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“You always look prettiest right after one of us—or all of us—wreck you,” he observed.
Zane smiled, shaking his head, but didn’t respond. Compliments still hit him strangely. He’d spent most of his life feeling invisible, and now, he lived with three men who looked at him like he hung the moon.
He was happy they found him pretty, even if he didn’t see it himself. He let Avi wipe them down with the wet wipes they kept on hand, but otherwise just laid there.
Finally, Avi stood, sweeping Zane into his arms like he weighed nothing, then carried him into the game room. Zane automatically wrapped his arms around Avi's neck, settling against him. He didn't even think about it anymore. Being carried around the house by one of his partners had become embarrassingly normal.
Their game room was a library in most of the other Mulvaneys’ floor plans, but they’d converted it. There was a massive screen on the far wall, pink and purple LED lights on the floor and ceiling, four large recliners, and built-in bookshelves with row upon row of games.
Avi settled Zane gently in one of the recliners, giving him the cheetah faux-fur blanket he loved best before grabbing their controllers and getting the system set up.
When the Stardew Valley logo appeared on the screen, Zane sighed in contentment. The familiar music immediately loosened something in his chest.
Avi tossed him his controller, then squeezed in behind him on the recliner, their naked bodies pressed together once more before he pushed the button that extended the footrest and lowered the back.
Once they were reclined, Zane shifted so they could both see and play at the same time, resting his head on Avi’s shoulder.
Avi smelled like expensive body wash, coffee, and home.
“I have a million things to do today,” Zane said a bit later as he caught fish after fish.
He rattled off his laundry list of woes, guilt settling deep in his gut over snuggling with Avi and playing a game while Asa and Felix were both hard at work and someone else was caring for their kids.
“It can wait,” Avi said. “I’ll help you get it all done. Besides, the boys are going home with Freckles and Coe. And Asa and Felix can pick up Coe’s dessert thing.”
“But it’s my job.”
“No, your job is to get your raw footage to your editor. Your job is a journalist. This house belongs to all of us. The chores belong to all of us. The kids belong to all of us. We share equal responsibility. You just like the domestic stuff more than we do so we tend to let you do the heavy lifting, which Felix doesn’t think is fair at all.”
Zane frowned. “Really?”
“Yeah, he doesn’t want you overwhelmed or overburdened.” Avi nudged his shoulder gently with his own. “We all know you think you have to prove yourself to stay here, no matter how dumb that is.”
The words landed harder than Zane wanted them to. Because the awful thing was that Avi wasn’t wrong. Some small broken piece of him still woke up every morning afraid that if he stopped being useful, everyone would realize they didn’t actually need him. That if he wasn’t cooking meals, managing schedules, packing lunches, buying birthday presents, remembering appointments, and holding their lives together, he’d somehow become expendable.
Avi’s arm tightened around his waist. Not possessive. Protective. Like he knew exactly where Zane’s thoughts had gone.
“You know we love you even when you’re being lazy, right?” Avi asked softly.
Zane snorted. “I'm literally never lazy.”
“Exactly,” Avi said. “That’s how I know you need to hear it.”
“Hey,” Zane said, elbowing him hard enough to make him grunt.
“What? It’s the truth,” Avi said around a laugh. “Your mom fucked with your head. It’s no big deal. Well, it probably is, but none of us really do well with trauma, so if you have some control issues due to your mother being a royal cunt, it’s all good with us. As long as you don’t stress yourself out.”
Zane’s chest tightened like someone had him in a vice. Avi was so good at casually breaking him wide open. Saying the sweetest things like they were nothing, just the truth, just facts. As if it was perfectly obvious that Zane was loved. As if the possibility of them ever getting tired of him was so ridiculous it wasn’t even worth discussing.
Avi’s arms were wrapped around Zane’s, his controller looking small in his massive hands. Zane kept his controller in his lap, head on Avi’s shoulder, soothed by his quiet laughs and soft breaths in his ear as they played together.
The steady rise and fall of Avi’s chest against his back was strangely comforting. Safe. It was only when the phone buzzed that Zane realized Avi had grabbed it from the side table on their way out of the bedroom.
They paused the game and Avi unlocked his screen. They both smiled when they saw a notification from the Doodlebug app from the boys’ school.
A new photo.
The boys were sitting in oversized white T-shirts that went down to their ankles and blue plastic smocks. They were covered head to toe in several different colors of paint, which was odd seeing as how the pictures they’d clearly painted were two vaguely animal-like brown blobs.
