Archive of Our Own

“A gift to summon the spring.”
- Spiritbox, Perfect Soul

...

Snowfall buries your problems along with your crops, a tangle of withered attempts sticking out from so much endless white like reaching fingers in the dark. You should have scythed them, but winter snuck in overnight and turned the volume down on everything in your life, burying your will to do much more than endure the silence.

In the quiet, you’ve been left alone to burn through the last of your fruit preserves, the hard cheese, and endless bottles of summer wine popping up iridium grade in the cellar with no one to share them with.

It seems like a waste, but you get drunk in your kitchen all by yourself, your booze-berry lips stained into ugly shapes, while Fish, the cat, spends the night hiding under the kitchen sink. You spend your time alternating between singing along with the old victrola and sobbing.

That first week of winter was a dedication to self-immolation.

The Ridgesiders suggest saving up all those harsh things for the annual bonfire, but you can’t wait until the end of the season: you build a pyre and put Jerry the flamingo on it along with the bouquet, and for an evening, you sit in your heavy mining boots, a heel popped on the warmed stones with a bottle on your knee, watching your memories of the two men that inspired them become ashes. You burn the sundress too.

You feel better in the morning.

Well, if you ignore your hangover.

Shane, you think, still has the wrong idea about self-medication, but being as dehydrated as you are, there aren’t any tears left to cry out when the image of the hurt look on his face floats to the surface of your imagination and you have to relive all his revelations about you one more time.

You don’t think about Sebastian.

You can’t, just yet —

You do other things instead.

You make sun tea in a jar in the kitchen window, and bake cookies with Granny’s recipe, and then go fishing. You pet all your animals twice, and sweep the barn one more time, and check to see that those weird-ass powder melons are growing from the random pack of seeds you hoed up. You hang out in the greenhouse, which smells loamy and fresh, and eat a fat, lopsided peach direct from the tree with the juice dribbling down your chin onto the dirt to ground yourself again and because the mess makes you feel marginally more human to appreciate that you can grow things, even when they aren’t perfect.

Grandpa grew strawberries for midwinter’s eve.

The memory inspires you to till up the soil and plant a few in his honour, and maybe for Evelyn as a thank you for the little notes she keeps sending you because she was the one who told you that he used to bring them into town —

You are so fucking lonely that when the reminder creeps in that no one you care for wants to talk to you, you nearly tear apart the little scaffold you made for the grape vines to climb when you sag into it.

You make pumpkin soup and pepper poppers that night, and you eat every single bite even though the latter is so damned hot you think your esophagus is melting, but the cheese is gooey and the soup is fragrant and fuck it all, if you can survive Shane’s favourite snack, you can survive anything.

The soup is soothing.

And that makes your eyes prickle again, because isn’t that exactly what Sebastian always said whenever you brought him a bowl?

No… no, you remembered wrong:

The smoked-out rasp of his murmur hits just like his praise, appreciative and a little melodic when he’d say, “This brings back good memories.”

You hang onto the table for a whole minute before you can breathe again, and you definitely don’t think about how their favourite foods befit their personalities:

The former felon with the soft touch and the asshole with the heart of gold, molten at the centre.

You’re a goddamned mess, farmer.

But you can’t stop thinking about them, either.

—

Going to the Saloon is an act of bravery because it’s a Tuesday after six p.m., and you walk the whole way not thinking about the schedule change — a shift in the darkness turning everything imposing after four p.m. and affecting circadian rhythms. Never mind your routine — you just want to keep sleeping, but if you don’t do something different, Lewis will show up on your doorstep again.

You don’t want to give him an eyeful of just how bad things are.

Flannel. Denim. A shower. You even remember a scarf and a slouchy beanie. Too many layers can be insulating, but they don’t soften the sting when you pass Willow Lane and remember the way the alley looked near Spirit’s Eve from a position on your knees.

You almost expect to see Shane, so you hunch into your jacket and keep walking.

One foot after the other on icy, downtrodden streets that no one’s shovelled in a week.

Maybe Elliot and Leah will make space for you if you buy them a round — if you can stomach another lecture on the nuance of wood grain direction again.

The problem is that distraction keeps you from thinking in a straight line, self-preservation ducked in favour of needing human company. You’re fucked before you even cross the threshold:

Gus brightens to see you, and you know by the clack of pool balls from the right-most room where Sebastian bought you a drink and conceded his title as the Valley’s reigning pool champion just how you’ve screwed up this time.

It’s Shane who stops cold, framed in the entryway to the games room with his pool cue in a guard position against his shoulder, grim expression a portent. You take a step back, because if Shane’s here on a Tuesday, it must mean Sebastian’s with him —

Have they smoothed things over?

“It’s good to see you,” Gus is saying. “We were starting to think you’d gotten snowed in.”

You drag your attention back to him. “Maybe I’ll just get something to go.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Emily chimes in. “It’s sleeting!”

You hadn’t noticed.

But Emily insists, “The food will be cold before you even make it past Pierre’s.”

This was a stupid decision.

Your low tones and feeble apologies notwithstanding, the silence that creeps from the back room as the game ceasing becomes an oppressive weight.

You can’t see them.

You can’t do this.

There aren’t any excuses.

You strain, trying to hear the low conversation, but under the jukebox music, there’s nothing but your imagination filling in the blanks.

You make fists of your hands on the counter and unfold them while you wait for your order, over and over until Sam steps up beside you — Sam, who is the least perceptive of all people — and asks in an undertone, “You okay, farmer? You look like you’re going to barf.”

From the backroom: a clatter of pool cues and the meaty sound of a body hitting the pool table. It scrapes across the hardwood and you don’t need to know who said what to react to the sounds of a fight starting, launching yourself sideways before the two men can do something stupid to each other.

The limits of your responsibility should end when someone draws blood, but who the hell writes the rules for this stuff?

It’s not what you expect at all: Sebastian is holding Shane up and Shane is shoving him off, and the pool table is a casualty of two bodies knocking into it in the scuffle —

The whole tableau like a museum sculpture, two figures twisting around each other, furious expressions and hands grasping clothing. If they were naked, you could get Leah to carve them.

Sebastian looks up just as Shane shakes him off, his hoodie off-kilter just enough to emphasize the reason for his stagger.

“Fuck off, Seb, I can walk,” he says, but he skirts your presence with only a brush to your shoulder, hands raised to avoid all contact, but while the moment is fleeting, the hesitation is real, and you can see that he wants to tear into you like nothing’s changed.

Sebastian just stands there.

No one says anything for a long moment, but in the silence you find a scatter of broken things — dashed hopes and small moments that feel more significant having lost them.

They shiver and stretch their wings like those little nighttime creatures that only appear for a little while in winter when the cold is just cold enough so you think for a second that they exist only in your imagination.

Frost butterflies, you think as you disconnect from the present for just a second to hide in something pretty and hopeful and delicate like a symbol for forgiveness.

That is a dream.

This is a waking nightmare.

Shane’s throat bobs, his eyes a little red, his mouth a hard line. Soft lips. Clenched jaw. Sweat. Stubble. Shadows around the eyes from sleepless nights. Shoulders turned inward, protecting vital organs already suffering damage.

He leans in, and you can smell the beer on his breath, but the sneer is a mask because you’ve seen a glimpse of what’s underneath:

“It didn’t mean anything,” he says.

You blink, the sting rising two seconds after the fact: not because of the lie, but because of what he’s trying to hide.

Your voice cracks. “I wish I believed that.”

Shane’s veneer — a hairline fracture of clarity in the bleary, drunken disconnect — shows too much, all at once, and reopens the wound.

You stand there for a second and you know he sees you: all those raw and tender things splayed wide for his examination, but his expression folds into itself like a collapsing star, and then all that remains is the void-dark that hangs over the world as Shane sees it.

Maybe that’s what compels you to keep trying:

“You weren’t a stand-in, either,” you tell him, knowing he won’t believe you. “You were not convenient.”

This isn’t a battle you’re going to win, Farmer. You don’t go toe to toe with someone else’s self-hatred and hope to make a difference. You just tell it like it is, palms sweating, hands shaking, messy and terrified and indelicate.

“I don’t regret it.”

You don’t regret wanting him, only how it happened. He doesn’t understand the difference.

“Fuck this,” Shane slurs. “You can just —”

Your throat closes. You’ve braced for it, but you’re still not ready.

It doesn’t happen the way you think. It doesn’t happen at all, because Shane mangles the accusation, and smiles with bleary, forced indifference.

“I don’t care.” 

He escapes. You let him.

“He’s drinking more these days,” Emily whispers like it’s a secret, but the whole bar hears.

Sebastian stares, and bows his head, that hard little smile of a vintage that is only familiar in that he only offered it to you when he was pissed at Demetrius turned into his chest, and you offer him the only truth you’ve got left:

“I can’t fix this.”

And because it’s the most honest thing you may have ever said, Sebastian’s expression melts into unguarded defeat. It softens so far into exhaustion that it aches to not reach for him, pull him into a hug right there in the middle of the tavern and forget for two seconds that it’s been two weeks since it ended because you couldn’t lie about your feelings.

You shrug your shoulders, your eyes burning.

“I can’t fix anything. I just get roped into circumstances that make no sense, and the one time I do anything, I — I fucked it up, Seb.”

He huffs a breath. “I know that’s what you think, farmer girl,” he says. “But you and I aren’t being honest with each other if you think that’s all there is creating this distance between us.”

You nod, more to yourself than him, and blink away the sting of it: your throat closing up.

This is what it’s got to be from now on.

“I wasn’t keeping secrets,” you admit. You were just scared, and lonely, and a little hurt maybe that he’d walked away, but you don’t admit to any of that because it’s too late.

But he hesitates: something glimmers beneath the surface and vanishes before you can look closer to determine what it is — it looks like guilt from this angle. But maybe you’re imagining it. Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore.

Sebastian’s silence is no more condemnation than it is acceptance:

Some things just are.

I’m so fucking sorry, you want to tell him, because now the scattered annotations of your almost-relationship make sense:

He wanted a safe harbour, instead you gave him a shipwreck.

“I know,” he says. “I’d never forget.”

And there’s that haunted look again.

Seb is almost rueful when he says it: “Sobriety has that effect. The forgetting part happens with the substances.”

You blow out a breath, a little relief trickling down your spine at the indirect reassurance that he’s not using again.

You nod. He nods. Your stomach twists. Maybe you will barf after all.

You leave the bar, your food under one arm and your pride dragging along behind you like a collection of tin cans, off to your honeymoon, ‘just decimated’ sign taped to your back.

Emily was right: the snow slushes beneath your feet and when you turn your face up to the street lamp, your cheeks get pelted with little bits of icy water. It drenches your jacket, creeping towards your bones with inhospitable intentions to do worse damages to the dregs of your good humour.

Ah, but farmer, you’re lying to yourself: you’re already numb.

The creak and slam of the saloon’s door belches a burst of music and laughter into the silence, but the weather drowns it in an icy hush.

“Why didn’t you wait for me?”

The words hang a moment before you turn to find Sebastian in front of the Stardrop, his hands hanging because he’s at least one part frog and the damp has never bothered him, so he doesn’t hunch up. He shrugs instead.

“You didn’t break it off because I scared you with that note. So?”

You see him as he was, maybe ten years ago, like a ghost:

Sebastian’s younger self — the dreamer with big plans to get out of this little town, who wanted see the world from the back of his motorcycle; alone and broke but maybe smiling because he still remembered how to be happy: a glimpse of potential in a younger man who didn’t have to hide behind the armour of having lost a decade to prison.

Nothing hurts as much as seeing a glimmer of that innocence, knowing what you’ll do to it with your best intentions.

It’s a whisper: “I didn’t read it.”

And you’ll never know what it says, because he took it with him.

You start walking again.

“Why?” It rings around the square, an accusation.

“Because I thought you left.”

“I went to the city,” he shouts back. “At Demetrius’ recommendation. To see a lawyer, and to my parole officer just to be a hundred percent clear that I wasn’t going to screw things up for you if we got together.”

The snow crunches under your feet, but you’re shaking your head, walking faster.

Don’t, please, you think.

“It said I’d be back soon,” Seb says, high and clear. “It said —”

Those three words hanging between you unsaid are a weapon.

Sebastian stops himself, hanging onto something that you’ve ruined, but the choice not to wield them makes him better than anyone you’ve ever met, you think: the best kind of friend, the best kind of partner, and you don’t deserve him, farmer.

You keep walking, but the urge to run crumples the box beneath your arm.

“Me too, Seb,” you say under your breath, your face hot and wet, and though you swipe at your cheeks, you can tell the difference between the rain and whatever guilt is trickling out of your eye sockets.

“I thought —” he starts, and falters. “I thought you felt it too.”

You did. You do.

Instead you give him one last truth, “There’s two of you.”

“So you called it off with us both?“ He’s not going to let this go.

You turn, anger at yourself steaming off the cold as each raindrop fizzles off the places you’re exposed.

“Because I can’t choose.”

And no one is going to make you.

Sebastian doesn’t stop you, but it doesn’t occur to you that whatever’s gestating takes time: you don’t have the whole picture. Not every truth knows how to fly.

—

This is how it goes, because we so often only hear pieces of a whole conversation, the absences unrelenting when blame sits on the surface obscuring all the stuff happening underneath.

Maybe you should have listened closer, give it a second to sink before condemning yourself to shallow expectations.

Farmer, you’re so busy worrying about the splatters on the canvas you almost miss the big picture…

What had Sebastian said in those plaintive tones before getting frustrated?

He’d gone to the city to tie up some loose ends.

Just in case.

As a precaution…

Cold spreads icy fingers through your chest and throat, your soggy dinner turned gross, the chill seeping through bone and sinew less to do with the weather and more to the ends that he hadn’t made any demands or expectations from you then, or now, even.

There was a direction in place, the signposts evident, but what is consent if not conversation first? You know this, you silly little kinkster:

No agreements.

No contract.

No promises.

“Fuck sakes,” you breathe, blinking back the rising swell, tide pools flooding.

Still, there was expectation. Wasn’t there? There was a precedent, evidenced by the number of times you’d waited for him, naked and on your knees, patient as ever, deserving the praise he offered when he returned from the kitchen, or rewarded you with his attention. You’re supposed to trust him.

Why then? Why not here?

Your stomach twists.

You know the answer: it’s somewhere out here in the dark, hovering like a giant question mark over rough hands and sad green eyes.

Then again, the long way home isn’t a straight road — a fact tried and tested as you slop past the Ranch, the mud up to your ankles, and the windows remain dark squares staring with indifference onto your passage.

Shane should have gotten home ages ago.

Maybe he’s sleeping off his future hangover.

Maybe he’ll be alright, spared from your affections because despite what he believes about himself, he’s a smart guy — but you know false comfort when you tell yourself otherwise.

Maybe —

Your heart gives a squeeze. 

In the distance, near the cliffs, you hear a sound: a small thing, easily lost under the patter of rain, ready to be sloughed off with the eroding soil and sediment and pushed off the edge as if there weren’t a waterfall not ten feet in the other direction.

Someone’s crying.

Farmer, you’re not going to believe me when I tell you this, but try:

This is not your fault.

Now, run.

—

Winter dark makes all the difference when it sleets, your misplaced footfalls sliding through puddles, black ice beneath the feet, wet up to the ankles and damp through the knees of your trousers when you sink to them.

There’s no light on the cliffs, but somehow you find him:

He shines bright, even when he’s dying. An angry red flare smeared against the night, and you — you’re just an insect.

Shane says your name, and while there’s nothing supernatural about it, some part of you feels it like an incantation, notched under the ribcage to measure out a different rhythm whose cadence is bracketed in fear and stubborn resilience. The cold creeps in, but it’s not the rain:

Two minutes in either direction might mean losing him.

You’d hear him anywhere.

“…I’m just a soiled piece of garbage.”

You push back the hair that’s sticking to his forehead, the tally of empty beer cans like shotgun shells. Some are older and rusted. He’s been coming back here often.

“Don’t you know that’s redundant?” you breathe, but he doesn’t hear it and your chest feels too tight.

There’s vomit. He’s crying.

But the message becomes less hazy when Shane’s explanation arrives in slivers you need to put back together to see a complete picture, because the brain compartmentalizes certain dark things into tiny pieces when it grows too big to process.

These are just fragments:

Too white, water-logged fingers.

The bruises under his eyes ringed red with exhaustion.

Flecks of dirt in his stubble, on his forehead.

Can’t do it.

Can’t keep fighting.

He’s trying.

He fears success.

There’s no strength in his limbs left, but his heart hammers beneath your fingers when you press them to his soaked teeshirt and the feverish skin underneath.

When Shane meets your gaze for the last time, he can’t focus for more than a few seconds, and defeated, he says your name again like it was a void he’d reach into again and again silently hoping and fearing that maybe you’ll reach back.

I think you should take me to the hospital now.

For someone so heavy, he’s light as a feather when you pull him up to sitting, half in this world, and half in the next one already.

You carry him the long way back, because the cliffs are the farthest point from Harvey in either direction.

One step after the next —

And for a little while, maybe, with your arm around his waist and his head lolling onto your shoulder, you remember a reason to stop faltering.

—

Shored up on the ratty purple rug, you shiver into the pre-dawn in the quiet. Down the hall, the boiler turns off and on to mark the hours, but you’ve lost count. Somewhere between the nightmares, a pair of boots walks across the room to find you curled up in a place you don’t belong, but you couldn’t go home, and you couldn’t stay under the fluorescents at the clinic.

Shane would hate that.

“Hey, farmer girl.” Seb’s voice is a ghostly hush, so soft it aches, but you curl around it like you could hold on a little longer to the comfort of being close to him without touching anything he owns.

He doesn’t ask what you’re doing on the floor in front of his bed.

He knows.

You squeeze your eyes shut that the scrunch squeezes out a little wet, but they’re not tears, because you’re not crying. It’s just tired tension. It’s just —

A thumb traces your cheek, hiding the evidence.

“He’ll be okay,” he rasps in that tired hush, sorrow and relief indiscernible because “okay” is measured in right now and not forever. “I stayed until he fell asleep.”

You should go, but if the places you reside don’t feel like the places you’re supposed to be. That’s why you snuck into this basement.

That’s why when you push yourself to sitting, Sebastian’s exhausted smile makes you feel like you’re hallucinating the warmth radiating from his body, the persuasive scent of cigarette smoke and leather addling your senses. No further questions. Just his open hands.

“I didn’t —” You think better of making excuses for your behaviour. “Thank you.” You swallow, your voice small. You should have called tomorrow when the calm, clear shock of reality wakes you up fully to how inappropriate this is. “I’ll go now.”

There’s barely space enough to stand between him and the bed frame, but your clothes are heavy with rain water but not half as heavy as your soul and when Seb follows it’s with the express intention of preventing you from doing anything stupid, and you sag into his touch when he pulls you into his chest. He folds you into him, and while it’s familiar, it’s new too. It’s different. It’s tender like a bruise. The kind that you want to squeeze and rub as it forms, just so you can keep feeling something.

He’s smiling, but the sound is muffled when he says into your hair, “No, love.”

The shudder that rises is soothed only by the hands wrapping the back of your neck, pushing your jacket from your shoulders with quiet insistence.

“No, sweetheart.” He chuckles a little, like you haven’t caught up yet.

His stubble rasps your cheek before his mouth touches down at the corner of your lips, and murmurs, “That’s enough.”

He doesn’t kiss you, but Seb’s progress is careful when he pulls off your sodden sweater, your damp teeshirt, fingers trailing between your shoulder blades as he unclasps your bra. He unfastens your belt, and you let him push down your jeans halfway before he sits you on the edge of his bed to take off the rest. Wet socks and all.

You’re dressed in a clean teeshirt and covered to the chin with the scent of him in the blankets, the springs creaky on the twin bed as he strips to his boxer briefs and slides in close enough that your thighs notch together. Close enough that you can measure your breaths against his. Close enough to kiss, but the only place his lips touch are your forehead.

“Thank you for finding him,” Sebastian says, and tucks you closer, one arm around your shoulders, the other hand pressing you into his chest at the small of your back.

“This is so fucked up,” you whisper.

“Hm,” Seb murmurs, his eyes already half-shut. “Maybe it’s time to start looking at things from a different perspective: maybe what you’ll find looks damned good, given the alternative.”

“What’s that?”

“Never knowing each other. Being separated.” He hums, the sound soothing it’s nearly a lullaby. “Three weeks apart is too much.”

Close like this, it’s like you’re sharing secrets. His murmur is so easy, you’d forgotten what it feels like to go molten under his fingers.

“We still have time, farmer girl,” he says. “I don’t want to waste it. Enough with the self-flagellation.”

You withdraw a little, but Seb’s eyes are shut, the line of his mouth easy and satisfied, like he’s figured it all out while you’re still thrashing, still fighting the current.

“Are you panicking?” he asks, not opening his eyes.

“I thought I fucked up.”

“You did,” he agrees. “But we’re what? Two to one, now, on that front? You forgave me.”

“I don’t understand —”

“It might not be easy, but it’s not that complicated either.”

“Sebastian.”

He sighs, and when those lashes lift again, there’s a lazy appreciation shadowing his expression. “Be patient for a change. I need to talk to Shane.”

Everything sinks at once, closing over your head so you can’t breathe.

You nearly lost him.

You very nearly did.

You never apologized.

Shane didn’t want to hear it.

“He hates me,” you whisper.

Seb’s hold on you tightens. “Is that why you texted me instead of staying with him at the clinic?”

The world blurs. You nod.

“No one hurts like that over someone they hate, farmer girl,” he says, and against your ear, “But what he did is not your fault.”

You shake your head.

“It’s not,” Seb says. “I think what he feels for you is so strong. But the chemicals in his brain that throw things off are just way stronger.”

“So I’m not winning the competition of what fucks Shane up more.” You sniff. “Insulting.”

Seb snuffs a laugh. “You should tell him that.”

“He wouldn’t think it was funny.”

“Not ‘haha’ funny, but darkly amusing. You just —“ He weighs his next words. “You’ve got so much love to give. You’re like a bottomless pit that’s hard to crawl out of. It’s terrifying. You know that, right?”

You frown at him. “A bottomless pit.”

He nods. “An abyss.”

“Thanks, Sebastian.”

He brushes your nose with his. “You’ve want flowery prose, go talk to Elliott. All I’ve got are Solarion Chronicles references.”

You think about it for a second. “You’re telling me I scared him.”

Seb says with affection, “You scare the shit out of me, so yeah, I’d say so.”

It settles, your mind clearing a little with the confession, but how deep it goes is difficult to gauge when your feet can’t touch the bottom of whatever this is —

“You’re, ah —” Seb’s smile flickers and fades, but the warmth of it lingers because the smoky depths of his voice trundle across your senses. “You’re easy to get lost in.”

You drift a little, forgetting to fight the feeling that you’re on your own in everything for a second, and you just exist — suspended in the safety net of Sebastian’s embrace.

“I am patient,” you mutter, petulant, and he chuckles, pulling you closer, like you might slip through his fingers if he loosens his grip.

“No, you’re not. You’re a greedy little brat who doesn’t read her letters.”

It ripples into a shiver, your body responding with pique and a little tremor of something sweeter.

“You’re still my greedy little brat, however,” he murmurs, and yawns. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have shown up here, soaking wet again and expecting me not to do anything about it.”

“Staking claims, then?” you hedge.

He says, “That’s not being possessive. It’s a practical consideration. Come to think of it — I should put your clothes in the dryer so you can’t slip out of here while I’m sleeping.”

You poke him in the ribs. He grins.

“What do you need to talk to Shane about?” you ask, because you can’t help it: your heart is a hammer, your body so easily moulded to his you can’t help but feel every call and response —

The hair on his shins. The hardness of his thigh parting your legs. The angle of his hips against yours. His chest. His piercings. His mouth when he leans in, lips parted, and breathes against you before he touches down:

“Sharing,” he says.

“W-why?” Your eyes burn. That’s not what you expected.

Seb squeezes the back of your neck — one part warning, one part reassurance — and you open beneath him at the slightest prompting, because you belong to this moment and this man, who has had your best interests in his hands from the beginning.

Sebastian doesn’t falter. His tongue dips into your mouth, tasting you again with that surreal, slow savour that arches your back and curls your toes and leaves you full to the brim because Sebastian likes to control the kiss.

He likes to hold you by the throat and rub his tongue against yours until you yield to his rhythm or you start to whimper, whichever happens first.

When he’s finished, you’re gasping, but the explanation is simple, pressed into your skin like a promise:

“Because I love you.”

Everything tingles.

His hands are gentle, scooping up your teeshirt to touch your skin, but you don’t stop there: you pull it off over your head and follow the crest of movement, chest to chest so there’s nothing between you.

His gaze dips to your breasts, and when they return to your face, they’ve blown black to the edges.

You search him. Me too, you want to say, but you don’t. It scares you.

Knuckles graze your chin. His hand cups your cheek. Fingertips trail along the curve of your ear. Sebastian nods. “And I know what you need better than you do.”

“What’s that?” you ask, but it’s breathy.

He kisses you again:

A deep, open-mouthed lick that unfurls your body further into his where the points of connection blur into the ease of familiarity, comforts offered and taken.

“A reminder in no uncertain terms,” he says. “Because I don’t want to lose you, and I… I don’t know what I’d do if —”

You see it in the way Sebastian’s gaze goes a little unfocused, his expression half-sunk into the pillows so you nearly miss the distance:

Memories float free from their moorings, and you think of those fantasy novels he’s talked about that influence the way he writes his campaigns — the ones with the orcs and elves, battle-slain spirits confined to dead marshes. He looks haunted, only for a second, but you can only offer the reassurance that you’ll hold on no matter where the current takes him.

“I’ll be your anchor,” you tell him. “Okay?”

Seb blinks, confused out of his momentary contemplation.

“I’m not going anywhere without you,” you explain. “Unless you want me to let go —”

“No.” His arms tighten, the length of him pressed into your thigh, so hard it almost hurts. “We’re in a twin bed made for one person and with barely enough room to breathe, and you’re still not close enough to me.”

“This isn’t overcompensating for the past two weeks?”

“You’re still wearing panties. So no, I don’t think so.”

Your breathing hitches. He notices.

“Sweetheart,” he says, his voice a warning rumble of thunder. “Yoba knows —“ Like it hurts him. “We’re going to figure this out. You’ve got my blessing, but I need his too.”

Shane.

It sits on the surface like a too fragile leaf, light enough to keep hurting when it doesn’t sink.

Seb presses his mouth to yours again, and you breathe into the kiss, your eyes fluttering. “He’s more stubborn than you are. He’s not going anywhere either.”

“I really want to believe you.”

He nods like he knows.

“So.” You swallow hard.

“Stay with me,” he murmurs, a little hoarse.

If there’s fear in Sebastian’s gaze, it’s not because of what you did or what you’re doing, only the resignation to knowing what life looks like without each other.

“I know I’m not the safe option, farmer girl, but —“

“Neither am I, I guess.”

He huffs a laugh. His attention dips again, brow furrowed, and a little slyly edged.

“You feel pretty safe to me, all things considered. Home and harbour,” he says. “And there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to get back to you if we were apart, but I’d rather not test the limits of the law on that front.”

Tomorrow you need to be brave, you think. For Shane. For Seb too.

“Okay. Alright.”

Seb’s gaze lids, and you can feel just how rigid he is half-underneath you: how unrepentant about his desire because being with him feels like the most natural thing.

“That’s not convincing,” he murmurs. “Are you uncomfortable?”

You’re empty, and a distraction would be welcome, but the part of your brain that is still thinking about Shane in the clinic is tripping over your worries.

His fingers curl around your thigh, the tips trailing along your pantyline, sneaking a little beneath it to squeeze your hip, the curve of your ass the exact right fit for Sebastian’s palm when he sneaks below the fabric.

“I’m fine,” you manage.

“I should clarify: I meant I wanted his blessing to court you,” Seb says in a tone so low your skin prickles with a shiver. His touch is illustrative: smoothing out any misgivings.

“Oh.”

“Make it official.” He smirks. “He knows about this. He knew before. Farmer girl — Shane isn’t some innocent who you were taking advantage of. Everyone’s accountable for their own decisions. Don’t take all the credit.”

Oh.

“Here I was thinking I was corrupting you both.”

He snorts. “You’re adorable.”

“We’re not just —” fucking. “We weren’t before.”

Sebastian searches you, and nods. “Now it’s on the table. This is very nearly almost something official.”

You flinch, laughing at the intensity of his expression.

“Would that be okay? If I held some of your attention?” Seb asks.

“You never lost it. But I don’t know how to negotiate this… additional complication.”

His response is a tug of your panties, the gusset pulled aside with his thumb as his fingers trace the edges of your arousal, wetting the tips, rubbing you open.

“Right now, the math is simple: I’m gonna start with two fingers, and we’ll work our way up from there. See what works.” He’s dead serious when the first slips in, and then the second, pulling you onto his chest to get better leverage.

Forget sleeping.

“We’ll figure out the rest of the equation later,” he says.

Yoba. He’s so hard, and he shivers at the feeling when you angle to better take him.

There’s a glimmer of something tender uncertain that lingers, but you brush it away with a touch of your fingers. He leans into it.

“There’s going to be a point in time when I’m going to get you to beg for it, but this is not it, farmer girl. Tonight… tonight I just want you and I —”

You kiss him: the last kiss before the turn because not all shifts are seismic, but they can still make the sort of waves that flood cities.

Atlantis, you think, was mythic.

It probably wasn’t as pretty as the way Seb sighs when he finds you soaking through your panties.

“You make this so fucking easy,” he says, pushing down the waistband of his boxer-briefs, the shaft slotting along your slit to soak it. The rest is a rhythm you know too well, probably, because you rise just enough to take the first three inches and he eases all the way in with a tilt of his hips. Teamwork, or something.

“Seb, what are you doing —“

“Do you want to stop?”

No, fuck. You shake your head. He nods as if to say, That’s what I thought.

“I’m going to tear these panties off you, I swear to Yoba,” he mutters, but it’s a lazy complaint and his head rocks back when you drape yourself over his chest, moving slowly with an easy cadence that lets you feel how hard he is —

His heartbeat thunders through your bodies when he slows your movements with a, “Hold it,” and a press of his fingers to your hips. “That’s it, sweetheart, just go slowly for me. Grind it nice and easy.”

Seb laughs when you obey, rolling your hips, your nipples dusting his chest, elbows on either side of his head.

He wraps his arms around you, cradling your body against his.

“I can take direction,” you tell him.

He licks his lips, murmuring into your temple, “Keep going, then.”

But Seb’s fingers stroke over the back of your head and down your back like he was memorizing the feel of your body over his. He’s indulgent — taking little sips of your tender places, creating little distractions when he kisses your shoulder, your cheek, your throat.

He whispers in your ear, “I love the way you fuck me,” and you very nearly come right there, but he places a hand against your lower back to hold you to him while he rocks up into you, letting you feel every slippery inch of his cock easing out and back in, over and over until the friction fuzzes your brain with white noise, everything swollen and too wet to be too sensitive.

It’s tender. It’s slow. You keep going.

Stubble brushes your cheek, and you squeeze good and hard when you start to ride him properly, but it’s not the sex that captivates him — not your undulating spine or the way your breasts sway a little bit, not the way you respond to the stroke of his thumb when he brushes over the hood of your clit like he was petting it.

He’s smiling:

A curious little half-grin, his eyes mostly lidded as he watches you trying to please him.

“You’re so beautiful,” Sebastian says, and you sob as he sits up, taking you with him into his lap where you don’t have the leverage to keep going but it doesn’t matter because he’s kissing you.

And kissing you.

And kissing you like he’s been in the desert for a decade and you’re an oasis.

“I missed you,” Seb whispers at some point, and you shatter.

You come so hard on him that you lose all muscular control, and with spotting vision, you realize he’s laid you down to follow you over into oblivion in a handful of firm thrusts to fill you up, warm and soft and sloppy and reverent.

It’s unlike anything you’ve done before with him.

It feels like something’s different — like the tectonic plates have shifted and the oceans are going to accommodate with a tsunami, somewhere far away, later.

“Are you afraid?” he asks, because he must see it in your face.

You’re nodding, because you’re not clairvoyant.

“Me too,” he says. “But I’d rather be afraid with you than for you, you know.”

You and Seb against the darkness, but even Solarion campaigns need a third for the party.

“I know.”

He’s still inside you when he pulls you back to the pillows, into the circle of his arms and beneath the covers, legs entwined, souls too, maybe —

Maybe that was the point of this exercise:

Choose which door you go through and reap the consequences.

No one’s grading you on this scenario, anyhow.

He doesn’t pull out.

Seb huffs into your throat, and you feel the elastic on your panties pop twice as he tugs them to shreds: first at the hip, and then at the gusset. He throws the scrap of fabric somewhere.

“Keep it warm for me, alright?”

Because even making love with Sebastian has a little bit of spice.

You grin, tired but content. “Alright.”

The goodnight kiss he gives you lingers against your lips, fading into the soft heaviness of dreams as you realize Seb’s sunk into unconsciousness.

It’s not hard to settle beside him, sharing the same pillow, breathing the same air again. The weight of days and nights alone are lifted so easily by his presence — some shared burden that doesn’t weigh any more than a few tears, in hindsight.

“Love you,” you tell him, hesitant, like the words might hurt. They don’t, of course. Something loosens in your chest, like you can breathe a little easier having admitted it.

His lips curved at the edges like it rouses him just enough to acknowledge it.

“Good girl,” Sebastian breathes.

It’s the last thing that follows you into dreams.

—

It’s warmer in the farmhouse when you get home. Midafternoon sun paints cold pats of buttery light on the kitchen, the melty feeling of waking up in Sebastian’s arms a lingering comfort as you shower and change clothes, and set a fire burning for the evening in the hearth. It started snowing on your walk home, and the ground is as white and fresh as marshmallow fluff by the time you reach the farm.

Wool socks and a sweater over flannel and leggings. Hot cocoa. Cookies, maybe. While you’re waiting for Shane to recover.

Baking. Baking sounds like a solid plan to occupy idle hands.

Then you’ll get out a pad of paper and a pen, and write down exactly what you’re going to say to him in the effort to make amends so you can’t fuck it up again.

This is the plan.

It’s cold outside, but warmer with the lingering burn of Sebastian’s touch offering comfort as you wash your hair and get into snuggly, comfortable clothes, and get the flour and the chocolate chips and the brown sugar.

The last dregs of the year turn like Winter Star decorations in your mind. You could put up a tree, you think. Maybe you could invite Shane over, and Sebastian. Make them dinner. Talk things over.

New year, new possibilities.

The daydream shatters in a cloud of baking powder and with a knock at the front door.

Loud enough to make you jump, your heart kicks back against your ribs in response, but the abrupt interruption to your thoughts leaves you startled that thinking of him has summoned Shane to your doorstep.

He stands on the ground, and not the porch, and the snow reveals too much:

Footsteps track back and forth, up and down in anxious circuits — an orbit that brought him up the stairs more than once, and sent him back to hesitation and second guesses on the ground while he paced it off to the conclusion you read on his face:

Shame in those green eyes at odds with the firm clench to his jaw.

Shane stares a second, his throat working, but all he manages is a monosyllabic, rough scrape:

“Hey.”

You can’t catch your breath, though it puffs out of you in a billowing cloud when your exhalation seems to deflate every ounce of self-preservation you have. His gaze flicks to your legs, and away —

You didn’t expect Harvey to release him so soon, but then again, you don’t know what you expected. Not him here. Not the bruises beneath his eyes, or the checked flannel shirt and jeans because last night’s clothes are ruined. Heavy boots. Snowflakes in his hair. Every single excuse wasted for him to be here having this conversation.

It should be a confrontation.

He should be eviscerating you.

You want him to, suddenly. Because a pissed off Shane is better than a Shane who wants to die.

“Oh man — uh — how do I say this?”

He hesitates, the words careful, like he can’t orient himself to this new reality where you’re actually breathing the same oxygen. It’s surreal.

“I’m really sorry for what happened at the cliffs. That was… embarrassing.”

The self-deprecating half-smirk that appears and fades is misplaced — infuriating.

He wouldn’t be smiling if he’d seen himself, you think.

But it’s Shane, and his eyes are bright when he gulps a breath and looks at you again like it’s taken all his courage to do this one little thing, and with your shredded dignity, you find a spark of anger deep within and strike at it like kindling.

“I’m just glad you’re still here,” you tell him. You mean it. Of course you do. But the hollow fear-driven ache doesn’t go away —

I thought I lost you, goes unsaid.

You’ve felt so horrible over the way you treated him. You missed his stupid face. His dark sense of humour. His grumpy Sundays which happen literally any day of the week. His presence a rain cloud, his physical warmth, his tenderness when he talks about Jas. His fucking chicken stories. His perpetual five o’clock shadow. His mouth when he smiles. The smell of his sweatshirt. His kiss, though brief, which undid enough of you that you were willing to sacrifice everything if it meant sparing his heart from the likes of your wrecking ball infatuation.

It was always more than that, wasn’t it?

You were never going to be “just friends” with this fuckhead.

A full body shudder wakes something inside you when Shane’s smile fades. He must see it in your face: for someone who nearly died last night, he’s not treading carefully enough around your fragile feelings —

Not ‘fragile’ like a daisy, you realize, staring at this man who raked your guilt complex over thorns for two weeks, who ignored you, who stands before you now faking contrition.

‘Fragile’ like a fucking bomb.

“Wow,” he says, “it was that serious, huh? I can hardly remember.”

You stare, because you’re not sure how to express your relief and your terror at what his body felt like under your arm when you weren’t sure if his organs were about to shut down, or what you’d do if he fell unconscious.

You see him in your mind’s eye: a pale body, cliffside.

Midnight under rainfall.

What if you hadn’t heard him crying?

Something catches up to him then, and maybe this little dance with death he’s indulging in registers, because he takes a breath, and turns away from your glare, a little pink in the cheeks from the cold or from embarrassment or who fucking cares —

“I’ve decided I want to see a therapist. Harvey got me in touch with a colleague of his —”

He stops himself from elaborating, as if you don’t want to hear the details.

Sebastian’s words ring around your head:

No one hurts like that over someone they hate.

“Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for taking care of me. And I want you to know that I’m going to take things a little more seriously from now on.”

It’s all sincere, but it’s rehearsed: a careful arrangement he thinks you want to hear. Maybe he practiced while he was pacing back and forth in front of your porch.

Shane’s already turned away when his voice dips, the admission tender, the feeling behind it genuine and painful to admit to anyone, least of all to you. Maybe that’s why he thinks you don’t hear him. Maybe that’s why he says it at all —

“I don’t want to be a burden on anyone.”

He fires off a sad smile like that’s it, his head bowed, but it still takes two seconds too long for you to catch up, your strangled invitation to parry crystalline in the cold:

“You fucked up, Shane.”

Your eyes are burning, but you press your lips together hard when he turns back, shocked.

“What?”

You march into the snow in your socks.

“You fucked up, Shane,” you enunciate. “You fucked up bad if you thought that would be a good enough conclusion to tie things up here, between us. You’re not absolved. I don’t forgive you. That’s not enough.” And because now you’re mad, you add, “You don’t get to fuck off.”

Maybe he expected something softer from you; someone delicate that dances around the point instead of stomping on it.

He blinks. “What more do you want?”

You fold your arms over your chest.

And a little louder, when he realizes you aren’t mollified: “This —” he gestures. “This is all I’ve got.”

You make fists of your hands, your nails digging into your palms, but somehow you manage to point at the door of your house with a shaking finger, the words hissed between your teeth, “Would you like to come inside?”

He rears back like you’re a viper. “Fuck no, farmer — you —” He stops. Licks his lips. Tension spindles into something vicious. You can see it behind his eyes when they go flinty. Instead of leaving, he takes a step forward.

“Which part wasn’t clear? The fact that I’m absolving you of all involvement or the fact that I don’t give a shit?”

“About what? Me caring about you or you being a liar?”

He gapes. “You’re serious.”

“You didn’t want to hear it.”

“You weren’t saying anything worth hearing.”

“You didn’t give me a chance!”

“Kind of hard to carry on a conversation with a cock in your mouth —”

“Oh, remind me of how much you didn’t want that.”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t say much. You just walked off.”

“Because I’m not going to be your distraction when your boyfriend is out of town.”

“So between then and now your self-respect went where, exactly?” You sneer. “Oh, and the parameters of our relationship weren’t defined yet, by the way.”

“Oh, I know — I already spoke to him.”

“What did he say?”

“‘It’s not that complicated.’ Whatever that means.”

“You’re jealous,” you breathe.

Shane blinks. “The hell you say.”

It strikes like lightning. “Of him or of me?”

“Fuck off,” he says. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

You grab his sleeve. “I know you thought you weren’t good enough for me to pick first.”

Shane stares at you, his mouth flattening into a thin line. He nods, and sniffs, and when he leans in again, there’s a threat in it when he says, “Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time: I don’t care.”

You shiver at the intensity, clinging to his jacket when the heat rolling off him is the only thing keeping your blood pumping in the freezing weather.

“And maybe you’re only saying that because it’s easier keeping everyone at arm’s distance: no commitment to anyone, a guilt-free escape.”

His gaze flickers.

You loosen your grip on his arm, swallowing hard.

“Nothing to anchor you to this plane of existence, huh?”

You nod, because while you didn’t see it before, the events of last night offer a new perspective: it’s really bad.

What about Marnie? What about Seb? What about Jas?

“Okay, Shane.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, because he takes a step that presses you backwards, and then another where his anger gathers. You move with him — not touching, but whatever simmers between you licks up your legs and into your core.

“You don’t know me at all, farmer. You don’t know what I’ve been through. Because if you did, you would know what you’re getting into, and you wouldn’t want it, or me, or this. Trust me when I say that not getting involved with me is the better alternative.”

You jut your chin. “Your drama is a colour that is visible to only certain kinds of shrimp.”

He clings to the doorframe, and for a second, you think he’s going to shut it in your face.

Instead, he chuckles, despair lacing the sound with a brittle edge, his grip turning his knuckles white.

“Why aren’t you more scared?”

You search him — you, the one kinda-dating an ex-felon and recovering addict. You might have a coping problem yourself… commitment complications, daddy issues.

“I’m on a first-name basis with the void, these days,” you say. “Besides, between you and I, one of us has to be brave.”

“Has it occurred to you that you might just be —”

“Don’t finish that sentence if you know what’s good for you, Shane.”

“We’re not doing this,” he says. “I’m done. I’m getting the fuck out of here —”

“Do you hate me as much as you hate yourself?” you ask.

It hangs, but rather than soften him, he recoils as if struck.

“Fuck off,” Shane whispers.

But that’s not enough. “You think you’ve got this self-defence tactic all sorted. But I can see you under there, and the only thing that I’m getting is that you’re scared, and conflicted, and —” You gesture at his crotch, the front tented. “Full of shit too.”

He looks down, the tension in his shoulders curling them up to his ears. He’s breathing hard, the snow drifts curling into the front room from the open door. It’s cold, but he’s flushed, his eyes glazed over and hostile when he lifts his chin again.

“You don’t like that, do you? Being told you’re wrong,” you say. “You’ve worked so hard to convince yourself that you don’t deserve anything good that any challenge shakes the foundations. They’re not solid, Shane.”

He’s glaring again, a vein jumping in his jaw the longer he doesn’t soften under the assault. Kindness could wear him down, you’re pretty sure — but you’re out of time for that.

“You sound so certain.”

This is it, you think. He’s going to leave, and maybe it’ll be over before it ever even started, so you go for it:

“No one else knows you like I do, and all I’ve gotten are tiny glimpses into the guy hiding behind this asshole exterior. You might not, but I like him.” You swallow. “I think he deserves to be loved.”

The silence that drops is a hammer fall, and in the hush, you can hear the sound of every snowflake hitting the floorboards as they melt.

Shane moves all at once, the door slamming shut behind him as he shoulders into your house like he owns the place, boots on, a swirl of cold air when he falls upon you in the kitchen —

He crowds into the counter as the whole of his presence carries you backward and you whimper at the first contact of his fingers around your neck, his thumbs framing your face, his mouth already on yours as the warning falls from his lips in a hot rush:

“Then maybe what I should be doing is proving you wrong.”

There’s nothing clumsy about the kiss, but the hunger behind it startles a noise from you as his tongue fills the space of your mouth, forcing you open further, arching you backward because the counter cuts into your hips and there’s no place to go.

There’s just him, and the demands of a kiss that makes space instead of coaxing you into pliancy.

As rough as his stubble, he pushes a thigh between yours, and you moan at the sudden pressure as it notches you into his hip.

“That what you wanted?” he asks, but his mouth closes around the soft skin under your ear and he sinks his teeth in like he wants to leave a mark behind, and your mind, your body, your willingness to keep fighting shatters with a keen and a ripple of sensation that washes down your side.

Shane sheds his jacket, his mouth still attached, and his hands scoop under your ass taking two handfuls of flesh to pull you into his thigh to grind on. He grunts, and you find his shoulders, your toes leaving the floor with the force of his desperation as he moves to the other side and takes your earlobe between his teeth.

A hand palms your breast, squeezing hard enough to leave finger-point bruises, and you choke around the swell of heat as you brace yourself against the counter.

He’s hard against your inner thigh, painfully so because he groans when you try to squirm into a better position.

“Isn’t that what you wanted? Why are you trying to get away?”

Your cheek brushes the side of his face, those glass green eyes filled with challenge and bitterness when your fingers find his forearms, travelling up flanneled biceps, and you grip his collar.

“Trying to push you into the right position,” you breathe, and Shane starts.

You kiss him — an open-mouthed, starving attempt to swallow him whole that he doesn’t respond to.

“You’ll take what I give you.”

He pushes you with five fingers to your sternum, chasing your mouth, rough palms smoothing over fabric and under to skin while your frustration bubbles into a sob, and he cups the whole of your pussy in one hand. Squeezes it. Strokes the slit through your leggings as you try to crawl up onto his cock while he finds your clit and circles it with hardly any pressure. The other hand cradles the back of your head like a threat.

“You wet for me already?” Shane breathes, your whole body jerking with the way he pulls your waistband down, his knuckles catching your shiver when his fingers cross the thatch of your pubic hair.

You nod. You’re out of breath.

Just that little stroke alone makes your pussy clench, everything rendered down to his hesitation because he stops without touching you and it hurts to be so close, and you know he’d walk away in a heartbeat if he second-guesses again.

Yoba. You bite down on your lip. You try not to squirm or sob or beg, but you don’t want to scare him off.

Shane offers you one last exit:

“Say no. Stop me. One word, sunshine —”

Instead you shudder out, “Fucking make me.”

He searches you, unhappy about this development because he’s frowning when Shane’s middle finger slides between your folds, feeling for himself the slick feeling of your arousal, and then pushing two inside you without letting you adjust.

He holds you in his palm a second, your open-mouthed surprise captivating his attention as he moves and the sound you make tears from your throat — a ragged plea for more.

They glisten when he looks at them like none of this makes sense.

He’s going to push you hard enough to break you, you think.

The ripple that shivers up your spine isn’t fear, it’s anticipation.

“Shane?”

It’s not a question. It’s you begging.

“I can handle it,” you manage, your voice a tiny thing that trips a switch.

And he’s kissing you again. Harder. Teeth and tongues and an angry, firm hand on the back of your neck to hold you in place, his stubble burning against your delicate skin.

He’s breathing hard when he stops, your arms wrapped around his shoulders.

“Please,” you whisper. “I can —”

He huffs into your throat, “Get on your knees.”

You slide down without further questions, your mouth already watering, his thumb a brush against your lips an invitation to open.

“Wider. All the way. Show me.”

The clink of his belt opening makes you shudder, your legs squeezing together, and some distant part of your brain acknowledges the discomfort of kneeling in cold, melted snow but he’s undoing the button and pulling down the zipper and you can taste yourself on his fingers when he pushes the middle and index between your lips to tip your head back and —

“Show me how deep you’re going to take me.”

You breathe through your nose. You don’t gag. You’re so well trained. It’s easy. It’s Shane’s fingers sliding as deep as they’ll go, and pushing on your tongue like he’s testing your gag reflex, you want so bad to make him happy that you go slack, hands fisting into his jeans as he slides in and out.

You moan.

“Like a little whore,” he murmurs. “He taught you to do that?

Fear kindles quick — just a spark — but you realize in that instant at least part of the problem when Shane pulls out his cock and tugs on it. It curves a little left, but the girth is going to stuff your throat —

“Come on. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Pre-come smears your lips, but you look up to see him frowning down, his breath held like it hurts him, and you open wide and stick out your tongue.

“Oh, fuck,” Shane blinks and turns his head away, pushing in until he grazes the roof of your mouth, and lower. He shuts his eyes, but that furrow between his brows only grows deeper as he fills your mouth, your tongue tracing along the vein underneath the shaft, careful not to close your throat when he sinks in another inch and lodges to the back.

“I can’t —” he starts. “Fuck, don’t look at me like that. You can’t possibly like this.”

You hum, your eyes falling shut, your hands sliding between your legs, and you bump his feet with your knees, spread wide so he can see you touching yourself as you wait for him to make the best use of your mouth.

“Fuck me,” Shane breathes, and he bucks his hips because he can’t help it. “Fuck, sunshine. What are you doing? Fuck —”

You’re wet enough that you can hear the slick sound of your fingers moving out of your pussy, pumping easily while he watches, transfixed on the way you’re pleasuring yourself for him with his cock in your mouth and he shudders into action, hips pumping slowly to match your rhythm.

You moan when he obliges, the stroke of his frenulum brushing over your lips as he pulls out and pushes back in so far your nose brushes his pubic hair and on reflex you swallow. Shane groans at the added suction, his fingers cupping your chin as he pulls out again.

“Use my mouth,” you manage in a rush, opening wide for him again as he stares at you, not comprehending.

His thumb spears your lips again and you close your lips around it, giving the digit and experimental suck, your spit wetting your cheek when he pulls out and strokes it across your face.

“You thinking about him when I do that?” he asks.

You spit on the floor, but your eyes never leave Shane’s. “I’m not. But if you’re unsure, then maybe you should fuck the thought out of me.”

He darkens by increments, something clicking: locked into place when he cups your face again, searching you. Last chances and all that. No safe words.

“Right out of that pretty little head,” he murmurs, and his cock drips when he pushes it past your lips, and you huff a breath because he’s got your face in his hands when he starts to thrust —

A sharp, rolling motion that doesn’t build. He just hits the back of your throat, forcing you to open and go loose as the spit gathers on your tongue, and it’s so good. It’s so good that your eyes fall shut, taking the friction of his flesh against your tongue, teeth tucked away safely so he can fuck out his frustrations while the burn starts behind your eyes and they start to water, leaving tracks down your face. It stings a little, but that’s good too, because Shane’s breathing’s gone ragged, and you knew…

You knew he wanted you too.

“Fuck yourself for me,” he says, relentless. You won’t have a voice by the end of this. Your throat’s already raw from the tip of his cock repeatedly hitting it, salt and spit and the cradle of his grip your world, that musky scent of his skin delicious whenever your nose brushes close to his stomach.

You bury your fingers inside of yourself. You curl them. But nothing feels as good as the way Shane cradles your head to his body as his rhythm starts to stutter.

“Don’t wanna be done,” he sounds so far away. “C’mere, sunshine. Come on. Get up —”

You think of the last time, and you nearly sob when he pulls away, pulls you up —

“No —” you say. “I don’t want to stop.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Shane says, the sound snuffed as he bites down on your lower lip, opening you up from both directions.

Leggings off. Panties. Socks.

Your ass hits the countertop, and he jerks you to the edge, pushing a knee up to brush his cockhead against your slit.

No condom. Just skin and wet and slick as he rubs the tip through your pussy lips, up to your clit, and in to the hilt without hesitation. Stuffed fully, ragged with shock, you press your face into his collar where the darkness swallows the sound of your sob.

“Yoba, you’re tight. Why are you so tight. I, fuck — you took all of me.”

You throb, your pussy stretched to the point of discomfort because you’ve never been with someone who had such a thick dick.

“Does it hurt?” His breath against your neck makes you shiver, but he’s wrapped you up in a bear hug, and the flannel of his shirt is so soft.

You nod.

“Good,” he says, but his hands tell another story:

They palm your back, your neck, your shoulders, moulding you to his chest while you clench and unclench repeatedly, the sting easing to a point where, if you weren’t so wasted on endorphins and dopamine and stupid from his dick, you might be able to sob out a, “Please, Shane,” that he’d ignore happily.

He presses a secret into your temple. “You’re too good for me, sunshine. You get that right?”

He moves, sliding out and back in easily. His laughter has relief and dismay mixed into it.

Shane licks his lips. “Makes me want to ruin you a little bit.”

The sound is strangled. He squeezes your thighs, pulling you into him as he moves his hips, grinding his pelvis into your clit and making space for his cock to slide out and in again.

“That’s a good girl,” he says, and you shiver, burying yourself into his neck, his chest. “All I’ve thought about doing is wrecking this tight little pussy for days. For weeks,” he says. “Thought about fucking you six different ways, twelve times a day. What you’d taste like. What you’d say. And here you are, clenching on my cock like a little slut, desperate for me to get you off.”

You moan something incoherent.

“You like that, huh?” he murmurs. “Seb said you would.”

Ohmyfuck, you think.

It builds a good ache, the burn transcendent because he fits you in a way that Sebastian can’t, and it’s perfect. It’s what you need — someone who’s a little mean, a little demanding, a little lost to the feeling when his thumb skates between your bodies and he pushes it into your clit so hard that you cry out.

“But what if I don’t want that? What if I want you to suffer like I have?”

You sob, because you’re close enough that the added pressure clamps you around the piston friction turning you soft and receptive, ready to be pushed over into oblivion.

“You don’t come until I say so,” Shane says into your ear.

“O-okay.”

“Louder, baby.”

“Okay, Shane.”

He shudders. “Don’t you fucking say my name like you like me.”

His balls are striking the underside of the cabinet, his hips clapping hard into your thighs, cock glistening with your juices when he pulls back to let you watch him full you to the brim. Over and over.

“Watch me fuck you, sunshine, and you tell me who this pussy belongs to.”

“Y-you.”

“Not convincing. Try harder.”

“Come inside me.”

Stunned, for a second, the only sound is his ragged breathing and the clap of flesh before he grunts.

Shane comes.

The gush pumps into you as his thrusts slow to a stutter, every second stretching into discomfort as he finishes, the heat and gush of wet slipping out of you a mark to say he’s taken what he was owned and left a piece of himself in return.

He’s still hard, though.

“I’ve always wanted you,” you whisper — the confession tremulous and too tender for the moment, because there are easier options, but nothing easy is worth doing when the alternative undoes the firm set to his jaw.

“Don’t do that,” he says hoarsely.

You kiss the corner of his mouth, and he gulps a breath and pulls out.

“Stop it.” But he doesn’t let go of your either when you slide off the counter, chasing his mouth in an effort to be closer.

He doesn’t kiss you back. Too fucking bad because he tacks your hands to the counter to regain control of your mouth, taking whatever’s left of your self control with rough strokes of his tongue.

When he lets you go, you reach on instinct: cupping his face in your hands. It only pisses him off.

“What are you doing right now?” he asks. “What is this?”

Your breath hitches, but you don’t hesitate when you name drop in the effort to get him out of his head. “Seb says I’m a bit of a brat. Just trying to live up to my reputation, I guess?”

He flips you around, pressing you down to the countertop face-first, your hands rattling a number of things across the surface, but the first thing Shane notices is the bottle of truffle oil you keep near the stove.

“Damnit. You’re a mess. Yoba, that’s — that’s really something.”

He thumbs the edge of your pussy, pulling you apart to watch you drip on his fingers.

“Really fucking pretty,” Shane says like it hurts him.

He rubs your back, encouraging you to arch into him, lifting your ass.

“Fuck sakes,” he breathes. “Don’t do that, sunshine, I can’t take it.”

Two fingers slide into your pussy and pump a little, stretching, in and out a few times to be replaced with his cock. It slips in so easy that you moan.

He’s hard as a rock, the angle perfect to strike against the soft, spongy wall that buckles your knees. When you clench, you drip down your thighs — come leaking a little with every rock of his hips into the meat of your ass.

“You just don’t get it,” he says, your hip in one hand, those strong fingers notched into the crease between thigh and pelvis.

His thumb —

His thumb cards between your cheeks to the pucker of flesh that not even Sebastian’s touched, and you seize up.

Shane grunts and pulls out, running the come from your pussy to your asshole and pushing a finger in to the knuckle.

You see white for a second: a brilliant sharp sting, as your body responds to the intrusion, and you gasp as your cunt gives a responding pulse of pleasure, everything seizing up as you go rigid on the counter.

“Seb told me something else,” he says as he pulls out to circle the hole, but it’s contemplative. “He told me a few things, actually — your likes and your dislikes, for one, and what you’ve never done with him. In case I wanted first dibs, I guess.”

Your voice shakes. “That’s a lot of sharing for one day.”

He scoops up more come, adding a little pressure to your asshole as if to say he’s well aware of your interests in degradation but not how far you’ve explored it.

“Maybe we’ve been talking about you for a while,” he says, and pushes past the limit, stroking in and out a little, loosening you for him to add another finger. Less resistance. More fluids. Shane sinks his cock into your pussy again and you claw at the counter.

You’ve never felt anything like it.

You can’t breathe.

You can’t speak.

You’re going to come and he hasn’t once touched your clit.

He’s fucking you with them, you think: a gentle pistoning of his fingers making you ragged, squeezing so hard while he plays with your ass that you don’t want him to stop.

This is so fucked up. The thought strikes at you from afar, but you’re so far gone that when the beautiful, floating feeling overtakes you, you fall in headfirst, and you forget everything but the bliss.

“Maybe he put the idea in my head, I dunno. I don’t — my imagination isn’t —” He laughs. “Well. Maybe I’m a liar.”

Two fingers. He’s keeping his cock warm while you cry, your cunt pulsing on him. Everything feels swollen and oversensitive, but he’s still not letting you find release, even as you buck a little and he pushes you back into place against the counter.

“Shane,” you find your voice, but that’s the only word in vocabulary now. Subspace robs you of so many things, but this one thing is your anchor:

“Shane.”

“I’m going to fuck your ass, sunshine,” Shane says without preamble. “This is mine. Before anyone else. So fucking take my fingers and keep clenching because I know you like how it feels, being filled up like this with everything I’ve got to give. You need to earn my dick if you want it after this, and when you come for me with my fingers in your pussy and my cock in your ass, you’ll thank me for taking my time getting you ready, and beg me to do it again.”

The top pops off the truffle oil. A dribble on thick fingers. His cock sliding from your body, only to be stroked over, and pressed hot against your hole. He rubs against it the resistance until he finds a little give.

“I’ll be careful,” he murmurs, leaning over you in a way that’s almost protective. He smells good. Flannel and woodsmoke. Shane’s lips against your ear, “That’s my good girl.”

There’s pressure, but he pushes in so gently you don’t resist, settling all the way in with careful, languid strokes like this is how he’d treat a princess.

“You’re shaking,” he murmurs, lacing your fingers together, cuddled up on your kitchen counter as the fingers of his free hand find your clit, brushing over it like he’d been waiting this whole time for you to give up the fight entirely and be rewarded with release. “Stay with me, baby.”

“Mmph.”

He chuckles, rubbing over you and pushing his fingers into your pussy so you clench with a violence. “There she is.”

“Fuck me,” you manage.

“With pleasure.”

Two fingers in your pussy, your clit pushed into his palm, and Shane grinds into your ass into his lap like you weren’t already trembling on the edge of a scream. You come. It happens so fast you barely register the blackout feeling of falling into nothing, but the crest doesn’t release you when you gasp back into consciousness with fabric in your mouth and the hard slap of his balls against your thighs. You bite down, but he keeps going.

“That’s for me,” he says. “And this is for every time you were a cocktease.”

It tears another wave of pleasure from you when he curls his fingers, pumping into you as if Shane’s only mission was to ruin you for anyone else.

But the overwhelm is impossible. You’ve never felt so full, or so stimulated, or so good, because every part of him feels like it was designed to stuff you so there’s no room but the friction-pressure-pleasure of his cock, his weight at your back, his thick arms, and the sounds he makes —

Desperate. Determined.

“One more, baby. I want you to remember this.”

His thumb pins your clit, the last few strokes pushing your pussy into his fingers. Your body dances on his, and everything is perfect for a brief, shimmering second before it shatters.

It’s just a glimmer: an uncertain future where the sweat and laughter and dirty talk is a regular occurrence: and this is a fond memory from a time where you broke the kitchen cabinet because your fucking was too vigorous.

Sebastian making jokes about how he wasn’t there to witness the debauchery.

You’ll make it up to him. He’s more than receptive to compromises.

Three of you lounging in the afterglow by the fire.

Shane falls away from you, your body empty all of a sudden, aftershocks leaving you bereft instead of satisfied, and somehow you find the energy to reach for him before he can escape.

“Shane?”

He never stepped out of his boots, so he keeps standing there with his jeans around his ankles as the seconds tick into the realization that something’s very wrong. He doesn’t meet your gaze again.

“I’m —” It hangs as heavy as his head. “I’m gonna —”

The glance towards your door is damning, clarity surfaced with a riptide of emotion brewing beneath the surface; fear and shame and other things lifting like sediment stirred up after being disturbed.

You see it all happen behind eyes that won’t meet yours.

Your hand falls to his arm. He starts.

“No, you’re not,” you tell him. “Come on.”

“I shouldn’t have —”

He did. You have.

Shane stops himself from running a hand down his face, which is endearing in its own way because he shuffles over to the sink with a worried look at the bottle of truffle oil before scrubbing his hands clean with soap and hot water in the kitchen sink.

You take his hand, putting it on your shoulder once he finishes.

“What —”

You kneel, untying his boots and helping him out of his jeans as he watches, dumbfounded.

“What are you doing?”

“Step out of them. You’re going to fall on your face.”

He obeys, which is such a stark contrast to the last hour spent in his company that your worry creeps up your throat to settle on your tongue.

It’s the other way around, usually: but comfort and reassurance in the aftermath of a scene goes both ways, for all players, especially first-timers. Doesn’t matter who’s topping.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, okay? There’s a bathroom down the hallway.”

You lead and he follows, and you get towels, and run the hot water in the tub while he stands there, gears turning. This is shock. This is something else —

“I didn’t mean any of that,” he says. “I don’t think that about you — those names I called you.”

You meet him at the centre of the room.

Shane shakes his head, disbelief stark. “I didn’t mean any of it.”

“You didn’t like the way I felt?”

He turns ashen at the edges. “No, that part — that part was good.”

“I’m going to tell you something that might upset you,” you tell him. “And the thing I’m going to need you to understand before you answer, is not just that I consented to everything we just did: but I wanted it.”

He stares, cheeks pinking.

“Sometimes there’s so much of a singular desire inside us that it makes us feel like we’re losing ourselves to it. It eats away at our normal boundaries — the things we think are acceptable to experience, because those feelings can be terrifying. We can look at ourselves and not know our own reflection, but just because we don’t recognize it, doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge it.”

You swallow hard, but you meet his stare.

“It’s okay to be that person under controlled circumstances, for a little while to get it out, and with the right partner.” Your eyes narrow. “I see you, Shane. I caught a peek down that well, and it is deep. And there is nothing there that I don’t like. With me, you can be honest. You don’t have to bury it.”

The breath that leaves him is a shudder.

“You’re not supposed to care,” he says.

A smile threatens.

“It’s going to be a different experience in your head, trying to understand why you feel the way you did when you did those things to me out there, but I need you to know: I loved every minute.”

He follows you to the bath when you tug him by the fingers, pulling off your sweater and teeshirt and bra. Blinking down at you, Shane arrives at the same conclusion as you:

“I didn’t even get your clothes all the way off.”

You smirk. Unbutton his flannel. Pull off the undershirt beneath it, and try not to stare at the wall of flesh on display — his chest and belly hair, his stomach, his shoulders.

You clench your knees together. Down girl, you think.

“Did I hurt you?” he whispers.

You wet your lips, nudging him into the tub before you, dropping in a homemade bath bomb that only sorta fizzes and draping a washcloth on the edge before following.

“Not in any way that an ibuprofen can’t fix,” you tell him. “But the lasting effects are going to be a problem, I think.”

Shane watches your progress, attention snaring on your breasts, your legs, your calves — he looks shaken. Worse, maybe, when you settle between his legs and you find him semi-erect. He grips the edge of the tub.

“What? How?”

He’s remembering the total lack of condom.

“I’m on birth control,” you tell him. And also, “And I’m clean. I’ve been tested.”

“I haven’t had sex in three years,” he says flatly. “Since moving here.”

You blink.

“I played gridball,” he confesses, defensive. “In college.” As if all the reason he needs to explain his performance.

You lean into him, the warmth of his body and the hot water so enticing you could be floating. You get the bar of soap, and lather your hands, and you grip him just above the base of his cock, stroking him clean as his head drops, his knuckles white on the tub’s edge.

Eyes shut, he exhales long through his nose. When he looks at you again, you try to repress a shiver.

You find your voice after a second: “You were right: I’m going to need you to do that to me again, sometime, preferably soon, and if that’s a problem for you, then we should probably work out a solution that doesn’t make it hard to speak and leaves bruises on my knees.”

He moves, because apparently touching his cock has a sobering effect on him when he’s freaking out over the details. “Shit, sunshine, I’m sorry, let me see.”

Hands.

Yoba.

His hands are on your legs again, pulling your knee up so that you sink into him as he inspects the damages he’s wrought, and if Shane isn’t semi-hard again against your back, he’s not as far gone as you thought.

“T-that’s the problem,” you tell him, swallowing hard. “This can’t be a one-time thing.”

Silence falls into a pregnant pause. After a moment, he remarks, “I left marks.”

You turn your head.

His fingers tip your head left, inspecting the column of your throat.

“They felt good too, when you were making them,” you tell him.

“I think I bit you.”

You shiver, your nipples pebbling. You fold your arms over your breasts. “Mmhm.”

He hesitates a second, pulling you halfway around to see your expression. “You liked that too?”

Yoba, this is ridiculous, you think. You gesture, splashing him. “I’m still soaked. Bathwater notwithstanding.”

That furrow is back between his brows. “I don’t believe you.”

You offer an inch in challenge, spreading your legs, and you can see it in his face: something’s changed. The cadence of your conversation, the slight hesitation, even the way he touches your knee, and when Shane strokes the skin of your inner thigh, it registers on a different meter.

“Gently,” you whisper.

He leans in a little, and he dips beneath the water to run a finger along the inside of your labial lips, shutting his eyes briefly when he realizes you’re not, actually, just trying to make him feel better.

“That’s what you do to me,” you tell him. “Whenever you open your stupid mouth. Whenever you look at me that way. Okay?”

He nods, a smile threatening, but doesn’t go any further. His hand rests on your stomach, one fingertip dipping into your bellybutton. He shudders when he realizes just how tender the gesture is, and laughs into your shoulder.

“This is fucking terrifying,” Shane announces, but it’s a rumble of sensation with his lips so close to your ear.

“Was this just a fuck for you?” you ask. His five o’ clock shadow on the verge of becoming a beard.

It’s like no one’s ever asked him the question before:

What do you dream of? Do you still imagine?

Vulnerability skirts the edges of something softer, sadder.

“No, sunshine.” And ragged, “I want whatever you’ve got that isn’t a crutch and doesn’t fuck me up even further. And I think you will. I think that’s the part that makes me feel a little hopeless.”

“That why you’re so angry?”

He stares for a second. “I tried to hatefuck you into steering clear of me, and all you’re being is sweet. You tell me.”

You bite your lip, and he frowns further.

“Don’t do that.”

You lilt, “Okay, Shane.”

Maybe Seb was right. Maybe you are a brat.

“Does it make you want to kiss me better?” you hedge.

He grouses, but he’s not letting you go, either.

“Yes,” he mutters.

“I’d like that too.”

He searches you, and swallowing, he looks away again. Rolls his eyes at himself, probably, and mutters, “Thank you.”

He doesn’t specify for what, and that’s alright.

Shane takes the soap from you, pulls the washcloth into the water, and hesitating, he mutters, “I don’t know how to do this part.”

You don’t think he means washing your hair, but you like the feeling of his callouses running down your arms, and you like the feeling of his heels tucking under your bum to keep you from sliding down the porcelain, and you like the way his mouth touches down on your collar when you stroke whatever parts of him you can reach in the bathtub.

You don’t know how to ask for this one thing, when it’s so easy to beg for his body and his attention and your release, and everything else in between, but you try anyway:

“I think you start by deciding not to leave,” you tell him.

He searches you, the meaning greater than two people being intimate with each other:

This is serious.

This is everything.

“I can’t fuck this up,” he says. “I can’t lose everything again.”

There’s a story here, you realize: the life before and the life after, something in between a dividing line between who he was and who he might’ve been, and where he landed.

“You can tell me whenever.”

Shane bows his head, nodding to himself, drawing back some of that history to tuck away for a future conversation.

“I think I get what he meant, now,” he admits. “Sebastian.”

The washcloth is warm against your shoulders where he starts to wash off the sweat and spit.

“You are a complication, farmer.”

But his mouth trails the places he cleans when he touches down on your skin, and he looks at you like something that he might like to take apart again, just to put you back together in an arrangement that makes him fit a little better into the bigger picture.

“Is that a yes?” you ask. 

He shakes his head, his exhale long and heavy, as if he’s pondered this very question more times than you’ve considered.

“I may not be the smartest person, but I’m also not stupid,” he says.

Hope flickers. “Okay, then?”

Shane leans in, pulling you into his lap with easy fingers because the tenderness loosens any lingering resistance, and you yield to him because it’s gentle, and a little firm when he gives your thigh a squeeze.

“With certain stipulations,” he agrees.

“Like?”

“Dunno yet. I’m still thinking.”

“Doesn’t your brain control those fingers?”

“Multi-tasking.”

You huff a breath.

“Yes,” he demurs. “But you could have just… not told either of us. Isn’t that how most people do it? Shove a bouquet at whoever and just go about your business while no one knows the better —“

“That wouldn’t be fair. That wouldn’t be honest.”

He stares. “You are, aren’t you? Brutally honest?”

On this, you remain firm. “I know what I want, Shane. It’s all or nothing.”

“I get that,” he says.

“Do you?”

“Nobody’s perfect.”

A smile threatens. “What’s your personal failing?” you joke, but Shane isn’t laughing.

“I’m just a little selfish,” he says, kissing you again.

—

Snow reflects the moonlight.

Twenty-four hours later, and only after proper introductions to the chickens, you bypass the Ranch like it’s a deliberate choice to keep walking together towards the town centre in the hazy, dreamlike disconnect of somnambulation.

It’s nearly eleven, but the darkness is contemplative, and in the quiet, you get the sense that you’re alone together with the right person, even though there remains some unvoiced expectation.

You wait.

Shane’s quiet but not brooding, his hands shoved into his pockets because it feels strange to be touching outside of the privacy of the farmhouse: like anything more than the brush of your shoulders would be a declarative statement, but you’re hovering on the edge of it, and he’s got a quirk to his mouth that’s a little amused by how you keep giving him warm glances.

It gives you butterflies —

Tiny, silver, sparkling little things that flutter around your mind like swirling snowflakes.

“Wanna split a pizza?” he asks.

So you keep going, neither of you wanting to broach the subject of an absent third party, who needs to be part of the conversation either tonight or later because it feels like something’s missing and the anticipation adds a texture to the silence that makes you want to shiver.

“I can text him,” he says, squinting into the distance when you don’t answer. “He might join us.”

Your knuckles brush, and Shane gulps a breath. You take his arm. He shudders out an expletive.

“Are you ready for that conversation?”

Shane rolls his eyes in your direction. “We’ve been talking about what we were going to do with you in a totally non-sexual context for the past two weeks, farmer. What makes you think that involving you in the process is going to be different?”

In profile, he’s frowning, but there’s a flush to his cheeks that suggests he’s not being wholly honest.

“How long were you talking about me in a sexual way?” you tease.

“Sunshine, I swear to Yoba — ”

“Pepperoni sounds good. Vegan.”

Your heart flutters a little bit when Shane pulls a face. “That’s offensive.”

“I’m glad I didn’t mess up your friendship.”

Shane’s mouth flattens, his steps slowing as the town square opens on your left. His gaze is fixed on the mid-distance, or maybe the sewer —

“The trick to staying friends with that asshole is actually not telling each other every little detail about our damages,” he says, but his throat bobs when he swallows. “Except, maybe, not knowing is a little like knowing exactly because I can imagine the worst possible scenarios that could land a guy like Seb in prison.”

He wipes a hand down his face.

“I think — I think maybe that’s where you come in,” he says.

You follow his line of sight to the figure standing in the cemetery just beyond the sparse, snow-covered bushes. Sebastian’s smoking, the plume rising like a shroud overhead — a giant, ghostly billow that whites out the darkness and softens his edges.

“He talked about quitting,” Shane says. “I thought he had.”

It feels like a portent — like it’s your turn to step in, but how this handoff happens is anyone’s guess. Is it? Is that how it’s going to happen? From one pair of hands to the next, passed along between men and back again when you’re finished?

“What day is it?” he asks in an undertone, brow furrowed.

“The nineteenth, isn’t it?”

Under his breath, Shane murmurs, “Shit. You’ve gotta — we can’t be here for this.”

He tugs your hand, but you resist. You shake your head, not understanding how you’re intruding.

“What’s he doing?”

“He’s never told me the details, but I know it’s not good —“

When you look back to Sebastian, you can trace the way his shoulders hunch into his ears, the discomfort of the ritual being conducted in the deep freeze with the snow up past his knees because no one shovels the cemetery at this time of year.

“Sunshine.” The nickname isn’t a warning, but a gentle plea to leave before it’s too late.

Something doesn’t feel right.

You know it like a chime in the bones, a sparkle across the snow a reminder that even frozen, it’s only a matter of time before whatever’s buried gets surfaced.

“He wouldn’t leave you behind either,” you tell him.

“Yoba, you can be so invasive — you’re like a weed,” he mutters. “This is how you win people over, isn’t it? You just keep coming back even though they keep trying to pluck you out of their lives.”

“Worked on you, didn’t it?”

He frowns, opening his mouth to retort, but you know what you’re going to do before you take that first step.

“Are you okay with this?” you ask Shane, but you’re not sure yourself.

He looks you over. “You want my permission?”

Not in so many words.

This is tricky. “Come with me?”

He blinks. Shakes his head like you’ve surprised him. Hesitates. You can see the gears working.

It never occurred to you that Shane might be nervous.

The next part comes out a little tattered at the edges, stained by something you can’t understand because you don’t know enough of their dynamic beyond a few beers shared over their Tuesday evening pool game where Sebastian periodically crushes him:

“I didn’t want to do this with you because I didn’t want to hurt him,” he says, and it clicks: little wings shivering into a rapid flutter of motion all at once as recognition lifts. It breathes. “He’s lost a lot, sunshine. I didn’t want to take anything else.”

How far this goes.

How deep it might be for him —

“You’re not,” you tell him, because it’s a truth buried deeper than where the frost can reach, sleeping under a blanket of white, just waiting for the next season to be nurtured into whatever it’s meant to be.

Shane licks his lips.

“He waited all night with me at the clinic,” Shane says. “He told me exactly what you did to get me to Harvey to get my stomach pumped. All by yourself.”

He’s not leaving.

You smile a little. “We both did what we needed to do to help.”

This is a revelation, but he doesn’t shrink from it.

“I never thanked him either,” he says.

His fingers are warm wrapped around yours.

“You don’t have to,” you tell him. “Sometimes you just need to be there.”

You don’t pull. You don’t force it. But Shane knows enough of what debts are owed and the look that graces him is fathoms deep.

He’s already made his decision.

He lets you go, but not so far that he’s not a pace or two behind when you cut a path for him to follow.

The snow crunches beneath your footfalls, the darkness toned to shades of silver, and though the night is soft, the silence is fragile because you’re so full of things to say when Sebastian looks up to see who’s joined him that all you can do is duck your smile into your scarf when he says, “Oh, hey, farmer girl —” that you tilt your head.

And his gaze slides left beyond your shoulder to the unexpected.

“Hey,” Shane says.

There’s a small pinch of pain, but Seb’s hesitation melts into a sad smile, and something else: relief, maybe, even though he does his best to hide it. Like maybe whatever burden he carries could be lighter with enough hands to lift it because it pains him.

Maybe he wanted to be alone, even though you know that’s never going to happen again. There isn’t room between three of you for more secrets. That part’s over.

“You shouldn’t be out here in the cold,” he says.

It’s Shane who asks the question:

“What are you doing out here?”

Seb’s smile trembles, but his answer doesn’t turn either you away from him. He opens his hands, and offers a secret like it’s a relief to finally have someone to share it with:

“Remembering.”