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It’s taken you three years to break your ‘no-dating-during-undergrad’ rule, and you’re already regretting it.
It was a well thought out rule. The gap year you’d taken before college was stock full of poor decisions you probably wouldn’t make again, and while you don’t necessarily have regrets, you definitely came out of it with some things you didn’t want to experience again.
The dating pool is, quite frankly, shit. Everyone wants to build-a-partner on swiping apps or have a mediocre one night stand and then sneak out before the sheets have gone cold. You’ve yet to encounter a man your age that hasn’t been horribly immature or blatantly antagonistic, and the older men you very briefly considered dating treated you like you were the one lacking maturity.
That year had taught you a lot about wanting. But wanting fades, and you’d decided, moving forward, that casual flings weren’t really for you.
Brendan seemed to understand all of that at first. A little too well, maybe.
You thought that meant something, until you’d found out that the months you’d spent casually getting to know one another and building a connection was actually just the result of a bet to see how long it’d take you to put out. It feels like you’re in fucking high school all over again.
You’re more mad about the fact that you couldn’t see it for yourself. Hurt, even—if you can let yourself admit to it.
But now Brendan’s staring at you open-mouthed from his spot on the shitty sofa in his shittier frat house, surrounded by his friends and everyone else who knew and didn’t tell you before, and the drink you’d poured over his head is soaking into the material like watercolors. His face is ashen with disbelief, mouth wrenched open as he spits out liquid onto himself, fists clenched in festering anger. He looks like a child, which is fitting, really, for the way he acts.
You’ve kept your head down for three years. You don’t like making scenes, but this helped a little.
You storm out of the frat with your chin held high, distantly aware of the people recording on their phones. You hope it gets circulated online—Brendan deserves to be miserable and lonely until graduation, if not after that too.
You just sort of wish you didn’t feel the same.
+
“That was fucking awesome. God. I’ve never seen his face do that before. I’m saving this video. Can you set a video as a lockscreen?”
You stifle a laugh into your textbook, lifting your neck up for the first time in an hour or so. Your eyes hurt from reading and typing on your computer screen beside you, and when you look up, most of the library occupants that’d been here when you first sat down have left.
Except for Steve and Bucky, who’ve just arrived, seemingly, only to talk to you.
You raise a brow at Bucky as he slumps into the seat across from you. “You really want Brendan’s face to be what you see every time you pick up your phone?”
He grins. “If it’s you throwing a drink in it, hell yeah. S’good shit.”
“He’s got a point,” Steve adds, leaning against your table with his arms crossed over his university sweatshirt. “I think there’s about half the campus that’s been dreaming about doing what you did to him. Worse, probably. It’s a collective catharsis.”
“Look who’s taking an advanced English course,” Bucky reaches over to pinch him in the hip. Steve Steve swats him away, and Bucky looks back at you. “No, but. Seriously. People are being very supportive in the comments.”
“Comments?” you groan, closing your textbook.
“It is the twenty-first century,” Bucky reminds you.
You chew at your lip, trying not to picture the worst. “Are there any bad ones?”
Steve snorts as he helps you slide your laptop into your bag and then hefts it and your textbooks onto his shoulder. “I wouldn’t worry about that. Buck’s been on comment duty since it first went up, reporting anyone who’s being an ass.”
“I am now responsible for several suspensions,” Bucky says proudly, standing from the table with a mock bow.
“Thanks for defending my honor.” You pat his head a little condescendingly, but his smile is blinding enough to throw you off when he stands again and winks.
“Anytime, sweetheart.”
It’s dark outside the library when the three of you make it out to the courtyard, and you’re suddenly grateful they’d decided to show up. You hadn’t meant to stay so long, and while your campus isn’t necessarily scary, you don’t exactly relish walking alone at night.
You fall into step between them on the sidewalk, Steve’s sweatshirt and Bucky’s dark tee grazing either of your arms. A few other lingering students glance your way from across the quad, and you straighten up, putting some distance in between the three of you.
Steve and Bucky have a…reputation. And while you don’t care what they get up to in their personal time, you’d like to hold onto some semblance of your own reputation after all of this.
But they were also the only ones here who were honest with you, so you can’t be too picky. You clear your throat, unsure if you’ve said it before now.
“Hey, um. Thanks, again. For telling me about the bet in the first place.”
“You don’t need to thank us for being halfway decent human beings,” Steve says.
“Well. I wouldn’t go that far,” you tease, smiling.
“You’re welcome, is what he meant to say,” Bucky rolls his eyes, nudging his shoulder with yours. “We’ve got your back.”
“If I ever hear anyone in the girl’s bathroom making wagers about you guys, I’ll be sure to return the favor.”
Steve looks adorably concerned. “Do they do that?”
“Personally, I’d be happy to lend a hand to anyone looking to win a few bucks,” Bucky interjects.
You raise a brow as you pass underneath a streetlight. “At the expense of your dignity?”
“Not much there to begin with,” Steve mutters. Bucky reaches over you to shove him.
“Punk.” He smiles at Steve fondly for a beat too long, then looks back to you. “So. What’s the plan now that dickwad is out of the picture?”
“The plan?” you echo, shrugging. “Focus on school. Graduate. Get a job. Same as it was before him.”
“That’s great, sweetheart. But I meant less academically and professionally and more… you know, romantically and such.”
“I’m not sure that really fits into it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it just doesn’t,” you tell him, slightly harsher than you mean to. Both of them back off a little as you turn toward your small apartment building, and you sigh, feeling guilty for taking it out on them when they’re trying to cheer you up. “Look. I tried it, okay? I tried back home, I tried here, I tried again, just now, even though I probably shouldn’t have. I just think I need to get my feet under me first before I try anything like that again.”
“Because guys who are a few years older and have a job can’t also be assholes,” Bucky mutters.
“Buck,” Steve admonishes.
“I’m just saying—assholes are assholes. They can be any age, any place, any time. But that shouldn’t stop you from putting yourself out there because, against all odds, there are some of us who are, like. Halfway decent. And stuff.”
You huff a laugh. “Strong argument.”
“You know what I mean,” Bucky insists, uncharacteristically serious for a moment. “You deserve to be treated right, is all. And if you withdraw completely, you cut yourself off from the good stuff, too.”
You glance at his expression, waiting for the crack, the joke, but it never comes.
“I’ll keep that in mind, Bucky,” you agree gently.
You pause at the door to your building, scanning yourself in and standing in the open space to keep it from closing on you. You take your bag back from Steve and hold your textbooks, and Bucky leans back against the railing on the steps, crossing his ankles.
“Well. I’d say it definitely worked out for us, Stevie. We’re now friends with the coolest girl on campus.”
You look at him. “Friends?”
“She doesn’t have to be friends with us, Buck.”
“No, but she should be. We come with perks.”
You freeze for a second, suddenly worried that their kindness has all been culminating into them hitting on you. But you relax slightly as he continues, counting on his fingers.
“We’ll walk you home whenever you want. We always have snacks. And, uh. Steve will let you copy his work if you don’t feel like doing an assignment, probably.” He pauses, thinking hard, then breaking out into a cheesy smirk. “Also, free eye candy whenever you want it.”
Steve sighs, heavily. “That’s a dollar in the jar.”
“The jar?” you implore.
“The Douchebag Jar,” Bucky clarifies. “Which I am so not contributing to for that, by the way.”
“Oh, this is great,” you decide, ignoring him to turn to Steve. “Am I allowed to make him add to it, too?”
Bucky scoffs. “Hey!”
Steve shrugs. “Be my guest.”
“Well I guess that’s a reason to keep you guys around,” you tease. “This’ll be fun.”
Steve laughs, and Bucky sticks out an exaggerated lower lip, glaring at both of you. “This is so unfair. After everything I did for you in that comment section—”
“Alright,” Steve huffs, reaching over to yank his sleeve, pushing him down the steps. He glances back at you. “We’ll let you get inside. And, seriously, we’re glad everything went okay with the Brendan situation.”
“I mean it—lockscreen material!” Bucky says from the sidewalk.
“Thanks,” you tell them earnestly. You offer a smile as Steve joins him and the begin to head back toward the dorms, watching them walk so close together that they nearly blend into one shadow. At the corner Bucky tosses up a wave, and then they’re gone.
Sagging with the heaviness of your bag and books, you make sure the door’s security system activates and then drag yourself down the hall to the stairs. You pass a girl living on the floor above you on her way down. You used to make small talk with her in the hallways, but since the video, the conversation has significantly lessened, like she’s secretly afraid you’re going to toss a drink on her too.
With a measured inhale and exhale, you make it to your apartment and let yourself inside, slumping your things to the small table in the foyer to deal with after you’ve gotten some sleep. You’ve been here for three years and not really made many friends, but this is by far the most alone you’ve felt since you got here.
You’ve got Steve and Bucky, though, apparently. You don’t quite know how to feel about that accidental friendship yet, but it’s something.
Right now, you’ll take it.
+
You go home for spring break, avoiding all the festivities going on around campus. Brendan’s sure to be at all of them, and you’d like to save yourself the tension.
You figure that by the time you get back to campus, Bucky and Steve will have mostly forgotten about you. They’d done you a favor, and you hadn’t offered to sleep with them for it. You’re not sure what else they could want from you. Especially not after a week full of opportunities for parties and booze and ill-advised sexual encounters.
But your return only picks up right where you left off. The two of them begin showing up around you like stray dogs looking for a home, in the library, outside the lecture hall, the diner just off campus when you’re picking up food to-go. You want to be annoyed, and you’re still a little confused, but over time it gets easier just to accept the fact that you’ve befriended them. You might as well, you figure, since apparently this last year before graduation you’re doing all sorts of things that are outside of your comfort zone.
Privately, you wait for the other shoe to drop. You know that their reputation isn’t unwarranted; you’ve been classmates with girls who’ve had no issue regaling in fine detail their nights of passion between both of them. None of the stories have ever been bad, certainly not like some other guys around campus, but those other ones have made you leery of men in general. Especially lately, it’s difficult to let down your guard.
It doesn’t matter though, because they’re persistent. Steve is always quick to remind you that you don’t owe them anything, but you have genuinely come to enjoy the company sometimes. You’re so used to the sound of your own thoughts or your headphones that it was jarring, at first, having two people around you so often; Steve’s solid presence and Bucky’s perpetually running mouth.
It’s been nice, is all. Not being alone.
Even if you’re trying not to let yourself get used to it.
+
The first time you realize you might’ve been wrong about them is when you’re hanging out at their dorm, take out boxes scattered around you on the floor and a shitty movie playing on Steve’s computer.
You’ve all had a few drinks that Bucky bought from the gas station on the corner, and you picked up your favorite Chinese so that you could watch Steve’s cheeks go bright red with the seasonings. You’re already a little buzzed by the time you realize you’ve never seen Steve and Bucky drunk before, never overlapped at parties or events.
They aren’t drunk but they’re headed that way, Bucky all giggles and Steve more loose lipped than you’ve ever seen him before. You’re pleased to find out that they aren’t aggressive or rude, still nice to you even with their inhibitions lowered.
Lowered so much, in fact, that you’ve never seen them so touchy before. Not with you, but with each other.
All three of you have been talking over the movie, sharing food cartons and passing beers back and forth, but any hopes you had on refocusing for the end of it are gone when you can’t stop watching them instead.
Every few minutes Steve will lean over and say something in Bucky’s ear that makes him grin, crooked and private. You try to make yourself look away, back to your food or the movie, but they’re a little distracting.
At some point, their hands meet in the middle where their thighs are pressed together, leaning back against Steve’s sofa. You watch Bucky’s pinky wrap around Steve’s and then retreat, teasing, before Steve does it back. A minute later, Steve feeds Bucky a bite of chicken using his own chopsticks. When sauce smears at the corner of his mouth, Steve licks his thumb and presses it to the spot, lingering there for a few seconds longer.
Then, just as you’re about to look away, Bucky leans in to close the extra few inches and kisses him.
It’s quick, sweet, and obviously not really meant for your viewing. You yank your eyes away from them, heart beating rapidly in your chest, and blink at your rice as you readjust your perception of them inside your head.
You finish the last of the movie in silence, and by the time you’ve gathered enough courage to look back at them, everything looks relatively back to normal.
Which you’re now realizing is something very different than what you thought.
“So you two are…” you gesture between them, buzzed enough to bring it up but not enough to be eloquent about it, “...together.”
A few feet away from you, Steve looks sheepish, and Bucky looks resigned. Something has hardened in his expression that you aren’t used to, defensive, almost, as he purses his lips and avoids your eye.
“Yeah.”
“Oh,” you say distantly. “I thought it was just, like—a thing you did to…”
“To get girls into bed with us?” Bucky asks wryly, stabbing at his food. “Yeah. Most people think so.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed,” you tell them gently, guilt killing the rest of your pleasant haze from the alcohol.
“It’s not like we’re super public about it or anything,” Steve says, but even his smile is strained. “Don’t sweat it.”
“Is the not-public on purpose, or…?”
Bucky tosses up a shoulder. “Not really. People assume things. There’s a lot of people that wanna get in between us for a night or two. We just don’t really have that many friends. You know?”
Yeah, you think. “I know what you mean.”
Steve’s smile turns a little more genuine, and Bucky runs his eyes over your face for a minute, assessing. Eventually he relaxes, and you feel restless with the need to prove that you can be trusted with this.
“You got any other movies saved?”
Bucky announces that he’s choosing next, and you scoot a little closer to Steve on the rug, sharing fortune cookies between you.
Your eyes stray to the infamous Douchebag Jar on the dresser, wishing you had a dollar to put in it yourself.
+
Somehow, you get roped into attending another party—something else you’d sworn off for the rest of the semester.
And it’s not even for any fun reason. You have a group assignment ready to submit that makes up nearly half your grade in this course, and one person hasn’t logged in to sign off, which is the final barrier to submission.
You decide to cash in on your friendship perks that Bucky promised you before, enlisting him and Steve to accompany you to the party you know your groupmate will be at. The untouchable confidence you felt when you dumped your drink on him has dwindled into something sour now. Brendan might be an asshole, but he’s a frat asshole, and that means he’s got connections all over the place that you probably don’t know about. You’d pissed him off, and you don’t want him to retaliate somehow when you’re not expecting it.
Things are fine for the first bit of the night. You show up with Bucky and Steve in tow and find yourself a relatively quiet corner, talking with Bucky while Steve goes to the kitchen to find drinks that haven’t been spiked or taste revolting.
Eyes were on you the minute you stepped in, but upon closer inspection, you think maybe they’re just looking at Bucky. From this angle you both have a view of Steve over by the island, watching as a girl approaches him, lip caught between her teeth, a hand on the outside of his arm. You can’t even blame her. Steve looks as handsome as he ever does, like he was ripped straight from a vintage GAP men’s ad to be hung up on bedroom walls, and she’s really pretty.
You wonder if she’s their type. Briefly you consider asking Bucky, but you think that might be rude.
“Does that ever get old?” you ask him instead, nodding toward Steve.
Bucky stares for a minute, watching Steve politely duck out from under the girl’s attention. “Yes and no. Always nice to be wanted, I guess.”
He stops himself, and you tilt your head. “But…?”
“But sometimes, y’know.” He sighs. “It’s hard not to wonder if it would even matter if I was there too or not.”
You frown. “How so?”
“‘Cause—well, you know what people say about us. Steve’s the relationship guy. The guy you date, ‘cause he brings flowers and he pulls out the chairs and he’s charming without even trying to be. Sometimes more so when he’s not trying to be.” Bucky glances down. “And I’m—I’m the reason we have the reputation we do.”
“Bucky, that’s not true,” you tell him.
“It is. I’m the one that likes the more social shit. Getting to know people. And, yeah, sometimes that means going home with ‘em if everybody’s feeling it.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I just—it was something we did a few times, the first couple years. And then, suddenly, it was just like we were only known for that. Which sucks, because Steve’s really fuckin’ smart, and he’s a great artist, and I think he’d get a lot more accolades if my name wasn’t always attached to him.”
You study Bucky’s side profile, the curve of his shoulders and his hands stuffed into his pockets. It’s so easy to think of Bucky as confident with the way he presents himself, but you’re realizing now that he has a lot of the same insecurities that you do in relationships. It’s another thing that makes him feel more accessible to you, lowered from the isolated pedestal you’d put them both on before.
“I can’t say I know what that feels like, because I don’t,” you tell him, your elbows touching. “But I have had the displeasure of suddenly being known for only one thing this year. And it does suck. And I don’t know about everybody else, but I’m really glad that you guys thought I was worth sticking around for long enough that I could get the chance to be proved wrong, too.” You nudge him purposefully. “You guys are great, Bucky. Not just Steve. You balance each other, you know? And I’m—I’m just really glad I get to know you.”
Feeling oddly vulnerable after your impromptu speech, you clear your throat, hoping that the flush on your cheeks isn’t terribly vulnerable—even though Bucky’s private smile tells you that it probably is.
“We’re really glad to know you too, sweetheart,” he says.
The two of you have drifted closer throughout your conversation as the party got louder, your sides fully pressed together and Bucky’s face inches from yours. You feel yourself heat further once you realize your proximity, and you immediately shove down the memories of thoughts you might’ve had about them once or twice before you became friends.
Steve returns, saving you from breaking the tension yourself as he holds out a cup to you and Bucky with a smile.
“Okay, I hope you like plain coke because it’s about the only thing here that I could guarantee was safe to drink. Unless you want questionably dated orange juice.”
“I’ll take the coke,” you laugh.
“Definitely same,” Bucky agrees.
You cheers your plastic cups together and take a drink, scanning the small crowd in the house for your classmate and coming up unsuccessful.
The house buzzes as even more people find their way in, your corner feeling a little crowded as others begin coming up every few minutes, saying hello to Steve and Bucky and catching up. Apparently they haven't been going to many parties lately, either.
All of your earlier texts to your classmate have been left unread, but you check immediately when your phone finally buzzes with a response. You pull it out of your pocket while Steve chats with someone they know beside you, and Bucky peers over your shoulder.
“That him?”
“Yeah. He says he’s outside. I’ll meet him out there, make sure he signs, then we can go.”
“I’ll go with you,” Bucky offers, pushing off the wall.
“You go with Steve,” you insist, handing him your empty cup. “I’ll be fine. Seriously. Finish your conversation and then meet me out front.”
He glances between you and Steve with a frown. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Though he doesn’t seem pleased about it, you appreciate that Bucky lets you go without an argument. He slips into place at Steve’s side as you vacate the spot, and you head back toward the front lawn to get your digital signature.
It’s humid out front, and you squint at the setting sun as you descend the front steps and move off to the side to wait. There’s groups of other students hanging around on the porch and the sidewalk, each of them glancing at you periodically. You cross your arms over your chest, forcing yourself to stand your ground despite the unwelcome attention.
A minute turns into two, then five, and you find yourself wishing you had asked Bucky to come with you. You get out your phone again to text your classmate a series of question marks, and you get two words in response.
Look up.
You have about a split second to realize what’s happening before you look over your shoulder to find a group of Brendan’s friends huddled together on the third story balcony, a large bucket balanced on the railing.
They shout something at you and then tilt the thing over, and suddenly you’re standing in the middle of the yard, drenched head to toe in something sticky and ice cold, frozen.
You barely register voices coming out of the house, footsteps headed toward you. You cling to Steve as he strips off his jacket to cover you with, and when you peek out from under it, you see Bucky on the other end of the sidewalk gearing up to throw a punch at a guy who won’t delete the video. If you weren’t still partially in shock, it’d make you smile.
He joins you soon enough, once Steve has quickly walked you to the other side of the fence and far away from the house and anyone who might still have a camera.
“Hey. Let’s get out of here, huh?” Bucky asks, wrapping an arm around your shoulders and attempting to rub warmth back into your arm. Your teeth are chattering.
“I—I didn’t get the signature—”
“Don’t worry about that,” Steve says. “I was the TA in that course last semester and I still talk to the professor. I’ll speak to him and explain. It’ll be fine.”
Soaking wet and feeling horribly lost, you walk the same path to your apartment that you’ve taken with them countless times before. It’s not the first time you’ve felt grateful for them, but it is the first time you don’t really know what you would’ve done without them.
So much for trying not to get attached.
+
You let them spend the night.
They find something to eat while you’re in the shower, and by the time you come out of your bathroom with wet hair and a fresh set of pajamas on, the food’s ready, there’s a sitcom playing on the television, and the way Bucky rushes to put his phone away tells you he’s been on very dutiful damage control again.
You’re upset about what happened, but mostly tired at the moment, still too numb yet to cry or get angry. Steve tells you he’s emailed the professor as one episode rolls into another, the three of you sharing space on your small couch.
The comfort is much needed. They don’t make you talk about it but they remind you they’re there in other ways; Steve’s arm along the back of the couch for you to lean against while he rubs your shoulder, Bucky’s fingers hooking onto yours on the cushion between both of your legs the same way he’d done with Steve on the floor of their dorm room weeks ago. Their quiet conversation amongst each other anchors you enough that you can’t get lost in a rabbit hole of bad thoughts, but they also don’t expect you to jump in and try to be happy at the moment. You aren’t sure you could anyway.
It’s not a particularly high bar, but it does prove something important: Steve and Bucky have walked you home, seen you half drunk, been alone with you in their dorm and in your apartment, and now also when you’re emotionally vulnerable and looking for support.
And not once have they acted like any of your exes. They haven’t used any of it against you or to manipulate you into something.
“Will you stay?” you ask them between one episode and the next, the first words you’ve spoken since you got back.
Even then, they say yes without strings. Steve takes your couch and Bucky curls up in the armchair by the window, both in relatively close distance to your bed that you probably could have all fit on, if you’d tried.
You lay awake for long time that night, even when you can hear Steve snoring from the sofa and Bucky’s conked out against the side of the chair, cheek smushed against his arm.
You’re not just attached, you realize quietly. You’re something a whole lot more than that.
+
As graduation continues to get closer, so do the three of you. Maybe a little closer than you intended.
Steve left some of his books at your place the night before and you told him you’d drop them by before your classes. So, for the record, you had warned him.
Which is why you’re slightly surprised that it’s Bucky who swings open the dorm room door to greet you, his body blocking the view into the room.
His body, which is lacking a shirt and very nearly lacking pants too, strapped low across his hips. He’s breathing heavily, face flushed, pupils dilated and fixed on you with a focus that’s so intense you have to keep yourself rooted to your spot.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he grins. “Those for Steve?”
“Um. Yeah,” you say. “Is he—uh, here?”
Bucky chuckles. “Oh, he’s here. He’s just…occupied. At the moment.”
Your stomach drops in a split second, your confused smile going with it. You do take a step back then, holding out Steve’s things as a barrier between the two of you.
“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t realize you guys had someone over.”
“What?” Bucky drops the smirk, stepping fully into the hallway with you. “There’s nobody else in there. Thought we covered that.”
Now confused and embarrassed, you feel your face heat. “I—we did. I just figured, since you answered the door, and you said he was still—sorry,” you rush out. “I misunderstood.”
Bucky stares at you for a second, and you desperately hope that you haven’t accidentally offended him again. Your reaction was more so rooted in your own feelings for them than anything about them, but you can’t exactly come out and say that right now.
Without looking away from you, Bucky twists the doorknob behind him and leans back enough to call through the gap.
“Stevie,” he says. “Make yourself decent.”
There’s a muffled answer on the other side and then some shuffling, and after a tense minute between you and Bucky in the hall, Steve stumbles to the door just as half-dressed and obviously mid-coital as Bucky had been. With glassy eyes and hair sticking up randomly, he knuckles at his eye.
“My stuff,” Steve says in belated acknowledgement when he sees you, offering you a small, breathless smile. “Thanks for bringing it by. I really appreciate it.”
“Move over,” Bucky grunts.
Him and Steve step back into the room, and Bucky holds the door open wide, waving you in. You hesitate for a second in the hallway before tentatively stepping forward, and he shuts it again behind you. He’s letting you see for yourself, you realize.
And, sure enough, the room is empty except for them. The sheets on the bed in the corner are all rucked up and half coming off the side, morning light spilling onto it from the window above the headboard. Steve’s desk, doubling as a nightstand, has a bottle of lube balanced on the edge of it, still open.
You turn slowly so you’re looking at them again, trying to come up with a way to apologize without giving yourself away. Bucky beats you to the punch.
“We haven’t brought anyone else here this semester,” he says deliberately, holding your eye. “You understand?”
So, before they told you about Brendan. Before you in general. The heat on your face feels like it spreads throughout your body, and you nod.
“Good,” Bucky says. “And just for the record, you’re welcome here anytime, no matter what we’re doing. You’re not interrupting anything we wouldn’t be okay with you interrupting.”
You glance at Steve for his reaction, but he seems to be in agreement. He steps up beside Bucky, bending to lean a dimpled cheek against Bucky’s shoulder atop his crossed arms, and smiles at you.
“Think you’re gonna be late, honey,” he says.
“Oh, shit,” you curse. “Yeah. I am, probably. Here,” you hand him his things clumsily, stepping forward into their space to trade it off.
You plan to take a quick step back but Bucky catches your arm before you can. Steve drops the books on the sofa and turns back to you too, and you’re promptly pulled into a three way hug, your face against their bare chests.
They’ve been more physical with you since staying over at your apartment, less hesitant to put a hand on your back or grab your hand or pull you into hugs like this one.
Usually they’re wearing clothes, though.
“Sorry,” you mumble, hugging them back. You feel Steve’s mouth against the top of your head.
“Don’t be. We’ll see you after class, huh?”
You nod, and Steve returns to the bed as Bucky walks you back into the hallway. His words from before still ring in your head about people’s assumptions, and even though Steve was alright with it, you feel like you owe Bucky another apology.
“I really am sorry, Bucky. I honestly didn’t mean it the way that it came out.”
“I know what you meant,” Bucky says, stepping closer, “because I would’ve done the same thing if Steve and I came over and I thought you had someone else inside.”
You swallow. “I haven’t—with anyone else, either.”
Bucky didn’t ask, and you aren’t really sure why you offered. It feels like you’re talking about the same things but you can’t be sure, and that’s scary enough to hesitate.
But Bucky gives you another long look, his head tilted as he drinks you in, and then he nods as if pleased by your answer. Stepping away from you feels like a loss, your limbs thrumming with how close you’d been.
“Good.” He smiles, then, and nods toward the exit. “Get to class. We’ll see you for lunch, okay?”
Still reeling, you follow his direction, nearly jogging as you try to make it to your morning lecture.
You get there, barely, but it’s no real use anyway.
All you can think about is what Steve and Bucky had been up to before you got there and—hopefully, maybe—what they’d finished after you left.
+
After that, it’s difficult to ignore the mounting tension between you. And with the dwindling time left before you leave campus, you’re antsy.
You’ve come to appreciate Steve and Bucky as genuine friends. What if you try to make it more than it is and you don’t click the same way in that setting, and then things are weird between you until graduation? What if you’d somehow misunderstood their intentions and they actually don’t want you like that anyway?
You’re pretty sure that last one isn’t the case. But you don’t really want to lose the one friendship you might manage to take out of college because of your libido.
It’s hard not to want more though when they give you just about everything you wanted and never got in your past relationships. You meet Bucky’s sister too when she visits for Steve’s birthday in July, and the three of you stumble your way through a very awkward explanation when you try to convince her that you aren’t, in fact, a part of their relationship and none of you have any real evidence against it.
Except for the sex. You are very much aware of the sex that is not being had in this situation.
Ultimately, it doesn’t take much to shift things into place.
You had dinner with them at a bar off campus, something a little nicer than the ones here, and none of you had been ready to part ways when you got back. Back at your place you change into something comfier while Bucky kicks off his boots and Steve sheds his jacket, the three of you spreading out in your space like you’ve been doing it forever.
Steve sits at your dining table, bent over a sketchbook he’d pulled from his bag. Bucky is fiddling with the bluetooth speaker that you broke last year and haven’t been able to fix, his tongue stuck between his lips as he pokes and prods, and you’re on the couch, scrolling through your playlists in hopes that he can get it up and running. There’s a lingering energy in all of you tonight that your typical movie marathon doesn’t seem like it would satiate.
The top you’d worn to the bar is a button down, soft enough that you’d left it on when you got home even though you changed your pants. You have to roll up the sleeves as you watch Bucky work, hotter outside and a different heat here in your apartment, your body keenly aware of where Steve and Bucky are inside of it.
The apartment. Not you, unfortunately.
With your hair let down and the makeup you’d put on this morning mostly smudged off now from laughing at dinner, you’re an odd mix between pleasantly relaxed and impatient for more.
“Aha,” Bucky cheers, pressing a button on the speaker. The traitorous thing that hadn’t worked when you did that gives a happy beep at Bucky’s touch, the lights on the front blinking to show that it’s ready to pair. He grins at you, lethal with his dark brown hair and the deep green of his sweatshirt, and holds out a hand for your phone. “You picked a song yet?”
You give it over, shuffling one of your most recent playlists when you couldn’t decide on anything else, and Bucky pairs it with the bluetooth. Soon enough there’s quiet music playing throughout your living room, and you realize how much you’ve missed having it to fill the silence.
Finished with the speaker, Bucky leaves it on the windowsill and crosses over to you, shoving the coffee table out of the way as he goes. He extends a palm. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
He drags you up from the sofa and to the center of the room, now an empty space, hands on either side of your waist.
“We’re going right here,” he says. “There was nowhere to dance in the bar.”
“I think there was, actually,” you point out.
Bucky gives you a flat look. “If I just wanted to grab onto your hips and hump you from behind for a few minutes, I’d prefer it not be in public, sweetheart.”
You stutter a laugh, allowing him to pull you close. One of his hands on the center of your back, the other holding yours against his chest underneath his collarbone. It puts his nose at your hair and yours near his neck, close enough to smell the cologne he’d put on this morning as he sways the two of you back and forth.
“I should probably tell you that I’m not very good at dancing,” you admit.
“Seems like you’re doin’ just fine to me,” he says. “Stevie? Thoughts?”
Steve grunts from the dining table. “Busy. Keep dancing”
The two of you turn in a slow circle, and when you begin to face him, you realize that Steve is drawing you and Bucky. You’re pretty sure he’d been working on something else before, but now his eyes keep flicking up to you every few seconds, tracing curves and hard edges, the line where you and Bucky meet in the middle and your shuffling feet as you try to stay off Bucky’s toes.
One song bleeds into another on the speaker, and you tilt your head enough to rest it opposite your hand on Bucky’s chest. You feel his sigh as much as you hear it, his pulse steady under your cheek.
“Been a long time since I’ve gotten to do this,” he tells you.
“It’s nice,” you agree. “I don’t think I’ve actually ever danced with anyone before this.”
Bucky pulls away from you only enough to guide you into a small spin, then tugs you right back with a wink. “You’re a natural.”
You’d enjoyed the momentary distraction of learning something new, but by the time the third song comes to a close, all you can think about is how close the two of you are.
You keep picturing the way he’d looked in the hallway in the dorms that day, flushed and sweaty and yet still in control. Letting you into their space, proving to you that there was no one else. You’d been embarrassed in the moment, but every time you’ve thought of it afterward you get distracted wondering what might’ve happened if you hadn’t had class, if you’d stayed, if you’d joined them in bed and finished what they’d started with each other before you got there. You wonder now if Bucky can feel your pulse picking up underneath his hands.
The sun is setting outside the windows and you can feel it through the cracked blinds, humid and inescapable. When you tilt your head up, you’re close enough to Bucky’s face to see the beginnings of sweat on his temples.
“S’warm,” you murmur, worried he might let go of you if you’re too loud. His mouth curves up at the corner, making a show of feeling your forehead before moving down to your cheek.
“You are, yeah,” he confirms, swiping a thumb over the collar of your shirt. “Maybe we should lose a few layers.”
You swallow. “I’m, um. I’m not wearing anything underneath.”
It’s meant to be more of a reason you can’t take it off than an attempt at flirting, but Bucky is visibly affected, inhaling sharply through his nose as his eyes run over your face. The hand on your lower back spreads out and tugs, pressing you tight against his chest.
It makes you stumble, catching yourself with a grip on his arm and a surprised noise. The shirt isn’t particularly thick, and neither is the lace bra you’re wearing underneath it. It doesn’t have any padding in it so every bit of your breasts go firmly against the heat of Bucky’s chest, with nowhere to hide and no place to conceal the hardened points of your nipples through the lace.
With an extremely measured exhale, the hand Bucky has on your cheek spares a thumb to trace over the outline of your lips. When you don’t pull away, Bucky leans in.
“You been wantin’ this as much as we have?”
You nod, breathless. Relieved. “Longer, probably.”
“Wanna bet?” Bucky cocks a brow, then winces. “Ah, fuck. Sorry. Bad choice of words.”
Your laugh is quiet, but it makes Bucky smile. Your fingers spread out on his chest, smoothing over his shoulder and up to his neck, grazing his hair that’s close to touching his shoulders now.
“And if I was feeling lucky?”
“I would say,” Bucky proposes faux thoughtfully, slipping both arms around your waist and lowering his voice to a whisper, “that there’s a damn near guarantee we could make Steve awful jealous right now.”
You fight a smile. “I think I like those odds.”
Bucky leans in closer, until the ends of your noses are touching. Everything about him is warm, his scent familiar and inviting, his arms easy to lean into. His eyes flick down to your mouth and back up again, and you tilt your chin for him without having to ask.
Bucky could probably tease you all night long, but if he wants you, he’s going to have to be the one to make the first move.
He doesn’t leave you waiting for long. His own face turns, just enough to catch your lips with his. A brief graze at first, and then more firmly. It’s been months now since you’ve kissed somebody, and you always forget how much you enjoy it. And the fact that it’s Bucky is just a really, really nice plus.
You lean into his weight as you abandon any former semblance of dancing altogether, standing still and sliding your hand fully up into his hair. He hardly parts from you enough to breath but neither of you seem to care, and for a few seconds, everything else falls away.
Everything except for Steve, that is; you can hear the soft scratch of his pencil stop as it hits the sketchbook and rolls off somewhere on the table, the thump of his feet on your floor, the added body heat at your back when he steps into your space.
It’s the only thing that makes you pull away from Bucky, twisting so you can make sure that, despite all the signals, he’s still alright with this happening.
He assuages your worries nearly immediately, turning you in Bucky’s arms so that he can take your face in his hands and taste you for himself. It’s surreal, having this in real life and not only in your head, and you cling to the front of Steve’s shirt like you had Bucky’s, caught between them both.
“What do you want?” Steve asks you, dropping his hands to hold yours, rubbing circles into your wrists in between your bodies.
“Anything you want,” Bucky agrees, pressing against your back.
You glance over toward your bed and ask them, for a second time, “Stay?”
Steve grins and you feel Bucky’s relieved exhale as his chest caves behind you. He bends to kiss your shoulder, and Steve slips his fingers through yours.
“Lead the way, sweetheart.”
+
It’s not as weird having Bucky and Steve in your bed as you thought it might be.
They’ve already been everywhere else in your apartment anyway, and it’s almost weirder that they haven’t been in it yet in some capacity or another. You’re glad to be rectifying that now.
You go down easily when Bucky lays you back on the end of the mattress, reluctant to part from your mouth. He does eventually though, if only to peel off his sweatshirt and leave him in a thin t-shirt, and Steve steps up in his absence to kiss you some more.
“How many times have you touched yourself, right here, thinking about us?” Bucky asks, grinning above you.
“Dollar in the jar,” you tell him.
He doesn’t even try to make a joke. “Dead serious, sweetheart.”
You look to Steve for support, but he only chews at his lip, sheepish. “I’m kind of curious too.”
Rolling your eyes, you kick Bucky in the hip with your leg. “Surprised your egos fit through the doorway.”
He catches your calf in his hand before you can draw it back to the bed and you watch, propped up on your elbows, as he rubs the skin there up and up and up. He kneels on the mattress beside you, fingers grazing your shin, the sensitive inside of your knee.
“You tellin’ me we’re wrong?” he asks. “That you’ve never once thought about us when you were in here, came home after seein’ us and needed some relief? Never slipped your fingers between these thighs and wished it was ours instead?”
He bends to attach his mouth to the side of your neck, and your head rolls to the side to allow him access even as you keep stubbornly quiet.
“Never imagined what it’d be like if we were there with you, huh? One on either side, keepin’ you warm. Makin’ you squirm.” His fingers trail up higher, just barely grazing the line of your shorts before pulling away. “Makin’ you beg.”
“Bucky,” you gasp.
He smiles like you’ve just proved his point, but schools it quickly to sit back on his knees with a shrug as Steve takes a seat by your ankles.
“‘Cause if you had pictured us, I was gonna offer to make your dreams come true. But I can’t really do that if you didn’t have ‘em in the first place, so—”
“I did,” you relent, too keyed up to deny it. “I—I thought about you. Both of you.”
Steve’s eyes light up at your admission, his own touch slipping around your ankle, rubbing. “Yeah?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Tell us about it?” Bucky prompts. “We’ll do whatever you want.”
You’re not sure you have a place to start. You’ve pictured this happening in a variety of different ways, none of them given to you quite so easily, and the unexpected power placed into your hands is something you aren’t sure you know how to hold just yet.
Steve ducks down to press his lips against your knee, then moves to pull his own shirt over his head. Bucky, seemingly sensing your dilemma, moves to sit behind you. He leans back against the headboard, slipping his hands underneath your arms to drag you back against his chest to watch Steve.
“How ‘bout we start with just one, hm? That make it easier?” He rubs your arms. “Why don’t you tell Stevie what you like about him?”
The man himself is shuffling at the end of your bed, his chest bare but his hands twitching like he still wants to shove them into the pockets of his jeans. You reach a hand out, and he comes closer, kneeling on the end of the mattress.
“Your hands,” you say first.
“They’re nice, aren’t they?” Bucky agrees. Your answer earns you Bucky’s hands slipping over your shoulders and down to the buttons of your shirt, flicking open one and then two. “Could probably hold these real good, one in either hand.”
He grips both of your breasts in his palms in display, and you bite back a gasp as you push up against him.
But just as easy as he’d moved toward them, he moves away. Casually, he runs a finger over the next button.
“What else?”
“You’re nice to me,” you tell Steve, whose smile softens a little at your words.
Bucky eases another button from its pocket. “That turns you on, sweetheart? His manners?”
“You care,” you rephrase, staring at Steve until he meets your eye despite the spreading flush on his cheeks. “You ask how my day was and actually care about the answer. Offer to help me carry things when I overcommit on accident. You check in on me if you know I’m having a hard time, and you always make sure I’m comfortable and feel safe.”
“Anyone would have done those things,” Steve argues.
“No,” you insist, “they wouldn’t. They haven’t.”
Unable to fight you on that, Steve can only look at you, surprised and quiet.
“Also, you have nice shoulders.”
That earns you a laugh, Steve’s aforementioned shoulders shaking with it as he sits fully on his bent legs on your bed. “Thanks, honey.”
Sitting up, you part from the warmth of Bucky’s chest behind you so that you can turn around and face him. He doesn’t stop you as you settle on his lap, just settles one hand on your hip and the other on one of your thighs as you get comfortable. He’s gone quiet, and you don’t like it.
“And you…” you trail off, using your hand to make him look at you.
“Not quite as polite as Stevie is,” he says with a subdued smile.
“Maybe, but that’s not what I like about you anyway,” you tell him easily. “If you were polite, you wouldn’t have monitored the comments on that video. Or punched someone in the face to defend my honor. Or marched up to me in the library all those months ago to let me know that my boyfriend was betting on my virtue, despite the fact that we were practically strangers before that.” You raise your brows when he opens his mouth. “And don’t tell me anyone would have done that, because almost everybody knew, and they didn’t say a word.”
He rolls his eyes, but you can tell that at least some part of what you said has settled him a little. “Yeah, alright.”
“You’re honest. That means a lot to somebody who’s been lied to before.”
“Well, shit,” he murmurs softly, looking at you. “Here I was thinking it was my rugged handsomeness that hooked you in, but—”
You lean forward and kiss him again, and he abandons his train of thought to kiss you back. You can’t resist grinning when you pull back, thumbing at the dimple in his chin.
“You are pretty handsome.”
The room goes quiet, all three of you smiling to yourselves. Even when you look to the side, Steve’s just watching the two of you, a fond expression on his face.
“I went off topic. Sorry,” you apologize. “Did I ruin the mood?”
“You’re half naked in Bucky’s lap,” Steve says pragmatically. “I’m not sure anything could ruin the mood for me right now.”
As if being reminded of the fact himself, Bucky’s eyes take a detour from yours, trailing down the front of your open shirt and lace bra and back up again as he draws in a slow breath. His fingers twitch on either side of your hips.
“Steve,” Bucky says, still looking at you. “Gimme your hands.”
Without question, Steve’s hands—the ones you said you’d liked so much just a few minutes ago—appear, one on either side of you at Bucky’s disposal, palm up. You watch as Bucky’s own hands curl around his wrists and tug, making Steve kneel behind you, his warmth obvious even through the thin layers.
Bucky presses Steve’s palms flat against your ribs, letting you feel the weight and shape. He moves them slowly up, still watching your face, until Steve’s cupping the underside of your breasts. Both of them can feel the hitch in your breathing, but you can’t find it in yourself to be embarrassed.
From the look on his face, Bucky knows exactly what he’s doing to you.
Finally, just when you’re about to pester him about it, Bucky slides Steve’s palms up the last couple of inches to mold over the shape of your breasts fully. The three of you exhale a variety of different noises—you, a gasp, Steve’s stuttered moan, Bucky groaning low in his throat, eyes half-lidded as he watches Steve learn your shape.
You sway a little, off balance, but Steve’s right there behind you to rest against. Leaning back into him pushes your chest up and forward, further into his eager hands, and he squeezes briefly, enough to pull a surprised noise from you again.
“So soft,” Steve murmurs, dipping forward to nose at the side of your neck. His thumbs sweep over the line dividing flesh from lace underneath your shirt, slow and steady until he can find the hard peak of your nipple under the material. You whimper, your hips restless against Bucky’s underneath you.
“Look at that,” Bucky says, tucking your hair behind your ear. “See what happens when you tell us what you want?”
His hands slip down to grip your waist more firmly, hauling you up against him closer until the bulge of his hardening cock sits snug in the split of your legs. You’re separated by his jeans and your underwear, but the heat, the shape, the feeling—it’s already so good.
“We thought about you too,” Steve admits, breathing harder against your neck as he slips two fingers beneath the fabric of your bra to press against your nipples with nothing in between.
It takes a moment for the words to catch up with you. You lift your head from his shoulder. “Really?”
“Fuck. Yeah.”
“Steve,” Bucky warns. His cheeks are the slightest bit more flushed, and you wonder, briefly, what could have been so depraved that even Bucky would be blushing.
You desperately want to know.
“You’re so—we didn’t think you’d ever want this. But we’d talk about it. Sometimes.”
“‘Sometimes’ as in over brunch,” you question breathlessly, slipping a hand back to slide it into Steve’s hair, “or sometimes like that day at your—?”
“Both,” Steve moans when you pull. “Definitely both.”
You turn your chin enough that Steve can kiss you over your shoulder, his other hand yanking Bucky forward against your chest. One of Steve’s hands leaves you as his tongue teases the corner of your mouth, and you hum into his mouth when Bucky’s teeth graze the spot Steve’s wandering fingers just vacated.
Kissing Steve is warm and intense, slicker than you thought it’d be. Something about Steve made you think his kisses might be chaste and just as polite as the rest of him, but he holds the back of your neck and gets as close to you as possible, sharing air and cradling your lower lip with his own with a focus so heavy it makes you a little dizzy.
Which isn’t to say that Bucky isn’t doing his best to distract you anyway; his arms have wrapped fully around your waist now to hold you against his chest, his mouth mapping out the path of skin between your breasts with aching intent. Every few seconds you feel his teeth, nipping and teasing, but it’s hardly enough. You put a hand to the back of his neck and press until he commits, mouthing at you in wet trails and sinking his teeth and tongue into your skin enough that it’ll leave a mark or two behind.
It’s more sensitive the closer he gets to your nipples, the skin thinner and easier to bruise. But he hears your muffled noises against Steve’s mouth for what they are, easing up on you as he takes one in his mouth before swiping a tender thumb over the blooming marks to solidify them.
“Can I taste you?” Steve pants against your lips, pulling back. “Please. Been thinkin’ about it, what you taste like—”
“He’s real good with his tongue, sweetheart,” Bucky rasps in addition, as if you need any more convincing.
No sooner have you nodded do you find yourself plucked off of Bucky’s lap and laid on your back on the mattress, and the loss of solid heat between your legs feels like an ache. You reach for Bucky, kissing him messily as he flicks open the last of the buttons on your shirt and Steve eases your underwear down and off your legs. It feels jarring, a little, until Bucky leans up to strip his own shirt off, and you see Steve losing his pants in the corner of your hazy vision as Bucky leans in to kiss you again.
He does it differently than Steve does, rougher, less composed. The same flash of teeth you’d felt against your breasts is the one you feel now against your lips, and he likes kissing you nice and long and deep and then pulling back, watching you chase him for more. You’ll make some sort of joke about that cocky grin, some time when you aren’t otherwise occupied.
Steve’s hands slide up the outside of your legs, over the tops of your thighs, running up and down to the inside of your knees and back up again. You’re ticklish there, and you shiver when his mouth follows closely behind, the bed creaking as he settles in the space you’ve made for him between.
“So fuckin’ wet,” Steve marvels distantly, and the thickness of his voice draws you back into the moment. You break from Bucky’s mouth with a gasp and a string of spit still connecting you, and Bucky thumbs it away as you glance down between your legs at where Steve is openly staring at you. His eyes flick up to your face for a second, a spark of something mischievous in his gaze. “Bet you’re soft here too.”
Without further ado he lowers his mouth to your cunt, and you groan, dropping your head backward into the quick reflex of Bucky’s hand that cradles it.
“Don’t be afraid to tell him what you like,” Bucky murmurs against your jaw. “He takes orders like a champ.”
You file that away to be explored later. The affect it has on you is obvious—to Steve, at least—who moans against you when your cunt bears down around the wet heat of his tongue. You slide a hand down to slip it into Steve’s hair and against his scalp, but don’t direct him otherwise.
“Don’t know what feels good. Haven’t done this part much.”
At your admission, Steve slips his arms underneath your thighs, pulls your legs over his shoulders, makes a noise that you can feel. He laps at you without shame, but you can feel that focus in every movement; the angle of his sharp jaw, the suction in his cheeks, each measured exhale that makes you shiver before he settles his mouth over the bump of your clit and sucks, then goes back to flicking his tongue.
It’s true, nonetheless—none of your previous partners have bothered much with eating you out, and if they had, it was always a couple minute precursor to penetrative sex and nothing more. And that was usually just to get you wet enough, which…is not looking like it’s going to be much of an issue here.
Steve’s eyes flick up to you again, finding yours atop the rolling wave of your stomach as you try and fail not to grind your hips up against his mouth. He holds your gaze as he rubs one warm fingertip through your excitement and then hovers it above your entrance, thoroughly prepared by his tongue, and you nod.
His tongue makes wide, firm circles against your clit as the digit sinks into you. Not quick, not rough, slow enough that you feel every aching inch of it until there isn’t anymore to go. You whimper, pushing against him for more, but it’s Bucky that answers.
His hand wraps loosely around your throat to get your attention, fingers on your neck and thumb pressed to your chin to tilt it back. He’s been watching you while Steve takes you apart, quieter than you typically know him to be, but the heaviness in his eyes tells you it’s arousal and not anything bad that’s got his tongue tied.
The thumb on your chin raises by an inch, pressing down on the thickest part of your lower lip. You open for him, eager for whatever you’ll be given, but he doesn’t kiss you.
Instead, as Steve eases a second finger in underneath the relentless roll of his tongue, Bucky hovers above you, purses his lips, and spits, slow, into your open mouth.
You shudder, clenching down hard against Steve’s fingers as you’re pushed even closer to your first orgasm of the night. Bucky sees it all—watches your eyes roll backward before the flutter closed, lets you squeeze the outside of his wrist against your throat, doesn’t look away for a moment as you close your mouth to swallow what he gave you and then open again so he can check.
“Fuck,” he curses, drawing the word out long and pressing it into your tongue as he drops down to kiss you. It’s overwhelming, the thrust of Bucky’s tongue similar to the motion of Steve’s fingers inside you; it’s so deliciously close to what you’d pictured all the times you’d thought about this alone in bed.
Just that the real thing is better.
Your hand finds the side of Bucky’s face as you kiss, and you find your nails dragging across the roughness of his facial hair. It’s somewhere between stubble and a beard and you like the in between, can’t help thinking about the marks it’d make if he took Steve’s place between your legs right now.
“I like this,” you tell him, rubbing your hand over it. “Liked it both ways, but it looks good grown out.”
“Both ways?” Bucky lifts a brow. “You knew about us before this year?”
Steve tilts his hand, curves his two fingers up into you to find your spot, shoves his tongue in the space left over. You shiver, your brain-to-mouth filter momentarily offline.
“In the stands. Football game. Freshman year. You always had crowds around you.”
“No shit,” Bucky breathes, chuckling as he smears a kiss against your cheek. “Can’t believe we wasted so much fuckin’ time.”
You pull his mouth back to yours, one hand in his hair and the other digging your nails into Steve’s arm that’s been spread over your stomach to keep you from bucking away from him too far. His jaw must be aching by now, you think; your other partners certainly would have complained by now that you hadn’t come yet.
Before you can start feeling guilty and trying to make yourself, Bucky pulls you back with a hand on your face. “Hey. You wanna come like this?”
Your lower lip disappears behind your front teeth, still tasting of Bucky. If you say yes, there’s a chance it’s a means to an end—you get off, then they get off, and then it’s over. You want this to last as long as possible.
“I don’t know.”
“Let me rephrase, then,” Bucky says, catching the lobe of your ear between his teeth. “If Steve makes you come now with his mouth, can you do it again for me afterward?”
“Yes,” you nod frantically. “Yes. Please.”
Bucky grins. “Atta girl.”
With a clear goal in mind, Bucky slips rough fingertips down the front of your body, between the valley of your breasts and down your quivering abdomen, past your hips until he reaches where Steve’s head is settled in between your shaking thighs. He goes even further then, using two digits to spread you apart nice and wide, the way Steve can’t while he’s holding your waist and fucking you on his fingers.
The position means that there’s nowhere left to hide now, no reprieve from the sensation of Steve’s tongue. It’s warm and wet and unyielding, sucking and flicking and drawing your clit to full attention for him. With toys or fingers it might be too much sensation to really feel good, but the pressure of his mouth is just right.
You cling onto Bucky’s arm and Steve’s hand as you begin to tense up, the coil in your stomach tightening. You like this part, this little plateau before the plunge, and it’s been so long—if ever—since you’ve actually gotten to experience it at the hands of someone else and not just your own.
If you could talk, you’d say right there or don’t stop or I’m close, but your breath is getting stuck in pants and hiccups, your hips twitching, out of your control. You feel molten underneath both of their gazes, anticipating your release but not rushing you toward it.
You let your eyes close, welcome the sudden press of Bucky’s fingers against your mouth and Steve’s hand to keep you grounded, and let everything else fall away for a minute.
The orgasm doesn’t take you by surprise. It builds, slowly and then in quicker increments, until it takes you over. Your mouth wrenches open noiselessly, eyes wet with overwhelmed tears, and all of you tenses tight before rapidly unraveling between the fixed points that Steve and Bucky make around you.
It keeps going, Steve’s mouth and fingers insistent as he works you through it. Noise fades back in as the ringing in your ears adjusts, Steve’s moans as you get him wet with your release, Bucky’s rough, raspy whispers of praise against your hair, your own shameless whines and squeaks as you ride it out completely.
Eventually, when you’re spent, you collapse back against the pillow Bucky put under your head and blink idly at the ceiling. You feel cold between your legs when Steve pulls away, your cunt pulsing, displeased at the sudden emptiness.
It’s worth it—if only because you get to lie back and catch your breath while Bucky drags Steve in by the neck and ravages his mouth with his tongue, tasting him. Tasting you.
Their hands are all over each other in a way that betrays the fact that they’ve been in a much longer relationship, aware of each other’s limits and weak spots. Steve groans when Bucky yanks his head backward and sinks his teeth against his neck, smearing you even further across Steve’s skin, leaving visible wetness behind. You watch, half surprised and still valiantly turned on, when his palm smacks the side of Steve’s ass and squeezes before he pulls away.
Both of them are hard, Bucky’s bulge significant underneath his boxers and Steve’s briefs rucked dangerously low against his hips, enough to see the hair around the base of his cock. He must’ve been grinding against the bed. You push your thighs together again with a whimper at the thought.
The noise draws Steve’s attention, and he crawls back on top of you, turning your bent legs to the side but keeping your back against the sheets as he kisses you. Soft, slow, more like what you thought he’d be like in the first place.
“Was that good?” Steve asks you.
“So good,” you agree with a smile, pushing a hand through his hair. “Thank you.”
“Both of you are too polite,” Bucky sighs. “What am I gonna do with you two?”
Steve slants his eyes from you over to Bucky, sly. “Something with your dick, preferably.”
You choke at his forwardness; you’ve never known Steve to be that bold. Bucky laughs at your expression, and Steve seems unabashed.
“You ain’t heard nothin’ yet, sweetheart,” Bucky tells you. “Just wait ‘til I’m fuckin’ him through the mattress. He gets real filthy, then.”
“Fuck,” you exhale. Your filter’s still not totally back.
Biting down on a smile, Bucky leans in to look up at Steve with you, appraising. “He does make quite the picture like that. But maybe…” he turns, talking right into your ear. “Maybe you take him first, huh? Been so patient, both of you—you want that?”
You nod. “Yes. Yeah.”
“Then, after he’s finished, when you’re all shaky and sensitive—it’ll be my turn. Roll you over. Slip into you, nice and easy. Fuck you deep enough that you can feel me right here,” Bucky continues, reaching down between you and Steve to press a palm against the cradle of skin between your hips.
“Bucky,” you moan. “Yes. Please. All of it.”
Lazily, Bucky rolls his head to look up at Steve. “Stevie?”
“You gotta fuckin’ ask?” he mutters to a laughing Bucky. You raise a brow, and he shifts his gaze to you, smiling crookedly. “When I said we’d talked about this, I meant in detail.”
You laugh with them, which is something else that hasn’t happened during sex with anyone else. It feels good. You feel good. Your body is loose from your first orgasm and you’re comfortable enough with Steve and Bucky that you don’t feel like you have to put on a show or hold a certain position. Which is good, because they seem to be developing a habit of arranging you however they like.
Like you’re a delicate addition to the well oiled machine of their relationship, Steve wraps his arms around your thighs again and pulls you down to the center of the mattress, and Bucky locates one of their wallets from the floor to grab a condom. The thoughtfulness makes you momentarily emotional, one less thing you have to think or worry about.
The condoms in their wallets that, you’re realizing right now, are probably more so for them to have sex with each other than they are to hook up with girls like you initially thought. You’re glad to understand better, now.
While Bucky’s up he grabs a water from your fridge and pops the cap, drains a good third and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand before tossing it to Steve. He does the same, then leans down to hold it against your lips while Bucky fixes the pillows behind you. It’s oddly intimate, given everything you’ve already done, and you flush with heat at the unexpected gesture.
The boxers come off, Steve’s and then Bucky’s. You drink them in with a stare that’s only partially intentional, your mouth dry despite the water, suddenly glad that Steve had opened you up on his fingers in addition to his mouth. It’s been a while, and they’re both fairly well endowed.
It’d be the perfect place to make a crude joke at your expression, but it never comes. Steve leans in, fingers brushing your cheek. “You okay? We can do something else, if you want.”
“Or stop, if you’re tired,” Bucky adds.
True to your word, care and honesty really do seem to be what gets you going these days.
You shake your head, pulling your legs apart and Steve in between them as you lay back with Bucky’s thigh as a pillow. The condom sits idly on the bedspread to the side, and you pick it up and hand it to him in invitation.
With a smile and a final press of his lips to your forehead, Steve kneels up between your legs and rips it open, rolling it onto himself. He takes a few measured breaths as he looks at you, working his fist over the length of his cock in three slow pumps before he relents and braces on his knees.
Steve’s broad all over, and he spreads you wide without even meaning to. The span of his thighs and hips pushes your legs open enough that when he leans forward on top of you his dick is already straining where it wants to go, and you hiss when it bumps against your still-sensitive clit, shivering.
He grips it and swipes it through your wetness, letting it rest against you so you can feel the weight and shape of it before anything else happens. He’s warm, velvet hot against you, and you’re so wet that you can feel it on the sheets underneath you. Open from the orgasm and Steve’s fingers too, you think he should be able to slide in fairly easily.
You hook a leg over Steve’s hip as he leans forward further, the head of his cock pushing barely inside of you. Both of you moan, and Bucky lets you squeeze his hand as hard as you want in open anticipation.
Holding himself there, Steve gives a few slow thrusts against you. Shallow and brief, working himself in just slightly more each time. His thoughtfulness is a tease without meaning to be, making you clench down around nothing each time he withdraws.
Then, on a particular forward thrust, his cock sinks in a little deeper. He holds himself still, then repeats it all again. By the time he’s halfway inside of you you’re both holding your breath, sweat beading on Steve’s hairline, his grip tight enough to leave marks on your hip.
“Shit. Bucky. I’m—” Steve curses, squeezing his eyes shut as he pauses, shivering.
“Get it together, Stevie,” Bucky murmurs, pushing some of his hair back from his face. “Promised her a good time, did we not? You gonna deliver?”
Steve nods quickly, but the muscles in his neck and shoulders are pulled taut as he swallows audibly. “She’s—tight, Bucky. Fuck.”
“You would know, since you just had your fingers inside her, big guy.” Bucky flashes you a grin. “Sorry. Steve gets a little stupid about good pussy.”
“Liar,” Steve manages, breathless. “Never had one like this before.”
“Had what?” Bucky taunts him. “She’s got a name, don’t she?”
Being with them is apparently unlocking various new kinks for you. You feel suspended, weightless, anchored only by the thick pressure of Steve’s cock stretching you open, the biggest you’ve ever taken. You couldn’t form words if you tried.
“Your—” Steve chokes, trailing off. He grits his teeth, forces his eyes open and looks straight into yours as he slides the rest of the way inside of you. “Fuck. Your cunt. This tight little fuckin’ cunt.”
You cry out, arms shooting up and sideways to grip onto whatever you can to steady yourself. It doesn’t hurt, though you’re sure to be sore later. But you’ve never taken anyone this big before and it’s different in a way you hadn’t thought to expect.
You can feel him, hot inside of your body. Every inch of you is aware of it too, making room, adjusting, overwhelmed. You struggle to get air in for a moment but keep a shaky hand pressed to Steve’s side so he doesn’t pull out, trying to catch your breath.
Steve noses at your cheek. “That okay? S’it—?”
“Yeah,” you manage, blinking rapidly to clear your vision. “Deep. It’s—so full.”
Tender as anything, Bucky wipes at your cheeks to catch the tears you hadn’t managed to hide and strokes over your flushed skin with his thumb. “He’s big, isn’t he? Knows how to use it, too.”
He turns his attention to Steve, sinking fingers into your hair and settling up against your scalp, holding you steady. Sparks dance along your nerve endings at the promise of it, and you can’t help bearing down, drawing Steve further into you in anticipation.
“Show her, Steve.”
Steve shifts, bracing his palms on the bed in preparation obediently, but he pauses to kiss you again first, each one sweeter than the last.
“Tell me if it’s too much, ‘kay?”
With your approval, he widens his stance by your shoulders, bends his knees to push yours apart a little further, and braces himself to draw backward.
It’s slow—achingly so, at first, but necessary to get you used to him. He pulls back only halfway before pushing back in, working out of you the same way he’d worked himself in. Your wetness makes it all perfectly audible, the obscene slick noises echoing in all three of your ears each time he shifts.
You wrap a hand around his bicep, feeling the movement of the muscles underneath, and squeeze to let him know you can take a little more. His thrusts deepen, pulling nearly all the way back out of you before returning this time. It exaggerates the length of his cock, makes every drag of it feel even deeper, every brief moment of emptiness like a loss.
The three of you are quiet as he works up to a rhythm, entranced by the sight and sound and feeling of him taking you for the first time. You’re struck by a moment of disbelief at how unlikely this had seemed to you before; a fantasy you’d never actually get to have.
But you do, and it’s better than you imagined, and you’re not planning to waste it thinking of past hypotheticals.
You clench around Steve again, wiggling your hips, and he seems to get the message. With a quick readjustment of his grip on your hips, he kneels up and drags you with him, laying your ass against the slope of his thick, tensed thighs. It rushes blood to your head that’s still on flatter ground against Bucky’s leg and you gasp, feeling exposed and split open as your legs fall further apart to accommodate him.
Steve fucks you deep and the right amount of rough, a divot between his eyebrows that tells you it must be feeling good for him too. He’s glistening with sweat now, bare chest and muscles on display, and it’s hard not to feel self conscious around the two of them. But he’s making you feel good enough that it’s easier to let go, and if that didn’t do the trick, Bucky bending over you to kiss you again surely does.
Watching the two of you kiss makes Steve quicken his pace again. He grunts with each thrust of his hips, your wetness spreading all over his lap and the inside of your thighs and making a mess. When he thumbs over your clit you cry out into Bucky’s mouth, your body suddenly beginning to strive for release again.
“Fuck,” Steve pants, the circles of his thumb rough with the pace of his thrusts. “Baby. Want—I want you to come with me. Can you?”
“Nightstand,” you gasp to Bucky on autopilot. “Top drawer.”
He goes without question, stretching himself out so that he doesn’t have to move you to get to the nightstand. The drawer opens and things rattle to your left as Steve lowers your body back flat to the sheets and begins fucking you in sharp thrusts aimed right at your spot. It’s so good but you need just a little bit more, just—
“Fuckin’ hell,” you hear Bucky groan as he finds your vibrator and frees it from its not-so-secret hiding spot. You’ve resorted to it more often than not lately, the idea of a quick and efficient release more enticing than a slow workup if you’re tired or stressed. “How many times’ this thing heard our names, huh?”
You don’t give him the answer to that, because it’s mortifying. Instead, you say, “Second button. Hold it down, then press it twice.”
Seconds later, you hear it buzz to life. Even the sound of it seems to push you closer, the sensation so closely linked to release in your mind that you’re aching for it. Steve’s thumbs are digging into your hips, Bucky’s skin hot beneath your cheek, your body rising to meet each one of Steve’s movements. You’re so overwhelmed you feel like you might cry again—the really good kind of tears.
And then Bucky presses the vibrator against your clit.
You do cry, then, and yell something you’ll probably find embarrassing later on. But Bucky knows what you need, doesn’t let you wiggle away from it. There’s nowhere for you to go, even, not when Steve’s cock is buried so deeply inside of you.
And it is deep; he’s not pulling out as much anymore, holding you still, fucking into in long, punctuated thrusts, never once leaving you empty. He grinds into you in a concentrated effort now that the vibrator’s on you, careful not to knock it off.
“You gonna come for me?” he grunts to you, disheveled in a way so unlike Steve that it threatens to unravel you. His perfectly styled hair is in ruins lying across his forehead from you and Bucky’s fingers, scratch marks across his chest, a red flush working its way down from there with his restraint. His want.
You nod, trying and failing to form the words. Bucky, as if reading your mind, kicks the vibrator up just one more notch and presses.
“Oh, fuck,” Steve shudders, fucking you harder. “M’not—not gonna last. God, you—you’re squeezing me so fuckin’ tight, baby.”
“Yeah? Is he right, sweetheart? You feelin’ real good? I got this in the right place?” Bucky asks above you.
You nod, blurry with tears and pleasure. “Don’t—don’t stop.”
“Nobody’s stoppin’, honey. Promise. Not ‘til you come for us again.”
You don’t wait for a command or a cue, can’t even wait to make sure that Steve’s there with you before you go tumbling over the edge again. The orgasms with the vibrator are sharper and more sudden, rolling over you in waves. You say their names this time, repeating them as you whimper and squirm between the onslaught of Steve’s cock and the toy, caught in an endless loop of pleasure.
This one doesn’t last as long, but you’re slower to come back from it. Once your body stops rolling with the last dredges of your orgasm, you feel little things—Steve’s tight grip around your waist, his teeth in your shoulder, the added weight and wetness between your legs as he fucks himself through his own orgasm into the condom. Bucky’s hands still in your hair, his voice praising both of you, the fixed points at the edges of his smile.
You stay like that for seconds, minutes, you aren’t sure, basking in the aftermath of it. It’d been unexpectedly intense, and you’re once again glad that this is them and not anybody else, content to let yourself float in it for a minute before you have to be coherent again.
Steve eases off of you slowly, carefully, mindful of your sensitive and spent body as he pulls up and out of you. The emptiness this time around feels more severe, and you’re embarrassed at the noise you make and the fact that Steve has to reach down and curl three fingers back into you until it feels like less of a loss.
You aren’t certain how long it’s like that—Bucky stroking over your arms, your legs, your thighs, Steve’s fingers gently fucking into you without purpose until your body is more okay with letting him go. Even then there’s a smoothness to it all, a system with you in the center.
Steve gets up to toss the condom and grab another water while Bucky pushes the last of the other one to your lips and helps you finish it. Awareness begins to trickle in again, your muscles a little sore and the wet spot on the bed less than ideal underneath you, but Bucky remains a solid, sturdy weight at your side.
Bucky, who’s still achingly hard against his own hip and hasn’t made a single move to do anything about it. He could’ve fucked your mouth while Steve was fucking you, could have gotten himself off with his own hand and come on your chest. It’s not like you would have said no.
But he hadn’t done any of that, because you had a plan, and because he’s more polite than any of you give him credit for apparently.
Roll you over. Slip into you, nice and easy. Fuck you deep enough that you can feel me right here.
Lazily, you roll off of Bucky’s thigh and into a dry spot on the sheets, laying your cheek against the pillow to look up at him. He really is handsome, his hair and his face and his body and his heart, and you want him just as badly as you wanted Steve. You still do, if he’ll have you.
You reach blindly across the bed to grab his hand and tug. He leans on an elbow beside you obligingly, running a hand up your spine. When you make another noise, he finally undoes the clasp that’d been barely holding your bra still on you all night, and the straps fall open, baring your back to him fully.
“You wanna sleep, sweetheart?”
You shake your head, fumbling for his wallet on the corner of the nightstand. You’re still shaking a little but you manage it, flipping one side open and pulling another condom out with two of your fingers to hand back to him.
With the audacity to look surprised, Bucky glances at you, wide eyed. He leans closer, stroking a hand down the back of your head. “Still want me?”
You nod against the pillow, slipping one of your arms beneath your head. “Just—slow.”
“‘Course,” Bucky agrees.
He arranges you so you don’t have to move anymore, letting your head stay comfortable while he nudges your hips up onto a pillow and into place for him. You’re already wet and open and ready for him and you hope the thought is as exciting to him as it is to you, that he’s been waiting for this as much as you have.
Distantly, you register movement. The condom being ripped open, footsteps returning, soft voices, the bed creaking under new weight. With anyone else, you would’ve had to be on high alert. Wouldn’t have trusted them to be so vulnerable with. You’re not scared with Steve and Bucky.
As if proving the point, your body opens for him easily when he presses inside. You’d liked seeing Steve face to face but this way everything is so much tighter, warmer, softer around the edges, every inch of Bucky’s body pressed against yours keeping you anchored to the bed. He’s not as long as Steve but he makes up for it in thickness, the weight of him filling you like pressing on a lovebite you don’t want to fade.
He pauses for a minute when he’s settled to the hilt, just holding you. Your breathing syncs, heart rates much calmer now, and you welcome him in so much that you think you could nearly fall asleep if he held still long enough.
And then he moves.
An arm tucked underneath your shoulders and another keeping a forearm pressed into the pillow beside your head for leverage, Bucky doesn’t bother with the rough fucking Steve had given you. He hardly pulls out much at all. Instead, he grinds into you in steep, slow circles, making sure that neither of you miss any fleeting detail. It’s the most quiet you think he’s ever been around you before, both of you listening, moving, communicating with each other in a way you haven’t before.
The angle is so different than being on your back. The times you’ve been on your front before were all hands and knees, nothing like this; not the intimate press of a warm chest to your bare shoulder blades, not an open palm against the thud of your heartbeat, not with anyone close enough to feel the reactions of what they were doing to your body.
It builds quickly this time, and without any conscious effort. You lean gratefully into Steve’s fingers when they move your hair from your face, but otherwise, you’re overwhelmed by nothing but Bucky. He’s thorough and attentive, seemingly conscious of the same approaching crescendo as you are. You can believe it, after making him wait all night.
Bucky moves your hair from your shoulders too, kisses the curve of your neck, your shoulder, the first notches of your spine. The hand on your chest rises briefly to hold your throat again, keeping you steady as he rocks into you over and over again.
There’s a subtle tremble in the strength he uses to hold himself above you, a few last strings that need cutting. He’s still taking care of you.
The pillow propping your hips up gives enough room to reach underneath and touch yourself, but it’s not your hand that you want there.
Lifting your tired limbs, you shift your arm until you can wrap your fingers around Bucky’s wrist that’s around your chest. You drag it down between your hips and push it where you need it, Bucky’s rough fingers finding your throbbing clit with ease.
Relief rolls over you at the intensity of it. You don’t have much energy except to tilt your hips back and try to move them back and forth between Bucky’s cock and his fingers, but it’s enough.
The angle’s better and Bucky slides into you even deeper, his helpless groans matching pitch with your frantic whimpers. It’s not going to take much this time, not with so much build up, and when you feel Bucky’s thighs begin to shake around yours where he’d shoved one up at to the side, you tighten around him, the contractions of your muscles drawing your own orgasm to the surface.
Bucky takes your jaw in his hand as you come one last time, his fingers spreading out over your face to hold you while he fucks you through his simultaneous release. It’s the least intense one of the night but your tired body feels every ebb and flow of it, clutching onto every part of Bucky you can with how much it rocks you, makes you feel vulnerable.
He keeps you steady through it, boxed in in his arms just like when you were dancing earlier. Even when you’re both finally through the aftershocks he stays there inside of you, lips pressed against your shoulder, hand tucked underneath your cheek.
He leans up just enough to press a kiss there too when he eventually lifts himself off of you, and you can feel Steve at the ready with a cool rag to wipe you down. It’s not as good as a shower would be but there’s no way you have the energy for that right now. You appreciate the change in temperature and the gentle treatment as your body winds down from the rush of endorphins you’d flooded it with, and when you’re mostly clean, Steve helps you sit up and slip on Bucky’s shirt while Bucky strips the sheets and tosses a clean blanket over the mattress.
You settle in between both of them, already nearly asleep when you curl against Bucky’s front and feel Steve slip an arm around you from behind. Bucky’s the last one to talk, thick with sleep and something else you can’t name just yet.
“Thank you, sweet girl.”
You press an open mouthed kiss against his chest in response. You’d missed his voice.
.
.
.
Brendan (and the rest of the campus, for that matter), are all shocked to find out that the school’s biggest brat and its equally notorious playboys are all in a relationship. Even more so when it lasts through another semester and after graduation, too.
You’re not, though. They’d been wrong about all three of you, so it makes sense they’d be wrong about this too. You’ve stopped caring so much about proving people wrong, especially when you have so many other things to put your focus toward.
Nudging open the door of your apartment with your shoe, you let yourself inside and set the last moving box down by the dining room table. You smile at the sketchbook that’s been left out, a rough drawing of Bucky on one side, you on the other.
“Okay, I think that’s everything,” Bucky announces, falling back onto your couch.
“Until we have to move everything up another floor next week,” Steve reminds him, gulping down water from your sink. Bucky groans.
“Don’t fuckin’ remind me.” He tosses an arm over his eyes dramatically. “You sure we can’t just live here, sweetheart?”
“Yes,” you answer immediately. “The size of your unit is practically double mine. If anything, I would be moving in with you.”
Peeling his arm away, Bucky gives you a mischievous grin. “Now there’s an idea.”
You laugh, walking over to him. “Easy, tiger. One thing at a time.”
“Oh? S’that the plan now?”
You settle on his lap, both of you sweaty from moving their boxes to your place temporarily. The window Steve cracked isn’t doing much in the way of cooling you down, but you sort of like the way Bucky’s hands feel like brands on your hips.
“No plans. We’re going with the flow, remember?”
“Ah, that’s right.” He nods, thumbing at your lip. “Does the flow entail us takin’ a break so I can get this mouth on me again?”
“Horny jar,” you say at the same time as Steve, both of you grinning at Bucky’s groan.
“I’m not using that damn jar anytime I want my girl,” Bucky complains. “I’d be broke.”
“Yeah, but we’d have rent covered for the first, like, three months at least,” Steve reasons.
Tossing an arm over the back of the couch to flip him the middle finger, Bucky uses his other hand to curve around your neck and pull you down to his mouth. He kisses you deep, slow, as lazy as the heat in the apartment, and your sore muscles go slack against him.
“Maybe we can take a little break before trying to organize everything,” you tell him.
With a cheer, Bucky lifts you clean off the couch and sets you on the ground, spinning you in his arms. “Fuck yeah. You have the best ideas. I love you.”
He kisses you again, but both of you pause when you realize what he just said. You glance from Bucky to Steve, who’s already looking over at you from the kitchen, equally frozen.
“Uh,” Bucky says. “Hey, so. I love you?”
Your mouth splits into a slow grin when he doesn’t retract it but tells you again, and you laugh as you lean up to kiss him again.
“I love you too.”
His arms slip around your waist, keeping your mouths together as he walks you back toward your bed. You can hear Steve clearing your pathway, then finally feel him against you once you hit the mattress.
“I guess Buck beat me to it,” he smiles, “but I love you, too.”
“Well, I love you…three?” you ask, giddy as you pull him down against you.
“So much love,” Steve murmurs against your mouth. “Does this mean we have to start a love jar now?”
“Nah,” Bucky insists, stripping out of his shirt. “We’d lose count.”
The three of you collapse into a pile in the center of your mattress in a happy heap, all smiles and wandering hands, and you think, as Steve peels his borrowed boxers down your legs with your shorts, that this is the best you’ve ever felt in a relationship in your life.
When you feel safe enough, you’ve discovered, you kind of like not having a plan.
They settle in around you easily, slotting into place, and stay.