Down In The Holler

Casual Wanderer © 2025 All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and specific other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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"Atonement (Part 3)"

"You hate it?" Blake asked, palm still braced on the jamb, rain running off his jaw.

Jackson smiled without hiding it. "Gives you a respectable look now you're old."

Blake's mouth twitched. "Old as a Friday night."

"Old as a deacon who knows where the good pie's hid."

"That...respectable?"

"Respectable enough Mama might let you in her kitchen without keepin' one hand on the broom."

A breath of laughter moved through Blake's chest, light as steam. They slipped into the old lane for a moment, and small jokes laid end to end, the kind you walk without looking down.

"How'd you find me?" Blake asked, quieter, thumb rubbing rain off the door's edge like he owed it an apology.

Jackson tipped his head. "Used what you taught me. Asked the places. Listened for money pretendin' to be fun." He glanced back toward the dark edge of the lot. "Had help, too."

Blake followed the tilt. Cash was already crossing the gravel, wet to the ribs, walking like a man who trusted the ground even when it lied. Something flickered through Blake's face, old habit, new ache, but he kept the rest of him steady.

Cash reached the steps and squinted up into the run-off. "Y'all want to keep flirtin' out here in a carwash," he drawled, "or move this revival someplace that ain't tryin' to baptize us against our will?"

Jackson cut Blake a quick wink. "He bites, but he don't draw blood," and stepped back, letting Blake stand first if he meant to. 

Blake snagged his hat off the rail, shook a sheet of water out of the brim, and set it on with the old care, short hair dark against his temples now. He said nothing, but he turned. The three of them took the steps like a unit and cut through the rain.

The tent took them in with a slap of canvas and cold air. Neon beer signs trembled against wet vinyl, and a string of bulbs threw a soft, cheap halo over puddled concrete. The smell was sweat gone sweet, spilled lager, fryer oil clinging to denim. Cowboys crowded the bar two deep. A woman in fringe laughed, mean and kind at once. Somewhere, a steel guitar bent a note into a prayer and changed its mind halfway through.

Jackson walked shoulder to shoulder with Blake, a hand brushing his lower back in a touch that could've been guidance or proof. Blake let it live there. Cash fell in two paces behind, eyes working, taking every flinch and breath like measures he'd need later if things got loud.

They slipped along the edge, past a table with boots stacked under it like sleeping dogs, past a rope crate, until they found a corner where the light pooled in a small, shaky coin on the tabletop. 

Jackson stopped there. 
Blake did, too. 
Cash didn't.

He flanked the bar like a man taking a trench and reappeared with three pints, sweating cold, foam proud. He slid into the bench hard against Jackson's hip, shoulder to shoulder, making a narrow wall of denim and heat. That left the far side. Blake took it, exhaling like he'd been holding his breath since counties back.

Cash set the beers down in a tidy row, turned one so the logo faced Blake like a dare. "House special," he said, deadpan. "Pairs well with silence."

Jackson lifted his pint. "To not drownin' in a tent."

They touched rims. Blake drank. Cash drank. Jackson drank and tried smiling at both like he was refereeing boys he loved before breakfast. The pints went down in parallel, Blake with that old, efficient swallow that kept his throat from telling on him, Cash steady as water finding its level. The tent's draft found the sweat on their necks. 

"So..." Jackson said, after the second pull, "how's everybody enjoyin' the weather?"

"Moist," Cash said, with the gravity of a man reading from a hymnal.

Blake's mouth threatened a smile, but he didn't commit. He tipped his beer again, set it down, and turned the glass a quarter turn, fingerprints fogging the slick bottle.

They let the noise cover them a minute, boots scuffing, laughter popping like grease from the fryer, a woman's cackle that could shuck oysters. Cash and Blake drank like the clock would pick a favorite if it had to.

Jackson leaned his elbow on the table and nudged the air. "You heard about the verdict?" he asked, gently. "Been a week."

Blake's eyes flicked up. "Mm."

"Thank you," Jackson said, plain, and put the weight of it on the wood between them. "For takin' that phone. For sendin' it where it needed to go."

Cash nodded, then ruined it in his special way. "Yeah," he said, aiming for gruff and hitting graceless. "I mean, you still got the social skills of a barbed wire fence, and you ride like a lunatic, but steal a phone like a hero, and I'll buy you a beer."

Blake stared, then barked a single laugh he hadn't planned. "That a compliment?"

"It's the Dalton blend," Jackson said. "Two parts praise, one part insult, splash of bless-your-heart."

Cash lifted his glass in a crooked salute. "I ain't sayin' you ain't a damn fool. I'm sayin' you were a nice fool for five minutes, and you did right. Don't get used to me sayin' that. Makes my tongue itch."

"They didn't even use it," Jackson went on, because truth deserved its chair. "Judge tossed the video. Said it was too...whatever the word was. But it got the ball rollin'. It scared the right men into sayin' quiet out loud."

"Good," Blake said, as if the syllable had been waiting in his pocket.

They let that sit. 

Blake took another drink, eyes on the table now, and Cash mirrored him without meaning to. Jackson tried a smile that could have been a bridge and found it wanted more boards. The silence went companionable for half a breath, then turned into something else, the kind that waits for somebody to say a true thing and refuses to hurry.

They drank. 
The pints kept arriving. 

A kid with a sponsor hat recognized Blake and bought the next round "for luck," which guaranteed the opposite. Two riders in starched suits sidled up, grinning and handed over caps for signatures. A woman with a braid to her waist leaned in for a photo that ended with her cheek against Jackson's shoulder and a "you ever think about comin' back out?" breathed hot into his ear. Jackson laughed it off, polite as Sunday, "ma'am, I ain't got the knees", and signed whatever got put under his hand.

Men came to clap Blake's back, "hell of a spur, man", they'd say. Others to prod at Jackson, "You ridin' Amarillo? We got a slot". Blake scrawled his name and practiced yes-less smiles. Jackson gave them banter and a little sparkle. The table became a small current in a wide river. Beer rings bloomed and overlapped on the wood like wet coasters of time.

Cash tried. 
He really did. 

He joked with a kid who asked if Jackson had ever fallen off a mechanical bull, "He married one once", he razzed, laughed with a barrel racer who declared Blake "still fine, even angry," and elbowed Blake when an old timer told a story about a fan belt that turned out to be a snake. But with every stranger's hand on Jackson's arm, every "man, you were poetry out there," the humor thinned. The Dalton jaw came out of the drawer. He started answering before Jackson could.

A college boy in a pearl snap leaned on the table too close. "You're Jackson Bell," he said, like he'd discovered it. "You shoulda never left," He let his gaze travel like a slick hand. "You grew up real nice."

Jackson did what he always did, smile like a porch light, slide the conversation to neutral. "You ridin' tonight?"

Before the boy could purr an answer, Cash's voice cut in, flat. "He's sittin' with me, chief. Find your own cowboy to pet."

The twink blinked, then laughed like it was all part of his charm. "No offense, man, I was just payin' my respects."

"Respects paid," Cash said, eyes steady, not smiling. "Go spend your change somewhere else."

It took the kid a second to hear the edge. When he did, his mouth did a small snotty thing. "Okay, Dad." He moved off, shoulders broadcasting wounded youth.

Jackson set his beer down. "Cash."

"What?" Cash said, too fast.

"Dial it," Jackson murmured. "They're drunk and friendly and most of 'em will forget my name by mornin'. This is the road."

"The road's rude," Cash said. "And handsy."

"That's accurate," Jackson said. He touched Cash's knee under the table."

Another pair came and went. A girl asked Blake to sign her hat brim, and he did, head down, careful not to brush her fingers. A stock contractor slapped Jackson's back and asked, again, about Amarillo. "We could make you a comeback story, son," he said, voice full of wants Jackson didn't share. Jackson slid out from under the hook with a grateful smile and no promise. Cash watched it all like a man measuring a door he hadn't planned to set.

"Look," Jackson said finally, low, as the crowd thinned a little. The rain on the canvas softened from fury to diligence. "This is standard. Folks poke. Folks flirt."

Cash's shoulders sank a fraction. "I know," he said. It wasn't surrender so much as a truce with a world he didn't know yet. "I just..." He swallowed. "I'm learnin'. It sounds like punchlines."

"It's mostly that," Jackson said, relief easing his mouth. "And dust."

Across from them, Blake had been quiet. He finished his beer, set it down, turned the glass a quarter turn, and changed his mind. He looked up at Jackson and let something close to mischief show, tentative as a stray coming near.

"I got a thing," he said. "A...surprise."

Cash's head snapped like a hinge over-tensioned. The little calm he'd found skittered. "Course you do," he said, laughing too sharply. He slid out from the bench in one practiced move, hip bumping the table, sloshing beer onto the rings already there. "Y'all enjoy it."

"Cash..." Jackson started.

But he'd already shouldered into the flow toward the bar, jaw set, wet hair making dark commas at his temple. He claimed a stool like a fort, leaned both elbows on the wood, and stared a hole into a row of taps. The bartender made a joke. Cash didn't take it. He lifted a hand, ordered with two fingers, and let the beer come to him like an apology he wasn't ready to hear.

From the table, Blake watched Cash's back a beat, then looked at Jackson and lifted his hands off the table like a man showing he wasn't holding any weapon but the truth.

"What's the surprise?" Jackson asked, low.

Blake tipped his hat back. "You gotta follow me out," he said. "Think Cash'll survive five minutes without you?"

Jackson's eyes slid to the bar. Cash sat there like a storm on a stool, elbows down, jaw set, doing his best not to watch them leave and failing a little. "He'll be fine," Jackson said, more prayer than prediction, and rose.

They slipped out of the tent flap into a wet, dark, and brightened by halogen and lightning far off. 

They didn't touch. 
They didn't have to. 

That old current ran anyway, the air around Blake charged like the fence line. He walked a half step ahead. Jackson matched him, boots making small, private sounds in the puddles.

The barns took them in with the horse-sweet smell of hay and wet shavings, the soft wooden thunder of a hoof shifted in straw, the whisper of rain combing the tin roofs. A sorrel flicked an ear. A paint stamped once, impatient. Blake didn't stop until the far end, where the world narrowed to wood, hay, and breath.

Jackson saw it then.

In the last stall, a white horse stood like a question, the kind the heart asks before the mouth knows how. He wasn't new white. He was the kind that time makes: gray turned milk, silver threaded through a mane heavy as river water, the faintest sprinkles of flea-bite freckles at the shoulder like somebody'd sifted cinnamon in a blessing. One ear was nicked on the edge, a crescent moon taken by a fence years back. A star whorl sat at his forehead where a child might press a kiss. His eyelashes were pale. His eyes, dark and kind, held the steady intelligence of a creature who has forgiven a world's worth of hands. Pink showed soft at the muzzle, where the skin goes thin over bone. The whiskers there were white as breath. 

He lifted his head when Jackson halted, just a degree, and the leather on his halter spoke a small, honest creak. "I...I don't..." Jackson's voice didn't pick a lane. He laughed once, wet and astonished. "I can't believe it."

Blake's mouth did that thing it saved for rare moments, opened into a smile without barbs. "Took some doing," he said. "Wasn't easy."

"How'd you..."

"Asked in all the places." He shrugged one shoulder, rain-dark shirt pulling over muscle. "Feed men. Grooms. Folks who know horses better than names. Traded some favors. Drove miles that didn't want to be counted."

Jackson's eyes were bright as a boy's. "Is it…?"

"Yeah," Blake said softly. "First one you ever sat proper. He's older. He's right. He's yours." He coughed a little, almost shyly. "If ya want him. Was gonna send him up to Willow Creek with a note like an idiot. Figured if I was wrong, you'd at least have a reason to cuss me pretty."

The world narrowed to the stall door and the sound of rain. Jackson lifted the latch like it might wake somebody and slipped inside. The horse breathed him in, soft, careful, that warm alfalfa-sweet that turns a chest into a church. Jackson put his palm out, fingers loose. The muzzle came down and met it, velvet and old-silk, whiskers tickling. Jackson closed his hand slowly, slid it up along the bone, over the star, into the forelock that felt like rope made of cloud.

Time changed its clothes. 

Jackson laid his cheek to the horse's neck. The hide there was warm and clean and smelled like rain taught it something. He could feel the big, calm engine under the skin, heart, breath, the patient strength that had carried a thousand small hopes without complaint. He smiled, open, ungilded.

"Lord," he murmured. "Lord, you're beautiful." His voice dropped to a secret only the stall should hear. "This the most beautiful thing anybody's ever given me."

Blake leaned on the half-door and watched, steady line, something raw and tender in his eyes that didn't need a name. He stood like a man who'd put a gift into the world and was willing, for once, to let its goodness belong to someone else. The horse breathed out, warm on Jackson's wrist, and tipped his head like he remembered who'd once told him all his fears without getting the words right.

Blake's smile came slow, then sure. "I could say the same 'bout you," he murmured, voice gone low and private. "Ain't been given much in this life, Jackson. But you...you about the prettiest thing God ever set in my hands."

Jackson didn't answer with words. The yes in him burned hot and steady, lantern-bright. Blake stepped in close, the barn's hum narrowing to two men remembering how to breathe the same air. His fingers found the hem of Jackson's shirt, rough pads skimming denim, up to cotton, and slid under, slow, reverent, as if his hands were reading a story they'd half-forgotten.

"Missed you," Blake said into the inch of space between them, the confession warm as summer.

He glanced down the row, empty, only horses listening, and then eased Jackson back until his shoulders touched the inside of the stall wall. The wood caught them, solid as a vow. 

The world tipped.

Those old magnets found their poles. They fell into each other like a storm breaking, mouths meeting with the practiced surprise of men who know exactly where the other lives. It wasn't careful. It was the kind of kiss that pulls names out of your chest and leaves them on the other man's tongue for safekeeping.

Blake's palms mapped him, hipbone to ribs, up the ladder of muscle and breath, thumb smoothing along the edge of a shoulder blade like blessing. Jackson's hands climbed Blake's back, felt the new crop of hair damp under the nape, the line of tendon and stubborn under it. He opened to the kiss and answered, body shifting forward, tongue sliding in slowly, the length of him fitting Blake as if that had been the plan all along. Denim rasped denim. The horse huffed, unbothered, a warm witness. Rain stitched the moment shut from the outside.

Blake broke just enough to breathe, forehead to Jackson's, words and breath ghosting his mouth. "God, you taste like home."

Jackson made a sound that wasn't polite and pulled him back in, teeth grazing the corner of Blake's lower lip, a promise with a pulse. Blake swallowed it and gave one back, hunger simmering just under the sweetness, hands sinking at Jackson's waist to anchor them both. 

"Alright..."

Cash's voice hit the aisle like a thrown tool, sore and hot, the edge of the man he used to be clanging through the tin and wood.

They stopped on contact, breathless, close enough for the same air, rain loud as an alibi. Blake's hands stilled at Jackson's hips. Jackson's fingers tightened reflexively in the cotton at Blake's shoulder before they loosened, both of them turning toward the sound, the stall holding the shape of what they'd almost let themselves finish.

"Alright," he repeated, voice too calm to last.

Jackson stepped forward, palms out, breath still unsteady. "Cash..."

"Don't 'Cash' me," he snapped, and the old Dalton in him came out like a storm through a screen door. He dragged a hand over his face as if he could wipe off the picture he'd just been given. "I watched you walk through rain to him. I watched you put your mouth on him like that was the only water in a dry county." He swallowed hard, anger and hurt wrestling in his throat. "I ain't built for standin' here and pretendin' that don't cut."

Blake's shoulders squared, then eased—hands lifting, empty, cautious as a man around a skittish horse. "Dalton..."

Cash barked a laugh that had no joy in it. "Nah...nah. Fuck you, Buckley!" He spat, finger pointed at Blake's face. "I been tryin'...God knows I been tryin'...to gotten my head 'round this whole' the road's got its rules and he's a man with miles'." He thumped his chest with two fingers like a man knocking to find a stud. "But this? Watchin' you touch what I hold? My gut says no. Not after all this."

Jackson closed the space fast, hand to Cash's forearm. "Listen to me. I told you the truth. I ain't lied to you once in this. I..."

"I heard you," Cash fired back, eyes jumping between Jackson's mouth and Blake's face like he didn't know where the danger lived. "I heard every word about wildfire and home. I said I'd help you find him. And I did, but..." he wavered. "But I ain't got a compartment I can put this in and sleep, Jacks." His voice cracked on the nickname, just for a breath. "I want you happy. I do. But I can't watch him put his hands on you and call that love of mine."

Blake took a step, palms still open. "He came to me," he said, not as an excuse, as a fact.

It was the wrong sentence in the wrong moment.

Cash moved without thinking. 

The punch came straight from the shoulder, a carpenter's line as clean as a plumb drop. His fist met Blake's cheek with a sound that made the horse in the stall pin both ears and stamp once. Blake's head snapped. He stumbled back into the half-door, hat skidding under the rail, eyes wide not with fear so much as surprise, like a man who's taken hits before but hadn't expected this one to count. A hand went to his jaw, fingers pressing, mouth red where a tooth had cut the inside.

"Cash!" Jackson caught his wrist mid-swing as he cocked again, bodies colliding, stall rattling. "Hey. Hey."

Cash let his fist go slack under Jackson's grip, breath heaving like he'd run too far in bad boots. He kept his eyes on Blake, fury and grief and shame all sparking off the flint of him.

"I love you," he told Jackson, not looking away from the man he'd hit. It came out raw as a scraped knee. "God help me, I love you to the studs. But I can't do this math no more. I can't be your house and stand by while you light the damn roof on fire." He finally looked at Jackson then, and it ruined him a little, blue eyes, rain-wet, a boy he'd held since before he knew what that meant. "You gotta choose. Him or me. You can't have both."

The rain hammered approval or disapproval, it was hard to tell. The barn waited, hot and bright and breathless, for the first answer to find its way into a mouth.

But Jackson didn't answer.

He didn't answer because there wasn't a word big enough to hold it. His whole body did the talking, shoulders pulled between two tides, breath going short and high, hands halfway to both men and stuck there. He looked like a boy at the end of a dock watching two boats drift in opposite currents, ropes burning his palms. 

Fire and porch. 
Sky and house. 

He was both and he had never learned how to tear himself cleanly.

Cash saw it land and saw it not land. Something flickered in him, grief trying for mercy, and then the spark went out. He shook free of Jackson's grip with a curse that sounded like his own name said wrong and turned on his heel. "Fine," he bit out, to no one and everyone, and shouldered into the aisle, boots ringing on wet concrete, shoulders sending the humid air off in waves. The tent door swallowed him. Rain took him.

Jackson went after, calling something that got killed by the downpour, but Cash had always been fast when it mattered. He cut across the gravel, past the drinks tent with its neon buzz and wet laughter, past the practice pen where a kid who didn't know yet was learning to fall. He hit the driver's door hard and hauled himself in. Keys bit the ignition, the engine turned and caught with a tired bark, wipers thumped awake, and he yanked the column into drive like the road owed him change.

The truck leapt and then ran, tires hissing on the fresh skin of water, headlights carving two pale tunnels in the rain. Cash's breath sawed in his chest, too big for such tiny space. The fury came in cycles, hot up the throat, dropping to cold in the gut, and back again. His hands clamped the wheel at ten and two till the tendons popped, then loosened like he might throw the whole thing across the dash. He tasted metal. He pounded the heel of his hand once, twice into the steering wheel, a dull drumbeat that didn't help and hurt exactly right.

"Fuckin' stupid," he told the empty seat, which was Jackson's by right. "This is..." His voice broke, came back meaner. "After all the...after everything..." He smacked the wheel again, harder. The horn blurted an involuntary, ridiculous bleat at the rain.

He found the exit lane without meaning to and took it. The fairgrounds dropped away in the mirror like a cheap carnival. The county road shouldered him with wet pines and flooded ditches, the kind of dark that makes you believe you're the last person God left awake. The fence ran alongside, silver wire slicked to a black line, posts shouldering up through pooled water like men who'd been told to stand there till it stopped. Beyond it, the pasture was a single sheet of brown glass, rain turning dirt to skin, skin to mud, mud to muscle under the floodlights that were for nobody.

He breathed, one-two. One, two. The place between anger and quiet showed itself for a moment, thin, habitable, and he eased the truck into it, the way you nudge a door whose frame you've finally trued. His grip loosened from a choke to a hold. He blinked sweat and rain out of his eyes, and the road became a road again instead of a dare.

And that's when it happened.

Headlights bloomed suddenly in the mirror, too close, carving his cab white. He squinted into it, jaw tightening. The truck behind ate the distance like a thing that hadn't learned manners. "Go 'round," Cash muttered, flicking his blinker as if courtesy could conjure sense.

It did. 

The other truck swung out into the oncoming lane, a dark shape hydroplaning on purpose, throwing a rooster tail of water that slapped Cash's windshield blind for a heartbeat. He lifted his foot, blinked wipers up to frantic, and the world came back just in time to see the stranger cut in sharp. Gravel spat. The nose of the other truck slid sideways across the lane and stopped catty-corner, blocking the blacktop from shoulder to flooded shoulder. Brake lights glared red as two accusations.

Cash stomped the brake. The seatbelt grabbed his chest and held. His tires skated, found purchase, shuddered, and held, the hood dipping until inches were all that lived between chrome and chrome. 

Rain pounded the roof. 

They sat breathing at one another, two animals with their hackles up in a storm, the road turned into a question mark by somebody else's answer. 

Cash was out of the cab before the wipers could finish their swipe. "Move your damn truck!" he shouted into the rain, voice ripped raw. 

He slammed his door, and in the same breath, the other driver's door opened. 

Blake climbed down, hatless, rain ironing his shirt to him, hair slicked dark and short against his skull.

Cash froze half a second, the recognition a punch on its own, then found his breath and sharpened it into knives. "Of course," he barked. "Get it out of the road, Buckley, before I push it into the ditch with your pretty face."

Blake didn't move. He just stood, shoulders square, rain pinning him to the landscape like a photograph. He let Cash's fury blow through and didn't take a step toward or away.

"Move...your...fuckin' truck!" Cash shoved him. It was clean, hard, palms to chest. Blake rocked back a fraction, boots holding. The restraint read as contempt in Cash's bones. It lit something older than the evening. "This is all your fault," he hissed. "Ever since you showed up...since you put your hands on him...since you turned his head...everything went to hell."

Blake's face didn't flinch. A mountain of silence.

"You know what?... Fine," Cash spat. He vaulted the fence like a man escaping his own skin, denim scraping wire, boots dropping into mud that took him up to the ankles with a greedy sound. Rain came sideways now, needling. He put his head down and trudged into the churned dark.

"Don't," Blake said, calm across the fence. "You'll sink."

"Stay the fuck away from me," Cash snapped without turning. "I'm warnin' you..."

Blake swung over the fence anyway, landing heavy and sure, the pasture sucking at his weight and letting him have it back. 

He followed, not hurrying. 
The rain haloed off them both. 

Cash whirled, swung, the punch fast and blind with all the new hurt and all the old hurt braided in it. Blake's hand came up, deflected, and turned the wrist, gentle as if taking a tool from a child before he harms himself. Cash lost his footing. He went down hard, the mud catching him and not softening the ground at all. He came up on his knees, filthy and heaving, and threw himself at Blake again.

Blake gave ground without fleeing, sidestepping, forearm, the old rodeo balance that lets you live through hooves. Cash's fists beat at him, glanced off shoulders, slid on wet cotton. He caught one punch and let the other land where there was meat, where it would bruise him honest but not break a thing. "Come on!" Cash shouted. "Fight me! Fight me!"

"I ain't your bull," Blake said, breathless but steady. He took another shot and rode the pain instead of paying it forward.

Cash's voice thinned and frayed as if the rain were unspooling it. "I hate you," he choked, swinging wildly, tears mixing with the weather on his cheeks so there was no telling which was which. "I hate you, I fuckin' hate you," he sobbed, and the fists kept coming, weaker and truer, little-boy fists inside a man's hard hands.

Blake's palm found the space between Cash's shoulder and jaw and pressed, not to hurt, to ground. His mouth bent close enough the words could thread through the storm and land where they needed to. "I know what you feel," he said, low. "I know."

Cash shuddered like something in him had been named against its will. His punches got messy, then lost interest in being punches at all. They softened into pushes, then clutched at fistfuls of drenched shirt. Blake kept talking, steady as fence posts. "But it ain't your fault. None of it."

The pasture was a brown ocean around them, rain beating it into waves that rolled against their shins. Mud climbed their jeans like it meant to claim them. Cash's forehead fell into Blake's chest with a small, miserable thud. He breathed in ragged pulls that caught on ribs, his body done with rage and not yet finished with grief.

Blake's hand went to the back of his head, fingers splayed, warm even wet, anchoring like a man palming a skittish colt. "You're not him, kid," he said, the word kid not a slight, just the right size for the moment. He bent his chin to Cash's crown. "You're not the one who hurt you."

Cash sagged like a structure that had finally been allowed to stop pretending. He pressed closer, mud sucking at their boots, sobs ripping out of him hot and childish and unpretty. Blake took the weight, took the weather, arm bracketed around Cash's shoulders, holding him up in the middle of all that ruin like a man who'd learned at last how to stand between a storm and something worth saving.

And he didn't let go. 

He kept his hand at the back of Cash's head, thumb stroking rain and grit into something gentler, his mouth closed enough that the words could get past the storm.

"It wasn't your fault," he said, quiet and flint-true. "All them nights he came home sour and swingin'? That ain't on your ledger. You didn't do wrong. You didn't make him mean."

Cash's shoulders jerked under his palms, a mule-kick of memory. All those nights, on that trailer park, taking Vernon's rage so he wouldn't go after Cassidy, or Carla.

Blake tipped his jaw up with two fingers, made him meet it. "Look at me."

Cash tried to slide away from the gaze like it was fire. Blake held him easy but sure.

"You and me," Blake said, voice scuffed and simple, "we're the same kind, Cash. Same deep cut. Never closed proper. We learned to hold the wall up with our backs and call that livin'. I see it. I know it."

Something in Cash's face let go, not the anger, the scaffolding around it. 

Blake's thumb swept a muddy tear off his cheekbone.

And that's when it happened. 
Cash moved.

It wasn't graceful. He leaned and crashed their mouths together like he was throwing himself against a locked door. Blake met him halfway, answered with teeth and heat, both hands fisting in the back of Cash's shirt, dragging him closer. They went down in the mud together, knees giving, boots skidding, hands scrambling for purchase they didn't want to find. The kiss turned fierce and thoughtless, jaw to jaw, breath ripped out and taken back, a long-hoarded fury finding fire that didn't burn them to the ground.

They rolled, shoulders plowing brown water, denim heavy and clinging. Cash shoved, hauled Blake over. Blake let him, then surged back, mouth catching Cash's again like a fight he knew how to win without hurting anything that mattered. For a breath, it was all want and no mercy, exactly the language their bodies had always kept under the floorboards.

Cash tore free, panting, swung once more from that old place. Blake caught the wrist mid-arc, turned it, not cruel, just enough to still the dumb part of pain. "Hey now," he said, rough, not unkind, and yanked Cash back in to kiss him again, hard enough to take the swing out of his bones. This time, Blake's tongue went in. Cash made a sound like a sob or a curse into Blake's mouth and went with it. Tongue met tongue.

They fell again, this time with Blake on top, palms planted in the mud on either side of Cash's ribs, bodies heavy and shaking. Cash turned his face, breath shuddering. "Let me go," he said, but it came out tired, not true.

Blake's mouth bent, a half-smile cut out of rain and ruin. "You sure?"

Silence answered, wet and loud. Cash didn't say yes. He didn't say no. He held Blake's stare like a man standing on a ledge and not stepping back.

"Alright," Blake said, softer. He eased down, slower now, everything in him changing gears. The next kiss landed like a hand to fever, careful, certain, time taken. Their tongues laced gently and this time, Cash didn't fight it. He groaned into it. Mud cooled on their necks. 

Heat found a home under it. 

When Blake finally lifted his head, breath shaking just a little, the hammering eased. 

The rain quit like a curtain dropped between acts. In the pause afterward the fence began its tiny ticking, cool metal answering heat, as if the pasture itself were catching its breath. The sky behind them came up clear and strange, the last of the storm torn into ribbons that drifted north and lit from within, green and rose and a pale, holy blue like someone had spilled paint from another world. 

Dawn should've been ordinary.
Instead, it moved soft and slow under a scrim of lights, a poor man's aurora that made the wet earth shine like new skin.

They lay there a beat, mud heavy on their clothes, ribs heaving in the same time without anyone having to say how they'd gotten there. Somewhere off in the waking dark, a horse gave a low, certain nicker that ran up the spine, found the soft spot behind the sternum, and pressed.

Blake lifted his head, palm still at the back of Cash's neck. He turned toward the road. Cash followed the line, breath catching, not from any fear now, but from that old, sudden ache when beauty arrives without calling ahead.

Out by the fence, where the blacktop threw a dull coin of light into the ditch, a shape slid free of the thinning shadow. 

The white horse stepped up out of the low ground as if he'd been born from it, mane damp and haloed by the odd light, breath smoking in the new cold. On his bare back, easy, knees loose and hands soft, Jackson sat like a man who'd remembered how to wear joy. He didn't look down at his hands to ask if he deserved it.

He looked at them.

The gelding trotted, not hurrying, hooves sucking and lifting from the softened earth with a sound that was half kiss, half heartbeat. Each step sent a small silver of water up into the air to catch the aurora's green and the first thin blade of sun. Jackson's hair, wet and gold, turned the same colors for a second, like dawn had taken a liking to him. He rode with his weight forward in that way he had when he was being tender, speaking with his hips, not his heels, one hand open, palm grazing the horse's neck in thanks for coming through.

He came to the fence and stopped just shy, the gelding's ears flicking once, as if he knew how much the morning could bear. Jackson's blue eyes held them both, and it did something to the air, took the leftover fight out of it, made it deep enough for forgiveness.

He didn't ask what, or why, or how. 
He was the why. 

He sat there like an answer that had taken its time getting right, sunlight waking slow across his face. The aurora above made its silent curtain call, the last green lifting like a blessing. The sun took the stage with a soft, unarguable gold that lay on his shoulders, on their mud, on the fence, and on the trucks that steamed like animals cooling after a run.

Blake felt his jaw loosen, the sore coming on where Cash's fist had written its true name. Cash felt something loosen in his ribs, not surrender but untying, and the first slack in a rope pulled too long. Between them, the old scar hummed, and Jackson's nearness poured something cool over it, enough that the throb eased, enough that, for a breath, they could feel the shape of healing under their hands.

He was not a judge or a truce flag. 
He was a plainfield. 

An elixir brewed from Daisy's kitchen gospel and road dust and all the stubborn love that had refused to die when it should have. He was the thing that let both fires warm a house instead of burning it.

"Ain't the two of y'all 'bout done with this here foolishness?" Jackson said, voice soft and hoarse, smiling like he couldn't help it.

The horse blew out and lowered his head, resting his chin on the top wire like even saints appreciate a fence now and then. Blake's hand slid off Cash's nape and landed on the mud beside him. Cash pushed up to his knees and swiped at his face with a filthy wrist, laughing once because there was nothing else big enough to put there.

*

They came inside the hotel room on a hush, the soft thud of the door, the carpet swallowing their boot-sounds, the wet drip from cuffs and hems marking a breadcrumb trail from the storm. Mud made maps on Blake and Cash both, dried in streaks where hands had grabbed, darker where the rain hadn't bothered to rinse. They stood just inside like men who'd forgotten what to do with the quiet.

The room was pitch dark, a string of light pouring from the outer rim of the shutters.

Jackson crossed to the bedside lamp and thumbed it on. A small, honey coin of light pooled and spread, finding the planes of shoulders, the cut of jaw, the wet shine at a temple. 

He went to the foot of the bed and stood there, bare feet silent on carpet, hair still damp, eyes the steady kind of blue that makes a man feel seen. Cash's gaze caught and held. Blake glanced down at his clothes, mud-slicked shirt clinging to his ribs, denim heavy as regret, and tipped his chin toward the bathroom, half-turning.

"Where you goin'," Jackson asked, mild as a laid palm.

"Shower," Blake muttered, like the word might pass for permission.

Jackson shook his head once, slowly. "Naw. Y'ain't," he said before pausing, eyes scanning their mud-covered clothes. "Just...take them clothes off."

Blake's mouth twitched, old habits tasting the order and finding it fit. 

He looked at Cash.
Cash looked at him. 

One short, helpless laugh ran between them, boys caught and happy to be. They started with buttons, all those small decisions. Blake's fingers worked the placket, mud flaking, cotton giving. The shirt came open to the color the sun had made of him, to the thin white line at his shoulder where fence and fate had left a story. He shrugged it off and it hit the carpet with a tired thump. He toe-heeled his boots away, peeled denim from muscle, the fabric's wet rasp turning into a sound you feel low. His thighs were roped and honest, nicks and bruises a map of long work. His waist cut in clean, ribs rising and falling under skin the color of bread gone golden. 

Jackson smiled. No matter how many years had passed, Blake was still a sight to behold. A man built like a job done right and hard.

Cash tugged his own T-shirt over his head, the hem smearing a darker band across his ribs, hair standing in damp peaks. His shoulders were a carpenter's, deltoids rounded by years of lifting things that don't help, forearms corded with the quiet language of torque and care. A long, pale scar ran like a chalk line along one hip. There was a faint, familiar sawdust scent still clinging under the rain and mud. When he unbuttoned his jeans, his hands trembled once and then steadied. The denim came down slowly, heavy with the day. The hard cock under it didn't apologize for being there.

Both men stood in the lamp's warm coin, different kinds of strong, the same kind of beautiful, their bodies telling true in ways their mouths still caught on. And Jackson watched them with a softness that didn't spare them detail. It was inventory and praise.

Then he reached for his own shirt, fingers catching the hem and dragging wet cotton up over ribs that worked fine and fast. He undid his belt and slid the leather free, a sighing sound, and let denim slide off narrow hips, tanned thigh catching lamplight, old buckle marks on his skin like secret punctuation. Jackson wasn't shy. He wasn't showy. He stepped out of himself the way you step out of a porch shadow into dusk: deliberate, sure, made of invitation.

He spoke while he undressed, words easy but edged with the right kind of steel. "I'm done pretendin' there's a choice that don't cut me in half," he said, the accent going low as the lamp. "I love you," he nodded to Cash, "and I love you," to Blake, "and it ain't a ledger I'm tryin' to balance. It's a house I'm buildin'. You're the fire in it. You're the porch. I won't be made to choose which room I get to keep warm. I won't call that love. My life don't mean what it's supposed to if I gotta lock one of you out so the other can sleep. I'm tellin' it plain, in the light: I won't choose. I can't. I don't want to."

He let the last stitch of fabric fall, a soft whisper onto the carpet, and slid into the bed like a cat choosing a sun-warmed sill, body sculpted into perfection, the white sheet folding over the long line of his back, the lamp painting gold down the fine, golden hairs on his forearm. He rolled to face them, propped on an elbow, the curve of his collarbone catching a glint, his mouth soft and sure. He rose one leg, thigh muscles tightening until he exposed his peachy cheeks, a glimmer of his shaking beaconing all eyes on it.

"If you want my happiness," he said, voice gone gentle and enormous at once, "you ain't got to outdo each other. You just gotta love me. Together."

He held their eyes in the coin of light, patient as a door held open, and let the room take the breath it needed.

And they moved. Oh, did they move.

They came like tide, unhurried and inevitable. Cash rounded the bed's corner with that loose-hipped steadiness he wore when a job was nearly done. Blake's shadow filled the other side, broad and sure, the mattress dipping under his weight like a confession it was glad to keep. Jackson rose to meet them on his knees in the gold coin of the lamp, the sheet slanting off his hip, the fine muscles of his back drawing under skin like good grain under a handplane.

They closed him in, Cash before him, eyes dark and certain. Blake behind, heat gathered along Jackson's spine, breath touching the soft place below his ear. They held its geometry for a second: triangle, trinity, something old and twice as welcome. Then Jackson leaned in and took Cash's mouth with his own.

It was a kiss that told history without using dates, hungry and grateful, a little ragged at the edges from all the almosts they'd survived. Cash's hands rose of their own accord, one at Jackson's ribs, thumb counting each rung like rosary. The other at his jaw, angling him with a carpenter's care. Jackson's palm slid to Cash's chest, found the beat there, and learned it again.

He broke just enough to breathe, his head turning, his eyes half-closed, and he offered his mouth back over his shoulder. Blake came forward with a sound that lived somewhere between a laugh and a prayer, one big hand cupping the back of Jackson's head like he might hold an ember there. The kiss they shared was different, weather and road, and the relief of a man finally allowed to want without apology. Jackson smiled into it.

The room felt it.
An invisible light expanding out to the corners, softening everything it touched.

They pulled back a breath, and in that bright hush, the same understanding moved through both men like current through wire: this is what the road was for, what the porch was for, what the hurt held out for.

Not a bargain.
A meeting.
Three lines closing a shape that had needed every mile to complete.

Jackson's lips brushed Blake's once more, tongue teasing its edges. Then he turned, eyes clear, voice a warm command. "Kiss each other."

There was the smallest waver, surprise, old pride testing the air, and then Blake and Cash leaned past him at the same time, bodies pressing Jackson gently between them, breath mingling warm as bread. Cash's hand found Blake's shoulder, solid as oak. Blake's thumb skimmed the cut of Cash's cheek where rain had dried to salt. Their mouths met, tentative for a heartbeat, then steadying, respect finding heat, heat learning respect, two stubborn men discovering the same key fits both their locks.

Jackson felt it happen against him: the give, the answer, the slow, necessary thaw. The shape of both men's stiff cocks pressed against his skin. He set his hands at their hips and drew them closer until chest met shoulder met back and the three of them were one stacked warmth, moving without hurry.

Cash deepened the kiss, a soft sound in his throat. Blake answered with patience edged in hunger, the kiss tilting toward promise. Jackson nosed along Blake's jaw, then pressed his smiling mouth to the hinge of Cash's neck, and all three of them breathed like the first breeze after a long heat.

Bodies aligned, skin to skin, they made a little constellation there, two stars and the bright, stubborn one between, touches mapping orbits: Blake's palm flattening over Cash's heart. Cash's fingers splayed at Jackson's lower back. Jackson's hand sliding up, open, between two steady spines.

Outside, the world might have turned. In here, light and breath and the long, sweet shock of finally arrived.

Blake drew back from Cash, their lips parting with a soft pop that broke the silence. His mouth was flushed and moist, and as he spat into his hand, the sound briefly punctuated the quiet room like a sharp riff in an otherwise hushed track. He used the slickness to prepare himself, feeling the familiar anticipation thrumming under his skin. With a practiced grace born of many intimate nights together, Blake lined up against Jackson's entrance. The head of his cock nudged gently at the tight entryway that seemed to pulse with its own rhythm. As he began to press forward slowly, carefully, Jackson's head tipped back instinctively, revealing the elegant line of his neck.

Seizing the moment, Cash leaned in with excitement sparking in his eyes. His lips attacked Jackson's newly exposed skin, biting softly then easing off into teasing flicks of his tongue. The sensation on Jackson's neck elicited a deep moan, causing Jackson's body to tighten around Blake's length with almost fierce urgency. Still, Blake moved persistently inward until he was completely buried.

"Lord, I missed this," Blake growled, his voice low and rough with desire. His hips moved slowly, every thrust deliberate as Jackson arched towards him, fingers gripping the sheets for support. Cash remained at Jackson's neck, planting kisses and gentle bites that would surely bloom into soft bruises by morning light. With precision, he wrapped a hand around Jackson's pulsing hardness, syncing his rhythm to Blake's movement.

Jackson's words flowed like molten honey as he breathed out a command, "Slow…" he conveyed. Instantly the atmosphere shifted. Blake's sweat-slicked hips responded smoothly to the directive. He withdrew almost lazily from Jackson's heat before driving back with careful intensity. Each thrust was a symphonic note, his muscles flexing tightly with effort as he pushed deeper into the quivering warmth beneath him. Jackson's lips parted as if releasing a spell, a moan escaping from deep within him. "Well, bless your heart, that's it right there," he purred, voice thick with urgent need.

Cash maintained his relentless focus on Jackson's skin with a vampire-like intensity, marking territory that declared possession without words. His dark eyes darted upward to meet Blake's gaze. That smirk told a thousand stories, one that reflected their history: two wolves entwined with one willing prey.

Blake's hands moved with feral desperation, abandoning Jackson's pillowy hipbone to stake claim on Cash's chiseled, unyielding terrain. His fingers shook with pent-up need as they mapped every ridge of Cash's hardened flesh, the kind of body that begged for domination even while it commanded it. Cash was all raw power and animal magnetism, a living testament to masculine force. Blake's left hand mashed Cash's ass cheek, kneading it until Cash's pelvis lifted toward him, erasing every inch of space between their bodies. The heat pulsed between them like molten metal, a blazing furnace of sweat and unrestrained lust.

A guttural groan tore from Blake's throat as he savored the contrast, Jackson's tender warmth slipping away, replaced by Cash's iron-hard form. It felt as if he were clutching a carved statue, every sinew, every groove, every sculpted curve worthy of worship. His cock throbbed violently, greedy and insistent, aching to fuse skin to skin with Cash as their bodies dovetailed in a savage symphony of flesh and friction.

Suddenly, Cash's hand shot out with brutal precision, yanking Blake's wrist away. "Hold yer horses a minute, now," he snarled. He guided Blake's hand downward, past the heat of his ass, until Blake's fingers grazed the rigid pillar of Cash's cock. Blake's breath stuttered as he closed his grip, feeling its scorching pulse, raw potency, pure, unfiltered power in the palm of his hand. Cash released a harsh groan, thrusting his hips into Blake's grip as Jackson whimpered beneath them, caught in the conflagration of two seething infernos.

Blake's thick, calloused fingers wound around Cash's throbbing shaft. Slick with pre-cum, his grip pulsed violently, jerking up and down in a merciless rhythm that had Cash's hips bucking. That relentless motion ignited Blake's own momentum, causing him to drive into Jackson with brutal force, ramming Jackson's hips down so hard that every strike resonated through the room like thunder. Meanwhile, his other hand dragged over Cash's shaft faster.

At last, Cash ripped his mouth from Jackson's in one wet, brutal pop. Their breaths collided in the thick, steamy air as Jackson's eyes met Cash's. In that instant, Cash recognized the raw dominion Blake wielded: electric, primal, undeniable, sending another shudder through his twitching cock. Jackson's lips curved into a wicked grin, mirrored by Cash, their mouths hovering inches apart, taunting, tasting.

Jackson's tongue slid out in slow, deliberate promise, glistening with arousal like morning dew on steel, and Cash could withstand no longer. He lunged forward, smashing his lips against Jackson's in a torrid, sloppy kiss that dripped with need. Their moans mingled against each other's mouths, fueling Blake's savage hunger to reclaim Jackson's hips. He dug his fingers into Jackson's soft flesh, yanking him down until Jackson's moans were swallowed by the wet prison of Cash's mouth with each punishing thrust. The room erupted in a storm of sweat, spit, and relentless, unquenchable passion.

It shattered with each brutal thrust. Every impact drove Jackson's face deeper into the mattress, muffling screams that would've awakened the entire building. Blake's fingers dug crescents into flesh that would mark Jackson for days, claiming him with a violence that bordered on worship. Cash couldn't breathe watching them, his lungs seizing at the image of Blake's cock disappearing into Jackson's body with mechanical precision, stretching him beyond what seemed humanly possible.

Blood roared in Cash's ears as Blake's grip crushed around his own throbbing cock. Cash's control snapped, he seized Jackson's ass with both hands, spreading him so wide Jackson cried out in shocked pleasure. The wet, obscene sounds of their connection echoed like thunder, Jackson's hole stretched pink and glistening around Blake's punishing girth.

"Is this what you were fixin' to get?" Blake snarled, eyes wild.

Jackson convulsed, reduced to animal sounds, high, broken whimpers punctuated by sobs when Blake hammered that spot that made his vision white out. "Fuck...fuck," he whimpered, eyes closed, teeth biting into his lips.

Cash's mouth found Jackson's ear, teeth grazing the shell. "He's tearin' you up," he hissed, voice trembling with awe.

Jackson's spine arched impossibly, muscles seizing as Blake's pace turned savage. Cash's hand blurred over his own cock, pressure building to unbearable heights as Blake's thrusts grew erratic, his massive cock visibly pulsing.

"I can't..." Cash choked, every nerve ending electrified.

"STOP." Blake's command cracked like a whip.

Cash's entire body shuddered violently, a feral sound tearing from his throat as he forced himself back from the edge. Blake withdrew in one fluid motion, Jackson's body convulsing around the sudden emptiness. He collapsed against Cash's thighs, sweat pouring down his back in rivulets, each labored breath sounding like it was being ripped from his chest.

"Swap it out," Blake ordered, voice like gravel, eyes burning with a hunger that promised devastation.

Cash's heart fluttered, his arousal throbbing intensely in his grasp. Blake was not one to wait for an invitation. He stepped back, his heavy feet punching the floor, his body resonating through the room as he rounded the foot of the bed, his hips swaying with an air of dominance, landing a sharp smack on Cash's back. "Git along now, Junior," he growled.

Cash's smirk curved slowly as he prowled around Jackson's sprawled body, claiming Blake's spot like a triumphant conqueror. Blake took Cash's place, his hands moving, fingers entwining in Jackson's sweat-soaked blonde hair. He lifted Jackson's head, forcing those plump lips open, and slid his throbbing length into the heat of Jackson's mouth. Jackson gagged, but Blake was undeterred. He pressed forward, inch by inch, until he was fully sheathed, Jackson's lips stretched around his girth. Blake's groan was bass, his head thrown back as he savored the heat, the tightness, the way Jackson's throat spasmed around him.

Blake's eyes opened, locking onto Cash's with a smirk. "Yank 'em on down to town, kid," he drawled, his Southern charm wrapping around every word like honey. He winked, slow and deliberate, before tightening his grip on Jackson's hair, forcing him deeper.

Cash needed no further encouragement. 

He positioned himself behind Jackson, his hands gripping the curve of that perfect ass, fingers digging into the soft flesh. He leaned in, his breath scorching against Jackson's overheated skin, and pressed the engorged head of his cock against that tight, quivering entrance. Jackson moaned, muffled by Blake's length, as Cash pushed in, slow at first, savoring the way Jackson's body resisted, then yielded, taking him inch by inch. He paused for a heartbeat, letting Jackson adjust, letting himself revel in the heat, the tightness, the way Blake's warmth still lingered there. Then he pulled back, just enough to tease, before thrusting forward again, harder this time, the force of it driving Jackson's mouth further onto Blake's shaft.

The room was a symphony of iniquity, the soggy slap of skin against skin, the guttural groans, the sharp gasps muffled by desire and sheer brutality. Blake's hips moved in a relentless rhythm, his length plunging deep into Jackson's throat, while Cash took him from behind, each thrust driving Jackson harder, deeper.

Blake's hand tightened in Jackson's hair, forcing him to look up, his blue eyes glassy with pleasure and tears. "That's it...my beautiful fuckin' angel," Blake purred. Jackson moaned, eager to please and be pleased, the sound vibrating around Blake's cock, and Blake chuckled, low and dark, before glancing at Cash.

And it was in that searing instant, amid Jackson's ragged, submissive gasps and Cash's muscular hips pistoning so hard against his reddened cheeks that the bed groaned beneath them, that Blake's arm lashed out. His fingers snapped around Cash's throat like iron shackles, hauling him so close their foreheads bled heat into each other. 

The synergy they created arose with a potency that surpassed anything they had ever experienced, bringing Blake's words to life.

"That burn, that fury…" Blake murmured, his Southern drawl a velvet slash. Blake leaned forward, lips brushing Cash's in a kiss so gentle it was weaponized with purpose. "Ya pour that into love, ya hear?" His breath was hot whiskey on Cash's tongue.

Cash's dark eyes, flickering with need and surrender, locked onto Blake's. He nodded, his chest heaving, every muscle trembling with the urge to explode inside Jackson's slick warmth. "Say it," Blake purred, voice velvet-coated steel.

"Ah'ma...Ah'ma turn it inta love,"  Cash rasped, hips stuttering, unable to contain the tidal wave pounding through him.

"Good boy," Blake whispered, a grin curving his lips as he dropped his grip. "Show me whatcha got."

In a heartbeat, Cash snapped from quivering pup to alpha predator. His arms locked around Jackson's waist as his thrusts morphed into brutal, merciless drives, each one burying Jackson deeper into the mattress, wood splintering with the force of their ecstasy. Every crack of skin against skin rang like thunder.

Blake watched Cash's transformation like a conductor savoring the crescendo before unleashing it. The hunger in Cash's eyes burned hotter than any storm, devouring everything in its path, especially Jackson's gasping silhouette beneath him.

Then Blake slid forward, the pallid tip of his cock brushing the back of Jackson's trembling throat. He forced Jackson's head down, impaling him until every inch of his length vanished into that tight channel. Jackson jerked, gagging into muffled moans, his hands clawing at Blake's thighs as waves of bliss and dissent ripped through him.

Cash's thrusts accelerated, savage pistons driving against Jackson's velvety heat, the bed's legs scraping the floor in an orgasmic war dance. Blake's hand tangled in Jackson's hair, tugging him closer until his lips parted around Blake's base. Jackson's eyes fluttered back, lost in pure, white oblivion as he swallowed every inch.

"Take it," Blake whispered, drawing out each word like a ritual. 

Cash roared in response, his balls drawing tight under the onslaught of sensation as he slammed into Jackson with bruising intensity. Flesh slapped flesh with a wet crack that echoed through the room. Blake's strokes became frenzied, his wrist a blur, urged on by the sight of Cash ravaging Jackson's body so viciously.

"Fuck…yeah," Blake groaned, his own release spiraling toward its peak. "Make me holler, darlin'. Take me on down deep."

Jackson's back arched, his muscles spasming. His world compressed to the pounding in his gut and the slick press of bodies against him, an exquisite maelstrom of pain and bliss. Cash's thrusts grew ragged as his orgasm finally hit. He howled, cock convulsing, hot jets of warm cum pulsing deep inside Jackson.

Blake shattered seconds later, a guttural groan ripping from his chest as his own orgasm ripped through him. He held Jackson's head firm, forcing him to hold steady, thick ropes of cum flooding his throat until he swallowed them. 

Every single one.

When the storm finally spent itself, the three fell sideways, crashing over the clean sheets, mud, sweat, cum, and rain mixing together. They lay wrapped in each other's heat, bodies heaving, limbs tangled on every curve. Blake's breath panted in Jackson's ear as he feathered his fingers through his hair, a fierce tenderness softening his grin.

"You were perfect, sugar," he rasped, voice raw with satisfaction.

Cash let out a hoarse chuckle, collapsing back against the pillows, chest rising and falling in ragged waves. "Sweet Jesus…that was intense," he muttered, eyes half-lidded with bliss.

Jackson's grin surfaced from under his flushed face, his Southern drawl dripping with lewdness. "Not bad for a first go-round."

*

Blake sank deeper into the armchair as if the leather knew him, knees spread, shaft still resting between his legs, forearms draped, eyes on the bed like a man watching a storm he'd prayed for.

Cash's back shining, each muscle catching light as it flexed. Jackson lay beneath him, throat bared, mouth open, legs dangling to the side, that soft pleading sound he only makes when he forgets to be careful.

"Slow," Blake murmured, voice a low chord. "Let him feel every inch of you...not with your dick, with your whole self."

Cash shifted, and Jackson's breath punched out, his fingers slid up Cash's spine, counting vertebrae like rosary beads, then flattened at the nape, guiding, asking for that perfect angle again. Cash gave it, hips rolling, chest pressed to Jackson's, their bellies slick with heat, the mattress speaking a small, honest hymn with every push and gather.

Jackson turned his head toward Blake, lashes damp, a smile ghosting despite how wrecked he looked. "You like watchin'," he breathed.

"I do," Blake said. "And I ain't blinkin'."

Cash raised himself on his forearms so he could see Jackson's face, so Jackson could see him. Then he kissed him, slow at first, then deeper, teeth grazing the lower lip, drawing out a sound that went straight through Blake. Jackson's knees lifted, bracketing Cash's hips, opening, welcoming. He rolled their bodies, hips saddling. Cash's cock remained deep inside his body. His heels found the sheet for purchase, then slid when the rhythm changed, and he let the slide happen, let himself be moved by Jackson's swinging.

"Good," Blake coached, heat under every syllable. "That's it. Take him in. Show him it's home," he groaned, his deep voice filling the room.

Jackson's hand fell to the center of Cash's chest, right over the thud, and pressed. "You're here," he whispered, like a miracle he didn't want to startle. Cash nodded, forehead to Jackson's, breath stuttering, hands at Jackson's ribs holding him steady and holy.

Blake stood, slow as a tide, and came to the edge of the bed. He set one palm to the small of Jackson's back where the muscles were jumping and stroked down, soothing heat. Jackson arched into it, a startled thank you. Blake leaned and kissed the hinge of Cash's jaw, tasting salt and the stubborn sweetness underneath. "Easy, carpenter," he said against skin. "Make it last, not fast."

Cash answered by changing the cadence, giving less urgency and more gravity, deepening the rock of his body until Jackson's eyes fluttered closed and stayed there, lashes trembling, breaths counting time. Blake's hand slid to Jackson's throat, not squeezing, just cupping the column tenderly. His thumb found the pulse, feeling it race, then settled to the rhythm Cash's thrusts set. Jackson's mouth opened on a sigh that was half prayer, half praise.

"Look at me," Blake asked him, and Jackson did, even with his body dissolving around the edges, waterfinding, shorefinding. He laughed breathlessly, then gasped when Cash rolled his hips just so, guidance, claim, devotion in the same motion. His fingers curled in the sheet, then in Cash's hair, tugging, asking. Cash gave him more, and then less, playing the line between ache and mercy until Jackson's entire body learned the new gospel and said yes to it.

Blake climbed onto the mattress on Jackson's other side, close enough that their shoulders touched, close enough that Jackson could turn and drink from his mouth between kisses with Cash. Blake fed him his breath, his steadiness, one palm smoothing Jackson's hair back from his wet forehead, the other mapping the slope of his ribs, the arch of his belly, the place low where want lights and burns.

Jackson reached for Blake without looking, found his wrist, and kept it, anchoring himself between them, their heat a circle closing. Cash felt it, too. His rhythm faltered, and then he found a more generous pace, one that took Jackson right to the edge and held him there, teasing, rocking, keeping him open, keeping him adored. "You feel me?" Cash asked, his voice roughened to velvet.

"I feel you," Jackson whispered, wrecked and thankful, feeling Cash's cock expand inside him.

Blake's mouth brushed Jackson's ear. "Say what you want."

"You," Jackson said, helpless and sweet, eyes flicking between them. "Both of you. Don't stop."

And because they loved him, they didn't. 

Cash pressed in, chest to chest, breath lifting Jackson's breath; Blake's hand traced lower, not crude, just firm, guiding the rhythm, syncing them, the three of them making a little weather system of heat and patience and the kind of hunger that feeds rather than starves. Jackson's body answered in waves, shoulders bowing, thighs trembling, throat working under Blake's thumb. He turned his face and kissed Blake's palm, then turned back to catch Cash's mouth, moaning into it when everything lined up perfectly and held.

"That's it," Blake said, voice almost gone. "Right there...hold..."

Cash held. 

Jackson's fingers slid, clutched, and released, riding the rise, meeting it, making it. The bed gave a deep, approving creak.

"Jacks," Cash warned, a tender panic in it.

"Let go," Blake told them both, tone like a hand on a fever, steady, sure.

His hand found his cock, two strokes, and he burst.
Cash came next. Inside. Warm and slow. Rough and tender in equal measure.
Jackson followed, strings flying over Cash's chiseled stomach, landing without order, without rules.

Jackson fell first, silent at the top and then laughing, astonished, as the wave ran through and left everything golden. Cash chased and found, shuddering, forehead pressed to Jackson's, eyes squeezed shut like a man seeing light too bright to stare down. Blake held them there, palms splayed, one to Jackson's heart, one to the back of Cash's neck, until the trembling turned to afterglow, until breath evened, until the lamp made quiet halos on every new place their bodies had made holy.

No one spoke for a long time. 

Cash slid to Jackson's side without pulling out. Jackson rolled into him and reached back for Blake, and Blake came willingly, folding around them both, a long, warm bracket. 

Three men lay knotted together, skin humming, no edge left sharp, the room tasting like rain, mud, and clean linen, and the kind of love you don't get taught so much as survive into. 

Grow into.

*

Steam had turned the hotel bathroom into a bayou, and three big men arranged themselves under it like a puzzle nobody'd checked the box for.

Blake worked the hotel shampoo into a lather with both hands, suds sliding down his forearms like he was prepping for surgery. "Reckon we oughta conserve water," he drawled, eyes wicked. "One of y'all could do your civic duty and..." he tilted his chin toward Cash, "...get acquainted with the local… amenities."

Cash snorted so hard he fogged his own face. "Ain't one square inch of your 'amenities' gettin' near me, Buckley. This is a family shower." He reached around Jackson to snatch the tiny conditioner bottle like a man selecting a chisel. "You keep your…civic responsibilities to yourself."

Jackson grinned, shoulders shining, leaning back into both of them like a cat that'd found two sunbeams. "Y'all hear him say 'square inch'? That's a carpenter talkin'. Measurements and boundaries."

Blake slicked a hand over his short hair, water beading and running in quicksilver lines. "Boundaries can be…negotiated."

"Not these," Cash said, flipping the conditioner cap with his thumb. "These are up to code."

Jackson elbowed Cash lightly. "Don't front like you ain't adaptable. Mister' I once thought lips were just for prayin' and now look at you." He tipped his head, blue eyes cutting. "You forget I'm your first fella?"

Blake's eyebrows shot up. "First? Well, bless both your hearts." He wagged a soapy finger at Cash. "So you been livin' off the salad menu and jumped straight to chef's tasting with Jackson Bell? No wonder you act like you own the restaurant."

Cash tried to fight the grin and lost. "I ate plenty just fine, thank you, before Jackson started teachin' electives."

Jackson laughed, tipping his head under the water, hair sluicing back. "He did used to hook up with girls," he told Blake, stage-whisper. "Had a whole fan club of 'Cash nailed my shelves and my heart' texts."

Blake cackled. "Did they leave Yelp reviews? 'Five stars, door caught true and so did I.'"

"Four and a half," Cash said, deadpan. "Lost half a star for leavin' sawdust in...problematic places."

They all lost it a little, laughter bouncing off tile and steam. Blake slapped a palm to the wall to catch his breath. "Boy, you're gonna kill me in a shower and Daisy's ghost is gonna tan my hide."

"Mama ain't dead," Jackson said, chuckling. "She just omnipresent."

"Same difference," Cash muttered, then pointed the conditioner bottle at Blake like a sermon. "And don't you be sayin' 'taste' at me in this confined space. I will slip and sue."

Blake put a hand to his chest in mock offense. "I was bein' educational. Road safety. Hydration."

"Hydration is water, not..." Cash stopped, pinched the bridge of his nose, and started laughing again. "For fuck sakes, Buckley, you are impossible."

Jackson spread his hands like a referee in a very friendly game. "Alright, Coach Cash, here's compromise...you handle the shampoo logistics. Blake handles the back-scrub union. I'll file the permits."

Blake took the cheap washcloth, rolled it, and ran it down the knots between Cash's shoulders with surprising care. "See? Teamwork. No amenity encroachment."

Cash's breath dropped a notch. "That's...yeah. Right there." He cleared his throat, dignity jostled but intact. "You're intolerable and useful."

"Story of my life," Blake said, satisfied.

Cash rolled his eyes but didn't move away, letting the water run through, rinsing off mud and fight, leaving behind the kind of clean you can only get after you've been good and dirty together. 

Jackson slid aside, water shivering off his shoulders, and stepped out with a grin. "Don't flood the county," he said, snagging a towel. He tossed them a look that was half-hazard, half promise, then padded away whistling some lazy tune Daisy used to hum over a skillet. The steam took his song and softened it, turning it into something like a lullaby down the hall.

Blake watched the doorway a beat, then turned back to the shower, to Cash squared under the spray like it was a job he meant to finish. "You missed a spot," Blake said, easy, holding up the rolled washcloth like a peace flag.

Cash arched an eyebrow. "I can reach my own back."

"Sure," Blake said, stepping in close anyway. "But can you reach that knot that lives right here?" He pressed his thumb just inside Cash's shoulder blade, firm, careful. Cash's breath hitched. The water beat a bright coin on his nape.

"You been carryin' lumber feelings all day," Blake murmured. "Let 'em drop."

"I don't..." Cash started, and then the thumb found a second knot, lower, and a sound like a low curse slid out of him, edged in relief.

"Uh-huh," Blake said, pleased. He worked slow circles with the cloth, then his palm, steam ghosting around them. "Stand tall, carpenter. I ain't gonna saw nothin' off."

"Quit narratin'," Cash said, but softer now, the line of his shoulders loosening under Blake's hands. The water ran hot over both, rivulets mapping the old work written there in scars and knots.

Blake's mouth tilted. "Can't help it. Man sees a fine frame, he starts talkin' structure." He moved the washcloth up, stretched Cash's arm with a press at the wrist until the lat opened and sighed. "There you go."

Cash huffed. "Bossy."

"Permittin' you to relax," Blake said, voice lowering. He slid one hand to the front, resting high on Cash's chest, just over the thrum, while the other braced his shoulder from behind. He drew him back a fraction, so Cash could feel the breadth of him, heat on heat. 

"Blake," Cash warned, not quite a warning.

"Just...relax," Blake said, and the gentleness in it undid more than any force could've. He let the washcloth trail down Cash's spine, slow as a summer afternoon. "You don't gotta fight every minute."

Cash's jaw worked. Then he let his head tip forward into the spray, surrender small and specific: the kind a proud man gives when somebody's finally learned his language. Blake leaned, not crowding, just enough to share breath. And to let his hard cock brush the inside of Cash's tick thighs. His lips brushed the corner of Cash's shoulder, steam-wet and respectful. "That okay?"

A long beat. "It's...fine," Cash said, which in Cash-speak meant more than fine. His hand came up and covered Blake's where it lay flat to his chest, big fingers fitting over big fingers.

Blake smiled against warm skin, a little helpless. "Hell, boy," he whispered.

Jackson's whistle wandered down the hall, bright and lazy. It threaded the steam like a string through pearls, a reminder and a blessing both.

"Turn around," Blake said, quiet.

Cash hesitated a heartbeat, then did. Two alphas measuring a new line, neither of them blinking. The water striped Blake's short hair and ran down the planes of his face. Cash stood solid in front of him, and so did his cock. Chin up, eyes daring and unsure at once.

"C'mere," Blake said, without swagger now. He reached up and laid his palm along Cash's jaw, thumb sweeping once, slow, as if erasing the last of the old fight. Cash didn't pull back. He leaned an inch, then another, and their foreheads touched, breath mixing, steam eddying around their brief shelter.

Blake tipped his head, patient as a man easing open a sticky latch. Cash met him halfway. The kiss was simple at first: press, breathe, check, then deepen on a shared exhale. Not a contest, not a conquest. A test that turned into a knowing. Cash's hands came up to Blake's ribs, fingers spreading, learning the terrain. Blake's other hand slid to the back of Cash's neck and held, steadying them both when the world tried to slide.

The hot, clean water drummed their shoulders and ran between their chests. Jackson's whistle lilted from the other room, the tune bending into something familiar and fond. Under it, the kiss found a slow rhythm: give, answer, stay. More tongue. A new compromise written in heat and humor and the quiet shock of yes.

They broke only when the spray turned briefly cool, laughing once into the space between them like boys who'd gotten away with something and found they wanted to be caught. Blake bumped his brow to Cash's, breathless, relieved. Cash's mouth, so often a blade, had softened, the line of it changed by the kiss and the steam. "You ain't all that, Buckley," he said, but it didn't have teeth.

"Tell that to yer pecker," Blake murmured. He stole one more, quick, then reached past to shut off the water as Jackson's whistling drew closer again.

*

The room had gone soft and gold again. 

Cash sat in the armchair like he'd been poured there, naked but for Blake's hat tipped low over his eyes, shadow making his mouth look dangerous and young all at once. His knees were open, forearms on his thighs, the long line of him loose in a way Jackson had been trying to teach him all his life.

On the bed, Jackson had settled astride Blake's hips, hands braced on Blake's chest, that easy, rolling rhythm that comes when two men have learned the same song. Blake's head was tipped back into the pillow, throat open, breath catching on quiet, ruined little laughs. His hands rode Jackson's waist, holding, guiding only when asked, reverent as a man palming the grain of a door he loves to open.

And boy, did he ever.

Cash watched, spellbound at how Jackson's hole expanded to fit Blake's manhood. At first, his gaze clung to Jackson, the shine at his throat, the smile that came and went like a breeze, but then it dipped, slowly, ungoverned, to the heat where their bodies met. 

He tried to look away.
But didn't. 

The brim of Blake's hat threw a shadow over eyes that had gone dark and curious.

Jackson felt the look like a hand on his skin. He glanced back over his shoulder, lips wet and soft, and smiled a secret smile before leaning low to Blake's ear. Whatever he whispered made Blake huff a breath that could have been a laugh if it hadn't been so wrecked.

"What'd he say?" Cash asked, voice rough, trying and failing to sound bored.

Jackson didn't turn, just kept that slow, beautiful motion, riding Blake's cock like a true cowboy, while he answered Blake under his breath again, the whisper turning both their mouths into yes. Blake's eyes slid to Cash, lazy and wicked. "Said he sees you starin'," he drawled, voice ragged-sweet, "and he ain't mad about it."

Jackson finally looked at Cash and held him with those blue eyes like river light. "You look good in that hat," he said, his breath riding the words. "You look good lookin'."

"Shut up," Cash muttered, but he was smiling, helpless, hands flexing on his knees. He shifted forward in the chair as if his body had decided for him. "I ain't...I don't..." He clicked his tongue, annoyed.

"Hush your mouth and get on over here," Jackson said, gentle as porch light.

Blake's palm slid down Jackson's spine, slow, encouraging, eyes never leaving Cash. "I got 'nough for you too," he added, low. "Plenty."

Ruffled, Cash stood, brim still low. He crossed the short space like a man wading into water he wasn't ready to call warm, and set a knee on the mattress, then another, the bed dipping to take his weight. He paused there on all fours at the edge, breath tight, eyes on Blake's face, checking for mockery, permission, anything that might make this harder or easier.

There wasn't any mockery. 

There was only Blake, looking back at him like a man who knew exactly how hard it was to walk this far and meant to make the rest of the way simple.

Jackson reached a hand without breaking his rhythm and laid it on Cash's wrist, anchoring him to the moment. "Hey, look at me," he said. Cash did, and whatever he saw in Jackson's face loosened something mean and old in his shoulders. "Wanna know what it's like...?" Jackson teased, voice being beaten lower by Blake's thrusts. "Get a taste of this Buckley grit?"

Cash swallowed, hat sliding back a fraction, eyes flicking again to the place that had held his attention from the chair. His mouth worked once. Then he gathered himself like a diver on a dock and said it plain, voice low and honest as a prayer.

"I…" Cash whispered, his voice trembling as it shed its final layer of resolve. What followed was the most delicate sound Jackson had ever heard from him, a fragile confession bursting forth at last. "Fuck, yeah..."

Jackson smiled, the curve bordering on a smirk. He eased up and unseated himself, his sphincter widening before closing abruptly and puckering a couple of times at the unsettling absence of Blake's manhood. He slid to Blake's side, propping on one elbow so the lamp could lie its coin across all three. He smoothed a palm over Blake's chest once, as if to thank the muscle there for holding so much, then let his hand fall to the mattress between them, open.

Cash drew a breath you could hear, nervousness curling at its seams.

He crossed those last inches on his knees like a man stepping onto a beam in a high frame, capable, scared, determined.

He came over Blake, hands splayed to either side, hat tipped back now so his eyes could work. Blake's whole posture changed. The weather went out of him, and the house came on, something with walls and a roof, built to keep. He rose enough to meet Cash's weight, big hands climbing the long slope of his back in slow, steady passes, mapping, settling, telling the skin under his palms the truth of it: you're safe, we go slow.

Jackson slid over the edge of the bed and landed on his knees, pulse banging in his ears as he watched, utterly enchanted by the moment.

At the weight of Blake's strength, Cash's stance shifted, all the old storms draining out of him as he felt another man's moist cock brushing gently against his crack for the first time. Cash leaned forward just enough for his hands to meet Blake's massive chest, digging into them, ushering Blake's hands to start descending the slope of his back again, the terrain narrowing into two muscular cheeks.

Blake smiled.
A smile that said things only he and Cash understood.
A shared hardness, finally willing to give in.

"Breathe," Blake murmured low, voice sinking into Cash's skin like heat. "Drop your shoulders. Yeah, just like that." His thumbs pressed deep into Cash's hips until the tight coils beneath them released with a soft exhale. "You don't have to hold anythin' in. Not here," Blake coached, one palm flattened against Cash's lower back, while the other slapped his cock gently against rough skin. "Open up."

Cash's jaw worked. He blinked, eyes closed for a beat, then opened, steady and brave. His nod was small but fierce. Blake retracted his hand, slicked it with spit, then traced it along his cock until the tip brushed Cash's trembling entrance.

Blake's hands stayed kind and firm, guiding, pausing, seeking silent permission with every motion. When he finally pressed in, it was with the slow, reverent patience of a worshipper.

Cash sucked in a breath that rattled his ribs, muscles quivering under Blake's touch. His first sound was raw, a fierce, ragged plea. His head dropped forward, chin to chest, breath catching in his throat. Blake's thumb swept over Cash's temple, holding him grounded. "Shhhh," he whispered, practiced and true. "Let your back be a hinge. Don't lock..let it swing."

The first press stung with honest ache, drawing a stark line around every nerve, but it never cut. Blake held him on that threshold, groin warm against Cash's cheeks, hands steady. "Good. There's the breath. Take me like you ease a door open...slow, let gravity help."

"Shut the fuck up..." Cash exhaled, long and trembling. A chuckle followed, and Blake responded with his own. The tight band around Cash's ribs loosened. He dipped back to meet Blake, who met him softer, then paused. The ache bloomed into heat, heat into want, as Cash's body learned a new language, one careful, measured syllable at a time. Surprise flickered behind his dark eyes. He let out a fractured sound, half groan, half laugh, and then half-laughed at himself for making it.

"Yeah," Blake breathed, forehead tipped to Cash's jaw. "Ain't nothin' wrong with likin' it."

"I..." Cash started, eyes suddenly wet without permission. He swallowed and nodded instead, the nod turning into a roll of his hips that brought Blake deeper by a breath. The slick, hot pressure of Blake inside him bloomed outward. The world tilted toward an answer.

Blake moved, barely, a slow rock that asked more than it took. The steel length of him pulsed against tender, virgin places that had never known touch before tonight. He kept one hand low on Cash's back, the other cradling the back of his neck, holding him in a shape that could receive without bracing to break. "You're doin' fine," he said, voice roughened to velvet. "You just... open." He swallowed. "I got you."

Cash's reaction came in layers. First, the surprise again, of not being split, of being filled in a way that made him feel both claimed and freed at once. Then an easing he couldn't have faked if he'd wanted to, something deep in his belly uncurling to meet the motion. His mouth softened. The line between his brows smoothed. His hands slid from fists to open palms against Blake's chest, feeling heat, hair, the steady drum of a heart keeping time with his own. Another breath, another slow, guided press that stretched him just to the edge of too much, and his hips answered on their own, learning Blake's pace, finding out where his own yes lived and letting it in.

"Jesus," he whispered, a little wild, a little moved, as Blake's cock brushed something inside him that sent sparks up his spine. "It's..."

"I know," Jackson said, smiling wet, voice gone hushed with pride.

"... it's not what I thought." The admission came out like relief. He laughed, startled and manly about it, then bit his lower lip when the next slide lined everything up just right, Blake's thickness dragging against that perfect spot. His eyes fluttered and held. "Don't..."

Blake didn't. 

"Go...slower..." Cash asked.

Blake did.

He gave him rhythm and room, each thrust deeper than the last, the slick heat finding a language. The room filled with the small sounds of men who trusted each other: breath catching on the edge of pleasure, a low curse that was really gratitude, a laugh when Blake shifted his angle and suddenly hit something that made Cash's vision blur white. Cash's body learned quick how to tilt his hips just so, how to bear down when Blake pushed in, the stretch and burn transforming into a fullness that made his cock throb and leak against his stomach. Each time Blake withdrew almost completely before sinking back in, Cash felt the ridge of his cockhead dragging against that spot inside him.

He rocked back into Blake and felt the power in it, I get to choose this, and it lit him without burning. The pressure built low in his belly, his thighs trembling with the effort of holding himself up as Blake's thickness split him open in the most tender way possible.

He looked down into Blake's face then, saw the wrecked tenderness there, sweat beading at his temples, jaw clenched with the effort of holding back, and something like pride answered in his chest. He leaned and kissed him, not careful, not shy, mouth opening with heat and gratitude both. Blake made a hurt little sound that wasn't pain and kissed back, steadier, deeper, one hand smoothing up Cash's spine in long strokes while his hips never stopped their steady rhythm, filling Cash so completely he couldn't tell where he ended and Blake began.

When they finally broke for breath, Cash's forehead pressed to Blake's again, his voice a scrape of gravel and grace. "Guess I 'can' take you," he said, wonder threaded through the words like light in water, his body clenching around Blake's length as if to prove the point.

Blake's eyes closed a beat as if it had knocked him from the inside. When he opened them, the look he gave Cash wasn't triumph. It was gratitude so plain it almost hurt to see. "Guess you can," he said, and moved with him, slow, true, driving deeper with each thrust, making a home out of something both of them had once been taught to fear.

Blake surged up suddenly, flipping Cash onto his back with a strength that stole breath. The mattress gave beneath them with a creak of surrender, Cash's head landing so close to Jackson's that their temples nearly touched. 

This time, Blake descended like a storm, driving in with a force that made Cash arch and gasp. His rhythm transformed, no longer careful, but desperate, claiming. Each thrust buried him to the hilt, the slap of skin against skin punctuating Cash's broken moans. Cash's body gripped him, and Blake's face contorted with the sudden yet exquisite torture of it, jaw clenched, veins standing out on his neck. 

Jackson watched the transformation, saw the moment control fractured, and his lips parted in silent awe.

Blake's eyes squinted, his brow furrowing as he tried to hold back, but the sensation was too good. Cash's ass felt like pure sin, and Blake was drowning in it. Jackson noticed every detail, the way Blake's hips jerked involuntarily, the way his cock pulsed with every thrust, the way he bit his lip to stifle a moan. 

It was perfect.

"Fuck," Blake growled under his breath, his rhythm faltering for a moment as Cash clenched around him again, tighter this time. Blake's cock twitched, a bead of precum leaking from Cash's tip as he pushed deeper, his balls smacking against Cash's ass with a determined thrust. 

Cash whimpered, his hands clawing at the sheets as Blake filled him inch by excruciating inch. He was being stretched, trembling with the strain, but he didn't want it to stop. Blake's cock was thick and unforgiving, hitting every keen spot inside him. His own cock was hard and leaking, bouncing against his stomach with every thrust.

Blake's hips snapped forward, driving deeper, and Cash let out a strangled cry. Blake's hands moved to Cash's shoulders, pinning him down as he fucked him, the bed creaking with a caged force, like practiced hands hitting a hammer against a tack. Jackson leaned in closer, his hand creeping toward his own dick as he watched Blake take Cash's defenses apart piece by piece.

"That's it," Jackson murmured, his voice dripping with ardor. "Go harder."

Blake growled, his thrusts becoming erratic, his cock banging into Cash. Cash's body shook, his moans ringing less masculine, defenses crumbling with each thrust. Jackson's hand was moving faster now, stroking himself in time with Blake's jabs.

And then something happened.

Jackson, kneeling back in shadow at the edge of the bed, felt the room change, as if the air had learned a quieter language. Blake's eyes found Cash's, and something in the set of his mouth, usually built for swagger or penance, unlatched into simple reverence.

"Look at me," Blake murmured, the word landing warm at Cash's lips.

And Cash did.
It happened in the gaze. 

Cash's pupils widened and startled, then steadied. Blake's, usually counting exits, now counted the freckles at Cash's cheekbone he'd never noticed, the hitch in his throat, the little prayer of a pulse there. Blake shifted his hips, not deeper, not harder. Truer, letting his body find Cash's shy 'yes' instead of chasing it. His palm slid up the ladder of Cash's ribs to splay over his heart, the heel of his hand catching the drum. He kept it there, as if he could hold the time for them both.

"Right here," Blake whispered, and Cash's jaw softened. 

Another breath. 
Another meeting. 

The line of Cash's mouth, so often a blade, melted into a shape that was just receiving. He lifted his chin a fraction and let the sound he'd been swallowing come out, small, honest, edged with surprise at how sweetness can sting and not wound. "Oh..." he moaned.

Jackson felt the pull to move closer, but did not. He sat back on his heels and gave the space over. It wasn't his anymore. It was theirs. For once, the wildfire and the porch laid down their arms and watched each other. The room knew it. Even the lamp dimmed itself by accident.

"You good?" Blake asked.

"Yeah," Cash answered, voice roughened sweet. His hand, uncertain, slid up to Blake's cheek and stayed there, thumb stroking one slow line along the crop of hair as if learning its newness. In that slight movement, Blake went boy-young, a look Jackson had seen only in rain and surrender. This time it wasn't collapse. It was an offering.

Blake set his forehead to Cash's, eyes closing, like two men leaning the same plank into place. His body moved with a patience that felt like apology rewritten as promise: no rush, no hurt, I'll take the sharp and hand you the warm. He changed the angle by a breath, cock sliding a fraction deeper, then waited for Cash to come meet him. And when Cash did, a careful tilt, a catch of breath that turned into wanting, Blake smiled into it, eyes opening again to see it happen. 

Not conquest.
Comprehension.

Cash looked up and, for a startled second, seemed to recognize himself in the other man's face: the boy who'd braced for pain and learned he could ask for sweetness instead. The man who'd been taught to hold everything alone and found out he didn't have to. The recognition went both ways. Blake's gaze said I know that ache. I carried it till it turned me mean. Let me hold its edge now so yours can turn to something else.

He rocked them into a slow cadence that felt less like taking and more like being taken in. The bed gave a quiet amen. Cash's hands, fists at first, opened on Blake's shoulders, testing their fact, then roaming, curious, sure. A tremor ran through him, not fear but a new strength shaking itself awake. "Fuck...don't stop," he breathed, not a demand, a trust.

"I won't," Blake said, and the vow cost him something that made him wealthier.

Jackson watched the light find them, two men learning the same note and holding it, felt the ache of love crack open into pride. If there had ever been a shadow of him here, it stepped back of its own accord. The room held only two now: a pair of wounds recognizing the same seam and choosing to mend from both sides at once. 

Blake's free hand slid to the back of Cash's neck, not to pin, to cradle.
Cash arched to meet him, not to endure, to join.

When it crested, quiet, wrecked, holy, Blake didn't drop his gaze or his care. He kept the pace soft through the trembling, talking Cash down with those low, ordinary words that build a life: "Easy...I got you..." he groaned, pushing his hips forward, tip teasing Cash's sweet spot. "Right here." Cash laughed once, breathless and wet-eyed at himself, the sound more beautiful than any bravado he'd ever worn.

Blake kissed him plainly and gratefully, and in that kiss, Jackson felt the decision take shape: a man choosing to be the roof, not the fire, for the body beneath him. A goodbye beginning in the precise place where tenderness had proven itself. 

Jackson's throat burned, and he let it. 

He had never loved Blake more. 
He had never trusted Cash more. 
He had never believed in home more.

When Blake finally eased and lay his cheek to Cash's shoulder, both of them breathing the same slow count, Jackson bowed his head. He didn't touch them. He didn't need to. Something had been fixed in that small, golden gospel of a bed.

Something that transcended time.  
And space.  

A silent promise that what was unfolding would remain a cherished secret.  

Like a beautiful, treasured memory.  
One they could revisit together.  

A harmony of novelty, passion, and belief.  

Jackson stood then, transfixed, his eyes narrowing as he absorbed the unexpected scene unfolding. He watched Blake, already turning inward toward the kind of leaving that is not abandonment but benediction.

Blake's eyes tightened, his cock swelling as he felt his orgasm building. Cash was trembling beneath him, hands now clutching Blake's back, nails digging into his thick skin, body and soul clenching around Blake's dick. Blake's thrusts became feverish, his hips jerking as he pushed into Cash with everything he had.

And then he came with a roar, his cock pulsing as he poured his thick, hot cum into Cash's body.

Cash's soft moan tore through the room, surprise layered with disbelief, as his own cock erupted. Thick, pearly ropes of cum shot across his chest, painting his skin with streaks of sticky, glistening proof of his euphoria. His body convulsed, muscles trembling, as the last pulses of pleasure ripped through him. 

Jackson panted, his fist a blur as he stroked himself, watching Cash. His own climax hit him like a brick to the head, cock spurting hot, light-colored nectar all over Cash's face, chest, and the crumpled sheets around them.

After a few beats, Blake, still inside, reluctantly pulled out. 

A whimper from Cash's mouth escorted the movement, feeling his body clasp around Blake's retreating dick. His hole queefed ever so gently, showing its dissent toward the rash vacancy. 

Blake grabbed Cash by the hips and flipped him over onto his stomach, spreading his cheeks wide. Still catching his breath, Jackson crawled closer, his eyes locked on Cash's gap: red, swollen, and slick with Blake's essence, some of it oozing lazily down his taint. 

"Well...ain't that just a sight for sore eyes, bless its heart," Blake remarked. He leaned in closer, his breath hot against Cash's quivering entrance. Cash's sphincter gave a little twitch as it tried to close around nothing. 

Blake didn't hesitate.

He plunged his face, tongue-first, gurgling at the cum-smeared rim. Cash moaned, half-shocked, half-pleased, his body jerking as Blake ate him out with a zeal that edged on folly.

"Fuck, Buckley…you fuckin’...insane, damn…" Cash mumbled, voice slurred. 

Blake pulled back, his mouth glistening with Cash's juices, and grinned. "You ready for round two, carpenter?" he teased, slapping Cash's cheek.

Cash groaned, his gradually softening cock twitching weakly against his stomach, still sensitive.

"What…" Cash whispered, his eyes glazed. "Not a chance, Buckley," he added, hand discreetly going for his ass, fingers gently wandering around it as he secured its integrity.

Jackson, beside them, watched.

Heart so full it felt like a new, good ache. He breathed with them, counted the center with them.

They lay in the soft wreckage of the bed, sheets kicked south, breath coming back in little stutters like waves after a storm. Blake rolled on his back, sweat cooling in a thin shine along his ribs. Cash sprawled beside him, blinking at the ceiling like it had just told a joke he was half a second from catching. Jackson slid in from the side of the bed and found Cash's chest with his chin, settling there like a cat and letting the carpenter's heartbeat drum under his jaw.

For a long moment, nobody said a thing. Jackson tipped his head, blue eyes sparking. "Well?" he asked, lazy and wicked. "What'd you think?"

Cash considered. "Hurt like hell," he announced, deadpan.

The laughter hit all at once, rolling, bright. Blake slapped a palm over his eyes and wheezed. Jackson lost his balance on Cash's chest and had to brace a hand, grinning too wide to be pretty.

"Lord," Blake managed, turning his head to grin at Cash. "You got a gift for sweet-talk, Dalton."

"Don't," Cash said, trying to scowl and failing, the edges of his mouth betraying him. "Ain't nobody warned me your..." he made a helpless shape in the air with his hand, "...amenities come with a user manual."

Jackson snorted. "We did say 'doors, not locks.' Forgot to add 'maybe some hinges squeal at first.'"

Blake propped up on an elbow, eyes dancing. "Squealed, did it? I can fetch some oil, loosen the..."

"Shut up," Cash said, swatting at Blake's shoulder. "Your manhood ain't goin' near me ever again. I'll build a fence. With barbed wire. And a moat."

Blake held up both hands. "I hear you. I respect boundaries." He paused. "I also respect remodels."

Jackson groaned into Cash's chest. "Do not encourage the contractor metaphors."

"I'm just sayin'," Blake went on, undeterred, "If the client is satisfied..."

"Client is reconsiderin' his Yelp review," Cash cut in. "One star for pain, one star for persistence, minus three for..."

"Charm?" Blake offered.

"Arrogance," Cash said, delighted. "And circumference."

That sent them again, silly and breathless. 

Blake leaned over and kissed Cash's cheek, softer than the banter would've suggested. "You did good," he said, gentled. Then he rolled out of bed, stood, long and unbothered in the lamp's gold, and stretched until his shoulders popped. "I'm puttin' water on my face before I catch fire." He padded toward the bathroom, tossing over his shoulder, "If you boys start talkin' behind my back, make it flattering."

The door clicked. 
Water ran, a brief bright hiss.

Jackson propped himself higher on Cash's chest, studying that familiar face, flush at the cheekbones, lashes damp, mouth still pulled in that crooked, post-storm line. "Tell me true," he said, and the mischief slid back a notch to make room for the thing that mattered. "How was it really?"

Cash stared at the ceiling again, then let his head tip toward Jackson. The smile that came was reluctant and honest, softening him in a way that made Jackson's ribs ache in the good way.

"He's a beast," Cash said, and they both chuckled. He rolled the words around like a secret he'd decided to share. "But...I..." He swallowed, surprised by his own answer. "I liked it."

Jackson's eyes went bright as a porch light. 

He didn't crow. He didn't tease. He just eased up enough to kiss the corner of Cash's mouth, slow and pleased. "Good," he murmured against skin.

Cash huffed, embarrassed and happy. "Don't you go tellin' him that. He's cocky as is."

"Lawd...ain't that the gospel truth right there," Jackson said, settling his chin back on Cash's chest, grin tucked away where only Cash could feel it.

(To be concluded...)

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