part i don't even know
Nov. 14th, 2008 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzie(in which lj saves my story from my dumbassness: i was still writing this when i had total brain fart and quit out of firefox and it went *poof*. >.< thank god for "restore from draft", is all i can say.)
Val managed to wake up at a normal hour for a Sunday morning - a normal hour for him, anyway - and carefully untangled himself from Aidan and the pile of blankets and tiptoed into the bathroom to pee. He still couldn't get over the fact that he'd watched his best friend's girlfriend go down on his best friend while Val fucked him, and they'd all been sober, and they'd all been consenting, and no one had been dared. He knew it would take more than one conversation with Stella, and one conversation with her and Aidan, for this to make any sense to him and to turn into something he could actually do.
Which wasn't to say he didn't want it, because he was at least half sure he did. Not just the sex, but the relationship, the easy, devoted, comfortable kind of relationship they had with each other. It wasn't until he'd gotten to know Aidan and Stella that Val had realized he had no frame of reference for what they had. He'd never even gone a year with someone, the few times he'd stayed with anyone past a few dates. In college, he'd done what he'd thought at the time was a lot of fucking, but it was really only "a lot" in comparison to high school. And he'd been a little confused in high school.
He'd dated, sure, and he'd had boyfriends and girlfriends, but not a lot of them, and not for very long, and they'd always been boyfriends and girlfriends, even if they'd started out just friends. He'd never had what Aidan and Stella did. But he'd never been in love like they were either.
He wondered if he could lay it at his parents' feet, the fact he'd never had a long-term relationship with someone he could consider a friend as well as a lover. He knew how to be a good friend. He knew, or thought he knew, how to be a pretty good boyfriend. But watching Aidan and Stella, he realized he didn't know how to be both at the same time.
And they thought he was good threesome material. If he wasn't so tired and so overwhelmed and so confused, he could almost laugh.
Someone knocked on the bathroom door.
"Hey, Val?" Stella called. "Are you ok?"
"I'm almost done," he said. "Sorry." He tried to compose himself, opened the door, and walked out. Stella had gotten dressed, or at least she'd put on jeans under the t-shirt she'd slept in, and it made Val feel a little better and a little more secure.
"You're still freaking out."
"Yeah. I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize." She flapped her hand dismissively. "But get dressed." She grinned, pushed past him into the bathroom, and shut the door. He wandered around the bedroom picking up his clothes and putting them back on and trying not to wake Aidan up. Aidan slept like a dead person, apparently. Val didn't think he'd moved all night from the position he'd fallen asleep in.
Val tiptoed out of the bedroom, even though he was pretty sure his normal footfalls wouldn't wake Aidan up, and went into the kitchen. He thought maybe he should make coffee or something, make himself useful in some fashion. He felt like all he did was come over here and eat their food and sleep on their couch.
And sleep with them. Oh, god, he was never going to adjust to that, was he. He had to get a grip.
He'd just found coffee beans in the freezer when Stella came up behind him and gently pushed him out of the way. "You sit down," she said. "I woke up the log, but it's anyone's guess when he'll shift his ass out of bed."
Val waited for her to make another comment about Aidan's ass, but she didn't, just busied herself with the coffee. He sat at the kitchen table and tried not to play nervously with the placemat. He'd never understood why Stella put placemats on the table between meals, but didn't use them for meals. It made the table look perpetually half-set, but it was also kind of nice. It looked decorated.
"I don't know about pancakes after all," Stella said, sticking her head in the pantry. "We're out of Bisquik. Damn. How about eggs? I make a mean omelette. What do you want on it?" Now she opened the fridge. "We have cheese, mushrooms, that looks like ham, there should be some salami, don't say sweet corn or I won't feed you, um... oh, cheddar, nice." She stepped back from the fridge and started pulling things out of it - a carton of eggs, a jug of milk, a brick of orange cheddar, a container of sliced mushrooms, half a stick of butter on a butter dish.
"Do you want some help?" Val asked.
"You can set the table, I guess. Plates, silverware, juice glasses." She pointed to cabinets and a drawer. "The oj has pulp in it, I hope you don't mind."
The table was set, the kitchen was starting to smell like coffee, and Stella was sauteeing mushrooms in a gigantic frying pan when Aidan finally stumbled into the kitchen and practically fell into a chair.
"I hate you both," he mumbled.
"Good morning to you too," Stella chirped. Val just smiled brightly. This was a situation he understood.
"I hope you're making me breakfast."
"What kind of girlfriend would I be if I didn't? Val first, though. He offered to help."
"I offer to help!" Aidan protested. "I put the dishes in the dishwasher!"
"You don't scrape them first."
"Do you scrape your dishes?" Aidan asked Val. "What's that about?"
"It makes the plates easier to clean," Val told him. "Kirk's girlfriend Haley makes us do it." They shared a moment of male bafflement over women's weird washing-up rules.
"Ok, boys," Stella interrupted, "I have a mushroom and cheddar omelette for the cute top." She grinned at Val as she set a plate in front of him. He cut into the omelette with a fork, and mushrooms and melted cheese oozed out. Runny, just the way he liked it.
"What are you making for the cute bottom?" Aidan asked.
"What does the cute bottom want?"
"I think he wants ham and cheese. No mushrooms."
"Would the cute bottom like to make some toast?"
"Oh, sure, I'll make some toast."
Aidan made toast, Stella finished his omelette and made one for herself, Val poured coffee, and they sat around the kitchen table eating breakfast and chatting like they did it all the time. Val felt as if every other sentence out of his mouth was forced, like he was just faking being calm and relaxed, but he could also admit that it was relaxing. Aidan anyway had that effect on people.
Val tried to pay attention to how the other two were acting, to try and suss out if either of them felt as off-balance as he did, but he couldn't tell. He'd never been a great reader of other people anyway.
They finished breakfast, cleaned up - Stella watched Aidan scrape leftover omelette and toast crusts off the plates before he put them in the dishwasher - and Val was sure he'd be able to get away without having to discuss last night or what Aidan and Stella clearly thought was their threesome future, but Aidan plopped down on the couch as Val was putting on his shoes, and he steeled himself to insist that really, seriously, he had to go into the office, he didn't have time to -
"Stella says we'll have a conversation later," Aidan said. "After you're done at Caswell and Etc. She'll pick you up if you want."
"I don't know how long I'll be there."
"So call us when you're done. We'll be here. I have some writing to do anyway, and I should really practice a couple songs. I keep forgetting the bridge of this one ballad, and that's stupid. It's my song, how the hell do I forget it?"
He looked so completely calm, Val didn't quite know how to react. But he felt a little bit of that calm seeping into him. Just a little.
"I'll take the bus," he said. "I have a book to read. I have to... not freak out before I come back here, in case I freak out afterwards."
"You're so strange." Aidan grinned. "Stella's going to take you in. I'm not dressed." He gestured to his pajama bottoms and t-shirt, which he'd clearly put on this morning after Stella woke him up. "We'll see you later. We'll redefine 'relationship' and make some ground rules, it'll be fine. Don't panic."
"I'm not panicking."
"Not yet." Aidan grinned again, patted Val on the shoulder, and stood up. "I need to take a shower. I'm too stinky to be belived. Later."
Aidan disappeared into the bathroom, Val collected his stuff, and Stella drove him downtown. She chattered on about a random collection of harmless topics during the trip, so that Val decided she was just trying to put him at ease. He was still confused and slightly freaked by the time she dropped him off in front of his office building, but he figured he was fine to concentrate on Catherine's insane case for a while.
There was a stack of work on his desk and a voicemail and three emails all saying the same thing - variations on "You have a lot of work to do, don't leave in the middle of the day like that again, and I expect you early on Monday". Val sighed, tried to rearrange all the crap that had landed on his desk, and buckled down.
He ran into a lawyer he recognized but didn't really know in the kitchen a couple of hours later, and there were two people apparently holding a meeting in the library, but otherwise the offices of Caswell, Velez, Malcolm, and Simonson were quiet and empty. It was a little unsettling, but at the same time, it meant Val had no distractions and could get a lot done. He felt pretty accomplished by the time he packed it in, although he wasn't looking forward to Monday, or, indeed, the rest of the week.
He called Stella and Aidan's place while he waited for the bus. Aidan answered and asked if Val wanted Chinese takeout or homemade pizza for dinner, but before Val could answer, Stella got on the phone and said they were ordering Chinese because she was just not up to dealing with Aidan's appalling taste in pizza toppings. Val said he didn't care, anything was fine with him.
It took the bus another fifteen minutes to show up, during which time he read The Road and didn't think about anything else, and by the time he got to Aidan and Stella's, he actually felt kind of zen. He didn't think it would last, not once they all started talking, but it was a nice feeling.
words: 1841
total words: 25,755
Val managed to wake up at a normal hour for a Sunday morning - a normal hour for him, anyway - and carefully untangled himself from Aidan and the pile of blankets and tiptoed into the bathroom to pee. He still couldn't get over the fact that he'd watched his best friend's girlfriend go down on his best friend while Val fucked him, and they'd all been sober, and they'd all been consenting, and no one had been dared. He knew it would take more than one conversation with Stella, and one conversation with her and Aidan, for this to make any sense to him and to turn into something he could actually do.
Which wasn't to say he didn't want it, because he was at least half sure he did. Not just the sex, but the relationship, the easy, devoted, comfortable kind of relationship they had with each other. It wasn't until he'd gotten to know Aidan and Stella that Val had realized he had no frame of reference for what they had. He'd never even gone a year with someone, the few times he'd stayed with anyone past a few dates. In college, he'd done what he'd thought at the time was a lot of fucking, but it was really only "a lot" in comparison to high school. And he'd been a little confused in high school.
He'd dated, sure, and he'd had boyfriends and girlfriends, but not a lot of them, and not for very long, and they'd always been boyfriends and girlfriends, even if they'd started out just friends. He'd never had what Aidan and Stella did. But he'd never been in love like they were either.
He wondered if he could lay it at his parents' feet, the fact he'd never had a long-term relationship with someone he could consider a friend as well as a lover. He knew how to be a good friend. He knew, or thought he knew, how to be a pretty good boyfriend. But watching Aidan and Stella, he realized he didn't know how to be both at the same time.
And they thought he was good threesome material. If he wasn't so tired and so overwhelmed and so confused, he could almost laugh.
Someone knocked on the bathroom door.
"Hey, Val?" Stella called. "Are you ok?"
"I'm almost done," he said. "Sorry." He tried to compose himself, opened the door, and walked out. Stella had gotten dressed, or at least she'd put on jeans under the t-shirt she'd slept in, and it made Val feel a little better and a little more secure.
"You're still freaking out."
"Yeah. I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize." She flapped her hand dismissively. "But get dressed." She grinned, pushed past him into the bathroom, and shut the door. He wandered around the bedroom picking up his clothes and putting them back on and trying not to wake Aidan up. Aidan slept like a dead person, apparently. Val didn't think he'd moved all night from the position he'd fallen asleep in.
Val tiptoed out of the bedroom, even though he was pretty sure his normal footfalls wouldn't wake Aidan up, and went into the kitchen. He thought maybe he should make coffee or something, make himself useful in some fashion. He felt like all he did was come over here and eat their food and sleep on their couch.
And sleep with them. Oh, god, he was never going to adjust to that, was he. He had to get a grip.
He'd just found coffee beans in the freezer when Stella came up behind him and gently pushed him out of the way. "You sit down," she said. "I woke up the log, but it's anyone's guess when he'll shift his ass out of bed."
Val waited for her to make another comment about Aidan's ass, but she didn't, just busied herself with the coffee. He sat at the kitchen table and tried not to play nervously with the placemat. He'd never understood why Stella put placemats on the table between meals, but didn't use them for meals. It made the table look perpetually half-set, but it was also kind of nice. It looked decorated.
"I don't know about pancakes after all," Stella said, sticking her head in the pantry. "We're out of Bisquik. Damn. How about eggs? I make a mean omelette. What do you want on it?" Now she opened the fridge. "We have cheese, mushrooms, that looks like ham, there should be some salami, don't say sweet corn or I won't feed you, um... oh, cheddar, nice." She stepped back from the fridge and started pulling things out of it - a carton of eggs, a jug of milk, a brick of orange cheddar, a container of sliced mushrooms, half a stick of butter on a butter dish.
"Do you want some help?" Val asked.
"You can set the table, I guess. Plates, silverware, juice glasses." She pointed to cabinets and a drawer. "The oj has pulp in it, I hope you don't mind."
The table was set, the kitchen was starting to smell like coffee, and Stella was sauteeing mushrooms in a gigantic frying pan when Aidan finally stumbled into the kitchen and practically fell into a chair.
"I hate you both," he mumbled.
"Good morning to you too," Stella chirped. Val just smiled brightly. This was a situation he understood.
"I hope you're making me breakfast."
"What kind of girlfriend would I be if I didn't? Val first, though. He offered to help."
"I offer to help!" Aidan protested. "I put the dishes in the dishwasher!"
"You don't scrape them first."
"Do you scrape your dishes?" Aidan asked Val. "What's that about?"
"It makes the plates easier to clean," Val told him. "Kirk's girlfriend Haley makes us do it." They shared a moment of male bafflement over women's weird washing-up rules.
"Ok, boys," Stella interrupted, "I have a mushroom and cheddar omelette for the cute top." She grinned at Val as she set a plate in front of him. He cut into the omelette with a fork, and mushrooms and melted cheese oozed out. Runny, just the way he liked it.
"What are you making for the cute bottom?" Aidan asked.
"What does the cute bottom want?"
"I think he wants ham and cheese. No mushrooms."
"Would the cute bottom like to make some toast?"
"Oh, sure, I'll make some toast."
Aidan made toast, Stella finished his omelette and made one for herself, Val poured coffee, and they sat around the kitchen table eating breakfast and chatting like they did it all the time. Val felt as if every other sentence out of his mouth was forced, like he was just faking being calm and relaxed, but he could also admit that it was relaxing. Aidan anyway had that effect on people.
Val tried to pay attention to how the other two were acting, to try and suss out if either of them felt as off-balance as he did, but he couldn't tell. He'd never been a great reader of other people anyway.
They finished breakfast, cleaned up - Stella watched Aidan scrape leftover omelette and toast crusts off the plates before he put them in the dishwasher - and Val was sure he'd be able to get away without having to discuss last night or what Aidan and Stella clearly thought was their threesome future, but Aidan plopped down on the couch as Val was putting on his shoes, and he steeled himself to insist that really, seriously, he had to go into the office, he didn't have time to -
"Stella says we'll have a conversation later," Aidan said. "After you're done at Caswell and Etc. She'll pick you up if you want."
"I don't know how long I'll be there."
"So call us when you're done. We'll be here. I have some writing to do anyway, and I should really practice a couple songs. I keep forgetting the bridge of this one ballad, and that's stupid. It's my song, how the hell do I forget it?"
He looked so completely calm, Val didn't quite know how to react. But he felt a little bit of that calm seeping into him. Just a little.
"I'll take the bus," he said. "I have a book to read. I have to... not freak out before I come back here, in case I freak out afterwards."
"You're so strange." Aidan grinned. "Stella's going to take you in. I'm not dressed." He gestured to his pajama bottoms and t-shirt, which he'd clearly put on this morning after Stella woke him up. "We'll see you later. We'll redefine 'relationship' and make some ground rules, it'll be fine. Don't panic."
"I'm not panicking."
"Not yet." Aidan grinned again, patted Val on the shoulder, and stood up. "I need to take a shower. I'm too stinky to be belived. Later."
Aidan disappeared into the bathroom, Val collected his stuff, and Stella drove him downtown. She chattered on about a random collection of harmless topics during the trip, so that Val decided she was just trying to put him at ease. He was still confused and slightly freaked by the time she dropped him off in front of his office building, but he figured he was fine to concentrate on Catherine's insane case for a while.
There was a stack of work on his desk and a voicemail and three emails all saying the same thing - variations on "You have a lot of work to do, don't leave in the middle of the day like that again, and I expect you early on Monday". Val sighed, tried to rearrange all the crap that had landed on his desk, and buckled down.
He ran into a lawyer he recognized but didn't really know in the kitchen a couple of hours later, and there were two people apparently holding a meeting in the library, but otherwise the offices of Caswell, Velez, Malcolm, and Simonson were quiet and empty. It was a little unsettling, but at the same time, it meant Val had no distractions and could get a lot done. He felt pretty accomplished by the time he packed it in, although he wasn't looking forward to Monday, or, indeed, the rest of the week.
He called Stella and Aidan's place while he waited for the bus. Aidan answered and asked if Val wanted Chinese takeout or homemade pizza for dinner, but before Val could answer, Stella got on the phone and said they were ordering Chinese because she was just not up to dealing with Aidan's appalling taste in pizza toppings. Val said he didn't care, anything was fine with him.
It took the bus another fifteen minutes to show up, during which time he read The Road and didn't think about anything else, and by the time he got to Aidan and Stella's, he actually felt kind of zen. He didn't think it would last, not once they all started talking, but it was a nice feeling.
words: 1841
total words: 25,755
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