Work Text:
Between Kate’s occasional bouts of night terrors and Javi’s uneasy dozing, Tyler’s really the only one that sleeps easy at night.
A year out of El Reno and Kate still wakes up with memories of the wind screaming in her ears and muscle pain from clenching too hard at imaginary railings. The memories from the overpass mix with the memories from the rodeo, and she flails awake more than once to find Tyler peacefully slumbering at her side.
And she’s seen Javi sleep at random, in planes and airports and slumped in the back of the car, and he’s a light sleeper, always tossing and turning. Kate wonders what he dreams about. She wonders if he dreams of his truck flipping near that fire-tornado. Of being trapped in that hunk of upside-down metal. It still keeps Kate awake at night, sometimes.
It’s become a thing the last few weeks during their speech tour: Kate will be awake, and Tyler will be asleep (snoring, even though he denies it), and she’ll receive a chime and a ‘you up’ text. She’ll let Javi in. It’s never the other way around, for some reason. She never leaves the room to join him. Instead, it’s him that slides into Kate and Tyler’s shared hotel room. Most nights they don’t speak. They’ll watch the TV on the lowest volume, or swipe at their phones in companionable silence. Javi watches her, Kate knows. Not anything untoward… just watches, like he’s scared she’ll disappear.
They’ll stay awake until they can’t anymore. Sometimes Javi retreats to his room.
Most of the times he doesn’t.
One night, she wakes up with a scream stuck halfway through her throat and she needs to see him, needs to make sure he wasn’t lost in that fucking tornado like Addy, Jeb and Praveen. She’s the one to text and he’s at her doorstep in an instant, curls astray and eyes a little wild at the edges. She squeezes him in her arms and she falls asleep with her hand brushing his arm where he’s dragged the chair next to the bed.
Tyler knows. Hard not to when he’s woken up to find Javi dead asleep in the corner of the room more than once. But Tyler is easy, Kate’s come to learn. He’s easy and he’s clever, so he never says anything and neither do Javi and Kate ever discuss it.
So. It’s Monday and they’re snowed-in; Kate wakes up to the peculiar grey light from a blizzard day peeking through the half open blinds. It’s just warm enough under the quilt that she’s comfortable, just on the edge of being too cold. It takes her a moment to reorient herself.
Alive – whole – not currently in a tornado – in her hotel room.
There’s quiet chatter echoing in the room, and she peeks out of her heavy eyelids. Tyler’s comforting voice is soothing, and she almost falls back asleep until she catches Javi’s raspy reply, lazy and amused. They’re sitting opposite of each other. Javi’s body is sleepily draped over the one room chair and his socked feet are propped on the end of their mattress, and Tyler’s sitting against the headboard, thigh warm where Kate’s face is pressed. They’re smiling.
She feels too fuzzy with sleep to catch the subject of their conversation, but it’s easy (everything with Tyler is, anyways) and quiet, and she drifts happily with Tyler’s gentle fingers in her hair.
It’s Wednesday – she wakes up, and Javi is propped on the carpeted floor, sitting next to the door (there is no chair, for some reason), and she has half a mind to tell him that it must be disgusting, but she snorts when she’s reminded he used to sleep in the mud and grass back in their chasing days. She turns around and snuggles into Tyler’s chest. She feels Javi’s eyes on her until she falls asleep.
It’s a Sunday, and Javi doesn’t even knock. He barges in with the spare key and tight lines around his eyes, and Tyler actually wakes up. He squints around for a moment, seems to register Kate’s okay, and then he stares at Javi, who’s frozen in the doorstep. Tyler sighs deeply.
“Nobody wake me before eight or I’ll bury you out in the snow and leave you out to freeze,” he grumbles. He turns around and his breathing evens out, dead asleep.
Javi closes the door with much more care than he opened it, and he doesn’t say anything, just goes to sit on the ground between the bed and the wall on Kate’s side of the mattress. She feels him slump to the side.
She swallows and reaches a hand to card in his hair – it’s very soft.
Only Tyler sleeps the rest of the night.
It's a Monday. They’ve been on campus for the week for a series of talks on environmental issues and advances in the mitigation strategies and technologies. It’s Michigan and it’s chilly, early spring and everything is still sort of grey and wet and muddy. It’s also raining and hailing pea-sized pellets of melting ice. So, they stay inside of the hotel room while it clears.
Kate towels her hair dry and cracks the bathroom door open. With the shower and fan off, and the door open, she can now just make out Javi and Tyler’s quiet conversation in the room, muffled against the sound of cable tv playing at low volume.
“Nah man, it’s just. I feel guilty, you know?”
She stops halfway through the doorframe and leans against the wall, quietly chucking her wet towel on the rack. Javi sounds contemplative and hesitant.
“I think I really did start because I wanted to help folks, you know? It’s why I quit the military – I felt like… Like I only ever did damage over there, and I wasn’t helping anyone. I wanted to make it better. So that there’s less chance of people dying like Addy and Praveen and Jeb.” Javi’s voice cracks around the names of their dead friends. “So. Maybe I just lied to myself. Maybe – maybe I told myself that it was harmless. And that it was for the greater good, in the end. Just… what a crock of shit, man. I was a fucking idiot.”
Tiptoeing around the corner of the wall, Kate slides into the room as Tyler seems to seriously consider Javi’s words. “Hey now,” he leans to squeeze Javi’s knee. “I don’t think you’re an idiot. These days, I know how hard it is to do good, ‘cause everything costs so much. And in the end, you did the right thing. Helped save a lot of lives. Saved mine. I don’t think I ever said thank you, but. You know. Thanks.”
“Yeah,” Javi says tremulously.
The silence stretches after that, and eventually Kate feels sort of bad that she’s lurking and eavesdropping, so she clears her throat, shoving her hands in her sweatshirt pocket. Tyler’s hand is still on Javi’s knee.
Javi rolls his head around to look at her, eyes settling on hers. “You know for what it’s worth, I am sorry.”
Kate knows he is. She’s known him for years. She used to think she knew him better than anyone outside of Jeb. But she didn’t know he went and joined the army. He never struck him as the type. So maybe there are some things about Javi that she doesn’t know.
Still. She knows Javi’s heart, she thinks. She’s re-learned a lot about him, ever since El Reno.
She comes to stand behind him and brushes a hand against the back of his neck. His head lolls back. She gives in to the urge to brush stray curls away from his forehead. “For what it’s worth, I forgive you. It’s like Tyler says. You did a lot of good, too.”
She watches his throat bob as he swallows. “I’m sorry about what I said, too.” He rasps. “It was unfair, and I was angry and I was–”
“You were grieving.”
“So were you – so are you – we both are, still, and I should have never put that on you. Never. It wasn’t your fault.” He blinks, eyes wet.
“Javi,” she leans over him until he’s looking at her again, upside down. Her hand slides over the hinge of his jaw, where she feels the muscle work when he grits his teeth. “It wasn’t your fault either. You know that? It wasn’t anybody’s fault.”
“I should have been with you.”
“You would have been dead. And then maybe I would have lost all the people that I loved at once.” The scar on her leg twinges at the onslaught of memories. “You said you wanted to make up for what you said; you being here, with us, doing this… it makes up for it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’m glad you’re here.”
She lets her eyes stray to Tyler’s over Javi’s head. He’s biting his own lip, pensive, but he smiles at her when he notices her looking. It shakes her out of the somewhat intimate trance she’d been in, and she releases Javi’s head.
“Great,” Tyler claps his hands to dispel the tension. “Now that that’s behind us. I am starving.”
They both generously let Javi scrub at his eyes. By the time Tyler returns from the pizza run, wet and battered from the hail, raving and ranting about losing the coin-toss, they’ve all settled, and Kate enjoys her lukewarm pizza with something warm in her chest.
Wednesday again, and Javi’s in the room to begin with. It’s two queen beds instead of two separate rooms because the hotel was overbooked. Obviously, they’re chasing, and so are a bunch of other folks, so the good people of the ‘Drummond Motel’ have their hands full, even with the impending storm. Javi and Tyler bicker in the bathroom while they prepare for bed. From the angle of the bed she can ogle Tyler’s shirtless back, the shape of his backside in his boxers, his strong legs. Javi’s much leaner next to him but he’s nothing to scoff at either, and she scolds herself for even thinking it.
Tyler slaps Javi’s ass when the latter squeezes past him to sprawl on his bed. She’s half expecting Javi to sputter, but Javi just stretches on the quilt, shirt riding to expose a strip of tan skin on his stomach, and he raises on sharp eyebrow at a chortling Tyler.
“I was in the army, bro. That was just a little love tap.”
“Yeah, got freaky with the boys, private Storm PAR?”
Javi laughs and it makes his eyes squint. “You wouldn’t even know it, Owens.”
Kate buries her head in her book and pretends not to be affected by that.
Saturday.
She wakes up screaming. It’s been a while since it happened.
She’s jolted awake by strong arms shaking her, and the first thing she registers is Tyler’s aftershave. It all comes back to her after that. She’s in a motel. They’re in North Dakota. Tyler’s warm where he’s pressed against her.
“It’s okay I’ve got you,” he’s saying, and all she’s hearing is his screams when he got crushed outside that damn theater in El Reno. “You’re alright Kate, I’m here. I’m here, I’m alright, and so’s Javi, hold on,” he slots her against his body and she’s so shaky she feels like she’ll roll right off. She spies his phone in his hands for a second but before she can ask, he’s back, intense and worried, blue eyes set against hers. “Shit. I promise it’s okay.”
They spend a moment just breathing together, until the silence is broken by a quick knock. Javi cracks the door open and seeing him there, alive, fills her with so much relief she sobs harder. They’re both there – both alive and healthy. She rasps out Javi’s name and he hesitantly shuffles in the room.
“Get in here,” Tyler says with no room for arguments.
“Alright, bossy,” Javi quips as he slips out of his slides, and it makes Kate laugh, just a little bit. Suddenly Javi’s there, pressing a chaste kiss on her forehead, and he settles in the bed on her other side, pressed shoulder to hip.
It smells like Javi’s aftershave – something nice he didn’t wear before the army, and Tyler’s special shampoo she’s absolutely not allowed to use. She feels them both breathe on either side of her, ribcages expanding and back down, steadily calming her own rhythm.
“Storm PAR,” Tyler grouses after a little while, “your feet. Are. Fucking freezing, Jesus,” and Kate realizes their legs are all tangled together under the quilt. And Javi’s feet are cold.
“Man, I got poor circulation, I can’t exactly control it,” Javi whines.
The absurdity of it all, dealing with tornado-related trauma with two men squeezed in a hotel room bed has her chortling. What has her life become? There are warm hands brushing her cheeks and Kate realizes she’s been crying again.
“C’mon city girl. Clear skies. Stars out. You can go to sleep; we’re right here.”
Under the blanket, Javi’s hand snakes into hers. She should probably shake him off, but honestly the three of them are so far away from propriety that she doesn’t care. She falls asleep comfortably wedged between them both.
She thought it would be strange in the morning perhaps, but it’s not. The boys bicker and try to one-up each other all throughout the complimentary breakfast. Tyler piles his plate with bacon and eggs and sausage and three waffles while Javi munches on slices of honeydew, sipping on his coffee. Neither mentions the fact that they all slept together.
It’s all very easy.
It’s not ever been that way for her in years. In the past, she’d have woken up for a nightmare, have been unable to go back to sleep, and then she would have spent the rest of the day miserable afterwards. But now… Now she feels okay. Her appetite isn’t what it usually is, and she still feels a little shaky, but it’s sunny, and the three of them are sitting outside at a tiny table and their knees all knock together. She feels alright.
It’s about a week later that Tyler and Kate are passing by Javi’s room, and they have to stop and eavesdrop the seemingly one-sided screaming match happening on the other side of the badly soundproofed wall. It’s Javi’s voice, shrill and way too loud for a little motel in the middle of nowhere. Sounds like a pretty vicious argument, too, and there’s nobody answering, so it must be over the phone.
“Uh,” Tyler drawls, a delicate eyebrow raised high, “should we be doing something about that?”
Kate’s about to open her mouth to say that they should maybe give Javi privacy when a slamming sound echoes through the hall, followed by a string of curses. The door swings open suddenly onto Javi, who has his phone clenched tightly in his hand, looking harried. “Oh.” He breathes. “I was just going out, so.” His eyes are red, and his mouth is frozen in a tight line.
She and Tyler exchange a glance.
“Neat. Us too. Where are we going?” Tyler doesn’t miss a beat and lies straight through his teeth with a genial smile, wrapping an arm around Javi’s shoulders. Javi freezes there, stealing a glance at her like he knows they were on their way in and not out, but she just raises an eyebrow, to say ‘what are you willing to do about it huh?’
Javi sighs, scrubbing a hand over his eyes. “Just. Anywhere. I need a drink, or like. Coffee or something. Can’t go to sleep right now.”
So, they end up sitting in a booth at a local 24h dinner. Tyler and Javi sit face to face, and there’s a moment where Kate ponders about what side would be appropriate to sit in, before shaking her head at herself and sidling up next to Javi in the booth. Tyler, always hungry no matter the time, orders some pancakes and a serving of fries for the table. Javi gets his coffee, two creams and a sugar like he always gets. He looks less shaky, less flighty, settled in the booth beside her. She has the odd though that she’s sort of boxing him in penned against the window. Oh well.
“So, Storm PAR,” Tyler beckons with a fry. He has a way to drawl the nickname that makes a corner of his mouth lift. “What was that all about?”
To his credit, Javi doesn’t do anybody the disservice of trying to act confused. He lets his eyes fall on his coffee cup with a defeated sigh. “I was just talking to Scott.”
Scott. It’s been so long, but it also seems like it was just yesterday. Scott, Kate remembers. Javi’s business partner. She remembers blue eyes, long legs, a severe look about him. She does remember him smiling rarely, but always around Javi when he did. He hadn’t liked her much, and the feeling had been mutual. But she hasn’t thought about him for months, and Javi never mentions him. She thought… well clearly, she was wrong.
“Seems to me that it was more screaming than talking,” Tyler presses pointedly. It’s something Kate admires about him; how straightforward he can be.
“He’s asking me to come back. That bastard, he – you know he would have let you die in that town, and now he calls me, and he’s asking me back. They’re gonna move ahead with the project.”
The news sours Kate’s mood, though she’s personally not very surprised.
“And you told him no, right?” Tyler quips.
“What? Of course I told him no! Did you think I’d just leave our study,” Javi pauses, eyes darting between Tyler and Kate, “– that I’d leave you? C’mon, man.”
“Just checking,” Tyler shrugs, a picture of nonchalance, though there’s a tightness at the corner of his eyes that tells Kate he’s genuinely worried about all this. “I mean it’s a lot of money, probably, and he’s your friend.”
Javi bristles at that. His eyes are just a little wet. “God, I don’t even know if we’re friends anymore. Shit. I left him behind. Pretty sure I threw mud in his face. Quit our joint project mid-way. I just… I don’t know why he bothered to call me. I wouldn’t call me.” Javi sniffles and absent-mindedly stirs his coffee. “And he wasn’t just my friend. We were, uh. I don’t know. We were something, I guess.”
Oh. So it was like that.
“Damn, Storm PAR,” Tyler eloquently puts. “So that sucks.” Kate kicks him under the table.
Javi snorts. Scrubs a hand over his eyes and into his wayward curls. “Ah. It’s whatever, you know? It didn’t work out, and I don’t want to be part of his scheme.”
“We’re much better company anyways,” Kate awkwardly tries to console him. She grimaces, because it’s not the same, though, is it? Javi’s lost a partner, both in the business sense, and in the intimate sense. And Kate and Tyler are… well they’re just Javi’s friends. Can’t really fill up the void of Scott’s absence.
Javi seems pleased by the attempt anyways and turns to smile at her. His eyes slowly travel from Tyler to Kate, from Kate to Tyler, something glinting in his gaze that Kate can’t quite decipher. “Yeah,” he agrees after a moment of silence, “yeah I agree.”
Tyler spears a piece of pancake, jostling the plate with a loud clink. “Screw him, Javi. We’ll sneak you a drink tomorrow, get you all loosey-goosey. You need to relax.”
Jave snickers incredulously, shaking his head in disbelief. “Where were you two during my break-ups in middle school?” He leans to eat the dripping chunk of pancake from Tyler’s offered fork.
The conversation swerves into childhood memories and teenage shenanigans. Under the table, their feet are all knocking against each other’s. Javi picks up the bill and smiles the whole way back to the hotel. Kate considers the whole affair a win.
Javi watches her a lot, she’s noticed. But Javi watches Tyler, as well.
She remembers standing shoulder to shoulder with him when she first saw Tyler Owens hop down his big old fuck-off red truck. He’d watched him then too. It used to be the wary sort, half disdain and half cautious, but nowadays Javi watches Tyler fondly.
There’s a moment where she feels that maybe she should be jealous that he’s looking at her boyfriend like this, but in the end… she gets it.
Tyler’s easy on the eyes. He’ll stand in the sun with his hair wheat-blond and handsomely ruffled, and he’ll turn to smile at Kate and Javi sometimes, that smile that makes his eyes crinkle at the corner and digs dimples into his cheeks. And Kate loves him. He’s a gorgeous, gorgeous man. And she finds she doesn’t mind that Javi watches. After all, Kate and he do have a lot of interests in common.
They’ll go chasing tornadoes just the three of them for weeks on end, following interesting systems and running trials and collecting data. It’s always the same: Tyler will drive and blast horribly cheesy country music. Kate will ride shotgun where she can peer through the windshield and look at the storms. And Javi’s taken to the back of the truck napping intermittently. Kate sees Tyler watch him through the rearview mirror ever so often, and Javi will meet his eyes and smile.
What a sight they all make.
Tyler went part-time on the whole YouTube business now that he’s back in academics (or at least, his name will be in the ‘et al’ of their article). Boone’s been promoted to main guy, picking it back up when Tyler can’t be there. They still link up and chase together, as obnoxious and loud as Kate remembers. That racks up an insane amount of views.
There are fireworks involved. More than once. Kate and Javi watch from a hill, exasperated, a mirror to how they were when Tyler did it last. But when she turns to Javi, he looks mildly amused, relaxed against the truck with his arms crossed. His eyes look dark under the overcast skies. Almost like a storm.
So yeah. Kate knows that Javi watches her boyfriend. But something strikes a chord deep in her stomach every time he does it, and she can’t bring herself to begrudge him about it, all things considered.
They get funding to test the water-lock barrels officially. Reputable funding stacked with government grants, and a strong academic backing. They go out to celebrate on the day it’s all confirmed, at a nice restaurant for once, where they need to have reservations, and the prices have her eyes bug out, and Kate wears a dress for the first time in ages. Tyler zips her up in it and kisses her shoulder, her neck, calls her beautiful. Makes her feel warm and floaty.
Those feelings buoy her right into dinner. Javi’s a little late, but he looks… he looks damn good with his hair gelled and slicked back, in a crisp shirt that make his eyes stand out. He kisses her cheek and also calls her beautiful, and if he was any other man, maybe Kate would feel awkward about her boyfriend being right there, but Tyler only says, “damn right she is,” and hugs Javi with a hand low on his back.
And as they wine and dine, and Kate finds herself flush from the wine, she watches the two men speak and laugh and look at each other, and Tyler looks at Javi’s mouth where it’s curved around his glass, and Kate thinks about that hand low on Javi’s back, and Kate thinks,
Oh.
They’ve all been looking at each other, she realizes: Kate looking at Javi, and Javi looking at Tyler, and Tyler looking at Kate, and on, and on, and the other way ‘round.
Because Tyler definitely looks at Javi, too.
Javi… Javi’s pretty – he’s freckled, and his hair curls around his ears, and his eyes are very beautiful. He’s smaller than Tyler (smaller than her in heels), but he’s solid. He always stands straight like a soldier, and he’s strong. Strong and quiet to Tyler’s strong and loud. He didn’t use to be this quiet, Kate recalls. There was a time where he was rambunctious and chatty. She sees shadows of his vibrant personality now and then, even though he’s much tamer.
They eat well, drink expensive wine, and when it’s time for dessert they have coffees and they share a decadent slice of cake, the three of them passing the fork around.
Javi holds her jacket for her to slip back into, and Tyler holds the door for them, and they escape into the starry chilly night. They watch the constellations leaning against Javi’s car, and the silence should feel awkward and oppressive but it’s not. It’s all so very easy.
“We’re gonna do this thing,” Kate says quietly, with resolve. She feels it in her chest, warm and overwhelming.
“We feelin’ it,” Javi chuckles.
Tyler knocks shoulders with her, kisses her temple. “We’re chasing it.”
It’s summer, and they renovate the old barn.
It takes about two months; One whole week just to parse through the stuff already in it. There are things she keeps and things she discards, and it hurts a little bit to see all the reminders from the before times, but it’s also cathartic to parse through that mountain of unused stuff from the past and make space for the future. There’s so much packed in there – things from her dad from way back when, and old memories from elementary school, old science stuff, some clutter her mother’s been accumulating while Kate’s been away.
Javi and Tyler crash at her mom’s place with her. Tyler gets to room with her, after some strategic negotiating from Kate herself with her mother, and some pleading and assurances from Tyler that no, nothing untoward would happen under her roof, no ma’am.
Javi gets the spare room across the hall, where Kate held many a sleepover as a kid. There are still plenty of Addy’s clothes in the dresser. She watches him unpack his bag from the doorway, curious as the newfound order of it all, when he used to be such a disorganized person. Must have been the army. Tyler reclines on the spare bed, looking at the old glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling, while he chats Javi’s ear away.
At dinner, Javi does the dishes and Kate’s mom pats his curls like she used to years ago. Tyler dries, and Kate puts it away.
On week two, they participate in the yearly neighbourhood garage sale at the local elementary school, sprawling in school yard alongside other families. The whole town seems to attend. Kate’s mom oversees the affair, running their table like a tight ship, pleased as punch to get rid of some clutter. Tyler collects the money in a ridiculous vintage lime-green hip pouch unearthed in the barn. Javi, ever the best salesman between the three of them, pitches tchotchkes to the masses.
Kate gets reacquainted with her old schoolmates, and their spouses and their young children, re-learns how to be a gal from Sapulpa like she was years ago. So many of the girls who kept saying they would leave for the big cities are still here, only they look older and calmer, more settled, more at peace.
There are kids selling lemonade for a buck, and the sky is blue, blue, blue, not a single sign of a storm for miles.
Then, it’s all about actually repairing the damage from time and weather. She gets to watch the boys work and play around. One afternoon, she catches Javi and Tyler, sitting shoulder to shoulder, Tyler hunched and twisted to have his face in Javi’s space with that smile. Playful, like a cheshire cat. All teeth. Their knees are knocking, and they’re sweating and laughing. Javi’s dimples dig deep into his cheeks.
“Are you boys going to help me or what?” She throws her rag at them, and it flails in the air before fluttering to the ground before it even reaches them. They both look up at her, two blinding smiles, and Kate wrestles with the thought that they’re both very beautiful.
And she thinks: ‘damn. Get it together, girl.’
They finish the last of the repairs late one evening when the sun is well on its way to disappear against the horizon, sky dark blue and a little purple. The barn looks great, and Kate’s mom gets them each a cold beer to celebrate. They drink in companionable silence, frogs and cicadas and the constant ‘whoosh’ of wheat stalks dancing in the wind.
The next day, while the boys drive to town to get supplies, Kate sets up three photos on the end of her worktable. Jeb. Praveen. Addy. She lays keepsakes they’ve left behind: a woven bracelet, a spare pair of glasses. A discoloured valentine’s teddy bear. She brushes her fingers over every object, over the sharp edges of the picture frames. She kisses a finger and brings it to Jeb’s heart.
It feels good.
When Tyler returns, he gently holds her in his arms and from the corner of her eyes, she watches Javi take a moment before her makeshift altar, touching everything with a sort of reverence she rarely sees from him.
“We did it,” Kate says, muffled against Tyler’s chest.
“We did,” Javi smiles over Tyler’s shoulder, and the three of them are standing there, wide smiles and loose shoulders.
“Teamwork makes the dream work,” Tyler obnoxiously drawls, “get in here, Storm PAR.”
Javi lets himself be pulled in a three-way hug.
The barn does look great.
Another night, another hotel room. They’re on the ninth floor and she’s sitting on a patio chair, feeling the cool breeze across her face. She can faintly hear the boys – her boys – bicker inside. Javi showed up with Chinese takeout and a bottle of red, and she ate too much fried rice while Tyler and Javi wrestled for the last chicken ball.
‘The Greatest Risk Is Not Taking One’
Her fortune cookie said. Lucky numbers 36-14-25-44-7-28. She sits there outside and twirls her hair around her finger. She thinks of risks.
She’s taken plenty in her life. Chasing tornadoes is a huge risk, always. Leaving home to go study instead of working the farm, not even knowing if she’d have the money to get her degree – risk. Leaving El Reno’s theatre in Tyler’s truck to attempt to stop the biggest tornado she’d ever seen – possibly the biggest risk so far. She doesn’t shy away from taking big steps into the unknown. Not these days.
But she thinks of the one impossible thought that has plagued her the past few weeks. She thinks of one risk she doesn’t know if she’s ready to take. She thinks about the two men inside her room.
Kate sighs. Shakes her head. It’s not fair to Tyler to think these thoughts. But she can’t help it. And then…
Through the patio door, she looks at them both inside: Tyler has a strong arm slung around Javi’s shoulders and is dragging him close to him, almost in a headlock. Javi’s weakly pushing against him but it doesn’t do much to deter the bigger man. In Javi’s other hand, the last fortune cookie is half-crushed. Doesn’t seem to bother either man much.
She knows what she wants. Is it so crazy to hope that it could at all be possible?
Javi’s given the crumpled cookie over to Tyler, who makes a show of shoving the crumbs into his mouth. He catches her gaze mid laugh, and she smiles tightly at his questioning look before turning towards the town again. It smells like rain.
Lucky numbers 36-14-25-44-7-28. What a crock of crap.
In the end, Tyler asks before she even has time to gather her courage.
She’s taking her makeup off in the cramped bathroom. It’s quiet, and Javi’s napping in his own room, so it’s just Tyler and her at the moment. She’s dutifully wiping at the corner of her eyes, trying to get all her eyeliner off before bed. She meets Tyler’s eyes in the mirror and they just look at each other for a while, until Tyler snorts and kisses her temple.
“What?” she giggles.
“Nothing. You’re just beautiful.”
“Oh well if it’s just that,” she flips hair over her shoulder, “look on, sir.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
She returns to her cleanser with a soft snort, but when she straightens back, he’a still looking at her, something in his eyes she can’t parse. Like there’s something he has to say but can’t.
“What?” She raises an eyebrow, bemused. Tyler’s mouth opens, closes, and for a moment Kate thinks maybe he’ll drop it, but then something steely flashes across his expression.
“Are you in love with Javi?”
The two of them stand there in the bathroom, same as they did a minute ago, except now Kate feels like the ceiling is collapsing on her head, and the floor is crashing beneath her feet.
Is she in love with Javi?
Is Kate about to disintegrate and fly away with the wind? She would welcome it.
Once upon a time, she ran away from the state, the storms, and her past. She’s pretty good at running away. She escapes the bathroom and beats a hasty retreat to the bedroom, falling face first into the bed because there’s nowhere to go, really. Tyler’s socked feed pad against the carpet and she feels him standing there, just watching.
Tyler asks, “you want to kiss him?” And there’s no judgement there that Kate can hear. She still can’t manage to get her head out of her pillow. She feels him move, and then hands come around her waist and finds herself being hoisted up, away from her hiding spot. It might be hot in any other situation “No c’mon I’m serious Kate. I – you want to kiss him? To have something, with him?”
Their noses are bumping against each other, and despite her best effort to look away Tyler is there. Right there, looking right into her eyes. There is no escaping this.
“I’m in love with you, I love you,” she blurts. And it’s true. Tyler has to know this, above all else, and so what if she’s skirting the question? What if she’s being a coward?
“Okay, so – yeah. I’m in love with you too,” Tyler says. He bridges the gap between them and pecks her lips, and that’s the most reassuring thing she’s ever felt. “But… do you have feelings for Javi?”
It’s… “I love you,” she says helplessly.
“’You’ meaning just me, or ‘you’ meaning us both? C’mon. You can tell me.”
“Both,” he squeezes out, and it feels like shame and doom, and she feels like a such a greedy asshole and like the worst emotional cheater out there. She lets her head fall against his shoulder, warm and solid, and prays that it’ll be quick of Tyler decides to dump her right then and there. There’s a great long pause, and then finally Tyler sighs, something shaky coupled with a laugh.
“Okay. Okay, okay! Good.”
Her head whips back up. “Good?”
Tyler laughs again, a little breathless. There’s a helpless sort of smile on his lips. “Yeah, good. It’s – he’s. Okay. So, what if I had feelings for him, too?”
She can’t help but look at him with her mouth open, gasping like a fish. What if Tyler had feelings for Javi? Well, if true, it would mean… a whole new world of opportunities, actually. It would mean that all that shame and that weight of those feelings, it doesn’t have to rest solely on her shoulders. If. If.
“Are you kidding me?”
Tyler thumbs the pointy end of her chin, gently closes her mouth. “No.” He doesn’t expand on the subject, just challenges her with his eyes.
“Tyler. I swear if this is a joke, I’ll never forgive you.”
“Cross my heart,” he says, hands raised in a ‘don’t shoot’ gesture. And he does look like he means it; has the serious, determined look he gets sometimes when he decides he wants to do something dangerous but worthwhile chasing tornadoes.
“Then,” she says slowly, “if I’m in love with him, and you’re in love with him, I’d say that maybe we need to see if he has feelings for us both?”
Tyler snorts. “Kate, c’mon, we don’t have to look real deep for you. We know he loves you.”
“And he adores you,” she counters.
“I mean, he’s in love with you.”
She does know, is the thing. Javi’s not the most subtle of guys. Addy used to needle Kate over it way back whenever Javi would give her the puppy dog eyes.
And there was some… tension, she supposes, in the beginnings of Tyler and her relationship. Might have been jealousy. But she thinks it’s changed since, into a different, much more positive sort of tension.
“And I think he has a big ole’ boy crush on you, Tyler Owens.”
Tyler snorts. “Well, I sure hope you’re right.
They chuckle together for a moment, and Kate gets to enjoy a semblance of calm, however brief.
“So…” Tyler starts.
“So?”
“So, what do we do about this?”
“You’re asking me? I don’t know anything about being in a uh, a throuple,” she smacks him. “I know how to work a farm, and I know tornadoes. And that’s about it; I’ve spent more years studying science than I have spent been in a relationship,” she realizes with amazement. What she had with Jeb had been short but fiery. A year of fun and deep, overwhelming love. But just a year.
“Well,” Tyler sucks on his teeth, “it’s not like I have a lot more experience in the throuple front either. Then, I guess we need to apply the scientific method to this. Observe and report our findings.”
“The scientific method? Is this an experiment? Will you be gathering data?” she scoffs incredulously.
“Essentially. We’re scientists; we need to test it out. We introduce the idea, and we test out how he reacts. Take it slow, incremental.”
Kate cackles, still feeling a little light-headed about it all.
“What the hell, sure,” she says, because there’s nothing left to do but go pedal to the metal at this point. Head right into the tornado at full speed.
Neither of them does anything about it immediately after their conversation. They talk more about it, of course, but they don’t approach Javi right away. Instead, a strange sort of charged tension takes root.
On Monday she watches Tyler make him a coffee, just how he likes it, and she gives Tyler a pointed look. Tyler’s hand lingers when he passes the cup. On Tuesday Javi shares his umbrella with her when they walk outside, hips bumping against each other. Wednesday, the boys wrestle and Javi winds up straddling Tyler, the bigger man’s hands on his waist, big smile on his face. Thursday: they’re waiting for a flight, and she throws her socked feet on his lap at their gate, leaning against Tyler’s warm, sturdy chest. She pretends to read on her tablet, but she’s hyper aware of Javi’s hand on her bony ankle.
On Friday, Tyler, ever so bold, slings his arms around both of them as they walk on a dirt path. He presses a tender, stubbly kiss to her temple, lingering with a quiet ‘love you’, and then turns around and smacks a kiss on Javi’s cheek when the man complains about PDA.
Javi ducks his head. “Aw man,” he complains, but he looks flushed and he’s smiling.
“Wouldn’t want to make you feel like you’re missing out, Storm PAR.” Over Javi’s head, Tyler winks at her. She contemplates the pretty glow on Javi’s cheeks, and jots down her empirical observations in her mental journal.
She misses it. Goddamn it – she missed it!
She’s parked Tyler’s ridiculous truck after a coffee run and finds that in the thirty minutes she was gone, her two men managed to ‘talk it out’.
And by ‘talk it out’, she means she walks in on them sucking face, Javi still with his duffle in hand.
“Well,” she says, and they jump like spooked cats.
Tyler’s eyes swivel to look at her. He doesn’t look scared; he just looks curious, and there’s the barest hint of a smile on his lips. Javi, for his part, has his face hidden against Tyler’s shoulder, like he can’t bear to look at her.
“Jesus. Jesus. Fuck,” he says, emphatically. “Oh, fuck. I’m so sorry, Kate, I.”
He scrambles back, away from Tyler and he still can’t look at her. His lips are spit-slick and his whole face is red. “We –” He flounders, helpless, gaze ping-pong-ing between Kate and Tyler, Kate and Tyler, Kate and Tyler.
“Okay, Storm PAR, first of all,” Tyler put his hands on his hips and visibly planted his feet, ready to face anything head-on like he does everything, from the disrespectful people talking to him, to the tornadoes he likes to sit through. “I don’t need you to make excuses for me.” He turns to face her. “I kissed him.”
“It’s. I kissed him, really,” Javi protests. “And –”
“And did you like it?” Kate cuts him off. Her stomach is fluttery with anticipation. She finds herself desperately wanting Javi to say yes.
Javi looks at her like she’s grown a second head. His curls are astray. “Wha – I.” He stutters. Kate shrugs her shoulders like ‘well? Did you?’ and Javi seems to realize she’s dead serious. “Yeah,” he sighs heavily, defeatedly. Can’t bear to look at her. “Yeah, I did. I’m sorry.”
She feels… so entirely relieved, so much like a weight’s been lifted off her shoulders that she feels like she could float. Javi liked the kiss. Javi likes Tyler. And he likes her, and she likes them both.
They can do this. The evidence is damning.
“Good,” she says.
“Good?”
“I was hoping you would. We,” she grabs Tyler’s hands and sidles up his side. The taller man’s smiling whole and wide now, and when he bends down to kiss the crown of her head, she feels her resolve harden. “We were hoping that you would.”
“Hoping that I would kiss Tyler?” Javi mumbles with some disbelief.
“Yeah,” Kate nods. And now here comes the last hurdle they need to clear. “And we were hoping that you might want… might want to kiss me, too.”
Javi’s eyes are still travelling left and right, rabbit quick. Tyler takes pity on them both and lays it all down.
“To be clear, Javi, if you’re interested in kissing us both, then we are also interested in kissing you back. The both of us.”
Javi’s face goes through a series of emotions very quickly, goes death pale and then ruddy red with a blush, and then he finally settles somewhere half-nonplussed, half relieved.
“And you’re — you’ve discussed this?”
“I mean Tyler didn’t warn me that he was going to kiss you now, specifically, no, but yeah. We discussed this.”
“Sorry,” Tyler says, very much not sorry at all.
“It just.” Javi grimaces apologetically. “It just happened.”
Kate hums and levels Tyler with a glare. “Oh, I’m sure it was Tyler’s fault.”
Tyler raises his hands like ‘what can you do’. “So,” he bats his eyes at them both, “can we all agree that it’s been kind of tense with the whole flirting? So can we all chill out and work through it now?”
“What does working through it even look like to you, big guy?” Kate finally drops her bag and their tray of coffees on the TV stand. She hops over Tyler’s discarded backpack and sidles up to them both. They’re all so close to each other that she can feel the heat from their arms brushing. Javi still looks like he thinks he might be dreaming.
Can’t really blame him for that. Kate thinks she probably looked the same a little while ago when she had her own life-changing romantic revelation.
“I guess to keep it even…” Tyler smiles and leans to kiss her in turn, sliding their mouths together in something filthy. She feels herself blush at the thought of Javi, standing right there and watching. She bites Tyler’s bottom lip because she can, and he groans when he stands back up. “Now you.”
She turns back to look at Javi, who’s five shades of red and flushed to the tip of his ears. He doesn’t budge from his spot, still rooted, so she takes a step forward. Her heart is pounding against her chest, and she can’t help but feel… surprisingly smug about all this. Maybe Tyler’s been rubbing off on her.
Javi finally moves when she comes to stand in his space. He raises a hand to cup her jaw, and he looks at her with those eyes – making sure that she means it, and she does – and then he finally leans in and presses their lips together in a much more chaste kiss than she shared with Tyler. She feels his stubble against his chin, and when her own hand come to his face, she threads his soft curls between her fingers.
She lets out a shaky exhale when they step back. “Holy shit.”
Javi jolts, bringing his fingers to his mouth with a frown. “Is it bad?”
She can’t help but giggle, and she kisses him again, trapping his fingertips between their lips. “No,” she says between breaths. “It’s very good.”
He lets her lick into his mouth and drops his hands to her waist. She’s so lost in the moment that she doesn’t feel Tyler come up to them until he’s pressed against her back, a hot line of muscle and two big arms wrapping around both herself and Javi.
Tyler kisses her neck, and when she opens her eyes, she catches Javi looking at him over her shoulder. She bites at Javi’s mouth and then guides him by the jaw, closer to her and into Tyler’s reach. She can feel and hear more than see them kiss right against her ear, bumping into her temple. Tyler hums and one of his hands travels to her front, dipping into her waistband, petting the sensitive skin of her navel.
It feels like her whole body is on fire like this, stuck between the both of them. It’s hot, and the pressure of their bodies against her – their arousals – really gets her going. She really wants Tyler to take her to bed right now, and God… she really wants to take Javi to bed.
But maybe going gung-ho and breaking in the bed with their newly formed poly-tri-whatever-ship in the first hour of it is a little fast.
So, she wriggles out from between their bodies and firmly scruffs them both by the shirt hems, breaking them apart. “Okay gentlemen, that’s enough for today I think.” Javi and Tyler both blink at her, and she shakes them slightly. “We’re going to sit down, have our coffees, and talk about our feelings like well-adjusted adults.”
“Ugh,” Tyler moans, letting himself fall back on the bed.
Javi takes a moment to right himself and straighten his shirt. He’s still rosy about the cheeks, but his smile is confident and joyful when he catches her looking.
“Okay?” she asks, about her plan to have a chat, but also about it all. He considers her question for a moment, eyes straying to have a look at Tyler on the bed. He takes in a big breath.
“Yeah. Okay.”
It’s surprisingly easy, after that. She realizes just how deeply burrowed into their lives Javi was when they start dating each other and nothing really changes. Javi’s still there with coffee for them, bright and early in the morning, and they all still sit way too close to one another. Tyler still wrestles with him until one of them yields, out of breath, and Kate still watches him through the rearview mirror of Tyler’s truck. They share everything: food, space, their beds.
Nothing really changes except for the few important things that do.
She has two sets of lips to kiss, now. Two pairs of hands to hold. She wakes up from her nightmares to two bodies pressed against her. There’s a whole new person to take care of when they fool around, a new man to learn the ins and outs of; but Javi’s easy, because Kate already knows him so well.
And Tyler and Javi work surprisingly well together in all this. She was worried, at first, that they would only ever be together in relation to her, but the truth is that when she’s not there, they have the same sort of love for each other than they have for her. It’s nice to know that the sides of their triangle are equal, that the three pillars are strong and that they each give and receive the same amount of love and attention.
Her mom doesn’t get it.
A few weeks into their new relationship, when it’s all very new and fun, her mother invites them over for Kate’s birthday. She wishes she could tell her mother: ‘You know how Tyler and I are a couple? Well, we’ve sort of taken Javi in. So now I’m dating the two of them. And the two of them are dating each other. It’s a whole thing.’
She wishes she could have a conversation with her about feeling so damn fond of the both of them. She wishes she could explain how much she loves them both, and how it scares her a little that it feels so easy when it feels like it should be hard. She wishes she could sit in her mom’s bed like she used to as a little child and lay out her boy problems.
But in the end, it’s not meant to be easy on her. Because her mother walks in on her kissing Javi in the barn, and while she is nothing but cordial in the moment when she asks him to give her a moment alone with her daughter, she’s furious as she whirls on Kate the moment Javi’s gone.
All in all, it’s embarrassing to get caught like a horny teen making out with a boy she’s not supposed to be seeing. It’s a painful hour trying to explain that yes, Tyler is well aware that this is happening, and yes, everything is consented to, and no, Kate is not throwing away her relationship.
She’s not entirely sure her mom even believes her when they leave the barn after that long hour, but Javi and Tyler are waiting for them anxiously outside, seated on the porch stairs, and she sees the moment her mother notices their linked hands. She doesn’t say anything about it then, but Javi is still welcomed for dinner. They don’t really discuss it again, and Kate tiptoes around the subject until her mother point-blank asks her if she’s happy on the last day of their visit.
Kate is. She’s desperately happy in a way she hasn’t been since before that day her friends died. She tells her mother so, and something like a heavy weight seems to lift from her mom’s shoulders.
Her mom doesn’t get it, but she doesn’t really need to. She loves Kate, and she trusts her, and that’s enough.
It’s Monday. It’s raining horizontally outside, pelting against the windows. The drumming is making Kate drowsy. For once she doesn’t have to wonder whether Javi will be coming to their room. Because he’s already there, in their room.
He lounges on their bed – their bed – twirling Tyler’s tan cowboy hat around his fingers, head propped on the man’s lap. She watches him where she’s cuddled against Tyler’s other side, warm, warm, warm. The tv’s on droning in the background, and she’s fighting the pull of sleep with all she’s got. Tyler’s fingers are carding through her bleached hair. Forecast says there are risks of tornadoes the next day. Once upon a time, it would have been enough to give her nightmares. Now, it’s a thrilling reminder that she’s going in the field to do what she loves most, studying one of the most breathtaking meteorological events in the world.
And she gets to do it all with her boys.
She snuggles closer to Tyler’s side slinging her arm against him so that she can curl her fingers into Javi’s shirt. She feels herself floating, dozing. Tyler kisses the crown of her head, and she feels Javi shuffle closer, kissing the exposed skin of her shoulder.
Yeah. She could get used to this.