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As overbearing as his parents are, Idoney knows Delacroix loves them. Why shouldn't she? The Sempills have never locked their son up in a hospital, or dictated his letters to him as he wrote. The first thing she ever received from them was a family heirloom. They find her odd, and she's confided to him in that she feels slightly shy of them sometimes, but they love her as their son's wife.
He has no such feeling for his wife's parents.
Idoney and Delacroix live in Fenburg, not two streets away from where he grew up. Admittedly, the two streets make a difference to the neighborhood and the neighbors they encounter, but it's exciting, it's closer to his parents, and her parents seldom deign to grace their home with their elite presence. His parents are used to making do by now, even as they climb back up the social ladder, and as they see the Delacroixes far more often than she does, they even assist to share what news is available.
There's still much to do with their new home, but what they have is quite in harmony.
Like a cat landing discordant on a piano being played, Max turns up at their door at a highly unsuitable hour.
(It isn't so unsuitable as it seems, but Delacroix prefers to wake late and Idoney doesn't mind sharing this inclination.)
"Good morning to the newlyweds," Max sings out when Idoney opens the door, almost slamming it. "Look, I've got croissants! What a fabulous bakery you've got." One eye is swollen, but he's grinning like nothing happened. He saunters in and Idoney smacks the door closed behind him, grunting. Max pivots to face him, raising one eyebrow and then wincing as it pulls at his eye. "Really, the way it smells! Right across the street I could smell it. Can't imagine why you wouldn't be excited to breakfast upon its wonders."
"Make coffee if you're going to be this annoying this early," Delacroix calls down the hall.
It's the tone of her voice rather than her words that cue him in finally to her mood and Idoney's hastily knotted dressing gown. Idoney's glower just serves to underline the point. (It's a good-looking glower, and Max files the thought away for examination when he's not in danger of a morning homicide.)
"All right, all right, back to bed with you," Max tells him, taking him by the shoulders and turning him round. Idoney offers no resistance as he's pushed towards his bedroom, only saying over his shoulder, "you can bring in that coffee to us when it's done."
"I won't knock!" Max yells as the door closes, and he can just about make out the familiar laughter of his long-time friend.
He's never really made coffee before, and the kitchen is full of the usual sparkling new household items that newlyweds attract like bees to honey. A good hunt through the cupboards turns up two different bags that certainly smell like coffee and look like coffee beans, a kettle, and the same kind of coffee press his sister uses, unassembled in its box.
Hm. It can't be that complicated.
It might be that complicated.
Delacroix turns up while he's tasting his third attempt, making a face at the weakness of the coffee. Waking up agrees with her: she's practically glowing.
"Good morning to you," she says, leaning over his shoulder. Max turns his head to grin at her, nudging her side with his elbow.
"Sounds like you had a better morning than me," he teases, and she flushes slightly darker at the implication, but grins back.
"Very good," she agrees, and squeezes his shoulder. "You're taking a while with the coffee."
In answer, he hands her the cup, and she looks down into the weakly brown water. After a moment's hesitation, she sips very cautiously, and wrinkles her nose.
Max nods at her reaction, and gestures magnificently at the mess on the counter. "You may have to get help sooner rather than later."
"Or I could go back to bed and you could continue trying." He turns and there she is, just a step away with the plate of croissants he's arranged so nicely. "Just come in when you're ready."
"Mighty inhospitable of you," Max complains, watching as she exits the kitchen. But he stays put and makes another attempt at coffee. After what feels like the eighth or ninth attempt, though, he gives up and finds a tray to try the freshest attempt on them. At least it's a hot drink.
They've polished off most of the plate, but thoughtfully they saved some for him, and make pleasantly disgusted faces on trying his coffee. Delacroix even moves over so he can cuddle up beside them, which is good, because he's had a rather long night.
This is the first of many hours spent in their bed.
Another night, months on, Delacroix wakes up because of a stray hand smacking her in the face.
She knows it's not Idoney because the hand doesn't smell like his beeswax, and also it's a little bit rougher. In fact, she has to sneeze at the smell and texture both.
There's a yelp in the dark that she knows as soon as the hand is snatched away. "Serves you right," she mutters as she sits up slightly to switch on her lamp. There in the middle of their huge bed is Max, as expected. Also as expected, Idoney is on the other side, still asleep and snoring softly.
"That's no way to treat a guest," Max says. He's attempted to tidy up for bed, which is likely why he's down to his underwear, but there's still a lingering odour of something on his hands. He wipes them on the sheets.
Delacroix avoids the obvious provocation in favour of pointing out the keys they gave him weeks ago. She'd been half-sure he might have lost them, in fact. Max looks abashed, but only for a moment.
"You haven't changed the locks, so I'm still welcome."
"We can't really call you a guest if you have keys, is what I meant." Delacroix shoves at him, halfhearted. Max falls back exaggeratedly onto Idoney, who wakes with a grunt. He makes to sit up and then doesn't, patting Max's stomach sleepily.
"I'm reconsidering a pet," he tells his wife with a yawn. "Or let's get something small. A rabbit'r something."
"But think of the warning system," Delacroix says, curling on her side to face them, lying across Max's thighs. It isn't the most comfortable position in the world, but they're all three squeezed together enough that it works, and this way Max gets the most of her bony hip, which is a good change from the elbows he always complains about. "We'd get much fewer surprise bedroom invasions."
"Like I won't figure a way around that," Max tells them, shifting to accommodate them both. "Good bit of meat, lots of scritches."
"We'll have to work on discipline," Idoney murmurs, already half-asleep again. "The one we've already got is terribly wild." Delacroix stifles a laugh at that, digging a knuckle against Max's arm to hush his protest.
"Shh," she whispers to her oldest friend. "You can wrangle over that in the morning."
As it happens, Idoney and Max don't argue over much. Sometimes, they even agree too much-- when it comes to Max's political activities, for example.
"The van Meyer boy is just getting wilder," Mother says abruptly one afternoon at tea, turning the conversation away from his work and their campaigning. Father doesn't look surprised, which Idoney suspects means they'd been planning to bring this up. He carefully sips his tea, letting the non sequitur hang in the air like a very awkward elephant chandelier.
"I've never thought he could. Get wilder, I mean," Idoney says, trying to sound neutral.
"One continues changing after school," Father observes, clearly trying to placate the early brewings of an argument. It doesn't work: Idoney's temperament comes from his mother, and when they clash, they clash badly. But the buildup takes a while.
"I've heard he's been attending meetings with Vasile's faction. Think of it! And rumours that he may be a speaker at a rally!" Mother sets her teacup down, rattling it. "Any excuse to make a fuss."
"He wouldn't be spouting empty nothings," Idoney says, his voice the kind of calm that precedes a storm. "No one would last long at that sort of gathering with nothing to say."
Mother snorts inelegantly. "Darling, that is impossibly naive. We know exactly how long someone can last in higher positions than that with a lack of intent disguised by pretty words! His sister could do well if she didn't have an albatross like him around her neck."
Father seems torn between laughter and dismay. "Eglantine, let's not have a formal debate about our boy's friend—"
"Don't be silly, my love," Mother says sweetly, looking her husband in the eye. It's more an apple-razor than poison-pill kind of sweet, and this afternoon's conversation is clearly going to stretch out over the next few weeks, without intervention. "I'm merely saying that the scrapes he gets into aren't the kind of matters we should be involved in. Always bandaged or bloodied, well, some do entertain that, but how he gets those, it could very well be more serious than slumming it in the brawling rings. Poor Janna, having him for a brother." Poor son of ours, she doesn't say, very loudly. Poor Patrice, our pretty daughter-in-law.
At this point, Idoney abandons all pretense of composure. The only affectation of calm is the gentle clack of his teacup on its saucer before he stands to leave. "It's lucky that Patrice isn't here, Mother. You know she enjoys your company. And I don't want to spoil that for her, so I shan't tell her about today."
And he keeps his word, but he does tell Max. Unluckily, or perhaps unwisely, he doesn't try to work out his temper before seeking Max out, and the venting Max persuades him to, impulsively righteous, could easily convince his mother of her correct opinion.
As it is, Delacroix isn't pleased with either of them when she arrives to take them home.
"I don't want to have to see both of you only in seances," she says crossly, getting the automobile into gear. Idoney has the grace to look ashamed, but Max grins at her in the mirror unrepentantly. It doesn't have quite the same effect as usual, given the bump just above his eye.
"We know the risks. We've talked all through the risks. We need to take risks to have any effect." He leans forward to brush his fingers along the corner of her jaw. "Think of it this way. I've spent lots of time thinking about ways to haunt you both. You'll love it when I'm gon— ow!"
"At this rate we're going out all together with one good swing of the wheel," Idoney tells him, catching his wife's eye and miming sympathy to her before she turns back to the road. "It's been exciting enough tonight, and I don't need more broken bones."
Max grumbles under his breath, but acquiesces, pulling an arm around Idoney very carefully. They shift against each other in the dark, finding the least aggravating posture for their bruises, and Delacroix watches them in the mirror when she can.
In their home, under full brightness of electric light, her husband and her best friend look worse than ever. Idoney's arm has been done up properly, and she dares say he'll look quite distinguished in a sling, all said, but the cut down his cheek and the bruises all up and down his side are appalling to behold. Max's wounds aren't much better.
She helps them tend to each other beyond the basic dressings the doctors at the hospital has provided. Idoney knows better which creams and ointments go where, and Max is a terrible patient, but beyond that she's the only one with the reach and the lack of pain to put these where they ought to be.
Max has that look in his eye when they're done that says he's still bursting with the need to do something, be somewhere, and almost simultaneously the husband and wife object out loud.
"Stay put, Max."
"Don't you move an inch!"
He tries to resist, but between Idoney leaning across him to stop him getting up and Delacroix leaping up to put his shoes pointedly away, there's really only aggravation of his bruises if he squirms. He struggles a little more, for the sake of it, then gives up, sagging dramatically over Idoney (being careful to avoid his arm). The other man bears up under his weight, patting him gingerly, and Delacroix comes back, and they get to bed.
Their bed is a little the worse for having to shuffle around to suit the two of them and their bumps and bruises, not to mention where the little bags of clove and wormwood have been turned out of their corners in her haste to dress and get to them. Max, with full use of his limbs, takes over Idoney's role in helping her replace them, while Idoney very, very carefully gets ready for bed onehandedly. He's a rather arresting sight when he returns from the washroom, shirtless and most of the pomade washed out, and Max hurriedly preoccupies himself with making sure the sheets are exactly straight and neat as Matron used to insist on, with Delacroix's charm bags tucked where they can't get loose so easily.
When he resurfaces, Delacroix has changed for bed as well. She's sat on the edge of the bed, Idoney behind her with his legs on either side of her, and he's brushing her hair. It's so sappily domestic that Max almost doesn't want to spoil it. But only almost.
"I can take over if that's too much for one hand," he offers, leaning against the bedpost, not quite ready to sit on the mattress itself. There's something uncomfortably intimate about this moment. He's been in their bed often— invaded it in the wee hours when they were already asleep, or bounded in to wake them up on a sunny morning. These hours are just as wee as the ones before, but the context is so changed that the fizziness of movement in his blood is less of doing and more of going. Or leaving. Yes, leaving.
"I'm not that vain, and it's not that difficult," Delacroix says drily, rubbing cream into her hands. Idoney winks at Max and then tugs a little hard, jerking her head. She winces and turns her head to pout at him.
"It might be a little difficult," he tells her cheerfully, and shifts over to make space for Max. It's a little awkward, one leg pulled up onto the bed, the other draping over her lap. Max joins them on Delacroix's other side, folding his legs under him, and wonders: is he intruding if he's invited?
Idoney starts humming as he goes about the room, turning down the lights, arranging things just so. Delacroix yawns, leaning against Max's warm shoulder, and Max manages not to flinch from the bruises. When he's done with her hair, he glances at Idoney, trying to communicate how he should probably help his wife under the covers while Max leaves them alone.
It doesn't get across.
Idoney raises his eyebrows at him, but doesn't go to help, instead getting into bed on the other side. He's still humming, which soothes as much as it annoys— it's going to be difficult for Max to get himself out of the room and into their guest bedroom. Which location he still has no idea of, come to that. But with a slightly scathing glance, he helps Delacroix lie down, and she, mostly asleep, shifts so that her legs are on the mattress. Then he gets up.
Or he tries to, and the humming stops, and when he turns round to look at Idoney, the other man is frowning at him. He looks down at himself. "What? Have I started bleeding again?"
"You can't possibly still be going," Idoney tells him. "Come on, lie down."
"It's just your spare bed. Or your sofa. I'm not going far."
"You don't even have to go," Idoney insists, patting the space between himself and his wife. "We've never kicked you out before. You don't have to kick yourself out."
Max wavers, glancing down at his sleeping best friend, with her eyelashes barely visible in the soft remaining light. Six years sharing a dorm with her, one year with him, and yet he's never felt stranger about being in the same room with them, much less the same bed. "Wouldn't want to climb over her." It's not quite an excuse or a refusal. He isn't sure what it is. But Idoney rolls his eyes at him and moves to the middle of the bed, patting the side left empty, and Max only has so much contrariness in him for one night. He gets into bed.
The thing about sharing their bed like this is it's... blurry, for lack of a better word. It's one thing to bribe his way in or invade their space. It's another to have arms wide, the duvet open. There's something poking into his ribs which he suspects might, incongruously, be Delacroix's foot slung all the way over her husband to reach him. Idoney's broken arm is definitely the one he's next to, but folded across his chest in the sort of romantic gesture where Max suspects he'll find that the two of them are holding hands if he lifts his head to check.
He doesn't, because he's too tired (because he isn't sure what he wants to see if he does), but he gently grasps her foot so at least his bruises are spared.
She makes a snuffling noise when he tickles her sole, and wiggles her toes, and in that fashion, he drifts off.