Chapter 19: A Vulnerable Request
The second night of Josh’s absence—the day after Patrick secretly pleasured Willum in the shop—Malcolm felt weary and worn out. The house felt different without Josh’s booming laugh, the quiet stretching thin and brittle. The memory of yesterday’s charged silence in the workshop hung in the air like sawdust, a faint, unsettling haze. Patrick had been preternaturally quiet all evening, and Tyler had seemed distracted, his sketches more frantic than usual. Managing them, on top of a brutal day of remote client meetings, scheduling nightmares for three different freelancers, and a mountain of paperwork, had drained Malcolm completely. His brain fizzed with static, a burnt-out circuit board. His shoulders ached with a hollowness no amount of stretching could fix.
He was ready to collapse.
Pat and Ty had long since retreated to their own bedrooms, doors shut. Willum’s room was empty, the bed neatly made. A solitary desk lamp glowed from the workshop downstairs, a lighthouse in the quiet, dark house.
Malcolm made the long journey down, each step on the staircase railing a monumental effort. He pushed open the workshop door. Willum was at the drafting table, bent over a sprawling blueprint, a pencil behind his ear. The air smelled of graphite and old wood. The lathe was silent, a dormant beast in the corner.
Malcolm didn’t call out. The thought of raising his voice, of forming words, was exhausting. He navigated the familiar terrain of floorboards and tool shadows until he reached the sturdy leg of Willum’s stool. He looked up. The climb up the denim to his friend’s lap seemed like scaling a cliff. Instead, he simply reached out, his fingers barely having the strength to curl, and tugged weakly at the thick ribbed cotton of Willum’s sock.
The touch was faint, a ghost of a pull.
But Willum felt it. He went still, then looked down. His face, shadowed and focused a second before, softened into an expression of pure, unguarded concern and love. The lines of concentration melted away, replaced by a warmth that seemed to physically brighten the dim space around him.
“Oh, Mal.”
His voice was a low rumble, a sound Malcolm felt in his bones. Willum’s large hand descended, blotting out the light, but it was a gentle eclipse. His fingers were impossibly careful as they slid beneath Malcolm, gingerly scooping him into the vast, callused plain of his palm. The world lifted, and Malcolm slumped into the warmth, too tired to even sit up.
Willum brought him to eye-level. His warm brown eyes were huge, deep pools of worry. “You work too hard, my dear.”
The words vibrated through Willum’s hand, a soothing hum that seeped into Malcolm’s fatigue. He shifted his hand, bringing Malcolm closer. His lips, soft and full, brushed against Malcolm’s entire front in a kiss that was more breath than pressure, a benediction. It was a kiss that said I see you. I see your exhaustion. The scent of him—soap, cedar, a hint of coffee—was a balm.
“C’mon, little one,” Willum murmured, his voice a private thing just for the two of them in the late-night quiet. “Let’s get you comfortable.”
He didn’t go to the bedrooms. He carried Malcolm to the old, beaten leather couch against the workshop wall, a piece he’d built years ago that had permanently sagged into the shape of his body. He lowered himself onto it with a quiet groan, leaning back against the cushions. With his free hand, he unbuttoned the top two buttons of his flannel shirt.
Then, instead of setting Malcolm on his chest, he opened his hand like an offering. An invitation.
Malcolm didn’t need prompting. He crawled from the palm, over the back of Willum’s thumb, and slipped inside the open shirt. The world became soft, dark cotton and overwhelming heat. He pushed the inner t-shirt aside, pressing his entire body against the warm, living skin of Willum’s sternum. He felt the coarse hair, the steady, powerful thump of Willum’s heart against his ear. He wrapped his arms as far as they would go, his tail looping around a rib for an anchor. A deep, shuddering sigh escaped him, one that seemed to pull the last of the day’s tension from his marrow.
Above him, Willum’s hand came to rest over the fabric, right where Malcolm was curled. He didn’t pat or stroke. He simply held, a massive, warm weight of security. His other hand came up to rest on his own stomach, creating a total, gentle enclosure.
“Rough day with the heathens?” Willum asked softly, a smile in his voice.
Malcolm nuzzled deeper, his words muffled by skin. “The Harper account changed their specs three times. Three. Tyler’s client is refusing the color palette he spent a week on. Patrick’s been… quiet. And Josh isn’t here to distract anyone.” He didn’t mention the strange, charged air from yesterday. He didn’t have to. He felt Willum’s heartbeat skip, just once.
“I know,” Willum said, his voice a low hum Malcolm felt more than heard. “Miss him too. But you shouldn’t carry it all, Mal. That’s my job.”
“It’s my job to help you,” Malcolm countered weakly, his eyes already closing. The heat was leaching the stiffness from his muscles.
“You do. Just by being here.” Willum’s thumb began to move then, a slow, rhythmic sweep over the fabric covering Malcolm’s back. It was a mindless, gentle motion. Then he started to hum. It wasn’t a song, just a low, tuneless melody from his chest, a vibration that traveled through his skin and into Malcolm’s core.
The combination was devastating. The warmth. The solid, safe enclosure. The sound. The loving, unburdened touch. Malcolm’s shaking, which he hadn’t even noticed until it stopped, stilled completely. His tail, which had been coiled tight with stress, slowly loosened, becoming a languid curve against Willum’s side.
The paperwork, the emails, the schedules, the silent worries about being a burden, the unspoken tension humming between his friends—it all blurred, then dissolved. Sandcastles washed away by the tide of Willum’s steadfast presence. Here, under his hand, against his heart, there was no management, no negotiation, no fear. There was only this: absolute, unquestioned safety.
Malcolm’s breath evened out, syncing with the rise and fall of the great chest beneath him. The humming faded into the background, becoming part of the rhythm of the night. He fell asleep not to silence, but to the sound of Willum’s heartbeat—a slow, mighty drum saying, again and again, home, home, home.
Willum lay perfectly still, listening to Malcolm’s breaths become soft, shallow puffs against his skin. He seemed to shrink, all the intellectual ferocity and managerial tension melting away until he was just a warm, trusting weight over his heart. The trust was a physical thing, as tangible as the linen under Willum’s fingers.
He continued stroking Malcolm’s back through the fabric, his thumb moving in long, soothing arcs. He watched the dust motes settle in the moonlight, the workshop around them holding its breath. His own eyes closed, though he didn’t feel particularly tired. His mind was a swirl of the day’s quiet sounds—Patrick’s uncharacteristic silence, the hollow space where Josh’s energy should be, the profound relief in Malcolm’s sigh.
With his free hand, he carefully found the open buttons of his flannel shirt. One by one, he re-buttoned them, sealing the cuff of fabric shut against the creeping chill of the night air, ensuring no draft could reach the tiny friend sleeping on his chest. It was a simple, deliberate act of preservation.
He kept his hand there, a living blanket. He couldn’t shake the image from yesterday—Patrick’s desperate, hidden embrace, the silent conversation of tension and release. It had cracked something open in him. Now, with Malcolm so vulnerably asleep, the fear he usually kept in a locked box rattled loudly. This profound peace, this absolute responsibility… what if it was borrowed?
What if his need for them was a cage, not a home?
A floorboard creaked upstairs. A soft footfall. Willum’s eyes snapped open, his body tensing protectively. Malcolm mumbled something incoherent, his tail twitching.
“S’okay,” Willum whispered, his hand firming over him. “Just the house.”
The footsteps moved toward the bathroom. Tyler, probably, getting a glass of water. Willum forced himself to relax back into the leather, but the serene moment was fractured. The warmth under his hand felt more fragile now. Precious, and therefore terrifying. He stayed like that for over an hour, guarding Malcolm’s sleep, staring at the shadows on the ceiling.
The first grey hint of dawn was bleaching the window when Malcolm finally stirred. He shifted, a slow, stretching curl of limbs, and let out a jaw-cracking yawn Willum felt more than heard.
“Feel the brain cells regenerating,” Malcolm mumbled, his voice rough with sleep. He pushed himself up, his tiny hands pressing into Willum’s sternum as he peered out from the newly-opened collar Willum had just unbuttoned for him.
“Good.” Willum’s voice was gravelly from disuse. “You had a pretty serious deficit going.”
“Ha.” Malcolm climbed out onto the plane of Willum’s chest, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. The green of them was vivid even in the low light. He looked restored, the hollows under his eyes softened. He glanced around the quiet workshop, then back at Willum’s face. “You stayed here all night?”
“Didn’t want to move you.”
Malcolm’s expression did something complicated—gratitude warring with that ever-present, managerial guilt. “Will… you didn’t have to.”
“I know.” Willum smiled, a tired, genuine thing. “I wanted to.”
The simplicity of the statement hung between them. Malcolm looked down, his fingers tracing the weave of Willum’s t-shirt. The silence was comfortable, but charged with everything unsaid from the past two days.
Upstairs, a door opened and closed. Heavier footsteps this time, followed by the distinct, cheerful whistle of someone pretending to be in a good mood. Patrick.
Malcolm’s head tilted. “He’s up early.”
“Yeah.”
Patrick’s whistle grew closer, then stopped at the workshop doorway. He leaned against the frame, already dressed, his red hair damp from a shower. He looked at the two of them on the couch—Willum reclined, Malcolm sitting on his chest—and a flicker of something passed over his face. It wasn’t jealousy. It was recognition, and a shared, quiet anxiety.
“Camping out?” Patrick asked, his tone carefully light.
“Mal had a system crash,” Willum said, sitting up slowly, one hand coming up to cradle Malcolm as he rose. “Needed a reboot.”
“Don’t we all,” Patrick said, his gaze flicking to Willum’s for a half-second too long. The memory of the lathe’s hum, the secret dark, pulsed in the space between them.
Malcolm, ever the observer, noticed the exchange. He looked from Patrick’s carefully neutral face to the slight tension in Willum’s jaw. He decided, for once, not to manage it. He simply climbed up to his familiar perch on Willum’s shoulder, settling into the crook of his neck.
“I need coffee,” Malcolm declared. “And to fire the Harper client. Figuratively. Unless you have a tiny flamethrower in here?”
Willum barked a laugh, the sound loosening the tightness in his chest. “I’ll check the tool drawer.” He stood, a giant unfurling from the couch, and Patrick stepped fully into the room.
“I’ll help,” Patrick said, his voice softer now. He walked to the small kitchen nook, not waiting for an answer. Willum followed, the three of them moving into the new day with the ghosts of the night clinging to them—the ghost of Malcolm’s exhaustion, the ghost of Patrick’s restless hands, the ghost of Willum’s fear, all held temporarily at bay by the ritual of coffee and casual, clinging proximity.
Willum followed, the three of them moving into the new day with the ghosts of the night clinging to them—the ghost of Malcolm’s exhaustion, the ghost of Patrick’s restless hands, the ghost of Willum’s fear, all held temporarily at bay by the ritual of coffee and casual, clinging proximity.
The coffee was bitter and strong. Malcolm stayed on Willum’s shoulder, sipping from a thimblecap Willum held steady for him. Patrick leaned against the sugar canister, his tail flicking. The silence wasn’t awkward, but it was full. It was Patrick who broke it, his eyes on his own tiny mug. “About yesterday. In the shop.” He didn’t look up. “I shouldn’t have… ambushed you like that.”
Willum’s hand, holding the thimble, went perfectly still. “You didn’t ambush me.”
“I took advantage.” Patrick’s voice was flat. “You were working. I was in my head. It wasn’t fair.”
Malcolm watched, sipping slowly, saying nothing. Willum set the thimble down. He reached out, a single massive finger, and placed it gently against Patrick’s chest, not pushing, just resting. The warmth was a brand. “Hey. Look at me.” Patrick’s dark green eyes lifted, wary. “It’s us,” Willum said, his voice low and rough. “There’s no fair. There’s just… us. Okay?”
Patrick held his gaze for a long moment, then gave a tight, jerky nod. He didn’t look convinced, but the rigid set of his shoulders eased a fraction. “Okay.”
The morning unspooled with a fragile normalcy. Willum retreated to the drafting table, the sprawling blueprint for a Pipkin-sized library ladder needing final adjustments. Malcolm, true to his reclaimed managerial spirit, had a tablet and a stack of digital invoices perched on a nearby stack of art books. Patrick claimed the other side of the table, his editor’s eye scanning a manuscript on his screen, but his focus seemed to drift every few minutes back to Willum.
Malcolm clung quietly to Willum throughout the day. The profound peace from the couch had mellowed into a steady, grounding need for contact. He worked from the slope of Willum’s shoulder, then from the pocket of his flannel shirt. The low-grade anxiety from Patrick’s confession, the underlying fear he saw in Willum’s eyes, it all made him want to be closer, to anchor them both.
At one point, he tugged at Willum’s collar. “Inside?” he asked softly. Willum, his pencil hovering over a measurement, just nodded. Malcolm slipped under the snug-fitting shirt, finding his familiar territory against the warm skin of Willum’s left pectoral. He settled there, his back against the firm muscle, feeling the deep, rhythmic breaths.
A minute later, he felt a shift in the fabric, a new weight. Patrick slid in from the other side, under the same shirt, without a word. Their eyes met in the dim, cloth-filtered light. No mischief lit Patrick’s face now, just a mirrored, quiet hunger for connection. An understanding passed between them, silent and complete.
They both curled around their own nipple, Malcolm on the left, Patrick on the right. Their tiny hands, so adept at detail work, began to stroke the sensitive peaks with a hypnotic, feather-light rhythm. It was not the desperate claim of the previous day. This was quieter. A synchronized statement, a wordless reassurance written on his skin.
Willum’s pencil skidded, drawing a jagged line across the blueprint.
A sharp, full-body shiver racked him from the base of his spine to the nape of his neck. He froze, his breath catching. The sensation was utterly unexpected, a direct line of pure, electric pleasure that short-circuited his focus. It wasn’t localized. It was a wave, diffuse and overwhelming, emanating from the two points of intimate contact and flooding his nervous system.
He tried to breathe. The strokes continued, unrelenting in their gentleness.
Another shiver, warmer this time, a deep tremor that made the muscles in his abdomen clench. A soft, helpless sound escaped his lips. The blueprint blurred. His hips pushed minutely against the stool, seeking pressure, friction, anything to ground the sensations ricocheting through him. His face flushed hot. He was painfully, obviously hard, the denim of his jeans suddenly constricting.
“Guys…” he managed, his voice a strained whisper.
They didn’t stop. If anything, their rhythms became more deliberate, a slow, maddening torture. Patrick’s tail came up, the very tip adding a barely-there, swirling counterpoint. Malcolm nuzzled closer, his breath a hot pinpoint on the wet skin.
Willum’s world narrowed to the graph paper under his hands and the twin points of devastating focus on his chest. Each light pass of their fingers sent fresh jolts through him, a constant, low-voltage current of pleasure that made his toes curl inside his boots. He was shaking. It was too much. It was not enough. He dropped his forehead onto his arms on the table, a muffled groan vibrating in his throat. This was surrender, total and absolute.
He didn’t hear the front door open.
“Okay, who died? The quiet in here is creepy,” Josh’s voice announced, bursting into the workshop. He froze, taking in the scene: Willum slumped over the drafting table, visibly trembling, his knuckles white where they gripped the table’s edge.
Josh’s playful expression vanished, replaced by sharp concern. He dropped his sketchbook. “Will? What’s wrong?” He rushed forward, his eyes missing no detail—the flushed skin at Willum’s neck, the tense line of his shoulders, the way his whole body was taut as a bowstring.
Willum jolted upright, a guilty, dazed shock in his warm brown eyes. The movement inside his shirt ceased instantly. “Josh. You’re back early.”
“A bunch of the kids got sick. What’s going on?” Josh was beside him now, hand reaching out but hesitant to touch. He looked terrified. “Are you sick? Is it Mal? Pat?”
The fabric over Willum’s chest stirred. Two small shapes moved beneath it. Malcolm’s head, then Patrick’s, peered out from the unbuttoned collar, their faces flushed, their hair mussed. They didn’t look sick. They looked devious, and satisfied, and utterly unrepentant.
Josh stared. His gaze darted from their faces to Willum’s stricken one, to the telltale tension in his body, to the abandoned, shuddering breath Willum was trying to control. Understanding dawned, slow and then all at once.
“Oh,” Josh said, the single syllable amused & calculating. “I see. You guys started the party without me.”
The tension in Willum’s shoulders didn’t ease, but it changed, vibrating with a new, sharp-edged anticipation. He couldn’t speak. His breath was sawdust in his throat.
Patrick and Malcolm exchanged a look before smiling mischievously at Josh standing on the drafting table next to Willum’s arm.
“C’mon, Josh,” Patrick said, his voice a teasing slide. “We’ve already done most of the hard work. Wanna help finish?”
The two men ducked back under Willum’s shirt, returning to play with the man’s nipples. Their hands weren’t gentle now. They were deliberate, knowing, circling and pinching the peaked flesh with a confidence that made Willum’s spine arch off the stool.
Meanwhile, Josh dropped his bag.
A wild, grateful grin split his face. He didn’t hesitate. He jumped off the table, a short, arcing leap through the air that ended with him landing right on top of Willum’s denim-clad bulge.
The impact was precise, a firm, full-bodied pressure.
Willum cried out, a deep, ragged moan torn from somewhere behind his sternum. His hips jerked up off the seat, seeking more of that weight. His hands flew to the table’s edge, knuckles bleaching white.
Josh laughed, a bright, exhilarated sound, and immediately began to wriggle. He fought with the button, then the zip, his tiny hands deft and frantic. He tunneled past coarse hair and under the waistband of Willum’s briefs, diving into the hot, dark space now thick with the scent of sweat and clean skin and pure, urgent need.
He found his target instantly, his face pressing against the slick, flushed head of Willum’s cock.
“Oh my,” Josh breathed, his voice muffled and intimate. “Someone’s already hard and wet~” He didn’t wait. He moved forward and began open-mouth kissing the leaking slit, dipping his tongue in to slurp up the pre.
The sensation was catastrophic.
It was a wet, specific, concentrated point of pleasure that exploded against the broader, electric storm Patrick and Malcolm were conducting on his chest. Willum’s world dissolved into a series of brutal, exquisite shocks. He was being taken apart from three different directions, each touch a live wire soldered to his nerves.
“Fuck,” he gasped, the word a broken thing. His head fell back, tendons standing out in his neck. He was trembling violently, a continuous quake that started in his thighs and rattled his teeth. He couldn’t think. Could only feel.
Josh was relentless, his tongue lapping and probing, his small hands gripping the thick shaft for stability as he worked. Malcolm bit down, just a subtle pressure of teeth, and Willum shouted, his hips bucking, driving himself deeper into Josh’s mouth. Patrick scraped a fingernail in a slow circle, and Willum sobbed.
“Please,” Willum begged, though he didn’t know what he was asking for. Stop. Don’t stop.More. It was a mess of need, a raw vocalization of everything he never let himself voice. The fear of them leaving, the depth of his want, the sheer impossibility of containing this much feeling inside one body.
It was too much. He was a vessel cracking under pressure.
“That’s it,” Malcolm murmured against his skin, the vibration humming straight into Willum’s ribcage. “Just let go. We’ve got you.”
Josh took him deeper, his throat working. The tight, wet heat was a finishing blow.
Willum came apart.
His climax wasn’t a wave; it was a structural collapse. A silent, seizing rigidity for one endless second before the crash. A guttural, wounded sound was punched from his lungs as he fell forward over the blueprint, his arms giving out. Pleasure, white-hot and paralyzing, ripped through him in relentless pulses, each one wracking his frame.
Josh drank him down, swallowing every salty, shuddering pulse. Patrick and Malcolm held on, their touches softening into soothing, circular palms as the tremors subsided.
For a long time, the only sounds were Willum’s harsh, gasping breaths and the soft, wet sounds from Josh. The workshop air hung thick, smelling of sex and spent cedar.
Slowly, Willum pushed himself up on trembling arms. His vision swam, then cleared. He felt hollowed out, scoured clean, and so utterly vulnerable it was terrifying. He looked down at his open jeans, at the tiny, satisfied figure of Josh wiping his mouth on the back of his hand as he crawled out.
Patrick and Malcolm emerged from his collar, their faces soft, watching him.
They all looked at him, waiting. There was no mischief left. Just a quiet, profound focus.
Willum’s throat worked. He had no words that could possibly bridge the gap between what had just happened and the ordinary world. The fear rose again, a cold tide behind the warmth. What did this change? What did this break?
He opened his mouth. Closed it.
Josh climbed up his t-shirt, settling on his sternum, right over his pounding heart. “Welcome home,” Josh said softly, and it wasn’t about the camp.