Huge thanks for the kind comments, everyone. This became a series because of you. - Jekyll.
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The bed they give her is a simple, military-grade cot with a thin mattress, plain, white sheets and a pillow that's got the texture of something freshly synthesised and almost... living. It was clearly generated by someone that doesn't use a human bed, but it could be an ebony four-poster compared to sleeping on the floor, and she doesn't utter a single word of complaint against it.
She divides her days when Alex doesn't visit her quite simply: studying every inch of her cell as covertly as she can to locate cameras, mechanisms, anything she can work with or try to sabotage, and... slinking, maddeningly unsuccessful, back into that bed. They've learnt their lessons from the previous times they captured her, clearly - that should have been obvious as soon as they stripped her, refusing to let her even have a hairpin in case she managed to force a particular exposed circuit and cause a fire...
Good memories.
The only way out she has is Alex. She's been here two weeks now, seen him twice, and considered him near-constantly to reach that conclusion: he's the only novel thing in this whole stupid set-up - if not for Alex's 'companionship', she might as well be hermetically sealed in here, her other captors refusing to set foot near her after the initial violence. Even her food is delivered through an automated slot that, when she stuck her arm through it on day two, was revealed to be double-sealed away from the outer corridor and useless for escape, just like the tiny adjoining chamber she uses for the toilet.
But they send her a whole
person
every few days, and people are the biggest liability in any system. Even if those people are like Alex. Quiet, confident Alex, with his smiles, his heat, and his well-selected words.
All weaponised
, she reminds herself.
Weaponised
against
her.
He arrives again on the fourteenth day of her imprisonment. Three days since the straps and that damn vibrator made themselves
very
familiar with her body.
When he arrives, his hair is wet, and he isn't wearing any socks nor boots. She stares at him from her small nest of bedding like he's grown a second head, or maybe a third bare foot. In his hand is a grey towel, and he's drying the back of his (only) head even as he throws her a smile - even as he stands in the cell doorway, half in and half out, and extends his free hand towards her like they're about to go for a drive, or maybe to the beach.
"I've had an excellent idea," he says, and the sound of any voice after three days, let alone his, warm and noticeably affectionate, is enough to make her pulse quicken. "Come with me."
She learns nothing of the facility's layout as she pads, bewildered and still naked, down the corridor outside her cell. The panelling is seamless, floor to ceiling, with only simple light strips to illuminate the way. She thinks about knocking Alex out and making a run for it three separate times - but that's all she can do as she follows him, holding his hand like a lost child, along corridor after nondescript corridor:
think
about it. The cumulative effect of the drug is infuriating.
When they arrive at the final turn in their little walk, she stops short. The metal door has hummed open, and what she sees makes her insides twist with surprise, immediate recognition, and then a lot of confusion.
"I'm getting a shower?"
Then she clenches her jaw and has to almost physically block out the flash of helpful suggestions her mind offers up for what Alex-plus-shower might mean - all of them involve her hands against the glass divider that separates the shower area from the rest of the room, her captor's hair falling just like it is now, dark over his brow, and a quick, generous rhythm snapping through his hips -
fuck
.
"It seems the most humane thing to do," Alex says, and she blinks away the thought quickly.
"Since when were your kind worried about being humane?" she quips back.
As she steps inside and approaches the shower at the end of the room she takes quick stock of it: the panels in this room are white instead of the unforgiving slate grey of her cell, and the glass divider is a single sheet that allows the user just to just walk around it and under the shower head.
"Since you've deigned to stay with us for longer than a few days?" Alex replies warmly.
There don't seem to be any cameras, but then again, she only has Alex's word to tell her that there are cameras in her
cell
and she still believes him - their technology is maddeningly hard to spot nowadays.
Then someone suddenly appears to her left, and she jolts - then calms. It's a mirror, hanging on the lefthand wall over a shelf-like counter. The thin, startled woman staring back at her looks as though she hasn't slept in weeks - she's more muscle than fat, but even the muscle is beginning to turn ropey and give her a street-urchin's hardness. Her hair is lank, her lips almost bruised, and the man standing beside her in his military issue shirt and slacks is so achingly
healthy
and
handsome
and
smiling
at whatever he sees on her face that she has to look away again, fast - it's an uncomfortable cocktail of shame and annoyance.
"Are you going to join me?" she says, spotting the bottles of what must be soap at the base of the shower, by the drainage system. "Or are you just here to make me realise how filthy I look by comparison?"
Out the corner of her eye, Alex folds the towel that had still been in his hands and stows it under the sink, where a chute opens obligingly to his touch. "I've just finished. Hence no shoes."
And the wet hair, annoyingly and effortlessly tousled.
Then he turns, and she can only watch as he lifts himself up onto the counter to sit. He leans back against the mirror, clasping his hands in his lap like he's waiting for his laundry to finish on any other weekend.
"I'm just here to make sure none of my colleagues disturb you," he says.
She smirks wryly and makes herself move around the divider so she can stand under the shower head, unable to help brushing his knees as she passes thanks to the narrowness of the gap between the counter and the glass. "I thought we already established what your colleagues like."
She feels his eyes on the back of her neck, her shoulders, and she makes herself concentrate on the water mechanism, all the while bringing back to mind her thoughts from that morning.
He's her only out, the only weak point in the system. Be smart for once.
"Scaly, dry, loose, and what was it?" he asks behind her.
The system is intuitive even to a human, and when the water hits her for the first time in what feels like months, she has to force herself not to gasp at the strangeness. "Hating it," she replies over the water's clatter.
"That's it." His voice echoes just slightly across the white panelling, and she can hear his smile. "Hating it despite her best efforts. I set the temperature already, by the way, so you won't be able to change it."
And as if it was listening to its master, the water shifts from lukewarm to a delicious, perfect, almost-too-hot deluge in half a moment. She can't stop her shudder, doesn't even try to, and steps face first into the shower head's offering without hesitation. The self-warming table, the bed she'd just received, they both quickly fade into nothing the moment the water soaks her scalp, the muscles of her shoulders, all the way down her back and the flesh of her legs. She actually groans, and is soon carding the water through the weeks of dirt in her hair as if she can absorb its magic through her scalp by sheer force.
Only when she opens her eyes to start looking for the soap bottle, almost amphibious, does Alex speak again.
"Is it nice?" he asks.
He must know it's the best thing to happen to her since, well, three days ago. She bends to pick up the bottle of what she assumes is soap and replies, swiping her free hand down her face to try and read the inscription on the bottle: "It's so nice, I can almost tolerate your presence."
She hears his chuckle under the water's rush. Then she decides she ought not to risk putting some unknown alien goop on her body just because she can't read their language, and turns to face her seated audience. "What does this say, is this the soap?"
She doesn't expect for his eyes to be all over her when she turns. She doesn't expect the way his head is tilted slightly to the side to see fully around the divider, as if he's been sliding his eyes down her body and admiring every inch that he sees. He lifts his gaze, recovering his focus, and holds a hand out for the bottle.
She gives it, and she's blushing. Blushing... and thinking.
"It's for your hair," he soon replies, after a brief glance at the script. Either he's definitely an alien, wearing her species' skin like a party costume, or he's the only human in all four sectors that has ever learnt the enemy's language.
And he wants her. He's the only way out that she has, and he wants her. Would it be so impossible to seduce
him
for a change?
"Thanks," she says, turning back to the safety of the water and away from his blue, distracting eyes.
For once, they haven't gone straight to destabilising her. For once, she has some time to think while he's still in the room, while her head is still reasonably clear. She feels a plan begin to form, and as she squeezes the shampoo into her palm, the thick solution cold and scentless, she makes sure to keep herself turned away from him to give her thoughts their best chance. Because his presence in the shower room is like a weight on her mind, now that she knows how he looks at her when she's like this, how he watches the way the water runs down her thighs. She washes her hair, and when she's done, she asks: "Is the second bottle the soap?"
"Yes. You can use it everywhere."
Everywhere.
She does her best to ignore the implication and bends to pick the bottle up, tries not to think about what kind of view the movement gives him. When she squeezes out more scentless liquid into her hand, the only difference she can discern between this one and the shampoo is that this one is milky white instead of colourless. It's obvious what it reminds her of - it's the presence of her least favourite alien that does it. Every one of her actions feels an inch away from sexual whether she likes it or not, as if the combination of humidity and the weight of his gaze are a touch in themselves.
It's probably the reason that her plan begins the way it does.
With a healthy dollop of the soap in her hands, she begins to wash away the two weeks of confinement. She's methodical at first, like she would have been on her own ship. Then there comes a moment when she knows she could probably finish up and be done within a minute, her skin and hair finally soft and clean.
