Sunshine: Trinity
Trinity
“I want to see him fuck you,” Cassie had said, and that was how it all began.
Or not. No, that can’t have been it. It began when she walked in on them, breathless and quivering with want and aggression, half-kissing and half-fighting in the Observation Room three months ago; it began the first time Mace and Capa fucked, half hate and half lust, in the shower; it began the moment the three of them met back on Earth Base. Perhaps it didn’t begin and was always there, like the God that Harvey believes in. Maybe it’s fate or destiny or just complex, or maybe it’s as simple as three beautiful young people trapped for years in a confined space. Maybe it’s the only possible outcome of the situation.
“I want to see him fuck you,” Cassie had said, and Mace had sworn and Capa had just looked, and Cassie had smiled with a nervousness that was so at odds with her words.
It was complex enough before she had suggested it. Capa isn’t stupid, knows that Mace doesn’t like him-there is something between them deeper and more primal than that, something that hit Capa like a fist to the gut and pulls them together over and over again with an impact that shatters bone. They don’t enjoy each other’s company, they think differently, they act differently, they piss each other off-but they need each other: right from the first time they fought they knew that, and everyone else knew too. They just kept coming back for more. An unspoken agreement: if fighting was the only way they could be together, they’d break bones, they’d draw blood.
“I want to see him fuck you,” Cassie had said to Capa, voice low because who knew when someone would walk into the gym and overhear them?
And it was more complex even than that, Capa knows. He knew something was really fucked up the first time a fistfight in the corridor over some stupid argument turned into them grinding their hips together, pressing close through layers of fabric and Mace biting Capa’s shoulder hard with his orgasm. He knew something was really fucked up when Mace refused to stay the night in Capa’s room-“I’m not gay.” He knew something was beyond fucked up when he found that Mace’s refusal hurt.
“I want to see him fuck you,” Cassie had said, and Capa could see Mace’s body tensing, could almost feel every muscle pull taut.
And of course, Capa has seen the way that Mace looks at Cassie, knows that he’s hopelessly in love with her. Capa’s not sure if Cassie knows or not-she rarely gives a sign either way-but sometimes there’s a certain sharpness in her tone to Mace that makes Capa think that she knows for sure, but is intent on hiding it. Mace himself would never admit verbally: the one time Capa made the mistake of suggesting it, Mace nearly knocked in his teeth.
“I want to see him fuck you,” Cassie had said, and then after a pause she had added, eyes intently on Capa, “please.”
Capa likes Cassie, which is why he hesitated before laughing-“sorry, what?”-and tried to take slow breaths, stop the frantic beating of his heart. He’s liked her ever since the beginning of the trip: likes her calm competence; her complete lack of arrogance; her easy smile, playful laugh, earnest sense of duty. Most of all, he likes the way that she seems comfortable about him. Few people are so capable of accepting Capa’s silence, his reserve. They fit together nicely: Cassie sitting silently behind Capa as he works; Cassie occasionally leaving notes stuck to his door with quotes from her books-Mrs Dalloway, usually, lines copied from an old edition with its spine lovingly cracked. Yes, Capa likes Cassie, even feels comforted when he wakes to see her watching him, but he knows too-even though he’d rather not-that she likes him more.
“I want to see him fuck you,” Cassie had said, and Capa had first been shocked and then realized that it was an inevitability: Mace would not say ‘no’ to her, and he could not refuse Mace.
And now that inevitability has led to this moment, this reality: Capa and Mace sitting side by side on Capa’s bed, and Cassie watching them from the place where she always sits. Time hangs heavy, leaden in the air. Capa can feel Mace’s hot breath on the side of his neck; can see Cassie’s chest rise and fall quickly with her breathing. In this moment, he knows that he will go through with this, and more than that knows that he wants to: the loneliness of space presses in on him, and he reaches out for contact, a confirmation that he is alive, yes, that he is more than just a purpose.
“I want to see him fuck you,” Cassie had said minutes before, and now she adds again, quietly, “please.”
*
Mace slept with Cassie in Earth Base, just once. He didn’t think much of it at the time: she was attractive, yeah, but it was scratching an itch more than anything, for both of them-he doesn’t have any delusional ideas that it meant more to her than to him. A quarter-hour in a shower cubicle and it was over: him zipping up his pants, her straightening her jacket. Even the sex itself was just, well, sex: simple, straightforward, to the point. Not sex that pretended to be anything else, just two adults making a mature decision to let off some hormones with each other. And then after that, nothing: back to being not-very-close teammates, back to being apart.
For months, Mace was cool with that. He respected her and worked with her and yeah, sure, he stole looks every now and again, and there was that time he ‘mistakenly’ walked in on her in the showers (the welt from where she hit him with the wet towel lasted for weeks), and maybe he made a few lewd jokes to Trey-but that was it. Case closed.
He’s not sure exactly when things stopped being like that. He just knows that now he actually kinda likes her, even if sometimes she’s pretty fucking holier-than-thou. She has a killer smile, a genuine laugh, and she’s smart and tough and all the other stuff that Mace likes but never found in all the cute-but-dim girls (and boys) who threw themselves at him back on Earth. He likes Cassie because he can respect her. Likes her earnest frown when she reads, too, and her deadpan comments over supper, and the way that once, when they were sitting beside each other at dinner, her leg rested close to his for the entire half-hour, making his skin prickle.
Not that he’s in love or anything stupid like that.
He never expected this, though-what she said, and now her sitting there in the corner, flushed and breathing audibly, eyes fixed on him and Capa. (Him and Capa-fuck. The less said about that the better.) Mace knows she’s a liberated women and all, that ‘good’ girls can like sex too, he wasn’t born in the nineteen-fucking-nineties or anything-but it was still a surprise, even after her having walked in on them kissing: the way she came and sat down on the bench between them in the gym. The way she waited for Capa to stop running (he’d always stop whatever he’s doing for her: too fucking eager to please) and didn’t talk till she realized that Mace wouldn’t put down his weights. The way she looked from one of them to the other, took half of a deep breath before saying quickly, rushed and nervous: “I want to see him fuck you.”
I want to see him fuck you. Jesus Christ, Mace still can’t believe she said it. Still can’t believe it even now as he and Capa are starting to undress each other-Capa looking only at Mace’s chest, thin fingers tugging at his zips and catches-and Cassie’s looking at them, lips slightly parted and, fuck, wet (which makes Mace think of other things), hands resting on her knees, legs crossed.
Mace is so hard that it hurts.
Capa’s lips are soft on his neck despite being slightly chapped, despite the stubble around them rubbing over Mace’s skin almost painfully. Mace lets his head drop back reflexively, stretches out his vulnerable throat for Capa’s lips (and something deep and primal thrills at that, at the show of weakness, at the vulnerability of his windpipe, spinal cord, jugular-but then Mace has always known there is the animalistic in sex). He slides his own hands down, arms bumping into Capa’s briefly, to reach for the other man’s jacket: unzips it, forces it back over his shoulders, presses it down over pale skin.
A noise comes from Cassie, an irresistible groan, and Mace’s eyes flick open to see her tracing her fingertips, seemingly without thinking, over her neck; trailing them down to the zipper of her shirt. The sound makes Mace’s cock twitch, but it’s nothing compared to the look she suddenly gives him, full on, unblinking: pupils wide, eyes half-lidded and almost weary with pleasure, expression so full of sex it makes him feel, for a moment, like he’s falling. He’d happily kill for that look again, let alone fuck Capa.
When both men are naked they pause, for a moment, suddenly struck by the awkwardness of it all: they sit apart, Mace careful not to look anyone in the eye, Capa pulling the corner of the sheet over himself (though he has had no problem with nudity in their group decontamination safety drill), laughing softly.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
“Don’t stop,” Cassie replies, and Mace looks up at the rustling of fabric to see her dropping her jacket on the ground beside her, tracing the outline of her nipples through her shirt with her fingertip, tiny little circles that make Mace feel like he’s going insane. “Don’t.”
There is a moment, here, where Mace and Capa just look at each other: are still but for quick-beating hearts and panting breaths and trembling fingers, just looking. When their lips meet, Mace can’t actually remember having leant forward: there is just suddenly Capa’s mouth, Capa’s tongue between his lips, and fuck, who said scientists couldn’t kiss? (He finds himself thinking that Cassie was a good kiss, too.)
It all goes quickly, after that-they know each other, after months of sometimes more, sometimes less violent fucks in every area of the Icarus II (on the dining table, in the Oxygen Garden, the Earth Room: the only place Capa refuses to go is inside the payload, and Mace-after some teasing-hasn’t pushed it). Capa’s left hand finds a familiar rhythm on Mace’s cock; Mace bites gently at the arch between Capa’s shoulder and neck that he knows so well, licks at the delicate skin and thrills at the arch of Capa’s body, the rush of air as he inhales with pleasure. There’s still some fumbling as they settle on a way to do this-Mace’s hands not-so-gently twisting Capa around, Capa’s whispered “fuck, Mace,” which only makes Mace harder, makes the tension more unbearable-and they’d end up nowhere but a mess of tangled limbs and unresolved arousals but for Cassie’s voice, sudden and firm:
“I want to see both of your faces. Kneel in front of Mace, Capa.”
Her voice is soft and arousal-slick, but it’s an order, and Mace doesn’t feel able to say ‘no’, though he’s sleepwalking through the maneuver: Capa kneeling before him, legs spread, and Mace settling between his calves, cock pressing against the inside of Capa’s left thigh, looping one arm around the smaller man to hold him up. All the time his eyes are on Cassie: her quick breathing. Her flushed cheeks. The little sheen of sweat over her skin. Her fingers hesitating at the bottom of her shirt as she says, “do you mind…?”
Mace’s mouth is dry and his tongue feels impossibly large as he swallows, shakes his head, is completely incapable of tearing his eyes away from her.
A moment, only one moment in all of time: Cassie, shirt and bra off, beautiful skin revealed with the little scar from having her appendix removed. Her eyes focused on them both: drinking them in, pulling them closer. Her fingertips sliding down to her trousers and slowly, slowly undoing the buttons. Three shaking breaths together in the warm air. Capa’s body warm and sweat-slick against Mace’s chest, one of the muscles in his thighs quivering. Dark hair pressed against Mace’s cheek, the edge of Capa’s right ear pressed to his lips. The beat of Capa’s heart under Mace’s steadying hand. The desperate pressure of need low in Mace’s belly.
Mace can't stop himself looking at Cassie.
“Here.” Capa’s voice, Mace realizes with a little start, and Capa’s hand, arm twisted back, pressing a tube onto Mace's palm. Mace takes it automatically, going through the steps without really thinking about it: lube on his hands. His hands on his cock. His hands on Capa. One finger in Capa. Two. He’s faintly aware of Capa making a gasping sound in his arms, of Capa tensing momentarily-but what Mace thinks of, instead, is Cassie. Imagines Cassie pressed back to him, wet for him, imagines Cassie moaning as he fingers her-looks up, sees Cassie with her trousers and underwear pulled down and, fuck, touching herself, fingers sliding over herself, rubbing at her clit as she makes the tiniest whimpering sound and arches towards them-
He has to stop for a moment, take a deep breath, focus on not coming too soon.
“If you don’t get on with it,” Capa says finally, breathless, head resting back on Mace’s shoulder and lips brushing Mace’s neck, “I’m going to finish myself off.”
What Mace does next could be because he's sick of Capa being so fucking clever. Then again, it could be because of the way that Cassie looks at Capa, says so softly, “Capa, look at me, please.” Either way Mace feels a surge of something bitter and hot rise in his chest, wishes that Capa would just shut the fuck up, wishes for some stupid moment that Cassie would say his name instead. The anger is sharp and painful in him and for a moment he can't think, can't rationalize-just desperately needs to hurt Capa, make him ache. He grips Capa's skinny hips tight enough to leave bruises and pulls him back with a vicious jerk, thrusting into him hard, getting a horrible thrill out of the other man's cry.
"Capa!" Cassie says sharply, concerned, and Mace only growls, tightens his restraining arm around Capa's chest and grips Capa's hip harder with his other hand, short-cut nails digging into the physicist's pale skin. Capa's quivering in his arms, trembling and hard with need, and though Mace can't hear most of Capa's words he catches one: "fine," mumbled around pants to Cassie.
Fine. Mace wouldn't describe anything between them as 'fine', but then they're not boyfriends, not lovers, not partners-perhaps 'fine' just means that this works for them, this violence and this aggression, and yeah, it does. They have an understanding. Whichever one of them is doing the hurting and whichever one of them is being hurt, that is what holds them together: the mutual promise of pain. Simple, understandable, human pain.
Cassie seems to accept Capa's answer: Mace watches her lean back against the wall, letting her eyes half-close again, her lips parting as she breathes heavily. Her hand is moving faster between her legs now, muscles over her thighs tensing, toes curling as she gets closer to her orgasm (and Mace remembers what it felt like to be there inside of her, wethotpressure and her lips on his neck and her breasts pressed against him and her Mace, Mace, Mace against his ear...)
While he thinks of Cassie, he fucks Capa. Or perhaps, instead, that's too simple: he thinks of them both, thinks of Cassie's faint curves and Capa's hard wirey lines; imagines cupping Cassie's breast as he presses his hand to Capa's chest, pulling him backwards; imagines that it's Cassie he's thrusting into- but Capa is always there, reasserting his place, impossible to forget even when Mace closes his eyes tight, presses his face to the nape of Capa's neck (smelling his sweat and his skin) and just tries to imagine.
Mace is almost calm when Cassie speaks again and ruins it all: her voice quavering and higher-pitched than usual and close to desperate. "Touch yourself, Capa, let me see you touch yourself," she says, and the words hit Mace like a kick to the chest, like someone's torn out his fucking organs and has left a big gaping hole in him, and the only way he can live with the hole there is by thinking elsewhere, doing something to someone else. It's almost a reflex action, reaching for Capa's arm, grabbing hold of him just above the wrist; for a moment, Capa doesn't seem to understand what's happening, just continues moving with Mace's hips and gulping for breath-
With a jerk, Mace twists Capa's arm viciously up behind his back, painfully contorted, and holds it there between them as he fucks him. Capa's body arches awkwardly backwards as he cries out, a sharp yelp of pain that fades into an agonized hiss. He twists and contorts and writhes, shoulderblades digging back into Mace's chest as he struggles to find an angle at which his arm doesn't hurt. From above, Mace can see his face-mouth open, teeth bared, eyes squeezed tight shut in a grimace-and it makes his cock throb: hearing Capa whimper makes it better, yeah, making Capa writhe with pain and pleasure makes him feel like he can deal with it all. It’s awkward and violent, even more so than usual: but he can hear Cassie’s tiny little sounds of pleasure as she touches herself and Capa’s desperate noises as he twists to try and keep the pressure off his arm and the slap of skin on skin-
Mace comes first, pressing once more into Capa’s body and holding him tight and close as he orgasms. He tries to keep his eyes open to watch Cassie as he does so-moans as he thinks he hears her gasp with pleasure-but it’s impossible: his eyes press tight closed for a moment, and when he opens them he’s tired, suddenly weary of everything. He lets go of Capa’s arm and sits back on his heels, sliding out of the other man’s body, taking a deep shuddering breath.
Capa himself whimpers, hips rocking involuntarily forward as he approaches his own orgasm, choking on words: “Mace, please-”
“Don’t come,” Cassie whispers, voice rough with panting, “don’t come, don’t come, not yet-”
She is so beautiful as she orgasms that the image is burnt onto Mace’s retinas: her head tipped back, eyes closed, mouth open with a cry, trembling fingers pressed hard between her legs. There is nothing he wants to do more than to touch her, to kiss her breasts, to taste her-
But he gets down on his knees when she tells him too, takes Capa’s cock into his mouth, thinks it’s just what he deserves as Capa pulls on his hair roughly.
*
Cassie still cannot quite believe it has happened, this: that the fantasy she has been orgasming to for the last three months has become reality, that she has seen (even thinking it feels strange) Mace and Capa having sex. The courage she spent all those hours working up has suddenly disipated and she feels somehow smaller than before.
For the longest time she can imagine it is silent apart from their breathing, the sound of the three of them still living, still going on, unchanged by even the most impossible of things. Capa lies on his side, moving his sore arm experimentally and wincing every now and again: the marks of Mace’s fingers are still an angry red on his skin. Just once, he looks up at Mace, and on his face is an expression that Cassie can’t properly read-something yearning, something needy, something so intense she feels more like a voyeur watching that single look than the sex. Mace himself sits propped up against the wall opposite her, legs spread cockily. His eyes are fixed on Cassie; blushing, she looks away. She looks instead at other parts of him: the sweat glaze over his chest. The curve of his muscles. The hair on his belly.
Everything is silent, and Cassie is suddenly sure that they are never going to talk about this again, that they are going to drift apart and away and pretend this never happened. Though she could not say what was here and is now gone, what was once so full of promise and is now broken, Cassie feels a sudden, inexplicable sense of loss.
"You look beautiful when you're sad," Mace says very quietly.
Cassie turns her face away from him and closes her eyes, frowning. "That's sick."
"But true."
Resting her hand lightly on her belly, Cassie doesn't reply.
fin.
Comments and constructive criticism would make my day.