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Hua tapped her foot impatiently on the spotless floor. Her clock ticked incessantly in the corner, timing every tap of her finger on the sofa arm. She stared vacantly at her empty studio with one leg crossed over her knee, lights bright and ready and capturing nothing but negative space. 

Her models were late. 

Not terribly so, at least; her watch, clock, and phone confirmed that currently, her models were running late for four minutes. Hua had worse clients. Although, her marketing team had raved to her about how professional these two were, both in their own regards. But perhaps she was just being a little fastidious. 

Sighing, Hua threw her head back and closed her eyes. She moved her hand onto her knee and tapped to the faint song coming from the record store across the street. Her throat bobbed with a swallow, and she tried her best not to think about the clock ticking away the time as best as she could. 

It proved to be futile almost immediately. Letting out a short puff of breath, Hua slapped her knee once and got up from her sofa. She might as well recheck if she brought her memory card, again, for the seventh time.

Just as she slid her camera open, a gust of wind blew her hair in front of her face. Hua swept her hair back over her forehead and turned around on a heel, opening her mouth to let out a long string of criticisms. 

She couldn’t, though. Her words blew away in the wind, unreachable from the beauty that held in front of her. 

The woman, who she was sure was Mei from the countless photos Xixi had sent to her over the past week, stood in front of her studio’s glass door with heaving, panting breaths and a long overcoat that did little to hide how breathtakingly tall she was. A few strands of dark hair stuck to her lip-glossed lips, though Mei was quick to move them out of her face when she caught Hua’s eyes. 

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Mei immediately said, and Hua couldn’t seem to recall that she looked this strikingly beautiful in those photos emailed to her. Mei was unhooking her heels from her shoes as she continued, breathlessly, “There was a traffic jam a few blocks from here. I got off the bus as fast as I could to run here. I am so, so—”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Hua said immediately, snapping her camera’s card slot shut. “Some things are out of our control. Do you need help with your—?” She gestured vaguely to Mei’s overcoat. 

It took only a moment for Mei to understand what she was pointing at. “Oh! I got it,” she assured her. She didn’t give Hua a chance to breathe after that, stripping off her dark coat with such ease that Hua couldn’t help but feel fixated on her every movement. Mei slipped the coat onto her arm, gave her a silent questioning look, and Hua pointed to the small rack close to the door. 

Hua found her voice while Mei grabbed a hanger. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked kindly, swallowing down the dryness in her throat. “Tea? Water?”

“Tea would be nice,” Mei said amicably with a gracious smile. She smoothed down the cardigan she wore. Hua noticed that her fingernails were newly manicured.

“What kind are you partial to?” Hua asked, slipping her fingers away from the camera to move towards the small countertop that housed all of her standard utensils for lunch breaks. She turned the kettle on while she fished for a few boxes of tea. 

“Green, if you have it,” Mei said, rather shyly. 

Hua looked over her shoulder to flash her a quick smile of approval. “That’s my favorite,” she commented. She hoped it didn’t come out as awkward as she felt. There was something about Mei that made her a little itchy around the collar. 

“Really?” Mei said with a laugh. Her shoulders were starting to untense. “Do you take it with honey too?”

“Two spoonfuls,” Hua admitted. 

Mei smiled. Hua rather liked how radiant and natural it looked on her. “I take mine with three, when no one else is looking to judge me.”

Hua exhaled with a laugh. “I’ll put three in yours,” she said. “I won’t judge.”

Mei gave her a quick smile, hands clasped in front of her abdomen, then looked around the empty studio curiously. Her eyes lingered for a moment at the backdrop Hua’s camera pointed towards, then they settled onto Hua’s. “Is… Kiana not here yet?” she asked. It was a casual question, but Hua could spot the slight strain in it. 

It only took a second for her to understand what Mei was asking. Kiana Kaslana was her other model for the day. She’d committed both of their names to memory, because there was nothing less professional than making your models feel, well, commonplace. 

“He might’ve caught the same traffic jam you did,” Hua rationalized. The slight frustration she felt for their tardiness ebbed away slowly at her own justification. The kettle was starting to whistle next to her ear, so she worked at opening two packets of tea bags as she said, “I could get a few solo photos of you while we wait. Your clothes should be—”

The little bell on her door rang noisily with the presence of her second model. The noise of the streets poured in before the door was slammed clumsily shut. Kiana was panting visibly harder than Mei had been, his arm trying wildly to find balance on the wall. A bead of sweat trailed down the side of his face. 

“Sorry!” Kiana said, voice strained with huffy effort. “There was—”

“Traffic. I know,” Hua soothed. She silently handed Mei her mug of tea, and she thanked Hua under her breath. “Do you want some water?”

“Oh, God— please?” Kiana said with a groan. He stretched his arms over his head and popped his back to release the tension, and for a moment Hua considered kicking him out of her studio to let him shake off his sweat like a dog. 

Though, she’d be lying if she didn’t find him just as attractive as Mei. Xixi knew how to pick her models, and seeing them both in her field of vision was certainly a testament to it. He wasn’t quite as tall as Mei, but he made up for it with his impish smile and bright blue eyes that she knew would look just perfect in the lens of her camera. 

With Mei sipping on tea next to her counter, Hua fished for a bottle of water in her mini fridge. She tossed him the coldest one that she could find, and he gulped most of it down in just a few seconds. 

Kiana wiped the corner of his mouth and raised the bottle to her in gratefulness. Now she could see exactly what Xixi meant by his goofy charm. 

Now that her models were ready to go, all she had left to do was assess the rest of her equipment and push them both into dressing rooms. That, and to make sense of the rather odd tension in the room. 

It wasn’t close to anything hostile. Hua made sure to tell Xixi a long time ago never to book her any pairs of models that would cause problems, albeit significant others or exes or the in-between. She worked as a photographer for her own enjoyment, not to work as a mediator and therapist for childish clients. 

Still, Hua worked with enough people in her lifetime to spot tension. They both masked it well enough, and she admired them for their commitment to professionalism, but neither of them could hide everything from her watchful eye. She could see it in the way Mei drank her tea in slow sips, eyes shifting everywhere but directly at Kiana. She could see it in Kiana’s shifting feet, his nervous look and the way his smile strained when he thought Hua wasn’t looking. 

But, she only had them for the next two hours. After that, they had nothing else booked with each other in the near future, and for all Hua knew, she would never see any of them again; hell, might as well all three of them in the same tight studio. 

Hua clicked her tongue and rubbed her hands together to find a semblance of warmth in between them. “I’ll get you two prepared as soon as you’re both ready,” she said. “Your clothes should be all ready for you on the rack next to the dressing rooms, all in order of wear. My assistant had them tagged for you this morning. I’ll be waiting right here. Any questions?”

Kiana held up his hand awkwardly in the air. When Hua gave him a pointed look, he cleared his throat and put his hand down. “Where is your assistant?” he asked curiously. 

Hua gave him a dry smile and a tilt of the head. “I have two. Xixi spoke to both of your managers for me. Elysia would have stayed for a few minutes to help with your first shoots but…” She looked over at the clock with a slight frown. 

“Oh! Right,” Kiana said clumsily. 

“How about your other clients?” Mei asked her worriedly. “Won’t you need some help with them later in the day?”

Hua waved off her worry. “The rest of the day was booked off for the two of you. Your managers told me you both need special attention,” Hua explained, and she nearly stumbled on her wording from how the two of them reacted, with Kiana’s pressed lips hiding a gleeful smile and Mei looking away in slight embarrassment. She tried to take it in stride anyway. “And I’m fairly positive I could handle the two of you.”

Kiana unconcealed his smile. He raised his eyebrows in amusement and joked, “You could handle us?”

“Kiana,” Mei chided, though she looked almost just as amused by his antics. 

Hua tried not to roll her eyes. Instead, she waved them off to change, making sure to tell them that they should call her over if either of them needed help. 

She silently praised how easy they were to work with. Excusing the odd tension that prodded curiously at the back of her neck, neither Mei nor Kiana had trouble with getting things ready. The only time Hua needed to direct them was when Kiana needed help getting his hoodie over his head, but even then it didn’t take too much effort. 

She shouldn't be so surprised, anyway. Xixi told her that they were seasoned in shoots like this, with Mei in well over a hundred different fashion magazines and runways and Kiana in various stunt movies and articles that praised him for his expertise and good looks. Either way, they were breaths of fresh air, and she was sure to thank them for an easier day on her hands by the end of their shoot.

Hua directed Kiana to sit down on the gray box on the floor. It didn’t take long for Kiana to take the ropes from her from there, leaning on his elbow and curling a finger underneath his chin for a smolder towards the camera that made Hua want to roll her eyes again. 

Mei stood beside him, wearing a nearly identical outfit. Their white coats and dark pants were the same, though Kiana’s hoodie underneath was a bright orange, whilst Mei’s was a more neutral gray. The bright sneakers weren’t a favorite of Hua’s, but she could understand the appeal of them, especially from the way Mei and Kiana tilted them towards the camera with their inviting smiles.

Hua had worked with this clothing brand before, and the models they’ve sent to her in the past were all certainly attractive, but looking at Mei and Kiana through her viewfinder had knocked all the breath from her lungs. Mei, with her radiant, goddess-like smile, and Kiana’s more boyish charm. They couldn’t be more different from each other, and yet Hua was affected by them both all the same. 

Nevertheless, Hua was still on company time. She cleared her throat and directed them to come a little closer together, leaning down to stare into her camera perched on a tripod. 

The result was instantaneous. Both smiles dropped by a fraction, though they were done as told. Their smiles graced back onto their faces, but with a strain that Hua doubted she could explain to anyone else. 

After a few pictures and a few different poses, Hua looked through the photos. They looked great in the lighting, and she’d just need a few edits on the wrinkles of the pants and the shadows on their arms when she got home. Their smiles were heartstopping. There was something missing, though she couldn’t understand what it was. 

Instead of burdening either of her models with faults that she couldn’t make them fix, she flashed them a thumbs up and a signal to change into their second round of clothes. Their shoulders slumped gratefully.

It only took them both three and a half minutes to change. The motif was black and purple this time, with leather jackets and bags that hung over them in a street style that somehow both Mei and Kiana worked well in. She was more than well-equipped for the change in scenery and replaced their backdrop with a darker gray. 

A strand of Kiana’s hair hung over his face from his loosening ponytail, and Hua made a move to help him. Mei noticed quicker, and she tucked his hair behind an ear before Kiana could react. Kiana’s eyes lingered on hers for a moment, and in a snapshot tucked behind her eyes, Hua could see the look they shared. The vulnerability. 

How fragile it seemed, even in the second it took for them to look away. 

Hua pressed her lips together in a thin line and motioned them towards her. They followed without another word. 

With the musicians outside of her studio playing a low ballad as their entertainment throughout the rest of the shoots, Hua relaxed into her craft. She instructed them to move around a few times, occasionally stepping into the backdrop to straighten out their jackets or sweep hair off a shoulder. 

Like their last rounds, the photos turned out great. Hua cycled through them on her camera, pressing her lips tighter and tighter together with each photo that she clicked through. Objectively, these were nearly flawless in quality. The lighting was perfect, their poses weren’t as awkward as she thought, and there would be just enough editing to go through in her apartment to last her until her bedtime at midnight. 

But the tension.

Her assistants had lovingly called her tenacious in the past, but it was something that she took pride in. Now, she wasn’t sure if she was just being paranoid over something diminutive. Was this something she even had to bring up?

Kiana answered for her. “Something wrong?”

He leaned close to her shoulder, looking down at the photos she flipped through in her hands. Hua tightened her grip on her camera, just in reflexive protectiveness. Sensing her slight hesitance, Kiana blinked and took a step back away from her. 

Hua turned to look at him after taking a deep breath, hoping that the assuring smile on her face wouldn’t deter him or Mei, who stayed close by behind him wearing an identical look of worry. “I tend to have a bit of a perfectionist streak,” Hua admitted to them. “I’m sure it has nothing to do with either of you.”

“Well, you’re taking pictures of us, aren’t you?” Kiana teased. He tilted his head curiously. “What do you need us to do to fix it?”

Hua looked between his eyes and Mei’s. Candor was a trait she long had to learn when she first started, and she tried her best to exercise it now without sounding like she had fallen too deep into conspiracies.

“There’s a tension that I can’t explain between you two,” Hua said. She looked between their faces for a reaction. “Not everyone on set gets along and that’s something I had to make peace with a long time ago. But usually, they’re things that I can explain. Here, I can’t think of a single one.”

Perhaps it was the frustration in her tone, or maybe the complete underlying helplessness in it, that caused the sag in both of her models’ shoulders. They looked at each other, silently communicating with creased brows and shifting legs. 

It was Mei who broke the contact first. She looked over at Hua, sucking in a deep breath to steady herself for an explanation. Hua rubbed her thumb over the buttons of her camera to have something to do in the meantime, the sputter of jazz music in tune with the speed of her hand. 

“We met in high school,” Mei explained. Hua immediately liked how concise she was, her eyebrows raising slowly in understanding. “You could say that Kiana and I are, mm…”

“Old flames,” Kiana piped up helpfully. “But n— nothing that either of us can’t handle, don’t worry! I can swear to you that we’re both professional.” 

He puffed up his chest in an attempt to seem more confident, and then looked over at Mei after a beat. Hua noted that there was no malice or bitterness in the way they eyed each other. Warily and awkwardly, sure, but not enough for Hua to warrant an intervention. Whatever happened between them was none of her business, now that she knew that it wouldn’t further tamper with her job. 

She cleared her throat, and Kiana and Mei glanced at her in surprise. Hua held up her camera with a polite smile plastered on her face and said, “Let’s take a few more and send you off.”

Relief was evident in the way their shoulders and necks untensed. Hua pointed them back towards the backdrop and ordered them to stand close to each other, and the tension in the air began to dissipate with each flash of light she shot at them. Kiana even began to crack his own jokes midway through. 

Each smile on camera became easier and easier to capture, and Hua found herself with her own soft grin by the end of the day. It was hard not to, not when it was so easy to pretend Kiana and Mei’s focused eyes and attractive smiles were for beyond the lens they gazed upon.

Hua swallowed back the dryness in her throat. She clasped her hands together and stood up straighter, flashing them a wary thumbs up that immediately made Kiana break into a lopsided grin. Mei began to stand up from her seat on the stool to shed off the heavy jacket, fanning herself with one hand. 

“That should be everything,” Hua declared, and Kiana whooped and stared at the ceiling as he stretched out his lower back. Mei thanked her politely with a handshake and a slight bow at her hip before she undressed in the dressing room. 

Hua packed up her camera and her lights, dusting off her chairs and cleaning up the counters with a rag to rid them of the tiny specks of spilled sugar that some of her assistants left from that morning. By the time she placed two cool bottles of water on a table closest to the door, Mei and Kiana were ready to leave. 

Mei was the first one to go. She hooked a finger behind her shoes and put them on with an ease that Hua was almost jealous of, and Mei gave her a warm smile and another word of thanks before leaving through the door. Hua immediately looked away just in time for the bell to tinkle away Mei’s departure; though she swore that she felt lightning-hot eyes on the back of her neck. 

Kiana left two minutes after her, taking his time to chug down some fresh water and thanking her for a warm stay at her studio. Unlike Mei, he wasn’t as graceful in putting on his shoes. He hopped and bumped into the wall as he wrestled with his own sneakers, causing Hua to snicker behind her hand to save him some dignity. Kiana groggily waved at her afterwards, and unlike Mei, he was less inconspicuous in stealing glances behind his shoulder to look at her. 

Hua tried her best to pretend not to notice, and eventually the bell attached to her door signaled Kiana’s second goodbye. 

She rubbed the zipper of her camera bag, frowning at the dark camera within it before closing it up. There was a pang of regret in the pit of her stomach, though it didn’t fester enough for her to quite understand it. 

Hua uncapped her own water bottle. She took a gentle sip, then swiped at the corner of her mouth with the pad of her thumb while she double-checked the security code near the front door. 

Editing next to the warm lamp of her small desk in her apartment was a kind of solitude that she could hardly describe. Editing her photos was a calming activity for her, a destresser in between the calamity of emails and wardrobe malfunctions and last minute cancellations. A solitude that she strove for. 

But looking at those pictures of Kiana and Mei stirred a kind of ache in her heart. An ache that begged her to know more than those piercing eyes and the practiced, modeled smiles that only dropped to their natural states whenever Hua was quick to quip back against their jokes in between flashes of light. 

Sighing through her nose, Hua closed her laptop. She could deal with editing in the morning. 

It was hard not to think about them after that. Hua had met all kinds of people in the past, ranging from university students looking to expand their portfolios to celebrities that Xixi would connect her to. She was a hard person to impress, what with the years of experience and “it’s so nice to meet you”s under her belt. 

But Kiana and Mei were… interesting. She wanted to see them again, even if briefly; though, she doubted that was possible unless she reached out to them after asking Xixi for their personal information, and she didn’t feel like dealing with either of her assistants’ teasings or potentially seeming like an unprofessional creep in a model’s phone messages. 

So, Hua chose the next best thing— she tried to shoo them away from the forefront of her mind. There was no use lamenting over two people she can barely even call acquaintances. She went to appointment after appointment, day by day, and yet with each click of her camera held the ghost of Kiana and Mei’s features in the bright camera of her mind. 

Two weeks of mindless appointments and meetings and editing later, Xixi dropped a nuclear bomb on her.

“You’ve booked who?” Hua cried, turning her head so sharply to her short assistant that she felt a sprain in the back of her neck. She winced and massaged the knotted spot there as Xixi explained, eyes creased at the corners in mild amusement. 

“Two whos, actually,” Xixi said happily. She was hugging a planner close to her chest, rocking on her heels with giddiness that Hua was perplexed by. “Kiana Kaslana and Raiden Mei— you remember them, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” Hua replied quickly. Maybe too quickly. To remedy her swiftness after Xixi quirked an eyebrow at her, Hua continued, “I remember everyone I work with.”

“Right,” Xixi said with a trace of doubt, and Hua opened her mouth to defend herself further. Xixi beat her to it. “Anyway, their modeling agency phoned us this morning. The models you were supposed to work with this morning both caught, ah… ahem, unsavory transmitted diseases. Kiana and Mei volunteered to take their place.”

Hua felt her heartbeat spike along the side of her throat. She swallowed hard, finding the right words to say, before settling with, “And they’re replacing the models for the 2 o’clock appointment? For today?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Xixi said with a light, teasing salute. She glanced at the thin watch on her wrist. “Which is in just a little over half an hour, actually.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Hua said tiredly, pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand and keeping a hand on her tripod with the other.

Xixi looked at her strangely. “You’re not usually upset by something like this, especially when we don’t really have anything to change around your schedule.”

Hua’s eyes widened by a slight fraction and she was quick to shake her head. “Oh, I’m not upset, just—” She actually couldn’t find the right words. “It caught me off guard. That’s all.”

Xixi regarded her one more time. Hua was usually thankful for her attentiveness, but now she couldn’t possibly wish for anything more than for her to turn around and keep herself useful with a laptop. “I’ll be in the other room if you need anything,” she finally said, and Hua loosened her bated breath. 

It didn’t take long for Kiana and Mei to arrive after that. Half an hour should have been more than enough for her to prepare, and it was at least, in a sense. Her camera and her equipment were ready, and Elysia had put on the radio to a soft pop station before she left to get everyone some coffee. 

Kiana arrived first, a grin plastered on his face that reached all the way to the sparkle in his eyes, and it took all the breath away in her chest, even long after Kiana greeted her and left to get changed. 

Mei arrived not long after, smiling softly to her in a familiar and relieved kind of way, and the afterimage burning in Hua’s chest grew twice as large. 

They were modeling with sports apparel and merchandise today. The company had already sent them the props days ago, the gym bags and hoodies and street-style button-ups already organized on racks. She shouldn’t be so biased, but she was practically certain that Kiana and Mei would suit those clothes better than the models the agency originally sent to her. 

She decided to separate them for the first hour. She shooed Mei away to get comfortable, tugging Kiana along to their prepared area. Individual portraits and closeups would look nice with the props that she had to work with. 

And, from an objective standpoint, it would be good to utilize Kiana’s sweaty biceps and smoldering grin and strong shoulder holding a gym bag to promote such a concept. Objectively. 

His intense blue eyes seemed to always be the focus in her frame. It was hard to stray away from them, and at times it looked as if he looked beyond the camera and into her own head. It was a silly thing to think, but Hua couldn’t fight the steady drumming of her heartbeat as Kiana struck pose after pose and asked her for feedback on the things that she needed to capture. His eyes never seemed to stray too far. 

Hua could tell that his photos would turn out great once she sent it to Xixi the next day. He was attractive, with lean muscles that did quite well under the glare of her photography lights and a tall ponytail that provided a nice draw of the eyes in every photo she took of him. Even Hua found herself affected by his charm, at least in the slightest of ways. 

Hua flipped through his photos on a laptop near her camera. She concentrated on determining his best photos, which was a feat in itself when every photo looked almost magazine ready from the get go. 

Kiana put his hand on Hua’s shoulder. He was gentle, not disturbing her peace and letting the gentle touch of his fingers speak for itself. 

Hua turned around with a blink, a quiet question in her eyes. 

“What do you think?” he asked. He said it with a confidence that Hua was familiar with; she could, however, hear the slight hesitance in the volume of his words, as if he was bracing for her criticisms. 

“I like them,” Hua declared. It wasn’t a lie to nurse his ego.

Kiana squeezed her shoulder gently with a satisfied smile. Hua quite liked his smile that way. She waved off the thought of asking him to wear it for another photo immediately as it came. 

Mei’s shoot didn’t give her a chance to breathe as well as she thought it would. Unlike Kiana, her presence on set wasn’t as loud. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially with how subtle and ethereal she carried herself in other aspects. 

Her beauty was almost otherworldly to describe. The contrast between her gentle, natural smiles and the style that she modeled for was stark, but it didn’t clash in the way that Hua had feared. It was complimentary in ways that made Hua subconsciously nod her head along to every set of poses that Mei would show off for her, and it made the dryness in her mouth more prominent with every praise that slipped through her tongue to encourage her. 

Outward shots were Mei’s specialty, she quickly realized. She took a few portrait shots, similar to Kiana’s, but she needed to zoom out to accentuate her long legs and sly smile. 

Kiana watched from the sidelines, a respectful distance away from Hua but close enough that Hua could see him out of the corner of her eyes. He had his arms crossed, a finger hooked over his lower lip in concentration. His fierce look as he watched Mei and stole glances at Hua made him look more handsome than Hua had already thought in the first place.

Hua invited her to look at her photos this time around. Mei bent down slightly to parallel her eye level, leaving a distance to them similar to what Kiana had done. Still, even with the arms length between them, Hua could smell the faint trace of perfume. 

Floral. Just the way she liked it.

Her collar slightly warm, Hua gave them a ten minute break. It was more for her own benefit than for theirs if she was being honest. 

Though she had no intention to step foot into their conversation, both Kiana and Mei were insistent in roping her in. Somewhere between the two weeks Hua had met them last, the pair told her about being able to reconnect through meetings for coffee and texts on the phone. They had her to thank for the chance to see each other again, but Hua waved them off. 

Oddly enough, they seemed to be careful in ensuring she didn’t feel like a third wheel. Every question that Mei would ask about Kiana’s new music tastes would then ricochet to be asked about Hua, and Kiana would look between Mei and Hua interchangeable with every pun he would make about the food that he was raiding in Hua’s small pantry. It wasn’t that Hua wasn’t thankful for it— it was more that she hated it made her feel drawn more in. 

Their shots go together next, and they were told to strip to more bare clothing. A tank top on Kiana and a bodysuit on Mei wasn’t the end of the world, but it certainly made her feel like asking Elysia to turn up the air conditioning.

It was silent in the studio, save for the shutters of her camera and the gentle pop song that played on the radio in the corner. With the awkwardness dissipated from their first photoshoot, Kiana and Mei were naturals in handling each other. Their eyes would bore into one another, hands resting naturally on shoulders and fingers splaying on hips and lips quirking upwards in mild amusement. 

Hua half expected them to get lost in one another at some point. She saw the way Kiana’s fingernail slowly disappeared underneath the fabric of Mei’s tight bodysuit. She saw how Mei’s eyes shifted down to the floor, slowly climbing until it looked up at the camera with hooded eyelids, and finally, over at her. As if she wanted to see if Hua was watching. Kiana wasn’t any better; his lips parted in a slight ‘o’, glancing quickly between the lens and Hua’s hairline with an amused burn in the color of his pupils.

It made her mind race. It would be pointless to deny them the chemistry they had, and it would be even more so to pretend that it didn’t exist. Were they frustrated that she was watching? It wouldn’t be the first time that a duo in her studio would start a hopeless fling after a shoot, but it definitely the first time that Hua felt something more than annoyance at the mere prospect of it. 

She didn’t care what Mei and Kiana did after the shoot. At least, she shouldn’t. 

Hua tried not to make her relief too obvious when she looked up from the camera to give them a half-hearted thumbs up. Mei and Kiana’s hands left each other's in an instant, not in a way that would suggest being burnt, but in a lingering, messy way that confirmed Hua’s suspicions. 

She looked away from them, ducking her head to busy herself with checking the photos on her laptop. Her lips formed the words for it, reminding them to get changed and to take their time, as she always did to the point of reflex. 

When Kiana burst from the dressing room with his boisterous voice and Mei giggled in a way that shuddered the forms of her heart, Hua looked up. She hadn’t even realized that she was staring at the same photo, of Kiana and Mei looking as if they were gazing right at her. 

“I’m starving,” Kiana complained, itching the spot in his eyebrow. “I could eat a horse!”

Mei let out a chuckle at his antics. She was shouldering a purse. “We could find somewhere to eat before you go home,” she suggested. 

Kiana was quick to agree to that. He deflated a moment after, huffing out a breath to look at Mei for help. “I don’t know part of this city,” he admitted.

Mei merely blinked, tilting her head at him. When she smiled, Hua could trace the humor in it. “I’m… not that familiar either,” she said to him quietly. 

Kiana snorted out a laugh, pulling out his phone while sweeping his hair out of his face. “We could look at some restaurants closest to us. I’m not really picky for anything, you can close your eyes while I scroll down on my phone and whatever your finger lands on, we can—”

“There’s a sushi place a few streets from here,” Hua blurted out. Kiana and Mei turned to look at her in an instant, and she found herself growing smaller under their surprised gazes. Still, she cleared her throat and decided to continue. “It’s next to my apartment complex. I like to eat there sometimes, when I get a craving.”

The craving itself happened at least once every two weeks. She couldn’t help it with how good the food was. 

Kiana and Mei continued to stare at her. Feeling slightly self conscious, Hua ducked her head again and pretended to flip through new photos on her laptop despite having already gone through it all. 

“Thank you,” Mei finally said. She sounded utmostly sincere. 

“Mei, let’s go try it!” Kiana piped up, happy to have found just the right spot for her hunger pangs. 

Hua had thought that was the end. No more nuisances and distractions from that day forth, and Hua could finally spare her first deep breath of the afternoon. 

The bell to her door jingled, but neither Kiana nor Mei disappeared. 

She could feel their presence lingering in her studio without even looking up, like large afterimages burned straight into the forefront of her mind. 

Hua looked up to meet their expectant gazes, hopeful and pleading and pulling her in all at once. It was a trap, one that she could feel the longer they looked at each other, but sirens always came as beautiful and innocent as they looked at first from the shore.

“Would you like to come with us?” Mei asked her. There was hopefulness to it. Hua could see it in the purse of her lips as well.

“Please?” Kiana continued, dipping her chin to pout slightly at her as a joke. He held the door open, and not a muscle moved from either of them.

Hua debated with herself briefly. It was late afternoon, and she had one last appointment about three hours from now. Be that as it may, Hua knew it was the perfect amount of time for her to have an early dinner. But was it really professional to go out with people she’s worked with? It could get messy. She could accidentally hook them into unsavory situations if either one of them were to ever do something reckless. They could do the same to her.

But their smiles, hopeful and reaching out to her with a promise for something as innocent as a dinner, was all that Hua needed to answer. 

She sighed slightly, the tension leaving her body. “I need to be back here within the next two hours,” she warned them.

Kiana pumped the air. Mei’s smile brightened. 

Hua had never been so happy to squeeze something into her day quite like this.

She shouldn’t have been so surprised when Kiana and Mei insisted they stay in contact after that. Phone numbers were shared right before she had to sprint back to her studio (which should have been a brisk walk at most, had it not been for the fact she got lost in a rather amusing conversation with them), and what Hua had assumed would be small talks once a week turned into a steady friendship with the pair. 

In between other shoots and the solace of her apartment, Hua would find herself chuckling and laughing along to the happenings in her direct messages. She abhorred looking at her texts before, mostly because they were full of client questions and reschedules and the gradual whitening of her hair from various problems submitted to her. Now, every morning and before she went to bed, her treat came from checking her inbox. 

Kiana was swift in creating a group chat between the three of them. It was active almost everyday despite their busy schedules, and it often consisted of energetic well wishes for the morning and equally pleasant wills for a good night to sandwich the memes Kiana would send and the fascinating anecdotes Mei would tell them in between. 

Between that and the group chat, Kiana and Mei didn’t give up in showing her just how interested the both of them were. Mei often private messaged her, asking her about her day and telling her to take it easy on herself, as well as sending easy recipes for her to try in her apartment. Kiana loved to send her cat memes that she thought she would enjoy, as well as selfies that Hua would admittedly feel a little tempted to save. 

Texts weren’t the only forms of communication between them. Late night calls happened at least once a week, sometimes with all three of them that amassed a chaos that Hua would find herself yearning for during long, boring shoots. Then there was sometimes finding time to grab a coffee with Mei at her favorite cafe, whose building hung a large pride flag right next to the door. Kiana would sometimes ask her to come see a movie or to hang around a mall for spontaneity, and Hua had the honor of helping him put on tape around his chest right before a particularly cold night spent at a concert venue. 

It didn’t take long for Hua to grow fond of them both. They both wormed themselves into her mind throughout the day, in ways that Hua wished she didn’t. Even photos deleted off her laptop don’t disappear into thin air, not with her eidetic memory.

She’d fold laundry and think of Mei, who held her hands and giggled and showed her an easier way to fold a blouse the first time she came over to cook with her. Even the faintest smell of caramelized pork brought back memories of Mei, humming with a curl on her lips while she chopped white onions.

Kiana hung in the floors of her studio, when Elysia would keep the radio on for her and she’d hear the pour of a pop song that she knew would cause Kiana to start bobbing his head along in that silly way of his. She counted once, to see how long it usually took him to turn to her whenever a favorite song of his came on, a plea on his lips for her to sing along: it took no more than two seconds every time. 

Before long, they came as naturally into the frame of her life as easily as the blues of the sky. Hua could hardly remember the time before they’d met. She doubted she wanted to. 

Sighing softly, Hua took another sip of her tea. It warmed her throat as it went down, and it warmed it just as immediately when it threatened to come back up with her surprise. 

She sat up straighter on her couch, peering carefully at the phone in her hand. Kiana had posted a photo on his social media, his smile bright and eyes as blue as she remembered it to be with Hua on one side of him and Mei on the other. She remembered when he took that photo. He wanted it to be candid, and so the photo was taken with a swift precision. It caused Hua to look at the camera with a startled and blurred look, and she grimaced when she realized that out of the three of them, she was quite obviously the least photogenic. 

The caption softened the blow though. He added three hearts, one colored blue, the middle orange, and the last being purple. That was it. 

In his replies, followers of his asked him if he was dating either one of the girls next to him. It made Hua wince, knowing perfectly well where she stood in his life. To have people so nosy under such an innocent photo was the reason why her social media accounts were there only for professional practice, and she seldom checked them. Kiana clearly enjoyed it enough to keep it. 

Most comments were ignored by him, except for one who asked him if he happened to be dating both of the girls next to him. Kiana answered with a simple, “If they’d like to!” and a winky face that had him written all over him. 

Hua stared at it longer than she’d like to admit. 

Especially when she finally noticed that Mei’s public account had liked the reply as well. 

She sipped at her tea and swallowed hard. Was this their subtle-not-subtle idea of showing her that they were interested in something a little bit more? Should she say something? Had they been expecting her to see it in the first place?

Her phone pinged. Involuntarily, she had to smile. 

It was the text tone she set for the group chat.

“What’s that?”

Hua turned her head, her nose nearly bumping right into Kiana’s. Her breath hitching slightly from the surprise, she blinked and pointed back at her camera, perched on a tripod. “This?” she questioned. The question almost immediately made her bark out a laugh. She’d just spent the last fifteen minutes explaining to him about the difference between aperture and shutter speed, and now they’re back to square one.

Kiana bobbed his head. He had his hands folded behind his back to peer down at it with her. “No one ever tells me anything about their camera,” he said morosely. “It’s always ‘Kiana, get back to work’ or ‘Kiana, you don’t need to know!’” he continued, mimicking random voices in a higher pitch. 

Hua cracked a small smile. She tapped the part he was eyeing and answered, “It’s called a mode dial. Most of these settings are to help beginners.”

“Then what’s that picture of that lady for?” Kiana inquired further, pointing at a small icon on the dial. 

“It’s for portraits,” Hua said. She clicked the dial into place so that he could look at the difference on the screen. Kiana ooh’ed and ducked his head to look at it closer, rubbing his chin in a way that made Hua want to push his cheek away for being so Kiana. 

There was a reason why she declined his request to handle one of her cameras when she took nonsensical photos of them in her living room, just for fun and for them to keep after she developed them. Though, she did let him play with her vintage polaroid camera, and he made use of it by taking about a dozen photos of the three of them squished into the frame, commanding them to pull out peace signs and hearts and silly faces (to which Hua vehemently disagreed to do). The memory from an hour ago made her smile. 

“I hope you’re not bothering her too much,” Mei said from behind, and both Kiana and Hua spun on their heels to face her. She peered at them with a mix of amusement and veiled concern, and Hua was quick to defuse the situation. 

“He was curious about the camera,” she explained, tapping the top of the mode dial with a fingertip once more. For a moment, she hesitated. Mei’s genuine smile was the only reason she felt spurred on to say anything more. “It’s… nice, to show someone else about these things.”

Kiana gave her a happy grin in response. Hua pretended not to meet his eye to preserve her own dignity. 

Mei let out a soft laugh. “You should go get changed, Kiana,” she reminded him gently, her underlying warning of we shouldn’t overstep our stay here clear in her eyes, and he perked up and said a dual goodbye before darting off. Mei watched him speed away, weaving through the various tables and random equipment on the ground to find his way to the dressing rooms. When she turned back to look at Hua, the corners of her eyes relaxed. 

“I really hope this isn’t too much to be asking for,” Mei said. She was cradling her arms to her chest, forefinger rubbing over her elbow in a self-soothing manner.

Hua waved off her worry, flashing a look back at her camera to ensure Kiana hadn’t knocked it over in his hurry to get away. “It’s my job,” she said matter-of-factly, because it was simply the truth. That, and— “You and Kiana are friends of mine. I don’t need anything in return from either of you for a favor like this. I thought letting you both into my apartment was concrete proof of that.”

At nearly midnight, Mei and Kiana had approached her about something a little more on the… sensitive side. 

They asked if it was possible for her to photograph them again, for a more personal reason. Mei was quick to tell her that it would be no problem for her to decline, and Kiana explained that they wanted to ask her first because they felt more comfortable with her for such a thing. Her decision to agree was entirely up to her.

Like a fool, Hua agreed. 

She had chances up until half an hour ago to change her mind and cancel, but she had sucked it up on the basis that she was a professional photographer, with years and years of experience on her belt and certificates on the wall to showcase her competence. Photographing her friends, friends whom she was unfortunately attracted to, in lingerie shouldn’t be a problem for her.

Gritting her teeth and smiling at Mei was a challenge in of itself. She’d already changed out, black lace on black lace, and for once Hua couldn’t fault Kiana for his tendencies to let his eyes wander and his jaw to slacken around her. 

She was aware that Kiana and Mei were attractive. In fact, it was harder not to be. It was, however, going to be complete hell if she didn’t learn how to put that professional barrier up again.

“We’re still paying you,” Mei insisted. “Double, if you need it.”

“Keep it,” Hua said, and she hoped she conveyed her genuinity as best as she could with her narrowed eyes. “I wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t feel as if I couldn’t handle it.”

“I never said you couldn’t. You’re the most talented woman I know,” Mei said. Hua’s fingers faltered on her camera. The utter genuinity wasn’t something Hua was expecting. “I just didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”

“I’ve shot more boudoir photos in my lifetime than I can count on my fingers,” Hua replied, giving her a pointed look. She flipped over her camera to open the card slot, just to check one last time. “Twice, I did photoshoots for shirtless firefighters for their charity calendars. Twice.”

Mei laughed. “You must be a hero among the middle-aged population then,” she joked, and Hua shared in her amusement with a half smile. “But you know that’s not what I meant.” 

“What you and Kiana do in private, or what you want to do with those photos, has nothing to do with me,” Hua answered, her teeth nearly gritting together in an attempt to keep her awkwardness at bay. “Client confidentiality is a big thing in the industry nowadays,” she added as a joke.

Mei tilted her head to stare at her, mouth slightly open in an attempt to think. Even from the corner of her eye, Hua was struck with the idea that she looked as if she could command lightning with the power and intensity in her eyes. 

The truth was, it did bother her a little not to know what those photos were for. They could be for their own lovers, and the pair just thought it would be better to get a shoot out of the way together. They could even be for each other. Hua never missed the burn in their eyes when they looked at each other. Sometimes she mistook that fire for a look directed at her, when she’d look at them from her peripherals and catch their eyes lingering right on her.

But it shouldn’t bother her in the first place. What they did in private, without her, had nothing to do with her. It was her own mantra at that point. 

She was afraid that Mei could see right through her and see what she was thinking. Maybe Mei was staring at her because she was willing her thoughts out of her head, waiting for her to crack and say something to her finally.

Instead, Mei blinked slowly and smiled faintly, lost in her own thoughts and musings. “Sorry,” she said, when Hua finally faced her in curiosity. “I just thought you looked beautiful.”

Hua gulped down the jump of her heart from her throat. She gave Mei a weak smile, in which Mei returned with her own, bigger and dazzling. 

Hua swallowed again, then cleared her throat. “Kiana should be almost done,” she said, peering behind Mei’s shoulder to check for any sign of her eccentric model. “We could take your individual shots first.”

Mei pursed her lips. “Kiana and I were hoping to get them done together,” she said, almost musingly. 

Blinking at that, Hua considered it. It would make sense as to why they came together as a pair. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise, and she nearly wanted to hit herself on the head with the blunt of her lens for being so blind to it. Those photos were for each other. 

It made the jealousy in the pit of her stomach stir enough that she could feel it like the boil of a pot. She suppressed it as best as she could. She was happy for them, all things considered, and she should stay only happy for them for reconnecting with each other. 

Hua forced her voice to work. “We could take a few individual shots, just to see if you’d like it,” she said. She almost added, and to break you out of your comfort zone, but they’ve modeled almost as long as she’d been photographing. To break herself out of her comfort zone, was more like it. 

Mei frowned a little and said, “We only wanted a couple photos today, so we wouldn’t take too much of your time. Are you sure?”

“Positive,” Hua replied, her mouth still dry. She licked her lips in an attempt to get them to sound less plain. “You’re my last shoot for the night anyway.”

“If you’re sure,” Mei said, holding out her hand. 

Hua took it, leading her to the leather love couch set up in her apartment. She had her own mini studio here, used for more personal projects when she didn’t feel like hauling things around for her assistants to question her for. She thought bringing the pair here would make them feel more comfortable, and in a way, it had. 

Though when Kiana had asked her about her set-up, locked away in a room separate from her living spaces and she had told him that it was meant for her private photography, she felt their gazes settle on her back as she fiddled with her tripod like the strike of lightning setting the grass ablaze. When it occurred to her about what they probably assumed, it was too late for her to backtrack and explain. 

Mei wobbled enough for her to notice, and Hua tightened her hold on her hand to reassure her. She was already well aware of Mei’s slight dislike of high heels, and it confused her to find out that high heels were exactly what she wanted to wear for the shoot. 

Then again, it made her taller. A lithe frame in the shadows of her camera like that would look fantastic with the lingerie that she wore, and it occurred to her that maybe this wasn’t the first time she and Kiana had done something like this. 

The jealousy it should’ve brought on never came. If anything, the thought ignited the first wick in her stomach. It excited her to be the one to do this for them now, despite the roiling envy that laid underneath it all.

At the very least, her mind whispered, besides them, you get to see those two like this. It was a thoroughly selfish thought, but it relaxed her nonetheless.

The human inclination to find the good in things was a trait she was utmostly thankful for. 

Kiana poked back into the room just in time for Hua to snap her third photo of Mei. She positioned Mei on the couch, lying down on her back with her arms over her head and her eyes firm on the camera. She understood Kiana’s sudden pause when he realized the scenario he had walked into, his eyes blazing with that same want that Hua was holding back with an effort that was tiring.

She wanted Kiana to look at her like that too. To have his eyes look that intensely into the camera later though, was enough of a drug that she could take for now. At least, she hoped.

For now, she focused all of her attention on her beautiful Mei. Pressing her lips together, she murmured a low praise to Mei for dipping her head lower to her chest, creating the effect she perfectly wanted for the camera. 

The crisp snap of her camera never made Mei flinch. 

“You’re perfect,” Hua murmured. The praise came as easily to her as wrapping her fingers around the body of her camera. A part of her scolded herself for the easy admission. Most of her thought it was better off said now than later. 

Unlike the flashing bulb hanging close to Mei’s face, those words affected her. Barely seen to the naked eye, but enough that it was noticed by Hua’s perceivable gaze. Mei’s shoulders tensed, caused by the deep inhale that she held steady in her ribcage.

And Hua frowned. Ever the perfectionist, she couldn’t have any flaw in her photography.

“Look at me,” she commanded. 

Her order was granted instantaneously. Mei’s eyes flitted upwards, her head frozen in place. It created an effect that Hua could only dream of— Mei’s hooded eyelids, paired with her languid body relaxed on her sofa and an arm thrown over her head. Like this, Hua’s imagination didn’t have to run so far. Her lips were inconceivable kissable from this distance, the now steady up and down of her chest as enticing to touch as the strand of hair that fell in front of her face. 

The lace that held her body together, like a present coaxing her to make undone, was a temptation Hua had never felt before. It was a sweet aroma in the distance that enticed her, whispering things in her ear to allure her into widening the view of her camera, drawing the line from Mei’s face to the curves of her body and commending each new photo with a click of her camera. 

She could feel Kiana’s warm presence close by. He kept his promise of a distance, holding about an arm’s length away from her and her current work in a modest way that Hua wished he could for once learn to disrespect. She wanted his breath on her neck, warmer and all Kiana. She wanted him to make it known how affected her talent can make him. 

Hua swallowed the lump in her throat. She didn’t realize how thick the air had gotten in her negligence. 

She leaned back on her heels, her camera backing away from her subject and her muse. Mei turned her head slightly, a question plain in her eyes. 

“That should be enough,” she said, charging as much conviction as possible into her words. In truth, a thousand photos would never be enough to capture how beautiful she thought Mei looked. She pointed her camera downwards, away from the tempting siren in front of her. “We should get you two together now,” she added. 

She didn’t need to turn around to see Kiana’s frown on his face. She could already feel it. “So I don’t get any solos to keep?” he joked. There was confusion in his teasing as well, mirrored by Mei’s furrowed brow. 

“I could take a few closeups of you while you’re with Mei. We’ll make better time that way,” she explained, checking the watch on her wrist. Time was the least of her concern. Her fears lie on the bridge that she swayed on, the ropes threatening to snap with every look that Kiana or Mei shot to her camera. 

Kiana agreed once he studied her face for a moment longer. He stretched his arms over his head, the trained muscles of his back and arms straining with the effort. His outfit wasn’t as sensational as Mei’s black-trimmed lace, though she approved his choice in doing so. Kiana stepped over the wires on the floor carefully, nearly tripping on one that he missed with a laugh already bubbling past his lips. 

He was shirtless, leaving only a pair of white boxers with a black trim. Simple, but as he chatted idly with Mei who sat up on the couch to make room for him, Hua could see the simple brilliance in their coordination. They were matching, playing into their strengths that fed off each other like the stoking of fire on tall logs. 

Mei, in her gorgeous lace, tall and slim and a body that drew the eyes up and down like the strokes of a gentle brush. Kiana was leaner than she was, strength in the way he held his eyes up to Hua and the way he set his jaw, an elbow perched behind the couch, the muscles on his relaxed body as powerful as a gazing lion. 

They were antithetical from one another just as they were harmonious. Attractive in more ways than one, and attractive in one way that made Hua want to capture more than the palpable things on camera. 

She shuttered those thoughts away, though. 

Just to test the lighting, she snapped a photo of them. Mei and Kiana looked over at her curiously, conversation winding down when they noticed that their photographer was now ready for them. 

Hua looked down at her camera. She adjusted one of the overhead lights to hit Kiana at a slightly different degree, just to minimize the shadows on his hair. When she looked back up at them, ready to tell them to get back on track with her, she found that they were already looking back at her. Ready for her instructions. Ready for her command. 

It gave her a rush that she couldn’t quite understand, other than the fact that it was heat in a bottle. It made the warmth spread from one shoulder to the other, the pulse on her neck making itself more known with every second that passed. 

Breathing in deep from the nose, Hua raised her camera back to them again, backing away awkwardly on her heels to fill the frame of her two subjects. They looked breathtaking. That was obvious enough to see.

Hua cleared her throat before speaking. “Kiana, get a little closer,” she instructed carefully, tilting her head to the left to goad him in the right direction. 

Kiana followed without a bite. He raised himself slightly off the sofa to scoot in, Mei moving her knees in a slightly different degree to allow him the space. They were closer together in physical proximity now, but Hua could still feel the tension that prevented them from getting closer in the sense that she wanted. Like the congruous poles of a magnet. 

She pursed her lips and lowered her camera right below her eye, the lens still pointed directly at her models. “Closer,” she said. She meant it as a mild suggestion, a gentle coercion. Instead it came out like a hushed warning. 

Kiana’s eyes flicked up at her. For a tense half second, Hua was afraid that he would lash out, stubbornly sticking himself in place to punish her for her seek of control. 

He lowered his eyes from her, fixing him on the ground in front of them to move much, much closer to Mei. Their arms stuck together like glue and paper, yet neither of them flinched away. If anything, Kiana took a deep breath and relaxed against his partner, the tension in his muscles fading with every exhale and tick of the clock in the corner. 

Kiana continued to look at the ground as she snapped photos of him. Not in a pouty, bullheaded manner, but rather in… deference. She could tell from the way he kept his lips sealed together, eyes burning bright in a singular spot on her carpet with a compliance that made Hua’s blood warm with a kind of vigor. 

She found herself liking it.

Hua wasn’t one to pursue the ladder of power in her career. She loved to take photos, of any photo, regardless of who or what the subject could be. She couldn’t command the sun to set for her photos just as much as she couldn’t force the rivers to stop flowing. The people she ordered around her studio seemed like a near exception to that rule, but she loved seeing what kind of dynamics they came up with without her command. The camera was an extension of what she saw, not of what she governed. 

So it presented as an oddity to her now, when all she could think about was the thousands of ideas in her head to get the models in front of her to replicate the visions in her head. It thrilled her, a constant hum in her veins with every click of her camera and every word from her mouth to get them to do exactly what she told them to do. 

Neither Kiana nor Mei seemed to disobey her. Not once. 

At first, it came gradually, a dip of her fingertips in the lukewarm of a lake. “Face each other,” she said, plain on her tongue. 

The reaction was quick. Their heads turned, noses ghosting near each other by half an each. She could tell that their hair-trigger reactions came at a cost, surprising them both with the proximity that she curated just for them. Mei’s shoulders hunched up, her tendency to inhale deep and hold it with her surprise plain for Hua to see. Kiana stared into her eyes in return, unwavering but too shy to let it linger downwards in the way Hua knew he wanted to. 

Hua licked her bottom lip. She snapped a photo of them, despite neither one being photo-ready. She clicked her tongue in plain displeasure, and Kiana and Mei tensed. She wondered if it was the unready click of her camera or the click of her tongue that set them off the most.

“Kiana, tilt your head down for me,” she instructed, harsher than her last. Without another word, Kiana did as told. 

And as promised, Hua made sure to adjust her lens to focus on him. She lowered the body of the camera to get a downward angle of the slope of his face, brilliant and sharp and intense just from the small screen that Hua could see. The intensity of his eyes were always a favorite of hers. She wanted to see just how piercing they could get, with just the right push.

She took a few more photos of him from that angle. Handsome, charming Kiana would no doubt love to see the photos that she took of him like this. Almost certainly, he would forgive her for the wait she imposed on him when she took photos of Mei first. 

Because she had never told them to look away from one another, their eyes were firm in the same position. It almost made her laugh. It was an accidental staring contest, close to each other’s faces and close enough that their hands were resting on thighs and forearms, but instead of the discomfort that it often invited, Kiana and Mei were beginning to relax. 

Relax, in the way that they were melting in each other’s arms. Hua could tell that it was getting harder and harder for them not to let their eyes graze down. 

“Look at me,” she spoke again. Their eyes shifted towards her, almost gratefully. “Look at me,” she urged once more, and their faces turned. 

She took some photos of Mei and Kiana together in the frame, just to have something to pick out when she came to edit them. Up close like this, she could spot the sweat on their foreheads and be alerted to every twitch of their fingers. It was a luxury to be able to be so close to them like this, though it was obvious that it was making them nervous. For whatever reason, she couldn't understand. 

Luckily for them, Hua wasn’t here to torment them. She dipped her camera to the ground and rose from her kneeling position on the floor. Kiana and Mei glanced at her as she walked from the corner of their eyes, silent curiosity painted on their faces. Neither of them spoke. She wondered what caused them to be so obedient like this, like a switch had gone off the moment she took the cap off her lens.

Hua perched her camera on top of its tripod. She adjusted it to ensure its safety on the perch, and she addressed them with an indifferent flick of her eyes. It was as if the air stilled in front of her. 

“Are you two comfortable?” she spoke up. It was a genuine question, accentuated with the knit of her brow. 

Mei seemed to take her first deep breath. Her shoulders relaxed gradually into the sofa as she answered, “Yes. We trust you.”

Hua pondered her answer for a silent moment. Her finger ran over the side of her camera as she thought about it, and she could feel Kiana’s strong gaze watching her languid movement like a hypnotized lion. “Tell me if anything I ask of you is stepping over the line,” she continued. Like before, she meant every word. She hoped she conveyed that enough with her poignant look, begging them to understand the gravity of her thoughts. 

Her fears melted away when Kiana looked back at her. He smiled, not big enough to warrant the crinkle in his eyes as always, but enough that she could detect the traces of trust. And slyness, if she looked deeper. “O’ course,” he said to her, bringing the weight off her shoulders. 

With a loosened breath knocked out of her chest, Hua rubbed a thumb over her camera and looked down at it. The position they held now was perfect. She checked their previous photos to pass the time.

She noticed almost immediately while checking the photos that Kiana and Mei wore nearly identical looks towards the camera. Desire was the closest word she could find for it, and she knew it for what it was. She knew, because it was a look that she tried so hard not to look at them with all night. 

Was the desire an effect for the camera, a talent that they embodied and wished to display? Or was their desire an innate reaction, for the person behind the camera? She would be a bigger fooler for hoping, and yet. 

She addressed Mei first. “Hook your knee over his thigh,” she said, and Mei followed along with a simple nod. Hua looked at Kiana and said, “Hold her waist. Right there.”

Intimacy wasn’t a word close enough for what she was seeing. They held each other so naturally, so perfectly, that she couldn't even find it in herself to feel a hint of jealousy. Especially not when it was because of her. 

Without her prodding to, they rested their foreheads on each other. Hua worried that they would feel awkward this way, throwing them into boiling hot water without letting them get acclimated to the temperature. Rather than shame, Kiana and Mei were climbing the rocks of familiarity. She could tell from the way Kiana’s fingers began to dig into Mei’s skin, gently but with a possessiveness that was making Mei’s back arch slightly into him. 

A lover’s embrace. 

They were looking at each other again, just as they were before. Now, Hua could sense the oncoming tension of lightning before it struck the earth. She could see it in their slowly parting lips, the rapid up and down of their chests. The singe of burning wood was close. 

It sent shivers along her spine. It felt like the ghost of their touches, spurred on by the constant glances thrown her way for approval. 

Hua bent down slightly at the hip to look at her camera a little closer. She swallowed the dryness in her throat and asked, “How are you both feeling?”

It came coarser than she hoped. She grimaced, but the pair took it in stride. 

“We’re okay,” Mei assured her, strained. Though it wasn't a lie. The strain, it seemed, came from focusing on the fingers indenting on the side of her waist, the slight parting of her lips an eager affirmation of her buried pleasure.

Mutely, though confidently, Kiana nodded, eyes going back and forth between Hua’s fixed gaze and Mei’s blurred one. 

Their eager reciprocation to the situation made Hua want to fly close to the sun. She wasn’t sure how close she was allowed to come alongside it, so she decided to test the climate. 

“You’re welcome to kiss, if you’d like to,” she said, her voice parched with the dryness on them. She cleared her throat, hoping that the exertion in them didn’t cover up the sincere invitation. 

It didn’t. Kiana and Mei moved their heads towards her by a slight fraction, questioning her motives with looks that lit another fuse in her veins. Hua dipped her chin, then lifted it. A slight nod of approval, a small sign yet acquiescent in every way. 

As if she was watching a film strip go frame by frame, Kiana and Mei leaned in for a kiss. They didn’t stop at something chaste, but rather wrapped their arms around each other in vine-like holds to keep each other as close together as they could. With their eyes closed and their fingers lingering on jaw lines and tracing over necks and collarbones, they continued to kiss.

They’d break apart only to shift slightly on the sofa, Kiana’s fingers never once resting on a singular place. He’d run them over Mei’s long neck, relishing in her sigh of relief as he did so, then let it play over the bump of her collarbone and the valley of her navel. He was rubbing his palm over her bare thigh now, uncaring for the sounds of skin on skin. 

Hua didn’t notice that her fingers had a slight tremble to them as it ghosted on top of her camera until Kiana and Mei had deepened their kiss. They were lost in each other, just as much as Hua was lost in them. 

A quiet, breathy moan escaped from one of them, quiet in the sense that they were clearly trying to hold back. It made Hua frown when she realized she didn’t know who, exactly, it came from. Not when they were tangled like this. She wanted to know, and she wanted to see it, more than anything else. 

And even if it was selfish of her to wish for it, she wanted to see more. 

“Stop,” she said. It was undemanding, but it had the same effect regardless. 

Kiana and Mei separated immediately, as if they were burnt by her own hand. They panted, a string of saliva connecting their lips to one another that showed just how deep their physical desires had gone. They stared at one another at first, unsure until it became solid with their conviction, and they looked over at her.

There was a pleading in the creases of their faces. Clearly, they hadn’t wanted to separate, but they also knew that they needed approval. 

Hua liked that. 

She ran her tongue on the inside of her cheek, thinking to herself. She tapped the side of her camera, still ready to shoot at any time. Though she was certain of what they wanted, she wanted them to voice it for her. 

“Do you want me to turn this off?” she asked them. 

“What for?” Kiana asked, his tone still hazy with want. He sounded genuinely confused, though he continued to rub his fingers up and down Mei’s thigh hitched on him absentmindedly. 

Hua wasn’t expecting him to answer like that. “I won’t shoot anything either of you don’t want me to,” she explained slowly. It was getting harder and harder to concentrate, the longer she watched them toy with each other’s bodies as if they no longer had a care in the world. 

“You’re doing just fine,” Mei assured her. Just like Kiana, the effect of the air around them was taking a toll on her. She was nearly slurring her words, a darkness to them that was making Hua dizzy just standing there. 

“Are you sure?” Hua reiterated. She really didn’t want to do anything they wouldn’t like.

“We’re sure,” Kiana said off-handedly. And he grinned at her, slowly but brazenly. There was a new intensity to his eyes, sharp and focused and eager. His eyes ran up and down Hua’s body, and his fingers tightened on Mei’s thigh until Hua could tell it was going to leave crescent-shaped indents on the skin. Mei only answered by kissing the side of his neck. 

Still, Kiana kept his eyes on her even as Mei continued to suck right under his jaw, a finger resting on the other side of his neck. Hua must’ve shown how unconvinced she looked to him.

“Whatever you’re seeing is for you,” Kiana husked. His voice rumbled deep, resonating an urge in Hua that was beginning to warm her across the chest. “Just for you.”

The reassurance, along with the pierce of his gaze, set her alight. 

A finger rested on top of her camera. She played the role of their photographer once more, as confident as she usually was. It was her job to make sure they did everything just right. 

She kept Kiana’s patient gaze. “Kiss her,” Hua said to him. 

He gave her a shrewd smile, before turning to look back at Mei and running a finger under her chin to make her look at him. He wasted no time in pressing his lips to her, deep and seemingly controlled. Mei’s head moved backwards from the force of it, though she fought back by sliding her hand over his bare chest, causing a slight distance between them. 

It was perfect that way. Hua could see where their hands were, along with how deep the kiss looked from the camera. She snapped a photo of it. 

Kiana and Mei weren’t disturbed by the shuttering noise it made. If anything, it seemed to spur them on. 

Their kisses were beginning to become more frenzied. Their bodies leaned and receded, like a boat on a crashing wave. Kiana’s hands were expert wanderers, taking their time in getting to know Mei’s body with every open-palmed exploration on the expanse of her thighs and arms and chest. Mei kept her hands firm on his upper body, letting them graze over his strong shoulders and linger on the veins and muscles protruding on his neck. 

Hua let them have their fun. She snapped a few photos of them, frowning slightly to herself when she realized that they were coming out slightly blurred by their constant moving and groping. She didn’t stop them though, allowing them to continue while she turned her back on them to fetch a bottle of sparkling water from the fridge a few feet away. 

She uncapped it and sipped, almost unconcerned with the scene in front of her. Happy models meant a happy, undisturbed photoshoot. Still, her hand shook slightly with every tip of her drink. Adrenaline was a fickle thing, even as a bystander.

Kiana’s fingertips were toying with Mei’s lingerie. They came under Mei’s bra, swiping the skin there back and forth like a metronome until Mei shifted to kiss him deeper, and he groaned into the kiss. His fingers fell away, only to find solace on Mei’s thigh, fingertips once again digging underneath the lingerie. 

He wanted more. From how rapid Mei’s breathing came to be, so did she. 

Hua didn’t need to wait. Kiana’s teeth grazed on Mei’s bottom lip, pulling them out until Mei’s lip was almost white in color. He let go, then tracked his own kiss-bitten lips to Mei’s neck, pressing his canines down on her pulse point. Mei let out a small moan, and Hua inhaled sharply. 

Realizing that they were breaching an unspoken order, they looked over at Hua expectantly, breathing heavily with want. 

Hua looked over at her camera, then back to them. She twisted the cap back on her bottle of sparkling water and tapped it on her jaw. Her gaze was sharp on them, and they seemed to grow smaller under it. It surged a new kind of power in her skin.

“Why’d you stop?” Hua asked them, too innocently. It sounded almost sinister in retrospect, but it caused Kiana and Mei’s eyes to widen in earnestness. “Your shots are turning out great.”

She could tell that it made their breaths hitch. Kiana, most evidently. He wasn’t very good at hiding how he felt, but it played to her strength. 

“What else do you want us to do?” Kiana asked her, hoarse and pleading and incredibly arousing. The additional comment was already evident on his face. We can do whatever you want. 

Hua licked her lips, folding her arms over her chest to think. Her mind raced, throwing ideas at her without an order or care. Brainstorming was always her favorite part of thinking of photoshoots, but now she wished she could skip that part in the process. 

And asking them what they’d like to do would be too unfair to her. She was the one to please. From the way their eyes studied her and her body, that much was clear. 

“Kiana,” she said. Her tone was inscrutable, and yet he perked at the sound of his name on her tongue. “Strip her.”

Eager to please, Kiana did exactly as told. He peppered kisses all over Mei’s neck, and Hua relished in the breathy laughter and moans that mingled out of Mei’s lips. Hands continued to play with her body, running up and down the length of her abdomen until they stopped to continue on his mission, a finger hooking over the band of her underwear to pull it down in one swift motion. 

Mei assisted him. She arched her back and helped him run the underwear down her leg. It was a shame how easily the pair decided to discard the piece of lingerie, but her disappointment was quickly replaced with excitement when she realized just why they wanted to do so. 

Hua was behind the camera the entire time, capturing almost every half second of the interaction. She had photos of Kiana’s lips on her neck, Kiana’s finger hooked on her lingerie, and Kiana’s hand wrapped around her cock. 

He had a thumb over the slit of her dick, rubbing the tip and sides as he pumped her up and down in languid movements. It obviously wasn’t the first time he got to do so. Mei was bucking her hips, allowing him more room to do what he wanted to her with a gasp on her lips. He shushed her quickly with a kiss, swallowing her moans with his own and picking up the pace. A click of the camera.

“Bite his shoulder,” she said under her breath. She didn’t really expect them to hear her. 

Mei conceded to her request, leaning over with shaking legs to bend down and press a kiss on Kiana’s lean shoulder before wrapping her mouth on a part of it to bite down hard. A click of the camera.

It caused Kiana to open his mouth, exhaling hard from the pleasurable pain that seemed to make him lurch. He paused for a moment, relishing in the feeling of Mei’s mouth sucking on his shoulder to remedy his pain, before he continued to move his fist in a more stuttered, uncontrolled motion. A click of the camera. 

“Leave a hickey on her collarbone,” Hua said, her voice more charged with authority, “make it nice and pretty for the camera.” For me, she wanted to add, but he glanced at her once and already understood. 

She looked through the viewfinder of her camera to watch them. She watched as he leaned and kissed Mei’s chest twice, before grazing his teeth right on top of her collarbone to tease her, before wrapping his lips on the protruding bone and sucked. 

Mei’s moans were strained and guttural, the swimming pleasure in her eyes looking so alluring on camera. 

She bucked her hips again, and Kiana swiped his thumb over the tip again. Precum was already collecting on Kiana’s thumbnail. 

If she focused hard enough, she could see just how sweaty they’d become, droplets of sweat collecting on the sides of their faces and down their abdomens. There was an angry purple bruise already forming right on top of Mei’s breasts, placed there by Kiana’s lips and Hua’s single command. Like a traveler to an oasis, Hua wanted more.

“Get her to cum, Kiana,” she said. She didn’t need to command it. She knew they’d do anything for her, anything she’d ask.

Mei moaned again when Kiana dipped his head underneath her chin to suck on her neck, a mix between a whimper and a mewl. Hua loved every second she got to hear it, and it seemed that Kiana shared in the sentiment. He let go of her cock to run his fingers over it, letting Hua take more photos of them in their tight embrace and the almost inconceivable twitch of it under his fingers. 

Hua snapped more photos when he gently bit down on the valley between her shoulder and neck to subdue her, then continued his aim to get her to cum. He jerked her off, and yet was dutiful in rubbing the head once in a while to tease her. Hua’s skin felt as if it was on fire.

Hua pressed her lips together. Mei had her eyes closed in pleasure, and the noises she made were in appreciation of his touches. She had her arms thrown over his shoulders, locking him in place as if she was afraid he’d leave her unmoved. They’ve touched each other like this before, and she knew she shouldn’t interfere with the pleasure that they were giving unless she was certain that she could amplify it. It made her slightly nervous to even think, but she also knew that there was no chance they’d fault her for wrongly assuming. 

She hesitated, watching them for another moment longer. Deciding then, she clicked her camera one more time before addressing them. “Suck on her tits.”

Kiana glanced at her from the corner of his eye. They seemed to light up, even from the limited view that Hua had of them, and he sucked hard on Mei’s neck one last time before removing them with a wet pop. It made Mei’s shoulders jump. 

Wasting no time, he pressed his lips back to Mei’s skin, this time around the circle of her nipple. She threw her head back immediately, moaning loud and without abandon. Hua snapped photos of it, the beat of her heart strong in her neck and chest. It thudded along to the rhythm of Kiana’s hand. 

Kiana suckled on her nipple with a vitality that spread warmth across Hua’s face and neck. It was obvious that he loved even the suggestion of her idea, and Mei seemed to reciprocate. 

The sounds of skin rubbing on skin and Mei’s quiet whimpers of pleasure almost made her want to burst at the seams. She could feel her own arousal peaking above her professionalism, causing every shift of her legs to grate on her in a tortuous manner. Hua inhaled deeply, her chest rattling with anticipation and excitement. Even her own hands were betraying her, the subtle shake of them now becoming a tremor that made it difficult to press down on the shutter button.

It took a while for Mei to reach her peak. Nevertheless, Kiana had the stamina and the vigor to continue his pace on her cock, his lips going back and forth between her nipples and his other hand exploring the expanse of her body. 

“Fuck, I—” Mei mewled, faintly but enough for Hua to hear. She moaned again when Kiana accidentally hushed her with his teeth gently on her peaked nipple, now sounding much closer to a sob. 

She knew it for what it was. Hua looked back at her camera and took two more photos: one of Mei with her head thrown back, in the middle of a blissful, long moan, and one of Kiana’s furrowed brow in concentration as he rubbed her to orgasm. He had his lips on the base of her throat.

Kiana stopped immediately after she came. They were breathing hard, looking into each other’s eyes with a want that hadn’t seemed to deplete. 

That wouldn’t do. 

Hua turned off her camera with an audible beep, and they turned to look at her with looks of confusion and immediate concern. She didn’t address either of them, instead taking the camera off the tripod and capping the lens. 

It was a tense drawn silence before Hua spoke again, after she bent down and packed the camera away into its bag and picked out a smaller device, hiking it back onto the tripod. She turned it on first, the blinking white light small but clear as it faced Kiana and Mei. 

Their eyes were wide, pupils blown with lust and excitement and hopefulness. Their bodies were still all over each other, the short spurt of Mei’s cum still on the back of Kiana’s hand and Mei’s cock already half-flaccid. When they shifted together to look at her, Hua spotted the large wet splotch on the inside of Kiana’s boxers. She wondered if the shudder of Kiana’s body when Mei came was his own orgasm. She’d be sure to check her camera thoroughly later. 

Hua stripped off her jacket first. Their eyes widened further, though they said nothing in case they’d shatter the glass-like atmosphere around them. 

She took off her shirt next. Her action caused immediate feedback, Kiana leaning closer to her with a whine on his lips and Mei keeping her eyes on her with a gaze that she could liken to a viper before it struck. 

“It’s a video camera,” she said matter-of-factly. They looked at the camera for the first time, as if they hadn’t noticed it was there in the first place. “It’s not on yet. Would you want…?”

She didn’t need to ask any further. Kiana nodded his head enthusiastically, his mouth stumbling on three different “yes”es while Mei merely swallowed thickly and said, “Please do.”

Almost clumsily, Hua toyed with her camera until the light shifted from a blinking white to a full red.

Hua barely remembered her walk from next to her camera to next to them. She blinked once, and suddenly she was in the middle of her large sofa, Kiana and Mei kissing her all over and letting their hands wander to places that made her dizzy. 

Mei unhooked her bra for her, pressing a kiss to the back of her neck that rewired her like electricity through a power source. Kiana was the one to slip it off her shoulders, his warm hands blazing a trail of fire along her biceps. His gentle kisses worked its way down her arms, and Mei got busy with tucking her hair behind her ear with a compassion akin to worship. 

She felt lightheaded with the attention she was getting, in the best of ways.

Hua had always felt at ease behind the camera. She didn’t like having the attention on her, and she’d so much rather point her lenses at things far more interesting than she ever could be. But having Kiana’s lips kiss every point of her fingertip and Mei’s teeth grazing along the back of her neck as she continued to brush her hair out of her face, she wondered why she spent so long never chasing after a spotlight like this. 

She didn’t know how long time had passed when they finally stripped her of any obstructions. She felt too blissed by the feeling of their lips and skin on her, allowing them to do anything and everything so long as their warmth was close by. 

To suddenly come back to the earth again, feeling the cold breeze on her chest and the sudden vulnerability of being stripped of everything in between Kiana and Mei, Hua felt slight panic. 

They noticed almost immediately. Mei removed her lips from the back of her shoulder and peered at her closely. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t like,” she murmured, her voice still hoarse from the turbulence of the night. 

“You tell us what to do tonight,” Kiana said. “Remember?” 

He intertwined their hands together and kissed her knuckles. Mei’s lips ghosted over her shoulder blade, her warm breath causing goosebumps on Hua’s skin. 

Hua blinked. Moved by their affections for her, she looked at Kiana first before turning to look at Mei. She steadied herself, supported by the readying gazes around her. She dreamed about being this close to them for weeks, and somehow it was more overwhelming than she could ever expect it to be. 

Hua leaned backwards to kiss Mei on the mouth, her hand coming to cradle the side of her jaw devotedly. She turned to kiss Kiana next, who reciprocated enthusiastically by running his tongue along her bottom lip. 

“Get up,” she murmured, addressing Mei. “Help me return the favor you owe to him.”

Mei kissed a spot on her shoulder once more, then lifted herself away from the couch. Hua ordered her to kneel on the floor, close to Kiana. Neither of them seemed to understand until she faced Kiana, regarding him with an unfathomable look. Kiana’s gaze held steady on hers. 

Hua shifted closer to him. She leaned in, slowly but surely, and he seemed to be pulled in by the draw of her lips. Her fingertips splayed on his toned stomach, and she felt him flinch from the cold. Smiling, she tilted her head playfully and guided his lips to hers. She kissed him gently, enough to gather her fill, and rested her other hand on his knee. 

Her fingers on his stomach ran further down. A nail played with the top of his boxers, until she listened to the soft cry on his lips and hooked it in. She looked up at him, asking for permission. 

Kiana visibly swallowed and nodded, his eyes wide with anticipation. Mei was sitting on the floor as asked, her fingernails running up and down the side of his thigh. She had her eyes set firmly on Hua, waiting for any flick of her wrist or command on her mouth. It thrilled Hua to no end. 

Instead of hooking his boxers downwards, she pressed her middle finger lightly against his clit. Kiana canted his hips and cried out, chasing after the feeling with each stroke that Hua made to experiment with him. She added a second finger and rubbed him lightly, humming pleasantly when her fingers came back wetter than the last. Even with the barrier, Kiana’s excitement was palpable. 

“Kiss him,” she instructed, her voice almost down to a hush. Mei wasted no time in granting her wish, running her hand over his chest and collarbone before letting it settle on his neck to keep him in place. She kissed him ardently, swallowing any moans that passed through his lips. 

Hua decided it would be too much torture to tease him any longer. Swiftly, she hooked her fingers over his boxers and pulled down, and Kiana shimmied out of them with a small whimper on his lips. It was clear from the shine in his eyes that he wanted Hua’s hands on him. 

Hua thought he deserved a little bit more than that. She backed up on the couch to give themselves more distance, and he watched her with panicked, wide eyes. Even Mei watched, looking pitiful for the way her warmth disappeared by her side. 

She ran her fingers down his thighs. Subconsciously, Kiana spread them for her. 

She placed two careful kisses on the inside of his thighs. Before Kiana could beg her for his release, Hua slid in two of her fingers and took him into her mouth, wrapping her lips around his clit. He adjusted to her long fingers quicker than she expected him to. 

He moaned loud, and she flicked her eyes up in time to watch him grip onto the arm of the couch, bucking his hips closer to her lips. Hua held him steady, indenting his thighs with the grip of her nails. She let her eyes linger on Mei, watching as she helped subdue him with deepening kisses and a hand stroking his chest, dangerously close to the expanse of his neck. 

A vein popped out when Hua sucked on his clit, carefully watching him for his reactions to every thrust of her fingers. She could tell that he wouldn’t last long like this, and it was a fact that warmed every part of her skin. 

“Fuck,” he panted, and he rolled his hips when Hua let go of his clit and continued to fuck him relentlessly with her fingers. The noises her fingers made were making her dizzy with lust. “Hua, your mouth,” he said again, his voice airy with desperation. 

He whimpered and threw his head up to the ceiling when her fingers tilted further upwards, and Mei took that as an invitation to openly suck on his pulse. It caused a jolt in Kiana’s hips, and Hua warned him with a biting grip on his thigh. 

Her fingers still working him, she leaned over. Mei, who had proudly placed a deepening purple hickey on his neck, backed away enough for Hua to kiss him fervidly. 

“What do you want?” she asked him quietly. She knew the answer— she just loved to see the pleasuring agony dance in his eyes, and the lust in Mei’s from next to her. She committed it all to memory. 

“Your mouth,” he said a second time, yet this time much softer. He whimpered when Hua slowed down her pace, and she didn’t miss the subtle way he tried to buck his hips to feel pleasure again. 

“My mouth what, Kiana?” Hua asked. She wasn’t the type to taunt, nor did she ever expect to like it. 

But having Kiana and Mei watch her this desperately, imploring her with looks and the rise and falls of chests that made her so dazed with this new brand of power— she loved it. It made her the center of the frame for once, and she craved it. 

“I need your mouth on me,” Kiana said, his voice strained in desperation. “Please.”

She granted him what he wanted. She pressed one more kiss to his lips before letting her lips linger on his abdomen, before wrapping her lips back to his clit. This time, she sucked harder, only to see what the reception would be. 

Kiana took it positively. He moaned louder, muffled only moments later when Mei kissed him to appease the sharp look Hua glanced at them with. She watched as Mei placed her hand back around his neck and lightly squeezed, causing him to mewl pathetically in the thrill. 

Every curl of her lips brought him closer to his high; every swirl of her tongue earned her a new pleasurable sound, sometimes intermingled with Mei’s at the sight of them. Hua committed everything to memory. A camera may capture the scene in front of her, but it would never replay the same tight warmth around her fingers, or the feeling of Kiana’s thighs close to her ears, or the subtle noises of Mei’s quiet moans as she rocked her hips to the ghost of Kiana’s pleasure.

His orgasm was swift and came with nearly no warning. Kiana threaded his fingers through Hua’s hair, pleading with her to stay to let him cum. Hua disagreed, humming discontentedly as she let go of him. He sobbed, immediately begging for her return with the miserable tremble of his thighs. 

Instead, Hua met Mei’s blazing eyes. In a split second, Hua moved backwards enough to allow Mei to bend down and press her lips against his clit, lapping up his wetness and enticing him to cum. Kiana moaned appreciatively, gripping her as he let out one last cry and rolled his hips onto her tongue to chase after the waves of bliss. 

As he came, Mei let go of him and kissed her. Her tongue ran over her bottom lip, letting Hua enjoy the taste of him as much as he did. Hua deepened their kiss, gripping the back of her neck with her fingers and letting the mix of saliva and cum dribble down her chin. It was messy and rough and made her head swim with spots in her vision, but Hua loved every second of it. When Mei moaned into her mouth, she could tell that the same could be said for her.

When Hua wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, she expected Kiana to lie there to recover. She knew it was a strong orgasm, and even just watching him cum caused a deep exhaustion in the seep of her bones. 

She didn’t expect him to pin her back against the couch, his fingers running down the side of her jaw and kissing her with a fervor that brought back the flames of her lust. His movements were sluggish, a hallmark of the orgasm that she gave him just seconds ago. 

His lips on her made it hard to think. She couldn’t understand what he was doing until she was already pressed against the couch, his hand on her bare hip and Mei’s breath warm on her neck. 

“Do you have lube?” Mei asked her gently, pressing an equally gentle kiss on her shoulder. 

Kiana’s kisses were trailing further south. He sucked on one of her nipples, and Hua parted her lips in a gasp at the surprise. She gripped his hair, and he looked up briefly to smile subtly at her before grazing his teeth on it.

It took her a moment to register Mei’s question, and she was thankful for Mei’s patience. Blinking, Hua considered her question, feeling an ache in her abdomen when she realized just, exactly, what the pair were planning for her. 

“In… in my bedroom,” she said breathlessly. She could barely think when Kiana had his lips on her nipple, his opposite thumb rubbing the other carefully. She could tell that Mei was watching them carefully, and it contributed significantly to the pleasure that simmered under her skin. “Bottom drawer of my nightstand.”

Mei tilted her chin so that she could look at her. Unlike Kiana’s fierce, dizzying kisses, Mei’s kisses were kinder, the embodiment of silk on skin, but made her just as lightheaded. 

“You’re perfect,” Mei said quietly. Kiana agreed to the sentiment by looking up, kissing the side of Hua’s lips chastely and reverently. 

She disappeared to find it. Before Hua could miss her for long and demand her presence back, Kiana let go of her nipple. He massaged the other breast gently, before looking into her eyes and conveyed an innocent question. Hua breathed out, trying to steady the strong drum in her chest. She nodded. 

She recalled the feeling of Kiana’s palms along her thighs as he helped her take off the rest of her clothes. She’d forgotten that she was completely bare for them to see, until Kiana trailed more wet kisses between her breasts and down to her navel and took hold of her dick. 

He pumped her up and down languidly. Hua sighed heavily, relishing in the feeling. 

Before long, he bent down to wrap his lips around her length, and Hua cursed. 

She couldn’t hold back her moans as he bobbed his head up and down. Her grip tightened in his hair, though she loosened when she began to worry that she was hurting him. Kiana glanced up at her, challenging her to do it again with a wild, lustful look. 

His mouth was warm, and she could feel his moans in tandem with hers each time she decided to grip onto him harder, nearly fucking him with her own hand. 

“Kiana,” she said breathlessly. As soon as his name left her lips, she couldn’t remember why she’d said it in the first place. Her head was too fuzzy with the feeling of his tongue and mouth wrapped tightly against her. 

Kiana glanced up at her again, and he seemed to sense exactly what she wanted without her saying so. He picked up the pace by a slight margin, allowing her to throw her head back and yield to the pleasure that he was granting to her. 

Her heady moans were beginning to double in volume, and Kiana’s eyebrows pulled together in concentration.

Her pleasure didn’t last as long as she wanted it to. He let go of her with a wet pop, before sucking on her tip for a few more seconds as a sort of apology. 

“Why’d you stop?” she asked, a cross between a whimper and a demand, though her answer came as soon as it left her mouth. 

Kiana stood shakily to allow Mei to take his place. She had a bottle of lube in her hands, and she squirted a generous amount onto her palms to coat herself with. She placed the bottle on the ground, and Hua’s breathing came to her in short, labored lengths. 

Hua watched her with her elbows raising her to a half-sitting position, the excitement nearly bursting in her chest. She’d been so caught up in watching Kiana and Mei let loose to their pleasure that she had completely neglected the ache in hers. Every inch of her body felt as if it was begging to be touched, and here sat the answer to her prayers. 

She just needed Mei to touch her already. 

“Lie back down,” Mei instructed. She didn’t expect the command to come out so easily from her lips, especially when she had been reduced to nothing but a whimpering mess only moments ago. The surprise made Hua obey without a question.

“Like this, baby,” Mei said again, much softer, and she placed her hand on Hua’s chest to coax her into relaxing and shimmying closer to the arm of the couch. Hua did as instructed, though the position didn’t seem as comfortable as if she had been lying all the way back. Like this, she had her head lying on the arm of the couch. She opened her mouth to bring it up, before she caught sight of Kiana right above her. 

Kiana ran his hand over the side of her face. Hua leaned into his touch, swallowing down the lump in her throat from the realization. 

“Can I ride you?” Kiana asked her, voice hushed with the taint of his shyness. It was a far cry from the sharp gaze he had on her as he sucked her off, but it made it all that much more precious in Hua’s eyes. 

“Please,” Hua said to him, and his eyebrows jumped up in surprise at her answer. They settled only a moment later, and he licked his lips in anticipation. She reciprocated with the hammering of her heart, and she could already feel the taste of him on her tongue as he rolled back and forth right on top of her.

The blink of the camera caught her eye, just as Mei lined herself up. The coldness of the lube and Mei’s tip greeted Hua, and she could feel the anticipation rising in herself like a rolling boil of a pot. It took much effort to turn her head, and she looked into the dark circle of the lens that stared back at her with a striking silence that danced across her skin. 

Mei and Kiana followed her gaze. 

“Do you want me to turn it off?” Kiana asked her, not a spot of judgment in the way he said it. 

“No,” Hua said decisively. She looked up at him, then looked over at Mei, who had a hand gently on her forearm. Hua placed her other hand on top of hers, squeezing. 

She let out a breathy sigh of content. “Just fuck me,” she said to them both, begging. 

There was nothing more that she wanted than to keep this moment as more than a memory. She wanted to relive it, over and over, with Kiana’s clit grazing over her tongue in tandem with Mei sliding in and out of her. 

And if they wanted more after that, well. 

Hua was more than willing to pose them for the camera perfectly. 

Hua flipped through the catalog of movies on her TV with a yawn, holding her fresh bowl of popcorn closer to her chest for warmth. Mei was cuddled to her side, murmuring suggestions in her ear with scattered giggles whenever Hua would wrinkle her nose and reject her seventh pitch of watching their third romcom of the week. 

Behind her in the kitchen, the microwave popped quietly with the sounds of popcorn. It smelled deliciously of butter, and Hua was already prepared for the notion that her apartment would smell like a movie theater for the next two days. Kiana never stopped at two bowls, regardless of how many times he promised to take it easy. 

“Here,” Mei said with a chuckle, taking the remote from her when Hua failed in finding a movie to watch. Hua complained, though she was quickly shushed with a kiss to her lips. It satiated her enough to sulk deeper into the blankets, and she pulled out her phone to do something else while Mei took the reins from her. 

She ran her fingernails up and down Mei’s back as she scrolled mindlessly through her social media timeline. She did so carefully, still conscious of the fact that she and Kiana hadn’t been so kind that morning. There was the feeling of bumped marks on Kiana’s nails down her back and the warm splotches where Hua had sucked on, and each time her fingers grazed them, Mei visibly breathed in deeper. 

Hua kissed her hairline apologetically. “I’m still sorry about this morning,” she said with a grimace. 

Mei laughed breathlessly at that, putting down the remote facedown on Hua’s chest to look at her. “I asked you to be rough,” she reminded her. “It’s no one’s fault but my own, and personally, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Hua rolled her eyes. “Sometimes, I think Kiana’s rubbing on you,” she teased. “And not in a good way.”

“You know I heard that!” Kiana complained from the kitchen, and Mei and Hua shared a gleeful look. 

Shaking her head fondly, Mei went back to looking for a movie. Hua lifted her phone back up to her face. 

A few seconds ticked by before Hua groaned out loud. Startled, Mei put down the remote again to look at her, concern etched on her features. Hua pressed a chaste, apologetic kiss to her forehead before twisting her body to look at Kiana behind them. She lifted her phone screen for Kiana to see. 

“When did you even take this?” she asked incredulously. 

Her phone showed off Kiana’s newest post: Hua and Mei on either side of Kiana on their bed sleeping while Kiana was posing with his tongue out and holding up a peace sign. 

Kiana laughed loudly when he realized, shaking out the last of the popcorn into a big bowl. He waved his hand to dismiss Hua’s concern, and she glowered at him. 

“It was cute!” Kiana argued. “Right, Mei?”

Curious, Mei peered down at Hua’s phone while she continued to grumble. She split into a smile, before coughing into her hand to cover it up when Hua turned to look at her expectantly. 

“Well,” Mei said, carefully picking out her words, “it is cute. There’s a reason why I have a photo of you two sleeping as my lockscreen.”

“That’s different!” Hua argued. She felt her face warm up. “Not everyone sees that. It’s not like I post the photos I take of us on my camera on a big billboard outside of my studio for the world to see, which is effectively what Kiana was doing.”

Kiana snorted. Hua turned to look at him with a warning glare, but he paid no heed to it. He was shaking the bowl of popcorn to coat it with powdered cheese as he spoke. “Okay, but I take photos of us being cute, if you posted the things on your camera, everyone would see me posing with a str—”

“Kiana!”

Mei giggled, though she was quick to muffle her laughter by pressing her face into Hua’s chest.

Kiana’s laughter was more shameless, and he walked over to them with his popcorn. He pressed a kiss to Mei’s hair, then captured Hua’s sulking lips with his to apologize. It worked well enough, and Hua was left there to grumble as he invited himself in between Mei and Hua on the couch. It was thanks to them that she had to buy a bigger couch a while ago. 

Mei continued to look for a movie, and Kiana directed her to different genres. 

Hua cleared her throat. “Your photos from last week are almost finished developing,” she said, the last of her sourness disappearing with every giggle that she heard coming from the pair. “We could add them together in your album this weekend.”

Mei hummed appreciatively. To thank her for her efforts, Kiana fished out a piece of popcorn and pressed it to her lips to eat. 

“Do you think we should take some more soon then?” he wondered out loud. 

“I’m not opposed to it,” Mei admitted. 

It took just a little bit longer for Hua to ponder that. “We can talk more about it after the movie,” she decided. 

Kiana turned to look at her with an impish smile. She knew that look anywhere. 

“Don’t you think it would be more fun if we shot a movie of our own?” he asked with faux innocence. “I mean, it has been a while.”

Hua pinched his waist, and he squirmed next to her. 

“Be patient,” she nearly hissed out, and he only laughed. “The last time we used my video camera, you nearly exported the video to your manager.”

“Name your video files better then!” Kiana argued. “Even something like ‘Kiana-gets-pounded-by-two-foxy-hotties-in-front-of-the-camera.mov’ is better than a bunch of numbers and hyphens.”

Hua opened her mouth to retaliate, but Mei sneakily placed another piece of popcorn in her mouth to calm her down. She crunched down on it and sulked, and Mei thanked her for her reticence with a kiss to the cheek. 

“It’s like I’m never off the clock with either of you,” she said in exasperation. 

“You know we love you,” Mei said in amusement.

“Sooooo much,” Kiana teased. 

Hua sighed and relaxed into the couch. She shook her head, and Kiana frantically waved down one of the movies that Mei nearly passed by. 

She wouldn’t have wanted to spend her Friday night anywhere else. 

But as they settled in and watched through the introduction credits, something occurred to her. 

“Do you remember the first time we—” Her voice caught as she thought about the wording. “—made… love?”

Kiana snorted, but Mei laughed lightly and looked up at her to show that she was listening. Kiana tilted his head to show the same interest. 

“You said you wanted me to shoot some lingerie photos for something,” she said. She made sure that she didn’t sound accusatory, because she trusted them both with everything that she had. “You never told me what it was.”

There was a brief silence that hung in the air, so much so that even the movie seemed to somber down to let the silence permeate. 

And then Kiana and Mei twisted even more to look at her, wearing matching smiles that seemed to convey their twin amusements. 

“Did you really not… realize? After that?” Kiana asked her slowly.  

“What?” Hua said uncertainly.

“Hua,” Mei said breathlessly, laughter in her words. 

“They were kinda for you,” Kiana admitted. 

There was another beat of silence. “Oh,” she said simply, because while she had a slight inkling to it after they both stayed the night to cuddle with her and asked her out the very next day, she never allowed herself to just… grasp it.

Kiana and Mei laughed, loudly and happily, and she joined in with them even if she felt a little silly. 

Maybe it was good that she met the both of them. They were finally showing her how to look at the bigger picture.