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“Like throwing a birthday party for their relationship,” Caboose says happily to Sarge, just as Locus sidles in.
“The deathdate of Simmons’s respectability as a human being,” Sarge grumbles. “The resignation of his humanity! The day he decided he could get it up for walking, sentient lard mass of trash.”
“Yes! It’s wonderful! We should throw a party for the day that Griff and Simon became Official Best Friends.”
Locus lifts a tea mug out of the kitchen cabinet. He’s not trying to eavesdrop. He’s only here to make tea. It's not his fault most people in this base are incapable of realizing when he walks into a room.
Sarge says, “‘In celebration of you hooligans stopped peacock-dancing an’ finagling an’ dilly-dallying and caught up to last decade’s news, which is that I’ve seen your drunk-married certificate with my own two human eyeballs, and finally did the horky-porky’. Put that on the invite.”
“That is a little long, Mr Sarge.”
“You don’t have to throw them a party for finally becoming an item,” Sarge grumbles. “You just want to throw a party.”
“Yes!”
“Don’t be so brazen about your scheming heartless Blue ways! Making me think we had hope for Red and Blue peaceful interactions! That we could lay down arms and be as brothers!”
“Yes! I want to throw a party with you and all my other friends,” says Caboose.
Sarge gives a choked-up wail. “Of all filthy, heartfelt—using Grif and Simmons for your dastardly friend-making agenda—”
At this point, Locus fills up the tea kettle, and the sound of the sink makes Sarge jump, who clearly hadn’t realized Locus was there. Which was fine, and how Locus prefers it, but sometimes conversations can turn uncomfortably personal while he’s lurking in the corner of a room. “Christ! Locus! Always sneakin’ around like you’re tryin’ to get the jump on us!”
Locus doesn’t even respond. Unfortunately, he’s growing used to Colonel Sarge. In Grif’s words: It’s just how he is, man.
“One of these days, we’ve got to put a bell and a collar on you,” Sarge remarks.
Caboose gasps. “Sarge! That’s dirty!”
“Wh—no! Like putting a collar on a cat!”
Caboose has one hand over his mouth.
“Oh, don’t pretend you understand,” says Sarge grumpily. “You’re just imitating Donut again.”
“Nobody will tell me how babies are made and what collars have to do with it,” says Caboose sadly.
“Would you like tea,” says Locus, because it’s a safer conversation topic than Donut’s interests that may or may not involve collars.
Sarge waves it off. “Yes, please,” says Caboose, “with sugar. I need minimum of six packets.”
Locus puts the kettle on, then a teabag and Splenda in a mug for Caboose. They don’t need a hyperactive Caboose running around the base. (Locus isn’t getting suckered into taking care of Caboose or the Reds and Blues’ domestic games. He’s not.) “Come join us,” says Caboose. “We’re getting a present for Griff and Simon, in honor of them becoming Official Best Friends!”
“Oh. How… nice,” says Locus. He sits down at their table like the chair will bite him.
“Unfortunately, none of us know what to get them,” Sarge grumbles.
“Which is, ah, you know, ridiculous,” says Caboose. “It’s like they don’t give birthday presents at Red Base!”
“We don’t! It’s in the Red Team Handbook: no presents! Right under ‘no feelings’ and right above ‘especially no presents for anyone wearing orange’!”
“What if Gruf put on a different color shirt,” says Caboose.
“Nonsense! Everyone knows that at this point, our armor is practically welded to our bodies!”
“Then it’ll be double fun because it’ll be Grif’s first time getting a present!” Caboose says cheerfully.
Locus has a game he likes to play where he compares the number of times the Reds and Blues have made fun of him for being dysfunctional, and then the number of times the Reds and Blues soundly outdo him in dysfunctionality. How do you live with a person for nearly a decade and never bother to get him a present? Is anyone here capable of showing Dexter Grif human decency? Back when Siris had first brought them together, Felix had once bought Locus a beat-up book and a male hooker, which wasn’t a good present but it’d been at least a present; and when Felix can outdo you in kindnesses, something is wrong.
“But we have to find out what he likes…” Caboose says. “Maybe we should ask?”
“That’s not how a present works,” says Locus.
“You have to find out through espionage,” says Sarge gravely.
Locus hesitates. “No, that’s—”
“INFILTRATION!” hollers Sarge. “TOP SECRET CLEARANCE! A MISSION!”
Locus immediately regrets this. “Actually, you could just ask Grif,” he says.
“No, you’re absolutely right,” says Sarge. “If we’re going to do this, we have to breach enemy territory! Sneak undetected into the vast, uncleaned, laundry-infested lairs of Grif’s natural habitat, all for some hidden glimmer of what Grif might like for a—ugh—a present! A perilous journey! A man may not survive!”
“And everything will be ruined if Grif finds out someone went in his room to look for what he might like as a present,” says Caboose.
“Hrmmemghghrmrmgfjhgh,” says Sarge. “Who do we know likes Grif, is an indestructible son of a bitch, and good at going undetected…”
Slowly, Sarge’s eyes slide towards Locus.
“You’re not busy right now, are you?” Sarge begins.
Why does everything with the Reds and Blues have to be so… this way.
Locus has been in Grif’s room, and he’s sure that Grif wouldn’t mind Locus poking his head in there, and Locus has spent quite a bit of his career breaking and entering into people’s homes, but that’s precisely why it leaves a particularly bad taste in his mouth—breaking and entering someone else’s space, one of the necessities of his old job, combined with newer, wide-eyed faces. Sometimes he thinks that they don’t realize that the human face they see around base is the same human face he wore under his helmet as he lined up their helmets in his crosshairs.
But if Caboose asks, it’s not like he has a choice. So he puts on his armor, revs up the active camo, and pokes his head into Grif’s room while Grif’s at the beach.
Grif’s room still has bad mobility. The bed nearly blocks the closet, and the rest of the floor is covered in snack wrappers and shucked-off clothes. No windows. Two exits, although one of the doors only connects to Simmons’s room. Easy to get trapped in here.
It’s still crammed to the corners with old laundry, with snacks hidden in every nook and cranny, like Grif’s afraid of going too long or too far without emergency food. (Locus knows what that’s like, but Grif could choose better food.) There’s no visible organization system, although that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. There’s no books. There’s a sticky note reminding someone to ‘refill these!! date 02/18’ in Simmons’s handwriting, right on the bedside table beside a half-empty weekly meds organizer. There’s a datapad on the wall, which Locus, reluctantly, pokes at; there’s no appointments except for a series of markers: one week, one month, two months, three months, so on and so forth, as if Grif could hold on better to the time since he and Simmons began dating if he tracks down the milestones. There’s a tray of toiletries for the trip to the communal bathroom, but now the tray has two toothbrushes and a pair of glasses that aren’t for Grif.
Locus is so busy wondering how long Simmons and Grif have practically been living together when, of course, Simmons and Grif open the door and walk in.
“There’s literally nothing wrong with barbecue sauce and grape jelly,” says Grif.
“Yeah, if you put it over meatballs,” says Simmons, “you can’t just put it on bread like a heathen. What’s wrong with you? That’s disgusting!”
“Oh, babe, you’re hurting my delicate feelings.”
Simmons looks vaguely panicked for half a second right before Grif snickers, shuts the door, and says, “Christ, Simmons, I’m still the same person.”
Locus, in full active camo, is standing by Grif’s closet and the foot of Grif’s bed, barricaded in by four rumpled shirts and some sweatpants. If Locus moves, his footsteps will show up on the soft fabric of the clothes. He might be able to move without sound in most situations, but mud, dirt, snow, and water are soft terrain that always give him away. And there’s no way to circumvent his having to open the door to get out without Grif noticing the door opening by itself.
They’ll leave soon. Locus can hold position for days. Slowly, Locus slinks into the space between the footboard of Grif’s bed and the wall, so that nobody will bump into him on accident. He can wait this out until they leave, and then he'll escape and never return.
“I know that,” Simmons’s voice says tartly. Locus can’t see him anymore from this corner, but Locus already knows the pinched, suburban-white-mother face he wears so well. “I just… whatever. Never mind.”
“Uh-huh. I bet Locus would agree with me about the barbecue and grape jelly.”
Locus would not.
“Locus,” says Simmons. His tone is too bitter to be a joke.
“It’s not Locus’s fault he has better taste in food than you.”
“Why not go hang out with Locus, then?” says Simmons acidly. “If he’s so great and wonderful and hot?”
“Literally nobody mentioned that he’s hot except you,” says Grif.
Locus shifts uneasily. Checks the door again. Still closed. Still no escape.
“I didn’t say he was…” Simmons begins.
“You literally just did,” Grif says, already laughing. There’s the sound of bedsprings, Grif hopping up on the bed. “Are you jealous? Do you think I’m going to run off with Locus?”
“No,” says Simmons, pathetically. “I… You just spend so much time with him! And he’s really hot!”
“Sounds more like I should be worried about you running off with him.”
“I’d be too scared of him to actually cheat on you with him.”
“Monogamy saved by being yellow-bellied cowards, hell yeah," says Grif.
There’s a very brief silence, then Simmons mumbles: “I wouldn’t. Do that. To you.”
Grif snorts.
“I wouldn’t,” says Simmons. The sound of more bedsprings as Simmons gets on the bed too. Locus wonders if they’re covered in sand from the beach or not. “I don’t… y’know. He’s not you.”
Grif gives a very nervous laugh. If they’re going to keep flirting with a pair of high school freshmen, Locus is going to disintegrate inside his own armor, or maybe just smack them both. “Didn’t know you even had that capacity for cheese,” says Grif, and Simmons’s reply is cut off with by the unmistakable slick sound of a kiss.
Locus feels every cell in his own body shriek.
Weren’t Grif and Simmons supposed to be at the beach with Donut and Tucker? The others would wonder where they were. Grif and Simmons should be leaving soon, and then Locus will get out and tell Sarge and Caboose that the so-called mission was an uneventful failure. They’re going to leave. They’re have to leave, so help him. They’re just having a quick couple’s moment before they resolve this and move on with their lives and Locus can dunk his own head in a tub of cold water and pretend that he never heard this and never lurked in a corner while Grif and Simmons had a heartfelt couples talk and then made out on Grif’s bed.
The kissing noises are getting slicker. Wetter. There’s a moan.
Stay calm. Breathe. Take stock of the situation. In a combat situation, assess your opportunities and throw out the rest, leaving no room for regrets. Locus can do this. Locus is a survivor. He’s going to survive.
“Grif, we can’t just keep making out every time we have three seconds alone,” Simmons complains.
Yes, absolutely. Excellent point. Listen to Simmons, Grif.
“I think we have more than three seconds.” The sound of kissing. “Tucker knows what’s up.” Another kiss. “Beaches are overrated.” Another kiss. “Rather spend time with you.”
There’s the sound of rustling fabric, uneven breathing, the sound of Grif saying, “Simmons—” and then trying to stifle a groan.
“Okay. Let's do this fast,” says Simmons eventually.
Locus would stop breathing if his breath hadn’t already been frozen several minutes ago.
He is incredibly thankful that he’s chosen a spot with no visuals, because if he’d had to stand in the middle of Grif’s room, surrounded by clothes that would give his footsteps away, staring at this, he—he doesn’t even know what he’d do. He should have left when he’d first had the chance. He shouldn’t have come in here from the start. This is karmic retribution for every crime he’s ever done. This is retribution for not going to jail. He should have just accepted being executed on Chorus just to avoid having to listen to Grif and his nervous boyfriend straight up—
“Hey, Simmons,” says Grif.
The noises stop. The bedsprings shift under their weight, but they’re not moving much anymore. “What,” says Simmons, sounding grumpy at the interruption but still out of breath.
“Do you really think Locus is hot?”
“What?”
What, Locus thinks.
“‘Cause there was this one a couple days ago—I’m pretty sure one time he wiped sweat off his face with his shirt and showed all his washboard abs and you stared at him for like four minutes and then licked your lips?”
“Wh—I—no—”
“And this other time he talked to you and you stammered like you were talking to a hot girl? Or this other time he was tying up his ponytail and he lifted his arms to do it and showed off the muscle lines in his giant arms and you made a noise?"
“I make a lot of noises! It’s a prerequisite for talking!”
“A horny noise, Simmons.”
“No! I wasn’t going to do anything, I just—come on, you’ve his face! And his arms! And his hair! And his—everything!”
“Not everything,” says Grif. “Although that would be nice. I did get him to take his shirt off once, remember that?”
Locus’s heart attempts cardiac arrest. He hadn’t thought it was intentional.
“Just because he’s pretty, doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything,” says Simmons irritably.
“But I’m asking if you want to. Because it kiiiiiinda looks like you do.”
“Where are you going with this,” Simmons says. “And may I remind you that you still have your hand on my dick.”
“I’m just saying, watching you blushing and stuttering over someone else… Like, we all know Locus is hot. And I think you’re hot. You being cute next to a dude like Locus is a view I do not mind seeing.”
Simmons groans. There’s a soft thud against the footboard right by Locus’s head. It sounds like they’ve wound up lying with their heads by the footboard instead of the other way around, and Simmons just bumped his hand into the footboard. Locus stares at it the footboard like it’s a live snake and tries to keep his breathing even. It doesn’t work.
“Is this some kind of proposition to have a threesome,” Simmons demands breathily, as the slick sounds of—a handjob?—pick back up.
“Not unless you want to. I’m just saying it’s nice to think about. Thought about it yesterday, even, in the shower. How pretty you are when you blush,” says Grif, and the sound of wet skin on skin picks up, the bed creaks gathering a a rhythm. “How nervous you get around him every time you see him picking up heavy things. I was thinking he could pick you up with one arm, how cute the noises you’d make would be…”
Simmons does make a cute noise at that. “You can’t—just use other people—as masturbation fantasy material—”
“Simmons, I masturbate while thinking about you even now that we’re together,” says Grif. Simmons moans again. “And what Locus doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
And this is when Locus realizes how well and truly fucked he is. Grif and Simmons are really going to do this, and they can't even fuck like normal people. They have to fuck while talking about Locus specifically, while Locus is in the room. And there’s no escape, and they’re going to say all sorts of awful things that Locus should never hear, and Locus will just have to sit here and bear it and listen to Grif jack Simmons off to the thought of Locus himself and then he’ll have to look Grif in the eyes tomorrow and act like nothing happened and honestly, truly, maybe Locus should have just died on Chorus, because that would be so much better than this—
“So I’m right,” says Grif smugly. “You do wanna climb him like a tree while I watch. You like the idea.”
“Just—keep talking,” says Simmons, through gritted teeth.
“Only if you keep making those noises. Door’s closed. Nobody can hear you except me.” And then in a whisper: “I bet Locus is hung as hell, too.”
Locus is going to scream. Except he can’t because then they’ll know he’s here and that he heard them fantasizing about a threesome with him and then they’ll have to deal with that and also Locus doesn’t want to be here anyway and it’s not his fault this was all just a mistake but he can’t take it back now and he can’t escape and FUCK. FUCK.
From where Locus is hiding, he sees the tips of Simmons’s cyborg fingers curl, clinging desperately, trying to hold on.
Grif goes on: “He’s like, two inches taller than even you in height, there’s no way his cock’s not huge. Wouldn’t that be nice—a proper, long, thick cock in your throat?”
Simmons whines. “But I like yours,” he pants.
There’s a lot of wet kissing noises in response to this, probably because Grif is the sort of person to nervously mark every relationship anniversary on his datapad and takes every compliment directly to heart, while Locus stares into his own invisible lap and counts every point where he went wrong in life to lead to his demise by listening to Grif and Simmons fucking.
“Maybe I’ll be putting my dick to better use,” Grif murmurs. “I was thinking that I wanted to jack off while watching you suck another man’s cock for me…”
Can Locus blame Felix for this? Is he allowed? Felix is dead, so who’s really going to stop him from saying that it’s all because Felix wouldn’t let him accept Mason and Megan’s proposition for a threesome, and something went wrong and then Locus committed genocide, and that’s why he has to listen to Grif talk about his boyfriend sucking Locus’s dick in excruciating detail—
“...but,” says Grif, “do you think you could suck his dick while I fucked you from behind?”
There’s the sound of Simmons is squirming against the sheets, and Locus has the vivid image of Simmons, shirt shoved up to his chest, trying to buck his hips into Grif’s hand as Grif pins him down. Simmons groans. “I don’t know, it’s not like… not like I’ve ever tried, I…”
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Grif says. Simmons appears to forget the rest of his sentence. “We can start slow,” Grif promises. “Bet he’d understand, too. He seems scary, but he’s nice like that.”
I am? Locus thinks, wondering who Grif thinks Locus is, and if Grif has forgotten that Locus attempted to murder a whole planet, and also what Grif’s doing with his hand to make those noises come out of Simmons’s mouth.
“He’d let you take your time getting used to the size of it in your mouth, let you have a few passes—think he’d be standing with you on your knees? Or lying in bed, so you can lean over him and really get it all down?”
“Oh my god,” Simmons pants.
Oh my god, Locus thinks.
“Lying down,” Grif decides. “But then he’ll get his hands in your hair, push down , until you’re more than halfway—bet his hand’s big enough to cover the entire back of your head—all the way down until you can’t breathe, until you’ve got him to the root—”
The cyborg hand on the footboard digs hard into the wood. Locus immediately buries his helmet’s visual cams into his gloves and closes his eyes and tries to unsee this. The black space of his closed eyelids is suddenly filled with the high flush on Simmons’s pale cheeks when he’s flustered and the filthy, shit-eating grin Grif gives him in secret.
“And have you heard that voice?” Grif says. “Bet it rumbles all the way down his chest. You’d feel it in your throat when he warns you against using teeth—when you suck him down all the way to the back of your throat for the first time and he catches his breath—when you’ve got your tongue along the bottom and your nose in his pubes and he’s gasping for air, saying your name…”
Grif’s voice is soft, now. Close, too. There’s a footboard and the armor and the active camo between them, but in terms of distance, there’s only a couple feet between Locus and Grif pouring dirty talk straight into Simmons’s head. The low volume is even worse, because it practically feels like Grif is talking to Locus, right up against his ear, and Locus keeps thinking about the way Simmons’s throat works when he’s swallowing water after a workout, Grif’s stubble scratching under his palms, the fine bones of Simmons’s hand when he shyly holds Grif’s hand in public, Grif’s hand on Locus’s back when Locus had first come to stay with them...
“Bet you’d be so good at sucking cock that he’ll loses focus, stops holding on to your hair,” Grif whispers. “You’re still my boyfriend and he’d be too polite to hold you down, but I think I’d love to get my hand on the back of your head instead, hold your hair out of your eyes while you work his cock down your throat. I’ll push hard on the back of your head. I know how much you can take. I know you like to choke, sometimes. I want him to run his hands along your cheekbones and feel the length of his dick inside your throat, watch you break him with your tongue on his balls, hold his hips down and swallow it all when he starts to come—”
Simmons gasps and moans so loudly that Locus is certain someone must hear, the sticky rhythm of flesh, the cyborg hand shakes. Locus's own hand is pressed firmly against his thigh, thinking about anything but what's happening between his legs. Then the cyborg hand eases off and away out of sight, and Simmons sighs contentedly.
Locus doesn’t know if he can breathe. He can barely hear the sound of kissing over the sound of the static in his head.
But at least they’re done—it’s over—soon, he’ll be free—
“Your turn,” Simmons says when they break apart. “I swear, I’m going to give you the best blowjob of your life.”
What. No. No, wait, they’re going for a second round? Or is it still the first? Simmons came but not Grif so they’re going to go again—
“Are you going to drag this out for a million years again?” Grif asks.
No, no, no—
“You love it when I do,” says Simmons.
“Hell fucking yes,” says Grif, over the sound of bodies reshuffling.
Locus gazes longingly at the door, teeth clenched over his bottom lip, as Simmons gets to work. Grif, not two feet from Locus’s hiding place, begins to moan.
Two hours later, Caboose finds Locus pulling his entire head out of a bucket full of cold water, long hair soaking wet and dripping like a thick curtain over his face. Caboose begins, “Oh, Locus, h—”
Locus picks up the bucket and dumps it over his entire body, plastering his shirt to his freezing skin and only somewhat wilting his boner through his cargo pants.
“...How did the present search go?” Caboose says, unaware and undeterred.
“EVERYTHING IS FINE,” Locus growls, and stomps away to find an even colder shower.