Chapter 20
WALL
SOME THINGS YOU notice only because they don't happen, and Patrick Grze?kowiak isn’t pulling away.
A lost game usually follows me home, asking to be worried about, to dissect until I know exactly what went wrong and how to fix it. But the game is a faint memory, and this isn’t my home, and my hand rests on the back of Patrick’s neck and he’s letting it stay there.
Every few bites, a little more of his weight arrives in my palm, like trust arriving shyly, in tiny waves, and I find myself wanting more of it.
All of it.
On the other end of the couch, Theo has been quiet for three minutes straight.
When I glance over, he’s already looking at me.
His eyebrows lift a fraction, and mine answer, and there’s a whole conversation that happens, in an instant, with words unspoken, and he’s transmitting thoughts I can’t possibly be sure of, but somehow am.
I nod, he nods, then it’s settled.
Patrick sets down his fork, and immediately tries to stand with the plate.
I grab his shoulder and hold. "Stay."
He pauses halfway up, brows furrowing over eyes that are still red. "I can put a plate in the kitchen."
Theo lifts it out of his hands. "Huge if true. Sit down."
Patrick watches the plate leave his custody, and Theo half-puts, half-throws it on the coffee table, then settles back down, and presses his mouth to the skin below Patrick's ear.
Under my palm, Patrick goes rigid. His head starts to turn, one hand rising toward Theo's neck, reaching for control automatically, like the night might crash without him at the wheel.
I catch his wrist.
He looks down at my hand, then up at me. "What are you doing?"
I keep my grip loose. It’s just a statement, after all. "Taking care of you."
He lets out a chuckle that sounds close to nervous. "I know how to take care of myself."
Theo kisses the edge of his jaw. "And that is very much the problem."
Patrick's free hand comes for my hoodie next, fingers curling into the fabric, because if he can't run Theo he'll run me. I catch that one too and press both of his hands flat against his thighs. His pulse taps against my thumbs, quick and climbing, calling his own calm face a liar.
"What are you two—"
"Sit back, Grze?kowiak."
It comes out clean, all of it. The soft middle, and all those vowels, and the ending that took me three weeks to get just right. I'd been saving it for something. I didn't know until right now that it was this.
Patrick’s breath hitches in his throat and Theo jerks his head back, staring at me with eyes wider than I’ve ever seen them. "What the actual fuck?"
I try for casual, and somehow manage to pull it off. "What?"
"You can say it?" Theo presses, his tone almost accusatory and deliciously hilarious.
I shrug. "It's his name, isn’t it?"
Patrick’s just staring at me for a moment. His wrists have gone still in my hands. His pulse hasn't. It did something to him, something pleasant, I’m sure, and if that read is wrong, it's the first wrong read I've had all night.
His next word confirms I’m not wrong. "Again."
Something rolls over in my chest. I sweep my thumbs across the inside of his wrists, and repeat, quieter this time. "Grze?kowiak."
His eyes close. The breath he lets out takes his shoulders with it, all the way down to the couch, and then his head tips back onto my shoulder like it was always going to end up there, and suddenly I'm holding the weight he stopped holding himself.
Theo’s grin arrives slowly, but once it settles, it’s nothing short of wicked. "Wallace, you absolute weapon."
I release Patrick's wrists and leave my hands resting over them. "Can we?"
His eyes open. I watch the answer cost him on its way up. He swallows before he says, "Yes."
I kiss him before the yes can grow conditions.
His mouth is warm and slower than I expect, and I take my time, because I want to feel him allow it.
Every degree of it. His lower lip yields between mine, short beard tickling my chin.
Somewhere on the other side of him, Theo has returned to his throat, and the sound of it, soft and wet and busy, runs down my spine like a tip of a finger.
Patrick's hand rises to my jaw. I take it and set it back on his thigh.
His other hand disappears into Theo's curls. I retrieve that one too. He pulls back an inch, breath ghosting my lips, then turns to look straight forward like he doesn’t have it in him to face either of us as he asks, "You're enjoying this, aren’t you? "
"Yes," I admit, just as Theo says, "I'm having a religious experience," and his lips are on Patrick’s before he’s finished speaking.
Patrick turns toward him, angling to take that kiss over, so I catch the corner of his mouth with mine, pulling his attention back, and the sound he makes, first sharp, then ragged, shoots straight through me and keeps traveling south.
The couch wasn’t built for the three of us at once, and Theo solves this the Theo way, by shoving the coffee table with his foot until a leg snags the rug and drags it into a ridge.
Patrick yanks his head back. "Lift it at least. You'll scratch the floor."
Theo looks at me over Patrick and rolls his eyes. "He's surrendering beautifully.”
Then we both stand, grab one side each, and carry it clear, plate and all.
Theo flattens the rug with his toes, and I drop two couch cushions onto it, pure instinct taking over because I have no way of knowing where this goes or how it ends, while Patrick watches his ordered living room get rearranged around him, color climbing his cheekbones. "You can’t put it—"
"We're improvising," Theo says. "It's brave and artistic."
I come back to stand between Patrick's knees. "Take off your shirt."
One eyebrow rises. "You take it off," he says, like it’s a challenge.
It isn’t. Not anymore.
I catch the hem, and as I lift it Theo is already there, following the rising fabric with his mouth, kissing every strip of skin as it appears.
By the time the shirt clears Patrick's shoulders, his breathing has shortened, and my jeans have grown so tight around my cock it’s getting impossible to ignore.
I plan on ignoring it anyway.
The moment Patrick’s hands are free, he reaches for my hoodie. I catch him. "Later."
His gaze goes dark and direct. "Wallace."
"You said yes," I remind him, with satisfaction that’s hard to conceal.
His argument dies behind his teeth, and he loses the war he’s waging against himself and lets us take the rest. Theo draws the belt out of its loops and I lean down to kiss him, my hip flush against Theo’s, my fingers already working the zipper.
When it's time, Patrick lifts his hips off the couch to let them go, the tiniest act of collaboration that means one thing and one thing only: surrender.
Then he's naked on his own couch, while we're both still dressed in front of him, and his cock is already hard against his stomach, thick, and shining in silent invitation.
If someone had told me before the season started that I'd have Patrick Grze?kowiak stripped and pinned by his own yes, I'd have assumed it would feel like winning.
It feels nothing like winning. It feels like being handed something breakable by a man who doesn't hand things to anyone, and tonight he’s handing them to two people, and all I want to do is be gentle with it.
I kneel on the rug between his knees. Theo comes down beside me, his shoulder warm against mine, and Patrick's thighs open around the two of us.
Theo wraps his hand around Patrick’s cock first, and I fit mine underneath it, and there’s enough room on his shaft for us both, and then some.
For a moment we just hold him, two grips stacked, and Patrick's stomach pulls tight watching us do it.
Theo starts a slow stroke, then loosens his fingers and hands me the pace like a baton.
I tighten mine.
Patrick's hips lift off the couch, one blunt, honest push into both our fists, and then he retracts the motion, lowering himself like it never happened.
"You can move, you know," Theo says.
Patrick swallows. "I'm aware," he says, and surely he thinks he sounds snappy, but his voice is hoarse, and shaky, and isn’t it fucking everything?
I close my grip another fraction, and his next breath comes apart in the middle.
Theo bends down and puts his mouth on Patrick's inner thigh, lips first, then tongue, and the muscle jumps under it. The sound Patrick tries to keep behind his teeth doesn't fully stay there. I lean in over the other thigh and learn him with my mouth, tasting the smooth, warm skin. Above us, Patrick’s hands hover in the air, opening and closing over our heads, like he doesn’t know what to do with them.
I look up. "You can touch us," I say against his skin.
His fingers come down into my hair, careful, like I might change my mind if he moves wrong.
Then Theo runs his tongue up the underside of Patrick's cock, base to head, slowly, and the sound that gets out of Patrick is low and helpless.
Something hungry stirs in my chest.
I want that.
I want to be the reason for the next one.
And I want it so fucking much it’s stronger than anything else, and I squash down my cool, and my pride, or what’s left of it, and let my voice shake freely, as I turn my head to Theo, and say, "Teach me."
He stops with his mouth an inch from Patrick’s cock. "Seriously?"
"Yes. Show me," I say, because fuck it. If dignity’s the price, I’m happy to pay.
Patrick's hand stills in my hair. "You don't have to."
I meet his gaze and hold it. "I know."
Theo's grin comes back, but it’s softer than usual. "You can start wherever you feel like it."
Then he shows me, one hand around the base, thumb spreading the pre-cum that already dripped down. He sticks his tongue out, running the tip over slit first, then circling, before closing his lips over the crown with one long pull that hollows his cheeks.