Cain had almost managed to will away his blinding headache when someone came barging into the room again. Even worse, they brought with them a horrible odor that made bile crawl up the back of Cain's throat. It smelled like fear and pain and urine and sweat… and the worst sorts of blood, too. He couldn't bear smelling blood that wasn't Damien's, the fear of what havoc that blood might wreak still being far too real to him.
The person was carrying a bucket that bumped and clattered, sloshing its contents around as they tried to find a decent place to set it down in the narrow quarters.
Slowly, agonizingly, Cain managed to peel one of his eyes open. He groaned incomprehensibly for a moment before forming words as he demanded, with no small amount of ire, "What is that stench?"
"The dungeons!" said the person, who Cain recognized upon hearing his voice. His eye was still having a hard time focusing – not because it was dark, as his night vision was perfectly fine, but rather because his headache was roaring back to the forefront and it was making his vision blurry.
Damien sloshed his bucket around again, saying angrily, "Someone had to prepare the cells, and I didn't see you volunteering. It was a bit of a mess."
Cain would have had more sympathy for the werewolf if he wasn't currently suffering immensely due his lack of foresight vis-a-vis mating bonds. So, rather than engage the accusation of unhelpfulness, Cain instead persisted in calling out what he considered to be the main issue: the odor Damien had brought into this very small room. "Be that as it may, have you not heard of baths?"
"I've heard of them, but the last time I used one I was nearly drowned, my vampire-repelling amulet was stolen, and I was snatched by Crowe," Damien growled, clearly not in a much better temper than Cain at the moment. "Forgive me if I'm a bit hesitant to repeat such an experience."
That… was a fair point. Cain didn't really have anything he could say about that, so he made a halfhearted noise of understanding, though with how irritated he still was at being disturbed yet again, he wasn't certain that the sentiment was going to be received as intended.
Seemingly content with leaving the conversation at that, Damien proceeded to strip naked. Right there. In the room. With Cain watching him. Did the werewolf have no shame? Was he accustomed to being naked in front of other people? Cain was more private about that sort of thing, unless he was undressing for a particular purpose. It seemed Damien was only focused on getting clean after working up a sweat, but Cain wasn't at all focused on that, because Damien was naked.
He swiped the washcloth over his long limbs, leaving glistening trails of water droplets in its wake. He didn't seem to have soap – this was probably a preliminary wash, he would need another bucket or two to get fully cleaned off. But Cain wasn't sure he'd be able to handle another bucket's worth of washing because Damien. Was. Naked.
He wasn't supposed to be long and lean with corded muscle. Hadn't he been too-skinny and sickly only a day ago? Did the mate-sickness recovery really happen that quickly? Why was Cain still struggling to recover even a fraction of his own strength when Damien was already looking well – looking excellent, even – and clearly nearly back to his old self?!
Damien dried himself off with the towel, sighed, and tugged on a new outfit. "I should take these back to the laundry," he said, sounding anxious.
Cain didn't bother answering, too busy trying to convince himself that he didn't feel bereft by his losing the glorious vision of Damien's unclothed form.
Damien clattered back out of the room, presumably to discard his horribly stinky clothes with the laundry, and possibly come back to make use of the soap this time to fully cleanse himself of the nastiness from the dungeon.
Cain resolved himself to keep his eyes closed the next time.
He did not succeed.
~*~
"So," Damien said, after what had to be four buckets of water and nearly an entire bar of soap later, "we cleaned the two adjoining cells in the dungeon you mentioned."
Cain just grunted in response, the blanket still mostly tucked up around his head.
"We weren't sure if you wanted to go confirm the security for yourself or not," Damien added, annoyance heavy in his tone.
What Cain wanted was to be left alone and sleep. It was seeming less and less likely that he would be able to manage such a thing given current circumstances.
When it became clear to the werewolf that Cain wasn't interested in conversing anytime soon, Damien sighed heavily. Cain expected him to leave after that, but instead, Damien tugged on the covers that he'd tugged up over himself. "Move over," he groused, still clearly irritated with the situation.
Cain wondered absently if irritability was a symptom of an approaching werewolf transformation. Damien certainly appeared to be in rare form today. He hadn't been this combative with Cain for quite some time, and it was not making Cain's headache any better.
Not waiting for Cain's response, Damien crawled in the bed, wriggling his way under the same blanket that Cain had been trying to cocoon himself in. Then, without so much as a by-your-leave, he promptly little spooned his way into the center of the bed, pressing his back against Cain's chest and sighing comfortably.
Cain had thought that seeing the werewolf's body was difficult, but that was nothing compared to the heat radiating off him, the softness of his hair brushing against Cain's nose, the warm scent of freshly-washed skin underpinned by the muted but ever-present smell of the blood flowing in his veins.
Cain might have been undead, which meant his bodily functions operated at a slower speed than the average living creature, but he also wasn't actually dead, which meant being pressed against by an attractive and delicious-smelling young man was not something his instincts – both carnal and vampiric – could simply ignore.
Suddenly, his headache became the least of his worries. Why was the werewolf laying like this, his bare throat mere inches from Cain's fangs? Was he trying to tempt Cain? Was he simply an idiot with no idea of how irresistible he was? He didn't think it was possible for someone to be so ignorant, but Damien had proven himself to be stubborn and naive in equal measures, so he supposed it was equally likely that the werewolf was trying to provoke action as it was that he had no idea the affect he was having on Cain.
Regardless of the reason, Cain couldn't stay here. He wasn't strong enough to resist the temptation in his state. So, with more effort than he wished to admit to needing, Cain dragged himself out of the bed.
Damien, who had until this point been drifting closer to sleep, voiced a mild protest. "Don't go," he whined.
"I have matters to attend to," Cain lied, because he couldn't think of a better excuse when his head was pounding like a drum.
"Can't it wait?" Damien whimpered, more sad puppy than wolfish in that moment.
"Unfortunately, it cannot," Cain lied, moving for the door. He remembered, briefly, that the whole reason he'd been staying in this stupid room was because he didn't have enough strength to withstand an attack from Crowe should the vampire be looking for him.
But he couldn't stay here, now, either. What choice was there? He needed to go.
"Cain," Damien said, voice plaintive and yearning. "Please. I won't have you beside me for my transformation, can't you give me this one thing?"
Cain shut his eyes, gritting his teeth. The wolf didn't know what he was asking. He was forgetting that Cain wasn't a werewolf, but a vampire. That what may have felt like a soft and nurturing moment to Damien had only awakened a deep and twisted bloodlust in Cain's own veins. "No, Damien, I can't," Cain said. "I told you: I'm not a werewolf."
"You're still my mate," Damien said. "Don't you feel it? The connection?"
Standing there, with his eyes closed, Cain took a moment to feel for the little spot of warmth in his chest, out-of-place in a vampire's cool undead form. It didn't speak to him the way it seemed to communicate to Damien, but he could still sense its presence, buried deep in the center of what made him real. "I feel something," Cain said, "but it's not the same for me. I need you to accept that."
This time Damien was the one to cover his head with the blanket. "Fine," he said, voice muffled, but not enough to hide the hurt in his tone. "Just go, then."
Cain nodded, even though the wolf couldn't see him, and took his leave.