If life ain't just a joke then why are we laughing

2) any vegetable is better than no vegetable

It's my religion

warnings: smut, emotionally cheating if you squint, threesome, barely any plot

word count: 3,718 words

pairing: michael clifford/reader, luke hemmings/reader, muke/reader

a/n: titled tba. I kinda got carried away also recently watched skins so luke is accidentally tony kinda

WARNING! RPF CONTENT DONT LIKE DONT READ

You were curled against Luke's side on the couch, knees tucked beneath you, while his arm hung lazily across the cushions behind your shoulders. He'd pulled you there a while after you started greeting your guests, settling you against him while he talked with a few of his friends, including Michael, who sat across from you in an armchair, fidgeting with a pick from the show from earlier that night.

The venue had been tiny, but impressive in a way that made your chest ache with pride every time you looked at Luke. The music rattled through the floorboards hard enough for it to feel in your ribs. The band had only been together for a little over a year, yet somehow people already knew the lyrics.

They’d shouted the band’s name afterward while Luke stood sweaty and breathless beneath the stage lights, curls sticking damply to his forehead.

The party afterward in Luke's apartment was mostly for networking, according to him. Producers, other musicians, friends-of-friends crammed in with drinks balanced carelessly in their hands. Luke had dragged you along with him the second somebody invited the band over, fingers hooked through yours as he disappeared easily into conversation after conversation. You mostly stayed put next to him while people talked about gigs and recording sessions and people you’d never met or even heard of, smiling politely and giving you two cents despite feeling a little lost.

You decided to get some air eventually, more out of boredom than anything else.

Luke noticed the second you started untucking yourself from his side, his hand sliding from your thigh while he glanced up at you through heavy-lidded eyes.

“Where you goin’?” he asked

“Outside for a minute,” you murmured.

His fingers caught briefly around your wrist before letting go again. “Don’t disappear.”

Michael seemed to notice your state.

He leaned back deeper into the armchair across from you, boot nudging lightly against the leg of the coffee table while he still rolled the guitar pick between his fingers, his eyes followed your movement and watched you disappear.

The chill hit immediately. It felt good after being packed inside warm bodies all night. You sat down on the metal steps with your drink between your hands, elbows resting on your knees, while the noise from inside dulled, and the smell of cigarettes drifted to your nostrils.

The fire escape window opened again a minute later.

“Knew this wasn’t really your thing,”

Michael stepped outside, the apartment light spilling briefly across the stairwell behind him before closing it once again.

“Figured I’d come keep you company.” he said after a moment

You looked down toward the drink balanced between your hands instead of directly at him. “That obvious?”

“A little.”

There was amusement sitting quietly underneath his words, though not enough to make it feel mean. He stepped down onto the stair beside yours, close enough that your knees could brush if either of you moved wrong.

Michael was somewhere in that strange space between acquaintance and friend. You saw him often enough because of Luke and spent enough late nights around him after rehearsals and shitty diner trips, yet the two of you had never really been alone together before.

There was something easy about him. Familiar, you would say. You trusted him instinctively, in the way you trust somebody who’s seen you half-asleep in the backseat at three in the morning or listened to you ramble tipsily on somebody’s kitchen floor without ever making you feel stupid for it.

And maybe that was part of the problem lately.

The last few weeks had felt off, you had no other word for it, in a way, you were trying very hard not to examine too closely. Nothing obvious. Nothing bad. Just little things that had started to linger longer than they should have.

Michael looking at you across rehearsal rooms a second too long. Your stomach flipping stupidly whenever he brushed past you in cramped hallways. The kind of tension you could still pretend wasn’t there if you never faced it.

“I think Luke forgets these things are actually boring if you’re not in a band.”

Yeah,” he murmured. “You kinda need to care at least a little.”

“I tried caring.”

“I’m sure you did.”

You glanced sideways at him finally, catching the faint grin sitting at the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t mocking. If anything, he looked entertained by you in a way that made heat creep faintly into your face.

“You liked the show though?” He asked.

Your expression softened automatically. “Obviously.”

“You looked proud.”

“I was proud.” You smiled a little to yourself. “You're all getting the recognition you deserve, you're even getting invited to places like these.”

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Still feels kinda weird.”

“We were playing to like,” he laughed quietly, “fifteen people six months ago.”

“And now random girls know your lyrics.”

“That’s mostly Luke’s fault,” Michael said easily. “People like looking at him.”

You snorted softly into your drink. “You say that like people weren’t staring at you too.”

His mouth pulled slightly at the corner afterward, he muttered. “Were you?”

You were shocked because the answer should be obvious? Luke.

Luke, your boyfriend, all sweet and pretty smiles and endless love.

But maybe Michael, too.

Michael, with his guitar hanging low against his hips, head tipped down while he played. who barely seemed aware when people looked at him, which somehow made it more endearing.

The realization made the feeling of guilt twist softly in your chest.

Still, your eyes flicked briefly down toward Michael’s mouth before you could even stop yourself.

“Both.” you admitted quietly, and regretted instantly. What the fuck.

You felt it immediately, awfully in your chest, like you’d said something you weren’t supposed to out loud.

Michael noticed too. You could tell by the way his expression shifted slightly, the corner of his mouth pulling faintly like he was trying not to smile too much at your obvious panic.

You stood up too fast, nearly spilling your drink down the front of yourself in the process. “We should probably go back inside.” you said quickly.

Michael got up a second later, slower than you, hands slipping into the pockets of his jacket while he watched you carefully for a moment. He didn’t push you further, and that somehow worsened it all.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “okay.”

You suddenly felt too aware of your surroundings inside, after the quiet, warmer outside.

Luke was across the room, laughing at something while he leaned back against the counter.

His eyes found yours when you came back in. Then shifted briefly toward Michael, climbing in after you.

Something unreadable flickered across his face for half a second, you could tell, but it went as fast as it came.

The rest of the party blurred a little after that. You mostly pretended to listen to conversations while your brain replayed the fire escape over and over again in humiliating detail. And every now and then, you caught Michael looking at you from across the room, while Luke's hand rested on your waist.

Eventually, the apartment thinned into just the three of you.

Michael stayed. He always did. Which was unfortunate for your current situation, considering his presence in your apartment felt almost as familiar as your own by now.

By the time the place finally quieted down, it was almost three in the morning, and the three of you had fallen into cleaning without really talking about it, drinking more halfway through. Luke moved around the apartment gathering empty bottles into trash bags while you stood at the sink rinsing sticky alcohol from cups. Michael dried them beside you with a dish towel thrown over his shoulder.

Luke moved around easily behind the two of you, and every so often, he’d pass by and drag his hand absentmindedly over your hip or the small of your back like he needed to touch you on instinct alone. Casual.

Still, every single time he did it, you became painfully aware of Michael standing right there.

The last bag of trash was tied off. The final glass sat drying on the rack. The silence that settled over the clean-ish apartment..

“Can we not move for a second?” You groaned, leaning heavily against the kitchen counter.

“Please,” Michael mumbled.

Luke pushed off the counter immediately, a small smile dedicated to you. “Come on.” He caught your hand and pulled you towards the living room.

He fell onto the cushions first, landing with a soft oof, and pulled you to rest on his chest. your body molded to his with the ease of a year's habit.

He smelled like beer, and home. His arm came around you, heavy.

Michael followed behind, dropping onto the seat next to you.

The three of you lay there in a comfortable, drunk silence for a few minutes.

The streetlight outside cast long, lazy shadows across the room. Your mind drifted, floating hazily on the feeling of Luke’s heartbeat under your ear and the solid, quiet presence of Michael beside you.

Luke’s hand, which had been resting on your hip, began to move. It was absently-minded stroking you, his thumb tracing idle circles through the fabric of your dress. It was the same casual, instinctive touch from the kitchen, but here in the dark quiet, it felt amplified.

And each pass of his thumb sent a little spark through the pleasant fog in your head.

You tilted your face up toward his, and he was already looking down at you, his eyes dark and soft in the shadows. A slow, lazy smile touched his lips. He bent his head and kissed you.

It was a tired, beer-flavored kiss at first—soft, closed-mouthed, a simple love you. But then his hand slid from your hip to the small of your back, pressing you a little more firmly against him, and the kiss deepened. His tongue slid against yours, seekingly so, and a low hum of pleasure vibrated in his chest.

You kissed him back, the familiar taste and feel of him a comforting anchor in the sleepy, spinning room. Your hand came up to curl in the soft hair at the nape of his neck. The world narrowed to the soft sound of your mouths moving together, the scratch of his stubble, the heat of his body under yours.

Michael had turned his head on the cushion.

He was watching you, not with shock or jealousy, but with a kind of hungry fascination. His eyes were glassy from drink and tiredness, but they were fixed on Luke’s mouth, then on yours.

He quickly looked away when he saw you’d noticed, a faint flush visible even in the dim light, his throat working as he swallowed.

Luke followed your gaze. He didn’t seem surprised. He looked from Michael’s averted face back to yours, his expression thoughtful.

His hand resumed its slow stroking on your back.

“Comfy, Mikey?” Luke asked, his voice a low rumble.

“Yeah” Michael muttered

“Good.”

Luke kissed you again, but this time it was different. More deliberate somehow, like he was showing off.

He angled his head deeper against yours, making a soft, pleased sound into the kiss while one of his hands slid up to cradle your jaw. It was the kind of kiss that normally would’ve melted you instantly, but through the lingering haze in your head,

“The whole night,” he continued softly, thumb dragging once along your jaw. “The way he looks at you. The way you look back.”

Heat flooded your face so fast it almost hurt.

“Luke,” you whispered, horrified. “I didn’t mean—”

Michael let out a quiet strained laugh from next to you, more nervous than amused. “Dude—”

“Relax.” Luke cut in easily, though his eyes stayed on yours the entire time.

There was still something unfairly calm about him. He had no jealousy or anger. If anything, he looked too focused, like watching the two of you together had flipped some switch in his head that he hadn’t expected.

His hand slid from your jaw to your throat, loosely.

“It’s kinda hard not to notice,” he said quietly. “You get all shy around him lately.”

Your pulse jumped.

“And he looks at you like he wants to eat you alive.” Luke huffed out the faintest laugh through his nose after that, almost disbelieving. “Think I’d have to be blind to miss it.”

Luke shifted beneath you, his arm extending past your shoulder to grip Michael’s wrist where it rested on the armrest, pulling his hand forward until his fingers splayed warm and heavy against your hip alongside Luke’s own. "Touch her" Luke murmured, his voice wrecked against your ear, his thumb stroking the inside of Michael’s wrist where the pulse hammered wild.

Michael made a broken sound, his fingers flexing hard into your waist, and then he was surging across the narrow space between you, his hand coming up to grip your jaw, fingers sliding into your hair.

Michael kissed you like he’d been starving for it, months of sidelong glances and yearning finally breaking surface. His hand came up to grip your jaw, fingers sliding into your hair, and when he pulled back barely an inch his breathing was ragged against your lips.

“This okay?” he whispered, his thumb tracing your cheekbone. “’Cause I can—”

“Don’t stop,” you said, your voice sounding foreign, thick. “Please. Just don’t stop.”

You felt Luke shift behind you on the couch, his chest pressing harder against your back. His hand didn’t leave your waist—his fingers dug in possessively as he watched over your shoulder. Then his mouth was on your neck grazing the tendon there and you were trapped between them, gasping.

“You sure?” Luke murmured against your skin, his hand sliding up to cover Michael’s where it gripped your jaw. He laced their fingers together, a silent question passing between them. “We can just—”

“I want you both.” you said, the words tumbling out before you could catch them. You felt your face burn, but Luke groaned, low and wrecked, right against your ear.

“Fuck,” Michael breathed. “Okay. Yeah.”

Luke’s hand slid up roughly, pushing the strap of your dress off your shoulder. The fabric loosened, and Michael’s hand immediately slid inside, his calloused palm cupping your breast. His thumb found your nipple, rolling it until it hardened. You gasped, arching into it, your head falling back against Luke’s shoulder.

“You’re shaking,” Michael observed, his voice unsteady. He leaned in, his lips brushing your ear. “We can slow down.”

“No,” you said, reaching out to fist your hand in his shirt, pulling him closer. “I’m not scared. I just—God, I’ve wanted this. I didn’t know how to say it.”

Luke’s other hand worked the back of your dress, zipper grinding down. He pushed it down your hips, his knuckles dragging against your skin. “You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “We know. We’ve known.”

The dress pooled on the floor. Michael broke away just long enough to pull his own shirt over his head, tossing it aside, and you reached for his belt, fumbling with the buckle. Your fingers were clumsy, trembling.

“Here.” Luke said, his hand covering yours. Together they worked the leather free, the metal clinking softly in the quiet room. Michael’s jeans unzipped, and his cock sprang out, thick and flushed. You reached for him, wrapping your hand around the baseand he sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth.

“Your mouth,” he managed, his hand coming up to cup your face. “Can you—?”

“Yeah,” you whispered, and Luke was already guiding you forward with a gentle hand between your shoulder blades, bending you over Michael’s lap.

You took Michael into your mouth, tasting salt and heat, and he groaned above you, his hands threading into your hair—not pushing, just holding, his fingers trembling against your scalp. “Fuck, that’s—” he cut off, his head dropping back.

Then Luke was moving, kneeling on the floor between your spread knees. He shoved your underwear down your thighs, leaving them tangled, and pushed your legs wider with his shoulders. “Lift up a little,” he murmured, his hands sliding up your inner thighs. “There. Just like that.”

His mouth found you immediately—hot, wet, filthy. His tongue dragged up from your entrance to your clit, then he sucked the sensitive bud into his mouth. You moaned around Michael’s cock, the vibration making him curse and jerk his hips.

“Feel good?” Luke asked, pulling back just enough for you to feel the words against your thigh. He pushed two fingers into you, curling them, and you bucked against his hand.

“Yes,” you gasped, pulling off Michael with a wet sound. “Luke, don’t—don’t stop.”

“Wasn’t planning to,” he said, and you could hear the smile in his voice. He went back to work, his tongue circling your clit while his fingers fucked you slow and deep.

Michael’s hand slid down from your hair, his thumb tracing your swollen lips. “Come up here,” he said softly. “Wanna see you.”

Luke’s hands gripped your hips, helping you turn, guiding you up and around. You settled back onto Luke’s lap, facing Michael now, your knees bracketing Luke’s hips. Luke’s cock was hard and hot against your lower back, and he reached down, grabbing himself, aligning himself with your entrance.

“Slow,” he breathed against your neck. “Tell me if it’s too much.”

You sank down onto him, inch by inch, the stretch burning perfect. You both groaned—low and guttural—as you took him to the base. “Not too much,” you panted, your head falling back against his shoulder. “It’s perfect. You’re perfect.”

Luke’s hands came up to grip your waist, his thumbs pressing into your hip bones. “Ride me,” he said, his voice wrecked.

You started to move, rolling your hips, grinding down. Michael watched from the couch beside you, his hand wrapped around his own cock, stroking slow. His eyes were dark, fixed on where Luke entered you.

“Come here.” you said to him, reaching out. “I want you closer.”

Michael moved immediately, shifting up onto his knees on the couch beside Luke’s head. You leaned forward, taking him into your mouth again, and the angle was different now—deeper.

Michael groaned, his hand coming to rest on the back of your head, not guiding but feeling.

Luke thrusted up into you from below, meeting your downward grinds, his hands tightening on your waist. “Look at you,” he rasped. “Taking us both. You’re so beautiful like this.”

You pulled off Michael with a gasp, your hand replacing your mouth, stroking him firm and wet. “Switch.” you managed, looking back over your shoulder at Luke. “I want—can I?”

Luke understood immediately. He slowed his thrusts, his hands guiding you up until he slipped free, wet and hard against his stomach. “Turn around,” he said softly. “Get on your knees.”

You turned, facing away from him now, on your hands and knees on the couch. Luke sat back against the arm, positioning himself in front of you, his cock upright and glistening. Michael moved behind you, his hands gripping your hips, his chest against your back.

“You good?” Michael asked, his lips at your ear. His cock was pressing against your entrance, not entering yet, just teasing through the wetness there.

“Yes,” you whispered, pushing back against him. “Please, Michael. I need you inside.”

He pushed forward in one slow steady thrust, filling you completely. You gasped, your forehead dropping to Luke’s thigh. The feeling was different from Luke—and it sent a sharp spark of pleasure up your spine.

“Fuck,” Michael breathed, his forehead dropping to your shoulder blade. “You’re so tight. So wet.”

“Okay?” Luke asked, his hand coming under your chin, lifting your face. His eyes searched yours in the dim light.

“Better than okay,” you said, and you meant it. You leaned forward and took Luke’s cock into your mouth again, the taste of yourself mixed with his pre-cum, and the position was perfect—you impaled on Michael from behind, your mouth full of Luke, the two of them filling you from both ends.

They found a rhythm together, natural and unspoken. When Michael thrust forward, you rocked onto Luke’s cock. Michael’s hands gripped your ass, his fingers digging in, while Luke’s hands were gentle in your hair, his hips making small, shallow thrusts into your mouth.

“Touch her,” Luke said to Michael, his voice strained. He reached down with one hand, finding Michael’s where it gripped your hip, and guided it between your legs. “Rub her clit. She’s close.”

Michael’s fingers slid between your legs from behind, finding your clit, rubbing tight, hard circles while he fucked you. The dual sensation was overwhelming—his cock hitting deep, his fingers on your clit, Luke’s cock sliding over your tongue.

“Is that good?” Michael asked, his voice breaking. “You gonna come for us?”

You couldn’t answer, you just moaned around Luke, the vibration making him groan and tighten his grip in your hair.

You were babbling incoherent, the pleasure building sharply, coiling tight in your belly.

“I’m close,” Michael choked out, his thrusts stuttering. “Fuck, I can’t—”

“Come in her,” Luke said, his voice a rough command softened by the way he was looking at you, his eyes dark. “fill her up. Let me see.”

Michael’s hips jerked hard, and he buried himself deep with a ragged cry, his cock pulsing as he came inside you, hot and thick. The feeling of him coming, the squeeze of his fingers on your clit, sent you over. You came with a moan around Luke’s cock, your body convulsing, your pussy milking Michael’s cock as he groaned above you, his weight pressing you forward.

The tight clenching of your orgasm and the sight of you falling apart sent Luke over the edge. He pulled your head back slightly, his hand gentle in your hair, and came spilling over your tongue and lips, his hips bucking up, his hand gripping the couch cushion white-knuckled.

You collapsed forward onto Luke’s chest, Michael’s weight heavy and perfect against your back for a moment before he carefully pulled out, falling sideways onto the couch with a groan.

You lay there, a panting mess.

Frank talking about music and then laughing at some joke.