A Balance of Harmonies: Meant to Fly
Nov. 7th, 2011 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frogs_of_warI’ve got so many things I’d like to post (two short stories, another chapter of this, and reviews of the books I listened to while I moved, etc.), but we are headed into the holidays at work and so my hours have doubled for the next few weeks, so either I’ll spam your friends lists today, or you won’t hear from me for a while. Or both.
Title: Meant to Fly
Series: A Balance of Harmonies (Three)
Status: Chapter forty-five of many
Genre: m/m romance, drama, city life, businessmen
Rating: R
Content: entryway intimacy, blue, stretching, bedtime, calluses, loves, a cold floor, flowers, texts, questions, an invitation.
Length: about 2,300 words
Summary: Kurt and Emil entertain themselves while Peregrine takes a greater interest in the person he’s painting.
Master list
Kurt attempted to unlock the condo’s front door, but he was hard and Emil was eager and his fingers just didn’t want to work properly. Emil slipped between Kurt and the door and pulled Kurt down for a kiss. The kiss was deep and wonderful and so very distracting.
Kurt had to get the door open. He needed Emil, but couldn’t have more than a taste until the door was closed with them on the inside.
The key turned and the dead bolt thudded opened. Only one more lock and they would be inside.
Emil’s fingers ran down Kurt’s chest and teased under his waistband. Kurt wrenched his mouth away for long enough to slip the key into the door knob, but then Emil took possession of his mouth and his hands got even clumsier. But the lock finally opened and with it the door.
Only Emil was leaning against the door and he fell backwards.
Kurt grabbed him with his left arm and pulled the key from the lock with his right and then kicked the door closed behind him as he lowered Emil to the floor. Emil untucked Kurt’s shirt and had his hands against Kurt’s skin before he touched the floor.
Kurt didn’t think he could make it into the bedroom. Only beautiful, hungry Emil didn’t seem to care that they were still in the entryway. Five seconds of Emil’s undivided attention and Kurt didn’t care either.
--
Peregrine opened a new tube of white. This corner of the room was a thousand shades of light blue.
Mr. Zipfel waltzed in. “Are you still at it?”
Mr. Zipfel had taken off his shiny double breasted vest, high collar, and coat with tails, but he still had on his shiny light blue, tight, calf-length pants, now with a matching smoking jacket. This had frog closures like Ivory’s jacket, but Ivory’s were asymmetrical, giving the jacket an Asian feel and ze’s light blue satin was matte. Did Mr. Zipfel dress Ivory, too?
Peregrine mixed in a dot of cobalt. “I told you this would take a while.”
“But Ivory has work tomorrow.”
Peregrine shrugged. “Then Ivory can go to bed.”
“You can paint without him?”
Peregrine shaded a couch cushion, giving it depth. “A lot of the painting isn’t Ivory. If you’d wanted Ivory on a solid backdrop, you should have told me.”
He gestured Mr. Zipfel over to look.
Mr. Zipfel put his hand to his chest. “May I?”
“Of course. It’s your painting.” Peregrine turned to Ivory. “You too.”
Ze’d been sitting at that harp for over two hours. Zir muscled had to be in need of stretching.
Mr. Zipfel enthused over the barely started portrait. Peregrine didn’t roll his eyes. Mr. Zipfel was a paying customer.
Ivory got up slowly and made no move to look at the painting. Peregrine did a few stretching exercises. He never noticed the aches while he painted. Ivory raised zir hands over zir head, lifting zir jacket hem above zir waist and flashing a bit a skin.
Mr. Zipfel sighed. “I told you to put a shirt on.”
“A shirt would show and ruin the line of the jacket.”
Peregrine was pretty sure they were rehashing an old argument. Time for a distraction. “What kind of calluses do you get from a harp?”
He held out his hand. Ivory looked at it, then at Mr. Zipfel, and then at Peregrine. Peregrine wiggled his fingers. Ivory sat zir hand in his. Mr. Zipfel harrumphed. Peregrine ignored Mr. Zipfel and ran his fingers over Ivory’s.
Ivory had working hands, putting a lie to the image of an idle house youth, but they were soft and well taken care of.
Peregrine held out his own. “I have a few calluses from my paint brush and some from biking everywhere, but most of my bangs and scars are from the hand tools I use to make my own canvases.”
“I thought artist bought them,” said Ivory.
“I like nonstandard sizes.” Peregrine gave a brief account of getting this canvas ready to paint on, but Ivory asked a lot of questions, so Peregrine went into depth. He also went back to painting.
Mr. Zipfel watched for several minutes. “If you don’t need him, Ivory can come to bed.”
With Mr. Zipfel? Maybe the sex was really good or something. Possibly inertia and guilt weren’t the only things keeping Ivory here.
Ivory shook zir head and sat on the couch. “I think I’ll stay up.”
Mr. Zipfel sighed heavily. “Come to bed later.”
He trudged from the room. Peregrine waited until a door shut at the other end of the house. “He didn’t really expect sex while I was here, did he?”
Ivory smiled. “He doesn’t do sex.”
Peregrine had a lot of questions, but they weren’t any of his business. “I don’t really do sex either. That’s why I need two boyfriends.”
Ivory raised zir eyebrows.
Peregrine grinned. “So they can keep each other company.”
“You’re joking.”
Peregrine shook his head and added a highlight o the couch cushion. “If you pop by the gallery, you can see them. My two loves.”
“I would think painting was one of your loves.”
Peregrine paused. “I don’t paint because I love it. I paint because I can’t not paint.”
“And you make money.”
“I support myself.” That shadow that had refused to cooperate on the harp came into focus. He added the correct shading to make the painting reflect the original. “And you’re a doctor?”
Ivory nodded while looking at the floor. “I work at a clinic a few days a week. I just moved up from intern in July, so I finally have days off.”
“Twenty-four hour shifts?”
Ivory shrugged. “I’d give up more than sleep to be a doctor.” Ivory sighed. “What pronoun do you call me in your head?”
“Ze.”
Ivory sighed again. “That’s as good as any. Have you ever met anyone like me?”
“No. But I know people who are androgynous in different ways.”
Ivory crosses zir ankles. “How?”
“My friend Zan had breast removal surgery over the summer and her hair even shorter than mine. And Willow dresses as a boy one day and a girl on another. Or a boy for dinner and a girl for dancing.”
“Zan is your friend. Who is Willow?”
“Willow is my younger lover’s younger sibling.”
“No pronouns.”
“Willow says to use she, so maybe I should. Willow’s boyfriend does.”
“Even like that, someone loves her.”
Ouch. That sentiment probably explained why Ivory was still in a place that had zir so unhappy. “Zan’s got a girlfriend. No matter who you are, somewhere out there is your other half.”
Ivory grinned and shook zir head. “You don’t really believe that.”
Peregrine shrugged. “It took two men together to be my one true love, but then I’ve always been a problem child.”
“You may need them, but do they need you?”
Peregrine added detail to the wall behind the couch. He didn’t want to think of Kurt and Emil happy without him in their lives. “I think we are all broken in some way. But maybe you’ll find that one perfect person.”
Ivory grinned. “Or I’ll have to learn to be content with two?”
Peregrine shook his head. “No, I’m just the luckiest guy in the world.”
--
Emil peeled himself off the cold hard floor. Area rugs. They needed lots of area rugs. Especially if Kurt continued to want to enjoy every inch of Emil’s skin. Seventy degrees wasn’t warm enough without clothes. But that didn’t stop Emil from sashaying into the kitchen without a stitch on.
Behind him Kurt growled. Emil glanced over his shoulder. Kurt growled louder and got to his knees. He was so beautiful and needy. He couldn’t get enough of Emil, but that didn’t keep him from trying. Emil pretended to ignore Kurt as Kurt came up behind him and he squealed when Kurt grabbed him. Kurt growled again. Emil rubbed up against him then stepped away. “What have we here? Flowers?”
“Umhum,” Kurt said from the vicinity of Emil’s ear.
Emil pulled the vase towards him and touched the blue and purple flowers. “Are these my apology?”
“If I only buy you flowers when I’ve done something stupid, then if I just buy you flowers because they are pretty and you like them you’ll think I’ve done something worth apologizing over.”
“Are these because they are pretty and I like them?”
Kurt rubbed his hard front against Emil’s ass. “Can I get the thanks for the present without the humiliation of being an idiot?”
Emil turned and wrapped his arms around Kurt’s neck. “I think you can convince me.”
Kurt’s breath was harsh against Emil’s shoulder. “Here or in bed?”
Emil grinned. “Have you ever had sex in a kitchen?”
Kurt swallowed hard and shook his head.
Kurt was Emil sweet, big, innocent virgin. “Then today is your lucky day.”
--
Peregrine checked his phone. Three am. Ivory opened zir eyes and sat up. “Are you done?”
“No.” Peregrine put his phone away. He’d respond to the texts later. “I thought you were asleep.”
“No such luck.”
Peregrine smiled. “I really don’t mind. But if you’re up, I might get nosy.”
Ivory lifted zir eyebrows. “You are already nosy.”
“Do you think Mr. Zipfel is asleep? I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“He needs his beauty rest.”
As if that answered his question. “What does he want you for if it’s not sex?”
Ivory stopped moving and then slowly finished crossing his ankles.
Peregrine was being terribly nosy, but he always was in the wee hours. Ivory and Mr. Zipfel’s relationship was a puzzle. “In bed, I mean. Is he a cuddler?”
“Are you?”
“No. Getting too hot gives me nightmares. One of my lovers is a hot water bottle and the other is a furnace.”
“Do they know you think of them that way?”
“I think of them lots of ways. An incubus and a naive country boy. An Incan high priest and Thor. A king and a prisoner of war. A male concubine and a man’s young lover. Kurt is a dragon with big, strong wings. When we were young he hadn’t yet began to use them, so they flopped about and got in his way. But now he’s a dragon in flight, nothing can stand against him.”
“And the other one?”
“Emil? He’s a bird of some kind.” Peregrine added a bit of texture to the carpet. “I’ve been with him six years, so you’d think I’d know what kind, but he still eludes me, like he isn’t all the way hatched, but once he’s out of that self-imposed shell, he’ll fly. I know he will. He was meant to fly.”
How much of that shell was Peregrine’s fault? Would Emil be flying already if Peregrine were a better man?
“And what are you?”
Peregrine grinned at Ivory. “I’m a phoenix.”
“Isn’t that a bit egotistical?”
Peregrine shrugged. “It might be if I’d come up with it, but my animal was lovingly bestowed on me by my lovers. They decided together on one of their dates.”
“They date?”
“Of course they date. I don’t make they stay at home and wait for me when I’m working.” Of course if Peregrine did they could still entertain themselves quite well in bed.
“What if people know about them but don’t know about you?”
“The only people I care about knowing are the three of us. But Emil’s family knows, as do our friends and Kurt’s colleagues. I’m not going to lie to make things easier for anyone, but I’ve allowed people to think Kurt and Emil were dating and all we share is a place to live.”
“Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Should it? I know they love me. I paint my love for them with every stroke. I don’t need to shout it from the rooftops.”
Ivory smiled. “I was right. You’re egotistical. He likes to cuddle and show me off at parties.”
“Buy him a dog.”
“What?”
“One of those cute, little, fluffy ones that wouldn’t be out of place in a Rococo painting. Did Madame de Pompadour have a lap dog?”
Ivory shook zir head. “I have no clue.”
“Neither do I. But the dog should be white and not mind bows in its hair. Long haired maybe.”
“Should I be happy that I can be replaced by a dog?”
Peregrine looked up from the painted couch. “Yes. If you felt the need to replace yourself with another young person who was content to cuddle and be dressed up, you’d be here for a great deal longer. I’ll even paint him a portrait of the dog.”
Ivory huffed a laugh. “He’d like that. But it better not shed. He hates things getting dirty.”
“No, it just needs to like to be brushed. Such a dog must exist somewhere.”
Ivory turned away. “Sure.”
Ivory needed a bigger group of friends. “Come to church with me on Sunday.”
“Why?”
“Why not? Kurt and I can pick you up if you need a ride. You’ll fit right in.”
Ivory looked down at zirself and back at Peregrine. “You think?”
“Trust me.”
“Why?”
“How could taking an hour and a half out of your Sunday morning hurt you in any way? You don’t work then do you?”
Ivory shook zir head.
“Then it’s a date.” Peregrine wasn’t normally this pushy about anything. But if Ivory didn’t like it, ze didn’t have to go back. The world was bigger than one man’s Rococo home and his group of friends. Peregrine felt the need to give Ivory a little taste of how big the world was.
Title: Meant to Fly
Series: A Balance of Harmonies (Three)
Status: Chapter forty-five of many
Genre: m/m romance, drama, city life, businessmen
Rating: R
Content: entryway intimacy, blue, stretching, bedtime, calluses, loves, a cold floor, flowers, texts, questions, an invitation.
Length: about 2,300 words
Summary: Kurt and Emil entertain themselves while Peregrine takes a greater interest in the person he’s painting.
Master list
Kurt attempted to unlock the condo’s front door, but he was hard and Emil was eager and his fingers just didn’t want to work properly. Emil slipped between Kurt and the door and pulled Kurt down for a kiss. The kiss was deep and wonderful and so very distracting.
Kurt had to get the door open. He needed Emil, but couldn’t have more than a taste until the door was closed with them on the inside.
The key turned and the dead bolt thudded opened. Only one more lock and they would be inside.
Emil’s fingers ran down Kurt’s chest and teased under his waistband. Kurt wrenched his mouth away for long enough to slip the key into the door knob, but then Emil took possession of his mouth and his hands got even clumsier. But the lock finally opened and with it the door.
Only Emil was leaning against the door and he fell backwards.
Kurt grabbed him with his left arm and pulled the key from the lock with his right and then kicked the door closed behind him as he lowered Emil to the floor. Emil untucked Kurt’s shirt and had his hands against Kurt’s skin before he touched the floor.
Kurt didn’t think he could make it into the bedroom. Only beautiful, hungry Emil didn’t seem to care that they were still in the entryway. Five seconds of Emil’s undivided attention and Kurt didn’t care either.
--
Peregrine opened a new tube of white. This corner of the room was a thousand shades of light blue.
Mr. Zipfel waltzed in. “Are you still at it?”
Mr. Zipfel had taken off his shiny double breasted vest, high collar, and coat with tails, but he still had on his shiny light blue, tight, calf-length pants, now with a matching smoking jacket. This had frog closures like Ivory’s jacket, but Ivory’s were asymmetrical, giving the jacket an Asian feel and ze’s light blue satin was matte. Did Mr. Zipfel dress Ivory, too?
Peregrine mixed in a dot of cobalt. “I told you this would take a while.”
“But Ivory has work tomorrow.”
Peregrine shrugged. “Then Ivory can go to bed.”
“You can paint without him?”
Peregrine shaded a couch cushion, giving it depth. “A lot of the painting isn’t Ivory. If you’d wanted Ivory on a solid backdrop, you should have told me.”
He gestured Mr. Zipfel over to look.
Mr. Zipfel put his hand to his chest. “May I?”
“Of course. It’s your painting.” Peregrine turned to Ivory. “You too.”
Ze’d been sitting at that harp for over two hours. Zir muscled had to be in need of stretching.
Mr. Zipfel enthused over the barely started portrait. Peregrine didn’t roll his eyes. Mr. Zipfel was a paying customer.
Ivory got up slowly and made no move to look at the painting. Peregrine did a few stretching exercises. He never noticed the aches while he painted. Ivory raised zir hands over zir head, lifting zir jacket hem above zir waist and flashing a bit a skin.
Mr. Zipfel sighed. “I told you to put a shirt on.”
“A shirt would show and ruin the line of the jacket.”
Peregrine was pretty sure they were rehashing an old argument. Time for a distraction. “What kind of calluses do you get from a harp?”
He held out his hand. Ivory looked at it, then at Mr. Zipfel, and then at Peregrine. Peregrine wiggled his fingers. Ivory sat zir hand in his. Mr. Zipfel harrumphed. Peregrine ignored Mr. Zipfel and ran his fingers over Ivory’s.
Ivory had working hands, putting a lie to the image of an idle house youth, but they were soft and well taken care of.
Peregrine held out his own. “I have a few calluses from my paint brush and some from biking everywhere, but most of my bangs and scars are from the hand tools I use to make my own canvases.”
“I thought artist bought them,” said Ivory.
“I like nonstandard sizes.” Peregrine gave a brief account of getting this canvas ready to paint on, but Ivory asked a lot of questions, so Peregrine went into depth. He also went back to painting.
Mr. Zipfel watched for several minutes. “If you don’t need him, Ivory can come to bed.”
With Mr. Zipfel? Maybe the sex was really good or something. Possibly inertia and guilt weren’t the only things keeping Ivory here.
Ivory shook zir head and sat on the couch. “I think I’ll stay up.”
Mr. Zipfel sighed heavily. “Come to bed later.”
He trudged from the room. Peregrine waited until a door shut at the other end of the house. “He didn’t really expect sex while I was here, did he?”
Ivory smiled. “He doesn’t do sex.”
Peregrine had a lot of questions, but they weren’t any of his business. “I don’t really do sex either. That’s why I need two boyfriends.”
Ivory raised zir eyebrows.
Peregrine grinned. “So they can keep each other company.”
“You’re joking.”
Peregrine shook his head and added a highlight o the couch cushion. “If you pop by the gallery, you can see them. My two loves.”
“I would think painting was one of your loves.”
Peregrine paused. “I don’t paint because I love it. I paint because I can’t not paint.”
“And you make money.”
“I support myself.” That shadow that had refused to cooperate on the harp came into focus. He added the correct shading to make the painting reflect the original. “And you’re a doctor?”
Ivory nodded while looking at the floor. “I work at a clinic a few days a week. I just moved up from intern in July, so I finally have days off.”
“Twenty-four hour shifts?”
Ivory shrugged. “I’d give up more than sleep to be a doctor.” Ivory sighed. “What pronoun do you call me in your head?”
“Ze.”
Ivory sighed again. “That’s as good as any. Have you ever met anyone like me?”
“No. But I know people who are androgynous in different ways.”
Ivory crosses zir ankles. “How?”
“My friend Zan had breast removal surgery over the summer and her hair even shorter than mine. And Willow dresses as a boy one day and a girl on another. Or a boy for dinner and a girl for dancing.”
“Zan is your friend. Who is Willow?”
“Willow is my younger lover’s younger sibling.”
“No pronouns.”
“Willow says to use she, so maybe I should. Willow’s boyfriend does.”
“Even like that, someone loves her.”
Ouch. That sentiment probably explained why Ivory was still in a place that had zir so unhappy. “Zan’s got a girlfriend. No matter who you are, somewhere out there is your other half.”
Ivory grinned and shook zir head. “You don’t really believe that.”
Peregrine shrugged. “It took two men together to be my one true love, but then I’ve always been a problem child.”
“You may need them, but do they need you?”
Peregrine added detail to the wall behind the couch. He didn’t want to think of Kurt and Emil happy without him in their lives. “I think we are all broken in some way. But maybe you’ll find that one perfect person.”
Ivory grinned. “Or I’ll have to learn to be content with two?”
Peregrine shook his head. “No, I’m just the luckiest guy in the world.”
--
Emil peeled himself off the cold hard floor. Area rugs. They needed lots of area rugs. Especially if Kurt continued to want to enjoy every inch of Emil’s skin. Seventy degrees wasn’t warm enough without clothes. But that didn’t stop Emil from sashaying into the kitchen without a stitch on.
Behind him Kurt growled. Emil glanced over his shoulder. Kurt growled louder and got to his knees. He was so beautiful and needy. He couldn’t get enough of Emil, but that didn’t keep him from trying. Emil pretended to ignore Kurt as Kurt came up behind him and he squealed when Kurt grabbed him. Kurt growled again. Emil rubbed up against him then stepped away. “What have we here? Flowers?”
“Umhum,” Kurt said from the vicinity of Emil’s ear.
Emil pulled the vase towards him and touched the blue and purple flowers. “Are these my apology?”
“If I only buy you flowers when I’ve done something stupid, then if I just buy you flowers because they are pretty and you like them you’ll think I’ve done something worth apologizing over.”
“Are these because they are pretty and I like them?”
Kurt rubbed his hard front against Emil’s ass. “Can I get the thanks for the present without the humiliation of being an idiot?”
Emil turned and wrapped his arms around Kurt’s neck. “I think you can convince me.”
Kurt’s breath was harsh against Emil’s shoulder. “Here or in bed?”
Emil grinned. “Have you ever had sex in a kitchen?”
Kurt swallowed hard and shook his head.
Kurt was Emil sweet, big, innocent virgin. “Then today is your lucky day.”
--
Peregrine checked his phone. Three am. Ivory opened zir eyes and sat up. “Are you done?”
“No.” Peregrine put his phone away. He’d respond to the texts later. “I thought you were asleep.”
“No such luck.”
Peregrine smiled. “I really don’t mind. But if you’re up, I might get nosy.”
Ivory lifted zir eyebrows. “You are already nosy.”
“Do you think Mr. Zipfel is asleep? I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“He needs his beauty rest.”
As if that answered his question. “What does he want you for if it’s not sex?”
Ivory stopped moving and then slowly finished crossing his ankles.
Peregrine was being terribly nosy, but he always was in the wee hours. Ivory and Mr. Zipfel’s relationship was a puzzle. “In bed, I mean. Is he a cuddler?”
“Are you?”
“No. Getting too hot gives me nightmares. One of my lovers is a hot water bottle and the other is a furnace.”
“Do they know you think of them that way?”
“I think of them lots of ways. An incubus and a naive country boy. An Incan high priest and Thor. A king and a prisoner of war. A male concubine and a man’s young lover. Kurt is a dragon with big, strong wings. When we were young he hadn’t yet began to use them, so they flopped about and got in his way. But now he’s a dragon in flight, nothing can stand against him.”
“And the other one?”
“Emil? He’s a bird of some kind.” Peregrine added a bit of texture to the carpet. “I’ve been with him six years, so you’d think I’d know what kind, but he still eludes me, like he isn’t all the way hatched, but once he’s out of that self-imposed shell, he’ll fly. I know he will. He was meant to fly.”
How much of that shell was Peregrine’s fault? Would Emil be flying already if Peregrine were a better man?
“And what are you?”
Peregrine grinned at Ivory. “I’m a phoenix.”
“Isn’t that a bit egotistical?”
Peregrine shrugged. “It might be if I’d come up with it, but my animal was lovingly bestowed on me by my lovers. They decided together on one of their dates.”
“They date?”
“Of course they date. I don’t make they stay at home and wait for me when I’m working.” Of course if Peregrine did they could still entertain themselves quite well in bed.
“What if people know about them but don’t know about you?”
“The only people I care about knowing are the three of us. But Emil’s family knows, as do our friends and Kurt’s colleagues. I’m not going to lie to make things easier for anyone, but I’ve allowed people to think Kurt and Emil were dating and all we share is a place to live.”
“Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Should it? I know they love me. I paint my love for them with every stroke. I don’t need to shout it from the rooftops.”
Ivory smiled. “I was right. You’re egotistical. He likes to cuddle and show me off at parties.”
“Buy him a dog.”
“What?”
“One of those cute, little, fluffy ones that wouldn’t be out of place in a Rococo painting. Did Madame de Pompadour have a lap dog?”
Ivory shook zir head. “I have no clue.”
“Neither do I. But the dog should be white and not mind bows in its hair. Long haired maybe.”
“Should I be happy that I can be replaced by a dog?”
Peregrine looked up from the painted couch. “Yes. If you felt the need to replace yourself with another young person who was content to cuddle and be dressed up, you’d be here for a great deal longer. I’ll even paint him a portrait of the dog.”
Ivory huffed a laugh. “He’d like that. But it better not shed. He hates things getting dirty.”
“No, it just needs to like to be brushed. Such a dog must exist somewhere.”
Ivory turned away. “Sure.”
Ivory needed a bigger group of friends. “Come to church with me on Sunday.”
“Why?”
“Why not? Kurt and I can pick you up if you need a ride. You’ll fit right in.”
Ivory looked down at zirself and back at Peregrine. “You think?”
“Trust me.”
“Why?”
“How could taking an hour and a half out of your Sunday morning hurt you in any way? You don’t work then do you?”
Ivory shook zir head.
“Then it’s a date.” Peregrine wasn’t normally this pushy about anything. But if Ivory didn’t like it, ze didn’t have to go back. The world was bigger than one man’s Rococo home and his group of friends. Peregrine felt the need to give Ivory a little taste of how big the world was.
