Poker Night

     “Go fish,” Halim mumbled. Neither of his partners stepped in to correct him.

     To his right was Cyno: his eyebrows furrowed together, crimson eyes trying their best to keep himself focused. His entire self was tense from the effort, mouth a tight line, and limbs a solid granite. Halim could almost feel the cogs whirling in his brain, trying to find the words to correct him while still sounding polite.

     “What the fuck does that even mean?”

     Tighnari was less concerned about being polite, and more impatient about actually getting the game moving. Tighnari was sprawled at Halim’s left: His body kept going limp, weight slouching against his partner, tail dragging across the carpet. Today he was all sighs, even more so than when sober. As Halim was figuring out the rules of the game, Tighnari let out exasperated little noises as he tried to hide the fact that he was impatient. Sassy came to mind as a good descriptor, but Halim knew that verbalizing the thought would only help to further sour Tighnari’s expression.

     Regardless, Halim was having fun.

     His day had started with hands all over, pulling Halim back to bed before he had even realized he had tried to stand. There was an unspoken tension to Halim’s mornings, a fire pulling at his feet the second his eyes opened to the day. His partners, two weights, one of each arm, had convinced him to stay put throughout the day. Overall the wisest decision, but one that had caused Halim rising anxiety in his gut.

     Cyno had pitched the idea of a card game, excited about the prospect of Genius Invocation TCG. Tighnari had suggested alcohol to the mix, excited about an excuse to drink in the middle of the work week. Hatim had suggested they go out to the desert instead, but that wasn’t an idea his lovers were willing to entertain.

     Instead, they swore they could help him relax: bodies huddled together on the floor of their place, drinks served and sipped, a deck of TCG sprawled across the floor.

     The only problem? Halim didn’t know how to play and was proving a bit too drunk to be a good student.

     “Isn’t it how it goes?” Halim offered, still trying to figure out what the cards in his hand actually meant.

     “It could be,” Cyno pondered for a second, looking through his deck. He then placed a couple of cards on the floor, pushing them toward the center. “Plus two.”

     Tighnari’s eyes were rolling to the back of his head. He picked up the cards and placed them back on Cyno’s lap.

     “Where are you getting all these terms?” He whined, then pointed an accusatory finger at Cyno. “You’re not helping learn, at all. What game are we even playing?”

     “Aren’t we playing Genius Invocation” Halim asked, completely out of the loop.

     Cyno just shrugged, “Brain foggy, bad teacher. Can I get more?”

     Halim quickly acted on his request, refilling Cyno’s cup with the imported wine. The taste was sweet and smooth, a pretty little liar that made them think they were consuming less alcohol than they had. Not that any of them minded.

     “Okay, well,” Tighnari abandoned his deck on the floor, shifting his body to be in front of Halim’s. “Let me see that for you.”

     “Cheater,” Cyno gasped. A strong attempt at sarcasm, but falling flat nonetheless.

     “No I’m– here,” he pointed at one of Halim’s character cards. This one featured the portrait of a boy and the Anemo symbol giving it its typing. There was a lengthy explanation of who he was and what he did neatly on the back of the card, but Tighnari was too drunk to point it out. “This is a character card. Cyno, where are the dice thingies?”

     “Elemental D-Eights,” the general mumbled into his cup, pointing at a spot near Tighnari’s tail where the dice had long been abandoned. Tighnari picked them up, palms up, showing them to Halim.

     “That. Uh, you… well, you take those,” he was trying very hard to remember the rules of the game himself. “And you need to roll them– you can re-roll as many as you want. But only once. Right, Cyno, you can re-roll if you need to?”

     “Only if you find yourself in a dicey situation,” Cyno agreed.

     Halim started laughing, a quiet type of sound. Tighnari threw his head back, whining.

     “You get it? Dicey as in dangerous, but also dicey as in dice, given that both words have the roots on the–”

     Halim intervened, trying to hide the stupid smile growing on his features. Gently, he grabbed onto Cyno’s shoulder, pulled him closer.

     “We know, handsome,” he simply said.

     “Oh. Well, good,” Cyno nodded solemnly. Then, he matched his gaze with Tighnari’s, “You are taking the game too seriously. We’re all too… compromised for a proper round.”

     Tighnari made a face, “I want to make sure Halim is having fun.”

     “I am,” Halim promised.

     Cyno shook his head. “He won’t be if you don’t relax.”

     Tighnari stuck his tongue out, “You’re not making it easy.”

     “I am having fun,” Halim insisted.

     Once again, ignored. “Maybe we can play another game, Tighnari.”

     “Do you have any ideas or should I go with mine?”

     “Go fish?” Cyno said, almost hopeful.

     “We’ll go with mine, then.”

     At this point, Halim’s head was spinning– not from the drink, and not in a bad way, but it was hard to try and keep up with what was going on. He started at Tighnari as he wiggled out of his grasp, then collected and shuffled all of the TCG cards.

     “Ever played poker?” Tighnari asked, starting to deal three hands once more.

     “Once,” said Halim, making a valiant effort to figure out where this was going.  

     “Alright then, this should be easy enough. How about Strip?”

     Cyno started pulling at the edge of his belt, the gold hanging in front of it clinking as he did. Tighnari quickly leaned forward, shaking his head.

     “No, not now, Cyno– Strip poker.”

     Ah, that made more sense, “whoever loses takes off a piece of clothing,” Halim explained.

     “Exactly!” Tighnari passed the decks with a smile, “And we all know how to play poker. I think.”

     The first round was pretty short, with all of them trying to apply their knowledge of poker to a completely different set of cards. Tighnari tried taking lead on it, making corrections here and there, and establishing everyone’s first chip: hand decor. Despite the fox keeping himself on top of the game’s rules, Cyno was the first one to win.

     “Now do I take off my clothes?” he asked, voice completely even.

     “No, you won,” Halim said, slipping his bracelets off his hands. “So we take them off, not you.

     Beside him, Tighnari was struggling with his gloves. He got them off, but it took him way longer than it should have, “next is shirts. Or, well–” he gestured at Halim’s cape and Cyno’s shoulder pads, “whatever’s closest.”

     Tighnari won the second round, punctuating his victory with a full swing of his drink. Before any of his partners had even begun shedding their next piece of clothing, he loudly announced “I’ll help!”

     And he turned to Halim.

     Tighnari’s skin was warm, but the tips of his fingers had the nip of winter– chilled, by the ice that had been floating inside his drink. His hands were suddenly all over Halim, picking at the loops and belts that made his cape, trying to unhook them in the least productive way possible. In the meantime, his fingers would trace over Halim’s exposed skin, taking sharp inhales out of the man. Now it was his turn to be all sighs, it seemed.

     “I don’t get it,” Tighnari mumbled, face very close to Halim’s neck. He was studying the spot where shoulder met fabric, “how do you even put that thing on?”

     “You slip it on,” Halim forced a coherent answer out of his lips.

     “Interesting,” was his response, in the least interested tone imaginable. At this point, so close to his partner, he was a magnet lulled by iron. Taking advantage of his prime position, he placed a kiss on Halim’s neck. Halim let out another breathy sigh. “Very interesting indeed,” Tighnari concluded.

     Halim saw movement at the corner of his eye, then felt another pair of hands wrap around his waist– these were warm and gloved. Guess Cyno wasn’t particularly fond of feeling left out.

     “I thought you were helping,” Cyno pointed out to Tighnari.

     “I am,” Tighnari was now tracing little kisses over exposed skin. Halim shifted to give the other a better reach, hand blindly feeling for something to hold onto. In this case, it was Cyno’s hair, the spot right on the back of his head, who leaned closer at the touch.

     “You are not helping,” Cyno concluded to Tighnari, voice softer around the edges, but still stubborn on his debate. “If anything, you are helping yourself. You know, as in when someone has a helping of something, referring to a meal–”

     Halim torso turned for a better angle, and then he was kissing Cyno. He was taken aback by the sudden interruption, but the surprise was easy to shake off. Cyno himself deepened the kiss.

     He smelled primarily of sandalwood and myrrh, tasted like a fine foreign wine, and felt incredible against his lips. The tension on Cyno’s figure seemed to melt away through the affections, and Halim felt grateful for it. The general’s hands were still wrapped around Halim’s waist, pulling him closer, a grip firm but overall secure.

     Tighnari had gotten Halim’s cape at one point when the eremite was too busy to notice. The garment now lay abandoned on the floor, along with Tighnari’s excuse of helping him, when his motives were solely focused on Halim’s skin. Tighnari kissed along the curve of his shoulders, his warm breath sending chills through Halim’s spine. At this point, the game was all but forgotten, and Halim only allowed himself to feel his partner’s affections. For Halim, love was expressed through the physicality of touch, and this level and this level of intimacy grounded him in reality. Perhaps it was the alcohol, the pointless rounds of games, or his lovers enveloping him like a blanket, but that unspoken anxiety from the call of the desert had vanished somewhere along the way. He was here, he was grounded, and Cyno and Tighnari made sure that he could feel secure.

     By the time the kiss was broken, the trio shifted, as if this was a practiced maneuver. Tighnari lay his head on Halim’s lap, Halim helped Cyno out of his shoulder pads, and Cyno pressed his forehead against Tighnari’s. They were more a tangle of limbs and kisses than they were a cohesive set of silhouettes, and none of them had any complaints.

     “We aren’t playing the game anymore, are we?” Cyno asked, peppering kisses over Tighnari’s forehead.

     “Were we ever?” Halim pointed out.

     Tighnari stuck his tongue out, but he wasn’t truly annoyed. When never was, when they were all together. As Cyno and Halim let out some laughs, Tighnari shifted his attention to Halim.

     “You wouldn’t get this in the desert, would you?”

     Halim didn’t admit it, too preoccupied with his lovers at his side– but he was glad he had stayed home that evening.