L'appel du vide - Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes, Alex/Annie/Gene/Sam, sans plot

[petra]

Title: L'appel du vide (lit. the appeal of the void; trans. the urge to jump off of high places)
Authors: petra and thatyourefuse
Fandom: Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes AU
Series: Modern Love / At AO3 (This is the last in the series)
Summary: That which is too gratuitous to be incorporated in something dignified with the term "story." Passes, after a fashion, for series 2 in said timeline. Does not contain any of the following: Kevin Hales, Martin Summers, SuperMack, Jackie Queen, though it explores in detail how one earns the title of "the most loved man [she'd] ever met," or the events of 2x08.
Pairing: Alex Drake/Annie Cartwright/Gene Hunt/Sam Tyler and sub-combinations thereof
Length: 16,000 words
Content: Explicit consensual sex, approximately as vanilla as canon

Curtains for you
When Sam, Gene, and Annie move in to a flat, they get as far as "We need furniture. A settee." Then they break down over what kind of upholstery. For days. A week.

In the discussion phases, the phrase "You people have no taste" comes up about once every fifteen minutes, from different people every time.

After that, everybody gets a room. Which room is decided by lottery followed by barter.

Sam still regrets trading Annie the living room for the kitchen, except when he's in the middle of cooking. But it comes back every time he looks at the coffee table. As for the refrigerator, he can't find one in a color he can stand, so he repaints it.

Gene lays claim to the spare bedroom. Neither Sam nor Annie has any idea where you get a tartan duvet. Or why you get a tartan duvet.

The argument over the duvet goes something like "I am not sleeping on or under anything that hideous with you or with anyone else."

"The hell you're not, Gladys." At which point there is punching that turns into tackling that devolves into sex, and it turns out that Sam was incorrect in his original assertion, though he still hates the plaid.

The dining room is Annie's. It's all in browns and oranges. Not godawful, exactly. Staid. Except for the oranges.

Sam makes frequent efforts not to say aloud, "I can't believe it. I can't--how did I wind up with two people who think orange is a neutral bloody color?"

The rugs are down to the same person who's in charge of the room, in the end. The one in the spare bedroom isn't tartan. It isn't even orange. It's some faux-futuristic primary colored thing that inspires the comment, "Where did you find that in nineteen-bloody-seventy-nine? It looks like you raided a nursery three decades ago!"

"It's not your ruddy room, now, is it. Shut it."

"Oh my God. Your wife didn't pick out that bath mat you used to have, did she."

Their bathroom is white-and-black. But all the useful moveables are neons.

"Neons are pretty."

"I can barely clean my teeth without getting a headache."

"And I can't look at the kitchen counters without wondering if they're dirty. Shush."

For all Sam's complaints, it's not as though he's free of receiving some himself.

"But why have you got only one wall green?"

"It's an accent color--look, did I argue with you about the place mats?"

"Yes."

As for the dishes--don't talk to Sam about the dishes. They have very nice china, left over from a wedding present from Phyllis. And they have everyday dishes that are never seen by anyone who could qualify as a guest. Ever.

And then there are the settee cushions--"They're nice."

"Annie, they've got fringe on them."

"So? I like them."

The fringed settee cushions stayed on pain of the expulsion of all macrame from the kitchen. Forever. Even the ones made by members of the family. When one is in the WC, it's a little dark because there's a hanging plant in front of the window.

"When is your Auntie Muriel ever likely to visit us here? She's afraid of trains. And she thinks I'm a dangerous lunatic. I'm not having that in my kitchen for her again."

"You weren't exactly on your best behavior that Easter. Went off shouting about--what was it?"

"It was a case! A murder! I couldn't sit around waiting for the kiddies to find the eggs."

"You could've said you had to go without yelling that someone'd been shot. And it's our kitchen, not just yours. She's family."

"She hates me, she's never coming south, and no."

The master bedroom was an attempt at consensus. To spare the sales staff, they did most of the arguing at home and made a list, resulting in: no plain white, no fucking plaid, no prints, no fringe, no bloody accent wall you made that up anyway, no orange or I'm sleeping somewhere else, no colors almost but not really white do you want it to look filthy when it's clean, no knotted throw rugs are you mad or merely blind, no brown because the whole dining room is brown and that's more than enough, no wallpaper, no sponge painting whatever that is it sounds hideous, &c.

The end product is a boring plain blue bedspread none of them like but they will never admit that, with a matching carpet but not shag, god, no.

They have quite a few sets of sheets. The satin ones made Annie laugh so much that she was crying even before they'd opened the package.

"What is it with you and throw pillows?" is a frequent subject of debate until the usefulness of less fringey and slippery throw pillows in more adventurous sexual scenarios becomes evident through practice, and the argument goes from "Oh god, not another throw pillow" to "That cover won't clean very well."

Sam has custody of all the public-accessible closets, too, as is immediately evident to anyone from CID who comes by and puts their coat away. Annie's desk is tidy, but it's not meticulous.

He's never actually lined everything up by color. Well, once when he was getting over the flu and there was really nothing on. He was just grateful at that point that he hadn't hallucinated plasticine threesomes.

"You make Liberace look like Clint Eastwood, Gladys."

"And I threw out all your old vests. Some of those things are more holes than string."

"Prissy, noncey, fairy bastard!"

"Thank you," Annie says fervently.

*

Gene's legal address looks exactly like the residence of a man who lives in his office and somewhere else without ever entering the flat in question.

Bare. Tidy to a fault.

Alex looks up his address, after that particularly interesting dinner, out of curiosity. It's a relief that he has another one, except then she actually sees it.

"It's not that much of a mess, Princess," is not really reassuring.

More like "this place is too clean except for the dust."

Alex isn't sure she can articulate "I didn't realize it was like that."

Working her way through the layers of "This is serious" until she gets to the bit that makes her run screaming.

And trying to figure out how to say "I liked this idea better before I thought you really meant it."

[fin]

*

Female bonding
The day Annie and Alex fall into each other and mean it is not a day they get any further out of bed than, once, to the kitchen for a glass of water.

When the boys come home from a football match and are roundly shouted out of the room, it's been hours. "Don't come back!"

"--Well. Don't come back without lunch!"

"It's half six, love," from without.

"--Supper. Lots of supper. Was that your stomach or mine, growling like that?"

"Both, I think. Make it extra supper."

"What, so I can slide it under the door?"

"Oh, to hell with it. I'll make us noodles. And Sam--go sit on Gene or something. I don't want to hear a word."

Failing to comment on Alex's distinctly swaggery walk, somewhat impressive collection of fading-but-still-visible finger-and-tooth marks, and monumentally tangled hair--it takes a better man than Gene, especially when she's wearing one of his shirts and quite clearly nothing else.

Sam, forewarned, limits himself to a whistle.

Gene says, "Bloody hell, Drake."

She flips him the V sign and goes back to poking at the stove.

Sam says, for her, "You should see the other girl."

"I'd like to!"

Annie took a moment to brush her hair, which doesn't mean it's behaving itself one little bit. She's also rather flushed and a bit glazed. She looks less overtly hostile. Sam is rather glazed himself by implication alone; Gene says, "So, what was the score?"

"Doesn't matter, does it?" Annie says, and grins at him. "It's only the half. Plenty of time to even it up."

Alex beams into the nearly-boiling pot. Sam chokes happily. Gene is actually be gobsmacked into silence, albeit briefly, before he says, "I'll have to find a seat down front, then."

Alex dumps the noodles in the water. "Find a seat somewhere else for once."

Sam sighs wistfully. "Are you sure?"

Annie folds her arms, which is rather a risky proposition in a bathrobe. "For now."

Gene scoffs. "What in hell for?"

"Female bonding," Alex says with a perfectly straight face.

Sam makes a small, muffled, dying sound; Annie bites her lower lip quite hard to keep back the giggles.

Gene attempts sad puppy dog eyes, though were one to challenge him on the fact he would say he was merely deeply disappointed in them. "Right," he says, and sighs. "Next time you get round to tying each other down, you'd better let us watch."

"She said bonding--"

"I know what she said."

Annie is giggling in earnest, but she sobers enough to say, "Probably."

Alex smiles at her rather twitterpatedly. "Maybe tomorrow."

"God," Annie says, and shifts from one bare foot to the other. "Do you think so?"

Alex shrugs. "We can always throw them out again."

"Of my own bed," Sam says, but quietly, and he's smiling in a way that suggests he does not in fact mind all that much.

"Don't know what your problem is," Gene says, rather more cantankerously. "You had all ruddy morning. And afternoon."

Annie sighs and turns to him with a particular, small frown. "This isn't about you."

"Think she means it, Guv," Sam says, and it's not that he doesn't sound disappointed. It's just that the disappointment is less important than the commitment.

"Female bonding."

"And about time, too." Annie pokes Gene in the chest. "What are you so fussed about? You were off watching your footie. We could've been spending all our pay on shoes or dresses, but we stayed in."

Sam is snickering. "Like good girls."

Alex gets out two bowls and mugs. "Like girls who know how to make their own fun when you are off being manly idiots. Like girls who haven't had half enough time to really talk in a long while."

"Doesn't look like you spent a lot of time talking, Princess."

"Well. Sam's not the only one who can multitask."

That makes Annie go a rather enchanting shade of pink. "So go on, have a lovely evening. Watch telly, go out to Luigi's, whatever you like. But don't hang round the hall trying to work out what we're doing, or I--" she glances at Alex "--we won't give you the time of day for a week."

Sam makes a pinched face, then squares his shoulders. "That goes for all of us, then."

Gene groans. "Christ on a bike, what am I doing with you lot? Ganging up on me, keeping the best bits to yourselves--"

Alex sniffs. "It was lovely, but I don't know about best overall."

"Don't be greedy." Annie shakes her head.

Sam thumps Gene's shoulder companionably. "I'll distract you," he offers, the epitome of chivalry.

Gene makes every effort not to smile at that at all. "You think you can compare, Gladys?"

"Don't put it like that," Sam says. "I know I'm not two lovely, naked women writhing all over a bed--for hours at a go--right there--down the hall--God, Annie--Alex, I--" There is a short, respectful interval devoted to this thought before he shakes his head and says, "Right. I'm not them. But I'm not that dull. Am I?"

Gene sighs heavily. "You'll do. I suppose."

"We're off, then," Alex says.

"Don't knock unless something's gone terribly wrong." Annie kisses Sam on the cheek, or means to; it ends up as more of a brief but heartfelt makeout.

Gene clears his throat. "Tomorrow, you said," he says to Alex, though he's not looking at her.

She smiles at him over the still-steaming noodles. "If you're very good, and we have all the time we need to bond tonight, probably."

He narrows his eyes, though not enough to hide the smile. "I'm not taking that kind of order from you, Drake."

"You don't have to." She turns away, still walking with more of a lurch than normal. When he grabs her arse, she doesn't startle enough to splash her mug of water. "Oh, go grab Sam."

"When I'm done with you." He kisses her neck, takes a good, long whiff, and lets her go. "Remember we've work to do Monday."

Annie laughs. "We've all of tomorrow to recover."

"That's what you think. Go on, then."

[fin]

*

And what a lovely morning

It takes less time than Alex would've wagered, had she ever considered the subject at length, to become entirely accustomed to waking up next to Annie. The hardest part of that is the mornings when Annie's far too cheerful and Alex has not had anywhere near enough rest or tea to deal with her, though those also tend to be the times when conversation goes by the wayside.

"Just coming in to get a shirt," Sam says from the hallway one such morning.

Alex can't answer in a timely way, what with the absolute lack of breath in her lungs, Annie's tongue flicking at her clit, and her hands tightly wound into the sheets. She manages, "God--" some time after he's opened the door.

And it is, after all, his bedroom, and it's not embarrassing--shouldn't be embarrassing--but for some reason he was carrying his shoes, and they hit the floor. "Hell, I slept in the wrong bed," Sam says, sounding awed.

"Nn--didn't miss much--" Alex says, when she can, though her hips are arching off the bed entirely without her conscious volition. Annie squeezes her hip, tucks one hand under her when she wriggles again. There's something about being in a relationship with two people with a significant fascination with arses that makes Alex feel inadequate right up to the point where they've got their hands on her and aren't complaining of the lack. "A few--ah, God--minutes is all--" She concentrates and gets one hand free, then reaches toward him, asking for something, though she can't think what else she needs.

A kiss is a good start, though she's embarrassed again--she hasn't been awake three minutes, and she hasn't cleaned her teeth. Sam doesn't seem to mind, and he's had tea already, she can taste that. He lets her go and nuzzles her breasts, and she groans at the feeling. It should take longer than this, surely, but she's only half-awake and it's easier to let herself go than it normally is.

"Jesus," Gene says. "You didn't tell me there was a party."

The thought that he's watching makes Alex shudder, for all it's not new, for all he can't be amazed by it. She puts her hand flat on the bed again, trying to stop herself from tugging Annie's hair. "Don't stop," she says, and Annie hums, gives her a squeeze. Alex makes herself open her eyes, though it takes a concerted effort; Gene's leaning on the doorjamb, shirt unbuttoned, looking as though he could stand there all day. "And--you--get over here."

He doesn't wait to be asked twice, and the way he kisses her is another layer, another thing that takes her apart; between Sam's mouth on her nipple and Annie's tongue in her, on her, she can hardly find the edges of herself, all nerves and pleasure. Gene's hand in her hair and his teeth on her lower lip ground her and pull her together long enough that she comes, moaning into his mouth.

[fin]

*

Divers alarums and revelations

Alex wakes up during the wee hours one day in late November and thinks, "Oh God, I'm in a relationship with three people."

The first phone number she rings up, she doesn't wait for someone to say, "Hello?" She just yells, "I'm not marrying you!"

A very confused Asian woman says, "I'm sorry, who is this?"

It takes her five minutes to find a bottle of wine, open it, drink two glasses, and dial very, very carefully.

This time she waits for Sam to say, "Hello?" and then she can't say anything. "I'm having trouble hearing you. Who's there?"

"Hi," she says, and if she wasn't already sitting on the floor, she'd end up on the floor.

"Hello," he says, sounding more heartened. "Who is this?"

Alex sighs. "Alex. I. Hi."

It takes him a beat to ask, "What's wrong?"

She sniffs. "Nothing, I just--"

"Are you hurt?"

"No!" Alex rubs her eyes. "I just--I don't know."

"I'll be right over. We will."

"No, but--" He's hung up the phone by then.

Alex has finished the bottle of wine but hasn't managed to get off the floor by the time there's a knock, Sam's voice saying, "Alex?" and the scrape of a key in the lock--and that is the last time, the absolute last, she will ever give a man a key to her flat. Bloody Gene must have made copies--except that he's first through the door.

"You brought backup," she says, and maybe drinking a whole bottle of wine before--as--breakfast wasn't the best idea, but it seemed better than facing her sudden revelation without it.

"Looks like I'm going to need it," Gene says, his thumbs tucked into the pockets of his coat. "You didn't spend the night on the floor, did you, Princess?"

"No." She picks up the wine bottle and tries to tuck it behind herself, but Sam's kneeling next to her already, taking it out of her hand.

"Bit early for that, isn't it?"

Alex shakes her head. "No."

Somewhere--toward the kitchen, maybe, not that Alex is tracking very well--Annie sighs and asks, "Have you eaten anything since supper?"

This "No" comes out more plaintively. "You didn't all have to come thundering--galloping over here like the cavalry. I'm fine."

Sam presses his lips together and merely shakes rather than laughing aloud. Gene snorts and squats down by her. "If you're fine, I'm ruddy pregnant. --Hell, that's not what it is, is it?"

Alex splutters at him in horror. "No--no. God, no." She pushes herself up the wall and waves a finger at him, at Sam, at Annie, at the whole flat full of people at whatever time it is. "I didn't want you to show up and, and make breakfast, and comfort me, and." She shakes her head. "I'm fine."

"You're not fine," Sam says, and waves the wine bottle at her. "It's five-o'clock in the morning. When did you start drinking?"

Alex shrugs. "When did I call you?"

Sam winces. "Half an hour ago."

"Then."

Gene settles down on his knees as if he's going to stay on the floor a while. "What brought this on, Your Highness?"

Alex leans her head against the wall and looks up at the ceiling, which is wobbling a bit. "Bad dreams."

Sam hisses through his teeth. "Again?"

"What d'you mean, again?" Gene asks.

Annie sighs from the kitchen doorway. "Everyone has bad dreams sometimes, Alex."

"I damn well know that." Alex closes her eyes and pulls her knees up to her chest, which is when she realizes that she's wearing a shirt and no pants. To hell with it. "I dreamed," she says, slowly and deliberately, "that I was completely surrounded by people. Who wanted me to stay right where I was and never, ever go away. And I woke up screaming."

She forgives Sam first, because he backs off first, ending up five feet away by the time Gene says, "Shit."

She'd forgive Annie second if she'd only stayed in the kitchen--and wouldn't her mother have had something to say about that thought--except that instead of keeping her distance, she comes over, hunkering down next to Gene. "You say that like it's frightening."

"It is!" Alex tugs at her shirt, but there's no way she's going to be able to cover herself properly. Nothing they haven't seen, and neither Gene nor Annie's looking right now anyway. "I--you have no idea who I am," she says to Annie, because she can't say it to all of them at once. "You wouldn't be here if you knew."

"Yes, we would," Sam says, sounding pained.

"Come here," Gene says, hugging her rather than actually waiting for her to move.

It's the last thing she wants, only it isn't the last thing at all. Maybe it's the only thing she wants, the scratch of his coat's fabric against her cheek and the thump of his heart in her ear. "Damn it," Alex says. "Damn you."

Annie has her arms round both of them next, and it's not like Alex's dream. She was naked in her dream, and there were handcuffs but not the fun kind. She kisses Alex's temple. "It's all right to be afraid," she says, and then she gets up as fast as Sam had. "But not to be so afraid you burn breakfast."

Gene's stroking her hair in a way he only ever does when they've been having sex. "Are you going to run out on us?"

As if she could run anywhere, half-smothered by him like this. "If I were going to run anywhere, I wouldn't have bloody well called you, would I?"

"Could've," Gene says. "Nutter like you, could've done anything. Drunk your breakfast, drunk yourself into a swoon, buggered off into the night. Well, the morning."

Alex smacks his chest and makes him let her go. "I didn't. Well. I drank. But not the rest of it."

Sam is leaning against the wall across the room, his arms folded. "So you need more space?"

Sometimes she understands exactly why he says what he says, and how well he means it, and it makes her want to knee him in the groin as much as Gene's boorishness. "No. Yes. Fuck off, Sam. Fuck off, all of you, I just--" Alex puts her face in her hands. "This cannot possibly be real."

"Right," Annie says. "Would you like imaginary pepper on your imaginary eggs? They might make you feel better."

The thought of food makes Alex's stomach churn. "I'm not hungry." She wonders whether standing up would work, or whether she'd end up tottering around until one of them caught her. It's easier to stay on the floor than find out. "I hate you all."

"Do you?" Annie asks. She hands a plate to Sam, but instead of waving food under Alex's nose she brings her a glass of water. "It was just a dream, Alex."

"So's this." Alex takes the water and says, "Thank you," automatically, though she doesn't want it. Still, she doesn't need a hangover at dawn either. "I am fine. Damn it."

Annie shakes her head. "You're drunk, and you had a terrible dream, and it sounds like you're coming down with something dreadful."

"Does not," Gene says. He gets to his feet and brushes himself off, so now everyone's looming over her, looking all vertical and superior. "Sounds like she's having a snit."

"And a headcold," Annie says firmly. "Best stay home and look after that today so you'll be right as rain tomorrow."

Sam waves his fork at Alex. "Might as well take her up on it," he says with his mouth full. "Not going to get a better offer."

Alex covers her face with her hands. "You're all mad. I'm mad. Why are you here?"

"You're not mad, you're just an idiot, if you can ask that. When the phone rings at four-thirty in the morning, you don't roll over and go back to sleep. And when it's--" Gene clears his throat "--someone you're responsible for, you don't just hang about wondering what's got her in a tizzy. You go find out."

"'Responsible for,'" Sam echoes, sounding like he's about to start laughing. "For God's sake, she's not a lost kitten."

"Might as well be," Gene says. "Curled up on the floor, freezing what little arse she has off, hasn't got the sense to come in out of the rain."

"It's not raining," Alex protests. "I'm nice and warm." Though she isn't, now that she's out of wine. "I hate you."

"You keep saying that." Annie offers her a hand. "Come on, let's get you back to bed."

It is not as easy to stand up as it was to sit down, and as for staying on her feet, she nearly falls over into Annie before Gene gets his arm round her shoulders and Annie steadies her round her waist. "I don't need your help," Alex tells them, though if they weren't there, she would've fallen. Then again, if they weren't there, she'd be asleep on the floor, or not drinking at all, or safe in bed to start with, depending on how long they hadn't been there for. She tries to make Gene let her go, but he only holds on more tightly.

"Take the help or I'm carrying you."

Sometimes that's not such a frightening offer, but at the moment she's afraid she'd be sick if he tried to lift her. "Fine. Fine! I still hate you."

Annie sighs. "We're going to talk about that sometime when you're sober. Sometime soon."

Talking. They should've done that, a lot of that, but she'd been expecting to leave, before, and if everything had worked out there wouldn't have been any time for talking. If everything had worked out, she'd be telling her therapist about the strange sexual aspects of the subconscious world where she is right now instead of living it, instead of breathing in the stale smoke from Gene's jacket and the scent of Annie's shampoo as they get her turned round and help her sit on the bed.

"I don't hate you, really," she tells Annie.

Annie brushes Alex's hair away from her face and smiles. "Good. I'd hate to think I'd done something that awful."

"Are we all forgiven, or is this a special dispensation?" Gene asks, sounding as though if it's the latter, he's going to find someone to punch.

Alex sighs. "I don't like you."

Gene nods. "Right." He raises his voice. "Tyler, your wife's running off with my girlfriend. Get your skinny arse in here and catch them."

There's no room in her bedroom for four people, which is part of the problem to start with. They're all crowding round, just like the start of the dream, though Sam looks much more confused than lascivious and Annie is giggling. "You might want to find some more clothes before you run off," Sam says somberly. "And--" he glances at Gene, then at Annie, before he focuses on Alex. "Thing is, however far you run, there's something to see."

Alex lets herself fall back on the bed and does not try to make sense of that, not now. "I don't like you either."

"Told you," Gene says.

Annie pats Alex's knee. "Get your legs up or you'll have a terrible backache."

Sam hums. "Yes, I can see them, running right out the door. Off to San Francisco, are you?"

"Sod off," Alex says, while she's taking Annie's advice. "I'm not going anywhere. Except--" she yawns "--except to sleep."

"And you're not to come in to work today," Annie says firmly.

"God help us." Gene tugs on Alex's blankets until there's enough slack to cover her, even if they're askew. "I should have a bloody nightmare now and then if it gets me a day off."

"Don't you try it." Annie tucks her in. "And if you go drinking scotch for breakfast, it'll be all you get."

"That's sexism, right there." Gene pats Alex's shoulder. "Get some sleep, Princess."

"And come over for supper," Sam says, though Alex is too far asleep to answer, or to hear more than a murmur of voices as they leave.

[fin]

*

Would you have liked a present too?
"Keep breathing," Annie says for the third time, and Sam starts to laugh.

He's sure he would've liked to hear the whole conversation where Annie talked Alex into this--beginning with "It's his birthday, love," and going on from there--and as birthday presents go, there are far worse ones than a day he doesn't have to work with an interlude that begins in Annie's arms and segues quickly into Alex's thighs round his ears.

That was at least an hour ago now--though Annie put a book in front of the clock, because she knows him, and she said, "This lasts as long as it can. Doesn't matter how long that is, now, does it?"

Alex was more awake than Sam was at the time--not his fault; she'd been up and had tea, and he'd been taking advantage of his day off to get a bit of rest in the afternoon. He would've been coherent with some tea, he's sure. "Are you awake enough for this?" she'd asked.

And the day he says "No" to that sort of thing is the day he fully expects to be turned out of bed. Not that that would be a bad thing, exactly; there are other places to sleep just down the hall in either direction, depending on how much space he was looking for at the time.

"Always," is a better answer, though not necessarily accurate.

It's not as though he would've protested, in the end, even if they'd given him a full run-down of the plan. It's about trust, isn't it, and if he can't trust them, he'd better find something else to do with himself.

So that was the start, Alex leaning on Annie and kissing her, making that soft, gasping noise she always makes when she's on the edge of an orgasm, sweet and hungry and tugging at his hair. Better than tea to get the blood flowing.

And that was--some time ago. Some blocked-clock time ago, and Sam's not trying to count the minutes, not with Alex's hands on his wrists, not with her warm and demanding on top of him, around him, teasing with every roll of her hips.

He started begging a while back, but they're not listening. Or they are listening, but they're not taking his words into account, so much, not the "Please" and the "Oh, fuck," and not the "I can't--Christ, I can't--"

"God, you feel good," Alex says, moving lazily, not enough to bring him off, or her, either, from what he knows of her. It's exquisite torture, and he can't decide whether it's more exquisite or more torturous from moment to moment.

Sam starts to wonder if he's only saying things in his head, if he really is too breathless-fucked to talk, until Annie kisses him and says, "You can't?"

"I can't keep on like this," he says, and someone should give him a gold star for that sentence. Or an orgasm. He'd rather the latter, given a choice.

"Oh, poor Sam," Annie says.

He hasn't looked at her, at either of them, in--a while--and he misses the clock, even though he would've sworn he never looks at it at times like this. But when he looks at her now, he knows he's in trouble. He's said the wrong thing, and she's going to use it for all it's worth.

Sometimes his life--by whatever definition of the term--is amazing.

Alex leans down and kisses him, her breasts soft against his chest. "You really can't?"

He groans against her mouth. "D'you have any--any bloody idea--what you're doing to me?"

"Oh, yes." Alex grins at him and lets his hands go.

He reaches for her breasts, but Annie's hands are on her hips, bracing her, helping her up. Alex moves off him and it takes a strong man not to cry, just then. He's strong, damn it, strong enough for that, but he's not proud of how needy he sounds. "God, how long are you going to make me wait?"

Alex laughs. "That depends, doesn't it?"

"On what?" He can think of any number of things, including how eloquently he can manage to beg--not very, he's betting, not with all the thoughts in his head being "I need this, I want this, please, please, please," and variations on the theme not so much in content as in order and intensity.

"You'll see," she says.

Annie's leaning against the headboard next to him, and Alex settles back on her lap, her thighs spread wide over Annie's. That's the most beautiful moment he's seen in at least a few weeks, and he'd like to watch them at it. Preferably after he can think for a moment, but that's not on the table, so he sits up and moves down the bed, looking for a better angle. "Sam," Annie says sharply, and it takes that tone, the one that says she's watching him and she's not happy, before he consciously realizes his hand's on his prick.

Exactly what she expects of him--but they've talked about that, haven't they. "Sorry," he says, and lets go, though it's nearly as much of a wrench as having Alex get up. "I--really, what's the timeframe here? Do I have to say the magic word?"

"There's no magic word," Annie says, and nuzzles Alex's ear, petting her breasts. "You keep on about how much you like watching, but you had your eyes closed for most of that."

Sam bites his lip hard and keeps both hands flat on the mattress by his knees. "I would've lost it otherwise."

"Oh, would you?" Alex is grinning, though she loses it to a shiver. "I would never have known."

That's a flat-out lie as obvious as any she's told, but he can't bring himself to object.

Annie squeezes Alex's thigh, and there are times when she'd be mock-angry at that kind of lie, but apparently this isn't one. "So you kept your eyes shut. Think what you were missing." She strokes higher, presses two fingers into Alex smoothly, makes her whimper.

Sam covers his mouth to avoid making the same sound. "I can't," he says, in all honesty. "Not if you want me waiting for, for some bloody thing."

"Oh, you'll be fine," Annie says unsympathetically.

Alex leans back against her. "Do you put up with this every--nn--every year?" she asks Sam, her eyes half-closed in pleasure.

Sam tries to remember the last time he was willing to take quite this much loving abuse and delay, and can't think when it might've been. Possibly it was after some stand-off or other where he'd nearly been shot. Those situations tend to bring out the best and worst in everyone, afterward, and their best makes it rather hard to walk normally the day after.

"Only when everyone's feeling inspired," he says. "And only when Annie's--" he can't come up with the right words. Calling her "dominant" is true enough, though she doesn't like to own the label precisely. "Taking my feelings on the subject into consideration."

"Oh, God--" Alex's eyes widen and she reaches for him. "You should kiss me, at least."

He's sure that's not going to help a bloody thing, and he's not going to try for anything else without explicit permission. On the other hand, there's Alex wriggling a few feet away, and he's not the sort of masochist who entirely enjoys denying himself. It's easier to get someone else to do it, though Annie lets him have this much.

She knows perfectly well that it'll just make him want more than he is currently allowed to have. "Jesus, you're both cruel," Sam says against Alex's mouth. She groans softly and runs her fingers through his hair, a familiar gesture, and one that never fails to make him shiver.

Annie smacks his shoulder, stinging and fond all at once. "Don't say such awful things."

"If you really loved me, you'd let me touch myself," Sam says, aware that he sounds petulant and not caring in the least.

Alex tugs on his hair, giggling. "You're ridiculous. You do know that."

"I'm ridiculous?" Sam raises his eyebrows at her. "Look, love, you've got the best of this deal. Nothing but the best for our Alex, I'm sure, and if I so much as think of taking a moment for myself--"

"You won't," Annie says with enough confidence that he's tempted to prove her wrong.

"Tell me what I'm waiting for, and I'll try harder." Sam reaches past Alex and squeezes Annie's thigh. "If there is something. Unless you want me to beg you incoherently--but I already did that, a bit, and it didn't do any good."

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" Annie asks him.

Sam pulls away from Alex enough to look at the clock--the copy of Stranger in a Strange Land is still in front of the digital readout, but he moves it to one side. Seven-thirteen PM. "After dinner. You're not going to tell me I'm meant to make you all dinner in this state. You'll be eating water soup and oxygen biscuits."

"No." Annie kisses Alex's cheek. "It must have been a bad day, then."

Sam rubs his hand over his face and refuses to feel guilty for taking a day off at his own discretion. It's his birthday, for God's sake, and the records show he works enough bank holidays and assorted weekends for three men. Three men who aren't Gene, but that's a problem without any solution at all, even a solution consisting of "There are beautiful naked women here. Come home."

Sam would never ring the station and tell Gene that.

Only the once, and that was when he was staying late to take care of a robbery they'd solved before it happened.

Not tonight, not when he's been out of the loop for a day and has no idea whether someone's life is on the line. That would be reckless, and Sam isn't as reckless as he wants to be, even with beautiful naked women involved.

"Can I get a deadline?" Sam asks. "A bottom line? Eight-o'clock or bust?"

"Eight-o'clock?" Annie lets Alex go and turns enough to see the clock, then grins at Sam. He's used to that expression--half joy, half awareness that he's giving himself up again--and it still makes him shiver. "Another three-quarters of an hour sounds only fair, yes. If you can make it that long."

Sam swallows hard and closes his eyes again, though he's sure she'll tell him off for that if he milks it for more than a moment. "I have no idea. It depends on what nefarious plots you've got up your sleeve."

Alex pats his shoulder. "If there are nefarious plots involved, she hasn't told me about them," she says, as sweetly ingenuous as Annie has ever managed. "Kiss me again."

"That's nefarious enough on its own." Sam still can't tell her no--for any number of reasons, but the one he chooses to accept as his own motivation for the moment is that he can't imagine having kissed Alex enough times in any given period.

"You're seeing terrible things where there aren't any," Annie says, though she's stroking Alex again, and that's verging on the worst kind of tease. Alex is right there, moving against him, and if he so much as puts a hand on her breast he's going to be in trouble for it.

It's a special definition of being in trouble, that's true, but it's still there, and while the consequences are nebulous, they're not less real for all of that.

"Sometimes you make me want to scream in all of the worst ways," Sam says, as mildly as he can manage, while Alex is shivering against his mouth and making the particular noise she does when she's on the edge of orgasm. "God, both of you. I don't know what's worse--that you're doing this, or that I'm putting up with it."

"Stop talking," Alex says, and holds him in place to kiss him, firm and hungry.

He can almost translate the feeling to a blowjob--she's no more gentle with those--and he tries to stop himself from thinking of it. If he asked, maybe she'd say yes, maybe it would be allowable, but it's a long time yet till eight and he's sure that now that he's consented to one more delay, it would be an excruciating interval. For both of them; forty-five minute blowjobs are only for skin flicks, and then only for people who have the luxury of editing different takes together, surely.

The thought of how uncomfortable that would be in practice takes a bit of the edge off, though not enough of it. Sam sighs and kisses her, listening to every last gasp with his hands on her shivering shoulders.

It has been too long--though Annie would surely say not long enough--since Alex wore one of those tops that bares her, there. Sam knows better than to ask her to do it again; she surely has her reasons for stopping even apart from the toothmarks she tends to have on her collarbone, these days.

"Christ," Alex says, when she can breathe again. "All right--all right, the next time you need to take all of this delay out on me?"

"Yes?" Annie asks, when she doesn't finish the sentence.

"Do it. Do it as much as you like." Alex lets Sam go and eases off Annie's lap, then turns and kisses her properly.

Sam folds his hands together and squeezes until his knuckles go white. He doesn't have a particular fondness for any one part of them, but the way they move together has made his brain turn off since the first time, and he can't imagine reacting any more coherently in the future. “Maybe a nice hand of cribbage," he says, though he can't recall any of the rules right now.

"Not cribbage," Alex objects, while Annie's laughing at him. "It's a two-player game. You wouldn't want to leave anyone out, now, would you?"

"You'd probably go on without me just fine," he says; imagining them playing cards, whatever they're wearing to do it in, is less provoking than the current reality.

"Come here," Annie says, and kisses him when he complies even though he hesitated a second. "You're doing so well."

"I'm going out of my bloody mind," he says, though he goes to some trouble to make it sound cheerful. There have been enough times he's said that sort of thing and meant it nonmetaphorically that when he doesn't mean it as literal truth, it takes a certain ironic weight to make the phrase carry.

There is the sound of a door opening, out in the flat, and Sam has a moment where he's too busy running down the checklist of logical causes to look forward to anything: no doorbell, so it's not someone who needs a key; no crash, so they have a key; no stealthiness, so it's not a thief. He wishes sometimes that he could come to the logical conclusions more simply than that: there are three people who more or less live there, and two of them are in one place, so it's most likely the third. But if he could think that simply, he wouldn't be half the detective he is.

He does his best not to share that kind of reasoning with anyone, even the people most likely to accept it from him, because it's one thing to tell Annie she's driving him out of his mind, and it's another to prove that he's still rather far out of it on any specific evening.

"Heard there was a party going on," Gene says from the bedroom doorway. "Christ, and you're not even drunk, are you?"

"Glad you could make it," Sam says as drily as he can. "If you brought any alcohol, I would love some. And the next time I tell Annie I don't mind when she makes me wait for things, hit me until I take it back."

Annie pats Sam's cheek. "You don't mean that," she says.

"I do," Sam protests. "You have no idea."

“I could hit you now," Gene offers, and the bed dips slightly more as he gets on it. "If that's what you've been waiting for."

Sam rolls his eyes, though the offer is as affectionate as any of the trouble Annie and Alex have been putting him through. "She said wait. I've been waiting. And you've been--" Sam frowns at Gene for a moment; he's left his clothes on the floor, so that's one set of clues missing, but he doesn't look particularly worried "--working. On nothing in particular. Paperwork? On my bloody birthday?"

"There's a cake out there," Gene says defensively. "Had to pick it up, didn't I? And takeaway from that ruddy awful Asian place you like so well."

Sam prods him in the chest. "And you were doing paperwork."

"Only if there's been a minor miracle nearby recently," Alex says, sounding amused.

Annie clears her throat. "I didn't say you should do paperwork--though I'm hardly going to complain about it if that's really what you've been doing."

"That, and a few visits to a snout or three." Gene spreads his hands and gives Sam a look that doesn't manage to be innocent, though he does try rather hard. "The whole world doesn't stop turning when you want a day off, Dorothy."

"I know that." Sam takes a breath and refuses, again, to feel any guilt. It was only one day, and it's nearly seven-thirty now. He hasn't kept any of them off the streets for very long. "And if you had any idea what you've been missing you'd have been home hours ago."

"Would I, now?" Gene's smirk implies he has some idea of what he hadn't seen, though not a clear one. "What did I miss, then?"

Sam puts his face in his hands. "It was a very long evening. Would you for God's sake just fuck me through the mattress before I go hide in the other room?"

"Not on your life." Gene pats his cheek fondly. "Not till I know why I should've been back however many hours ago."

Alex laughs, then covers her mouth when Sam looks at her. "You walked into that one," she says, and shrugs at him.

"I--" Sam does not look at her breasts or consciously try to remember how good she feels in the many ways he's been touching her. "Well, maybe, but I'm still not forgiving you all for it."

"Just start talking," Annie says, and her hands are warm on his shoulders, soothing his muscles though he doesn't want or need that kind of massage. "The sooner you say it, the sooner you'll be through."

Sam groans and doesn't let himself lean against her. On one level, he’s furious with her. On every other level, he can't imagine how he'd be happier with the situation, but the frustration’s winning out at this particular moment. "I was taking a well-earned nap."

"A nap," Gene says flatly. "Exactly how old are you? I think we might've missed a digit on that cake."

."You know bloody well," Sam says, and tries to put the afternoon-into-evening into anything like order. "So there I was, sleeping the sleep of the just, when Annie gets into bed, says something I don't remember to which I said yes, like an idiot, and then Alex is kissing me and pushing at my shoulders--you know how she gets--till I've got more complicated things to think about than 'Am I really awake?' More like 'What've they been doing that she's this wet?' and 'If I drop off again, what's she going to think of me?'"

Annie presses her fingers into a knot on Sam's left shoulder that hasn't gone away in any meaningful sense for the last few years, not since that knife fight. It hurts like hell. "You wouldn't fall asleep on her."

"On her, no. Under her--sometimes, maybe."

Gene snorts and glances at Alex. "Princess, don't believe a word of this bollocks. He's pretending he's older than dirt."

"And he wasn't asleep. Not even close." Alex sighs in reminiscence. "Keep going."

Sam tightens one hand into a fist. Talking about it is bringing back all the arousal, and he only half-trusts them to do something about it this time. "Ten seconds after I'd got her off, Annie's kissing me--you are all filthy, by the way--and grabbing at my wrists."

"Oh, now," Annie says, and bites his ear, making him shiver. "That makes it sound like you were struggling."

"I wasn't expecting that. And not--" Sam swallows hard "--not Alex, on me, for however the hell long it was, till you made her stop again. That was cruel."

"And you've been waiting since then?" Gene asks. He looks moderately impressed.

Sam shakes his head. "Oh, if they'd stopped there I'd be all right. No--then they went and put on a show for me."

Annie prods the sore spot again and Sam tries not to moan. "Bells and whistles and all."

Gene laughs. "You're right, I should've been back. What did you do, Cartwright?"

"Sam's telling it. Go on, Sam."

He shakes his head; the images are vivid and he is bloody tired of being good about this, for anyone at all, no matter how much he loves them or how much he knows it'll be worth the wait. "Would you just--"

"No," and that's in chorus, both of them, Alex too. "Keep talking," Annie says. "You can do it. Just a little more."

Sam closes his eyes and tells it as fast as he can, like it's something he's seen that has some bearing on a case and the quicker he gets it out, the quicker they can save someone. "Spread her open--like I hadn't done most of the work myself--and fingered her till she came, and made me kiss her besides, while I had my ruddy hands as empty as they are right fucking now. So I'm not feeling as patient as I could be, and I'm not sitting round here till you figure out what to do next."

It's a relief when Gene takes him by the shoulders and kisses him hard, though Sam's not entirely sure he can trust this, either. It could be another tease, another seduction and feint at the last moment. But surely not, not this time, not when he's been doing everything they asked.

The intense desire to point out exactly how good he's been makes him flush, but then, so does the kiss, and it's much easier to go along with the latter than to try to do the former just then. "Can't catch a break, can you?" Gene asks, barely half an inch away. "What do you want next?"

"I don't care," Sam says, and he should probably have a better answer than that. Next time he will. "As long as you let me have a fucking orgasm, with no playing keep-away, you can do whatever you want."

It's the truth, but no less embarrassing to say aloud for all of that.

He can't look at Alex, though she's had her share of times when she said, "Anything" and more or less meant it.

This is neither the time nor the place to stand on any sort of dignity; Sam is sure he had some, once, and he'll find it again. It's probably somewhere across the room with someone's pants on top of it, getting a little dusty, but surviving all the same.

"Hands and knees, then." Gene gives him a push in the right direction--someday there will be a bed on the market big enough for four people, but till then there's some maneuvering that goes on, though Sam's not trying to track it carefully. Just now, if he falls over on top of Annie or Alex, it'll be all they deserve as far as he's concerned.

"Don't mess around," Sam says, as much for the reassurance as because he's afraid Gene will do anything like that.

The maddening delays are more Annie's style than Gene's, in any case. Gene swats his arse, and he was asking for that, he knows it; that doesn't make it any less pleasant. "So you've been panting yourself hoarse over Alex, have you."

Sam grins, not sure who's watching and not going to put the energy into looking up to find out. He's the show, this time, as much as Alex was earlier, and that's all right. "Sorry, Guv."

"You didn't wear her out, so I might forgive you." Another series of swats, in time to his words, as though there's anything to forgive in any of this.

It doesn't matter--logic doesn't matter, not like this. What matters is that it feels good, though it really shouldn't. "I'm still sorry."

"Don't lie to me." Gene presses his leg between Sam's and pushes his knees apart. "Give us a hand, Cartwright."

She hands him lube, rather than lending a hand, and that's a good start--it's all a good start, it's all been starting well for entirely too long, and Sam lets his head hang and tries to breathe through it. At least if he loses it at the last, no one's going to be surprised. He may hear about it at intervals till his next birthday, going off like a teenager at a finger in his arse, but that's only to be expected.

"I'm fine," he says, before he entirely is, before he normally would say anything but "Keep on." But there's a rhythm to this, and he's not going to let himself lose it, not yet, not while he can still take a breath and let it out again. "Please--"

"Shut it," Gene says, and smacks him again. "You start begging me and we're all done."

"Jesus, what do you want me to say?" Sam bites his tongue hard to keep in another "please."

Gene squeezes his thigh, as proprietary a gesture as any spanking. "Annie, you've been waiting as long as he has, haven't you?"

Annie laughs. "I was wondering when Sam would notice that."

"You did say," Alex says, defensively. "I would've given you whatever you liked."

"I know." There's a soft noise; Annie's kissing Alex, and Sam would look up at them but he hasn't the energy. Besides which, he's flushed again. He really ought to have seen that pattern and complained less about his theoretically dire straits.

Gene sighs appreciatively. "Better not give Sam any more friction than he's got from the air, just yet, but he hasn't worn his tongue out yet. Have you?"

"I'm sorry," Sam says, and the hell of it is that he really is, for all everyone's been putting in a concerted effort to keep him out of his head all this time. "I'll make it up to you, I--"

"Shh." Annie moves so she's kneeling in front of him and eases him up for a moment, taking his weight off his arms and kissing him. "Of course you will. As if you've ever let me down."

"I didn't mean to," Sam says, and he's as eager for this as he was when they woke him, however long ago that was now.  It's been entirely too long since he could think clearly, and he's losing what little composure he had left. "I wouldn't have--"

"Stop that," Annie says, and tweaks his ear, hard enough to make it burn. "Don't tell me what you're going to do to fix things, just fix them, and we'll all be better off for it."

"Sorry," Sam says, and she tweaks his ear again. "Just--let me--please."

"Now that's a fascinating response," Alex says, and the tone of voice she's using makes shivers go down Sam's spine. It's one thing to deal with Gene in a possessive mood, and another when Annie's decided that she needs to be in charge of things, but Alex waxing analytical about anything to do with the four of them makes Sam want to kiss her until she's quiet, until she won't poke at all of the looping, bizarre truths that make his life keep working.

He can't, not just then, not with Annie's hands on his head, easing him down so he can do exactly as he's offered. He barely has a moment in which he could, theoretically, protest, and he's not going to say, "Oh, stop," now, not when it could apply to so many things he likes much more than listening to Alex take him apart.

"If you're profiling our Gladys, you're going to need a bigger notebook," Gene says, sounding affectionate. "You still think you're ready for more, do you?"

Sam pushes back against his hand, wishing he wasn't blushing, wishing Alex would be quiet or that someone would tell her off. This is not the time or the place, he's sure of that. Some birthday party: the food's in the kitchen, he's nearly exhausted and strung-out on hormones, and to top it all off, he gets to hear someone examine his psyche for free.

"Honestly, though," Alex says, and it might be tolerable if she didn't sound so fond, as fond as Annie's soft groan. "If you lot kept me on edge half that long I'd mutiny, if you can call it mutiny when there's only one of you doing it. It's not as though Sam's incapable--"

Sam presses his tongue against Annie's clit, trying to make her wail, anything to drown out Alex talking. Gene's familiar, low noises are too soft for the purpose, even as he pushes into Sam in earnest.

"--but he wants to be incapable, don't you?" Alex pats his shoulder, her hand cool and entirely the wrong size for Gene's, and the wrong angle for Annie's. "He's been pushing himself to do what he thinks is right, even though almost none of it has been articulated. Just how long have you spent negotiating this kind of scene?"

Annie gasps, too quietly still. "Long enough that we don't have to--God--start--Sam, let me finish my bloody sentence--"

He makes a protesting noise, though he can hardly keep the same rhythm he was giving her when Gene gets hold of his hips and tugs him back, filling him at a speed right on the edge of too fast and too much. If they hadn't done this, if he wasn't used to it, if they hadn't negotiated it all over and over till they could do it with a wink and a nod, it would be painfully overwhelming.

It's still overwhelming, but wonderfully so instead of uncomfortably, and it barely matters that Alex is still talking.

"It makes a certain amount of sense--Sam's affection does tend toward fixation rather quickly, by his own accounts--"

"Accounts?" Gene bites Sam's shoulder. "Whatever you've been telling her, you're giving me the same stories when you're done with Annie."

"It wasn't that interesting, I promise." Alex strokes Sam's back again--at least he thinks it's her hand--and sighs, only slightly louder than Annie a second later. "He left out all the filthy parts, more's the pity. Though it might've been easier working out what you were all up to if he'd left them in."

It takes Sam that long to realize what she means, and he's not going to try to remember those conversations and recordings at this distance, not now, not when the alternative is Annie pressing her thighs against his ears--mercifully blocking out whatever else Alex is saying--and the sweet taste of her, and Gene, insistent, demanding, taking everything Sam can give him and pushing him faster.

"God, Sam, I won't make you stop, I promise," Annie says, her hand on the back of his head, not urging him on--he doesn't need it, not like this, especially not with that reassurance. All he needs, all he's needed, is permission to let himself go and know that they'll catch him.

He's feeling well and truly caught, and most of the way to orgasm all over again without the barest touch on his prick. He'd be begging for that if he let himself, or begging in words--it's easier to give Annie what she needs, to make her come for him, than it would be to try to pause for a moment. She may not be ordering him to do things in words, but that's what all those endless discussions were for. This is not something he's good at stopping, or ever has been, or ever wants to be. Sam doesn't tease, not in the same wicked ways that he reluctantly, painfully appreciates when they're willing to torment him.

And it feels like he's earned something, no matter how ludicrous and filthy that sounds, when Annie's clutching at him and coming, the shudders in her thighs all out of time with the way Gene's moving, but perfect anyway. It's too easy, says the part of his mind that's keeping time, clock or no clock, but then she's been watching all this time and teasing at Alex. Not too easy at all then, and only right that she's shaking apart for him, slick and delightful.

"Never stops being beautiful," Gene says in Sam's ear. "If you could see her face--"

He knows what she looks like, though it's an impossible view from this angle. The thought makes him shiver, though, and he is not many shivers away from his own orgasm. Annie lets him go enough that he gets a good breath, enough to say, "Please--" and nothing else, the S hissing off into nothingness at Gene's next thrust.

Gene kisses his neck. "That far gone, are you?"

He doesn't have the breath to say yes, to do more than nod.

"You can beg me next time, then," and it's a promise for both of them, as certain and steady as Gene's hand on him.

It takes two firm strokes on Sam's aching prick and he's coming, all that desperation and waiting coalescing into one bright moment, vision blanking out, every muscle tensing and melting away out of his awareness. Everything's gone for a timeless interval, and when it comes back, he's flat on the bed, someone's hand stroking his hair, someone else--probably someone else--rubbing his back. Gene's somewhere--everyone's somewhere. It's too hard to look up and figure out who’s where when the pillow is warm and soft under his nose. Sam tries to assure them that he's still breathing and comes up with "Nn."

"Morning," Annie says.

The thought that he's been asleep all night is appalling enough to get his mind working again. "Isn't. Is it?"

"No," Gene says, and that's his hand on Sam's lower back. "You want your supper in bed?"

He could--they never, ever do, but this once--but there's cake. "No." Sam manages to turn over with a great effort. "Crumbs in the sheets."

Alex laughs. Maybe she's never woken up in a bed full of crumbs. "We could change the sheets."

"They could use it," Gene admits.

Sam refuses to contemplate the state of the bedclothes. They're not his fault. "Fine. Breakfast--supper in bed. And sheets."

"You're going to want a shower." Annie kisses his cheek.

"When I can stand. Maybe."

"After supper." The bed shifts as Gene stands up. "You lot stay out of trouble, I'll get it."

Alex gets up, too. "I'll help."

[fin]

*

Curiouser and curiouser

Responding to all of them and all of their myriad sexual charms--not least the parts where they make her beg, and she enjoys it--with "You know me too well" is Alex's coping mechanism.

Which leads to the question, "Is it that you don't like that sort of thing, or that you don't like that you like it, or that you don't like that we like it as much as you seem to?"

Gene says, "Stop making it sound so bloody complicated. And as for you, Your Highness, if you like it don't run off. And if you don't like it, for Christ's sake say so."

Alex's face, very serious, only slightly very hammered, "It's complicated."

"Of course it is," Sam says comfortingly.

"Everything is." Annie sighs. "But I can't help thinking that if it makes you stop talking to--us--for a few days at a go, I don't want to do that sort of thing anymore."

"No, no--" Alex runs her fingers through her hair. "No. I just. It's."

Sam kisses Alex's shoulder. "We could cut down on the, you know, the complicated part. For a bit. If it's making you uncomfortable."

"How on earth do you propose to do that?" comes out relatively lucid.

Gene takes a long-suffering breath. "Less of the--" there is no hand gesture on earth that summarizes "humiliation kink," and neither does this wave. "Less of the talking."

"At least that sort of talking," Annie says, frowning.

"Right." Sam laughs once. "Or--I don't know. Whatever you need."

Which results in Alex with her face in her hands. "Stop being so bloody understanding."

"Now that I can handle," Gene says with confidence.

Annie groans. "That's not helping."

Alex shrugs and doesn't quite look up yet. "Stop understanding me, then."

"I think I can safely say that I never have done," Gene says, and Annie thumps him this time.

Sam puts an arm around her, a bit tentatively. "I can see how it'd be a bit much when you're not used to it."

Alex glowers at him. "And you--you can stop being nice. Right now."

"There's no call to go biting heads off," Annie says, very firmly. "Now do you want to explain to us what we're doing wrong, or shall we leave you to sulk?"

Alex splutters briefly, then buries her face in Sam's shoulder, as it's right there and a convenient hiding place. "I don't usually--it's been--I--" she pauses, then starts over. "I wish you didn't know me as well as you do. All of you--yes, even you, Gene."

"I'm not sure there's actually much we can do about that," Sam says, eventually. "I mean, by this point. Unless you want to stop."

Alex makes a small "no" sound. "It's not that. I--I like this. I do. It's just--I haven't been in a relationship since--and you're all bloody terrifying sometimes."

Sam hugs her because she needs it, because hell, after that he needs it, and because the "since" in there makes him wince for her and he doesn't feel up to sharing exactly why with everyone else. "Sorry, love."

Annie looks like she shrinks about an inch when she lets her breath out at that "no." "We don't mean to be. Not like this."

"I know--it's just--" Alex shakes her head. "You must have those mornings where you wake up and you realize you'd be hard pressed to explain your life to anyone who hadn't lived it."

"God, yes," Sam says.

"It's no one's bloody business but yours. Ours," Gene amends.

"It's the 'ours,' really," Alex says, waving her hand towards Gene. "The 'we.' I didn't think I was signing up for that. Exactly."

Annie raises her eyebrows. "And it's a problem, is it? Well--"

"No." More quietly, "Yes. Sometimes."

Gene slumps slightly. "You're not alone in that, y'know."

Annie blinks at him and takes his hand. "Next you'll be telling me you're all tired of this."

Which gets a chorus of "No" from the gentlemen, and Alex saying, "I just said--no, not that. It doesn't make sense, but it works."

Sam laughs hard enough that he has to let Alex go. "I've had that feeling."

She gives him a rueful smile. "I'm sure."

"But you shouldn't worry about it," Annie says. "I mean, not if it's working all right."

"Mm. Well." Alex has another drink while she's thinking of it. "I keep thinking I'm either insanely lucky, or simply insane."

Gene gives Sam, who is still snickering, a glare. "At least you're among some of your own kind either way, then."

Sam grins at him. "Yes, we're all mad here."

"Thank you, Alice." Alex kisses his cheek.

"Oh, dear," Annie says, while Gene snorts. "Maybe you're right; maybe you've been spending far too much time with us. Or some of us, at least."

"Watch it, Cartwright," Gene says fondly. "Mixed-up enough for one evening, she is."

"One lifetime," Alex corrects him, and stretches out. "At least. I really am very fond of you all, you know."

"Good to hear," Sam says, and Annie kisses the top of her head.

"We like you too," she says. "Even when you are rather strange."

[fin]

*

A bit much
Alex has had the occasional boyfriend with a thing for her arse before, though rarely anyone quite as fixated as Gene can be when he's in a mood. She's had anal sex, though not always with the arse appreciators--it was generally better to wait until they asked, she'd found, and some of them never quite formed the words to inquire.

This--

She still can't entirely believe in him, and when she does believe in him, she doesn't entirely believe in the man who's got her spread across the wide blue bed, fingers in her arse with enough lube to float a battleship, it feels like, infinitely tender and appreciative.

Someone told her a story once about Gene Hunt and made him sound like a bastard. Then things changed.

Someday she'll accuse Sam of castrating him, sometime over the last eight years, though she's sure she'd rather be here like this with Gene rubbing little circles on her back and asking, "All right, there, Princess?" instead of dragging her off to his cave by her hair and bending her over a rock to fuck her.

Most of the time.

For this particular act, at least.

It's not as though he's always this careful, or she'd have to scream at him. Punch him again. That would fix things.

"If you don't stop messing about, I'll bring myself off and leave you hanging," she threatens him.

They probably ought to be somewhere else--her flat, his flat, and she knows he has one, but she hasn't seen it yet. Somewhere that's private, where no one else has a key and every right in the world to come wandering in at any second. But they're not, and that was her choice as much as his. She's going to have to have a conversation with him about that at some point.

Some point. Not just now.

“Go on, then,” he says, and nuzzles her neck. “Unless you’re going to shove me off the second you’re done.”

Alex bites her lip and works herself up onto her knees, immensely aware of his fingers in her, holding her open. “You’re not going to help,” and it’s not a question; he’d have to let her go for that, wash thoroughly and preferably with near-boiling water before she’d let him. “God--” The whole process has left her sensitized and half out of her head. “Is that why you wanted it like this?”

Gene wriggles his fingers slightly, not in any rhythm she’s setting. “That’d be right devious.”

“Mm. Yes.”

“Shouldn’t be fucking me if you don’t trust me, Princess.” He nips at her ear. “And you’re assuming I don’t want to touch you every way you’ll let me.”

Alex bites her lip and keeps her eyes closed, wondering whether the dull thud she can hear from the hallway is someone else’s door or the one belonging to the rightful owners of this particular flat. “It’s not so macho, is it--diddling your--” she can’t find the word for what she is to him, not girlfriend--how teenaged--not lover--how sweet--not partner--because if he’s got partners, he’s got two already, and they’re coming home any time now, as soon as the paperwork’s done on the Travors case. “Bird,” she manages.

Gene laughs at that. “I’ve not had my tongue up your arse,” he says, and that’s a semi-oblique offer she knows better than to refuse.

“Now that’s not macho at all.” It’s entirely possible that when Sam gets home, she’ll owe him more than normal--and that is, in the end, saying quite a bit, as it’s his pillow she tucks under her side to get her hips at a good angle. That, and if anyone in London is responsible for Gene’s willingness to do this, it’s almost certainly Sam.

He’s not the best she’s had--a bit too macho, even in this, and too inclined to braggadocio, to looking up at her with his lips slick and saying any damn thing he can think of to make her shiver. At least today’s, “Thing is, soon as you’ve had enough, I get mine, so the faster you’re done the sooner I get a good fuck,” is appropriately irritating.

There must have been a time when she didn’t have that metric for--people she’s having sex with.

“Hello?” Annie calls, down the hall, and Alex buries her face in Annie’s pillow.

There are distinct advantages to not being interrupted in flagrante delicto. Alex enjoys the leisurely pace of such an encounter as much as the next girl--possibly more, considering that the next girl’s response to “In here, love, but we’re a bit busy,” is to stick her head round the door and make a pleased noise.

“You look comfortable,” Annie says, and Alex doesn’t look up from the pillow, but she does manage to wave in what is probably approximately the right direction.

They’re not doing this again. Not here, anyway. Not--no.

Alex has decided, and she will tell Gene that as soon as she can bloody well speak. It’s not as though she’s going to shout, “Go away!” under the circumstances, tempting though it is.

"Christ," Sam says, somewhere, and Alex wants to point out to him that she had no plans whatsoever to do this for an audience today, but the words don't quite line up.

"You're back very early," into the pillow, is the best she can manage, before the bed sags and someone--Annie, her hands are cooler, and she smells ever so faintly of soap and hairspray--reaches over and tucks a sweat-damp tangle of hair back behind her ear.

"We can go away again," she says, sounding so purely innocent that Alex knows exactly the look on her face without having to move so much as an eyelid. "If you were doing this in here with the bedroom door open so's you could be on your own, I mean."

"Anyone ever told you you're pure evil, Cartwright?" Gene says, thick-voiced and far more amused than he should be, given the circumstances; Alex kicks weakly at him, not really expecting even the resultant graze of her heel against his forearm, and Annie giggles.

"You say the nicest things to a girl," she says, and the bed creaks with her leaning over to--not kiss him, Alex is quite sure, but Gene hisses and Alex has put in more than enough time with Annie to be forewarned about her teeth. "And will you be joining us, DI Tyler?"

"Hell," Sam says, not sounding in the least upset, and something that's probably his jacket hits the floor. "As long as there's room."

And Alex is quite, quite sure that she hadn't made plans, this morning, to end up a damned party favor, but Annie kisses the arc of her shoulderblade and Gene's fingers trail--more slowly and deliberately than he would do, without an audience--right back up to where his mouth needs to be again right now, and she shakes rather too badly to put any weight behind her objections.

Sam kisses her and gives her the kind of look she's coming to expect of him in this kind of situation, a mingled "I can't believe you're here" and "I can't believe I'm really this lucky." It's heartening in a way that even her imaginary men are pleased to see her, consistently; the edge of incredulity has started to wear off with Sam, a bit, and he's no less appreciative for being slightly less wide-eyed. "So," he says, running his fingers through her hair. "What were you looking forward to, exactly?"

Not this, exactly, but she can't say that, not when every practical consideration would've told her the simplest ways to avoid ending up in just this sort of situation. "I don't know," is closer to the truth without being an outright rejection, without making her sound as if she's gone mad.

Sneaking in--it wasn't breaking in, though they haven't given her a key and she can't imagine what she'd say if they offered, what she'll say when they offer, it's probably, probably coming someday right next to her first cup of tea in the morning and she is not thinking about this, not thinking about how hopeful they'll bloody well look--

No. She's thinking about how close she is to screaming when Sam kisses her again, when Annie gives her arse a squeeze and says, "You've been at this a while, then," when Gene strokes her just the right way.

He can, in fact, be taught.

She has faith in that, though not necessarily in the lessons he chooses to learn.

"Fuck," Alex says, and Sam raises his eyebrows.

"Yeah? Was that a request?"

She's never--well. There are any number of things she has yet to do, and it'd be easier to admit that aloud if she wasn't half-buried in people who've probably worked their way through every bit of the Kama Sutra they could manage with three people and limited physical flexibility.

It's been a long time since she got so far as having a man in her while her arse was quite this full--the angle's off, and she's never been much of a one for toys, not since Molly found her vibrator and played with it along with her Barbie. Molls was all of three, then, and Alex has never asked whether she remembers the incident. Alex does, in a vaguely appalled way, and after she'd thrown the thing out without explaining it in even the most glancing of terms, she'd never bought another. Fingers are enough.

Fingers can be bloody marvelous, come to that--and she's going to come, any second now, if Gene keeps on that way, if Annie nuzzles her ear again just that damply--and she doesn't have an answer for Sam, only another kiss, and an excuse to clutch at his head while she can see him. For once.

She can't quite believe that she's been doing this with them enough to form actual patterns, but there she is. There they are.

Annie nips her ear and her hips buck, she screams into Sam's mouth, riding the orgasm out as it tears slow and merciless through her and leaves her trembling in between them all. "God," she says, when she can force herself to speak, and Annie laughs.

"It takes me the same way," she says, and kisses her hairline very sweetly--and fuck, fuck, isn't that a thought, Annie shaking apart under Gene's hands in exactly the way Alex doesn't, all things considered, get to see half often enough.

And won't today, if any of the indications are to be relied upon, but it's something to file away for the future she doesn't quite believe in; perhaps it's not, after all, worth trying to extricate herself until all the changes have been rung. Within reason.

Certainly not while Sam's still kissing her like that, as if he's decided it's the only way to keep her from dissolving into thin air before they've finished with her, and he makes it very easy simply to run her fingers through his hair and kiss back.

"Well," Gene says, obviously doing his absolute best to sound annoyed. "Let me know if you plan on finishing with her, Tyler. I had plans for this evening and all."

"Mmm." Alex is more than slightly pleased by the dazed look on his face when he breaks away. "Don't change them on my account."

Gene runs a hand up her back, fingers spreading out at the base of her neck in a way she's absolutely certain shouldn't make her breath catch again so soon. "How about it, Princess?"

"Now let me get this straight." Alex bites her lip and forces herself not to make eye contact with anyone; there's something too nakedly desperate about it, when she feels more open--hungrier, she thinks--than she can remember being in her life. "What precisely are we talking about?"

Annie takes a breath--getting there first, and Alex is hard-pressed not to envy them all the effects of years of practice however much she's determined not to envy the years themselves. "I think it's up to you, love," she says, her voice soft in Alex's ear. "Though it's a bit of a trick, first time."

Alex can think of any number of things that she hasn't done yet, or at least, not with them, and she hasn't told them all the stories.

She doesn't want to tell them all the stories, either; she can't face the thought of astonishing them, if she managed it, and it's not as though they've given her all of theirs.

"What is?" Alex asks again, when no one elaborates.

Gene kisses her thigh. "You've been round the block, Princess. Ever had two blokes at once?"

"Monday," she says, "and last Saturday, and--" though he was there for those instances, and surely he can't have forgot them so easily. Then she works out just what he means, and shivers. "Oh. Christ, you don't do things by half measures, do you?"

Sam winces slightly as if she's insulted something. "Sometimes."

Annie hugs her from behind. "You know perfectly well we'll back off on anything you don't like if you just say, don't you?"

"Of course." Alex twists round to kiss her, a process which inevitably takes up rather more time than she'd bargained on and doesn't quite get her mind off the subject at hand. It's not something she's ever given much serious thought to, not even after taking up with this lot, but she can feel herself flush when she thinks about it, about the pair of them-- "God. All right."

Sam frowns a bit, not quite seriously, and Alex can't decide whether she wants to kiss it off his face or shove him out of bed until he promises to stop. "You're positive."

"Are you questioning the lady's judgment?" Gene gives a very plausible impression of annoyance, spoiled only slightly when he squeezes her shoulder far more gently than she'd ever expected him to be capable of. "Who was it kept telling me birds had to be allowed to make up their own minds?"

"I know." The corner of Sam's mouth twitches, as if he wants desperately not to be amused. "I know. I'm only saying. If you've never--"

"I want to," Alex says, and realizes it's true. "Honestly. I want--God, I want everything."

"Good girl," Annie says softly, and Alex would swear she can hear the grin in Gene's breathing.

"Well, there you are, then," he says, and ruffles her hair as if she were far, far younger than she is. "Tyler. How d'you want to work this?"

"How do I want to work it?" Sam sounds somewhere between startled and guileless. "No, that's down to Alex."

"I have no idea," she says, incredulously, then realizes she's admitted she's not done this before, if not in so many words. "As carefully as possible."

"Well, of course." The disbelief is back in Sam's expression, but for a wonder, he doesn't quadruple-check that she really means it. He takes a breath, head to one side, considering. "You'll probably have an easier time of it on your knees--makes it easier to move, and you don't end up with a great lummox on top of you in the middle of things."

Annie runs her hand over Alex's shoulders, almost firmly enough to be a massage. "Though if that's part of the appeal--"

It is, sometimes, when she's having trouble holding on to things, when she needs to be shown in no uncertain terms that this is a place she can breathe and a place where having several too many stone of Gene on top of her can stop her breath as easily as he can make her gasp. "Not just now, no." Alex rocks her hips slightly against Gene's hand, trying to imagine all of this, trying not to ask too many questions that she ought to know the answer to if she's leaping into this madness.

Going to bed with them hasn't felt like a proper orgy in weeks, but this--

"All right," she says. "Though I don't know how long I'll manage it for."

"That's only normal," Sam says, as if there's a normal to be found in practices like this. "If it was easy, everyone would do it."

"It's probably a bit more complicated than that," Alex says, and Annie laughs, digging her nails just deep enough into Alex's shoulder to make her gasp and push back.

"You'll like this," she says, low and inviting and--well. Less like a command than it might be, given all the circumstances, but with enough strength behind it to bring the thought to mind. "I'm sure you will. Don't know why we didn't think of it earlier, it's just your sort of thing."

There's nothing, really, to do for that, except to lean over and kiss her again, soft and shallow and lingering enough to make someone--she thinks it's Sam--groan between his teeth. "And what sort of thing is that?"

Annie grins, pulling away barely far enough to catch her breath. "Too much for most people?" she says, and Alex could go mad for her again purely on account of her voice. "You like it a bit like that, don't you? A bit hard?"

"I do." Alex laughs, and it doesn't feel like quite as much of an admission as it could be. Not to people who've already had the evidence of it, at any rate, and it's not as if any of this counts. "I really do."

"Not that I ever plan on saying this again," Gene says somewhere quite far away, in one of his falsely meditative tones, "but hands off, Cartwright. You'll have your go some other time."

"Of course." Annie smiles quite demurely at him before lying down, her hand trailing idly across Alex's back. "Go on then, love, kneel up--"

It's entirely too easy to do as she says, but then it normally is for things less--fraught--than this could potentially be. Too much for most people, indeed; if Alex knew herself less well, she'd have to take offense to that.

She is not going to try to work out what part of her subconscious has designed Annie--half an expression of the inner analyst that watches her constantly, half everything she could think of wanting from a woman, if she'd ever wanted much from a woman--and it's just as well she's not going to try to concentrate on it now, with her knees shaky already and Sam kissing her again and someone's hands on her breasts--Annie's, probably; Gene hasn't washed and those aren't sticky fingers.

"Sometimes I can't believe this is happening," Sam says in her ear, so softly she's sure the others can't hear what he's saying. "I don't know that I was quite this good."

His conviction that he's deceased--or her conviction that he should be convinced of that--no, really, she's not thinking of this, not now, not when the better option involves kissing him and feeling him moan when someone gets a condom on him.

No one should ever have a subconscious pregnancy. God only knows what it would represent in the real world, and she doesn't want to know, doesn't need to wake up and have to work that one out.

Another unwanted, unnecessary thought--in a lot of ways she's carrying Sam Tyler's brainchildren round already--

Kissing. She's kissing him, he's kissing her, it's much better kissing him than trying to think when her thoughts are afraid of what she's said she'd do, when she doesn't want to focus on the matter at hand.

Or the hands between her legs--Gene, still, and his fingers have almost certainly gone waterlogged by now, and how romantic is that, and--she can't actually tell whose hand is spreading her open, whose fingers are on her clit. "All right?" Sam asks, as if she's going to back out already. "Do you need anything--"

"No. Damn it, just--do it." Alex smacks his shoulder, and he smiles.

The things she's learned here will appall someone, someday. They're appalling her right now.

If she ever has a lover again, in real life--

God help her if she compares him to this lot.  

Or to one of them, even--to Sam, who's never less than careful, even while he's easing into her, close and slow, his eyes open wider than they normally are. Doesn't miss a trick, not Sam.

She can't think of anyone she'd rather be doing something this mad with, and she tells him so, her voice somewhere between a gasp and a laugh.

"Thanks," Sam says. "I'm glad you're here, too."

Gene kisses her neck. "Takes more'n one, Princess," he says.

Alex leans back against him, letting him take some of her weight. He's still there every time she opens her eyes, though she's never sure why. "I meant the lot of you, really."

"Of course you did." Sam's hands come to rest on her hips, and she shuts her eyes and grinds down around him until they're digging bruises. "Fuck, you're so--Christ, you're amazing, but we need you to relax. Trust me, you're going to enjoy this a lot more if you can."

"Of course." Alex giggles, light-headed and breathless and, in the part of her mind that's left to observe the rest of it, thoroughly annoyed with herself. "Nothing easier."

"Give her a moment," Annie says, sounding almost clinical for being able to catch her breath. "You're doing fine, love. Don't let them go on until you're ready."

"What you must think of us, Cartwright," Gene says, just as Alex is saying "Don't worry, I--" and she laughs again, and opens her eyes to meet Annie's, wide and bright and--and Alex must have learned to read her, at some point, although she can't herself put her finger on when she stopped seeing nothing there but the sweetness that's only part of it--thoroughly pleased at the sight of them.

"I can manage," she says, and proves it by accomplishing a long, shuddering breath that carries at least some of the tension out of her body.

"Course you can," Gene says, and kisses her neck again, loudly. "In your own time, then, if you can lean up a bit--"

Sam's hands shift the angle of her hips, correcting it--gently, rather too gently, and she could slap him again if it wouldn't delay things--until she's half bent over him, back arched and hands braced on his shoulders, and feeling rather shockingly more vulnerable than the position would otherwise tend to suggest; a feeling that doesn't go much of anywhere when Gene runs a hand down her back, slow and approving and down until one fingertip is pressing into her, not precisely too much but startlingly present, and she chokes on a gasp and digs her nails into Sam's shoulders until he groans.

"There's a girl, now," Gene says, and sometimes she thinks there's too much she'd be willing to do with that voice guiding her. "Ease up on him, Princess, or this is all going to be over a bit quickly. That's it. You shout if you need to."

In and in, opening her back up, and her knees are shaking almost too badly to hold her--

Gene kisses the back of Alex's neck and she swears a blue streak in a very, very shaky voice.

The point at which Alex's voice cuts out completely is just about simultaneous with the point at which Gene's finally finally goddamn finally who knew he could be that patient all the way inside her. Silence. Possibly a very tiny "oh fuck."

Sam says, "I know," in just about as small a voice, and she has to shut her eyes and concentrate on her breathing for a second, or it's all going to be too much, she's never bloody well done this before, and it's--God, she's never felt this open--

Gene kisses her neck again and says "You spectacular tart" in the absolute most soothing voice she can imagine.

Sam's no good for more than fragments when he's struggling, and Alex is down to noises and digging her fingernails into his shoulders, trying to breathe and move without screaming.

"You still with us?" Gene asks, with his normal coherence in the face of all the odds.

She smacks him. Well, she smacks Sam--who's going to fault her for getting front and back a little muddled just now?--and he groans.

Gene chuckles. "Hold off on that, your highness, unless you're sick of him. Move for me--God--slowly, now, I know you're dying for it, we're all--we can feel that--little bit at a time. Lean back against me, now--that's it, you're going to kill me. Can't think of a better way to go.

"Jesus, Alex, take a breath. You want to keep quiet, next time we'll find you a nice bloke so you can blow him--Christ, keep on like that--like that thought, do you, you lovely slut--we'd keep you just like this--Sammy, don't make that noise. Not yet."

"Your fault," takes Sam about fifteen seconds to put together and say.

"Worst manners I've ever seen." Gene does not, in fact, smack him, which is just as well, as Alex is sure that would be exceedingly counterproductive, but he does hold still. "Close your eyes and think of Maggie Thatcher."

That has something of the desired effect, though it comes with several indignant snorts and Annie giggling in a horrified way.

"Thanks. I think."

Alex manages a deep enough breath and enough consecutive thoughts to say, "Never. Ever say that. Again."

"I'm only giving you your due, your highness. Can't have him popping off when we've only just started, not when you need a good fuck. And you always, always do." A kiss to her neck, warm and wet. "Give us another wriggle--Christ--"

And she's nearly breathing by that point, enough to laugh a little and work back against him and Christ, fuck, his hands go tight on her hips.

"That's it--fuck, there's a girl, bloody made for this. Come on, Alex, let's be hearing you, you know you want to--like that, yeah." And she's been chewing her lip trying not to scream, but the sound she does make is thinner and higher-pitched than that, almost a gasp, and--

Alex has to open her eyes to be sure it's Annie kissing her, even though she's almost sure--there's just too much, everywhere, for her to focus on any one thing, and this is more slick, perfect heat and friction. She's torn between "If Gene would just shut up" and "Fuck, none of this should ever, ever stop," especially when he's nearly growling in her ear--more of the same, the things that always work for her, the "You beautiful, beautiful whore, you'd do this for anyone," in the sweetest voice he owns. "You'd do this for everyone, all at once, and let them all have you--can you bear a little faster?"

She has to break the kiss off to find his leg--too much skin, too many hands, too many people--and this time she does manage to hit him instead of Sam. "Yes--" It's the only word she can think, and when Annie groans and kisses her again, she can't say it twice. Doesn't need to, though.

And he's shaking her apart, they both are, perfect perfect burn of it rocking her forward, and Sam groans and Annie's kissing her and stroking her breasts, too light, too bloody perfect, and she thinks half-madly that she's never been the center of this sort of attention before.

And "Come on," Gene says, "come on, Princess, right--like that, there you are, you know you're getting there. Give it up for me, Alex--"

She's been trying not to for--some period of time--afraid that too much would send them both over with her, end things too soon. But she can't say no to that, not when she wants it desperately, not when they're driving her so thoroughly out of her mind, and it only takes a little--a little that is, like this, amplified into a huge amount, the faintest rock and grind echoed through three, four bodies until it feels like her scream is coming out of Sam's mouth, until Gene is squeezing her hips and saying, "Fuck, fuck, fuck," finally as incoherent as the rest of them, and Alex has never been the best at counting orgasms when they hit like clusterbombs, and this is not the day to start, only to feel, all of it, everywhere and everything and every one of them.

"God," Annie says, while Alex is still half out of her head and her body is very little more than fucked, fucked nerve endings.

"Are you all right?" Sam asks, asks Alex, probably. Probably.

"Mmmm," she says, and means, "Oh, yes."

[fin]

Comments

[eisen]

/gathers all of these up into her bosom and cradles them close, so that she can offer all the love in the world to them

♥

[petra]

Thank you. They are all wonderful, odd people, but at least they find an equilibrium, every now and then. In spots. They lose it again, but what can one expect?

[thatyourefuse]

<3 <3

I am infinitely pleased that you enjoyed.

[animagiblender]

Oh. My.

I had coherent thoughts, but they all sort of stopped after that last bit.

Also, fucking hell, I want to marry Annie. I have no idea how I managed to love her the best of them all, but she is so evil, so perfect, so dominant, so lovely, so cheerfully filthy. I just want to frollick in a field of flowers with her, even though I have horrible allergies, and that would just end very badly.

Also, oh god, my mom sponge-painted our kitchen with a yellow accent wall. I fucking loved the house decorating fragment, obviously.

[thatyourefuse]

*giggling too hard to form words, actually*

I am so, so excellently pleased that anyone is reading this at all, you know. Especially you, because your feedback is excellent feedback. (And, yes, Annies are in rather high demand around these parts.)

[petra]

If it makes you feel better, I think Alex's coherent thoughts were pretty well done in by the last bit, too. And everyone else's, for good measure.

I am so pleased that Annie comes out of this looking as endearing she does. She is truly not that evil (don't ask about s3, just--don't) and she does get a lot of mileage out of being The Sane One. And Alex does have a weakness for that, along with the various weaknesses for the less sane ones.

My mother-in-law is entirely too fond of sponge painting, and her brother has a bittersweet accent wall. Alas for people whose sense of taste was formed in troubled times.

[scribe]

I'm slightly shocked to say it after all the excellent porn, but I really do think the house decorating segment was my favorite. Just absolutely perfect.

[petra]

This makes me giggle like a mad thing in part because, well, the house decorating bit is all out of sequence. It has no function even in the thing that passes for a story arc here, and I included it because, as you say, it was too lovely to leave on the cutting-room floor.

Thank you for justifying my decision. Oh, poor Sam.

[thatyourefuse]

*glee*

Well, that bit contains the only two lines I'm absolutely positive I remember writing, so I'm especially glad you liked. And, really, the desire to just eavesdrop on that lot doing anything -- doesn't go anywhere.

[philomytha]

Oh wow. I was going to try and tell you which bit was my favourite, but my thought after the end of each one was 'this one!', so that didn't work. But the decorating! Oh, that was just perfect. And Alex's nightmare was excellent too - I adored the lost kitten bit, that was so perfectly in-character.

[petra]

Thank you so much! I'm curious whether you worked your way through the entire AU, or whether you started here. It doesn't so much matter for plot, naturally, as much as characterization. Looking at this makes me want to prove we can write Gene when he hasn't been married to people determined to civilize him for the last 7 years.

The decorating remains one of my favorite things, and I am so glad it works for you. Sometimes curtainfic pays off as a genre.

[philomytha]

I started at the top and worked my way down, then realised that I was going at it in the wrong order and decided I didn't mind. The characterisation all seemed plausible to me. And Modern Love is currently being my reward for doing the numerous less exciting things I have to get done this morning...

I am now completely sold on curtainfic as a genre :-).

[petra]

Ah, that makes sense. I do hope you enjoy the rest.

I'm glad it works as positive reinforcement for you, but I'm not going to make any claims about curtainfic in general.

[basaltgrrl]

Oh. My .. God. "You spectacular tart."
I... have to come back to this. Holy. Can I be one of them, now, please???

Oh.

[petra]

That scene was one of the reasons there are no extensive content notes on this one, though really it would have been a treat to warn for curtainfic and double penetration.

And for Gene Saying Things During Sex, which is a happy place I never expected to have, but which I appreciate immensely.

[basaltgrrl]

On my (have lost count of how many times I've read it) most recent reading I find myself paying attention to Gene Saying Things During Sex, and enjoying it very very much.

[thatyourefuse]

It is an enjoyable thing, really.

[petra]

Always good to know that it bears multiple readings. And--well.

I feel quite sure that Gene can talk Sam and Alex to death. At some point, on a day when I have no shame, I may write the one where Annie talks *him* to death, as I am equally certain that she can and does.

[basaltgrrl]

Is the "Curtains for you" part new, or did I just miss that somehow? Because it's HILARIOUS and... EEEEEEEEEE!

"I can't believe it. I can't--how did I wind up with two people who think orange is a neutral bloody color?" EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

And oh my fucking god, the bedroom negotiations!

Oh, and this made me a little manic: the argument goes from "Oh god, not another throw pillow" to "That cover won't clean very well."

It's just that I can imagine every bit of those four having those conversations! Neon in the bathroom! EEEEEEEEE!

[petra]

It was always there, and always one of the files that made me want to post a stack of vignettes in this 'verse.

Poor, poor Sam and the orange, and the fringe, and the--everything.

I'm beaming at them all over again. Thank you.

[basaltgrrl]

Clearly I got so sidetracked by the "you spectacular tart" that I missed many other gems.

[petra]

I sympathize with that problem on so many levels.

[basaltgrrl]

Today the bit that I am in love with is "curiouser and curiouser", and this especially:

Which results in Alex with her face in her hands. "Stop being so bloody understanding."

"Now that I can handle," Gene says with confidence.


Oh, you guys. They would have terribly convoluted conversations, a lot.

[petra]

\o/ For art imitating life! They would have some of the *hardest* conversations to navigate, bless them.