Heartbreaker, a Hearstopper Story - Ch. 13

Gay Erotica, +18, Gay Cuckold, Bottom Cuck, Voyeur, Cheating

This is the second chapter posted today. Make sure you read Chapter Twelve before moving forward.

—

The night that greeted them outside Seaview Hall was almost indecent in its perfection. A vast, cloudless sky crowded with stars, one of those skies California kept in reserve for the nights you needed to remember. The air was warm and carried a faint breeze rolling in from the ocean, salt and jasmine tangled together, and Charlie could feel in it the promise of the heat that was coming, spring tipping into summer, the days about to stretch long and golden and scorching. He’d miss this when he was back in Kent. English summers had their own quiet charm, but they were nothing compared to this, this warmth that wrapped around your bare skin like a hand, this light that lasted until nine and turned everything amber.

The campus was alive. Everywhere Charlie looked, white togas moved through the dark like ghosts heading to the same afterlife, groups of students streaming along the walkways, laughing, shouting, someone already drinking, someone else already stumbling. The energy was tangible, buzzing in the air like static before a storm, a particular end-of-term recklessness that only existed when the last exam had been sat and the last essay submitted and there was nothing left to do but celebrate the fact that they’d survived it. Music thumped from somewhere ahead and the noise grew louder with every block.

Luna produced a bottle from her bag, store-bought caipirinha, and Charlie took a swig. He winced. It was nowhere near the real thing, too sweet, too thin, missing the bite of proper cachaça and the fresh sharpness of hand-muddled lime. Aunt Fernanda would have wept. But the alcohol was the point, not the flavour, and by the time they’d passed the bottle between the three of them twice, the warmth had spread through Charlie’s chest and the night felt wider, and full of possibility.

It was barely seven when they reached Greek Row, but the party had already swallowed the street whole. Delta Tau Phi’s house sat at the end of the block, and the celebration had long since burst through its walls and spilled across the pavement, the front lawn, the neighbouring yards, and most of the road itself. The crowd was enormous, hundreds of students packed shoulder to shoulder, filling the street from kerb to kerb like the world’s most debauched Pride parade. The music coming from inside the house was deafening, a bass line so heavy Charlie felt it in his teeth from half a block away, and on any other night the brothers would have had noise complaints stacked to the ceiling before the first song ended.

The street alone was chaos. A group of engineering students had rigged a makeshift fountain from a garden hose and a traffic cone that sprayed anyone who walked past, and the pavement was already slick with water and spilled beer. Someone had projected the word APHRODITE onto the side of the neighbouring sorority house in enormous purple letters. Two blokes Charlie didn’t recognise were wrestling on someone’s front lawn, togas hiked to their waists, cheered on by a circle of spectators who were placing bets with shots instead of money. A girl standing on the roof of a parked car was delivering what appeared to be a dramatic reading of the Iliad through a megaphone while her friends filmed her from below. Somewhere in the crowd, someone had brought a speaker playing nothing but the Gladiator soundtrack on repeat, competing aggressively with the house music and losing; Two LAPD cruisers were parked directly in front of Delta Tau Phi, lights off, a presence that was obviously meant to prevent last year’s chaos from repeating itself. Charlie glanced at them as they passed. All four officers were young, out of their cars, leaning against the bonnets with their arms folded, and every single one of them was holding a red Solo cup. One of them was laughing so hard at something a toga-clad senior had just said that he had to set his cup on the hood to keep from spilling it. Charlie had a feeling their presence there wouldn’t make any difference at all.

Charlie felt his jaw drop the moment they crossed the threshold. He’d been inside Delta Tau Phi once or twice before and remembered the place clearly, all dark hardwood floors and leather club chairs and framed composites of former brothers lining the oak-panelled walls, carefully maintained old-money elegance that whispered our alumni donate generously and we’d like you to know it. The grand staircase, the crystal light fixture in the foyer, the antique billiard table Harp had once claimed was worth more than his parents’ car. All of it was gone.

The entire ground floor had been transformed into a Dionysian bathhouse that bordered on the genuinely hallucinatory. Columns painted marble white with gold accents lined every wall, some structural, most emphatically not. A fog machine churned in some unseen corner, filling the room with a thick, sweet-smelling haze that caught the blue and purple LED lights and turned the space into a shimmering, otherworldly grotto. Plastic paddling pools had been set up, filled with warm water and bubble bath and floating rubber ducks wearing tiny laurel wreaths. Shirtless frat brothers in short togas circulated through the fog as self-appointed nymphs, serving grape juice mixed with vodka from gold-painted chalices with a solemnity that suggested they were taking their mythological roles extremely seriously. People lounged in the pools in full costume, togas darkening with water, passing joints and raising their chalices and shouting to the gods! every time someone launched themselves in with a cannonball that sent warm, soapy water cascading across the already-soaked floor. The fog was so thick Charlie could barely see the far wall. And at least three people had already lost their togas entirely and didn’t seem remotely concerned about retrieving them.

“Bloody hell,” Charlie breathed.

His words were swallowed by the music, but Nick must have caught the shape of them because he turned, took in Charlie’s stunned face, and grinned.

“STAY CLOSE OR WE’LL NEVER FIND EACH OTHER AGAIN,” he yelled, and even pressed right against Charlie’s ear it was barely audible.

Charlie nodded and squeezed Nick’s hand hard to show he’d understood. He turned to tell Luna the same thing, but when he looked for her she was tangled up with a tall bloke in a gold-trimmed toga, and for one alarmed second Charlie thought they were fighting, until he realised they were locked in the most furious snogging he had ever witnessed, Luna’s silver stilettos lifting clean off the wet floor as the bloke hoisted her up by the waist. She’d been inside the house for approximately ninety seconds.

Realising they were a party of two, Charlie let Nick lead him through the chaos. Nick moved through the crowd like a ship through heavy water, his size clearing a path that Charlie slipped gratefully into. People stopped them constantly, faces appearing through the fog, lighting up when they clocked Nick, shouting his name, clasping his shoulder, pulling him into hugs that were slightly too long and slightly too emotional. It wasn’t just party energy. Charlie could see what they were doing, every handshake, every shoulder squeeze, every yelled compliment was aimed at the same target: the loss. They were telling Nick that it didn’t matter, that he was still their guy, that a silver medal didn’t change a thing. A couple of girls kissed his cheek. A bloke Charlie vaguely recognised from the business school grabbed Nick’s face in both hands and yelled “YOU WERE ROBBED, NELSON”. Nick accepted all of it with grace, smiling, nodding, saying thank you into ears that probably couldn’t hear him, and Charlie watched the warmth of it slowly thaw something in Nick’s face that had been frozen since the bus ride home.

They pushed through into an adjacent room that Charlie had no memory of from his previous visits, mostly because it no longer bore any resemblance to whatever it had been. The furniture was gone. In its place sat an enormous inflatable pool, chest-deep and murky with foam, and above it a hand-painted sign in fake Greek lettering declared they had entered the arena of the gods. Fighters squared off inside the pool armed with pool noodles, foam swords, and the occasional wet sponge. The crowd surrounding them hurled soft projectiles and screamed encouragement: rolled-up socks, empty cans, someone’s sandal, and at least one rubber duck from the bathhouse that had been repurposed as ammunition. Half the spectators roared “SPARTA!” while the other half bellowed “FOR ARES!” and the allegiances seemed to shift at random depending on who was currently winning.

Jake Mallory and Marcus Jenkins were in the pool, Mallory swinging a pool noodle with unhinged enthusiasm as if he had found his true calling, and the moment they spotted their fellow Shark they started shouting for him to get in. Mallory pointed his noodle at Charlie too, yelling something about how the English needed to learn what real combat looked like, and it was only through what Charlie could reasonably describe as divine intervention that they made it through to the garden unscathed.

The entire yard had been transformed into Mount Olympus. Strings of warm white lights crisscrossed overhead between the trees and the back fence, casting everything in a golden glow that mixed with the tiki torches planted along the perimeter. Fake marble columns flanked the back door, draped in ivy that might have been real. A DJ booth had been erected on a raised wooden platform against the far wall, flanked by speakers the size of small cars. The DJ, a shirtless bloke in a gold laurel crown and mirrored sunglasses, was conducting the crowd with both hands like he was leading a symphony rather than playing remixed Dua Lipa at a volume that violated several international agreements. To the left, an enormous plastic slide had been bolted — Charlie hoped it was bolted — against the side of the house, climbing from the garden up to the roof and curving back down into the actual swimming pool below. A steady stream of toga-clad students climbed a ladder to the roof, screamed something about glory or death or both, and launched themselves down the slide into the pool with abandon that suggested the university’s liability insurance was about to be tested in ways it had never anticipated.

In the centre of the garden, elevated on a platform that gave him a commanding view of his domain, was Harp.

He sat on a throne constructed from stacked beer cases, duct tape, and what appeared to be an old leather armchair liberated from the house’s study. He was golden from head to toe. His toga was an entirely different class from everyone else’s, absurdly luxurious, so convincingly close to cloth of gold that Charlie stared at it for a full five seconds trying to determine whether it was an actual prop from a film set or something Harp had commissioned specifically for this occasion. A gold laurel crown sat perfectly on his head. In one hand he held a lightning bolt fashioned from a pool noodle wrapped meticulously in tinfoil. In the other, a golden chalice that was never, as far as Charlie could tell, empty. A hand-painted sign propped against the base of the throne read: SEEK THE FAVOUR OF ZEUS — BRING AN OFFERING. A queue of supplicants had already formed, students approaching one by one, bearing tributes. Most brought a shot or a beer. One girl presented a slice of pizza on a paper plate with exaggerated solemnity. A bloke near the front of the line was holding a sock puppet.

Harp had been receiving his supplicants with the grave solemnity of an actual deity dispensing judgement, but the moment he spotted Nick and Charlie below, the act shattered. His face split into a grin so wide it had to hurt, and he scrambled down from his throne with zero regard for its structural integrity, the beer-case foundation wobbling dangerously behind him.

“TOGA WEEKEND, BABY!” he screamed, and launched himself bodily at Nick.

It was a testament to Nick’s strength that he barely wobbled. He caught Harp mid-air, absorbed the full impact of a six-foot-two lacrosse player travelling at speed, and set him down on the grass as if the whole thing had been choreographed. Harp turned to Charlie, golden toga swishing, eyes bright and manic, buzzing with the high of a night he’d been planning for months and that was clearly exceeding every expectation.

“What do you think?” he asked, arms spread wide, presenting his kingdom.

“This is completely mad,” Charlie said.

“Baby, we haven’t even started yet.” He peered at their empty hands. “You’re not drinking? Why aren’t you drinking?”

“We literally just walked in,” Nick said.

Harp shoved his golden chalice into Charlie’s hand without a second’s hesitation. “Here. The good stuff. Not that grape-vodka piss the nymphs are pushing.” He levelled a finger at both of them. “Stay. Don’t move. I need to handle something.”

He vanished into the crowd before either of them could respond, the golden toga swallowed by fog and bodies within seconds.

Charlie took a sip from the chalice and the taste of expensive bourbon bloomed across his tongue, smooth and warm with a finish that lingered and had no business being at a toga party.

“Christ, how rich is that bloke?” he asked, passing the chalice to Nick.

Nick took a sip. His eyebrows rose. He looked down into the cup, then back up at Charlie. “Rich enough that we should never question him when he says the good stuff.“

He shifted closer, his free arm finding the curve of Charlie’s waist.

“You alright? Not too much?”

“I’m great,” Charlie said, and meant it.

Nick’s hand settled warm and heavy on his hip, pulling him in until their sides were flush. “Just say the word,” he murmured against Charlie’s hair. “Whenever. And we go.”

For the next hour, they did nothing but enjoy themselves.

They danced in the garden under the lights, Charlie’s back pressed against Nick’s chest, Nick’s arms wrapped around him from behind, swaying together to whatever the DJ threw at them. When the music slowed they kissed, long and lazy, tasting bourbon on each other’s lips. When the music picked up again Nick spun him around and Charlie laughed so hard his laurel crown went flying. Nick snatched it out of the air before it hit the wet grass and settled it back on Charlie’s head, adjusting it carefully with both hands, tilting it just so, as if crowning a very small and slightly drunk emperor.

They passed Harp’s chalice back and forth, refilling it twice from a bottle of Blanton’s that Harp had stashed behind the throne before surrendering his seat to Elliot Jameson, who took over the role of Zeus with considerably less charisma but made up for it in volume. People stopped by in a steady stream. A girl from Charlie’s Romantic Poetry seminar told him his toga was cute and asked if Nick was single, which Charlie found hilarious and Nick found mortifying. Torres appeared briefly, looking much more relaxed than the last time Charlie had seen him, and pulled Nick into a hug that lasted long enough to say something without words. A group of lads from the lacrosse team circled Nick, examined the exposed pec, and offered increasingly creative commentary on Harp’s costume choices. One of them suggested Nick had lost a bet. Another said the toga was a public service. A third simply pointed at Nick’s chest and said “bro” in a tone of quiet reverence. Nick flipped every single one of them off with a grin that got wider each time.

They danced some more. They drank some more. Charlie leaned against Nick’s shoulder and watched the slide send another screaming body into the pool and felt… just happiness. Simple, uncomplicated happiness. Nick’s arm was around him. The night was warm. The bourbon was expensive. And for one golden, perfect hour, that was enough.

Then Beto arrived.

Charlie felt it before he saw it, the shift in Nick’s body beside him. A sudden tension that rippled through the arm around Charlie’s waist, the fingers on his hip tightening fractionally, the easy rhythm of Nick’s breathing catching for just a second. Charlie followed the direction of Nick’s gaze and there he was, moving through the garden crowd, every head turning as he passed.

Nick’s reaction was immediate. His pulse jumped — Charlie could feel it hammering through the wrist pressed against his hip. The muscles in his forearm went taut, tendons standing out against the skin, and his weight shifted almost imperceptibly, angling his body half a degree toward Beto before catching himself and correcting. His jaw tightened. His throat moved on a hard swallow. And beneath the toga, pressed against Charlie’s thigh where their bodies were flush, Charlie felt the unmistakable twitch of Nick’s cock stirring against the thin fabric.

Charlie’s blood ran hot.

Beto kept it brief, exactly as they’d planned. He stopped by for barely a minute, kissed both of Charlie’s cheeks, said he was the cutest eromenos that night, and made thirty seconds of easy small talk about the fog machine and whether the LAPD officers out front had started dancing yet.

“Hi, Nick,” he said, turning to him last, warm and casual.

“What’s up, mate,” Nick replied. His voice was perfectly neutral. His eyes were locked on something above Beto’s left shoulder. His palm was slick with sweat against Charlie’s hip.

Beto smiled, said something about finding Luna, and melted back into the crowd. Gone in under three minutes. They both knew that lingering would only tighten the knot in Nick’s chest, and Charlie wanted the opposite, wanted Nick’s shoulders to drop, wanted the bourbon to do its work, wanted the tension of Beto’s proximity to fade into something ambient and manageable. Background heat, not a bonfire.

They kept drinking, but Charlie monitored every refill. He started intercepting it more often, taking longer sips himself, topping it up with less bourbon and more water. He wanted Nick buzzing, loose, his inhibitions softened at the edges, but not wasted. Not sloppy. Not so far gone that whatever happened next could be blamed on the alcohol and dismissed in the morning. Whatever was going to happen tonight, Charlie needed it to be Nick’s decision. Fully conscious, fully present, fully choosing.

It was eleven sharp when Charlie decided it was time.

The chariot race was about to begin. They could hear the roar building from the street, the clatter of shopping carts being wheeled into position, someone testing a megaphone with an ear-splitting burst of feedback. Nick’s eyes had lit up at the sound, the first genuine spark of competitive excitement Charlie had seen from him all week.

“You’re not gonna want to miss this, Char,” he said, already pulling Charlie toward the side gate.

“Go ahead,” Charlie said, squeezing his hand and letting it drop. “I need the loo. I’ll find you out there.”

They parted with a quick peck, Nick’s lips warm and bourbon-sweet, and Charlie watched him disappear through the gate. Charlie’s cock twitched against his undies at the thought that crept in: the next time he saw Nick, Nick would be buried to the hilt inside someone else.

He turned and scanned the garden. It took him only a few seconds to find Beto, leaning against one of the fake marble columns near the DJ booth, red cup in hand, laughing at something a girl in a flower crown was telling him. Their eyes met across the crowd. Charlie held the look for exactly one second, then glanced toward the house and back. Beto’s smile didn’t change, but something behind his eyes locked into place. He gave the smallest nod imaginable, excused himself from the girl mid-sentence, and moved toward the house without looking back.

Charlie didn’t follow him inside. Instead, he scanned the crowd again, this time looking for a flash of gold, and found Harp near the tiki torches, pressed against a pretty twink Charlie had never seen before, the two of them kissing with intensity that suggested they’d forgotten other people existed. Harp had one hand fisted in the back of the twink’s toga, and the twink’s fingers were tangled in Harp’s hair, pulling him closer, their mouths working against each other with a hunger that was bordering on indecent even by Toga Weekend standards. Apparently Harp had an unlimited supply of beautiful boys, because whoever this was, he was definitely not Jaden Kessler.

“Oi, Harp,” Charlie said, tapping him on the shoulder.

It took a full thirty seconds for Harp to surface. He bit the twink’s lower lip on the way out, a slow pull that made the lad’s eyes flutter shut, before turning to Charlie with a gaze that was half lust, half bourbon, and zero percent interested in whatever Charlie was about to say.

“Yo, Char,” he said, mouth wet, breathing hard. “You good?”

“Not really, actually. I think I’ve had too much bourbon. You mind if I lie down on your bed for a bit?”

The drunken haze cleared from Harp’s face instantly, replaced by something more alert. “Sure, man, go ahead. Room’s unlocked. You want me to take you up there?”

“It’s fine, I’ve got it. But can you tell Nick? He’s watching the race and I don’t want to go all the way out to the street.”

“I’ll find him in a second, okay? Get some rest.”

Before Charlie had even turned away, Harp was already back on the twinks’s mouth, hands pulling him in, picking up exactly where he’d left off. Charlie smiled to himself. He’d have a couple of minutes at least before Harp remembered to look for Nick, which was exactly the window he needed. He walked toward the house, heart hammering, and didn’t look back.

Harp’s room was on the second floor, at the end of the hallway, and mercifully far enough from the garden speakers that the music was reduced to a muffled pulse through the walls. It was exactly what Charlie would have expected from Harp, expensive without trying too hard. A king-sized bed that took up most of the room, unmade, sheets that looked like they cost more than Charlie’s monthly grocery budget. A surfboard mounted on the wall above the headboard. A lacrosse stick propped in the corner. Clothes draped over every available surface. The bed was enormous. It would fit Nick and Beto perfectly.

Beto was already there, sitting on the edge of the mattress, one leg tucked beneath him. He smiled when Charlie walked in, warm and steady, none of the nerves Charlie was expecting.

“Harp went to tell Nick I’m not feeling good,” Charlie said. “He should be here any minute.”

Beto stood and crossed the room, extending both hands toward him. Charlie took them, and Beto laced their fingers together, his grip firm, grounding Charlie in a moment that felt like standing at the edge of a very high cliff.

“You sure about this, Carlinhos?” he said, his dark eyes searching Charlie’s face.

“I am,” Charlie said. He was already breathless. His heart was doing something violent behind his ribs.

“If anything feels wrong, you call me,” Beto said, nodding toward his phone on the bed. “One ring. I stop the same second. No questions.”

“Okay,” Charlie said, nodding quickly. “But I won’t change my mind. I want this, Beto. I really, really do.”

Beto laughed, low and incredulous, shaking his head. “You’re fucking crazy. Can’t believe I’m doing this.”

“Of course you are. You can’t resist my charm.”

“Yeah, looks like it,” Beto said softly.

Then, to Charlie’s surprise, Beto leaned in and kissed him. Just a small peck, barely there, his lips warm and tasting faintly of cachaça and lime. Aunda Fernanda’s caipirinha. It lasted less than a second but it was enough to send a current through Charlie’s entire body, scalp to toes, lighting every nerve on the way down.

Beto pulled back, their foreheads almost touching. “Maybe you’ll join us next time,” he murmured.

Charlie’s cock went rigid under his toga so fast it was almost painful. The images flooded in before he could stop them, the three of them on that enormous bed, tangled together, hands and mouths everywhere. He and Nick sharing Beto between them, Beto arching under four hands, greedy for both. He and Beto sharing Nick, taking turns, driving him out of his mind. Nick and Beto sharing him, Charlie pinned between those two golden bodies, overwhelmed, consumed, completely and utterly theirs.

His breath caught. His fingers tightened in Beto’s.

“Maybe I will,” he said.

He’d chosen Harp’s room for one reason, and it wasn’t the bed. The closet. One of the doors was a full-length one-way mirror, one Harp had probably installed for outfit checks, but which served Charlie’s purposes with an almost poetic precision. From inside, he could see the entire bedroom in perfect clarity. From outside, there was nothing but his own reflection staring back. Invisible, but present. Watching.

Charlie squeezed Beto’s hand one last time, took a deep breath that did absolutely nothing to steady his pulse, and stepped inside the closet. It was cramped, a rack of Harp’s shirts pressed against one shoulder, something that felt like a lacrosse bag at his feet, but he had enough space to stand, enough space to see. The mirror gave him the whole room: the bed, the door, the strip of light from the hallway.

In one swift motion, he shoved his toga up and took off his undies. He wouldn’t be needing modesty for what came next.

They didn’t have to wait long. Charlie had barely settled his breathing when the bedroom door opened and Nick’s frame filled the threshold, backlit by the hallway, massive and golden in his ridiculous toga.

“Charlie?” he called into the dim room, scanning the space. “Char, you in here?”

Beto was sitting on the far edge of the bed, his back to the door, perfectly still.

“Oh, sorry, mate,” Nick said, stepping inside. “You seen my boyfriend? Charlie Spring? Harp said he was up here feeling—”

Beto turned.

Charlie stopped breathing.

“Hey, Nico,” Beto said softly. “Just little old me in here. Sorry.”

Nick froze. Charlie watched it happen through the glass, close enough to see every detail, every micro-expression, every involuntary betrayal of Nick’s body.

The recognition hit Nick first, a flash of surprise that crossed his face and vanished almost immediately, replaced by something harder to name. His lips parted. His shoulders pulled back. The hand that had touched Beto’s shoulder didn’t withdraw so much as hover, suspended in the space between contact and retreat, as if Nick’s brain had sent the signal to pull away and his body had simply refused to execute it.

Then the lust arrived, and it was devastating.

Charlie could see it roll through Nick like a physical force, a visible wave that started in his chest and spread outward, darkening his eyes, flushing the skin across his collarbones, tightening the muscles in his jaw. His breathing changed, his chest rising and falling too fast under that obscene toga. His hands curled into fists at his sides and then uncurled, fingers flexing, as if they were fighting not to reach for something. It was stronger than the garden. Stronger than the flinch when Beto’s name had been mentioned at Seaview Hall. This had to be Houston all over again, the same helpless hunger Charlie had heard in Beto’s voice on the phone that Sunday morning, except now Charlie could see it, could watch it take hold of Nick’s body in real time, could see the exact moment his boyfriend’s willpower began to buckle under the weight of wanting something he’d promised himself he’d never want again.

Charlie wrapped his hand around himself and bit down on his knuckle to keep from making a sound.

“Um,” said Nick. He took a step back. “Charlie’s not feeling well. I need to go find him.”

But he didn’t move.

“Charlie’s fine,” Beto said easily, still seated on the bed. “Just saw him like four minutes ago. He’s watching the chariot race.”

“N-no,” Nick stammered, and Charlie’s stomach flipped at the sound of it. Nick Nelson, six foot three of muscle and certainty, stammering like a boy caught somewhere he shouldn’t be. “Harp told me he drank too much and needed to lie down up here.”

Beto took a theatrical look around the room, glancing left, glancing right, peering under the bed with exaggerated curiosity. “Maybe Harp’s the one that drank too much. There’s just me here.” he said pleasantly. He looked back at Nick. “And you.”

Charlie couldn’t tear his eyes from Nick. He was still pressed against the doorframe, one hand gripping it behind him as if the wood was the only thing keeping him upright. The exposed pec glistened faintly with sweat from the heat of the party below. The flush had spread from his collarbones to his neck, creeping up toward his jaw, and his eyes — God, his eyes. They were locked on Beto with an intensity that bordered on pain, wide and dark and helpless, a man staring at something he wanted so badly it was burning him from the inside out. Had he looked like this in Houston? This stunning, this wrecked, this impossibly gorgeous in his own undoing?

Before Nick could say anything else, Beto rose from the bed, crossed the room in three easy strides, and closed the door. The click of the latch was the loudest sound in the world.

“What are you doing?” Nick asked, and he sounded genuinely afraid.

“Oh, I think you know what I’m doing, Nico,” Beto said softly.

With a single fluid motion, Beto loosened the clasp at his shoulder and let the toga slip from his body. The fabric pooled at his feet like water and he stood there in Harp’s bedroom completely naked, bathed in the dim light bleeding through the curtains. Every line of him was golden and lean and perfect. Nobody should look like that. It was unreasonable. It was almost offensive.

Charlie pressed his free hand flat against the glass to steady himself. He was seconds from a heart attack.

“No,” said Nick.

The strength of the denial surprised Charlie. Nick’s voice had found something solid, something that sounded like the bedrock of every promise he’d ever made. He straightened against the doorframe, pulling himself up to his full height, his eyes dragging themselves away from Beto’s body with visible effort.

“We’re not — I’m never doing that again, you hear me?” His voice shook, but held. “Never.”

“Why not, Nico?” Beto asked, tilting his head, lower lip pushed out in a pout that managed to be both ridiculous and devastating.

“It’s not—we can’t—” Nick’s hands were shaking. “Are you mad? Charlie is here somewhere. We can’t.”

“But if Charlie wasn’t here,” Beto said, taking a step closer, “then we could?”

“That’s not what I—”

“Maybe we should find him, Nico,” Beto cut in, his voice dropping to something silky and precise. “Maybe we should ask him to watch. You think he’d like that? Watching me take your cock?”

Charlie bit down on the meat of his hand so hard he nearly drew blood. The sound that had been building in his throat died against his own knuckles, muffled and desperate, his whole body trembling with the effort of staying silent. Beto was threading dangerously close to the truth, dancing along the edge of it, one careless word away from unravelling everything, but Charlie trusted him. In that moment, pressed against the glass with his cock in his hand and his heart in his mouth, he had no other choice.

“No,” Nick said again. But the word had lost something. The bedrock Charlie had heard thirty seconds ago was fracturing, hairline cracks spreading through it, and Nick’s voice came out softer.

Charlie noticed, with a thrill that lit up his entire nervous system, that despite every denial, despite every no and every never, Nick still hadn’t left. The door was right there. The handle was inches from his hand. He could walk out, go downstairs, find Charlie, rejoin the party, and none of this would have happened. But he stayed. Rooted to the spot, flushed and shaking, watching Beto close the distance between them as a man watching his own ruin approach and finding he couldn’t look away.

It would work. Charlie knew it in his core, knew it with the same certainty he’d felt watching Nick on that screen during the final, before everything had gone wrong. Nick would surrender. Nick would break, the way he’d broken in Houston, the way Charlie needed him to break. And this time Charlie would be here to watch it happen.

“I miss your cock so fucking much, Nico,” Beto said.

His voice had changed. The playfulness was gone, the teasing, the theatrical pout, all of it stripped away, and what was left underneath was something Charlie had never heard from him before. Unguarded. Real. A voice scraped clean of performance, vibrating with a need so naked it made the air in the room feel heavier. It was the voice of the sirens from the old Greek tales, Charlie thought, the ones who sang from the rocks and pulled sailors to their deaths, not because the song was loud but because it was true, because it reached inside you and found the thing you were most afraid of wanting and gave it a melody you couldn’t resist.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Beto went on, another step closer, close enough now that Nick had to feel the heat coming off his bare skin. “I tried to fuck other guys to make me forget you. It didn’t work. None of them were you. You’re in my skin, Nico. I need your cock again.”

His voice dropped to barely a whisper.

“I need you to destroy me again. Like you did that night.”

Charlie watched through the glass as Beto reached for Nick’s hand, lifting it gently, lacing their fingers together the same way he’d done with Charlie moments ago. His other hand rose to Nick’s exposed chest, fingertips finding the nipple, brushing across it with a feather-light touch that was barely there at all. Even from inside the closet, Charlie could see the goosebumps erupt across Nick’s skin, a wave of them cascading from his chest down his arms, his stomach, every follicle on his body standing to attention at once.

Nick’s breath left him in a shudder he couldn’t hide and Charlie’s hand started moving on his cock. Slow at first, matching his breathing, but the control was already slipping. He’d barely begun and he was already close, already teetering, because Beto was right there — right there — touching Nick, his fingers on Charlie’s boyfriend’s skin, and it was everything, it was every fantasy he’d ever built in the dark come to life in front of his eyes, real and breathing and three metres away.

Beto looked down at their intertwined hands for a moment. Then his gaze lifted to Nick’s face.

Their eyes locked, and the room went still.

The chemistry between them was something Charlie had never felt before. Stripped of pretence, stripped of an audience, stripped of everything except two bodies and the unbearable charge between them. It was almost blinding. They looked at each other the way binary stars must look at each other, two forces locked in an orbit neither had chosen, pulling each other closer with an inevitability that had nothing to do with permission and everything to do with physics. Beto wanted Nick with every fibre of his body. And Nick wanted Beto with a desperation that was written across his face so plainly it hurt to look at.

They were magnificent together. Devastating. Made for each other in some fundamental, chemical way that Charlie couldn’t replicate and didn’t want to, because being the one who witnessed it, the one who made it possible, the one who burned in the dark while two beautiful men found each other… that was better.

That was everything.

Charlie pressed his forehead against the cool glass and watched, and wanted, and burned.

Beto raised himself on his toes and kissed Nick.

Charlie made a sound, he must have, torn from somewhere deep in his soul, but neither of them heard it. They didn’t move. Beto’s lips were pressed to Nick’s, soft and still, offering but not taking. Waiting. He wanted Nick to take the next step, and Charlie knew he would. He knew what came next like he knew the lines of a poem he’d read a hundred times. Nick would raise his hand and grab Beto’s hair, exactly the way he did with Charlie, and he would deepen the kiss, would devour Beto’s mouth, and the last wall would crumble and there would be nothing left but skin and want and surrender.

Sure enough, Nick’s hand rose.

Charlie felt tears prickle his eyes. His hand moved faster, gripping himself tight, his breathing shallow against the glass. It was happening. It was beginning, and God knew where it would end, God knew what would be left of the three of them when it was over, but Charlie didn’t care, couldn’t care, because this was everything he’d ever wanted, it was real, it was happening —

Nick’s hand closed around Beto’s throat.

He tore his lips from Beto’s mouth.

“I fucking said,” Nick snarled. “no.“

The door burst open.

It was like a portal had been ripped in the wall, the universe of Harp’s quiet bedroom torn apart and replaced by the roaring chaos of Toga Weekend below. Music crashed in, bass and screaming and someone bellowing something about a chariot through a megaphone. Laughter. Glass breaking. The distant splash of a body hitting the pool.

Luna stood in the doorway.

It took her less than a second. Her eyes swept the room — Beto naked, Nick’s hand around his throat, their faces inches apart, the flush on Nick’s chest, the charge in the air that was so thick it was practically visible — and Charlie watched, through the glass, as understanding hit her like a slap.

“Oh my God,” Luna said, her voice pitched so high it barely qualified as human.

She slammed the door shut.

Nick released Beto’s throat and shoved him backward. Beto hit the edge of the bed and sat down hard, the mattress bouncing once beneath him. They stared at each other. The desire was gone. Wiped clean, replaced by something cold and stark and animal, the same expression on both their faces, identical masks of pure, undiluted terror.

Charlie stood in the dark of the closet, hand still wrapped around his cock, tears still wet on his cheeks.

Oh, fuck.

—

Didn’t see that one coming, did you? I just know you all thought Nick would fold again… but nope, our boy he’s tougher than that. And now things are getting messy. Charlie’s little web of lies is spreading, and it might be growing beyond his control. If you liked this chapter and wanna see what happens next, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Nothing gets me writing faster than that notification popping up.