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Any average bounty hunter (or grim reapers, as colloquialisms would have them) would know that it was an absolute no-no to fall in love with their bounty, especially when the bounty of their affection was one-third of an adventuring group that had managed to collectively die almost one hundred times (and never once check into the astral plane, which was just rude).
Fortunately for Kravitz, he was no average bounty hunter (or Grim Reaper, as he liked) and, therefore, basically had the free-range to do whatever the fuck he wanted.
He hadn’t intended for “loving Taako” to be item number one on the very long list of “things he could (probably) finesse his way around doing,” but it wasn’t like he was complaining.
How could he complain when Taako, golden hair splayed out messily on his pillow, stretched behind him and squeezed his eyes shut tight before turning them, tiredly, onto Kravitz?
Taako smirked, his eyes glinting. “You’re staring, my man.”
Kravitz, turning to prop himself up on his elbow to face him, shrugged. “Just admiring the view.”
Taako rolled his eyes and pulled a face. “Such a sap,” he said, sitting up. The comforter bunched around his bare waist. “Gross.”
Kravitz chuckled as he watched Taako tie his hair into a messy knot on top of his head. Taako side-eyed him and his hands stilled in his hair. “You’re really admiring this view, aren’t you?” he teased, looking away. His hands continued their movement. “I already know I’m drop dead beautiful, Krav, don’t gotta tell me twice. I mean, Death himself is in my bed.”
“It’s very comfortable,” Kravitz noted, tilting his head. “And, yes, perhaps you do already know that, but that won’t stop me from saying it.”
Taako seemed unfazed, humming as he finished tying his hair, though the slight twitch of his ears didn’t go unnoticed, nor did the faint smile on his lips. A genuine one, a rare one, for once not fueled by a witty quip or followed by an eyeroll, and Kravitz never wanted to take his eyes off him. “And you are,” Kravitz continued. “Very, extremely, incredibly beautiful.”
“A man after my own heart,” Taako said, lying back down next to Kravitz. “Knowing a pretty face when you see one is a good skill to have.”
“Perhaps,” Kravitz said. “But more than just that, of course.”
“Well, yeah, my dude, I have a rocking figure as well.”
He smiled. “Yes, that too,” he said. “But I just think you’re a beautiful person, Taako.”
And there it was again: his ears twitching, this time paired with an eyebrow raise and a hum. After that, he stayed silent, instead choosing to stretch upwards again and arch his back. Moonlight dashed across his chest and, as he came back down, he kept his eyes trained on the ceiling above him.
“So smitten already,” Taako mumbled. “You don’t half-ass things, do you?”
While Taako wasn’t entirely wrong, they did only go on their first date last month, Kravitz took note of the deflections with a slight eyebrow raise. It was a tactic of Taako’s that he had become more and more aware of each time he saw the elf. They were subtle, smooth and properly placed so that they would just be mistaken for an enlarged ego, or a witty sense of a humor.
Kravitz, though, having become confident in his abilities to begin to understand the man he had been spending most of his time with, was starting to think it was something else. A deflection, not out of modesty or teasing, but out of wanting to avoid the subject entirely. It was something he had seen before: Taako, lauded for his beauty, suddenly side-stepping when he as a whole was brought up, as if one mattered more than the other, or as if just a portion of him was… enough.
And Kravitz wanted— loved , even, though that felt a lot like falling and never stopping—all of Taako. As cliche as it all sounded, it had been… a long while since Kravitz had been so charmed by someone, and he forgot how good, how warm, it felt.
He didn’t think Taako was an insecure man, per se, or faking his confidence until it became real; more so, it felt like… a defense mechanism. A way to keep his walls up and people out while still using what he had to keep them interested.
A mechanism that, if Kravitz thought about it, was probably only built up out of necessity, out of needing to keep his guard up while still letting people be near him.
But Kravitz, who Taako had been inviting to the Moonbase more and more (secretly, of course), knew boundaries when he saw them. He wasn’t about to trivialize whatever Taako had gone through in his past, nor was he about to believe that problems could be easily washed away with love. He would never pressure Taako, for what they had was better formed on genuine trust than on Kravitz coming with a pickaxe at Taako’s walls.
More so, he just wished that, whatever Taako had gone through, it hadn’t been so hard on him, so quick to show him that life could only be journeyed with mile-high walls up above him.
Kravitz wasn’t an idiot; he knew better than most that life was never easy but, sometimes, he wished life was kinder.
“Are you staying?” Taako was asking, finally snapping Kravitz out of his thoughts. Taako’s eyes were turned back to him, lazily and tiredly taking him in. “Usually you’re hauling ass back to the RQ.”
“Typically because she doesn’t have the best timing,” Kravitz said. With his luck, his Queen probably heard him say that.
Taako laughed. “You should tell her to chill it,” he said before stifling a yawn with his hand.
“I’m sure that would go great for me,” Kravitz said with a chuckle. “I’ll just strut up to her throne and demand that she stops sending me after all those nasty necromancers and liches.”
“Yeah, my man,” Taako said, smiling. “Doesn’t she know that you have things to be doing?” He yawned again, turning on his side and tugging the blanket up around him. “Or maybe she doesn’t. I was on your Most Wanted list for a while.”
Kravitz grinned. “She’s a surprisingly forgiving person, I assure you,” he said. “But- do you want me to stay? You seem tired, and I know your boss has been working you pretty hard recently, so-”
“If you don’t have any reason to go, might as well stay.” It was simple, as if Taako didn’t care. Still, Taako gently interlaced their fingers. His touch was light and barely there. Kravitz could easily pull away if he wanted to; he could get up out of the bed and yank on his clothes and open a rift and be gone, and it would be so easy.
Kravitz didn’t want to.
“I’ll stay,” Kravitz said, squeezing Taako’s hand.
Taako smiled before shrugging it off. “Cool, my man,” he said. He waited a moment before shifting in the bed, sliding up next to Kravitz and laying his arm over his torso, his head now resting where Kravitz’s heart would have been beating. “It’s hot in here anyway, so finally I have some fucking AC in here.”
Kravitz didn’t say anything when Taako tugged the comforter a little tighter around them.
“And your roommates won’t mind that the man who tried to kill them is sleeping over?”
“I doubt they even know you’re here,” Taako said, his voice already muffled and heavy with fatigue. “Besides, who cares?”
Kravitz smiled and rested his arm over Taako, holding him close and securely. “I suppose you’re right,” he finally said, and he felt Taako relax against him.
“So, how did you even become a reaper?”
Kravitz arched an eyebrow even though Taako wasn’t there to see it. They had been speaking over their farstones for a while now (which was all Kravitz could say about that, since time in the Astral Plane didn’t pass like it did elsewhere), and their conversations up until then had been rather normal.
Kravitz was unable to leave the Astral Plane for the day. The Raven Queen needed him on call; they were on the lookout for a nasty bunch of necromancers that had somehow managed to be fairly difficult to catch.
Taako, meanwhile, had been training all day. His boss was working him and his two other partners down to the bone ( “Like, literally, Krav. I’m gonna look like you by the end of this.” ), and he was left to spend what little time he had to himself recovering and resting for the next day of training.
“I think I’m gonna lose my shit if I spend another day just staring at my ceiling, waiting for my body to stop aching,” Taako had said in lieu of a greeting. “My ass is being thoroughly kicked—which is real fucking annoying—and it’s all getting very boring and I think my boss is trying to kill us and I am ready to retake you on that offer to bring me to the Astral Plane for all of eternity.”
Kravitz had laughed. To start a call with venting was such a Taako thing to do, and he found that he preferred that to some plain old greeting. “Be careful what you say, dear,” he had said. “You did already die and come back to life nine times.”
Taako sighed. “You know, bubbalah, I think you’re making all that up,” he said. “I’ve been very close to death before but never, like, actually died? I think you just saw me in Nerd Lord’s lab and wanted a piece of this-” Kravitz couldn’t see Taako, but he imagined that he was gesturing to himself with a flourish “-For the rest of your very dead life.”
“Caught red handed,” Kravitz said, grinning down at the paperwork that would soon be left forgotten on his desk.
All very normal conversations, really.
And it wasn’t that Kravitz becoming a bounty hunter happened under any odd circumstances; it was just… talking about the past, and talking about the past wasn’t really something they did a lot of.
“Well, rule number one,” Kravitz said. He was lying on the bed that he didn’t technically need but liked anyway, frowning at one of his rings that had been chipped during his last hunt. “You have to be at least partially dead. Not dead? A complete deal breaker.”
“Well, there go my job prospects for when this is all over,” Taako said. Kravitz could hear a smirk in his voice. “Or, well, who knows. I’m probably gonna die before this is all over anyway, so maybe I’ll just join you in the astral plane.”
Kravitz held back a sigh, not wanting to alert Taako to the fact that that still bothered him- bothered him a lot, actually.
“Because I’m worried no one else will have me,” Taako had told Kravitz when he asked him why he would stay in such a dangerous career. At the time, Kravitz was still… testing out Taako. He knew he wasn’t going to try to bring Taako and his friends back to the Astral Plane anymore, but that didn’t mean he was ready to get on one knee.
Hearing that, though, twinged something in Kravitz. His heart hadn’t beat for centuries, but hearing Taako say that still pulled on something in him.
“I think you’d be bored here,” Kravitz said. “It’s all grey. Really washes everyone out. Terrible, really.”
“Well, is it against the law there in the Astral Plane to hang some color?”
“No, but it has to be red,” Kravitz joked, though he did eye the red tapestries around his room. “And that’s rule number two: you can only decorate with red, and something red has to be in every one of your outfits. If it’s not red, you’re off to the Eternal Stockade.”
“Well then nevermind,” he said. “I’m more of a blue person.” He then sighed dramatically. “It’s a shame, truly. Dying young can be so tragically beautiful, you know? Well, young for me.”
Kravitz chuckled. “Taako, I’ve been a bounty hunter for over three centuries.”
“Oh shit,” Taako said, a surprised laugh escaping him. “You’ve been stuck in that job for a fucking while.”
“The pay’s good.”
“I guess so.” A beat of silence. “How old are you actually? Like, minus three hundred years.”
Kravitz paused, his eyebrows shooting up. His age wasn’t something that he’d thought about in… well, over three centuries. He didn’t age anymore. Hell, he technically was a skeletal being. He could conjure up any appearance he wanted for himself; he was just lucky to be an attractive man and decided to stick with that.
Pushing a fallen dread away from his face, Kravitz thought for a moment. “Thirty… five, I think? No- yes, wait- yeah, no, I’m technically thirty-six. Kicked it not long after my birthday.”
Taako hummed. “How?”
Kravitz glanced down at the stone of farspeech in his hand. It wasn’t like he minded the question. Sure, when he was first dead and adjusting to this new life of being not-alive, perhaps, but he has had years to cope. It wasn’t even like death bothered him, or that would have caused an awful case of irony.
Just- still, “Taako” and “questioning” didn’t always go together.
“If you’re looking for a fun story, it was nothing heroic,” Kravitz said with a dry laugh.
“I’m not,” Taako said. “I’m just… curious.”
Kravitz paused for a moment before nodding. “I used to be a musician, as you know, and I was heading home from a performance,” he explained. “Leaving Neverwinter, actually. That city’s been standing for practically forever, you know?”
Taako hummed in agreement. “And where you grew up?”
“Redwick,” Kravitz answered. “Not there anymore. Well, the land still is, but a new town was built over it long ago. Let’s see… it’s about… probably twenty miles south of Rockport? Incredibly small town, blink and you would have missed it.”
“Did you like it there?”
Kravitz smiled. “Very much, actually,” he said. “My parents were farmers, and we were actually responsible for the produce for the entire town. Of course there were other plots, but we were the shit, you know?” His smile widened when he heard Taako laugh on the other end. “I, however, helped out at the only library in the town. It was a small, pitiful thing, and I loved it. Despite its size, the books it had… and the musical compositions, oh, Taako, if only I could have my hands on that music now.”
“Is that how you decided you wanted to be a musician?”
“Not necessarily,” Kravitz said. “I was fortunate enough to have a cello as a child, but there was where I realized I wanted to- to lead. I’ve always loved playing, and I’ve dabbled in writing my own music, but having beautiful masterpieces in my hands, and all of it? To be able to know when and what the violins and the flutes and the piano play…” Kravitz swallowed the wave of emotion in his throat and released a deep, contented breath. “I wanted to be at the head of it all, Taako.”
“I think you would’ve been great,” Taako’s voice was barely over a whisper.
Kravitz nodded. “It really would’ve been something.”
A moment of silence passed before Taako said, “So you were heading home? If- if you still want to-”
“Oh, yes!” Kravitz said, remembering where he left off. “So, I was heading back home from Neverwinter. The performance had gone well. Wasn’t one of my best, but certainly wasn’t bad. It was just… a normal performance.”
“And then what?”
“Well, it was the middle of autumn. Not cold enough to be worrisome at the time, but still not completely pleasant. And, well, on one of the final nights of the journey home, it stormed. I was travelling in a horse and carriage with a driver and, after an hour or so, we were finally able to reach a town and find an inn to stay at, but…” He sighed. “Within a couple days, I was sick. The doctor in Redwick did his best, but the sickness reached my lungs and, in hours, well, that was it.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m-” Taako took a deep breath. “I’m really sorry, Krav. That… really sucks.”
Kravitz shrugged. “At the time, yeah, it was rather rough to deal with,” he said. “But… it was so long ago, and I’m practically living a second life now.” He smiled. “Got to meet you.”
Taako chuckled. “My man, if I’m the best part of your undead life, you should really try to get a pay raise from the RQ.”
“Oh, Taako, my dear, you give yourself too little credit.”
“You flatter me,” Taako said, and Kravitz could hear the smile in his voice. “So, how’d you become a reaper?”
“Well, Taako, this might come as a surprise to you, but I’m a betting man.”
Taako was silent for a moment before erupting into laughter. “Kravitz- Krav, please do not fucking tell me that you made a bet with the fucking goddess of life and death! ”
“Hey, what can I say!” Kravitz laughed. “I didn’t want to die and I liked to think that I was a charming man, so why not?”
“So- so, what? You just sauntered up to RQ and asked to live?”
“Oh, no, she would have already heard that a thousand times that day,” Kravitz said, shaking his head. “Instead, I just tried to… offer my skills. I saw what was in the Astral Plane and it was a sea of one collective consciousness and- okay, so it isn’t terrible, but I like being my own person, you know?”
“Kravitz is good out here.”
Kravitz grinned. “Exactly,” he said. “So I told her that it might do her well to expand inner circle. I myself was lead to the Astral Plane by a reaper, so I thought I could do that, you know? Or- or write music for her. I was a bard, so it could’ve come in handy, you know?” He then sighed. “She enjoyed my charm but enough so that she wanted a bit… more from me.”
“And how so?” Taako asked.
“Apparently proving my loyalty would’ve been a bit too easy if it was just leading the recently deceased to the Astral Plane,” he said. “She made a deal with me that if I could take down a small group of necromancers—no more than three—I could be a bounty hunter for her.”
“And how’d you manage to finesse that, handsome?” Taako asked, a teasing lilt to his voice. “Walk up to them with that Cockney accent? Ask them politely?”
Kravitz smirked. “Taako, do you doubt my skills at persuasion?” he asked, mock offended. “I’ll have you know, I was always an excellent bounty hunter, even my first time out.”
“Oh, I’m sure, ” Taako said. “So, what did you do, Mr. Big And Scary Grim Reaper?”
“Well, you know, she gave me the scythe and the dark robes and the whole kit and caboodle and- let me make it clear that this wasn’t a hard job. You three probably could’ve done it without needing a competent woman to save you.”
“So it was one of those jobs that, if you fucked up, you deserved to be in that sea of semi-consciousness.”
“Precisely,” Kravitz said, laughing. “I think she just wanted to see if I was bullshitting her. But- so, she gave me everything, but I wasn’t a fighter. I was a bard . I didn’t know shit about swinging a scythe, but I did know how to… talk.”
“Oh my god, you actually asked them nicely, didn’t you?”
“Hey, they were pretty shit necromancers, and ‘charm person’ is a wonderful little spell.”
Taako burst into laughter, and Kravitz beamed. “I can’t fucking believe you!” he managed out. “Fucking walking into the den of some shitty necromancers and fucking charming them. ”
“They really seemed like awful necromancers!” Kravitz defended, laughing now, too. “It seemed like their rituals barely worked! I was doing them a favor, and politeness can get you anywhere!”
“So, what, their leader was suddenly charmed and they just went, ‘oh, shit, okay’?”
“Exactly that.”
“Cockney accent?”
“Oh, no,” Kravitz said. “I developed that wonderful tactic later on. I didn’t want to do too much off the bat, yeah? Can’t start at the top or else there’s nowhere left to go.”
“Except down,” Taako said through laughter and, after a couple moments, he added, “And that was it?”
“That was it,” Kravitz answered. “Eventually I started to use the scythe more, obviously, and I’ve gotten better, but it was a pretty humble… boring beginning, really.”
“And now you’re everyone’s favorite Grim Reaper.”
Kravitz smiled. “You flatter me.”
“It’s the truth, my man.” Taako’s voice was quiet, gentle. Simple words meant only for Kravitz, and simple words that would have made Kravitz’s heart swell.
“Means a lot,” Kravitz said. “Especially when it’s coming from everyone’s favorite wizard.”
Taako scoffed. “Stop trying to one-up me with your charm,” he said. “Fuck outta here, using the same line I just did.” Kravitz laughed, and he heard Taako laugh, too. They were quiet for a moment before Taako said, voice quiet again, “So I’ll see you soon?”
Kravitz hummed. “Definitely,” he said. “This mission shouldn’t last much longer, and then we’ll be back to sneaking around your moon base.”
“Or we could go out some-” And, then, Taako’s voice cut off and, just barely in the background, Kravitz could hear voices that sounded like they were calling out. “Sorry, Krav, I’ll call you later. The two other chucklefucks are back with dinner, and your boy is starving.”
“Oh, I see how it is, choosing food over me.”
“Uh, yeah, duh,” Taako said and Kravitz laughed.
“I’ll talk to you soon, Taako.”
“You better.”
And, then, the stone of farspeech went quiet and Kravitz, after releasing a contented sigh, sat up.
He had work to do and, if he wanted to follow Taako up on actually going somewhere not super secret for a date, he had better get going on it.
Taako had been sitting propped against Kravitz, Kravitz’s back up against the headboard of Taako’s bed, when Taako said it:
“I tried cooking for myself today.”
Up until then, there had been two things that Kravitz knew about Taako and cooking: one, that he used to be a chef and, two, that something happened and Taako barely even went near kitchens anymore.
What Kravitz didn’t know was what happened in between.
“Did you?” Kravitz asked.
“Yeah,” Taako said. “It didn’t really work out.”
If Kravitz hadn’t glanced out of the corner of his eye, he would’ve assumed Taako was just having any old conversation. His voice was steady, his tone flippant. The only give away that something was off was Taako scratching at his cuticles.
Kravitz nodded slowly, glancing up to Taako’s face. He showed no sign of distress, though, looking back down at Taako’s hands, the last thing Kravitz wanted to do was make Taako feel forced to open up.
But, then again, if he was saying something in the first place, would commenting on that just make him throw his guard up?
“How come?” Kravitz finally asked.
It was the safe question, and one that would give Taako an out if he wanted to take it.
Taako was silent, and for long enough that Kravitz thought he was taking that way out, when he finally said, “Panicked.”
When Kravitz looked back down at Taako, Taako was already looking up at him.
“Did I ever… tell you about that?” he asked, and Kravitz shook his head.
Taako sighed, looking away and back down to his hands. “Taako, you don’t-”
“No, I-” Taako quickly interrupted before cutting himself off with an even more frustrated sigh. He brushed his hair back from his face and straightened up, no longer using Kravitz in place of a pillow. “I will, I just-” He cast a cool look over his shoulder. “I don’t need your pity.”
“Okay.”
“I’m serious, Kravitz. I got by long enough without people’s pity and-”
Kravitz put his hands up in defense. “Taako, I promise,” he said, and hoped his sincerity reached through. “Whatever you’re going to tell me… I’m not going to coddle or pity or-”
“Okay, okay, got it,” Taako said, nodding. It seemed more to assure himself than Kravitz. He shifted on his bed, turning to face Kravitz with his legs crossed underneath him. He bit the inside of his cheek, studying his nails one last time before looking up at Kravitz. “So I’m, like, Taako from TV, you know?”
Kravitz smiled. “Of course.”
Taako smiled faintly in return, his eyes darting away before turning back to him. Kravitz could practically feel the nerves coming off of him. “Well, I used to do a cooking show,” he said. “ Sizzle it Up with Taako .”
“Catchy name.”
“I know, right?” Taako let out a quick laugh. “And so I had this show. And it was, like, my thing, you know? Like, I would go to different cities and towns and… put on a cooking show.”
Kravitz nodded.
“I put magic into it,” he continued. “To make it more entertaining, you know? Anyone could season something, but what if those seasonings were transmuted from salt or cutlery or anything, yeah?” He sighed, looking away again. “It gave the show more flare, and more people came to see it.”
“I also-” He then cut himself off again, worrying his bottom lip. “I had a stage hand. Sazed. And-” He laughed dryly, his eyes trained on nothing across the room. “Krav, you would’ve thought I hung the moon for this guy. He adored me and the show and… everything. ”
“Okay,” Kravitz said slowly, already trying to piece the two together.
“And, one day, Sazed asked to be a part of the show,” Taako said. “I didn’t give him anything big to do. Just… I don’t know, get the materials, help transfer stuff in and out of the oven. And then, another day, he proposed a… partnership, I guess.”
“And?”
“And I told him no,” Taako said with a shrug. “ Sizzle it Up was my thing. I started it and made the dishes and the brand and it was my thing. I’ve never had things before and-” He sighed, shaking his head. “It was mine.”
“After that,” Taako continued. “Sazed was… weird. Moody. And, like, listen, I got it, I guess , but I thought he would get over it. It wasn’t like it was the end of the world for him.” He then paused and looked down. He clenched and unclenched his fists. “So, I was in Glamour Springs for a show, and…” He trailed off and, finally, looking back up at Kravitz, he smiled sadly. “And they loved me there.”
“Of course they did,” Kravitz said quietly.
“I was making a thirty garlic clove chicken and-” His breath hitched and, in any other case, it would have went unnoticed but, in the silence, it was all they could hear. “-And something went wrong.”
Kravitz swallowed thickly.
Taako shook his head again, looking away again, looking anywhere but at Kravitz again.
“Forty people died, Kravitz,” he finally said. “We didn’t stay long enough to watch it all happen but, trust me, we found out pretty quickly.” He paused. “I thought it was me. I transmuted practically everything I cooked with for that show and… I thought it was the elderberries. They look so similar to deadly nightshade, that’s what it had to be.”
“I’m gonna guess it wasn’t.”
“Bingo.”
“Taako-”
Taako jutted a finger at him. “I said no pity.” Kravitz shut his mouth and, faintly, Taako smiled before continuing with, “Hey, remember Refuge? The town where, again, a shit ton of people were dying?” Kravitz raised an eyebrow. “I swear this tracks.”
“Okay, yeah, Refuge isn’t a town that I’d forget.”
“Well, while I was there, get this, a cup that could control time was possessing an eight year old girl.” Kravitz frowned. “Wild, right? Well, so this cup-lady showed me that it actually wasn’t my fault! Sazed was just a jealous fucker and fucking poisoned my dish with arsenic!”
Kravitz’s eyes widened and Taako then let out a bitter laugh. “And, you know, all this time, I’ve been feeling really fucking bad about this! Like, for the past six years I thought I killed forty people. I travelled on my own after that, practically fucking hiding, fucking dyeing my hair because maybe I was about to be, I don’t know, fucking found and arrested , and Sazed fucking dipped because I assumed that he didn’t want to be associated with something like me, and-”
He cut himself off with a frustrated noise and roughly tucked his hair behind his ears, pulled back in anger. “I wasn’t angry then, you know? Because it wasn’t my entire fault. I- I had a hand in it, but Sazed was that did it, yeah? But now? I’m just- it’s pretty fucked, Krav!”
Kravitz blinked.
If he was Taako, he think he would have razed the world. People often striked out of jealousy, but what was done to Taako was on an entirely different level. What Taako had done to him was more than jealousy; it was malicious and calculated so that Taako would be the only one left at the end of it all.
Alone and the deaths of forty people on his head, left with nothing but guilt for a crime he didn’t commit.
“And, listen,” Taako continued, not even letting Kravitz get his comment in on how, yes, that was definitely fucked, “I’m- Being alone is also kinda my thing, you know? Like, I was passed between family members for, I don’t know, twelve years? And have then been travelling with whoever would have me for well over a hundred years. But just- for that to happen? Fuck, Krav, it fucked me up! I can’t cook for myself without- without thinking it’s fucking poison and I’m gonna get sick and die. And, then, for Candlenights, I wasn’t even thinking and made macaroons for everyone and- how could I have done that? What would I have done if something happened? If everyone died and-” His breathing hitched again and, shutting his eyes, he drew in and released a shaking breath.
Kravitz stared at the man before him.
In all his time knowing Taako, he had never seen him so open, so vulnerable.
Kravitz wanted to raze the world for him. Show it what it deserved for- for this. For being so cruel and so harsh and so cold and, yes, life wasn’t fair but, dammit, this wasn’t fair.
In any average situation, Kravitz would have laughed at himself. Here he was, Death himself, cursing the world for being unfair.
But this wasn’t any average situation so, instead, he said, softly, “Taako.”
Taako opened his eyes and smiled sheepishly. “Kinda went off there, didn’t I?” He let out a quiet laugh. “Sorry about that, my dude.”
“Why are you apologizing?” Kravitz asked, shaking his head.
“Because I’m Taako, you know, who’s supposed to be all cool and stuff? Not-” He gestured to himself “-whatever the fuck this is.”
“Human?”
Taako smirked. “Not a human.”
Kravitz smiled back, tilting his head. “Then being alive, because you’re feeling and- wait, no, because I’m dead and I feel, but-” Taako laughed “-but you know what I mean!” He reached out to him and, after a moment’s hesitation, Taako took his hand. “You’ve been through enough that I think I’d be worried if you didn’t care.”
“That’s a lot for the literal Grim Reaper to say.”
Kravitz laughed and nodded. He rested his forehead against Taako’s. “So you know that I truly mean all of this,” he said softly.
Taako breathed deeply and shut his eyes. “I don’t like being weak,” he whispered.
“You’re not.” Kravitz squeezed his hand. “Being open… Taako, that isn’t weak, not even close.”
“Feels like it,” he mumbled.
Kravitz frowned. “Taako, I want all of you. I don’t want you to- to shut out parts of yourself because you think I’ll like one thing over another.”
Taako worried his bottom lip. “That’s a big ask, bubbalah,” he finally said. “All of me is a lot to handle.”
“Well, then I have a problem with everything that made you feel like that.” Taako’s eyes flew open and he leaned back. “That only hurt you, and I take personal issue with that.”
Taako blinked at him. “No one’s ever… done that for me.”
Kravitz smiled. “There’s a first for everything.”
Taako rolled his eyes and looked away, though he didn’t do much to hide his own smile. “Such a sap. Can’t believe I’ve managed to successfully seduce Death.”
“Not like I’m complaining,” Kravitz said and leaned in to press a kiss to Taako’s cheek. “Looks like you aren’t, either.”
“Hell yeah, my man,” Taako said, laughing. “Not like I’m gonna deny this. This is chill as hell.”
Kravitz beamed and Taako turned back to him.
Taako smiled. He leaned forward and kissed him gently, one hand cupping his face, and Taako ran his thumb along the line of Kravitz’s jaw.
“Do you want to stay?” Taako asked when he pulled away. “You’re here already.”
“Do you want me to?”
Taako thought for a moment before nodding. “Yeah,” he said. “I’d like that.”