It Takes Three

By Willa Okati

Geoff’s a medical student. Hardworking, driven, tightly wound as an entire mattress factory’s worth of bedsprings. Ross is a med student too, but unless it’s got to do with math or science he has no idea what’s going on. He kind of likes it that way. It’s peaceful. Aurélien’s a med student as well. Uber-calm, uber-zen, uber-practical.

The three don’t know each other, but with study burnout and big exams coming up fast, they’re all in desperate need of some R & R. And what better way, proposes Aurélien, than getting a little action? Together. Multiple times, and in multiple ways. Sounds a little nuts to Geoff, but he’d rather his head not explode before he’s licensed. And Ross, well, he’s up for anything if it sounds like fun.

To their surprise and pleasure, once they get started these guys “work” well together. Very much so. Maybe a little too much so. Aren’t things like this supposed to be hard? Sometimes, sure. But in this case, the answer to all their questions is three.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Changeling Press
• Release date: Jul 10, 2020

Willa Okati

Willa Okati can most often be found muttering to herself over a keyboard, plugged into her iPod and breaking between paragraphs to play air drums. In her spare time (the odd ten minutes or so per day she's not writing) she's teaching herself to play the pennywhistle. Willa has forty-plus separate tattoos and yearns for a full body suit of ink. She walks around in a haze of story ideas, dreaming of tales yet to be told. She drinks an alarming amount of coffee for someone generally perceived to be mellow.

Book preview

three.

Chapter One

Geoff

You know what? Fuck it. Geoff closed his book with a thump.

Not satisfying enough. He tossed it across the table, where it landed with a much better thump. Fuck it, he said again for good measure, and because that felt so good, he went on. This had been building for a while. Fuck medicine. Fuck medical school. Fuck residency, fuck internships, fuck the student loan-shark industry, and while we’re at it, fuck the entire predatory insurance industry -- and don’t get me started on pharmaceuticals. Whose stupid fucking idea was it for me to be a doctor in the first place?

Across the student lounge table from him, unruffled except for the lock of hair that’d been blown across his forehead when Geoff threw the textbook, sat a fellow student. Geoff didn’t know him except to speak to, to nod across the hall in lectures. Decent guy, seemed like, though his pan was so dead it was its own field of archeological study.

Witness his reaction: not a blink, not a flicker of change in the expression. I’m guessing it was yours.

What’s-his-face had a provincial-French kind of accent. Very manly, very redolent of vin du table made from actual tables, very much the kind of accent that went with a firm hairy chest and a taste for kink. Kind of ridiculously sexy, or would be under different circumstances. Geoff jabbed a finger at him, almost positive the guy’s calmness meant he wouldn’t get it bitten off or broken. Probably. Exactly, so fuck me for being a fucking idiot. Fuck!

Third time was the charm. Geoff flung his textbook across the room, where it bounced off the wall and landed broken-spined on the floor.

His table mate remarked, The bookstore isn’t going to buy that back from you now. Stressed, are you?

A fuzzy, tousled head popped up from behind an equally broken-down couch that had been placed with its back to the study tables. Dazed blue eyes stared blearily at them. What’s going on?

Nothing to worry about, Ross, go back to sleep. He turned to Geoff, examining him as coolly as a specimen floating in a jar. Which was what Geoff’s brain felt like, so fair go all around. Aurélien.

Come again?

You can’t remember my name. That’s all right. It’s Aurélien, Mr. Impassive -- okay fine, Aurélien -- said. Just as soothingly as he had to -- what was it? Oh wait, Ross, that was it. And you’re Geoff. And it’s been a while since I took an abnormal psych course, but my informal diagnosis would be you’re suffering from stress.

Geoff gestured wildly at the wreck of his textbook, an eight-hundred-page tome on every single thing that could ever possibly go wrong with the endocrine system. You fucking think? The USMLEs are next week. Motherfucking USMLEs, Aurélien. ‘Aurélien.’ Did I pronounce that right?

Better than most Americans could.

I still don’t know what’s going on, Ross said plaintively.

Aurélien sighed, then closed his book -- gently -- and stood, dusting who-the-fuck-knew-what off his neat polo and khakis. Mother of Mary and all the saints, he was the kind of guy who wore those unironically. Come on, follow me. If you’re good and awake, you too, Ross. Aurélien started to walk out, so calmly assured that they would follow him that Geoff kinda had to admire the guy’s balls. Not in the fun way, but Aurélien wasn’t hard on the eyes, so --

Hang on, back up. Follow you where?

Aurélien paused at the exit of the student lounge, and -- lounge? Who could lounge in a cut-down classroom whose walls were soaked in the despair of former students? If there was a more dismal hole on the college campus Geoff had yet to see it. In search of refreshment, for starters.

Studying, remember? I do not need to get drunk right now.

One of Aurélien’s eyebrows quirked gently. No one said anything about alcohol, Geoff.

Well, now he’d gone and piqued an interest. Then where are we going? A coffee shop? Geoff stood up, deliberately not brushing off the scraps of paper from sheets he’d ripped out of a ring binder. Mostly to see how Aurélien would react.

Aside from a mild wince, not profoundly. You’re coming, then? Good. My next move would have been finding a jacket with extra-long sleeves or getting Ross to sit on your head.

What, now? Ross asked, sounding alarmed.

It’s okay, Ross, no one’s going to make you do anything like that. Unless you want to. That’s your choice. Refreshments, Geoff. A strict diet of vending-machine junk food and adrenaline do the body no favors. Let me show you the way to something better. You too, Ross.

Coffee only makes me worse, Geoff warned him, thoroughly intrigued.

Somehow that only makes me want to see that for myself one day, but noted. I wasn’t planning on coffee, though. You don’t need winding any tighter.

Ross stood a good three or four inches taller than either of them, and now that he’d woken up and Geoff had had a chance to get a proper look at him, his face was finally recognizable from school news articles on every winnable academic award for the past couple of years. Currently, he looked and sounded about as lost as a babe in the woods. Would someone please tell me what’s going on?

Got me, Geoff said, patting Ross’s shoulder. Hmm, nice. Weirdly comforting in a way. Like patting a brick wall, but smoother. And warmer. Aurélien? You want to share with the class?

Aurélien smiled at that, the first time Geoff had ever seen him make an expression, and it did the most fucking amazing things for an already spectacular face. Well, shit. He sat back down and folded his hands before him. You’d like the TLDR version? Very well. You need to get laid, Geoff, and after we are refreshed I propose to resolve that issue tonight. You too, Ross, if you’d like to come along.

Ross brightened. Oh, sex. Cool. He paused. What’s a teal deer?

Tee-ell-dee-are, Geoff said absently. Short for ‘too long, didn’t read,’ followed by a quick summary of whatever’s happening. And why the fuck am I -- never mind. Did you just proposition me? Both of us?

I did, Aurélien said, utterly calm. Do you realize Ross got it before you did? And is that a yes, or is that a no?

It’s a -- it’s a -- Geoff’s brain did a 404, shut down, and took its sweet time rebooting. He sat back down and thrust his hands through his hair. It’s an I-don’t-know.

I do. Ross went to fetch Geoff’s textbook and brought it back to him, happy as a puppy. If you like sex, sex is fun. It’s relaxing. It’s good. So are refreshments, even if we don’t know what they are yet. You should come have some with us.

Sweet Lord.

Aurélien chuckled. Well?

I can’t believe I’m even considering this, Geoff said in disbelief. Because he was. Considering it, that was. Some parts of his anatomy more so than others. They liked the idea. "This is nuts. Banana chunky monkey batshit