What a scene. Baekhyun can see it from the side, the spectator's perspective, even whilst playing the pivotal part in the spectacle: their beds pushed together to accommodate all three men, Chanyeol on his knees, Baekhyun on his back, his head nestled in his partner's lap, Sehun suspended above him, the pair of them wearing nothing save their skins. He can see it clearly, but the road from the washroom to the one he shares with Chanyeol he can scarcely remember, how they might have ended up in this position in the first place. It's all a blur of bodies coming into contact with each other as they advance. Whose mouth? Whose hands? Whose eyes? Whose scent? A jumble all of it. Sehun in front of him, Chanyeol behind, and he in the middle – between love and desire, old loyalties and fresh betrayals.

Sehunnie, I want you, he says without speaking, his fingers tightening round Chanyeol's arms that are holding him in place.

Sehun studies him for what seems a lifetime, and the longer he stares, the firmer Chanyeol's grip on him grows and the fiercer the pain in Baekhyun's lower half.

"Does it hurt?" Sehun speaks at last with blood-boiling coolness, his tone mild and mesmeric. "Where? Here?" he taps his fingers on the left side of Baekhyun's chest, then brushes them steadily the length of his torso, southward to his . "Here?" he repeats, momentarily cupping, then releasing it, and reaches lower still, pressing the tip of his middle finger to Baekhyun's entrance as he probes, "Or is it here?" His irises darken with delight at the pitifulness of his senior's state, the whole of whose body is in jolts and tremors at the very prospect of his junior's touch, never mind the fact of it. His cheeks ablaze, Baekhyun bites his lips and averts his gaze, while Sehun mutters, "Mm, I see."

"Oh S-Sehun –" Baekhyun stammers breathlessly, his hips swaying involuntarily back and forth at the younger's ceaseless teasing.

"What? Tell me. Tell me what you want me to do and I will. But you have to say it."

"Sehunnie –" Chanyeol gasps and shakes his head. Baekhyun glances up at him, an awkward angle, yet he can tell by now Chanyeol is also past his tolerance. Excited. It actually excites him seeing us like this – what the hell?!

"Omo, omo, aren't we a little too excited, hyung?" Sehun challenges on behalf of Baekhyun as well as himself. "This is your man I'm about to have, after all." Chanyeol can't deny it, the colour is ripe in his cheeks, his breathing is strained, his wide eyes are half their natural size and twice their usual heat with anticipation. Will you really let him? Baekhyun wonders as he watches his partner long for his lover. He can't imagine it – Chanyeol in his stead – and somehow it pains him.

"Alright then," Sehun chases, his expression again that hateful sneer Baekhyun loves so well. "Tell me, the pair of you, what should I do?"

Baekhyun only shudders, salty water suddenly welling up his eyes and spilling down his face. He doesn't know why, yet he can't help but cry. "What's this?" Sehun asks, counterfeit fret warping his forehead. "Crying? Why? Tsk, I'm cruel to you, aren't I, hyung? Always have been. I'm sorry," he sighs and softly pecks Baekhyun's tear-stained cheeks, all the while whispering, "Spread your legs for me, mm? As wide as they'll go. Let me in."

He does.

Sehun goes to his knees and leans back on his calves, oils his fingers and with them his and finally prepares to enter his expectant bed-mate.

Just like that? Baekhyun petrifies at the prospect of being penetrated without the least amount of preparation. Willing as he is, the way must be made – slowly and patiently. Yet this boy means to force it open. The pain. His hands begin to tremble at the thought of it, snapping Chanyeol out of his stupor just as Sehun is about to breach him.

"You can't do that," he hisses, his eyes huge with panic, "not without preparing him."

"Why?" the youngest demands, his catlike countenance so callous, Chanyeol promptly joins Baekhyun is quaking. "He wants it to hurt; don't you, hyung? Or hadn't you realised? He doesn't like tenderness, not really – do you, Baekhyunnie? Look at him: I haven't even touched him yet and he's already dripping. Drip drop, drip drop on me," Sehun sniggers as he sings.

For the first time in Baekhyun's living memory his best friend and boyfriend cannot muster a reply. His mouth is opened but his mind tight-shut with shock at their kind-hearted maknae's show of cruelty. You really don’t know him at all, do you, Chanyeol-ah?

Mortified as he is, Baekhyun can do no more than mutter feebly at Sehun, "You bastard." But then he notices the boy's eyes are filled to their brims with tears, which promptly overflow and hit his cheeks as Sehun leans forward and presses his forehead to Baekhyun's with painful force.

"I wish you loved me," he whispers miserably.

"What?" Baekhyun gasps, his mind a muddle that melts to madness as all at once Sehun s into him. He howls, the sound rebounding from the walls and splitting his ears as the boy does his flesh. "Wha-what did you s-say?" he half pants, half whimpers through the disorienting pain.

A mirror of the same, Sehun clenches his eyes and strenuously exhales. "There. You got the first half of your wish – pain. Now I have to give you the second, mm, hyung? Pleasure."

"S-Sehunnie –"

Scowling, Sehun further fastens his eyelids and shakes his head. Through gritted teeth he hisses, "Sehunnie…Sehunnie…Oh Sehun – you're always calling me! I can't think when you're always calling me – of anything but you. I can't think!" Again he pushes into Baekhyun as deeply as he'll go.

The elder starts convulsing. Somewhere, a great distance away it seems to him, Baekhyun can hear Chanyeol shouting, but the sound of his own sobs blocks it out. It hurts so incalculably much he's sure he'll faint with it, yet the boy won't stop. Time and again he drives into Baekhyun, so that after a while, the latter loses all connection with his surroundings.

Pain. Creation proper feels to consist of nothing else.

Pain…pain…pain…p…leasure. His seeping eyes roll to the back of his head, his spine coiling as suddenly Sehun hits his sweet spot. Somehow he manages to refocus his vision sufficiently so as to see the relief on the younger's beautifully twisted face at having found it. Baekhyun no longer knows what to think. Does this boy mean to hurt or to please him? Both. 'I wish you loved me…' What did he mean by that? What does he think this is? Oh Sehun, he calls internally and the younger instantly looks at him. Can you hear me? When I call you, can you hear me? Not just your body. This too, he presses his hand to Sehun's heart. I want it all. I love it all. I love all of you, Sehunnie. Can you hear me?

Wonderingly Sehun stares at him a moment, then peers up at Chanyeol, his gaze redirecting Baekhyun's as well, and in a tone blissfully anxious asks, "What should I do, hyung? He says he loves me."

With bloodshot eyes, through clamped teeth and quivering lips, Chanyeol replies, "A blow for a blow."

Sehun gifts him a sad smile – a smile that's a half-hearted apology and a whole-hearted promise. "You're sweet," he murmurs and promptly puts his lips to Chanyeol's, his hips resuming their activity as he rams into Baekhyun repeatedly.

K-kissing…he's kissing h-him…my Sehun…m-my Ch-Chanyeol…k-kissing… His mind stutters at the sight, at Sehun's ceaseless pounding of that part of him whose teasing nullifies all other sensation. He twists his legs round the younger's hips, digs his nails into his rear, prompting the boy deeper into him, his backbone bowing every time his tip grazes against Baekhyun's over-sensitized prostate – it's that good, he's scared he'll go stupid with it.

"Are you happy?" a low whisper sounds in his ear. Park Chanyeol. Baekhyun can swear he's heard it before – this very query, in this very bed, five years previous…

Eighteen-year-old Park Chanyeol is lying atop him, inside him. It's their first time – together, apart. They're scared senseless and so in-love they think they'll die of it. Pain, pleasure, it's all the same, so long as they're the ones giving and receiving it. Breathless, Chanyeol murmurs in his ears "Are you happy?" his thick voice further thickened with unshed tears. "Baekhyun-ah, are you happy?" time and again he repeats the question, until Baekhyun replies, "Happier than I deserve to be." Chanyeol's eyes lessen. He looks at him as though Baekhyun were a thing of such rare value as defies reckoning, and Baekhyun wonders at his lot being thusly loved by one who loves no one save his own skin.

Why me? Why you? Why Sehunnie? His hazy eyes ask of Chanyeol in reply to the latter's inquiry. Am I happy? Do I deserve to be? Do you, Chanyeol-ah? Does he? "I'm –" He opens his mouth to speak, but Chanyeol shuts it with a kiss.

Tender love. Baekhyun has never liked it. Tender kisses, tender caresses, tender embraces – they hurt too badly, cut too deeply, weigh too heavily on his heart, his conscience. Park Chanyeol, you're fire; the smoke you give out suffocates me and I can't breathe. Air. I need air. Sehunnie…

Ever mindful of his mind's speech, Sehun blows harder into him. Up they go – up while Chanyeol holds him down, nailing Baekhyun's fluttering form to the bed both with his mouth and his fists, the softness of his kiss a stupefying contrast to the strength of Sehun's ing. Between them, his love and his lover lift him higher than he's ever been. Curiously, at the final moment, Sehun pulls out, rather than finish inside him.

Relieved, Chanyeol lets out a heavy sigh and Baekhyun realises this is their junior's acknowledgment of the former's seniority. Still, the question remains: "What now? Chanyeol too?" he puts to Sehun, his stare sprinting back and forth between them, as the trio settle into their heartbeat.

 Sehun rests his chin on Baekhyun's folded knee, projects and retracts his lips considerately. "You tell me."

"Did you mean it when you said you loved him?" Baekhyun again glances at Chanyeol as he chases. His partner's jowls tauten at the inquiry.

"Mm," Sehun exhales, his eyes, like Baekhyun's, like Chanyeol's, dancing between the parties. "But when he asked me to choose, I told him there was no choice, because there's only one voice I hear even when it's silent. Oh Sehun, Sehunnie, it keeps calling me and I can't think of anything nor anyone else, because it's deafening."

"But you never show it," Baekhyun returns, shamed by that pinch of protest in his otherwise poised speech.

Sehun's brows bend in wonder, as does his voice. "Of course I do. I let you, don't I? Only you I allow."

It's true, but… "I don't understand you," Baekhyun admits, his heart hastening at Sehun's answering smile – pungently sweet.

"But you never stop trying."

"I can't."

The younger considers him an instant, then: "What do you want to know?"

"Everything you do," Baekhyun blurts out unthinkingly. It doesn't matter how pathetic he may appear – to Sehun, to Chanyeol, to himself – he knows this chance may never come again, the chance to satisfy his curiosity, see beyond the screen that seems to separate Sehun from his fellows.

Squarely the boy replies, "I know nothing."

"That's not possible. Your eyes…"

"Do they seem deep?" Sehun enquires, the organs in question boring ever-deeper into Baekhyun's psyche.

"Unfathomable," he confirms, momentarily shutting his own for a second's relief. When they open, Sehun's are that much nearer his, his face now a mere foot removed from Baekhyun's as he lounges beside him, propping his temple on the palm of his left hand, while his right rests on his elder's midriff, it lazily. Unfathomable, Baekhyun repeats within at their proximity.

"Are you sure it's my eyes you're looking at and not your own reflection in them?" Sehun poses, the jab drawing a muted chuckle from Chanyeol – its truer target.  

Decidedly Baekhyun replies, "I'm sure."

"Why?"

"Because I don't look at you with my eyes."

Sehun sniffs – sarcastically indulgent. "Your heart? No wonder you can't see me then. Good Book says men judge by outward appearance – it's only God who judges by the heart alone. Are you a god, Byun Baekhyun?"

"No, but I'm grateful to him." Baekhyun shakes his head as he judges, as always ruling in favour of the younger, never minding his culpability, such as it may be.

"What for?"

"Giving me such poor sight and such a clear heart," he returns and bites his lips at Sehun's suddenly biting his.

Quietly gratified, the younger concludes, "Then you're a good match for me. My sight is sharp, but my heart is as cloudy as can be – I'll look for you, you feel for me."

"And Park Chanyeol?" Baekhyun inevitably asks, saving the sorest for last. Chanyeol flinches. He won't be cut off. Baekhyun couldn't, not without bleeding to death for it. Stifling as the smoke can be, he knows that he could no more live without fire than he could breathe without air.

Drawing near enough Baekhyun that their temples meet, Sehun sweeps his gaze the length of his third-youngest elder brother, slits his eyes and smiles quite Machiavellianly, inciting a similar smirk both from his Chanyeol-hyung and their Baekhyunnie. "He'll keep us warm…with a bit of fanning."