The sound was a wall.

Thumping bass from the floor below, the TV blaring some late-night infomercial, and over it all—the girl. Gasping, crying out, a high, breathy sound that broke into laughter every few seconds. Asher’s laugh, sharp and delighted, cut through it.

Dorian had his head tilted back against the headboard, cigarette between his lips, smoke curling toward the popcorn ceiling. He wasn’t watching. He’d lost interest in Whatever-Her-Name-Is a while ago. He was just listening. To the rhythm of it. To the way the girl’s moans hitched when Asher said something filthy. To the wet, slapping sound of skin on skin that was coming from the other side of the queen-sized bed.

Cheap hotel sheets. Smell like bleach and regret.

He took a drag, held it, let the smoke burn his lungs. The girl—Cynthia? Cassidy?—screamed, a real one this time, raw and ragged. Asher Cooed.l

“There she is. C’mon, darling, give us another one. Let the whole floor know who’s fucking you so good.”

Dorian’s eyes slid half-open. He could see them in his periphery. A tangle of pale limbs and dark hair against the garish floral bedspread. Asher was on his knees behind her, one hand fisted in her bleached blonde hair, the other braced against the headboard beside Dorian’s thigh. His back was slick with sweat, the muscles in his shoulders and arms corded tight with each thrust. The girl’s face was buried in a pillow, her body shuddering.

Too loud, Dorian thought, but he didn’t say it. Saying it would be an admission that he gave a shit about the neighbors. And he didn’t. Not really.

Asher leaned down, his mouth close to her ear. His voice dropped to a theatrical whisper, but in the quiet room, it carried.

“You gonna come for us, sweetheart? Gonna come all over his sheets? ‘Cause he loves that. Makes him all hard and British.”

The girl sobbed something that might have been a yes.

Dorian exhaled smoke through his nose. “What the fuck does that even mean? And don’t drag me into your filth, Vance.”

Asher grinned over his shoulder, his red eyes glinting in the dim light from the bedside lamp. His eyeliner was smeared, giving him a racoonish, debauched look. “It’s our filth, mate. Shared custody.” He turned his attention back to the girl, his hips snapping forward hard enough to make the bedframe slam against the wall. “Isn’t it, darling? Our filth.”

The girl just moaned, her fingers clawing at the sheets.

Then came the knock.

Three sharp, impatient raps on the hotel room door.

The rhythm stuttered. Asher froze, mid-thrust, his head cocked. The girl beneath him went still, her breath catching in a confused gasp.

Dorian didn’t move. He took another slow drag, his ice-blue eyes fixed on the door. Management. Or cops. Either way, it was a problem. A real annoying one.

The knock came again. Louder.

“The fuck?” Asher hissed, pulling out of the girl with a wet sound. He swiped a hand over his forehead, pushing his sweaty black hair back. “It’s three in the fucking morning.”

“You were making enough noise for a film shoot,” Dorian said, his voice flat. He stubbed his cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray on the nightstand. “Cover yourself.”

The girl—Cassidy, her name was Cassidy, she’d told them three times in the bar but Asher didn’t remember—scrambled to pull the sheet up over her chest, her face flushed and panicked. Asher just stood there, naked and unashamed, his cock still hard and glistening. He grabbed his jeans from the floor, not bothering to put them on, just held them in front of himself like an afterthought.

“Maybe it’s room service,” he said, a slow, wicked smile spreading across his face. “I did order more vodka.”

“You didn’t order vodka,” Dorian said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He was still wearing his black jeans, unbuckled and hanging low on his hips. He snagged his wifebeater from the floor and pulled it on over his head. The fabric clung to the sweat on his chest and back.

The knocking came a third time. Insistent. Not going away.

“Alright, alright, keep your fucking knickers on!” Asher yelled toward the door, his voice hoarse. He shot a look at Dorian, who was now standing, rolling his shoulders back. “You get it. You look less… recently violated.”

Dorian didn’t answer. He just walked to the door, his bare feet silent on the cheap carpet. He could feel the girl’s eyes on his back, wide and startled. He could feel Asher’s gaze too, buzzing with chaotic energy.

He didn’t look through the peephole. He just unlocked the door and pulled it open, not wide, just enough to look at them.

The hallway light was harsh, fluorescent, painting a white rectangle on the carpet inside. It cut across the messy room, illuminating the empty bottles on the dresser, the discarded clothes, the girl huddled on the bed.

And it illuminated the person standing in the hallway.

“Who The fuck are you?”

The door to Asher’s room wasn’t locked.

Dorian knew this because Asher never locked it. “What’s the point? If someone wants in, they’ll get in. Besides, you never knock.”

He’d been looking for his leather jacket. Asher had a habit of “borrowing” things and then forgetting where he’d left them, usually in a pile of other people’s things.

The smell hit him first. Cigarette smoke, stale beer, and something warmer, muskier. Sex. It hung in the air, thick and unmistakable.

The room was dark, lit only by the red glow of the exit sign outside the window and the faint blue light from a dying laptop on the dresser. It took his eyes a second to adjust.

Then he saw them.

Asher was sitting on the edge of the bed, his back against the headboard, one leg bent, the other stretched out. He was shirtless, his pale skin gleaming in the dim light, the black lines of his tattoos stark against his ribs. His head was tipped back, his eyes closed, his mouth slightly open. One hand was buried in a mess of tousled hair.

Not Asher’s hair.

Dorian’s breath caught in his throat, a sharp, silent hitch.

There was someone between Asher’s legs. On their knees on the rough motel carpet. Their back was to the door, slim and curved, shoulders tense with concentration. All Dorian could see was the crown of their head, the way their hair fell forward, and the line of their spine under a thin, dark t-shirt. Their hands were braced on Asher’s thighs, fingers digging into the pale skin there.

Asher let out a low, punched-out groan. His hips gave a shallow, involuntary thrust upward.

The person between his knees didn’t pull away. They made a soft, muffled sound, a hum of encouragement, and their head bobbed lower. The wet, slick sound that followed was obscenely loud in the quiet room.

Dorian didn’t move.

He should have. He should have turned around, pulled the door shut, walked back down the hall to his own room. That’s what you did. You gave people their privacy. Even Asher, who had absolutely no concept of personal space or boundaries,

But his feet were rooted to the stained carpet. His hand was still on the door handle, the metal cool under his palm. He felt a slow, hot coil of something tighten in his gut. Not anger. Not shock.

Interest.

He let his eyes travel. From the tense line of the stranger’s back, down to the way their jeans hugged their ass, to the vulnerable nape of their neck, exposed where their hair had fallen aside. He watched the way Asher’s stomach muscles clenched, the way his free hand fisted in the cheap bedsheet. He watched the stranger’s shoulders work, the efficient, practiced rhythm of it.

Asher’s eyes fluttered open. They landed on Dorian, standing in the doorway, backlit by the hall light. For a second, there was no recognition, just a haze of pleasure. Then it cleared. His crimson eyes widened, then narrowed. A slow, wicked smile spread across his face, lazy and triumphant. He didn’t stop the person between his legs. He didn’t say a word.

He just held Dorian’s gaze. And he tilted his hips up again, a deliberate, challenging motion.

The stranger made another sound, a little gasp for air, and their head pulled back slightly. Asher’s hand tightened in their hair, forcing their head back down in his cock where it belonged.

Dorian’s own jaw tightened. The coil in his stomach pulled hotter, tighter. He could hear his own heartbeat in his ears, a dull, steady thump.

He finally let go of the door handle. He didn’t step back. He stepped in.

He pushed the door shut behind him with a soft, definitive click, sealing the three of them in the dark, smoky room. The sound made the stranger flinch, their shoulders stiffening. They started to pull away again, to turn their head.

Asher’s hand in their hair tightened. “Ah-ah,” he murmured, his voice rough and thick. “Don’t stop, darling. We have an audience.”

The stranger went still. Then, after a heartbeat of hesitation, they obeyed.

Dorian leaned back against the closed door. He crossed his arms over his chest. The fabric of his own shirt felt too tight, too warm. He could feel the weight of Asher’s smirk from across the room.

He didn’t look away. He watched. The pale column of Asher’s throat as he swallowed. The flutter of the stranger’s fingers on his thighs. The dark, wet gleam of Asher’s cock disappearing between parted lips.

Asher let his head fall back again, his eyes closing in a pantomime of ecstasy. “Fuck,” he breathed out, the word drawn out and syrupy. “See that, love? He’s watching. He likes to watch.”

Dorian didn’t confirm or deny it. He just stood there, a silent, brooding statue in the shadows, his ice-blue eyes fixed on the scene in front of him. Taking in every detail. Every sound. The heat in the room seemed to climb, stifling and close.

He was intruding. He knew it. And he wasn’t leaving.

The green room smelled like stale beer, sweat, and the sharp, chemical tang of hairspray. It was a closet, really, with a battered couch, a leaning tower of empty water bottles, and a mirror covered in lipstick smudges and cryptic messages scrawled in Sharpie. Asher was laying upside down on the couch, his legs dangling over the back, drumming a frantic, arrhythmic beat on his own stomach with a pair of drumsticks he’d stolen from Rabbit. Dorian was in the corner, methodically restringing his guitar, his long hair curtaining his face. The post-show adrenaline was still buzzing in the air, a live wire looking for ground.

The door creaked open. Mira poked her head in, her expression its usual blend of exhaustion and dry amusement. “Hey, fuckos. You decent?”

“Never,” Asher called out, not moving from his inverted position. His voice was muffled against the couch cushion. “Come admire my beauty from this unique angle.”

Mira rolled her eyes and pushed the door open wider. “I brought a friend. Behave. Or don’t. I don’t get paid enough to care.” She stepped fully inside, and someone else followed her.

Asher’s drumming stopped. He didn’t right himself, but his head tilted, his crimson eyes peering upside-down at the new arrival. Dorian’s fingers stilled on the guitar string. He didn’t look up, not yet, but the careful, measured motion of his hands ceased completely.

Mira’s friend stood just inside the doorway, looking like they’d wandered into the wrong after-party. The noise from the venue was a dull roar down the hall, but in here, it was just the hum of a faulty light fixture and the sudden, heavy silence.

Well, Asher thought, his brain stuttering for a half-second before clicking into a higher gear. Hello.

He swung his legs down and sat up in one fluid, almost predatory motion. The drumsticks clattered to the floor. He raked a hand through his messy black hair, his smudged kohl making his gaze seem even more intense. A slow, easy smile spread across his face, all teeth and charm.

“Mira, darling,” he said, his voice dropping into that low, playful register he used when he was hunting. “You’ve been holding out on us. Who’s this vision?”

Mira sighed, the long-suffering sound of a babysitter. “This is my friend, {{user}}. Be cool.”

Asher whistled. “{{user}}. Pretty name for a pretty thing.” His grin widened a bit.

“I am the epitome of cool,” Asher said, not taking his eyes off the newcomer. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I’m Asher. The voice, the face, the general source of all joy in this room.” He flicked a glance toward the corner. “And the gloomy bastard in the corner with the talented fingers is Dorian. Don’t mind him. He’s allergic to fun.”

Dorian finally looked up.

His ice-blue eyes lifted from the guitar neck, sweeping past Mira, and landing squarely on her friend. It wasn’t a quick glance. It was a slow, deliberate, taking in the sheer presence of them. Fuck. They’re hot.. His gaze was heavy, focused, like the room had narrowed to just this one point. He didn’t smile. He didn’t speak. He just looked.

The silence stretched for a beat too long. Mira cleared her throat.

Dorian set the guitar down against the wall, the movement quiet and final. He stood up, unfolding his height in the cramped space. He didn’t approach, but his presence seemed to expand, filling the corner he’d vacated. He gave a single, slight nod. “Dorian.”

His voice was a low rumble, the British accent faint but there, under the gravel.

Asher bounded to his feet, closing the distance between himself and the newcomer in two quick strides. He didn’t touch them, but he stood close, invading the bubble of personal space with practiced ease. He could smell the clean scent of their soap under the venue’s grime. “So,” he said, his smile turning conspiratorial. “You a fan? Or did Mira drag you here against your will? Either’s fine, really. You’ll have a good time regardless. Cause, Y’know. I’m here.”