What's at Hand, a Port Charles fantasy by Sue Castle. Rated NC17 for slashy sex, no copyright infringement intended.

Work could only take up so much of a man's concentration. Sublimating sexuality for fear of health risks undermined almost as much as work bolstered that concentration. It was bound to take its toll.

Joe had no idea how high that toll would be, or what strange highways it could guard.

Not being able to focus on his own love life, other than promising Gabby he wouldn't hurt her, and finding that after the fourth double shift in a month even Ramsey wouldn't let him stay on rounds, he fell back on his third level of defense against rampant frustration. He poked around his friends' and family's romances.

Hell, if he couldn't get any, at least he could live vicariously through everybody else who was getting some. Or should be. Or might, if they could figure out whom they wanted to be with when they got it. Nobody at General Hospital had what could be termed a simple love life. Except perhaps Amy, and even she had a rich fantasy life.

Take Ian and Eve, on the friend front. Now, those two were in love, even if Eve was married to his stepbrother, and even if Ian was too much of a gentleman to act on the emotion, and even if Eve had been knocked on the noggin and couldn't remember what had happened between the two of them when an old nemesis from Ian's past had kidnapped them both. Ian said nothing. Eve looked confused and conflicted. Joe'd bet his last dollar there was something Ian wasn't mentioning. Something big.

Which led to the family front. Kevin was committed to his marriage to Eve, but every time he turned around he was hauling his ex-lover Lucy's butt out of the fire. And he was carrying a load of guilt about something that happened while he was grieving, thinking Eve had died in that car bomb. It had something to do with Lucy.

Or maybe Mac.

Maybe both of them.

Joe's mind boggled. Then he looked down at his watch and realized he'd been working for thirty six hours straight. No wonder his brain was going wonky. He grabbed a cup of sludge masquerading as coffee in the staff lounge before hitting the road. He briefly considered using paper tape to tape his eyelids open, but gave up the idea when it struck him that he might miss, and taping his eyeball was a very bad idea.

Half-way home he realized he had to go by Kevin's and make sure everything was set for the ceremony. Eve and Kevin were renewing their vows. Less than a year after the first crack at it, which would certainly give the impression somebody was trying too hard. If not two somebodies. He could probably call once he got home, but as tired as he was it was a better idea to stop by in person. At least that way he wouldn't fall asleep in the middle of the conversation and miss anything important. If he did he'd fall over and wake himself up. He sighed and turned left toward the lighthouse.

Passing the Port Charles hotel on the way, he pulled over to the side, unsure just what his eyes were telling him. Lucy and Livvie, luggage piled around them like an orange and fuchsia mountain, were attempting to stuff what looked like everything they owned into one poor beleaguered cab. The cabby looked frightened but determined. Lucy was known as a good tipper when service people pulled off miracles.

"What's going on?" Joe called out his window. Before Livvie could open her mouth, Lucy went into high speed word-attack.

"It's enough! It's over! If he doesn't have the sense to see what he's throwing away -- again! -- then I don't have the patience or the time or the need or even care to try to make him see how much more we belong together and how much happier he would be with me than he'll ever be with her! And now she's gone and left him and Scotty is an absolute idiot and how could they do this to me? I'm outta here!" Still babbling a mile a minute, she flounced into the front seat of the cab.

Livvie sighed. "Eve got her memory back. Couldn't decide between Ian and Dad so she took a Tahitian vacation with Scott until she can sort it all out. Lucy's losing it so I'm going with her to try to talk some sense into her." A cross between a screech and a whine implored Livvie to move it if she was coming. "Would you do me a favor and check on Dad? I can't leave Lucy like this."

Joe nodded yes and watched in bemusement as Livvie was hauled into the cab next to Lucy and they headed off for parts unknown. Zero to seventy in three point five seconds. A little like Lucy's tongue. His thoughts veered to Kevin. From two women to none in less time than that, looked like. He pulled back into traffic and resumed his journey to the lighthouse. His errand had changed from last minute details for a wedding ceremony that was now minus one bride to making sure his stepbrother didn't try to immolate himself from grief and loss. Again.

He was parked and walking up the front steps when it hit him. Eve was gone. That meant Ian must be hurting, too, if he even knew yet. Joe took a deep, painful breath. Ian was a damned good friend. It hurt when he hurt. When Joe got home he'd have to take a trip down to the basement and see how Ian was handling the situation. Maybe bring a drop of the good scotch with him to soften the blow if Joe had to be the one to tell him. And to drown the memory and the might-have-beens if he already knew.

Hand raised to knock, he saw the nose of a familiar car pulled around beside the walkway. Mac's car. Joe's eyes narrowed. That was odd. Mac hadn't parked out along the street, but wasn't in the side drive, either. His car was tucked away where the foliage would nearly cover it, almost as if he was hiding. Didn't want anyone to know he was here. The strangeness piqued his curiosity and appealed to his sense of the bizarre. Everyone knew Mac and Kevin were best friends. Why on Earth would Mac want to pretend that he wasn't helping Kevin deal with the wreck that was his life?

Sneaking around the side of the lighthouse, Joe tip-toed through the bushes and peered in the corner of the window, feeling vaguely ridiculous but smiling anyway. It was mildly invigorating to be playing cloak and dagger games, even when there wasn't any real reason for them. A sense of play kept a man young. Then his glance fell on the two men, not sitting on the sofa as he'd expected, but stretched out on the rug in front of the fire.

Naked. Bare skin everywhere.

The men, not the rug.

Joe completely forgot stealth as he straightened and stared unabashedly through the window, his mouth falling open in shock. Thankfully Kevin and Mac were too busy with one another to realize they'd left the shade up and they had acquired an audience.

A fascinated audience. Not appalled, as aspects of his blue-collar Irish Catholic background should have been insisting.

Aroused.

Well, a tiny inner voice reasoned in what small portion of Joe's brain wasn't enthralled with the action taking place in the soft glow of the fire, it wasn't as if what they were doing was entirely unexpected. Even if it was an unconscious expectation. Mac and Kevin had been close for years. Heck, they'd even dressed up as women together. So it shouldn't be completely out of the blue to see them getting naked and ... and ... Joe's mouth closed with a snap.

God, that was sexy.

Mac was moving between Kevin's thighs, his head down as he kissed a path up Kevin's chest to nuzzle at the side of his throat. Kevin's arms were sliding up and down Mac's arms, and his feet were sliding up and down Mac's calves. Kevin's head was back and his eyes were closed. He looked like he was in ecstasy.

Then Mac stopped licking Kevin's neck long enough to plant a long, deep, hungry kiss on Kevin's mouth. Joe moaned, startling himself. Thankfully, the glass was thick, so neither Kevin nor Mac noticed. Unfortunately, it was starting to mist up. Joe frowned and wiped at it with his muffler, clearing a patch to look through. He would have been chagrined to realize he'd been panting, but he was too busy avidly watching the action by the fire. Which was getting hotter.

Mac was hunched over now, and Joe could see the muscles moving in his shoulders, down along his back and his hips. He was thrusting rhythmically into the cradle of Kevin's pelvis, and Joe didn't have to have a clear viewing angle to know precisely what was happening where their bodies met. Kevin's legs were clamped around Mac's waist at this point, his hands digging into the pile of the rug, his neck arched back. His mouth was open and Joe imagined he could hear the groan of need coming from it.

It echoed his own.

Then Mac was hunching into him, and Kevin was curling up, and Mac's head was up and his eyes were open and he was staring right back at Joe. Sheer shock held him immobile as Mac finished coming and slumped over into Kevin's embrace. It was only when their gazes unlocked that Joe was able to turn and slink back through the bushes as silently as he'd entered, only a hell of a lot faster.

Thank god a good climax took away a man's senses. Or the police commissioner would be tossing his butt in the slammer as a prowler. As soon as he got disentangled from Kevin's butt, that was.

Giggling with what he was sure was incipient hysteria, flushed, hard as a rock and still in shock, Joe drove with the care of the punch-drunk back to his own home. It would appear that Kevin had his comfort taken care of at the moment, and would no doubt not welcome any intrusion. Well, any intrusion other than that already being taken with him. Shaking off the thought and trying to get his brain back into working order, Joe considered his duty to family complete and concentrated on his duty to friends. Kevin might be fine, or would be, eventually. Ian didn't have anybody to cushion his shock.

Ignoring, even to himself, the pun inherent in that last internal statement, Joe tossed his coat in the general direction of the hall closet and headed through the living room to the door of Ian's basement apartment. Cursory examination told him that Frank wasn't home. No doubt still at the Recovery Room covering the evening shift. The thought reminded Joe that he'd planned to have a bottle of whisky on hand, just in case. He sighed. Detouring by the kitchen he grabbed a bottle of champagne he'd intended to bring to the wedding that now wouldn't be. Hopefully Ian wouldn't get the wrong impression and think Joe was celebrating this recent turn of events.

He knocked hesitantly. "Ian? You home?"

There was no answer, and he leaned his shoulder against the door, events of the day catching up with him as the shock started to wear off. He was so tired. The door opened with no warning and he tumbled into the room, nearly clocking Ian with the champagne bottle and only being saved from landing on his face by Ian catching him up in his arms. Joe stared up at him, mouth hanging open. Again.

"Partyin' already, Joe?" Ian teased him. There was an unusually rough note in his voice.

"For the wedding. That isn't. But you knew that, didn't you." It wasn't a question. He could tell by the deep sadness on Ian's face and the edge of anger in his expression.

"She didna want either one of us," Ian growled. He glanced down at the bottle. "S'pose it's better not to let it go to waste. And 'tis better to know than not, isn't it?"

Joe had no idea how to answer that one without sending Ian right over the cliff into the pit of despair, or, knowing the Irishman's temper, into a fit of rage. "Uhm?" he said with little discernible intelligence.

Unfortunately, pressed close as he was to Ian from belly to knees, other parts of him were speaking loudly. Clearly. It would appear that the shock hadn't quite worn off from his discovery of Kevin and Mac deepening their definition of friendship. It would also appear that the experience had given his much-too-long celibate body some strange ideas of its own.

He could see the moment it dawned on Ian that he had an armful of horny male. His eyes widened, then narrowed, and a glare fought a grin. Thankfully for Joe's continued health, not to mention his baritone voice, the grin won. Vaguely Joe was thankful Ian hadn't taken offense and had his balls on a plate.

"You thinkin' of extendin' some physical comfort along with the alcoholic kind, Joseph?" There was a raspy sort of purr taking over the growl in his voice. It made Joe impossibly harder.

"God," was all he managed to reply.

"Nah, just some wayward sinners," Ian responded absently, then took the bottle of champagne from Joe's rapidly numbing fingers and tossed it in the general direction of the couch. It bounced off a cushion and rolled over into the corner. The pop as the cork gave way from the pressure of the bubbles made Joe jump.

Directly up against Ian.

"I could be doin' with a bit of that," Ian assured him, then pushed him back up against the door Joe'd just walked through. Joe was still trying to remember how to form words, stymied by the fact that all the blood in his body was now gathered at his crotch, when Ian blew his last few working neurons away by the simple action of opening Joe's fly and sticking his hand down Joe's shorts.

It had been a very long time since Joe'd had sex. It took very little time for him to lose control of the situation. Three strokes, one big hand grabbing the back of his head and one kiss with tongue that he felt clear down past his tonsils and he was coming. All over Ian's hand. Screaming into Ian's mouth.

That felt so incredibly good.

His knees gave out and he slid down Ian's body, but that was okay, because the hand that had been in his shorts was now unbuttoning Ian's fly, and the hand that had been in his hair shifted to the crown of his head and directed his face forward. For the first time in his life Joe had a man's cock in his mouth, and to his fuzzy surprise, giving head wasn't nearly as tough as some of his previous dates would have him believe. Just cover his teeth with his lips, lick as much as he could reach, and breathe through his nose.

It even tasted pretty good. What he could taste, as Ian went for his throat and Joe found himself hanging on to Ian's hips for the ride. As it turned out, Eve must have been quite a prick tease and Ian must have been nearly as desperate as Joe had been, because it was over relatively quickly. Joe swallowed as fast as he could and tried not to drown.

It had been a long time for both of them.

Joe must have liked it even more than he thought, because his hand was back at his own cock, and he was getting hard again. There was a voice coming from the shadows, and he thought it was Ian's, but it was too bright. Too high-pitched. Too surprised, and with too much laughter in it. Joe shook off the last of the muzziness from his climax and looked up.

Directly into Gabrielle's face.

He froze in shock. Didn't even think to take his hand out of his lap.

She had one hand over her mouth and the other on his shoulder, shaking him lightly. Her eyes were glittering with barely-contained laughter mixed with pure unadulterated lust. She shook her head reprovingly at him and her hair fell over her shoulder, blocking his view of the room.

The staff room.

He blinked.

Her face lowered until she could whisper in his ear, and her hand dropped from her mouth to cover his own hand, still clasping his erection through his pants. "Soon, lover," she promised huskily, tracing the tip of his cock through the material, pressing against the wetness there. He shivered. "But right now, you have to go home and get some rest. Before somebody else comes in here and finds you having ... " she paused and licked the side of his neck directly below his ear, "sweet dreams."

He could feel the blush starting from the soles of his feet. "You know how it is," he joked feebly. "When you can't have what you want, you take what's at hand."

She was still laughing when he kissed her.

end