21. Chapter 21
Sidney wakes to the smell of something burning, which gives him both a sense of deja vu and also the concern he might be having a stroke.
He groans into the pillow, breathes in the warm cotton and the faint trace of Erath still clinging to the sheets, and considers, briefly, never getting up.
The underworld is dark enough that he could stay here indefinitely.
No one would know. No one would care. Except the five-year-old who will absolutely know and absolutely care and will come in here and physically drag him out of bed if he doesn't present himself within the next thirty seconds.
He hauls himself upright. His body aches in places that have nothing to do with the state of the world and everything to do with the state of last night, and there's a tenderness in his muscles that makes him feel simultaneously well-used and embarrassingly pleased about it.
He pulls on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt from the bag he packed at his apartment, which is a vast improvement over wearing Erath's clothes, and pads barefoot into the hallway.
The kitchen is not in flames, so that's a win.
Erath is standing at the stove with a spatula in one hand and an expression on his face that suggests the eggs have personally wronged him.
There is smoke. There is also a raw egg on the counter that appears to have been cracked with far too much force, its contents sliding in a slow, viscous trail toward the edge.
The pan is producing a smell that is neither appetizing nor identifiable, and the eggs inside it are simultaneously burnt on the bottom and glistening wet on top in a way that defies every known law of thermodynamics.
Sidney doesn't understand how this is physically possible. He genuinely does not.
"Move," he says, nudging Erath aside with his hip.
Erath goes without protest, stepping back with the air of a man who has been waiting to be relieved of duty.
Sidney surveys the carnage. The eggs are unsalvageable.
He dumps them, scrubs the pan, and starts over.
He cracks three eggs cleanly, adds salt and a splash of the milk that has appeared in the fridge through what Sidney suspects is divine intervention or possibly Vivi, and scrambles them the way eggs are supposed to be scrambled: gently, over medium heat, without spite.
Erath watches from the counter. He has his arms crossed and his head tilted and he's studying Sidney with a quiet affection that has crossed the line into something Sidney is getting dangerously used to.
He hasn't thought about what he wants out of this arrangement. Not really. He's filed it away in the part of his brain marked "things to process when there's enough distance to breathe around them," which is a filing cabinet that's getting dangerously full.
He makes toast. He plates the eggs. Penny appears in the kitchen doorway dragging a stuffed animal behind her, its arm clutched in her fist while its body bumps along the floor, and she climbs into her chair the way someone scales a mountain.
Her hair is tangled and she yawns so wide her face disappears.
"Morning, kiddo," Sidney says, setting her plate in front of her.
"Morning, Sid," she says, already reaching for her fork.
He brings his own plate to the table and sits.
Erath follows and takes his usual seat, the one where he doesn't eat and pretends not to watch them, which is a pretense that fools no one.
The three of them at this table has become a routine.
Sidney doesn't know when it happened, the shift from temporary arrangement to something with a rhythm, but it's here now and it's settled into the shape of his mornings and he can feel it.
Penny eats her food and looks up at Sidney with the grave, unblinking focus that only children can pull off and says, "Are you going to stay forever?"
Sidney stares at her.
He glances at Erath. Erath is looking at Penny with an expression that is trying very hard to be neutral and failing spectacularly. There's something in his jaw, a tightness, and something in his eyes, a want, that he can't quite smooth away fast enough.
"Forever is a long time, kiddo," Sidney says carefully. "But I'm not going anywhere right now."
Penny considers this with all the gravity of a five-year-old philosopher. She tilts her head. Narrows her eyes. Arrives at a conclusion.
"Okay," she says. "But you should stay forever."
And then she continues eating.
Sidney's chest aches.
He pointedly doesn't look at Erath, because if he looks at Erath right now something in his face will give him away.
He eats his breakfast. The eggs are good.
The toast is slightly overdone because he got distracted by Erath's hands on his spine, but it's still edible.
The three of them eat in the quiet, ambient hum of the underworld while the green light from the river pulses through the stained glass windows and casts colored shadows across the kitchen floor.
***
The day passes quietly. Too quietly.
Erath leaves to tend to whatever it is that the god of death tends to on a Tuesday, or a Thursday, or whatever day it is, because time has stopped having meaning in a place with no sun and no clocks and no reason to distinguish one hour from the next.
Sidney tries to keep busy. He reorganizes the kitchen, which takes twenty minutes because there's barely anything in it.
He washes dishes. He folds the blanket on the couch.
He finds a broom in a closet and sweeps a floor that doesn't really need sweeping, because the underworld doesn't seem to accumulate dust, which is either a perk or profoundly unsettling.
Penny colors at the kitchen table with a set of crayons that have been through hell.
She's drawing something that might be a house or might be a boat or might be a dragon.
Sidney doesn't ask. He watches her and thinks about the fact that a week ago he was a bartender who lived alone in a crappy apartment and now he's playing house with the god of death and his daughter in the literal afterlife.
It's absurd. The whole thing is absurd.
He's twenty-five years old and he's been in three relationships, all of them terrible, and the common denominator in all three was him.
His inability to be what they wanted. His inability to be enough.
His inability to stop reaching for things he knows will cost him everything and reaching anyway, because something in him has never learned the lesson that wanting too much is the fastest way to end up with nothing.
Erath wants him to stay.
Erath, who is eternal and powerful and ancient and could have anyone or anything, wants Sidney to stay.
And Sidney knows that even without Erath coming out and saying it, and the fact that he knows it without it being explicitly spoken is huge.
It's enormous. And Sidney wants to believe this could be his so badly that it terrifies him, because believing it means trusting it, and trusting it means being vulnerable, and being vulnerable means handing someone the power to take him apart.
Every man he's ever been with has used that power eventually.
He doesn't know how to accept that Erath might not.
No one has ever touched him and asked nothing in return.
That's the part he can't get past. The asking nothing.
Because in Sidney's experience, people always want something.
They want his body or his time or his compliance or his silence, and when he gives it they want more, and when he can't give more they leave, and the pattern is so deeply carved into him that Erath's patience feels less comforting than confusing.
He keeps waiting for the other side of it.
The price. The catch. The moment where Erath reveals what he actually wants and Sidney has to decide if he's willing to give it.
But Erath keeps not asking. Keeps making terrible eggs and watching Sidney with that quiet intensity and holding him at night without sleeping and saying things that crack Sidney open and leave him raw.
I've already let you in. Erath said that. Last night, in the hallway, with his hand on Sidney's face. There's a hollow place in my chest that I didn't realize was empty until you and her walked back through that door.
Sidney presses his palms flat against the counter and breathes.
The thing is, he's already in too deep. He knows that.
He knew it when he let Erath heal him on the couch, knew it when he let slip that he'd fallen for him and hadn't taken it back.
He knew it this morning when Penny asked if he was staying forever and the honest answer, the one he bit back behind his teeth, was yes.
Yes, he wants to stay forever. Yes, he wants this, the burnt eggs and the stained glass and the little girl with a kind heart and the man who holds him through the night without sleeping.
He wants it with an ache that sits behind his ribs and won't ease, and that's the problem, because wanting it this much means losing it will break him in a way he won't come back from.
This time it won't just be him that gets hurt. It'll be Penny too. And he can't do that to her.
He exhales slowly and pushes away from the counter and goes to sit with Penny at the table.
She holds up her drawing proudly. It is, apparently, a picture of three people standing in front of a house.
The tallest one is all in black with a tiny frown.
The smallest one has black scribbles for hair.
The one in the middle has a giant smile and he's holding both their hands.
"That's us," Penny says.
Sidney stares at the drawing. The crayon lines are crooked and the proportions are wrong and the house has six windows and no door and it's the most amazing thing anyone has ever made for him.
"Yeah," he says, and his voice cracks. "That's us."
***
By the time Erath returns that evening, Sidney is wound tight.