"No, this won't work. I'm not going to take my clothes off in front of you. I just can't do that."
"You can't take a bath with them on," she laughed, then straightened her face. "I used to do this for a living. I was a sex worker, remember?. A whore. Undressing men was what I did. I'll strip first, then we won't worry about it so much.
Mia stripped to nothing in seconds, quickly and efficiently, throwing her clothes in a corner. "I'll get all wet and soapy anyway, and no use in getting the clothes wet." Decimus stared at her, wordless.
"I might be willing to do that too, if I looked like you."
She refused the joke. "Nonsense, you don't want to look like me. You want to look at me maybe," She laughed again, "But you don't want to look like me. Now you take your clothes off and let's get on with the bath."
She had to help him out of his clothes and into the tub, but he let her do that. Once in the warm water Mia added, "I'll even scrub your back. I've never done that. The men I stripped for when I was working didn't want their back scrubbed."
Decimus went numb. This seemed wrong, and right at the same time. Once in the tub, he wondered how long it had been since he had had a bath. He had been sponged off in the hospital, but it wasn't the same thing as a real bath. He didn't remember when he had bathed last in his own tub, but it had been quite a while. It had been a couple of weeks that he couldn't walk up the stairs to his bedroom before the ambulance finally came.
Mia walked over to the open shower and rinsed off,
"I've never seen a goddess take a shower before," he thought. Then he made the mistake of saying it out loud while Mia was drying off.
"Please don't say that. Not to me anyway."
"Why not?" Decimus was genuinely puzzled. "You are a goddess."
"Because it reminds me of what I was, and I hate what I was, and don't want to think of it or be reminded of it. I'm not a goddess. I'm just a normal human, or trying like hell to learn how to be one."
Decimus could see she was near tears. He didn't understand but he did shut up, making moves to get out of the tub.
"Hold on!" Mia said, throwing her towel into a corner and walking over to the tub over the pebbled floor. He wasn't going to be able to get out of that tub without help. Once out of the tub, Decimus held on to one of the grab bars while Mia dried him off and helped him into clean clothes. She then walked him into his bedroom and put him into one of the stuffed chairs, disappeared immediately into the bathroom and reemerged fully dressed in under a minute. She sat down in another of the stuffed chairs.
"So how does that feel? A real bath in a real bathtub."
"I can only say thank you," Decimus said quietly. "I don't remember the last time I had a bath. It's been a long time."
"I can see there are some tricks to it. I'll get better with practice, but we both survived and that's the main thing. Maybe after you've rested you can take a nap in your very own bed for a change. It's all made up and ready for you.
Once Decimus was in the bed, Mia went back downstairs.