They settled into the bed in order. Priya on the far left, Ankur beside her, then Som, then Ritika on the right edge. A bit of streetlight got through the curtains. Everyone went quiet.
Ankur didn't know when exactly he fell asleep, but he woke up to the mattress moving. A slow, soft rhythm that he first registered as someone turning over. Then he heard the kissing. Low and unmistakable, the wet-soft sound of it.
Everything in him went sharp. The train came back to him in one clean image.
Priya was still right beside him, breathing steady, not stirring. He lay still and listened. It kept going.
He waited. Then, slowly, the way you shift when you're half asleep, he turned to face the other side of the bed.
It stopped. Silence.
He waited. Let his breathing go slow and heavy. Let it deepen into the sound of someone properly out.
A few seconds passed.
"I think he's asleep," Ritika whispered.
"Vodka'll do that. He's gone," Som said quietly.
Ankur kept his breathing exactly where it was.
And then it started again. Soft sounds, fabric shifting, a whisper that wasn't words. He opened his eyes the smallest amount.
The streetlight came through the curtains at the right angle. He could see clearly enough.
Som was over Ritika. His mouth at her neck, her jaw, moving up toward her ear and back down. Her hands were in his hair pulling him in. They moved with the ease of people who had already done this, no awkward angles, no first-time hesitation, just weight and warmth and want. Som pressed harder against her neck. His hands moved up her body to her chest. Ritika's back curved slightly off the mattress, a soft broken sound leaving her, her face open in a way Ankur had never once seen before.
She looked nothing like his senior. Nothing like the older sister who'd been guiding him through final year. She looked like a woman completely given over to what she was feeling, and it was one of the most disorienting things he had ever seen.
Som, drunk and absorbed, started working her shirt up.
"If someone walks in on us we're completely finished," Ritika breathed.
"Priya won't move until morning." Som's voice was low, unhurried. "I can still hear Ankur snoring. We've got the whole night."
He lifted her shirt slowly, inch by inch, pressed his mouth to her stomach, dragged his tongue across her navel. Then he pulled the shirt up over her chest to reveal her white bra. Even in that diluted streetlight Ankur could see it clearly. Her chest rose and fell with each breath, steady and full.
Som cupped her boobs in both hands, pressed his face into her cleavage, ran his tongue along the valley between them. Then he pushed the bra up and took her nipple into his mouth.
Ankur's brain went completely still.
He had spent two years thinking of Ritika as a mentor, a senior, someone he looked up to. And now here she was, three feet away, her back arched and her nipples in Som's mouth and her fingers pulling at his hair to keep him there, and something in Ankur's chest cracked open and let in something entirely different.
Som sucked at her nipples, going back and forth between them, sometimes gentle, sometimes harder, sometimes catching them lightly between his teeth.
"Ah, that hurts," Ritika whimpered. She pulled him closer.
Ankur felt jealousy and lust running into each other until he couldn't tell where one ended. He thought about what it would feel like to be where Som was, mouth on her boobs, her hands in his hair, her body reacting like that. He thought about reaching out, about doing something, about being caught watching and what would happen. He pushed it all down.
Then Som moved lower, his thumb pressing between Ritika's thighs through the thin fabric of her pants, fingers starting to move in slow circles, the beginning of fingering her through her clothes.
The moan that came out of Ritika wasn't quiet. It wasn't close to quiet. It left her before she could catch it and it filled the room.
Priya stirred.
Everything stopped. Absolute stillness, both of them locked in place, holding their breath. Ankur kept his breathing even. Priya shifted once on the mattress and then went back under.
Whispered exchange. Long pause. Then Som started again, softer now, fingering her gently through her pants, his mouth back at her chest, kissing her deep and slow.
Ankur was completely, uncomfortably awake. His body had been awake since the kissing started. He lay there not moving, not making a sound, every nerve tuned to what was happening three feet away.
Eventually it slowed. They didn't go further than that. After a while they put themselves back together in the dark and their breathing settled into the rhythm of sleep.
Ankur lay still for another twenty minutes after that, staring up at the ceiling, making sure. Then he got up as carefully as he could and went to the bathroom, pulling the door closed softly behind him.
He was in there for about five minutes. He came out lighter, heart still going a little fast, that particular relieved-and-raw feeling sitting in him. He'd had to masturbate, there was no other way through it. The first time finished quickly. The second time came from the image of her on that bed, her boobs in Som's hands, the sound she made, and that one hit differently.
He stood at the sink and looked at himself. Face still flushed, pulse not quite back to normal. He ran cold water over his hands and it didn't do much.
He stared into the mirror for a while.
He had watched Som kiss her boobs, finger her through her clothes, heard her try to swallow her moans, and he had masturbated twice thinking about it. That was where he was.
It wasn't just arousal. It was the particular ache of wanting something and watching someone else have it. Excluded from something that he hadn't even known he wanted until he'd seen it up close. Something in him had shifted without permission and it was not going back.
He wanted Ritika. Not the senior, not the Didi, not the mentor. Her. The one on that bed with her eyes closed and her back curved and her hand pulling Som's hair.
That thought sat in him quiet and immovable, and sleep, when he finally went back and lay down beside Priya, did not come easily at all.