“Kuta, are you busy right now?”
Kuta was lying on the beach as far away from everyone else as possible. They wanted to be left alone as they had a migraine, and a side effect of that migraine was that they kept on picking up on everyone else’s thoughts. Normally Kuta would have been annoyed by the interruption, but the voice belonged to their darling soon to be forever partner Ret, and Ret always meant well.
“For you? I am always free!” Kuta smiled weakly. “Something is troubling you?”
“You can tell?”
Kuta’s smile quickly faded. “Stupid telepathic migraines… making me pick things up…”
Ret thought for a moment, shrugged, then sat down next to Kuta. He glanced out at the water, thought a little bit more, twiddled his thumbs for a bit then seemed to settle down and actually speak.
“I have a small problem that I do not know how to articulate.”
“For us Rethans, that is a rather normal thing.”
“It is, yes…” Ret grunted. “It is extra hard for me because I am somewhat set in my ways and my, uh, desires, they are all mostly based on you.”
“Again, fair. What is bothering you, my darling? You know I… uh…”
“Telepathic migraine mind reading again?” Ret asked. “You are accidentally mind reading a lot. Nyssi was doing it earlier. Thassalin said he thinks there is a big void storm coming this way. Kyr Itaviir said we do not have a way of tracking void storms around here because there is no infrastructure to do weather tracking stuff. I guess it is weird that we have weather in the big empty void anyway though.”
Kuta nodded. “It is weird, and yes, migraines do that to me. Litvir and I were doing it to each other earlier when he got back.”
“Huh. I thought you and Litvir were somewhat… immune to each other.”
“It was more like constant second guessing each other. I think it happens with a lot of telepaths who are intertwined.”
Ret didn’t get it and decided to just let the subject drop, so he could talk about his problem. “Have you seen Arkay since he got back?”
Kuta went back to smiling. “Yes. He is rather unusually walking around in a very Rethan shape. The shape he used when he was dating me. I think Arkay is feeling defensive because he met actual family, feels uneasy about it and does not want to be a Skyan-like being… Oh, you think Arkay looks attractive?” Kuta paused. “Piss. I did it again.”
“It is fine, my dear. But you are very right, Arkay is very attractive right now.”
“He is. Is that bothering you, Ret?”
Ret nodded. “Before I met you, before you started dating Arkay and just after I started our Dessaron team, one day, Arkay came round to check in on us and stayed the night. I came downstairs for one of my 0200 hours snack breaks and found Arkay on the sofa and we spoke about a lot. He said he liked me and was willing to date me, but did not want me to get into trouble. Both because of my bloodline traditions but also because Arkay was scared he would get into trouble too.”
Kuta frowned. “He did get into trouble while dating me. People… died… because Arkay wanted a relationship, he did not want to be lonely. I think Arkay is still torn up by what happened between us.”
“Probably… Admittedly, my thought is… a lot more selfish. I… I think I want to sleep with Arkay. When he is in that Rethan shape. I suppose you do know what that is like though.”
“It was nice when things were good. If we are both being honest, I am so much happier being with you, you are just an all round better and more stable being. But you are curious, yes?”
Ret nodded some more. “I often wonder about the path not taken. What if I had dated Arkay? Or slept with him once. I… I considered it that night. Getting up, sitting next to him, putting an arm around him… probably would have been a mistake but… it did somewhat work with you.”
Kuta snorted. “I guess you are right, it did work with me. But I think you also do somewhat crave Arkay’s body. I do not blame you. Would be nice to taste that again. And, again, as we are both sharing our honesty, I also do want to have some more fun with Kyr Elkay.”
“Hm. That was a lot of fun, even if we accidentally ended it all early.”
“That was my fault. I forgot that Synaisthyns are weird, sexually.”
Ret thought for a moment. “Are we weird, sexually?”
“As in, weird as a species or weird as in us two?” Kuta asked back.
“Uh, both, I guess.”
Kuta shrugged. “I would not know. As a species within our universe, we were just a sapient race that was intersex, we had an entire genera to ourselves, a similar race in the Skyavok and a common ancestor that was also intersex. Out here? No clue. What we do between us? I do not think what we do is ‘vanilla’ but what we do is also not too extreme.”
“Would inviting Arkay to join us be extreme?”
“HAH!” Kuta suddenly laughed. “Arkay is in a polyamorous relationship with my twin sibling and a parallel version of you who is also on fire. He has threesomes on the regular. I assume he somewhat has to. But you have given me an idea. We could try a foursome.”
“You want to invite Arkay AND Elkay?”
“Yes. I am sure Arkay would like to try a few things and, well, there has been this thing about trying to get the two Synaisthyns to mate for a while…”
“Huh… That might be fun, actually. And I suppose, worst case scenario, if one of them says no, we just do what we did last time?”
Kuta smiled. “Indeed.”
“We should let Arkay rest a little though first.”
“Of course.”
Ret smiled as well. “Good. I like this idea. And I like you.”
“Hah, I like you too, Ret.”