Custom be Damned

Sacharissa/Otto

Sacharissa/William/Otto

Rated G

Words: 2370

What an odd thing respectability was, Sacharissa thought. She’d believed that losing it was the sort of thing that made people cross the street to avoid you. 

People crossed the street to talk to her now. Strangers didn’t approach a woman who was a lady, but they did approach the newspaper lady, she found. Often, they claimed they had a lead for a story, or they wanted to discuss something that had been printed recently (send an editorial, she told them), or they had adverts, or questions. Just as often, though, they were curious, and wasn’t that something? There was something else you could be besides respectable, and that was interesting. Interesting got you interviews. It got you readers. It got you work. 

Sacharissa had been born as if in a cocoon. There were rules to adhere to and set paths to follow, and if you did exactly you were expected to, you were guaranteed safety and success. It wasn’t like that outside of the cocoon. Outside of the cocoon, no one told you what to do, and the risks were greater, but so were the rewards. You had to shed the respectability to get out.

It was easier than she had expected it to be, and far less frightening, but some of the training from that old self still stuck, and was trickier to wriggle out of.

There was the matter of William. Quick, resourceful William who had a sharp eye and a moral compass that drove him to be better than he had been raised to be. He was not as stuffy as he could have been, all things considered, and he was improving. Sacharissa liked him. She liked sparring at words with him; their arguments made her feel giddy and energetic afterwards, because they were never about being right, they were about the thrill of the back and forth, the thrust and parry. It helped that he was handsome. It helped that he so clearly liked her, but didn’t know how to ask.

There was the matter of Otto. Dear, sweet, Otto with his funny caped waistcoat and little glasses and exaggerated accent. She’d learned all the songs in his League of Temperance songbook, and had tried to convince herself that there was nothing more to it than wanting to be a good friend. It didn’t explain why she’d started dropping by the thaumonics shop on her lunches to read iconography pamphlets, to the point that the shop proprietress started to notice her. There wasn’t exactly a point to wanting to impress Otto with her breadth of knowledge on his favourite subject. But impressing wasn’t what she was after. She was after the spark in his eye when he got onto his favorite subject with her. She was after the surprised, pleased little “ah!” when he was unconsciously humming a black ribboner melody and she tuned in with the harmony, and they hummed together in the press room, sharing a moment between them, unnoticed by everyone else there.

Respectable people had to choose. She didn’t.

She made up her mind to have a word with Otto first.

“I know the city better than you,” Sacharissa told him one night when they were preparing to lock up the press room. “And it’s quite dark out. Let me walk you home.”

“Yes,” he said, amused, “zhat’s true, but you are forgetting I can see in zer dark.”

“Look,” she said, “I want to. Will you let me?”

Few lights were still on, and the building was quiet. Otto looked briefly at her, then looked straight ahead, looking at nothing. He very primly did up his scarf.

“You want to go home with me,” Otto said, putting on less of his protective accent.

In the half-dark, no one could see that Sacharissa was blushing. Her blood rushed in her ears, her stomach felt high and tight. She had not been taught how to approach men to ask for love.

“I want to go home with you,” Sacharissa affirmed, steeling her nerves. “Yes.”

Then she exhaled with belief. It was simpler than she had thought.

“You know…” he said haltingly. “I don’t… zhere are people who are very interested in… I don’t bleed people anymore, you know.”

“I know,” Sacharissa said. She thought she’d never understand the exact feeling, but what she did understand came close. It was disappointing when she thought men wanted to be friends with her and it turned out that they only wanted to be friends with her breasts.

“I’m not after that. I like you, Otto. You’re my friend and I like you and you’re a vampire. We don’t have to— Nothing needs to come of this, if you’d rather not. But I’m not after your teeth.”

“Ah,” said Otto, smiling. “In that case, Miss Cripslock, please do valk me home.”

///

William de Worde lived off of his ability to notice things. Perception was his profession, as was coming up with a comment ready to print within the day. He did not have a comment for what he was noticing now.

He sat at his desk towards the end of a long day and pretended to rearrange some papers while he thought.

Otto and Sacharissa were together now. They were his friends and he was happy for them, but he could not shake the feeling of personal loss. William wasn’t entirely sure what he had lost. Neither of his friends had changed the way they interacted with him. They were both still the same Sacharissa and the same Otto and they hadn’t disappeared into each other’s exclusive company like some couples sometimes did.

Small mercies, perhaps. In a part of his head, William blamed his own indecision. He hadn’t made up his mind about which of them to court and they had gone off and courted each other. What drew him to both of them had drawn them to each other.

William had always been aware of men, and in his stubborn way had always refused to believe there was anything bad about it. That one had to be cautious, he knew, but he also knew that no one commented too much about two bachelors moving in together, even for years. He had half-entertained a fantasy of morning coffee with Otto, lounging in housecoats. He had also half-entertained a fantasy of the same with Sacharissa, and both images had seemed so right that he never could pick one over the other. The two scenarios overlapped in his mind, like those picture books where you had to look at a page with your eyes unfocused, and then you would see the picture moving, animated, three-dimensional.

It pained Wiliam to have to get rid of the picture book, but the sooner he did so, the better it would be, and the easier it would be to move on. For move on he must, since they were his friends, and he ought to be happy for them.

It was difficult to move on when nothing had changed at all. Not even the subtle flirtations from both of them. William tried to make himself believe they had never been flirtations and he had been reading too much into friendliness and a sense of humor.

Then again…

There wasn’t much subtlety about a man calling you handsome and winking at you from time to time. Otto hadn’t stopped doing that. William didn’t mind that he hadn’t stopped doing that, but he felt a sense of guilt about it, and thought of bringing it up with Sacharissa.

William sought for the right words to phrase the idea so it didn’t make him sound like a snitch. He was a journalist, not a snitch, and Otto wasn’t doing anything wrong, only ill-timed with William’s attempt to move on.

Perhaps he ought to talk about it with Otto, then, not with Sacharissa. And he ought to get it over with. The more he waited, the worse his own feelings about the conversation would become.

William rose up forcefully from his desk with the full intention of going down to the iconography cellar where Otto worked, to see if he was still there. He nearly collided face-first with Sacharissa, who stood quietly in the doorway.

“I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed. “I came to say something but I saw you there so focused in your thoughts and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

He was about to reassure her that there was no need to apologize, but he saw that she was partly laughing at him, and he smiled a little sheepishly at her instead.

“I’m sure what you came to say was more important,” William said.

“I would hope so,” Sacharissa answered, her face an expression of mischief. “Otto and I were going to invite you to dinner. At his flat.”

Oh no, William thought.

“Yes!” he said, sounding eagerer than he wished to. “Tonight?”

Sacharissa shook her head.

“Octeday, after the weekend paper goes out. I think we’re all pretty busy till then.”

“Yes, we’re all very pretty—pretty busy, ack!—till then. Yes. Okay.”

“Okay,” said Sacharissa, looking at him with amusement and what he both hoped was and hoped wasn’t fondness. “See you then.”

///

Come Octeday, William found himself walking up the steps to Otto’s flat on Elm. He brought a bottle of wine in his bag, because he didn’t like showing up to dinner empty-handed, but he was beginning to regret it. It was an Ephebian blend, made from sea grapes, part of the stash he had brought with him from his father’s cellar when he moved out, and he was beginning to think it was too fancy. William thought his friends deserved the best, but the idea that bringing sea grape wine could be read as a ridiculous flex of wealth was beginning to eat at him. He didn’t think Otto and Sacharissa would think that he was the sort of person who thought like that, but the uncertainty of thinking about what other people thought one was thinking was grating on his nerves. But then Otto had been a baron once, hadn’t he? What was it Otto had said? Baron Myteeth? Gods, no, that had definitely been a joke, that couldn’t—

“Vere you going to knock at any point?” Otto asked, opening the flat door.

“Yes, I was going to knock,” William huffed.

“And vere you going to enter?” said Otto. “Or do you have to be invited?”

“You’ve already been invited!” Sacharissa called from within.

William stepped inside.

Otto’s flat was small, but well decorated, and William could see where Sacharissa’s hand had come in. The reds and blacks were all Otto, but Sacharissa had put up colored etchings of landscapes and animals that she had inherited from her father. They did not match the furniture, but somehow, it all fit together.

///

Otto had cooked, because he had a talent for it, and because Sacharissa lacked the patience for cooking. There was a mushroom barley soup with cabbage rolls on the side. William hadn’t expected to like the mushrooms, but he did.

Sacharissa started to get talking about an idea she’d had for an article, but Otto had objected to talking shop during a meal, so she poured herself another drink and started going on instead about her plans to adopt a cat.

Otto and Sacharissa sat next to each other on one side, and William sat on the other, watching them both, watching them watch each other, watching Sacharissa go on about cats.

“It’s not all cats that are haughty,” William insisted tipsily, toward the end of dinner.

“No indeed!” Sacharissa agreed, “But what I’m saying is that I wouldn’t mind if a cat were haughty. As long as he’s also orange and well-behaved enough not to wreck the house but not too well-behaved.”

“Not too vell-behaved?” Otto asked. “You’re sure?”

“Of course,” Sacharissa declared. “You can’t have a cat that likes authority. That’s just a dog.”

William started laughing, then Otto joined him, then finally Sacharissa joined the two of them, laughing with them.

“Ve have a proposition for you,” Otto said, once the laughter had cleared from the air.

“No!” said Sacharissa, grinning. “Well, yes, that too, Otto, but he’s a gentleman, and we’ve only taken him to dinner once. First, we have a proposal.”

“Oh, yes, naturally,” Otto said, correcting himself. “Ve are proposing to you.”

“I’m sorry?” William asked, gently putting down his glass.

“But not right away!” Otto said. “Not on the first date!”

There was a silence as William tried to process their words. Sacharissa was blushing violently and adjusting her cuffs as she spoke.

“It’s difficult, you see,” she informed the buttons at the wrist or her shirt, “because there’s no custom for this. We can’t be the first people to invent this, but it’s not the sort of thing people talk about, because they don’t think it’s respectable. But you like us and we both like you and I think we have enough respect for each other so as not to need to concern ourselves with everyone else’s.”

“Are you trying to ask if I’d like to be—” William began, letting himself hope that he had understood, “part of a… part of an… er…”

The word his mind supplied was harem and his sense of words knew it was the wrong word, completely wrong, because that was one king with several wives and this was different, this was three equals, none of them in charge, three individuals deciding of their own accord to be together. Whatever it was, it was something that appealed to him, something that he hadn’t thought of before but that sang to him like a song that becomes a favorite on first listen.

“A three of us,” Sacharissa said, still blushing, but addressing him directly rather than her shitrcuff now, fixing him with her gaze.

“Ve understand if you say no,” Otto said gently. “There vill be no hard feelings, as they say. There vill be very good feelings if you say yes, but if not, ve understand. There’s no custom for this, as Sacharissa said.”

William said, 

“Custom be damned,” and held out his hands across the table to both of them, which they accepted.