Chapter 2: The Bathroom Floor Confession
The tile was cold. That was the first thing Ender registered when his knees hit it—the shock of porcelain against bare skin, water from the forgotten shower pooling around his thighs in silver ribbons. Then Zenix's hand on his shoulder, steadying. Then Gene's palm flat against his chest, right over the scar that curved like a comma beneath his collarbone.
"Hey," Gene said. Just that. Just hey.
Ender's breath came in ragged pulls, his lungs refusing to cooperate. He stared at the drain in the center of the floor, watched the water spiral down into darkness, and thought about how easy it would be to just dissolve.
"I've got you," Zenix murmured behind him. His voice was low and rough, the way it got when he was trying not to spook a wild thing. "I've got you, sweetheart."
A sob clawed its way up Ender's throat. He swallowed it back hard, but it left fingerprints on the inside of his ribs. "I don't—" he started. Stopped. Tried again. "I don't know how to stop."
"Stop what?"
"Feeling like this."
Gene's hand shifted, fingertips trailing up to the hollow of Ender's throat. He could feel his pulse there, rabbit-fast, traitorous. "Then don't," Gene said. "For tonight. Just don't."
The words made no sense. Ender opened his mouth to say so, but Zenix was already moving behind him—shifting closer, knees bracketing Ender's hips, his chest a solid warmth against his back. His lips found the nape of Ender's neck, damp with condensation and sweat.
"Let us take it from you," Zenix breathed. "Just for a little while. Let us carry it."
Ender's hands curled into fists against his thighs. The oversized shirt—the navy one, the third one he'd tried—hung off him like a shroud, clinging wet in patches where the shower spray had reached. He wanted to pull it down. Wanted to disappear inside it.
But Gene was already tugging it up, slow and deliberate, and Ender couldn't find the strength to resist.
"Arms up," Gene said.
Ender obeyed. His arms rose, trembling, and the shirt came off in a whisper of wet cotton. It landed somewhere behind him with a sodden thump.
He was bare now. Bare in the steam, bare in the amber light, bare in front of the fogged mirror that still held his distorted ghost. His scars caught the glow—raised lines, puckered edges, the history of a body that had never learned to be gentle with itself.
"Fuck," Ender whispered. "Fuck, fuck, fuck—"
"Shhh." Gene pulled him forward, into his lap, and Ender went because there was nowhere else to go. Gene was warm and solid and his hands were careful as they settled on Ender's waist—not gripping, not demanding. Just there. Just present.
"You're shaking," Gene observed.
"I know."
"Cold?"
"No." Ender swallowed. "Yes. I don't know."
Zenix was still behind him, still kissing the notches of his spine one by one. His fingers traced the scars on Ender's back—the ones that crisscrossed like a road map of bad decisions. He didn't flinch away from them. Didn't hurry past. He lingered on each one, lips following where fingers led.
"You're beautiful," Zenix said against his skin.
"No."
"Yes."
"Zen, I swear to god—"
"Ender." Gene's voice cut through, sharp and soft all at once. "Look at me."
It took effort. Everything took effort. But Ender lifted his head, met Gene's dark eyes, and felt something in his chest crack open like a geode—ugly on the outside, glittering within.
"You don't have to believe us," Gene said. "Not yet. But you have to let us show you. Can you do that?"
Ender's lower lip trembled. He bit down on it, tasted copper, and nodded.
The steam swallowed the rest of the world. There was only this: Gene's hands on his hips, guiding him closer; Zenix's mouth on the back of his shoulder, murmuring words too soft to catch. The sound of water still raining down from the showerhead, indifferent to the sacrament happening beneath it.
Gene kissed him first. Soft, closed-mouthed, the kind of kiss that asked permission. Ender gave it by pressing forward, by opening, by letting Gene's tongue slide against his own in a rhythm that felt like a question and an answer all at once.
Behind him, Zenix's fingers found the waistband of his boxers. Ender's breath hitched.
"Okay?" Zenix asked.
"Yeah." Ender's voice cracked. "Yeah, okay."
The boxers came down. Cool air hit skin that had been hidden for too long, and Ender wanted to curl in on himself—wanted to hide the softness of his belly, the jut of his hipbones, the way his thighs still trembled from the cold.
But Gene was looking at him. Really looking. And there was no disgust in his eyes. No pity. Just hunger, raw and reverent, like Ender was something holy.
"Come here," Gene said.
Ender went.
What happened next unspooled in fragments. Gene's palm, slick and warm, wrapping around him. Zenix's chest against his back, solid as a wall, while his hands mapped the planes of Ender's shoulders. The slip-slide of skin on wet skin. The way the mirror held none of it—only fog, only shadow, only the suggestion of bodies tangled on the floor.
"There you go," Gene breathed when Ender's hips jerked forward. "That's it. Just feel it."
"I can't—" Ender gasped. "I can't—"
"You can. You are."
Zenix's lips found his ear, teeth grazing the lobe. "Let go, baby. We've got you."
Ender's vision blurred. The tile was hard beneath him, cold and unforgiving, but the hands on his body were anything but. They moved with purpose—not frantic, not rushed. Every touch was a sentence in a language Ender was only beginning to learn. Every kiss was punctuation.
They shifted. Gene lay back against the rise of the bath mat, pulling Ender down on top of him. Zenix followed, a shadow with gentle hands, settling behind Ender with his thighs bracketing his hips. The position was vulnerable. Exposed. Ender could feel the heat of Zenix's body against his back, the hard line of him pressing against the cleft of his ass.
"Tell me if it's too much," Zenix said.
"It's always too much."
"That's not what I asked."
Ender laughed—a cracked, wet sound that turned into a moan when Gene's fingers found his entrance, circling slowly.
"Tell me," Zenix repeated.
"Don't stop." Ender's voice was barely a whisper. "Whatever you do, don't stop."
They didn't.
Gene worked him open with careful fingers—one, then two, then three—while Zenix pressed kisses to every inch of skin he could reach. The scar behind Ender's ear. The freckles scattered across his shoulder blade. The dip of his lower back. Each touch was a rebuttal to every cruel word Ender had ever whispered to himself in mirrors that couldn't answer back.
"You're doing so good," Gene murmured. "So good for us."
"Please," Ender heard himself say. The word was foreign on his tongue. He didn't beg. He never begged. But here, now, with the steam curling around them and the fogged mirror bearing silent witness, he was undone.
Zenix pressed into him slowly. The stretch burned, but it was a good burn—the kind that grounded him, that reminded him he was real, he was here, he was alive.
"Breathe," Gene reminded him. "Breathe, sweetheart."
Ender breathed.
And then Zenix was moving, and Ender was moving, and the three of them found a rhythm that felt older than breath, older than bone. Every thrust pushed the air from Ender's lungs and replaced it with something brighter—something that burned away the shadows in his head, the vitriol, the years of standing in front of fogged glass and finding nothing worth keeping.
"Do you feel that?" Zenix whispered, his voice ragged. "Do you feel how perfect you are?"
Ender shook his head, but Gene caught his chin, forced his gaze.
"That's okay," Gene said. "We'll tell you until you do."
They whispered it. Over and over. Beautiful. Perfect. Ours. The words became a litany, a prayer, a tether in the dark. Ender sobbed their names—Zenix, Gene, Zenix, Gene—a broken loop of devotion that echoed off the tile.
When he came, it was with a cry that felt torn from somewhere deeper than his body. Gene's hand still wrapped around him, Zenix still buried inside him, the two of them holding him together while he shattered.
He sobbed. Not from sadness. Not from joy. From the sheer, overwhelming weight of being seen—really seen—and not found wanting.
They held him through it. Didn't move, didn't pull away. Just held.
Afterward, when the shaking stopped and the world came back into focus, Zenix eased out of him with infinite gentleness. Gene kissed the tears from his cheeks, tasting salt and steam.
"You okay?" Gene asked.
Ender sniffed. Wiped his face with the back of his hand. Laughed a little, wet and shaky.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "But I'm... something."
"Something is good," Zenix said. "Something is a start."
The biggest towel they had was a navy monstrosity, its hem frayed from too many wash cycles. They wrapped Ender in it anyway, tucked the edges around his shoulders like a cape. Zenix carried him—actually carried him, one arm beneath his knees, the other behind his back—while Gene held the bathroom door open.
The bedroom was dim, lit only by the moon bleeding through gauze curtains. They laid him on the bed, still wrapped in the towel, and Gene disappeared for a moment, returning with clean boxers and the softest shirt Ender owned—a worn band tee from a band that had broken up before he was born.
"Arms up," Gene said again.
Ender complied. The shirt slid over his head, and he was swallowed once more—but this time, it didn't feel like hiding. It felt like armor.
Zenix climbed in beside him, pressing against his left side. Gene took the right, his hand finding Ender's beneath the covers. They lay there in the quiet, three heartbeats syncing into one rhythm.
"You're ours," Zenix murmured against his hair.
"Yours," Ender repeated. The word felt strange. Not bad. Just... new.
"Tomorrow's going to be hard," Gene said. "You know that, right?"
Ender closed his eyes. "Yeah."
"But so are we." Gene squeezed his hand. "We're not going anywhere."
The moonlight shifted. Somewhere in the apartment, the shower finally ran cold, and the pipes groaned in complaint. Ender listened to the sound and felt, for the first time in longer than he could remember, something that might have been hope.
It was fragile. Small. Easily crushed.
But it was there.
And for tonight, that was enough.