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“You had a baby?” Patrick demands, crossing his arms over his chest.
Pete just shrugs, like the infuriating little shit that he is. “Well,” he says, like it’s no big deal at all. “Ash had a baby. It’s presumably mine.” Squinting a little, he adds, “Why does it matter?”
Patrick sucks in a sharp breath and counts to ten so he doesn’t bash Pete’s head against the wall. “Because,” he says through gritted teeth, “in case you hadn’t noticed, you and I are men.”
Pete just looks baffled. “Yeah? So?”
“You’re king, Pete, you need a fucking heir.”
Pete blinks slowly. “I just always sort of assumed that if anything happened to me, you’d take over.”
Patrick smacks his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Pete, if anything happened to you, I’d be a basket case, okay, the only thing I’d be taking over is Joe and Andy’s couch, with a keg of mead and four thousand pounds of chocolate.”
“Aw, Pattycakes,” Pete says, beaming, “I didn’t know you cared.” Pete rubs at his chin a little then, like he’s stroking the beard he’s always whining about not being able to grow. “But you may have a point. What about, like… Matt?”
Patrick takes another deep breath. “Pete,” he says, letting a little of his exasperation slip into his voice. “Pete.”
Pete pouts. “Aw, come on. He even kinda looks like me.”
Patrick cuffs the back of Pete’s head. It’s not as satisfying as it should be. “You have a son, asshole, who is probably wandering the mortal world, thinking he’s just some jackass who’s going to end up flipping burgers to pay his way through college.”
“Dude, dude,” Pete says, totally earnest, “their burgers are fucking delicious, don’t malign the burger-flippers of the mortal world.”
Patrick narrows his eyes and stares Pete down. It takes a while, usually, but even Pete eventually quails in the face of Patrick’s death stare.
“Fuck you,” Pete says, shoulders slumping, finally. “Fine. But I’m not doing it. You can send one of your babyfaced little handmaidens or something.”
“Fine,” Patrick huffs triumphantly, “maybe I will.”
--
Kevin is working the counter, eyelids heavy, half leaning on the till and trying not to yawn. Joe is propped against the espresso machine, dozing off and coming to in a start every few minutes. Nick is in the back somewhere—the only evidence of which comes in the form of muttered, obscure expletives relating to Joe’s incompetence. It’s late January, and the day is cold and slow and sleepy.
The tiny, antique bell on the door that Nick insists is charming lets out a feeble tinkle, and two heavily-bundled customers tumble inside, laughing and brushing snow off the arms of their jackets.
The taller of the two makes it to the counter first, yanking off a damp and snow-covered beanie and shaking out his truly impressive lady hair. “Hi,” he says, propping pointy elbows on the counter and waggling thin brows at Kevin, mouth turning up crookedly at the corners. “I bet you’d like to know what you can do for me.”
Kevin blinks at him for a moment. The guy’s face is sort of uncomfortably close, and for a moment, Kevin sort of hopes that Nick will storm out of the back to rage at Joe, just so that he’ll step in and save Kevin from the—admittedly very gracefully pretty and fine-boned—creepy customer.
The guy behind the first customer elbows him—hard, apparently, because he winces and half-falls into the glass of the cookie display—and says, “Jesus, Bill, stop fucking hitting on him, he looks like he’s gonna cry.” To Kevin, he says, rolling his eyes, “Ignore Bill, he’s an ass.”
Kevin bites his lip and tries not to smile. He’s fairly certain that Nick would frown on him calling a customer that, even if in agreement with a sort of scary-but-strangely-attractive other customer. “I see,” he says, instead, and tries to convey his amusement through a meaningful look.
“Uh,” the guy says, arching an eyebrow, “are you okay, dude?”
It occurs to Kevin that it’s possible that only his brothers are capable of speaking his eyeball language. “Yeah,” Kevin says, trying not to blush. He doesn’t mean to check the guy out, but he’s got his arms crossed, and there’s something about them that Kevin just can’t quite pretend to not be looking at. “Yes, no, I’m—I’m fine. What can I get you?”
The customer’s face softens a little, a dopey smile creeping around the edges of his lips, and he looks right at Kevin’s mouth when he says, “I’ll have a—“
Kevin doesn’t remember the rest, just functions on autopilot in tandem with Joe, biting his lip against the weird warm hum at the base of his spine. “Here you go,” he says, tongue clumsy in his mouth, handing over what he thinks might be a latte with two shots of espresso, and some sort of tea for Bill.
The customer’s mouth quirks up in something a little more ironic than a smile. “Thanks, kid.”
Kevin is still trying to remember how his hands work, even after the two of them have walked out the door.
Joe is looking at him like maybe he has an extra head. “You okay, man?”
Kevin would answer, but his mouth is sort of pleasantly numb.
--
“So, Billiam says you want to eat a barista from the weird incest cafe?” Gabe says, first thing, when Mike walks into the station that night. He’s leaning back in his big leather chair, feet kicked up on the table, the hood of his purple sweatshirt tugged up over an ugly as shit teal cap.
“Are you stealing Travie’s clothes now?” Mike shoots back, instead of actually dignifying that with an answer. Encouraging Gabe is dangerous. “Because I get that you think you’re the shit, but you’re not actually a badass, you realize.”
Gabe throws his fangs up and waggles his eyebrows instead of actually responding, and says, “He says it’s the curly one, but last time I checked, there were two curly ones and one with an unfortunate eyebrow problem. Tell me it’s not the one with the eyebrows, Carden, my poor heart can’t take it.” He claps a dramatic hand to his chest and fake swoons a little.
Mike gives Gabe his best unimpressed face, but Gabe is undeterred, because he’s Gabe. “I don’t want to eat a barista,” he grumbles, flopping into his swivel chair and giving it a good spin. “Also, you’re a dick.”
Gabe pouts at him, but it’s fifteen seconds to on the air, so he can’t do much besides slip his headphones over his ears and narrow his eyes at Mike.
Mike puts on his own headphones and grabs his mic, kicking back in his chair and trying not to grin. He might want to eat the barista—Kevin Jonas, his nametag said, Kevin—a little. Or possibly just assault him a little. There might already be a weirdly detailed fantasy involving two of his fingers and Kevin whimpering, head thrown back, smelling like Cherry Coke and clean summers, eyes wide and unfocused and—
“You’re on the air with the Cobra and El Koala,” Gabe says, voice low and smooth. Like always, he mouths, Koala is Uruguayan slang for badass, and Mike is snapped all the way back, rolling his eyes and chiming in with,
“Prepare to spend the next hour wanting to bleach your brain and cry over your broken childhood; it looks like we’re starting out the show with Flounder singing the Cobra’s revised version of A Whole New World.” He nods at Brendon in the sound booth, holding up three fingers, lowering each in turn, and just like that, Kevin and the coffee shop and the whole day melt away as Mike settles into being exactly where he belongs.
--
The thing about KCobrazone is that you have to know you’re looking for it—you have to know that they go on every night at one twelve in the morning, and you have to be willing to scan through channels until you find it.
Kevin knows what time they go on, and he’s always willing to spend as long as it takes to find the program.
He manages to find them in time to catch the last strains of what might be A Whole New World, but it’s clouded in a dirty jazz beat and the words aren’t quite right.
“So,” the Cobra says, almost criminally smarmy as the last strains of music melt away, his voice crackling out of Kevin’s crappy car speakers, “it looks like El Koala—fuck, don’t kick me, jackass, I’m telling you, it’s Uruguayan slang, fucker, fuck—it looks like El Koala has some sort of hard on for a caffeine-peddling poodle downtown. Sadly for him, he refused to discuss this with yours truly before we went on the air, so y’all bitches get to listen to me grill him, with occasional musical interludes courtesy of the Kobra Kid.”
El Koala sighs heavily. “Ignore my friend, folks. The Kobra Kid is gonna have to get on that interlude thing while I kick the Cobra’s ass.” Kevin’s fingertips start to prickle, just a little, and a sense of familiarity starts to creep up his spine.
“Oh, suck it up, Balto, be a man,” the Cobra says, even as the intro for a song Kevin vaguely recognizes as a punk band Joe listens to, Blag, starts up. “Tell me all about your creepy stalker lust for the sexy coffee boy. Bilvy tells me there are Bambi eyes coming into play here. Venison, baby.”
“Oh, fuck you—“ The music blasts in, and the conversation cuts off over the sounds of a scuffle.
Kevin swallows, and slowly, so slowly, whacks his head against the steering wheel a few times.
--
The thing about Ian is that he’s not a follower.
Nash likes that.
Sean—well, Sean is the Alpha, so he maybe doesn’t like it so much. Sean is a good Alpha, but no Alpha is going to be okay with being constantly questioned. Nash can understand that, really; the wolf in his brain understands it implicitly. The humanity that lingers, however, mostly hates seeing Ian bullied like this.
“Hey,” Nash says, crouching down and pulling back the covers that are tugged up around Ian’s ears. Ian glares at him, face tear-streaked over the big bruise on his cheek, but doesn’t fight him. Nash almost wishes he would, just as proof that there’s still some fight in him. “You look pretty much like crap.”
Ian snorts, and the corner of his mouth tilts up for a brief second. It’s good. “I think that’s what’s supposed to happen.” He averts his eyes, swallowing hard, and Nash kind of wants to throw up. Two weeks ago, before the moon, Ian would’ve been bouncing around, making jokes about Nash’s mother or his hair, or just climbing things that aren’t really supposed to be climbed. Nash touches careful fingertips to the bruise under Ian’s eye, and Ian flinches back. “I’m an idiot,” Ian grumbles, squeezing his eyes shut. “Like, like—who even looks at Sean and thinks, ‘It’s totally a good idea to fight that guy’?”
Nash takes a deep breath, flicking his hair out of his eyes. “Brave people, I think.”
Ian chokes out an uncomfortable laugh, covering his face with his hands. “Dude, dude. Sean’s not a tyrant or something, I wasn’t, like, leading a glorious revolution. I challenged the Alpha because I have, like, petty issues with authority and stuff.” The hilarity seeps out of his voice, and he says, kind of dejected, “This is just what happens after that.”
Nash understands the Omega process, understands why the pack is picking on Ian now. He also understands that it isn’t going to stop, that Ian’s fought for himself and lost, and that sort of thing is permanent. “I don’t like it,” Nash admits, settling back on his haunches, smoothing his hands over the threadbare knees of his jeans.
“Yeah,” Ian says, snorting again, “me neither. But there’s kind of not a lot to do about it. This is how packs work.”
“I’d be your pack.” It’s what he came here to say, but that doesn’t make it any less huge, any less overwhelming and insane.
Ian is blinking at him like Nash is a crazy person, which, well. His brother’s told him that more than once. “What?”
Nash swallows and ignores the wolf in his head telling him that that’s not how pack works, that you can’t just leave when times get rough. Nash isn’t leaving because times are rough, or because he has a problem with the kind of Alpha Sean is. He’s leaving because Ian hasn’t smiled in two weeks, hasn’t stumbled into the living room in his pajamas and fucked around on his guitar, hasn’t sang songs while making really gross sandwiches, and that means that Ian isn’t Ian anymore, and that makes Nash feel sick, makes his chest go tight and his stomach roil.
“I’d be your pack,” Nash says again, a little stronger this time. Taking a deep breath, he rocks forward onto his knees and lowers his head until his cheek is resting on the bed, baring his neck.
“No, dude, holy shit,” Ian says, scrambling back, drawing his knees up to his chest. “No, look, get up, if anybody comes in—“
“You’d be a good Alpha,” Nash says, and it’s true, it’s kind of painfully true; there’s nowhere he wouldn’t follow Ian, there isn’t a thing he wouldn’t do for him.
“I’m barely eighteen, dude, it was a terrible idea to go up against Sean, okay, I get that, I’m not trying to be Alpha anymore,” Ian protests, clutching the blanket up to his chest. “Nash, Nash, please, okay, please get up.”
Nash stays where he is. “You can’t stay here like this. I can’t stay here and see you like this.” It’s breaking his heart, it’s making his insides feel ugly, making him want to go challenge Sean himself, just so the pack will have someone else to pick on, and if there’s ever been a worse idea than leaving, it’s that. Nash tilts his head, just a little, so he can see Ian’s face. Ian’s eyes are wide and panicked, and that alone is enough to quiet the doubt in Nash’s head—Ian’s never been afraid of anything, and the fact that he is now is something Nash can’t take.
“Please,” Ian says again, shaking his head. “Please, dude, get up.”
Nash bites his lip. “If I get up,” he says, closing his eyes against the fear on Ian’s face, “it’s going to be because my Alpha orders me to.”
Ian makes a pained noise. “Can’t we talk about this? Please? Like—like, Nash, come on, dude, there are things to figure out, there are—I can’t just—“
Nash reaches out across the mattress to wrap a hand around Ian’s skinny ankle. “There isn’t anything to talk about,” he says firmly, slipping his fingers under the hem of Ian’s jeans until they meet skin.
Ian sucks in a sharp breath. “Dude, you’re not—I get it, okay, I get that you don’t want me to be picked on, but it’s not worth leaving the pack.”
Nash’s fingers tighten on Ian’s ankle involuntarily. “No,” he says slowly, gnawing his lip. “No, it’s—I can’t handle it, like—“ He stops, thinks about the way to say what’s going on in his head. “It feels wrong, the way disobeying Sean is supposed to feel wrong. It hurts the wolf just as much as it upsets me.”
“I’m not your Alpha,” Ian says, and it’s quiet and helpless and the wolf in Nash rebels violently, making his chest ache.
“You’ve always been my Alpha,” Nash counters quietly. “But while you were following Sean, that didn’t really change anything.”
Ian goes still and silent, the muscles under Nash’s hand humming with tension. After a long, long moment, there are fingertips touching Nash’s hand, prying his fingers away from Ian’s ankle and tangling with them instead. It feels right, feels viscerally, irrevocably right, and Nash squeezes hard in case Ian decides to pull away. “This is a terrible idea,” Ian says softly, but there’s a thread of a smile in it.
Nash has to squeeze his eyes shut against deeply unmanly tears of relief, and his heart skips a couple beats when Ian’s thumb starts to rub back and forth over his own. “I know,” he admits, “I’ve got your back.”
Ian’s other hand comes down to touch gentle fingers to the back of Nash’s neck. “Get up, Nash,” he says, equally gentle, but there’s a hint of real compulsion behind it, and Nash finds himself straightening up and getting his feet under him before he even thinks about it. His throat feels tight with the enormity of that.
“Ian—“ he starts, but the words get lost in his throat.
Ian’s looking at him with a quiet sort of helplessness, gaze hovering on Nash’s mouth, and there’s a tiny flush of pink across his cheeks. “Nash,” he says, voice breaking a little, “You get, right, that I have no idea how to do this?”
“I’ll help you,” Nash promises, kneeling on the mattress.
Ian laughs a little, maybe a tiny bit hysterically. “I’m supposed to take care of you. I’m—I’m supposed to lead you, dude.”
Nash inches closer, close enough to swing a leg over Ian’s thighs, settling on top of them. “I’m not a sheep,” he reminds him, not unkindly, “I don’t need to be led.”
“You know what I mean,” Ian protests, eyes glued to Nash’s mouth like a prayer.
Nash nods, sliding his hands up under the hem of Ian’s shirt, rubbing his thumbs over the soft skin covering Ian’s hipbones, and Ian’s breath catches, stutters out in sharp bursts. “I’ve got your back,” Nash says again, leaning down close enough that he can feel Ian’s unsteady breaths on his mouth. “And you’ve got mine. All this means is that, when it comes down to it, you’re the one who makes a call, not me.” He brushes his lips over Ian’s, just a quick moment of skin to skin, and Ian sucks in a sharp breath, and Nash can feel him get hard, just like that. Nash does it again, then again, barely-there passes of his mouth, lower lip catching and dragging against Ian’s. “Make the call,” he murmurs, almost against Ian’s mouth.
Ian reaches up, tangling his fingers into Nash’s hair and tugging him down. “Yes,” he says on an exhale, “yeah, Nash, come on, yes.” His hands are shaking violently as he leans up to lick into Nash’s mouth.
Nash closes the gap and meets Ian’s mouth for real this time, opening and letting Ian take. Ian groans, spreading his legs and grinding up against Nash, teeth tugging at Nash’s lower lip, and Nash gives back as good as he gets, deepening the kiss and making it claiming, making it a confirmation of how fucking in this he is. Ian’s breath is still ragged, and his hands are still shaking, still clutching Nash close, but there’s a sweeter edge to it now, like maybe it’s not all fear, like maybe it’s just the fucking enormity of how right this is.
“See?” Nash mumbles against Ian’s lip, “you make awesome decisions.”
Ian’s breath runs out on a tiny, shaky laugh, and he nips at Nash’s lower lip. “Well, this isn’t exactly a hard one. You’re—“
Nash ducks his head so the red on his cheeks doesn’t show, and he noses at the soft spot under Ian’s jaw. “Yours,” he says softly. “I’m all yours.”
And for the first second in his entire life, everything seems good, seems just easy, like for the first time, Nash is exactly where he’s meant to be.
--
“While we were away,” the Gabe says into the mic, smirking at Mike, “El Koala has admitted to some pretty deliciously incriminating things. Tell them about it, mi Koala especial.”
Mike grunts as Mikey digs his freakishly strong vampire knee into his kidney. The table tastes like old coffee and what might be strawberry lube. He thinks it’s pretty safe to blame Gerard for both of those. “Fuck you,” Mike wheezes.
Mikey digs his knees in harder.
Mike sighs and relents. “Fucking fine, okay, the curly poodle barista is hot and I want to bone him, okay, is that what you wanted to hear?”
Gabe clicks his tongue. “No, no, that’s not what you said during the Black Flag break, my sweet, sweet, Koala-flavored homie. Tell the audience what you told me, sweet cheeks.”
Mike tries to take in a deep breath for an appropriately put-upon sigh, but Mikeyway is a surprisingly heavy motherfucker, and there’s not really a lot of room to breathe. “I want to fucking sink my teeth into him,” Mike grits out.
“And?” Gabe prompts evilly.
“And fucking keep him on his fucking knees and fuck him bloody, goddamn it, get your minion the fuck off me.”
Gabe narrows an eye, but waves Mikey off with a lazy flap of his hand.
Mikey beams down at Mike and pats him on the head before clambering off without any of the grace that people keep telling Mike that vampires are supposed to have. “Sorry, dude, he’s my boss,” Mikey says, tipping him a lazy salute and wandering back to his corner full of albums.
Mike sits up, panting, and glares at Gabe. “What if he heard that, asshole?”
Gabe snorts. “Please, sugar, no one listens to this.”
--
“So, is this, are you, like, is it a werewolf thing?” Gerard asks when the travesty of a show is over, really earnest. “Because, okay, I totally respect that you’re trying to get in touch with your inner man-animal-thing, but, like, are you sure it’s healthy to embrace it to the point that you actually want to hurt this guy?”
Gerard has worked with Mike for four and a half years, and somehow still thinks that Mike’s lycanthropy is some sort of voluntary act of soul-searching in attempt to connect with his inner animal nature. He also hasn’t noticed that his own brother is a vampire, but Mike does have to allow that even before he was turned, Mikeyway never really saw sunlight, anyway, so it might be kind of understandable that Gerard’s only comment after the change was on Mikey not wearing his glasses anymore.
“It’s how Mike shows a desire for intimacy,” Mikey says placidly, flipping his hair out of his eyes. “It’s his nature or something, whatever, shut up, Gee, go suck a cock or something.”
Gerard opens his mouth, then thinks better of it, and shuffles off to hide in a corner and send dirty texts to Frank.
--
Z is still up when Mike gets home. She’s curled up on the couch, bowl of popcorn balanced on her knees, watching what he’s pretty sure is Cake Boss.
“Yo,” she says, not look away from the screen. Her expression doesn’t change, but Mike can smell a thread of amusement wound through her voice.
Mike groans. “You listened to the show.”
A smirk creeps across her face, and she looks up at him through her hair. “Maaaaaaaaybe,” she says, tone heavy with what is definitely evil. She might be tiny, but she’s just as bad as Gabe, if not worse.
“Shut the fuck up,” Mike says, stealing the popcorn and flopping down onto the couch beside her. He can feel the board under the cushions digging into his ass. They need a new fucking couch. “It’s not a big deal.”
Z mutes the TV, steals the popcorn back, and, shoveling a handful of it into her mouth, says, “You don’t date, Mike.” Swallowing, she adds, “Or fuck. So, yeah, it’s a little bit of a big deal.”
Mike rubs a hand over his face. “It’s not like you’d know.” He arches a meaningful eyebrow.
She makes a face, lips pressed into a prim, disapproving line. “Ryan has nothing to do with this. Stop being a dick, I’m not Gabe.” She shoves at him with a sock-clad foot and offers him the mostly-empty popcorn bowl. “Girl talk time, bitch. Tell me everything.”
“It’s not like—“ Mike sighs and shoves a pile of popcorn into his mouth, chewing and swallowing before he tries again. “It’s not like I really talked to him. He’s just this guy. He’s pretty, okay, I don’t fucking know.”
“And?” Z prompts, biting her lip over a smile.
“And nothing,” Mike grumbles. “Bill was, like… draping himself all over the counter and batting his eyelashes and shit, it was fucking weird. I bought some coffee. He smelled like… something. Nice. I guess. That’s all, okay, it’s not exciting, fuck.”
Z harrumphs. “Well, you have to go back. It doesn’t count if it’s not exciting.” She adds some jazz hands to that, because Z is fucking weird.
Mike doesn’t bother to argue—if he doesn’t go back on his own, Z will just go without him and make everything worse. Resigned, he slumps down onto the couch, head on her shoulder, and says, “I fucking hate you.”
She smiles and loops an arm around his shoulder, turning the volume back up on the television, and says, “Yeah, yeah, so you say.”
--
There’s a hand on Kevin’s throat—not squeezing, just wrapped loosely around it, keeping him in place, and fingers trailing down his ribs, dipping lower, lower.
The guy from the coffee shop is leaning over him, breath hot against Kevin’s lips. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, he pops the button on Kevin’s jeans, slides down the zipper, tooth by tooth. “Stay still,” he murmurs, and his voice crackles with radio static.
Kevin bucks up, all of a sudden, into the hot, wet stretch of the guy’s mouth around him. Immediately, the guy’s hands are holding him down, thumbs digging painfully into the muscles of Kevin’s thighs. Kevin fights the grip, mostly so the fingers will push harder.
The guy lifts off, just for a second, and says, “Bad.”
Kevin whimpers, and then there’s a finger pushing back, behind his balls, pushing into him, dry and merciless, crooking up sharply.
He comes, hard and sudden, waking up with his face stuck to the steering wheel with drool, the front of his jeans damp and sticky.
--
“Are you guys hungry?” Tennessee asks, poking her head in. “I bet you’re starving, that sounded like a workout.” She opens the door a little wider to reveal a giant plate of sandwiches in her other hand, and does that thing where she tries to waggle her eyebrows, but she can’t, so it just looks like her face itches.
“You,” Ryan says, completely heartfelt, eyeing the massive tower of sandwiches, “are a goddess.”
Tennessee beams. “They’re salami and pesto.”
Ryan loves salami and pesto. And Tennessee always adds weird vegetables and fruits, like slices of mango and tomato and pickles all together, and it’s always fucking ungodly delicious. Tennessee makes sandwiches to tempt long-dead gods and the broken souls of poets. “You’re my favorite,” he says, clambering over Z to get to the sandwiches. God, sandwiches.
“Hey,” Z protests as he accidentally knees her in the kidney, “how is it that I just let you come on my face, and yet she’s your favorite?”
“She,” Ryan says, grabbing a sandwich and taking a huge bite of magnificent, sandwich-y goodness, “brings me sandwiches.”
“The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” Tennessee says wisely, ruffling Ryan’s curls. Normally that annoys the shit out of him, but Tennessee just made him a mountain of sandwiches, so he only glowers a little instead of ranting about his manliness and dignity and whatnot.
“It is,” he agrees through a mouthful of deliciousness. “And the way to your heart is with a chisel.”
Z pouts at him. “You’re such a douche, I can’t believe I love you.”
Ryan beams at her. “I know, right?”
“Well,” Tennessee says to Z, handing the plate of sandwiches off to Ryan and taking one off the top, sitting beside Z on the bed. “I’ll always chisel you.”
Z snuggles up to her, taking a bite of the sandwich without bothering to take it out of Tennessee’s hand. “I know,” she mumbles through the bite, grinning so the chewed bread and veggies show. “That’s why you’re my favorite.”
“Look at that,” Tennessee says, smiling in this secret, soft way that Ryan knows means she’s really, actually happy, “I’m everybody’s favorite.”
Z wriggles closer, wrapping her arms around Tennessee’s waist, and says, “Always, baby.”
Tennessee brushes a piece of blonde hair off Z’s forehead, tucking it behind her ear, and her cheeks are just a little pink when she says, “And you’re mine.”
Ryan feels, all of a sudden, like he’s on the outside, a voyeur looking in, taking things that aren’t his. He hates himself a little bit extra when he realizes that that’s something they’re fully aware of, and they’re so fucking good that they give it to him, anyways.
The sandwiches are suddenly just a little less delicious, tasting dry and guilty on the back of Ryan’s tongue.
--
The creepy, ancient bell on the door jangles on a slow Thursday morning when he’s working the counter alone, and Kevin looks up to see the guy from Tuesday, the one with the long, scraggly hair and the eyes that are maybe a little bit too bright for the badass look he’s got going. The guy who Kevin is almost definitely sure is El Koala, oh god. There are phantom thumbs digging into imaginary bruises on Kevin’s thighs, reminding him of Tuesday night, and he has to swallow a couple of times before he can speak.
“Hi,” Kevin says, suddenly not sure where his hands are or what to do with them. “What can I, um. What can I get you?”
The guy’s teeth dig into his lip for a second, and then he says, voice a little rough, like maybe he’s been smoking or something, like maybe he’s a smoker, and actually, Kevin can kind of smell cigarettes on him as he shuffles a little closer to the counter, and normally, yes, Kevin thinks smoking is disgusting, but the idea is going straight to his gut and he just thinks that this guy would look so pretty taking a deep drag from a cigarette, letting smoke curl out from—“Double shot of espresso”, startling Kevin out of his trance.
Kevin fumbles with the till for a second, bobbing his head awkwardly. “Yes, right, okay, that’ll be, um, two seventy five, and—“ he hesitates, but thinks that it’ll be worse if he announces a double shot for El Koala, seriously, “—can I get a name?”
The guy’s mouth curls into another one of his weird not-quite-smiles, and he says, “Mike. Mike Carden.”
Kevin pretends that his lungs aren’t tight with some weird, fluttery new sensation and says, trying not to let his voice shake, “Coming right up, Mike Carden.”
He’s pouring the espresso when Mike says, startling him, “You seem pretty cool.”
Kevin bites his lip, closing his eyes against the tangle of, You’re the voice that talks to me at night and tells me it’s okay to be weird, and, you want to do dirty, dirty things to me, and, I don’t even know what to do with that except yes, please, please, and then he’s picturing himself somewhere entirely else, saying, please, Mike, please, please, and he’s hard. He’s standing in front of the espresso machine, paper cup in hand, trembling, and he’s hard. “I’m really not,” he says, giving a weak laugh and trying so, so hard not to drop the espresso. Kevin is not anything that has ever even remotely resembled cool. Kevin is, in Nick’s precise wording, antithetical to cool.
Mike is looking at him when he turns around, eyes dark and considering, and Kevin is grateful that the counter hides him from the waist down. Mike reaches forward and eases the cup from Kevin’s still-shaking fingers, handing him a neatly folded five. He smiles for real this time, saying “I know these things, kid,” and “keep the change,” and, “catch you around.”
Kevin closes his eyes and tries to will away the sick surge of want that’s twisting in his gut. It doesn’t really work.
--
“This is supposed to be easy,” Ryan complains, head in Z’s lap, feet in Tennessee’s. “I’m supposed to meet him, and it’s supposed to be striking and beautiful and easy, or at the very least poetically tragic or something, but this is just awkward and stupid and I feel like my arms are too long and like maybe,” he pauses, scratching at his nose, “like maybe my skin is just on too tight.”
Tennessee squeezes his ankle. “I don’t think that’s really how it works.”
Z pets his hair, stroking it away from his forehead and scratching a little behind his ears. “Nothing in life is easy, dumbass, I don’t know why you’re expecting love to be.”
Ryan huffs. “It’s easy for you two.”
They exchange a look, a look like they’re on this entirely different wavelength, this look like they have a language all their own that Ryan isn’t ever going to understand. If he tried to talk to Jon with just his eyes, he’s pretty sure that Jon would just think he was high or had something in his eye. “I think,” Tennessee says slowly, drawing it out like she’s still thinking about it, “I think maybe that’s because everything else is so hard, you know?”
“The one werewolf bonus,” Z agrees, snorting, which, really, is just bullshit, because Z is ten times stronger than Ryan and can lift him up over her head and can smell what people ate for breakfast when they sweat, and even though that second thing is sort of gross, Ryan is still jealous.
“I just wish there were a way to know if he’s interested,” Ryan complains, because, while he knows they know this, they’re still just talking to each other with minute facial expressions, and he’s feeling ignored. He’s in love with his boss, his life is tragic, he deserves attention.
Z leans down and presses a kiss to his forehead. “I know, baby,” she says soothingly. For a minute, Ryan closes his eyes lets himself pretend that he’s still hers, that there are still arms he belongs in, that there’s still someone he can adore, can follow, who can tell him what to do so he doesn’t hurt himself and everyone else all the time.
“I miss you,” he says, barely even a whisper.
“We’re right here,” Tennessee says, rubbing comforting circles over the hole in the knee of Ryan’s jeans.
Z, though, she knows; looks down at him and smiles tightly, says, “I know,” and, “me too, sometimes,” and, “everything has to keep moving forward, Ry.”
Ryan doesn’t feel like he’s moving at all.
--
“This is a terrible idea,” Jon tells Demi seriously. “Truly terrible.”
“No,” she counters, sinking to the floor and crossing her legs Indian style, “this is totally the best idea I have had in months.” Not waiting for Jon to argue—because Jon is going to argue, because he’s right—she opens up the giant bottle in her lap. It’s got an ominously handmade-looking label, across which is scrawled the word PIE in thick black sharpie. “You’ve been mooning over Ross for like, six billion years, the only way to cure your weepy woman bullshit is with pie.”
Jon doesn’t like the fact that every time Demi says the word pie, it’s emphasized. It’s never “pie,” it’s always pie. Pie. He doesn’t think he likes the look of this pie, although he kind of has to admit that it smells kind of awesomely like actual pie. “I don’t think—“
Demi shakes her head. “You’re not allowed to think, Jon.”
“But—“
“Drink this or I will bite you in the shins,” she says, narrowing her eyes at him. She’ll do it, too. Jon has seen her lick Ross’s face when he starts arguing with her about the supposed glory that is Korean pop music.
Jon hesitates.
Demi leans forward, opening her mouth threateningly and eyeing Jon’s pants leg like it’s a piece of steak.
Jon groans and caves, sinking to the floor and reaching for the jug. “This is me saying, for the record, that this is not going to end well.”
Demi nods solemnly. “Oh no, I definitely agree. Pie is dangerous.”
Jon sighs and throws back a gulp of the stuff, expecting it to taste like vaguely apple-y nail polish remover.
Unfortunately for Jon and everything he’s ever believed in, the pie is delicious. Which is how he ends up drinking over half the jug on his own, sprawling out in Demi’s lap begging for headscratches, weeping inconsolably about the tragedy that is his massive crush on his weird, spindly, pretty new employee, and eventually rifling through his stack of papers to find Ross’s number so as to confess his undying love and general desire to get him naked—and, most unfortunately, pie is to blame for the fact that when he can’t find Ross’s number, Demi informs him that it’s an emergency, and Jon does exactly what any responsible employer would do in an emergency.
“An emergency in your pants,” Demi giggles as Jon fumbles for his phone.
“Shut up,” Jon slurs, thinking absently that he doesn’t remember his phone being so wriggly. “This is important.” Ross is all delicate and beautiful and kind of hilariously earnest in his love of Mark Twain, and Jon wants to pick him up like a princess and carry him off into a land of wonder and beauty and pie.
“Yes, no, totally,” Demi agrees, waving a hand, “carry on, carry on.”
--
“God, fuck, what?” Z grumbles blearily into the phone. “It’s four in the fucking morning.”
“It’s an emergency,” a guy says on the other end of the line, slurred and miserable sounding. “It’s an emergency, and you’re the—the contact. The emergency contact.”
Z pinches the bridge of her nose. “The only person who has ever thought it was a reasonable idea to list me as an emergency contact is Ryan, and he’s right here. Who is this?” When she says his name, Ryan stirs in his sleep, eyelids fluttering. “Shhh,” she says to him, stroking his hair out of his face gently. “Go to sleep, baby.”
The voice on the other line makes a pitiful noise. “He’s there?”
“…Yeah?” Z says, scrunching up her eyebrows. “Who is this?”
There’s another sad, aborted noise and then the line cuts off.
Z looks from the phone in her hand to Ryan, then back again. “Oh,” she says, out loud, feeling all sorts of short bus special. “Fucking hell, Ry.”
Ryan doesn’t even have the decency to twitch.
--
Mike was bitten when he was eleven, and he hasn’t wanted to risk infecting anyone, and humans mostly all smell like shit, anyway. So, okay, maybe he hasn’t kissed anyone, unless you count his mom, once, on the cheek, when he turned sixteen and left home and she’d said, “I love you, baby, I understand, be safe,” and he hadn’t been able to go without doing something that made him feel, just for a second, like a good son.
So the fact that, when he goes back to the coffee shop on Friday morning, he totally fails to order coffee and somehow ends up tugging Kevin halfway across the counter to suck marks into the skin of his jaw—well, yeah, that’s kind of new and maybe a little fucking weird.
Kevin is making soft, sugar-sweet noises, lashes fluttering against his cheeks, head tipped back, and Mike says, voice raw with the tightness in his throat, “Come home with me.”
Kevin pulls back, just enough that Mike can see blown pupils and flushed cheeks, and says, voice shaking a little, “I just. I need to get Joe to watch the counter.” He pauses, and Mike waits, realizing after a moment that he’s got his hand clenched in the collar of Kevin’s shirt. Exhaling, he makes himself unfurl his fingers enough that Kevin can ease out of his grip.
“Sorry,” Mike says, swallowing against the wrongness of letting Kevin go.
Kevin gives him a tiny smile, flags of color still high on his cheeks. “No, it’s—really, it’s fine, just. I’ll, um. I’ll be right back?” And then he’s shuffling off to the stockroom, presumably to find this mysterious Joe.
Mike waits, pulse thundering in his ears. Mine, he thinks, so firm and definitive that it makes his chest ache.
--
“So, I’m here to clear a couple things up,” Z says, planting her elbows on the counter and leaning across it to peer at Jon. “Firstly, Ryan and I are not together. We just sometimes fuck. And secondly, you’re an idiot.”
Jon blinks slowly at her, like a tiny, bearded owl. “Uh,” he says. “I don’t even know where to start with that one. Who are you?”
Z narrows her eyes. “You called me last night, asshole.”
Realization dawns on Jon’s face, immediately followed by a look of resigned pain. “Right,” he says slowly. “So, I’m just going to go in the back and commit seppuku now, is that cool?”
“Well,” Z says, reaching over and patting Jon’s head kindly, “no, because we have things to do, and I don’t think I want to wait as long as it’s going to take for you to google how to commit seppuku.”
“Things? We’re doing things?”
Z nods wisely. “Oh yes.” She gestures towards the walls filled with guitars. “Pick one, we only have like three hours before Ryan’s shift, and he always leaves early so he can have extra time to ogle you without being expected to deal with customers.”
“Uh,” says Jon, eyebrows climbing his forehead, and, “I don’t—“ and, “Has anyone ever told you that you’re kind of terrifying for someone so small?”
Z rolls her eyes. “Watch it, bitch, you smell like cats.”
Jon twitches. “What?”
“Cats,” Z explains patiently, “are delicious.”
--
Ryan and Z broke up a long time before Tennessee came along. Ryan is pretty sure it’s at least ninety eight percent his fault. He knows that, if he could love anyone, he would have loved Z. But he couldn’t, and it went just like it had gone with Keltie—she’d been so, so in love with him, had loved him so much that he hurt for her, had ached with the guilt of not loving her back. The difference, really, was that after Ryan broke down, after he fell apart at four in the morning and told Z that he didn’t, that there was something wrong with him, that he just couldn’t say it and mean it, Z didn’t steal his dog and try to burn his house down.
She’d just smiled and kissed him on the nose and said, “Am I supposed to hold that against you?”
Ryan had blinked at her with sticky eyelashes and said, voice cracking a little, “Probably.”
She’d hummed a little and said, thoughtfully, “Would you feel better, if I took it out on you?”
Ryan hadn’t had to think for even a second before he’d said, “Yes.”
She’d gone down on him for two hours straight and hadn’t let him come until he was begging, sobbing, “I’m sorry, I’m fucking sorry,” over and over.
After, when he was still shaking, she’d kissed his damp cheek and said, “I know, baby, and I’m always going to forgive you.”
Things mostly stayed like that until Tennessee.
--
Kevin is panting, straining up and trying to get closer to Mike despite the gearshift in the way. He doesn’t really remember how he went from working in the coffee shop to this in under an hour, but Mike had been all insistent and grabby and every single part of Kevin thinks that’s awesome.
“Now, please, come on,” Kevin begs into Mike’s neck, shuddering when Mike’s fingers dip under the waistband of his jeans, pressing into the hot, damp place where his thigh meets his groin. Kevin is pretty sure that this isn’t how he’d meant for things to go at all. He’s actually pretty sure that he’d meant for there to be low lighting and chocolates and roses and maybe an overlarge teddy bear.
Well, one out of four isn’t that bad.
Mike’s fingers graze the head of Kevin’s cock, a fingernail catching gently on the tender skin, and just like that, Kevin is coming.
Kevin barely has time to think, That was really embarrassing, before Mike’s hand is on his throat, thumb stroking over his Adam’s apple, and he’s climbing over the gearshift to straddle Kevin’s lap. He licks his way up Kevin’s jaw and stops, mouth hovering barely an inch from Kevin’s lips. “It’s not,” he says firmly, his other hand sliding into Kevin’s hair and tipping his head back so he has to look up into Mike’s eyes, still visible in the low light. “It’s really—“ he presses a kiss to Kevin’s temple, then drags his mouth down to lick over Kevin’s pulse point, “—definitely not.”
Kevin swallows. “I didn’t—I didn’t think I said that out loud.”
Mike freezes, just goes totally still, and his eyes squeeze shut, like he’s in pain. Kevin counts almost all the way to sixty before Mike moves again. “Yeah,” he says, finally, “I don’t think you did.”
That doesn’t actually make any sense. “What?”
One of Mike’s eyes opens, and he doesn’t look especially happy. He kind of looks like Nick does when he finds out that Joe has used all of his special healthy fruit goop as hair gel—and the fact that Kevin is thinking about either of them when he has come drying in his pants is kind of horrifying. Mike sighs heavily. “We should probably get out of the car for this, Jonas.”
Kevin looks around, startled for a moment, and remembers that they’re in Mike’s garage, that they’d pulled in and the door had closed and the light had been so dim, and then Mike was touching him, and just like that, Kevin is getting hard again. It’s weird, because Kevin’s body isn’t like this, doesn’t do this; it normally takes him almost an hour to get hard again.
Mike exhales sharply and shifts, just a little, rubbing over the front of Kevin’s jeans. He tips his forehead against Kevin’s, so they’re nose-to-nose. “Come on,” he says softly, not unkindly, and Kevin knows, he knows, that Mike means, Come on, let’s go inside, but Kevin reaches up and twines his fingers through Mike’s hair, tugging him down, and Mike says, almost into his mouth, “No, kid, we need—“
Kevin closes the gap, licking into Mike’s mouth, and Mike lets out this ragged, animal noise, and then he’s kissing back, hard and hungry, and there’s a strange sensation, like the flip of a switch, in Kevin’s head, and—
—minemineminemorecomeoncomeonclosermore—
Kevin whimpers and drags Mike closer, pushing up against him, shoving his hands under the back of Mike’s shirt, desperate for skin, and there’s this foreign ache, in the bones of his chest, this screaming need to be closer, closer, closer, and Kevin is suddenly so, so afraid that he can’t get close enough, that no amount of skin is going to be quite enough—
—pleasemorefuckgodpleasemineminemoreplease—
Mike is panting into his mouth, fingers tight in Kevin’s hair, and there’s a whine building in his throat, high and desperate, and Kevin wants, wants like he’s starving, like he can’t get enough air—
—thisisitminemine—
“Mine, fuck, mine,” Mike chokes out, wrenching away from Kevin’s mouth, sucking bruises into the line of Kevin’s jaw, into the side of his throat, and Kevin can’t think anything except—
—yespleaseyoursyoursplease—
Mike’s hands are shoving Kevin’s shirt up, now, yanking it off over his head, and he’s fumbling at the side of the seat, reaching, until something shifts and Kevin is jerked back with the seat as it reclines and slides back, and Mike is moving down his body, licking down the slope of his collarbone, teeth grazing over a nipple, and Kevin lifts his hips up to help as Mike pops the button on his jeans and yanks them down with his underwear. Mike scoots back, kneeling down in the narrow space between the seat and the dashboard. Kevin closes his eyes and braces himself as Mike’s breath ghosts over the head of his cock, but then Mike is hooking Kevin’s legs over his shoulders, lifting Kevin’s thighs and hips up, and his mouth goes further down, further back, and—
—mineneedcloserfuckfuckfuckwanttotaste—
Kevin shouts when Mike’s tongue flicks out against his hole, tracing the taut ridges of muscle. Mike’s fingers dig into the muscles on the backs of Kevin’s thighs, and he presses his tongue harder against Kevin, pushing inside, and Kevin—
—godpleasepleaseijustneedmikemikepleasecomeonplease—
Kevin has no idea what he’s asking for, no idea what’s even happening anymore, just that this isn’t close enough, not nearly close enough, and he’s dizzy with the slick slide of Mike’s tongue inside him.
Two of Mike’s fingers press against him, and Kevin jerks back from the burn, but Mike follows, pressing closer, fingers an unrelenting pressure, and Kevin throws his head back, mouth working silently with the—
—hurtsgoodhurtspleasepleasemore—
And Mike has them all the way in now, and the stretch is raw and new and then he’s moving them, scissoring them apart, flicking his tongue down between them, and Kevin can taste it, can taste—
—likecherrycokeandsunshinefuckletmehearyou—
Mike crooks his fingers up hard, jerking up against something in Kevin that makes his vision go gorgeously, spectacularly white, and Kevin sobs out, “Mike, please, please,” like he’s drowning.
Mike’s fingers twitch up again, again, again, and Kevin’s back arches against the seat, feet braced against the dash, and he’s so close, so—
—closemikepleasemoremoremore—
Mike slides a third finger inside, and that’s not what Kevin meant at all, but it’s such a sharp, sudden stretch that tears leak out of the corners of Kevin’s eyes and he jerks against Mike’s mouth, hips twitching.
Mike spreads his fingers wide and licks up, draws one of Kevin’s balls into his mouth and then keeps going, dragging his tongue up the underside of Kevin’s cock, licking over the head. Kevin strains closer, trying to push back onto Mike’s fingers and up against his mouth at the same time, and Mike obliges, pressing his fingers deeper, curling them upwards. He licks at Kevin’s cock again, a wet slide of hothothot and then his teeth are grazing over it, barely there, but sharp all the same, that’s all it takes.
—goodgoodcomeoncomeformemineminemine—
Kevin comes messily, all over his belly and chest, but Mike doesn’t stop, just takes the head of Kevin’s softening cock into his mouth and sucks hard, hard enough to be too much, way too much, and Kevin spasms with an aftershock so strong he’s almost coming again; throws his head back and cries out. Mike swipes his fingers through the mess on Kevin’s stomach and reaches down, still sucking hard on his cock, to slide his slick fingers into Kevin as he withdraws the others.
—gonna—ineed—fuckfuckfuck—comeon—
Mike’s thoughts are blurred and loud and almost frenzied as he works Kevin open with two sticky fingers, and Kevin can see images, now, flashing on the backs of his lids—Mike’s cock pressing into him, his arm pinning Kevin in place, braced across his throat; Mike’s whole hand, slick, twisting into Kevin; Mike biting down on the inside of Kevin’s thigh, drawing bright, bright blood; Mike bending Kevin over the side of a bed, pressing into him dry; Kevin’s own face, mouth working, eyes squeezed shut, tears slipping out from under his lids—and Kevin, for one quiet, utterly clear moment, thinks,
—yes—
and
—please—
Mike stops, hand stilling, and draws back. His tongue darts out, licking over his lower lip, eyes at half mast. “I—you—“
Kevin meets his eyes, almost defiant, and shifts his hips, working Mike’s fingers in deeper, and says, “Yes,” and, “please.”
Mike’s eyes close, and he breathes hard through his nose. “You don’t even—you don’t understand what this is.” His fingers move, pressing hard against whatever it is that makes Kevin’s heart just stop like that, god.
Kevin’s eyes flutter shut without him telling them to, and he says, voice cracking a little, “I don’t have to understand to know I want it.”
Mike’s fingers withdraw, and for a moment, Kevin is afraid, terrified that he’s done something wrong, that Mike is—
—pleasedon’tgoineedyouneedyouneedplease—
Mike’s fingers stroke over the backs of Kevin’s thighs, trailing through the fine hairs there, and he presses a kiss to the side of Kevin’s knee. “I’m not,” he says softly. “I’m not, I swear.” He pulls back a little further, though, and Kevin panics for exactly as long as it takes for Mike to yank his shirt off and undo the fly on his jeans. He doesn’t try to take them off in the cramped space, just scoots back up and covers Kevin’s body with his own.
The tension leaves Kevin’s body the instant Mike’s skin is on his, and he twines his legs around Mike’s without quite intending to.
Mike’s cock is trapped between them, hard and digging into the skin of Kevin’s soft one. The insides of Kevin’s thighs are sticky with his own come, and they scrape uncomfortably across the rough fabric of Mike’s jeans. Kevin breaths with it, rubs closer, dragging Mike’s cock through the cooling, sticky mess around his own, and Mike’s breathing quickens.
—thisreallyisn’tagoodplaceforohfuckohfuckfuckfuck—
Mike ruts against the slippery crevice of Kevin’s thigh and across Kevin’s cock, pushing roughly against the softness, and Kevin breathes hard, through his mouth, and says, “Come on, co—“
—meoncomeonpleasemikepleaseplease—
Mike shifts his hips back, just enough to reach down and line himself up, rubbing the head of his cock against the stretched, slick ring of muscle, barely pushing forward.
Kevin tightens his legs around Mike’s and pulls him closer, deeper, and all the air in his lungs goes out at once as Mike thrusts in.
The world is so, so slow. Kevin can feel air stroking over his skin like water.
Mike says, voice ragged, against Kevin’s ear, “Mine.”
Kevin opens and closes his mouth a few times before he can make sound come out. Mike is totally still inside him, waiting, and one of his hands is tight over Kevin’s hipbone, the other holding himself up over Kevin, covering him, surrounding him. “Yours,” Kevin murmurs, utterly content in the knowledge that it’s somehow, irrevocably, true.
The world snaps back into focus as Mike moves, pulling almost all the way out and thrusting back in hard, hard enough that Kevin is hitched up in the seat, again, again, again. Kevin’s spent cock twitches, and slowly starts to fill as Mike finds the right angle, moving faster. Mike’s teeth scrape over Kevin’s throat, down to the juncture of his neck and shoulder, and then he’s digging them in, biting down, and Kevin is crying out and jerking helplessly up, muscles tightening around Mike so hard that Kevin could swear he can feel every blood vessel in Mike’s cock humming with his heartbeat.
Mike groans, slowing down for a moment, and then speeding back up, teeth still digging into the meat of Kevin’s shoulder. The skin starts to break, Kevin can feel it ripping, and his cock twitches in response, and then he’s flying, a foot outside his body and buzzing with electricity as Mike slams into him, biting harder and harder and—
—minefuckmorei'msorryi’msorrygodfuckmoremore—
As the skin breaks and Kevin starts to bleed, Mike jerks hard, shoving into Kevin once, twice. It’s rough, painful, but claiming, and it’s exactly, exactly right—it’s exactly close enough, just for a second. Kevin goes limp as Mike closes his mouth around the bite and licks at it, tongue rough, scraping over the raw wound, and comes. Mike’s hand tightens over Kevin’s hip, bracing him, and, thrusting in deep, he follows after.
—yesfuckyessorrysofuckingsorry—
Kevin looks at Mike with heavy-lidded eyes, feels the newness crawling down his veins and wriggling through the aftershocks of his orgasm, through the feedback loop of Mike’s. He reaches up a still-shaking hand and strokes over Mike’s hair, pushing a sweaty piece out of his eyes. “Could you not be?”
Mike laughs weakly, head dropping onto Kevin’s wounded shoulder, and says, “I don’t—“
Kevin ducks his head and pushes his nose against Mike’s. “Yours,” he says, firmly, and feels a sweet ache all through his chest with the truth of it. “So shut up.”
Mike’s mouth twitches. “I’ve never—I just bit you. You bled. I’m—you got, right, somewhere in there, the whole—“
“Werewolf thing?” Kevin asks, snorting. “I got that when you started talking inside my head, yes. And I kind of suspected something was up when you tried to, you know, claim me while I was working. Yes, Mike, I picked up on the werewolf thing. I’m not actually mentally deficient, whatever my brothers will try to tell you.” Nick, especially. Nick has made pamphlets.
Mike’s face cracks around a grin, but he immediately looks contrite. “I bit you,” he says, swallowing, “I’m a werewolf, and I bit you, so you get that you might be—“
Kevin feels the moon settling like a shadow inside him, lets the awareness of being Mike’s, of being claimed by him, owned by him, by this, settle over him. “Yeah,” he says, smiling, then wincing at the dryness of his lips as they crack a little. “But whatever I might be, I’m definitely yours.”
--
“Uh,” Spencer says, opening his door and finding a pink-cheeked-with-rage Queen Patrick standing there, arms crossed. “Can I, uh. Can I help you?” He means to add Your Highness, but Queen Patrick is all growly and huffy and kind of looks like a ginger hedgehog, and Spencer has trouble referring to him with titles.
Queen Patrick shoulders past him into Spencer’s chambers and starts pacing, hands locked behind his back, twisting around each other. “Handmaiden Smith,” Queen Patrick starts, then stops awkwardly.
Spencer waits, because Queen Patrick really fucking hates being interrupted, and Spencer doesn’t want to end up vomiting butterflies or anything. Queen Patrick’s ragey magic gets creepy and creative and Spencer hasn’t ever borne the brunt of it, but he’s seen it happen to all the Alexes at least once, it’s just never good.
“Handmaiden Smith,” Queen Patrick says again, lifting up his beflowered trucker hat to run a hand through sweaty, thinning hair, “I have a task for you.”
--
“So, uh,” Kevin says, when they collect themselves and stumble, sticky, out of Mike’s car and into his house. “That—I don’t—I don’t normally do that.”
Mike scrubs his hand through his hair, looking sort of pained. “Yeah, no, me neither.”
“There was just this, like—“ Kevin struggles to describe it.
“Pull,” Mike finishes, hooking a finger through Kevin’s belt loop and reeling him in. “Here,” he adds, pressing a knuckle against the skin right under Kevin’s navel. “Like someone’s got a hand around your spine, pulling you—“ he yanks, and Kevin trips over his feet, falling heavily against Mike’s chest, “closer.”
Kevin pushes closer, until he can rest his cheek against the skin of Mike’s collarbone where the neck of his shirt is tugged down. Immediately, the pull lessens, and the humming in Kevin’s bones quiets to a murmur. “Yeah,” he mumbles into Mike’s skin, “like that.”
Mike’s chest rumbles with what sounds like it might be a laugh. “You’re not freaked out at all, are you, kid?”
Kevin shrugs. “I mean, me freaking out isn’t going to make it stop happening.” He’s learned that after years living with Joe—he’s been set on fire more than once, okay, not a lot phases him anymore. Follow that up with Frankie’s generally traumatizing existence, and being literally, physically attracted to a ridiculously attractive guy who’s attracted back? It’s really not the sort of thing that Kevin is going to scream and rail at the universe about.
Mike’s hand smoothes over Kevin’s hair, fingers tangling in the curls at the base of his neck. “You’re not afraid?”
Kevin tips his head back to see can look up at Mike’s face. His mouth is pinched. “Of what?”
Mike snorts. “Me. The—what I am.”
Kevin tucks his hands into the back of Mike’s waistband, rubbing his thumbs over the dip in Mike’s spine. “What’s wrong with what you are?” Kevin’s dealt with being something wrong for his entire life. Mike, at least, can’t help what he is, and it doesn’t have anything to do with what kind of person he is. “You’re nice.”
“Yeah,” Mike says, laughing a little, pressing a kiss against Kevin’s forehead that makes him feel warm all the way to his bones. “Yeah, I guess.”
Kevin straightens up a little so he can press a kiss to Mike’s mouth. “No guesses,” he says firmly. “You’re nice. I like you.” That’s a lie, just a little. He doesn’t like Mike, he wants to crawl under his skin and stay safe there, curled up in his quiet and his steadiness. That should probably feel more weird than it does.
Mike squeezes him briefly. “This is new for me, you know.”
Kevin nods, burrowing back down against Mike’s chest. “I don’t really date,” he admits, and it’s not as embarrassing to say is it is when he’s talking to Selena or Demi or his brothers. “Like. Not at all.”
Mike takes a breath, like he’s hesitating, then says, so, so quietly that Kevin can barely hear him, “I hadn’t kissed anyone until, you know… today. That.”
Kevin sucks in a breath and forces himself not to ask the most obvious question, the How? How has nobody gotten you before me? How is this all just—“Mine,” he says, fiercely, squeezing close enough to Mike’s chest that it’s probably a little uncomfortable for him. “That just means you’re mine.” It sounds nice, sounds right, like maybe Kevin is supposed to be claiming Mike back, like maybe that’s necessary.
Mike swallows, hard, like maybe he understands, and pulls back enough that he and Kevin are eye to eye. “Well,” he says, a little too lightly to be anything but strained, “I guess, if we’re each other’s, or whatever, we should maybe, I don’t know, talk.”
Kevin laughs despite himself, a short burst of hysteria. “I would kind of like to know what your favorite color is,” he says, trying very hard not to grin. “Maybe, say, what you do for a living. Your middle name. Birthday, even.”
Mike reaches up and tucks a curl behind Kevin’s ear, trailing his fingers down the side of Kevin’s neck, down to his chest. “Red, secret radio host, Stephen, and December third,” respectively, he says, all in one breath, beaming. “You?”
Kevin’s heart beats funny for a moment or two, but he manages to say, “Purple, I run a coffee shop with my brothers, Kevin is actually my middle name, my first name is Paul, like my dad, and November fifth.”
Mike’s smile widens, crooked and hungry and sweet. “Awesome. Introductions are complete. Now I want to fuck you on the couch.”
Kevin’s gut clenches with a sudden rush of want, almost painful. “Yeah,” he chokes out, finding it strangely difficult to breathe, “yeah, that sounds like a plan.”
--
“Welcome to T-Dogs Tall Glass of You Know You Wanna Hear It,” Tyson purrs sexily into the mic.
“That is such a fucking stupid name,” Ian says, rolling his eyes. “Like, seriously, can’t we name it something that doesn’t make you sound like a goddamned wigger?”
Tyson ignores him. Tyson is street, yo. Tyson is badass. “As usual, last night’s KCobrazone sucked balls,” he goes on. “The Cobra sounded like a dying Spanish-speaking whale.”
“Wow,” Ian says, deadpan, “you’re really fucking creative, there.”
“Aw, Crawfish,” Nash drawls, scratching at his chin scruff and kicking Ian under the table—which Tyson would be grateful for, if it didn’t just end up leading to them playing gross amounts of footsie like it always does. “Dude, go easy on T-Dog, he’s a fragile flower and shit.”
“You two are gross,” Justin complains. “Can you please stop touching feet? Feet are nasty.”
“Naw,” Nash says easily. “His feet are cute.”
Justin makes a gagging noise, and Tyson spares a solid moment to lament about the total, tragic uselessness of his team before launching back into his scathing and witty commentary about last night’s KCobrazone.
--
“So,” Kevin says, still flushed and panting a little, later. He’s got his head on Mike’s chest, and it’s—it’s nice, it’s comfortable. He feels like he’s home. “So, you’re, uh, you’re part of a secret radio show?” He tries not to let his voice crack embarrassingly, but a syllable or two might go into the six-year-old girl range, just a little.
Mike’s mouth quirks. “Something like that. Except for the part where you make it sound like it’s cool.” His fingers are tapping out absent rhythms on Kevin’s hip, a gentle tippity-tap reminding Kevin that he’s there, that Kevin’s here.
Kevin clears his throat. “You should, uh. You should tell me about it.”
“Well,” Mike says, shifting a little bit, like maybe he’s uncomfortable, “I run it with my friend Gabe. Friend is maybe the wrong word, whatever. I run it with Gabe, who is a guy I know and kind of a dick. Anyways.” He pauses, chewing his lip. “It’s basically us talking about weird shit, and us and our friends covering random songs, and us playing music we think is actually good.”
Kevin is biting through his lip in an attempt not to burst into hysterical laughter, because Mike is El Koala, and Kevin is pretty sure that there’s no way this is actually happening to him. “I see,” he says, a little choked.
Mike either doesn’t notice Kevin’s tone or ignores it. “Yeah. I’m pretty sure that, like, three people have listened to it ever. It’s not a big deal.”
Kevin decides that he’s not going to be able to contain himself much longer, because he’s lame, okay, and pushes, just a little, “So, you have, like, secret radio DJ names and stuff?”
“Yeahhhh,” Mike says, rolling his eyes. “Mine is tragically uncool. Let’s see,” he holds up his fingers and starts ticking them off, “we’ve got Gabe in charge, also known as the Cobra, and then there’s Brendon—Brendon’s this kid who sings, his voice is the shit—and he’s Flounder—“ Mike snorts. “Okay, maybe that’s not that cool, but he picked it himself, so that doesn’t count. There’s Gerard, the sound effects guy, and he does this serial romance story about a dinosaur in love with a unicorn, don’t ask, he’s Uncle Jiggy. There’s Mikey, his kid brother who runs the music, is the Kobra Kid—that’s with a K—and then Bill, you met him, he does…” Mike cuts off, scratching his head. “Actually, I’m pretty sure all Bill does is blow Gabe in the utility closet. He just followed me in one day and hasn’t left. We were roommates in college.”
Kevin is grinning like an idiot, he can’t help it. “And you are…”
Mike groans and buries his face in Kevin’s hair. It feels kind of nice. “El Koala,” he says, like it’s painful.
A giggle slips out of Kevin’s throat, and he says, as solemnly as he can, “It’s Uruguayan slang for badass.”
Mike sits up so fast that Kevin tumbles off the couch and onto the floor. “You knew?” he asks, voice suspiciously close to a squawk. “The fuck, Jonas?”
Kevin beams at him—he should maybe be sorry, but the only emotion running down his connection to Mike is shock, not anger, so he doesn’t even try to stop smiling. “You’re really good, actually. I loved your cover of Africa.”
Mike buries his head in his hands. “I can’t believe you heard that.” He makes a weird, pained noise, and Kevin tries not to laugh at him. “How long have you—“
“Since the fourth show,” Kevin admits, suddenly a little uncomfortable. “It’s been kind of—“
“That’s five years, Jonas,” Mike says, peeking through his fingers, face incredulous. “That’s five fucking years.”
Kevin shrugs, looking away. It’s not something he should be ashamed of—KCobrazone is what got him through college, is what made him confident enough to start the coffee shop. On the other hand, maybe that’s why he’s ashamed. To Mike, it’s this lame thing he does, and to Kevin, it’s this huge, years-long thing that’s kept him afloat when things get hard. “Yeah,” he says, studying the blue-gray of Mike’s carpet intently.
Mike opens his mouth to say something, but right then, the door bangs open hard enough that it rebounds off the wall, and two girls tumble in.
“Carden!” the tiny blonde one shouts gleefully, flinging her arms wide and throwing her key ring in one direction, her purse in the other. “Get your half naked ass of my sofa and go fuck in your own room, Ryan’s coming over.”
The other one, taller, with a sweet, round face, waves awkwardly at Kevin. “You must be Mike’s mate,” she says, smiling and ducking under the other one’s arm to come hold out her hand for Kevin to shake. “I’m Tennessee.”
Kevin blushes down to the roots of his hair. “I, uh, I guess I am,” he says, biting his lip and trying not to grin at the deeply uncomfortable look on Mike’s face.
“Awww, you guess?” the blonde one says, giggling and flopping down onto the couch, limbs akimbo, head landing on Mike’s thigh. “That’s so cute. You’re precious. You’re a poodle.” She reaches out, like she’s going to pinch Kevin’s cheek, but Mike bats her hands away.
“Get the fuck off, Z, you weigh a ton,” he grouses, shoving halfheartedly at the blonde girl’s shoulders.
“She does not,” Tennessee protests, wagging a chastising finger at Mike. “She’s dainty.”
“Elegant,” Z chimes in, pouting up at Mike.
“Fine-boned and fair,” Tennessee agrees.
“Graceful, even.”
“Petit.”
“Delicate.”
“About to get her hair yanked out if she doesn’t get off my lap,” Mike says, rolling his eyes.
“Oooh,” Z says, glancing at Kevin and waggling her eyebrows. She’s kind of terrifying. “Kinky, Carden, but you’re not my type.”
Mike snorts and stands up, dumping Z on the floor beside Kevin. “Hi,” she says, batting huge eyes at him. “I’m Carden’s roommate, by the way.” She extends a hand and Kevin shakes it, a little dazed. Her eyes are so big. “Z. Z Berg.”
Mike kicks at her thigh and holds his hand out to Kevin, helping him to his feet. “Ignore them both,” Mike says, though he looks like he’s trying very hard not to smile. “They’re horrible, corrupting influences.”
“Mike,” Kevin says, because it seems necessary to point out, “you abducted me from my workplace and took my virginity in your car. Like, a few hours ago. After meeting me twice.”
Mike pinches the bridge of his nose as the girls burst into a flurry of laughter. “It was my virginity too, kid, I don’t think that counts as corruption.” The girls just laugh harder.
Through a stream of hiccupping giggles, Z says, “Damn, Carden, you move fast.”
Tennessee reaches out and pats Kevin on the arm. “Now, now, dear, I’m sure they’re just trying not to waste time.” Her smile is sweet, but there’s a sharp edge to it that makes Kevin feel nervous. “You know how eager puppies are.”
Mike smacks at her hand. “He’s not a poodle, I’m not a puppy, fuck off, I’m older than you.” He jabs a finger in Z’s direction. “And I swear to god, if I hear Ryan Ross make sex noises today, I’m going to eat him. On one of his fucking sandwiches.” Huffing, he grabs Kevin’s arm and turns, heading for the bedroom hallway.
Kevin doesn’t even pretend to understand what’s going on, just waves cheerfully over his shoulder at the girls and lets Mike drag him away. “Bye!” he calls, not looking back, “I think it was probably nice to meet you!”
The sound of feminine giggles persist until Mike tugs him into a bedroom and shuts the door.
--
“Good morning, starshine,” Greta singsongs, hopping onto the bed and planting a big, messy kiss on Ray’s cheek. “The earth says hellooo.”
Ray makes a sweet little whuffling noise and shifts a little in his sleep. “Nnnnrrrrghh.”
Greta hikes up her nightshirt and knees her way up the bed to straddle his hips, sitting down heavily and digging her knees in. “Last warning,” she tells him sweetly.
Ray cracks an eye. “I’ll never surrender,” he says groggily, throwing a hand over his eyes. “You’re a terrorist. A terrorist of the bed.”
Greta snickers. “Yeah, yeah,” she says, rolling her eyes and digging her fingers into his sides, tickling him without mercy.
He spasms like a dying fish and makes a high, garbled noise, flailing. “You’re eeeeeeeeviiiiiiiiiiiiiil,” he wheezes between shouts of not-quite laughter. “Eviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil.”
Greta lets up when he starts to hiccup. “Time to get up, you lazy bum,” she says fondly, sweeping his curls off his forehead and leaning down to kiss him properly. “We’re about to have company, and I made waffles.”
“Witchy waffles?” Ray asks, eyes narrowing suspiciously. He hates when glitter ends up in the batter, almost as much as he hates when she insists that it’s just the byproduct of making them more magically delicious.
“No,” she says, sticking her tongue out and blowing a raspberry. “Just boring cinnamon.”
“I like boring cinnamon,” Ray says defensively.
She pats him on the head. “I know.” She hops off the bed and starts rifling through the closet in search of a guest-appropriate dress to replace her ratty nightshirt. “Come on, bitch, time to get dressed.”
Ray grumbles a little more, but heaves himself out of bed in time to help her do up the buttons running down the back of her yellow sundress. “Who’s coming over?” he asks, sweeping her over her shoulder and out of the way so he can help her clasp her necklace.
She shrugs. “Not really sure,” she admits. “But my spidey senses are tingling.”
Ray snorts good-naturedly. “Don’t try to pretend it’s superhero stuff, woman. It doesn’t make it any more scientific than if it’s just magic.”
She leans up on her tiptoes to loop her arms around his neck, examining their reflection in the mirror above the dresser. She’s got a mighty fine man, if she says so herself, even if he is a botanist. “You know it’s real,” she teases him, shimmying a little against him. “You’ve seen it work.”
“Quit that,” he says, grinning at her and putting his hands on her hips to still them, “unless you plan on taking the dress back off. And there’s a scientific explanation for everything.”
“Yes, dear,” Greta says solemnly, making a tiny breeze ruffle through Ray’s hair, just to be a pain in his ass. “Put on some pants so we can eat our waffles before they get all nasty.”
He presses a kiss to her temple and lets her go, bending down to pull a pair of pants from their dresser drawer. “Thanks,” he says, looking up at her through his hair while he stands on one leg to put the other through the leg of his jeans. He’s got that smile, the one that’s just so soft and sincere that it makes Greta’s stomach go sweet and squirmy. “For making me boring cinnamon waffles.”
She beams at him. “Every day of your life, Mister Toro.” She doesn’t mention that she still makes magic ones for herself—he wouldn’t care, anyways, would just laugh and ask if they taste like unicorns and rainbows. Which, incidentally, they kind of do.
He stands up properly, doing up the button at the waist of his jeans and bending down to kiss the top of her head at the same time. “You’re too good for me, Misses Toro,” he says, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and tugging her close to his chest.
She closes her eyes and breathes in, loving the way he still smells like warmth and skin and sleep from being in bed half the day. “Not even close,” she says, shaking her head and smiling into his collarbone. “You’re silly.”
“I am,” he agrees easily, grinning, releasing her so he can pull a shirt over his head. “But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.” He works a belt through the loops on his jeans, buckles it, and slings an arm around her shoulders. “Take me to my waffles, woman!”
She kicks him playfully in the ankle, but takes him by the hand and leads him down to the kitchen anyway.
--
Tyson isn’t bitter. Bitter is an ugly word. Tyson is much too beautiful of a man to be bitter.
However, Gabe Saporta stole Tyson’s one true love, William Beckett, right out from under his nose, seducing him away from Tyson with promises of radio fame and dirty sex in public bathrooms. Beckett is the second most beautiful man in the world, after Tyson himself—they share chiseled features, and Beckett is so lovely that Tyson can almost see some of himself echoed in Beckett’s visage. Could. Could almost see some of himself—now he can’t see anything, because Beckett is gone, lured away by talk of the Cobra and some sort of strange cult and dirty public bathroom sex.
So Tyson isn’t bitter. He didn’t start his radio show out of bitterness. Rather, he started it out of supply and demand—clearly, there is a demand for a radio show that exists solely to critique the utter failure of Gabe’s own terrible radio show. Tyson is just filling a niche in the market.
Really. Bitterness has nothing to do with it, no matter what Crawford says.
--
Kevin is stealthy. Kevin is ninja.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Z asks, eyebrows up, arms crossed, foot tapping.
“Uh,” Kevin says articulately, freezing with his hand over the plate of sandwiches. “I’m—“
“Those are for Ryan,” Z says, slow and dangerous.
“There are twenty eight sandwiches on that plate,” Kevin points out carefully. He knows. He counted.
“Yes,” Z agrees, moving forward slowly, so slowly, “there are.”
Kevin nods, hesitating between snatching a sandwich or just bolting. “I’m really hungry.”
Z’s gigantic eyes narrow. “Those are Ryan’s sandwiches.”
Kevin wants to explain that he just wants one, one tiny sandwich, but before he can get the words into anything like an order that makes sense, a boy shuffles into the room. His eyes are as big as Z’s, and all his limbs seem a little too long. There’s a bite mark on his shoulder that’s bleeding sluggishly, a ring of bruises around his throat, and he has bags under his eyes. Z’s eyes follow him, concerned and sharply discerning, as he goes to the counter and grabs a sandwich from the plate that Kevin is eyeing. He must be Ryan, then.
Tennessee comes in the door right after him, mostly naked, hair tangled and wild, and leans on the jamb. Kevin isn’t sure whether he’s jealous or just nauseous when he looks at the bruises on her hips, her ribs. “Ryan,” she calls gently. “Just bring the plate.”
Ryan looks slowly from the sandwiches to Kevin and then back again. “But he’s hungry,” he says, sounding lost as he peers at Kevin’s face.
Kevin clears his throat nervously. Ryan’s eyes are a little creepy, and they kind of make him sad. “No, no—I’m fine, really, I was just being lazy, I can make some soup or something.”
“Good boys get sandwiches,” Ryan insists, eyebrows furrowing. He looks to Z and Tennessee. “What is he?”
“I’m Kevin,” Kevin says, extending a hand for Ryan to shake, “Kevin Jonas.” Ryan just peers at the hand curiously, like it’s a strange and foreign animal, and Kevin realizes, right then, that Ryan isn’t human. “You’re—“
Ryan nods, a tiny smile breaking on his face. “Are you a good boy, Kevin Jonas?”
Kevin swallows. How is he even supposed to respond to that? “I—“
Mike’s hand settles on Kevin’s hip, and Kevin jumps, just a little—he hadn’t even felt Mike come in, let alone heard him.
Ryan is tilting his head, examining them like a curious bird. “What is he, Mike?”
Mike’s hand tightens on Kevin, squeezing briefly, and he says, not unkindly, “He’s human, Ryan.”
Ryan takes a huge bite of his sandwich and continues to stare at them, chewing thoughtfully. When he swallows, he says, “Is he a good boy?”
Mike’s hand tightens even more, squeezing hard enough to bruise, and he says, voice soft and oddly proud, “The best.”
Z hisses, low and angry, as Ryan’s face falls. “Oh,” Ryan says, and looks down at the sandwich in his hand. “Does he want my sandwiches?” He’s not addressing Kevin, now that Mike’s here—he’s just looking through him, past him, to Mike. “If he’s the best, he should have my sandwiches.”
Tennessee comes forward, putting a hand on Ryan’s elbow. “No, baby,” she says, hooking her chin over his shoulder, pressing up against his back. “You can give Kevin a sandwich if you want to, to be friendly, but you earned them.”
“But Mike says he’s the best boy,” Ryan protests, still sounding confused.
Kevin’s stomach hurts, watching Ryan’s face. “I’m not—“ he starts, but Mike silences him with a warning pinch to the hip.
“He’s Mike’s best boy,” Tennessee explains gently. She takes a sandwich from the pile on the plate and hands it to Kevin, who takes it numbly. “You’re our best boy.” Her hands brush over Ryan’s stomach, and Kevin watches as his skin jumps under her fingertips. “Come back to bed, Ryan.”
Ryan hesitates. “But what if he’s better than me? You should take him instead.”
Mike starts to growl, low in his throat, and Kevin pushes back against him, reassuring. He can feel it when Mike forces himself silent, and they wait, watching Ryan’s face in the cool light of the kitchen.
“Ryan,” Z says, sounding strained. “Ryan, take your sandwiches and go back to bed with Tennessee.”
“Are you going to take him?” Ryan asks her, mouth smiling a little, eyes shadowed and sad. Kevin’s heart breaks a little in his chest, and he wonders what’s wrong with Ryan, why he’s like this.
Z looks a little wounded. “No, Ry,” she says tiredly, “I’m just going to make a phone call.”
Ryan bows his head. “Are you sure, because—“
“Ry,” Z says, a little sharper. “Go with Tennessee. I’ll be right there.”
Ryan bites his lip and goes, letting Tennessee steer him out of the kitchen and down the hall, plate of sandwiches in hand, with only a tiny wave for Kevin and Mike.
“Next time,” Z says, narrowing her eyes at him and yanking her phone out of the pocket of her pajama pants, “make some fucking ramen or something.” Muttering to herself, she punches a few buttons on the phone and walks away. Kevin just barely catches her saying, “Jon? It’s—yeah—“ before she’s out of earshot.
Kevin stands there dumbly for a moment, sandwich in his hand. “Mike—“
Mike’s chin comes down to rest on his shoulder. “Ryan is…” he trails off, mouth pressed to Kevin’s skin. “Ryan was switched.” He shuffles Kevin over to the counter and turns him around, giving him a boost up so he can sit on the countertop. When Kevin is settled, Mike raises an eyebrow at the sandwich, and Kevin takes a bite. It’s really good. “He was born in the otherworld. I don’t really know a lot about it, but he’s—“
Kevin swallows the bite of sandwich and says, “He’s a fairy?”
Mike snorts. “Something like that.”
Kevin hums and takes another bite. Still chewing, he says, “Are they all like that?”
Mike looks conflicted. “No,” he says, drawing it out into two syllables. “No, I think Ryan is just—“
There’s a loud crack from down the hall right at that moment, then a wounded howl, followed by a sob. Kevin can hear someone panting, and he isn’t sure whether to be uncomfortable or not.
Mike scrubs a hand over his face. “I think Ryan’s just a little messed up. Something happened to him, I think.”
Kevin wonders what would have to have happened to him to make Ryan look so lost. “So—the three of them, they’re…?”
Mike shrugs. “Tennessee and Z are together. Ryan just. Ryan happens. It doesn’t explain well.”
Kevin finishes off his sandwich and hops off the counter. “So,” he says, ducking his head to hide the smile that’s inching across his face, “you think I’m the best boy, huh?”
Mike snorts and cards a hand through Kevin’s hair. Kevin has to resist the urge to push into it like a cat. “I do,” Mike says, voice low and pleased, and Kevin’s chest surges with pride. “Show me how good you can be.” He pushes Kevin’s head down, urging him to the floor.
Kevin drops to his knees. The kitchen tile is hard and cold on his knees, grounding him. He reaches up, sliding his palm over the fabric of Mike’s pajama bottoms, and pops the button on his fly. Mike’s cock pushes through the gap in the fabric, and Kevin doesn’t hesitate, just opens his mouth and sinks down as far as he can go.
Mike’s fingers tangle into Kevin’s curls, gripping tightly, and he tugs Kevin the rest of the way down, until Kevin’s nose is pressed to Mike’s belly. It’s hard to breathe, and his throat is working around Mike’s cock, trying to gag, but he remembers the pride in Mike’s voice when he’d said best, and so he tries to relax.
Mike doesn’t make it easy—he pulls back a little, then pushes forward, thrusting into Kevin’s throat, and Kevin chokes a little, eyes watering. Mike’s breath quickens, and he starts to guide Kevin by his hair, pulling him forward and back, his cock jerking against the back of Kevin’s throat. Kevin tries to swallow around him, but it’s hard, and he’s drooling, making the slide of Mike’s cock past his lips slick and messy. Kevin’s lips are stretched wide, and he can’t quite get enough air through his nose.
Mike’s hand tightens in Kevin’s hair, and he yanks Kevin forward all the way, holding him there, nose pressed tight against Mike’s groin, close enough that for a moment, Kevin can’t really breathe at all. There’s a moment of panic, tightening his throat, but Mike’s hand is steady on his head, and Mike is safe, Mike is his, he won’t do anything Kevin can’t handle—and just like that, the panic slips away, and Kevin can feel Mike in his head—
—fuckinghellsowetsopretty—
Kevin whimpers, muffled around Mike’s cock, and tries to suck. It’s hard, and there are white spots dancing in the edge of his vision now, so he closes his eyes and tries again. Mike jerks, pulling Kevin’s head back, and starts to thrust into his mouth again, harder than before, hissing out loud but not slowing down when Kevin can’t quite keep his lips wrapped over his teeth. Kevin tries harder, but it’s winter, and his lips are chapped enough that his lower one cracks, just a little, a sweet sting. Kevin ignores it, tries to open his jaw wider—he’s good, he can take this, he’s—
—best?—
Kevin doesn’t mean for Mike to hear it, but Mike spasms hard enough that Kevin knows he did. Mike shudders, hand trembling in Kevin’s hair, and holds Kevin’s head still as he thrusts forward, sharp and fast, motion violent enough that Kevin has to squeeze his eyes shut.
—suchafuckinggoodboyyou’resofuckinggood—
That’s not enough, that’s not good enough, and Kevin has to squinch his eyes shut even tighter so he doesn’t cry. A tear leaks out anyway, sticky and hot and awful, coursing down his cheek, and—
—sorrysorrycandobettermikeicandobetter—
Mike’s breath hitches, and he doubles over, his hips stuttering against Kevin’s face as he buries himself deep and comes down Kevin’s throat.
Kevin opens his eyes, lashes damp, and looks up as Mike pulls carefully out of his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he says earnestly. He doesn’t want Mike to think that he’s not trying, that he doesn’t want to be good, doesn’t want to be best. “I’m sorry, I—“ his voice is wrecked, cracking in the middle of every word.
Mike is breathing hard, looking at Kevin incredulously. He strokes a shaking hand over Kevin’s jaw, sweet and gentle, and Kevin can’t quite help the way he leans into it, closing his eyes and sighing. “You honestly think I could possibly want better than you?”
“I—“ Kevin winces at the crack in his voice.
“Jonas,” Mike says sternly, rearranging his pajamas and crouching down to look Kevin in the eyes, “there isn’t any such thing as better than you.”
Kevin bites his torn lip and tries very, very hard not to let himself blush with pride.
—best?—
He can’t help but ask; it’s too loud in his head for Mike not to hear.
Mike brushes his thumb over the bloody spot on Kevin’s lip and grins, wide and stupidly, adorably pleased. Pleased with Kevin.
—alwaysbest,youfuckingidiot—
--
“Hey,” Frank calls into the kitchen. “We’re here with the midget!” He always loves going to Greta’s, especially with Bandit; Greta’s entire house looks like something straight out of a fairytale, all done up in pastels and filled with sunshine—it seems like the perfect place to be for something awesome to happen, and he likes the idea of all of Bandit’s childhood happening in places like that.
“Hey, there, kiddo,” Greta says, beaming and crouching down so she’s at eye level with Bandit. Her baby bump is sort of hilariously huge now, and it’s all Frank can do not to snicker at the weird way she wobbles as she squats down. Bandit yanks away from Frank and Gerard and hurls herself into Greta’s arms, giggling delightedly. Greta sweeps her up and squeezes her, swinging her back and forth, and Frank’s heart stutters in his chest. Gerard’s hand reaches out, fingers tangling with his, squeezing, and Frank lets himself take a moment to appreciate just how in love with his entire life he is, how perfect his family is. “And hey, guys,” Greta adds, setting Bandit back on her feet, leaning over her to squeeze Frank and Gerard briefly around the shoulders. “It’s good to see you. Come on in, Ray’s just out back in the garden.”
“Oh man,” Gerard says, lighting up, and Frank knows he won’t be seeing Gerard for the rest of the visit. Not that he minds; this trip is less of a social call than Gerard thinks it is, and it’ll honestly be easier for Frank if Gerard is trailing Ray around his weird little botanical garden, poking stuff and asking if it’s edible while Ray very patiently doesn’t rip out all of his own hair. “I think I’m just going to—“ and then he’s squeezing past Greta, shuffling through the house and out the screen door to the back garden.
“Wow,” Greta says, snorting and tucking her hair behind her ear, “nice to know I’m so loved.”
“It’s okay, Aunt Greta,” Bandit promises solemnly. “Papa and I love you.” She pats Greta consolingly on the hand. “Daddy doesn’t understand manners.”
Greta snickers and takes Bandit’s hand, leading her and Frank to the kitchen table and taking a seat. “You’re precocious, you know that, kid?” she teases Bandit, and Frank can’t disagree, but he knows before she opens her mouth that Bandit’s going to.
“I’m not precocious,” she says primly, tongue only tripping slightly over the last word. “Daddy says I’m and astute and highly observant.”
“Also that,” Greta agrees easily, smiling lopsidedly at Bandit, then at Frank. “So, Iero, tell me what brings you here. The last time I saw you, there was snow on the ground.” She taps the tabletop absently, pulling a steaming teacup out of the wood with the palm of her hand. “Tea?” She hands it off to Frank, and Frank takes a sip, tasting vanilla and mint.
“This is awesome,” he says, ignoring her question and taking another gulp and hoping it’ll drown the small, vicious woodland creatures squirming around in his stomach. He doesn’t get butterflies, he gets possums and squirrels squirming around and scratching at his guts. Hazards of growing up as the heart of a tree. “You have serious skills, Mrs. Toro, no lie.”
She drags another cup out of the table for herself, following it with a plastic cup of juice for Bandit. “You’re here for a reason, Frank, stop trying to flatter me into ignoring it. You’re going to have to get to it eventually.”
Frank sighs and sets his tea onto its tree-patterned saucer—a nod to his upbringing, or a result of having been conjured from the wooden tabletop, he’s not sure—and takes a couple deep breaths before he admits, “I want to have another baby.”
“I see,” Greta says blandly, sipping her tea with an absolutely blank face.
Bandit bounces in her chair, scrunching up her face around a grin. “I want a baby sister, Aunt Greta. I want a minion.”
Frank bites his lip and tries not to smile. She’s so much his and Gerard’s kid that it twists his gut sometimes, and he knows he doesn’t have to go to Greta for this, that he could adopt, but seeing his own eyes crinkling up over Gerard’s tiny, pointed nose on her face is literally the best thing that’s ever happened to him, and if he can have another iteration of that, another living piece of this, he’s not going to settle for less. “Yeah, Greta,” he says softly, nudging her ankle under the table. “My kid needs a minion.”
Greta smiles briefly, but her mouth tightens a little, and she clears her throat. “Frank,” she begins seriously, and Frank’s stomach clenches. He knows what she’s going to say, knows that it’s going to be a no even before it comes out of her mouth. “Frank, I’m not helping you have another baby until Gerard accepts what you are.”
Bandit frowns, peering into her juice. “You guys are boring,” she complains. “I’m gonna go see if Uncle Ray will let me braid his hair.” She hops off her chair and makes for the garden, leaving her juice precariously balanced on the edge of the table.
Frank sets it to rights before he says, “Greta, it’s not like I haven’t told him.”
Greta rolls her eyes. “Telling him isn’t the same as making him understand, and you know it. You’ve spent almost a decade letting him believe that wood nymph is your way of saying that you’re transgendered or something, Frank, and while there certainly isn’t anything wrong with that, you’re not, and it’s dishonest, and I’m not helping you to bring another child into that.”
Frank knows she’s right, he does, but the idea of having Gerard think he’s crazy, or worse, thinking that he’s lied all this time—Frank is so happy, he’s not sure he even knows how to risk all of it just for the idea of Gerard understanding where he came from. It’s not like he’s living in a forest now, it’s not like it really has an impact on Gerard, he’s not keeping anything relevant from him. It’s not really his fault that when he tells Gerard how hard it was to start living like a human man instead of a nymph that Gerard assumes he’s talking about changing his gender. Gerard is painfully supportive—whenever anyone noticed that Frank was a man and was pregnant, and started to ask questions, Gerard would immediately jump in with a fierce scowl and tell them to fuck off, that his Frankie was special, and that they weren’t allowed to defile his specialness with their negativity and prying questions—and that almost makes it worse. Frank knows Greta’s right, but he’s not sure he can fix it. “Greta, I don’t know. He’s still pretty sure that you being a witch means that you practice Wicca or something, and he’s seen you conjure stuff out of thin air.”
Greta sighs and sets down her teacup, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You have a point, but it’s a point I’m going to argue for the sake of your marriage and my sanity. Right after I pee, because there’s a tiny person inside of me who has made it his life’s mission to kick me in the bladder as often as possible.” She rubs a hand over her belly, smiling down at it for a moment before standing up, her chair scraping loudly on the floor. “Don’t go anywhere. I pee fast. I get a lot of practice now.”
Frank remembers that feeling, and ducks his head to hide a smile. “I’ll be here,” he promises.
He waits until she’s waddled down the hall and out of sight before he scrambles up, dashing to the pantry like a crazy thing. He knows they’re in here, he’s seen her get them out before, he just needs to find the right jar. He loves Greta, but he loves Gerard, and he wants this, and it’s not like Greta can’t just make more.
The jar is on a high enough shelf that Frank has to jump for it, and it tips over when his fingers nudge it. He manages to catch it before it hits the floor, but a half dozen charms fall out, scattering across the floor.
The toilet flushes down the hall, and Frank scrambles to put the jar back on the shelf, kneeling down and sweeping the charms up into his hands. They’re cookie-shaped, but soft—he remembers them tasting faintly like strawberry gummy candies—and they’re definitely not all going to fit in the pockets of his skinny jeans, but he can hear Greta shuffling down the hall, and he’s out of time.
So he does the only thing he can think of, and shoves them into his mouth, chewing as fast as he can.
Which, he supposes, is probably how he ends up pregnant with twins.
--
“Look,” Justin says, “I’m flattered and everything, but I’m just not into guys.”
“We get that, really,” Alex says, pulling his shades down his nose, “but we don’t really like to give up, either.”
Ryland snorts, but doesn’t say anything, because Ryland is a stoic motherfucker, and that’s exactly how Alex likes him.
Justin shifts uncomfortably. “I gotta go, okay, but really, guys, it just isn’t my thing. Sorry.”
Alex exchanges a look with Ryland. “It’s cool,” he says. “We’re patient.”
Ryland nods in solidarity. “Yeah,” he says, tapping a finger to the corner of his shades.
Justin backs slowly towards the door. “Oo-kay,” he says slowly. “I’m just gonna—“ And then he’s gone, bolting out the door like a baby deer.
“Wooing is underrated, I think,” Alex says, pushing his shades back up.
Ryland’s mouth quirks up. “Florist?” he asks, cocking his head.
“Well,” Alex says, mulling it over. “I guess that’d be a start.”
--
“You smell nice,” Mike murmurs against the skin of Kevin’s neck.
“I—thanks?” Kevin says, trying not to move. “I guess I maybe wear a lot of deodorant?”
Mike snorts, and it sends a shiver down the outsides of Kevin’s arms. Then his teeth are scraping over the tendons on Kevin’s neck, and Kevin can’t suppress a shudder.
“Are you—are you gonna hurt me?”
Mike pulls back enough that Kevin can see his eyes and says, “Don’t you want me to?”
Kevin swallows against the lump in his throat, looking up at Mike through suddenly damp lashes, and says, voice a little hoarse already, “Yes, please.”
This should be more complicated than it is, really, and Kevin knows it, but so few things have ever been easy, and he’s going to run with it for as long as he can.
--
“Hey,” Saporta says, all snide and smug and shit. “How are you, man?”
Tyson narrows his eyes. “Oh, you know,” he says, being vague in case Saporta is fishing for information. Saporta is wily, and Tyson is totally on guard, he is wary and prepared. “Fine.”
Saporta raises an eyebrow. “Cool, man. Cool. What’re you up to these days? It’s been forever since I heard from you.”
Tyson furrows his brow for a minute before realizing—Saporta is playing dumb. Well, fine, if he wants to pretend that Tyson isn’t waging a totally hardcore radio war against him—Tyson Ritter uses Radio Slam! It’s super effective!—well, that’s fine. Two can play that game. Tyson can be wily, too. “Oh, you know. Mostly just fucking around. Definitely not kicking any ass on the radio or anything.”
“Oh, dude, thanks, I had no idea you tuned in,” Saporta says, looking genuinely flattered, and Tyson has to hand it to him, he’s a good actor. “We’ll dedicate a song to you or something, it’ll be sweet.”
“You do that,” Tyson says ominously. “You do that.”
Gabe’s other eyebrow goes up. “Yeah… yeah man, I will. I’m, uh. I’m gonna go now, you’re kind of weirding me out.”
Tyson gives him a slow, finger-by-finger wave, because it looks mysterious and threatening. “I’ll bet I am,” he says mysteriously, because he’s mysterious. “I’ll just bet I am.”
--
Joe is dating some beefy guy named Taylor, as well as a tiny blonde girl, also named Taylor, and Kevin can never tell which one Joe is talking about.
“So, right, Taylor says it’s all pheromones, right, because of the werewolf thing—“
“Wait, wait, because Mike is a werewolf, or because Taylor is a werewolf? Which Taylor?”
Joe rolls his eyes. “Yes. Anyway. It’s all pheromones, right, yours are just, like, yelling to Mike, ‘Hey, hey, I’m genetically matched to you, let’s make sweet sexy lovings!’ and his pheromones are like, ‘Woo hoo, yeah baby!’ Or something.”
Kevin squints at Joe. “I think you’re having too much sex. It’s shaking your brain loose or something.”
Joe squints back, mouth scrunching up into Joe’s version of a concerned face. “Dude. Wait. Can that happen? Because I am kind of having a lot of sex.” He grins, waggling his eyebrows. “A lot.”
Kevin buries his head in his hands. “You’re not actually helpful.”
--
“Alright,” Butch says, “here’s how this is gonna go.”
“Y-yeah?” the guy says, shaking. “Anything, I’ll do—“
“You’re gonna sit right the fuck down and not make any sudden moves.” He gestures with his knife, pointing vaguely in the direction of the bed. The guy—Butch’s mark—sits abruptly, and Butch crouches down, duct taping the guy’s hands together, then his feet.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Chiz asks, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “Why aren’t you just killing him?”
“Because,” Butch says, opening his pack and yanking his banjolin and a pick out, “some shit is more important.” He stands up, slinging the strap around his neck.
Chiz looks up from his hand and groans. “What is wrong with you? We’re on a job.”
Butch grins at him. “I’m in love,” he explains to the mark, who smiles awkwardly, like he’s trying to be supportive enough that Butch won’t kill him. “I’m in love with this beautiful bastard right here—“ he gestures towards Chiz with his pick. “—and he’s being fucking stubborn.”
“I said I’d have sex with you!” Chiz exclaims, throwing his hands up. “I gave in, you raving fuckhead.”
Butch tsks at him. “Now, Chizzy, baby, you know that’s not what I’m after.” Strumming, he starts in, “It’s a beautiful night, we’re looking for something dumb to do—“
“Oh, god, Butch, come on—“
“—Hey baby,” Butch croons, leaning in and batting his lashes in that way that never fails to make Chiz flip his shit with rage, “I think I wanna marry yoooooooooou.”
The mark says, “Um, I think—“
Butch smacks him in the head, hard enough to rattle his brains a little, and says, “Don’t interrupt me, bitch, I’m a goddamned hit man, don’t think I won’t kill you right the fuck now.”
“You’re supposed to kill him,” Chiz complains, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That’s exactly what should be happening right now.”
Butch shakes his head and strums again, grinning at Chiz’s face. It’s that sweet, sweet shade of tomato that gets Butch all hot in the pants. “Not killing anyone,” he says, totally unconcerned, “until you marry me.”
Chiz buries his face in his hands. “You are fucked up. Pete’s going to kill us.”
“Naw,” Butch says, shrugging. “Pete understands. I’m not the kind of man as takes a pretty young man’s virtue without doing the right thing by him, Chizzy, and Pete isn’t, either.”
Chiz scowls at him, pure loathing, and it’s so gorgeous that Butch wants nothing more than to kiss him breathless. “I’m not a virgin, what the fuck.”
Butch snorts. “Uh huh, yeah. Okay.” Turning to the mark, he strums the banjolin again. She sings so fucking pretty under his hands. “Now, you keep your fucking mouth shut, I have wooing to do.”
“I don’t want to be wooed,” Chiz groans from behind his hands. “I want you to kill the motherfucker on the bed, and then I want to go home and take a shower because my soul feels dirty.”
“What do you think?” Butch asks the mark, raising an eyebrow. “Should we let sweet Chizzy go purify his delicate, virgin soul?”
“No, no,” the mark says hastily, “you should definitely woo him.” He swallows. “Woo away.”
“Yeah,” Butch agrees, “that’s what I thought.” He launches into Never Gonna Give You Up with no shame or further ado.
His favorite part is always when Chiz starts to cry.
--
“Wait, seriously, where are we going?” Kevin asks, letting Mike tow him up the dark, narrow flight of stairs.
“You’ll see,” Mike says, looking over his shoulder to grin at Kevin.
They top the stairs and Mike drags him down a long, long hallway, to an unmarked door, and before Kevin has a chance to ask any more questions, the door is swinging open into a dim room, and Mike is plowing right into a freakishly tall guy.
“Woah, Balto,” the tall guy says, steadying Mike with gigantic hands on his shoulders, “in a hurry?”
Mike laughs, open and unrestrained in a way that Kevin has only heard when they’re completely alone, and he says, grinning up at the other guy, “I just didn’t want to be late and not have time to introduce everyone.”
The tall guy looks over Mike’s shoulder into Kevin’s face, and says, “Oh,” and, “I see,” and waggles his eyebrows in a way that makes Kevin feel sort of naked. “Well, do bring Bambi inside, I think we’ve got time to make the rounds.”
Mike pulls Kevin close to his side and ushers him into the room, and it takes a couple of seconds for Kevin to realize where he is, but when it hits him, he stops breathing for a minute or two.
“Welcome to KCobrazone, little Jonas,” the tall guy says magnanimously, hand sweeping out to encompass the room and the small crowd of people in it. “I am the Cobra, and it’s my pleasure to welcome you to the KCobracrew.”
Mike elbows Kevin in the ribs, and Kevin realizes that oxygen is kind of necessary for his survival, so he sucks in one breath, then another. “I—you’re—“
“Gabe Saporta,” tall guy says, holding out a hand for Kevin to shake. Kevin does, a little dazed, and Gabe squeezes—not one of the weird macho squeezes, but a comforting squeeze. “And here we have my dear Billiam, who I do believe you’ve had the pleasure of encountering previously—“ he waves at Mike’s friend, Bill, who is lounging sort of obscenely in one of the rolling chairs around the long table. “And next to him we have little Brendon—“ a tiny, dark-haired guy in red glasses gives a dorky little wave, and Kevin relaxes just a tiny bit, “—and the unwashed fellow beside him is Gerard—“ a guy with stringy black hair smiles, showing tiny, pointy teeth, “—and then there’s his brother, Mikeyway—“ a guy who looks very little like Gerard nods vaguely without looking up from his phone, “—and I’m pretty sure you know my partner in crime, El Koala.” He winks lasciviously at Kevin, waggling his eyebrows again, and Kevin is too awed by the fact that he’s here to even be properly creeped out by how sleezy Gabe is.
“Nice to meet you all,” Kevin says, voice a little higher and thinner than he’d like for it to be.
“So,” Mike says, squeezing Kevin’s captive hand, “how do you feel about joining us on air tonight?”
Kevin blinks at him. “Wait, seriously?” He maybe squeaks a little. “Me?”
“Yes, indeed, you, Bambi,” Gabe says, pulling an empty chair out from the table, holding it steady while Mike pushes him gently toward it. “Nothing major, just chiming in if you feel like it.”
Kevin bites his lip and tries not to sound like a complete and total girl when he says, “I’d like that.” He’s not sure if he succeeds, but Mike is beaming, and Gabe looks… well, smarmy, but in a pleased sort of way, and Brendon shoots him an encouraging thumbs-up, so he steels himself and collapses into the chair, trying to figure out what the heck he’s going to say.
It turns out that it’s easy, easier than breathing—it’s just like listening to show from his car, from his room, except instead of answering to a silent room, he can respond and have Gabe or Brendon or Mike answer, and, for the first time in his life, he feels like maybe he’s not just a brother, not just a guy in a café, not just a boyfriend, but like he’s part of something, part of something that, if he cried out, would ring back to him like it’s his.
--
After the show, after everyone has filtered out, and Mike’s locked the door behind them, Mike flicks the “on air” switch and searches until he finds a channel that’s free.
“Mike—“ Kevin starts, a little hesitantly.
Mike bites his lip, looking away, and mutters, “I just want to be able to tell people you’re mine, okay?”
Kevin looks like he’s trying very hard not to smile. “And this is your solution? What are we even going to talk abou—“ Kevin lets out a startled oof when Mike pushes him backwards on the tabletop, climbing over him and leaning down to bite at his lower lip.
“I wasn’t actually planning on—“ Mike nips at the skin below Kevin’s ear, reveling in the sharp, sweet noise he makes. “—talking.”
Kevin’s eyes go wide, and Mike smells his arousal start to gather. “But—I mean, people could be listening.”
Mike ruts down against him, a sharp slide of his hip between Kevin’s legs. “That was kind of the idea, yeah.”
“Oh,” Kevin says, feeling heat flooding his cheeks. “Oh.”
--
Tyson squints at the radio. “I’m not sure what’s happening, here.”
“It’s called sex, dude,” Ian says, rolling his eyes. “I mean, I know it’s been like seven ages of man since it’s happened to you, but the soundtrack is the sort of thing a guy doesn’t really forget.”
Tyson’s eye twitches a little. “I…see,” he says, scratching awkwardly at the back of his neck. “I see.”
--
Kevin is up on his knees, back arched, cheek pressed into the table by the mic, drawing in loud, shaky breaths while Mike licks him open. Kevin’s legs are shaking so hard that he can barely hold himself up, shaking enough that Mike has to brace his thighs with both hands.
“Good boy,” Mike murmurs, thumbs stroking down the insides of Kevin’s thighs, brushing over his balls. “Let me hear you.”
Kevin whimpers when Mike’s tongue swipes over his hole again, pushing inside. “I can’t, I don’t—“ he sucks in a breath, trying to remember how to talk. “I need—“
“What?” Mike prompts, dipping down to suck one of Kevin’s balls into his mouth, “what do you need?”
Kevin squeezes his eyes shut. “More,” he says, finally. “I need—more, Mike, please.”
Mike doesn’t say anything, just pushes two fingers into Kevin, dry except for the dampness from his tongue, and Kevin is curling up, in on himself, gasping from the burn. “Like this?” Mike asks, twisting the fingers mercilessly, rubbing up against Kevin’s prostate.
Kevin breathes through it, trying to relax, and doesn’t wait until it stops burning to say, “More.”
Mike lets out a low, harsh noise, like he’s pleased, and leans down to lick around his fingers where they’re pressed inside Kevin, making him slick, and then follows his tongue with a third finger. “Better?” he teases, flexing his fingers.
“More,” Kevin says, voice cracking a little. “Mike—more, closer, I need—“
—you’retoofarawaypleaseplease—
Mike’s breath catches, and he moves in closer, so Kevin can feel him, pressed up against the edge of the table. “Think you can take my whole hand?”
Kevin’s heart stutters, and he clenches down around Mike’s fingers. “Yes,” he says, barely breathing, “yes.”
Mike presses a wet, open mouthed kiss to the base of Kevin’s spine and pulls his fingers out. “Now?” His voice is raw, strained, a little desperate.
Kevin tightens around Mike’s fingers again, and says, almost a whisper, “Fuck me first.”
Mike’s breath runs out of him all at once, loudly, and then he’s unbuckling his belt, tugging his jeans down, fitting his hands over Kevin’s hips and jerking him back, pulling him off the table. “Bend over,” Mike growls, and Kevin can hear the wolf in rising up in him. “Fucking hell, Jonas, bend over.” He pushes down on the middle of Kevin’s back, pressing his chest flat against the table, and Kevin closes his eyes and submits, going pliable, bending under Mike’s hands. There’s not even enough time for a breath before Mike is lining up, shoving roughly into him, hard enough that Kevin cries out, the sound echoing in the room.
Mike’s thrusts are fast, harder than normal, drawing a sharp, involuntary cry from the bottom of Kevin’s throat every time he bottoms out. Kevin’s cock is pressed against the table, grinding against it with every thrust, and he’s close, so close. “Please, Mike,” he says, panting. “Come on, please.”
Mike rakes his nails down Kevin’s sides, not hard enough to draw blood, just enough to sting, and then acquiesces, wrapping a firm hand around Kevin’s throat and squeezing just a little. Kevin relaxes into it, body going limp, and Mike growls, low in his throat, and digs in with the nails of his other hand to Kevin’s hip. “Good boy,” he grunts, hips jerking harder. “Good boy, let everybody hear you, come on.”
There are soft white stars edging Kevin’s vision, so he doesn’t realize what Mike’s going to do until there’s a finger shoving into him beside Mike’s cock, jerking up and against his prostate. He doesn’t quite scream, but it’s a near thing, a ragged, broken noise tearing itself out of his throat, and he comes, hard, against the table and his stomach.
Mike’s finger jerks again, and Kevin, oversensitive as his orgasm fades, can’t quite catch his breath. “Mike,” he pleads, “Mike, Mike, come on, just—“
Mike’s hand around his throat tightens, merciless, and he speeds up his thrusts, fingers never hesitating. Kevin doesn’t try to keep quiet, just rides it out, spasming weakly around the intrusion. “Tell them whose you are,” Mike demands, thumb rubbing roughly around Kevin’s tender rim. “Tell them.”
Kevin takes a breath to say it just as Mike slips in a second finger, so the word rips out, tremulous and shattered, “Yours.”
Mike doubles over, groaning, hips jerking violently as he comes.
--
“So you’re El Koala,” Joe says, eyes wide. “You’re El fucking Koala.”
Mike groans. “Gabe named me. Gabe is an asshole. He likes to lie and say it’s Uruguayan slang. Gabe is an asshole.”
“Maybe you’re a drop bear,” Joe suggests. “They’re, like, mythical carnivorous koalas. They eat people.”
“Do they eat snakes?” Mike asks, rolling his eyes.
“Uh,” Joe says, scratching his head, “is that—is that a euphemism? Because I really don’t want to know about your sex life.”
Kevin kicks him in the shin, and Mike spares a moment to be really pleased about that. “You spent three hours yesterday telling me about which Taylor gives better head,” he says primly. “And no, it was not a euphemism.”
“Yeah,” Mike says, unable to help himself, “we already know the answer to that, come on.” He leans over the counter to grope sort of ineffectually at Kevin’s ass—half to make Joe uncomfortable, and half for the color Kevin turns and the way he starts to smell just a tiny bit turned on.
Joe cringes, clapping his hands over his ears. “Oh god. Pictures I never wanted. Pictures I never wanted.”
--
Nick is leaning against the counter, humming something that may or may not be a terrible pop song he once wrote, waiting for closing time, when the guy comes into the café.
“Yo,” he says, towering in the doorway, backlit by the streetlights from outside. Kevin, cleaning the tables, squeaks.
Nick’s throat catches when the guy moves into the light. He’s over six feet tall, with deep brown skin and big arms covered in tattoos, and something about the way he’s standing makes Nick think that he’s probably dangerous.
“How can I help you?” Nick asks, ignoring the way his voice goes up an octave.
The guy smiles, and it’s creepy as hell, all sharp teeth and a dimple that somehow manages to look dangerous. “Actually, I’m looking for—“
“Travie!” Gabe exclaims, coming out of the bathroom and basically plowing the guy over with a hug that defies all normal bro-regulations as Nick has come to know them. “Motherfucker, where you been?”
Travie laughs, and it’s grating and sort of hot at the same time, and Nick’s spine feels like it’s contracting. “I’ve been around for a month, asshole, you’re behind the times. Before that, Brazil was doing a pretty good job of keeping me busy.” He waggles his eyebrows, just like Gabe does, but somehow it’s even more suggestive on him.
Gabe slings an arm around Travie’s—Nick can’t get over this giant dude having a name like that, it’s weird—shoulders and sweeps a hand through the air, gesturing at Nick and Kevin. “That’s my boy, Kevin—he’s hooked up with Carden, no shit—and his baby brother, Nick. There’s another one around somewhere, Joe. They own this place. Collective Jonases, this is Travis.”
Nick would resent being called anyone’s baby anything, but he’s too busy getting goosebumps from the way Travis is looking at him—like he’s thinking about peeling Nick out of his skin and eating him like an orange. Nick does his best to stare him down, and eventually Travis looks away, following Gabe to a booth and sitting there, heads bent together like they’re plotting something evil, but Nick’s skin doesn’t stop prickling until long after they’ve both left the coffee shop.
“That was weird,” Kevin says, over an hour later, when they’re closing up. “Like. Really weird.”
“Yeah,” Nick agrees, throat dry. His knees feel kind of wobbly. “Definitely weird.”
--
Justin doesn’t like the flowers. The flowers are not sweet, are not pretty, and definitely do not make his stomach flip over. Definitely not. But if they do, it’s with terror, because, yeah. He doesn’t mind them or anything, but they’re, you know, not his thing. Not at all. Nope.
Well, maybe a little. He might have a small weakness for romance. Maybe.
The note, however, is a problem.
Handcuffs are fun
Condoms are cool
Let us sex you up
And love you down like fools
Justin’s face is going to spontaneously combust. It’s just a matter of time.
--
“He came in my mouth this morning,” Z says cheerfully, hopping up on the counter and swinging her legs, ankles banging back against the display. “Wanna taste?”
Jon doesn’t even know what to do with that. “Uh,” he says, stalling for time.
Z doesn’t give him any, just leans down and licks into his mouth . He means to pull back, really he does, and he gets about a millimeter away from her lips before he catches the salty, bitter taste on her tongue. She laughs into his mouth when he fists his hands in her collar and drags her back in.
--
It’s dark in Nick’s apartment, which is weird, because he’s actually pretty sure he left the lights on. “Hello?” he calls into the dark living room, padding down the hall to the light switch.
“Hey,” Travis says, scaring the shit out of Nick. He’s lounging on Nick’s couch like it’s no big deal, inspecting his fingernails. “You have a big-ass apartment for a dude that works in a coffee shop. I like your welcome mat. Real inviting, dude.”
“I own the coffee shop,” Nick corrects automatically. “With my brothers.” He’d known that welcome mat had been a bad idea, but it had been a present from Kevin, and Speak Friend And Enter had been nerdy enough that he’d assumed it wouldn’t actually be a risk, even in a town with this many weird things.
“Yeah,” Travis agrees, letting it go pretty easily, which Nick is grateful for, because he doesn’t want to have to both defend his life and the fact that he used to be a pop star. “I’m a vampire.”
Nick swallows. “Yeah, I kind of figured it was something like that.”
Travis looks amused. “You’re not running away. Smart people run away now.” His grin reminds Nick of the hungry hyenas on Animal Planet.
“I kind of can’t move my feet,” Nick admits. “Can’t really feel them at all, actually.”
Travis snickers, rubbing a hand through his giant hair. “Survival instincts of a wet noodle.”
“Well, I have two older brothers,” Nick says, grimacing and palming the back of his neck. His hands are sweating. “I think I’ve adapted to hold still and hope no one sees me.”
“Oh man, kid,” Travis says, stretching his long, long legs out and cocking his head to look at Nick like he’s a milkshake with legs, “anyone who doesn’t see you doesn’t have any fucking eyes.”
A blush creeps up from Nick’s ears to spread over his cheeks, and he tries to fight it down, because there’s a vampire on his couch, and he’s not supposed to be flattered by the implication that he looks like a tasty snack, but he is flattered, and the blush ignores him, anyway. “Uh,” Nick says, channeling Kevin, “thanks?”
“You’re welcome,” Travis says easily. “Now come sit in my lap and let me see if you taste as pretty as you look.”
Nick twitches. “Um, no,” he says, as politely as he can. “I don’t think so, thank you.”
Travis arches a thick eyebrow. “Aw,” he says, “you’re all ladylike and shit. But I wasn’t asking.”
It’s getting kind of hard to breathe, and Nick can’t even tell if it’s because he’s scared. “Really, I kind of have a life, I don’t want to be eaten. I have to look after Kevin and Joe. If I die, Joe will have an orgy in the coffee shop and end up burning down the city because he’ll forget how to clean the espresso machine.”
“While that’s all touching and whatnot, I’m still stuck on this thing where you get your tiny, fluffy-headed ass over here,” Travis says, a tiny hint of iron in his voice now. A shiver runs down the back of Nick’s neck, raising goosebumps in its way.
“No, really,” Nick says, “I think I’m good over here.”
Travis goes from lounging on the couch to towering over Nick so fast that Nick doesn’t even see him move. “I don’t let people argue with me very often,” he says, low and dangerous, and Nick’s pants are suddenly a little tighter than his sense of shame would like for them to be.
“Well,” Nick says, swallowing and forcing himself to look up to meet Travis’s eyes, “I’m kind of a pain in the ass. If you want easy acquiescence and big eyes, you’ve definitely got the wrong brother.”
A slow, creepy smile spreads over Travis’s mouth, and Nick doesn’t even know what to do with the pulse of want that rocks through his gut. “Damn, fluffy,” Travis says, tipping Nick’s chin up with a long, cool finger, “for a dude who’s terrified, you’ve got one hell of a boner.”
Nick’s cheeks burn. “I noticed, thank you.” He ignores the crack in his voice.
Travis’s grin widens, and all of a sudden, there’s a big hand on his back, and Travis is bending down to sweep Nick’s knees out from under him with the other.
“Holy shit,” Nick squeaks, five feet off the ground, tucked up against Travis’s chest. “What. What are you doing. What.” Travis’s arms are like iron.
Travis adjusts him a little. “When you kidnap a lady, you carry her like this,” he says, winking. His smile is no less terrifying this close.
“I’m not a lady,” Nick protests, trying to ignore exactly how far he is from the ground.
“It’s cool,” Travis says, shrugging a shoulder. “We’ll work on that.” Travis bends his head down, close enough that Nick can count tiny rings of gold around his pupils, and then their mouths are touching. It’s not even a kiss, really, it’s Travis’s tongue sweeping into his mouth, tasting, claiming, while Nick trembles, frozen. When he pulls back, Nick can’t really breathe at all anymore.
“Uh,” Nick says, barely even a sound. “What?”
Travis’s nose bumps his, and he ducks in for another not-quite-kiss, and Nick’s heart pounds like it’s trying to claw its way out of his chest and into Travis’s mouth. “I like you, you mouthy little fucker,” Travis says, like he’s trying not to laugh. “I’m taking you home with me.”
“I still don’t want to be eaten,” Nick says, but it’s halfhearted at best.
Travis snorts and starts heading for the door, Nick clutched tight to his chest. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll take that into consideration and shit.”
Nick thinks that’s probably as good as he’s going to get, so he shuts up and enjoys the ride.
--
“Hold still,” ladyTaylor says, smacking the back of Joe’s head. “You’re so freaking squirmy.”
Joe pouts at her. “But it’s boring.”
She narrows her eyes. “I’m sick of hearing people telling me my boyfriend looks like a poodle.”
DudeTaylor cocks his head. “He does, kind of. Weeeeiiird.”
“Gee, thanks, guys. This experience is totally awesome for my self esteem.”
“Oh, please,” ladyTaylor says, making a face and pointing at him menacingly with the hair straightener. “Like you need a bigger head.”
Joe sighs piteously at the indignity he suffers at the hands of his significant others. “You’re so mean,” he complains, but holds still while she attacks his poor, sad hair again.
She snickers. “Yeah, yeah, you like it.”
DudeTaylor nods. “We do,” because it’s very, very dangerous to disagree with ladyTaylor when she has beautification implements in hand.
Joe says nothing, because anything at this point is going to be incriminating.
“You know,” ladyTaylor says, pointing at dudeTaylor with the straightener between swipes over his hair, “he’d probably whine less if you distracted him.”
DudeTaylor narrows his eyes at her. “I don’t think that’s going to help him hold still.”
“Eh,” she says, shrugging. “Probably not, but he’s right, this is boring.”
Joe keeps his mouth wisely shut, which is how he ends up with a blowjob and half-straightened hair.
It’s worth looking ridiculous.
--
“I cannot believe you did that,” Chiz says, slamming open the door so hard that it hits the wall and bounces off it again.
Butch doesn’t move from his comfortable, towel-clad sprawl on his bed except to arch an eyebrow. “Why not? I feel like it was actually pretty understandable.”
“You serenaded me in front of a mark,” Chiz shouts, hands clenching into fists at his sides. “A mark that you left alive. He’s still sitting there.”
“You could’ve killed him yourself,” Butch points out, pretty reasonably, if he says so himself. “You’ve sure as hell watched me do it enough times.”
Chiz groans and smacks himself in the forehead a few times. “That isn’t my job, dickhead. That isn’t my job at all. I’m cleanup.”
Butch shrugs. “Marry me.”
Chiz just stares at him incredulously. “I hate you,” he says, like all the air is trying to run headlong out of his lungs just on that one phrase. “I loathe you with every single part of me. Why the hell would I marry you?”
“Naw,” Butch says, chewing on a callus on the side of his thumb, “you loathe me with most of the parts of you. There’s definitely some parts I recall being interested in me a month or so back in the bushes at Queen Patrick’s May Day hootenanny.”
Chiz makes a pained noise, like someone is punching him in the stomach repeatedly. Butch fucking loves that noise. “Do you just—is this just a big fucking joke to you? Are you just doing this to make my life as hard as possible? Is it like—is it a hazing thing? Because I get that I’m not Fran, but fuck, that isn’t my fucking fault.”
Butch narrows his eyes. “This really doesn’t have any fucking thing to do with Fran. And if you bring him up again, I swear on your gorgeous blonde locks that you’ll wake up missing limbs.”
“See?” Chiz says, throwing his hands up. “One minute, you’re trying to marry me, the next you’re threatening to cut off my arms. There is something wrong with you. You’re a psychopath, okay, you are deeply disturbed.”
Butch shrugs again. “Probably. But Fran was my fucking partner, and that’s how it works, Chizzy McChiz.” He pats the bed beside him. “Come sit with me, and I’ll keep my hands above the waist and make you wish you’d already said yes to the wedding.” He waggles his eyebrows and makes kissy lips. No one can resist his manly sexiness.
Chiz sighs. “If I don’t, you’re just going to come after me, aren’t you?”
Butch nods solemnly. “You’re learning.”
“Apparently,” he says, resigned, and drops heavily onto the coverlet. “God, you’re annoying.”
Butch grins at him, summoning all the charm inherently contained in his rakish five o’clock shadow and crooked grin, and says, “Baby, you love it.”
Chiz doesn’t both arguing, just closes his eyes and lets Butch carry on convincing him of the joys of matrimony.
--
“Wait,” Gerard says, eyes round. “You’re dating Bob? Mermaid Bob?”
Mikey presses his fingers to his temples and sighs. “He’s not a mermaid, Gee, fuck.” He’s a male denizen of the sea. He doesn’t have a tail. He just… breathes underwater and has to take saltwater baths once or twice a week.
Gerard’s eyes narrow. “Bandit says he’s a mermaid.”
“Bandit is twelve, Gerard,” Mikey points out. “Bandit is twelve and her best friend is an imaginary Sailor Scout named Sailor Muskrat.”
“One, that last part is totally Frank’s fault, he was trying to remember Sailor Iron Mouse, okay, and two, Bandit is an honorable and trustworthy young woman, Mikey, she’s totally a legitimate witness to reality, you can’t just, like, invalidate her observation because she’s not as temporally advanced as you are--“
“Does she still have a bedtime?” Mikey interrupts, arching an eyebrow.
“…Yes,” Gerard allows, slowly, like he’s not sure what that has to do with anything.
Mikey’s eyebrow goes up further. “You see? She’s not an adult, Gee. She has a bedtime.”
“That’s just so he and Iero can fuck,” Gabe puts in helpfully, looking up from the soundboard and waggling his eyebrows.
“That’s true,” Gerard agrees cheerfully. “I do it to spare her.”
Mikey buries his head in his hands. “Yes, okay, fine. Fine. I’m dating Mermaid Bob.”
“Dude,” Brendon says, walking in and slinging his messenger bag onto the table. “Dude, I was gone a day. How do I miss this shit?” He doesn’t wait a beat before bursting into Under the Sea.
Mikey groans. “I hate you all. Someday I’m going to snap and eat you, you know.”
Gerard furrows his brow. “Why eat? I always thought you’d be the type to, like, beat us all to death with a pipe or something.”
“Dude,” Brendon says, cutting off mid-Sebastian-impression. “He still doesn’t know?”
“Know what?” Gerard asks, brows knitting even further. “Has Mikey killed someone with a pipe already? Because I mean, I get that you’re independent and stuff, Mikey, but I’m kind of offended you didn’t ask me to help dispose of the body. I know things. I am a knower of things, I would totally be useful.”
Mike pinches the bridge of his nose. “No, Gerard,” he says, because it’s easier than trying to explain that he’s maybe eaten one or two or seven people and had to deal with the bodies without help, “I haven’t beaten anyone to death with a pipe.” It’s not like he even really eats them anymore; once the first few months of hunger were over, it was easier to remember that people weren’t actually just a food source. Mostly. Occasionally baristas are just asking for it.
Gerard beams, and Mikey, for a minute, stops being annoyed and just loves him, because Gerard is an idiot, but he’s still Mikey’s big brother, and he’s awesome, and if Mikey actually told him, Gerard wouldn’t think it was anything other than totally cool. “Good, then,” he says, and, “I’m expecting a call if you do.”
Mikey snorts, and tries to pretend he finds Gerard tiring instead of just ridiculous. “Promise,” he agrees, rolling his eyes a little.
“Damn straight,” Gerard says, punching him in the shoulder.
Mikey kindly pretends that it hurts.
--
Ryan is normally pretty good in bed.
Today, he’s really, really not. There’s about three minutes of frantic, uncoordinated thrusting and then he’s hunching over, groaning, and Z is left, blinking at the ceiling in confusion, as he rolls over and goes to sleep.
“What the actual fuck?” That’s when she decides, unequivocally, that the album she and Jon are writing can go fuck itself, this shit needs to get fixed right the fuck now.
--
“Okay,” Z says, hand freakishly tight around Ryan’s bicep, like she’s some sort of tiny, blonde cyborg or something, “I can’t take it anymore. I have the patience of a saint, okay, I do, but I cannot take it anymore, you two are fucking stupid.” She slams the door of the music store open with her shoulder and drags Ryan across the threshold.
“Uh,” he says, trying to catch up with what exactly is going on.
“No. No uh,” she snaps, shoving him at a legitimately startled-looking Jon. “I had a big, giant, epic plan that involved musical genius and romance, okay, but the two of you are retarded and ruining my life and I want to eat you, so you need to just shut the fuck up and make out or something, okay?” She flicks Ryan in the ear—which hurts like a bitch, because Z has claws—and smacks Jon in the side of the head—it’s loud enough that Ryan winces for him—and storms back out the door.
The bell jangles, incongruously cheerful, and Ryan blinks at Jon.
“Hi,” he says, a little uncertainly, but Jon’s arms are warm and tight around him, and there’s something like a smile on Jon’s lips, so Ryan doesn’t think he minds how close they are.
“Hi,” Jon says, arms tightening a little, hands resting in the small of Ryan’s back. “So, apparently we’re ruining your girlfriend’s life.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Ryan corrects, trying very hard not to burrow into Jon’s chest. Jon is warm. And he smells nice. “She’s werewolf-married to a girl named after a state who makes me sandwiches.”
“Oh,” Jon says, a little faintly. “I mean, I kind of knew that, but in a less sense-making way.”
Ryan nods. “Z dislikes explaining things. She thinks that if people know what’s going on, she’ll be less in charge of it.” Which, to be fair, Ryan thinks may actually be true, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t deeply annoying.
“Well, that’s fair, I guess,” Jon admits. “Can I get you a cup of coffee or something?”
“It’s Sunday, I think the café is closed.” Which is a tragedy, because Ryan is pretty sure that coffee would make this a lot less awkward and embarrassing. He blames the Jonas guys for being weird and religious and not keeping their café open on the day of rest, or whatever.
“I live upstairs,” Jon says, mouth quirking up a little.
“Oh,” Ryan says. “Right. I knew that. I think.” Ryan is pretty sure he knew that. His brain is maybe slightly impaired by the fact that Jon is right here, smelling like wood polish and guy and maybe a little like sunshine and possibly kittens.
“If you wanted to come upstairs, I could make us some coffee, and we could talk about how you ended up not-dating a werewolf-married terrifying chick and also how I’m a wizard.” He doesn’t say it like he’s joking, so Ryan assumes that he’s not, which isn’t really that ridiculous, because Ryan spends most of his time in a house with three werewolves and the guy who owns the café that’s closed because he’s weird, so the idea of Jon being a wizard is mostly just… kind of cute.
Then again, Ryan’s judgment is deeply impaired by the fact that Jon’s hands have started inching under the hem of his shirt, thumbs rubbing across his skin, and Ryan doesn’t really care if Jon is secretly the Prince of Narnia. “I—“ his voice catches when Jon’s nail scrapes over his back, and he has to clear his throat and start again. “I think coffee would be good. Very good.”
Jon beams at him, and Ryan’s throat goes tight with something he doesn’t even have a name for. “Awesome. Coffee it is.”
It doesn’t end up being coffee, mostly because they don’t get as far as the stairs before Ryan is pressed up against the wall, whimpering desperately into Jon’s mouth while Jon’s hands somehow, magically, find all the places on his body that even Ryan didn’t know felt good.
Wizard doesn’t seem all that out of the question, really.
--
Jon lays him out on the piano bench, smoothing his thighs apart with gentle hands. He takes his time with the buttons on Ryan’s pants—there are three of them, because Ryan is secretly some sort of old man with weird old man pants—and the laces of his shoes.
Ryan’s eyelids are heavy, slipping shut on a slow blink every so often. “Jon?” he says, sleepy and slow, almost childlike. Then, “Jon,” again, more insistently, when Jon finally manages to get Ryan’s pants off his ankles.
“Yeah?” Jon doesn’t stop what he’s doing, just tugs Ryan’s argyle socks off his feet and throws them on the pile with his ridiculous old man shirt and his honest-to-god blouse.
“This isn’t—I’m not right. That—I feel like that’s a thing we should talk about. Before. I’m pretty sure I’m like, legitimately fucked up.”
Jon runs his hands up Ryan’s thighs, trailing his fingers through the fine hairs, and tucks his fingers under the waistband of his briefs. “Yeah,” he agrees, smiling a little despite himself. “You like Mark Twain.”
Ryan barks out a laugh at that, startled and loud. “You’re an asshole.”
Jon nods solemnly, looking Ryan in the eyes and cracking a grin. “Yep. And you love me.”
Ryan swallows, looking away from Jon’s gaze, red flags flaring on the tops of his cheeks. “If I can love anybody,” he allows, a little stilted, “then, yeah, it would be you.”
Jon presses a kiss to the inside of Ryan’s left knee, then the right one. “You’re kind of an idiot,” he says, not unkindly, “but Ryan, you aren’t—you’re not broken.”
Ryan opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but all that comes out is a sob. Jon leans up to swallow the sound.
--
“Seriously?” Nick says, raising an infuriatingly cool eyebrow. “White? Isn’t that a little cliché?”
Travis smacks his ass—harder, really, than the comment warranted, but he likes to make Nick squeak. “I like white on you.” It matches his ridiculous ring. It’s pure, untainted, elegant. Nick, above all things, requires a little elegance. Steadily, he pulls the laces tighter, pulling until Nick’s breath hitches.
“That’s really fucking tight,” Nick complains, voice a little higher than normal.
Travis keeps pulling. “Watch your mouth,” he says, instead of dignifying the complaint with a response. “Keep it clean or I’ll get it dirty.”
Nick winces, a real wince, and Travis pulls just a little more and then ties the laces off. Nick’s waist is small to start with, but the corset takes it in so much that Travis can circle it with his hands and have his fingertips touch.
“I don’t get why you won’t just fuck me,” Nick complains, rolling his eyes as Travis clips Nick’s stockings to the bottom of the corset.
Travis shakes his head. “I swear, Jonas, you don’t watch your mouth and I’m gonna put it to work.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Nick says.
Travis looks up at him from where he’s kneeling on the floor. Nick’s arms are big, muscular, and his nipples just barely show above the line of the corset. “This is important,” Travis says, going back to work, clipping the other stocking on. Nick’s cock is half hard, tenting the lace panties just a little, right in front of Travis’s face. Travis brushes two fingers over it, feeling the delicious heat of the skin under the lace.
Nick is quiet for a minute, holding still while Travis puts him into the dress, lacing it up over the corset. The silk is raw, homespun and so, so old, catching against the pads of Travis’s fingers as he runs tender hands over the slope of Nick’s waist. The skirt falls to the floor in delicate folds, pooling around Nick’s feet. It slides off his shoulders a little, revealing the top swell of each bicep. Travis clasps the double string of pearls around Nick’s throat, letting the second string hand long, over his chest.
“You look good,” Travis tells him honestly, unable to hide a smile of satisfaction. He puts on Nick’s makeup—brief touches of rouge and eye shadow, a neat smear of lipstick, careful rings of eyeliner on his lids. “Really fucking good.”
“Why is it,” Nick asks, instead of taking the fucking compliment, because he’s Nick, “that you get to curse, and I don’t?”
Travis leans in and bites at his lip, careful not to smear the lipstick. “Because,” he says around Nick’s lower lip, “ladies don’t curse.”
Nick shudders, and Travis feels his pulse speed up. “I’m not a lady,” Nick protests—it’s mostly out of habit by now, Travis knows. He’s had Nick screaming, on his knees and begging, pretty fucking adamant about what a lady he is. “I’m not.”
Travis shrugs, lets it go. It’s not like he has anything to prove, and it doesn’t ever get him anywhere to argue with Nick. Nick is convinced by hard facts, by having reality forced down his throat until he understands it. Travis doesn’t have any problem working with that. “Come on, then,” he says, taking Nick by the pearls and leading him out of the room, down the hall to the study. With every step, Nick’s heart rate goes up.
In the study, he finds the book he’s in the middle of—The Picture of Dorian Gray, it’s actually pretty good—and sits on the fainting couch. It’s a remnant from his days in London in the nineteenth century; it had belonged to the very old lady he’d rented from and subsequently eaten. He brings Nick with him, arranging him so he’s facedown over his lap. Nick’s breath quickens just from that, so Travis leaves him there awhile, cracking open the book and starting to read.
He makes it maybe five pages before Nick starts to squirm and mutter.
“You’re not being very ladylike,” he chastises, walking his fingers down the lacing at the back of Nick’s dress. “Ladies are patient. And quiet.”
Nick grumbles incoherently, so Travis punishes him by making him wait another five pages before he does anything. After that, though, even Travis is impatient.
Gently, he strokes over the back of Nick’s stockinged foot, letting the rough pad of his finger catch on the fabric. Nick twitches. Travis trails his finger further up, up the back of Nick’s leg, dragging the silk of his skirt up with his finger. When he gets to the back of Nick’s knee, he pauses, stroking over it in slow circles. Nick jerks, ticklish, and starts to breathe a little harder.
Travis makes it to the back of Nick’s thigh, to the crease between the top of his leg and where the lace panties stretch over the swell over his ass. Slowly, as slow as he can stand to be, he runs a finger down, between Nick’s legs, to stroke over his balls and back up, over the crease of his ass. He keeps it up, just the same motion, up and down, over and over.
Nick is completely hard now, rubbing up against Travis’s thigh, so Travis goes back to his book for a while, still stroking one finger over the cleft of Nick’s ass, down to his balls and back up again, lace catching on his skin every now and again.
He gets through twenty six pages this time, occasionally reading the same paragraph two or three times before it actually sticks. He keeps getting distracted, and he shouldn’t, he’s done this a thousand times, played with the patience of a thousand different people, but this is Nick. And it shouldn’t be any fucking different, but it is. Travis has no fucking idea how this happened, how he got to be this far gone for a kid with stupid hair, a kid he found in a coffee shop in downtown Chicago and took home on a whim. It doesn’t make a goddamn bit of sense, which, honestly, is probably why it works. It scares the shit out of him sometimes, which is legitimately the most stupid thing he’s ever thought in the last five hundred years, but it fucking does, it terrifies him so much that he just stops in place and can’t remember who he is, what he’s doing, until Nick brings him out of it, touches his arm or presses a kiss to his cheek and says, Hey, like this is nothing, like it’s not a big deal, and then, then Travis can pretend that it is no big deal, that this isn’t the first time he’s fucking felt something like this since he first walked out into the world.
Nick is breathing hard now, short, sharp pants into the pale brocade of couch. Travis takes pity on him and tugs the underwear down, bunching it under the curve of Nick’s ass, letting it snap a little against his balls when he lets go. Nick’s blood thunders, loud, and if Travis were younger, it would be the kind of thing that he wouldn’t be able to resist. Now, though, he’s older, seasoned, and it’s just a comfortable tug at his gut, a gentle reminder that Nick is delicious.
“Spread ‘em,” Travis says, nonchalant, turning a page in his book—mostly for show, he honestly has no fucking idea what’s happening in the plot anymore.
Nick obliges, silent, parting his legs as much as he can without one of them falling off Travis’s lap. The dress is rucked up around his waist in the back, exposing him, and Travis has to resist the urge to just throw him down and take, to just rip into him and keep going until he begs.
This is better, though. This lasts.
Travis licks a finger, getting it wet, and slides it down the cleft of Nick’s ass, circling his rim. Nick is tense, wound tight. Travis presses down, pushing his finger in, not stopping until he’s sunk in all the way to the knuckle. Nick’s breathing is harsh, ragged, as Travis curls his finger up, rubbing across Nick’s prostate. He rubs back and forth, reveling in the way he can feel Nick’s heartbeat pulsing all around his finger.
Slowly, he adds a second finger, not bothering to get it wet. Nick makes this stupidly sweet gasping sound, like he’s surprised, and his mouth opens and closes wetly, his eyes squeezed shut.
Travis scissors his fingers apart and turns another page in the book. Nick whimpers.
“If you want,” Travis says, like he just doesn’t give a shit, “I’ll blow you now.”
Nick is silent for a minute, hesitating, which is damn good, because it means he knows it’s a test. “No,” he says, finally, voice small and pained. “No, thank you.”
Travis grins a little to himself. Ladies don’t take anything the first time it’s offered. “Well, if you’re sure,” he says, just to be a dick. “I guess I’ll just keep reading.”
Nick whines a little, low in his throat, as Travis wriggles his fingers, opening him up. He pulls them out, sucking them into his mouth to get them wet again, and pushes them back in along with a third. Nick groans outright, tilting his hips up so Travis’s fingers sink deeper, open him wider. Travis likes to watch the way Nick’s rim stretches, forming to his knuckles, spreading wide and stretching when he moves. It mesmerizes him, the sweet, elastic stretch as he pushes deeper, spreads his fingers wider. Nick’s insides cling to his fingers, squeezing down around him, clenching randomly as Travis moves his fingers.
“I think,” Travis says idly, turning another page, “I want to pierce your ears. Ladies should be able to wear nice earrings.” He flicks his fingers, hard, catching just the right angle to make Nick gasp. “Pearl earrings, yeah? You’d be so fucking pretty.”
Nick grunts, shuddering, as Travis spreads his fingers as wide as they’ll go. “Y-yeah,” he agrees, voice trembling, and his muscles relax, just a little.
Travis has to bite down hard on his own lip just to keep himself in check. There’s something about this, about the way Nick changes, goes soft and pliant around him, letting him in, that goes straight to Travis’s gut. “You ready for me, baby?” he asks, still feigning nonchalance, but it’s harder now. Nick’s skin is thin, almost translucent in this light, and Travis can see the delicate indigo and red web just underneath, begging for attention.
Nick squirms back against Travis’s fingers, clenching down around them a little, and nods, burying his face in his arms. “Yeah,” he says faintly, “yes, I’m ready.”
Travis tucks his bookmark into his book—not that the page he’s on matters, he’s never going to remember what he’s read tonight—and eases out from under Nick, dropping to his knees beside the fainting couch. He takes his time, looking, taking in the elegant pools of silk rucked up around his hips, the gold of his skin, softer than the fabric. He runs his fingers down Nick’s arm, over the thick curves of his bicep—the kid has big arms, like he works for them, and Travis always wonders what he was like before this, what he did with his days before the café with his brothers, before Travis himself—down to the exposed skin of his forearm, over the delicate bones in his wrist. Wordlessly, Nick disentangles the arm from under his head and offers it, wrist up, to Travis.
Travis taps a thoughtful finger over the vein thrumming under the skin there, and after a minute, decides against it. Instead, he tugs the loose sleeve of the dress higher, until it’s bunched around Nick’s shoulder, until Travis can see the smooth lines of muscle standing sharply out from Nick’s skin. Nick’s muscles tense, just a little, just enough that Travis can tell that he’s nervous, and that’s what decides him. He lets his fangs drop down.
Nick howls when Travis bites down, into the muscle, actually howls in pain, and the sound goes straight to Travis’s dick. He waits until Nick is quiet, until he’s taking soft, shuddering, almost frantic breaths, to retract his fangs, sucking gently at the bite. He doesn’t ask if Nick’s okay—if he weren’t, he’d say something, he’d let Travis know. Nick is shaking hard, and his heart rate is up enough that the blood is practically shoving itself down Travis’s throat, despite him not being near any major veins or arteries. Before too long, Travis licks at the bite, pressing it closed, just a little, with his tongue, until the blood flow trickles to almost a stop.
He sits back on his haunches, sucking the last of the blood from his lips as he considers. Nick always tastes sweet, sharp and electric under his tongue, like new coins and lightning, and Travis likes it better in short bursts, like shocks in his mouth. He thinks, too, that if he let himself go for the major blood lines, he might not actually remember to stop—he’s been doing this for a long fucking time, but Nick is something else entirely, and despite himself, Travis isn’t sure he’d be able to live with himself if he killed Nick by accident.
He goes for the curve of Nick’s ass, next, right above where the lace of his underwear is resting, and Nick jerks hard this time, but stays silent. Travis doesn’t like quiet from Nick, so he bites a little harder. When all that gets him is a choked-off whimper, he growls a little and pulls back. “You’re being difficult,” he tells Nick sourly.
Nick has to breathe for a minute before he can say anything, which Travis counts as a win. “Ladies,” he says, and Travis can fucking hear the smirk, “are supposed to be seen, not heard.”
“That’s children, asshole.”
Nick snorts. “Whatever.”
Travis smacks Nick’s ass without really thinking about it, hand grazing the bite mark, and Nick grunts, a jagged, startled exhalation, and it’s awesome. There’s blood smeared across Travis’s hand, slick on his fingers.
Nick moans outright when Travis slides the blood slick fingers into him, pushing deep. Travis grins a little to himself—for a kid who wears a purity ring, Nick is fucking filthy—and leans back down to suck at the bite on Nick’s ass cheek. He flicks his fingers hard while he drinks, making Nick grind desperately down into the couch, panting noisily. Travis takes his time, waiting to lick the bite shut until Nick asks for it.
He doesn’t disappoint. “Travie,” Nick pants, “Travie, come on.”
Travis nips at the bite a little, making Nick’s skin jump under his mouth, but licks it closed and sits back. “Come on, what?” he teases, twitching his fingers a little deeper into Nick’s ass. “Ladies are polite and specific.”
Nick sucks a sharp breath in through his nose and huffs it back out, like he can’t decide if he’s turned on or exasperated, and turns his head so he can look Travis in the eye. His eyes are glassy, but there’s a challenge in them, anyway. “Come on and fuck me.”
Travis doesn’t call him on the obscenity—Nick’s been biting his lip, and his mouth is raw and swollen, and Travis is weak enough that at this point, he doesn’t give a shit what comes out of it. “Yeah,” he breathes, word catching in his throat a little, and it’s fucking weird, it’s foreign, but there’s this tightness in his chest like he can’t take air in, which is stupid, he’s a fucking vampire, he hasn’t needed air in centuries. Slowly, because for a whole fucking second he can’t remember how to move, Travis pulls his fingers out of Nick and stands up. “Yeah, baby, okay.”
He moves fast, then—once he’s going, he doesn’t hold back. He gets Nick’s dress shoved up, jammed up under his armpits, and maybe tears the lace of Nick’s panties when he yanks them off. There’s still a thin trickle of blood leaking down the side of Nick’s arm, and another smeared over his ass. Travis undoes the buckle on his belt, gets his jeans down and off, shucks his shirt somewhere over his shoulder.
He pulls Nick back by the hips until he’s bent over the arm of the fainting couch, ass high in the air, head hanging down between his arms. Travis doesn’t wait a beat before shoving into him in one hard, smooth stroke, reveling in the way Nick just stops breathing, goes totally still for one long, drawn out moment. Nick’s back arches up, and Travis plants a hand between his shoulder blades without even thinking about it, shoving him back down, hard. Nick whimpers a little, startled, but doesn’t struggle as Travis starts to thrust. Nick is tight, even after Travis fingered him open, and he’s clenching down convulsively, thighs trembling as Travis moves.
When Travis comes, groaning and stretching out across Nick’s back, Nick takes one, long, shaky breath and follows after, not even three heartbeats later.
After, when Nick is taking deep, gulping breaths of air and crawling into Travis’s lap, Travis runs his hands over the ruined fabric of the dress and swallows hard. This feels suspiciously like something new, something sharp and heady and addictive like even blood isn’t, and Nick is so gorgeously, perfectly begging for it with every breath that Travis isn’t sure how this can end well for either of them.
He doesn’t even really care how, anymore, just squeezes his eyes shut and counts Nick’s heartbeats until he believes that somehow, somehow it will.
--
The thing is, it all boils down to Chord’s hands. None of this would even really be an issue, if it weren’t for Chord’s stupid hands. Ryland and Alex are totally nice guys, and yeah, okay, their attempts at wooing are kind of endearing. Justin would maybe even be swayed by this point. But Chord’s hands.
Justin has a problem.
He knows the radio show is a joke, knows there’s really no point to it other than stroking Tyson’s massive, wounded pride, knows that the music is terrible and that mostly it’s just Tyson being lonely and pathetic across the airwaves while Justin and Ian and Nash and Chord and Ryland and Alex make sure that he doesn’t go drown himself in the bathroom sink every night.
The thing is, okay, the thing is, Chord has these hands. And they’re all long, with wide palms and big knuckles, square fingertips and raggedly bitten nails, and Justin can’t stop watching them.
He wants to just jump the stupid table they all sit around and go crawl into Chord’s lap and start sucking on his fingers until everyone shuts up about the evils of Gabe Saporta and the injustice done to Tyson by Bill Beckett, princess of princesses or whatever. Justin wants to just lose himself in dragging his tongue over every callus, every bitten-down cuticle, while everyone else just sits there and stares.
It’s seriously weird. He knows it’s weird. But it’s a thing.
--
“So,” Travis says, trailing a finger up Nick’s chest, pressing his nail into the curve of Nick’s clavicle and making note of the neat, white crescent mark it leaves. “How’d you end up here?”
“Dude,” Nick says, “we’re not talking about this.”
“No, seriously,” Travis says, raising an eyebrow. “I want to know, and you’re going to tell me.” He puts a tiny thread of iron in it, the tone that makes most people quail.
Nick’s mouth just tightens, and he turns his head away from Travis, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “I really, really don’t want to talk about it, okay? It’s—it’s stupid, and embarrassing, and I’m here now, so it’s not like it even really matters anymore, right?”
Travis’s eyes narrow, and for a moment—maybe three or four moments—he’s worried that Nick has some sort of ugly past, some sort of secret darkness that’s going to catch up and make Travis’s life more complicated than it already is. And then he remembers that this is Nick, and that dark is a long shot from embarrassing, and he says, raising his other eyebrow to join the first, “Fucking tell me, Jonas.”
Nick mumbles something that someone with human hearing would never catch, cheeks flaming, but Travis could swear that he says, “I was a pop singer.”
If Travis had to breathe, he would probably die from how long and hard he laughs. Nick’s death glare doesn’t even put a dent in it.
--
Jon writes on Ryan’s arm every morning, before Ryan wakes up, Fixable.
Because he gets that Ryan sees himself as broken, and Ryan’s not going to believe Jon if Jon tells him otherwise. So he doesn’t try to argue the point, just reminds Ryan that he’s willing to help Ryan be unbroken.
--
It’s not that big a deal. It’s just an assignment, it’s just an in-and-out job where Spencer takes the boy and goes.
Except that there’s this feeling, this weird creeping sensation in the pit of his stomach, worming its way all the way down to the tips of his fingers, that says it isn’t just an assignment, that there’s something amiss, and Spencer hasn’t lived this long ignoring his gut.
On the other hand, the idea of returning to the Court empty handed and facing Queen Patrick’s purple-faced wrath is even more unappealing than facing down the weird feeling prickling at him. Queen Patrick is one terrifying motherfucker, and occasionally manages to make Spencer seriously consider the normally ludicrous idea that gingers don’t have souls.
It can’t be something so bad it’s worth flying in the face of Queen Patrick’s wrath, right?
Right.
Sighing, Spencer pushes the door to the music shop open and takes the flight of stairs without looking back.
--
“Look,” Nick says, “this is important.”
“Uh,” Travis says, scratching at his head through the massive cloud of hair that he keeps meaning to cut, “yeah, okay.”
Nick’s eyes narrow. “If you laugh at me, I’m going to bite off your kneecaps while you sleep.” He shakes his guitar at Travis for emphasis.
Travis stifles the immediate compulsion to laugh hysterically. “Okay,” he agrees, biting his lip over a smile. The sad thing is, he’s retarded enough over Nick that he’d probably let him get through at least one kneecap before he kicked his ass. Travis is going soft in his old age, but he can’t muster up enough disgust with himself to really give a shit.
Nick sits down on the fainting couch and glares at Travis, all tiny and fucking fierce, like a cracked out baby poodle. “This is necessary,” he says, voice hilariously menacing. “According to Kevin. And his unwashed wolf boyfriend agreed with him, and seriously, if you laugh at me, I’m gonna take the curtains with me when I leave in the morning.”
Travis presses his lips together so he doesn’t snicker, and nods solemnly.
Nick is blushing furiously now, red flags on the tops of his cheeks, and Travis wants to punch himself in the face, it’s so cute. “Okay,” Nick says. He clears his throat uncomfortable and strums a little.
Travis waits.
“I’m good at wasting time,” Nick half-sings, have croaks, face flaming.
Travis bites down harder on his lip so he doesn’t crack up. If he laughs, he’s pretty sure Nick will cry, and he doesn’t like making Nick cry by accident. On purpose is fair game; is fucking hot, actually, but by accident makes him feel kind of sick.
“I think lyrics need to rhyme,” Nick goes on, scowling down at his guitar. “And you’re not asking, but—“ he looks up at Travis, and there’s a brief glimpse of a smile on his face, “I’m trying to grow a mustache.”
Travis snorts, but when Nick glares up at him, smoothes his face into the perfect picture of vampire impassiveness. “Go on,” he says, mouth twitching.
Nick’s eyes narrow to dangerous slits, but he keeps strumming, and starts back in. “I eat cheese,” he sings ominously, “but only on pizza, please, and sometimes on a homemade quesadilla, otherwise it smells feet to me, and I—I really like it when the moon looks like a toenail,” he hesitates, looking up at Travis, and it’s so awkward, but Travis just wants to fucking smoosh his adorable little face, god, “and I love it when you say my name.” He holds the last word for an extra couple seconds, scowling fiercely.
“Nick,” Travis says, pinching the bridge of his nose, trying not to laugh, but Nick is singing in earnest now, still glaring, but there’s a smile on his face, too, and it’s like a fucking sun shower, and Travis doesn’t even know what to do with how fucking endearing it is.
“If you wanna know, here it goes, gonna tell you there’s a part of me that shows when we’re close, gonna let you see everything, but remember that you asked for it—“
“Nick,” Travis says again, burying his face in his hands. Yes, he asked for it, but singing seems ridiculously unnecessary, and it’s making Travis want to fucking cuddle the shit out of him, and Travis is an old, terrifying vampire. Making him want to cuddle is not cool.
“I’ll try to do my best to impress, but it’s easier to let you take a guess at the rest, but you wanna hear what lives in my brain and my heart, well, you asked for it—“ He makes this face, this priceless face, like he knows exactly how uncomfortable Travis is, like it’s totally what Travis deserves for asking him some basic fucking questions, like what he does in his free time and what his favorite color is, which is ridiculous, because people ask those questions all the fucking time. It’s not weird. Dressing Nick up in corsets and gowns and drinking his blood could possibly be considered, by people who are not Travis and not ancient vampires, a little weird, but basic social questions do not warrant revenge by incredibly catchy jingles.
“For your perusing,” Nick goes on, because he’s Nick, and even in totally retarded you’re-an-asshole-Travis-jingles, he has to be a verbose motherfucker, “at times confusing, slightly amusing, introducing me.” He stops, and Travis exhales in relief, because it’s fucking over, and he can pretend this never happened.
Except, oh holy fuck, “Do do, do do do do do,” Nick sings, this psycho manic grin on his face, and Travis knows, knows that he’s going to wake up with this fucking song stuck in his head every day for the rest of fucking eternity, “do do, do do do do do, la da da da, la da la da la da da da—“ Nick stands up, face just completely evil triumph now, “da.”
“Nick, seriously,” Travis says, rubbing his hands over his face. If he hadn’t killed hundreds of people, he’d be wondering what horrible thing he’d done to have this be happening to him.
“I,” Nick says, shuffling towards Travis, singing through a smirk, “never trust a dog to watch my food.”
Travis’s face starts to smile without his permission, and he tries to clamp down on it, he really does, because Nick is a wily-ass little shit, and he doesn’t need to think he’s fucking winning something, here.
“And I like to use the word dude,” Nick goes on, dancing a little now, and it’s so dorky that Travis is kind of embarrassed for him, but Nick is totally in this shameless zone of poodle-y used-to-be-a-pop-star madness, “as a noun, or an adverb, or an adjective. And I’ve never really been into cars, I like really cool guitars—“ he sort of shakes his guitar at Travis in emphasis, “and superheroes, and checks with lots of zeroes on them.”
Travis is definitely smiling now, and he’s kind of wishing for a stake so he can end the pain of being so fucking in love with this. “You’re horrible,” Travis tells him, narrowing his eyes to dangerous slits. It’s an expression that’s made half-naked supermodels and manly-as-fuck bodybuilders shriek and try to run for the hills in equal measure, but Nick just beams evilly at him and keeps going.
“I love the sound of violiiiiiiiiiiiiins,” Nick croons, leaning up and getting all up in Travis’s face, like Travis isn’t even thinking about chowing down on his guts just so he’ll stop singing and making Travis feel like such a girl. “And making someone smiiiiiiiiile.” He pecks Travis on the mouth, like a goddamn nineteen-fifties housewife.
“Why do you hate me?” Travis asks him. “I give you pretty dresses and good sex. What did I do to deserve this?”
Nick’s eyes narrow again, but he’s still smiling, like he thinks Travis is being cute. “If you wanna know—“
“I don’t,” Travis lies, in a desperate attempt to regain some of his ability to be a scary-ass, imposing motherfucker of a vampire.
“—here it goes, gonna tell you there’s a part of me I show if we’re close, gonna let you see everythiiiiiiiiing, but remember that you asked for it.”
Travis backs up until he can flop down into the giant armchair by the fireplace and rub his hands over his face.
Nick follows, hopping up on the arm of the chair and throwing his legs over Travis’s lap. Travis could throw him off, but he won’t, and Nick obviously knows it, and is doing this just to be a smug bitch. “I’ll try to do my best to impress, but it’s easier to let you take a guess at the rest, but you wanna hear what lives in my brain and my heart, well, you asked for it.” He pats Travis on the head without pausing the song. “For your peruuuuuuusing, at times confuuuuuuuuusing, possibly amuuuuuusing, introduuuuuuuuuuucing meeeeee.”
Travis cracks up, finally, just buries his head in Nick’s shoulder and lets himself laugh until he’s wheezing.
Triumphant, Nick sings, “Well, you probably know more than you ever wanted to, so be careful when you ask next tiiiiiiiiiiime.”
“I will,” Travis promises. “Fine, you win, no more prying.”
Nick nods, making his weird victory face—he gets these duck lips, and his eyebrows go up, and he bobs his head, and Travis is pretty sure he has Joe to blame for that shit—and doesn’t fucking stop singing. “Sooo, if you wanna know, here it goes, gonna tell you there’s a part of me I show if we’re close, gonna let you see everythiiiiiiiiiiing, but remember that you asked for it—“
“Come on, little dude,” Travis says, still laughing despite himself, “I give in.”
“I’ll try to do my best to impress, but it’s easier to let you take a guess at the rest, but you wanna hear what lives in my braaaain and my heart, well, you aaasked for it.” Nick raises a challenging eyebrow at Travis, like he’s fucking daring him to argue anymore. “For your peruuuuuuusing, at times confuuuuuuuusing, hopefully amuuuusing, introduuuuuuucing meeeeeeee.” He leans in close and sings right in Travis’s face, and it’s that fucked up, bouncy part, and Travis’s head is bobbing in time with it without even getting his permission first, he’s going to kill something; “Do do, do do do do, do do, do do do do do, do do do doooo, introduuuuuuuciiiing meeeeeeeee.”
He stops, finally, and Travis doesn’t even know what to say. “I fucking love you, you irritating little shit,” pops out of his mouth, and yeah, okay, that’ll do.
Nick beams at him. “I know. But if you ask me about my past ever again, I will write you a seven minute pop hit before you can blink, and it will have your name in it, and I will make sure it gets on the radio.”
Travis thinks of Gabe, and the fact that Nick’s brother is dating Mike, and supposes that that is, in fact, a very real threat. “Fine,” he grumbles, nipping at the shell of Nick’s ear, “I won’t ask you about your time as a world renowned pop star, asshole.” He bites a little harder, and Nick suddenly isn’t laughing anymore. “But I reserve the right to ask you about other shit.”
“Fine,” Nick agrees, voice going a little higher as Travis’s mouth migrates down the side of his throat. “That’s fine. Sex now?”
Travis grins into the skin of Nick’s neck. “Sex now,” he agrees. “Definitely sex now.”
--
“Hey,” Jon says, running the tips of his fingers down the line of Ryan’s side. “I was wondering how you felt about pictures.”
Ryan’s brow furrows, and Jon resists the urge to smooth out the wrinkles with his fingertips. “Pictures?” He’s pulled up on his elbows, the sheet pooling in the small of his back, and the light filtering in the window makes his skin glow moon-white.
“Yeah,” Jon says, ducking his head and trying not to let his cheeks go pink. It never used to feel awkward to ask for this from anyone, but it’s been a long time since he felt like photography was his work, and it’s somehow so much more uncomfortable to ask for when he doesn’t have the excuse of being an artist to hide behind. But Ryan is beautiful in the way that the fairy court was beautiful, made of long lines and sharp angles, but it’s tempered with this sort of fragile humanity that Jon isn’t sure he can even capture on film, but he can’t not want to try. “Like—pictures. Of you.”
Ryan stares at him for a beat, and then there’s a tiny ghost of a smile on his lips, and he says, barely a breath, “Oh.” He sits up a little more, and the sheet slides further down, and Jon’s breath catches.
“I just—“ Jon starts, but then there’s a real smile curling over Ryan’s mouth, and Jon can’t even remember how to talk.
“How do you want me, Jon Walker?” Ryan teases, stretching out so all his lines lengthen, practically purring.
Jon swallows hard and hides behind the certainty of being directive, of setting up a shot, and says, “I might need to—to do some prep work.”
Ryan’s eyelashes dip, and he says, utterly shameless and totally, insanely hot, “I’m all yours.”
--
Jon looks up, and Spencer’s heart clenches in his chest.
“Hey,” Jon says, voice soft, and there isn’t really any shock in his eyes.
Spencer swallows. This is it. This is his chance to see his curse working, to see Jon miserable and without his magic, because Jon is here, Jon is with someone, so his heart can’t have been broken, which means, which means—
“You’re happy,” Spencer says incredulously. “You don’t have your powers, you don’t have—and you’re happy?”
Jon looks at him in that creepy wizard way he has, the way that makes Spencer feel like Jon is looking through him, looking at all the parts of Spencer that Spencer keeps for himself. “On the contrary,” Jon says, slowly, “I definitely have my powers, Spence.” He sounds sad, but not like he’s sad for himself—like he’s sad for Spencer, and that definitely doesn’t make any sense.
“No,” Spencer says, just as slowly, because he feels confused, feels stupid, and he doesn’t like that. “No, you have to have had your heart broken.” He gestures at Ryan without looking at him, because if he looks, he’s not going to be able to look away. “And you haven’t, you’re not broken hearted, you’re with him.”
Jon smiles, but it’s wrong and twisted; it makes him look far away. “Spence,” he says gently, like Spencer is the fragile one, like Spencer is delicate and broken, still, after all this time. Spencer refuses to consider the possibility that Jon is trying to be kind. “Spence, Ryan breaks my heart every day.”
Spencer’s eyes sting, sudden and strong, and he has to blink hard to keep from embarrassing himself. “Then why are you with him?”
Jon looks at Ryan, but Spencer doesn’t let his gaze waver. If he looks—he can’t look. “I love him. And—and he needs me, Spence,” Jon says, like it’s an admission of guilt, like it’s heavy.
Quiet enough that he hopes Ryan won’t hear, Spencer says, “I needed you, Jon.”
Jon looks stricken, just for a moment. His face clears quickly, though—too quickly, really. “Spence, I was someone else, then.” He clears his throat, palms the back of his neck—for the first time, he looks awkward, and considering the situation, Spencer kind of wants to laugh at that. “I’m not proud of who I was.”
Spencer bites his lip so he doesn’t say anything beneath his dignity. “I’m—this requires better explanation.” He tries not to look like a child when he says, “Come with me?”
Jon shakes his head and tips his head towards Ryan, and finally, Spencer looks.
Ryan is up on his knees and elbows on the empty drum stand, hands tied in front of him. His head is hanging down, hair over his face. There are stripes down the backs of his legs, crisscrossing all the way from his thighs to his shoulders. In a strange, foreign way, it’s almost beautiful. Spencer swallows hard and keeps looking. There are bruises everywhere, huge plum-colored swaths, painting a picture of adoration over the sides of his hips, the backs of his thighs, the sides of his calves, the protuberances of his ribs. He’s been fingered open; his rim is slick and shiny, gaping wide, and Spencer’s gut clenches when he sees a flash of slick pinkish flesh inside. The camera is set up barely a foot from Ryan, and in the viewfinder, Spencer can see that same image—latticed pattern of bruises and stripes, all leading in to this one focal point, forcing Spencer’s eyes to it again and again. Ryan is perfectly still, perfectly silent, waiting.
Like a good boy, Spencer thinks. Hold still for me, Spence. Good boy.
“I’m in the middle of something,” Jon says, finally, almost businesslike. “It’s important.”
It’s a dismissal if Spencer’s ever heard one. “This is important,” he says, though it’s not an argument. “There’s something we need to discuss.” It doesn’t seem tactful to explain that Spencer has been sent to take the boy Jon has clearly spent hours carefully arranging. That can come later, with the conversation and the other explanations. Spencer forces himself to stay calm instead of punching Jon and breaking his stupid fucking camera.
Just spread your legs a little more, let me see—yeah, Spence, good boy, just like that. There are ghostly hands on Spencer’s calves, the backs of his thighs, positioning him just right. The sound of a flashbulb, and a flash of Jon’s pleased smile from a hundred years ago.
“We can discuss it later,” Jon says, stern now. “You need to leave.”
Spencer doesn’t mean to sound as lost as he does when he asks, “Where should I go?”
Jon must catch the tone, because his face softens a little, and he says, “There’s a coffee shop a few doors down. I’ll come find you when I’m done here.”
Almost done, Spence. Open your mouth a little wider—good boy, show me you want it, come on.
“Alright,” Spencer says, throat catching a little. He tries not to look at Ryan again, but the tableau is hauntingly familiar and he can’t quite keep his gaze away. “I’ll be waiting.”
He goes, then, before Jon can say anything else, before he has to remember anything more.
Spencer isn’t even halfway down the stairs when he hears Jon say, “You were so still, so good for me. Such a good boy, Ry.”
He flees.
--
When the boy walks into the coffee shop, the entire world stops making noise, and Brendon’s breath all rushes out on the word, “Oh.”
He’s beautiful, with lady-hips and lady-hair, a sweet face and a scowl like he’s the prettiest curmudgeon to ever walk the universe. His hands are jammed deep into the pockets of too-tight jeans, and his hair is flopping over his face like it, too, hates everything, and Brendon just wants to bury his hands in it and assure it that no, the world is actually pretty okay.
“Um,” the boy says, when Brendon’s arms are around his neck and his legs are around his waist, “I’m not a tree.” It’s muffled by Brendon’s stomach, but his voice is like grumpiness transformed into music.
“Shush,” Brendon croons, petting his hair soothingly, “the world is beautiful, and you are the most beautiful of all its things.”
The boy doesn’t say anything other than, “Uh,” but his arms wrap around to support Brendon’s hold on him, which Brendon is going to take as a definite sign towards him being okay with Brendon climbing him.
“I love you,” Brendon tells him, clinging as the boy starts to walk towards the booth Brendon had been sharing with Joe and Gabe and Bill and Demi and both the Taylors. “I love you more than I love the cereal with the marshmallows in it. Tell me your name, sweet love of mine.” His toes are tingling. The boy is magic, Brendon can feel it like glitter sparkling in the back of his throat. Just as easily, Brendon can tell that the boy is his, that he fits all Brendon’s everything like he was made just for him.
The boy starts unwrapping Brendon’s limbs from his head, and Brendon ends up dumped—pretty gently, really, because the boy is obviously chivalrous and a gentleman—onto the table. “Okay,” the boy says, cocking a hip and making a really impressive bitchface, “I’m Spencer, and you’re fucking weird.”
“I know,” Brendon says, as Gabe starts to make defensive noises, like maybe he’s going to sock Brendon’s brand-new, beauteous Spencer in the face, “but you’re okay with that.”
Spencer’s eyes narrow, but his bitchface softens a little, and he scrubs a hand over his face before he says, “Yeah, no, I kind of am.”
Brendon beams up at him. “I want to get naked and give you sweet kisses, Spencer.”
Spencer makes a sort of pained face, but Brendon is used to that from most people, and doesn’t take it personally. “Weren’t you here with these people?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at the group, who are being pretty chill about all this, really.
“He was,” Demi says, patting Brendon supportively on the arm, “but Brendon gets distracted by shiny things. We’re used to it.”
Spencer’s mouth twitches. “I see,” he says, slowly, like he’s thinking about it.
Brendon scrambles up, scooting forward so he’s sitting up like a dignified person, letting his legs dangle off the table on either side of Spencer’s luscious lady-hips. “You’re not shiny,” he tells Spencer earnestly, “you’re perfect.”
Spencer’s bitchface blurs into this weird, soft expression, with big, big blue eyes, teeth digging into his lip, and he swallows hard. Brendon’s heart is going to burst right in his chest. “Okay,” Spencer says, throat catching on the first syllable.
“Okay?” Brendon asks, distracted by the sheen of sparkles on the side of Spencer’s throat, where it disappears into the neck of his shirt.
“Okay, take me home,” Spencer says, ducking his head a little.
Gabe wolf-whistles, but Brendon barely hears it as he hops off the table, taking Spencer’s hand and fishing for his keys in the same motion. “Awesome,” he says, grinning so hard his face hurts. “Let’s go, Spencer…“ he pauses, waiting for Spencer to tell him his last name.
“Smith,” Spencer says, after a the second or two it takes him to catch on. He lets Brendon lead him to the door and out into the bright afternoon sunshine.
“Let’s go, Spencer Smith,” Brendon says, liking the way the name fills his mouth up, like good ice cream or root beer or a smile. Brendon tows him down the street towards his apartment, and has never, ever been more glad that he lives so close to the café, not even on mornings when he’s only had two hours of crappy sleep and only has fifteen minutes before he has to be at work. “I want to see your sexy thighs without pants on them.”
Spencer laughs, low and sweet and so, so pretty. “Yeah,” he agrees, eyes sparkling like water in the sun, “yeah, okay.”
--
Mike’s changes aren’t Kevin’s favorite thing in the world—it’s a lot of lonely waiting and hearing Mike howling like something’s trying to rip itself out of his chest, and that makes Kevin’s own chest ache like he’s dying—but this time, his chest is aching with something else, and it’s well after moonrise when Kevin realizes that he might be getting sick.
He doesn’t think it’s that bad until he’s doubled up in the bathroom, retching, trying to cling to the toilet and keep his hair out of his face at the same time.
He makes it back out to the living room around three in the morning—with the intention of getting the afghan and throw pillow from the couch so he can curl up in front of the toilet, but he’s so tired and dizzy that he doesn’t make it back to the bathroom, just sinks down to the floor and draws his knees up to his chest and tries not to throw up again, because he knows that the smell will never come out of the carpet to Mike and Z and Tennessee’s wolf senses, and that just doesn’t seem fair to them.
He wakes up in the morning with Mike and Tennessee peering at him, Mike’s hand on his forehead.
“You’re burning up,” Mike says softly, voice hoarse from howling.
“Sick,” Kevin mumbles, trying to smile reassuringly, but the muscles in his face refuse to pull themselves out of their tight grimace.
“Why didn’t you go to the doctor?” Mike asks, sounding—sounding scared.
Kevin wants to make him feel better, wants to tell him that he’ll be fine, but all that comes out is, “Didn’t want to leave you alone.”
If Mike says anything in response, it gets lost in the black of sleep as Kevin’s eyes slip closed.
--
Kevin keeps his hands clenched in the fabric of Mike’s jacket, keeps them curled so tight his knuckles go white. The alley behind the café is poorly lit and chilly, but it’s mostly private.
Mike’s breathing is harsh and ragged, coming in short pants, visible in the cold air. This is—this is the first full moon after Kevin got sick, and he’s only been healthy for a couple weeks, and the second course of antibiotics only ended a week ago. They’re scared, the fear running back and forth down the tether in Kevin’s head, until he’s not even sure what’s his and what’s Mike’s anymore.
“This is a really bad idea,” Kevin gasps out, breathless, into the skin of Mike’s neck as Mike thrusts up, into him. It hurts—he’s barely slick at all anymore, the friction just slightly eased by residual lube from earlier—but it drags him back into the moment, over and over, keeps him here, pinned to this wall, Mike’s hands on his hips, holding him up, holding him steady.
A growl tears itself out of Mike’s throat, muffled against Kevin’s shoulder, and Mike shudders—whether from the cold or the oncoming moon, Kevin can’t tell. Mike’s nails are digging into the skin over Kevin’s hips, hard enough to tear the skin, and even with the cold, Kevin is close.
Mike sucks bruises into the skin of Kevin’s throat, sloppy and rough, biting hard at the tender spot behind Kevin’s ear. He doesn’t stop shaking, whole body trembling as he moves, and he’s pressing close, close enough that the angle isn’t quite right, but Kevin can feel the fear under his skin, the need to get closer—Kevin knows that feeling, feels it all the time, the need to get closer than is possible, to crawl into each other and curl up there forever—so he doesn’t argue, just clenches down and urges him on.
“You’re mine,” Mike tells him, voice like gravel, “you’re okay, you’re not—“
Kevin closes his eyes against the guilt of having worried Mike so much and kisses him, biting into his mouth hard enough to bruise, hard enough that their teeth clack together. “Yours,” he promises, voice catching as Mike thrusts in harder, “I’m fine. It was just a cold.” It wasn’t, exactly, but it wasn’t anything truly serious, and—
—I’llbeherewhenyougetback—
Mike whines, low in his throat, like it’s involuntary, and slows his pace a little, nuzzling into the skin over Kevin’s collarbone. “Don’t wanna leave you.”
Kevin squeezes Mike with his legs, wriggling until Mike gets the idea and picks up the pace again. “I know.” Kevin’s head scrapes against the wall every time Mike moves in him, and he should really brace himself against the wall or something, but Mike is still shaking, and Kevin isn’t going to let go.
One of Mike’s hands squirms between them, wrapping around Kevin’s cock and squeezing. “Don’t come,” he says, hips speeding up minutely, like he’s close. “Don’t come.”
Kevin bites his lip and squeezes his eyes shut and tries to hold back. Mike’s fingers tighten around the base of his cock, squeezing hard, relieving the ache, just a little, and then Mike is pushing in deep, groaning into Kevin’s neck as he comes.
Kevin whimpers, barely loud enough to hear, as Mike pulls out. Come is dripping out of him, down the insides of his thighs, and it’s sticky, cooling fast, and he’s still hard, aching with it, and it’s so hard not to just beg.
Mike tucks himself back into his jeans and zips up. “Turn around.”
Kevin swallows hard, but obeys, turning so his front is pressed to the wall. The head of his cock brushes the rough brick, and he winces, just a little.
Mike presses up close behind him, fingers trailing down Kevin’s spine. He pushes two fingers into Kevin, twisting into the warm stickiness, and then out again. He reaches around to Kevin’s mouth and rubs them over Kevin’s lower lip, and it’s weird, and it’s slippery and gross, but Kevin opens his mouth anyway. Mike’s fingers taste like them, like being close enough, and Kevin has to dig his nails into his palms so he doesn’t come from the taste.
Mike takes his fingers from Kevin’s mouth and gets down on his knees, disregarding the cold, wet concrete. Wordlessly, he spreads Kevin apart and licks into him, tongue pushing in as far as it will go. Kevin grinds forward into the wall and tries, tries so hard not to come, but then Mike is licking down, over his balls, cleaning the sticky mess off of him, and it’s just too much, and he can’t not, not with the cold air on his wet hole, with Mike sucking Kevin’s balls into his mouth, and he just comes, whimpering, against the wall.
Mike doesn’t back off, doesn’t get upset, even though he should, because Kevin was bad, couldn’t hold back. Mike just tugs him back further from the wall and leans up to lick the come from Kevin’s cock, from the brick where it’s splattered. Kevin pants, open mouthed, face pressed to the cold brick, and tries not to cry.
There’s just this line—it’s a thin line, but it’s dividing him from where he is and where he’s supposed to be, from being what he is, and being as good as he wants to be for Mike. He worries Mike when Mike’s supposed to be worried about himself; he can’t quite obey when he wants to. And it makes Kevin’s chest hurt, just a little, to realize that there really isn’t much he can do about it.
--
“So,” Spencer says, shifting a little awkwardly on Brendon’s raggedy, overstuffed couch.
Brendon bites his lip and smiles this tiny, shy smile, so different from his weird, overwhelming enthusiasm from before, and Spencer, all of a sudden, can’t quite catch his breath.
“So,” Brendon says. He’s got his hands jammed into his back pockets, and he’s just standing there, in this too small purple shirt and too tight chick jeans and these ridiculous red glasses, and Spencer keeps thinking that his hair looks like a cockatoo, and Spencer has no idea why he thinks it’s attractive, but his breathing just won’t even out at all. For a moment, just one tiny, tiny moment, Jon and Ryan and Queen Patrick and everything Spencer is supposed to care about seem so, so far away.
“Are you hungry?” Brendon asks, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“Sure,” Spencer says, mostly so he’ll have something to do with his hands other than shove them down the back of Brendon’s retardedly tight pants or cover his face with them and sob about the horrible misery that is his life outside of this tiny, shabby apartment.
Brendon’s smile is sweet and tentative and totally, stupidly beautiful when he says, “How do you feel about cereal?”
Spencer has no idea how he feels about cereal, because he’s a fucking fairy and he eats cakes and pastries and confections spun from starlight sugar and morning sunlight, so he just shrugs, watching awkwardly as Brendon shuffles off to the kitchen, presumably in search of this mystical cereal.
When Brendon comes back, he’s holding two big mugs full of milk and floating chunks of rainbow colored crunchy-looking bread. “Sorry,” he says apologetically, ducking his head as he hands one of the mugs to Spencer. “I’m kinda out of bowls.”
Spencer shrugs again and takes the spoon Brendon offers with the mug. Peering into the ocean of multicolored chunks, Spencer scoops some up and takes a cautious bite.
“Oh,” he says, blinking a little in surprise. “This is delicious. What the fuck is this?”
Brendon beams at him and flops down onto the couch next to him, some of the milk sloshing out of his mug and onto the dingy carpet. “Cereal,” he says, like that means something, and throws his legs over Spencer’s lap.
Spencer swallows at the warm weight of the touch—he’s not used to being touched, he hasn’t been really very tactile since Jon, he’s been keeping his distance from people and the way they like to fuck him over—and settles a careful hand over Brendon’s knee. Spencer takes another bite, carefully juggling mug and spoon, and says, “I like cereal.”
Brendon’s smile widens a little, and he looks down into his mug, shoveling some cereal into his mouth like he’s trying to hide his grin. “Yeah?”
Spencer bites his lip and takes another couple of bites before he says anything. Chewing and swallowing the delicious, sugary goodness, he says, “Yeah.” He follows that up pretty much immediately with, “So this is probably weird.”
Brendon arches a dark eyebrow at him over his glasses. “Which part? The part where I climbed you like a tree, or the part where I’m feeding you kid’s cereal with marshmallows in it?”
Spencer takes another bite and thinks about how to answer that. It’s all weird, but mostly the part where he’s supposed to be here to grab Pete’s son and take him back to the Otherworld, and is instead sitting on some guy’s couch, eating cereal. Well, that, and the part where the guy is gorgeous and apparently wants to get into his pants, because, when he’s honest with himself, Spencer isn’t really sure what anyone could see in him, really. He’s ugly for a fairy, with too much pudge and too many curves and something like a beard is always trying to happen on his face.
Before he can figure out a way to explain any of that out loud, though, Brendon is setting his mug of cereal on the floor and leaning in to brush at the hair flopping over Spencer’s forehead, and just like that, Spencer forgets that anything at all is supposed to be weird.
“You look sad,” Brendon says softly, thumb sweeping over the curve of Spencer’s cheekbone, under his eye, and it’s such a familiar gesture, tender and concerned, like Brendon’s known him for centuries, and Spencer’s gut clenches with the heaviness of that.
“I am sad,” he admits without really meaning to.
Brendon folds himself up a little awkwardly, curling forward to tuck his head against Spencer’s chest, face pressed into the side of Spencer’s throat. “Tell me your sadnesses,” he says, lips moving against Spencer’s skin, and it’s totally foreign and still so, so right, and Spencer wants. Wants to burrow into all the inexplicable sweetness and just stay.
Spencer sets his cereal on the end table and wraps an arm around Brendon’s waist, squeezing him close, and buries his head in the curve of Brendon’s shoulder. “It’s complicated,” he says, throat tight.
Brendon nuzzles closer, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the pulse point under Spencer’s jaw. “That’s okay,” he murmurs, smiling against Spencer’s heartbeat, “I can keep up.”
The thing is, Spencer kind of believes him. “Why did you jump on me?” he asks, instead of explaining anything.
Brendon pulls back—not far, just enough that he’s looking up into Spencer’s eyes, and he looks so solemn. “Because,” he says, like Spencer’s a total headcase, “you’re it.”
Spencer sucks in a sharp, constricted breath. “I’m what?”
Brendon shakes his head. “No, no,” he says, resting his forehead against Spencer’s and looking at him anyways, so his eyes cross, “you’re just it.”
Spencer’s chest is tight like someone’s squeezing his lungs. “I don’t really—“
Brendon’s lips are chapped, and the swipe of his tongue over Spencer’s is sweet from the sugary cereal. Spencer sighs into his mouth, a startled whoosh of breath, and Brendon presses closer, angling their mouths together. His hands come up, framing Spencer’s face, thumbs stroking over his cheekbones, and he pulls back a little, murmuring against Spencer’s lips, “I just know, okay? If you don’t—that’s, I can deal with that, but I know, okay, you’re just—“ he ducks back in, licking into Spencer’s mouth, and it’s so right that all of Spencer’s insides go tight and all his skin spangles, “—you’re just it.”
Spencer squeezes his eyes shut so that the heat prickling behind them doesn’t slip out and embarrass him. It doesn’t really work, and a hot tear slides down his cheek, sticky and shameful. Another one follows it, and Brendon’s thumb swipes over them.
“Hey,” Brendon says, nudging Spencer’s nose with his, “hey, Spence.”
Spencer’s breath hitches, and he can’t make himself say anything—if he opens his mouth he’s just going to start sobbing, and it may feel like he knows Brendon, but he doesn’t, and there’s only so much embarrassment he can handle in front of the hot guy who took him home. The hot guy who thinks Spencer is actually something worth taking home, worth kissing without taking pictures of it after.
Brendon’s hand slides up to bury itself in Spencer’s hair, pulling his head forward so it’s resting on Brendon’s shoulder. “If you tell me why you’re sad,” he says, stroking fingers over Spencer’s scalp, rubbing in soothing circles, “I’m not going to think any less of you.”
Spencer knows, he knows, that Brendon can’t know that, but he sounds so sincere, like he just has all this inexplicable faith in Spencer, that Spencer can’t hold up against it. And just like that, it’s all spilling out, pouring out of Spencer’s mouth in a string of garbled, nonsensical sentences and hiccupping, miserable breaths.
Brendon’s hand never stops moving through his hair, and when he’s finally, finally done, done explaining about King Pete and Queen Patrick, about Prince Ryan and Jon, god, Jon, and all the things Spencer hates about his perfect fairy existence, Brendon is still there, humming thoughtfully and hanging on like Spencer isn’t a pathetic piece of crap. When Spencer can finally bear to look up at him, Brendon is just looking at him.
“What?” Spencer asks, drawing back.
Brendon shakes his head and squirms closer. “No, no, just—I can’t believe anyone could just throw you away like that.”
Spencer thinks about it—thinks about Jon and his perfect smile, his strong hands and bright eyes, and then about himself, about his too-soft stomach and too-round chin, and doesn’t have any trouble believing it at all. “Brendon—“
Brendon shakes his head again. “Spence—seriously, no, come on, look at me—you’re beautiful, okay, you’re beautiful and you’re incredible, okay, anyone who gives you up is—“
“You don’t even fucking know me,” Spencer interjects, gritting his teeth. “You met me two hours ago. For all you know, leaving me was the best decision Jon ever made.”
Brendon flicks him in the ear. “I don’t have to know you to see what you are.” He rolls his eyes and leans in, pressing a closed-mouth kiss to Spencer’s forehead. His voice cracks a little when he says, “You’re magic and all the best bits of everything, Spencer Smith.” And then he’s kissing Spencer again, slow and careful, and there are hot tears on Spencer’s face that aren’t his own. “You’re fucking it, okay, and if leaving you was his best decision, the only other decisions he ever made were to invent ponies and glitter, because leaving you is fucking stupid.”
Spencer pulls back looking for anything like manipulation on Brendon’s face, looking hard with all the Otherworld’s oldness and suspicion in his eyes, but there’s nothing, just a fierce expression and so much sincerity that Spencer could burst.
“Okay,” he says, breath whooshing out of his chest. “Okay.”
Brendon tucks a lock of Spencer’s hair behind his ear. “Can I get you naked, please?”
Spencer hates being naked, hates seeing all his gross, squishy paleness out in the light. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
Brendon beams at him and scrambles out of Spencer’s lap, pressing a quick kiss to his mouth. “Come to my bedroom, Spencer Smith, and let me show you how beauteous you are.”
Spencer gets up and lets himself be towed along, because, really, the thing is, he thinks maybe Brendon will.
--
“It’s, um, tomorrow, it’s our six month anniversary,” Kevin says, and Mike looks baffled for exactly eight seconds and then bursts into hysterical laughter.
“I see,” he says finally, wheezing. “Am I supposed to, like. Get you something?”
“Yes. I want to be a werewolf,” Kevin continues, totally politely and reasonably, if he says so himself. This is his answer—this is his way to make Mike not have to worry anymore, to make himself better and stronger and not a burden, but a help; the sort of person who can live up to what Mike deserves.
“No,” Mike says, equally politely, but brooking no argument, and walks out of the bedroom without any further comment.
That’s okay, though. Kevin will bring him around.
--
“I can’t, uh,” Spencer says, drawing in a great, shuddering breath, and Brendon isn’t breathing right, either; all the air is catching in his throat, “this is—this is—“
“Good,” Brendon breathes, squeezing his thighs together. Spencer’s cock slides slickly between them, rubbing across Brendon’s balls as he moves. “This is—this is good.”
Spencer gives a shaky, almost hysterical laugh. “Fuck, Bren, I can’t, it feels—“
Brendon reaches down to where the head of Spencer’s cock pushes out, below his balls, every time he bottoms out. “You don’t have to hold back,” he says, and, on the next thrust, Brendon rubs his thumb over the head. Spencer makes this pretty little noise, like he’s surprised, and then he’s groaning, coming over Brendon’s hand and the base of his cock.
Brendon brings his hand up to his mouth to lick it off, but stops just short of putting his fingers to his lips. “Spence,” he says, slowly, “what the fuck?”
Spencer is flopped over on his side, panting, hand flung over his eyes. He moves it to crack one eye at Brendon. “Oh,” he says, like it’s nothing, like his jizz isn’t glittering and doesn’t smell like candy or anything. “That’s normal.”
Brendon can’t help it. He bursts out laughing. “You have sparkly jizz, dude.”
Spencer’s one visible eye narrows at him. “I’m a fairy, asshole. I am steeped in the magic of the universe.”
“Uh huh,” Brendon agrees, hiccupping. “Sure. Your come is sparkling at me.”
Spencer moves his hand completely off his face so that Brendon can see both eyes giving him a death glare. “See, I was totally going to blow you, but now—“
“Oh, hey, no fair,” Brendon protests, pouting. “That shit is uncool. Foul play. I call a do-over.”
Spencer squints at him. “How does that work?”
Brendon doesn’t actually know. He’s not sure how you can re-do discovering that someone has glitter jizz in a way that doesn’t end with you laughing. “It, uh,” he says, stalling for time. Seized with inspiration, he grabs Spencer’s cock.
Spencer makes a really undignified squawking noise and bats Brendon’s hand away. “What the fuck?” he demands, eyes round. “Dude. I just came. Like eight seconds ago.”
Brendon manfully resists the urge to remind Spencer that he knows, because Spencer’s come is still cooling on his skin, glittering at him. Instead, he clambers awkwardly over Spencer’s body until he’s kneeling astride Spencer’s thighs, and says, “Turn over.”
Spencer looks suspicious. “No.”
Brendon is wounded. “Dude,” he says, sticking out his lower lip and giving Spencer his best puppy dog eyes. “Dude, I would never do anything bad to you. I am offended.”
Spencer doesn’t look any less suspicious. “I don’t care. Also, you’re on top of me, I can’t turn over.”
Brendon obligingly scoots back enough that Spencer would totally have room to turn over, if he weren’t being a dick and implying that Brendon is some sort of untrustworthy, sneaky… thing. “Come on,” he wheedles, “I wanna lick your butt.”
Spencer facepalms. “I cannot believe I like you, oh my god,” he says, in a totally unnecessarily horrified tone. “I absolutely have no idea how my totally dignified existence as a member of the fairy court has ended up here. In bed. With you.”
Brendon flicks him in the ear. “Stop whining, you sound like a girl. Turn over and let me lick your butt.”
Spencer just groans. “I hate you. I hate everything about you.”
“While that’s totally legitimate and stuff, you came like a minute ago, and my dick is still hard, so you need to turn over and let me lick your butt.” Brendon pokes at Spencer’s sides. “Turn over, asshole.”
Spencer spreads his fingers wide enough that he can glare at Brendon through the spaces. “You are completely unsexy.”
This is probably true. Brendon has actually had this pointed out to him several times throughout his life. Mostly by girls. “Probably,” he agrees, because it’s important to let your man win the smaller battles, right? “But seriously, turn over or I’m gonna tickle you.”
“You will not,” Spencer says, scandalized.
Brendon pokes him in the side again, wiggling his finger a little, and says dangerously, “Oh, you think I won’t?”
Spencer glares at him for another minute, but Brendon waits it out. He has like four hundred siblings, he can win any staring contest ever.
“Fine,” Spencer huffs, finally, and flops over.
“Sweet,” Brendon says, gleeful, and grabs Spencer’s ass. It’s an awesome ass—Spencer sort of looks like a girl, in the ass-and-hips department, which is totally awesome, because that’s pretty much the only part of girls that doesn’t freak Brendon out. “This is gonna be great.”
“Oh yeah,” Spencer mutters grumpily into his crossed arms. “I’m sure.”
Brendon ignores him and spreads his cheeks, leaning down to swipe his tongue over Spencer’s rim.
Spencer squeaks.
“Yeah?” Brendon teases, waggling his eyebrows—it doesn’t matter if Spencer can’t see his face, eyebrow communication is totally a psychic thing anyway, whatever.
Spencer grumbles something unintelligible, so Brendon does it again, this time letting his tongue linger, tracing the tight ring of muscle, getting it wet.
Spencer is panting, the back of his neck flushed, and he whimpers, just a little, when Brendon pulls back.
“Who’s unsexy now, bitch?” Brendon demands, rubbing his thumb over the crease of Spencer’s thigh.
Spencer groans, but it doesn’t sound like the exasperated kind. “You,” he says. “Totally still you.”
Brendon narrows his eyes. “Fuck you. Challenge accepted.”
Spencer doesn’t say anything else, because Brendon goes back down, and Spencer is way too busy panting like a bitch to make fun of Brendon’s supposed lack of sexiness.
Spencer’s skin tastes different, here, too—sweeter than human skin, like he’s been taking baths in sugar water. Brendon licks harder, pushing his tongue inside, and the taste of sugar is there, too. In the background, Brendon hears Spencer making noises, little desperate mewling noises, as he drags his tongue in and out. Spencer’s muscles clench around his tongue, spasming, and Brendon tries to press his tongue deeper, taste more. He strokes over the soft skin behind Spencer’s balls with his thumbs, pushing up against his prostate, and Spencer makes a quiet, helpless sound, says,
“Fuck,” and, “okay,” and, “you win.” He’s trembling under Brendon’s mouth. Brendon licks over him, tongue slipping over the tiny folds of skin, dipping back down to lick inside, and Spencer moans.
Brendon’s chest clenches a little, and he realizes, all at once, how much he wants. “Spence,” he says, voice an octave lower than he’s used to it being. “Fuck, Spence.”
Spencer turns over, slowly, so he’s facing Brendon. His cock is hard again, and he’s flushed a delicate pink, all the way from his chest to the tips of his ears. His eyes are wide and dark, glassy, and his legs are splayed wide between Brendon’s knees. “This is—Bren, I want more, come on.” He reaches up, tugs Brendon down. Brendon goes, licks into his mouth. “Want you in me,” Spencer murmurs against Brendon’s lips when he pulls back.
Brendon wants, he really, really fucking wants, but, “We can’t. You’ll have to stay.”
Spencer blinks up at him, slow, a languorous dip of his lashes, and licks his lips before he says, “I want to.”
Brendon swallows hard. “Ten minutes ago, you didn’t even want to be here at all,” he reminds him—reminds himself, really, because the lube is right there, it would be so easy to slick up and spread Spencer’s legs apart, push into him.
Spencer closes his eyes for a moment. “You’re kind of retarded,” he says, but he doesn’t sound like he means it unkindly. “I didn’t mean that I couldn’t, I meant—“ he stops, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You know what, never mind.”
Brendon lets his weight sink down, pushing Spencer into the bed, lining them up so that their cocks brush one another. “I think,” Brendon says, realizing as it comes out of his mouth that it’s true, “that you just don’t want to have to be the one to decide to stay. You want it to be my fault, so you can’t feel guilty for leaving them behind.”
Spencer grinds up, pushing his cock against Brendon’s in a long, slow drag. “You’re doing that unsexy thing again,” he pants. “Can’t you just shut up and fuck me?”
Brendon thinks about it—really, honestly considers it, and yeah, okay, his dick maybe has something to say about it, too—but now that he gets it, that’s all he can think about, and even getting off kind of has to take a backseat. “If you really want to stay,” he says, leaning back so he can look down at Spencer’s face, “and you really want me to be the thing that makes you stay—“ he hesitates, because this is the part that matters, right, even if it only matters to him. “Then you need to be staying for me. Not just because you want an excuse to not go back.”
Spencer squeezes his eyes shut, and he slumps a little. “That’s so not what this is.”
“It is,” Brendon argues. He rubs against Spencer, just a little—he’s hard, okay, and friction is a necessary thing, it’s not even really voluntary. “It totally is.”
Spencer’s mouth falls open, and his hips shift a little, making the angle better, the slide smoother. “It’s not,” he argues, the decisiveness in his tone weakened a little by how hard he’s breathing. He brings his hands down to Brendon’s hips; they’re big, with wide palms and long, long fingers, and when he squeezes, Brendon feels small. “It’s—it’s complicated, yeah, okay, but that’s not what it is.”
Brendon closes his eyes, tells himself not to listen, because Spencer is wily, Spencer is totally not actually into him, is way too amazing to be into Brendon—he just wants someone to get rid of his obligation to Pete’s court, and Brendon made that totally convenient for him by jumping his bones in public. “Okay,” he says, all the air whooshing out of his lungs with the word.
Spencer sucks in a breath. “Okay?” he asks, like he isn’t sure he heard Brendon right.
Brendon nods, keeping his eyes shut for a minute longer, but apparently not looking at Spencer doesn’t help him not be taken in by Spencer’s stupidly convincing sincere voice. “Okay,” he says again, voice breaking a little.
Spencer leans up, catching Brendon’s mouth with his, and Brendon lets him, gives into it, just lets go. He’s made the decision—the wrong decision, but that doesn’t make him want it any less.
Brendon gropes through the covers until he finds the lube, and he makes it through the motions of slicking up his fingers while managing to not let himself thing about this, about what this is going to mean. It’s not until his index finger is knuckle deep inside Spencer, flicking against his prostate, and Spencer is keening, hips twitching up, that Brendon loses the battle with himself and thinks,
Holy shit, I am so gone for you.
He works in the second finger and scissors them apart, but doesn’t really take as long as he should before he’s pulling them out and slicking up his cock. Spencer is pliant under his hands, spreading his legs and drawing his knees up to his chest. Brendon lines up, heart pounding way too loud in his ears, and then pushes in with one smooth motion.
Spencer’s breath hitches, and Brendon wants to go slowly, wants to be careful, really, he totally does, but Spencer is hot and tight and moving around him, and his head is thrown back on the pillows, hair totally fucked up, throat working, and Brendon just thinks, Yes.
Spencer’s legs wrap around Brendon’s waist, pulling him in, and he tangles one hand in Brendon’s hair, tugging a little, and he apparently isn’t into the slow and gentle thing, either, because he’s meeting Brendon motion for motion. Brendon moves a little slower, just a little, and closes his eyes so he can really feel it, because he knows that this isn’t going to happen again. And that’s—that’s totally okay, he can ignore, after right now, the fact that this is perfect, this is exactly everything he wants and way, way more, that Spencer is soft and tastes like sugar and his ass is incredible and every single thing that comes out of his mouth makes Brendon smile, even when he’s making fun of him.
Spencer’s legs tighten around him, and he makes this low, strangled, gorgeous noise as he comes, hot and sticky between them, and Brendon opens his eyes so he can see. Spencer’s lower lip is between his teeth, and his eyes are wide open, dark, looking up at Brendon’s face. That’s really all it takes for Brendon to tumble over the edge after him.
After, still shaking with aftershocks, Brendon turns Spencer over and licks into him again, pushes his tongue deep and licks Spencer clean, ignoring Spencer’s protests about being sensitive—he needs this, needs to remember this, needs to make it everything he knows how to. Spencer stops arguing pretty quickly, just shudders and breathes hard into the mattress, wriggling a little under Brendon’s tongue. It’s weird, and kind of incredible, tasting himself and the weird sugar-sweetness of Spencer together.
If he keeps going way after Spencer is licked clean, after he’s arching and crying out for more again, well, it’s only fair that he gets to make this one time last, right? Right. Brendon decides to go with that—otherwise, he’ll have to admit that maybe he’s just greedy when he’s in love.
--
“Wait, wait,” Demi says, brow creasing. She taps her pen against the counter and tries to sort it all out in her head. It doesn’t really work, no matter which way she looks at it. “Let me get this straight. You’re a wizard.”
Jon scrubs a hand over his beard. “Yeah.”
“And you used to work for—“
“The king of the fairies, yes.”
“And you dated—“
“Slept with,” Jon corrects, sounding pained. “The point is that we didn’t date.”
“Spencer,” she finishes. “Brendon’s magic fairy boyfriend.”
“Yes,” Jon says, nodding. “And broke his heart.”
“And he used a fairy curse to get rid of your magic until your heart was broken.”
Jon nods. “Pretty much.”
Demi can feel a headache coming on. “Which it is, somehow, because you’re dating—“
“Sleeping with,” Jon corrects, but then pauses. “No, that’s not right.”
“You’re in love with,” she says, grinning at him when she realizes that it’s true, “Ryan.”
“Yes,” Jon agrees. “And—“
“And his werewolf ex-girlfriend and her girlfriend are having sex with him and trying to get him to admit that he’s in love with you?”
Jon buries his face in his hands. “Yes.”
Demi nods slowly, considering. “I see why you need me,” she says finally. “My organizational skills are definitely an asset here.” She revels in the hopeful look on his face for a second or two before she quashes it with her favorite phrase ever. “We’re going to need a flowchart.”
Jon winces. “Somehow, I knew you were going to say that.”
“Yeah, well,” she says, beaming. “Being efficient necessitates being predictable. Get me my highlighters!”
Jon makes a valiant attempt at avoiding her organizational frenzy by saying, a little helplessly, “You know, I am your boss.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “Yes, you are. You can choose which color represents who. I’ll even let you be blue, since it’s your favorite.”
Hanging his head, Jon goes off in search of the highlighters. Demi resists the urge to cackle and rub her hands together like a supervillain. Selena will do that with her, later, anyways.
--
“Quit fucking asking,” Mike grumbles, poking Kevin in the ribs. “Answer’s not gonna change, kid.”
Kevin gives Mike his most convincing pout. “Come on,” he pleads. “It makes sense.”
Mike just glares at him, arms crossed over his chest, and the ugly feeling in Kevin’s chest just gets bigger and darker and tighter. “It doesn’t make any sense at all, Jonas, I’m not doing that to you.”
Kevin ducks his head and rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Is it—is it just because you don’t think you want me around for that long?”
Mike’s brow furrows. “What?”
Kevin shrugs as nonchalantly as he can. “I don’t know. I mean, I get it if you just don’t want to be stuck with me as your mate or whatever.”
“Kev,” Mike says gently, stepping forward into Kevin’s space, crowding him a little. “Hey—hey, look at me.” He tips Kevin’s chin up with a finger. “I came into your café, right, and you knew?”
Kevin swallows. “That you were a—“
Mike nips at Kevin’s lip, a bright spark of nice, and says, “That we were a thing. That this is it. I mean, I knew.” He tucks his fingers through Kevin’s belt loops, anchoring him, and presses a kiss to Kevin’s temple. “You smelled like—“
“Sunshine, you said,” Kevin finishes, smiling a little, despite himself, “and Cherry Coke.”
“Like my mate, Jonas. You smelled like mine.” Mike nudges at Kevin’s hairline with his nose, breath warm against Kevin’s skin. “And you knew, kid; nobody fucking starts mindmelding with their werewolf boyfriend on the first date and doesn’t freak out unless they know it’s something bigger than just—than normal. That’s—it’s not complicated, kid, it’s just there.”
It still feels complicated to Kevin. “If I were like you, you wouldn’t have to be alone during the moon,” he points out.
“I’m not alone,” Mike argues. “I have Z and Tennessee.”
Kevin raises an eyebrow. “No, Z has Tennessee, and you have an awkward corner of the reinforced basement, listening to them do wolfy things while you howl like a sad thing. It’s not like I’m not upstairs, Mike, I hear you.”
Mike snorts. “Me being lonely for three nights a month isn’t worth turning you into that. It hurts, you know.”
Kevin bites his lip and hides his face in the warm curve of Mike’s neck. “I like it when it hurts,” he mumbles, face hot.
“Not—“ Mike snickers, nipping at the shell of Kevin’s ear. “It’s not the same, kid.”
Kevin burrows closer, sliding his hands up under Mike’s hoodie. “I just wanna be like you,” he says softly. “Just, like—your equal, you know?” He wants to be as good as Mike deserves for him to be.
“Oh, kid,” Mike says, huffing out a laugh, “no. You’re so much better than me.”
--
“Yo,” Ian calls, banging on the door to Brendon’s apartment. “Open the door, bitch, I have beer and brownies.”
“It’s open, retard,” Brendon yells, not looking away from the television. Onscreen, Julia Roberts is being epically self-sufficient and an awesomely inspiring role model for oppressed women ad stuff.
“My hands are full!” Ian yells back, and there’s a weird thumping on the door, like he’s trying to use his foot to turn the knob or something.
“Fuck,” Brendon mutters to himself, snorting and pausing the movie, clambering gracelessly to his feet. He’s still sore from last night with Spencer, and he’s feeling shitty enough about his existence in general that all he wants to do is watch Mona Lisa Smile without interruption. On the other hand, Ian has beer and pot brownies. Brendon is a sucker for beer and weed. “Goddamn it, Crawford, you need to learn the glory of backpacks,” he grouses, swinging the door wide.
Ian rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah.” Shuffling past Brendon and dumping the beer and Tupperware of brownies onto the coffee table, he squints at the screen. “Is that Julia Roberts?”
“Yes,” Brendon says defensively. “Yes it is.”
Ian’s eyes narrow. “That’s Mona Lisa Smile.”
Brendon wraps his afghan tighter around his shoulders and flops onto the couch. “So what?” he demands, tucking his knees up against his chest. Maybe he should have cancelled super-secret beer-and-weed night.
“Dude,” Ian says, “that’s the big guns, holy shit. What the fuck is so bad that a dose of Gilmore Girls isn’t enough to fix it?”
Brendon takes one look at Ian standing there, eyebrows up, his face and his fro looking independently concerned about Brendon’s wellbeing, and bursts into tears like a six year old girl.
Ian cracks open two beers, pops the top on the brownies, and flops down onto the couch, yanking Brendon over until he’s curled up against Ian’s chest, sobbing into his Sea World shirt. “Dude,” Ian says, once Brendon’s crying has slowed to a steady whimpering, “tell me all your sadnesses.”
Brendon snuffles wetly and says, voice thick with snot and woe, “Spencer’s going to hate meeeeeeeeeeee.”
Ian squints down at him and takes a long pull of beer. “Why? Last time I checked, dude seemed pretty into you, man.”
Brendon steals a sip of Ian’s beer, because it’s closer than the untouched one on the table, and because stolen beer is always more delicious. “We had sex,” he says, pouting. “Awesome, hot sex in the butt.”
Ian bobs his head. “Right, right,” he says. This time, he goes for a brownie, breaking it in half and handing the other part to Brendon before taking a bite. “And he hates you because…?”
“He doesn’t hate me yet,” Brendon says, wiping his drippy nose on Ian’s shirt and ignoring Ian’s horrified noise of protest. “But he’s gonna hate me the second he misses delicious fairy foods and hot naked fairy boys and, you know, magic.”
“Wait, wait,” Ian says, furrowing his brow and fluffing his fro simultaneously, “Spencer’s a fairy?”
“Duh,” Brendon says, rolling his eyes and swiping at the tear tracks on his cheeks. “Keep up, Crawford, god.”
Ian snorts. “Yeah, yeah. So wait, you fucked Spencer—“
“We made love,” Brendon corrects piteously. “Hot monkey love. His butt tastes like sugary goodness.”
Ian nods wisely and takes another bite of brownie. “Makes sense. And he can’t eat fairy food because…?”
“Because I sexed him up and it’s like if we go to the fairy world and eat a mystical fairy cheeseburger! He can never go baaaaaaaack,” Brendon wails, shoving his entire half-brownie into his mouth and chewing furiously. “He’s stuck here forever and it’s my fault and he’ll realize one day that he wants to go back, and I’m going to have to live the rest of my life waiting for the morning he wakes up and is all, I hate you, Brendon Urie, it’s all your fault that I can never eat a delicious mystical fairy cheeseburger ever again, go die in a fire.”
Ian and Ian’s fro—which is starting to look like it might be growing by the minute, but that might be because Ian puts a fucking lot of weed in his brownies, and Brendon hasn’t actually eaten anything else since yesterday afternoon, unless he’s counting the four beers he had for breakfast—look at Brendon for a long, long moment. “You’re retarded,” Ian says, finally. “You’re retarded, and if I were smart, I would listen to Tyson and wash my hands of your entire existence.”
“Yeah,” Brendon agrees, slumping down and stealing the rest of Ian’s beer. “Yeah.”
Ian smacks him in the head. “Go fucking call your fairy boyfriend and go kiss and make up and have him reassure you that normal cheeseburgers are plenty delicious, and then come back here. I’m gonna sit on this couch and drink all the beer and eat all the Chinese leftovers that are almost definitely in your fridge, and I’m going to watch something manly and dignified like Gilmore Girls, you pansy bitch, and I’ll be here, bloated and high, when you get done.”
Brendon narrows his eyes. He does have Chinese leftovers in his fridge. He blames Ian’s fro for his weird ability to sense Mu Shu vegetables. “Stop being reasonable and making me feel like my worries aren’t legit.”
“They aren’t legit,” Ian says, rolling his eyes. “They’re stupid, because Spence looks at you like he’s a dog and your face is made of bacon.”
Brendon pouts. “Come on, dude, have a heart. At least let me finish my movie-and-wallowing ritual.”
“No,” Ian says. “No, I’m gonna hog the couch and fart until you’re uncomfortable enough to leave the room and hunt down Candyass Smith.”
“Oh, please,” Brendon says, standing up and shuffling towards the door, anyways, “like farting has ever made me uncomfortable.”
“So you say now,” Ian says menacingly, waggling his fro, and okay, Ian lives with Nash and Chord, who are gross motherfuckers from the South, so maybe he has a point.
Brendon goes.
--
“Mortal burgers are tasty,” a voice says from the corner when Brendon comes back from the bathroom. Spencer is sitting on the bed, knees drawn up to his chest, glaring at the stranger, who is sparkling faintly, and Brendon realizes who he is. “He’s not missing anything, really,” King Pete continues, nodding at Spencer. “Except fancy clothes.”
Spencer snorts. “I don’t think I’ll miss those that much.”
Brendon hovers in the doorway. “We’ll watch America’s Next Top Model a lot,” he says, half to Spencer, half to King Pete.
“Yeah,” King Pete says, smirking. “I just bet.” He steps forward, just a little, and flicks his fingers at Brendon. “I’ve been creeping on you for a while, Urie. I like you; you’re fucking weird, and handmaiden Smith here could use more of that. I officially give you my blessing.”
Spencer’s eyes go a little wide, and Brendon’s chest goes tight. “Seriously?” he squeaks. “Like—like Spencer won’t lose all his fairy powers and stuff? You’re—it’s okay?”
King Pete nods, beaming a little manically. “As okay as it can be in my book,” he says, and it would reassuring if it weren’t for his total-crazy-person grin. “Go forth. Have the sex! Frolic! I need to get back to my Queen. Make sure he gets his magic out regularly, though, that shit builds up in the mortal world like crazy.” He waggles his fingers at Brendon, then at Spencer, and then the corner where he’s standing is empty, and there’s a pile of fine glitter on Spencer’s carpet.
Brendon is pretty sure he’s the one who’s going to be stuck vacuuming it up. He doesn’t really mind.
--
“Come on, Spence,” Brendon pleads, hips twitching helplessly. “No fair. You’re mean.”
Spencer snorts. “Quit complaining, you like it.” He smirks. “Besides, come on, this is a condition of me staying. I have to use my magic or I’ll explode or something.”
Brendon huffs a noncommittal noise into the pillow and lifts his ass a little. “Sure,” he says. “I’m all self-sacrificing and stuff for the good of you not exploding.”
Smiling smugly, Spencer traces a finger around Brendon’s hole and dips it in, just a little, sending a crackle of magic down the digit. Brendon’s back arches, his breath catching, and Spencer’s own chest goes tight with how fucking gorgeous he is like this.
“Seriously,” Brendon pants, “if you don’t fuck me right now, I’m going to die. It will be an ugly and embarrassing death, and you’re the one who’s going to—to have to explain it to people.”
Spencer pushes the finger deeper, nudging Brendon’s prostate, and lets out another spark.
Brendon keens, hips stuttering midair, and his fingers tighten in the sheets. “Please,” he says, breathing hard through his nose.
Spencer curls his finger and does it again, a little sharper this time, holding the charge for an extra moment. Just like that, Brendon is clenching tight around him, crying out, and coming in short spurts across the sheets and his own stomach.
Spencer swallows. “Holy shit.”
Brendon grunts in agreement, face buried in the pillows. “Nnngh.”
Spencer bites his lip and does it again, making the magic a little sweeter, but no less sharp. The noise Brendon makes in response is startled and breathless and so, so good, Spencer can’t help but do it again. With his other hand, he reaches down and rubs a finger over the tender head of Brendon’s soft cock, feeling Brendon’s entire body go tense.
“Spence—“ he starts, choking off into a sharp cry when Spencer shocks him with both hands.
Spencer flips him over then, just pulls back and pushes until Brendon is flat on his back, blinking up at Spencer with these dark, liquid eyes and damp lashes, all fucked out and trembling, and Spencer just wants more.
Brendon hisses in a sharp breath when Spencer takes his soft cock into his mouth, shuddering when Spencer starts to suck. He’s not gentle, and he maybe lets a thin trickle of magic seep out of his mouth, into Brendon’s slick skin.
“Spence, I can’t—I can’t—“
Spencer lets his teeth graze the head of Brendon’s cock, and Brendon is jerking hard, pulling back, out of Spencer’s mouth. Spencer follows, sucking him back down, and Brendon’s breath is starting to come in desperate sobs.
“It’s—too much, Spence, I—“
Brendon’s twisting back, away, but Spencer covers his hips with his hands and sends a hard shock through them, hard enough that Brendon’s back arches up off the bed, his shoulders going taut. Determined, Spencer sucks harder, burying his nose in the coarse curls at the base of Brendon’s cock, breathing deep. Brendon is shaking hard, but his hands are still scrabbling at the sheet, not trying to shove Spencer away, so Spencer keeps pushing, letting more energy crackle through his mouth and into Brendon’s cock, stinging him sharply.
Brendon’s eyes are squeezed shut, and his teeth are digging hard enough into his lip that Spencer thinks he might actually draw blood. “Spence,” he grits out. “I can’t fucking—holy shit.”
Spencer twists another finger into his ass and doesn’t stop the current, letting his skin sparkle with static. “How many times can you come for me?” he asks, drawing off of Brendon’s cock, mouth slick and raw.
Brendon’s chest heaves as Spencer adds a third finger. “I don’t—I—Spence, I can’t come again yet, I just—“
Spencer pulls his fingers out and leans back so he can line up, no preamble, and pushes Brendon’s knees back to his chest. “Yeah,” he agrees, huffing out a breath as he pushes into the tight, tight heat of Brendon’s ass, “but I’ve got time.” He lets his magic stream out of his skin everywhere it’s touching Brendon, not slowing any of the current, and starts to thrust.
Brendon’s head snaps back and he bows off the bed, mouth wide, working silently in what would definitely be an actual scream if he could make his vocal cords work. Spencer tightens his hands on Brendon’s thighs and starts moving faster, watching Brendon’s cock slowly fill as the staticky stream of magic pools on his skin.
Brendon is vibrating, thighs shaking so hard that Spencer can barely hold onto them, and he’s barely hard before he’s coming again, shouting helplessly and spasming, whole body contorting with the force of it.
Spencer doesn’t even slow down, just reaches down and wraps his hand around Brendon’s cock, squeezing. Brendon moans, long and low and pained, but doesn’t try to pull away when Spencer starts to jerk him roughly.
--
“Brendon is dumb in the face,” Ian says, flopping down onto the couch. He’s done it so many times, his head lands perfectly in Nash’s lap without him even having to try.
Nash strokes a curl off his face and smiles sleepily down at him. “Super-secret beer and weed night not as fun as usual?”
Ian groans and rubs a hand over his face. “I don’t understand people that aren’t us.”
Nash snorts. “Me either.” His eyes are all soft when he looks down at Ian, heavy-lidded and fond. His mouth tilts up a little on the side, dimpling, and Ian reaches up a finger to trace the corner of it.
“You’re fucking perfect, you know?” he says. It always surprises him, how easy this is, how quiet and peaceful and steady everything is between them.
A smile spreads over Nash’s face like sunshine, and he leans down to press a kiss to the middle of Ian’s forehead, smoothing out a wrinkle Ian hadn’t even noticed was there. “You make me feel like I am.” He reaches down a hand to tangle his fingers with Ian’s, squeezing. “You’ll tell me if you ever think I’m dumb in the face, yeah?”
Ian grins and tugs their entwined hands up, kissing Nash’s thumb. “I always do.”
Nash snickers and flicks Ian’s ear. “C’mere.”
Ian struggles to sit up, but once he manages, Nash is reeling him in, tugging him close until Ian’s settled firmly in his lap. “Hey, you,” Ian says, grinning.
Nash leans forward until their foreheads are pressed together, then rubs their noses together in an Eskimo kiss. “Well, hello there, sir,” he says in a hilariously thick southern accent. “It’s come to my attention that you had a crap night.”
Ian’s eyes flutter shut, and he leans the last inch in to touch his lips to Nash’s. “Getting better now,” he murmurs, smiling against Nash’s mouth.
“Yeah?” Nash teases, nipping at Ian’s lip. “Anything I can do to help that along?” He doesn’t wait for an answer before his fingers are at the button of Ian’s jeans, popping it free, tugging down his zipper.
“Yeah,” Ian says, going a little breathy, “yeah, that would do it.”
“Good.” Nash presses his smile against Ian’s cheek and laughs softly, fingers dipping below the elastic on Ian’s boxer briefs. “Anything to help my man.”
--
“Okay, look,” Pete says, snapping into existence already talking, “I need to know what the fuck you’re doing, because it looks to me like your thumbs have been up your asses for the last month, and all your marks are still alive.”
“Yep,” Butch says, completely unapologetic, lounging in an armchair by the door. “Chizzy here won’t marry me.”
Pete looks from him to Chiz, who is slouched in the other armchair, looking sullen and rumpled—a result of Butch having kicked his ass at checkers and then arm wrestling and then actual wrestling, which had ended up with both of Butch’s hands down Chiz’s pants—win—and Chiz punching him in the jaw. The bruise feels sexy. “I see,” Pete says, his completely douchetastic eyebrows doing some weirdass dance in the middle of his face. Butch wonders, not for the first time, if he just draws them on with sharpie in the mornings. “Chislett?”
“He’s refusing to kill anyone until I marry him,” Chiz grumbles, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Can you please tell him how stupid that is? Or, I don’t know, kill him?”
Butch pouts at Chiz—that’s uncalled for and bullshit, totally, and Butch knows he doesn’t mean it, but the words still wound him, Butch is a sensitive soul.
“Actually,” Pete says, “that seems pretty reasonable. Fair play to you, Walker.” He nods at Butch, and Butch nods back, because fuck yeah.
Chiz groans miserably.
“Anyways,” Pete says, “I might have something else for you to do that doesn’t involve killing anyone, if you’re tired of sitting around like lazy bitches while you wait for Chislett to give in.”
Butch rubs his chin, admittedly a little intrigued. Staring Chiz down in various anonymous hotel rooms and occasionally singing him songs about their epic love does, occasionally, get a little old. “Hit me.”
“I lost my son in the mortal world, and Queen Patrick is sort of inordinately upset about it,” Pete says, rubbing the back of his head a little awkwardly. Butch nods like he’s interested, which of course he isn’t, but Pete’ll get to the point eventually. “And Patrick’s bitch boy handmaiden thing was supposed to go get him, but he just ended up banging this hot piece of mortal ass, and they’re all cute and shit, and I kind of like him—he wears purple pants without irony, okay, that shit is golden—he’s a weird little fucker, basically, and so I don’t really wanna ruin their bliss or anything, so you need to go get my son and haul his ass in here.”
Butch hums and thinks about it. He really was intending to abstain from effective work entirely until Chiz gives in, but this actually sounds like it might be interesting. “Alright,” he agrees, holding out his hand for Pete to shake. “We’re on it.”
--
“Fuck,” Ryan hisses, arching up, twisting his hips to try to get more inside him. “Fuck, Jon, come on.” He can’t move much; he’s tied face down on the piano bench, legs splayed wide.
Jon pinches the tender skin behind Ryan’s balls roughly. “Don’t rush me.”
Ryan whines, can’t help but whine. He knows it’s not going to make Jon go faster. “What’re you even doing?” Jon’s been fingering him for ages, using way more lube than usual, and the stretch is slick and easy now. It’s been easy for a while, but Jon is still slipping three fingers in and out, rubbing around his rim.
Jon hums and adds a fourth finger, stretching Ryan suddenly, wide enough that he gasps, choking on air. “I love the noises you make,” Jon admits, wriggling his fingers deeper into Ryan. It’s a lot—still slick, but it’s enough that Ryan feels stretched, feels desperate and oversensitive and a little achy, as Jon’s thumb rubs over the taut ring of muscle.
Ryan lets out a louder whine than he’d normally let himself, just to hear Jon’s breath catch. “Please, Jon, I’m—“ his voice catches when Jon’s thumb pushes inside, and he can’t help the raw, animal noise that claws its way out when Jon’s wrist shifts, pushing, twisting until his thumb is inside, tucked against his palm. Ryan can feel Jon’s whole hand, his fucking wrist, as his muscles flutter around it, clenching down and releasing in tiny, helpless spasms.
“Do you think,” Jon says, a little breathily, as his fingers curl in on themselves, making a fist, “you’re broken right now?”
It catches Ryan off guard, and his breath just stops completely in his chest. “What?” he asks, voice cracking, just to make sure he heard Jon correctly, because he’s maybe a little bit distracted by the hand in his ass.
Jon’s fist closes, and he twists it, knuckle scraping right over Ryan’s prostate, hard enough that Ryan has to blink stars from his eyes. “I asked if you feel broken. Right now.”
A tiny, hysterical laugh threads out of Ryan’s throat, and he clenches down involuntarily around Jon’s hand. “Jon, I—“
“Ryan.” Jon’s voice is sharp, demanding. It’s his fucking wizard voice, the one that reminds Ryan that he knows words of power that can turn people into fucking bunny rabbits or screech owls or butterflies. Jon can turn people into butterflies, and he has his hand in Ryan’s ass. “Ryan, answer the fucking question.” His fist splays open, fingers going wide, and Ryan’s breath stutters over a sob.
“I’m not—Jon, I don’t—uhn—I don’t feel broken, I just am broken.” He breathes hard, through his nose, as Jon’s thumb rubs back and forth over his prostate mercilessly, hard enough that it’s not even really pleasure, just raw, blinding intensity that makes Ryan’s jaw clench. It’s not like he has a complex. Ryan isn’t neurotic, he’s just… fucked up. He doesn’t work right. Something in him is wrong, and he can taste it on his tongue when he’s pushed to the edge, when Z has him begging, when Jon has him worked over and sobbing—he can feel it, this ugly, dark thing inside him, trying to seep out of his seams, and it doesn’t let him love, doesn’t let him believe in things, doesn’t let him even really want to anymore.
Jon’s hand folds closed and slowly, slowly, slips out of him, letting lube drip out of him, down over Ryan’s balls and the insides of his thighs. Ryan breathes a little deeper, relaxing as the intrusion goes away, until he’s drawn up short by a new pressure against his stretched, sore rim.
“Hold still, Ry,” Jon says, stroking a lube-slick hand over Ryan’s hip. He pushes whatever it is—it’s slick and rubbery, like a condom—against Ryan’s hole, twisting a little, until it starts to sink in. Ryan shudders as a hard edge presses against his rim, then pops past it, the object sliding in easily after that. It’s tapered, letting Ryan’s overstretched rim relax but still filling him up. It’s hard, not shifting when Ryan clenches down, and it hurts, just a little, if he moves too much.
“Jon,” Ryan says, straining a little, for the first time, at the ropes that tie him to the piano bench. His face is pressed to the wood tightly enough that he can’t see over his shoulder, can’t turn and see what it is. He’s not quite freaking out, but it feels weird, inorganic, and there’s a hum of metal and plastic in it that rings down to his bones.
Jon rubs a soothing hand over the back of Ryan’s thigh. “Hang on,” he murmurs, and then he’s drawing away, leaving Ryan stretched out, suddenly cold. He waits, taut as a wire.
There’s a noise, all of a sudden, a low rustling, a steady thump-thump, and a shaky, repetitive rasp. “What the fuck is that?” Ryan asks, jerking a little, trying to see Jon. His voice echoes strangely, loud and muffled at the same time, heard twice.
Jon flicks a finger against the object in Ryan’s ass, and there’s a muffled boom. It only takes a split second for Ryan to realize that it’s a mic. A microphone with a condom stretched over it, hooked up to Jon’s amp, turned up loud. The sounds he’s hearing are his muscles moving, his heartbeat, his fucking breath.
“Jon,” he breathes, suddenly shaky. It’s so loud.
Jon is silent, tracing a finger up the back of Ryan’s calf. His nail scrapes gently, and Ryan’s breath hitches, just a tiny bit, but it echoes over the room like a wave crashing. His finger goes up the back of Ryan’s thigh, over the crease of his buttock and leg, until it’s circling the tender, slightly gaped ring of Ryan’s rim. Gently, he pushes inside, above the microphone, crooking his finger against Ryan’s prostate. The movement provokes a soft noise from the amp, along with Ryan’s sharp, desperate intake of air.
Ryan becomes suddenly, sharply aware of how fucking hard he is. His cock is pressed into the wood of the bench, digging into his stomach, and he can’t help but grind down, searching desperately for friction. He can hear that, too, can hear the way each movement makes a soft, wet noise into the mic, can hear the definitely distinct sounds of his heartbeat over it all.
“You know,” Jon says, voice strangely strained, “from here, it doesn’t sound there’s anything wrong inside you at all.”
Ryan freezes, all his muscles going still at once, and says, voice tight, “Maybe it’s not the kind of thing you can hear.”
Jon rubs his free hand over the length of Ryan’s spine, making him relax, just a little, into the touch. “I don’t know,” Jon says with obviously forced nonchalance. “I think if I can hear the sound of you swallowing, the sound of your heart beating, I would probably be able to hear this invisible brokenness.” He bends down, low, low enough that he can speak right against the shell of Ryan’s ear, warm breath making goosebumps rise on the backs of Ryan’s arms. “I think,” he murmurs, stroking Ryan’s hair back, tucking it behind his ear, “that it would sound like breaking glass. Or metal screeching. Or someone crying. Don’t you think?”
“I—“ Ryan starts to say, but it gets lost in the gasp when Jon bites down on the lobe of his ear, hard enough to sting, hard enough to send a jolt to Ryan’s cock.
“All I hear,” Jon continues, pressing a kiss right behind Ryan’s ear, “is your humanity, Ry.”
Ryan’s eyes sting, and he blinks hard. “I don’t feel fucking human, Jon.”
Jon’s finger crooks inside him, driving a ragged gasp from him. “I really don’t think that’s actually relevant.” Jon withdraws the finger and wraps his hand around the end of the microphone, tugging it out a little and pushing it back in. It feels strange, feels uncomfortable and too real. “I hear the sounds of you—you just giving yourself over to me, for thousands and thousands of consecutive moments; the sounds of you, alive and feeling, you just—just trusting me with yourself.” He pulls the mic out in one smooth motion, a mostly painless tug, followed by a thud when it hits the floor. Ryan gasps and shudders at the loss of pressure inside him, grinding down harder against the piano bench. Jon takes Ryan by the hips and tugs him backwards, just enough to line himself up, and thrusts sharply in. Ryan is overstretched, oversensitive, and it hurts, hurts enough that he cries out, too loud in the now-quiet room, hands clenching and unclenching on the legs of the bench.
“Jon,” he begs, not sure if he’s asking for mercy or more. He thinks it’s probably more.
Jon withdraws most of the way and slams back in, hitting at just the right angle, making Ryan cry out again. “If you think,” he says, breath quickening as he begins to thrust, “that love sounds any different than that, you’re not broken, you’re just—“ he trembles, hands going tight on Ryan’s hips, “—you’re just kind of an idiot.”
Ryan laughs, startled and involuntary, spasming hard around Jon’s cock, and that’s all it takes for Jon to shove himself all the way in, stilling as he comes with a sweet, broken-off noise that Ryan feels all the way in his gut.
When Jon pulls out, Ryan is sore and sticky, still hard, cock rubbed raw from thrusting against the bench and his stomach.
“Please, Jon,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut. “Come on, please.”
Jon unties him, turning him over on his back, and wraps a wide palm around Ryan’s cock. “Tell me,” Jon says, hand completely still, tight around the base of Ryan’s cock. “Tell me, or I will make you listen to yourself beg for it with that mic inside you until the store opens in the morning.”
Ryan’s pulse speeds up at the thought, and his cock twitches in Ryan’s hand. “Jon, I can’t.” He swallows hard.
Jon’s hand gets tighter, but he keeps it still on Ryan’s shaft. “Tell me, Ry, or I will open those doors at ten am and let every single person looking for their first fucking guitar hear the way you sound from the inside when you beg me for it.” He leans down, licks over the head of Ryan’s cock, and it’s too much, way too much after all of this, and Ryan’s hips buck, hard. Jon’s other hand comes down in the middle of his chest, holding Ryan still. “I’ll tie you down on the counter and keep you spread wide; let everyone who comes in look at the pretty way you gape after I fuck you.”
Ryan swallows again, throat dry, and his cock twitches again as he looks at Jon’s face and pictures it, pictures the customers, peering at him, some scandalized, some hungry, while Jon shows him off, shows them what he can do—pictures them wanting. They can’t have him, he’s Jon’s.
He stops breathing, stops looking for friction, stops moving at all when he realizes.
Jon’s face lights up with a smile as he looks down at him. “Ry?”
Ryan exhales, loud and sort of painful as his chest clenches, and he says, barely a whisper, “Oh.”
Jon’s hand loosens, just a little, and he bends down, takes Ryan in his mouth, covering Ryan’s hips with his palms. It barely takes a moment before Ryan is coming, hard and helpless, his orgasm roaring through him as he trembles under Jon’s hands.
When Jon pulls back, he doesn’t go far, just rests his head on Ryan’s quaking thigh. “Tell me, Ry,” he says gently.
Still shaking, Ryan puts an unsteady hand on Jon’s head, fingers brushing haphazardly over his hair, and he says, wonderingly, barely loud enough to hear over the thunder of his heart in his ears, “I love you.”
Ryan can feel Jon’s smile against the skin of his thigh, can feel the sweet warmth of his grin when he says, “I really fucking love you, too.”
--
“Like ninjas,” Butch warns Chiz outside the door, holding a finger to his lips. “Like ninjas, Chizzy.”
Chiz glares at him. “One of these days, I’m just going to snap and stab you in the face, you know.”
Butch grins at him. “Waiting with bated breath, sweetheart. You know I like it rough.” He tosses Chiz a black ski mask. “In the meantime, seriously, ninja up, motherfucker.”
Chiz holds the ski mask between two fingers, inspecting it with raised eyebrows. “You do remember that we have magic, right?”
“The problem with you,” Butch explains, rolling his eyes and tugging his own ski mask down over his face, “is that you have no sense of adventure.”
“I do so,” Chiz argues—mostly, Butch thinks, because Chiz likes to argue, not because he thinks he has any hope of winning, because Butch hopes he hasn’t fallen in love with some kind of moron who can’t tell that he’s never going to win. You can’t win against people who don’t believe in logic, and Butch decided that logic was for people who aren’t paid to kill people a long time ago. “It just doesn’t involve—what even is this? Is this a hat?”
Butch snatches the ski mask and jams it down over Chiz’s face, ignoring his spluttered protests. “Shut the fuck up and let’s go, bitch.” Not waiting to see what Chiz decides to do about the ski mask, Butch spells the lock open and pushes the door wide, creeping up the stairs to Walker’s Music like the goddamn ninja he is.
The fairy boy is asleep on the floor, curled over the chest of a bearded dude with a flop of dark hair. The boy is obviously Pete’s blood, delicate and elegantly boned, with a wide mouth and fingers that twitch in his sleep, like he can’t even rest while he’s asleep. Butch almost feels bad for the kid—the only time Butch has peace of mind is when the lights go out, and this kid doesn’t even get that.
Inching forward, Butch looks over his shoulder to make sure Chiz is ready—he is, ski mask askew on his face and all—and leans down to put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Chiz places a hand on the kid’s leg, and Butch takes a breath, remembering the sweet smell of Otherworld grass and honeysuckle in the King’s gardens, and just like that, they’re away, and the bearded dude is left sprawled alone on the floor.
For another brief moment, Butch almost feels bad, but then he remembers that he has wooing to do.
--
When Jon wakes up, he’s alone, and his chest goes tight before he remembers that his is Ryan, that Ryan usually freaks out a little anytime something big happens, that he’s probably out for a walk, writing poetry in the drafts folder of his cell phone because he always forgets his notebook—or he’s back at Z’s, having weird not-girl talk about what just happened.
Jon breathes deeply for a minute, lets the fear go, and rolls over to go back to sleep.
But it’s still bothering him, so he picks up his phone and texts both Ryan and Z, just in case.
Ryan’s phone pings from the other side of the room immediately, and a few moments later, Z texts back that she hasn’t seen him.
And then Jon starts to worry, because Ryan never goes anywhere without his phone, and Z always knows where he is.
Jon gets dressed faster than his dignity would like for him to admit, and it’s not until he’s buckling his belt that he sees Ryan’s clothes, still on the floor in the corner, and then he really starts to panic.
He’s dialing before he has time to think about any of the possibilities—none of which even really make sense—and Z picks up on the first ring.
“Ryan’s gone,” he says without preamble.
“He freaks out pretty easily, Walker,” Z says, but there’s hesitation in her voice. Jon thinks maybe she can hear the panic in his voice.
“He doesn’t usually freak out and leave his clothes behind, Z,” Jon says tightly. “Get here, now.” He clears his throat, squeezing his eyes shut. “Please.”
Z doesn’t argue, just says, “Ten minutes,” and hangs up without another word.
Jon waits, counting his heartbeats.
--
“Fairies,” Z says, nose wrinkling in disgust. “Two of them.”
Jon’s chest clenches tightly. “Where did they go?”
Z shrugs, then holds up her hand when Jon opens his mouth to argue. “Fairies are tricky, Walker. I can’t do much.” She smiles wryly, and if Jon weren’t so worried, he’d probably be able to admit that she’s most likely just as concerned about Ryan as he is.
“What can I do?” Jon asks, wishing he didn’t sound as helpless as he does. If he knew where they were, he could probably blast through the world barrier, find Ryan, but the Otherworld is huge, is something like infinite, and he can’t do Ryan any good if he ends up wandering deserts or gardens or forests for eternity.
“Two days til the full moon,” Z says slowly. “If you can wait—“ she holds up her hand again when Jon goes to cut her short, “—I can track them in wolf form. That nose is a hell of a lot stronger, and I’ll be able to find them.”
Jon bites his lip and nods. It’s not ideal, but if he can’t find anything else—it’s something. “Thank you,” he says, trying to smile past the taste of worry and fear in his mouth.
She shakes her head. “I am, too.” She jerks her head towards the door. “I’m going back to Tennessee to see if she knows anyone who would know anyone who knows anything. You should get some sleep.”
“Yeah,” Jon agrees, knowing he won’t sleep until the full moon, “I probably should.”
She snorts and holds the door open for him, walking him to the café and holding that door, too, before giving him a tiny salute and trudging off towards home.
Jon isn’t really any more alone without her—the coffee shop is bustling, this early in the morning—but she’s got part of Ryan in the way she smiles, in the way she speaks, and without that, Jon feels naked and alone.
Two days is a long time to wait.
--
“Seriously,” Kevin pleads, “seriously, Mike, come on.“
Mike takes a deep breath. “Kevin,” he says, biting his lip so he doesn’t just growl like a dog. “Can you—can you just sit down? Please?”
Kevin ducks his head and sits on the couch, drawing his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. Mike sits down next to him and takes his hands, pulling him so he’s almost in Mike’s lap, close enough that Mike doesn’t feel like he’s going to run away.
“Kev,” he says softly, trying to figure out the best way to say this. He turns Kevin’s hands over in his, bringing them up to his mouth and pressing his lips to Kevin’s pulse points, feeling his normal, human heartbeat under the skin, racing against his mouth. “I don’t—I don’t need you to be anything more than you already are.”
Kevin lowers his gaze, chewing his lip. “You don’t need it,” he says softly, miserably, “but you should want it.”
“I don’t, though,” Mike insists. “I want—I want you to be safe, okay, and happy, and I don’t want you to have to feel your bones ripping through your skin three nights a month.” He tugs Kevin closer, wrapping his arms around Kevin’s waist and squeezing. “It’s not that I think you couldn’t take it, because you could, you’re—you’re the strongest person I know, stronger than anyone. I don’t think I could take it.”
Kevin snorts. “Sure.”
Mike squeezes harder, tries to push his sincerity down their bond. “I couldn’t. I can’t watch that happen, I can’t know that’s happening to you, let alone because of me.”
Kevin’s breath catches in something like a sob, and then he’s burrowing into Mike’s embrace, eyes streaming, and Mike gathers him all the way into his lap, tucking Kevin’s head under his chin.
“It’s okay,” Mike promises, shushing Kevin gently. “It’s okay. You’re not—you’re not a burden, or a worry, Kev. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I’m supposed to worry about you sometimes. If I didn’t, it wouldn’t be right.” He runs a hand over Kevin’s hair, fingers catching in his curls, and waits until Kevin’s breathing slows a little, settles from sobs into soft hiccups. “You don’t worry about me during the moon?”
Kevin jerks his head up, glaring at Mike, eyes red. “Of course I do.”
Mike smiles tightly. “You’re proving my point, here,” he teases gently. “I’m allowed to worry without it being a bad thing. I’m allowed to feel bad for not being able to take care of you without that meaning that I have to—to infect you with this, okay? Lycanthropy isn’t a magical fix-all.” He tightens his arms around Kevin. “I don’t want to fix this. I like that I have someone in my life worth worrying about.”
Kevin huffs, but he relaxes a little in Mike’s arms. “What if I just want super strength and your awesome sense of smell, huh?”
“I will tell you all the super-secret-wolfy-smells,” Mike promises solemnly. “And I will lift everything heavy. If you decide to leave me—“
“Mike!” Kevin squawks, shoving at him and giggling.
“—if you decide to leave me, you can convince Z to bite you, and then you’ll be able to lift cars and shit when I’m not around.” He presses a kiss to Kevin’s temple, and Kevin relaxes just a little bit more. “Deal?”
“…Yes,” Kevin agrees, a little hesitantly. “But I’m not going to leave you, you know,” he adds, pouting a little. “It would be kind of hard, I think, since I hear you in my head all the time.”
And Mike says,
–Wellyeahthat’skindofthedownsideofbeingmymate,it’sforlifeandeverything—
Kevin beams at him.
--thatseemslikeaprettyokaydownsidetome—
--well,atleastionlyintendtoabusemypowersinthenameofsneakingintoyourbraintofindoutwhatyouwantforyourbirthday—
--iwantapuppy.nosneakingrequiredijustwantapuppyokaypuppiesarecool—
Mike laughs out loud. “Yeah, okay,” he agrees, ducking his head to catch Kevin’s mouth with his own, because he’s a complete fucking sucker for Kevin, and that’s just the way things are.
--
“Hey,” the guy says. He’s leaning on the doorjamb, dressed in a green hoodie with the hood tugged up all the way, and his pants are ripped enough that they’re barely even pants anymore. His beard is sort of aggressively awesome, in the way that makes Tyson wish he looked less like a pedophile when he tries to grow facial hair. “I’m looking for Overstreet.”
“Uh,” says Tyson, sort of dumbfounded in the face of that seriously kickass beard, “which one?”
The guy wrinkles his nose in this weird, incongruously delicate way. “There’s another one?”
Tyson nods. “There’s the one with the trouty mouth, and the one that always smells like a wet dog.”
“Hey,” the guy protests, a smile flickering around the edges of his mouth, “some of us can’t help that.” He moves into the room, planting a hip against the conference table, scooting one of the mics out of the way with his ass. Tyson would totally protest the manhandling of his equipment, but the dude is sort of intimidating. “Seriously, though, I need to talk to Nash.”
Goosebumps run up the back of Tyson’s neck, and he thinks, briefly, that Crawford will probably take him out at the knees if he tells this guy where to find Nash. “He’s not, you know, here,” Tyson says, gesturing to the empty room. “I can take a message or something, I guess.”
The guy’s eyebrows go up. “Yeah,” he says, slowly. “That might work.”
And then, okay, Tyson is pretty much willing to openly admit that he has no idea how he ends up on his back on the conference table with the guy—whose name he doesn’t even know, holy shit—popping the button on his fly. “Uh,” Tyson says, brow wrinkling. “I meant more like with a pad of paper and a pen or something, not inappropriate touching.”
The guy grins up at Tyson, and there’s kind of a fucked up twist of arousal going on in Tyson’s gut. “Yeah, but that isn’t nearly as fun, and I’m a two birds with one stone kind of guy.”
“Oh,” Tyson agrees faintly, because there’s a creepy hot beardy dude offering him sexual favors, and yeah, okay, it’s been a while and he’s never really been much for class in the first place, “fair enough. What’s your name, creepy hot beardy dude?”
“Sean,” creepy hot beardy dude says, tugging Tyson’s briefs down his hips. “Can you stop talking now?”
“If you’re going to put your mouth on my dick,” Tyson says breathlessly, as Sean starts going down, “you should know right now that I never stop talking.”
--
Jon is on his twenty-something-th cup of coffee and third slice of pie—only because the one with the gigantic eyebrows told him that if he didn’t eat, he was throwing him out, and Jon couldn’t stand the idea of going back to his empty apartment—when the door chimes.
It’s chimed a hundred times since Jon sat down twenty-something hours ago, but something makes him look up.
“You’re Demi’s boss,” the guy says, shuffling inside and sitting down across from Jon. “Jon Walker, right? The music store dude.” He smiles, pushing red glasses up on his nose. “I’m Brendon. I was hoping for a friendly face this morning.”
Jon blinks at him and tries to remember how to make his mouth form words that aren’t I lost Ryan. He can’t remember how that works, no matter how hard he tries, so he just lets those words out, instead.
Brendon bites his lip, then leans forward a little, covering Jon’s hand with his. “Jon Walker,” he says solemnly, “tell me of your sadness.”
--
When the sun is coming up, another twenty-something hours later, and Jon is nursing his umpteenth cup of coffee and a cucumber sandwich—foisted on him by Joe in the middle of the night—the door chimes, and Jon doesn’t bother looking up.
Which is why, when Spencer slides into the booth across from him, he actually startles a little, waking up from his catatonia just enough to be totally baffled.
“What’re you doing here?” he asks, tongue numb enough that his lisp slips through a little.
Spencer clears his throat and rubs a hand over the back of his neck and says, without looking Jon in the eyes, “Brendon says you lost your true love.”
Jon sucks in a breath and doesn’t even ask how Spencer knows Brendon. “I did.”
“Well,” Spencer says, finally meeting Jon’s eyes, and his gaze is blue enough that Jon’s stomach turns over, “I found mine.”
“Come here to gloat?” slips out of Jon’s mouth before he really thinks about it.
Spencer’s mouth twists sourly. “Maybe a little,” he admits, and Jon snorts. “But—“ he sighs, and there’s a swirl of sparkles in front of his mouth like there’s a magic to what he’s admitting, and he reaches across the table to squeeze Jon’s hand where it’s wrapped around his mug. “But I get the difference, now, and I don’t need you to hurt for me to be happy.” He smiles a little, soft and secret. “I’m just happy.”
Jon blinks at him, and if this were any other time, he’d probably be beaming with how much this means. “Okay,” he says, throat tight and raspy.
Spencer ducks his head and looks up through his bangs, a little hesitant, and says, “I know where they took Ryan.”
--
The power it takes to blast into the Otherworld is so strong that it burns the grass around Jon’s feet when he arrives, leaving the carpet of wildflowers blackened and curled.
“Dude,” King Pete says, making a face. “Wizard Jon, what the fuck. It’s been like a hundred years. You don’t call, you don’t write—and then you fuck up my garden? Seriously uncool, man.”
Jon casts his eyes around until he finds Ryan, perched awkwardly—delicately—on the edge of a burled wood throne covered in twining honeysuckle and primrose. “I’m here to take back what’s mine.”
Pete’s weird face gets weirder, brow furrowing. “That’s my son and heir, dude, I’m pretty sure I’ve got dibs. Chill your tits, Wizard Jon. And fix my fucking grass while you’re at it.”
Jon ignores him—if Pete were going to try to fuck with him, he would’ve done it by now; the likelihood is that Pete is sickly fascinated, because that’s pretty much where the fairy King lands with everything: either he wants to fuck it, or mess with its head. But then, that’s true of most of the people of the Otherworld; Jon isn’t going to start bitching about it now. He has business to attend to. There’s a flower crown on Ryan’s hair, drooping down into his eyes, and he looks—he looks far away, like he isn’t seeing Jon, isn’t sure where he is. He looks lost, and Jon just wants to cry and light everything on fire at the same time.
“Ryan?” Jon calls, stepping towards him. “Ryan, can you—“
“Jon,” Ryan says, blinking at him sleepily with sad, sad eyes, “Jon, they said I’m special. That I’m a fairy.” There’s a crooked little smile on his face, distant and lonely, and Jon’s chest goes tight.
“Yeah, dummy,” Jon says softly, moving forward to kneel down at Ryan’s feet, putting a hand on Ryan’s knee. “Yeah, of course you’re fucking special. I love you. You’re mine.”
Ryan’s fingers catch on Jon’s, and tears start to slip down Ryan’s cheeks. “No, no, they said—they said I’m a prince or something, I’m—“ he hiccups around a sob, and that’s it, that’s all Jon can take of this.
He stands up, sweeping Ryan off the fairy throne and into his arms, one arm under Ryan’s legs, the other supporting his back, and walks back towards the blackened circle in the fancy-ass fairy grass. “You’re coming home, is what you are,” he promises, squeezing Ryan tightly.
“Dude,” Pete says, standing up and trying his damnedest to look menacing, “dude, that’s my heir, you can’t just carry him off like a fucking princess or something. I need him.”
Jon narrows his eyes and steps back into his burnt grass circle. “Look,” he says shortly. “I like you. I do. You’re pretty okay for a swishy fairy dude, and I mostly don’t have a problem with the shit you do. But don’t fucking piss me off.” He calls up the portal he came through, rubbing a reassuring thumb over Ryan’s trembling arm. “Go impregnate someone else and have another fucking heir. It’s not like you’re getting any older.”
Pete’s brow furrows even deeper. “I’m pretty sure Queen Patrick would cut off my dick before he lets me use it to impregnate somebody, dude. You’re putting me in a really difficult place here.”
Jon rolls his eyes. “Go talk to Salpeter. That’s not my problem.”
Pete makes a face like he’s just bitten into a lemon. “Greta? She’s just a hedgewitch.”
“A hedgewitch who specializes in getting people pregnant,” Jon points out, cracking the portal open and tucking Ryan’s face against his chest so that he won’t have to watch the sick slide of spacetime go by. “For a really old dude who doesn’t technically have anything he has to do other than notice shit, you’re really kind of a dumbass.”
Pete looks like he’s about to argue, but Ryan starts to shake even harder, and Jon just stops giving a shit and clutches his boy tight and lets the portal swallow them up.
--
Everyone apparently wants into Justin’s pants. Justin will admit, he’s not the most highly observant person, so yeah, okay, he only realizes everyone wants into his pants when he’s coming out of the bathroom and Chord, like, pounces on him and drags him back in.
Justin doesn’t even really get together what’s happening until his back is pressed to the door and Chord is sucking on his neck, stupidly-perfect fingers undoing Justin’s belt faster than he’s ever managed to do it himself.
“Uh,” Justin says—croaks, maybe, really, because Chord’s teeth are digging into his earlobe now, and Justin hadn’t even realized how much of a thing that was for him until right now.
Chord pulls back from Justin’s neck and his mouth is all huge and shiny and pretty, and Justin really means to say something else, but, “Want you to blow me,” Chord says, just like that, like Justin isn’t a total virgin and this isn’t a bathroom and like they’d, you know, discussed this previously or something.
“I don’t—“ Justin starts to say, and he’s kind of proud of himself, because those are both two totally legitimately coherent words, and that’s definitely an increase in sanity right there, but then Chord’s hand—his hand, his fucking beautiful hand—is wriggling into Justin’s boxers and wrapping around his dick, and the rest of Justin’s totally-going-to-be-awesome sentence trails off into a squeak.
Chord starts to jerk him—hard, harder than Justin does to himself, and it’s good. “I’m gonna—“ Chord’s teeth drag over a tendon in Justin’s neck, and he grinds his hips against Justin’s thigh, “—I’m gonna fuck your mouth raw, shit, shit.”
Justin’s air all whooshes out at once as Chord shoves two fingers into Justin’s mouth, thick and callused and beautiful, and they taste like metal from Justin’s belt buckle, like skin and sweat and maybe Chord’s shampoo or something else fruity, and the weight of his fingertips, the rub of the pads of his fingers on Justin’s tongue is so perfect that that’s it, he’s just gone. This obscene noise forces its way out of his throat, and Justin is swallowing around Chord’s fingers until they’re rubbing roughly against the back of his throat, until he can work his tongue at the web of skin between them, and Chord just goes with it, says, “Yeah, fuck, come on,” and moves the hand around Justin’s dick a little faster, a little frantic.
Justin can barely remember to make himself breathe, he’s so focused on the taste of Chord’s fingers, the edge of his palm where it’s pressed to Justin’s mouth. Chord leans in to lick at the corner of Justin’s mouth where it’s stretched wide around his knuckles, rubbing his thumb roughly over the slick edge of his lip, and Justin’s tongue pushes out to get a taste of the pad of Chord’s thumb, fast and desperate enough that he smears spit down his chin. Chord kisses sloppily at the damp spot, licking over his own fingers and Justin’s tongue.
“You’re not—you’re not really subtle, you know?” Chord murmurs, twisting his fingers to run a fingertip over the ridge on the roof of Justin’s mouth, making Justin jerk. “Like, you—you watch, all the time, it’s kind of fucked up.”
Justin knows that, he’s never pretended otherwise—that’s why he’s never mentioned it, never smiled at Chord the way Alex and Ryland smile at him, never asked him out or even over for a movie. He whines around Chord’s fingers, half apology, half desperation.
Chord pushes closer, rubbing hard against Justin’s hip, and his eyelids flutter. “No, like—“ he takes a sharp breath when Justin sucks hard on the digits in his mouth, “—like, it’s like I’m the only thing you’re thinking about.” His voice cracks a little, like he’s not used to that, like every other person alive wouldn’t want him, wouldn’t stare if they were shut in a small room with him every day, watching him and his hands. “Like you just want—“ His hand tightens around Justin’s dick, going still, and he swipes his thumb across the head, smearing precome into it. “Like you want—“ He jerks against Justin’s hip and mouths his way across the line of Justin’s jaw. “Fuck, Justin, please.”
Justin shudders, mouth going slack, and for a second, he thinks that maybe the only thing better than Chord’s fingers in his mouth would be—and then Chord is stepping back, unbuckling his own belt, leaning against the door, and Justin is on his knees before he can even finish the thought, dragging Chord’s briefs down. “Yeah,” he says, swallowing against the tide of nerves that rise up when Chord’s dick is actually in front of him, thick and flushed. “Yeah, I want.”
Chord’s hands are tight in his hair, tugging him forward, and Justin doesn’t like things that hurt, he’s not insane, but Chord’s hands on him are pretty much all he’s wanted for months, and he’s not going to complain about it. One hand slides down, stroking over his jaw, sliding down his throat. “God, your mouth,” Chord says, breath hitching, and Justin decides that he likes that hitch. Leaning in, he presses his mouth to the top of Chord’s thigh where it meets his hip, opening up and dragging his tongue up in a wet slide. Chord’s fingers go tight, clutching a little, and Justin braces his hands Chord’s thighs so he can keep his distance for a minute. This is—it’s Chord, yeah, and he wants, but this is new, and it’s fast and it’s not—they haven’t talked about any of it, haven’t—he just wants to get it right.
The smooth expanse of skin below Chord’s bellybutton tastes faintly of soap and sweat, and Justin sucks on it until Chord is shaking and panting, head thrown back against the wall. When there’s a red spot blooming under his mouth, Justin moves over, licking into the damp crease of Chord’s thigh, tongue catching on soft gold hairs. He mouths wetly at the top of Chord’s inner thigh, then Chord’s balls, dragging his tongue over them in one slow swipe.
Chord goes utterly still, breath caught in his chest, and Justin grins, just a little. “Please,” Chord chokes out, fingers trembling in Justin’s hair. “Seriously, I can’t—please, dude, stop fucking teasing.” He sounds wrecked, like he’s not annoyed that Justin’s teasing, like he’s just desperate.
The head of Chord’s dick tastes like salt and something bitter and foreign, and that’s really all Justin has time to think before he’s swallowing around it, hollowing out his cheeks and sucking him down. Chord cries out, kind of obscenely loudly, and bucks up into Justin’s mouth, dick pushing against Justin’s throat. He’s got one hand clutching at Justin’s hair like it’s a lifeline, the other pressing fingertip bruises into the side of Justin’s neck, and it’s. It’s so good.
“Let me—“ Chord pants, hips twitching violently, “—let me fuck your mouth, come on, I want—“ his fingers tighten experimentally, palm wrapped around the base of Justin’s throat without squeezing, other hand actually pulling his hair now, hard enough that it aches a little.
Justin lets his eyes slip shut and slackens his jaw in acquiescence. Chord makes a choked-off noise of approval and jerks forward, pushing his dick down Justin’s throat in one fluid motion. Justin fights off the urge to gag and swallows around it, pushing forward until his nose is against the smooth skin of Chord’s abdomen.
“Yeah,” Chord breathes, pulling back and thrusting again, hands squeezing a little, “yeah, holy shit, come on, just like—fuck, just like that.” Chord moves a little faster, arrhythmic and graceless, hands slipping until he’s cupping Justin’s jaw and holding him steady while he thrusts into Justin’s mouth. “God, I’ve wanted—“ he groans, long and low, hips jerking, and his hands clench a little around Justin’s jaw, and it’s—it’s better, almost, than the slide of Chord’s dick in his mouth, it’s grounding and perfect and Justin wants those hands everywhere, it’s not healthy. “—I’m gonna—I’m—“
Justin lets go of Chord’s thighs and reaches up to twine his fingers through Chord’s where they’re cupping his face, dragging them forward until his thumbs are brushing the corners of Justin’s mouth where it’s stretched around Chord’s dick. He doesn’t mean to let the noise out, but it’s pathetic, really, this desperate little whimper, and Justin hates himself for the five seconds it takes Chord to get it.
Then Chord’s thumbs are slipping into Justin’s mouth, the pads sliding roughly against the insides of his cheeks, and just like that, Justin is painfully aware of how hard he is. He opens his eyes to look up at Chord’s face, to check—it’s weird, he knows it’s weird, but Chord is just staring down at him with his lids at half-mast, mouth slack, panting.
“You’re kind of a slut for this,” Chord says, swallowing, fingers digging into Justin’s cheeks experimentally. It’s almost a question. “For—“ his hips twitch forward, pushing his dick forward between his thumbs and against the back of Justin’s throat, “—for, like—for my hands?”
Justin squeezes his eyes shut and pretends that he’s not the most awkward virginal freak in the world, that he’s cool and totally knows what he’s doing and stuff. It doesn’t really work; he can feel his face flaming, which is pretty ridiculous, considering that he has a dick in his mouth.
Chord’s fingers stroke down Justin’s jaw, weirdly gentle, considering the way he’s still pushing his dick down Justin’s throat. “No, dude, dude—“ Chord shudders, hard enough that Justin feels his dick trembling in the back of his throat, “—it’s hot, okay?” He pulls back and thrusts again, picking his messy rhythm back up, holding Justin’s mouth wide between his thumbs. “I don’t,” he starts haltingly, taking harsh, loud breaths as his hips pound back and forth, “I don’t get it, but it’s hot that you—god, oh my god, I can’t—“ Chord pulls back, yanking his fingers and dick from Justin’s mouth at the same time, leaving Justin’s lips sore and spit-slick, and stares down at him, pupils blown in the bright lights of the bathroom, mouth red like he’s been biting it.
Justin blinks at him, breathing hard. “Did I—did I do something wrong?” He misses the weight on his tongue already, the heavy slide of Chord’s dick and the salt at the back of his throat, and he tries not to panic at the sudden loss.
Chord grips him by the collar and drags him up, and Justin only spares an instant to think about how stretched out his shirt’s going to be before Chord is pushing him back against the wall, licking into his mouth, hands pushing up under the hem of Justin’s shirt to stroke over his ribs. Justin suddenly can’t catch his breath, moaning helplessly into Chord’s mouth as his calluses catch on Justin’s nipples, blunt nails raking down his sides. Chord presses closer, lining their dicks up and grinding down sloppily, rough and jerky and fast. It’s too much for Justin, too raw and hard and dry this soon, and he cries out, bucking up into it despite himself. Chord’s hands are everywhere, clutching at Justin’s hips, dipping into the small of his back, squeezing at the curve of his ass, and it’s overwhelming, like trying to breathe underwater.
When Chord brings one hand down to wrap around their dicks, Justin gives up any pretense of trying to maintain his dignity, just groaning into Chord’s mouth and letting his hips jerk into Chord’s fist. He can feel every single callus, every fold and ridge of Chord’s palm, and it’s so much to take in that he’s almost coming already.
“Tell me,” Chord says, mouth moving messily against Justin’s cheek. “You’ve—you’ve been watching, tell me.”
Justin’s back arches as Chord’s dick slides against his just right, dragging against his balls and under the head. “I just—your hands are—“
Chord shudders, moving faster, frantic and uncoordinated now. “Are what?” His free hand is on Justin’s stomach, thumb stroking haltingly over Justin’s solar plexus, and the drag of his fingertips is just—
“Perfect,” Justin grits out, bucking up hard, and comes.
Chord sucks in a harsh breath and bites Justin’s lower lip, thrusting sharply into the tight circle of his fist and against Justin’s come-smeared dick. “I’m gonna—“ he grunts, hand spasming on Justin’s chest, “—I’m gonna finger you until you beg me for it.” Chord takes another ragged breath, thrusting faster, hand moving now, too, fast enough that it’s almost too much for Justin as he comes down, “I’m gonna make you come all over my hands and make you lick them clean, a—“ he tightens up, dropping his head down into the curve of Justin’s shoulder, panting hard, “—a hundred fucking times, until you can’t even remember what it’s like to come without my hands on you.” Chord jerks one last time, dick twitching hard, and comes all over his own hand and both their dicks.
Justin’s chest is still constricted like he hasn’t even come; he’s wound so tight he thinks he might explode, like a cartoon character or something. Chord’s eyelids are heavy and his mouth is red and slack when he lifts his sticky hand up to Justin’s lips, slick fingers pushing at Justin’s mouth. “Clean me up,” he murmurs, watching Justin’s mouth intently.
Chord’s fingers slip into his mouth, bitter and salty on Justin’s tongue. Justin takes a shaky breath and licks at them, wrapping his tongue around Chord’s forefinger and sucking it clean until it tastes like nothing more than skin again. Slowly, the tightness in Justin’s chest loosens, and he sucks the next digit clean. Little by little, the tension in Justin’s gut loosens, and when Chord’s whole hand is damp and clean, Justin feels lazy with afterglow.
Chord trails his spit-damp hand down the side of Justin’s throat and follows it with his mouth. “Come back to my place?” he says, voice breaking a little. “I want—“
Justin closes his eyes and opens his mouth to say something—really, to say something—but Chord just pushes two fingers into it.
“Seriously,” Chord says, taking Justin’s hand with his free one—his palm is a little sticky, but warm and rough, and it’s so good that Justin is almost hard again, “seriously, come home with me.” He shifts closer, and Justin is reminded that their junk is still all out and awkward and sticky, but Chord doesn’t seem like he actually cares. “Let me actually, like. Get you naked.”
Justin sucks hard on the fingers in his mouth, tonguing at the knuckles. Chord squeezes their tangled hands and leans in to push his nose against the side of Justin’s neck, nuzzling in. “Like,” Chord says, nonchalantly, “when I get you there—when—I’m gonna strip you down and spread you out and tie you down so you can’t get any more than what I give you.” And yeah, okay, Justin is pretty sure he’s not into bondage, he’s not some weirdo or anything, but the idea of Chord just—keeping him there, it’s kind of more than a little hot. “And I’m gonna touch you—“ Chord’s fingers slip out of Justin’s mouth to swipe over his soft dick, making Justin jerk, “—all over, until you’re begging me for it.” Chord pulls his now-sticky fingers up to his own mouth, licking the come off them, and Justin’s heart is pounding so hard he can feel it beating behind his eyes. “And then, I’m gonna put my fingers in you, one by one, until you want it so bad you don’t even remember how to beg me for it.” Chord sinks down to his knees, looking up at Justin with these heavy-lidded eyes, looking so turned on that Justin wouldn’t believe he’d just gotten off if he hadn’t been there. “And then, okay, I’m gonna fuck you.” He leans forward, licking over the smear of come on Justin’s thigh, tongue rough and ticklish and really good. “And you’re not gonna come til I get a finger inside you, holding you open for my dick.”
Justin keens from the overload of sensation as Chord sucks his soft dick into his mouth, cleaning him up. Chord’s fingers tighten on Justin’s, squeezing tight, and he pulls back, licking a streak of white off the corner of his mouth.
“And when you’ve got come all over your stomach, I’m gonna pull out and come all over you, too, and then I’m—“ Chord squeezes his eyes shut, like he’s picturing it, and god, god, Justin could almost get hard again this second, “then I’m gonna rub my hands in it and make you lick them clean.”
Justin swallows hard. “Yeah?” he asks, voice shaking way more than he’d like it to.
Chord’s eyes are crazy dark, looking up at Justin like he wants to eat him. “Yeah,” he says, word dragging like gravel in his throat. “Come home with me.”
Justin forces himself to just breathe for a minute, to stop thinking about what just happened, what’s going to happen, and says, “Yeah. Yeah, okay, I’m in.”
--
Jon lands, stumbling, on the stoop of his apartment building, and doesn’t pause a beat before maneuvering the door open and starting up the stairs with Ryan in his arms.
“You can put me down,” Ryan says softly, halfway up the last flight of stairs. “I can—I’m okay, I can walk. I should go see Z, she’s going to be worried.”
Jon closes his eyes against the dizzy, sick feeling that washes through him. “I was worried,” is all he can say, opening his apartment door with a flick of his finger and a murmured spell. He doesn’t put Ryan down.
Ryan turns his face to burrow it against Jon’s chest, and it’s an oddly reassuring gesture. “You came for me,” he says, voice catching. “I didn’t think—you came for me.”
Jon’s hands clench tight enough that Ryan whimpers in discomfort. “I’m always going to come from you, you dumbface.” He chokes on something in his chest that might be a laugh, might just be a sob. “Always.” He makes his way to the bed, sitting on the edge and rearranging Ryan in his lap without actually letting go.
Ryan squirms around a little, says, “I always thought, you know—I mean, I always thought I wasn’t really a person, and this makes sense, it does—it explains why my dad never really—“
Jon cuts him off with his mouth, kissing him just so Ryan will stop saying things that make his chest hurt. “You’re a person,” he says fiercely. “You’re my fucking person, and anyone who knows you and doesn’t love you so much that they hurt with it is fucking stupid.”
Ryan laughs wetly and shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s how it works. That’s not really rational.”
Jon slants his mouth over Ryan’s again and swallows down the sweet noise Ryan makes before he says, “I don’t care.” He kisses him again, a gentle press of lips, and, “Let me be irrational and tell you how amazing you are. You were just kidnapped by fairies, okay, I’m allowed to be irrational.”
Ryan nods, pressing his mouth to Jon’s, opening up under him, and Jon pushes closer, caging Ryan’s jaw in his hands and letting his eyes flutter shut. “I’m here,” Ryan says, solemn and low against Jon’s mouth, “I’m fine, you got me. I’m here, Jon, I’m not going anywhere again.”
Jon pulls away a little and lays back on the bed, tugging Ryan down with him. Ryan goes with it, scrambling to wrap himself around Jon, all too-long limbs clinging to him like an octopus, and he squeezes, like he knows Jon needs it. “You were just gone,” Jon says when they’re settled, when Ryan’s nose is pressed to his cheek and Ryan’s leg is thrown over Jon’s, hooked around his knee. “You were just—I’d thought you’d just left me.”
Ryan swallows hard and noses closer, tucking his head under Jon’s chin and squeezing him hard. It would be uncomfortable in any other circumstances, but right now, it’s just nice to feel that Ryan’s real, that he’s here. “I didn’t,” Ryan reminds him. “I’m not—I wouldn’t.”
“I know,” Jon says, and it tastes sour like a lie.
Ryan snorts. “Sure you do. That’s why you’re crying.”
“I’m not crying,” Jon says, lying again, and ignores the hot tears slipping out of the corners of his eyes and down his temples into his hairline.
Ryan kisses the underside of Jon’s jaw, soft and careful. “You are,” he says, but it’s not mocking, and it doesn’t matter, anyway—Jon can’t even pretend to be holding in the sobs anymore, they’re just wracking his chest and ripping their way out of his throat, and he’s burying his face in Ryan’s hair without even really meaning to. “You are, but it’s okay, I swear,” Ryan says, holding onto Jon so tightly that Jon can’t tell if it’s for his benefit or Ryan’s own. “I love you, okay, I love you, I’m not—I’m not going anywhere. Not ever, not on purpose.”
And that’s only the second time Ryan’s said it, and it’s the first time on his own, and Jon thinks that he could hear it a thousand times a day for the rest of his life and it would never get old. “I didn’t even know if—I didn’t know if I was supposed to look. If you wanted me to come after you. I didn’t want to be—I didn’t want to be that creep who can’t take a hint,” Jon says, laughing at himself a little. “But there wasn’t a note, and I didn’t think you’d leave me without a bittersweet Mark Twain quote or something, and—“
“We all do no end of feeling, and mistake it for thinking,” Ryan interjects sleepily. “Which is the only one I could think of off the top of my head, and that only seems vaguely relevant, and that means that to leave you properly, I’d need to spend at least an hour on Google, and that sounds like way too much work to make myself miserable again.”
“I keep thinking that you’re too good for me,” Jon admits, pressing a damp kiss to Ryan’s forehead.
Ryan snuggles in closer, if that’s even possible, and says in his quoting-Mark-Twain voice, “It is very wearing to be good.” Kissing the tear-streaked side of Jon’s face, he adds, “Go to sleep, Jon Walker, and I swear I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Jon exhales, trying to let the panic dissipate, and it works, a little. “If any fairies try to steal you while we sleep—“
“I’ll bite them,” Ryan promises. “I’ll bite them and quote Mark Twain until it echoes through the whole universe, so you know where to find me.”
Jon huffs out a laugh despite himself. “Sounds like a plan, Ryan Ross.”
“That’s Ryan Ross, prince of the fairies, to you,” Ryan says haughtily. “Now shut up and go to sleep so you can wake up and give me blowjobs and sammiches.”
Jon buries his fingers in Ryan’s hair, rubbing in small circles, and Ryan relaxes against him, just a little. “Yeah,” Jon agrees, sleep already overtaking him after so long without it, “sounds good.”
--
“Okay, fuck you, fine.”
Butch flips a page in Cosmo and doesn’t bother looking up. Chiz goes into a lot of irrational rages lately, and Butch finds that it’s really best not to encourage him to elaborate on them unless absolutely necessary. “Uh huh.”
“I said fine,” Chiz snaps, throwing his hands in the air dramatically enough that Butch glances up momentarily.
“That’s nice,” Butch says placidly, turning another page so he can finish this article on how to best please your man with your junk-shaving techniques. He’s pretty sure that shaving his junk isn’t on the menu, but it’s apparently very popular to shave your pubes into the shape of your man’s initial. He just doesn’t think he could look down at a giant, hairy C right above his cock without thinking about Sesame Street and Cookie Monster. He blames Fran for this, and then feels vaguely uncomfortable for having thought about Fran at all, and he just sort of wants—
He’s yanked from his thoughts by a searing pain in his calf, and his head catches up a little slowly, eventually substituting a loud bang in real life for the metaphorical one in his head when he accidentally thought about Fran. “You shot me,” he says—a little incredulously, he’ll admit, but Chiz just shot him. “What the fuck.” His leg is bleeding.
Chiz is panting, eyes narrowed, gun smoking with faint purple glitter, and it’s so cute that Butch could just scream. “I,” he growls, and god, that’s almost as hot as the burning pain in Butch’s leg. “Said,” he continues, shoving his gun back into his holster and stalking forward, yanking Butch’s magazine out of his hands—Butch allows it, because it’s not like he’s going to keep reading before he deals with the blood leaking out of his calf—and poking him hard in the chest. “Fine.” He throws his hands up again—Butch is really going to have to talk to him about that, it makes him look kind of crazy and womanly. “And you’re not even paying attention.”
“Oh,” Butch says, nodding solemnly, trying to stand up and then remembering that his leg has a new hole in it. “Fair enough. Can you hand me my jacket?”
Chiz just stares at him like an idiot for a second before moving stiffly to the bed and grabbing Butch’s jacket, holding it out to him with a rigid arm. “Here,” he mutters. His cheeks are starting to color, like the fact that he snapped like a total psychopath is just now catching up to him, and he’s embarrassed by it. It’s fucking endearing as shit.
“I’d have gotten it myself,” Butch says, taking it, “but you just shot me, and I’m losing a lot of blood, and I don’t reckon it’s a particularly good idea for me to start frolicking around.” He digs around in the pockets until he comes up with the box—discreet black velvet, damn straight—and hands it to Chiz without ceremony. “Here you go.”
Chiz makes a face. “Seriously? You’ve been nagging me for like half a year, and you’re not even going to get down on one knee?” He shoves the box back into Butch’s hands, and Butch has to scrabble for a second so he doesn’t drop it. He’s a little lightheaded, but he’s not actually sure if it’s from the blood loss or the fact that Chiz is saying yes.
“Dude,” Butch says, shoving the box back at Chiz in turn, “you just shot me in the leg.”
Chiz refuses to take it, crossing his arms and getting that stubborn bitch look he gets, and Butch grits his teeth. “You’re seriously going to make me get down on my knees while my leg is bleeding.” He doesn’t even bother to say it like it’s a question; he knows what that look on Chiz’s face means. ‘
“Damn straight,” Chiz says, and yep, that’s the man Butch loves. Grouchy and demanding and absolutely stunningly insane. “Well, just one knee,” he allows a second later, a smile twitching in the corner of his scowl. “Both can come later. After we put some gauze on that.”
Butch laughs outright and lets himself sink down to the floor, not even bothering to try to stand up in between sitting and kneeling, and does his best to prop himself up on one knee. Hurts like a bitch, but he thinks that’s sort of appropriate. He pops the box open, grinning up at Chiz—and if his upper lip is sweating, if his hair is gross and flopping everywhere, well, Chiz is going to have to deal, because getting shot has that kind of effect—and says, “Michael Guy Chislett, will you do me the honor of being my wife?”
He’s laughing when Chiz’s boot connects with his head and the world goes fuzzy, then black.
When he wakes up, hours later, with a lump on his head and a bandage on his leg, Chiz curled up around him, diamond shining on his finger, he’s pretty sure it was worth it.
If you ask him again later, when he’s trying to stand up so he can go take a piss, well, he might not be so smug, but for now, he’s pretty fucking pleased with himself.
--
Ryan spends a lot of time worrying. It’s something that’s true of his character, not a problem, necessarily, but lately—since he’s been back, really—it’s been… prohibitive. He can’t sleep, usually, and when he does, he wakes to nightmares that shake him out of his skin and his head, leaving him untethered and panicked.
“I feel like a dog wandering around without tags on its collar,” he says, trying to explain, after Jon shakes him awake from the latest nightmare. “Just—like I’m just waiting to be snatched again, and if I am, I won’t remember myself, and even if—even if you come for me, there won’t—“
“Ryan—“ Jon tries, but Ryan shakes his head and keeps on talking.
“—There won’t be anything for you to find,” he finishes, holding up his hands helplessly, palms splayed. “I want—“ he swallows, shakes his head so the last scraps of the nightmare flutter out, “—I want tags, Jon.”
--
“Get on your knees, Ry,” Jon says gently, pushing at Ryan’s shoulders until he folds down to the floor.
The warm stream hits Ryan in the face, spraying over his mouth and cheek, dripping down his jaw and throat. He arches into it, squeezing his eyes shut and bracing his hands on Jon’s thighs, letting the flow trickle into his hair and down over his shoulder. He likes it, likes the way it feels like claiming, owning. He feels marked.
Ryan opens his mouth, just a little, lets the drops on his lower lip touch his tongue, and for a moment, it’s something like enough.
But when Jon crouches down to look at him, swiping a thumb over Ryan’s drying cheek, Ryan still feels lost, still feels like he’s missing, and the only thing he can force out of his throat is a thin croak of, “More.”
Jon’s brow furrows. “I kind of can’t—“
Ryan shakes his head. “No, like. More. It has to be—“ he searches for the right word. “It has to be permanent.”
Jon makes a low noise, just a little intake of breath that gets stuck, and Ryan hates himself for needing anything more from him than he’s already giving, but—
“I’m sorry, you know?” he says, drawing his knees up to his chest. “I don’t mean to be such a—“
Jon’s hand smoothes over Ryan’s jaw and into his hair, nails scratching a little, soothing. “You’re not,” he says, like he really means it. “You’re not, Ry. We’ll figure something out.”
It’s Jon, and Jon doesn’t lie to him, so Ryan believes him.
--
Frank is going into labor with the twins when it finally happens.
“Gerard,” he says through gritted teeth.
Gerard is hovering at the bedside in scrubs, hair tied back ridiculously, and he’s looking adorably, disgustingly earnest and supportive. “Yes?”
“Fuck it. Gerard, I’m a wood nymph.”
Gerard nods sympathetically and smoothes Frank’s sweaty hair back from his face. “I know, baby, I am totally supportive of your life and your body and your choices, okay, you are so beautiful to me.”
Frank narrows his eyes as his guts contract violently, and he clenches his jaw, determined to get this out right now, while Gerard is feeling guilty for impregnating him in the first place, when Gerard almost definitely won’t flip his shit and abandon Frank forever. “No, okay—ugghhhh, ow, shit—no, Gerard, I’m actually a wood nymph. Magic is real.”
“Frank—“
“Really real. My mom was a tree.”
Gerard looks at him for a long, long moment, blinking owlishly, and whatever he sees in Frank’s screwed-up-with-pain face seems to do the trick, because he rocks back on his heels and says, “Oh.”
Frank is totally worried by the stricken look on his face for about eight seconds, until Gerard collects himself and says,
“Dude, wait, does that mean Gabe is actually part chupacabra? Because I thought that was just, like, an office myth.”
Frank rolls his eyes and concentrates on squeezing two babies out of his definitely-not-secretly-in-possession-of-a-real-uterus body. “Yes,” he grunts. “And your brother is a vampire. I’ll—aaaaaagh, shit—I’ll make you a list after I get these horrible things out of me.”
Gerard’s eyes go round. “Frank, Frankie, they are precious beings born from the beauty of our—“
“I swear to god, if you say one more word other than, ‘Yes, Frank, they are bringing you more painkillers,’ I will feed you one of your own limbs.”
Gerard shuts up. For about five minutes. Because it’s Gerard.
Frank wouldn’t really have it any other way.
--
“Dude, woaaaah, what the fuck,” Nash says, leaning on the doorframe so he doesn’t fall over.
Sean looks up at him from where he’s got his dick in Tyson’s ass, and says, “Yo, Overstreet.”
Tyson cranes his sweaty head up from where he’s laid out on the table on top of Tomrad, and says, “Dude, Nash, I’m totally being self sacrificing here and saving you and stuff.”
Nash squeezes his eyes shut so he doesn’t have to see any more naked limbs than are already seared into his brain. “Uh huh. I see. That’s totally what this is.” And Nash would totally be content to run the fuck away and pretend this was all just a really, really terrible dream, but just then, Ian bumps into his back, and says,
“Yo, man, what’re you—oh holy shit.”
Nash opens his eyes to Sean sighing wearily and pulling out of Tyson, tugging his jeans back up and zipping his fly. “Crawford—“
Ian steps around Nash and holds out his hand, pulling Sean into a bro hug, pounding a fist on his back. “Dude. I don’t want to fight you, okay, I just want to live with my boyfriend and play terrible music on the radio.”
Sean rubs a hand over the back of his neck, and it’s the first time in Nash’s memory that he’s ever looked awkward. Including just now, when Nash walked in on him and Tom banging Tyson. “I wanted to fight you, but there’s kind of this thing, now, with me and Tom and this idiot over here, and I don’t—“ he snorts. “I don’t really even give a shit anymore.”
Ian looks at him consideringly, then briefly glances back to Nash—Nash hurries to nod, because fuck if he knows what’s even going on anymore, but he’s behind Ian a hundred percent—and says, “We should have a beer.”
Sean eyes him for a minute, still obviously wary, but says, “Yeah, man, I’m down.” He looks over at Tyson. “Now, could you get the fuck out? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
Ian giggles his high pitched little giggle that makes Nash feel like they’re middle schoolers in stupid, amazing love, and says, “Aw yeah, I bet you are.”
--
“Okay,” Jon says slowly, wiping Ryan’s arm down with alcohol. “So, you’re going to have to hold still. It’s going to mark wherever I touch, so if you need to move, say something, don’t move if you can help it.”
Ryan nods tightly, fingers digging into the sheets. He doesn’t look nervous, really, but then, Jon is nervous enough for both of them. “I’m ready,” he says, taking a breath. “Just do it.”
Jon huffs out a breath and settles on the edge of the bed, laying Ryan’s arm across his lap. “You’re sure you want—“
Ryan flicks his ear. “Quit trying to talk me out of this.” He’s a little flushed, the awkwardness he feels about wanting this, needing this, and Jon feels like a jackass for questioning him again. “I’m ready, come on, Jon.”
Jon takes a deep breath and settles himself, letting his power pool in his hands. “This is permanent,” he reminds Ryan. “Like, it doesn’t come off, even with magic, it’s just—“
Ryan flicks him again. “Seriously, asshole, I’m going to kick you. I know it’s permanent. If you break my heart and leave me, it’ll be my reminder that guys are jerks and I need to learn to like chick parts.”
“That’s not reassuring,” Jon says, even though it sort of is, in a backwards and retarded sort of way. “Hold still, and don’t forget to breathe.”
Ryan’s eyes flutter shut, and Jon gives himself a minute to look at the resolution apparent in Ryan’s face, the firm set of his mouth. He waits until the magic in his hands is white hot, and then gently lifts his right hand and lets it hover over Ryan’s arm, making sure it’s lined up perfectly before he lets his hand settle, wrapping around Ryan’s wrist and squeezing hard.
Ryan’s hips jerk off the bed, but the arm in Jon’s grip stays perfectly still, and Ryan doesn’t make a sound, even when the skin starts to smoke faintly.
“You okay?” Jon asks softly, squeezing tighter, letting the energy in his hand flow faster, etching every line of his palm and fingerprints into Ryan’s skin.
Ryan nods slowly, eyes squeezed shut, and says, voice rough, “Never been better.”
Jon lifts Ryan’s wrist carefully, making sure his hand doesn’t slip, and presses an open-mouthed kiss to Ryan’s palm. “You’re beautiful like this, you know? So gorgeous, so good for me.”
Ryan huffs out a laugh. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Oh yeah,” Jon says, rolling his eyes. “All the girls I magically brand and then fuck over the window sill.” He sucks Ryan’s index finger into his mouth, tongue worrying at the fingertip and knuckles.
Ryan’s breath catches. “Seriously? Where everyone can see?”
Jon hums confirmation around Ryan’s finger. “Mmmhm.”
Ryan shivers, biting his lip, and his eyes dart to Jon’s hand, still squeezing his burning wrist. It has to hurt—the skin is burning, smelling so much like bacon that Jon doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to eat it again, and giving off thin wisps of black smoke—but Ryan just looks impatient rather than pained. If Jon’s not mistaken, there’s a certain level of interest happening below the waist that has nothing to do with the bad kind of discomfort. “I want—“ he stops, lifting his free hand to trace a finger over Jon’s lower lip before he speaks again. “I want you to have something, too.”
Jon’s hand is starting to hurt from gripping so hard, but he ignores it in favor of leaning down to rub his nose against Ryan’s, pressing a kiss to the corner of Ryan’s mouth. “Like what?”
Ryan shrugs with one shoulder. “You’re giving me what I want. You should get something, too.”
Jon has to just stop for a minute and breath so he doesn’t just smack Ryan in the back of the head for being a dumbass. “You are the thing I want, Ry, what the fuck.”
“No, not like—just something little. Something you want from me.”
He looks so earnest, so concerned, that Jon actually thinks about it for a minute. When it comes to him, he just blurts it out without even really deciding that it’s what he wants. “I want to ride you,” he admits. “I’ve never—it’s never been me.”
Ryan blinks up at him for a moment. “All you want is sex?”
Jon blinks back. “Well. I kind of have everything else.” He’s a wizard with a spacey, beautiful, incredible boy in his arms, he’s not sure what else he’s supposed to be asking for. “I mean, Z says you make a mean grilled cheese.”
“I do make a mean grilled cheese,” Ryan admits. “It’s the king of sandwiches.”
“But I’d kind of rather have your cock in my ass,” Jon continues, “unless that’s something you’re deeply morally opposed to.”
Ryan snorts, and then goes still, like he’s only just remembered that Jon’s hand is in the middle of branding him, and that he should maybe hold still. “I haven’t—not since Z and Tennessee, and it wasn’t really like—“
Jon shrugs. “You asked.”
Ryan smiles at him, strangely wide, like he’s proud of something, and says, “Yeah, I did.”
“Well, that’s it,” Jon says, ducking his head. “That’s—I know you don’t want to be in charge, I get that.” He kisses Ryan’s palm again. “I can still be, you know—“
Ryan’s mouth twists up in what might be a smirk on anyone else. “I know. You should do it now.”
Jon’s eyebrows hit his hairline, and he glances meaningfully from Ryan’s face to his own hand, still burning its mark into Ryan’s wrist. “I feel like that’s not actually a good idea.”
Ryan raises a challenging brow. “What, you can’t do it? Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of wizard or something, Wizard Jon?”
Jon huffs, and vanishes their clothes, just to prove the point. “You’re kind of a dick.”
“And you love me,” Ryan agrees gleefully. “I have no idea what’s wrong with you. Masochist.”
Jon doesn’t bother to point out that Ryan’s the one asking Jon to burn him, just grips Ryan’s arm tight and straddles him awkwardly, making sure his other hand doesn’t touch Ryan or the bed. “I’m maintaining that this is a bad idea,” he says, following it up with a muttered incantation he’d learned from Pete a long, long time ago. When he’s sure there’s a good amount of slickness, he sits up on his knees and lines himself up, waiting for Ryan to help. Ryan grins at him, thumb rubbing over Jon’s slick rim, before gripping tight to Jon’s hip and helping him slide down.
It’s a lot. It’s too much, really, except for how much it’s exactly what Jon wants. “Holy shit,” he says when he bottoms out, stretched and aching.
Ryan looks at him, pupils blown, mouth slack, and swallows hard. “Can you—“ he starts, then has to clear his throat. “Can you move? Please?”
Jon makes sure his hand is tight enough on Ryan’s arm that it won’t slip, and then he starts to lift off and sink down again, agonizingly slowly. He means to keep the slow thing up, he really does, but Ryan bucks up, thrusting against Jon’s prostate, and that’s all it takes for Jon to drop down, bracing his other hand against the mattress and ignoring the way the sheet starts to smoke around his palm, and start to move in earnest. Ryan groans, throwing his head back, and meets him thrust for thrust. Jon pushes Ryan’s arm back against the mattress, pinning him in place, and dips his head to dig his teeth into the sharp line of Ryan’s throat.
When Jon comes, he squeezes Ryan’s wrist so hard he hears bones shift, and Ryan cries out sharply, jerking up and going still, spilling himself into Jon.
When Jon looks, later, the red handprint etched in Ryan’s arm is perfectly outlined, perfectly laid out, except for a faint shadow from the very last second, when his hand slipped and left a ghost of a burn up the inside of his wrist and across Ryan’s palm. Ryan’s fingers had tangled with his, and Jon had forced the power back into his arms and away from his hands, but it hadn’t spared Ryan the faint pink shadow.
Ryan just tucks himself over Jon’s chest and promises, as they drift off to sleep, that it’s his favorite part.
It’s kind of Jon’s favorite part, too.
--
“Good evening, my delicious KCobras,” Gabe purrs into the mic. “I have a special treat for all of you listening tonight. My dear compadre, El Koala, is leaving us for a few weeks, as he’s taking his scrumptious morsel of a coffee-slinging life partner, Bambi, to realms unknown for what I suspect is some sort of torrid elopement. In the meantime, I’d like to share with you the deeply entertaining musical stylings of a dear old friend of mine.”
“This song,” Tyson says, strumming his guitar, “is called, Bill Beckett, I am so much prettier than your half-leprechaun, half-chupacabra douchebag radio-hosting boyfriend. I hope you like it.”
And just like that, everything goes on, like things do, and Gabe basks in the sweet anonymity of a radio show that almost no one listens to, a boyfriend someone else wants, and being the only person he knows who is both still alive and really, really tall.
Life is good. Really good.
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END