Chapter 15 #2
They left the attic door at the bottom of the stairs open, and also left the door at the top of the stairs open so that people in the rest of the house would know where they were and not call the police if they somehow went missing.
It was a joke to him, but after the palaver with Nally Hawthorne’s stalker showing up at the house with violent intentions, the family was vigilant about knowing where everyone was at all times.
Art suspected they could all track each other’s exact location with their phones.
It was kind of sweet the way they did that. Truth be told, he wouldn’t have minded having both Ryan’s and Graeme’s phones connected to his so that he always knew where they were, too.
Where they were for the moment was in a pile of stuff that had been hoarded for the past two hundred years.
“Wow,” Graeme said, glancing around as Ryan stepped deeper into the musty, dusty space to turn on more of the lights, most of which were bare bulbs that hung from ancient cords that had been tacked into the crossbeams decades ago. “This is like my gran’s attic times a thousand.”
“One of the advantages, if you can call it that, of having a massive manor house is that there’s a ton of attic space to shove things into and forget about them for a few centuries,” Ryan said, picking up an old snuff box from a dusty tray atop a bureau that was likely from the eighteenth century.
“Rebecca had an idea last year that we should call in one of those antiques shows to go through the place and find stuff to take to auction.”
“And get rid of your family heritage?” Art asked indignantly, climbing over to the shelf full of old diaries and envelopes of letters that someone had curated maybe a hundred years ago. “What a terrible idea.”
“I don’t think I’d like some television show going through my family’s stuff,” Graeme agreed, picking up a crumbling book that looked to be from the late-nineteenth-century with the title “Gardens of England” embossed on the cover.
He was instantly absorbed in that. Art already had a good idea of what he wanted to fetch from the attic, but since the real purpose was to distract the other two, he stepped past the shelf to an old chest he’d briefly looked at a few weeks ago and opened the lid.
Ryan came over to join him as he dove in to examining the contents. “This trunk must be hundreds of years old,” he said, crouching by Art’s side to go through the contents.
“It belonged to your great-great-great-granduncle, Cornelius Hawthorne,” Art said, taking a seat on the floor and lifting a pile of papers tied with a string onto his lap. “I peeked in here last week, but I wanted to look around a little more.”
Ryan dropped from his crouch to sit crunched up in the narrow, empty space, his knees brushing Art’s. “How do you know Cornelius Hawthorne is my great-great-great-granduncle?”
Art glanced up at him as he tugged at the string. “I researched your family tree first thing, once I knew I would be sticking around for a while.”
Ryan arched an eyebrow at him. “Sticking around for a while?”
Art glanced to the side, where Graeme was now sitting in an ancient armchair, leafing through the book. He then looked back at Ryan and said, “Graeme seems to be coming along surprisingly well at accepting the three of us are a three of us. When are you going to get on board, too?”
“I am on board,” Ryan argued, taking the top few crumbling papers from the stack that Art handed to him.
“We should be wearing cotton gloves to look through these,” Art said, shaking his head. “I’m not a very responsible archeologist. And you’re still afraid of what people will think of you having two partners.”
“I am not,” Ryan protested.
Art lowered the papers he held. “Really?”
“I’m not!” Ryan laughed, but there was a huge amount of tension in his body as he did.
“Fine.” Art twisted toward Graeme and called out, “Oy, sweet cheeks. Could you join us for a moment?”
“I swear, I’m not,” Ryan repeated, this time with a touch of panic.
Graeme glanced up from his book with a questioning look, closed the book, then made his way over to them. “Did you find something?” he asked.
“I did,” Art said, putting the stack of papers back into the trunk and scooting over to make a very small space for Graeme on the floor beside him. “Have a sit.”
Still confused, Graeme sat with them. The space was tiny and cramped, so they had to move around a bit before figuring out how they could all sit together.
By the time they did, their limbs were tangled over and under each other, and they were close enough that Art could make out the different soap and deodorant scents of both men.
“Cards on the table,” Art said, choosing the kamikaze approach to dealing with their growing relationship. “We’re a throuple, a threesome, a triad, a daisy-chain, whatever you want to call it.”
Ryan and Graeme just blinked at him at first.
“Are we?” Graeme asked, barely above a whisper.
“He wasn’t asking a question, love,” Ryan said, taking one of Graeme’s hands, but staring at Art, almost like he was annoyed Art had forced the issue so bluntly.
“It wasn’t a question,” Art confirmed with a nod. “And frankly, I’m getting a little tired of the three of us dancing around it. I’m a boy with needs, you know. I haven’t gone this long without frequent, satisfying sex in ages.”
“You two…just the other day,” Graeme blurted awkwardly.
Art grinned. “That was just one quickie,” he said.
“I need more. I need skin on skin, groping and fondling. I need my mouth and my hole stuffed full, possibly at the same time. And I need to hump one or both of you like a jackhammer as frequently as I can. It’s not good to hold your semen for so long. ”
Graeme’s jaw dropped and his face went red, but Ryan laughed. “You really are a whore, aren’t you,” he said.
“I like sex,” Art said with a shrug. “Frankly, this arrangement is perfect for me, because I can’t see myself committing to just one man for the rest of my life.”
“Are you saying you could commit to two?” Ryan asked, one eyebrow arched.
There were two questions there, were they committing and did Art want an open relationship?
The answer to both questions surprised him.
Yes, he was absolutely ready to commit, wild though that seemed.
And yeah, he was thirty-three now. The idea of hooking up with someone new every night was as tired as he was sometimes.
He’d done the indiscriminate whore thing, and now he wanted to be a discriminate one.
“I’m game if you are,” he answered with a shrug.
“Wait, wait, slow down,” Graeme said breathlessly, holding up his hands. “What are we talking about here?”
Ryan still held one of his hands and squeezed it, an affectionate look making him go all doe-eyed. “We’re talking about the three of us making it official,” Ryan said.
“It?” Graeme looked even more wide-eyed and innocent than ever, if that was possible.
“The three of us,” Art answered, grinning. “The great throuple. The spit-roast of destiny.”
“What’s a spit-roast of destiny?” Graeme asked, shrinking in on himself slightly.
Before either Art or Ryan could tell him, he figured it out with a quick, “Oh! You mean…with the front and the back…three of us.” He looked at Art in complete awe and said, “People actually do that? I mean, outside of porn?”
Art burst into laughter. “Yes, and I love it,” he said. “When I’m in the right headspace. It’s a little overwhelming if you’re not.”
“Okay…um…yeah.” Graeme was still as lost as a cloud flitting through the sky, but he didn’t look as wrecked as he had the other day at his flat.
“Ryan?” Art asked. “Are you ready to take the triple plunge?”
“I already said I was,” Ryan said, laughing and reaching for Art’s hand with his free one.
Art grabbed his hand and Graeme’s free one as well.
“It’s settled then,” he said with a nod, even though he felt like it was in no way settled and they still had a mountain of things to work out between them about how it would all fit together.
Literally and figuratively. That wasn’t the point of the exercise, though.
The point was to get Ryan and Graeme out of their heads so they could dive back into their work with extra creativity. “And now, it’s orgy time!”
“Wait, what?” Graeme squeaked, leaning away from Art, like the very mention of spit-roasting earlier meant he was going to end up as the roast right now.
“He’s not serious,” Ryan laughed. “He’s just trying to get a rise out of you.”
“Indeed, I am,” Art said, wiggling his eyebrows. “Although if you want a BJ right now, I’d be glad to oblige.”
“Right here?” Graeme’s voice went even higher. “In the attic?”
Art might have taken things further. He might have even maneuvered things so he ended up bent over one of the old chests in a repeat of Ryan’s studio the other day. But a knock on the door and Janice Hawthorne’s call of, “Yoohoo. Everybody decent?” stopped him.
“Yes, Mum,” Ryan said, pushing himself to his feet as if she’d caught them doing something naughty.
“Good,” Janice said, coming the rest of the way into the room. “Because you have a visitor, dear.”
“A visitor?” Ryan asked with a frown.
“Yes,” Janice went on. “He’s a rather attractive, silver-haired Italian man, actually, but there’s something decidedly off about him. I don’t like him, so shoo him along as quickly as you can, if you please.”
The mood in the attic changed at once. “Giorgio,” Ryan said with a scowl and started toward the door.
Art scrambled to his feet, helping Graeme up with him, and they followed after him. It looked like their great moment of coming together would have to wait once again.