"Yeah."
We watch them.
Zero is doing some kind of dunking maneuver on Bane that involves a lot of splashing and a lot of swearing. The moon is on the water. Their voices carry. Bane laughs—a real laugh, the kind I almost never hear out of him—and Atlas's chest rumbles against my back with his own quiet laugh.
He kisses my temple.
We sit like that for a long time.
After a while, Atlas's hand slides under my hoodie. Just his palm. Flat on my stomach. Skin to skin. Possessive in the quietest way he's ever been possessive of me.
"I almost didn't go."
"...what?"
"To the wedding." He says it into my hair. Quiet. Like he's giving me something he hasn't given anyone. "I had a meeting in Singapore that day. I was planning to send my regrets and a card."
"You're kidding."
"I rebooked the flight at four in the morning. I don't even know why. I don't make decisions that way. I called my secretary at four in the morning and said move it, and she didn't ask why, and I sat in that pew next to Zero and watched a kid in a too-big suit walk his mother down the aisle, and I—"
He stops.
His thumb traces my ribs.
"And there you were."
I don't know what to say. My throat has closed. I press my face into his shoulder.
"I almost missed you," he says. Soft. "By a phone call. By a Singapore meeting."
"Atlas—"
"I'm telling you because I want you to know I think about that day. A lot. I would have met you eventually, of course I would. When you moved in. Across the table where you would already be my father's wife's son and the rules would have already been in place."
His thumb traces my ribs.
"But I got to meet you before. Before you were my stepbrother. And I hold onto that. That I felt something back then, before all of this." He huffs a quiet breath into my hair. "Sohowever fucked up it is that all I want to do is worship my little stepbrother, it doesn’t seem so bad if I think about you from that night."
I turn in his arms and kiss him. He holds me there. Kisses me back.
Atlas is strong like a rock, like a place I could fall apart and never miss a piece when I decided to put myself back together. His hand raises higher up to my chest, my hoodie raising up until chills pebble along my skin from the ocean breeze.
"Get aroom," Zero shouts from the water.
We don't break apart.
Bane jogs up the sand first, dripping, hair pushed back. Zero is fifteen feet behind him, walking instead of running, taking his time. Both of them pale in the moonlight and absolutely unembarrassed.
Bane scrubs a wet hand through his hair and shakes the water off his fingers. "Hand me a towel."
"You forgot the towels," Atlas says. Calmly. Into my hair.
Bane stops at the edge of the blanket.
"...what."
"You forgot the towels, Bane."
