Chapter 1 #4
I looked nervous. And curious. And alive in a way I hadn't seen in my own reflection in a very long time.
The door at the far end of the locker room had a small frosted window in it. I could see warm light on the other side, and movement, and the suggestion of space opening up beyond. I put my hand on the door handle and felt that small flutter of curiosity again, stronger this time.
I pushed the door open and stepped through.
The space beyond was nothing like what I'd expected.
It was enormous, for one thing. The ceiling had to be twenty feet high, supported by faux-stone beams that gave the whole place the feel of an ancient roman temple.
The lighting was warm and indirect, coming from fixtures mounted on the stone walls and reflecting off the water that seemed to be everywhere.
Because there was water everywhere. The centerpiece of the room was a large circular pool, maybe sixty feet across, with steam rising gently from the surface.
Around it were smaller pools of various sizes, some built into raised platforms, others sunk into the floor.
The sound of water moving and filtering created a constant, soothing background noise that seemed to absorb the sharper edges of conversation and laughter.
And there were people. Not a crowd, but enough that the space felt alive. Most of them were in the water or sitting on the edges of the pools, towels discarded, talking quietly or not talking at all. All of them were men and it seemed most of them were human.
But not all of them.
I saw him before my brain fully processed what I was seeing.
He was sitting on the far edge of the main pool, his legs in the water, talking to another man who was floating nearby.
From the waist up, he looked human. He had broad shoulders, a muscled chest, and dark hair.
But he had horns. And his legs, the ones that disappeared into the water, were wrong.
Too long. Too hairy. And when he shifted position, I caught a glimpse of what might have been hooves instead of feet.
A satyr. I was looking at an actual satyr.
He must have felt me staring, because he looked up and caught my eye across the room. He smiled. It was a friendly, uncomplicated smile. Then he raised his hand in a small wave before turning back to his conversation.
My heart was beating faster. Not from fear, exactly.
From something else. Something that felt a little like the first time I'd realized I was attracted to men.
It was that same combination of recognition and possibility and the sudden understanding that the world was larger and more interesting than I'd previously allowed myself to believe.
"First time?"
I turned. The voice belonged to a man standing a few feet away. He was maybe forty-five, with salt-and-pepper hair and laugh lines around his eyes. He was wearing a towel around his waist, like me, and holding a bottle of water.
"Is it that obvious?" I asked.
"You've got the look." He extended his free hand. "I'm David."
"Cal."
"Nice to meet you, Cal. You want some advice?"
I nodded.
"Don't try to take it all in at once. Pick one thing that looks interesting and start there. The whole point is to relax." He gestured toward the main pool. "That's usually a good place to start. Water's perfect temperature, good for conversation. Less overwhelming than some of the other areas."
"Other areas?"
"Upstairs gets more... active. Downstairs is more intimate. This floor is kind of the social space, not it stops people from fucking in the pool. But mostly it’s good for getting your bearings.
" He took a sip of his water. "You want a drink? There's a fridge over in the far corner that’s stocked with anything you’d like. "
I looked where he was pointing and saw, tucked into an alcove I hadn't noticed before, a small sort of vending area that looked like it didn’t require a credit card.
"Maybe in a minute," I said.
"Sure. I'll probably be around the pools for a while if you want to chat later. Welcome to the club, Cal."
He walked away, leaving me standing there in just my towel and my racing heart and the growing realization that I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do next.
The smart thing would have been to get a drink.
Alcohol would have helped with the nerves, given me something to do with my hands, provided a familiar ritual to ground myself in.
But I doubted they had just things in a bathhouse.
Alcohol and heat didn’t mix. So, I found myself walking toward the main pool, drawn by the warmth of the water and the low murmur of conversation.
Up close, the pool was even more impressive.
The water was crystal clear, heated to what felt like the perfect temperature when I dipped my toe in.
There were maybe eight or nine people in it, scattered around the edges and floating in the deeper center.
The conversation was quiet, relaxed, the kind of talk you might hear at any social gathering if you ignored the fact that everyone was naked and a couple of them were making out with their hands groping below the water line.
I unwrapped my towel, folded it, and set it on a nearby chair. The feeling of being completely naked in a room full of strangers should have been mortifying. Instead, it was oddly freeing. Like shedding the last piece of armor I'd been wearing without realizing it.
I slipped into the pool.
The water was perfect. It was warm enough to relax muscles I hadn't realized were tense, but not so hot that it was overwhelming.
I found a spot along the edge where I could sit with the water up to my chest and my arms resting on the pool's rim.
For the first time in hours, possibly days, I felt my shoulders drop.
"Feels good, right?"
The voice came from my left. I turned and found myself looking at a man, maybe thirty-five, with short dark hair and intelligent eyes. He was sitting in a similar position a few feet away, his well muscled arms resting casually on the pool's edge.
"Much," I said.
"I thought so. You looked like you were about to bolt when you first came in."
"I was considering it."
He laughed. "A lot of people do. I'm Erik."
"Cal."
"So what brought you here, Cal? Besides the obvious need to relax."
It was a simple question, but I found myself pausing before I answered.
What brought me here? Hollis and his black card, obviously.
But before that. The meetings I couldn't remember.
The face in the mirror that looked like it was about to crack.
The slow, steady realization that I had built a life that was consuming me from the inside out.
That felt like far too much to dump on a stranger.
"I think I forgot how to be a person," I said finally.
Erik nodded like it was the most reasonable thing anyone had ever told him. "Yeah, that happens. Especially to people in high-pressure jobs. You get so good at being the job that you forget there's supposed to be someone underneath it. I had the same problem until I started coming here.”
“How did you fix it?”
He looked over at me, flashing me a big smile. “I started letting myself have whatever I wanted here. And after a while, the person I used to be slowly came back.”
“Whatever you wanted, huh?”
“Yeah,” he said, sliding closer. “And if you’re interested, I wouldn’t mind helping you relax a little bit, handsome.” He reached out a hand, stopping just before it touched my shoulder. “Would you like that?”
I looked at his hand hovering near my shoulder, at the question in his eyes, at the way the warm light played across the water between us.
My heart was doing something complicated in my chest. It wasn’t panic, exactly, but a kind of acceleration I hadn't felt in so long I'd almost forgotten what it was.
"I—" I started, then stopped. The truth was, I didn't know what I wanted. Or rather, I knew what I wanted but I couldn't seem to access the part of myself that was supposed to know how to ask for it.
Erik's hand stayed where it was, patient. "We can start simple," he said quietly. "Just touching. See how that feels."
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
His hand settled on my shoulder, warm and solid.
It was just that, his palm against my skin, his thumb moving in a small circle near my collarbone.
It was nothing, really. The kind of casual contact that happened all the time in the world outside.
But I felt it everywhere. In my chest, in my stomach, in places that had been quiet for so long I'd assumed they were permanently offline.
"Good?" he asked.
"Good," I managed.
His hand moved, sliding down my arm to rest on my forearm.
Then back up, tracing the line of my shoulder blade.
Simple touches, the kind meant to soothe rather than arouse, but my body was responding like he was doing something far more intimate.
I could feel my cock getting hard under the water, which should have been embarrassing but somehow, here in this place, it wasn't.
"You're wound up pretty tight," Erik observed, his fingers finding a knot of tension at the base of my neck.
"Occupational hazard."
"What do you do?"
"I'm a lawyer,” I said before I remembered that people didn’t exchange that kind of info in the bathhouse. “And not the Law and Order kind."
He winced in sympathy. "Yeah, that'll do it." His hands moved to my shoulders, working at the muscles there with practiced ease. "You hold all your stress right here, don't you?"
I closed my eyes and let myself lean into the pressure of his hands. "I hold all my stress everywhere."
"When's the last time someone gave you a massage?”
The question surprised me. Was a massage a normal thing to get? The last time was with Adrián, probably. Two years ago. Some last ditch attempt to get me to respond to him that I’m sure I ignored.
"It's been a while," I said.
Erik made a soft sound, something between sympathy and disapproval. His hands stilled on my shoulders. "Can I ask you something?"