Dinner was simple, exquisite, and abundant. Drin says so, sighing, and the cook dimples up in a broad smile. When Dance is done stacking up dirty dishes and willing to settle, Drin pulls out a chair for him, slides an arm over onto Dance’s shoulders, gives him a kiss. Dance leans into the support of Drin’s whole body. The shoulders relax under Drin’s touch.
“Man, that was so good,” Emma says then. “I’m stuffed.”
“Our Drin picks out great bread.” The soft words come through Dance’s back as a vibration. Then Dance puts out one arm and smooths his palm over Emma’s back. The way Dance’s muscles shift, somehow the touch has the satisfying feel of a harmonic ringing, a circuit loop joined, ramping up to full power.
“Good olives, and cheese, too,” Emma agrees, with a groan. She leans back into Dance’s hand. He rubs his palm across her upper back, gently.
Emma stiffens and gives a sudden stifled grunt.
Dance exclaims, and Drin asks, “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, don’t mind me, it’s just the stupid back again,” she says, half-angrily.
“Easy, easy, we talk it down, your period coming makes you sore, yes?” Dance says, both hands steadying her.
“Oh hell, I’m not dragging you off for this silly spinal problem tonight, not when Drin has time off–” she cuts it off with a hiss of pain, clearly unable even to reach around and grab at her back.
“Whyever not?” Drin asks. “Yeah, take it easy, let Dance get that sorted out. I’m not going anywhere until my tum has had a chance to enjoy everything properly.”
“Stuffed like a teddybear,” Dance says, surprising them both. He shifts his chair around to get at Emma’s back more closely, and smiles impishly at their expressions. “Amalia’s words, yes?”
“Apt,” Emma says, smile twitching in one corner of her mouth.
“Do you want me to go in another room–” Drin offers, starting to shift his knees.
Emma does have the ability to reach out and clamp a cool, dry hand on Drin’s wrist. Her fingers tighten with each spasm. “No, don’t go. Talk me through it, distraction helps– Besides, hey, girl skin, nothing special, not like you’ve never– seen it before– gaaah, the timing, sorry–”
Drin helps her fingers lace with his. She grabs onto the support. “Easy now,” he repeats Dance’s phrase several times. When he speaks, the spasms in her back do seem to ease up.
“Drin talks, please, and we slide into it slowly,” Dance says.
“Is that okay with you?” Drin asks.
Emma gives a tight nod.
“What do you want me to talk about?”
“Haircuts,” Emma says, with a sharp look at Dance. “The man’s hair looks fabulous. How did you do it?”
“A very good stylist who’s used to jumpy clients,” Drin says, chuckling at the look on Dance’s face.
“Okay, we start with the hands,” Dance says, taking up one of Emma’s wrists. He gives her a stern look. “No jumping bean. No guilt on not looking at computer. Just sit and relax, yes?”
Emma growls. She never sits still during a frantic busy weekday evening, with schedules to sort. But her back is still visibly spasming, the muscles jerking in her torso like snakes writhing under the skin, and she grunts sometimes. Looking at that, Drin is pretty sure her pain threshold must be nearly as high as Dance’s, which is scary.
Dance takes Emma’s left arm, turning it back and forth, studying it, until she gives up and lets him carry the weight.
“Neither one of us were real sure about the orangy gold streaks in the hair, until it got done,” Drin says, in the low, relaxed, put-babies-to-sleep tone that should get those back muscles to calm down.
“The stylist was right. It sure picks up our Dance’s skintone nicely.” Emma shakes a forefinger at him. “Yes, I said our, and I meant it!”
Dance makes a wry face. “Am I pwned?”
“Absolutely!” Emma says fiercely, right along with Drin, who grins.
Dance rolls his eyes. “Oh, you should hear the stylist talk about our Drin’s hair, too. He scolds Drin on messing up the very beautiful silvery Drin hair with cheap shampoo. He shakes the finger at us, tells me I am the bad influence on Drin. He will school me if I let Drin go out looking like that. I tell him we were too busy making out to be careful of shampoo. He says we are doing unsafe hair, and shame on us.”
Emma starts to laugh. “You’re kidding.”
“He’s so fey he looks suburban, my dear,” Drin says.
Her back shakes out more laughter, between spasms.
“You should be afraid, you’re next,” Dance warns her.
“Oh really? And what could he do with all these damn red curls?”
“I fear to ask!” Drin chuckles. “Visions of sugarplums dance in my head–”
Emma looks surprised, and laughs again. “Oh, you heard me talking to Amalia about just getting a magenta dye job and whacking off a couple yards of these darn bedsprings.”
“No, no, it gets done right, you let our friend work on it,” Dance assures her.
“Our friend, huh? I guess your stylist really is that good at it.” Emma looks around at Drin.
Drin smiles. “How about some music on the cd player? What would you like, our Miss Emma?” He bends enough to meet her gaze, and says, “Right, how about that old Julian Bream recording Dance wanted to hear?”
Another growl, this time one of consent.
“Okay, Dance, do you need more oil?”
“Yes, the same bottle we put on the bread. Make our Emma smell like we should nibble her up.”
“Have a pillow,” Drin says, putting a throw pillow onto the table that’s been cleared in front of her, covering it with a kitchen towel, and sliding the bottle of extra virgin olive oil over next to Dance.
Emma sighs. Dance murmurs, and helps her tug off her cheap, nasty polyester blouse. She props her head on her other arm while Dance begins spreading oil lightly up the back of her forearm, and down her fingers.
“Easy, limp hand,” Dance says, supporting her forearm and shaking her hand gently to test it. “Good. Loose. We hold the weight, don’t worry. All taken care of.”
The woman has surprisingly athletic arms and hands, because she lifts and carries books all day long. Her shoulder blades stick up painfully under the straps of her brassiere. There are red marks on her skin, striping across the light dusting of tiny freckles.
Drin yanks his gaze away from the soft skin, and marches himself away to the living room. He puts on the remastered music, adjusts the volume, and crosses back to sprawl in a kitchen chair nearby. He lifts his eyebrows in question, indicates her back where the marks are, and Dance holds up three fingers and shakes his head in silent reply. Drin nods and relaxes.
“I feel really silly,” Emma complains.
“You look beautiful,” Dance says firmly, with his fingers stroking light trails of oil up her bicep. “Now, I look silly.”
Emma grunts. “Doubt that.”
“Oh hush,” Dance says, laying down her forearm on the table next to the pillow, and smoothing oil onto her other wrist.
“Drin, I want a second opinion.” Her head bobs up a degree. She’s still fighting it, as bad as a little kid who doesn’t want to go to bed and miss any of the fun.
“Oh, I’m hopelessly biased in favor,” Drin murmurs, in those same low tones that put kids to sleep and make adults relax.
Dance smiles as his fingers slide up Emma’s trapezius muscles into her neck, just letting her feel that first touch. He asks her, “Do you both think our adding rosemary on the roasted cheese bread, like tonight, might be too much for Metro guests?”
“I liked it,” Emma says. “And the sage on the sourdough bread, and that garlic-gruyere spread, too. Ooh yum.”
“It’s a carb test tonight,” Drin singsongs the words to a Broadway melody, grinning.
“Cheese test tonight too,” Emma agrees.
“The bay leaf was a little too harsh, I think?” Dance says.
“It’s okay if you’re in the groove from the others, but not as a surprise on your first bite,” Emma says. “Put it later in the lineup when you lay out the table.”
“Hmm,” he says, and he lays down her other hand, and he’s spreading oil across her upper shoulders, between the shoulder straps.
“Oh, Christ, do I hate this damn harness,” Emma says, annoyed, starting to move.
“Easy, easy, we’ll unhook it, give us a minute–”
“I’ll get you a clean towel,” Drin says quietly. When he returns, between them they’ve got the back hooks undone, and Emma has her arms untangled from the shoulder straps. She holds up the front of the bra modestly when she sits up enough to accept the hand towel. But she’s happy to get the towel draped over her chest instead. Dance sets the brassiere aside, keeping his gaze on Emma as she moves. She leans down gratefully into the pillow, turning her head to one side.
Then Dance nods at Drin, gravely. He indicates her hair to Drin. Drin scoots his chair closer and sweeps the curls out of the way of Dance’s hands. Strokes it aside so Dance can reach up her neck. Then Drin is just slowly stroking the curls aside, because it feels nice. It’s working too; the side of her face relaxes under his touch.
Dance points a little finger at his own temple, along his jaw, and nods at Emma in signal. Drin strokes her face with the lightest touch of fingertips. Drin picks up oil on the tips of his fingers, and begins swirling light circles into the base of Emma’s skull, sliding up from her neck muscles, pausing during the other man’s pushes, so she feels that in between the deeper muscle manipulations that Dance is performing. Sometimes Dance gives deep pushes onto her trunk muscles. He murmurs each time, warning them both what he’s doing. “Hard push here, it will slide onto that knot, it will push the knot–yes, it will push along that knot–”
Dance rides out one snakey struggling knot, and then suddenly her back unkinks, the vertebrae visibly stretch wider apart. The right side of her pelvis gives a funny little clunking noise, and drops a good quarter inch in place. “Yes,” Dance murmurs, a deep satisfied grunt.
Emma gives a sigh of very nearly orgasmic relief. Drin keeps his finger tips moving, very gently. He feels her whole body stretch out, lengthening, easing, loosening.
“That was quick!” Emma says, gasping the words.
“It was,” Dance says, looking up at Drin with a smile. “Relaxing the two spots at once, magic!”
“Takes both of you, huh?” Emma says.
“We are beginning to think so,” Dance agrees.
Emma just groans. “I could sleep.”
“Best thing for you,” Drin murmurs.
“Hot shower first, then slide into warm bed, very careful,” Dance agrees. “You might be stiff into the morning, too, call us if you need help, yes? No kinking up that hip again.”
She groans again as Drin draws his fingertips out of her hair. He pats her shoulder lightly. “I’ll just get that shower going.”
“Your turn tomorrow night, right?” Emma says, turning her head enough to look up at him.
Drin sighs. Of course Dance has found the gimpy stiff bits on Drin’s body, the scar tissue from burns, the shortened tendons, the odd places that lack adequate lymphatic drainage and swell like a sunovabitch when he’s been working on the computer for twelve hours straight.
There will be stretchings and massages done before such tissues swell, with fierce boyfriend glaring, warning comments about ergonomics, and crisp Metro-style lectures on not allowing work to damage his health. There will be ticklings, if he’s not careful. “I promised, yeah,” Drin says.
“It will feel good, it will not hurt like you say physical therapy did, or I am not doing it right,” Dance says firmly, holding up his oiled hands.
Drin looks at the gleaming hands. Of course his imagination starts reminding him what those skilled fingers are capable of doing to him, and he gives another sigh. “Hot shower coming up for our Miss Emma,” he says, and grins at her. God, she looks wonderful in tousled curls with a towel folded over her breasts. He says so, too, right before he heads down the hallway. She tells Dance tartly to swat his boyfriend for her, and Dance just laughs, washing off his hands at the kitchen sink.
Drin fetches her ratty old favorite warm bathrobe and hangs it up in the bathroom for her. When he closes the bathroom door after her, Drin gives a long sigh. Then he returns to the kitchen to hug his boyfriend very tight.
Dance says, “More, yes, like that. So good on my ribs! Ahhh!” and there’s little crackling nosies as Dance leans back against his grip, twisting and pushing bones against Drin’s arms. He leans into Drin with a happy sigh, sliding his warm hands up Drin’s back, up under the shirt.
“That’s the first time she’s let me watch you,” Drin murmurs into his lover’s hair.
“Yes. I don’t know why she’s shy about some things and not others,” Dance agrees.
“And you’re very turned on, too.”
Dance kisses him. “It does that, she has these beautiful sleek muscles, mmm,” he says, nuzzling his way into Drin’s collar, and kissing his neck. “I like what my hands feel, yes? Like wanting you when I massage you. When we– when I stop using the hands, all this energy boiling around, it goes down there on me.”
Drin’s hands rub gently downward along the slopes of Dance’s buttock muscles. “There?”
“Yes, and there–”
Drin’s hands shift around, and Dance sighs happily. Drin murmurs, “And there?”
“Mmmm,” Dance agrees, unbuttoning Drin’s shirt and kissing everything he can reach, without being particular about it. “You– you are all hard too–”
“I love watching you two, you’re both so damn cute together,” Drin says. In Dance’s ear, he murmurs, “It’s sexy as hell, the way you run your hands all over Em, and she’s just fine with you touching her. Because you earned it, that trust. It’s really beautiful, I love seeing it. Just because I’m such a horndawg, I’d love to see what you could do if it was okay to touch her tummy, and her breasts–can’t help it–”
Dance’s breath catches. “Yes.”
“Yes, you want to do that?”
Dance says, “She is okay with that right now. But I– it makes me– I get too excited, I want to–”
“It makes you want this too much?”
“Yes, like that,” Dance says, arching into Drin’s hand. “Oh, oh, Drin, I wanted to–I want you all day so bad–”
“Yeah,” Drin whispers, and takes the mouth turned up urgently toward him. Then he pulls back, panting, before the shudders in Dance’s body get serious, before the boy goes off like a rocket right there in his arms. They’re totally stuffed from eating dinner. It shouldn’t even be possible to want to use those gut muscles to shove his prick in somewhere warm and happy and slick. But it wants Dance, badly.
Dance writhes in his arms, making a sharp, disappointed noise.
Drin chuckles. “Why don’t we go do something with all that energy while Em’s busy in the shower?”
Dance’s body slackens a bit. “We could, but I should be working, and you should be working–”
“With this distracting both of us?” Drin’s hand knows exactly what to do with Dance’s excess energy.
Dance arches again, with a gasp. “Well, yes– but you like to make me come twice, and then I take too long, getting noisy–”
“Oh, I can figure out some way of keeping you quiet,” Drin says, walking them both into their bedroom, and closing the door behind him. “Maybe keep your mouth full, huh? Hand me the cock ring, I’m gonna need it with you pulling like a freight train– oh man, Dance, easy, easy there, I’m gonna lose it too soon– ”
Drin is always charmed and surprised by all the different kinds of urgency Dance brings to sex. It seems to surprise him as much as Drin. At times the driving force seems to be to get at every square inch of his lover, licking and biting and tasting and mauling Drin as if he can’t get enough of Drin’s skin in his mouth. He has a very big mouth, when he wants to. Other times he just wants to hug Drin until both their bodies creak and joints crackle. He won’t even give up clutching tight while Drin attempts to figure out what might satisfy his hunger for affection. Or he wants to get his mouth on Drin’s and just crawl inside Drin’s kisses and stay there, trying out everything he can invent, for hours.
Dance is not low maintenance, in these states.
Tonight, Drin realizes that he’s made love to Dance before in a similarly odd mood. Drin just didn’t know his boy was coming off one of those high-octane massages. It suddenly makes more sense that Dance would turn into a fuck-crazy top with a need to insert tab A into every slot B in Drin’s body, and when it’s really bad, plunging hungrily into all of Drin’s inventive capacities with toys, too. Drin knows now what the boy wants, as clearly as if he’s shouting it, and Drin is happy to figure out what will give him some peace.
Months of walking and swimming with Dance, and stretching so he has far more flexibility in his hamstrings, are another big help. He smiles as he sprawls out on his back, pulls his knees apart, and says, “Oh, I’m ready. But I’m gonna go all fem here and make you talk while you’re doing me. Tell me things. Tell me what you want it to feel like.”
It really doesn’t take much to steer the panted words around to Emma and her fabulous anatomy, and what she might need if Dance was making love to her. Things like talking to her, checking what she wants him to do with his hands, how she likes her breasts rubbed and kissed.
“Yeah, there,” Drin groans. His nipples used to be just neutral points on his chest, nothing special; since Dance started kissing his way all over Drin’s chest, playing with his chest hair and worshipping Drin’s nipples with his mouth, they have heated up into new erogenous zones. He’s never heard of anybody developing new hot spots that can bring them off in five minutes, fully clothed behind a hastily closed closet door, but Dance has done that to him.
“Oh, now. Yeah. Fuck me, Dance.” He doesn’t last any time at all, the way Dance has him expertly triangulated. He’s done, while Dance is still moaning in frustration, a wild-eyed satyr with a prick up hard against his leg. But Drin has toys, and the will to take his time and use those interesting new insights in how to satiate Dance to slack boneless relaxation.
He thinks it’s a nice look on Dance. He approves of his own abilities to reduce the boy to a puddle of cum and a yawn.
Some time later, he walks as softly as he can up the hall to the bathroom, one arm resting on his lover’s sweaty shoulder. They both pause by Emma’s open door. She’s curled up under her blankets, out like a light, long eyelashes completely at rest. At her cheek there’s a fluff of reddish curls showing. Her ratty bathrobe is hung up to dry on the usual hook next to the door. Dance takes a deep sniff of it, sighs it out, nods in satisfaction at Drin, and walks up the hall with that relaxed swing to his stride which says he’s nice and loose after a workout of the best possible sort.
Drin pauses a moment to sniff the robe too, and understands dimly what Dance must be picking up; it smells of soap and shampoo and clean woman, like a promise of domestic order restored. Wonderful, how reassuring that is.
In the shower, Dance murmurs, “She’s good now, she’ll sleep through, and maybe the muscles will stay loose tomorrow when her period makes her hurt. She’ll be sore, but we hope no knots.” He stands still for Drin. Drin wets down his beautiful musician’s newly-cut hair. Then Dance says, “I wasn’t sure you’d be okay with– me– going on with– massages like that–yes, you said it is good, but–”
Drin smiles. “You worried I’d be jealous of you spending time on helping Emma instead of paying attention to me?”
Dance nods.
Drin shakes his head. “You and Emma belong together. It’s a gift. It’s a total gift, far as I’m concerned. Whatever Em wants from me, whatever she wants me to do for you, we’ll talk about it, and it’ll get worked on, do not worry.”
Dance looks down and away sharply.
Drin’s hand asks Dance to tilt his head up as he starts lathering shampoo in the man’s hair, and of course he sees the eyes squint shut, and tears, absurdly, start to run down his lover’s face. He rinses water through Dance’s hair, cups both hands around the elegant skull, and kisses him breathless all over again. Drags him out of the shower stall, stands him up against the tiled wall, and kneels down in front of him on a pile of towels, to get at him better. When he pulls his mouth off Dance’s cock, he talks. He talks about some of the same things he said to Dance in the bedroom.
He’s found out that he can bring Dance off hard and fast just retelling his own bisexual fantasies. No, not just another gay boy, not when Dance is hissing and groaning and thrusting up harder into his hip or his hand or his mouth, the way Dance reacts when he talks about the soft perfumed hollows under the lace panties, the swing of her breasts, the swagger of her hips striding along, the curve of her belly. He’s pretty sure Emma’s got plenty of ideas of her own, too.
He whispers across Dance’s rigid prick, his breath making the skin shiver. “I just like to think how it’d feel, rubbing my ass under you, feel you fucking me. Dream that I’ve got my cock sliding down into Emma, feeling those soft womanhips move so sweet under me, oh man. Or I’m leaning in holding her back, fucking her up the ass, while you’re giving this sweet prick to her in front. Holding her up when she comes with both of us in there rubbing together. Feeling those boobs come down heavy in my hands, you know? Bi-boy here, dreaming about getting royally fucked by both of you. Turns me on.”
“But surely after– after all that– I’m not going to–” Dance gasps, wobbling a bit. His knees are almost buckling. “Oh, oh Drin–”
“Oh yes, I think you could,” Drin chuckles, standing up, pinning him back harder into the wall with his shoulders, grinding their hips together. “I think you’re about ready.”
“Oh. Oh.”