The blanket goes still.
Atlas's hand, where it's resting on my stomach, stops moving. Bane's forehead lifts off my thigh. Zero, against my throat, goes very, very quiet for one held second.
Then he laughs.
Low and dark and delighted, the kind of laugh he saves for things that genuinely surprise him, and his hand fists tight in the front of my hoodie.
"Oh, baby."
"What."
"Say that again. Slower. I want to hear every syllable."
"Zero—"
"Did you hear him, Atlas?"
"I heard him."
"Bane?"
"I heard him."
"Our boy wants input. On the calendar."
"I didn't—I just—I don't always want it to be sopolite, that's all. I don't—I don't want you all to just hand me back and forth like I'm a—a serving dish—"
"He wants us to fight over him."
"I did not say that—"
"He absolutely said that."
"Zero—"
"Tell me I'm wrong, Carter. Look me in the eye. Tell me you wouldn’t like it if Bane has to actually pull me off you. Tell me you don't get hot watching Atlas yank us both off you. Tell me."
I cannot tell him.
He sees that I cannot tell him.
His grin breaks open against my throat in a way I feel down my whole spine. He kisses the bond mark, slow, possessive, with his teeth grazing it just enough to make me gasp.
"That's my boy."
"Don't encourage him, Zero." Bane. Mock-grim. But his thumb has found the bruise on my hip under the hoodie and ispressing it on purpose. "Now I have tofight youfor him on a Tuesday."
"You always had to. He just made it official."
Atlas's mouth at my temple. Quiet. Proud.
"Noted, Max."
Zero kisses my throat one more time, smug as anything, then sits back enough to take a long pull off the wine bottle.
"For the record," Bane says, dry, "I am not on a calendar. I'm a freelancer."
"You're a what?"
