Archive of Our Own

“Do you have to stick your feet under my legs?” Zichen snaps.

Xingchen comes back into the living room just in time to see Xue Yang, on the other end of the couch, worming his way down onto his back and forcing his feet, ankles, and the lower half of his calves under Zichen’s thighs all at once. “Fuck off, my feet are cold.”

Zichen makes a disgusted face; it’s so priggish that Xingchen almost breaks into giggles. “I don’t want your dirty socks all over me,” he says. “Put your slippers on if you’re that cold.”

“Zichen, Yang’er, please stop fighting,” Xingchen says. He sets the popcorn bowl down on the coffee table and turns to face them properly; he can’t stop the smile from slipping out. He likes them both so much. “Let’s just enjoy the movie.”

Xue Yang rolls his eyes. “Tell him to stop being such a killjoy, then.”

“Tell him to stop being so obnoxious,” Zichen returns.

“Do I need to sit between you?” Xingchen says. Normally he sprawls on the floor, flopped across spare cushions and bundled up in blankets, but he’s willing to sit on the couch if that’s what it takes to get them to leave each other alone.

But the threat to their usual routine does the trick. “No,” Xue Yang grumbles, and withdraws his feet reluctantly from under Zichen’s legs. Zichen heaves an unsubtle sigh of relief, rearranging himself comfortably on the couch; satisfied, Xingchen lies down, and they start the movie.

Thursday movie nights have been a tradition of theirs since three months after Xingchen convinced Xue Yang to move in with them. It had been his idea: a way to spend some time together as roommates, to bond with each other and—hopefully—curb the constant arguments between Zichen and Xue Yang. It hasn’t particularly worked, but two years on they both keep faithfully showing up for movie nights anyway, bickering and all, so Xingchen will count that as some sort of win. He’s happy just spending time with them, no matter how much they fight.

On Sundays Xingchen volunteers at the food bank. The staff need a constant stock of reusable bags to hand out to people when they package up their meals, so he also gathers up as many of those as he can find every week and takes them with him to his shifts. He’s digging his current collection out of the front hall closet, nearly on his way out the door, when Xue Yang wanders into the kitchen and immediately starts giving Zichen trouble.

“Quit it,” Xingchen hears from the other room, and then the abrupt sound of a bowl being dragged across the counter. “Hey, don’t put sugar in that!”

“Why not?” Xue Yang demands. “Why the fuck is the sugar out if you’re not going to use it?”

“It’s for the sauce, Xue Yang, not the batter,” Zichen says. “I’m not going to fry the beef in sugar. It’ll burn.”

“Fine, fine,” Xue Yang huffs, and then there is silence for a moment while Zichen continues, presumably, preparing stir-fried crispy beef. Xingchen collects the last of his bags, shuts the closet, and prepares to make his escape. Surely they can get by for one afternoon without him.

“What are you—stop that!”

Xingchen looks around the doorframe just in time to see Zichen slap Xue Yang’s hand away from the cutting board. Whatever he was going to say flies instantly out of his head. “Oh, Zichen, please don’t hit him,” he says.

“He’s stealing my garlic,” Zichen says, aggrieved. “It’s not even cooked! Who eats raw garlic right off the knife?”

Xingchen sighs. “Yang’er, please just let Zichen cook,” he says. “He’s making dinner, the least you can do is not bother him.”

“I’m not making dinner for him,” Zichen says, shooting Xue Yang a murderous look.

There’s more than enough beef on the counter for three people, and Xingchen knows very well that Zichen always sets a portion of Sunday’s dinner aside for him to eat once he’s home from volunteering, so this strikes him as particularly unfair. “Zichen.”

“Ugh, fine,” Zichen says. “Yes, alright, you can have some, are you happy? Now stop picking at it.”

“Sure, yeah, whatever,” Xue Yang says with a shit-eating grin. He hops up onto the counter to sit just out of Zichen’s reach and watch him cook.

“Behave yourselves,” Xingchen says. “I’ll be back at seven.”

As he closes the door behind him, he hears Xue Yang say, “So how much sugar are you putting in the sauce?” He turns the lock and hurries away before he can hear Zichen’s snappish reply.

On Friday when Xingchen gets home from class, the house is suspiciously silent.

Any afternoon but Friday, he wouldn’t think much of it. Most days of the week Xue Yang works into the early evening, which means that only Zichen—also a grad student, but on an earlier schedule than Xingchen—is home when he gets in; and Zichen is always quiet when left to himself. But Friday is one of Xue Yang’s regular days off, and it’s rare that Xingchen comes home to anything but loud music, an argument, someone clattering around in the kitchen, or all three at once. Hearing nothing is a little concerning.

And then, as he sets his shoes down on the rack, he realizes it’s not quite nothing after all. Zichen’s voice is audible somewhere on the first floor, too soft to make out the words but not so low as to hide his tone, which is strangely intense. Seized with a sudden apprehension, Xingchen drops his bag on the mat and hurries down the hall to the dining room.

There is a moment, when he comes into the doorway, that he can’t quite parse what he’s seeing; and then a moment longer in which his brain simply refuses to take it in. Zichen has Xue Yang pinned against the far wall, looming over him ominously, one hand wrapped around his wrist and the other gripping the front of his shirt. Xue Yang’s cheeks are flushed, in fury or embarrassment, and the look in his eyes is shockingly vulnerable. And as for Zichen’s expression—Xingchen could not possibly name it, but it’s so intent it’s almost frightening.

“What are you doing?” he all but cries.

With a gasp Zichen breaks away from Xue Yang, whirling around defensively. Xue Yang scrambles back, blinking wide-eyed at Xingchen; his chest is heaving, like he’s only just now remembering to breathe. The look on Zichen’s face has been wiped clean, replaced by guilt and distress; it’s almost hard to believe that seconds ago he was so—angry? He must have been angry—but all the same Xingchen knows what he saw.

“Were you fighting?” he demands. “How could you? I know you don’t like him, but—Zichen, I expected better of you!”

He’d known there was a risk, asking them to move in together. He’s known Zichen since high school, Xue Yang since his first year of university, and they’ve always been like oil and water. Zichen is particular; Xue Yang has never met a boundary he didn’t want to break. They had almost come to blows more than once in those first years, and even now they’re constantly finding ways to provoke each other. Just yesterday Zichen dumped a whole pile of dirty laundry directly on Xue Yang’s lap because he’d left his clothes on the floor of the bathroom instead of taking them back to his room. But Xingchen had always thought they’d put true animosity aside—for the sake of their friendship with him, if nothing else.

“Wait—Xingchen, no,” Zichen stammers out, stricken. “It’s not what it looks like, I promise—”

He looks to Xue Yang—for support? An excuse?—but instead of backing him up, Xue Yang has inexplicably started grinning, tonguing over the point of his canine. “Yeah, Zichen,” he says. “I expected better of you.”

For a moment Zichen looks almost comically dismayed; and then like he would enjoy nothing so much as to throttle Xue Yang, if only it wouldn’t prove Xingchen’s point. “Oh, come on, you are not helping—”

“Zichen,” Xingchen interrupts. “Just promise me you’re not going to hurt him.”

The bark of laughter Zichen lets out at that surprises all three of them. “I’m not going to hurt him,” he says. “Swear to god.”

“Aw,” Xue Yang quips, “not even if I’m good?”

Abruptly Xingchen is exhausted of them not getting along. “Enough, Yang’er,” he cuts in, before Zichen can get a word out. “I’m going to my room. Please don’t kill each other.”

”Xingchen—” Zichen begins, but Xingchen waves him off and turns around, walking up the stairs without another word.

“I can’t keep doing this. We have to say something,” he thinks he hears Zichen say. Xue Yang’s response is swallowed up behind his closed bedroom door.

“Please say something,” Zichen begs.

Xingchen just stares at him. Say something? He has no idea what he could say. All he can do is blink at them, his eyes skipping between their faces, unable to settle. His fingertips are going numb. He’s never misjudged a situation quite so thoroughly.

He had always assumed Zichen and Xue Yang didn’t like each other. Most days they hardly even seem to tolerate each other. He had thought his beliefs had been vindicated by catching them on what he was sure was the precipice of a fight—only for them to sit him down and tell him that they’re dating. It sounds so ludicrous as to be impossible; and yet all Xingchen can think to wonder is why he didn’t see it. Surely he knows them better than this. Where did he go wrong?

Zichen can’t seem to look at him, staring at the floor with his hands clasped anxiously on his lap. Xue Yang, on the other hand, seems thrilled at having left them in such confusion: bright-eyed, smirking, as delighted as he ever is at sowing chaos in his wake. Xingchen can hardly believe he kept it from him at all: normally he tells Xingchen everything. Normally, so does Zichen.

How could he have missed this?

“You’re not—this isn’t a joke, is it?” he says finally, and immediately regrets it. “I’m sorry, I—that was tactless. You just… most of the time it’s like you can barely put up with each other.”

“Yeah,” Zichen says, subdued. “I guess that’s fair.”

Xue Yang kicks him lightly in the shin, and for the barest hint of a moment, a smile flickers across his lips. Xingchen finds himself once again adrift.

When did everything change? And how did he miss that tide turning? They’re his best friends; he’s known them both for years. He knows both of their good qualities, knows exactly what might have drawn them to each other, but he never thought they’d see that in each other. And truth be told there’s a small part of him—bitter, mortifying, unjustly resentful—that’s surprised neither of them asked him out first. He’d been so sure back when they were in undergrad that Zichen was into him: that it meant something, the way they could communicate at a glance; that they were building a real foundation between them in their shared dreams and ideals. And Xue Yang has always been flirtatious. The way his eyes would linger—

But nothing had ever come of it, obviously. And now they’re dating each other.

No, this is unfair of him. They’re his best friends. He ought to be pleased for them.

“So, um,” he says, fighting valiantly to keep his voice casual. “How long has it been?”

“Like three weeks,” Xue Yang says.

“Two weeks, five days,” Zichen says, near-simultaneously.

A smile breaks across Xue Yang’s face then, surprised and sincere and entirely unguarded. For a third time Xingchen has no idea what to say. He can’t remember ever seeing Xue Yang look so open.

“And—” Zichen checks his phone. “Seven hours,” he concludes, a little sheepish, spots of high colour prickling across his cheeks. Finally, finally, he looks up to meet Xingchen’s eyes. There’s a kind of desperation there: a tremulous hope, quiet and devastating.

Something twists in Xingchen’s gut. Zichen and Xue Yang are all but family to him: together, in love, and hoping for his approval. Of course, he thinks, how could he not give them his blessing? How could he fail to be supportive? They’ll be wonderful together—he’s sure they will.

Resolutely he gives them a smile. It’s as bright as it ever is; it has to be. After all, he has no reason to be distressed. “I think it’s lovely,” he says. For some reason his heart is aching. “I’m so happy for you both.”

Xingchen does his best.

It’s not too bad at first. Nothing substantial changes. Zichen still wakes up early to get to the gym before his morning classes; Xue Yang still sleeps in until half an hour before his shift starts every morning and eats all of Xingchen’s leftovers. They go to campus, the grocery store, Xue Yang’s work and Xingchen’s volunteering. Xue Yang and Zichen still bicker at dinner, and Xingchen still scolds them for fighting over the serving spoons. Xue Yang teases; Zichen glares; Xingchen despairs of them ever getting along.

But there are differences, too. Zichen actually smiles—fleetingly, there and gone—at some of Xue Yang’s jokes; Xue Yang flirts openly, fluttering his eyelashes and letting his mouth curl seductively around his recurring threats of violence. When they pass each other in the hallway, Zichen leans into Xue Yang rather than pushing him away. Xue Yang hangs over Zichen’s shoulders at his desk, trying to distract him, and Zichen just rolls his eyes and allows himself to be pestered.

They stop hiding themselves from Xingchen, and it’s—strange. Yes. Strange is the word for it.

They still have their regular Thursday movie nights, too. As usual, Xingchen finds himself in his preferred spot on the floor; but he can’t help but feel almost excluded this time, especially with how closely Zichen and Xue Yang are sitting. Not that their newly apparent affection has in any way stopped them from fighting about everything.

“We watched a romcom last week,” Zichen says. Xingchen can all but hear his eyes rolling from the floor. “The new Superman is on streaming now. I want to watch that.”

“Newsflash, asshole: Superman is for dorks.”

Zichen huffs out an exasperated breath. “Yeah, why am I not surprised you don’t like Superman.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Xingchen looks up just in time to see Zichen poke Xue Yang square in the middle of the forehead. “Just that you’re predictable.”

“You take that back—”

“I’ve heard good things,” Xingchen cuts in. “We should watch it, Yang’er, you might like it.”

Xue Yang snaps his teeth at Zichen’s hand, but even Xingchen can tell it’s halfhearted. “You always take his side,” he says sourly.

“Come on,” Xingchen cajoles. “It’ll be fun. Besides, you picked last week. Let’s give it a try.”

There’s a bit more scuffling back and forth while Xingchen gets the movie set up, but eventually they calm down, and by the time fifteen minutes has gone by Xue Yang is as thoroughly engrossed as Zichen. When a darkened scene comes up on screen, Xingchen steals a glance back at them. He discovers Xue Yang cuddled up against Zichen’s side, his head practically resting on his shoulder. Zichen is wide-eyed and startled, but even as Xingchen watches a tiny smile steals across his mouth, and he settles back into the couch, taking Xue Yang’s hand.

The moment hangs in the air between them, thick and heavy as steam. Xingchen feels his face prickle with heat.

He drags his gaze back to the TV, but he’s already lost the thread of the plot, and he can’t seem to focus long enough to pick it back up again. Vivid colour and comic book action crosses meaninglessly over his eyes, passing into his brain without making the slightest impression. All he can see is the sweetly trusting way Xue Yang had curled, unthinking, into Zichen’s side; the wary surprise and then quiet joy on Zichen’s face; the way they had woven their fingers together, creating a closed loop. There’s no room for him in that, is there? And, after all, why should there be? They’re dating, and he’s just going to have to get used to that.

By the time the movie is over, he has gnawed the inside of his cheek raw without meaning to. He had barely even noticed he was biting it.

He looks back at them again only once, when the credits are rolling and they’re waiting to see if there’s a mid-credits sting. They’re not holding hands anymore; instead, Zichen’s arm is over Xue Yang’s shoulders, and Xue Yang has one palm resting on the curve of Zichen’s kneecap, brushing his fingertips idly over the inner seam of his jeans. Xingchen stares, a sickly feeling welling up in his throat, and then wrenches his gaze abruptly away.

When he lifts his eyes, he finds Xue Yang unexpectedly looking back at him. Xingchen has to fight himself not to visibly startle. Xue Yang only furrows his brow, confused and then inquisitive; and then his mouth quirks into a wicked smirk, and he licks his lower lip. He hikes a brow, inviting and open, almost like he’s asking Xingchen if he likes what he sees.

Ashamed, cheeks burning, Xingchen looks away.

Xingchen owes his next chapter to his thesis supervisor on Wednesday. On Tuesday night he sets up to work at the dining table and stays up far later than he should, drinking endless cups of green tea and fretting over his edits for hours. Finally he makes unintentional eye contact with the clock and is forced to conclude that it’s as good as it’s going to get. He emails the document to Baoshan, shuts down his laptop, and heads upstairs to snatch a few meagre hours of sleep.

It’s nearly two in the morning, and the house is quiet. Xingchen does his best to walk lightly as he passes Zichen’s bedroom: there’s a creaky floorboard that always seems extravagantly loud in the middle of the night. He steps over it silently, and then almost chokes on his own tongue when a loud, strangled moan splits the still air of the hallway.

Xingchen stops walking. He doesn’t even realize he’s done it at first. And then his brain catches up with his body and he can’t decide if he’s thrilled, or horrified at himself. For a long moment he just stands there, waiting, straining to hear what must be going on in Zichen’s room. His heart is in his throat, his entire body flushed with heat; absurdly, he feels like he must be glowing with it, a beacon in the dark.

There’s a second moan. Expecting it, listening for it, he is able this time to recognize the voice as Xue Yang’s.

He can hear other, smaller noises now too: the squeak of the bedframe, the slap of skin on skin, heavy breathing and faint whimpers. He can’t tell if they’re actually getting louder, or if his ear is just growing attuned to them, and that thought makes him burn with a fresh blaze of heat. He takes a swift step closer, flattening his body against the wall and turning his head toward the door. He’s practically holding his breath, desperate not to miss a single sound.

Is that Zichen he can hear panting like that? Xue Yang? Both of them? And which of them is making those tiny little whines? Neither of them had ever struck him as the type. What do they look like? Has Zichen spread his own legs, or bent Xue Yang over the mattress? Is Xue Yang riding him? Are they tangled up together under the blankets, so close it’s impossible to tell where Zichen’s body ends and Xue Yang’s begins?

God, he’s so hard already. Xingchen can’t remember ever being this horny before.

“Fuck, that’s it,” Zichen says. His voice is low, wrecked, so deep Xingchen almost misses it; but there is no way he could miss what comes next. “That’s it, baby, there you go. My good boy. You’re doing so good for me.”

Even bracing himself against the wall, Xingchen sways dizzily. He’s never, ever heard Zichen speak so sweetly before—and to Xue Yang? If he hadn’t heard it himself, he would have said it was impossible. Xue Yang’s answering groan sounds nearly drugged; frankly, Xingchen can’t blame him. He has no idea what he would do, if Zichen spoke to him like that, in that voice.

There is the sound of bodies shifting, the mattress creaking, the slick noise of a slow kiss. Zichen says something too softly for Xingchen to catch it, and Xue Yang all but whimpers. Head spinning, Xingchen presses his palm flat against his cock, aching for relief.

“Lift your hips for me,” Zichen is murmuring: warm, adoring, ragged. “Get your knees under you. Good boy, just like that. Spread your legs a little more.”

So he’s fucking Xue Yang from behind, Xingchen thinks, the image blazing itself across his imagination in full colour. He bites back a whimper of his own, shoving his hand into his pants to wrap it around his cock. He has to force himself not to start jerking off right there.

“So good,” Zichen says. Xue Yang groans at that, and Xingchen nearly groans along with him. The noise in the bedroom starts picking up again, the bedframe now thumping rhythmically against the wall. Xingchen can practically see them in his mind’s eye: the controlled muscle of Zichen’s body and the bead of sweat rolling down his spine, the force of his thrusts as he fucks into Xue Yang; Xue Yang’s hips dimpling under his grip and his fingers scrabbling at the headboard, his back arched in an obscene curve. It’s so vivid he can almost taste it.

“You’re so good for me, baby,” Zichen croons, a cracked high note in his voice like he might come at any second. “So good, Yang’er, you feel so good—”

Xingchen can’t help himself: he thrusts into his fist, hot and hard, and a moan tears itself from his throat, unexpectedly loud in the silence of the hallway. Right away he claps his hand over his mouth, but the damage is already done. Did they hear him? He can’t be sure. His heartbeat is pounding so loud in his ears he can’t tell if any sound is still coming from Zichen’s bedroom. Is Zichen just quiet when he comes? Or have they stopped?

All at once Xingchen comes crashing back to reality. He bolts from the hallway, not even taking the time to do up his pants before he’s tearing into his bedroom and shoving the door closed behind him. He kicks his jeans and underwear off, wrestles his shirt off without even bothering to drop it in the laundry hamper, and throws himself into bed, burrowing down into the blankets and yanking them up over his head.

For long seconds he waits, breathless, listening. It’s all he can do not to rock his hips against the bed, to rut heedlessly into the mattress until he spills himself across his clean sheets. If they know he was listening—if they’re upset with him—

But there is nothing but silence.

As the quiet stretches on, the buzzing of Xingchen’s nerves transmutes itself back to arousal, fanned by the flame still sitting low in his gut. His hips shift; he grinds his dick into the bed, and has to swallow a giddy whimper. He slips his hand down between his body and the mattress, taking his cock in hand. He almost can’t believe how hard he still is.

Xue Yang’s moans and Zichen’s tender praise are still echoing in his ears. He turns his face down into the pillow, exhales a shaky breath, and tightens his grip. He’s almost wet: he’s leaking precome all over his fingers. He’s never been this desperate for it, this frantic and debauched. Almost without deciding to move, he starts fucking into his hand, rapidly picking up speed until he’s whining helplessly into his pillowcase. It takes only minutes to work himself up to a fever pitch, and then he comes so hard his vision goes white and he nearly bites through his tongue.

It takes almost as long, it feels like, for his pulse to slow down enough for him to hear his own thoughts. A rush of embarrassment comes over him then: he just got himself off thinking about his roommates—his two best friends—fucking each other. After he illicitly listened in on them doing just that. How could he do that to them? They had no idea he was even there—at least, he hopes they didn’t—and they certainly didn’t agree to it. And then after all that, he didn’t even have the dignity to fantasize about being with either of them himself. Just about seeing the two of them together.

He lets his breathing even out, listening for any signs of movement: a voice, a light switch, the slow opening of a door. But just as before, there is nothing. Uneasily Xingchen turns over, rolling out of his wet spot, and closes his eyes to sleep.

“So you’ve been being weird,” Xue Yang says.

Xingchen does his best not to jump. He had tried to slip down to the kitchen as quietly as possible, so he wouldn’t have to talk to either of his roommates; but Xue Yang, it seems, has been lying in wait to corner him. “What are you doing here?” Xingchen says. “I thought you were reading with Zichen.”

“He’s reading,” Xue Yang says, folding his arms smugly over his chest. “He sent me down here to find out what the fuck’s gotten into you.”

“What do you mean?” Xingchen says. “Nothing’s gotten into me.”

Xue Yang just raises an eyebrow. “Xingxing. Come on.”

Of course Xue Yang isn’t wrong, but Xingchen still can’t help but feel somehow betrayed. He’s been working so hard for the last week and a half not to put his awkward, guilty desires on them—staying later on campus, working at the library instead of their dining room table, eating his meals at odd hours and picking up extra shifts at the food bank—and yet they’re still insisting on dragging it out into the open. Mulishly Xingchen turns away, refilling his water bottle and getting a container of leftovers out of the fridge. Eventually he says, “It’s not your problem.”

But Xue Yang just rolls his eyes. “Like fuck it’s not,” he says. “You think we’re gonna be okay with you disappearing into some weird hole? Avoiding us? That’s our problem, Xiao Xingchen. Did we piss you off or something?”

“No!” Xingchen says, nauseated at even the idea that they might think it’s somehow their fault. “No, I just—you’re dating now, you’re a couple, things are—obviously things are going to change,” he says, casting around for some explanation, anything that might make sense. “You need—space. To be with each other. I don’t want to be the third wheel when you’re just trying to spend some time together.”

For a very long moment Xue Yang is silent. Xingchen can’t look at him. He scrapes his leftover curry into a bowl, puts it in the microwave, and stares at the clock as the timer ticks down. Surely that’s a good enough excuse, isn’t it? All he needs is a reason to leave them alone, and he can get over his disgraceful fantasies and put his awful violation of their privacy behind him.

“Well. That’s a shame,” Xue Yang says finally. “Because we would love to have you watch us spend some time together.”

Xingchen’s head snaps up, his cheeks already flaming. He wants to believe that Xue Yang couldn’t possibly have meant what it sounds like he’s implying—that it’s just his dirty mind, his guilty conscience; but his roommate is smirking, hips canted, his head tilted up at an angle that is somehow both cocky and alluring. As Xingchen watches, he crosses the kitchen floor—he practically prowls across the floor, that’s so sexy, what the fuck—and comes right up to him, backing him into the corner by the sink.

“What are you talking about?” Xingchen says feebly. He’s practically climbing onto the counter in a futile effort to keep from touching Xue Yang. “I don’t—I’m not—”

“Xingchen. Babe,” Xue Yang purrs, crowding up to him. “You think we haven’t noticed how you look at us? You think we haven’t talked about it? Get real. You think Song Lan wasn’t gagging for it the second I told him I thought you might like to get between us? You’d have to be blind to not notice he wants it. It is absolutely disgusting, by the way,” he adds, jabbing Xingchen in the chest with one finger, “just how whipped he is for you when you haven’t even fucked him. At least if you’d had sex it would make sense.”

Xingchen has no idea how to parse this. His head is spinning. Zichen wants him? They’ve talked about it? That can’t possibly mean what he’s thinking now—can it? He opens his mouth, and what comes out is, “Are you suggesting you’re not also whipped for me?”

“Oh my god, shut the fuck up,” Xue Yang says, but he doesn’t deny it. He shifts forward, pressing his hips to Xingchen’s; the bulge of his cock is impossible to ignore. “Are you going to quit being weird and come watch him fuck me, or what?”

The silence that falls in response to that question is echoing. It is intruded upon by an incongruously mundane sound: the beeping of the microwave. This is all, Xingchen decides, quite definitively surreal. “What is happening,” he says.

“Eat your fucking curry,” Xue Yang says, “and let’s go.”

Xue Yang tows Xingchen up to Zichen’s bedroom, one hand clamped around his wrist, tugging him insistently in his wake. He shoulders the door open, hauls Xingchen forward, and pushes him bodily into the room. “I brought him,” he says, unnecessarily, and closes the door behind them.

“Um,” Xingchen says. “Hi.”

Xingchen has been in Zichen’s room before, though he’s never really spent his time there. It’s very tidy, with neatly organized bookshelves, an uncluttered desk, and a laundry hamper with a lid. There are never clothes on the floor, and the dark blue bedspread is always pulled straight. The only things Xingchen has ever seen on his nightstand are a lamp, a book, his phone when it’s charging, and the lotion he uses for his hands. Now, a bottle of lube has joined them.

Zichen is sitting on his bed, a book in his hands, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He meets Xingchen’s eyes; anyone else would read his expression as nothing but polite disinterest, but to Xingchen he looks distinctly amused. “Hi,” he says. “Let me guess: he made some smartass comment, steamrolled right over you, and dragged you up here without giving you a choice.”

“Hey!”

“Shut up, Yang’er.”

“Bitch,” Xue Yang says. Zichen ignores him.

“Um,” Xingchen says again. His face is so hot; why can’t he stop blushing? “I mean, yes, but—I wouldn’t—I mean—”

Zichen tilts his head slightly, and then sets the book down. When he gets to his feet, it’s with a smooth self-confidence that Xingchen can’t remember ever having seen on him before. He comes over to Xingchen, stopping just before he steps too close, and reaches out. His touch ghosts over Xingchen’s hair, his cheek, his jaw, barely there, hesitating to land; Xingchen feels it burning like a brand.

“You’re saying,” Zichen says, “you would have agreed to it regardless.”

Swallowing hard, Xingchen nods.

The smile that breaks across Zichen’s face then is like a sunrise. It’s so rare that Xingchen sees him smile, wholly and fully; they’ve known each other over ten years, and it still takes him by surprise every time.

The heat that blazes through him now is not confusion, or embarrassment, but desire.

“Good,” Zichen says decisively. He nods towards the desk chair. “You can sit there. Get as close as you like, but don’t touch the bed.”

“Okay,” Xingchen whispers, and has to tear his eyes away. The mingled pleasure and humiliation twisting through his gut is more than he knows what to do with. He pulls the chair out and settles on it, inching towards the bed until he’s about two feet away. That seems… safe. A reasonable distance at which to watch his best friends fuck. If there is even any such thing.

Xue Yang has already switched the lamp on; now Zichen turns off the overhead light, and the room transforms into something cozy and intimate. Xingchen’s heart is beating in his throat. On the other side of the bed Xue Yang reaches for his fly, but freezes instantly when Zichen says, “No.”

Xue Yang whines. “What do you mean, no?” he demands, but Xingchen notes that he makes no move to disobey.

“Yang’er, we have a guest,” Zichen says, and a shudder crawls up Xingchen’s spine. “You’re not just going to kick your jeans off and drop them on the floor. We’re going to make it good for him.”

“Fuck off,” Xue Yang says weakly. His breath is hitching; there’s a glassy look to his eyes already.

“Hush,” Zichen says. “Be good.”

Xue Yang offers no resistance as Zichen steps up behind him, slipping his hands under his shirt and rucking it up his stomach. Zichen doesn’t look over, doesn’t acknowledge Xingchen at all, but he turns Xue Yang subtly to give him a better view. Xue Yang melts back into his arms, exhaling a shaky sigh; his skin is rippling with goosebumps. Gently Zichen directs him to raise his arms, drawing the shirt over his head and exposing his chest fully to Xingchen’s view. Xingchen finds his gaze sticking on the wing of Xue Yang’s collarbone, on the soft pebbled peak of his nipples and the curve of his ribs and waist.

Zichen strips his jeans from him slowly, dragging his palms back up Xue Yang’s thighs to tuck his thumbs into the waistband of his boxers. Xingchen follows his treasure trail down with his eyes, and has to bite his lip on a quiet sound when his cock springs free of his underwear, already more than half hard. It’s uncut and lightly curved, flushed pink and glistening faintly at the slit. Xingchen is abruptly overcome with the desire to take the tip into his mouth and suck at it lightly, just to feel the delicate weight of it on his tongue.

“There,” Zichen murmurs. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Xue Yang only whines in response, and Zichen huffs a silent laugh, pressing a kiss to the hinge of his jaw. “Go on, get on the bed. Hands and knees, baby.”

Xue Yang scrambles onto the mattress, arranging himself at the centre on his hands and knees as directed. Zichen doesn’t follow right away; instead he pauses at the edge of the bed, hesitating for a moment, and then drops his hands to the hem of his own shirt. His movements are deliberate, but there’s a faint tremor in them too, an oversensitivity in the jump of his stomach—and in them Xingchen sees that he’s far more nervous than he’s been letting on. Xingchen’s own flustered interest and the self-assurance of Zichen’s manner had blinded him to it at first: but now he can see Zichen’s awareness of the great weight riding on his actions. Xingchen’s heart opens up to him all at once. He is suffused with a great and aching tenderness for them both.

Zichen drops his shirt with Xue Yang’s clothes, then climbs onto the bed beside him. He runs one hand up his back, coming to rest between his shoulder blades; and gently he presses him down into the mattress. Xue Yang bites out a low whimper, but doesn’t complain, just arranging the pillow between his arms and his face like he’s done this many times before. The arc of his spine is the most gorgeous line Xingchen has ever seen.

“Good boy,” Zichen says, and reaches for the lube. “That’s it, hold that position. You can do that for me, right?”

Xue Yang just nods frantically, adjusting his knees to spread his legs a little more. Zichen pets him briefly, squeezing over the rounded globe of his ass, and then drizzles some lube over his hand and Xue Yang’s hole. With a practiced twist of the wrist, he slides one finger inside him.

He spends a long time working Xue Yang open: relaxed, languid, but also relentless. It takes only a minute or two before he adds a second finger, but several minutes more before he deigns to include a third. Xue Yang is moaning and pleading incoherently long before he gets there, hips rocking helplessly against Zichen’s gentle onslaught, his cock bobbing stiff and untouched between his legs. Zichen works him at multiple angles, now penetrating him deep and slow, now focused on massaging his rim, now curling down against his prostate to coax high keening yelps from his throat. By the time he fits his pinkie inside him, Xue Yang is taking him effortlessly all the way to the knuckles, his hole clinging greedily to the thrust of Zichen’s fingers.

Xingchen can see it all perfectly. The sight of Xue Yang opening up like a flower under Zichen’s ministrations is burned into his retinas in vivid high-definition: he’s not sure he’ll ever get it out of his head. He has disappeared entirely into watching them together; he’s aware of his own arousal as a distant and comforting warmth, but his body feels strangely far away. It’s not an unpleasant sensation—fills him, in fact, with a bright and thrilling joy. He has become nothing but a pair of ears and eyes, a willing receptacle for the pleasure they’re taking in each other. That they’re showing themselves off for him like this—that they wanted him here, wanted him watching—god, are they enjoying being looked at as much as he likes looking at them? He really, really hopes so. He was right after all: they’re wonderful together.

Finally, after what feels like forever, Zichen withdraws his hand from Xue Yang’s hole. The sound Xue Yang makes then is practically a sob, and he chases back after Zichen’s fingers. But Zichen stops him with a hand on his hip, pushing him down into place.

“It’s okay, baby, you’re okay,” he says, and Xingchen is astonished once again at the reminder that actually, they get along fine. “My good boy. Just give me a moment.”

He gets to his feet, slipping his sweatpants off. Still he pays no attention at all to Xingchen, but he’s conscious of his presence—he must be—if they were alone, with Xue Yang waiting for him so frantically, his face shoved down into the pillow like that, there’s no way Zichen would linger so carefully over sliding his pants from his hips. There’s no way he would skim his palms down his thighs, sensual and a little self-conscious, before moving to take off his underwear. He wouldn’t turn just so, angling his body to show himself off to Xingchen’s eyes, as he takes off his boxer briefs to reveal—

Oh, Xingchen thinks deliriously, and has to choke down a hysterical little giggle: oh, he’s big. Xue Yang will be more than feeling that later, even with all the preparation he’s had.

Zichen settles onto the end of the bed, the mattress dipping under his knees. Xue Yang is nearly shivering now, pressing his hips eagerly into Zichen’s hands. Zichen pets soothingly over his lower back and sides, his touch only raising more goosebumps.

“That’s it. You’re so good for me,” Zichen says. He takes his dick in hand, nudging it up against Xue Yang’s gaping, lube-slicked hole. He works the head in, out, in again, and then starts pushing his way inside, slowly and inexorably. Xue Yang shudders beneath him, a cry breaking in his throat. At this angle, Xingchen can see it all perfectly. He is aflame from his scalp all the way down to his toes.

Finally Zichen bottoms out, tugging Xue Yang’s hips flush against his own. “So good, baby, you feel so good,” he croons. “You’re doing so well. Just a little more.”

Xue Yang lets out a low whine. “Please,” he whispers. “Song Lan, please.” Xingchen can’t remember the last time he heard him say that.

“Shh,” Zichen says. He wraps his arms around Xue Yang’s waist, sitting back on his heels, and shifts them around just enough to be mostly facing Xingchen. Steadily he guides Xue Yang upright, lifting him properly onto his lap. Xue Yang moans, tipping his head back against Zichen’s shoulder and turning his face into his neck. He’s fully exposed like this, open to Xingchen’s eyes, his cock flushed and hard and jerking helplessly as Zichen starts rolling his hips, fucking implacably up into him. As Xingchen watches, Zichen hooks an arm under one of his knees, hitching his leg up and letting Xingchen get a good look at where he’s entering his body.

“There. There you go,” Zichen breathes. “You’re so good, Yang’er, baby, so good for me—”

“Oh—oh, fuck,” Xue Yang mewls, shifting his hips on Zichen’s lap, desperately meeting his thrusts. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fuck, Song Lan—”

 “So close already,” Zichen says. “You liked me fingering your ass open that much?”

Xue Yang only keens at that, fervent and frantic, driving himself down onto Zichen’s cock harder and faster with every moment. His dick is practically bouncing now, and Xingchen, watching him with perhaps more focused attention than he has ever put into anything before, almost imagines he can see the moment when he knows he’s about to come. With a wrecked wail, Xue Yang spills himself in a long arc across the bedspread, his cock nearly pulsing with the force of his orgasm. It’s only then that Zichen wraps his hand around him, jerking him with a practiced and ruthless efficiency until Xue Yang is nearly shivering with overstimulation.

“Good boy, good boy, that’s it,” Zichen says. His voice is gutted, torn, cracked open. “Just let me—that’s it—”

It’s several minutes still before Zichen is truly getting close. Xue Yang takes it like a champion, writhing and whining but never flinching away, rocking his hips into Zichen’s even through what must be a miserable oversensitivity. He’s flushed all down his chest, his eyes clenched closed; his body is wracked with the spasmodic tremors quaking out from his core through all four of his limbs. He’s so beautiful that Xingchen thinks his heart might break. He never knew Xue Yang could be so sweet and giving and good.

“Oh,” Zichen groans all at once, and seizes Xue Yang about the waist, dragging him down hard onto his cock. Xue Yang moans softly and clenches around him, heaving for breath; and Zichen shoves his face in the side of Xue Yang’s neck, shaking and shaking, taut with strain and fiercely quiet, and comes buried deep inside him.

There is a long moment of blissful silence. Xingchen barely dares to breathe, not wanting to shatter that stillness, his heart and his eyes utterly full with them. And then Zichen loosens his grip on Xue Yang—gently at first and then more fully—and lifts him carefully off his cock, laying him down on the bed. All at once Xue Yang collapses into the mattress; his eyes are still closed, but the lines of his face have smoothed out from the intensity of orgasm into a simple, satisfied exhaustion. Zichen settles himself beside him, gathering Xue Yang into his arms, and Xue Yang turns towards him and exhales a peaceful, bone-deep sigh.

Zichen looks up then, and for the first time since he started stripping Xue Yang acknowledges Xingchen’s presence. With an overwhelming blaze of arousal, Xingchen slams back into the outlines of his own body. All at once he is aware of the tightness of his limbs; the cramp in his fingers from clenching his fist on the arm of the chair; the raw skin of his hand where he was gnawing on the pad of his thumb while he watched them, wholly entranced. He is aware, too, of how painfully, viciously hard he is: and how obviously visible his erection must be to Zichen from two feet away on the bed. They surely invited him here for just that purpose, and yet he still feels obscurely embarrassed: stripped bare before his best friends’ eyes, even though they’re the ones who are actually bare, and he’s the one who has been watching.

Zichen tips his head, inquiring and contemplative, and gives Xingchen’s lap a pointed look before raising his eyes back to his face. There’s a clear invitation in his expression. He obviously wouldn’t mind if Xingchen got himself off in front of them: might actually enjoy it, might even be wondering why he hasn’t done it already. And yet Xingchen finds that the idea of taking his dick out right now—of reducing the tenderness and beauty of what they just shared with him to mere titillation—wakes a strange and nauseating desolation in his gut. He shakes his head.

“I’ll leave you be,” he says gently. He pushes himself to his feet, ignoring the stiffness in his legs, ignoring his arousal, ignoring the heart which is telling him he’s running away from the best thing that’s ever happened to him. “Thank you. So much, truly. You were so lovely.”

“Xingchen…,” Zichen says.

“Stay,” Xue Yang mumbles into Zichen’s collar.

But Xingchen only shakes his head again. “I’ll let you sleep. Goodnight Zichen, Yang’er.”

And he leaves, closing the door and cutting himself off from the soft glow of the lamplight, and from the fragile, fluttering warmth of his heart that he has left behind with them.

The next day, when Xue Yang and Zichen are on their way up to bed, Xue Yang holds his hand out to him in an obvious request. Xingchen shakes his head. “Not tonight,” he says, with the most convincing smile he can summon up. “I have work to get done.”

Xue Yang looks briefly disappointed at that, then shrugs and shakes it off. “Your loss,” he says, flashing a wicked little smirk.

“Don’t stay up too late,” Zichen says, his hand on Xue Yang’s lower back already to guide him up the stairs.

“No promises,” Xingchen says. “Sleep well.”

“Goodnight.”

The next day is Sunday. Xingchen has his regularly scheduled shift at the food bank to get him out of the house for the afternoon; he pleads tiredness afterward, and a morning class on Monday, and goes to bed early. On Monday night, he hadn’t planned to stay out, but he takes advantage of an invitation to a study date with a classmate. He gets dinner with her and two other PhD candidates, and doesn’t make it home until nearly eleven.

On Tuesday night, Xue Yang doesn’t ask: he just grabs his arm when he gets up from the couch and tries to pull Xingchen along with him. Startled, Xingchen resists a little harder than he otherwise might have, snatching his hand back to his chest. Xue Yang turns back to him, just as surprised. “What gives?” he says. “Are you coming or not?”

“I’m, I don’t—” Xingchen says.

“You’re being weird again,” Xue Yang says. “I told you to stop avoiding us!”

“I’m not!” Xingchen says, gesturing helplessly at the couch. He’s been hanging out with them all evening, halfheartedly reading a book and watching Xue Yang play Dark Souls. “I just—I can’t—”

“Yang’er, give him some space,” Zichen says, but while his words are understanding, Xingchen can see the hurt in his eyes as well. He ducks his head, his insides writhing.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll see you both tomorrow.”

Xue Yang blows out a frustrated sigh. “Fine. Fine!” he says, and turns to march up the stairs.

Xingchen spends the afternoon with them on Wednesday, as promised; but when the evening begins to lull, he goes upstairs of his own accord and walks into his own bedroom before they can ask him to join them.

Thursday is movie night, like always. Xingchen picks The Green Knight, and then spends the last third of the film wanting to crawl into a hole once it becomes apparent what’s going on between the lead and his two married hosts. He practically bolts as soon as the movie is over, making some incoherent excuse about his Friday classes and disappearing into his room.

On Friday night, Zichen and Xue Yang go to bed ahead of him, without trying to ask him to join them. Xingchen stays downstairs late into the night, picking fitfully over Baoshan’s comments and revisions on his latest chapter, trying not to feel bereft. He has no right to be upset that they didn’t invite him up with them when he’s the one who keeps turning them down; more to the point, he never had any right to it in the first place.

The lights are off in Zichen’s room when Xingchen finally heads up to bed. He steps over the creaky floorboard by long habit, and then nearly jumps out of his own skin when the bedroom door swings open anyway. Zichen is a dim, looming shape in the doorframe, half-dressed in hastily thrown-on sweatpants, his arms folded uncomfortably over his chest. The glow of a distant streetlamp spills into the hallway at an odd angle; no other light illuminates him.

“Zichen! You scared me,” Xingchen whispers. His heartbeat is still galloping in his chest, for more reasons than one.

“Can we talk?” Zichen says, just as low. Xue Yang must be asleep.

“Do we have to?” Xingchen blurts out, plaintive, and regrets it immediately. “I’m sorry, that was rude. Of course we can talk.”

Zichen takes a long breath in, slow and shaky. He can’t seem to decide on how to arrange his hands. “Why haven’t you come to join us again?” he says finally, straightforward and raw. “I thought you’d enjoyed it. Did we do something wrong?”

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” Xingchen says, firmly—maybe a bit more loudly than he’d intended. The words spill out of him in a rush, a confession. “I did enjoy it. I liked it so much.”

“Then—what’s the problem?” Zichen says. He straightens up slightly, the set of his arms more relaxed.

Xingchen just stares at him, at a loss. He has no idea how to answer that without revealing far too much—without putting all his unwanted emotions on them, which is exactly what he’s been trying to avoid by refusing their invitation. “I just—I can’t,” he says at last. “I probably shouldn’t have agreed to it in the first place. It’s not fair.”

“Not fair?” Zichen says, frowning. “You mean… Xingchen, if you want to do more than just watch, we can do that, we can—I just thought you’d enjoy watching the first time. I didn’t mean—”

“No! No, no, it’s not that,” Xingchen says. He has to steer Zichen away from this line of thought, for both their sakes. “That isn’t what I meant. Of course I liked watching, I would never want to impose—”

“Who’s imposing?” Zichen says. Now he’s the one who sounds at a loss. “You’re not making any sense. We want you there.”

Xingchen’s heart is going to shatter into a million pieces. “I meant that it’s not fair to you,” he says. “You asked me to join you under—under certain assumptions, a particular set of circumstances. It would be unfair of me to keep taking advantage when you don’t know the truth.”

“What truth?” Zichen says helplessly, but before Xingchen can even think of how to answer there is a scuffle and a thump from Zichen’s bedroom, and then Xue Yang comes storming out into the hallway, sleep-rumpled and completely nude.

“Oh my god, is that what this is about?” he demands. “Xingchen. Xingxing. Babe. You are so stupid. We know you were listening to us fuck in the hallway. That’s why we wanted you to watch! Was that not fucking obvious?!”

Xingchen feels his whole body flush. All the embarrassment of that night comes flooding back at once, twisting in his gut like he’s wringing out a towel; and it’s compounded now by the new embarrassment of having falsely believed he’d gotten away with it. He remembers what Xue Yang had said, backing him into a corner in the kitchen, and wants to squirm right out of his body.

The fact that he’s naked is certainly not helping.

“Yang’er, calm down,” Zichen attempts, but Xue Yang is having none of it.

“I swear to god, you’re such an idiot,” he says. “We give you the perfect excuse to watch us as much as you like, but no, you can’t do it. You wouldn’t even jack off for us! Did you think we were gonna like that more? ‘Oh, he can look at us, but he’s not allowed to think it’s hot,’ like that makes any fucking sense. And now you won’t even come watch us again because, what, you sneakily listened in that one time? It’s not fair to us? What’s not fucking fair is me having the best orgasm of my life, and not getting to do it again because you’ve decided to get all stupid and noble!”

“It’s not that!” Xingchen cries, and then has to clap his hand over his mouth. His mind is spinning. He didn’t mean to let it slip, but the onslaught of new information was too much for him to keep his head.

The silence is ringing. Xue Yang just glares at him, his hands planted on his hips; Xingchen quickly averts his eyes. His gaze lands on Zichen, which is hardly better: he’s at least not naked, but his face is so fraught with devastation that Xingchen thinks his heart might break all over again.

Zichen takes a deep breath in, his chest inflating visibly—and, no, that’s so rude, Xingchen has to look away from him too—and then lets it out just as slowly. “What is the problem, then?” he says. “Can you please tell us? Because… I’ll be honest, this has been a really confusing rejection so far.”

To his horror, tears come spilling out of Xingchen’s eyes. “It’s not meant to be a rejection!” he says—oh, he hates this, he hates this, his voice is already wavering, he sounds so pathetic. “That’s the problem! I want you both so much, and that’s not my place, because you’re together—I’m not part of that—and it’s not fair to you, to be, to be falling in love when that’s not what you signed up for, you just wanted to have fun with me, and—and I didn’t want to make this your problem—”

Zichen is staring at him, wide-eyed and stunned. He takes half a step forward, reaching out to him, and for a moment Xingchen thinks he’s going to brush his fingers over his face like he did that night in their bedroom. “Xingchen,” he begins, aching and plaintive; but once again, Xue Yang cuts in.

“What the fuck, Xiao Xingchen?” he spits. “What is wrong with you?!”

Xingchen hiccups on a sob. “I’m sorry—”

“Fuck off!” Xue Yang shouts. “I don’t wanna hear your sorries! You’re in love with us and you think that’s a problem?! You fucking asshole! That’s why we wanted you to watch!”

There is a beat of silence. Xingchen blinks tears out of his eyes, fighting to get his breathing under control. “Wh—what?”

Zichen closes his eyes for a moment, exhaling a pained sigh. “Yang’er, I love you, now please shut up for a minute,” he says. Xue Yang squawks indignantly, but Zichen ignores him. He steps up to Xingchen, hesitating for a moment, and then settles his hands on his upper arms. “Xingchen. You’re in love with us?”

Xingchen can’t look at him. “Yes,” he says miserably.

Strong fingers catch his chin, forcing his face to lift. Zichen is startlingly close, his eyes dark and liquid, his lips gently parted. “But that’s amazing,” he says. “That’s everything we could possibly want.”

All at once Xingchen is buzzing with nerves. “Really?” he practically squeaks.

“Of course it is,” Zichen says, and leans in to kiss him.

It’s soft at first, exploratory, but then Xingchen’s breath hitches and it right away turns heated. He is swept up in it instantly, dizzy and desperate; he has no idea what to do with his hands. Zichen’s mouth on his has unlocked something in him, and he realizes quite abruptly that he’s been in love with him from the moment they met. He feels like a live wire. He never wants it to end.

But it does have to end eventually. Zichen lets him go, and backs carefully away, and Xingchen does his best not to stagger, bracing himself on the wall. His thoughts are impossibly muddled. “Did that really just happen?” he says fuzzily.

“No, you’re fucking hallucinating,” Xue Yang says immediately, and shoves Zichen aside to bully his way into Xingchen’s arms. “My turn now.”

Xingchen is a little more prepared for it this time. He meets Xue Yang’s kiss halfway, winding his hands into his hair and pulling him close. His blood thrills at the press of his naked body, his hot mouth, the needy little whines already falling from his lips. He’s not even sure Xue Yang knows he’s making them. He can’t seem to get close enough. Desire is coursing through him now, heavy and molten and bright.

Oh, he loves them both. He loves them both so much.

“There,” Xue Yang all but growls when he finally pulls away. “Will you quit being stupid now?”

Xingchen lets out a ragged little laugh, clutching Xue Yang to him. “I’ll try,” he says.

“Good,” Xue Yang says decisively, then twists around in his arms to direct a glare in Zichen’s direction. “And you. I can’t believe the first time you said you loved me was when you were telling me to shut up. Some boyfriend you are.”

“Really?” Zichen says; he seems like he’s aiming for dry, but he’s too happy to make it stick. “I thought it was very in character.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“Yeah, that’s the plan,” Zichen says, and then—once again ignoring Xue Yang’s sputtering—reaches out to Xingchen.

Xingchen clasps his hand readily, threading their fingers together. “Hi,” he says giddily.

“Hey,” Zichen says, low and warm. “So, want to join us?”

Xingchen is smiling so hard it’s making his cheeks hurt. “Yeah,” he says. “I really, really do.”