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Sometimes, Taako looked at Kravitz and couldn’t believe his eyes.
Sometimes that was because he didn’t have in his contacts, or because his glasses (which were not nerd glasses, fuck you, Lup) were dirty.
Other times it was just because Kravitz was…
Unbelievable.
For starters, homeboy was fucking death , which was…
Alright, it was dope as hell, but also? What the fuck? Like, the fact that Death was a person (and a hot person, at that) (and a sweet, kind, snippy, compassionate, snarky, caring, petty dork of a person, but that—look, some things were too fucking soft for Taako to actually think about, so moving right the fuck along ) was wild, but even more than that…
Kravitz was incredible .
(Okay, so maybe Taako was going to think the soft thoughts. Fine, cool, whatever. Not like he had a brand or something. Stupid fucking in-love brain.)
He only ate his toast cut into triangles, and when he ate a fried egg he’d dip those triangle-toasts into the runny part of the yolk. He had a soft spot for cats, especially black cats, which fit his whole Spooky Aesthetic, but he spoiled those cats more than he spoiled Taako . He organised his closet by colour, but he hated folding clothes, so most of his stuff was just piled in the clean clothes hamper.
He could burn rice.
Rice .
And Taako loved him.
(Oh, Gods, the softness! The sap! The ridiculous amounts of fluffy feelings! Taako was going to die!)
And then there were the other times Taako looked at Kravitz and couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Time like…
“Hey, um, babe? What the fuck?”
“Huh?” Kravitz asked, spinning around to face Taako. A few of his dreads were slipping out of the knot he’d tied them into and were hanging around his face, and his collar was only half-tucked into his sweater. Basically, he was gorgeous, and it was making it very difficult for Taako to focus on the matter at hand.
Namely, the small fire burning on top of what looked to be a punk rock alter, in the middle of his kitchen table.
“ What . The fuck .”
“Oh,” Kravitz said, wiping his hands—was that fucking blood —on a dish towel hanging up on the stove. “That.”
“Uh, yeah , ‘that’. It’s on fire, dude! On fire! In our house!”
“It’s a sacrifice!”
“That doesn’t make this at all better! Actually, I think that makes this worse! Why are you sacrificing things in our kitchen?”
“Um… that’s where the cinnamon was? And—and the lighter? And the knives? So I just thought—”
“That you’d burn down our house while trying to summon the dark one ?!”
“No!” Kravitz said, finally moving to stand next to Taako. “No, I just—at the beginning of every year, followers of the Raven Queen—or most gods, honestly—do a sacrifice, as a sort of, y’know. Renewal of the covenant.”
Taako blinked at him.
“A renewal ,” he repeated. “Of the covenant .”
“Yes?”
Taako sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “You—okay, you get that’s, like, weird , right, babe? Like you can see how the sketch factor is, uh, pretty fucking high on that?” he asked. “Because, uh, not gonna lie to you, compadre, that sounds wack as hell .”
Kravitz chuckled for a moment. “I… I’ll admit, it must seem rather unusual from the outside—”
“You mean from every side, dude. Seriously. You’ve lit an alter on fire in our kitchen .”
“—but I can assure you, there’s nothing—nothing sketchy is happening here. It’s just—it’s a ritual between myself and my goddess.”
“Okay,” Taako said, throwing his hands in the air. “Okay, I guess that makes—I mean, I’ve seen Merle do some pretty messed up shit for Pan, I guess this isn’t—fuck, okay. You—you are the biggest disaster I’ve ever met.”
“So you’ve said. Multiple times.”
“And I’ll keep saying it! Jeezy creezy, okay, what do you—what do you need to do to finish the, uh, covenant thing? Like, what can I do to speed up the process so we can put out all the flames and shit?”
“So I’ve technically—like, I’ve done the sacrifice, mostly, now I just need to burn a few feathers and say the vows and then I’ll be done.”
“What…” Taako began slowly, sort of afraid to continue, “what was the sacrifice?”
“Just…”
“Just?”
“Afewdropsofmyblood.”
“A few what?!”
“Drops of blood! Just a few drops of my blood, nothing—nothing serious, nothing major, nothing I can’t heal myself without a problem—”
“This is so fucked up. This is so fucked up.”
“Maybe a little—”
“Are Lup and Barry doing this?”
“I think so? I mean, I sent them the file with the instructions, so I would think—”
“So everyone in my immediate close family is offering up their blood as a sacrifice to death —”
“Taako, please.”
Taako took a deep breath. “Alright. I’m—I’m cool. This is— cool . So. Feathers. Vows. I’m guessing probably some dope pyrotechnics. Rock ‘n’ roll, buckaroo.”
Kravitz stared at him for a moment, as if Taako was the weird one in this situation. He then pulled a few feathers out of seemingly thin air—probably from wherever he kept his scythe—and laid them gently on the still-burning alter.
And then he began to pray.
Or, at least, Taako assumed he was praying.
He couldn’t understand the words.
(And just in case you missed that, lemme run it by you one more time— Taako didn’t understand the words. Taako. Taako, who spoke Common, Elvish, Goblin, Dwarvish, and fucking Draconic couldn’t understand the words to Kravitz’s creepy as fuck death chant.)
“If our house explodes you’re dealing with fantasy insurance,” Taako grumbled. “I’m not gonna be the one to explain all this.”
Kravitz didn’t reply, but he did take a moment to look over at Taako, a small smile on his lips.
Finally, there was a gust of wind that moved through the kitchen, cold as ice, that made the hairs on the back of Taako’s neck stand up, and then all at once, the fire went out, leaving Kravitz sitting in front of a burnt pile of cinnamon-scented wood.
“You, uh, you good, bone boy?” Taako asked.
Kravitz smiled up at him. “I’m good.”
“Great, because you’re cleaning that up. I’m making pimento cheese sandwiches and praying I don’t get visited in my sleep by the ghost of blood sacrifices past.”
Kravitz laughed and pulled Taako into a hug, pressing a light kiss to his forehead.
“I think you’re only going to have to worry about one undead being watching you sleep tonight—”
“Oh fuck why did you say that that’s so bad —”
“Yeah, I—yeah. That didn’t sound—”
“Fucking—fantasy Jesus Christ, I hope not!”
Taako loved Kravitz.
If this shit didn’t prove it, nothing fucking did.