#solider boy

You tease him for it constantly, because teasing Billy is one of your favorite dangerous hobbies. He grumbles, calls you a pain in his arse, and still leans into you every time you touch him. That’s love, with Billy, rough around the edges and stubborn enough to survive anything.

Your relationship has never been easy, but easy has never been what you’ve wanted from him. Billy argues like he’s breathing, and half the time he seems to pick fights just so he can have a reason to pull you close afterward.

He’s made you furious more times than you can count, usually by shutting down the second something matters too much. You’ve thrown cushions at his head, slammed doors, stolen his coat out of spite, and told him he’s impossible while he stood there with that awful little smile that said he already knew you weren’t leaving.

He’s called you trouble so many times the word has started to sound like a pet name. You’ve called him a bastard in five different tones, and he knows exactly which one means you’re actually angry and which one means you want him closer.

That’s the thing about Billy, he listens badly until he doesn’t. He misses the obvious emotional conversation, then remembers the tiniest detail about how you take your tea. He can be brutal, careless, sharp, and maddening, but with you, he tries. It isn’t always pretty, but it’s real.

Most people think Billy is the possessive one because he’s louder about it, but you’ve got your own habits too. You notice when he’s too quiet, when his jokes get crueler because something’s dug under his skin, when his shoulders sit higher than usual under his coat. You know when to push and when to wait him out.

You know how to touch his wrist when he’s spiraling without making him feel trapped. You know when his anger is anger and when it’s fear wearing boots. He hates how easily you read him, but he trusts you with it too, and that matters more than any pretty confession could.

Sometimes, when the room is crowded and awful and loud, Billy looks at you once and something in him settles. You’ve seen it happen too many times to pretend it doesn’t. You’re his soft place to land, even if he’d rather chew glass than say it in front of anyone. He’s yours too, though you usually tell him that in quieter ways.

Ben had noticed all of it almost immediately, because Ben noticed things people wished he wouldn’t. He’d seen Billy’s hand curl around the back of your neck during an argument with Frenchie, not tight enough to hurt, just firm enough to remind everyone where you stood.

He’d seen the way you leaned into Billy without thinking, as natural as breathing, like your body trusted him before your mind had to check. He’d seen Billy pass you food from his own plate and pretend it was because you were hovering. He’d seen you roll your eyes and steal another bite anyway.

Ben had watched that strange little domestic ritual with open amusement, his gaze moving between the two of you like he’d found something worth poking. At first, you’d assumed he was only interested because Billy hated being studied.

That made sense, since Ben seemed to live for making Billy’s jaw tick. Then he’d looked at you a little too long, smiled like he’d caught you at something, and called you sweetheart. That was when the problem had started.

Your relationship with Ben had never become friendship in any normal, respectable sense of the word. It was more like tolerance with sharp edges, the kind of arrangement that only worked because neither of you admitted it worked at all.

He was loud, smug, old-fashioned in all the worst ways, and so certain of himself that it made your teeth itch. He walked into rooms like he owned the floorboards, the air, and everyone’s attention by default. He made comments that earned him immediate death stares, drank from bottles that weren’t his, and had the nerve to look entertained when people snapped at him.

You’d told him to shut up before breakfast more than once. He’d told you that you were cute when you were bossy, which had almost gotten him stabbed with a butter knife.

You’d called him a walking midlife crisis with super strength. He’d laughed like that was the nicest thing anyone had said to him all week. Somehow, against all good sense, that had become a rhythm.

The awful thing was that Ben didn’t treat your irritation like rejection. He treated it like conversation. If you snapped at him, he leaned in with that grin, pleased you’d given him something to work with. If you ignored him, he made it his personal mission to become impossible to ignore.

If you rolled your eyes, he watched your mouth like he was waiting for the smile you were trying to bury. He liked getting a reaction out of you, and you knew that, but you also knew there were different kinds of attention.

Sometimes he was only winding you up because Billy was nearby and easy to provoke. Sometimes his eyes stayed on you even after Billy had left the room. Sometimes he asked what you thought before anyone else did, then pretended he didn’t care about the answer. Sometimes he remembered things you’d said days before and used them later, casually, like he hadn’t been listening at all. That was harder to dismiss.

You’d enjoyed it, though you’d rather have swallowed a live grenade than admit that to anyone. You liked being able to get under Ben’s skin, especially because he acted like nothing touched him. You liked that his grin faltered for half a second when you hit back with the right words.

You liked the little spark of victory when he laughed despite himself, like you’d dragged the sound out of him against his will. You liked that he looked at you as if you weren’t just Billy’s girl, not just the soft thing standing beside a dangerous man, but someone dangerous in your own right.

It did something to you, being seen that way. It made you feel sharper, brighter, less easy to place in the neat little box people kept trying to put you in. You told yourself it was harmless because you’d never crossed a line. You told yourself it was only attention, and attention didn’t have to mean anything. The problem was that Billy had noticed long before you’d finished convincing yourself.

Billy had started watching in that quiet way that always meant trouble. He hadn’t exploded, which made you more nervous than if he had. Billy had a temper like a lit match in a petrol station, so when he chose silence, it meant he was gathering information. He saw the way your shoulders squared whenever Ben entered a room.

He saw the way your voice changed, not softer, not sweeter, but quicker and more alive. He saw the way your mouth twitched when Ben said something stupid enough to be funny. He saw the way you looked away when you were close to laughing, like denying Ben the satisfaction mattered more than the laugh itself.

He saw the way Ben noticed too, and that made something dark and interested move behind Billy’s eyes. He didn’t like Ben, not in any simple sense, but Billy wasn’t simple either. There was jealousy there, yes, but there was also curiosity.

What turned Billy on more than he wanted to admit was the contradiction of you. You acted so sweet with everyone else, all gentle hands, warm looks, and careful words. You remembered who took sugar in their tea, checked wounds without making a fuss, and softened your voice when someone needed kindness more than sarcasm.

Then Ben opened his mouth, and suddenly there you were with teeth. You didn’t melt under his attention, at least not where anyone could see. You snapped back, challenged him, made him work for every little reaction he got from you.

Billy saw the flicker under all that sweetness, the part of you that enjoyed being provoked because it gave you permission to stop pretending you were harmless. It did something to him, knowing you weren’t as innocent as you looked.

It made his blood heat in a way he didn’t fully trust. It made him want to press on that hidden part of you and see what else came out.

He’d confronted you about it once, though Billy’s version of confrontation had started with him standing too close and pretending it was casual. It had been late, after Ben had left the flat with that smug grin still sitting on his face.

You’d been at the sink, rinsing mugs and muttering about men who couldn’t take a hint. Billy had leaned beside you, quiet enough that you knew he was about to say something unbearable. You’d looked at him from the corner of your eye and asked,

“What?” He’d lifted his brows like he was innocence itself, which was ridiculous on his face. “What, what?” he’d said, voice rough with amusement. You’d set the mug down slowly, because you already hated where this was going. “You’ve got that look,” you’d told him. Billy had smiled, and that was when you knew you were doomed.

He hadn’t rushed the point, because Billy enjoyed making you squirm when he knew he was right. He’d picked up the towel you’d abandoned, dried one of the mugs with unnecessary care, and let the silence stretch until you wanted to throw something at him.

“You enjoy it,” he’d said eventually, so calm it made your stomach dip. You’d turned toward him too quickly, and he’d caught that too. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you’d said, which had been the worst possible answer because it sounded guilty even to your own ears. Billy had hummed like a man who’d just been handed proof.

“Course you don’t,” he’d replied, setting the mug down. He’d stepped closer then, not crowding you exactly, but close enough that you could feel the heat of him.

“You act all sweet,” he’d said, his voice low and knowing, “then that smug bastard gives you a bit of attention, and suddenly you’re all lit up.” You’d hated how your face warmed before you could stop it.

You’d tried to argue, because of course you had. “Ben is annoying,” you’d said, folding your arms like that settled anything. Billy had nodded immediately, too agreeable to be trusted. “He is,” he’d said, like he was doing you the courtesy of confirming a weather report. That had made you narrow your eyes.

“He’s arrogant,” you’d added, needing the list to be longer, needing it to become a defense. Billy had dried his hands, slow and patient, before he looked back at you. “Very,” he’d agreed.

You’d felt cornered by his calm more than you would’ve by anger. “He’s unbearable,” you’d insisted, and Billy’s mouth had twitched. “Doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy puttin’ him in his place, love.”

That had stayed with you because he hadn’t sounded angry. He’d sounded amused, yes, but beneath that amusement had been something rougher, something that made your pulse trip even though you hadn’t wanted it to.

Billy had looked at you like he was seeing the part of you that you usually kept tucked away beneath kindness and composure. “You like it,” he’d said, moving close enough that his voice belonged only to you. “You like that he gives you something to bite.”

You’d told him to stop being smug, because that was easier than answering. He’d caught your chin lightly, not forcing you to look at him, just giving you the chance to refuse. You hadn’t refused, which he’d noticed.

“My sweet girl,” he’d murmured, and the words had sounded darker than they should’ve. “Not half as innocent as you act, are you?” You’d hated him a little for saying it, and you’d hated yourself more for liking that he knew.

After that, you’d tried harder to ignore Ben. That had lasted roughly twenty minutes. The next day, Ben had appeared in the kitchen while you were making coffee, all broad shoulders and smug timing, as if he’d been summoned by your worst instincts.

He’d reached over your head for a mug he could’ve taken from a lower shelf, and you’d stiffened on principle. “Relax,” he’d said, his voice too amused already. “I’m just getting coffee.” You’d turned your head enough to glare at him and told him, “Your arms broken?”

He’d looked down at you, close enough that you could smell smoke and soap on him. “Nope,” he’d replied, like he enjoyed making the word as unhelpful as possible. You’d shifted aside with a sharp little breath through your nose. “Then reach somewhere else,” you’d told him. Ben had grinned as if you’d just made his morning.

Billy had been at the table that day, pretending to read the paper. He hadn’t looked up immediately, and that was how you knew he was listening to every word. Ben had leaned against the counter, mug in hand, watching you pour coffee with a smile that should’ve been illegal.

“You always this bossy before noon?” he’d asked, voice warm with provocation. You hadn’t given him the satisfaction of turning around fully. “Only with men who need constant correction,” you’d said. Ben had laughed, low and delighted, and the sound had landed somewhere you’d refused to name.

“There she is,” he’d said, like he’d missed you. You’d told him to find a hobby that wasn’t bothering you. From the table, Billy had turned one page of the paper with slow precision. He hadn’t needed to look up for you to feel him noticing.

Those small moments had kept piling up, each one harmless on its own and impossible to ignore together. Ben had complimented your aim after a messy fight, and you’d told him even a broken clock was right twice a day.

He’d called you vicious, and you’d told him he sounded impressed. He’d said maybe he was, and you’d looked away too quickly. Billy had seen that. Another time, Ben had held a door open for you with exaggerated politeness, and you’d told him not to strain himself pretending to have manners.

He’d leaned closer as you passed and said he could be very well-mannered when he wanted to be. You’d scoffed, but your smile had betrayed you for half a second. Billy had been across the room, watching with his arms folded. Later, he’d kissed your temple and said nothing at all.

The fact that Billy said nothing became its own kind of pressure. You started noticing him noticing you, which only made every interaction with Ben feel more charged than it had any right to be. If Ben called you sweetheart, you heard Billy’s silence behind it. If you snapped back, you wondered whether Billy was amused or jealous or both.

If Ben made you smile, you buried it too late and felt Billy’s gaze catch the evidence. The strangest part was that Billy never pulled you away. He never told Ben to stop, not seriously, not in the way he could’ve if he’d truly wanted it over.

Sometimes he even looked as if he was waiting to see how far you’d go on your own. That made you nervous in a way you didn’t know what to do with. Billy was keeping something in his mind, turning it over, letting it become an idea. You knew him too well not to recognize that.

Tonight is supposed to be free from all of that. No missions, no blood drying under fingernails, no Ben lounging around like an arrogant ghost of bad decisions. It’s meant to be just you and Billy, the kind of night you’ve both been promising each other for days and nearly losing to chaos every time.

The flat is warm, and the outside world sits muffled beyond the windows, softened by rain against the glass. Billy stands in the kitchen with his sleeves rolled up, unpacking takeaway containers like the whole thing requires strategy.

You watch him from the doorway, wearing one of his shirts because you know exactly what it does to his concentration. He glances up once, eyes dragging over you before he pretends to focus on the food again.

“You’re distractin’ me,” he says, voice rough with false irritation. You lean against the frame and smile because you know he can hear it before he sees it. “You’re opening containers, Billy, not defusing a bomb.”

He gives you a look over his shoulder, and it’s so fond under the annoyance that it makes your chest ache. “Everything’s a bomb if you’re stupid enough,” he says. You walk closer, peering at the bags on the counter because you already suspect him of hiding the naan.

Billy shifts his body just slightly, blocking one bag with his hip, and that’s all the proof you need. “You’re gatekeeping bread,” you tell him.

He doesn’t even blink. “I’m preserving order.” You reach around him, and he catches your wrist with a speed that makes you laugh. “Thief,” he says, though his thumb rubs once over the inside of your wrist.

You tilt your head up at him, letting your voice go sweet on purpose. “I thought what’s yours is mine.” His eyes darken slightly, and his grip softens without letting go.

Billy looks at you for a beat too long, and the air changes the way it always does when he forgets to pretend he’s unaffected. “You’re trouble,” he says quietly. You smile because that word means more from him than most declarations would from anyone else.

“You keep me around anyway.” “Bad habit,” he replies, but his hand has already found your waist. You let him pull you a little closer, just enough that your shoulder brushes his chest. For a moment, everything is exactly what you wanted it to be.

There’s food on the counter, rain at the window, music playing low from the other room, and Billy warm beside you in the kitchen. His thumb rests at your waist through the loose fabric of his shirt, and his mouth hovers near your temple like he’s considering a kiss.

You’re about to tease him for being romantic against his will when someone knocks at the door. The sound cuts through the room hard enough to make you freeze.

Billy doesn’t freeze. That’s the first thing you notice, and it sends suspicion through you before the second knock even lands. He barely glances toward the door before reaching for his glass, too calm, too casual, too Billy when he’s already done something he knows you’ll complain about.

You pull back enough to look at him properly. “Were you expecting someone?” you ask. He takes a slow sip, eyes on you over the rim. “Might’ve been.” Your expression goes flat immediately. “Billy.” He lowers the glass, and the corner of his mouth twitches like he’s fighting a smile and losing.

“Yes, love?” You point toward the door without looking away from him. “Who is that?” The knock comes again, heavier this time, impatient in a way your stomach recognizes before your mind does.

A familiar voice carries through the door, muffled but unmistakably smug. “You two dead in there, or should I kick it in?” Your stomach drops, then twists into something you refuse to examine. Billy watches your face so closely that you know he sees both reactions.

“No,” you say at once, because there’s no other word available. His smile finally appears, small and private and infuriatingly pleased. “You don’t even know who it is.”

“I heard him, Billy.” From the other side of the door, Ben knocks again, like patience is a disease he refuses to catch. “Sweetheart,” he calls, dragging the name out because he knows exactly what it does to the room. “Tell Butcher to stop being a rude son of a bitch.”

You turn back to Billy slowly, and he has the nerve to look comfortable. “You invited him,” you say, not asking because the answer is already written all over his face. Billy lifts one shoulder as if this is a normal thing to do on your quiet night in. “I did.”

For a second, all you can do is stare at him. The rain taps against the windows, the music keeps playing, and your dinner sits open on the counter like this isn’t a betrayal of sacred takeaway privacy. “You invited Ben,” you repeat, slower this time, giving him the chance to hear how insane it sounds.

Billy’s gaze flicks briefly to the door, then returns to you with that dark, knowing warmth that’s been haunting you for days. “Thought we could use some company.” You laugh once, sharp and disbelieving. “You hate company.”

Ben knocks again before Billy can answer, and you hear his muffled sigh through the door like he’s being personally victimized by your locked flat. “I can still hear you arguing about me,” he calls. “Very flattering, by the way.”

You close your eyes for a moment because if you look at Billy, you might actually throw the naan at his head. Behind you, Billy steps closer, not enough to touch this time, but enough that you feel him.

“Open the door, love,” he says, voice low and far too calm. You turn your head, giving him the most murderous look you can manage. “I’m going to kill you.”

His mouth curves. “Get in line.” Ben’s voice cuts through again, amused and impatient. “If you’re done threatening each other, some of us are hungry.”

You yank the door open before either man can make this worse, though you suspect that’s exactly what Billy wants. Ben stands in the hallway with one hand braced against the frame, jacket damp from the rain and grin already settled like he’s never regretted anything in his life.

His eyes go to your face first, then lower to Billy’s shirt hanging loose on your body, then back up with a slow kind of satisfaction that makes your spine straighten. “Well,” he says, voice warm with trouble. “Don’t you look comfortable?” You tighten your hand around the edge of the door and refuse to step aside.

“Why are you here, Ben?” He looks past you toward the kitchen, and his grin widens when he spots Billy behind you. “Ask your boyfriend.” You glance over your shoulder, and Billy lifts his glass in a lazy little toast.

That private look is back on his face, the one that says he’s been planning this longer than you realized. You look between them, heart beating faster, and understand that Ben’s arrival isn’t an interruption at all. It’s exactly what Billy’s been waiting for.

Ben doesn’t wait for a second invitation, because of course he doesn’t. He steps over the threshold like the flat already owes him a drink, broad shoulders brushing past you with just enough nearness to make your breath hitch despite yourself. You close the door behind him, and the latch clicks into place with a sound that feels much louder than it should.

The hallway disappears behind the wood, the rain turns muffled again, and suddenly the room is just you, Billy, and the man Billy invited without warning you. Billy doesn’t move from the kitchen doorway, because he’s apparently decided that watching this unfold is far more entertaining than explaining himself.

He just stands there with his glass in hand, wearing that calm, infuriating little look that says he knows exactly what he’s done. Ben’s boots hit the floor with slow, heavy confidence as he glances around the flat like he’s taking inventory.

His gaze comes back to you almost immediately, and you feel it before it fully lands. It’s warm, shameless, and deliberate enough to make your stomach twist. Then you remember, with a sharp little rush of heat, that you’re wearing nothing but Billy’s shirt.

It had felt perfectly normal five minutes ago, when you’d thought the night belonged to you and Billy alone. It had felt private, comfortable, and familiar, the kind of thing you wore when it was only meant to be takeaway, rain, bad television, and Billy’s hands on you because he couldn’t help himself.

Now the shirt feels much thinner than it had in the kitchen, like the fabric has somehow turned traitor under Ben’s eyes. The hem sits high on your thighs, loose around your body, and suddenly you’re aware of every bare inch beneath it. You’re aware of your legs, your feet against the floor, the way the fabric shifts when you move, and the terrifying truth that there’s nothing underneath it.

You hadn’t put anything else on because you’d thought you were safe inside your own night. A hot rush of embarrassment climbs your throat, but beneath it, something else sparks before you can stamp it out.

You’re underdressed, exposed in a way that isn’t quite indecent but definitely isn’t innocent. The worst part is that you don’t hate it nearly as much as you should. Maybe Billy had been right, and maybe you really do enjoy the attention.

Ben notices the shirt before he notices anything else, because Ben would notice a weakness in a locked room with the lights off. His eyes flick down, not rushed, not subtle, and not apologetic in the slightest. They trace the open collar, the loose sleeves, the bare line of your thighs beneath the hem, then crawl back to your face with a slow, knowing amusement that makes you want to shove him back out into the rain.

You fold your arms because you need something to do with your hands, and because the movement gives you the illusion of covering yourself. It doesn’t work, not really, because Billy’s shirt shifts higher on one side and your stomach drops when Ben’s gaze catches it.

“Eyes up, Ben,” you say, trying for sharp and landing closer to breathless than you like. He does lift his eyes, but the grin he gives you says he’s already seen enough to annoy you with later. He takes his time before answering, his voice lazy and American and far too pleased with itself.

“I’m lookin’ at your face, sweetheart,” he says, and the pause after it feels deliberate enough to count as a crime. “You’re the one standin’ there like you forgot I’ve got eyes.”

Billy makes a low sound from the kitchen, not quite a laugh and not quite a warning. It pulls your attention over your shoulder, and you catch him watching Ben with dark amusement instead of the anger you’d been expecting.

That’s new enough to unsettle you, because Billy’s jealousy usually comes fast, loud, and mean when Ben pushes too close. Tonight, though, it sits behind his eyes like a secret he’s enjoying too much to share yet.

“Careful,” Billy says, but his voice doesn’t carry the bite it should. Ben looks past you at him, grin still in place, and reaches into the inside of his jacket with a casual kind of confidence.

For one brief, absurd second, your body tenses like he’s about to pull a weapon. Instead, he produces a bottle of expensive whiskey with a smug little flourish, holding it out like he’s just solved world peace. “Brought a peace offering,” he says, though nothing about his face looks peaceful. Billy’s brows lift when he sees the label, and even he can’t hide the flicker of reluctant approval.

Ben follows Billy into the kitchen like he belongs there, and you hate how naturally the room seems to adjust around him. “Bought it,” Ben says, sounding offended in the laziest possible way as Billy takes the bottle from him. He leans one hip against the counter, still watching you in quick, stolen glances that don’t feel stolen at all.

“Don’t look so shocked, Butcher, I’ve got class,” he adds, and the way he says it makes you want to laugh and roll your eyes at the same time. Billy turns the bottle in his hand, studying it with the kind of respect he rarely shows people. “You’ve got a pensioner’s ego and a porn star’s jacket,” he says, voice dry as dust. “Wouldn’t call that class.”

Ben laughs under his breath, and the sound settles too easily into the warmth of the kitchen. His gaze flicks back to you as if he’s checking whether you’re still standing there in Billy’s shirt, still pretending not to feel seen. “She looks like she’s got class,” Ben says, nodding toward you with that grin that always means trouble.

Billy’s eyes slide to you, and there’s something possessive in them that pins you in place. “She’s got more class than either of us,” he says, before his mouth curves slightly. “And a lot less innocence than she sells.”

Your face heats instantly, because Billy knows exactly where to put the knife and how slowly to twist it. “Billy,” you warn, but your voice doesn’t have the force you need it to have. Ben’s grin sharpens like he’s just been handed something shiny and told he can keep it. He looks between you and Billy, taking in your expression, Billy’s calm, and the fact that no one has told him to leave yet.

“That right?” he asks, his voice lowering into that rough, cocky drawl that makes everything he says sound like a dare. “Little Miss Sweetheart’s got a mean streak?” You glare at him because glaring feels safer than reacting.

“You’ve been here for two minutes,” you say, and you hate how aware you are of Billy watching your mouth around every word. “Don’t start diagnosing me.”

Ben lifts both hands like he’s innocent, though nothing about him has looked innocent for a second in his life. “I’m just askin’ questions,” he says, and Billy sets two glasses down with a heavy little clink. “You’re breathin’, so you’re startin’ somethin’.”

The whiskey opens with a rich, sharp scent that cuts through the takeaway and rain. Billy pours for himself first, a generous helping that catches amber under the kitchen light and makes Ben nod in clear approval. He pours one for Ben next, just as heavy, because apparently this is the kind of night where restraint has been left outside with the weather.

Ben watches the pour with his arms folded, expression smug like bringing good whiskey makes him less of a menace. “Now that’s hospitality,” he says, lifting his glass once Billy pushes it over. Billy gives him a sideways look, his own glass already in hand.

“Don’t get used to it.” Then Billy reaches for the vodka, and you know exactly what he’s doing before he even asks. He takes your glass from the cupboard, adds vodka, then lemonade, measuring by memory rather than sight because he knows your drink as well as he knows your moods.

The familiarity of it does something stupidly tender to you despite everything else happening around it. Ben notices that too, because of course he does, and his mouth softens into something almost thoughtful before the smugness comes back.

Billy slides the glass toward you when you finally make yourself walk back into the kitchen. “There you go, love,” he says, his voice quieter when he speaks to you, rough around the edges but softened in the middle. His fingers brush yours as you take it, and the contact steadies you for half a second.

You hate that you need steadying. You hate that Ben is watching you be steadied. “Thank you,” you say, softer than you mean to, and Billy’s eyes drop once to the shirt hanging off your shoulders. His expression shifts just enough to tell you he’s thinking something he has no intention of keeping to himself forever.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he says. That shouldn’t make your stomach tighten, but it does. Ben picks up his whiskey and lifts it slightly in your direction. “To quiet nights,” he says, like he hasn’t just ruined one by existing.

You stare at him over the rim of your glass, feeling the fizz of lemonade on your tongue before you answer. “You weren’t invited to my quiet night.”

Ben takes a sip and smiles like the whiskey tastes even better because he’s annoying you. “Sure I was, doll,” he says, and the easy confidence in his voice makes your fingers tighten around your glass. He lets his gaze flick to Billy before returning to you, as if the reminder is part of the game. “Just not by you.”

Billy doesn’t correct him, and that makes the room feel strange again, charged in a way that crawls over your skin slowly instead of striking all at once. You turn to Billy, waiting for him to explain himself properly, but he only gestures toward the living room with his glass. “Come on,” he says, already moving like this is settled.

You follow because apparently curiosity is stronger than irritation tonight, but you don’t let him get away without hearing you. “That’s your explanation?” you ask, bare feet quiet against the floor as you trail behind him. Billy looks back at you, eyes too dark and too amused. “Didn’t realize I was on trial, love.”

“You invited Ben into our flat while I’m dressed like this,” you say, and the words come out sharper because saying them makes the situation feel even more real. Billy stops near the living room for half a second, just long enough for his gaze to travel over you without even pretending not to.

He takes in the shirt, the bare legs, the way you’re trying to stand like you aren’t painfully aware of both men looking. There’s no shame in his eyes, only possession and something darker that makes heat crawl under your skin.

“I know what you’re dressed like,” he says, voice low enough that it feels less like an answer and more like a promise. Behind him, Ben lets out a low laugh that makes your shoulders tense.

“Hell, don’t we all,” he says, and the amusement in his tone makes you want to smack him with a cushion. You nearly turn around just to do it, but Billy’s hand finds the small of your back before you can decide.

It’s a brief touch, guiding and possessive, but his fingers press through the shirt like he’s reminding you whose it is. You swallow, because somehow that makes the whole thing worse and better at the same time.

The living room is warm and low-lit, the lamps casting gold across the old couch, the coffee table, and the scattered evidence of the night you were supposed to have. Billy sets the whiskey bottle down beside the food and drops onto the couch with casual confidence.

For one second, you expect him to leave the other side open for you, same as always. He doesn’t. He sits close enough to the middle that there’s space beside him, then looks at Ben like this has already been decided. Ben takes the invitation without asking, because asking has never been his style.

He lowers himself onto the couch next to Billy, not touching him, but close enough that the space between them feels intentional. There’s still a gap, a small one, but your mind catches on it anyway. You stand there with your glass in hand, suddenly aware that the only place that makes sense is Billy’s lap.

Billy knows it too, and the bastard doesn’t even try to hide his smile. “Well?” he says, patting his thigh once like he’s calling you home and setting a trap at the same time.

Ben makes himself comfortable in a way that’s almost offensive. He leans back into the couch, whiskey in hand, shoulders spread, one arm stretched along the back cushion like he’s claiming the room by posture alone.

Then his legs ease apart, slow and careless, and your gaze drops before you can stop it. It’s only a second, less than a second, but it’s enough. You see the spread of him, the relaxed confidence, the sheer arrogance of a man who knows exactly what his body does to a room. Your eyes snap away so quickly it almost hurts.

Heat rushes to your face, and your fingers tighten around your glass hard enough that the cold bites your palm. Billy catches it, because Billy catches everything when it comes to you. You know he catches it because his eyes are already waiting when you look at him. Ben catches it too, and his grin turns unbearable.

“Well, now,” Ben says, his voice low, amused, and far too pleased with himself. He doesn’t lean forward or chase the moment, because that would make it too easy to accuse him of something. Instead, he lets the moment sit there like smoke, thick and impossible to wave away.

“Didn’t mean to distract you, sweetheart,” he says, and the lie is so obvious it’s almost impressive. You lift your chin, refusing to let him have the full reaction even though your pulse is already betraying you.

“You didn’t,” you say, too quickly to sound convincing. Ben’s eyebrows rise, and he takes another slow sip of whiskey before answering. “Sure,” he says, dragging the word until it feels like a hand under your chin. “That why you looked away like you touched a hot stove?”

Billy’s hand finds your wrist before you can snap back, not stopping you, just grounding you enough to make his involvement impossible to ignore. “Careful, Ben,” Billy says, but there’s a smile tucked under his voice. “She bites when she’s embarrassed.”

Ben’s eyes glitter at that, and he looks at you like Billy has just confirmed something he’d been hoping was true. “Good,” he says, his voice rough with amusement. “I like a girl with teeth.” Your thighs press together before you can think better of it, and the movement is small enough that you almost convince yourself no one notices.

You’re not wet, not yet, and the distinction matters because you cling to it like proof that you still have some control. But there’s a low throb at your clit, small and insistent, the kind of pulse that makes you hate your own body for answering before you’ve agreed to anything.

You shift your weight from one foot to the other, and Billy’s attention drops immediately. His expression changes, subtle but devastating, because he knows. He knows you aren’t as unaffected as you’re pretending to be. He knows Ben’s attention has landed exactly where he suspected it would.

Worse than that, he likes knowing. It turns him on, the proof that your sweetness has edges, that you can stand there in his shirt and still enjoy being looked at by someone who shouldn’t be looking at you at all.

Billy pats his thigh again, slower this time, with a menace that makes your stomach twist. “Come here,” he says, and there’s no impatience in his voice because he already knows you will. You stare at him for half a heartbeat, very aware of Ben watching from the other side of the couch.

“You’re unbelievable,” you mutter, though you’re already moving. Billy’s smile is all teeth and patience. “You keep sayin’ that,” he says, like he loves hearing the accusation because he knows it’s true. You step closer, and the shirt shifts around your thighs with every movement.

Ben’s gaze follows the hem openly, not enough to be crude by his standards, but definitely enough to make your skin prickle. When you lower yourself onto Billy’s lap, you do it carefully, trying not to let the shirt ride higher than it already has.

Billy’s arm comes around your waist the second you settle. His other hand lands on your thigh, warm and firm, thumb resting just below the hem like he’s found exactly where he wants to start causing trouble.

The contact is familiar enough to calm you and deliberate enough to make you tense again. Billy’s palm spreads over your bare skin like he’s reminding you and Ben at the same time that you’re his. He doesn’t push the shirt higher at first, and somehow that restraint feels like its own kind of threat.

Ben’s gaze drops to Billy’s hand on your thigh, then lifts back to your face with a smile that says he’s enjoying the view far too much. “Cozy,” Ben says, voice dipped in that smug warmth of his. You glare at him from Billy’s lap, trying to look composed when you feel anything but.

“Jealous?” you ask before you can stop yourself. Billy’s fingers tighten once, clearly pleased by the bite in your voice. Ben laughs, low and rough, as if the question has delighted him instead of landing.

“Of Butcher?” he asks, spreading his free hand like the idea is ridiculous. “Nah, sweetheart, I’m just wonderin’ if you always sit that pretty when you’re mad.”

Billy’s chest moves against your back before you hear his quiet laugh, and the sound sends a shiver down your spine. He sounds entertained, not threatened, and that’s somehow more dangerous than any jealous outburst would’ve been.

“She does,” Billy says, his voice close to your ear. His hand slides a fraction higher on your thigh, not high enough to fully expose you, but high enough to make your breath catch. Then, because he’s a menace and apparently committed to proving it, his fingers pinch the hem of the shirt and tug it upward by a slow inch.

Your hand flies down to catch his wrist, more instinct than decision. “Billy,” you hiss, glancing at Ben before you can stop yourself. Billy’s mouth brushes near your ear, and you can feel his smile there. “What?” he asks, all false innocence and rough amusement. “Just gettin’ comfortable, love.”

Ben watches the whole thing with shameless interest, whiskey paused halfway to his mouth. He doesn’t say anything for a second, which is almost worse than if he did. The silence lets you feel the position you’re in, perched on Billy’s lap, his arm locked around your waist, his fingers holding the hem of his shirt slightly higher on your thighs while Ben looks on from the other side of the couch.

You’re still covered, barely, but the shift is enough to make every nerve under your skin wake up. You’re not wet, you remind yourself again, but the throb between your legs pulses harder at being made so aware of yourself. Billy knows it too, because he’s evil and observant and far too pleased with himself.

His thumb strokes along your thigh, slow and lazy, while his fingertips keep the shirt from sliding back down. “You’re making a scene,” you mutter, though your voice doesn’t sound nearly as offended as it should.

Billy’s lips hover near your ear as he answers, low enough to make it feel private even though it isn’t. “No, love,” he says, “I’m lettin’ him see the scene you’re makin’ all on your own.”

Ben lets out a quiet laugh, and the sound scrapes right over your nerves. “Damn,” he says, settling back again with that infuriating confidence, legs still spread like he hasn’t got a single polite bone in his body. “Didn’t know date night came with a floor show.”

You turn your glare on him because it’s easier than looking at Billy right now. “You’re one comment away from being kicked back into the rain.” Ben smiles over the rim of his glass, not even slightly worried. “You gonna do it yourself, sweetheart?” he asks. “Dressed like that?”

You feel Billy’s fingers tighten against your thigh, not in warning, but in approval, like he likes the way Ben keeps pushing and the way you keep pushing back.

“Careful,” Billy says again, but this time his voice is darker, more amused than protective. Ben’s eyes flick to him, then back to you, and his grin turns slow. “I’m bein’ careful,” he says. “If I wasn’t, she’d know.”

Your breath catches before you can stop it, and Billy feels it because you’re sitting right against him. His hand slides another inch along your thigh, then curls around the fabric again, nudging the shirt higher in a way that looks casual only if someone is being generous. No one in the room is feeling generous.

You grip your glass tighter, trying to keep your face steady while your body betrays you in tiny, humiliating ways. Billy’s voice drops close to your ear, warm and rough. “Still not enjoyin’ yourself?” he asks, and the words settle low in your stomach. You twist slightly to look at him, scandalized and flustered and furious that he knows exactly what he’s doing.

“I hate you,” you say, because it’s the only safe lie you can find. Billy’s eyes drop to your mouth, and his smile turns fond in the meanest possible way. “No, you don’t.” Ben’s voice comes from beside him, dry and amused. “She really doesn’t.”

“Don’t start agreeing with him,” you snap, turning back toward Ben because at least irritation gives you something to hold on to. Ben lifts his glass in surrender, though his grin doesn’t move. “I’m just callin’ it like I see it.”

His eyes drop once more, not to your face this time, but to Billy’s hand where it’s still holding the shirt higher against your thigh. “And I’m seein’ plenty.” Your face burns so fast it almost makes you dizzy. Billy laughs softly, and his arm tightens around your waist to keep you steady on his lap.

“There she is,” Billy murmurs. “All mouth until someone looks too close.” You want to deny it. You want to tell him he’s wrong, that Ben’s attention doesn’t affect you, that Billy’s hands on your thighs in front of him don’t make your pulse trip. But your clit throbs again, insistent and traitorous, and the words refuse to come clean.

The three of you sit there in a silence that isn’t really silence at all. The rain fills the windows, the low music hums beneath it, and the clink of Ben’s glass against his ring sounds too loud when he shifts. Billy holds you in his lap like he’s got every right to, because he does, and because he wants Ben to see that he does.

His hand stays on your thigh, thumb tracing slow, maddening arcs while his fingers keep playing with the hem of the shirt, lifting it just enough to make you tense before letting it fall back a little. It’s a small game, a cruel one, and the worst part is that he’s barely doing anything. Ben doesn’t look away from you for long, even when he speaks to Billy.

“So,” he says, stretching the word with lazy amusement. “This how you two do date night?” You look at him over your glass, trying not to feel every inch of Billy beneath you and every inch of Ben’s attention beside you. “Usually there’s less of you involved,” you say.

Ben grins like you’ve complimented him, and Billy’s mouth brushes your ear as his fingers tug the shirt higher one more time. “Yeah,” Billy murmurs, dark and pleased, “but she’s doin’ just fine with the extra attention.”

Billy’s mouth finds your neck before you’ve fully recovered from Ben’s last comment. It starts like a kiss, slow and warm under your ear, but there’s nothing gentle about the way his hand tightens at your waist. His lips press against your skin with the kind of confidence that says he knows exactly how quickly you’ll soften for him.

You feel his beard scrape, then his teeth graze lightly enough to make your breath catch. The sound you make is small, almost swallowed, but both men hear it. Billy’s chest shifts against your back, his quiet laugh sinking straight through you.

Ben’s gaze sharpens from the other side of the couch, whiskey forgotten in his hand. He doesn’t look amused now, not only amused anyway. He looks hungry. The room seems to shrink around the three of you.

Billy kisses lower, dragging his mouth down the side of your throat while his hands start moving with purpose. One stays firm at your waist, holding you in place against him, while the other hooks under your thigh and shifts you like you weigh nothing.

You gasp when he manhandles you sideways on his lap, your back pressed tighter to his chest, your knees forced apart by the way he rearranges you. It happens smoothly, confidently, like he’s been thinking about this exact position since Ben walked through the door.

Your shirt rides up higher, bunching at your hips, and cool air hits the bare skin between your thighs. For one stunned second, you don’t move. Then embarrassment slams into you so hard that your hands drop instinctively, trying to pull the fabric down.

Billy catches one wrist with a low, rough sound against your neck. “Ah, ah,” he murmurs, lips still brushing your skin. “Don’t go shy on me now, love.”

You try to close your legs anyway. It’s not because you don’t want it, and that’s the humiliating part. It’s because Ben is right there, close enough to see everything, close enough that his breathing has gone deeper and his whiskey sits untouched against his thigh.

Your knees shift inward, but Billy’s hand slides down and stops you with maddening ease. He tuts against your throat, the sound low and scolding, and it makes your stomach flip. “Now, what did I just say?” he asks, voice soft enough to be intimate and mean enough to make your pulse jump.

You turn your head like you might argue, but his mouth presses under your jaw before you can form the words. His hand smooths along your thigh, then pushes it open again, slower this time, making sure you feel every inch of being spread.

Ben watches your legs part, his jaw tightening as his eyes drop. His free hand flexes once against his own thigh, like he’s stopping himself from reaching too soon.

Billy notices that too, because Billy is watching everything. “You seein’ this, Ben?” he asks, voice rough and amused, like he’s showing off something priceless and dangerous. His hand stays heavy on your thigh, fingers splayed wide over your skin, keeping you open without hurting you.

Ben’s eyes lift to Billy’s face for a second, then fall back to you like he can’t help himself. “Yeah,” he says, and the word comes out lower than before, stripped of some of that usual cocky polish. His throat works when he swallows. “I’m seein’ her.”

You feel yourself clench at the sound of it, at the weight in his voice, at how different he sounds when he isn’t just teasing. Billy’s lips curve against your neck. “Pretty fuckin’ sight, ain’t she?” Ben exhales through his nose, slow and heavy. “Prettier than she’s got any right to be.”

The praise hits you somewhere low and vulnerable. A whimper slips out before you can trap it, soft and embarrassed and impossible to take back. Your hand flies to your mouth like that will erase it, but Billy catches your wrist again and pulls it down.

“No hidin’ that either,” he says, voice warm with satisfaction. The hard line of his cock presses beneath you, unmistakable now, thickening against your ass through his trousers. You feel the change happen in real time, feel how much this turns him on, and your whole body goes hot with the knowledge.

Billy is hard because you’re exposed on his lap. Billy is hard because Ben is staring. Billy is hard because you tried to act sweet and embarrassed, but your body keeps betraying you. That realization should make you want to disappear. Instead, your clit throbs harder, pulsing between your open thighs like it wants to answer for you.

Ben sees the way you shiver. He sees the way your mouth parts, the way your fingers curl uselessly against Billy’s wrist, the way you can’t decide whether to hide or lean into it. His own body betrays him just as badly. His legs are still spread, but now there’s tension beneath the careless posture, a thick, obvious hardness pressing against the front of his pants.

He shifts once, jaw flexing like the friction isn’t enough and too much at the same time. Your gaze drops before you can stop it, catching the shape of him straining under the fabric. He notices instantly, because of course he does.

“Eyes up, sweetheart,” he says, echoing you from earlier with a grin that’s gone darker around the edges. His voice is rougher now, less teasing, more affected than he probably wants to admit. “Unless you’re finally done pretendin’ you’re not lookin’.”

Billy laughs low against your skin, and the sound vibrates through your back. “She’s done pretendin’,” he says, his hand sliding from your wrist to your stomach, holding you still against him. You shake your head once, but it’s weak and everyone knows it.

Billy’s mouth returns to your neck, kissing and biting lightly, each touch making you sink heavier against his chest. His other hand drags over your thigh, then pinches the hem of the shirt again.

This time, he doesn’t only lift it a little. He pushes it higher, bunching the fabric above your hips, until there’s nothing left to hide behind. Your pussy is on display between your parted thighs, bare and exposed under the warm lamplight.

You hear Ben’s breath catch, a quiet, rough sound that makes shame and arousal twist together inside you. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters, and for once, there’s no joke tucked behind it.

You try to close your legs again on instinct, but Ben moves this time. His hands land on your thighs before your knees can come together, big palms warm and firm against your skin. He doesn’t shove them open violently, doesn’t hurt you, but he stops you with the same sure confidence Billy has been using all night.

The contact makes you jolt, and the whimper that falls from your mouth is even worse than the first one. It sounds needy. It sounds like surrender. Your face burns so hot that your eyes sting. Ben’s hands tighten slightly, not enough to bruise, just enough to let you feel the size and strength of them.

“Easy,” he says, voice low and rough, his accent thickening around the word. “Ain’t gonna bite unless you ask real nice.” Billy’s mouth pauses at your neck, and you can feel his grin before he speaks. “Careful, mate. She might.”

The words make you squirm, and both men react at once. Billy’s cock presses harder beneath you when you shift, and his breath catches against your skin before he buries it in another kiss. Ben’s fingers flex on your thighs, and his eyes drop again, helplessly drawn back to the slick heat you’re trying so badly not to acknowledge.

You’re wet now, no matter how much you want to deny it. The slow throb has turned into a warm ache, and your pussy glistens under their attention, soft and flushed and embarrassingly open from the way they’re holding you.

Ben looks at you like the sight has knocked some of the arrogance out of him, at least for a second. His mouth parts slightly, his thumb brushing an absent circle against your inner thigh.

“You’ve been sittin’ there actin’ all offended,” he says, voice quieter now, more dangerous for it. “And look at you.” Your breath shakes. Billy’s hand slides up your stomach, holding you tighter. “Told you she liked bein’ looked at.”

You want to snap back. You want to be sharp and clever and difficult, because that has always been safer than admitting the truth. But Billy’s mouth is hot against your neck, Ben’s hands are on your thighs, and the weight of both their attention makes words feel impossible.

Your hips twitch once, barely there, but enough for Billy to feel it. He groans softly, a rough little sound that slips out before he can make it cruel. That sound undoes something in you. Billy’s control has always been a challenge, and hearing it fracture because of you, because of this, makes your whole body go loose and feverish.

Ben sees your expression change and goes very still. His grin fades into something darker, more focused. The room has shifted again, past teasing now, past little power plays and clever lines. You can feel the moment waiting for you to choose.

So you do. Your hand moves before your pride can stop it, trembling slightly as it settles over Ben’s wrist. His eyes snap to yours immediately, and for the first time tonight, he doesn’t say anything. He waits. That almost ruins you more than the flirting had.

Billy goes still behind you too, his lips pressed to the side of your throat, his breathing rough against your skin. You swallow, fingers tightening around Ben’s wrist, and guide his hand higher along your thigh. Ben lets you move him, his palm sliding over warm skin in slow, careful inches.

His thumb brushes dangerously close, and your hips lift without meaning to. Billy’s arm locks tighter around your waist. “There you go,” Billy murmurs, voice thick with approval. “Show him what you want, love.”

Your face burns at the praise, but you keep moving Ben’s hand anyway. You guide him higher until his fingers are right there, close enough that the heat of him makes your thighs tremble. Ben’s breath leaves him in a slow, rough exhale, and his hard-on strains visibly when your hand presses his closer.

“Fuck,” he mutters, the word dragged low and almost reverent. “You sure about that, sweetheart?” The question is rough, but it’s still a question, and it makes something inside you loosen. You nod, but Billy’s teeth graze your neck in warning.

“Words,” he says. Your voice comes out small, but it comes out. “Yes.” Ben’s eyes darken. Billy’s cock twitches beneath you. The single word drops into the room like a lit match.

Ben’s fingers finally touch you. It’s not much at first, just the slow press of his fingertips against your slick folds, but your whole body jolts like he’s done more. Billy catches you easily, holding you against his chest as your head tips back against his shoulder. Ben’s hand stills for a second, watching your face with that hungry, startled intensity.

“Sensitive little thing,” he says, and there’s awe underneath the smugness now, like he didn’t expect you to react so beautifully. Billy’s hand slides down to your thigh again, pushing you open wider for him.

“Don’t tease her too much,” he says, even though his voice makes it obvious he wants exactly that. Ben’s mouth curves, but his eyes stay fixed on where he’s touching you. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” His fingers move again, parting you slowly, and your breath breaks.

When Ben spreads you open, the sound he makes is almost ruined. Your pussy is slick and swollen under his fingers, flushed from arousal, your folds shiny where he parts them for a better look. Your clit is hard and exposed, twitching at the cool air and the unbearable attention.

Billy sees it over your shoulder and groans against your neck, his control slipping another inch. Ben stares like he’s forgotten how to make a joke. His thumb holds you open with careful pressure, and his other fingers spread your folds just enough to show exactly how wet you’ve gotten from being watched, handled, and teased.

“Damn,” Ben says, voice low and rough as gravel. “All that mouth, and she’s this fuckin’ pretty when she gives in.” Your thighs tremble against his hands. Billy’s palm strokes your thigh like he’s proud of the reaction. “That’s my girl,” he says, and the possessive warmth in it makes you clench around nothing.

Ben sees that too, and his expression turns feral for half a second. “Oh, she likes that,” he says, looking from your pussy to Billy’s face with a grin that’s almost disbelieving. “You say that, and she just about melts.” Billy’s hand comes up to your jaw, turning your face enough that he can see your eyes. His mouth is close, his smile dark and intimate.

“Yeah?” he asks, like he doesn’t already know. “You like him seein’ how well you listen to me?” You whimper again, smaller this time, because the truth is too heavy in your mouth. Billy kisses the corner of your lips, almost sweet if not for the way his cock is hard beneath you and Ben’s fingers are holding your pussy open.

“Look at that,” Billy murmurs. “All embarrassed, but you’re not tellin’ him to stop.” Ben’s thumb shifts closer to your clit, not touching yet, just making you feel the promise of it. “She doesn’t wanna stop,” he says. “Do you, sweetheart?”

You shake your head before you can make yourself hesitate. Billy’s laugh is soft and mean, full of satisfaction. Ben smiles like you’ve just handed him something dangerous and told him to be careful with it. His thumb finally brushes your clit, barely a touch, but your whole body jerks against Billy’s lap.

The movement grinds you down against the hard length beneath you, and Billy curses under his breath, his fingers biting into your thigh. Ben watches both reactions, yours and Billy’s, and the sight makes his own hips shift slightly against nothing.

He’s painfully hard now, the front of his pants tight enough that there’s no hiding it, but he doesn’t reach for himself. He looks too focused on you, too caught on the way your pussy shines under his hand, too pleased by the little sounds Billy keeps pulling from your throat. “That’s it,” Ben says, voice low and rough. “Knew you had it in you.”

Billy’s mouth finds your neck again, but now every kiss feels like a claim. His hand stays at your jaw, keeping your head tilted enough for him to reach your skin, while his other hand holds your thigh open for Ben. The position is obscene, overwhelming, and so intimate it makes your chest ache in the middle of all the heat.

You feel Billy’s heartbeat against your back, too fast to match his smug voice. You feel Ben’s hands steady on your thighs, one still touching you, the other holding you open like he can’t bear for you to hide again. You feel your own body giving in by degrees, embarrassment turning molten, want spreading through you until it’s harder to remember why you’d been pretending.

Billy speaks against your neck, voice rough with arousal and pride. “Still my sweet girl,” he murmurs. “Just not as innocent as you wanted him to think.” Ben’s thumb circles your clit once, slow and deliberate, and his grin comes back when you gasp. “Good,” he says. “Innocent’s overrated anyway.”

Billy and Ben keep you on your knees between them like they’ve decided the rug is the only place you’re allowed to exist for now. Billy’s hand stays buried in your hair, keeping your head tipped back, while Ben stands close enough that his cock brushes your cheek every time he shifts.

Both of them are hard, breathing rough, belts open and trousers shoved just low enough to make the whole scene feel filthy and unfinished. You’re naked beneath them, shirt discarded somewhere beside your knees, nipples tight in the cool air while your pussy throbs uselessly between your spread thighs.

Billy looks down at you like he’s proud of the mess he’s made, and Ben looks like he’s fighting not to lose what little patience he has left. “Look at you,” Billy mutters, voice low and cruelly fond, as his thumb drags over your wet bottom lip.

“All that mouth on you, and now you’re finally quiet.” You try to answer, but Ben taps the head of his cock against your cheek before you can get anything out. The slick, warm contact makes your eyes flutter, and his grin turns dark at the way you don’t pull away.

“She’s quiet because she’s got better things to do,” Ben says, rough and smug, his hand closing around himself. Billy laughs under his breath, tugging your hair just enough to make your throat stretch. “Then she’d better get on with it.”

Billy takes your mouth first again, and he doesn’t ease you into it this time. He pushes the thick head of his cock past your lips with one firm roll of his hips, groaning when your mouth stretches around him. He’s not long enough to make you panic, but he’s so thick that your jaw aches almost immediately, and the burn makes your thighs tremble.

You wrap one hand around the base of him, slicking him with spit as he uses your mouth in short, rough thrusts. Ben stands beside him, watching with his jaw tight, one hand stroking himself slowly while the other comes down to your face. He taps his cock against your cheek, then drags it along your skin until your face is smeared with him while Billy is still inside your mouth.

“Damn,” Ben mutters, his voice rougher than before, “she looks good with her mouth stuffed.” Billy’s fingers tighten in your hair, and his hips jerk at the praise even though he acts like it doesn’t get to him. “Course she does,” he says, looking down at you with a sharp, possessive smile.

“She’s been gaggin’ for it since you walked in.” You moan around Billy, and both men hear how much you like being spoken about like you’re not fully innocent. Ben’s cock twitches against your cheek, and his grin comes back meaner. “Yeah, she likes that.”

Billy pulls out just enough to let you gasp, but he keeps the head of his cock resting against your lips. Spit trails from your mouth to him, shiny and messy, and Ben’s eyes track it like it’s the best thing he’s seen all night.

You’re breathing hard, lips swollen, cheeks hot from the slaps and the humiliation and the way your body keeps saying yes before your mouth can. Billy slaps your cheek lightly with his fingers, a quick sting that snaps your attention back to him.

“Eyes here, love,” he says, voice rough with warning. You look up at him immediately, and his expression darkens with satisfaction. Ben laughs softly from beside him, clearly enjoying how quickly you obey even while your hand is still reaching for him. You wrap your fingers around Ben’s cock again, stroking him while Billy keeps your mouth close.

Ben’s breath catches, his hips pushing into your hand before he can pretend he’s in control. “That’s it,” Ben says, his grin turning strained, “don’t leave me out just because Butcher’s got you trained.” Billy’s mouth twists at that, jealousy flashing hot in his eyes. “She’s trained because she likes bein’ useful,” he says, pressing his thumb against your tongue until your mouth opens wider.

Ben takes over with a rough hand at your jaw, guiding your face toward him before Billy can push back in. His cock slides over your parted lips, heavy and hot, and you open because you’ve already stopped pretending you won’t. He groans the second your mouth closes around the head, fingers sinking into your hair as if he’s been trying not to grab you too hard.

Ben is longer, and every inch you take feels like a challenge he’s daring you to meet. He doesn’t shove all the way in, but he controls the rhythm with enough force to make your eyes water. Billy stands close on your other side, stroking himself while he watches you work, his expression tight and hungry.

“Look at you takin’ him,” Billy says, voice darker than before, like he hates it and loves it at the same time. The words make your pussy clench so hard you nearly lose your rhythm. Ben feels the way you moan around him and curses, his hips twitching forward.

“Christ, she’s filthy,” he says, brushing wet hair away from your face with a hand that’s too rough to be tender. “Mouth full and still actin’ like she wants to be praised for it.” Billy reaches down and slaps your cheek again, not hard enough to scare you, but enough to make the sting bloom bright. “Don’t encourage her,” he says, even though his voice sounds like he wants exactly that.

You don’t wait for an order before lowering your mouth from Ben’s cock to his balls. The shift makes him freeze for half a second, his hand tightening hard in your hair as your lips brush lower. His balls are heavy and warm against your tongue, and the first slow suck makes a rough sound break out of him that doesn’t sound smug at all.

Ben’s head drops forward, eyes fixed on you like he can’t decide whether to mock you or praise you. “Well, hell,” he breathes, voice gone low and wrecked, “didn’t know you were this eager.” Billy’s hand comes to the back of your neck, steadying you as you suck Ben messily, spit slicking your lips and chin.

You look up through wet lashes, and the sight of Ben losing that clean, cruel composure makes your stomach burn with pride. Billy doesn’t let you enjoy it too long, because his cock is still hard in his hand and his patience is a very temporary thing. He grips your hair and pulls you back just enough to make you gasp.

“My turn,” he says, rough and possessive, and the words land like a command your body already knows. You let Ben slip from your mouth with a wet sound, and his breath comes out sharp when you leave him shining. Billy tilts your face toward himself, his grin mean as he adds, “Don’t look disappointed, love, you’ve got plenty to choke on.”

You take Billy back into your mouth, and the thickness of him forces your lips wide again. Your hand wraps around what you can’t fit, stroking him while your tongue presses along the underside of his cock. He’s rougher now, hips snapping in short thrusts that make your throat work and your eyes sting.

One of his hands stays in your hair, and the other cups your cheek in a way that would be sweet if his fingers weren’t pressing possessively into your skin. “That’s it,” Billy mutters, breathing hard as he watches your mouth stretch around him. “Knew you were a greedy little thing under all that sweetness.”

Ben steps in close again, his cock brushing the side of your face while you’re full of Billy. He taps himself against your cheek, then drags the wet head over your temple and down toward your mouth, smearing himself over your skin like he’s marking what he hasn’t fully gotten to keep.

“She’s got two hands, Butcher,” Ben says, voice rough with impatience. “Don’t hog the whole damn girl.” Billy pulls your hair just enough to make you look up at him with watery eyes. “She’s not a girl,” he says, voice low and possessive. “She’s my filthy little woman.”

The words make you moan around him, and Billy’s hips stutter at the vibration. Ben catches the reaction and laughs, but it’s breathless enough to expose him too. You reach for Ben again, hand sliding up and down his cock while your mouth stays full of Billy.

His skin is hot under your palm, slick where you’ve already made a mess of him, and you tighten your grip the way he’d demanded earlier. Ben’s groan sounds almost angry, his hand coming down to the back of your head as if he needs to touch something or he’ll come apart too soon.

“Attagirl,” he says, rough and mocking, though there’s real strain under it. “Knew you could handle a little work.” Billy pulls out of your mouth with a wet sound, then slaps your cheek with the heavy head of his cock instead of his hand. The contact makes you gasp, and your tongue flicks out instinctively, tasting him from your own skin.

Billy’s eyes go almost black at that. “Fuckin’ hell,” he mutters, gripping your jaw. “You’re worse than I thought.” Ben grins down at you, stroking himself through your fist. “No, she’s exactly as bad as you hoped.”

Billy shoves you toward Ben again, rough enough that you have to catch yourself with both hands on Ben’s thighs. Ben doesn’t complain, and the way his muscles tense under your palms makes you feel powerful for one brief, dangerous second. Then his hand closes around the back of your head and guides your mouth back onto him, taking that illusion away as quickly as it came.

You suck him messily, letting your tongue flatten along his shaft before taking him deeper, and his cock drags heavy over your tongue. Billy stands at your side, stroking himself with one hand while the other keeps slipping down to your face, your jaw, your throat, wherever he can feel you working.

“Don’t get soft on her,” Billy says to Ben, voice rough and taunting. “She likes it when you’re mean.” You whimper around Ben because Billy’s right, and the sound makes Ben’s fingers tighten. “That right, sweetheart?”

Ben asks, pulling your head back just enough for you to gasp around the tip. “You like bein’ talked to like a dirty little thing?” Your eyes lift to his, dazed and wet, and the answer is written all over your face. Ben’s grin turns savage. “Yeah, thought so.”

You slide lower on Ben again, dragging your tongue down his length before taking one of his balls into your mouth. His whole body reacts this time, hips jerking, chest rising hard, his hand snapping tighter in your hair. The sound he makes is raw, deep, and so unlike his usual smug voice that Billy laughs under his breath.

“Careful, mate,” Billy says, stroking himself slower now while he watches. “She’ll have you embarrassin’ yourself.” Ben shoots him a look, but it loses half its bite when your tongue moves again. “Shut your mouth,” Ben says, but his voice breaks slightly on the last word. Billy smirks, stepping closer until his cock rests against your cheek while you suck Ben’s balls.

“Busy mouth,” Billy says, tapping your face with himself again. “Look at her, though, all eager to keep both of us happy.” You moan around Ben, and your pussy throbs so hard it hurts. You’re soaked, slick on your thighs, knees aching from the rug, and still you don’t want them to stop.

Ben’s free hand drops to your shoulder, gripping hard enough to hold you in place as he breathes through the pleasure. “Fuck, she’s good,” he mutters, like admitting it annoys him. Billy’s smile widens. “Told you she had hidden talents.”

They drag you back and forth between them after that, rougher now that the softness has burned away. One of them is always in your mouth or against your face, while the other uses your hands, your cheeks, your tongue, anything he can reach. Billy pulls you to him by your hair, makes you take his thickness until spit runs down your chin, then pushes you low enough for your mouth to work over his balls too.

The second your lips close around him there, his control fractures in a way that makes your whole body flare with heat. His head tips back, throat working, his free hand pressing hard against the back of your head. “Fuck, love,” he breathes, and there’s a crack in the roughness that makes your chest feel tight.

Ben watches, stroking himself slowly, his grin smug but his eyes fixed and hungry. “That shut you up,” Ben says, and Billy’s glare would be more convincing if his breath weren’t wrecked. You suck Billy messily, tongue and lips wet, feeling the weight of him against your mouth while his cock presses hot against your cheek.

Billy looks down at you with a kind of pride that makes you clench around nothing. “That’s my girl,” he says, voice low and ruined. Ben’s cock twitches visibly at the phrase. “Yeah,” Ben mutters, stepping closer, “share some of that loyalty over here.”

Ben gets impatient and pulls you back by the hair before Billy can answer. The motion is rough enough to make you gasp, and Billy lets him do it with a dark little smile because this is apparently the game now. Ben guides you up to his cock again, tapping the head against your swollen lips until you open.

“Don’t make me ask twice,” he says, voice low and mean. You take him in with a soft, wrecked sound, and his hips push forward, slow but forceful, making you feel the length of him. Billy’s hand comes down across your cheek again, the sting landing while Ben is in your mouth. The combination makes you moan so hard Ben curses above you.

“She likes that too much,” Ben says, voice tight, though he doesn’t pull away. Billy crouches slightly beside you, catching your face in one hand so he can see your eyes. “Course she does,” Billy says, thumb smearing spit across your cheek.

“She’s just been waitin’ for someone to stop treatin’ her like she’s delicate.” You tremble at that, because it hits too close and both men know it. Ben’s fingers stroke through your hair once, then tighten again. “Then we won’t,” he says.

They make you try both again, and this time it’s nastier because you’re already messy enough that everything slides too easily. Billy presses his thick tip to one side of your mouth, and Ben presses his to the other, both of them watching as you open wide with swollen lips and glassy eyes.

You can’t take them both, not properly, and they know that. You can only manage the heads, your tongue trapped between them, spit slicking over both cocks as your jaw aches around the impossible stretch. Billy groans first, low and vicious, his fingers digging into your hair hard enough to make your scalp sting. Ben’s breath leaves him in a rough laugh that almost sounds like disbelief.

“Look at that,” Ben says, voice thick with arousal. “She’s actually tryin’.” Billy’s eyes stay on your mouth, his control hanging by a thread. “Greedy little mouth,” he mutters. “Doesn’t know when to stop.”

You whimper around both of them, and the vibration makes them curse nearly at the same time. Ben pulls back first, jaw tight, and drags his cock over your cheek instead. “Not yet,” he mutters, like he’s reminding himself more than you. “Not done with this mouth yet.”

Billy takes advantage of Ben pulling back and pushes into your mouth again, claiming the space immediately. His thrusts are rougher now, shallow but demanding, making your eyes water while your hands brace against his thighs. Ben moves behind your shoulder, stroking himself while watching your lips stretch around Billy’s girth, his own expression caught between hunger and frustration.

“You’re hoggin’ her again,” Ben says, but his voice sounds too wrecked to be properly annoyed. Billy glances at him, breathing hard, and pulls your hair enough to make you look up while still full of him. “She can handle it,” Billy says. His eyes drop back to you, and his smile turns cruel.

“Can’t you, love?” You nod as well as you can, and Billy groans because the motion drags your mouth around him. Ben’s hand reaches down to cup your face, his thumb pressing into the spit at the corner of your lips.

“Jesus, she’s a mess,” he says, sounding like he wants to ruin you further just to see how far it goes. You reach blindly for him, stroking him again, and his stomach tightens under your hand. “Yeah,” Ben mutters, “keep doin’ that.”

By the time they switch again, your mouth is swollen, your cheeks are wet, and your thighs are trembling from the ache of being left untouched. Ben takes your mouth with a rough hand in your hair, and Billy moves down your side with his eyes, watching your tits, your shaking legs, your soaked pussy, the way your body keeps begging even while your mouth is busy.

“Look at her,” Billy says, voice low and degrading, almost conversational. “Cunt’s drippin’, and we haven’t even touched it in ages.” Ben grunts as your tongue presses under his cock, his hips rolling forward before he checks himself. “She doesn’t need it yet,” he says, though his voice is strained.

“She’s got her mouth full.” Your pussy clenches hard at that, wetness slipping down your inner thigh. Billy notices and gives a rough laugh, then slaps your cheek again, softer this time but no less humiliating. “Dirty thing,” he says, and his hand slides briefly over your throat, feeling the movement as you take Ben.

Ben pulls out enough to let you breathe, then taps his cock against your lips. “Tell him,” Ben says, voice dark. “Tell Butcher you like bein’ used like this.” You gasp for air, eyes flicking between them, and the only thing you manage is a broken, “I like it.”

That confession nearly unravels both of them, though neither cums. Billy’s hand tightens around his cock, his jaw locking as he stares down at you like you’ve just given him the best and worst gift of his life. Ben’s grin fades for half a second, replaced by something hungrier and more serious, before he grips your jaw and pulls your mouth back to him.

“Damn right you do,” he says, and the praise sounds like degradation from his mouth. You take him again, then Billy, then Ben’s balls, then Billy’s, until the rhythm turns sloppy and instinctive. They keep you moving with hands in your hair, hands on your jaw, hands at your throat and shoulders, never letting you forget there are two of them and only one of you.

They slap your cheeks when your attention drifts, tap their cocks over your face when your mouth is full, and tell you exactly what you look like kneeling there naked and ruined. Your body burns with it, clit throbbing, pussy soaked, nipples aching, jaw sore, and every filthy word makes you wetter. Billy keeps calling you his, even when Ben’s in your mouth. Ben keeps calling you greedy, even when he’s the one pushing for more.

Neither of them lets themselves finish, not yet, though you can feel how close the edge keeps getting. When Billy finally pulls you off Ben and back toward him, his thumb strokes over your wet cheek with cruel tenderness. “Still with us, love?” he asks, voice rougher than before. You nod, dazed and desperate, and Ben laughs low beside him. “Good,” Ben says, cock still hard against your cheek. “Because we’re nowhere near done.”

Billy’s hand tightens in your hair one last time before he pulls you off Ben, and the sudden emptiness makes you gasp like you’ve been dragged up from underwater. Your mouth is wet, swollen, and aching, your cheeks marked with heat from their hands and the messy smear of both of them.

Ben is breathing hard above you, cock still in hand, jaw clenched like he’s fighting the urge to shove right back between your lips. Billy looks at him, then down at you, and that same silent agreement passes between them again, quick and wordless and cruel. It makes your stomach drop before either of them touches you.

You’re still on your knees, naked, soaked, trembling, and both of them are looking at you like they’ve decided your mouth was only the warm-up. Billy crouches first, catching your jaw in his hand and making you look at him properly. His thumb drags over your bottom lip, smearing spit across it as his eyes search yours beneath all that mean amusement.

“Still with us, love?” he asks, voice rough enough to scrape. You nod too quickly, dazed and aching and desperate enough that shame barely has room to breathe. Billy’s eyes narrow, not satisfied with that, and his fingers press harder into your jaw. “Words.” Your throat feels ruined from taking them, but you manage it anyway. “Yes.”

Ben’s breath shifts behind him, heavier, like hearing you say it does something filthy to him. Billy smiles then, slow and dark, before his hand slips from your jaw to your throat. “Good girl,” he says first, almost sweetly, and then his mouth twists. “Good little slut.”

The words make your pussy clench so hard your thighs shake, and both men see it. Ben laughs under his breath, stepping closer until the heat of him crowds your side. “Hell,” he says, voice rough and smug, “she likes that.” Billy doesn’t look away from your face as his thumb strokes along the front of your throat. “Course she does.”

His grip closes, controlled but firm, squeezing just enough to make your breath hitch and your eyes flutter. Your lashes roll back before you can stop them, pleasure and pressure making the room blur at the edges.

Billy watches it happen like it’s the prettiest confession you’ve given him all night. “Look at that,” he mutters, and his voice drops into something crueler. “Gets called what she is, and she damn near melts.”

Ben’s hand comes under your arm, and Billy catches the other, and between them, they haul you up from the rug like they’ve run out of patience for letting you move yourself. Your legs feel weak, knees sore, thighs sticky with your own slick, and you barely get your balance before Billy turns you toward the couch.

Ben moves behind you with too much ease, crowding your back, his cock hot against your ass for a second as he leans in near your ear. “Told you we weren’t done,” he says, voice low, smug, and rough around the edges. You shiver, and he laughs like he feels it all the way through you.

Billy sees the reaction and grabs your chin, pulling your attention back to him before Ben can keep it. “Eyes on me when he’s talkin’,” he says, his voice sharp enough to make your pulse jump. His hand slides down your throat again, claiming the line of it while Ben’s fingers bite into your hip.

“Greedy thing’s got two men on her and still doesn’t know where to look.” Ben’s hand smooths over your stomach from behind, dragging slowly upward until his palm cups one of your boobs.

His fingers find your nipple and pinch lightly, rolling the hard peak until your breath breaks. “She knows exactly where to look,” Ben says. “She just likes actin’ too dumb to choose.”

They move you like you’re something to be arranged exactly how they want. Billy sits back on the couch first, thighs spread, cock hard and flushed against his stomach, one hand already reaching to drag you over him. Ben stays behind you, big hands on your waist, guiding and forcing at the same time until your knees are on either side of Billy’s hips.

You end up straddling Billy, hovering over his lap, your hands braced on his shoulders while Ben stands at your back. The position leaves you open between them, exposed, your pussy slick and swollen under both their stares. Billy looks down between your bodies and gives a rough little laugh.

“Fuckin’ look at her,” he says, not to you, but to Ben. “Mouth full two minutes ago, and she’s still drippin’ like a proper little cum dump.” The phrase hits you so hard you almost fold forward, but Ben’s arm locks around your middle and keeps you upright.

His other hand slides to your chest again, fingers pinching and tugging at your nipple until you whine. “She likes bein’ called that,” Ben says, almost pleased. “Bet she’s been waitin’ all night to hear it.”

You whimper because they’re talking over you like you’re not there, like your body is evidence they’re both examining. It makes your face burn, but your pussy clenches in full view of Billy, and his eyes snap down to it immediately. He laughs again, meaner this time, while one hand settles at your thigh and pushes it wider.

“There it is,” he mutters. “Can’t even pretend she hates it.” Ben leans over your shoulder, his chest brushing your back, and you feel his cock slide hot between your ass and his stomach as he looks down too. “You hear that, sweetheart?” he asks, though he still sounds like he’s talking to Billy more than to you.

“Your cunt’s givin’ you away.” You try to lower your head, but Billy’s hand comes up to your jaw and keeps you exposed to him. “No hidin’.” His thumb presses into your cheek, making your lips part as he studies you. “Not after you got on your knees and sucked us like a desperate little slut.”

Billy spits on his fingers first, shameless and filthy, then brings them down between your thighs. The wet heat of it makes you jolt before he even touches your clit. He drags his slick fingers through your folds, spreading you open with slow, possessive strokes while Ben watches over your shoulder.

You’re already soaked, but Billy still looks pleased with the mess, like it belongs to him because he made you admit it. Then Ben’s hand appears beside his, rougher and broader, his fingers pressing your folds apart so both men can see you clearly. “Pretty little pussy,” Ben says, voice low, and the praise sounds almost mean because he says it while spreading you open.

Then he spits too, directly onto your pussy, the warmth landing against your clit and sliding down into Billy’s fingers. Your whole body jerks. Billy groans at the sight, cock twitching under you. “Christ,” he mutters. “She likes that.” Ben’s fingers roll your nipple harder from behind, and your back arches against his chest. “Yeah,” he says, breath hot at your ear. “She’s nasty as hell.”

You do like it, and they know it. Your hips twitch downward, chasing anything, friction, pressure, relief, but Billy’s grip on your thigh stops you from taking too much too soon. Ben’s hand comes down against your ass with a sharp smack, not enough to break the rhythm, just enough to make you cry out and arch.

“Don’t get impatient,” Ben says, his voice rough with amusement. “You’ll get what you can handle.” Billy looks past your shoulder at him, one brow lifting, his hand still working spit and slick through your folds. “And what makes you think she can handle both of us?”

Ben’s mouth brushes the side of your neck, his grin felt more than seen. “Look at her.” He pinches both nipples now, cruel little rolls that make your chest shake with every breath. “She’s already actin’ like a slut who wants to be split open.”

Your breath shakes because he’s right, and because Billy’s face says he knows it too. Billy’s eyes come back to yours, and the dark satisfaction there makes your thighs tremble. “Yeah,” he says softly. “She will.”

Billy guides himself beneath you, thick head pressing against your slick entrance. Even after everything, the first push makes your mouth fall open. He’s not the longest, but he’s so thick that the stretch steals the air out of your lungs, forcing you to sink down slowly while his hands clamp around your hips.

“Easy,” he says, though his voice sounds anything but calm. You try to take him too fast, desperate and shaking, and he jerks you back with a rough grip. “Don’t be stupid, love.” His thumb digs into your hip as he holds you above him, letting only the head stretch you open.

Ben watches from behind, one hand still at your chest, the other wrapped around himself. “She’s tryin’ to swallow you whole,” he says, breathless and smug. Billy’s jaw tightens.

“She always gets greedy when she’s embarrassed.” His hand moves back to your throat, squeezing just enough to make your eyes go glassy again. “Ain’t that right?”

You sink lower, inch by inch, until Billy is seated inside you, thick and deep enough to make your thighs shake around his hips. The stretch is familiar and still overwhelming, made worse by Ben standing behind you, waiting and touching you like patience is running out of his body.

Billy’s head falls back against the couch for one second before he forces his eyes open again, unwilling to miss your face. “Fuck,” he breathes. “That’s it.” His hands move to your ass, spreading you, holding you open as Ben steps closer behind you.

You feel Ben’s cock slide against your slick folds, nudging where Billy already fills you, and panic flares with arousal so hard your fingers dig into Billy’s shoulders. “Billy,” you gasp, not sure if it’s a warning or a plea.

Billy’s hand comes up to your throat again, grounding you, making you look at him. “You said yes,” he reminds you, voice rough but focused beneath all the filth. “You still mean it?” You nod, frantic, and force the word out. “Yes.”

Ben groans behind you, and the sound is almost too much before he even pushes in. He spits into his palm, slicks himself with rough, impatient strokes, then spits again over the place where Billy is already buried inside you. The sensation makes you clench around Billy, and he curses, hips jerking up once before he controls himself.

“Fuckin’ hell, don’t do that,” Billy growls, even though his hands pull you down harder. Ben laughs under his breath, but it’s strained, his usual arrogance cracking under the pressure of what he’s about to do. “She can’t help it,” he says. “Poor thing’s full and still beggin’.” His tip presses against your entrance alongside Billy, and the stretch goes from intense to impossible.

Your whole body locks up, breath punching out of you in a broken whine. Billy’s hand tightens around your throat, not cutting off all your air, just taking enough control that your eyes roll back again. “Breathe,” he orders, and the command comes out like a threat and a promise at once.

Slow feels like a joke, because there’s nothing gentle about being opened around both of them. Ben pushes in by brutal little increments, forcing your body to make room while Billy holds you down on his cock. The pressure is obscene, hot and splitting, every nerve in your pussy screaming as both of them fill you at once.

You choke on a sound, forehead dropping toward Billy’s shoulder, but he catches your hair and pulls your head back. “No,” he says, voice low and cruel. “Let him see your face.” Ben stills behind you, breathing hard against your neck, his cock only halfway in and already making you feel like you’re being ruined from the inside out.

“Jesus Christ,” Ben mutters, and for once he sounds genuinely shaken. “She’s tight as hell.” Billy’s mouth curves, but his eyes are blown dark. “Told you,” he says, talking like you’re a thing being proved right in front of him. “Pretty little cunt’s spoiled, but she’s still got to work for it.” Ben’s hand slides from your hip to your stomach, pressing low. “Shit,” he says, voice dropping. “You can feel us right here.”

Your gaze follows his hand down, and the sight nearly wrecks you. There’s a subtle bulge low in your tummy where both of them are stretching you full, a faint, obscene pressure under Ben’s palm that makes your breath stutter when he presses on it. Billy sees it at the same time you do, and his entire body goes tense beneath you.

“Fuck,” Billy says, voice rough with disbelief and possession. “Look at that.” Ben’s palm stays there, rubbing slowly over the small swell like he’s memorizing what they’re doing to you. “We’re makin’ room where there wasn’t any,” Ben says, and his voice is so filthy and fascinated that your pussy clenches around them both.

Billy’s hand snaps back to your throat, squeezing as his hips jerk up under you. Your eyes roll back again, pleasure and pressure and humiliation crashing together until your mouth falls open.

Ben’s other hand pinches your nipple hard, and your whole body trembles between them. “Dirty little cum dump,” Billy says, almost panting now. “Look what happens when we fill you up proper.” Ben huffs a wrecked laugh against your shoulder. “She likes the proof.”

They start moving in tiny, cruel shifts at first. Billy rolls his hips up while Ben pulls back just enough to push in again, and the combined drag makes your vision blur.

It isn’t fast yet, but it’s already too much, every movement forcing you to feel both of them separately and together. Billy keeps one hand on your throat, squeezing in little pulses that make your lashes flutter and your body go loose for him.

Ben’s hand stays at your stomach, pressing over the bulge, while his other hand keeps playing with your nipples from behind. He pinches, rolls, and tugs until your chest aches and every little shock runs straight between your legs.

“She’s shaking,” Ben says, almost conversational, like you aren’t trembling between them. Billy looks down at your body, then back at Ben with a cruel little smirk. “She does that when she’s gettin’ treated like the slut she is.”

Your nails dig into Billy’s shoulders as another broken sound slips out of you. Ben thrusts shallowly, and your whole body jolts. “Yeah?” he says near your ear. “This what you wanted, sweetheart? Both of us makin’ a cum dump outta that pretty pussy?”

You can’t answer right away, and Billy doesn’t like that. His hand leaves your throat long enough to slap your cheek lightly, sharp enough to snap your focus back to him. “Answer him,” he says, voice rough and dark.

Your lips part, but the next slow grind of Ben’s cock alongside Billy’s turns the words into a gasp. Billy smiles like that’s answer enough, but he still waits because he’s a bastard. “Yes,” you finally manage, voice shaking apart.

“I wanted it.” Ben groans behind you, his forehead almost touching your shoulder for a second before he straightens again. “There she is,” he mutters. “Knew she’d say it if we stretched her enough.” Billy laughs, but it breaks into a curse when your pussy clenches around both of them.

“Fuck, love,” he hisses. “Keep squeezin’ like that and we’re not gonna last.” Ben’s hand presses lower on your stomach, making you feel the bulge and fullness all over again. “Then she’d better learn to take it.”

The rhythm builds slowly because it has to, because there’s too much of them and only so much of you. They don’t stop talking over you, about you, like your whimpers are just another part of the room. Billy says your pussy’s taking them better than he expected, voice rough with pride and disbelief.

Ben says you were made for trouble, that all that sweet little attitude was hiding this, a woman who’d end up split open between them and still try to act shy. You hear every word through the haze, and each one makes your clit pulse harder. Billy’s thumb finds it again, slick and spit-smeared, and starts rubbing slow, mean circles while Ben holds your hips open from behind.

The pressure of both cocks inside you, Billy’s thumb on your clit, Ben’s fingers abusing your nipples, and his palm pressing your lower stomach is enough to make your thighs shake violently. You cry out, and Ben’s arm clamps across your chest, pinning you back against him while his fingers keep twisting one hard nipple.

“There you go,” he says, breathing hot against your ear. “Let Butcher hear how much you like bein’ shared.” Billy’s mouth crashes against yours, rough and possessive, and his hips snap up harder. “She’s not bein’ shared,” he growls against your lips. “She’s bein’ shown off.”

That makes you break into a sobbing moan, because Billy can make possession sound filthier than sharing ever could. Ben laughs against your shoulder, but his thrust stutters like the words hit him too. “Yeah?” he says, voice ragged. “Then show her off right.” Billy’s eyes flash, and suddenly his hands are on your hips again, lifting and dragging you down with a strength that makes your breath vanish.

Ben matches him from behind, timing his shallow thrusts to Billy’s movement until you’re caught in a rough, coordinated rhythm that leaves you helpless between them.

Your pussy is stretched so full that every thrust feels like it’s taking you apart and putting you back wrong. You can feel Billy’s thickness grinding against one side, Ben’s length pressing from the other, both of them slick with spit and your own wetness.

Your head falls back against Ben’s shoulder, and Billy immediately grabs your throat to keep your face visible. His fingers squeeze, your eyes roll, and he groans at the sight like it’s going to ruin him. “No hidin’ from me,” he says. Ben’s mouth brushes your ear, his voice dark with amusement. “Or me.”

They keep you there, pinned between them, while the quiet night Billy promised turns into something ruinous and loud with breathing, skin, and filthy praise disguised as insult. You’re trembling so hard now that they have to hold you up, Billy from beneath you and Ben from behind, both of them using that to move you exactly how they want.

They spit on their fingers again, on your clit, on where you’re stretched around them, making the whole thing wetter, messier, more obscene. Billy talks about how sweet you looked in his shirt and how much better you look with it gone, split open on his cock and Ben’s like you’d been waiting for it.

Ben says he knew you were trouble the first time you glared at him, says he should’ve known your mouth wasn’t the only greedy thing about you. You whimper through it, trying to keep hold of Billy’s shoulders while Ben’s hands bruise your hips and squeeze your tits from behind. Neither of them lets you disappear into the pleasure quietly.

Every time your eyes close, Billy snaps your name. Every time your head drops, Ben pulls it back. Every time your body clenches, they both groan like you’re testing them on purpose. And through all of it, they keep talking like you aren’t in the room, like you’re something they’re using and admiring and ruining between them. You hate how much it turns you on, and you hate even more that they both know.

Billy feels you start to come apart before you manage to say it. Your thighs clamp uselessly around his hips, your nails dig into his shoulders, and your whole body starts shaking between them like you’ve been wound too tight for too long. Ben feels it too, pressed behind you, his hand still at your stomach where that obscene fullness shows beneath his palm.

He lets out a rough, almost disbelieving laugh when your pussy starts fluttering around them both, tight little pulses dragging a curse out of Billy and a sharp groan out of him. Billy’s thumb keeps working your clit in slow, cruel circles, not letting up even when you jerk against him.

“There she is,” Billy says, voice wrecked and mean, his eyes fixed on your face. “There’s our filthy little slut.” Ben’s hand slides up from your stomach to your throat, replacing Billy’s grip with his own, fingers firm and controlled around the front of your neck.

The pressure makes your lashes flutter, your breath catching in a broken whimper that only gets worse when Billy’s hand drops to your tits.

He slaps one, sharp and filthy, then the other, watching your nipples bounce and harden under the sting. “Cum for us,” Billy growls. “Go on, love. Show him what my girl looks like when she’s ruined.”

Your orgasm hits so hard that it nearly takes your voice with it. For a second, you can’t do anything but shake, mouth open, eyes rolling as Ben’s hand holds your throat and Billy’s cock grinds up into you from beneath.

Then the sound breaks out of you, loud and helpless, both their names spilling from your mouth in a ruined, sobbing rush. “Billy,” you gasp first, clinging to him like he’s the only thing keeping you upright. “Ben.” Ben groans against your ear when you say his name, his hips snapping forward harder, forcing another cry out of you.

Billy’s hand comes down against your tit again, the sting melting straight into the pleasure tearing through your body. You don’t even know when the words change, only that your head is gone and your body is too full and too sensitive and too desperate to stay proud.

“Daddy,” you whimper at Billy, and the look that takes over his face is almost dangerous. Then your head falls back against Ben’s shoulder, and the name slips out for him too, softer and needier.

“Dada, please.” Ben’s grip tightens at your throat for one controlled second, just enough to make you gasp around the word. “Fuck,” he snarls. “Say that again.”

Billy’s whole body goes tense beneath you, jealousy and arousal twisting together in his face. He slaps your tit again, rougher this time, and the sting makes your pussy clamp down around both of them so hard that Ben swears into your neck.

“Little cum dump’s got names for both of us now,” Billy says, voice harsh, but his hips buck up into you like it’s the hottest thing he’s ever heard. Ben laughs, breathless and mean, his hand still at your throat while the other arm locks around your waist to hold you steady. “She sounds good beggin’ like that,” he says, thrusting shallow and hard, making you feel every inch of him alongside Billy.

“Bet she’d sound even better askin’ for what she really wants.” Your orgasm is still rolling through you, still making your thighs tremble, but the words drag another desperate ache out of your body. Billy’s thumb presses against your clit again, and you sob. “Please,” you choke out, voice thin under Ben’s hand.

Billy’s eyes narrow, his mouth wet and parted as he watches you struggle to speak. “Please what?” he asks. Ben’s mouth brushes your ear, cruel and hot. “Use your words, sweetheart. Tell us what you want us to do to that pretty little cunt.”

You barely get the sentence out. It comes out broken, filthy, and desperate, torn apart by the way they keep moving inside you. “Cum in me,” you beg, voice shaking so badly the words nearly blur. Billy’s hips stutter beneath you, and Ben goes still for half a second like you’ve punched the air out of him.

Then you say it again because their reaction makes you reckless. “Please cum in me.” Billy’s face twists with something possessive and ruined, his hands grabbing your hips hard enough to pull you down against him. “Hear that?” he says to Ben, like you’re not there, like you’re just a soaked, trembling thing split open between them. “She’s beggin’ for it now.”

Ben’s hand flexes around your throat, his thumb stroking once along your jaw when your breath catches. “Yeah,” Ben says, voice rougher than it’s been all night. “Wants to be filled up like a good little cum dump.” Your pussy clenches again, and both men groan at once. “Please,” you whimper, turning your face toward Billy, then back toward Ben as much as his grip allows. “Please, Daddy. Please, Dada. I want it.”

That breaks whatever restraint they’ve been pretending to have. Billy’s hands become bruising on your hips, lifting and dragging you down onto him in rough, grinding thrusts that make your whole body jolt. Ben matches him from behind, his hips snapping forward in short, punishing strokes, keeping you pinned between his chest and Billy’s body.

They aren’t soft now, not even a little. Their words get nastier, their rhythm harsher, their hands less patient as your body turns loose and trembling between them. Billy calls you a greedy slut for asking so sweetly after pretending you were shy. Ben calls you a perfect little cum dump against your ear, his voice shaking with how close he is.

Billy keeps slapping your tits, alternating between the sharp sting of his palm and the rough squeeze of his fingers around your nipples. Ben’s hand stays at your throat, firm and grounding, controlling just enough air to make every sensation blur into something dizzy and desperate.

Your eyes roll again, and Billy groans when he sees it. “Fuckin’ look at her,” he pants. “Gone stupid on our cocks.” Ben bites out a laugh, thrusting harder. “Good. That’s how she should be.”

Billy cums first, because the way you’re clenching around both of them is too much even for him. His whole body locks beneath you, shoulders tense, jaw clenched, hands dragging you down so hard you feel him buried as deep as he can get. “Fuck,” he groans, voice breaking around the word. “Take it, love.”

Then he spills inside you, hot and thick, his cock pulsing hard as cum fills you from beneath. You feel every twitch of him, every hot rush, and the sensation makes you sob because Ben is still moving behind you, grinding his cock alongside Billy’s while Billy empties into you.

“There you go,” Ben mutters, voice ragged at your ear. “Daddy’s fillin’ you up.” The words make you clench so hard Billy curses through his own orgasm.

Ben’s grip on your throat tightens for one last dizzying second before he lets it ease, his other hand pressing low on your stomach as if he can feel Billy’s cum inside you. “My turn,” Ben says, and his voice is no longer teasing. It’s wrecked.

Ben follows with a harsh groan, hips driving forward and holding there as deep as your body can take him. His hand leaves your throat to clamp around your waist, pulling you back against him while Billy holds you down from the front. “Fuck, sweetheart,” Ben grits out, his voice cracking into something raw. “Take mine too.”

Then he cums inside you, hot and heavy, pulsing into the same stretched, soaked space Billy has already filled. The feeling is overwhelming, too much heat, too much fullness, too much wetness as both of them stay buried and twitching inside you. You can feel their cum mixing deep in your pussy, slick and warm, making the stretch wetter and messier with every tiny aftershock.

Billy’s breathing is rough against your chest, his forehead briefly pressing to your collarbone like even he needs a second. Ben groans into the back of your shoulder, his body trembling once behind you.

You’re still shaking from your own orgasm, still clenching weakly around them both, and every pulse makes cum shift inside you. “Good girl,” Billy murmurs, voice hoarse and wrecked. “That’s it. Take all of it.” Ben kisses the side of your neck, messier and rougher than tender. “Looks like she loves it.”

For a moment, no one moves properly. You’re pinned between them, full of both of their cum, your body limp and trembling, your tits sore from Billy’s hands and your throat still tingling from Ben’s grip. Billy’s fingers stroke over your hip, almost absent, while Ben’s palm spreads across your lower stomach one more time.

“Hell of a thing,” Ben mutters, still breathing hard, and there’s a rough satisfaction in his voice when he feels how full you are. Billy looks down between your bodies, eyes dark and hungry even through the exhaustion. “Want to see it,” he says, and the words make your stomach twist again despite how ruined you already feel.

Ben pulls out first, slowly, and the loss makes you whimper. A wet sound follows, obscene and soft, and Ben curses when he sees the first slick spill of cum start to slip out around Billy’s cock. Billy grabs your hips and lifts you off him next, careful enough not to hurt you but still rough enough to make your thighs shake.

His cock slides free, and the combined cum immediately starts dripping back down onto him from your pussy, thick and white, mixed with your slick as it trails over his shaft and lower stomach. Billy stares at it like it’s a claim made visible. Ben lets out a low laugh behind you. “Jesus,” he says. “Look at that mess.”

Billy doesn’t let you hide from it. He keeps you lifted just enough, one arm strong around your waist, while his other hand dips between your thighs. His fingers scoop through the cum dripping from you, gathering the messy mix before it can slide too far.

Your face burns when he brings it up toward your mouth, but you open before he has to tell you. Billy’s eyes go dark at the obedience. “That’s my girl,” he says, pushing his fingers between your lips. The taste of cum hits your tongue, salty and warm and filthy, mixed with you, mixed with both of them, and you moan around his fingers because you love it.

Ben moves in too, his hand following Billy’s, fingers sliding through the mess still leaking from your swollen pussy. “Greedy even after all that,” he says, amused and breathless. He brings his fingers to your mouth next, and Billy pulls his free just enough to let Ben feed you too.

You suck Ben’s fingers clean without hesitation, eyes half-lidded, body still trembling between them. Ben’s grin turns wrecked and satisfied. “Damn,” he murmurs. “She really does love bein’ our cum dump.”

Billy’s hand comes back to your jaw, not harsh this time, but still possessive enough to make you look at him while Ben’s fingers slip from your mouth. “Swallow,” he says, voice low and ruined. You do, because there’s no part of you left pretending you don’t want every filthy piece of what they give you.

Billy watches your throat move, and something soft and dangerous flickers under all the degradation. Ben’s hand slides over your hip, squeezing once, while his mouth brushes your shoulder. “Good girl,” Ben says, and the praise sounds almost obscene after everything else.

Cum is still dripping from you, slow and sticky, sliding down your thighs and onto Billy where he sits beneath you. Billy notices, of course he does, and his thumb strokes over your swollen lower lip. “Look at you,” he murmurs. “Full of us, fed from us, and still lookin’ like you’d ask for more.”

Your laugh comes out broken and breathless, half a whimper. You lean into his hand because you can’t help it. “Maybe I would,” you whisper. Billy’s smile turns dark again, and Ben’s laugh rumbles against your back. “Course you would,” Billy says. “You’re ours now, love. No point lyin’ about it.”

You pout up at them before you can stop yourself, lips still swollen, eyes glassy, body trembling in that loose, ruined way that makes Billy’s gaze sharpen all over again. It isn’t even a practiced pout, not something you mean to do to get your way, just the natural little downturn of your mouth when Billy’s hand leaves your jaw and Ben’s warmth shifts away from your back.

You feel too empty already, too exposed, too full of them and somehow still needy enough to hate the distance. Billy notices instantly, because Billy notices every pathetic little thing you try to hide from him. His hand tightens around your waist, and for one stupid second you think he’s going to pull you back onto his lap.

Instead, he lifts you with a rough little grunt, making your thighs shake as cum slips hot and sticky between your legs. “Look at that face,” he mutters, voice hoarse and mean around the edges. “Still fuckin’ poutin’ after all that.”

You try to answer, but the sound that comes out is just a soft, embarrassed whine. Ben laughs under his breath, stepping closer like he can’t help wanting to see what Billy’s done to you from every possible angle.

Billy sets you down on the chair beside him, rough enough that you gasp when your bare skin meets the cool seat. The chair creaks beneath you, and your hands fly to the arms of it, fingers curling hard as your body tries to remember how to sit normally.

There’s nothing normal about it, not with your thighs slick, your pussy sore and swollen, cum still leaking out of you in slow, humiliating little drips. Billy doesn’t let you close your legs. His hand catches your knee immediately and shoves it back open with a dark look, like he’s offended you’d even try to hide now.

“No,” he says, simple and sharp. “Don’t get shy after beggin’ for us to fill you.” Your breath catches, and Ben makes a low sound from where he stands in front of you, still half-dressed, still looking unfairly smug and wrecked at the same time. “She’s tryin’ to look innocent again,” Ben says, voice rough with amusement. “Cute.”

You glare at him, or at least you try to. It comes out weak, ruined by the way your body keeps shaking and the way your lips are still parted like you’re waiting for someone to give you another command. Ben sees that too, because Ben has become dangerously good at reading all the little cracks in your pride.

His eyes drop between your spread thighs, and his grin fades into something darker when he sees the mess they’ve left behind. Billy’s cum and Ben’s cum keep slipping out of you, thick and white against your flushed, swollen pussy, trailing down toward the chair in slow, obscene streaks.

You feel it and shiver, half embarrassed and half turned on all over again. Billy sees the shiver and reaches over, fingers digging into the soft inside of your thigh. “Still twitchin’,” he says, like he’s talking to Ben more than you.

“Poor thing doesn’t know what to do with herself now.” Ben steps closer, one hand coming down to grip the back of the chair above your shoulder. “Sure she does,” he says. “She’s sittin’ there waitin’ to be told.”

The words make your stomach dip, and Billy’s fingers flex like he feels the reaction through your thigh. “That true, love?” he asks, leaning back on the couch like he isn’t still hardening again at the sight of you ruined beside him.

You swallow, throat tender from Ben’s grip and Billy’s commands, and your voice comes out smaller than you expect. “Maybe.” Billy’s mouth curves, slow and wicked, and Ben’s brows lift like your answer has delighted him. “Maybe,” Billy repeats, dragging the word out like it’s something filthy. “That’s not what you sounded like five minutes ago.”

Your face burns hot, but you don’t look away fast enough. Billy reaches over and catches your chin before you can try. His thumb presses into your lower lip, smearing what’s left of the wetness there. “You had plenty to say when you wanted our cum in you.”

Ben makes a low sound at that, like the reminder gets under his skin too. He crouches in front of you, not kneeling fully, just lowering enough that his face is closer to your open thighs. The position makes your breath go thin, especially when his hands settle on your knees and push them wider for himself.

“Christ,” he mutters, looking at the way cum keeps leaking from you. “She really did take it all.” Billy’s eyes are on you, not between your legs, watching your face twist with embarrassment. “She loved takin’ it,” he says. “Didn’t you?”

You bite your lip, and Billy’s hand comes down on your thigh, a sharp slap that makes you jolt. “Don’t bite that lip unless I tell you to.” Your eyes fly to his, and your voice shakes when you answer. “I loved it.” Ben’s grin comes back, slower this time, rougher around the edges. “Yeah,” he says. “I know you did.”

Ben’s gaze drops again, and this time he doesn’t just look. He reaches into the pocket of his jacket, pulling out his phone with a calmness that makes your whole body tense. Billy’s eyes flick to the phone first, then to your face, his expression sharpening with warning and interest all at once.

Ben notices that too, because he isn’t stupid, just infuriating. “Relax,” he says, though his voice stays dark and hungry. “I’m askin’.” Your breath catches as he tilts the phone in his hand, not lifting it fully yet, giving you the chance to say no. Billy’s hand stays on your thigh, warm and grounding despite how rough he’s been with you.

“You want that, love?” Billy asks, and his voice drops softer beneath the filth. “Want him keepin’ a picture of what we did to you?” The idea hits you so hard your pussy clenches, pushing more cum out in a slow, humiliating trickle. Ben sees it happen, and his jaw tightens. “Shit,” he mutters. “That’s an answer if I’ve ever seen one.”

You still force yourself to speak, because Billy’s eyes demand it and Ben’s phone stays lowered until you do. “Yes,” you whisper, cheeks burning so hot you feel dizzy. Ben’s grin turns dark, satisfied, and almost reverent in the worst possible way.

“Yeah?” he asks, thumb hovering over the screen as he shifts closer. “You want me takin’ pictures of this pretty ruined pussy?” Your thighs twitch, but Billy’s hand keeps them open. “Say it proper,” Billy murmurs, thumb stroking once along your inner thigh. Your voice shakes, but the want in it is embarrassingly clear.

“I want him to take them.” Ben exhales slowly, like the words have knocked something loose in him. “Good girl,” he says, and the praise sounds obscene coming from his mouth. “Knew you had a little exhibitionist streak in there.” Billy huffs a rough laugh beside you. “Little?”

The first picture makes you flinch even though you asked for it. Ben angles the phone down between your thighs, capturing the spread of your legs, the swollen shine of your pussy, the thick cum dripping out of you and smearing against the chair.

The soft click feels louder than it should, sharp enough to send a pulse straight through your clit. You cover your face on instinct, but Billy catches your wrists before your hands can hide you. “No,” he says, dragging your arms down and pinning them against the chair.

“You wanted it, so let him see your face too.” Ben’s eyes lift to yours over the phone, his grin crooked and filthy. “Yeah, sweetheart,” he says. “Don’t hide now.” He takes another picture, this one wider, catching your ruined expression, your bare chest, your open thighs, and Billy’s hand holding you in place.

Your stomach twists with shame and pleasure at once. “Fuck,” Ben says softly, looking at the screen. “That’s one hell of a souvenir.”

Billy leans over enough to look, his shoulder brushing yours while Ben turns the screen slightly toward him. The sight of them both looking at the picture while you’re sitting right there makes your whole body burn. Billy’s mouth curls like he’s proud and possessive and half tempted to ruin you all over again.

“Look at her,” he mutters, voice rough. “Looks like she’s been thoroughly used.” Ben’s thumb swipes once, checking the picture, and his eyes flick back to you with something hungry and pleased. “She looks like she needs to be looked at again,” he says.

You make a small sound, and Billy’s hand slides from your wrist to your throat, not squeezing yet, just resting there like a reminder. “You hear that, love?” Billy asks. “He’s already plannin’ what he’s doin’ with those.”

Ben lifts the phone again, angling for another shot of your pussy leaking over the chair. “Damn right I am,” he says, voice low. “I’m keepin’ these.”

Your breath catches harder than you expect. “Keeping them?” you whisper, even though you already know the answer. Ben’s gaze rises to yours, bold and shameless, but there is still that pause, that tiny space for you to take it back if you need to.

You don’t. You sit there with Billy holding your throat and Ben crouched between your thighs, and the thought of him leaving with proof of you like this makes you throb. Ben sees it in your face before you can say anything.

“I’m gonna stroke myself to them when I get home,” he says, rough and deliberate, watching your reaction like it’s the real prize. “Gonna look at that pretty little cum-filled pussy and remember exactly how you sounded beggin’ for us.”

A whimper slips out of you, helpless and immediate. Billy’s fingers tighten slightly at your throat, his smile darkening as he feels you melt under the words. “Fuckin’ knew it,” Billy murmurs. “You like that.”

Ben takes another picture while Billy says it, capturing your face mid-whimper, lips parted, eyes glassy, throat held in Billy’s hand. The humiliation of it makes your pulse thunder, but you don’t ask him to stop.

You can’t. You love the attention too much, love the idea of being kept like this, love knowing Ben will have to look at you later and remember what it felt like to ruin you with Billy.

“You’re sick,” you whisper, but there is no bite in it. Ben laughs, low and pleased, lowering the phone just enough to meet your eyes properly. “Maybe,” he says. “But you’re the one spreadin’ your legs wider every time I point this thing at you.”

Your gaze drops because he’s right, and Billy’s thumb strokes along your throat like he’s rewarding the honesty your body keeps giving away. “She can’t help herself,” Billy says. “Likes knowin’ she’ll be kept.” Ben’s smile turns slower. “Oh, she’s bein’ kept all right.”

Billy’s hand moves from your throat to your jaw, turning your face toward him while Ben takes another photo from the side. This one catches Billy’s fingers on your face, your ruined mouth, the bruised flush in your cheeks, and the cum still leaking between your open thighs.

Billy kisses you after the click, rough and possessive, his mouth swallowing the soft moan you give him. Ben makes a quiet sound behind the phone, and when Billy pulls away, you see the way Ben is staring at the screen like he’s already imagining later. “That one,” Ben says, voice rougher. “That one’s gettin’ used a lot.”

You shiver, and Billy laughs against your mouth. “Dirty little thing,” he says, not unkindly, but still mean enough to make your stomach twist. “You hear him talk about jerkin’ off to you and you damn near shake.”

Ben shifts closer, phone still in hand, and his free fingers slide along your inner thigh, smearing through the mess there. “Can’t blame me,” he says. “Look at her.”

You try to pout again, partly because you’re overwhelmed and partly because you know they both react to it. Billy sees it first and clicks his tongue, eyes narrowing. “There’s that face again.” Ben immediately lifts the phone, like he has been waiting for exactly that.

“Hold that,” he says, voice turning sharp with command. You freeze, lips parted in that soft little pout, thighs still spread by Billy’s hand. The picture captures it, the ruined softness of your expression paired with the filthy evidence between your legs.

Ben looks at the screen and lets out a rough laugh. “Jesus,” he mutters. “You’re gonna be a problem.” Your voice comes out breathy, almost shy despite everything. “For who?” Ben’s eyes lift slowly from the phone to your face.

“For my right hand,” he says, and Billy laughs so hard under his breath that you feel it through his hand on your thigh. “Romantic bastard, ain’t he?” Billy says.

Ben stands again, still looking down at you like he’s not finished deciding what he wants to remember. He takes one more picture from above, getting the whole wrecked shape of you in the chair, legs open, chest bare, throat marked faintly from their hands, mouth swollen from them both.

Billy keeps you in place through it, one hand on your thigh, the other at your chin, forcing you to look up instead of away. The click lands, and you feel it everywhere. Ben studies the screen for a long second, his expression almost stripped of humor now. “Yeah,” he says softly, more to himself than either of you. “I’m definitely keepin’ that one.”

Billy looks up at him, possessive amusement cutting through his exhaustion. “Don’t wear it out.” Ben grins, finally sliding the phone away. “No promises.”

Your thighs tremble, and another slow drip of cum slips out of you. Both men look down at the same time, and Ben’s grin turns wicked again. “Might need one more.” Billy squeezes your thigh, holding you open as he murmurs, “Smile for him, love.”

© CUMKISSED ♡ | EST. JUNE 2026 ˎˊ˗ all original content found here belongs to me. canon material belongs to its respective owners. don't repost it, don't feed it to ai, don't translate it, don't archive it elsewhere, and definitely don't pretend you wrote it. ♡

The file hit his lap. Ben looked down with the kind of flat, exhausted annoyance he had been wearing since he woke up in that obscene room high over the city. Homelander’s room. Homelander stood across from him bright-eyed. “Think about it again”, he had said. Then the file.

Ben almost told him to go fuck himself twice. His fingers were already closing around the folder to throw it. Then he saw the label. A name. Not yours when you were his wife. Not Mrs. anything. Not the name on the marriage license, or the bills, or the little card at the dry cleaner back when there had still been ordinary days. Your name. The one from before him.

Ben went still. The suite got very quiet.

Ben looked down at the folder again. SUBJECT STATUS: CRYOGENIC CONTAINMENT STABLE For one second his brain refused to understand the words in the right order. Then it did.

His thumb slipped under the edge and opened the file. The first page was a photograph. Black-and-white. Studio-lit. Clinical in a way that made his stomach turn. You were in your twenties in it. He knew that before the file told him, because he knew your face. Not the lined, careful face you might have worn if life had kept happening to you. Not the older version time should have made. This was you as you had been when he left you. Soft mouth, watchful eyes, hair set neatly back from your face, trying so hard in the picture to look composed that it hurt to see.

Twenty-seven. Frozen there. Eighty-five years gone and not a day on your face.

Ben stopped breathing. Below the photograph, line after line of text blurred and sharpened and blurred again.

Initial retrieval. Unauthorized domestic association with asset. Emotional leverage viability high. Compound V survivability unexpectedly successful. Long-term storage authorized. Pressure contingency. Pressure contingency. Pressure contingency.

His hand tightened on the page hard enough to crease it.

Across the room, Homelander lifted his glass and watched him with open interest. “She´s alive”.

Ben did not look up. The suite had narrowed to the file in his hands and the sound of blood rushing hot and violent in his ears.

There were more pages. Medical charts. Temperature logs. Monitoring summaries. A diagram of some buried facility with sectors blacked out in thick ink. One page clipped in later than the rest with a new date stamped at the top and a note: Subject remains non-public. Retention advised. Utility value may increase if Soldier Boy becomes noncompliant.

Ben stared at that line until the letters stopped being letters and became something else. Something with teeth.

He had thought leaving you had been the worst thing he ever did to you. Not because he had not done worse things to other people. He had. Plenty. Enough to wake sweating with names he never let himself say out loud. But leaving you, walking out of that little kitchen for good, letting Vought sand down whatever was left of Ben until Soldier Boy fit cleanly over the top, had always sat in him like rust. Hidden. Eating through from the inside.

And all that time… All that goddamn time… They had had you. Kept. Stored.

“I figured that might get your attention”.

Ben lifted his head then. Slowly. He had looked dangerous before. Hungover, heavy-eyed, broad across the shoulders even in borrowed clothes. Now he looked like something much older and uglier than danger.

Homelander’s expression flickered, just a little, delighted and cautious at once. “She was always there”, he said lightly, as if discussing an old account finally brought current. “Cute trick, really. Vought keeps all sorts of contingencies. You of all people should appreciate preparedness”.

Ben rose from the couch.

“So”, Homelander said. “Now that you understand the leverage, are you ready to be useful?”.

“You knew”.

Homelander tilted his head. “I know lots of things”.

“You knew”, Ben said again.

The file hung at his side, crushed under his fingers now, your photograph bent where his grip had warped the paper.

Homelander gave a small shrug. “I knew enough”.

That was all it took. Ben crossed the room. He caught Homelander by the throat and hit him through the edge of the bar. Marble split. Bottles exploded and glass sprayed the room.

Homelander laughed. Even half-crushed under Soldier Boy’s hand, he laughed. “Ah”, he choked out, eyes bright and mad, “there he is”.

Ben hit him again. This time the sound was wetter. Angrier. A lamp went over. A slab of black stone cracked down the middle.

Homelander’s smile came back bloodied. “She’s alive”, he rasped. “That’s the important part”.

Ben’s fingers tightened at his throat. For one terrible second, he really might have killed him. Then Homelander, even pinned and bruised and half-grinning through blood, said the one thing that cut clean through the red: “You kill me, you lose her”.

Ben froze. Homelander smiled wider despite the hand at his neck.

Ben looked at him and saw, all at once, every Vought man he had ever hated. The executives with polished shoes. The handlers. The doctors. The ones who turned human beings into concepts and concepts into assets and assets into pressure. Homelander was just the latest model, shinier, but made from the same rotten blueprint.

Very slowly, Ben let him go.

Homelander staggered back, still smiling because he could not help himself. Because getting under skin was the only intimacy he understood.

Ben wiped his bleeding palm on his shirt and looked down at the file again. Your picture stared back up at him. Twenty-seven. A whole life stolen and held in a drawer.

His chest went tight in a way no fight had ever managed. Not even Russia. Not the furnace. Not the years in a tube under a foreign sky while his own name turned into a mascot and then a joke and then a warning. You.

He thought of the side yard between your houses. Your mittened fingers tucked into his elbow. Your voice, soft and bossy at sixteen: Hold still. The little kitchen table where you had cleaned blood off his face while his father’s voice still rang in his ears, calling him a fucking disappointment. The way you had looked at him when nobody else looked at him like there was anything worth saving.

He had left you. That was his sin.

But this… This was something else.

They had taken what he left behind and turned it into inventory.

Homelander straightened. “Get Butcher for me”, he said, as if the room were not half-destroyed around them. “And I show you where she its”.

-

The air bit cold enough to sting the back of your throat just breathing it. Frost filmed the pipes overhead. Ben stood in the middle of the bunker, bloody from wrist to collar. Some of it was his. Most of it wasn’t. Bodies lay where they had fallen. One by the far control panel, neck bent wrong over a spill of shattered glass. Two by the blast door, rifles kicked out of reach. One half-slumped against the wall. Another near the alarm box, hand frozen inches from the switch he never got to hit in time. Ben had not made much noise doing it. That was what frightened him now, standing there with the little remote in his hand and your tank in front of him. Not the killing itself. He had done too much of that for it to feel new. Not even the speed of it. It was how easy it had been. How clean. How Soldier Boy it had felt.

The remote was small in his palm. One red button under a flip-cover guard. Ridiculous, really, that after eighty-five years, after Russia and fire and Butcher and Homelander and all the rot in between, the distance between him and you had come down to one ugly little button.

He stared at it. Did not move. In front of him, behind a curved wall of glass gone pearly with cold, you stood upright in the tank. Frozen. Perfectly still. Twenty-seven. That was the first thing that had wrecked him when Homelander shoved the file at him in the tower. Not the reports. Not the coordinates. Not even the word cryogenic typed in neat black letters above your name. Your age. Twenty-seven.

He had been old enough to rot and be reborn and rot again. The world had gone through wars and presidents and hairstyles and goddamn moons and computers in people’s pockets.

He had been buried under Russian steel while his own legend got sold by men who had never once had to dirty their own hands. And you were still twenty-seven. Still wearing the same face he remembered from the last years before he left. Softer in rest than in life, maybe, because whatever fear or sorrow Vought had dragged through you hadn’t made it through the ice.

Your hair was pinned back from your face by frost and suspension gel and machinery he did not understand. Your lashes lay dark against your skin. Your mouth looked pale and closed and familiar enough to stop his heart. You looked exactly like all those years ago.

And the second he saw you, all the time between then and now collapsed so violently it left him dizzy. The little house. The kitchen table. Rain on the windows. Your pink satin nightgown. Your face wet with tears while he stood in the doorway and let Soldier Boy win.

He had imagined finding you a hundred different ways on the drive out here. Older. Dead. Bones in a box. A grave with some false name. He had not imagined this.

You looked like you could open your eyes any second and ask why he was home so late.

Ben’s fingers tightened around the remote until the casing creaked. He was afraid. Afraid of pressing a button. B ecause once he did, it became real. Once he did, there would be no more distance between the idea of you and your body in front of him.

You might wake and not know him. You might wake and know him too well. You might look at him and see only the man who left. Worse—you might not wake right. Vought had held you for eighty-five years like inventory. Shot you full of V and put you under glass. Used your name as leverage in files. He had no reason to trust anything about what came next.

“Jesus Christ”. He stepped closer to the tank. Up close, he could see where frost feathered over the seams of the metal braces holding the glass in place. Tubes snaked from the back of the chamber into your arms, your spine, the base of your skull. Machines had been kissing you longer than he had. The thought made something black roll over in him.

He lifted his free hand and pressed his palm to the glass. The cold bit instantly through blood and skin. Behind the fogged surface, your face stayed calm. Untouched by any of it. Soft in that old familiar way that used to wreck him even when he was a boy with split knuckles and too much pride. You had always looked gentler than the world deserved.

He bowed his head once, just enough that his forehead nearly hit the glass. Blood from his hand smeared across the frost in a rust-dark streak. For a second, all he could see was another kind of red. Lipstick on a collar. Then your tears. Your wedding band glinting while you tried not to cry in front of him. All the little moments he had buried under war and whiskey and Vought work and rage because digging them up would mean admitting what he had done with his own hands.

His thumb found the edge of the safety cover on the remote and flipped it open. Ben’s heartbeat kicked hard. Then something inside him, something older than Soldier Boy and uglier than pride and maybe closer to Ben than he had been in years, made the decision for him. He pressed the button.

For one horrible second, nothing happened. Then the chamber gave a low hydraulic thud. Lights changed from green to amber. Somewhere under the floor, machinery woke in layers—pumps, vents, hissing valves releasing pressure in precise bursts.

Frost shivered loose from the tank seams and fell in powdery sheets. The hum deepened into a mechanical roar.

Ben took one step back, then stopped himself and stood his ground.

Amber turned to white. Warm fluid began draining in spirals around your body, slipping down the inside of the glass in pale pink streaks where blood had mixed into the solution somewhere in the tubing.

Numbers on the monitor started changing faster now. You did not move. Ben’s throat tightened until breathing hurt. “Come on”, he muttered.

The glass clouded, then cleared in patches. Your skin changed color by degrees, from the waxy stillness of preserved flesh to something nearer living. Frost melted from your lashes. One lock of hair slipped loose against your temple. The line of your mouth softened as the cold released it. Still nothing.

Ben stepped closer again without realizing he had. The chamber hissed. A latch somewhere deep in the mechanism disengaged with a heavy clunk. Then your fingers twitched. So small he might have imagined it in another life. Not now. Ben stopped breathing altogether.

A second later your hand jerked again, this time harder, tendons pulling under your skin. Your chest gave a shallow, ragged hitch as if your body had forgotten the shape of breath and was trying to relearn it by force.

The front seal cracked with a metallic snap. Ben was moving before the door had fully opened. It swung out in a gust of freezing vapor, and you pitched forward with the dead weight of someone waking into gravity after a century. Tubes tore free. Glassy fluid spilled over the lip of the tank onto the floor. Your knees buckled instantly. Ben caught you.

Your body convulsed against him. Then you coughed. Ben looked down and saw the tube shifting at the back of your throat. “Shit”. He dropped to one knee in the spill of coolant and freezing fluid, one arm locked behind your shoulders to keep you upright. The other hand hovered for a second over the tubing, his fingers slick with blood and condensation.

You gagged again, harder this time. “Easy”, he said, though his own voice was shot through with something dangerously close to panic. “Easy, sweetheart, I got it”. He had no idea if he did.

He slid two fingers carefully to the base of the tube, trying to ignore how unnatural it looked disappearing past your lips, trying to ignore the old terror that came whenever your body was involved and his hands had to do something delicate.

His touch, for once, was painstakingly light. Your throat worked around the plastic. Another cough tore through you. Ben pulled. The moment it cleared your mouth you folded forward with a choking gasp. Your forehead knocked weakly against his collarbone. Cold fluid soaked through the front of his shirt where you leaned against him. You kept coughing. Your whole body shook with it.

“Breathe”, he said, low and rough. “Come on. There you go”.

There were wires everywhere. Thin sensor leads plastered to your skin. Adhesive pads at your icollarbone, your ribs, your temples. A cluster of ports and lines trailed from your back and arms and disappeared into the ruined chamber behind you. The monitor to the side was beeping too fast now, numbers climbing. Ben glanced at it once. He didn’t know what most of it meant. But he knew the sound of a heart trying to decide whether it belonged in a living body again. Fast. Wrong. Then skipping. Then racing.

His jaw tightened. “C’mon”, he muttered, more fiercely now. “Don’t do this”.

He reached for the first wire at your chest and peeled it back with maddening care. Then another. Then another. The adhesive came loose with soft wet sounds against your skin. His fingers shook once when one of the leads snagged in your hair and you flinched faintly even half-conscious. “Sorry”, he said instantly. The word left his mouth before he could stop it. He stared at your face after saying it, as if even now some part of him expected you to open your eyes just to tell him it was too late for apologies. But your eyes stayed shut. Your mouth was parted, drawing in broken little breaths that. Every now and then another cough shuddered through you, weaker than the one before.

Ben stripped the last wire from your throat and shoulder, then found more at your wrists. At the inside of your elbows. At the base of your neck. Whoever had put you in there had instrumented every inch of you like they were trying to measure a miracle and own it.

He tore the leads free one by one. The monitor screamed once before the rhythm smoothed. Still too quick and shallow. But steadier. Ben went still long enough to listen. And there was your heartbeat. Fast. Frightened… Human.

He frowned and looked toward the monitor again. That made no sense. They had pumped you full of V. He knew that from the file, from the notes. He had come down here half-prepared to find something else in the tank. Some glowing-eyed Vought experiment wearing your face. Some twisted answer to a question nobody should have asked.

But your heart didn’t sound like his. Didn’t sound like Homelander’s, his own or any of the monsters and mascots he had spent too much of his life around. It sounded breakable. Human.

Your breathing hitched again and your eyelids fluttered.

Ben’s pulse hammered. He had faced gunfire with less dread. He could fight. Kill. Blow through steel doors. March into a bunker alone and paint the walls with guards and not blink. But waiting for your eyes to open… that nearly undid him.

Because now there was nothing between you. Now it was just you waking up. And him. The man who left. The husband who broke your heart before strangers finished the job. The one who had not come back in time. Not in 1970. Not in 1980. Not in any of the years after that.

The one who had let himself become Soldier Boy so completely that the company had thought the only way to control him was to freeze the last soft part of his old life and keep it in storage.

Ben sat back on his heels in the freezing slush and watched your face with the kind of terrible focus that made everything else disappear. A dozen possibilities chased each other through his head, none of them good. You might wake confused. You might wake screaming. You might wake and remember only the worst of him. You might wake and hate him on sight. You had every right.

That last thought lodged in him hardest.

Did you still hate him? Worse—had the hatred had eighty-five years to sharpen somewhere inside whatever dreaming half-life Vought had trapped you in? Or had the ice kept you right at the moment of your ruin, your grief as fresh as blood under skin?

Ben rubbed a hand once over his mouth and came away with red still drying there from someone else. He looked down at it with sudden disgust and wiped it on the concrete.

Your heartbeat jumped again. His attention snapped back to you instantly. “Hey”, he said. “Stay with me”.

Your fingers closed weakly around two of his without any strength in them at all. The contact hit him so hard it almost made him bow forward.

There you were. Cold. Half-conscious. Newly dragged from eighty-five years of dark. And still, by some reflex too old for either of you to kill, your hand had reached.

Ben swallowed hard enough it hurt. “I know”, he said softly, though you had not spoken. “I know”.

He didn’t know what he meant by it. That he knew you were frightened? That he knew he shouldn’t be the one you woke up to? That he knew exactly what kind of man he had been the last time you saw him properly and how impossible it was to ask for anything gentler from this moment? Maybe all of it.

Your breathing steadied a little more. Still shaky. Still too quick. But less torn-up on the way in. Less like drowning.

The lights buzzed overhead. Down the corridor, a distant alarm warbled and cut out, maybe killed by the same broken circuits that had left this section half running on backup. Cold fog curled low around the empty chamber. Corpses stared at the ceiling in silence. And in the middle of all of it, Soldier Boy knelt on a concrete floor holding your hand like it was the only thing in the world he couldn’t afford to break.

Your lashes trembled again. This time your eyes opened halfway. Blurred. Unfocused. They moved over the room in fragments—white light, concrete, the silver of the blankets around you, the dark shape of him kneeling in front of you. Your brow drew faintly, confusion coming first. Then discomfort. Then the weak animal fear of waking somewhere wrong.

Ben saw the exact second your gaze snagged on his face and tried to make sense of it.

He was older. The face was still Ben’s. The damage wasn’t.

Recognition came slowly and painfully in pieces. Your lips parted. No sound at first.

Ben’s chest went tight. “Don’t push it”, he said, instinctively rough, then caught himself and lowered his voice. “You don’t gotta—”.

Your mouth worked again. This time a thread of breath shaped itself into a word so faint he almost thought he imagined it. “Ben…?”. There was no hate in your voice. Not yet. Not understanding either. Just stunned, impossible recognition.

His eyes closed for one beat. When he opened them again, something naked had slipped through the cracks in his face before he could stop it. “Yeah”, he said. “It’s me”.

Your gaze held on him, still struggling to focus, still dragged under by cold and waking and the sheer wrongness of the room. He could see your mind trying to fit him somewhere it understood and failing. The last Ben you knew should have been twenty-something and standing in a little house with his shadow too long on the wall. Not this.

Your fingers tightened weakly around his. Then your gaze dropped to the blood on him. To the bodies beyond. Back to the tank. Confusion turned to fear in a quick, bright flare. Ben felt it like a knife. “No”, he said at once, too fast. “No, easy. You’re okay”.

That was a lie, and both of them knew it. But he could not bear the look in your eyes when it landed on the room.

He shifted closer, slowly enough to give you time to recoil if you wanted to. You tensed anyway. Only a little. Only instinct. Still enough. Ben stopped right there. His throat worked once. “I know”. The words were almost to himself. He loosened his hand under yours, giving you the room to let go if that was what you wanted. His other hand stayed braced on the concrete beside your hip.

“You were in there”, he said quietly, glancing toward the tank. “They had you under. Long time”. His mouth tightened. “I got you out”.

Your eyes flicked to the tank again, then back to him. Your voice, when it came, was no more than a scrape. “How…?”.

Ben let out a breath through his nose. How did one answer that? How did one bridge war and Vought and Homelander and files and eighty-five years buried under concrete and ice? He chose the only part that mattered first. “I found you”.

Your lashes fluttered. Confusion still clouded everything. “You left”, you whispered. The words were so weak they should not have had any force at all. They hit him like a bullet. Ben went motionless. Of course. Of course that was the first clear thing. Not the bunker. Not the blood. Not the impossible machinery. Him leaving. The door. The kitchen table. The keys.

Your mind had come back through ice and nightmare and whatever half-life Vought had forced on you, and the first solid fact it reached for was the one that hurt most.

He looked at you and did not even try to defend himself. “Yeah”, he said.

Your face changed, not into anger exactly, because you were too weak yet for anything so hot. More like the old wound had opened before the rest of you had even finished waking.

Ben felt panic rise in him then. Helplessness. The kind he had always hated most.

Just then, your world tipped sideways.

One second you were looking at him and the next, everything in you simply gave out. Your fingers slipped from his. Your eyes rolled shut.

Ben caught you before your head hit the concrete. “Hey”. The word cracked out of him, sharp with fear.

He felt for your pulse before he even realized he was doing it, two fingers at the side of your throat, then lower when his hand shook too much to trust the first reading. Your heartbeat was still there. Fast, too thin, but there. Your breathing came shallow and uneven against the front of his shirt. You were alive. Just unconscious.

Ben closed his eyes for half a second and let the relief hit him hard enough to make his teeth grit. Then he wrapped the blankets tighter around you, slid one arm behind your back and the other beneath your knees, and lifted you with a care that would have looked unnatural on anybody who knew what his hands could do.

Your head fell against his chest. Damp hair brushed his throat.

He got out of the bunker before the next wave came. More alarms. More men. Maybe Vought cleanup. Maybe Homelander changing his mind.

He didn’t stay to find out.

The car crooked in the gravel behind the bunker entrance, engine still idling.

He laid you in the back seat of the car he’d taken from the last guard first, then stopped, swore under his breath, and moved you again.

“No”, he mumbled. Not back there. Not where he couldn’t hear every breath right beside him. So he settled you in the front instead, reclined the seat as far as it would go, belted you in with maddening care, then pulled both emergency blankets up to your chin before slamming the door and getting behind the wheel.

He took back roads first, then frontage roads, then some dark stretch of highway lined with shut gas stations and chain restaurants glowing in the distance. He didn’t know where he was going until he saw a motel sign.

The place sat off a quiet road outside town, the sort of motel people used when they didn’t want questions or company.

Ben carried you in through the side entrance of room twelve with the key still warm from the clerk’s hand.

Inside, the room was dim and ugly and blessedly quiet.

He set you down on the bed and for a second he just stood over you.

Your face was pale against the motel pillow. Your lips still had that bluish cast around the edges that scared the hell out of him. Coolant and thawed frost and fluid had soaked through everything. Blood, other people’s, maybe some yours, marked the silver blanket and his ruined jacket wrapped around your shoulders.

You looked small. Not fragile exactly. You had always hated that word. But small in a way the world had no business making you.

Ben turned on the bathroom light. Found washcloths, thin towels, a sealed little bar of soap. Ran the sink until water came hot enough to steam. He went back out with a wet towel and sat on the edge of the bed.

Then he hesitated.

Not because he hadn’t seen your body. Christ, he had. A thousand times, in better years and worse. In satin and cotton and nothing at all. In the narrow bed of your first house with summer heat making the sheets stick, in dark mornings before he left for work, in the rare soft pauses where he had once believed wanting and keeping were the same thing.

That was exactly why it hit him so hard now. Because all those memories came from a life before he broke the right to any of this.

Still, you were half-frozen and unconscious and shaking every now and then in little leftover aftershocks. He could not leave you soaked in chemicals and blood. So he did what needed doing. Carefully.

He cleaned you with warm water and the washcloth, rinsing fluid and blood from your arms, your shoulders, your legs, your throat. Wiped the residue of adhesive from your skin where the sensors had been. Smoothed damp hair away from your face with fingers that dwarfed your temple and yet somehow barely touched.

Every now and then he stopped just to listen. Heartbeat. Breathing. Human. Still there.

When you shivered hard enough to make your teeth knock together in your sleep, he stripped off the ruined top half of his suit without a second thought. Underneath, he had the long-sleeve undershirt Vought had built under the costume warm from his own skin. He pulled it over his head and for a second stood there in only his suit pants.

Then he dressed you in it.

That took longer than it should have. One limp arm at a time. Your head supported in the crook of his elbow while he eased the shirt down over you. The fabric swallowed you whole, hem falling to your thighs, sleeves past your wrists. His shirt on your body looked indecently intimate in a way that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with history. He hated how much that undid him.

By the time he got you under the blankets, you were warmer than before. Not warm enough. But no longer ice. Ben sat beside you and stayed there.

-

At 2:07, you woke with a gasp that hurt all the way down. The room lurched into view in broken pieces. A yellow lamp with a stained shade. Floral curtains pulled almost shut. A ceiling painted the color of old nicotine. The stale smell of motel soap, dust and somebody else’s cigarettes soaked into the carpet long before you ever got here.

Your body felt wrong in every possible direction and for one wild second, you did not know where you were.

Then you tried to move and everything came back badly. The tank. The bunker. The blood.

Ben.

You pushed yourself up on instinct. Pain and dizziness hit at once. Your head swam. Your stomach turned over hard enough to make you press one hand against it. The blankets slid down your lap. Something warm and steady moved in the chair beside the bed.

“Don’t do that”. His voice came low and immediate. Awake already. Waiting.

You turned your head.

Ben sat in the chair by the bed with his elbows on his knees. He had no shirt on. Only those green superhero suit pants still clung to him. He looked tired enough to split. His hair was damp, pushed back from his face by impatient fingers. There was gray at his temples now, not the gray of age so much as damage that had decided to show itself there first. Faint scars cut across his chest and shoulder, old and pale. His eyes stayed fixed on you with the kind of concentration men used on bombs.

You realized then that what you were wearing was not yours. A dark long-sleeve shirt swallowed your body whole. It smelled like soap and something underneath it that was unmistakably him. Not cologne. Not city. Not the chemical glitter that had clung to him in the last years before he left…. Just Ben.

Your throat went tight.

He saw your gaze drop to the shirt. “You were freezing”, he said. The explanation came out rough, almost defensive, like he was bracing for accusation. “You had all that fluid shit on you”.

You tried to speak too quickly. Your voice came out scraped raw. “What—”. You stopped to swallow.

Ben was already reaching for the bottle on the nightstand. You took a sip and looked around the room again, slower this time. Cheap dresser. One door with a heavy chain lock. A purse-sized Gideon Bible on the nightstand. “This…”. Your voice failed. You tried again. “Where are we?”.

“Motel”, he said. His eyes did not leave your face. “Outside the city”. That answered almost nothing.

You licked dry lips and looked at him more carefully. Really looked. The last time you had seen him properly, he had still been young in a way that made sense. Dangerous maybe, yes. Mean, yes. Already turning into something… cruel. But still recognizably anchored to the world you knew.

This Ben was not that.

The face was the same underneath. The mouth. The brow. The shape of his jaw when he clenched it. But time—however it had touched him—had done it from the inside out. He looked like a man who had been lived through by too much. A man who had survived things badly.

Your eyes dropped to the green pants again. To the ridiculous costume piece in a room that might have existed nowhere in the world you remembered. Cold crept into you from somewhere deeper than your skin. “What year is it?”.

Ben went still. You saw the way his shoulders locked and the way his eyes changed. As if this had been the question he had been dreading most. When he answered, he did not soften it. “2026”.

You stared at him. The number meant nothing for a beat. Then too much. Your hand loosened around the bottle. “No”, you said.

Ben’s jaw tightened. “Yeah”.

“No”. You shook your head once, then regretted it instantly when the room tipped again. The clock on the nightstand glowed red. 2:08. That horrible little digital brightness alone looked wrong enough to make your chest pull tight. “That’s not…”. You swallowed. “That’s not funny”.

His face changed at that. Something like pain crossed it fast and was gone. “I’m not joking”.

You looked at the lamp. The clock. The cut of the curtains. The shape of the phone on the nightstand, plastic and smooth and alien compared to what memory expected. The air itself felt different. Colder in some mechanical way, flatter, less alive than the rooms you remembered.

You pressed your hand harder to your stomach. Eighty-five years. The number opened under your feet like a trapdoor.

Your mind reached for smaller things instead. Safer things. The last details it could still trust.

Rain on the kitchen windows. The tick of the clock above the stove. His keys on the table. The newspaper on the floor.

Your breath started coming too fast.

Ben heard it immediately. He pushed out of the chair before you could register the motion, then stopped himself halfway to the bed, hands open at his sides, as if remembering all at once that moving fast toward you was no longer neutral. “Hey”, he said, lower now. “Breathe”.

You looked at him and wanted to ask ten things at once.

Where had he been. What had they done to you. Why were you still twenty-seven. Why did he look the same and not the same. Who had dressed you. Why did the room smell like bleach and old heat.

Why, why, why.

Instead what came out was, “I was dead”.

“No”. The answer was immediate. Too sharp. Almost angry.

Ben dragged a hand over his mouth and forced his voice back down. “No. They had you under. Frozen”. His mouth twisted around the word, hating it. “Long time”.

Your eyes burned. “Who?”.

“Vought”. The name sat between you like acid.

You looked away. Of course. Of course it was them. Who else took people and turned them into property with a clean desk and a typed memo?

Your fingers curled into the blanket. “Why?”.

He laughed once through his nose. No humor in it. “For me”.

You turned back to him. He did not look away. “They kept you as leverage”, he said. “Pressure. In case I ever stepped out of line”.

You looked down at your own hands. Pale against dark fabric. A stranger’s motel light on skin that had not aged. The shirt sleeve hanging over your knuckles, his shirt, because there had been no time or right or choice left in anything. “For you”, you repeated.

Ben’s throat worked once. “Yeah”.

A hundred feelings moved through you at once, too tangled to separate—shock, fear, grief, humiliation so old it woke up instantly, and somewhere under all of it a raw little thread of anger that had somehow survived even the ice.

You laughed once, softly and without any joy in it. “That sounds about right”.

He flinched.

You had not meant to make him do that. Or maybe you had. You didn’t know. Your whole body felt like it belonged to someone else.

Silence settled.

Ben stayed standing where he was, not near enough to crowd you, not far enough to pretend he wasn’t waiting for every breath.

You looked at the motel door with the chain lock, then the window, then back at him. The movement was instinctive. Measuring exits. Safety. The habit felt new and old at the same time.

Ben noticed. “This place is clean”, he said. “I checked”.

You almost smiled at the phrasing. Almost. It died before it got there.

“Did you kill them?”.

Ben went very still. You already knew the answer. You had seen the blood on him in the bunker. The bodies. The way he carried violence now like a second skin. Still, some part of you needed to hear whether he would lie.

He didn’t. “Yes”.

You closed your eyes. When you opened them, he was still watching you with that unbearable focus. “They were keeping you in a tank”, he said, voice roughening. “I wasn’t gonna ask nicely”.

No. He wouldn’t have. That answer should have frightened you more than it did. Maybe because there was no room left for new kinds of fear yet. Only the old one, sitting between your ribs with his name on it.

You shifted under the blankets and the motion pulled a small, involuntary wince out of you. Ben caught it instantly. “What hurts?”.

You blinked at him. The question came so fast it sounded as though he had been waiting to ask it for hours. “Nothing”, you said automatically.

His expression said he didn’t believe you for a second. “Everything?”, he tried instead, and there was something almost grimly dry in the adjustment, something old-Ben enough to catch you off guard.

A tired, disbelieving breath escaped you. “Pretty much”.

That did something to his face. Softened wasn’t the word. Wounded maybe. Or maybe just made him look like a man listening to damage he could neither fix nor fight. He sat back down in the chair slowly. He leaned forward, forearms on his thighs, giving you less height to have to look up at. That seemed deliberate too. You watched him for a while.

“You were waiting for me to wake up”.

Ben looked at the floor for a second before answering. “Yeah”.

“How long?”.

He flicked a glance at the clock. “Couple hours”.

The absurdity of that hit you strangely. The world had moved nearly a century. Vought had stolen your life. You had woken in a motel wearing your estranged husband’s undershirt while he sat shirtless in superhero pants beside the bed like a sentry. And still some small, intimate truth survived in the middle of all that ruin: he had waited. You didn’t know what to do with that. Neither did he, by the look of him.

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, lower than before, “You can go back to sleep”.

You almost laughed. “Ben”, you whispered. “I woke up in 2026”.

His mouth flattened. “Yeah”.

“I don’t think I’m sleeping”.

No answer at first. Then, almost under his breath, “Fair enough”.

Around three, Ben started talking, because the silence had become its own kind of cruelty. He gave you the shortest version he knew how to give, which still wasn’t short, because his life after you had been one long chain of violence, bad choices, and men using one another like weapons.

He told you about Countess first. Not gently. Ben had never known how to make ugly truths pretty. He sat there half-turned in that ugly motel chair, forearms on his knees, looking at the carpet instead of you when he said, “Yeah. I loved her. In my way”.

The words hit low and hard. You kept your face still, but your fingers curled tighter in the blanket. He must have heard the change in your breathing, because his jaw tightened. For a second you thought he might take it back, soften it, say something to save you from the shape of it. He didn’t.

“She wasn’t you”, he said after a beat, rougher now. “Never was”.

That should not have helped. It did and didn’t, both at once.

Then came the rest. His team. The betrayal. Countess turning on him with the others. The Russians taking him. Decades in a lab, drugged and buried and cut open and studied. He told it flatly, like if he stripped the feeling out of it first, maybe neither of you would have to touch it.

You listened with your arms around yourself. Every now and then you asked a question, and every answer only seemed to make the world wider and colder.

Then Butcher. His guys. Homelander. Vought changing shape over the years without changing its soul. Companies swallowing countries. Supes becoming celebrities and products and idols and nightmares all at once. The world getting louder, faster, filthier, greedier. Men in suits still running everything, just with better technology and whiter teeth.

You sat there trying to imagine all of it and couldn’t.

Television everywhere. Phones without cords. Cars that barely made noise. People living half their lives inside screens.

And then, for some ungodly reason, Ben spent far too long explaining porn.

At first you thought you had misheard him.

Then you realized, with growing horror, that no, he was seriously trying to explain the scale of modern depravity through the existence of instant filth on demand, as if that were somehow one of the key pillars of civilization you needed updated on.

“Ben”, you said at last, appalled, while he sat there shirtless in his green suit pants talking in the calmest voice imaginable about how “there’s whole websites for every weird thing a person can think of”.

“What?”, he said, actually looking offended. “It’s relevant”.

“It is not relevant”.

“It tells you a lot about the culture”.

“It tells me people need church”.

That shut him up for half a second. Then one corner of his mouth twitched.

You saw it and hated that part of you still recognized that almost-smile. “This is funny to you?”, you asked.

“A little”.

“Benjamin”.

That made the smile vanish properly, because you only used his full name when you were genuinely scandalized, and apparently even after eighty-five years that still worked on him.

You straightened under the blankets as much as your weak body would allow and gave him, in your raw half-frozen voice in a cheap motel room in 2026, a tired, sincere lesson about morality, modesty, Christian decency and the collapse of civilization.

Ben sat there and took it. Mostly because he looked too tired to fight. Partly, maybe, because hearing you sound like yourself again, even lecturing him, did something to his face he could not hide fast enough.

When you were done, he rubbed a hand over his mouth and muttered, “You wake up after eighty-five years and your first real opinion is that everybody needs Jesus”.

“Yes”, you said. “Obviously”.

That got a breath of laughter out of him. Quiet. Brief. Gone almost immediately.

From here, Ben should have let it go there.

He should have taken the small, strange mercy of that moment. Your outrage, his almost-laugh, the fact that for half a second the room had felt less like a grave dug up and more like two people who once knew how to talk.

But Ben was still Ben. Which meant the second the air got almost manageable, he ruined it.

He leaned back in the chair, scrubbed a hand over his jaw, and said, with the kind of false casualness that was never a good sign, “You should probably hear about Herogasm from me too”.

You blinked. “What”.

His eyes flicked to you, then away. “It’s… a thing”.

“A thing”, you repeated.

“Yeah”.

The way he said it made your stomach drop before you even understood why. You stared at him. “Benjamin”. That full name again. Sharper this time.

He shifted in the chair, suddenly looking like he knew he’d stepped wrong and had decided, in typical fashion, to keep walking anyway. “Look, I’m telling you now because if you find out some other way later, it’ll be worse”.

You sat up straighter despite the ache in your body. “Find out what”.

Ben exhaled through his nose. “It’s this yearly—”. He made a vague motion with one hand. “Supes-only event. Vought pretends it doesn’t know about it. Everybody knows about it”.

You kept staring.

His mouth flattened. “Basically a giant degenerate free-for-all”.

Your mouth fell open. For one full second, you could not even form words. “A what?”.

That won you the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth, which only made your horror worse. “A giant degenerate free-for-all”, he repeated, less flippant this time, as if he knew very well how it sounded and had accepted that there was no better version.

You looked around wildly as though the motel room itself might confirm you had finally lost your mind. Then your eyes snapped back to him. “And you”, you said, each word distinct with disbelief, “were involved”.

Ben had the nerve to look almost rueful. “I kind of started it”.

You made a sound so scandalized it barely qualified as language. Then you grabbed the nearest pillow and threw it at him. Not hard. You were too weak for hard. But with all the outrage and heartbreak your body could muster at four in the morning in a motel in 2026.

The pillow hit him square in the face. Ben caught it a beat too late and let it fall into his lap.

For one stunned second, he looked at you over the top of it like he couldn’t quite believe you’d done that. Then, because he was exhausted and half-broken and still somehow capable of being amused at exactly the wrong moment, he let out a quiet huff of laughter.

You pointed at him from under the blankets, appalled. “Do not laugh”.

“I’m not laughing”.

“You are”.

“A little”.

“Ben”.

That cut it off again. He dropped the pillow to the floor and held up both hands in surrender, though there was still a trace of something almost warm in his face. “All right. All right”.

You stared at him in open horror. “A yearly—”, you broke off, unable to even repeat it properly. “With other people”.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah”.

Your cheeks felt hot now, which was ridiculous after everything. After tanks and bunkers and eighty-five years and blood and Vought and the end of the world as you knew it. And yet this—this obscene, careless, public filth attached to the man you had married in a church while wearing white gloves and trembling because you loved him so much—this was somehow what undid the last of your composure.

“You are disgusting”, you whispered.

Ben took that one. Didn’t argue. Didn’t posture. Just sat there in the chair, shirtless, looking more tired than offended. “It was a long time ago”, he said after a beat.

“That is not helping”.

“I know”.

“And you thought I needed to know this now?”.

“Yes”.

“Why?”.

He looked at you then and whatever joking edge had been there faded. “Because if you hear it from someone else, it’ll sound worse”.

You gave him a stricken, incredulous look. “How could it possibly sound worse.”

His mouth opened. Closed. To his credit, he did not try to answer that.

The silence that followed trembled with the remains of your outrage. Your heart was beating too fast again, but for a different reason now—less fear than a kind of mortified heartbreak, the shame of imagining too much and wishing you could imagine none of it. Because beneath the scandal, beneath the appalled moral horror, there was something much simpler and more painful.

He was your husband.

He had been your only man. The only body you had ever made room for in your life. The only one you had ever known like that.

And now here he was, matter-of-factly admitting to entire arenas of dirt and excess and other people and acts so vulgar your mind kept swerving away from them before they fully formed.

Your eyes stung. You looked down at the blanket before he could see it, but too late. One tear slipped free and landed dark on the fabric pooled over your knees.

Ben went still. All the humor dropped out of him at once. “Ah, hell”, he said quietly.

You wiped at your face angrily.

“I didn’t mean—”.

“You never mean”, you said and your voice broke halfway through.

That shut him up.

You pressed the heel of your hand to your mouth, furious with yourself now. Furious that after everything he had already told you, this was what pushed tears out. Furious that your body still kept finding new ways to humiliate you in front of him.

But it wasn’t just Herogasm. It was Countess. It was the years. It was his body becoming public in every possible way while yours had been locked underground and forgotten. It was the obscene scale of all the lives he had lived without you. The filth of it only made the distance easier to picture.

Ben leaned forward in the chair, elbows on his knees again, hands hanging between them. He looked stricken in that angry, helpless way of his, like if there had been someone else in the room to hit, he’d have preferred that to watching you cry. “I was trying to tell you straight”, he said.

You laughed once through the tears, a soft miserable sound. “And that worked out beautifully”.

His eyes shut for half a second. “No”, he muttered. “Guess not”.

You kept your face turned down, breathing carefully, trying to stop the tears before they became more than a few. The blanket bunched under your fists.

After a moment, Ben said, lower now, “It didn’t mean anything”.

There were so many things wrong with that sentence you almost laughed again. Instead you looked up at him with wet eyes and said, “That might be the saddest part”.

You sat there for a long time without speaking.

The tears had mostly stopped, but your face still felt tight with them. Your throat ached. The room had gone dimmer in a way that only happened toward morning, when the lamp seemed too yellow and the window too pale and everything looked exhausted with you.

Ben watched you from the chair.

He was bad at silence on a good day. Silence left too much room for things he didn’t want to sit with. Guilt. Shame. Memory. The sight of you in his shirt with your eyes red from crying because of him.

So, after a few minutes of the kind of quiet that made the whole room feel held underwater, he tried again. Not with anything important. That was how you knew he was trying. He started telling you stupid little things about the new world. Not the big terrible ones this time. The ridiculous ones. The things that seemed to offend him personally on principle.

He told you about self-checkout machines that made customers do the cashier’s job for free. About electric scooters left all over sidewalks “like some kind of plague”. About men in suits paying nine dollars for coffee and thanking the barista like they’d just been handed medicine. About something called “influencers” and the look on your face at that word alone was so baffled that one corner of his mouth twitched before he could stop it.

“They just… influence what?”, you asked weakly.

“Everything, apparently”.

“That is not a job”.

“No”, he said. “It is not”.

Then he told you about juice cleanses and gender reveal explosions and people filming themselves crying on the internet for strangers, and for the first time all night a sound escaped you that wasn’t pain. A small, startled chuckle. It slipped out while your cheeks were still damp. The noise seemed to hit him almost as hard as your tears had. His face changed around it. Not into a smile exactly. Something quieter. More careful. As if hearing you sound like yourself, even in that tiny way, made him afraid to move too fast and lose it.

“There she is”, he murmured.

You wiped under one eye with the heel of your hand and gave him a tired look. “This world sounds ridiculous”.

“It is”.

“And immoral”.

“That too”.

“And badly dressed”.

That got a real laugh out of him. Low and brief and gone quickly, but real. “Yeah”, he said. “You’re gonna hate half of it on sight”.

“Only half?”.

“Maybe seventy percent”.

You gave a weak, watery breath that was almost another laugh.

The room loosened by one thread. Not fixed, but loosened.

Ben shifted forward a little in the chair, elbows on his knees. The lamplight caught the line of one scar down his shoulder. He looked, suddenly, less like a myth and more like a very tired man trying and failing not to scare the one person he most wanted near him.

His hand lifted. Slowly.

You saw what he meant to do before he did it. Just brush your arm, maybe, or smooth the blanket where it had bunched near your elbow. Your body flinched back anyway. Small. Quick. Pure reflex.

Ben froze and his hand stopped in midair. Then dropped. The look that crossed his face was so nakedly guilty it made something twist in your chest. He looked down at his own hand like it belonged to someone else. Then, very quietly, “I’m in control now”.

You didn’t answer right away.

His voice roughened. “I am”. Ben swallowed once and kept his eyes on the floor. “I know that doesn’t mean much coming from me”, he said. “But it’s true”. A beat passed. “I spent years in Russia with every goddamn thing in me chained down and measured. Then more years after trying not to level a room every time I got pissed”. His mouth tightened. “I know my own strength now”.

You watched him.

He finally looked up. “I would never hurt you by accident again”.

The sentence sat between you, heavy and imperfect. Not because you didn’t believe he meant it. Because “by accident” still left too many other kinds of hurt in the room. Maybe he knew that. Maybe that was why he looked away first.

Your voice came soft. “That wasn’t the only problem, Ben”.

His jaw flexed. “I know”.

And there was too much history in those two words to press any farther right then. So you didn’t. Instead you asked other things. Smaller things. What music sounded like now. Why everyone’s clothes looked so cheap in the brochures he found in the motel drawer. Why women wore running shoes with dresses. What a microwave was. Why cars all looked rounded.

Ben answered as best he could. Sometimes badly. Sometimes with surprising patience. Sometimes with that old dry streak of humor that had once caught you off guard in kitchens and backyards and school corridors before life had filed all its edges into weapons.

By the time the clock dragged toward six, your body had started losing the fight. The adrenaline had burned off. The shock had settled deeper. Every muscle in you felt borrowed and sore. Your eyelids turned heavy between one blink and the next. The room kept going a little soft at the edges no matter how hard you tried to keep your thoughts lined up.

Ben saw it before you said anything. “You’re done”, he said.

You frowned faintly. “I’m awake”.

“Barely”.

“I am”.

He gave you a look. Not mean. Not even amused, exactly. Just familiar in a way that hurt. “You look like you’re about to fall over sitting still”.

You wanted to argue. Instead you yawned. That made one side of his mouth twitch despite everything. “Yeah”, he muttered. “Thought so”.

He stood then, slowly enough not to startle you, and crossed to the lamp.

“Don’t”, you said, more quickly than you meant to. His hand paused over the switch. You looked toward the window, where the first weak gray of dawn was beginning to thin the dark. “Not all the way”.

Ben glanced back at you and seemed to understand. The lamp stayed on, just dimmed lower.

Then came the awkward part. The room had one bed.

You looked at the chair. At him. At the bed. Your tired brain could not quite make those pieces into a shape that felt sensible.

Ben solved it the way he solved most things: by making a decision and standing still inside it. “I’m not sleeping in that chair”, he said.

The bluntness of it would have annoyed you in any other life. Now you only looked at him through the fog of exhaustion. “I wasn’t asking you to”.

He studied your face for a second, like he was checking whether that was true or just politeness shaped like surrender. Maybe it was both. You were too tired to sort it out.

He came to the bed carefully, pulling the blanket aside on the far edge and lying down over the comforter first, not under it, as if to prove he wasn’t assuming anything. The mattress dipped with his weight. Your body noticed immediately. Tensed a little. Then, because you had nothing left in you for another flinch, slowly let go.

He kept his distance. An honest distance. A strip of mattress between you. One arm folded under his head, the other lying still on top of the blanket where you could see it.

You didn’t complain. Part of that was exhaustion. Part of it was that your thoughts had gone too loose and strange to fight anything except sleep by now. And part of it—though you hated admitting it, even to yourself—was older than all of this. Older than Vought and tanks and neon motel signs and digital clocks. Old training in your bones. A wife did not make a scene over a bed. A wife did not tell her husband no just because the world had ended and remade itself around them. Not when she was raised in the years you were. Not when love and obedience and habit had been braided together so early you could no longer always tell where one stopped and the next began.

Ben must have sensed some of that in the silence, because after a long beat he said into the dim room, “If you want me out of the bed, say it”.

You turned your head on the pillow and looked at him.

The offer sounded almost painful coming from him. Like it had cost him. You were too tired to unpack that too.

“I don’t”, you murmured.

It wasn’t the whole truth. It wasn’t a lie either.

He nodded once, eyes on the ceiling. “All right”.

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A/N: Didn’t plan on posting it this soon, but… well, here we go because Lou can’t wait. Like always. The next one will probably be up in a week.

Also, just so you know, I had this one finished before season 5 aired 🙃 I wrote it after that teaser of Ben in Homelander’s suite came out. Kinda funny considering all the church and Jesus stuff… well, you’ll see in the following chapters 😭

Please let me know what you think.🥰 

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Part 2

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