Julian Lupin is a Legend

Finn needed this. God. He’d needed it terribly.

The salt of Leo’s throat, the warm and practiced weight of Logan’s hands on his flanks. A suggestion of a squeeze at the curve of his ass had him shiver-shudder-smiling into Leo’s jaw; in the span of his next inhale, it became a mouth on his own to ease them from sort-of dancing to sort-of grinding, and it was everything, everything he’d been dreaming of.

Roadies took it out of him every year, but the great Canadian redemption tour claimed its pound of flesh and left him dragging. Maybe the distance was finally getting to him. Maybe, at the grand old age of 26, he was losing the thrill of travel. Not a bit of it mattered when he woke with Logan between them again. Even less when they could steal away into the endless rocking bodies of New York, anonymous and in love like a thousand others around them.

He let more of his weight into Logan’s capable hands and pulled Leo along with him, the way he liked so much. Sure enough, the next kiss came bruising and hungry—he’d never be over the way Leo ignited in Logan’s mere proximity. A better poet than him would have something to say about twin flames and an endless, ember-rich burn. Finn was just the lucky one that got to feel its warmth from both sides.

The pressure of his thumb on a sharp jawline made Leo groan, still mint-sweet from the restaurant. He released Finn into the fizzing noise around them. Blue eyes glittered with satisfaction and dragged none-too-subtly between them, where Logan remained dedicated to feeling Finn up as he bit gently at the back of his neck. Lights flared in kaleidoscope with the swell of the music. It was something loud; something Logan would like. By the sway of his hips, still plastered to Finn’s backside, he did.

Weight sloughed off him. He could die a blissful, happy man.

“So good,” he said, though he meant to say much more. His mouth would be a swollen mess soon. Finally. He tilted his chin to take the tip of Leo’s thumb between his lips, then kissed the palm of his game-saving hand. “Let me get us drinks?”

The music slid from heavy thumping bass to the bloom of synthesizers.

“Something sweet for you.” He nipped at Leo’s lower lip, next, and nuzzled their noses together. “Maybe spicy.”

“Sweet,” Logan answered.

Teeth sank into the side of his neck. Leo devoured him plenty, well, and often, but nobody savored quite like Logan. Finn’s laugh came out breathless and giddy as he reached back for a none-too-gentle tug to Logan’s hair. “I know what you want. I was asking—ah.”

Teeth on both sides. They held him under the heavy blanket of sound and motion, dulling the rest to the hum of crowd-life that fed straight into his bloodstream. This energy. Their energy. It coated his soft palate, ran down his throat like nectar. Finn closed his eyes and let his lips part. They never got to be like this. Young and dumb and stupid, losing themselves in a bit of a bacchanal. It was a privilege. It lit him up inside.

Finn’s skin tingled when Logan let him go. That would be a pretty souvenir for the drive home. Leo took his time, but sweetened it with a kiss to something pleasantly sore on the way up. “Surprise me.”

A dark and stormy, then. Finn’s very first guess with him; one of many successes. He gave Leo’s butt a firm pat and peeled his way out from between them with an incredible heave of effort. The light of the bar was his only beacon through the dance floor, where every brush of limbs and body siphoned out the ache of back-to-back games and left him more settled in himself than he’d been in two weeks.

He rattled off their orders with only half a thought. The rest, of course, remained across the room where Leo and Logan rocked against each other in the low shadows. The immediate tunnel vision should have been embarrassing. But Finn was shameless, and they were the most wonderful thing in this entire place, so he leaned his elbows back on the bartop to look his fill and slipped a twenty in the tip jar as an apology.

Hips and thighs. Shoulders and grasping hands, Logan’s face tilted toward their personal sun with a grin Finn would fight a god for. They made a perfect pair, lovers meeting under flashes of pink and red. Logan’s mouth dropped open when Leo nudged into the crook of his neck and Finn swore—swore—those green eyes found him across thirty feet of dance floor.

“Sir?”

“Yeah?” It was rude, he really did love talking, but Logan was rolling his hips like—

“Rum and coke, Dark and Stormy, Old Fashioned?”

“Yeah.” The sheen of sweat gathering at the back of Leo’s neck curled his hair. Finn’s throat throbbed where those lips rested not ten minutes prior. Jesus fucking Christ.

Logan was definitely looking at him.

Finn cursed under his breath and raked a hand through his hair for some semblance of grounded sanity. Thank god they didn’t drive tonight. He wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes on the road, let alone his hands on the wheel. Maybe he could ask them to get off in the backseat while he drove them home one of these days, just to kill the temptation to touch. But no—that would only make more problems. He was pretty sure he should look through the windshield more than the rearview mirror.

With one last bitten-down groan, he gathered their drinks in one hand and his own in the other, stealing one sturdy swig to shock the most explicit thoughts from his head. He had to be able to make it across the dance floor without the world’s most uncomfortable boner, and then—fuck, maybe he could ask them. Get an Uber to Logan’s apartment and head straight for the parking garage—

“That’s mine?”

Finn startled, hard. Liquid sloshed over his knuckles and he swore again, very much not under his breath. “Huh?”

A girl looked back at him. Annoyed. “That’s mine.”

He could only stare. “What?”

“The drink.”

Finn looked down at his hands. Full of drinks. She pointed very helpfully at the Old Fashioned, now missing about a mouthful worth of anti-hard-on. And a cherry. Finn looked down again, further, at the bartop.

One perfect Old Fashioned sat at the edge, cherry still perched at the rim.

“Oh!” Her delight was immediate and obvious. “Nevermind, take that one, I only had the cherry and I like those best anyway.”

“I—”

“Thank you!

“But—”

“My boyfriend bought it, don’t even worry!”

She waved at him, silver bracelets jingling, as two of her friends pulled her back to the dance floor with a raucous cheer.

Chivalry told him to buy her a new one anyway, or at least apologize more. But his knuckles were wet, two incredibly hot men were waiting to dance on him, and he was not feeling particularly honorable.

It only took a few minutes to reach them again. Success.

“I stole someone’s drink!” he called. Logan took his sweet-tooth-nonsense with a pleased noise; Leo planted a sloppy kiss on Finn’s mouth that left him grinning like a fool. “Hi, gorgeous.”

“Who’d you steal from?”

Finn shrugged. “Dunno, she took mine and said it was fine. I was a little distracted by some hotties in the corner.”

Leo’s smile spread syrup-slow. “Oh, yeah?”

“Mhm. The things some people do in public. Hey.”

Logan looked up, index finger still half-submerged in Finn’s drink. “Quoi?”

“Ew.” Finn batted at the back of his hand until Logan withdrew, clearly affronted, and wiped it on his jeans. “French creature.”

“Where’s my cherry?”

“She ate it.”

“You let someone eat my cherry?”

“Well, I stole her drink, she had first dibs.” Finn took another sip. His displeasure must have shown, because both of them frowned back. “Eugh. Kinda sucks anyway. Who recommended this place, Luke?”

Logan only rolled his eyes and cuffed him gently on the side of the head. “Mine’s good,” Leo offered, swirling his stir-stick. “Want to switch?”

“Nah. Just too much bitters, I think.” The bourbon was smooth, though, and they used fresh orange peel. He knocked down another mouthful and smacked his lips loud enough to make them both groan. “Maybe it’s just ‘cause Lo put his fuckin’ hand in it.”

“You love my hands,” Logan snarled into the hinge of his jaw, and took the witty response right out of Finn’s mouth with his tongue.

Even into college, Finn couldn’t fathom being too tired to go out. Too tired was for study group or hockey practice, or a convenient excuse that wasn’t I’d actually rather keel over than watch you flirt across a house party. The solution to too tired was to let everyone else pour out for a while and drink it in until he could think again, put his feet on the ground and let music set his pulse so his heart could take a break.

It came back to him now, with Logan fit close to his front and his sugar-scent in full bloom. Finn felt his exhaustion shake loose in their steady hold. His blood sang. His head, finally, calmed to a dull roar. Energy rebounded off the walls; it was a live wire when he reached for it, and it hit like cool water in a fever. He would give them the world tonight.

Clarity, clean and fast. Finn’s stomach turned.

Logan, still moving against him, went still a millisecond before Finn pulled back. “What?”

Odd. Finn blinked, but pulled him back in. His smile soothed the worry at Logan’s brow. “All good, baby.”

Leo slid in behind Logan and went right for his waist, big hands closing under the hem of his tank top. “Bonjour,” Finn heard him murmur as teeth flashed at Logan’s earlobe. Hot—

His knees faltered.

“Harz?”

Worry, again. On both of them. Finn took one hand off Logan and closed it around the back of his neck. He was hot. He was really hot. His palm came away slick.

The song changed. Another cheer rose, with a wave of sequins and reaching arms to follow. It didn’t steady him, anymore. It was…kind of too much, actually. Leo’s touch was cool on his forearm. “Hey, you okay?”

Yeah, Finn started to say, but something even deeper whispered no just loud enough to stop him. Unsurety tilted him off-balance. He rolled his shoulders out and nodded, then tipped his head side to side. “My stomach’s feeling kinda weird.”

His head, too. The whole room was starting to feel—well, weird.

“It’s probably something I ate,” he said, then shrugged. “Or the planes. I dunno.”

Leo ran his hand along his forearm. “Want to head back?”

“No, I’ll be fine in a minute.” Finn reached for his drink, but the ice had mostly melted in the time they’d been dancing, and he knew enough about bitters to know they didn’t taste any better watered down. A shame, but half a drink was a fine price to pay to dance with his boys on a night out. He snagged an ice cube from Logan’s glass and popped it in his mouth with a smile. “Now we’re even.”

Logan just kissed him, deep and longing. There was the energy. The easing of a busy world’s rough edges.

The room heeled over.

He leaned harder on Logan and took the heavy inhale that answered like a gift. Everything evened out soon enough, anyway. He didn’t feel sick sick, he thought. More like the uncomfortable itch after a long flight. An unsettled twinge in his stomach, the dull spread of a low-set headache that gentled when Leo got him by the scruff. It was so good, so good, so good. Logan was panting between them, now. Finn's mouth watered at the sound.

“Lemme—” A quiet moan broke in Logan’s throat and Finn gripped his belt loops tighter at the spike of pleasure-heat. “My drink, it’s going to melt.”

“Forget it,” Finn mumbled, leaning down for a kiss so easily granted.

They parted with a soft sound. Logan dragged his fingertips over Finn’s lips. “But you were so nice, getting it for me.” His curls had gone wild. His smile, even moreso. “Nobody buys me drinks when you’re not here.”

Some pathetic little whine stole out from behind Finn’s teeth. He let Logan slide away. It was intoxicating, being here. Dizzying. It—

He was dizzy.

Bad.

“Le.” It was out before he could even think about it. Leo turned back to him, amused for about a quarter of a second. “I don’t…”

“What?”

It was so hot. He pulled on the hem of Leo’s shirt, though he wasn’t sure why, exactly. “I think we should go home.”

“Okay.” The room was off-kilter again. Leo’s hands found his shoulders. “Your stomach’s still bugging you?”

“Yeah,” Finn managed, then gestured at his throbbing head. “I’m just not feeling great.”

“We can go home.” He sounded so sweet, all concerned and soft-spoken. It’s not what Finn wanted tonight. None of this was right. “Hey, it’s okay. What’s that face for?”

“I’m…” Leo was in his blue shirt. The one they bought last time they visited Finn’s parents, just for occasions like this. It’s not like they got a lot of them. “Maybe we can stay.” That wasn’t what Finn wanted, either. “I don’t—I mean, I’ll be fine, I’m just gonna step outside for a second.”

Sympathy spilled all over Leo’s face, but those eyes looked right through Finn. It took everything in him not to squirm. “We can hang out at home. Rather make sure you’re feeling better before we have to drive, you know?”

Logan reappeared. Finn hadn’t realized how long he’d been gone. He still looked happy, tucking his arm around Leo’s waist with a smacking kiss for his jaw. But then he looked between them. It went out like a snuffed candle. “Quoi?”

“We should head back,” he heard Leo say. Terrible. Oh, it was bad, he didn’t mean it, not really.

“Your stomach?”

Finn took too long to answer. He could tell. “Yeah.”

Like Leo’s face, Logan’s tutting was all fond concern. He didn’t protest. Finn didn’t really think he would, but…well. They just never got this kind of time. The drape of Leo’s arm across his shoulders held no annoyance when they started to move, bringing Finn close into the haven of his body. The quiet there was nice. Some distance from the dance floor, a break for his ears and vision. “It’s okay,” Leo murmured in the tiny space between them. “Let me know if you need a break.”

“It’s not that serious,” Finn said. That didn’t feel true. He felt a little bad. Sand pulled at his ankles with every step, but he kept plodding along. He wasn’t sure where they were going, now that he thought about it. He was more tired than sick. So tired. Maybe that was it: a jetlag-induced migraine tricking him into thinking he had the flu.

Logan made a small sound. “You’re burning up, rouge.”

That was true. Should he take his shirt off? Probably a bad idea. He couldn’t feel the sweat-cling, but he liked the sensation of the fabric. He’d be too sensitive without it. Everything was too much. The corners of the room had fallen away, and it spun and spun and spun.

Night air hit Finn like a truck. He stumbled. Their hands were on him before his own reached the wall. “I don’t feel right.” Had he said that already? Did they know? “Knutty, I don’t feel good.”

“Okay, okay.”

He wanted to go home. They needed to take him home, because something wasn’t right, because Finn couldn’t feel the sidewalk under his feet and the city lights blared too bright to mean anything. Fuck, his heart was racing right out of his chest. Someone else would have to drive. He’d—he wanted to curl up in the backseat and sleep. Just sleep. For a while.

“Finn.” Leo’s voice, sharp with concern.

He tried to take a step, one hand on a rough wall. His ankles went out from under him. So many hands on him. The whole world, falling away. Finn panicked, flat out, and it didn’t feel like anything at all.

“Can’t.” His tongue was swollen, his mouth all over the place. A body shifted; he grasped at it. “No, no, no.”

“Finn, talk to me, what’s going on?”

Leo. Thank god. “ ‘S happening to me?”

Words, where were words? It was all fear, and nowhere to put it.

“Don’t feel right.”

“I know.” Pressure on his temple, around his arms. “I know, baby, hold on.”

“Don’t let me go.” So dark. He was lost. He clutched at Leo’s shirt and body and understood, on the next tumble of awareness, that he couldn’t feel his legs anymore. His head wasn’t floating off anymore—it was concrete, dragging him down. He’d never been more afraid to fall asleep. He’d never been more afraid in his life.

“Deep breaths.” Leo was rubbing his back. “Deep breaths, we’re getting help.”

“Don’t leave.” Spinning, spinning out of control. He licked his chapped lips. Was that the sound of his own breathing? “Le, ’m scared.”

Waves on the shore, crashing him into darkness and pulling back just long enough for him to know they were still outside before rolling him into the deep. They needed to go home. Leo would take him home. He’d go anywhere they wanted, just not here.

Something hitched and pulled in his chest. He was falling in slow motion. Leo swam into focus, holding Finn’s hand. Finn didn’t remember that. He held on as tight as he could. “Going on?” Slipping through his fingers like water. Big hands. Big hands, pressing close on his own. Talk to me, Finn, just keep talking. His throat tightened.Oh, fuck. “Le. I don’t know where I am.”

Shadows crowded and drew up toward the sky. Club lights above them, blinking red and blue. Hands and color. They were trying to take him away. Pulling on his wrists, fighting his grip on Leo. He’d die if he let go. He was absolutely going to die.

“No,” he tried, scrabbling, flailing his elbow at a shape creeping closer. His body wasn’t working. Too many voices, not enough faces. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

He was so tired. It rose up on him like a lighthouse in the swirling maelstrom. He could sleep. He had to. There was no choice in the matter. And Leo was there, in the hands brushing rain off his face. He heard Logan in the little he could hear at all. He was laying down, he thought. They took him home. The bed was still cold.

Finn fell asleep. He couldn’t help it.

--

Finn got sick the first time he went out with the Lions. Convinced himself he’d developed allergies for a good few weeks after, actually. There was no other explanation for the seizing onset of clammy hands, a pounding heart, the kind of tunnel vision that took his hearing out with it. He blamed the heat coursing through him on Gryffindor’s muggy August weather. He’d been talking, and laughing, and then his whole body sprinted off without him and left a trembling hare-scared thing behind.

So he politely excused himself to be extremely ill, washed his face in the sink, and tried again.

And obviously they thought he was a complete and total freak after that. Of course. Why wouldn’t they? Finn hadn’t been brave enough to ask, after begging jetlag and dragging his sorry self back to his hotel room. He’d nearly fallen asleep on the subway ride home. Not one of them brought his sudden absence up at practice the next day. But chirps or not, Finn knew in his gut that they must have noticed.

He was younger than most, and strange, wasn’t he? Full of the humor that killed at college parties but probably didn’t land with this crowd. He’d—they wanted him to be more serious, he figured. He was a rookie, but expensive at the draft. He’d find a balance between locking in and being funny. People liked when he was funny. He’d get there. He would.

He missed Logan like a limb.

The mere thought of him at those hot August get-togethers, lingering just out of Finn’s eyeline to beat his heart on the ground again and again, made Finn’s stomach flip and his head pound.

College was one thing. Here, they’d smell it on him.

--

The bed wasn’t big enough.

Leo didn’t budge. Logan didn’t ask him to.

That hit, months and months away. Finn, sprawling, then still as the grave. The worst of Leo’s brain was all over it. A TV on hi-def. A dog on a fresh steak. He couldn’t get it to let go for anything. Loops on loops of collision, a crowd, and weeks at home of the bubbling thing in his chest that made his teeth too sharp for his mouth. The sick rot told him how lucky he was to be picked tonight. Leo was pretty sure it was the worst thing in his entire fucking life.

It wasn’t true, he thought. There was no luck to this or those awful weeks, save for the heavy pour of bad the universe ladled onto Finn. And luck or not, it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. This wasn’t fair.

That loop, at least, made Leo feel a little better than the mental replay of Finn breaking against wood and fiberglass. Not really. But a little.

The test results were so, so stupid. He was still angry, and still relieved. Boring old standard ugly-ass Rohypnol. Slipped into Finn’s drink, or whoever’s it was supposed to be. Run-of-the-mill bullshit fuckery. Leo wanted to kill. He wanted to—he didn’t even know. Break every glass in that bar. Burn the whole place to the ground.

He ran his fingers through Finn’s hair instead. He’d been spending too much time with Logan, maybe. Or maybe he’d just been pretending they were all that different for too long.

Finn was warm and a little damp when he kissed his forehead. It made him stir, eyelashes fluttering, but he didn’t wake. Leo had been careful not to disturb the saline lines when he climbed in. One arm laid palm-side up on Leo’s thigh, the IV hidden from view by foggy tape. There was more color to him now. He was cooler to the touch. Finn was safe like this, held close to his chest.

Just too much bitters, I think. Had it been bitter, when it passed Finn’s lips? Was it salty, like dried sweat on fevered skin? Sweet and hidden?

“I’ll call—I’ll call Coach,” Logan said, hoarse in the silence. Leo nodded. “Mine, and—someone. Fucking. I’ll call someone.”

“Sirius.”

“Ouais.” Logan dragged his hands through his hair again, then down his face. He left them there. His expression was gone but his shoulders said everything Leo could ever want to hear. “I’ll. Yeah. The bar opens at five tomorrow. Today.”

Leo nodded.

--

“Wait, no, tell me another one.”

Leo laughs like rain. Big, big smile that dimples his cheeks on both sides, because the universe fucking loves Finn and gave him the opportunity to kiss this boy right here whenever he wants. Oh, he wants. He wants to the ends of the earth.

“Hmm…” He lays his head on Leo’s chest while he thinks. It’s a good place to exist for a while, in the slowness. “Oh, wait, this is a good one. We’d have morning practice at, like, fuck o’clock—”

“Mm, yes, very scientific.”

“I know. But we had night practice, too, and we ran so late one time, Le, I swear to god we got home at midnight. So Coach reschedules morning practice to just be a lift at, like, eight.”

“That’s so evil.”

“Well, I was still up at five-whatever—” Leo covers his eyes, exasperated, but peeks through his fingers. “—and I’m trying to be nice while I get my running stuff on, ‘cause there’s no way I’m going to be able to go back to sleep.”

He loves his part of the story. His face hurts from laughing already, half an hour deep into pillow-talk when they really should have been out of bed by now.

“I got all my clothes together and changed in the bathroom, got my sneakers on, got all the way to putting my wallet in my pocket,” he continues. “And then I sneak my way out the bathroom door, and who’s looking right at me?”

“Was it your scary roommate?”

“The scariest. Kwah?” Finn mimics, badly. “Where are we going?”

“We?!”

“We!” The drag of Leo’s fingers through his hair sends a pleasant shiver down his spine. “I didn’t set an alarm or anything, and Lo’s like, standing there in his pajamas, no shirt, blinking at me all slow like I’m going to make him come along.”

“Was he pouting? I love it when he pouts.”

“It was more of a…” Even after years of cherishing the exact expression Logan made, Finn knows he’ll never come close to the well-balanced blend of judgment, disappointment, resigned agreement, and sleepy sweetness Logan manages to nail in the earliest of hours. He shakes his head. “I was like, dude, you do not have to be awake right now. You are in a prison of your own making.”

“He went with you?”

“Complained the whole way through breakfast.”

Finn loves this story. He loves their bed, and the way Leo’s chest moves beneath him. He could stay in this moment for a long time.

--

“What?”

Logan didn’t want to say it again. He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to be here anymore. “He took the wrong drink. There was something in it.”

Noise in the background, somewhere below the muffled cursing. He was glad Remus was there, but it wasn’t Remus he was holding the phone with both hands for. “Fuck,” Sirius muttered. “Fuck. Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” His voice quavered against his will.

“Did you have any of it? I mean it, Logan, even a little bit.”

Logan shook his head. He could see their joined shadows through the thin curtain, and the sliver of Leo’s leg in the gap. “No.”

“You’re staying in the emergency room, right?’

“Yeah. They’re giving him fluids.”

“Okay.” A moment of whispering, a few mumbles. “Okay, I’ll come get you, don’t go anywhere.”

Oh thank god thank god thank god—“Don’t.”

“What?”

“You shouldn’t come.” He could feel his pulse in his ears when he leaned his head on the cold, pale wall. The fear was catching up, quick and paralyzing where there was only adrenaline before. He was so scared. He was so fucking scared. “It’s just waiting, now. And the media…we’re lucky we got here without any pictures. They said we just have to wait it out at this point and I—there’s not a lot of space.”

“Logan.”

“Please.” He swallowed down a lump. Pressed the phone closer to his face. “I don’t want to talk to more people.”

Sirius was quiet for a moment, save for his breathing. Logan closed his eyes and listened. He could pretend, for these minutes at least, that there wasn’t glass and a few hundred miles between them. “Okay,” Sirius said, softer. He didn’t sound happy, but he didn’t sound angry, either. Logan couldn’t handle it if he was. “Keep me updated. Call if you need anything at all. I’ll pick up.”

Logan wiped his nose on his shirtsleeve. “I know.”

“Is Leo there?”

“With Finn.”

“Put him on?”

Logan made sure the curtain gap was closed behind him when he stepped back into their little den. Sirius, he mouthed, and Leo didn’t hesitate before holding his hand out for the phone. His eyes shut; his head rested back on the flat hospital pillow, Finn still propped up against his chest.

“Yeah,” he said. “No, I didn’t.”

The police report was complete. Logan saw them drag the guy out as the ambulance doors were closing, but they wanted every possible account. He wasn’t sure how many more ways he could say they mixed up drinks and the love of my life dropped like a rock. He was less sure how an eighth retelling did more good than giving him five minutes alone in a room with the guy.

Leo’s next exhale wavered. “Thanks.”

Logan laced their fingers together in Finn’s lap and felt a squeeze. Finn’s heart was still beating fine. His blood oxygen was also fine, and his breathing rate, and all the other lines scribbled over the monitor by his bedside. It had been so dark in the club. It wasn’t until they got in the glaringly-white ambulance that Logan saw how terrible Finn looked, drawn and pallid, sweaty from more than dancing. His cheeks held more pink, now. Like he’d fallen asleep after an all-nighter.

He laid his head on Leo’s leg. A moment of adjustment; a hand in his hair. The cycle of blame and hatred kicked to life again, jarring his ribs.

“I will,” Leo promised. “No, I know, I—he is. Lo’s taking real good care of me, don’t worry. Ha. Well, not about me, then. I know. I know it is.”

He rolled his eyes, but Logan knew better. Sirius never really stopped being his captain. He was more than that. It was important. For Leo, it was more important than most.

“I will,” Leo repeated, quieter. “And you’ll tell Coach? I’m…I don’t want to come back without him. Okay. Good, okay.”

He’d been right there. Finn said he was sick, Logan just…he hadn’t thought to push. Dinner and drinks and kissing and dancing, and more kisses, kisses he’d keep close until their next visit. He let himself get lost. He let himself look away. He knew better. He hadn’t thought anyone would ever—

He hadn’t thought. That was the crux of it, when the hammer came down. Logan hadn’t even considered this as a possibility, too willing to blame jetlag and lure Finn in to make the most of these treasured nights. Not when Finn wavered into a kiss, and not when he got that first funny shadow-flicker of confusion.

“Thank you,” Leo said again, so soft. His hand laid heavy on Logan’s head. “We will.”

The tray table was too full of their things. Leo balanced the phone on his abandoned jacket. They sat. The monitor beeped. Gently, Finn breathed.

“He loves you. Wanted me to tell you.”

Logan knew that. It made his stomach writhe like a slug. He pressed his head harder to Leo’s leg and hip. Here, here, yours, yours.

“I hate this,” Leo whispered.

“Je sais.”

“I wanna go home, but—” Logan buried a flinch at the hitch of his voice. “I don’t know. I’m so glad we didn’t go home. Fuck. I’m so glad.”

Of course. The exact subject of Logan’s thoughts for a good hour. Finn dropping in an Uber, superimposed over his all-too-real memories of that bus ride back from Yale. Finn fought it then, too. He could have gone down in the subway and fallen onto Logan just like he did at 19. Maybe they would have started walking, and Finn would have collapsed on some random corner.

They’d barely made it to the highway, in college. Logan was too scared to dig around for good English while yelling for their coach and trying to shake Finn awake. It was a senseless blur in his recollection, only words and chaos. He wasn’t sure he sounded any different tonight,

He pushed his forehead against Leo’s hip, then sat up enough to kiss the back of his hand, his thumb, the knuckle of his first finger. Love you love you love you. “We’re okay,” he said quietly. Leo blinked down at him, not quite crying but not anywhere near alright. “We’re okay.”

--

Finn’s never leaving. Never ever. Try and find someone who could make him, see how well it works.

The tide rocks beneath him. The sun bakes Logan’s back. It’s turned Leo’s hair the color of cornsilk in the weeks they’ve been here, kissing him golden to welcome him home. Everything here loves him, from the warm wind to the river’s lazy flow.

His head is heavy on Finn’s shoulder, cuddled close despite the heat. Because of it, perhaps. He’s never asked.

“How do you sleep?”

He feels Leo blinking against his bare skin. “…what?”

“At home. No frogs. No screaming tree bugs. Little less wind.”

He feels Leo laugh; hears Logan’s follow. “I kind of famously don’t,” Leo answers, rolling half onto Finn to look down at him. His thumbpad brushes across the high of Finn’s cheek. “But I don’t know. The cars help, sometimes. And when we leave the windows open a bit.”

A blip of water splashes against the boat’s hull. He brings Leo back down to lay flat and trails his fingers down the long valley of his back. “We could get you one of those things,” he says, watching Logan arch into a stretch. “The noise machines.”

Leo hums. The best kind, and his approval sends a happy zinging pleasure through Finn’s whole nervous system. “You’re good to me, O’Hara. I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got.”

--

If the police wanted to talk to him, they’d have to come and do it themselves. Leo had said as much—probably too loud in his clenched-teeth panic—when they were loading Finn into the ambulance.

Thank the hockey gods and New York and gay bars six blocks from hospitals for Logan Tremblay. Leo wouldn’t have let Finn go for the fucking pope. He’d heard enough. Finn was unconscious by then, but he’d gone under holding Leo’s hand and he’d be goddamned if Finn woke up without it.

Don’t leave me. I’m scared.

Another tremor rattled him. Few and far between, this far in, but he hadn’t been able to shake them. Logan rubbed his knee and kept filling out their thousandth stack of paperwork one-handed.

“Do you need anything?” Leo managed to choke out.

Logan shook his head. He checked off a box, then gave Leo the tiniest and tightest of smiles through a kiss to his wrist. “Don’t worry. I know your birthday. Breathing?”

“Sounds better.”

Logan nodded.

He should be helping more, he thought. Logan had called 9-1-1, Logan had dragged the bouncer outside by the scruff of his jacket, Logan had shouted him down until security corralled some guy from the crowd, Logan had handled the cops when they followed the ambulance to the hospital to ask a million and one questions. If you don’t cuff him right now I will kill him with my hands on this sidewalk.

Between the three of them, Leo was sure they had bail money. If Logan didn’t want an accomplice, he could at least handle that part.

He hated waiting. He hated it so much. A good goalie was constantly watching and bracing for a change from one second to the next. He was very good. This endless limbo was hell, made so very personal.

Le, I don’t feel right. Le, I’m scared. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know.

--

Logan was going to fly off the face of the fucking planet, and Leo was just—Leo was just staring. Sea-blue had long since turned to something dull, fractured, standard as a passerby. Finn, lax in the cradle of his body and sleeping soundly, and Leo just staring until he wasn’t. Until the blue came back in the welling of sudden tears and he turned away to look at the other wall.

“Can you just—” It broke in his mouth. Logan didn’t know where to touch. He picked Leo’s shin to lay a hand on while Leo swiped roughly at his own cheeks. “Can you talk? I need—I need someone to talk. Please.”

“Ouais.” Logan rubbed a few gentle lines over denim. “What do you…about what?”

Leo’s lower lip trembled. Twin tears streaked down his face as he shook his head. He pressed the heel of his hand to one eye. “I don’t know. Anything you want.”

The silence was getting to Logan, too. It had a way of creeping, he thought, and choking out everything in its path. It had strangled Leo’s throat and then apparently gone straight for his heart. Logan was familiar with the feeling.

“I used to check his LinkedIn.”

It was a weird place to start. He regretted it immediately. But it must have been absurd enough to cut through the horrid gloom, because Leo managed a shuddering breath of what?

Logan nodded. “In the year we were…when I wasn’t talking to him. As much. It would come up on me and sit until I couldn’t breathe. You know the kind that scrapes, right in here?” He gestured to his ribs and chest. “It was so heavy that I didn’t even want to eat, really.”

The corners of Leo’s mouth turned down. But it was a sympathy frown, sad but normal, and Logan had never been so glad to see it.

“I’d sit there and—” He shook his head. “Be stupid. And I’d open my computer with a whole new private browser window, and clear all my history after, too. Like I was fucking…watching porn, or something.”

Leo was shaking again. It took Logan a second to realize he was laughing, one hand covering his eyes. “Jesus fuck, Logan.”

“I’m serious,” he said, and it was actually a stroke of genius to pick something funny-sad because he couldn’t take another second of Leo looking like that. “I’d sit there with my back to the wall and just look at him. I graduated from Harvard University in 2018 with—”

“Stop, stop, oh my god, I’ll wake him up.”

“—hoo-hoo, high honors,” Logan finished, pitching his voice back down. “He looked so fucking hot in his picture, too. I took it. It was from the fall.”

Finn O’Hara. B.A. in English Literature, Harvard University. Red hair, red trees, red sweatshirt, red cheeks and ears from the wind. They’d been walking back from breakfast, the zipper of Finn’s bag jangling. The career center’s not homework. No way. What, you sit there with your resumé and talk about what you want to be when you grow up? What the hell are you gonna need a job search for, Mr. Up and Coming? Me, on the other hand…come on, Lo, think you can sneak me in? I’ll have a headshot and everything, real pretty.

In the hospital bed, far from Harvard and autumn, Leo made a contemplative noise. “Is it still up?”

“Is this your slutty Batman, part two?”

“Yeah.”

“He changed it.” Frankly, Logan had to agree with Leo’s immediate sigh of disappointment. It was a great picture. “End of his rookie year, when they extended his contract. I almost cried.”

“Aw, Lo.”

“Not actually, but kind of.” He gestured vaguely. Leo got it. “The sitting thing. You know.”

“Yeah.”

“I haven’t checked it since.”

Leo pressed his lips together. It wasn’t okay (not a single bit of this was okay), but there was something like a smile there, so Logan would survive the night. He kissed his fingertips and touched them to Leo’s shin. Leo rolled one sneaker over until it bumped his arm in return. “My poor, freaky little business major,” he murmured. “Tough to lose your extremely personalized and niche porno.”

“It was,” Logan agreed, folding his arms over Leo’s leg and laying his head on top.

“Thank you.”

Logan planted a kiss right on the denim of his pants. He could feel both their warmth like this. Leo’s hand remained over Finn’s heart; the other, draped around his waist to keep him close and stable. He was breathing steadily. The fever-flush had gone from him, and the sick pallor too.

“He didn’t believe I had to go to the career center as homework.”

Leo looked at him for a long, long moment. Then he settled back into the pillows, checking that Finn’s head and shoulders stayed supported. Finn’s chest—he could see it rising, the soft sleep of medication kept light by the monitors beside them. His heart beat the calmest rhythm Logan ever saw. Beneath his hand, Leo was still tense. The next exhale took a whisper of it away.

“He thought I was making it up,” Logan continued. “But as soon as he figured out I was telling the truth, he made me take him along. I was already running late. Took his picture by a tree outside the library, ‘cause he didn’t have a headshot and didn’t want some wall as the background.”

“So you tortured yourself looking at it for a year.”

“Three years.” He drew a faint arc over the pale skin of Leo’s ankle, then another, connecting them in a loop. “Percy made me make a dating app profile after Cassie, did I ever tell you? He put my headshot on it.”

“From…”

“Same day.” Leo’s slight huff was sweet like caramel. Logan pulled a swirl over the fine arch of his Achilles tendon. “Mine was against a wall, because I had a rubric to follow. So there were all these pictures of fucking…parties, and hockey, and then me in the worst lighting you’ve ever seen.”

“Christ.”

“It was so bad. And I hated those stupid apps, too.”

“Yeah, you would,” came the fondest of answers.

“I don’t like meeting strangers, I don’t care that much what people look like—”

“And you had your very professional pinup available 24/7, so…”

“I’m going to end you,” Logan laughed, and he was losing the battle of keeping himself quiet in this awful bustling place but it was okay because Leo was, too, both red in the face with the effort of containing their hysteria. It was one of the worst nights of Logan’s life. It was the best 1:17 a.m. he’d ever had.

--

Laughter in the kitchen.

Logan’s legs swinging, heels knocking the cupboard doors while Leo torments him in their funny little game of cat-and-mouse Finn will never understand but loves like breathing. Kind of like their French, now that he thinks about it. The two of them trade roles with seamless precision. One moment, it’s Leo holding a perfect piece of cheese and honey hostage, and the next, Logan’s thieving hands on half the things Leo was using, from a butter knife to a quarter of a raw shallot.

One moment, it’s Logan’s blunt fingernails dragging marks down Leo’s back and shoulders, and the next, those same hands pinning Leo to the bed until he can hardly breathe from the easy pleasure of it all.

Finn thinks, distantly, that he should be getting hard at that thought. They’re laughing together, just a few feet away. He should get up and go to them. It’s hard to move away from this bookcase, though. He was doing something. The thought of turning from it petrified him at the time.

Cold, then too hot. Did they have the window open? Had the radiator burnt him when he bent to get a book? The dark outside frightened him, and the concrete below. He remembers falling. Probably the radiator, then. Tripping over the carpet in just the wrong place.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing here. They’re in the kitchen, happy. Whatever he left out here, he doesn’t need it.

There—in the corner, below the window. Confusion and fear.

The kitchen will be warm. He won’t be alone there, they’d never let anything happen to him, and the small childish part of Finn’s brain has him moving before he even decides to do it. It’s warm, and they’re laughing, they’ll be waiting for him to—

“Easy, easy.”

Finn couldn’t stop moving.

“Easy, honey, shh.” Leo’s voice. Not laughing anymore, but he was, he was, Finn was so sure.

“Burning.” Finn’s mouth was all wrong, all wrong. “Burned, too dark. Kitchen.”

“Okay. Okay, slow down.”

He watched his own leg bend and straighten in a failed attempt to stand—which would be a bad idea, he understood with a suddenness, because he was not on the ground and would very rapidly find himself there if he were to try and get up. His arms moved, lurching and awkward.

“Stop,” Leo said, gentle despite the iron of his hands coming around to hold Finn tighter to him.

The pressure—pressure was good. Pressure was divinity. Finn shuddered so hard his teeth knocked together, but his arms went slack before his eyes.

“Kitchen house,” he said, but shook his head right away. That wasn’t right and he knew it. “Apartment. Home.”

One of Leo’s hands rubbed his upper arm. “We’re in the hospital, sweetheart. Slow down.”

Goddamnit goddamnit—

“You’re in the house.” Tears in his voice. Horrifying. Probably the same ones clogging his throat when he took a shaky breath. “Hear you kitchen. With together. Fell, caught me.”

“Finn.” Hands on his cheeks. He closed his eyes and prayed that Logan would smudge away this terrible mass of cotton-headed mush-mouthed nonsense, but Logan only brushed his thumbs across his cheekbones a few times before holding Finn’s face still in both palms. “Rouge. Can you hear me?”

He nodded.

“Can you see me?”

He nodded.

“You need to open your eyes, mon beau.” Another dash of touch across his undereye, where he hardly felt any friction. He blinked his eyes open. Everything, absolutely everything, hurt.

Finn sniffled. “Can’t feet. Feel. Can’t feel feet.”

A sentence. Fucking finally.

Logan was smiling at him, all kinds of encouraging, but the blinkers in the back of Finn’s head that lived forever on Logan’s frequency were going gangbusters. He just…he couldn’t. He leaned back into the safe cove of Leo’s chest. The pressure on his arms and chest alleviated. It was only a hug, really. Not much of a restraint at all.

“You okay?” Leo asked it just for him, low-soft like midnight and humming deep in his chest, right where Finn’s shoulder blade sat. Finn was pretty sure he was fine. He kind of felt like he was dying, though.

They weren’t even in a special room or anything. Curtains all the way down, with printed flowers that did little to ease the pulsing white light from above. As his hearing returned, he heard wheels and voices, and someone speaking over an intercom far enough that he couldn’t make out the words. It was a tiny bed. Not built for someone like Leo, certainly not with Finn laying on him like a dead fish. The barest beginnings of embarrassment heated him. Did he ask Leo to cram himself in for a cuddle?

It struck him then, belatedly—he really had no clue what they were doing here. Everything hurt and throbbed and ached like a bruise, sure, but he didn’t see so much as a bandaid. They’d been out for date night. He was still wearing his own clothes, even if his shirt was unbuttoned.

Oh, god.

“Finn?” Logan looked alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

“What?” Leo asked.

Logan’s hand rubbed at his leg, a little too hard and fast to be comfortable. “He’s turning really red—Harzy, can you still hear me?”

That would be the abject humiliation and mortification, Finn thought. Great work, skin. Top notch. “Logan,” he started, very very quietly. It made no difference (he was fully melted into Leo) but there was only one person in the room who had ever seen him truly wasted, and he couldn’t take any more embarrassment than he already felt.

Logan’s “yeah” was barely a breath.

“Did I drink too much?”

“No.”

Relief. Sweet, blessed relief. Finn didn’t even hear whatever Logan said next—he was too busy dropping his head back on Leo’s shoulder. Leo, who he could face again knowing he did not black out on date night and then coerce him into cuddling in a hospital bed. Which…

Woah, that meant they were in the hospital hospital. Finn sat up. His vision wobbled and bubbled. “I’m here,” he said decisively. “You’re here. I’m—guys, I’m sorry, I’m really fucked up.”

Leo’s hand came to rest between his shoulders. His other brought a small plastic bowl to rest on his thigh. “Did you hear what Lo said?”

His ear was ringing. Just the one, like he went swimming and got water all in it. Finn shook his head.

“Someone put something in your drink.”

It took him a minute. Too many heavy thoughts, too little brain to spare. “What,” he laughed. “What, like a fucking roofie?”

“Ouais,” Logan said quietly. “Exactly.”

Finn shook his head again. Then he leaned forward and set it right in his hands, blocking out the worst of that terrible overhead lighting. “Oh, shit.”

“They don’t think it was meant for you.” Leo’s hand came around, and the rest of him pressed flat to Finn’s back. “You grabbed that girl’s drink by accident, and it was probably intended for her. They got the guy right after you…went under.”

Brunette. Pretty, with big eyes and a lot of jewelry. Finn couldn’t remember a word she’d said to him. Went under. “Did it happen inside?”

A beat of quiet. “You said you didn’t feel good,” Logan filled in. “We were about to get an Uber when it hit. Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.”

He had that rasp, all kinds of worry and upset buried under sandpaper. Finn had heard it before, in settings very much like this. A kiss found the back of his neck. “I’m so glad we didn’t get in that fucking car,” Leo murmured against his skin.

“Was it bad?” He didn’t remember feeling sick. Come to think of it, he barely remembered the ride to the bar. It sieved out with the rest of the night into too-smooth patches and blurs. Did he throw up? He hoped not.

“It was scary,” Logan answered. “Very scary.”

“Is the girl okay?”

“She’s fine.”

“Is she—I mean, that’s insane, she’s out with friends and some guy spikes her drink?” Finn didn’t even know people did that anymore. Stupid of him, maybe, but it’s not like he’d take them to some seedy dive bar with a bunch of creeps. This was downtown Gryffindor. Bouncers and everything. He raked a hand through his hair and winced at the pressure in his head. “This is fucking crazy. And she’s okay? They talked to her?”

“She went right to the owner when she saw it was you. Gave them the whole story.”

Finn sort of wished she’d give him the rundown, next. “That’s…who even does that? Did the owners apologize? They should give her something. I mean, maybe no free drinks, I just—that’s insane. And they got the guy, right?”

“Yes.” Logan was looking at him all weird again, but with less of the clear fear that Finn was actively dying and more like Finn said something wild. Which wasn’t unusual, but he was pretty sure he was making sense again. Finn watched him look at Leo and back.

“What?”

Leo kissed the space below his ear. “I think everyone was a little more worried about you, Harz.”

“Well, I’m—fine, I think.” He could lift his arms without enormous effort again, which was pretty great. “I mean. Like, everything kind of hurts, but I’ll be fine. I’m glad it…yeah, she could have been hurt really bad.”

“If we weren’t with you, you would have hit the ground.” The sudden flatness of it, the firm punch behind every word, shocked Finn from his pinwheel thoughts. Logan held his gaze, not sweet and searching but so utterly focused it made his skin tingle. It was like looking into the center of a lightning storm. Logan, in true Logan fashion, gave him no ground. “They were worried you’d seize in the ambulance.”

Finn’s world jerked on its axis.

“If you’d—” Logan stopped, lips going tense at the edges.

Leo shifted. His chin hooked over Finn’s shoulder, and his arms, wrapped around Finn’s waist, gave a squeeze. “There was a lot in that drink,” he said simply. “Too much.”

Oh.

Finn watched one of the pink flowers flutter in a sea of orange and yellow. That poor girl. She wasn’t built like him. She wouldn’t have known to stop. It would have hit her so much harder, and Finn might not have known the guy but she definitely did. She didn’t have Leo and Logan. She could have been hurt. A seizure—she could have died. “Is she pressing charges?”

“No, cher, I think they’re wondering if you are.”

It caught up to him, then, with a little bit too much clarity. Finn started to nod along because, wow, alright, understood, and found he couldn’t stop. At all. He was nodding, and reaching back to twist Leo’s shirtsleeve in his hand all while grabbing for Logan and the world was getting really blurry all over again.

Leo’s next exhale wavered. “We’re really lucky you didn’t drink all of it.”

He’d wanted to dance with Leo, the way they liked. Bring him in close with hands in Leo’s back pockets and kiss him pretty ‘til Leo called him sweet and good and smiled, bright enough to stun half the room but meant for Finn alone. He’d wanted to sit Logan on his lap and do rather crass things to the cord of his necklace before tasting rum-sugar off his lips. He’d wanted date night. To go home tripping over each other, not in drunken stupors, but in their eagerness to be as close as they could manage. Just—date night. The way he liked it.

He didn’t even know that guy.

Logan held onto him so tight he could hardly breathe. It was just fine with Finn.

--

6:50 in the morning. Logan checked the time only once, as they pulled into the parking garage and turned the car off in silence. He hadn’t been out that late in years. He’d never been this tired.

He turned the water on hot. Finn didn’t fight it when Logan helped him out of his shirt, then his belt. Leo was already in the shower by the time he stepped in, watching them through the ever-gathering steam. His blue. Logan tucked his nose into the divot of Leo’s throat and breathed until his hands stopped shaking on Finn’s shoulder.

There wasn’t much else to say, he thought. Harvard stories and Finn stories and home stories until Finn woke up, then that story. Too many doctors through it all, too many questions. It was a quiet shower. They all cried a little more before the need to sleep overwhelmed the need to blast every remnant of the night off them.

Logan didn’t need to say a thing for Finn to slip between them and open both arms. They were on him in the span of a breath, polar sides of a magnet, and Leo’s leg stretched across the breadth of Finn’s body to lock around the back of Logan’s knee with lethal decisiveness. Their bed was cold. Logan could feel him shivering. If he thought about it hard enough, maybe his internal furnace would get the memo to kick it up a notch.

It worked, eventually. He hadn’t stopped looking at them.

Finn twisted in the arc of Leo’s tight spoon to stare at him for a long moment, then kissed his forehead, his nose, his mouth. One tug, and Logan was pressed impossibly tighter to his front. He got a kiss, kiss, kiss, too. Then Finn closed his eyes and burrowed deeper into the blankets.

“I love you,” he whispered, though it was only them and the closed bedroom door. He sounded exhausted. “Thank you.”

Leo didn’t say a thing. The length of him cocooned Finn’s back, their heads on the same pillow. His arm laid loose but protective between Finn’s stomach and Logan’s. He kissed the back of Finn’s head once more.

Blue. Logan stared back. He combed his fingers through Finn’s fox-soft hair. “Je t’aime.” He moved to the burst of freckles above the point of Finn’s nose. “Je t’aime. Je t’aime.”

He finished with his favorite: the littlest one, hidden at the edge of Finn’s lip. He lingered. Seven and a half hours in the emergency room, and Finn’s mouth was still soft on his own. He felt Finn’s breathing begin to deepen and pulled back. Not far. Never far. Finn fell asleep gently, tucked into the softness between them.

Logan waited until he was sure, then brought two fingers to his mouth and pressed the kiss-laden pads to the rounded arc of Leo’s upper lip. He got one in return, laid on his knuckles like a gift. More importantly, there was a light in the deep blue again, sun of a new day dappling the surface. “Merci,” he mouthed more than whispered. Leo settled onto Finn’s pillow. His hand kept Logan’s beneath the covers. It gave a single perfect squeeze.

A breath between them made them both sit up in an instant. “Don’t tell my mom,” Finn mumbled, half-buried in the pillow. Then he groaned, brows pitching. “Don’t tell Alex.”

Logan blinked down at him, then looked to Leo, who was pinching the bridge of his nose hard enough to turn the skin white. “Rouge, I love you, but I am telling Alex everything immediately.”

“Fuck.”

“Sirius already knows.”

“Fuck.”

Leo smoothed his palm over Finn’s head and shoulder, then rolled him onto his back. “We are going to care about you,” he said firmly. “You are going to let people help. Alex is hearing about this the minute we’re done sleeping this off.”

Finn shook his head. “No, Le, he’s gonna kill someone—”

“Yeah, Lo already tried.”

“I wish I succeeded,” Logan added. It had been a good threat, and an honest one. He would have liked to follow through on it.

Logan leans back, laughing, like he’s going to splay out and look up at the stars the way they so often do—and in their haze, it seems they both forget how full the bottle clutched to his chest actually is. Finn reaches out too late. Whiskey sloshes over Logan’s neck and collarbones, making him startle and yelp and sit up, arms out, baffled.

They break down again. There’s nothing for it.

“Merde,” Logan mutters, setting the bottle down with too much care. He swipes at the few droplets on his arms and sleeves, looks down at himself, and sighs. The flannel comes off with only a bit of struggle. He’s left in a white tee with a gaudy moose on the back, Bienvenue! stretching over its head and between his shoulders. His necklace falls out the soaked neckline when he leans forward to assess the damage.

“It’s not so bad,” Finn remarks.

Logan’s nose crinkles at the side. “Sorry. I know it’s a nice bottle.”

It’s true—Finn used his Christmas money for it. But he bought it just for this. For them. For the roof.

Looking at Logan shake his shirt out, he can’t imagine it would look better in any other place.

“Here,” he says, reaching across the (always too) small space between them, shrugging his own overshirt off as he goes. He daubs at Logan’s arm (hot so hot always so hot) and presses cotton to his chest, drinking in the tang of alcohol on the night breeze. It’s warm, for spring. He can smell the undertones of the whiskey on Logan’s skin.

This close, he can see porch-light reflecting off the dampness on Logan’s neck, not yet evaporated. A bit dribbles down into the hollow of his throat, past the thick cord of his necklace, vanishing into the wet patch above his collarbone. It’s good whiskey. He can hardly imagine how it would be to taste it off Logan. To take fabric between his teeth and drink every drop, then fix his mouth to the warm skin beneath.

Finn looks, and for a moment, it’s devastation.

He looks, and it’s Logan.

Green eyes, calm and quiet and deeper than the deepest sea. A sharp jaw begging to be kissed, to be bitten. Lips curled in what would be a wry grin if it wasn’t so him. He doesn’t flinch. It’s so much worse. They’re so close like this. They’re always too close.

“Finn.”

Finn fights the flutter of his eyes and feels the breath in his lungs go still. Logan’s voice around his name—not Harzy, ‘arzy, mon ami—and nobody home. Nobody’s home, not really. Just Percy, and Will, and maybe Dylan. A couple of the guys who haven’t left for break. Maybe even Cole, but he’s supposed to leave in the morning, he wouldn’t be out tonight, wouldn’t see if Finn finally collapsed under the tingling gooseflesh weight of that voice on his name. Yours-and-yours-and-yours, his heart beats. He would roll Logan onto his back, he thinks. Right here on the shingles. He’d kiss him until he couldn’t taste the alcohol, just Logan and spit and body and Logan. They really didn’t have that much. Not at all. He’d die for just a moment of it.

“Harzy.”

‘arzy.

Does he want Finn’s heart on a plate? He’ll give it to him now, with a shot to chase it. Oh, god, he can’t take another moment of this rib-clenching want in the night and his name. He wants to make Logan laugh like that again, loud, free, just to kiss it from his lips.

Logan looks sober. And sad.

Finn wants to apologize. His mouth is numb and empty. “Is that better?” he asks, ragged.

“Ouais,” Logan whispers back. The silence, the silence. Please please please please. “We should go inside. You’re drunk.”

Finn shakes his head. Please please pleasepleaseplease.

“I’m cold.”

He could cry. He could fucking cry. Would Logan break if he did? “I’ll get a blanket.”

That’s the thing of it all, that’s the fucking thing, is he can see it all over Logan’s face and his wildfire eyes and the unhappy curve of his mouth. He wouldn’t tell Finn no, if he took the cord of his necklace between his teeth and sucked it clean. He wouldn’t push him away if his neckline followed, and god knows he wouldn’t tear Finn a new one for kissing whiskey off his skin. He loved it when Finn took the sea-salt off him like that in France. He fucking loved it. The way he smiled—the way he held Finn.

Logan’s gaze flickers over his face. Finn braces for it. Digs his skates in hard.

“Okay.”

That’s…Finn stumbles over his own thoughts. He blinks. Logan’s expression does a funny thing, not quite agony, not quite a smile. He nods, once, just a dip of his chin.

“That would be nice.”

“Okay,” Finn says, too quiet to his own ears.

Logan takes the whiskey bottle by the neck and moves it away from the edge. “Okay.”

Finn slips in through their window, somehow. He’s not hammered but he feels like it, sweaty-cold with a pounding pulse. He scrubs both hands through his hair and folds them at the back of his neck, pushing hard on the pressure points there. He rests his head on his desk and tries to remember how to breathe. Cool wood. The sounds of a late, late dinner for one downstairs, and a party three or four streets down.

Dawn

“Good morning, baby.” The soft trace of her fingertip down his nose made his smile hard to hide. “Good morning, I knew you were in there. How’re you feeling?”

The back of her hand was gentle on his cheek. Warm as the sun, just barely coming in through his curtains. Leo pressed into it and heard his mother laugh. “Mama,” he mumbled, burying his face back into his blankets. “Do I have to go to school?”

“What’s that, baby?”

Leo huffed, then wriggled up the bed until his mouth was free again. “Do I have to go to school?”

His mother hesitated long enough to give him hope, but the pursing of her lips quickly dashed it. “Yes.”

He groaned into his pillow and made sure it was loud enough to hear the first time.

“You were so excited last week!”

He burrowed down deeper, like the bullfrogs in the riverbank behind grandma’s house. If he went deep enough, they’d never be able to get him out. He’d croak and grumble and—

“All your friends are going to be big kindergarteners without you if you don’t.”

It was a good first croak. His second was even better.

“You get to tell them all about visiting Auntie Faye.”

“What if my head hurts?”

Her hand, petting through the top of his hair, stopped short. “Your head hurts?”

“…no.”

“Leo Nolan Knut.”

Leo peeked out of the blankets. He didn’t think bullfrogs had mothers that said their full names like that. She was in her running clothes still, all good mornings gone out the window with the stern narrowing of her blue eyes.

“I’m going to rinse,” she said. “And your butter beans and that head o’ yours better be downstairs by the time I’m done.”

“Yes, mama.”

“That joke isn’t funny.”

“Yes, mama.”

“And you better have your sleep clothes in the basket. I see them on the floor again and they’re going out the dang window.”

“Yes, mama.”

She had started petting him again, in the quiet way grandma did when they sat together on the porch swing. She kissed his forehead before standing and heading for the hall, stretching her arms high like the lions they’d seen at the zoo on Tuesday.

“Mama?”

“Hmm?”

“Do bullfrogs have full names?”

“Yes, baby, go ask your daddy about it.”

-

His father did not, in fact, know the names of the bullfrogs in their yard. Or grandma’s; Leo made sure to check. It was a crying shame, all things considered. “I’ll ask them after school,” he assured his father.

“You do that.”

“It’s important.” If he slumped low and stretched his feet way down, the tips of his sneakers almost touched the kitchen floor. “What’re you doing today?”

“Going to work.”

Leo wrinkled his nose. “You always go to work. Can we go on the boat?”

“You still want to go on that thing?” His father gave him a funny look, exasperated and fond and lost for words all at once. His brows pinched the way they did whenever he looked at Leo’s forehead, even though the cut was mostly covered by his hair, now. Leo hadn’t liked having shaved-short hair at all.

He liked the boat, though. It wasn’t the windshield’s fault that he fell. “Yeah,” he answered. “Can we go?”

“You got school. And bullfrogs.”

“That won’t take all day,” he explained. Lord, his parents didn’t know anything.

His father laughed into his coffee, like Leo had said something funny. “You’d be surprised.”

“Can you go to school with me?”

“I already went to school, they don’t want me back.”

“What if there’s snakes?”

“They got as much of a right to an education as you do.”

Leo frowned and dragged mazes through melted butter with the end of his toast. They had picked out his first-day-of-school clothes together last night before bedtime, but he could already tell he’d sweat through his shirt. The kitchen was getting hotter by the minute. “Daddy?”

“Yessir.”

“What if I sweat at school?”

That gave his father pause. “Well,” he started, then thought a moment longer. “You want to bring an extra shirt with you?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“Wyatt Knut, your son thinks he’s funny,” his mother announced as she entered the room. Her hair was free of its ponytail and had been blown into big curls, clipped back out of her eyes but otherwise free in a golden cloud. Leo thought she looked like a princess when she wore her hair like that. Magnolia filled his nose when she pressed a hard kiss to the top of his head. “Couillon.”

“Hey,” he whined.

“Apparently, we’re making jokes about our little incident on the boat now.” She took her coffee cup from the table, right where his father left it every day, and sat on the edge of his lap to get her kiss.

His father raised his eyebrows. “Oh, we are?”

“Apparently.”

“I got in trouble for it,” Leo informed him.

His mother was already up again, buzzing between the stove and her purse and the sink to do half a dozen chores one-handed. Leo finished the last bite of his toast just as his father leaned toward him, both elbows on the table. “You know that was serious, don’t you?”

“Mhm.”

“And you could’ve been real hurt? And that your mama and I were scared?”

“Yessir.”

“Alright.” With a last sip of his coffee, he checked his watch and made the same surprised sound he’d made each morning since Leo could remember. “Go on and get your bag, then, we’ve got a bit of a drive.”

-

Noon

The Gryffindor Lions are proud to select, from New Orleans, Louisiana, goaltender Leo Knut…

He had a jersey. He had a hat.

He had a team.

He had—pictures, somewhere. Someone had them. Leo fit his fingertips between the stitched letters of his name that stretched across thick red fabric, short and blunt and ink-black in the strange light of their seats. His past, his present. At long, long last, his future. A real one.

He couldn’t speak anymore. Thank you yes sir very excited thank you sir nice to meet you sir yes sir I can stand right there yes thank you. Yes, they had taken pictures; he’d have to find them later. He hoped he didn’t look as insane as he felt. Oh, god. He really hadn’t had a backup plan at all, had he?

“Leo?”

He nodded. Yes sir thank you sir.

“Leo, baby?” The hand on his back gave a firm rub. His mother’s voice was shaky with emotion, and when he finally managed to turn his head, her smile was, too. He collapsed into her without a thought for the arm of the too-small auditorium chair between them. It pushed into his lower stomach and he only held her tighter, his jersey in one hand and her shirtsleeve clutched in the other.

From New Orleans, Louisiana, goaltender Leo Knut. He was the first one, the very first. Not just from New Orleans—the whole damn state. The thought paralyzed him. “It’s just me.”

“Oh, baby, no, you’re so talented.” His mother squeezed him tight. “There’s no just you. They all know it.”

He shook his head, even though it was buried in her shoulder. “No, I mean—I mean I’m the only one. From home. It’s just me.”

Her breath caught, trembling and shallow. Her palm ran down the back of his head and rested warm on his neck. He was five years old, soaking in clear April afternoons between thunderstorms so big they shook the house. He inhaled. It burned. They were calling someone else’s name, now.

Those boys on the stage could talk all day about frozen ponds and fresh October ice. Not one of them knew how the lake steamed in the earliest mornings. How it felt to roll down the highway past alligators sunning themselves in the last bit of daylight. How the trees turned to ghosts before the sun woke them. Did they know what it was like, packing fifty pounds of gear at four o’clock in the morning so they could make it to practice by six?

Sick, dude, you’re from L.A.? Ohh, Louisiana, my bad, my bad. Hey, we’re hitting Tim’s, you want anything?

Leo hadn’t known. He’d turned a thousand shades of red when Tyler with the frosted tips (not drafted yet, Leo beat him, and he had to admit he was a little proud) explained the tradition. Because that was a tradition, for these boys. They didn’t have ice cream after games. They had hot chocolate and coffee from a place that didn’t exist in Leo’s half of the world, and doughnuts baked hot enough to thaw their frozen mouths.

One hundred years, and the NHL had never seen a player from Louisiana. Hey-I’m-K.D.-from-Tampa had laughed at his accent that morning over the shitty hotel breakfast. Well, boy howdy, ain’t it nice ta-meetcha, pardner. He hadn’t been called up, yet, either. Fucker.

One hundred years. Leo figured they’d never had a player like him in a couple different ways, some easier to hide than others. He was already strange in their spotlight-blinded eyes, not that anyone looked close enough to see. Maybe they assumed everyone from New Orleans wore bracelets. It would be hilariously easy to make them believe it. He couldn’t be the only one, could he? Was that too much to ask? He’d do it, he was ready, he just…it was just a lot. To be alone like that. It had been a lot for a long time.

A touch to his elbow made him jump. He ducked his head down at his mother’s beckon. Her crystal-blue eyes were bright and happy; she’d worn her going-out perfume. “We’re so proud of you,” she whispered. Her thumb brushed the side of his face. “All of us. So proud, baby.”

They could laugh over tasteless bacon and bland waffles all they wanted. He was a Lion for this year, at least. They wouldn’t be laughing by the end of it.

-

Dusk

The rush. The sudden fall. The empty buzz.

Leo slowed to a stop and leaned his head on the wall. Cold. Every fucking thing was cold, here. Stilled into stasis, so far from the heat that soothed him through the thick of summer.

What a fucking nightmare. What a horror show.

He found his parents in the family box. It was just them and Finn’s folks left, now—Haley saw him before anyone else and took her husband by the loop of his belt, tugging him toward the door with a tilt of her head and kind, smiling goodbyes for Leo’s own family. His mother gave her a kiss on each cheek. When she turned, she knew right where to look.

Leo fell into her arms with the last bit of strength in his worn-down body.

“We’re so proud,” she said, holding him hard. “You were exceptional. Absolutely incredible.”

Leo shuddered.

His mother sighed. “I’m so sorry, baby. This is a hard one.”

He nodded. He couldn’t speak. He’d used all the words up in the interminable interviews. Sometimes you miss things, he remembered saying. Sometimes it doesn’t go your way. I wish I had made a couple of better saves out there, for sure.

He hadn’t said the rest, but he wanted to. He figured they heard it anyway. I wish I had been better. I wish I had been better. I wish—

“Can I come home?”

The tears were there. He didn’t know when they had come, hot and quick. Sometime between his mother rubbing his back and the comforting weight of his father’s presence beside them. He heard the plea in his own fragile voice and it rubbed terribly at the raw thing inside him.

“Oh.” His mother, again. A sound like she couldn’t help it. “My Leo, oh, baby, of course you can. You can always come home, don’t you ever doubt that for a minute.”

“I don’t want to talk to people,” Leo mumbled into her shoulder. She was wearing a shirt with his name and number in red-gold sparkles. He was ruining it. He squeezed his eyes shut tight and felt twin tears run down his nose, soaking into cotton. “I don’t want more questions.”

“No questions,” she promised. “Not from us.”

He felt small. Tired and sore. “When can we go?”

“Any time you want.”

Now. Right now. No more cameras. No more sad eyes. He couldn’t look at Kasey. And—he didn’t want to look at Logan. Another wave hit him hard. He was so awful. He was bad for Logan. Maybe Logan was bad for him. He didn’t even know, anymore. He couldn’t take another second of wrecked, guilty green.

But thank god he was guilty. Thank god Logan looked as wrecked as Leo felt.

Lord, he was a terrible person.

“I just wanna be home,” he croaked. “For—for a little while.”

“Alright.”

He needed to burn, for a while. To breathe and have it warm him with thick summer steam. He needed to let the river take this weight all the way to the delta’s sprawl, and pour it into the sea. Thick butter, spice that made him sweat this terrible thing out like a fever, his grandmother’s tea to gentle the sweetness back into this hollow ache inside. He needed her. He needed them. His own tongue betrayed him when he listened back to his interviews.

Leo let himself be held a moment longer. “Tomorrow?”

“Hmm?”

“Can we go tomorrow?” It was over, but it wasn’t finished.

His mother passed a hand between his shoulders. “Sure, baby, whenever you want.”

“I need to say bye.” Was this a goodbye? No, he thought. No, he didn’t want that. A see you later. A see you soon. He hadn’t said goodbye to Logan. They’d be waiting for him. “To Finn,” he added, straightening up and blinking in the light. “And—and Logan.”

Her lips pursed. “You sure?”

Leo tried for a smile. “Isn’t he your favorite?”

“We’ll see.”

That made him laugh, at last. Snotty and weak, but it was there and it was real. He heard her mutter something like one damn phone call as he turned to his father next and let him drag him close, one big palm over the back of his head. Leo’s forehead nestled into his shoulder like every memory he’d ever had. If he closed his eyes, he could smell salt on the breeze, stained forever in his father’s shirtsleeves.

He could breathe again. It was hard. He could do it. “I’ll pack,” he said into the fabric of his own jersey, the one he signed for them last summer in what would have been a joke if not for the pride in his father’s eyes. “I’ll pack, I’ll say goodbye. Maybe stay the night. I can meet you at your hotel in the morning.”

They were quiet for a few beats. Probably doing that thing they did, with the eye contact over his head (or shoulder, once he grew). He did that with Finn sometimes, in crowded rooms.

Oh, Finn.

“I think we’d like to say goodbye to your boys, too,” his mother ventured. “Would that be okay?”

Leo lifted his head. “Really?”

“Well, yeah,” she laughed, then cupped his cheek with a small sound. “Oh, you poor thing, you’re all red. We don’t have to. There’ll be other times.”

And because it was over, because he could feel his feet on the ground again, because for the first time in months he could split it all into something resembling a neat pattern—Leo took a second to think. About Finn, and Logan. Home. He wanted to lie down in Finn’s bed, their bed, his and Finn’s for more than a year, now. It smelled like him all along one side. He liked to roll over and curl up in it once Finn had left for his morning run.

“Okay,” he said. “Yeah. They’ll drive me over in the morning, and then take us to the airport. We’ll all fit in the car.”

He thought for a few moments more, because he could. They waited for him.

“I’m not bringing a lot.” The honesty of it surprised him. “Just stuff for a couple days, I think.”

“Okay.” The good kind of brightness had returned to his mother’s eyes. She squeezed his upper arm. “You’ve got some clothes at home, still, but I’m not sure they’d fit you anymore.”

“I missed you.”

It left him in a rush. He didn’t know why he said it, but he needed to, like his heart needed to beat. It had been hiding somewhere under his tongue next to rolling vowels and loping French. His father’s brows pitched. Leo wiped his nose on his sleeve.

“I just,” he started again. He didn’t know where he was going with this. He shrugged. “I miss you, when I’m here. Even with everything. And I’m really upset, and I’m really glad you’re here.”

Razor edges in his lungs wore down to dullness. When his father pulled him over again and kissed the top of his head, right where Leo knew his hair slid from gold to pale gray, he let it ache, and he let it soften.

-

Dawn

Finn was attempting to escape. Five minutes ago, Leo had dedicated his whole entire seven a.m. self to making sure that did not happen under any circumstances. Finn may not have known that in so many words, but the point was rapidly becoming clear to him. Smart boy. He learned fast.

“Le,” Finn finally laughed, quiet. He cast a darting glance at the lump keeping Leo’s back warm before looking down at him. Bambi, indeed. Soft and doe-eyed as a teeny-tiny speckled baby creature. He wondered if Finn would let him pet his ears. The thought marinated when he closed his eyes, Finn’s lips leaving quick pecks on the bridge of his nose and each cheek. “I was going to bring you some coffee in bed.”

Leo hummed at him. In the bend of his arm, Finn’s thigh gave a twitch. His opposite wrist was still firmly entangled between Leo’s neck and hand.

“Butter…”

“You stay.”

Finn’s nose was perpetually cold. He nuzzled it to the high of Leo’s cheek, hot from being pressed between them. Rainwater on a summer day, that one. “You sure?”

“Hmm.”

Finn lowered his voice further. His breath ghosted over Leo’s jaw, followed by the cool drag of his skin and the press of his mouth to the sensitive, confidential space beneath his earlobe. “I also got you secret breakfast,” he confessed. The warmth of his words passing over Leo’s skin sent goosebumps racing over him. “Which was a surprise. So you gotta act like you didn’t know when I bring it in, ‘kay?”

“Bribery and extortion.”

“You’re holding three—four of my limbs hostage.”

Leo flexed his ankle around the back of Finn’s knee. It pulled him another inch into the cocoon of his body. His whole cheek smushed with the force of the kiss Leo left there. “You’ll wake the beast.”

Finn peered past him, into the dim dark. “We can handle him.”

“Five minutes,” Leo ordered. “Earn your freedom.”

“With minutes of my one beautiful and precious life?”

“Ten of ‘em.”

“Whew, inflation.”

“Rate’s going up…”

Finn let his head fall back onto his pillow with a thump. It made the thick, silk-soft waves of his hair fluff up and Leo released his wrist (though wrested it back swiftly in the crook of his elbow) to brush a few strands to the side and kiss his favorite freckles. Then he laid his full weight down on Finn’s front, rested his cheek against the breadth of Finn’s face, and closed his eyes.

“You’re joking,” said Finn’s muffled voice.

“You can breathe.”

“My nose. Is flat.”

It was. Leo could feel the cold point of it just above the hinge of his jaw. “Sacrifices must be made.”

Finn’s chest puffed. “What about secret breakfast?”

“Your breath is so hot right now.”

“I can’t move.”

Leo leaned down and kissed his temple. Nipped his ear. “Nobody is coming to save you,” he whispered.

“Logan—”

Finn broke off with a yelp and a thrash as Leo’s fingertips found his ribs, relentless. Logan woke with all the grace of a hibernating bear, squinting out at them from his blanket bundle even as he pulled more of the sheets to his chest. “Quoi?”

“Save me!”

Logan hunkered down deeper; Leo tightened the grip of his thighs around Finn’s legs and wrestled him back down into the covers. Finn was lean and strong, but some days, it paid to be six-three and stronger.

One attempted bite later, Finn was pinned even more firmly than he had been five minutes prior. Logan blinked at them like a tired cat, looked at the clock, and shook his head. “Non.”

“What?” Finn sputtered. Leo tucked his frozen toes into the curve of Finn’s calves and pulled a wonderfully strangled hootfrom him.

“You’re exactly where you want to be,” Logan concluded.

“Yes,” Leo agreed, laughing as Finn’s ears reddened. “I am.”

And a bonus Loops, of course: