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Adrienne leaves.
Gil knew it would happen – Adrienne knew she didn't want to stay, and Gil knew he wanted to stay. This is something they've been building up to for months. Still, after Adrienne runs through airport security, pastel lilac braids pulled up into a ponytail and passport in hand, Gil is left standing on the other side of the gates for almost thirty full minutes after she's already gone.
He gets his legs to move, eventually, sure, but it still feels like something in him has died. Not to be dramatic, of course, it was a friendly split, they'd broken up months ago, they'd promised to keep in touch, and Adrienne had kissed his cheeks twice before she'd picked up her bags and rushed through security, but he and Adrienne had been together for as long as he remembers. Since before he came out. There's no one else in the world that knows him better than she does.
Gil calls Alex, because that's what he does when he's in trouble. He calls Alex, because he knows him the second best in the world and because he lives close and because Alex is a fixer and this is what he does. He fixes things. Gil wants him to fix him.
Alex comes to pick him up and takes him to his apartment and John tacklehugs him as soon as they walk in, which is impressing because John's a foot shorter than him. He does it nevertheless, and Gil remembers just how much he loves him.
There's no smalltalk. No talking at all, in fact, just John's arms and hands and lips on his cheek, dry and chapped, and then Alex joins in and they hug him, long and tight. Gil tries his best to hug them both back. John takes his wrist and leads him into the living room where he's built a very cozy-looking blanket mattress, pulls him down until he flops down on the soft blankets, the pillows underneath them. Alex comes to sit on his other side, and they sandwich him between their bodies. They watch Chopped until Gil's so tired he can't see anymore, and then John, who's closer to the TV, turns it off and tucks him in. They cuddle. It's very quiet. Strange for the three of them. Gil is willing to ignore it, falls asleep easily.
A few days later –
Gil, Alex, and John in the kitchen. John's lips ghosting along the expanse of Gil's throat, Alex's hands on his hips. It's intoxicating, way too hard to resist, and Gil wants so bad to just kiss them both. Wants to be kissed silly. Wants skin in his mouth and hands on him. Wants wants wants.
Instead of doing any of what he wants he says “I can't,” and Alex and John both back off immediately.
“Okay,” says Alex, very level, “why? We're not judging you. You don't have to explain but if you want to we would like to know.”
Gil swallows. Considers. He knows he and Adrienne have been broken up for months. It's not like Adrienne left him at the airport, or like he's cheating on her. It's just. It's still not over enough for him to consider this. “I feel like I shouldn't enter a new relationship yet.”
“Okay,” says John, “we don't have to become romantic immediately. Or ever. We can just be platonic roommates who just happen to sleep in the same bed and cuddle a lot, and if you change your mind we can rethink our relationship label. How's that sound?”
Gil thinks it sounds good and he says it. John pats his chest, gentle. Kisses his cheek.
-
When John lunges he does so face first.
Gil thinks it's stupid – gives way too much advantage to the other guy, allows him access to his face, his neck. It'd be way smarter if he'd go sort of sideways, shoulder first, or at least put his fists between himself and the other guy, but John doesn't do that even after Gil's tries teaching him some basic fighting positions. John doesn't do smart when he gets like this. What he does is hard, fast, and painful. He does straight out dumb sometimes, and he does it on purpose. Gil doesn't like it, Alex doesn't like it, and John doesn't like them all up in his business which Alex begrudgingly accepts but Gil still has trouble swallowing.
(“Relationships, man,” says Alex drily one time after John's locked himself in the bathroom after a fight gone wrong and the following argument gone sour. They're sitting on the floor, backs against the door, Alex's head tipped back, throat stretched and bared, and Gil just nods.
“I can hear you, asshole,” comes from the other side of the door, sort of muffled, teary.
Alex puts his hand on the door, fingers splayed wide, goes “I love you, baby,” and Gil has to close his eyes at the amount of affection he manages to fit into those words.
“Love you too,” says John, immediately. Gil has a feeling that if the door were to magically disappear their hands would touch.)
So John lunges at him face first. This isn't new – they play fight all the time, and sometimes the fights turn a little bit too real and they both end up with bloody noses and scratched up backs. Alex and John play fight too, but it's way less of an all the time thing and there's way more stress on the play part of play fight, probably because they're the same height and John's got muscle weight on Alex, and because no matter what Alex says Gil knows he still has issues with hurting John even when he knows he wants it. Gil does too, doesn't like hurting John, but he's better at holding John back and making sure no one's going overboard with the violence, better at keeping himself and John in check. Alex is easier to wind up.
Usually when it starts like this John has a look – a fight look, a specific eyes slightly out of focus -look he gets when he really wants to be messed up and thrown around a bit, and most of the time Gil just takes him by the shoulders and spins him around and slams him against a wall and keeps him there until he's ready to talk about his feelings.
Not today.
John lunges at Gil, face first, and the pin drops.
Gil doesn't have time to weigh his options. John lunges at him and Gil grabs his throat with one hand to stop him in his tracks.
Silence falls. For a second John looks more surprised than anything – eyes wide, mouth just barely open, eyebrows raised. Gil stares right at him, eyes wide, a little nervous. Alex makes a panicked sound from somewhere behind Gil, one that Gil knows is of genuine fear. It makes Gil want to back off, even though he knows he's got a good, solid, safe grip of John, knows he won't hurt him. He's not even holding him tight enough to cut off his air, just hard enough for him to feel it, to feel a little restricted. He's good at this. Hooked up with someone who was into this enough times for it to be considered semiregular. The correct way to do this comes to him automatically. Alex makes a noise, another scared sound. Gil thinks about letting go, but before he can move John's face goes slack, his posture rounding out into submissiveness.
“Oh,” says Gil eloquently. John's knees go a little wobbly so Gil backs him up until the backs of his knees hit the bed, guides him down onto the bed. John's legs twitch a little, kick up when Gil lays him down on his back. He sits down on John's thighs, applies a little bit more pressure. Not too much, just a quick squeeze. Gives him an easy way out if he wants to safeword or otherwise leave the situation.
John goes boneless. His breathing evens out as much as it can with Gil's hand over his windpipe. Gil eases up on the pressure, pets his cheek with one hand, and when John leans into the gentle pressure on his face he lets go of his throat.
“Wow,” says John as soon as he humanly can, “you have really big hands.”
Alex starts laughing first, a high, panicked sound that turns into genuine amusement. Gil smiles, a little unsure, and John grins back at him, winded down, content. Alex comes to hug them both, a little sloppy, kisses John's face for a little bit and then headbutts Gil's chin, gentle, until Gil lets him tuck his head underneath his chin.
-
“I should probably sell my apartment,” mumbles Gil one night.
John is asleep, and Alex is mostly there as well, and he's not entirely sure why he picked this time specifically to say this, but he did. It's out there now. Alex makes a sleepy sound, a lip smacking sound, and turns to face Gil in the dark. He moves so much slower when he's half asleep, limbs stiff and loose at the same time, body not quite obeying his brain.
“Okay,” he says, a little muffled, a lot sleepy. Gil trails his fingers down Alex's arm. Alex leans into him, hums, goes “why now?”
It's a fair question. They've been living together for months now, and most of Gil's things have already found their way into Alex and John's apartment. They've been doing each other's laundry for weeks. Gil is quiet for a long time. Considers. “I think I want to take up on that offer. I think I want that relationship.”
Alex rolls closer, kisses his bared throat. No pressure. Just dry lips against skin. “Okay,” says Alex. “Okay,” repeats Gil back to him.
-
“Hey,” greets John when he walks in.
Gil doesn't turn to look at him but he grunts in acknowledgment. It's been a rough day – one of those days that suck the energy out of you until you're too tired to even focus on the TV, the kind of tired where you have the volume turned up as high as it goes and the subtitles on but you still don't understand anything that's happening. It's only seven but Alex is asleep in the bedroom, just over yet another migraine. Any other day Gil would complain to him about how this is probably because he lets his wrists go untreated, lets himself work himself sick, but today is just. Today is milky-tired. Sucked dry -tired. Gil's taken his covers from the bed and wrapped himself up in them in front of the television in a desperate attempt to stay awake for at least a few more hours while still being at least somewhat comfortable. It's not going very well – he's drowsy and kind of cranky and he's getting increasingly annoyed at the people in the TV show he can't remember turning on.
“Bad day?” asks John and sits down on the couch.
He's eating the crackers Alex hates again. Gil is neutral to the crackers, not that anyone cares about his opinion. Gil makes a m-hm sound from within his blanket burrito. He knows for a fact that before coming to the living room John went into the bedroom and kissed Alex's forehead. John bites down on another cracker. It makes an obnoxiously loud sound. Gil is starting to get why Alex doesn't like them.
“Want me to squish you? I know I'm shorter than you by like a foot but I could come sit on you or something.”
Gil shrugs. He doesn't really get the appeal of being squished. He doesn't like being contained so it just sounds like it would give him anxiety.
“Alex really likes it,” says John.
“I'm not Alex,” mumbles Gil.
And isn't that the problem? Most of their relationship problems could be summed up by him not being Alex. Gil gets that John loves him, gets that Alex is the number one person in this relationship, he gets it. Alex and John – they've been together since, what, Alex moved into the States. They've been practically inseparable for years. Hell, they've been strangely codependent since the day they met. He gets it – he gets that they don't exactly have the same history, gets that compared to Alex he is just a stranger to John. An outsider to their inside jokes and easy affection. Gil just wishes John would think of him as his own person instead of a taller, weirder Alex.
“I'm not Alex,” he repeats. He can feel John not looking at him. He's probably licking cracker dust off his fingers or something.
Gil picks up his pillow from the floor and marches into the bedroom. Shuts the door behind him very carefully. John doesn't follow him.
-
In the middle of what Gil thinks might be on its way to turning into sex John, in his clumsy French, calls Gil beautiful.
Gil recoils, stands up. He feels exposed in his thin undershirt and boxers, lips kiss-swollen and tender, and both Alex and John look at him in bewilderment. Gil notes them unconsciously shuffling closer to each other on the bed, knees knocking together until their hips touch. Alex puts two fingers into his mouth, bites down on the knuckle. Gil doesn't think he notices doing it. Stress reaction. Has to have something in his mouth to bite on.
“Gil?” goes John, suddenly unsure. “Are you okay?”
Gil – he isn't. That's the thing. He's not okay. He just doesn't know how to explain this to them. It's not like they haven't both called him beautiful before, called him pretty and beautiful and gorgeous – adjectives with strongly feminine connotations have been applied to him for as long as they've been together. It's just different when it's in French. It's different. He doesn't know how to explain it in a way that would make sense to them. He doesn't know if it makes any sense.
Maybe it has something to do with how his family had reacted to his coming out with passive-aggressive misgendering that Gil had no way of calling out without it seeming like he was just being dramatic for no reason. Maybe it's just one of those things that aren't explicit misgendering or denial of his identity but rather something too small to fight against. Instead of the axes or knives of blatant denial of his self-identification it's like needles, or maybe just thorns. Small. Still hurts.
“Beau,” whispers Gil. He's crossed his arms defensively across his chest without even realizing he had moved, an old habit he thought he'd gotten rid of long ago. Alex's mouth drops open a little bit in understanding. Gil watches him squeeze John's hand. Swallows. “Beau is the masculine of belle.”
“Oh,” says John, realization dawning on him. There's a split second where the only emotion Gil can identify in John's eyes is horror. “Oh my god.”
Gil's knees feel wobbly suddenly. He feels like all air has been punched out of him. Drained. His fight or flight response is leaving him, adrenaline rush coming to an abrupt stop. He collapses face first on the bed.
“Can I touch you?” asks John after a few seconds of silence.
“Mm,” says Gil. John's fingers tangle themselves into Gil's hair, not tugging, just a gentle scratch of blunt fingernails against his scalp. Alex puts a gentle hand on his shoulder and when he backs up into the touch Alex lies down against his side, cuddles into him. He's so short that he's got his face buried into his neck and his feet still end several inches before Gil's.
“I'm sorry, baby,” says John after a minute of idle petting. Gil makes a sound. “Are there any other words we should avoid in the future?”
Gil pauses to think. Most of his words are in French. He doesn't think there'll be any problems with that.
“Just. Don't use explicitly feminine adjectives to describe me?” It comes out as a question. Scratches his throat on the way out. Gil licks his lips. Tries again. “Beautiful is okay. Pretty is okay. Just. The French equivalents imply more strongly that I'm a girl. To me at least. Just. Don't.” John picks up his hands one by one, kisses his knuckles. Rolls him over a little. Gil lets his body be manipulated.
“Okay,” says John, soft, and Gil knows it won't be brought up again unless Gil wants it to be.
Sighs. Lets himself go boneless. John drags him up enough to pillow his head in his lap. Alex nuzzles his face into the space between his shoulder blades.
-
“Wow,” John chokes out, bordering on a sniffle, “this is such a me thing to do.”
He's right. Alex doesn't lock himself in the bathroom when he's overwhelmed – Alex very rarely even uses the safeword system and when he does he usually just trusts them to leave him alone. The most he's done is lock himself in the bedroom. John, on the other hand, practically does this biweekly. Sometimes several times a week. Before he picked up this habit he'd storm out of the apartment, would usually get into a fight by the time he was five minutes away from the building, most nights would come home bruised and bloody and even more distressed than he was when he left. It's better this way, Gil knows, and Alex especially knows. It works for John. Not so much for the rest of them.
Today, though –
It's been a rough day. Alex's wrists have been bothering him all week, and he's been systematically refusing to wear his wrist braces, refusing to take breaks, refusing to take it easy. Gil knows he's a stubborn little thing, knows that it is one part principle, one part anxiety, and one part pride. Alex can't stand feeling inadequate, can't stand feeling like he depends on others, can't stand feeling like he isn't doing enough. John and Gil trying to convince him into taking a break had quickly escalated into Gil wondering out loud why they even live in an apartment this small, “we don't even have an office. Wouldn't it be easier if you had a writing space so you didn't have to shut us out every time you want to write?” which in turn had turned into Alex walking out.
“Are you a red?” calls John after him, voice soft with concern. Alex locks the bathroom door.
“This is my fault,” Laf says. Drags the backs of his hands down his face.
“No,” says John, but it sounds a little weak.
“It's fine, you don't have to lie to me,” he says, suddenly very tired, and John bites on his lip, doesn't say anything else. They sit in silence. Alex doesn't make a sound from behind the door.
“I'm sorry,” says Gil after it's been twenty minutes, loud enough that he knows Alex has to have heard it.
“Yellow,” responds Alex. He sounds weary. Not angry anymore, just tired. “Yellow. But it's okay. It's fine.”
Gil swallows around the lump in his throat he didn't realize had formed there. “Okay. Okay.”
John takes his hand. Knocks on the door, a quick thing, but with intent, a pattern in there. Alex responds immediately with his own rhythm. Gil watches John's lips curl into a tired smile. Wonders when he stopped feeling jealous about them having these silent, secret things he isn't a part of. He catches John's eye, smiles at him. John smiles back, a sweet smile, a secret smile. Gil realizes with a pang that just because he isn't a part of everything John and Alex share doesn't mean that he's excluded. Doesn't mean they don't have their own secret things. John smiles at him in his secret smile. Gil smiles back, not a secret smile, just a Gil smile. A John smile. A Gil to John smile.
Alex removes himself from the bathroom another thirty minutes later, eyes still a little puffy and face a little splotchy, skin red where it isn't tanned gold. John wraps himself around him the second he steps out, gentle, loose arms, enough space for him to untangle himself from his arms if he wants to. Alex falls into John's arm, easy, sweet. John's arms wrap around him effortlessly, tight enough to support his weight. Gil fidgets nervously around them, hugs them individually, hugs Alex and then kisses every part of his skin he can reach. His ears. His cheek. His forehead. His neck.
They talk about it. Alex agrees to take a break. Agrees to go to the doctors. They'll probably diagnose him with carpal tunnels again, give him strict orders to rest and wear his braces and Alex'll ignore it, but it's still something. A compromise. Gil doesn't want to compromise, doesn't want to compromise when it comes to Alex's health, but John gives him another one of those secret looks, a warning glare, and Gil shuts his mouth, doesn't say anything. They schedule an appointment. John kisses Alex's eyelids and then Gil kisses his wrists and Alex blushes until he's pink and gold under their lips. Alex sniffles and John makes an executive decision to get him into the shower. Alex doesn't protest.
“We can't move out,” says Alex a few hours later when they're all sprawled out on the living room floor, season six of The X-Files playing on the background. John makes a mhm sound into Alex's shoulder to get him to go on. “I can barely pay my share of rent here. I can't afford a bigger apartment.”
Gil pauses where he was braiding John's hair into two French braids. “That's fine,” he says, a little confused, “you can pay what you can and we'll pay the rest.” Alex sighs but doesn't tense up. His hair is still a little damp from the shower. Gil buries his face into it briefly. He smells like honey and vanilla. Smells familiar. Smells like family.
“No,” says Alex.
“No?” asks Gil.
“No.”
Gil stops prodding. Finishes John's braids. Pats him on the shoulder, drags Alex up by his armpits until he's sitting on his lap. John grumbles but settles over Alex's lap. Alex's hands settle on John's back, on his neck.
“You want one or two braids?” he asks, and Alex sighs.
“One,” he says.
“Okay,” says Gil.
An alien explodes onscreen. John sucks two of Alex's fingers into his mouth, and Gil watches Alex's lips stretch into a smile.
-
The bathtub isn't big enough for three people.
“The bathtub in my apartment is four times the size of this, ah, Alex, c'est quoi en anglais, un seau?”
“Bucket, Gil.”
“The bathtub in my apartment is four times the size of this bucket.”
Alex kicks him, gentle but forceful enough to kind of hurt. “Shut up. It's not even your apartment anymore. You sold it.”
Gil has to pause at that. It's true – it's not his apartment anymore. Hasn't been in months, really. He splashes the water around his legs thoughtfully. John lets go of his waist with the one hand he'd been using to hold onto him and splashes a little himself. Sympathetic splashing. Gil snickers. What even.
It's a tight fit. He's got his back against John's chest, who in turn has his back against Alex's chest. Alex has his legs wrapped around John's waist from behind like an octopus, head on the edge of the tub. John's face is barely above the surface of the water. The angle can't be good for him, but he's going with it anyway. Alex has a habit of doing that – of trying to wrap himself around John, and John has a habit of seeking out situations where Alex will wrap himself around him. It's a thing for them, Gil knows. Something about wrapping bodies around each other and being smothered but like, in a good way, being smushed, being contained by each other. Gil's getting a hang on it, too, has been asked to lie down on top of both of them before. He still doesn't like being squished, but he'll do it for Alex. He'll do it for John, too, but he asks for it a lot less often.
It's a tight fit but it isn't bad. Gil doesn't think he would enjoy being in Alex's position, or in John's, but this – this is okay. It's good. His legs are bent a little (or a lot, maybe), and the parts of him that aren't underwater are getting a little cold, but John's there, warm and solid and sweet, and Alex's legs are there too, these weird bumps against his back. It's good. He feels close to them. Feels close in general.
“I take it back,” mumbles Gil.
“Hm?” says John, drowsy.
Gil makes a mental note to keep an eye on that. John has a tendency of dropping off whenever he's even vaguely comfortable and warm, and falling asleep in the tub seems kind of dangerous.
“This isn't a bucket,” he says, finally, “this is a very nice bathtub.”
John presses his lips against the skin of Gil's shoulder so that he can feel them stretch into an easy smile. Alex moves his leg a little bit, not quite a kick. Just enough of a movement for Gil to know that he's heard what Gil said. Enough to let him know that he agrees.
“Good bathtub,” he repeats, “yeah. Good.”
Doesn't completely just mean the bathtub.