Tom Sloane was unlocking his front door when he heard her shout of "Hello-ooo there!" He turned to his left and saw Saavik burning up the pavement on her long legs, bundled up against January, her bag on her back and a cardboard box in her arms.
"Hi hi," Tom said. "Wasn't expecting this, but I certainly won't object."
She reached the foot of the stairs and started up. "Did I miss Daria?"
"I just saw her back to the T," he said. He unlocked the door and held it open for her.
"You buy her the brunch you promised?"
"We went out for bagel sandwiches and wandered the neighborhood a bit."
"I," she announced, "went shopping in Chinatown. Century eggs and that mala veggie jerky you thought was too weird for me, and for you..." She opened the box to reveal a half-dozen custard tarts.
"Scrumptious," he said, pleasant surprise in his voice, and gave her a quick smooch at the threshold.
As she was divesting her coat and unlacing her boots, he filled the electric kettle for tea. He had just bit into a custard tart when she said, "Finish that one, fridge the rest and clear your appointment book."
"It's the—what's this?" She interrupted whatever he was going to say by wrapping her arms around his chest from behind and compressing herself into full-body contact.
"I'll let you go if you have a very pressing previous engagement," she said, in a whisper that had more than a little growl to it.
"Schedule just cleared itself," he managed to say. Pastry crumbs fell unheeded from his fingers into the sink.
* * *
The water had long since gone cold. He switched the kettle back on and poked through the boxes of bagged and looseleaf teas.
"Am I not tart enough for you?" Saavik said, easily, wryly, lounging her way into the room.
"Just... getting tea?"
The gears of his higher brain functions were beginning to mesh again. She was direct and assertive, yes, almost always, and he liked that rather a lot, but she was usually only ravenous when surging with something intense like the high from a show.
"Trying to keep me from straying?" It came out as the joke he meant, since he had lost those feelings for Daria so long before it now felt strange to contemplate them, and now Daria's mood and situation made him feel more worried than anything else, and he and Saavik had had frank and honest talks about not needing or expecting monogamy from each other. He had bit into his second custard pastry of the day when a noise from Saavik made him look up with concern.
"Errrrr..." she went, deep in her throat.
"Hey, bagel sandwiches and a stroll were just bagel sandwiches and a stroll, I promise."
She nodded, met his eyes, nodded again. "She is... prettier than I expected. Can't always tell that kind of thing from author photos, but... yeah."
"You're not worried about me," Tom realized.
"I'm just being a bit silly, aren't I? Not my usual deal at all."
"You're entitled to it." The kettle had not yet come to the boil. He pulled a tea box down from the cabinet and lifted the metal infuser gizmo from its hook. "Now and then."
"I know we set the ground rules for dating around," she said. "And I was serious that I don't mind you doing it."
"I was serious too," he told her.
"It feels... different now that it's hit me right here," tapping her chest, "you know? Now that it's a real option. Or, at least, that I know I would. And that part of me... wants it really badly."
Tom took her hand.
Finally, the kettle reached boiling and clicked off.
She followed him, still lightly holding his hand, as with his other he retrieved a pair of ceramic mugs. Her head drooped onto his shoulder. "That's nice," he whispered, and meant it.
Clinking, shuffling.
"I don't really know what to say," he began, a little louder but still more than casually soft, "to convince you that I am OK with this. And having the possibility become live is kind of a big thing for me, too. I had gone a long time without really thinking about it."
"Same," she said.
As the tea brewed in the pot, he took a deep breath. "OK, total honesty: When you didn't try to date Jane, I kind of figured that polyamory would stay a theoretical possibility for a long while."
This got a smile out of her. "Guess the lightning just didn't strike."
After her first sip of tea: "More total honesty, then. Do you think I have a chance?"
"I think you're devastatingly beautiful. So, you have that working in your favor. And the way you two got along yesterday... I don't know if that's what flirting looks like for Daria Morgendorffer." He paused and held her gaze. "I don't know if she's queer. But... maybe?"
"On both counts?"
"On both counts."
"And... devastatingly beautiful, you said?"
He planted a kiss on her forehead and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "And I meant it."
"O brave new world, my love."
"A queer tale's best for winter," he misquoted, smiling, "my love."
Daria chopped fifteen centimeters off the end of the baguette, sliced it lengthwise, folded it open, scooped out two channels of soft bread and began layering in vegetables. First, the spicy pickle chips and a few of the peppers from their jar, then a layer of the garlic-dill pickle chips from the second jar and a generous portion of the pickled red onions from the third. She inverted the bottle of dill-pickle mustard, gave it a good shake and added a squiggle over the onion layer. Then she squeezed the sandwich shut, rotated the plate and slid it across the table to Saavik. "You asked," Daria noted.
Saavik lifted the sandwich and squeezed it experimentally. Then she leaned in to take a bite. "Mmmm," she said, eyes closing in joy.
"Acceptable?"
Saavik swallowed. "Elementally satisfying. You have no idea." She went in for another bite.
"Well. Lucky for me you're easy to please."
Daria stood up and gathered the ingredients to return them to the fridge. Saavik watched her as she moved. She wore a green-and-black sweater over her red-and-black sleeping flannels, indoor clothes for a Boston winter that by good fortune brought out the softness of her still-disarrayed auburn hair and the—Saavik was convinced of this although Daria didn't seem to be—eminently caressable contours of her face.
"You look good," Saavik said, as gently as she knew how. "Though I'd wish you were showing off your curves, if I weren't so thoroughly sated."
"I don't have curves to show off." Daria slid back into her chair.
Saavik set down her half-eaten sandwich and held Daria's gaze. "Take it from me?" she suggested.
It was the third night they had spent together, and the second in Daria's bed. And Daria's fifth and sixth orgasms in Saavik's care, if anyone was keeping track, which both of them were. This time, as she had before, Daria had started nervous and then become eager, so eager. This time, Daria had whispered, "I took so much, before. Please. Teach me how to give." This time, they had showered together afterward and were having a midnight snack.
Daria smiled, hesitatingly. "I'll try." Saavik reached a hand across the table, and she lightly held it, her smile becoming easier. "I'll try," she said again.
As Saavik finished her quad-pickle sandwich, Daria nibbled on a molasses chocolate chip cookie. She'd tried improvising the recipe and didn't think she had quite dialled it in yet, but for improvisational baking the results weren't bad at all.
Soft footsteps, then, from the direction of the bedrooms. "Oh, hey," Jane said, sleepily.
"Hey," Daria greeted. "You OK?"
"Woke up, couldn't sleep again. Didn't want to... Thought I'd try TV on the sofa."
"You want anything?" Daria asked. "Chamomile tea? Hot cocoa?"
"Um, we have any of that hazelnut kind left?"
"Sure." Daria rose. "You?" she asked Saavik.
"Oh. Um, peppermint, like I had before?"
Daria set about preparing their hot drinks. Saavik suspected that Daria liked being able to do something kind and then step back, to be generous without having to keep herself physically present.
Jane fumphed onto the sofa and tapped a command into the portable keyboard. A familiar logo glowed into being on the projector screen. The announcer declared from the stereo speakers, "Desert nights, secret passions and apocalyptic power... Lesbian keepers of the demon core, next on Sick, Sad World!"
"Bootlegs with the original music," Daria said to Saavik.
"Cool." Saavik chomped the last bite of her sandwich, licked dill-pickle mustard from her thumb, and surreptitously appropriated a cookie from the plate.
When the three mugs of cocoa were ready, Daria handed one of the peppermint to Saavik and carried the hazelnut to Jane. A flicker of concern passed over the quiet of Daria's features. She took a sip of her own cocoa and then sat beside Jane.
Jane was stretched out, elbow-propped, taking up most of the couch, while Daria kept herself to the leftmost cushion.
Saavik brought her cookie and her drink to the living room and settled herself on the floor, leaning back against the sofa armrest. She then crouched forward to nosh on her cookie, and she looked up at them.
Jane was caught between fatigue and an anxiety that she was doing her best to bury. There was trepidation in her slowness as she brought herself closer to Daria and brought her head to rest on Daria's shoulder.
Daria smiled her Mona Lisa smile, and her eyelids flickered with the sensory rush.
Her hand fell to the side and then, encountering Saavik's hair, gently slipped through it, her fingertips giving Saavik's skin a stroke in one direction and a skritch in the other.
Daria was in love with Jane. That much was obvious. In love in every way except what had happened in Daria's bed tonight—and her well of anxiety about that kind of closeness went deep, farther than Saavik had known in anyone else.
Jane was in love with Daria. That much was obvious, too.
Whether that included sexual attraction, Saavik wasn't sure—her own feelings in this stage made it hard to think that anyone wouldn't want Daria—but it didn't seem out of the question.
Whether Daria would accept that now, or if being with Saavik would eventually help her to be comfortable enough to accept it in the future, Saavik didn't know either.
They would have to figure all of this out one day.
But that could wait.
After all, they had plenty of time.