five rules for impromptu threesomes. ben barnes/james mcavoy/keira knightley, nc-17.
First of all, if you haven't seen this yet, you need to. Look at James getting a little bit flustered and forgetting his notes, and saying ALL THE NICE THINGS, and Keira immediately hugging him when she comes onstage and then looking back for him after she does her speech, and the way they sort of scurry off together with their arms around each other. CUTEST, CUTEST. ♥_♥
And, secondly, what is this? Where did this come from? I wrote it in an embarrassingly short period of time and really have very little explanation for it. I just like writing about Ben Barnes becoming entangled in unexpected sexual situations, plus I think deep down I have always wanted to write Keira Knightley. I have adored her since I was about twelve. It was a lot of fun writing James, too - I have come to the conclusion that there needs to be more fic about him having sex.
ANYWAY, THIS MADE ME HAPPY, AND I'M GOING TO POST IT BEFORE I CHICKEN OUT.
Title: five rules for impromptu threesomes
Author: likecharity
Pairing: Ben Barnes/James McAvoy/Keira Knightley
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Real person het and slash, adultery
Summary: Entirely grey décor! Evil heron statues! Apricot beard shampoo! Conversational mazes! This is how Ben ends up taking James McAvoy and Keira Knightley back to his hotel room at nearly 2am on a Sunday. Well, a Monday, technically, which he's pretty sure makes it even weirder.
A/N: I keep thinking this is completely ridiculous, but then, James is friends with Keira and he is also friends with Ben and also I love them all, SHUT UP IT'S NOT THAT FAR-FETCHED. *looks again at summary* Okay...no, this is completely ridiculous.
Keira cocks her head. "You know, you're really quite lovely," she says, in something like bemusement.
They've been in the pub for about an hour now, at Ben's rough estimate, and it seems to have taken her this long to come to such a conclusion. He frowns. "James has been speaking well of me, then?"
"What?" Keira leans in. The pub is noisy, busy enough for them to be holed up in a corner without attracting too much attention. (One young woman did come over and shyly ask for Keira's autograph a while ago, but amusingly appeared not to recognise the men sitting with her.)
"You sound surprised," Ben says.
"Well," Keira says, looking a little bit caught out, and then she splutters with laughter. "I'm sorry." She reaches out to touch his arm, and Ben feels a shiver of pleasure at the casually affectionate touch. "He may have shared a story or two," she admits.
At that moment, James returns with their drinks, and Ben, ignoring Keira's half-frantic hand movements, says, "Didn't know you were so fond of slagging me off to your mates, McAvoy."
James looks puzzled for a moment as he unburdens himself of the three pints, and when he takes his seat again, he looks guilty. "Ah-well," he says sheepishly, "I can't make you sound too pleasant, can I? I don't want her abandoning this old man for a younger, better-looking version."
Keira actually snorts with laughter at this, which isn't particularly good timing considering she's got her pint lifted to her lips. She grabs a napkin and wipes her mouth, still giggling.
"We're like, a year or two apart in age," Ben reminds James.
"Yeah," Keira adds, and James gets a bony elbow in the ribs at this, "didn't realise you were so insecure."
Ben is surprised by their easy affection-they're very physical with each other, and very teasing, almost like brother and sister, and he hadn't quite realised they were so close. He knew Keira was a friend of James's, but he never heard him talk about her very often. Perhaps they're just on a high from the events of the night-they've just come from the Empire Awards, to which Ben declined his invitation, on account of the Killing Bono premiere being the very next night. Besides, Georgie and Will Poulter were going, and he figured they could represent the Narnia faction.
He'd hoped to spend the evening watching a movie with Robert or something, but it turned out Robert had plans, and after a couple of hours of sitting alone in his hotel room getting text updates from Georgie every twenty minutes (including a very excited "JAMES IS HERE!"), he started to feel very lonely and very bored and decided to go out and feel sorry for himself in a pub instead. And he'd only been there a little while when James and Keira happened to stumble in, bickering and giggly, shirking the awards after-party in favour of a nearby pub.
And so his quiet night in turned into a night of drinking with Keira Knightley, which was altogether unexpected, but certainly not unpleasant. He's a little nervous, of course, because she's beautiful and famous and he's sort of had a crush on her for years, not to mention the fact that this has come completely out of the blue, but the beer is helping and she's actually quite hilariously down-to-earth for someone who just won an Empire Hero award a few hours ago.
So he adapts to this surprising turn of events, and is just starting to feel comfortable when James says, "Wow, it's getting late. All right, whose hotel is nearest?"
And, it turns out: Ben's.
***
This is how Ben ends up taking James McAvoy and Keira Knightley back to his hotel room at nearly 2am on a Sunday. Well, a Monday, technically, which he's pretty sure makes it even weirder. Nobody has talked about why, exactly, they're doing this-there have only been vague, ostensible mentions of minibars and night caps-and Ben's nervousness is increasing by the minute. What state is his hotel room in? Did he leave underwear lying everywhere? How is he going to entertain them, he doesn't have anything for them to do-
James and Keira are completely unconcerned, spending the entire lift journey to Ben's floor exchanging soppy tales of the night's events.
"He was so sweet, Ben, seriously," Keira is saying, "he said a whole lot of completely unnecessary lovely things about me-"
"They were necessary," James cuts in, "because they were true."
They've reached Ben's room, so he unlocks it and ushers them inside awkwardly.
"You deserved all that, Keira, stop being so modest for once and admit that you're an incredible human being," James is saying as they wander into the room.
"Awww, James."
"Stop it, I'll get sick," Ben warns. He's not actually that drunk, but James retreats a little bit anyway.
Keira, slinging her purse over the bizarre heron sculpture by the door, just says, "You could, it might brighten up the place."
This, though gross, is a rather good point-the hotel room is almost entirely pale grey. It's also made up of a lot of straight lines and pointy corners, which Keira points out as she narrowly avoids stabbing herself in the shin on an inexplicably jagged chair.
"Not very soft or curvy, either, is it?" she says, making a few slightly tipsy, wavy hand gestures.
"You're one to talk," James replies, which gets him the elbow in the ribs again.
Ben-a little embarrassed, not quite comfortable with their easy camaraderie just yet-says, "No, it's not. I've only been here a few days and I think I've got a bruise from just about every piece of furniture."
"Including or excluding the heron?" James enquires, reaching out to touch it.
"Oh, I've got three from the heron," Ben says with a long-suffering sigh.
He sits down at the foot of the bed and starts unlacing his boots, trying to go about his normal routine like it isn't a little bit weird to have the two of them here, so late, in his hotel room. He might get away with telling himself that if it were just James, because they've been friends for quite a while now, but. But.
Keira Knightley.
Keira Knightley laughs at him and shrugs off her jacket onto his floor. It's grey, and almost disappears from sight entirely against the grey carpet. "Klutz," she says, in a way that's strangely affectionate.
"It's the beak!" Ben says defensively. James quickly retracts his hand from the bird, but neither of them are paying him any attention.
"You're exaggerating," Keira informs him, taking a step towards the bed. It's just one step, but it feels to Ben as though she's advancing on him.
"Oh, am I?" Ben says, somewhat stupidly. He pulls off his second boot and sets it down a little awkwardly beside the first. Dark brown, they stand out-he's actually stopped wearing the grey pair he brought, along with all his other grey clothing, simply because he couldn't stand being so colour-coordinated with his hotel's décor.
"Yeah," Keira says, "you're uncomfortable with the fact that we're both in your hotel room at 2 o'clock in the morning, so you're embellishing stories and making jokes to alleviate the tension."
"Keira Knightley: amateur psycho-analyst," James says from somewhere.
Ben is a little worried by the way James's seems to come from behind him, like maybe he's snooping around in the bathroom or something, but he's more immediately concerned with the fact that Keira actually is advancing on him now.
"What tension?" Ben says. He scans the room like he's looking for it. He discovers that it is everywhere. Also, that James is snooping around in the bathroom. Shit.
Keira laughs. "You're nervous," she says, almost gleefully, so close now that with one more step she'd be right between his legs.
"I think we've established that," he says. Nervously.
"Is it me?" Keira asks, smiling, coy.
Ben sort of wants to say, you're Keira Knightley, but she's probably aware of that. He flounders for a bit, trying to come up with something that's smooth and not idiotic.
"Ha!" A sudden hoot of laughter from the bathroom, and then James's voice again-"You use special beard shampoo?"
Keira falls back, dissolving into a fit of giggles. "Shut up!" is Ben's only available comeback.
James is cracking up too. "You've got, like, stubble, mate," he manages through his laughter, and then gestures at his own facial hair. "Now, this is a beard worth shampooing."
"Aww, lay off him," Keira says, then, relenting. "It's the twenty first century, James, men are allowed to groom."
"I am growing a beard," Ben says, still desperately trying to defend himself, "I-I can grow a beard," he looks back at James, "you've seen me with a beard-"
James just shakes his head, still laughing.
"Yeah, and at least his wasn't as ginger as yours is," Keira teases. James is gasping in mock-offense and threatening to chuck the shampoo bottle at her, and she's giggling adorably again and ducking, but Ben is momentarily distracted.
"Hang on, you-" he starts.
"What? I saw The Voyage of the Dawn Treader," Keira says with a shrug which just so happens to help her avoid the bottle being hurled in her direction. Unconcerned by her narrow escape, she adds, "I love those movies. Don't look so surprised. They're great."
Ben is not sure he can cope with this. He's horribly afraid that he might be blushing.
"Okay, it's made with apricot oil," Keira is saying now, inspecting the bottle, "that's going a little bit too far."
"It makes it soft?" Ben offers.
Keira tosses the bottle over her shoulder and looks at him doubtfully, hands on her hips. And then suddenly one of those hands is on Ben's face, sort of caressing him, and he jumps.
She grins. "It is pretty soft for stubble," she admits, "but Christ, you're nervous. You should try and calm down."
"He gets like this around pretty girls," says James, cruelly, appearing beside her.
"I-you-shut up," is Ben's reaction, and it is not unlike that of a fourteen year old boy being teased about his crush on a popular girl at school, so it sort of makes him want to die. He has to try and recover, but the best he can manage is blurting out, "I'm suave," which sends the two of them into fits of laughter again.
Ben is not suave. Ever. And especially not when he's in his weird grey hotel room at 2am wearing a Ghostbusters t-shirt and being ganged up on by two gussied-up movie stars fresh from an awards show-
His thoughts are beginning to get even more ridiculous than they usually are. He has to get a grip. He has to regain some sort of power here, maybe try and get the upper hand. "Oh, and I'm the only one?" he says. "Georgie told me you were like a lovesick puppy when you first started doing Atonement."
Resorting to these 'he-said-she-said' tactics is probably not the most mature idea in the world, but Ben is desperate.
James just brushes some imaginary lint off his shirt sleeve (wait, when did he take off his jacket? Where did he put it? God dammit, is it grey? They'll never find it again-) and says, "Ah, Ms. Knightley here no longer holds any mystery for me."
(-wait, what?)
"That's James's classy way of saying 'been there, done that'," Keira adds with a derisive snort, plopping herself down onto the bed beside Ben.
"Adultery's awfully stressful, you know," James says offhandedly, settling down on Ben's other side, and oh god, he's surrounded.
"You're-you're winding me up," Ben says, because really, it's the only logical explanation.
"What makes you think that?" asks James.
Ben doesn't answer for a moment, because he doesn't think now is the right time to mention that if James has slept with Keira Knightley, he is going to be irreversibly consumed with jealousy and they can no longer be friends.
Instead, he says, "You wouldn't cheat on Anne-Marie," but it comes out less decisive than it was in his head and almost sounds like a question.
"Maybe we have an open relationship," James shrugs.
"You don't have an open relationship," Ben says, "or you wouldn't have said the thing about adultery."
"Maybe that was to throw you off," James suggests. "Make it all sound seedier than it really was."
Ben feels as though he's trapped in some sort of conversational maze and he wonders if he'll ever get out.
"You're so resistant to the idea," James observes. "Hard to imagine?"
No, it's not hard to imagine-Ben has got that fucking library scene from Atonement practically burnt into his brain right now.
"Or maybe you're just jealous," James goes on. His voice is really close now, almost right in Ben's ear but not quite, all low and gravelly and stupidly Scottish-
"I don't think he's jealous," says Keira, and she's incredibly close all of a sudden too, and Ben can smell her perfume and feel the heat of her and oh god, her thigh is touching his. He's being drawn deeper and deeper into the conversational maze, and the metaphor is beginning to sound oddly sexual. He can't deal.
"No?"
"No," Keira says, "because I've been flirting with him all night and had no reciprocation, and I hardly think it's just because he's too dense to have noticed."
Ben makes a sort of pathetic, stunned squeaking sound at that, like he just ran head-first into one of the maze's walls. Hedges? Mazes are usually made with hedges, aren't they, he thinks wildly, only it wouldn't be such a big deal to run into a hedge and this, this is a hell of a big deal-
"I hate to break it to you," James says with a sigh, "but he really is that dense."
"I am," Ben blurts out. "Totally, completely dense. I'm sorry, I-" he actually works up the courage to turn and look at her at this point, and then all the words vanish from his head. The maze has swallowed him up. Keira's eyes are sparkling, and she looks mischievous and amused and beautiful and Ben wants to kiss her but he's scared. "I have a girlfriend," he says, because he's a complete, raging fool.
Keira's face falls, just a little.
"Actually," Ben says, grasping desperately for words that aren't stupid and failing to find any, "we did do that thing once-you know when you make lists, of celebrities you're allowed to-you know, have one night with if you ever happen to get the chance?"
Keira's face changes rapidly from disappointment to desperately trying not to burst out laughing. "Are you serious? I'm on your list?"
"Well-I-I maybe should have mentioned to her that I had a connection to you through a friend," Ben babbles, "not that, not that that makes it-"
"Am I on your list?" interrupts James. Ben is not sure if he's serious. He's grinning like a loon, but still seems to be expecting an answer.
"No," Ben replies. "You were-you were on hers though, I don't know if that-you know, counts."
Keira, suddenly serious, nods solemnly. "It counts," she says firmly. "That's one of the rules."
"What, the lists are interchangeable?" Ben asks, grinning and trying not to think about what all of this actually implies, lest he actually explode.
"Yup. Rule #2: The lists are interchangeable," Keira says, with another assured nod.
Ben laughs. "What was rule #1?"
Keira quirks an eyebrow. "Don't talk about Fight Club."
"I think," says Ben, and tries to stop smiling, "that you should kiss me now."
He actually thinks this is a pretty good line, and possibly his first proper attempt at being assertive all night, but Keira just looks amused.
"I'll kiss you when I'm good and ready," she replies, and then, regrettably, leans back a little bit.
"When will that be?" Ben asks before he can stop himself.
"When it's my turn," Keira shrugs. She shoots a look at James, and then inspects her nails indifferently. Ben blinks at her for a bit until she looks up. "Oh, don't think he hasn't told me about last Christmas's drunken snog," she says, rolling her eyes, "because I heard every detail."
James lets out a low chuckle, and Ben tries not to blush. Apparently, it's not something you can control. "That was-"
"Blah blah, drunken mistake, blah," Keira interrupts.
James is rolling up his sleeves, which is strangely business-like, but Ben is too busy staring at Keira to pay attention. Until he feels a hand rough on his jaw, pulling his head round.
James is grinning. "Let's give the lady what she wants, then," he gravels at him, and then oh, okay, this is really happening.
Everything is lips and tongue and beard, and Ben remembers distantly that James had a beard last time too and he liked it rather a lot, the slight pressure-scratch around his lips, something unfamiliar and strangely sexy. He also remembers that they said they'd never do this again, that it really was a drunken mistake, and right now that seems like a terrible flaw in their judgement because this is pretty fantastic. Ben has a habit of sort of forgetting how much he likes men until he has one in his bedroom and then everything sort of snowballs from there.
He's not sure what happens when a woman is added into the equation, especially when that woman is Keira fucking Knightley, but he's rather excited to find out.
Keira's hand is on his thigh, sort of gently squeezing as if in encouragement, but it startles him and he pulls back a little. James is flushed, and his forehead is slightly sweaty, and his lips, Jesus-
"Nice," Keira says approvingly from behind Ben. He tears himself away to look at her. "Nice?"
Ben nods somewhat weakly. "The," he says, and his voice sounds like it's coming out via a cheesegrater, so he stops and clears his throat and tries again. "The ginger-ness of the beard matters less when it's against your face," he says, and adds in a few vague hand gestures. It is a completely ridiculous sentence and he wishes he'd have shut up when he paused instead of soldiering on, but Keira is grinning at him like she thinks he's cute, so maybe it's okay.
"Interesting," she says. "He was always clean-shaven when I kissed him. Mind if I try?"
Ben stammers, and James says, mockingly, "Whose permission are you asking?"
Keira flicks out her tongue, kittenish. "I don't know," she says, "do I need it?" She leans across Ben, her hand tightening on his thigh.
"Minx," James bites out, and then their mouths meet, and Ben starts to think that maybe they weren't winding him up after all, because it certainly looks like a kiss between two people who once had some kind of sordid affair. In fact, it looks like a kiss between two people who once had a sordid affair and have done nothing but think obsessively about it ever since it came to an end. There is passion, and also a sort of relief to it; Keira sighing against James's lips like she's been waiting.
There's also a slight messiness there, like it's something they've done a lot, like they're used to each other's mouths, and James reaches up to take Keira's face in his hands, to kiss her deeper, and Ben is not sure he's ever witnessed a kiss this close-up before. It's surprisingly nice to watch, though it's making him long to feel that gentle burn of James's beard on his own skin again, and to know what Keira tastes like.
He feels ignored, all of a sudden. He does the first thing he can think of, and clears his throat again, a cartoonish "ahem" that has the two of them breaking apart sheepishly, Keira tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as James's hands slip from her face.
"Rule #3," says Ben, "try and remember there's a third person in the room."
It's kind of a dickish thing to say and he almost immediately regrets it, only he doesn't quite have a chance, because suddenly Keira is kissing him and that's one hell of a distraction. She tastes like James, smoky and warm, and her hand is creeping up his thigh. She's so forward.
And then James is there too, closing in until they shift, make space, and Ben has never kissed two people at once before, and it's messy and hot, and it sends a thrill right through him as he feels James's hand steady on his back. He's growing hard already, Keira's hand edging its way up between his legs and then gently stroking there.
He pulls back and gasps involuntarily at the touch, and James and Keira barely bat an eye, go on kissing each other like he was never there. This should bother him, Ben thinks distantly, but Keira is currently unzipping his trousers so he doesn't feel as left out as he might. She caresses him through the thin fabric layer of his boxers, and then pulls away from James to kiss Ben once again, stroking him to full, aching hardness beneath her hand. There's a rustle of fabric from Ben's left; James is unbuttoning his shirt, pulling it off.
Ben draws back, and says, slightly breathless and in disbelief, "What are we doing?" He laughs a little, dazed, and Keira's lips quiver before she breaks into a huge grin.
"I have no idea," James replies with a chuckle. "'s pretty good though, isn't it?"
Ben can't help but kiss him at that, at least until Keira is easing his erection out of his boxers and he feels the cool air of the room against hot sticky skin and then the tight wrap of her fingers around him-and then he's panting and sort of clutching at her, pulling her into another kiss and trying to slide his hand beneath her dress, their arms crossing between them.
Keira's dress is all scratchy lace and has some sort of strange flower-shaped sequins on it which scrape the back of his hand. He thought she was supposed to be a fashion icon or something, but what she's wearing tonight is really kind of weird, and has caused him to draw back from her suddenly and hiss with pain. She smirks at him, leaning in until she's so close she's a blur. She keeps eye contact as she takes his hand firmly and shoves it under her dress, spreading her legs for him, and he feels damp hot silk against his fingers and shitshitshit he has his hand between Keira Knightley's legs-
She kisses him again, slow, soft, and curls her hand tighter around his cock, goes slow here too, a gentle up-down as his own fingers fumble, pushing up over fabric and then easing down past a waistband. She lets out a shaky breath against his lips that almost sounds like a thrilled little laugh when his fingers slide down through soft sparse hair and into slick hot folds, and then her kiss is fierce when their lips meet again, her hand working him faster now as his middle finger pushes inside of her.
He's almost forgotten about James entirely, and then he feels a hand spread out over his knee. James comes closer, and there's a brush of beard against Ben's neck and then he's kissing his throat, wet, open-mouthed, tongue against pulse and Ben moans out loud, fucking Keira with two fingers now and feeling the rhythm of her hand around him speed up. The angle is awkward; his hand is trapped inside her knickers and beneath her dress, restricted; but none of it seems to matter-James's teeth skim tendon and his breath is wet-hot against Ben's skin, and Ben feels like he could come right here, right now.
"Rule #3," James pants, and Ben can feel his smile, the bastard, that flash of teeth against his neck, and Keira is laughing suddenly, high and sweet in Ben's ear.
"Somebody's demanding," Ben murmurs, but slides his hand over James's crotch anyway, experiences a little sort of jolt in his heart when he feels the bulge there, the heat and the hardness beneath the thick denim of James's jeans. Which are grey. He swallows down a joke.
Keira lets go of Ben, reaching across for James instead with both hands. "Oh, you fucker," she swears, and the outburst actually makes Ben jump, "why'd you wear a belt? Bloody-"
She's yanking at it, agitated, and he's cracking up, and Ben starts to feel like this is maybe an inside joke. It's undone in no time, though, and Ben takes over, unbuttoning, unzipping, and he's startled to feel hot flesh beneath his fingers almost instantly.
"You wore a belt but didn't bother with underwear?" Keira laughs in disbelief, her fingers running over James's erection where Ben is faltering, caught off guard somehow.
He didn't give himself a chance to ready himself for this, for the feel of James's cock beneath his hand, to see it thick and flushed and leaking a dark spot of pre-come against the denim of his jeans-Ben swallows a mouthful of saliva, licks his lips uneasily. This probably shouldn't be a bigger deal than the fact that he's currently got two fingers knuckle-deep in Keira Knightley, but somehow it is. Maybe just because James is his friend.
"Sorry, Ben," Keira says then, with a pout, "rule #3 is tricky."
Her hand returns to Ben, and his hips buck, welcoming it, and he tries to find rhythm again, fingers twisting inside of her, but as his fingers brush the hot skin of James's cock it's hard to focus. He takes it in his hand, and exhales shakily at the feel of it filling his fist. His thumb skims the wetness at the tip, and James hisses, swears. God, it feels good to make him do that. Ben does it again, hungry for that reaction, that noise, and he's only moved his hand maybe three times before he can't take it anymore.
He pulls away, hand slipping out of Keira's knickers as he sinks to the floor, babbling nonsense apologies, something like "Sorry, I-I just-I have to-"
And then he's on his knees between James's legs and breathing him in, and this is how it goes-he forgets how much he loves this, and then the opportunity is presented and he goes crazy for it, greedy, eager. And it's been too long.
He takes James in his mouth before giving himself a chance to think about it much further, rolls his tongue over the swollen flesh and swallows him down deep, even as his throat protests, out of practice. His watering eyes flicker up and he sees James, speechless, head thrown back, hands flexing and clenching around the edge of the bed. Keira looks astonished and maybe a little bit impressed, her mouth open.
Ben suckles, hardly able to control himself, head bobbing between James's thighs, one hand steadied on a hip and the other snaking its way up to James's chest, following a trail of hair. James is swearing breathlessly, hardly able to get the words out. It's a combination, Ben thinks, of how it feels and how much of a shock it is-and Ben understands, because he's just as surprised as they are.
"Is he good?" Keira asks softly, sliding over to James across the space that Ben left and nuzzling close to him, lips brushing his ear. "He looks like he's good."
"Christ, he's good," James forces out, and kisses her, a large hand raking through her hair. His voice lowers as he murmurs against her lips, "You wet, darling? Watching him suck me off?"
"James," Keira squirms, and Ben thinks-mistakenly-that she's embarrassed, and maybe it's because he is, blushing at the words even though that is what he's doing, James's dick deep in his mouth, sliding over his tongue.
James reaches under the skirt of her dress, and Ben sees his hand moving beneath the fabric, slipping into her knickers.
"Oh, yeah," he grins, his voice so deep and rough, "you're soaked," he says, and she whimpers, clutching at his chest, and Ben is transfixed, his face burning, his throat burning as he struggles to take James all the way in, over and over.
Keira's hands fumble with her dress, hitching it up a little to expose her pale thighs and then pulling down the zip under her arm. Ben catches a glimpse of ivory skin and the ripple of her ribs and then she's distracted, moaning "Fuck," loud, her hips twisting. "Oh, fuck, that's good, fuck."
Whatever it is, James keep doing it, and Ben watches the rapid movement of his arm, muscles trembling with movement, and the way his face is screwed up, eyes tight shut in an expression almost like a grimace.
"Jesus," he says, and he sounds wrecked, "can we make rule #4 'keep doing that'?"
Ben is flustered, surprised with himself, almost ashamed at his own enthusiasm, and pulls off and wipes at his wet mouth with the back of his hand. He finds that there's spit on his chin, trickling down his neck, and he feels red-hot, trying to keep his cool. "I dunno," he says with a shrug, and god, if James sounds wrecked, Ben sounds like his voice has been through a fucking combine harvester, "my jaw's starting to get kinda sore."
James laughs at him, shaking his head. "You little bastard."
"Here," says Keira, taking James by the wrist, easing his hand from between her legs and slipping off the bed with surprising grace despite the fact that her dress is yanked up around her waist by this point and her legs are wobbly, "let me help with that."
She budges Ben aside, her hips bumping his. James opens his legs wider to make space for her, but says, "Oh, Keira, you don't have to-"
And it seems to Ben like there's something unspoken here, like maybe this isn't something Keira likes, or something she never used to do with him, and once again Ben is blindsided by the fact that James and Keira seriously had a secret affair-
Keira holds up one hand, silencing James before he can finish his sentence. She then curls that hand around the base of his cock, nestled against pubic hair and holding tight. "You said so many nice things about me tonight, James," she says, coyly, "how can I show my thanks?"
James laughs, and there are no further complaints as she dips her head, swirls her tongue over him, just tasting. Ben is painfully hard, throbbing as he takes himself in hand and watches, watches Keira lips kiss the head of James's dick and then open up and slide down his length. She goes as far as she can and then tenses up and pulls back with a wet noise before going again, her hand stroking what she can't fit in, and god, it's quite possibly the hottest thing Ben has ever seen.
He can't help himself, though-in moments he's shuffling forward again on his knees, ducking down, tongue flicking out over James's balls. They draw up a little under his tongue and James shudders, and his arms, holding him up, start to give out gradually until his back's flat against the mattress. His legs spread out further and he groans, and Ben's tongue slicks over Keira's knuckles and the sticky-hot skin between her fingers and then her lips, and then they're kissing, and licking at James at the same time-clumsy and messy and good.
Keira has her other hand between her legs like Ben, working furiously, but it's not enough. She pulls off and Ben hears her say, in a pleading tone, "James, I need you," which is so fucking vague that it's like she's in a romance novel, but James knows exactly what she means and gestures, beckons for her.
And then she's pulling her rucked-up dress over her head, hooking her thumbs into her knickers and yanking them down, kicking off her heels on the way. She's even prettier naked, somehow, Ben thinks, shapely thighs and hard little nipples and the gentle flare-out of her gorgeous hips-and he watches as she crawls up the bed and positions herself over James's face, tossing one leg carelessly over him and easing herself down, graceful as a cat, still on all fours with her hands splayed out over James's stomach and her bony knees right up against his shoulders.
Her hips are a V, the bones casting gentle shadow, leading down to where James's tongue spreads out flat against her, everything red and wet and shining, and she moans openly, fingertips pressing into the skin of James's stomach. She rides him like that, a slow grind of her hips that grows faster. Ben tears his eyes away for a moment to look down at the straining erection in front of him, rigid and glistening, and he takes it between his lips and sucks it down, all the while keeping his eyes on the sight above him.
Keira is lost in her own pleasure, lifting up now, hands steadied behind her on the bed as she bears down on James's tongue and rocks against his mouth. Her navel piercing glints in the light and her torso is so stretched, flat, taut, as she casts her head back, exposing the pale column of her neck. Her hips work faster and she's swearing, chanting a litany of dirt, and James's beard is slick and scratching lightly against delicate skin, and Ben realises he was wrong-this is the hottest thing he's ever seen.
He tries to watch and suck James at once. His throat hurts and his lips stretch and it's good, so good, but then Keira is coming and Ben loses the ability to multitask, just freezes with his lips open at the head of James's cock and watches. Keira's whole body goes tense, and she spits out, "Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck," and holds still until James can barely breathe, and then she's trembling like a leaf in the breeze and easing off him, loose-limbed and dazed. James is about as breathless as she is, his chin and cheeks shining, and he wipes his mouth with an open hand and grins at her, almost adoringly.
"You all right?" Maybe a little bit smug, as well.
"Shut up," she breathes, barely even a whisper, punching him weakly in the shoulder.
Ben isn't entirely sure what's going to happen now-it's as if it was all fun and games, but now someone has had an actual orgasm and somehow it's upped the stakes or something, and he has condoms in the bathroom somewhere and he wonders if he should go get them or if that would be presumptuous-but he and James are still hard as rocks here and Keira's recovering like she's ready for another round of it and-
"You ready for me, darling?" James asks, low, just a little bit mocking.
"I'm always ready," Keira shoots back instantly, lips curling into a grin that shows her teeth.
Yes, Ben decides. Now is the time to go and get the condoms.
He hurries off into the bathroom, shedding the rest of his clothes on the way, and, after a few moments of rummaging, he finds a rather crushed box in the bottom of his wash bag. James and Keira are kissing when he returns, in the centre of the bed, Keira practically in James's lap. James is naked now too, and Ben has to admit it's a little bit jarring to re-enter your bedroom (hotel or otherwise) and find a couple of naked people rutting against each other.
Not that he minds it.
"I want you to take me from behind," Keira is whispering, and Ben seriously did not know that Keira Knightley had such a mouth on her, "like that time in Venice, yeah?"
James is bucking up against her inner thigh, hard and wet and clumsy-desperate. Like he's remembering.
Ben thinks of Georgie's jumbled text from earlier in the evening about how James had given Keira the 'cutest intro eva' and Keira had apparently 'pounced' on him when she'd given her acceptance speech. He's beginning to feel as though this is a foregone conclusion, that James and Keira were always going to fuck tonight. Ben has just happened to get in the way, and it's so inevitable that even that's not stopping them.
Again, not that he minds it. "Er," he says somewhat awkwardly, tossing the condoms onto the bed, and James gropes for them without taking his eyes off her.
Going from that to fucking seems to happen in the blink of an eye. Keira is on all fours again, across the bed this time as James stands at the side of it, hands wrapped around the jut of her hips and holding her steady as he pushes into her slick heat.
"Oh, don't go slow," Keira begs, brokenly, "please, James, don't-fuck-you fucking tease-"
James chuckles, low in his throat, and Ben is mesmerised, watching, sinking down onto the bed. "Ah, that's not what you want?" James asks. He shoots a look at Ben. Smirks. He is a tease.
"James," Keira pleads, and it sounds so pretty, and she's wriggling back towards him, trying to take him in on her own.
"What do you want?" James mutters, like he knows exactly what he's doing and he's loving it.
"I want you, Jesus fuck," Keira swears, "I want you in my cunt, filling me up. I want you fast-a-and hard-and," she breaks off, hissing angrily, "I've been waiting too fucking long for this, James, don't you dare make me wai-"
And with that, James bucks forward, fills her with one quick thrust, deep and fast and sudden, and Keira cuts herself off with a moan. James echoes it, unable to stop himself. His eyes roll back in his head. The rules, Ben thinks, do not matter in the slightest right now-he's never been more happy to be a third wheel. They look so good, like nothing on earth has ever felt as good to them as this moment right now. James is fully sheathed inside of her, deep as he can be and savouring it, his knuckles going white around her hips, and Keira falls down onto her elbows like her arms aren't strong enough to hold her. She clutches the grey sheets and her palms are sweaty, turning them darker, vague handprints on the satiny fabric.
James draws back slowly, like he can't bear it, and the friction makes him groan again-that low rumble of a sound that Ben is beginning to love. He pulls back like that, only to slam in again, and again and again, driving into her over and over until she's practically screaming, and Ben remembers distantly that Robert Sheehan is a few doors down and can probably hear them but he doesn't fucking care-
"Is that what you want?" James grits out, reaching along the slender pale plane of her back and resting his fingers between her shoulder blades for a moment, letting them play there, drum against her spine. She arches her back at the touch, head thrown back, and his fingers creep further forward.
"Ye-es," Keira manages, and to Ben's surprise she takes James's fingers in her mouth, bites down and sucks, moaning around them.
Then James's hand goes to her throat briefly, then over her shoulder, wet fingers splayed against her collarbone and squeezing. Ben might worry, he thinks, about how rough James is being, if Keira didn't seem to love it so much. He thinks, suddenly, wildly, about what it must feel like-to be on all fours for James like that, to feel that thick cock stretching and filling him, stroking from the inside out and making him scream. That's not something he's ever done, ever even wanted-but damn, she makes it look so good.
"Ben," Keira says suddenly, and he's still not even used to hearing her say his name, like she knows him, like they didn't only just meet tonight, but he shuffles towards her anyway, eyebrows raised, questioning but not yet able to speak. "C'mere," she juts her chin at him, "I can-"
He realises what she means, and his cock aches for it, but-Jesus, he doesn't deserve that, he hasn't been showering her with praise tonight-or, he has, but only in his own brain, pretty much ever since he saw fucking Bend It Like Beckham in fact, and oh god, now is not the time to be thinking about that because she's grasping his thighs and tonguing the tip of his cock and then something hurts, suddenly, a press of her thumb into something tender-
"Wow, you weren't exaggerating about the bruises," she says breathlessly, and Ben remembers the little purplish marks, about eight of them, one as high as his ribs and the others spread out over his legs.
"The heron," Ben says, grinning at her, "it's lethal."
"You poor thing," she soothes, grinning knowingly, and takes his cock into her mouth, wet warmth enveloping him unsteadily as she rocks back and forth with the force of James's thrusts. The tiniest scrape of teeth, and Ben jolts; her tongue slicks over the head and something churns inside of him and he has to try not to come-
"I want you to fuck me," Keira says suddenly, like she maybe just decided right then and there.
James is pulling her back against him, slower, his hands all over her body and they look so big against her wiry frame. He raises one eyebrow at Ben, and Ben can't interpret the look-it's mocking, but it's almost an invitation as well, a challenge, like yeah, she wants it, but can you give it to her? And Ben wants to try. God, he wants to try.
"O-okay," Ben says shakily, gets a condom for himself and tries not think about any of what's happening, because if he really thinks about it he's pretty sure he'll just lose it right now, come all over his own hands while she's waiting for him.
She's pulling back the covers, settling herself under them, and James laughs at her as he slides off his condom, practically sauntering over towards the bathroom to chuck it out. He's so casual about this it's almost infuriating, and Ben can't help the competitive urges that well up inside of him as a result-it's always been like this, ever since they met, because Ben was the new guy on the Narnia set and pretty much taking James's place, and it's never been hostile but they get possessive and they're always trying to prove themselves.
He lays down next to Keira, on his side, facing her, and she smiles, wraps one arm around him.
"You good?" she asks, but doesn't wait for an answer, just hitches up one leg, throws it over his waist and reaches down between her legs to help him inside of her.
She squirms as she eases herself down onto his cock. She's hot and wet around him as he's surrounded inch by inch, and it's so intimate, face to face-he can feel her breath as she sighs, and see the tiny changes in her expression as she takes him deeper. He stares at her beautiful face, her cheeks stained pink and her lower lip caught in her teeth, her eyelashes casting feathery shadows. It all feels a bit surreal and he might doubt that it's really happening, but she feels so real around him, smooth and tight and perfect.
Ben is aware of James's presence, like maybe he's standing in the doorway of the bathroom, silently watching. And then the mattress dips and James is behind him, pressing in close, sweaty-hot skin. Ben can feel James's cock, hot and stiff against his lower back.
James hooks his chin over Ben's shoulder. His beard scritches against Ben's skin again and Ben shudders. Keira isn't looking at him anymore, her gaze shifted just a little bit to the side, fixed on James. For a moment Ben expects something, some sort of banter, dirty talk-but there's nothing, just their eyes, intense and staring. Ben's hips are moving slow, more up and down than back and forth, and each movement sends James's cock sliding over his back now. And god, he's had it in his mouth but it was nothing like this, pressed right against his skin and hard enough to bruise, and James's lips are on his shoulder, kissing sloppily as he starts to move with them, adopting their rhythm.
"Ah," James's breath catches, "oh, yeah, fuckin' hell, that's good," and the sound of his voice makes Ben fuck Keira harder. She's clutching at him, pearly-pink fingernails digging into skin. Ben isn't going to last.
James slides his cock into the crease of Ben's arse, and maybe it was intentional, maybe not-it doesn't seem to matter. "Oh, fuck," James groans out, slicking his cock along the crevice, his hand grasping Ben's hip tight and bringing him back against him, and Ben allows it, his own hand on Keira's bony hip and gripping just as hard. Her eyes are glazed over, lips glossy, and it looks like she's nodding at him. Maybe it's just the clumsy thrusts, Ben beginning to lose control. Maybe she's encouraging him.
God, she's so beautiful, he thinks, as James's teeth graze the line of his shoulder. Keira's eyelids flutter; she churns her hips. James's cock presses between Ben's legs and meets resistance before pushing back up, again and again, growing frantic. He's grunting out, "Fuck," still, and Keira is silent but for breathy whimpers.
James is getting closer. "Make some noise for me, Ben," he murmurs, low and urgent, "how does she feel?"
And Ben bites down on anxious laughter, overwhelmed. His voice is shaky when he says "Good," and the word comes out long.
Apparently it's enough-James grips him tight and holds him so close Ben feels him everywhere, and his hips jerk up and he comes, spurting sudden and hot between them with a broken groan. Ben feels it on his skin, dripping down onto the covers, and it's intimate and it's dirty and when James continues to rock against him, slower this time, cock sliding through his come, Ben feels his own orgasm coursing through him. Keira kisses him and sinks down, takes him deep, and he comes with an almost strangled sort of cry against her mouth, feeling as if the room is spinning.
When he regains the use of his eyes, and things stop looking so sparkly and blurred, Keira is kissing James instead, and they're both sort of smiling.
"God," says Ben weakly, "I feel disgusting."
"Crushing guilt already?" asks James absentmindedly. "That's rather quick, isn't it?"
"I meant the fact that I'm drenched in the sweat of three people and I've got your come all over my back," Ben says wryly, and then adds, "smartarse."
"Do you have any food?" Keira asks. Actually, what she says is "Do you have any foo-" and then interrupts herself with a long yawn, but Ben gets the gist and shakes his head. She pouts, and then lights up. "Oh wait, I've got a Bounty in my purse."
"You've got a Bounty in your purse?" Ben repeats, grinning.
"Of course she's got a Bounty in her purse," James says, as Keira disentangles herself from them and practically slithers out of bed.
"Oh-while you're up," says James, and Ben jumps when he feels James's hands sneaking down between his legs and fumbling blindly with the condom. Impressively, he manages to tie it off under the covers, and he presents it to Keira.
"Oh, charming," Keira says, but takes it anyway and pads into the bathroom. They hear her washing her hands and then heading back into the bedroom, over to the heron. "Pardon me, sir," she says to it with a little bow, unhooking her purse's handle from its beak.
"Don't be so polite to it, it's vicious," Ben tells her sleepily.
He rolls over and James sort of throws an arm over his chest. It's too hot, really, to have someone else's limbs draped over him like that, but he finds that he doesn't mind. He looks at James, who is yawning, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. His hair is all mussed up and his face is red and his beard is sort of glistening, but he still looks handsome. He does 'dishevelled' rather well, Ben thinks.
Keira is munching on half a Bounty bar, trying not to lean against any of the sharp furniture.
"You can eat that in bed," Ben offers. "I'm going to have to change these sheets anyway."
"Really?" Keira seems thrilled by this. "Wicked."
She clambers back into bed with them and finishes it off happily.
"A birthday, an award, and two men in my bed," she remarks then, snuggling down under the grey covers, "this has turned out to be a remarkably good week."
"It's not actually your bed," Ben points out.
Keira waves this off. "Another blessing," she says. "This thing is a hazard." She lifts up one of her long pale legs to show him a blossoming bruise just beneath her knee.
"I did warn you," Ben chuckles.
"I'm tired," Keira says, tucking her leg back under the covers and rolling over onto her side, pressing her lips to Ben's shoulder as she curls up against him.
"Me too." Ben looks at her, at the smudged eye make-up she hasn't bothered to remove, and he leans in, nuzzling her nose gently with his own. She smiles, and kisses him, tasting like chocolate and coconut.
"Me too," James echoes from Ben's other side. "I have an idea."
"Oh? What's that, then?" Keira asks through a yawn, settling down, one hand under the grey pillows.
"Rule #5," James announces, and then says simply, "sleep."
End.
And, secondly, what is this? Where did this come from? I wrote it in an embarrassingly short period of time and really have very little explanation for it. I just like writing about Ben Barnes becoming entangled in unexpected sexual situations, plus I think deep down I have always wanted to write Keira Knightley. I have adored her since I was about twelve. It was a lot of fun writing James, too - I have come to the conclusion that there needs to be more fic about him having sex.
ANYWAY, THIS MADE ME HAPPY, AND I'M GOING TO POST IT BEFORE I CHICKEN OUT.
Title: five rules for impromptu threesomes
Author: likecharity
Pairing: Ben Barnes/James McAvoy/Keira Knightley
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Real person het and slash, adultery
Summary: Entirely grey décor! Evil heron statues! Apricot beard shampoo! Conversational mazes! This is how Ben ends up taking James McAvoy and Keira Knightley back to his hotel room at nearly 2am on a Sunday. Well, a Monday, technically, which he's pretty sure makes it even weirder.
A/N: I keep thinking this is completely ridiculous, but then, James is friends with Keira and he is also friends with Ben and also I love them all, SHUT UP IT'S NOT THAT FAR-FETCHED. *looks again at summary* Okay...no, this is completely ridiculous.
Keira cocks her head. "You know, you're really quite lovely," she says, in something like bemusement.
They've been in the pub for about an hour now, at Ben's rough estimate, and it seems to have taken her this long to come to such a conclusion. He frowns. "James has been speaking well of me, then?"
"What?" Keira leans in. The pub is noisy, busy enough for them to be holed up in a corner without attracting too much attention. (One young woman did come over and shyly ask for Keira's autograph a while ago, but amusingly appeared not to recognise the men sitting with her.)
"You sound surprised," Ben says.
"Well," Keira says, looking a little bit caught out, and then she splutters with laughter. "I'm sorry." She reaches out to touch his arm, and Ben feels a shiver of pleasure at the casually affectionate touch. "He may have shared a story or two," she admits.
At that moment, James returns with their drinks, and Ben, ignoring Keira's half-frantic hand movements, says, "Didn't know you were so fond of slagging me off to your mates, McAvoy."
James looks puzzled for a moment as he unburdens himself of the three pints, and when he takes his seat again, he looks guilty. "Ah-well," he says sheepishly, "I can't make you sound too pleasant, can I? I don't want her abandoning this old man for a younger, better-looking version."
Keira actually snorts with laughter at this, which isn't particularly good timing considering she's got her pint lifted to her lips. She grabs a napkin and wipes her mouth, still giggling.
"We're like, a year or two apart in age," Ben reminds James.
"Yeah," Keira adds, and James gets a bony elbow in the ribs at this, "didn't realise you were so insecure."
Ben is surprised by their easy affection-they're very physical with each other, and very teasing, almost like brother and sister, and he hadn't quite realised they were so close. He knew Keira was a friend of James's, but he never heard him talk about her very often. Perhaps they're just on a high from the events of the night-they've just come from the Empire Awards, to which Ben declined his invitation, on account of the Killing Bono premiere being the very next night. Besides, Georgie and Will Poulter were going, and he figured they could represent the Narnia faction.
He'd hoped to spend the evening watching a movie with Robert or something, but it turned out Robert had plans, and after a couple of hours of sitting alone in his hotel room getting text updates from Georgie every twenty minutes (including a very excited "JAMES IS HERE!"), he started to feel very lonely and very bored and decided to go out and feel sorry for himself in a pub instead. And he'd only been there a little while when James and Keira happened to stumble in, bickering and giggly, shirking the awards after-party in favour of a nearby pub.
And so his quiet night in turned into a night of drinking with Keira Knightley, which was altogether unexpected, but certainly not unpleasant. He's a little nervous, of course, because she's beautiful and famous and he's sort of had a crush on her for years, not to mention the fact that this has come completely out of the blue, but the beer is helping and she's actually quite hilariously down-to-earth for someone who just won an Empire Hero award a few hours ago.
So he adapts to this surprising turn of events, and is just starting to feel comfortable when James says, "Wow, it's getting late. All right, whose hotel is nearest?"
And, it turns out: Ben's.
***
This is how Ben ends up taking James McAvoy and Keira Knightley back to his hotel room at nearly 2am on a Sunday. Well, a Monday, technically, which he's pretty sure makes it even weirder. Nobody has talked about why, exactly, they're doing this-there have only been vague, ostensible mentions of minibars and night caps-and Ben's nervousness is increasing by the minute. What state is his hotel room in? Did he leave underwear lying everywhere? How is he going to entertain them, he doesn't have anything for them to do-
James and Keira are completely unconcerned, spending the entire lift journey to Ben's floor exchanging soppy tales of the night's events.
"He was so sweet, Ben, seriously," Keira is saying, "he said a whole lot of completely unnecessary lovely things about me-"
"They were necessary," James cuts in, "because they were true."
They've reached Ben's room, so he unlocks it and ushers them inside awkwardly.
"You deserved all that, Keira, stop being so modest for once and admit that you're an incredible human being," James is saying as they wander into the room.
"Awww, James."
"Stop it, I'll get sick," Ben warns. He's not actually that drunk, but James retreats a little bit anyway.
Keira, slinging her purse over the bizarre heron sculpture by the door, just says, "You could, it might brighten up the place."
This, though gross, is a rather good point-the hotel room is almost entirely pale grey. It's also made up of a lot of straight lines and pointy corners, which Keira points out as she narrowly avoids stabbing herself in the shin on an inexplicably jagged chair.
"Not very soft or curvy, either, is it?" she says, making a few slightly tipsy, wavy hand gestures.
"You're one to talk," James replies, which gets him the elbow in the ribs again.
Ben-a little embarrassed, not quite comfortable with their easy camaraderie just yet-says, "No, it's not. I've only been here a few days and I think I've got a bruise from just about every piece of furniture."
"Including or excluding the heron?" James enquires, reaching out to touch it.
"Oh, I've got three from the heron," Ben says with a long-suffering sigh.
He sits down at the foot of the bed and starts unlacing his boots, trying to go about his normal routine like it isn't a little bit weird to have the two of them here, so late, in his hotel room. He might get away with telling himself that if it were just James, because they've been friends for quite a while now, but. But.
Keira Knightley.
Keira Knightley laughs at him and shrugs off her jacket onto his floor. It's grey, and almost disappears from sight entirely against the grey carpet. "Klutz," she says, in a way that's strangely affectionate.
"It's the beak!" Ben says defensively. James quickly retracts his hand from the bird, but neither of them are paying him any attention.
"You're exaggerating," Keira informs him, taking a step towards the bed. It's just one step, but it feels to Ben as though she's advancing on him.
"Oh, am I?" Ben says, somewhat stupidly. He pulls off his second boot and sets it down a little awkwardly beside the first. Dark brown, they stand out-he's actually stopped wearing the grey pair he brought, along with all his other grey clothing, simply because he couldn't stand being so colour-coordinated with his hotel's décor.
"Yeah," Keira says, "you're uncomfortable with the fact that we're both in your hotel room at 2 o'clock in the morning, so you're embellishing stories and making jokes to alleviate the tension."
"Keira Knightley: amateur psycho-analyst," James says from somewhere.
Ben is a little worried by the way James's seems to come from behind him, like maybe he's snooping around in the bathroom or something, but he's more immediately concerned with the fact that Keira actually is advancing on him now.
"What tension?" Ben says. He scans the room like he's looking for it. He discovers that it is everywhere. Also, that James is snooping around in the bathroom. Shit.
Keira laughs. "You're nervous," she says, almost gleefully, so close now that with one more step she'd be right between his legs.
"I think we've established that," he says. Nervously.
"Is it me?" Keira asks, smiling, coy.
Ben sort of wants to say, you're Keira Knightley, but she's probably aware of that. He flounders for a bit, trying to come up with something that's smooth and not idiotic.
"Ha!" A sudden hoot of laughter from the bathroom, and then James's voice again-"You use special beard shampoo?"
Keira falls back, dissolving into a fit of giggles. "Shut up!" is Ben's only available comeback.
James is cracking up too. "You've got, like, stubble, mate," he manages through his laughter, and then gestures at his own facial hair. "Now, this is a beard worth shampooing."
"Aww, lay off him," Keira says, then, relenting. "It's the twenty first century, James, men are allowed to groom."
"I am growing a beard," Ben says, still desperately trying to defend himself, "I-I can grow a beard," he looks back at James, "you've seen me with a beard-"
James just shakes his head, still laughing.
"Yeah, and at least his wasn't as ginger as yours is," Keira teases. James is gasping in mock-offense and threatening to chuck the shampoo bottle at her, and she's giggling adorably again and ducking, but Ben is momentarily distracted.
"Hang on, you-" he starts.
"What? I saw The Voyage of the Dawn Treader," Keira says with a shrug which just so happens to help her avoid the bottle being hurled in her direction. Unconcerned by her narrow escape, she adds, "I love those movies. Don't look so surprised. They're great."
Ben is not sure he can cope with this. He's horribly afraid that he might be blushing.
"Okay, it's made with apricot oil," Keira is saying now, inspecting the bottle, "that's going a little bit too far."
"It makes it soft?" Ben offers.
Keira tosses the bottle over her shoulder and looks at him doubtfully, hands on her hips. And then suddenly one of those hands is on Ben's face, sort of caressing him, and he jumps.
She grins. "It is pretty soft for stubble," she admits, "but Christ, you're nervous. You should try and calm down."
"He gets like this around pretty girls," says James, cruelly, appearing beside her.
"I-you-shut up," is Ben's reaction, and it is not unlike that of a fourteen year old boy being teased about his crush on a popular girl at school, so it sort of makes him want to die. He has to try and recover, but the best he can manage is blurting out, "I'm suave," which sends the two of them into fits of laughter again.
Ben is not suave. Ever. And especially not when he's in his weird grey hotel room at 2am wearing a Ghostbusters t-shirt and being ganged up on by two gussied-up movie stars fresh from an awards show-
His thoughts are beginning to get even more ridiculous than they usually are. He has to get a grip. He has to regain some sort of power here, maybe try and get the upper hand. "Oh, and I'm the only one?" he says. "Georgie told me you were like a lovesick puppy when you first started doing Atonement."
Resorting to these 'he-said-she-said' tactics is probably not the most mature idea in the world, but Ben is desperate.
James just brushes some imaginary lint off his shirt sleeve (wait, when did he take off his jacket? Where did he put it? God dammit, is it grey? They'll never find it again-) and says, "Ah, Ms. Knightley here no longer holds any mystery for me."
(-wait, what?)
"That's James's classy way of saying 'been there, done that'," Keira adds with a derisive snort, plopping herself down onto the bed beside Ben.
"Adultery's awfully stressful, you know," James says offhandedly, settling down on Ben's other side, and oh god, he's surrounded.
"You're-you're winding me up," Ben says, because really, it's the only logical explanation.
"What makes you think that?" asks James.
Ben doesn't answer for a moment, because he doesn't think now is the right time to mention that if James has slept with Keira Knightley, he is going to be irreversibly consumed with jealousy and they can no longer be friends.
Instead, he says, "You wouldn't cheat on Anne-Marie," but it comes out less decisive than it was in his head and almost sounds like a question.
"Maybe we have an open relationship," James shrugs.
"You don't have an open relationship," Ben says, "or you wouldn't have said the thing about adultery."
"Maybe that was to throw you off," James suggests. "Make it all sound seedier than it really was."
Ben feels as though he's trapped in some sort of conversational maze and he wonders if he'll ever get out.
"You're so resistant to the idea," James observes. "Hard to imagine?"
No, it's not hard to imagine-Ben has got that fucking library scene from Atonement practically burnt into his brain right now.
"Or maybe you're just jealous," James goes on. His voice is really close now, almost right in Ben's ear but not quite, all low and gravelly and stupidly Scottish-
"I don't think he's jealous," says Keira, and she's incredibly close all of a sudden too, and Ben can smell her perfume and feel the heat of her and oh god, her thigh is touching his. He's being drawn deeper and deeper into the conversational maze, and the metaphor is beginning to sound oddly sexual. He can't deal.
"No?"
"No," Keira says, "because I've been flirting with him all night and had no reciprocation, and I hardly think it's just because he's too dense to have noticed."
Ben makes a sort of pathetic, stunned squeaking sound at that, like he just ran head-first into one of the maze's walls. Hedges? Mazes are usually made with hedges, aren't they, he thinks wildly, only it wouldn't be such a big deal to run into a hedge and this, this is a hell of a big deal-
"I hate to break it to you," James says with a sigh, "but he really is that dense."
"I am," Ben blurts out. "Totally, completely dense. I'm sorry, I-" he actually works up the courage to turn and look at her at this point, and then all the words vanish from his head. The maze has swallowed him up. Keira's eyes are sparkling, and she looks mischievous and amused and beautiful and Ben wants to kiss her but he's scared. "I have a girlfriend," he says, because he's a complete, raging fool.
Keira's face falls, just a little.
"Actually," Ben says, grasping desperately for words that aren't stupid and failing to find any, "we did do that thing once-you know when you make lists, of celebrities you're allowed to-you know, have one night with if you ever happen to get the chance?"
Keira's face changes rapidly from disappointment to desperately trying not to burst out laughing. "Are you serious? I'm on your list?"
"Well-I-I maybe should have mentioned to her that I had a connection to you through a friend," Ben babbles, "not that, not that that makes it-"
"Am I on your list?" interrupts James. Ben is not sure if he's serious. He's grinning like a loon, but still seems to be expecting an answer.
"No," Ben replies. "You were-you were on hers though, I don't know if that-you know, counts."
Keira, suddenly serious, nods solemnly. "It counts," she says firmly. "That's one of the rules."
"What, the lists are interchangeable?" Ben asks, grinning and trying not to think about what all of this actually implies, lest he actually explode.
"Yup. Rule #2: The lists are interchangeable," Keira says, with another assured nod.
Ben laughs. "What was rule #1?"
Keira quirks an eyebrow. "Don't talk about Fight Club."
"I think," says Ben, and tries to stop smiling, "that you should kiss me now."
He actually thinks this is a pretty good line, and possibly his first proper attempt at being assertive all night, but Keira just looks amused.
"I'll kiss you when I'm good and ready," she replies, and then, regrettably, leans back a little bit.
"When will that be?" Ben asks before he can stop himself.
"When it's my turn," Keira shrugs. She shoots a look at James, and then inspects her nails indifferently. Ben blinks at her for a bit until she looks up. "Oh, don't think he hasn't told me about last Christmas's drunken snog," she says, rolling her eyes, "because I heard every detail."
James lets out a low chuckle, and Ben tries not to blush. Apparently, it's not something you can control. "That was-"
"Blah blah, drunken mistake, blah," Keira interrupts.
James is rolling up his sleeves, which is strangely business-like, but Ben is too busy staring at Keira to pay attention. Until he feels a hand rough on his jaw, pulling his head round.
James is grinning. "Let's give the lady what she wants, then," he gravels at him, and then oh, okay, this is really happening.
Everything is lips and tongue and beard, and Ben remembers distantly that James had a beard last time too and he liked it rather a lot, the slight pressure-scratch around his lips, something unfamiliar and strangely sexy. He also remembers that they said they'd never do this again, that it really was a drunken mistake, and right now that seems like a terrible flaw in their judgement because this is pretty fantastic. Ben has a habit of sort of forgetting how much he likes men until he has one in his bedroom and then everything sort of snowballs from there.
He's not sure what happens when a woman is added into the equation, especially when that woman is Keira fucking Knightley, but he's rather excited to find out.
Keira's hand is on his thigh, sort of gently squeezing as if in encouragement, but it startles him and he pulls back a little. James is flushed, and his forehead is slightly sweaty, and his lips, Jesus-
"Nice," Keira says approvingly from behind Ben. He tears himself away to look at her. "Nice?"
Ben nods somewhat weakly. "The," he says, and his voice sounds like it's coming out via a cheesegrater, so he stops and clears his throat and tries again. "The ginger-ness of the beard matters less when it's against your face," he says, and adds in a few vague hand gestures. It is a completely ridiculous sentence and he wishes he'd have shut up when he paused instead of soldiering on, but Keira is grinning at him like she thinks he's cute, so maybe it's okay.
"Interesting," she says. "He was always clean-shaven when I kissed him. Mind if I try?"
Ben stammers, and James says, mockingly, "Whose permission are you asking?"
Keira flicks out her tongue, kittenish. "I don't know," she says, "do I need it?" She leans across Ben, her hand tightening on his thigh.
"Minx," James bites out, and then their mouths meet, and Ben starts to think that maybe they weren't winding him up after all, because it certainly looks like a kiss between two people who once had some kind of sordid affair. In fact, it looks like a kiss between two people who once had a sordid affair and have done nothing but think obsessively about it ever since it came to an end. There is passion, and also a sort of relief to it; Keira sighing against James's lips like she's been waiting.
There's also a slight messiness there, like it's something they've done a lot, like they're used to each other's mouths, and James reaches up to take Keira's face in his hands, to kiss her deeper, and Ben is not sure he's ever witnessed a kiss this close-up before. It's surprisingly nice to watch, though it's making him long to feel that gentle burn of James's beard on his own skin again, and to know what Keira tastes like.
He feels ignored, all of a sudden. He does the first thing he can think of, and clears his throat again, a cartoonish "ahem" that has the two of them breaking apart sheepishly, Keira tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as James's hands slip from her face.
"Rule #3," says Ben, "try and remember there's a third person in the room."
It's kind of a dickish thing to say and he almost immediately regrets it, only he doesn't quite have a chance, because suddenly Keira is kissing him and that's one hell of a distraction. She tastes like James, smoky and warm, and her hand is creeping up his thigh. She's so forward.
And then James is there too, closing in until they shift, make space, and Ben has never kissed two people at once before, and it's messy and hot, and it sends a thrill right through him as he feels James's hand steady on his back. He's growing hard already, Keira's hand edging its way up between his legs and then gently stroking there.
He pulls back and gasps involuntarily at the touch, and James and Keira barely bat an eye, go on kissing each other like he was never there. This should bother him, Ben thinks distantly, but Keira is currently unzipping his trousers so he doesn't feel as left out as he might. She caresses him through the thin fabric layer of his boxers, and then pulls away from James to kiss Ben once again, stroking him to full, aching hardness beneath her hand. There's a rustle of fabric from Ben's left; James is unbuttoning his shirt, pulling it off.
Ben draws back, and says, slightly breathless and in disbelief, "What are we doing?" He laughs a little, dazed, and Keira's lips quiver before she breaks into a huge grin.
"I have no idea," James replies with a chuckle. "'s pretty good though, isn't it?"
Ben can't help but kiss him at that, at least until Keira is easing his erection out of his boxers and he feels the cool air of the room against hot sticky skin and then the tight wrap of her fingers around him-and then he's panting and sort of clutching at her, pulling her into another kiss and trying to slide his hand beneath her dress, their arms crossing between them.
Keira's dress is all scratchy lace and has some sort of strange flower-shaped sequins on it which scrape the back of his hand. He thought she was supposed to be a fashion icon or something, but what she's wearing tonight is really kind of weird, and has caused him to draw back from her suddenly and hiss with pain. She smirks at him, leaning in until she's so close she's a blur. She keeps eye contact as she takes his hand firmly and shoves it under her dress, spreading her legs for him, and he feels damp hot silk against his fingers and shitshitshit he has his hand between Keira Knightley's legs-
She kisses him again, slow, soft, and curls her hand tighter around his cock, goes slow here too, a gentle up-down as his own fingers fumble, pushing up over fabric and then easing down past a waistband. She lets out a shaky breath against his lips that almost sounds like a thrilled little laugh when his fingers slide down through soft sparse hair and into slick hot folds, and then her kiss is fierce when their lips meet again, her hand working him faster now as his middle finger pushes inside of her.
He's almost forgotten about James entirely, and then he feels a hand spread out over his knee. James comes closer, and there's a brush of beard against Ben's neck and then he's kissing his throat, wet, open-mouthed, tongue against pulse and Ben moans out loud, fucking Keira with two fingers now and feeling the rhythm of her hand around him speed up. The angle is awkward; his hand is trapped inside her knickers and beneath her dress, restricted; but none of it seems to matter-James's teeth skim tendon and his breath is wet-hot against Ben's skin, and Ben feels like he could come right here, right now.
"Rule #3," James pants, and Ben can feel his smile, the bastard, that flash of teeth against his neck, and Keira is laughing suddenly, high and sweet in Ben's ear.
"Somebody's demanding," Ben murmurs, but slides his hand over James's crotch anyway, experiences a little sort of jolt in his heart when he feels the bulge there, the heat and the hardness beneath the thick denim of James's jeans. Which are grey. He swallows down a joke.
Keira lets go of Ben, reaching across for James instead with both hands. "Oh, you fucker," she swears, and the outburst actually makes Ben jump, "why'd you wear a belt? Bloody-"
She's yanking at it, agitated, and he's cracking up, and Ben starts to feel like this is maybe an inside joke. It's undone in no time, though, and Ben takes over, unbuttoning, unzipping, and he's startled to feel hot flesh beneath his fingers almost instantly.
"You wore a belt but didn't bother with underwear?" Keira laughs in disbelief, her fingers running over James's erection where Ben is faltering, caught off guard somehow.
He didn't give himself a chance to ready himself for this, for the feel of James's cock beneath his hand, to see it thick and flushed and leaking a dark spot of pre-come against the denim of his jeans-Ben swallows a mouthful of saliva, licks his lips uneasily. This probably shouldn't be a bigger deal than the fact that he's currently got two fingers knuckle-deep in Keira Knightley, but somehow it is. Maybe just because James is his friend.
"Sorry, Ben," Keira says then, with a pout, "rule #3 is tricky."
Her hand returns to Ben, and his hips buck, welcoming it, and he tries to find rhythm again, fingers twisting inside of her, but as his fingers brush the hot skin of James's cock it's hard to focus. He takes it in his hand, and exhales shakily at the feel of it filling his fist. His thumb skims the wetness at the tip, and James hisses, swears. God, it feels good to make him do that. Ben does it again, hungry for that reaction, that noise, and he's only moved his hand maybe three times before he can't take it anymore.
He pulls away, hand slipping out of Keira's knickers as he sinks to the floor, babbling nonsense apologies, something like "Sorry, I-I just-I have to-"
And then he's on his knees between James's legs and breathing him in, and this is how it goes-he forgets how much he loves this, and then the opportunity is presented and he goes crazy for it, greedy, eager. And it's been too long.
He takes James in his mouth before giving himself a chance to think about it much further, rolls his tongue over the swollen flesh and swallows him down deep, even as his throat protests, out of practice. His watering eyes flicker up and he sees James, speechless, head thrown back, hands flexing and clenching around the edge of the bed. Keira looks astonished and maybe a little bit impressed, her mouth open.
Ben suckles, hardly able to control himself, head bobbing between James's thighs, one hand steadied on a hip and the other snaking its way up to James's chest, following a trail of hair. James is swearing breathlessly, hardly able to get the words out. It's a combination, Ben thinks, of how it feels and how much of a shock it is-and Ben understands, because he's just as surprised as they are.
"Is he good?" Keira asks softly, sliding over to James across the space that Ben left and nuzzling close to him, lips brushing his ear. "He looks like he's good."
"Christ, he's good," James forces out, and kisses her, a large hand raking through her hair. His voice lowers as he murmurs against her lips, "You wet, darling? Watching him suck me off?"
"James," Keira squirms, and Ben thinks-mistakenly-that she's embarrassed, and maybe it's because he is, blushing at the words even though that is what he's doing, James's dick deep in his mouth, sliding over his tongue.
James reaches under the skirt of her dress, and Ben sees his hand moving beneath the fabric, slipping into her knickers.
"Oh, yeah," he grins, his voice so deep and rough, "you're soaked," he says, and she whimpers, clutching at his chest, and Ben is transfixed, his face burning, his throat burning as he struggles to take James all the way in, over and over.
Keira's hands fumble with her dress, hitching it up a little to expose her pale thighs and then pulling down the zip under her arm. Ben catches a glimpse of ivory skin and the ripple of her ribs and then she's distracted, moaning "Fuck," loud, her hips twisting. "Oh, fuck, that's good, fuck."
Whatever it is, James keep doing it, and Ben watches the rapid movement of his arm, muscles trembling with movement, and the way his face is screwed up, eyes tight shut in an expression almost like a grimace.
"Jesus," he says, and he sounds wrecked, "can we make rule #4 'keep doing that'?"
Ben is flustered, surprised with himself, almost ashamed at his own enthusiasm, and pulls off and wipes at his wet mouth with the back of his hand. He finds that there's spit on his chin, trickling down his neck, and he feels red-hot, trying to keep his cool. "I dunno," he says with a shrug, and god, if James sounds wrecked, Ben sounds like his voice has been through a fucking combine harvester, "my jaw's starting to get kinda sore."
James laughs at him, shaking his head. "You little bastard."
"Here," says Keira, taking James by the wrist, easing his hand from between her legs and slipping off the bed with surprising grace despite the fact that her dress is yanked up around her waist by this point and her legs are wobbly, "let me help with that."
She budges Ben aside, her hips bumping his. James opens his legs wider to make space for her, but says, "Oh, Keira, you don't have to-"
And it seems to Ben like there's something unspoken here, like maybe this isn't something Keira likes, or something she never used to do with him, and once again Ben is blindsided by the fact that James and Keira seriously had a secret affair-
Keira holds up one hand, silencing James before he can finish his sentence. She then curls that hand around the base of his cock, nestled against pubic hair and holding tight. "You said so many nice things about me tonight, James," she says, coyly, "how can I show my thanks?"
James laughs, and there are no further complaints as she dips her head, swirls her tongue over him, just tasting. Ben is painfully hard, throbbing as he takes himself in hand and watches, watches Keira lips kiss the head of James's dick and then open up and slide down his length. She goes as far as she can and then tenses up and pulls back with a wet noise before going again, her hand stroking what she can't fit in, and god, it's quite possibly the hottest thing Ben has ever seen.
He can't help himself, though-in moments he's shuffling forward again on his knees, ducking down, tongue flicking out over James's balls. They draw up a little under his tongue and James shudders, and his arms, holding him up, start to give out gradually until his back's flat against the mattress. His legs spread out further and he groans, and Ben's tongue slicks over Keira's knuckles and the sticky-hot skin between her fingers and then her lips, and then they're kissing, and licking at James at the same time-clumsy and messy and good.
Keira has her other hand between her legs like Ben, working furiously, but it's not enough. She pulls off and Ben hears her say, in a pleading tone, "James, I need you," which is so fucking vague that it's like she's in a romance novel, but James knows exactly what she means and gestures, beckons for her.
And then she's pulling her rucked-up dress over her head, hooking her thumbs into her knickers and yanking them down, kicking off her heels on the way. She's even prettier naked, somehow, Ben thinks, shapely thighs and hard little nipples and the gentle flare-out of her gorgeous hips-and he watches as she crawls up the bed and positions herself over James's face, tossing one leg carelessly over him and easing herself down, graceful as a cat, still on all fours with her hands splayed out over James's stomach and her bony knees right up against his shoulders.
Her hips are a V, the bones casting gentle shadow, leading down to where James's tongue spreads out flat against her, everything red and wet and shining, and she moans openly, fingertips pressing into the skin of James's stomach. She rides him like that, a slow grind of her hips that grows faster. Ben tears his eyes away for a moment to look down at the straining erection in front of him, rigid and glistening, and he takes it between his lips and sucks it down, all the while keeping his eyes on the sight above him.
Keira is lost in her own pleasure, lifting up now, hands steadied behind her on the bed as she bears down on James's tongue and rocks against his mouth. Her navel piercing glints in the light and her torso is so stretched, flat, taut, as she casts her head back, exposing the pale column of her neck. Her hips work faster and she's swearing, chanting a litany of dirt, and James's beard is slick and scratching lightly against delicate skin, and Ben realises he was wrong-this is the hottest thing he's ever seen.
He tries to watch and suck James at once. His throat hurts and his lips stretch and it's good, so good, but then Keira is coming and Ben loses the ability to multitask, just freezes with his lips open at the head of James's cock and watches. Keira's whole body goes tense, and she spits out, "Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck," and holds still until James can barely breathe, and then she's trembling like a leaf in the breeze and easing off him, loose-limbed and dazed. James is about as breathless as she is, his chin and cheeks shining, and he wipes his mouth with an open hand and grins at her, almost adoringly.
"You all right?" Maybe a little bit smug, as well.
"Shut up," she breathes, barely even a whisper, punching him weakly in the shoulder.
Ben isn't entirely sure what's going to happen now-it's as if it was all fun and games, but now someone has had an actual orgasm and somehow it's upped the stakes or something, and he has condoms in the bathroom somewhere and he wonders if he should go get them or if that would be presumptuous-but he and James are still hard as rocks here and Keira's recovering like she's ready for another round of it and-
"You ready for me, darling?" James asks, low, just a little bit mocking.
"I'm always ready," Keira shoots back instantly, lips curling into a grin that shows her teeth.
Yes, Ben decides. Now is the time to go and get the condoms.
He hurries off into the bathroom, shedding the rest of his clothes on the way, and, after a few moments of rummaging, he finds a rather crushed box in the bottom of his wash bag. James and Keira are kissing when he returns, in the centre of the bed, Keira practically in James's lap. James is naked now too, and Ben has to admit it's a little bit jarring to re-enter your bedroom (hotel or otherwise) and find a couple of naked people rutting against each other.
Not that he minds it.
"I want you to take me from behind," Keira is whispering, and Ben seriously did not know that Keira Knightley had such a mouth on her, "like that time in Venice, yeah?"
James is bucking up against her inner thigh, hard and wet and clumsy-desperate. Like he's remembering.
Ben thinks of Georgie's jumbled text from earlier in the evening about how James had given Keira the 'cutest intro eva' and Keira had apparently 'pounced' on him when she'd given her acceptance speech. He's beginning to feel as though this is a foregone conclusion, that James and Keira were always going to fuck tonight. Ben has just happened to get in the way, and it's so inevitable that even that's not stopping them.
Again, not that he minds it. "Er," he says somewhat awkwardly, tossing the condoms onto the bed, and James gropes for them without taking his eyes off her.
Going from that to fucking seems to happen in the blink of an eye. Keira is on all fours again, across the bed this time as James stands at the side of it, hands wrapped around the jut of her hips and holding her steady as he pushes into her slick heat.
"Oh, don't go slow," Keira begs, brokenly, "please, James, don't-fuck-you fucking tease-"
James chuckles, low in his throat, and Ben is mesmerised, watching, sinking down onto the bed. "Ah, that's not what you want?" James asks. He shoots a look at Ben. Smirks. He is a tease.
"James," Keira pleads, and it sounds so pretty, and she's wriggling back towards him, trying to take him in on her own.
"What do you want?" James mutters, like he knows exactly what he's doing and he's loving it.
"I want you, Jesus fuck," Keira swears, "I want you in my cunt, filling me up. I want you fast-a-and hard-and," she breaks off, hissing angrily, "I've been waiting too fucking long for this, James, don't you dare make me wai-"
And with that, James bucks forward, fills her with one quick thrust, deep and fast and sudden, and Keira cuts herself off with a moan. James echoes it, unable to stop himself. His eyes roll back in his head. The rules, Ben thinks, do not matter in the slightest right now-he's never been more happy to be a third wheel. They look so good, like nothing on earth has ever felt as good to them as this moment right now. James is fully sheathed inside of her, deep as he can be and savouring it, his knuckles going white around her hips, and Keira falls down onto her elbows like her arms aren't strong enough to hold her. She clutches the grey sheets and her palms are sweaty, turning them darker, vague handprints on the satiny fabric.
James draws back slowly, like he can't bear it, and the friction makes him groan again-that low rumble of a sound that Ben is beginning to love. He pulls back like that, only to slam in again, and again and again, driving into her over and over until she's practically screaming, and Ben remembers distantly that Robert Sheehan is a few doors down and can probably hear them but he doesn't fucking care-
"Is that what you want?" James grits out, reaching along the slender pale plane of her back and resting his fingers between her shoulder blades for a moment, letting them play there, drum against her spine. She arches her back at the touch, head thrown back, and his fingers creep further forward.
"Ye-es," Keira manages, and to Ben's surprise she takes James's fingers in her mouth, bites down and sucks, moaning around them.
Then James's hand goes to her throat briefly, then over her shoulder, wet fingers splayed against her collarbone and squeezing. Ben might worry, he thinks, about how rough James is being, if Keira didn't seem to love it so much. He thinks, suddenly, wildly, about what it must feel like-to be on all fours for James like that, to feel that thick cock stretching and filling him, stroking from the inside out and making him scream. That's not something he's ever done, ever even wanted-but damn, she makes it look so good.
"Ben," Keira says suddenly, and he's still not even used to hearing her say his name, like she knows him, like they didn't only just meet tonight, but he shuffles towards her anyway, eyebrows raised, questioning but not yet able to speak. "C'mere," she juts her chin at him, "I can-"
He realises what she means, and his cock aches for it, but-Jesus, he doesn't deserve that, he hasn't been showering her with praise tonight-or, he has, but only in his own brain, pretty much ever since he saw fucking Bend It Like Beckham in fact, and oh god, now is not the time to be thinking about that because she's grasping his thighs and tonguing the tip of his cock and then something hurts, suddenly, a press of her thumb into something tender-
"Wow, you weren't exaggerating about the bruises," she says breathlessly, and Ben remembers the little purplish marks, about eight of them, one as high as his ribs and the others spread out over his legs.
"The heron," Ben says, grinning at her, "it's lethal."
"You poor thing," she soothes, grinning knowingly, and takes his cock into her mouth, wet warmth enveloping him unsteadily as she rocks back and forth with the force of James's thrusts. The tiniest scrape of teeth, and Ben jolts; her tongue slicks over the head and something churns inside of him and he has to try not to come-
"I want you to fuck me," Keira says suddenly, like she maybe just decided right then and there.
James is pulling her back against him, slower, his hands all over her body and they look so big against her wiry frame. He raises one eyebrow at Ben, and Ben can't interpret the look-it's mocking, but it's almost an invitation as well, a challenge, like yeah, she wants it, but can you give it to her? And Ben wants to try. God, he wants to try.
"O-okay," Ben says shakily, gets a condom for himself and tries not think about any of what's happening, because if he really thinks about it he's pretty sure he'll just lose it right now, come all over his own hands while she's waiting for him.
She's pulling back the covers, settling herself under them, and James laughs at her as he slides off his condom, practically sauntering over towards the bathroom to chuck it out. He's so casual about this it's almost infuriating, and Ben can't help the competitive urges that well up inside of him as a result-it's always been like this, ever since they met, because Ben was the new guy on the Narnia set and pretty much taking James's place, and it's never been hostile but they get possessive and they're always trying to prove themselves.
He lays down next to Keira, on his side, facing her, and she smiles, wraps one arm around him.
"You good?" she asks, but doesn't wait for an answer, just hitches up one leg, throws it over his waist and reaches down between her legs to help him inside of her.
She squirms as she eases herself down onto his cock. She's hot and wet around him as he's surrounded inch by inch, and it's so intimate, face to face-he can feel her breath as she sighs, and see the tiny changes in her expression as she takes him deeper. He stares at her beautiful face, her cheeks stained pink and her lower lip caught in her teeth, her eyelashes casting feathery shadows. It all feels a bit surreal and he might doubt that it's really happening, but she feels so real around him, smooth and tight and perfect.
Ben is aware of James's presence, like maybe he's standing in the doorway of the bathroom, silently watching. And then the mattress dips and James is behind him, pressing in close, sweaty-hot skin. Ben can feel James's cock, hot and stiff against his lower back.
James hooks his chin over Ben's shoulder. His beard scritches against Ben's skin again and Ben shudders. Keira isn't looking at him anymore, her gaze shifted just a little bit to the side, fixed on James. For a moment Ben expects something, some sort of banter, dirty talk-but there's nothing, just their eyes, intense and staring. Ben's hips are moving slow, more up and down than back and forth, and each movement sends James's cock sliding over his back now. And god, he's had it in his mouth but it was nothing like this, pressed right against his skin and hard enough to bruise, and James's lips are on his shoulder, kissing sloppily as he starts to move with them, adopting their rhythm.
"Ah," James's breath catches, "oh, yeah, fuckin' hell, that's good," and the sound of his voice makes Ben fuck Keira harder. She's clutching at him, pearly-pink fingernails digging into skin. Ben isn't going to last.
James slides his cock into the crease of Ben's arse, and maybe it was intentional, maybe not-it doesn't seem to matter. "Oh, fuck," James groans out, slicking his cock along the crevice, his hand grasping Ben's hip tight and bringing him back against him, and Ben allows it, his own hand on Keira's bony hip and gripping just as hard. Her eyes are glazed over, lips glossy, and it looks like she's nodding at him. Maybe it's just the clumsy thrusts, Ben beginning to lose control. Maybe she's encouraging him.
God, she's so beautiful, he thinks, as James's teeth graze the line of his shoulder. Keira's eyelids flutter; she churns her hips. James's cock presses between Ben's legs and meets resistance before pushing back up, again and again, growing frantic. He's grunting out, "Fuck," still, and Keira is silent but for breathy whimpers.
James is getting closer. "Make some noise for me, Ben," he murmurs, low and urgent, "how does she feel?"
And Ben bites down on anxious laughter, overwhelmed. His voice is shaky when he says "Good," and the word comes out long.
Apparently it's enough-James grips him tight and holds him so close Ben feels him everywhere, and his hips jerk up and he comes, spurting sudden and hot between them with a broken groan. Ben feels it on his skin, dripping down onto the covers, and it's intimate and it's dirty and when James continues to rock against him, slower this time, cock sliding through his come, Ben feels his own orgasm coursing through him. Keira kisses him and sinks down, takes him deep, and he comes with an almost strangled sort of cry against her mouth, feeling as if the room is spinning.
When he regains the use of his eyes, and things stop looking so sparkly and blurred, Keira is kissing James instead, and they're both sort of smiling.
"God," says Ben weakly, "I feel disgusting."
"Crushing guilt already?" asks James absentmindedly. "That's rather quick, isn't it?"
"I meant the fact that I'm drenched in the sweat of three people and I've got your come all over my back," Ben says wryly, and then adds, "smartarse."
"Do you have any food?" Keira asks. Actually, what she says is "Do you have any foo-" and then interrupts herself with a long yawn, but Ben gets the gist and shakes his head. She pouts, and then lights up. "Oh wait, I've got a Bounty in my purse."
"You've got a Bounty in your purse?" Ben repeats, grinning.
"Of course she's got a Bounty in her purse," James says, as Keira disentangles herself from them and practically slithers out of bed.
"Oh-while you're up," says James, and Ben jumps when he feels James's hands sneaking down between his legs and fumbling blindly with the condom. Impressively, he manages to tie it off under the covers, and he presents it to Keira.
"Oh, charming," Keira says, but takes it anyway and pads into the bathroom. They hear her washing her hands and then heading back into the bedroom, over to the heron. "Pardon me, sir," she says to it with a little bow, unhooking her purse's handle from its beak.
"Don't be so polite to it, it's vicious," Ben tells her sleepily.
He rolls over and James sort of throws an arm over his chest. It's too hot, really, to have someone else's limbs draped over him like that, but he finds that he doesn't mind. He looks at James, who is yawning, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. His hair is all mussed up and his face is red and his beard is sort of glistening, but he still looks handsome. He does 'dishevelled' rather well, Ben thinks.
Keira is munching on half a Bounty bar, trying not to lean against any of the sharp furniture.
"You can eat that in bed," Ben offers. "I'm going to have to change these sheets anyway."
"Really?" Keira seems thrilled by this. "Wicked."
She clambers back into bed with them and finishes it off happily.
"A birthday, an award, and two men in my bed," she remarks then, snuggling down under the grey covers, "this has turned out to be a remarkably good week."
"It's not actually your bed," Ben points out.
Keira waves this off. "Another blessing," she says. "This thing is a hazard." She lifts up one of her long pale legs to show him a blossoming bruise just beneath her knee.
"I did warn you," Ben chuckles.
"I'm tired," Keira says, tucking her leg back under the covers and rolling over onto her side, pressing her lips to Ben's shoulder as she curls up against him.
"Me too." Ben looks at her, at the smudged eye make-up she hasn't bothered to remove, and he leans in, nuzzling her nose gently with his own. She smiles, and kisses him, tasting like chocolate and coconut.
"Me too," James echoes from Ben's other side. "I have an idea."
"Oh? What's that, then?" Keira asks through a yawn, settling down, one hand under the grey pillows.
"Rule #5," James announces, and then says simply, "sleep."
End.