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Jace, who was so very clever and capable, to have difficulty with a simple act like removing his shirt must have been because he was nervous. Very nervous. Yes, nervous and anxious and eager. All of those things. Jace didn’t have the same need to hide mistakes in public like the Thaf’ell did, but there was still a sense of intimacy in Jace showing him this when they were alone. Jace was never afraid to be open with him. Exposed. But confident. Just like now.

“You are so beautiful,” Khoth murmured as he reached over and re-arranged Jace’s messy hair.

Jace’s gray eyes widened. The embarrassment changed to pleasure. He flushed again. Pink highlighted his cheekbones. Jace lowered his head. He looked up again at Khoth, but through his eyelashes this time. Khoth’s heartbeat seemed to both slow and quicken at the same time. Heat bloomed between his legs. Arousal.

“You are too,” Jace said and blushed harder. “I mean… Well, I really mean that. I’m not just saying it because you said it first and--”

“Thank you. I am glad you find my physical attributes pleasing,” Khoth answered.

“Just stating a fact. Definitely a fact.” More blushes. The pink color was just fascinating to Khoth. The opposite of his own coloring.

“You are surprisingly logical always,” Khoth complimented.

“I hear for a human in there.” But Jace didn’t seem offended. Again, he flashed one of his brilliant smiles.

“I find that I do not know humans at all now that I have met you,” Khoth admitted.

“Right, well, I hope I don’t disappoint,” Jace said and there was a blush of a different sort. Jace then cast around himself. “Ah, now that we have conquered the shirt--”

“It was a deadly foe,” Khoth said solemnly.

Again, Jace blinked. “Ah, yes, yes, it was. But it is now dead.”

Khoth lifted the “dead” shirt and tossed it off the bed. “It is most definitely dead.”

“I should lay down and you should… well, do whatever you want to do,” Jace mumbled and threw himself face down onto the bed, face pressed into the pillows. The blush this time swept around to the back of his neck and even onto his shoulders.

Khoth regarded him for long moments. The graceful sweep of Jace’s back. The solid muscle of his ass. The surprisingly long legs. Jace shifted. His head moved to the side.

“Everything okay?” Jace’s words were muffled.

“Yes, I was just… admiring,” Khoth admitted. “And you blush again.”

“No one’s ever said that I was… beautiful. No one’s ever admired me,” Jace told him, gripping the pillow a little tighter. “I’ve never… uhm, I’ve never had a massage.”

Khoth’s eyebrows lifted. “Not even by a machine?”

Jace let out a strained chuckle. “Uhm, no, not even by a machine. I was… I was in pain almost all of the time. I would see auras around everything and everyone. There was a near constant ringing in my ears. The headaches would literally lay me flat for days. One summer I didn’t leave my room for a month.”

Khoth’s forehead furrowed deeper and deeper. “You suffered.”

Jace shrugged. “I guess. I mean… it wasn’t all bad. Okay, so a lot of it was bad. But my parents were amazing. And my few friends were… were really good to me.”

“I see,” Khoth murmured. “That is… I am glad that you were able to be helped.”

“You did the helping. Well, you and Thammah and Gehenna and--”

“I almost did not,” Khoth felt this was necessary to confess.

“Because you thought twice about handing over the key to destroying the Khul to a kid you just met? No, Khoth, that’s not failing to help. That’s… normal,” Jace insisted.

“I see now what a mistake that would have been. To not help you,” Khoth stated, his mouth dry. “To think you could have continued to suffer like that or--”

“Or die. I was dying. After Metal Rain, I was really messed up, but it would have been better than dying at the hands of the Khul,” Jace told him, seemingly blithely. “I got to save Walter and his granddaughter. Not to mention Sammi and her brother. So if I had gone out then--”

“Do not say it!” Khoth was shocked at the raw emotion in his voice and the way he gripped Jace’s shoulders. Too tight. Jace grunted, but didn’t express pain in any other way. “Do not… do not speak of that. Of dying. Of it being… acceptable. It is not acceptable.”

“Okay,” Jace said and his voice was calm and measured as if he had seen beyond Khoth’s words and whatever he found there didn’t worry him or scare him, but made him certain. “But I will point out that you were going to let yourself die in that Hive, thinking I was just going to leave you there and--”