Page 24 of Patron of Mercy

He was one of the oldest beings on the planet. He had lived through wars, plagues, mass extinctions, meteor strikes, the fall of the Roman Empire, and the cancellation of Sense8. So there was no possibility whatsoever that he was seasick. None.

Sleep was a choice for gods, usually. He rested, and needed rest on occasion, but he didn’t require eight hours a night like a human. But he had thought spending time on the deck of the boat by himself would prove boring, so he’d decided that sleep was a good way to avoid it.

Somehow, he hadn’t gotten so much as a wink. The moment he’d closed his eyes, a general sense of unease had overcome him. Then had come the rolling in his stomach that matched the rolling of the boat on one wave after the next. His head pounded, his stomach twisted, and he stared at the wall. And it went on all night.

After all, his other choices were to leave, or to wake Lach up and admit that he felt ill. He’d said he would make the journey, and he wasn’t a liar, so the first wasn’t really an option. The second was worse. Showing weakness to Lach was like bleeding in shark-infested water.

Thanatos had always been good at keeping his silence. He kept so many people’s secrets. Who better to tell your most closely held information than Death himself?

For the thousandth time, he told himself that it didn’t make sense. He was a millennia-old immortal being who rarely needed to sleep or eat. He absorbed what he needed from the world around him, and the ichor in his veins provided a near-limitless source of energy.

And yet, his stomach rolled and kept threatening to expel anything that might be in it.

When Lach started whistling in the morning, it was both endearing and annoying at once. Thanatos decided, he thought rather charitably, to call it cute. When the whistling was followed up by frustrated muttering, it felt like he’d been hurtled back in time: Lach’s unbreakable optimism, occasionally tempered by conversations with himself about things that annoyed him.

There was a soft knock on the door. “Thanatos?”

He wanted to insist that Lach go away. Lying there, sweating and breathing heavily was possibly the most undignified thing he’d ever done. He didn’t want anyone to see him that way, let alone Lach.

After a moment, the knock came again, but this time instead of the quiet call of his name, it was followed by the door opening.

As much as he wanted to say something, anything, to deny Lach entry, he was worried that what came out would be a moan.

The smell of food invaded the cabin, and Thanatos tried to hold his breath. It wasn’t as horrible as he’d expected it to be, though; no heavy eggs and salty meat.

“Thana—” Lach set the tray he was carrying on the end of the bed and climbed up next to Thanatos, mouth hanging open and eyes wide. “Holy crap, what’s wrong?”

He tried to shake his head, but it made his stomach even angrier, so instead he curled in on himself.

Lach had never been one to give up easily, so he leaned in and ran a hand over Thanatos’s forehead. His fingers were ice cold, which was wrong. He’d always had warm hands.

It was silent in the room for a moment before Lach sighed. “Seriously? This isn’t fair. You can’t be seasick.”

“M’not,” Thanatos muttered.

“Okay,” Lach said, voice calm and agreeable, despite the thread of panic he was covering. “Let’s get you topside, then. Okay?”

Thanatos tried to curl into a tighter ball instead. Getting up was definitely not going to happen.

Not to be deterred, Lach hopped up, came around the bed, put an arm around Thanatos’s shoulders, and pulled him upright. The motion made the throbbing in his head worse, and like there was a direct line between his head and his belly, his stomach churned.

Weakly, he tried to push Lach off. For possibly the first time in their relationship, the human was stronger than him. Against all odds, against the nausea turning his stomach and the uneasiness in his heart, Lach’s strength was comforting. The fact that someone was still competent and he wasn’t alone with his misery was the most comforting thing he’d felt in a long, long time.

Practically bearing the entirety of his weight, Lach pushed him up the stairs and into the morning air. It made him dizzy, the rush of cool breeze against his face and sudden feeling of openness, but at the same time, it was good. That didn’t stop him from stumbling over his own feet and almost falling on his face, but nimble and quick as ever, Lach circled and held him up.

Lach helped him over to a bench on the deck and settled him onto it, then pointed off into the distance. “Can you do me a huge favor and just... look over there? Keep an eye out, you know? Focus on the horizon?”

Thanatos tried to nod, but it made his body rebel, so he rasped out a barely there “yeah,” and did as asked. He wasn’t sure why Lach was giving him an assignment when he was feeling, and probably looking, as miserable as he’d ever been in his life, but it was good to have something to focus on. In fact, the longer he looked at the horizon, the more his whole body seemed to settle. The nausea receded, and the headache dulled to a slow throb.

He realized he was looking off the side of the boat, not where they were going or where they had come from. What was the purpose of staring at nothing?

Lach poked his head up from below deck and stared at Thanatos for a moment before disappearing again. When he returned, he was carrying the tray from before, and the previously inoffensive food suddenly smelled incredible. Pancakes? And some kind of fruit?

Lach set the tray next to him and gestured toward it dramatically. “Ta-da! Breakfast!”

Thanatos almost said something snarky. Something about the lopsided pancakes or the oddity of Lach being able to cook at all, but there was something on the man’s face that stopped him. A thread of uncharacteristic uncertainty lurked in his eyes, and the way he nibbled on his lower lip as he glanced between Thanatos and the food.

So instead, Thanatos smiled at him. “Thank you. It smells wonderful.” He picked the tray up, set it in his lap, and hesitantly picked up the fork. The first chunk of melon was better than ambrosia, and he hummed his approval around it.

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