Work Text:
"I don't know this one." Adam is lying on his stomach, still in silk boxers, chest propped up by a pillow. Academic review should always be so easy; he might have stayed in academia if more peer review involved mornings in bed.
The air conditioning kicks on, a faint hum and a sudden sensation of cold across his bare arms and exposed back, cooling the warmth he’d barely realized was setting in too deep. It's unthinkingly indulgent, really. This house that learns their patterns, their waking moments, follows them from room to room, seeing to their comfort and consumptions. He's watched humanity soften itself through the centuries, weaken itself until tragedy, and start again; this latest creation is just one more step away from survival. People today took for granted luxuries even emperors never imagined.
There was a time he rose early every morning without fail and bathed in cold water to cleanse himself and steel his heart. Admittedly, that was before the advent of the water heater.
Still; how time flies. A century and a half ago he had spent nearly a decade replacing sleep with cocaine, the poison its own cure; each heart attack and reawakening in the nearest river had reset the receptors of his brain. He had formulated the theories of addiction long before standardized medicine got around to it-- by his own experience. He can say with complete certainty how much of the craving is physical and how much is the comfort of routine.
How time flies. A decade and a half ago he still couldn't sit quietly in the same room as Henry Morgan without his heart rate accelerating, his physical reaction to the other man's presence mirroring both addiction and post-traumatic stress.
An hour and a half ago they woke up in the same bed, and now Henry is half-naked next to him, the length of him pressed against Adam’s side, his weight propped on his elbows. Except for the not inconsiderable fraction of his weight that seems to be supported by his chin digging into Adam's shoulder as he cranes to read Adam's notes.
Adam wouldn't move him for the world.
He considers the printout in front of him, tips it so the bright shards of morning sunlight fall on the bedsheets and not the page, and reaches out and draws a leisurely question mark across two whole paragraphs in thick red pen.
"Did you even visit Justinian's court?" Henry wonders. He smells like coffee and mouthwash, his stubble scratching gently, and part of Adam still sings when their skin touches, somewhere deep in his gut.
"Long enough to remember why I hated Constantinople," he says, lip curling. "Despite my better judgement I thought I owed the Empire a visit after they retook Rome. I should have stayed herding sheep with Cearl in Wales. He was more loyal to me than Rome ever was. And didn't give me the damn plague, either."
"Speaking of Wales," Henry starts enthusiastically, his breath ticklish on Adam's neck as he leans closer-- to the paper, not to Adam, an unwitting tease. As ever.
"Arthurian history later, eunuchs now," Molly orders from her desk. He looks over his shoulder and sees that she's finished her coffee, is sitting regally with one leg over the other. The pink housecoat is silky enough to do for a renaissance painting; the elegant cotton night set less so. One of her ancient fuzzy blue slippers dangles from her toe, doing its damnedest to be seductive. "Do I have to come keep you boys on track?"
"I am on track." He strikes out a passage, makes a note; the explanation is too long to write in the margins. "Henry's distracted."
"What was Constantinople like?"
"Not Rome," Adam says curtly. "And full of the dead. My fingers rotted on my hands and when I came back to life the river was so thick with corpses I wondered if it was hell. I didn't stick around--" he lifts his voice for Molly's benefit, haughty and much put-upon, "--to interview the eunuchs."
"Understandable," she says simply. Henry looks a little worried and sympathetic; Henry always does, or always has since Adam began to prove himself worth his sympathy. He was born in a softer age. Molly was born in a softer one still, but she never gives him a rise. Her sympathy is matter of fact and saved until the rare moments that he cannot do without it.
A decade and a half ago, how he hated her.
He does still, in a way, or at least resents her, but the resentment has been fused into the foundation of them, the cornerstone in an unshakeable understanding of one another that is something more than love and almost approaches friendship.
She rises and stretches and both of the immortals pause to watch her. Adam has much, much less interest in women than Henry, but he appreciates perfect elegance when he sees it.
Somehow-- a skill he has not managed to copy-- she does not shuffle in her loose, flapping slippers, and crosses the room like a vision. The morning sunlight comes through the blinds in stripes, catches and twists in the folds of her housecoat, makes her face gold and her hair silver and bronze.
She has a second red pen in her hand; he blinks away the dazzle and shakes his head as he sees her trace the cap down Henry's spine. Henry's back arches and he gives her a disgustingly besotted look. Henry is a glutton for sensation and has the carefully laid bruises and faded red marks to prove it.
Adam realizes he's been staring at the beautiful line of Henry's back and the love-bites that the flogger left on him a few nights ago, and Molly catches him looking, and smiles. She uncaps her pen, and drags the felt tip across Henry's shoulder blade, tracing a bloody abstract curve that joins one of the faint red marks and terminates with a flourish over his sixth thoracic vertebra, halfway down the back.
Henry preens under the sensation. As always, half a cat and half his mistress's dog.
Adam rolls his eyes and turns back to the paper.
"No," he says to himself, striking out another passage and circling the footnote. "And no. That's thirteenth century propaganda. The author wouldn't have known. Ah-- yes."
Something wet touches his back, but he knows it's no threat-- Molly has stopped feeling like a threat. She almost never had. Her voice brought a sense of safety to him even when all he knew about her was that he hated her.
She did a neat job taming him, he sneers to himself. Acclimatizing him and breaking him to accept touch without responding violently, dragging him down into her domestic web where morning lie-ins exist and he reviews papers that interest her with an eye to historical accuracy. Today, the Social Status of Eunuchs in Greece and Eastern Rome.
This is what she's reduced him to; fact-checker, choreboy. She's literally muzzled him when she likes. The figurative kind is more damning; she won't let him engineer a death, won't let him murder Henry over arguments, won't indulge him with panic or despair when he relapses into one of his old rages. She has such a vicious lack of compromise when it comes to Henry's safety and happiness; she's a positive tyrant about Adam's mental health, has annexed his continued existence for her own and coerced his consent afterwards.
Adam quite likes that about her.
"This-- yes. This is a neat piece of scholarship." He circles a conclusion. "Thank god for queers in academia who can draw the right conclusion even after it's been obscured by generations of desperate Victorian revisionism. Tell the author they’re less of an idiot than most of their peers."
"Mm. I'll let him know you approve," Molly says, and tugs the waistband of his boxers down. He ignores her pointedly as she traces his iliac crest from the hip inward and down with a tightly looping line, the scratch of felt blending with the brief cool dampness of drying ink.
Molly pulls his waistband back and snaps it; the elastic is too weak to give a satisfying impact and she knows it. He refuses her the satisfaction of squirming for her touch, much as he'd like to feel her nails rake over the line of her pen or the sharp slap of her hand to add a bit of an edge to this sluggish morning.
He hears the scratch of the pen again, short lines on soft flesh; Henry has her attention now, and given her predilections is probably being decorated across his ample bottom.
He flips the page, continues to notate.
Henry frowns along, leaning more heavily into him as he concentrate-- interested until he jolts, chest jerking against Adam's side, and makes the little gasp that is uniquely identifiable as his 'just pinched in the ass' noise.
Adam snorts.
Molly pats Henry-- he can hear the soft impact on flesh-- and Adam waits as she shifts, smirking to himself when he feels the pen on himself again.
He gives less than half a thought to the short lines she's tracing across his upper back, short runic strokes, so focused on the paper; she goes over her work again, one shoulder blade to the other, tidying up the pattern, and only as he reaches a chapter conclusion does he think back and realize that the spacing and shape of her lines was suspiciously like writing. She sits back, satisfied.
Frowning, he closes the binder, leaving his pen sticking out as a bookmark.
"I wasn't done reading that," Henry protests.
Adam ignores him, craning his head to see his own back. Definitely writing, but that's all he can see out of the corner of his eye. He pushes Henry aside so that he can sit up and eye Molly's work. Henry’s back is a scratchpad of random geometric shapes and flourishes, but just peeking out from under his sleep pants he can see a few letters.
He yanks the pants down--
"Adam, do you mind?"
--and growls.
Molly smiles sweetly, twirling her red pen between her fingers.
"What on earth?" Henry looks over his own shoulder, trying to see the words written on his backside without any more success than Adam had, but Adam turns his back, trying to indicate his own back with accusatory shoulder blades.
"Look. It's the same on both of us, I can almost guarantee it."
"'If found, return to Molly Dawes'," Henry reads, and Adam can hear his grin.
Molly holds up her arm to show the neat block print down her forearm: I AM MOLLY DAWES.
"You treacherous wench," Adam growls, and lunges at her. She gives a little shriek of delight as she goes down under his weight, laughing as he mouths toothlessly at her neck and the crease of her arm where he knows she's ticklish. He pins her on her back, weight on her shoulders, her legs between his knees. She knees him in the thigh and kicks.
She could catch him full in the groin if she wanted to. Middle age hasn't softened her knee or weakened the muscles of her thigh; when she is in the mood to hurt him she can send him out of his mind with agony.
When she is in the mood to play the damsel in distress, somehow she becomes all round edges; her nails leave no marks and she's all kittenish wriggling softness and throaty giggles.
She's giggling now; he silences her with a hard kiss, invades her mouth with his tongue.
"No you don't," Henry growls, and grabs him by the hips, dragging him off of her. Adam tries to turn to grapple him, but Henry has the advantage of position and gets his arms around Adam's chest. Adam squirms out of the hold, turning and sinking his teeth into Henry's upper arm.
Henry bites his jaw, breath hot on his neck, and Adam lifts his head to bite his mouth instead.
He feels his bottom lip split against Henry's teeth and tastes copper, sucks the taste greedily from Henry's mouth. Henry grabs his shoulders, fingertips sinking in with an aim to bruise, and joy bubbles up in Adam like blood out of a wound, joy and hot desire, and he kisses, kisses, kisses Henry with his stinging lips, leaving tiny smudges of blood over his cheeks and jaw and neck.
"Adam," Henry breathes, only a little despairing. His punishing grip loosens, hands sliding up Adam's arms and down his back, the grapple becoming a lover's cradle.
"Boys," Molly murmurs, and her fingernails comb through Adam's hair and surely Henry's too, her breath on Henry's ear and her teeth on Adam's. She crowds in against Adam's back; she's taken off her shirt and housecoat, because her breasts and arms are naked. Too late, Adam realizes that he is surrounded. They surround him. Again, he's lost the upper hand.
Her head on his shoulder; Henry's broad hand slipping out from between Molly's belly and Adam's back to cradle Adam's head instead.
If Henry's cruelty surprised him once, Henry's kindness still leaves him completely helpless. Molly's is just an extra indignity to bear, insult to injury. Henry is his weakness; Molly is his prison.
She kisses down his back, delicate, brushing touches that she scatters across his shoulder blades, down his spine. There’s no pattern to it, no steady, ignorable repetition to slide into the back of his mind; instead it nags at him, irritation that turns quickly into furious frustration-- a sore thumb caught on the edge of a table, a full bladder interfering with an unfinished task.
Henry uses his grip to tilt Adam’s head, long fingers rubbing gentle circles against his scalp, drawing his attention away from Molly and into a kiss that’s too soft, so slow. It leaves his lip throbbing and Henry beaming.
Of course. Molly is kissing around her pattern, the bare skin left to frame whatever red shapes she sketched on him. The realisation leaves him suddenly weightless and strong with joy. He grins back at Henry, watches the way Henry’s dark eyes crinkle at the corners-- shifts forward and into Henry’s space, leverages up with his core strength and flings Henry back onto the bed, leaping in after him before Henry’s startled laugh can become a recovery.
“Adam-!” Henry says, before Adam bites his mouth, his chin, pins his wrists against the bed and kisses him again.
“Adam,” Molly says, low in his ear, her skin hot where it touches him, her strong, slim hands closing over his.
“Yes,” he hisses. “I know.”
“It’s all right,” Henry murmurs, lifting his hips. “There’s no hurry.”
He hears Henry, processes what he says in the half second it takes for Henry’s back to curve, for Henry’s groin to press against his and Henry’s cock to bounce against him and drag up the groove of his thigh, both of them half-hard and heavy already, from the morning lie-in, from the way they lay alongside one another, Henry from attention, Adam from addiction maybe, from obsession-- and the words are gone, twisted into smoke and blown away.
He needs to be in Henry now, grabs the cloth between them to tear it, and Henry’s eyes glitter.
Adam’s hips snap forward even as he digs his fingers into Henry’s sleep pants, into the soft, firm skin of his hips. Henry grunts at the contact, lifts up to meet his next thrust for all his calming talk. He wants this as badly as Adam; Adam can see it take hold in him, they way they fit together so well, sees it settle hungry in his dark eyes. They’ve never rested easily with the other, fill so quickly with breathlessness and violence and overflow.
He could do it now, grind them together between Henry's slippery pyjama bottoms and his boxers, desperate and and graceless. Ruin the silk and cotton, tear Henry’s pants off his body, take him as he reels from his pleasure. Henry won’t stop him, Henry is wanting and helpless beneath him, reeking of arousal, his body going soft and so, so willing--
“Adam,” murmurs Molly, and her lips are on his neck again. The sweet almond smell of her night oil cuts through the musk of Henry in his nostrils and her gentle grip on his hair pulls him back. “Adam.”
He catches a breath and pulls back from the brink.
“You should get him undressed.”
His lip curls; he doesn’t take pleasure in her orders, even couched as suggestions, but she’s right. He’ll do this… properly.
She leaves him, cool air chilling his back.
“Adam,” Henry groans. “Will you, please?” His hips lift again, beseeching, and Adam tugs the sleep pants off him and throws them off the bed. Henry’s long legs come up around him, and Henry reaches into the placket of Adam’s silk boxers to draw out his erection.
“Soon,” Adam hisses, skin prickling as Henry’s hands close around his cock, the careful pressure not nearly enough, but the strength in Henry’s palms so promising.
“Oh, yes.”
It almost undoes him, Henry’s simple pleasure and how badly he wants him, how badly he wants to have Henry desperate and mad with wanting him back. The years Adam had given, the patience and penance to be allowed close to Henry at all, to touch him, to have the eternal promise of his body and his companionship--
His vision is tunneled down to Henry’s pale chest, the ribs flexing with each deep breath, sweat beading on his abdominals and pectorals and glittering in his navel. His scar is flushed pink, always darker than the rest of him, the stippled skin shining, stretching and heaving with his breathing.
Molly’s hand slides into view and between one blink and the next pale lines appear on Henry’s chest, under her fingernails. Another blink and they’re flushing red.
Henry moans.
“Soon,” she coos, and settles herself behind Adam again. There’s something in the hand pressing against his side. Cold hard yielding, metallic scratch--
Lubricant and a condom, says the part of his brain thinking in verbal symbols.
“Come on,” Molly says, and pats the plastic bottle against his hip. “Get him ready.”
Adam grabs the bottle and fumbles it open, gripping too hard. Lubricant splashes across his hand.
Molly opens the condom, wraps her arms around him; one small hand covers the jagged scar on Adam’s stomach, the other settling the condom on the tip of his cock.
Adam works a finger into Henry, Henry bearing down in an instant with a strangled grunt, and pushes the lubricant and another finger into him, breathing through the tempting press of Henry’s body around his fingers, and the cool slippery tease of Molly’s fingers rolling the condom onto him.
“Any… further objections?” he grits out.
“No,” she says. She gives his cock a quick, expert squeeze, running once down the length of it and smoothing the condom, and lets him go. She shifts her weight behind him, hands resting on his hips. She presses into him, lining them up together; he can feel her hard nipples and soft breasts, her belly and the scrape of her pubic hair as she slides her body down until her hips are nestled against his ass, grinding gently through his boxers.
Henry wriggles, the way his muscles clench and release around Adam’s fingers making Adam’s breath catch, and nestles his generous ass against Adam’s hips, shifting his legs until he’s comfortably wrapped around both Adam and Molly.
“Good boy,” Molly says, that warm pleasure she gives to Henry, and Adam sees the well-trained pride in Henry’s smile. “We’re doing this together,” she tells Adam, teeth closing briefly on his shoulder. “You’re my cock, do you understand? You move how I tell you, you fuck when I tell you, you don’t stop unless I tell you. I’m fucking him with my cock.”
So that’s how they’re playing it. Molly’s never shown any hesitation in pressing their bodies into her own service, and she does love to turn her boys into her sex toys.
He’d be more amused at the thought if Henry wasn’t still flexing around his fingers, already so hot, slick with lube, starting to grumble; if his own heart wasn’t racing, his vision narrowing down to his fingers in Henry, to Molly’s words and the selfish, self-satisfied place she’s put him in.
“You’re going to tell me how he good he takes it and how he feels,” Molly says, and Henry whines, twisting his hips in a sharp, fast circle.
“Please, Molly,” he says, his voice strained. Adam crooks his fingers and gets a rewarding yelp.
“Mm, please, sweetheart?” Molly says, and slips one hand from Adam’s hip to his forearm. She grips his wrist, guides his hand, spreading her fingers deliberately. He echoes her movement, and Henry hums happily, humping up. “How is that?”
“Good, Molly,” Henry says, immediately, pure adoration in his voice. He’s so well trained.
She moves Adam’s fingers again, twists them until Henry’s whining, a steady stream of noise that wavers between complaint and pleasure, wriggling and driving himself down against Adam’s hand.
Molly pulls his hand away, pushes it down to Henry’s hips, her other coming around to grasp Adam’s cock. “Here we are,” she says soothingly, as Henry lifts his hips off the bed, holds tighter with his legs.
“Hold him open for me,” she tells Adam, and nips at the soft skin where his neck meets his shoulders. “We have to get my cock in him.”
Henry groans, hitching himself up, spreading himself as best he can. He is sweet in this state, Adam thinks, selfish but giving, and then Molly’s pressing her hips hard into him, driving him forward, and his cock bounces and slides along Henry’s ass.
“He’s ready for us,” she says. “Show him how good we can make this for him, get me in him.”
It takes more concentration than Adam would like, to line himself up, his movements irrationally sluggish, his cock strangely foreign. How quickly she got in his head.
“He feels so good,” Molly coos in his ear. “Me pressed against him like that, my big cock against his little hole, he’s so eager, waiting for me to fuck him-- get ready, sweetheart,” she says, more loudly, more sweetly, and thrusts hard against Adam.
He jerks forward, echoing her movement-- they groan together when he catches at the rim of Henry’s entrance, Molly’s fingers slipping between them, guiding him in, and he presses inexorably into Henry’s body.
Henry arches up, jerking them closer to him with his thighs, pulling Adam sharp and fast into himself. He hums happily, pleased with himself, and Adam can't help the little gasp he gives, the sudden absurdity of being pressed tight between his man and his man's mistress, his own breathing shaky with restraint.
“Ooh, he’s so good,” Molly says, starting into a steady, rocking rhythm, driving her hips up against him, driving him into Henry, rolling them back. “Tell me how good he is, tell me how he feels around my cock.”
“He’s-- good,” Adam manages, then glares, jerks his head to clear it. Henry smirks at him. It’s absurdly charming, smug and proud on his arousal-stupid face. “And he knows it, the bastard.”
Molly jerks their hips forward hard, lifting Henry’s ass off the bed with a grunt.
It does feel good-- it always feels so good, it’s more than fucking, more than sex. It’s Henry. It’s having someone else, someone as eternal as he is, someone when the centuries have built up into stones again, into ruins, into madness. It’s Henry’s gentle heart and sharpened kindness, how he gives and gives and fears and fears.
Molly shifts, rising up on her knees, and he follows without realising, shifting their angle so he grabs Henry by his ass, drives down hard enough to make Henry shudder, his eyes close.
She pushes them harder, faster, panting along with him, sweat slicking up between them. “Harder, fuck him harder, make him scream for me, Adam. Fuck him open with my dick.”
Adam feels his surroundings pulling away-- the present seems so tenuous, he wants to crawl into Henry and never return, something like fear leeching into his arousal.
Sharp pain brings him back to the bed, back to Henry; four points of pressure dig into his thigh, Molly’s nails a gasp away from breaking skin.
“Stay with me,” she murmurs, and moves her hips against his, steadying his rhythm. Henry has his head thrown back, is oblivious, but Molly is with him, Molly anchors him to the bed. Her right hand slips out of his boxers, but he can still feel the marks she’s left.
There’s no trace of that edge when she takes his hand and wraps it around Henry’s cock, and they milk him together in time with the kisses she presses to Adam’s feverish neck.
“How does he feel?”
“Hot,” Adam rasps. “Infinitely tight and deep. He wants this, I feel his muscles driving him up into me, he’s pulling me into him.”
“Oh yes,” she purrs. “He loves this, doesn’t he? What does his face look like.”
“He’s abandoned. Blind with pleasure. He’s not even listening to us, he has no idea I’m talking about him. I could devour him.”
Teeth sink into his neck and his hips move without his own volition, snapping forward into Henry.
“How close are we?”
“I’m not ready,” he growls.
“No. We’re close. He’s too good,” she purrs, and her left hand moves off of his hip and cups his balls, knuckles rubbing along the base of him, an edge of pressure between him and Henry at the bottom of every stroke.
Henry whines and grinds into the pressure, hips making a circle, and Adam’s control cracks open and falls away in pieces. He stutters and thrusts into Henry, into Molly’s clever hands, his energy pours out of him and he bows over Henry, gasping.
Henry slurs out a wordless plea-- Molly works Adam’s limp hand over his erection, and Adam’s vision almost goes white with the pressure on his own oversensitized cock. Henry’s muscles are gripping at him, greedy, trying to keep him inside.
“Shh,” Molly says, one hand soft again, sliding up to his belly, pulling him back and out of Henry, one hand firm around Adam’s, pulling Henry to his own crisis.
“Shh, there’s my boys.” She drags Adam’s fingers through Henry’s semen, draws his hand to his lips. Adam sucks at it, sullenly pulling something of Henry into him, and then pitches slowly forward to lie across his fellow immortal.
A chuckle; Molly’s hands are at his shoulders, turning him, and he has no strength to resist. He’s lost in the warm viscous darkness behind his own eyes. He loses track of things; he feels the slide of cold cloth and thinks he’s being helped out of his stained boxers, only to realize he’s naked and Molly is wiping him down. The bed shifts, and a hard surface-- Henry’s elbow? settles against his arm.
He thrashes up out of the afterglow like a man escaping in a mire, and finally, victoriously cracks one eye open.
Molly has Henry’s head in her lap, stroking his hair; it’s her knee Adam can feel against his arm. There’s a faint tension around her eyes, a certain smile that Adam has come to recognize. She hasn’t found satisfaction this morning.
She’s a mess of red ink; all of them are, smears of pink across their skin and the bedding.
Henry stirs, dark eyes blinking open. “Molly, darling, what can I do for you?”
“I’m fine,” she says firmly, and kisses his head. “I’m going to take a shower.” He lifts his head, and she scoots out from under him, settling him back down.
“May I--”
“No.” She taps his nose. “You may not. Get some rest, my perfect boy. Clean up the papers for me when you wake up.”
“Yes, miss,” he sighs, and snuggles deeper into the blanket, eyes drooping shut again.
Molly throws her housecoat over her arm, scrubs her face-- she leaves a smear of pink-red ink from her forehead to chin, the colour collecting in her crow’s feet like a veil of red lace.
“More corrections for us, after your shower?” Adam asks drowsily.
“No,” she sighs. “More neurology reading for me. I’m still so far behind you when it comes to the neuroscience of trauma.”
“We have time.”
Her eyes close, the red veil falling. “I’d just like to make some headway on our research.”
“As you like.” He leans back into the warm bed beside Henry, throwing a forearm over his eyes. As much as he appreciates their shared mission to understand the psychology and function of the standard immortal, it can wait until his legs are working.
He inhales their mixed scents and lets a stupor fall over him. Henry’s hand finds his hip and holds him in the bed. He hears the plumbing rattle and the shower start, far away.
He tells himself he’ll wait just until Molly’s out of the shower.
He wakes up because the light has changed angle and found its way into his eyes. His face is hot, his wrist still over one eye.
Henry has rolled onto his stomach, flung his entire arm over Adam, and his beautiful elbow is digging into Adam’s stomach. Adam grins; it pulls at his sleep-dry lips.
“Up you go, Morgan.”
“Mn.”
He sits up, to Henry's sleepy complaint, leans his back against the headboard before the unusual quality of the stickiness reminds him that there's more than sweat on him. It's a little shock of memory, a small thing with a weight to it, and he suddenly wants to see what remains of the writing and illumination.
The geometric doodles and flourishes on Henry's back have been smeared, fingerprints and fresh scratches disrupting the neat lines of ink. Adam sweeps the sheet down, surveys his ass.
Henry sighs, and pushes his hips back against Adam's hand, and another wave of unreality strikes him, the firm warmth of Henry's backside like a dream.
It is still barely legible, Molly's claim on him, but Adam's counterclaim cuts a swathe through it, the sweep and squeeze of his fingers captured in red ink and red marks on the skin.
Adam pulls the sheet back into place, gives Henry's backside a fond, parting caress, and slowly clambers out of the bed. It sucks at him, the soft mattress, the heat and the sheets smeared with red.
Instead he makes his way to the shower. He pauses, glancing in the mirror, seeing more of his own back-- the much-smeared words, made unreadable by sweat and small handprints. Molly will have left hot water, but he grips the cold tap and twists it to full blast. The showerhead spits once, impotently, before it it builds pressure, and he has a second to inhale before the cold spray hits at full force.
He turns under the spray, exposing his back and chest to the stinging cold, tipping his head under to let it soak down to his scalp. He shudders involuntarily and sucks in another breath.
The ink on his back dilutes to a bare blush before it washes down to the white tile; innocuous and nothing like blood. He turns his back to the spray again and watches the little pink ribbons of it drip down his sides and legs and run in pastel streaks to the drain, dissolving into nothing before they reach it.
The shower is cluttered with the three of them, neat as Henry makes it; Adam contributes as little to the mess as he can, using Henry and Molly's more complicated washes and hair products defiantly, but all he's ever bought for himself is bar soap and a rag.
He reaches for those now, scrubbing at himself, and the scent of honey reminds him that this is compromised, too-- it started as a small gift, this little luxury, intolerably Brooklyn hipster local goat’s milk and upstate honey and small-batch manufacture, and he never stopped Henry from providing it and never replaced it with something simpler.
He scrubs his face harshly, scouring away the sweat and sleep, trying to scour away the memory of the morning or at least take the edge off of its softness.
His life has been cold water and ashes more than it's been anything like this, and this century is barely a blip in human history, this life that is the whole of reality to nineteen million New Yorkers is as transient and collapsible as every other empire that has ever been. One morning weighs itself against a hundred thousand that came before it and a hundred thousand before that and before that and his connection to the warm bodies that he woke up with shatters like a soap bubble.
The rag falls by his feet and he braces his hands against the wall, breathing deeply.
He counts breaths, fast and ragged, scrubs his toes against the tile grout and inhales convulsively through his nose, grounding himself in clean water, the lingering scent of Henry's bodywash and Molly's shampoo. He knows this house, and he connects it to the apartments and hotel rooms before it, slowly and painstakingly re-connects the threads of himself to the life before.
His count slows with his breaths.
He's better at this than he was a century ago, when fresh raw nightmares shattered his composure and he lost the knack of living with eternity all over again. He's better off than he was a few decades ago, at that.
Henry feels this way too, at times. Less than he will, someday, but it catches him off guard in quiet hours. Somehow, though, it's Molly-- finite, mortal Molly Dawes, who really understands Adam’s occasional break from history. They've talked about this, about his memory and his periods of dissociation.
Her matter of fact acknowledgment of his pain is sometimes a greater relief than anything.
It passes, finally, and he unsteadily stoops for the washrag and finishes scrubbing down. His skin has gone numb; the cold water no longer burns.
He feels worn down but stable, stepping out; he scrubs at himself with a towel, skin prickling. He twists his back to the mirror again; the red designs have faded and pitted into almost nothing, not even the suggestion of words left.
Henry is fully asleep in the master bedroom; Adam dresses in the guest room. The room is for guests in name only, these last few years-- his clothes hang in the closet and sit in the drawers. Still, the illusion that it would be easy to cut ties, that he’s only borrowing space, is sometimes comforting.
He strolls out into the den, and Molly looks up from the corner work desk. Her eyes fix on him, and he realizes suddenly that he’s rubbing his shoulder, fingertips scrubbing aimlessly across the shoulder blade as if chasing a phantom itch. She closes what she's working on, a tell of her own-- something's troubling her. He could make use of that, try to pry his way in and put her off her balance but it feels... pointless. He'd much rather banter than really fight.
She's put on flawless makeup but she still isn't fully dressed; she's wearing her housecoat over jeans that she could wear outside in a pinch and a faded t-shirt that she never would. She is, she always is, perfection.
"How are you feeling?" She asks blandly, and Adam hides a smile. They both live comfortably in their public masks, even in private places.
What lurks under the surface of her today? Mild concern, at most. Perhaps-- probably-- affection.
He tips his own polite mask, gives her a flash of teeth and cynicism older than her language, and her eyes crinkle briefly in return.
He doesn't need her help today, as he's needed it so often before. He's well-anchored and at ease.
Still. Still, sparring with her, jousting for reaction with her as if they were still really trying to gain advantage over one another is a comforting exercise. It's no different than calling his room the guest room, five years in. It's not the kind of play Henry prefers-- oh, Henry likes his games as straight-forward as he is, simple pain and simple pleasure, obedience with only the most token resistance, adoration without disguise.
He’d never understand. This quiet contest of wills is how Adam and Molly relate to one another.
"Oh, I'm fine," he says, sweetly, and she lifts a perfectly shaped brow.
"Anything you want to talk about?" Her opening gambit, like clockwork. After all, she is a counselor.
"Nothing comes to mind. I hope you appreciated the significance of this morning's exercise."
And there's the other eyebrow. "Does sex have to be significant?"
"Sex? Not at all. Marking, now, that's psychologically significant. Your little dominance display." He doesn't mean it. He would have, a decade ago. A decade ago he'd have been trying to wound.
"I'd have used something a little more permanent than red pen if I were really trying to define my territory," Molly notes. She doesn't say that she has. She doesn't mention the pretty chain Henry wears so proudly around his neck.
"Marking pen is as permanent as anything else," he sneers. "No brand or scar would last much longer. Not with he and I."
"And does that bother you?" she counters, crossing her leg, swiveling the desk chair away from the desk to face him with her whole body.
"Why should it? I'm used to it. Even if I wanted you to leave your mark on me I know it isn't possible. Scars fade. No matter what you do to me, no matter how you train me, civilize me, it always fades." He turns away, paces the room leisurely, picks up a knick-knack from the bookshelf by the sofa and makes a show of examining it.
"The memories are clear, but... take my Welsh shepherd. His name was Cearl. Kind, devoted creature. Oh, he had bad breath... shared the odd social disease with me... but he was guileless and good in bed. I left him a newlywed to visit Constantinople and by the time I wound my way back he had grown children and his face was a pile of wrinkles. Still he welcomed me. Laughed with me."
Adam pauses, his tone so delicately proper as he adds: "I seduced his eldest son, of course. Because he was beautiful and because I could-- easily, he was no more of an effort than his father." He tips a glance over his shoulder and sees the curl of exasperated smile that Molly doesn't quite hide in time. He hasn't quite given up trying to shock her, but he's certainly learned that most normal taboos won't do it.
"One night, when we were drunk, I told Cearl what I'd done. He howled with laughter, said I ought to be passed down along with the rest of the farm, to son after son, and be useful. We laughed ourselves sick. Very literally; the wine was strong and not good. His wife was less amused; threw us out into the pens to sleep it off with the sheep, and we giggled like idiots under the stars. I remember... that I was happy." He puts down the curio he's been staring past, and spreads his hands.
"Maybe I should have stayed. My life might have been made of more sheep and fewer tears. But I left, and it's... gone. I remember it so clearly, the wheeze in his laugh and the twist in my guts from sour wine, the stink of sheep and sheep shit and bog, the stars in the sky. There's nothing of the happiness left. I look back and I feel... nothing. I remember that I was happy the way you remember the capitals of states you’ve never visited, a fact without meaning. Nothing stays. Someday nothing will remain of this morning for me, only images and and sounds and meaningless words that washed away within the hour.”
When he turns back to her he cuts himself off dead. She's crying.
He's seen her cry before; that's not alarming. To live with her and be accepted by her is to see her when she gives her emotions free reign. It is to know that a bad day can leave her face twisted and her eyes glassy with tears and that a competently executed period romance can make her weep outright.
But she doesn't cry for Adam. Not even this silent grieving, her jaw set and bottom lip trembling, silent as the tears spill over her cheeks. Not for Adam and especially not for a dry old bone of contention like this one.
It's part of their arrangement; he offers no excuses and she offers no pity. He rages and she cuts him down and refuses him the catharsis of violence. He bares his open wounds and she judges him heartlessly.
These are the rules. This is their unwritten compact, and she would no more lightly break these rules than she would murder someone.
Something is wrong. Something has gone very wrong, and he doesn’t understand-- the idiot, why didn’t she say something?
"What?" he barks.
She shakes her head quickly, and it's so obviously an effort to look him in the eye that the muscles in her neck should be cording and twisting with the strain.
"You stupid woman--" he strides to her side and crouches by her, gripping the arm of her desk chair. "Why didn't you say something?"
"I'm sorry, Adam," she says, and her voice is low and rough.
"Idiot," he snarls. "You should have said something before it got this far. You would have my skin if I went past my own limits like this, how dare you-" he cuts off with a hiss, forcing a breath out between his teeth.
Her lips twist down helplessly and she barely nods. He feels his own mouth pull down in tandem. It’s not like her to agree with him without a fight.
"What's wrong?" he murmurs. The first sharp shock of concern has faded, leaving him worried but no longer quite panicking.
"Henry's not going to be able to handle this."
Adam's brow furrows. "He's entirely aware of my lack of connection to my emotions. Do you mean the incest-? Maybe you’re right, he is such a civilized boy and a loving father--"
"No. The experience," Molly whispers. "Your lack of mirroring, if it's what we think, a reaction to your abnormally good memory-- to having constantly enforced synaptic connections when you die--"
Adam catches up with her immediately. "Then it will inevitably happen to Henry."
"It makes as much sense as any explanation," she says, hand flicking meanfully toward her closed laptop. "More, taking into account some of the latest studies of brain activities in trauma patients from war zones. The brain can't keep every emotional trigger forever, and eventually it forces emotional dissonance-"
"But that might not hold true for us. For me, yes, but Henry started life as a much more social creature."
"Is that any better?" she asks quietly. "He's going to live forever. If his brain can't turn off pysiological triggers associated with stressful memories-- happy memories, anything-- someday he'll be so overwhelmed by sensory input he won't be able to function. What kind of choice is that?"
Adam sighs; oh, he understands now, and this must have been the shadow that's dogged her this morning, that hesitation he saw. He hadn't realized. "I used to imagine the day it would happen to him. I used to fantasize about his reaction when he understood how heartless he'd become. I haven't thought about that in years."
Molly laughs softly, unhappily. "I should be happy that you haven't. It's amazing progress. You’ve come a long way."
"Never mind. You’re thinking about it now." His mind leaps forward across the research they've shared and the connections they've made and he finds himself contemplating the same possibility that she is. It's no longer satisfying to think of Henry losing that innocent spark of his. In fact, it's a bit appalling.
"It's roughly chronological. Roughly," Adam mutters, thinking out loud. "Not from the time of the experience but from the last memory-- I forgot friendship before my parents. Because the suffering of my parents' people went on for centuries, it kept the memories raw and alive, but-- the names of fellow Legionaries, generals I was fond of, they lost their spark quickly. A few hundred years? If that? I don't remember when I realized it was happening. I celebrated it, my distance from humanity."
"Henry won't," Molly sighs.
"It will break his heart," Adam agrees. "It will start with small things, with friends from his life before death, but one day he'll realize he can't recall the precise blend of betrayal and love he felt for Nora or the grief he felt for his father. He'll remember the moments to the last detail, but--"
"But he won't feel anything. And he won't react well. He's so scared of losing his connection to his past already. And I'm afraid he'll blame himself," Molly whispers.
Adam reaches out, carefully brushing two new teartracks off of her cheeks.
"In my fantasies, when I didn't know him, it would be-- a joining of us against the world. He would feel as if he was going mad and then we would be the only two sane people. But that's ridiculous, that's not Henry." He knows Henry much, much better now than he did then.
Then, all he had was a construction, an ideal that Adam built out of scraps of information and his own fury and desire and hate, and Henry the man is nothing like what Adam wanted him (believed him, desired him, demanded him) to be.
"He'll grieve," Molly says.
"And possibly turn to drink again." Or worse. He might hurt himself more directly. Mourn. Feel like a monster. Do his best to act like a monster for a decade or so, and it's not an impressive best but he'd hate himself anyway for it.
"I won't be there to help him," Molly says as if she's choking on it. "I won't be able to help." He recognizes the expression on her face-- he’s seen it on his own. The inescapable future is closing in and not even death can spare Henry and him from day following day following day. She feels the full measure of her helplessness.
He’s never seen her quite like this and he’s still a bit furious that she let herself get hurt this way, but it isn’t her fault. She couldn’t have known which way the dialogue would twist, they’ve talked about everything in their time. She must have thought she was ready to handle him and he struck at this new, raw nerve-- and she’s crying.
Poor stupid brave woman, she’s worked so hard to understand the horrors of immortality and now they haunt her, too, he’d never have wished that on her, not really. Some day it will mean nothing but now, in this present, it cuts him to the bone to see her broken open this way.
It frightens him how much it hurts.
"That isn't your fault," Adam murmurs, wrapping his arms around her, resting his forehead against hers. "It isn't your fault."
She shakes her head against his, and his arms heave softly with the motion of her shoulders.
"Sssh, Molly."
"I thought I'd have time," she whispers, and ice shoots through his veins.
"Are you--" Sick. Ill. She can't be. She's not even fifty five, she has decades left, the world can't take her away from him. Merciful god she can't die before Abraham that wouldn't be fair, and it isn't as if he's ready to let the old man go either-- let alone Henry’s feelings, Henry’s feelings can fuck off, this is about Adam, he’s not ready to lose her.
"No." She pats clumsily at his shoulder, and she's never clumsy. He catches her hand and squeezes it, dropping back to his haunches so that he's looking up at her. She shakes her head. "No, I'm sorry--"
"You don't apologise to me, don't. It's all right."
"I've just started to feel. Old. I was younger when we started, I thought I could-- I don't know what I thought I could do. It's catching up to me. I won't be there."
He can't not see it before his mind's eye, the way the smeared ink had feathered into the soft wrinkles of her skin, the brilliance of the silver strands overwhelming the gold in morning sunshine. Henry finds it beautiful. Adam finds it impressive. But they can't change what it means.
"Molly," he says, and it feels like it echoes in the hollow of his chest. "Come on. Let's sit on the couch. Can I get you some wine?"
She shakes her head again, sniffling lightly, but then says: "Yes. Maybe. Tea?"
"Tea." He stands and helps her from her chair, too aware to be objective, catching himself wondering if he's imagining that she stands more carefully than she used to, if she's much lighter, frailer than she was when he took her hand and helped her resentfully out of an inflatable chair in a student counseling office twenty years ago.
He leads her to the couch, habit more than will keeping his face impassive and his hands steady. He settles her down, strokes her shoulders, kisses her forehead, and reaches out without looking to grab a box of tissues and sit them in her lap.
She blows her nose delicately-- habit more than willpower.
They have that in common, something that neither of them shares with Henry. They make their masks part of them, not a gladiator's armor but a tortoise's shell, a comfortable weight grown into their skin. His chest pulls tight with it, at how much she is a part of him too.
There is a name for what she is to him. He shies away from it.
"I'll be back soon," he promises, leaves her with a last firm squeeze on her shoulder and walks through the storm of his thoughts into the kitchen.
The kitchen is all golden calm-- Henry's domain more than Molly's or Adam's, and in fact Henry's actually pried himself out of bed and gotten dressed and is sitting at the white-paneled island delicately eating toast and going over the day's newspaper.
He looks up, positively glowing with all his innocence and good intentions, and his face softens when he sees Adam's expression.
"What's wrong?"
"Molly's having a rough morning." Adam puts out a hand, palm out, when Henry immediately puts down his paper. "Give her some time. I'm making her some tea."
"All right." He frowns, his brow heavy with worry. “The water should still be hot.”
Adam shifts past him to check the kettle-- not quite hot, so he flips the switch to set it heating again.
Henry stands, moving to the door to peer out, and Adam can feel his mood shift-- can’t identify exactly what shift in body language signals it but knows that Henry is furious even before he turns back, scowling.
“What have you done?” Henry whispers, furious.
“Nothing that wouldn’t have happened by itself in the long run. It’s a rough morning, leave it.”
“Good God.” Henry stalks toward him with all the grace and subtlety of an angry peacock. “You’d rather cut your own neck than have one day of unadulterated happiness, wouldn’t you? And you’ll be damned before you let me have one.”
The clumsy shot still hits home; Henry has that ability. Adam rolls his eyes. “This has vanishingly little to do with you. Leave it.”
“What did you say to her?”
“Nothing important. I mean that; an anecdote from my life before that would have shocked your sensibilities but not hers. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“Didn’t you?”
“No!”
“Then what happened?” Henry demands, and oh the accusation in his voice is grating.
“She feels old, Henry, and she knows better than you do what it’s going to mean to you and that hurts her,” Adam snaps. “You should have let her tell you in her own time.”
“She’s only fifty-five,” Henry says, rocking back on his heels, surprised.
“And? Is there a legal age at which she’s allowed to feel her mortality? I know you can’t see it. You’re blind to the age of the people you love, but she sees herself clearly and it’s hurting her.”
“But you must be delighted,” Henry returns coldly, curiously. “Have you ever felt anything towards her but impatience? Let alone the gratitude and respect--”
Of course not, he should be able to say. He's past that. This should be an unpleasant reminder to Henry that Adam still has teeth. And here he finds himself, gummy as an old man. It makes him irritable.
“Henry, don’t lecture me on my feelings. Not this morning.”
“What did you say to her? Did you gloat?”
“Don’t be an idiot!” he snaps as if it isn't a perfectly reasonable thing to assume.
“I’ve been a fool. You must be so pleased-!” Henry throws up his hands. “Sed fugit interea, fugit inreparabile tempus--”
“No Virgil, Henry. You know how I feel about Virgil.”
“Oh, do pardon me for violating old formalities when you have plans to make. I’m sure the decades until the death of the woman I love will simply fly by--”
Something inside him twangs. Adam feels a roar start in his throat and is just barely able to modulate it down to an angry whisper, isn’t able at all to keep from grabbing Henry by the front of his clean white shirt.
“This has nothing, nothing to do with you and your relationship with her. Do you understand? This is between me and her, as hard as it may be to realize that the two of us have a life outside of you. Never suggest again that I’m waiting out her death. Never.”
“So you do feel something,” Henry mocks, ignoring the grip that wrinkles his shirt.
“The last time I felt quite this invested in someone’s survival I was in the tenth legion,” Adam snaps, and there’s a moment of silence in which the reality of it hits him in the ribs like a ram.
It’s true, isn’t it. He’s loved in the centuries since his death, but always at a distance, and this isn’t--
Molly is closer to him than--
He lets Henry go, dusting off his hands with bad grace.
“I’m going to make her some tea,” he says, regathering his composure. He turns deliberately away, turns off the bubbling kettle, goes to the cupboard for Molly’s favored blend.
“I’ll be in the study,” Henry says. He pauses at the doorway, speaks to Adam’s back: “And you’re wrong. I do understand that she’s getting older. I’m painfully aware of how little time we might have left.” A beat. “After all. Abigail was only sixty-five.”
If there were a door in the hallway entrance he’d have slammed it, Adam thinks dully, and leans on the counter. There's a pounding in his ears.
He remembers Abigail with perfect clarity-- ‘Sylvia Blake’, as she’d styled herself at the time. Their meeting was… brief. Violent. She’d meant nothing to him except a link to another immortal, a woman who stood between him and his goal. Her defiance had enraged him, her death had been a setback.
She had some superficial similarities to Molly-- blond, smaller framed. She had a similar strength of will. But they’re hardly identical, they’d be difficult to confuse even at a distance--
That isn’t stopping the sudden flood of feeling, the memory of Abigail suddenly awash with new emotion, a sense of fear that sends him reeling and spikes the adrenaline in his blood all over again.
Henry isn’t him. Henry isn’t the man he imagined him to be. Henry would never--
It doesn’t stop the panic, the sudden irrational conviction that in ten years something will take Molly from him as violently as he took Abigail from Henry. He leans on the counter, hands over his face, and his lungs heave, and Henry really should feel accomplished because it’s been decades since he’s had two panic attacks in the same day let alone in as many hours.
He appreciates the irony, he tells himself, although he doesn’t, he can’t.
He will appreciate the irony, later, that it’s his own crime coming back to haunt him this way.
He doesn’t know when, to the moment, Abigail decided protecting Henry from him was worth her life. He could guess-- he knows what he said, knows how he sounded, possessive and unrepentantly sociopathic. He didn’t care at the time.
He cares now. It hurts now. The memory had nothing attached to it and now it’s full of his fear and the understanding of what the woman meant to Henry and what they were together and all that he took from them.
This is when he ought to cut ties, free himself with blood, but the impulse is barely there and it dissolves in the golden sunshine through the window. It’s too late to protect himself now.
All he can do is protect them.
The kettle has boiled itself down to half a scalding cup when he gets himself back together again; he dilutes it with tepid water and sinks a bag of Molly’s preferred brew into the mug, letting it steep brown, then taking out the bag and adulterating it with the monstrous amount of sugar she likes.
After a moment’s thought, he adds a shot of apple brandy, taking a swig for himself before replacing the bottle.
The living room is cool and surprisingly dark with the curtains closed, after adjusting to the sun in the kitchen; Molly looks up, as if surprised to see him back. She’s curled herself into the corner of the couch, knees tucked up under her, eyes dry.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, and offers her the tea. “I got caught up with something.”
Her lips part to say ‘I’m fine’ and he shakes her head, inclining his head toward the wastebin under the end table. He can’t actually see the details clearly, but he knows what he’d find, a tissue smeared black and gold with the aftermath of Molly’s expert makeup repair.
“Is everything all right?” she asks instead.
He settles beside her, lifting a brow. “You’re asking me that.”
“Of course.”
“Mm.” It’s not actually a surprise. It just… drives a point home to him. “I have a new research direction.”
“Oh?” she sits up attentively, utterly poised. She looks as if she’s in need of no comfort; she looks as if she’s in no pain.
Adam’s heart goes out to her-- it feels very literal, as if the fibers in his chest are straining towards her.
“And we’re talking about it later.” He pats her knee softly. “Drink your tea. I’ve spiked it.”
“Going to take advantage of me?” she chuckles, and he sees her peering out from behind her perfect mask.
“When do I do anything else?”
Molly blows on her tea and takes a sip, humming a little as she tastes the brandy in the back of her throat.
“This is exactly what I needed.”
“I’d hoped,” he says simply, and reaches out to rub her neck.
She sighs, and stretches outside of her perfectly presentable self a little more, eyes drooping in fatigue, mouth twisting into something unbeautiful. He squeezes under the nape of her neck, fingers digging into the tight muscle, and releases, and repeats, and some of the pain in her eyes is because of the massage and most of it is because the morning hasn’t left her.
“What happened? I heard you and Henry talking.”
“We… disagreed about something.” He pauses, rubbing her neck in silence for a few beats. “I’m not being intentionally euphemistic, but it’s the best description of the situation. He doesn’t trust my intentions.”
“Should he?”
“Surprisingly, yes.” He rubs fingertips and thumb down her neck-- still full of tension knots but not completely a slab of rock any more. “I’m as appalled as you are, I’m sure.”
“Very disappointing,” she agrees, amusement concealing her confusion almost perfectly. She takes another deep drink of tea.
He squeezes her shoulder, once, and then sets his hands in his lap, shifting over against the opposite arm of the couch to give her space. They’re almost symmetrical, knees thrown toward the center of the couch, spines curved lazily, elbows propped, only his feet are on the floor and hers are tucked under her dressing gown.
“I’d prefer it if what happened this morning didn’t happen again,” he says.
She gives him a skeptical look. “I can’t guarantee that.”
“Neither can I. But the both of us can do better with one another.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” There’s just a tiny, controlled thread of irritation in her voice. She thinks-- because she has every reason to believe it-- that he’s attacking her at her weakest point. She thinks-- because she’s very observant-- that he’s angry at her failure to be invulnerable.
That is entirely the kind of unreasonable bastard he is. She knows it.
But not for her. She hasn’t realized that yet. Adam doesn’t blame her. He only noticed it himself this morning. If he could work up a proper spite, he could blame her for not being psychic, but alas, no.
“I need to respect your limits. You… well. I’d say you need to trust me but we both know that you have good reasons not to. So perhaps you’re right; it’s nothing you can do. I need to be trustworthy.”
“That’s not something I’ve ever asked of you. For Henry, yes, but--”
“But. This isn’t about Henry.” He drums his fingers on his thigh, once. “And that’s something we haven’t discussed, have we. It’s always been about him. What I had to do to appease you to get to him. What you had to do to protect me from him. What I had to promise to touch him, how in control of myself I had to be before you’d let me. He’s the lens we see each other through.”
“That’s true.” Where are you going with this? she means.
He wishes he’d made himself a cup of tea. He’s almost as active a hand-talker as Henry when not actively restraining himself and he’s beating a tattoo on his thigh as he works to verbalize the understanding that took him.
“We cast each other quickly in conflicting rolls, didn’t we? You were the gatekeeper that barred me from the man I wanted. The doctor who treated me when my mind twisted against me. I was the patient, traumatized, in denial; I was the wolf at the gate.
“And Henry was the focus. You took me on as a patient because of him. I shared a bed with you because of him. You held me when I wept, so that I could heal for him. I accompanied you out so that I could be near him. We went out together, you and I, judged films, ate dinner, sat and watched the world together, sat like this through late nights, and we did it because of him.”
“Well, when you put it that way, it almost sounds unhealthy,” Molly deadpans.
“Henry’s… a beautiful, gentle man,” Adam says, allowing the understatement only because they both know better and he doesn’t have to explain. “But I think he’s less fundamental to us than we’ve made him.”
"So where do think we stand? Without Henry." She's wary.
He slouches a bit more into the arm of the sofa, allows himself to be not just harmless but graceless in her sight.
“It’s been at least a decade since I would have been willing to give up your company, whether Henry was involved or not. Well, give or take; obviously I wasn’t examining my own motives very deeply.”
Her eyes have widened just a little. He looks at her and lets the affection well up unchecked. She’s brilliant and she knows that he’s brilliant and the one thing he can really surprise her with is admitting he’s been an idiot.
“You’re the best friend I have, Molly. One of the best I’ve ever had. You have been for a very long time. I don’t expect to have been yours; our positions were extremely different, but I thought you should know… my intentions.”
She considers this for a while. She stretches her legs out a bit, arches her spine, and when the stretch is finished her feet are still precariously near his knees.
“As your therapist, of course, I’m thrilled.”
“And as the woman who has to live with me?”
She smiles over, eyes crinkling. Her face is all but unmasked; she is tired, she is still weepy, she is irritated at him for his dramatics, she is not entirely comfortable in her current position, she is mortal, she bares it to him and it is unutterably intimate.
She pokes his thigh with her foot; he catches it gently and gives it a little shake.
She sits up, pulls her leg back toward her and extends her hand; he gives up his grip on her ankle to take it, hold it for a second. It’s like a compact between them, their own compact.
“As the woman who has to live with you, I appreciate the point you’re making about respecting my space, but get back over here. My neck still hurts.”
“High maintenance,” he tuts, and scoots over to her, settling both hands on the back of her neck. She leans into him
“What’s going to change?” she asks.
“Very little, I think. I vent my spleen less often. You exercise the right to call me an asshole more often.”
“Adam, you’re an asshole all the time. That’s a lot to ask of me.”
He snorts, and kisses the back of her neck. “I mean that want you to stop putting your own needs last with me. That’s an agreement you’ve made with Henry, not me. I don’t wish to be your subject.”
“Mm. So the sadomasochistic scenes stop?”
“I didn’t say that. Unless you were only comfortable hurting me in a therapeutic capacity, in which case I have to admit that I’ve been enjoying our sessions more than benefitting from them for some time.”
“Scenes, not lifestyle,” she summarizes. “I enjoy hurting you, too.”
“Excellent.” He tucks his thumb into a ball of tension and pushes. She grunts, and leans back into the pressure.
“Ooh. That’s good, thank you, an inch lower? Right there. Do you still want to do Folsom?”
“Did you really buy the dog harness with the ‘warning, I bite’ label?’”
“The box is still under my bed. And the muzzle is in my toy chest.”
“Well, we can’t let that go to waste, can we.”
“We should talk about limits again. What you’re comfortable with in bed-- our personal dynamic. We never had that conversation, really. It was all about--”
“Henry. Yes.” He sets the balls of his hands against the inner edge of her shoulder blades and pushes. “We will. Not today.”
She melts back against him. “...it was a rough morning.”
“Yes.” He inhales, lets her feel it against her back. “I know the burden you’re under very well. I don’t want you to carry it alone any more.”
“I don’t think I have been.”
They’ve held each other this way before, they’ve been this close; it feels new, without the shroud of Adam’s pre-conceptions. At the same time, it feels comfortable and practiced, as if they’ve always been this way.
He loves her; he faces that, blazes a light into the dark corner of himself and burns the monstrous shadows back into solid objects. He may be furious with himself but it's better to know the the truth of things.
She reaches up to her shoulder, finds his hand still resting there, and links her fingers through his.
“I don’t think I could have done this without you. Even at the beginning you were-- something to do, a tangible problem that I could deal with,” she says. “And our research gave me something to hope for, and you’ve been there when it was -- so hard.”
“I hope that I can be more than a counter-irritant.”
“I think you have been. For a while. I wasn’t examining my motivations too closely either, I guess. I didn’t want to think I’d gotten attached. That would be stupid of me. You’re a murderer, an expert at emotional manipulation, I'd have to be so gullible to think…”
He nods, because she’s not wrong. But:
“I won’t use your lapse of judgment against you if you won’t take advantage of mine.”
“Deal,” she says.
He shifts her a little more comfortably into his arms, finding a better angle for his back against the sofa cushions. “I need to tell you. I… had an interesting experience this morning. It’s not the first time, but I’ve never put it into context before. I think there may be a way to associate new emotional triggers with old experiences. We should study this, it might pave the way to coping with lost emotional connections.”
“Did something happen-?”
“Later. Details later. Because it’s been--”
“--a rough morning,” she finishes. “...all right.”
He smiles ruefully at her tight, resigned tone. "It’s almost physically painful not to slip into your role as a therapist right now, isn’t it.”
“Mm-hmm,” she confirms, nodding tightly. “Was this your plan all along? Death by frustration? Devious.”
“Next, world domination.” He kisses her knuckles. “I am sorry that I hurt you, Molly. You... I would not see harmed.”
“Best friends forever?” she teases gently.
“Confidants. Partners sitting in judgment on the world.”
“Biffles,” she says, with an admirably serious tone.
“Exactly,” he replies in kind, and she cannot see his eyes crease.
“I forgive you, by the way.” She nods. “I really shouldn’t trust you, but I do. I forgive you.” She leans her head back, nestling it against his collarbone.
They’re still lounging like that, both too tired to get up and do anything productive, when the kitchen door cracks and Henry’s shadow spills out onto them.
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes, sweetheart.” Molly’s tone is warm-- she sits up slowly and smiles, gentle and all-knowing. She expands for Henry, grows in some intangible way.
“I’ve made coffee. Would you like some?”
“In a second,” Molly says. “How are you doing, Henry?”
It isn’t a question that can be deferred, and he bows his head. “I was angry, earlier. It’s passed. I’m still rather worried about you.”
She nods. “Is it something we need to talk about now?”
“No, Molly.”
“We will, though. This evening after dinner.”
“Yes, Molly.” It is an instant, instinctive obedience, because Henry trusts her completely and in return she gives him no less than complete trustworthiness. Adam could never give him that, isn't sure he wants it, is glad to leave this to Molly.
Once, hadn't he thought he wanted all of Henry?
Once, hadn't he thought she could never own any of him?
Ah, well.
“Good boy. Take my empty mug and go get me some coffee.”
“Yes, Molly,” Henry says, eyes dark and adoring.
“If you’re offering in general, I could use some,” Adam drawls.
“I’ll think about it,” Henry returns, arching a brow at him; his submission is entirely limited to Molly. There is a contented hum inside Adam where the jealousy should be.
“Don’t do me any favors,” Adam calls after him as he retreats to the kitchen again.
“Are you two going to be all right?” Molly asks.
Adam nods. “I think so. And we three?”
“I think we’re going to be just fine.”
Henry returns with the coffee, two black mugs in one hand and Molly’s ‘#1 Professor’ mug in the other, the scent wafting ahead of him as he makes his careful way across the carpet. He sets one of the black mugs next to the foot of the couch, pushes the other one at Adam.
Adam takes it, but Henry doesn’t release the cup immediately, pulling Adam forward as he leans in.
“There are things for which I cannot forgive you,” he murmurs into Adam’s ear. “That doesn’t mean I wish them on you.” Not quite an apology but closer than it should be, given the circumstances.
Adam shakes his head lightly; if they start down this road of penance he has a much longer way to go than Henry does. It will take a long, long time to balance the scales of their history. “I know you don’t,” he mutters back. “You’re too forgiving.”
“Yes, I rather think I am,” Henry says, and kisses his cheek with a crisp formality that parches his skin. Henry’s weaponized kindness does frighten him at times, but it is right, it is how they are, and it is-- sustainable.
Henry leaves him with his coffee, and goes to his knees in front of the couch, offering the last mug to Molly with a bowed head. She strokes his head before taking it.
“Thank you, sweetheart.”
Henry smiles down at the carpet, eyes lowered demurely, content.
Adam cannot imagine being content on his knees for long. He does believe that Henry is happy, that the ritual provides him some necessary thing. Molly's face is beatific; this is as necessary to her. Adam may not be entirely at peace with it but it, too, it like Henry's affection with its sometimes-edge, is good. This house is good. This companionship is... essential.
This is not his prison. It is his fortress.
Adam stands up carefully, leaving his friend in communion with their man. He finds himself by the window, a hand on the curtain-- the fabric is warm with the sunlight beating against it.
He throws the curtains open, and lets the sunlight in.