The ceiling fan in Scott Pilgrim's living room had one blade that wobbled, and Lincoln Loud had been watching it for eleven minutes. It was the only thing in the room that moved. Steven Universe had melted sideways into the arm of the couch, one hand buried in a bag of all-dressed chips he'd stopped eating forty minutes ago, his red-rimmed eyes fixed on a point somewhere past the television. Jack Sullivan was on the floor with his back against the couch, legs splayed, a beer sweating onto his knee. Max Goof sat cross-legged on the ottoman, spinning his phone on the cushion beside him. Scott himself was hunched forward in the recliner, plaid shirt open over a black tee, staring at the laptop on the coffee table like it owed him money.
"I'm so bored I'm about to start counting the stains on your carpet," Jack said, and took a pull off his beer. "There's a lot. I'm at six. I think one of them's blood."
"It's wine," Scott said.
"It's not wine."
"It's wine, Jack." Scott pushed his bangs out of his eyes and didn't look up. He'd been quiet since Ramona left for the slumber party, and the quiet had a shape to it — the shape of a guy who kept checking his phone and finding nothing. "Ramona's hosting. Ronnie Anne, June, Connie, Roxanne. She said they'd be up late."
Steven made a noise like a boulder settling. "Late," he repeated, dreamy and slow, tasting the word. "That's such a — that's a heavy word, you know? Late. Like, later than now. Later than everything."
Lincoln snorted into his can. He was only buzzed, three beers in, but the buzz had sanded down the edges of his usual nervous hum and left something looser underneath. He kept thinking about Ronnie Anne's ponytail. He kept pushing the thought away and it kept coming back.
Scott's thumb moved on the trackpad. "I've got the house system," he said, almost to himself. "Cameras. All of them. I set it up for — I don't know. Break-ins." He clicked something. "Ramona knows about it."
"Dude," Max said, sitting up. "Are you about to spy on your girlfriend's sleepover?"
"No." Scott's ears went pink. "I'm just — checking the feed. Making sure the house is fine."
The laptop screen flickered from four gray squares to one bright rectangle, and the living room of the Flowers house bloomed into view — a low-lit space with a shag rug and a beanbag chair and five girls arranged on the floor in a loose circle, a board game box open between them. Scott's breath caught, small and involuntary, and he didn't click away.
"Oh," Steven said, sitting up so fast he knocked the chip bag over. "Oh, that's — they're playing a game."
Jack was already on his knees, craning at the screen. "What game?"
Lincoln leaned in. The feed was good — better than good, sharp enough to read the box lid. Purple cardboard, gold lettering, a silhouette that left nothing to the imagination. Triple X Truth or Dare.
"Ronnie Anne's got it," Max said. "She's reading the rules."
She was. Ronnie Anne Santiago sat with her knees pulled up, purple hoodie sleeves shoved to her elbows, reading off the back of the box in a flat, unbothered voice that carried through the laptop speakers like she was reading a nutrition label. Her ponytail had come loose on one side, a dark curl stuck to her cheek, and Lincoln watched her mouth form the words and forgot to breathe for a second.
"Rule one," Ronnie Anne read. "Any dare or truth is allowed. Any time you lose a pair of clothing, you can't wear it again until the game ends." She paused, eyebrows up, and kept going. "Rule two — there will be a lot of sex dares in these cards. Nobody can say no to a dare or truth. If you can't answer or pass, you lose one article of clothing. Rule three, if you can't come up with a truth or dare, pick a card. Rule four — when a player is fully naked, they're eliminated." She flipped the box over, found the last line. "Rule five. The last person to be fully naked wins the game."
On the screen, June Del Toro — black hair loose over her shoulders, oversized band tee hanging off one shoulder — reached over and plucked the box out of Ronnie Anne's hands to read it herself. She set it down and said, deadpan, "Cool."
Ramona Flowers leaned back on her hands, blue hair catching the lamplight, green eyes half-lidded and amused. "Cards only," she said. "No homemade dares. It's faster."
"Socks and shoes," Roxanne said, already pulling hers off — red waves falling forward as she bent, the pink crop top riding up her back. "Rule one says we can't put them back on."
They all did it at once, five pairs of socks and shoes tossed onto the rug in a heap, and Scott made a strangled sound in his throat. "They're really doing it," he said.
"They're really doing it," Max echoed. His voice cracked on the last word. He didn't seem to notice.
Steven was fully upright now, cross-legged, hands on his knees, eyes enormous and wet. "I think," he said slowly, "we should watch. For — for safety. Someone should know where they are."
"Yeah," Jack said, without a shred of conviction. "Safety."
Lincoln didn't say anything. He was watching Ronnie Anne pull the first card, and his mouth had gone dry.
"First turn's mine," Ronnie Anne said, and flipped the card. She read it, and a grin spread across her face — the sharp, knowing one, the one that meant she'd already decided how much trouble she was going to cause. "Every player has to say what they call their partner's dick."
Jack laughed so hard he choked on his beer. "Oh, they're cooked."
On the screen, Ronnie Anne didn't hesitate. "I call Lincoln's the Lincoln Log," she said, and tossed the card aside like it was nothing, like she hadn't just said her boyfriend's name into a room full of girls.
Lincoln felt his whole face go hot. Max whooped. Scott, without looking away from the screen, said, "That's — okay, that's actually kind of good."
June went next. She considered it for a second, then said, "The willy," in the same tone she'd use to name a dog, and Jack wheezed and slapped the carpet.
Ramona didn't even sit up. "The ride," she said, and smirked at the camera — at Scott, who had gone very still in his recliner.
Connie Maheswaran sat with her braid coming loose, arms crossed, jaw working. She looked at the other girls. She looked at the floor. "I can't — I don't have one," she said finally, and her cheeks went dark.
"Then you lose a piece," Ronnie Anne said, cheerful.
Connie pulled her teal crop top over her head and dropped it on the pile. Underneath she was wearing a plain black bra, and she crossed her arms tighter, and Steven made a small wounded sound like he'd been hit in the chest.
Roxanne was next to fold. She looked at the camera — quick, a flick of green eyes — and pulled the pink crop top off, and the whole room on the other side of the screen went quiet at once.
Because Roxanne had been hiding something under there. Late C-cup, early D, the kind of growth spurt that hadn't quite finished announcing itself, and the bra she had on was doing its best and losing. Freckles scattered across her shoulders and the tops of her breasts. She tossed the crop top onto the pile and shrugged like it was nothing, but her ears were red, and Max had stopped breathing.
"Okay," Max said, very quietly. "Okay."
Ramona drew next. She read the card, stood up, hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her ripped black jeans, and stepped out of them in one motion — long legs, lean muscle, a small tattoo on her wrist catching the light as she moved. Then she did the macarena. Badly. On purpose. June laughed so hard she had to lie down, and Ramona finished the whole dance with her face perfectly straight, and Scott pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead and groaned.
Roxanne pulled the next card. She read it twice. "Nude wrestling time," she said. "The two most athletic players wrestle. Winner is whoever can rub their pussy against the other one's until she — " she flipped the card, squinting, " — until she comes. Players have to be even in what they're wearing."
Ramona didn't miss a beat. "June. Connie. You two."
June stood up and pulled her band tee off without ceremony, black hair swinging, and she was wearing a black bra and denim shorts, and Jack made a noise into his beer can that was not a word. Connie stripped down to her bra and leggings, and the two of them squared off on the shag rug like it was a sparring mat, and then Connie — who had spent years training with swords, who moved like her body was a weapon — took June down in about nine seconds, pinned her, and ground down against her until June's hips bucked and she tapped the floor with her palm.
"Connie wins," Ramona said, unbothered. "Connie's turn."
Connie sat up, breathing hard, braid wrecked, and drew a card. She read it and her face did something complicated. "Each player tells how they fucked their partner the first time."
Jack leaned forward so fast he nearly fell off the couch. "Oh, we're doing this."
June went first, matter-of-fact, still catching her breath. "Shower sex. Jack's place. His mom was at work."
Ramona went next. "Scott's birthday. The first one we spent together. He was twenty-one and he cried after." She said it without looking at the camera, and Scott put both hands over his face.
"I did not cry."
"You cried," Ramona said, to the room.
Roxanne tucked her hair behind her ear. "Prom night. We were sixteen. Max's dad's car, in the parking lot after, and we were both so nervous it took like an hour." She smiled at the camera, small and private, and Max made a sound like he'd been kicked.
Then Ronnie Anne. She didn't look at the camera, which was worse — she looked at the other girls, chin up, and said it flat. "Lincoln's fourteenth birthday. His room. I fucked him and he came inside me, and then I deepthroated him after."
The living room on Scott's side went dead silent. Lincoln stared at the screen and his heart was doing something ugly and fast in his chest, because he remembered it — remembered it exactly, the creak of his bedroom door, the way she'd looked at him — and she'd just said it out loud to four other girls like it was a grocery list.
"Dude," Jack said, reverent. "Dude."
Lincoln couldn't answer. He was watching her pull the next card.
June drew. "Make a player deepthroat a fake dick for thirty seconds," she read, and then she looked straight at Ronnie Anne. "You."
Ronnie Anne took the silicone cock out of the box without a word, knelt on the rug, and put it in her mouth. All the way. Thirty seconds, by June's count, and Ronnie Anne didn't come up once — throat working, eyes watering, jaw set, and Lincoln watched the whole thing with his hands curled into fists on his thighs and a hard ache building behind his zipper that he was absolutely not going to acknowledge.
Then Ronnie Anne's own card: Curse. Lose two articles. She pulled her hoodie off and then her leggings, and she was standing there in a purple bra and black panties with a small scar on her elbow and her ponytail finally giving up entirely, and Lincoln thought, distantly, that he might actually die in this chair.
"Round two," Ramona said, and drew. "Take off your shirt and shake your boobs." She pulled her tank top over her head and did exactly that, and Scott made a sound like a wounded animal and finally, finally reached for his belt.
"Okay," he said, hoarse. "Okay. Everyone — everyone can jerk off. I'm calling it."
"Finally," Jack said, and had his jeans open before Scott finished the sentence. Max was already working at his zipper, eyes locked on Roxanne. Steven — Steven had gone very quiet and very still, hand moving slow and deliberate under the waistband of his jeans, mouth open, watching Connie with an expression of profound and stoned devotion.
Lincoln undid his jeans and didn't take his eyes off the screen. On it, Roxanne drew a card and cursed Connie, who pulled off her bra and her leggings and sat there in her panties with her arms crossed and her jaw set. Then Connie drew a risk card — grab a fake dick and make yourself cum, no hiding, in this room — and she did it, flat on her back on the rug, knees up, working the silicone into herself with sharp efficient strokes while the other girls watched, and she came with her teeth clenched and her eyes shut, and then she was naked, and she was out.
"Connie's eliminated," Ramona said. Connie flipped her off and lay there.
June drew. "All players say their favorite position."
"Deepthroat," Ronnie Anne said, immediate.
"Cowgirl," June said.
"Doggystyle," Ramona said.
Roxanne went last, and she flushed — actually flushed, red creeping up her chest — and said, "Titfucking."
Max came. Right there, on the ottoman, with a strangled grunt and his fist tight around his cock, and Jack laughed at him and then came too, and Steven followed a few seconds later with a long shuddering exhale, and Lincoln — Lincoln held out, because Ronnie Anne was still in the game and he wanted to see how far she'd go.
Round three. Ramona drew a card that let her touch another player for five minutes. She chose Roxanne, made her take her bra off, and then sat behind her on the rug and cupped both of Roxanne's breasts in her hands — freckled, heavy, the nipples going hard under her palms — and kneaded them slow and thorough while Roxanne's head dropped back and her mouth fell open and her hips started to move against nothing. It took less than five minutes. Roxanne came with a high, broken sound, thighs shaking, and Ramona let go and said, "Sensitive," like she was filing it away.
Roxanne drew next. "Make a player strip one piece." She picked June, who pulled off her shorts and sat there in a black bra and black panties, unbothered.
Then Ronnie Anne. Sacrifice. Lose two articles, take one from another player. She looked at Roxanne, and said, "Pants." Roxanne pulled her jeans off, and Ronnie Anne pulled off her bra and her panties, and just like that she was naked and out of the game — standing in the middle of the rug with her arms loose at her sides, not covering anything, and Lincoln felt something in his chest crack open.
Round four. Ramona drew a card that made her use the fake dick on herself. She took her panties off and did it kneeling, blue hair falling forward, and it took her a while, and when she came she said Scott's name — quietly, like she hadn't meant to — and then she was naked and eliminated too.
Roxanne drew. "Make another player cum." She picked Ramona, crawled over, and sucked on her breasts until Ramona's back arched off the rug and she came a second time with her hand fisted in Roxanne's red hair. June drew a curse card and took her bra off. And then there were two of them left, June and Roxanne, both in panties, and Roxanne drew the last card.
She read it. Her green eyes flicked up — past the other girls, past the board game, straight into the camera lens. And she mouthed, slow and deliberate, come over.
Max was on his feet before anyone else. "She — did you see that? She — " He was already pulling his jeans up, already grabbing his keys off the coffee table.
Scott was up too, laptop forgotten, plaid shirt hanging open. "She knew," he said, half-laughing, half-something else. "She knew about the cameras. She knew the whole time."
Jack hauled Steven off the couch by the arm. Lincoln was last, because Lincoln was still hard enough that standing up was a problem, and because Ronnie Anne was naked on a rug two miles away and looking at the camera like she'd known he was watching, like she'd planned it.
They took Scott's car. Five of them, doors slamming, tires on wet asphalt, and nobody said a word the whole drive.
The front door of the Flowers house was unlocked. They came in through the hall and into the low lamplit living room, and the girls were waiting — Connie still flat on the rug, Ramona sitting up with her knees drawn in, June on her feet with her arms crossed, Ronnie Anne standing with her hip cocked and her ponytail finally redone, and Roxanne in the middle of them all with nothing but black panties on and a smile that said she'd won something none of them had agreed to play for.
"Took you long enough," Roxanne said.
Ramona looked at Scott, and then at the rest of them, and said, in her low measured voice, "The last card was a bust. So we're settling it ourselves. New rule." She stood up. "You fuck us. Whoever comes last wins. If a girl taps out, her guy moves to whoever's still standing."
June uncrossed her arms. "And nobody gets to be polite about it."
Jack was already crossing the room. "Nobody was planning to be."
What happened next happened fast and then slow, in waves. Jack got June first — she pulled him down onto the rug by the front of his hoodie and he was inside her before his jeans cleared his knees, and she wrapped her legs around his back and rode up into every thrust with her teeth in his shoulder. Steven knelt in front of Connie, who was still lying there, and she looked up at him with her jaw set and said, "Well?" and he put his mouth between her legs and worked his tongue into her until her heels dug into the carpet and her hand fisted in his curly hair and she came with a sharp, startled cry, and then he pushed into her and she pulled him down by the gem in his belly and held him there.
Scott got Ramona against the wall, her leg hooked over his hip, and she bit his ear and told him not to stop, and he didn't.
Max got Roxanne on the beanbag chair. She pulled him in by the belt loops and he sank into her with a groan that cracked in the middle, and she laughed at him — breathless, fond — and then stopped laughing when he started moving.
Lincoln stood in the middle of the room with Ronnie Anne in front of him, and for a second neither of them moved. Then she stepped in close, took his face in both hands, and kissed him hard, and said against his mouth, "You watched the whole thing, didn't you."
"Yeah."
"Good." She shoved him back onto the couch and climbed over him, and he got his jeans down and she got him inside her in one long slide, wet and tight and familiar, and she set the pace — fast, hard, her palms flat on his chest — and Lincoln grabbed her hips and held on.
It went on. Jack came in June and she tapped the rug twice, done, and Jack pulled out and went to help Steven, who was still buried in Connie and getting close. Connie tapped out a minute later, gasping, and Steven — flushed and glassy-eyed — crawled over to where Ramona was pinned against the wall and slid in behind her while Scott kept her front, and Ramona's voice went high and broke. Ramona tapped out. Scott and Steven moved to Roxanne, who was already riding Max on the beanbag and took both of them like she'd been waiting for it, one in her mouth and one in her hand, and Max came inside her with a shout and she didn't tap — she just kept going, mouth full, eyes bright.
Ronnie Anne came first, clenching around Lincoln with a shudder and a bitten-off curse, and then she pushed him back and said, "Go. I'm out," and slid off him onto the rug. Lincoln stood up, cock slick and aching, and looked around the room — and Roxanne was the only one left standing, on her knees on the beanbag with cum already running down her inner thigh and Max's hand still in her hair.
She looked at Lincoln and crooked a finger.
He went to her. She pulled him down and took him in her mouth — all the way, throat working, red hair spilling over his thighs — and then she came up gasping and pushed him onto his back on the rug and straddled him, and Lincoln got his hands on her breasts, heavy and freckled and warm, and kneaded them the way Ramona had, and Roxanne's hips stuttered and she moaned and rode him harder.
"Don't stop," she said. "Don't — " and he didn't, and she came with her head thrown back and her nails in his chest, and Lincoln felt her clench around him and he was done, spilling into her in long pulses while she ground down on him and rode it out.
For a moment nobody moved. The room was a mess of bodies and cum and scattered clothing, the board game box tipped on its side, the ceiling fan still wobbling overhead. Roxanne lifted herself off Lincoln and flopped onto the rug beside him, and Ronnie Anne crawled over and lay her head on his shoulder like none of it had happened, and June said, from somewhere near the couch, "Well. That was fun."
Ramona, flat on her back with her blue hair fanned across the carpet, started to laugh. Then Max. Then all of them, ten people on a rug in a low-lit living room, covered in each other, laughing until it hurt.
Roxanne turned her head toward the camera in the corner of the ceiling and, still smiling, flipped it off.