Page 27 of The Death God
“Oh, good idea. Let’s go with that.”
Okay, they’d stick to allergies. He smiled and sipped his drink. “Then we have the touching.”
Thanatos grew still. “The touching?”
“If you’re my boyfriend, I’m gonna touch you.”
“Like…hold my hand?”
“Hold your hand, kiss you, and such.”
Thanatos leaned back to increase the distance between them.
“Not acting like that. You don’t pull away from me.”
When Thanatos glanced at the doorway as if considering running away, Gregory allowed a mental curse. “Babe.” He grabbed the bowl of nuts. “Have some nuts.”
Thanatos looked into his eyes, then at the bowl as if he hadn’t seen it before. Carefully, he plucked a cashew and put it in his mouth. Gregory studied every motion.
“I’ve never kissed anyone, and I think I’d freak out.”
The air whooshed out of Gregory. “Why would you freak out?” He’d sort of, almost, kissed Thanatos earlier.
“You’d be too close.”
“We’ll practice on being close later. We still have a couple of days.”
“Three.”
“Yeah. You’ll learn not to jump as soon as I’m near you. You can still keep your distance from everyone else.” Gregory liked the idea. It would mean he’d be the only one who ever got to be close to Thanatos. Then he gave himself a mental slap. Stupid partial mate bond.
Thanatos drank again, and Gregory nudged the bowl of nuts toward him once more. This time he ate a few different kinds, and Gregory sprawled his legs and leaned against the table. He hated these benches. You couldn’t lean back on benches. Impractical. They’d have to switch it out for real furniture, though he suspected it had been built there. There was no way they’d be able to get it out the door without sawing it into pieces.
A few seconds later, Thanatos yawned, and Gregory was more than a little pleased with himself.
“Maybe I should go to my room.” Thanatos looked at the glass. It still had about half left.
“What’s the stupidest death you’ve ever predicted?”
Thanatos shrugged. “Most are pretty tragic. I had one once who was to grab a poisonous snake in a zoo and got bitten.”
“Did he work there?”
“No. It was dark. I think he broke in during the night.” He considered it for a few seconds. “Though, that’s one you can avoid, so maybe he changed his fate by coming to me. If I told you: you’ll die from a snake bite while trying to steal it from the zoo, I bet you’d nix the idea when it popped up in your head.”
Gregory grinned. “You saved his life.”
The blank look Thanatos gave him had a shiver of unease crawling up his spine. “Everyone dies. There is no way to save a life, only prolong it.”
Right. Fuck. “Yeah, but you gave him more years.”
“I’m not sure he deserved them. People are dying of diseases, car accidents they don’t cause, they get hit by lightning, and they’ve done nothing wrong. Why should I waste energy on trying to save an idiot who tries to steal a snake?”
“Maybe he was trying to save it.”
Dead eyes met his. “He wasn’t the saving kind of man. I spent a week in the sickbay after he was done with me.”
Rage burst to life like a hot flame inside of Gregory. “Want me to kill him?”
