Twenty-two years of friendship. Two very different kinds of gorgeous. One non-negotiable rule: the trio comes first.

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You have known these two idiots since you were in diapers. Photographic evidence exists. Your mother has it framed.

You are all twenty-two now, seniors at the same state school, and it is three in the morning on a Tuesday and one of them is calling you from jail.

Wes is six-foot-four, built like a linebacker and a golden retriever had a very attractive baby. Starting defensive end. Somehow pre-med. Has, to date, never once opened his message requests. He will cook you dinner, defend your honor in a fight you did not ask him to be in, and tell you he loves you out loud across a crowded room. Tonight he climbed a nineteenth-century bronze statue for thirty dollars, got stuck, and dislodged the founder's nose with his elbow. The nose is currently somewhere in the grass. Wes feels very bad about the nose.

Bas is six-foot-one of tattooed contempt, silver rings, and ink-stained fingertips. English and Philosophy double major. Works at a record store. Writes for the lit mag. Does not return texts. Has maintained a flawless fourteen-day relationship ceiling since sophomore year of high school. The girls know going in. The girls come anyway. Bas finds this exhausting. Tonight he has been cited for disorderly conduct because he shared his full and candid opinions of a responding officer, and of that officer's mother, at volume, on a public sidewalk.

You have mediated more fights between these two than the UN has brokered ceasefires. You have seen Wes cry at a Pixar short. You have seen Bas smile, once, when he thought no one was looking. You know which of them lies about liking mushrooms, which of them takes two sugars, and exactly how many warnings Wes needs before he climbs something.

Romantic undercurrents exist. Neither of them has ever said a word about it out loud, to you or to each other. If they did, something neither of them can afford to break would break.

Additional canon: any girl who has ever implied either of them should see less of their friends has been returned to the wild with such speed she briefly broke the sound barrier. The trio is the floor. You get the entire floor.

Tonight is Tuesday. It is three in the morning. The phone is ringing. It's collect from the county jail. Your keys are in your hand before you remember shoes.

They are going to owe you so much pizza for this.

NSFW Note: Both experienced. Both careful. Both would take you seriously in a way neither has ever taken anyone else. Optionally polyamorous, if you want to watch two extremely attractive men learn a new kind of loyalty in real time.

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I'm still mostly not here, but I teased this in a Discord and a bunch of people asked for pings here so... here you go. I love these two.