The helmet came off and the air hit him like a wall. Cold, sharp, moving. Eli sucked it in through his nose, his mouth still remembering the gag, his jaw aching from how long he'd held it open. Sweat ran from his hairline down the side of his face and dripped off his chin onto the polished platform between his knees.

He was still on all fours. Still bent over the edge. His arms had gone numb somewhere in the last hour and his knees had stopped reporting anything at all. He could hear his own breathing—ragged, wet, too loud in the windowless room—and beneath it the soft creak of rubber as Sam's hand left his shoulder and the two sealed figures shifted back from him.

"There he is," Marcus said.

Footsteps crossed the floor. Eli turned his head just enough to see the charcoal trouser legs stop at the edge of the platform, the shine of polished shoes, the shadow of a hand hanging loose at Marcus's side. He didn't look up. He didn't have the strength to look up.

"Your reward is finished," Marcus said. His voice had gone warm, the way it did when he wanted something. Fond. Almost proud. "You did well tonight. Both of them, inside you, and you took it. That's not nothing."

Eli said nothing. His throat was raw. He could still taste Sam on his tongue—salt and rubber and something underneath that was just Sam, the way Sam smelled on the bike, the way Sam's hand had felt on his shoulder.

"But a reward is a thing you give and then it's over," Marcus went on. "And what comes after is not a reward. What comes after is your place."

Eli's arms gave out. He didn't decide to let them go—they just went, and his chest dropped onto the platform's padded edge, his cheek flat against the leather, his breath sawing in and out of him. The leather smelled like every night he'd spent on it. Like the first night. Like Adrian's night. Like his own sweat, layered over and over until he couldn't tell which layer was his.

Hands slid under his knees.

Eli flinched—couldn't help it—and then Adrian lifted him. Just lifted him, the way you'd lift a child out of a bath, one arm under each knee, and Eli's whole body came up off the platform with no effort at all. His back arched. His head fell back. The room swung past him—downlights, steel, the black shape of the machine in the corner—and then Adrian's chest pressed against his spine and held him there, suspended, weightless, his own legs dangling over Adrian's forearms.

"Easy," Adrian said. His voice came through the helmet's grill, flattened and metallic, but it was Adrian's. It was the voice that had said mine over the locker room bench. It was the voice that had promised to be there when it was over.

Eli's hands found Adrian's forearms. The rubber was slick with sweat and warm from Adrian's body, and Eli's fingers couldn't get a grip, so he just held on with his palms, his arms shaking, his knees spread wide over Adrian's arms.

Something pressed against his hole.

Eli knew the shape of it. He'd known it for weeks now—the blunt heat of it, the way it found him without being guided, the way his body had learned to open before his mind caught up. He'd taken Adrian before. He'd taken Sam. He'd taken them both tonight, one after the other, and his body had already been stretched and used and left slick and open, and still—

Still, when Adrian pushed in, Eli gasped.

Slow. Deep. Adrian didn't rush it. He held Eli suspended over his arms and sank into him an inch at a time, and Eli felt every inch of it—the stretch, the fullness, the way his body gave and gave and kept giving, the wet sound of it, the way Adrian's breath caught against the back of his neck when he bottomed out.

"There," Adrian said, quiet. "There you are."

Eli's mouth opened. Nothing came out. His hands slid on Adrian's forearms and found nothing to hold, and his legs hung useless over Adrian's arms, and he was so full he couldn't think past it—couldn't think past the pressure low in his belly, the ache that had been building all night and hadn't been allowed to break.

Then Sam stepped close.

Eli felt him before he saw him—the heat of him, the rubber of his chest against Eli's side, the brush of his thigh against Eli's hip. Sam's hand found Eli's jaw and turned his head, and Eli looked up into the black helmet, into the two round lenses where Sam's eyes should be, and behind the grill Sam's breath moved in and out, in and out, steady as a metronome.

"Breathe," Sam said. "Like we did."

Eli breathed. He didn't decide to. Sam said it and his body did it, the way it did everything Sam told it now, and he felt his hole loosen around Adrian's cock, felt the grip of his own body ease, and Sam pressed his length against him—against the place where Adrian was already inside him—and pushed.

Eli screamed.

It came out of him high and thin and wordless, and the sound filled the windowless room and came back off the steel, and his body arched so hard that Adrian had to tighten his arms to keep him from bucking off, and Sam kept pushing—slow, patient, the way Sam did everything—until he was in, both of them in, both cocks locked side by side inside him, stretching him wider than he'd ever been stretched, wider than he'd known he could be.

"Good," Sam said. "Good. That's it."

Eli couldn't answer. He couldn't breathe. He hung between them—Adrian behind him, Sam in front of him, their sealed chests pressed against his back and his chest, the rubber of their suits slick and hot and glued to his skin by sweat—and both of them were inside him, and his body was doing things he hadn't given it permission to do, clenching and releasing and clenching again, trying to accommodate what couldn't be accommodated.

Adrian began to move.

Small strokes. Shallow, at first—just enough to drag along the place that made Eli's thighs shake—and then deeper, and Sam moved with him, counter to him, so that when Adrian pulled out Sam pushed in, and Eli was never empty, never for a second, and the two of them found a rhythm between them like they'd done it before, like they'd rehearsed it, and Eli's body was the instrument they were playing.

"That's it," Marcus said from somewhere behind them. "That's what it looks like. Three bodies, one rhythm."

Eli's hands found Adrian's forearms again and held on, and his eyes found Sam's lenses, and Sam's hand stayed on his jaw, holding his head up, holding him open, and Eli watched himself in the black glass of Sam's helmet—a smeared reflection, a shape that was barely a person anymore, being used from both ends and taking it and taking it and taking it.

His cock was hard.

It had been hard all night. It was hard now, leaking against the cage, the steel bars slick with him, and every stroke pushed him closer to the edge and pulled him back at the same time, because the cage wouldn't let him come and his body wouldn't stop trying. The ache had gone past pain into something else. Something white. Something that filled his head and left no room for anything else.

"Please," Eli said.

He didn't know what he was asking for. He didn't know if he was asking Adrian or Sam or Marcus or his own body. He just said it, because it was the only word left in him, and Sam's hand tightened on his jaw.

"I know," Sam said. "I know. Just hold on."

Eli held on.

The rhythm picked up. Adrian's strokes went deeper, harder, and Sam matched him, and the wet sound of it filled the room—the slap of rubber against skin, the suck of it, the small helpless noises Eli couldn't keep in his throat. Sweat ran down his back and pooled where Adrian's chest met his spine. His knees had stopped holding anything. His whole weight hung on Adrian's arms and Sam's hand on his jaw, and he was so far past the edge of himself that he couldn't find the way back.

Then the rubber began to soften.

Eli felt it first where Adrian's chest met his back—a slow give, a warmth, the suit going from armor to something closer to skin. He thought it was sweat at first. He thought it was heat. But then Sam's chest did the same against his, and the seams of both suits—the seam along Adrian's collarbone, the seam down Sam's ribs—began to blur, and the blur spread, and Eli watched the black rubber of Sam's shoulder flow into the black rubber of his own shoulder like two drops of oil finding each other on water.

"What—" Eli started.

"Shh," Sam said.

The suits kept flowing. Eli felt it move up his arms, down his sides, and where it moved it took the seams with it, and the three of them—Adrian's chest, Sam's chest, his own—became one continuous surface, black and gleaming, no line between them anywhere. He tried to move his arm and couldn't. He tried to turn his head and Sam's hand held him, and Sam's hand was—Sam's hand had gone into the suit, was part of the suit now, the fingers blended into the black shell along Eli's jaw so that Sam wasn't holding him anymore. Sam was the holding.

Eli's breath came fast and shallow. His heart hammered against the inside of the new shell, and the shell took the beat and passed it along, and he felt it—felt his own pulse travel through the rubber into Adrian's chest, into Sam's chest, felt it come back to him changed.

"There," Marcus said. His voice was close now. Right behind Eli's head, close enough that Eli should have felt the breath of it on his neck—but there was no breath. Just the voice, coming through the shell itself, a vibration in the rubber where his skin used to be.

"This is your position now," Marcus said. "The three of you, one body. Sam in front. Adrian behind. You in the middle, where you belong."

Eli tried to speak. The shell had closed over his throat, and when he opened his mouth the air came out of him and nothing else. He could still breathe—the suit had left him that much, a thin channel of air down the center of him—but his voice was gone, sealed somewhere inside the black, and the only sound he could make was the wet rasp of his own breathing.

"You feel them," Marcus said. "Both of them, inside you, and they're not going anywhere. That's not a machine holding them there. That's your body. The suit's just made it permanent."

Eli felt it. He felt both cocks locked inside him, held there by the merged suit's grip, and he felt the slow pulse of Adrian's heartbeat through the shell, and Sam's breath moving through the same shell, and his own heart answering both of them, and he couldn't tell anymore where his body ended and theirs began. His legs were their legs. His arms were their arms. He tried to lift a hand and three hands moved.

"Forever," Marcus said.

The word landed in Eli's chest and stopped his breath. The shell tightened—just a fraction, just enough to feel—and inside it, held in the dark, the three of them stood fused on the platform like a single black thing, and Eli's heart beat once, hard, against the rubber that was now the only skin he had.

Sam's head tilted down. The lenses found Eli's face. Behind the grill, Sam's breath moved in and out, in and out, and there was no question in it, and no answer either.