Chapter Thirteen
The dead could get headaches.
That was good to know.
Hill stood in the middle of his apartment and rubbed the heel of his hand against his forehead.
It didn’t help. The breathing exercises he usually did weren’t cutting the mustard either.
The familiarity of it was a comfort, but without the physical pressure on his lungs, it just didn’t have the same impact.
“So, you think that…interfering…with John’s brain—”
“John?” Davy said dubiously. “Who’s John?”
He knew the answer to that. It was clear from context. He was just being difficult to try and dodge responsibility.
It was probably the same reason he’d stripped down to fitted black boxers the minute the door had closed behind them. His shed clothes were left on the floor behind him where they’d dropped. But if he thought that was going to distract Hill, he was wrong.
Hill hesitated mid-righteous denial as Davy padded past him on his way into the kitchen.
Bruises stippled his ribs and the small of his back.
Others stained the smooth gray surface of the tentacles that dragged tiredly along behind Davy.
The bruises shifted shape as Davy stretched and muscles moved under his skin.
Or when the tentacles contracted or stretched out.
Hill’s mouth went dry as the thought of kissing them better flitted through his mind.
OK, he wasn’t entirely wrong. Hill wasn’t about to admit that, though.
“Reynolds, then,” he corrected himself, unnecessary though they both knew it was. “You think interfering with his brain with your…tentacles…”
He hesitated as he said that and glanced at the tentacles. The physical presence—metaphysical?—of the tentacles didn’t throw him anymore; even their casual handsiness didn’t, but for some reason the word always got stuck on his tongue like oatmeal.
Tentacles. How could he talk casually about that? It seemed impossible, but Hill made himself press on.
“You think that’s what made him fixate on me?”
Davy shrugged. “It makes sense.”
Did it? Hill had not gotten that memo.
“It does?” he asked.
Davy opened the fridge. He hitched his shoulders up in a shudder as the cold hit him and then reached in to sort through the juices. Most of them, apparently, didn’t meet his standards.
“I saw it happen once,” Davy explained. He picked out a bottle of kombucha to regard dubiously.
After a second, he shrugged to himself and twisted the lid off.
“Back when I was alive. This sniper we were working with got the shit kicked out of him by some kid’s family.
He ended up being cycled through the docs, the shrinks, and finally the priest. Apparently, it was some sort of half-assed possession.
He’d crossed paths with a spirit who had enough in common with him that his brain got confused between what was him and what was it. ”
“And you think you and Reynolds have something in common?” Hill asked. He wasn’t sure who the dubious note in his voice insulted. Probably someone.
Davy took a swig of juice and then wiped the back of his mouth on his arm. He gave Hill a lazy once-over and then smirked slowly.
“Oh, there’s a couple of things,” he said.
At this point, Hill had accepted that the dead could blush; he just wished it wasn’t so easy for Davy to make him flustered and hot. He had to clear his throat and take a moment to shuffle his thoughts back on track. Once he did, he remembered why he was annoyed.
“Oh, right, so it’s a thing,” he said and stalked forward to glare at Davy. If he could have poked him in the chest, he would have. “And you thought it was a good idea to stick your tentacle up his nose again?”
Davy looked thoughtful.
“Yeah,” he said after a pause. “Either he goes off the rails and Fraser has to deal with that, or he wants in your pants enough he gets us the password…and Fraser has to deal with that. Win-win for us.”
He swigged from the bottle and then lowered it, holding it out so he could frown at it.
“This is disgusting,” he said. “Why do I want more?”
“That’s how I feel about you,” Hill said sourly.
In isolation, in his head, it was cutting. Once he’d said it out loud…
Davy grinned. “How I got laid alive, too,” he admitted.
It was… Hill gave up. He sat down on the floor and buried his head in his hands, fingers twisted through his tangled hair. There were no chemicals to give him the familiar come down from the panic and flight and rage. He kind of missed them. The emotional hangover was worse.
Where the hell was he supposed to start? He pressed his thumbs against the side of his nose as he thought about it. Which of the moral or practical problems he had with what Davy had just done needed to take pole position?
Something cracked somewhere. A second later kombucha and glass splattered over his knees.
Through, technically, and all over the floor. It looked like he’d soiled himself in some sort of horrendous way. He stared at it for a second and then looked up at Davy, who was holding a jagged stump of bottle in one hand.
“I didn’t…” Hill fumbled over the horrified apology. He remembered the bloody alley and the scoured-clean muzzle of the Hound. He glanced back down at the splattered vinegar and tea and imagined it in red as his stomach twisted. “You…are you…”
“Shit, if it means that much to you,” Davy said as he crouched down. A tentacle slid under Hill’s chin to tip his eyes up away from the mess. “I’ll not complain about what’s in your fridge again.”
Hill laughed. He caught himself and rubbed his hand roughly over his face.
“Don’t,” he said. “It’s not funny. I could hurt you.”
He ignored Davy’s skeptical snort at that and pressed on. “What you did to Reynolds, it could hurt him. What if it causes a brain aneurysm or a stroke? I wanted…I wanted justice. I wanted Fraser to make things right. Not for more people to get hurt.”
The tentacle stroked a stray curl out of Hill’s face. It was gentle, the brush of it against his temples soft as velvet. Hill reached up to push it away, but couldn’t quite bring himself to reject the touch.
“I mean, considering who you brought back,” Davy said. “I think we’re doing pretty good. No one’s dead. Well…no one new.”
Hill turned his face into the curve of Davy’s tentacle. The gash from earlier caught his eye, a jagged line thick as his thumb. It wasn’t bleeding, but it hadn’t healed either. The skin was puckered and raw. On a whim, he brushed his mouth over it to kiss it better like he’d imagined earlier.
Davy hitched in a startled breath in reaction and closed his eyes for a moment. He reached for Hill with one hand, fingers cupped for the nape of his neck. A frustrated “fuck” escaped through clenched teeth as his palm swiped through Hill’s throat instead.
“Is this part of what we’re meant to learn?” Hill asked ruefully. “Not to want what we can’t have? To not waste our life wanting the dead?”
“I know I’ve said this before,” Davy said.
He braced a tentacle against Hill’s chest and pushed him down onto his back.
Another tentacle crawled up his leg and hooked around the waistband of his jeans.
The quick tug made Hill gasp and then laugh in confusion.
“But they brought the wrong dead man back for that.”
A tentacle grazed over Hill’s stomach and up along the slats of his ribs. The pulled-fine tip of it flicked against a nipple and then wrapped around it. The pinch made Hill gasp and squirm, a quick jab of pleasure zapped straight down to his balls. His cock felt thick and heavy under his jeans.
“How does it…how can we—”
A tentacle covered his mouth. Davy crawled on top of him, weight braced on his arms and knees in the mess of glass and kombucha. They weren’t, Hill supposed, touching, but the proximity and the squirming weight of tentacles made it feel like they were.
“It just works,” Davy said. “Don’t worry about how.”
Hill screwed up his nose. “Why not?” he asked from behind the tentacle gag.
Black-on-black eyes crinkled at the corners.
A tentacle cupped Hill’s cock through his jeans and kneaded the bulge.
The strange, thirsty pleasure of the dead clutched at Hill’s balls and twisted in his stomach.
Davy leaned down until his mouth almost touched Hill.
Close enough Hill could pretend he could still taste the memory of that first old bone and grave dirt kiss.
“It might stop working.”
Oh well, Hill did not want that. He reached up to graze his fingers along Davy’s jaw and was intercepted by a tentacle. It toyed with his fingers, cool and velvet soft, and then pinned his hand down to the floor.
The restraint made something in Hill’s chest catch.
It was part arousal and part nervousness, all tangled together until he wasn’t sure where one started and the other stopped.
Davy cupped his chin with a tentacle. It traced the curve of his mouth like it was the only thing they had to do, and then slid up to give his earlobe a tug.
“Is this what you want?” Davy asked.
Hill squirmed on the floor. He arched his hips to press the jut of his erection against the tentacle laid over his hips.
“What do you think?” he said pointedly.
The corner of Davy’s mouth tucked in a smile. That unexpected dimple, the one that was only a suggestion when he smirked, made an appearance again.
“I get your cock is all in,” he said. The tentacle curled tenderly against the nape of Hill’s neck to lift his head up. “What about you?”
Hill huffed out an annoyed breath. “I’m autistic, not an addict,” he said tartly. “I know they start with the same letter, but I don’t have any trouble with ‘no’ if I don’t want this.”