Forgot what I was going to say.”

“I have to find my horse.”

“She went that way.” Lark offers, helpfully, with a toothy grin as he points down the way he’d just traveled from.

#writing #hj #fantasy au #rewrite wishlist #xw #lt #mmr #mm

[unknownjpegs]

oath

“I promise—”

“Xavier—”

“No, you cannot interrupt,” Xavier says quickly, looking up. “It has to be said fully—it’s not an oath if you don’t say all of it.”

“It’s not a real oath,” Benji replies. From this angle, he looks beautiful. Washed in the pale moonlight through the barn’s rafters, his rich skin glowing. They’re in the loft, they’re in their spot. Together. Here, often. Amongst the hay and the privacy of it all. Xavier, on both knees in front of the man, who stands—and despite standing and Xavier kneeling, his head could rest on his chest like this. He is that much taller (and never awkward, hulking, gangly or weird around this man) and the thought is so tempting, it almost breaks Xavier.

“It’s real to me,” he whispers.

He slips his hands forward, folding them together in prayer. He bows his head, leans forward with his submission.

For a brief moment, he’s thinking of other reasons he’s been on his knees for Benji. The first time he’d ever sunk low and gotten that delicious vision of him above, tall and beautiful. Wild hair tamed back into a braid, strings of it falling around his face. Sweat slicked from his days hard work. Watching his chest rise and fall with breath, watching him hold his tunic up by his teeth because his strong, workers hands were tangling into Xavier’s hair. His tongue and teeth and lips marking across the mans stomach. Lower. Lower.

“I promise,” Xavier says, eyes closing. “On my faith, that I will in the future be faithful to my lord. To never cause him harm and observe my homage to him completely.” He isn’t supposed to—it’s necessary for him to stay bowed, to stay low like this, but he lifts his head. Find’s Benji’s dark brown eyes. “And against all persons in good faith and without deceit shall he be served by his vassal. So I shall live, upon this oath, wholly.”

Xavier extends his hands forward.

“You have to take them,” he murmurs.

This is the longest he’s ever gone without hearing Benji speak, he realizes. Since the very first day he’d accidentally wandered onto the farm and attempted to drink from their well, and been threatened with a chopping axe; Benji and Xavier have not stopped talking. Endlessly, he’d thought they’d run out of conversation, and yet it never found the full stop. Wit, back and forth, quips and jokes and then sometimes, something deeper. The melancholic lull of a conversation under stars. His head to Benji’s stomach, listening.

The farmhand slips his hands over Xavier’s. They are warm. And large. And rough from the work. Xavier has tasted them, with his tongue, joking and sometimes not. He has put his nose to this man’s wrist, has kissed the pulse there.

“I dunno what—” Benji clears his throat, his voice oddly hoarse and rough on the edge. “What do I do in reply?”

“You say that that you’ll keep me safe.”

“That’s it?”

Xavier’s face cracks into a smile, large like it always is, toothy and broad and full.

“Do you want to say more?”

Benji’s hands tighten and yank him closer, pull Xavier right to his torso. The smell of him is an intoxicant. The warmth of his body radiates and makes him melt. Bend to him, mold against him.

“I’ll keep you safe.”

“As your vassal.”

“As mine, Xavier.”

#writing #hj #2023 #fantasy au #xw #bp #bp x xw

[unknownjpegs]

dreams

When he finally sleeps, he dreams.

And it begins, always, on a battlefield. With him, no sword, hands bloody. Looking down at the pale flesh soaked red while stale air stirs around him. No helm on, his long hair tangled and equally as gore soaked. The braid at his temple has come undone. He can smell the death, the rotting corpses of the days past skirmish. Crows squawking and unwilling to share the space with him. When he looks up—

Now, he’s on a beach. The sort that’s dull and gray and full of rocks and stones. The ocean yawns out, long and terrifyingly unknown. Xavier has never been to the ocean. He’s never been this far before. It smells—beautiful, something about it so clean and pure and the salt burns his sensitive nose. He breathes in anyway and looks back to his hands and finds them clean.

There’s a shhhhhhk sound. Shhhhhhhk.

Shhhhhhk.

Xavier follows it; feels like his legs aren’t really working. Less walking, more traveling forward. Going. The stones clatter together as he does. The ocean crashes against them. The rolling sound of it makes his heart speed up; what is out there? What is past all that green, foaming water?

“Who are you?” he asks the knight, sitting on bleached, decaying driftwood. Their back is to him, but he can see their height, even as they sit. The poise in their broad shoulders. The armor is half shucked off and their pale skin makes him feel a shiver run over his entire body. He sees, mostly, the red blond hair that catches in the dull, watery gray sunlight. It makes his head hurt, makes him press a palm over his eye and hiss.

“Xavier,” the knight says, turning their head over their shoulder. They’re sharpening a sword. Shhhhhhhk. The whetstone slides over the blade. Their hand is pale—is beautiful. Long fingered. Tinged red at the tips. He can imagine them, touching his lips. “Watch your step.” They say, with a smile that hooks under his ribcage and yanks him open. Feels the spray of his blood everywhere. His heart, beating, endlessly fast.

“How do you know my name?” He steps toward them and falls, pitches forward, and the ocean swallows him up with absolutely no regard. Just another knight, churning through, nature pulling him apart.

He’s inside a cabin, in the woods. Loamy and earth rich—heavy with rolling fog that blankets the floor. Lark stands, a knife to a woman’s chest; her hair is the same shade as Xavier’s, dark red like blood and she smiles at him over Lark’s shoulder, her curling hand behind the nape of the thief’s neck. One of her fingernails dips into flesh, draws blood.

“Lark,” Xavier tries to say. His friend glances his way and frowns. A fire crackles in the hearth, washing his beautiful face in hues of orange and red.

“Medicine didn’t work, Baby?” And he shoves the knife into the woman’s sternum. Instead of killing her, it pokes right out from Lark’s chest instead and he glances down to it. Like her chest was a portal to his, and the blood dripping off the tip is black and inky and cold. “Fancy that,” Lark says as the woman tilts her head back and laughs. As her arms slink around his shoulders and bring him closer and closer.

“What are you doing in my home?” A witches voice seethes into his ear and then Xavier is thrown back, down, onto hay. Sunlight filters in through a crack in the barn’s ceiling, his hand splayed and raised to block it out from his sensitive eyes.

“Clumsy,” the farmhand is laughing as he sinks down onto Xavier’s lap, knees to either side of his hips. He’s warm and heavy. Curly haired, with dark skin, his arms roped with muscles, flexing as this man shoves Xavier by the chest—back down to the hay. The salt is still in his hair. The witches tongue is drawing a poisonous, knife sharp line around the shell of his ear. “Can a knight be clumsy, yeah? You’ll fall on your sword, Xavier.”

He feels the bite of the blade to his throat and—

The scream pulls him awake.

“Xavier!” The lady Jyra is there, above him, her soft face pinched into a look of terrified concern. His eyes are wet, blurred, his skin coated in a fine sheen of sweat. Xavier reaches for her, hand wrapping around her bicep. His entire palm fits around that slim arm and he shivers, feels the fever sinking into him, eating at him. He can still smell the salt of the ocean that he’s never seen before, never been to.

“Xavier, you were having a nightmare,” Jyra whispers, her hand folding over his forehead. It’s cool, her fingers swiping back strands of his red hair.

“The knight,” he mumbles back. “With honey and blood colored hair.”

“What knight?” Jyra leans closer. Her hair brushes off her shoulder, tickles his cheek. He smiles and slides his hand up to cup her chin. Hold her there, tries to look into her eyes, but feels himself buzzing around the edges of himself. His thumb slides over her cheekbone, watches the blood collecting there to turn her skin red.

“And Lark—a witch. He would, bastard. A witch And—”

“Oh, Xavier, you’re so warm. A fever—”

“Of course,” he says, smiling at her. “Warm. Because of the sun—you.”

He doesn’t finish, because his eyes roll back up into his skull and he faints.

—

“Eddard,” Jyra is frantic when the man joins them, crouches beside Xavier’s unconscious figure. Her hand hasn’t left his forehead yet—she’s thinking of that fever touched hand grasping her chin, thumb touching her. It was too bold, improper, inappropriate. It was so different, and it made something in her chest hitch and unhitch and hitch again. “I think—I think he’s very sick, but I—what do we do?”

Eddard takes Xavier’s limp hand in his own and heft its. Then he lets it drop, thump onto the ground beside him. He looks up at Jyra with his heavily defined brows pulled in slightly.

“Your highness,” he says in a tired voice as he looks at her (and that’s nice as well, to have someone look at her, really look at her, and not lower their eyes in modest contempt, in frivolous tradition). “I think the knight you’ve found is a little off in the head.”

“Eddard!”

#writing #hj #2023 #fantasy au #rewrite wishlist #xw

[unknownjpegs]

perilous journey

“Would make a fat lot of coin, Baby.”

“You are not kidnapping my princess, Lark.”

As always, the thief is talking from up in the trees. Sits on a branch with one leg pulled up. His hood has been thrown back; such a sign of vulnerability, for a thief to tug down their hood, pull away their mask, look at Xavier with that sweet, open face. The moonlight cuts through the dry, dead branches. Make Lark sinister. Or just reveals that nature of his simmering at the surface.

“She ain’t no princess. Just some Lordlings get, big enough to wander off—play poverty. Look at me, on my perilous journey.” He mocks her then, in a high pitched tone, using a dagger to swing the notes back and forth in the air. Xavier glares, puffs up his shoulders, prepares to defend her honor, but Lark barrels on. “Noble enough to catch coin if you haul her back to whatever silly estate she has abandoned. Not worth the headache, Xavier.”

The knight glances back to the camp, just enough steps away that Lark won’t disturb the lady or her giant friend. He’s figuring out that relationship, because all the nobles he’d ever known spurn the low folk. Cooks, cleaners, maids, doesn’t matter. Underneath their boots. Jyra doesn’t wear those boots, though. She’s softly slippered. Not suited for the weather that’s coming to cold harder and faster everyday.

“I am not deviating my journey—she travels with me to the Kings tourney.” He adjusts himself slightly, hand on the hilt of his sword. He looks properly knightly and brave and Lark snorts; can tell the thief doesn’t necessarily buy it as he slips out the tree. He lands, in that eerily soft and silent way that he can. “She is causing me no headache, or slowing me down.”

“Yet.” Lark says, pointing at him with the dagger. He steps closer and Xavier hunches slightly, rounds shoulders so he doesn’t feel nearly as hulking next to the slimmer, shorter man. “Have you been having nightmares lately?”

“Of course.”

“Try this,” Lark dips a hand under his cloak and pulls out a purse. Not stuffed with coin. Xavier can smell the medicine and recoils with a wrinkled nose.

“Absolutely not. Smells foul.”

“Prophetic dreams will scramble a young knights brain.” Dramatically, he lifts his hands to the moon drunk sky. “Oh humble knight of unforetold destiny, plagued by—” Xavier snatches purse from his hand, glancing behind him to where Jyra and the Eddard slept. She was tucked up against his side, his arm protectively close, but not inappropriate. They slept, soundly.

“Thank you, Lark,” Xavier says “Always nice to see a friend. Do not try and kidnap my princess for ransom.”

“Hm, would not dream of it.”

“I am very serious!”

“And so threatening, fate-bound, stinky knight.”

When Lark departs, in the night, like he was never there, Xavier subconsciously takes a sniff at his shoulder.

#writing #hj #2023 #rewrite wishlist #xw #lt #fantasy au

[unknownjpegs]

normal

“Benji?”

“Mm.”

“Benji.”

“Mhm.”

Xavier tries to hold in his laugh, crawling further onto the sun warmed bed. The blankets are messy, thrown everywhere, and his pillow had been on the floor when he’d come into the bedroom. For someone who slept predominantly curled up into a tight ball (unless, of course, Xavier was there to hold him in a different position), Benji was able to wreck the bed, almost nightly. Xavier is slow as he tucks hair back from Benji’s face. It makes the drummer’s thick, black brows pull together. A small line creases his forehead. His mouth twists and he turns on his side even further, knees tucked up.

There’s a tiny burn inside Xavier’s chest to watch it all, his grin barely contained as he chews his lower lip. Sunlight filters in through his curtains, which are too sheer to offer much protection. It makes Benji’s dark brown skin even more beautiful to look at, if that’s really possible. Ever since Benji had landed a few weeks ago, he was on a mission to find him looking more beautiful as many times as he could.

Xavier’s palm spreads over a bare shoulder. Squeezes.

“Wassit?” Benji barely manages to mumble.

“You overslept,” Xavier explains in a whispery tone as he kneels beside Benji’s blanketed form. Black curls stick up in hilarious messy tufts. His facial hair is mussed and Xavier has started to notice that the eyelashes on Benji’s left eye are always sort of crinkled. It’s because he sleeps on his side so often and they’re so long.

“Overslept for what?” Benji groans. He clears his throat, blinks his gorgeous dark eyes open. They soften on Xavier for just a moment. Then his body snaps still—then it animates immediately, Benji shooting up to a sitting position, eyes comically large.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he groans out and then, just as quickly, falls onto his back. One of his arms drapes over his eyes dramatically. The blankets been shoved down a bit more, which reveals his bare upper torso…and the little dark marks Xavier had put across his hairy chest with his teeth.

“I called Lark.”

“Mad?”

“Oh, like, so mad,” Xavier teases, his pale hand spreading greedily over Benji’s stomach. He watches the muscles shiver. The burn in his chest turns from innocent adoration to something nastily hungry. He scoots himself closer. “He said you probably needed it.”

“How’d he say it?”

“Tired asshole is probably getting his first eight hours of sleep in his entire life.”

It is such a poor imitation of Lark’s cool, husky voice that it makes Benji burst into an immediate laugh. It shakes him slightly, which makes Xavier’s hand continue it’s spoiled path up and between Benji’s pectorals. The coarse chest hair is a nice texture under his fingertips. Tempts him—like it’s asking for more of those little hickies. So Xavier starts arranging himself. Lays down on his side, with his hand petting more fondly. Circular motions. His eyes go narrowed and devious.

“Benji,” he says for the third time. At the sound and pitch of his name, murmured out like that, Benji tilts his head so they’re facing other another. His pupils begin a slow bloom, which does something to Xavier’s ego. To be looked at like that. To be found so appetizing it’s making Benji’s body react on it’s own. He inches closer just as his hand moves from chest, to torso, to the soft spot below Benji’s belly button.

“Can I make you more late?” Xavier asks, brushing their noses together. Benji is quiet for a moment. Only a moment. Then he groans and uses both hands to yank Xavier in for a kiss.

When it’s over—this early morning hand job Xavier had admittedly been thinking of nearly since the time he’d woken up hours earlier—Benji is laying on his back, panting, one hand curled deep into his own hair and the other snug and tight around Xavier’s wrist. The red head kneels on dark thighs, his closed fist still tugging gently (he secretly likes the feeling, Benji going soft, secretly likes being present for every single moment, even that). Thick white release still sticky over his knuckles, a little drip of it on Benji’s stomach.

“God, I love making you cum,” Xavier groans, hunching over and stealing a kiss.

“What the fuck did I do to deserve you?” Benji mumbles out, their lips only inches apart. For some reason, it sort of shocks Xavier. Makes him blink rapidly, press another quick—and shy—kiss to Benji’s cheek. His nose brushes into thick, black hair. His hand finally leaves and presses against a warm stomach. It makes Benji huff and then touch Xavier’s waist softly and they lay like that for some time.

—

“Holy shit.”

Tess had been quiet across the couch for so long it startles Xavier to hear her speak. She sits with her knees curled up, feet tucked between the cushions, a thumbnail in her mouth. She stares down at the cracked phone in her other hand. It’s got a clear case on and the polaroid picture stuck between it and the phone is of Ratspit’s infamous, news worthy drummer. Caught in candid, head turning to the side, mouth wide in a smile.

Xavier, across from her, kicks his legs up onto the poor mans excuse for a coffee table he has (a DVD is shoved underneath one leg and that’s the only thing keeping it moderately balanced even so plastic ducks don’t go spilling off it everywhere). When he tries to hand over the joint they’re sharing, she doesn’t even notice at first.

“Xavier,” she says instead. Her thumb pops out her mouth and she looks up at him. The worry in her eyes makes his stomach sink to an all new low. It’s lessened only because she also quickly leans in to grab the joint and tuck it between her lips. He deflates a bit, head falling back to look up at the boring, popcorn colored ceiling. He already knows. She doesn’t have to say it out loud, but she does.

“This shit is scary,” Tess says.

And it was. It is.

Xavier had given over his phone when she’d requested, one joint already down between the both of them. Now, sufficiently high, he was prepared to talk about what she was there to talk about.

Tess, who listened exactly to the kind of music Ratspit made, had seen something online about—well. About him. Her little brother and Benji and that had been enough for her to book an impromptu vacation from Seattle, Washington to Boston-Fucking-Massachusetts. Because Tess knew Xavier—that if his name, his face, was in headlines, was online, was out there—he was going to have a fucking panic attack.

Which he’d already had. More than once since everything had sort of broken. Apt term. Felt like some dam had finally collapsed and now here it all was. He’d had one, not too long after Benji had left for whatever fancy music producers meeting he and Lark had to attend. At the airport, waiting for Tess to finally land. So many people, in every direction and he couldn’t tell who was looking at him and who just happened to be looking in his direction.

But in the safety of his apartment (which he wasn’t sure if he could still call safe now that his fucking address was posted on Reddit), he had been able to convince himself maybe it wasn’t all that bad.

Tess had gone down the same sort of path he had on the internet. She’d seen the good first.

And there was good—there was so much good. There were comments like;

o m g stop i am in love ! look at them !! 😍 #ratspitromance

shut up…the hot security guard ?! someone ship name them NEOW #ratspit #benjipalanivel #doweknowhisname?

🖤🖤🖤 idc idc idc look at his eyes!!! happy for u benji! #realrats #sadaboutthetourtho #benji

And more of course, that talked about his hair or his biceps or his freckles. Comments that—he was ashamed to admit—made his heart flutter. Made him blush, kept him reading, because it was addicting in a way. Attention he was unused to, a flood of comments calling him beautiful, hot, sexy, calling him things he didn’t even know he could be called. Pictures torn off other peoples Instagrams, candids he wasn’t even aware fans had gotten, plastered over social media.

Then came comments that he secretly loved, things he looked at to make himself think someone gets it and this is worth it, right? Comments like:

ive never seen benji smile like that in a candid : ( he looks so sweet !

wow u can FEEL the love that redheads giving off #happyforbenji

when i was at a meet n greet on last tour benji seemed happier !!! you can tell !!

Tess has been smiling reading those. Flickering between different socials and articles that used Xavier’s (now fully revealed) name as a hashtag, or the band’s name, or Benji’s. And then, slowly but so fucking surely, her smile had disappeared. Her eyes had gone watery and big, brows pulled in and turned upward. Her mouth had set itself in a thin, suppressing line that paled her even further. Then she began biting at her thumbnail and her knee wouldn’t stop shaking.

Because there were also comments like;

benji’s in his make america great again era I guess #fuckingposer #acab #itsfuckthepolice not #fuckingthepolice

the only good gay rep I get and hes bending over for a guy so bland you could find him at any frat party in america—hashtag cover your drinks 🤮

he shoulda died at that show he ruined when he smashed his head in lmao #ratspit #xavierwolffe #disappointedbutnotsurprised

uhmmmm no one is pointing out the obvious? benji is his EMPLOYER that power balance is so disgusting i hope benji is ashamed wtf #ratspit #benjipalanivel #bringbackewanlmao

benji PLEASE break up with mr. straight passing when there are SO many fucking better options…….#iloveyoubenji

All of which was awful, of course. The unrelenting dissection of Xavier’s time in the military, his graduation photo from boot camp somehow found and spread around (and then photoshopped and demeaned along with other harmless selfies taken from friends unprivated accounts) (No one calling him beautiful in those posts). The autopsy done on his sexuality and the validity of it. The speculation of their sex lives, like they weren’t even people.

The slow descent into online madness had stung at first, but Xavier had really thought himself too strong for it all. There was a solid ache in his ribs that never truly went away—he’d been hurt before.

But people wanted Xavier dead. It was a surreal, unearthly feeling to be hated so intensely by complete strangers that he didn’t know if it hurt.

But it did scare him.

Xavier leans over then and gently takes his phone away from Tess. He locks the screen and turns it over so he can look at the picture of Benji he keeps tucked in the case. It was from the previous tour, taken under low lighting in some club they’d all gone to after a show. Benji’s blurry and the picture was awful, but his smile is so undeniably happy. Xavier wishes he was smart enough for bigger words, to find synonyms that make it sound as grand as it was. As big as it meant, for Benji to be smiling so much, so openly, like that.

To let Xavier take pictures of him.

And yet, he was stupid.

“Have you guys talked about this?” Tess finally asks, leaning over to offer the joint. Xavier takes it and is glad to find his hand still. He reclines and puffs appreciatively on it.

“Sure.”

“Oh my God, you haven’t?”

“No!” Xavier looks over at her. He takes another greedy hit, passes the joint back. “We have. I mean—we just—there isn’t that much to talk about. The internet is shit, okay? We all know it’s shit.”

“Xavier, someone took a picture of your apartment building on Google Maps. And they posted it! Like it’s not a big fucking deal!”

“And you can’t get into my building without a code,” Xavier points out. It’s a ridiculous argument to make, because it’s a terrible building and people slip in all the time. People buzz random apartments just to see who will accidentally let them in.

He’d even reached out to the building management in an email to explain the situation and the woman had simply replied asking if he needed to reach out to a mental health service. She’d thought he was going through some sort of paranoid break instead of believing, I’m dating a mild celebrity and his fans hate me for it. Not that Tess needed to know any of that and not that he was going to tell her either.

“In case TSA is listening, I mean this purely in a self defense way. But—Do you have guns here?” Tess asks, her nose curled. In any other situation it might have been funny—her asking him. Because she hates guns, violence of any kind.

“Two,” he breathes out thick, cotton white smoke, coughs a little. He gestures toward the bedroom with a tired hand. “I keep the ammo locked in a separate safe and they’re both registered.”

“God, I can feel Dad’s pride.”

At the mention of him, both Wolffe siblings go absolutely quiet. The city is loud right outside his window even though he’s on a higher floor. It feels stale in the air. Xavier begins picking at his cuticle. He leaves his phone sat on his thigh, so Benji’s still upright, facing him. It makes him feel marginally better.

“Does he know?” Xavier then asks quietly.

“No. I called Jessie—who is freaking the fuck out, by the way. But, she said dad has no idea.” A certain kind of guilt nestles between his ribs that hurts worse than the death threats and the animosity and the stress. The feeling of lying, to his little sister, when it wasn’t necessarily lying to just not tell her something. To not be the one calling her, either. He continues picking his cuticle, finding his chest tightening in a way that made breathing harder. Maybe he shouldn’t have had the second joint.

“He’s going to find out,” Tess says slowly. Her foot extends and kicks his knee enough so that he’ll look at her. They both have the exact same colored eyes and at that moment, both have matching red as well. “You don’t want—Xavier. You do not want that to be the way you come out to him.”

“I don’t want to come out to him at all,” he mumbles. The cuticle splits and a dot of blood wells up, in a neat little drop. The siblings fall back into silence at that—the shared grim shadow of their father looms over them. He presses a finger to the blood and smears it backward.

“Wanna know something fucked up?” Xavier finally asks when enough time for both of them to go through the mental list of why they can’t stand their father and why they also love him too much to fully hate him. Tess snorts and settles herself further into the couch. In a horrible display of irony, she’d picked out a Ratspit hoodie to wear; one of the really old designs that had two rats dancing on the front that were supposed to be Lark and Benji. You could really only tell because either rats had their most signature tattoos.

“Nothing you’re doing right now is more fucked up than what the internet is doing.”

“So the tour is canceled, right?” Xavier lifts both hands as he’s talking—grinning now. Because this is better conversation, this is what he’d rather be talking about than whatever shit storm was brewing on the little device sitting on his lap. “And—well. I asked Benji if he wanted to stay with me while they were figuring everything out.” He goes bashful at that, lets himself feel the high he’d been working up. He slopes in the couch, spine curved. His watery eyes blink out at nothing.

“It’s just easier, right? Because Lark lives in the US—if Benji had to—all these like meetings they’re having to figure out what to do about that fucking loser—anyway. He’d have to attend over Zoom.” Both Tess and Xavier laugh at that. They have the same cadence of laugh, too big and loud. He’s snickering and trying to fight tears when they’re done. “Can you fucking imagine Benji on Zoom?”

“Oi, is this turned on?” Tess mocks, in a much better imitation of his accent than Xavier ever manages. It pathetically makes his heart squeeze, because he wishes Benji was there. Right there, in the living room, with his sister.

“Anyway,” Xavier continues, his voice going softer at the edges. “Last night, I took him to the Dive In Show.” Tess’ face lights up, her smile stretching so wide it looks painful. Her red and green eyes sparkle at the mention of the worst drive in movie theater that might possibly exist in all of the US. Dive In, get it? Drive in, he’d said, making Benji laugh so recklessly that he’d felt like a king. Xavier smiles too, figures they look like little mirrored images of each other, him and Tess. He lolls his head back and forth groaning.

“It’s just as fucking bad as you remember, Tess. Swear. But—it was like, desolate too. There were two other cars and they didn’t even give a fuck about us. So we got to get out and lay in the bed of the truck to watch the movie.” Xavier doesn’t feel like he needs to explain any further than that. He sits in the memory of being—normal. A couple that goes to a terrible drive in movie, that lay in the truck bed. Movie mostly ignored as they laid on their sides together and talked about every topic that popped up. Some serious, most not.

Xavier doesn’t have to explain, so he doesn’t. He stares at his phone case, at Benji’s smiling face. There’s a click and wheeze sound of Tess and her terrible electronic cigarette that she inevitably passes to Xavier.

It had felt so private and intimate and so theirs. Xavier didn’t need to worry someone was going to look over and see them, because no one there fucking cared. They didn’t have to worry about walking to the God awful concession stand and someone coming up to ask Benji for a picture. No one wanted his autograph and no one gave a shit who he was—the man at the counter that slid their corn dogs over barely spared them a glance.

The guilt of enjoying that was eating him alive, but…

“Okay, so what’s fucked up?”

“He’ll be here for his birthday.”

“Happy Birthday, Benji.”

It makes him laugh, though that laugh is suddenly wet at the edges. Xavier sniffs and rubs the heel of his hand across his eyes. He looks over at Tess, whose face has gone gentle and caring. He kind of hates her for it, but he also loves her. Wouldn’t want anyone else to be there, in that moment with him, admitting how pitiful he is.

“I am so fucked up for being so excited that this tour got canceled, Tess.”

“No, you’re not—”

“Yes, I am,” Xavier cuts her off with a finality, voice rough and mean. “It’s so fucking selfish to be this excited that—he’s all mine? Like, just mine? Not even Lark or Matilda or—like, Benji is solely, for that day, for that special of a day—going to be just mine. I’m not sharing him with anyone—fuck. This is so fucked up. I am so fucking high.” He rubs his hands across his face further, trying to pretend it isn’t because a few tears have escaped.

They lapse into silence once more. And then,

“You and Benji have to talk about this, you know that, right?”

“Tess, Jesus Christ, I said we have.”

“No,” she raises a finger, her lips going flat once more, eyes severe. “I believe you when you say you’ve talked about all the absolute vile shit on the internet. And I’m sure you’ve told him how guilty you feel about that. You can’t keep a secret to save your fucking life.”

“Jeez.”

“I’m saying,” she continues, struggling on the couch to get closer to him. She sits and then leans her head against his. Xavier is still for a moment, before softly tucking his cheek to the top of her head. The short, fuzzy buzz cut feels nice. He has a dizzying, hilarious moment where he thinks of Maran—who would get along with Tess, who would like her. Xavier blinks more tears out.

“You are like, dating someone in the public eye, okay? And you need to either be okay with that or—It doesn’t go away, right? They’re going to go on tour again at some point.” But Benji hates touring, is the one horrific, traitorous thought that pulses through him in that moment. Benji hates touring. Xavier stays quiet, afraid that if he says it out loud, he’ll make Tess angry somehow. Like he’s trying to make excuses for something.

“It’s not his career, it’s his passion, right? Drumming? You said it’s like the thing Benji loves the most.” She’s directly referencing him, from spare phone calls on the road he could manage when there was slim amounts of downtime. Xavier’s stomach roils and his heart makes a pathetic stutter. His chest tightens once more, but worse. He’s glad they’re not looking at each other, so Tess can’t know how much the truth of her words wound him. She’s not wrong, and that’s the worst part.

“You can’t make him choose between normal birthdays with his boyfriend and his life’s passion.”

Because his whole body trembles with his next breath in, Tess can tell he’s crying. She turns to wrap her arms around his shoulders, a hand tucked behind his neck. She hugs him closer and Xavier lets her. His phone slides off his thigh and hits the ground with an awkward plap sound. He tries not to make it an ugly, messy cry, but it’s the first time he’s let himself actually cry about the entire situation. He’d spent a good portion of it fighting with humor, or worrying about Benji or even the whole band.

He let himself get sidetracked with checking on Mouse, who told him to fuck off every single time, but secretly seemed pleased to have his attention. Or he let himself get involved with late night conversations with Lark, who was more worried than he let on about the whole band and where it was headed and what happened now. Xavier even let himself meet up with Matilda, to sit down and share nicotine and bitch. Complain and whine and say awful fucking things about Ewan.

When Xavier and Tess pull apart, she is using the hooked edges of her Ratspit hoodie sleeves to wipe his face. It makes him laugh and push away her hands.

“I got too high,” he admits.

“Your tolerance used to be like fuckin’ wicked. I’m kind of impressed, actually. You must really cut back when you’re around Benji.”

Xavier shrugs, picks up his phone. He doesn’t admit that being sober around Benji feels just as good as being high. It feels corny—but he also worries that Tess might not take it the right way. She was hyper aware and hyper alert and hyper prepared to be worried about him, all the time. That felt as much daunting as it did comforting. He clears his throat and brushes hands back through his hair and lets himself breathe a few times.

“Do you wanna hear why I’m awful?” Tess offers, placing hands to her chest and batting her eye lashes at him.

“Jesus, please. I’d kill for someone else to be the bad guy.” She looks like she might leap to his defense but Xavier raises a hand and then gestures for her to continue on.

“You’re going to be like, so fucking mad at me though.”

“What did you do?”

“Well,” Tess tugs at the strings of her hoodie, leaning back on the couch. She tries for an innocent expression. It looks absolutely terrible on her. “I’m picking up Jessie. And.”

“And.”

“And we’re going to go see Matilda.”

“Oh my fucking God, Tess.” Xavier presses a hand to his forehead, eyes screwed shut. Matilda’s face pops up behind his eyelids, the way she schools her expression to something neutral when she’s mad. The way he could see a tremor of pure fury in her jaw, when she talked about the exit of their guitarist. “She’s on vacation. She’s already so fucking stressed—you cannot do that to her. She’s going to be putting her Matilda The Keyboardist face on the whole time. Why would you make her perform like that, when she’s—what the fuck, Tess?”

“Xavier, relax.” Tess raises both hands in her defense. “God, wow, you like love her, huh? Not just Benji—you really care.” He’s stunned for a moment, looking at the little tattoos on her palms. Xavier’s eyes slip away to the window and then down and around back to her. He shrugs a shoulder, suddenly oddly shy about what she’s implying. He’d never thought about it like that.

Tess begins unwinding from the couch, patting herself down for her phone. She sidesteps the coffee table to locate her big, chunky boots.

“I texted Matilda and she was into the idea. Jessie is cool, you know she is. I mean, she’s a fan, but she’s also cool. And,” she pauses for a moment, one foot slid into her boot. She looks apologetic and awkward. “I think Jessie is kind of going through something right now. So it would mean a lot to hang out with her idol for even a day.”

“I didn’t know,” Xavier replies softly. He looks down at his hands. The weird little red smear from his cuticle. He didn’t know—he still doesn’t. Because going through something, isn’t really an explanation. Xavier folds his hands together and puts them behind his neck. “Is she okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” Tess laughs, waves a hand. She slides her foot into the other boot and hops a few times. “It’s—look. You talk to Jessie yourself soon, okay? She misses you.”

Xavier thinks of going home, tries to imagine himself back inside the confines of the big blue townhouse that he’d grown up in. And it’s true that Jessie is there, but it’s also true that everything else is there. Everything else he’s been avoiding is there. He looks down at his phone again—Benji smiles.

Tess crosses the room and plants a wet kiss to his forehead.

—

Benji’s arms are full of plastic bags when he returns. He has his phone pressed between his ear and his shoulder (which sort of squishes his cheek in a way that is so cute it hurts) but his face lights into an undeniable smile when he sees Xavier on the couch. And Xavier—to be corny, for sure—like the tides in response to the moon, suddenly shoots off the couch. He all but stumbles into the kitchen after Benji, who is saying goodbye to Saha—

“Thanks—yeah—well, Lark will call you. Or Til, one of them. They’re the ones with the passwords to the account—alright.”

He hovers long enough for that to finish, and then he hovers no longer.

“Xavier,” Benji gets only that one word out before he’s engulfed in a hug. Before Xavier is taking the plastic bags and setting them aside. He’d gotten Benji’s text. A sweet little “on my way home, picking up food, I’ll cook tonight” that had made him cry again. The high was gone, but that didn’t make him feel less prickly and vulnerable and reading the word home in relation to his shitty Boston apartment and everything—everything, all of it—was making Xavier feel skinned and raw.

And hugging Benji like this, with his face buried deep into black curls, was making it all better. He inhales and rubs his face further, which elicits a loud laugh. Benji’s hands slide across his sides, onto his back. Down to tuck past the fabric of his sweatpants. Instead of being sexual, it feels oddly cute, to be held intimately like that. Xavier pulls away smiling. But Benji—because it’s Benji, the smartest fucking man on Earth to Xavier—notices there’s something else underneath the smile.

“Alright?” he asks, tugging them closer, head tilted as he looks up.

“Will you come with me to see my parents this weekend?”

There is a sudden still silence in the kitchen. Xavier had actually rehearsed how he’d ask and this wasn’t exactly it. But, looking at Benji, into soft, beautiful brown eyes that only went softer for him, he could not hold a single thought back. He lifts a hand, cups Benji’s warm cheek. His thumb moves softly over his facial hair. Slowly, Benji smiles. So wide, little wrinkles appear at the edges of his eyes.

Instead of answering, he leans up and Xavier closes the gap and they kiss. They kiss for so long, everything feels perfect and right and exactly as it should be.

#writing #hj #2023 #band au #xw #tw #xw x tw

[unknownjpegs]

question, answer

"This is a sharp disposal container.”

Xavier’s mom holds it up. The little red plastic box looks ominous, black biohazard symbol shiny, warning label text too small to read unless his nose is pressed to it. He cannot fathom what all of it says, or what it means that something he’s stabbing into his body goes into that when he’s d one. It looks overwhelming in her small, freckled hand. Lark stares at it with upturned, nervous brows. She looks back at him with a serious expression.

“When you’re done with your injection, you put your needles in this box and this box only. Okay, Elias?” He nods quickly. She pauses and slowly slides the box across the bathroom counter until it’s next to his injection supplies. He drums his fingers on it, his other arm crossed over his chest.

“Oh, sweetie, do you want me to do it for you?”

“No,” Lark answers quickly, tone unfortunately very on edge. “It’s just like—uh, very Resident Evil, you know?” Lorelai Wolffe looks at him with narrowed, confused eyes. Then she throws her hands up into the air.

“Whatever that means. You just let me know if you need me, okay? I’ve been doing shots for people since before you were born.” She points to her eyes and then to the sharp disposal container and then to him. Lark salutes, which makes her soften with a smile. “C’mere.” She tugs Lark close by his biceps, peppering kisses into his moppish black hair. He blushes immediately, stiffens at the sudden affection.

He doesn’t know where to place it—her motherly love that he isn’t even sure he’s earned. Xavier’s mother just gives it without asking. Not that he’d been given a free couch to sleep on. Lark was up on Sundays doing chores with Xavier. His class grades were monitored and like the other Wolffe children, he was nagged to brush his teeth morning and night. But, Lark could handle all of that. It was nearly reminiscent of his own mother—even if Lorelai did most of her parenting with a smile—but it was the affection that always made him skittish.

When she draws away, Xavier’s mother cups his cheeks for a moment. Lark finds it hard to meet her eye.

“Oh my God, mom.”

“Xavier Wolffe, you do not—”

“You gotta go, this is private.” Xavier starts to wedge himself between his mother and the bathroom door. He pushes softly at her shoulders. She barely—barely—comes up to his chest. Somewhere along the way Xavier had gone from incredibly scrawny and small, to six-foot-three overnight. Everyone in the house dissolved into near tears every time he accidentally smacked his long limbs into something, because he was so uncoordinated it was like living with a new born moose.

“If it’s so private, why are you here?”

“This is guy time,” Xavier replies, flapping hands. His mother raises a pointed finger and his hands immediately drop, eyebrows raised. His eyes go puppyish and Lark knows then that she will absolutely cave—because Xavier is, at the end of the day, her son. Lark fiddles with the edge of the plastic on the needle he’ll shortly be poking himself with, rather than looking up at the two. He hears the door close.

“Dude,” Xavier says softly.

Lark holds up the still plastic wrapped needle with a smile.

“Your juice.”

“Oh, come on, don’t fucking say it like that,” Lark groans as he sits on the toilet. The bathroom is a little too small for both of them. His mother had fit because she was thin and small and Lark was struggling to grow taller than five-five. But Xavier finds a way to get himself onto the edge of the tub, looking at Lark with big, excited eyes.

“Are you, like, gonna do it?”

“Obviously.”

Lark stays sitting there for a moment, just looking at Xavier. Another minute passes. And then another. He takes the needle and the little vial and looks down at them. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears, loud, roaring. The sound of the family living room outside the door is almost louder; they’re watching some T.V. show together. They’ll have dinner in an hour. It’s pizza night.

“Can you help?”

Xavier leans in, his big smile taking up all of his long, handsome face.

“Show me what to do.”

There’s a small moment where it gets awkward, as Lark shoves down his jeans. He looks at Xavier, who looks at him, with wide innocent eyes.

“The lady said to put the heel of your hand here.” He puts his palm to his thigh and lays it flat. His briefs go down a little too far so he pulls the edge back a little. “You put your hand on my knee—man, your hand might be too fucking big.” Xavier laughs as he cups Lark’s knee. The warm contact of Xavier’s palm makes goosebumps pepper along his leg. He arranges the hands better and then stares down at his pale, smooth thigh.

“Okay,” Lark says, his fingers beginning to tingle. His other knee bounces until Xavier puts his hand there too. Flattens it down with that stupid jock strength. “Thanks.” He works off the red cap of the vial, then arranges the needle. He stares at it for the longest moment, before he begins.

“This is so Resident Evil,” Xavier mumbles, wide eyed.

“You couldn’t even get through the first part of the house,” Lark reminds him, staring with concentration as the needle slowly fills with the murky yellow liquid. He swiftly safety caps it. “You needed me to help you with the dogs.”

“The dogs were fucking scary, man.”

“I don’t think I can do this, Xavier,” Lark says, staring at the spot in his thigh. He swallows and suddenly feels his chest expanding too quickly. Some strange, cold sweat breaks out across his forehead, the back of his neck. He thinks of his room, back home—back home, home—and the dresses in the closet. He thinks of his parents, who didn’t care. Didn’t care he was trans, did not care he was not a girl. He thinks of them, not caring. Not being opposed, but not—just not fucking caring. Lark inhales and then exhales in a wide gulp.

“Oh, easy,” Xavier leans forward, his knee on the tiled floor. His hand cups behind Lark’s neck, looking at him. “C’mon, Lark. You had a calendar on the wall marking the days off to get this shit. It’s just a needle.”

“It’s biohazard waste.”

“Well, because of the like, blood or whatever.”

“The lady said there shouldn’t be that much blood.” Lark’s voice goes high pitched. Xavier’s hand squeezes and makes him jump a little. Both their eyes swing to the capped needle. Xavier’s hand falls away from his neck and then gently takes it. For some reason, it looks comically different in Xavier’s hand. Smaller. Less threatening.

“On the count of three.” He uncaps it and holds it over Lark’s thigh. “And then you get a Batman bandaid.” Lark stares at him and he winces. “Sorry, dude. It’s all we had.”

“One. Two.”

The needle pokes into Lark’s thigh.

Then it comes out, clean. No blood. Xavier safety caps it again and then pokes it into the red sharp disposal container with the shiny black biohazard symbol. He takes the bandaid from the sink, splits it open, smooths it over pale skin. The entire time, Lark watches with his jaw dropped, lips in the shape of a perfect ‘o’. He blinks a few times and then Xavier slowly leans back until he’s sitting on the floor, long legs outstretched on either side of the toilet that Lark sits on.

“Whoa,” Lark says quietly. They share a smile then and Lark thinks to say thank you, but instead the door gets wrenched open. He shrieks then, hastily jerking at his jeans as Xavier’s sister, Emily, stands in the door. Her face turns a shade of red that seems neon.

“Why didn’t you knock?” Xavier snaps, scrambling to stand.

“Mom wants to know what pizza topping you want. I told her pepperoni—”

“Lark likes white pizza—”

“White pizza is boring and—”

The door closes, silencing the conversation and giving Lark a moment to stare at the little red box on the bathroom counter.

***

Matilda bends over the bathroom counter in a way that makes Lark look at the sensual curve of her spine. He flattens a hand on her lower back and slowly slides up, fingers drawing a pattern over the nape of her neck and then back down. She shivers, strands of her pretty hair falling over her bare, pale shoulder. She’d recently gone with a dark purple color, and Lark had admittedly, selfishly it was one of his favorites. Made her eyes pop. Made her stand out in a room, like she should.

“Stop teasing me,” she mumbles, tucking her chin over her shoulder and staring at him with those eyes that stand out luminescent amongst all that dark hair. Lark smiles, his fingers pinching the cup of her ass and then he takes a step back to angle the needle right. It’s a quick poke, but it takes a minute to depress all the estrogen. While he does, his eyes lift to look at her, as she stares at him.

“Taking it like a good girl,” he purrs and she rolls her eyes.

“You’re corny for that,” she comments and then he withdraws the needle. Lark pats the spot with the cotton swab, and then presses on the little dot bandaid she prefers.

Matilda’s shirtless, so when she turns around to face him, Lark gets instantly distracted. His eyes fall on the swell of her breasts, his hands making paths up her sides. He feels her shiver with the sensation, leaning in to put his mouth on one. Her hand stops him, flat on his forehead.

“Lark, be so for real, are you into med fet? You cannot be getting horny every time we do this.”

“I am into boobs,” Lark explains, brows crawling up his forehead as her hand slides from pressing against him to brushing his hair back. It’s his turn to shiver at the feel of her longer, manicured nails scratching across his scalp. Lark puts arms around her middle, tugs her just a bit close. Matilda is pouting, an expression that he never found endearing until her.

“That one hurt,” she complains. He’s sure. The needle she uses is a different gage then his. And she doesn’t have injections on the same frequent level as him—he’d discovered HRT didn’t work interchangeably for them. But it had been interesting to learn it all. Lark tries to lean in again, eyes very focused on a nipple. Instead, Matilda presses her hand on the hollow of his throat, and her sharp thumbnail points his chin up.

“Very t-for-t of you to be into this,” Matilda teases. Lark’s eyes widen as she slides slowly to her knees. The sight alone is enough for something sparking white and hot to overtake his insides. The way she purses her lips, knowingly, beautifully, makes it worse.

“I will be, like, whatever you want if you’re about to do what I think you’re about—okay,” Lark exhales the word noisily as Matilda slides one of his muscular legs over her shoulder.

—

“Do you think about what you’d do if you and Benji broke up?”

Xavier looks up from the sub sandwich in confusion. A banana pepper dangles from his mouth, as well as shredded lettuce. The sub nearly falls apart in his lap so Lark leans over and tugs it further up. They sit on the stage, watching the show clean up, food supplied by the venue. Best subs in all Pennsylvania, they’d boasted and Matilda had snorted and almost argued.

“Uh,” Xavier pushes the pepper into his mouth and chews. “Only if I’m trying to make myself cry on command.” It makes Lark laugh and look back to the roadies. Benny helps carry the equipment, his hat nearly falling off. He watches Matilda lean in and correct it, tuck a strand of his white blond hair back underneath it.

“It’s like,” Lark looks down at his own food, mostly untouched. “You’re at that point where, you’re either going to do it, right? Forever. Like commit to it. Or you’re going to have the most painful break up of your life.” He pulls a black olive off the sub and contemplates eating it.

“Should I be worried that Benji is about to break up with me?” He doesn’t sound worried. Xavier bites into the end of his sub again, fillings pushing out the other side. He’d overstuffed it, because once he heard it was free, he’d asked for almost every item on the menu. Lark watches him chew, bemused expression on his freckly, pale face. Benji is only a few feet back, working on his drums.

What is that like? To feel that confident. To know everything. To not be afraid.

“No,” Lark says, using his hands to help him talk, gesture his way through it. “But if he did, you’d lose it, right?”

“Dude.” Xavier stuffs the rest of the sandwich into his mouth. He chews and swallows and dusts off his chest of the little bits and crumbles and then turns to fully look at Lark. “Why are you thinking about this?”

“That’s terrifying,” Lark comments, deciding against the olive. Against the sandwich. He puts it to the side and then slowly slides off the stage. His legs are sore from the amount of running he’d done the whole show. His throat hurts—and he should be resting his voice, but he isn’t. Because Xavier has always been the one that made decisions feel less big.

“Oh, man. I think I’m about to ask Matilda to live with me. I think, I’m going to like, ask her to never break up with me, ever.”

“Uh. Like marriage.”

“No, that’s absolutely too far. But, the thing before that, but after casual dating.” Xavier gives him a look that says, you’re so fucking hopeless.

“She’s coming over here, by the way.”

Lark yanks his hands out his hair, shoving them into his back pockets. He watches Matilda hop around the cables on the floor that Nomi is organizing. He watches her look up from under her lashes as she does and smile. Lark swallows and exhales—then inhales a giant breath of air that doesn’t seem to go anywhere. Just gets stuck in his chest. It expands so big it feels like he’s going to break open. Little fizzles of him will go everywhere.

“Count of three, Lark. One, two,—”

Xavier kicks him squarely in the back and sends him stumbling toward Matilda. And he is so scared, but when her arms drape over his shoulders, Lark looks up and thinks, this isn’t scary at all. She sighs dramatically, theatrical with her exhaustion as she puts their foreheads together. This isn’t scary, if it’s her.

“I have a question for you,” he says softly.

“I’ve got an answer,” she answers cheekily, her smile curling, pretty and all her.

I know you do, he thinks. Isn’t that funny? I know you do.

—

Lark slides the vials of estrogen into his bathroom cabinet. He looks at them, lined up, on the side that is now Matilda’s. There’s nail polish and four different kinds of lotion, and a cream she uses on her face at night. Lark moves them so the labels face outward, because that seems right. Then he feels a yank around his middle and he’s suddenly stumbling backward.

“See? I knew you were into medical shit. You are so weird, Lark.” Matilda’s voice is right against his ear. Her warm breath tickles his freshly bleached hair. He snorts and turns, shoving her flat back onto the bed that had once just been his. Bags of her stuff are in the room, ready to unpack.

And it’s not like permanent because she has her own place (a really, admittedly, nice place), but until they figure out which place is the best, it’s something shared instead. He pulls his shirt off from the back of his neck, stalking toward her on the bed.

“You’re so not beating the allegations, acting like that after unpacking my stuff in the bathroom.” Despite what she says, Matilda’s knees widen to accept his body between them. Her hands dance up across his toned abdomen. Her eyes are dark. Pretty. The new hair is a bright yellow and orange ombre. He likes it. He just likes her.

“You know what? I’m okay with that,” Lark reasons, snarky and mean as he crawls over her on the bed and presses swift kisses to her cheek. Over and over and then on the bridge of her nose, making her giggle until it’s high pitched and she’s shoving at him. Half hearted, because she likes it. Likes him.

#writing #hj #band au #2023 #lt #mmr #mmr x lt

[unknownjpegs]

one two three

“Boo.”

Benny swivels to the side, agile on the heel of his boot to find Benji behind him. He’s post show exhausted looking, hair still stringy from sweat, dark marks under his eyes. There’s bandages on one of his hands, because his calluses had betrayed him and broke during the closing number. The blood is still on the drum set, which needs to be cleaned down, disinfected, put away.

And a roadie could do that—but it’s Benji. Who is particular about his drum kit.

“I’m not Xavier,” Benny replies, tongue on his canine tooth as he sneers. “Can’t sca-scare me.” Benji snorts at that, rolls his eyes and flexes that bandaged hand. Most of the stage is broken down already—there’s a lull in the frantic energy that Benny has slipped himself into.

Sometimes it’s nice; being on the stage, looking out into the empty space where hundreds of people had just been. Pressing closer and closer. Right up against him, usually, with excited, grabbing hands toward the musicians on stage. Benny didn’t envy them that—he wasn’t like Xavier, who got nauseas at the mere idea of being the center of attention. Instead, it just exhausted him. The idea of performance. He reckons, he’d look similar to Benji.

Like a bus fucking hit him.

But when it’s drained of all the people and lights and the music, it’s nice. Hollow feeling, sort of sits heavy in the chest like.

“What’s that for?” Benji gestures to the little container of wipes in Benny’s hands.

“Late n-ni-night snack.”

“Give it,” Benji says with an exhausted gesture of his hand. Because it’s sort of obvious what the wipes are for, considering Benny stands directly in front of the kit and no one else has many any moves toward it just yet. Either because of the blood, or maybe because they’re afraid of the drummer. Benny is neither squeamish, nor fooled by Benji’s bite. So he rolls his eyes and tucks the wipes behind his back, taking a step toward the kit.

“Relax. No bl-bleach. Just sanitizing wipes.”

“Yeah? S’nice. Give it.”

Benny fishes into his pocket with a heavy sigh. He pulls out the e-cigarette that Matilda had told him would be just like smoking a real cigarette. It isn’t, and it really only annoys him when he tucks it between his teeth and takes a drag. It’s nowhere near as satisfying a burn in his lungs, nor does it taste as good as menthol, and when he puffs the vapor out his nose, it just sort of tickles. Makes him sneeze and have to shoot his hand out to grab the vape before it clatters to the ground.

“Trying to st-stop smoking.” The bandages on Benji’s hand have little spots of red on them. Benny is no stranger to pain, but even he has to admit the sting of sweat on hand injuries is something else. He doesn’t look like he’s in pain—just tired. Benny takes another hit on the vape. “Maran’s been making puppy eyes at m-me over the cigarettes.”

“That’s whipped behavior, mate.”

“Whhp.” Benny mimes having one, making a crack in the air as he starts walking toward the drum kit. “I’m up f-for it if Maran ever wants to try.” He gives Benji a big sleazy grin, full of teeth that could be close to Xavier’s pretty toothy smile if Xavier also looked like he built nail bombs in his spare time. He’d hoped the comment would distract Benji, but it doesn’t—he darts forward and Benny hops around and points to the stool.

Ratspit makes plenty of money. Plenty. Hard not to think about how much money they make—and Benny is privy to the finer details. Like that Lark and Benji have a larger stake in the company that is Ratspit than the other members. But Benji’s stool is worn in, the leather on the seat cracking around the edges. He could afford a new one and Benny doesn’t know why he doesn’t.

He pats it.

“Still warm,” he comments.

“You’re out of it, mate.” Benji looks close to getting angry, but that doesn’t deter Benny. It’s not that Benji puts on the same veneer as he does; but they are similar in that they have veneers. He could put Benny in his place, with words or hands if he really needed to. Benny just has a sense—something prey like, animal fear—about people that aren’t as scary as they look. There’s give to Benji. Something soft that he isn’t trying to manipulate, but be friends with.

“I’m j-just gonna f-fu-fucking wipe it down, Benji.” He waves the container of sanitizing wipes back and forth and then pats the stool again. “Wouldn’t attempt to break th-this thing down if you fucking paid me. So, just sit and watch.” He pops the top off the container and starts kneeling. Benny wiggles a brow suggestively, notching his knees apart and clucking his tongue. “M’like real entertainin’ to watch.”

Benji sinks onto the stool with a long, tired sigh. He flexes his hands, examines the one that’s bandages as Benny plucks out a wipe and looks at what he thinks is the snare. The blood was particularly bad there. For a moment, he stares at it and his eyes go slightly fuzzy. He isn’t squeamish but sometimes blood—in certain patterns, or shades—make his brain try and crawl backward. He bites his lip and shakes the wipe out a bit before he starts gently rubbing at a splattering line.

“You don’t like our music,” Benji suddenly comments.

“Nope,” Benny agrees. He works harder at a little spot that has already dried, wrinkling his nose. There’s a long pause. A roadie at the left of the stage talks quietly to a tech who is packing up long cables. He watches the wipe slowly turn pink.

“There music you do like?”

Benny whips out another wipe and starts going at the metal rim of one of the drums. He doesn’t know the particular anatomy, so to him it’s just all drum. This close, he can see how well worn it also is. Not just the stool. He wonders if Benji has really kept the same kit for that long. He shifts a bit on his knees, the stage cruel against the bones and sighs.

“Rap,” Benny replies. He cuts his eyes over to Benji to see if there might be a subtle pass of judgment over his face. Music types are like that. If you’re not into what they’re into, then you have bad taste. Benny is used to that response, considering the music scene he’s ended up working in. Instead, Benji is grinning a little, a somewhat anxious bump to his knee. He looks good smiling, Benny realizes. Because it’s not something he’s plastering on for effect. Looks real.

“Old school,” Benny continues as he moves to clean more little spots of blood. “Naughty by Nature. Black Sheep. Notorious.”

“N.W.A?” Benny wedges his vape between his teeth, snide grin on as he puffs at it and cleans. Benji is smiling wider the next time he glances over. “Maran likes hip hop.”

This feels less like neutral ground and more like—well, it can’t be common ground either because Benji loves Maran differently than Benny (who will figure out a way to say that out loud, but not yet, not today). But it’s not as though Benji is extending the olive branch of an easy conversation they could both indulge in so there’s no awkward silence, because they both know Maran. Feels more like Benji is pleased he has someone else to talk about the man with.

You know Maran, he says with his eyes. I know Maran, Benny says back with his own. You know him better. Tell me about him. I’d like to know.

“Making him a pl-playlist,” Benny says, snapping out the last wipe and attacking the remainder of the drying blood. His knees are starting to hurt, this dull reminder that he is not in his twenties anymore. Benny leans back groaning, tossing the pink wipe with the rest that he’ll stuff into the trash in a minute or two. “He’s so fucking hyper on the bus.” He unfolds, snapping off his black nitrile gloves and tossing them to join the wipes.

“Do you wanna try?”

“What?”

Benji points to the drums and Benny actually jumps at the idea. He steps away from it, like it’s suddenly on fire, even though he had just spent half an hour dedicated to getting the little drops of blood out the metal edges. It seems to entertain Benji, whose hooded eyes look less sleepy now and more playful. There’s so many nuances to the drummers expressions, to his body language. Benny had never bothered before, because he thought Benji was an asshole. Rude, or mean. Not necessarily the fairest assessment.

He was still sort of nursing a bit of a wounded ego from—didn’t matter.

“M’gonna break it down in a minute. Nows your chance.” Benji stands from the stool in this panther like powerful grace that makes Benny blink a few times. The tips of his ears go hot and he looks away and stomps a combat boot on the stage. “Relax,” Benji teases playfully, shoving the stool his way. “Right?”

“D-Don’t fuck with me,” Benny mutters as he flops himself down onto the stool. He reaches down the the spare sticks, the ones that aren’t soaked red from the hand injury and holds them up. “Can I d-do the thing?”

“Aw, s’corny.”

“Can I?”

“Corny.”

“One, two, three!” Benny yells anyway, slapping the sticks together recklessly.

—

Benny wraps hands around Maran’s waist and absolutely yanks him back into the tiny alcove of a sleeping space that he has. There’s masking tape on the side that says BEN. Maran’s laugh is wild in response, a great squirm and kick as he attempts to escape but Benny’s arms slink further around him. Maran isn’t small by any measure and yet for some reason, Ben’s arms seem to be able to fold around his mid section so easily. His shirt slides up, forearms touching bare, smooth skin that for a moment distracts him. Ben tucks himself back up against the rumbling wall of the tour bus as it jerks along the road.

“Stop wriggling,” he says, squeezing hard enough to make Maran huff out a sound. He wraps a leg over the other man’s hip as well and frees an arm just to snatch at his blanket—something he’d brought from his own apartment because sleeping on the bus was hard enough. Small comforts.

“M’not wriggling,” Maran protests, in a voice that says I’m wriggling, what are you going to do about it?

“How ma-many energy drinks you had today?”

“Thought we were goin’ to listen to music?” He deflects and Benny huffs and rolls his eyes.

I’m going to ask Maran to stay after the tour. Benji had blinked at him, as he was panting, holding the sticks, beads of sweat collecting at his temple. Nothing he’d drummed made any sense, or sounded good at all, but it had felt nice to do it. There had been a beat of silence between them as he said it, that had seemed louder than the instrument.

Have fun, Benji had finally replied, taking the sticks and pushing the stool away with a foot. He’d been smiling, though. And had suggested a song for the playlist. Not an olive branch. Not a conversation filler. Maran was more—to Benji. And to Benny.

Unfortunately, the important, beautiful boy in question continues squirming until Benny slips a hand down the front of his jeans and into one of his pockets. Then he stills in alert excitement; then he realizes that Benny is going for the headphones. He makes a petulant sound at that—something between a sigh and a whine. Benny puts his hand underneath Maran’s chin, coaxes his jaw to the side with a tender push of his fingers and then kisses the corner of his lips.

“You’re going to fall asleep, aren’t you?”

“Fuck yeah,” Benny sighs contently as he takes one of the headphones and puts it into Maran’s ear. He repeats the gesture with his own and then settles back on the tiny little cot. Maran finally stops moving as much. Except his hand moves back, places itself on the curve of Benny’s thigh—and he drums his fingers to the rhythm of a song as the playlist starts up.

#writing #hj #2023 #band au #jlb #bp #bp x jlb

[unknownjpegs]

palm reading

The jokes are never that creative. And he’s really heard them all, but—for some reason sometimes, Benny can’t ignore them. Hates that the most. It should be easy too; it’s not like he isn’t like this for a reason. There is always a reason. It’s the bubble he created. The outward shell to protect soft, easily torn insides. Benny doesn’t wanna make friends. It’s bad enough he already has a few. Should have less, if he’s being honest with himself. Hates the expectations of friendship. Makes it hard to maintain the persona. But he tries. And well, it works. Obviously.

“Nice to meet you,” the roadie for the other band says in an exaggerated voice, swiping his hand back and forth on his thigh. Benny pretends not to notice, tucking his own hand back into his jacket pocket. “Feels like I need a shower after that.” He jokes loud enough for their tech to hear and it makes her laugh.

But sucks to be him, because she also does that once over, that long stare up and down him that Benny recognizes. I’d fuck you, it says. Even if you need a shower.

Thing is, he doesn’t. He had one in the shower that morning—a really nice, long one because they got a hotel and he loves hotel showers. Actually, Benny’s weirdly neat about hygiene. Picked it up in the Air Force and sort of never put it down. But, he can’t beat these nasty allegations. Probably because he doesn’t try. He sucks his teeth, rolls his eyes, gives the cute blond tech a big, sleazy grin.

“You probably f-fucking do, man. You stink.” The roadie’s grin drops. The girl laughs behind her hand and returns to the guitars she’s tuning, but her sly glances over her shoulder don’t go unnoticed. Benny’s gross smile doesn’t go away, but his hand burns. His heart sort of hurts.

—

“Did you know I can read palms?”

Maran swings beside him on the playground, smiling ear to fucking adorable ear. It’s dark, but there’s a streetlight that’s sort of washing him all orange and pretty. His freckles look darker, like he’s been spending too much time out in the sun—and maybe he has. It seems like others lose their color with tour, get washed out and exhausted. Maran seems to constantly be gaining new colors. Getting livelier every day.

Benny takes a long drag on his cigarette.

“Ar-Aren’t you cold?”

His shirt is too short. Or it’s the fashion, anyway, with inches missing at the bottom. Enough to show the gentle curve of his stomach, a little roll over the band of his jeans as he sits on the swing. Benny has stared at it one too many times, because he’s not going to pretend he isn’t a stomach guy. Would put his mouth over every inch if he could. Isn’t going to, because—well it’s Benji’s fucking friend and he keeps making moony eyes at Benny, but that doesn’t mean anything. Could mean anything and nothing. Benny tries not to think about it too hard or it gives him a headache.

They’d come to the playground directly beside the HOV parking. Random place for one, but it was nice to be away from all the noise of the buses. Maran pushes with his dirty white converses against the wood chipping, swinging back and forth a few times. He kicks his feet. Benny feels like the toes of those shoes are wedging under his ribs. Cracking them apart. He has to look away.

“Mm, nope,” Maran answers, leaning back. The shirt hitches just a little higher. He has a plaid long sleeve on over top of it, but it must be Benji’s because it fits differently on him. Parts around his ribs and nearly drags on the ground. “Did you hear me?”

“No you don’t,” Benny says with a snort, finishing his cigarette. He rubs it out on the ground a few times to get it well and out before tucking it into his pocket. “N-No one actually reads palms.”

“I’m serious!” Maran leans closer, his eyes wide, pitiful in desperation for Benny to believe him. Which tugs at heart strings he thought he’d severed. So he ends up sighing and twisting on the swing set and tossing his hands forward. His big, pale palms unfold.

Benny watches Maran’s take them and for a moment, he feels cold and anxious. He feels like bugs are crawling up his back and into his hair, because this is the joke. Nasty! Gross! Ew! Touching Benny is so, so icky—unless you wanna fuck? Then it’s fun and disgusting. Benny’s eyes feel like they’re vibrating and he looks everywhere all at once, but Maran.

He feels thumbs smoothing over his palms. Maran’s grip tightens slightly. Then the bugs suddenly disappear and a liquid, simmering heat unfurls inside his lower stomach. He’s wearing his security jacket, so he’s not cold. Now he’s too fucking hot. Sweaty. He’s worried Maran is going to notice. He’s hunching forward, humming to himself as he peers closer. His finger trails so softly over a line in Benny’s palm that he feels almost like jumping out of his skin.

No, no, no. Don’t touch me like that. I’m not making this weird. I’m not making any of this weird. It’s already weird—it’s always weird, when I’m involved. And I’m being good. I am not fucking Benji’s friend, Xavier’s boyfriend’s best friend. Best friends since childhood.

“W-We—Well, what t-the fuck do th-they say?” Benny sputters out, laughing a little bit higher than he meant to. Maran jerks his hands closer, almost making the security guard fall off the swing and then he laughs. This loud, beautiful sound that echoes in the empty playground. Benny blinks rapidly, watching Maran’s gorgeous mouth. He kicks out a foot and leans back in his swing.

“Nah, Ben, m’sorry! I don’t actually read palms. Just an excuse, yeah? T’hold your hands. It’s a cheesy pick up line—use it in bars, yunno? Works, see?”

Usually he’d have something clever to say. Some flirtatious retort that borders on mean or odd. He’s full of them. Quips. Just because he has a stutter doesn’t mean he’s slow. But now, he’s just staring at Maran hefts Benny’s hands like playthings. He turns them over and pulls them up to read the tattoos on his knuckles.

BOOM !!!!

“Like these,” he comments softly. Benny stares at him for a long time and then gently tugs his hands away, laughing. Doesn’t come out as anxious, or high, or weird. He puts his palms into his pockets and sways on the swing. The chains creek as Maran starts swinging again as well.

#writing #hj #2023 #band au #jlb #mgc #mgc x jlb

[unknownjpegs]

not a waste

Xavier realizes he’s nervous when someone bumps into him and he fucking jumps. Makes a noise and everything, a small yelp of surprise that causes him to almost throw his cell phone. The stranger whose shoulder had grazed Xavier’s gives him a judgmental eyeful before tucking herself closer to her small children—which doesn’t help the nerves. One of them stares up at him owlishly, a crust of snot around their nostril. Xavier takes a step away from them as well. His hands sweat, clammy and slick, as he shoves them into his pockets, along with his phone.

He’s waiting for that text. The ‘just landed’ text, but staring at his phone isn’t going to make it magically appear. Or make him less nervous.

Which he shouldn’t be—except, it’s just—it’s that he hasn’t seen Benji in two months. And Xavier thinks when he does see him again, right in front of him, physically present and not just a little image on his phone, he might lose his mind.

They figured out quickly that they don’t do long distance well. Benji had just kept Xavier after their first tour together ended; took him straight home with him, practically until their next one started up. So for a while, it almost didn’t even feel long distance—only this time, between Ratspit’s Summer tour and their Spring one, Xavier couldn’t just go to the UK. He had a downtown Boston apartment that needed rent paid every first of the month—he had bills. He had a job, off tour, that he needed to keep.

Sort of. He sat in a booth at night and watched security cameras for a museum. Walked through the long halls in semi darkness with a flashlight to make sure nothing was amiss. No little characters come to life, or cat burglars dropping from spotlights in the ceiling. Felt cinematic almost, cliche in a way that was sort of endearing. Wes Anderson like, until he had to sit there and stare at the clock and realize he was lonely.

Really, really lonely.

Not just for Benji; but he couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t…mostly for Benji. But the first year of touring with The Band had been, arguably, the best year of his life (was that sad?). Even when it was draining or stressful or frustrating—or he’d slammed his head on a concrete barrier and had to get stitches and now had a scar he could still run his fingers over. Xavier missed them. He missed Lark’s hovering concern, or Matilda’s gentle fingers brushing through his hair to trim off the sides.

Xavier missed being kissed at random times, when there was a spare moment. A small, stolen thing back stage (and Benji laughing against his lips as he had to walk backward to the starting line, drum sticks in his hands). He missed having to plug his ears and smile at Tino when the music was getting louder and louder and louder—and the older man smiling back at him (paternal, soft, kind). He missed eating an entire large pizza with Benny, Maran perched over his shoulder, darting for slices.

Xavier even missed Mouse—who messaged him frequently on Instagram, terrifying memes he couldn’t decipher. But that she sent them at all, the soft reminder that she was thinking of him, made his heart hurt anyway.

His phone buzzes in his pocket. The vibration feels loud and his hand’s weak and fumbling as he pulls it out. The screen is cracked in the corner, a winding splinter down the front. Benji stares at him from his lockscreen, his eyes crinkled mid laugh. His hair is wild and Xavier’s pale hand is pushing it back. He’d taken it on the tour bus, after show, when Benji was exhausted, but still offering him a grin. Would always save one for him, no matter how tired he was. It was a little blurry and the aspect ratio fit horribly on his phone—and he didn’t care. It was his favorite photo.

He looks at the notification, his chest feeling tighter and tighter. Somehow lighter.

Just landed.

—

All the anxiety seems to swell up inside his chest and pop when he sees Benji in the crowd.

His eyes don’t have to search hard to locate his boyfriend; not because Benji is obvious. Because he’s not. He’s in a faded, fraying hooded sweatshirt, his crazy waves of black hair sprouting out from underneath like little snakes, sunglasses on and headphones around his neck. To anyone else maybe he’d blend in with the rest of the sleepy crowd, not unique or special. Maybe nothing about him would stand out in sharp contrast, or everyone was just looking for their person. But to Xavier, his chest pulls in one heavy breath and his gaze swings slightly left and Benji is just there.

Magnetic pull.

Boston Logan International is deafeningly loud around them, throngs of people crowding together as happy families reunite, or businessmen dart through the crowd on cellphones, talking above the undercurrent buzz of noise. It feels distant to Xavier when he steps forward and his hand falls directly to Benji’s hip. It feels like being underwater, like waves keep crashing down on him, pulling him under somewhere. Airports have always felt liminal; awkward junctions between real places. Standing in front of Benji for the first time in so long, yeah. It doesn’t necessarily feel real. But it feels so right.

He watches Benji pull off the sunglasses and lean forward until his chin is touching Xavier’s sternum—and he stares up at him, with tired brown eyes that blink softly and slowly.

“Hi.”

“Holy shit, I missed you so much,” Xavier blathers out, his other hand cupping Benji’s cheek. His heart kickstarts with an aggressive thump when Benji leans into it, flutters his eyes closed and sighs out, long and slow. Xavier’s hand slips back behind the nape of his neck and then suddenly they’re hugging. Just hugging. No dramatic reunion kiss, slow motion in the middle of the airport, move scene worthy. He’s just got his arms around Benji, who loops his own around Xavier’s waist.

Xavier does sneak one poke of his nose into the wild mess of black hair hair, nuzzling until Benji laughs at him.

—

They do kiss on the elevator ride up to Xavier’s apartment, however. Long, slow, lazy kisses that keep making Benji sigh whenever their lips part. Xavier’s hands become possessive paws enclosed around Benji’s hips, height difference making him hunch. Sometimes, Benji will rise up on his toes, arms slung around Xavier’s shoulders, in an attempt to close that gap. But Xavier pushes him down, pushes him to the elevator wall instead and continues kissing, as if neither of them need air.

And they get distracted by the push and pull of each others bodies, the warm press of their mouths together, their tongues and constant roaming hands—because the elevator dings on Xavier’s floor. The doors open. Then close. It brings them right down to the lobby again and Xavier finally pulls away, panting as he slaps the number eight on the panel of buttons. Benji’s mouth touches under his jaw, a warm laugh tickling across his skin and making him feel buoyant. Lighter than air. In love.

When they do finally get out of the elevator, Xavier hefts one of Benji’s bags up over his shoulder. It isn’t everything—apparently some of it is getting shipped straight to Lark, who organizes the tour bus. But enough to carry him through the month (the entire thirty one days) they’ll have together. The significant weight of Benji’s clothes and personal items feels metaphorical almost, strap of the duffle bag straining down his shoulder a little.

“I have a surprise,” Xavier says, subconsciously tucking Benji’s hair behind his ears as he pauses outside his apartment door. He still looks jet lagged, sleep clinging to him in the slow way he blinks. But he looks content, if not tired. He looks dreamy and subdued, with a little tilt of a smile to his slightly kiss swollen lips. It makes Xavier feel like tearing into him, pushing him against the wall again and devouring him in more places than just the mouth. Instead he fishes out his keys and unlocks the door.

“M’gonna trip,” Benji weakly complains with a laugh as Xavier loops his hands around his eyes.

“No, no, I got you.”

They do that comical sort of dance into the apartment, moving together like a strange four legged beast as Benji’s hands touch Xavier’s forearms. The duffle bag drops from his shoulder and onto the floor and Xavier nudges it with a foot toward his couch. For a moment, he thinks to be self conscious of his place. It’s not big. It’s a downtown, one bedroom and he’s shoved all his things inside it haphazardly.

The coffee table has a gun magazine that he panics over, thinking he should have stowed somewhere. And there’s an embarrassing amount of rubber ducks across his entertainment center, no two the same design. His hockey gear should have been put away, but instead leans in a corner, because his closet has most of his winter things packed up, so he has no other place. It’s neat, at least, because he keeps things clean habitually, but it’s filled to the brim.

So, he really shouldn’t have bought the drum kit.

“Tada!” Xavier hops around Benji, dropping his hands and standing in front of it. The massive things been shoved into the awkward space between his bedroom and the tiny kitchen that doesn’t get much use. “I figured—if you’re here for a month, maybe you’d want to practice.” He settles down onto the stool, picking up drum sticks. “It’s not as satisfying as a real kit, but I couldn’t get anything loud. Apartment complex and all.” He twirls one of the sticks in his hand (just like how he’s seen Benji do a hundred times over), only to send it flying across the room.

“Uh, still learning.” Xavier’s cheeks go red hot as he tucks the other one back into place. But Benji is silent in a way that makes Xavier perk up like he’s being loud. He blinks a few times before inhaling sharply and standing.

“Oh. Oh—Benji,” he says softly, striding forward. His foot lands on the drum stick he’d just tossed and it rolls underneath his heel, sending him nearly careening backward with comical pinwheeling arms. Only Benji catches him by the shirt and immediately pulls him closer. Xavier makes a soft huff of a sound when their bodies crash together.

“Menace,” Benji sniffs, the tears making his eyes look glassy, but beautiful. His brows are upturned, pulled in, creating a little line that Xavier wants to kiss away. His hands come up, cup Benji’s cheeks how they always seem to do. He feels like he has no control over that gesture, like his body works on it’s own accord when this man is around him. It’s a dizzying feeling, like he’s swept into currents that are peaceful and warm and soothing. His thumb brushes a tear that manages to escape, wiping it away before Benji’s forehead tucks against his sternum.

He sniffs again, hard and Xavier smiles to himself as he kisses the top of Benji’s head.

—

When the pizza arrives, he has to run down and get it, because the buzzer to the apartment building never seems to work. Benji’s left on the couch, sprawled out with some shitty action movie playing in the background. Xavier has to be normal about the amount of glances he gives him before leaving—catching Benji smiling on the last quick look before he’s out. Xavier bounces on the heels of his sneakers the whole ride down, a smile pulling at his cheeks until he tries to tamper it down—just for it to spring back on anyway.

And he’s running on auto pilot a bit as he stops by the neighbor across from him. His scarred up knuckles rap slightly on the door and Mrs. Fisher answers with a plate already in hand. Her fat tabby cat winds in and out of her legs before winding in and out of Xavier’s as well, tail flicking across his calves. He bends slightly, doing a balancing act with the pizza to scratch the old cats head a little.

“My, my, Xavier,” Mrs. Fisher says in her tiny old lady voice. She blinks behind her giant rectangular glasses, smiling up at him. The cat makes a demanding sound that goes unanswered by her owner. “That’s a lot of pizza for just you.” She’s gesturing with the plate to the two boxes in his hands. He quickly sets them down on the ground (and the cat tries to get at it immediately, so he has to tuck her under an arm) and goes about opening one. He crouches, smiling up at her. As he kneels, she’s about the same height as him anyway.

“Uh, I have company actually.” She holds the plate out as he slips two slices onto it for her. The tabby meows again. Xavier tucks his knuckles to his jaw and smiles, feeling his cheeks go warm again, feeling that smile going too wide again. The cats tail smacks at his side. “My boyfriend is visiting.” The cat gets out of his arm and darts into the apartment, meowing on every stomp of her paws. As he slowly stands and picks up the two large pizzas Mrs. Fisher beams.

“No more lonely holidays for you!” She says, patting his arm with her tiny, wrinkled hand. “Does he cook? I’ll never have to make a Christmas casserole again.”

“You don’t have to do that to begin with, Mrs. Fisher.”

“And you don’t have to share your pizza with me,” she says, slowly tottering into her apartment. “But you do every time!” Xavier closes the door for her, the pizza boxes nearly upending before he catches them and stumbles back to his own apartment.

—

“Why am I not surprised that you’re the tallest one?” Benji taps a finger on glossy paper, snickering as Xavier leans to look. They sit (or lay, rather) on the couch, half tangled—satiated from the pizza and comfortably high from the joint that Xavier had pre-rolled hours before the plane had even landed. One of Benji’s legs splays across his lap, the other underneath. Xavier’s laying sideways, arms folded around his boyfriends thick torso, head against his bicep. He’s tucked comfortably between Benji’s body and the cushions, in a way that squeezes him soothingly.

The yearbook is propped up on Benji’s thigh, an embarrassing relic he’d managed to yank out of a box in his closet for no reason—other than he was high, both on marijuana and the intoxication of time alone with Benji. The picture in question has Xavier lined up with all the other wrestlers, but he is almost a head taller than his awkward, teenage peers. He’s also distractingly pale and his hair is more orange in the terrible early 2000’s photo.

“I was six-three by junior year,” Xavier says proudly, grinning toothily up at Benji. He turns a little and the yearbook slaps to the floor because no hands are holding it any longer. Both of Benji’s have found their way into his hair making his eyes roll close. They’d smoked hours ago, so it’s wearing down, but the body high feels comfortable. Benji’s fingers work softly and make him sigh.

“Thanks for letting me stay, Xavier.”

His eyes pop open and blink rapidly, brows digging in as he looks up from his awkward angle.

“What do you mean?” Benji laughs, air through the nose sort, not the real laugh Xavier loves getting from him. And Xavier is high so he might be wrong, but there’s some sort of self conscious set to Benji’s lips, his teeth tucking against his bottom lip. His eyes, glassy from the weed seem to skate off him and toward the drum kit and then back before he closes them and puts his hand on his forehead.

He doesn’t want Benji to answer then; to have to pull out words that might be difficult to find. Xavier inches his way up, pulling Benji’s body as he does until they’re even. Face to face at the very least. Xavier tucks his lips against Benji’s bearded jaw, giving it a soft peck. He works his way up, listening to the stutter in Benji’s breathing. Hands fist into his shirt as he moves those kisses back down instead, to his neck. Xavier kisses a little harder, little more part to his lips.

“Always gonna be a place for you, Benji.”

The hands in his shirt move into his hair than, tugging him. They kiss once more, pressed together on the couch. Xavier thinks of moving those kisses south, thinks of getting Benji’s belt off and zipper down. Thinks of ways he can say I want you with more than just words, but they keep kissing instead. They kiss and kiss, until they’re panting and they’re tired and Xavier has to pull away and whisper bedroom to get Benji just to move off the couch.

—

The next day, Xavier let’s Benji sleep in.

He wakes up earlier than he means to, because the sunlight catches his eyes, startles him to consciousness from the dream he’d been having. Sharing the bed puts him on the other side of the mattress, the side that’s usually empty (the side he’d been looking at, nightly, wondering if Benji would fit there, just for Benji to steal the portion of the bed Xavier usually sleeps on), so the part of his curtains lets a shard of sunlight hit him directly in the face at seven in the morning. And once he’s up, Xavier is just up.

So he cleans, because that keeps his hands busy. Not that the two of them had made any sort of mess of his apartment the night prior. Benji’s shoes are two separate areas of the living room, because he’d kicked them off. Xavier gathers them and chucks them next to his own by the door before he jogs over and puts them right. The pizza boxes get taken to the trash chute and the cups they’d used to drink from get put in the sink until he stares at them long enough he rinses and dries them. Xavier thinks to roll another joint until he wanders his way back into the bedroom.

Xavier realizes he doesn’t want weed or to clean, or to distract himself any longer with either of those. He wants to crawl back into the bed. Xavier wants to be with Benji so bad it feels like there’s a hook around his spine dragging him forward. But there’s also something so incredibly special about Benji asleep in his bed, that he doesn’t want to ruin it.

They’d not had sex last night; Benji had fallen asleep almost immediately once he was down on the mattress. Xavier had even helped him out of his jeans and shirt. Jet lag, or prolonged lack of sleep to begin with, or the weed. Or safety. Comfort. Love. Xavier’s brain blinks a few times, like someone is throwing the light switch on and off as he looks at Benji curled up. He sleeps like that if Xavier doesn’t intervene. A hand tucked under his cheek, the other arm around his torso. Knees raised, spine bent.

So Xavier gets into the bed again, determined. But careful, so he doesn’t wake the drummer. His side rises and falls in a beautiful, soothing rhythm. He wants to flatten his hand there, feel both the cadence of his breathing and his warm, brown skin. Instead he hovers a little, hands on either side of Benji’s unconscious form.

In the tender, vulnerable morning light that splashes across Xavier’s bed, across Xavier’s lover, he tries to recall ever feeling like this. It’s not that Benji is the first person he’s ever felt for. There have been others; but it’s like having a headache—and then not having a headache. Not being able to conjure the idea of pain without being in pain. Xavier can’t remember what love felt prior to this moment, prior to gently taking Benji’s shoulders and moving him so he’s flat on his back.

He can’t ever remember wanting someone as much as he wants Benji, though he must have, at some point. There must have been someone else he looked at and loved, with his whole heart beating through his chest. Pumping electrified blood through his veins. There must have been. There couldn’t have been. It’s just not possible that Xavier has ever felt this way before; he would remember. So it’s new—and a little terrifying. Like the peak of a roller coaster, or leaning out of a boat with his fingers skimming the water and his grandfather telling him to be careful. It is so scary and so exhilarating.

“Xavier?” Benji breathes in, voice sleep husky.

“Sh,” he murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to Benji’s temple. He presses more down his cheek to his neck. “Sh,” he continues, his hands brushing up and down warm sides. He can feel the way they expand and contrast on a heavy, deep breath. Benji’s soft ‘mmnh’ in his sleep. His hand raises, slips tiredly across Xavier’s chest and then tucks itself underneath Benji’s chin. He watches his eyelids fluttering.

Xavier continues kissing.

He feels a spike of something that tastes like guilt. Something like worry, that he’s being soft and slow and deliberate, that he’s not trying to wake Benji up. That he likes looking at him, sleepy like this, likes kissing his collarbone and hearing a tired sigh. It’s not that Xavier wants Benji asleep—not that he’d ever cross some boundary, that clearly defined line that everyone recognizes. It’s just that Benji asleep feels so special, in a way that he can’t articulate.

Comfortable. Safe. Loved.

Xavier’s teeth touch the skin of Benji’s pectoral. He bites gently and feels his own moan winding through his throat. Unable to stop it, he half silences it by sealing his mouth there. Tongue appreciating the taste of Benji’s skin. The blankets rustle, hands touch his shoulders, fall down his forearms. Xavier doesn’t stop, sucks a mark there and continues on. His mouth moves until he presses a sweet, soft kiss to a nipple. Benji makes a sound then, a soft inhale.

“You’re so beautiful, Benji,” Xavier whispers, his warm breath pressed right against the other mans skin. His tongue flattens, touches Benji’s nipple. He wedges his knees to either side of Benji’s thighs as he continues, teasing bites. His other hand moves, up and down, up and down, a steady rhythm over Benji’s shivering side. Xavier’s open mouth and hot tongue travel once more, to the other neglected side.

He spares a glance to Benji, whose face has pinched with pleasure, but his eyes remain close. His chest draws in heavier, harder. Xavier drags his tongue up, memorizes the taste of Benji’s morning warmed skin.

“Do you know that?” The whispered reply is only Xavier’s name, softly spoken, barely a mumble. He presses another kiss to the corner of Benji’s mouth, subduing him. His legs cage him more, his hands brushing over Benji’s neck and down his shoulders. “Do you know you’re the most beautiful fucking person alive?” Benji’s arm slings around his shoulders, fingers digging into his skin. His eyes blink open a few times so Xavier softly lays a hand across them. He kisses him, parts his lips with his tongue.

They kiss, with Xavier’s hand over Benji’s eyes, with Benji’s arm slung around Xavier’s shoulders, until they’re both breathing hard. And then Xavier is tearing away. He’s moving faster, hurried as his palm slaps at his beside table. He feels Benji’s lips on his chest, on his shoulder. No, stay asleep, he thinks wickedly, his breathing heavy and hard as he jerks open the drawer to the table. Sleep and let me make you feel good, wake up feeling good, wake up safe in my bed, feeling good. He blinks rapidly, drawing away and looking down.

Benji lays beneath him, a hand looped around the back of Xavier’s neck. His eyes are barely cracked open, brown pools that feel hypnotizing. Xavier could fall into them—keep falling. Just never fucking stop. He cups Benji’s cheek again, his thumb brushing over his lips until he parts them with the digit and feels Benji’s tongue touch his skin. He moans then, eyes falling shut as he leans forward.

“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” he whispers.

“M’not awake,” Benji replies and Xavier’s spit slick thumb brushes out his mouth, down his chin. Benji’s eyes close again, his back arching up a little as he adjusts and gets comfortable. His head tilts back, bares his beautiful, brown throat. Xavier kisses there, hungrily, so it’s messy when he starts to lube fingers because he’s not even looking. Benji shivers when the cool liquid drips on his stomach, makes a throaty sort of laugh that has Xavier’s mouth going harder. There will be little bruises there, from his teeth and lips that will linger for days.

It becomes something languid then, something warm and unhurried. Xavier’s knee parts Benji’s easily, his hand between his thighs. He likes watching, but his eyes stay up inside, watch the graceful curve of Benji’s brows when he’s penetrated.

“I missed you,” he admits through the amber hued lethargic foreplay. Benji’s heavy breathing become pants, shallow and quicker than the movement of Xavier’s wrist and fingers. He makes a desperate and high sound when another finger joins the first and his body twists upward. Xavier merely uses his other hand to flatten him back down. “I thought about you every night.” He hears his name again, in that sleep soaked tone. Xavier’s lips travel across Benji’s chest again, leaving marks everywhere he can.

All at once, he pulls away—leaves Benji gasping, making a whining sound, like don’t go, but he can’t focus on that. Instead he grabs Benji by the hips and turns him over. He doesn’t mean to make it that fast, definitely not that rough, but Benji’s hands are reaching out, grabbing at a pillow. Xavier breathes heavy against the nape of Benji’s neck, his hands flexing and curling around his waist. He bites once more, and that whine is back in Benji’s voice.

“I want you,” Xavier manages to slur out, moving his teeth. He finds a shoulder blade, biting, and kissing again. He’s only barely managed to yank his own sweatpants down—barely even registered that he had.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Benji moans out, his voice muffled because he’s facing the pillow he’d grabbed. His body curves, inviting and beautiful. Xavier’s eyes drag down his spine, lower. His hand fists his own erection, his body shivering at the sensation of lube and skin. “Give—fuck—I want it, Xavier.”

His name is almost cut off because Xavier gives it then—a shallow thrust, a slow start. It makes Benji’s head snap backward, his back arching more. Xavier’s hand flattens down his spine, his face burying into Benji’s hair. He murmurs something loving, something soft and barely there as his hips thrust forward again, as he feels Benji’s body. He cuts his own words in half with a moan and then a throaty laugh. Both is fists brace onto the bed on either side of Benji as he lays there, on his stomach, prone and under Xavier.

And that starts slow too, just as the foreplay had. Starts with Xavier rolling his body forward and Benji bracing back. Every thrust gets him deeper, makes Benji’s legs splay further, accepting. His arms stay wrapped around a pillow, face into the fabric as Xavier continues. His own face stays buried into those dark curls, his breathing harder. It stays that way for a minute, until Benji turns his face to the side. And the mere glimpse of one of his eyes, rolling slightly from the sensation of Xavier fucking deeper makes it hard to stay fucking sane.

I want to see more, he thinks, the only rational thought he can manage when his hand sinks into Benji’s hair. Maybe he means to continue slow, or for it to be romantic—soft? Instead, his hand jerks Benji’s head back, elicits a loud whimper that practically echoes in his bedroom. His fingers curl, tighten to hold his head still so he can look at Benji’s face. The way his jaw drops, his eyes roll up and close, squeeze shut. Xavier’s body bucks forward at the mere sight of that pleasure and Benji whimpers again. His hands slap against the wall. Xavier realizes all of his weight is pressed down, trapping Benji on the bed.

Something possesses him then. The overwhelming need for more. More whimpers, more moans, more of Benji’s body, more pleasure for them both. He pulls, ever so slightly and Benji makes another harsh, high sound, his head falling back. His eyes blink open, pupils dilated and big. Wet. He can see tears gathering on his pretty black lashes. More. The hand in his hand moves. Both do. They capture of Benji’s that were flat on the wall.

He adjusts so that both their arms are under Benji, completely enclosing around him. His chin to Benji’s shoulder, his body continuing a harder thrust. Deeper. More and more. Every inch he can give. Benji’s head falls forward, resting on Xavier’s forearm as he continues.

“Benji,” he moans it, or it’s a growl really. Something dark and obscene and hungry inside him is driving him forward. “Tell me it feels good,” he continues. His nose touches behind Benji’s ear. His teeth touch there too. The sounds from his thighs clapping against the back of Benji’s almost drown his words out, so Xavier asks again, asks directly into Benji’s ear—tells, rather. Tell me.

“Yes,” Benji gasps out wetly. His head tilts back then, falls against Xavier’s shoulder. “Oh fuck,” he continues. Dissolves into less words and more moans, but it makes Xavier’s adjust again.

“Harder?”

“Yes, yes—harder—”

So he braces up and puts his hands to Benji’s lower back. He looks at the beautiful body sprawled underneath him. The way Benji’s back muscles flex as he’s being fucked, the sensual curve of his biceps, the slowly darkening hickie he’d left on his side. All his tattoos and dark body hair. Xavier’s thumbs brush along as his hands curl around his middle. Harder. He’s blinking sweat from his eyes as he watches Benji bite into the pillow—all thoughts seem to blink out of existence then.

But he does fuck harder. Brutally so, savage jerks of Benji’s body back and forth as his own hips drill forward. The sounds get louder then, from both of them. The bed slaps against the wall with the movement, because Xavier’s strength seems unbound. He’s unraveled at the seams and can’t hold back. And Benji’s loud encouraging moans only make it easier for him to continue. Waves of pleasure, from how tight and warm and good Benji feels make him toss himself forward.

Xavier gasps as the feeling punches through his chest. He slumps forward with his head between Benji’s shoulders. His body throbs, a warm feeling draining through all his limbs. His eyes flutter shut as he pumps into Benji, as his thrusts run slow. His hand goes into Benji’s hair again, softer now. Holding, curling through strands of hair as he pants. The sweat slicked body beneath him trembles, little shivers. So Xavier’s other arm slips up underneath him, to hold them together. He feels the tacky sensation of Benji’s cum on his stomach but doesn’t mind.

Their labored breathing becomes the only sound as they lay there.

Benji’s face stays to the pillow, so Xavier gently moves his hand around, cups his chin and turns it. There’s tear stains across his cheeks, brown eyes partly closed, a vulnerable tilt to his eyebrows. Xavier moves forward and kisses them, moving their bodies. He listens to Benji groan a little as they part, as he slides so their stomachs are pressed together, laid on their sides. Benji’s hand braces against Xavier’s sternum. He absently begins tucking back his hair and that vulnerable look smooths into something content, still tired.

“Sorry for waking you up,” Xavier whispers.

“Helluva fuckin’ way,” Benji replies, his lips tilted into an almost shy smile. Xavier practically has to ignore it, because he could go again if Benji makes an expression like that. He could fold him right over and go again. Instead, Benji blinks a few times then frowns. “What time is it?”

“Little past noon.”

“You let me sleep too late,” Benji snaps, burrowing closer, with a slight glare to his blown out, pleasure dilated eyes. Sweat has made his hair flatten slightly, little S curls of black hair sticking to his temple. Those pretty dark lashes still have a few wet tears that Xavier brushes at with a thumb. “Only got thirty days left now.” His heart beat swells up and then goes funky, a little stutter that threatens to really hurt him as his palm folds around Benji’s cheek.

“You’re counting days?”

Benji moves until his head is under Xavier’s chin, their legs sliding against one another. He huffs out a sound, a hand resting on the red heads hip. His thumb presses a little into soft, pale skin there and makes Xavier shudder.

“I missed you too,” Benji says then, his breath tickling Xavier’s collarbone.

—

Despite Benji’s grumbling, they actually do sleep more. They stay tucked together, spooning chest to chest, as the morning light turns to mid afternoon orange glow. Every time Xavier’s eyes flutter open, he’s greeted with curly black hair, or Benji’s face tilted slightly away. The relaxation is what had made him feel so…wild.

The nature of their relationship was accidentally frantic. Benji’s lifestyle was, inherently chaotic. The constant traveling, the back breaking shows that made him exhausted, drained. The time apart, that couldn’t really be solved. Their first year of dating had been a revolving door of snatching time together when they could between shows, when they could be alone. If they could even be alone.

So it wasn’t that Benji was sleeping, or that he was tired—though he looked unforgivably cute when he was. It was just that he was at ease. Calm. Comfortable. Safe. Fucking loved enough to pass out the second he touched a mattress.

When they do wake up, they don’t go out. They order in again, after a long shower that washes off all their sticky residue. Xavier makes jokes of it as he brushes his teeth while Benji puts his shampoo and conditioner into the shower stall. He stares at those bottles, feels a little empty headed thinking about them there.

“It’s not a waste of a day,” Xavier comments idly as he sits on the floor between Benji’s knees. They’ve tossed on something to play in the background, while Benji’s fingers move deftly through red hair. He’s putting braids here and there, in no design or fashion forward way. It’s just something soothing that is making Xavier feel jellied and content. “If you’re—I mean. Just having you here. Not doing anything. I kind of wish we could do that more.”

Benji is quiet for a moment, the terrible movie in the background not loud enough to cover up his small inhale. His fingers move until they’re under Xavier’s jaw and they tilt his head back. He blinks up at Benji, upside down.

“Yeah, me too, Xavier,” he says. It feels heavier than it should, but before he can ask about it—what do you mean, are you okay, are you getting tired, is touring took much, sometimes you look so exhausted you might faint—the buzzer on his door crackles to life. The food’s arrived. Xavier sits there, looking up at Benji until the drummer smiles and leans down to press a kiss.

“Introduce me to Mrs. Fisher, yeah?”

“Oh, man. You’re gonna love her.”

—

He coaxes Benji into sleeping on the train too. He lays across Xavier’s lap, hands tucked under his cheek. Xavier’s fingers make a constant gentle massage through his dark curls as he watches the scenery blur by. The months over—so they’re meeting Lark and the bus in New York. The dark circles that once seemed permanent under Benji’s eyes have lightened enough that it almost worries Xavier. Like, they don’t have to be there all the time. Benji could sleep as much as he’d like, if he was encouraged into it.

Not that encouragement cures insomnia, but sometimes, it seemed like Benji just needed someone to kiss him; remind him, that letting go and relaxing was fine.

The ticket master slaps the door open and even that rudely loud noise doesn’t disturb Benji. Xavier, used to ticket masters, holds his out and gets them inspected quick enough.

For some reason his day dreams on the train ride have been unusual. He looks forward to the tour—looks forward to getting out of his shitty graveyard security position. Misses Matilda and even Benny. Secretly misses Tino the most—aside from Lark of course. But, before, when he’d think of tour and all the excitement, he’d day dream of all those little glimpses of time with Benji. The stolen hours when they’d wedge into the same cot. When Benji would steal him backstage for a quick kiss, where no one could see them.

Feeling Benji’s boot on his shoulder, shoving playfully at him while they arrange the stage and he stands there, to look menacing at Ratspit fans.

Xavier daydreams about the beach for some reason. About swimming in open, salty water. He thinks of how Benji would look, bobbing along in the waves. Under the sun. He thinks about laying on the pale, burning sand. He daydreams about drinking orange juice while Benji makes his tea—he’d even bought an electric kettle just for him to use. He daydreams about holding hands—something simple, maybe even dumb. He tucks self consciously around Benji’s sleeping form.

Feels a little guilty, because, dating Benji sort of meant dating this kind of lifestyle. This four hour train ride alone, is the longest stretch of time they’ll have together once tour starts again.

And Xavier let’s Benji sleep. Because it’s not a waste, for him to relax. For him to be comfortable. His throat bobs and his lips touch Benji’s temple, his eyes closed. It’s not a waste.

#writing #hj #2023 #band au #xw #bp #bp x xw

[unknownjpegs]

twenty kisses

“He has health insurance through the VA,” Lark tries explaining to the exhausted woman at the counter. “But, I have no idea where his card is.” There’s a bit of drying blood on his palm that’s making him nauseas because it’s Xavier’s blood. He rubs it against his jeans, where more blood has dried into a dark pattern. “Can’t you just look him up?”

The emergency room screams behind him; makes his skin crawl. A man moans in the corner, a woman tries to comfort a screaming baby, a police officer stands by the door and makes Lark even more anxious. Matilda is the only comfort behind him, with her arms crossed and an anxious, pale face. She taps her foot in a rhythm that he recognizes and has to close his eyes too. Lark swipes his hand through his hair—a mistake, because it’s the same hand he’d used to cradle Xavier’s head. All that dried blood mixing with his sweat. He feels sick to his fucking stomach.

He can’t be the adult in this situation, but he also can’t call Xavier’s older sister. She’s a six hour flight away—what’s he going to say? Cry to Tess; Xavier’s got a concussion and he’s getting stitches on his fucking head, because he got shoved into a concrete barrier and it’s my fault because I got him this job and I don’t know how his health insurance works because he’s a veteran and I am absolutely unequipped to be dealing with this right now.

When he joins Matilda again, the moaning man is getting louder and Lark’s headache is getting worse. And as if she senses that, one of her slim hands works its way back through his hair, settling on the nape of his neck. He leans back into it, eyes closed, trying to cut out the image of dark red blood on concrete by imaging the way that slender, pale hand looks against his skin. Lark blinks his eyes open.

“Asshole should carry his wallet on him. Do I look like I know how Medicaid works?” Both her hands cup his cheeks then and she tilts his head to look at him. He feels a little sting of guilt because her eyes are red rimmed, like she’d been crying. It had been scary, watching Xavier go limp like that. The way Tino had to hop the barrier to ensure the crowd didn’t maul him on accident. And Lark dropping off the stage and watching those pretty green eyes roll up and go white, his hand slipping underneath his head. Tacky, wet with blood. If she’d cried, he didn’t blame her.

He sort of cried a little too.

“We left the poor concussed asshole alone with Benji,” Matilda points out, just as the moaning man starts throwing up.

—

A fast walking nurse escorts him to Xavier. Her shoes squeak with every step and she’s actually shorter than Lark, but makes him feel minuscule with every glance over her shoulder to make sure he’s keeping pace.

He feels lost without Matilda next to him, but two was the limit and Benji was already there. No one was going to ask Benji to leave. And someone needed to go back and stop Mouse from freaking out worse than she already was—someone needed to make sure Benny didn’t storm the hospital with an anarchy sign protesting health insurance. Someone probably needed to help Tino file the incident report with the security company Xavier worked for.

So Lark was without Matilda for the time being and his hands kept falling in and out of his pockets with anxiety over it. He felt like he was shoved into the role of most adult when Lark was scraping through adulthood on a whim. He was a musician, fucks sake, he barely understood taxes.

“Oh,” Lark pauses in front of the blue curtain separator, blinking. “He didn’t get his own room?”

“He’s got a concussion,” the nurse says in a voice that makes Lark feel even inches shorter. He tries not to glare at her, even though she glares at him. Turns on her squeaky rubber heel and starts her fast walk elsewhere. Lark tries for sympathy, or empathy; because he’s just a musician who doesn’t understand taxes and she’s probably working a twelve hour shift no breaks. Instead he just puts a hand to the curtain dividing Xavier from a little kid with a wrist that looks very wrong.

Lark can hear Xavier actually. This section of the hospital is not like the emergency room. There’s the ambient never ending sound of beeps and people talking; the mother with the child sniffling. There’s the nurses station a few feet down where the sound of a keyboard is grating. But Xavier’s voice feels so clear. It makes Lark want to sigh with relief, makes his heart feel a little less sore and terrified.

He slips fingers through the curtain, parting it slightly.

Xavier sits on the edge of the gurney, his shoulders round and his toes scuffing up the tiled floor. They’d not made him change out of his clothes, so the black security shirt has a stain of dark blood that turns those white letters pink. Both his hands hold one of Benji’s as he stands in front of him. Their height difference is so visible then, stark and impressive. Benji stands only a few inches taller as Xavier sits.

“You’re gonna get me in trouble,” he slurs in a dreamy but happy voice. His green eyes flicker a bit over Benji. His back is to Lark, but he can see the tension in the line of his shoulders. Lark loves Benji so much, he feels like he could read every thought on him by body language alone; subtle shifts in the way he rests his arms or stands, or the barest lift of an eyebrow, or sometimes the way his eyes close completely and he tilts his head away from conversations, or if he holds his cigarette in a different way.

Benji stands like he’s exhausted and worried.

“You’re not in trouble, Xavier,” he says in a soft voice. Xavier’s head tilts a little, eyes fluttering, one hand reaching like he might touch the back of his head. Benji’s hand lifts instead and catches it. “Don’t touch the stitches, though, alright?”

“Oh man,” Xavier replies with a laugh that is dopey—reminiscent of when he’s high. It’s this rumble of a laugh from his chest, low pitched. He sighs out heavily, long day at the office style. “You are like, really going to get me in trouble.” Lark stands there, curtain parting a little more, but he doesn’t disrupt. “They gave me the hottest nurse in the whole fucking hospital.”

“M’not a nurse,” Benji says, his voice laced with both exhaustion and the slightest hint of amusement. He shifts a bit on his feet, both his hands holding Xavier’s now. “Does it hurt anymore? Should I get a nurse then, yeah?” Xavier’s smile fades for a moment and then returns with vigor. Turns large, toothy as he leans forward.

“I have a boyfriend,” he whispers, conspiratorially. “So you have to stop flirting with me.”

“I’m—Xavier,” Benji’s voice is definitely amused then. He has a snort of a laugh, air through the nose sort. But he laughs for real, then. A soft under the breath chuckle as he leaves one of Xavier’s hands on his thigh and then lifts it to brush a strand of dark red hair back. It had fallen into Xavier’s eye and he kept blinking slowly as if that could fix it. When Benji touches him, cups his cheek with his dark brown palm, Xavier sighs and his eyes flutter close. “I am your boyfriend.”

“What?” Xavier’s eyes pop then and his whole long body leans forward on the gurney, like he might slip right off. Benji bunches himself forward, gets between his knees to stop him from moving. Xavier’s giant palms fold over Benji’s ribs intimately and Lark has to glance away for a moment. He gnaws his lip, fights a smile as he listens. “You are my boyfriend? What the fuck?” He draws the curse out long and softly.

Benji laughs again. The sound is beautiful; like just an unreleased version of a song. They had so many of those. Things they made when they were younger, or even more recent. Sometimes Benji and Lark came together and made things just for them, just between them. Not necessarily hiding, but a rekindling of an old flame that they both miss. Music before the concerts and money and everything else that came along with it. Music just for them.

Lark feels guilty listening to that laugh. It’s like the music. A sound just for Xavier.

“Do I get to kiss you?” Xavier whispers harshly, like he’s trying to keep it to himself.

“A bit, yeah.”

“Oh my God. Can I kiss you right now?”

“Xavier, we’re in a hospital, cause you banged your head up, yeah? Real bad.”

“Heh,” Xavier’s laugh comes out sneaky. Lark can’t help but look again, even if he’s trying to pretend like his fucked up converses are more entertaining than this. Xavier has his eyebrows raised, lips pursed in a smirk. “Banged.” He bats his eye lashes exaggeratedly and leans in. “We should, like, do that, you know?”

“Xavier,” Lark finally interrupts with an exhausted sigh of his name. Benji jumps, startling his way back from between Xavier’s knees. One of his hands stays there, though, lingers maybe for both his comfort and Xavier’s. The concussed security guard blinks at Lark, like he’s trying to piece him together in his life as well. Lark glances up at the dimmed lights he sits under and then back down. “How does your Medicaid work?”

“Whats Medicaid?” Xavier asks, looking at Benji for help. His eyes are big, puppy like, sad.

“Americans,” Benji replies, leveling a flat gaze at Lark.

—

Apparently, not being able to sleep with a concussion is a myth mostly perpetuated by television and movies. Xavier not only is allowed to sleep the second they get him into the car, but he does. Leans his entire body weight against Benji and passes out. There’s a thick bandage around his head that makes him look almost comical. Lark wants to find it comical because he was so scared. Because the adrenaline of the entire night is draining out of his body and making him feel leaden.

Because of the incident, they at least get a hotel for the night so Xavier can sleep on a real bed. The expense gets written off somehow (Thanks, Happy) but by the time they arrive, Xavier’s dopey, dreamy attitude has fallen off. Instead, he’s exhausted, in pain and annoyed—snaps about the elevator being slow and making him nauseas. Snarls about the person who shoved him at the show, curses under his breath when he gets inside the hotel room and almost trips against the stupid coffee table.

Lark helps him peel off his security shirt, wincing at the way the blood wants to velcro fabric and skin together.

“I’ll find that guy,” Xavier mutters. “And I’ll crack his fucking skull open. Piece of shit.” He continues his angry mutterings to himself, hands folding behind the back of his neck. Tired eyes closing, dark marks like bruises underneath them. For a man so tall, lean with muscles, he looks oddly fragile.

“He’s all yours,” Lark says loudly instead of replying to Xavier. He balls up the shirt and tosses it into the waste basket by the door. But then he pauses and leans down and fishes it out—housekeeper shouldn’t have to deal with that. He stands by the door for a moment, hand on the knob as he looks at Benji coming from the bathroom with a rag.

They look at each other then. Lark is absolutely stunned for a moment, with the urge to walk over and hug Benji. Crush him to his chest and tell him thank you. The world feels so big and so scary and Xavier has always felt like someone swept up into it in ways Lark could never protect him from. Thank you, Benji. Instead he half waves from his hip and dips out the door into the hallway. Lark leans back against the door, staring at the garish ugly floral artwork on the hotel wall in front of him.

Time for him to find Matilda.

—

Xavier’s definitely been in worse pain before. Nothing compares to the ribs—nothing will ever compare to the ribs, as long as he fucking lives. But that doesn’t make being in any amount of pain easy. Except, with his head in Benji’s lap like this, he doesn’t necessarily find it…so bad.

The bandage around his head makes tufts of his hair stick up and Benji seems to play with them idly. His fingers brushing them back and forth as he flicks through the channels on the television. He’s trying to find something ambient enough that Xavier can doze through, because Benji knows Xavier likes background noise. Xavier’s tongue feels dry in his mouth and his eyes hurt, but he refuses to sit up to drink water, or to ask for the lights to be even further dimmed.

Instead he turns a little onto his side. Does it slowly, because his stomach is still rolling and movement makes him dizzy. He tucks an arm around Benji’s middle and presses his face into the softness of his stomach. Xavier sighs out, nuzzles and regrets it because it makes his head swim. Causes him to make a soft sound the draws Benji’s attention immediately.

“Should you be on your side like that?” he questions, fingers grazing over Xavier’s temple and to his cheek. The feather light touch causes a different sort of sound that has Benji laughing. Xavier can feel that laugh, tucked closer to Benji’s middle as he is.

“You’re so worried about me,” Xavier teases softly, his eye cracking open. He regrets that too, but not because of any physical symptoms. It’s just that Benji is looking at him. Chin tilted to his bare chest and eyes down. His long curly hair is only barely held back by a claw clip, so strands are everywhere. Xavier blinks a few times and then closes his eyes.

“Yeah,” Benji says softly. “Was worried. Got a real fuckin’ bump to the head, Xavier.” Benji’s hand cups his shoulder and gently moves him so he’s on his back. Xavier is too tall to really be laying like this, so his legs dangle off the bed somewhat. But he’d refused to lay any other way. It was head in Benji’s lap or bust.

“I have a thick skull,” he replies, lifts a hand as if he’s going to rap knuckles on his forehead—but Benji catches it. He laces there fingers together and gently lays the tangled pair of hands on Xavier’s chest. “I’m fine, Benji, really.” There’s shifting again in the bed. Benji is being careful, gentle as he draws himself out from under Xavier and then lays slowly beside him. He feels a leg tucking between his own—his favorite way to lay.

Benji knows this like he knows Xavier enjoys ambient background noise before bed.

“Do you remember what you were sayin’ back in the hospital?”

“No,” Xavier laughs, his head turned to look at Benji. “Was I being embarrassing?”

There’s a long pause where Benji looks at him with those dark beautiful eyes. Xavier doesn’t try to look away from them this time. Lets them swallow him up whole, lets them take his breath away and make him feel light headed in a different sense. Benji leans forward and his lips start a trail from Xavier’s cheek to his lips.

“Just asked for a kiss is all,” Benji mumbles, his warm breath making Xavier feel hot all over. “So I’m goin’ t’kiss you, alright? Think you earned a few.”

Xavier’s hand pushes waves of black curls behind Benji’s ear.

“Feel like I deserve, probably, like—twenty? Like twenty kisses.” It makes Benji laugh, which is his goal, because feeling him laugh against his lips is everything to him. The television is a low murmur as Benji kisses Xavier until he slowly drifts to sleep.

#writing #hj #2023 #band au #xw #bp #bp x xw #lt

[unknownjpegs]

stairwell

“Are you following me?”

Maran blinks up at him from three steps below. Benny stares down in contrast, hands in his black bomber Security jacket, sunglasses perched low on his nose. There’s the loud sound of a door closing a flight below them, the obnoxious slam of it echoing through the whole concrete stairwell. Maran’s smile gets bigger, taking one step up and closing the gap slightly between them. Benny tilts his head in response.

“No,” Maran answers coyly, his beautiful lips curled into an almost shy smile. Benny knows that smile by now; it’s this pretty, inviting, sometimes teasing smile. Makes Ben’s cheeks a little warm. He’s wearing a faded Ratspit shirt that has a hole in the collar. Benny thinks of slipping his fingers into that opening, widening it, yanking Maran up the stairs by thin fabric. Instead he blinks and furrows his eye brows, snorts and turns to continue climbing. “But,” he hears the younger man practically hopping steps. “Where ya goin’?”

“Up,” Benny answers without looking to the side where Maran has hopped the final step. Their shoulders brush a little. It’s an obvious attempt to get Benny to glance over that he doesn’t fall for. The brush comes a little harder then so he stops at the fifth floor and turns. Despite wanting that attention, Maran startles a little when Ben steps right up to him.

Their chests are close. Benny still has his hands in his pockets, but Maran has laced his behind his back. It pushes them a bit closer. He’s still smiling that sweet, boyish grin. It makes his lips look so fucking inviting; the memory of what they’d felt like when they’d kissed the first time lingers in the back of Benny’s head. Even when Maran isn’t there, somehow his thoughts stray toward that fucking kiss. Like he’s some virgin in math class unable to stop thinking about his crush—sort of annoys Benny.

Maran backs up a little, leans against the concrete wall behind him. He tilts his chin down, practically bats eyelashes.

“M’Just g-going for a smoke, Mar,” Benny laughs, tapping his fingers against his lips in obvious gesture.

“In a stairwell?”

“Roof,” Benny says, gesturing up. “G-Get alone for a bit. S’fuckin’ tour has too—too many people on it.” Maran’s shoulders drop a little. The chin tuck becomes less adorable and more morose as he glances down the curving stairwell they’d just climbed up. He pushes off from the wall and Benny rolls his eyes. “Relax,” he says, slipping a hand over Maran’s side. He feels a little shudder underneath his palm. It goes from ribs to lower back and then roughly jerks them closer. The silly little chain Maran wears on his belt jingles a bit. “Didn’t mean you.”

He smiles so instantly that Benny feels even more annoyed. Except it isn’t annoyance—it’s just so close to annoyance. It’s—like frustration. It’s this weird sensation in his chest. Fluttering almost. Benny doesn’t feel this way for people. He doesn’t care about them often enough to. It’s such a similar feeling to arousal that it makes him—aggressive. He keeps his hand flat to Maran’s lower back. Forces their hips together as he leans in.

When they’re about to kiss, Maran dodges it. Backs his head up and bites his lip to stop himself from smiling wider. His pretty brown eyes flicker over Benny’s face. His cold blue eyes narrow. He unwinds his hand from his pocket and pushes his sunglasses up and into his hair. He leans in once more and Maran almost laughs this time as he pulls away again.

Faster than he means to, Benny’s hand snaps up to catch Maran’s jaw. He feels him gasp a little at the sudden restraint, pupils expanding in those beautiful brown irises. Benny’s fingers curl, indenting pretty olive skin. Not enough to hurt—but Maran isn’t moving now.

“Stop being a brat,” he murmurs, lips close enough to touch. He feels Maran’s warm breath tickling him. Instead of kissing, Benny lites his lower lip. Gentle, no strength to it. Just a little hint of teeth is all, a small tug. Maran’s arms loop around him. One hand digs into the material of his jacket. Maran’s hips seem to buck forward and Benny can tell it’s unintentional because the mans face starts to turn scarlet.

Benny’s hand uncurls so he can run the tips of his fingers over the lower lip he’d just bitten. His eyes flutter when they part for him and he sees a hint of tongue.

“Ben,” Maran starts and is cut off when he’s yanked into a kiss. For a moment, it’s just the simple, but hard pressure of their mouths together. Then it isn’t. Then it’s Benny backing Maran up against the wall and wedging his knee between Maran’s thigh. Then it’s Maran’s hand digging into Benny’s hair and making him open his mouth to moan—and that parting of lips gives Maran the opportunity to push forward. Chase with tongue.

They kiss a little messy and hungry, tucked against that stairwell wall. Ben’s hands roam up under the shitty merch shirt. His palms flatten over ribs, move against back muscles. Smooth skin that’s warm to the touch, that makes Maran sigh to be touched. One slips higher, fingers brushing over a pert nipple that makes Maran twitch and pull back and hiccup a laugh.

“Aw,” Ben says in a snide voice, grinning ear to ear. He puts his forehead to Maran’s and flutters his own pale eyelashes. “Mar, are y-you sensitive, babe?”

“It tickled,” he protests in a petulant voice, both his hands looping behind Benny’s neck. A thumb brushes against his skin, making Benny hypocritically shiver. It incenses him, makes that frustrating-annoyed-fluttery feeling grow larger. Inescapable. He goes for another kiss, but then his head tilts down, looks at the way their hips are almost aligned.

“Are you hard?”

“What?” Maran blinks rapidly, shuffles a bit in place. “No.” Benny tilts his head. One of his hands nestles behind Maran’s neck, thumb brushing and then slowly digging and making Maran’s lips part in a soft gasp. He has to resist going back in for another kiss, because he wants to. Ben will think about it later, about how much he could just fucking kiss Maran. How he could pin him to the concrete wall and do nothing else but taste him on his tongue. Dangerous line of thinking.

“Want help?” Benny asks, grin still curving, a little nasty. He’s trying to ignore that big feeling in his chest. His knee bumps hard between Maran’s thighs—the whimper he does as a result has Benny’s stomach muscles tightening. A flash of heat simmers painfully over his skin. I want you. I want you, fuck, I want you. His hand squeezes on reflex and Maran’s eyes quickly shut, leaning back into that touch. Encouraging. Makes Benny light headed thinking Maran doesn’t do it purposefully. All reactions. All so many cute reactions.

“In here?” Maran asks, finally opening his glossy eyes and blinking at Benny. His head swivels a little bit, blinking up the last flight and down toward the bottom. There’s silence except for their heavy breathing. Benny’s hand moves to cup his chin again, move so he can only look forward, at him.

“Should I stop?” His knee hikes up again, presses forward against the erection he knew he felt when they were kissing. Maran’s hand slips up into his hair, curls into his blond strands. Accidentally makes the sunglasses fall off and clatter to the cement floor of the landing. Maran’s eyes follow them as he pants, open mouth. “Should I?” Benny asks again as both his hands slip down to open Maran’s belt.

“No.”

“What was that?” The belt gets fully open then, Ben’s fingers tucking into the edge of Maran’s briefs. “Whew,” he smiles, momentarily distracted as he flattens his hands and pushes them up instead, hikes the shirt higher. “An-Anyone ever tell you how cute your stomach is?” His eyes flicker up to find Maran smiling. Cheeks pink, eyes hooded a bit. The feeling in his chest gets so big it makes his ribs feel like they’re bowing outward. Benny has to blink a few times before his hands grip into his hips and then he maneuvers them.

If I look at you any more, I’m going to lose my fucking mind. I’m going to do more than give you a fun handjob in a stairwell. You’re making me dizzy. Stop looking at me. I have to slow down.

Suddenly, Maran faces the railing, the somewhat dizzying drop down the hollow center of the stairwell. His hands catch the railing as he sucks in a hard breath and Benny stands behind him. Much better. Much easier. He uses his heavy boot to kick Maran’s feet apart slightly, grinning with his lips to his shoulder at the jump it causes to travel up Maran’s body.

Benny slips his wallet from his back pocket and flicks it open. He puts it close to his mouth, using his canine to hook the condom there and pull it out enough that his teeth can really grab hold. He flicks the wallet close and shoves it back in place. His other hand stays where it is—on Maran’s lower stomach, up underneath his borrowed shirt. He’s so soft there, a little pliant when Benny’s fingers dig in.

He sort of makes a show of it. Because it’s a bit about the show of it. Doubts Maran’s ever enjoyed a bit of exhibitionism. Don’t worry. Always here to show a guy a good first time. He makes it apparent what’s in his hand. Maran’s head is tilted to the side. His back, pressed to Benny’s chest, expands and contrasts with his heavy breathing. Benny is going to store this info away. That Maran get’s like this just from kissing, from being man handled and complimented. He lifts the edge of the condom wrapper, wedges it between his teeth and rips. Then his hand finally moves. Not where Maran wants it to move, of course.

He wraps it around the railing in front of them instead, tucking his chin over Maran’s shoulder. He presses a sweet little kiss there. BOOM reads loudly from his knuckles. He flexes fingers just a bit, because he’s caught Maran looking at those tattoos more than once.

“Get—Get it out,” he says, low, throaty, dark.

The breathing gets louder. A beautiful echo in the empty concrete stairwell. Benny’s ears practically perk at the sound of Maran’s zipper. His hands are trembling a little—almost makes Ben stop. Seeing them makes him want to pause and grab them and hold, ensure they calm down before they continue. Until he realizes that’s excitement, that tremor is anticipation. Then he sinks his teeth into Maran’s shoulder, pinching the fabric of the shirt.

Something about the sounds of the zipper, the jeans, the briefs rustling is erotic to Benny. Makes his eyelids drop, his hand on Maran’s stomach press a little. He tucks his chin over his shoulder again, looking over as he watches Maran pull himself entirely from his briefs. He gives himself one nice tug that makes Benny’s lidded eyes pop open. He turns his head, takes Maran’s earlobe in his teeth and groans.

“K-Keep doing that, actually,” he says, making Maran shudder again. He attempts to adjust a little, but Benny’s body becomes a falcon like curve around him. Bars him from moving much at all. His eyes fall back to Maran’s cock, watches as he gives it another few gentle strokes.

“No one’s going to come in here, right?” Maran mumbles his voice breathy and soft. His chest is heaving a bit, shoulders moving up and down with effort. “’Cause—hah—that would be—”

“They might,” Benny cuts him off, hypnotized watching that tan hand. His own presses Maran’s lower stomach again, making him twitch.

“Ben—wouldn’t that be—bad,” he clips out the word when Benny’s hand moves from his lower stomach. His fingers dance forward over Maran’s shaft, making the younger man tremble and stutter his hips.

“Do you ha-have freckles on your fucking cock?” It makes Maran groan. Breathless and gentle as his head falls back against Benny’s shoulder. He squirms a bit, which almost makes Benny groan too, because he can’t pretend he’s not hard in his jeans too.

“Right, they’re weird—”

“They’re so fucking cute, Mar,” Benny replies, his whole hand gripping Maran now. “Y-You’re so fucking cute.” He listens to him groan again—only this time it sounds a little more like a whimper. Soft. Held in. Benny gets the sense he’s trying to be quiet—maybe not just because of the stairwell. Like he’s someone who holds in his noises. Makes Benny grip just a little tighter. He toys a bit, hand tugging slow, fingers moving over the tip of his cock in a teasing circle.

Benny gives him a few more compliments. Slow dragging of his dry palm until he feels a few beads of precum. Contemplates putting them in his mouth, but he’s focused now. On the talking. Tells Maran, right to his ear, how cute he is. How cute his cock is—how cute those freckles are. Might keep talking a little too much. Tells him if he could, he’d put his lips there. He’d kiss every single one of them.

I bet you taste good, Maran. I bet you taste so fucking good. I bet you’d like if I tasted you.

He remembers the condom then, laughs to himself that he’d forgotten to begin with. He flicks his wrist once more, the wrapper coming free from the little circle of pink latex. It drifts lazily down through the hollow center of the stairwell. Oops.

“Mind if I put it on for you?” Benny asks. Doesn’t give him enough time to answer as he starts. “S’just—can’t get my hands off, is all.” Maran’s breath punches out of him as he rolls the condom down, smoothing it. Benny tucks his chin again, right to his shoulder, head tilted to look at him. “Maran,” he beckons with his voice pitched low. He can see one flushed, pretty, freckled cheek and then Maran turns to look at him. “I really like you,” he confesses as he starts moving his hand.

“Fuck, Ben,” Maran replies, eyes glazed. Their lips are close, but Benny doesn’t lean in.

“Yeah, I would.” He gives Maran both his hands then. Starts up a good, tandem rhythm. Tight fists. “Really would.” Maran’s hands wrap around the railing. He bows his body slightly, head falling forward. “Nuh uh,” Benny says, pausing. “Look at me.” There’s a pause, as Maran collects his breath. He can see his eyes squeezing shut before he lifts his head back up, turns slightly to face Benny.

But Ben puts his big combat boots on either side of Maran’s cute, dirty white sneakers and keeps his body facing forward. Doesn’t let him move. The restriction is part of the fun. Maran’s breathing goes hard—harder when his hands start up again. Through the slick latex he can feel how warm he’s getting. A little throb when Benny’s wrist flicks, a motion of tight fingertips over the tip of his condom covered cock. Maran whimpers at that and makes Benny smile. Big and sleazy.

Then the sound of the door from downstairs makes Maran’s entire body jump. He tries to scramble, but Benny keeps him there, feet locked and hands still on him.

“Shhhh,” Benny whispers condescendingly. Maran’s eyes flicker around the stairwell. The sounds of conversation drifts up. He thinks he hears that cute little social media manager down there and a roadie. Some tech that has a crush and probably pulled her in for a quick, private conversation. Same idea as this, really. “Shhh,” he repeats, hands continuing their loving pace. Maran’s head drops forward, eye contact now simply impossible.

It’s adorable when his hips start moving too, bucking forward into Benny’s two handed grip. He moves so his mouth is at the nape of Maran’s neck. He breathes heavy, because he knows how good that feels. And is rewarded with more frantic hip movements. The press back against him makes Ben’s eyes momentarily roll close. The door sound comes again and the conversation peters out.

“Mmfuck—nhh—close,” is all Maran manages to sputter out breathlessly. His head twists to the side. Benny lets him, moves his foot a bit. That allowance makes Maran turn further, an arm hooking over Benny’s shoulder and their faces are so close then. Benny’s hand moves faster—and then faster, as the other works its way up Maran’s body. Side, rib, chest, neck. His fingers collar. He pulls them that much closer, lets their open mouths rest together.

Benny misses the warm feeling he knows would be there, if that little thin layer of latex was gone. He misses how it’d feel, spread across his fingers. But the most important part—Maran’s face, is all there for him to look at. The upturned brows, the gasp of a sound, the flush of pink all across his nose. All those freckles standing out more under the dark scarlet color. Benny’s tongue touches Maran’s lower lip and then he draws away with a large grin.

“You needed th-that bad, huh? Pent up?”

Maran sags a bit, turning until his lower back is against the railing. He huffs out an adorable breath, his chest giving a big heave. One of his hands scrubs over his smiling mouth, then up over his eyes. Benny does him the favor of snapping the condom off. He startles at that again and makes Benny laugh—the loud crack of it echoing the stairwell. He ties it off and kicks at the trash can in the corner of the landing, tossing it in.

When he turns, he stumbles back at the force of Maran’s arms around his neck. He feels the curve of his body, heavy and warm all over him, making Ben blink rapidly.

“Oh fuck, that was good,” Maran sighs out, crushing toward him. Benny realizes his pants are still unzipped, belt undone, so he goes about doing that for him to ignore that searing heat across his cheeks at the affection. He snorts a little snicker, feeling weird that his fingers are clumsy as he gets the belt buckled correctly. “Fuck, like, proper good. Like, going to feel it in my legs all day good.”

“J-Jesus, Maran, just a handjob,” he mumbles, but his lips are curling into a smile he doesn’t feel himself recognizing. Maran plants a wet kiss to the corner of his lips, another to his cheek, messy. Benny groans, but it’s affectionate, a hand patting Maran’s lower back. He’s shocked to feel his sunglasses getting slowly slid into his hair, blinking again. Hadn’t even seen Maran pick them up.

Go fucking figure. Got the sunglasses before he’d even zipped his own pants.

Once they get to the roof top, Benny wedges a bridge into the door to stopping it from closing. Last thing he needs is Lark running around with his head cut off because he can’t find Benji’s visiting friend, or the shitty security guard he probably regrets keeping on his payroll.

Maran chases after a small flock of pigeons immediately. Flaps his arms at them as he does, turns in a circle to throw Ben a big, open mouthed smile like he’d done something amazing. Benny tries hard not to grin back (fails) and untucks a cigarette from his pack and slips it between his lips. He gets close to the edge as he fishes out his lighter.

He feels Maran’s arms again, only this time they have a little shy note to them as they slip around his hips and pulls him away from the edge of the roof. Benny strikes the lighter a few times until the flame catches and then changes his mind. He takes the cigarette and taps it back into the pack. As he turns, Maran is already there, leaning in to kiss him.

#writing #hj #2023 #band au #jlb #mgc #mgc x jlb

[unknownjpegs]

new jersey

Benny fucking hates New Jersey. Rightfully so. They’re New Yorks younger, stupider brother—and South Jersey was worse for some reason. They’ve an adapted version of his Queens accent, but nastier. An underserving amount of pride that they have gas attendants and that The Jersey shore was filmed on the Jersey shore (where the fuck else would it be filmed? Ben wonders, if not the fucking Jersey shore?) If you didn’t mind stepping on glass and getting harassed by people living under the boardwalk, the beach was—no. Benny fucking hates New Jersey.

There’s that classic saying; I left all my exes in dead in Texas. Well, Ben dated a girl from Ocean City for a minute and it was the worst minute of his life. So he has absolutely no love for Atlantic City, but an East Coast Tour for Ratspit doesn’t exist without a pit stop in New Jersey. Go figure.

But, overall, it wasn’t the worst night he’d had since joining security for the band. Tino ran such a tight crowd it was hard for things to go wrong; Xavier’s muscular handsome self by the stage looking menacing (when he wasn’t turning his chin over his shoulder and looking moony at Ratspits drummer). Ben was making sure front line row didn’t spill over and start climbing the stage to yank little Lark right off and snap him in two with horny Ratspit obsession.

Still. Ben was tired. He was fucking sore and his ears were ringing; because even the little pink plugs he’d gotten for himself didn’t drown out the music—that he did not care for—well enough. But he’d promised Xavier that he’d meet him at the bar anyway. And as much as Ben loved to break a promise—and often did—he found himself wandering to the airdropped location anyway. Grumbling as he went that Xavier was even lucky he had his phone on him to follow the directions. Even luckier that he was mostly just hungry enough for dive bar food.

Ben pushes the door open exactly as someone stumbles out, reeking of vodka. He watches them tumble down the sidewalk, their little intoxicated dance briefly amusing before he slips his lean body into the yawning open door. He’s met instantly by the stereotypical volume, all those horrible Jersey accents and the promising smell of terrible greasy food.

Xavier’s easy to spot. Had snagged himself a spot at the bar, long body hunched over a terrible looking mess of nachos. He sits directly under the television, eyes up and glazed over. Benny is not surprised that a hockey game is on. Xavier could go a fourteen hour shift standing on hot coals and find time for fucking hockey. Masshole loser. Ben dodges others in the bar, unafraid to put hands on people to slightly angle them out of the way or get him closer.

“Are they winning?” Ben asks, squeezing his way next to Xavier. A pretty blond girl momentarily looks to see whose shoving up behind her and then immediately looks away from Benny at the sight of his sneering grin. Benny turns his attention back to his friend and coworker; runs a hand right up from the nape of the red heads neck to the top of his head, shaking it back and forth a little as his fingers grip into Xavier’s hair. Xavier tilts his head to smile at Benny.

“Absolutely fucking not, dude. I’m miserable.” Xavier scoops a nacho and shoves it into his mouth. “Fanks for comin’,” he continues as he chews.

“Where’s your plu-plus one?”

Because Xavier had not asked just for company. He’d mostly cornered Benny after the show and all but begged him to tag along; because when he’d told Benji he was going to a bar after the show to watch his stupid game, Benji had declined to come. Normal behavior from that prickly bastard. Something about resting up before tomorrow, hanging out with the giant guitarist. No doubt the terror that was their bassist would find a way in on that; whole trio of terrifying in his opinion.

But when Benji had declined, his visitor had not. The new guy. Well. Not really. Not part of the band or crew; just a friend from the UK that was bored for the summer and decided to tag along on the tail end before they went back together. Which was fine, sure. But this was not just a friend.

Best friends, Xavier had said in a panicked voice, clutching Ben’s shoulders. Like, their parents knew each other before they were even born, best friends. And he wants to hang out with me. I can’t be alone with him, I’ll say something stupid.

Benny thought having nearly his entire throat columned in bruises from Benji’s lips and teeth made him look stupid already in front of the knew-each-other-since-birth best friend. But he’d agreed to come, because Maran was interesting. He was pretty and interesting—which were two very good combinations as far as Benny was concerned. And he’d not gotten a real chance to interact with him. Seemed like he was having a good time in America so far if the way Ratspit’s little social media manager looked stumbling from a supply closet had anything to say about it.

“He went to the bathroom a minute ago. He was drilling me,” Xavier mumbles to his nachos. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

“Nice,” Benny replies with a slippery grin that makes Xavier’s eyes roll.

“He’s—”

“Coming.”

“Nice,” Xavier says this time instead, nodding and grinning with all his pretty teeth. Ben’s turn to roll his eyes and lift a lazy hand to point toward the end of the bar, where Maran’s shaking hands out. He can see they’re a little wet—shitty bathroom probably didn’t have paper towels. Lucky if it had soap.

Maran doesn’t look out of place in the bar; which is odd because he’s wearing a faded Kirby t-shirt underneath an oversized black jean jacket, sleeves cuffed. Not really Atlantic City, New Jersey fucking fit. He feels like Maran should look out of place and not just because of the outfit. Like there should be a giant neon sign over his head that says BRITISH, or something. NOT PART OF THE BAND. JUST VISITING. JUST A GUY! He seems to part through a crowd effortlessly, squeeze himself in between people to speak to the bartender.

And she looks all too happy to help, leaned over close, ear bent his way as though the volume was that bad.

Benny rubs a hand over the back of his neck and looks away.

—

He gets stuck there with the bartender at first. Caught up in a real long conversation, with her leaning half over the bar to hear Maran better. Him sitting in the stool, an idle finger toying with a straw in a drink. Until the womans back up is huffing, puffing, practically pissing herself tending the busy counter herself—then when she slinks away, the man comes up.

Maran gets caught again. Xavier doesn’t seem to notice—not maliciously. His pond colored eyes stay up, flicker back and forth between the men on the screen, distracted enough that he nearly misses his mouth with another nacho. Ben’s more of a baseball guy, but that’s not the real reason he can’t seem to focus on the game. He stands beside Xavier with his back to the bar, elbows laid back lazily, and his head tilted toward the end.

It’s just—it’s very obvious by the mans posture. That half lean, that sort of hunch forward. He’s shorter than Maran and but he stands so he can be taller. He’s patted Xavier’s boyfriend’s best fucking friend no less than three times on the shoulder. So, it’s obvious that he’s flirting with Maran. It’s not obvious that Maran is flirting back. Or, as Benny watches, chewing the inside of his cheek, pale eyes hooded, it’s rather—it doesn’t seem like Maran is flirting at all.

Ben hadn’t shared more than one word with him. Well, Maran had shared a word. Alright? He’d said it when they’d almost accidentally bumped into each other backstage. Benny carrying those big rope dividers with a roadie (and he liked helping them out because no one fucking else did) and walking backward and him scooting around. Alright? In that accent, with that big smile on his face. Effortless. Easy going. Natural. I’m just a guy! Just here visiting! Having fun!

He’d not been able to say anything. Just kept walking, staring at Maran turning back around to continue on. Had left a strange feeling right up inside his rib cage.

Benny shoves his should into Xavier’s to pry his attention from the bar television. A quick glance shows that his team is losing anyway—which is good. Xavier in a foul mood could be good for Benny tonight. The red head lolls his head to the side, a nacho raised to his mouth and his eyes bored and sleepy.

“You—You think you could take that guy in a—a fight?” He gestures to the man down the bar, next to Maran. The one standing when Maran is sitting, the one whose been bumping his shoulder closer, whose been leaning in. While Maran has that sweet, humored look on his admittedly beautiful face. The stranger is thick in the shoulders, t-shirt tight enough to strain around his biceps. Xavier tilts his head back and forth, chews the nacho open mouth and obnoxious.

Then he smiles. Because his team is losing and he’s tired and he should have just stayed in with Benji.

“Yeah,” he answers confidently. Benny believes him.

“So—So if I get into a fight, you’re ba-backing me up, right?”

“Are you starting a fight?”

Benny unzips his bomber jacket and tosses it over the bar stool next to Xavier. Underneath, he’s thrown on some shitty printed loose fitting button up that cuts a little too short above his belt line. He makes sure the top few buttons are undone, yanks at the collar enough to show the scorpion on his neck. He takes the time to brush his hand back through his hair a few times, making the blond mop messy. Then he looks at Xavier and smiles. It’s not a mirror image because Xavier is handsome. He smiles with all his teeth and people swoon.

But Ben smiles like he knows the right color wire to cut for a bomb. And he isn’t going to fucking tell anyone. He smiles like he’s going to be a problem.

“Maybe.”

—

When he shoves his way toward them, people part easier than they had before. Benny knows he looks terrible. He’s got bruises under his eyes like someone pressed fingerprints there, and he’s pale to start. Under the bar lights, he’s even more washed out. His blue eyes don’t always look pretty, most of the time they look a little eerie—he’d made his hair look even worse, and even though he’s in clean clothes, the shirt’s print is off putting and his jeans have holes in the knees. He’s fucking covered in tattoos and none of them are artistic or pretty.

So when he gets there and immediately pushes his way between Maran and The Stranger to get the bartenders attention, the way the man flinches backward is not entirely surprisingly.

“Bud Lite, thanks.” It’s the same one that had been occupying Maran’s time before the man and she seems just as wary of Benny. But when he tilts his face to the side, Benji’s sweet visitor hasn’t moved all that much. Despite the closeness of their bodies, the way Benny is hunched over the bar between the two men, Maran hasn’t backed away. He sits with his hands wrapped around the edge of the stool, feet kicking a little rhythm on the stool bar. Fucking cute. Benny’s eyes trail up from those dirty white converses to his face.

Then he turns fully to face Jersey Shore.

“Go away,” Benny says simply, tapping his tattooed knuckles on the bar.

“The fuck?”

“Go.” He leans forward slightly, chin tucked down, pale eyes forward. “Away.”

And New Jersey gets angry then, starts talking louder, gesturing over Benny’s shoulder to Maran; who he hears laughs a little. It’s soft, under his breath, like maybe he’s trying to keep it contained. Benny can’t reply—well, he has a ton of retorts in mind. He could tell the guy to fuck off, die, your mother, all the good classic nonsense yelled back during verbal altercations. But ‘f’ and ‘y’ have always been problematic for him since he’d developed his stutter. And he’s trying for the persona route before Xavier has to get involved.

Because it’s usually easier to end fights before they start. It’s usually easier to look scarier than it is to actually enforce being scary.

So instead of saying anything he inhales deeply, exhales as he rolls his eyes to the ceiling. Then he snaps his fingers in front of the mans face a few times to get him to shut up, stunned and bewildered. With a quick side sweeping gesture, Benny throws his hand out toward the door.

“Go away,” Benny repeats instead of all the pent up insults he’d love to throw.

His pint of beer gets put on the bar top the exact same time he speaks. Benny goes for it, but before he gets a chance, Maran’s Stranger reaches instead. He swipes it toward himself and spits into the foam; then shoves it forward with a delighted, disgusted expression on his face.

“Fuck you, you fucking weirdo.” Benny recognizes the slur in his words. Drunker than he’d looked, underneath that Jersey Shore tan. His cheeks are ruddy and a bead of sweat rolls down from his temple. Ben leans against the bar with his hip, one of his flat to the bar. His fingers drum. The man glances down at them. BOOM, they read up until Benny takes the beer.

He makes sure to look the man in the eyes as he dips his tongue into the beer. He watches him flinch again, that wide eyed surprise of someone who just got involved with a person far, far, far more off the deep end than them. Then Ben tilts his head back and drains the entire pint. He slams the glass down on the counter and sighs out a long satisfied sound.

And luckily he’d drawn all that attention because the man is not even aware that Xavier has shown up.

“We havin’ a problem here?”

It’s Benny’s favorite version of Xavier. Technically, not true. He loves Xavier deeply, like a younger brother he’d accidentally gotten through Veterans Anonymous meetings years ago. He likes the guy when he’s dancing in clubs like no ones watching, he likes him even when he’s standing next to Benji looking desperate to touch him and only brushing the back of his hand over the drummers side. Loves him being kind to him, when Benny bristles at kindness.

But sometimes Ben wants to shake Xavier and ask where is he? Where is that scary man I know lives inside your fucking head? That guy looking for a fight? C’mon. No ones even all the time, Xavier. Let’s see you get mad. Let’s see Boston fucking Wolffe. Let’s go, Xavier.

The guy is shorter than Benny, so next to Xavier, he looks even smaller. Xavier, who stands with his shoulders tight, at his full height. Who only tucks his chin down a little to stare at the man. He smiles—not that I know the codes to the nukes and I’m taking them to my death! smile that Benny has. Xavier smiles like I’m pretty, I know I’m pretty and I win fights because no one can get a hit on this pretty face.

“Your fucking friend—”

“My fuckin’ friend, what?”

Benny isn’t facing Maran—nor does he turn too, yet—but he puts his foot on the leg of the bar stool and slowly pushes it backward to ensure he’s not too close when the fighting starts. Then he leans his chin over his shoulder to look at him. Maran’s looking back, eyes blinking a little. His hands are still wrapped around the stool between his knees, his dirty sneakers tucked into the legs of the stool. Ben tries not too—but he smiles.

Then he turns back and immediately ducks a punch.

New Jersey isn’t expecting quickness like that, so it makes him fall forward a little. But Xavier make’s it easy—slips his long arm around the mans neck and wrenches him to the side and then slams him to the sticky, alcohol soaked floor. And it probably would have ended there, except Benny feels his elbow yanked by someone and—turns out that the groaning man on the floor has friends to get involved.

“Uh,” Benny says a little stupidly, blinking a few times as another punch swings his way. An easy duck again, a step over the drunk man on the floor and then he pats Xavier’s side. A simple touch—he’ll watch that side. And then it dissolves into an absolute mess of East Coast fists and limbs and swears and violence.

—

After they’re kicked out and Xavier has examined Ben’s nose for an actual break, they find a taco truck. The nose wasn’t broken, but had bled marginally when someone’s elbow had snapped into it. Benny’s still sniffing at a coppery smell, but was relatively sure all the blood was out his facial hair by the time they eat.

They sit on the curb and eat the messy food—and Xavier and Maran seem to bond then. Seem to get onto some topic they can both talk about for far too long while Benny picks jalapeno’s off Xavier’s taco and tucks them into his. Ben mostly listens while he eats. Likes the cool one in the morning air tickling through his messy blond hair. Likes listening to the two men and their distinct accents; Xavier’s awful Boston one and Maran’s very cute Liverpool one.

Benny doesn’t feel outside of the two as they talk. The occasional time chimes in, he gets a pretty laugh from Maran or a snort from Xavier; or he dissolves into trying to tell Maran an embarrassing story. Benny likes not having to fill that void, even though he can talk too. He can talk worse than Xavier sometimes—it’s just hard with new people. Hard to get them not to cringe when he has to say a word again, or that inevitable moment when they try to finish his sentence because they think it’s easier somehow.

They have to make the walk back home then. Home being the tour buses parked in a Walmart parking lot. They have to be up in five hours to get on the road again; and Ben finds it almost impossible to sleep in a moving vehicle, so he’s likely to be annoyed and tired all day tomorrow.

Somehow Maran finds his way between the two of them. Xavier to his left, Benny to his right.

“Why’d you start that?” Maran asks, this first big direct question aimed at Ben. He blinks a few times, head turned as he walks with his hands in his pockets. It’s dark but there’s street lights every couple paces. So Maran is washed orange, bathed in darkness, washed orange, bathed in darkness. This pattern that makes his eyes shine; makes all those freckles look so nice. Benny’s eyes skate off him, around the ground and then forward.

“He w-was hitting on you—you. I don’t like New Jersey guys. Th-They’re bad one night stands, trust me.” Maran laughs. It’s this big sort of head tilted back, in the moment laugh that crinkles his eyes.

“He wasn’t hittin’ on me.”

Xavier and Benny stop walking at the same time, turning their heads toward Maran between them. He pauses after a few steps, takes one back in a comical gesture. He blinks, lifting a hand out of his jean jacket pocket and laughs. “What? Weren’t. Was askin’ me how the flight over was, s’all.” Benny looks at Xavier at the same time Xavier looks at him and they both burst into a laugh. His is more of a wheeze, but Xavier’s is loud enough to echo off the wide empty street in front of them.

Xavier slides an arm over Maran’s shoulder, pulling him in close and grinning. His cheeks are a little pink, both from the fighting earlier and the laughter.

“He ask you how long the flight was?”

“An-And how hard of a flight it was?”

They laugh again. Benny pats Maran’s stomach a few times as he starts walking again. He can see the man going slightly red under the orange glow of the streetlight out the corner of his eye. The blush looks good on him, underneath all those freckles.

Ben skips a little forward until he’s in front of them and then turns.

“Do—Do you wanna see a magic trick?”

“Aw, fuck no—Maran, don’t indulge this asshole.” Xavier sighs dramatically, head thrown back. His red hair has gotten all out of sorts, long and curling. Benny continues walking, backwards in front of Maran. Agile and lithe, like he could do this the whole way back to the tour bus. He tucks a hand into his bomber jacket and pulls out the deck of playing cards stashed in the lining.

Still walking, he cuts it and shuffles it and grins ear to ear like a knife slashed right through his face. Maran tilts his chin up a little. Coy about it.

“Alright,” he says and for a moment, Benny is back behind the stage, his arms full, watching Maran smile at him.

“Thi-Think of a card.” Benny holds up the deck. For show he licks one and slaps it to his own forehead. Gets a laugh out of Maran. “Thinking?”

“G’on.”

But Xavier has his arm slung over Maran’s shoulder still. For some reason, it bothers. Like—a burn sort of bother. Which is stupid because Xavier’s so fucking fused to Benji it’s like their atoms are going to splice together. Create a whole new creature; Bavier. Xanji. So, Benny knows Xavier’s arm isn’t lingering like that because he wants Maran. But his fingers brush over his shoulders anyway—and he’s got those long sort of arms that leave his palm dangling in a way that’s almost weirdly suggestive. They say ‘take my hand, hold my hand, it would be cute’.

So Benny shoves Xavier’s arm off Maran’s shoulders.

There is for the briefest moment that Boston Wolffe flash in Xavier’s eyes. That spark of anger; but it fades quickly, his hand slipping into his pockets. Benny would be scared of a guy like Xavier if he didn’t know him so well. Sometimes, he’s more surprised people aren’t scared of Xavier.

Benny leans in and puts his hand behind Maran’s ear. When he pulls it forward, a card is slipped between his two fingers. He points it facing forward.

“Nope.”

“Damn.” They continue walking, Benny still backward. Still upright, still balanced. He snaps his finger by the other side of Maran’s head and when he withdraws his hand there’s another card.

“Naw, mate, not that one.”

Maran is smiling wider and wider with each incorrect pull of a card. Benny swears, but it’s theatrical and dramatic until he stops walking altogether. The sudden pause of momentum makes Maran almost run directly into him. He stops in time, but they stand there, Maran still in the ring of the streetlights glow and Benny just outside of it. He sneaks his hand forward, up and underneath Maran’s jacket. He slides his hand along a toned, warm side. Feels the expanse of his ribcage widen as he draws in a breath. Benny keeps looking at him, in the eyes as he tucks his hand into Maran’s back pocket.

Then he snaps his hand back, a card there.

“Ki-King of Hearts?”

Maran’s eyes aren’t on the card. They look forward, at Ben. They’re the same height, he realizes—or rather, Benny has maybe an inch because of the thick soled combat boots he wears. His eyes finally sway from Maran’s to the card he’s holding.

“No?”

“If I said no, you’d try again, yeah?”

Fuck yeah I’d try all night. Try until the cards run out. All fifty two. You didn’t think of one did you? Just wanted to play.

“Oh, come on,” Xavier groans, hopping a little until he continues walking. Maran’s smile indents when he bites into his bottom lip. Benny has to force himself to look away, over his shoulder to the lanky red head continuing on. He feels Maran pass him, their shoulders brushing a little, so his eyes lift again.

“Got any other tricks?”

“Whole sle-slew of ‘em.” Benny matches Maran’s pace then, hands back in his pockets, deck of cards back in the lining of his jacket. “Sh-Show you next tour?” There’s a comfortable lull of silence where he supposes Maran is thinking about next tour.

I’m just a guy! Just visiting!

“Next tour, yeah? You’ll figure that card out, Ben, sure of it.”

#writing #hj #band au #2023 #jlb #mgc #xw #mgc x jlb