Infinity Smashed: Crossed Wires
Jul. 10th, 2018 11:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeHey guys, I know that Coming Out to Raige's Dad got the top vote, and it's coming, it just needs more editing first! So y'all're getting this one first.
Crossed Wires
Series: Infinity Smashed
Summary: The best laid dating plans of Thomas and M.D. go awry.
Word Count: 2100
Notes: This story is after Raige has been dating Thomas and M.D. for a little over a year and a half, maybe a month before Bodily Reconstruction. There's some sexual stuff in here, but nothing intense. I figure stuff like this is as explicit as I will ever get for these characters. It just feels weird for me.
The date was going very, very nicely, as far as Raige could tell. He and his dates had finally managed to have the same block of time free and get together, for the first time in over a month. Raige hadn’t had some mid-term to study for, Thomas hadn’t had to cover a last-minute shift, and M.D. hadn’t had to bolt out the door for a medical emergency. For once, they’d all managed to get to M.D.’s place on time with no incidents—no long line at the League, no forgetting of paperwork, nothing like that. The large Jane with pepperoni that Raige had gotten from Tarzan’s was still steaming hot, and the latest of Thomas’s homemade soda experiments (rosewater cardamom, he said) was still ice cold.
(M.D.’s salad was still… well, it was a salad. Raige didn’t have the heart to tell her he wasn’t hugely into it, and after he finished, she surprised him with his favorite Treehouse honey cakes, which were purple and made for a delicious dessert.)
Everything was nice. They ate their pizza, salad, and cakes, drank their soda. Raige got out his laptop, put it on the table/shelf/counter thing, and cuddled up on the bed with his dates to watch Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan. (Raige had gotten to choose the movie, even though it wasn’t his turn, because they’d missed his birthday the prior month. Thomas mostly picked action films, while M.D.’s knowledge of cinema seemed limited to atrociously bad Bela Lugosi flicks.) They made silly commentary together and laughed.
If Raige had to pick, these were the moments he liked best—ordinary and still, M.D. curled up on his left, Thomas draped over his right. No adrenaline, no adventure, just peace. Being loved, Raige was now certain, was being comfortably, happily squished.
By the time the end credits rolled, Thomas was making out with him, which was also pretty great.
“You got him covered or do I need to assist?” M.D. asked.
Thomas must’ve given her a thumbs-up or something behind Raige’s back, because she said, “Ten-four,” and went about popping out the DVD and shutting down the laptop before its battery died. Raige kind of lost track of her, if he was honest; Thomas was distracting.
After Thomas and Raige’s clothes started coming off, she returned to Raige’s awareness. Everything had been moved out of the way had been that needed it, and while she was still fully dressed, as usual, she was rolling up her sleeves and shoving her normal gloves in her pocket.
“You want me in?” she asked.
Raige surfaced just long enough to blurt, “Yes!” and had even been with them long enough to not die of embarrassment immediately afterward.
“Aw, you even managed to say it right off; good job, milquetoast,” she said, patting him on the knee of his pants.
“What can I say?” Thomas said, tossing her a pair of latex gloves from the enormous box in the corner. “I’m the best influence.”
“Or the worst.”
“Who’s counting?”
Raige didn’t say anything. Even though he’d been with them both for over a year now, he still couldn’t get over that he got to have this. Have them. That they were okay with this, and with him, and had been for long enough that even he was starting to think it wasn’t a fluke.
“Y’all know the rules,” M.D. said, pulling the gloves on. “I touch Raige, y’all don’t touch me, don’t try to talk me out of it.”
“Sure.”
“You got it.”
M.D. finished tugging the latex gloves into place and announced her readiness with a rubbery snap that made all of Raige’s hormones jump.
“The doctor is in,” she announced in an atrociously fake Lugosi accent.
“Oh come on,” Thomas said, “you can’t say that until at least half an hour from now...”
After that, things left “nice” on a rocket ship, headed straight for “perfect” by way of “fantasmo,” and all of time and space collapsed into eternal moments of skin and latex and heat and—
—And suddenly M.D. and Thomas were bolting for opposite ends of the room (not that there was far to go), making sounds of pure horror.
“Huh?” Raige came back to himself. “Oh my god! Are you okay?”
Thomas was hugging himself and making noises and facial gestures like he’d just taken a big bite of wool. “Oh man, that was nasty, nasty...”
For her part, M.D. was trying to claw at her eyes but couldn’t on account of her gloves being covered in lube and other assorted substances. “Scarred! Scarred forever! My brain! Aaaaah!” She split the difference and scrubbed her face on her bare arm.
For a moment, Raige was positive he’d done something wrong, that this was his fault. Then he told that part of himself to hush and got his sense back.
“You touched, didn’t you?”
“It was an accident!” M.D. wailed.
“I slipped!” Thomas moaned. “I’m sorry!”
“Not as sorry as I am!”
Thank goodness M.D.’s room was even smaller than Raige’s dorm room; even as far apart as possible, he could still comfort them both at the same time. Super-careful to only touch M.D.’s shirt, he patted them both on the back. “It’s okay, it’s okay...”
“No! Not okay!” Thomas said. “I feel like I just shoved my dick in a blizzard!”
M.D. had gotten herself together enough to start peeling off her gloves. “Ugh, it was like being in a porno with the bad music and everything and someone shoving me full of drugs and I don’t approve of your endocrine system, Thomas!”
“You say! I was hoping to get off tonight!”
Apparently the idea of what that would’ve felt like through the telepathic link occurred to them both at the same time; their appalled expressions matched.
Thomas shuddered. “No way. Not happening. My buzz is killed.”
“Yeah, I vote abort.”
“Same.”
Raige nodded and hugged them both tight—well, he hugged Thomas. When he tried to hug M.D., she just squirmed out from under his arm and stormed off to hurl her gloves in the scraps basket, kick the wall, and stomp out of the room.
For a moment, he considered going after her, but he wasn’t dressed so he decided to stay focused on Thomas, who was clearly unhappy to be naked with his boyfriend and not at all turned on about it.
“It must’ve been my fault,” he muttered, rubbing his face. “She’s always so freaking careful…”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay—”
“No, dude, it’s not, we had this planned and I screwed it up…”
“I’m not mad, accidents happen, it—wait. You planned this?”
“Yeah, for months! Do you have any idea how freaking hard it is for me and M.D. to get the same time off as you with a six-hour time difference and her working an eight-day week so her stupid schedule never matches ours? It freaking blows, man. I had to butter up my manager forever…”
“Not that, I mean… you know. This.”
Thomas looked forlorn. “It was your birthday, man. We wanted it to be special.”
And suddenly, it all made sense. Why Thomas had made fancy soda, and why M.D. had gotten those purple honey cakes that Raige liked so much even though they cost a bomb, and why they’d let Raige pick the movie even though it wasn’t his turn.
One slip, and that’d all gone out the window.
“But… my birthday was a month ago,” Raige said.
“Yeah, stuff kept going wrong.”
“M.D. went for it?”
Thomas looked a little uncomfortable. “Look, man, between you and me? She sometimes feels like a third wheel—”
“She’s not--”
He held up his hands. “Yeah, I know and you know, but she still has this stupid idea in her head. I don’t know where she got it, but she’s the one who came up with this whole idea. She said… she said it let her feel like she wasn’t competing with me and losing. You know?”
Raige thought about it. He thought about what M.D. had said to him, that time in Tarzan’s Pizza when they’d first gotten together. He felt sad.
“Plus, seriously,” Thomas added, “I would’ve asked my grandma for a three-way before bringing it up to M.D.”
“You joked about it!”
“Yeah. I joked.”
Raige sat there and thought, then sighed. “We should get dressed and talk to her.”
“Yeah.”
“And we are not doing something like this again.”
After some cleaning up with baby wipes as best they could and getting decent again, they went looking for M.D… though that implied she’d gone far. Really, she’d just climbed the tree that grew right above her living space, the one she worked in, gotten up on a branch, and curled up into a ball with her head down on her knees. She had her sleeves rolled down, her normal gloves back on.
Raige and Thomas clambered up next to her… though Raige nearly fell once or twice.
“Hey,” Raige said, coming to sit next to her.
She made a grumbling noise.
Thomas flopped on her other side, keeping more distance. “Are you crying?”
“No!” Indignant. But she didn’t look up.
Outside, Treehouse was shifting to the dusk market, which meant there were lots of assorted beings walking, flying, slithering, or undulating by, carrying wares. Treehouse being what it was, people were glancing up at them curiously, and any minute now, someone was sure to try to talk to them.
Raige hastily made the “local societal more” sign, since it was about the only Pidgin Sign with any complicated meaning he’d ever managed to properly learn, and he’d discovered it translated to, “we’re doing weird Earthling stuff, don’t mind us.” For his part, Thomas went off into a more complex visual monologue. Raige didn’t catch barely any of it, but it must’ve been a more thorough, “Everything’s fine, do not disturb,” because the crowd returned to bustling and left them alone.
“Can I hug you?” Raige asked.
For a moment, he thought M.D. wouldn’t answer. Then she said, “Yeah.”
He did. She didn’t uncurl, but she did relax a little.
“I ruined it,” she said.
“No, you didn’t.”
“It was probably me who screwed up,” Thomas said. “You had clothes and gloves, and you’re always really careful about touching us.”
“Stop trying to comfort me, you stupid horndog.”
They stopped and let her sit there for a bit.
Then Thomas punched her in the shoulder. She jabbed him with her elbow, and her head came up. There were no tears on her face, just a fierce glare.
“We had it all planned out and it was going to be great, and ugh.”
“I know, I know,” Thomas said. “The best laid plans of aliens and men, babe.”
Raige tried to think of something he could say that was comforting but in a way that wouldn’t just make M.D. madder. Finally, he said, “Y’all are the best.”
They looked at him.
“You got my favorite extra-dimensional dessert. You made me soda. You let me watch my favorite movie even though I know neither of you actually like it that much and it was kind of M.D.’s turn…”
“Yeah, you’re both on the hook for Bela Lugosi Meets the Brooklyn Gorilla next time, by the way.”
“…And you planned this whole surprise for ages. And I really appreciate that you tried and all, I do! Just… let’s maybe not try and do this again, okay? I’m already the luckiest guy in the multiverse right about now because I’ve got two such cool people dating me, and I don’t think I could handle that much awesomeness at one time without my brain exploding. So it’s really just as well it didn’t work out.”
Thomas was smiling again. “Yeah, we are pretty great.”
“Yup. So, you know, you guys don’t really get to feel bad today—I mean, you can, if you really want, but I’m just saying, I already had a really spectacular belated birthday, and nothing can really ruin that for me, so if you’re feeling bad for me, you really don’t have to.” Pause. “Though now that we’re talking, there’s one thing I kind of do really want right now.”
They both looked at him eagerly.
“A bath. I’m, uh. Kind of sticky and gross.”
He lucked out; that made them both smile. M.D. got up, stretched, and said, “Okay, I’ll go rent a private room with Bath Master III. As long as nothing sexual happens, I’m okay with being in your heads for that duration.”
“My thoughts will be pure and Catholic,” Thomas swore.
“Ew.” But she was smiling when she said it.
Apparently M.D. told the master of the bath house that it was Raige’s birthday; Raige came into the room to find a fresh supply of fancy creams, oils, and even bubblers. Not as foamy or lavish as the stuff at home, but hey, the reason Bath Master was a third-generation bath house owner was in part due to an encyclopedic memory on bath stuff that wouldn’t hurt the community or its water supply. And the water temperature was perfect.
Getting scrubbed by two people who loved him? Best way to end a date.
Crossed Wires
Series: Infinity Smashed
Summary: The best laid dating plans of Thomas and M.D. go awry.
Word Count: 2100
Notes: This story is after Raige has been dating Thomas and M.D. for a little over a year and a half, maybe a month before Bodily Reconstruction. There's some sexual stuff in here, but nothing intense. I figure stuff like this is as explicit as I will ever get for these characters. It just feels weird for me.
The date was going very, very nicely, as far as Raige could tell. He and his dates had finally managed to have the same block of time free and get together, for the first time in over a month. Raige hadn’t had some mid-term to study for, Thomas hadn’t had to cover a last-minute shift, and M.D. hadn’t had to bolt out the door for a medical emergency. For once, they’d all managed to get to M.D.’s place on time with no incidents—no long line at the League, no forgetting of paperwork, nothing like that. The large Jane with pepperoni that Raige had gotten from Tarzan’s was still steaming hot, and the latest of Thomas’s homemade soda experiments (rosewater cardamom, he said) was still ice cold.
(M.D.’s salad was still… well, it was a salad. Raige didn’t have the heart to tell her he wasn’t hugely into it, and after he finished, she surprised him with his favorite Treehouse honey cakes, which were purple and made for a delicious dessert.)
Everything was nice. They ate their pizza, salad, and cakes, drank their soda. Raige got out his laptop, put it on the table/shelf/counter thing, and cuddled up on the bed with his dates to watch Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan. (Raige had gotten to choose the movie, even though it wasn’t his turn, because they’d missed his birthday the prior month. Thomas mostly picked action films, while M.D.’s knowledge of cinema seemed limited to atrociously bad Bela Lugosi flicks.) They made silly commentary together and laughed.
If Raige had to pick, these were the moments he liked best—ordinary and still, M.D. curled up on his left, Thomas draped over his right. No adrenaline, no adventure, just peace. Being loved, Raige was now certain, was being comfortably, happily squished.
By the time the end credits rolled, Thomas was making out with him, which was also pretty great.
“You got him covered or do I need to assist?” M.D. asked.
Thomas must’ve given her a thumbs-up or something behind Raige’s back, because she said, “Ten-four,” and went about popping out the DVD and shutting down the laptop before its battery died. Raige kind of lost track of her, if he was honest; Thomas was distracting.
After Thomas and Raige’s clothes started coming off, she returned to Raige’s awareness. Everything had been moved out of the way had been that needed it, and while she was still fully dressed, as usual, she was rolling up her sleeves and shoving her normal gloves in her pocket.
“You want me in?” she asked.
Raige surfaced just long enough to blurt, “Yes!” and had even been with them long enough to not die of embarrassment immediately afterward.
“Aw, you even managed to say it right off; good job, milquetoast,” she said, patting him on the knee of his pants.
“What can I say?” Thomas said, tossing her a pair of latex gloves from the enormous box in the corner. “I’m the best influence.”
“Or the worst.”
“Who’s counting?”
Raige didn’t say anything. Even though he’d been with them both for over a year now, he still couldn’t get over that he got to have this. Have them. That they were okay with this, and with him, and had been for long enough that even he was starting to think it wasn’t a fluke.
“Y’all know the rules,” M.D. said, pulling the gloves on. “I touch Raige, y’all don’t touch me, don’t try to talk me out of it.”
“Sure.”
“You got it.”
M.D. finished tugging the latex gloves into place and announced her readiness with a rubbery snap that made all of Raige’s hormones jump.
“The doctor is in,” she announced in an atrociously fake Lugosi accent.
“Oh come on,” Thomas said, “you can’t say that until at least half an hour from now...”
After that, things left “nice” on a rocket ship, headed straight for “perfect” by way of “fantasmo,” and all of time and space collapsed into eternal moments of skin and latex and heat and—
—And suddenly M.D. and Thomas were bolting for opposite ends of the room (not that there was far to go), making sounds of pure horror.
“Huh?” Raige came back to himself. “Oh my god! Are you okay?”
Thomas was hugging himself and making noises and facial gestures like he’d just taken a big bite of wool. “Oh man, that was nasty, nasty...”
For her part, M.D. was trying to claw at her eyes but couldn’t on account of her gloves being covered in lube and other assorted substances. “Scarred! Scarred forever! My brain! Aaaaah!” She split the difference and scrubbed her face on her bare arm.
For a moment, Raige was positive he’d done something wrong, that this was his fault. Then he told that part of himself to hush and got his sense back.
“You touched, didn’t you?”
“It was an accident!” M.D. wailed.
“I slipped!” Thomas moaned. “I’m sorry!”
“Not as sorry as I am!”
Thank goodness M.D.’s room was even smaller than Raige’s dorm room; even as far apart as possible, he could still comfort them both at the same time. Super-careful to only touch M.D.’s shirt, he patted them both on the back. “It’s okay, it’s okay...”
“No! Not okay!” Thomas said. “I feel like I just shoved my dick in a blizzard!”
M.D. had gotten herself together enough to start peeling off her gloves. “Ugh, it was like being in a porno with the bad music and everything and someone shoving me full of drugs and I don’t approve of your endocrine system, Thomas!”
“You say! I was hoping to get off tonight!”
Apparently the idea of what that would’ve felt like through the telepathic link occurred to them both at the same time; their appalled expressions matched.
Thomas shuddered. “No way. Not happening. My buzz is killed.”
“Yeah, I vote abort.”
“Same.”
Raige nodded and hugged them both tight—well, he hugged Thomas. When he tried to hug M.D., she just squirmed out from under his arm and stormed off to hurl her gloves in the scraps basket, kick the wall, and stomp out of the room.
For a moment, he considered going after her, but he wasn’t dressed so he decided to stay focused on Thomas, who was clearly unhappy to be naked with his boyfriend and not at all turned on about it.
“It must’ve been my fault,” he muttered, rubbing his face. “She’s always so freaking careful…”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay—”
“No, dude, it’s not, we had this planned and I screwed it up…”
“I’m not mad, accidents happen, it—wait. You planned this?”
“Yeah, for months! Do you have any idea how freaking hard it is for me and M.D. to get the same time off as you with a six-hour time difference and her working an eight-day week so her stupid schedule never matches ours? It freaking blows, man. I had to butter up my manager forever…”
“Not that, I mean… you know. This.”
Thomas looked forlorn. “It was your birthday, man. We wanted it to be special.”
And suddenly, it all made sense. Why Thomas had made fancy soda, and why M.D. had gotten those purple honey cakes that Raige liked so much even though they cost a bomb, and why they’d let Raige pick the movie even though it wasn’t his turn.
One slip, and that’d all gone out the window.
“But… my birthday was a month ago,” Raige said.
“Yeah, stuff kept going wrong.”
“M.D. went for it?”
Thomas looked a little uncomfortable. “Look, man, between you and me? She sometimes feels like a third wheel—”
“She’s not--”
He held up his hands. “Yeah, I know and you know, but she still has this stupid idea in her head. I don’t know where she got it, but she’s the one who came up with this whole idea. She said… she said it let her feel like she wasn’t competing with me and losing. You know?”
Raige thought about it. He thought about what M.D. had said to him, that time in Tarzan’s Pizza when they’d first gotten together. He felt sad.
“Plus, seriously,” Thomas added, “I would’ve asked my grandma for a three-way before bringing it up to M.D.”
“You joked about it!”
“Yeah. I joked.”
Raige sat there and thought, then sighed. “We should get dressed and talk to her.”
“Yeah.”
“And we are not doing something like this again.”
After some cleaning up with baby wipes as best they could and getting decent again, they went looking for M.D… though that implied she’d gone far. Really, she’d just climbed the tree that grew right above her living space, the one she worked in, gotten up on a branch, and curled up into a ball with her head down on her knees. She had her sleeves rolled down, her normal gloves back on.
Raige and Thomas clambered up next to her… though Raige nearly fell once or twice.
“Hey,” Raige said, coming to sit next to her.
She made a grumbling noise.
Thomas flopped on her other side, keeping more distance. “Are you crying?”
“No!” Indignant. But she didn’t look up.
Outside, Treehouse was shifting to the dusk market, which meant there were lots of assorted beings walking, flying, slithering, or undulating by, carrying wares. Treehouse being what it was, people were glancing up at them curiously, and any minute now, someone was sure to try to talk to them.
Raige hastily made the “local societal more” sign, since it was about the only Pidgin Sign with any complicated meaning he’d ever managed to properly learn, and he’d discovered it translated to, “we’re doing weird Earthling stuff, don’t mind us.” For his part, Thomas went off into a more complex visual monologue. Raige didn’t catch barely any of it, but it must’ve been a more thorough, “Everything’s fine, do not disturb,” because the crowd returned to bustling and left them alone.
“Can I hug you?” Raige asked.
For a moment, he thought M.D. wouldn’t answer. Then she said, “Yeah.”
He did. She didn’t uncurl, but she did relax a little.
“I ruined it,” she said.
“No, you didn’t.”
“It was probably me who screwed up,” Thomas said. “You had clothes and gloves, and you’re always really careful about touching us.”
“Stop trying to comfort me, you stupid horndog.”
They stopped and let her sit there for a bit.
Then Thomas punched her in the shoulder. She jabbed him with her elbow, and her head came up. There were no tears on her face, just a fierce glare.
“We had it all planned out and it was going to be great, and ugh.”
“I know, I know,” Thomas said. “The best laid plans of aliens and men, babe.”
Raige tried to think of something he could say that was comforting but in a way that wouldn’t just make M.D. madder. Finally, he said, “Y’all are the best.”
They looked at him.
“You got my favorite extra-dimensional dessert. You made me soda. You let me watch my favorite movie even though I know neither of you actually like it that much and it was kind of M.D.’s turn…”
“Yeah, you’re both on the hook for Bela Lugosi Meets the Brooklyn Gorilla next time, by the way.”
“…And you planned this whole surprise for ages. And I really appreciate that you tried and all, I do! Just… let’s maybe not try and do this again, okay? I’m already the luckiest guy in the multiverse right about now because I’ve got two such cool people dating me, and I don’t think I could handle that much awesomeness at one time without my brain exploding. So it’s really just as well it didn’t work out.”
Thomas was smiling again. “Yeah, we are pretty great.”
“Yup. So, you know, you guys don’t really get to feel bad today—I mean, you can, if you really want, but I’m just saying, I already had a really spectacular belated birthday, and nothing can really ruin that for me, so if you’re feeling bad for me, you really don’t have to.” Pause. “Though now that we’re talking, there’s one thing I kind of do really want right now.”
They both looked at him eagerly.
“A bath. I’m, uh. Kind of sticky and gross.”
He lucked out; that made them both smile. M.D. got up, stretched, and said, “Okay, I’ll go rent a private room with Bath Master III. As long as nothing sexual happens, I’m okay with being in your heads for that duration.”
“My thoughts will be pure and Catholic,” Thomas swore.
“Ew.” But she was smiling when she said it.
Apparently M.D. told the master of the bath house that it was Raige’s birthday; Raige came into the room to find a fresh supply of fancy creams, oils, and even bubblers. Not as foamy or lavish as the stuff at home, but hey, the reason Bath Master was a third-generation bath house owner was in part due to an encyclopedic memory on bath stuff that wouldn’t hurt the community or its water supply. And the water temperature was perfect.
Getting scrubbed by two people who loved him? Best way to end a date.
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Date: 2019-02-16 04:36 am (UTC)It's so sweet and realistic.
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Date: 2019-03-21 02:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-20 08:33 pm (UTC)This was utterly lovely. Yay for making things work. <3