Work Text:
When Lucius got the Outlook invitation, he naturally assumed it was one of Stede’s borderline fraudulent excuses for a vacation. First of all, Ed was the only other person invited. Second, the subject was “Work Trip,” which seemed as clumsy an attempt at masking the truth as someone naming their porn folder “Taxes.” So he’d packed his nice boxers and his slinkiest button-downs and settled in for a long weekend of getting fucked on the clock.
Which is why it’s all the more disturbing that he’s found himself actually doing work. For several days!
He’d discovered en route from the airport—reluctantly skimming through one of the tri-fold pamphlets Stede handed him from his briefcase—that this would be both a legitimate and deeply boring weekend. There are actual meetings and lectures that he has to attend with his fellow hollow-eyed, undercaffeinated twentysomethings. For fuck’s sake, he’s even got a lanyard.
Even Stede asking him to take minutes wasn’t a ruse to sext in his Google Doc comments, because those have gone unresolved, too.
For sale. One Lucius. Unfucked, he texts Pete under his folding chair.
Sorry babe :^( Pete replies. Then, callously: can u get me a free tote bag
*
It’s actually been a very pleasant year spent drifting in and out of Ed and Stede’s insane orbit whenever the mood struck. After New Year’s, they’ve found a pattern that works for everyone: allow a combination of sexual tension and boredom to reach unbearable levels until the dam bursts, fuck creatively and expansively, then let everyone get back on with their lives.
But they’ve always been more of an occasional indulgence than a routine habit. Ed and Stede are a sometimes food, as the wellness gals say: a little now and then, but not something you want to subject yourself to 24/7. Like a parsley garnish. Or radiation.
Still, at this point, it’s sort of insulting not to be propositioned.
You think I’m hot, right? he texts Oluwande in a panic. It's his third day of drinking burnt medium roast and seeing magic eye distortions in the carpet. He’s touched zero dicks. He’s starting to feel like a virginal princess in a sort of scary European fairy tale, sleeping naked and wet-eyed in a tower and waiting for a swarthy hero to break in through the window to take her maidenhead. Like, I’m cute. You’d want to sleep with me if you were my boss. Right??
Did you mean to send that to Pete? Oluwande replies, after several minutes.
No!! Lucius sends back. I need an objective third party! Help!!!!
He doesn’t get a response after that.
So it’s a welcome fucking respite when Stede finally raps at his door to ask him if he has any plans that evening and if he wouldn’t mind terribly accompanying him and Ed to dinner for a little “quality time.” Lucius’ room key is in his pocket before he even finishes talking.
*
Dinner is long and meandering and in the kind of upscale bistro that has a one-page menu and serves exclusively spa water. The whole time, Ed and Stede are giving him that look over their balloon glasses that men over forty don’t even realize they’re doing: the heated, leery one that screams BONER in skywriting and immediately precedes dick pics and entry-level fantasies.
“Lucius, try the Chardonnay,” Stede says, a hand high on Lucius’ thigh, ogling him so openly and intensely that Lucius doesn’t see the traumatized sommelier for another twenty minutes.
It’s sweet. It’s a relief to be so openly wanted.
The ten-mile radius surrounding the convention center must be jammed with lawyers and underpaid legal staff desperate for a decent meal, because the Uber ride home is a gridlocked nightmare. He can feel Ed and Stede’s mounting impatience in the backseat next to him, watching the freeway exit numbers increase by glacial degrees. With a measure of manic glee, he thinks How’s desperation feel, bitch? and serenely scrolls Twitter.
They’re barely through the door to their room before Stede has him pressed up against the wall hard enough that he can feel the velvety edge of the damask wallpaper through his shirt.
“I thought we’d be in that car forever,” Stede sighs, then kisses him.
“You could’ve had this whenever, you know,” Lucius says when they part. “I thought maybe I was a leper. You had me going that this was actually just a business trip.”
“Lucius,” Stede chides, with impressive condescension for someone trying to suck a hickey into the space between his neck and his chest. Lucius swats him away; it’ll ruin the visual cohesion of his V-necks. “We run a business! I needed to do some work first.”
“You’re his treat,” Ed calls from where he’s rummaging around the kitchen. Lucius and Stede both look up. “For being a good little business boy all weekend.”
Lucius—for whom a treat is a nine-dollar coffee and one of the puffed quinoa snacks from the clients-only stash in the conference room—reconsiders his priorities.
Stede goes a little red. “Well. I might’ve used a different turn of phrase. Perhaps ‘shrewd career man?’”
Lucius grins, catching Ed’s eye. “No, definitely ‘business boy.’”
He lets Stede kiss him as much as he likes after that. Stede kisses the same way that starving men gorge themselves sick when finally given food. He’ll kiss until everyone’s swollen and sore and chapped and past the point of enjoying themselves if permitted. But Lucius figures he’s earned his fill after several decades in borderline chastity, so he tries to be a good sport about it.
He hears a soft sound of approval and a clinking to his left. Ed must be getting some of the fancy ice from the silicone trays that Stede brings with him on trips (because hotel ice is allegedly “hideously untrustworthy”) to make a drink while he waits his turn to be the center of attention.
It’s nice, and he’s perfectly fine to be ravished on the company dime, but—
“Sorry, one sec,” Lucius says. He tries to squirm out of Stede’s arms, but he’s started doing pilates three times a week (for sex reasons, Lucius suspects), and it’s weirdly difficult. He’s so much denser than he looks. “Bathroom. Did anyone else drink, like, an entire pitcher of water at dinner?”
The kitchen is abruptly silent. Ed’s poised above his glass with an ice cube between mini-tongs. His eyes cut to Stede, who’s suddenly gone pink and still.
“I’m not going to like, leap out the window or anything,” Lucius says, wary. “I just have to pee.”
“About that, Lucius,” Stede says, as casually as a dropped anvil. “I was wondering.”
*
So Stede likes to be pissed on. He’d said as much in a hot rush against Lucius’ neck, maneuvering him into the bathroom, unbuckling his belt and whipping it through the loops while Ed lurked in the doorway like the scary-hot apparition he often was.
This was, admittedly, a bit of a swerve from the man who seemed to like getting his hands dirty in only the abstract. Lucius had always regarded him as possessing a sort of stolen pervert valor, but apparently, he was actually putting in the work at his advanced age. Huh. Good for him.
But. This kind of thing is not really in Lucius’ wheelhouse. He’d actually considered saying no before he realized he didn’t really have a good reason. Plus, Stede was difficult to say no to. Especially when he was guiding Lucius by the elbow into the massive, gleaming walk-in shower, as gentlemanly as a school dance chaperone.
Lucius shifts on his heels while Stede arranges himself eagerly at his feet. “Is it not, like… a biohazard, though?”
He thinks he’d heard a podcast episode about it once on his commute home, but with the volume of information his deeply damaged millennial brain absorbed on a day-to-day basis, it was usually at capacity by about 9:00 AM.
“Lucius,” Stede sighs. He’s kneeling in front of Lucius on the high-gloss herringbone tile. What a wonderfully expensive and nerve-wracking stage upon which to take this leap. “As if I would propose you do something genuinely dangerous.”
“It’s mostly water anyway,” Ed interrupts, casual as anything.
He kicks off from his lean against the bathroom wall with the usual rockstar swagger. Lucius stiffens and wills his shoulders to drop. There’s just something about Ed that makes it impossible to truly relax around him. Maybe that was half the appeal for Stede, someone who seemed pathologically incapable of standing still for more than ten seconds.
Stede’s looking up at Lucius with the usual unsettling intensity, which is mostly having the effect of making Lucius even desperate to pee. Probably that’s the idea.
“So, okay,” Lucius starts, then stops. “I mean, how do you want this? I just– go?”
Stede tuts. “Is there any other way of doing it?”
“Okay, don’t be a bitch about it.” Still, Lucius worries at a fingernail. “And you’re absolutely sure you want me to—”
Stede’s already talking over him. “Yes, yes.”
“Oh, believe me, he likes it,” Ed says, stepping into the shower and slotting behind Lucius.
There’s a squeak and a groan as the showerhead spatters to life, and then there’s a very naked Ed squeezed up against him, encircling him in his arms. They’re more or less the same height, and yet Lucius feels utterly blanketed by him. Like liquid takes the shape of a container, Edward Teach molds himself around people.
Lucius feels a worrying twinge in his bladder and wills himself to stop thinking about liquid.
“I really do,” Stede says solemnly, placing his hands on Lucius’ shins. His cock bobs a little with the motion. He’s been hard since they crossed the bathroom threshold.
“And you?” Lucius addresses what he can see of Ed over his shoulder, which is mostly hair. “What’s your vibe?”
A shrug against his back. “I like how much he likes it.”
They must’ve done this before together, Lucius registers, which is stupid because— of course they have, if Stede’s propositioning him, but it still feels ludicrously prurient to consider.
He images Stede, on his knees like this in front of Ed instead. Ed, with a hand in Stede’s hair, or cradling his jaw, his cock in his hand. Maybe making him wait for it— or maybe just going for it right away? And where — on his chest?
His face?
Jesus. Lucius has more or less seen them in that exact position himself, but he still feels a little naughty picturing it, like he’s a teenager with a dial-up connection again, googling the least incriminating varieties of “blow job” with only one earbud in, expecting to be caught.
“Well, good thing I’m here, then,” he says. He’s aiming for breezy, but it sounds like babbling. Ed’s hand is wandering over his chest, squeezing as he goes, playing idly with his chest hair. Lucius continues, inanely: “You two would just ping-pong off each other forever if you were left to your own devices, you know?”
When Ed laughs, it’s in a hot puff against Lucius’ neck, warm and deep enough to make a little shiver zip down his spine, right into his belly.
“Lucius,” he asks, amused. “Are you nervous?”
I’m not fucking nervous, Lucius thinks, even as his heart kicks into an incriminating timpani roll, because it would be crazy to be nervous. People do this literally all the time. It's a kink so basic that cashiers and newscasters and peoples’ mums know about it.
Because, okay— it’s not like he’s a prude. He’s worldly. He’s well-read. He’s aware that there are different shades of this—the humiliation stuff, the control angle, the maybe-actually-dangerous holding your pee stuff (which, now that he really thinks about it, he definitely did listen to a podcast about).
It’s just that it's been a long time since he’s had a truly novel sexual experience. There’s a certain security in sluttiness that he’s apparently been taking for granted, and now, here he is, feeling… virginal.
Yes, alright, he’s nervous.
“I'm just not good with an audience,” he finally says, lamely.
Stede looks at him with disappointment. “Lucius, you and I both know that’s not true.”
“Not like this!” he says, somewhat desperately, gesturing vaguely downward, where his dick is still debating how it feels about this whole situation. “This is anxiety-provoking!”
“Nothing to be anxious about. Just imagine you’re by yourself.” Ed’s casual, talking in that low rumble that Lucius can feel reverberate through his body like a physical thing, rattling its way down to his stomach, where he has to pee so bad it hurts a little now. He’s still so intimidating, and the worst part is Lucius can’t even picture him naked, because he is naked right now, and it’s making everything worse. “No one else here. Just gone for a piss in the middle of the night.” His hand wanders to the soft curve of Lucius’ stomach, settling there innocently.
Then he presses down, sharply.
“Fuck, fuck,” Lucius gasps, straining against where Ed’s got him held fast. A jolt of intense discomfort pulses hot in his bladder. Stede makes a broken sound at his feet.
“See?” Ed says, against his ear, friendly as anything. “Relax.”
“You are making it so incredibly hard to do anything approaching that,” Lucius babbles, fighting the childish urge to squirm where he’s locked in Ed’s arms. He registers abstractly that he’s sort of hard. “Oh, god.”
He’s distracted enough that he doesn’t even notice Stede nosing between his legs until it’s already happening. He jolts in surprise: Stede’s right there, licking him all over, like he’s too excited to take the time to actually put his dick all the way into his mouth.
Lucius nudges him with one toe and gets a muddled mmmm sound in response. Stede runs pinkish on a normal day, but he’s vermillion now everywhere except the crisp white part of his hair. The ends are dark and curling in the steam.
“Stede,” Lucius groans. Ed’s shifting against him purposefully now; he can feel the hot line of his cock dragging against the back of his thighs. The wet slide of Stede’s tongue is weirdly muted against the throb of his bladder, like he’s being touched underwater. Whenever one sensation recedes, the other races in to take its place. “That’s not helping.”
Stede pulls back briefly, his mouth slick. “I’d like to do it anyway, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Oh, well, look at that,” Ed says, brisk and conversational, like he’s not rubbing his dick all over Lucius’ ass. “Perfectly polite. Be rude to turn him down.”
“Insulting, really.”
“I mean, who says no to a blowjob?”
“Oh my god,” Lucius groans, “just do it.” Experience has taught him that without a tight leash, Ed and Stede will invent new varieties of sex that mostly involve talking while naked.
Ed briefly twists away. There’s a squeaking sound; he’s cranked the shower up higher. When he turns back around, the extra water means that he's grinding slippery and porno-wet against Lucius' back.
Some wordless exchange occurs between him and Stede, and then Stede’s pulling back so that Ed has enough room to take him in hand.
“By the way,” Ed’s saying, like Stede’s not even there, vibrating with anticipation with a dick in his mouth. “He likes that it’s dirty. So if you’re worried about that, no need. It’s the main event.”
“Rich boss man likes to be debased,” Lucius says, much less evenly than he was hoping, watching Ed’s hand slide up his cock to where it’s sitting on Stede’s tongue. “Not really the twist of the century.”
“‘Hot secretary gagging for it,’ isn’t exactly a headline, either.”
“You–” Lucius starts, but then Ed’s hand is on his stomach again, and his voice dies in his throat.
He feels the gravelly scrape of Ed’s stubble against his neck when he leans in, lips to the curve of his ear.
“The longer you wait,” he sing-songs, and Lucius feels the uncontrollable shudder move through him like an escalating scale on a xylophone. “The worse it gets.”
“Ed, don't tease,” Stede gasps as he briefly surfaces, in perhaps the most unconvincing performance of his life.
“I‘m not teasing. Just stating the facts.” Ed’s hand’s just sitting there, doing nothing but threatening worse. “How long since dinner?”
Lucius blinks. Between what Ed’s saying and what Stede’s doing, it’s getting increasingly hard to focus. “I–”
“Forty-five minutes? An hour?” Ed muses. He drums his fingers on Lucius’s stomach, once, twice, like he’s the surface of a desk. Even that’s too much for how uncomfortable Lucius is now; he whines through set teeth, trying to twist away from the spiky-hot pressure. “Maybe more? Probably not long before you don’t get to choose when. Got all night to wait.”
Stede whimpers, his mouth too full for anything else. Lucius’ toes are curling into the tile, searching for purchase, physically bracing himself against Ed and Stede’s two-pronged attack.
“Think of how good it’ll feel,” Ed says, his voice like smoke. The blunt edge of his teeth graze Lucius’ neck when he leans in close. “A long piss? When you really have to go? Nothing better.”
“I– know.” Lucius says it without thinking, but the truth of it—the hot, squirming shame of his body’s inevitable weakness—hits him sideways. His cock jerks where it sits on Stede’s bottom lip. “Oh, fuck.”
“Don’t you want to give him what he wants?” Ed asks, quiet.
Their shapes are foggy and obscured in the vanity mirror. The world shrinks to the size of the shower stall.
“Lucius,” Stede groans wet against his thigh, hushed and pleading, and Lucius has to close his eyes for a second because what the fuck.
Then Stede’s gently sucking his balls into his mouth, and Ed’s squeezing his tits and biting his neck, and the whole fucking time the weight of his bladder is sitting like a hot heavy stone in his belly. The conflicting desire snarls up inside him, straining for relief.
“Stop. Both of you, stop,” he gasps, desperately. “I’m not— if you want me to do this, I need to focus.”
Ed’s hands retreat. Stede pulls back to sit on his heels, his face upturned and hopeful, his fist working inelegantly over his flushed cock. It’s a graceless, self-serving stroke, the kind that you do when you’re alone or you’re so hot for it you can’t even put on a show, and Lucius can barely look directly at it because there’s something magnetic about Stede’s stripped-bare desire. It's like staring at an eclipse. And Lucius has been around enough times to know that when someone bares their freaky little id to you, the least you can do is try to meet them halfway.
“Okay,” Lucius says, voice frayed, willing his body to cooperate. He needs to piss and he needs to come and he can’t really figure out what’s more urgent. He screws his eyes shut. “Okay. Okay—”
Stede’s grip on his shins gets tighter. “Are you—?”
“Don’t,” Lucius hisses. “Don’t distract me.”
“Shhhh,” Ed echoes over his shoulder.
Stede mercifully obeys, but he’s got the tips of his fingers pressed to his mouth like he can’t trust himself to stay quiet otherwise. He looks perched on the edge of something. Lucius knows the feeling.
Lucius sucks in a breath, his cock sitting heavy in his hand, marveling at just how bizarre it is that he has to go so badly but – can’t. He was holding it in before, but now his body feels totally unplugged from his brain. The train’s left the station for doing anything on purpose; it’s just going to happen on its own. The need builds in him, stoppered, the pressure rising.
There's just the spatter of the shower and the sound of their breathing, tangled together, and the sense of almost, a tossed coin spinning and spinning and spinning on its edge.
Infinitesimally, he relaxes, and then—
“Um,” he says in warning.
“Yes,” Stede says, breathless, and Ed groans, and Lucius finally lets go.
Ed was right. In the end, it is mostly water, and once he starts, he can’t stop. The relief is unbelievable, so acute and sweet that his knees go a little wobbly with it, but Ed props him up, strong arms locked around his chest, holding him in place, and– yeah, he’s pissing on Stede.
“That’s it, that’s it,” Ed’s saying, low and encouraging, like Lucius is an animal finally coaxed into a performance. His face prickles hot with it, but he groans all the same.
It splashes in a hot gush onto Stede’s lap and his chest. Shame squirms in Lucius’ belly, every impulse in his body protesting the wrongness of doing this here, in this context. But the look on Stede’s face—
“Oh my god,” Stede’s saying. “Please, yes, god,” and he looks so grateful, and he— he leans forward, sort of angles his face closer so that some hits him on the neck, almost on his chin, and now Lucius really does have to look the fuck away. It wicks up his body in a hot rush of disbelief. Holy shit, Stede.
“Don’t.” It’s Ed, his voice ragged, with a hand gripping his chin, forcing him to look. “Watch him.”
“Fuck,” Lucius pants. “Okay.”
Ed closes his hand around Lucius’ where he’s gripping his dick, angling the stream so that it’s hitting right between Stede’s legs. Stede makes an expression like he’s been slapped.
“Lucius,” he gasps, “keep doing that.”
Ed’s panting hard in his ear, rubbing his cock in the cleft of his ass. “Fuck. Do it harder. Really get him dirty.”
Lucius groans helplessly. “I don’t know if I—”
“You can.” Ed moves his hand to push on his belly, hard, and makes the decision for him. It spurts across Stede’s chest and catches him full on the face. Stede whines, an incredible squeezed-out sound, and touches his free hand to his cheek, chasing the sensation.
“Oh,” Stede moans, “Oh, that’s – it’s going to be over – very quickly.”
Lucius can feel the slick-swollen tip of Ed’s cock bumping the back of his thigh while he jerks himself off and knows he’s not far off either.
“Go on, then,” Lucius says on a shaky exhale, the heat rising in him, and look who finally has his fucking footing back. “Show me.”
Stede’s eyes squeeze shut in something like reverence. When he comes all over his fist and chest and the shower tiles too, all Lucius can think is how is this the same guy I had to drag into bed last year?
The sight of Stede must tip Ed over the edge, because he groans and stiffens behind Lucius, panting into the crook of his neck. Lucius can feel the hot drip of it down his ass and thighs before it's sluiced away with the rest of the mess.
For a moment it’s silent again, except for the shower still running, wasting what must by now be (with apologies to Greenpeace) a small country's worth of graywater.
And then Lucius laughs, a burble of hysterical giddy release floating out of him like a soap bubble.
“Jesus Christ,” he says, “you two.”
“Fuuuuck,” Ed agrees from where he's nuzzled into Lucius’ shoulder like a cat, stretching the word out several additional syllables. His arms slacken, then reposition themselves around Lucius in what might be a hug. The tenderness is such a surprise that, Lucius, horny and piss-drunk, somehow finds himself taking Ed's limp hand and holding it, like this is the world's weirdest, wettest first date.
“Wow,” is all Stede manages, dazed. He’s drenched, spattered with come and worse, the soft whitish hair on his chest glistening wet. He keeps staring at his own filthy hand, then back up at Lucius, then back to his hand, like he can’t believe what just happened, and Lucius would laugh again, except that emptying his bladder means that the need to come is suddenly extremely urgent.
“Not to interrupt whatever revelation you’re having down there,” Lucius says, his voice gone thin and—mortifyingly—a little desperate. “But could someone please touch me. Like, now.”
They both do. In the humid warmth of the bathroom, Ed and Stede wrap themselves around him like a cloud of steam: Ed, whispering hot in his ear, Stede's mouth back on his cock, and the last remnants of Lucius' nerves floating harmlessly up to the ceiling like vapor.
“That was good,” Ed’s groaning in his ear again like the devil on his shoulder. It makes Lucius shiver with pride. Maybe he's starting to get it after all. “That was so fuckin’ good. Look at him. You did that.”
*
“Thank you,” Stede says quietly, later.
Lucius is dozing on their luxe king-sized bed, scrubbed clean but damp enough to stick to the sheets. Ed’s still in the bathroom, doing whatever elaborate routine his hair requires.
It’s not totally clear if this is an intentional absence on Ed’s part— if he wants to give Stede and Lucius a moment to debrief, or if he really does just want to do his hair.
“Mm,” Lucius murmurs, all the eloquence fucked out of him. He rolls over so he can get a better look at Stede, who’s picking at the comforter shyly, the faint pinkish outline of the tile still crisscrossing his knees and his shins. He clearly wants to say something else. Lucius waits a beat for the monologue.
“And if it was too much…” Stede starts, trailing off.
Lucius shuts him down with a wave of his hand. “Nah, It was hot,” he says, drawing the plush comforter around him. “Revelations occurred.”
It's not a line – he has some new things to consider between podcasts on his commute. Plus, there was always something exhilarating about being let in on someone’s secrets, dirty or not.
And… Lucius would never say it, because that much raw sincerity makes him feel itchy and nauseous, but it’s inexplicably been a minor honor in his life to be here for Stede like this.
He tucks that all away for later. For now, he pats Stede’s arm fondly.
“Look at you with your little perversions! You’ve come so far.”
Stede swells with pride. “Well,” he blusters. “I had a lot of help from some of the top minds in the field.”
Lucius snorts. “You’re welcome,” he says around a yawn, which is stupid, because all he really did was take a highly-anticipated piss, but Stede and Ed have a way of running everyone around them ragged.
He feels the bed dip with Stede’s weight as he moves closer. Can almost taste the herbal cloud of his expensive shampoo.
“Could I persuade you to stay here for the night?”
“Does that mean I can play hooky tomorrow?”
Stede tuts. “Well—”
“Before you answer, consider that I already threw out my lanyard.”
“Lucius!” Stede chides, and his vaguely paternal disapproval is as cozy as an old well-worn sweater. “We really need to work on your attitude!”
“Mm, yeah, totally.” Lucius listens to the familiar prattle of Stede going on and on and pulls out his phone. Squinting one-eyed at the bright screen, he taps out a message with his thumb.
I got your stupid tote bag he texts Pete. And… want to try something new when I get home?