Chapter Eleven
"This is insane," Rowan concluded as we sat in the living room. Simon continued to smoke like a chimney, having popped into the kitchen for a bag of funyuns that he was now inhaling like a vaccum cleaner. Meanwhile, Rowan was sitting in his armchair, facing me with his arms draped across his knees, his black eyes narrowed as he ran through my plan in his head, probably trying to find a reason to take back his offer for help. And yet, oddly enough, he wasn't telling me to go fuck myself and returning to his old lady news station.
He just didn't look too pleased with it. Not that I blamed him, because it was going to be both awkward and intense.
I needed to get those books, though. I needed to get into Joxeia's office, occupy his time, and have Rowan find and snatch the books for me in a way that he won't be detected by Jo. Of course, one would warn me no, Stanton, don't, he'll steal the books from you. No, he wouldn't. If Rowan wanted to get those books back from Joxeia so badly, he would've gone and gotten them himself, with Simon, days before I got out of the hospital. Instead, here he was, offering to help me, at the risk of an awkward and uncomfortable situation.
Not to mention, I remembered his conversation from earlier with Simon. Rowan liked me, and I was starting to debate whether that like was platonic or romantic. Either way, I could use it to my advantage. Rowan wasn't going to hurt me or take the books without my knowing. His offer was genuine, and so was the look that finally settled upon his expression as he came to his conclusion.
"When should we leave?" He asked. I glanced at the clock, then took out the scrap of paper with Joxeia's office hours.
"Says he's open from eight to five. Or seventeen. Or whatever time frame pleases you. We should leave in about ten minutes so we can get there around lunch. Joxeia will happily cut out his lunch hour just to talk to me. Trust me." I stood up and Rowan followed suite, nodding slowly as if he already understood without my needing to explain anything further.
Joxeia would jump on the chance to help me. He'd pretty much shat on me in the past and he'd see this as a fantastic opportunity to patch things up between us. And poor Jo saw the good in everyone. Too bad for him that there was no more good left in me, apparently.
"Watch the house," Rowan told Simon, who tilted his head back to look up at us boredly, "We'll be back in a couple of hours. Think you can handle that?"
"I am so fucked right now, I don't even think I can get up to piss," Simon responded flatly, then turned back to the television. Rowan looked back at me, his flat expression making me smirk. We left the house and he locked the door behind him. I turned to Rowan, who took a deep breath and cracked his neck from side to side. I stepped out from under the small roof overhead and into the sunlight that shone down overhead, casting a shadow just below me.
Rowan stood in the shadow of the roof, his eyes closed. His image began to fade, like he was becoming transparent, only darker and darker until he was nothing but a filmy black shadow that blended in with his surroundings. It was almost like watching him disappear, except he latched onto my shadow a second later.
A shudder went through me, raced up my spine. I sucked in a deep breath, feeling a tingle rush through my bones, centering at the back of my neck. Jesus, it was like a strange little brain orgasm or something. I glanced down at the shadow on the ground. I could feel Rowan there. I could feel him almost as if he were connected to me. And oddly enough, for the first time since I was with Alaric, I didn't feel alone. To test it out, I walked to the end of the walkway and my shadow followed along as it should. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing strange or funny about it. A few people passed by on the street, some pausing to wave, others smiling, and some just kept going. No one suspected Rowan was even present.
No one can see me or feel me, I tensed at the sound of Rowan's voice in my head, and don't panic. I am connected to you in quite a few ways right now, meaning I can feel what you feel, hear what you hear. And vice versa. Out of curiosity, I tested it. I stood still for a moment, focused in on the things that I didn't normally feel on a daily basis. I could feel a small ripple in my stomach, and it took me a full minute to realize it was Rowan's heartbeat. And when I concentrated harder, I caught a brief flitting thought from Rowan that made me cough and clear my throat.
Stop invading my privacy, Rowan said sternly and I held my hands up in surrender, watching my shadow copy the movements. Out of curiosity, I put my hand on my head and my shadow mimicked the movement, making me smirk.
Forgot to mention, Rowan said dryly, you can also control my movements like this. If you start to rub your belly and pat your head, I will shove my foot up your ass. I'm in the perfect position to do it. With that in mind, I decided I was done playing around. I teleported us from Styx to Olympus.
Talk about going from one world to another. Whereas Styx was in the midst of summer, Olympus was winding down towards winter. It wasn't freezing cold, but much cooler in comparison to Styx, and thankfully, it was bright and sunny, so my shadow was perfectly natural in the light. I appeared not far between the main town and Zeus's palace where Joxeia's office was located. The town below was a flurry with activity. Things had been rebuild after the whole Atlan fiasco, so the buildings were sparkling new and clean, some still in the process of being rebuilt, and the town was beginning to stretch out further around to connect to other smaller spots of activity.
Meanwhile, Zeus's palace sat high above the activity overlooking everything like the almighty king it housed within. The path wound up to the front steps that I took two at a time before reaching the door. I felt my neck tingle with Rowan's anticipation to be inside. I cleared my throat and stepped inside, pausing in the massive sleek modern foyer. Everything about the interior of this place was high end modern. Everything came in basic colors; black, white, gray, navy. Nothing too bright and flashy. Everything was geometric and perfectly placed and orderly, from the steel columns to glass doors.
I didn't stand there for too long, admiring the huge chandelier over my head because the air rippled around me. I felt myself tense involuntarily as Joxeia came into view from around the corner of a hallway further down from the foyer.
He looked as dazzling and beautiful and angelic as ever. He was completely androgynous, meaning that most of the time people mistook him for female rather than male. He was drop dead beautiful with delicate feminine features, smooth pink glossy lips, skin the color of very pale cream, hair like snow that fell in perfect straight locks down his back, and almond eyes the soft pinkish red of an albino. His body was lean and slender, which was accentuated by his choice in tight jeans and a knit white turtleneck under a long gray cardigan, his black heeled ankle boots only adding to his height.
He was honestly the epitome of beauty. It made sense. He was Creation. He created beauty, created life, created wonder and joy and happiness. He was everything fluffy and cute and perfect.
And I hated him for it.
"Stanton," Joxeia greeted me, looking surprised as he came into the room, but he knew better than to approach me and hug me. Instead, he stopped a good ways away from me and continued to look at me like I'd sprouted a tail. I made sure to keep not only the topics, but my mind focused on the task at hand. If Joxeia picked up on what was going on, and lord knew he fucking would because he was so goddamn smart, it was game over and I was screwed.
Nobody liked to be lied to more than Joxeia.
Honesty was his best, and probably only, policy.
"Hey," I said after a moment, then cleared my throat, reaching into my pocket and taking out the slip of paper from my pocket, holding it out to him, "Uh, someone recommended you to me?" Joxeia took the paper, took one look at it, and a small smile turned up the corners of his lips. He looked oddly happy to have had Hades recommend me, especially given how much he wanted to have a sit down with Hades and Hades refused, claiming he was totally and completely well.
Yeah, well like a steak and a steak should never be fucking well done.
"Yes," Joxeia murmured, then looked up, "I actually had him call me. He told me not to count on seeing you." Of course he did. I shrugged a little, looking down awkwardly at my feet as I shifted to further prove how uncomfortable this whole situation was. I mean, come on, therapy? Really? And Hades was the one who told me to come here?
Please. That Greek needed a thousand years of therapy in comparison to me.
"Yeah," I muttered, making Joxeia raise an eyebrow, "I just... I have nowhere else to go." Joxeia's expression softened. It made him look even more like an angel. He folded up the paper and handed it back to me and I took it, shoving it back in my pocket. I glanced around the foyer, hoping no one else was in the vicinity to see this.
How annoying would that be, to explain to people why Death of all people was seeing a therapist.
"I have some time now," Joxeia said, doing exactly what I knew he'd do, "How about we go to my office? It's not far." I just nodded. Joxeia smiled again. Like he couldn't believe this was happening and he was glad I came on my own and proud and all that weird shit. He led the way out of the foyer and down the right hallway, passing a couple meeting rooms. One of which was closed with a meeting in progress sign on the door.
Joxeia opened a door at the end of the hall and gestured for me to go inside first. I didn't like having him behind me, but I said nothing as I slipped in, keeping him within my peripheral vision.
The room was not what I was expecting. I was expecting flowery decor, maybe one of those weird sofa bed things they made you lay down on so you could cry about your feelings. Instead of the bright fluorescent lights out in the hallway, the light was a soft buttery yellow and came from a floor lamp by the windows, windows that looked out into a beautiful chill view of a private garden. Another lamp sat on a nearby desk where a Mac was set up with trinkets and utensils, and by that was a huge bookshelf with books ranging from child psychology to Dealing with OCD. Across from that was a brown overstuffed suede armchair with a small glass end table by it, and on the other side of it was a matching loveseat with cream and green pillows.
Everything was cozy and warm. It didn't really look like what I expected from a therapist's office.
"Take a seat wherever you like," Joxeia said, shutting the door behind us. I glanced at him, then around the room. The only seat were the armchair, the loveseat, and a metal rolling chair by the Mac. Something told me it was common to sit in the loveseat... So I sat on the loveseat in the middle.
I was already uncomfortable with this. I should've made a different plan. I didn't like sitting in this room. I didn't like being shut in with Joxeia. I didn't like how on-display I felt. I watched Joxeia go to his laptop, pop it open and type something in before he shut it and came over to take a seat on the chair. He picked up a little planner thing from the end table, scribbled something down, then looked up at me.
I looked back at him.
And all I could hear now was the ticking of the clock on the desk, a bird outside chirping as it stood on the edge of a birdbath. I could feel a soft tingle on the back of my neck, and following it... I felt a small tugging sensation and knew Rowan was leaving me to go find the books.
"So, what do we do now," I asked, sitting back on the sofa, then leaning forward to put my arms on my knees, "I talk about my feelings or some shit like that?" Joxeia shrugged, folding one leg over the other and clasping his hands together on his knee. Wow, didn't he just look so goddamn professional like that?
"We talk about whatever you want to talk about, Stanton."
"You want me to talk about how shitty Xiphrus is?" I expected that to piss him off, but whatever, it was Joxeia. Nothing ever showed on his face. He was very good at the poker face thing. He may not show it, though, but it didn't mean he didn't feel. So my words probably irritated him.
After all, Joxeia had also jumped on the let's love Xiphrus bandwagon.
"Whatever you want to talk about," Joxeia reiterated smoothly. As if I hadn't bothered him. I sat back now, putting my hands on my thighs, rubbing at my jeans, because I didn't really know what to talk about at this point. I wasn't even actually here for therapy. I just needed to keep Joxeia busy.
What I should've done was write a list of things to discuss with him so I could pretend to work toward some kind of goal with him.
The bird was tweeting closer to the window now and I turned to look at it. It was a tiny little fat thing. Cute as hell. Its little black eyes were outlined in black, matching the feathered tuff on its head, and its little feet that gripped the branch. It just cocked its head from side to side, peering in at us, like it, too, was wondering what the hell was going on here. It chirped, a high sound that seemed to echo through the room.
I heard a soft breath and looked over to see Joxeia smiling at me.
"What?" I asked, irritated.
"You still like birds, I see," Joxeia answered. I shrugged, pretending to be disinterested... even though I knew exactly what kind of fucking bird it was and why it preferred the garden over the rest of the mountain and that it probably had a nest in a bush nearby because these birds in particular didn't generally make nests in trees and now I'm a goddamn bird nerd.
"Do you still study them?" Joxeia asked. I gave him a droll stare.
"That was eons ago. I don't really care anymore."
"How come?"
"Because I have more important things on my mind."
"Like what?"
"Like the fact that I'm fucking Death," I deadpanned, folding my arms over my chest, "I don't have time to read books about birds. I have to go out every time there's a catastrophe, and in case you haven't noticed, there's been quite a few lately." Joxeia nodded slowly, like he understood exactly what I meant and I wanted to snap at him by now. As if he knew what that was fucking like. Joxeia hadn't once gone out and gotten involved in the greater scheme of things. He was too busy living it up in his pretty little palace with his pretty little whatever the hell he called Zeus. Boyfriend? Fiance? Were they married? Getting married? Was he even into that sort of thing?
"So," Joxeia continued, making me glance at the window where the bird still sat watching us, and I looked back at Joxeia, "Are you just going to bitch about being Death? Is that why you're here?" I raised an eyebrow.
"I thought therapists were supposed to be kind and caring and non-judgemental," I answered. Joxeia smiled.
"I'm not most therapists, and I think we both know that. I think we also both know I'm not stupid. You didn't come here to talk about your job or how much you hate Xiphrus," he responded. I went still at that, immediately turning statue so I could stare at the floor.
Shit. He knew. Goddamn it. How had he figured it out? Was my showing up here just suspicious on its own? Did he know where Rowan was?
"Yeah?" I asked at last.
"You're here about Alaric." Oh shit, thank you baby Jesus, I was about to shit bricks all over this suede. Traumatize the damn bird and Joxeia. Hell, myself. I still felt like my heart was racing and my body suddenly felt like jelly. It was like that moment of fear you got when you felt like you were gonna slip and fall backwards, but you caught yourself last minute and you stand there thanking every god in the book you didn't both make an ass out of yourself and crack your damn head open.
"You heard about that?" I asked. Joxeia shrugged.
"People talk."
"You mean Hades talks."
"Everyone knows that. The whole damn family couldn't keep a secret to save their lives. Thank the Source the universe has never depended on that particular skill or we'd be screwed," Joxeia answered. I smirked at that and nodded my agreement. Joxeia smiled a little at that.
"So, does Alaric know you're here?" He asked. I shook my head, looking out the window again at the little bird that had moved over to the birdbath again and was flitting across the surface of the water, like it was having a blast.
"Haven't seen him since he left," I responded. Joxeia nodded.
"Hades said he left and he was very upset. Do you want to talk about what happened?"
"No."
"Then how about you tell me how you and Alaric met?"
"You know how we met."
"Refresh my memory," Joxeia encouraged. I rolled my eyes, reaching up to pinch the bridge of my nose before looking outside again. I could picture the day clearly, because it was one of the few moments in my life that didn't involve death and shit. Instead, I'd gone in to see Lucifer. He wanted to make some rules about my going in and out of Gehenna to drop off souls.
Alaric was still a kid then. I'd heard plenty about him growing up, terrorizing the household like the wildchild he was. But when we met, he was a teenager. Shrimpy, tousled brown hair with natural blonde highlights, fierce hazel eyes that said I'll do whatever it takes to prove myself. He was so goddamn innocent and feisty, like an angry little puppy ready to face the world. He was still in training with his siblings, and Lucifer always kept him close so he could show Alaric the ropes of the household. So he'd let Alaric sit in on our meeting. Those fierce hazel eyes were focused on me the entire time, and when I gave him a wicked smirk, he'd flushed pink right up to his ears, his mouth falling open before he snapped it shut and made an excuse to flee the room. Fuck, he was so goddamn cute.
He was still cute, but not in a kid way. In a male way. A full beautiful grown male. He went from tiny angry cherub to straightforward no bullshit male, who not only wanted to face the world, but did it with no questions asked. He'd gained confidence that he flaunted well. And his body, his body was utter perfection. Lean hard muscle, soft sun kissed skin, and his fingers, long and slender, his ass so firm, so perky I could bounce a quarter off the damn thing.
"How did you and Alaric get together in terms of dating?" Joxeia asked. I remembered it not starting out as dating. I offered sex and he took the offer and ran with it. We had sex every time we met up, and we met up on his terms and his terms only. We kept up this relationship of sex and go for years until I couldn't take it anymore. I wanted to hear him say it; I wanted him to say he loved me. I wanted him to ask me on an actual date.
Except he never did.
And logically, I understood why. Alaric was an artificial, a creature formed from science and magic. He was programmed with specific things in mind, and thanks to Lucifer and his pea brain, he'd programmed Alaric to focus solely on the family and protecting them and keeping them together. And when he found out one of his brothers was living in Styx, he'd packed his shit up and went there, and at the time, I'd been hired to babysit his ass the whole way.
It took Alaric losing his memory and me lying to him to get him to date me. Alaric had been confused, but he said it felt right. It felt like something he should've done years ago and he apologized for not doing, even though he didn't need to. And even after I claimed to be his boyfriend and vice versa, we didn't really go on a date right away. We went back to sleeping together whenever we met up, then both of us leaving for work.
I wanted more than that. And gods, that sounded like such a pussy ass thing for someone like me to say, but I couldn't help it. I wanted more than just the sex. The sex was great, don't get me wrong. It was totally mind-blowing, rocked my socks off quite literally. It was perfection. I just wanted to wake up for once with him in my arms. I wanted to hear him talk about everything, not just work, not just how sexy I was when I took charge. Yeah, that shit was great, but what else? Anything else you like about me? Anything else you want to do?
Things changed after I asked Alaric to marry me. He started to depended on me as much as I depended on him. We loved waking up together, embraced, or even sprawled on top of each other. We loved watching the same shows, eating the same foods, playing the same games, making the same jokes, talking shit about the neighborhood pretty committee.
Alaric made me... feel alive, for the first time in eons. No one else had touched me the way Alaric did. He was my tether to sanity.
"So, you had to initiate dating," Joxeia concluded. I'd told him how we met, how we ended up dating, just not the rest of the information. There was only so much I was willing to tell Joxeia, and how deeply Alaric was connected to me was off the table. It was a weakness I wasn't willing to expose to him, especially him.
"Yeah. He was programmed to protect the family."
"That makes you angry, though," Joxeia pointed out, making me frown, "We both know Alaric couldn't stop what Lucifer had made him for. And yet, that still upsets you. It upsets you that Alaric was more like a tool than a son to Lucifer, and that Alaric never wanted to pursue anything romantic with you in the first place."
"Reading my mind, are you?"
"I don't need to read your mind to see what's written on your face when you talk about it," Joxeia explained and I rolled my eyes, turning my face away from him to make his job more of a pain in the ass, "Did it ever bother you that Alaric didn't want a relationship with you in the beginning?"
Yes. Because it reminded me of Xiphrus and Joxeia and everyone else who didn't want to be around me. I wasn't always this much of an asshole. I just realized that being nice wasn't going to make people like me, so fuck it. To hell with all of it. I wasn't going to play their social game to try and make friends with people who didn't want me around. Might as well act how I really felt. I was honest with people. And if they didn't like it, that was their fucking problem, not mine.
But Joxeia didn't need to know that.
"No," I replied smoothly, looking down at the suede and giving the fabric a swipe, so the fibers brushed the opposite way and appeared darker than it actually was, "Alaric couldn't help what he was created for."
"What about afterwards? When you asked him to marry you? What made you decide to take that initiative?" Joxeia asked. I frowned. I guess I was feeling stupid. I wanted to go for it. Ask him and if he said no, then give up and walk away. He clearly wouldn't have wanted me around at that point. I was nothing more than a sex friend to him.
But he said yes. That meant he wanted to be in a relationship with me... right? Yeah. I mean, come on, who would marry someone they didn't want to marry, right? I asked him. He had the choice to say no, but he said yes. So that meant he wanted a relationship...
Was I trying to convince myself? What the fuck?
"I figured I'd give it a shot," I said with a shrug, maintaining my cool, "If he said no, then it meant I was just wasting my time with him. But he said yes, so that meant he wanted our relationship to go further. Took a gamble and I won." Joxeia nodded, like he understood. Yeah, I'll bet he totally understood what it felt like to have everyone abandon him and not want to be around him. The prick couldn't go three feet without someone offering to give him a blowjob.
"What else would have happened if he had said no?" Joxeia asked. I gave him a droll stare.
"Obviously I would've left."
"Would you have been hurt?"
Yes. It would've ripped out the last shred of humanity I had left inside me. It was would've been the confirmation I needed to know that no one wanted me. I was completely and utterly alone in this big huge universe with an unlimited population.
"No," I said, looking up to meet Joxeia's pink eyes, "I would've accepted that it wasn't supposed to happen and get the fuck on with my life."
"Do you love Alaric?" Joxeia asked. I scowled.
"What kind of question is that?"
"Just a question. Do you love him?"
Yes. Yes. I loved him more than anything else in the universe. Alaric was the air I breathed, the sun in the day, the moon of my night. He was the reason I woke up in the morning, and the reason I felt safe enough to fall asleep at night. He was everything pure and beautiful in my world, a world that was constantly dark and full of death and misery and woe. In that dark cold world, Alaric was my light, my warmth.
"Yeah." Because that was enough. That was all Joxeia needed.
"You're angry," Joxeia said after a moment and I looked him curiously, sensing a change in his tone of voice, almost like he was annoyed with me, "You're sitting there giving me half-assed answers, pretending the world is fine and dandy. Your husband just cut off your relationship. He won't see you anymore. Your father, the one you claim fucked up your life, is now alive and well and walking around, happy with his own lover. Everyone else has moved on, but you're still stuck in this state of limbo and you're not going anywhere. You're just digging your heels into the ground."
"Excuse me?" I asked, wondering where the hell this was coming from. Joxeia gave me a sarcastic smile that only succeeded in ticking me off further.
"Does any of that come as news to you? You came here for a reason. You clearly want to talk about it... or maybe you came here because you're waiting for a chance to hurt me?"
"Why the fuck does it have to be about you?"
"It's not. It's about you wanting to hurt me, to hurt Xiphrus. Maybe you want to hurt Satanika too. Geara. Alexion. And everyone else from the past, because that's what you feel they did to you."
Oh shit, this was not going the way I expected and I was getting fed up. I hadn't felt the tingle on my spine that meant Rowan was back yet, and he'd been gone long enough. Either he'd snatched the books on his own and already left, or he was still searching and coming up empty handed. Either way, I was fucking out of here. I was not going to deal with this bullshit. It was just a distraction, not an actual session.
"I'm out of here," I stated, getting to my feet and heading for the door.
"Feel free. You're very good at running away," Joxeia replied. I froze, my hand on the door knob. I felt my muscles slowly locking up, my grip on the door knob tightening so much that the metal whined and cracked beneath my finger, splintering apart. I turned around slowly to see Joxeia sitting there like a calm pretty little doctor in his armchair, this superior expression on his face, like he thought he'd won some kind of battle here.
"Watch your fucking mouth," I said in a hard voice, watching Joxeia quirk a brow, "We both know that I don't play by most barrier laws. I can easily break your neck here."
"Then do it," Joxeia responded calmly, folding his hands in his lap, "I encourage you to make the attempt. If you think hurting me will make you feel better and change everything that happened, please. In fact, I would like you to. If hurting me or hurting Xiphrus will bring back your siblings, bring back the children I also lost during that war, if hurting us will also bring Alaric back to you and make the universe a better place for you, then please. Come here and break my neck, Death." Fury rocketed up my spine and before I knew it, I was on the other side of the room with my hand on Joxeia's throat, pinning him against the back of his seat.
His skin was soft, fragile, beneath my grasp. One squeeze and his pretty little head would pop off like a cork on a wine bottle, and I'd relish the explosion of red spraying out after the decapitation. I waited for Joxeia to say something else intelligent, but he just sat there and stared up at me through his pale lashes with piercing pink-red eyes that knew everything and nothing at once.
My chest was heaving and my heart felt like it was splintering to pieces like the door knob, cracking and popping open in some parts, my lungs inhaling, exhaling sharply, adrenaline kicking through my veins and making my body tremble with rage. I felt my fingernails bite into Joxeia's pale throat, begging for me to rip it open and expose his insides.
"You want to know how I fucking feel," I seethed, watching Joxeia's eyes continuously staring at me, unfeeling, "I fucking hate you. I hate Xiphrus. I hate Satanika. I hate Alexion. If all of you fucking died tomorrow, that's the only way I would be happy. You sit here and you act like you lost everything-- Bullshit! You have everything, asshole! You have a family! You have friends! You have a life! It's easy for you to fucking move on because you have everything you need! I didn't! I came to you before you left Paradise! I came to you and I asked for you to stay with me, but you didn't even look at me! You're a fucking coward is what you are! You're the one who runs away when things get too hard for you! You're the one who took off like a pussy with your tail tucked between your legs and now you make friends and clients just by opening your goddamn legs!"
"Xiphrus was my everything, you prick! He literally created me! He was there for me every single second of every single day of every single long miserable fucking year! He was my entire world and he tried to kill me! He tore my throat open! He killed my brothers and my sisters and your goddamn children! And before you give me the same bullshit everyone else keeps feeding me, oh stop, Stanton, Xiphrus has changed. Xiphrus is a good person, Stanton. Why don't you fucking tell me why for the hundredth time Xiphrus tried to kill me, huh?!" Joxeia's eyes finally flickered at that and I laughed, feeling a rush at finally having caught him off guard.
"Yeah! That's what fucking surprises you? Xiphrus trying to kill me again? Does that destroy your pretty little picture you've painted of Xiphrus? How can you fucking sleep at night knowing that you're shaking hands with the asshole who mutilated your children? Who tried to kill you, tried to give you over to Atlan like a sex doll? Then again, you turned out pretty much the same now, huh, so I guess that's what you wanted all along. I should've known. You even opened yourself up to the biggest dickhead in all of the Greek pantheon!" Joxeia's expression shuttered, closing off once again.
"There he is," I hissed, getting in his face, making him tilt his chin up, like he was trying to look like a tough guy and it only made me laugh that he had to do that in order to try and one up me, "That's the Joxeia I remember. So good at not giving a shit about anyone or anything else. You pretend you want to help people. You pretend you want the world to be great, but in actuality, you love this corruption. You feed off of it. You get a kick out of it. After all, what would you be without a clientele of fucked up psychos, huh? Just Zeus's little personal prostitute." I roughly let go of his throat, shoving him back against the chair and taking a step back.
I wanted nothing more than to punch him in the face. I wanted to see him bleed. I wanted to hear him scream. It was a sudden shot of anger and hatred that rushed through me. It was a combination of hot and cold, like my blood was replaced with icy-hot and was cutting a path right up to my brain, flaring out in my chest, kicking my heart into overdrive. It didn't ache anymore, didn't hurt, just felt so goddamn good. It was like getting injected with steroids or something.
And as that anger continued to flow through me, I felt something magnetic attach to me, sending a tingle up to my neck, like someone had just plugged something electrical into my system. And I recognized it immediately as Rowan.
I smiled pleasantly now, watching that same flicker of curiosity go through Joxeia's eyes.
"Guess our time is up," I stated, taking a step back as I curled my fists up at my sides so tight that my fingernails sank into my skin, freeing a couple droplets of black blood that dripped to the floor. Joxeia's eyes flashed and locked on it, widening slightly before they shot back up to my face and I met his eyes.
"Thanks for nothing, Jo. I think I'm gonna find a therapist who actually gives a shit. Sorry we never got to the part where you took me into your bed and let me fuck you for a week. I know that's your favorite part." Joxeia actually winced at that and I felt my smile widen into a straight up grin.
Finally. Finally something hurt this bastard. Finally he got a taste of what it felt like to be in pain. And I hoped it lasted.
I vanished from his cute little office in Olympus, reappearing on Rowan's doorstep. As soon as I took my place there, Rowan detached himself from me. He pooled as a black shape on the porch, then formed himself into the drop dead handsome shadow he was. I was still tingling, still twitching, from the anger and without thinking about it, I grabbed Rowan and shoved him up against the door, making him grunt. I put my hands on his hips, savoring the sound of his heart pumping under his breastbone, his expression twisting into confusion for a split second before his eyes widened as I got in his face.
"Stanton--"
I slammed my mouth against his. It didn't give me the butterflies or fireworks that my kisses with Alaric gave me. But I wasn't looking for romance or beauty or completion. I just wanted to hurt someone, something, anything. It was like my body craved it. It was a physical need I had to attend to as soon as possible, otherwise, I was going to explode. So I took over Rowan's mouth, kissing him hard, parting his lips with my tongue. He reached up to grab me, but I caught his wrists and pinned them to the door. I lifted my knee, going between his legs, spreading them apart, rubbing my knee against him.
He growled at that and in a split second, it went from me pinning him, to him spinning us around and shoving me up against the door with my chest to the door and his body covering mine, his hands grabbing my wrists and pinning them to the small of my back. I panted hard from the adrenaline, from needing something violent to happen. I bared my fangs and looked back at him. Rowan was breathing hard, his lip bleeding so a stream of black ran down his chin. I nipped at his chin, catching the blood on my tongue, licking my lips at the powerful sweetness of it. Like licking cake icing off a cake.
"Stanton," Rowan said in a low voice against my ear, "Don't. You're caving into the infection. Don't let it do this to you." I felt a laugh rumble through my chest and Rowan narrowed his eyes at me.
"Isn't that what you want? You want me to be infected? You want me to go dark side? Are you seriously turning me down in bed to remain noble or some shit? Don't be stupid. We both know you want to fuck me. You've wanted to since the day you saw me. That's not even me being arrogant. You couldn't wait to take me home yesterday. You practically begged me by sticking around in the hospital--"
"Enough," Rowan commanded, making me twitch with irritation that he wasn't shutting up and getting straight to what I needed, "Stanton. Listen to me. I'm not going to touch you when you're like this. What you feel right now is part of being infected. When you feel anger, when you feel hate, when you feel sorrow, it doesn't just hit you like it normally would. It bulldozes you. It goes off like a goddamn bomb inside you. This isn't who you are. We both know that. I want you to take a deep breath and calm down." I started to yank myself away from him, but found it was almost impossible. I growled low and again tried to snatch myself out of his grasp, but he held me fast.
My breath became harsh, angry, my lungs hollering for air as I tried to catch my breath. I looked back at Rowan with the intention to threaten him, only to see that his expression wasn't anger. It wasn't frustration or anything. It was... sorrow. He was sad. I could almost smell it in the air. And it wasn't that he felt sorry for me or anything. I think he just... empathized with me. And somehow, that managed to calm me down.
I went from feeling inflated with power, with anger, to feeling... goddamn stupid. And as I felt my body begin to physically come down from whatever high it was that the infection did, I reassessed everything that had happened up until this point.
Joxeia had purposely been trying to make me angry, because he knew that was the only way to get me to talk. Unfortunately, he had no idea I was infected. He had no idea it was going to actually get violent, that I wanted to actually hurt him. I'd lashed out at him, because everything he said was true in some kind of twisted way.
And suddenly I felt weak. My legs trembled and I almost hit the floor, but Rowan caught me under the arms. He sighed and knocked his foot against the door a couple times. A second later, Simon was at the door. The expression on his face said that the moment he saw us, he knew exactly what was going on. He and Rowan worked together to drag my ass up the stairs to the guest room where I was dumped on the bed while Simon went to fetch some brownies from the kitchen.
"That's why you guys smoke the weed," I mumbled against the pillow as Rowan pried my boots off, "To keep yourselves from going insane." Rowan glanced at me as he set my boots by the door and came over to sit on the bed beside me. I rolled over onto my side, looking up at him.
"Yeah," Rowan said at last, "It takes the edge off. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't." Simon came in with some brownies wrapped in saran wrap. I nodded my thanks as he set a glass of water on the nightstand and went over to lean on the wall by the door. I reached out, took out some brownies and took a few bites. It took a little while, but it finally hit me and I relaxed even more on the bed.
"Why did I get weak?" I asked.
"Anger makes you turn into the Incredible Hulk," Simon responded, "Sorrow makes you never want to get up. It makes you never want to take another breath."
"This sucks," I muttered, "It's like bipolar disorder, except twenty times worse."
"Pretty much," Rowan said quietly. I chewed on a couple more brownies, drank some water, then ended up rolling over onto my back. Rowan stayed on the bed while Simon left to go make a call for Chinese takeout, something he knew I was craving and I wasn't sure how. Maybe he wanted some too. I felt sleepy, though, as I laid there, staring up at the ceiling, my hands tucked beneath my head.
"Hey," I said after a while and Rowan glanced at me, "Sorry for kissing you."
"Any other time would've been nice," he responded, making me raise an eyebrow and smirk, and he shrugged, looking down at his fingernails, "You were correct, about how I feel. However, I am not a fool. We both know you want Alaric." I looked back up at the ceiling.
"He doesn't want me, Ro."
"Yes, he does."
"He left."
"Doesn't mean he's gone. Just means he's trying to figure out why you don't want him."
"I do want him."
"But he doesn't know that."
"Since when did you counsel people on relationships?" I asked dryly. Rowan just shrugged again. Simon came back up the stairs and informed us it'd be half an hour before our order came in. Apparently they had to call another cook to come in because our order was so big. I laughed at the news and Rowan shook his head. I groaned and rolled over onto my side again, bringing the pillow up under my head.
"Hey, Ro?" I asked, feeling strangely sleepy now. My eyelids felt heavy, like a pair of garage doors ready to close down for the night. My body felt weak and relaxed, the whole world warm and fluffy and the blankets helped... and so did having Rowan there, watching me, like he was waiting to make sure I was alright. I smiled at that.
"Yeah?" Rowan asked. His voice sounded far away.
"You're a good guy."
"I wish, Stanton... I wish."