M-rated; cw for implied past sexual abuse.

--

Miles settles the blindfold round Julian's eyes, and his world is suddenly dark. He jerks round, instinctively looking for Miles despite the impossibility of it.

"You okay?" he hears Miles ask.

"No," he gasps instinctively – then remembers he's supposed to be, this is supposed to be fun, it's with Miles, and hastily backtracks. "Sorry, I mean, I'm fine, it's fine. I can do this."

The bed shifts, and he feels the pull of fabric against his skin, and then a hand stroking the side of his face while another slides round his back, holding him. "Julian, can you open your eyes for me?" Miles asks softly. Julian blinks: he hadn't realised he shut them.

"The— the blindfold?" he asks. "Why are you—"

Miles shakes his head. "We're stopping there, Jules. I'm not doing this if something's wrong."

"Nothing's wrong!" Julian protests. "You don't have to stop just for me."

The bed creaks as Miles moves again, sitting himself back against the headboard, and lightly tugging on Julian's wrist to pull him back with him.

"Why are you doing this?" Julian asks – nonetheless shuffling over and allowing Miles to wrap an arm around him. "You were having fun."

"But you weren't," Miles says.

"It was just a— just for a second," Julian says. "I was just surprised."

"Then why are you still shaking?"

Julian shrugs. He doesn't have an answer: his head is still a mix of the cloudy highs of sex and the irritating panic that the blindfold had generated. But he knows that Miles is taking this too far. "You're being overprotective," he grumps.

"And you're starting to worry me," Miles says. "What sort of partner do you think I am, that I'll just ignore it when you say no and start panicking?"

"Well of course it sounds bad when you put it like that!" Julian snaps. "But I'm not made of cotton wool, Miles. It's not like I've never handled that before. If you're enjoying yourself..."

He trails off, his own words echoing in his ears. They don't sound that great, either – and he can feel that he's said the wrong thing from the way Miles had tensed up beside him, his grip on Julian's arm suddenly becoming extremely tight.

"What do you mean by that?" Miles demands. Julian shakes his head, and pulls his knees up to hug them, burying his face into Miles' shoulder, as though he could hide if he could only make himself small enough.

"I don't know," he mumbles. There's a buzzing in his ears, and he can't figure out how he's supposed to be feeling right now, or what exactly he ought to be thinking.

"Julian, you've got to—" Miles starts, a familiar frustration lacing each word. But then he breaks off, taking a deep breath - and then another, even deeper one.

"Okay," he says slowly, and Julian's startled by how soft his voice has suddenly become. "That's okay, Julian. You just— Fuck. Take your time, alright?"

He lets go of Julian, but only for a few moments – just enough to reach over for the covers and lie down, pulling Julian with him and wrapping both arms firmly around once more. Julian's always liked these moments after sex, curled up in his partner's arms, fuzzy and warm, when nothing's expected of him – indeed, before he started sleeping with the O'Briens, he'd have said it was his favourite part of the whole thing. But he's off-kilter now; this isn't after, it's still mid-way through, and for all Miles is telling him to "take his time", he still feels like there is something expected of him. He's just not sure what.

"Are you angry?" he asks.

"What?"

"I said, are you—"

"I know what you said!" Miles replies quicky. "Jesus, Julian, just—"

Julian props himself up on one elbow to look at his partner. His eyes are closed, and he's taking yet another one of those exaggeratedly deep breaths.

"I know I'm doing this all wrong," Miles says after a moment, now turning his head to meet Julian's gaze. "I'm sorry. I promise I'm trying but— Fuck. Yes, of course I'm angry, Julian."

Nodding, Julian settles back against Miles, his mind turning. If Miles were anyone else, he'd be rushing to put things right, doing whatever they wanted to apologise for ruining their evening... but he gets the feeling that Miles isn't angry at him. No, more than that: he knows Miles isn't angry at him, full stop.

Which is a far more weird and uncomfortable feeling than it has any right to be, and he wishes there was a way to make this all better.

"I'm not shaking anymore," he points out.

"That doesn't mean this is suddenly okay, Julian."

"No— I meant... I meant you're helping, I guess."

Miles snorts, and Julian's eyes shoot up to him as he immediately realises how lackluster that must have sounded.

"Miles Edward O'Brien: He helped, I guess," Miles says, a teasing grin dancing over his lips. "Put that on my tombstone, will you?"

Before he knows it, a soft laugh has escaped Julian's own mouth, too.

"I guess," he says again, trying to prolong the moment of levity.

"I'll take it," Miles replies. "Your guesses are usually pretty accurate." He smiles at Julian, and for a second, Julian feels trembly all over once more: he can see the fondness and gentleness and sheer love in that smile, and it's almost more than he can bear, that it's all directed at him.

The atmosphere has changed now, though. As Julian burrows back down again, he's no longer trying to hide; his heart might hurt, but he's remembered now how safe it makes him feel that Miles has found him. He might see more of Julian than Julian really wants him to, but if Julian has to face whatever-it-is-this-is, then at least he's doing it with Miles.

"We're going to have to talk about this, aren't we?" he says, eventually.

"Yeah," says Miles. "Yes, we are."

"I don't really want to."

"I know."

Of course Miles knows. Julian holds him tighter, not having the words to express just what he's feeling.

"It'll be okay," Miles promises. "We'll help you, Julian, whatever you need."

"I know."

(... This was going to end with "Cue Keiko dragging all three of them to bed each night and making them get a proper rest", but actually I don't want to put that on her...)

So, cue Keiko going to Sisko to ask him to sort it out and make sure his senior staff are looked after properly. He's kind of aware of it - it's not like he doesn't put in more hours than is reasonable, especially now Jake's moved out - but over the next few days he starts to get into the routine of hunting down the three of them to send to their quarters, and then going back to his own for the night. It's better for all of them.

Or at least, it seems to be, for a few days - maybe even just over a week - before they discover Julian's been sneaking back to his office to put in a few more hours of research and is getting just as little sleep as before.

And now Miles has had a week of proper sleep and remembered how good it actually feels to be well-rested, he and Keiko put in a team effort to start taking Julian back to theirs each night and making him sleep. (Since Kira's been with Odo, she only stays with them when Odo's regenerative cycle has got out-of-sync.)

It's... better for Julian. His nightmares are even more regular than Keiko and Miles', which is bad news for their newly-improved sleeping schedule... She mentions it to Nerys, who suggests Odo could put a tracker on him so he could go back to his own quarters. Keiko's not too sure about that one, but they were going to ask him to spend a few nights next week in his quarters anyway while Nerys came to stay, and when she tells Miles he laughs and thinks it's a great idea. So, they try it the following week, all fond banter and "wouldn't want you to ruin your progress the next few nights!" as Julian lets himself be fitted with the tracker.

Of course, once they're gone and he's suppposed to be sleeping, he removes it. And would have fooled them, too, if he hadn't been so euphoric about figuring out a seamless way to get around the tracker that he totally forgot about the people on the night shift who might physically see him and report him.

Odo drags him back to bed. It's not his proudest moment.

When Ben's told, he resigns himself to this being his problem again. After talking to Kasidy, he goes back to Julian and presents him with the option - no, the order, really - that if he's not going to sleep in his own quarters, he can go back with Sisko and stay in Jake's old room. Julian agrees a little too readily.

(He's not really got a handle on how he's feeling about all this. Embarassed that everyone's making such a fuss of it, warmed by all the attention, in some ways more relaxed since he's been sleeping with the O'Briens, but also more tense at the idea of being a burden on them, and not being 100% clear on what they are now? And still completely unable to unwind at the end of the day when he's on his own and desperately tired of all the fucking nightmares, and relieved that he won't be spending another night completely alone, but maybe Sisko won't hear him yell if he's in a different room...)

Ben wakes up in the middle of the night. Everything's still as he crosses the hallway to the refresher. As he walks back to his room, he remembers that, from how the O'Briens had been talking, he'd been expecting to be woken up by his visitor that night, but there's been no sign of the violent nightmares Julian apparently usually experienced.

An urge to check in on Julian, just as he used to look in on Jake, takes over him, and he changes course towards the other door. It slides open softly, giving gentle illumination to both the passageway, and Julian's sheepish expression as he looks up from the stack of padds surrounding him.

Ben sighs. He grabs a couple of the padds and places them on the desk, and Julian resignedly follows suit, uncharacteristically quiet—

Oh, that's not out of character, actually. It's the end of season six.

...Julian resignedly follows suit, in that quiet manner he's adopted over the past year. He becomes far more animate when Ben climbs into Jake's bed, awkward and fumbling and protesting, but Ben simply turns over and orders the lights off. Moments later, he feels the bed dip beside him, and a back bumping against his own. Good.

There is a nightmare - of course there is - but after waking them both up, Julian comes down from it pretty quickly. And, if he's being honest, Ben falls back to sleep as easy as ever with the warm weight of Julian in his arms.

It becomes a thing, after that. Him-and-Julian when Kasidy is away (she understood, the first time, when she found them curled up together - and she's pleased this whole thing has made Ben sleep better when she's not there - but she does like having Ben to herself on nights when she's back), Miles-and-Keiko-and-Julian when she's not. Worf quickly overrides Dax's playful motion that the two of them should join in and make it a proper game of pass-the-Julian. Nerys and Odo share a nervous look with each other, relaxing as they both give a minute, definite shake of their heads at the idea.

A month or so later, Miles and Keiko are settling down for the night when they suddenly remember that Julian should have been coming over that night. The computer says he's in his quarters: Miles volunteers to go and get him, but Keiko says she'll go, since he's supposed to have an early shift tomorrow, and if Julian's sneaking around the station again she'd rather be hunting him down and Miles start getting some rest.

But Julian is in his quarters. And he's not even surrounded by padds! He's curled up in his bed, sweetly asleep.

cw: internalised arophobia

(Keiko and Miles are having none of it though - for once, this is entirely comfort!)

--

His first week of dating Miles and Keiko is just as wonderful as he'd ever imagined, and Julian's not sure if he's ever been happier. The hugs, the laughter, the unrestrained affection – Julian knows he's a lucky man, and desperately gives as much as he takes. But although he never stops enjoying it all, at some point he starts to notice that the way in which the O'Briens love each other seems very different to the way in which he loves them. Little things they mention off-handedly about their feelings sometimes seem worlds apart from how he views his own feelings, and while at first he puts that down to his relationship being new and Miles and Keiko being married, and so on and so forth, he can't shake the feeling that it's not just that.

Over the next few months he becomes increasingly convinced that even though he definitely loves them, he's not actually in love with them. He begins wondering if he's ever really been "in love" with anyone, now that he's properly paying attention to his feelings, and after a lot of lonely soul-searching – lonely because he doesn't really want to involve Miles and Keiko in this unless he's sure, and that means not confiding in his other friends, either, just in case it got back to them – he comes to the conclusion that he's maybe, probably, aromantic. Which is... well, it's fine, he supposes, but he really wishes he could have figured it out far, far sooner.

The worst of it all is that, now he knows – and god, he really doesn't want to admit it – but now he knows, it wouldn't be fair at all on Miles and Keiko to carry on with their relationship. He really, really doesn't want to lose what they have, but if he's never going to be able to love them the way they love him, it's better to end it sooner rather than later, right? That's just what you're supposed to do when you realise you're not in love, isn't it? You're meant to break up.

When he tells them – sitting on the sofa opposite them one evening, forcing himself to look them in the eyes – his quiet explanation is so full of apologies that the O'Briens initially struggle to make sense of what he's trying to say. But eventually they get there, and Julian finds that he's not met with any of the reactions he's feared. There are no scoffs of annoyance for having wasted so much of their time, no sarcastic eye rolls – not even a gentle-but-firm dismissal. Instead, they both move to sit next to him, expressions somewhat sad but still full of fondness. Which only makes it harder, because of course they'd never be anything less than kind, that's one of the many reasons he loves them, and he's going to miss them just so much...

Keiko puts her hand over his. "If that's what you want, Julian, then of course you've got to do what's right for you. But..."

"But what?"

"Well, it kind of sounds like you're only doing this because you think it's what we're going to want."

Julian frowns. "I don't understand."

"I think we're maybe going about this the wrong way," says Miles, the 'we' sounding as natural as ever, as though they really are all still in this together. "I get that it's never going to be romantic for you, sure, but what do you actually want to change? Is there anything we do that you don't like, that makes you uncomfortable..?"

Before Julian can reply, Keiko moves her hand away, shuffling a couple of inches back. "I'm sorry," she says, "I didn't even think to ask."

Julian shakes his head, bewildered. "No, it's fine, it's – I liked it!" he assures her. "There's nothing you do – I told you it wasn't your fault, you've always been wonderful. It's just me, and my stupid feelings."

It seems they believe him, at least, because at that they both move in even closer, their bodies pressing up against his, arms wrappinh around his back. "Is this okay?" Miles asks, and Julian nods miserably.

"I still think you're being far too nice to the person who just broke up with you."

"Probably because I'm not really convinced you have," Miles replies, causing Julian to stare at him in disbelief. Is this reaction all just... denial, then? "I mean, don't get me wrong – like Keiko said, if you don't want to be with us anymore, or need things between us to change, however that might look, we'll accept that. But you know you'll always have a place in our bed – I assume?" he adds hurriedly, glancing at Keiko to check.

"Always," she says. "If you want it, of course. We're not trying to pressure you into changing your mind, Julian. It just seems like you haven't considered any other options."

"I— You... But bed sharing – that's what people in a relationship do."

Miles shakes his head, the roll of his eyes softened by a small grin. "He's a smart one, our Julian," he teases, still looking across to Keiko. "Look, Julian... All we're saying is that it's been nice – uh, more than nice, I guess – you being around these past few months, and if you liked it and we liked it, then it doesn't matter what your feelings are, we don't have to stop—Wait, no. Shit." He pauses for a second. "That came out wrong, of course they matter... What I meant was, if you still want to be doing the things we've been doing, then really, we don't care about your feelings—"

Neither Keiko nor Julian manage to hide their amusement. Miles scowls. "You know what I was trying to say!" he grumbles.

"He's a smart one, our Miles," Keiko smiles, nudging Julian. "But he's right. I think what Miles meant to say, is that we're not worried if your feelings for us are different to what you thought they were. We want you in our lives in a way that makes you happy – and if that means you want to put emotional or physical distance between us, then you can, but if you don't want things to change, they don't have to! Does that make sense?"

It does, in a bizarre, upside-down, counterintuitive way. They're both deadly serious, and even if Julian hasn't quite worked out why, he can tell that all his worrying seems to have been for nothing. He sighs, sagging against her. "I should have told you about this weeks ago," he mumbles.

"Maybe," she replies, running a hand through his hair. "Or perhaps it was something you needed to work through for yourself. But you've told us now, and whatever comes next, we'll support you. You do know that, don't you?"

He does now, he thinks, feeling more than a bit rotten that he'd ever doubted them. But then, how could he have guessed that they'd be this fantastically illogical about their relationship?

"You're both amazing," he says earnestly. There's a part of him that wants to say more – to check and double check and triple check they really mean it, to get explicit confirmation they're still in a relationship, and what it even means for a relationship to be half-romantic and half-not. But he needs some time to work up to all that – and besides, it still feels strange to be quite so emotional around Miles – so he opts for the safer route: a joke.

"Well – you are, Keiko. Miles doesn't care about my feelings."

"Hey!"