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sponge, scrunching it to generate suds; he ducked
his head to soak his hair thoroughly and started from the top down.
    Moira leaned
on the faded wooden rail around the deck, holding the hose on him in one hand
and propping up her chin in the other.  His abdomen flexed and tightened as the
rivulets of water ran down, carrying a stream of bubbles into his navel and
below, tracing the muscles of his thighs...
    Can I get
paid for this?  Without a doubt, I could happily stand here forty hours a week
and wash down naked angels.  Damn the meds; I'll get a good lawn chair for when
the leg and back get bad again...  Might even sell video, if I could ever bring
myself to share.
    Leo rubbed
until he'd gotten the blood out of his hair and his entire mane was white with
soap; he scrubbed his face with slightly less ferocity, wiping the bubbles away
from his eyes before moving on.  Carefully the angel washed both his sides,
back to the start of his feathered wings.
    He beckoned
for her to toss him the body-wash; he refilled his sponge and hefted the bottle
back, pleased to see her catch it easily.  Now he was rubbing the sponge back
and forth over his chest in a lazy figure-eight that spiraled down his
stomach.  She forced her eyes up and caught him watching her... and grinning.
    “Time to
rinse!” she said brightly, squeezing the hand-trigger hard and blasting him. 
He quaked with silent laughter and dropped his sponge to fend off her attack,
shaking the suds out of his hair.
    Moira relented
when he waved his hands back and forth – pax, pax!  The sponge was brought
close to be washed out under the hose and refilled with soap.  Then he stepped
away once more, turning almost primly in order to block her gaze and continue
his bath with a smirk at her sensibilities.  She fanned the spray from one side
to the other over his back and wings, instead. He didn't seem to mind getting
them wet but didn't care to use the soap on them and there wasn't really a
need.
    When Leo
turned back he was covered in soapy bubbles from navel down, as modest as a
loincloth.  He set the sponge on the rail beside her and took her hand, lifting
it up to hold the hose high enough that the spray would rain down on his head. 
He scrubbed through his hair one last thorough time and ran his hands over his
torso and legs, flicking away the foam.
    Imperious as a
reigning monarch he gestured for her to turn off the water.  She let go the
hand-trigger and allowed the hose to slip down onto the deck.  He turned,
strode off towards the forest, paused halfway to the trees – and shook himself
all over like a giant gangly pigeon.  When he came back she was holding out the
best of the towels and not even chuckling.
    As he dried
off she distracted herself by cutting the tags off the new pants.  He slipped
the red ones out of her hands as soon as she was done and stepped into them. 
They did come up to his waist but the cuffs were floating around the bottom of
his calves, leaving his ankles bare.  He cinched the drawstring, tied a half
knot in it, and struck a bit of a pose for her review.
    “The color's
good on you.  I'm sorry they're not longer; I tried to get the biggest ones
they had.”
    He waved away
her concerns absently, finger-combing his hair.  At the other end of the porch
was an old rusted grill, the kind that may have been a re-purposed oil barrel. 
He stared at it speculatively, then looked at her and nodded to it.
    “The grill? 
What would you want with that?”
    He flipped one
of his wings forward, rubbed a feather between his fingers, then gestured back
to the corner where the rose-bush was and forward to the kitchen where the
table was.  The gathering gesture again, now pushing towards the grill.
    “You want to
burn your old feathers.”
    He nodded
firmly, tilting his head.
    “I've not used
the grill here yet... I suppose we could, if we keep the fire small.  I've not
got any charcoal.  You'd have to get some dead branches from the