Silanos was dead to the world. On a bench, nonetheless, in the middle of the town. Sprawled haphazardly across it, when the trickle of cold water hit his face, there was a pause before the lord’s eyes snapped open.

It wasn’t a pleasant way to be awoken, the water running over his face and down his neck to soak into his chiton, and even less enjoyable was the unforgivably bright light that was quite literally burning his eyes out of his head.

“Fuck!” came the sleepy exclamation as Sil lifted an arm and rolled over in an attempt to avoid both the light and the stream of water. “Fuck!” came the mightily disgruntled reaction as he rolled clean off the bench to land in a heap on the floor.

Not a nice way to wake up, no.

For a moment, Silanos lay very still because of things [i[hurt[/i] and maybe he was actually dead or dying. There was a sharp pain in his head, and he cracked one eye open again to see the very blue sky where he was pretty sure there should be a ceiling. It was confusing. “What the…” Squinting, he forced himself to open his eyes fully again, wiping a hand over his face which was inexplicably wet and trying to figure out where in gods name he was.

‘Mornin’! Breakfast?’ came a disembodied voice, and Silanos twisted his neck and blinked until a familiar face came blearily into focus.

“Mmnf” It was, as fas as greetings went, fairly unique, but Sil hadn’t yet caught up to why his friend’s younger sister was talking at him into that all too chipper voice. He pushed up to sitting and glanced around them, nonplussed and pressing a hand to his head which was pounding mercilessly. The same hand came to settle miserably over his face a moment later as he groaned again. Right then, the dark depths of Tartarus seemed like a welcome prospect to compared to the bright, hideous sunshine and chirpiness of his morning company. Which was a question in itself….why was Eliana there? He squinted at her, pretty sure she hadn’t been part of the night before. When he’d decided he wouldn’t throw up imminently and spied the now empty cup on the bench beside the young woman, Silanos glared at her.

“Where’s your idiot brother?” he griped after a moment as his slightly bloodshot eyes found Eliana again. “Shouldn’t you be somewhere annoying him?”

He wasn’t entirely sure how he’d lost Pallas, only that he’d been there for at least some portion of the evening. Sil eyed the raisin bread that had been thrust in his direction and shook his head, a thing he immediately regretted as it set his head to throbbing again.

“What time is it?”

Silanos was trying to recall the night before, attempting to make some sense of how he’d ended up on a fucking bench of all places. He didn’t have a great relationship with sleep. In that it was more he tried not to, but occasionally it caught up with him, and he had to. Maybe he’d pushed it too far this time? At least he’d been drunk enough to have passed out, not to have dreamt.

“Very funny” he muttered, rolling out the kinks in his neck which had formed from sleeping on such a hard, unrelenting surface. He wondered how it came to be that Pallas had found his way home, but he hadn’t. He pulled a face when Eliana made her best guess at the time. It was way too fucking early, but he knew he would need to take something to either knock him out properly or just keep going now. Gross.

“Yes, it’s too fucking early. And I could have done without the shower too, thanks” He grumbled, thinking about getting up off the floor and then feeling exhausted just at the thought of it. Eyeing the bread, she was shaking in front of his face he wished she’d stop fussing. He didn’t want to talk about vomiting. Or think about it. It felt like tempting fate.

Mostly to get her to shut up, he took the bread, broke a piece off and shoved it in his mouth. He thought if he just choked a bit down, she might at least be quiet a few moments, but to his surprise, it wasn’t an entirely horrible experience eating it. It almost made his rolling stomach feel a little less like it was about to hop up on out of his mouth and so he begrudgingly chewed and swallowed the rest of it, heaving himself up to flop down next to her as he did.

A dismal patting down of his chiton revealed he was without his coin, but Sil squinted into the distance as he tried to remember if hed even had any left once they’d left the cardhouse. Or the whorehouse. Wherever the fuck they’d been last. He hoped it had been worth it. He scrubbed a hand over his face and then through his hair, leaving it sticking up at odd angles. Not that the lord seemed to care overmuch.

“I blame your brother,” Sil said, side eyeing Eliana. “It hardly seems fair that he ended up in a nice comfy bed, still asleep, while I’m here] getting bullied by his little sister. Though thanks for this” He lifted what remained of the raisin bread. “Why on earth are you up and about so early anyway?”

Sil thought he would have much preferred the alternative wake up that Eliana spoke of, and his unimpressed look left her in no doubt of the fact. He didn’t recoil from her hand in his hair though, more than used to her fussing. Blue eyes that were still heavy with sleep were shadowed with too many similar nights gone before, and the lord stifled a yawn as he let her try and tame the dishevelled mop atop his head.

“Alright, fine, I’ll give you that” he conceded, because yes, of all the people that could have found him spark out on a bench in the middle of Argothia, Eliana was probably the most forgiving. “Though you could hide your amusement better” he grumbled, shielding his eyes from the sun again. “It’s so fucking bright.”

And even her mock offence was so loud, and Sil wanted to curl up in a ball and just not move again. He groaned quietly. This time of the day was meant for dull people who did nothing interesting with their evenings, and certainly not for Silanos, who leant toward the nocturnal. That Eliana was voluntarily up and about was unfathomable to the Colchian lord, and he squinted at her as she explained her reasons.

“Oh yeah. I forgot you have your little job. How’s that going?” He didn’t understand why the girl had taken the position, it wasn’t like she needed the money, but Sil also knew the Lady Theodora was hot and he slanted a glance toward his friend, the edge of a grin at his lips. “Don’t suppose you want to introduce me to your new boss, do you? Blessed she may be, but she hasn’t yet been blessed with my company so surely her life is lacking”

When Eliana stood and held out her hand as if to encourage him to do the same, the young lord eyed it with some dismay. “Must we?” he muttered, even as his hand took her hers and he got up, swaying only the littlest bit as he came to standing. Water sounded...reasonably appealing though, for now she mentioned it, Sil realised that his mouth felt like something had crawled in there and died. Gross.

He blinked, a little confused at why she’d want him to keep this secret from Pallas, but gave a shrug as agreement. “Sure, whatever. Never saw you.”

And the baths definitely sounded like a good idea. Silanos wasn’t one to fuss overmuch about his appearance, but even he could admit that last nights booze and gods knows what else was not a flattering aroma. “You gonna come wash my back for me?” he asked, a reflex reaction even though he and Eliana had long gotten past the point where he bothered trying to flirt with her.

They ambled lazily through the streets: or at least, Sil ambled, and Eliana was forced to adjust her pace so as not to leave him behind. His head was throbbing, some hideous punishment that he could make no sense of. Dionysus was a cruel god to so torture those who tried to honour him justly.

As they walked, he was blearily sorting through the flashes of memory from the night before and frowned as he tried to figure out where a cat in an urn had come into it. Huh. He had a vague recollection of arguing with Pallas that he’d talked himself into a freebie with one of the Heterae. Maybe that was where they’d parted company. Sil’s brow creased as he tried to piece together the jumbled snippets that he could remember. Oh well. He was alive and not too worse for wear save for this miserable hangover, so whatever had happened, it had not been so terrible. “Are we there yet?” he asked, all too aware of how plaintive a whine it sounded and not caring in the slightest.

Silanos was hanging so hard he couldn’t even find it within himself to be terribly offended at Eliana’s response about introducing him to Theodora of Leventi. “Fuck you” he muttered. “Just because you have awful taste” It was lame as far as a retort went, but he really wasn’t on his game, and she was wagging her finger in his face like she was serious about him keeping his distance. Sil shrugged, there were plenty of other Leventi in the sea after all.

“Who’d want to be associated with you anyway” he muttered, ruffling her hair in a way that he knew would aggravate.

There was a reason, after all, that he was friends with Pallas first and foremost. Eliana was tolerable, could even be fun sometimes, but she had these funny lines that she drew and it was more effort than Sil was willing to put in to try and understand them. Pallas spoke his language.

That and Eliana just had a way with words that managed to puncture his dreams over and again. He pulled a face at her as she completely derailed his bathhouse fantasies for no good reason.

“Wow. You literally kill the sexiness in anything don’t you” he griped, shooting her a look. “It’s no wonder you’re single. One day, when I’m less close to death, I can help you with your affliction.”

Close to death might have sounded dramatic, but Sil didn’t think it was too much. His body was just one giant ache after lying on a stone bench for however many hours, and his stomach had decided perhaps it wasn’t so fond of the raisin bread after all. He clamped his mouth shut in the hope that it would settle down and not make a grim reappearance, and for a while, he just concentrated on making his feet move.

It was only when he was certain that he wasn’t going to puke that he woefully enquired as to how long their walk was to last. Eliana’s too-cheery response and the jostling of his poor head as she took his arm didn’t make him feel better, but the premise of water and sinking up to his neck in warm water did. The steam would help him sweat out the wine. He was almost certain that’s all that was running through his veins right now.

“How about you kick his ass for me and I’ll lie on a kline and watch” he suggested amiably as they finally reached the bathhouse. Out of it enough just to go where he was pointed, Silanos leant in to sniff the vial Eliana offered up and was surprised that the minty, woody aroma did manage to cut through the cotton stuffed in his head. “Huh” he responded eloquently, before neatly snatching the vial away. He’d be keeping that one.

The bathhouse was not segregated, but Sil was unphased. He stripped off with the speed of someone well-practised and wandered into the steaming baths with a groan of satisfaction before sinking down against one of the edges. He didn’t even bother to try and take a peek as Eliana undressed to join him, eyes drifting closed until he realised that there was a real risk of drowning if he carried on like that.

Lifting his head from where it had flopped back on the lip of the pool, Sil lifted an eyebrow towards Eliana as she sank below the water. “Oh look, you do have a body under there after all. Not bad…”

It really wasn’t fair for him to be trying to trade barbs with Eliana. He wasn’t at his best, and it showed, because she was outdoing him, and that was almost more miserable than the hangover. He didn’t have a comeback for the dig at him never being sober, and it irritated the fuck out of him all the way to the bathhouse.

And then when they were in the bath, it was distracting that she actually looked pretty good which wasn’t a concept he wanted to try and wrap his head around at that point. He didn’t even manage to dodge the splash of water that she sent at him, just blinked as the water ran down his face in rivulets.

“I’m not the one making it weird,” Sil said, though he was a little bemused that she would expect him not to notice her being naked and stuff right next to him. It didn’t get any less odd when she wandered right over to where he’d parked himself and made a motion for him to turn around.

Silanos did it but only because he was pretty much eye level with her breasts and there was no way that wasn’t going to become a thing otherwise. “Right because your dog of a brother hasn’t already dragged home way more grossness than I might bring” he drawled, just about biting off the story that nearly spilt out. Pallas wouldn’t thank him for that.

And he made a vague ‘whatever’ gesture about his hair, would’ve rolled his eyes except the thought made his eyeballs ache. “Do what you want but hurry up about it at least.”

He made himself available to her then and tried not to fall asleep with the combined heat of the baths and the - dare he say it - relaxing motion of her hands. At least until she dug her fingers into a knot of muscle in his shoulder and he yelped and pulled away, turning an offended look upon her.

“Wow. I pity poor Lady Theodora if she gets a similar sort of mangling” he sniped, rubbing absently at the sore spot. Only then his thoughts wandered to that scenario and he side-eyed Eliana, smirking before he’d even said. “Do you take baths together? That’s an interesting visual that even you wouldn’t spoil.”

Before she could answer Silanos shuffled down enough to submerge himself in the water, coming up with it running in rivulets down his face and plastering his hair to his forehead in a wet thatch. Still, it felt good after the grimy feeling of having slept outside all night, and he flopped back against the edge of the baths and yawned widely before chugging one of the cups of water provided like he hadn’t drunk in six months. Urgh, he still felt fucking hideous. He pushed upright with a sigh.

“Alright. Do the hair because I reckon you have a small window before I doze off and drown and it’ll be your fault.”

Silanos thought he’d earned the right to be cranky. It felt as if Hephaestus himself was hammering away inside his head, and he’d been rudely awoken after passing out on the steeet, abandoned by his partner in crime and with a severe case of ‘how the fuck did that happen’. But he did quieten his whining for a few moments and might have leant back into her hands. People paid for this shit; he was damn well going to make the most of getting it for free.

At least until Eliana decided it was the perfect opportunity to torture him by sticking her pokey fingers into his shoulder like she was playing at being a masseuse only had hooves instead of hands, and any enjoyment was ruined.

When he resurfaced from his full body dunking, Silanos didn’t bother to complain at her remarks. He had absolutely no interest in taking responsibility for anything, thank you very much. That was why he was in Taengea at all. He gave an unapologetic shrug and then ducked down, so Eliana didn’t have to reach so far to mess with his hair, screwing his eyes shut against the soapy water.

“I’m not about to let one of your maids scalp me” he grumbled, pulling a face at the water that got in his mouth when he spoke. When she indicated she was done, he slicked it back from his face and grinned at Eliana as she went on.

“Oh, come on. You think that anyway. It's adorable.”

When she shooed him away, he went happily, plonking himself down on one of the carved stone benches beneath the waterline and stretching his arms along the stone edge of the pool. The girl’s next words, spoken in jest, nevertheless settled a bit uncomfortably with the Colchian lord. His family had been through enough heartache, he thought. But he smiled and made a rude gesture with his hand because that what she’d be expecting, and then settled his head back and closed his eyes, trying to decide if it was off-limits to imagine the visuals to accompany the sounds of her washing.

Hmm. Maybe.

Easier to doze instead, and the young lord had drifted off by the time his companion was done, blinking back awake and almost as disorientated as when he’d first come to. Still, he blearily staggered from the bath and redressed, drinking another cup of water as he went.

Rubbing at his hair with one of the drying cloths did not do much for it, but Sil wasn’t the one offended by it, after all, so once he was dressed and dry and meandered over to where Eliana was repinning her fibulae and tugged on the end of her braid.

“You done?”

Sil thought his hair was just fine, and he told Eliana so before giving a smug little shrug when she too gave up on trying to do anything with it. He did alright with it the way it was, thank you very much. “Well you know, you’re the only one I hear complaining about it. In fact...whose that little friend of yours, the blonde one? She was a fan. Couldn’t keep her hands out of it. Until they were busy elsewhere, you know what I’m saying?”

He broke off with an obnoxious wink before chugging another cup of water and then dropping the bronze chalice back on to the tray with a clang. He paused and raised a brow when Eliana gave him a slow once over, wondering for a moment what motivated her concern. Had he...sometimes he didn't sleep good, and the nightmares woke him up, but he didn't think he’d been deep enough under for that to happen. He fucking hoped he hadn’t embarrassed himself.

Brazening it out, Sil stepped up and draped a casual arm over the girl’s shoulders, waving his pruney fingers in her face. “I’m fine as much fine as I can be with wine in my veins instead of blood. Take me to the temple; we can offer it to Dionysus” But then she made her comment about big hands, and Sil sighed dramatically at being handed such an opportunity. It almost hurt him to say “Well you know what they say about big hands.”

Never mind that it was wasted on his friend’s little sister. Mores the pity.

He let her move away, tilting his head a little and considering her next words, because honestly, no. He wasn’t accustomed to being up and about at such an ungodly hour, and he didn’t have a plan, which was easily rectified.

“I don’t” he agreed. “And its all thanks to you. So...I’ll just tag along with you for a bit until Pallas wakes his lazy as up and then he can apologise profusely for leaving me to sleep on a fucking bench. How does that sound? I know, you’re welcome.”

Another yawn and they'd ambled out into the daylight once again, Silanos squinting at the suddenly bright light. He looked marginally less grey and death-like that he had when she’d first woken him, but the smudged shadows beneath his eyes were still there, and then there was the hair… Oh well.

“What’s the plan then, Lady Kassotis? How do you even spend your days anyway?”