Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Life was full of choices, and at the moment, Art had mixed feelings about the ones in front of him. Not when it came to Ryan and Graeme, of course. There was no choice there.
After finally convincing Ryan that Graeme had had more than enough space and what he needed now was intervention, he’d gone to Graeme’s place and discovered he was right.
Graeme had been in much worse condition than either Art or Ryan had dreamed he would be.
Art had kicked himself for waiting so long as he’d sat Graeme down for the heart-to-heart that should have happened weeks ago.
It had been a good conversation, and if Art had had fewer scruples than he did, he would have ended the conversation in Graeme’s bedroom with his sweetheart’s ankles up over his shoulders and his cock buried deep.
People always assumed he had no morals at all, but they couldn’t have been farther off the mark.
Art considered himself deeply moral about the things that mattered to him, and both Graeme and Ryan mattered. A lot.
Which was why they were all sitting around the drafting table in Ryan’s studio on a rainy August afternoon, writing and sketching away at the projects that would, if everything went well, save their careers. If they went wrong? Well, that was something Art refused to let happen to the men he loved.
He sat back from where he’d been poring over several ancient diaries from past Hawthorne family members, racking his brain to come up with a way to make the gamekeeper’s cottage excavation, and indeed everything he’d been doing at Hawthorne House, palatable enough that the university would bless him for being there instead of dragging him before an ethics committee and firing him.
He had just been reading Countess Barbara Hawthorne’s last diary, in which she was an old woman expressing her sorrow for Queen Victoria over the loss of her beloved Albert.
But as fascinating as the thoughts of Ryan’s great-great-something-grandmother were, Art was far more interested in staring at the man himself.
“Still no luck?” he asked, glancing between Ryan and Graeme, who sat on opposite sides of the table with Art at its head.
Both Ryan and Graeme looked up from their sketching. It amused Art to no end that they looked at each other, intensely, before turning almost in unison to look at him.
Sexual tension crackled through the air. It was enough to make Art laugh. The three of them wanted each other so badly, but now that they’d gotten over the surprise of their potential throuple, they were hiding behind the excuse of work to avoid all the conversations and logistics that were coming.
“I’m not quite there yet,” Ryan said. Art would have giggled at his choice of phrasing if he didn’t look as if he was about to shit a brick from the amount of stress he was under.
Ryan threw down his pencil, leaned back in his chair, scrubbed his hands through his hair, and said, “Gloria has a whole team of sewers on standby, and she’s already put together the first few pieces I’ve sent her.
But I’m not at all confident in those designs, or this entire concept.
‘Garden Party’ has been done a billion times before. ”
“Are those outfits going to be of any use if you change your mind about the concept?” Graeme asked, looking as sweet as a ripe peach.
Ryan blew out a breath and let his arms drop. “I can probably use one or two pieces, but none of them are key to the concept. I keep trying, I must have sketched a thousand designs at this point, but…nothing. I hate it all.”
The man was painfully uptight about it all.
Art had offered to ease things for him a few times in the last couple days, but Ryan had turned him down every time.
Their tryst in the studio the week before had been a one-off, and if he had to guess, he’d say that Ryan and Graeme’s adventures in Cornwall had been a one-off, too.
Ryan needed about ten-off at this point.
“How about you?” Art asked, turning to Graeme. “How are the garden designs coming along?”
Graeme huffed and scribbled one last thing on his paper before glancing Art’s way. “I want to get this right,” he said. “Mrs. St. Ives is being incredibly kind to me. The least I can do is to give her enough choices so that she knows I’m really interested.”
Art grinned and reached out to touch his arm.
Graeme was the most earnest, bottled-up person he knew.
Whether the man was aware of it or not, his perfectionist people-pleasing was definitely linked to being raised in a world where the adults constantly harangued him with specters of a miserable afterlife for sinners, which included gay men in love with two guys at once and people who did a lazy job at work in equal measure.
Contrast that with Ryan, who was clearly wrapped up in knots over Giorgio Esposito and whatever inferiority complex-slash-fear of failure he was stuck in.
Ryan knew he was a brilliant designer because he’d had a brilliant career for years in Milan before some bastard yanked the rug out from under him.
He didn’t want to be hurt again by having something he loved torn away from him a second time, so something inside him was stopping him from investing in it enough to be hurt by losing it now.
Add Art’s own tumultuous feelings over the possibility that he could lose his job if the university got wind of his unconventional romantic life and decided it didn’t reflect well on the university, and they made a right old mess of a triad.
“Right, that’s it,” he said, slapping the table, then pushing his chair back and standing.
“That’s what?” Ryan asked.
“What’s what?” Graeme asked a split-second later.
Art laughed. “I love you two, you know that, right?”
“Um—” Graeme began.
“Yes, love, we know,” Ryan said with a sarcastic smirk.
“We are all much too far up our own arses at the moment,” Art went on, as if he were holding a board meeting.
“No one is getting any effective work done, and since it’s too wet outside for us all to distract ourselves either with gardening or unearthing treasures in the gamekeeper’s cottage, I suggest we have a good, old-fashioned orgy. ”
Dead silence followed his suggestion.
Art couldn’t keep a straight face. His lips started to wobble, and he had to contort his face in all sorts of ways to stop from giggling.
Ryan let out a breath. “You’re not serious,” he said, more as a statement than a question.
“That was a joke?” Graeme asked, looking just a bit crestfallen.
“It was a joke,” Art said, breaking into a smile at last. “Although if you’re up for it, you know I’m always ready to go.”
“That wasn’t a joke, by the way,” Ryan told Graeme with a twinkle in his eyes.
“Yeah, I got that,” Graeme said.
The tension started to bleed out of the air between them. Nothing could have made Art happier. The three of them really were so good together. As soon as all the nonsense of work and challenge was over, they really would have to get naked and explore all the ways they could make each other blush.
“What I’m actually suggesting,” he said in a much softer voice, “is that the two of you take a break and come up to the attic with me as I search for more primary source material for the paper I need to present to my dean so that he’ll continue to approve funding for the excavation instead of firing me for being a complete heathen that he can’t control. ”
Art’s suggestion was met with a thread of worry as Graeme and Ryan exchanged a look.
“Are you really in danger of being fired for—” Graeme didn’t finish his question.
“Nope,” Art said, then clipped the look of relief that came over Graeme’s face by finishing with, “You’re not allowed to worry about that. My precarious position with the university is secondary to your garden presentation and Ryan’s show.”
“Arthur,” Ryan said in the daddy voice that never failed to get Art’s blood pumping. “You didn’t tell us that you’re in trouble, too.”
“Because it’s not trouble,” Art insisted, moving around the table to pull at Ryan’s chair, prompting him to stand.
He continued around to Graeme’s side of the table.
“My job is just a job. There are other universities in the world that have faculty far more eccentric than me. If I play my cards right, I could end up with an even better job. If I need to. But we’re not there yet.
” He winked at Ryan as he grabbed Graeme’s hand and pulled him to his feet.
“I guess we could use a break to help you,” Ryan said, tidying up his sketches a bit before heading for the door.
“Yeah, it’s your turn for help,” Graeme said as he and Art followed him.
“See?” Art said with a broad smile. “We’re already functioning like a proper throuple should.”
He knew his words would trip Graeme up, and maybe Ryan, too, and he wasn’t wrong.
“I…I don’t know about…those things,” Graeme said, face going pink.
Ryan glanced across at Art with a look that said, “Don’t shake the baby” as they made their way down the hall to an old set of stairs that would take them to the attic, walking three abreast.
“There’s no use in hiding from the truth anymore,” Art said, pretending they were discussing something light and funny as Ryan pulled open the door to the attic stairs.
“I love you and you love Graeme and Graeme loves me and I love him and he loves you and you love me, See? It all lines up perfectly. We just have to stop running away from the truth.”
“You know,” Ryan said as he flicked on the lights and started up the stairs, glancing back over his shoulder at Art. “Sometimes you boggle my mind.”
“I’d like to boggle it even more, if you’d let me,” Art replied cheekily.
To his surprise, Graeme snorted into a giggle behind him. When Art turned to check on him, he said, “I can’t help it if you’re funny. My mind exists in a constant state of…bogglement? Is that a word?”
“It is now,” Art said, smiling like the sun had come out.