#i need to go thru and tag all their cod timeline but im so lazy

[day0walkersdrafts]

It’s actually a few years of the good life before Xavier get’s hurt. Like, the good life. Years of it. How many? Couldn’t tell you. They blur together, like Xavier’s put his hand over them and smeared. They all blend, never ending. Something like a dream and not always pleasant of course. The hardest years of his life behind him, these still sometimes held little pockets of pain here and there. Arguments between the two men that felt pointed and heavy and brimming, sometimes, with violence. Never actual violence, but the insane dual realization that both of them are deeply capable of it.

But mostly good. The best, actually. If Xavier were to talk about it to anyone, those few years after finding Benji’s home in the woods—bloody ankle and all—were the best. The feeling of immortality crashing and mingling with reality and also aging. What a thing that was. Aging. Benji’s sprout of gray hair at the temples, salt and pepper beard. Xavier’s little wrinkles by his eyes, the weight he puts on around his hips so he can’t fit in old jeans anymore. That’s where time has suddenly crept up like a spring trap and gone oh! It’s been years! Xavier, it’s been so many years.

He calls it bad luck to Benji because he’d had to make it a joke, or risk losing his ability to speak through chattering teeth, adrenaline spike making his chest burst. Laying on the frozen ground, arm cradled awkwardly to his side (that side, that one with the fucked up ribs, the old and never healing injury that will always remind him of the before years, before the old house, duck pond, etc).

“Oh, bad luck,” is what he’d wheezed out between clenched teeth while Benji knelt beside him. Later, at the hospital, Xavier had found himself depressed, because Benji had gone into that crouch too quickly. One knee up, hands touching Xavier’s side. It was such a familiar gesture. It was muscle memory that would never be forgotten, because Benji’s body would never forget kneeling next to downed soldiers in need of medical aid.

It hurt. More than the broken arm. Sometimes, he wanted to take a wet rag to their pasts and tidy it up. Clean up all the parts covered in blood. But he never could. He liked living in the good years now, though the memories were sometimes still just there. For them to have to deal with.

“Clean break!” The doctor says, stabbing the X-Ray up onto the light box. He is young. Like baby young, no facial hair, big bright brown eyes. Handsome in that youthful, life ahead of you sort of way. Xavier feels old sitting there in the hospital bed, with his arm casted and slung close to his chest. The pain killers wear off in a buzzing sort of way, crawling underneath his skin, making his mouth dry.

“You’re lucky the fall didn’t break your elbow, yeah?” The doctor continues, sliding closer on a stool. He’s smiling widely at Benji, who stands like a dark cloud beside Xavier’s shoulder. He’s arm crossed, brows knotted mad. Xavier will later, nose behind Benji’s ear, lips kissing that sensitive spot he’s all too aware of, ask if Benji just didn’t like seeing someone else medic him.

“Must have braced your arm when you fell—which rough for the arm, but the elbow’s worse to heal? Good instincts!”

Xavier and Benji share a brief look. Not instincts. Training. Then the doctor goes about giving Benji a sheet of paper with instructions on what to do with Xavier’s casted arm, when to come back in to get it off, physical therapy office locations in case he needs it.

Once in the car, Benji takes that little sheet of paper and crumples it into a ball. He tosses it into the back and then turns to look at Xavier. His mouth is set in a flat line. Those gray hairs stare at Xavier. He feels the phantom sensation of lifting a hand and tucking a few strands behind Benji’s ear—but his arm stays locked in place at his chest. He’ll apologize for cleaning the gutters on the house directly after a storm, with a slippery ladder. But right now, he is still thinking of his instincts, the medicine wearing off, the pain.

“Least it wasn’t my good arm, huh?” He uses a tight fist near his hip to gesture what he means. Benji turns the car on with a quick, angry twist of his hand.

—

Benji isn’t actually angry.

Well, he might be. About the gutter cleaning after a storm, for sure because he’s warned Xavier before how nasty they can get. But, he isn’t that sort of angry. Xavier thinks of Benji’s face when he’d come skidding out the house, tripping over himself. Guilt festers because Xavier had screamed. Had been so shocked at the sudden twisting, snap of his arm and the meteor shock of pain, that he’d actually screamed. High pitched and terrified—he’d never have screamed before. In the old years, he’d have clamped a hand in his mouth and bit it till it bled to stop himself from screaming.

Before, he would have fashioned a sling himself and walked to an extraction point. Blinking sweat out his eyes. Lifeless eyes. Devoid. Before, it might not even have hurt. Xavier’s relationship with pain was like that, back then. Nothing really ever hurt, it just bled a lot. It just bruised. Cut. But it didn’t hurt.

Benji wasn’t angry, he’d been scared.

“Don’t let this happen again,” he says, a dark brown hand sliding over the cast. Xavier watches it’s path go from the ugly baby blue color to the tips of his fingers poking free. It tickles when he touches them. Benji’s hand continues onto his chest and pushes slightly so Xavier will go to his back on the bed. The exhaustion takes him over then, really pushes all other thoughts out of his head. Don’t let this happen again, you’re not supposed to get hurt anymore. That’s all in the before, that’s all gone now.

“Yes, sir,” Xavier jokes sleepily. A hand cups his cheek and he feels lips against his own before he sleeps.

—

At some point, when both of them don’t seem as frayed at the edges about the surprise injury, it becomes a little fun. Xavier doesn’t mind being taken care of, or spoiled—which Saha calls him, over the phone as Benji ties up his laces before they leave to meet her in the city. He gets paid time off work, which he thought would make him listless, but lazy days on the couch, waiting for Benji to come home aren’t as bad as they would have been. His mind, previously, had needed to be occupied at all times for Xavier to feel level.

He lays there, casted arm carefully lifted, cartoons on their TV as Anika sleeps soundly on the floor beside the couch.

It stops being something that hangs over them (because what if Xavier had broken his neck? What if he’d hurt himself worse? What would Benji do then, in a world that he’d built to have Xavier in it, suddenly Xavier-less? What then?) and starts being something they live around. They even make it work in bed.

With Xavier, flat on his back, legs hitched high around Benji’s shoulders to accommodate the casts need to rest on his chest and Benji holding in a stifled laugh. Xavier panting to a finish and smiling like he’s done something spectacular (Benji had put in entirely all the work and later complains about a sore thigh).

“You can cum under any circumstances, can’t you, Xavier?” Benji purrs with hands lovingly spread over pale, freckled thighs. Just that sensation alone has his cock twitching, like there will be seconds. There will always be seconds for them.

“Hah,” Xavier breathes out. “Circumstances.”

—

Weeks later it’s mostly an annoyance.

Xavier swears loudly and drops the razor into the sink, slapping a messy hand across his jawline. There’s the cold and then warm sting of a cut opening across his chin as well as the sting of shaving cream smearing inside that cut. He blinks at himself in the mirror and then turns to the side, where he knows—

Benji leans against the door frame, one hand on his hip. He’s in his work clothes, because Xavier had been trying to get this done before Benji had gotten home. He looks good in them too, this slightly ruffled white button down. He’s pushed sleeves to his elbows, unbuckled his belt. Not that he means to be standing there, looking stupidly sexy, he probably was about to get changed into home comfort clothes, but Xavier feels that immediate coal warm sensation stirring his insides.

He smiles and it pulls the cut open on his chin more. Blood trickles between his fingers.

“At least I didn’t break anything, this time.”

“I’ll break you myself,” Benji mumbles, stepping into the bathroom.

Xavier has to sit on the edge of the tub in order to be short enough. It threatens to make his ass go numb, but being below Benji like this makes his whole body go sort of numb. There’s a newly pressed bandaid to the shallow, but dramatic, cut on his chin. Benji’s deft hands make easy work of both washing the cream off his face and then reapplying it. Xavier sneezes when it tickles his nose and Benji laughs so hard the entire moment almost comes undone.

But it goes on, with Xavier tilting his head back to let Benji look at him. He can imagine Benji being good at this because he’d probably had to have started shaving so much sooner than Xavier, who had made it entirely through high school with a baby face. Xavier lets his eyes close and imagines the pictures of Benji that exist in a photobook Kay has shown him over and over. Xavier covets those pictures, in his oddly perfect memory. He can imagine Benji waking up one day with little black hairs and begrudgingly figuring it out himself. Imagines him cutting himself up nasty until he finds his father.

Xavier breathes out softly, blinks his eyes open when the razor starts sliding down his cheek.

His most cynical thought—of which, Xavier blessedly doesn’t have many—was that eventually he would maybe stop feeling this way. At some point, he was sure that it might fade to something smaller; that all the feelings he had about Benji would have to lessen because it was sometimes so overwhelming it pushed at him. At his insides. Rearranged them and sometimes hurt. This beautiful, hot hurt. He’d never admitted that out loud to anyone, much less the man in question. But it felt like it was an eventuality. Bridge to cross when he came to it.

Never happened, though. Sitting on the edge of the tub, with his one good hand tucked loosely around Benji’s thigh, he stares up, overwhelmingly in love. Benji’s brows knit and he bites his tongue as he moves the razor with more care than he ever has for himself. Xavier’s watched him clean up his throat before (anyone can imagine why he was watching of course, Benji’s throat was a sight, truly) and he was always messy and in a rush. Ready to be onto the next task.

He takes care with Xavier, tilting his face to get to the angle he needs. There isn’t much facial hair, because even in his thirties, his face continues to cling to youthfulness. His eyes hood, like he’s tired and maybe he is. Before (before, before, keep up with all the before’s) being with Benji was like a pure shot of adrenaline. The kind a soldier would take if they needed to limp through the end of a mission, bloody and disgusting. It kept him going. Truly. Some days, it was the only thing that did.

But occasionally, there were rare moments—rare, rare, very fucking rare moments—that Benji was like a warm pool of water, lulling him right to sleep. Xavier hates remembering any of that, but he does remember once, knelt over, head to Benji’s thigh, nodding off as his hair is tickled. Waking up with a silly little braid he’d not taken out until it threatened to tangle, or another operator would see and well, Shadows didn’t like those small little bits of weakness.

“Do anythin’ today?” Benji asks, the question so shockingly mundane that it makes Xavier blink. His hand gently touches underneath Xavier’s chin to reveal the long, pale column of his throat and the little red angry hairs there. Xavier swallows, his hand pressing on Benji further to tug him closer.

“No,” he admits, quietly. “Oh,” he continues, lips pulling into a smile. “I tried cleaning the gutter aga—”

“I have a blade to your throat, Xavier.”

He lets his head fall back further, his arm sliding around Benji’s hips. He relishes the warm feel of him. Wishes the shaving cream didn’t have such a chemical smell about it—would rather it be all Benji.

“I trust you,” he jokes, but the joke doesn’t necessarily land as one. He feels Benji’s thumb, gentle across his jawline. He shivers a bit, keeps his eyes closed, because he’s genuinely afraid if he looks at him all that love will rush right to his head and make him faint. Like standing up too quick after laying down for so long.

“S’not a funny joke.”

“What? I’m not joking, I trust you—”

The razor clatters in the sink behind them. Xavier lowers his head then. Benji’s hand runs into his hair, pushes it back. It’s gotten long—like, actually long. Not sort of long for a mercenary type long where he could sometimes get away with it too much on the top and back. Xavier has properly long hair now, even though he has to keep it short on the sides, because it tickles his ears, drives him crazy. He has nice hair—it gets complimented often. Xavier blinks at Benji, who stares down at him with such vulnerably soft eyes.

“Oh,” he says and then slowly puts his cheek to Benji’s stomach. The rest of the shaving cream gets on the nice white button up shirt. “Okay, promise. No more jokes about the gutter. I won’t even try and clean it again.” Benji’s laugh is wet and he tugs Xavier’s hair sharply.

“Want me to clean you off?”

“If you say it like that, it’s like—we’re not going to get clean, if you know what I mean?”

“You’ve another week in the cast,” Benji notes, tapping it with a finger. “No shower sex till after that.” Xavier groans, downright rubbing his face into Benji’s stomach then. His hand crawls, until it’s gripping Benji’s ass, giving it a firm, loving squeeze. Listens to his former medic’s laugh, can picture that smile in his minds eye perfectly.

#xavier #benji #xavier x benji #i need to go thru and tag all their cod timeline but im so lazy