"What?" Maille demanded. "That's absurd."

Kell raised an eyebrow at her as if to say, yes, and what is absurd?

A challenge then.

She nodded and pulled the sarong up around her thighs and began to crawl up the stairs without a backward glance.

Kell was incredibly glad she wasn't looking at his face, at his blatant shock at her acquiescence. She continually did the things he least expected her to. When she got to the top and left his sight he began to call up to her, asking what she thought of this or that idea.

Maille sat on her heels staring around her in the city lights and the moonlight. The entire ceiling was a sky lamp. It was domed and beautiful. She sat there staring until she heard a lull in Kell 's words. He had completely stopped speaking.

Maille took in the sights. Huge bay windows covered the city side wall, and behind her a coke bottle glass shower dominated the center of the room. There was no furniture, no closet. Just a bare wall on one side and the window on the other. Kell had crawled to the top of the stairs, he lay there watching her intently, his chin propped on his hands.

She seemed to know he was there. "It's...." There were no words. Her breath came shallowly.

"I know." He agreed.

It was all there was to say. The clouds drifted by overhead, the city lights wavered and reflected. The moon shone brightly between clouds and stars floated on wings of ravens. She was enchanted.

The carpet slipped away from her fingers and she found herself laying down on her back staring up through the skylight, the huge dome that made it seem like she was outside, but she wasn't. Like a shrine, like a planetarium. She hadn't even realized she had fallen back. But suddenly something floated over her, elusive, crystalline. She reached up but it disappeared.

Maille kept her eyes drifting over the spot where she had seen the elusive inner movement, and sure enough, another appeared. She reached up again and felt a slight tremble and a pop as the thing caught the light and then disappeared. Coolness wrapped over her finger.

"Again." She whispered, and as if by magic another shape came floating over her, this time she pointed a finger at it, caught the tremulous light on the tip and popped it.

Kell was blowing bubbles at her. She lay there on her back. Watching bubbles.

"Can you catch one on your tongue?" he whispered in the utter stillness.

Maille waited until several bubbles came into view and then tried to position herself so the bubbles would land on her face. She heard Kell crawl closer, could feel his breath close to her skin as he blew. Just for her. Beautiful bubbles every few seconds.

"My feet are still on the stairs..." he whispered. "I am not yet in the room with you."

"Hmmm." Maille answered and felt another wash of bubbles over her face, she opened her mouth, although the thought of soap in her mouth made her feel queasy. One did land and pop on her chin, another landed on her cheek. The third landed and popped in her eye and she sat up abruptly and cried out, one hand clutching her eye.

"What is it?" Kell demanded in alarm.

"Soap in my eye." She cried wiping furiously. It would have been fine. The hem of her sarong served as a blotter, and the pain was all but gone.

Kell did an amazing flip to his feet, and picked her up, rushing her to the shower, he turned the cold water on before she could even think, and held her eye in the darkness as water ran into her face.

Maille screamed and jerked away from him frantically, but he held her steady and then gently massaged her face with a soft cloth he had produced from somewhere. Agitation.

Defeat.

She stood there sopping wet in her clothes with her eye no longer burning. Alone in a shower with a guy--- a gay guy.

He left her and returned a second later with a towel which he handed to her. He never once turned the light on and for this she was grateful. Nor did he speak, and again, she was grateful. She didn't know what to say. How could she tell him to get away from her when he had just saved her eye from burning?

Another towel was handed to her, as if he had a magic wand that allowed him to see in the darkness, and another towel came floating over her head.

"Dry off, dry off! I have clothes for you." He said. He was no longer in the shower with her, or even close by. She stepped out and tried to see him in the dark, but couldn't. "There are clothes behind you." He said from the area by the stairs. "I am not in the room with you." And she knew he wasn't.

She dropped the towels and her sarong and her underwear, and briefly held up each item of clothing; underwear (which were actually boxer shorts... she'd never worn boxer shorts) pajama pants, loose with a drawstring, and a white t-shirt.

She slipped into the soft things and blinked her eye once again for good measure, then came back into the room, which she really had never left. She could make out Kell's form lying on the stairs, and for a second she felt sorry for him, having to lie on the stairs to fulfill her requirements, but then she thought of the alternative, and didn't feel so bad.
*****