“Uh huh.” Grayson shifts against him, smirking. “Think you can survive another dance number?”
Finn groans. “You’ll kill me.”
“I’ll revive you,” Luca offers brightly. “With glitter.” He tosses his hand like he’s throwing confetti.
“And my dick,” Rowan adds, smug.
“And a video for later,” Gideon says with a cat-like smirk.
“And good music,” Jay says, lifting his phone asHey, Hey, It’s Your Birthdaybegins to play over the speakers.
“And queso,” Leo adds with a smirk. “Because I’mnachoaverage mate.”
A chorus of groans follows.
Someone else moans, “Goddess, Leo.”
Leo just shrugs, unrepentant. “What? I knocked that joke out of the park.” His mates begin a debate over the best baseball-sex puns.
Finn closes his eyes, heart full to bursting, letting the noise of his family roll over him in waves.
This is where he belongs.
Life couldn’t possibly get any better than this.
“Best birthday ever,” he whispers.
***
Three days later, Finn climbs the stairs, his Dopp kit in hand. He’s sore and tired in all the best ways.
He throws the kit on the bathroom counter and heads back into his room to empty his pockets on the dresser: the old leather wallet his mother gave him when he got into medical school, and a hot pink poker chip that readstopon one side andbottomon the other. It makes him grin—this weekend had been one for the scrapbook.
His eyes catch on the edge of a single dollar bill sticking out of the billfold.
Slipping it free, Finn’s heart flutters. Pressed to the center in a flash of red is a perfectly shaped kiss. He and Grayson had exchanged the bills before clearing out the Truist Stadium box. Finn had declined at first, but Grayson—and the others—had insisted he’d earned it.
He grins at the memory of his flushed cheeks, pride rising as he remembers Grayson’s wobbly gait in the elevator.
Pulling open a neatly organized desk drawer, Finn chooses a pink-tipped pushpin—the exact color of Grayson’s cheeksandother things—and he finds a place for the memento next to the art show ticket from when he’d met Rowan and Grayson at the art show in New York.
Finn wouldn’t consider himself sentimental, not like Luca or Jay.
Butthis—he wants to remember forever.
IV
They Shine Brighter Now (that I found you)
This story is a short interlude between Jamie and Nix that takes place a month after the events of Tides of Fate.
Originally posted as a short story in my newsletter, this has been completely overhauled.
Content Warnings
Use of Daddy and Baby Boy (but no age play)
They Shine Brighter (now that I found you)
