Chapter Two
His new cock wasn’t circumcised.
That was the second thing Davy noticed.
He finished his first piss in nearly thirty years, surprisingly fun, to be honest, and shook his borrowed cock off before he tucked it back into the jeans.
Then he turned to wash his hands, the smart sting of pain as the water hit raw meat making his eye twitch, and studied “his” reflection in the mirror.
That had been the first thing he noticed, that he’d no fucking idea who this kid was.
Dark hair hung in unstyled curls over a narrow, expressive face. Pale green eyes stared warily at the world from behind thick lashes, and his mouth…
The memory of the kiss flickered quick and vivid through Davy’s brain.
Warmth and softness, that moment when the kid had leaned into it.
The taste of his breath—coffee and Skittles and life.
An unfamiliar heat flushed through Davy, and he felt that uncircumcised cock twitch with quick, eager response.
His hands tightened unconsciously against each other, and he flinched at the sharp ache from his injured palm. He loosened his grip and flicked the tap off, giving a quick shake to shed the water.
He glanced at the mirror again, lean cheeks now flushed and eyes darker as his pupils expanded, and licked his lips. His lips.
Let’s just say, it was a good mouth.
Just not one that he could place, or the face around it.
Although, to be fair, Davy couldn’t think of anyone he would recognize that would want to bring him back from Beyond.
Hell, he doubted anyone had even gone looking when he disappeared, just in case they found him.
He’d not been a likable man, and his profession hadn’t encouraged him to try and hide that.
Still didn’t.
So? That begged the question: what did a pretty kid with green eyes want with him?
There was only one way to find out, he supposed.
Davy turned and reached for the door. His tentacle grappled with the handle, but the best he could do was rattle it before the jellyfish-translucent feeler slid through it. He stared at the door in bafflement for a beat and then remembered…
Hands.
He snapped the thin end of his tentacle to underline the realization, a pop of soft skin.
Of course. He’d forgotten how much he used to use them for… pretty much everything, really. He reached for the door. The metal was cold against his palm, almost painful, but he managed to fumble it open.
Out in the hall, the kid was caught mid-pace as he waited for him. He turned to glare at Davy as he stepped out onto the cheap lino.
“What took you so long?”
“You know, you could have just walked through the fucking door?” Davy asked as he jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
The kid stopped, mouth open, as he looked at the door, then back at Davy.
“I can?” he asked.
Davy snorted. “I fucking wish,” he said. “Nothing’s that easy in this life. Or the next.”
The kid looked pissed off. He started to say something, stopped himself, and took a deep breath.
It wasn’t really necessary in his current situation, but Davy understood the impulse.
The kid narrowed his eyes. The pretty green had faded to almost silver, pale and striking against dark lashes and sallow skin.
“Am I dead?” he asked.
Davy held his arms out. The span felt slightly off, and he spared a breath to be mildly annoyed to realize the kid was taller than him.
“Do you look dead?” he asked.
The kid looked down at his hands and flexed his fingers to watch the tendons move under thin, desaturated skin.
“Kind of,” he said quietly.
Fair enough, Davy supposed. He patted himself down briskly. Hoodie first, then his jeans, and then the back pockets. He found the wallet in the back left, a well-worn flap of leather roughly stitched in one corner where it had started to come apart. It was full of cash, but no cards or ID.
At least the kid made an effort.
“Think of it as more of a…Face/Off situation,” he said absently as he pulled the cash out to count it.
“A what?”
Davy glanced up and took in the look of utter confusion on the kid’s face. OK, so that wasn’t the easy cultural touchstone he’d expected. He weighed up the advantages of trying to prompt the way to mutual understanding, and then decided to just change tack.
“OK, like a house swap,” he said. “I get to be alive, you get to be dead. We have fun, we both learn important lessons, and then we probably go back to the status quo.”
That got him a frown and the dubious repetition of, “Probably?”
Davy shrugged. “Things happen,” he said vaguely.
What things, he couldn’t say. There was no handbook for the dead, just the slow drip of information from the dry dead down to the wet dead. The threat of “things” had definitely been muttered about.
Davy tossed the wallet and folded the cash over to tuck it back into his jeans. He turned and headed toward the front door.
“H-hey, wait,” the kid stammered out. “What are you… Where are you going!?”
Davy paused on the threshold of the house and looked back over his shoulder.
“It’s been thirty years since I had something to eat,” Davy said. “I’m going to get a burger.”
“I’m a vegan,” the kid protested weakly.
“Going to suck to be you when you get this back,” Davy said. He waved his hand in a sweeping “after you” gesture at the door. “You coming or what?”
It took a moment, but the kid shook off his bafflement and broke into a graceless, ungainly lope to catch up with Davy. He squeezed through the propped-open door and stumbled down the step onto the path, looking around like he’d never seen the street before.
Davy stared after him and then looked down at his body, all long arms and lanky legs. Shit. If he needed to run, he better not look like that. He stepped down onto the path and let the door slam behind him.
As his foot hit the cracked pavers, he felt a brief jolt of disorientation as his brain tried to stitch his last real flesh memory and this one together.
…boots instead of Converse, comfortable but heavier as he walked, and that low-grade but constant ache in his knee from a misstep on old stairs in a Moscow apartment block.
His hair had been damp with rain, and he’d shoved a door open, palm flat against the glossy green wood, as he glanced over his shoulder to say, “You didn’t have to do this. ”
“Do what?” the kid asked.
Davy tripped over his own feet as he staggered out of the memory. He caught himself against the fence and then straightened up, brushing his hands together.
“I didn’t say anything,” he lied in a rough voice.
It wouldn’t have convinced anyone who’d ever known him, but the kid just looked confused and shrugged it off. He stuck close to Davy’s heels, unconsciously tucked into the mantle of his tentacles, as they walked down the street.
Davy had plenty of questions he needed answers to. Time was short, and the stakes might even be high. So he was a little surprised that the first one he asked was, “So, what’s your name?”
The kid looked startled too. Maybe at hearing that question from his own face.
“Hill…” the kid said, and then glanced sidelong at Davy. He added the rest reluctantly. “Hill Rosen.”
Huh.
That cleared up…fucking nothing.
Davy took a bite out of the cheeseburger. The heady taste of cheese, hot meat, and warm, starchy bread filled his mouth. He closed his eyes and groaned in satisfaction as he chewed. Even the sting on his tongue from not letting it cool only added to the experience.
Thank the Reaper that restaurants still did Lost Souls opening hours on Solstice.
“Albie Rosen,” Hill said. “You seriously don’t remem…”
He stopped and glanced uneasily at something that Davy couldn’t see.
Something dead, presumably. Being incarnate had drawn the veil over the Beyond that the living enjoyed.
All Davy could see of it was Hill, who was essentially haunting him, and his own tentacles…
who’d been haunting him since Davy died.
On principle, he raised one of those and swatted whatever was taunting Hill away. Opposite, Hill unhunched a bit and rubbed a bony, elegant hand over his face.
“You really don’t remember my dad?”
Davy licked grease off his fingers. “It’s not ringing a bell,” he said.
“He worked for Fraser since…forever. He’s the one who buried you in that house.”
“I was dead at the time,” Davy pointed out.
He picked up some fries and dunked them in the curry sauce before he took a bite.
The pop of starchy potato flavor was better than sex.
He sucked the salt off his fingers and caught the flicker of lust in Hill’s pale, clever eyes as he watched.
His body—Hill’s body, technically—tightened in reaction…
and yeah, well, maybe the fries weren’t that good.
“We didn’t do introductions. Besides, it’s not like he killed me. Right?”
Something bleak and angry crossed Hill’s face, tightening his jaw and twisting his lips. He gave a short, hard shake of his head.
Davy took a noisy slurp of soda.
“Don’t worry. It’s good enough as far as the powers that be are concerned,” he said.
Water ran down the side of the paper cup as he set it back on the table, puddling on the scored Formica.
He left a smudge of blood overlaid across the logo and frowned as he checked his hand.
Blood had soaked through the rough dressing, but not enough to be a problem.
It would stop soon enough. Davy blotted his hand against his leg as he went on.
“Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. If you want something bad to happen to dear old Dad, I’m still your man. ”
Hill gave a small, humorless twist of his mouth.
“Something bad already did,” he said. “Someone killed him.”