fen (cutslike) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2018-06-17 19:14:00 |
|
|||
PART ONE: A talk. Fen wasn’t sure why she always expected the worst. Perhaps because, as much as she wanted to hope, every small victory and step upward usually came with a sweeping downside afterward. She was somewhere that seemed slightly more stable than Fillory, had a place to stay, was reunited with Eliot and Margo, and now had what she needed to create a true Fillorian forge and show her worth as a blademaker. It wasn’t perfect, and she wanted it to be enough. But the strange writings the demon made available made it clear that even this might not last. Fen didn’t precisely disbelieve Eliot when he said he needed her. She just assumed it was dramatics he was prone toward. She wanted to be needed, but she saw what he already had and, looking around the cottage, it was hard not to think he would be fine without her. She sat downstairs in the common room, waiting for him. He hadn't immediately moved from his bedroom to find his wife. After writing that declaration, knowing full well of how it could be interpreted, he'd remained sitting on the edge of his bed for a few more moments. Hands had moved to push back curls that had fallen down along his brow and he'd held them there as he recollected the entire conversation of which he'd just had against conversations over the past few weeks. In the grand scheme of things, Fen hadn't been in his company here in Tumbleweed for long, but it had been awhile. And it was quite evident now that he'd not done very well at demonstrating how glad he was to have her in his company. Sighing, he'd pushed himself up from the bed and made his way downstairs. Cursory glances were made as he passed doors along the hall. The last he'd known, they were fairly alone in the house. That was never a guarantee. People could come in at any moment and might have done so while he was wrapped up in the network, trying to quell the damage that Michael was trying to cause. Emerging from the stairs, he spotted Fen in the main sitting room. While he needed to make his feelings clear, he'd stumbled into another topic that was now going to have to be handled in the same discussion. She didn't know about his time in Fillory's past. He didn't know if he'd just been unable to tell her or if he'd opted not to. Quentin and him hadn't told Margo back home, this much he knew, so it was possible that he'd chosen the same in relation to Fen. But he didn't want secrets with her. He just didn't know if this truth was going to do more harm than good. Moving towards her, he took a seat across from her and clasped his hands between his legs. "I don't want to compare you with Kylo or Kylo with you," he began, eyes upon her, "Just as I don't want to compare either of you with Margo or Quentin." Fen frowned but thought as he did not see herself comparing at all that this was probably a good thing. Instead she said, “I love you, Eliot. And I know you love me as family. I did not mean to make feel badly about that.” Fen released her breath slowly so it would not come out as a sigh. “What is it that you wanted to tell me?” She looked tired. Whatever new revelation he had to tell her, she wasn’t sure she wanted it entirely, but what good could she be as family if she did not at a minimum listen to him. He took in a breath and bowed his head, eyes looking upon his hands. "You are my family," he said, quietly, before allowing himself to tilt his head and gaze back up on her. "We didn't have it easy and we both know that there weren't feelings involved when we got pushed into this. But that doesn't mean there aren't now." There was a time when his desire to have her here was solely because she was family. He didn't know her well and he'd felt obligation more than anything else. But that was a long time ago and there'd been the day when he'd been flooded with memories, including her, and everything changed. "Okay," he began, "Does the mosaic mean anything to you?" He knew it was important in the novels but he wasn't sure if it was something the Fillorians knew well. He'd not known about it when Quentin had first brought it up but he hadn't been raised in Fillory. “It was a puzzle of some sort? Solved before my time,” Fen said quietly. She hadn’t responded to his line about feelings. Mostly because she thought she knew what he meant by feelings. He gave a nod. That was the essence of it. "Quentin and I solved it," he responded, matching her volume. It might not get across what had brought up this entire conversation, of how Quentin meant more to him than she perhaps believed, but it would at least make it understood that Eliot had experienced a time prior to their own. “Like how Quentin and Julia made a deal with my grandfather? Using magic to go into the past?” Fen asked. The concept wasn’t entirely foreign to her. The Watcher Woman had time magic as well. "Not quite the same, but we went to the past," he agreed as he shifted, sitting back with his back pressed to the couch cushion. He crossed his leg over his other one. "We went through the Chatwin's clock and arrived decades before the Chatwin's would," he explained, but knew that wasn't the most important part. "We were stuck there, Fen." Fen looked predictably confused. “But you found a way back. You’re here now.” "We didn't find a way back," he said, frown setting in, before shaking his head. "We lived there our whole lives. After Quentin found the key, he had to give it away and so he wrote a letter to be delivered to Margo years and years later, telling her who she needed to see to get it. Margo did that, and she stopped us from ever going, and that is why I'm here now. Margo stopped it from happening but it did happen, too. I remember all of it." “You and Quentin…” Fen restated slowly to make sure she understood. “...were trapped in the past…. And you died?” Her face fell as she let that information sink in. “Away from everyone else?” He nodded his head in response but he didn't look necessarily saddened about the information. It hadn't been a bad life, after all. It had been a very good one. "We kept trying to solve the puzzle and get back but in order to solve it, we had to depict the beauty of all life. Vague, I know." A pause."And we did that by having a life." Fen wiped under her eyes. She didn’t understand how Eliot could be so calm. It seemed unfair. To make him go through living some complete other life and then come back to this one. It struck her as unfair to ask of a person. “But you’re okay now?” she asked. The question gave him pause. He had been content in knowing that he had lived a full life and had been happy, even if he had died before the quest was complete. It had been his lifelong goal and they'd been loyal to the end. He never abandoned the mosaic or the potential of bringing magic back to all worlds, even if he had accepted that he was going to give everything he had to the goal. When he had the memories of that alternate life thrust upon him in Fillory, unable to shake from his subconscious even if he had been stopped from ever going through the clock, he had been overwhelmed and unable to form commentary with Quentin on the subject. But he knew that he pressed forward back home. Perhaps he and Quentin would have a life together one day. Perhaps it would include Fen. He wanted it to include Fen. But here? Here he had been granted those memories against the memories of Tumbleweed and the love for Kylo. And he had made a choice. But was he okay? Sucking in a breath, he just nodded some, "Yes." He looked at her, watching for a few more moments, before saying, "So, yes, I do love you in a way like I love Quentin." Fen frowned. Possibly because she was worried that, yet again, Eliot wasn’t telling her everything and that in some way he was still not okay. She didn’t push, the decision settling like a small lead ball of guilt in the pit of her stomach. “Okay. Can you tell me what that means?” she asked gently. Rather than assume it meant Eliot had been trapped living a life he hadn’t wanted to with a person that wasn’t his first preference, Fen wanted to hear what that meant to him. He wasn’t with Quentin, after all. She needed to hear it from him so she could reconcile her own feelings. “I guess it would help me if I knew where I fit in with you. What you want me to be to you.” "As a spouse," he replied just as gently. It was a statement that came both as a confession but also as an explanation. He'd never married Quentin but they'd been dedicated to one another. He was his partner for an entire life. And Fen's words had been that perhaps he felt for her the way he did Quentin. It wasn't the same feelings, because his feelings were different for everyone he cared deeply about, but they bore from a similar beginning. “I don’t feel like your spouse,” Fen confessed. She’d spent so long avoiding this topic of conversation, but Eliot’s answers had a way of clarifying and confusing her at the same time. Quentin didn’t look like much of a spouse to Eliot, either. “I feel more like an ex-wife you’re on very good terms with while you date Ren. And I like Ren, I don’t want you to stop being with him. I just don’t feel like someone you want to be with…” She paused, adding, “As husband and wife. Doing things husbands and wives do.” She did not bring up how long it had been since they had been together. That subject lead to bringing up some of the more painful parts of their past. “I’m not sure if I should have said anything.” Mostly because she had been avoiding the possibility of direct rejection. Fen frowned. He didn't display any visible shift in emotion with her confession. If he was honest with himself, this was what he'd suspected for awhile, but there'd been difficulty in trying to have this conversation with her. The last time he'd considered trying, he'd faltered, and they'd not gotten any further; even though he'd come to realizing that they'd had misunderstandings. He'd been giving her distance out of misunderstanding but even once it was revealed, he'd not tried to bridge any further connection, because he had faltered. He pulled in a breath and shifted, pushing himself from the couch and moving towards her to take a seat by her side, with his body turned in her direction. "No," he said in response to the final statement, shaking his head. "I've been wanting you to say something," he stated. He wanted a better understanding of what was going on and in waiting for it, he'd kept some distance, even once he suspected he perhaps shouldn't. He took in a breath, "When I was gone, I told myself if I ever got back home, I was going to do better for you and Fray. And then I began to realize I might not ever get home, and I focused on my life there with Quentin, but you were there in my mind. I thought about you. I worried," he sighed before admitting, "And I know I've not been doing better since you've got here." He reached out and took hold of her hand, holding it in his. "I've not meant to make you feel unwanted." He knew in Fillory that he'd given this impression but that wasn't his intent here. Fen gave his hand a squeeze, but she felt her courage to ask for what she wanted begin to wither once again. “I feel wanted as a friend, or as someone to help watch over Fray with,” she said, though she wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a consolation to him or herself. He returned the squeeze, his thumb moving against her upturned hand, before nodding. He could see how that was the way she felt. He shifted and leaned in towards her with slow and cautious movements before pressing his lips against her shoulder and whispering, "I want you to feel like my wife." Fen shivered slightly with his touch. Her expression softened, any tension in her body slowly started to melt away before it ratcheted back up tight and she shifted away from his affections. “I don’t want to hurt Ren,” she blurted. There were three long seconds of confused helplessness on her face before she blurted, “I miss you. I miss being with you. But I feel like this also isn’t just about you and me anymore. He’s apart of this, too, and maybe we should involve him.” Fen paused. “I didn’t mean--” like that, “I mean--” although Fen had an interested thought telegraphed across her face that she quickly shoved into the back of her mind, “I just mean a conversation. Between the three of us.” His eyes had lifted with the shiver and he was gazing upon her, feeling as though he could feel the stillness around then, but then she'd blurted out the words. He lifted his head and stared at her, blinking a few times. He went to say something but then she was continuing and his mouth gaped open with the final words of her statement. Involve him. He pulled back some, though his gaze didn't leave her, and his mind was already rushing to the first few nights he'd spent as her husband. He thought of how he'd wanted to have the company of others, even if he couldn't indulge along with that company, and how it had been off putting for Fen. And now she was suggesting including Kylo? Well, that he wasn't against. Oh. He quickly cleared his throat and glanced away from her, as a hand moved to rub at the back of his neck, while he sucked in another breath. "Okay," he said, the word being drawn out and long and seeming as though he was trying to process it at all. Turning to look at her, again, he shook his head, "It's never been about just me and him, either." He paused himself for a moment. "Is that what you really want to do?" “Do?” Fen asked. She blinked herself. “Talk, I mean talk. Yes. I just think the three of us should be on the same page and honest with one another about what we want.” She exhaled and managed to pull her thoughts together. “I know I’m your wife, but I don’t want it to feel like… You’re being unfaithful to him with me. And I know I just said I wanted to be wanted as your wife and now… I just want to know both of you are okay with that.” He raised a partial eyebrow as she repeated the word as a question before clarifying that they needed to talk. He was certain his imagination was getting the better of him. She was emphasizing the importance of talking between the three of them. It was no different than what they'd have done back home with his other engagement. "If that'll make you feel better, we can do that. He and I always try to communicate and I think it would be good for all three of us to do as well." Fen smiled with relief, and leaned in and kissed him chastely on the lips. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted more and, it means a lot to me that you do. For now, it’s enough. We can talk to Ren and see what we decide from there.” There was a split second where she felt dishonest again, hiding the fact that in her timeline he’d offered her a divorce. But it wasn’t like hiding that she’d been a FU Fighter, or that royalty of Fillory often took both a husband and a wife. What would telling him that accomplish? If he didn’t feel that way now, maybe he wouldn’t if he remembered. Fen did not entertain the possibility of what might happen if that was not the case. |
PART TWO: It'd been decided that they were going to talk to Kylo. He'd agreed to Fen's request and told her that they'd have a discussion once Kylo was home. After that, the two had parted for the immediate time, with Eliot going upstairs. Once he was upstairs, he sent a message off to Kylo, asking if he minded having a conversation with him and Fen once he was home. Following that initial message, he proceeded to answer any questions that his lover sent his way, and waited for him to get home. Hearing the door open, he'd moved out of the bedroom and moved further down the hall to see the entranceway, checking to see if it had been Kylo or one of the other residents. Upon seeing Kylo shutting the door, Eliot turned and moved back towards his bedroom, stopping at the door beside his to rap his knuckles against the frame, letting Fen know Kylo was home. And then he moved into an adjacent room that no one occupied at present. It'd been cleared of all bedroom furniture awhile back and instead had an older couch and a few arm chairs. He dropped down in one of them and waited. When Kylo followed Eliot into the room it was with three coffees in one of the carry-out containers from the Espresso Pump. He handed one over to Eliot - his favorite, and took his own, leaving one on one of the empty chairs for Fen when she joined them. Strictly speaking that hadn't been necessary, but he suspected, knowing what he knew about the topic of this conversation that he'd do better with something in his hand. He took a sip, glanced over at Eliot and gave him a quiet smile. "If the coffee is wrong, then I didn't make it," he smirked softly. "If it's right, then I did make it, and you're welcome." Fen could not say why, exactly, she had used the time after her conversation with Eliot to: Style her hair. Put on some makeup. Pick out something nice to wear. At the time it just seemed, given the importance of the conversation, and out of respect for Ren, to make herself as presentable as possible. It wasn’t as if this were a date. Nothing silly like that. She just… wanted to look nice. When she heard the knock at her room, Fen perked up and joined Eliot and Ren, spotting the open chair and the third coffee and smiling cheerfully as she took it and sat down. Cheerful was probably not the right mood for this talk, but she couldn’t help but feel strangely happy, even as she tried to clear her throat and put on a more serious demeanor. Rather than be the first one to speak she took a well timed sip from her coffee mug, with a soft noise of approval. Eliot reached out to take hold of his coffee cup with a look of gratitude. "If it's wrong, I question how they managed to accomplish that," he said, returning the smirk as he lifted the cup to his lips to take a sip. He gave a nod of satisfaction and was just lowering his cup when Fen walked through the door. There was a look of light surprise when he spotted her. He had been with her just a little while before and she hadn't looked that way. The look of surprise, however, turned into a smile to show he'd noticed. Then he took in a breath, figuring he might as well be the one to get the conversation started. "Okay," he began, "There've been a lot of conversations I've had with either of you in the past, about what we want from one another, but we've not really had a chance to sit down together as the three of us and have a joint conversation." He paused. This was pretty much what he'd given Kylo a heads up over a text message about. This wasn't really new information for either of them. "It'd be good for everyone's comfort if we are honest among ourselves." He hoped this wouldn't be a problem and doubted it would. As he spoke, he was glancing at them both. Kylo's gaze had shifted to Fen when she walked in and he had noted the hair, the outfit, the all of the effort, and as he glanced back down at the coffee cup in front of him and took a sip of said coffee cup, he couldn't help but think that however awkward the situation was, it could be a good deal worse. Fen didn't seem to hate him, or begrudge him, or even wish him away, and she could have so easily. Kylo wasn't certain if their situations had been reversed for some reason that he could have been so generous, but as Eliot spoke, he put the coffee down on his knee and he looked up, attentive to the words. Not that he knew exactly what to say in the conversation or how to begin it. Knowing the topic, didn't mean he knew exactly what context it had come up in, and his cheeks flushed slightly despite himself. Having had it with Eliot was not the same as having it with Fen, who frankly, had rather outdone herself to look attractive. They were all connected together, and somehow they seemed to keep managing it, but that didn't mean Kylo had any idea what to say, so for now he just nodded, and then frowned slightly. "What we want? Or what we expect? Or both?" “Both,” Fen agreed. She smiled gently at Ren, her expression slightly hopeful. “But, I’m more interested in what you want. As for expectations, I suppose right now my only expectation is that we talk. That’s all.” She hoped that reassured him a little, or if nothing else, encouraged him to be more open. “Maybe Eliot should start?” Fen offered. “With what he wants?” It might have been unfair to offer Eliot to go first but it was partially to take the pressure off Ren who was much more shy. And well, Eliot usually didn’t have a problem saying what he wanted. Eliot's eyes flicked to Fen as she spoke. There'd been plenty of conversations prior to Fen's arrival between Eliot and Kylo about how they would handle his marriage if it ever became relevant in Tumbleweed; both before his memories had been upgraded and after. His stance had changed with those memories but he'd always gotten the impression that Kylo's hadn't. With his memories, he was open to the idea of intimacy with Fen, perhaps even more so than he had ever been in Fillory. He knew Fen wanted that intimacy. It was clear to him before that evening but he'd not been proactive on moving forward. And he knew Fen didn't want to hurt Kylo. In turn, he knew Kylo had considered Fen's feelings time and time again, even when Eliot himself wasn't. And what did he want? He'd told Fen that afternoon he wanted her to feel like his wife again. He didn't like knowing she felt unwanted or cast aside, when he'd been largely holding off on most affection out of concern for her and knowing what she'd been through. And partially out of uncertainty, too, if he was being honest with himself. He wasn't being terribly attentive. Ultimately, he wanted everyone to be content and happy and not feel neglected. "I want both of you two to be happy," he offered up, because it was the easiest statement. "And I don't want either of you feeling neglected or uncared for by me." Kylo's attention held on Eliot for a moment, the conversation not a particularly surprising one for him, because it rang true to what he knew of El. Fen's arrival had been a relief in many ways, but it had also brought some complications, namely, it was no longer just Eliot and Kylo, something they'd both been reasonably content with. But he'd also known it was a possibility one way or another that wouldn't last forever, and Fen had been the person he'd known was most likely to disrupt it. And he'd been afraid, perhaps, if he were honest with himself, that he'd be jealous, or made discontent by her arrival, but however awkward it had been at times, and it had at times been very awkward, he hadn't really felt discontent. Kylo looked over to her, eyes taking in the woman who was Eliot's wife, and therefore he was inevitably connected to because of that. He'd come to think of her as determination and brightness, and right now, perhaps both of those felt most like hope maybe? It was a feeling Kylo had been lacking any deep acquaintance with until he'd met Eliot, and perhaps it was his turn to speak. He moistened his lips. "I told Eliot a long time before you arrived, that if you should ever be here, that I would respect the relationship that you and he have. He has a beautiful wife, and -" he faltered slightly, the words to really speak about a physical relationship seeming to run away from him. His cheeks felt flushed as he continued: "As much as I love him, I don't wish to in any way discourage him from … being with you if that's something the two of you want." Fen nodded, watching Ren intently when he spoke. Her fingers traced the edges of the paper coffee cup in her hand as she tried to gather her thoughts. “I do,” she admitted. “But not at the expense of your happiness. You have been nothing but gracious and kind to me since I first arrived here, and I know you’re important to Eliot and how much he loves you. I just… as much as I would like to be with my husband again, I don’t know if I could if I knew it would hurt you.” She took a sip from her coffee to give her a moment between speaking. “As much as I would like to…” Fen lost her nerve to speak plainly halfway into that sentence, “be with him again, that hasn’t really ever been the basis of our marriage either.” She took a deep breath as if to draw up a little courage, “I would rather remain celibate than hurt you. And I would not hold it against you if you wanted things to continue more or less as they have been.” Fen looked to Eliot for his thoughts. He'd shifted, moving to cross his leg over his knee, and putting the bottom of the paper cup on the arm of the chair he was sitting in, holding it from the top with his palm pressed against the lip of the lid. He was listening very intently as his lover spoke about the conversations that had been had about his wife over their course of their courtship. His eyes flicked to Kylo and he tried to read his expressions as he spoke. He knew that Kylo had wanted to be enough for Eliot but that he was prepared to share his affection when it came to Fen. They'd just not been at a stage where it had been relevant until these recent weeks. And Eliot was well aware that just because something had been said previously didn't mean it would hold true. He watched carefully to try and make sure he was picking up on anything that went unspoken. And as Fen spoke up, his gaze moved back to her. There was a frown that formed with her reference to the state of their marriage in Fillory. His elbow propped against his leg and he brought his hand up to rest against his face. "I'm not comfortable with you being celibate in our marriage," he spoke up, letting his hand drop as he leaned back against the chair. He'd have been more comfortable with her either taking a lover or accepting a divorce over the idea of her being celibate while he was not. It seemed wrong. But he knew she didn't like either of those options. "I'm not comfortable with that celibacy being because of me," Kylo echoed almost as soon as Eliot's words left his mouth. "Not when -" he stopped, realizing that what he had been about to say might be more tangled than the word suggested. He'd been going to say not when he'd known up front that Eliot was married and that his wife might show up someday, and that even if he wasn't primarily attracted to women, physicality was an aspect of marriage - typically. And that was true, but there was maybe more to that. His brows pulled together, and he glanced back at Fen for a moment. He wasn't certain what he'd anticipated from Fen. Nothing Eliot had told him had really ever given him a real understanding of what she would be like, and having met her face to face, and having spoken with her, there was more than just the specific respectfulness towards the marriage. "I just mean that you should be loved and wanted. It's clear to me that you're very deserving of that." Fen smiled, grateful, and nodded with them. “I don’t want or expect Eliot to start sleeping in my room now. And, I hope that if either one of you is uncomfortable or upset about something that we can talk about this again, among the three of us. I sort of--” Fen frowned, because this was harder to talk about, still, even though they all seemed to relatively be on the same page. Maybe. Fen still worried about Ren. “--I feel like the intruder, and I don’t want to be. Even if you and I aren’t in a relationship, Ren, I mean we sort of are now through Eliot. I just… You matter to me, is all I’m trying to say.” "Eliot could magic the bed bigger and we could put him in the middle," Kylo quipped, lifting the coffee to his mouth as he did so. It was mostly a joke, an attempt, perhaps a bad one, to ease some of the formality between the three of them. Not that it was necessarily bad, and maybe it was a natural outcome of the situation they found themselves in, but Kylo was more and more thinking maybe that formality wasn't necessary, exactly. He liked Fen, and they could talk about regular things all right, and he loved Eliot, and certainly had made his way through difficult conversations for him, and while pulling back into formality was a way of protecting himself, he couldn't help but think it might be getting in the way here. His gaze flickered to Fen's face, trying to read her for a moment. "I'm the intruder, if we want to be perfectly frank," he told her, but his gaze softened. "Your willingness to ... " he wasn't certain how to say what he was thinking and so he glanced back to Eliot. "El, you said you wanted both of us to be happy, but you didn't say what you want. If you could guarantee our happiness what would you want?" "The option of a California King is still on the table," he retorted to Kylo's comment, a warm smile tugging at the edges of his lips as he did so. Somehow, the quip made him feel better about the entire situation, because there was no doubt some awkwardness to the formality of it all. Of course, Eliot wasn't thrilled with either Fen or Kylo's stance on intrusion. Eliot had been thrust into Fen's life and they'd been trying to figure out what they were to one another for a very long time in Fillory, as well as now in Tumbleweed. And Kylo had been invited into Eliot's life with welcome arms. He loved them both in very different ways but the affection was still there for each, just as it was for Margo and Quentin in their own ways. There had been a trace of a frown when Fen had called herself an intruder and it had returned with Kylo's response. When the conversation came back to Eliot, with a direct question, he appeared momentarily off guard, as though he'd not expected to be addressed. "Both," escaped him before he'd a chance to think of a perhaps better structured response, since he'd been largely caught off guard. But then he shifted, looking at them head on. "I don't want either of you to feel like you are intruders. I want to get to a point where that feeling is gone," he then said, because it had been something he'd been keyed in on. He was aware it wasn't going to happen overnight but it was something he hoped for. "And I don't want either of you feeling as though the other is more importance. I want to commit myself to both of you." Fen blinked with surprise at the mention of a bigger bed, which turned into a blush by the time Eliot mentioned the california king still being an option. It wasn’t even the most important part of what they were talking about. Eliot’s pledge that he was committed to both of them was obviously the much more touching, important part of the conversation. It was just she was also fighting the mental image of both of them in the same bed with her. Rather than say anything, Fen nodded in agreement with Eliot, because he had been genuinely sweet, even if she didn’t quite feel that important yet. “We’ll get there,” she said. Ren's gaze stayed intently on Eliot for a moment, looking for anything he might not be strictly speaking saying, although truly, everything he had said fell so easily in line with what he'd been doing for the past few weeks, months, it wasn't a surprise, even if the words themselves hung: commit. Something Eliot had obviously done with Fen, if as part of an arrangement for his kingdom, but it felt as if it was something Kylo and Eliot hadn't said in so many words for them. He swallowed, his attention pulled back to Fen by her words, and that intense gaze shifted from Eliot to Fen, who seemed flushed. He moistened his lips, opening his mouth to speak but not certain exactly what to say as thoughts swirled around his mind. So he echoed Fen: "We will get there." The blush hadn't escaped Eliot's attention and his mind trekked back to earlier that afternoon when Fen had tripped up over her words. Fen had told him that she didn't want Kylo's feelings to be hurt and that he was apart of their relationship now and that they should involve him. Eliot, naturally, had been caught up by that word choice, with his mind trying to figure out if he'd misunderstood or if she was suggesting actually involving all three of them together at once. When she'd corrected herself and clarified a conversation, he decided that felt more in line with his memories of his wife, and his imagination had just gotten the better of him. But the blush made him think earlier to that. Maybe it was just the idea of sharing a bed was too much. Kylo turned his attention back to Eliot, and for several heartbeats that intense gaze was on his lover's face. This wasn't the sort of conversation he'd ever really imagined himself being a part of for any reason, but here he was. He took a sip of the coffee again, although it was largely a method of giving himself some space to think. And wish he'd asked more questions about Fillory's cultural nuance, although perhaps Eliot wouldn't have known how to answer that. Fen would. Likely. He met Eliot's eyes again and nodded back, a small smile on his lips. Eliot caught Kylo's gaze and held it for a moment, hoping that the very meaning of his word choice had been conveyed. He had made up his mind well before this conversation, months prior in fact, but he'd not wanted to state as much until he'd had a chance to have a conversation with Fen. He'd intended to speak privately to her about it but maybe this was better. All his cards, regardless, were on the table. He was committing himself to both individuals in this room. And to their chosen phrase repeated between both Fen and Kylo, Eliot nodded his head in agreement. |