Ready Check

"Leeroy Jenkins!"

I've got the volume about right, going by Rhys's face. He's on the end of the hotel sofa bed with a slice of cold pizza held up like a pointer, mid-sentence, and the sentence dies. Tariq, on the desk chair beside my breastplate, gets as far as "Bod, what" before I'm across the carpet and in his lap.

I kiss him with my hands in his hair and my knees either side of his thighs, and the chair rolls back into the desk. He kisses back before he's decided to. Under me, through his jeans and my leggings, his cock is already most of the way hard, so that's one vote counted.

For the record, they've been conferring since before the pizza came. I said what I wanted, plainly, once, and then three decent men held a meeting about it in front of me: whether I was sure, whether I'd still be sure on Tuesday, what it'd do to the raid team.

Rhys put the guild's chances of surviving it at thirty-two point three three, repeating of course. Dunc said, "I'm all right here, but crack on," and went back to his crisps.

"That's the pull," I tell Tariq's mouth. "Rhys, you're on me. Get over here."

"Are we... is this decided, then?"

"I've pulled, Rhys. You can heal it or you can stand there while we die."

He puts the pizza down.

I climb off Tariq, which he objects to with both hands, and get my phone out of my bag. I unlock it, open Notes, and hold it out across the double bed to Dunc. He wipes his fingers on his shorts before he takes it. Dunc has edited every kill video we've put out and he's never once touched a lens with crisp on his hands.

The note's called "strat". It's a numbered list with a timing beside each line and initials beside each timing, R and T and B, and under it a kit list: condoms, two sizes because I didn't know; lube, the big one; a towel from home; the bullet, charged. Beside item one, and beside every item after it, it says "D: cam".

"You wrote this tonight?"

"I wrote it at the end of last season."

He reads to the bottom and back up, and I let him. Rhys has arrived at my shoulder and is reading too. I hear him get to item five, because he breathes in through his nose.

"Landscape," I tell Dunc. "We're not animals."

"Light's shit in here." He's already turning the desk lamp to face the wall. "Bedside ones on as well. Tariq, shift the chair, you're in her key light. Right. Rolling."

IMG_4417. MOV 2:06

"I'm Bex Hollis, I'm thirty-five. I main a dwarf, and today I'll be fucking two of my friends while a third one holds the phone. Hi."

I say it straight down the lens, and I'm not saying it to Dunc. I'm saying it to the one person who'll ever press play, which is me, tomorrow, on a train.

The breastplate's already on the desk. The rest of Bodrin's armour comes off in the reverse order it went on: tabard with the foam muscles in, padded tunic, then the binder, because male dwarves don't have boobs.

I peel the thing up over my head and my tits drop. I wipe what's collected beneath them. It's the most comfortable I've been since breakfast. I smell of a day inside foam: sweat, contact adhesive and, faintly, chips. These three men have spent the whole life of the guild politely not looking, and the habit doesn't shift easily just because I'm topless.

I went as the elf one year, and found the fakes online with my face and other people from the neck down, and I've been the dwarf every year since.

"Lower, Dunc. Get my face in."

"You're in. Tits and face. Holding."

"Dunc, mate," Rhys says, "are you sure you don't want to..."

"Rhys, jeans off. Tariq, shirt and jeans. Then stand here, either side of me."

"Copy," says Rhys, in the voice he uses for boss timers, and unbuckles his belt.

I kneel on the towel. Tariq pulls his T-shirt off and there's a tattoo. It's tribal, black, and spiky, and it runs from his shoulder down to where a T-shirt sleeve stops.

I know what this man owes on his credit cards. I know what the consultant said about his mum, word for word, because he typed it to me between pulls. I've shared a room with him at every expo since the second expansion, and he's slept in a T-shirt in all of them.

"Don't," he says.

"I've said nothing."

"You're making a face."

Rhys teaches chemistry to teenagers, and if this file ever left my phone he'd never teach anything again. He knows that, and he's taken his boxers off anyway. What I didn't know is that his cock curves up, and slightly to the left, and that he's ginger everywhere.

"Right. Next to me, both of you, cocks on my face. Dunc, this is the poster."

I take one in each hand and bring them in until they're resting on my cheeks, Tariq's on one side, thick and dark, foreskin already rolled back off a wet purple head. Rhys's curve is on the other, pale, and, I swear, freckled. My chin's up for the lens. Tariq's leaking already, a clear string from his slit to my cheek that stretches when he twitches. Rhys is bone dry. Healers. Conserving mana.

"Holding," says Dunc. "That's your thumbnail."

I lick the string off Tariq, and he says my name, the dwarf one.

IMG_4418. MOV 0:48

Item two is both cocks in my mouth, and my mouth isn't built for it. They've come round to stand shoulder to shoulder in front of me, hips together, and I'm still on my knees on the towel. My jaw's as wide as it goes and I've got both heads on my tongue, and neither will fit with the other one there, no matter what order I try it. Eventually I hold them tight together in my fist and work my mouth over them slowly, wet and loud, spit running down my wrist.

Their cocks are pressed together along the whole underside. In all the years of sharing hotel rooms Rhys and Tariq haven't shared so much as a towel, and each of them is studying a different wall.

"Hips in," I say, round them. "Closer. Dunc, get under."

"Under. I've got your chin. Spit's reading well."

"Bod," Rhys says. "Bod, I'm, hang on, I'm..."

He doesn't hang on. He comes in my mouth, a lot. When I pull back in surprise the next few go over Tariq, across the head of his cock and up his stomach.

Nobody moves. There's a thin white line of Rhys's come lying across the head of Tariq's cock and another looped through the hair on his belly. It's running down his shaft into my fist, warm, and dripping off my knuckles onto the towel. A line of it slides off my lip onto my tit.

I lean in and lick Rhys off Tariq's cock, one long slurp, and put my tongue out for the lens.

"Mmm. Yummy."

"That," I say, once I've swallowed what I had, "is a fifty DKP minus."

"Oh my god."

"We never wiped this fast on Rudolphus the Red," I say to Rhys, who's gone exactly that colour. Tariq's got his chin on his chest and his arms held out from his sides, splashed by a bus.

"Still rolling," says Dunc. "For what it's worth."

"Tariq, I'm so sorry. Bod, I'm so, that's never, I'm really..."

"Cut."

IMG_4419. MOV 4:40

A healer on cooldown can still heal. I'm on my back across the double with my knees up and I've assigned lanes, Tariq top, Rhys bot. Rhys, who'd have gone home given the choice, is lying at the foot of the bed with his tongue in my arse, making amends.

He's good at it, and I'm not really surprised. Rhys has never once let a tank die for want of attention. He licks in flat strokes round the rim and then pushes in, and I clench on him every time.

On his hands and knees above him, Tariq has my cunt held wide open and is sucking my clit with his whole mouth, breathing hard through his nose into my hair. Tariq eats cunt like he does damage: all burst, no plan.

"Tariq, stay on the clit. Don't wander. Rhys, deeper."

"Copy," says Tariq, straight into me, and I get the word as a buzz more than a sound.

The trouble with two lanes is they're five centimetres apart. Rhys comes up as Tariq goes down, and skull meets chin with a knock I can hear from up here.

"Ow. Fuck."

"That's my lane," says Rhys.

"Your lane's further down, mate, that's the whole..."

"Less chat, more tongue. Tariq, two fingers, palm up."

He slides them in and curls them, and they go straight in, because my cunt's sopping. From up here it's two heads of hair between my thighs, one black, one ginger, and my own clit red and stiff between Tariq's lips whenever he comes off it for air. The towel under me is damp already, and the room smells of me and lube and cold pepperoni. Rhys moans into my arse, and Tariq's two fingers keep up a slow steady stroke.

"More dots, Tariq. More dots."

His fingers speed up. His wrist is knocking Rhys on the forehead at every stroke and neither of them mentions it.

"Notification," says Dunc. "It's come down over the top of the frame. Your mum wants to know if you remembered your big coat."

"Swipe it... oh fuck. Swipe it. Is my face in?"

"Face is in. Tits, face, top of Tariq's head. Go when you like."

Item three says I come here, to camera, loud, and I'm close enough that it's only half acting. I turn my head to the lens, get a fist in Tariq's hair and give it everything: "Oh fuck yes, eat my pussy, I'm coming, I'm fucking coming," in an accent from somewhere off the coast of California, while my thighs shake and my arse clenches. Somebody in the next room bangs twice on the wall.

"OK, stop dots. Stop dots. Tariq, I mean it, that's a live wire now."

He lifts his face out of me, wet to the eyebrows, and grins.

"Cut. Good. Rhys, you're forgiven."

IMG_4420. MOV 0:11

Standing at the end of the bed with one leg hoisted over Tariq's forearm, his cock halfway in, tilted open for Dunc crouched underneath. It's an angle built for a camera and not for normal knees. Mine goes. "Cut, cut, cramp."

IMG_4421. MOV 6:15

This one's my shot and I can't see it. I'm on my front with my chin on the bed and my face to the phone, knees wide, arse up in the air. If Dunc's doing his job, the frame is my face, then the rise of my arse behind it in soft focus. Behind that, whoever's fucking me.

"What've you got?"

"Face, arse, Tariq's belly. Tattoo's out of shot."

"Thank you," says Tariq, and works his cock into my cunt in one long shuddering stroke.

He's thick, and from behind every thrust lands on my front wall. It's a classic tank and spank: no mechanics, nothing clever, stand still, take the hits. I've got one hand underneath me with the bullet on my clit, lowest setting. The headboard clonks on the wall.

"Fuck me like you paid for it." That's line one of the script.

"How much did I pay?"

"Tariq."

"I'm only asking because of the debt." He's fucking me harder while he says it, though, fingers dug into my hips, and I grunt on every stroke and keep my face to the little black dot, for her on the train, who I hope is cringing.

"Swap. Rhys, you're up. Fresh one's on the pillow."

Rhys is res'd, and then some. From behind, the curve drags across a spot Tariq went straight past, and my mouth falls open on the duvet.

"Spank me."

He pats me. It's the pat you'd give a horse you didn't know very well.

"Rhys. Hit my arse."

"I did."

"Harder than you'd burp a baby."

He manages a clap, open handed, that stings nicely, and then immediately rubs the place better. "You like that?"

In porn that isn't a question. From Rhys it goes up at the end, and he slows right down to hear the answer.

"Yes, Rhys. Four out of five. Don't stop. Swap."

They swap twice more on my call, and I click the bullet up a setting each time and sweat into the Ibis duvet.

Then it's item five. Lube, a lot, cold enough that I swear, and Rhys's thumb working it into my arsehole, in, out, more lube, in. A new condom.

"Say when."

"When was a while ago, Rhys."

The head of him presses where the thumb was, and I push back, and for a second nothing happens. It burns. Then I open and he goes in, until his hips are on my arse.

I breathe out through my teeth.

"Line, Rhys."

"Where is my cock?"

He says it like a man asking the back row who can tell him the atomic number of carbon. Tariq laughs so hard he has to sit down.

"Again. You're not asking. You already know."

"Copy." He takes hold of my hips, pulls nearly out and drives back in, and his voice drops to somewhere I've never heard it go. "Where's my cock?"

I've got the line ready. I grunt instead, because he's done it again.

"Tell me where my cock is."

The script says ass. I typed the word with my own thumb. "It's in my... ugh... arse," I say, in my own voice, the one from Carlisle, into the duvet.

Nobody calls it. Tariq's come back from the sofa bed and is kneeling by my head, out of shot, stroking himself through a fresh condom and keeping very quiet, so near my face that I can smell the latex and him under it.

Rhys has stopped asking. He's locked into the groove, all the way out to the ridge and all the way back, the lube clicking, his balls swinging into my cunt and the bullet ringing through the lot, and I'm making a low ugly grunt into the duvet.

He fucks my arse like that until I tap out on the mattress. He eases free, and I reach back with both hands and haul my cheeks apart while Dunc comes round the bed.

It's behind me, but I know the shot. It's my arsehole fucked open to a dark ring the width of Rhys's cock, red and wet at the rim, shiny with lube, slowly trying to remember its job. The air con gets in where air con doesn't go.

"You're holding open on your own," says Dunc. "Closing. Closed at two and a half."

The list says gape, 3 sec. "Cut. We'll get the other half later."

IMG_4422. MOV 11:32

Tariq's lying on his back and I'm astride him with his cock in me, leaning forward on my hands, trying for an angle that'll work. I've used what seems like half of the big bottle on the pair of them, over fresh condoms, until they shine. "Rhys. In with him. Slowly. Slowly."

It goes suddenly. The head of Rhys's cock pushes in along the top of Tariq's and I'm stretched more than I've been by anything, and all three of us stop breathing. Even Rhys has more sweat on him now than freckles. Under me Tariq says "Jesus." Rhys says "All right?" and I nod, and he pushes in the rest of the way.

They can't both move, so at first only Rhys does, short strokes, his cock sliding along Tariq's inside me, and Tariq's mouth is open and his eyes are shut, and then they've got the beat, one in as the other draws back, and I stop calling swaps because there aren't any, and then I don't call anything, and I don't know where the phone is, and the bullet's gone, it's somewhere in the duvet buzzing at nobody, and I can't spare a hand to find it because both my hands are fists in the sheet beside Tariq's head and my face is in his neck, and all I've got attention for is the stretch and the drag of them and the wet sound of it.

"There?"

"Yeah."

"Too much?"

"No. Don't stop."

Rhys has one hand flat on the small of my back and the other on Tariq's knee, for balance, and hasn't noticed whose knee it is. Tariq's got my arse in both hands and is pulling me down and open. They're rubbing each other as much as me, and every time they pass each other inside me the whole weight of it shifts, front to back and back again.

The lube's gone warm. It's running down the insides of my thighs and over Tariq's balls, and the noise we're making is a wet suck and slop, with three people breathing hard over it. There's a drop of sweat on the end of my nose and I let it fall on him.

Two cocks sandwiched in my cunt and fucking me stupid, and I'm a stuffed wet hole with a heartbeat and tits.

I try to say faster and get as far as the f.

"Like this?"

"Yeah. That. That."

Tariq's hand goes hunting through the duvet. He finds the bullet by its noise, gets it down between us, fits it to my clit with two fingers and holds it there. Off to one side the light changes, because Dunc's moved the lamp, and nobody told him to.

I come without any noise at all. My mouth's open on Tariq's shoulder, on the tattoo, and what comes out is breath, and then nothing, while my stuffed cunt grips both cocks in long hard pulses I can't control, and my arms finally give way. Tariq keeps the bullet where it is. The next one comes round smaller and sharper, and takes me by surprise, and I bite him.

"Oh, Bex," says Rhys. He comes with his forehead between my shoulder blades, jerking. Tariq goes rigid under me and says "fuck," once, quietly, and both cocks kick and both condoms fill, and I feel both.

We lie in a heap. The bullet's still going. It takes me three tries to get enough air.

"Cu..." It comes out as a croak. "Cut. Dunc. Cut."

IMG_4423. MOV 1:54

Nobody's moved. Dunc's rolling again because I flapped a hand at him.

"Three seconds," I say, and it comes out ragged. "Out, both of you. Slowly. Dunc, get behind me."

They ease out one after the other, each holding his condom on at the base like a sensible boy, and I'm left gaping. I get my hands back there and spread my cunt for the lens, pink and loose and puffy and open round nothing, lube and my own cream running out of it down my thigh, and count to three out loud, and lose my place at two.

"Got it," says Dunc. "Three and a bit."

"Loot. Give them here. Don't spill."

I kneel up and face the phone. Both cocks are going soft in their condoms, the latex wrinkling, smeared white with me at the base, a bulb of come hanging off the end of each.

I strip each condom off its owner, pull it tight between finger and thumb until the come's all down in the teat, and hold the pair up either side of my face. Tariq's hangs heavy, a good fat thumb's worth, thick and cloudy white. Rhys's, his second of the night, is thin and nearly clear and frankly a grey item.

"Need," I tell the lens. "On both."

"You can't roll need on both," says Tariq, flat on his back. "That's ninja looting."

"Raid leader's discretion."

I put the full ends in my mouth, both together, and suck them, and flick the teats with my tongue so they swing. Then I tip my head back, open wide, and up-end them.

I wait like that, mouth open, jaw starting to ache. Tariq's slides down the latex in one slow lump and drops onto my tongue, warm. Rhys's needs a squeeze. I hold it all there, show the lens, shut my mouth, swallow, and open again. Clean tongue. "Mmm." Item seven, done.

"Fuck me," says Rhys, like a man in church.

I kiss him first. He hesitates for half a second, and then he kisses me properly, a hand on my jaw. I kiss Tariq, who doesn't hesitate at all. Then Tariq turns his head and Rhys is there, and they kiss each other, once, briefly, and sit back.

"Exit interviews. To camera. Rhys."

"Good, yeah. Sorry about earlier."

"Tariq."

"Would run again. Bring a bigger towel."

"Gg," somebody says. I think it's me.

"Battery's on nine percent," says Dunc. "I'm calling it."

"Copy."

His thumb comes up over the lens.

* * *

Dunc locks the phone himself. I hear the click. He walks it round to my side and hands it to me face down, the way you'd pass somebody a knife, handle first. Nobody asks me to send it. Nobody asks to see it. I kiss him, on the mouth, once, and his beard's softer than it looks.

"I'd say I'll fix the lamp flare in post," he says. "Can't, though." And he goes back to his crisps.

* * *

The train's rammed with foam swords and tote bags. I've got a table seat, a coffee, my big coat, which I did remember, and Bodrin's breastplate in a bin bag on the rack above me.

The guild Discord's been busy since before I woke up. Rhys has posted the sign-up for Tuesday's raid with his usual note about flasks. Tariq's replied with a gif. Dunc's put up a thumbnail poll for the last kill video. Somebody who wasn't there asks how the expo was, and Rhys types "Good, yeah," and I have to put my coffee down for a second. I click ready.

Headphones in. Photos. I scroll up through the weekend: the queue for the main hall, a very good cardboard mech, Tariq asleep on a beanbag with a lanyard across his face, Rhys holding a pretzel the size of a steering wheel, the four of us in the hotel lift mirror with me as the dwarf, beard on. After that there are seven clips in a row, seven small dark squares.

The man opposite is doing a sudoku in pen. My thumb goes past the first square, past the short one, past the very short one, and stops on the long one.

I check the volume twice. I turn the phone sideways.