White Shadows

Chapter 15 - Seviyorum Sevmiyorum

***ALEX***

Juliet, Fionna, and I push Elijah through the sliding door. I catch sight of Harlan and say, "Hey, look who we found! It's my nightmare come to life!"

The appropriate response to this is not to scoff at me, as Elijah does (no surprise there), but to dribble Sierra Mist from your mouth onto the floor, as Harlan does. "What the what?" he asks. Or, actually, I think he was going for "What the fuck?" but ended up too surprised to do more than repeat his first word. Call it the TV edit, but it was real, not a clumsy-ass censor job.

"I'll, uh, take him off your hands for a while, guys," Harlan says as soon as he's composed himself a bit - and made at least a halfway-decent attempt at cleaning the soda off his T-shirt. "Seviyorum sevmiyorum," it says. Whatever that means. It's a favorite of his, if the highly uncensored thoughts issuing from his head (loudly enough to block the foreign pop song playing on TV in a language I can't identify) are anything to go by. "Uh, so some of you can get dried off and dressed again?"

I exchange glances with Juliet. I'm not too thrilled about putting my regular clothes on without at least taking a shower first - I'd rather not contaminate them with the smell of chlorine. But Harlan's got a point - we're both dripping all over the tile next to the sliding door.

Without another word, Harlan takes hold of Elijah and pins him down long enough to tie him down to the chair with his dark power. Right away, Elijah struggles to tear himself free, but the black ropes of energy refuse to break, and he gives up after a few seconds.

This is my cue to open the door and go back outside. As Juliet follows me, I ask, "You wanna get changed first, or should I?"

"Ladies first, huh?" she asks, smiling. With a shrug, she walks into the hut, closing the door behind her with a soft thud. There's a window high up on one side. Unable to resist the temptation, I stand on my tiptoes and sneak a peek - but I tear my eyes away just as she unhooks the top half of her bikini. She's got her back turned, so she doesn't see me, and I see nothing important. But I still feel guilty - not to mention, my balls are still hurting. I guess even after I lose my boner, the balls are the last part of me the blood wants to rush away from. Isn't that the cause of blue balls? I think it is.

"I might just do that to you while you're in here," Juliet says. "See how you like it."

"What?" I lose my balance for a second from sheer surprise, bouncing off the wall. Now the pain is concentrated less in my genitals and more in my so-very-not-humerus.

I look up to see Juliet peeking through the window herself. "Oh. Sorry, Alex. I, uh, thought you were looking in on me and jacking off or something."

"What?" I repeat. "Ew, gross." I get back to my feet. "I'd rather have you actively involved in the fun."

"Me too," she says, her eyes twinkling mischievously.

"Uh, not to change the subject, but how are you able to look through the window? Are you standing on a box or something?"

"A stepladder, actually," she says. "Why it's in here, I'm not sure...but, hey, if you're still up to-"

"Not really," I say, slumping my shoulders. "I mean, I wanna have sex too, but...but Elijah's really killed the mood."

Juliet sighs. "Oh well. Thought I'd ask." She turns away from the window. "Sorry about the jack-off joke. It's not something you'd do anyway."

"You'd be surprised," I say without thinking.

"Oh, I'm sure you do jack off," she laughs. "What boy doesn't?"

She's right, but I'm still hard-wired, like most angels raised on religion, to act as if my sexuality doesn't exist. "I deny everything-"