12 - Coming full circle
Dearest Anons,
In five days (on May 8, 2011) this meme will have existed for a whole year.
It is an extraordinary achievement, your extraordinary achievement, to have kept this going well and alive for so long. With thousands of fics and comments, this meme is one of (if not the) most amazing thing I've ever come across. Not only the amount of fic ( Read more... )
In five days (on May 8, 2011) this meme will have existed for a whole year.
It is an extraordinary achievement, your extraordinary achievement, to have kept this going well and alive for so long. With thousands of fics and comments, this meme is one of (if not the) most amazing thing I've ever come across. Not only the amount of fic ( Read more... )
Peter Mandelson was memorable upon first meeting, slightly absurd after a few but reliable enough to make his way to their inside group. Tony liked him, and Neil liked him, and eventually Gordon liked him, enough to confide in him, enough to share a drink.
The drink turned into a few, and Gordon was sure it was merely his imagination, the way Peter's hand ghosted over his knuckles when reaching for the bottle, a brush of skin sending sensations to strange places, or Peter's hand on Tony's knee, lingering.
For a moment, Gordon could merely curse Tony, who'd brought this world of implication into their existence (theirs, like they were already an entity together), but after Peter left, Gordon's conversation about the strategy they'd been talking was cut short with Tony's mouth and hands and desperation.
Clutter, Gordon thought. That's what all this was. Sex and partnership and weird emotions and Peter fucking Mandelson. Tony had brought all this clutter into his brain and his body gave in like a weakling, an addict to all of it.
Honesty, too - the most lethal clutter, and the most abused. Tony cried out against the hollow of his collarbone, biting into it, and then, a question slipped past his lips, and an answer escaped Gordon just as fast.
”You'd love to do this with Peter, right?”
”Yes.”
It did all begin with work. Kind of.
tbc
And by 1b I obviously meant 1a, this is 1b and I suck. :D
I'll post the rest once I've finished it. This is just to show it's being filled. As it's probably evident, this is mostly-partnerless!AU, completely from Gordon's POV, and will eventually be OT4. Hopefully it'll be as believable as such an unbelievable scenario as a fourway relationship can be.
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Peter did not need to be seduced or convinced. Peter just had to be there. During a late enough night their friendship spanned over a new intimacy, and there was none of the awkwardness of their first time. None of Tony's attempts at sentimentality.
It all sunk into need - need of each other, need of something, someone.
*
So things weren't going awfully well, Gordon realised. This could get destructive, the habit of replacing political failure with whatever they'd become. Tony didn't see this, or he simply didn't care. To Peter, the only issue was the lack of success in the first place.
Gordon thought about shaking the habit, and the thought unsettled him.
Truth be told, he felt he was at his strongest when the three of them were alone, in any capacity. It centered him. Far from being clutter, it had begin to eliminate all the other clutter from his thinking, the needless self-doubt, the occasional insecurity.
(Tony's arms as they circled him as he'd presented a good idea, kissing Peter every morning before work.)
”Why did you ever agree to Tony's stupid idea?” Gordon asked Peter one afternoon over lunch, and for whatever reason they both knew which of Tony's stupid ideas he meant.
Tony's biggest stupid idea. The three of them.
”I wouldn't call it a stupid idea,” Peter said, thoughtfully. ”Unadvisable idea, perhaps.”
Gordon nodded. ”True.”
”Sometimes those are the best ones.”
If anybody could see the bigger picture, Gordon figured, it was Peter. He wasn't immune to bad decision-making but neither did he seem prone to it.
It all seemed like it was going to work out.
*
Gordon worried endlessly about image. The stuffy apartment was too small for the revolving door and whatever this and whatever they were, and he worried about image.
”You're always together,” a Tory MP noted at him and Tony. ”Where one is to be found, there's also the other. Isn't that a little strange?”
The suggestion was unmistakable.
”Unity's in abundance in our party,” Tony said without hesitation as Gordon merely glowered.
Even if the Bennites were rioting in Neil's front garden, the Tory would have believed Tony's words just by the tone of the statement.
”This is getting worrying,” Gordon said when they got to Tony's office, where Peter was sitting, waiting.
”It's fine, it's completely besides our real problem,” Tony says.
”It will become our most pressing real issue, if we're not careful,” Gordon argued.
Peter offered a compromise. ”It's not unheard of for MP's to flatshare. You can make it seem like a frugal choice.”
Gordon did not enjoy it, but given the choice between moving to a bigger flat, one he could share with Tony, and coming out to the public as a homosexual polyamorist (a term he was certain Tony had made up), he figured the rumours would be worth the risk. The smartest thing would of course have been to protect himself, put that distance between himself and the other two, but it was getting more difficult to make the smartest of choices.
Peter, who moved a third of his own wardrobe into one of their cupboards, seemed at ease with the situation.
”You're in the shadow cabinet,” he told Gordon. ”People barely care what you have to say about things, let alone who you spend your nights with.”
The truest truth hurt the most.
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Peter clung onto Gordon, in some ways. It wasn't a conscious choice by any stretch, nor did it make the relationship unbalanced. In work matters, Peter could offer most of his help to Gordon.
So Tony needed somebody, too.
It wasn't a matter of 'them', but Peter recommended a man from The Mirror to ease their relations with the press and to simplify things when it came to 'them'. Them as a unit. An outsider who they could confide in, whilst making sure they didn't ever let the intimate fringes of their relationship show.
Of course, it was clear from the beginning that things were less than idea between the new recruit and Peter. Gordon was livid, because after meeting Alastair Campbell, he seemed an obvious choice for the job. Tony liked him, too.
”It's not an issue,” Peter assured Gordon in private. ”It truly is all in the past.”
”I'm not jealous,” Gordon said, fuming. ”This is about, about .. clutter.”
Peter smiled, brushed hair back from Gordon's face. ”Trust me, Alastair's the cleanest person I know.”
*
Alastair was devoted and determined and all the right things, and all the wrong ones in the ways his arguments with Peter seemed to suggest a strange connection that went beyond professional. Tony was nonplussed but it made Gordon uncomfortable, to the point he began listing reasons to fire either of them, or both, almost despite of himself.
Peter and Alastair made up always almost as soon after the argument had finished, with great humour, bizarre dialogue that Tony listened with half an ear and Gordon could barely make sense of, simply dismayed that so much time had been wasted with this nonsense. The relations between himself, Tony and Peter had been honed to such a degree that it felt as if they barely argued at all. If they ever did, it was merely to argue points they strongly believed in.
And even as he thought about this, he missed the obvious conclusion by lightyears, and as Tony climbed into his bed, Gordon was angry.
”Not tonight, I'm exhausted,” he said.
”I'm not here for that, I just want to sleep,” Tony snapped in reply, ”Peter's in my bed. With company. I was welcome to join of course, but--”
”With company?” Gordon asked, feeling a pang of jealousy now. They hadn't made a contract to keep the relationship exclusive, but he'd been harbouring the illusion that they were only for each other.
”It's just Ali,” Tony said as his head hit the pillow, and almost as soon he was fast asleep, unable to answer all of Gordon's questions.
In the morning, Tony was all eager hands and fuzzyheaded pillow-talk, but Gordon pushed him off non-ceremoniously.
”You were welcome to join? What the fuck does that mean?”
Tony merely grinned and dove in for a kiss.
*
The next night, Tony showed him. Under the guise of celebrating positive poll results (not quite positive enough for Gordon's liking but good enough), Peter made him drink wine, and always kept his glass full, and Alastair was sharing anecdotes, some entertaining, some tedious, but the alcohol made Gordon more willing to chuckle along to them.
It made him slower to react, too, so when Peter kissed him in front of Tony and Alastair, on the other side of the sofa table, he didn't think to push Peter away. And then he didn't think of anything at all, watching Tony and Alastair mimic them, kissing and hands carefully but quickly removing clothing, layer after layer, and Peter's hands were touching him, and somebody suggested they move into one of the bedrooms.
There, he witnessed Alastair in a way he'd never even conceived of before, eyes dark with want as their mouths met with Tony splayed underneath them, a low moan elicited from Alastair because of what Peter was doing to him.
The next morning, the most clear memory Gordon had was of Tony, spent but still with enough energy in him to kiss all of them, one by one, a whisper after his mouth leaves Gordon's, ”This was perfect.”
Perfect.
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The messiest solution was surprisingly clean. Alastair cared about the party about as much as Gordon did, and the four of them made good team, a clever force. The rest was inconsequential, Gordon liked to believe, and none of them sought some sort of a deeper psychological explanation, even when one was staring right at them. That their work was so important to them they infused it with whatever personal needs for intimacy they desired, until it was a continuum, a whole, a bizarre monster.
In the back of his head he'd write out a risk assessment for their relationship. Two of them could fall in love and watch everything crumble in jealous fits and potentially career-wrecking confessions to outsiders. Two of them could fall out and let everything sour in their collective fury. Any number of other things could go wrong, and go wrong in such a way as to impact everything they cared about. Including each other.
He hated it, the feelings that solidified between them, between all of them, like a thick network attaching them to one another. He wished it'd just been about sex. Sex could have been so much easier. Loyalty and fondness weren't.
Love wasn't.
*
Ambition was a danger he didn't quite recognise in himself, but the others did.
”One of us might be up for the big job, one day,” Alastair said. ”If we don't believe in that, then why try at all?”
”I agree,” Peter said, and looked at Tony.
But Tony looked at Gordon.
And like that, it was decided among them, wordlessly and without debate. Like they were truly of just one mind.
*
The following night he slept next to Peter, who only got more confessional after an orgasm.
”I'll be honest,” he told Gordon, ”at this point, even if it was the time for it, you wouldn't be the ideal candidate. You're rough at presentation.”
Gordon said nothing and Peter kissed him, long but hesitantly, as if gauging for a reaction.
”But you've got us.”
And Gordon kissed him back for it, and in his cluttered mind, foolish but honest emotions confirmed one thing: this was indeed perfect.
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”Scoot over,” Alastair told Gordon, and in his hazy state of mind, head full of thoughts about the conference and everything else, in the dark of the hotel room, he made room for Alastair in his bed.
They rarely did this alone, so the hesitation lingers heavy in the air between them, until Alastair kissed him, hand pressing demandingly against crotch and every rational thought gave way to sensation.
When Gordon'd recovered, Alastair's mouth was against his earlobe, nibbling lazily, almost as if to avoid doing something else.
Eventually, words found their way out. ”You know, Tony thinks you'll become Prime Minister.”
”Tony hopes that,” Gordon corrected him.
”No, Tony thinks that. Tony had a premonition about it,” Alastair said.
Neither of them said anything for a moment, almost as if to take the information in.
”Tony is determined,” Alastair said.
”Does he realise how it sounds?”
”A bit mental, yes, but. He is determined.”
Gordon considered this. ”What does Tony want to be?”
”What do any of us want?” Alastair countered. ”To be involved, I suppose.”
Truth be told, Gordon couldn't understand how they could simply settle like that. But he was glad they were there.
”Let's sleep,” he told Alastair.
They did.
*
After Gordon became leader, a certain paranoia took over him. Even after setbacks, Tony kept talking about how they'd win the election, about what they'd do after they won the election, like it was inevitable.
”What do I owe you when this is all over?” he asked Tony, and Tony merely smiled.
”I'll tell you when the time comes,” he said, pulling Gordon into a kiss. ”It won't hurt a bit, I promise.”
Gordon knew better than to trust him.
*
Nights in Downing 10 were lonely, and Gordon found himself obsessed with finding warmth.
The bed was too small for four.
Peter sighed. ”When did you become so needy?”
”We need to end this,” Gordon said. ”It's not healthy.”
”Then we can go,” Alastair replied, tired and annoyed, but Peter held onto his hand.
”We'll stay,” Peter said. ”We'll find a solution. We always have.”
”We always have to,” Tony said and pressed himself closer to Gordon on the bed. ”I'm exhausted, though. Wake me up when you figure something out.”
*
There was no easy solution. Some nights Tony stayed with him, some nights Peter, some nights Alastair. Never long enough to arouse suspicion, sometimes leaving so early Gordon would wake up alone.
Something was never good enough, but it had to do.
*
Tony sauntered into his office one day, a brief in hand, and dropped it in front Gordon and Alastair, unceremoniously.
”What is that?” Gordon asked, opening the file with one hand, but eyes still focused on the document he was going through.
”A proposal,” Tony answered. ”For you to look at later. No hurry.”
”It's not important, I take it?”
”Not unless you decide it is.”
Later, after Alastair had left, Gordon opened the file and read the title.
Civil partnerships.
*
He owed Tony this much, but after much deliberation, Gordon made another choice, too.
”If this passes,” Gordon began, but Tony interrupted him.
”When it passes.”
”When it passes, it'll change a lot of things.”
”Surely the whole point of politics, Gordon.”
”Yes, but what I'm saying is .. you called it a proposal and I .. I can't be romantic, you know that, and--”
”Yes.”
”So hopefully you will understand this without--”
”Gordon, I said 'yes'.”
Gordon paused, gaze firmly on the floorboards. ”If it passes--”
”When it passes,” Tony corrected him. ”And it will.”
”And Peter and Alastair?” Gordon asked.
”Nothing will change,” Tony replied.
”Surely the whole point of politics,” Gordon said.
And Tony kissed him, and there were no happy endings or blissful constants in politics, no lack of scandal or failure or disappointment.
But the Act passed, and Gordon never woke up alone again.
-fin-
Finally! Hopefully it's balanced as an OT4 - it's hard to convey that there's love between all of them, especially when it's told from Gordon's sober point of view. And yeah, the ending is a bit heavy on the TBGB & this probably could've used more bickering. Still, hope you liked!
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I love you aa, this is really brilliant.
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