Fear the Reaper [malexmale]

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

"Stanton, you can't ignore him for the rest of forever."

I said absolutely nothing as I towel-dried my hair vigorously before letting the fluffy white thing flop over my shoulders. Across the room, Alaric sat on the bed, wearing an unfortunate pair of boxer shorts and a tank top because he wanted to remain civil while we were staying a block away from where my father was currently living with his boyfriend-thing-person-what the fuck ever. It only further irritated me as I went over and sat on the edge of the bed, looking out the window of our hotel suite at the city of Heaven splayed out like the diamonds of a rich lady's necklace; sparkly, brilliant, high class.

"He apparently had no problem ignoring me," I said under my breath, reaching up to brush my wet hair back from my face. Alaric sighed and I felt the bed dipping with his weight as he crawled up behind me and put his arms around my shoulders, pushing the towel down onto the floor. I sighed as he gave the side of my head a little kiss and started to massage my shoulders. It was a smooth hard roll against muscles that felt like they'd been yanked so tight, they were about to snap.

Could you fucking blame me?

Apparently I wasn't the only Xiphrus spawn walking the universe. Rowan was my brother. He was alive. He had gotten away. He'd been alive this entire time and I'd never known. Why hadn't he come to find me? Why didn't he bother to look for me? He wasn't stupid; he knew I was his brother. He had to know I was alive. I was famous, and that's not even me bragging. I was fucking Death, for god's sake. Hard to fucking miss me.

And yet Rowan had no problem hiding away all these years.

And he didn't even want to talk about it. Bringing it up had gotten us a buttload of nothing. He'd brushed it off, acted like it wasn't important.

For once, and I could not fucking believe I was saying this, I agreed with Xiphrus. The old fart also looked completely appalled by Rowan's revelation, and clearly wanted to know more, but Rowan had shut him down so fast, I think we both had whiplash from it. When I'd tried to bring it up with Rowan after we left Xiphrus's place, he'd shut me down again.

"Sorry, I'm in a mood for Italian tonight. We'll meet up with you at the hotel."

Like we were on fucking vacation and not trying to figure out what this prophecy was, who was really behind all of it, and uhm, hello? Family? Standing right there in front of you? Instead of discussing it, he'd taken Simon and they'd gone to some high class restaurant with the promise of coming to the hotel Xiphrus had booked for us. He'd walked off like nothing mattered, like everything was all fine and fucking dandy.

Oh, and before leaving, he'd slipped me a bag of pot, gave me this stern look that threatened to beat my ass if I didn't cool my head off. He had balls to act like he gave a shit, then turn around and shut me down when I asked about the fact that we were siblings and where was he for the last six thousand eons or whatever.

Bullshit.

It was absolute bullshit.

Oh, and leaving me to explain to my husband why I needed weed? Yeah, that was fun.

"For the panic attacks," Alaric had murmured in understanding when he'd seen Rowan slip me the bag, "I don't know why we didn't think of it earlier. Raven's dipped his toes in it before. He said it helped for awhile, but it just wasn't really his thing."

"So you're not mad?"

"What? No way, if it works for you, baby, please. I don't want to see you all strung out like that again. It scares me, and I know it scares you. Do what you have to, but know that I have to tell Hades."