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For all Taako’s flirtatiousness, ‘bringing a boy home’ doesn’t come easily. Even if, technically, it’s not ‘home’, but ‘moon’, and he’s sharing it with Protein Burnsides and Plantfucker Highchurch. And even if Kravitz has already seen their little suite they… coinhabit as a trio, that doesn’t make it any easy to get past his mental block and let him in through the door. Taako don’t trust easy, after all. Part and parcel of going it alone for… pretty much all his life. And with all the time they’re spending together, Kravitz… is starting to be able to see through him and his bullshit. So when he does finally get the invite - if you can call an exposed shoulder, flirty wink, and door left open behind him a traditional invitation - Raven Boy can see that something isn’t quite right .
“Hey there, Bone Daddy, why don’t I make good on that threat I made the first time we met?” He takes him by his fancy goth lapels and tugs him towards the bedroom door that can only be Taako’s (one of them is covered with a hand-carved wooden duck design, and the other is sprouting the odd leaf) but there’s something in the corners of his lavender-coloured lips and in the shape of his perfectly drawn-in eyebrows that is just… not reassuring.
“Hey, uh, babe-” He’s cut off by a kiss that, again, while definitely enthusiastic , is still just ever so slightly off . Kravitz plants his feet and catches Taako’s wrists, bringing them to a halt. “Babe? Can we just - just talk about this?”
By this point, they’re already inside a bedroom that is just as much of an artful mess as its occupant.
“What’s there to talk about, thug? You want me, I want you - let’s do this!”
Kravitz is fighting hard not to go skull at this point. He swears he can feel the tip of his nose dissolving. “Taako - not that I’m against - against-” His lips form several hesitant shapes before he settles on a suitable euphemism.
If he weren’t feeling this flutter of anxiety - which is bullshit , by the way - Taako would have a hard time not getting distracted by how cute his grim reaper boyfriend is.
“Sleeping with you, just - what brought this on?”
His ear twitches in a way that Kravitz is pretty sure means he’s been caught out.
A mostly unconvincing seductive look spreads over his face. “Don’t know what you mean, thug,” he hums. His ear does that little twitch again.
The tip of Kravitz’s nose gives up the ghost and flickers briefly out of existence - will he never stop bringing that up? - before he reasserts it. “Taako, babe-” He takes a step back, puts some distance between the two of them both. “What’re you hiding? What’s going on? You know my not putting you in the Stockade isn’t conditional on anything, right? Do you really want this?”
“...Of course I do,” he says, just a beat too late to be convincing. “You do - don’t you?”
There’s a flash of badly veiled vulnerability from him, and with that, something in Kravitz’s mind clicks into place. “Taako, I’m not going to leave you if you don’t have sex with me.”
He tries to laugh it off, because of course he does. “I - I know that,” he bluffs, but the wariness still in his face does a lot more talking for him.
“Us - whatever we are - I don’t want you to think there’s any - any conditions on it,” Kravitz slowly gets out, trying to think before every single word, thinking and overthinking about what the effect of what each and every one of them might have. He steps back in closer again, resting his hands on his boyfriend’s shoulders and he looks carefully into Taako’s beautiful eyes.
He’s aware of the power he could exert to coerce anything he wanted - they did meet, as Taako delights in reminding him, in the ultimate fantasy game of cops and robbers. Cops and death criminals? Being chased down for crimes against the order of life and death itself. If he were an unscrupulous bastard like some of the people he’d come across in the past, he knows he could have used that. And the thought of doing that, of using his power and position like that, even by accident, horrifies him. He’s taken pains to be sure that he’s never done anything that could be interpreted as putting conditions on their relationship - and Taako’s freedom.
Well, no conditions beyond ‘pretty please don’t commit any more death crimes I don’t know if I could even try to arrest you now’.
But it seems that, despite everything, he’s been stepping all over invisible cracks.
“...Why don’t we sit down and have a talk? Just - just so we’re on the same page, yeah?” he suggests. His eyes land on one piece of the artful mess and a figurative Light spell illuminates his head. This could even end up as cute and romantic! “I could brush your hair out for you at the same time,” he offers, waving his hand at the arsenal of different brushes that magpie Taako has managed to accumulate.
Taako is visibly taken aback. It’s as if, just by making that offer, Kravitz has made him more naked and vulnerable than he would have by having sex with him. He stares blankly at his goth boyfriend for a moment, this offer - completely out of the blue - having cut through his defences which had as many layers as the typical Taako™ outfit. He opens his mouth to refuse, but a voice in his mind that is his-but-not-his calls him a goofus and tells him to let Skeletor play with his hair.
“Fine. But I’m warning you - one pull on it, and it’s over. Got it?”
“Promise, no pulling.”
It takes a few minutes of Taako, wary as an alley cat, arranging himself and everything else to his exact liking, fussing over everything until it is perfectly in place.
Kravitz assumes he has some sort of system, because he himself can’t see any kind of pattern to it all.
They’re both sitting on the bed as Kravitz begins teasing out the elaborate date night ‘do. Taako looks like he’s about to bolt at any second. His shoulders are as tense and stiff as the silence between them.
“Babe, your hair is perfect,” Kravitz says after a few minutes of this, hoping desperately to break this ice.
“Thanks, bird boy, it’s genetic and unattainable,” he immediately shoots back what has to be a stock response, looking a little more comfortable to be able to be on easier ground.
Too bad for him that Kravitz isn’t going to let this become another Deflection Session™ .
“So… want to explain to me what all this is about?”
“What’re you talking about, Bone Boy?”
His hands pause for a moment where they’re carefully unweaving one of Taako’s plaits. There’s a tiny collection of hairpins going on by his heel. Deflecting again. “You’ve been nervous all night,” he observed. “And… inviting me in. That didn’t feel entirely like… you , you know?”
That ear twitch happens again. “No-”
He cuts him off. “Don’t try to bullshit me, babe. I’m starting to get a pretty good insight into when you’re not being entirely truthful with me.”
Taako sighs and mumbles something under his breath, sounding both incredibly put-upon and fairly petulant.
“Are you planning on using your words at any point, babe?” he teases, using the very end of his finger to lightly tickle the tip of Taako’s ear.
It flicks and Taako’s head turns to give him a grumpy look. “You’re meant to be focusing on my hair, thug. Quit feeling me up!” he jokes, the mood lightening just a fraction.
They sit in a no-longer stiff silence for a moment more while Taako sorts through his words like an adult.
“It’s just - the five-date rule, you know?”
“...Five date rule?” Kravitz echoes slowly. “Babe, I’ve technically been dead for a good few hundred years. You’ll need to explain what you mean to this ‘ancient skeleton’.”
Suddenly, a measure of the previous tension returns. Taako’s hands go from resting idly in his lap to twisting and kneading at the many, many layers of fabric covering his knees.
“Uh - you know - how, if you don’t sleep with someone by the fifth date, you’re a prude and probably not worth their time…?”
Kravitz freezes, then makes himself let go of his hair and rests his hands carefully on his shoulders. “Taako… who told you this?”
“No-one,” he shrugs, but the movement is jerky. “Just - observational data and all that nerd shit. Uh - it’s fine, you - you wouldn’t be the first one to say I’m not - the first to break it off-”
Dark fingers smooth tenderly down his arms and cut him off by drawing him into a hug. He probably needs it. When was the last time Taako got a hug?
Okay, apart from rib-snapping Magnus hugs. A hug without the risk of death.
“Taako, even if I’d given a shit about sex before I died, I couldn’t give less of one about it now. I’m definitely not going to break up with you over it! Who - who made you think- ?”
He is getting some very unethical urges to abuse his powers. Regardless of his own feelings, he can see very clearly, clear as all hell that Taako has been made to hurt over this before, and he’d been hurt badly .
“...Mainly someone who can go eat a bunch of dicks for so, so many reasons,” he replies with a glare down at his knees.
His shoulders are tense and sharp as knives in Kravitz’s grip, and he quickly lets go. Gives him space. And they sit together, not talking, barely touching, for a good long while. Kravitz picks up the brush again and goes back to slowly brushing out his hair, even though he has long since finished undoing all of the intricate little elements Taako put in.
Neither of them is really sure what to do to break the silence. Taako’s… confession, of sorts, sits heavily in the air between them, and Kravitz is turning over in his mind again and again this person , this unnamed person who has - what? Pressured Taako into sleeping with them? Hurt him? Belittled him and called him names?
He keeps sweeping the softest brush slowly through his hair, root to tip. Root to tip.
The movement and the soft ‘ sshh, sshh ’ of the brush is making his endearingly droopy eyes start to close halfway as he is lulled to sleep. He jolts and catches himself once or twice. Kravitz smiles, but says nothing.
Sleepy Taako is cute Taako. Adorable Taako.
“I never got what’s so great about it in the first place,” he mumbles eventually, out of the blue. “What makes it important anyway.” Sure, he knows there’s something about babies, but why do people care about it outside of that anyway?
“...Sex?” Kraitz asks, just to confirm.
“Yeah. Why’d people care? It’s just - all messy and sticky and - and gross.” His ears have flicked down, losing some of their droopy sleepy position with Taako’s lingering irritation. “I don’t get - get why it’s so important in the first place! Why do people care? Why does it matter so much?”
“People… often put it as a need,” he explains with a shrug. “I’ve come across a lot of people who’ve done some… strange things for sex.”
That one time in that morgue… he’ll never be able to forget. No matter how much he tries to bleach it from his memory.
Kravitz keeps doing those long, slow sweeps through the full length of Taako’s hair, not fighting his dumb, in-love smile when he notices the little aborted nods and the sleepy droop to Taako’s ears.
He stays and watches him sleep until his Queen calls him to his work.
The next time it comes up between them, Taako is exhausted from the ramped-up training session the Director has him on. Come to think about it, if Kravitz is being honest with himself, he knows he’d probably never be able to open up about it without having been pushed to his limits anyway. Taako brand close lips, and all that. Gotta make like everything is Gucci.
The other two have been kicked out and Kravitz has officially been pressed into servitude as sous-chef while they cook… something. He just follows orders and lets Taako boss him around, all the while watching him with heart eyes as the flip wizard still somehow manages to be graceful despite looking half-dead.
“I’ve come to terms with it, you know? Being broken,” he says bluntly, without preamble. He doesn’t look up from the vegetables he’s tossing with olive oil over a high heat.
Kravitz gives him that space, not looking up from his assigned task while he speaks. The only sign he gives of listening is a little non-verbal acknowledgement.
“Even with - well - that asshole. Realised there was something e- something wrong with me, not to want it as much as he did. Or to - to feel it.”
“And you’ve had… people walk away from you in the past? Because of it?”
Taako shrugs, taking the frying pan off the heat and imperiously gesturing for Kravitz to bring over his current task. “Only makes sense that there’s people who can’t handle the Taako Personality™ without a - a little extra, y’know?”
“More fool them.”
Kravitz… vaguely remembers the sensations of being alive. When he focuses. But one of the biggest positives of being a construct is no messy bodily needs. Sure, he can enjoy good food and drink, and he can feel all the other feelings of being a person, but everything in it just runs itself. He doesn’t technically need to eat or anything else. No need to feed a heart that doesn’t beat, after all. He doesn’t remember if he’d… slept with anyone in the past. Before he died. But he can’t imagine giving up Taako over something so trivial.
“Not wanting to - to have sex-”
“You said the s-word! I’m so proud of you, Raven Boy!”
“ Taako .”
“No, no, go on. I’ll - I won’t interrupt you again.” He’s still grinning. Kravitz desperately wants to kiss that smile.
He takes a deep breath and starts over. “Not wanting to sleep with someone does not mean there’s something broken about you, Taako. And you’re not the only one. I’ve - I could bring you to the Astral Plane to meet any number of people who know what it’s like. And - there’s amazing things about you that make you a - a gift to be with, beyond just the - the physical.”
It’s adorable , Taako thinks, how easily his grim reaper gets flustered.
“You’re - you’re amazing, Taako,” he finishes, his whole little speech filled with a deep, genuine honesty that strikes to the core.
Other couples might have had a tearful, emotional Moment of bonding and coming together after this. An intimate, in-depth baring of hearts and souls that would leave their relationship and their bonds all the stronger for it. It would probably end in tears and kisses, maybe even quiet and tender cuddles together for a soft and loving evening which would lead into an equally romantic and tender night.
Other couples.
Taako looks up at Kravitz with a snort, a smile playing on his perfect lips. “Kravitz, “ he says. “That’s really fucking gay.”