Folie a Trois
Aug. 18th, 2011 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeTitle: Folie a Trois
Prompt: 'Triangle'
Raige and M.D. invited Thomas out for pizza one Thursday, and they couldn’t have been more obvious if they’d tried. Raige’s cheeks were red and he kept tugging at his hair and looking at M.D. as though hoping she would say something, and M.D. was darker than usual and she kept fidgeting and giving Raige the stink-eye as though expecting him to say something. They thought they were being subtle, but they really weren’t, and they’d made it through half a Carnivore Special without saying anything real, just stuff like, “So, uh, how’s weather down in Austin?” and “I read this really interesting paper on gastropod digestion, it was fascinating.” So Thomas finally decided to put them out of their socially inept misery.
“Okay, you know what, I know. You two hooked up. Y’all’re trying to tell me, and y’all’re doing a really crappy job, because y’all think I’m going to make fun of y’all. And you know what, I will, I really will, but not on y’all’s first day. Y’all’s first day, I buy y’all ice cream and go Jesus Christ it took y’all long enough!”
Raige winced and slunk down in the booth so he was sitting only slightly taller than Thomas. M.D. made a face.
“And it took you half a large pizza to let us off the hook?” She said. “Some friend you are.”
“I was having fun watching you squirm,” Thomas said, but he was lying. He just hadn’t wanted to admit that he, Sex Incarnate, was now the third wheel. “Because y’all’re both hilarious. So, Raige,” he snapped his fingers, “hand it over.”
M.D. blinked at Raige, who went flaming scarlet, cleared his throat, and said, “Uh, actually, I kissed her. So um…”
“Seriously? Jesus!” But Thomas wasn’t a sore loser, so he pulled his wallet out and handed over a five. “God, I thought you’d die of old age before you had the guts to try…”
“You bet on it?” M.D. shrieked. Her skin tone didn’t let her go red, but she was definitely getting darker, and her voice was hitting that distinctive squawking range of true M.D. mortification. And he wasn’t even trying.
“I didn’t think it’d ever actually happen!” Raige protested, trying to wave away the five. “He insisted! I figured he’d forget about it.”
“Raige, my man, I forget a lot of things. The tenth president of the United States, the quadratic equation, my aunt’s birthday. I don’t forget the important stuff. And take the five, I work nights and weekends doing construction now.”
“If he doesn’t want it, I’ll take it,” M.D. said. “All my wages are currently in Treehouse scrip, good luck converting that…”
“Hey, I never made any bets with you,” Thomas retorted. “I know better. You cheat.”
“Lies and heresy! Cheating implies I get caught.”
“If you’re really that determined to give me five dollars, use it to buy the ice cream,” Raige interrupted, and that satisfied everyone.
They sat on the subway overpass, watching the trains and people rush by as the sun descended, trying to devour their ice cream before it melted. M.D. gave herself two ice cream headaches in the process, but she was the only one to succeed.
“You mock my eating habits,” she said, clutching her temples, “but they are mere evidence of my evolutionary superiority.”
“Yeah right,” Thomas said, catching a drip off his cone. “Did you even manage to taste it?”
The ribbing was half-hearted. Sure, he and Raige had horsed around a bit in the past, but he’d always known in his gut that if M.D. ever got over her own social awkwardness enough to ask him out, Raige would be gone in a heartbeat. And he knew how these things worked, especially for people who had never dated anyone before: they got a new girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever, and they forgot everyone else existed for a while, and nothing was really ever the same afterward. Either they stayed together, in which case they now had their special couple land where their friends couldn’t follow, or they broke up, in which case there was tears and drama. Whichever happened, the friend triangle was over.
And he was odd man out.
He’d known this would happen, had always figured easy come easy go, he’d take it in stride like he did everything else, but still. He’d miss them.
He sunk into his melancholy, enough that he didn’t notice that M.D. and Raige weren’t hanging all over each other, but instead, were on either side of him, Raige leaning on the overpass railing, M.D. sitting on it with her legs hooked under.
“It’s funny,” she said, flicking a cone crumb to a pigeon. “You’re Mr. Charm and Schmaltz, bragging all the time about how everybody wants you, but you’ve been single the whole time I’ve known you. Heck, me and Raige got together before you did.”
Thomas shrugged. “Aw, you know, after Treehouse, it’s hard finding someone who gets it. I’m a year behind in school—I’d be two, if Raige weren’t tutoring me—and everyone seems… I don’t know. We’re not on the same page anymore. They’re all thinking about college and stuff, and I really don’t think I’m going to go. There doesn’t seem much point, you know? I don’t know what I’d do, and I’ve worked so long now, I’m having a hard time doing the whole school thing again.”
Raige cleared his throat. He was turning red again. “Hey, uh, Thomas?”
“Yeah?”
“We… didn’t actually manage to break all the news to you.”
“Y’all didn’t?” Thomas felt a sinking sensation in his gut. Were they headed off to college? Well, not M.D., she was busy being junior healer, but Raige was definitely smart enough and rich enough. “What’s going on?”
Raige and M.D. gave each other uncomfortable looks over Thomas’s shoulder, than gave him pathetic, hopeful smiles as though asking for him to read their minds again.
“Sorry, guys, I’m not psychic. Y’all’re going to have to tell me this time.”
“You know I’m asexual, right?” M.D. said.
“Well, yeah.”
“You realize Raige isn’t, right?”
“Yeah…” Honestly, he’d kind of figured that once they got together, M.D. would change her mind, or Raige would, or something. But apparently not.
“I’m telepathic at physical contact, so I can feel sexual pleasure by proxy, but that doesn’t mean I particularly want to much—and I tend to lose contact with my body during that sort of thing anyway if I’m not careful, so—”
“I know how your stuff works, kid.” She was sliding into Science Talk again, which was more M.D. signs of mortification; something was up.
Raige took over, though he talked like he was hoping he wouldn’t stutter if he blurted it out fast enough. “I like you a lot, and she likes you a lot, and if you’re okay with it we wanted to know if you wanted to be with us.” Then he buried his hand in his hair, curled over the railing, and started to hyperventilate.
“Well said,” M.D. said, reaching over Thomas to pat Raige on the back.
Thomas didn’t say anything; he was busy mulling everything over, enough that he didn’t notice his ice cream going to ruin. “So… like a threesome thing?”
M.D. rolled her eyes. “Fine, flatten it all to sex—”
“No, no! I just… I don’t know any other word for it.”
“Ménage à trois?” Raige suggested.
“More like folie à trois,” M.D. muttered.
“Look, I speak English and Spanish, okay? I don’t speak French. And no, I didn’t just mean sex, though now that you mention it…” He gave them questioning looks.
M.D. squinted and wrinkled up her nose as though she were envisioning a medical procedure in explicit detail. “Ew…”
“You didn’t even think about it before I brought it up, did you?” Thomas asked her, not sure whether to be amused or wounded.
“Did you miss the whole ‘asexual’ part of this conversation? Thomas, I thought I explained this to you years ago…”
“Maybe,” Raige squeaked.
They looked at him with surprise—M.D. because apparently she didn’t expect him to be interested, Thomas because he didn’t expect him to admit it. Raige just avoided looking at either of them and took deep interest in licking vanilla off his fingers, which was all the more distracting because he had no idea how distracting it was. Raige just shrugged and continued, in the high pitch he’d only started being able to maintain six months ago, “I, uh, I could be okay with that.”
Thomas grinned and patted him on the back. “Flattered.”
“This,” M.D. said, crossing her arms, “is obviously going to require more discussion than I thought.”
Thomas glanced at Raige, who was still trying not to hyperventilate, and M.D., looking huffy and in over her head. “This is killing y’all, isn’t it? I’m sorry I didn’t drag it out longer.”
“Look, my planning skills are limited to surviving mayhem and eluding various agencies of la migra intergalactica,” M.D. said, settling deeper into her self-defensive sulk. “Pardon me for not having everything laid out yet. I’m still figuring out this sexual behavior concept.”
“I can help with that,” Thomas volunteered, and she rolled her eyes, while Raige laughed behind his hand. Well, if he could make them laugh, that meant that they were still friends, at least.
M.D. wrinkled her nose at both of them. “When I pondered my future, I didn’t exactly ponder this. All I know is, me and Raige are happy when it’s the two of us. But we’re even happier when it’s the three of us. We’re still figuring out what it all means.”
Thomas glanced back and forth at them and ate his ice cream for an excuse to mull the whole thing over. He had no doubt they were serious; M.D. was acting like she didn’t care in the way that meant it was massively important, and Raige was obviously trying not to have a heart attack of embarrassment. As uncomfortable as they both were, he was surprised they’d managed to even tell him.
Just to see what’d happen, he ran his tongue over the last of his ice cream. M.D. didn’t appear to notice, which was usual, but Raige turned a deeper shade of scarlet and hastily looked away. Which was gratifying.
“Y’all have been doing some serious talking, haven’t you?” Thomas asked.
Raige cleared his throat. “Three hours after I fessed up. We wanted to make sure we had as much straight as we could before we tried dating.”
“Is this what you call straight?” Thomas asked, and Raige choked on his vanilla.
“We already have one overlap and a couple interstellar government agencies between us, not to mention the obnoxious chronological disparity and Raige’s dad hating me like Hansen’s Disease.” M.D. said, ever the pragmatist.
“He doesn’t hate you,” Raige emphasized. “He’s just… afraid you’ll abduct me again.”
“What the heck, I didn’t abduct you! You came of your own free will!”
“I would hope so,” Thomas said.
Raige looked like he was dying; M.D. staunchly ignored them both.
“There are numerous logistical issues to take into account,” she continued, “and that was before the topic of you and your dubious sense of humor, which is still not funny by the way, even came up. You can’t just jump into a relationship like that.”
Thomas wasn’t impressed by the Mr. Spock act. “How long did it take before you stopped freaking out?”
She scowled and finally admitted, “Two hours.”
“Wow,” Thomas told Raige. “I figured it’d take her at least a day.”
Raige smiled and shrugged. “After she’d calmed down, I panicked for an hour, so I can’t really claim superiority. I’m still getting used to the idea that who I like apparently doesn’t fit in the boxes I was given.”
Thomas nodded. “Yeah, you and me both. And I’ve had a little longer to figure it out.”
M.D. poked him in the back a couple times. “So?”
“Don’t rush him,” Raige scolded. “Between us, we freaked out for three hours; give him a second.”
M.D. shrugged. “Yeah, but he’s more well-adjusted than we are. He lords his sexual liberation over us all the frogging time; I’m ready to watch him walk his talk. Anyway, his quiet’s giving me the creeps. He’s only made one sex joke since we told him.”
Thomas laughed and wrapped an arm around both of them. “Hey, give me some time to think about it, okay? I mean, I’m popular, but this is the first time I’ve ever had been propositioned for a space threesome.”
“Folie à trois,” M.D. corrected.
“No habla French, babe. And I haven’t had a six hour freak out/serious talk to sort it all out yet.”
“Well, uh, if you want,” Raige said, “it is the weekend, and I’ve got bad movies at my house, so if you want to have the freak out/serious talk with company…”
Thomas grinned. “I could go for that.”
It seemed their triangle wasn’t broken after all.
Prompt: 'Triangle'
Raige and M.D. invited Thomas out for pizza one Thursday, and they couldn’t have been more obvious if they’d tried. Raige’s cheeks were red and he kept tugging at his hair and looking at M.D. as though hoping she would say something, and M.D. was darker than usual and she kept fidgeting and giving Raige the stink-eye as though expecting him to say something. They thought they were being subtle, but they really weren’t, and they’d made it through half a Carnivore Special without saying anything real, just stuff like, “So, uh, how’s weather down in Austin?” and “I read this really interesting paper on gastropod digestion, it was fascinating.” So Thomas finally decided to put them out of their socially inept misery.
“Okay, you know what, I know. You two hooked up. Y’all’re trying to tell me, and y’all’re doing a really crappy job, because y’all think I’m going to make fun of y’all. And you know what, I will, I really will, but not on y’all’s first day. Y’all’s first day, I buy y’all ice cream and go Jesus Christ it took y’all long enough!”
Raige winced and slunk down in the booth so he was sitting only slightly taller than Thomas. M.D. made a face.
“And it took you half a large pizza to let us off the hook?” She said. “Some friend you are.”
“I was having fun watching you squirm,” Thomas said, but he was lying. He just hadn’t wanted to admit that he, Sex Incarnate, was now the third wheel. “Because y’all’re both hilarious. So, Raige,” he snapped his fingers, “hand it over.”
M.D. blinked at Raige, who went flaming scarlet, cleared his throat, and said, “Uh, actually, I kissed her. So um…”
“Seriously? Jesus!” But Thomas wasn’t a sore loser, so he pulled his wallet out and handed over a five. “God, I thought you’d die of old age before you had the guts to try…”
“You bet on it?” M.D. shrieked. Her skin tone didn’t let her go red, but she was definitely getting darker, and her voice was hitting that distinctive squawking range of true M.D. mortification. And he wasn’t even trying.
“I didn’t think it’d ever actually happen!” Raige protested, trying to wave away the five. “He insisted! I figured he’d forget about it.”
“Raige, my man, I forget a lot of things. The tenth president of the United States, the quadratic equation, my aunt’s birthday. I don’t forget the important stuff. And take the five, I work nights and weekends doing construction now.”
“If he doesn’t want it, I’ll take it,” M.D. said. “All my wages are currently in Treehouse scrip, good luck converting that…”
“Hey, I never made any bets with you,” Thomas retorted. “I know better. You cheat.”
“Lies and heresy! Cheating implies I get caught.”
“If you’re really that determined to give me five dollars, use it to buy the ice cream,” Raige interrupted, and that satisfied everyone.
They sat on the subway overpass, watching the trains and people rush by as the sun descended, trying to devour their ice cream before it melted. M.D. gave herself two ice cream headaches in the process, but she was the only one to succeed.
“You mock my eating habits,” she said, clutching her temples, “but they are mere evidence of my evolutionary superiority.”
“Yeah right,” Thomas said, catching a drip off his cone. “Did you even manage to taste it?”
The ribbing was half-hearted. Sure, he and Raige had horsed around a bit in the past, but he’d always known in his gut that if M.D. ever got over her own social awkwardness enough to ask him out, Raige would be gone in a heartbeat. And he knew how these things worked, especially for people who had never dated anyone before: they got a new girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever, and they forgot everyone else existed for a while, and nothing was really ever the same afterward. Either they stayed together, in which case they now had their special couple land where their friends couldn’t follow, or they broke up, in which case there was tears and drama. Whichever happened, the friend triangle was over.
And he was odd man out.
He’d known this would happen, had always figured easy come easy go, he’d take it in stride like he did everything else, but still. He’d miss them.
He sunk into his melancholy, enough that he didn’t notice that M.D. and Raige weren’t hanging all over each other, but instead, were on either side of him, Raige leaning on the overpass railing, M.D. sitting on it with her legs hooked under.
“It’s funny,” she said, flicking a cone crumb to a pigeon. “You’re Mr. Charm and Schmaltz, bragging all the time about how everybody wants you, but you’ve been single the whole time I’ve known you. Heck, me and Raige got together before you did.”
Thomas shrugged. “Aw, you know, after Treehouse, it’s hard finding someone who gets it. I’m a year behind in school—I’d be two, if Raige weren’t tutoring me—and everyone seems… I don’t know. We’re not on the same page anymore. They’re all thinking about college and stuff, and I really don’t think I’m going to go. There doesn’t seem much point, you know? I don’t know what I’d do, and I’ve worked so long now, I’m having a hard time doing the whole school thing again.”
Raige cleared his throat. He was turning red again. “Hey, uh, Thomas?”
“Yeah?”
“We… didn’t actually manage to break all the news to you.”
“Y’all didn’t?” Thomas felt a sinking sensation in his gut. Were they headed off to college? Well, not M.D., she was busy being junior healer, but Raige was definitely smart enough and rich enough. “What’s going on?”
Raige and M.D. gave each other uncomfortable looks over Thomas’s shoulder, than gave him pathetic, hopeful smiles as though asking for him to read their minds again.
“Sorry, guys, I’m not psychic. Y’all’re going to have to tell me this time.”
“You know I’m asexual, right?” M.D. said.
“Well, yeah.”
“You realize Raige isn’t, right?”
“Yeah…” Honestly, he’d kind of figured that once they got together, M.D. would change her mind, or Raige would, or something. But apparently not.
“I’m telepathic at physical contact, so I can feel sexual pleasure by proxy, but that doesn’t mean I particularly want to much—and I tend to lose contact with my body during that sort of thing anyway if I’m not careful, so—”
“I know how your stuff works, kid.” She was sliding into Science Talk again, which was more M.D. signs of mortification; something was up.
Raige took over, though he talked like he was hoping he wouldn’t stutter if he blurted it out fast enough. “I like you a lot, and she likes you a lot, and if you’re okay with it we wanted to know if you wanted to be with us.” Then he buried his hand in his hair, curled over the railing, and started to hyperventilate.
“Well said,” M.D. said, reaching over Thomas to pat Raige on the back.
Thomas didn’t say anything; he was busy mulling everything over, enough that he didn’t notice his ice cream going to ruin. “So… like a threesome thing?”
M.D. rolled her eyes. “Fine, flatten it all to sex—”
“No, no! I just… I don’t know any other word for it.”
“Ménage à trois?” Raige suggested.
“More like folie à trois,” M.D. muttered.
“Look, I speak English and Spanish, okay? I don’t speak French. And no, I didn’t just mean sex, though now that you mention it…” He gave them questioning looks.
M.D. squinted and wrinkled up her nose as though she were envisioning a medical procedure in explicit detail. “Ew…”
“You didn’t even think about it before I brought it up, did you?” Thomas asked her, not sure whether to be amused or wounded.
“Did you miss the whole ‘asexual’ part of this conversation? Thomas, I thought I explained this to you years ago…”
“Maybe,” Raige squeaked.
They looked at him with surprise—M.D. because apparently she didn’t expect him to be interested, Thomas because he didn’t expect him to admit it. Raige just avoided looking at either of them and took deep interest in licking vanilla off his fingers, which was all the more distracting because he had no idea how distracting it was. Raige just shrugged and continued, in the high pitch he’d only started being able to maintain six months ago, “I, uh, I could be okay with that.”
Thomas grinned and patted him on the back. “Flattered.”
“This,” M.D. said, crossing her arms, “is obviously going to require more discussion than I thought.”
Thomas glanced at Raige, who was still trying not to hyperventilate, and M.D., looking huffy and in over her head. “This is killing y’all, isn’t it? I’m sorry I didn’t drag it out longer.”
“Look, my planning skills are limited to surviving mayhem and eluding various agencies of la migra intergalactica,” M.D. said, settling deeper into her self-defensive sulk. “Pardon me for not having everything laid out yet. I’m still figuring out this sexual behavior concept.”
“I can help with that,” Thomas volunteered, and she rolled her eyes, while Raige laughed behind his hand. Well, if he could make them laugh, that meant that they were still friends, at least.
M.D. wrinkled her nose at both of them. “When I pondered my future, I didn’t exactly ponder this. All I know is, me and Raige are happy when it’s the two of us. But we’re even happier when it’s the three of us. We’re still figuring out what it all means.”
Thomas glanced back and forth at them and ate his ice cream for an excuse to mull the whole thing over. He had no doubt they were serious; M.D. was acting like she didn’t care in the way that meant it was massively important, and Raige was obviously trying not to have a heart attack of embarrassment. As uncomfortable as they both were, he was surprised they’d managed to even tell him.
Just to see what’d happen, he ran his tongue over the last of his ice cream. M.D. didn’t appear to notice, which was usual, but Raige turned a deeper shade of scarlet and hastily looked away. Which was gratifying.
“Y’all have been doing some serious talking, haven’t you?” Thomas asked.
Raige cleared his throat. “Three hours after I fessed up. We wanted to make sure we had as much straight as we could before we tried dating.”
“Is this what you call straight?” Thomas asked, and Raige choked on his vanilla.
“We already have one overlap and a couple interstellar government agencies between us, not to mention the obnoxious chronological disparity and Raige’s dad hating me like Hansen’s Disease.” M.D. said, ever the pragmatist.
“He doesn’t hate you,” Raige emphasized. “He’s just… afraid you’ll abduct me again.”
“What the heck, I didn’t abduct you! You came of your own free will!”
“I would hope so,” Thomas said.
Raige looked like he was dying; M.D. staunchly ignored them both.
“There are numerous logistical issues to take into account,” she continued, “and that was before the topic of you and your dubious sense of humor, which is still not funny by the way, even came up. You can’t just jump into a relationship like that.”
Thomas wasn’t impressed by the Mr. Spock act. “How long did it take before you stopped freaking out?”
She scowled and finally admitted, “Two hours.”
“Wow,” Thomas told Raige. “I figured it’d take her at least a day.”
Raige smiled and shrugged. “After she’d calmed down, I panicked for an hour, so I can’t really claim superiority. I’m still getting used to the idea that who I like apparently doesn’t fit in the boxes I was given.”
Thomas nodded. “Yeah, you and me both. And I’ve had a little longer to figure it out.”
M.D. poked him in the back a couple times. “So?”
“Don’t rush him,” Raige scolded. “Between us, we freaked out for three hours; give him a second.”
M.D. shrugged. “Yeah, but he’s more well-adjusted than we are. He lords his sexual liberation over us all the frogging time; I’m ready to watch him walk his talk. Anyway, his quiet’s giving me the creeps. He’s only made one sex joke since we told him.”
Thomas laughed and wrapped an arm around both of them. “Hey, give me some time to think about it, okay? I mean, I’m popular, but this is the first time I’ve ever had been propositioned for a space threesome.”
“Folie à trois,” M.D. corrected.
“No habla French, babe. And I haven’t had a six hour freak out/serious talk to sort it all out yet.”
“Well, uh, if you want,” Raige said, “it is the weekend, and I’ve got bad movies at my house, so if you want to have the freak out/serious talk with company…”
Thomas grinned. “I could go for that.”
It seemed their triangle wasn’t broken after all.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-19 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-20 12:31 am (UTC)--Rogan
Yes...
Date: 2013-06-30 07:19 am (UTC)Wow!
Date: 2013-06-30 07:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-23 06:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-23 09:53 pm (UTC)Also, I see that you are actually located very near to me! We're also in the Davis Square area.