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Weddings, Sam had decided, were starting to get old. When they’d hit the 5-year post-university mark, the invitations started to come with almost disturbing frequency, from acquaintances looking to fill their evening guest list to the closer friends who wanted him there for the full ceremony.
He’d also realised that they were all fairly similar, all a bit boring and rather uncreative. The script for the day was the same in each case as well – the mingling with half-friends who he hadn’t spoken to, deliberately or otherwise, for years; the congratulations for the happy couple when he got a few minutes to see them; the hope that someone he was good friends with was on the guest list as well so he always had someone to be around.
Fortunately, he, Luke and Tom had largely moved in the same circles at university and at least Luke always seemed to be invited to the same weddings as Sam. Tom was often there as well and even AJ when the friendship groups had overlapped between drama cohorts.
Still, Sam decided at this particular wedding that he’d always try to think of something more entertaining to reward himself with after any subsequent marriages that he was invited to witness. He wasn’t sure he could get through another round of speeches and uninspiring finger food without something to look forward to.
At least they’d picked a good time of year to get married, he begrudgingly acknowledged as the sun started to set around 9pm. The wedding itself had been in a nice marquee, surrounded by flowers and green grass and the hum of a nearby beehive. The sort of wedding he could imagine Tom having one day.
The three of them had been invited together, Luke getting a plus-one in an amusing bout of miscommunication that had led him, even more amusingly, to dragging AJ along. Sam was bewildered to find that AJ had agreed, he himself knowing that he had enough weddings that he was forced to attend never mind going to one out of choice, but he was also pleased that the younger man was there. It gave him an easy angle to tease them, asking one time too many if they were in a relationship now which earned him a firm slap on the arm from Luke by the early afternoon and a silent look in his eyes that told Sam to stop.
Tom had been patiently amused by the teasing, raising his eyebrows steadily when Sam appealed to him after Luke’s physical retaliation.
“Leave them alone,” he’d murmured diplomatically when they’d had a moment to themselves, a light in his eyes still dancing with an unspoken gleam of humour. “They clearly don’t want to upstage the bride and groom with their own announcement.”
Sam had snorted unceremoniously into his champagne, a whisper of a smirk on Tom’s face as he looked away, perfectly composed.
By sunset, they were reaching levels of giddy tiredness that suggested they were either going to get far too drunk at the expensive hotel bar or descend into childish mischief that they probably should have outgrown by now. But when the next generic song came around on a playlist that Sam swore all the couples he knew had used, Luke stood up from the table they’d claimed and gestured to the door.
“Let’s explore,” he announced in a way that suggested he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“Explore?” AJ repeated, sounding just a little too incredulous for Sam to contain a laugh. He got to his feet, patting the younger man’s shoulders encouragingly.
“Have fun?” he coaxed sarcastically. “Do you remember what that is?”
“I’ve been supervising the elderly all day,” AJ bit back reliably, holding his arm out in Sam’s direction. “Need a hand?”
“Alright, children,” Tom’s hands landed on both of their shoulders, nudging them towards Luke’s scouted exit. “Let’s get some fresh air.”
Sam followed Luke out of the borderline excessive hotel, sharing a grin with AJ and watching the expression mirror itself on the other man’s face. And he was glad, yet again, that AJ had accepted Luke’s invitation for whatever reason.
The temperature was perfect as the sky lit up orange, seeping into pink. Having expected them to get into trouble for something, Sam was pleasantly surprised when their adventure only took them as far as a small hill around the back of the hotel. Luke had stridden purposefully towards it, a familiar restless energy seeming to drive his intentions.
And then he sat down beneath the tree at the top of the hill, no regard for the suit trousers he’d probably got dry-cleaned for the occasion. Tom sighed pointedly, getting nothing but a beaming smile back from Luke before he joined the three of them on the ground.
The silence was welcome, the sound of the party still getting caught by the breeze but not enough to disrupt them. Even though it was only late evening, it felt like the rest of the world was asleep already, allowing Sam to hear the other three breathing, an oddly comforting sound.
“I hate weddings,” he broke the silence eventually, his own vitriol not surprising any of them. AJ snorted under his breath as the other two chuckled. “So fucking boring.”
“You won’t say that about your own,” Luke grinned, nudging his arm. “A whole day to be the centre of attention. You’ll love it.”
“Well, we clearly all missed the memo,” Sam retorted, “Everyone I know seems to be getting married this year.”
“And here we are,” Tom said, faux mournfully.
“Sat under a tree and condemned to be single,” Luke joined in.
AJ lay back suddenly, shifting around until he was comfortable and then staring up at the leaves above them. Sam felt the rest of them waiting, so in tune with each other that they knew AJ was about to say something.
“Do you guys all want to get married, then?” he asked eventually, something curious in his question that suggested to Sam that he was far less bothered about it.
“To the right person,” Tom replied, his answers to these sorts of questions always coming quickly as if he’d thought about most turns his life could take.
“Yeah,” Sam nodded, glancing at Luke.
“I guess,” he shrugged less certainly, “Like Tom says – depends on what happens.” He picked at a small patch of grass, visibly debating with himself for a moment. “It can be a bit – conventional.”
Sam watched the cogs turn in AJ’s head. A bit of alcohol and a four-syllable word that he probably didn’t hear often usually caused a pause. It was comforting to know that about him, comforting to read AJ so clearly.
“Gay marriage has been legal for a while,” he pointed out eventually, clearly assuming Luke was talking about the potential to marry another man.
“Yeah,” Luke conceded. He didn’t continue and Sam let his own brow furrow, wondering what Luke had meant in that case. It didn’t seem like the right moment to ask though and he trusted that the other man would talk to them at some point if he had something he wanted to say.
For now, a summer breeze and some quiet companionship seemed too right to disrupt with a conversation that turned too serious.
“What about you, AJ?” he asked instead, stretching his foot out to prod the man in question lightly. “Don’t want to be tied down?”
“Don’t know,” AJ shuffled against the ground as if he was trying to shrug. “Can’t imagine it.”
“Well, whoever you end up with will be lucky to have you,” Tom said, his tone making Sam smile to himself. It reminded him of university again and the constant, steadying influence Tom had on him back then. Every time he heard the older man speak like that it sent him back in time – back to something unexpectedly reassuring given the other memories he had of Tom back then, far less stable.
“Anyway, I thought you and Luke were…” Sam trailed off teasingly, watching AJ roll his eyes, smothering a grin.
“Shut the fuck up,” he said quietly, almost lost beneath Luke’s more indignant response.
They settled again and Sam looked out across the fields in front of them. He was grateful for the choice of location – a country hotel at least gave some nice scenery, even if they wouldn’t sell a pint at a reasonable price.
An arm draped over his shoulders suddenly and he glanced over to meet Tom’s smiling eyes, rocking into his side easily. He was only pleasantly tipsy, actively choosing to seek out that tactility and knowing Tom was in the same state. Still, if neither of them talked about it, it didn’t have to mean much. Not even when Tom’s chin dropped into his hair, a more unusual gesture between them.
Apart from when they were acting. Playing at being a couple…
“Looks like you two are the ones hiding something,” Luke commented all too quickly. Sam didn’t move, feeling Tom gently huff out a laugh and stay put just as calmly.
“There’s room for a little one,” Tom said after a moment. Sam felt him move again and glanced over slightly, watching him hold his other arm out to Luke who shuffled into his side with a contented hum that Sam tried not to concentrate on too much. AJ glanced over at them, a knowing grin already spreading across his face that Tom tried to cut off. “Don’t start.”
“It’s just a bit of polygamy, Tom,” Sam teased, “No need to be ashamed of it.”
“Polygamy?” Tom repeated. Sam knew his eyebrows were raised without having to check.
“Didn’t realise we’d got married in the last five seconds,” Luke joined in. There was a brief note of hesitance under the rest of his joke though. “I thought we’d agreed to take things slowly.”
“Well, what do people call it when there are three of them?” Sam asked indignantly.
“Polyamory, dear,” Tom replied, reminding Sam of the way his grandparents used to explain things to each other. And, in typical Tom fashion, the joke fell away into a teaching moment without hesitation. “Not just throuples either. You know, just multiple people in one relationship.”
“What? That’s not just an open relationship?” Sam asked. Like he did on stage, he always felt like he was fighting a losing battle arguing with one of them about a topic they clearly knew more about. Still, he was stubborn.
“That can be part of it,” Tom replied, his shrug almost displacing Sam’s head. He started toying with the shirt sleeve Sam had rolled up to his elbows distractedly, a gesture that was suddenly, unavoidably obvious. Sam tried to focus only on what he was saying - on the gentle tone of voice without acknowledging quite how gentle it was. “Some people date multiple partners separately. Others have a more cohesive relationship.”
“Didn’t think we’d end up in a sex ed class this evening,” AJ mumbled, his forearm settled comfortably over his forehead as he squinted up at the rest of them. Sam was glad he didn’t seem to be the only one learning something though, watching the small furrow between AJ’s eyebrows stay put.
“Well, school doesn’t teach you this sort of thing,” Tom replied, wrinkling his nose up, “People think non-monogamy is always just one guy with a hundred wives or whatever but it can actually be…”
“A lot of different things,” Luke finished quietly, almost sounding thoughtful again.
Sam hummed, more an acknowledgement than anything else. He couldn’t really think about anything else, caught up in other considerations. Considerations like the number of times he’d caught himself looking at Luke a little too long before realising he was doing exactly the same thing to Tom. Or maybe the way he’d individually catalogued the microscopic reactions that Tom, Luke and AJ all had to different things – the way he read them without thinking. Or how everything under his skin had settled since the four of them had come outside together.
But he wasn’t – if he didn’t even know it existed, he couldn’t be interested in a polyamorous relationship. If he’d wanted one of them, he’d have sought out an explanation for his feelings already.
And it wasn’t as if the rest of them would want it.
“How would you even…” he started talking before he could stop himself, cutting off abruptly and hoping that none of them would push.
“Go on,” Tom prompted after a moment, both patient and a little playful.
“Like – how do they even start, these relationships?” Sam asked, forcing himself to sound merely curious. He was merely curious. “Say you like multiple people – what are the odds that all of them like you too? How would you even have that conversation?”
“I guess a lot of them start with a couple and then more people get added organically,” Tom mused, “I don’t know really.”
“Maybe it’s like any other relationship,” Luke suggested, “Sometimes you just get a feeling.”
“I suppose,” Sam conceded, “Sounds complicated.”
The three of them laughed and he tried not to bathe in the sound.
“Sounds like it would be reassuring,” AJ spoke up, thoughtful again as if he wasn’t talking to anyone in particular, or maybe it was just the alcohol doing most of the talking. “Imagine how much you’d have to trust each other.”
Sam found himself imagining it, those daydreams he’d sometimes had about all three of them suddenly coming into focus. It wasn’t just some strange thing his head had come up with – perhaps it had a name. Which made it real – made it a real thing that could happen one day.
Complicated. Reassuring.
And impossible, surely. In his experience it had been hard enough to navigate a relationship with one other person – two brains and two worldviews that needed to align on so many things. Doubling that requirement seemed implausible.
They had worked together for several years by now, still trying to build something sustainable out of bucket collections in the same London comedy clubs. Sam wondered if they would have given up by now if they weren’t all well-aligned to a certain extent. Perhaps there was already something between them – some sign that the four of them melded together in a way that other people didn’t.
“We’ve lost him to introspection,” Tom’s voice shook him out of that dangerous thought but didn’t erase it, the words too smooth and low with that hint of gravel that made it Tom.
And since when was Sam in the habit of noticing such a thing?
“What?” He forced himself to concentrate, rather unhelpfully proving that he had been ignoring them. Tom’s arm squeezed around his shoulders briefly, his cheek pressing back against Sam’s hair.
“I was saying I’m glad they didn’t actually try and convince us to perform,” AJ repeated, nodding back in the direction of the hotel. Sam grimaced at the idea that the groom had floated with him several months earlier. Both halves of the happy couple had been members of a different drama society at Royal Holloway and apparently remembered seeing Sam, Tom, Luke and AJ performing at the students’ union early on in their relationship. Sam wasn’t sure he could think of anything less appealing than trying to be the wedding entertainment at an event filled with people who already knew him.
“We would have had to be professional,” Luke agreed, wrinkling up his nose distastefully.
“Performing on a Tuesday night doesn’t normally inspire much professionalism,” Tom retorted jokingly.
“Can’t just come and sit outside under a tree when everyone’s expecting you to put on a show though, can you?” Luke shot back. “No amount of money would have made that bearable.”
“Look at that, he’s saying our company’s priceless,” Sam said, sensing he had stolen a joke from beneath Tom’s feet.
“I’m just saying you lot are more bearable than performing back there,” Luke threw his hand towards the hotel, leaning around Tom to stare Sam down. “I wouldn’t take it as a compliment.”
Sam grinned lazily and slumped some more of his weight against Tom’s side, feeling tired and satisfied in equal measure, like the end of a show had come round and they were all firing on their last cylinders over a pint at the bar. He knew they were getting close to giving it up, regardless of this hypothesis that the four of them had some mind-melding connection keeping them going.
No amount of psychic interlinking could argue with the numbers. Shoot from the Hip wasn’t financially viable if they kept going the way they had for the last few years. All four of them were making sacrifices to keep it up, probably holding themselves back from other career prospects in an attempt to get it working. And they weren’t talking about that bit, still enjoying the chaos and the free-spirit nature of it all.
Sam wondered who would be first to say it – which domino would fall and trigger a landslide – and how they would all react even if they knew they couldn’t argue.
But tonight, he had decided, wasn’t for serious conversations. Not beneath the tree in the whispering breeze. He eventually let Tom pull him to his feet and followed Luke and AJ back down the hill, watching Luke drop back a step to brush a few strands of grass from the back of AJ’s white shirt. Sam nudged Tom’s elbow, already pushing down the tiny voice in his head that had already started to wax lyrical about the sideways glance the two of them had shared, the small smiles he could see them exchanging – that he wished he could see more clearly.
Not tonight.
He didn’t let himself think about the comedy group on its last legs and the implications that had for their friendship.
Not tonight.
“Do you think they’ve remembered the bed sharing situation?” he asked Tom instead, just a touch too loudly to keep AJ and Luke from hearing. They’d all arrived at the hotel that morning to the news that Luke and his ‘plus one’ had been designated just one room with a double bed, a fact that AJ had shrugged off graciously when Luke sheepishly admitted that he had forgotten to ask for separate rooms.
“We’ll just be nice and cosy,” AJ had said earlier that day, smiling teasingly.
Now, with a couple of drinks in him, he merely raised his middle finger over his shoulder, not even turning around to deign Sam with a reply. Luke, equally unbothered, tossed his head back and laughed, either at Sam’s comment or AJ’s action. The cause of his amusement wasn’t really important – Sam was happy enough any time someone provoked Luke like that.
And he wouldn’t over-analyse his own reaction tonight. Not with some new vocabulary floating around his mind.
He was still a little too stubborn to forever have to attribute such a life-changing revelation to another one of these identical weddings.