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I love you. I love you. I love you.
The words have a radioactive effect on Ruben’s being. They carve themselves into his skin. They sew their letters into the backs of his eyelids. They crawl through his veins and pound through his head: a thick, syrupy remembrance that’s as much a form of suffocation as the first breath of life he’s taken in years, as much a source of pain as it is the most unimaginable sort of euphoria. Ruben can’t stop hearing it. He can’t stop replaying the words in his mind. He can’t stop wanting to hold on to them at the same time he wants nothing more than to forget they’d ever come out of Niall’s mouth and to forget what Niall said first all the harder.
His name is Alby. I love him.
Chin raised, eyes right on Ruben, the declaration filled with such certainty that Niall would have harmed Ruben less if he’d picked up one of the big stones from around the pond and smashed it into Ruben’s head.
I love him – and I love you. I think about you when I’m with him –
And fucking Christ, what thoughts – every one of them plucked from Ruben’s own imagination. Every horrible thing. Every arousing, nasty, awful flight of fancy that passed through his mind when he was watching Niall through the windows none of them ever bothered covering, sitting cold in the car himself with his fists clenched and teeth working at the inner meat of his cheek as that little fag dropped to his knees and mouthed at Ruben’s brother like he was starving for it. Ruben had thought about it, too, after the initial instinct to violence passed: ripping the fag away from Niall and beating him until he ceased to be recognizable turning to grabbing the curls of that bobbing head, forcing the cunt to get to the point, making him take everything Niall could give him and then take a little more. He’d thought about pressing close to Niall’s side, whispering in his ear while his precious boyfriend choked.
“This is how you do it, Bambi,” he would say. “You use that big cock of yours and take what you want. You don’t let some pretty little cunt lead you about by it.”
He thought of the look on Niall’s face when he came, how he would shudder and cry when Ruben forced the boyfriend to swallow.
It was only after Ruben thought of himself. It was only after that he ever realized the weight of his own heavy cock between his legs, the throb of it radiating throughout his body. His stomach churned, nausea crawled up his throat, and in swallowing back the bile he would realize he couldn’t bear to watch any longer. His gaze would jerk away from the windows to look out into the street, at the steering wheel, his hands in his lap. Time drifted. Hours passed. Shame was a wet blanket over his shoulders and more tangled emotions layered over it besides. By the time Ruben blinked and came back to himself, his cock would be soft again and his body would feel as if it were coated in some greasy film that no hours of cold showering later would quite manage to scrub off. The cold always seemed stronger, too, or maybe his skin less thick to the elements. The inevitable drive back to the flat he’d gotten not too far from Niall was silent and tense. Ruben barely managed to sleep once he got back, tossing and turning all night.
For months, that’s how he got by.
Months.
It isn’t much of a wonder that the first time he finally finds himself in the same room as Niall again makes him feel like he’s been set ablaze.
*
“What’s yours is mine, is that the game we’re playing?” Ruben asks.
“It’s not a game,” Niall denies as confidently as he’d said ‘I love him’. “It’s just the way things are supposed to be, isn’t it?”
*
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Ruben is self-aware enough to realize that if that’s not the worst thing Niall could have said if he possesses a single hope of ever being free of Ruben, it’s only because it isn’t lacking for competition.
*
Ruben doesn’t have a plan.
Not on the day Niall leaves for uni and Ruben spends so long staring out at the empty street Lori’s car has long since disappeared from that his legs ache by the time he goes back inside. Not the first time he drives to Glasgow, a clench in his jaw and an impotent sense of rage and betrayal fluttering about his chest. Not the first time he watched Niall from a distance and not the first time he saw who had so captured Niall’s attention. Not any of the dozens, hundreds of times he watched after: sickened and angry and aroused and miserable all around. Miserable in his loneliness, his disgust, his envy.
Ruben never has less of a plan than when he finally comes home and goes into their room to find Niall and the fag both in Niall’s bed, naked, covered in spend, all curled up around each other as peaceful as can be.
He has even less when he says, his throat so tight it’s a wonder he can get the words out, “You can tell me you don’t want me around.”
And then, “We need to catch up, don’t we?”
And then, “Take off your clothes and get out of the car.”
Ruben doesn’t plan any of it. He’s incapable. Time since Niall left has become at once a crawl and a mad race and it’s impossible to think even a step ahead in the midst of it. He’s operating entirely on instinct, entirely on the rotten thing in his chest that hasn’t gone a day since Niall left him without aching. Nothing solidifies. Nothing settles. Nothing makes him clean.
Nothing –
“You’re coming back to Glasgow with me,” Niall says, doesn’t ask. “Yeah? And you don’t have to look through windows anymore. I want you there. I want you with us.”
It’s a hook in Ruben’s cheek. A bear trap around his ankle. A door locking behind him and being bricked up for good measure before one of those bricks is slammed to the back of his head. Ruben is as much stunned as he is salivating at the life Niall is handing out to him on a silver platter, seasoned exactly to Ruben’s taste.
“Aye?” The word comes out choked. “What’s yours is mine, is that the game we’re playing?”
“It’s not a game. It’s just the way things are supposed to be, isn’t it?”
It is, Ruben thinks immediately. Still dazed. Chest still heavy with horrendous need. It is, it always has been. It’s what he’s felt all along.
It’s just that he never once believed he would ever hear Niall agree to the sentiment and mean it.
*
Ruben is outside of himself as he does it. There’s a dreamlike haze over his mind, a fuzz of feeling over his body, and for all he can’t remember his cock ever being so hard in his life he might as well be watching late night porn on the telly instead of sinking into an arse as tight as Niall’s. The organ doesn’t feel like his own, like instead of Ruben doing this thing he’s watching a bloke who looks exactly like him from somewhere up high. It’s a familiar feeling – sickening for why it’s familiar. Ruben stares at the pale flesh between Niall’s shoulder blades as he fights to push accompanying memories away, to swallow back his nausea as his skin flushes hot and cold, hot and cold.
It helps that Niall gives only the most cursory struggle, just a single flinch that Ruben thinks is mostly from the impact of being bent over the hood of the car, before he settles down and goes lax beneath Ruben’s grip. That makes it easier for Ruben to not make comparisons. Gives him less of a chance to snap back to reality out of this strange fantasy he’s wandered into. Niall only squirms a little when Ruben unzips and the shivering he does when Ruben finally touches him, hands grazing rough paths up and down his back, aren’t movements to get away. Niall doesn’t cry. He doesn’t beg. He doesn’t plead. He doesn’t freeze up, his breath quickening and eyes shut tight like he can’t wait for this to be over. No, Niall is arching into Ruben’s touch like he’s trying to crawl out of his own skin and into Ruben. His breath is hitching like he’s desperate before Ruben’s cock even touches him.
That helps, too. Reminds Ruben that Niall isn’t him and this isn’t that. This has nothing to do with his da’. Ruben isn’t a boy anymore. He isn’t small. He isn’t weak. He isn’t the one bent over a car, held down in a bed, a pathetic fag, a fucking slut bare naked in the cold as a bigger man has his way with him and makes him moan for it. Ruben could have done anything to Niall out here. He could have killed him. He could have fucked him on the ground by the pond, hand buried in Niall’s hair to force his head down into the water. He could have dumped Niall here and then went back to the house to give sleeping beauty something to remember him by. Ruben has the power here. He has all of it.
This is only about three of them, not four.
“You know where this Alby has been, yeah?” Ruben asks as he rubs his cock against Niall’s arse, teasing at the hole, because he understands even in his fucked head that’s his business now too. “He’s as good a boy as you, Bambi?”
Niall doesn’t answer at first, nothing coming from his mouth but hot little sounds that make Ruben’s cock throb even harder.
“Yes,” Niall eventually moans. “He’s a good boy, too, Ruben.”
“You both just act the whore for each other, then?” The thought brings on both a burst of pleasure and a rush of relief. “That’s good, Bambi. That’s perfect. Less I have to punish him for.”
Only three, yeah? Only three. Ruben can live with that: just him, his brother, and a pretty boy fag to split between them. Ruben can pretend he’s a bird from behind. Use enough lubricant to make his arse feel like the wettest cunt. Ruben can keep his eyes on Niall while they fuck his precious Alby together. If that’s what it’s going to take to make Niall happy, to keep him with Ruben, to have what’s Niall’s be his – Ruben can provide that.
The word rings out in Ruben’s head as he feeds Niall his cock inch by inch and Niall pants, moans, whimpers like it feels so good it hurts. It’s about providing, yeah? Niall needs this. Niall is Ruben’s. It’s Ruben’s responsibility to give him what he needs. That’s what a brother does. It’s what a man does.
And if not Ruben, then Christ knows who Niall might have found himself belonging to instead. Some old cunt, some sick pervert. A man who might slap him around, pimp him out, make him feel ashamed of himself.
A man like Ruben’s da’.
Better it be that one, Ruben has been thinking for weeks. Once the urge to brutalize Alby became less urgent, once beating his way through the walls separating him from Niall no longer seemed appealing, once he could watch them together without feeling only rage – Ruben thought to himself: better for Niall to end up occupied with a boy his own age who seems to get on his knees twice for every one time Niall submits himself to him. Better it be a flatmate than a professor.
Better, Ruben thinks now, that it’s someone he can put a collar on. Keep from straying and bringing back something nasty to infect Niall with. Keep from doing anything else that might hurt Niall. And all of it better for Alby, too – Christ knows the sick fucks out there would be no kinder to him than they’d be to Niall. A pretty boy like that with his cock sucking lips and head of curls.
Ruben used to have curls like that, back when he was a kid. His da’ loved them. He loved to sink his fingers into Ruben’s hair and give just the slightest pull. Ruben always knew he wouldn’t spend the night alone from that. Just from that one touch.
It lasted until the day Ruben took a pair of scissors to his own head and chopped everything off as close to the scalp as he could. Maura looked at him like he’d cut off a limb instead. His da’ looked at him like he was disappointed. Like Ruben had failed him in some significant way.
His da’ didn’t visit his room that night, though, and it was enough to give Ruben the strength to go to Maura the next day and tell her what was happening.
“You needy fucking slut,” Ruben praises when Niall starts pushing back against him, trying to get more of Ruben’s cock into him than Ruben was ready to give –
But plans change.
Ruben gives Niall what he needs, a masculine sort of pride rushing over him when Niall cries out moments later and comes all over the hood of the car. Ruben shuts his eyes and fucks him through it, losing himself in the pulsing heat all over his body as he thrusts into Niall, chasing his own pleasure.
“Say it,” Ruben demands as he nears release.
Niall moans from beneath him, arse clenching around Ruben’s cock which only makes Ruben give it at little harder on the next thrust.
“Say it,” Ruben says again, louder, harsher.
Niall swallows audibly.
“You’re my brother,” he says.
“And?”
A beat passes.
“I love you,” Niall says, soft at first until his voice raises on a moan. “I love you, Ruben. I love you. I – “
Niall’s voice breaks off as Ruben starts fucking him hard enough to shake the car, punched out little moans replacing words until Ruben finally curses and stills, coming in Niall’s arse.
“I love you, too, Bambi,” Ruben says when he manages to catch his breath.
He punctuates the statement with a lingering kiss to the back of Niall’s neck. He can hear Niall’s breathing hitch and that’s half the reason Ruben kisses him again.
“Say it again,” Niall begs, voice so soft that it’s only their proximity that allows Ruben to hear it. “Please, Ruben –“
“I love you,” Ruben repeats. He kisses the side of Niall’s throat, the space beneath his ear, and Niall shudders beneath him, arse clenching around Ruben’s soft cock. “Brother.”
“Again.”
Ruben repeats himself. Niall squirms beneath him some more, moaning –
“Again.”