…
Yeah. That was a metaphysical lesson that Davy didn’t want to get into today. Mostly because of time; partially because fuck if he actually understood how it worked.
“Just stick close to me,” Davy said as he draped one long, boneless arm over Hill’s shoulder. “You’re not going to be dead that long, and you won’t remember it afterwards.”
Hill started to shrug Davy’s arm off, flinched away from something that came too close, and decided to stay where he was.
“So this is your place?” Davy said. He followed his nose over the wooden floor to the open-plan kitchen and a covered plateset out on a counter. There was a card propped next to it, a cardinal staring festively from a white, expensively printed background. Hill ignored it for now as he unboxed the plate. “It’s nice.”
Hill hung on to the end of Davy’s tentacle, and the thin fingerling length twirled through his fingers as he trailed after him.
“It’s Fraser’s place,” Hill corrected him. “I just live here. They didn’t think I could cut it on my own.”
Davy made a pleased sound under his breath at the platter of cookies he’d exposed. They weren’t hot anymore, but they were the size of his palm and shiny with sugar crystals.
“Yeah,” he said as he picked one up. “Rich kids are easy marks. Just tell them ‘I like you for you’ and they leave you in the same room as their wallet.”
He lifted one and took a bite. His nose wrinkled as the taste exploded on his tongue.
It was…
He chewed as he tried to identify the flavor that flooded his mouth. It was chocolate. He knew it was chocolate—what the fuck else would you put in a cookie—but he couldn’t get his brain to believe it. The taste of meat had beeninstantlyfamiliar, but this just wouldn’t click. He swallowed and poked his tongue between his teeth after a hard chunk of biscuit.
Today he’d learned you could be old enough to forget the taste of chocolate.
“It’s carob,” Hill told him as Davy took a second bite.
Davy grimaced and spat the mouthful out into his hand.
“Why the fuck?” he asked.
“Vegan, remember?” Hill said. “No dairy.”
Davy wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “You know what, life is wasted on you.”
A humorless smile twitched Hill’s mouth. “You’re not the first to say that.”
Davy picked up the card and flipped it open.
“Hey,” Hill protested. He grabbed at the card with one hand, his fingers wisping through the thick parchment. “Where did you get that? It’s for me. You can’t just–”
“And yet I am,” Davy said with a shrug. He hitched one tentacle up to block Hill. Maybe Hill couldn’t grab the paper, but his fingers swiping through it made it hard to read. Davy glanced over the neat, angled script that said it hoped to see him—well, probably nothim,but not like they’d know—on Christmas Eve. He fanned the invite idly in the air and raised his eyebrows. “Look at that, back from the dead for—” He checked Hill’s watch. “—two hours, and already my social calendar is filling up.”
Hill scowled. “You’re not going.”
Davy shrugged as he turned away. “Shouldn’t be dead if you want a vote,” he said as he headed down the hall to find the bedroom. There were still a few hours till dawn, but he was on a deadline, so he couldn’t waste the wee hours. “First lesson you learn.”
It wasn’t, but…why spoil a nice night with that sort of detail?
Hot water battered the back of Davy’s neck. The steam filled his lungs, hot and sweet with the raspberry and chamomile smell of the shower gel.
It was on the label. On his own he’d just have called it “sweet.”
Close his eyes so he couldn’t see the squirm of his tentacles against the glass walls of the shower, and it was almost like he’d never been dead.
“You can’t go.”
Well, it was as long as he ignored his tentaclesandthe original occupant.
