Neither answer him when he asks to join them.
Two is company, three is a crowd.
So Cairo smiles as the man steps away. Even in the darkness he can hear how the man’s breath sharpens, displeasure bleeds, sharp like salt into the air. Cairo does not need to see how his spine grows tighter. The tension becomes taught and Cairo’s low laugh bubbles out from him like champagne spilling, whiskey-rich, upon the floor.
Their shared breaths tangle and wash upon the walls of the cave. The ocean seems close and Cairo’s sunbright gaze tips, lazily, toward the man. The girl watches from beneath the thick fan of her ebony lashes. Hunger rides upon the waves of her breath, it is in the gleam of her teeth. But there is more than blood that is wanted here. What makes you think we are here for love. She asks. He does not look at the man to see how he also wants, how he recoils from his desire. Was that how he looks when he recoils from Zayir. Cairo still has not answered Zayir when he asked why he always left.
“No, you are right.” Cairo says languidly as he regards them both. His body is sleek, leonine as he prowls out from between them. “I was too quick to judge. This is much more about lust.” Then his gaze flits to the man, stood by the entrance where traces of clear air manage to sigh down into the depths of the earth, “And shame.” There is no smile upon Cairo’s lips in that moment. They are a shadow, darkened gold heavy with his own faults. He knows the shame, yet his are born from a different source.
“But,” He says suddenly, his silken voice growing lighter. “If you both want to make it about stalactites,” Cairo wanders, casually, to where the stalactites hang like jagged lances poised to pierce the floor of the cave (like her teeth, he thinks of the girl, set to pierce something decidedly softer). “Then I must say these are interesting, but I have seen far, far more impressive sets. You two could do so much better.”
@Euryale @Asterion
