so tell me about love, love

Truthfully, this is the fabric of all my fantasies: love shown not by a kiss or a wild look or a careful hand but by a willingness for research. I don't dream of someone who understands me immediately, who seems to have known me my entire life, who says, I know me too. I want someone keen to learn my own strange organization, amazed at what's revealed; someone who asks, and then what, and then what?

    -- Elizabeth McCracken, The Giant's House

Flora's wearing her favorite pajamas, which is to say she's wearing an old tennis tank top that has the words "Lady Skwarors" emblazoned in a mincing arc across the front and a pair of gray shorts, cotton or rayon or something similar, whatever it takes to make the absolute best texture for a garment like that that, of course, hangs in all the right ways.

Addam wears old t-shirts to bed too, things from Accounting Society or some family friend's 5K for lung cancer research, everything just as perfectly magnanimous as he should appear to be, and it's not that he's cynical, but it's a little silly that he never wears them in the daytime, pairing them only with flannel pants that Flora sews up with ease whenever she needs a little project to tackle.

Minoth, then, doesn't wear a shirt at all. Ever since that first night, when they'd of course not bothered much with the fussing of vestments before they got down to elegant debasements, and then when Flora had kissed his chest the following morning, well...he finds himself always leaving it off, conveniently enough. Representative of the freedom and comfort he's found, and all that.

It's been four months and it's a Halloween-y time, now, and she offers to make him some pajamas as well, with the obvious lean towards wanting him to lounge around on a Saturday morning in something other than his usual jeans. Wants him to be even more comfortable, and they both do. Cute. He waves his hand and doesn't say much about it, and of course she doesn't forget, but she does forget it like he wants her to, and that's the end of that.

It only manages to keep being the end of that until this night in late October when they shuffle into bed, tooth-brushing turns taken, and Minoth mutters a good night with just-as-muttered kisses brushed across each cheek before turning over on his side and shunting himself over to the left end, stage right, of the bed. He usually goes in the middle, so that's something strange, isn't it?

"Are you alright, Minoth?" Addam calls over from where he's got his cheek smushed up against Flora's bare shoulder and his arms circled around her middle. "Dandy," Minoth answers, and they should believe him, shouldn't they, he's an honest fellow, he doesn't make a habit of lying to the poor saps.

"Work go okay today?" They don't usually ask, because he makes such fine conversation about every other little thing and never even needs to resort to complaining about his co-workers. "Peachy," he says with a crust of morose irritation on his voice.

Flora swats Addam down, and pats the top of Minoth's arm to signify that she's on his side, and just go to sleep, as long as no calamity's come down upon you that's just fine. But he leans into the touch something fierce, and where perhaps four months ago Flora would have been taken aback at the sudden turn from their chivalrous guest, now she lets warmth and smirk tease at her lips, and she drapes her whole upper body over his arm then, chest conveniently pressed to and into the gap in between his arm and ribcage.

"Did you want something, love?" She hasn't started casually calling him "love" yet, around the house and all that, but she does it in the bedroom when he gets like this, or even when he doesn't, and that's the signal that he can spend a few minutes, maybe a few hours if it's not a weeknight, nuzzling into the side of her neck and jaw and absolutely intoxicating himself on the sparkling champagne that is her pretty face and smile.

He does it again now, since her face is propped so close, and just as Addam's about to huff he twists his other arm back around to beckon the prince-not-a-prince down to where he can kiss him, probably with tongue and all (don't look at me, I'm no voyeur nor expert nor voyeuristic expert!).

And no, Addam is not, in fact, about to make a frowning face as he draws back, and insist that, "You know, you don't have to get into one of these moods if you'd like to have sex, that was really your whole point," because it never leads into that. Minoth's not a bratty third occupant of the bed, he just has to close himself off sometimes, or then subsequently find the absolution of being prisen open.

So this time, then, is different. This time there's something more of a hunger, of a passion, in the way his hair splays on the pillow, the way he arches himself up and cups at Flora's jaw, the way his hands grasp at the swells of Addam's chest.

Then, there's a moment of unspoken recoordination as the duo Origos make to rearrange themselves around their oh-so-intriguing lover, but just as they think he's about to take his rightful place in the center of affection, he hangs back.

"Did you want something?" Flora asks again, and though she's playful and consenting to the moment she does sound a little nervous. Minoth nods, simplicity in motion, and gestures quietly. "You, if that's alright."

He has...had Addam, in ways and means effusive and available, likely most of them during the day when she's out, and so somehow the whole business of equality had fallen away, something like twisted-up feminism shining its way through. He never asks to take Flora, never tries to thwart her seeming immunity to the male gaze, but now he makes the subtlest motion upwards with his hips, knelt calves-to-hamstrings a third of the way from being completely off the bed, and then Flora understands.

She doesn't look at Addam, doesn't need his permission, and she knows if he's feeling the effete scandal tonight he'll say it. In fact, he hangs his chin over her shoulder again and does a bit of ogling himself. "I was wondering when you'd ask, Minoth," he says idly, tone the only thing construing this onward along the proper triangulation of their so delicate balance.

"So was I," is Minoth's very much matched and reciprocal reply, but he's still staring at Flora - not staring, gazing, and not at her but into her eyes. There's something supplicating about him, there always is, but always more so with her than with Addam.

"You shouldn't be scared," she offers with a questioning hand beckoning to and then stroking over his thigh. After all, "I'm not," she answers his unspoken ensuing question. "Who said I'm scared?" Minoth asks a curveball with a purr in his overtones, and then he moves closer.

Addam leans back, lies back, is a support structure underneath Minoth's broad shoulder blades, and he runs his fingers through the ashy brown hair to set everyone at ease, all three of them. Is he going to watch, then? Is he going to be the voyeur? That's a little odd, but how else does a third person fit?

If Flora is the third person, she fits by being wholly tucked into Minoth's embrace, loose top and looser bra lifted lovingly off and bare back caressed by the immobility of his forearms. This much gentility in one person is really a marvel, because it's not the bull made weepy, and it's not the softness of someone who is simply that, it's...whatever and whoever Minoth is. Undoubtedly, it's beautiful.

Whatever vague worshipping motions he'd even been making at all soon cease as Flora takes due advantage of her close position and peppers kiss after kiss over the bottoms of his pectoral muscles. It's not a methodical march along the line like one would expect of her, both because she doesn't have quite that much facility of movement, and because now isn't the time for that usual procession.

She's needier than he is, maybe, and probably has been, again, since that first night when his head had been between her legs and she'd gasped out, "Oh, Addam, we're keeping him-!" (And Addam had nodded his sly agreement and said, "I know, dear, you're the one who took him in in the first place." She'd been too whisked-out to argue.)

There's a thunderstorm outside, Addam notices. Maybe there's a thunderstorm inside. He doesn't want to interrupt, but he flourishes his own attraction across Minoth's sensitive scapulas and scalp, burying his nose in among the mane for a brief second.

Eventually, he hazards a "Will you be needing me?" and Minoth does indeed have the presence of mind to prod a considerate yet still confident elbow back and say, "Of course I will, Addam." He more hears than sees Flora nod her affirmative as well, and content with that, he settles back into the cushions coating the headboard and closes his eyes.

Well, no, he doesn't close his eyes. They're lidded but they're not shut, and he's conscious of the events as they unfold before him. It's very obvious, the way Minoth is pressing the center of his hipline forward towards Flora, and the way she's obliging his advances by pressing that of hers back. The watched perspective is almost over, but they're sweet in their stumbling wantonness, and Addam knows he loves them. We can let him know that, can't we? Of course we can.

"Minoth," Flora mumbles uselessly into his chest, "aren't you going to do something?"

"I am going to do something," Minoth replies easily, "but, then," and here he grins his own breathlessness, "I suppose I was waiting for my cue."

Now both lower halves come uncovered, and even though the lamp is still dimmed down to the lowest possible luminosity without being off, Flora knows what she sees. She may be ineffable, but she's not asexual. She likes what she sees. She's even predictable about it: she bites her lip.

Suddenly, she has to get out a qualification, a "You know I'm glad that we 'kept you', or however I said it," (she remembers perfectly, the sneak), "for other reasons than this."

"Oh," Minoth starts lightly, "okay. Maybe I know. But I don't have to. I wouldn't be particularly ashamed if I didn't."

There is very much something hanging there between his legs, languishing towards the gravity of the bed, and yet Flora reaches out and tweaks his nose and says, "I know you would be, and you know you would be too. Now come on," and here her daring becomes immaculate instead of merely fresh, "aren't you going to do something?" Her lips zip their way to his ear, and his cheek trembles against hers. "Aren't you going to fuck me?"

Oh, so that's how it is. Her little speech isn't and wasn't manipulative, no, but Minoth finds himself transfixed and confounded regardless. He is going to do it, was planning to, but he's no idiot even if he's never been with a woman - not fully, yet - before. First his fingers find what on her is so desperately looking, then his lips, then his tongue.

She tangles her fingers in his hair, those of her right hand, and her left goes to Addam, who's been fully emancipated from the possibility of being, well, sat on, and he takes the offering with gratitude and cuddles it under his near cheek. To adore her is all of either of them wants, is all the paired both of them even have the capacity to do, it seems, and so they do it. Oh, how they do it.

When he enters her, it's quiet. They are very much having sex in a two-and-half threesome in a house where a vaguely infantile son is sleeping not twenty yards away, so perhaps of course it's quiet. He's very thoughtful, is Minoth. You know, he makes his entrance. A mind for tact and placement, goals he seeks to reach not with a bang but with a whimper. If there's a sound he does make, it's a whimper, far less breathy than everything that's issuing from Flora.

Is it good, is it not good? Of course it's good. I don't think I'd be telling you about it if it wasn't good. But it isn't just good in the sense that you say you've had good sex, or you're good at sex, or you're good of spirit and you course with some sexual energy that you think is so beautifully tamped and tempered by that wishfully whimsical attribute of your personality.

It's good because he loves her, and she loves him, and four months is a short time but he does everything with such sincerity, not necessarily more than her or Addam but if in a broader, deeper, fuller way then, why, what else is that but greater sincerity?

She realizes halfway through that there's a logistic to this that she so frivolously left out, and she, Flora Origo, is never, never, someone to do something like that. Especially not something like this.

Halfway through? How should she even know it's halfway? He hasn't altered his pace because his pace isn't hardly pacing, he's slow and they're more sideways than top-to-bottom. Addam leans clumsily over and kisses the sweat and the flush from both their cheeks, and brushes the hair aside, and Flora can hardly believe how wide Minoth smiles when he finds he can see her again, where he couldn't before because his hair had fallen in the way.

"Addam," she starts with a pant, and there's an apology in her eyes about looking past her lover that Minoth implicitly accepts, and he even folds her closer over his shoulder, thrusting up to facilitate the spatial equation. It's far too blunt for the coyness she should exude, and she almost hates it as it leaves her parted lips, but she does have to say it: "Do you want to have another baby?"

Addam makes an appraising face, one that's hiding the brutal, loving yank on his heartstrings, and he even almost laughs. Like he's already considered it, Flora tells herself, not because this is some kind of mad-maudlin nightmare dream. "I suppose that's not really up to me, then, is it? The child wouldn't be mine."

Now Minoth pauses his lovemaking wholesale to pull Flora away from him, roll his eyes, and kiss her forehead before leaning his cheek on it and twisting back to look at Addam. "You know it would be." And yet the instrument of artefaction is still sheathed in that all-important place.

"Minoth," Flora starts again, poking at his chest as if to remind him that hers is still flung full out, "I suppose you might as well finish. If only because I don't want to be having this conversation with your cock inside of me."

Addam makes a face then - just a face, just a wrinkle of disdain, because of course that's horribly insensible, not to say insensitive. "Flora, that's not like you."

"Prince, come on," says Minoth, remarkably calm and cool and collected and all, "you two must have talked about this before. I know, and you know, and she knows, that it doesn't matter which one of us two does or did the deed. Were you planning to have another kid, or weren't you?"

Flora nods her way around the unreasonableness of the method by which she had arrived at the same conclusion as Addam mumbles a quietly relieved "We were," and Minoth resumes his crucial activity with more abandon than he'd had before. A trio of idiots, they rather are, but at the same time, well, they're not stupid.

Just before he's about to finish, in the midst of the only modicum of frantic freneticity he could be said to have displayed, Minoth pauses, tips Flora's chin up so her eyes meet his, and then he does some otherworldly combination of kissing and bucking that lets her lead the way, and he follows close behind.

Addam's considerate like that, but the thing is...he's not half as good at it. Minoth has no right to be so good at it, which is what Flora thinks and what you must be thinking, but quite simply he is and will continue to be.

They stay clung together for a good few minutes afterward, and Addam once again pokes and perches his way in to shower both of them with his heartfelt congratulations. Again, not "congrats on the sex" for the sex itself, but more the exact opposite turnabout thing.

"Say, Minoth," Addam drawls out some many more than few minutes later with his arms looped around the taller man's chest, "it's been a few months, hasn't it?" Hiding a grin, Minoth shifts his arm tighter around Flora, presses a kiss to the top of her head. "Mmm, yeah. I suppose it has."

"Are you by any chance particularly attached to that last name you've got?" As Addam trots out the idea, Flora returns the gesture with a petite nudge up at the underside of Minoth's jaw. "I'm more attached to yours now, I think," is the easy, honest answer.

"And shall we make it so legally?" The grin bursts lazily out now. "Don't you have to? How else are you gonna decide what to name the kid?"

"Oh, I don't know," Flora says over-sweetly - well, perhaps it's not overmuch but just exactly the right amount. "I think we love you enough to figure it out somehow."

(And they name her Evelyn, congratulations indeed, and Xander is very excited about his brand new important role as big brother to baby Evie, and no, Flora doesn't forget the precaution ever again, but she does think it's silly that sometimes she feels that maybe she'd like to. Because there's other ways to tell him about love, and to let him tell her about his, whether Addam's owlish on the sidelines giving his own input or not, but after all she did like that one, old pajamas and all. Silly.)

I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know. Twilight is the border between day and night, and the shore is the border between sea and land. The border is longing; when both have fallen in love but still haven't said anything. The border is to be on the way. It is the way that is the most important thing.

    -- Tove Jansson, "Moominvalley in November"