howdy >:D

Tanselle left Dunk and Baelor to it and went to the bathroom to put her hair up in her bonnet, grabbing her sleep trackies and a tank top that had once belonged to Dunk when he'd been about 12. Her reflection looked much the same as it had this morning: tired, eyebrows in need of a trim, that weird hair on her chin growing back. She grabbed her tweezers and got the fucker before she forgot again, then pulled her hair up in a loose poof with one of the My Little Pony scrunchies Dunk had found for her at a thrift shop in their unopened box when they'd still been stupid undergrads with dreams of becoming the next (even hotter) versions of Woodward and Bernstein. She was pretty sure they'd never had a threesome with Ben Bradlee.

By the time she came out, bonnet in place and sleep mask perched on her forehead, Dunk and Baelor were having a wordless argument where Baelor tried to put his clothes on and Dunk tried to take his clothes off. It wasn't quite a wrestling match, mostly because Dunk had a good seventy-five pounds on Baelor and had just fucked him into the mattress so comprehensively that Tanselle was pretty sure Baelor had cried into her cunt a bit, but credit to the old man, he was putting up a fight.

Baelor caught sight of her and seemed to think, bizarrely, that he was going to get backup from her. "Ah, I really ought to be going," he said, which was so adorable she wanted to pinch his cheeks.

"Shut up," she said, and snatched his trousers out of his hands.

They bullied him into a pair of her softest jimjams while Dunk (who'd been wrestling him while naked, and Tanselle wasn't going to give too much criticism to him just yet but at some point she would have to tell Baelor to never argue with Dunk while he was naked because he was too powerful like that to be easily defeated, like some (even more) erotic version of Ganondorf) rummaged about and found an old gym shirt that said "THE MAN" and his matching boxers that said "THE LEGEND." Baelor, clutching his borrowed clothing, looked at him in horror.

"You get used to it," Tanselle assured him, and shuffled him into bed, pinning him once again with her leg just as Dunk reached across his chest to curl his hand into Tanselle's. She squeezed it briefly, and he squeezed back, grinning at her from across the bed.

"The light's still on," Baelor said after a minute. He was so tense Tanselle thought he might have another heart attack right there and then.

"Mm," she agreed. "Dunk gets night terrors. Here," she said, and managed to get her sleep mask off without disturbing the bonnet too much. She slapped it over his eyes with probably more force than necessary, but — god, it was fun to rile him. He was fun, his outrage never truly in earnest, his offended expression — the one he turned on her now — always equal parts laughter, and she could've kicked herself for all the times she could've just reached over his stupid desk and snogged him.

But of course it had to have happened like this, with Dunk and in their shitty flat where the refrigerator was about five feet from the bed and there was a cat fight between literal actual cats happening in the alleyway below even as they all settled further into the bed, Baelor looking strangely serene under her giant sleep mask, his borrowed shirt riding up just a bit to expose his belly and an intriguing trail of hair. She tucked herself further into him, feeling another squeeze from Dunk as his knee bumped hers, and she fell asleep to the sound of these two strange, wonderful, terrible men starting up yet another fucking argument about rugby league versus rugby union. "I'll kill you both," she yawned, and didn't think anything further until the morning.