Page 45 of Patron of Mercy

“It’s okay, Lach. That kind of thing—it happens to everyone sometimes.”

“Not to gods.”

Thanatos laughed. “You’d be surprised.”

Lach rolled his eyes and shrugged. He pulled the sheets over his lap. He didn’t think he’d ever disappointed Thanatos before—not in bed, anyway. Felt like a new low.

Thanatos got up on his knees. With a steady hand, he cupped Lach’s cheek. “Will you talk to me?”

With the god he loved there, imploring him, Lach couldn’t help but look at him. His skin was lightly flushed, a little darker than it normally was, and his eyes were swimming with concern.

“About what?” Lach asked.

“You seem upset.”

“I don’t mean to be.”

“But you are.”

Lach took a slow breath. “You didn’t want to kiss me.”

Thanatos flinched.

“It’s okay,” Lach hastened to say. “I get it. You don’t want to get hurt again, and I hurt you. So I’m probably not... not a guy you want to kiss.” He reached out and touched Thanatos’s chin, turning his head gently to look up at him again. “But I don’t want to hurt you.”

The skepticism in Thanatos’s eyes broke his heart.

“I don’t. I know I—I did. Want to hurt you. Definitely. What I said, that I didn’t want to be with you because you’re Death? I knew it’d hurt you, but I didn’t mean that. I’m not making excuses for saying it—there are none. I got scared. I ran away. I knew if I said that, you’d let me go.”

“So you wanted me to live thinking you felt that way?” Thanatos’s voice was chilly and distant. There was a gap between them that Lach no longer thought he could cross.

“No. Yes. I—Thanatos, I was stupid, and so fucking young.”

“Plenty of mortals get their lives together by thirty-five. They don’t disappear for months without word or lash out at people they’ve been with for years.”

Lach grimaced. Some mortals did that, but that didn’t make them worth emulating. “Yeah. But you don’t think the Fates gave me immortality because they knew I’d need more time?”

Thanatos scoffed. “I don’t think the Fates gave you anything.”

“Yeah. You’re right. Whatever I am now, it’s some kind of mistake. I mean, I’ve got a pretty impeccable track record of fucking up. Hurting you—that’s the worst thing I ever did. And I’m so, so sorry. But Thanatos, I don’t want to be the man who can fuck you but can’t kiss you. I can’t—” This was absurd. He should’ve taken what he could get and been grateful for it. Plenty of other gods would’ve smote him already. “I can’t pretend this doesn’t mean anything to me. I love you.”

Thanatos let out a breath like Lach had punched him in the gut.

“I know,” Lach continued. “I’m not saying I think you should love me back. But I love you, and I can’t do that halfway.”

One Bad Turn

Over the millennia, Thanatos had occasionally fantasized about this scenario.

On one level it felt silly, as though a being his age should be long over such childish whimsy. But sometimes he wondered if he’d really changed all that much over his eons of existence. Prometheus had made humans like the gods, so the similarities were many, but it seemed to Thanatos that humans gained in wisdom quickly while the gods languished in their excesses: a sort of indefinite arrested development because they had no reason to move forward, learn, and grow.

For so many years Thanatos had imagined this moment, when Lach came back, insisting that he’d been wrong and saying he still wanted him, still loved him.

At first, he had always taken Lach back, wrapping him in his arms and holding him as every bit of him wanted to.

Later, he had spent the fantasy tearing Lach apart the way Lach had done to him, insulting everything from his attitude to his prowess as a lover. It had all been lies, of course. Thanatos might be incapable of gaining the wisdom mortality bestowed, but he wasn’t ignorant enough to think Lach wasn’t perfect, even—and perhaps especially—in his imperfections.

That Lach saw himself as a mistake was astounding, and like every damned thing about him, oddly endearing. Thanatos didn’t think the Fates had decided Lach’s future because Lach had always brashly forged ahead, making his own path where there had been none. To call him a mistake was to call a tornado a mistake. They weren’t planned, certainly, but they decided their own fates from start to finish, and even the gods couldn’t predict their actions.

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