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The realtor was a thin, nervous man who had spent most of his time in the house within two metres of the door while Rex wandered from room to room. He pulled a handkerchief from his inside pocket and dabbed at his forehead. His eyes flickered around the room and when Rex let a cupboard close too quickly he jumped at the sound.
Rex acknowledged all of that and then was quickly distracted by the washer/dryer tucked into the corner of the kitchen.
“White goods are included,” the realtor said, shuffling a little further into the flat, but only a little.
Rex hummed thoughtfully. It was a nice little house in a quiet neighbourhood: two bedrooms, a garden, a covered garage, a full bathroom and a half attached to the master. All well out of Rex’s rather feeble budget. Except it was actually being sold well under his budget.
“What’s wrong with it?” Rex asked. He’d read the home report, he’d even talked to the neighbours — lovely on both sides — but there must be something.
The realtor laughed thinly, eyes flickering around the room. “There was a death here a couple of decades ago, and well, again three years ago. And well, it’s all talk, obviously, but they say it’s haunted. The owners are eager to sell.” He seemed to suddenly remember he was supposed to be trying to sell the place. “Did you see the master bedroom! Lots of storage space!”
Rex stared and the realtor wrung his hands.
“I’d like to put in an offer,” he said.
The realtor sighed, shoulders slumping in relief.
—
Cody sat on the kitchen counter watching the man — Rex , the realtor had called him Rex — look through his cupboards. He’d had plans. He could normally scare off potential buyers in a matter of minutes with nothing more than submitting them to a vague but consuming sense of dread. For the stubborn ones he’d throw something at them. He liked his peace and quiet
Rex looked at the ugly floral patterns covering the insides of cabinets and wrinkled his nose, face scrunching up adorably.
“Who fucking picked this?” he muttered and Cody beamed. That was exactly how he had felt when the last family had redecorated. Rex had good taste.
He wouldn’t mind sharing with this one. Rex was different. He was perfect. Handsome, with broad shoulders and a lovely smile. Cody was going to keep this one. Rex bent down to look into the lower cupboards and the door of the one above him swung a little further open, settling right above Rex’s head. Cody gathered some energy and nudged it closed.
He was in love.
—
Moving in had been an anti-climactic affair. His last apartment had been furnished and he tended to purge his stuff after a break up anyway. So it only took him a few hours to haul everything out of his car and get everything put away or to get the box in the correct room. It was still enough manual labour to call for an evening on the ratty couch he’d been dragging between apartments since college, with a beer and shitty movie.
He stirred sometime in the middle of the night, face pressed into the cushions, a small stain on his carpet from where he’d dropped his thankfully mostly finished bottle when he’d fallen asleep.
The house was dark aside from the flickering light of the TV.
Rex yawned, and considered pulling the blanket off the back of the seat and just going back to sleep. Except his bladder was demanding attention and it felt weird to spend his first night as a homeowner on a lumpy sofa. Joints complaining at the grotesque angles he’d subjected them to, Rex stood.
He made it to the door out of the living room when he felt… Something. It wasn’t quite a shiver, but perhaps the less well-adjusted cousin of one. He turned.
There was someone standing in the corner of the room.
Rex slammed his hand flat to the wall, missing the light switch and then fumbling, heart pounding, throat thick. A couple of awful seconds passed and then the room was flooded with light. There was nothing there. The room was empty except for him. He felt cold.
He stared at the corner, swallowing, terror still gripping his insides. He was so sure he’d seen something.
Rex did a loop of the house and found nothing. Not a single thing out of place, or any other suggestion that someone else had been there. Still, he checked behind the shower curtain before taking a piss, the hair on the back of his neck on end, ears pricked for even the smallest sound. He left the light on, and grabbed a knife from the kitchen just for good measure before he climbed into bed. There was nothing wrong, he was just letting the shit get to his head. He didn’t believe in ghosts.
The house wasn’t haunted.
So there was a tiny, minuscule, probably not worth mentioning, possibility that the house was haunted.
I like your skin.
Rex stared at the message on his bedroom wall — the message written in a suspicious red — and was forced to concede that there might be a little truth to the rumours. Ahsoka was never going to let him live it down.
He could just call her, find out if her claims of being a medium were actually true after all. But it seemed like a very aggressive approach. The ghost hadn’t actually done anything to him yet and he didn’t want to be the one to escalate things. He could at least try playing nice first.
He looked at the message again, head tilted. It certainly wasn’t the weirdest thing that anyone had ever said to him. At least someone was appreciating his skincare routine.
—
“I’m thinking about texting Maul,” Rex called through.
Ahsoka took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling, praying to anyone that might listen for patience.
“He got in a physical fight with your grandmother at Thanksgiving, Rex! ”she yelled back
“Yeah,” Rex said, but he sounded unconvinced. “He did apologise though. And promised not to do it again.”
“He did it again the following year,” she reminded him, and Rex had nothing to say to that.
“How’s the new place?” Ahsoka asked, dropping down on her couch beside Rex, wanting to change the subject before she reconsidered their entire friendship. “Ready for visitors?” she added, pointedly.
Rex made the face he made when he was trying to act casual. Interesting.
“It’s great,” Rex said, and he did sound like he meant it. “The neighbours think it’s haunted though.”
Ahsoka twisted on the couch, bringing her knees up so she could face Rex straight on.
“Is it?” she demanded. It had been ages since she’d got to investigate a real haunting. Most of the time someone was just lonely or trying to play an elaborate prank. Or a raccoon. There were a lot of raccoons involved.
“Of course not,” Rex said, sounding about as serious as he always did when she talked about the supernatural. They’d agreed to disagree on the topic even though she knew she was right. It wasn’t Rex’s fault he couldn’t see ghosts like she could. Rex paused. “Can I borrow a Ouija board?”
Very interesting, though also very dumb.
“Ugh,” Ahsoka kicked him. “If you listened to me, you’d know Ouija boards are mostly bullshit. Besides, you’ll just piss it off.” She grabbed his leg. “Let me exorcise it.”
Rex pushed her off. “There’s no ghost, Ahsoka, I just want to have one for when I have neighbours over. I think it could be fun to have people buy into it. Probably lowers my chances of being robbed.”
Rex was a terrible liar, always had been. She narrowed her eyes.
“Rex, if it’s haunted and you start fucking around you could get hurt. Let me take a look.”
Rex took a sip of his beer. “It’s not haunted, Ahsoka. I’ll get one online, don’t worry about it.”
“No, it’s fine. If you’re going to get yourself murdered fucking with the undead you can at least do it with a nice board. But—” she held up her finger “—if you don’t get eaten, I get to come over next week and take a look myself.”
He raised his bottle and she tapped her own against it.
“Deal.”
—
Cody watched with great interest as Rex set up a couple of candles in the middle of the living room floor, and then after staring at them for barely a few seconds relocated to the tiled kitchen. He was so clever. It was one of the many things Cody loved about him.
Candles set out in a large circle, easily large enough for Rex and another person to sit with room to spare, Rex returned to the living room and pulled a large wooden board out of his rucksack, bringing it though and placing it in the centre of the circle. The candles flickered.
Rex joined it in the circle and sat down, legs folded in front of him. The board was intricately decorated, swirling patterns carved into the edges and beautiful calligraphy letters across the middle. Rex placed a heavy looking planchette down on top of the board. Cautiously, Cody stepped into the ring of candles and sat down opposite Rex.
“Uh… Hi?” Rex said, looking up towards the ceiling, well over Cody’s head.
Oh. If Cody had still had a heart it might have skipped a beat. Rex was trying to talk to him.
He reached for the planchette and then stopped. He hadn’t planned what he would say in a situation like this, he hadn’t considered it an option. Rex was talking to him. He had to say something clever, something charming.
“Am I meant to do something first? A ritual? Are there words I’m meant to say” Rex asked, still looking up at the ceiling. He sighed. “This is stupid.”
Cody reached for the planchette before Rex could. It took almost no effort to make it move, the planchette sliding smoothly across the polished board.
H-I
“Holy shit,” Rex breathed, and then seemed to catch himself. “Ahsoka, if this is you somehow, I’ll kill you, don’t test me.”
Cody didn’t know who Ahsoka was, and frankly didn’t care all that much. Instead he waited eagerly, hands on the planchette, for Rex to ask another question.
“What’s your name?” Rex asked, voice pitching up at the end, not just a question, but unsure if it was a sensible question to begin with.
No one had asked Cody his name before. Well, not since he died. Or well, not in the way that Rex had. The last lot to live here had tried to convince Cody to stop tormenting them — with no success of course, they weren’t perfect like Rex was — and that had included screaming demands of who he was.
Rex asked like he wanted to know.
C-O-D-Y he spelt out carefully, gaze flicking between the board and Rex’s slack-jawed face.
“ Cody?” Rex said and Cody’s name had never sounded as nice as when it came from Rex’s mouth. “I’m Rex.”
I—K-N-O-W
“Oh, right. Of course,” Rex said, and then paused. “So, uh… You’re a ghost?”
Cody rolled his eyes. Obviously. Still, he could understand this would be a lot to take in and Rex was remarkably calm about the whole thing. Cody had made the right decision in letting Rex move in. Still, as thoughtful as the board was, Cody wanted something faster.
I—C-A-N—U-S-E—A—K-E-Y-B-O-A-R-D
Rex stared at the planchette, brows furrowed. “Oh. Oh! Let me get my laptop,” Rex stood up. “Do you need the candles or anything?”
Cody snorted.
N-O
“Ahsoka could have mentioned that,” Rex muttered. He picked up one of the candles, but before he could blow it out Cody pushed a gust of air through the kitchen. Rex looked startled for only a moment before he smiled, warm and beautiful. “Thank you.”
Cody hoped someone tried to break in. He wanted to kill for Rex.
—
Rex turned on the computer, opened a blank document and then stood up out of the chair. Maybe Cody didn’t need to sit, or could sit in him anyway, but it felt rude not to. He still wasn’t totally convinced Ahsoka wasn’t fucking with him somehow, but it was hard to argue when he was watching his keyboard type by itself.
“ I really don’t want to be rude,” Rex said, and he didn’t, but there were a couple of questions he would like to get out of the way, “but you aren’t going to kill me or anything like that are you? Because if so, I can and will leave, no murder required.”
“I would never hurt you, Rex.” The reply came almost instantly, though Cody’s typing was a little slow. Rex supposed that made sense, even if Cody had only been dead a couple decades his touch typing was probably pretty lacking.
“I won’t either, in case you were wondering. As long as you don’t plan to go all poltergeist on me, I don’t mind having you around.” Rex cringed. That was probably the wrong thing to say.
The cursor highlighted what Cody had just typed and bolded it.
“Okay,” Rex said, gears turning, that was definitely the most important question out of the way. He didn’t think he’d mind living with a ghost, Cody seemed nice enough. “Do you need anything from me? Unfinished business, anything like that?”
“ No.”
Well that left little room for discussion.
The side of Rex’s computer was glass and in it he could make out his own faint reflection, but between him and the computer was a fluid sort of shadow that moved forward whenever Cody went to type. Rex reached out, looking at the reflection, looking at the point where it looked like his hand was about to make contact with the shadow. He glanced to his real hand, sticking out in front of him, hovering over nothing. Back in the reflection his hand lowered, enough that if the shadower were solid he would be touching it.
Ice cold shot up his fingers to his shoulder leaving sharp tingling in his wake. The shadow vanished from the reflection instantly.
“Sorry,” Rex said, snatching his hand back. “I wasn’t thinking.”
There was a long fraught pause before the keys started moving again.
“ I don’t mind.”
—
Rex was at work, which meant Cody had some time to address some concerns he’d been sitting on. Rex was wonderful. He was clever, and funny, and beautiful, but he also had a couple of very minor faults that should be addressed. For example, his idea of how Cody’s house should be laid out was ludicrous. It wasn’t like the last family — who had done their very best to ruin everything — but it was enough that Cody wanted to address it.
Rex wouldn’t mind.
Moving things was a mixed bag, when he was angry Cody found he had almost bottomless depths of power to draw on — it was how he’d had such an easy time dealing with the last people who’d lived here — and the reality was it was much easier to mindlessly throw something across a room than neatly arrange cushions. But while Rex leaving to work was very inconvenient, it did mean Cody had all day to get it just right.
Living room back how Cody liked it,he moved onto the rest of his to-do list; Rex was going to be so pleased when he got home.
Rex arrived while Cody was mid-task, but he spared no time putting the knives down, just letting them fall from where he’d been floating them, and appearing in the hallway instead.
Rex was frozen in the doorway, half out of his coat, looking over Cody’s efforts. Cody waited with baited breath — metaphorically of course.
“It does look better this way,” Rex mumbled under his breath. Rex just kept proving over and over that Cody had made the right choice letting him move in. He was gracious and kind and besides, with his blond hair, brown skin, and delightful shoulders, Rex went very well with what was left of Cody’s fittings, the things the last family hadn’t ripped out and ruined.
“Thanks,” Rex called into the apartment, removing the rest of his coat, hanging it over the back of a chair. Cody frowned at it. Rex should get them a coat rack. Cody looked over at the computer. And at the wallet Rex had tossed onto the coffee table. Cody should get them a coat rack.
He trailed after Rex into the bedroom and waited for Rex to change, feeling another burst of warmth as Rex thanked him for rearranging his drawers. Rex was tidy — Cody wouldn’t have let him stay if he wasn’t — but he could use a guiding hand.
They moved through to the kitchen and Rex stopped again, concern wrinkling his forehead.
“Hey, Cody?” Rex called, unaware that Cody was standing right by his shoulder. “Why are all my knives sitting out?”
It was an excellent chance to show off what else he’d done while Rex had abandoned him. He teleported across the room to sit at Rex’s computer.
“ I sharpened them,” he typed onto Rex’s computer. Rex jumped as the text-to-speech announced the words out into the room in a monotonous tone. “They were blunt.
“ Oh,” Rex said, picking up one of the knives. He looked particularly pretty holding a knife.
“You could have hurt yourself,” Cody typed. He didn’t touch the keyboard, just stared at it, focusing to make the keys dip down one after another.
“Huh,” Rex ran his finger over the blade, checking it’s sharpness. “I guess it had been a while since I sharpened these ones. Maul stole my good knife.”
Who the fuck was Maul? And how did he expect to get away with stealing from Rex?
Cody considered how best to phrase his concern.
“ He should suffer for daring to take what’s yours ,” Cody typed. Perfect.
Rex looked up from where he was collecting the knives scattered across his kitchen. “Oh, no, it’s nothing like that. He’s my ex. He was just sort of like that.”
Cody hadn’t considered if Rex had been with anyone before him. It made sense, Rex was lovely, of course he’d dated. But the idea that he had dated men who had mistreated him didn’t sit well with Cody. He didn’t think he liked this Maul very much at all.
“It’s a funny story actually, we met when he tried to mug me,” Rex said, rolling his eyes with a fondness that didn’t match the story. “We got into a fight over it and then started talking. Strange how things turn out.”
Cody frowned, considering the implications of the story Rex had just told him. Rex was lucky Cody was here to protect him; it sounded like he had terrible survival instincts. Cody would have to keep an eye on things.
“I’m gonna watch a movie over dinner. You want to pick something?” Rex asked.
Another of Rex’s many talents: cooking. Cody sat on the counter watching as Rex poured some chicken nuggets onto a baking tray and threw them into the oven.
—
Rex lounged back against his pillows stroking his cock. He did his best to avoid thinking about anyone in particular, lest how intimately he knew Maul’s tattoos slip into the fantasy, how it tasted to lick salty sweat off them. Ahsoka might have a point about Maul, their relationships had been a mess, but Rex would be damned if the sex hadn’t been great. Probably worth Maul setting his car on fire that one time.
Still, great sex or not, he was over Maul and shouldn’t be thinking about him like this. He tried to conjure something more generic, tugging on his dick aggressively imagining traditionally handsome men kneeling between his legs.
There was movement in the corner of eye and he glanced up. Rex screeched. He leapt out of the bed, or might have if not for the blankets tangled around his ankles, instead he mostly just flopped over to the other side.
Reflected in the mirror was Cody, clearer than Rex had ever seen him. If not for the slight shimmering around the edges of his reflection Rex wouldn’t have known he wasn’t right there on the bed next to him. Cody was close enough to touch him, sitting cross legged right by Rex’s hip and while he’d looked up to meet Rex’s gaze through the mirror there Rex was under no illusions to where he’d been staring a second before.
“Uh,” Rex said, and then realised he had nothing to follow up with.
Cody was handsome — if a little grey — his eyes flashing like a cat’s in the dark.
“Hi?” Rex said, not sure what he was expecting; both his computer and Ouija board were in the other room. What he got was Cody moving a little closer, so close that he was almost brushing up against Rex. Rex moved his leg and shivered.
Cody looked hungry. He looked like he was considering eating Rex alive and not in the way Ahsoka was worried about.
Rex looked down at his dick which hadn’t flagged despite his near heart attack. When he looked back at Cody his gaze hadn’t wavered, still staring at Rex through the mirror. Cody tongue darted across his lips.
What the hell.
Without looking away, Rex wrapped his hand back around his dick. He twisted his wrist upwards and groaned, the heat from his gut blurring with the coolness radiating off the points of contact with Cody. It was very suddenly a whole lot of points of contact with Cody.
—
Ahsoka was staring and she was making no effort to hide it. The ghost didn’t seem to mind.
“Rex,” She said and Rex looked away from the movie, fork freezing half way to his mouth.
“Hmm?”
“I know you’re sceptical about this stuff, but please believe that I wouldn’t lie to you about this. Your house is for real haunted,” she tried to sound sincere, though she knew that probably just made her sound less sincere. How hard could it be to do an exorcism without him noticing?
Rex sighed. “Yeah, I know. His name’s Cody.” Cody perked up like the weirdest labrador on hearing his name.
“You know it’s name?”
The ghost turned to look at her. His eyes had gone dark, black smoke peeling off his skin into the air around him. The lights flickered.
“Codes, it’s okay,” Rex said, and put a hand down flat on the pillow next to him in the general direction of the ghost. The smoke was gone between one blink and the next and Cody was staring at Rex again.
“I know what you’re going to say,” Rex started.
“Wanna bet?”
“ But it’s fine. Cody and I have talked it over and we’ve agreed to share the house,” Rex said, like this was a perfectly reasonable thing for him to have done.
“He’s killed before.” Ahsoka couldn’t be completely certain of that, but he had the power to do it and given how long the place had been empty before Rex had stumbled head first into it with all the grace of a newborn giraffe it seemed likely.
“I know,” Rex said, and for a moment Ahsoka considered making herself the more present risk to his life, “and we’ve talked about that. He’s promised he’s not going to kill me.”
Unfortunately, Ahsoka believed the ghost. “Yeah, well, do you also know he looks at you like he wants to be that piece of pasta?”
Rex sighed again. “Yeah, he does that sometimes.”
Maybe Rex was right. Maybe he should shoot Maul a message.
Rex finally put the pasta in his mouth and Cody leant just a little further forward.
—
Rex was asleep which meant Cody was engaging in his own nighttime activity. Rex slept on the left side of the bed, rather than in the centre, which gave Cody plenty of space to sit next to him and keep watch.
Rex didn’t snore, but he made a soft little sigh on each exhale, inaudible unless very close. Cody liked listening to it. Rex’s face would contort sometimes when he was dreaming, his nose scrunching up and his lip curling. Watching it was one of Cody’s favourite ways to spend eight hours.
There was a sound from the front door. Rex mumbled something and turned over, away from Cody, but didn’t stir.
Cody didn’t stand, instead he just moved, on the bed one moment and in the hallway the next. A lanky, shirtless man covered from head to toe in twisting tattoos was carefully closing the door behind him, shoving a ring of lock picks into his pocket. Cody grinned. It had been a long time since he’d been able to use real organs in his decorating, and Rex would see how well Cody could protect him.
The man looked up and to Cody’s surprise, looked directly at him.
“A spirit,” the man hissed. “I have no business with you. If you get in my way however, you’ll find I’m not to be crossed.”
Medium or not, Cody grinned, letting the smile stretch too wide, letting that bone deep sense of dread ooze out of him and creep across the floor over the medium’s prosthetic legs. He seemed unaffected, and bared his own teeth in return, muttering under his breath. Cody felt the pull of a banishing spell grip him.
The medium might be powerful enough to shrug off more subtle approaches, but Cody had always prided himself on clever tactics and back-up plans.
He threw the medium into the coat stand.
The stand fell, crashing to the side table, the medium falling with it. Before he could stumble back to his feet Cody hauled him back up, glowering down the hallway, applying crushing pressure to the man’s chest and throat, flooding his lungs with ice cold water.
“Maul?”
The light came on above them and they both turned to find Rex squinting down the hallway at them, blinking against the sudden brightness,
Maul.
“Put him down, Cody,” Rex said, and did that thing that Cody loved where he put his hand up to where Rex seemed to think he was. He wasn’t mollified this time however. Cody didn’t move, didn’t release the grip he had on the invader’s insides.
“Cody, please,” Rex said again, and stepped further down the hallway. “You’ll hurt him.”
Maul gurgled around the water Cody was filling his throat with. Hurting him was the point.
This was Cody’s house. Rex was Cody’s. He wasn’t going to let this man mess everything up.
Except Rex looked upset, and not entirely with Maul.
Cody let the power slip away and Maul wheezed in a breath.
“Thank you,” Rex said. Cody stood between them, glaring at the invader.
Maul laughed, a manic edge slipping in even around the rasp Cody had put in his throat. “Oh you’ve upset him, Rex. He’s sulking.”
“You can see him,” Rex turned to look in the vague direction to where Maul was still warily eyeing Cody. “He can see you?”
“Of course I can see your little pet, Rex. I told you I could see the dead,” Maul said, leaning against the wall for balance. He coughed, and murky water splattered down onto the floor.
“I thought that was just you flirting,” Rex admitted. He took a step towards Maul. “Why are you here? You— We agreed we were done.”
Maul looked between them, and he let his gaze settle on Cody when he answered. “I think you took one of my shirts. I came to collect it.”
“You took all my shoes with you when you moved out and you think I have one of your shirts?” Rex asked, and Cody didn’t think he was taking this situation as seriously as it warranted.
Maul sighed, dramatically, with his entire body. “The ‘wlw mlm solidarity’ one,” he said, like it should be obvious.
“That’s my shirt,” Rex said. “You stole it. I took it back.”
Maul leered, gaze roaming over Rex’s bare chest. Rex went a little pink.
Cody snarled but Maul was ready this time and his attempt to throw Maul again only shoved him back a few inches.
Rex frowned.
“We need to talk,” Rex said to Maul after an uncomfortable moment. Cody disagreed. “Outside,” Rex continued. Cody disagreed with that even more.
Cody reached out and caught Rex’s shoulder, forcing his hands to be solid. Rex’s skin was still warm from the bed but Rex shrugged him off. “It’ll just be a minute, Cody. Hold on.”
Rex grabbed Maul by the arm, and pushed him towards the front door.
“Rex,” Cody said and Rex didn’t hear him. Maul did, grinning wildly as he was dragged out of the house.
Cody lunged after them but he already knew the outcome. The edge of the house wasn’t a solid barrier, he didn’t slam up against it, the tether seemed to come from behind, allowing him to go so far but no further. He reached the end of it at the front door, whatever bound him to the house yanking him sharply backwards.
He threw himself at it again, the windows rattling in their frames at the force of his fury.
How dare Maul invade his house? How dare Maul try to hurt Rex.
How dare Rex go with him rather than stay where Cody could protect him?
—
Rex grabbed his razor from the cabinet and turned to the mirror. His reflection stared back at him, eyes lifeless, skin rotting and peeling away. The maggot squirming out behind his eyeball was a nice touch.
“Cody!” he yelled. “I’m going to be late for work”
Blood leaked out of his reflection’s open mouth, spilling down his chin onto his shirt.
Rex had hoped Cody would have calmed down by now, but he’d been in a mood for days, since Maul had shown up, and promptly been sent on his way. It would help if Rex knew exactly what part of it Cody was upset over; Rex not letting Cody kill Maul? Rex leaving with Maul? Both?
Sighing, he slapped some shaving foam onto his face, resigning himself to shaving blind. From the living room he could hear the now familiar sound of his cutlery drawer being emptied out onto the floor. He ignored it and carried on with his morning routine.
He patted his face dry with a towel and went back into the living room. There was dark goopy liquid sliding down the wall behind his TV and another crash from the kitchen.
Rex ran a hand down his face, finding a patch of scratchy stubble under his jaw that he’d missed. He didn’t have time to fix it. He didn’t have time for another attempt at fixing things with Cody either, but that was worth being late over. He pulled the Ouija board out from its drawer and placed it down in the centre of the table. A rush of cold air passed him.
“Can we talk about this?” Rex asked. For a moment nothing happened and then the planchette shuddered. Rex lent forward, hopeful. The board flew off the table, slamming into the wall with enough force to split the board into, leaving an impressive dent in the wall as the two pieces tumbled to the floor.
Well, that was why he’d used the board and not his computer.
Rex sighed. He needed to go to work. He’d already missed a day this week after sleeping through his alarm. It turned out it was very difficult to sleep with a pissed off ghost scuttling on the ceiling over his bed.
He was going to have to bring in the big guns.
—
“I feel like someone warned you dating a murderous ghost was a bad idea,” Ahsoka said, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. She couldn’t believe she’d agreed to mediate this — after the fucking ghost had broken her nice Ouija board too.
“He’s not normally like this,” Rex insisted. He had dark circles under his eyes and the left side of his lower lip was chewed up. Maybe that’s why she’d agreed to help.
“Seeing Maul just upset him,” Rex continued. “I just need him to understand that me not letting him murder Maul doesn’t mean I still have feelings for him.”
“It would be easier to just exorcise him, you know,” she said without any heat. Why couldn’t Rex just date a nice, normal guy? She climbed out of the car, pulling a bag with few supplies. She wasn’t dumb, she wasn’t going to walk into a house with a pissed off ghost without a little salt at least… And maybe a few other things… Just in case.
“I don’t want him gone, Ahsoka. He’s sweet, and a good boyfriend.” The following pause said a lot. “Mostly.”
“Nuh-uh. You don’t get to tell me he’s a good boyfriend. I know your dating history, you have the worst taste in men of anyone I’ve ever met.”
“It’s not that bad,” Rex insisted, leading the way to his front door, fumbling a little with the keys.
“Maul,” she said, deadpan.
Rex made a face. “Okay, but—”
“Dooku.”
“I was in college,” he said weakly. “He paid my rent.”
“He made you listen while he read you his manuscript,” Ahsoka said. She still remembered giggling with Rex over drinks while he recited quotes from it.
“It wasn’t that bad, he—"
“My brother.”
Rex winced.
“Maybe don’t mention that one to Cody,” Rex said, as if Ahsoka enjoyed remembering that train wreck.
Rex opened the door and stepped inside. “Hey, Codes. I’ve brought Ahsoka. I want to talk things out.”
Ahsoka was hit with the overwhelming smell of rotting onions; oh Cody was really pissed off. She wrapped her coat tighter around herself as the cold seeped into her. Rex, with all the supernatural awareness of a blobfish, seemed unaffected.
“Hi Cody,” she said, waving at the towering mass of black smoke at the end of the hallway. The mass grew even darker and that specific feeling that something was very very wrong coiled up her spine. She brushed it off; she wasn’t an amateur. “Rex was saying you met Maul. What you need to understand is that Rex is an idiot and Maul is an asshole.”
Rex shot her a betrayed look but Cody seemed to settle, if only a little. She could almost make out the shape of a person in there. She jerked her head and led them both into the living room. She pushed the coffee table out of the way and started pulling things out of her bag. She could feel Cody’s suspicion but ignored it. Rex hovering at her shoulder was harder to ignore.
“I’m going to set up a bridging circle,” she explained, pulling out clumps of wormwood, placing them in a loose circle in the middle of the floor, large enough to seat all three of them.
“He’ll be able to see me?” Cody asked, and Ahsoka almost jumped. She hadn’t actually heard him talk before. The smoke dissipated all at once, leaving a rather normal looking man with a slight grey tinge to his skin and a nasty wound on his forehead, closed with lumpy, clotted blood. Ahsoka would put money on that being what had killed him. The ghost suddenly looked very nervous.
“That’s the idea,” she said, just barely resisting the urge to roll her eyes; why had she agreed to do paranormal couple’s counselling. “And hear you. That way the pair of you can talk out your shit without me having to speak for you.”
“You can do that?” Rex asked.
“Yep,” she said, popping the final letter. She set up three rosemary candles, one behind where each of them would sit, between the bundles of wormwood. “Which you’d know if you listened to me when I talked about this stuff.” She looked over at Cody. “He didn’t believe in ghosts until he met you.”
She stepped into the circle, lighting the candles with her lighter before sitting down, gesturing for Rex to do the same. Cody stood outside the circle, frowning. She carried on regardless.
She pulled out a bag of dandelion leaves that she’d crushed before leaving. She put her left hand into the bag grabbing a handful, rubbing them into her palm.
“Do your right hand,” she told Rex and handed over the bag. She took Rex’s hand with her clean one, and then held out the dandelion coated one to Cody. Cody just looked at it. She offered it more insistently and he finally sat, taking her hand, and then placing his other one into Rex’s open palm.
Ahsoka closed her eyes, and started muttering under breath. It was a simple spell, made even simpler through the ghost’s cooperation. Cody’s hand tingled under hers.
She opened her eyes.
Rex and Cody were staring at each other, Rex with wide eyed wonder, Cody with a twisted expression that appeared to be him trying to keep his glower fixed to his face to cover nerves.
“Hi,” Rex said.
Cody’s expression broke, and he smiled, disgustingly shy.
“Hi,” he said back.
Ahsoka didn’t flop backwards onto the ground with a groan, but only because it carried a serious risk of setting herself on fire. She couldn’t believe she had agreed to witness this.
“I’m sorry about Maul,” Rex said, all in a rush. “I knew if you were part of the conversation he’d just keep trying to wind you up. I just wanted to get him to leave.”
Cody was looking at their joined hands.
“It’s okay,” he said after a moment. “I love you.”
Rex beamed. “I love you too.”
Ahsoka did groan then, but neither of the men noticed her, staring at each other with sickening expressions. She had the feeling she was going to be here for a while.
—
Cody watched thoughtfully as Rex brushed his teeth. Things had been a little different since Ahsoka’s interference, and Cody was fairly sure they were for the better. Rex had made it clear that he didn’t want Cody killing anyone, even if they were breaking into the house. Cody thought it was unreasonable, but he could at least see the logic in not wanting to attract attention.
They’d compromised on a light maiming.
Rex spat toothpaste out into the sink, and caught Cody’s eye in the mirror and smiled. There was still toothpaste on his lip and Cody wanted to wipe it away. His hand still tingled from where Rex had held his, really held it and not just guessed at where Cody was. Maybe Rex had turned him soft because he thought he would let Rex stay even if he completely redecorated and made a terrible job of it.
Teeth done, Rex turned the water to warm and grabbed a couple bottles, pouring some cleanser out onto his hand and starting to rub it into his face.
He still thought they should kidnap a medium of their own to keep around to do the bridging spell whenever they wanted, but knowing Ahsoka could be worn down with some pathetic begging from Rex was enough.
And well, Rex would die eventually, and then they could haunt the house together.
Cody smiled and nudged the moisturiser into Rex’s fumbling hand.
—
“I still think he’s creepy,” Ahsoka said, kicking her feet up into Rex’s lap. Cody shot her a look from here he was perched on the couch behind Rex, but there was less heat to it than before. He’d mellowed on her considerably since the bridging ritual.
“He’s not creepy,” Rex insisted, because he had been born with horrendous taste and not a smidgen of common sense.
“He follows you to the bathroom,” Ahsoka pointed out. Cody followed Rex everywhere, never more than a metre or so away as long as Rex was in the house.
Rex made a face, but not the one of abject horror she was hoping for. “So we need to talk about boundaries,” Rex said, sending a fond look in Cody’s vague direction.
Cody looked unbearably smug as he lent down and put his hand through Rex’s beer, condensation forming along the rapidly cooling bottle. Rolling her eyes, Ahsoka slipped on her own room temperature beer.
—
“I want you to meet my parents,” Rex said over dinner. Cody was sitting right next to him if the chill he felt whenever he leaned too far to the right was anything to go by. “They probably shouldn’t meet you, not sure my dad’s heart could take it, but I’d like you to meet them.”
A new wireless keyboard was sitting on the coffee table by Rex’s plate but it didn’t move. Rex wasn’t surprised, Cody was a good listener and often just let Rex ramble.
“My brothers would like you though,” he added. Ahsoka had agreed, with a lot of unnecessary complaining, that she’d do the ritual again, though she’d made it clear it was a special occasions only sort of thing. He thought meeting the twins counted as as a special occasion. Cody was part of his life now, he wanted his family to know.
He would have to think about how to handle it; his family were weary about his love life since the Maul incident. Incidents. Huh. He hadn’t been thinking about Maul much at all recently. He put his hand through the cold space next to him and smiled. He hadn’t really noticed, but it was obvious now he thought about it.
“My mum will love how you decorated the place,” Rex said. He picked up his glass from the table and downed what was left of the water. “She has a real eye for that stuff.”
He liked that idea, his parents appreciating how happy Cody made him even if they couldn’t ever know the reason. He made to stand up but a firm, but gentle force shoved him back down. The glass was tugged from his hand and floated over to the kitchen.
“Thanks,” he said, smiling widely. Ahsoka didn’t know what she was talking about. Cody was an excellent boyfriend. “What do you think?” he asked, taking the returning, and now full glass from the air. “You want to meet my family?”
Now there was a direct question, there wasn’t any hesitation before the keys clicked out Cody’s reply. “Anything for you.”
Yeah, this was going to work out great.