Disclaimer - Well, in my dreams, they're mine….

Note - Many thanks to KS for proofreading the very rough first draft of this one, and to Snow for liking it….

Pairing - 1x2x5

Warning - squelchy sap and ….a teeny bit of retrospective angst. Just can't get away from it, can I?

Rainy Day in Dublin - Part III:

OK, if anyone tells you it doesn't always rain in Ireland, don't believe them. Seriously.

The thing is, rain isn't always bad.

It's actually kind of nice walking around under an umbrella with your two boyfriends crowded in on either side of you. Even though the umbrella's pretty big, there's still three of us, so we do have to crowd in a little so we all stay dry. And there's usually one of them holding it up with me, and every now and then our hands slide together on the wet handle.

It's a good excuse for dodging into little shops that might look interesting, or for staying that bit longer in a café and maybe ordering a second hot chocolate or a hot scone.

The receptionist in our hotel had recommended hot whiskies as a way of keeping the damp out, and that's become a little before-bed ritual for us.

Rain's a reason to stay in bed for just those few extra minutes in the morning, to see if it's going to clear up before deciding what to do, and then having to abandon any tentative plans we'd discussed the night before because, after we'd fallen asleep a second time, there was really no point doing anything except calling down for room service.

And whenever we do get back to the hotel, I tend to get stripped straightaway and thrust under a hot shower, or into the bath. That doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense; I mean where's the logic in getting me even wetter inside of drying me off? But at least one of them invariably ends up in the water with me, so I'm not going to complain.

But they were sure that if the tiniest raindrop landed on my skin or my hair, I'd melt away, so after I'd had my shower or my bath, I invariably ended up on the bed with Heero towelling my hair and Wufei doing magical, miraculous things to my feet with his hands and a tube of lotion. Things usually took a fairly predictable course after that.

A few months ago I got a chill while I was on a stakeout. Somehow it morphed into double pneumonia and I ended up staying a couple of weeks in hospital. The illness wasn't really all that serious; the main threat to my health was that I'd end up jumping out of the window to get away from the two of them.

We'd only just gotten together, and they insisted on taking time off to haunt my hospital room. Outside visiting hours, they hassled the medical staff over my temperature having risen infinitesimally during the night, or demanding that I should be getting some new treatment they'd been researching over the net.

When they were actually allowed into my room, they sat on either side of the bed and stared at me, desperately trying to anticipate my every need. They even bumped heads a couple of times when they both leaped up to fluff my pillow, or refill my water glass.

I think someone, maybe Quat or Tro, mentioned that I was finding all this - oppressive, because they did let up for a couple of days, and then I caught a small infection and it was worse than ever.

It got to the point where I was starting to dread going home, where it would be open season on coddling me, and there' be no nice nurses around to order them out. I just snapped one day, after Wufei had insisted on tucking my blanket around me in five different ways and Heero had reduced a poor little student nurse to tears when she forgot to check there was ice in my water jug.

I think two weeks of frustration came bursting out in as many minutes and they both just looked so - stricken after I was through. We ended up in a weird sort of group hug on my bed; they both desperately wanted to hold me and were terrified they'd hurt me so in the end I just sort of draped myself over the two of them and hung on.

We managed to sort a few things out. They agreed they'd both been - ahem! - a little on the overprotective side, and I admitted that I wasn't very good at being cared for. Never really had any practice in that sort of thing.

They assured me they'd stop making their concern quite so obvious, and I promised I'd work on accepting the whole being-fussed-over thing a little bit better.

They did try to make an effort once I was home; well, they took turns staying home with me so I only had to deal with one of them at a time. Heero went around for days biting his tongue on things he wanted to say and was scared would somehow upset me, and Wufei nobly tried not to call home every fifteen minutes when he was at work.

It took time but eventually I realised they weren't doing any of this to torture me, but because they cared. They made heroic efforts to back off, when I was awake, but I kept catching concerned glances when they thought I was wasn't looking, and I knew whichever of them was home was constantly sending the other texts on how I was doing.

They were trying but they were slowly driving me mad. I yelled at Wufei the third night I was home, and he hadn't really done anything. Just handed me my dinner with the neatly chicken cut up into bite-sized pieces so I could stay lying on the couch and eat with a fork. He'd meant it as a kind, sweet gesture, and I saw it as reinforcing the fact that I was like some useless invalid who couldn't do anything for himself.

I stormed off to the bedroom, giving the door a good hard slam to emphasise that I wanted to be alone. Of course, once I was alone in the vast bed I still thought of as theirs, I started to feel the first niggles of guilt; I wasn't just feeble; I was ungrateful as hell and there was no way they'd want to put up with that for much longer.

I fell asleep curled into a ball and doing my best not to cry, in case they heard. I think I woke up several hours later; it was dark and I wasn't alone any more.

Heero was stroking my hair, soft as a whisper, and Wufei had one hand lightly over my heart. Heero was murmuring that they just had to learn to lighten up a bit, and stop smothering me, and our Chinese partner was saying, in this awful choked whisper I'd never imagined coming out of Chang Wufei's mouth, that he'd been trying, but it was so hard.

I think I realised it really dawned on me, for the first time, listening to them, just how they felt about me. The thing that choked me up was Heero's quiet voice in the darkness, telling Wufei that I needed some time, needed space to get used to all this, to learn to depend on them for a change, and I hadn't meant to hurt him.

It occurred to me then, that maybe my wanting to be totally independent wasn't the best way to live, not if it hurt the people who wanted to get close, and maybe I could start leaning on them, just a little.

Of course, things didn't change overnight. I learned to bite my tongue and smile and thank them for the little things they did, even if I could have quite easily done them myself.

It kind of helped when I realised it wasn't just me who got fussed over; Heero admitted that when he'd been shot on a mission, Wufei hadn't been able to sleep properly for weeks, and Wufei confided that whenever he travels with his job, Heero calls him to make sure he's eating properly and taking some time to himself away from the office.

I'm a lot more at ease with the whole attention thing now. I've gone from discomfort to resentment via frustration all the way to the point where I can positively wallow in it.

It's - kind of nice, actually; now that I'm starting to accept just how much they care. Letting the people who love you look after once in a while isn't such a bad thing. And nor is rain, really, when you try to look for the positive side.