Chapter 5
Sidney is twenty-five, and warm-blooded, and has had questionable taste in men since he was fifteen and first understood that his interest in the boys’ locker room was not, in fact, a universal experience.
He has dated precisely the wrong kind of person at every available opportunity.
He has a type, and his type is “will almost certainly ruin his life,” and he is aware of this pattern and has done absolutely nothing to correct it.
Which is why he does not turn down the god of death’s offer to help him bandage his ribs.
He should. He knows he should. August’s voice is in his head, urgent and worried, saying the lord of the underworld and I put you in a lot of danger and be careful, and Sidney is hearing all of it and choosing to get his medical supplies and take his shirt off in front of a man who could apparently end his existence with a thought.
August would kill him. August would actually, literally kill him, and then Erath would have to deal with his soul in the underworld, and at least then they’d have an excuse to keep seeing each other.
He goes to the bathroom. Cabinet under the sink: linen bandages, medical tape, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide that expired two years ago, and a tube of Neosporin that he’s pretty sure came with the apartment.
He brings it all back and sets it on the coffee table and stands in front of the couch where Erath is sitting, watching him with those dark eyes, and pulls his shirt off over his head.
It hurts. Lifting his arms hurts. The motion of the fabric sliding over his ribs sends a sharp, bright flare of pain through his left side that makes him suck in air through his teeth.
The sudden exposure of his bare skin to the cool air of the apartment hurts too, although that’s less about the injury and more about the fact that he’s now shirtless in front of a man who looks at him the way Erath looks at him and he is not prepared for what that does to his nervous system.
He’s not impressive. He knows this. He’s lean and toned in the way of someone who lifts kegs and glass racks for a living and walks two miles to and from work every day, but he’s not built.
Xela does most of the heavy lifting at the bar because she has superhuman strength and doesn’t believe in letting Sidney do things she can do faster.
He’s just the blond human who makes a great Mai Tai and is remembered for being unremarkable in a city of remarkable people.
Erath is probably older than the Earth itself.
He’s probably seen more impressive bodies in his time than Sidney can fathom.
Erath should be clinical about this. Detached. A task to be performed, bandages to be applied, an injury to be addressed. There’s no reason for this to be anything other than functional.
He is absolutely not clinical about it.
Erath leans forward. He picks up the linen roll from the coffee table and unwinds the first few inches and looks at Sidney standing there, shirtless, one arm crossed tentatively over his own stomach in a gesture he doesn’t remember deciding to make.
Erath’s eyes don’t drop. They stay on Sidney’s face, steady, and he says, “Sit.”
Sidney sits. Because the alternative is standing shirtless in front of the god of death while they negotiate seating arrangements, and that seems worse.
He sits beside Erath, close, close enough that their knees are almost touching, and there’s a pull in his chest that has nothing to do with his cracked ribs.
It’s lower than that, and warmer than that, and it started the moment Erath walked into his apartment and hasn’t let up since.
It’s the same thing he felt when Erath showed up at his door for Penny, and again when Erath walked him home from the bar.
A gravity. A tug toward him that Sidney cannot account for and did not ask for and does not know how to turn off.
It sits in the center of his chest and pulls, quietly and persistently, and every time he tries to examine it directly it slides out of focus.
He doesn’t know what it is. He knows what it feels like, though. It feels like standing at the edge of something tall and looking over the side and feeling the insane, irrational urge to step forward instead of back.
Erath’s hands find his ribs. His fingers press, gently, along the left side where the bruising is worst, and Sidney hisses.
“Here?”
“Yeah.” Sidney breathes through the press of Erath’s fingers. “There.”
Erath hums. It’s a low sound, more vibration than voice, and Sidney feels it in his teeth.
Erath starts wrapping. His hands move slowly, unwinding the linen and pressing it against Sidney’s skin, circling his torso, one hand feeding the bandage while the other steadies it against his back.
The touch is firm and sure and deliberate.
He touches Sidney the way someone who knows what they’re doing touches an injury: with enough pressure to support, not enough to hurt, and no wasted movement.
But there’s something else there too. Something in the slide of his palms that’s not strictly medical.
Something in the way his fingers linger at the edges, how his thumb presses against the ridge of Sidney’s ribcage with an attention that goes beyond friendly assistance.
Erath is not cold. That’s the thing Sidney keeps catching on, the thing that keeps throwing him off balance.
He remembers the drops in temperature during their previous encounters.
The chill when Erath had appeared at his door.
The plunge of cold in the alley, the last thing he’d registered before blacking out.
He’d been operating under the assumption that the lord of the underworld would be cold to the touch, that proximity to death would feel the way death looks, pale and still and frigid.
But Erath’s hands on his skin are warm. Not burning, not feverish, but unmistakably, intentionally warm, and it’s that intentionality that undoes him.
The warmth has focus behind it. It’s directed. It’s for him.
“You know how to do this,” Sidney says, because if he stops talking he’s going to think about the way Erath’s hands feel on his skin and that’s a road he cannot take tonight. “The bandaging. You’ve done this before.”
“I’ve been around a very long time,” Erath says, and there’s something dry in it, something faintly amused, like the question entertains him.
His hand circles Sidney’s back, feeds the linen around to his other hand, and the brush of his knuckles against Sidney’s spine sends a current down his back that has absolutely no medical justification. “You learn things.”
“The god of death learned first aid.”
“The god of death has learned a great many things that have nothing to do with death.”
“Name one.”
Erath’s mouth curves. It’s small, barely there, and Sidney sees it because he’s watching for it, which is its own problem. “I make a very good espresso.”
“You do not.”
“I do. I have a machine.”
“You have an espresso machine in the underworld,” Sidney repeats, because he needs to hear it twice to confirm he’s not having a stroke. “Where do you even plug it in?”
“Electricity isn’t the only way to power things.
” Erath wraps another layer. His hands are at the base of Sidney’s ribcage now, lower than they need to be, and the press of his palm against Sidney’s stomach makes his abs contract involuntarily.
Erath’s fingers pause there. Just for a moment.
Just long enough that Sidney knows he felt it, knows he noticed, and then his hands resume their path and the linen tightens another degree.
“Though I admit the results are inconsistent.”
“So what you’re saying is you make a terrible espresso.”
“What I’m saying is that my espresso has character.”
Sidney laughs, and the laugh pulls at his ribs and he winces, and Erath’s hand immediately steadies against his side, holding him still, and the sudden firmness of the touch sends a bolt of heat straight through him that he has to actively, consciously redirect.
He breathes in. He breathes out. Erath’s hand stays where it is, warm and broad and covering most of his left side, and he doesn’t remove it until Sidney’s breathing evens out again.
The pull in his chest tightens. It’s worse now, or better, depending on perspective.
It’s stronger. It’s the kind of pull that makes him want to lean into Erath’s hand instead of away from it, to close the two inches of air between his shoulder and Erath’s chest and find out what it would feel like to be held by someone who could level a city block without breaking a sweat.
And that’s the problem, isn’t it? That’s always been the problem.
Sidney is drawn to power the way other people are drawn to warmth, and it has never once ended well for him.
The last one had been strong too, and charming, and attentive, right up until the moment he wasn’t.
The one before that had told him no one would ever want him and he’d believed it for the better part of a year.
He knows how this goes. He has the script memorized. They’re interested, and then they’re possessive, and then they’re angry, and then they’re sorry, and then they’re interested again, and the cycle repeats until Sidney is the one who breaks.
Erath’s thumb brushes the edge of the bruise that wraps around Sidney’s side and Sidney hisses but doesn’t pull away. The touch pauses there. Erath’s thumb rests against the discolored skin, and the gentleness of it is so deliberate, so purposeful, that Sidney’s throat goes tight.
“Tell me about the bar,” Erath says.
“Willow’s?”
“How long have you worked there?”
“Four years. Five in January.” Sidney adjusts his posture, trying to find an angle that doesn’t make the wrapping pull. “Started as a barback. Xela promoted me after two weeks because the previous bartender got into an altercation with a vampire and she decided I was less likely to start fights.”