#w359bb17

It started with an innocuous comment— actually, a rather sexy comment. A comment Eiffel very much enjoyed hearing in the moment. Which makes the whole thing worse, really.

It happened during one of their talks, the ones they have so casually now, over mugs of nighttime tea or bowls of morning cereal. Conversations about this insanely glorious, mind-boggling, if-only-teenage-Doug-could-see-him-now kinky three-way relationship they’ve had going for a few months now, ever since Minkowski and Lovelace caught him jerking off at his station and punished him for it—only to find that they enjoyed punishing Eiffel just as much as he enjoyed being punished.

They’re talking through the logistics of a scene when it happens.

“Now, if we were back on Earth, Eiffel, I’d buy a nice dildo just for you and peg you with it,” Lovelace says, as cool and casual as anything, which is how she delivers a lot of her sexier propositions. It drives Eiffel crazy. “But I don’t know that there’s anything up here that would be good for that.”

“I don’t know,” Minkowski says. “There are some truly bizarre things on this ship.“

But Doug doesn’t hear much of the ensuing conversation (which centers mainly on whether or not anything onboard could be safely used for anal penetration) because he’s hung up on the one unsexy part of what Lovelace said.

“If we were back on Earth.”

That’s the phrase that gets stuck in Eiffel’s craw, that keeps coming back to him in quiet, vulnerable moments, like when he’s alone in the shower or halfway between sleep and consciousness. If we were back on Earth.

Because here’s the thing. No matter how Doug figures it—and he figures it a lot of ways, like solving a math problem by hand, in Excel, and on two different calculators, trying to get a different answer to a problem that only has one—this thing they’re doing? This threesome, triad, polyamorous arrangement, whatever they wanted to call it? It would never work back on Earth. Could never work back on Earth. He tries to imagine himself out on a date with Lovelace, her gorgeous and confident, him lanky and awkward and overcompensating with corny jokes. The stares they would get. The laughter, stifled under hands to be polite, but audible nevertheless. He doesn’t belong with her , these strangers would think. She can do so much better .

And Minkowski—Doug’s breath catches in his throat when he thinks about Minkowski and Earth. She has a husband. And while Doug doesn’t know much about their relationship—after Lovelace first defused the other woman’s protest that she was married with a sultry married ain’t dead, is it?, none of them had mentioned him again—there’s nothing to suggest that Minkowski wouldn’t go back to him when she returned to Earth. That she wouldn’t want to return to her healthy, monogamous marriage, leaving Lovelace and Eiffel—where?

Lovelace could find someone else, of course, easily. Someone as beautiful and badass as she was, her fitting counterpart, someone who in conjunction with her would evoke the phrase “power couple.”

And Doug would be all alone, with nothing but the memory of a few months on a spaceship when the two smartest, most fantastic women he’d ever met had been desperate and lonely enough to take him to bed. He could just picture himself, alone in a cramped and cluttered apartment somewhere, jerking off to the memories for the thousandth time. Miserable. Lonely. Untouched. And most of all, unloved.

It’s enough to make Eiffel collapse inside.

One night he’s in the middle of just such a collapse: he’s in the comms room, ostensibly on rotation, actually staring blankly at the controls, soul-crushing visions of if we were back on Earth dancing in his head like the world’s most vicious sugarplums and rocketing his mood into a downward spiral.

The thing about an all-seeing AI, though, is the all-seeing part.

“Officer Eiffel? Are you okay?”

Doug blinks a few times, rapidly, then rubs his eyes with the insides of his wrists.

“What? Yeah. I’m fine, Hera.”

“You don’t seem fine.”

“It’s nothing. Really.”

“Are you sure? Because you’ve seemed a little…off lately.”

Doug sits up, shakes the hair out of his eyes, and tries to feign alertness. “Off? I’m not off. I’m just as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as ever. Might as well call me Alvin or Rocky or something.”

“Eiffel.”

“Okay, okay, I will admit that I’ve been going through some stuff lately. Promise you’ll keep it a secret?”

“If I had hands, I’d pinky swear.”

“Okay, so…”

And he tells her the whole thing from start to finish. Lovelace’s offhand comment. How he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. The ways it had manifested itself, over and over again, in the darkest parts of his imagination.

Hera’s an excellent listener, and by the time Doug’s finished, he’s on the edge of tears, the beginnings of a good old-fashioned cry forming at the corners of his eyes.

“Have you told Lovelace or Minkowski any of this?” Hera asks when he finishes.

Doug snorts. “Yeah, right. I’m just going to draw attention to the fact that I don’t deserve them and remind them exactly how out of my league they both are. That definitely won’t backfire or make them reconsider this entire situation or anything.”

“I don’t think it will,” Hera says. “Eiffel, I think…I think I have an idea. Something that might help. But it’ll be better if Lovelace and Minkowski are both here.”

“What kind of idea?”

“Just…trust me on this one, okay? I’ll ask them to come up here, and you can tell them how you’re feeling, and I’ll take it from there.”

Doug considers it. He’d rather swallow shards of glass than admit to either woman how insecure he’s feeling about their relationship. Just thinking about it feels like swallowing glass: a sharp pain stabs at the back of his throat, and the tears in the corners of his eyes threaten to spill over.

Still, he trusts Hera. Trusts her more than anyone besides maybe Lovelace and Minkowski. And this thing, this fear that’s built up inside him and keeps getting bigger, feels like it’s eating him alive.

“Okay,” he says finally, the word half-stuck in his throat. He swallows, breathes, and tries again.

“Okay.”

Minutes later, Lovelace and Minkowski enter the comms room, the former looking confused and the latter concerned. All Hera had told them was that it wasn’t an emergency, but that Eiffel needed them.

“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” Lovelace says, and Eiffel breaks. The dam of stubbornness and willpower that’s been holding back his tears bursts and suddenly he’s sobbing into Lovelace’s arms, Minkowski’s hand running comfortingly up and down his back.

“Shhhhh,” he hears the commander say. “It’s all right, Doug. It’s all right.”

When he’s recovered well enough to speak—Minkowski insists on getting him tissues, and Lovelace ties his hair back for him so he doesn’t have to keep brushing it out of his face—he tries to explain as best he can.

“I’m sorry, I know you both have work to do—”

“Never mind about that,” Minkowski says. “We want to know what’s happening with you, Doug.”

“Well, um. Shit.” He looks down at his feet. “It’s hard to explain.”

“You and I were talking,” Hera says, prompting him.

“Right. We were talking, and I was telling her…that I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” Minkowski asks.

“Afraid of an if ? Which is completely stupid, especially when I say it out loud, it’s just…” Doug takes a deep breath. “A couple weeks ago Lovelace said if we were back on Earth. ”

“Then I’d be fucking you senseless with a strap-on,” Lovelace says. “I remember.”

Doug can’t suppress the hint of a shiver that runs down his spine when she says this. “Right. But I just got to thinking…if we really were back on Earth…we wouldn’t have this at all.”

“What do you mean?” Minkowski says.

“It’s just…I mean, the two of you are only with me because you don’t have any other options. Besides each other, of course, and honestly sometimes I’m not sure why you don’t just stick with that and leave me out of it—but my point is, we’re only doing this…thing we’re doing because we’re trapped in space together. If we were back on Earth? Neither of you would choose me.” Doug breathes deeply, trying to keep tears from welling up again.

“Oh, Eiffel,” Minkowski says, and she wraps him in what might be the tightest hug he’s ever experienced. “That’s not true. Of course it isn’t.”

“I don’t know, Minkowski,” Lovelace says slowly, her expression uneasy. “I know I’d choose Eiffel on Earth in a heartbeat, but…you have a husband. The three of us would never have happened if he were in the equation.”

Minkowski tenses but doesn’t let go of Doug.

“I mean, that’s true, isn’t it?” Lovelace says. “You’ll go back to your husband. When we get back. If we get back.”

Minkowski shifts so that she’s still got her arms around Eiffel, but only loosely so. “I honestly don’t know,” she says. “I haven’t really thought about it. I’ve just been so worried that we’ll never get back at all…I’m not even sure he’d want me.” Her voice goes thin on the last sentence, threatening to crack. “He still thinks I’m dead. I don't…I don’t know what he’d do if I turned up suddenly.”

As far as Eiffel can tell, all this conversation has done is make everyone in the room feel worse. So he reaches for his lifeline.

“Hera? You said you had an idea to make this all better?”

“Yes,” Hera says, sounding less sure of herself now than she had in her initial conversation with Doug. “I thought I could…tell you a story. Of life back on Earth.”

“A story?” Doug says. That was her brilliant plan? Admittedly, Hera’s a hell of a storyteller when she wants to be—many nights spent masturbating to her cleverly improvised erotica could testify to that—but Doug isn’t sure a good wank is going alleviate any of the woe from the can of worms they’ve just opened.

“Yes, Officer Eiffel. A story. Everyone sit down, if you please.”

“What is this, kindergarten?” Lovelace grumbles, but she sits cross-legged on the floor nevertheless. Doug and Minkowski join her, and soon both women have Doug cuddled up between them, his head on Lovelace’s shoulder, her arm around his waist, one of Minkowski’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, and her other hand resting on his knee. He feels warm, and safe, and cared for, and the sharpness in the back of his throat begins to dull.

“If you were back on Earth,” Hera begins. “Lovelace would buy that dildo.”

“Hell yeah I would,” Lovelace says.

“Hey, no interrupting.”

“Sorry. Just excited.”

“Lovelace would buy that dildo,” Hera continues, “and she’d keep it in a locked chest in the back of her closet, along with all the rest of her toys. Vibrators, and handcuffs, and ropes and paddles and whips and chains. Costumes, too—a catsuit, a headmistress’ uniform, corsets and thigh-highs and heels. Everything Lovelace had in her dominatrix days, and everything she dreamed of having but couldn’t afford or didn’t have the space for. But now, now she’s working with three incomes plus the payout from a successful class-action lawsuit against Goddard Futuristics. She can afford a few indulgences.

"A lot of indulgences, actually. See, since Lovelace and her crewmates got back to Earth, they’d kept fighting, had organized Goddard employees past and present, gathered evidence, shared their testimony. And when it was all over, they had an eight-figure number to their name, but more importantly, they had the knowledge that the people who’d hurt them and their crewmates would never hurt anyone else ever again.”

Doug isn’t sure what he’d expected this story to be, but this is definitely not it. Still, he feels his muscles start to relax, his shoulders dropping down and the tension in his face, which he hadn’t even noticed until it was gone, releasing.

“And with that money, Lovelace decided to treat herself. Lord knows she deserved it after everything she’d gone through. But more importantly, she decided to treat her partners. Because after everything they’d been through, she couldn’t imagine a happy ending that didn’t involve the three of them together. And neither could they.”

Doug feels Lovelace sigh against him.

“And so they bought a house together in Southern California. A place where the weather was beautiful and they never had to worry about being cold. A place where they could make trips to the beach whenever they liked, but where they weren’t permanently tracking sand into the house, much to Minkowski’s relief. A place where they could hear the sound of traffic, never so loudly that it interrupted their sleep, but just enough to remind them that there were other people nearby, would always be other people nearby.

"And it’s a smart house, too, very environmentally friendly. But more importantly, equipped to accommodate a state-of-the-art AI program, originally designed for a deep-space mission, but more than up to the task of managing a single-family home.”

Doug smiles. “I think I know just the right girl for the job.”

“They fill the house with things they want but don’t need. Really nice china plates for Minkowski, which sit untouched in their custom-made cabinet, but which make her smile whenever she looks at them, and a vintage record player and stacks of Broadway soundtracks on vinyl. For Lovelace, a home gym full of shiny, fancy equipment, and a motorcycle, and of course, her trunk full of toys. And for Eiffel, a home theatre, with Blu-Rays of every movie he’s ever loved, and an arcade-style Pac-Man machine.”

“Awesome!” Doug interrupts, and Minkowski shushes him.

“They drink coffee together, real coffee from Colombia that Minkowski grinds herself every morning. Some nights they stay in, order pizza and catch up on all the Netflix they’ve missed, with queues carefully curated by Eiffel. Other nights they dress up, go out to dinner at fancy restaurants where Eiffel comically mispronounces the names of dishes to cover up the fact that he legitimately doesn’t know how to say them, and they order the most expensive items on the menu just because they can, and they play footsie under the table and don’t care who sees.

"One night they go dancing. There’s a swing dancing club nearby, and Minkowski insists on taking them, even though Lovelace has never done swing dancing in her life and Doug has and knows exactly how much of a disaster he’ll be on the dance floor. Minkowski doesn’t care, though, and the two of them want to make her happy, so they let her teach them each in turn, clumsy steps slowly turning into graceful ones, even for Eiffel, until they give up on partnering off and begin twirling and swaying in a messy, giggly threesome, making up the steps as they go along, stealing kisses until, by the time they make it back to the house, they’re ready for something much more satisfying than kissing.”

“Mm, can I get some more details on that?” Lovelace says.

“The bed in the house is massive, a California king that’s almost the size of the entire bedroom in Eiffel’s first apartment. It’s only because of how spacious the master is that the room isn’t swallowed by it. It’s a little extravagant, maybe, but it’s got enough room for three people to sleep comfortably—and have sex comfortably. A lot of times, for scenes, they’ll use other rooms of the house—the basement, over time, becomes more dungeon than anything else, and the kitchen surfaces have all seen their fair share of… unconventional use.

"But on nights like the night they go dancing, they take going to bed together literally and tumble onto the mattress, a sweaty mess of limbs and passion, mouths finding necks, hands dipping below waistbands. Yes, they have every sex toy any of them’s ever imagined having, but for all the hours of fun they have testing them out, nothing can turn them on like each other, like the feeling of skin on skin and the simple truth of the three of them together, present, safe, with all the time in the world to dedicate to drawing out moans and gasps and orgasms.

"There are no disasters to manage, now. No mind games to play, no ominous mysteries to uncover. There’s just a house, and three people, and one AI. So even when the nightmares come—and they come—and even when they must navigate difficult reunions with people on Earth—and they must—and even when it all seems like too much—and it does—there is always a safe haven to come back to, a place where there is love and support and understanding. Where there is always at least one someone to wipe away tears, to rub tired shoulders, to hold onto silently until the hurt goes away or to listen patiently until every frustrated word has been spoken.

"There is no such thing as a world without hurt. There is no such thing as paradise. But in a house by the beach, where they can always hear the sound of traffic, three imperfect people with imperfect pasts and imperfect futures do their best to build something like it. And at times, like when they sit out in the yard together, watching the sun set in brilliant pinks and purples over the horizon, each one holding the other two’s hands, they come so close to paradise that they may as well have reached it.”

Hera finishes her story, and there is silence for a long moment, the four of them letting the final words of her tale linger in the air for as long as they’ll last. Then, finally, Lovelace speaks.

“Hera, I think that’s the best story you’ve ever told me.”

“Me too,” Minkowski agrees.

“Me three,” says Doug.

“Thank you,” says Hera. “I do my best.”

“I don’t know about you guys, but…I’d like for that to happen. Just like Hera said,” says Minkowski. “The house, the dancing…all of it.”

“I make no promises about the dancing,” Doug says. “Hera wasn’t kidding, we did swing dancing in seventh grade and my partner and I both ended up on the floor. Twice. No joke. But the rest of it…yeah. That sounds pretty perfect.”

“What do you say we get a head start on that whole ‘lots of really excellent sex’ part?” Lovelace says, her mouth twisted into half a smirk.