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The house was clean.
This wasn't unusual; it was always clean. But today was cleaner than usual. All of the artwork and photographs were perfectly straight. There wasn’t a speck of dust on any surface, and the hardwood gleamed with what had to be wax. The wax, the shine on the floor, the perfection of it all, meant that Thomas had cleaned. Beyond the cleanliness and residual smell of cleaner, the smell of food filled the house. Something vaguely spiced, garlic, meat- the works. John took off his shoes quietly, placing them neatly on the boot rack as the sound of George's laughter filled the air. Edward's shoes were also present- the same pair he wore every day, scuffed and creased in the places where his feet bent as he walked. John was the last one home. He smiled softly as he entered the kitchen, where his three… His three were talking and laughing.
(It was hard to define the nature of their relationships to one another.)
The floorboards creaked underfoot, causing John to flinch. It wasn't as though he was intending to be quiet and inconspicuous, but a childhood of trying to be seen but not heard, of avoiding making too much noise, created habits that were hard to break.
"Ah, John!" George greeted him and pulled him from his lament by practically leaping into his arms and planting a kiss on his lips. He smiled against their kiss, placing a soft hand on George's waist. They wore delicate gold earrings that bounced when they moved, and their hair fell in loose curls around their ears. Their smile was lopsided and enchanting.
The commotion drew Thomas and Edward’s attention as well, Tom’s wide-eyed smile contrasting with Edward’s, deep dark eyes crinkling in the corners while he grinned. Tom nodded before turning back to the stove, stirring the source of The Good Food Smell while John settled.
John laughed self-consciously as George ushered him into a chair. They practically pushed him down, leaving John to land on the (inherited) wooden chair with a soft chuckle.
(The dining room set was his great aunt’s. She left it to John for being the Good Christian Boy their family deserved. A paragon of how to live a Holy life. She figured John would kick his roommates out and marry that girl, all blonde curls and pastels-)
"It was fine. Quiet." He shrugged, offering Edward a Look. The Look was meant to convey that he was being honest so that Edward didn't worry too much. They did that often, glanced at each other instead of having proper conversations. Even so, it seemed to soothe whatever worry was on Edward’s brow, and his smile returned in full force. "Certainly not as interesting as everyone else's."
“And you're right to say that!" George took over then, telling about an adventure they had had on campus and how it related to their elementary school, leading the conversation in several different directions. John watched them speak for a few moments before he turned his gaze to glance at Thomas, who had been quiet. Though he brought dinner (beef tenderloin, some sort of mushroom sauce, smelling divine, must’ve taken some effort) and wine (Grenache/Syrah, a few years old, must’ve had a significant price tag) to the table, he seemed distracted, gaze distant in the way it got when he was contemplating something. The sources of Tom’s contemplation varied, sometimes it was an errant thread, sometimes it was displeasure with how his dinner was cooked. Sometimes he went a bit darker. John frowned, raising an eyebrow at Thomas.
“Alright, Tom?” He asked.
"Well," Tom started as he settled into his chair, watching as the others began to serve themselves. His gaze was still somewhere else, though after a few moments he came back, peered at each of them in turn. "I have something I wanted to ask. An idea I had." He paused, peering quietly at his plate while he considered his words.
Edward suddenly looked like he was on the verge of panic. He had blanched due to Tom's words, gaze nervously flitting between his partners as he searched for reassurance. Beneath the table, John brushed his shin against Edward's leg before taking his hand, giving a soft, quick squeeze. If it was something horrible, Tom wouldn’t have gone to all of this effort. He tried to communicate that with a Look, but Edward pressed his lips together. Doubt.
George was blinking expectantly at Tom, so he continued. "You remember I mentioned one of my regular patients was back? Solomon? He, ah. He's broken his ankle this time, and he told me that he wasn't going back to his ex-boyfriend's house." He chuckled dryly at this. Pleased. "Which is for the best, believe me. Anyway, he, er… He's unemployed, he's down on his luck, and he's quite a good man. So, how would you all feel if he stayed with us for some time?"
Everyone quickly broke into various sounds of agreement or protest. George, delighted, clapping their hands and asking questions, Edward near spiralling asking if Tom was serious, and John, letting his sudden indignation show. "What? Here?"
Tom blinked. "Well, yes, unless there's another house we have that I don't know about."
John sighed heavily. He looked to the others for help, only to find George, smiling ear-to-ear.
"Thomas, darling, I have a very important question. If you'll all recall the gentleman who worked on the street lamps outside our home last summer, you know, the one John watched from the window-"
"I didn't-"
"- the one we all thought was quite fit. How does our prospective houseguest compare to him?"
Thomas laughed, bright and cheerful. Leave it to George to lighten the mood, to use their sweetly lilting voice to distract everyone. Their eyes sparkled as Tom explained: "He's handsome, but not like that. He looks like a normal, handsome guy. Blond. Shaggy hair. Dark eyes. Dimples when he smiles."
Ned finally spoke up. "Why does he keep landing in the hospital?"
Tom grimaced. He looked at Edward, tucking The Strand of Hair behind his ear as he peered at him. Tom’s attention seemed to soothe Edward, even if only marginally. "He and his ex-boyfriend like to get into trouble. Drugs, usually, though they never admit it."
John's eyebrows knit together. The words weren’t comforting to him, but he couldn’t quite find a way to articulate that. Instead, he settled on the ingrained, knee-jerk response he’d been trained to have when hearing the word drugs. "So he's a criminal?" His voice tipped toward scathing, and he narrowed his eyes. The thought of Tom befriending some seedy character, someone manipulative and devious, made John bristle like an angry tomcat.
"I think it’s recreational, John."
Ned swallowed, looking helpless for a moment. If John didn’t care for him, he’d think it funny, seeing such a tall, handsome man looking absolutely stranded, a deer in the headlights. Doe-eyed and nervous, he managed to speak. “You think?”
"Never comes in with cops," Tom mused, looking thoughtful in his quiet, faraway fashion. He looked as though he were weighing his words carefully once again. "Admittedly, I don't know for certain. He was a Marine, though. I don't think the military types are big on crime."
"A Marine," George cooed, excited. "Like Graham?"
“Exactly.”
George seemed to take this in great stride. “Well, if he’s anything like our Graham, I don’t see why we wouldn’t want him in the house.” They looked at Edward’s melancholy, at John’s irritation, and flashed them both a dazzling smile, the trademark of George Henry Hodgeson. Such a smile generally brought John to his knees, weak and wanting due to the sweet, awkwardly charming grin of his–...
Well, the exact nature of their relationship was nebulously defined–
… –Of his George. Their earrings swayed and lightly clicked together as they moved, reaching for John’s hand to give it a reassuring squeeze. Meanwhile, Thomas mirrored the movement, placed his hand atop Edward’s, calmly, soothingly stroking his thumb across the ridges of Edward’s knuckles. “If he’s reprehensible, we’ll ask him to leave, yes? What’s one night?”
Thomas hummed softly. “Only if you’re all okay with it. If you aren’t, we’ll forget the whole thing. I swear.”
John took a long, steadying breath, closing his eyes. It would be the kind, correct thing to do to let this man stay with them. It would be the righteous thing to do. His concerns about the moral character of the man could be set aside until he met him. He sighed, lifted his hands in acquiescence. “Alright,” John said, finally, letting his voice drop low and calm instead of the shrill(? he thought so, anyway) quality it took on when he was stressed. “Alright, I’m on board.”
Three gazes turned to Edward, whose permanent frown deepened now that he had the attention. He swallowed hard, darting his gaze between the others before settling it firmly on a fascinating point in the middle distance. The crease between his eyebrows, one that seemed nearly permanent, deepened, and he looked quietly at Thomas. “Okay,” he said, finally. “Okay. He can sleep in Dundy’s room, I’m sure he won’t mind.”
“Broken ankle,” Tom said softly. Not correcting, not condescending. “I don’t think he’ll be able to make it up the stairs.”
“Couch, then,” George decided, triumphant and glowing. “We’re going to have a couch surfer!”
“Is it surfing if ours is the first couch he’s staying on?”
John sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What’s his name, again?”
“Solomon Tozer.”
“Solomon. Biblical,” John hummed, quietly pleased. Not that Biblical names were necessarily superior to others, but it gave him a bit of hope that the man was similarly raised, to be polite and subservient and helpful. Hopefully with less of the soul-crushing dread and guilt, but he supposed that just came with the territory. Maybe the whole boyfriend thing was his way of dealing with it.
“Hebrew, actually,” Tom corrected, gentle.
George’s eyes lit up at this. “You know, the etymology of the name Solomon is quite nice. Tom’s right, it comes from the Hebrew Sh'lomoh, which, in turn, comes from shelomo and shalom, for peaceful and peace, respectively. Later it was used to mean a wise ruler- this was in about the 1550s, see. It also appeared in Greek and Arabic, like most names, it tended to pop up all over the place. Of course, those forms are a little different than ours, but the origin remains the same.”
Edward chuckled dryly. “Peace and wisdom,” he mused. “Sounds like he’ll be a good addition, then, yes?”
“It’s funny, you know, both of your names have Hebrew origin, or at least similar- I’ll get to that,” George continued after an amicable laugh in Edward’s direction, clearly on a roll. “Thomas has disputable roots but generally is agreed to be Aramaic, meaning twin. You can see it in Syriac toma, and Arabic tau'am. John is a little easier to source: y'hohanan, meaning Jehovah has favoured, which, of course, is from hanan- he is gracious. I think that’s fitting of you, don’t you, John?” They flashed that smile in John’s direction again, and John found his cheeks flushing. He nodded in place of a proper answer, hoping for George to continue speaking so that he wouldn’t have to address the compliment head-on. Even if it made him feel a little slimy- was he gracious?
“What about you and I,” asked Edward, rescuing John from his brief crisis of humility.
“Lucky you, yours is easy,” George announced, beginning to gesture with their hands. They did this when they were excited, able to talk about something they felt quite passionate about. “Edward is Old English- ead for wealth, and weard for guardian.”
Edward laughed once again, the tension in his shoulders beginning to subside. “It seems as though our wealth guardian would be John, no?”
“Indeed- perhaps you should switch names!” Now that they had everyone’s attention, George’s grin grew wider, and they flourished their hands rather theatrically. “And, finally, for myself- George pops up in a few different forms but the earliest seems to be Greek. Georgos is an adjective, describing a husband or farmer. Of course, I am neither of those things, so I suppose myself and Tom have the most dissonance.”
“Well, the two of you and Solomon. From Thomas’ description, he doesn’t sound very peaceful or wise.” John said this dryly, sardonically, though there was a smirk curving his lips. Edward gave him a conspiratorial glance, huffing a soft amused sound.
Tom laughed at this, hard enough that he seemed to choke on his wine. He quickly composed himself, hand over his mouth, though the crinkle of a smile was still evident in his watering eyes. John took great joy in this; he didn’t usually get to make the others laugh, and relished the moments where he seemed to have magically developed a talent for comedy. Tom’s laugh was delightful as well, high and clear like a bell, short and sharp. He didn’t allow himself to laugh raucously as George often did, but there was still great delight in drawing such a reaction from him. He swallowed, giggled out another soft sound. “You’d be right about that. Hopefully, you’ll be a good influence, John.”
“Maybe he’ll be a bad influence,” George suggested, with a wiggle of blond eyebrows. “I’d love to see bad boy John.”
After that, conversation flowed more easily, affectionate ribbing mixed with everyone’s recaps of their day. Tom sighed about a leaky faucet, Edward explained (as much as he could, legally) a case that came across his desk today, George dominated the conversation with more anecdotes and tangential wandering. John himself didn’t have much to report; Tom would’ve been told about anything important long before John got home, anyway.
Working for Tom’s father had its perks, he supposed. Even if one of the aforementioned perks was being able to dodge small talk.
After dinner John and George took up dish duty, leaving Tom and Edward to their devices. John wasn’t sure what they were up to, but that thought was on his periphery, watching fondly as George loaded the dishwasher. “Tom wants this one washed by hand,” John interrupted, as George absently put one of Tom’s nonstick pans into the machine. John had made that mistake once and received a long lecture on the importance of not ruining a pan’s finish. John took it from the blond and wandered to the sink, already filled with soapy water, enjoying the burn/sting of the too-hot liquid on his skin.
It was while he methodically scrubbed the pan with one of Tom’s Fancy Sponges that he managed to form his thoughts into a semblance of a coherent sentence. “How do you do that?”
This seemed to give George pause, even as they placed the stemware into the top rack of the dishwasher, the cheap glass clinking delicately. “Do what?”
“You were so… Okay with the whole thing. You didn’t need any convincing. Why? How?”
“It’s going to be an adventure,” George explained, oddly concise. John frowned over his sink of soapy water until they continued. “Back when my brother and I were quite little, my aunts, Berta and Gwen, had this drifter stay with them for a little while. It was so fun.” They noticed John had turned to them with what must have been an appalled expression because they laughed, closing the dishwasher with their hip. “I’m serious! His name was Mika and he was very, very Swedish. He had this little black dog with him, and they were trying to cross Europe using only the kindness of strangers.” Their voice had taken on their typical storytelling cadence, dramatic and captivating, jewelry merrily jingling as they gestured. “It was interesting to get to know someone so different from us, you see. He was an Atheist, he was hip and young, and the whole thing was really quite the lark.”
“You’re not at all concerned he’s going to rob us blind?”
“I mean, he’s on crutches, John. I don’t think the man will get far. Besides, what do we have that someone would want to steal?”
George crossed the small tiled kitchen to stand beside John, placing a gentle hand on his chest, like they were soothing a wild animal or anxious horse. John didn’t regret agreeing to the whole thing, but he still had his doubts about the ne'er-do-well that Thomas was going to bring into their home. George looked at him with a soft expression, something between fondness and pity– it was an expression they wore well, and one that was often turned onto John– but it made the knot in his stomach tighten. “You can still say no,” they offered.
“No, taking him in is the right thing to do. It’s. It’s just that.” John stumbled over a few more aborted sentences, trying to phrase his point without coming across as condescending. “You trust quite easily, George, I don’t want you to be disappointed.”
The fond-pity expression George wore melted into absolute affection, and their hand (pale, long-fingered, dainty) rose to cup John’s cheek while the other stilled his hands that were still drying the same pan. “I won’t be,” they promised. “Do you think Tom trusts easily?”
Well. No.
John didn’t say as much, but he didn’t have to; George seemed to sense it and chuckled fondly. “Exactly. It’s not that I implicitly trust Mr. Tozer– though I’m sure he’s just wonderful– I trust Tom. He wouldn’t be doing this if he thought it was a bad idea. We’ve watched him compare the benefits of bonded and non-bonded thread for repairing socks. He’s not the type to rush into something. If he had his doubts about Mr. Tozer, he would send him on his way as soon as he’s discharged and wait for him to come back to the hospital. I’m sure he just wants to help the poor thing out of a tough spot.”
John sighed. “I don’t know how you can be so easygoing.”
A delighted smile appeared on George’s face. It was unfair, how much they smiled, how easily they did, how effortless they seemed. John wondered how one person could be so filled with joy, elation at the mundane, smiling like it didn’t cost a thing. “Because you are wound almost as tightly as Edward. Someone’s got to be able to go with the flow.” They chuckled, patting John’s cheek affectionately before they started to meander out of the kitchen. “Come on, unless you want to keep drying that pan all night.”
They exited the kitchen as John found the appropriate home for the pan, and turned to find the blond peering at him through the pass-through. They rested their elbows on the sill, watching as John walked to the other side, leaving them separated by a few inches of drywall. While John settled on his side of the pass-through, they held out a hand, bangles jingling and colorful nail polish sparkling (today it was a soft yellow, like the downy feathers on a chick). "C'mere," they murmured, beckoning John closer with a crooked finger like they were a temptress in a classic Hollywood film. When John was within reach George reached out with both hands and tugged John by the lapels to kiss him. Their lips were soft, vanilla chapstick sweetening the taste as John sighed happily and leaned into it.
"I love you," George murmured, lips brushing John's while they spoke. "Even when you fret."
"Iloveyou," John mumbled in return, all in one breath, a secret whispered that no one else could hear. He was still nervous to say it, despite all this time, despite their first kiss, hurried and quick in their college dorm. George had been rarely as nervous as John, from the first day they tried on a skirt in the dorm to the first time they told him they loved him. They were braver than they'd ever admit, and John loved them for it. Immensely. All-encompassing.
"Come on, dear heart, take me for a walk?" The relative silence in the rest of the house signalled that Thomas and Ned were busy. Doing what, John wasn't sure, but that didn't matter when blond eyelashes fluttered at him, framing baby blues. John smiled as he darted into the hallway, holding out a hand for George to join.
They walked through their neighbourhood, arm-in-arm, George recalling a poem one of his students had mentioned in class today: “it’s about sapphic love- more specifically sex- but has this really lovely metaphor about an octopus.” They didn’t memorize it, so they pull it up on their phone and read the poem to John, who finds himself more concerned with the cadence of George’s voice than the words they recite.