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Duke locks the front door of the Gull and stands for a moment, weighing the keys in his hand. Oven: Off. Burners: Off. Lights: Off. Trash: Out. Recycling: Out. Cash box: Locked, stowed. There are six vehicles left in the lot: His, Nathan’s, Audrey’s, and three others with keys he’s got locked in the cash drawer. He’ll be seeing those drivers at the crack of noon tomorrow.
A fog has rolled in, obscuring the moon, and the night is dark. The wind’s picked up, and Duke expects they’ll have rain before dawn. He’s looking forward to waking under the eaves with the steady raindrops pounding on the roof, blowing against the windows in gusts off the bay. He’s looking forward even more to waking with Audrey and Nathan wrapped safe in his arms.
He tosses the keys one last time, snatches them out of the air overhand, and pockets them before swinging himself up the stairs to Audrey’s front door.
Outside, he pauses. Light is filtering out in window-shaped patches across the weathered boards of the deck. Inside, Audrey and Nathan are sitting at Audrey’s kitchen table with mugs of tea before them, talking softly. He can’t make out words drifting out the open window over the wind and the waves. As he watches, Audrey reaches out in that deliberate way she has, sliding her hand up Nathan’s forearm as far as his shirtsleeve allows, her eyes on his face. Duke sees Nathan’s breath catch, watches his eyes follow the progress of Audrey’s fingers up the skin. Duke wonders if Audrey’s noticed, yet, the fading scars that stand out pale against even Nathan’s pale skin.
He hasn’t asked Nathan outright, since his return, whether Nathan’s still cutting when things get bad. After tonight down at the bar he probably doesn’t have to. Watching Nathan pull out the safety pin -- kept right where he’d always carried it -- had broken something in Duke’s chest. Something that he can still feel, sharp and painful, ready to goad him into unhelpful anger and helplessness if he lets it.
Duke remembers, all too well, what happened when he let Nathan’s pain -- and his own -- drive him away. He’ll sit for hours in meditation daily before he lets that happen again.
He pulls in a deep, deliberate breath of ocean air and focuses his attention on the present. On the way Audrey has left her hand at the crook of Nathan’s elbow. At the way Nathan is leaning into her touch like a cat, his whole body pressing forward for more. Something Nathan’s said has made Audrey smile, and when she responds he smiles back -- that rare, hopeful smile that makes Nathan look sixteen again. Duke’s been seeing that smile more and more often since Audrey came to Haven and even before knowing she wanted them both Duke would have been willing to do pretty much anything to keep her in Nathan’s life.
Even if it had meant watching her and Nathan together as a couple without him.
It would have been sharp and painful; filled his days with anger and loss.
But he would have done it.
Deep, deliberate breath. It would have required days of meditation. Years.
But he would have done it.
The miracle is that he doesn’t have to. That’s the gift he’s not yet sure he trusts: that he can look in on this scene, the intimacy of a caress, and think Fuck: they’re so mine.
You. Me. Nathan. Audrey had said.
You think I want one of you without the other? She’d asked, in defiance, daring him to acknowledge the unshed tears that shone in her eyes.
It would make him a liar to claim he had never, not once, in the privacy of unspoken wishes, imagined how good they’d be together. Not just in bed, though he can admit, now, how much he’s looking forward to learning what good in bed feels like for the three of them. Not just in bed, but in all of the ways that make sharing a bed something they want to share: Good in a crisis, good at rest, good over dinner, good when they wish one another good night, and good with the next day’s first cup of coffee.
Duke knows there are a lot of ways to have sex with another person, or people. He’s had sex with people out of desperate loneliness, in drunken embarrassment, due to magical seduction, in the heat of competitive eroticism. He’s fallen into bed (or against the nearest wall) with a few people out of mutual boredom or pure physical pleasure. He’d be a fool to say sex can come without feelings, but feelings come in a full spectrum of colors and not all of them are lasting, or healthy, or something you want to build a life around.
He knows that returning to sexual intimacy with Nathan, that welcoming Audrey into that part of their lives, will be nothing so transient. Not just because sex with Nathan was always intense, never uncomplicated. Not just because Audrey might walk away and he won’t help Nathan force her to stay. Two nights ago, tangled with Audrey under the cheap motel bedding, it had all seemed so easy: Just … obviously. The three of them, together. Of course. It had taken until somewhere above Ontario the following morning for the terror of hope to set in. The terror that they will get this right -- and then something will go absolutely wrong. He’s doomed, it seems, to fall for the big damn heroes. When the meteors come, he’ll place even odds on which one of them is the first to attempt some insane act of self-sacrifice -- and what the odds are that one of them will succeed.
It’s who Nathan and Audrey both are; he’s trying to make peace with that.
Because at the end of the day, Duke knows he doesn’t have another choice. Because while losing one or both of them will break him, running away again would destroy him. And at the end of the day, acknowledging that to himself is like recognizing he needs to keep breathing to stay alive.
It should have been awkward -- the three of them -- but wasn’t. Sure, in the beginning they’d gone through the vague motions of tension and jealousy like they were each of them afraid to lose the other two to one another. He knew most of Haven had a version of that story in their head: Duke and Nathan, ex-lovers with an axe to grind, competing for the new girl in town. Hell, Duke himself had spun a version of that story in his head at first, torn between the angry part of him that wanted to win Audrey from Nathan and the despairing part of him that wondered if Audrey might be better for Nathan than Duke had ever been.
Thing was, despite their own best efforts, what grew between them was something else entirely. Where Audrey and Nathan’s connection should have made Duke insanely jealous, instead it opened up pathways for Nathan to turn toward Duke once again. As Audrey’s touch helped Nathan back into his skin, it’s made Nathan easier, by infinitesimal degrees, with his body -- and with that he’s been turning toward Duke once again. Every time Duke and Audrey flirt over cards, or close ranks against Nathan’s moments of stubbornness, it should piss Nathan off -- and it does. But not with any real malice. Instead, he just steals Duke’s last taco or swipes Audrey’s beer. And Duke knows from experience that a grabby Nathan is a comfortable Nathan -- a Nathan who trusts that Duke’s space is his own.
And all the while there had been the question of how much Audrey suspected, or knew, about Duke and Nathan’s shared history. The longer it went unspoken, the more unspeakable it had seemed to become. As if all three of them shared a superstition that if they acknowledged Nathan and Duke’s past, and potential, as a couple then the place Audrey was coming to occupy in their relationship would crumble away.
Except it hadn’t, in the end: Audrey naming what Duke and Nathan meant to one another had been part of what made tonight possible.
Duke stands, with his hand on the doorknob, and thinks about how fragile this is, and how little time they have to build something together that will survive whatever forces in Haven -- human and Troubled -- are gearing up to pull them apart.
There are moments when Duke suspects that everything he’s done since returning to Haven amounts to some sort of fucked up postmodern hope chest. Like if he can feed them, and house them, clothe them, and keep them ...then they’ll be his.
He shakes his head, takes a breath, and pushes open the door.
Both Audrey and Nathan look up as he enters, and Duke feels his heart stumble at the motion, at the way they’ve so obviously been waiting for him. For the last forty-five minutes it’s been all he could do to keep himself moving through the normal closing routine of the bar when, with every breath, he was conscious of Audrey and Nathan right there, in Audrey’s apartment above him, conscious of the taste of Audrey’s wine on the back of his tongue, and the feeling of Nathan’s rekindled hope fluttering fragile in their hands.
Now he knows they’ve been feeling it too.
Jesus.
“All locked up,” he says, for something to say. “Storm’s blowing in over the bay.” Because even though he’s spent forty-eight hours holding the possibility of this moment cradled to his chest now that they’re actually here -- the three of them, alone -- he feels like an actor who’s fumbled his lines.
What if he can’t remember what Nathan likes?
What if he’s just too damn exhausted to --
What if Audrey can’t -- doesn’t -- won’t --
“Duke -- hey. Duke?” It’s Nathan who pushes his chair back from the table and gets up, closing the distance between them. Who reaches out a hand to trace Duke’s jaw, pulling him back to the now from the what might have been and what still could be. “Hey.”
It’s soft and less tentative than it had been earlier in the evening, Nathan’s caress. The contact loosens the panic mounting in Duke’s chest, reminds him that even though neither of them have admitted it out loud to themselves or one another, he and Nathan have, gradually, been relearning how to touch one another with love rather than fear.
Another deep, deliberate breath.
“Hey,” he echoes. “Yeah. I’m here. Sorry.” He turns his head to kiss Nathan’s palm in apology.
Audrey’s risen, too, collecting the tea mugs from the table and carrying them over to the sink to rinse and leave in the drainer. Out of the corner of his eye, Duke’s aware of her movements, though he holds Nathan’s gaze.
“A very wise woman has just finished telling me,” Nathan says, sliding his hand around the back of Duke’s neck and pulling Duke forward so they’re pressed forehead to forehead, breathing the same air, “that a very wise man recently told her that it’s not up to us to decide if and how we matter in the lives of the people who love us.”
“Yeah, well --” Duke starts, not sure where this is going, but Nathan isn’t done.
“I’m sorry for being young and stupid, Duke. And for being older and stupider. I never stopped loving you. I just -- I didn’t know how to let you love me the way -- I’m still not sure I know how. But. I’m ready to try.”
“-- and I’m sorry for being young and angry. And older and angrier.” Duke clears his throat. “I shouldn’t have left. Not like I did. Not at all. It didn’t help, anyway, I -- I promise not to run again.” And he means it, unconditionally.
“Audrey promises me this is -- this is really us.” Nathan says, and as if invoked by her name Audrey’s there in their space again, catching the hand Nathan puts out toward her, sliding an arm around his waist. Duke can feel the full-body shudder that is Nathan’s response to her touch.
“You know it is,” she says, quietly.
Nathan shakes his head, forehead still pressed against Duke’s. “I don’t. But I know you know.”
Without breaking contact, Nathan slides down Duke’s cheek to bury his nose against Duke’s neck, breathing deep. Duke knows he smells of the bar, and of sweat, of exhaustion, of residual fear and growing desire. Swallowing against the memories of Trouble-plagued sex, Duke steadies himself with a hand on Nathan’s hip, then against the small of Nathan’s back where Audrey’s arm shifts to give him room. He’s leaning into Nathan’s touch but letting Nathan lead them.
He reaches with his other hand to meet Audrey’s outstretched palm, feeling the promise in her touch. Help me, he pleads with her silently. Help me not screw this up again.
Nathan drags his mouth back up Duke’s throat, tonguing little butterfly kisses against Duke’s skin, tasting him, tentatively, hungrily, until he reaches Duke’s mouth and presses Duke open with lips and teeth and tongue. Duke wonders if Nathan’s aware of the needy little sounds he’s making, of how heartbreaking and hot Duke finds it to have Nathan back in his arms, of how long Duke’s waited for this moment and how sure he was they would never find their way back here again.
He makes approving, encouraging noises against Nathan’s mouth, pushing greedily into the kiss, remembering that Nathan won’t be able to feel clearly how much Duke’s whole body is on board with this, how his hips have just jerked forward against Nathan’s thigh in response to the nip of Nathan’s teeth into his lower lip.
“God, Nathan --”
Audrey’s hand spasms in his and and it’s not like Duke’s forgotten she’s there, he hasn’t for a moment, but it’s one thing to know and another to feel her responding to their intimacy, to suddenly think about what this moment is like for her. To imagine watching him and Nathan become reacquainted with one another's bodies.
Fuck.
Duke is, of course, aware of his own exhibitionist tendencies, but Audrey here, with them, is something altogether new in his sexual repertoire. Drunken make-out sessions in various bars, sure. Potentially-public sex on the deck of the Rouge, in rooms with thin walls, yes, occasionally. But this is something different: This isn’t a quasi-performance in front of drunken strangers, or the frisson of being caught or overheard by an anonymous passerby on the quay.
This isn’t a performance, this isn’t putting on a show for someone, this is just … him. The self that’s been desperately in love with Nathan for over a decade, the self whose desire for Audrey has grown every time she’s taken his side and every time she’s pushed him to be better. Both Nathan and Audrey know this self, want this self.
It’s terrifying. And Duke doesn’t think he’s ever felt more aroused in his entire life.
He whimpers against Nathan’s lips, crowding closer as Audrey’s hand slides up his arm to trace teasing fingers along the side of his jaw. Nathan, however, pulls back from the kiss with a growl of frustration, dropping his forehead to Duke’s shoulder, hands fisted tight in the front of Duke’s shirt. “I don’t know how to do this,” he says, so softly that Audrey has to lean in, pressing against Duke’s shoulder, to hear him. He’s shaking, Duke realizes, as he closes protective arms around Nathan’s back.
“Tell me -- tell me what you need, babe,” Duke says, just as Audrey says, “Stay with us, sweetheart,” sliding her hand to the nape of his neck where her palm touches bare skin.
“I don’t -- I can’t -- fuck it, I can’t feel you, Duke,” Nathan grinds out through his teeth. “I thought, maybe, but --” he chokes off and, then, just when Duke’s mustering the courage to try and break the silence he says, in an almost inaudible whisper: “I can’t -- I don’t want to fake it with you.”
“When have I ever wanted --” Duke fights down the frustration in his own voice, knowing this won’t help, remembering all too clearly how old this pain is, how he used to accuse Nathan of covering his deteriorating loss of sensation.
“I know, I’m not -- I just --” Nathan pulls away from them both and stalks a few steps away, shoulders tight with frustration. Audrey turns to watch him, pulling Duke’s arm around her own waist as if she needs the comfort of continued contact. She’s changed since the party earlier, is now dressed in flannel pajama pants and a camisole under a well-worn hooded sweatshirt. Duke can feel the heat of her through the thin shirt. When he inches the fabric up so his hand is against her skin, Audrey presses her hands over his, possessively.
Nathan rolls his shoulders in a defensive shrug, still turned away from them, like he can’t look them in the face and say what he needs to say: “It’s not -- it’s not faking it, exactly. It’s just -- you learn how to make it good for the other person, even if you can’t feel it yourself. And sometimes that’s enough, but --”
Knowing this is his cue, Duke gives Audrey a tight squeeze and gently extricates himself from her grasp. He shrugs off his jacket, tossing it over the back of the closest chair, and kicks off his shoes, physical reminders that he’s not going anywhere, isn’t waffling about this moment, isn’t once again on his way out the door.
Audrey goes back over to the kitchen counter and pulls the stopper out of her half-finished bottle of Apothic. She picks up one of the washed tea mugs from the drainboard and pours, then carries the mug and the bottle over to the couch where she folds herself into the corner closest to where Nathan is standing under his own cloud of misery.
She lifts her mug to Duke in a silent salute, then takes a generous swallow.
Duke closes the distance Nathan has put between himself and Duke and Audrey and circles Nathan until they’re standing face to face again. Nathan isn’t meeting his eyes, and he’s got his arms folded self-protectively, hands fisted under his arms.
Carefully, where he knows Nathan can see, Duke puts out his hands and slides them over Nathan’s elbows, feeling the tension radiating from every muscle.
“Nathan,” he says softly. Nathan’s jaw twitches.
“Nathan, will you look at me, babe?” Nathan glances up, then away again. Duke forces himself to slow his breathing and relax his shoulders. His own body is a confusing distraction of arousal, anxiety, and anger; he’s going to have to quiet at least two of those things if he wants this conversation to go at all well. It’s a conversation he’d been hoping they could just, you know, skip altogether. But he should have known that Nathan wouldn’t let them. Which is part of why Duke loves him, that Nathan hasn’t ever let Duke avoid the uncomfortable conversations. But that doesn’t mean he has to like it.
Deep breath.
Fuck this shit.
“This isn’t fake,” he begins, because that seems like the most important thing. “I never thought this --” he gestures between them, “-- was fake. What I said before -- I was scared because it felt like your Trouble was just one more thing you thought you had to hide. And no, at the time I didn’t trust you not to cover because you were covering a lot of things. But being scared and being angry aren’t excuses for making you think I doubted us, or thought you somehow couldn’t -- we couldn’t --” he falters, groping for words, “-- find ways to work with your body.”
It had been his experience with Nathan, in fact, that had driven Duke to yoga and meditation in the first place. Only with time, and distance, and a lot of hard-won mindfulness, had he realized how fucked up most of Haven was in their collective relation to the Troubled, and how, specifically, neither he nor Nathan had been given any support in figuring out how to treat Nathan’s Trouble as anything other than a debilitating affliction.
Duke will never stop regretting the way he left Nathan, but he still believes that his instincts were right about needing to leave Haven. The years he spent away from this goddamn town and its particular brand of crazy have given him the resources he needs to walk back in on his own fucking terms and show Nathan that Troubled martyrdom isn’t the only freakin’ way.
“I’m Troubled, Duke, what’s there to work with?” Nathan says wearily, like he’s reading Duke’s mind, finally raising his head so he can study Duke’s face.
“You’re Troubled, Nathan. That’s it. We can work with Troubled.” He gives Nathan a little shake, knowing he can feel the movement of his body through space, the pressure of Duke’s hands on his arms. His nerves might not be communicating with his brain, but he can still tell when his body meets with resistance.
“Sometimes I come, Duke, and I don’t even care,” Nathan says bitterly. And okay, if Nathan meant that to hurt than he’s as accurate a shot as he’s ever been, because suddenly Duke has to fight down the urge to punch something, anything, possibly a puppy -- and he likes puppies.
“That’s not the. Fucking. Point,” he manages to say evenly.
“Oh, well, forgive me for thinking my orgasms mattered to you,” Nathan responds, trying to jerk away. But Duke’s ready for him this time, and catches his arm, pulling him back around.
“Jesus, Nathan, quit it with the dramatics, okay? I’m not trying to argue that your Trouble doesn’t affect how we have sex -- I’m trying to say that what happened before, we both got stuck on it. Built it into a thing that eclipsed everything else we knew about how our bodies worked together. How we worked together.” He’s holding Nathan’s wrist tight and it’s going to bruise. Nathan’s eyes flicker down to Duke’s grip, then back up, and nothing in his eyes says let me go. “We let your Trouble take over,” Duke stumbles, his fingers tightening further at the look, “We don’t have to -- we don’t have to, look --” he feels weird putting all of this into words, it’s made sense in his head for so long now, but he’s never actually said it out loud to anyone.
“Look,” he tries again, “imagine that spring in drama class your Trouble hadn’t been in remission. Imagine that we had this, had your Trouble, to deal with from the very beginning. Here’s the thing, Nathan, I’ve thought about this for a long time. I’ve thought about this since the day I sailed away from you and I do not think you and I would have let your Trouble stop us.”
Nathan’s gone still under his hands, his breathing ragged, his eyes on Duke’s face as Duke babbles desperately, trying to make this thing that’s made perfect sense in his head make sense to Nathan, too.
“Nathan, I want you -- I’ve always wanted you -- because you’re you not because of how we do or don’t have sex. Jesus. I didn’t leave you because you were Troubled. I left because I was making it worse. I left because I couldn’t hide how much I loved you any more -- and you weren’t ready to be out. I left because of what Haven was going to fucking do to me if I didn’t. Because I needed things Haven wasn’t going to give me in order to survive here. I didn’t leave because I thought you were broken or faking it.”
“How wouldn’t we have let my Trouble stop us?” Nathan asks, quietly.
Duke sucks in a ragged breath and forces himself to stop talking. Breathe in … breathe out. top trying to explain the past and refocus on the man standing in front of him in the present -- the man who’s stopped his full-body retreat and is once again looking at Duke with an expression of heartbreaking hope in his eyes.
Breathe in … breathe out.
You can do this, Duke. He can feel Audrey watching them from the couch, her mug of merlot, momentarily forgotten, cupped in her hands.
“You know the answer, Nathan,” he says, finally, putting every shred of hard-earned calm and confidence into his voice. “Think about what you were doing, just now, before you started to worry about doing this the wrong way. Think about how I smell -- fried onions for the tacos, the vodka you broke and splashed all over my jeans, the bleach I used to wipe down the counters, maybe the ocean clinging to my jacket, sweat on my neck, the shampoo I used to wash my hair. Think about how I taste -- beer, sauteed onions, ground beef, hot sauce, maybe Audrey’s wine, the whiskey you kissed onto my lips, the tea on the back of your own tongue. Think about the way it felt to watch Audrey kiss me under the porch. Maybe I know a little bit about what that feels like, when you see that moment of intimacy and think, Christ, they’re mine. You want me to tell you how I know you weren’t faking it? Because I could feel your heartbeat picking up and see your pupils dilating and that flush that creeps along your cheekbones when you’re thinking dark and dirty things. Because I could feel you getting hard while your tongue was fucking my mouth. Because of the way you’ve been watching me for the past six months when you think I’m not looking or you’re too distracted to care. Because you were upset enough to stab your fucking palm because you thought Audrey and I would hook up behind your fucking back.
“Because of the fact that I’m not even touching you, right now --” he holds up his hands to demonstrate “-- and I see how fucking close you are to coming, just from listening to me describe what I see when I look at you --” he leans toward Nathan, still not touching him, but close enough that he can speak softly into Nathan’s ear, “-- whispering things in the dark like I used to backstage during those dress rehearsals, when we were always one second away from being caught touching -- but I knew I could get away with whispering my lines in your ear, just like this.
“Your body knows how to do this, knows what Audrey and I can do to give you pleasure. You’ve always known. You and I have just been too scared and too angry to listen.”
They stand there together, breathing, in the shadowed half-light of Audrey’s apartment. Duke closes his eyes and listens to his breath. In … and out … In … and out. Tries not to fear he’s pushed too hard or not hard enough. In … and out. He hears, distantly, Audrey lean forward -- the creak of the old couch springs, the soft shush of her slippered foot on the floor, and set her mug down on the coffee table. He hears her rustling around over by the bed.
Finally, Nathan drags in a breath that’s closer to a sob and reaches up, with trembling hands, to fumble at the buttons on Nathan’s shirt. “I think I need you naked. Now,” he says, shakily, but firmly, with more certainty than Duke has heard in his voice all night.
“Yeah, okay,” Duke hears himself say, slightly breathless himself, “yes,” and then, because he’s slightly buzzed from the relief of not fucking up, but suspects this will shortly turn to flat-out exhaustion, “could we maybe -- bed?”
“Bed,” Nathan agrees, pushing Duke’s shirt off his shoulders and reaching down to undo Duke’s belt. He leans in to suck a possessive bruise into the flesh over Duke’s collarbone. “Damn right you’re mine,” he whispers fiercely into Duke’s skin.
“Of course I’m yours,” Duke says, fondly, knowing this has never, really, been in question.
“Mine, and Audrey’s,” Nathan amends, not quite a question, pushing his hands up under Duke’s undershirt and yanking the cloth up over his head.
“If she’ll have us, pair of idiots that we are,” Duke says, dropping his arms and reaching for Nathan’s hips to pull him into a kiss.
“She’ll have you if you get over here before she falls asleep,” Audrey calls, lightly, from the direction of the bed. Duke smiles against Nathan’s lips, feeling Nathan do the same -- victory! Nathan! smiling! -- and lets Nathan unzip and push off his jeans before pulling him bed-ward.
Audrey has folded back the duvet and sits crossed-legged against the pillows. She’s lost the pajama pants and slippers, but hasn’t stripped further, still wrapped in her hoodie against the rain-heavy breeze that’s blowing in through the open windows. The salt-sea breeze is growing heavier, damper by the minute and Duke can hear a distant foghorn calling its thready warning through the wind.
Duke spares a brief thought for the need for more nakedness all around, remembering promises made in other time zones, and then Nathan is pressing him back against the mattress and Duke goes with it, drinking in the gift that is Nathan willing to take what he needs. Nathan pushes Duke down against the sheets and straddles him on all fours, nosing at Duke’s chest, neck, ear.
“Look at you, Jesus, look at you, so beautiful,” Nathan’s murmuring, almost to himself. Duke arches under his touch, relishing the way Nathan’s weight keeps him pinned to the bed. He could break free if he had to, wanted to, but he doesn’t want to, he likes the way Nathan’s solid strength makes it slightly difficult to move, giving him wordless permission to sink into the moment and let Nathan lead.
He turns his head, giving Nathan better access to the particular spot on his neck that Nathan seems most interested in tasting, and catches Audrey’s eye. She’s slid down the pillows to lay with her head next to his, her whole body turned toward them, watching.
Duke shifts, slightly, pulling his left hand free from where he’s been trying to work open Nathan’s jeans, and reaches out for her. She’s been giving the two of them space to work this out, and he appreciates that, but she should be closer now, he wants her closer, wants her hands on him, on Nathan, wants to stop thinking about how this could work and start paying attention to how this is working.
She rolls toward them, easily, with a sigh, like she’s been waiting for the right opening and Duke’s outstretched hand provides it. “Beautiful,” she whispers, against his lips, “Duke, he’s right, you’re beautiful,” and then, “Thank you,” in a voice that manages to encompass Thank you for being here and Thank you for letting me in and Thank you for holding us together and Thank you for not asking me to think about the future tonight.
Then she turns her head and says, “Hey, Nathan,” reaching up to caress his cheek, skin to skin in a motion that sends a rippling shiver across his skin. Duke feels the response, the intake of breath, watches how Nathan stills at the touch.
“Hey,” he says, turning his face against Duke’s neck to make eye contact with her. Duke feels the movement in Nathan’s throat as he swallows and decides he gets to turn into Nathan’s body and kiss him, just there. He leans forward, lifting his torso and rocking Nathan back into a sitting position. It’s a movement that puts his dick in firm contact with Nathan’s own groin, and he mmmms happily at the sensation as he tugs impatiently at Nathan’s shirt and resumes his work on Nathan’s pants.
Audrey follows them forward, shifting to her knees and making quick work of Nathan’s shirt, a favor Nathan repays her in kind, pushing her sweatshirt away and tugging her camisole off between kisses. Duke feels the brush of a nipple and curve of a breast against his arm as Audrey reaches up to wrap her arms around Nathan’s neck and pull him back down onto the bed between her and Duke. It’s a move Duke approves of because now he can take hold of Nathan’s waistband, jeans and briefs, and pull them free and clear in one firm yank as his partners’ momentum carries them towards the mattress.
Sometimes, he knows from experience, the teasing barrier of clothes can be fucking erotic. But tonight he’s desperate for the unadulterated intimacy of skin. It’s been too long since he’s seen Nathan, been allowed to see Nathan, like this; it’s still shockingly recent, the realization that Audrey wants him to see her, to touch and taste her, talk to her about all the myriad ways he plans to have her, all the ways he wants to share Nathan with her.
He wriggles out of his own boxers, hissing at the friction of cloth against sensitive flesh, and kicks them the way of Nathan’s pants. He slides, possessively, with a satisfied sigh up against Nathan’s familiar ass, feeling the way Nathan’s temperature has soared, the way his whole body is wracked with fine tremors as Audrey presses herself against him, chest to hip, an insistent thigh between his, mouth against his lips, fingers buried in his hair, digging into the flesh of his ass.
Nathan pushes back against Duke, in acknowledgement: I know you’re there. Duke responds with a thrust of his hips, the firm press of his belly at the base of Nathan’s spine, knowing Nathan can feel the resistance: I’m here. The return of pressure against his own erection feels good, so good, though it’s starting to be maddeningly not enough. The predicted exhaustion is starting to pluck at the edges of his awareness but isn’t doing much at this point to counteract the building urgency beneath his skin. Nathan shoves back against him, once more, and Duke lets him know how good it feels with a moan against the back of his neck, presses a kiss against the knuckles of Audrey’s right hand as she cradles Nathan’s skull.
Audrey laughs, breathlessly, against Nathan’s cheek, reaching over his shoulder to brush Duke’s hair out of his eyes, “Hey, there, beautiful, don’t rush things. We’ve got all night.”
“Says the woman threatening sleep ten minutes ago.”
“Second wind, Duke, ya gotta -- fuck,” she says, with a groan, as Nathan works a hand between them and manages to slide his hand down her underpants. Duke reaches across Nathan’s hip, slides a hand behind the curve of Audrey’s ass, pulls her toward them, feels the jerk of her hip as she fucks against Nathan’s hand. How many fingers? Duke wonders, uncertain whether he’s thinking about how soon he’ll get to fuck Audrey like this or the last time Nathan had fingers in him. Sensation and longing tangle together as something twists, wanting, deep in his belly.
“Nathan?” Audrey’s voice says, uncertainly, drawing Duke back to the present, and he realizes that Nathan’s trembling has turned into shaking, and his overheated skin has broken into a sweat, become almost clammy. That he’s breathing in short, rapid gasping breaths that suddenly aren’t at all sexy.
“Too -- too much. It’s -- too much,” he says, between chattering teeth, “Sorry, God, Audrey, sorry, I -- it’s just too -- too much,” and as Audrey gently disentangles herself from Nathan and scoots back across the bed Duke realizes, seconds after her, what Nathan is trying to say. After years of dulled nerves, of course Audrey’s touch is overwhelming, exponentially so when Nathan’s as aroused as he is right now.
Fuck. Why hadn’t they thought of this?
Duke tries to pull back, too, tries to give Nathan some space, but Nathan reaches back and grips his hip hard enough Duke knows he’s gonna bruise. “No -- please, Duke, I need -- just. Stay.” He’s still panting, but his breath is gradually slowing, easing.
Duke tentatively wraps his arm around Nathan’s chest and rolls them both back, slightly, so Nathan can open his lungs more easily.
“Too much of a good thing?” Duke murmurs against Nathan’s ear, half question, half observation. His eyes are on Audrey when he says it and he can’t help smiling at the hectic flush on her cheeks, the hair she’s pushing out of her face.
Nathan lets out a faint, wheezing, laugh in the direction of the rafters, a laugh that eases -- though doesn’t entirely erase -- the worry lines around Audrey’s eyes. “Fuck.”
“I should have thought, Nathan --” Audrey starts, apologetically, but Nathan cuts her off.
“Thoughtfulness wasn’t exactly what I was going for there, Parker,” Nathan manages, wryly, and then, “Fuck,” he says, again, dragging in a breath as Duke rubs his chest in slow, steady circles, trying to remind his lungs to keep working.
Audrey laughs, and Duke realizes that, like him, she recognizes the gift that is Nathan still with them instead of locked in the bathroom with a safety pin.
“Oh? So what were you going for, exactly?” she teases, and Duke tries to telegraph thank you across the bed.
“Mmm.” Nathan’s stopped shaking quite so hard, and his breathing is deeper, more measured. He shifts against Duke, settling back against Duke’s chest in a way that lets him look at Audrey without craning his neck at an awkward angle. “Mmm -- well, I was enjoying the taste of chamomile tea on your tongue, and listening to your heart rate picking up, and your breath coming faster, and harsher, and I liked the little keening noises you were starting to make in the back of your throat, and the way you couldn’t stop your hips from jerking when I slipped the first two fingers inside --”
Audrey licks her lips, flicks a glance at Duke, and then slides a hand down across her belly and dips her fingers beneath the waistband of her worn cotton underpants. “In that case, I think we can probably pick it up and run with it, don’t you think?” she says, clearing her throat around what Duke suspects is the same constriction clogging his own. Nathan’s paying attention to what Duke said, earlier, and using his body and his senses in all the ways he still has available.
Her eyes on Duke and Nathan, Audrey shoves her left hand down into her panties, She crooks a knee to open her hips and beneath the thin cloth with its faded stripes, Duke can see the angle of her wrist and the bulge of her knuckles as she holds her hand steady, pausing.
“How many fingers, Nathan?” she asks in a low, intent voice.
“Three,” Nathan says, with a quiet authority that suddenly settles the three of them back into unity. They’ve been struggling all night to find their rhythm together, a rhythm that for months now has felt nearly effortless. But finally, finally, Nathan’s decided not to stand in their way. And just like that: they’re a team again.
Audrey never takes her eyes off Nathan’s face as she fucks into herself, deep and hard, hips rolling against the angle of her wrist and hand. Without removing her hand or her gaze, she lifts her hips and awkwardly shoves the final layer of cloth down her thighs and over her knees, toeing it off one ankle and then the other so that she’s finally entirely naked.
Duke’s seen her naked, before, sure, but that wasn’t nakedness with invitation. Wasn’t nakedness that said, I’m letting you in, inviting you to see, taste, smell, hear, touch without reservation. He knows now what Nathan will have to face tomorrow, or the day after, or one of the days that follow: that Audrey can’t promise them anything but the time they have left. But she is no longer holding herself at a distance, afraid of the damage she might do. Perhaps, after losing Nathan yesterday, she’s seen the truth of what Duke tried, fumblingly, to explain to her in Colorado: that never having this would always have been worse than having it and losing it. Because once they’ve shared this space together, they will never entirely leave it behind. No matter what happens tomorrow, or the day after, or the days after that, this will have altered who they are and nothing can take that away from them.
“Four fingers, Audrey,” Nathan whispers, jerking under Duke’s hands, and Duke realizes they’re both rocking together in time to Audrey’s thrusts, and she’s watching them, eyes sliding over their entwined bodies, free hand fisted in the sheet a careful six inches from where Nathan’s dick is curving thick across his abdomen.
She pulls her left hand back with an audible sucking noise, folds her fourth finger over, and pushes back in with an arch and a moan, the curve of her thumb sliding tight along where Duke imagines the line of her clit lies rigid against the unyielding curve of her pelvis. It feels almost like she’s touching him, and Duke closes his eyes against the sudden pulse of desire that burns through his core. He feels the muscles of Nathan’s abdomen jump under the palm of his hand.
“Tell me -- tell me if this is too much,” he whispers to Nathan, softly, pressing sloppy kisses against Nathan’s shoulder as he slides down and curls a hand around Nathan’s cock. Nathan jerks back against Duke, again, digging his fingers into Duke’s hip. Yup. Totally gonna bruise. Totally don’t care.
Beside them on the bed, Audrey still feels frustratingly far away. He knows they can’t solve everything in one night, but he catches her eye and tries to promise her silently, You next.
She nods in acknowledgement, canting her hips one more time, and then pulls her hand away, slick with arousal, and rolls in toward them until she’s nose to nose with Nathan, still not touching, and offers her fingers to him.
“Nathan,” she whispers, “this is what you two do to me. For weeks, now. You walk into a room and something releases in the pit of my stomach. Duke turns the corner and my nipples go painfully hard. I wake up at night from dreams where I’m sandwiched between the two of you, so close we can’t tell who’s inside whom and for how long, maybe forever.”
“Fuck,” Nathan whispers, nostrils flaring as he scents her, “Audrey --” Even Duke can smell the musk of her desire wrapped around all three of them as he runs a firm hand along Nathan’s penis, head to base, then base to head, trying to gauge how much pressure will be enough to communicate to Nathan that he’s being touched.
“Duke has you in his hand, now,” Audrey goes on whispering, “You’re so gorgeous like this, Nathan, Duke wrapped naked around you, his beautiful fingers smoothing up and down and up and down along your dick. He knows you so well, Nathan, the curve and weight of you, I can see him paying attention to just how tight he should hold you, you’re feeling it, right? Feeling it gathering deep in your belly, the pressure, feeling it build in the back of your skull, like the sound of my voice is opening a door that you’ll never be able to close --”
Nathan nods jerkily, his eyes squeezed shut as if all he can take in right now is the sound and smell of Audrey and the twisting pressure of Duke’s hand, the solid weight of Duke against his back.
“You get to have this, Nathan,” Audrey continues, unbroken, “you get to have us, I’m sorry it took me so long to get here, I --”
“I’m --” Nathan chokes, suddenly, and Duke feels the orgasm shuddering up through him, up through his core, and he’s coming, spilling over Duke’s hand, the sheets, Audrey’s belly as she curls close, whispering: “Duke’s got you, he’s got you, fuck you’re beautiful, so beautiful, look at you, Nathan, so, God --”
Duke presses his forehead against the back of Nathan’s neck, panting slightly against the pull of his own orgasm because not yet, not yet, he wants to --
All three of them are very still, for a moment, then two, and a handful more, listening to the sound of their collective breathing. Outside there’s a roll of thunder, distant, and a scatter of raindrops on the roof above them.
Then a soft shuff of movement across the bedclothes and Duke feels Audrey’s hand on his, where his fingers are still curled, almost protectively, around Nathan’s softening cock. Probably too light a touch for Nathan to be aware of -- but Duke’s done this instinctively, still marveling at the gift of once again being allowed. In the intervening years, Duke’s mostly managed to forget this, to forget how sex with someone you’ve let in this deep fucks with your sense of personal space, of the distinction between bodies. He’s holding Nathan in his palm, breathing with him, feeling Audrey trace her fingers through the slick mess on his hand, and it’s almost beyond sexy or hot. They’ve stumbled their way into the place where being together, like this, simply is.
Duke rolls his and Nathan’s hips up into Audrey’s hand, letting himself enjoy the pleasure turning over in the pit of his stomach at the movement.
Feeling his weight shift, Nathan opens his eyes and looks down, then reaches down, tentatively, and slides his own hand over Audrey’s where it rests on Duke’s, and there they are.
“What have I done to deserve either of you, Parker?” He whispers, “I --”
“It’s not about deserving anything,” Duke says, gently, just as Audrey starts: “Everything, from the minute I arrived in Haven --”
Nathan turns his face, seeking Duke’s mouth, as he slides his hand across the back of Audrey’s hand, up along her wrist and forearm, wrapping his fingers around her wrist and tugging her gently forward to bring her in closer.
“Nathan --,” she begins, as if she’s trying to decide whether or not to argue.
“Shh,” he says, “I know what I’m doing, Parker. Just -- it was just a lot all at once. You were -- distracting. I’ll let you know if --” he pulls her against his chest, leaning over to nip several kisses in swift, affectionate succession along her lower lip. “Let me do this. Trust me.”
She puts a hand on his chest and pulls back far enough to study his face. Then looks at Duke.
“Hey, don’t look to me for help, Audrey, you know I’m on his side here. You,” he points a finger at her, “orgasms.”
She flushes and grins, sinking back down against Nathan’s chest, “Yeah, okay. Yes. You two win.” And Nathan takes the opportunity of her acquiescence to roll them both over toward Duke so that Audrey is suddenly on her back between the two of them, and there Nathan and Duke are looking down at this amazing woman who blew into their lives like a storm off the sea.
Nathan leans across her body and gives Duke a swift, fierce kiss, and then shimmies down the mattress, dragging his palm in a smooth, appreciative line, along Audrey’s flank from shoulder to breast to belly to groin. When his head is at hip level he reaches down and, before Audrey can offer more than a squeak of surprise, grabs her ankle and ducks under her left leg to settle on his elbows between her thighs, sure hands bracketing her hips so she’ll have to make an effort to pull away.
She doesn’t.
Exchanging a look with Nathan, Duke hooks his calf against the inside of Audrey’s right knee and presses her open wider, tucking his toes in against Nathan’s hip. She flexes up into his body with a groan and Duke feels his own erection -- having subsided from “any moment now” to “please can we get a move on here?” -- brush against the back of Nathan’s hand where he’s holding Audrey firmly in place. He lets a groan of his own slide out against the curve of Audrey’s ear. She should know how much he wants this.
Nathan presses a kiss against the crease of Audrey’s thigh, where the deep gold of her curls -- several shades darker than the hair on her head -- springs thick and fragrant from her groin. Duke hadn’t taken in before how she has a sweet honey trail climbing from where Nathan is nosing at her dampness up to her belly button. He smooths a palm along the curve of her belly, fingers dancing over the tracery of faded stretch marks that texture her skin.
He rests a hand, just there, and turns to catch Audrey’s eye. He wonders if, while he was closing up the restaurant, she told Nathan what they’d found in Colorado -- about who the Colorado kid was, about how they have more jagged, broken pieces of a desperate past she can’t remember. The look in her eyes, as she lifts her hips to meet Nathan’s mouthing kisses and pulls Duke down for a kiss, tells him nothing other than that she’s ready to live in the present with them, past or future demons be damned.
He leans into the kiss, feels her diaphragm expand beneath his hand as she pulls his scent into her lungs. Her lips part beneath his and press forward with tongue and teeth, messy and wet. Her hands, raised to his face to hold him close, smell of Nathan and her own arousal. Duke drags his own fingers up to her breast, thumbs a nipple, and feels her arch her back to meet him.
“Duke.” She whispers his name against his lips, “Duke, fuck I’ve wanted --”
“Yeah, me too.” His voice is shaking, and he’s aware that he’s rocking his hips up against her hip, Nathan’s wrist, his dick leaking moisture against them both; Jesus, their skin is so warm, the pressure so good. He dips his head and takes one of her dusky, tightened nipples in his mouth, fumbling the other between thumb and forefinger. Beneath his tongue and teeth he feels the areola pulling tighter, Audrey’s right hand tangled in the hair at the back of his neck, pulling him closer. He nips across her breast, then -- wanting to leave evidence of this night -- sucks hard at the flesh of her clavicle, meaning to bruise.
“Please,” Audrey whimpers against his temple. “Please -- God, Duke -- fuck, Nathan, don’t -- don’t stop -- ” and out of the corner of his eye he can see Nathan watching them, even as his teeth and tongue work steadily against Audrey’s clit. Duke imagines how she will taste as an echo on Nathan’s tongue, thinks, My turn next time.
And then, just as he’s turning back in search of Audrey’s lips, she’s coming with an eerie, silent grace, head thrown back against the pillows and thigh muscles clenched around Nathan’s ears in a vise grip. He pulls back, slightly, to watch her face as she rides out the inrush and ebb of release.
Something about this moment always strikes Duke as sacred in its uniqueness, like the rare, still solitude he occasionally finds at the heart of his meditation practice. Audrey’s lost to them, utterly uncaring of their presence as her whole being is wholly absorbed in riding out her own pleasure. And yet here he and Nathan are, invited to witness.
When her muscles relax, Nathan rests his head on her thigh and Duke leans down to lick the messy taste of Audrey from Nathan’s lips. They’re smiling into each others’ mouths, laughing breathlessly along with Audrey, whose orgasmic silence has given way to shaking post-coital laughter as she reaches bonelessly for Duke and Nathan, patting them indiscriminately.
“Hey, Parker, enjoy the afterglow,” Nathan says, breaking away from Duke’s mouth with one final kiss and extricating himself from the tangle of Audrey’s legs to crawl back up the bed so he can look her in the eye, kiss her on the lips.
“Mmm. So says the man,” slurs Audrey without any heat, “who used his own afterglow to blow me.” She giggles into Nathan’s shoulder, patting blindly across the bed for Duke. She finds him by touch, sliding a still-sluggish hand up between his thighs to cradle his balls in a loose and somewhat awkward back-handed grip.
Duke jerks at the caress, to his embarrassment almost recoiling.
“Hey, you okay?” Audrey pulls her hand away, rolling toward Duke with the beginnings of a frown on her face.
“No -- yes, I -- I’m fine, Audrey. Good -- it was good.” Duke swallows, catches her hand in his own and replaces it, gently pressing her fingers in to hold him firmly, feels the ripple of renewed arousal in his abdomen.
Duke may be an exhibitionist at heart, but he’s always found this moment of sex terrifying, like the moment when you walk onstage and the glare of the footlights make you feel absolutely, positively sure you’ve forgotten every single one of your lines. Duke knows his part as a confident flirt and seducer, but he’s never been able to pull off acting in the midst of sex. This is just him, that Audrey and Nathan are looking so hungrily at. This is just him -- and, Jesus Christ does he want them, but --
“Duke?” Audrey says again. “What do you want. Tell us.”
“I --” He’s been having non-stop fantasies about what he wants in bed with them for the past two days; he even woke from his brief few hours’ sleep the day before in his bunk on the Rouge hard from a tangled dream in which Nathan had gone with them to Colorado and their night in the motel room had ended quite differently.
She traces her fingers up from his groin to his cheek, fingernails tickling faintly across his torso. “Duke.”
He looks at her, then Nathan. They both look thoroughly fucked, their bodies languid and sleepy, and he thinks, I’ve done that. He’s pulled it off. No one’s fled in panic from their own desire or stormed off in anger or crawled away into a corner to lick their psychic wounds. Everyone’s safe, everyone’s whole, everyone knows they’re loved … and now Duke can finally fucking sleep.
“I --” He wants them, desperately, through the fog of exhaustion that’s closing in around him. It must be well past midnight now. The rain is falling in earnest on the roof about them. Will Audrey and Nathan have to get up for work in the morning?
“Here --” Nathan squeezes Audrey’s elbow and rolls off the far side of the bed, “-- hang on a minute, I think I know what we need.” He turns off the bedside lamp on that side of the bed, casting the apartment into shadow, and then comes around to Duke’s side of the bed and does the same.
In the darkness, Duke feels the bed dip as Nathan climbs in beside him. All three of them shift, gingerly, to accommodate their limbs in the double bed.
“We’re gonna need a bigger bed,” Duke murmurs under his breath and Nathan laughs at the joke.
“What --” He stops since he’s not even sure what he’s asking.
“You told me to listen to my body, Duke. Now it’s time for you to do the same.” Nathan spoons up behind Duke, mirroring the way Duke had been cradling Nathan earlier. “No one’s watching you now. We’re just here, holding you.” Nathan has, predictably -- now that he’s dealt, for the moment, with his own demons -- identified Duke’s problem in a heartbeat. And figured out a way to help him refocus on what’s actually important here.
Audrey’s hands find Duke’s chest in the dark, slide down toward his belly, then lower. He sucks in a breath as she takes him in hand.
“I never would have guessed Duke Crocker had performance anxiety about sex,” Audrey says as she starts to stroke him, gentle but sure. He opens his mouth to protest, but then Nathan reaches a hand down to join Audrey and, with a moan, he decides it’s not really that important to clarify things after all.
Audrey’s mouth finds his mouth first, and then Nathan’s lips are pressing sure kisses along his neck, sucking a hickey against his jawline. He closes his eyes against the dark, so his pupils will quit straining to see, and with a shuddering sigh gives himself over to their hands and mouths and whispered love.
It’s probably seconds, rather than minutes, but it feels as if Duke could float here forever, letting the orgasm build deep in his belly. Everything is skin-on-skin and scent and sound. Whispers of love and home and here from the two people it feels like he’s always wanted most of all and, until tonight, couldn’t quite let himself believe had found their way into his heart.
“Fuck,” he says, hearing the surprise in his own voice, as the orgasm hits him, over the murmur of Nathan in his ear -- I love you I love you I never stopped loving you -- and Audrey at his lips -- let it go let it go we’re here let it go.
He’s wakened at some point -- minutes? hours? -- later by flush of the toilet in Audrey’s tiny closet of a bathroom, the running of water, and then a few seconds -- minutes? -- later the damp heat of a warm washcloth running over his belly. A rustle of cloth as the duvet is pulled up and tucked in against the rapidly cooling, rain-damp night air. Thunders rolls, distantly, moving closer. A gust of rain against the windows, on the roof. Audrey murmurs something over his shoulder to Nathan, and they’re shifting him, settling around him, Nathan at his back and Audrey curled on her side with her ass nestled possessively into his groin. As she settles against the pillows, she gropes for his right hand and pulls it firmly over her breast, moulding his sleep-clumsy palm to her flesh.
Mine. He feels more than hears her whisper into the dark.
And you’re mine, he thinks, or perhaps says aloud, for Nathan whispers against the nape of his neck, “And now you’re both mine.”