Robin winces, his smile faltering. "What dent?"
"Don't play dumb. Quarter panel. Size of a golf ball."
"It's the size of a quarter! Maybe. If you squint."
"My car, my rules. You're getting it fixed this week."
"Ash—"
"This week, Robin."
So possessive he tracks damage on his car down to the quarter inch. Notices a dent I've never seen despite walking past that Audi every single day. The kind of guy who keeps tabs on everything, controls everything, probably has spreadsheets tracking oil change dates and tire rotations.
"How did you even find me here?" Robin asks, apparently deciding not to fight the car battle. "Did Toby text you?"
"Car has a location tracker. Plus I've got one on your phone."
He tracks Robin's phone. Knows exactly where he is at all times, can pull up an app and see Robin's little dot moving around the city.
That's... a lot.
Robin doesn't seem bothered by any of this, which is interesting. He just rolls his eyes like Ash said somethingembarrassing rather than something that would send most people running.
"TOBY!" Robin yells toward the stairs, apparently unaware that my entire perception of him has just shifted. "Get down here!"
A muffled response from above, something irritated about being interrupted. Knox's voice, probably. They've barely surfaced in three days, which means Toby's either exhausted, sore, or both.
"NOW! It's important!"
Footsteps, heavy and reluctant, and then Toby appears at the top of the stairs looking rumpled and freshly fucked. He's wearing loose pajama pants that are definitely Knox's—they're about four inches too long, pooling around his bare feet—and one of Knox's oversized band shirts that hangs off one shoulder. His hair is a disaster, sticking up in about seven different directions. His neck and shoulders are covered in marks—deep purple bruises, red bite marks, scratches that look like they came from claws not quite shifted—Knox has not been subtle about the claiming.
"What's so—" Toby stops dead, one hand on the railing, staring at the man next to Robin. His whole face transforms, cycling through the same shock-disbelief-hope I saw on Robin. "Oh my god. ASH?"
He comes down the stairs so fast he nearly falls, feet tangling in the too-long pajama pants. He catches himself on the railing, doesn't slow down, and then he's throwing himself at Ash too, and Ash catches him just as easily, pulling him into the hug so all three of them are wrapped up together.
"Hey, Tobs," Ash says, and there's that softness again. "Missed you."
"Missed you too, you jerk." Toby's voice is thick, definitely crying now. "You could have written more. You could have called."
"I wrote when I could."
"Once a year isn't enough. Once a year is bullshit."
"I know. I'm sorry."
They stay tangled together—Robin and Toby both holding onto Ash like he might disappear if they let go, Ash holding them both with the kind of fierce protectiveness I recognize from Knox. The same willingness to burn the world down for the people he loves. The same intensity, the same focus.
And I'm starting to wonder if I've read this completely wrong.
Then Ash pulls back slightly, and his expression changes. Goes from soft to stone-cold deadly in half a second flat, like someone flipped a switch.
He's staring at Toby's neck. At the bruises and bite marks that cover his throat and disappear under the collar of Knox's shirt. At the scratches on his collarbone, the fingerprint bruises on his upper arms, all the evidence of three days of thorough, enthusiastic claiming.
Before Toby can react, Ash catches his chin in one hand, tilting his face to the side. His grip looks gentle but immovable—Toby couldn't pull away if he tried. Ash examines the marks with clinical precision, taking inventory of every bruise, every bite, every scratch.
His thumb brushes over a particularly dark bruise on Toby's throat, and Toby flinches. Not from pain, I don't think. From the intensity of Ash's focus.
"Toby." Ash's voice has gone low and lethal, barely above a whisper but somehow filling the entire room. "Who did this to you?"
