The little gestures helped. She grew more adept at making them, and he learned from her example. It was easier with her than with Andreas to make the overtures, however small, but he did start to pay attention to the other man's routines instead of sulking in rigid isolation. Thinking of it as more establishing ties than going anywhere near the word "husband" as it did not apply to himself, that helped. Even if he would have to face that fact eventually.

He approached it with her one afternoon in the garden, where she seemed to be spending most of her alone time.

"Does it ever puzzle you to think of both of us as your husbands?" he asked, approaching the subject sideways before he could lose his nerve or, more likely, hide out of reflex behind something tangential to the topic but not addressing the problem.

She tilted her head at him, wide-eyed, brushing her hair out of her face with a dirty gloved hand. "No. But," she added, as he chuckled and reached up to wipe the new smear of dirt from her face. "I'm more used to the concept than you are. We consider that a person might have more than one spouse, it's not strange for me to think that I might have ..."

"One more husband in the future?" he asked, his voice sardonic and his chin lifting, the air suddenly chill on his skin. "Or a wife?"

"If necessary, although I don't think it will be," she told him. Maybe her voice was a little tart in response to his insult or hurt or both. "Handling the two of you is quite enough for me, right now."

Aleksandr slumped down onto the bench behind her. "I'm sorry, Beata, I didn't mean..." No, he had meant to hurt her. "I didn't mean to offend you." That, at least, was truthful enough. "It's not easy for me to think of having to share you with someone else, a stranger..."

She stripped off her gloves and covered his hands with hers. "But if I did marry again, it wouldn't be a stranger, you know? Our custom isn't just to marry whoever we please, it has to be arranged with all the relevant and interested parties. And that includes you too, now. You and Andreas both."

He didn't realize that including the other man in the discussion didn't hurt until they were talking about something else entirely. She explained to him what she was doing, how this plant had to be tied up so it didn't crawl along the ground, cover itself over, and part of it rot away for lack of sunlight. They didn't stop chattering until the shadow fell over them, tall and broad across the shoulders. The Commander.

"Andreas." Aleksandr looked up and nodded a greeting, smiling. Or trying to smile at least. It didn't feel like much of a smile.

Beata dragged herself to her feet and wrapped her arms around him with unfettered affection. "Hello, stranger." Andreas had been spending several hours over the last few days at his embassy, giving detailed reports to the new ambassadors who were finally on their own. "Everyone settling in well?"

"For the moment," Andreas looked a little bemused at her hug, though he returned it, looking over the top of her head at the other man. Aleksandr didn't know what to make of that, returning the look with a wary frown and trying not to assume that he hadn't done something he should have, like hug the other man, too. Did he expect that? No, Andreas was talking. "There's apparently some kind of unrest along the borders with mercenaries, which is why Fleet Commander Augustus took his leave a little earlier than planned."

Aleksandr and Beata both winced. Since the war had ended it left a number of mercenary companies without work, or at least, without work they were accustomed to. The less scrupulous among them had taken to making their own work, and now everyone was dealing with a pirate and smuggler problem. "I'm sorry," he said, meaning it. "Anything we can do?"

"Our field and rescue teams have the situation in hand, but thank you."

It was a civil start to a conversation. As long as they talked about work and things like that, he and Andreas got along well. It was when they started acting like more than comrades or co-workers that they ran into trouble. Beata returned to her gardening as Andreas took a seat on the bench next to the other man.

"What are your people saying about this?" Aleksandr asked, despite his instincts for self-preservation telling him he shouldn't. He didn't need to know. He shouldn't ask. The diplomat in him, of all things, reprimanded the young man hiding from anything unfamiliar and uncomfortable. He did need to know.

Andreas shook his head. "About this? The raiders or... More of the same. They don't believe this will work, they're surprised it's lasted this long. They don't see how a symbolic union is supposed to foment peace. We are..." he straightened, thinking. Aleksandr had noticed that when he didn't know what to do with himself he assumed a military bearing to give himself time to think. "... a practical people. If this is what's required to gain an alliance and a truce for all sides we'll do it, but that doesn't mean we understand. As a people," he added, smiling wryly. "I'm sure there are individuals who understand even less."

Beata snorted, but otherwise continued grubbing in the dirt, her back to them. Andreas shook his head. "I think," Aleksandr said, before it could get any messier. "That puts me on the other side of the ..." He couldn't complete the metaphor and let it awkwardly drop. "What you call marriage we call union under law, and while most of the time it's done for reasons of romance or ... or one kind of love or another, sometimes it is done to keep two rival groups from fighting."

Andreas smiled. Just a little. "Well. In this case, I would say it's still to keep two groups from fighting. There just happens to be a third group in the mix."

Aleksandr gave him a long, dry stare. "That doesn't help me very much, thanks ever so."

"Why do you fight with him?"

Beata was helping him get ready for bed, even though she didn't have to. He wasn't sure whose idea it was, his or hers, or maybe it hadn't been either of their ideas, she was just doing it. He splashed cold water on his face, washing off the sweat of the day, while she hung up his clothes for the next day.

"I thought the valet did that," he mused, glancing over and watching her brush down his suit. "I don't fight with him." Not the valet.

"You do," she said, soft and tired or maybe just concerned. "I don't think you mean to, and you don't do it in any obvious way, but you do fight with him. The two of you fight. Why?"

Aleksandr tried to find an answer to that, especially since she had already acknowledged that it wasn't a question he necessarily knew the answer to. Not consciously, at least. He leaned against the sink counter while he thought. "I don't know. I don't mind him. He's not bad, but..."

But he didn't want a husband. He had never wanted a husband, even setting aside the cultural prejudices against such things, he had never looked at another man and thought that man was anything other than abstractly handsome in the most aesthetic sense. He'd never been sexually attracted to another man or considered sharing his life with one. Or anyone, maybe.

"But...?" Beata tugged him away from the sink where, he realized, he'd been leaning against a wet patch. "Here, you'd better take that off and put on dry."

"But, this marriage entire isn't something I wanted or expected. Let alone a marriage to another man. I'm sorry, Beata, but I don't know how to behave any other way than how I am." He was sorry, too. He expected hearing that would be hard for her.

And it was. He watched her fingers clench on his shirt as she put it aside, then watched her force her shoulders back down. "I don't know how to make it any easier on you than I have," she said, petulant, maybe, or maybe tired of his whining, which he was doing. He thought he was, anyway. "I don't know what will..."

She fell silent as he came up behind her and started to knead her shoulders. "You don't need to work to make this easier on me, you know. I need to get through this on my own. This needs to work because of what we do with ourselves, not because of what we do for each other..." Even as he said that he knew it was wrong. He shook his head. "I mean, not because we're carrying each other. We need to stand on our own ... changes ..."

It didn't take the sadness from her smile when she looked over her shoulder at him. One tiny hand covered his. "Thank you, though. I appreciate you trying."

That was all it was, for now. Trying. He stayed in his suite and watched her go settle into bed next to her other husband, who was reading with the light on. Even Aleksandr knew his routines by now, the little things he liked to have ready or to do during the day. Tea, juice, a run, a book by the bed at night. He could probably name the title Andreas was reading, and yet it was still hard to accept all this into a part of his life. It belonged to someone else. Someone who, Aleksandr felt, should have no part of his. He didn't know how to change that.

Beata was leaning over and talking to him. Probably asking him something about his day or his book or whatever it was they had been talking about before Aleksandr had focused on them. She was doing her best, and he was finding it very easy to care about her, so maybe it was working. At least in that aspect. He could, he thought, eventually come to love her. Or at least to work with her as a partner in a political relationship. Very easily.

But there was that third between them, and he didn't know how to deal with that. Relationships, partnerships did not come in threes. They just didn't.

Andreas said something and Beata laughed, and Aleksandr disappeared from the doorway and into the darkness of his suite. They were expecting him in the bed later in the night but he could retreat to his rooms if he needed to. He could spend the night there and disappoint them.

Sitting in the office chair by the window, he wasn't sure if he felt gloomy because he didn't want to disappoint them or because all the light and warmth and company was in the next room, and there was nothing here but silence.

Andreas was a little surprised that Aleksandr made the first overtures outside of Beata's company. After the first day or so he concluded that the man was best left in peace to come to terms with his new role in private, and hadn't pushed it. And for a few weeks that sufficed. Aleksandr spent fewer and fewer nights in his own rooms, joined the other two in their great suite more often. Putting Beata between them, of course, which Andreas was just as happy to do. They got along well with her individually; all three of them was another matter.

And yet. A month or so into the fall season, Aleskandr approached him with a problem. Something trivial. A trade related issue regarding a shipping route that crossed both their nations' territories, and he'd been asked by a friend if there was anything he could do to help. Not that Andreas could smooth his way at all, but he could offer advice how to approach the person involved. As it happened, it was someone he vaguely knew, a man who had left the military for the diplomatic corps.

He wondered, later that night, if Aleksandr had known that and done it on purpose. Maybe so.

Things eased the next morning at breakfast. A couple of days later he asked how the trade agreement was getting on, and they spent five whole minutes in conversation. Bit by bit, it grew easier to talk to him.

A week later he noticed Aleksandr in the library for the first time, browsing through the books and datacards while Andreas himself sat stretched out on one of the chairs to read by the fading light. The whole room painted a beautiful picture, he had to admit. He had grown used to the effort Beata's people put into their aesthetics, and as much as he would look forward to returning home in the last third of the average year he thought he would miss this already.

"Looking for something in particular?" he offered, by way of letting the younger man know he was there and offering a hand in friendship or something like.

Aleksandr looked over at him, shook his head. "Something in general. The culture or folklore of ..." One hand gestured around him, meaning these people.

"Ah." Andreas frowned. "There's.... I believe there's a folklore section with the children's literature, but they don't seem to have much readily available outside of history or children's stories." Certainly, he knew, they didn't have any religion that was commonly or popularly held. Small temples in out of the way villages, Beata didn't seem to have any faith in a higher power on her own.

"Hmm." If Aleksandr drew any conclusions from that, he didn't voice them. Instead he turned towards what Andreas remembered were the sections on philosophy. As good a place to start as any.

It did make him curious, though. "Are there things you miss? About your home, I mean." Things of faith, not that he meant to pry that deeply, but since they were on the subject.

Aleksandr didn't look around, instead ran his finger through the air in front of the screen, down the list of titles. "Of course there are things I miss. Sights and sounds..."

Whatever they were, it cut him deeply. Or made him restless, or both. Andreas frowned, watching him, but didn't press just yet. "I was thinking that when we manage to work our way back around to the Empire, I'll miss this place a little. It is very beautiful."

"That it is." But Aleksandr didn't look up, not for a full minute or so.

And when he did it was first at Andreas. And only then he looked out the window, around at the room. The architecture was as stunning as the cleverness with which they hid the technology, circuits and power sources and lights. The attention they paid to the materials with which they built, chosen both for their sustainability and for their beauty. It was attention to the look of the thing on a level that both of their nations had long since passed out of favor in exchange for efficiency, sustainability, and what would best suit their populations.

Evidently what best suited the population of Beata's world was having something nice to look at. "Do you think ..." Aleksandr's focused turned towards him, and once again Andreas found himself wondering whether this fevered intensity was something the younger man had always had or if throwing himself headlong at things was a new habit. "Do you think that we lost something, somewhere in our history? Some idea that beauty is a thing to be appreciated, just as necessary as function or sustainability or health?"

Aleksandr shook his head, looking back out the window where the sunset was painting everything in hues of gold or shades of gray. "I don't know." Not the usual way he answered, though, but something absent-minded. He was either thinking about what Andreas said or about whatever it was he missed from his homeworld that brought him to the library.

The aesthetics of his homeworld, maybe. Or of his faith or philosophy, considering that was what he was looking up.

For the first time since they had met on their wedding day, Andreas wanted to go to him. Offer some sort of comfort. But he was not a comforting man, and he didn't even know where to begin with Aleksandr.

"What do you think you'll feel, when you go home?" It was as close to the current topic of conversation as he could get and still ask the question he meant to ask.

Aleksandr half-stared out the window, still, as he made his selection on the terminal and transferred the texts to his tablet. "I can't even begin to guess. Relief. Awkwardness. For all that it'll be good to be home, I won't be able to take certain things for granted again." He did not specify what those certain things were; maybe nothing in particular. Maybe it was just a way of saying that this had changed him as much as he expected the others to change.

"And yet, you sound as though you take that for granted," Andreas pointed out.

Aleksandr looked over at him. "Do I?" His lips stretched into a smile, he made an appropriate sounding wry sort of a laugh, but there was absolutely no warmth or humor behind it. "I suppose I do. I don't..." he shook his head, dropping his gaze and the arrogance at the same time. "I've been on too many other worlds to even know what home is anymore. Every time I go home things have changed."

Andreas sat up a little straighter, realizing at least a part of what he meant, and that it was true for him as well. While they were changing themselves and each other over here, the world and the people they had left behind were changing, too. Even if it was something as simple as making new friends or discovering a new taste in food. They were all caught up in this, and he kept finding new ways in which it rubbed or hurt or grated or was otherwise uncomfortable.

Perhaps fortunately, Aleksandr left before they could bring each other down any more than they already had. Andreas tried to lose himself in his book again, but gave it up a short while later and went to bed.

Beata seemed surprised, but he wasn't, when Aleksandr didn't join them in bed that night.

The house seemed emptier without her. Of course, it was a big enough house that it didn’t take much for either man to feel its emptiness. Neither of them was used to such space or ostentation.

Aleksandr walked down the hall to their bedroom and wondered what would happen when he got there. It was only two nights. Possibly Andreas and he would roll over and go to sleep, elbowing each other in the night without Beata there to separate them. Possibly Andreas wouldn’t come to bed at all; it wouldn’t be the first time the old man stayed up too late reading over briefs and history books only to fall asleep in the arm chair.

But Andreas was there when he arrived, getting ready for bed and swishing the cleanser around in his mouth. Like any other evening as they made ready for bed, stripping down to undergarments and washing faces and all those other things they did as they settled in for the night. There was a book on the nightstand by Andreas’s side of the bed. He didn’t seem inclined to read it.

“Are you all right?”

Aleksandr realized he’d been staring. Not something that was entirely polite for a husband to a husband, and one eyelid twitched out of reflex at that thought. No, he had a husband, he’d admitted it out loud and there was no point in hiding from himself. He had agreed to this ridiculous...

Andreas made a disgusted noise and wiped his mouth, stomping towards the bedroom. He did everything at a stomp when he was being so terribly military.

He splashed cold water on his now flushed face, angry. At himself, for being an idiot. At Andreas, for forcing the issue and then at himself again because Andreas hadn’t forced a thing. Had made it clear that there would be no forcing involved. And so had Beata, although her disappointment and terrified concern had made it hard not to at least give it a try, and what followed was not something he had ever imagined would be so easy.

Not that it was easy. There were moments like this.

But it was not as hard as it could have been. It didn’t have to be as hard as he was making it and he didn’t know any other way of behaving. These flinches and grimaces were ingrained. Drawn deep into him like the wrinkles already creeping in at the corners of his eyes, like the thin press of his lips or the way his fingers clenched and drew bent at the topmost knuckle, making claws of his hands. He had to throw himself into this shoulders to the wall and break it down or someone would have to teach him otherwise. And now he was just delaying the inevitable, unless he wanted to sleep somewhere else tonight. That really would be hurting Andreas unnecessarily.

Scrub face, swish, take a couple of deep breaths. He glanced through the open door and across the bedroom to the liquor cabinet, then made himself turn out the light and close the door behind him and crawl into the too-big bed.

Andreas’s eyebrows raised, but he didn’t look up from what he was reading. There was something Aleksandr should be reading too, wasn’t there. He didn’t remember what it was.

“It does feel bigger and emptier without her,” Andreas commented, in his measured and graveling tones. Andreas sounded exactly as old as he was; it made Aleksandr wonder if he would sound like that when he was that old. Another sticking point, but far less of one.

He nodded, a jerky motion that eased out when he realized belatedly that that was an admission, that the commander was admitting this was as strange for him as it was for the former minister.

Aleksandr sunk further into the pillows. “I’m sorry. I’m …” No, he clamped his mouth shut before he finished that.

The other man closed his book and put it on the bedside table again before looking over at him. “You’re young,” Aleksandr bristled. Again. “And you’re unused to this, and this is still a strange, big house with a strange big bed and the woman with whom you feel most comfortable isn’t here to come between you and the strange man sharing the bed.”

“Well, when you put it like that, it sounds ridiculous.” Aleksandr scrubbed a hand over his face and rolled over onto his side, turning out the light and determined to ignore the other man if he was going to be a bastard about it. By the time he had settled back onto his side he realized that he was being a child, which wasn’t much better. He didn’t turn on the light again, though. “This isn’t...”

It wasn’t many of things. All of which hung in the air between them like a curtain of thick mist, wet and obscuring everything and permeating the air.

In another moment he heard the click of the light behind him, and the room was dark. Except for the moonlight that played over the bed. He rolled over onto his back to look at it where it lay flat on the wrinkles of the blanket. It looked much more beautiful when the blankets were stretched over her curves. “I miss her,” he said, and he hadn’t meant to say it out loud but there it was anyway.

“I know,” Andreas murmured, an upward lilt of surprise at the end. “I do, too.”

He rolled over a second time, this time onto his side stretched out and facing the other man. His mouth opened to ask him a question, but he couldn’t think of how to phrase it. Andreas sat with his back still propped against the pillows, as though he might turn the light on again and start reading. His fingers curled towards himself but still, unmoving; the posture looked inconvenient for sleep. Neither of them were going to be able to sleep anytime soon.

If she were here they would have both curled up with her. “Do you …” That was the question, but the words came hard and uneasily. “Do you miss...” One hand gestured over the empty space where she should have been. Andreas looked at him and cocked his eyebrows again.

“The comfort, the intimacy? The intimacy of holding another person in the bed at the end of the day, when both of you are relaxed and vulnerable and you have the luxury of being intimately vulnerable with another person whom you can trust? Yes, I do.”

Aleksandr closed his mouth before his tongue dried up and shriveled away. Not the most elegant description, but it cut so deep to the heart of things that he realized he’d forgotten the older man was...

… smart. Aleksandr closed his eyes and pinched two fingers over his forehead. That was not a kind thing to think, let alone say. At least he hadn’t said it out loud. His diplomatic skills were not serving him well, but at least they helped him that much.

Another part of diplomacy was concessions. Truth, but also concessions. He could make a concession here, couldn’t he? “I wasn’t raised to be vulnerable with another... man.” He was a grown adult, dammit, had been for quite some time, he could say such things.

Andreas gave him a peculiar look. “Neither was I, but I was raised to believe that...” And then his mouth twisted, a sigh hissing out between clenched teeth. “That things were different with your chosen spouse.”

“I’m sure you can pick out the key word of that sentence,” Aleksandr’s mouth curled, but the sarcasm was directed more at the situation than at Andreas, and the other man nodded. He sighed, pushed himself further into the pillows and focused on the space between him and the older man as he spoke. “By the time we reached this point, even assuming … assuming we were properly married, there would have been... dinners, nights out, nights in. We would have...”

“Gotten past all the initial awkwardness.” The bedcovers rustled. When Aleksandr looked up again Andreas had settled into the blankets and mirrored his position, facing him. “Grown used to each other, I’d assume, or decided that we were not mutually compatible and parted ways.”

“Is that how they do it where you’re from? Regardless of...”

“Yes,” Andreas sounded amused, and truly, Aleksandr should know that already. “I imagine it’s much the same where you’re from, albeit with some more... restrictions.”

He shook his head. “Restrictions, they’re not... who would want...” He shut his mouth there, but it was too late, the damage was done. The other man’s face was shuttered again, drawn tight into the military mask and Aleksandr wondered, for the first time in all the times they’d shared a marriage bed, how many times he had said similar things or implied them without thinking. And with Beata there to interrupt him or smooth it over.

He still didn’t understand it, though, and he didn’t know how to explain that lack of understanding without resorting to the usual ways of thinking that it was gross, unclean, dirty. Sometimes painful. In his world, these sorts of things were exotic or underground. Every now and again someone popped up with a scandalous affair with a young man who sold himself for food or drugs. Or it was something you did as a youth, when you were trying to find yourself. It wasn’t matter of fact. It wasn’t an option you had, sex did not lend itself to options. You were the way you were made.

“Andreas...” And that felt strange, too, on a completely different level. And a simpler one. You did not call military commanders by their familiar name. “I didn’t...” That would be dishonest. “I didn’t mean any … I wasn’t … raised. To believe that this was acceptable behavior. I can’t overturn all that in a few months.”

That wasn’t an apology. Andreas’s calm and cold stare drove it into him that that was not an apology. “Then maybe they should have chosen someone else.”

It was the way that hurt that made him realize, he didn’t want to be replaced in this treaty. Marriage. Whatever it was. The way that hurt, stabbed him right in the chest, that he could be replaced? Not just the idea of failure and not even the idea of leaving Beata, but something about leaving this. That he would miss, yes, the other man, for himself. Andreas frowned, not understanding whatever expression was crossing Aleksandr’s face.

“I don’t want them to choose someone else,” he said finally. “But this is not going to be easy.”

“No. I never imagined it would be.”

Aleksandr’s fingers curled into the bedclothes and clenched, moonlight splaying across his knuckles. Peaks and valleys. It made him think of other sordid things. Which led him down a strange road to what had to seem like an even stranger question. “Do you prefer men or women?”

“Do I...” Andreas blinked, frowned and seemed to give it some consideration. “Men, I suppose. I wouldn’t say it was a preference, things just seemed to...” Small shrug.

“Fall out that way. I don’t understand how... how it works. How can you find men attractive? I don’t...” he hastened to add. “Not that way, not like what I said earlier. I mean, truthfully, how do...”

The older man shrugged. “How do you find Beata attractive? Or that red-headed lady from your university that you mentioned. What attracts you to them?”

It seemed fair to give his answer some consideration as well. “She was... we had some classes together. She was very beautiful and... she was smart, too. We could talk to each other, engage each other’s interest. Beata...” That was more complicated. “It started out as the formal arrangement we all made, but she was so very... kind about it all. More patient than, I admit, I probably deserve.”

“Heh.” Somewhere between a snort and a chuckle, Andreas clearly didn’t disagree as to that point. “She is more patient than I think we both deserve, sometimes.”

He smiled, remembering. “She doesn’t seem to feel we all need to be in love with each other, so long as we are fond and can trust each other.”

“She’s a great deal more practical about marriage than I was at her age.”

Now that was interesting. “Did you think about marriage at her age?”

Andreas stretched out a little further, settling in. “Oh, some. I decided it wasn’t something I could afford to do, and it wouldn’t be fair to the person I married. I couldn’t give that kind of commitment to a person and to my unit. Some, yes,” because Aleksandr had been about to protest that millions of people did it all the time. “Some are capable of that. I...” he shrugged. “I wasn’t.”

“Did you ever... regret that?”

It looked for a second as though he’d put his foot in his mouth again. The other man scrubbed a hand over his face, then into his graying hair and Aleksandr knew the answer was yes. There had been someone. He took a guess. He had a fifty fifty chance, and asking the question would assuage some of the worry Andreas might have about saying so.

“Who was he?”

Andreas gave him a sharp look for a second, then sighed. “He worked at the botanical gardens near the base I was stationed; we met at a .. some function or another. We were both young, he was slightly older, very settled. Very sharp-minded. A bit like you,” he glanced over and Aleksandr didn’t even realize he was supposed to react until he saw that wariness on the other man’s face. “He was very... aware of the importance of small things in the large.”

“Did either of you...”

He shook his head. “I left before he could ask, and if he … No. We ended it by letter after I left.”

Aleksandr couldn’t quite stop the look of semi-horror, semi-disgust. Something along those lines; it struck him as cowardly to end a relationship that had obviously meant something to him by letter. “Is that what we should expect, then, to find you gone one morning with a letter...” Calculated attack, for the first time that night. By way of both expressing his chagrin and what it was for and trying to drag the other man into an admission of feeling, since he felt he had made more than enough concessions for the moment.

“No,” he interrupted, angry again. “If I had thought...”

Which was when Aleksandr shocked them both by putting a hand over the other man’s mouth.

And he didn’t know why he did it, was the strange thing. But with all the shifting they had done and by leaning over that far, he was close enough to do it. It was an intimate gesture. As he’d said a moment ago, intimacy and vulnerability.

“No,” he said carefully, trying to regain control of his breathing and his face which seemed to have flushed and heated at the cheeks without his blessing. “Was quite sufficient. I just... wanted to know. That was a cold thing to do,” he added, dropping his hand. “Leave someone in a letter. Especially someone you were that close to.”

Andreas gave it a moment, then nodded, shrugging. “I never claimed to be a paragon of good character then. Or now, I suppose.”

“You do all right, I think,” Aleksandr smiled a bit. “I mean, she really likes you...”

“She is a paragon of virtue and patience to put up with us,” he chuckled. Aleksandr laughed with him, because it was true. This whole conversation was proof of how combative they could be.

He ran his fingers along the wrinkles in the sheets again, parallel to the other man’s chest. “If she were here, she’d be appalled at how we behaved just now.”

“If she were here, we’d both be on better behavior for her sake.”

“That doesn’t seem a … a good way to conduct a marriage.” He made himself lift his eyes to Andreas’s face, again, considering after he did so why it was so hard to meet the other man’s eyes. Because it was important, significant? Yes. Most likely that was it. The same reason it had hurt earlier. This was, or had become, a real marriage to him, however much his mind was having a difficult time catching up to the concept.

Andreas looked back at him. “Do you have a better idea?”

And there was the point of the matter. Because if he had been a woman, Aleksandr would have suggested making a try of making a proper marriage out of it at once, even with the difficulty of it being a marriage of three people instead of two. But he wasn’t. And he didn’t have the first idea of where to begin.

“I don’t know where to begin,” he admitted. “I don’t know how to begin to make this...”

But Andreas narrowed his eyes at him and then smiled, a startling and slightly hideous smile, as though he’d pounced on something. “You think this is about sex.”

Aleksandr blinked, now. “Isn’t it?”

He expected, though he didn’t know what Andreas was going to do until the other man’s arm was around his shoulders, that some kind of demonstration would be forthcoming. He did expect the touches and waited for it to go lower, or for Andreas to indicate that he should reciprocate in some what. It didn’t happen. The position was awkward, they were both sitting up and the older man had his arm around his shoulders and he didn’t understand. He felt too conscious of where his hands and elbows were.

He was conscious of the other man’s sigh in a way he hadn’t been before. “You’re not comfortable with me in the bed, Aleksandr, how would you be comfortable if we had sex? How would that change anything? There is no magic button on you that I could push to make you comfortable with this, and telling you to relax won’t help in the slightest.”

Now that he said it in words like that it seemed like Aleksandr should have known that. But it didn’t make him any more comfortable, either. “Then what do you suggest we do?”

“Well, this would be a start.”

In the time it took to draw breath to ask what he meant he realized what the other man meant, and shook his head. Didn’t pull away, but shook his head. It was hard to imagine getting to a point where he could be comfortable with this.

Andreas sighed. “All right. Let’s get to sleep, then.”

Aleksandr settled back down again and rolled over, back to the other man. He kept most of the grumbling inside his head, but there was a significant amount of it. At Andreas, for making him feel foolish; at himself, for helping. Because everything that the older man had said made sense, and was something he might have thought of if he’d been thinking and not skittering away from all thoughts of being intimate with the other man. Not all thoughts, but all the vivid or detailed ones. “I don’t know how to do this,” he muttered to no one in particular.

Behind him, he heard Andreas draw breath to say something and then silence. Maybe he’d meant to answer the question. Aleksandr was a little glad he’d chosen not to.

He scrubbed a hand over his face and tried not to feel like a young man fumbling his way through sex for the first time. And why was he so hung up on sex, anyway? It wasn’t as though Andreas was demanding it from him. He wasn’t doing anything but offering comfort.

A comfort Aleksandr was slowly coming to realize he craved, as the moments slid by and the moonlight shifted over the blanket, and he felt the warmth of the other man at his back. Closer than it would have been earlier in the evening if they’d kept their positions. The warmth reminded him of what it was like to cuddle up to someone else in the bed, and did it really matter who it was? He’d slept in beds with other young men before, going camping. And on the other hand, that was camping. This was, what? Marriage? His husband? The word still sounded strange applied to him in the sense of possessed rather than state of being. Except he was someone’s husband. Two someone’s. Too confusing.

“You’re thinking too much,” Andreas murmured, and he could hear the exhaustion in the older man’s warbling voice. “Go to sleep. Go...” One hand, the heel of one hand, rather, with a light shove in the middle of his back. “To your usual side of the bed if you must.”

No animosity in it. Just a willingness to send him where he would sleep more easily, where they were all used to sleeping. It was kindness, and affection, in his own way. Which triggered a slew of small memories of moments when Andreas had been kind to Beata, the youngest of the three. And a question. How could someone capable of such tenderness be so cold as to end a relationship in a letter?

He didn’t move, regardless. Not when he was shoved. No, he did move, to elbow back behind himself and catch Andreas in the ribs. It was the tenderness he missed. And if he could make himself relax tonight, maybe he could have that. The warmth of another person, sharing a bed. “You go to sleep,” he grumbled. The words weren’t coming, and for someone who relied on words so heavily it was confusing. And a bit painful.

Andreas made some sort of ‘mmph’ type noise. “Are you sure?”

“Not if you keep talking about it,” he said, then rolled over and came face to, well, chin, with the other man, although they were about of a height. He was just more curled up at the moment. “This... ” This was warm. And comfortable. Mostly comfortable. “This is good. I’ve … I’m all right.”

“All right,” Andreas said, slowly and uncertain but he didn’t pull away either. He even pulled Aleksandr a little closer, brushing fingers through his short-cropped hair and settling both arms around him. As an embrace, Aleksandr was more at ease with this somehow. Perhaps because it was easier to think of it in neutral terms. Was that wrong of him?

A moot point, when neutral terms flew out the window as Andreas kissed his forehead. His lips were soft and cool, cooler than lips should be. It made him all too conscious of that point of contact. And even stranger, his body and his instincts didn’t mind. His muscles relaxed instead of knotting up tighter, fingers flexing open a little more. As tired as he was both from the events of the ordinary day and the much less ordinary conversation of the last several minutes, he found his thoughts drifting. To how this was comfortable, when it might not have been even last night, or the night before. And beneath that, as he realized his eyes had drifted closed when he hadn’t been paying attention, wondering if the older man’s lips were that soft and that cool and what it would be like to taste.

That thought did knot his back and shoulders. Not just because he felt he shouldn’t but also because he felt he should. Except he shouldn’t. This was his husband, and the loyalty and idea of a marriage pulled him more strongly now than the gut-twisting strangeness of kissing another man.

If Andreas noticed anything strange in the tension in his body, he said nothing. Did nothing except hold him, fingers curled and knuckles brushing along his back. He didn’t even pull him any closer, only stayed very still and left him where he lay.

Aleksandr’s lips moved. After another second and a swallow, breath gave voice to the words. “Why... why would you...” Do this. Do anything. Be kind to someone who obviously thinks this is repulsive.

Did he really think it was repulsive?

It was hard to think of being held like this as anything but serene. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. Holding, and being held. He wasn’t even doing anything strange. Aleksandr uncurled his fingers a bit, then a bit more, resting his open hands on the other man’s chest. Then, taking a breath, he started to slide his arms around the other man’s waist, as if to prove to himself that this was not the disturbing perversion he had thought it was. Andreas certainly didn’t seem like a pervert in any way, in anything Aleksandr had seen him do. His thoughts chased themselves in circles. Panicking, he realized.

Andreas hadn’t said anything. That did not help. “Say something,” he rasped, fingers clenching around fabric again.

“Such as?”

That dry, familiar tone actually brought a choked laugh out of him. He hadn’t expected that, either. “I don’t know. Anything. This silence is not helping.”

“Hmph. You talk too much.”

“I made my living by talking.”

“I did not say it was unreasonable, only that you talk too much.”

The whole conversation was so absurd. He laughed, and after a moment Andreas laughed too, a throaty chuckle that sounded as though it had been a while since he had relaxed like that. More than that, he felt the laughter through his chest, against his cheek. That, too, felt good.

“I talk when I’m nervous,” he admitted, only for Andreas to rumble in response.

“I’ve noticed.”

“I thought about...” he started, and then swore at himself for stalling, which was what he was doing. He knew it even if the other man didn’t. They wouldn’t have another night on their own for a while, or at least, they had tonight and tomorrow night and then Beata would be there again to put a buffer between them, and he wouldn’t know if it was her courage or his.

Andreas was too startled to kiss back at first. Then he was too gentle and Aleksandr tried to press in closer, more urgent, and was rebuffed. Andreas actually put his hands on his shoulders and pulled back and away, frowning.

“What’s your hurry?”

Not a rebuff, then, but he felt his cheeks flame hot and angry anyway. “I wasn’t in a hurry.”

“Mmm,” was all Andreas said, and then kissed him again.

He had been right after all. Aleksandr had been hurrying.

There was a significant difference in kissing and being kissed for the first time, for the first few times. There was a difference in kissing someone when you had little experience, even though the physical difference between a man’s mouth and a woman’s shouldn’t matter. It did. Or maybe he only thought it did and that made all the difference, but for whatever reason he felt inexperienced and shy.

Andreas made it as easy on him as he reasonably could, for which he was grateful. One moment at a time, first the kiss and then he felt the fingertips calloused and casual on his cheek. And then the warmth of his palm spread fully on his cheek and the kiss had deepened when he hadn’t been paying attention to whose lips and tongue were doing what. It trapped him in a cycle of stimulation and heat rising under his skin and his body’s responses puckering his skin and dampening his brow, then realizing each response and being repulsed by it. At the very least, ashamed by it. And then he would relax backwards, not too much except it was enough that either Andreas noticed or perhaps he only thought the other man noticed, because he used that as an excuse to press in again. Over and over.

At some point he realized what he was doing, or how he was doing it, and broke the kiss. This wasn’t fair to anyone. He lowered his head to Andreas’s shoulder with a sharp exhale of breath and felt the arms closing tight around him with the broad strength of iron bars, keeping him steady.

Which only underscored the unfairness of it all. Someone who could feel and exert that much loyalty deserved better.

Fingers trailing down his cheeks accentuated the wetness and he realized he was crying. Andreas didn’t seem to know what to do. There were little touches everywhere over his face and shoulders, one arm always hugging him tight. He tried to shake his head.

“It’s...” He didn’t know what it was. He couldn’t explain what it was but he didn’t want him to worry. He didn’t want either of them to worry, and fortunately Beata wasn’t there right now. “I’m all right. It’s all right.”

“All right.” But he didn’t let go, and neither of them was fooled. It was an excuse to give him enough time to take a couple of breaths and reorient himself.

Aleksandr leaned forward and kissed him again, urgently. Because if he changed his mind now he wouldn’t be able to do this again, he felt it, instinctive. As surely as he knew that if he didn’t let go he could hold on and things would be all right, he would ride out these bad reflexes and it would all be okay again. It worked, for a little while. He rolled and pulled the other man on top of him and in the next second it wasn’t okay, it was smothering, and his heart pounded even faster as his fingers clawed into Andreas’s night-shirt.

“All right,” he murmured a second or two later. Aleksandr hadn’t noticed him pulling back but now he was kneeling above him, straddling him, knees pressing into the bed. His hands wrapped around Aleksandr’s wrists and unhooked his arms from his waist. “All right. Let’s just get some sleep...”

“But...”

He kissed him again but this time it was quick and chaste. Aleksandr was too confused by himself and his feelings, by Andreas’s actions that were contrary to everything he expected, to resist. Andreas tucked them under the sheets together, loosely tangling his leg around his and tucking his head back to his shoulder. One hand rubbed up and down his back, but there was no way to push his suit at this point. Aleksandr turned his cheek into the other man’s chest and blinked, trying to make sense of it all.

He was still trying when he fell asleep, buried in scent and sensation and the firm, reassuring grip of his husband.

Beata still had no idea what had happened, a week later. She'd been gone to the capital for two days and when she came back something seemed to have broken in the conflict between the men, some barrier or blockage was missing.

Neither of them would talk about what had happened. The sleeping arrangements stayed as they were, no one advanced in the bedroom, but there was a greater ease to the way they moved around each other during the day. Something less tense in the air. They talked and laughed together; she wondered how it was Aleksandr had gotten Andreas to unbend and actually laugh. She even prodded them about it a time or two.

"Men's mysteries," Aleksandr said, in a lofty tone clearly meant to evoke images of stuffy heads of universities or scientists used to analyzing the world from the comfort of their armchairs rather than the world itself. Beata squinted at him, then poked a finger into his chest.

"Fine. Keep your secrets." Sticking her tongue out at him, she flounced a few steps away before he grabbed her around the waist and spun her around for a hug, laughing.

Still, whether or not she knew how it had happened, she was grateful for it. Because they were coming into spring, when they would have to leave her planet and her home and go out into the world. Or back to their world, she thought. They would probably think of it that way.

"How do we want to proceed?" Beata tucked her feet under her on the overstuffed armchair and wrapped her hands around a mug of hot tea. Not that it ever got very cold here, even in the winter, but she felt better for the warmth and the comfort since they were all in their separate chairs with their separate readers at the moment. It made it easier to think. It also made it less reassuring.

Aleksandr frowned. "I would assume, as visiting dignitaries. We're still proceeding with the plan that we visit my home first, and then..." Andreas nodded his acceptance, Beata shrugged.

"There's no reason to change it that I know of." And since all of them had begun sharing their intelligence reports that they received from their government, there was no reason to change it that any of the rest of them knew of either.

Beata wondered what their governments would think if they knew about the sharing of information. Or if they automatically assumed that each of them would share those reports with the others, even if only unofficially. Neither her nor the men had decided whether or not they would make the information available in an official capacity, but the unspoken agreement was that they would discuss matters of international importance and only divulge if it was absolutely necessary. And because of that, Beata had the feeling their various governments assumed they were keeping things to themselves.

Which was, she thought, no way to conduct a marriage. And people should know better. But they didn't. "Hmm?" Aleksandr was talking to her. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

Rather than offended or hurt, as he might have done only two weeks ago, he looked amused. "Do you need to go to bed early?" he offered. They'd had a late night of it the night before, reviewing cultural material from Aleksandr's world, which at the time had meant comedians. He'd had to explain a few of the jokes and they still didn't get some of them, but mostly it had been uproarious laughter from Beata and even chuckles and dry remarks from Andreas. A late night, and an early morning.

"Ah, no, I'm here. What was that you were saying?"

"There's no reason to change the order of visitation. Nothing unusual or dangerous is happening just at the moment, there's no active threat."

"More than usual," Andreas murmured.

Of the three of them, she had wondered which would be the most security conscious. Aleksandr had had reason to think about security for visiting dignitaries, she had lived with the usual assortment of threats to her person from political sources all her life, although being a younger princess she was pretty far down on the list of people to threaten. Or had been, until recently. The treaty had made targets of all three of them.

But the commander ended up being the one who oversaw the security measures and nudged their daily habits to ones that made them easier to protect. Which she supposed made sense. She and Aleksandr were used to being the protectees; Andreas had had to consider who and what he was defending far more.

"More than usual," Aleksandr nodded, acknowledging the point. "No reason to break with the plans now. But we won't be living in this kind of lifestyle..."

He hesitated, and Beata blinked. "I hadn't imagined we would. We'll be visiting each other's home, yes? This happens to be my home, the sort of home I'm used to. I would assume you're used to a very different kind of..."

She and Andreas both directed curious looks at Aleksandr's grimace. "That's the problem. I'm not sure what kind of reception I'll be coming home to. I have no idea what they have planned, but I'm sure I won't be allowed to just resume my life as though nothing had happened."

Andreas nodded, picking it up quicker than Beata did; she was still making faces as she puzzled out what he meant. "They'll want you to move to a bigger, more palatial house, if they haven't moved you already. You'll be expected to attend parties or meetings or a combination of both, probably with us..."

"And a whole slew of other things I haven't had to do before, yes. We'll be as close to visiting royalty as we've had in centuries. I don't know how they're going to handle that."

"Have you started making inquiries..." Andreas ventured, to the younger man's impatient headshake.

"Already, yes, but they've only given me a very tentative schedule and itinerary. What it does tell me so far is that our lives are going to be planned out about as far as we can stand. There will be meetings with government leaders, regional and national, there will be charity events..."

Beata's mouth twisted in her sideways thoughtful expression. "Will they allow us to pick and choose from charity events or will they be selecting those for us?"

"I've already told them the sorts of organizations you're involved in," Aleksandr told her, smiling, which made her heart ease and twist in funny ways all at once. "They're working on finding our equivalents. Education and hunger isn't going to be problematic, they should have an easy time figuring out what the well-known and trusted groups are."

Which left Andreas. She and Aleksandr both looked over at him, sitting very still and upright in his chair. "They'll be keeping an eye on me in case I'm under orders," he offered dryly. Beata could find no visible signs of tension in his body, and yet she knew him well enough by now to know that he was already dreading the suspicion and the reacclimitization. Her people were far better, she thought, at placing spies.

Which brought her around to wondering for only the second or third time that season where the spies in her household were. Her mother, at the very least, would have placed some, to ensure her safety. And most likely her government had placed another one or two. Were there more?

"They'll want to make sure we're doing the best for them," she said, slow and drawn out and thinking as she spoke. "They haven't yet adapted to the idea that we're trying to do what's best for all of us."

If either of the men doubted that, they didn't raise their doubts. Aleksandr was in a mood where he agreed with that sentiment, but Andreas only looked dark and grim. Beata exchanged a look with her younger husband and hoped it wasn't going to be as bad as he thought. Aleksandr only shrugged and shook his head. Hard to say, just yet.