Page 115 of Lovesick Titan

He could eat normally too and finally convinced Lynn to let him try standing. Even though he ached everywhere, sitting up on the edge of the bed was only a minor struggle. Standing was harder, but he coped and padded slowly across the room to reach Mal’s bed.

Dom stood on the other side, while Lucy came up to Danny to help guide him closer. It felt so natural to have them both there. Dom had left from time to time, Priestly and Oz had come in occasionally, but Lucy only ever went out to the bathroom or to shower. She always came back.

Danny had insisted that he didn’t need to be watched over every minute. They all had the right to sleep at home, get real rest, and could come to visit him while still living their lives. But since Lucy was also there for Mal, she refused to follow suit. Which meant she and Danny had enjoyed several long conversations when it was just the two of them, including one around three in the morning that they hadn’t finished until the sun came up and Andre arrived with coffee.

Lucy had regaled Danny with the few happy memories she could recall from childhood, mostly of Mal whisking her away for birthdays out of their father’s sight or to see movies in the projector room of a rundown theater without paying.

Mal faced Dom’s side of the bed, so Danny reached out tentatively to trace his fingers along the new scar. The muscles jumped, twitchedfrom contact, but nothing they’d done, nothing Lynn had tried, had made any difference. Mal just kept sleeping.

“I have an idea,” Danny said. “I don’t think I can do it yet, but…if I’m up to it tomorrow, I want to try.”

“What are you thinking, Danny?” Lynn asked from behind him.

He pulled his hand back, then lifted the other to fold over Lucy’s on his arm. “What if all he needs is one more jolt?”

R

The morning of day four, when Mal still hadn’t opened his eyes, Danny didn’t care if he felt weak, it had to be enough. The others who had been there when he awoke were all present, with Priestly added, peering curiously from the doorway to see what Danny would do. He’d made them all leave the med room, concerned what his lightning might do if it got out of control, since they still didn’t fully understand what it had done to Mal.

Standing in front of him, Danny reached one hand around Mal’s back to touch the scar and held the other over his heart. Then he started to spark.

He’d shocked others, traveled with people, used his lightning in so many ways, but only Mal had ever experienced Danny giving himself over fully as he had when they were together. He’d done the same when summoning his lightning to take down Ludgate. If that had saved Mal, then Danny had to believe that one more try would wake him up.

Feeling the energy course through him, his eyes glowed brighter as his lightning jolted around him, snapping like static at any nearby metal surface. He held his palms to Mal’s skin and whispered, “Please…don’t leave me alone when I’ve only just found you.”

Ice stirred in Mal, Danny could feel it, then see it as frost began to form from the places Danny touched, expanding over Mal’s skin until it covered every inch of him.

When a gasp broke the collective quiet, Danny gasped too.

R

Mal choked on the rush of air entering his lungs, not even fully remembering that he had taken a breath. He just knew he felt like his heart was going to explode, and he didn’t know how to slow it down. Gripping the wrist of the hand held over his chest, he felt the steady thrum of a hummingbird’s heartbeat—Danny.

Before Mal could look up to see if Danny was really there, a pop reverberated like every lightbulb in the area had exploded, and the room went dark. Had Mal imagined it? Was Danny with him? The last thing he remembered was all that glass and Danny lying on the ground, still and bloody.

“Da…” he tried to call for him, but his voice caught from how fast his heart was beating, almost like it was trying to sync with the speed of Danny’s lightning.

“Mal!” Danny’s voice called to him out of the dark.

Maybe Mal was dead, and they were reuniting on the other side.

Maybe Mal was in Hell, and Danny would always remain just out of reach.

The hand was wrenched from Mal’s grasp, and the moment he was fully out of contact with it, Mal wheezed as his heart finally started to slow down. Realizing how impossible it was that it didn’t hurt, that he wasn’t in pain, Mal merely felt like he’d been shocked and couldn’t come down from the initial jolt of…well,Danny. It had to be Danny.

He felt the deep chill of his ice start to fade as if it had been summoned to protect him. Voices swarmed around his head, and he tried to focus. New hands replaced the first, smaller, firmer hands, and he was rolled onto his back. He readied himself for it to sting like hell, only it didn’t. Ludgate had stabbed him; why wasn’t his back sore? He wriggled his toes, just to be certain he could. He wasn’t paralyzed, he could feel all of his body, there just wasn’t any pain.

Maybe even sad, old thieves got to go to Heaven.

“Malcolm, open your eyes. Look at me,” Lynn said.

Blinking, he squinted at the dim blue lighting that started to come on around them—the emergency lights? Was he in the morgue? Before he could ask, he caught a glimpse of Lynn’s face and then a shock of brighter light as she flashed a penlight in his eyes.

“Shit, doc…don’t blind me,” Mal said, his voice hoarse but not as winded as he expected. “Trying to focus here.”

“Mickey…oh thank god.” Lucy. She was here too. She was safe.

“Give me room,” Lynn said, but Mal had to know, he had to be sure it hadn’t been an illusion. Because Danny was there, but Danny wasdead. If Mal was alive…

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