30. Group Fish Humidity Situation #2
The tunnel is spinning with light and heat and the wet sounds of skin and mouths and pure overwhelming want. Every thrust pushes me higher. It's too much and exactly enough.
I try to warn around Joel's cock, but it comes out a desperate, muffled sob.
"Come on, baby," Beck laughs breathlessly against my back.
Joel pulls back just enough to let me breathe. "Come for us, Grace. Right fucking now."
The orgasm hits like the wave pool finally turning back on, hard, sudden, overwhelming. I cry out, loud and broken and happy, clenching hard around Grant and Beck. My whole body locks up, thighs trembling, back arching as they hold me through it, murmuring praise and filth and love against my skin.
Grant groans first, hips stuttering up into me as he comes, fingers digging into my hips. Beck follows right after, burying himself in my ass with a shaky laugh that turns into a long, low moan as he pulses inside me.
Joel comes across my tongue, filling my mouth with a quiet, wrecked sound that might be the hottest thing I've ever heard.
I collapse forward onto Grant's chest, glowing and laughing breathlessly into his skin. Beck drapes over my back, pressing lazy kisses to my shoulder. Joel stretches out beside us, one big hand stroking down my spine like he's checking structural integrity after an earthquake.
"Well," I mumble, voice hoarse and stupidly happy, "frequency definitely achieved. Ten out of ten. Would group heart again."
Beck snorts against my neck. "The lube heist was worth it."
Grant sighs, the fondest, most exhausted sound in the universe, and wraps both arms around me. Joel leans in and kisses my temple.
Eventually Grant and Beck ease out carefully. Condoms are tied off and deposited in the trash bag Joel brought because Joel apparently plans post-orgasm waste management. Grant passes around water and wipes, and Beck helps clean me up with a tenderness that doesn’t match his grin.
"That was," I say.
"Yeah," Beck says.
"I mean."
"Yeah."
"The three of you."
"Yeah."
"At the same time."
"We were there, Grace."
"I know you were there, I'm processing. The processing takes time because the input was considerable and my processor is not built for this volume of simultaneous..."
There's a sound from outside the tunnel. I know that sound in my bones, in my blood. The wrong-feet sound.
And then a thump against the tunnel door.
Shuffle. Drag. Thump.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," I say.
Shuffle. Drag. Thump.
"Gregory."
Of course it's Gregory. Gregory who escaped the fountain and navigated the entire park just to interrupt the exact moment emotional and physical progress is being made. Gregory's sixth sense is specifically calibrated to ruin my moments.
"He can't get in," Joel says. "The door's reinforced steel. He could thump for a week."
Thump.
"Gregory, we're busy," I shout.
Thump.
"We're having a moment. A private group heart situation moment. Go away."
Thump thump.
Beck starts laughing first, naked, wheezing, full-body laughter that's so Beck it sets me off too. Grant's chest shakes under my head. Even Joel huffs a quiet laugh against my shoulder.
"Fuck off, Gregory," Beck calls, still cracking up.
Thump.
"I'm adding this to the crayon plan," I say. "New item. Gregory: banned from tunnel. Violators will be redecorated."
"Redecorated?" Beck says.
"I meant relocated. I said redecorated. Don't look at me like that. My brain just did a triathlon. It's not going to produce perfect vocabulary right now."
Thump.
"He'll wander off," Joel says. "Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. He'll lose interest."
"Fifteen minutes of Gregory percussion."
"We could use the time," Grant says. "Hydration. Rest. Blanket redistribution."
"Blanket redistribution is code for something and I'm not sure what."
"It's code for you're lying on four blankets and everyone else is lying on the floor."
I look down. I am, in fact, a blanket dragon.
"I'll share," I say, rearranging. The rearranging involves my elbow encountering Beck's ribcage. "Sorry."
"Ow."
"I said sorry."
"Your elbows need their own insurance policy."
"My elbows are fine, they're just enthusiastic. They have a range of motion that exceeds social expectations and I can't be held responsible for..."
Thump.
"Gregory, I swear to god."
We settle. The blankets redistribute. I give up two of the four and feel like I've made an enormous sacrifice. Beck tucks himself against my left side, arm over my waist. Joel is on my right. Grant adjusts so my head is still in his lap and his back is against the curved wall.
"My mom's going to meet you," I say.
"Terrifying," Beck says.
"She's going to make you eat something with protein."
"Less terrifying."
"She's going to ask you questions. Individual questions about your intentions. She's going to use the word intentions."
"Slightly more terrifying."
"Joel, she's going to ask about your job. Your real job. Before. She's going to want to know that you're stable."
"I maintained critical water and power infrastructure for a theme park during a societal collapse," Joel says. "I'm stable."
"Grant, she's going to love you immediately because you have a wallaby and you're gentle. And she's going to cry when she meets Pepper. Mom cries at baby animals. She cried at a documentary about penguins for forty-five minutes. Penguins, Grant."
"Penguins are emotional," Grant says.
"And Beck, she's going to be suspicious of you."
"Why me?"
"Because Mom doesn't trust charming. She's going to watch you like a hawk. Not like Captain. Like a mom hawk. She'll see through the grin."
"Good," Beck says. His arm tightens around me. "Let her see through the grin. Let her see what's under it."
"What's under it?"
"A man who found a woman who broke into a theme park with a foam trident and decided that she was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen and he was going to follow her around until she let him stay."
"That's very... that's..."
"If you cry."
"I'm not crying. My eyes are doing a moisture thing. It's the tunnel. The tunnel is humid. Fish humidity."
The thumping slows. One last half-hearted thump, then silence.
"I need to tell you guys something," I say.
"You already said the love thing," Beck says. "No take-backs."
"I'm not taking it back. I'm adding to it. Addendum. I've always gotten up alone. After every fall. The getting up is alone because the falling is alone. You can't fall with someone, falling is a solo activity, falling is..."
I stop, regroup, and find the words. The wrong words. My words.
"I don't have to get up alone anymore," I say. "And I don't have to fall to be held."
Beck pulls me closer. Joel's hand finds mine. Grant keeps stroking my hair, slow and steady.
Gregory shuffles away to cockblock another day.
And we stay there, tangled and sticky and glowing. Four disasters finally exactly where we're supposed to be.