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“You called—er!”
Xiao’s mouth closes so fast that his teeth click together audibly, and he freezes, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling. Heat creeps up his cheeks even as he ensures his eyes don’t fall anywhere disrespectful.
It doesn’t do much for his ears, though, and the heat only washes over him further when Zhongli speaks, a deep, familiar rumble that rolls through Xiao’s suddenly-unsteady limbs.
“He responds to you?”
“Xiao and I are on very good terms,” Venti says, and, oh. Xiao can hear the smile in his voice.
He’s not wrong. And Xiao thinks that he knows what this is—a scheme of Venti’s, one he’d mentioned and Xiao had absentmindedly nodded along with, because it was so far beyond the pale that he didn’t have it in him to realize that Venti was serious.
Soft skin brushes against Xiao’s wrist, and then he’s being tugged forward, stumbling towards the bed where two archons are entangled in a way that is wholly inappropriate for Xiao to be spectating. He screws his eyes shut.
“Xiao,” Venti whispers. “Open your eyes.”
He does, two points of heat burning high on his cheeks, and averts them. This close, there’s nowhere to look except the pale sheets draped over Venti’s waist, like a mimicry of an archon’s robes; the shadows where his knee presses against Zhongli’s hip; the amber tips of his master’s hair, unbound and tumbling loose.
“My apologies,” Xiao croaks. He would kneel, if Venti wasn’t holding him up, and—maybe Venti can tell, because he guides him downwards, so close to the side of the bed that his knees press against it, and free to lower himself down, down, down, until he can’t see anything except the fine carpet fibers between his knees. It’s better, like this. Less like he’s straying beyond his place.
“Whatever for?” comes Zhongli’s voice again, and then his palm is smooth, warm stone against Xiao’s jaw, unyielding as he tips his chin up.
Xiao blinks, but—Venti asked him to keep his eyes open, so he does, except Zhongli’s gaze is cor lapis gone molten and seeping through the cracks of his disguise of humanity, entirely too much for the way Xiao’s breath is already quickened in his lungs. He lowers his gaze, deferent—to Zhongli’s bare chest, and the reddening spot above his clavicle that fits perfectly into the crescent of Venti’s devious smile.
His face reddens to match, and he looks back to Zhongli’s eyes instead.
“Don’t be shy,” Zhongli says, smiling. “We are the ones who called upon you. Though, if you are uncomfortable—ah, I’m afraid Barbatos made a compelling case for your interest…?”
Xiao cuts his eyes over to Venti, who frowns at Zhongli and tugs on a strand of his hair.
“Hey,” Venti says, “can’t you just trust me? I know you’ve got rocks for brains, but you could at least try to imagine what it’s like to be in his position right now. Show some mercy, won’t you?”
“What, like you?” is Zhongli’s dry response, and maybe it’s his lackadaisical acquiescence to Venti’s tugging, or the note of humor threading through his stone, but—
Xiao finds his voice. “You…” He swallows, throat bobbing against Zhongli’s fingertips. “If you’ll have me.”
Zhongli blinks, and the fond irritation in his eyes melts back into pure warmth. He lets go of Venti’s hip to cup Xiao’s face entirely, until Xiao’s eyes burn with pleasant heat and he loses track of anything except encompassed and warm.
“Always,” Zhongli says, and leans down to press his lips to Xiao’s.
Xiao’s breath hitches in through his nose, but he presses forward, just the slightest amount—he doesn’t dare move from Zhongli’s grip, but, oh, he strains against himself as Zhongli’s lips part against his own. Kissing is always softer than he remembers, a slick pressure against his tongue that is wholly incongruous with someone he’s always seen as his lord—
Zhongli parts with a quiet, wet sound, and Xiao tips forward in chase before he remembers himself, flushed and wide-eyed.
“He’s even prettier if you get his lips all red and swollen,” comes a murmur, Venti’s chin hooked over Zhongli’s shoulder as he peers down at them both.
“I may be the dragon,” Zhongli says, petting a thumb across Xiao’s cheek, “but I’m not the one that likes to bite.”
“Oh,” Venti says, airy. “Did I mention biting? He’s on his knees, Morax.”
Zhongli’s breath catches on an inhale, claws scraping gently at the short hair at Xiao’s nape, and Xiao squeezes his eyes shut and trembles.
“Are you having trouble keeping your eyes open, love?” Venti asks, and a third hand cards through Xiao’s hair. His eyes flutter open, low and apologetic.
“Mm,” Xiao hums.
“Seems like a good opportunity for some practice, since Morax is too polite to admit he’d love to see you choke on his cock,” Venti suggests, grinning in a way that never heralds anything good. Or—things that are too good, sometimes. “I have an idea.”
That is how Xiao ends up naked, back on his knees, relegated to the floor at the side of the bed and instructed to watch carefully. Venti is not in a particularly merciful mood, of course, so he is by no means neglected—no, Venti coaxes him up onto the bed, first, leans him back against Zhongli’s chest and instructs his master on how best to put his hands to use. One arm wraps around Xiao’s chest, both of his own left clutching at Zhongli’s wrist, and Venti holds Xiao’s knees wide, wide, wide as Zhongli trails his fingers over his chest, skims over his stomach, and finally, finally, dips between his legs.
Venti’s instructions are clinical, deviously so, and he talks to Zhongli over Xiao’s head in a way that makes Xiao feel like a toy, an object present only for their entertainment with no regard spared to his own needs. Unfortunately for him, Venti is paying rather too much attention to Xiao’s needs, because every time he closes his eyes, overwhelmed by the smooth glide of warm fingers against the slick heat between his thighs, the rhythmic rub of a thumb against his clit, the teasing dip of a finger just inside his aching hole—
That’s when Venti always tugs Zhongli’s wrist away, leaves Xiao’s mouth silently gaping and his hips twitching, involuntary, against the air. He aches, desperately, but he can’t bring himself to watch, not as Zhongli hums thoughtful agreements against his ear and traces wet circles against the junctions of Xiao’s inner thighs.
They never quite allow him to crest, because that’s not the point of this little exercise. They simply wind him up and keep him there, until his vision is a foggy haze of pink-tinted desire, until his lungs exist only for Venti to coax voiceless gasps from, until Zhongli twists his fingers against one of the sensitive nubs on Xiao’s chest, ripping a pitchy cry from his throat, and Venti has to yank his hand away because even that was nearly enough.
Eventually, Venti decides Zhongli has had enough educating. He tugs Xiao out of Zhongli’s arms, loose-limbed and trembling with desire like a newborn colt, legs spread wide to avoid stimulating the tight bundle of throbbing need that sits between them.
“You’re so good,” Venti murmurs against his ear, gentling Xiao to his knees beside the bed. “It’s over, you did so well, love, don’t worry—all you have to do is watch, now, okay? Knees wide, there you go, don’t touch yourself—can you hold your hands behind your back? I won’t tie you, you have to hold on.”
Xiao nods, nods, nods, too tired and wound-up and hazy to mouth anything, anything you want like he really wants to. When Venti is finished with him, he is positioned just so: knees spread, too far apart to press his thighs together for relief but with plenty of space for Venti’s cheeky breeze to brush between them, sending Xiao gasping and arching as his hands clench into fists around his own wrists.
“You’re rather unkind to him,” Zhongli observes, a serpentine tongue swiping traces of wetness off his fingers.
“Am I?” Venti asks, leaning in. Xiao tips his chin up, hoping—but Venti just brushes the tip of his tongue across Xiao’s bottom lip, light and fleeting, before pulling away. “You’re the one who did everything I said.”
“That is because Xiao suffers beautifully,” Zhongli says, and lowers his hand to wrap around Venti’s wrist. “And because I knew you would get what’s coming to you.”
Venti’s eyes go wide, breath hitching. “Ah—ahah, right, um—” His voice pitches up. “Morax—?”
“Remember,” Zhongli tells Xiao, eyes slitted as a fang peeks past his smirking lip. “Watch carefully, Xiao. Be a good boy.”
“Yes,” Xiao says, and is shamefully proud that it comes out as something other than a whimper.
Venti’s seeming apprehension dissolves into a peal of laughter as Zhongli flings him to the bed, a waiting python bursting out of the sheets and into motion as he rolls them over and pins Venti stomach-down on the mattress. Venti turns his head, cheek squished endearingly against a pillow as he faces Xiao and grins widely.
“A brute!” he declares. “I would never do something like this to lovely Xiao.”
“Xiao would never do something to deserve such brutality,” Zhongli rumbles back, and presses Venti’s wrists more tightly against his lower spine, until Venti gasps, arching and wriggling against the hold.
Then Zhongli fucks him, exactly like he wouldn’t fuck Xiao.
Xiao can’t tear his eyes away. Just as before, however, it is his ears that truly betray him: Venti won’t stop narrating, deliciously poisonous words pouring from his lips between every hitched gasp and unrestrained moan.
“I swear I taught you better on Xiao than on myself,” he whimpers as Zhongli curls two fingers inside of him. He’s propped Venti’s leg up on his own hip, spreading him to a more accessible angle and, with a glance towards Xiao to judge his perspective, refusing to leave anything at all to Xiao’s imagination. “Oh! Do that again, Morax!”
Zhongli does it again, more slowly and with an obscene squelch, and smiles to himself as Venti goes breathless for a moment.
Only a moment, though. Venti is never without words for long.
“So good,” he mumbles against the sheets, “Xiao, are you watching? Wan’ you to know what you’re missing. Want you to want it so bad it hurts.”
Xiao swallows, and Venti’s eyes trace the bob of his throat.
It already hurts. He feels hypersensitive to Venti’s every sound, Zhongli’s every movement—the fronts of his knees are pressed against the bed, and he can feel it shift with their motions, but there is nothing else. Just the tight press of his fingernails against his own wrists, and watching, waiting, praying as he imagines—no, remembers—neither, both—how it feels when Zhongli finally presses his cock into Venti.
Zhongli pulls Venti up, holds him back against his chest with his legs spread wide and his pussy stretched around Zhongli’s cock, just like Xiao could have been, if, if, if they’d let him. Venti reaches back, tangling a hand in Zhongli’s hair, and sighs, satisfied, eyes fluttering open to meet Xiao’s.
“Feels full,” Venti mumbles. “You’d love it, Xiao, you would—you’d be made for this, I know you like it so big that it aches, that’s why I only let him give you two fingers earlier—drives you out of your mind a little slower like that, makes it not-enough in more than one way. Ah!” Zhongli smirks into Venti’s shoulder, settling from where he’d hitched his hips up. Venti closes his eyes, slow, and opens them just to peer back down at Xiao. “What a cock. I bet he’d stick it in and you’d come all over yourself. I can see how much you want it—you’re chewing your lip raw, love, don’t hurt yourself. Poor baby—maybe I’ll be nicer if you start crying. Ah, Zhongli, Morax, please…”
Xiao can’t move, but that doesn’t stop his hole from clenching over nothing, and he can feel himself actually drip, a shameful trickle of wet heat trailing down his thighs that nonetheless is—close, tantalizing sensation so close to where he needs it—
He can’t touch himself like this, can’t press his legs together for the scantest of relief, and he can’t hide his arousal, either, legs spread in a perfect vee that neatly frames the evidence of his desperation.
Venti’s eyes catch his as they both gasp, and Xiao can’t hold it back anymore: a whimper crackles up the back of his throat, and he tips forward, pressing his forehead against the sheets.
He trembles, squeezes his eyes shut, and doesn’t beg. Please, please, please wants to bubble out of his chest, but—be good, Zhongli had said, and good boys—Xiao had never thought of himself that way before, had never let the thought enter his mind until the words dripped off of Zhongli’s lips, smooth as truth—good boys don’t beg.
And yet he’s not good, because a hand winds into his hair, sharp points of pain sparking as Xiao is tugged up, head tipped back as he gasps and twitches, the touch a live wire of desire even so far from where he truly wants it.
Venti is whimpering against Zhongli’s throat, face half-buried in it as he tries to grind back against his motionless partner. Zhongli stares down, eyes lidded, at Xiao struggling in his grip. His other hand presses against Venti’s lower belly, two long fingers tracing firm circles over Venti’s clit that send his hips kicking forward with every stroke.
“M’sorry,” Xiao mumbles, tongue tripping over nothing before Zhongli can reprimand him. “Didn’t mean to, master, I’m sorry. I’ll be good, I’ll be good—”
The sharp tug softens into a gentle pet as fingers run down the back of his head and squeeze—firm, immovable—against the back of his neck. Xiao pants, trying not to tug forward the way Venti so clearly is.
“I know,” Zhongli says, eyes trailing down over Xiao. It’s the first time he’s looked at him in a while, and Xiao trembles under the scrutiny, thighs flexing against nothing as he realizes Zhongli can see how wet he is—see the flush trailing down Xiao’s chest, the shine of slickness on his thighs, the minute shaking of his legs.
Zhongli smiles, and sits Xiao back onto his haunches, giving one last squeeze to the back of his neck before letting go. Xiao manages to choke back the whimper, but can’t do anything about the way his thighs clench, another drip making its way down his thigh.
“Watch carefully,” Zhongli instructs again, and finally gives Venti what he’s been straining for.
Venti finally getting fucked into coming is like a punch to the chest, and Xiao keens in an echo of Venti’s own cry before he manages to strangle the noise down. They hadn’t told him to be quiet, but surely they want it, for him to be unobtrusive, out of the way where they’ve put him—oh, he can see the way Venti squeezes wetly around Zhongli’s cock, hear the filthy noise of every thrust, can almost—almost—feel it, a phantom throb between his own legs that makes him twitch with every thrust of Zhongli’s hips. His own hips twitch forward, a minute movement in perfect tandem with the wind-down of Venti’s long, satisfying, loud orgasm.
Xiao has fucked Venti like that before, slow and deep at Venti’s careful instruction, with a pretty wood-carved toy that Venti fitted specially to Xiao’s hips. He’s been fucked in turn, teeth clenched around the back of his glove as Venti rolled his hips or twisted his wrist in just the right way to bounce Xiao onto the tips of his toes and roll his eyes back into his head. The knowledge of how it feels on both sides is a terrible curse that burns in his veins as he watches, impotent, as Venti shakes apart, lashes fluttering against his flushed cheeks.
When Venti finally peels his eyes open, panting and mouth curled inevitably into a smile, his gaze meets Xiao’s. Xiao doesn’t know how he must look, other than desperate, perhaps even pained, and he doesn’t beg—won’t beg, wants to be good—but he tries to plead with his eyes and expression, holds his breath for the long moment that Venti captures his gaze and a tentative hope builds in his chest, that maybe—maybe if he’s good enough, it can be his turn—
The corners of Venti’s lips hitch a degree higher, and he pats at Zhongli’s chest until he leans back and Venti can roll himself off and over onto his back, propping a leg up on Zhongli’s shoulder. He’s spread even wider like this, the pretty arch of his back and the dramatic angle of his thigh making Xiao’s throat go dry as he tries to swallow.
A thin breeze brushes Xiao’s loose hair against his jaw, a ribbon that trails across his throat and behind his back, down to wind around his waist and finally settling to play, swirling and joyful, between his thighs for a long, torturous moment. It’s a coy tease, purely Venti, and ratchets Xiao so tight that he has to bite down on his lip again to stop himself from begging before it finally dissipates.
“You think you’d give him something a little more solid to relieve him,” complains Zhongli, a voice of grinding stone, and squeezes his hand around Venti’s knee.
But nothing solid comes, the memory of warm stone a mere tease as Venti’s laugh rings high and clear as a bell through the empty space between them.
“Morax,” Venti laughs, “again.”
Zhongli wrings two more orgasms out of Venti, and fucks him hard enough to knock the bedframe against the wall. The second time comes slower than the first, and the third slower still, until Venti is languid and hazy-eyed with pleasure, gasping wetly as he trails his fingers through strands of Zhongli’s hair.
They look at each other like they are in love, and look at Xiao less and less at all as time goes on. It makes sense, of course—they are wrapped around each other, beautiful and divine, and Xiao can’t tear his eyes away, either. He watches the bruises Zhongli’s fingertips leave blooming in the soft flesh of Venti’s thigh and traces his eyes over the way Venti’s teeth press into his lower lip before he surges forward and bites Zhongli’s lip, instead.
It makes him shift in place, squeezing his hands over his own wrists as he fights not to slip a hand between his legs and search for the relief that Zhongli is working Venti through—over, and over, and over. Xiao shivers, untouched and cooled from his feverish state, but his back still wants to arch and press himself down onto—something, anything, to soothe the throb between his legs.
… But it also sends a prickle of discomfort through him, when long minutes pass and Venti’s narration dies down. Neither of them so much as glance at him as he shivers and aches.
He bites down on his inner cheek to stop from making any noise that might draw their attention and spoil the mood.
Eventually, Venti starts straining away from Zhongli, and Zhongli bends him over even further, burying his face into the crook of Venti’s neck with a long groan as his hips stutter to a stop. That, more than anything, finally makes the burgeoning wretched feeling twist in the pit of Xiao’s stomach.
Because, well—is that it? Is Zhongli done? He’s barely even touched Xiao—after the beginning, at least, and that was only at Venti’s instruction—for Venti’s fun, even, though Xiao enjoys it, too. Enjoyed it, that is, because the warm haze of submission is curdling from something loving to something sour as he realizes—realizes—
Do they truly want him here at all?
Is he extraneous to this? Venti has always been cruel to be kind, it’s always been fun, but they have never involved Zhongli, and surely his master does not truly desire relations with someone so far beneath him. He’d felt like a toy, earlier, just a tool between Venti and Zhongli’s machinations, and it felt nice because he’d still felt wanted, because Venti always makes him feel like he’s being mean because he knows Xiao likes it, except now he wonders—he wonders—how much of a fool is he, really, to have believed that Zhongli feels about Xiao the same way that Xiao feels about him?
He’d been surprised when Venti’s call had summoned Xiao. Surprised, and somewhat displeased. At Venti overstepping, Xiao had initially thought, but perhaps rather at the fact that Xiao had interrupted.
Do they—they would have touched him by now, wouldn’t they have? If they’d wanted him? If he’d been here for any reason other than some pathetic vestige of sympathy for his obvious pining after the both of them?
Xiao looks down, stares at the carpet between his knees. It’s stained darker in places, humiliating evidence of how well he’s strung himself along. How must Zhongli feel, under the burning gaze of unwelcome desire? How shameless does he think Xiao is, staring after him like an animal? No wonder he’d taken this long to finish, if he’d had to ignore Xiao’s panting the whole time.
Zhongli shifts on the bed, and Venti makes a noise, fucked-out and long.
Xiao’s mouth twists, and he bites down on his cheek again to restrain himself as heat pools in the pit of his stomach. He’s disgusting. His teeth clench, and blood fills his mouth. Filthy. Arousal mixes nauseatingly with the cold clench of anxiety, and yet he’s still so fucking disgustingly wet over the sound of Zhongli’s cock sliding out of Venti. A perversion upon divinity.
He squeezes his jaw tighter.
“Xiao’er,” comes Zhongli’s voice, and Xiao flinches. A hand in his hair, an echo of last time, and he fights not to twist away—fails, but only a little bit, managing not to rip himself out of Zhongli’s grasp. “Didn’t I instruct you to watch?”
Xiao’s breath stutters, eyes wide as he holds himself still and stares at the bedcovers. His tongue presses against the back of his teeth, coated in the taste of iron, and he can’t open his mouth without revealing that, but he can’t breathe well enough to swallow, either.
You don’t have to let me watch, he wants to say, if you would rather I not be here at all. But the words hurt too much, and his skin still burns at Zhongli’s touch, a trail of heat like a perverse mockery of Xiao’s own fucked up desires—
“Xiao?” calls Venti, quiet and hesitant, and Xiao hunches over in Zhongli’s grip.
Zhongli lets go. Before Xiao can skitter away, Venti is squirming up on his stomach, hanging his arms off the bed to cup Xiao’s cheeks. “Love, can you give me a color?”
Xiao blinks, mouth flattening. Colors. Right. Venti had spoken about that a while ago, and liked to make Xiao say green, green, green any time he was being particularly cruel—liked making Xiao ask for the cruelty, making him admit that he liked it. Red was the color for a boundary crossed, but—it’s not Xiao’s boundary that’s the problem, is it? It’s Zhongli that Venti should be asking, that Xiao should be begging for forgiveness.
Yellow is to slow down. They’re basically at a crawl at this point, but the thought of asking for more makes Xiao sick, too sick to swallow, makes his eyes burn and his chest clench—
“Barbatos, move.”
Something hooks against his jaw: dull, painful pressure on either side that pulls his head forward, until Xiao opens his mouth with a cry and crimson pours out over his lips and onto the carpet in front of him.
He sobs, just once, feeling dizzy. His lips feel sticky, and his mouth is disgusting, but Venti wanted to know—
“Yellow,” Xiao croaks, staring at the red, red, red dripping between his knees. “Sorry. Yellow.”
There is a long, silent pause. Xiao doesn’t dare look up.
“Or—whatever you like,” he whispers, swaying. “I will clean this. My apologies.”
A hand catches his shoulder and leans him to the side, another tugs at his wrists where they are locked behind his back. Xiao makes a noise in the back of his throat, resisting—he’s not supposed to move those, he’s not—
He blinks, and his cheek is pressed against something warm and moving, a steady in-out that seems impossibly slower than his own ragged breaths.
“That is fine,” Zhongli says, sounding strange and distant. “With all the wine he drinks, Barbatos is no stranger to cleaning red stains out of my carpeting.”
“Yeah,” Venti says, nodding along rapidly, an uncharacteristic failure to rise to the barb. “Yeah, I—and it’s always my fault, too, the red stains—oh, Xiao, oh no…”
Zhongli tugs at Xiao’s wrists again, his other hand petting a thumb at Xiao’s neck. It feels nice, and that feels wrong. “Please release your hands, Xiao.”
Xiao looks up at him. “But…”
“We are finished, I think. There’s no need for you to continue holding yourself like this.”
“Oh.” Right. They’d finished. When Venti had, for the third time—and Zhongli—Xiao flinches, releases his wrists, and folds his hands neatly in his lap. He lowers his face, so it is out of sight of where Zhongli kneels beside him, having tugged Xiao into his chest. When had Zhongli moved beside him? For his lord to be on his knees like this, all because Xiao is a wretch that can't keep control over himself, it is—
"Yes," he says, swallowing. "I—would you like me to…? I am able to leave—”
“No,” Venti blurts, and finally scrambles off the bed. He flings himself into Xiao’s lap, nearly bowling the three of them over, and presses his hands to Xiao’s face to swipe at the blood still dripping down his chin. “Xiao, what in the world are you talking about?”
Xiao squirms in Venti’s hold and finds himself unable to escape. The pressure against his skin is nice, but he shouldn’t want it, not when—they’re being kind, right now, and it’s out of some sort of obligation, a reciprocation of the fealty he has shown them both, but it’s wrong, he doesn’t want it when there’s no actual desire—
“I’m sorry.”
Xiao and Venti both startle, perhaps equally surprised the words didn’t leave Xiao’s lips, but Zhongli’s. Xiao stares up at him, wide-eyed.
Zhongli smiles back down weakly, and his eyes flick to the bloodstained carpet. It is a rare expression on his master’s face, and not one that Xiao himself has evoked in… a long time. He generally endeavored not to, after… well. Both of them have seen a lot of cause for sorrow, over the millenia. There is no need to bring about more.
“It seems to me that Barbatos and I have failed you this evening, and I suspect, based on your demeanor, that it is primarily my presence here that made such a thing difficult to communicate.”
Xiao shakes his head, and Venti squishes his cheeks harder. “Xiao, Xiao, you have to tell me when you don’t like something anymore, I can’t—I can’t do this if I’m scared I’m going to hurt you—”
Xiao’s stomach drops, and Venti must see it on his face, because he backpedals. “No, sweetheart, that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry, I know you feel bad right now and that was the wrong thing to say. I’m just scared, okay? I don’t know what’s wrong.”
“It’s not,” Xiao rasps, and pauses, trying to find his voice. “I didn’t want to—interrupt. And I thought you may have…” His eyes fall to the upset curve of Venti’s mouth, the red mark where his cheek was pressed against a pillow for too long, the mussed teal strands escaping his braids. He looks well-loved, and Xiao hasn’t so much as touched him all evening.
“Did we leave you alone too long?” Venti asks. “I stopped talking after a little while, was that bad?”
“You would dismiss me,” Xiao asks Venti’s collarbone, “if you truly did not want me present?”
Venti makes a wounded sound, and Zhongli’s palm traces down Xiao’s back. He’s coming back to himself a little more now, no longer dizzy on the adrenaline drop of biting through his own cheek, but he still wants to arch away, caught between the pleasant feeling of skin-on-skin and the way he’s convinced this can’t be what Zhongli wants.
“The question is irrelevant,” Zhongli tells him, tugging a sheet off the bed to drape it around Xiao and Venti, “because we very much do desire your presence. Unless you felt coerced into this?”
Xiao shakes his head wildly, which at the very least makes Venti look less like he’s about to cry. He grabs the sheet with his bloody hands instead, and dabs at Xiao’s mouth with it, smearing bright red over everything.
“Then what do you feel?” Zhongli asks. “What would you like, Xiao?”
Xiao holds his breath for one, long moment, and then—he can’t, he can’t, he may be miserably unneeded in this scenario, but if this is his only chance—
“Please let me—” Xiao ducks his head, winds his hands into the clean edges of the sheet. “I wouldn’t ask you to—touch me, master, but if you would allow me—I, I could please you, I swear.”
“Xiao’er…”
“I can make you feel good,” Xiao whispers, pathetic. All the time refusing to beg, and now he’s doing it in the most pathetic way possible. “I wouldn’t be troublesome. Anything you want.”
It’s too little and too late, anyways. Zhongli already had his fun with Venti. The only one still trying to drag this out is Xiao.
Zhongli tugs on the sheet, and tips Xiao back against his chest.
“I like touching you, Xiao,” Zhongli says, muffled in Xiao’s hair and smoothing a warm palm down his side like he’s gentling a horse. “You have never been troublesome in all the millenia I’ve known you, and we were mistaken to make you feel as though you were unwanted. I would much rather know how to make you feel good.”
“Xiao, I’m sorry,” says Venti, winding his arms around Xiao’s waist. He bumps Zhongli’s hand out of the way in the process, and it relocates to the side of Xiao’s neck, broad and possessive. Xiao shivers, trying to process the warring desperation and emotional ache writhing in his chest. “I pushed this whole thing too far and didn’t ask you enough, I’m sorry. You always do so well with all the things I want to do, I forgot—but it’s because we talk things out, isn’t it? And I didn’t tell you anything before we started, I just—oh, Xiao, we want you, I promise we want you, Zhongli was so excited he talked my ear off for a week after I suggested we all sleep together. I just wanted to make you wait for it, I didn’t mean to make you feel alone.”
Xiao closes his eyes and just breathes for a minute, and tries to make himself believe the words. He has no reason to believe they’re lying—can see no reason that they would—except for the twisting whispers in his ears that always curse him to expect the worst.
But his karmic retribution has no place here, tucked between two archons and two people that love him.
“It’s alright,” he whispers, in the end. It’s enough that they’re holding him, here and now.
They end up back on the bed eventually, after Venti starts kissing Xiao in gentle apology and it evolves into Venti’s tongue down his throat and Zhongli’s teeth in his neck—a poor habit, Zhongli apologizes, that he has picked up from Venti.
(Xiao is familiar with Venti’s so-called poor habit. He likes to trace the bite marks for days after Venti leaves them, little bits of evidence that he’s loved even if they often can’t see each other for weeks at a time.)
He’s properly encompassed like this, thighs hitched up around Venti’s hips and leaning back as Zhongli brackets his back and legs. Encompassed and surrounded, no part of him untouched for long as Venti cups his face to pepper it with kisses, as Zhongli wraps an unyielding hand around his thigh and stretches it higher, as Venti arches forward and drags his tongue, hot and wet, up that same thigh. And finally, as Zhongli winds his other hand down, splaying his fingers over Xiao’s stomach, then his pubic bone, then—
When Zhongli finally touches him, gentle, a single finger tracing up his wet slit, Xiao cries out so loudly that he bites down on the flesh of his own hand to muffle it.
“No, love, no,” Venti is whispering, tugging the hand away and replacing it with his mouth, and Xiao keens against his lips.
“It hurts,” he says, “oh, please—please—”
If it weren’t for Venti’s hands pinning his hips against Zhongli’s, Xiao wouldn’t be able to help but to thrust against Zhongli’s hand, the single finger stoking the all-scouring burn inside of him back into agonizing acuity. He’s been ignoring himself for so long, had relegated the ache to the back of his mind, but now that he’s pinned and spread like a butterfly on display, there’s nothing left to focus on except the throb between his legs and the way someone is finally, finally touching him.
“Please,” Xiao begs, unsure what he’s asking for. No more teasing? If Venti wanted him to, he would wait. But Zhongli presses his finger more firmly, a swirling pressure against his clenching hole, and—Xiao can’t buck his hips, but he can arch, scrabbling against Zhongli’s thighs fruitlessly. His legs can’t close like this, but they certainly try to, pressing against the sides of Venti’s hips.
“Shh,” Venti says. “Calm down, Xiao, we’ve got you, c’mon—oh, you’re so wet, sweetheart, your pussy is dripping, you’re so pretty. You waited so long, didn’t you? Ah, you’re so tight, you have to relax. We’ll make you feel good, don’t worry.”
Zhongli slides his finger into Xiao—just one, but he is so strung out, so pulled-taut, just that one feels impossibly tight right up until the heel of Zhongli’s hand grinds against Xiao’s clit and Xiao moans through gritted teeth, shaky and so pleasured that it’s become halfway pained.
Venti smiles against the inside of Xiao’s knee, pressing a kiss there. “There you go. You wanna come, yeah? Wanna work up to Morax’s cock? It’s so big, you’d love it, but…”
“I don’t think I can right now,” Xiao admits, miserable.
“We wound you up too tight,” Venti says, petting at his thigh. “Got you all stressy and hurt. Shh, it’s okay. You wanna come like this?”
“Can I?” Xiao asks, tipping his head back to look at Zhongli. “Please—I want…”
Zhongli rocks his hips forward in response, pressing Xiao up against his hand, fucking his finger deeper before letting him back down. Xiao’s thighs slide over Venti’s as he’s moved, Zhongli’s cock pressing into his lower back, and it’s like they’re both fucking him, spread out between them and held open like this. It’s a slick slide of Zhongli’s fingers between his legs, palm slipping against his clit as his middle finger strokes deeper and deeper into Xiao as he relaxes. He tries a second finger, but the pull tugs a whimper of genuine pain from Xiao—it’s a uniquely violating sort of pain, to be pulled so tense that he can’t handle more than this, and the noise surprises him more than anyone else.
Zhongli restrains himself to just one finger. It’s more than enough, right now.
Venti whispers in Xiao’s ear the whole time, skimming his palms up Xiao’s sides, tucking his head against Xiao’s and playing his thumbs across his nipples until Xiao arches his chest into it.
“You’re doing so well, sweetheart,” Venti murmurs, leaning back to look at Xiao. “Love this, love that he can make you come on just one—oh, I can see how much you want it, darling, you look like you’re ready to cry. Don’t worry, he won’t stop this time—are you afraid he might?”
Xiao wasn’t, not until Venti said that, and his breath hitches as he stares up at Venti, eyes wide and watering. A familiar curl of fear feathers through the pit of his stomach, but it’s the pleasant kind. He’s not sure he could stand it, if Zhongli stopped, but he sort of likes the thought, and he knows Venti can tell by the grin on his face.
“Barbatos,” grumbles Zhongli, and leaned against his chest like this, Xiao can feel his voice vibrate through his bones. “Have we not done enough?”
“Hmm,” Venti hums, smiling, and deliberately misinterprets: “No, I don’t think we have. Don’t stop. Maybe slow down a little. I think he wants to wait a little longer. Don’t you, love? It’s been so long already. Does our poor boy even know how to come, anymore? Or is this all he’s good for, just a hard, mean little tease before we leave him hanging again.”
Xiao groans, but Zhongli listens, and the tears do spill over then, cool against his burning cheeks—it’s frustration, it is a tease, it’s exactly what he needs right now. Gently, gently, Zhongli fucks him through the growing swell of pressure in the pit of his stomach as Venti pets at him: his nipples, his thighs, a cheeky lick up the trail of his tears.
“You never answered my question, Xiao,” he says, and Xiao sighs, shaky. “What do you say?”
“Thank you,” Xiao whispers, and Venti’s smirk melts into a look that Xiao can only recognize as love.
“Oh. Oh, no, baby,” Venti says, and kisses him. “Come on, love, let go. You wanna come? You look like you want it so much.”
“Please, please, let me…”
“Awfully polite. If you’re still together enough to ask so nicely, maybe you don’t really want to come. Does it hurt, darling?”
“Ah!” Xiao’s hips kick under Venti’s hands as Venti squeezes his hips—he doesn’t get anywhere, immobilized but for the steady, slow sway of Zhongli’s hips, the lazy, impossibly firm slide of his finger, in and out and in and out, like an inevitable pendulum that has Xiao’s eyes rolling back into his skull. He clenches around it, and a little zip of fear shocks through his stomach on every thrust as Zhongli pulls out his fingertip and pauses, for a long dreadful moment, to swirl it against Xiao’s entrance.
It does hurt. It’s not the tight hurt anymore, the gentle tease of Zhongli’s finger serving to massage him open—it’s the good hurt, the desperate kind that has Xiao going glassy-eyed and hazy again as Venti talks him through it until he’s floating on his own thoughts and the cant of Venti’s voice.
“Use your words, love,” Venti says. “Can you come like this, do you think?”
“Yes, yes, please…”
“What if I wanted you to wait? Your pussy looks so greedy like this, it’s like you’re trying to suck Morax’s finger back in. How desperate. Maybe you should learn some patience.”
Xiao whines in the back of his throat, digs his fingers into Zhongli’s legs. “If—if you want me to.”
“You don’t look like you want to, though. Look how much you’re dripping—that must be absolutely frictionless. I’m surprised you think you can come at all, like this. Are you sure you don’t want to stop? You might not be able to come at all, and this looks frustrating.”
Xiao whimpers, toes curling as Zhongli pauses and drags his finger along Xiao’s inner walls, rubbing back and forth against a spot that has him twitching helplessly in their grasp.
“Oh,” Venti laughs, “there you go. No friction needed, huh? You really are desperate, if you’re ready to come on one finger.”
“I wanna come,” Xiao moans, back arching.
“Oh,” says Venti, blinking innocently. “Well, in that case. Come on, Morax, you blockhead, haven’t you teased him enough? Look at him, he’s practically gagging for it.”
There’s a puff of air against Xiao’s neck, an amused huff that ruffles his hair, but Zhongli simply acquiesces to Venti’s demand: he rocks Xiao forward again, faster and harder, and presses his heel against Xiao’s clit in a cruel, wet rub—
Xiao’s voice breaks on a cry as he finally comes, hands spasming around Zhongli’s thighs. Zhongli pumps him through it, quick, shallow little thrusts that gentle him through the rhythmic clenching of Xiao’s inner walls. Venti’s hand joins Zhongli’s between Xiao’s legs, a thumb drawing circles over Xiao’s clit until Xiao stops twitching towards him and starts trying to wriggle away, overstimulated.
“Stop,” Xiao pants, and Venti releases him. Zhongli does, too, but only to clean his hand off and wrap it back around Xiao’s waist.
It’s—nice.
“You don’t have to…” Xiao starts to reassure Zhongli, and the arm only tightens.
“Ah,” Zhongli says, tugging Xiao up so that he can place his head on Xiao’s shoulder. “But what if I want to, little yaksha? Would you deny me this?”
His cock grinds against Xiao’s lower back as Zhongli moves him, stiff and clearly interested, and he flushes, trying to angle an arm back.
“I can—you’re still—”
“Xiao, please relax,” Venti says, catching Xiao’s wrists and pressing them down. It’s arguably one of the more difficult things that Venti has asked Xiao to do.
“I will try,” Xiao says, lowering his eyes. Venti slithers forward, letting Xiao’s legs down off his hips in favor of turning their little pile into a hug with Xiao sandwiched in the middle. It’s a little bit restrictive of his breathing—and probably more so Zhongli’s—but Xiao has to admit that the weight and pressure and… the touching, the affection, certainly make his task easier.
Venti tucks his head underneath Xiao’s chin, and Zhongli’s free hand shifts Xiao’s bangs out of his eyes.
“I think,” Zhongli suggests, “that we should speak more on this later, at length, until our mistake has been addressed properly and with no misconceptions left to foster hurt or resentment. For now, however, you are free to consider this an order: please relax and take a nap, Xiao. Looking at you is making me tired.”
Xiao blinks slowly as Zhongli stares down into his eyes. It’s a silly order. They both know it’s a silly order. But that knowledge can stay in the quiet space between them, and if nobody says it out loud—well, it’s exactly what Xiao needs. An excuse to let his eyes slide closed, and no way left to justify it as anything other than wanted when he relaxes back into Zhongli’s arms and lets the rhythmic puff of Venti’s breath against his collarbone soothe him into a steady sleep.