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It’s Kaveh’s fifth sigh of the night. He’s circling Alhaitham’s entrance with the head of his cock, teasing the folds, watching himself with a drawn expression.
They’ve shared more than a bottle of wine between them, and the four of them are varing levels of tipsy. Cyno, who cups Alhaitham’s chest in his hands, kisses the side of his neck, seeming not to notice. Tighnari is sitting just an arm’s length away, peering at Kaveh in troubled interest – palming himself through his trousers, not quite ready to commit.
(Tighnari had been the one to break the ice, reaching across the dinner table to drag Kaveh forward and kiss him. Cyno had placed his hands on Alhaitham’s hips, and soon after been lifted into his lap. They fell together the way they always do, at these times: chaotically and without much sense, four pairs of hands reaching for their spouses’, trying to make one complete body out of a mess of four people.
That is always how it starts.)
The sixth sigh comes as Kaveh is sinking into him. It’s such a ragged thing that it makes Alhaitham’s skin crawl, and his mouth opens before he can quell the impulse. ‘Law of Reductive Overdetermination.’
Kaveh halts. Cyno freezes. Tighnari’s ears give a concerned twitch, and he lays his hand aside, leaning forward on his knees.
Still some inches inside of him, Kaveh settles his weight back onto his feet – rocks, uncertainly, as though he is unsure whether to entirely pull out or plunge forward despite the safe phrase. He ends up withdrawing an inch, pushing in two, eyes dilating at the soft sound that leaves Alhaitham’s lips.
‘Alhaitham,’ prompts Cyno, letting go of him. He remains where he is, however, letting Alhaitham’s weight rest upon his chest. That is usually the greatest enjoyment for him during sex: being relied upon. ‘Do you need your headset?’
Alhaitham does not immediately reply. He studies Kaveh’s face: the thin ring of red circling his dark pupils; the pallid colour to his skin. He looks both aroused and uncertainly horrified. After a short stretch of a moment, Alhaitham feels Cyno gently place his headphones around his ears, press the wire into his hands.
‘Do you need a break?’ checks Tighnari, next. ‘Need to stop? Want to switch?’ Alhaitham shakes his head to each of these. He can hear the solution-seeking impatience building in Tighnari’s voice, the careful hold he keeps on himself to not burst into action. ‘Can you speak?’
‘I can speak,’ confirms Alhaitham, and that sets Kaveh into sudden motion.
‘Then what’s the problem! ’ he gasps. His earrings dance with the way he leans forward. Alhaitham winces when Kaveh pushes further inside; Kaveh tries to keep still, but he’s not very good at it. ‘Is this not enough for you? You really don’t want this after all, do you?’
Mouth drawing into a thin line, Alhaitham points. ‘That.’
‘“That”?’ repeats Tighnari, eyes scanning Kaveh’s face.
Kaveh’s gathered some pink to his cheeks, restoring the colour lost at the interruption. It’s not clear whether he flushes from anger or the physical activity. ‘I just knew it,’ he snaps, searching Alhaitham’s face. ‘Well? Can I touch you, at least? I’m going to fall over, at this rate.’
‘You may.’ Alhaitham suspends the roll of his eyes. Kaveh grips each of his hips in hand and lowers his weight onto him. Cyno, meanwhile, accepts both of them without a word.
‘I hardly see why we even do this if you’re not…’ Kaveh trails off, eyes narrowed. He’s quick to lose his gusto. He always is.
Meanwhile, Tighnari has breached the gap. He curls up against Kaveh, petting his hair; Kaveh sighs for the seventh time, turning his head to kiss Tighnari on the cheek. ‘What’s the problem here? Haitham?’
But there are so many problems. Cyno’s breath curling on his neck; Tighnari’s worried, flitting glance; Kaveh’s everything. These are all problems, and Alhaitham takes a held-breath moment to summarise it all into tidy phrasing.
He says, ‘Kaveh is upset by my lack of enthusiasm.’
‘I am not upset at your “lack of enthusiasm”,’ Kaveh scoffs, predictably.
‘I thought you were quite enthusiastic,’ murmurs Cyno. ‘Compared to other times.’
Tighnari nods absentmindedly.
Alhaitham inhales carefully. The smell of sweat coats the breath salt-tinged, and though the sun has fallen, the room feels too hot. Too heated. ‘Participating in sex is typically overstimulating for me. Atypically, I was doing fine – and I would have been, if not for your attitude.’
‘You want to claim I have an attitude?’ Kaveh spits back. ‘You’re the one who–’
‘“Who doesn’t even want this”?’ Alhaitham finishes. Kaveh gives a petulant sniff, falling silent.
Looking between the two of them, Tighnari loops his arms around Kaveh’s waist. ‘Isn’t that how it usually is? Cyno is the same way.’
‘At least Cyno actually wants it, sometimes,’ Kaveh says quietly.
‘Are you trying to claim I’m selfish for lacking sexual desire, Senior Kaveh?’ asks Alhaitham. He means to continue, but there is a pulse – an interested twitch of Kaveh’s cock, still half-inside.
‘Fuck you.’
‘That’s what you’re doing,’ observes Cyno.
‘Fuck you,’ Kaveh reiterates, but more wet. The potential of tears looms on the horizon.
Tighnari comforts Kaveh by kissing his back, spreading his fingers wide across him. He keeps Kaveh steady. He is so good at that, reflects Alhaitham.
Yet the problem assuredly remains. ‘You are upset,’ says Alhaitham, one more time, ‘that I lack the desire for this. You’re winding yourself up over the thought that I feel obliged to give you my body. Is that it?’
Kaveh doesn’t answer. This time, it is Alhaitham’s turn to sigh; what he gives is as good as a “yes”.
Feeling the tension leech out of him, Cyno lays his hands on Alhaitham again. When he is not stopped in his tracks, he begins tracing patterns and careless words into the skin beneath his chest. Alhaitham’s lashes lower over his eyes – and he knows he, too, is being quelled through touch and repetition.
‘You don’t ever have to give us sex,’ affirms Tighnari, voice weightless without the drench of guilt or fury that Kaveh carries. He sounds quite casual about the whole thing. ‘You know that, don’t you? We’ll still love you, even if we don’t ever touch you again.’
‘But touching you,’ Cyno adds, ‘is quite nice.’ He is writing the words I love you into the space above Alhaitham’s navel over and over again.
‘If I thought you were pressuring me, I wouldn’t agree at all,’ says Alhaitham. He catches Kaveh’s eye, hammering home each word. ‘Do I look like the kind of person who does what others want?’
‘... You never do what anyone wants,’ Kaveh answers. ‘You… that’s why people are so frustrated with you, you know. They can never find the Grand Scribe.’
‘The matra have dealt with their share of complaints on the matter,’ agrees Cyno.
Tighnari shakes his head. He nudges his hips up against Kaveh’s back, a smile lighting his face at the surprised gasp that he gets. ‘So is there any problem? Haitham wants to give himself to us.’
Kaveh makes a sound of frustration, brows scrunching tight over the bridge of his nose. ‘No, he– that still doesn’t mean he wants it, Nari–’
‘And why is that a problem?’
‘Why wouldn’t that be a problem!’ Kaveh snaps, scowling down at Alhaitham. ‘Is it so wrong for a person to want their partner to want them?’
‘Kaveh. Try to keep a clear head about this.’ Cyno’s one hand pauses on Alhaitham’s stomach so he can reach out the other, touching his knuckles to Kaveh’s forehead. Kaveh immediately nuzzles into the gesture.
Tighnari pulls back from Kaveh, and Kaveh abruptly turns to look at him, feeling the loss. His eyes watch Tighnari’s journey on hands-and-knees over to Alhaitham, who is still caught between Cyno and Kaveh. Tighnari settles before him and holds out his hand.
‘Can I touch you?’ Tighnari asks.
‘Yes,’ says Alhaitham. He spreads his legs; Tighnari’s fingers brush downward, and he rolls his thumb over his clit. Kaveh heaves a sharp inhale when Alhaitham tightens around him in interest.
‘What about here?’ Tighnari continues, moving his hands to Alhaitham’s chest.
‘Go ahead.’ So Tighnari fondles each breast in turn, leaning down to give the head of each nipple a sweet kiss. Kaveh’s hips are inching forward in breathy spasms, like it’s taking all of his will not to slam home inside of Alhaitham.
‘And here?’ Tighnari says, pointing his finger at Alhaitham’s mouth.
Predictably, Alhaitham wrinkles his nose. It is but a twitch of his expression – the barest movement of his brow, the slightest curl of his lip. Nevertheless. ‘I don’t like kissing.’
‘Not at all?’ Tighnari pursues. ‘But you’ll suck Kaveh’s cock or put your tongue inside of Cyno?’
Alhaitham deadpans, ‘Those are entirely separate things.’
‘But you don’t want to.’
‘I don’t like kissing,’ Alhaitham says firmly.
Tighnari turns to Kaveh. ‘He hates kissing. He doesn’t hate doing things with us.’
Kaveh is still yet to capitulate. He looks troubled and uncertain: he wears the expression Cyno puts on in his direst of moral dilemmas. ‘I– I’m quite aware of what you all like and don’t like, thank you. Is it really so much that a person wants her partner to desire her? Is it that strange?’
Finally, Alhaitham submits, rolling his eyes in earnest. ‘Senior Kaveh. My blanket lack of sexual desire is not an aspersion on you.’
‘Would you stop calling me that?’
‘Would you calm down and fuck me?’ Alhaitham mocks.
Kaveh sputters, face turning bright red. He is but an inch from being fully seated inside of Alhaitham, framed on either side by his two other spouses – both very naked – and yet the words have him blushing like a young maiden.
Cyno’s smile curls against the column of Alhaitham’s neck. ‘That’s a good look for you… Junior Kaveh.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘He means you look cute, Senior Kaveh,’ Tighnari hums.
‘What– what are you–’
Alhaitham raises his arms; without a word, Cyno closes his hands around his wrists. He gives Alhaitham the leverage he needs to push his hips down onto Kaveh’s cock. The both of them sigh – and Kaveh’s eyes flutter shut at the rush of sudden feeling.
‘Senior Kaveh,’ says Alhaitham, in the blandest voice anyone has ever wielded in the throes of sex, ‘I don’t need to want you to want this. I enjoy spending time with my partners. With you. And if I wasn’t in the mood, I would tell you. Are you quite ready to relax?’
Kaveh peeks an eye open at him. ‘... I–’
‘Do I need to fuck you myself?’
‘What?’ he gasps.
‘Tighnari,’ Alhaitham says.
Tighnari slides back behind Kaveh, and – when did he have time to oil his fingers – runs a seductive hand down the line of his spine. ‘I’m happy to fuck you in his stead. If you’re so worried about who wants you.’
‘I– hang on–’
‘Then I’ll have my turn,’ finishes Cyno. ‘I had thought to use Alhaitham’s mouth while you made love to him, but I can wait.’
Thoroughly defeated, Kaveh places his red face in his hands. Even the tips of his ears are blushing – ears that Tighnari nips at with his teeth, making Kaveh yelp. ‘Quit that!’
‘Are you ready to quit doubting me, then?’ Alhaitham asks.
Kaveh spreads the fingers on one of his hands, meeting Alhaitham’s gaze in the gap. His one visible eye is narrowed. Even so, the iris is still nearly black with desire, and his cock is as hard as it can get. ‘You don’t,’ he says chokingly, ‘have to make fun of me–’
‘I love you, Kaveh,’ whispers Tighnari.
‘I love you,’ Cyno adds.
Kaveh glances between them, then to Alhaitham, barely breathing.
‘I tolerate you,’ says Alhaitham.
And that, of all things, is what makes Kaveh laugh. It is his first laugh of the night.
But certainly not the last.