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Holster can easily admit that he and Ransom completely lucked out with their place. It’s well located, doesn’t leave them on their asses finance-wise, and the top floor is a gym that has a pretty stellar monthly membership fee. Sure, there are no individual washing machines, but there’s a laundry room in the basement with a half dozen machines that do the job well enough.
Ransom has been gone for so long getting the laundry out the dryer, though, that Holster is starting to wonder if his prayers for them to mangle at least one pair of Rans’ hideous salmon shorts have been answered.
Just as he settles on respectfully allowing Ransom time and privacy to mourn, Rans returns. He looks shaken and he’s holding all their washing bundled up sans-basket, like he’d just hauled it out the dryer and ran.
Holster forces himself not to immediately ask if there’s been a shorts casualty. “Come on, man. We agreed folding in the laundry room so we lose less socks. Where’s the basket, anyway?”
Rans takes a gulping breath. “Holtzy, I don’t wanna freak you out,” he says, unsteady in a way that definitely freaks Holster out, “but I think I’m legit hallucinating things. Like, I honestly thought I saw Chris Chow in our fucking laundry room.”
“Bro.”
“And the worst bit is I’m pretty sure he wasn’t a hallucination?”
“Bro.”
Ransom chucks the clean laundry next to Holster on their couch and pulls out his phone, typing at maximum speed. “Bruins recall goaltender Chris Chow,” he reads out. “Says here he was called up following a groin injury during the Bruins vs. Oilers game? … oh shit, predicted LTIR for him, blah blah blah… but Chow has had an impressive season so far with the Providence Bruins blah blah– okay basically holy fuck, Holster, I think Chris Chow was for real in our laundry room.”
Huh. Holster lets that conclusion sit in his brain a minute. Ransom sits down blindly on their coffee table; it’s a near miss with two cold mugs of coffee and ends with his ass ruining the careful arrangement of papers Holster had laid out some three hours ago with the naïve intention of easing their work backlog.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks, leaving little time at home for anything but eating, sleeping, and occasional mutual handjobs; they’ve both fallen out of the rhythm of watching games and the loop of hockey news, but they must’ve really fallen out to not hear about Chow being called up.
Chris Chow is legend in the Oluransi-Birkholtz household. Holster nearly got into a fist fight with a dude after Chow got sent down the first time and the guy smugly predicted that was the last anyone would see or hear of him, just another first-rounder whose career burnt out before it ever really started.
And Ransom stubbornly denies it, but Holster is pretty fucking sure Rans got a boner once watching a particularly slick classic Chris Chow save – he’d definitely been way worked up and ready for a tumble in the sheets in the immediate aftermath, anyway.
“So you just left him in there?” Holster asks eventually. Is The Chris Chow still standing in their building’s fucking laundry room?
“Uhh, yeah, kind of.”
“Kind of?”
Ransom shuffles about awkwardly, messing up the papers even more. “You know how I get when I’m like, starstruck, bro. I was getting our laundry out and I heard him come in and he had a laundry basket and he was all like ‘Oh, hey!’, so I kind of squealed at him and grabbed our stuff and ran up here?”
Holster watches the same horror he’s feeling spread across Rans’ face as the reality of that encounter sinks in. Where Ransom looks like he’d happily never leave the apartment again, though, Holster figures he can easily crown this the funniest thing he’s heard all week.
“Bro.”
Ransom, caught between agony and laughing too, groans, “Shut up.”
“Bro. Like? First? No shit he was holding a laundry basket.”
“Ugh, shut up.”
Holster absolutely has to make the most of this. He has to. It’s law. “Second–”
“Jesus Christ, shut up.”
There are no Chris Chow sightings anywhere else in the building over the next few days, though it is, admittedly, a big building and they don’t even know what floor he might be staying on. Plus, they have to work and shit.
They watch him in his first home game for Boston, though. Holster drops three handfuls of popcorn down his front, one for each period, and Ransom straddles him practically the second the final horn sounds. They make out with an intensity they haven’t had since Samwell, the commentators dissecting a replay of a particularly impressive save by Chow on the TV in the background.
Still, Holster has to tease Rans about really having made the whole thing up. Ransom continues to swear he’s being for real, so the next time laundry day comes around Holster makes sure they go down to the laundry room together.
“If I leave you to go alone who knows what embarrassing shit you’ll do,” he explains, triple checking his pocket for the apartment keys before he closes their front door.
“I don’t even want to go there,” says Ransom, tone edging towards whiny, “what if he remembers me and it’s too awkward for words and I’ve embarrassed myself in front of Chris Chow.”
Ransom presses the button to call the elevator and Holster considers; he could tease more, but it’s probably not nice to. “He probably won’t even be there, bro. He’s got an NHL career to think about, he can’t be hanging around in the laundry room all day every day.”
Except when they push open the hideously creaky laundry room door, The Actual Fucking Chris Chow is in there.
He’s folding a t-shirt fresh from the dryer into a bright blue laundry basket. The t-shirt looks soft, and comfortably worn in, and warm from the dryer, and Chris Chow is the one folding it with his soft, capable hands. Ransom inhales squeakily beside Holster, and Holster feels like one of those infinitely zooming-in GIFs Nursey likes to put in the group chat instead of using words.
Actual Chris Chow looks up at them standing frozen in the doorway.
He doesn’t call them out on it. Instead, he says, “Hey, I know one of you! Are you guys here to do laundry?” He blushes and laughs at himself a little. “Um, I mean, obviously you are. This is the laundry room! Just ignore me and carry on.”
Holster looks over at Ransom, who is already looking over at him, and they share a silent moment of holy motherfucking shit. Then Holster hauls their overstuffed laundry bag over to the nearest machine, allows Ransom to sort the detergent to his exacting standards, and starts shoving clothes into the drum. All while Chris Chow folds his patterned boxer shorts two machines over from them.
Holster rarely finds himself speechless, but he really doesn’t know what to say here. Hi, your hockey is amazing and kind of hot? Hope that’s cool to say! Have a great day, dude! Ransom looks like he hasn’t breathed since they entered the room, and neither of them can stop glancing over at Chow every couple of seconds.
He finally seems to notice. “Oh, right! Are you guys Bruins fans?”
“Um,” says Ransom.
Chow’s face falls. “Oh, no! I didn’t mean to sound really cocky, like you should know who I am or whatever. Uh. Hi, I’m Chris? I play hockey! Did you just want to welcome me to the building? That would be so nice of you. Um, not that you have to.”
“We know who you are,” Holster is quick to say, before Ransom collapses or Chow apologises himself into oblivion, “and you’re a killer goalie, super next level, but welcome to the building, too.”
He tries his very best to stop his voice going up at the end like it’s a question. If Chris Chow deserves to feel welcome anywhere, it’s in the slightly ugly building that houses the Oluransi-Birkholtz apartment, in the city that houses the team which drafted him and have kind of been fucking him over the last couple of seasons.
Ransom finally gets his voice back. “Yeah, we hope you like it here.” And then because he’s still got some level of game even when he’s about to swoon, “You ever have any questions or just want some company, I’m Ransom, he’s Holster, and we’re in 8C.”
Chow’s face lights up with a grin. “No way! I’m in 8A. Guess we’ll be seeing more of each other, huh?”
“Guess so,” Ransom replies, his automatic flirtation mode finding its stride.
Holster – who has no such mode – watches, the entire scene wholly surreal, as the penny drops for Chow between one blink and the next. Even more surreal, Chow glances between them and turns a little pink around the ears, then smiles a bunch wider. “Nice.”
Somehow, they end up leaving the laundry room together, Holster carrying his and Rans’ empty laundry bag and Chow his basket of neatly folded clothes. Holster leaves it to Ransom to carry the conversation for a teeny bit: Rans’ had his chance to freak out the first time he saw Chris Chow in their laundry room, which apparently actually happened for real, and now it’s Holster’s turn.
“I’m only here for a bit, you know?” Chow is saying with a gloomy shrug when Holster successfully checks back into reality without having actually screeched out loud.
“Uh, wow, hey now,” Holster says, automatic. “I don’t know about that.”
At the exact same time, with just as much outraged bluster, Ransom starts, “I think you’ll find with a save percentage like–”
They both realise at the same moment that they are defending Chris Chow to Chris Chow, not to some dumb bro who doesn’t get the artistry of being a goalie, and Holster can feel his entire upper body flush. Ransom’s teeth clack he shuts his mouth so fast.
Chow goes a little pink around the ears again, but he laughs and thanks them instead of saying uh what the fuck, which is what Holster would have done. He also manages to make pressing the elevator button with his elbow look graceful and athletic.
“I don’t know,” Chow says, once the three of them and their laundry-adjacent items are safely in the elevator. “The guys are great, super friendly, but… I don’t know. Everyone I know’s back in Providence, and the schedule is insane, and I’m still the new guy.”
“Well, like I said, we’re only over in 8C,” Ransom says, “if you’ve got a couple hours spare whenever.” This is daring even for Ransom, so its smoothness is ruined a little by his eyes going massive and a sound like he’s swallowed his own tongue
Chow doesn’t seem to mind. “Oh, really? Wow. For sure! That would be so cool.” He pauses. “Uh. Oh. Wait. Shit, okay, first, like I didn’t mean to say all that stuff before. You guys aren’t, like, the press or anything right? Because I love the team, like I really, really do, um–”
Ransom regains his voice to say, vehemently, “Fuck, no. We’re consultants.”
“Yeah, no, man.” Holster is trying so hard to sound casual that he cannot feel his entire lower body, quite possibly. “Not press. Our lips are sealed, too, no posting on Twitter. Listen, I’ll give you our numbers and you can text whenever. We can get brunch.”
“I love brunch,” Chow says. He looks between them and he smiles like, properly, and Holster isn’t the swooning type but damn.
Truthfully, the next thing Holster honestly fully registers is watching Chow wave goodbye and head down the corridor with a slip of paper in his hands. It’s paper which has Ransom and Holster’s literal fucking functional phone numbers on it, because he thinks they’re cool, or at least cool enough to get brunch with.
Holster drags Ransom into their apartment (or maybe it’s Ransom dragging him, who knows) lest they end up standing out in the corridor for eternity. He shuts the door. Ransom is staring at the TV looking a little dazed.
“You good?” Holster asks. He doesn’t know if he’s good himself. He just gave Chris Chow their phone numbers.
“He wants to maybe come to our apartment… and hang out,” Ransom intones, stunned and with a tinge of hysteria. “We’re getting brunch?”
Holster has no fucking clue what to say other than, “I know, man.” He takes their empty laundry bag back to their bedroom and suddenly realises their mistake. It washes away the Chris Chow daze in a heartbeat. “Oh shit, Rans, wait a sec. We didn’t put the red sheets in with the white stuff, did we?”
“I thought this kind of thing was behind us when we kissed that Faber ice,” Holster mumbles into the collar of his (once off-white, now pink) sweater. He’s waiting for Rans to brush his teeth while also trying to find a comfortable position to take a micro-nap in. “No one should be awake this early unless they haven’t gone to bed yet.”
He and Ransom have to wake up early for work, sure, but not like this.
“It’s the only time Chowder could do,” Rans calls from the bathroom, garbled around his toothbrush.
Holster feels some of his grumpiness seep happily away. “Can’t believe he told us to call him Chowder.”
“Pretty sick,” agrees Ransom, or at least that’s what Holster figures he says around all the toothpaste. There’s the sound of him spitting into the sink then the gargling of mouthwash. He’s in full date-night routine mode, which is cute, except Holster is too tired to do the same, so Rans is in fact showing him up.
It’s been a little over two weeks since The Laundry Washing. They’ve watched Chowder – Chowder! – a couple more times on TV in games, some wins and some losses. They’ve texted their congratulations after the wins (and then had some stellar sex and definitely not felt weird about it at all) and they’ve texted their condolences after the losses.
They’ve also (accidentally, at first) talked about so much random shit; the kind both he and Rans would usually save for each other, TV and shitty playlist ideas and whatever. Only, Chowder has talked back. Like, eagerly. They’re in an active group chat.
Holster feels a little crazy with it, but it’s cool.
As it turns out, though, playing NHL hockey means a pretty fucking rigorous routine, and a fair amount of fame in a relatively hockey town, so instead of Brunch with Chris Chow at the Diner Down the Street, it’s Inhumanely Early Breakfast with Chowder, in His Apartment, to Avoid Autographs.
But Holster isn’t panicking about breakfast. Partly because Chris Chow is Chowder now – like, he’s in a fucking group chat with him and Rans – and partly because he’s too tired to panic. Probably too tired to pop a boner if Chowder does do something hot, either, like exist in Holster’s direction, or Ransom’s direction. Not that him and Ransom have talked about it, exactly.
It will be fine. Probably. Chowder is their new buddy, and no one has done anything about the possible-maybe-flirting from that first laundry room incident, so Holster should probably cut it out with the horniness anyway.
Despite this, it takes Ransom another twenty minutes to be satisfied with how he looks, or smells, or whatever. He ends up coming out of the bathroom some kind of amazing and Holster has no choice to sidetrack them a further fifteen minutes with some hurried, minty making out.
The end result is them making the short journey to 8A ten minutes later than planned, all kinds of confusing date-night signals being sent through Hoslter’s semi-turned-on brain as Ransom vibrates beside him.
Chowder answers the door so quickly Holster wonders if he was standing on the other side of it, waiting for them to arrive.
“Good morning,” he says with a cheeriness that must be chirping, “Come in, I made normal people food especially for you guys. Please eat it or the nutritionist will kill me.”
Inside, Chowder’s apartment is neutral creams and whites and grays, a couple of soulless, stock-image box canvas prints on the walls. Holster wouldn’t call himself an expert on interior design, but it feels lonely, and not like Chowder at all.
There is a fuckload of delicious-smelling food on the dining table though, enough that Holster’s stomach gurgles a hurry up as they settle round it.
“Holy shit, dude, how early did you get up to make this?” Ransom asks, already grabbing a plate from the stack in the middle and filling it. “You didn’t need to make so much.”
Chowder waves the question away, helping himself to four slices of toast. “I’m giving myself a cheat day, so expect at least three quarters to be eaten by me. Besides, I kind of miss cooking? It’s no fun cooking for yourself.”
“You should sign up for one of those meal delivery things,” Holster says, as respectably as he can with half a banana in his mouth. “The healthy ones.”
“I really do like cooking though!” Chowder insists. “It’s just like, sad, I guess? To cook only for me. I haven’t really broken this kitchen in until today. You guys know, I wasn’t sure how long I’d be staying–”
“Load of bullshit,” Ransom cuts in.
“Check your own stats, dude,” Holster agrees.
Chowder smiles the same way he has every time so far. “Okay, okay, sure, whatever. I guess maybe I should’ve stayed in a hotel, so I wouldn’t feel all guilty about leaving the place unloved. But then I wouldn’t have met you guys!”
Holster really hopes his face doesn’t show how much his heart is like, singing its little butt off at that. If Ransom’s is anything to go by, it’s not good odds.
“And I’m super glad I met you guys,” Chowder says after a moment.
Chowder almost looks like he himself can’t believe he’s saying the words, or especially the way he’s saying them, but Holster’s ears don’t deceive him. He can feel someone’s foot against his under the table. He watches, with half a mind on the warning signs for stroke, as Chowder makes his point by touching Ransom’s hand for a moment too long.
Is it straight for dudes to touch hands? Holster doesn’t think it is. Fuck knows what straight guys get up to but… no way it is. Right? He watches Ransom, frozen. None of them have swallowed for way too long. Are they all going to get boners right now, in this ugly, soulless kitchen?
The moment stretches, out and out and out, and it is surreal. Fuck. In that laundry room Chowder had been picking up what they (okay, mostly Ransom) were putting down. He had. They’re having breakfast.
“Samesies,” Ransom and Holster say at the exact same time in the exact same dumb voice, which is not only unsexy but an in-joke six years old, because they’ve both got a chronic case of puncturing the tension terribly.
Luckily, it makes Chowder laugh. He takes his hand back from Ransom’s to carry on eating, and Holster’s feet are unaccompanied again under the table.
For a while, they’re mostly quiet, emptying and refilling their plates with the literal bounty before them as he and Ransom take turns to shower Chowder in praises and Chowder steadily turns pinker and pinker. Through the window the sun rises to an acceptable level in the sky and, near miss boner-popping aside, it’s actually, like, one of the most peaceful morning’s Holster’s had in a long while.
Eventually, though, they all have to take a pause for the sake of their digestive systems; none of them are college bros anymore.
“So how come you did get this place?” asks Ransom, looking around. “Are you subletting or something?”
“It’s kinda interesting, actually!” Chowder says, absentmindedly refilling everyone’s glasses with juice. “I was ready to get comfy with hotel living, but then I got this call from a friend of a friend who said he had an apartment empty in this building! And I was like, awesome, dude, but also how did you get this number? Which he didn’t answer, now I think of it. Anyway, then he sent me a video of the place and it looked fine. He also said it’d be super important for me to live here. Um, I’m kind of superstitious, I guess? So I took it!”
“Huh,” says Holster. “Sounds like something one of our buddies from college would’ve said.”
“Wow,” says Ransom. “Think the last I heard Johnson was still lost out in Appalachia, though.”
“Yeah, I don’t know. Weird, right?” Chowder shrugs. “But like I said, it worked out! At least it will have if you eat all the pastries with the chocolate in them before I do.”
Ransom obligingly grabs three; one for himself, one for Holster, and one to split. They have a system. “Well, if you insist, my dude.”
Holster hadn’t even noticed the pastries with the chocolate in them yet and when he bites into his he can’t help the sounds he makes. Chowder has literally served him and Rans the breakfast of gods and it is so sweetly overboard that Holster isn’t sure what to do with himself.
It’s not really an excuse, per se, but it’s probably like the main reason that Holster finds himself saying – around a mouthful of delicious pastry – “Hey, dude, we should totally pay you back for this at some point. When’s good for you to come over and get dinner at ours?”
“Bro,” Ransom says into the darkness of their bedroom a few nights later. “Are we trying to, like… go somewhere with Chowder?”
“I think his schedule’s pretty booked up,” Holster mumbles into the pillow. “Don’t think he has much time to go any place during the season.” They have work tomorrow. He’s not sure he wants to talk about this even if they didn’t. Do they need to talk about it?
“Bro,” Ransom says again, reproachful this time.
Holster sighs and rolls over so they’re facing each other for this at least. “I would not say no if things were going somewhere.”
“Yeah.” Ransom nods, processes this for a minute, like Holster expected he would, and ends the contemplation period with another nod. “Good. Me neither.”
“Him neither, too, I think.” Holster isn’t sure that made sense and he’s almost sure there should be, like, more shit to discuss, but whatever. “Glad we’re on the same page.”
“Yeah,” Ransom agrees, but he’s still frowning a little by the light of their alarm clock. “Yeah, okay. Sex, or feelings too?”
“We invited him to dinner, dude. And he said yes.”
“Yeah, okay,” Ransom says again, smiling this time. He leans in to kiss Holster and it’s not much of a conversation, but Holster feels things settle into place.
The knowledge of their conversation stays just sitting there in Holster’s brain, feeling more and more comfortable as they work and live – and text and text and text with Chowder in between those two things – until it’s another two weeks later and their kitchen is in chaos.
Increasing comfort with the fact they want to shoot their shot with Chowder is doing approximately nothing helpful when Holster looks at their pathetic attempt at dinner. A supposedly romantic, wooing, sealing-the-deal meal.
“Oh, fuck.” Tentatively, he takes the tiniest taste of the end of the spoon and says, already rushing for water to wash the taste out, “Oh, fuck.”
“It can’t be that bad,” says Ransom reasonably, and tries some for himself. “Oh,” he says, after he’s done spitting it into the sink, “it is that bad.”
Holster chucks some random spices in but doesn’t re-taste the monstrosity just in case it made no difference. He doesn’t want to know. His self-esteem and nerves are already in tatters. “What do we do?” he asks miserably.
Ransom looks a little ill. “Ply him with alcohol so he doesn’t realise it’s literally disgusting?” he suggests.
Holster could kiss him – and does. “Rans, you are so smart, this is exactly why I love you,” he tells him, cracking open the fridge to survey their alcohol supply. “What are we thinking?”
“Tub juice minus the tub?”
“Not very classy, is it?”
Ransom goes to the stove and stirs like that will do anything. “We’ve gone way beyond classy, Holtzy.”
Their abomination of a dinner bubbles away happily as if in agreement. Holster puts every alcoholic beverage they have on the countertop, downs a shot of one of them, and says, “You may have a point.”
Ransom surveys the collection, absentmindedly knocks back the shot glass Holster hands him. “We could call them cocktails?”
Holster objectively knows the meal is still a complete fucking mess, but he feels something ease within him at that. Ransom is so smart. Another shot of alcohol doesn’t hurt, either.
“Again, this is exactly why I love you, bro.” There’s a box of fancy chocolate liqueurs he didn’t even know they owned and he holds them up, considering. “We could put this on sticks in the drinks? Like when people put olives.”
He’s half joking, but Ransom’s eyes go wide and gleeful. “Dude,” he says, pulling Holster in for a smacking kiss on the cheek. “You are so fucking smart.”
Except then there’s a knock at the door, and suddenly Ransom is looking ill again, and Holster can feel is heart somewhere in the region of his throat.
Holster loses the rapid-fire rock paper scissors to answer the door. Chowder isn’t in full tails and a top hat on their doorstep, because why would he be; instead, he’s freshly showered having come straight from a lengthy practice, and looking a very potent combination of flushed, tired out, and eager.
“Hey,” he says, smiling, and call Holster sloshed on one shot from their immensely tame liquor cabinet but it’s crazy how everything about one word can convey Chowder has come to dinner at theirs, that he means business.
Holster’s tongue feels twice its normal size. He needs Ransom beside him, seeing this, ASAP, because the energy that Chowder is sending out has to be flirting right? No way his and Rans’ sexy times Excel sheets have been consistently fucked for nothing. This is the real deal.
“Uh,” Holster gurgles. “Welcome to our humble abode? Come inside?”
Chowder grins and the spell is broken. He’s still looking incredible – duh, he’s Chris Chow, and then he’s Chowder on top of that – but Holster can breathe a little better with the intent banked for now. “Don’t mind if I do!” Chowder says, pushing right inside. “Hey, Ransom! I brought dips.”
Sometime later, once Chowder has nosed around their apartment shamelessly, politely swallowed two mouthfuls of their food without dying, then suggested ordering the healthiest takeout possible, they start on the ‘cocktails’.
They had migrated to the living room because the traces of their cooking were unavoidable and tragic sitting at the table, only now the reality is sinking in for Holster that their couch was not made for three hockey-adjacent guys. They’re shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee. It’s amazing.
Chowder takes a massive, glugging sip of his drink, shudders slightly, and places the glass down on the coffee table. “Wow, guys. That’s… really something!”
“You don’t like the garnish?” Ransom asks, entire face contorting around his sip. “Oh, crap. Fuck.”
Holster tries his and swears he can hear his ears ringing. He looks at his glass in betrayal – they used to be good at this making-tub-juice business. Is the alcohol off somehow? Are they just getting old? Was their entire college career a lie?
“Love the garnish,” Chowder agrees, his chocolate liqueur garnish very much uneaten. He picks up his drink again, take another shuddering sip, and considers it thoughtfully. “Huh. You know, these are actually kind of delicious when you give them a minute?”
So of course, before long, they’re not just sitting on the couch together – they’re huddled together, ranging from tipsy to schwastey, and Holster has no idea what they’ve been talking about except he feels a deep, unusual fondness for humanity as whole and he’s pretty sure they haven’t covered sucking each other’s dicks yet.
“So, like,” Holster asks, “why haven’t we sucked each other’s dicks yet?”
Holy crap. He really just said that out loud, for real, like in reality. What did they put in that no-tub tub juice?
“Dude,” says Ransom, reaching round Chowder to smack Holster on the arm. “Zero class.”
“Shocking,” Chowder agrees, shaking his head. He’s been flushed around the ears and giggly for a while, so it’s followed up by a brief pause for laughing at nothing, but then he says, “I mean, I actually don’t know why, though? We should.”
“Um,” says Holster. The couch suddenly feels about three times as small and ten times as warm.
“Okay, wow,” Ransom says. “Wow, wow, wow. Like. Wow?”
Chowder shrugs. “I don’t know. I mean, I want to, and if you guys want to…? Maybe we could kiss first, just to try things out?”
Holster is not getting hard over the idea of kissing Chowder, or of watching, or whatever. He wants to say something smooth, but what comes out is: “I… for real?”
Luckily, Ransom has got their collective, Ransom-and-Holster back for always through everything. “Fuck off, Holtzy, of course for real,” he says, like that settles it. “We talked about this, remember?”
Chowder sits up a little straighter at this. “You talked about me?” he asks, delighted. “Like, how you do all the time when I’m not there – like when you forgot to hang up that one time when we were dissecting the game – or about… this?”
Holster does not want to think about that one time they were dissecting the game. He has never come so hard in his life as he did after that time when they realised Chowder was listening in mid his and Rans’ post-game-and-game-dissection-with-Chowder horny foreplay.
“We invited you to dinner,” he says, probably sulkily, by way of explanation. “Read the room.”
Holster tries to not take it as a good sign, a sign of things being possible and working and other things, when Chowder nods like this makes perfect sense.
“You did,” Chowder agrees. “Like, I also tried and am trying all the moves on you guys, so. There’s that.”
“There’s that,” Ransom agrees, after they’ve sat tangled up and tipsy in silence for a few moments more. “Right. Wanna make out then?”
Chowder looks between them, tipsy and his face lit up in a way that’s already on its way to familiar. Holster shares a look with Ransom that is the braincell-to-braincell equivalent of holy fucking shit and Ransom puts his arm around both of them, as much as he can. None of it feels expected, exactly, even though they discussed it and all three of them have been picking up and putting down signals all over the place. Still. Holster is so, so ready.
“Or, you know, are we jumping straight to the sucking dick?” Chowder asks, smile turning sly and his fingers digging into Holster’s ribs like a shit.
“Bro,” Ransom laughs, hand slipping off Holster’s shoulder to grab Chowder by the top of his head and shove him around like it’s the best chirp he’s ever heard in his life.
Fine. It was a pretty good one. “Shut the fuck up,” Holster tells both of them anyway, trying and failing not to smile. Ransom is still laughing, his hand in Chowder’s hair and his foot against Holster’s, and Chowder is smiling because of Ransom but at Holster, like it’s all shared.
And like, again: Holster is so, so ready. He leans in and kisses Chowder.