Chapter 1: Photos Sent, Door Already Open
The sun cut a sharp diagonal across Ender's desk, catching the dust motes he'd been lazily watching drift through the air for the past twenty minutes. His 3D model sat abandoned on the left monitor, a half-rendered chair that looked more like a melted candy bar than furniture. The middle screen displayed a chaotic grid of memes he'd been saving for no particular reason. The right monitor—well.
The right monitor held a frozen frame of something that would've gotten him fired from any office job in the city.
Ender stretched his legs, the leather of his chair creaking beneath him, and tilted his phone toward the window. The morning light painted his skin in warm honey tones, catching the exposed line of his collarbone, the dip of his waist where the unbuttoned shirt hung open like an afterthought.
He snapped the photo.
His fingers danced across the screen, typing out a caption that made him snort before he even hit send. Thinking about you both. A pause. He added a string of emojis that were only technically appropriate for a workplace setting if you squinted. Wish you were here to punish me.
The message shot off to Gene first. Then Zenix.
Ender tossed his phone onto the desk and stretched his arms overhead, letting the shirt slide further off his shoulders. The fabric pooled in the creases of his elbows. His coffee mug—a chipped ceramic thing Gene had made in some long-ago pottery class—sat empty except for a brown ring at the bottom.
He should probably work. He had deadlines. Actual clients who paid actual money for actual designs that didn't look like abstract interpretations of erectile dysfunction.
But the apartment was too quiet, and he was too bored, and his boyfriends were both stuck in meetings all afternoon doing important adult things while he sat here in his underwear, vibrating with the need to cause some kind of trouble.
His phone buzzed.
Ender's grin split his face wide as he snatched it up, expecting a flustered response from Zenix—something about how he was in the middle of a conference call, or how Ender was going to get himself in trouble. Instead, he found a single thumbs-up emoji from Gene.
A thumbs-up.
That was it.
Ender frowned at the screen like it had personally insulted his mother. Gene usually responded with something that made Ender's toes curl, some quiet, devastating command that left him squirming in his chair for hours. A thumbs-up was practically a dismissal. A text equivalent of a pat on the head.
The competitive part of his brain—which was, honestly, most of his brain—took offense.
He sat up straighter, letting the shirt fall completely off one shoulder. He angled his phone lower, capturing the jut of his hip, the sharp line of his thigh where it disappeared beneath the shirt's hem. He bit his lip in the photo. Not hard. Just enough to make it look like he'd been thinking thoughts he shouldn't.
He sent it to Gene with no caption.
Then he sent it to Zenix with the caption: Your boyfriend is ignoring me.
Zenix's response came fast. Which one?
The tall one. The one who's supposed to be possessive and scary and fun.
He's probably in a meeting. You know, working. Like adults do.
Boring.
Ender flopped back in his chair, one leg hooking over the armrest. He could feel the mischief bubbling in his chest like carbonation, that familiar itch that demanded he push just a little further, just to see what would happen. Gene hadn't responded to the second photo yet. Maybe it hadn't been explicit enough. Maybe he needed to be clearer about his intentions.
He propped his phone against the coffee mug and set the timer. Ten seconds. He had ten seconds to arrange himself into something that would make Gene forget every meeting he'd ever attended. The shirt slid off his other shoulder. He ran his fingers through his hair, messing it into that just-fucked look he knew drove them both crazy. He tilted his chin down, looked up through his lashes at the camera—
The timer beeped.
He took the shot.
This one he didn't send right away. He examined it first, zooming in on his expression, the flush creeping up his chest from the sheer audacity of what he was doing. It was good. Really good. The kind of photo that would make Gene's jaw tighten in that way that meant Ender was going to pay for his crimes later.
He sent it to both of them.
The silence stretched.
One minute. Two.
Ender's foot bounced against the desk leg. His phone screen stayed dark, that frustrating emptiness where notifications should have been popping up like little rewards for his bad behavior. Maybe they were both actually busy. Maybe he'd overplayed his hand. Maybe—
A key scraped in the front door lock downstairs.
Ender froze.
The key twisted. The door swung open with that familiar creak they'd been meaning to fix for six months. Footsteps. Two sets. One heavy and measured—Gene, definitely Gene, that deliberate cadence that always made Ender feel like prey being stalked. The other lighter, quicker, a certain bounce to it—Zenix, whose schedule should've kept him at the office until at least five.
They were both home. At one in the afternoon. When neither of them was supposed to be home.
The footsteps climbed the stairs.
Ender looked down at himself—shirt hanging off both shoulders, chest bare, a visible tent in his underwear that he was absolutely not going to be able to explain away. His phone sat on the desk, still displaying the last photo he'd sent, the one that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.
He grabbed the shirt and yanked it closed, fumbling with the buttons. His fingers felt like sausages. The top button went into the wrong hole. He was still fixing it when the door to his office swung open.
Gene filled the doorway.
He was still wearing his work clothes—dark slacks, a white button-down with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, a tie that had been loosened just enough to expose the hollow of his throat. His expression was perfectly neutral, that careful blankness that Ender had learned to recognize as the calm before the storm.
Behind him, Zenix leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, a slow grin spreading across his face that made Ender's stomach flip.
"Hey," Ender said, his voice pitched a little too high. "You're home early."
Gene stepped into the room. One step. Two. He moved with that unhurried grace that always made Ender feel like the walls were closing in, like there was nowhere to run and no reason to want to.
"We got your messages," Gene said.
His voice was smooth as river stones, warm as August asphalt, and it made Ender's mouth go dry.
"All of them," Zenix added, pushing off the doorframe and following Gene inside.
The door clicked shut behind them.
Ender's back pressed against the chair, his fingers still caught in the misfired buttons of his shirt. His phone buzzed again on the desk—some notification, some meaningless alert—but he couldn't look away from the two men now standing at the foot of his workspace like they'd just won something and were deciding how to spend their winnings.
"Were you bored?" Gene asked.
Ender swallowed. "Maybe."
"Feeling neglected?"
"A little."
Gene's hand came up, slow and deliberate, and he undid the single button Ender had managed to get right. The shirt fell open again.
"Then let's fix that," Gene said.
Zenix laughed, soft and low, and pulled the office door all the way shut.