Chapter Text
Golden Cheese sunk deeper into the warm, rose-scented milk, arms resting along the stone edges of the bath. The heat shimmered around her, with steam curled in gracious swirls, heavy with the scent of honey and crushed petals clinging to her skin.
Behind her, Burning Spice sat with his knees bent and his back half-reclined against the curved wall of the massive golden tub. His broad shoulders, marred by countless scars, gleamed in the light. Every line on his skin was carved by war and centuries of violence, but the way he settled against her spine was nothing but gentle.
She had tried not to gawk when they got in the bath… Really, she tried ! But how was she supposed to ignore him? His frame was nearly triple her own, and, she would rather be caught dead than admit it out loud, but every inch of his body was stupidly attractive in a way that made her brain short-circuit.
His long, dark hair fell down his back in thick ropes, and droplets of milk clung to the sharp lines of his jaw and the strong, yet somewhat chiseled structure of his face. His hands, rough and calloused, moved through her hair with unexpected care, each touch careful and gentle, in a way Golden Cheese never even imagined him to be capable of.
The woman exhaled as he poured another handful of warm liquid over her head. His claws had been dulled down a little —she didn’t know when or why— but they still caught strands of her golden curls as he gently worked in the rose-scented soap. His fingers massaged her scalp with a care that made her stomach turn over on itself. It just felt so… wrong.
“Your hair tangles like it fights me on purpose,” he muttered near her ear.
A tremble passed through her, though not from fear. She wasn’t scared of him. Not anymore.
Probably.
“Or maybe it just knows better than to trust you,” she replied. “Unlike me, apparently.”
He paused. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like.”
“You’re the one who brought me here.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Then why do it?” he asked, his voice a little rougher. “You could’ve left me to rot in that pit.”
Golden Cheese let out a breath through her nose. “Believe me,” she muttered, “I wonder why I didn’t do that every single day of my life. ”
Silence. Then : “That’s quite the foolish thing to say,” he said dryly, “considering I’m in your bath.”
She scoffed and turned just enough to flick a handful of milk at him over her shoulder, droplets landing across his chest. “Shut up.”
That words like these could be spoken to Burning Spice, the very incarnation of ruin and wrath, and met not with fury but with an amused silence, felt like something that defied the natural order of things… Like their relationship alone did, in fact. For centuries, even the boldest of warriors couldn’t even dare themselves to meet his gaze, let alone challenge him on anything, and yet here was Golden Cheese, speaking to him with a tone that would have cost anyone else their life. Though, what was truly staggering wasn’t even the words she spoke, but that he allowed them to be.
“You’re not denying it,” he said, and the bastard had the nerve to sound amused. She looked away, chin tilted upward like she was done with the conversation, but she didn’t shift forward either. In fact, her body stayed leaned into his, resting between his legs and against his large torso.
There was silence between them for a moment, and he leaned in a little more, so close she could feel his breath at the nape of her neck.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No,” she muttered, perhaps too fast. “Keep going.”
He did. When his claws met a knot, he detangled it slowly and gently, as though her curls were spun glass. It should’ve been easy to relax, but the only thing she could think about, as his thumb brushed behind her ear, was the memory of these same hands tearing through her wings.
The pain had been blinding… She had eventually gotten her wings back, but at that moment, the second his fingers dug in and ripped them from her shoulders had etched itself into the core of her mind. And now, the same person that made her feel agony was rinsing soap from her hair.
It made her feel insane.
“This is weird,” she muttered, flicking a droplet of water off her cheekbone with her pinky. “You’re being weird.”
He chuckled. “You’ve said that three times now.”
“Because it keeps being true.”
He moved closer again. His legs shifted around her, bracketing her body loosely, and she could feel the heat of his chest against her back, even through the bath. Then, he lowered his face to the crook of her neck and inhaled.
“You smell… exquisite,” he murmured. The compliment was breathy, as if he were tasting the words, or, worse, tasting her through that sentence.
“I—It’s the bath,” she said, and damn it, her voice wobbled. “I told you. Milk baths. They’re amazing, really good for the skin. I told you that.”
She could feel his smile, pressed far too close to her collarbone to her liking, but didn’t say a word about it. Bastard that he was, he enjoyed their bickering far too much, always pushing just enough to get a rise out of her, and giving him satisfaction would only make it worse.
So instead, she huffed and shifted forward, grabbing the soap and lathering it between her palms. “Turn around,” she ordered. “I’ll wash your back.”
He obeyed, muscles rippling subtly beneath the water as he turned. Golden Cheese scooted behind him, kneeling carefully in the bath as not to fall, and placed her hands against his spine.
Oh, the sight of him from this angle was something else entirely.
His back was broad, every inch of it a landscape damaged by time and war. The skin beneath her fingertips was rough, no matter how much she scrubbed - the kind of roughness that would never soften, no matter how many baths or gentle touches tried to mend it.
She moved slowly, soap trailing over his skin, careful not to press too hard. One hand brushed his thick, wet hair to the side, clearing a path for the other to follow, and she caught herself staring again. His hair was ridiculously beautiful : absurdly long, unfairly soft, cascading in jet-black waves down his back. It was, if she were being honest, the most beautiful hair she had ever seen.
Why, she thought bitterly, did it have to belong to him ?
Why did her hands still want to linger, long after the soap had done its work? Why did her pulse thrum louder in her ears every time she touched him? Why did her heart, usually so solid and unbothered, lose all sense of logic the moment he got close?
The universe, it seemed, had a particularly cruel sense of humor.