Archive of Our Own ^beta

Camilla had never been much of a Valentine's Day person. To her, it was just another day, and she thought people made a too-big, performative deal out of it. The sudden influx of chocolate-dipped strawberries and gaudy teddy bears clutching silk roses in public spaces struck her as hollow. Palamedes, of course, agreed with her, and they had, once again, declined to participate in the annual scramble for reservations at overpriced restaurants where tables were crammed together, just because it was a thing couples were supposed to do today.

Instead, she and Palamedes had invited themselves over to Pyrrha's house, which was a nice two-story place where you didn't have to worry about thin walls and nosy neighbours. This didn't count as a Valentine's Day activity to Camilla, since it was something they did whenever the three of them had a rare day off at the same time.

This time, Camilla and Palamedes suggested they watch a movie or a documentary together. Pyrrha had accepted this plan with appropriate enthusiasm, her voice warm over the phone, but now that her partners had arrived, she seemed more entertained by her phone than by the company. This was unusual. Camilla didn't mind an occasional text or checking on news, and Pyrrha wasn't even really on social media, but now she was glued to her phone.

Soon after they had arrived at Pyrrha's place, Palamedes had disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Camilla and Pyrrha waiting for him and some snacks on the worn leather couch in Pyrrha's living room. Camilla had not expected to find herself bored and lonely sitting this close to her girlfriend and being just a room away from her boyfriend.

Pyrrha's enormous rescue dog of a mystery breed, Nona, had immediately claimed Palamedes's vacated cushion. Camilla had been wary of the dog at first, but had since learned to like it. Much like Camilla, Nona was hungry for Pyrrha's attention, but, like Camilla, was ignored as Pyrrha smiled at her phone. This too was unusual. Usually when someone bothered Pyrrha over the phone, it was "some dipshit" from work who definitely didn't make Pyrrha smile. Pyrrha continued to be in a good mood as her phone buzzed again, so it didn't seem like she would have to leave them here and go to work.

"Really, Pyrrha?" Camila asked, trying to get her attention.

"Hm?" Pyrrha said, as if she hadn't even realised she was being rude, lowered the phone, and looked at Camilla. "Oh, sorry."

"What is so important that it can't wait?" Camilla asked.

"Perhaps I'm cheating on you guys," Pyrrha deadpanned. 

"You certainly have chosen an interesting day to break our collective heart with news like that," Palamedes said with just as much mock-seriousness in his voice, as he reentered the room.

He was carrying a little plastic tray with three beer bottles and a bowl of chips. Camilla was pretty sure Pyrrha was not even aware she owned that tray since she always just balanced everything she had to carry in her hands, but Palamedes had gotten very familiar with Pyrrha's kitchen and its meagre offerings these past few months. He and Camilla spent so much time in this house that both of them had toothbrushes permanently living in Pyrrha's upstairs bathroom cabinet.

"You know me, I live for weird interpersonal conflict and petty drama," Pyrrha said, as Palamedes set the tray in front of her on the low sofa table.

"I do know," Palamedes said as he bent down to kiss her on the cheek.

The familiar yet sweet gesture brightened Pyrrha's expression, and she shooed her dog gently away to make room for Palamedes on the sofa. Nona jumped off the couch with a dramatic huff, radiating the wounded dignity of a pet who believed that Pyrrha had never shown her any affection in her whole life. This was patently untrue given the premium dog food and heaps of dog toys Pyrrha kept purchasing. The gigantic sulking dog picked up one of these toys, a ball painted with the world map, and slinked out of the room, with her tail drooping in theatrical dejection. Pyrrha ignored this.

Palamedes slid into the now-empty spot by Pyrrha's side, the cushion covered in dog hair, and wrapped a slender arm over Pyrrha's shoulder. Camilla, not to be outdone, placed her hand deliberately on Pyrrha's thigh, her thumb tracing small circles against the worn denim. She savoured the firm contour of muscle beneath her hand and hoped that the evening would start progressing somewhere interesting. Hopefully toward Pyrrha's bedroom upstairs.

While Pyrrha seemed perfectly content being sandwiched between her partners, she still did not put her phone away, constantly glancing at it.

"So, what is actually going on?" Palamedes asked.

"It's Gideon," Pyrrha said. "She's freaking out."

"About anything in particular?" Camilla asked. 

She worked with Gideon at the dingy old gym reasonably near Camilla and Palamedes' apartment, and so knew her pretty well. Gideon could be perfectly calm under actual emergencies, like an elderly client having a heart attack on the treadmill, and then get agitated by the strangest things. Now that she thought about it, Gideon had been kind of jittery when Camilla had last seen her two evenings ago.

"Take a guess," Pyrrha urged.

"Something about Harrowhark?" Palamedes guessed.

"Bingo."

Camilla and Palamedes waited for more information. Pyrrha had cultivated a great immunity against sharp looks over the years, so it took her over a minute to even show that she had registered being stared at from both sides, and even longer to react to it. Camilla was about to break her own long-standing rule against reading other people's private messages and take a look at the chat, when Pyrrha spoke again.

"Gideon's going to propose," she told them.

"On Valentine's Day? I didn't think she was the type," Camilla said, genuinely surprised.

"That really does not sound like Harrow's kind of thing either," Palamedes pointed out.

"Yeah, I think that is why Gideon chose the date. She thought a public proposal on Valentine's would be funny or something, when they'd think back to it later," Pyrrha sighed.

"I suppose it is a little funny," Camilla had to agree. It was very much like Gideon to choose to make a joke out of something that was serious to her. It also reminded her of Pyrrha, who, too, was deeply allergic to showing vulnerability.

Palamedes studied Pyrrha's side profile for a bit. He then realised something that Camilla hadn't thought of. He tapped his bony and sharp knuckles on his equally bony and sharp chin.

"So Gideon talked with you about this beforehand?" He asked.

"Yeah," Pyrrha admitted.

She looked happy, though a bit bashful about it. That was interesting because Pyrrha was so rarely shy about anything at all, and often weaponised this immunity to shame against weaker people. Camilla understood that such a show of trust from Gideon meant a lot to Pyrrha, though. This was the kind of thing one might want to talk about with one's parent, and Pyrrha was the closest thing to one that Gideon had, even though Camilla was pretty sure that Gideon's father, unlike her mother, was still alive. The whole thing seemed… difficult.

Camilla thought Gideon was needlessly worried since everyone knew that Harrowhark was at least as obsessed with Gideon as Gideon was with Harrowhark. They were very intense about each other.

Since continuing to criticise Pyrrha's phone usage now that she knew the wholesome reason for it would have been a total dick move, Camilla relented, slouching back against the cracked leather seat. Speaking of dick moves, she had assumed that by this time her hand would be in Pyrrha's pants already, so Camilla considered telling Pyrrha and Palamedes to switch seats so she could get some action. Pyrrha typed for a while and then sighed fondly.

"I told Gideon that if she doesn't get on with it, we all will think that she's a coward," Pyrrha said. "She replied that she didn't consent to letting this sensitive information be broadcasted to the whole polycule, and I said too bad."

"Effective communication," Palamedes nodded.

"I mean, there were one or eleven curse words in the mix somewhere, but who is counting?"

With that, Pyrrha finally decided that it was time for Gideon to deal with her predicament by herself and put away her phone. She tossed it carelessly onto the coffee table, where it landed with a clatter next to Palamedes' phone. Pyrrha's phone screen was already cracked, and she didn't seem to care for it anymore. Usually, she took good care of her belongings.  

With the distraction finally gone, though Camilla felt mildly bad about thinking a big day in Gideon's life like that, the date night could properly begin. No one paid any attention to the beer and chips sitting untouched on the coffee table, nor did anyone want to pretend to be interested in the halfhearted movie plans. Camilla always prided herself on her sharp memory, but she couldn't recall the names of any films she wanted to suggest, even if she knew that she had spent the normal amount of time researching options that would interest all three of them.

The living room lights were dimmed enough, making the sparsely furnished room a bit cosier. Pyrrha had lived here for years but had never really bothered with interior design. Camilla was not much of a decoration or gift person, but she decided that she and Palamedes should get Pyrrha a painting or a framed poster to hang on her walls. While the decision to dim the lights had originally been made with movie-watching in mind, it also helped set the mood for something else. Neither of Camilla's partners was looking at the TV remote or at the snacks.

With three people, there were always some logistical issues when it came to physical intimacy unless one of them wanted just to watch. Camilla had no interest in playing spectator tonight, she wanted all three of them together, logistics be damned. She cut through the unspoken question of how to start, by choosing to kiss the person whose couch was making this moment possible.

Camilla's lips found Pyrrha's cheek first, and then she continued to leave a trail of kisses on the underside of her jaw, the way she had learned that Pyrrha really liked. Pyrrha's breath hitched in her throat in that familiar way that always sent heat curling through Camilla's stomach. Pyrrha had once told her, after a night full of impressive amounts of wine, that she only started to enjoy anyone kissing or even touching the lower half of her face after stubble no longer grew there. Camilla kissed her again.

Palamedes watched them with patient, though hungry eyes before taking off his glasses and kissing Pyrrha as well. Pyrrha took the glasses from him and set them, almost gently, on the table. The room suddenly felt warmer, though Camilla knew Pyrrha was stingy with her heating bill and that her thermostat was always set criminally low.

There was an abundance of kisses exchanged among the three of them. Lips met lips, met necks, met shoulders as they tangled together on the couch, which now felt much too narrow. Camilla let herself be pressed into the couch cushions by two sets of hands. They both knew how to love her, where to touch, when to be gentle and when not to be. Things were getting good. Camilla again thought of the upstairs bedroom and its proper bed again as Palamedes's hands worked at her shirt buttons. Her eyes were closed, but she could tell they were his hands.

On the sofa table somewhere, a million miles away from Camilla, a phone buzzed.

Camilla's eyes snapped open, darting accusingly toward Pyrrha. She had assumed that Pyrrha had the good sense to put the phone on mute. Pyrrha gave her an apologetic half-smile and sat back up, looked at her phone, shrugged and put it back down. Camilla's accusation had been hasty. The buzzing wasn't coming from Pyrrha's cracked screen, but from Palamedes' sleek, gray phone beside it.

"Sorry, that's mine," Palamedes said when he realised this.

He looked at the screen, squinting as he realised that he couldn't really make out the text. Before he could reach for his glasses, Camilla had already picked them up and handed them to him.

"Thank you," he said.

His phone started buzzing so rapidly that, for a moment, Camilla thought he was getting a call, but it turned out to be just a rapid sequence of texts. Palamedes' eyes darted behind his glasses, scanning the text. He was a fast reader, so it didn't take him all that long to read it and type in a short reply. The response was near instantaneous, more text flooding in, demanding attention. Camilla had a good idea of who was texting him.

"It's Harrow," he confirmed.

"I take it that Gideon proposed," Pyrrha said.

"She did," Palamedes nodded. "Which is why Harrowhark is now hiding in the restaurant's toilet."

"Naturally," Camilla said.

Gideon evidently was busy trying to talk to Harrow through the bathroom door or something, because Pyrrha's phone remained silent on the table. Palamedes adjusted his glasses, which had slid down his sweaty nose, as he summarised the frantic messages Harrow had sent him. The gist of it was that she assumed that Gideon's overly romantic proposal was some sort of elaborate prank, which of course deeply hurt her feelings. While the situation was honestly more than a little stupid, Camilla felt a pang of sympathy for both Gideon and Harrow.

Through a series of increasingly lengthy texts, Palamedes reassured Harrowhark that it was not a prank and that he was certain of that because he had been aware of the proposal plan beforehand. He conveniently left out that he had heard about the said plan just tonight. Eventually Harrowhark agreed to leave the restaurant bathroom, partially because a staff member apparently told her and Gideon that they were making a scene and asked both of them to leave, and Palamedes' phone quieted.

Camilla, Palamedes and Pyrrha waited for an update with bated breath for a long, long moment. Eventually Pyrrha's phone received a message. She grinned triumphantly at the screen and then tilted it for Camilla and Palamedes to see. They leaned in closer to take a look. On the screen was a slightly off-focus photograph of a slim hand with short black nails and many, many bracelets. On the ring finger of that hand was a ring that looked suspiciously like it had been made of bone of some sort. Camilla approved the choice, that was definitely Harrow's style.

"I'd ask Harrow when the wedding is, but I think reminding her about having to organise one might send her into another fit," Palamedes said. He paused to think about something for a second, like his habit, and then continued, "I cannot believe that it is our first Valentine's Day together, and we spend it mostly reading about other people's romantic drama."

"That is a good point," Pyrrha said, raising her hand up to her heart in mock-offence. "I mean, here I am, celebrating our first Valentine's Day as a trio, and my hands are mysteriously empty. Like, what does a girl have to do to get a gift here?"

"Asking it directly like that sure helps," Camilla told her, and Pyrrha laughed.

"Makes sense," she said. "I'll keep that in mind for the next holiday."

For some reason, Pyrrha didn't seem to be in any hurry to resume their activities, even with the distractions finally out of the way. Instead of Camilla, Pyrrha's work-roughened hand was reaching for the TV remote. She was acting casually, like nothing of note had been interrupted, like Camilla wasn't sitting right there with her shirt unbuttoned, the fabric hanging open, revealing a lot of her sports bra and abdomen.

"So, how about that movie?" Pyrrha asked. "I was actually thinking about this documentary about the history of concrete. Been meaning to watch it for ages."

Camilla narrowed her eyes at Pyrrha, and knew without looking that there was a similar disapproving look on Palamedes' face. While they both were somehow the rare kind of people who might actually enjoy watching a documentary about the history of cement, they had had enough distractions and detours tonight and really had no time for Pyrrha's games.

"You must be kidding," Camilla said.

"Of course, I am," Pyrrha said with a big and irritatingly handsome grin.

She promptly unfolded herself from the sofa. Pyrrha moved fast like she was trying to avoid further scorn, and Camilla and Palamedes followed her. All of them headed to the bedroom on the second floor, which was Camilla's favourite place in this house and not only because of the many good memories she'd had there. It was the one room in Pyrrha's house that, while as clean as the rest of the house, looked properly lived in with some clutter (which wasn't just scattered dog toys) here and there.

Camilla closed the door behind her, ignoring the yet again insulted whine of Pyrrha's giant dog who had followed them upstairs and wanted in. This was a private party. She knew from experience that Pyrrha would never be so tired after sex that she wouldn't get back up and go take Nona out before it was time to sleep.

Before joining her partners in bed, Camilla took out her phone, which had been untouched all evening, and made herself a quick note. She'd have to remember tomorrow to go out and buy Pyrrha two things. The first was the painting or framed poster she had been thinking of earlier, and the second was the tackiest Valentine's Day-themed gift she could possibly find on short notice. Possibly a teddy bear of inconvenient size with something naughty written on its T-shirt. Camilla knew that Pyrrha would appreciate it.