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He lifted Mort up, carried him inside, and put him in the avocado-hued bathtub. He was going to have to teach him about self-care, like bathing and showering, and teeth brushing, and not drinking a crate of beer in one fucking go.
“Warm,” Mort intoned as he came around in the water. That was a relief to Tristan, who had worried quite a lot about what would happen if Mort slid down under the water. He’d kept the bath practically empty for that reason. But now, as Mort opened his eyes, Tristan started running the water again.
“Yes. You’re in the bath.”
“Bath,” Mort repeated.
“Mhm,” Tristan said. He’d washed most of the filth off Mort so far. There was really just his hair to do, and now that Mort could support himself, Tristan could do that without worrying he’d accidentally drown the man he loved.
Tristan massaged shampoo into Mort’s dark locks, scrunching his fingers in Mort’s sandy hair. He was such a mess right now, but the sound of pure pleasure Mort made when he felt the scalp massage was one of real enjoyment.
“Feels nice,” Mort said, becoming more coherent. “That’s the first thing that has felt nice.”
“A lot of things can feel nice,” Tristan said. “Sex, for instance.”
“You still want sex with me? In this pathetic mortal form?”
“Watch it,” Tristan nudged the back of his shoulder with a smirk. “I’m in pathetic mortal form too. And you wanted to have sex with me.”
Mort tilted his head back, and dark eyes flashed up at Tristan. “I wanted… I want to claim you. To own you. To possess you so completely nobody else will ever be able to put a finger on you.”
Reaper or not, Mort was still Mort.
“You can still do that,” Tristan told him.
“Hmmm…” Mort said, as if he wasn’t sure. He was hazy and still very drunk, and Tristan did not want their first time to go that way. Aside from any moral concerns, he could only imagine how furious Mort would later be not to have been in control.
“But first, you need to get cleaned up. And we need to go into Perdition to get you some clothes. You’re not going to be able to wear the same hoodie and jeans every day anymore. Mortals get dirty.”
“You wear the same jeans every day.”
“Maybe I could stand to clean up too,” Tristan admitted.
Mort woke in the middle of the night with a painful erection.
Tristan was asleep beside him, snoring happily, one hand wrapped around Mort’s bicep possessively.
Something was throbbing in Mort’s ears. It took him an unpleasant few minutes to work out that it was his pulse.
Disentangling Tristan as carefully as he could, Mort got up. He had not anticipated mortality being so very challenging every second of every moment of every day. No wonder so many of them never got anything done, and what a massive achievement that any of them had ever done anything at all.
He went outside again, not to drink or to break things, but to look up at the stars, to try to feel part of the world beyond the mortal plane again. Night time was the time the veil was thinnest.
Everything was different as a mortal. He had a headache for the first time in his long history of existence. His mouth felt like sandpaper and tasted like dirt. He’d observed these effects in Tristan long enough to know that he was experiencing a hangover. He didn’t like it.
Alcohol had been an escape, but it had solved precisely nothing. He was still in precisely the same situation he had been in earlier, except now he felt worse.
“Hello, cousin.”
Mort got a hell of a fright when two obsidian eyes ringed with gold appeared before him. Anubis loomed out of the dark. Before, Mort had always been able to feel him, but his dulled mortal senses did not pick up the presence of the divine.
“I told you not to try to save him,” Anubis spoke in the voice of the night. Mort could no longer adopt the voices of places and planes. He was stuck using his very limited voice box.
Clouds skidded away from the moon, revealing the obsidian length of Anubis in all his glory. Mort had to fight the urge to fall to his knees. Mortal instincts were a bitch. So much fight, so much flight, so much fear. It was an ever-present undercurrent, infecting every thought and interaction.
“You are just as reckless and self-destructive. You were just stronger. For a time. And now you are weak. As you deserve to be. Do not worry, cousin. When the time is right, I will come for both you and your boy.”
The old Mort would have told Anubis to fuck off. The new Mort whimpered.
16
Tristan took Mort shopping the next day. They both got haircuts. Well, Mort got a haircut. Tristan got a trim. He liked his hair long, and Mort agreed. More specifically, Mort told the barber that if he took more than an inch off Tristan’s hair, he’d end him.
