COMMENTARY: Privilege (3/3)
At long last, the rest of this! Continued from here.
May 1992
Richard's teaching schedule for Trinity term is really odd, so when Anne goes off to Berlin for her brother Wernher's second wedding, he stays in Oxford to give tutorials, read weekly essays, and take the occasional frustrated international phone call ("my God, Richard, I don't know why she's trying to get Siegmund to come in the first place, she knows they don't like each other, and also, you owe me so much for not having to deal with this").
For Anne's brothers see part 2 of this commentary. I mostly needed to get her offstage so that I could have some settled!Richard/Robbie after the wedding, and so that I could show that Robbie actually does like her.
His sense of tact, which he actually does have despite the repeated insistence of everyone in his life that he doesn't, forbids him from pointing out that she's left him alone with Robbie during Eurovision week.
Robbie gets less and less punk every time I write about him, I swear.
He's lying on the sofa with his head in Robbie's lap, reading a grammatically tortured essay and attempting to tune out the ear-sodomizing pop music coming from the telly,
I am not sure why I chose that particular adjective, given Richard's enthusiastic pro-sodomy stance, but I don't suppose ear sodomy would be enjoyable at all no matter how much one likes it when it happens elsewhere.
Incidentally, I watched a lot of 1992 Eurovision to write this scene. I suffer for my art, and so I am linking all the videos so you can suffer too.
when Robbie sighs plaintively (and curiously not on account of what he's hearing), and mutters, "This is really more fun when Anne's here."
He so wants to tease her about how her homeland's entry sounds like a douche commercial. Because IT DOES.
That is such a douche commercial, you guys. Or a 1980s sitcom theme.
Richard smiles up at him. "Not that I'm disagreeing," he says, "but I'm a little surprised to hear it from you."
"I'm going to ignore your implication that I don't like her," Robbie says, "but she actually argues with me about this stuff. That's what makes it entertaining. You just say" -- and here he puts on the Queen's accent -- "'whatever you say, darling' and 'well, it's all rubbish anyway, isn't it?'"
The Queen's English thing here is because Robbie constantly makes fun of Richard's excessive poshness, even though I picture his own background as fairly well-to-do (his historical original, after all, was part of the oldest noble family in England, if also one of the least wealthy). The difference is that he's the sort of person who adopts estuary English, while Richard is the sort of person who tries to have some kind of awareness about class issues but is nevertheless startled when professional-class Americans say "pleased to meet you" (which happens literally in this fic).
"Well, it is, isn't it?"
"Well, of course it is! That's the point."
"Whatever you say, darling -- also, would you kindly let go of my nose?"
"You could at least comment on how Dschinghis Khan was clearly robbed in '79."
"Dschinghis what?"
DSCHINGHIS WHAT INDEED. I have faithhopetricks to thank for this reference. Their whole schtick was vaguely historical-themed disco, and it is utterly hilarious. They represented (West) Germany at Eurovision in 1979 -- as the fic makes clear -- with this little number:
Perhaps shockingly, they did not win.
This song is probably better known in internetland. As well it should be. It also achieved great underground popularity in the Soviet Union.
Robbie's brow furrows for a moment, and his mouth hangs slightly open.
"Ask Anne about it when she gets back."
"I'll do that," Richard says, pulling himself up into a sitting position and leaning against Robbie's side. "In the meantime," he murmurs into Robbie's ear, "why are we arguing when we could be making out?"
That is basically Richard and Robbie's motto in this universe.
"Because you're a dork," Robbie laughs, and Richard gestures towards the screen -- you're watching that, and I'm the dork? -- while running his tongue along the edge of Robbie's ear, which makes him shiver, and then laugh. "All right!" he says. "As soon as the UK entry's done. I get so few chances to feel like I'm having sex with someone relatively cool."
There is apparently some debate over the currency of the word "dork" in the UK in the early nineties. But since it is not unheard-of and there is really no better word to describe academic-au!Richard, I am not going to apologize for it. ;)
Based on the ridiculously twitchy dance the UK singer is doing, Richard can kind of see what he means, but that was a low blow.
The UK competitor in 1992 was Michael Ball, of Les Miserables fame. I made my inner twelve-year-old cry by making fun of him in this fic, but watch his routine! HE HAD IT COMING.
It says a lot about Eurovision and also the early nineties that he came in second. (Ireland won that year and their song is even cheesier.)
"Good luck getting a hard-on ever again," he grumbles. "And I hope you can live with dooming me to a lifetime of kitsch-induced impotence. You'll have to explain yourself to Anne, I expect..."
"Oh, for fuck's sake -- " And then Robbie's got his tongue down Richard's throat and his hand in his trousers, and Richard's pulling him down on top of him.
It turns out nobody is doomed to a lifetime of kitsch-induced impotence after all. At least not for another year.
Anne returns from Berlin the following evening, tired but in a decent mood -- the family drama must have been fairly low-key -- and when Richard meets her at the bus station he wraps his arms around her, notices it's awkward because she's still holding her bag, takes the bag, attempts to return to the embrace, sets the bag down, and then kisses her while she's laughing at him.
This has been another moment of gratuitous cuteness. They can't help it. They just really are that cute.
"God, I missed you," he says.
"I missed you too," she says, releasing him and then slipping her hand into his.
I am pretty sure I put this detail in precisely because I'd already mentioned the politics of public handholding twice.
"But I'm sure you managed with Robbie."
"Well, yes," Richard said. "But it's much nicer with both of you. You know, Robbie missed you too."
This exchange makes Richard sound like he is about six, but that's okay.
"That's very sweet of him!"
"Apparently Eurovision isn't nearly as much fun without you...incidentally, what precisely is Dschinghis Khan?"
Anne's laughter is contagious.
I love the image of 13-year-old Anne (who is played in my head by the girl who plays Lucy in the Narnia movies) watching fuzzy black-and-white Eurovision broadcasts coming from the West -- by the time she'd have been a teenager, the East German government had largely given up on trying to prevent citizens from watching West German broadcasts. No doubt this was influential to her vision of a kind of Communism that had room for hilariously cheesy disco.
Also I just generally love that Anne likes cheesy Europop (this is also referenced in "Eaten Up in Miserable Circumstances"). Anne is so adorable.
***
March 1994
It's absolutely pissing down rain when Richard does his viva, which Richard has been gloomily, and annoyingly, insisting is perfectly appropriate for his impending doom, much to Robbie's considerable annoyance, since everybody knows Richard is completely brilliant, including Richard himself when he's not insisting on his own stupidity (and never the kind of stupidity that he does have, like the kind that leads him to bitch incessantly about failing his viva).
You may have noticed that we've just switched to Robbie's POV. This is largely because I couldn't do the threesome scene in Richard's POV -- he doesn't pick up on enough of the awkwardness immediately for the scene to convey what's going on. Because this is basically how Richard reacts:
"Oh God, I'm going to fail so hard," Richard moans, for at least the thirtieth time since breakfast. "I'm going to fail, and there will be absolutely nothing to be done, and I will have to go drown myself in the Cherwell."
Those of you unaware of the trajectory of this AU may or may not wish to know something about this particular exchange.
It's foreshadowing.
So, yeah. O HAI SURPRISE DEPRESSION.
"You can't possibly drown yourself in the Cherwell," Robbie says. "At least, not with any dignity."
"I don't deserve dignity," Richard says, "because I am going to fail spectacularly. Besides, the rain ought to be good for at least a few more inches."
Also, Richard clearly has a sort of meta-level awareness that he's in a universe that is not keen on dignity.
"For fuck's sake, Richard." Robbie takes his arm. "You know how I'm always telling you you're an utter wanker?"
Richard nods, looking distinctly dubious.
"Well, forget it. You're fucking brilliant."
Richard says nothing, preferring instead to chew his fingernails contemplatively.
I am not sure that's actually possible, but I am sure Richard would make a pretty good effort.
Also, I think Robbie telling Richard he's brilliant is adorable, given that usually they use "bastard" as a term of endearment.
"I suppose if I left my robes on I could do an Ophelia sort of thing," he says. "That's at least marginally dignified."
This is a meta gag referencing Victorian!AU Richard's identification with Ophelia (although I don't think most of you have actually read the fic where it's really obvious, because I haven't finished it yet!)
"Well, if it starts to go badly, you could tell them you had a paper sent up for good at Eton."
Richard rolls his eyes, but his stupidly gloomy expression has lightened a bit.
I always write Richard as having an odd relationship with his time at Eton, in that he is never anything but disdainful about it, but he does make sure you know he went there.
"I'm sure when you've turned into some great wheezing Tory bastard like all Old Etonians you'll go on and on about having been in Sixth Form Select, well into your dotage. I may have to shoot myself pre-emptively."
The Eton terminology is accurate as far as I could determine. Having a paper sent up for good means it was so impressive that it's included in the College Archives as an example to future students. Sixth Form Select is a group of students granted prefect duties on account of being in some ridiculously high percentile academically.
The jokes about the grim Tory future of Old Etonians was occasioned by the then-recent UK general election which (eventually) got the Tories back into power; Prime Minister David Cameron is himself an Old Etonian. In fact, if I understand the cutoff dates for schools in the UK correctly, he'd have been in Richard's year, as he was born in October 1966 and Richard, in this AU, in January 1967. Boris Johnson, the current mayor of London, would have been a few years ahead of them.
"Fuck you, Robbie," Richard says, but he's grinning broadly now.
"Not till after your viva."
AND HOW.
Anne shows up about an hour into the thing, while Robbie is sitting outside smoking and watching the rain. "I don't suppose there's any point in asking how it's going," she says, and Robbie shrugs. "It's not as if we can tell from out here. Did he ever manage to cheer up?"
"Oh, of course not," Robbie laughs.
"Of course not." Anne grins at him. "He's the last person in the world who has anything to worry about!"
Their confidence is, naturally, well-founded. It's another hour and a half, the last forty-five minutes of which are spent making awkward conversation with Richard's supervisor, before Richard comes out and there are hugs and congratulations and lots of discussion of things that need to be improved in order to publish.
I was going to write Anne and Robbie and Simon being awkward, but by this time I'd written most of the fic and was feeling very tired of writing it. It's okay, since it's not like the fic needs it; I just like Simon and his awkward pedagogical crush on Richard.
The first thing Richard says, far too despairingly for someone who's just earned his D.Phil., is "Oh God, I need a drink."
It's nearly midnight and still raining when they make it home from the King's Arms, completely drenched but just pissed enough not to care. Richard is still wearing his gown, which makes him look simultaneously batlike and pathetic, especially once they get to Richard and Anne's flat and he's standing there dripping on the carpet, the end of his nose slightly pink from the damp evening chill.
I put "batlike" in there for highfantastical. I might have also put the bit about his pink nose in there for her, but it may have been because that's just cute.
"Dr. Bordeaux," Robbie muses. "That sounds like someone with wine-based superpowers."
"I do have wine-based superpowers," Richard says.
Mostly they involve having drunk sex, though.
"Clearly this is why you are standing there dripping all over everything," Anne laughs, helping him out of his gown.
"I'm having an identity crisis, or something. I have no idea what I'm going to do without my thesis," Richard says, removing his jacket and draping it over the radiator before falling in a heap on the sofa. "I've lived with the damn thing so long."
Many things about Richard's viva are drawn from my own experience, which was quite recent when I wrote this fic: the pouring rain, the pre-viva despair, the post-viva identity crisis. Not the threesome, though. I just had Indian food.
"Might I suggest staying in bed for at least a week?" Anne's eyes sparkle with mischief as she sits beside him and starts in on loosening his tie, and he beams at her and ducks his head to kiss her fingers.
"Christ, I'm going to go home if you two are going to act like that," Robbie says, and then Richard looks up, all dripping and wide-eyed, and smiles at him.
"I'd really love it if you stayed," he says.
And his smile is totally dazzling, and he looks absolutely beautiful in his sodden and rumpled subfusc, and then Anne smiles too, her face going all pink, and Robbie knows perfectly well what Richard's asking of him, and he doesn't know whether it's that he wants in on the just-this-side-of-nauseating incandescent glow the two of them seem to emit or it's just the champagne or the convenient excuse to get out of his wet clothes, but he thinks, you know, I can totally do this.
This always breaks my heart for Robbie a little bit, and also makes me want to smack Richard for being a bad boyfriend (he does adore Robbie, just differently, and a lot less clearly).
"What the hell," he says, grinning. "You've earned it."
Richard pulls him down onto the sofa and kisses him hard, and the three of them collapse into a damp, giggling confusion of tangled limbs and wandering hands, Richard turning from Robbie to Anne and back again.
"Possibly," Anne says, her voice muffled against Richard's neck, "the sofa isn't the most comfortable place for this kind of thing."
Anne is eminently practical, but also she is the smallest person present and thus in the most danger of being squished.
Robbie is pretty sure this is the first threesome he's been involved in where everyone's got virtually all of their clothes on by the time they get to the bedroom, although Richard's jacket and tie are currently lying in a puddle in front of the sofa,
I forgot I'd already had him hang it over the radiator. D'oh.
and Robbie had made a good start on unbuttoning his shirt before they decided on a change of venue.
"I've never done this before," Anne confesses to Robbie, half-whispered.
"I've never done this with a girl!" Robbie answers,
This exchange was inspired by a similar conversation between Henry and Edward in "Three Such Enemies," although of course the dynamic is very very different here. I feel that it encapsulates a great deal, though.
and they both laugh, only slightly hysterically, as Robbie moves in to undo Richard's belt and Richard slides one arm around Anne's waist to pull her closer for a kiss, and his other hand just past the waistband of Robbie's jeans, which makes his breath catch and distracts him from drawing Richard's belt free. When Richard and Anne have pulled apart for breath, Robbie loops the belt over Richard's shoulders and draws him in, kissing him fiercely as Richard unzips his jeans and begins the slightly arduous process of peeling them off, his hands warm against damp cool skin.
speak_me_fair has some video of Richard's PB (see above) wearing braces (suspenders, if you're American, but UK suspenders are what Americans call a garter belt), which kind of made me regret putting him in a belt here, except then I couldn't have done that so I think it's okay.
(There is no known footage, that I am aware of, of Ian Bostridge wearing a garter belt, but if you know differently, please do tell me, because I really want to know about it.)
"Let go of the belt, Robbie," Anne says, after she's finished ducking behind Richard to reach around him and undo his trousers. "I can't get his shirt off!"
She makes an excellent point. Robbie lets go of the belt and removes Richard's shirt himself before stepping out of his own jeans, and Anne draws Richard's trousers down, sinking to her knees to trace his hipbone with her mouth and slide a hand up his thigh. Richard gasps and winds his fingers in Anne's hair -- Robbie suspects that if he doesn't do something soon he's going to get thoroughly left out. He trails a hand down Richard's chest to curl his fingers around his cock, feeling him stiffen against his palm.
It takes a really long time to get three people's clothes off in fic. One of those awkward situations where events that wouldn't really take that long in real life fill up a fairly long paragraph.
Also, I sort of glossed over how sticky peeling out of wet clothes makes you. Possibly because it's not very sexy. Oh, well.
"Hold on -- " Richard's voice is thick as he draws back from Robbie and bends to help Anne to her feet and out of her (truly regrettable) jumper. Robbie shrugs and peels off his own shirt, sitting on the bed to watch as Richard eases her skirt down her hips. Her fingers clench on Richard's shoulders and she sighs as he stops kissing her neck long enough to unhook her bra.
Apparently my fondness for giving people clothing-removal difficulties stops short when it's a cliche (seriously, there is a TVTropes page about this). Granted Richard is a pretty experienced bra-remover at this point.
Robbie doesn't think he's ever been this close to a naked woman before, or at least not one who isn't a Pre-Raphaelite painting, and Anne certainly isn't a Pre-Raphaelite painting; maybe she could pass for one from the shoulders up if she dyed her hair red, but she is short and kind of squishy-looking with pudgy thighs and slightly asymmetrical breasts and exactly the sort of attitude toward depilation you would expect from a German communist.
I fretted a bit about this paragraph, since I wanted to strike the right balance: Robbie clearly Does Not See the Appeal, but I didn't want to do a homophobic EW GIRL COOTIES thing either. Though the bit about her not shaving is dickish of him. HUMANS HAVE BODY HAIR, ROBBIE. EVEN WOMEN.
I got the pre-Raphaelite thing from gileonnen, for the record, because I think it is an excellent line.
He wonders what she looks like through Richard's eyes.
COMPLETELY ADORABLE, THAT'S WHAT.
Not that he wants to think about that too much right now, because watching Richard get all wrapped up in Anne's presence even when he's right there is a sharp pain like he's swallowed a caltrop, and it's really much worse when everyone is completely naked.
This is why threesomes where two of the people involved don't really want to have sex with each other are not a good idea. Especially when the people who don't want to have sex with each other also feel awkward about communicating with each other, because seriously, this thing would have gone much more smoothly if they'd worked out a plan for double-teaming Richard.
"They call these things threesomes for a reason, huh?" he calls out, trying for flippancy, and he apparently succeeds, because Richard's response is to fling himself at Robbie, pressing him to the bed in a rush of pointy elbows and knees. After a moment Anne joins the two of them on the bed, stretching out beside them; Robbie catches sight of her impish grin when Richard pauses for breath -- reason enough to roll over so that he's on top of Richard, who laughs and kisses him again. When they break the kiss, Robbie glances briefly at Anne; she watches intently, biting her lip, her pupils wide.
Anne's voyeuristic tendencies owe a lot to commodorified and our unfinished Big Squishy Historical Novel -- cf. also this fic. Well, and also, it is Richard and Robbie and they are hot. Certainly the awkwardness in the current fic is of a somewhat different flavor than that in the fic I just linked, and in this fic Anne is much more obviously getting off on it, but still.
Richard disentangles his hand from Robbie's hair and reaches out to her, trailing his fingers down her back as he kisses her in turn, and Robbie takes the opportunity to leave his own trail of kisses down Richard's chest, eliciting a muffled gasp as his lips close on Richard's cock, which becomes a strangled cry of pleasure and a clenching of fingers at Robbie's shoulder as he runs his teeth gently along its length --
I am incapable of writing a sex scene without ending at least one paragraph with an em dash. At least this one has more than one sentence in it.
-- and then it isn't long before Richard's arching his back and crying out and his fingers dig into Robbie's back enough that it hurts, and Robbie sits back on his heels, feeling his own cock hardening as he watches Richard shudder to a stop. Richard has got his eyes tightly closed and his hand braced at the back of Anne's neck, and she smiles down at him as she traces his nipple with the end of her braid, though at this point her breathing is nearly as labored as Richard's; her face is flushed and her own nipples look decidedly pointier. It's actually sort of cute even if Richard could really stand to acknowledge the man who just gave him a pretty damn fine blowjob (if Robbie does say so himself, and of course he does).
Robbie's pride in his blowjob skills is a recurring theme in my fic for some reason. But hey, his tongue is an asset to any party.
After a moment Richard opens his eyes, and, after giving Anne a lingering kiss, sits up, grinning broadly at Robbie.
"I always forget how good you are at that," he says, reaching out to trail a finger along Robbie's jawline, and Robbie turns his head just enough to catch that finger in his mouth, flicking his tongue across the tip before releasing it.
"I suppose I can forgive you," he murmurs, trailing his thumb suggestively over Richard's lips. "I am pretty mind-blowing."
La la la handporn. Don't leave home without it.
Richard laughs, and the sound seems to come from deep in his throat. He catches Robbie's hand, and kisses the inside of his wrist, trails his tongue over the lines of his palm -- Anne has pressed herself to Richard's back, watching raptly as she leans on his shoulder, and when Richard's tongue flicks over the space between Robbie's fingers her eyes widen, and she leans back and pulls Richard on top of her.
I am pretty sure this was meant to be extremely physically awkward, because it would really have to be.
"Oh, for fuck's sake -- " Robbie heaves a hopefully-effective sigh and rolls his eyes. "Fine, then." He climbs awkwardly off the bed. "Where's the lube?"
Robbie knows perfectly well where the lube is; he just wants to interrupt.
Richard appears to have his lips attached to Anne's collarbone, but not quite firmly enough not to answer.
"Same place it always is," he murmurs, with what Robbie feels is insufficient anticipation of a good hard shag, even if he has just got off. He rolls his eyes harder and then rummages through the drawer in the bedside table -- God, he did not need to know they own a strap-on
THEY SO WOULD.
I have this mental image of them finding it in the sex shop and cracking up, and then being all "We should totally get that." "Oh, thank God you said it first!" And then the clerk is really amused because he makes the obvious assumption upon meeting a scrawny professorly type and his German wife buying a strap-on. And then when they actually try it out Anne would be all "IF YOU DON'T STOP CRITICIZING MY TECHNIQUE I AM GOING TO STOP."
-- until he finds a few stray condoms and a mostly-flattened tube of Glide.
That bit begins my fic's weird fixation with the contents of Richard's drawers -- um, furniture-type drawers, not the other kind, because that particular fascination is much more longstanding -- that is continued in "The Ghosts of Departed Quantities." Although Robbie is much more focused and less obsessive-compulsive than Henry is, so he only notices the sex toys and not the other random crap in there.
Also, now that I think of it, lube tends to come in those plastic tubes that don't flatten and have flip caps; I assumed otherwise for the purpose of inserting random inconveniences into my sex scenes. Anent the condom usage, other events in the fic illustrate that they are all fluid-bonded either directly or indirectly, so who knows why it is in there, but perhaps it is reflexive (or maybe it just makes post-sex cleanup easier). Of course, later fics in this continuity suggest that none of these guys are particularly careful about safer sex when they are with each other (I am sure they are more careful with e.g. random conference hookups, and of course Henry does not have random conference hookups).
He unscrews the cap, deciding that there is, in fact, enough for a hearty round of buggery, though he is not at all sure that Richard deserves to have anything particularly interesting inserted into his arse at this particular juncture, and feels he should consider himself lucky that storming off to the bathroom mid-threesome and having a nice wank instead is far more juvenile than Robbie is willing to countenance.
Poor Robbie. I am so mean to him in this fic, and, perhaps more to the point, Richard has terrible threesome etiquette and is easily distracted.
By the time he's got back to the bed, Richard and Anne show little indication that they haven't forgotten his presence entirely; she's lying there with her head thrown back as he attempts to leave kisses on every inch of her body, sometimes feather-light and sometimes hard enough to raise flushed red marks on her skin, his fingers tracing patterns on her breasts, her belly, her hips -- she draws her knees up, and catches hold of Richard's hand as it trails over her thigh, guiding it inward, and this strikes Robbie as the perfect moment to trail a lubed-up finger down Richard's back.
It's a fairly effective gambit: Richard shivers in simultaneous pleasure and startlement, which throws him off his stroke enough that Anne sits up expectantly, and Robbie flashes her his most evil grin.
Robbie is described as having an evil grin a lot in this fic. But I bet he has a really hot evil grin.
"You complete bastard," she cries, falling back against the pillows, her voice shaking with laughter or frustration.
"Had to remind you two I was here, didn't I?" Robbie drapes an arm around Richard's shoulders, leaning in to kiss the back of his neck.
Robbie doesn't know enough German to know exactly what Anne says next, but he suspects he's got the general idea.
I wanted to include what she actually said, but it turns out German doesn't seem to have a proper word for "cockblock." Which surprised me, since it has words for everything else in the whole world.
I do now know, however, that "Schwanz" means "cock" ("Schwanzlutscher" = "cocksucker").
"I know what that means now, you kn-- " Richard begins, but anything else he has to say dissolves into a kind of incoherent verbal squiggle as Robbie slides one and then two fingers into him, and it sounds funny enough that even Anne laughs, pulling herself onto her knees to kiss him.
"Now then," she says, lying back again, "I think we were right about here." She tries to hook her knee over Richard's shoulder in a manner that would probably be terribly seductive if she were six inches taller, but as it is, the best she can manage is pretending she's actually attempting to caress his ear with her toes.
Richard is like a foot taller than she is! Anyway I still think that is adorable.
This is apparently seductive enough for Richard -- Robbie makes a mental note to try it sometime, perhaps as part of a kick in the head, but as much as he's got one coming, that would probably spoil his chances of getting off even if it were possible to do from this position, and getting off is really at the very top of his list of priorities for the immediate future.
Sentences like this are the kind of thing that make Robbie POV fun.
He withdraws his fingers -- Richard bends down to trail kisses along the inside of Anne's thigh, tracing the seam between her legs with a gentle hand, and when his lips and tongue finally join his fingers, drawing a long shivering moan from her throat, Robbie braces his hands at Richard's hips and pushes carefully into him. Anne's hands clench on Richard's shoulders as he shudders and groans; he slips two fingers into her, and she makes a soft sound that's somewhere between a gasp and a cry, while Robbie leans forward to leave bruising kisses on Richard's neck, and the three of them rock against each other, all efforts to jockey for position abandoned in the face of an increasingly urgent need.
It's Anne who comes first -- her legs tremble violently and her eyes widen and then snap shut as her entire body spasms, her heels digging into the bed and her toes curling and her fingers clutching at the sheets, and even though he can't escape the memory of Richard's mouth having a similar effect on him, Robbie doesn't need it to empathize with her, because damn, he is getting close himself. She lies there for a moment staring blissfully at the ceiling, and Richard bends over her, bracing himself on his elbows as Robbie grinds into him and leans forward to rake his teeth across Richard's shoulder, hard enough to leave marks and to make Richard gasp. Robbie can feel his entire body tensing up; he clings to Richard's shoulders, pressing his lips to the emphatically red mark his teeth have just made, and then he's coming hard and he can hear his own voice crying out roughly, muffled against Richard's skin.
I'm kind of amused that once everyone finally gets down to business the actual sex only takes, like, two paragraphs.
Richard moans in frustration when Robbie finally pulls out of him, collapsing into a red-faced and still-decidedly-aroused ball.
"Christ, Richard, I'm not a fucking machine," Robbie murmurs, when he's finished disposing of his condom and flopped down on the bed beside Richard, who rolls over onto his back to swat at him halfheartedly.
I am not sure whether he means "fucking machine" or "fucking machine," so I left it un-italicized.
"Besides," he adds, flashing Anne another evil grin, "some of us haven't been pulling our weight in that department, huh?"
Another moment of awkward threesome etiquette: Anne hasn't been very active, and that's had a lot of effect on the dynamics. SERIOUSLY YOU KIDS THIS WAS SUCH A BAD IDEA.
Anne rolls her eyes indulgently, moving to lie at Richard's other side. "I was getting there," she says, fingers tracing lazy circles on his chest, and Richard takes her hand to guide it lower.
"You might get there faster," he says, and Anne laughs, her hand closing around him and her thumb circling the tip of his cock.
Richard gives direction like Gielgud.
He's much quieter this time, his eyes screwing shut and his mouth falling soundlessly open as he comes all over Anne's hand; he wraps an arm around each of them and clings tightly as he catches his breath.
"God," he says, after another long moment to collect himself. "That was brilliant. Thank you both so much."
Robbie wonders briefly if he's caught onto any awkwardness at all, but he is tired and sated and not the least bit inclined to bring it up right now; instead, he slides his own arm around Richard's waist.
"We totally spoil you, you know," he says, and Richard laughs.
They so do.
"It's true," Anne says, and then sits up. "Hold on, I need to go wash my hands -- " and she dashes off to the bathroom, leaving Richard and Robbie alone, Richard kissing Robbie's neck lazily before leaning in to kiss his lips.
"Hey, I know where that mouth of yours has been," Robbie mutters, trying for flippancy, and Richard blinks at him.
BODILY FLUIDS: THEY'RE WHAT'S FOR DINNER.
...okay, sorry. As I said, it's really hard to do commentary on sex scenes.
"What, your neck?" Richard says, in that deliberately obtuse manner he occasionally affects, and Robbie rolls his eyes -- he decides not to press the issue further, but he does wipe Richard's lips with a corner of the sheet, an unnecessary gesture, since it's at that moment that Anne returns, carrying a towel, which she hands to Richard before curling up under the duvet, and Robbie takes the occasion to go wash his own hands. The faint giggling he hears coming from the bedroom has already subsided by the time he's finished.
"I still love you, you great prat," he whispers as he slides into the bed, but by then Richard has already drifted to sleep.
Richard: continues to be a crummy boyfriend in many ways.
***
It isn't really that early in the morning when Anne crawls out of bed, sneaking out to the kitchen so as not to wake up Richard and Robbie, but the relentless greyness of the morning and the persistent drizzle make it feel much closer to darkness than it really is.
O HAI PATHETIC FALLACY.
Or perhaps, she reflects as she stares fuzzily at the coffeepot, she just hasn't finished sleeping off last night.
The thing that she keeps coming back to is that she'd never expected to be so ridiculously aroused by seeing Richard with Robbie. It seems like it should make a lot of difference, when you invite your husband's lover into bed with you, whether it's something you're doing to be nice because your husband just defended his thesis, or whether you get off on it. Especially if your husband's lover -- all right, no, she tells herself, just use names, because this is stupid, even in your own head -- especially if Robbie is clearly not at all attracted to you and seems a little bit bothered at how much Richard is. Which, after all, she is married to him, why shouldn't he be, and yet. And also it's really difficult to remember to remind someone he needs to be attentive to two people when you're that turned on.
And on the other hand, Robbie seems to direct his apparently-endless arsenal of stupid English insults at Richard all the time, so how would she know whether or not he's in the habit of being constantly sarcastic in bed? It's not as if she has any other informed basis for judgment, and he's certainly constantly sarcastic everywhere else. Which feels like a terrible rationalization, anyway.
One of the qualities I've given to Anne that is basically from my own experience -- though, no, I haven't actually ever had to apply it in this particular context -- is an ability to tie herself in knots over issues of fairness, without necessarily accomplishing too much: I'm not sure that her realizations here really help matters a great deal; they just give her something else to be aware of (and to attempt to communicate to Richard).
There's this whole part of Richard's life that she's only tangentially involved in, and that doesn't bother her anymore: if there's anything in the world she can trust, it's Richard's love. But it doesn't seem like Robbie feels that way -- it's clear enough to her that Richard loves him madly, but maybe it's harder for him to see when he's inside it.
This was meant as a direct parallel to the "nauseating incandescent glow" bit earlier, which indicates that, yes, it is harder for him to see. Also, I was worried that it's not clear that Richard loves Robbie just as much, so I thought having Anne say it would help. I am not sure that it does; I hope so.
So it feels terribly exploitative, that when she remembers the two of them tangled together on the bed, pictures Robbie sliding down to take Richard into his mouth, she feels a flushing in her cheeks and a sharp but definitely pleasant twinge in her belly and thighs.
Which is the most awkward train of thought she could possibly be having when Robbie stumbles into the kitchen, carrying his rumpled shirt and looking considerably the worse for wear.
SHIRTLESS ROBBIE IS SHIRTLESS.
Actually I was going to have him show up in his underpants, except that everyone I suggested this to pointed out that it would probably be out of character for him to wear underpants in the first place.
"Hi," she says, feeling surprisingly shy given that they've known each other for years before the whole getting-naked-together thing, and he gestures at her with a raised index finger, making a beeline for the coffeepot.
"Coffee first," he says.
Anne nods, sipping at her own coffee and watching as Robbie sits down, pulls a pouch of tobacco and some rolling papers out of his pocket, and fiddles with them until he's had enough coffee to assemble a competent cigarette.
"You mind if -- " he starts.
"Of course not," Anne interrupts. "You know that."
"Right," he says. Anne does, in point of fact, know what he means: even if you've known someone for a long time, having sex with them -- well, that's not really accurate, exactly, since they haven't really had sex with each other, but still, close enough -- really does reset everything. Except, she supposes, in special cases, because she clearly remembers it didn't feel weird with Richard, which was obviously evidence that they ought to have been having sex and it was clearly right to do it.
This is actually the same way Edward feels about sleeping with Richard in a fic I'm currently working on, although who knows, by the time I've written this commentary it may already be done.
"Do you want something to eat?" she says. "I don't imagine Richard will be up for a while -- he's awful in the mornings, after all -- "
I think this detail depicts one of the most salient features of awkward conversations: that of telling people things they already know. At least, this is what tends to make conversations awkward when I am in them, in any context, but perhaps that is just me.
"I know," Robbie says, with a balefully indulgent smirk, and Anne is overcome with a desire to kick herself. Instead she gets up from the table to make toast, because having a vehicle for Nutella will probably improve this incredibly awkward conversation at least a tiny bit.
Nutella makes everything better. Except for me, because I am allergic to hazelnuts. This makes me very sad, because I love Nutella. Just not the way it makes me violently ill.
"Have you noticed," Robbie continues, "that we're talking to each other like we've barely met?"
"Robbie, there is about to be chocolate," Anne says. "And at that point I will be capable of talking about last night. But first, chocolate."
"Fair enough," Robbie says.
"So," Anne says, when she's returned to the table with a plate full of toast and a jar of Nutella.
There's nothing like toast for all your serious relationship discussion needs! Brought to you by the Toast Council.
"Right," Robbie says. He's apparently decided he's caffeinated enough to handle cigarette rolling; Anne watches as he fondles the little pile of tobacco and paper into a tube, unable to stop thinking about the effect those fingers have on Richard. She can feel her face turning red again as his tongue flicks over the paper, sealing the cigarette shut, and even redder when it's evident that Robbie has noticed.
He is so doing it on purpose.
"You all right?" The smirk is definitely back now, but all the same, his question also has undertones of so, do you regret it?
"I'm fine," she says. "Really." After a moment devoted entirely, and necessarily, to the fortifying qualities of Nutella, she adds, "What about you?"
Robbie doesn't look at her, devoting his entire attention instead to smoothing out his slightly wobbly-looking cigarette before lighting up and taking a drag -- Anne tries to remember if he's always looked like he's fellating his cigarettes, or if she is just making unnecessary if pertinent associations, or if he is just doing that to be emphatic. All of those possibilities seem quite plausible, really.
I am pretty sure she is right and the answer is "all of the above."
"It's not like I didn't enjoy myself," he says, after another long drag, and Anne bites back her instinctive reply, which is No, I could tell you did.
"And it's not like anything's different," he adds.
"No," Anne says.
"But."
"But."
I am rather proud of this conversation. I feel like it's very realistically awkward. I'm not sure why I love writing awkwardness so much, and yet.
This is totally not working at all. Anne buries her face in her hands, partly from embarrassment and partly for some pretense of of privacy in which to think.
"The thing about being involved with Richard," she says, finally, "and I don't think I actually have to tell you this, I'm sure you know it, but -- I don't know, I don't think we talk about things enough. You and I, I mean. Do you know Brecht, much?"
"I saw Judi Dench as Mother Courage," Robbie says.
I researched this! She played the role with the RSC in 1984. I am totally jealous of Robbie.
"Do you know Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis? Sorry, Caucasian Chalk Circle, I'm used to thinking of it in German," she adds, when Robbie blinks confusedly at her.
The idea of Caucasian Chalk Circle being Anne's favorite play is one of those things that sort of came to me out of nowhere but just felt absolutely appropriate: its overlapping of human love and Communist ideals is exactly the sort of thing that would resonate with her, and I picture her being very conscious that what communism needs to work is people who want to work for each other, just also optimistic enough to believe that that's possible, that people might eventually take off their every-man-for-himself capitalist blinders.
"Can't say that I do," he says, snuffing out his cigarette and beginning the meticulous process of rolling another.
"This peasant girl raises the governor's child after he's abandoned during a revolution," she says, "and when the real mother finds out where he is, they go before a judge. And the test he orders is to put the child into a circle on the ground, and both women try to pull him out. The idea is that only the true mother can do it."
"Like King Solomon," Robbie says.
"Right. Except that it's the peasant girl and not the birth mother who truly loves the child, and so she lets go." She can feel her face growing warm again; this doesn't really feel like what she meant to say, because she's making it sound like she's the one who's been making sacrifices, or worse yet like she's lecturing him about it, from the standpoint of someone who really hasn't had to. Which would make her a horrible person. Or a bad winner, which is not the way she wants to think about this situation at all.
This whole "WAIT MY LITERARY ANALOGY HAS GONE ASTRAY" thing is also something I drew from personal experience.
"I mean, of course Brecht was writing a metaphor about communism," she adds haltingly, "which is why it's the adoptive mother who's the true one, but..."
Brecht took the central event of Caucasian Chalk Circle from a Chinese folk tale; it is, as Robbie points out, similar to the story of King Solomon's proposed baby-splitting in its resolution. The idea that the birth mother is not the one willing to give up the child rather than see it harmed is Brecht's addition.
"But if you love someone, you can't tear them in half," Robbie says, and then adds, almost to himself, " -- even if they're doing it to you."
Anne takes both of Robbie's hands in hers. She's always tried not to think of him as a rival, and he's always tried not to treat her as one, but -- it's always this great gaping hole that they can't patch up and never really talk about, the fact that Robbie's claim to Richard's love predates Anne's, or that Richard and Anne could -- well, that they could hold hands in public without drawing comment, for God's sake, let alone anything else -- and Anne has never actually asked Richard whether he would have left her, if Robbie hadn't been willing to share, because she couldn't bear the answer either way.
I don't think he would have. But the question illustrates the precariousness of their situation.
I think, btw, that this was the first reference to handholding I put into this fic and all the other ones were basically back-formation.
"I don't think we should have any more threesomes," she says, gently, and Robbie's smile almost reaches his eyes.
I wanted to give Robbie a hug so much after writing this. Which is why I made Anne do it a few lines later.
"Yeah, me neither," he says.
"We'll tell Richard about it, when he gets up," she says, and Robbie shakes his head.
"I don't think I'm up for that talk right now." He snuffs out his cigarette, pulls his shirt over his head, and stands up. "I think I'm just going to go home."
Anne wraps her arms around him and kisses him on the cheek, and after a moment Robbie returns the embrace, a little hesitantly.
I always thought this bit was sweet. Anne and Robbie should totally hug more.
"Richard does love you," she says, after they've let go of each other. "I know he's bad at it. I'm sorry."
"Yeah," he says. "And, well -- it seemed like a good idea at the time, didn't it?"
And then he's out the door, and Anne is left alone in the kitchen to rinse out the coffee cups and try not to think too hard. She deposits them in the sink and then goes back to bed.
Richard is still sound asleep, which isn't surprising, really; he looks oddly worn, as if years of thesis work have caught up with him all at once. It makes it strangely difficult to be frustrated with him, even if she is frustrated on Robbie's behalf. She crawls under the duvet and slides an arm around his waist, and this turns out to be enough movement to wake him; his eyes flutter open and he smiles sleepily at her.
"Hey there," he says, and she smiles back at him.
"Hey yourself," she says, and kisses him. It tastes like socks, but that's all right.
One thing that only just clicked for me right now is that this fic ends a lot like it starts, in the sense that it both begins and ends with Richard and Anne in bed. Duh, self.
"Where's Robbie?" Richard looks around, having suddenly noticed that the bed is a bit emptier than it was last time he was paying attention.
Anne bites her lip nervously -- this isn't much of a fun conversation to have, certainly not first thing in the morning, but she and Robbie have had it, so Richard needs to as well. Granted, they'd had coffee, but Richard doesn't like coffee, which is his own fault.
He does drink a lot of it in "Eaten Up In Miserable Circumstances." Perhaps the association with his thesis ruined it for him. Or perhaps he forces it down while thesis-ing, for the sake of the caffeine. And he is totally the sort of person who'd drink it black, even though he doesn't like it, because he'd feel like putting anything else in it was cheating. This is what passes for machismo with Richard.
"He went home," she says, finally.
Anne can almost see the gears turning in Richard's sleep-fogged (and probably also still sex-fogged) brain: his brow furrows in confusion, and then his eyes widen, and then his face falls in disappointment.
"Oh." Richard rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling. "I've fucked this up immensely, haven't I?"
Aaaaaaaaaaaand there is the cluebat. I cannot help but remember the description of Richard in Robert Nye's Falstaff: "Richard never realized anything important about anybody until he had banished them. He wouldn't even believe in his dinner until he'd been to the shithouse. The royal shithouse!"
Anne doesn't feel comfortable answering him directly: yes, it was a bad idea, but she also knows that if she says so, it's the sort of thing that will sink in, and she can't say it; it will make her feel cruel and she can't do that, even to be kind, if it would be kind, which she's not sure: it's not always clear what's the best way to show your love.
It depresses me that the second-to-last paragraph has such a crappily-structured and obvious sentence.
And she knows they'll move past it, and pretend last night never happened, and eventually the pretense will become second nature. Because otherwise, no matter how much they all love each other, everything would break.
"We love you anyway," she says.
They do! It's why the fic isn't as cynical -- I hope -- as the sonnet I used for an epigraph, because they do love each other, and they do work at it even though they fuck up a lot -- although I have another fic in the works that (tangentially) deals with -- well, the decline and fall of Robbie. Poor Robbie. The thing he eventually can't get past (and/or doesn't really get the change to get past) is Richard and Anne's decision (as referenced in "All Amiss Employed") to try to have a baby.
About the fic as a whole, I got a really perceptive comment from puella_nerdii about this fic and the tendency in fandom to assume threesomes solve everything. I didn't really set out to critique that particular mindset -- as I think I said elsewhere in this commentary, while writing this fic I engaged in a lot of flapping about being nervous that I was being really negative about polyamorous relationships when it's not my place (as a non-poly person) to critique them. In fact, I mostly started out (after a conversation with gileonnen) thinking about the kind of negotiations they'd have to do as a triad with one poly person, one mono person, and one person who seems to prefer committed but non-exclusive relationships. In early drafts there was a reference to them having a threesome and deciding that while it had been fun, it really wasn't for them; a lot of the arc of the fic came out of thinking about how the said threesome would actually play out. Which is how I ended up writing a 2400-word sex scene. And possibly proving my het OTP are actually complete assholes, but I hope that is not really the case, because I heart them.
May 1992
Richard's teaching schedule for Trinity term is really odd, so when Anne goes off to Berlin for her brother Wernher's second wedding, he stays in Oxford to give tutorials, read weekly essays, and take the occasional frustrated international phone call ("my God, Richard, I don't know why she's trying to get Siegmund to come in the first place, she knows they don't like each other, and also, you owe me so much for not having to deal with this").
For Anne's brothers see part 2 of this commentary. I mostly needed to get her offstage so that I could have some settled!Richard/Robbie after the wedding, and so that I could show that Robbie actually does like her.
His sense of tact, which he actually does have despite the repeated insistence of everyone in his life that he doesn't, forbids him from pointing out that she's left him alone with Robbie during Eurovision week.
Robbie gets less and less punk every time I write about him, I swear.
He's lying on the sofa with his head in Robbie's lap, reading a grammatically tortured essay and attempting to tune out the ear-sodomizing pop music coming from the telly,
I am not sure why I chose that particular adjective, given Richard's enthusiastic pro-sodomy stance, but I don't suppose ear sodomy would be enjoyable at all no matter how much one likes it when it happens elsewhere.
Incidentally, I watched a lot of 1992 Eurovision to write this scene. I suffer for my art, and so I am linking all the videos so you can suffer too.
when Robbie sighs plaintively (and curiously not on account of what he's hearing), and mutters, "This is really more fun when Anne's here."
He so wants to tease her about how her homeland's entry sounds like a douche commercial. Because IT DOES.
Click to viewThat is such a douche commercial, you guys. Or a 1980s sitcom theme.
Richard smiles up at him. "Not that I'm disagreeing," he says, "but I'm a little surprised to hear it from you."
"I'm going to ignore your implication that I don't like her," Robbie says, "but she actually argues with me about this stuff. That's what makes it entertaining. You just say" -- and here he puts on the Queen's accent -- "'whatever you say, darling' and 'well, it's all rubbish anyway, isn't it?'"
The Queen's English thing here is because Robbie constantly makes fun of Richard's excessive poshness, even though I picture his own background as fairly well-to-do (his historical original, after all, was part of the oldest noble family in England, if also one of the least wealthy). The difference is that he's the sort of person who adopts estuary English, while Richard is the sort of person who tries to have some kind of awareness about class issues but is nevertheless startled when professional-class Americans say "pleased to meet you" (which happens literally in this fic).
"Well, it is, isn't it?"
"Well, of course it is! That's the point."
"Whatever you say, darling -- also, would you kindly let go of my nose?"
"You could at least comment on how Dschinghis Khan was clearly robbed in '79."
"Dschinghis what?"
DSCHINGHIS WHAT INDEED. I have faithhopetricks to thank for this reference. Their whole schtick was vaguely historical-themed disco, and it is utterly hilarious. They represented (West) Germany at Eurovision in 1979 -- as the fic makes clear -- with this little number:
Perhaps shockingly, they did not win.
This song is probably better known in internetland. As well it should be. It also achieved great underground popularity in the Soviet Union.
Robbie's brow furrows for a moment, and his mouth hangs slightly open.
"Ask Anne about it when she gets back."
"I'll do that," Richard says, pulling himself up into a sitting position and leaning against Robbie's side. "In the meantime," he murmurs into Robbie's ear, "why are we arguing when we could be making out?"
That is basically Richard and Robbie's motto in this universe.
"Because you're a dork," Robbie laughs, and Richard gestures towards the screen -- you're watching that, and I'm the dork? -- while running his tongue along the edge of Robbie's ear, which makes him shiver, and then laugh. "All right!" he says. "As soon as the UK entry's done. I get so few chances to feel like I'm having sex with someone relatively cool."
There is apparently some debate over the currency of the word "dork" in the UK in the early nineties. But since it is not unheard-of and there is really no better word to describe academic-au!Richard, I am not going to apologize for it. ;)
Based on the ridiculously twitchy dance the UK singer is doing, Richard can kind of see what he means, but that was a low blow.
The UK competitor in 1992 was Michael Ball, of Les Miserables fame. I made my inner twelve-year-old cry by making fun of him in this fic, but watch his routine! HE HAD IT COMING.
It says a lot about Eurovision and also the early nineties that he came in second. (Ireland won that year and their song is even cheesier.)
"Good luck getting a hard-on ever again," he grumbles. "And I hope you can live with dooming me to a lifetime of kitsch-induced impotence. You'll have to explain yourself to Anne, I expect..."
"Oh, for fuck's sake -- " And then Robbie's got his tongue down Richard's throat and his hand in his trousers, and Richard's pulling him down on top of him.
It turns out nobody is doomed to a lifetime of kitsch-induced impotence after all. At least not for another year.
Anne returns from Berlin the following evening, tired but in a decent mood -- the family drama must have been fairly low-key -- and when Richard meets her at the bus station he wraps his arms around her, notices it's awkward because she's still holding her bag, takes the bag, attempts to return to the embrace, sets the bag down, and then kisses her while she's laughing at him.
This has been another moment of gratuitous cuteness. They can't help it. They just really are that cute.
"God, I missed you," he says.
"I missed you too," she says, releasing him and then slipping her hand into his.
I am pretty sure I put this detail in precisely because I'd already mentioned the politics of public handholding twice.
"But I'm sure you managed with Robbie."
"Well, yes," Richard said. "But it's much nicer with both of you. You know, Robbie missed you too."
This exchange makes Richard sound like he is about six, but that's okay.
"That's very sweet of him!"
"Apparently Eurovision isn't nearly as much fun without you...incidentally, what precisely is Dschinghis Khan?"
Anne's laughter is contagious.
I love the image of 13-year-old Anne (who is played in my head by the girl who plays Lucy in the Narnia movies) watching fuzzy black-and-white Eurovision broadcasts coming from the West -- by the time she'd have been a teenager, the East German government had largely given up on trying to prevent citizens from watching West German broadcasts. No doubt this was influential to her vision of a kind of Communism that had room for hilariously cheesy disco.
Also I just generally love that Anne likes cheesy Europop (this is also referenced in "Eaten Up in Miserable Circumstances"). Anne is so adorable.
***
March 1994
It's absolutely pissing down rain when Richard does his viva, which Richard has been gloomily, and annoyingly, insisting is perfectly appropriate for his impending doom, much to Robbie's considerable annoyance, since everybody knows Richard is completely brilliant, including Richard himself when he's not insisting on his own stupidity (and never the kind of stupidity that he does have, like the kind that leads him to bitch incessantly about failing his viva).
You may have noticed that we've just switched to Robbie's POV. This is largely because I couldn't do the threesome scene in Richard's POV -- he doesn't pick up on enough of the awkwardness immediately for the scene to convey what's going on. Because this is basically how Richard reacts:
"Oh God, I'm going to fail so hard," Richard moans, for at least the thirtieth time since breakfast. "I'm going to fail, and there will be absolutely nothing to be done, and I will have to go drown myself in the Cherwell."
Those of you unaware of the trajectory of this AU may or may not wish to know something about this particular exchange.
It's foreshadowing.
So, yeah. O HAI SURPRISE DEPRESSION.
"You can't possibly drown yourself in the Cherwell," Robbie says. "At least, not with any dignity."
"I don't deserve dignity," Richard says, "because I am going to fail spectacularly. Besides, the rain ought to be good for at least a few more inches."
Also, Richard clearly has a sort of meta-level awareness that he's in a universe that is not keen on dignity.
"For fuck's sake, Richard." Robbie takes his arm. "You know how I'm always telling you you're an utter wanker?"
Richard nods, looking distinctly dubious.
"Well, forget it. You're fucking brilliant."
Richard says nothing, preferring instead to chew his fingernails contemplatively.
I am not sure that's actually possible, but I am sure Richard would make a pretty good effort.
Also, I think Robbie telling Richard he's brilliant is adorable, given that usually they use "bastard" as a term of endearment.
"I suppose if I left my robes on I could do an Ophelia sort of thing," he says. "That's at least marginally dignified."
This is a meta gag referencing Victorian!AU Richard's identification with Ophelia (although I don't think most of you have actually read the fic where it's really obvious, because I haven't finished it yet!)
"Well, if it starts to go badly, you could tell them you had a paper sent up for good at Eton."
Richard rolls his eyes, but his stupidly gloomy expression has lightened a bit.
I always write Richard as having an odd relationship with his time at Eton, in that he is never anything but disdainful about it, but he does make sure you know he went there.
"I'm sure when you've turned into some great wheezing Tory bastard like all Old Etonians you'll go on and on about having been in Sixth Form Select, well into your dotage. I may have to shoot myself pre-emptively."
The Eton terminology is accurate as far as I could determine. Having a paper sent up for good means it was so impressive that it's included in the College Archives as an example to future students. Sixth Form Select is a group of students granted prefect duties on account of being in some ridiculously high percentile academically.
The jokes about the grim Tory future of Old Etonians was occasioned by the then-recent UK general election which (eventually) got the Tories back into power; Prime Minister David Cameron is himself an Old Etonian. In fact, if I understand the cutoff dates for schools in the UK correctly, he'd have been in Richard's year, as he was born in October 1966 and Richard, in this AU, in January 1967. Boris Johnson, the current mayor of London, would have been a few years ahead of them.
"Fuck you, Robbie," Richard says, but he's grinning broadly now.
"Not till after your viva."
AND HOW.
Anne shows up about an hour into the thing, while Robbie is sitting outside smoking and watching the rain. "I don't suppose there's any point in asking how it's going," she says, and Robbie shrugs. "It's not as if we can tell from out here. Did he ever manage to cheer up?"
"Oh, of course not," Robbie laughs.
"Of course not." Anne grins at him. "He's the last person in the world who has anything to worry about!"
Their confidence is, naturally, well-founded. It's another hour and a half, the last forty-five minutes of which are spent making awkward conversation with Richard's supervisor, before Richard comes out and there are hugs and congratulations and lots of discussion of things that need to be improved in order to publish.
I was going to write Anne and Robbie and Simon being awkward, but by this time I'd written most of the fic and was feeling very tired of writing it. It's okay, since it's not like the fic needs it; I just like Simon and his awkward pedagogical crush on Richard.
The first thing Richard says, far too despairingly for someone who's just earned his D.Phil., is "Oh God, I need a drink."
It's nearly midnight and still raining when they make it home from the King's Arms, completely drenched but just pissed enough not to care. Richard is still wearing his gown, which makes him look simultaneously batlike and pathetic, especially once they get to Richard and Anne's flat and he's standing there dripping on the carpet, the end of his nose slightly pink from the damp evening chill.
I put "batlike" in there for highfantastical. I might have also put the bit about his pink nose in there for her, but it may have been because that's just cute.
"Dr. Bordeaux," Robbie muses. "That sounds like someone with wine-based superpowers."
"I do have wine-based superpowers," Richard says.
Mostly they involve having drunk sex, though.
"Clearly this is why you are standing there dripping all over everything," Anne laughs, helping him out of his gown.
"I'm having an identity crisis, or something. I have no idea what I'm going to do without my thesis," Richard says, removing his jacket and draping it over the radiator before falling in a heap on the sofa. "I've lived with the damn thing so long."
Many things about Richard's viva are drawn from my own experience, which was quite recent when I wrote this fic: the pouring rain, the pre-viva despair, the post-viva identity crisis. Not the threesome, though. I just had Indian food.
"Might I suggest staying in bed for at least a week?" Anne's eyes sparkle with mischief as she sits beside him and starts in on loosening his tie, and he beams at her and ducks his head to kiss her fingers.
"Christ, I'm going to go home if you two are going to act like that," Robbie says, and then Richard looks up, all dripping and wide-eyed, and smiles at him.
"I'd really love it if you stayed," he says.
And his smile is totally dazzling, and he looks absolutely beautiful in his sodden and rumpled subfusc, and then Anne smiles too, her face going all pink, and Robbie knows perfectly well what Richard's asking of him, and he doesn't know whether it's that he wants in on the just-this-side-of-nauseating incandescent glow the two of them seem to emit or it's just the champagne or the convenient excuse to get out of his wet clothes, but he thinks, you know, I can totally do this.
This always breaks my heart for Robbie a little bit, and also makes me want to smack Richard for being a bad boyfriend (he does adore Robbie, just differently, and a lot less clearly).
"What the hell," he says, grinning. "You've earned it."
Richard pulls him down onto the sofa and kisses him hard, and the three of them collapse into a damp, giggling confusion of tangled limbs and wandering hands, Richard turning from Robbie to Anne and back again.
"Possibly," Anne says, her voice muffled against Richard's neck, "the sofa isn't the most comfortable place for this kind of thing."
Anne is eminently practical, but also she is the smallest person present and thus in the most danger of being squished.
Robbie is pretty sure this is the first threesome he's been involved in where everyone's got virtually all of their clothes on by the time they get to the bedroom, although Richard's jacket and tie are currently lying in a puddle in front of the sofa,
I forgot I'd already had him hang it over the radiator. D'oh.
and Robbie had made a good start on unbuttoning his shirt before they decided on a change of venue.
"I've never done this before," Anne confesses to Robbie, half-whispered.
"I've never done this with a girl!" Robbie answers,
This exchange was inspired by a similar conversation between Henry and Edward in "Three Such Enemies," although of course the dynamic is very very different here. I feel that it encapsulates a great deal, though.
and they both laugh, only slightly hysterically, as Robbie moves in to undo Richard's belt and Richard slides one arm around Anne's waist to pull her closer for a kiss, and his other hand just past the waistband of Robbie's jeans, which makes his breath catch and distracts him from drawing Richard's belt free. When Richard and Anne have pulled apart for breath, Robbie loops the belt over Richard's shoulders and draws him in, kissing him fiercely as Richard unzips his jeans and begins the slightly arduous process of peeling them off, his hands warm against damp cool skin.
speak_me_fair has some video of Richard's PB (see above) wearing braces (suspenders, if you're American, but UK suspenders are what Americans call a garter belt), which kind of made me regret putting him in a belt here, except then I couldn't have done that so I think it's okay.
(There is no known footage, that I am aware of, of Ian Bostridge wearing a garter belt, but if you know differently, please do tell me, because I really want to know about it.)
"Let go of the belt, Robbie," Anne says, after she's finished ducking behind Richard to reach around him and undo his trousers. "I can't get his shirt off!"
She makes an excellent point. Robbie lets go of the belt and removes Richard's shirt himself before stepping out of his own jeans, and Anne draws Richard's trousers down, sinking to her knees to trace his hipbone with her mouth and slide a hand up his thigh. Richard gasps and winds his fingers in Anne's hair -- Robbie suspects that if he doesn't do something soon he's going to get thoroughly left out. He trails a hand down Richard's chest to curl his fingers around his cock, feeling him stiffen against his palm.
It takes a really long time to get three people's clothes off in fic. One of those awkward situations where events that wouldn't really take that long in real life fill up a fairly long paragraph.
Also, I sort of glossed over how sticky peeling out of wet clothes makes you. Possibly because it's not very sexy. Oh, well.
"Hold on -- " Richard's voice is thick as he draws back from Robbie and bends to help Anne to her feet and out of her (truly regrettable) jumper. Robbie shrugs and peels off his own shirt, sitting on the bed to watch as Richard eases her skirt down her hips. Her fingers clench on Richard's shoulders and she sighs as he stops kissing her neck long enough to unhook her bra.
Apparently my fondness for giving people clothing-removal difficulties stops short when it's a cliche (seriously, there is a TVTropes page about this). Granted Richard is a pretty experienced bra-remover at this point.
Robbie doesn't think he's ever been this close to a naked woman before, or at least not one who isn't a Pre-Raphaelite painting, and Anne certainly isn't a Pre-Raphaelite painting; maybe she could pass for one from the shoulders up if she dyed her hair red, but she is short and kind of squishy-looking with pudgy thighs and slightly asymmetrical breasts and exactly the sort of attitude toward depilation you would expect from a German communist.
I fretted a bit about this paragraph, since I wanted to strike the right balance: Robbie clearly Does Not See the Appeal, but I didn't want to do a homophobic EW GIRL COOTIES thing either. Though the bit about her not shaving is dickish of him. HUMANS HAVE BODY HAIR, ROBBIE. EVEN WOMEN.
I got the pre-Raphaelite thing from gileonnen, for the record, because I think it is an excellent line.
He wonders what she looks like through Richard's eyes.
COMPLETELY ADORABLE, THAT'S WHAT.
Not that he wants to think about that too much right now, because watching Richard get all wrapped up in Anne's presence even when he's right there is a sharp pain like he's swallowed a caltrop, and it's really much worse when everyone is completely naked.
This is why threesomes where two of the people involved don't really want to have sex with each other are not a good idea. Especially when the people who don't want to have sex with each other also feel awkward about communicating with each other, because seriously, this thing would have gone much more smoothly if they'd worked out a plan for double-teaming Richard.
"They call these things threesomes for a reason, huh?" he calls out, trying for flippancy, and he apparently succeeds, because Richard's response is to fling himself at Robbie, pressing him to the bed in a rush of pointy elbows and knees. After a moment Anne joins the two of them on the bed, stretching out beside them; Robbie catches sight of her impish grin when Richard pauses for breath -- reason enough to roll over so that he's on top of Richard, who laughs and kisses him again. When they break the kiss, Robbie glances briefly at Anne; she watches intently, biting her lip, her pupils wide.
Anne's voyeuristic tendencies owe a lot to commodorified and our unfinished Big Squishy Historical Novel -- cf. also this fic. Well, and also, it is Richard and Robbie and they are hot. Certainly the awkwardness in the current fic is of a somewhat different flavor than that in the fic I just linked, and in this fic Anne is much more obviously getting off on it, but still.
Richard disentangles his hand from Robbie's hair and reaches out to her, trailing his fingers down her back as he kisses her in turn, and Robbie takes the opportunity to leave his own trail of kisses down Richard's chest, eliciting a muffled gasp as his lips close on Richard's cock, which becomes a strangled cry of pleasure and a clenching of fingers at Robbie's shoulder as he runs his teeth gently along its length --
I am incapable of writing a sex scene without ending at least one paragraph with an em dash. At least this one has more than one sentence in it.
-- and then it isn't long before Richard's arching his back and crying out and his fingers dig into Robbie's back enough that it hurts, and Robbie sits back on his heels, feeling his own cock hardening as he watches Richard shudder to a stop. Richard has got his eyes tightly closed and his hand braced at the back of Anne's neck, and she smiles down at him as she traces his nipple with the end of her braid, though at this point her breathing is nearly as labored as Richard's; her face is flushed and her own nipples look decidedly pointier. It's actually sort of cute even if Richard could really stand to acknowledge the man who just gave him a pretty damn fine blowjob (if Robbie does say so himself, and of course he does).
Robbie's pride in his blowjob skills is a recurring theme in my fic for some reason. But hey, his tongue is an asset to any party.
After a moment Richard opens his eyes, and, after giving Anne a lingering kiss, sits up, grinning broadly at Robbie.
"I always forget how good you are at that," he says, reaching out to trail a finger along Robbie's jawline, and Robbie turns his head just enough to catch that finger in his mouth, flicking his tongue across the tip before releasing it.
"I suppose I can forgive you," he murmurs, trailing his thumb suggestively over Richard's lips. "I am pretty mind-blowing."
La la la handporn. Don't leave home without it.
Richard laughs, and the sound seems to come from deep in his throat. He catches Robbie's hand, and kisses the inside of his wrist, trails his tongue over the lines of his palm -- Anne has pressed herself to Richard's back, watching raptly as she leans on his shoulder, and when Richard's tongue flicks over the space between Robbie's fingers her eyes widen, and she leans back and pulls Richard on top of her.
I am pretty sure this was meant to be extremely physically awkward, because it would really have to be.
"Oh, for fuck's sake -- " Robbie heaves a hopefully-effective sigh and rolls his eyes. "Fine, then." He climbs awkwardly off the bed. "Where's the lube?"
Robbie knows perfectly well where the lube is; he just wants to interrupt.
Richard appears to have his lips attached to Anne's collarbone, but not quite firmly enough not to answer.
"Same place it always is," he murmurs, with what Robbie feels is insufficient anticipation of a good hard shag, even if he has just got off. He rolls his eyes harder and then rummages through the drawer in the bedside table -- God, he did not need to know they own a strap-on
THEY SO WOULD.
I have this mental image of them finding it in the sex shop and cracking up, and then being all "We should totally get that." "Oh, thank God you said it first!" And then the clerk is really amused because he makes the obvious assumption upon meeting a scrawny professorly type and his German wife buying a strap-on. And then when they actually try it out Anne would be all "IF YOU DON'T STOP CRITICIZING MY TECHNIQUE I AM GOING TO STOP."
-- until he finds a few stray condoms and a mostly-flattened tube of Glide.
That bit begins my fic's weird fixation with the contents of Richard's drawers -- um, furniture-type drawers, not the other kind, because that particular fascination is much more longstanding -- that is continued in "The Ghosts of Departed Quantities." Although Robbie is much more focused and less obsessive-compulsive than Henry is, so he only notices the sex toys and not the other random crap in there.
Also, now that I think of it, lube tends to come in those plastic tubes that don't flatten and have flip caps; I assumed otherwise for the purpose of inserting random inconveniences into my sex scenes. Anent the condom usage, other events in the fic illustrate that they are all fluid-bonded either directly or indirectly, so who knows why it is in there, but perhaps it is reflexive (or maybe it just makes post-sex cleanup easier). Of course, later fics in this continuity suggest that none of these guys are particularly careful about safer sex when they are with each other (I am sure they are more careful with e.g. random conference hookups, and of course Henry does not have random conference hookups).
He unscrews the cap, deciding that there is, in fact, enough for a hearty round of buggery, though he is not at all sure that Richard deserves to have anything particularly interesting inserted into his arse at this particular juncture, and feels he should consider himself lucky that storming off to the bathroom mid-threesome and having a nice wank instead is far more juvenile than Robbie is willing to countenance.
Poor Robbie. I am so mean to him in this fic, and, perhaps more to the point, Richard has terrible threesome etiquette and is easily distracted.
By the time he's got back to the bed, Richard and Anne show little indication that they haven't forgotten his presence entirely; she's lying there with her head thrown back as he attempts to leave kisses on every inch of her body, sometimes feather-light and sometimes hard enough to raise flushed red marks on her skin, his fingers tracing patterns on her breasts, her belly, her hips -- she draws her knees up, and catches hold of Richard's hand as it trails over her thigh, guiding it inward, and this strikes Robbie as the perfect moment to trail a lubed-up finger down Richard's back.
It's a fairly effective gambit: Richard shivers in simultaneous pleasure and startlement, which throws him off his stroke enough that Anne sits up expectantly, and Robbie flashes her his most evil grin.
Robbie is described as having an evil grin a lot in this fic. But I bet he has a really hot evil grin.
"You complete bastard," she cries, falling back against the pillows, her voice shaking with laughter or frustration.
"Had to remind you two I was here, didn't I?" Robbie drapes an arm around Richard's shoulders, leaning in to kiss the back of his neck.
Robbie doesn't know enough German to know exactly what Anne says next, but he suspects he's got the general idea.
I wanted to include what she actually said, but it turns out German doesn't seem to have a proper word for "cockblock." Which surprised me, since it has words for everything else in the whole world.
I do now know, however, that "Schwanz" means "cock" ("Schwanzlutscher" = "cocksucker").
"I know what that means now, you kn-- " Richard begins, but anything else he has to say dissolves into a kind of incoherent verbal squiggle as Robbie slides one and then two fingers into him, and it sounds funny enough that even Anne laughs, pulling herself onto her knees to kiss him.
"Now then," she says, lying back again, "I think we were right about here." She tries to hook her knee over Richard's shoulder in a manner that would probably be terribly seductive if she were six inches taller, but as it is, the best she can manage is pretending she's actually attempting to caress his ear with her toes.
Richard is like a foot taller than she is! Anyway I still think that is adorable.
This is apparently seductive enough for Richard -- Robbie makes a mental note to try it sometime, perhaps as part of a kick in the head, but as much as he's got one coming, that would probably spoil his chances of getting off even if it were possible to do from this position, and getting off is really at the very top of his list of priorities for the immediate future.
Sentences like this are the kind of thing that make Robbie POV fun.
He withdraws his fingers -- Richard bends down to trail kisses along the inside of Anne's thigh, tracing the seam between her legs with a gentle hand, and when his lips and tongue finally join his fingers, drawing a long shivering moan from her throat, Robbie braces his hands at Richard's hips and pushes carefully into him. Anne's hands clench on Richard's shoulders as he shudders and groans; he slips two fingers into her, and she makes a soft sound that's somewhere between a gasp and a cry, while Robbie leans forward to leave bruising kisses on Richard's neck, and the three of them rock against each other, all efforts to jockey for position abandoned in the face of an increasingly urgent need.
It's Anne who comes first -- her legs tremble violently and her eyes widen and then snap shut as her entire body spasms, her heels digging into the bed and her toes curling and her fingers clutching at the sheets, and even though he can't escape the memory of Richard's mouth having a similar effect on him, Robbie doesn't need it to empathize with her, because damn, he is getting close himself. She lies there for a moment staring blissfully at the ceiling, and Richard bends over her, bracing himself on his elbows as Robbie grinds into him and leans forward to rake his teeth across Richard's shoulder, hard enough to leave marks and to make Richard gasp. Robbie can feel his entire body tensing up; he clings to Richard's shoulders, pressing his lips to the emphatically red mark his teeth have just made, and then he's coming hard and he can hear his own voice crying out roughly, muffled against Richard's skin.
I'm kind of amused that once everyone finally gets down to business the actual sex only takes, like, two paragraphs.
Richard moans in frustration when Robbie finally pulls out of him, collapsing into a red-faced and still-decidedly-aroused ball.
"Christ, Richard, I'm not a fucking machine," Robbie murmurs, when he's finished disposing of his condom and flopped down on the bed beside Richard, who rolls over onto his back to swat at him halfheartedly.
I am not sure whether he means "fucking machine" or "fucking machine," so I left it un-italicized.
"Besides," he adds, flashing Anne another evil grin, "some of us haven't been pulling our weight in that department, huh?"
Another moment of awkward threesome etiquette: Anne hasn't been very active, and that's had a lot of effect on the dynamics. SERIOUSLY YOU KIDS THIS WAS SUCH A BAD IDEA.
Anne rolls her eyes indulgently, moving to lie at Richard's other side. "I was getting there," she says, fingers tracing lazy circles on his chest, and Richard takes her hand to guide it lower.
"You might get there faster," he says, and Anne laughs, her hand closing around him and her thumb circling the tip of his cock.
Richard gives direction like Gielgud.
He's much quieter this time, his eyes screwing shut and his mouth falling soundlessly open as he comes all over Anne's hand; he wraps an arm around each of them and clings tightly as he catches his breath.
"God," he says, after another long moment to collect himself. "That was brilliant. Thank you both so much."
Robbie wonders briefly if he's caught onto any awkwardness at all, but he is tired and sated and not the least bit inclined to bring it up right now; instead, he slides his own arm around Richard's waist.
"We totally spoil you, you know," he says, and Richard laughs.
They so do.
"It's true," Anne says, and then sits up. "Hold on, I need to go wash my hands -- " and she dashes off to the bathroom, leaving Richard and Robbie alone, Richard kissing Robbie's neck lazily before leaning in to kiss his lips.
"Hey, I know where that mouth of yours has been," Robbie mutters, trying for flippancy, and Richard blinks at him.
BODILY FLUIDS: THEY'RE WHAT'S FOR DINNER.
...okay, sorry. As I said, it's really hard to do commentary on sex scenes.
"What, your neck?" Richard says, in that deliberately obtuse manner he occasionally affects, and Robbie rolls his eyes -- he decides not to press the issue further, but he does wipe Richard's lips with a corner of the sheet, an unnecessary gesture, since it's at that moment that Anne returns, carrying a towel, which she hands to Richard before curling up under the duvet, and Robbie takes the occasion to go wash his own hands. The faint giggling he hears coming from the bedroom has already subsided by the time he's finished.
"I still love you, you great prat," he whispers as he slides into the bed, but by then Richard has already drifted to sleep.
Richard: continues to be a crummy boyfriend in many ways.
***
It isn't really that early in the morning when Anne crawls out of bed, sneaking out to the kitchen so as not to wake up Richard and Robbie, but the relentless greyness of the morning and the persistent drizzle make it feel much closer to darkness than it really is.
O HAI PATHETIC FALLACY.
Or perhaps, she reflects as she stares fuzzily at the coffeepot, she just hasn't finished sleeping off last night.
The thing that she keeps coming back to is that she'd never expected to be so ridiculously aroused by seeing Richard with Robbie. It seems like it should make a lot of difference, when you invite your husband's lover into bed with you, whether it's something you're doing to be nice because your husband just defended his thesis, or whether you get off on it. Especially if your husband's lover -- all right, no, she tells herself, just use names, because this is stupid, even in your own head -- especially if Robbie is clearly not at all attracted to you and seems a little bit bothered at how much Richard is. Which, after all, she is married to him, why shouldn't he be, and yet. And also it's really difficult to remember to remind someone he needs to be attentive to two people when you're that turned on.
And on the other hand, Robbie seems to direct his apparently-endless arsenal of stupid English insults at Richard all the time, so how would she know whether or not he's in the habit of being constantly sarcastic in bed? It's not as if she has any other informed basis for judgment, and he's certainly constantly sarcastic everywhere else. Which feels like a terrible rationalization, anyway.
One of the qualities I've given to Anne that is basically from my own experience -- though, no, I haven't actually ever had to apply it in this particular context -- is an ability to tie herself in knots over issues of fairness, without necessarily accomplishing too much: I'm not sure that her realizations here really help matters a great deal; they just give her something else to be aware of (and to attempt to communicate to Richard).
There's this whole part of Richard's life that she's only tangentially involved in, and that doesn't bother her anymore: if there's anything in the world she can trust, it's Richard's love. But it doesn't seem like Robbie feels that way -- it's clear enough to her that Richard loves him madly, but maybe it's harder for him to see when he's inside it.
This was meant as a direct parallel to the "nauseating incandescent glow" bit earlier, which indicates that, yes, it is harder for him to see. Also, I was worried that it's not clear that Richard loves Robbie just as much, so I thought having Anne say it would help. I am not sure that it does; I hope so.
So it feels terribly exploitative, that when she remembers the two of them tangled together on the bed, pictures Robbie sliding down to take Richard into his mouth, she feels a flushing in her cheeks and a sharp but definitely pleasant twinge in her belly and thighs.
Which is the most awkward train of thought she could possibly be having when Robbie stumbles into the kitchen, carrying his rumpled shirt and looking considerably the worse for wear.
SHIRTLESS ROBBIE IS SHIRTLESS.
Actually I was going to have him show up in his underpants, except that everyone I suggested this to pointed out that it would probably be out of character for him to wear underpants in the first place.
"Hi," she says, feeling surprisingly shy given that they've known each other for years before the whole getting-naked-together thing, and he gestures at her with a raised index finger, making a beeline for the coffeepot.
"Coffee first," he says.
Anne nods, sipping at her own coffee and watching as Robbie sits down, pulls a pouch of tobacco and some rolling papers out of his pocket, and fiddles with them until he's had enough coffee to assemble a competent cigarette.
"You mind if -- " he starts.
"Of course not," Anne interrupts. "You know that."
"Right," he says. Anne does, in point of fact, know what he means: even if you've known someone for a long time, having sex with them -- well, that's not really accurate, exactly, since they haven't really had sex with each other, but still, close enough -- really does reset everything. Except, she supposes, in special cases, because she clearly remembers it didn't feel weird with Richard, which was obviously evidence that they ought to have been having sex and it was clearly right to do it.
This is actually the same way Edward feels about sleeping with Richard in a fic I'm currently working on, although who knows, by the time I've written this commentary it may already be done.
"Do you want something to eat?" she says. "I don't imagine Richard will be up for a while -- he's awful in the mornings, after all -- "
I think this detail depicts one of the most salient features of awkward conversations: that of telling people things they already know. At least, this is what tends to make conversations awkward when I am in them, in any context, but perhaps that is just me.
"I know," Robbie says, with a balefully indulgent smirk, and Anne is overcome with a desire to kick herself. Instead she gets up from the table to make toast, because having a vehicle for Nutella will probably improve this incredibly awkward conversation at least a tiny bit.
Nutella makes everything better. Except for me, because I am allergic to hazelnuts. This makes me very sad, because I love Nutella. Just not the way it makes me violently ill.
"Have you noticed," Robbie continues, "that we're talking to each other like we've barely met?"
"Robbie, there is about to be chocolate," Anne says. "And at that point I will be capable of talking about last night. But first, chocolate."
"Fair enough," Robbie says.
"So," Anne says, when she's returned to the table with a plate full of toast and a jar of Nutella.
There's nothing like toast for all your serious relationship discussion needs! Brought to you by the Toast Council.
"Right," Robbie says. He's apparently decided he's caffeinated enough to handle cigarette rolling; Anne watches as he fondles the little pile of tobacco and paper into a tube, unable to stop thinking about the effect those fingers have on Richard. She can feel her face turning red again as his tongue flicks over the paper, sealing the cigarette shut, and even redder when it's evident that Robbie has noticed.
He is so doing it on purpose.
"You all right?" The smirk is definitely back now, but all the same, his question also has undertones of so, do you regret it?
"I'm fine," she says. "Really." After a moment devoted entirely, and necessarily, to the fortifying qualities of Nutella, she adds, "What about you?"
Robbie doesn't look at her, devoting his entire attention instead to smoothing out his slightly wobbly-looking cigarette before lighting up and taking a drag -- Anne tries to remember if he's always looked like he's fellating his cigarettes, or if she is just making unnecessary if pertinent associations, or if he is just doing that to be emphatic. All of those possibilities seem quite plausible, really.
I am pretty sure she is right and the answer is "all of the above."
"It's not like I didn't enjoy myself," he says, after another long drag, and Anne bites back her instinctive reply, which is No, I could tell you did.
"And it's not like anything's different," he adds.
"No," Anne says.
"But."
"But."
I am rather proud of this conversation. I feel like it's very realistically awkward. I'm not sure why I love writing awkwardness so much, and yet.
This is totally not working at all. Anne buries her face in her hands, partly from embarrassment and partly for some pretense of of privacy in which to think.
"The thing about being involved with Richard," she says, finally, "and I don't think I actually have to tell you this, I'm sure you know it, but -- I don't know, I don't think we talk about things enough. You and I, I mean. Do you know Brecht, much?"
"I saw Judi Dench as Mother Courage," Robbie says.
I researched this! She played the role with the RSC in 1984. I am totally jealous of Robbie.
"Do you know Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis? Sorry, Caucasian Chalk Circle, I'm used to thinking of it in German," she adds, when Robbie blinks confusedly at her.
The idea of Caucasian Chalk Circle being Anne's favorite play is one of those things that sort of came to me out of nowhere but just felt absolutely appropriate: its overlapping of human love and Communist ideals is exactly the sort of thing that would resonate with her, and I picture her being very conscious that what communism needs to work is people who want to work for each other, just also optimistic enough to believe that that's possible, that people might eventually take off their every-man-for-himself capitalist blinders.
"Can't say that I do," he says, snuffing out his cigarette and beginning the meticulous process of rolling another.
"This peasant girl raises the governor's child after he's abandoned during a revolution," she says, "and when the real mother finds out where he is, they go before a judge. And the test he orders is to put the child into a circle on the ground, and both women try to pull him out. The idea is that only the true mother can do it."
"Like King Solomon," Robbie says.
"Right. Except that it's the peasant girl and not the birth mother who truly loves the child, and so she lets go." She can feel her face growing warm again; this doesn't really feel like what she meant to say, because she's making it sound like she's the one who's been making sacrifices, or worse yet like she's lecturing him about it, from the standpoint of someone who really hasn't had to. Which would make her a horrible person. Or a bad winner, which is not the way she wants to think about this situation at all.
This whole "WAIT MY LITERARY ANALOGY HAS GONE ASTRAY" thing is also something I drew from personal experience.
"I mean, of course Brecht was writing a metaphor about communism," she adds haltingly, "which is why it's the adoptive mother who's the true one, but..."
Brecht took the central event of Caucasian Chalk Circle from a Chinese folk tale; it is, as Robbie points out, similar to the story of King Solomon's proposed baby-splitting in its resolution. The idea that the birth mother is not the one willing to give up the child rather than see it harmed is Brecht's addition.
"But if you love someone, you can't tear them in half," Robbie says, and then adds, almost to himself, " -- even if they're doing it to you."
Anne takes both of Robbie's hands in hers. She's always tried not to think of him as a rival, and he's always tried not to treat her as one, but -- it's always this great gaping hole that they can't patch up and never really talk about, the fact that Robbie's claim to Richard's love predates Anne's, or that Richard and Anne could -- well, that they could hold hands in public without drawing comment, for God's sake, let alone anything else -- and Anne has never actually asked Richard whether he would have left her, if Robbie hadn't been willing to share, because she couldn't bear the answer either way.
I don't think he would have. But the question illustrates the precariousness of their situation.
I think, btw, that this was the first reference to handholding I put into this fic and all the other ones were basically back-formation.
"I don't think we should have any more threesomes," she says, gently, and Robbie's smile almost reaches his eyes.
I wanted to give Robbie a hug so much after writing this. Which is why I made Anne do it a few lines later.
"Yeah, me neither," he says.
"We'll tell Richard about it, when he gets up," she says, and Robbie shakes his head.
"I don't think I'm up for that talk right now." He snuffs out his cigarette, pulls his shirt over his head, and stands up. "I think I'm just going to go home."
Anne wraps her arms around him and kisses him on the cheek, and after a moment Robbie returns the embrace, a little hesitantly.
I always thought this bit was sweet. Anne and Robbie should totally hug more.
"Richard does love you," she says, after they've let go of each other. "I know he's bad at it. I'm sorry."
"Yeah," he says. "And, well -- it seemed like a good idea at the time, didn't it?"
And then he's out the door, and Anne is left alone in the kitchen to rinse out the coffee cups and try not to think too hard. She deposits them in the sink and then goes back to bed.
Richard is still sound asleep, which isn't surprising, really; he looks oddly worn, as if years of thesis work have caught up with him all at once. It makes it strangely difficult to be frustrated with him, even if she is frustrated on Robbie's behalf. She crawls under the duvet and slides an arm around his waist, and this turns out to be enough movement to wake him; his eyes flutter open and he smiles sleepily at her.
"Hey there," he says, and she smiles back at him.
"Hey yourself," she says, and kisses him. It tastes like socks, but that's all right.
One thing that only just clicked for me right now is that this fic ends a lot like it starts, in the sense that it both begins and ends with Richard and Anne in bed. Duh, self.
"Where's Robbie?" Richard looks around, having suddenly noticed that the bed is a bit emptier than it was last time he was paying attention.
Anne bites her lip nervously -- this isn't much of a fun conversation to have, certainly not first thing in the morning, but she and Robbie have had it, so Richard needs to as well. Granted, they'd had coffee, but Richard doesn't like coffee, which is his own fault.
He does drink a lot of it in "Eaten Up In Miserable Circumstances." Perhaps the association with his thesis ruined it for him. Or perhaps he forces it down while thesis-ing, for the sake of the caffeine. And he is totally the sort of person who'd drink it black, even though he doesn't like it, because he'd feel like putting anything else in it was cheating. This is what passes for machismo with Richard.
"He went home," she says, finally.
Anne can almost see the gears turning in Richard's sleep-fogged (and probably also still sex-fogged) brain: his brow furrows in confusion, and then his eyes widen, and then his face falls in disappointment.
"Oh." Richard rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling. "I've fucked this up immensely, haven't I?"
Aaaaaaaaaaaand there is the cluebat. I cannot help but remember the description of Richard in Robert Nye's Falstaff: "Richard never realized anything important about anybody until he had banished them. He wouldn't even believe in his dinner until he'd been to the shithouse. The royal shithouse!"
Anne doesn't feel comfortable answering him directly: yes, it was a bad idea, but she also knows that if she says so, it's the sort of thing that will sink in, and she can't say it; it will make her feel cruel and she can't do that, even to be kind, if it would be kind, which she's not sure: it's not always clear what's the best way to show your love.
It depresses me that the second-to-last paragraph has such a crappily-structured and obvious sentence.
And she knows they'll move past it, and pretend last night never happened, and eventually the pretense will become second nature. Because otherwise, no matter how much they all love each other, everything would break.
"We love you anyway," she says.
They do! It's why the fic isn't as cynical -- I hope -- as the sonnet I used for an epigraph, because they do love each other, and they do work at it even though they fuck up a lot -- although I have another fic in the works that (tangentially) deals with -- well, the decline and fall of Robbie. Poor Robbie. The thing he eventually can't get past (and/or doesn't really get the change to get past) is Richard and Anne's decision (as referenced in "All Amiss Employed") to try to have a baby.
About the fic as a whole, I got a really perceptive comment from puella_nerdii about this fic and the tendency in fandom to assume threesomes solve everything. I didn't really set out to critique that particular mindset -- as I think I said elsewhere in this commentary, while writing this fic I engaged in a lot of flapping about being nervous that I was being really negative about polyamorous relationships when it's not my place (as a non-poly person) to critique them. In fact, I mostly started out (after a conversation with gileonnen) thinking about the kind of negotiations they'd have to do as a triad with one poly person, one mono person, and one person who seems to prefer committed but non-exclusive relationships. In early drafts there was a reference to them having a threesome and deciding that while it had been fun, it really wasn't for them; a lot of the arc of the fic came out of thinking about how the said threesome would actually play out. Which is how I ended up writing a 2400-word sex scene. And possibly proving my het OTP are actually complete assholes, but I hope that is not really the case, because I heart them.