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Kala doesn’t really like it when he smokes.
She never says anything, but he knows, feels the bitter burnt taste on his own tongue when he kisses her, so he avoids it.
Incidentally, Sun doesn’t like to smoke near Mun, who also never says anything, but all of his clothes smell very fresh, like fabric softener, and she would hate for him to not want to leave clothes at her place anymore, so she, like Wolfgang, avoids smoking around him.
Will does not mind it when Riley lights up. But she knows he’s working really hard to go back to his pre-Whispers habits, trying to be well and healthy enough to go back to work, so it’s only a drink with dinner and beers on weekends for them. She smokes with her dad.
And, more often than not, now, with Wolfgan and Sun.
He’s sitting on the roof in Paris, looking as the Tower glitters and sparkles in the night. Kala is asleep downstairs, and he craves a smoke. Just one. But it’s late, he would have to walk far to reach the nearest shop that is open at this late hour, it wasn’t worth it.
And then Sun is there, sitting by his side all the way from Seoul, lighting one up, taking a deep drag and then offering it to him.
“It’s not the same”, she says while blowing smoke upwards. “But it’s something.”
With a smile that only lifts one side of his mouth, Wolfgang takes the Korean cigarette and takes a drag, and she’s right, it isn’t the same. But it’s better than it was a second ago.
"Where 's Mun?” he asks, giving it back to her.
“Busan”, she replies, and he notices she’s a little gloomier. Not that Sun’s the most effusive, but he knows her well enough by now. “Visiting his parents.”
Mun stays with his parents for a week, so for seven days, Sun smokes with Wolfgang and Riley on the roof in Paris.
On the third day, Lito joins them.
Now, Lito doesn’t smoke, unless he has too much nervous energy or when he’s in a particular… Mood.
And Wolfgang doesn’t miss the way his eyes linger on his face when he’s taking a drag.
“What?” he asks, just to mess with him, and Lito smiles, that winning smile that can seduce an entire country at once.
“Your jaw looks very good when you forget to shave.”
Staring Lito down, Wolfgang hands him the cigarette, and fights a smile when he notices a faint blush tinge the actor’s cheeks.
There’s no actual nicotine running through his blood, only the sensation of the cigarette. Sun is the one smoking, he just feels the echo of what she does, so he’s happy when Riley shows up another night and asks “You want anything stronger?”
She sits down, and tonight it’s hash, and it’s better, and he gets a good buzz off it, lying on his back staring at the sky while she and Sun talk about how inconvenient police hours are.
He finds himself advising Lito on how to best hold his cigarette. Jordi Gallo, as it turns out, is a pensive smoker.
“What?”, he asks again, when he finds that Lito is, again, staring.
“You look very sexy like that.”
“He’s right”, Kala says, joining them from downstairs. She takes a pass on the cigarette and the hash, but she settles with them, her head on Lito’s stomach and her feet on Wolfgang’s lap, and it’s dawn before any of them realize it.
On Monday, Kala is on a video call with her family, and Wolfgang, Sun and Riley are laughing at Lito’s set stories when Puck shows up, plucking the cigarette Riley has lit for them from her lips, trying to act like he belongs right there with them, and he’s so obnoxious that the fun mood dies right down.
But he does bring news: Lila’s cluster is pissed, and they’re looking for revenge. On them, specifically.
“I’m telling you because I don’t particularly like any of them. Maitake was the most reasonable of them, but he got, you know”, he says, making explosion noises and motions. “Josh is a right prick, and he’s looking for you.”
“Let him come”, Sun says, nonchalant, and gets up to leave.
Puck offers the cigarette back to Riley, but she lets out a sigh, says “Keep it”, and with one look to Wolfgang and Lito, goes away.
“You’re not worried?” Lito asks Wolfgang after Puck leaves, and he shakes his head.
“We’ve dealt with worse.”
He falls asleep while watching movies on Lito’s couch, squeezed between him and Dani, Hernando’s voice while he explains the tragedy of the protagonist like a lullaby.
It’s just him and Riley on Wednesday, and he’s the one supplying the cigarettes this time.
“I’m doing a show on Saturday. You guys should come.”
“The Americans like you”, he teases, and she smiles.
“I like them.”
They all go to her show. Nomi and Amanita fly over to be there in person, but have to go back to San Francisco the very next morning, straight from the club.
The whole cluster has a mighty good after party on the airplane.
Except for Capheus, poor thing, who had danced and spinned with Riley for a good hour or two before he had to pop off, to prepare for his televised debate the next day. When Nomi and Amanita locked the small airplane bathroom door behind them, he quickly had to swallow a blocker, before he got too caught up on sensate activities on live television for the whole of Kenya to see.
.:.
Wolfgang has to go back to Berlin, even if only for a bit, and Kala wants to go with him, but he still doesn’t completely trust Fuchs, so she goes back to Bombay, and they agree to meet back in Paris in two weeks.
And he does go back, but her family has questions, and they miss her, so she takes a little longer.
He does have the flat to himself while she’s away, but they still spend their nights together, and she can still taste smoke in his mouth, so he still shares his cigarettes with Sun and Riley.
Nomi shakes her head when he reaches his arm, offering her a drag when she shows up one night.
“Thanks. I prefer my drugs baked with chocolate.”
He smiles, but it fades quickly.
“She’ll be here soon”, Riley says, because he doesn’t say anything, but he misses Kala way, way too much.
“Three days, tops”, says Sun, lighting one of her own when his runs out.
He’s still with them on the roof when Kala gets home, back in Bombay, and Rajan decides to join her in the shower.
Sun lies next to Wolfgang, extinguishing the cigarette they had been sharing in the fancy ashtray that sits on her balcony table. Rajan kisses Kala under her left ear and Riley’s lips mimics the motion on Wolfgang’s, whose own hand lifts and closes around the strands of Sun’s short hair, and Kala sighs in response, lifting her arm to grasp Rajan’s shoulders, nails digging a bit on Wolfgang’s flesh when she squeezes.
Riley’s tongue tastes like wine, and Sun’s legs squeeze his hips nicely, Kala bites on his lower lip and whispers she loves him in German, and if Rajan hears, he doesn’t react to it, lifting her leg to his hip and pressing her to the wet tiles.
Wolfgang makes love to three women and a man, but all his Parisien neighbors see, if they look out the window, is the German man smoking his cigarette alone, looking at the Eiffel Tower.