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Josh pulled him back to the bedroom, crawling between the sheets, still naked. Leo settled in the middle, cocooned between two warm bodies and what felt like all the love in the world.
Josh snuffled into him, Damon holding him firmly from behind. Leo let himself sink into their scents and drift into sleep, safe and exactly where he wanted to be.
TWELVE
Itwasamazingtorediscover how good having sex could feel.
It was silly that it had taken Leo so long to figure it out, but it was the intimacy that made all the difference. It was what had made him feel so good with Josh and Damon from the beginning; there was nothing forced or performative with them. Now that all the doubts had, if not disappeared, then at least quieted, it was easier to let go fully. To let the feeling of being wanted sink into his bones and warm him up in a way he’d never experienced.
It was constant work to trust that Josh and Damon were something he could keep. Therapy helped, but most of all, it was just time. No words could have convinced him fully that he wasn’t a spare piece in their relationship instead of an equal third of the whole. It was through living day-to-day with Damon and Josh, the way they showed him how much they cared for him, that proved to him, little by little, that this was as permanent as things got.
A telling sign of that was how nervous Damon and Josh were when they finally got to meet Rose. Leo assured them that she wasn’t mean, just protective, but that didn’t seem to calm them any.
“It’s not that we think she isn’t nice,” Josh said as they approached Rose’s apartment. “We just want to make a good impression.”
“Youwill,” Leo insisted, but Damon was still biting his lip and holding on to the basket containing the homemade bread the two had baked as though it were his only lifeline, knuckles white around the woven bark.
There was a goddamn checked cloth in there, too. It was endearingly ridiculous.
Leo knocked on Rose’s door, huffing out a laugh as Josh whispered a frantic, “How do I look?” at Damon.
“You both look fine,” Leo said, and then Rose opened the door, a grin on her face.
“You’re late,” she proclaimed cheerfully, and Leo was sure Josh was going to keel over from the force of that accusation.
Leo ushered his boyfriends in before one of them had a conniption out in the hall.
They made their introductions, Damon handing over the bread as though he were offering the queen a favour. Rose peered inside the basket and exclaimed with happiness, which seemed to calm everybody down somewhat.
Despite how comforting Leo had tried to be, Rosedidgrill Josh and Damon once they’d all sat at the table to eat.
“So, is my brother like your secondary partner? And you’re each other’s first? In terms of polyamory, I mean,” she asked sweetly.
Leo rolled his eyes, scared despite himself to hear the answer. “Put the Reid technique away, Rose. They aren’t one of your serial killers.”
“You know that serial killers are rare, right? Like, I’m not interrogating a serial killer every Tuesday.”
Leo gasped in mock surprise. “Wait,what? What even are you for, then?”
Before Rose could reply, Damon jumped in, voice low and calm but with that stern edge he got sometimes. “Sorry. Not to interrupt, but I wanted to make sure we answered your question. That’s absolutely not the situation here. We know that in a lot of polyamorous relationships, people have their main partner, to which they are mated, and then other partners who are…maybe not less important, but just different from that primary partner. But that’s not what Josh and I want at all.”
Leo stared at both of them as Josh nodded. His throat was tight, heartbeat so loud it threatened to drown everything else out.
Rose wasn’t done, though. “Whatdoyou want?”
Josh was the one to answer this time. “We want to spend the rest of our lives with Leo. The three of us, together.”
Leo made a choked, involuntary noise, drawing the attention of the three of them. “Sorry,” he said, continuing when everybody kept their eyes on him, “that sounds really nice.”
It wasn’t that they hadn’t talked about this previously, and it wasn’t that Josh and Damon treated him as anything less than an equal partner. It was just…so fucking nice to hear it being said so bluntly.
Rose’s eyes were bright and happy, lips in a slanted smile. “Good. Because my brother doesn’t deserve any more heartache.”
“And we’re going to do the best we can to make it so he never feels it again,” Damon said.
It was an impossible thing to promise. Life brought all sorts of heartbreak—nobody could escape that. But it made his soul quiet and calm, having two people in his corner to feel safe with through it all.
Other than with Rose, Leo had never had that. To have someone who wasn’t family see something worthy in him…it made him have faith that he was someone who deserved all the wonders this relationship had to offer.
