atp what am i even doing with my life?

“You’re dripping.”

Caleb cracks one eye open. The bag of frozen peas you set at his neck fifteen minutes ago has gone soft, condensation tracking down his throat and disappearing into the collar of his henley.

“I’ll get him a new couch.”

You cross your arms and raise a brow. “With what money.”

“He can add it to my tab. Right under the chiropractor bill.”

“Careful with the tab, captain,” Sylus warns drily. “I’m very creative about collecting, and I’m starting to think you enjoy owing me.”

Caleb chucks a pillow across the room. Sylus catches it without flinching and tucks under his arm like he won it fair.

“You boys—” you look between Sylus, settled into his armchair like a throne, and Caleb, sprawled on the couch “—are going to play nice.”

“We’re behaving,” Sylus says.

“Barely,” Caleb adds.

Sylus shrugs. “Barely counts.”

They’ve been like this since tonight’s game. Before the game, actually. Since the first time they met on the ice two seasons ago, since something sparked between them the first time your brother knocked your boyfriend flat on his ass only for the silver-haired menace to come up smiling.

Tonight’s third period had been ugly. Caleb’s team down two, Sylus’s team running clock, and somewhere around the seven minute mark Caleb had taken Sylus into the boards in a way that could have looked accidental from the cheap seats and looked extremely on purpose from the bench. Sylus answered with his fists. The refs let them go for longer than they should have. Both were ejected, and you’d watched them get walked off in opposite directions like dogs separated mid-fight while five thousand people screamed.

You’d had the idea on the walk back to your dorm. Stupid. Catastrophically stupid.

Come over, you’d texted Caleb. Sylus’s place.

Three bouncing dots appeared, disappeared, appeared again. He’d called you instead.

“You’re out of your mind, pips.”

“Probably.”

“Meimei.”

“Gege.”

He released a long, suffering breath. “Why?”

“Because I love you and I love him and I’m so tired of being caught in the middle like this.”

“He gave me a split lip.”

“You gave him a bloody nose.”

“And you think this is a fix?”

“I think it’s a try.”

He showed up an hour later, of course. You’d never asked Caleb for something he didn’t give you.

“How’s the nose,” Caleb says without opening his eyes.

Sylus touches the bridge of his nose, more out of habit than concern. “Fine.”

“Shame. Could’ve sworn I did more damage.”

“You always did overestimate your impact.”

“Overestimate?” Caleb’s eyes finally open. “I’ll overestimate my fist up your—”

“Okay!” you interrupt, lifting both hands in surrender. “New rule.”

“This should be good,” Sylus says under his breath.

“Each of you has to say one nice thing about the other,” you announce. “One. Single. Nice. Thing. And then we can move on with our evening like adults.”

“I am being an adult,” Sylus counters. “I haven’t poisoned his drink.”

You scoff. “That’s baseline human decency.”

“For me, sweetie, it’s generous.”

Caleb snorts. It’s the first sound he’s made in Sylus’s direction that isn’t hostile, and you watch Sylus clock it with a small flicker at his eyebrow.

“Caleb,” you say. “You first.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re in his apartment drinking his whiskey and bleeding on his furniture, and I think that earns him a compliment.”

Caleb stares at the ceiling for a long second, jaw working, like you’ve asked him to move a mountain with his bare hands.

“He’s fast,” Caleb says, finally.

“Fast,” you repeat.

“On the ice. He’s fast. Faster than he should be for his size.” Caleb pauses. “It’s annoying. Like a cockroach.”

“That’s not exactly a compliment.”

“It’s adjacent.”

You look at Sylus. “Your turn.”

Sylus takes a sip of whiskey, holding it in his mouth for a moment as he turns over his options. He swallows and tilts his glass toward Caleb.

“He doesn’t quit.”

Caleb glances over.

“Down two,” Sylus says. “Most players know when they’re beaten. He apparently lacks that particular survival instinct. Played the last seven minutes like he could bully the scoreboard into changing.” He takes another sip. “It was irritating.”

“So we’ve established you’re both fast and stubborn and you hate each other for it,” you say. “Wonderful. Truly groundbreaking diplomacy.”

“You asked for one nice thing,” Sylus says, swirling his glass. “That was one nice thing.”

“That was one nice thing wrapped in three mean ones.”

“What can I say? I’m efficient.”

“You’re efficiently a prick,” Caleb fires back.

“Mm,” Sylus hums, entirely unbothered. “Is that what you say when you don’t have a comeback, or is that what you say when your sister’s watching and you want her to think you’re tough?”

Caleb sits up. Drains his whiskey in one go, sets the glass on the table, and lets the bag of peas slide from his neck and thud to the floor.

“Watch it, pretty boy,” he says, eyes narrowed.

“It’s a genuine question. Because you do the same thing on the ice. All those big hits, the scrapping, mouthing off at the refs. It’s very impressive. Very masculine. Especially when she’s sitting third row.” Sylus tilts his chin toward you without taking his eyes off your brother. “Must be exhausting, carrying a crush that obvious for that long. I’m surprised she hasn’t said something.”

“Shut your mouth.”

“She’s a kind girl. Probably doesn’t want to embarrass you.”

“I said shut your mouth.”

“Or maybe she likes it. Having her big brother panting after her like a dog at the door every time she—”

“That’s enough!” you yell.

Both sets of eyes snap to you. You’re not one to raise your voice, and they both know it. You don’t know what you’re going to say next until you’re already saying it, and by then it’s too late:

“If you can’t talk it out, maybe you should just kiss and make up.”

You know it sounds wrong the second it leaves your mouth. You’re tired and tipsy and your brother and your boyfriend are having a conversation about you like you’re not in the room, and all you wanted was for them to stop, and what resulted was the dumbest sentence you’ve said in your entire life.

You try to chase it with a laugh that doesn’t quite land. The room doesn’t laugh with you.

You scramble to walk it back. “Kidding. Obviously. God, your faces. I’m going to get more ice—”

Sylus sets his glass down. The sound of crystal on marble is small, though it lands like a gavel.

“Interesting,” Sylus says.

“I was joking,” you reply, too fast.

“Were you.”

“Yes.”

“Hm.”

Sylus rises from the armchair, crossing to the couch in three steps. He holds out a hand to Caleb.

“What the hell are you doing?” Caleb asks.

“She asked us to make up,” Sylus says simply. “I’m making up. Stand up, captain.”

“You’re out of your goddamned mind.”

“She’s been mediating between us all night, and she’s running out of patience.” Sylus’s hand is still extended, patient and unmoving. “Your poor sister has spent two years trying to keep us from killing each other. The least we can do is give her what she wants for a few seconds.”

Caleb tries to look unbothered, but you catch this jaw tightening at your poor sister. ”She was being sarcastic.”

“Was she?” Sylus glances at you over his shoulder. “Sweetie. Were you being sarcastic?”

You should say yes. You should laugh it off and go get more ice and let the night fade into something survivable.

You just can’t seem to make yourself do anything at all.

Sylus turns back to Caleb, eyebrow raised. See?

“Fine,” Caleb says. “Fine. One kiss.”

He doesn’t take Sylus’s hand. He stands up on his own, because of course he does, and squares up in front of Sylus with his shoulders braced like he’s about to take a penalty shot.

“One kiss,” Caleb repeats.

“One kiss,” Sylus agrees.

Sylus cups the side of Caleb’s face, thumb settling by the butterfly bandage at his brow. Caleb swallows hard, but doesn’t pull away.

“Relax, sweetheart,” Sylus teases. “It’s a kiss. We’ve gotten more physical over a little black puck.”

Caleb’s hands curl into fists at his sides, his face carefully impassive. “Get on with it, pretty boy.”

Sylus leans in and kisses him.

It starts as nothing. A closed-mouth press, chaste, just sufficient enough to satisfy your request. Sylus’s hand stays at Caleb’s jaw. Caleb’s hands stay at his sides. It’s two men doing something for the benefit of a third person they both care deeply about, and nothing more than that.

Then Caleb’s mouth moves.

It’s the smallest shift—his lower lip catches against Sylus’s, and you watch Sylus notice it—tilting his head to change the angle, transforming the kiss from nothing to everything in the span of a heartbeat.

Caleb’s hand comes up to Sylus’s collar, fisting the cotton there. Not pulling, just holding, his split knuckles going white behind their tape. Sylus makes a small sound, approval or surprise or both. His hand slides from Caleb’s jaw to the back of his neck and he deepens the kiss, mouth opening against Caleb’s slowly, like he’s afraid to startle him, afraid for the moment to vanish, and Caleb lets him.

The kiss isn’t for you anymore.

You can see the exact moment it stops being a performance and starts being something private. Caleb’s other hand comes up, both fists in Sylus’s shirt now. Sylus’s fingers curl into the hair at Caleb’s nape, tugging gently. The sounds shared between them are wet and obscene and utterly, nakedly honest.

Your hands are in your own lap, fingers laced tightly together. You’re watching your boyfriend kiss your brother and the thing you're feeling isn't jealousy or shock or any of the things you are supposed to feel. What you feel instead is heat pooling low, the kind that makes you press your thighs together and the friction of your jeans agonizing.

Sylus pulls back first, turning his head just enough to look at you. His eyes scan yours, drop to your lap, then return to your face. His mouth tilts, and he’s beside you on the couch in three strides.

Caleb stands frozen in place, mouth still slightly open.

Sylus pats the empty space beside him. “Sit down, captain.”

Caleb sits.

Sylus settles between you, one arm stretched across the back behind your shoulders, the other behind Caleb’s.

“Well,” Sylus says to no one in particular. “That was overdue.”

Caleb is staring at the muted TV, jaw working, suddenly captivated by what might be the least consequential Division III basketball game of all time. His lip is bleeding again, the split reopened from the kiss, but he makes no move to wipe it clean.

“Caleb,” you say.

“Don’t.”

“Your lip—”

“I know.”

“It’s bleeding again.”

“I know, pips.”

Sylus reaches over and swipes his thumb across the corner of Caleb’s mouth, catching the blood. Caleb flinches but doesn’t pull away. Sylus studies his thumb for a second, then wipes it on his own jeans, satisfied.

“Good kisser, by the way,” Sylus says lightly. “In case that wasn’t clear.”

Caleb closes his eyes.

“Very direct. Bit aggressive. Holds on like he’s afraid you’ll leave.” Sylus glances your way. “You should try it, sweetie.”

Whatever lust-drunk haze you were in is sliced clean through by the implication, cold and brutally sobering.

“Try what,” you murmur.

“Kissing him,” Sylus clarifies. “You should try it. I think you’d like it.”

Heat floods your face. “Sylus.”

“Hm?”

“You know we can’t—that he’s—” you gesture vaguely between yourself and Caleb, then toward Sylus. “—and we’re—”

“Why not? Because we’re dating?” Sylus asks, sounding genuinely curious. “Or because he’s your brother?”

Your stomach falls through the floor.

Because you thought you’d hidden it. You’ve been so goddamn careful—with your eyes, your hands, the way you angle your body when Caleb sits too close and the way you laugh at his jokes exactly as long as a friend would and not one second longer. And Sylus just picked up everything you’ve been hiding and set it on the coffee table between the three of you, and now you’re all staring straight at it, and there’s no putting it back.

“Both,” you say. “Obviously both.”

“What if it’s neither,” Sylus says, holding both of you in the loose parentheses of his arms, as if he doesn’t find any of this complicated at all. ”What if the problem is that you’ve both wanted each other for so long you’ve turned it into something you’re not allowed to have, and the not-being-allowed has gotten so big you can’t see past it anymore.”

Caleb is staring blankly at the TV again. His throat works around his response.

“She’s your girlfriend, Sylus.”

“She is.”

“And I’m her—”

“You’re her brother. Yes. You’re also in love with her. We all know this. We’ve known it all night. We knew it long before tonight.” Sylus inspects his nails, nonchalant. “So let’s stop building the case and move to the verdict, shall we?”

“Sylus,” you whisper.

“Sweetie. Look at me.” You do. He’s giving you the look he gives when he wants your full attention, a look he doesn’t use often and one you’ve never been able to refuse. “Listen to me. Both of you. I’m going to say something, and I’m going to say it once, and after I say it neither of you gets to pretend you didn’t hear.”

You nod. So does Caleb, in sync, and you watch the small flicker pass across Sylus’s eyes that means he noticed.

“Your big brother won’t touch you,” Sylus says to you. “You know that. I know that. He knows that. He’s spent—how long, Caleb?”

Caleb blinks up at the ceiling.

“How long,” Sylus insists.

“Since I was thirteen.”

“Since he was thirteen. All those years deciding he’s not going to touch you. He’s not going to undo that tonight. Not for me. Not for you. Not for anyone.”

Your heart beats so heavily you’re certain the whole room can hear it.

“But,” Sylus continues. His arm tightens behind your shoulders. His other arm tightens behind Caleb’s. “He can touch me. Can’t you, Caleb?”

“...Yes.”

“And I can touch her. Can’t I, kitten?”

“Yes.”

“Then look at that. Look at how convenient that is.”

Caleb leans out of Sylus’s reach, dragging a hand through his dark hair. “Did I knock something loose up there, Qin? Lay into you a little too hard tonight?”

“Not nearly hard enough.” Sylus smirks, the amusement fading into something more focused. “Nobody touches anybody they’re not supposed to touch tonight. Everybody goes home having had exactly the experience they pretend they didn’t want.”

“That’s a nice speech. You rehearse that in the penalty box?”

“I had five minutes. Figured I’d make good use of them.”

“You’re delusional.”

“And you’re still here.”

That lands. You see it hit in the way Caleb’s mouth opens and stays there, the argument dying in his throat. Because he could leave. The door is right there. He has a car. A phone. Yet he’s sitting under Sylus’s arm and hasn’t taken a single step toward any of them.

Sylus sees it, too.

He reaches up and catches Caleb’s jaw, thumb finding the split in his lower lip, and presses into it. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to feel.

Caleb hisses through his teeth. His hand wraps around Sylus’s wrist but doesn’t pull it away.

“Unless,” Sylus says, his thumb resting in the seam of Caleb’s mouth, “you’d rather go back to arguing about hockey.”

Caleb doesn’t argue. He doesn’t say yes, or nod, or do anything at all except sit there with Sylus’s thumb against his lip and his hand around Sylus’s wrist and his chest rising and falling faster than it ever has on the ice.

That’s enough for Sylus.

He tilts Caleb’s jaw down and kisses him, tongue working in slow and unhurried strokes, like he has the whole night and intends to use every second of it. His thumb slides to the hinge of Caleb’s jaw and rests there. His other hand stays on your shoulder, keeping you close. Keeping you watching. A warm, heavy, point of contact that says stay and watch this and you are not going to look away from what I’m doing to your brother’s mouth.

Caleb’s hand finds the back of Sylus’s neck, and you inhale sharply.

Sylus pulls back at your gasp. His hand leaves Caleb’s jaw and finds yours with the same grip, thumb at the corner of your mouth, fingers curving under your chin, tilting your face up to meet his. His eyes scan yours, and something in his expression comes alive and hungry.

“Open, sweetie.”

He kisses you, and it’s a kiss you know. The shape of his mouth, the pace, the pressure of his tongue against yours. You’ve kissed this man so many times you could map it blindfolded.

But there’s something in his mouth that isn’t his.

It takes you a second to place it, a warmth that doesn’t belong to Sylus. A faint copper edge that blooms on your tongue when his presses against it. The blood of a split lip. Caleb’s, carried on your boyfriend’s tongue, delivered to yours with each stroke. You whimper against his mouth, and feel Sylus smile into the kiss—a small, satisfied flex that says his hypothesis just proved correct.

“There,” he says quietly, pressing a parting kiss to the corner of your mouth. “Now you’ve had him, too.”

On the couch behind him, Caleb’s eyes are focused on your face—specifically on your mouth, more specifically on the place where his blood is still sitting on your lower lip and you haven’t wiped it off.

“Now,” Sylus says, turning back to Caleb. “Your turn, captain.”

Caleb opens his mouth and Sylus kisses him, tongue sweeping wet and slow and thorough. Caleb’s teeth close around Sylus’s bottom lip and hold, pulling, tasting the sweetness that’s sitting on Sylus’s lip from yours. The bite pulls a low sound from Sylus’s throat, his eyelids fluttering at the pressure, and Caleb doesn’t let go. If anything he sucks harder, desperately chasing your mouth the only way he’s allowed to. 

Sylus finally pulls back with noticeable effort, running his tongue over his own lip where its newly swollen.

“Well?” Sylus asks, amused and knowing. “Could you taste her?”

“Apple.” Caleb swallows. “Green apple.”

The words hit you hard and low. Your Chapstick. The one he’s bought for you in bulk since you were in middle school and keeps in his glovebox because you always lose yours. The one he tosses into your lap without comment every time you get in his car, the one you reapplied before walking into this apartment.

“Yeah,” Caleb says, rougher. “Yeah, I could taste her.”

Sylus’s mouth curves. “Good.”

“Again,” Caleb says to Sylus, not asking. “Kiss her again.”

Sylus obliges. He turns to you and claims your lips, longer, dirtier, a thin strand of spit connecting your mouths when he pulls away. He turns to Caleb, who catches it with his mouth before Sylus finishes turning, desperate and graceless and nothing like the controlled athlete who commanded the ice earlier tonight. Caleb’s hand comes up to the back of Sylus’s head and holds him there, kissing him harder, letting Sylus feed him the taste of you, only pulling apart when his lungs burn for air.

“More,” Caleb groans.

Sylus huffs a laugh. “Greedy.”

“More, Sylus.”

The rhythm turns hypnotic. Sylus kisses Caleb, turns, kisses you. Kisses you, turns, kisses Caleb. Each pass filthier than the last, a little more urgent, carrying more of your brother to you—not just his taste but his small, wet sounds, his shallow breaths, the barely-held-back noises he keeps making against Sylus’s tongue that Sylus carries to you like gifts.

You don’t know how you end up pressed together.

Caleb’s thigh is flush against Sylus’s, their shoulders overlapping. You’ve managed to end up in your boyfriend’s lap, straddling his hips. And Sylus keeps one hand on each of you the entire time, one at your hip now, the other on Caleb’s bicep.

You lean in after one of the passes and catch Sylus’s mouth before he’s fully turned away from Caleb, the kiss off-center and messy, and you taste Caleb so strongly that your hips buck against Sylus’s.

Sylus laughs. He gives your ass a teasing smack.

“Bedroom,” he says.

Caleb pulls back, eyes widening. “Sylus—”

“We’re moving this to the bedroom. This couch costs more than your car, and your sister’s about to ruin it.”

You frown. “I am not—”

“Sweetie, your hand is on his belt.”

You look down. Your hand is, in fact, on Caleb’s belt.

Not through Sylus, just—your hand, on Caleb’s belt buckle, fingers curled around the leather, and you don’t remember putting it there and you don’t remember Sylus guiding it, and you’re dangerously close to not remembering why this whole thing was ever a bad idea in the first place.

You pull your hand away like it’s been burned.

“Bedroom,” Sylus repeats, an order rather than suggestion. He stands, bringing you with him, your legs wrapped around his waist. He eyes Caleb and tips his head toward the hallway. “Now.”

Nobody argues.

Sylus’s bedroom is all dark wood and low light, with a bed that takes up most of the space. It’s a mattress you’ve been on a hundred times. You know how the sheets feel bunched in your fists, how the pillow positions your hips at just the right angle when he puts it under your stomach, how the comforter feels around your shoulders when he tucks you in with a kiss to your temple.

You have no idea how different it’ll feel with three people on top of it.

Sylus deposits you in the middle of the bed before crossing to his nightstand. 

“Caleb,” Sylus says. He turns the lamp down another notch. “In or out. I won’t ask twice.”

You watch your brother from the doorway, his gaze flicking to and away from you, like the sight of you—leaning back on your elbows, lips kiss-swollen, hair a little mussed, eyes alive and wanting—is too much to bear.

He steps in, locking the door behind him with a loud click. “I’m doing this for her.”

“Of course you are,” Sylus says.

“I mean it, Sylus. This isn’t—I’m not here for you.”

“Nobody asked you to be.”

“Good.”

“Good.” Sylus reaches behind his neck, pulling his shirt up and over his head. “Clothes. Off. Both of you.”   

“All of them?” Caleb asks, still lingering by the door.

Sylus drapes his shirt over the back of his desk chair. “Leave the underwear. We’re not animals.”

“Debatable,” you mutter, and Sylus’s mouth twitches.

The three of you strip in silence, shirts tossed aside, all three pairs of jeans hitting the floor at different speeds— Sylus’s first, folded; yours next, kicked off the edge of the bed; Caleb’s last, shoved down and stepped out of.

You’ve seen your brother shirtless—at the beach, after a shower, when he mows the lawn in the dead of August. What you haven’t seen is your brother in gray boxer briefs that do nothing to hide the way his erection strains against the fabric, tight enough that you can tell where the head of his cock meets the shaft, that you can see the darkened spot at the tip where precum bleeds through.

Caleb catches you staring, eyes finding yours and holding them until you’re the one that breaks. Your cheeks burn violently, fingers fumbling with your bra clasp like you’ve forgotten how it works.

“Eyes up, captain,” Sylus warns, moving to the foot of the bed. “She’ll still be there in a minute.”

“You going to coach me through this like it’s a power play?” Caleb grumbles, crossing his arms over his chest.

“If that’s what it takes. You never could finish without a setup.”

“I have fourteen goals this season.”

“And how many assists?”

Caleb's mouth opens and shuts.

“...Shut up.”

Sylus huffs out a laugh. He pulls you to the edge of the mattress by your ankles, and you yelp.

“I’m going to tell you where to look all night, sweetheart. Get used to it,” he says to Caleb before turning his attention back to you. “Lie back, kitten.”

You settle back. Sylus stands between your legs, one hand braced beside your head, and for a moment it’s just the two of you. He kisses your throat, your collarbone, mouth moving down the center of your chest slow and warm. His free hand finds your waist and holds there, thumb tracing the skin above the waistband of your underwear.

“Caleb,” Sylus says against your skin. “Behind me.”

“I’m not cuddling you, Sylus.”

“Nobody’s cuddling anybody. Get behind me. Hands on mine.”

“This isn’t—”

“For her, captain. You’re doing this for her. Remember?”

Caleb positions his knees on either side of Sylus’s calves, chest close to Sylus’s back but not quite touching. He braces one hand on the mattress, the other settling over Sylus’s at your waist, lining up finger over finger, his broader palm bracketing Sylus’s against your hip. The added weight presses Sylus’s grip firmer into your skin, and you arch up into it.

“There,” Sylus says. “Feel her through me. When I move, you move. Yes?”

Caleb’s voice is barely there. “Yes.”

Sylus’s thumb traces up the curve of your waist. Caleb’s follows—riding the back of Sylus’s hand, tracking every motion. Sylus’s hand slides to your ribs, and Caleb’s follows, up and around. Sylus’s fingertips graze the underside of your breast and you gasp, and Caleb’s knuckle catches the edge of your skin where Sylus’s hand doesn’t fully cover.

Caleb freezes.

“I didn’t—I—”

“Caleb…” you whisper.

You look up at Sylus, but he doesn’t intervene. He watches your face from above, letting you be the one who tells Caleb what’s allowed.

“It’s okay, gege,” you decide. “You don’t have to stop.”

Caleb’s hand unfreezes. His fingers resettle over Sylus’s, and they keep moving.

The next touch isn’t an accident.

It’s the back of his ring finger, tracing a line along your ribs that Sylus’s hand doesn’t cover. A quarter-inch of contact, gone, then back—his pinky, grazing the curve of your waist as Sylus’s hand slides lower, gone just as fast. Ghost touches, so minimal you could pretend they didn’t happen. Caleb finding the gaps and pressing into them, testing, learning you through the spaces between your boyfriend’s fingers.

“Sylus,” you whisper.

“I see it, sweetie.”

“Is he—”

“He’s being creative.” Sylus’s mouth lifts. He shifts his hands enough to widen the gaps between his fingers by a fraction, adjusting his grip to give Caleb more room. “I’m allowing it.”

Caleb presses closer behind Sylus. His chest makes contact with Sylus’s back, and the added weight pushes Sylus’s body down against yours.

“Caleb,” Sylus says, in warning and permission at the same time.

“I know.”

“You’re on top of me.”

“I know. That doesn’t mean I like you.”

“You liked me just fine on the couch.”

“That was—that was the situation. That was for—”

“For her. Yes. You’ve mentioned.”

Sylus lowers his mouth to your breast. His tongue traces the curve, teeth teasing your nipple, and you arch up into him. The motion presses your hips against his, and Sylus’s hips press back against Caleb’s, and Caleb—

Caleb grinds forward.

It’s a small, involuntary roll of his hips against Sylus’s ass that pushes Sylus’s hips into yours, and you feel the force of Caleb traveling through Sylus like a wave cresting against you.

Your mouth falls open.

“Caleb. Do that again,” you urge.

“Pips—”

“Gege, please. Do that again.”

He does it again, harder this time. His hips roll forward, grinding Sylus into you, and the pressure hits you exactly right. You gasp and grab Sylus’s shoulders. Sylus makes a low, strangled sound you’ve never heard from him before, Caleb’s hips driving him forward and yours rocking up to meet him.

“More,” you gasp.

Caleb grinds harder, his exhales ragged against Sylus’s neck. The bed is moving. You’re moving. Caleb’s hands are now white-knuckled on Sylus’s hips and Sylus’s are braced on either side of your head and you’re gripping the sheets with both fists as the room dissolves to nothing but friction and heat and breath.

“Caleb—” Sylus manages, his voice is rough in a way that makes your stomach clench, “Caleb, you need to—fuck—you need to—slow down.”

Caleb doesn’t slow down. His next stroke grinds Sylus into you so hard you nearly scream, grabbing onto Sylus’s shoulders, and your boyfriend shudders—actually shudders—and Caleb’s hips snap forward again, relentless.

Sylus throws his weight backward, driving Caleb off him enough to break away. He holds a hand between you and Caleb like a referee calling a penalty—chest heaving, skin flushed, entire body vibrating with the effort of stopping.

“Christ,” he grits out. “The pair of you.”

You stare up at him, breathless. Caleb has one knee up at the end of the bed, hands still shaped around hips that aren’t there anymore.

“We need to slow down,” Sylus says, pushing his hair back with one hand, “or one of us was going to finish in our underwear like a teenager, and I am not going to let that be me.”

“Could’ve been me,” Caleb says, roughly.

“It was going to be all three of us. And we haven’t even started yet.” Sylus looks between you, eyes dark, still catching his breath. “Underwear off. All of us.”

“Thought we weren’t animals,” Caleb mutters.

“We evolved.” Sylus counters, already halfway out of his own boxers. “Take them off, captain.”

You lift your hips and shimmy out of your panties, tossing them off the side of the bed without ceremony. Caleb relents, kicking his underwear off in the general direction of his jeans.

It’s seeing them side by side that knocks the air clean out of you.

Sylus stands tall, lean and carved, all controlled lines and casual strength. A trail of silver hair guides your eyes to where his cock hangs heavy between his thighs, the tip flushed and leaking. Caleb stands broader, rougher around the edges, the bruise on his ribs going green, tape still half-wound around his knuckles. Dark hair runs in a line below his navel, and when you see your brother’s cock for the first time—thick and eager in his hand—you draw your knees together.

Sylus’s hand catches them before they close.

“Uh-uh,” he says simply. With one palm on each knee, he eases them back apart. “None of that, sweetie.”

He guides you back against the headboard, adjusts the pillow under your lower back, running a hand down your calf once he’s finished like he’s admiring his handiwork.

“Comfortable?” he asks, sitting back on his heels.

You nod. “Yes.”

The mattress dips as Caleb moves to kneel behind Sylus. He reaches for your boyfriend’s hip, already angling to resume the position—his chest against Sylus’s back, Sylus between your legs, the structure of this arrangement he knows and trusts.

“No,” Sylus stops Caleb with a hand around his forearm, pulling him to kneel beside you instead. “I want you to see something.”

Sylus settles between your legs, lowering himself on his elbows. His mouth grazes the inside of your thigh, red eyes pinning Caleb.

“You can look, captain.”

Caleb swallows. “I am looking.”

“Then look properly.” Sylus’s breath hits your aching core with each word, and you squirm. “It’s okay. Look at her.”

Sylus holds Caleb’s eyes as his mouth moves higher. He kisses your hip, the crease of your thigh, the soft skin below your navel. Then his tongue teases your clit, and your hips jerk up off the bed. Caleb’s hand, resting on his own thigh, curls into a fist.

“See how pretty she is?” Sylus murmurs against you.

“Sylus—”

“Look.”

Sylus parts you with one long, flat stroke of his tongue, closing his lips around your clit with a teasing suck before pulling away—giving your brother an unobstructed view, you realize hazily. He spreads you open with both thumbs, displaying your swollen, slick pussy with an almost reverent care. You’re so wet that you’ve made a mess of your inner thighs, so wet it should shame you, but the way Caleb is looking at you right now leaves no room for any feeling other than the dizzying certainty that your brother wants you as badly as you want him.

“You did this, Caleb. Your sister’s pretty little cunt is ruining my sheets. All because of you,” Sylus muses. He drags a thumb up through your slick heat, eyes locked on Caleb’s expression as he circles the wetness around your clit. “She’s been like this since you grabbed me by the shirt. Since you made me bleed on the ice, I’d imagine.”

Sylus lowers his mouth to you once more, tongue patient and expert, licking into you the way he knows you like. The sensation makes your toes curl, but you’re faintly aware that the act isn’t for your pleasure, but for the benefit of the man kneeling beside you with bated breath.

Caleb watches intently—the way Sylus’s jaw works, the speed and pressure that makes you gasp, the way your hips buck when he hums against you every few strokes—studying like an exam he’s desperate to pass.

“Caleb,” Sylus says, lifting his mouth just enough to speak. “Spit.”

“Excuse me?”

“You can’t put your mouth on her,” Sylus explains. “But you can give her something from it. Can’t you?”

Caleb exhales hard through his nose, but doesn’t deny it.

He leans over you, and his face is close, close enough that his breath heats your stomach, close enough that you see his nostrils flare, briefly, involuntarily, his lips parting at whatever he finds there. He lets saliva pool under his tongue and glances at you sideways, a silent plea for approval.

You nod, quickly, anticipation buzzing under your skin. “I want to feel you there, gege.”

He spits.

When it lands directly on your swollen clit, you cry out. The streak of saliva runs down your slit slowly, torturously, so erotic it makes you clench around nothing.

“Good,” Sylus murmurs, and drops his head back down. He works it in with his tongue, and the added slick makes you moan. “Feel that, sweetie? That’s all your brother. You’re taking him so well.”

Your hand finds the nearest solid thing—Caleb’s thigh—and grips tight.

Caleb lets out a strained sound at the contact, but he doesn’t pull away. You can feel the small shifts in his weight as he leans closer, pulled in, unable to help himself. He watches Sylus’s mouth on you with an expression that’s long passed hunger and arrived somewhere more primal.

“Sylus,” Caleb says, more groan than word.

Sylus hums against you but doesn’t move.

“Sylus. Let me—”

Sylus lifts his head, mouth glistening. He looks at Caleb with his chin resting against the inside of your thigh and a lazy, knowing expression that makes your stomach flip.

“Let you what, captain?”

Caleb’s throat moves. “Taste.”

“Taste what.”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“I’m going to make you say it.”

“Her. I want to taste her. Sylus, let me—”

“How badly.”

His jaw flexes once. Twice. “Badly.”

Sylus presses a kiss to your thigh before sitting up, giving his cock a few lazy strokes. “Hm.”

He positions the head of his cock between your legs—not to enter, just outside—sliding just the tip up and down the wet of you. You gasp, cunt throbbing, aching to be filled by him—by Sylus, by Caleb, by both.

Caleb is watching with his mouth open.

“How badly,” Sylus repeats, eyes on your brother as he rolls his hips against you this time, dragging the full length of him through your folds.

“Sylus—” Caleb urges.

“Tell me, sweetheart. I want to hear you say it.”

“Please.” It falls out of Caleb’s mouth unauthorized. “Please, Sylus, let me—”

Sylus grinds against you again, slower. He makes sure every inch of him is covered, glistening with you, and Caleb is watching with every muscle tense and his hands gripping his thighs hard enough to bruise.

“More?” Sylus asks Caleb, almost bored, like he’s asking about the weather.

“Sylus, for fuck’s sake—”

“That didn’t sound like more.”

“More. Yes. More, just—Sylus, come on—”

Sylus rolls his hips into you one last time, a long, slow grind that pulls a moan out of you and leaves him drenched. He rises onto his knees, cock gleaming with you, and looks at Caleb.

“Come here, captain.”

Caleb moves before the sentence is finished.

His mouth is on Sylus faster than you can process it—tasting you with one long, flat stroke of his tongue from base to tip; a wrecked, thankful sound torn from somewhere deep inside his chest.

“That’s it.” Sylus’s hand finds the back of Caleb’s head and holds there. “Taste your baby sister, Caleb. That’s what she tastes like when she wants you. And she’s been wanting you all night. Can you taste that? Can you taste how badly her body needs yours?”

Caleb’s hands grip Sylus’s thighs as his mouth works—tasting, chasing it, trying to get every trace of you off Sylus’s skin. You watch your boyfriend lose himself for a moment: his hips jerk forward once, and he looks down at Caleb with an expression you’ve only ever seen him give you.

“God, look at you,” Sylus says, low. “This is what you’ve been missing. Years, Caleb. Years of this.”

Caleb lifts his head. His mouth is wet, eyes nearly black. He looks at Sylus first—a look that is somehow both grateful and furious—and then he looks at you.

“I know,” he says, bitter but not at you. 

“Was it worth it? Being noble?”

Caleb shakes off Sylus’s hold, running his hand over the back of his head like he could erase the man’s touch. “Shut up, pretty boy.”

Sylus raises his hands in mock surrender. “I’m not saying anything.”

“You’re thinking it.”

“I’m thinking—” Sylus wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and settles beside you against the headboard. His hand finds your knee, pulling it closer to your chest. “—your sister has been lying here all alone, begging for you to fuck her, while you’ve been busy showing a lot of enthusiasm for a cock you claim to hate.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Qin.” His words are calm. His ears, unfortunately, are bright red. “That was for her, not you.”

“Was it. Then prove it.” Sylus gives your thigh a squeeze. “Do something for her she can actually feel. Between her legs, captain.”

“No. That’s—no. That’s not what we agreed to.” Caleb’s whole body goes rigid. “You said nobody touches anybody they’re not supposed to. That was the rule.”

“We didn’t agree to anything,” Sylus counters. “We’ve been making it up as we go. And so far, everything we’ve made up has worked, hasn’t it.”

“This—this is different.”

“Is it? You tasted your sister on my cock and the world kept turning.” Sylus raises a brow. “What makes you think this will be any different?”

“It’s completely different and you know it.”

“How.”

“Because she’s—” Caleb gestures at you without looking at you. “She’s right there, Sylus, and I—”

“Look at her, Caleb.”

Caleb looks at you, and you don’t soften it. You don’t close your legs or reach for the sheet or give him something to hide behind. You let him see the aftermath of an hour of being touched through another man, what a lifetime of being so close to your brother but never close enough has done to you.

“Caleb,” you say. “Please. Just come here.”

His hands open and close at his sides. “Pips, you don’t know what’s going to happen if I—”

“I know exactly what’s going to happen.”

“You don’t.”

“You’re going to touch me and it’s going to feel like it should have felt a long time ago. And I’m going to be fine. And you’re going to be fine. And I’m asking you, gege. I’m asking. Please.”

He’s quiet. He looks at Sylus—not for permission, not exactly. Giving your boyfriend one last chance to change his mind, to tell him this is wrong, to kick him to the curb and slam the door behind him and pretend none of this ever happened.

“She’s asking, Caleb,” Sylus says gently. “And I’m tired of being the only one who listens to her.”

Caleb closes his eyes with a heavy exhale. Opens them.

He moves between your legs.

“Closer, sweetheart,” Sylus directs from beside you. “She’s not going to bite. Yet.”

Caleb nods and inches closer on his knees, until the front of his thighs are flush against yours. He takes himself in hand and you open for him, drawing both knees tighter into your chest.

“I don’t—” Caleb starts. “What if I—”

“Just the outside,” Sylus says. “You don’t have to go in. Just feel her against you. That’s all.”

That’s all.

He presses the length of his cock flat against you the way he watched Sylus do, sliding slowly through your slick heat without entering, and the weight of your brother against your cunt makes you forget how to breathe.

“There,” Sylus says from beside you. You watch him wrap his hand around his own cock, stroking it in time with Caleb’s slow rolls, the visual sending a new wave of heat down your spine. “Just like that. Easy, captain.”

Caleb rocks his hips in long drags, hot and devastating as he slides through the wet of everything the night has built. His hand is still on himself, still controlling the angle, still holding onto the last bit of restraint he has left.

“Shit,” he manages. “Sylus, she’s so—feels so—”

“I know.”

“She’s—I can’t—”

“You can,” Sylus assures, gentle and genuine. “You’re fine. She’s fine. It’s just the outside.”

Your hips rock up to meet his on the next stroke, shifting the angle, and the head of his cock catches at your entrance.

All three of you gasp at the same time.

“That’s okay. Just a little is okay,” Sylus says, quieter now. He leans closer to rest a hand on Caleb’s lower back. “You can give your sister just the tip. That’s allowed. That’s nothing.”

“That’s not nothing—”

“It’s close to nothing. Let it happen.”

Caleb rocks forward and the head of him slides in—just barely inside, the tight heat of you closing around the first inch, your legs falling wider open with a small gasp. He collapses forward, free hand fisting into the sheets beside your shoulder. Your mouths open, only inches apart now. His hand tightens around himself like a brake.

“There,” Sylus murmurs. “See? That’s fine. Nothing to be afraid of.”

“I’m not afraid,” Caleb grits out.

“Then go a little further. You can let go of yourself. You don’t have to hold on anymore.” His thumb soothes small arcs on Caleb’s back. “Why don’t you give her a little more. Just an inch. She can take it. Can’t you, sweetie?”

Caleb’s hand releases. He plants it beside your other shoulder.

“Yes,” you breathe. “Yes, more, please—”

Caleb sinks deeper. An inch. Another. His jaw is clenched so hard you can see the tendon at his neck as his eyes lock on yours, searching for the thing that will tell him to stop.

You don’t give it to him.

“More,” you beg. “I can take it. I promise I can take it.”

“Pips—”

“Gege, please. I need you closer. I need more.”

“All the way,” Sylus says, and his hand presses flat against Caleb’s lower back. “All the way, sweetheart. She’s asking so nicely. Give your baby sister the cock she’s been begging for.”

Caleb pushes all the way in.

His forehead drops to yours, eyes squeezing shut. His forearms are shaking where they cage your head, and you’re full of him, completely, finally, and you have never in your life felt more whole.

Your arms come up around his neck, legs wrapping around his waist, and you hold him there, as deep as he can go. Sylus strokes the back of Caleb's head once before returning to your side.

“There you go,” Sylus murmurs. “There. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

Caleb’s breath shudders against your mouth.

“Give me a second,” he says. “Meimei, give me one second.”

You give him a second. You give him several. You lie there with him buried inside you and his sweat-slicked forehead against yours and your breath mixing in the inch between your mouths and you wait.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

When he moves, it’s in rolls, not thrusts. He moves like he’s terrified of the end of this, like if he goes slow enough it will never stop, and you let him, because you’ve waited years and you can wait a few more minutes.

Sylus settles back against the headboard, stroking himself slowly, watching the two of you with half-lidded eyes, his free hand resting on his own thigh. Occasionally it drifts—brushing a strand of your hair out of your face, giving a reassuring squeeze to Caleb’s forearm. Though you can barely register anything aside from the way Caleb is looking at you the way you always dreamed he would, like he’s burning alive and doesn’t want to be saved.

“Faster,” you plead, gripping his forearms for leverage.

Caleb doesn’t check with Sylus anymore. He goes faster.

You dig your heels into his ass, pulling him impossibly deeper. He groans against your throat, the loudest sound the room has heard all night, and his hips snap forward and the bedframe hits the wall with each thrust and neither of you cares. You’re nothing but two people who have been starving trying to eat at the same time, and it’s too fast and too much and not enough and—

“Caleb,” Sylus says.

His rhythm stutters. “What could you possibly—”

“Kiss her.”

Caleb cuts Sylus a sidelong glare, but he doesn’t reply.

“You heard me, captain.”

Your brother looks down at you, hips still rolling in a steady rhythm. He lowers his mouth to your forehead and presses his lips there. It’s the kind of kiss you’ve received a thousand times—at the airport, at graduation, in the parking lot after games. Safe. Known.

Sylus clicks his tongue, dissatisfied. “Lower, Caleb.”

Caleb inhales sharply, eyes scanning your face, contemplating. His hips have all but stilled, as if he needs all of his focus to fulfill the request. He picks a lower spot—the apple of your cheek—and kisses you there softly.

“Gege,” you whisper against the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah.”

“Please.”

“I know, meimei.”

You tilt your chin up, lower lip brushing his. “Please. Just one.”

Caleb kisses you, and the world falls away.

It’s slow, unbearably slow, just the full, warm weight of his mouth against yours for the very first time. His hand comes up to cradle your face, the gesture so tender you feel the start of tears pooling behind your lashes.

Caleb pulls away a fraction and comes back. His lips part, barely, and yours open to meet them. His tongue finds yours tentatively, nothing like the way he kissed Sylus, and you savor the way it glides against yours like it was always meant to. He tastes like whiskey and copper and Sylus’s skin and underneath all of it like Caleb—not number five, not the hockey captain, but your older brother, the one who taught you to skate when you were nine and held both your hands the whole time and never once let go.

His hips start moving again, each stroke matched to the kiss, each deep roll timed to the slide of his tongue against yours. Your hand moves from his jaw into his hair, and you kiss him back and feel a lifetime of careful distance dissolve like it was never there. Like all those years you thought were keeping something out were really keeping something in, something alive and wound tight and desperate for the chance to break free.

Caleb deepens the kiss, hungrier now, tongue licking deeper against yours as his hips snap forward so hard it’s almost painful.

“There he is,” Sylus says, barely above a breath, hand quickening on himself. “Fuck, look at you two. Let go. Together. Let everything go.”

“Gege,” you manage. “I’m close.”

“I know.” Against your lips. “Me too, meimei. Me too.”

“Don’t stop.”

“I’m not—I won’t—I—”

You both let go.

You break around him. His hips stutter. The sound he makes into your mouth is the twin of the one you make into his, and there’s nothing poetic or graceful about it. He holds your face like he’s trying to live inside the kiss, like if he stays long enough it’ll become something he can keep. You feel his release pulse hot inside you, your own orgasm pulling him in even deeper, and you hold each other through every wave, never breaking the kiss. Not even when he’s shaking, and you’re shaking, and neither of you can breathe.

Beside you, Sylus comes with his forehead tipped back against the headboard and his hand in your hair, fingers tangled loosely in the damp strands at the back of your neck while the two people he brought together fall apart. His exhale is long and heavy and sounds, if you’re listening for it, like satisfaction.

The kiss finally, reluctantly breaks.

Caleb pulls back an inch, resting his forehead against yours, the two of you trading shaky breaths while you wait for the room to stop spinning.

“I just kissed you,” he whispers.

You laugh, and it comes out wet. “You did a lot more than that.”

“Yeah, but—“ He wipes away a tear from your cheekbone you didn’t realize had fallen, his eyes glassy and dark and full of so many emotions your chest aches. “I kissed you, meimei.”

“Yeah, gege.” You grin. “You did.”

He smiles. It’s a smile you’ve know your whole life but never from this close, and from here it simply looks like pure, wild joy. And you think, without deciding to, that you’d burn the entire world to the ground just to see him smile like that twice.

Caleb stays inside you for a long time. His face is in your neck, your fingers in his hair, the two of you so thoroughly entangled your heartbeats are nearly synchronized.

Sylus is the first one to move.

He gets up quietly. You hear the tap run in the bathroom, the sound of a drawer opening and closing. He comes back with a glass of water and a warm cloth, sits on the edge of the bed, and rests a hand on Caleb’s shoulder.

“Out,” he says, gently. “Easy. I’ve got her.”

Caleb pulls out—reluctantly, carefully—and rolls onto his side. He reaches for you immediately, pulling you against his chest, arm heavy over your waist, nose in your hair, like he’s afraid someone’s going to call time.

Sylus cleans you up. Sets the water on the nightstand within reach. Pulls the sheet up over both of you, kisses the top of your head, and goes to the other side of the bed.

He lies down beside Caleb. Not touching, giving the two of you your own space to come down together. Caleb’s palm presses into your bare abdomen, soothing circles over your stomach. And after a minute or two, he shifts backward. Just enough that his shoulders meet Sylus’s chest.

Sylus lifts his arm and drapes it over both of you, over Caleb’s ribs, your waist, his palm settling on your stomach on top of Caleb’s hand.

Caleb exhales. His whole body goes slack against Sylus’s chest.

“Don’t you dare say a word, pretty boy,” Caleb murmurs.

“I’m not saying anything.”

“And don’t bring this up ever again.”

“Bring what up.”

“This. Any of this. Not on the ice, not in the locker room, not ever.”

“Caleb, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m asleep. You’re asleep. She's asleep. Nothing happened.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Nothing at all, sweetheart,” Sylus confirms. “Though if it had, I’d be putting myself down for the assist.”

“I will smother you with this pillow.”

“That would require you to let go of her first, captain.”

Caleb’s arm tightens around your waist. Sylus’s arm tightens over his. You lace your fingers through both of their hands where they overlap on your stomach and close your eyes.

Somewhere in the living room, the basketball game has ended, the TV humming without an audience. Nobody gets up to turn it off.

Nobody gets up at all.

if u made it this far....thank u for reading, fellow freak ;)

still hungry, sweetie??? -> masterlist | ao3

Work had filled most of your time this week. Back to back missions, three cases that bled into each other, a Thursday briefing that ate the entire day. The Association had kept you moving and moving was good. Moving meant you weren't sitting still long enough to think about things you should not be thinking about.

The problem was tonight there was nothing to move toward.

You'd slowed down. Today's mission had seen to that —a clean operation until it wasn't, until you'd caught the edge of something you'd moved a second too late to avoid and ended up limping through the debrief trying to look unbothered. The Association medic had looked at your leg, told you to rest it, and now you were on your couch. Leg up. Thinking.

You'd worked with Sylus enough times to understand how your arrangement functioned, he had access to things the Association didn't and in exchange you'd give him information he found useful. You showed up. He had what you needed. You left. Repeat.

That part made sense.

What didn't was the rest of it. The part where two weeks of silence felt different now. He was the most wanted name on the Association's list and you were a Deepspace Hunter. The math on that was simple.

So no, you did not miss Sylus.

Your leg throbbed. You shifted your weight and stared at the ceiling again, trying to have an internal conversation about professional conduct and the importance of clear boundaries and then your phone lit up.

You grabbed it so fast you nearly put your elbow through the side table.

Sylus: I heard your mission went sideways. How's the leg?

You: How did you...you know what. Never mind.

Sylus: Mephisto was nearby.

You: You sent your bird to check on me?

Sylus: Mephisto goes where he likes.

You: 🙄🙄

Sylus: He said you were limping.

You: Tell Mephisto to mind his own business.

Sylus: He'll be devastated.

You: Good.

Sylus: I have something that might interest you. Have you ever seen a white Protocore?

You: White Protocores don't exist. Whatever you have is a fake.

Sylus: The seller pulled it from an anomalous Wanderer outside the N109 zone.

You sat with that for a moment.

Sylus: Come see it yourself. You'll want to.

The color alone was impossible by every known framework for protocore classification. Which meant either the seller was running an extremely convincing con, or something had come out of that wanderer that nobody had a category for yet.

Your feet were already on the floor.

You: Don't let anyone touch it. Give me 20 min.

Sylus: No need to rush, kitten. Look out your window.

You crossed the room in four steps and pulled the curtain back an inch.

Black car at the curb. No-parking sign directly above it, ignored completely. Sylus leaned against the driver's side door looking up at exactly the moment you looked down.

He raised his phone.

Sylus: Five minutes. Or I decide the leg is worse than you're letting on and leave.

You let the curtain fall.

"Not a chance," you said, to nobody.

You changed fast —jeans, jacket, hair up, sidearm checked —and ran down the stairs in a time your leg was going to remind you about tomorrow. The night air outside hit you cool and sharp.

Sylus hadn't moved from the car. He looked at you coming through the door, down the steps toward him and said nothing until you were close enough to hear.

"You ran down the stairs?"

"I want to see that Protocore."

"Of course." His mouth curved and there it was, the look that sat underneath the smirk, the one you'd filed away and kept finding again. "That's the only reason."

"It is"

"Then why are you still standing here instead of getting in the car."

You pulled the passenger door open yourself before he could do it, which seemed to amuse him. The interior smelled like expensive leather and him.

He slid in beside you, started the engine— the sound of it vibrating through the seat— and pulled away from the curb without looking at the road for the first two seconds because he was still looking at you.

"My people investigated as much as they could." He shifted gears, smooth and unhurried. "Which is why I need someone who knows what a forgery looks like at that level."

"But you also have people for that"

"I have people for a lot of things." He glanced over. Red eyes catching the streetlight for just a second. "None of them are you."

You looked out the window " Is that a compliment?"

"I didn't say it was."

The N109 Zone came up around you, neon and dark in equal measure, a place that operated on entirely different rules than Linkon City. You'd been here more times than your Association file strictly reflected. You knew the streets. You knew the hierarchy. You knew which doors opened for which names. All thanks to the man sitting in the driver's seat.

You had no idea what a white Protocore was. You had no idea what tonight was going to become but you had a feeling you were about to find out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

His office, you knew this place better than your own.

The reinforced doors. The security overrides, which ones were decoys and which ones actually mattered. The hidden safes, three of them, one behind a painting ugly enough to be forgettable on purpose. You'd learned all of it slowly, standing close enough and quiet enough that he forgot you were paying attention.

The White Protocore sat inside a glass tube at the center of his desk, and you hadn't moved in two minutes.

It looked like the others at first. Same crystalline structure, same geometry. But every other Protocore carried color, blue, gold, pink, red, green and purple. This one just a faint pulse, soft milky light spilling across the dark wood. Strange and uncategorizable.

Sylus wasn't looking at the protocore, he was watching you. His eyes were tracing the curve of your jaw, the focus on your expression. In his world of cutthroat deals and rare power, you were his white protocore.

The back of your neck went warm but you kept your eyes on the protocore.

"Can I touch it?"

A low sound from his chest. Not quite a laugh. "I don't recall ever saying no to you, sweetie."

His fingers worked the glass tube open and lifted the protocore into his palm.

You reached for it.

Your fingers brushed his skin and the protocore sat between your hands for a single second and then —

No warning. Just white light swallowing the desk and the dark walls. Then the wind hit, not from outside but from inside the protocore, like a vacuum pulling in with a force that emptied your lungs before you could inhale. The sound of it was scary, like space tearing apart. The air collapsed into that small white light in your hands, the floor dropped away and you were falling without falling.

The first thing that came back was pressure.

Arms locked across your chest and shoulders, tight enough your ribs couldn't move. Something solid at your back. You tried to breathe. Couldn't. Tried again.

"Sy" Barely a whisper. "Can't— brea—"

His arms dropped instantly.

He was on his feet before you inhaled, one fluid motion, hand going to his gun, eyes sweeping the room. No targets. His hand dropped, but his shoulders stayed coiled, still reading the space.

You sat up. Pulled air in slowly until your chest stopped aching.

"Where are we?"

He didn't answer. Still looking.

You looked too.

Dark wood, heavy draping, expensive things chosen for use as much as looks. It felt like his place at first glance.

In the corner was a record player, vinyl turning silently, needle down, producing nothing. Beside it a bookshelf climbed straight to the ceiling, a ladder running the whole length on a track.

On the low table in front of the couch sat two glasses of wine. One half empty. Whoever had been drinking had stepped away expecting to come right back.

You stood slowly.

Sylus had crossed to the far side of the room. His head was angled down at something on the shelf.

You crossed after him, boots loud on the floor.

"Sylus."

He didn't turn.

You came up beside him, followed his eyeline, and stopped.

A photograph. You in your Hunter uniform with a different insignia of a rank you didn't hold yet, holding a trophy. Your smile in the photo was wide open and unguarded, a version of happy you didn't wear on your face very often.

There was a small engraved plaque at the bottom of the frame.

Hunter of the Year — November 2051.

You picked up a magazine beside it.

Your face on the cover. Same uniform, same trophy, same smile. Hunter of the Year in bold letters across the top. Small print in the corner, neat and impossible.

November 2051.

You set it down carefully.

Behind you, Sylus had already moved to the mahogany desk near the windows. Papers shifted. Folders opened and closed. His hands stayed busy and his face gave nothing.

"Sylus." You kept your voice steady. "Look at me."

He didn't.

You crossed to the desk and placedd your hand flat over the document he was holding.

"Three years," he was staring at nothing in particular, whatever was running behind his eyes not making it to his face.

You looked at the half empty glass. The record player still turning in silence. A coat hanging by the door.

"Sylus."

"I see it."

"That's your coat."

"This is one of my safehouses"

"Since when do you keep pictures of the Association Hunters? Last I checked you called us glorified errand runners."

A slow smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth "I've got a taste for beautiful art, sweetie, and maybe I like having a permanent reminder of my favorite headache."

"I'm not your—"

"Someone's coming." his eyes sharpened, hand closing around your wrist.

"Who—"

"This way." He was already pulling you toward a closet.

He yanked the door open expecting to see his weapons.

There were no rifles or guns, just stacked piles of the same magazine you saw earlier, floor to ceiling, your face on every cover, hundreds of them.

"Do you also collect magazines?" you asked, fighting to keep your voice down as he shoved you into the tiny space and squeezed in after you, pulling the door shut. "This is a lot of me for one closet"

"If you keep talking you're going to get us both caught."

You bit down on a laugh and then it died in your throat completely.

The door clicked open and Sylus stepped into the room.

You gasped, turning on instinct to check whether he had somehow warped himself out there with his Evol, but he hadn't moved an inch.

Future Sylus's hair was a mess, like he'd run his hands over it more than once, and a bit longer than you were used to. His shirt was wrinkled, streaked faintly with mud, stretched tight across shoulders that looked broader than the ones currently pressed beside you in the dark. There was more color in his face too, like time had put some weather on him. He paced the length of the room like a caged animal, fists clenching and releasing at his sides. He stopped mid stride, head turning like he'd caught a sound in the room, inside Sylus's hand shot out, closing around your wrist as one finger came up to his lips, a silent order to stay quiet.

Then the door opened again, and future you walked in.

She looked pissed. Shirt torn at the shoulder, soot and dirt ground into the fabric, but her eyes were lit up with anger.

She was you, there was no doubt about that, but she was different. There was more color to her face too and her body was softer in some places, sturdier in others.

"You had no right, Sylus!" She slammed the door behind her "I can still fight! I had that under control!"

"You almost got killed" Sylus didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. Whatever was in his tone was cold enough to make the room feel smaller.

"That's a fucking lie and you know it!" She crossed the space between them fast, jabbing a finger into his chest. "I'm not some damsel for you to decide when I fight and when I don't!"

Beside you Sylus dipped his head, lips grazing the shell of your ear. "Different year. Same feisty kitten." His breath felt warm against your neck.

"Shut up, Sylus. Shut up" you hissed, elbowing him in the ribs. He huffed out a quiet laugh like you'd done him a favor.

Outside, the fight kept climbing.

"You think you can pull me off a fight and take me wherever you want?" her voice bounced off the ceiling. "I'm a Hunter, Sylus. I'm not joining Onychinus. Not now, not ever, no matter how many times you bring it up."

"You've made that perfectly clear."

"It's my job, Sy"

"Not anymore, it isn't."

"You don't get to make that call for me!"

He didn't answer with words. He started walking her back instead, one slow step for every one she gave up without notice, until her spine hit the ladder bolted to the bookshelf.

She was out of room. He planted a hand on either side of her head against the wooden rungs, boxing her in.

"Are you sure about that, sweetie?" Not a question so much as a challenge.

"We don't even know ye— get out of my space!"

"Make me."

Their faces were a breath apart now, close enough that the argument had stopped sounding like an argument. Through the door you felt the air on the other side change, something thick and charged, like the silence that comes right before either a fight or something worse. Your face went hot just watching it, the line between the two of them hating each other and wanting each other collapsing.

"I hate you"

"Good," he murmured so close to her lips. "You can hate me all you want, Mrs. Qin. You're still wearing my ring."

He closed the distance, hand curling around the back of her neck, and kissed her like it was the only thing he had left to say.

Beside you Sylus went completely still.

Future you made a sound against his lips that started as surprise and turned into a moan, her hands coming up to grip his shirt before she dropped them and grabbed him instead.

You turned to look at Sylus, his eyes dropped to yours and a slow smile moved across his mouth and your stomach went with it.

His shirt hit the floor first, hers followed.

Future Sylus lifted her off the floor and settled her onto a rung of the ladder. She grabbed the rung above her head to steady herself and he stepped back just far enough to look at her, taking his time with it while she sat there catching her breath.

Then he reached for her boots.

He pulled the first one off, fingers working the laces without looking down, eyes on her face the whole time. The second followed. He set his hands on her knees and dragged them up her thighs and she made a small sound before he'd even done anything.

His mouth found her collarbone. Moved down. The thin lace of her bra was still on and he put his lips over it anyway, tongue pressing through the fabric against her nipple, and her head went back against the ladder. He bit down through the fabric, and the sound she made was immediate.

You pressed your hand to your mouth.

He did it again on the other side, slower, and her knuckles went white on the rung above her while her hips moved forward looking for something that wasn't there yet.

He kissed down her sternum. The soft skin below her ribs. His mouth dragged across her stomach and she was already breathing in pieces by the time his hands moved to her pants. He worked them down her legs and off, then dropped to his knees.

You made a small sound against your hand.

He was now on his knees between her thighs, hands finding the backs of them, hooking her legs one at a time over his shoulders. The muscles in his arms and neck shifted with the motion and he settled her weight there easily, like he'd done it before. Because in three years he had. Many times. You could tell by how she exhaled when her legs landed on his shoulders— relief. Her whole body recognizing what was coming.

He looked up at her.

Hands spread across her inner thighs, holding them open, red eyes on her face, waiting.

She looked down at him.

Her chest was moving fast. Her lip caught between her teeth. She held his gaze for one long second and then, quietly, barely enough to hear—

"Please."

His fingers found her thong and pulled it to the side.

One hand went to his hair, pulling him in, the other stayed above her head. Her nipples were hard against the wet lace.

Every sound came through clearly. His mouth on her wet pussy. Her breathing. Your face burned. Other things burned. You pressed your thighs together and it didn't help because the sounds didn't stop.

You turned to look at him again.

His right eye burned red in the dark closet. His chest rose and fell in a rhythm that wasn't steady.

"Sy—"

"Don't stop." Future you's voice came through the door, breathless. "Fuck, Sy...just like that."

Your face went hotter and you faced forward again.

Sylus exhaled against your hair. His hand was still on your wrist. Neither of you had moved it.

He made a sound against her and the sounds that followed were louder and wetter.

Your fingers found the front of his jacket and held on.

"Is this affecting you?" he asked, right against your ear.

"Shut up."

Then her voice again, completely gone, nothing held back. "Yes — baby, my clit, suck on it — fuck yes—"

His hand tightened on your wrist. Hard.

"Sylus." Your voice came out dry. Broken in the middle. Not what you'd intended at all.

"I know," he said.

Future you screamed his name. The closet pressed in from all sides.

"We need to leave"

"Yes," he agreed, but neither of you moved.

Her thighs locked around his shoulders and shook. He stayed until the last tremor left her. Then he stood, chest glistening, and his hands dropped to the button of his trousers.

Popped it open. Pushed the fabric down his thighs.

The outline of his cock through the fabric of his underwear made your throat close. The tip already wet, a dark circle spreading through the cotton, and his fingers found the waistband—

A large hand came down over your eyes.

"Hey—" You grabbed his wrist. His fingers didn't move.

"If you want a show," his voice low at your ear, "you only have to ask."

"Move your hand." You twisted your head. His palm stayed exactly where it was.

Dark behind it.

Then the sounds hit again.

Slap.

Slap.

Slap.

Skin against skin. Her voice breaking between each impact, the sounds coming in waves that your brain immediately started filling in visuals for and that was so much worse than if he'd just let you look.

"You're burning up," he said against your ear, not in concern but in pure mockery.

Your thighs pressed together hard. "I swear to god—"

His fingers spread open.

She was still on the ladder. Legs locked around his waist, both of them flushed, sweat catching the light. He had one hand on her hair, holding her close to his face, their mouths almost touching, breathing the same air while his hips rolled forward in deep slow drives that shook her whole body. He was saying something to her, too low to carry, but whatever it was kept fracturing her expression every time he said it.

Then his voice came through clearly.

"Look at me." Steady, even over everything else. "Tell me who you belong to."

Her tongue dragged across his upper lip. "Yours—" Her head dropped back. "Ah— yours, Sy, I'm yours—"

Your underwear felt damp and your clit was pulsing with a persistence you were doing your very best to ignore.

"Do you really think," Sylus whispered against your temple, "it takes us three whole years to get here?"

"I don't—"

Future Sylus pulled back, his tongue dragged slow up her throat while she panted against his shoulder. "You taste different today."

"Because you're—" she gasped, "—you're driving me insane—"

"That's not it." He pushed forward, one deep thrust that tore a cry out of her "You shouldn't be taking field hits right now." A beat. "Not when you're carrying my child."

The closet went cold.

Your jaw dropped. Hers did too.

Pregnant.

The argument. Him yanking her off the mission. All of it clicked into place at once. She was carrying his baby. In three years, you'd be carrying his kid.

Your knees went out from under you.

Your foot caught on something hard as you stumbled back. A stack of magazines toppled with the movement, and everything blurred, sound, vision, all of it going soft at the edges.

"—watch—"

Crimson light cracked through the dark. Sylus's Evol flared, and every falling magazine froze mid air.

The energy didn't stay contained. It rolled out through the closet door and everything on the other side went dead silent.

The sounds stopped. All of them. What replaced the noise had weight to it.

Sylus's eyes were locked on the door. Jaw tight. Not a muscle moving.

"Pathetic," future Sylus said, clear, not a trace of what he'd been doing thirty seconds earlier, "a top tier Hunter and the leader of Onychinus, hiding like toddlers playing hide and seek."

Your stomach dropped straight through the floor.

"Sylus?" Future you, breathless, confused. "Who are you talking—"

"I know you're in there." He sounded almost bored. "You're both breathing like horny teenagers."

Beside you, Sylus exhaled through his nose and reached out to push the door open. "I could say the same"

He stepped out first, glanced down at his sleeve, and flicked off a piece of lint that probably wasn't there. Then he reached back, hooked an arm around your waist, and pulled you out with him. You stumbled onto the polished floor, face burning hot enough to set the room on fire.

Future Sylus had future you pulled against him, her bra strap slipping off one shoulder, hair a wreck, and she was staring between the two of you with her mouth hanging open.

"Is that—" Her eyes went from you to the Sylus standing next to you and back again. "Are we— are they—"

Sylus looked at his future self. Future Sylus looked right back.

Three seconds of silence passed between them, and somehow it felt like an entire conversation.

"You look good," Sylus said.

"And you are interrupting," future Sylus said, arm tightening around future you.

You stopped watching the two of them and scanned the room instead.

There. The White Protocore, sitting beside the wine bottle, pulsing soft in the low light.

You moved before anyone could stop you, crossed the room, and closed your hand around it.

Sylus was right behind you. His hand landed over yours, the stone was caught between your palms again, warm and humming under your skin. He tossed one last glance over his shoulder at his future self and smirked.

White swallowed everything. The floor vanished, and then thud.

The familiar light of his office in the N109 Zone.

You were flat on your back, staring at the ceiling, just breathing.

The Protocore rolled out of your hand and knocked against the leg of his desk before it dissolved into dust.

Sylus sat up, forearm braced on a raised knee, and looked down at you, smirk already back in place. His gaze dropped to your mouth, your throat, the way your chest was still heaving.

"So," he said, leaning over you with one hand braced on the floor beside your head. "A baby."

You threw an arm over your face. "I will shoot you again."

"I'm just thinking ahead." His fingers found a strand of your hair "Sounds like we've got a lot of work to do in the next three years, Miss hunter."

Perm tag: @thealunari @i-idk-i-guess @hopelesslala @pearlescenthoney @stillseiims @xavisastrophil @thelastpolarbear @groovyravenagain @nanaminsmuse @darkairenkagamine @lunahaswings @ks-collection @calebunny @aweebs @crimsonrubie @lemurian-girl @aiycnlyme @grecianotes @yourlocalcatscammer @thicckage @goddesssevenseas @silvernight-m @little-lost-venus @gravitationalbluberry @b0nez9 @magnoliandew

Your inner prey instincts shrieked in protest. Yet, as you stared at the attached photo, your throat went dry. With his sharp jawline, striking eyes, and furry burgundy ears poking through his hair, the man was undeniably gorgeous. 

Worse, his profile had a warning listed: Lupine genes present extreme rut cycles. Past cycles managed via pharmaceuticals due to high stamina projections. 

So, he’s never had a partner, you thought. A pent-up predator didn’t bode well, especially not to a bunny. Even so, according to the warning, he had the exact untapped reservoir of energy that you needed to get through your insatiable heats. It certainly didn’t hurt that he was breathtakingly easy on the eyes. 

A sudden, sharp throb low in your belly shattered your hesitation. The early waves of your heat were beginning to roll in, warming your skin and sending a restless twitch through your elongated ears. You didn’t have the luxury of time, especially not to second-guess the man that, admittedly, exacerbated the effects of your impending heat.

Shifting your finger across the touchpad of your laptop, you slammed the Accept Pairing button before the more logical side of your brain could talk you out of it. 

In an instant, the screen flashed with a bold, celebratory notification: MATCH CONFIRMED!

 A soft gasp escaped your lips. He had already accepted. Before your mind could fully process that little fact, a new interface slid into view. 

KnotAlone Chatroom: Valko and You

The text bubble at the bottom of the screen was already bouncing, the three dots doing their usual rhythmic dance before disappearing, replaced by a message that was surprisingly warm for an apex predator. 

Valko Ao: Hello! So glad you accepted the match. To be honest, I was worried my profile statistics would scare people off. 

You blinked at the screen, intrigued. His message was devoid of the growling dominance and arrogance you had come to expect from predator hybrids. Another message came through before you formulated a response. 

Valko Ao: Your profile mentioned needing someone who can match your stamina, right? That works out perfectly. My doctors always insisted that my rut cycles are too intense for a standard pairing, so I’ve just been using suppressants up until now. I’d love to help you through your heat if you’ll have me. When does your cycle start?”

You bit your lip, fingers hovering over the keyboard as a flush crawled up your neck. It was one thing to fill out personal info on a questionnaire, but it was another to openly share with another person.

You: within the next two days at least. Already feeling the warning signs :/

Valko Ao: that’s fine! I can clear my schedule right away.

His easy, accommodating response did wonders for your nerves. Over the next two days, the anticipated dread of your impending heat transformed into something entirely different. Valko texted you constantly, sending jokes, asking about your personal preferences and hobbies, and sharing bits of his own life. By the time the warning signs had become full-blown symptoms, you found that you were genuinely excited to meet him, even if the circumstances weren’t the most ideal.

You woke on the third morning drenched in sweat, your skin hypersensitive to every little touch. Your panties were already soaked and sticking to your swollen folds. It was pitiful, really, how quickly you were made a slave to your own biology, no more able to fight it than you were able to count the stars in the sky. 

With a shaky hand, you reached for your phone on the nightstand, shooting Valko a simple text, followed by your address.

You: I need you

He replied almost instantly, informing you that he was on his way. With a groan, you dropped your phone onto the bed, curling into yourself and wishing you could sleep away the scorching need coursing through your body. It felt like mere minutes had passed when a knock echoed through your apartment.

You stumbled from your bed to the door, unlocking it and swinging it open to see Valko standing in the hallway, his ears twitching almost nervously. Before he could even say hello, he froze. The combination of seeing you in such a vulnerable state and smelling the sweet, heady scent that seeped from your apartment had rendered him speechless, his mouth watering and his cock already hardening in his pants. 

He swallowed thickly. For a fraction of a second, Valko tried to hold onto his manners, but the more of you he inhaled, the more he felt like a wolf rather than a man. He opened his mouth to greet you, fighting every urge to pin you to the wall of the entryway and take you there, but his throat constricted and his body locked up.

You could see in the rigid set of his posture that he was at least trying to be a gentleman, but you didn’t want a gentleman at the moment. You needed him rough, and you needed him now.

While he was still trying to pull himself together in the doorway, you tugged him in by the fabric of his shirt, the door slamming closed behind him. He stumbled forward, his polite composure crumbling to dust under your touch. You practically dragged him through your apartment to your bedroom, and his hand hovered over your waist.

“I’m Valko,” he finally managed, his voice raspy as his eyes locked onto the way you were already pulling your shirt over your head.

You giggled at that, and Valko thought it was the prettiest sound he had ever heard.

“I sure hope so.” He flushed, embarrassment crawling up his spine. Obviously you knew who he was. You wouldn’t have let him in otherwise. He blamed it on your intoxicating scent. It was muddling his brain and making it impossible to focus on anything that wasn’t you. You, who was now wrapping your arms around his shoulders and mouthing at his neck, pressing your body flush against his.

Before he could even think, his strong arms landed on your hips, pushing you back slightly to make space. You pouted, and he suddenly felt like a world-class villain.

“Easy, sweetheart. I’m gonna help you,” he soothed, pushing you backwards until the bed hit the back of your knees. You fell onto the plush on the mattress, bouncing slightly. Your breath quickened. Through the haze of your arousal, you were vaguely aware that you had invited a predator into your home. You were also acutely aware that even the worst of your heat cycles had never affected you as much as the hulking man that was guiding your pliant body to lie against the pillows. 

“So pretty,” he murmured, his hands ghosting over your bare skin, his fingertips skimming the lacy fabric of your bra. It was almost painful, the way his cock was straining against his pants.

You placed your hand atop his, guiding it to cup your breast. “You don’t have to be sweet, you know?”

He locked eyes with you, searching for any hesitation or reservations, and found none, only pure want and need. He surged forward, capturing your lips with his. It was messy, all teeth and tongue and unrestrained instinct.

You arched your body into his, your hips grinding against the bulge in his slacks. He groaned into the kiss, his hands shooting down to hook into the waistband of your shorts and panties, pulling both down in one firm tug. Your bra followed shortly after, leaving you entirely bare beneath him. God, you were a fucking vision.

The whimper he let out was pathetic, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Not when a pretty little bunny was completely offering herself to him. Your hands were everywhere, sliding beneath his shirt, stroking his ears, palming his leaking cock. Wherever you could reach.

He reluctantly pulled away from you once more, just long enough to strip his own clothing. His impressive build had you salivating, and your weeping pussy clenched around nothing in anticipation as he resumed his spot above you, your legs on either side of his hips. 

“Please, Valko, please I need you,” you practically sobbed, staring up at him with watery eyes. Valko’s heart thundered in his chest, a possessive pang shooting through his chest. 

It was too much. Your desperate pleading, your legs spread for him, your cunt on display just for him. It was maddening. He lined himself up with your pulsing hole, and you keened, eager to finally be filled, pushing your hips up to force him deeper.

You were dripping, his thick cock stretching you with ease as he sunk all the way to the hilt. You moaned loudly, your fingers clawing into the sheets. He was so big you swore you could feel him in your throat.

“So tight,” he groaned deeply, nearly growling. He was already panting and he’d only just begun. “You feel so— ngh—good.”

You wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling him into you like you never wanted him to leave. “More, Valko, pleasepleaseplease,” you begged, urging him to move, to touch you, anything that would quell the wanton need that radiated from your core. 

His hips snapped into yours, the blunt head of his cock molding your insides around him. It took everything he had not to cum prematurely. Your pussy gripped him like a vice, and he was sure this was as close to heaven as a man could get. 

The delicious drag of his cock had you beyond words, only able to cry out with pleasure every time his hips met yours. Your breath was ragged as he pounded into your slick hole, and your fingernails left red claw marks on his shoulders that he would later marvel at in the mirror.

“So perfect,” Valko breathed. “Made just for me.” His face was flushed a magnificent shade of his red, and his eyes were heavily lidded, drawn to the juncture where your bodies met, your slick leaking around his cock and soaking the bedsheets. 

You cried out his name, the edge of pleasure so tantalizingly close. His name fell from your lips like a mantra, spurring him on, his thrusts losing their rhythm and becoming frantic. He was already swelling at the base, but he’d be damned if he embarrassed himself and finished before you. Inexperienced though he was, he wasn’t a total prude. 

He brought his thumb to circle your neglected clit, sending pleasure shooting up your spine. You squealed, arching into his touch, your pussy spasming tightly around him as your vision went white.

Valko gasped, his own release overtaking him. Hot spurts of cum flooded your fluttering walls, and his swollen knot kept it all plugged snugly inside you and kept you connected to each other. 

Your vision was hazy, and for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, you actually felt sated, at least for the time being until your body again demanded more of him.

Quiet settled over the room, save for the twin sounds of your heavy breaths. Valko grinned broadly, a chuckle rumbling through his chest as he dropped his forehead onto yours, nuzzling his nose against your face. Behind him, his heavy tail thumped against the mattress.

It was comforting to be wrapped in such strong arms and taken care of, but the peace was short-lived; your body, in its current state, was already squirming beneath him for friction.

Valko groaned deeply, still sensitive from his release only minutes prior, but the thick smell of your pheromones was pulling him into renewed lust right along with you.

Whether it was with your knees pressed to your chest, from behind where he could watch your cute little tail twitch, or holding you on his lap to fuck up into you, he couldn't get enough of you or the sinful sounds you made when he was buried deep inside you. It was hours before he collapsed onto the bed beside you, his cum dripping down your thighs and a satisfied grin on his face as he took in how thoroughly wrecked you looked all because of him.

As your breathing finally slowed, Valko pulled you into his embrace, clawed fingers stroking up and down your back soothingly. “Are you okay? Was that alright?” he asked, his voice rough and vibrating against your skin.

“I’m perfect,” you rasped, burying your face in his chest, your heart swelling at his genuine care. “Better than perfect. I can see why your profile had a warning on it,” you laughed, recalling the words of caution on his profile.

He let out a soft, pleased sound, his arms tightening around you as if he had absolutely no intention of leaving the bed—or your life—anytime soon. It was like your scent had completely rewired the primitive part of his brain, the part that was now claiming you as his own despite the brief acquaintance. Though, to be fair, you had done more than what typical acquaintances do. He didn't think he could be satisfied being just your heat partner.

A flush crawled up his neck as he debated with himself, his wolf ears twitching nervously, but there was no time like the present. “That’s good. I’m glad I didn't disappoint.” He hesitated, the words he truly wanted to say sticking in his throat. It didn't help that you were looking up at him with wide, inquisitive eyes. Now that his more animalistic side had been satisfied and your scent wasn't sending him into a frenzy, he could take the time to admire just how delicate your features were.

“I know we still have a few days left to get through, and I’m not going anywhere, but when this is over, would you want to go on a proper date with me?”

His words had barely even registered before a bright smile lit up your face, and sweet giggles spilled from your lips. You nodded, your long ears shifting with the movement. 

"We're out of green onions," he announced with his head inside the fridge. "And ginger. Grandma said we have to buy soy sauce and it has to be the right brand."

"Which brand?"

He turned around with an expression that said he had absolutely no idea.

"Great," you said. "Really helpful."

"She showed me once. It has a red label. Or maybe yellow." He pulled out a tote bag from the cabinet and dropped it on the counter in your direction. "We'll figure it out when we're there."

"The market is a fifteen minute walk in this heat."

"Then we should leave now."

"Caleb—"

He was already heading for the door. "Come on."

You grabbed the bag and your sunglasses and followed him out into the heat, which hit you like a wall the second you stepped off the porch.

The neighborhood was quiet on summer afternoons, everyone wanted to be inside with their fans on. You walked beside Caleb through streets you'd both known since childhood, past the park, past the corner ice cream store with the faded awning, past Mrs. Yuen's house with the wind chimes that had been making the same sound for fifteen years.

He was telling you about an incident with a new recruit that had happened at a training exercise last month and you were laughing.

"Did he get hurt?" you managed.

"Bruised his ego more than anything." Caleb pushed your sunglasses up. "Poor guy spent the rest of the session pretending it hadn't happened."

The market was cool and smelled like the same brand of air freshener they'd been using since you were ten. You grabbed a basket and split off toward the vegetables while Caleb wandered in the direction of the snack aisle, which —you'd learned over years of shared grocery runs— meant you were going to spend the next several minutes complaining about his choices.

You found the green onions. Found the ginger. Turned the corner into the snack aisle and found Caleb standing in front of the chips with two bags in his hands, deliberating.

"We don't need chips," you said.

"Yes we do."

"We have food at home."

"Chips are not food, chips are a separate category." He held them both up. "Salt and vinegar or barbecue."

"Neither. We're here for dinner ingredients."

"And chips." He put the barbecue in the basket.

You took it out. He put it back in.

"Caleb."

"It's for the walk home. You'll want some on the walk home."

"You are so—" You stopped, pointed at his chest. "Fine. One bag. And you're carrying it."

He was already reaching for a second one.

"One bag."

"Salt and vinegar for you, barbecue for me. That's technically one bag each which is—"

"That's two bags."

"One per person."

You let him keep both bags because the alternative was standing in the snack aisle for another five minutes.

The soy sauce took longer. You found the section, found approximately ten different brands, and stood there for a moment in silence.

"Red label or yellow?" you said.

"I said I wasn't sure."

"You said you'd seen it."

"I'd seen it, I didn't memorize it."

"Caleb, if we get the wrong one—"

He picked one up, turned it over, put it back. Picked up another. "This one looks right."

He put it in the basket and you picked up a different one, compared the labels side by side, and put his back and kept yours.

He switched them back the moment you turned away.

------

You were outside, bag on Caleb's shoulder, chips already open when your hunter's watch went off.

The sound cut straight through everything. Your hand was in the chip bag one second and at your holster the next, the muscle memory of it faster than conscious thought. The screen had gone red.

Wanderer detected. Class: High energy anomaly. Proximity: 100 meters.

Caleb stepped in close "Behind the market. Let's go."

You were already moving.

---

The alley ran behind a row of shops, narrow and shadowed, the air warping at the far end and that meant the Wanderer had already been there long enough to disturb local reality. You pulled your gun and kept your back to the wall, moving fast. Caleb came in on the other side, gravity already building at his hands, the air around his knuckles bending in a way that meant he was ready.

The Wanderer was enormous, the geometry of it not quite making sense no matter which angle you looked from. It moved fast for something that size, swinging a limb in your direction before you'd fully cleared the corner.

You fired twice. The shots connected and it shrieked, momentum redirected enough that the hit meant for you shattered a section of wall instead.

"Flank!" Caleb called.

You were already going wide. He pulled gravity in from the left, compressing the Wanderer's movement, slowing it just enough for you to get behind it and put three more shots into the joint where two of its limbs connected. It screamed and lurched sideways.

"Keep it off the street," you yelled over the noise.

"Working on it." He dragged it backward with a gravity pull that made the pavement crack under the force of it, steering it further into the alley.

It was not a clean fight. It kept redirecting, slamming into the walls, filling the alley with debris that you had to dodge while maintaining your sight lines.

Eventually the thing started to slow. Eventually it disappeared.

Then you saw it.

On the ground where the Wanderer had dissolved — a Protocore, small, throwing off an iridescent white that you'd never seen from a Wanderer before.

"That's not standard," Caleb said, coming to stand beside you. He crouched down to look at it without touching it. "I've never seen one this color."

"Me neither." You holstered your gun. "I should take it to HQ."

"Agreed." You crouched beside him, reaching for the core at the same time he did, and your hands closed around it simultaneously.

White light erupted.

It collapsed inward, pulling everything —sound, light, air, the alley— into a point of white noise and wind, and then nothing, a few seconds later there was a floor coming up very fast.

You hit the carpet with a thud that knocked the breath out of you.

Caleb landed beside you, one arm slamming down to catch his weight before he pushed himself up.

"Are you hurt," he said, breathing hard.

You did a fast inventory. "No. You?"

"No." He looked up. Looked around.

You were inside a huge apartment. Carpeted floor and warm light from the windows. A long couch. A coffee table with papers on it. A mug. A jacket draped over the back of a chair.

Someone's apartment.

You stood up slowly. Caleb was already at the bookshelf, and you followed, and then you saw the first photo and everything in your chest felt strange.

It was you. You and Caleb, standing somewhere sunny, laughing at something out of frame. You were wearing a jacket you didn't own. His hair was slightly different, grown out and pushed back.

There were more. The two of you at a restaurant, faces close across a small table. A shot of you asleep on a couch, and Caleb sitting at the other end with a book, but whoever had taken the photo had caught him looking at you and not at the page.

Your throat felt tight.

"This is my apartment," Caleb said quietly, from somewhere to your left.

You turned to look at him. He was looking at the leather jacket on the chair. His leather jacket, the one currently in his wardrobe back at the base. A pilot's manual on the shelf, the same one he'd been working through. A mug from the Farspace Fleet. A framed photo of your grandmother that matched the one at home.

"The photos—" you started.

"I know."

He crossed to the coffee table, picked up the newspaper and scanned the top page. He held it out.

The date at the top was two years from now. Exactly two years.

---

You spent the rest of the afternoon going through the apartment with careful attention, very aware you were somewhere you weren't supposed to be. You were trying to understand what the last two years had produced.

Caleb's future self left notes everywhere. Fridge, desk, bathroom mirror. His handwriting but with a different quality to it, more settled. There were more photos than you'd first noticed — tucked into the edges of the mirror in the hallway, stuck to the inside of a cabinet. A birthday card in your handwriting on the desk, standing open. A second toothbrush in the bathroom.

You both looked at that for a moment.

"I'm not going to say anything about any of this," you said finally, standing in the kitchen with your arms crossed.

"Good call," Caleb said, from the doorway.

"I'm —this is a lot of information."

"It is."

"And I'm not drawing any conclusions."

He went quiet.

The sun went down. The apartment went from warm gold to dark while you sat on the floor of the living room eating crackers you'd found in the cabinet, your backs against the couch, the Protocore sitting on the coffee table throwing faint white light across the ceiling.

"We'll figure out how to get back," Caleb said.

"I know."

"Same energy that brought us here should be able to—"

"Caleb, I know. I'm not panicking."

He looked at you sideways. "You're quieter than your normal quiet."

"I'm just thinking."

He nodded slowly. Ate a cracker. Didn't push it, he knew when to let something sit. Almost two decades of knowing each other and he'd learned exactly where the lines were.

You were about to say something else when you heard it.

Voices outside.

Both of you were on your feet before the door handle moved. Caleb stepped toward the entryway on pure instinct and you grabbed his arm with both hands and pulled.

"Don't," you said, low and fast.

"I just want to see—"

"You cannot make contact with yourself. Do you understand what that does to the timeline? Do you understand what happens if you alter something?"

"I wasn't going to —"

"Caleb." You got in front of him, hands on his chest, looking up at him with full seriousness. "We hide. Right now. We have to wait."

He looked at the door. The handle was starting to move.

"Fine," he said before he grabbed the protocore and then your wrist to pull you toward the hallway closet in two long strides, opening it fast and pulling you in after him, easing the door shut.

The closet was full. Coats, bags, a stack of boxes on the floor that immediately became a problem because you had nowhere to step back, which meant you were now pressed against Caleb from your shoulders to your knees.

You could feel every breath he took.

"This is very small," you whispered.

"I know," he said, directly behind your ear.

His arms were on either side of you because there was nowhere else for them. His chin was above your head. You could feel him making adjustments to keep whatever minimal distance physics was willing to offer, and it was working as well as you'd expect. Which was not well.

You were two childhood friends in a closet in an apartment that was apparently his, two years in the future, surrounded by photographic evidence of something neither of you had said out loud yet, and he was doing his very best not to press against you and his very best was losing badly to the laws of spatial reasoning.

The front door opened.

Through the slats of the closet door, the living room light clicked on.

"I told you." Your own voice, but looser, threaded through with laughter that had a very specific quality to it. "I told you we shouldn't have had that last drink."

"Yeah," came the reply. Caleb's voice, except it was rougher and stripped of the easy warmth you knew and replaced with something that made the back of your neck prickle. "You were flirting with the bartender just to watch me lose it."

"Maybe I was." Future you sounded unrepentant about this.

Through the slats you watched two people stumble into the living room and your brain took several seconds to process what your eyes were seeing. She was in a dress, form fitting, gorgeous, currently half unzipped down the back. Future Caleb had shed his jacket somewhere between the door and the living room, his shirt untucked with half the buttons open, chest visible, hair slightly wrecked.

Behind you, Caleb had gone completely rigid. You felt it happen, every muscle in his body locking up at once.

Then future Caleb grabbed future you by the waist and walked her backward into the living room wall.

The impact was loud. What followed was louder, the sound of them kissing, which was not the word for what was happening, kissing implied something with more restraint than this. Future Caleb had his hands in her hair and on her waist and sliding down to bunch the fabric of her dress up her thighs, all at the same time.

You made a sound you hadn't planned on making.

Caleb's hand came over your mouth so fast you didn't even see it coming, his palm pressing firm and warm against your lips, his forearm across your collarbone. His chest was heaving against your back and something else was pressing against the small of your back that you were both absolutely not acknowledging.

You made a muffled sound against his hand anyway.

His arm tightened.

Future Caleb pulled back just far enough to speak "You want to play games tonight?" A pause, heavy with intent. "Let's find out how loud I can make you scream."

He pushed his hand up her skirt.

You'd never made that sound in your life. Or apparently you would. In two years. Against that wall.

"Caleb—wait, wait—the couch—"

That was it. That was enough. Your hand shot out in the dark and found the closet door handle and you grabbed it.

Caleb's hand came off your mouth and closed around your wrist, pulling it back against you, his mouth dropping to your ear.

"Don't you dare," he breathed.

"We have to stop watching this—" you hissed.

"If you open that door they'll see us—"

"Then they see us—"

"And alter the timeline," he said. "Your words. Two minutes ago."

He was right and it was the worst possible moment for him to be right.

"Just—" His voice came out strained "Just don't move."

"Caleb—"

"I'm a guy, and you are literally grinding into me," he snapped softly, though there was no real anger in it. His forehead dropped briefly to the back of your head. "Just..." sigh "give me a second."

Outside the closet Caleb lifted her clean off the floor. Her legs wrapped around his waist as he carried her the few steps to the couch and dropped her onto it.

His hands yanked the straps of her dress down, baring her breasts. He pinched a nipple, and she arched with a sharp cry. "You are so fucking wet already. Been thinking about my cock all day? Want me to stretch that pretty pussy out right here?"

"Yes—fuck, Caleb, touch me," she gasped, hips grinding up.

Your breath hitched. Heat flooded between your legs, sudden and embarrassing. Caleb's cock twitched against your ass and you had to bite your lip to stay quiet.

Future Caleb reached down and shoved his pants off. You couldn't look away. He was big, thick, flushed, veins standing out. Ready.

Panic hit you. "Don't look," you whispered frantically. "That's... me. Turn around or do something—"

"Like hell," he said against your ear, teeth grazing the shell. "You're the one staring. You like seeing him like that? Seeing what I— what he wants to do to you?"

"Caleb, shut up," you whimpered, thighs pressing together.

He didn't fuck her right away. He grabbed her ankles, yanked her to the edge of the couch, and spread her wide. Dropped to his knees.

"Caleb—" she started, but it dissolved into a broken moan as he buried his face between her legs.

The sound of his tongue working her was loud and messy, completely shameless. Her head dropped back against the cushions, fingers twisted tight into the fabric, her whole body shaking every time he dragged his tongue over her clit in greedy strokes. He licked broad stripes up her slit before focusing on her clit again, sucking it into his mouth with a low groan.

"Fuck, you taste so good,”Caleb growled against her pussy, voice muffled but clear enough to carry.

"Just like that baby” she moaned, one hand fisting his hair, the other still twisting in the couch cushion.

He pinched her nipple hard with his free hand, rolling it between his fingers as he sucked harder. Her thighs trembled around his head.

Behind you, Caleb let out a broken groan that made your knees go soft. His arm snapped around your waist, holding you steady, fingers digging into your hip the exact same way his future self was gripping her out there.

“Fuck,” you whispered, head falling back against his shoulder before you could stop yourself. Your pussy was throbbing, aching so bad it almost hurt.

“Listen to that. Listen to how wet you get for me.” Caleb shifted his hips, grinding the thick ridge of his cock against your ass through your jeans, dragging the seam right over your soaked cunt.

On the couch, she was losing it. "I need you inside me. I can’t wait anymore.”

Future Caleb pulled back, mouth shiny, breathing hard. He stroked himself once, twice, then lined up and drove into her in one rough thrust. Her legs wrapped around him as he started fucking her deep and hard, the couch creaking like it might give out any second. His back and ass flexed with every thrust, hips snapping forward. “Gonna come on my cock like a good girl?”

He leaned over her, one hand pinning her thigh higher as he fucked her. “Gonna fill you up. Want you leaking my cum the rest of the night. You love being my dirty little slut, don’t you? Say it.”

“Oh my god,” you choked, voice barely there. Watching yourself get railed like that—by him—was too much. The guy whose arms were currently locked around your waist, the same guy you’d known since you were kids, was pounding into a future version of you like he owned her.

She gasped between moans, nails now digging into his back. “Yes—your slut, Caleb—harder—”

“That’s my girl.” His hips snapped faster “Come on my cock like you did last night."

In the closet, Caleb’s forehead dropped to your shoulder, his cock twitched hard against your ass, hips making tiny, helpless thrusts.

You couldn’t tear your eyes away, every filthy word making the ache between your legs worse.

“Jesus,” Caleb whispered raggedly “We really talk like that?”

You twisted hard, trying to turn around in the cramped space so you wouldn’t have to see it anymore.

“Stop moving,” Caleb gasped, his control fraying fast as your ass rubbed right over the head of his cock.

“I can’t watch this—let me turn—”

Your foot caught on a heavy boot buried in the mess at the bottom of the closet. Balance gone.

“Whoa—” Caleb grabbed for you, but it was too late. Your combined weight slammed into the door.

The cheap magnetic latch popped open with a sad little click.

The squeaking of the couch cut off like someone had yanked the plug on the whole universe.

The silence that followed rang in your ears. You pushed up on your elbows, face so hot you were surprised you hadn’t spontaneously combusted. Caleb was beside you, shirt rucked up, the very obvious, very hard line of his erection pressing against your thigh.

You both slowly turned your heads toward the couch.

A few meters away, future Caleb was frozen mid thrust, hands locked on future you’s hips, his body still buried deep inside her. She had one leg hooked high around his waist, hair a wild mess, chest heaving. Both of them stared at you with identical expressions of what the actual fuck.

They were a sweaty, flushed disaster, very naked and very, very mid fuck.

“What the…” future Caleb started.

Future you blinked slowly. “Is that… us?”

You opened your mouth, brain offering the most useless sentence in history. “We were just looking for soy sauce—”

The white light from the Protocore exploded again. The apartment, the couch, your naked and extremely confused future selves—all of it ripped away in a roar of rushing air.

Thud.

You hit the dirty alley hard enough to knock the wind out of you again.

Caleb groaned beside you, flat on his back, one arm flung over his eyes. His chest rose and fell in sharp pulls. You could still feel the ghost of his hardness against you, the way his fingers had dug into your hip in the closet. Your own body was still buzzing, thighs slick, pulse pounding between your legs like a second heartbeat.

For a moment, neither of you moved.

Then Caleb let out a shaky laugh that sounded half hysterical. “Soy sauce. Really?”

You rolled onto your side, wincing at the scrapes on your elbows. “It was the first thing that came to mind, okay? We just watched ourselves— I mean, they— we were—” You gestured vaguely, face burning all over again. “You know.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know.”

He sat up slowly and ran a hand through his hair. The front of his shorts was still a bit tented. He didn’t bother trying to hide it. You weren’t exactly in a position to judge, your nipples were tight against your shirt, and you were pretty sure your face was the color of a ripe tomato.

The protocore gave one last weak shimmer and dissolved into harmless blue dust that scattered across the pavement.

Caleb looked at you. “So… two years from now, huh?”

You swallowed. “Apparently we, uh… figured some things out.”

He huffed another laugh, but it was softer this time. Almost wondering. He reached over and brushed a bit of alley dirt off your cheek with his thumb. The touch lingered.

“We should probably go”

You nodded, but neither of you stood up right away. The air between you felt thicker than the summer humidity, charged with everything you’d just seen and felt in that stupid closet.

Caleb’s gaze dropped to your mouth for a second, then flicked back up. “When we get back to the house…”

“Yeah?” you whispered.

He smiled, small and crooked and a little nervous, the same smile he’d given you a thousand times growing up, except this one felt different.

“I’m not waiting two years,” he said.

Your heart did something complicated in your chest.

You grabbed his hand, pulled him up with you, and the two of you started walking out of the alley like nothing had happened.

But everything had happened.

And as your fingers brushed again while you walked, neither of you pulled away.

Nerd! Zayne Part 5 coming soon. I promise.

So about his nose… Valko can definitely smell when you're aroused. He can detect any spike in pheromones, and it greatly affects him. The faintest whiff of your ‘special’ scent is enough to get him raging hard and sniffing his way to its source. Imagine Valko on his knees between your legs, panting heavily against your center as he begs for a taste, nuzzling his big nose against your clit 🫣

Trailing off that, Valko is absolutely a muncher. You’re gonna have to smack him away because he won’t stop if you let him, basically getting high on your essence; he could cum from it alone. Valko eats it from the front, from the back, upside down, on top of his face, he devours it ALL ways. He is THIRSTY!

Definitely a panty snatcher. He has a stash at home and at work 👀 Don’t ask what he does with them (totally not sniff/chew on them while he jacks off)

He doesn’t try to be overly sexual in the beginning, but whenever he nuzzles you to cover you in his scent, it inadvertently turns you on, ending with him between your legs every time. Valko is genetically weak to you, his body becoming fully in tune with yours and your desires.

I like to think he’s a virgin when you meet, so you’ll have to teach him some stuff, but this boy is EAGER! And he has no fear; he goes face-first into you like a starving animal when you give him the first go-ahead. Valko can’t help but cum in his own pants at the first taste, but he’s got the stamina to make up for the inexperience. It doesn’t take you long to train him, so he knows exactly what you like and how you like it.

Valko is a submissive top, if that makes sense lol. He lets you have power over him because that’s what he wants and how he’s wired. Valko could easily overpower you and dominate you thoroughly (which he of course does sometimes, hehe), but he likes to let you control and guide him. Valko secretly really likes it when you bully him, then kiss him sweetly and straddle his lap, but he’ll never admit it. Playing the ornery brat gets him exactly what he wants. He has no shame either; if anyone calls him a simp, he gladly owns up to it.

Due to his nature, it would make sense for him to have a breeding kink. He loves to cum inside you and watch it leak from your swollen folds (+ he’s not afraid to taste his own cooking if you know what I mean)

Valko is down bad and dirty for you, and he's up for trying anything at least once (he can’t say no to you, fr). Want a threesome with another LI? Who is he to deny his baby! (I am impartial to him taking a liking to Caleb cause your scents are similar, but shh I didn’t say that) Just make sure you show him the most attention, or he’ll have to remind you 😌

He moans, whines, and whimpers!! Valko likes it when you press him to the point of desperation, teasing him until he begs. He gets off on your praise and affection, so you like to make him ‘earn' it as a cute little game (that always turns dirty)