Page 45 of Icarus

“NO! I mean no, it’s good, it’s really good.” Helios still looked a bit spooked. “Do you by any chance want a tour of the house? Like with the lights on so it’s more official? Then I could cook maybe? Are you hungry?”

“I could eat.”

If you made something.

Swan

Icarus had been here often of course. But it was either in pitch-black darkness, or he had to crawl in a very specific window, take pictures, and then crawl right back out.

He didn’t have time to just wander around appreciating everything. It was interesting to see this through Helios’s point of view.

“There are four wings. Each has its own bathroom and its own kitchen, even if they’re hardly ever used,” Helios said. “The wing painted blue—where we usually are—is where we lived when I was a kid. The rest was just guest bedrooms, but now I’m in my old room and my dad is in the white wing.”

Icarus ran his fingertips across the banister as they headed down the stairs.

“There’s the blue wing, the white wing, the red wing, and the yellow wing. Yellow has the library; blue has the biggest bathroom. White has the most storage, and red is mostly used for business.”

Helios looked back at him with nervous brown eyes. He turned his head quickly when Icarus met his gaze.

So. Helios found him attractive.

Icarus hadn’t been sure before, but he understood now. Icarus knew he wasn’t handsome, but he had been eyed this way before and he knew what it meant.

He gazed at the nape of Helios’s neck as he walked up the stairs in front of him.

Luca looked at him like that sometimes. He still didn’t know what to make of it.

So he joked it away. Luca, in turn, had never asked. Never pushed. Touched him too rough for it to land.

He wondered what Helios would do.

Crunch

The blue wing was all memory. Pictures of Helios’s mom, who looked so much like him. Dresses still hung up in an open closet. Floors caked with dust. Icarus didn’t mention making this connection.

Yellow was warm, and seemed to be used half as much, if only for lack of occasion. There was a music room that Helios danced in sometimes, the library, a storage area with which Icarus was intimately familiar.

The red wing was also familiar. Impressive pieces in glass cases. Gaudy giant desks, books never meant to be removed from their shelves. There was a giant globe that Helios insisted they could sit inside sometime. Expensive telescopes and more.

The white wing was immaculate, but they didn’t go inside many of the rooms. There were a few guest rooms and a storage closet that was large enough to echo when they spoke. It was messy and crowded with sheafs of paper and old art supplies.

“My dad spends almost all of his time in this wing. I’m pretty sure he’d notice anything we did in here, so let’s just go back to the ground floor,” Helios said.

He led Icarus to the main living room where the TV was, through a butler’s pantry, and to the main kitchen.

“Do you have any dietary restrictions?” Helios asked.

Icarus shook his head. He sat down at the massive wood table and settled in to watch Helios cook.

Helios opened a large cabinet stocked full of pots and pans and turned on the stove.

“There are other things here, beyond the main house, that I would like to show you sometime,” Helios said, as he filled a pot with water. “There’s a really nice flower garden and a field. I can’t leave the house but you can go out there if you want. People can’t see you from the street because of the trees.”

“Do you know how far you can go?”

Helios shrugged one shoulder without turning around. “I can’t even get too far out the window. But I wouldn’t be able to run away efficiently enough to not be caught. I don’t know this town. I grew up in the city. My mom and I left this house when I was like seven. I spent one Christmas here when I was fourteen and then there’s now. This isn’t my home.”

He started chopping while Icarus took some time to think about that.