It was gentler between his shoulders than it had been against his chest. Flesh and self were linked. The cleansing was slow, attentive, drizzling water, then soaping his skin. It was healing something he hadn’t known needed to be healed. Like breathing, it was necessary, even as the tenderness of it was too much, gentleness where he had never expected Laurent to be gentle.
He had been braced against the lash for so long. Where he had been flayed, he was now open.
‘Laurent, I—’
‘Bow your head.’
He closed his eyes. Water streamed over him. His hair and face were wet. This was usually done seated, on the long bench by the sluice with the slave standing behind—he didn’t say it, as Laurent reached up to push soap into his hair, standing in front. Long fingers kneaded a lather from his temples to the back of his head, and the massaging of his scalp felt like comfort.
Laurent was like the edge of a blade, but sometimes he was like this. A fresh scoop of the pitcher: rinsed, the warm water engulfing him, he looked up at Laurent through wet eyelashes, and knew that everything was in his eyes.
It was in Laurent’s too. Laurent, who looked as he had never looked, his body wet, where he’d been splashed, the blond tendrils of his hair wet too. He knew now why Laurent had not tried to use words to relieve the past. Words were easier than this.
Laurent said, ‘What happens next?’
‘Isander served you in the baths at Marlas, didn’t he? You know what’s next.’ That wasn’t what Laurent was asking.
‘I soaked in the baths. He knelt on the marble.’
‘I want to make love to you.’
‘You can soak,’ said Laurent, ‘while I wash.’
The water in the soaking bath was hot, made for unknotting muscles, and relaxation. It was unexpectedly hot, considering that the day was hot, and that this bath was open-air, with sunlight glinting across its surface. Damen descended the six steps, and waded, at waist height, to the opposite edge where he turned and sat on the submerged ledge, his shoulders out of the water, the edge of the bath at his back.
He had wanted to consummate this closeness, to bring their bodies together while they were both wide open. But the water felt good too. And Laurent was an education in the pleasure of delay, of suspension and recommencement. Damen watched him.
After a moment, Laurent picked up the pitcher and used the last of the water to wash himself. He didn’t wash demurely like a slave, or seductively like a pet. He just cleaned himself, each motion useful; then rinsed, water sluicing briefly over his body. How little he looked like a slave, and how much he looked like himself, carrying out his ordinary routine, was its own form of enjoyment, an easy access to Laurent’s private self.
Then Laurent came forward. The flower was still in his hair. He was still wearing the sandals. Damen had a brief vision that Laurent was going to descend into the soaking bath wearing them, but Laurent stopped at the shaded edge.
He didn’t get in. He folded himself on the side, in a relaxed, elegant posture that Damen had come to learn over the last months habitual, one knee drawn up, his weight resting on one hand. He trailed the fingertips of the other in the water.
‘It’s hot,’ he said.
He didn’t clarify whether he meant the water, the sun, or the marble. He was slightly flushed even from the steam. If he came into the pool he’d be cooked. In all other ways, he looked cool, his long white thighs, his elegant recline, his male torso with its pink nipples, his cock, part-visible in that posture.
Damen wanted to push off the side; if this were a forest pool, he thought, he would swim three strong strokes to push himself out of the water alongside Laurent. He’d run a proprietary hand over Laurent’s body, over his thighs, his flank and chest. He imagined himself coming up dripping out of the baths to take Laurent there on the marble.
‘I thought the idea was to kneel.’
‘That does sound pleasing.’
Laurent’s voice wound lazily. He made absolutely no effort to get up. The words were at odds with the utter arrogance of his aristocratic pose, draped all over the marble.
Damen wondered if this was the way that pets behaved, or if it was just how Laurent behaved, fingers trailing in the water. He closed his eyes and let himself sink a little deeper into the water.
And because of where they were, and what had just passed between them, he found himself saying it.
‘They took me to the baths, after I was captured. It was the first place they took me.’
‘The slave baths,’ said Laurent.
‘Kastor sent a lot of men, enough that I couldn’t beat them. They tied my arms and legs and put me in one of the cells under the palace... Don’t get any ideas.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’
‘I thought there was some mistake. At first. I hoped there was some mistake for a long time after. The nights they held me outside the palace were the hardest. I knew what was happening, and I couldn’t protect my people.’
‘You always believed you’d get back to them.’
‘You didn’t?’
He remembered long evenings together, sharing a tent, with the sounds of a Veretian camp outside. Laurent had never seemed to feel self doubt, just as he had never complained about his circumstances.
‘Believe you’d make it back to Akielos? Yes. I did. You were a force of nature. It was infuriating to fight you. Frightening to have you on my side.’
‘Frightening?’
‘You didn’t know how afraid I was of you?’
‘Of me? Or of yourself?’
‘Of what was happening between us.’
The sunlight was brighter than he expected when he opened his eyes, sparkling across the water. Laurent was still sitting behind the shade line.
‘Sometimes I’m still afraid of it.’ Laurent’s voice was honest. ‘It makes me feel—’
‘I know,’ said Damen. ‘I feel it too.’
‘Come out,’ said Laurent.
He emerged hotter than steam, overheated like one boiled, his olive skin turned ruddy by the water. Laurent filled the pitcher from the secondary sluice, approached, and shifted his grip. Damen threw up his arms instinctively.
‘No, Laurent, that’s cold, it’s—’ Gasping.
Shock of the frozen water. Ice cold on superheated skin, like plunging into a river, a too-sudden revitalisation. Instinct propelled him to grab Laurent in revenge, to drag him forward, their bodies colliding.
Cool body plastering against hot. Laurent was unexpectedly laughing, his skin warm as sunlight. The struggle took them both to the slippery marble.
It was unthinking to get on top, to pin Laurent with a wrestler’s move. Damen progressed through three simple positions in his enjoyment of that sport before he realised that Laurent was responding to his wrestling holds with counters.
‘What’s this?’ Pleased.
Laurent, moving: ‘How am I?’
‘Wrestling is like chess,’ said Damen. Laurent moved, he countered. Laurent moved, he countered. Beneath him, he felt Laurent try out all the variations that he knew, a beginner’s set, but well executed. The part of Damen’s mind that liked wrestling above all sports took note, appreciatively, of Laurent’s form. But he was a novice: Damen countered him again easily, wise enough to keep his own hold strong and ready, even when he had Laurent fully pinned.
And then he thought about it. ‘Who’s teaching you?’
‘Nikandros,’ said Laurent.