The next morning, Ira woke up in Silas' bed. For a second, he didn't move. He stayed in the bed with his eyes closed and listened to the sound of Silas breathing next to him, felt the warmth of the body beside him. He took a moment to let it all sink in, surrounded by the warmth of the thick covers as he was. The bed was soft and the covers even more so, the pillows piled high around him. He dragged a slow breath in and felt his chest move in time with the motion.
He didn't want to move. Lying in bed next to Silas, feeling the warmth of another person next to him, knowing that that person wasn't going to hurt him... It filled him with something. He didn't really know what, but then he didn't want to know either. It was fine, not having all the answers. Sometimes the questions were the fun part.
So he allowed himself to lay in bed and just rest. He didn't have anywhere else to be and there was no else that he wanted to be, so he allowed himself to lay still with his eyes closed and cut off from the rest of the world.
The world was quiet. Or maybe that was just their room. Aside from Silas breathing, he couldn't hear anything else. This far out of the city, there weren't any roads close by and no cars passing by, no airplanes passing overhead. The room was quiet, relaxed, and removed from the worries that constantly plagued the world. He could feel the sunlight on his skin, as it streamed in through or windows. He could hear birds chirping outside in the trees, could hear the wind whining through the leaves. But he couldn't hear people.
After a while, he opened his eyes. The bedroom he was in was large, a gigantic bed placed in the center of it that he already loved dearly. It was no surprise to wake up next to Silas. Even though he couldn't remember falling asleep in the bed, even though he had no actual knowledge of how he came to be here, there was not a part of him that was surprised. Honestly, he had been expecting it.
Silas was predictable that way.
With his eyes open, he could clearly see the bright sunlight that filtered through the windows that faced to bed. It cast long shadows on the floor where the sunlight couldn't reach, all the lamps turned off but it didn't make the room any darker. It was such a needlessly big bedroom that he almost felt bad that he hadn't approached Silas earlier, knowing that he could have been sleeping here all along.
While Ira examined the room he found himself in, Silas continued to sleep next to him. Eventually, Ira's gaze slid to Silas, and he examined the man as well. Silas in this world was still taller than Ira, but not as tall as the alien nonhuman Silas had been. He also wasn't as muscly, his skin not as hard. He was much nicer to cuddle with. He had blonde hair that Ira could vaguely remember having been slicked back the day before but that was now a shaggy mess. His face was handsome, Ira supposed. Deep-set features and a straight nose; a sharp jawline. Ira didn't really understand what humans considered to be attractive.
It didn't really matter to him anyway what Silas looked like. The important point was that Silas could hug him and provided the cuddles that he had promised. A sleeping Silas looked aesthetically pleasing to his flawless senses though, so Ira took a few pictures just for posterity. Then he finally deigned to rise from the bed.
Once Silas had moved him to his bed, he had apparently taken off most of Ira's clothes, leaving him only in his shirt. The shirt was now crinkled and because he hadn't bothered to wash his clothes in a while, when he turned his sense of smell up he could smell that it needed a wash. So after some quick thinking, he pulled off that shirt and approached Silas' closet.
He searched through it for a while before he found something that Ira liked and pulled it on. The shirt was too big on him, it slid down his shoulders a little and exposed more of his throat and collar bones than he thought was intended. Then again, human fashion was weird and went through a lot of cycles so there was no way to tell. Maybe all close were just like that now. The pants were too long on him as well and he needed to use a belt, but they stayed on and he assumed that that was all they were supposed to do. It was good enough.
After he was properly dressed, he went to the bathroom. That business done, he ventured out of the bedroom and the adjoining bathroom and out into the hallway. He followed the hallway until he reached a living room. He supposed that in the rich people's terms it could be described as a parlor more than a living room. There was no TV in it, only a fireplace and some couches and armchairs.
He walked past that room and continued to search for the kitchen. Now that he thought about it, hadn't he seen in a lot of books the reference of "cuddling in front of the fireplace"? Cuddling on its own was nice. The question was, was it nicer to cuddle in front of a fireplace? Obviously, the fireplace would have to be lit up, there would have to be an actual fire in there, otherwise, it would just be boring; but this was an experiment he could try out. He reckoned there wouldn't be a better time.
He resolved to take the matter up with Silas when there was time.
He found the kitchen eventually. After searching through the cabinets — there were way too many of them — he managed to find some cereal and a bowl to eat it out of. Getting milk from the fridge, he sat himself down on the same counter that he could remember falling asleep on yesterday and started eating.
There was nothing much exciting about this, it was just eating. It was the normal thing that normal people did in order to stay alive because normal people needed to eat in order to be alive. It was all very normal. Nothing remarkable about it at all.
Then Ira had a revelation. He abruptly remembered that he had fallen asleep to Silas baking. And Silas's creations were phenomenal. He shoveled the last bit of cereal into his mouth and pushed the bowl aside. Striding to his feet, he approached the freezer and sharply pulled the door open. Like he had expected, there were a lot of frozen cupcakes in there. Just waiting for him to eat them like the good cupcakes they wore.
He gulped. Swallowed some saliva. Reached in with a barely shaking hand and pulled out a bag of cupcakes. He hugged it to his chest, feeling his smile creeping onto his face. Warmth spread in his chest and he allowed himself to grin quietly. He pulled two cupcakes out of the bag and put the remaining ones back into the freezer. The ones he pulled out, he shoved into the microwave impatiently.
Ira was happily in the middle of eating his cupcakes when Silas entered the kitchen. Ira didn't bother to look up at the man's entrance, he was much too busy enjoying the last of the cupcake. He closed his eyes as he took that last bite, his hand curling a little in his lap.
Silas came up behind him and brushed his hands through Ira's hair. Ira felt a sigh leave him.
Ira leaned his head back so that Silas would have better reach. His eyes fluttered closed and he leaned into the man behind him. An incomparably gentle laugh left Silas, and the man asked, "Had a good sleep?"
"It was alright," Ira said.
Silas spent some more time gently ruffling Ira's hair before he let go and moved to sit down next to Ira. At some point, he must have done something that Ira missed because music suddenly started weaving out of the speakers in the ceiling. Ira tilted his head to the side and decided that this kind of slow, unhurried music was something that he could get used to. Not really his usual style, he liked music where there was a lot of screaming involved because it just sounded funnier, but it was not altogether terrible. Very soothing.
Ira asked, "Are we going somewhere today?"
He saw Silas straighten up out of the corner of his eyes and then Silas asked, "Is there somewhere you want to go?"
"Not really," answered Ira. He shrugged his shoulders and let his head rest on his hand again, his elbow a solid support against the counter.
"I know a good movie that premieres soon that I think you might like, if you would like to see it?" Silas asked. He looked intently at Ira, his gaze both searching and unbearably hopeful at the same time. Ira looked away just so that he wouldn't have to see that expression anymore.
He hummed in thought and said, "Sure."
He ignored the smile that he could hear in Silas's voice when Silas said, "Great! I'll set it up."
Silas had pretty good taste in movies, or at least he was pretty well-versed in figuring out which movies Ira would enjoy, so Ira figured it would probably be a fairly pleasant evening, or day, whenever they went out to see that movie. He didn't mind it and only nodded in confirmation.
When Silas started eating breakfast, Ira left the kitchen. Watching as the man ate breakfast wasn't very interesting, and Ira still wanted to explore the rest of the mansion. He had fallen asleep too quickly yesterday and hadn't had time to explore the mansion. With the way it looked from the outside, he thought that the inside had to be just as magnificent and needlessly rich. He wasn't wrong.
Walking through hallways, it was made abundantly clear that this was most definitely a rich family's home. If Silas had been the one to decorate like this, Ira didn't know if he should be impressed or disturbed. On the one hand, all the gold and silverware and uselessly big paintings of people long since dead was kind of impressive. On the other hand, it was incredibly tasteless and seemed to glare at his eyes. He worried that he might go blind if he stared at it for too long.
At some point, he managed to find his way to the pool. It was an indoor pool and yet it was still a very, very big one. One of the walls was made entirely out of windows and through those he could see the forest outside. There was a patio outside the pool room as well next to the windows, and Ira saw some beach chairs there. The water in the pool looked sparkling blue, and the scent of the chemicals used to keep the pool clean filled the air.
Ira walked around the pool, staring down into those clear deaths. Under his breath, he hummed the melody that Silas had been playing in the kitchen. He walked around the pool before he reached the door to the patio. Pushing it open, he stepped outside and stared out at the view silently. He crossed the patio to stand by the railing, placing his hands on the cold wood. The grass was bright green, the flowers colorful and most definitely planted and carefully maintained — it was all much too symmetric.
But the view was breathtaking, and Ira inhaled the scent of flowers deeply. And with that view in front of him he couldn't help but wonder; which season of the year was it? Because he was very confused.