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Cody grimaces as he opens the front door and trudges inside, the warmth of the air inside hitting him like a wave as the cool Halloween air lingers on his skin. His back, ass and left side feel like one big bruise, and he knows his face is scraped up and one of his ankles feels tender from where he was thrown back into some gravestones.
As far as Halloweens go, this one was pretty mild compared to the last couple of years. He only had to kill about eight vamps tonight and take out one particularly smelly fungus demon. He feels like one big ache right now, but at least he didn't have to stop a small apocalypse... he had one of those last year. He would like to never do one of those again.
Cody reaches the kitchen and draws the large first aid kit out of its place of honor in the storage closet, next to the back door. He puts the kit on the kitchen island and prepares himself for the pain of sitting down on his bruise when there's a knock on the back door.
Cody recognizes the knock. Even though Ben had a standing invite into Cody's home — and Jango had not been pleased to learn that, after Cody had invited the vampire inside for the first time — the man always knocked politely.
Cody trudges achingly over to the back door and throws it open.
"You disappeared on me," Ben smiles, his perfect dumb teeth flashing in the dim lighting.
Cody turns his glare on the vampire standing on his back step. "I wouldn't have if you could keep up."
Ben's eyes narrow for a moment, and the skin on Cody's arms prickles with goosebumps. "You told me to behead and burn the remains of the fungus demon."
Cody sighs and then nods. He had asked Ben to do that after he'd stabbed said demon in both its hearts and left it to die. But then after he'd killed it, three vamps had shown up, and Cody had needed to deal with them. He hadn't wanted to just leave the corpse; the reek of fungus demon corpses was intense and could spread further and become stronger the longer it lay unburned.
He'd asked Ben to do that, but what Cody had really wanted Ben to do was back him up. It had been one of those vamps who had throw him into the tombstones. He could forgive himself for being distracted by the other two vampires — and not realizing the other vamp had snuck up behind him — if he didn't have Jango's voice screaming, "mind your surroundings!" in his head.
He knows that blaming himself and Ben isn't reasonable, but Cody wishes Ben had helped him with the vamps before the other man had dealt with the fungus demon. Cody is aware that Ben can't read his mind — even if the older vamp has gotten extraordinarily good at reading Cody's body language over their years of knowing each other. So he knows he's being unreasonable, but that's how he's feeling right now.
Cody blames some of his emotional fickleness on Slayer hormones and tries to shake off his resentment. He takes a step back and motions Ben inside.
It's closer to sunrise than midnight at this point of the night, and the rest of the house is quiet as Cody's family sleeps. Years back, one of Cody's older brothers or his father would wait for Cody to come home from slaying — if they weren't actively joining him on his nightly hunts. But Cody's been a slayer for a decade now, and he knows how to handle himself. Cody needs less sleep than the rest of his family does, slayer powers being what they are, so he doesn't resent them for trusting that Cody can handle himself by now.
"Come on, love, let's get you sat down and see to those scrapes," Ben crowds close to Cody's side. "I can smell the blood from here."
The feeling of Cody's skin prickling up into goosebumps intensifies for a moment before the reaction calms. He allows himself to be led to the living room by Ben, where he can be eased onto a couch instead of one of the hard kitchen chairs. Jango would throw a fit if he knew; his father's “no blood on the couch” rule was one that Jango had never relaxed, even after all these years (and the man had relaxed a little from the uptight Watcher he'd been during Cody’s childhood). But Cody's bruised ass appreciates Ben's choice of seating.
The reaction of Cody's body to Ben's closeness, the arousal and sliver of fear, never seems to go away. They've been together for two years now, and he still gets the shivers when Ben gets close.
Sometimes Cody gets a small flashing thought that he should know better than to be involved with a vampire, even a souled one like Ben.
Ben was drawn to the energy of this hellmouth once upon a time, just like all the other creatures that go bump in the night, the ones that Cody has a duty to slay. Even now he can still hear his father's annoying voice in his ear, telling him you can't trust a vamp, and he shakes it off. He's never had much use for all of his father's strict rules.
Cody became a slayer just after puberty, and Jango had kept him in the dark about his potential that whole time. Jango had been a part of a group of Watchers that covered the southern hemisphere once upon a time and had noted some of the signs of Cody's potential not long after Cody had been born. Ever since the main slayer from Sunnydale mingled the power of the slayers amongst all potentials three decades ago, slayers had been popping up left and right around the world. Cody was not the first male slayer, though he was only one of three. The female slayers seemed to range somewhere in the hundreds at this point.
And for every slayer that pops out of the woodwork, the number of vamps and night-time creatures seems to go up too. Sometimes, Cody thinks those creatures are drawn to the slayer power from other dimensions.
Cody turns his attention back to Ben, who is tenderly cleaning the scrapes on Cody's face before bandaging them. As Ben gently treats the visible wounds, his cool skin warms against Cody's overheated face.
Once a bandage is sealed over the clean scrapes, Ben gently cups Cody's cheek, giving Cody a soft gentle smile that Cody is still surprised Ben can produce after the life he’s led.
Cody turns his face into Ben's palm, kissing the calloused life-line there. Ben's pale grey-blue eyes close into satisfied slits, then they open again and catch Cody's gaze.
Cody shivers, Ben's full attention pinging Cody's hind brain like it always did, reminding him that Ben was a predator. A now souled, violent predator that had such a depth of gentleness and compassion that surprised Cody, even after all these years since he'd first met the vamp, not long before his eighteenth birthday.
Ben hadn't been souled then, and they'd fought like the vampire and slayer that they were. Cody hadn't thought that Ben had been seeking a death fight at the time, but more like... the vampire had needed the thrill of a fight, something to make him feel alive. Years later, Ben had admitted he'd gone into that fight, partially hoping Cody would kill him, but the fight had revitalized him in a way few things had in decades. Ben had lost both his sire and the childe he'd raised to Sith demons, a few years before, and since then he had been feeling the lonely weight of his immortality.
Cody's glad that the years of their weird frienemy relationship had brought life and new purpose to Ben's undead life, even if the sexual tension and fear for his own life had frustrated the hell out of Cody back then.
Ben had been a powerful vampire without aim or purpose. He'd been bored and depressed, making him target Cody in trippy, half-serious fights for over a year. Cody had not been a fan then, but along the way, they'd somehow fallen into bed, and their relationship had changed.
Then a year ago, they'd gone through that apocalypse together, and Ben had surprisingly stuck by Cody's side rather than getting out of town to save his own skin. Their life-reaffirming sex afterward had been the best sex of Cody's life. Ben had gotten really weird afterward though, and had left a week later, muttering something about an important trip Ben had needed to make.
All the slayers had heard the tales of the two vampires with souls who loved the Sunnydale Slayer, but Cody had never imagined that...
Ben had been gone for months. Cody had felt abandoned and angry at the time. But when the vamp had turned back up with a soul and wracked with torment over the lives he'd taken over his long life, it had finally dawned on Cody that he wasn't the only one compromised over his emotions.
The last year of trying to figure out where they stood with each other had been... weird and uncomfortable, almost like growing new skin over a wound that struggled to close. And yet... as Cody stares into Ben's pale eyes now, he can't imagine his life without Ben. And he knows Ben is the love of his life, for however long that is. Slayers tended to live short, brutal lives filled with violence and the threat of death around every corner. But with Ben, the future seems real in a way it never has before.
"How about we head to bed, and I can rub some liniment on your bruises?" Ben asks gently, his posh accent curling on his tee's.
"I'd like that," Cody whispers and lets himself be drawn off the couch and into Ben's arms.
He presses his face to Ben's cool neck and breathes in the sandalwood scent of the vamp’s cologne, edged with an earthy dirt smell that is all Ben.
"Happy Halloween," Ben whispers to Cody as they trudge up the stairs past the decorations Cody's brothers had put up, despite Jango's hatred of the holiday.
Cody snorts and shakes his head as Ben helps him limp up the next step. "What a horrible holiday. At least this year, we didn't have to have another Halloween apocalypse."
Ben makes a noise of agreement and closes Cody's bedroom door behind them.
Cody struggles out of his clothes with Ben's help. Soon he is lying face down on his bed as Ben's cool fingers gently inspect Cody's bruises and ankle.
As Cody begins to drift off, he smiles at the sound of Ben quietly fussing over him. Tomorrow is a new day and he can't wait to meet it after some sleep in his undead lover's arms.