Work Text:
“I’m curious, little fly,” Khonshu muses. “Do you not feel shackled by our partnership?”
Jake Lockley looks up from where he kneels on one knee at Khonshu’s feet, a calculative tilt of his head preceding a calm Spanish drawl. “You’re a god, why don’t you read my mind and find out?”
Insolent, Khonshu thinks, but he chuckles. He’s felt it, long before he had the intention to ask - the swift subservience, no questions asked, that follows after he gives his order, the numbness of emotion that ebbs whenever Jake spills blood, squeezes the life out of a sinful soul. “You are loyal.” Khonshu notes more so than appreciates. “Perhaps to a fault,” he adds, with a hint of mirth.
Jake, bent over in a gesture of respect, is silent. He’s less chatty than Marc and Steven, a trait which has lent itself to his gift of sliding into the driver’s seat of the system to no resistance, and Khonshu has been learning to interpret each bout of wordlessness. The pop of the bullets that lodged themselves in Arthur Harrow’s shoulder and his forehead still sends a chill down his time-worn skull and bones.
“I am pleased with your work today,” he says softly, plainly. “My son.” A gloved hand draws near to cup the man’s cheek. Jake all but sinks into the touch, eyelids fluttering shut, an almost childlike softness crossing his posture that Khonshu notes with fascination.
“In fact,” Khonshu says. “Let me do something for you for your service. Something that is within my ability.” As his fingers part from Jake's face, the man's head trails slightly in their wake.
Jake stares off into some unknown distance, a steadiness to his jaw as if he’s already made up his mind. Don’t tell them I was here is the usual request, one that Khonshu has rigidly honoured. Today’s exchange is just as simple. “Don’t wake me up tomorrow.”
Tomorrow, Marc Spector and Steven Grant will live their lives by the light of day, and at night they will sleep, real sleep, as Khonshu observes quietly in the space between the material plane and the spiritual. Vengeance, he decides with light consternation, will have to wait. “As you wish.”
Their deal made, Khonshu watches as Jake rises and makes his way to bed in the simulacrum of Steven’s apartment that is their mindscape, where his alters lie soundly in sleep that has long been stolen from them. Marc’s curls spill onto his pillow in gentle waves, his fingertips brushing against Steven’s knuckles on the soft linen sheets.
“Good night,” Jake greets in that gentle lilt of his, that fleeting softness crossing his features as he presses a light kiss to the crown of Marc’s head, then Steven’s. He finds an unoccupied spot near Steven’s feet and Marc’s head and it’s there where he decides to curl up, a mental image of a guard dog.
Jake sleeps light, this Khonshu knows – always distantly aware of Marc and Steven’s conversations, ready to close his fingers over the wheel when he is needed.
Khonshu pulls the covers over the son he so currently favours. When the two alters wake in the morning, Steven with his fresh new stint at the museum and Marc with his date with Layla, they don’t notice Jake there.