"Atlas, you arekilling me—"
"I told you to grab them on the way out the door. You said you had it."
"I had the bug spray, thewater, thechips Zero made me come back for—"
"You forgot the towels."
"...I forgot the towels."
He stands there at the corner of the blanket, dripping onto the wool, naked and pissed off and extremely Bane about it. Then his eyes drop to me—pulled between Atlas's knees,wrapped in Atlas's arms, dry and warm and very much not wet—and his mouth flattens.
"Maxie."
"...don't."
"C'mere, baby."
"Bane.Bane—"
His hand is on my wrist. He pulls. Atlas, traitorously, opens his arms. I am hauled forward onto the blanket and into Bane's lap in one motion, bare skin and seawater all over the front of my hoodie, his arms locking around me, his face pressed wet and cold into the side of my neck.
"Bane."
"Mm."
"You are freezing—"
"Mm-hm."
"You did this on purpose—"
"Fuck, you're warm." Mumbled into my throat. Almost a curse. "Fuck. Don't move."
Behind me, Zero has finally arrived at the blanket. He drops onto his knees next to us with the corkscrew already out, working it into the first bottle of red without bothering to put on a stitch.
"Glasses?" Zero asks.
"In the tote."
"You know damn well there are no glasses in that tote," Atlas murmurs around a chuckle.
"Then we drink from the bottle."
"Like animals," Bane groans into my neck.
"Yeah, Bane. We are."
The cork comes out with a soft pop and Zero takes a long pull straight from the neck and then passes the bottle across me to Atlas, leaning over to do it, his bare shoulder brushing mine on the way. I am sandwiched between two naked men andanother fully clothed on a wool blanket on a beach late at night, and my hoodie is wet. Bane flips me in his lap so I’m between his legs leaning against him as he shivers against my back, and his mouth has just found the side of my throat warm and slow and—
"Oh," I say. Quiet. To no one.
"Mm." Bane. Against the bond mark. "There you are."
His mouth is salt and ocean and him, and his hand has come around to splay flat over my stomach under the hoodie, and I tilt my head back without thinking and he kisses me, upside-down, his cold wet hair dripping onto my forehead, and I am laughing into the kiss before I can stop myself.
"Sorry, baby. I'm cold."
"You are not sorry—"
