Page 106 of Lovesick Gods

Ludgate beat us to it. I’ll explain tomorrow.He debated telling her to avoid mirrors, but that would only broach more questions. She was safe from Ludgate for now. As safe as anyone else.

You better.Jerk, she said, which was as close to ‘I love you’ as either of them got.

Mal smiled as he replied,Brat.

“You really shouldn’t let me rummage through your clothes,” Danny’s voice carried over from the stairway. “I find out all sorts of dirty secrets.”

Tossing his phone onto the coffee table, Mal glanced over. Danny looked refreshed and clean, the visible bruises on his face already fading. He wore Mal’s long-sleeved grey T-shirt and navy sweats, while carrying the first-aid kit and a damp washcloth, along with a black shirt thrown over his arm and a pair of white sleep pants…with lightning bolts on them.

Shit.

“Those were a gift.”

“Sure they were.” That puppy smile was blinding in the way Mal most adored, but there was a crack in it that couldn’t be banished. When Danny sat, placing the first-aid kit and cloth on the coffee table, there was a heaviness between them painted in pain and bruises from the long night.

“You don’t have to do that,” Mal said.

“Do what?”

“Smile for me.”

Danny’s expression was blank by the time he looked at Mal, still holding the Zeus-like sleep pants. “I…I just feel like…if I don’t smile, I’ll start crying again and won’t be able to stop.” On cue, a tear slipped free and dropped onto the fabric in his lap. He laughed and brushed it away. “To be fair, it’s not completely fake. Finding these totally deserved a smile.”

Mal chuckled with Danny, and maybe it was a broken sound, but it was still one they shared. He wrinkled his nose at the clothes though, wondering how he could possibly summon enough energy to change into them. Danny must have noticed because he stood. Mal started to stand too, but Danny held him down.

“You’re still wearing your boots,heathen,” he teased.

Snorting, Mal sank back into the sofa. “Smart-ass. Those I can get myself.” But he cringed as soon as he bent over, putting too much pressure where his middle was bruised from when Danny had crushed him. He hissed and sat back up.

“I got ‘em,” Danny said.

What brave new world had Mal built for himself that his enemy was welcome in his home and willing to get on his knees to remove his boots for him? Danny even brought them to the rug to continue the ongoing joke. Then he returned and urged Mal to his feet.

Slowly, Danny found the zipper at the back of Mal’s sleeveless, high-collared bodysuit, and drew it down, peeling the fabric from his skin. He helped Mal into the sleep pants and shirt, which Mal would have protested with anyone else and demanded to do it himself.

They sat and Danny motioned for Mal to scoot closer as he opened the first aid kit. Mal assumed Danny was usually the one being treated back at his hideout, but he still knew how to tend to someone else. He wiped the blood from Mal’s cuts with the warm, wet cloth—across his lip and above an eyebrow—dabbed antiseptic cream on both of them, then bandaged the cut above Mal’s eye.

Danny’s hands were warm as he slid them up beneath Mal’s shirt to feel at his ribs for breaks. He seemed satisfied with what he found, but Mal couldn’t help wishing the touch would linger, and he shivered when Danny’s fingers pulled away. Danny leftMal feeling cozy and content just by being near him, like he could curl up right then and go to sleep without a care in the world.

“You shouldn’t sleep yet with a concussion,” Danny said when Mal started to lie back.

“So keep me company.” Mal rested his head on the sofa’s pillow and lifted his legs to stretch across Danny’s lap. Danny set his hands on Mal’s thighs. Such casual, constant touch. Mal never allowed that with anyone. Not even Lucy. She tended to stray from touch as much as he did unless she had control over the situation.

Mal didn’t have control with Danny, he never had, but for once that didn’t leave him feeling weak or scared.

Soon, Danny’s eyes grew distant. Mal hadn’t minded the quiet while Danny tended to him, but now it felt stifling. Danny should never be this still. Only his thumbs moved, gently grazing over the white and yellow sleep pants that Mal thought clashed horribly with everything about him. But then Zeus didn’t clash as much with Prometheus as he’d always thought, so maybe he was wrong.

“What happened, Sparky?” he asked. “What did you see? What did hedo? Beat you around, fine, but it was more than that. And don’t tell me you don’t want to talk about it,” he pushed when Danny dropped his head back onto the sofa. “Ludgate’s after both of us.”

“Maybe. But he got insidemyhead. Got inside my…bodyand…” Danny shuddered at the memories, keeping his eyes on the ceiling. “There was a maze of mirrors…with Ludgate in every one of them. And me too. My reflection.”

“With black eyes?”

“Likehim.”

Thanatos.

“My reflection wore his suit, had his eyes, and I just…”

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