Chapter Text
Gavin knew something was very wrong the minute he stepped out of his room on Saturday morning to find everyone sitting in his living room. Geoff on the couch in front of the TV, his arms crossed a little too tightly for this to be something mundane - although when was something like this ever mundane? - Griffon leaning on the back of the couch with one hand on Geoff’s shoulder, massaging it, and Michael, who was looking kinda grouchy from the armchair. Gavin didn’t blame him; his own headache was killing him, and it was damn early in the morning, and nobody liked these types of gatherings. Whatever kind of gathering it was.
“Well,” he said, cheerfully despite his pounding brain, and everyone turned in a creepy tandem. He flushed. “I’m bloody smashed, you guys, I could really use some tea. So if you don’t mind I’ll just.” He inched towards the kitchen.
But Griffon was on him in a second, dammit, her hand wrapped around his wrist. “Lucky you, we thought ahead. Tea’s still warm, on the coffee table. I made it how you like it.”
Gavin swallowed. “Right. Er.” He glanced at Michael and Geoff, and got indecipherable expressions back. Fantastic.
“Sit,” Griffon instructed, swinging around the couch to perch on the arm of it.
Gavin sat.
“Stop looking like you’re in trouble,” Geoff said, leaning forward to retrieve Gavin’s tea. “You’re not in trouble, okay? We just wanted to talk.”
“Brilliant,” Gavin mumbled, desolate, into his cup of tea. “Can it wait? Have I mentioned I’m hungover?”
“Yeah, yeah, aren’t we all.” Geoff waved him off, looking to Michael, who still looked half-asleep. “Michael? You wanna do the honors?”
“Sure,” Michael said, straightening a little. “I got myself into this, anyway.” He turned in his chair, eyes refocusing on Gavin’s face, and to Gavin’s horror, he grinned like a movie villain about to reveal his final scheme.
“Michael,” Gavin said, slightly terrified. What was that bloody smirk for.
“Yesterday we talked,” Michael said, still with that unnerving grin. “Remember any of it?”
“I--ah--faintly--”
“Then you remember that you talked to me about your thing for being owned,” Michael continued, and Gavin shrunk in his seat, fiercely resisting a blush. That’d be the death of him for certain.
“I was sloshed,” he retorted. “Utterly mazzed off my nob. You can’t prove anything--”
“Mazzed?” Geoff interrupted. “We need to add that to the dictionary, huh?”
Gavin glared at his tea. “My point is, doesn’t matter what I said! I was drunk! Talking out my arse!”
“Talking out your ass, sure,” Michael said, that awful grin sneaking across his face again. “Weird how it got so specific, though. Did you know that apparently your ass wants to get collared? And then gangbanged by everyone in this room? And whored out and locked up at bedtime? ‘Cause, you know, that’s awfully advanced for an ass, talking or not. You might wanna get that checked out by a professional.”
Gavin’s face had gone scarlet. “I’m not--I didn’t--”
“Sweetie,” Griffon said, leaning over to steady his shaking wrists before he slopped tea on his legs. “It’s okay. We’re here to figure out how to get you that, okay?”
Gavin hunched over a little bit. “But the--you can’t possibly think this is okay, I’m gonna get fired--”
“You’re not getting fired, moron,” Geoff said, bumping into his legs; Gavin yelped and barely saved his tea. “Michael’s cool with giving you whatever you want, because of his gross boyfriend feelings for you, and we want to help because, hey, you’re our moron, so.” He shrugged, looking all nonchalant, but Gavin could feel warmth seeping up his spine, and not just because he’d had a sip of tea.
“Thanks,” he mumbled finally, still not un-hunching. “I--don’t really know what to say.”
“That’s fine,” Michael said, spreading his arms. “We practiced for you. C’mere, my lap’s cold. Don’t spill your fucking tea on me, though, or I swear I’ll revolt.”
Gavin still had to be crimson. “Right. Yeah.” He might’ve sloshed a little tea on his hand, but it wasn’t too hot, and when he settled in Michael’s lap and hands curled around his waist, suddenly his headache was worth it.
Michael pressed a kiss to the back of his neck, making him shiver, and mumbled into his skin, “If it makes you happy to do this stuff, I’m good with it. You get off on collars and locks, okay. You want to be with other people, that’s fine, long as you remember you’re mine.” Teeth grazed the skin of Gavin’s neck, and he shuddered.
“You look like you’re halfway to coming,” Geoff remarked.
“Means I’m doing my job,” Michael countered, and Gavin squeezed his hand in thanks.
“Here’s what we’re proposing, Gav,” Griffon said, slipping down to sit next to Geoff. “The two of you are together, business as usual, but having sex with either of us--or all of us, whatever you’re up for--is okay.”
Gavin glanced at Michael, got a pat on the leg as confirmation. He turned back to Griffon, swallowing his nerves. “Okay.”
“We’d make you up a collar,” Griffon continued. “Some other things, maybe. I’ve always wanted to try building kink gear.” She half-smiled. Probably thinking about what kind of wood she could carve a cage out of.
Gavin nodded, slowly. “Is that--”
“Yeah, Gav,” Michael said, squeezing a little. “It’s fine, you’re good, this is all okay. You wanna be our little pet?”
The grip on his tea loosened a little bit, and Gavin stared down at his lap, feeling inexplicably woozy until he realized he had forgotten to breathe for a minute.
“Gav,” Griffon said, gentle, concerned.
“‘m fine,” he said, looking up. “Just--lot to take in, innit? I never thought you’d all be so nice.”
“Don’t think we’re just doing this for you,” Geoff said, rolling his eyes. “I’m just as happy to get permission to tap that as you are to get leashed up.”
Gavin didn’t think that was true, but he smiled, hands closing around his tea mug. “Should we talk business, then?”
“Let’s write this down,” Griffon said, mirroring his giddy smile, and Geoff reached for the drawer of their coffee table to retrieve one of those notebooks they always brought back from the hotels, but she swatted his hand. “Let me. You’ve got terrible handwriting.”
She glanced up at Gavin. “First. We’re collaring you, right?”
Gavin felt a little dizzied just with the word. “If--yeah, yeah,” he said, when Michael’s hand draped over his thigh, a bit of reassurance, a bit of a reminder, a bit of an affectionate threat. Speak up for yourself, you dumb idiot, Gavin could almost hear him saying.
“Okay,” she said, and scribbled something down. “So. The collar’s an invitation. We aren’t going to expect you to have it on all the time, because consent is more important than seeing you all prettied up in leather, but I don’t think it’s an invitation for sex, either, necessarily.” She considered this, glancing over at her husband.
“Invitation for us to do whatever we want with you,” he offered, and she nodded.
“Does that sound all right?”
Gavin stared, and Michael squeezed his thigh, and he bit back a little yelp of surprise. “Yeah. Yeah. That sounds--top. Really top.”
“I think to seal the deal there should be keys,” Michael said, from out of nowhere. “That’s like. If you own a car, you have its keys, right? Own a house, keys. Own a boat, keys, I guess, if it’s one that you turn on. Own a storage unit, keys.” Gavin felt him shrug. “You know. Seems logical.”
“Gavin?” It was Geoff this time, asking.
He nodded, swallowing. “Yeah.”
“Hey,” Michael said, squeezing his thigh once more, gentle. “It’s okay. We’re all friends and, I guess, fuckbuddies here, all right? Give us something meatier than just yeah.”
“Uh,” he said, leaning back into Michael’s warmth. “I dunno what to say, even. That it makes my spine go all tingly?”
Michael chuckled. “So it’s good.”
“Yes,” Gavin said, with conviction. What else was he supposed to say? He couldn’t go into detail about the ways all of this snuck into his brain and crept around in his skull gleefully prodding all the bits that made his head go all fuzzy and his spine all warm. And they already knew he liked it, were already making enough of a sacrifice just sitting here doing all of this for him; they should be picking things that they wanted, not the other way around. Gavin was already happy. They ought to make it more tolerable for themselves.
“Gavin?” Geoff asked, in a voice like he’d already asked once. “You still with us, bud?”
“Yeah,” Gavin said, shaking his head a little, like it’d clear the fogginess. “What’d you ask?”
“I can make us all one key,” Griffon said. She was doodling something up in the corner of the page, a design maybe. “And one for you, of course. I don’t expect you to carry it around too blatantly, or even necessarily carry it around at all, but if you need a break, all you have to do is get your key and unlock it. No stress to ask us, no outside involvement necessary. Just you doing what makes you comfortable. Sound good, sweetheart?”
Gavin nodded again. “I...uh. Yeah.”
Michael patted his side. “Chill, boy. Your heart is going a mile a minute.”
“Can’t help it! This tea isn’t decaf and you surprised me and I’m excited,” Gavin said, all in a rush, leaning into his side. “I wanna do it.”
“You said you wanted to be whored out, too,” Michael said, tapping his nose with fondness. “Tell us about that.”
Gavin stared at him. “Uh, um.”
“Take your time,” Geoff said, in that dry voice of his that meant he was getting impatient, but when Gavin looked up he was faintly smiling.
“You guys…” he said at last. “You guys should be my proper owners, right, but. You can use me for whatever you like? So you can use me if you’re feeling, whatsit, voyeuristic. And it’d be fun. Knowing I’m yours and they’re just getting to. Borrow me.” His cheeks were so hot he thought they might actually be on fire.
Geoff was grinning like an idiot. “That’s fucking adorable.”
“‘s not--”
“It’s adorable,” Griffon informed him, and Michael hugged him around the waist, like he was agreeing. Traitorous, absolutely traitorous. Gavin was an adult. Adults and adorable weren’t supposed to mix, he was pretty sure.
“So we get to whore you out,” Michael said, chin set on his shoulder. “Cute. What do we get to do, reserve the right to give you to whoever we want to?”
“With consent,” Griffon added.
Gavin nodded again. “Yeah. Yes. I want you to decide who’s allowed to use me.”
“Does this include getting you to do video edits?” Geoff was stroking his beard - so absently that Gavin wasn’t even sure he was conscious of it - like this was a real thing he was considering. “I mean, can I just cop off my editing shit on you? We have a GTA thing that I really don’t wanna--”
Griffon elbowed him right in the ribs. “Geoff, we’re going for sexy. Work isn’t sexy. Keep work out of it. There’s another rule, no interruptions during serious work stuff, even if his collar is on. And absolutely no teasing during videos. The entire Internet doesn’t need to know about this.”
In his own head Gavin added the word yet to that sentence.
“Actually,” Michael said, in such a voice that Gavin just knew he’d have that devilish grin on, if he turned around, “work might be sexy. How about keyholders get to decide what you mean by ‘serious’? Like, if he’s just waiting for something to upload, could I steal him away? In theory. I mean, take him to the janitor closet, or something.”
Geoff snorted. “Still not sexy.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Gavin said, trying to hold back his enthusiasm. “I like--well, someone could find us, during, right? The threat of that is nice. I dunno if I would call it a threat but it’s nice. Anybody who found me would just know for sure whose I was.”
“They already know you’re mine, though,” Michael said. His hands were dangerously active on Gavin’s thighs.
Gavin sighed at him. “Yeah, but they haven’t seen the collar yet, have they? And what if it’s Geoff who took me to a janitor closet?”
“Do we even have janitor closets?”
Gavin scowled at Geoff. “Well, speaking hypothetically, right! If we did, and you fucked me in one, and somebody found us, I’d come right there!”
There was a noise like a mouse’s squeak, and then it happened again, and then Gavin looked over to Griffon accusingly as she burst into uncontrollable giggles. “Not funny,” he said stubbornly. “It’s hot, all right, don’t laugh at me.”
“I’m not laughing at you, sweetie,” she said, half-recovered, still chuckling a little. “I’m just, fuck, you’re adorable. And I’m--we’re so glad we get to have you like this.”
“I’m not adorable! Babies are adorable. I am a grown man,” Gavin said, barely even indignant.
"An adorable grown man," Griffon said, still grinning. "Can a grown man choose a safeword?"
"A what-who?"
"Safeword," she repeated, revealing nothing. "If you want to stop, you have to say something that will let us know it's time to quit."
Gavin blinked. "Why would I want to quit?"
"If we're going too hard on you," Michael said, chin resting on his shoulder. "Or if you get overwhelmed, all that."
"Why can't I just say stop?"
"Because you might say that in a normal scene," Griffon said, with an eerie confidence that made Gavin wonder, with some trepidation, how far she and Geoff had gone in the bedroom, before. "It's fine, just choose a word you wouldn't normally say during sex."
Gavin considered this. "Uh," he said at last. "That's--that's not my safeword, I just don't know what to say."
“You could just use green-yellow-red,” Geoff said. “Y’know. Like stoplights.” Gavin looked up at him with wide eyes and decided to just not ask. He’d probably end up finding out, anyway, now that he was--shacking up with them. Was that something he could safely call it?
“Gav,” Michael said, knocking on his shoulder like it was a door. “Still there, numb-nuts?”
“Wha, yeah, yeah,” Gavin said, blinking fast. “What if. How about I just yell fish really loudly? Wouldn’t say that during a shag, would I?”
Michael stood up very suddenly, and Gavin slid onto the floor with a quiet yelp. “Mi-chael!”
“This kid,” Michael said, pointing down at him from above, “is a fucking dork extraordinaire, and I will not stand for it. Seriously. Does anybody else want me to, like, toast a Pop-Tart?”
Geoff raised his hand.
“I was serious,” Gavin protested from the ground.
“A Pop-Tart and a screwdriver,” Michael amended, and ducked out for a moment.
Gavin pouted, leaning back, up against the chair. “Fine, killjoys! Green-yellow-red, then. What else do I need?”
Griffon stood, presenting her hand. “A collar and some keys. Come on, sweetie, we’ll let the boys drink themselves out of a hangover and you and me can have some fun.”
Gavin could’ve sworn she winked.
They ended up in her workshop, Gavin’s knees tucked into his chest as he sat up against the wall, curiously watching her arrange her tools on the workbench. Some of them looked like they could lop off a head. Griffon had to be some...goddess of war and tattoos, really, Gavin was sure of it. “Can I help?”
She glanced up, smiling down at him. Benevolent goddess, then, that was a relief. “Yeah, sweetheart, of course. Come on up, sit on the table, I promise I won’t bevel your nose even if it could use it.”
Gavin gave her a glare - entirely fake - and hopped on up, swinging his legs. “I have to ask,” he said, more shyly than he would’ve liked, “did you have that leather on hand already? Or did you buy it special?”
“Special, of course,” Griffon said, businesslike, as if this were something she did on the daily. “Why would I make you something that wasn’t special, boy? Head down.”
Gavin stared at her, bewildered, and she just rolled her eyes and put a hand on the back of his skull and pushed down. He went along with it, automatically, and when it was her hand on the back of his neck brushing up against the little hairs on his neck and him staring at his crotch in confused disbelief, it was like a dream. Better than a dream, actually, because he’d dreamt something similar to this before, but this was actually happening.
“Tell me when it’s too tight,” Griffon said, gentle, from somewhere outside Gavin’s immediate space, and then the warmness of her body moved in closer until her stomach was pressed up against Gavin’s knees, her hands brushing over the back of his neck and making his spine go bloody nuts.
Cool leather wrapped around his neck, and tugged, slowly, and he was thankful for that, taking deep breaths and swallowing to test it. “‘s still good.”
“You want it tight?” Ever-so-casual. Like she wasn’t discussing a bloody sex accessory.
Gavin swallowed, glad that he was staring down so she couldn’t see the flush of his cheeks. “Yeah. Yes. Please.”
“Good boy with those manners,” she said, in a low voice, and he thought he might’ve tipped over a bit, but she kept him steady, drawing the leather a little tighter until he couldn’t swallow without feeling it pull at his Adam’s apple, could feel it touching every bit of skin on his neck.
The lining was soft, like a really expensive scarf, and he sighed. “Griffon.”
“Yeah, hon?”
“Right here.”
She hummed her approval, and the leather was gone in another moment. “All right, thanks, Gav. You want to look up now?”
“Yeah,” he said, feeling like a damn puppy, and looked up at her with a grin. “I’m good, right?”
“So good,” she said, returning the grin, and squeezed his leg. “You like the lining, don’t you? I picked that out special, too.”
“Feels really nice,” he said, watching her pick up a rather imposing knife. It was the first chance he’d gotten to actually look at what she’d picked out: a reddish-brown material that looked soft on the outside, even, with darker forest-green lining on the inside. He wanted to touch it all over, supposed he’d get there soon enough, and didn’t want to hazard the large knife, either, so he let her at it without interruption. “What’s gonna go on it?”
“Haven’t decided yet. Studs don’t really seem to be your thing,” she said, shrugging. “We’ll see how it goes. Can you pass me the awl?”
“An--”
“The pokey thing.”
“Right, yeah, yeah.” He handed her the pokey thing. “What about the keys? You’re no locksmith, I mean. You’re just about everything under the sun but maybe not a locksmith.”
She smiled. “I’ve got friends in every place under the sun, at least. Top drawer in my desk, if you’re interested.”
Gavin hopped down off the table without further encouragement - not as if he needed much - and opened it to find four perfectly-formed golden keys and one little padlock. He picked it up, rolling it around between his fingers, and picked up a key, too, a little smaller than the size of his house keys, and glanced back.
Griffon was holding something squarish and a little terrifying, and he must’ve looked bewildered because she explained, “Skiving tool. You like them?”
“Am I the golden type?” he asked, holding out the key.
She grinned. “Obviously. What, are you under the impression that you’re not a precious metal? Put that back and come here, boy, you can fiddle with ‘em later.”
“Mm,” Gavin said, ducking his head, settled down on the table to watch her scrape away the edges of the leather. “How did this happen?”
“You’re askin’ me,” Griffon said under her breath, and shrugged. “Michael brought you home mostly-asleep, told the two of us you’d been talking about kink all night and it was out of his league. Obviously we’re adults, it’s not going to kill us to share you.”
“I thought you were gonna be angry,” Gavin said, kicking his legs a little bit, until her hand shot out and stilled his thighs.
“Only angry if you kick over the dollhouse I’m working on underneath the table,” she said, voice measured, and he stopped, flushing. “Why would we be angry at you for wanting something?”
“Well, it’s inconvenient, yeah?”
She glanced up from her work then, half-smiling. “It’s inconvenient.”
“Yeah! I’m--you were all established in things, before I showed up. ‘s weird. And unprofessional, probably, given Geoff’s my boss--”
“And Michael’s your coworker, and I’m your boss’s wife, boo-hoo. We’re all still adults. Nobody minds.” She flicked his nose and he gasped, indignant, hand coming up to protect it. “Trust me. Minding is the last thing on our minds.”
“Okay,” he said, still a little uncertain, but she didn’t seem to notice, just went back to scraping down the leather.
Griffon was cutting a space for the buckle when he started getting antsy again, wriggling on the table, and then she set down the knife and stared up at him, a wry grin on her face. “You’re a fucking child, you know that?”
“Hm?” he said, stilling almost immediately, guiltily.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s cute,” she said, stepping a little closer, “but Christ, I can’t get any work done around you. Like I’ve got to be paying attention to you.”
“You don--”
A kiss, warm and sweet and very Griffon, and he melted under it, back arching as he made room for the pressure and weight of her body pushing down on his, until his shoulders made contact with the table and he had nowhere to run.
And then the weight was off of him again and he gasped for breath, wanting it back, and Griffon’s face loomed over his, looking stern. “Tell me your safewords.”
“Green for go,” he said, licking his lips. “Yellow for slow. Red for get off’m me.”
“Good boy,” she whispered, and pulled herself up on top of him, and he lay there sprawled out on a workshop table underneath a woman who kissed like sugar melted into tea. The collar, he thought, a little dizzily, could wait, because her hands were on his shoulders like they’d twist him round if he started facing the wrong way and he didn’t think he needed much more to show ownership than that.