“Yeah, through there,” he gestured to the second door he had surprised me by coming through earlier. “There are towels, and I can get you some clean clothes. They should fit you,” he nodded at Vlakas. “They might be, um, a little big on you, though,” he said, his gaze measuring.
I shrugged. Story of my life.
“I’ll make do.”
Helios chuckled and checked something in the plastic tubing before he pulled my brother’s IV, then put a water-resistant bandage over the wound. V got to his feet, only a little wobbly, and I helped him into the shower.
The facilities were spartan, but we’d made do with worse. The walls seemed to be roughly hewn from the rock, possiblyeven natural formations. Water drained down a covered hole in the floor. I insisted V take the first turn showering. One of us needed to stay on guard and I wasn’t sure if V had enough energy for that yet. Helios seemed to be on the up-and-up, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
I still had so many questions about our unexpected savior. How had he come to end up here? How had he survived? The Tagmatarches had said it had been over two years since the “Beast” - I could only assume he meant Helios - had been captured. How had he survived all that time? What had happened to all the Mageia he had supposedly killed? Could he really have eaten them?
“Supposedly,” I muttered, a little annoyed with myself. Why did I feel like I could believe this man? He was rude, condescending, and I really wanted to wipe that knowing smirk off his face at times. Preferably with a kiss.
I shook my head in disgust at myself. It had obviously been way too long since I got laid. What the fuck was wrong with me? I’d gone years without real interest in anyone, content with a quick jerk of my own hand for release late at night or alone in the shower. An hour into knowing this guy and I wanted to lick his whole body. Could he have drugged me somehow?
I groaned as my cock filled in my pants and had to force thoughts of Helios away. No way did I want V getting out of the shower and seeing me with a hard on.
I managed to tame my unruly body, and true to his word, Helios knocked on the door just as V was getting out of the shower and handed me some clean clothes for us to change into. They appeared to be simple T-shirts and soft, stretchy pants of some kind.
“They’re sweats,” he said as I looked at the clothing dubiously.
“Sweats?” I looked at the material. They seemed dry, and not sweaty at all.
“Sweatpants?” he asked. My blank expression must have showed my lack of familiarity with the term. At the Legion, we wore tac pants and t-shirts. If it was cold, we wore long sleeve t-shirts. Why would anyone want to wear sweaty pants when they just got out of the shower?
“Here,” he gestured. He unfolded the pants and showed me how they were supposed to be worn, with a tie around the middle to tighten them. “They’re the only thing I have that might work for you.”
His hands brushed over mine when he handed them back, and that same zap of electricity happened. Dammit! I jerked back and shut the door in his face. It didn’t take super hearing to hear him chuckling something about cats and water as he walked away.
I threw the clothes at V as he wrapped a towel around his middle and shucked my clothes, jumping into the shower before he could see the effect Hel’s touch had had on me.
The water was blessedly hot. One more explanation I needed from Helios. How the hell did he have hot water? How the hell did he have ashower? I cleaned up quickly. I’d been half tempted to stroke myself to get rid of this problem Helios kept causing me, but my little brother was right there. No way.Eww.
After cleaning up I got out but left the water running so we could talk privately, though I turned it all the way to cold. We might want that hot water again soon. I wrapped us in an Air bubble, suppressing the sound around us as well. I figure if Helios could hear us through my bubble and over the sound of the water, there was nothing I could do about it.
V looked up as the sound of the water disappeared.
“So what do you think? You think he’s telling the truth?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Maybe. I mean, it all fits. It just seems too…” my voice trailed off.
“Too good to be true?”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Too easy. What’s the catch? What does he get out of this? What if we agree to help him, only to end up a slave on the other side of this war?”
“The devil you know…” V said.
I shrugged.
If they were both devils, it didn’t seem to make much difference. Though even with his scars, I couldn’t picture Helios as a devil. A fallen angel, maybe.
“So what do we do?” V asked, interrupting my thoughts of our Illyrian companion.
“Well, you need to get something to eat and I’m going to ask our new ‘friend’ some questions,” I said.
He nodded and stepped outside the door.
I dressed quickly, struggling to figure out how the “sweatpants” Helios had given me were supposed to work. The clothes were way too big for me of course, but I rolled the legs of the pants up so I wouldn’t be tripping over them. Fortunately they had elastic around them, so it wasn’t impossible. I couldn’t figure out how the tie on the waist was supposed to work. I kept pulling it tight, but it kept loosening itself. There were no belt loops, so finally I created Air suspenders to keep them up. Goddess bless the man, he had included dry socks, too! I could forgive a lot for dry socks.
