The Reaper is watching me, so mechanically, I pull the covers back and slide into the bed. The sheets are damp from the humidity, and they have an old, musty smell to them. I make a face, even as I settle in.
I mean, technically, it isn’t the worst bed I’ve ever slept in, and it’s better than the accommodations that old woman is going to get tonight.
Once I’m laying down, Famine retreats from the room.
I lie there in the darkness a long time, staring at the ceiling. I keep waiting for sleep to come, but my shoulder still throbs, and besides, I’m wired from the last hour.
In the room beyond mine, I can hear the horseman striding back and forth, back and forth. It should be lulling, but he sounds so damn agitated.
“Will you stop that?” I finally call out.
The footsteps pause.
“I should be on the road right now,” he says.
“I wasn’t the one who decided to stop,” I say.
Now those footsteps approach the bedroom. In the darkness I see his massive silhouette in the doorway, his scythe still in his hand.
“Ungrateful human.” His voice sends a shiver through me. “I should force you back onto my horse and continue riding.”
“You are so unnecessarily dramatic,” I say. I pat the mattress. “Just sit down for a second. I can’t sleep listening to your pacing.”
This may come as a shock, but Famine doesn’t, in fact, sit down. He just continues to loom in that doorway.
With a huff, I throw my blankets off and get up.
“What are you doing?” he demands.
Instead of answering him, I cross the room and grab the Reaper’s hand, pulling him forward, towards the bed. Much to my shock, he actually lets me lead him into the room.
When I get to the mattress, I push him down with my good arm. Now, however, he does resist.
“I am not interested in sex, little flower,” he says. There’s a note in his voice that raises my gooseflesh.
“I wasn’t offering anything, you big brute,” I say smoothly. “Now, sit.” I push against his armor again.
I can perfectly imagine his insolent frown. Reluctantly, he bends his knees and perches on the edge of the bed.
“Happy?” he growls.
“Stop pouting,” I say, getting on the bed as well. “Can you see me in the dark?” I ask after a moment, feeling oddly exposed.
“Would it matter?” he grumbles.
I wave my hand in front of his face.
“What are you doing?”
“You can’t see me,” I say, slightly triumphant.
“What is the point of me sitting here?” He begins to get up, but I catch his arm and pull him back down.
Before he can get up again, I begin tugging at his armor with my one good arm.
Something I’ve learned as a sex worker is the true nature of clothes. We wear our garments like masks. Take them off, and you strip a person of their pretenses. That’s what I want to do now—strip the horseman of his pretenses, whatever they might be.
Beneath my touch, his body goes rigid.
“What are you doing?” Famine asks again, this time more alarmed.
“Calm your tits. I’m not trying to deflower you.”
At least, not tonight.
That last wayward thought steals my breath.
What the hell, Ana? Sex with the monster is off the table … or on it, depending on whether there are platters of food nearby …
No, no. No fucking the scary horseman.
“You shouldn’t be moving your shoulder,” he says gruffly, his body still rigid beneath my touch.
“It’s fine.” It’s not really fine, but whatever. “I’ve lived through worse.”
It’s quiet for a moment, and I know Famine’s thinking about the scabs and scars on my torso.
The silence stretches on, and this is where a normal, nice person might apologize for nearly killing me. They might at the very least beg for forgiveness.
“You never should’ve been there,” Famine says as I begin peeling away his armor.
“Where?” I say, thinking he’s referring to protecting the old woman.
“Visiting me with that woman—the one who tried to sell you.” His words drip with disdain.
“And where should I have been?” I ask, casting aside a bronze vambrace.
“With me.”
I shiver at the low pitch of his voice, and this time there’s no mistaking it, they are good shivers. Problematically good shivers.
My hands move to the armor covering his chest, my body brushing against his. I can feel his eyes on me, and even though there’s nothing sexual going on, this whole situation feels intimate.
“Tell me about yourself,” I say to distract myself as I work on unfastening his breastplate.
“I don’t have a self to share.”
My brows knit together. “Well of course you do.” My gaze ventures up, and even though the bedroom is steeped in shadows, I catch sight of the pools of his eyes.
He stares back at me, and after a moment, I sense that he might actually want me to elaborate on that.
The armor comes undone in my hands. “Since you’ve come to earth, you’ve been a man—”
“I’m not—”
“You are a man. Just because you can’t die and you can make shit spontaneously grow,”—not to mention the swarms of bugs and the not sleeping and peeing—“you have a body. You have a self.”
I toss his unfastened breastplate aside, the metal clattering on the ground.
“What do you want me to say?” he finally responds. “Do you want me to tell you something human about myself? Even if there were a part of me that was truly human—which there isn’t—your kind made sure to stamp it out long ago.”
I think he’s alluding to the torture he met at our hands. I almost ask him about it, but I know that conversation would put the malice back in his voice. I’m not interested in his wrathful side; I get plenty of exposure to it during the day.
“Fine, then tell me something inhuman about yourself.”
Another long silence follows. I think I might’ve shocked the Reaper, though I have no idea why.
“I feel … everything,” he finally says. “Every blade of grass, every drop of rain, every centimeter of sunbaked clay. I am the storm that rolls in, I am the wind that carries the bird and the butterfly.” As he speaks, he begins to gain confidence.
“The sensations are a bit muted now that I wear this form,” Lightly he touches his chest, “but still I feel it all.”
Forgetting about the last bit of armor that encases his arm, I inch closer to him, drawn in by his words. Say what you will about me, I like a good story.
“That’s the difference between me and my brothers,” he continues. “We are all meant to ravage the world, but we have our distinctions: War is the most human, Pestilence perhaps next. But even Thanatos—Death—is intimately connected to life.
“I am the one least truly alive. I have more in common with wildfires and clouds and mountains than I do anything else. So to be something that lives and breathes is a stifling, unpleasant experience. I am ... trapped in this flesh.”
I sit back a little, trying to process his admission.
He sighs. “I just want this to be over,” he confesses. “All I want is to return to what I once was.”