Bas didn’t want Bridget to feel uncomfortable staying in a house full of men. She was showing a lot of trust, and the last he wanted was for her to have an encounter with Apollo in a satin robe he hadn’t belted properly.
Apollo’s tower wards sizzled against Bas’s skin as soon as he tried to step through the door. Bas put the tea and cookies on aside table, spent ten minutes disabling the wards, and continued up the stairs.
“Put your sex toys away, I’m coming for a visit,” Bas called at the top of his lungs.
There was no one in the lab on the first level. Pots and beakers bubbled away, the walls covered in Apollo’s bad handwriting. They had painted the walls with blackboard paint when they were younger, and Reeve still went out of his way to draw dicks amongst Apollo’s formulas. Valentine occasionally came in and added his own corrections to the formulas. What were brothers for?
Bas knocked on the bedroom door. “Open up, big brother. I have treats for you.”
“I’m not hungry,” came the sullen reply from within.
“You don’t want tea and fresh cookies? They are chocolate chip?” Bas wheedled. “Come on, Apollo, I need to talk to you.”
When there was no reply, Bas went with the one thing Apollo wouldn’t be able to resist. “I got a photo of Lachie coming back from training with your sword today.”
The door opened, and Apollo squinted at him. “That better be my French Earl Grey blend,” he said and took the cup and cookies from him.
“Of course it is,” Bas said and followed him into the bedroom.
Apollo’s room always reminded Bas of Howl’s bedroom in ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ except it had even more color. There was stained glass and crystal mobiles, a red and gold brocade bedspread, and velvet throw pillows for days. Apollo put the tea and cookies on the bedside table and flopped down face-first onto his bed. Bas kicked off his shoes and climbed in beside him.
“What do you want?” Apollo grumbled into his pillows.
“Advice. About my dragon.”
Apollo’s eye cracked open. “What about it?”
“How do you know if it’s the dragon or just you?”
Apollo lifted his head and grabbed a cookie. “Kind of the same thing, isn’t it?”
“So yours doesn’t randomly try and say and do things? I feel like I’ve got an extra personality living inside of me,” Bas admitted. He had sometimes worried about multiple personalities when he was younger, but this was the first time he had something separate in his brain.
“Mine...wants to bite Lachlan. A lot,” Apollo admitted, rolling over to stare up at the painted frescoes on the ceiling.
“Mine wants to pin Bridget down and smell her,” Bas said.
“Bridget, the Hawk Girl? That’s no surprise. I’ve never seen you goofy over a girl before.”
“She’s staying here with us.”
Apollo sat bolt upright. “What?! Since when?”
“Since you’ve been sulking in bed all day.” Bas caught him up on everything since he had seen him that morning, including that a dream monster was hunting Bridget.
“I swear, I have one bed day, and everything explodes without me,” Apollo complained and drank his tea. He was looking less sad and washed-out now that he’d had some gossip to fuel him. “And your dragon? How’s he taking things?”
Bas rubbed at his face. “It’s happy that she’s under our protection. That she’s close. She smells really good. No impulse to bite her, but it really wants to feed and fuss over her.”
“And you think that your dragon is separate from you?” Apollo cast his eyes to the angel painted above him. “Don’t be an idiot, Basset Bear. Your dragon knows you better than you do.”
Bas grunted. “Probably. I can’t follow his lead and tackle her in the flowers though. Bridget has trauma. She’s been treated badly, Apollo. I can’t just be like Kian and kidnap her until she realizes she’s in love with me.”
Apollo laughed. “No one can get away with that but Kian. You have convinced her to trust you enough to come and stay at themansion, so that will give you some time to get to the bottom of her trauma.”
“I can’t charm it out of her like you could. I’m not good at that kind of thing.”
Apollo flicked him in the side of the head. “Don’t be an idiot. Charm has nothing to do with it. You are the most patient and kindest out of all of us. Give her some time, hunt your monsters, and she will open up when she’s ready.”
