Bel, Erskin, and Jethro: Be celebrities.

You huff, growl, snap your teeth on air. Try to tease him back and only frustrate yourself more. Your claws knead his shoulders -- you don't know if that's allowed anymore, you don't want to stop and ask in case there's more arguing -- the frustration is stoking the fire in your belly even hotter than wrestling did before. Only minutes of this and you're blushing hard, prehensile in your pants, trembling with want even though you're just standing still and kissing slowly.

You don't know what to do. You don't know how to do this. And then suddenly, you do.

It comes over you like hot syrup, scalding sweet and slow -- possessiveness, intensity, your hands cradling his face and not letting him pull back as you kiss him deep, suck his tongue, wind yourself around him like anchor cable -- not red, though it would be hard to tell the difference from outside it. Black molasses.

 

You let out a long ragged breath and shove him, follow him down to the floor to straddle his lap and roll your hips against his. You're of a height with him, like this, and you take what advantage of that you can. You shove his forehead with yours, you get your lips on the soft curl of his ear and suck, snickering at each little wanting noise he lets out. You're still just in shorts but he's got a full set of clothes on, and instead of sticking a hand up his shirt you stroke his ribs over the fabric. It's soft but it's— challenging, intense. He holds on to you like he knows you'll keep fighting if he loses his grip, and you will. You do. He goes to readjust one of his hands on your face and you grab it, press a slow kiss against his wrist, the place where some of your own marks burn, you lick over his frantic pulse.

His eyes are wide and dark, when you meet them, and you grin: all fangs bared, and then the smallest butterfly kiss to his palm.

 

"Oh fuck," you gasp, voice cracked. Lock legs and roll, weigh him down, grind heavy and slow while you lick across his mouth. Wrap your fingers around his horns so he can feel how big your hands are and how your pulse thunders in your palms. You don't put it into words but you say it with your whole body: You're mine, and I'll fight for you.

 

You whine and arch against him, fighting to keep it together against the overwhelming stimulus flooding through your horns. He kisses all the breath right out of you and you, for your part, forego any sort of subtle retaliation in favor of getting his bloody trousers off. You achieve a handful of slick and ready bulge and you snarl into his soft mouth, "Fuck you, give me this, get this in me, you're mine."

 

"Don't forget it," you reply in the same hoarse snarl as you eagerly obey. Some clothes get torn in the process, but you don't even have any snide thoughts this time about what a hazard he is to your wardrobe; all you can think of is being locked together with him, your bulge in him and his in you, breathing his breath, pulling his hair, sucking his lips and tongue, losing track of who made which noises.

How did you ever live without this?

 

Bel spills himself into you first and you moan with savage pleasure, spurring him on with a leg wrapped around his hip. He shivers as he curls over you, thumbing your horns, whispering filthy encouragement as you take what you want, wringing him dry for your own satisfaction as your bulge claims every last warm, clutching inch of his nook. You sink your claws into the tangled silk of his hair and pepper his neck and shoulder with kisses, each one a claim: this is mine, and this, and this. not yours anymore. mine.

You wind down to a slow, sleepy nuzzling, your legs still tangled together but with no urgency in the way you slide against one another, just indulgence. You'll need a pail soon if you don't want to make a further mess of yourself but it's hard to want to attend to that, when there's so much of your kismesis still to stroke and kiss and possess.

 

You feel like you're seeing him -- not for the first time, no, but maybe on a different wavelength. By this new spectrum, it seems weird that you ever doubted him. Of course he still loves you, of course it was right for you to come find him, because you're you and he's him and that's how it is. Fate is in the name of the quadrant, after all.

The way you touch him now is gentle but pitiless; you're not soothing him, you're knowing him, and he's knowing you the same.

It's almost a disappointment when the urgency in your lower abdomen becomes too insistent and you have to get the bucket or make a mess. You find yourself biting your lip on a smile, because you're suddenly wondering what it would be like if the two of you had descendents, and that's just dumb.

 

When Bel gets out the pail and actually makes use of it you're actually surprised. You haven't... you haven't spent, much, with your Lady, in this last recent while, it had all been mostly spilling your blood for her, not genetic material. She had oils and things you could use instead... Bel smiles at you, though, still blushing and electric, and you grin back at him. It takes an effort to get up and onto your knees, but it's worth it to give him a shove and take the pail from him as if it were a victory prize. It feels just like one, when he watches you, when he licks his lips and splays a broad hand over your stomach. You grab his horns for balance and and end up laughing, as you release, and then laughing harder when that results in a genuinely hideous gurgling noise from your mating parts and a startled grimace from your kismesis, before he gets the giggles too.

He's fun.

You'd missed that.

 

God, you missed him. You sort of headbutt-nuzzle at him, laughing, while you stow the pail, and gather him against you just to gloat about how really-here he is. With your non-hugging arm, you grope along the fancy coffee-table sort of thing until you find the sashimi platter, because all this drama and fighting and fucking has given you an appetite -- but when you pull it down, it's not only empty but licked clean in a way Reggie's not equipped to manage.

"Somehow," you explain as you show it to Erskin, "an entire ice bear came into the lounge block, joined the clean plate club, and then went back into the respiteblock without us noticing. I can't decide if that's romantic or mortifying." You sprawl back with your arms spread. "My clothes are destroyed. Let's go shopping."

 

"I don't care who wanders in when we're entertaining ourselves, all I ask is to never see a lusus engaging in concupiscence. If my old fellow takes a shine to Jethro's I think I'll just skip trying to repress the memory and gouge my eyes out directly with a stick. Bad enough he got up to some business in private..." you shudder, and settle your head on Bel's chest.

"Nap first," you decree, yawning. "You wore me out, you insatiable beast. But then yes, my own garments are pretty shameful, I need new togs."

 

"Jethro has needed new togs since I first met him," you point out idly. "Those high-water jeans: just no."

After toying with his hair for a while, you conclude that you're too well-rested to nod off even after great sex, so you coax him to lift his head for a moment so you can turn over. He resettles himself in the small of your back, with an arm draped familiarly across your butt. You get out Cloris's husktop and your own, and get to work.

It turns out not to be terribly hard to crack, once you devote a block of time to it.

It turns out, once you've cracked it, you kind of wish you hadn't.

You're vaguely aware that Jethro woke up sometime while you were working, that Erskin has shifted around some and made some noises, that his lusus joined your nappish sprawl, but it isn't until Jethro drapes a purple-and-white knitty thing over Erskin's middle and your lower half that you really register his presence.

He's squatting on his heels next to you, fully dressed, with his mohawk properly vertical and his breath smelling of fangpaste. He looks seriously concerned.

"Um. Thanks," you say.

"Bro," he says, "I been makin' rude jokes about your bare ass for a quarter hour. The fuck you lookin' at on there?" He tilts his head to try to see the husktop screen, and you slam the computer shut. He jerks his head back. "Okay, classified, gotcha."

"No, it's... no." You take a long breath and push Cloris's husktop away from you. "She kept... mementos."

It takes a moment for that to sink in. When it does, he says nothing, just hisses through his teeth. He glances at Erskin, sleeping so peacefully with your back as a pillow and his lusus curled between his feet.

"I can't show him," you say. "It -- coming from me -- it'd be cruel, he'd take it as an attack. I don't know if he should see this stuff at all."

"It's bad, huh?"

"Jethro, my personal body count is in the high double digits, and it made me queasy. Erskin is... Erskin."

"But he deserves to know the truth."

"That's the problem in a nutshell." You stare at the husktop for a minute more. Then you pick it up and hand it to him. "Now it's your problem."

"That ain't nice."

"I know."

He sighs and puts it away. "I'll think on it. For now I'm starvin'. You hungry?"

"I will be when I forget some things. We talked about going shopping, we're running outta clothes."

"Whaddaya say we call Lainey an' make a party of it?" He lies down beside Erskin and gently ruffles his hair. He starts singing a song about sleeping.

You put your face in your hands and mutter to yourself about the mortification of having someone else's pale date taking place on your actual ass, but of course no one pays you any mind.

 

You wake slowly, and curl into Jethro's warmth with shameless pleasure. You noof your moirail's stomach and purr for a while, until Bel's grumbling complaints manage to penetrate your hazy enjoyment and you snicker, reach out, and pap his rear end.

"There, there," you say, and pap his butt again. "There."

 

"Oh Em Gee scandal," you drawl. There's a brief pause. You make a frustrated noise. "I wish I could fart on purpose."

Jethro snickers, but doesn't otherwise reply, too occupied by checking out Erskin's healing stump and all the scrapes and bruises from your tussle to pay you much attention. If you don't nip this in the bud they're going to start piling and you'll never get fed.

"Okay, guys, guys." You toss a discarded chopstick at them. "Erskin. I'm hungry enough to eat your other leg. Also I'm down to my last pair of jeans. We need to get off the floor."

 

"You're a delicate blossom and I'm ashamed to know you," you inform him, but make it to your feet. Jethro hovers as you shuffle into some dry shorts and a dusty old shirt, and when you've got them on you sling an arm around his shoulders not for balance but just to have him close.

"It feels fine, you big fussbudget," you tell him. "It feels good. Our fourwheel turret adventures are going to have to be postponed until the next disaster."

 

"Can't say I'm disappointed. I'm so fuckin' glad you ain't hurting no more." You put your arm around his waist and go on your tiptoes to bump noses, letting this happiness be your reality for now. You can worry about Cloris's husktop later. For now, Erskin deserves some unshadowed fun. "Wanna text Gossip Girl?"

Bel tromps around the place, pretending to be grumpier than he really is, until he considers himself fit to go out. He looks super ultra mega casual in his least-favorite (and thus least destroyed) jeans and a white button-down, but since the reason he didn't like those jeans is obviously because they're so tight he probably has to think unsexy thoughts constantly just so he can walk, and the button-down sleeves are too short so he rolled them up, and apparently something bad happened to his regular shoes so he's wearing the big black boots from his tac gear -- yeeeah it really looks like he's making a fashion statement.

You, on the other hand, are wearing very sensible clothes, a nice warm sweater, and your usual anti-glare prescription glasses. Any resemblance to a hipster is purely coincidental.

 

"Don't we make a fine trio," you note, amused, and watch Bel striding around in his painted-on trousers. You may tilt your head a bit to assess the various features contained and/or displayed by the trousers. You may also ponder shoving him up against a wall and getting him to comprehensively ruin the fit and coloration of the frontal area. Then Jethro waves his phone in front of your face and you attend to contacting the Gossip Girl in question.

FG: Hallo, it's Erskin! Might we impose on you for some Tour Guiding, we want to go Out for food and then Shopping.
DD: Gimme ten minutes, I'll be there.
FG: We could run an online search if this is too short a Notice?
DD: NOPE.

"I think she'll meet us out front," you say, giving the phone back. "Very obliging, that lady."

 

"We are porn stars, for better or worse," you remind him. You lead the way, partly because you're impatient to get to where the food is, and partly because you know exactly how these jeans look on you and you like the idea of getting him a little bit frustrated.

A hotel worker brings your rental around while you wait for Lainey. You spend the time rekindling the where-to-eat argument. Disappointingly, Erskin doesn't seem to care where you eat, as long as there's meat there, and since neither you nor Jethro is about to deny him meat when he's recovering, you mostly end up arguing with yourself.

Lainey arrives towing her spidery pity-bro, waving and calling down the block at you while he tries to disappear behind her. She is, once again, woefully underdressed for the weather.

"Okay, you guys?" she greets you breathlessly, "there is this barbecue place? you just have to try."

You toss the restaurant pamphlet over your shoulder with a shrug. "Problem solved."

 

"It was only a problem for you," you say, amused, and then accept a very enthusiastic handshake and side-patting from Lainey.

"Don't you look nice," she says, beaming.

"I'm in rags," you say.

"Yeah, that bit's awful, you're probably committing some kind of crime, but I meant—" she waves a hand at her mouth. You realize she's referring to evidence of your earlier pitch activities, and you grin over her head at Bel.

"Well, we are pornstars," you say, and Lainey giggles while her camera boy blushes a vivid lemon and becomes very interested in his feet. You let Lainey take your elbow as the car arrives and you all pile in.

"Can you drive?" you ask.

"That's the bit before you crash, right?" she tosses back. "Haven't gotten the hang of it. Lemme give your hunky scandal buddy the directions and we can discuss what the heck is up with your new leg, because oh my god, it looks divine, who'd you have to kill for it?"

 

"We sacrificed Jethro's virtue," you deadpan.

"Hey, I ain't even trolled 'er yet!"

"You will, though."

His reply is just a blushing grin.

After that you focus on driving and let the others do the talking. It's really pleasant, if you're honest with yourself. There's been too much serious business lately. When you touch down at your destination -- the kind of showy commerce aggregate that's built around a fountain and has marble floors and piped-in 'cultured' music -- you're almost sad the moment's over, even though the next moment will involve barbecue. You can smell it already.

((i'm actually super curious to know what erskin says about the leg!))

 

"I wasn't really awake for most of the procedure," you explain. "As I understand it the old one wasn't suited for me, so I was a bit under the weather from using it regardless. Bel had already commissioned me a new one as a gift, so they flew the mechanic in and hooked it up, neat as you like, and I'm good as new. Of course, my kismesis wouldn't know the meaning of overkill if you wrote it on a bomb and threw it at him, so this leg's apparently been loaded with everything from laser guidance kung fu action to a compartment for a ham sandwich. I'm a bit worried I'll trip over a rock or something and blow up."