Chapter 3 #4
"You know damn well there are no glasses in that tote," Atlas murmurs around a chuckle.
"Then we drink from the bottle."
"Like animals," Bane groans into my neck.
"Yeah, Bane. We are."
The cork comes out with a soft pop and Zero takes a long pull straight from the neck and then passes the bottle across me to Atlas, leaning over to do it, his bare shoulder brushing mine on the way.
I am sandwiched between two naked men and another fully clothed on a wool blanket on a beach late at night, and my hoodie is wet.
Bane flips me in his lap so I’m between his legs leaning against him as he shivers against my back, and his mouth has just found the side of my throat warm and slow and—
"Oh," I say. Quiet. To no one.
"Mm." Bane. Against the bond mark. "There you are."
His mouth is salt and ocean and him, and his hand has come around to splay flat over my stomach under the hoodie, and I tilt my head back without thinking and he kisses me, upside-down, his cold wet hair dripping onto my forehead, and I am laughing into the kiss before I can stop myself.
"Sorry, baby. I'm cold."
"You are not sorry—"
"Warming up."
Atlas hooks two fingers in the back of Bane's hair and tugs him off me, mild, unhurried. "Share." Bane goes without protest. Atlas turns my face with two fingers under my chin and kisses me himself. Slow. Deliberate. Tasting where his brother just was.
Zero, beside us, rolls onto his side, props his head on his hand, and watches.
"You two are art."
"Shut up, Zero."
"I’m just saying."
Atlas pulls back and looks at his brother over my shoulder.
"Come kiss him."
Zero blinks.
The smallest pause. The Zero pause—half a second of his heart doing a thing he didn't authorize, the small tell that Atlas casually offering me up to him landed somewhere it wasn't supposed to.
Then he is moving, propping up onto his elbow, leaning across the blanket.
His hand comes to my jaw. His thumb at the corner of my mouth. His eyes on mine.
"Hi, baby."
"...hi."
He kisses me. Salt and dark, his mouth still tasting like the wine he just drank, slow on purpose because Atlas is right there, because Bane is right behind me, because we are all watching each other watch each other.
His tongue pushes past my teeth and I shiver against him and he hums into the kiss—low, pleased, for them.
My chest does something I don't have a word for.
My mind scrambles. And I can’t believe any of it.
"You're all—"
"Mm?" Zero murmurs against my mouth as he nips at my lips.
"You're all just—"
"Yours?" Zero says. Filthy. Soft. Eye contact. "Yeah, baby. We are."
I laugh pathetically, because I can’t process how insane this all is.
I laugh so hard I have to bury my face in Atlas's shoulder. I laugh until my ribs hurt and I am crying a little and Atlas is laughing under me, that low rare laugh, and Bane is grinning at the sky and Zero is propped on his elbow looking insufferably pleased with himself.
The wine is open. We pass the bottle. We take long, lingering swigs.
"We should come back here," Bane says. After a while. Lying on his back with one wet leg over my ankle. "Sometime. Just us."
"A long weekend," Atlas murmurs. Into my hair.
"A week," Zero says.
"A month." Bane.
"A summer," Zero says.
"Don't get greedy."
"I'm always greedy."
"Yeah."
I am quiet. They wait.
"I want that," I say, finally. Small. Real. "I want to come back."
Zero's hand finds the hem of my hoodie and slides under it. Splays warm against my hipbone, over the bruise his brother left there.
"Baby." He leans in. His mouth at my ear. The bond between his sternum and mine going hot and bright. "Listen to me."
"...mm."
"I am going to fuck you in every single room of that house."
I choke on the wine.
"Zero—"
"Every room. The bedroom. The dining room. The kitchen counter. Richard and Margot’s room. Especially their room."
"Oh my god—" My cock twitches and swells with blood.
"I'm going to make you scream loud enough that all the neighbors will complain. I'm going to fuck you on the rug in the living room until you have rug burns. I'm going to bend you over the kitchen island where you—"
"And where, exactly," Bane says, mild, conversational, to no one in particular, "do I fit into this scheme of yours."
"Hm?"
"Specifically, Zero. Walk me through the schedule. You're claiming the whole house. I'd like to know which afternoons I get."
Zero, into my throat, doesn't even open his eyes. "Tuesdays and Thursdays."
"Tuesdays and Thursdays."
"Fine. And alternate Saturdays. I'm being generous."
"I am his bondmate, you absolute—"
"We're all his bondmates, Bane, that's the whole problem. There's a queue."
"There is not a queue."
"There's a queue."
Atlas, behind me, dry: "It's not a queue. It's a calendar."
"Excuse me?" I whirl around.
"I'll send it around. Color-coded."
"Atlas—"
"He needs sleep, Bane. He needs to eat. He cannot be having sex with three of us simultaneously every day for the rest of his life. There has to be a system," Atlas nips at my throat and I shiver.
Zero is shaking with quiet laughter against the other side of my throat.
Bane has propped himself up on an elbow to argue better.
I am being conferenced over, and the absurd domestic logistics of it—a calendar, color-coded, Tuesdays and Thursdays—has me laughing so hard I am crying again.
Wine spills down the side of my chin. Atlas wipes it with his thumb.
"Okay," I get out. "Okay, no. No. I am not on a calendar."
"You're definitely on a calendar, baby."
"...what if I want input."
The blanket goes still.
Atlas's hand, where it's resting on my stomach, stops moving. Bane's forehead lifts off my thigh. Zero, against my throat, goes very, very quiet for one held second.
Then he laughs.
Low and dark and delighted, the kind of laugh he saves for things that genuinely surprise him, and his hand fists tight in the front of my hoodie.
"Oh, baby."
"What."
"Say that again. Slower. I want to hear every syllable."
"Zero—"
"Did you hear him, Atlas?"
"I heard him."
"Bane?"
"I heard him."
"Our boy wants input. On the calendar."
"I didn't—I just—I don't always want it to be so polite, that's all. I don't—I don't want you all to just hand me back and forth like I'm a—a serving dish—"
"He wants us to fight over him."
"I did not say that—"
"He absolutely said that."
"Zero—"
"Tell me I'm wrong, Carter. Look me in the eye. Tell me you wouldn’t like it if Bane has to actually pull me off you. Tell me you don't get hot watching Atlas yank us both off you. Tell me."
I cannot tell him.
He sees that I cannot tell him.
His grin breaks open against my throat in a way I feel down my whole spine. He kisses the bond mark, slow, possessive, with his teeth grazing it just enough to make me gasp.
"That's my boy."
"Don't encourage him, Zero." Bane. Mock-grim. But his thumb has found the bruise on my hip under the hoodie and is pressing it on purpose. "Now I have to fight you for him on a Tuesday."
"You always had to. He just made it official."
Atlas's mouth at my temple. Quiet. Proud.
"Noted, Max."
Zero kisses my throat one more time, smug as anything, then sits back enough to take a long pull off the wine bottle.
"For the record," Bane says, dry, "I am not on a calendar. I'm a freelancer."
"You're a what?"
"I’m an opportunist. I'm in the kitchen, you walk past, that's an opportunity. You bend over to tie your shoe, that's an opportunity. The hallway outside Atlas's office, that's—"
"Bane. Oh my god. Bane."
"—an opportunity."
"You are all terrible."
"We're yours," Atlas says. Quiet. Final.
The four of us lie there. The blanket is sandy. The wine is half gone. The moon is at its highest. Zero's head ends up on my stomach at some point. Bane's hand finds mine. Atlas's chin settles on the top of my head.
I look up at the moon.
I don't say anything. I don't need to. They feel it in the bonds—I know they do, because Bane's hand tightens on mine and Zero's mouth presses absent-minded against my hipbone and Atlas's thumb strokes once across my collarbone like an answer.
I am going to remember this, I think. Exactly this. The salt and the dark and the four of us. I am going to remember this when I am old. I am going to remember this when I have nothing else.
I kiss Atlas's jaw.
Far out, the tide turns. Comes in slow.
But none of us dare move.