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Mort’s smile was indulgent.
“I appreciate the inspiration, really, I do. And I am sure you have plenty of experience. But I am a conductor of souls, and that is not something one can just fuck up.”
“Why not?”
“People are relying on me.”
“So?”
“It’s too important a job to fuck up.” Mort’s expression was attractively serious. There was an air about him now that Tristan had not fully appreciated before, a beautiful solemnity.
“Is that why you quit?”
“I quit because…” Mort pressed his lips together as if he did not want to speak the next word out of his mouth. “I quit.”
“Alright. Then we execute plan B. You continue to quit. I make the demons’ lives a living hell if they don’t leave you alone.”
“Uh huh,” Mort smiled, relaxing a little. “I’d love to see how you plan to make a demon’s life hell.”
“Easy. I die, and then I go to Hell and I just… fuck with them.”
“Alright,” Mort sighed. “Let’s try a plan where you stay alive.”
“Okay. If you want. But dead or alive, I owe you my life. So.”
Tristan looked earnestly at Mort for a second before dropping his eyes. That was about all the emotional intensity he could stand before his morning beer.
“I’ll do what I have to. Or whatever,” Tristan said.
He felt Mort’s dark gaze on him. “You are very sweet, but you owe me nothing. You have given me a place to stay.”
“You could stay anywhere. You could buy a whole fucking house. You don’t need me.”
You don’t need me.
Tristan’s voice cracked in the last part of the sentence in a way that made parts of Mort melt.
Seeing Tristan bent for the Punisher had been one of the most erotically charged experiences of Mort’s existence. Mort had not been made for connection, or carnal experiences, but in this mortal plane he found himself capable of all sorts of things. Lust was one of them, but this was more than lust. This was connection. When he was with Tristan, he felt a kind of attachment that made even hearing the mention of Tristan’s potential demise painful.
He reached out and put a hand over Tristan’s hand. “I need you.”
“Cool,” Tristan said, hiding his feelings behind a taciturn veil. It wasn’t a rejection, though it might have looked like one to a layman.
Mort noticed that Tristan had not immediately gone for a beer. It was the first time in their association that he had not reached for that lifeline immediately upon waking.
The delay did not last any longer than Mort’s rejection of his plans, though. The refrigerator door opened with a familiar squeal, followed by the sound of a tab being pulled.
Tristan leaned against the counter, threw his head back, and gulped at the beer. He was shirtless, as usual. The rippling of his stomach muscles in the evening light was entrancing. Tristan was many things, but most of all he was alive. Vibrantly, rebelliously alive.
“Why did you want to kill yourself?” Suddenly, Mort had to know the answer to the question.
Tristan snorted into the now empty can before lowering it. “As if I needed a reason.”
Mort could tell he was being evasive, and Tristan could tell that Mort could tell.
“Why did you quit delivering souls?” Tristan threw the question back at him.
Mort pressed his lips together.
“Maybe it’s best we keep our secrets for now.”
“Yeah,” Tristan said with a pointed look. “Maybe.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“It’s fine. It’s… you don’t know what it’s like to have a life,” Tristan said. “It’s supposed to be one thing, but it’s never that thing. You have all these hopes and dreams when you’re a kid, and people encourage them. They say you can be anything. But the truth is, you’re going to be whatever you’re going to be. People don’t get as many choices as they think they do.”
He took a deep breath, as if he was finished, then he started up again.
“They tell us we can be anything, and then they do everything in their power to make us nothing. You have to play the game. Their game. You have to be respectable. You have to be safe. You have to follow rules.” He looked at Mort, his eyes lit with passion. “There’s no life left in life anymore. There’s not even survival. There’s just something in the middle, some… pointless, gray, meaningless fucking expanse that is too long and too short at the same time.”
Mort loved Tristan so fiercely in that moment he could barely handle it. He pushed back the chair, stood up, grabbed his mortal lover by the chin and pressed a kiss of pure passion to Tristan’s lips.
He tasted Tristan. Tasted the beer, the sadness, and the anger. Tasted the wasted potential, and the grief. Mortality was so cruel and so beautiful, and he tasted that too.
“I know exactly what you mean,” he said when he broke the kiss. “You are so beautiful, and the life you are living does not reflect that. You don’t see it in the mirrors of your home, or in the world. But if you could see what I see, you would understand that you are the most incredible creature as far as any eye can see.”
