In The Middle

Steamy Showers, Late Nights and Dinner!

If there was anything Shouta had learned in the past three months, it was that love wasn't complicated nor uncomplicated. That every relationship needed its balance and its open communication in order to work. But nothing needed more work than a relationship with two boyfriends who were willing to always meet him halfway. There wasn't a schedule nor were there hours when one person got more love than the other. Days where someone was showered in affection then neglected the next. It took work, however.

It took time and it took patience. It was something made clear to him countless times by his therapist and the therapist he, Oboro and Hizashi shared. It was all too easy to continue building on their relationship together with that communication that was becoming more open. Something he was more comfortable using when he spoke to his boyfriends whether it be one-one-one or together. To talk to them without fear of having them snap at him. For bitter, angry feelings to come in the way and rip them apart.

It was this open communication that had been built upon with a rather firm foundation that allowed him to approach both men. It didn't change the fact hesitant when going to them with the request for a cuddle. That it didn't leave him red faced when Hizashi invited them in for a "cuddle puddle" as he called it on the living room couch. He had loved Hizashi and Oboro for so many years, he couldn't see where the love for one or the other outweighed the other. It was a cliché to say he loved them both equally.

Knew it but it was true. Even if he fell at different times for them, it didn't change that he had enough love for both men to take and give back. Polyamory, he found, wasn't about being greedy with his boyfriends. In lying to one to get what he wanted from the other. It was balance. It was working things out and coming together as he would if he were dating them one on one. He had his love to give to both of them and they had love for each other along with love for him. There was so much love he felt tipsy off of it.

Like a love sick teenager when he was shutting the door to his apartment with Oboro's hoodie tied around his waist and the scent of Hizashi's sandalwood cologne clinging onto him. When he was curled up with these scents in bed and kicking his feet to work out the energy that had swarmed under his skin from his day out with both men. A three-way relationship was about communicating. About vocalizing wants, desires, and needs to his partners. He couldn't deny that it was exactly why he had been so hurt.

Why he had felt unwanted, undesirable, by his boyfriends sexually. In the afternoon following his first time with Hizashi, he'd been hit with an odd sense of guilt. Strangling him after his odd tears had subsided long enough for Hizashi to coax him into the shower together did that reality hit him. He'd felt awful for having sex with the blonde without discussing with Oboro as well. To dive straight into it the way he had but he'd felt the smallest bit desperate under it all, hadn't he? Worried it was his only chance?

But standing with Hizashi cleaning him off, he'd been swamped with a worried guilt so intense it threatened to leave him curled on the shower floor. His blonde boyfriend, ever the positive person to see the silver lining, had promised they'd talk to Oboro. And it had been hard not to believe the faux reality his brain made him that Oboro would, in fact, not be okay with it. He'd been a bundle of nerves when the blue-haired man had flown over the threshold of the house with that sparkle to his gaze.

Scooping himself and Hizashi up with lips alternating between the blonde's and his own, he'd tried to breathe through his worried guilt. His anxiety that he'd done something wrong. It had driven him up the wall until the blonde coaxed the three of them to the living room to talk. He swore his face had never burned hotter than when the blonde had eased them into that conversation after dinner plans were made. It felt oddly harder to spit out that same conversation he'd had with Hizashi, yet it felt easier.