#doc holliday

on monday she came home from a close shift to find shane sitting in complete darkness because he had not worked out the light switches and had apparently decided that sitting in the dark was preferable to asking wade where they were. wade was in the kitchen making dinner with all the lights on, and neither of them had thought to connect these two situations in any way. she stood in the doorway of her own flat looking at a man sitting in the dark on her sofa with his arms folded across his chest, and she turned the light on and went to bed without saying a word.

wade broke the shower on tuesday while trying to fix it, which was worse than just leaving it broken. she discovered this at six thirty in the morning before her afternoon shift when the water came spluttering out at the shower hose instead of the head. she stood in the bathroom doorway in her towel looking at it and then at wade who was standing behind her doing rapid calculations about whether to lead with an apology or an explanation. she closed the bathroom door and went back to bed for an hour while he sorted it out, which he did, and the pressure had been perfect ever since, which she had not and would not comment on.

she came home on wednesday to find that shane had taken the bathroom tap apart and laid every component out on a tea towel on the kitchen counter in a row that was far more organised than she would have expected from a man who lived alone in the wilderness, while wade was on the sofa eating toast giving unnecessary commentary and hiding pieces whenever shane snapped at him.

"are you going to put that back together?" her voice was tired and flat, scratchy from yelling at grown ass men not to give their teenage sons alcohol.

"yes." 

"tonight?" it wasn’t a question.

"probably." and he had put it back together that night. it had not dripped since.

thursday she worked a close and came home with fatigue sitting in her bones rather than just her body, the kind that came from several consecutive late nights and a week that had been several weeks long in terms of what it had contained. she opened the door and dropped her bag and looked at wade on one end of the sofa and shane on the other with careful maintained distance. she sat down between them in the gap that was exactly the width of her without thinking about it, put her head on wade's shoulder, and closed her eyes.

neither of them said anything.

she didn’t mean to fall asleep, but somewhere between one breath and the next, the warmth of wade's on one side and shane’s on the other, the quiet of the flat and the slow steady mutters of conversation, she was gone.

then she woke up horizontal. wade had shifted at some point, or she had, and she was lying along the length of the sofa with her cheek against his chest and his arm around her, the slow, even rise and fall of his breathing underneath her moving her head. the flat was dim with just the fairy lights reflecting their soft, amber light, and his heartbeat was steady and very present against her ear, so she laid there as she wasn’t quite awake enough to move.

she turned her head.

shane was on the floor with his back against the sofa, arms resting on his knees, eyes closed with his head rolled back to rest on the edge of the sofa cushion. clearly he felt her eyes on her because one eye peeled open and he met her eyes with a raise of his eyebrow. she gave him a small smile and he rolled his eyes and shut them once more. 

she put her cheek back against wade's chest and his arms tightened around her, an unconscious reaction to not wanting to let go of her, and she laid there in the soft light of the fairy lights with his heartbeat under her ear and shane’s silence and was very suddenly very grateful for space and time splitting apart to get these men in her life. even if she only liked shane when he was quiet.

she did not move for a very long time, letting her finger trace patterns over wade’s chest, writing small sentences and symbols; just letting herself feel the firmness of the muscles underneath his skin as she coaxed herself back to sleep.

on friday she came home so tired she could not form sentences. the double shift sat in her bones like wet cement and she got through the door as wade came out of the kitchen. he looked at her face and did not say anything at all, just held out a cup of tea already made the way she took it, and she took it to her room and closed the door, barely nodding her thanks to him. she heard him go back to the kitchen and the quiet sounds of him moving around in there as she sat on her bed with her tea and drank it. she didnt even remember putting it on her side table before she went to bed.

saturday she came home to find the flat had been cleaned.

not tidied. cleaned, properly, the surfaces wiped down and the floor swept and the bathroom scrubbed in a way it had not been scrubbed since she moved in, everything exactly where it belonged. she stood in the middle of the living room in her coat and looked at shane who was back on the sofa in his usual configuration, ankle over knee, arms crossed, the expression of a man waiting to see what she did.

she hung up her coat and went to bed.

on sunday she did not have to go anywhere.

you woke up at ten to warmth on the wrong side of the bed.

not wade's warmth, she knew wade's warmth. this was different; they were too large for the space they were occupying, their arm underneath the pillow and one thrown over your waist, a blanket bunched up at their hips and their face buried in your frilly pillows. their jaw was set even in sleep.

shane fucking maguire was in your fucking bed.

you stared at him.

"what the fuck." you said, flat and very clear in the quiet of the room.

nothing.

"get the fuck out of my bed!"

he opened one eye, the other hidden in the plush of your pillows.

"woman," he said, with the raw gravelled edge of someone who had been very deeply asleep, "shut up. the floor hurts."

"i don't care that the floor hurts!"

"my back hurts."

"i don't care about your back either!?"

"the sofa's too short," he said, closing his eye again like he considered the matter settled, "and the floor is hardwood. i checked. your mattress is better than both."

"get out of my bed, shane."

"go back to sleep."

"wade." she raised her voice toward the door without taking her eyes off shane. "wade!"

a beat of silence from the living room.

"WADE."

the sound of the sofa, the familiar creak of it, and then footsteps, then the door opened so fast it bounced off of the wall. wade appeared in the doorway in yesterday's flannel with his hair pushed back and his eyes wide and alert and already scanning the room for whatever the problem was.

"are you okay, what's—" he stopped.

he looked at her side of the bed, he looked at shane, lying there with his face pressed into the pillows, very comfortable and completely unworried as he smushed his face even further into the pillows, nose pressed into the fabric like he was a damn dog.

wade looked back at her.

"what.." wade said, carefully, "is happening here?"

"the floor hurts," shane said, his voice muffled into the pillows.

wade put his face in his hands.

"get him out of my fucking bed—" the words came out hot and immediate, and you were already sitting up, turning toward shane and pointing at his limp figure.

"oh my god." shane's voice, flat and aggrieved was finally clear as he turned his head out of ‘his’ pillow, rolling his shoulder back to allow his hand to come up and slap it over your mouth, his palm warm and heavy against your face. "shut up. it is ten in the morning."

wade watched as your eyes went very, very wide and you grabbed his wrist with both hands.

"oh my fucking god." came from the doorway, and he was already moving, crossing the room in three strides, his hands finding your waist from behind and lifting you back before you could do whatever you were about to do to shane's hand, which was still over your mouth. you grabbed for it anyway, fingers reaching, and wade pulled you further back to prevent an ‘accident.’ 

"okay, okay, okay—" wade's voice, low and rapid, the drawl completely gone, replaced by the clipped efficiency of a man in crisis management mode, his arms locked around you from behind, "i've got you, i've got you, don't—"

shane finally opened both eyes, and he looked at the two of you, at wade holding you back with both arms and you still reaching for him with an expression that communicated your intentions very clearly, and the corner of his mouth moved.

"you're both insane," he huffed before he flattened his face back into the pillow.

"he's still in my bed." the horror in your voice was genuine, and clearly very amusing to wade as he had to stifle his giggles. "he is still. in my bed."

"it's a good mattress." shane said from the bedroom, entirely unbothered.

"wade—"

but wade had already dissolved into something that was not quite a laugh and was doing nothing to help the situation, his shoulders shaking with it, and you turned on him with the full force of your outrage. he held his hands up in surrender and before they dropped to pick you up. 

bridal style, both arms, one under your knees and one at your back, lifting you with complete ease, and you made a sound of horror and grabbed his flannel shirt. he paid no attention and walked out of the bedroom, nudging the door shut behind him with his foot and carried you down the hall and into the kitchen.

"put me down.” you said in abject horror, eyes still wide as your feet thrashed wildly in protest.

wade sighed as he put you on the counter, hands gripping your thighs to support you as he stood between them, his hips between your knees and your feet brushing the middle of his thigh. 

you stared at him, blinking as if you could clear the confusion from your eyes."why are you so touchy.” #

"i'm a friendly person," he said as he made an amused huffing noise, grinning down at you. 

"you picked me up."

"you were about to do something regrettable."

"i was going to ask him to leave."

"with your hands around his throat." wade's grin widened by a degree with your silence, and he reached past you to get the mug he deemed his now, not moving from where he was standing. you tried to ignore how his hips moved against yours.

shane appeared in the kitchen doorway and hummed a thanks when wade passed him his black coffee in another mug that had apparently been claimed, except this one still had a lipstick stain on it that shane was drinking from.

you stared at shane as wade hummed to himself, making himself and you your coffee’s like it was his favourite job in the world. 

"wade."

"hm?" wade said, leaning against the counter beside you now, entirely comfortable.

"why are you and shane buddy buddy?"

wade grinned into his coffee.

"wade."

"we talked." wade said, shrugging a single shoulder.

"you talked?" you repeated. "you and shane… talked?"

"a little," wade said. "while you were at work."

you looked at shane, shane looked from you to wade to you again before a grin split his lips, which he hid in his coffee. this was the closest he came to being entertained when a gun wasnt pointed at him.

"shane knows why." wade said cheerfully.

"what does that mean?" you said, horrendous images of male bonding starting to flash in your mind. "what did you talk about? what happens in this flat when i'm gone?"

wade grinned and said nothing, shane sipped his coffee, making an awful noise, but said nothing.

"wade." your voice was full of questioning and abject horror.

"you want breakfast?" wade said, already turning toward the hob. "i'm making eggs."

you sat on the counter in horrified silence and watched wade crack eggs into the pan with ease, grabbing seasonings and addons and whatnot without looking, becoming extremely comfortable in the kitchen. you’d figure the bartender mechanic wouldnt have taken to cooking so quickly, but he was confident in his egg making abilities. wade looked at her with an expression that was warm and unhurried and entirely unguarded, the kind of look that had no grin behind it or ulterior motive, and she felt goosebumps rise on the back of her neck.

shane looked at you again, and when you caught him, he snapped his gaze away and continued to make that awful slurping noise that rattled your teeth.

"what is happening!?" you said, your eyes tracking both wade and shane as they acted like awkward little boys who had broken a pot or a vase or something.

"breakfast," he motioned to the pan like it was a stupid question.

"that's not what i mean."

"i know," wade said, and the grin came back, smaller than usual, more private, and he turned back to the pan and you sat on the counter with your legs dangling, soaking in the strange warm atmosphere of a sunday morning in a flat that had somehow, without you noticing, become a place where three people lived instead of one.

wade turned from the hob and came to stand in front of you, settling between your thighs with easy familiarity and he looked at you with the same focused attention he gave broken window latches and drawer runners, and his hand gripped your knee, his thumb rubbing slow and absent patterns on your skin.

"sweetheart," he said, soft and direct, "you've got bags under your eyes the size of carry-on luggage. when did you last sleep properly?"

"i sleep," you said, because you do sleep, just not very well.

"you come home and go horizontal," wade said, "that's not the same thing. you need a proper nap and a shower and a day where you don't have to be anywhere, which today is, so after breakfast you're going back to bed."

"okay," you sighed, and it came out smaller than intended.

"yeah," shane said, from the doorway, like he was offering a clinical observation rather than a sympathetic one, "you look tired as fuck."

you turned and looked at him with the full force of a glare that had been building since you woke up to find him in your bed. shane looked back at you, unmoved, simply raising his eyebrow like he was challenging you to go for him again.

your eyes found the mug of tea you had made in the middle of the night when you came home from work last night, the teabag still sitting in the saucer beside it, wet and cold, and you picked it up, and threw it at shane. 

it hit him on the cheek with a small wet plap.

he stared at you for a small moment, his jaw setting like stone before he reached up and peeled the teabag off his face, looking at it as it dangled from his fingers, clearly unamused before he dropped it into the bin beside him. 

wade had turned back to the eggs but his shoulders were shaking in restricted amusement.

"when did you two bond?” you huffed, looking between them with suspicion. shane had wade up in the corner of the hallway with a gun beneath his jaw, had threatened him, called him a clone, insulted you in your own home multiple times and was just a dick!

how have you gone to work for a week, come back and seen these two attached at the fucking hip?

"genuinely. i want to know. i was gone for seven hours on thursday and i came back and you were sitting on the same sofa like you were bros, but now wade is making you breakfast and you slept in my bed and wade is giving me the look—"

"what look?!" wade said, from the hob.

"the look," you said, gesturing at his face, at the warm unhurried thing he had been doing with his eyes all morning, "that look, that one, stop doing it—"

"i'm just standing here!?" wade laughed, throwing his hands up with the spatula still in his hand.

"you're doing it right now! you're doing it at the eggs—" you turned back to shane, "and you keep staring at me and looking away when i catch you, which you have done four times since you got out of my bed, which you were in, without my permission, and i want to know what happened in this flat while i was working doubles and coming home too tired to notice things, because something clearly happened and nobody has told me what it was!"

shane picked up his coffee from the counter, the teabag residue still faintly visible on his cheek, and he looked at you over the rim of it with a flat expression, giving nothing away and acting like he was being questioned by the damn government for the secret to some family recipe!

wade plated the eggs and brought them over and set one in front of you on the counter and kept one for himself and leaned against the counter beside you with his shoulder warm against hers. he looked at you with the soft version of himself, the one without the grin, and he said, "we talked about you."

you looked at him.

you looked at shane.

"you talked about me?"

"you work a lot," wade said, in the tone of someone stating a fact that has been discussed at length in your absence, "and you come home tired and you don't ask for anything and you just keep going, and we had a lot of time in this flat with nothing to do and a lot of it ended up being about you, is the thing."

"that's not an answer to what you bonded over," you huffed, taking a bite out of your eggs and humming in satisfaction. it was the first real thing you’d eaten in a week of stuffing yourself with protein bars and ready meals that you picked up when you could.

wade picked up his fork and looked at you with stars still doing their thing in his eyes, which you were trying very hard not to look at directly because looking at him directly did something to your chest that you couldnt deal with in your kitchen on a sunday morning,

"football." shane grunted into his coffee, flat and without amble, and you turned to stare at him and he looked from wade to you, nodding like he considered his debt paid. 

out of the corner of your eye, you saw wade nod.

"football.” you repeated.

"and you." wade said cheerfully, eating his eggs.

"you bonded over football and talking about me behind my back," you said, looking between them, at wade with stars in his eyes and his little plate of eggs as his thumb still rubbed patterns into your knee, and at shane with his coffee that he had just finished and the teabag mark on his cheek. the two of them filling your small kitchen on a sunday morning with the easy warmth of people who had found, in your absence, some version of a language they could both speak. "that’s what happened?"

"eat your eggs and shut up, missy" wade said, his free hand coming up to ruffle your bed hair.

the shower was too hot and you couldnt be bothered to turn it down.

you stood under it with your palms flat against the tiles and your forehead tipped forward as the water crashed against the back of your neck and your shoulders. you let it run down your spine and pool at your feet, filling the small bathroom with the scent of your bodywash and steam that softened the edges of everything, 

it had been a long week. it had been several weeks compressed into one, the way weeks got when too much was happening in too small a space, and you had moved through it on autopilot, shift to flat to bed and back again. somewhere in the middle of moving through it the flat had changed without your permission into something that seemed more like a flat than somewhere to sleep at night.

wade smelled like your products, which should have been strange and was not. you’d bought him his own toiletries when you’d went out together, and yet he had been using your shampoo and neither of you had said a word about it. now the shower smelled like your shampoo and like him; that warm underlying scent of man and sugar and sun that the shampoo could not entirely cover, something clean and something human and something that was just wade, and you had been standing in this shower every night for a week feeling better for it.

shane, on the other hand, had refused your products with the certainty of a man who had strong and non-negotiable opinions about what went on his body, which you had found irritating right up until the point where you had accidentally tried to put his shirt on and melted into the smell of him, and somehow his hair was the softest thing you had ever seen in your life. 

it was odd to live with two men who seemed to have had opposite lives.

wade picked you up without being asked, wade made your tea the right way without being told, wade had kissed your neck in the kitchen and danced away with a wink like it was nothing, like it was just something he did, and the worst part was that with wade it probably was just something he did. the warmth of him so native and so constant that it probably meant less to him than it did to you, standing in the shower with the hot water running out and the memory of his mouth on your neck still sitting somewhere you could not evict it from.

wade was easy to think about, he was warm and frustrating and funny and you knew exactly what he was doing to you and you had no intention of letting him know that you knew, and that was a manageable situation, that was something you could navigate with the tools you had available.

shane was a different problem entirely.

shane got under your skin in a way that was not warm and was not easy and did not have the decency to be simple. he was infuriating in the way of someone who did not care enough about other people's opinions to perform anything for them, who said exactly what he thought and looked at you with that flat expression and looked away when you caught him staring and cleaned your flat on saturday without saying anything about it. but then he slept in your bed because the floor hurt his back and held your mouth shut with his palm at ten in the morning like it was a completely reasonable thing to do! he got under your skin and twisted, and kept twisting, and you could not find the place to grab hold of it and make it stop.

the water ran cold, the pressure went hard and you were quickly woken up.

you stood in the steam for a moment with the cold air starting to find its way in around the shower curtain and you thought about going back out there, to the kitchen and the eggs and wade's eyes and shane's flat expression and the sunday morning that had somehow become a thing the three of you were doing together, and you knew you were becoming too comfortable with them.

they’d have to go home eventually.

when you got out of the shower, there was a pair of pyjamas folded up on your bed; your favourite ones too, the soft cream set that you only wore on days off, that lived at the bottom of the second drawer and required actual intent to find. beside them a fluffy headband, clean, the makeup residue from the last time you wore it gone, and you stood in the doorway in your towel and looked at them and felt something start to ache in your chest.

wade had done this.

it was such a wade thing to do that you dont have to think about it. the quiet care of it, no announcement, no look at what i did! just the pyjamas on the bed and the headband beside them with the door pulled so you could get dressed in peace. you stood there looking at them and you felt your eyes start to water.

they welled up and just for a second, just in the privacy of your own bedroom with the door closed and the steam still coming off your skin, you let tears run down your face. 

you did not have family nearby, you had made your peace with years ago; your mum was three hundred miles north, your dad further than that in a different direction. you had friends, two of them who mattered, one in edinburgh and one in bristol, and you had sent both of them messages over the last week, not distress signals, just the ordinary checking in, and neither of them had replied. which happened sometimes, which was fine, which you understood because people had lives and jobs and their own weeks that were several weeks long, and you understood it! it was fine.

but you were so fucking lonely you couldnt help but miss them. 

and then wade had arrived on your carpet. wade  held you on the sofa while you slept and filled every quiet corner of the flat with the warmth of himself, who had taken up every space that had been empty and filled it so completely and so naturally that you had not noticed it happening until you were standing in your bathroom doorway looking at folded pyjamas and crying about it, which was humiliating.

you put the pyjamas and the headband on and you sat on the edge of the bed and you breathed in and you thought about how uncomplicated it was to need wade, how cleanly he slotted into the place where comfort was supposed to live.

then you thought about shane.

shane was not manageable. shane was not warm or easy and he did not fold pyjamas or make tea or kiss the side of your neck, he held your mouth shut with his palm and slept in your bed without asking and cleaned your flat without saying anything and looked at you and looked away when you caught him, and he got under your skin like a damn tick. but he was hot and he was beginning to become something like a friend to wade, and that was reason enough to keep him around.

you turned around and the devil himself was in the doorway. shoulder against the frame, arms crossed, that cold expression doing its usual work, and you made a sound that was not dignified and pressed your hand to your chest in shock.

"what if i was naked?!" you said, the words coming out shrill and high pitched in your shock

his eyes moved over you, slow and unhurried, the headband and the cream pyjamas and the corner of his mouth moved in a grin.

"hm," he said. "what if."

you stared at him, waiting for the joke to land, for the corner of his mouth to twitch into something recognisable, but it never came. instead he pushed himself away from the doorframe with the lazy roll of one shoulder, as though he had all the time in the world, and reached behind himself without looking to pull the bedroom door shut. the latch caught with a quiet click that somehow sounded louder than anything else in the room. 

the sound settled somewhere low in your stomach.

he started towards you.

not quickly. shane never moved quickly. he moved with the irritating certainty of someone who never doubted that the room would make space for him. each step was measured, unhurried, his eyes never leaving yours, and it felt less like walking and more like stalking.

you found yourself taking a step backwards before you had consciously decided to.

he noticed.

of course he noticed.

another step carried him closer.

you retreated again.

your calves brushed the edge of the mattress before you realised how little room was left behind you, and your balance tipped backwards for half a heartbeat. instinctively you reached for something that was not there.

his hand caught your wrist before gravity could.

his fingers wrapped around it with an easy, effortless firmness, not enough to hurt, only enough to stop you falling. the pull that followed was almost gentle. almost.

instead of tumbling backwards onto the bed, you were pulled forwards.

straight into him.

your breath caught.

your chest brushed his. one of his boots settled between your feet as he steadied you, close enough that you could feel the warmth coming off him through the soft fabric of your pyjamas. he didn't let go immediately. his hand remained around your wrist for a second longer than necessary, his thumb resting idly against your pulse as though he could feel how fast it had suddenly become.

"shane." the warning in it was clear. "what are you doing?"

he lifted one hand and made a small soft sound like he was calming a skittish cat. "sh."

you frowned at him, lifting an eyebrow despite yourself. 

"sh, sh, sh." somehow his voice was softer the second time. his hand finally slipped from your wrist, only to hover in the space between you instead, never quite touching, never quite giving you enough distance to breathe properly either.

he was close, far too close. close enough that you had to tip your chin upwards to keep looking at him, close enough that the clean scent of pine clung to him instead of the cold wind and stale beer he had first arrived with, close enough that you realised, with an uncomfortable jolt, that your bedroom smelled faintly like him now. 

"did you like the pyjamas," he said, low and even, "that i picked out for you?"

"you picked them?" your own voice came out smaller than you intended, almost soft in the limited space between you, your eyes dropping to his fingers as his fingertips brushed idly against one of the cream buttons, turning it lazily beneath his thumb as though it were absent-minded, as though he wasn't painfully aware of exactly what he was doing. 

"you thought it was your sweet cowboy in there?" he grinned, his eyes low and sultry.

you knew exactly what he was doing.

"shane." his name left your mouth with as much authority as you could force into it. 

his eyes lifted from the buttons to yours, every trace of teasing sharpening into attention. 

"i'm not sleeping with you to piss off wade."

the act disappeared the second you said it.

the grin softened into something unreadable. his eyes brightened instead, sharper now. his thumb stopped rolling the button and rested against it instead, lingering for a heartbeat before tracing the edge of the fabric with almost absent curiosity. it wasn't enough to undo anything. somehow that made it worse. it left the possibility hanging there between you, unspoken, acknowledged by neither of you.

"you know your boy in there thinks you're soulmates, yeah?" he hummed,  his voice had lost most of its teasing as his fingers drifted higher instead, feather-light across your collarbone, barely there at all. 

"thinks you're destined." 

his eyes never left yours as he spoke, "that's why he thinks he was summoned to you." 

another tiny pause. 

"why i was summoned to you." 

the words hit you like cold water. 

soulmates.

your stomach twisted. because wade believed it. not as a joke, not as wishful thinking. he believed it with every uncomplicated part of himself, and hearing shane say it aloud made you feel dizzy. and if it couldnt get any worse, shane had included himself.

‘why i was summoned to you.’

your brain stalled on it. because he had not corrected himself, had not laughed, had not called wade delusional or optimistic, he had simply put himself into the same impossible sentence and said it like it was normal now.

and all at once, pieces that had refused to fit together over the last week shifted into place. the quiet conversations that stopped when you walked into the room, the starry eyed looks, the strange understanding between the two of them that neither of them had ever bothered to explain. they’d been talking about wade’s soulmate theory while you were at work.

shane watched the realisation settle over your face without interrupting it and he grunted, his lips pursing in mock disappointment before his fingers dropped away from your skin.

"just something to think about." then he turned without another word, opened your bedroom door, and walked back into the living room with the same maddening calm he'd entered with. 

the latch clicked softly behind him with your pulse still hammering beneath the place he'd held your wrist. 

oh, fuck.

you sat down on the edge of the bed because your legs had suddenly become like jelly.

wade thought you were soulmates.

not as a joke. not as the kind of thing a charming southern man said because it was a cute little flirtation. wade believed it with every uncomplicated part of himself, the same part that fixed up your apartment and did kind, boyfriend-ish things without being asked. while you were telling yourself it was just wade being wade, just the warmth of him, of a man written to be the bad boy with a heart of gold, of a bartender who probably came across more sad, single woman than she did men; he was thinking they were written into the fabric of space and time.

this was a man who had apparently spent a week discussing it with shane maguire of all people, who had then walked into your bedroom and told you about it, and who had included himself in the sentence without flinching.

you pressed the heels of your hands against your eyes and pressed harder until white spots started to flash in the pitch black of your eyelids. grinding your heels into the thin skin, almost in hope that the pain will wake you up from this dreamish nightmare.

but this wasnt a dream, and you were a grown ass woman who didnt believe in soulmates or destinies. 

then you got up, because sitting in the bedroom was not going to solve anything and the two of them were on the other side of the door and at some point this century, you were going to have to go back out there and look at wade's face. look at the stars dancing in his eyes and the way his cute little dimples came out as he smiled, and you were going to have to act like you did not know what you now knew, which was that wade kinsella from bluebell alabama had crossed dimensions and landed on your carpet and decided, with full sincerity, that you were the reason.

you opened the door and stopped dead in your tracks.

the living room had been reorganised in your absence, which was becoming a normal occurrence now when you left the two of them unsupervised. the blanket from the back of the sofa was unfolded and waiting, the fairy lights were on, wade was on the left end of the sofa with his arm along the back of it and the space beside him open and waiting. shane was on the right end with his ankle over his knee and a bowl of popcorn balanced on the cushion beside him, looking at the laptop open on the coffee table with a bored expression.

wade looked up when you came in.

the stars were there immediately. you had always seen them and figured you were imagining his eyes brightening and his pupils dilating, getting bigger so he could take in more light to see you. now you could not do that anymore, now you had the word soulmates sitting in your chest like something with weight to it, and the stars looked different with that word underneath them.

you sat down between them.

wade put the blanket over your lap without being asked, tucking it gently around your knees and under your thighs, and shane dropped the popcorn bowl into your lap immediately after, almost like they'd arranged it

you stared at the laptop screen in horrified silence.

wade was warm on your left. not touching, not quite, just the heat of him radiating through the small distance between your shoulders, steady and constant and impossible to ignore now that you were trying to ignore it. his arm was still along the back of the sofa, his fingers close enough to your shoulder that you were so overly aware of them that your eyes kept flicking to them.

shane was so warm that it felt like his skin burnt yours merely on proximity. probably because he was a demon from hell. his shoulder was against yours, solid and present and unmoving, and he radiated heat the way a radiator did, the kind that made the air around him warmer than the air anywhere else in the room. but this radiator was an arrogant, gun-carrying, bed-stealing man from yosemite who had mouthed soulmates at you with the smug satisfaction of someone lighting a fuse and walking away to watch it burn from a comfortable distance.

you hated that he knew exactly what he was doing and was doing it anyway with the comfortability of a man who had never once in his life been inconvenienced by another person's discomfort, who thrived on making people crawl in their skins, who found your discomfort mildly entertaining actually, who had looked you dead in the eye mere minutes ago and declared that he and wade were entertaining the thoughts of soulmates. acting like it was a gift he was giving you rather than a grenade he was rolling across the floor of your living room on a sunday.

shane maguire was a fucking pest.

the film started and you did not absorb a single frame of it.

wade's fingers had found your shoulder, light, barely there, the absent unconscious weight of his palm made it clear he wasnt thinking about it, and you felt goosebumps erupt along your arm underneath the blanket where he could not see them. 

you ate a piece of popcorn and you stared at the screen once more, letting colours and pictures pass you by, not one of them landing anywhere.

shane shifted beside you then, his thigh pressed against yours, pressing against the meat of your own thigh, testing your reaction and letting out a soft hum when you made no motion to shove him off. 

don't react. if you react he'll know you noticed. do not react.

then his hand slipped under the blanket, slowly and deliberately his hand found the edge of the blanket and slid beneath it. now there was nothing between his palm and your thigh except the thin cream fabric of your pyjamas, and the warmth of him was immediate and considerably more present than it had been thirty seconds ago. his hand was heavy, properly heavy and settled into the muscle of your thigh with easy certainty with the heat of him coming through the fabric and warming up your skin. but his fingers didnt move or slip lower, just stayed firm and pressed into your thigh, holding it there to keep you pressed together.

wade's fingers kept their patterns on your shoulder. 

you ate a piece of popcorn.

shane's thumb moved.

one slow drag of it across the fabric of your pyjamas, barely the width of a thumbnail, and then it stopped, and the stopping was its own problem because now you were waiting. which was considerably more distracting than the moving had been. you gripped the popcorn bowl with both hands and kept your eyes on the screen and said nothing. because he knows. he has to know. your pulse is so loud he could probably hear it from there.

his fingers spread just slightly, just enough that the span of his hand covered more of your thigh than it had a moment ago, the heat of it expanding with the movement, and something low in your stomach pulled tight in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with the film, and you turned your head, eyes straining to look at him out of the corner of your eye.

shane was looking at the screen completely calm. jaw set, eyes forward, watching the film with his full and undivided attention, his hand underneath your blanket on your thigh like it was simply where his hand lived now and always had. 

after a moment he turned his head, and he met your eyes and held them, and his expression did not change, and his hand did not move but his lips moved instead, his lips perking, his tongue rolling over each letters as he mouthed to you: ‘soulmate.’

you stared at him with the force of everything you were not saying out loud, and he held your gaze for one more second, the corner of his mouth doing the weird grin he did when he was finding something privately satisfying, and then he looked back at the screen like nothing had happened.

his hand stayed exactly where it was.

wade's fingers traced a slow pattern into your shoulder, and you shifted closer into his side, trying to put a little more distance between yourself and shane's hand in the process, which didnt work. all he did was squeeze your thigh in a silent punishment. wade looked down at you, brows lifting slightly. "you alright, sweetheart?" 

you just hummed in answer and settled against his chest. he made a quiet, pleased sound at that, practically giddy, bringing a hand up to play idly with your hair, fingers combing slow through it like he had nothing better to do with his evening than exactly this. 

deciding two could play that game, you drew your legs up and swung them across shane's lap instead, feet settling in his lap, head tipped back against wade's chest. shane grunted in annoyance, hands finding your thighs and feet under the blanket and gripping, firm, over the fabric. you kicked lightly at his chest in retaliation, and he raised an eyebrow at you, unimpressed, before glancing from you to wade and back again, and rolling his eyes.

now and again he'd pinch the skin of your thigh, grinning when your leg kicked at him and then would rub your feet, strong hands digging into the arches of your feet. you'd never imagine he'd be such a good masseuse.

you did not watch a single second of the film.

by the time the credits rolled you had no memory of the plot, no memory of a single line, only the dual awareness of wade's chest rising and falling under your cheek and shane's thumb still working slow, irritating, entirely too-competent circles into your arch.

"you can stop," you said, aiming for casual dismissal.

"could." he didn't stop. "don't want to."

"that wasn't a request."

"funny. sounded like one." he pressed harder and you bit down a sound that would've undermined your entire point, and his grin went sharp and pleased, like he'd heard it anyway. "there it is."

"i hate you."

"you keep saying that." he let your foot go, only to give your ankle a light, mocking pat, dismissing you like an employee. "and yet here you are, feet in my lap."

"i didn't put them there for you to enjoy it this much."

"could've fooled me." his eyes flicked up, catching yours, daring you to argue, and when you didn't he just looked more pleased with himself. "go on. tell me you didn't just make a noise."

"i didn't."

"mm." he didn't believe you for a second, and made absolutely no effort to hide it.

wade's fingers kept moving lazily at the back of your neck, unbothered, and you felt the low rumble of his laugh more than heard it. "leave her alone."

"i'm complimenting her feet." shane's voice was all wounded innocence, none of it earned. "she should be thanking me."

your eyes had started to slip shut somewhere in the middle of the bickering, and shane, ever watchful for exactly this kind of opening, tipped his head to look at you properly, something flickering under the smugness for half a second before it was gone again.

"she's out."

"i'm not," you said, without opening your eyes.

"sure you're not." wade's voice was warm above you. "c'mon, sweetheart. bed."

"m'not tired." even as you said it your voice was thick with sleep, betraying you completely.

"you fell asleep with your foot in shane’s hand," wade said. "i think you're tired."

that got your eyes open, at least halfway, enough to squint at the two of them and then past them, to the window, where the light coming through the curtains was very clearly, undeniably, still daylight.

"it's like three in the afternoon."

"and?" shane said, like this was somehow not relevant information.

"i'm not going to bed at three in the afternoon, i'm not eighty."

"you slept for most of the movie sitting up," wade said, entirely reasonable, entirely unmoved by your protest. "that's not a nap, sweetheart, that's your body giving up."

"i wasn't asleep, i was resting my eyes."

"for an hour and a half." shane's mouth twitched. "very restful eyes you've got there."

"shut up."

"c'mon." wade was already moving, arms sliding under you before you could organize a proper defense, and you made a noise of protest that came out far weaker than intended. "it's a nap, not a bedtime. you can be mad about it lying down."

wade carried you down the hall, entirely unbothered by your continued protests, which had by now lost all conviction and were mostly just words you were saying out of principle while you went limp against his chest.

"put me down."

"almost there."

"i can walk."

"you could," he agreed, not putting you down.

he got you to your room and set you on the edge of the bed, and you sat there for a second, blinking slow and heavy-lidded up at him, your brain apparently deciding that now, of all moments, was the time to fixate on something completely unrelated to sleep.

"wade."

"mm?"

"have either of you ever done skincare?"

he blinked at you. "...what?"

"skincare," you said again, like repeating it made it make more sense. "like. a routine. cleanser, moisturizer, any of it."

"i wash my face," he offered, sounding faintly like he was being tested on something he hadn't studied for. "with soap."

"that's not skincare, wade, that's just... having a face."

from the doorway, because of course he'd followed, shane leaned against the frame with his arms crossed, looking deeply entertained by the turn the conversation had taken. "she's delirious. this is what sleep deprivation does to a person."

"i'm not delirious, i'm making an observation." you squinted at him. "you have unfairly good skin for a man who lives in a cabin and probably uses bar soap on his face too."

"i use whatever's in the shower."

"that's a crime, actually."

"noted. i'll take it up with my dermatologist," he said, "the one i don't have, because i'm a man, and i wash my face with water like god intended."

"well, that's changing right now." you were already pushing yourself up off the mattress, the nap apparently forgotten entirely in favor of this new and far more pressing crisis. "i have a whole bag. i'm doing both of you."

"you have a whole bag?" shane repeated, flat, like he was hoping if he said it back to you plainly enough you'd hear how insane it sounded.

"a skincare bag, yes."

"i'm not putting anything on my face that you keep in a bag with a zip."

"you haven't even seen the bag."

"i don't need to see the bag to know i don't want it near my fucking face."

you were already crossing the room to your dresser, digging it out, and wade watched you with the open, delighted attention of a man who had just been handed excellent news. "i'm in."

"you're always in," shane said. "you'd let her put anything on you. you have no standards."

"i have great standards. soft hands touching my face is one of them." he was already shifting up against your headboard, patting the space in front of him. "c'mere, sweetheart."

"absolutely not," shane said again, mostly to the room at large, as you climbed onto the bed and knelt in front of wade with the cleanser in hand.

"nobody asked you yet."

"i'm getting ahead of it."

"close your eyes," you told wade, ignoring shane entirely now, and wade did, immediately, without a shred of resistance, and the second your fingers made contact with his skin he let out a low, contented sound that had absolutely no business being that good to listen to.

shane, from the doorway, made a noise like he was watching a crime happen in real time. "you're just gonna let her. in her bed. no dignity left at all."

"she's touching my face soft and gentle, man." wade didn't even open his eyes. "yeah. fuck yeah, i'm gonna let her, bed or no bed."

"unbelievable."

"you're just jealous."

"i am not jealous of you letting a woman rub lotion on you like you're a baby."

"moisturizer," you corrected, warming it between your palms before smoothing it over wade's skin, and he melted further into the headboard, entirely loose-limbed now. "and don't listen to him. you have very soft skin. i'm proud of you."

"see, that," wade said, "that right there is worth every ounce of dignity i apparently don't have left."

when you finished, wade looked so blissed out you were fairly sure he'd have agreed to anything you asked of him in that state, and you turned, cleanser still in hand, toward the doorway, toward shane, who straightened up off the frame like he was preparing to physically flee the room.

"don't."

"sit down."

"i'm not sitting on your bed for this."

"then stand. i don't care. sit, stand, i'm doing your face either way."

you turned back around properly, twisting at the waist to look at him directly, and something about the full weight of your attention finally landing on him made him go very still in the doorway.

"shane. sit down." you pointed at the space behind you, flat and final. "i bet your face is filthy and your pores are clogged."

he opened his mouth, to argue, probably, out of pure reflex, closed it again, jaw working, clearly running the numbers on how much dignity he had left to lose versus how much you'd make his life hell if he refused. he grunted, low and defeated, and crossed the room, dropping onto the bed behind you with the enthusiasm of a man walking to his own sentencing.

you settled yourself between wade's thighs properly now, knees tucked either side of you, your back to his chest with wade's hands loose at your waist, and pulled the rest of the bag toward you; the foaming cleanser you'd already used on him, a tub of something thick and clay-colored, a sheet of gel eye masks, a serum in a little glass dropper bottle, and something else shane clearly didn't recognize and didn't trust.

"what is all of that?"

"skincare."

"that's not skincare, that's a lab."

"it's a routine, shane. sit still." you squeezed a dollop of cleanser into your palm, twisted around, and reached up to start on his face, and he flinched back on instinct, like your hand was something to be avoided rather than a hand.

"wh– warn a man."

"i said sit still, not brace for impact." you caught his jaw gently, tilting his face toward you, and worked the foam into his skin the same way you had wade's, slow, even circles, and shane sat rigid through the whole thing, spine straight, eyes fixed somewhere over your shoulder like looking directly at you would be an admission of something.

"this is humiliating."

"and yet you sat down." wade, behind you, sounded delighted by this observation. shane's jaw tightened under your fingers.

"i was outvoted."

"there were two people in the room and one of them was you agreeing."

"i don't recall agreeing to anything."

"you're sitting here," you pointed out, wiping the foam gently from his skin with a warm cloth, "on my bed, with a towel around your shoulders that i put there five minutes ago, letting me clean your pores. that's agreement, shane."

he didn't answer that one, mouth pressed into a thin line, and you took the silence as the closest thing to a concession you were going to get. you reached for the clay mask next, and shane's eyes finally flicked down to it with open suspicion.

"what is that."

"a mask. it draws out the gunk."

"the gunk."

"the gunk, shane. deep clean." you scooped some onto your fingers and started smoothing it over his skin before he could object further, and he sat there, increasingly gray and matte-faced, radiating the specific, silent fury of a man who had lost an argument.

wade, watching over your shoulder, was laughing so hard he had to press his knuckles to his mouth to muffle it. "oh, tha– that's incredible. you look like a hostage."

"i feel like a hostage."

"don't move your face," you said, patting the last of it into place, "it needs to set."

"for how long."

"fifteen minutes."

shane closed his eyes, jaw set, clay drying tight and cracking faintly at the corners of his mouth every time he so much as thought about talking, and settled into what could only be described as pure, simmering resentment, while wade grinned at both of you like it was the single best thing he'd witnessed all week.

shane sat there, clay cracking faintly at the corners of his mouth every time his jaw so much as twitched, radiating pure silent fury, and you were, quite frankly, delighted about it.

"you can't even complain right now." you patted the last of the mask into place, entirely too pleased with yourself. "this might be the longest you've gone without being a pain in my ass since you got here."

he made a noise, low and muffled, that was very clearly meant to be a scathing retort and came out as a strangled hum instead, the clay pulling tight across his cheeks with the movement, and wade, behind you, wheezed.

"say that again, i didn't catch it."

shane's eyes cut sideways toward him, murderous, and said nothing else, mouth pressed into the thinnest line the drying clay would allow.

you sat back on your heels to admire your handiwork, and that was when you felt it; wade's fingers, which had been resting loose and easy at your waist this whole time, starting to drift. slow, absent, dragging along your hip, thumb catching the hem of your shirt where it had ridden up, and then his head dropped, forehead coming to rest against your shoulder, nose tucked into the curve of your neck.

"wade–"

"mm." he breathed in, unhurried, like he had nowhere else to be. "you smell good."

"that's.. thank you, but you're being weird."

"smell like me." his voice had gone low, pleased, entirely too content with that fact for reasons you didn't want to examine. "shampoo's the same."

you stood up fast enough that wade made a small noise of protest at the loss of you, and you didn't look at him, because looking at him right now felt like a genuinely bad idea.

"time to wash it off!" your voice came out about an octave too bright, entirely unconvincing, and you reached down and grabbed shane's hand, clay-faced, wide-eyed at the sudden manhandling, and hauled him up off the bed.

"what the fuc– i can walk myself–"

"bathroom. now." you were already towing him across the room, not looking back at wade, who was watching the two of you go with the expression of a kicked puppy.

"you're being weird," shane said, following you into the bathroom with his face full of cracking clay, "weirder than usual."

"i'm not being weird, i'm being efficient. fifteen minutes are up, that's all this is."

"it's barely been five minutes."

"close enough."

you shut the door behind you, harder than strictly necessary, shutting the two of you into the small, steamed-mirror quiet of the bathroom, and pointed at the closed toilet lid.

"sit."

"i've been sitting for–."

"sit down, shane."

he sat, and you grabbed a flannel off the rail, ran it hot under the tap, wrung it out, and turned back to him, reaching for his face without any warning.

his hand shot up and caught your wrist before the flannel made contact, fingers closing around it, and he looked at you with an expression that had gone from irritated to something closer to disgusted.

"what the fuck is wrong with you."

"what?"

"you just slammed a door, manhandled me into a bathroom, and now you're coming at my face like you're trying to smother me with a wet rag." his eyes narrowed, clay cracking at the corner of his mouth with the movement. "you've gone all weird. what happened."

"nothing happened."

"you're a terrible liar."

"i'm an excellent liar, you're just paranoid."

"i've watched you lie to my face for a week and you're bad at it every time." his grip on your wrist didn't loosen. "you went somewhere in your head the second wade opened his mouth back there. what did he say."

you opened your mouth to deny it, found nothing useful there, and the words came out before you'd fully decided to let them.

"you two think i'm your soulmate!"

it landed loud in the small bathroom, off the tile, and shane went still for exactly one second before something shuttered closed behind his eyes and the corner of his mouth curled, mean and immediate, the softness from the mask session gone like it had never been there at all.

"oh, that's what this is about." he let go of your wrist like it had stopped being interesting. "you've worked yourself up into a state over wade's little fairy tale."

"i haven't worked myself up into anything."

"you slammed a door."

"i shut it behind me."

"you're shaking." he said it flat, almost bored, but his eyes tracked the movement anyway, cataloguing it, filing it away to use later. "over soulmates? genuinely? that's what's got you rattled, not any of the actual insane things that have happened this week. the word soulmate?"

"don't do that."

"do what."

"that thing where you make it sound stupid so i stop talking about it."

"i don't need to make it sound stupid, sweetheart, it's doing that on its own." his voice had an edge to it now, sharp in a way that hadn't been there a minute ago, like your panic had given him something to push against and he'd taken the opening gladly. "wade believes in soulmates. wade also believes every stray animal he's ever met loves him unconditionally and that the universe has a plan. you gonna have a breakdown every time he says something earnest, or just the once?"

"i'm not having a breakdown."

"could've fooled me."

"i just wanted to wash the mask off your face, shane, i didn't ask for a lecture."

"you brought it up." he tipped his chin, daring you to argue the point, clay flaking further at his jaw. "you're the one who marched me in here. don't get prickly when i've got an opinion on it."

"forget i said anything."

"can't now. it's said." but something in his tone shifted, just slightly, the meanness thinning at the edges even as his face stayed hard. "for what it's worth, you don't have to do anything with it. it's his word, not yours. you're allowed to just let him have it and not lose your mind every time he means something by it."

you blinked at him, thrown by the sudden, grudging decency buried in there, and he seemed to realize it too, jaw tightening, already retreating from it.

"don't look at me like that."

"like what?"

"like i said something nice. i didn't. wash the clay off before it sets permanently, i've got places to be." he leaned back slightly, chin tipped up, daring you with his eyes to try again. "and stop crying about soulmates in my bathroom time. it's weird."

"it's my bathroom."

"feels like mine now. i've spent more time in it than you have this week." he huffed, some of the tension easing out of his shoulders as he let you finally get the flannel to his face, wiping the clay off in slow, careful strokes despite the fact he was clearly furious about needing it done at all.

"you need a fucking nap." his voice was muffled slightly by the movement of your hand, eyes fixed somewhere over your shoulder. "you're all weird and tense and it's fucking uncomfortable in this box."

"i have to work, shane."

"you don't have to do anything."

"i have rent. i have bills. i have a job that pays for the flat you two have decided to colonize, so yes, actually, i have to work." you scrubbed a stubborn patch of clay near his jaw a little harder than necessary, and he grunted but didn't complain about it. "some of us don't get to just exist in a cabin in yosemite living off the land."

"me and wade could get jobs."

that stopped you for a second, flannel paused mid-motion, because you were about to point out (gently, or not so gently, you hadn't decided) that the two of them were, in fact, clones of the most photographed man on the planet currently, and that any job requiring them to show their faces to another human being for more than five minutes came with certain obvious complications.

he read it on your face before you said it.

"if we get dodgy jobs," he said, cutting you off before you could get there, "cash in hand, no paperwork, nobody's gonna ask why we look like that. nobody vets a guy selling drugs or doing illegal shit. criminals don't look twice at faces."

you actually thought about it for a second; pictured wade in his flannel trying to move cocaine or weed to teenagers or deadbeat parents, or wearing a hi-vis vest and charming a whole construction site into loving him within the hour. pictured shane doing security somewhere, arms crossed and radiating the menace that got people to behave without him having to say a word. shane watched you think about it with visible, irritated impatience.

"don't strain yourself."

"i'm considering it."

"don't." he stood up, done with the conversation and done with the bathroom, clay-free and looking considerably more like himself again, edges back in place. "wasn't asking for your approval. was making a point."

"what point?"

"that you don't need to be the only one holding this thing up." he said it flat, already turning for the door, delivering it like an afterthought rather than anything that mattered. you figured he was more bored of being inside than actually trying to be nice and helpful.

he rolled his eyes at whatever expression had crossed your face, and walked the both of you back out of the bathroom without waiting to see if you followed.

you followed him back out into the bedroom, and wade's whole face lit up the second he saw you again, that easy, unguarded grin spreading like he'd genuinely missed you in the ninety seconds you'd been gone, and you couldn't help the small smile that pulled at your own mouth in response.

"shane. sit."

"we just did this."

"we did half of it. sit down, i still need to do serum and moisturizer, you're not walking out of here half-finished."

he grumbled something under his breath but dropped back down onto the edge of the bed anyway, and you knelt in front of him again, reaching for the little glass dropper bottle, smoothing the serum into his skin with slow, even strokes. his shoulders, which had gone stiff and combative through the whole bathroom conversation, started to loosen again almost immediately, the fight visibly draining out of him under your hands, and by the time you moved on to the moisturizer his eyes had drifted shut, his breathing gone slow and even, jaw slack in a way that looked almost peaceful on him.

you grinned, delighted, watching him for a second too long.

his eyes snapped back open, catching you mid-smirk, and whatever soft, unguarded thing had briefly settled over his face vanished on the spot, replaced by a glare sharp enough to strip paint.

"what."

"nothing."

"you were smiling at me like i'm an idiot."

"i wasn't—"

he shoved you.

not hard, just enough, one flat hand against your shoulder, and you toppled backward off your knees and onto the mattress with a small, undignified noise, landing flat on your back, staring straight up at the ceiling and then, when you turned your head, straight up at wade, who was leaning over you now with a grin that took up his whole face.

"hi." he said, far too pleased with himself for someone who hadn't done anything at all.

"shane just assaulted me!"

shane grunted, clearly disagreeing from somewhere above and behind you, already standing, entirely unbothered. "self-defense. you were being smug."

"i was being pleased with my own work."

"same thing on your face."

you huffed, propping yourself up on your elbows to glare at the two of them, and wade's grin softened into something gentler, his hand coming down to brush your hair back from your face.

"alright." his voice had gone low, easy. "that's enough. you need to sleep."

"i just slept."

"you slept sitting up on a sofa for ninety minutes with your foot in shane's hand, that's not the same thing, we've established this."

"fine." you flopped back fully onto the mattress, staring up at the ceiling, and then, before you could think better of it: "why don't you two just stay in here. must be boring, sitting on the same couch every night."

there was a beat of silence.

then shane moved.

he didn't hesitate, didn't ask if you meant it, didn't so much as glance at wade for confirmation, he was already rounding the bed and dropping face-first into the exact same spot he'd claimed that morning, arm sliding under the pillow, face burying into the fabric like he'd been waiting for the invitation to be reissued all day.

"oh my god." you said, to the ceiling. "i just said it, i didn't mean it immediately."

"too slow," came shane's muffled voice, entirely unbothered, "should've specified."

wade sighed, long and put-upon, shaking his head at the both of you, but he was already toeing off his boots and rounding to the other side of the bed anyway, settling in without any further protest, like he'd known exactly how this was going to go the second the words left your mouth.

"you've created a monster." he said, to you, fond and resigned all at once.

"i didn't think he'd actually—"

"he slept here last night over the floor being uncomfortable. you just handed him an open invitation, of course he took it."

apparently shane was easier to deal with when he was domesticated and sleepy. 

you sat up between the two of them, wade's side warm and easy on your left, already stretching an arm out along the pillow for you, offering his bicep for you to lay your head down, and shane a still, solid line on your right, face still smushed into your pillows and looking, for all the world, like a man who had won something.

you sighed and crawled down between them, because at this point there was clearly nothing to be argued anymore. wade's arm came around you the second you settled, pulling you into his chest with a small, satisfied hum, while shane just shifted his legs so you could be properly tucked between them.

"comfortable?" wade asked, grinning down at you.

"i hate both of you."

"mm," shane said, muffled and smug, not moving an inch. "sure you do."

this was the best day off you’d had in years.