Power Trio

They dry off and get dressed in last night’s clothes. “Shoot.” Thekla picks up a shred of her panties from the floor. “I just remembered the orc ate my underwear.”

“Got some morning-after regret?”

“Nah.” She pulls her shorts on. “They were cheap, and that was priceless.”

In the kitchenette, Kell’s pulling two stacked trays of freezer waffles out of the oven. “Complementary breakfast for madame and monsieur,” she says. “Got a seat right there for ya, Thek.” She points with an oven mitt to the tallest of the mismatched chairs, which is furnished with a cushion from the couch.

“What a perfect hostess,” Evan pulls a white plastic seat up to the formica table.

Kell deposits a pile of waffles on his beat-up ceramic plate. “Let none deny that I am New Layth’s most dedicated service top.” She sits between them and slathers her own stack with maple syrup.

They tuck in, and Evan drops out of the conversation to eat, as he always does when someone puts food in front of him. Kell and Thekla buzz about recording plans, and the new album by Goethemode, and Kell’s penchant for dirty talk.

“What is it they say?” Kell says. “You spend your whole life writing your first album, and 18 months on your second. I’ve just had all this dommy mommy shit saved up with no sub to use it on. Give me a month and I’ll run out and just be going like ‘uhh uhh yeah bro shoot your goo.’”

“You’ll still have your fabulous muscles.” Thekla fills her glass at the sink. “And a gigantic bed. How much was that thing, anyway? It’s so massive.”

“Not much, dude,” Kell says. “Got it used.”

“You got it used? I could never. Like think of all the sex someone else had on it.”

“California kings are expensive, Thek. And it’s not like fucking on something makes it haunted.”

“What if someone died in it? People die in beds. That’s like the number one place people die.”

Kell’s fork pauses midway to her mouth. “I didn’t think of that.”

A rattle of keys and the front door opens. A raspberry colored half orc wanders into the apartment, an overnight bag slung across his back. He’s about 6 foot 2, halfway between Evan and Kell (appropriately enough). “What up,” he says.

Kell gives him a jaunty wave. “This is my roomie, Tom. Hi, Tom.”

“Yo.”

“This is Thekla, and that’s Evan. They’re my… bandmates in Legendary.”

Thekla gives Kell a sideways glance.

“Cool.” Tom tosses his bag onto the couch, where it knocks someone’s baseball bat sideways. “Gonna go crash.”

“It’s good to meet you!” Evan calls as Tom heads to his room.

“Yup.” Tom’s door shuts, jostling the beaded curtain laid across it.

“Wow.” Evan cuts into another waffle. “What a chatterbox.”

“That’s just how Tom is,” Kell says. “He’s cool. He’s coming to Ringside, I think. No idea what kind of music he’s into, but I’d love to impress him.”

“We’re your ‘bandmates in Legendary,’ huh?” Thekla drops her fork onto her plate and pushes her remaining waffles into the middle of the table. “Am I gonna be a buzzkill if I bring up the ‘what do we call this’ conversation?”

Kell pierces one of Thekla’s leftovers and transfers it to herself. “You mean you’re not a one-night stand?”

“I am actually going to fling maple syrup on you,” Thekla says. “I am going to make what Evan did this morning look like a tiny little squirt from a squirt gun.”

“Girl, I’m kidding. I just didn’t want to presume before we’d talked about it.”

“How public do we want to make this, exactly?” Evan asks. “I think our answer depends on that.”

“Sion already knows, so no use trying to keep him in the dark,” Thekla says.

Kell shrugs. “Fine by me. Glad I don’t have to put on a poker face in the Shed.”

“I actually need to talk to you guys about Sion at some point.” A vague look of worry passes over Thekla’s face. “Remind me.”

“I’m not trying to overcomplicate things.” Kell points her fork at Thekla. “You are my girlfriend.” She turns it to Evan. “You are my boyfriend. I’m not planning to hide it.”

“Co-signed,” Evan says. “I’m not gonna be dryhumping onstage or doing interviews in polyamory zines. But I won't complain about having two girlfriends.”

“Should we say partners?” Thekla asks.

“You can say partners. I always thought it sounds like a law firm. I like having a girlfriend.” Kell wiggles in her seat. “I have a itty bitty teeny tiny redhead goblin girlfriend.”

“Don’t be gross.” But Thekla’s grinning.

* * *

The next few days are an oversexed blur.

They throw in extra practice, putting additional time in the Shed for Ringside and for the next recording session, barely keeping their hands off each other for Sion’s sake. Evan and Thekla keep things under wraps at Labyrinth, if only because they’re having too much fun playing out an alt version of the sexy secretary affair, casting each other loaded looks across the shop floor. The rotation is, in fact, forgotten; Kell’s is the new spot, thanks to the size of the bed and the apathy of her roommates.

Eventually, he imagines, they’ll surely get it out of their system, but for now they’re having enthusiastic sex every night, and more often than not fooling around in the mornings too. Evan hasn’t hit the gym at all this week. Kell and Thekla are putting him through his paces enough that he’s still walking around with that sore post-workout satisfaction.

At night he sleeps like the dead, wrapped up in spent, multicolored limbs. After one of their threesomes, Kell remarks that “we look like a fucking Bob Ross palette,” and Evan thinks about that regularly.

Thekla fills him and Kell in on Sion’s bizarre request. They agree to put a pin in it, and work with the ash elf on his high strangeness after they’ve played Ringside. Kell gets a kick out of the whole thing, laughs off Sion’s behavior and proclaims her own intention to become a wizard. But Thekla doesn’t excuse Sion’s behavior so easily. She’s concerned that something is going on; some weird new drug or hyperfixation that they should think about an intervention for.

Evan is concerned too, but not for the same reason.

He can’t shrug off that night at Glorie’s as a quirk of equipment or an electrical freak accident. He’s tried, but he can’t. His amp was off. No power diode, no sound until the moment Sion spoke. He’s searched online, all over the forums and enthusiast boards. He’s read about grounding faults and tube hum. But he has seen nothing to explain what happened.

And the ash elf’s eyes, and voice, and touch. Evan can remember it perfectly. Like he’s right back on that stage.

He tells himself he doesn’t believe. But if someone had told him a couple of months ago that today he’d be warm, fed, happy, and in a sexual relationship with two beautiful musicians, he wouldn’t have believed that either.

He forgets about the mystery whenever he plays his bass or makes love to Kell and/or Thekla, and he’s grateful about how much of his time those two activities command these days. They chip away at their ten-song setlist, and Evan finally has a part on Tremendousness he really digs, a bright, sassy walking melody played up by the bridge to fill out the space between Thekla’s blocky power chords.

They’ve kept the power dynamic in the Shed and the recording booth the same, and it’s fascinating to see the way Thekla alternately takes and surrenders control. The intense, no-nonsense bandleader, making suggestions and calling shots, is also the giggling, bratty sub, eager to be pinned down and taken. Evan admires her self-assurance, how game she is to play both roles.

It only takes one more day of work to finish their recordings. Rahul brings them all into a big bear hug at the end, and even Sion relents (“for appearances,” he says). Now it’s all in the engineer’s hands to mix and master their sound. Sion’s been true to his word, and it’s good to have the elf back to his old sardonic self.

“Frankly,” Sion tells him one Smoke Shed evening when the girls are out on a cigarette break, “I’m pleased that I fobbed you off long enough to make it a nonissue. I thought I’d have to come up with far more excuses to keep you passed around between the ladies. Would you like a libation from Neko-chan?”

“Please.”

Sion retrieves two ales from the mini-fridge. “It’s nothing about you, you understand. But the coterie plays little games with people I bring over who aren’t part of the fluid bond. They can get quite catty.”

“I guess I’m grateful,” Evan says uncertainly, taking Sion’s offered beer.

“You ought to be. I intend to take at least partial credit for your throuple. See that you name either an offspring or a designer dog after me, whichever comes first.”

“Yo! Band announcement.” Thekla’s returned, striding as fast as her little legs can carry her. “We got news from Rahul.”

Kell is right behind her. “He said he’s passing our recordings up the chain at Warcry!” She’s buzzing with excitement. “And they’re probably going to be sending a guy to Ringside! We’re getting motherfucking scouted, dudes!”

“And so is Masonry.” Thekla’s more reserved. “Apparently they’re buzzy. So it’s a two birds situation.”

“Yeah but fuck that,” Kell says. “We’ll blow them out of the water and steal their spot. No problemo.”

“It’s not an either/or thing and it’s not a battle of the bands,” Thekla insists.

“Sure. Sure.” Kell nods. “But it's coming together, guys. This is the plan. It’s real!” She sweeps Thekla and Evan into a patented Falrak bearhug. “Sion.”

“No,” Sion says.

“Fine. But feel it, man. Feel the aura.”

Sion sips his beer. “Felt.”

“All right,” Thekla says. “If we're doing this for a scout, we're gonna need to practice more. We need to finish Geriatric, it’s just a progression right now, and listening back to our concert recording, I think we could have been way tighter on the song formerly known as Thunder Thighs. And we need to figure out its name. Which means you gotta put me down.”

Kell nuzzles the goblin. “Ten more seconds.”

The three of them take a moment and breathe together. Kell’s grip tightens on them, and Evan’s hand presses against Thekla’s lower back. Some of the bedroom softness creeps in.

Sion coughs.

“Okay.” Thekla breaks away and hops to the floor, ears flushed. “Music time. Finish your drinks, boys. Let’s get cracking.”

And the piece of Evan he’s pushed into a dusty corner of his mind says: if this band takes off, like Kell and Thekla want it to, you are going to have to tell them.

Before they say they love you, before you tell them you love them, you’ll have to tell them your last name.

Evan will not borrow pain from the future. He will suffer when it is his time to suffer and not before. He shotguns the rest of his beer and tosses the bottle underhand into the Shed’s spraypainted bin. He straps his bass on and nods to Thekla as she tunes up.

It’s time to be Legendary.