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Shaun visibly gulps.
It's obscene as it is shocking, the way Ed's hand slips into his friend's pants, clawing its way into him as Shaun's jaw lolls and his hips roll; gasping and groaning and carding his fingers through Ed's hair because he doesn't know what to do with the hand that isn't jerking himself off against Ed's stomach.
Their mouths open, but their words are silent—the nanny cam has no sound recording. But, he can see their giggling faces, lips pulled into devilish grins around the fags he'd smelled in the room earlier.
Shaun's fist works harder, faster—Ed chuckles at the loss of sanity in his lap—and it doesn't take long until he's panting at the ceiling, circling a thumb over the slit of his prick as Ed draws his teeth over the front of Shaun's bared neck.
And when Shaun slows, gritting his teeth to punctuate the finality of his orgasm, Pete doesn't need audio to be able to hear his housemate's blissed out moan echoing between his ears.
Pete doesn't leave particularly substantial sums of change lying around—he'd learned that lesson enough in his youth, and then he'd learned it some more at uni—but twenty p here and two quid there adds up over time, and it's the principle of the thing.
He suspects that Ed's the thief straight away. Why wouldn't he? When he's willing to be charitable, Pete would say that Ed overall isn't a bad person, he's just never known him to be too good for a little petty theft. Loose change he's left on a shelf corner, or atop the microwave, or beside the answering machine tends to go missing after Ed's taken it upon himself to tidy the shared areas of the house… and Pete could swear there's been a bill or two gone missing from his bedside table as well.
It's almost a game now, how much can he leave lying around for it to be considered not worth it? How much money does he have to lose before the culprit is irrefutably caught? There's only three of them in the goddamn house. Surely with video proof, Shaun would have to agree that Ed isn't fit to stick around.
"Ed," he starts, first thing Monday morning while Shaun is flitting about getting ready for work, "you haven't seen the change I left on the worktop last night, have you?"
But Ed doesn't look up from his shooter; he looks a bit unimpressed that Pete's chosen to nag him at all. "No."
"It's just that I didn't touch it, and Shaun says he didn't touch it."
"I'unno," Ed shrugs. His eyes never leave the television, rather focused on a round of Quake II. "Maybe you shouldn't leave stuff lying around."
For a moment the world is a cacophony of gunshots and erratic footsteps—Shaun, bumming a lift to work but now in the kitchen with the radio blaring, while Pete himself has been ready for ten minutes. Mornings like these feel claustrophobic, an inescapable funhouse where Pete's the only responsible person on Earth. He expects no less, but still has to thread his lips into a thin frown to keep from exploding.
So that's that.
At last, Shaun crosses in front of the telly to grab his jacket. He earns a click of the tongue from Ed, whose aim strays wrongly from the distraction. "Oi—oi, Shauny, before you go, can I borrow a few quid?"
Shaun balks, but is already rooting around in his trouser pocket for money before he asks, "What for?"
"Quiz night down the pub. Gonna head over a bit early, try the fruit machines. You'll come by after work?"
"Oh. Yeah, man."
Shaun holds the coins out for him to take, but when it's apparent that Ed is too busy rapid-firing at enemies, he folds himself over the back of the sofa and tucks the change into a side pocket of Ed's cargo shorts. He parts with a pat to Ed's pocket and a motion that for a moment, Pete believes was supposed to be a peck on the top of their housemate's head. In a split second change of judgement, however, he simply musses Ed's hair.
Ed ducks away from Shaun's touch with a grin in spite of his scoff.
"Get outta here," he says. "See you half six."
They stumble into the house that night drunk and a little bit high.
Shaun throws his messenger bag down on the hutch. Can't be arsed when he hears the clanking of what's probably coins sliding and falling behind the thing, instead tugging at the knot of his necktie and hooking his cap on the ear of a stray chair. With a yawn, all of the day's residual tension is gone.
"I needed that. What a fucking day."
Ed lets himself drop against the cushions, takes a drink from a glass of water that's been sitting stagnant for days and watches as Shaun chucks the tie across the room. It lands over a milk crate of records they've been meaning to take to a charity shop in the city centre… next to the several others of keepers. Shaun's eyes never leave Ed's, and he smiles, falling onto the sofa and into his mate's open arms without skipping a beat.
"Yeah, I bet it's hard talking about TVs all day."
"Well, it's worth it, knowing I have a loving wife who'll cook and clean while I'm at work." Shaun dabs slow, open-mouthed kisses up his mate's jaw, tongue flicking out like a snake's tasting the air between them. "Oh, wait."
"Shut up," Ed snickers, nipping back. There's a comfortable haze over them. When their mouths find each other, they don't breathe for thirty seconds straight.
Their relationship is easy in this way.
"You wanna fool around?" Ed asks, and Shaun nods lazily without words. He closes his eyes to get a handle on the room that's spinning around them, but Shaun himself is unfazed, more mellowed out from the weed than tipsy on lager.
But maybe it's the alcohol that makes him feel suddenly impish, sucking on his pinky finger—with Ed none the wiser, Shaun pokes the tip of his finger into Ed's ear.
"Oi!" Ed frowns, flinching away from the intrusion but just as quickly grinning wide with determination. Grabbing Shaun's wrist mid-air, "You little shit."
They wrestle, carefree on wobbly limbs, with Ed trying to direct Shaun's offending finger up his own nose, and Shaun's other little finger prepped to go into Ed's other ear. It doesn't make it quite that far, once Ed gets his mate's hands under control; softly chomping on his fingertips to make Shaun yelp and writhe. Then in a lull of chaos, Shaun ends the struggle with his lips placed against Ed's temple and a quietly sigh.
"Fuck me."
The SD card clicks out of the nanny cam and goes into Pete's laptop with practiced ease. It takes a second to whir and register as a storage device, and then a window pops up with a file of contents. He double-clicks the file with today's date to find a series of .mov videos, one for each time something's moved in the lounge.
There's some sudden regret, a sickly feeling that overcomes him and makes him hesitate before sifting through the footage. He'd never expected to have captured video of his housemates screwing on the sofa. The idea of Shaun and Ed together in that capacity seems absurd—it is absurd—but Pete is a decent man raised decently, and he'd never intended to intrude so intimately. It isn't his place, normally.
But, it's hot.
Oh, it makes him furious to have those words running through his head. But in the end, it's the honest truth. It's affected him.
To this point, he hasn't done anything more than rub his hard-on through his trousers, just a couple times, to ease the ache that humiliates him and reminds him of his crime. Regardless, shamefully, he's watched each day's videos in full, with wide-eyed fascination, clammy hands and a pounding heart.
He doesn't really expect another porno today, does he?
The first several hours of footage are rather mundane: Ed on the sofa sans-Shaun, watching daytime television and texting on his mobile every so often. Several times, he gets up to enter the kitchen or use the toilet, but he always comes back to nest in his cushion-grove on the left side of the sofa.
Pete clicks through the timebar at the bottom of the sixth video: just Pete getting home and heading out of view. Nothing notable all day. Somewhere along the way, Ed disappears completely and the camera stops recording.
It's 11:46 at night when there's finally some action in the footage: his housemates stumbling into the room gloriously pissed. Shaun, dressed for work, Ed in his regular uniform of childish novelty t-shirt and joggers.
He watches Shaun swing his way into Ed's lap, once the latter is sat on the sofa, and already Pete's cock is stirring with anticipation. His pulse spikes, seeing Shaun lick kisses into Ed, watching Ed nip back and meeting him grin for grin. And after a juvenile tussle, they've cuddled up a bit closer, and the angle is just such that all Pete can see is the fiery back of Shaun's head.
Ed's hands slink down Shaun's sides and into the back of Shaun's trousers beneath the beltline. There's some fidgeting while—Pete imagines—Shaun is unfastening his belt, and his black trousers seem more loose around Ed's wrists.
They kiss some more, Pete reckons, although possibly instead they could be forehead-to-forehead saying repulsive, mushy love yous. It's difficult to place what kind of lovers they are, in the way a camera can't capture. He wants to see more, and he realises how insane it is, and how intrusive he's being—but these thoughts are attractive to him, too.
With a sigh of defeat, Pete gives into the vile urge to take his swelling cock in hand and give it a slow, commanding stroke. Up, and down, and up, a blueprint from the video that Pete follows to a T.
To hell with I love yous, it's much more in character to think that Ed is saying something embarrassing, goading Shaun, bullying him into admitting, You want it? You like this? I'm gonna fuck you good, babe. He never can stop running his mouth, after all.
Shaun's shoulders heave and Pete can tell he's laughing, playfully shoving a palm into Ed's cheek as he leans forward against his friend's shoulder to allow for his pants to slip down to his thighs. And then Ed has a bottle of something—it's too poor quality a video to be able to tell exactly what, and it's partially obscured by Shaun's body, besides.
But Pete gets the idea.
His mouth goes dry watching Shaun and Ed shift around, watching Ed part Shaun's cheeks and push his fat little cock inside.
Pete finds himself panting, watching Shaun pant; keeps edging himself in languid strokes, even when he'd really like to buck and thrust into his fist with the selfish speed at which Ed is moving. He doesn't want to come before they're finished—there'd be too much self pity and guilt and he'd never see how the video ends. So he runs his thumb over the tip, wets it with sticky warm precome and shallowly pumps himself over, and over, and over…
He imagines what Shaun must sound like. He hadn't heard them downstairs last night at all. Had he really been that out of it? Or completely asleep? They're practically experts, having kept this a secret at all.
Keep your voice down, he imagines Ed warning. He imagines all manner of stifled, high-pitched whines that Shaun might make as he takes Ed's abuse with a hand over his mouth.
You're gorgeous, Pete imagines in Ed's voice. But it sounds too awkward and kind, so he mentally rewinds time and changes the dialogue, You take it like a slut.
In the video, Ed claps a hand onto Shaun's bum and Shaun erupts in giggles again—giggles that seem to warp as Ed's fingers grab and curl into his flesh. Their pace doesn't let up, but he can see Ed's concentrated grimace, saying something with finality, something simple and unromantic, and then they're kissing again.
Pete can only see the back of Shaun's head like before, so he closes his eyes and exhales sharply, conjuring up an image of Shaun in his lap. Riding his cock.
It's incredible to have this footage, but his imagination is pretty incredible, too, sculpting Shaun's half-naked body from nothingness; showing Pete what could be the trail of hair connecting Shaun's bellybutton to his shaft, hard and ruddy and dripping with the desire to spill all over Pete's collared work shirt.
He opens his eyes to see Shaun tumbling backwards with laughter, off of Ed's legs. A tangled mess of trousers and spend, and Pete's hips jump.
He bucks hard and fast into his fist once, twice, and then it's over—viscous and hot, his come landing over his knuckles.
He can picture Shaun licking it off of him, so clearly, because if he's being honest with himself, these thoughts have been within him before he ever bought the godforsaken nanny cam in the first place. The fantasy washes over him until his staggered breaths even out; until he feels like it's safe to open his eyes.
He checks his bedroom door: closed. No, nobody's found him out just yet.
When his mind is clear and he's cleaned himself with a tissue, Pete drags the offending video file off of the SD card, and into the bin.
"How was work?" Ed asks, barreling downstairs from the bog to find Shaun in the kitchen.
Shaun shrugs, watching the boiling water slosh about from the spout of the kettle to the teabag in his mug. "Was alright. Tea?"
"Mm," Ed nods agreeably, leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen. He pokes and prods some plates and glasses out of the way before hoisting himself up onto the worktop, watching as Shaun plucks another mug and teabag from the cupboard. "Guv happy with all the shit you been doing for him?"
"Yep."
"But you're still stressed about it?"
Shaun's features soften as he smirks down at his steeping tea, "Why, you wanna help me feel better?"
Ed snorts a soft chuckle, leaning over Shaun as he removes the teabag from his first cup and chucks it into the sink. "Doesn't wifey always make you feel better?" Then throwing his weight back against the cupboard, he suddenly amends, "I was just curious an' all."
Shaun startles when he turns, nearly walking straight into the tall, dark figure that's manifested itself in the kitchen unexpectedly. "Pete!" A streak of pink crawls across Shaun's cheeks, "S-sorry, did you want tea?"
The man's eyes are cold—always so cold—but he smiles his cordial Pete smile and shakes his head slightly and says, "I'm fine, thanks. Just coming in to grab a beer."
"Oi, yes please," Ed says, "I'll take one of those too."
Shaun frowns a bit but says nothing, and although Pete bristles at the request, he tosses Ed a can fresh from the fridge.
"Have you got plans for tonight?" Shaun asks.
"Trying to get me out of the house so you two can muck about on the sofa?"
"N-no," Shaun blinks, his voice small and guilty.
But Pete looks guilty, too, his eyes darting up, down, at his hands, at his beer. His mouth flops open, but in that moment, he simply stands there voiceless.
"What do you mean by that?"
Ed scrunches his nose from the worktop, staring Pete down with tired but pointedly suspicious eyes. He cracks open his can, the sharp fizz of it a catalyst for Shaun to step between them—an effort to preemptively de-escalate. A jerk of his head motions for Ed to join him in the lounge.
"Nothing," Pete snips, coming back to himself.
Then Ed is following Shaun, and Pete is following Ed, with one too many bevvies between them and a tension in the air that has their surly flatmate's face turning a slightly deeper shade of raging red.
"Just worry about the mess you're making," he says, plucking a poorly-rolled pair of used socks from beside the answering machine and chucking it at Ed's shoulder. "It's a pig sty around here. I'm going for drinks shortly with some of my mates from work. See if you can find the fiver I left here yesterday."
Then with a curt turn on his heel, Pete heads to his room.
For a while—nothing on the telly—time slows down.
"I think Pete's on to us," Ed grumbles, when the uncomfortable silence gets too unbearable. Shaking a smoke out of the packet, he lets Shaun swing himself across the sofa cushions to settle his back over Ed's knees. He pats his pockets for a lighter, but Shaun is quicker, grabbing his own from the coffee table and sparking it for Ed himself.
"No way," Shaun says, feeling somehow hotter. "You're getting paranoid, man."
"Take my word for it. He's always looking shifty at us."
He's only teasing himself at this point. The nanny cam ritual has fast become less about the money he's lost and more about catching Shaun in various stages of degradation.
It isn't always Shaun that initiates, but more often than not it is, and Pete uses it as a jumping point for his fantasies. He wishes he could hear their conversations, wishes he knew which words could tempt Shaun into baring himself so easily. Maybe he's just horny enough to want Ed without seductive words at all.
Today's footage isn't particularly good, mostly it's of Ed's back, but Shaun's blissed-out face makes an appearance on screen enough for Pete to get off to it.
He imagines Shaun all red in the cheeks, panting, begging for it. "Please," he mewls, "Pete, I need it…"
"You'd take it from anyone, wouldn't you," Pete chides the Shaun in his head. He runs a firm palm over his cock as it stirs to life. "You're desperate enough to get it from the louse who lives on my sofa."
He imagines, when he thrusts hilt deep into his fist, that he's hitting the back of Shaun's throat; that Shaun's practiced lips take him in with fervour; that he's humming and drooling around his prick like it's a snack, longer and thicker than the enemy's. And Christ knows Shaun isn't perfect, but his shortcomings would be easily made up for, sucking Pete 'til he has to pull away, tension headache forming from the pressure he's applied, with one delicate thread of saliva connecting Pete's cockhead to Shaun's glossy lips.
He might even forgive Ed's existence, if Shaun would get down on his knees for him. It's Ed, after all, who's trained him for this.
Pete takes in the digital image of Shaun one last time before screwing his eyes closed tight, pumping his fist along his throbbing length—he uses that image, uses Shaun as he nears completion and comes thinking about a thick, white blob dripping from the bridge of Shaun's nose, down to his cheek…
Thinking about Shaun's open mouth and waiting tongue as the rest of his spend lands like it belongs there.
He can't look for a minute; two minutes; ten. The come in the valley between his thumb and forefinger cools and feels dreadful, but it's nearly an impossible task just to open his eyes.
And just as hard to drag the .mov into the bin.
Shaun stumbles in, the sunlight acid-yellow through the blinds. He's stoned enough that his eyes are half closed and sore, and tired enough that he wobbles slowly left, then right, then left again. The state of the flat's somehow worse today than yesterday, clothes sulking in heaps, beer bottles lolling unexpectedly in corners.
"Oh—fucking–!"
He trips.
It's a bit of a dance, one foot hooked under a hoodie sleeve and the other stepping on the body of it when it flops forward; his hip hits the hutch desk covered in papers and crisp packets—and he thinks he may spot Pete's fiver as he swan-dives face-first into the old hickory bookshelf beyond the window.
The impact is intimate, and for a beat, Shaun clings there, taking in Ed's rotten snigger from behind him. He wheezes, half-laughing at himself, "I think Pete's right about this place. It's your turn to tidy up."
"Right," Ed grumbles, "I'll get around to it."
Shaun pokes at the shelf, back issues of Guitar World and Fangoria askew, small comic-related statuettes knocked out of place. And then he sees it—something too big, a book spine too perfect, too smug.
The penny drops. He leans closer with a squint.
"What's this?"
Ed shrugs, barely looking up. "A book."
"I know it's a book, but it's—we sell these at work. It's a spy camera. This must be what you were talking about, how Pete knows about us."
Shaun runs his finger along the fake book's cover. It really is a convincing decoy, had any of them in the house been the type to read 400-page financial manifestos with leather-bound covers. Shaun's lucky if he makes it through the articles in FHM. He holds the book out to Ed, who frowns and matches Shaun's squint. The gears up there are turning.
Finally, Ed blinks. "That is fucked up, man."
The pages are, of course, fake. It's a hollow tome with a removable adapter for its power supply that Shaun can trace to a socket behind the shelf. The SD card slot is at the very top, covert, in a small plastic box against the spine; he uses his nail to push the card in, and it ejects enough for him to pick it out.
"You wanna see what's on here?" he says, waving the card through the air.
Ed nods. "Yep."
Shaun's laptop lies dormant on the coffee table, so it's quick work to snuggle up and pop the card in. The video is desaturated, but respectable enough quality; the first file is time-stamped for yesterday, and indeed, the majority of the day's footage is of Ed on the sofa. He clicks through another dated file to get to the bits of yesterday evening, about an hour after Pete took his leave.
Stunned silence.
A pregnant pause.
The video of them is simultaneously embarrassing and mesmerizing, surreal to see these impossible angles of themselves in 480p on a laptop. Shaun's heart is beating a mile a minute, scandalised.
"If this thing's been here for a while, it means Pete's seen… lots. Seems like it's motion-activated."
"Lots of motion yesterday."
Shaun massages his jawline in thought, his chest a bit tight when he hums. "D'you think he likes it…?"
"Yeah," Ed scoffs, shaking a fag from its packet and lighting up. "What a pervert."
"I can't believe he'd go this far. These things cost like two hundred pounds."
"Maybe he's selling our amateur pornography to recoup the cost."
Shaun makes to laugh, though it comes out an anxiety-riddled cough, "No. Of course he isn't."
There's a quiet moment pass between them, with the video continuing to play, even after the Ed on screen has come and the Shaun is dabbing himself off with a tissue. Presently, Ed passes his cigarette to Shaun for a draw. He lets it sit between his knuckles, threatening to burn the skin of his fingertips.
"... You know what would be funny, if we asked him to join us." Shaun says at last, not daring to look at the Ed beside him, but at the Ed on screen, his cock spent and unabashedly bare.
Before Shaun can replay what he's just said in his head, Ed is clicking the SD card out of the laptop, falling back against the sofa with the card rotating between his fingers like a magician's coin. A plume of smoke obscures him, but even so, Shaun can tell the colour's drained from Ed's cheeks.
"A threesome?" he says flatly. He has a rough go at cramming the tiny card back into the port of the spy cam.
"Could be fun."
"You have got to be joking." It makes Shaun wince, the dry hurt that he detects in Ed's words, "There is no way I'm putting my prick near that prick's prick. Why him and not the girl you pulled in Greece? You talk about her all the goddamn time."
"Because I like her. And I'm still trying to get in good with her…" he hums. "I guess I should tell Pete the jig's up, then."
"Yeah."
"It's going to be a bit awkward…"
"Yeah."
Shaun's head drops to Ed's shoulder, Ed's head on Shaun's. The weight of their situation should feel much more grave—and maybe it's just the nerves, or the weed, but it's actually got Shaun chuckling softly under his breath. Each laugh vibrates through Ed, who's got to know by now something's up.
When Shaun grins, his pinkened cheeks swell, "I can't believe you're jealous."
"I'm not jealous," Ed frowns, attempting to shake Shaun off of him, but his long, thin fingers cling to Ed's shirt and he only laughs louder. "I'm the one who gets to actually stick it in you."
"You still could. Maybe I just give him a blowie."
"Come off it… What's so good about Pete, anyway?" Ed pouts.
He swings himself over the cushion, hopping to his feet and grabbing the spy cam in one smooth move. He shambles over to the bookshelf like a child, dragging his feet; poking and prodding the books and magazines there to make space for the book again. "So what, he's tall and goes to the gym. Boring. Who makes the best chicken parmesan nachos in all of Crouch End?"
"Ed, don't be ridiculous," Shaun grins. "What if it's you he fancies?"
Ed's face scrunches in horror and he balks, "I'd shoot myself in the fucking head."
And then he's back, dragging Shaun closer on the sofa; wrestling him down across his chest as Shaun puts in a noble effort to keep upright. His abs burn and tremble with effort, not allowing himself to fully fall—and then Ed's wrapping an arm around him, leaning in to peck his mate's forehead.
"Does it turn you on, knowing Pete's been watching us going at it?" he mumbles hotly against Shaun's hairline.
"Shut up," Shaun snorts. "Of course it doesn't."
"Gets me hard. I bet he wishes he were me, putting his hands all over you, Shauny. I bet Pete really wants to give it to you… S'why he's such an arsehole to me all the time. I'm throbbing just thinking about it."
He takes Shaun's chin in hand and tilts his head just so. "There're ways we can involve Pete. If he's gonna watch anyway… put on a show for him. Pretend Pete's the camera over there and keep your eyes on the book."
Shaun glances over at the spy cam. A shiver walks up his spine, his lips trembling above Ed's thumb as it caresses back and forth over the hair along his jawline.
"It's embarrassing," he mumbles.
"It'll be fun. Here—"
Ed's hand scoots lower, down to Shaun's bum, confusingly guiding him into his lap and then over it; Shaun understands quickly that Ed means to have him straddle his lap backwards, fully exposed to Pete's eye view, were he undressed. He leans against Ed's chest—another shudder, another twitch of his cock as blood flows southward and makes him half hard, like he can feel Ed is, with his clothed cock pressing into Shaun's lower back.
Then Ed's arm is back on him, a boa constrictor sliding across Shaun's chest to his jaw, just where they'd left off. Two fingers dip into Shaun's mouth easily, familiarly, sliding over his tongue and probing in to the second knuckle. Shaun's used to this assignment, closing his lips around them, whining around them, uncertain, but aroused. He dips his head back, turning to face Ed better, but Ed's immediately gripping him by the chin and telling him, in a low, dreamy voice,
"Don't look at me. Look at Pete."
Shaun whines in the back of his throat and complies. His cock twitches, too confined, sore; he spreads his legs while rolling back against Ed's hard-on, but that only makes the tension in his pants worse.
He can't help but drool around the fingers in his mouth, pushing in and out over his tongue, uncaring whether or not they're sloppy. Ed hums with delight, and rolls his hips upwards just to tease.
And Shaun's face is hot, sweaty; he admits to himself now that as shameful and strange as it may be, he does want Pete to see him like this. He wants Pete to see what his mouth can do, he wants Pete to see him with the enemy. His fingers ghost the top of Ed's wrist and guide his mate's hand to his neck. Instinctively those thick fingers wrap around his throat, lightweight except for the heel of his palm, pressing into Shaun's windpipe, just how he likes it.
"Do you think Pete's ever thought about choking you out like this?" Ed says, eye on the spy cam. "Maybe he's more aggressive."
Ed cards his free hand through Shaun's hair, takes a short handful and tugs Shaun's head back to reveal the light stubble at the top of his long neck. "Do you want Pete to bite you here?" And then Ed's lips are on the side of Shaun's neck, sucking hard enough to bruise.
"Ff—fuck!" he hisses. "Ed! Not so rough, Jesus!"
"I dunno, do you think Pete's a delicate lover?" Ed kisses the sore red splotch he's created, caresses it with his knuckle. "I thought you liked it a bit rough."
"S-sometimes."
It takes a second for Shaun to register that his fly is being unzipped, too distracted by his own humility. Certainly knowing there's a camera on them makes this feel ten times more obscene. His eyes flit down to catch his best mate's thumb rubbing the head of his cock through his pants. It's always been a little bit obscene to begin with, this thing with Ed.
Ed, who's shameless and daring. Young, dumb and full of come, just like his t-shirt says.
He's teased through his pants just long enough for him to whimper, snorting an anxious laugh through his nose when Ed finally pulls him free over the waistband and strokes the full length of him, tip to bollocks.
He'd never really considered Pete in his fantasies, but right now it's the only thing on his mind; the words, "Look at Pete" repeating on loop in his head like some kind of sick mantra as he fucks Ed's hand. He imagines Pete there in front of the bookshelf, hands on his hips, brow furrowed. Disappointed in them both; disappointed in him.
Lips slightly parted, eyelids partially closed—all Shaun wants to do is make Pete happy.
Pete steps softly from his bedroom. He leaves the door open to avoid its oil-hungry creak and makes his way towards Shaun's room several feet away at the end of the hall. Shaun's door isn't completely closed either; a bar of lamplight ekes into the hall, along with the residual tinny sound of Supergrass that's escaped from Shaun's headphones.
Shaun startles immediately when his door swings open, with Pete standing there dead centre: dimly-lit in yellow and backwashed in the hallway's shadow. Pete's startled, too, by his own boldness, or the unsurety of what's to come.
Shaun slips his headphones off his ears. They settle uncomfortably around his neck, so he fidgets with them a bit and stares, sheepish—his eyes dart past his flatmate in hopes that Ed might be there as well.
"H-hey, Pete."
Pete opens his mouth to speak, but ends up silent—looks like he's swallowed a fly, standing dumbly with a puzzled scowl on his face, surveying, sweeping the walls and floor and anywhere that isn't Shaun's pale, wide-eyed face.
"I'm sorry," Shaun eventually offers, for lack of anything better to say.
He knows why Pete's here, after all.
And then the man enters the room proper. He turns the knob as he closes the door behind him to dampen the click of the latch and makes his way to sit at the foot of Shaun's bed.
He looks at Shaun.
Shaun looks back.
It happens in a heartbeat: Pete swiping Shaun's magazine and Discman out of the way—"What're you doing!?" Shaun shouts, diving to catch the Discman before it can crash to the floor—and disconnecting the headphone cord from it in the process. Shaun crosses his arms in front of him to block Pete from moving in too close, ducks his head when Pete tries to cup his chin.
"Pete—I'm sorry! Ed made me–!"
Pete stills. Even his arm is frozen in place, mere centimetres from his smaller, stupider housemate. "Of course he did. Take some responsibility for yourself, Shaun," he scoffs, dark and devilish and wounding. "It sure looked like you were enjoying yourself, making cocktease pornography for me."
"It was just a laugh, wasn't it."
Shaun flinches away once more as Pete shifts even closer on the bed, succeeding this time in touching him. It's like a spark, the caress of Pete's thumb swiping slowly over his beard, the too-long hair along his cheek that he's been meaning to groom. It's almost relaxing, if it didn't imply something more.
"You could do so much better," Pete says.
And then he chuckles; a genuine laugh from the gut that breaks the tension in the room completely.
Without Pete towering over him, Shaun feels a bit less defensive. He doesn't even mind when Pete ruffles the top of his head like he were a child, wonders if he's seen Ed do the same. It's a thought that humbles him and brings heat to his cheeks. He's furious, really—at Pete and at Ed. At himself, too, for all his stupid decisions; for all the stupid ideas he has running through his stupid brain. If everything could just go back to normal…
But things here were never really normal. Beyond the door, he can hear Ed banging around, stomping up the stairs; a wheeze and a boorish shout of, "Oi, cunt!"
The bedroom door swings open and Ed staggers in all shirty, zeroing in on Pete, who's already pushing himself up off the mattress. "Did you enjoy the show? Twat? Pervert?"
Shaun groans in exasperation. "Ed…"
Pete's demeanour changes instantly, and he postures, standing much taller than Ed is, and stronger, too. He shoves him against the doorframe, tries to push past him into the hall, but Ed grabs the back of his shirt collar and tugs, forcing Pete to stumble back into the doorframe himself.
"Guys–! Guys, come on! Let's just all calm down–! We were all being stupid, okay?"
Ed ignores Shaun and his own better judgement, surely—he's scrappy and annoyed, and he's always loved a good fight. He shoves Pete again, and Pete spins on his heel, ending up with the backs of his knees against the bed, almost toppling backwards but able to recover. All the while Shaun is shouting at them to stop being cocks. He gets up in an attempt to wedge himself between the two of them, but Pete bumps into him as he goes to smack Ed across the face, and Shaun loses his balance, falling down onto the blankets.
Ed cups his cheek after the blow lands—"What the hell, man?"—and Pete takes the opportunity to shove him backwards and onto Shaun's bed as well.
"You two fucking imbeciles deserve each other!"
"Well what the hell were you doing recording us in the first place!?" Shaun matches Pete's volume, to their surprise. He sits up on the bed, isn't sure he wants to stand… Pete might just knock him down again, and Ed's hand clamps onto Shaun's leg to keep him down, anyway.
"Well it wasn't to record you two fuckheads trying every fucking position in the fucking Kama Sutra! I was trying to catch this fat bastard," he seethes, pointing an accusatory finger at Ed on the left, "stealing my fucking money. Which I did. You fucking fuck!"
"Fuck off, no you didn't."
"Wait," Shaun chirps, "did you take my twenty quid at the pub the other day?"
"Yeah, but I put it towards that super smooth kush you liked from Jamaica. You're welcome."
Shaun gawks like a fish out of water. "I thought some cunt stole it in the toilets! I picked a fight with someone for it."
"I know," Ed smirks, "it was a laugh."
"Look," Pete huffs, "Shaun, I don't give a shit about your weird lover's quarrel. It's obvious he has no regard for my property or yours. Right now I just want you pissheads to stop rubbing your filthy naked arses all over the fucking sofa." He sighs, dropping his arms to his sides. "Okay?"
He turns to move—stops dead when Ed snorts, "You liked it, though."
Shaun winces. He's exhausted and embarrassed, and he boosts himself up, dutifully holding Ed back at the shoulder to diffuse a situation that's rapidly spiralling out of control. "Ed, please."
"No. How many times've you tossed off to Shaun getting dicked down? Or d'you fancy watching him choke on my cock instead?"
"Your boyfriend doesn't want to let it go," Pete smirks, addressing Shaun directly, fire in his eyes.
"He's not my b—"
"It's almost like he wants to see you and me together." Pete scowls as he turns to Ed, but breaks into another imperious grin when he notices his disgruntled expression. He looks at Shaun, wolvish, and the air in the room thickens. "What do you want, Shaun? Do you want a quick fuck? Do you want to suck me off?" And once again at Ed, he snips, "Do you want him to?"
"He's a big boy, he can blow you if he wants."
There's a short, incredulous huff through Shaun's nose. He doesn't make eye contact with either of his mates, but he can feel their eyes on him. It's disgusting, but his heart is racing and his brain is cloudy. Nobody ever said he was the best decision maker. "I want you to watch," he says lowly, "... Ed."
"Fine."
"Perfect… I've been thinking about your mouth a lot lately." Pete laughs shallowly, one hand running over the crotch of his trousers, staring down at his housemate with clear hazel eyes under a heavy brow. "I've seen how Ed enjoys using it."
Ed rolls his eyes.
Shaun might too, if he wasn't so focused on the way Pete shifts, unzipping his trousers slowly, giving Shaun time to change his mind. It's all very simple, the way he leaves himself dressed, his trousers sitting on his hips; he just tugs his cock out past the fly of his pants and begins stroking himself to a full erection as Shaun stares wide-eyed at the thing. It's big and proud, and Shaun's mouth waters, opens instinctively because Pete is so, so close.
He scoots himself to the edge of the bed, glancing over at Ed, all flushed and grimacing. And then with a deep breath, he's taking Pete's cock onto his tongue.
At first his licks are tentative, experimental. Pete lets him set the pace, lets him take his time swirling his tongue around the head of it before finally enveloping him in the warm depths of his throat. He keeps Pete at a modest distance, hands around the base of his shaft for support as much as anything—his thighs already ache from the position he's in, hunched over the edge of the mattress, awkward and unfit. He takes Pete in as far as he can go until he gags.
Pete swears, a breath akin to a whisper; grunting, rolling his hips slowly forward as Shaun keeps his tongue pressed flat against him, his throat contracting with each tiny swallow. He dares a glance upwards, Pete watching him through his lashes.
There's a shattered intake of breath beside them now, where Ed sits slouched against the wall, watching his best mate gag on Pete's cock; he's uncomfortable, probably in several ways, but Shaun can tell from the way he wiggles in place, trying to sit in a way that doesn't betray his hard-on. Stubborn tit.
Shaun's attention is a competition. Pete lays a hand atop his head to bring his focus back, urging him to move faster. It's weird. As weird as it was to discover the spy cam, it's even stranger to have Ed watching him and Pete in the flesh. He isn't sure he likes it, really… though at least a part of him does.
He can feel that part pressing against the zip of his trousers.
"What was your favourite part?" Ed says then, to Pete. He rolls a joint barely looking; smirks as it settles between his lips and he raises a lighter to the tip. He inhales—holds that breath for a moment before finally releasing a plume of smoke up at the ceiling, chasing the question left hanging in the air.
It doesn't matter that Pete's not looking at him. He murmurs, "Mm?"
"Of the tape," Ed sniffs. "What made you so hard you fucking popped?"
"Don't worry, it wasn't you."
Ed's chest heaves as he chuckles, "Prick."
Shaun's eyes tear at the corners from exertion. His jaw is sore; he gags. Pulling away from Pete to catch his breath, he feels small, uncertain as his flatmate runs a thumb over his temple to catch a bead of sweat from dripping into his eye.
"This is a bit mental, isn't it?"
"I think slagging on your knees suits you," Pete says. "You don't want to keep going?"
"Um..."
He looks for reassurance from Ed, whose eyebrows rise and fall in a lazy waggle. Go on, then.
Shaun unfastens his fly. A calm washes over him as his fingers dip into his underpants, grabbing ahold of his own erection and thrusting into his fist. He tries to imagine he's got a contact high, tries to justify why the press of Pete's cock, sticky and warm against his lips, excites him so much.
Again, he lets Pete's length glide down his throat; pressing his tongue firmly to the underside of Pete's shaft, massaging the vein that runs along it. He bobs his head faster than before, more eager to take it now that Ed seems into it, now that he's got his hand on his cock—and Ed does now, too, jerking himself off with a hand inside his pants.
Shaun sniffles, nose running and brain cloudy as Pete holds the back of his head and squishes him into the cotton fabric below his abdomen.
"Fuck," Pete shudders.
He looks on with dark, hungry eyes that spur Shaun on to suck harder, pursing his lips when they reach the head and dipping his tongue into the slit like a hummingbird after nectar.
"S-stop," Pete shudders again, but his tone is lighthearted, "you're going to make me come…"
Shaun pops off of him with a smack.
"That wasn't the point?"
"Maybe he fancies getting off to me after all," Ed murmurs from the edge of the bed. He burns down to the end of his joint and stuffs the roach out in an ashtray on the floor. "Maybe his favourite part's the fact that I make you come."
"My favourite part is that I couldn't hear you talking."
Ed just snorts.
It's then that Shaun moves, bending to take Ed's wrists in either hand, forcing him to tumble closer to the middle of the bed as he guides a hand to each of his hips, teasing, bucking back against him as they get settled. Shaun's wiggled his underpants down past his thighs, but Ed is a bit more reserved in Pete's presence. He ruts against the crack of Shaun's arse through the cotton of his own pants, and takes hold of Shaun's cock from behind.
Shaun gasps, feels like he's drowning—and then Pete's there again, tapping his hard-on against Shaun's cheek, smearing it with precome that Shaun tries to lick away.
He's got his second wind—him and Pete both—though his jaw's still a bit sore, and he's tired of his nose dripping. Pete isn't rough, just insistent; Ed isn't rough, just crude.
"Tart," Ed snickers, rubbing the pad of his thumb over Shaun's beading bellend. "I can feel you twitch every time his cock hits the back of your throat."
Shaun whines, and the vibrations make Pete grunt, make his fingers thread tighter into Shaun's short hair, damp but still crisp at the tips with gel.
"Finish him off, and then I'm gonna come down your throat, too."
The words alone almost finish Shaun off, jerking violently into Ed's fist. He moans, deep throats Pete once, twice—
And Pete comes, holding Shaun still, shooting hot and thick and forcing Shaun to swallow and struggle for air with his nose pressed firmly against Pete's stomach.
Immediately Ed's hauling Shaun to him by the shirt collar. He's only got time to slip down his waistband and force Shaun's head down before he's coming too, so abruptly that Shaun chokes and can't swallow it fast enough. He has to pull away to cough, viscous white oozing from the corner of his mouth and dribbling down his chin in spite of his best efforts to catch it.
Ed just stares, pink-eyed, rosy-cheeked and awestruck. "I'm gonna make you come so fucking hard, Shauny."
With a swoop of his finger, Ed collects a dab of stray come and presses it into Shaun's waiting mouth, presses another finger in with it and pushes deep. Shaun's tongue runs over the digits lazily, suckling and slathering them with saliva. He knows where these fingers are going.
In and out they go until Ed's happy; until as predicted, Ed withdraws them, nudging them between Shaun's legs, teasing against his entrance. They push inside, stretching him beautifully; Ed barely has time to work his fingers into a rhythm before Pete's there, too, watching the depravity happen in real life, cupping Shaun's chin and lapping a kiss into him.
It's overwhelming. It's madness.
Shaun whines into Pete's mouth, snapping his hips back onto Ed's hand without any regard for either of them. He's absorbed in this hellfire, can only feel the simultaneous ache in his limbs and the relief washing through him as Ed strokes his prostate and his free hand wraps around Shaun's cock once more. Their position is unstable, but Pete is like a rock, letting Shaun slump against his shoulder, kissing down Shaun's neck…
Just before a little bite—
"Ohh," Shaun wails, "Christ–!"
Ed clenches his hand around the tip, closes around him hot and hard and possessive—
And at last, Shaun's panting, open-mouthed gulps of air, up at the ceiling. He can feel Pete's tongue on his neck, the man's hands on either side of his chest even as Shaun jerks up and towards Ed, buzzing, throbbing with pleasure.
He spills over Ed's hand with a squeaky sob, over the duvet—avoids Pete's leg by a miracle, he can only imagine he'd never hear the end of it otherwise.
With his fingers slipping from inside, Ed tilts Shaun's face to his, watches Pete with sly eyes as he leans forward and briefly claims his mate's lips.
Then he ragdolls back against the bed, sticky with sweat marks on his tee, idly checking the cleanliness of his fingernails. "Someone shoulda filmed that."
Between exhaustion, shock and post-orgasm clarity, the silence that falls over them seems to last forever.
The room stinks of weed and sweat, spunk and cigarettes.
"Well… I need a shower," says Pete, once the haze has lifted and Shaun is blinking, sitting up dumbly on the bed, half-dressed and pink. He's already neatly tucked into his pants and trousers and presentable. He's all business as usual, no one would ever know he'd just throat-fucked his housemate. "You," he points at Ed, "owe me forty quid."
"I didn't take your fucking money. And you owe us for the videos, besides."
Shaun rubs at his eyes, closing them with a sigh, "Look, call it even. Right? Forty quid, forty peepshow minutes—square." He can tell that Pete is still standing there because of the creak of the floorboards. He's probably seeing red.
"Fine, whatever."
"And anyway, if it weren't for me, you'd never have got a leg over Shaun. You oughta be nicer to me, man," Ed snorts, picking at his shirt to cool himself down. "I don't mind you so much when you aren't running your mouth and telling Shaun to bin me."
There's a pause, then a reluctant nod from Pete, a triumphant grin from Ed. Shaun flushes, but what Ed's just said is true, in a way. So the new balance is set: no debts, no prosecutions, and Shaun gets the benefit of domestic harmony for another day at least.
Maybe they'll tidy the flat tomorrow.