Thank you for the tags! I remember when I had enough free time to answer each tag game separately. Working life is not for me. 😔 As you can see though, I do keep them all and I appreciate being included in the writeblr community! ❤️️ I'm also reading all of them of course, but recently my spoon situation has been disastrous. I want to pick up providing feedback again; maybe this will hold me accountable!
This snippet is from Flu O'Clock, a story in the on your hands and your knees, do you feel in charge? series. Classic sick!fic with my end goal being platonic OT3. Want to see how that's going?
Telford could appreciate the directness, and he wasn't about to do harm to himself just because he didn't like the taste of something. That was more Rush's speed, though he wisely didn't verbalise that thought, accepting the canteen and knocking back the stuff as quickly as he could without risking hurling it up again.
"Good boy," Rush said, still in an aggressively casual tone of voice.
Everett coughed.
Rush did that thing where outwardly he completely ignored the sound, but Telford could see that all of the man's senses were trained with extreme interest on Everett, keenly awaiting any trace of pull on the line.
Of course he got exactly what he wanted, because Everett just wasn't able to help himself, in far too many areas of his life. "You said you had work to do?" he asked Rush, proving the one thing he didn't possess was any degree of subtlety.
"I think I'll work in here today," Rush said, the way he'd stated it as a fact without even an attempt at the faux politeness of asking if that would be alright designed to press Everett's buttons, specifically his agreeable-unless-you-don't-acknowledge-my-authority one.
"Do you really think that's necessary?" Everett responded, overly mild. "He needs his rest."
Rush placed the back of his hand on Telford's forehead. Telford heard Everett stand up.
That's right, he thought with no small amount of amusement, fight like dogs over me. He relaxed beneath Rush's cool skin, allowing his eyes to drift closed.
"I won't be a bother," Rush offered, in a tone far too soft to be used in company, in Telford's opinion.
"I just think--" Everett started, only to be immediately interrupted.
"I don't care what you think."
"Rush."
"What?"
"You're going to calm down," Everett ordered, doing a terrible job of remaining calm himself.
"I'm not the one yelling," Rush retorted, blunt but with a level enough voice that Telford knew Everett would find infuriating. "Maybe you'd like to practice using your inside voice."
"Listen!" Everett hissed, clearly restraining himself from moving any closer. "You can't--"
"I can do whatever I damn well please." The bed shifted as Rush stood. "You're not going to fucking touch me."
Invoking Telford's unspoken protection was an odd play, but one of the best things about Rush was that he never did what was expected of him, always keeping those around him on their toes.
Everett let out a warning rumble and Telford cracked his eyes open to see the two men standing nose to nose, staring each other down with no attempt from either party to conceal their aggression.
"You know," Telford remarked pointedly. "If you two want to fuck you can have the bed."
The twin scandalised expressions he received in response were well worth the headache the argument had set raging inside his skull, a bull deciding his brain would make a nice china shop to run riot in.
