Trek fic: Finding Home 1/2, NC-17, Leonard/Chris/Victoria
Title: Finding Home
Series: A Mighty Fine Man
Pairing: Leonard/Chris/Victoria
Rating: PG this part, NC-17 overall
Warnings: brief, non-graphic mention of sexual assault
Word count: c.2900
Author's Note: This comes several years after all other stories in the A Mighty Fine Man series.
Written for the lovely imachar. Happy birthday! Part two is mostly finished and will follow shortly.
Summary: Victoria has done so much for Leonard and Chris over the years. Now she needs their help and Leonard isn't sure what to do.
Victoria loves men - as sex partners, as colleagues, as proteges. She thinks of those men closest to her as ‘her boys’ and interferes in their lives as she sees fit, watching over their emotional entanglements with amusement while remaining largely immune herself.
Victoria roams the galaxy, her life contained in the kitbag slung over her shoulder. She has endless restless curiosity and little need for a home; she is proud of her independence and her self-reliance. But just occasionally life strikes back in unexpected ways, and where do you go to lick your wounds, if you have no home?
* * *
Leonard stared down at his padd in frustration, he’d done no work of any consequence in the last hour, distracted by the worry gnawing away in the back of his mind. With a huff of frustration, he pushed his chair back from his desk and stood up. He had to say something, to do something, even if he had no idea what. Life had taught him time and again that he couldn’t fix all the ills that plagued his friends, but that was damn well not going to stop him trying.
He walked determinedly down to the lower floor of Chris’s Mojave ranch and peered through the open door into the guest room. Victoria was sitting on the window-seat, chin resting on her knees, looking out across the desert with an unfocused thousand-yard stare that made his stomach ache. He hated that look on her. She’d never been anything other than completely present in any situation, eyes alight with mischievous interest and complex schemes. This vacantness hurt to watch.
“I’ve put the kettle on,” he said, “can I get you anything?”
“No, I’m fine,” she answered flatly, without even lifting her head to look across at him. He glanced round the room, noticing her dress from the previous night slung carelessly across the couch, a shimmering electric-blue sheath, with the customary slit up to her thigh. She’d looked stunning in it, as always.
He tried again. “Last night, at the dinner, that guy on your right seemed interesting but you didn’t pay him much attention. Not your type?” They’d been at a formal Starfleet dinner which as Admirals she and Chris were expected to attend.
She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Not every man in the universe is interesting, Leonard, trust me on that.”
He frowned at her, frustrated, helpless. Her dinner companion had been everything she liked in men, able and handsome, important and intelligent, and clearly fascinated by her. She’d barely acknowledged his existence. Leonard sighed inwardly. Being subtle had never got him anywhere in life. Best to go with his normal in-your-face approach. “Don’t give me that, you may not go fishing every time, but you always, always dangle your fingers in the water. What’s changed?”
Victoria turned on him, eyes narrowed with irritation. “If that is some stupid southern metaphor, you can ruddy well shove it.”
He glared back at her, arms folded across his broad chest. He was not going to give up that easily. “It seems to me you need to go there again with someone you trust.” And he knew who that someone should be. He had been so bitterly jealous when Victoria had dated Chris while he and Chris were separated. He knew how deeply Chris cared for her and how much she thought of him.
Leonard looked across at her small figure by the window, sitting with her arms wrapped tightly around her raised knees, the lithe body she normally flaunted tightly closed from the world. “You should fuck Chris.”
“No!” Her answer was as definitive as it is quick. “I would never do anything to come between you two. I don’t have to fuck everything that moves. Just leave it alone.” The last line was said in a tone that would stop a rampaging Klingon commander in his tracks.
‘Leaving it alone’ had never been one of Victoria’s strategies. When Leonard had finally decided he and Chris were in the right headspace to marry, and had let their friends know, she’d been the first to reach him on the comm. “You can have Jimmy as your best man,” she’d said, “but I am marrying you two. Don’t even think about arguing with me. I take all credit for your successful relationship. And I’m going to tie you two together so inextricably that you cannot screw it up any further.”
If she could dish it out, she could damn well take it too. Leonard was not going to give up but he knew enough about her to back off, at least for now. “Fine, forget it. Look, the latest episode of Love In Space has just come online, come and watch it with me before Chris gets home, you know what he thinks of my watching space soaps. We can drink wine and trash the plot.”
“It has a plot? You astound me,” replied Victoria dryly but she did get up and follow him back upstairs, so he counted it as a win.
“Here, I’ve picked out something special from Chris’s cellar,” said Leonard as he poured out two glasses of wine in the living room, “a 2258 Columella Bordeaux from the Swartland. He’ll never notice that it’s gone.”
“Good luck with that one!” As he’d hoped, he got the ghost of a mischievous grin from Victoria as she settled into the big arm chair she normally curled up in while he and Chris shared the sofa.
“Come here.” He patted the sofa beside him. “It’s been a fucking long day, come and sit with me.”
She looked at him quizzically. “What are you up to?”
He shrugged helplessly, knowing there was no point in trying to fool her. “Look, I’m not after anything, I’m as gay as the day is long and you know it. But I’m sad and you’re sad, just come and cuddle with me.”
She didn’t answer but she did pick up her glass and join him. He leaned against the arm of the sofa and tucked her in under his shoulder, pulling her against his chest and wrapping his arm around his waist. She had such a commanding presence that he was always shocked when reminded how physically small she was. She curled in against him and for just this moment, if nothing more, he felt he was managing to help her.
She twisted her head with look up at him with a wicked smile, for a moment just like her old self. “We’ve come a long way, you and I, to arrive at this.”
Leonard smiled back at her, he remembered how intimidated he’d been when he’d first met her, when he’d been a failing cadet spoiling for a fight with the higher-ups and she’d been Surgeon-General. Chris still teased her with Leonard’s description of her as tritanium wrapped up in ruffled velvet. He remembered how stomach-churningly jealous he’d been when she’d been dating Chris, how sulky and rude he’d been when she arrived on the Enterprise to kick his ass into action. She’d seen through his facades of defensiveness every time and somewhere along the line they’d fallen into a deep friendship. “You are probably the only woman in the entire universe I might briefly turn straight for.”
She just laughed at him and they turned to watch the flickering screen. The friendly silence didn’t last long, Victoria’s frustration with the plot soon winning out. “Okay, so Dana is the love-child of the missing Starfleet commander and that cephalopod from Bectel V, which if I may say so, is genetically completely impossible, but that aside, do we really think that she could hide out from her evil step-father on new Vulcan where it is sodding obvious she’s a stranger--”
Leonard trailed her hair through his fingers, letting both the program and her complaints wash past him, thinking about her storming into that disciplinary hearing so long ago, when Chris had been accused on cheating on Leonard’s flight solo sim scores, saving his career and Chris’s and their fledgling relationship. And saving them again by marching a parade of Admirals onto the Enterprise several years later, when it had become clear that neither he nor Chris would take the first step to repair their post-Nero relationship disaster.
And it wasn’t just about the two of them. He thought about Victoria’s first meeting with Jim at that Christmas charity party many years before, indulging his inept flirting while already noting his potential. And about her finding him again after the Nero debacle, in her own inimitable way giving him the support he needed as he tried to build his credibility as the too-young captain of the new flagship.
He thought about Victoria picking up the pieces when he failed to fight for Chris and sulked off on the Enterprise instead. She had held Chris when he needed her and then left Chris when it became clear Chris was trying to project his need for Leonard onto her.
And he thought about the Xibalbans. The beautiful violet planet of Xibalba, with its tall willowy people and its huge reserves of ditantalite, so essential to the Federation now that they were aggressively upping their armaments, militarizing in a way that would have been inconceivable to all of them before the loss of Vulcan. So the Xibalbans had been fast-tracked for membership, despite having social policies that did not fully comply with the Federation constitution, including the belief in the immutable right of male-gendered beings to own and use female-gendered beings.
“Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations” the Federation officials had said, invoking the spirit of Vulcan as they aggressively pushed for Xibalaban membership. “They’ll learn from our example,” they’d said, as they sent out surveys to assess the quantities of ditantalite available and put out tenders to mining companies.
When the Federation delegation had arrived to sign the formal agreement for the Xibalban path to membership, Victoria had been there in her capacity as director-general of the Federation Health Organization. Fundamentalist Xibalbans protesting the Federation alliance had managed to kidnap her as the most senior woman in attendance, along with some of her aides, and had made it clear by force what they thought women were best suited for.
All of that was public knowledge. What Leonard also knew, via Phil Boyce and the network of Starfleet medical professionals who looked out for their own, was that Victoria, in full knowledge of the consequences, had used her quick wit and cutting tongue to focus the wrath of their captors onto herself, to try and spare the younger women with her.
It had taken Starfleet three days to find and rescue them. It was a further two weeks before the best doctors Starfleet had on offer were prepared to release her from medical care. Leonard had been waiting in the hospital lobby, having got Chris to pull in favors all over the sector to get him there, and had informed her she was coming back with him to Chris’s Mojave ranch to recuperate. Now the wounds to her body were so cleanly healed you’d never know it had happened. But the wound to her soul seemed to be beyond any of them to reach.
“Well, isn’t this cosy!” said Chris, taking them by surprise as he walked into the living room, clearly having left Starfleet HQ early. “Victoria, I’ve given up on Leonard, but I can’t believe you’ve agreed to watch this brain-sapping bullshit.” He poured himself a glass of wine, noticing the vintage and sending a quizzical frown in Leonard’s direction. Leonard shook his head subtly and Chris let it pass without comment, settling down into the big armchair.
He soon joined Victoria in making sarcastic comments about the storyline, but Leonard gradually noticed that the screen wasn’t holding Chris’s full attention. His eyes kept drifting across to the sofa, not to their faces but lower down. Leonard looked down at where Victoria sat tucked against his side to see that the soft cotton shirt she was wearing had small mother-of-pearl buttons and the first one was open, showing off just a hint of her generous cleavage. Leonard wondered if there was more to it than that. He decided to try a little experiment.
He reached for his wine glass and then shifted casually once he’d put it down again, pulling Victoria closer in against his chest, sliding his hand over her stomach in a way that hooked up the bottom of her shirt, showing off just a sliver of creamy skin below, and simultaneously pulled down at the top of the shirt, popping the next small button open and revealing more soft firm breast.
Bingo. Chris was trying to focus on the screen but his eyes keep sliding sideways and it was Leonard’s hand on Victoria’s skin that was drawing his attention like a moth to a flame. She was now engrossed by the soap, laughing at some inanity and he used her wriggling as an opportunity to push her shirt up further, his darker hand now fully splayed across her warm stomach, another button open and it was now clear there was nothing under the shirt as the fabric pulled open almost to the nipples.
Chris shifted uncomfortably, fidgeting awkwardly with his wine glass and finally bringing up his left leg with studied casualness, in a way that hid his groin from their view, before subtly adjusting his pants. And in that moment Leonard knew. As surely as he’d known he needed to get Jim onto the Enterprise, and that he’d needed to stop Chris resigning from Starfleet, he knew what needed to be done now.
This time he was completely blatant about it. He slid her shirt up, until her stomach was bared to Chris’s view and his hand lay just beneath the curves of her breasts. “Leonard--” she started, but Chris interrupted her. “What the fuck are you playing at?”
Leonard looked back at him, a completely level look straight into Chris’s blue eyes. “Victoria needs help getting back on the horse, so to speak. I told her she should fuck you but she refuses to come between us. So I think that’s what we should do, literally. Put her between us. You get to do the work, but I’m gonna stay right where I am, protecting her back.”
Victoria was protesting again but Leonard and Chris were talking without words, watching each other across years of bone-deep knowing. Leonard could see the moment Chris made his mind up. He rose quickly and came across the room to kneel on the floor, next to where they sat on the sofa. He placed his left hand across Leonard’s which still lay on her stomach. “Victoria, if you are convinced that both of us are more than happy to do this, would it work for you?”
“Yes, it would,” she admitted eventually, “but Chris, this isn’t worth--” She stopped speaking and simply ran her finger across the wedding ring on his hand.
“Shhh, let me sort it out,” he replied, before looking up to Leonard sitting behind her. “Are you absolutely fucking sure about this?” he asked. “Because you’ve been known to get pretty damn worked up about Victoria in the past, and you in a jealous sulk is no fun for the rest of us.”
“Yeah, I’ve had my moments,” admitted Leonard, “but that was back when I thought love was something in short supply. That if you cared for her, it meant you felt nothing for me any more. Now I know love is something that expands as needed.” He traced Chris’s wedding ring with his other hand. “You and I, we’re rock solid. We’ve love to share.”
Victoria was beginning to wriggle impatiently between them. “Gentlemen, I hate to interrupt this touching moment, and I’m delighted that you’re both apparently in touch with your inner feelings and able to articulate your emotions and all that bollocks. I’m sure it’ll do your marriage the world of good, but right now, if I’m really about to get the screw the only one of my boys missing from my collection, can we bloody well get on with it?”
As she spoke, Victoria pulled her shirt over her head and revealed a magnificent pair of creamy breasts, topped by deep pink nipples. Leonard was momentarily speechless, he might be gay but breasts were still one of nature’s marvels and Victoria’s were particularly fine.
Chris, perhaps inured by more exposure to her breasts over the years, had clearly been thinking about what she’d just said. “The only one missing? You mean you’ve fucked Phil?”
“Of course I have,” she replied, “good heavens, have you looked at the man? That being said, it was way back when I was an up-and-coming Lieutenant and he was a broodingly handsome cadet. Bloody marvelous in bed. But I quickly realized he was far more useful as a protege than as a fuck buddy so we moved on.”
“Goddamn Chris, don’t you know some way to shut her up?” asked Leonard, who had pulled off his own shirt and twisted on the sofa to settle her on his lap, her back against his chest. “I really don’t want to know about Phil Boyce’s sex life.”
“Nothing shuts her up,” replied Chris, “but I do know some ways to make her a whole lot less coherent.” He twisted one hand into her hair, gently pulling her head to the side and began to kiss his way down her neck.
TBC
Series: A Mighty Fine Man
Pairing: Leonard/Chris/Victoria
Rating: PG this part, NC-17 overall
Warnings: brief, non-graphic mention of sexual assault
Word count: c.2900
Author's Note: This comes several years after all other stories in the A Mighty Fine Man series.
Written for the lovely imachar. Happy birthday! Part two is mostly finished and will follow shortly.
Summary: Victoria has done so much for Leonard and Chris over the years. Now she needs their help and Leonard isn't sure what to do.
Victoria loves men - as sex partners, as colleagues, as proteges. She thinks of those men closest to her as ‘her boys’ and interferes in their lives as she sees fit, watching over their emotional entanglements with amusement while remaining largely immune herself.
Victoria roams the galaxy, her life contained in the kitbag slung over her shoulder. She has endless restless curiosity and little need for a home; she is proud of her independence and her self-reliance. But just occasionally life strikes back in unexpected ways, and where do you go to lick your wounds, if you have no home?
* * *
Leonard stared down at his padd in frustration, he’d done no work of any consequence in the last hour, distracted by the worry gnawing away in the back of his mind. With a huff of frustration, he pushed his chair back from his desk and stood up. He had to say something, to do something, even if he had no idea what. Life had taught him time and again that he couldn’t fix all the ills that plagued his friends, but that was damn well not going to stop him trying.
He walked determinedly down to the lower floor of Chris’s Mojave ranch and peered through the open door into the guest room. Victoria was sitting on the window-seat, chin resting on her knees, looking out across the desert with an unfocused thousand-yard stare that made his stomach ache. He hated that look on her. She’d never been anything other than completely present in any situation, eyes alight with mischievous interest and complex schemes. This vacantness hurt to watch.
“I’ve put the kettle on,” he said, “can I get you anything?”
“No, I’m fine,” she answered flatly, without even lifting her head to look across at him. He glanced round the room, noticing her dress from the previous night slung carelessly across the couch, a shimmering electric-blue sheath, with the customary slit up to her thigh. She’d looked stunning in it, as always.
He tried again. “Last night, at the dinner, that guy on your right seemed interesting but you didn’t pay him much attention. Not your type?” They’d been at a formal Starfleet dinner which as Admirals she and Chris were expected to attend.
She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Not every man in the universe is interesting, Leonard, trust me on that.”
He frowned at her, frustrated, helpless. Her dinner companion had been everything she liked in men, able and handsome, important and intelligent, and clearly fascinated by her. She’d barely acknowledged his existence. Leonard sighed inwardly. Being subtle had never got him anywhere in life. Best to go with his normal in-your-face approach. “Don’t give me that, you may not go fishing every time, but you always, always dangle your fingers in the water. What’s changed?”
Victoria turned on him, eyes narrowed with irritation. “If that is some stupid southern metaphor, you can ruddy well shove it.”
He glared back at her, arms folded across his broad chest. He was not going to give up that easily. “It seems to me you need to go there again with someone you trust.” And he knew who that someone should be. He had been so bitterly jealous when Victoria had dated Chris while he and Chris were separated. He knew how deeply Chris cared for her and how much she thought of him.
Leonard looked across at her small figure by the window, sitting with her arms wrapped tightly around her raised knees, the lithe body she normally flaunted tightly closed from the world. “You should fuck Chris.”
“No!” Her answer was as definitive as it is quick. “I would never do anything to come between you two. I don’t have to fuck everything that moves. Just leave it alone.” The last line was said in a tone that would stop a rampaging Klingon commander in his tracks.
‘Leaving it alone’ had never been one of Victoria’s strategies. When Leonard had finally decided he and Chris were in the right headspace to marry, and had let their friends know, she’d been the first to reach him on the comm. “You can have Jimmy as your best man,” she’d said, “but I am marrying you two. Don’t even think about arguing with me. I take all credit for your successful relationship. And I’m going to tie you two together so inextricably that you cannot screw it up any further.”
If she could dish it out, she could damn well take it too. Leonard was not going to give up but he knew enough about her to back off, at least for now. “Fine, forget it. Look, the latest episode of Love In Space has just come online, come and watch it with me before Chris gets home, you know what he thinks of my watching space soaps. We can drink wine and trash the plot.”
“It has a plot? You astound me,” replied Victoria dryly but she did get up and follow him back upstairs, so he counted it as a win.
“Here, I’ve picked out something special from Chris’s cellar,” said Leonard as he poured out two glasses of wine in the living room, “a 2258 Columella Bordeaux from the Swartland. He’ll never notice that it’s gone.”
“Good luck with that one!” As he’d hoped, he got the ghost of a mischievous grin from Victoria as she settled into the big arm chair she normally curled up in while he and Chris shared the sofa.
“Come here.” He patted the sofa beside him. “It’s been a fucking long day, come and sit with me.”
She looked at him quizzically. “What are you up to?”
He shrugged helplessly, knowing there was no point in trying to fool her. “Look, I’m not after anything, I’m as gay as the day is long and you know it. But I’m sad and you’re sad, just come and cuddle with me.”
She didn’t answer but she did pick up her glass and join him. He leaned against the arm of the sofa and tucked her in under his shoulder, pulling her against his chest and wrapping his arm around his waist. She had such a commanding presence that he was always shocked when reminded how physically small she was. She curled in against him and for just this moment, if nothing more, he felt he was managing to help her.
She twisted her head with look up at him with a wicked smile, for a moment just like her old self. “We’ve come a long way, you and I, to arrive at this.”
Leonard smiled back at her, he remembered how intimidated he’d been when he’d first met her, when he’d been a failing cadet spoiling for a fight with the higher-ups and she’d been Surgeon-General. Chris still teased her with Leonard’s description of her as tritanium wrapped up in ruffled velvet. He remembered how stomach-churningly jealous he’d been when she’d been dating Chris, how sulky and rude he’d been when she arrived on the Enterprise to kick his ass into action. She’d seen through his facades of defensiveness every time and somewhere along the line they’d fallen into a deep friendship. “You are probably the only woman in the entire universe I might briefly turn straight for.”
She just laughed at him and they turned to watch the flickering screen. The friendly silence didn’t last long, Victoria’s frustration with the plot soon winning out. “Okay, so Dana is the love-child of the missing Starfleet commander and that cephalopod from Bectel V, which if I may say so, is genetically completely impossible, but that aside, do we really think that she could hide out from her evil step-father on new Vulcan where it is sodding obvious she’s a stranger--”
Leonard trailed her hair through his fingers, letting both the program and her complaints wash past him, thinking about her storming into that disciplinary hearing so long ago, when Chris had been accused on cheating on Leonard’s flight solo sim scores, saving his career and Chris’s and their fledgling relationship. And saving them again by marching a parade of Admirals onto the Enterprise several years later, when it had become clear that neither he nor Chris would take the first step to repair their post-Nero relationship disaster.
And it wasn’t just about the two of them. He thought about Victoria’s first meeting with Jim at that Christmas charity party many years before, indulging his inept flirting while already noting his potential. And about her finding him again after the Nero debacle, in her own inimitable way giving him the support he needed as he tried to build his credibility as the too-young captain of the new flagship.
He thought about Victoria picking up the pieces when he failed to fight for Chris and sulked off on the Enterprise instead. She had held Chris when he needed her and then left Chris when it became clear Chris was trying to project his need for Leonard onto her.
And he thought about the Xibalbans. The beautiful violet planet of Xibalba, with its tall willowy people and its huge reserves of ditantalite, so essential to the Federation now that they were aggressively upping their armaments, militarizing in a way that would have been inconceivable to all of them before the loss of Vulcan. So the Xibalbans had been fast-tracked for membership, despite having social policies that did not fully comply with the Federation constitution, including the belief in the immutable right of male-gendered beings to own and use female-gendered beings.
“Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations” the Federation officials had said, invoking the spirit of Vulcan as they aggressively pushed for Xibalaban membership. “They’ll learn from our example,” they’d said, as they sent out surveys to assess the quantities of ditantalite available and put out tenders to mining companies.
When the Federation delegation had arrived to sign the formal agreement for the Xibalban path to membership, Victoria had been there in her capacity as director-general of the Federation Health Organization. Fundamentalist Xibalbans protesting the Federation alliance had managed to kidnap her as the most senior woman in attendance, along with some of her aides, and had made it clear by force what they thought women were best suited for.
All of that was public knowledge. What Leonard also knew, via Phil Boyce and the network of Starfleet medical professionals who looked out for their own, was that Victoria, in full knowledge of the consequences, had used her quick wit and cutting tongue to focus the wrath of their captors onto herself, to try and spare the younger women with her.
It had taken Starfleet three days to find and rescue them. It was a further two weeks before the best doctors Starfleet had on offer were prepared to release her from medical care. Leonard had been waiting in the hospital lobby, having got Chris to pull in favors all over the sector to get him there, and had informed her she was coming back with him to Chris’s Mojave ranch to recuperate. Now the wounds to her body were so cleanly healed you’d never know it had happened. But the wound to her soul seemed to be beyond any of them to reach.
“Well, isn’t this cosy!” said Chris, taking them by surprise as he walked into the living room, clearly having left Starfleet HQ early. “Victoria, I’ve given up on Leonard, but I can’t believe you’ve agreed to watch this brain-sapping bullshit.” He poured himself a glass of wine, noticing the vintage and sending a quizzical frown in Leonard’s direction. Leonard shook his head subtly and Chris let it pass without comment, settling down into the big armchair.
He soon joined Victoria in making sarcastic comments about the storyline, but Leonard gradually noticed that the screen wasn’t holding Chris’s full attention. His eyes kept drifting across to the sofa, not to their faces but lower down. Leonard looked down at where Victoria sat tucked against his side to see that the soft cotton shirt she was wearing had small mother-of-pearl buttons and the first one was open, showing off just a hint of her generous cleavage. Leonard wondered if there was more to it than that. He decided to try a little experiment.
He reached for his wine glass and then shifted casually once he’d put it down again, pulling Victoria closer in against his chest, sliding his hand over her stomach in a way that hooked up the bottom of her shirt, showing off just a sliver of creamy skin below, and simultaneously pulled down at the top of the shirt, popping the next small button open and revealing more soft firm breast.
Bingo. Chris was trying to focus on the screen but his eyes keep sliding sideways and it was Leonard’s hand on Victoria’s skin that was drawing his attention like a moth to a flame. She was now engrossed by the soap, laughing at some inanity and he used her wriggling as an opportunity to push her shirt up further, his darker hand now fully splayed across her warm stomach, another button open and it was now clear there was nothing under the shirt as the fabric pulled open almost to the nipples.
Chris shifted uncomfortably, fidgeting awkwardly with his wine glass and finally bringing up his left leg with studied casualness, in a way that hid his groin from their view, before subtly adjusting his pants. And in that moment Leonard knew. As surely as he’d known he needed to get Jim onto the Enterprise, and that he’d needed to stop Chris resigning from Starfleet, he knew what needed to be done now.
This time he was completely blatant about it. He slid her shirt up, until her stomach was bared to Chris’s view and his hand lay just beneath the curves of her breasts. “Leonard--” she started, but Chris interrupted her. “What the fuck are you playing at?”
Leonard looked back at him, a completely level look straight into Chris’s blue eyes. “Victoria needs help getting back on the horse, so to speak. I told her she should fuck you but she refuses to come between us. So I think that’s what we should do, literally. Put her between us. You get to do the work, but I’m gonna stay right where I am, protecting her back.”
Victoria was protesting again but Leonard and Chris were talking without words, watching each other across years of bone-deep knowing. Leonard could see the moment Chris made his mind up. He rose quickly and came across the room to kneel on the floor, next to where they sat on the sofa. He placed his left hand across Leonard’s which still lay on her stomach. “Victoria, if you are convinced that both of us are more than happy to do this, would it work for you?”
“Yes, it would,” she admitted eventually, “but Chris, this isn’t worth--” She stopped speaking and simply ran her finger across the wedding ring on his hand.
“Shhh, let me sort it out,” he replied, before looking up to Leonard sitting behind her. “Are you absolutely fucking sure about this?” he asked. “Because you’ve been known to get pretty damn worked up about Victoria in the past, and you in a jealous sulk is no fun for the rest of us.”
“Yeah, I’ve had my moments,” admitted Leonard, “but that was back when I thought love was something in short supply. That if you cared for her, it meant you felt nothing for me any more. Now I know love is something that expands as needed.” He traced Chris’s wedding ring with his other hand. “You and I, we’re rock solid. We’ve love to share.”
Victoria was beginning to wriggle impatiently between them. “Gentlemen, I hate to interrupt this touching moment, and I’m delighted that you’re both apparently in touch with your inner feelings and able to articulate your emotions and all that bollocks. I’m sure it’ll do your marriage the world of good, but right now, if I’m really about to get the screw the only one of my boys missing from my collection, can we bloody well get on with it?”
As she spoke, Victoria pulled her shirt over her head and revealed a magnificent pair of creamy breasts, topped by deep pink nipples. Leonard was momentarily speechless, he might be gay but breasts were still one of nature’s marvels and Victoria’s were particularly fine.
Chris, perhaps inured by more exposure to her breasts over the years, had clearly been thinking about what she’d just said. “The only one missing? You mean you’ve fucked Phil?”
“Of course I have,” she replied, “good heavens, have you looked at the man? That being said, it was way back when I was an up-and-coming Lieutenant and he was a broodingly handsome cadet. Bloody marvelous in bed. But I quickly realized he was far more useful as a protege than as a fuck buddy so we moved on.”
“Goddamn Chris, don’t you know some way to shut her up?” asked Leonard, who had pulled off his own shirt and twisted on the sofa to settle her on his lap, her back against his chest. “I really don’t want to know about Phil Boyce’s sex life.”
“Nothing shuts her up,” replied Chris, “but I do know some ways to make her a whole lot less coherent.” He twisted one hand into her hair, gently pulling her head to the side and began to kiss his way down her neck.
TBC