Chapter Text
It took a while, afterwards, for them to come back to themselves. To remember which body was which.
They hadn’t known it would take them like that, when she had her hands on them.
They had touched her before that night, touched her with most of their hands before. She’d let their hands brush when she passed them a carton of Chinese takeout; she’d bumped her shoulders against theirs walking down the hall. She’d hit them (mostly playing). She had hugged them.
And they had done the same to her. They had touched her plenty.
But they had never touched her like that before. Had never touched the scars inside her thighs before, never pulled down the straps of her dress, never had her lips pressing against theirs, hard and urgent, like she needed to touch them like they needed to touch her, like she was running out of time.
Maybe that was why they hadn’t known it would be like that. Like all the walls in their mind were coming down at once. Like her hands were in all of them, loving all of them. Like she was a bolt of lightning, striking their four bodies in a single instant.
They were holding her to them on the chaise in the coat room. Heads pressed together. Laughing into each others’ mouths. Hands on her back, rubbing the skin there. They could just barely feel the beginnings of the scar on her ribs from the fire at Glengrove; her dress was bunched up around her waist and covering most of it but the edge was exposed and they were brushing it with their smallest finger.
“People will be wanting their coats,” she breathed.
“Well, they can just fuck off, then, can’t they?”
There, that was went they meant, about not being able to tell the bodies apart. That was a Teddy sentence, obviously, or maybe Alex could get away with it if they’d said it with less of a growl. Sounded all wrong in Robert’s accent.
(The teachers used to make them practice that, at Glengrove, would reprimand them when they got it wrong. “Now, Gestalt, is that an Eliza sentence or is it an Alex sentence?” Would make them say it over again in the proper voice until it sounded right. Humiliating. But it had to be done, for the compartmentalization to work.)
Myfanwy didn’t seem to notice, just laughed more. Pressed kisses to their cheek, their jaw, under their ear. “We should really—” she said, “we should—”
“Okay,” they said, and kissed her again.
It wasn’t as though they weren’t aware of what the rest of them was doing. Teddy was leaning on the other side of the coat room door and glaring at anyone who looked at all as though they planned to pick up their coat and leave the party, and Eliza was sitting on the stairs with their ankles crossed primly, doing their apologetic smile as Teddy redirected traffic. People were grumbling but they weren’t that pissed; they all thought it must be an agency emergency if Gestalt was involved.
And anyway, people liked it when women were apologetic and Eliza was good at it. They just had to keep that body sitting down, because Gestalt was not entirely certain Eliza’s legs would hold them up if they needed to move.
Alex’s wouldn’t, they’d figured that one out pretty much as soon as they got Robert’s hand up Myfanwy’s dress. That’s why they’d had Alex sit down at a table with their phone in front of them and pretend to be reading something important.
Anyway. The point was that they were fully aware of all of that. So it wasn’t as though they had forgotten how to function.
It was just that the boundaries were blurrier than they were used to.
Myfanwy was ending the kiss now, pulling away from their hands, pulling her own hands out of their hair, working the straps of her dress back up her shoulders. They let their hands fall to their sides, obedient.
“Okay,” she breathed, and stood up.
They felt it at once. The doubt creeping in, cold and damp, now that Myfanwy wasn’t blazing hot in their arms and burning everything else away.
She went to the mirror, straightened her dress, fiddled with her hair. Her legs didn’t seem to be that stable either. That was something.
She hadn’t really said what it meant, why she was doing it. She’d said, “It’s always been you, Gestalt,” but that didn’t necessarily mean — what they wanted it to mean.
Maybe it just meant that she was drunk. Maybe it meant she’d gotten carried away in the moment and hadn’t meant to say or do anything and just wanted to stay friends, only things would be unbearably awkward now, and they’d just spoiled the most important relationship in their life for a quick shag in a coat cupboard. Maybe it meant she’d been secretly pining away for them for years and now she was going to let them bring her to their flat and keep her in their bed where they could keep touching her and watching her and always know that she’d be safe.
“I’ll go out now,” Myfanwy said. “Why don’t you wait five minutes before you go out too?”
That ruled out option three, anyway.
“Sure,” they said. “Need a mo to recover anyway.”
She blushed prettily at that. Averted her eyes and ended up looking at the lights instead. “Shit,” she said, “we’re lucky I didn’t break these.”
The lights had only stopped flashing … two minutes ago? Time was fuzzy too. It had been after she’d come down a bit, after they’d pulled out, after they’d cradled her against them and petted her hair for awhile.
They liked it, the idea that they affected her that way. Like they broke down the walls in her mind the way she broke down the walls in theirs.
Anyway the lights had probably helped sell the emergency idea.
“Is that a challenge?” they said, because they couldn’t help it, and she laughed and rolled her eyes at them and opened the door.
On the other side of the door they took her hand in Teddy’s, barely touching her and only long enough to help her over the threshold. It still went right through all of them again. The lightning bolt of her.
Myfanwy scoffed as though they were being ridiculous, but from where Eliza was sitting on the stairs they had a clear view of her face and it had gone soft. She let her fingers linger against their hand.
“Whatever happens next,” she said, “I want you to know that I don’t regret this.” She put her hand on Teddy’s cheek. They felt all four of their mouths open as they breathed in sharp. “I don’t regret you, Gestalt,” she said, looking them right in the eye.
They wanted to say they didn’t regret it either. They wanted to tell her they would never regret anything they did with her. They wanted to kiss her again. They put their hand over hers on their face.
And then Myfanwy pulled her hand away. She turned and faced Eliza on the stairs and smiled slow and sweet. Like she could see all of them. Even without touching them. Like they mattered to her.
Then she was out of the door of the hallway, into the party. Leaving them to work out how to move their limbs and build their walls back up again. On their own.