After the wedding ended, Wolfgang spent the next morning —and the afternoon, and then the evening that followed— tangled between the sheets of Kala and Rajan’s hotel room. Lounging lazily on bed, Rajan’s body within reach, Kala’s hand drawing patterns on his arm until whoever sent the strawberry craving their way made Kala say “I want something sweet”.
“Yeah, me too,” Wolfgang didn’t want to leave the room if it’d mean letting go of Kala, but the sweet craving was making the rounds in his head and they were in Paris, for fuck’s sake, he wanted chocolate croissants.
Rajan made a soft sound and raised his head from the pillow. “Now?”
“Yes, now, Rajan.” When Kala sat up, her beautiful black hair cascading down her shoulders, her eyes drifted between them, as if deciding what happened now. Wolfgang himself wondered if there was a way to make it work, just a little longer.
“We could order something,” Rajan suggested, a lazy look on his face. “Maybe a croissant, hm?”
Wolfgang, greedy as ever, convinced himself he was doing it for Kala, but it would be a lie to say he hadn’t enjoyed seeing Rajan unravel as they fucked. Without the psycellium connection, Wolfgang relied on what he always relied on: instinct. Right now, his instinct told him no one wanted to burst their little bubble just yet.
“Let’s go out instead,” he said, even as his body ached and urged him to rest. Wolfgang stood up already missing their warmth, but Kala was quick on her feet and quickly found a dress to throw on.
From the bed, Rajan called, “are we really going out at… midnight?”
“Rajan, we’re in Paris. There’s bound to be somewhere open right now,” Kala reassured him, passing by Wolfgang’s side as he pulled his pants up. She bit her lip for a second and then, she was visiting next to him, “you look like you’re having fun.”
“So do you,” he answered out loud, feeling weird about keeping Rajan out of the loop. Kala immediately latched onto that spark of a feeling and smiled.
He turned around to face the bed, where Rajan was in his underwear rummaging for a pair of pants in his suitcase, and Wolfgang wondered what was Rajan’s idea of after. When Rajan approached him during the wedding to set up the threesome, it was after a couple of glasses of sparkling wine and many false starts. Wolfgang waited him out as soon as he noticed Rajan was biding his time for something and once the words were out of his mouth, he’d immediately said yes without even wondering if it’d break his heart the moment he had to leave.
Looking at him now, putting on a pair of jeans that were hastily packed, wrinkled from being pressed inside since their trip from Napoli, there’s no doubt about it: if this will break his heart, then so be it. It was worth it. They, Kala and Rajan, were worth it.
Kala put her hair in a bun and helped Rajan find a clean shirt, moving around the room with the air of someone who knows exactly what she’s doing, but hesitation lingered at the back of her mind and there was nothing he could do about it.
Once Rajan was ready and they made their way to the elevators, Wolfgang took a moment to look his fill. With their messy hair and their matching grins, he waited until they were inside the elevator to say, “you both look like you’ve been fucked.”
Wolfgang knows he does too, but Rajan’s blush and Kala’s tiny smile make every second he’ll spend picking up the pieces of his heart worth it.
“We’re lost.”
“We are not,” Kala insists.
“We are, babe.” The pet name slipped easily out of his mouth, even if he never called someone babe before. “Maybe we should’ve asked for directions in the hotel.”
Rajan turned to Wolfgang then, a smile blossoming in his face, “you’re the one who wanted to go out. I wanted room service and a shower.”
“Maybe we can ask Riley. She’s been in Paris before,” he said, trying to hide his smile at Rajan’s words. Wolfgang too wanted room service and a shower, but when they stepped outside of the hotel and walked side by side, shoulders bumping as they walked —Kala decidedly walking a step ahead of them as if she knew the city like the palm of her hand— it had felt nice. More than nice, in fact. It wasn’t like touching Kala in real life for the first time, but it sparked something. Wolfgang knew that Kala noticed and she was subtly trying something out, but what? It was impossible to tell.
He looked around the street trying to spot someone local, but it looked like they walked in the wrong direction for that. Wolfgang took a deep breath —the kind of breathing exercises Sun was very fond of— and focused on Riley, until he was in front of the bed she and Will shared during their time in Paris. They were packing already.
“Riley, where the fuck do you find chocolate croissants in Paris past midnight?” Riley looked his way and with a fleeting thought visited next to him. It didn’t take her a second. “How can you do that so fast?”
“Practice. And you’re in the wrong arrondissement for croissants at midnight.” With the next blink, they were both back in Riley’s room.
“Are you leaving already?” Stupid question for his cluster, since everyone was ready to bolt out of Paris the minute after the wedding party ended. Paris might’ve been a perfect place to stay if they hadn’t been chased there by Whispers.
“My only visit to Iceland was to break Riley out of a BPO facility. Besides, she misses her dad,” answered Will. He wrapped the cord of a laptop charger in two, then two again and shoved it carelessly into a backpack. In a hushed tone, as if that will stop the rest of the cluster from hearing, he adds, “BPO wants advisors on how to go on moving forward. It figures it’s gotta be me, I have no home to go back to.”
“Nomi’s working on getting e-Death for Will and you, but it turns out her guy is elusive,” said Riley.
“Nomi is still an All-Access kinda gal and will have your papers ready before you can say e-Death,” Nomi added, briefly visiting the room, then taking them all to her hotel room, which looked way more lived-in than it should be possible for a two-day stay.
“What about you? Are you going back home as well?” Wolfgang asked.
Nomi looked in Amanita’s direction and said, “not yet. Amanita wanted to write a book in Paris and Rajan so generously offered a honeymoon, so we’re staying here for a while.”
Wolfgang, back in the corner he’s with Kala and Rajan, asked “you offered Nomi a honeymoon?”
“I feel like they deserved it, after all they’ve done for Kala. For you,” he said sheepishly.
“And you two decided to stay in Paris?” he asked back in Nomi’s room.
“We’re reclaiming this city,” she says, jokingly serious.
In the background, Amanita asks, “is that Capheus? I have his flight information ready to go!”
Instead of lingering on that, he turns back to Will and Riley, “is everyone else leaving?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t they?”
Wolfgang’s stomach tightened at that. Not yet, he thought. He immediately noticed his mistake when Riley’s pitying smile told him his thoughts were transparent. Instead of lingering on that, Wolfgang said “so, late night croissants. Where?”
“Right in front of the Seine, like a block away from Tour Eiffel underground station.”
With a nod, he went back to the corner where Kala and Rajan waited for him. Kala’s face was blank of any emotion, as if she too was chewing on the thoughts of everyone leaving. Everyone else was going home. Wolfgang himself had no home to go back to, just his lonely apartment and a city where crime lords were fighting for every inch of it. If he wanted it, Berlin would be his, but what’s the point of having a city without anyone else to share it with?
Felix went back to Berlin during that morning, with a quick message and a you better visit soon that implied Wolfgang had somewhere else to be.
“Let’s go, we have a lot of ground to cover on our way back,” he said.
“We could take a taxi,” Rajan added.
“Let’s walk,” Kala replied, taking Rajan’s hand, then Wolfgang’s. “I’ve never walked around Paris and the night couldn’t be more beautiful, don’t you guys think?”
Kala’s hand in his feels small and soft and all he wants is to kiss it, so he does so, his lips lingering for a moment on her wedding ring, but his eyes intently set on Rajan. “Whatever you want, Kala.”
Following his cue, Rajan did the same thing to Kala’s right hand, then, without any prompting, he kissed Kala’s cheek as well. “My wife, I’ll gladly walk wherever you take me.”
With a smile on her lips and a glance to both of them, Kala set to walk them back to their starting point, the three of them holding hands as if this was the most normal thing in the universe. For once, Wolfgang hoped —he begged— the universe to grant him a little longer.
When they reached the bakery, Kala ran inside to buy them something filled with chocolate, leaving Wolfgang and Rajan alone for the first time since before the wedding. Well, alone outside the room where they’d been touching each other half the time.
Wolfgang had to be honest with himself, he thought Rajan was hot —he wouldn’t have agreed to the threesome if that weren’t true— but that didn’t mean he knew what he was agreeing to. Knowing Rajan through Kala only had only stopped being the baseline a few days ago, when he met the guy at Sans Jour, and even after, Wolfgang avoided him until he could no longer put it off and thanked him right before Kala joined them at Jean-Pierre’s.
No one ever told him how to get to know the love of his life’s husband in case the option of a triangle solution to their special situation was in the cards. Hell, he never thought he’d be psychically connected to seven strangers around the world, but here they were.
As much as Wolfgang missed simpler times, he’d never had anyone who would fight for him the way they did. Rajan not only accepted Kala’s connection to the cluster, but he readily understood that what they had was complicated. Wolfgang had to admit he had a soft spot for men who would do anything to help the love of his life. Wolfgang also had a thing for the burn of stubble down his neck, for men who moaned during sex, for men whose shy touch turned firm and all-consuming once they got comfortable with someone new.
“Can I ask you something?” Rajan said, interrupting his line of thought.
“Whenever you want.” Wolfgang didn’t have to phrase it like that, but he liked the way Rajan’s eyes darkened at the intensity of his words.
“What you feel for Kala– how would you describe it?”
And wasn’t that a loaded question. It was easy: he loved Kala more than anyone in the world. It was the purest emotion he’d ever been capable of and he treasured it inside himself like a dragon’s gold. He couldn’t imagine a life in which he didn’t meet Kala to fall in love with her again.
“I love her in a way I never thought I was capable of.” Without taking his eyes off the door to the bakery, he added, “I truly thought my father ruined me and I was ready to accept it. She once told me there’s something soft and beautiful hidden inside you and I’m still trying to find it.”
“She was right. We’re not our parents, we don’t have to make the same mistakes they did.” Rajan softly touched his arm to get him to turn to him. Under the Paris streetlight, with his messy hair and messier clothes, Rajan looked like he came out of one of Wolfgang’s dreams. “I meant what I said,” He nodded towards the bakery. “I’ll walk wherever she takes me. If she wants to walk into an open relationship, I’ll do it.”
He didn’t get a chance to reply because just then, Kala came out of the bakery carrying two brown bags of sweet goodies.
“I got us everything that’s supposed to be sweet and chocolate,” her smile was so big that Wolfgang didn’t want to burst their bubble yet, but he knew they needed to talk and for once, he thought using words would be worth something. “Do we go back to the hotel?”
Rajan was quicker than him this time, “maybe let’s sit on the grass and talk.”
Kala’s smile wavered. Wolfgang couldn’t take it, so he took one of Kala’s bags and said, “Come on, we can talk after I’ve had whatever you got in there.”
Rajan took Kala’s second bag and offered her a hand, Wolfgang quickly offered his free hand as well. Kala, for her part, looked like she was about to cry, but quickly took the hint and led them to a spot where they could watch the lights of the Eiffel tower from a safe distance from the tourists. When she sat down, cross-legged and expectant, Wolfgang looked back at Rajan’s warm smile and almost wished it was for him.
They ate their sweet treats and they talked, really talked, for the first time ever. The conversation flowed naturally, as well as their makeout sessions and their borderline animalistic fucking.
And when Kala asked Wolfgang what he wanted to do, the answer was as easy as breathing, “I hear Mumbai is lovely this time of the year.”
Their matching grins were enough to keep Wolfgang going for as long as it takes for the fates to come after him again.