Chapter 8 #2
Soft, almost surprised. His forehead falls forward against the back of my neck. His hand slides up under my t-shirt and rests, warm and possessive, against my belly.
"That's a good boy. Hmm. That's a—"
The back door slides open.
We don’t move. We freeze in a precise three-body knot in the shade of the limestone, Bane's hand at my jaw, Zero's hands on my belly, and footsteps on the back porch.
Margot's voice, slightly raised: "Boys? Where'd you go?"
Bane—who has, I now understand, lived an entire adult lifetime perfecting the art of looking innocent—steps back with the ease of a man straightening a tie.
"Out here, Margot. Showing Max where the ivy needs cutting back."
My eyes go wide. My cock is heavier, thicker, harder than it’s ever been and he’s leading my mother right to us? “Bane–” I grit.
"Oh good. I want to talk to you boys about lunch."
She appears around the corner of the house before I can take a breath.
Sun hat. Phone in one hand. Her face still slightly soft from whatever Liz just said on the call.
Zero is, somehow, already two feet away from me, crouched, examining what appears to be a thoroughly uninteresting patch of ivy with intense concentration like he’s studying for a final.
Bane has a leaf of the ivy between his fingers, turning it over slow as if he was just telling me about it.
I am red.
I am bright fucking red and dirty and my t-shirt is sweat-soaked and slightly askew in the back where Zero's hand was. I swallow hard, bending slightly at the waist and praying to God Margot doesn’t see my erection.
"Maxie, sweetheart, you look ready to collapse. Come in for lunch. Richard's golfing, it's just us. Boys, you'll stay?"
"We'll stay," Bane says.
I am going to die.
This is it. I’m going to die.
Margot leads the way and I follow them inside, peeling off the gardening gloves and trying not to limp. Luckily, I’m able to trap my cock in my waistband, but slick is making a mess of my already sore asshole and I can barely think straight.
The kitchen has never been small. The kitchen is, on any other day, the easiest room in the house to breathe in—high ceilings, three sets of windows, the long marble island that catches the light and the wide expanse of floor between the stove and the sink and the pantry that means you can move through it without ever being within reach of anyone else.
Right now it is the smallest room I have ever been in.
I am standing at the sink with my hands under the tap and my back to the room, and I can feel both of my brothers behind me like heat.
The bond is so wide between the three of us that it is using up all the air.
Margot is at the island twelve feet away pulling things out of the pantry, and she is one glance over her shoulder away from clocking the entire situation—my flush, my posture, the look on Zero's face, the careful neutral middle distance Bane is using on the countertop.
The window over the sink is reflecting the room back at me.
I can see all three of them in it. I can see myself, also: red, sweat-stuck, slightly hunched.
A man who has just had his stepbrothers' hands all over him in the side yard and is currently pretending otherwise in front of his mother.
I have never felt more on display in my life.
I am scrubbing dirt out from under my fingernails with the small wooden brush Margot keeps next to the sink, and I can feel Bane four feet to my left at the cutting board and Zero at the fridge digging for things and Margot at the pantry asking which kind of mustard everybody wants, and the bond is so wide that every time one of them shifts I feel it like a hand on the back of my neck.
Please, I think, in the general direction of both of them. Please.
Zero, fucking Zero, whistles softly.
I close my eyes.
"Dijon for me, Margot," Bane says. "Max?"
"...same. Dijon."
"Maxie, you hate Dijon."
"...regular yellow. Whatever. I'll do my own." I roll my neck, trying not to jump out of my skin.
Bane smiles at the cutting board.
The next ten minutes are an exercise in survival.
Margot is at the counter slicing tomatoes. Zero is at the cheese drawer doing things to the cheddar I don’t look at directly. That’s what he wants. Bane is at the cutting board, slicing bread, and every two minutes he has a question for me that requires me to step closer to him.
Maxie, can you grab the butter?
Maxie, what's in this, is this hummus or that white bean thing?
Maxie, hand me the knife behind you. No, the longer one.
Each time I step toward him his hand finds the small of my back.
Or the side of my hip. Or—once, the third time I lean across him for the knife—the curve of my ass through my shorts, brief, unmistakable, his palm flat and warm and gone before Margot can possibly have seen.
He doesn't look at me. He keeps slicing bread.
The bond is roaring and swallowing me whole.
Zero, meanwhile, has just kept on fucking whistling.
He has stationed himself between the fridge and the island and is, ostensibly, assembling a snack plate. He is also somehow, miraculously, in my ear every time I open the cutlery drawer.
"Bane has nice hands, doesn't he, Maxie?"
I don’t respond.
"You like when he touches you like that. I can feel it."
I can’t respond.
"You getting wet, baby?"
I—
"Margot," Bane says, calm as a glass of water, "where do you keep the olives?"
"Top shelf of the pantry, darling, behind the artichokes."
Bane disappears into the pantry.
Zero is suddenly behind me at the cutlery drawer. Chest against my shoulder blades. Mouth at my ear. He’s fiddling with something as if he has a reason to be next to me other than to fuck with me.
His voice drops to barely above a whisper.
"He's making you a sandwich, baby."
"Zero—"
"He's going to slice it down the middle and put it on a plate and bring it over and you're going to eat it and act normal."
"I am going to kill you. I fucking swear."
"You're going to do it while sore."
"Zero."
"Sweetheart. You went and got fucked by my brother and smell this good. You really think Bane and I aren't going to make you sit at this island in front of your mother and feel every inch of it?"
I—
"Boys," Margot says from the other side of the island, "Max, baby, would you do me a favor and grab the iced tea from the fridge?"
I get the iced tea with my back to Margot and my face on fire and Zero three feet away, not looking at me, plating cheese. The pitcher goes on the island. I sit down.
Bane is back from the pantry with a small dish of olives that he sets in front of me like he’s placing a chess piece.
Zero slides onto the stool next to mine and reaches over me for the salt, letting his arm brush, lightly, against the bond mark at the side of my throat.
I don't look at either of them. The sandwich is, possibly, the only safe object in the room.
It's a very good sandwich. I eat it.
Margot's talking about next Sunday’s dinner with Wren—she's decided on roast after all, she'd like to know if any of us have opinions about side dishes—and I chew very slowly because every time I shift my weight on the barstool I feel the soreness, and every time I feel the soreness Zero's eyes are on the side of my face.
He's not even pretending to look away. He's eating a slice of apple and watching me with rapt attention.
"Boys," Margot says. "Can I ask you something?"
Bane looks up from his sandwich.
"Mm?"
"This is going to sound strange. I've been thinking—I'd like to bring a little bit of your mother to the table on Sunday.
Something she used to make. Something the three of you would recognize.
I don't know what she cooked. Your father doesn't talk about her much and, well, to be fair I’ve never asked him this.
But if there's a side, or a dessert, or—anything. I'd like to do it."
The room goes quiet in a different way than it has been quiet all morning.
Zero stops chewing.
Bane's hand has gone very still on the rim of his plate. He looks down at it. Looks up at Margot. Looks down again.
"...she made a corn pudding."
Margot waits.
"It wasn't—it wasn't anything fancy. Cream-style corn from a can, mostly.
A box of cornbread mix. Sour cream. Two eggs.
She'd put it in the oven for an hour and the top would get this—" his voice has gone slightly hoarse and he clears his throat "—it would get this brown crust on it.
She'd cover it with foil if Dad was in a mood about anything. "
Margot's eyes are wet at the corners. My chest warms seeing how open he’s being.
"That sounds wonderful, sweetheart."
"It wasn't fancy."
"I don't want fancy. I want hers. And I want something you boys will like."
Bane swallows.
"...I think Atlas has the recipe somewhere. She wrote it on the back of an envelope. I think he kept it in a book."
"I'll ask him when he's back."
Bane clears his throat again. "...thank you, Margot."
"Don't thank me, sweetheart. I've been wanting to ask for a while and I lost my nerve about it more times than I want to admit."
Bane nods. Goes back to his sandwich. He doesn't look up for a beat. I think he’s trying to maintain his cool in front of my mom and I can’t help but smile.
Zero’s been silent, but purposefully silent.
Like he can’t find the words or maybe doesn’t want to find them.
He puts his apple slice down and reaches across the island and touches Bane's wrist, briefly, the way you touch a thing you don't want to draw attention to but you do, in fact, want to touch.
Bane breathes out.
I wish I could go to him too. Press a kiss to his neck and hold him tight.
"What else, then? I was thinking green beans, or maybe roasted carrots. Something that isn't too heavy with the roast and the pudding."
"Almonds are good," Bane says, to his plate. "With the green beans."
"Mm-hm," I say.