I know you're sharin' beds, well I'm a fuckin' mess

The sleeping arrangements in the Master’s Suite had been a bit of a nightmare to arrange.

After a delicious dinner, and a stimulating conversation, it was about time to settle in for a nice, early rest.

“Well… this discussion has been rather enlightening,” Amelia said politely, adjusting her glasses. She wore a frosty expression on her face, showing how little she really believed of the stories she’d been told by them.

Holly, Rose, and especially Mary all looked a little sheepish.

“I’m sorry I embellished so much,” Mary apologized. “Lying is wrong. But I want you to know, that’s really how I felt deep down, when I was brought here. I was just too afraid to confront that side of myself yet.”

It wasn’t clear if she was saying that to Amelia, or to Nick, or to herself. But everyone could feel the weight in her words.

“How we all met isn’t the important part!” Rose said, glossing over all the issues and lies she’d raised with her own statements. “What matters is how we feel about each other now!” She linked her arm around Nick’s and laid her cheek on his shoulder.

Amelia replied with a tight smile.

“…Thank you for saying as such,” she calmly replied. “But as I said, it is important that we rest for the evening. We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“Oh, that’s right, the beach party!” Mary gasped, her eyes widening. “Yeah, you’re right! Tomorrow’s going to be so exciting!”

“I can’t wait, personally,” Rose said, flashing a beaming smile. She turned to Nick with stars in her eyes. “You’re excited too, right, Nick? I’ve picked out a new swimsuit that I’m sure you’ll just love me in!”

Nick smiled politely back to her. “I can’t wait to see it,” he said, expressing his feelings sincerely but with a detached tone. He knew how Rose could get if she went a little out of hand.

She just tittered and hopped to her feet, already looking forward to how tomorrow would go.

“I’m so excited…” She hummed to herself, skipping towards the bed. “I can’t wait for tomorrow! Shall we go to sleep now?”

She was in full agreement with Amelia, but for a completely different reason. In Rose’s mind, the sooner they went to bed, the sooner it would be morning!

Nick nodded in agreement. He headed to the closet to get some of his sleepwear, and after a few minutes of preparation and getting ready for bed, it was finally time to get to sleep.

Now came the awkward part.

Sharing the bed with his stepmother.

“Nicholas, you don’t need to look so nervous,” Amelia said gently. “It will simply be the two of us sleeping beside each other. That is no reason to feel distress.”

“I know!” Nick shook his head. “I’m not distressed at all!”

“Then come join us!” Rose said, wrapping her arm around his and leading him to the bed. “There’s no need to worry!”

“And where do you think you’re going?” Mary grabbed Rose by the wrist and yanked her back.

“Yow! Hey, what’s the big idea?” Rose turned to Mary and pouted.

Mary scowled at her.

“You’re not serious, are you?” She sniffed. “Going to join them in bed, I mean?”

Rose shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. “W-well… so what if I am?” She said in a huff. “Would that be so wrong?”

“Yes,” Mary said without hesitation. “You’re not fooling anyone, Rose! Look at you! You’re practically naked! And you’re not seriously planning to take that apron into bed with you, right?”

Rose rolled her eyes and scoffed, a gesture that stated “absolutely not!”

…Which kind of proved Mary’s point.

The farmgirl shook her head. “No, no, this is wrong, all wrong. You think I’m so stupid I don’t know what you’re going to get up to? The second you get into bed with him, you’re gonna get up to all sorts of stuff!”

Rose blushed. “Not… not all sorts of stuff, just…”

She glanced over to Nick and bit her lip shyly.

Nick sighed. “Rose, Amelia is going to be in the bed too. We can’t fool around or anything, you know that.”

Rose had a card left she could play. Nick had promised her that he would pay her back for everything she’d done for him. If she really wanted to, she could cash in that chip right now.

But she let it slide. No sense in wasting something so precious on something as pedestrian as this, after all.

“Okay, you’re right,” she said with a resigned sigh and nodded her head. “But what, am I going to sleep on the floor!?”

Mary shook her head. “You’ll join me, in my bed! And Nick and Amelia can sleep right next to us. That’s okay with you, right?”

Rose groaned. That was the last thing she wanted… but it was better than nothing, too.

“Okay, fine,” she relented with a resigned nod. She gave a last mournful glance over at Nick before turning and trudging over to the kitchen, slinging off her apron, and joining Mary, who had already gotten under the covers.

She accepted the situation a lot better than Nick did. He was still flustered and nervous, and when he finally did manage to get into bed with Amelia, he couldn’t stop his heart from racing.

It was hard for Nick to describe why he felt the way he did. It certainly wasn’t because he expected anything to happen with his stepmother, or even because he wanted anything to happen with her. Just the opposite! He’d known Amelia since he was a little kid! The thought of doing anything with her, that was just…

Not happening.

And if he’d had to share a bed with her under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have had a problem with it at all.

But these were not normal circumstances. No, Nick was in a situation that he couldn’t really handle properly. Because this was Harem Hotel. Nothing was ever chaste and pure on this show, as Sylvia and Dakota had made quite clear. So even if he was sleeping in bed with his stepmother with purely chaste intentions…

The setting for this action was anything but.

“Nicholas,” Amelia whispered.

Nick turned around to look at her, barely making out her calm expression through the darkness of the Master’s Suite. He could only just see her green eyes, not hidden by her glasses, gazing up at him with a gentle glow.

“…Yeah?” He whispered back to her, keeping his voice low enough that the girls in the other bed wouldn’t hear him.

“Your heart is racing. Are you uncomfortable?” She sounded almost hurt. Like the fact Nick felt awkward about this reflected poorly on her.

Nick winced. “I… no, I’m… well, maybe just a little,” he admitted sheepishly, averting his eyes. What did she want him to say? Something like this… it wasn’t normal! Not at all!

Amelia was silent for a long time. If not for the fact they were staring eye to eye with one another, he might have thought she’d fallen asleep.

“Rose, quit hogging the blankets!” Mary hissed, breaking the tense silence.

“You’ve got a million over there! And I’m naked! Your stupid flannel will keep you warm!” The actress hissed back.

“And who’s fault was that, not bringing a change of clothes!?”

“How about you get heat from the lumps of fat on your chest then?!”

The sound of the two women in the neighboring bed thrashing about over the blankets made Nick’s problems not seem like that big of a deal in retrospect. He fought back the urge to laugh, and smiled at Amelia.

“…Sorry,” he whispered. “I just… things were a little uncomfortable for me, you’re right. Because of this whole Harem Hotel thing. I really hope you don’t take it personally, Amelia.”

“Of course not,” Amelia whispered back. She shook her head. “It isn’t easy to ask you to be comfortable with something like this, obviously.”

Nick couldn’t agree more. He swallowed and nodded.

“Thanks though,” he said after a moment. “For not making this any weirder than it has to be.”

“I don’t think that is possible,” she replied.

Boy, if only she knew. Nick actually appreciated the naïvete of that response. And with that in mind, he closed his eyes, and tried to pretend like the woman who raised him wasn’t sleeping less than a foot away from him in bed.

The body heat radiating from beside him? Nothing worth considering. The occasion brush of a leg against his, as she tried to settle and get comfortable? That could be anybody’s leg.

He removed the “stepmother” aspect from his bedmate and focused on the fact that she was just another woman. That made it so much less awkward, and he finally felt like he could drift off to sleep.

“Mary, that’s my pillow!”

“Too bad. I need more. You know, to support my ‘lumps of fat’.”

Ah, yes. No issues at all here.

When Nick woke up the next morning, it took him a second to remember that the person he’d gone to sleep with last night was Amelia, his stepmother. He was so used to waking up beside gorgeous women that it had almost become routine.

But there was nothing routine about this.

He turned over in bed, and was face to face with a slumbering Amelia Campbell, her delicate features practically glowing in the morning light. With her braid undone her hair was strewn about her face, and her usual strict countenance had relaxed itself, to the point where she seemed serene and peaceful.

If she’d been anyone else, Nick’s heart might have skipped a beat. And even knowing who it was, he felt a momentary lapse of composure. But he quickly pushed past that and carefully got out of bed, making sure not to wake her from her slumber.

The last thing he needed was to wake up his stepmother and cause problems before she’d had her morning cup of coffee.

Much to his relief, Mary had thought ahead. The farmgirl had woken up at the crack of dawn and scuttled off to the kitchen, where the scent of roasting coffee beans was already starting to fill the air.

“Ehehe… why yes, ladies, I’d be happy to run a tally for you…” A drooling Rose giggled to herself, turning over in her bed. “First one to sleep with Nick? Well, that will be…”

Nick rolled his eyes. Not just in exasperation, but also because hecouldn’t help but think fondly of Rose when she was behaving so cutely. She always tried to seem so composed and put together, but it was moments like these, when she let out her immature side, that always got him, reminding him how adorable she could be.

Of course, it was when she was immature like this. Not when she was picking fights with other women, like his wife.

He considered waking her up for a second, but then he thought better of it. He’d much rather she got a nice, long rest.

Plus, she was naked. There was a very good chance that if he woke her up, she’d try to pull him into bed with her, and he wasn’t sure if he was able to resist that right now.

So he dismissed those thoughts, and headed off to the kitchen to see what Mary was cooking up for breakfast.

It looked like it would be a long, lazy morning.

He froze at what he saw when he entered.

“M-Mary?”

The redhead jumped. She turned back to him with eyes as wide as saucers, and her face reddened in an instant.

“This… it isn’t what you think!” She sputtered, waving her hands frantically. “I just wanted to try it out, that’s all!”

She was buck naked.

“What are you doing?!” Nick hissed, rushing into the room and shutting the door behind him. He grabbed her by the arms, making sure to look her in the eye instead of anywhere else. He wasn’t sure he would be able to resist the temptation if he let his eyes wander. “You’re naked!”

“I-I know… I wanted to cook in a naked apron,” Mary said, looking down sheepishly. “You know… like how Rose did last night? …But I can’t. Since if I put one on, well…”

It would have transformed into her usual farmgirl clothes. Nick sighed, and nodded, understanding where she was coming from.

But still…

“Mary, Amelia’s in the next room!” He pointed out.

She stared blankly at him, and then rolled her eyes. “I know? Why do you think I started the coffee pot?” She pointed to the whirring machine on the counter.

Nick sighed. She wasn’t getting it.

“That isn’t my point!” He groaned. “Amelia’s in the next room! Were you seriously going to walk around naked with her around?!”

“…Well, we’re married, she’ll understand…” Mary lamely tried to excuse her actions.

On any other day, Nick would have found that adorable. But Rose had already made herself look a little loose. The last thing he needed was for Amelia to think that he was going about his days in the Master’s Suite just having naked women wander around throwing themselves at him!

…It may have been the truth, but she didn’t need the truth right now, she needed to think better of him!

He was suddenly sympathizing quite a lot with the girls’ embellished stories from the night before, he realized.

With a sigh, Nick rubbed his forehead. “Look, just… Mary, it’s okay. I’m not upset. But could you please put some clothes on?”

Mary sighed loudly. “If that’s what you want,” she relented, trudging over to retrieve her outfit.

Nick kind of felt like a jerk, seeing her in that state. He rushed after her and spun her around before she could get changed.

“Hey, is everything alright?” He asked, concerned. “You’d tell me if something was the matter, wouldn’t you?”

Mary blinked. Then she frowned. “…Something like what?” She remarked, sounding uniquely like a petulant child.

If this was about Rose being a blanket hog, Nick swore…

“Remember what I told you last night? About how I wasn’t going to be so passive anymore?” Nick reminded her. “Part of that comes with me pressing you about what’s wrong. So… tell me. What’s wrong?”

Mary sighed and shrugged. “It’s just… last night, Rose was all over you!”

Nick didn’t get what the problem was. Rose was always all over him. “So?” He asked.

The redhead’s eye twitched. “So… I’m your wife.”

Nick’s jaw dropped. “…Huh?!”

Was Mary… jealous?

Hadn’t they already solved this, like, weeks ago?

“Mary, I know you’re my wife, and I love you,” Nick said firmly. “So tell me, what’s the problem? I really want to know.”

Mary bit her lip and glanced at the kitchen door, like she was expecting Rose to burst in at any minute. She was clearly bothered by something, and that bothered Nick in turn.

He wished he knew what he could say to help her, but first she needed to be honest with him. So he shifted slightly so she was looking him in the eye again, and tried a second time.

“Mary, tell me the whole story,” he insisted. “What’s the matter? Are you angry that I was paying so much attention to Rose last night? Is that why you wanted to cook breakfast in a naked apron today or something?”

“…Yeah, a little bit,” Mary admitted, biting her lip. “But those thoughts… they’re sinful! The Bible tells us not to envy other people!”

“It… well, I suppose…” Nick was no biblical scholar, so he didn’t have a reply already cooked up for his wife’s particular brand of crazy. But after a few seconds of thought, he decided to pivot the issue. “Well… tell me where exactly it says that, then?”

Mary blinked. “H-huh?!”

Nick crossed his arms. “I mean, if it’s in the Bible, what’s the quote?”

“It… it’s in the Ten Commandments!” Mary’s jaw dropped in shock. She knew Nick didn’t share her passion for the teachings of God, but this was a whole new level of ignorance! “Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s house; thou shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female ****, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to thy neighbor. That’s pretty blatant to me!”

Mary wasn’t wrong. The text was very clear.

“Ah, but you see, it says not to covet your neighbor’s wife,” Nick pointed out. “I’m not anyone’s wife, and certainly not Rose’s. So there’s nothing wrong with being jealous over our closeness, isn’t that right?”

Mary’s jaw dropped.

“That… that’s rank sophistry!” She sputtered in disbelief.

Nick replied with a shrug.

He laughed as his wife swatted at him, her face red with frustration. Her playful little love taps helped energize him, and he grabbed her wrists as they collapsed onto each other in a fit of laughter.

“Sorry about this,” Mary said, giving him a shy smile. “I didn’t mean to get so worked-up about something that’s not that big of a deal.”

“Mary, it’s totally fine,” Nick assured her. “You’re my wife. It’s okay to be a little jealous about my relationship with another woman. …Especially if it’s Rose.”

He knew how much his French lover enjoyed rubbing her relationship in Mary’s face. Even if Mary was closer to him, Rose couldn’t help but flaunt his feelings for her as well.

Nick understood how much of that stemmed from a place of insecurity, which is why he gave her such latitude. But if it was causing problems for Mary…

“It-it’s not just about jealousy, either,” Mary admitted sheepishly. That was a bit of a surprise for Nick to hear.

“It’s not?” He asked, raising his eyebrow. “Then what is it about?”

Mary blushed and looked away. “W-well…”

She was being remarkably cagey.

“Mary?”

“…Well, like I said… I’m your wife. And she’s not.”

The weight of those last three words stung. Nick actually pulled back from her for a second, because he wasn’t sure how to interpret what she said.

“…What do you mean by that?” He asked cautiously.

Mary blinked, and for a moment she looked confused. Then, as if she suddenly realized what she said, a look of horror spread across her face.

“N-no, I didn’t mean it like that!” She said frantically, waving her hands. “I-I just meant… I’m your wife! And she’s not!”

Nick stared at her. Nope, she wasn’t making anything better.

“Mary…”

“If… if she wants to be that close to you, then why hasn’t she married you yet!?” Mary finally cried out. Like a massive weight had been lifted from her chest, she let out a sigh of relief. “…That’s all I meant to say.”

Nick stared at her in shock.

“…Huh?”

Mary blushed and looked away.

“I-I’m… I’m your wife,” she stammered. “I deserve special privileges. Because… because you married me. But you haven’t married Rose yet, but you’re treating her special, too! Inviting her to dinner with Amelia and us… shouldn’t you put a ring on her finger, then?!” She puffed up her cheeks and stomped her feet. “It’s the right thing to do, you know!”

Wait. So Mary wasn’t upset with him because he was giving Rose special treatment. She was upset with him because he was giving Rose special treatment… without marrying her first?

A laugh leapt from Nick’s lips before he could stop himself.

“Mary… you want me to propose to her? To Rose?” He asked, just to make everything clear.

Mary blushed and nodded shyly.

“I mean… if she’s going to act like your de facto second wife… it needs to be made official! Or else… or else it’s just adultery! Which is another Commandment, by the way! Thou shall not commit adultery!”

Nick couldn’t even begin to count the number of hoops Mary’s brain must have had to jump through in order to justify THAT perspective.

He just shook his head and tried not to burst out laughing.

“Mary… look, I love Rose, I really do. But I’m not ready to start handing out the wedding rings just yet.”

Mary frowned. “…Why not?” She asked, crossing her arms over her chest like an impatient teenager. “I’m pretty sure she’d say yes.”

Nick felt the same way.

“If Rose and I get married, it might start to put pressure on the other girls who I’m in relationships with,” he pointed out.

He could see the “So what?” coming a mile away and cut her off before she could get there.

“Marrying you was a special exception,” he clarified. “Because it meant something special to you. But I don’t want to put anyone on the spot if I don’t have to. This is a discussion we need to have with the other girls in the harem. Once we get everyone on the same page and I’ve developed my relationships a little more, then we can work on taking next steps together.”

Mary considered that for a moment, and then admitted that Nick had a point. “…You’re right,” she agreed. “I can’t imagine how Ella would react if there were a ton of weddings going around. And it might be weird for Morgana, too. You should probably wait until we’re all on the same page.”

Nick nodded. Knowing Rose, she could probably be a real bridezilla.

Also…

“…And then there’s Vivian,” Mary said with a sigh. “Opening that door…”

She let her thoughts trail off from there. Neither girl had a major issue with Vivian, but Mary wasn’t a fan of the way she seemed to be angling for Nick’s hand in marriage, and in her opinion, for all the wrong reasons.

“If I marry some of the girls, but hold off on marrying the others, it might cause some divisions. Put some girls ahead of others. And that’s the last thing I want right now,” Nick said with a sigh. Even if some people could think about it rationally, like Dawn, he doubted that others would.

Nick took Mary by the hand. “This might sound awful to say, Mary, but for now, I want you to stay as my only wife for now. That way, it will keep things from fracturing. One wife is going to be easier to manage than three or four.”

Mary gave Nick an awkward look. “Um… thank you. How… romantic.”

Nick winced. He had to admit, putting it like that didn’t sound great.