“Don’t you want to know what I said?”
“No,” Davy said. He liked Hill—it would definitely be practical to kill Fraser, but the idealism was kind of admirable…and Hill was cute—but not enough to cross the Company. It was best to stay out of Company business…even their dirty business.
He ran hot water over his hand, as hot as he could bear, as if it might help, and quickly redressed it, the fresh tape clumsily smoothed around the crease of his thumb. Then he headed back out into the main room of the apartment.
“I don’t know what I should—” Hill broke off mid-sentence. He held his hand up, fingers spread, between him and Davy. “Why are you naked?”
Davy stretched and reached over his shoulder to scratch his back. “Your clothes are itchy,” he complained. “Either you’ve got fleas or you need to change your detergent.”
“All the other spirits I’ve seen are dressed,” Hill said. “Why can’t you keep your pants on?”
“They’re your pants, and they’re itchy,” Davy said. “We’ve just covered that.”
Hill threw up his hands in exasperation and turned his back. “At least put a pair of briefs on,” he said in a strangled voice. “Please?”
“Fine,” Davy said as he rolled his eyes. “It’s your cock. If it gets a rash, that’s on you.”
He headed into the utility room to grab a pair out of the wash. It was done, folded, and stacked in a basket on top of the dryer.
“Your mom did your laundry,” he noted over his shoulder, before he looked through the pile for something that wouldn’t feel like poison ivy. “She used dryer sheets and everything.”
He found a pair of black briefs. He stepped into them and pulled them up over his thighs until the fabric cupped his ass and balls. The fabric was soft and cool, any heat from the laundry process long since faded.
“She wants me to go to the party,” Hill reminded him from the other room. “But not asme.”
The moment of glee that Davy felt was unexpected but undeniable. He let the band of the briefs snap against his stomach and hurried back to stick his head out the door.
“It’s a costume party?” he said.
Hill turned toward him, looked flustered, and averted his eyes to something over the top of Davy’s head.
“I…no, it’s not,” he said. “I just meant that I’m supposed to look like a credit to them instead of, well, me. Why? Do youlikecostume parties?”
Davy leaned against the door frame, one bare arm braced on the wood, and his head tilted to rest on his forearm.
“I mean, shit,” he said as he scratched the hinge of his jaw. “I guess?”
When he was alive, nothing short of torture would have dragged that out of him. He’d not even have admitted it to himself. Hell, dead, he wouldn’t have been keen to admit it. In the Beyond, masks and mystery balls were the preserve of theCompany. The whole point ofthese—the thought made Davy’s tentacles rear up to mantle around him—was to stop him hiding what he was under swagger and a pretty face.
His brief return to the world of flesh and bone and incarnate cocks, however, had apparently unlocked something in him. Only to immediately let him down. So no chance there from his last time drawing breath.
“You know, this isn’t the first time that Fraser’s fucked me over,” he grumbled. “But this is the one that hurts the most.”
Hill lowered his gaze from the ceiling long enough to give Davy an exasperated look. “He killed you.”
Davy shrugged. “I said what I said.”
For a second Hill stared at him. “How do you do that?” he asked. “Just…forgive people, without them being punished or showing any regret for what they did. I can’t. I’ve tried so hard, and I can’t let go of it.”
Davy pushed himself off the door frame. He rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged awkwardly. In general, he avoided too much introspection. It didn’t lead anywhere good for a man in his line of work, on either side of the Veil.
A Company man could do pro bono hours working off their sins. The likes of Davy still needed to hustle to make ends meet. Death was more expensive than the Church ever told you.
Whatever something had unlocked in him, though, wanted to give Hill an answer. Davy had a feeling that nothing else the kid was going to get from this was going to be that satisfying. Even if he did pull it off.
“It’s not that I’mnotpissed,” he said, “but someone was always gonna kill me. I was that kind of asshole, and so was everyone I knew. It wasn’t like I was gonna marry some hot twink with a trust fund.”
“I don’t have a trust fund,” Hill said primly.
